Ok, maybe this will help you look at it from a different angle. For me the domestication idea is not at all about tyrants, or violence, not even about hierarchy (if you can jump out of domestication, domesticated people are in the hierarchy by default unfortunately).
Very early draft, it will read different...
Hugging the Universe
The mountains held the morning in green silence. Mist rose from the valley like slow breathing, threading between bamboo groves and teak forests that had stood for centuries before anyone thought to name them. Kevin sat on the wooden deck of their house, laptop open, the WiFi signal provided by him to the whole village – a small ISP for this remote part of the world. The connection was not great—but it worked well enough to read what was happening in the world he'd left behind.
He'd been at it since before dawn, coffee going cold beside him, scrolling through forums and mailing lists and the endless churn of news that seemed designed to make thinking impossible. The screen's blue light looked wrong against the golden morning, a rectangle of elsewhere imposed on a place that wanted no part of it.
Behind him, the house was quiet. Emma's side of the bed had been empty when he'd woken—she'd left before first light for the monastery, the way she had every morning for the past week. Something about learning to sit with the monks, she'd said. Something about the mind. He hadn't asked for details. Emma collected experiences the way other people collected stamps, sexual partners or followers on social media, and he'd learned that asking too many questions only made her smile in that way that meant the answer wouldn't fit into words.
He heard her footsteps on the path before he saw her—light, deliberate, like she was walking on something more fragile than packed earth. When she appeared around the corner of the house, he looked up and felt something shift in his chest. A recognition of something that had changed while he wasn't watching.
She was wearing the same clothes she'd left in—loose linen pants, a faded tank top, her hair was tied back simply, the way the women in the village wore theirs, showing the line of her neck. But she carried herself differently now. Stiller.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey yourself."
She crossed the deck to where he sat, and instead of taking the chair opposite, she lowered herself behind him, her legs folding to either side of his hips, her chest pressing warm against his back. Her arms wrapped around him from behind, fingers interlacing over his breastbone. He felt her breath against his neck, slow and measured, and something in him that had been clenched since before dawn began to loosen.
"You've been sitting here for hours," she said. Not a question.
"How can you tell?"
"Your shoulders are up by your ears. And you're doing that thing with your jaw."
He hadn't noticed he was clenching his teeth until she mentioned it. He made himself relax, and she made a small sound of approval, her chin coming to rest on his shoulder.
"What's got you wound up?"
Kevin gestured at the screen with something that wasn't quite a laugh. "Pick a topic. They want to break end-to-end encryption. Again. To protect the children. Again." He could hear the bitterness in his own voice. "Exactly how Tim May predicted it twenty years ago. I don't get it—it won't work and it's a terrible idea, why do people go along with this?"
Emma's hands moved in small circles on his chest, not massaging exactly, more like mapping. Finding the places where he held his tension. "Do you really want to know why?"
"I guess. I really don't get it."
She was quiet for a moment. Her breath continued its slow rhythm against his neck, and he found his own breathing beginning to match it without conscious effort.
"Come outside with me," she said finally. "You need to get away from that screen."
They walked to the edge of the deck where two worn cushions faced the valley. The mist was burning off now, revealing layers of green—the near bamboo, the middle-distance forest, the far mountains fading into blue. Emma settled into the lotus position with ease. Kevin sat beside her, cross-legged and less graceful, and she reached over to take his hand.
Her palm was warm against his. He found himself looking at her profile—the soft curve of her cheek, the slight upturn of her nose, the way her eyes held the valley's green like they were drinking it. She looked like someone who'd just woken from a long sleep into a morning better than expected.
"Most people are still children," she said, her voice carrying that new quality he couldn't name. Not distant exactly. More like she was speaking from a place that had better acoustics. "They haven't grown up. They live in this mental fog, and fear creates it, and the fog creates more fear. They're related—the fog and the fear. They make each other."
Kevin waited. She turned to look at him, and her eyes held something he'd seen glimpses of before but never this clearly. Tenderness. Deep and wide as the valley below them.
"You know how children are afraid of the dark? 'Mommy, there's a monster under my bed.' So mommy comes in, turns on the night lamp, says it will be alright, and tells them she's just next door. The child is too afraid to look under the bed and confirm there's no monster. And if there was a monster, the lamp would do nothing—monsters aren't afraid of nightlights." She smiled, just slightly. "But the lamp helps with the fear. Someone came, heard about their fear, did something. The illusion that the problem is being handled—that matters more than whether it's actually being handled."
