I've always been interested in gadgets and technology and I've

Host:
The morning light spilled gently through the half-open blinds, striping the walls of the small apartment with golden bars. The air was soft with the scent of old paper, warm coffee, and the faint buzz of something electronic humming nearby. A tablet, a stack of books, and an open notebook lay scattered across a wooden table that had clearly seen both arguments and dreams.

Jack sat hunched over, his fingers gliding across a glowing screen, his eyes sharp and focused, like a man trying to decode the future itself. Jeeny, sitting across from him, had a hardcover novel open in her lap, its pages turning softly in rhythm with the breeze.

Outside, the city pulsed faintly — the distant hum of cars, the click of shoes on pavement, the quiet heartbeat of a world stitched together by both circuits and stories.

Jeeny:
“You’re always buried in some new device, Jack,” she said with a smile that was both gentle and teasing. “You treat gadgets like companions.”

Jack:
He looked up, his grey eyes flashing with a hint of amusement. “They’re more reliable than most companions,” he replied. “At least when they break, you can fix them.”

Host:
Her laugh was soft, the kind that could fill a room without needing volume.

Jeeny:
“Still,” she said, “you spend so much time with technology that you forget how much life still exists in words. You used to read.”

Jack:
He raised an eyebrow, leaning back in his chair. “I still read,” he said. “Just differently. The world changed. Books are too slow now.”

Host:
A faint shadow crossed her face — not anger, but a kind of sad nostalgia, the feeling one gets when watching an old photograph fade.

Jeeny:
“Too slow?” she repeated. “You talk as if reading were a race. Maybe it’s not supposed to be efficient. Maybe it’s supposed to be felt.”

Jack:
“Feeling doesn’t build the future, Jeeny,” he said sharply. “Thinking does. Tools do. I’ve always been drawn to gadgets, to machines that let us reach farther than we ever could with our hands alone. Isn’t that what it means to be human — to evolve?”

Host:
The light shifted slightly, catching the edges of their faces — her softness, his angular focus, the tension between heart and mind, memory and progress.

Jeeny:
“I think being human means remembering what you had to sacrifice to evolve,” she said. “Every tool gives us power, but also takes something from us. The book gave us memory, but the screen took away our silence.”

Jack:
He smirked, running his fingers along the edge of his tablet. “You say that like silence ever built anything. The screen connects us, Jeeny. It’s democracy. It’s access. Everyone can learn, speak, create. What’s so tragic about that?”

Jeeny:
“What’s tragic,” she said softly, “is when we stop listening because we’re too busy scrolling. When we stop reading not because we can’t, but because it takes too long to feel something real.”

Host:
Her eyes were wide now, dark pools reflecting the glow of his device. For a moment, her face was illuminated by its light, as though her soul were being translated into pixels — beautiful, fleeting, untouchable.

Jack:
“Maybe reading isn’t about feeling anymore,” he said, his tone quieter now. “Maybe it’s about processing — about keeping up. The world doesn’t wait for reflection, Jeeny.”

Jeeny:
“Then maybe that’s the problem,” she said. “If LeVar Burton can love both gadgets and books, maybe we’ve forgotten that the point isn’t to choose between them — it’s to balance them. One teaches you how to build the world; the other teaches you how to see it.”

Host:
The rain began outside, a soft, steady rhythm against the window, turning the city into a watercolor of movement and light. Jack closed his tablet, slowly, the screen dimming into darkness.

He reached for one of her books, turning it over in his hands, feeling the texture of the cover, the faint smell of ink and time.

Jack:
“Funny,” he said, almost to himself. “I used to think of these as machines, too. Books are just early technology, right? Words encoded on pages instead of screens.”

Jeeny:
Her smile returned — quiet, knowing. “Exactly. But unlike gadgets, books don’t need charging. They just need you.”

Host:
He laughed, the sound rough, almost reluctant, like a man learning how to laugh again. He opened the book, and the page caught the light, glowing faintly, almost alive.

Jack:
“You know, when I was a kid,” he said, his voice soft now, “I used to take apart radios just to see how they worked. I’d hold the wires and transistors in my hands, thinking I was holding the future. But at night, I’d still fall asleep with a book in my lap.”

Jeeny:
Her eyes softened. “That’s not a contradiction, Jack. That’s who you are. Curiosity and imagination — the engine and the soul.”

Host:
For a long moment, they sat in silence, surrounded by the quiet harmony of their worlds — the buzz of the device, the rustle of the pages, the rain tracing silver lines down the glass.

Jeeny:
“Maybe,” she said gently, “the real technology isn’t in the gadgets or the books. It’s in the mind that knows how to love both.”

Jack:
He nodded slowly, closing the book with care. “And the heart that remembers why.”

Host:
The rain eased, and a faint sunbeam broke through the clouds, landing across the table — half on the tablet, half on the book. The light didn’t choose; it simply illuminated.

Jack and Jeeny sat there, the quiet balance between old and new, machine and memory, progress and poetry.

And as the morning stretched into day, the words of LeVar Burton seemed to breathe through the stillness:

“I’ve always been interested in gadgets and technology and I’ve always been a reader.”

Because in that moment, it was clear —
to be truly human is not to choose between invention and imagination,
but to let both coexist,
so that the future may still have a story,
and the story may still have a future.