Lila's feed was flawless. Golden-hour selfies in the hydroponics glow. Top marks, posted with a shrug emoji, as if by accident. Gym clips where even her sweat looked art-directed. Zainab knew Lila only slightly — they shared two rotations — but she knew the feed by heart, and the feed had quietly become the ruler she measured her own life against, and her own life kept coming up short.
So Zainab adapted. An hour of editing per post. Retakes until her jaw ached from holding the smile. Deleting anything that underperformed by breakfast. Checking the count at two in the morning with the brightness turned down so her bunkmate wouldn't see the glow. The night she deleted a photo her mum had loved — because it had stalled at nine likes — the summons arrived, buzzing gently on top of all her open apps.
There was no hall. There was a riverbank under two moons, warm grass, and a young man leaning against a tree with a flute and a peacock feather in his hair, grinning like he'd been waiting specifically for her. "I'm Krishna," he said. "Everyone expects a throne. I find people tell the truth faster on grass. Sit — I want to show you a magic trick."
"The world wears costumes, Zainab. We call it maya — the grand illusion, the oldest special effect. My whole talent, the thing all the stories are actually about, is noticing the zip at the back of the costume." He lifted the flute and played a short phrase, and the air above the river lit up with Lila's latest post — the golden one, the effortless one. "Lovely. Now walk around the back."
Behind the image, like the back of a stage set, was the making of it. Forty takes on the floor. The ring-light borrowed from the botany rack. The crop line that had removed a mountain of laundry and a younger sister mid-tantrum. A caption drafted eleven times to sound undrafted. And after the post went up: Lila, face lit grey, refreshing the count, doing at midnight the exact same maths Zainab did at two. "You have been comparing your whole day," Krishna said, "to her best frame. Your Tuesday against her forty-first take. That contest is rigged, and neither of you is winning it."
"So she's fake," Zainab said, with a bitterness that surprised her.
"She's a builder," said Krishna. "The screen is not the world. It is a window someone built — and every window is also a wall on three sides. Always ask what it was built to show you, and what it was built to hide. And remember there are two builders per image: the person, and the feed itself. The feed ranks whatever keeps your thumb moving — not what's true, not what's normal. Neither builder is paid to care how you feel at 2 am."
The practice he gave her was hands-on, because Krishna doesn't lecture. First: check the edges — for any post that stung, name three things probably sitting just outside the frame. Second, the one that changed her: cut it yourself. He had her film an hour of her ordinary afternoon and edit it down to twenty "perfect" seconds. It took her ninety minutes, and when she watched the result — glowing, effortless, a lie assembled entirely from true footage — she understood the trick from the inside, and could never fully unsee it again. Third: a seven-day audit — mute every account that reliably left her feeling worse; keep the ones that left her neutral or better. Fourth: post one unedited thing, or nothing at all. Both allowed.
The audit made her feed boring. The boredom lasted about four days and then turned into something suspiciously like quiet. She slept. She even talked to Lila — awkwardly, in the ration queue — and Lila half-laughed and said, "It's like a part-time job I can't quit." Lila didn't change her feed; armour is armour, and it wasn't Zainab's to remove. But Zainab changed hers: fewer posts, no edits, and the photo her mum loved went back up, where it sat happily at eleven likes.
"I'm not asking you to smash the window," Krishna said, on the last night by the river. "Windows are useful. Just stop mistaking it for the sky."
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Your turn — short-answer questions
Krishna says, "The screen is not the world. It is a window someone built." Who are the two builders behind every image Zainab sees, and what did she find when she walked around the back of Lila's post?
Do your own edge-check: choose one post you envied recently and write three things that were probably just outside its frame. Then explain what "cutting it yourself" taught Zainab that no lecture could.
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For the classroom
Teacher notes — activities, reflections and assessment for this story.
Discussion: Krishna says there are "two builders per image" — the person and the algorithm. Who profits when you feel worse about your ordinary day, and how does the feed's ranking system turn comparison into a business model?
Activity — Check the Edges: Students analyse a set of influencer-style posts and annotate each frame: what is the image built to show, what is it built to hide, and what three things probably sit just outside the crop?
Activity — Cut It Yourself: Students film ten minutes of a completely ordinary activity, then edit it into a twenty-second "perfect" version. Screen the results side by side with the raw footage and discuss: every clip was true — so where did the lie come from?
Reflection: Track how your feed leaves you feeling for three days. Name one account you will mute, and what specifically it does to you.
Assessment — Feed Audit Report: Students run Krishna's seven-day audit on their own feed and submit a report with data (time spent, mood before/after, accounts muted) and a written analysis of two images using "who made this, and why?"
