A Different Interface

Originally published on Substack .

June 19, 2026 · Fragment

Clambering for something to say, I build a system (do this now, first, and things will flow) and still end up feeling like there’s no yield. Undaunted, I hone the tooling and the deadline crawls forward.

Forestalled, confused by lack of progress, I’m nevertheless convinced I’ll unearth a framework. But I’ve no idea what actually survives design, what travels furthest when all’s been said and done.

I sense a vacancy in the drop-down. I know it’s all there: a branching path to abundance.

The menu changed state. It displayed whatever it was told to and, yes, probably produced something. But only an earful. No missive, no chronicle. Just a really long yarn. Values passing down a chain of command.

Still, I set everything up, seeded an output and clicked on the label. It’s just that I don’t have much use for any of it. Maybe it would have been better if the programme hadn’t worked, if the computer had played a brutal move and stalled with a syntax error.

But the programme ran and that’s what was terrifying. The problem is success. My day shapes up like an interface: geometric, circular. I’m sliding a small grey triangle around with a mouse. Nothing halts my belief. There are riches beyond this strange funnelling.

Lugging pixels around, I think of tiny craters: my wrist skims cold-pressed paper, smudging brittle specks of graphite, casting shadows over staves. I reach for another sheet and in doing so revoke all permissions.

I swipe the debris overboard, into a plastic basket. I tap an eraser, gently, against my lips. A little cylinder crimped in pinkish metal.

© N.G.Brown, 2026

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