In writing 'The Humans,' I obsessed over the financial district

Host: The city was breathing—its steel lungs exhaling mist into the November dusk. Down below, the financial district gleamed like a cathedral of glass, each window a confession booth for invisible dreams. From thirty stories up, the streets looked orderly, almost serene, though every light represented someone still awake, still working, still hoping to stay above water.

Inside a near-empty office, the air was heavy with the faint buzz of fluorescent lights and the hum of an overworked heater. The walls were white, clean, too clean—like a place that had forgotten how to feel.

Jack stood by the window, tie loosened, his reflection fractured by the glass and the world behind it. Jeeny sat on the edge of a desk, her hands folded around a half-empty coffee cup, her eyes tracing the skyline where the towers pierced the last light of day.

On the table lay a copy of a screenplay—its cover slightly torn, edges annotated in blue ink. The title read: The Humans. Beneath it, in small print, “Stephen Karam.” And beneath that, Jeeny’s handwriting:
“In writing ‘The Humans,’ I obsessed over the financial district and the architecture.”

Jack: (staring out at the skyline) Obsession—that’s the word everyone uses when they want to sound profound. But you know what I see when I look at this skyline? Debt, exhaustion, and glass pretending to be hope.

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) You always see the machinery, Jack. Never the pattern. Architecture isn’t about walls—it’s about how those walls make us feel. Maybe that’s what Karam was chasing—the way architecture becomes a mirror of our anxieties.

Host: The city lights flickered below, as if the buildings themselves were breathing, responding to her words. The faint sound of sirens echoed in the distance, soft and rhythmic, like a metronome of urban despair.

Jack: (turning to her) You mean how the financial district becomes a metaphor for collapse? The higher the buildings, the deeper the fear that they’ll fall. We design our own nightmares—in perfect symmetry.

Jeeny: Or maybe the fear isn’t the collapse. Maybe it’s that the buildings will stand forever, outlasting us. We vanish; the architecture stays, collecting our ghosts.

Host: She rose and crossed to the window beside him. Her reflection merged with his—two figures framed against the geometric grid of light and glass, suspended between reality and its reflection.

Jack: (quietly) That’s poetic, Jeeny, but Karam wasn’t writing about ghosts. He was writing about humans—people trapped in a world designed to outgrow them. You ever walk through this part of the city at midnight? It feels like being inside a machine that forgot it was built for people.

Jeeny: (looking down) Maybe that’s why he obsessed over it. Because that’s where faith and fear coexist—the elevators, the cubicles, the apartments stacked like confessionals. Every brick becomes a question: Can something built for profit still hold love?

Host: The wind pressed against the glass, a low, steady hum. A paperclip rolled off the desk, landing softly on the carpet, unnoticed.

Jack: (sighing) And the answer’s obvious. It can’t. These buildings—they’re temples to efficiency, not emotion. The only love here is for numbers. The financial district isn’t just architecture—it’s ideology.

Jeeny: (turning to him, her tone sharper) You think it’s ideology, I think it’s confession. Every tower is a monument to what we fear most: failure, obscurity, mortality. Karam wasn’t judging the buildings—he was listening to them. That’s what makes his writing human.

Host: The lights flickered briefly as a generator somewhere below switched power grids. The brief darkness made their faces visible only in reflection—ghostly, overlapping, almost indistinguishable.

Jack: (after a pause) You sound like an architect. Or a priest. But you’re wrong, Jeeny. The financial district doesn’t confess—it lies. It tells us that order means control, that if the lines are straight enough, we’ll be safe. But inside, everyone’s falling apart.

Jeeny: (softly, almost tenderly) Maybe that’s why Karam called it The Humans. Because under all the symmetry, the glass, the steel, the schedules—there’s just us, terrified, pretending not to be.

Host: A deep silence settled, heavier than before. Outside, the fog began to rise, swallowing the lower floors of the buildings. From up high, it looked as if the city itself was floating—detached from the earth, unanchored.

Jack: (half-smiling) You always find poetry in the cracks. I see an ecosystem of ambition. You see a cathedral of emotion.

Jeeny: That’s the same thing, Jack. You just forgot to believe it could be both.

Host: Jack exhaled, pressing his forehead against the glass. The cold stung his skin. His breath fogged the pane for a moment, then faded—like a temporary act of rebellion against something larger, colder, more permanent.

Jack: (quietly) I used to think these towers were beautiful. They made me feel safe. But lately, when I look at them, I feel small. As if the city grew up and left us behind.

Jeeny: (gently) It didn’t leave us, Jack. We just stopped noticing it. We built all this to escape fragility, and then realized we couldn’t escape being human.

Host: The sound of footsteps echoed from the corridor outside. A janitor’s cart squeaked past, the smell of cleaning solution cutting through the stale air. For a fleeting second, the office felt less like a place of work and more like a theater—empty, waiting for the next act.

Jack: (leaning back from the window) Maybe that’s what Karam saw when he wrote it—the architecture of our loneliness. How even when we build closer together, we feel further apart.

Jeeny: (nodding) Exactly. The financial district isn’t just about money. It’s about the illusion of permanence—the idea that if we build high enough, we’ll rise above our fears. But in truth, the higher we go, the more fragile we become.

Host: A siren wailed far below, its sound slicing through the fog like a warning. Jeeny turned to him, her eyes glistening under the dull light.

Jeeny: (softly) We build towers to touch heaven, Jack. But maybe heaven isn’t up there. Maybe it’s down here—in the cracks, in the silence, in the small things that survive between the walls.

Jack: (after a long pause) You mean the humans.

Jeeny: (smiling) The humans.

Host: The city below seemed to pause, as though listening. The fog thickened, wrapping around the buildings like a quiet shroud. Jack reached for the screenplay, running his fingers over the title. His voice, when it came, was low and raw.

Jack: “In writing The Humans, I obsessed over the financial district and the architecture.” Maybe what he meant was—he wasn’t just writing about a place. He was writing about the design of our fear.

Jeeny: (nodding) And the courage it takes to live inside it.

Host: Outside, a single light flickered in a tower opposite them, then went dark. The skyline dimmed, but the glow of the fog remained—soft, uncertain, almost tender.

The camera would have pulled back now—two small figures framed in a sea of steel and reflection, standing inside the architecture of everything they couldn’t control. The city pulsed around them, alive and unknowable.

And somewhere between the steel and the silence, between ambition and fear, between the architecture and the humans it tried to contain—
a quiet truth remained:
We build the world,
but the world ends up building us.