Marcus and the Golden Pool
Four months of vent filters and grease traps had earned Marcus 412 duty credits, and every one of them was promised to the flight-sim rig he'd been eyeing in the trade catalogue for the next dock. Which is why the message hit him where he lived. ANTARIKSHA CREW GROWTH POOL, said the DM, under an avatar wearing the ship's own crest. Stake 100 credits, receive 250 at cycle's end — "cargo arbitrage with the Deva-Loka traders." First twenty crew members only. And, in friendly bold: keep this between us — supervisors shut these down out of jealousy.
His best mate Owen was already in for 150, and proudly showed Marcus the dashboard: OWEN — BALANCE: 270, in reassuring green. Withdrawals opened "at cycle's end." Marcus had the transfer screen up, thumb over SEND, the full 412 entered because why go halfway — when the summons buzzed through.
He found Krishna at dusk on a riverbank, holding up a coil of something in the failing light. "Quickly," said the god. "What am I holding?"
"A snake—" Marcus stepped back, then squinted. "No. A rope."
"The oldest lesson in Deva-Loka," Krishna said, tossing it to him. "In dim light, a rope becomes a snake. That mistake costs you a scream and a jump — embarrassing, cheap. But the traders of the dark run the trick in reverse: a snake, dressed carefully as a rope. That mistake costs everything in your pocket. You are holding one right now. Sit down and I'll show you its skeleton."
He counted the bones on his fingers. "One: urgency. Twenty spots, closing soon — urgency exists for exactly one reason, to make sure you decide before you think. Two: secrecy. Don't tell the supervisors — secrecy exists to keep you away from precisely the people who would recognise the snake. Ask yourself: who benefits from your silence? Three: the return. No honest cargo run pays 150 per cent in a cycle; if free money existed, strangers would not be DMing it to teenagers. Four: the proof. Your friend's dashboard is a picture of money — and a picture of money is exactly as spendable as a picture of dinner is filling. Five, and always: every illusion has a maker. Find the maker, and ask what they gain."
Then he made Marcus look at the edges, the way you check a costume for its zip. The account handle: ANTARIIKSHA-POOL — double i, easy to miss under a familiar crest. The dashboard's address: registered twelve days ago through a trade-barge relay. The glowing testimonials: all from accounts created the same afternoon. The practice Krishna gave him fit on a bunk-note. Any request for money or codes waits twenty-four hours, no exceptions — real offers survive a day; snakes hate daylight. Verify through a second channel: message the actual quartermaster, not the address the offer gives you. And say the offer out loud to an adult — "a trick spoken aloud in daylight," Krishna said, "very often dies of embarrassment on the spot."
Marcus didn't send the 412. He walked to the quartermaster's office instead, said the offer out loud, and watched her face do several things at once. There was no pool. A shipwide warning went out within the hour, and three crew members quietly cancelled transfers mid-flight.
Owen tried to withdraw that night. By morning the account, the dashboard and the crest were gone, and his 150 credits were on a barge already three systems away. They were never recovered — that part of the story stayed exactly as unfair as it sounds. Owen wanted to hide it forever. Marcus didn't gloat; instead he sat with him through the report that helped the quartermaster trace the relay and warn two neighbouring ships.
"Tell your friend this," Krishna said, playing something low and kind on the flute. "Being fooled is not stupidity — the trick was built by professionals who rehearse all day. Staying silent about it is the only part the fooled get to choose. Your caution saved one wallet tonight. His embarrassment, spoken out loud, saved three. Ask him which of you did more."
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Your turn — short-answer questions
Krishna tells Marcus, "A picture of money is exactly as spendable as a picture of dinner is filling." List three red flags in the Growth Pool message and explain which one was doing the most work — and why.
A "too good" offer lands in your DMs this week. Write the exact two steps you would take before replying (second channel, trusted adult, 24-hour rule) and what you'd look for at the edges.
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For the classroom
Teacher notes — activities, reflections and assessment for this story.
Discussion: Why do scams target young people with their first earnings — and why is "keep this secret from adults" the single most reliable red flag in any offer?
Activity — Spot the Red Flags: Give students a set of sample scam messages (investment pools, fake brand deals, prize claims, "your account is locked"). They mark up each one for Krishna's skeleton: urgency, secrecy, impossible returns, unverifiable proof, and the maker's gain.
Activity — Check the Link: Students examine realistic handles and URLs — lookalike spellings, double letters, freshly registered domains, mismatched senders — and build a class checklist for verifying a source through a second, independent channel.
Activity — Source Check Challenge: In pairs, examine three real online claims and apply Krishna's questions — Who made this? When? What is the evidence? Who else agrees? — to rate each as reliable, unsure or unreliable.
