Breathing is the most primitive, most autonomous, and surely the most honest act of our existence. The fuel of that first cry we let out at birth is the sorrow of the last breath we surrender at death. Yet today, amid the gray clouds we see when we look up at the sky, the cold blue light striking our faces from screens, and the invisible waves of data, we are forced to question the very nature of what we breathe. To imagine that what we draw into ourselves with every breath is merely nitrogen, oxygen, and the promise of a clean life is the most tragic and most innocent delusion of our age. We, in the depths of concrete forests, fiber-optic veins, and algorithmic labyrinths, breathe a brand-new and uncanny gas: dark oxygen.
The full text appears in Tasfiye — August 2026.