"Yes, but they're supposed to be adults." Kevin felt the frustration rising again, that familiar pressure in his chest. "They're allowed to vote. They're running companies, writing laws—and they're like this?"
Emma's thumb traced a slow circle on the back of his hand. "Have you seen the t-shirts in the markets here? The ones that squeak when you press them?"
"What?"
"Like the old Monchichi dolls. They have squeakers sewn in. Adults buy them because pressing them is calming." She laughed softly, but there was no mockery in it. "Everything is soft these days. People are afraid of uncertainty, afraid of monsters real and manufactured. And there's always someone offering to turn on the lamp for them. Call the mosquitoes with the light, maybe disrupt their sleep—but make them feel like the monster is being handled. They're most afraid of actually looking. Of removing the fog and seeing things as they are."
Kevin shook his head. "You really don't think highly of people."
"No." Emma's hand tightened on his, just slightly. "That's not it at all." She shifted to face him more fully, and he felt the warmth of her attention like sunlight moving across his skin. "I love them. The children. The frightened ones. The ones hiding under their covers hoping the lamp will save them. I love them the way you love anything that's doing its best with what it has."
She reached up and touched his face—just her fingertips against his cheek, light as thought.
"The thing is, Kev, they are doing their best. Most of them. With all their fear and fog and desperate need for someone to tell them it's going to be okay. That's not something to be angry about. That's just... where they are."
"So what—we just accept it? Let them march us all into dystopia because they're too scared to look at reality?"
"That's your monster under the bed." Her eyes held his. "The anger. You're afraid of what happens if you stop being angry about this. If you accept that most people will never see clearly. You think the anger is protecting something."
Kevin opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. The morning was fully bright now, the valley painted in shades of green and gold, and somewhere in the village a rooster was crowing for the hundredth time since dawn. Emma's hand was still on his face, and he found himself leaning into it.
"So what do I do with it?" His voice came out smaller than he'd intended. "The anger?"
"Look at it." She smiled, and he felt the warmth of it in his chest. "Look at your monster. See if it's really there."
They sat in silence for a while. A bird Kevin didn't recognize called from somewhere in the bamboo—three rising notes, then silence, then the same three notes again. Emma had closed her eyes, but her presence beside him felt more vivid than ever, like she was taking up more space in the world just by being still.
"I think I understand the people," Kevin said finally. "The fog, the fear, the children wanting nightlights. I do. But—" He struggled to find the words. "I expected better. Someone should explain to them that this can't work. That breaking encryption will hurt the innocent and the criminals will just use something else. But you're telling me they're just children, and I don't know what to do with that."
Emma opened her eyes. The green of the valley seemed to have gotten into them somehow.
"You're angry at them for being childish," she said. "But think about it—what does that actually mean? It's like being angry at a puppy for peeing on the carpet."
Kevin laughed despite himself. "That's a hell of an analogy."
"But accurate, yes?" She leaned her shoulder against his, a warm pressure that felt like home. "Puppies pee on carpets. That's what they do. You can't explain to them that they should go outside—they don't understand explanations. You might train them eventually, with patience and consistency and never, ever getting angry. But mostly you just accept that this is a puppy, and puppies do this, and you love the puppy anyway because it's doing the best it can at being a puppy."
"And people..."
"Are doing the best they can at being people. Most of them, anyway. With all their fear and fog and need to believe someone is handling the monsters." Her hand found his again. "You can be angry if you want. But puppies don't understand anger either. It just confuses them, maybe even makes them pee more."
Kevin looked out at the valley, at the green layered endlessly toward the mountains. The anger was still there, somewhere in his chest, but it felt different now, like something he was carrying that he could choose to set down.
"When did you get so wise?" he asked, only half joking.
"I'm not wise." Emma's voice was simple, matter-of-fact. "I just look at things. That's what the monks are teaching me. To look instead of assuming. To let the fog clear instead of adding more."
"And that's what you've been doing all week? Sitting and looking?"
"Sitting and looking. Breathing and looking. Looking at the looking." She smiled, and he felt it like a small sun. "It sounds simple. It isn't. But it changes things. It changes me."
The sun was higher now, warm on their faces. Kevin had moved so his head was in Emma's lap, her fingers running through his hair in slow, thoughtless patterns. The laptop sat forgotten on the deck, its screen showing a retro starfield screen saver.
"There's something else," Emma said, and her voice had changed—still gentle, but with something underneath it now. An edge of intention. "Two sides to this whole thing."