Reflection: Why is admitting you were fooled so hard? Using Owen's report, explain the difference between what his caution could have saved and what his honesty actually did.
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Teo was the funny one, and his instrument was the edit. The crew meme channel ran on his cuts — he could turn a yawning lieutenant into a week of shipwide joy. So when the EVA-sim footage landed, and trainee Bishop stood frozen for twelve seconds while his squad moved, Teo saw the joke instantly. What the raw footage also showed: Bishop's tether display glitching to zero, and Bishop calling the fault — exactly what drill protocol demands. Freeze. Call it. Textbook. Teo's cut removed the display and the call, looped Bishop's breathing, and added a caption: when the sim says do literally anything. Forty minutes of editing. Posted before dinner.
By morning there were three remixes and a nickname — "Statue" — and laughter that changed pitch when Bishop walked into the mess. Then the EVA rotation shortlist posted without Bishop's name: concerns regarding composure under pressure. Someone on the panel had seen the clip. Not the drill logs. The clip.
Teo had nearly finished telling himself the panel's mistake wasn't his fault when the summons arrived — mid-edit on the follow-up.
The riverbank was dark, the two moons up, Krishna lying in the grass. "Show me the clip," he said, and laughed when it played — genuinely, infuriatingly. "Good cut. The loop on the breathing — cruel, precise. You have the gift." Then the grin stayed but the eyes stopped. "Now show me the rushes." The full footage rolled out over the water: the zeroed display, the fault call, the protocol followed exactly. "Every frame of your version is true," Krishna said. "And the whole of it is a lie. You have found the oldest power in the worlds, little editor. So we should talk about the bill."
"They call me lord of illusion, and people hear a compliment. It is a licence, and licences carry conditions. When I wear a costume, I answer for every soul who believes it — that is the tax on the wardrobe. Illusion is a power exactly as real as fire — and I have never once lit one I was not willing to answer for. You lit yours for twelve seconds of laughter, and a man's shortlist burned down while you slept."
Teo tried his defences in order. It was a joke. "It was a claim. The panel believed the claim." I never said it was the full clip. "The frame said it. A crop is a sentence, boy. You wrote it." Everyone edits. "Everyone breathes. The question is never whether you cut — it is what the cut is for." Then Krishna gave him the maker's three questions, to ask before publishing any edit: Would the person in it recognise themselves? Does my cut change what a stranger walks away believing? Would I show them the raw timeline?
"And the repair?" Teo asked. "You cannot recall smoke," Krishna said. "Every copy is out of your hands forever. What the maker owes is daylight." Three moves, none comfortable. The full uncut footage under his own name, with plain words: I cut out the fault. The freeze was protocol. The joke was mine; the composure was his. The selection panel, in person, same words. And Bishop, face to face, no audience.
The correction got a tenth of the joke's traction — corrections walk, jokes fly. But the panel pulled the drill logs, and Bishop's name went back on the shortlist, because written records outlast remixes. Bishop heard the apology out and said, "You're sorry because it got serious," and was at least half right — and Teo carried that without arguing, which was part of the payment. "Statue" took months to die and never entirely did.
Teo kept editing; the gift was real. But the three questions went up over his console, and he became the channel's zip-spotter — the one who answers a suspicious cut with one word: rushes? "I will not tell you to put the knife down," Krishna said at the river. "The worlds need makers. But hear what every maker learns or becomes: the audience is innocent of the illusion. The maker never is. Cut as if someone will eventually see the rushes — someone always does."
▶ Listen to this story — paste your narration or video link on this slot
Your turn — short-answer questions
Krishna says, "Illusion is a power exactly as real as fire — and I have never once lit one I was not willing to answer for." What made Teo's clip "every frame true and the whole of it a lie," and what did Krishna say the maker owes once an illusion has spread?
Think of a time you shaped what others believed — an edited clip, a cropped screenshot, a retelling in which you came off better than the footage would show. Run it through the maker's three questions and write honestly what you find.
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For the classroom
Teacher notes — activities, reflections and assessment for this story.
Discussion: Teo never lied in words — the lie lived entirely in what he removed. Why do we hold the makers of clips and screenshots to a lower standard than people who lie out loud, and should we? Who bears responsibility for Bishop's shortlist: the maker, the sharers and remixers, or the panel member who judged from a meme?
Activity — Spot the Fake: Give students pairs of items — raw footage or full screenshots alongside edited versions (trimmed, cropped, re-captioned, looped). They identify which version is manipulated, name the exact editing move that changed the meaning, and state what a fair edit of the same material would have kept in the frame.
Reflection: Krishna says "a crop is a sentence." Find one edit you made or shared this month — even a small one — and write out the sentence its frame was speaking. Would the person in it recognise themselves?