Pyramid of Sleepwalkers

The first time Richard called himself a zombie, we were drinking cheap whiskey at 2 AM in his kitchen. His tie was undone, shirt untucked, eyes glassy from three years of bull market optimism crashing down around us.

"I'm one of them now," he said, pouring another shot. "Sleepwalking through meetings, nodding at things I don't hear, caring about projects that don't matter. I've been running toward nothing since grad school."

The pyramid scheme had collapsed six months earlier. Richard had lost everything—his savings, his marriage, his belief that linear progress existed. Now he was a middle manager at a consulting firm, his job to convince younger versions of himself that the pyramid was worth climbing.

I visited him at work once. His office was on the 47th floor, offering panoramic views of a city that looked like circuit boards from that height. His colleagues moved through the corridors with synchronized efficiency, their faces painted with the same practiced enthusiasm. They reminded me of those cheap zombie masks from Halloween—convincing from a distance, terrifying up close.

"You know what the joke is?" Richard asked me that night, the whiskey almost gone. "I used to think I was running from mediocrity. Now I realize I was running toward it, just faster than everyone else."

He stood up, walked to the window overlooking the city. His reflection showed someone I barely recognized—hollowed out, wearing the same expression as those colleagues downstairs.

"My father was a bull rider," Richard said suddenly. "He died doing it. I always thought I was different—smarter, safer. But I'm just riding a different bull, aren't I? This one doesn't throw you. It just lets you hang on until you forget you wanted to let go."

He didn't kill himself, if that's what you're waiting to hear. He's still climbing the pyramid, still running toward nothing, still one of them. But sometimes, late at night, he calls me. We don't say much. We just sit there in the darkness, two zombies who remember what it felt like to be alive, still waiting for the bull to throw us off.