Kevin opened his eyes to look up at her. From this angle, she was framed by the sky, her face a silhouette with golden edges.
"You're angry at people for not seeing through the bullshit. For heading toward control and surveillance and all of it. That's one side—accepting that most of them won't ever see clearly. But then..."
"Then what?"
"Then there's us." Her hand stilled in his hair. "We see through it. Or we're learning to. We don't want this future they're marching toward. And we're not the only ones."
Kevin sat up, turning to face her. "What do you mean?"
"There are others out there. People who've looked under the bed and seen there's no monster. Or people who've decided the monster is real but they're not going to hide under covers waiting for someone else to handle it. People who want to live on their own terms." Her eyes met his, and he saw something there he hadn't seen before—not just peace, but purpose. "Can we do something for them?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know yet. Infrastructure, maybe. Tools. A way to live outside the systems that keep everyone frightened and dependent." She tilted her head, considering. "If the fog is the problem, maybe you can help clear it. Not for everyone—most people don't want the fog cleared. But for the ones who are ready. The ones who are already looking."
Kevin felt something shift in him—not the anger transforming, but something new growing beside it. Interest. Possibility. "You mean like... a filter?"
"An attractor. For the ones who've grown up, or who want to." Emma's smile had an edge now, something sharp and alive. "You don't need to serve everyone. You can't save people from their own fog. But you can build something for the ones who are ready to see."
"Not me. We." Kevin reached out and took her hand. "I write the code. You see the people. I build the systems, you understand what they need. Together." She laughed. "I'm good at seeing. You're good at making. That seems like a reasonable partnership."
Kevin looked at her—at this woman he'd known for months now but felt like he was meeting for the first time. The morning light caught the fine hairs at her temple, turned her skin golden, made her eyes seem to hold fire.
"You really think we could do something? Build something that matters?"
"I think we should try." She squeezed his hand. "The world's going one direction. We can't stop it—the momentum is too strong, the fog too thick. But we can build something else. A side path. A way out for anyone who wants to take it."
They talked for hours after that, or maybe they barely talked at all—later, Kevin wouldn't be able to separate the words from the silences, the ideas from the warmth of her hand in his, the planning from the simple fact of being together in a place where time moved differently.
The sun tracked across the sky. They moved inside when it got too hot, then back out when the afternoon cooled. Emma made tea with leaves she'd brought from somewhere—bitter and complex, like drinking a forest. Kevin found himself sketching systems on scraps of paper, not code exactly but something closer to architecture, shapes that might become code later.
Evening came slowly, the way it does in mountains. The valley filled with blue shadows while the peaks still held the light. They sat on the deck again, watching the colors change, Emma's head on Kevin's shoulder.
"I love watching your mind work," she said. "It's like watching someone build a cathedral."
"And I love—" Kevin stopped, surprised by the word that had almost come out. Then, choosing it deliberately: "I love how your mind sees. Like you're holding the whole world at once and it all makes sense to you."
"It doesn't make sense. That's not the right word." She turned her face up to look at him, and the last of the sunlight caught her eyes. "It's more like... I can hold it without needing it to make sense. Hold all of it. The people and the fear and the fog and the ones who are ready to see and the ones who never will be. It's all just part of the same thing."
"What thing?"
"I don't know what to call it. Everything, maybe." She laughed softly. "The monks would have a word for it. But words make it smaller than it is."
Kevin looked at her—really looked, the way she'd been teaching him to look all day. At the light on her skin and the peace in her eyes and the way she seemed to contain multitudes without breaking.
"It's like you hug the whole universe," he said. "With your mind. Like you can hold all of it at once and still love it."
Emma was quiet for a long moment. Then she smiled—not her teaching smile or her planning smile, but something softer. Something that was just for him.
"Hug the universe with my mind," she repeated, trying the words out. "I'm going to try that."
She reached up and pulled him down for a kiss—soft at first, then deeper, her hand finding the back of his neck and holding him there. When they finally separated, the sun had fully set, and the first stars were appearing above the mountains.
"Come inside," she said. "We have more planning to do tomorrow. Tonight I just want to be here with you."
They went inside. The mountains held the darkness gently, and the stars multiplied above them, and somewhere in the world the fog was still thick and the children were still frightened—but here, in this small house in the highlands, two people had found each other, and something had been planted that would grow in directions neither of them could predict.
The future was still forming. For now, that was enough.
