The Weight of Riddles

Elena sat at her desk at 2 AM, the fluorescent lights humming their eternal, headache-inducing song. She felt like a zombie—not the movie kind, but the corporate kind: hollowed out, moving through rituals she'd performed a thousand times, her soul eroding in increments too small to measure.

On her monitor: the sphinx logo of their latest client. An AI startup calling itself Sphinx Technologies, promising answers to questions no one was asking. The irony wasn't lost on her. She'd been bearing the weight of this project for six months, carrying the team while Marcus took credit, while leadership promised promotions that never materialized.

Her phone buzzed. David, her on-again-off-again lover, the one who made her feel alive for hours then ghosted for days. "You up?"

She stared at the message. Another riddle she couldn't solve. David was her personal sphinx—enigmatic, withholding, rewarding her with affection only when she guessed correctly. She was tired of guessing.

She remembered their weekend at the cabin last month. They'd seen a bear across the creek—a massive grizzly, wild and unapologetic. David had held her hand, and for a moment, she'd felt something real. But the moment passed, and he returned to his carefully curated distance.

The bear had known what it wanted. David never did. Neither did she, anymore.

Elena stood up, walked to the window. The city sprawled below, millions of people like her—zombie-walking through lives they hadn't chosen, burdened by expectations, trying to solve sphinx-riddles that had no answers.

She typed back to David: "No."

Then she opened a new document. Her resignation letter. For the first time in years, she wasn't bearing anything. She was putting it down.

The sphinx on her screen seemed to smile. Some riddles solve themselves when you stop trying to solve them.