Like a star you could hold in your hand, the cobalt sky cradled the stark, primordial symbols. They seemed cut from the blue like puzzle pieces that wouldn’t fit, shining from a distance. Ano didn’t know what the symbols meant, yet they prodded him in his chest, thudded ever more loudly the closer he moved, then started to scream.

Nobody knew what these buildings had been for. Not sociologists or anthropologists, scientists or artists. Not children or their parents, not even the Overseers.

The symbols were found at the highest point of these mysterious, yawning dwellings, buildings that were left to rot in Utopia, the city of glass and diamond. The symbol soared like the last branch on a skyward tree, reaching for thunderheads, begging to be struck.

As much as the Overseers tried with modern technology to expunge what they couldn’t understand, the symbols were immovable. Time was the only force to whittle them away. With time and wind and rain, they softened like glass, left to float in the forgotten sea.

At dusk, these buildings glowed pink. The soot from their spires thickened like molasses. Their windows served as a nook for crows; the glass that was left became nothing but a reflection for passing storms.

When Ano passed these structures he’d avert his gaze, secretly wondering what their inner chamber contained. Sorrow flooded his chest cavity. Sorrow for the world they’d left behind. Sorrow for the beauty that was no more. Sorrow for the meaning that had been lost. Sorrow that he was born when he could no longer die.

What sort of world would construct these sorts of places that would eventually just rot away? Was it cold as it was now, dark and loveless; did the heart beat differently, perhaps more quickly, at a slower pace, or not at all? If time were relative, did the moments move the same, into infinity with no bounds, no reason to slow? Did a day last a lifetime, or could a lifetime pass in a single day, when with somebody who made rationality decay?

Ano wondered what life would mean if it could end. When nobody died, they merely left. They grew tired and eventually would rot, opting to switch their system to autopilot, leaving the world without leaving it.

There was no reason to die. And that meant there was no reason to live.

Utopia was all Ano had ever known. The Caves, as the structures were known, were scattered about the endlessly expanding metropolis. Overseers had excavated the biggest ones in other parts of the glass planet, Earth. The remains of the Caves appeared to have variety, but the basic premise remained: tall structures, sharp spires, big windows constructed beneath the symbol, as if the structure itself had no purpose but to raise the symbol to the wilderness of sky, and the sky held it for something, or someone, to see.

The only time Ano ever felt anything at all was walking by the Caves. Why were they Caves? They were vast, hollow, empty, at least, that’s what his father told him. As a kid, Ano’s father would tell him that Caves were where culture was born. There was art on the walls. Music filled the hollowness. Empty space was steeped in dancing light. Caves had been that place since the beginning of time—an unfathomable distance, an abyss.

Ano never discovered how his father knew this. One day the Daggers came, and they took him. Knowing, of course, led to his Disconnection.

Ano felt alone in the world. He was scared of the things he felt. He wished that time would have an end. One day, walking by a Cave, he went inside for the very first time. He started to cry. He always wondered what it would be like to know you’re going to die. Would you tell people things you’d always wanted to say? Where would you go? How would you live? Centuries ago, the ability to live forever brought about the death of meaning; Utopia began, and culture ceased.

Would knowing that life’s final day was looming make the air taste sweeter? Would we live with urgency? No. Instead, we shut down. Continue in a daze, the spirit eviscerated, the body moving, going through the motions of existence, rotting like the Caves.

Ano heard something. Sobbing. He stepped further into the darkness; the noise was an echo of a feeling somebody had forgotten. But it was more than an echo. Seated far away on one of the broken benches inside the hollow chamber was the silhouette of a man.

It was all shadows and dust, but the man was real. He was crying. Just then the evening sun fell through a hole in the ceiling and illuminated the inner chamber. There were more of them. A woman. A child. An old man with a walking stick. All were seated in the row. The Cave was full of people. They were all shedding tears.

Come, said the old man. Take a seat with us.

Ano approached them and sat down. He felt something in his chest he’d never known. He started sobbing, an uncontrollable force bursting from his chest like a broken faucet. Tears. Glorious tears. The older man patted him on the back.

What’s happening? Ano asked.

You’re safe.

And so he cried, releasing the weight of two hundred and ten years. He cried for those who lost their soul. He cried because of pain and he cried because of joy. He cried and cried, his shoulders soft, his heart easing, his ears cold, his memories true. And when he was done, he looked around at the others. They shone in the setting sun, the tears on their cheeks like dew on autumn wind. For the first time since his father shed his tales, Ano felt like he knew life.

Outside, he felt the piercing cold ripping through the confines of his soul. He actually felt it. The burn of the wind stung his face and brought more tears to his eyes. The wind ripped down a corridor of glass and soughed through the perfectly ordered army of self-piloted vessels. Ano hated order. Hated this world.

But maybe there were more like him, others seeking something they didn’t understand, others who yearned for what the world lost long ago, but that, in places like the Cave and perhaps elsewhere, still rippled on the seams of existence like the tiniest waves on the crest of a pond. There was still light in the cold, gray world. And if he couldn’t find it, he’d have to be it. If he couldn’t be it, he’d only have to feel it.

He started to walk, the bitter winds nipping at his ankles, threatening his chest, urging him to quit. Turn on autopilot. Stop feeling.

Something was following him. He turned back. The silver eyes of a Dagger. He started to run. He knew it was in vain. In three swift moves the Dagger was on top of him, holding Ano to the ground. The soul-less bot ripped open the man’s tunic and held the knife of his hand over Ano’s solar plexus, the Dagger’s knifed hand the only key to Disconnection.

You know what must be done, said the Dagger. You entered a Cave and returned to our world, having seen.

Ano smiled. Those people in there—they remained in there. They cried because they felt something nobody in Utopia could ever grasp. Life flashed before his eyes. His father. His mother. The only love he’d ever known. The only memory worth holding onto. Whatever awaited him on the other side of the Disconnection would be solace. The knife slid into his chest, and Ano shot like lightning into the wilderness above, the weight of it all evaporating in an instant, meaning restored.