New York City, present day. A city of eight million people, each one living a life so full of meaning to themselves that the collective result was absolute meaninglessness.

Liam Kane was thirty-nine years old, an insurance salesman in Midtown Manhattan, divorced, estranged from his sixteen-year-old daughter, living in a studio apartment in Astoria that smelled faintly of boiled cabbage. He was not unhappy. He was not happy. He was in a state of continuous, low-grade numbness that he had mistaken for contentment.

Then he inherited two million dollars from an aunt he barely knew. The will contained one condition: he must spend the entire amount within thirty days. He could not donate it. He could not invest it. He could not leave it to anyone. He must spend it -- on anything, anyone, anywhere.

Liam began spending. He rented the top floor of a Manhattan penthouse for one night. He hired an entire orchestra to play in Central Park. He booked out the entire fifth floor of a restaurant in Chinatown for a dinner for twelve people. He bought a yacht and sailed it around Manhattan while blasting opera music.

In his spending, he encountered six strangers who met by chance in a bar called The Last Question in Greenwich Village. Each one had made one decision that defied all logic.

Professor Arthur Finch was a tenured philosophy professor at Columbia who had decided to streak across Times Square during the New Year's Eve celebration. He had practiced in his apartment. He had bought new running shoes. "If I do it," he told Liam, "the world will see a naked old man running. If I don't, the world will see nothing. The action is the meaning."

Maria Santos was a seventy-two-year-old retired schoolteacher who had spent her entire life savings on a round-the-world trip. She was currently in a hostel in Chiang Mai and planned to return to the US in three months to live on nothing. "I spent everything I had," she said. "Now I have nothing. For the first time in my life, I am free to want nothing."

Judge Harold Pemberton, retired, sat on the same park bench in Central Park for eight hours every day, watching people. He did not know why. He had been doing it for eleven years.

Chloe Park was a twenty-four-year-old algorithm engineer at Google who quit without notice to write letters to her dead grandmother. She wrote one letter per day. She had written eight hundred forty-seven. She would never mail them. "I know she's dead," she said. "I know she can't read this. But I need to say it to someone, and she's the only one who will never judge me for it."

Derek O'Brien was a recovering alcoholic who ran a support group that met in a church basement. He told everyone at the meetings that he was fine. He was not fine. He had not been fine for six years.

And Silent Sam was a homeless man who lived under the Brooklyn Bridge. He collected bottle caps and arranged them in patterns on the ground. Nobody knew what the patterns meant. Sam did not know. He just liked the shapes.

Day twenty-nine. Liam had three thousand dollars left. He could not spend it on anything material. He took the three thousand dollars and bought six cups of coffee. He gave them to the six strangers. He sat with them. They drank. They said nothing.

Day thirty. The money was spent. Liam walked back to his studio apartment. He passed his daughter's school. He did not go in. He sat on a bench outside. He watched children come out. He watched them. He did not approach them. He just watched.

He had spent everything. For the first time, he had something left.

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