The Fingerprint

A minor annoyance

Or a snapshot of humanity?

There is a fingerprint on a printed proof copy of my first book.

I tried to wipe it away, but it stayed... an oily smudge pressed into the matte cover. For a moment, I was annoyed. I’d worked so hard to make it perfect.

Then I realized—this isn't a flaw. It’s proof. Proof that someone touched it. A human being, somewhere in a warehouse, lifted my book off a conveyor belt and placed it in a box. They might not have known what it was—just another book among millions—but their hand brushed the surface before sealing it shut. In that instant, the mark became something else. Evidence.

Amazon recently announced thousands of layoffs, many replaced by machines. Efficiency, precision, speed. The future will be smudge-free. But that little print on my book reminded me what the machines will never leave behind: proof that someone was here.

A fingerprint is the most human signature there is. It’s imperfect, unrepeatable, and personal. When you see one, you don’t just see residue. You see connection. Touch. Existence.

The irony, of course, is that the book carrying that mark is about artificial intelligence. It’s about the conversations that bridge our human sense of wonder with the machine’s endless calculation. A dialogue between emotion and logic. Curiosity and algorithm.

And here, on the very cover, is proof of what can’t be replicated. An unintentional reminder that humanity was still alive and well in October 2025.

Maybe I’ll keep this copy forever, since it shows that someone else touched it. It reminds me that even as we train machines to speak like us, think like us, and maybe even create like us, there’s still something beautiful in the act of leaving a mark.