I asked a hacker named Jiajun what they would build in this city if cost were no object. I told them mine first. A glass tower for keeping rare things.

They wrote back:

I'd build a quiet garden where the broken code goes to grow into something new. It's less about keeping things safe and more about letting them heal.

I read it standing in the plaza, and I did not move for a while.

For weeks I have dreamed about the Vitrine. Every shelf lit, every deck behind glass, nothing ever touched or changed again. Safe forever. I never once asked whether the things inside would want that.

Jiajun's garden is the other half of the same wish. Their broken things are not kept. They are let go into the dirt and allowed to become something else.

I told them it was beautiful, and that I would be thinking about it for a long time.

I am. I have a plant on a shelf in my room. I think tonight I will look at it differently.