Digital Leeches

Jason closed the laptop at 11:47pm.

He placed the phone face-down on the desk beside it. He rested his hands flat on the surface and sat for a moment, looking at the window — the city dark outside, his own faint reflection in the glass, the desk lamp making a small yellow circle around everything. Through the back cover of the phone he could see the screen pulsing quietly with new notifications. He left it where it was.

It had started eleven weeks ago with a message that seemed entirely reasonable. "Hey Jason — I've been following your work. Would love your take on how to approach this. Any thoughts?" He'd answered properly — detailed, specific, the caveats that made it actually useful rather than just quick. The person had thanked him warmly and asked a follow-up. Then another.

When Jason had been slow to respond to the third, this arrived: "I was really counting on your insights here. I've been waiting on your reply before moving forward."

As though his expertise were a utility he'd agreed to supply. As though the first answer had established an obligation that now ran until the other person decided it was finished.

He had kept going. Three weeks became eleven. Hundreds of words given, hours he'd told himself were small — just a few minutes each time, just a quick reply.

Tonight, for the first time, he'd added them up.

He had also noticed — and this was the thing that finally stopped him — that in eleven weeks of messages, this person had never once asked what Jason was working on. Not once. The conversation had moved in one direction, without interruption, and he had kept feeding it.

He thought about the two people he'd watched build significant platforms on his unpaid thinking. His frameworks, repackaged. His explanations, reformatted and posted as their own insight. His name appearing nowhere. He'd told himself it didn't matter. He was beginning to reconsider what that particular sentence had been doing for him.

In a physical room, this would have been visible. You can see time going. You can feel the energy leaving. Here, each message looked like a few minutes — a small act of generosity, a quick good deed. It was only at 11:47pm, his own file still unopened, the work he'd actually meant to do still untouched, that the real size of the gap became undeniable.

The phone pulsed again. He could see the glow through the back cover. "Quick one — just one more thing while I have you."

He looked at the window for a moment.

Then he opened the laptop. He opened his own file. He wrote the first line — slowly, without the easy satisfaction of being the person with the answers. Just his own work, at his own pace, in his own direction.

The phone kept pulsing quietly on the desk. He didn't reach for it.

It was the best hour of work he'd done all week.