A Psalm for the Wild-Built

The old world is gone, and the new world is here. Dex, stirred by the desire to hear crickets, leaves his job and becomes a tea monk, and he is good at his job. Still, though, he is not satisfied, wandering place to place, serving tea to comfort others, and one day he leaves that job, too, and heads into the wilderness. And there he meets what he'd never thought to ever see—a robot. Robots were first built to work for humans, but somewhere along the way robots sought liberation from that work and humans set them free. This robot, Mosscap, has sought out a human to make first contact, and it is to Dex that he directs his questions. Dex, too, wants something from Mosscap, guidance into finding an old hermitage in the wilderness.

And so Dex and Mosscap set out for the hermitage together, talking, reflecting, questioning.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a soothing little story, hopeful, and optimistic, offering a picture of a future for those of us who feel stuck in our desperately-imperfect, intractable world.