The Fate of the Last Clairvoyant

Madame Delany, the last remaining clairvoyant, was sad when she finally packed up her tent. As she stowed away her crystal ball and unhooked the veils for the very last time she reflected on years of visions and readings. She met all sorts of people in that tent. There were many non-believers who came in for a laugh, some were skeptics - unsure of what to believe - and the remaining others stared into her eyes intently. They trembled when they held out their palms, they clutched and shuddered hopefully. She could feel their energies, she could read their expressions and body language. It was a serious matter speaking words into people's lives. It was a matter she never took lightly and if she saw nothing amidst the faux smoke and glimmer in the crystal, she never charged.

But no one came to see her anymore. Machines had taken over.

Madame Delany sighed as she contemplated the demise of personal contact, the human touch of intimacy, romance, drama and mystique.

People were now informed of their futures via computers for handsome sums not just loose change. It was an age where machines knew more about people than people did about themselves.

Almost every human action was monitored, recorded and meta-analyzed. With the advent of social media, CCTV cameras, satellite tracking systems, and electronic financial blue-printing, machines could trace the whereabouts of everyone, the things they viewed and searched for, the friends they kept, their affiliations and habits - social, financial, and private.

It was an age where technology was fast but time was even faster. People were busy, too busy, lives always being lived in the future tense with no ability to rest in the present moment. People no longer knew each other, just ideas and marketed images, sales-pitch personalities on screens. You saw people's selected images rather than their physical being. This was how they communicated and this was how they networked. There remained very few chance encounters. Face-to-face evolved into screen-to-screen. Existence had become calculated and boring. Advertising slowly replaced inspiration, and wonder had been brushed aside by statistic.

But Madame Delany never wanted any of these things. She despised the city and its commercialism. She hated machine orientated invasions of privacy all for the sake of capital. She lived the life of a true bohemian, in the countryside on the outskirts of the city. There she lived in peace, growing her own vegetables, trading produce with neighbours, never owning a cell phone, computer or television. She had all that she needed, living a simple contented life.

But this way of life was slipping away. Slowly, even the bohemian communities were evolving. House rents increased and became harder to cover. The owners in the city began to evict those that couldn't pay. Everyone started to move further afield where the cost of living was more affordable or stay, working harder and longer. She began to lose many of her friends and the community disintegrated.

Some months later, a drunk and heavily depressed Madame Delany stumbled off a public bus in the middle of the city. Fuelled by a heavy sense of irony she swiped her bank card in a machine that told people's futures. The bank card was the only information they had on her and she hardly ever used it.

The machine quoted her the cost of it's clairvoyance service and it was nearly the entire sum of her account, but she decided to accept.

In a slot at the bottom of the machine a piece of paper emerged which read her new balance which amounted to a few quarters - the cost she usually charged her clients to have their futures read.

Below that was only one additional piece of information, her future;

Directions to the nearest bureau where they issue food stamps.

Immediately the screen dismissed her, changing to welcome the next user in bright colours, an image of a nuclear family jumping for joy in celebration on an intricately cultivated suburban lawn.

"The future is yours" it read.

In response to the person who questioned what I was doing with my life

First of all. Why such critical and condoning tone? Why not such question posed with love or concern? What does it even mean to you? Does my life effect you in some way? Do I cause you pain? You say that I have no stability or foundation. What do you expect from me? I'd build a house if I knew where to put it. I'd make a home if it agreed with my heart. Both are not for lack of resource. I'm not an unwise and foolish penny-less vagrant.

Are they monuments, a wife and children? Are they things to erect on my lawn? Everything happens in its own time and I trust that everything works out as it should. So let it be.

You fail to see this journey I'm on. And I'm working it out slowly. I've been studying and I've been discovering, and I'm lost somewhere within the depths of me, the universe makes sense.

I've learned what it is to look through these eyes. I've stepped through the past and come to terms. I've held things in my hand and let them go. I've taken hurts and lies and thrown them into the light.

Because this journey is not about a destination. You see, it is so deep and amazing that we never truly arrive. It's not about milestones or trophies. It's not about accolades or comparisons. It's a personal and shared experience. Blessed are those that sink into it's weight, and feel it's endless bounds. Do you know what love is? Are you in awe of its power? It will collapse your knees!

So what about my years? So what if I'm thirty?

I am a deliberate man and I am deliberate in my actions.

So please don't criticize me when I can honestly say;

I am ready to love.

Honest Living

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if everyone made an honest living. What if all jobs were in some way a benefit to mankind and what if companies didn’t charge too much for products or services. What if everything was reasonable? What if there were no monopolies? I know I’m asking too much. But what if everyone just did enough to have what they needed?

I look at people and their lifestyles and wonder how they keep it all together. These thoughts have stuck with me having rented a spare room temporarily with a family. Both parents are thirty-something health professionals and they have two children, 4 and 3.

I wouldn’t normally stay with a family but for 5 weeks it was convenient.

I watch them. The family. Not in a creepy way but the way someone watches things when lazily microwaving a potato for dinner. I look at the alarm (6AM) when the kids are tearing up the house in the morning. And I watch him (the father) fall asleep on the couch at 8:30PM with an un-drunk cup of tea in front of the television.

Is this the future? I think.

This cannot be the future.

It is this fear of this sort of thing becoming my life that has prompted thoughts about living modestly and making honest gains.

Why do we work so hard? What makes us work so hard? Do we have to work so hard?


These are my answers;

Capitalism. The rich have power. They rich have luxury. The rich have people under them making them money. Why not be rich?

Yep. That’s about it.

But I wonder how many of us working class get there? I mean truly get there. And what is the cost?

I’m not coming from a “let’s move the country and start a commune” point of view (although I do fantasize about it from time to time). Business and industry is important part of society. But what if people worked less? I’m not saying work less hard. I’m saying: still work hard, simply work less. What if we job shared? The tasks would all get done. The cogs of society would keep turning. We’d all have more time for recreation. We wouldn’t always be microwaving potatoes for dinner and we’d all have better quality of life, health and well-being. There would also be a lot less unemployment.
It’s a wonderful thought: A three day work week and a four day weekend.

I know, I know, this is sounding a bit like communism. But isn’t the idea of communism quite beautiful until human nature kicks in and the balance of the scales are corrupted by laziness and greed? There will be people that want something for nothing and there will be people that want everything at the expense of others. We can’t eradicate human nature and therein lies the problem. 

I walked across Spain on an ancient pilgrimage trail several years ago with my friend Matt. We stayed in refuges, most really cheap, some requiring only donation. It is a popular trail. Some do it for religious purposes although many do it to ‘reconnect’ with the simple way of life and ‘escape’ the trappings of their general realm of existence. Each day basically consisted of fellowship, walking, eating, drinking, sleeping and enjoying the scenery. The only problem was some people saw it as a race. They wanted to get to the next refuge before everyone else. They would get up at 5AM, turn the lights on in the dormitory, create noise by packing all their belongings and disrupt everyone’s sleep just so they could trudge on ahead. Maybe they were scared of not having a place to sleep. Maybe they just felt the need to arrive at the next destination first.

I revisited Northern Spain again earlier this year and re-walked some of the trail. A Hollywood movie had been made about the walk since and I was surprised at how much busier it had become. It was actually too busy. People were now getting up at 4AM and by lunchtime there were lines outside the refuges waiting for them to open. The prices for refuges had also been put up. Many people even cheated by taking a bus.

Maybe that is just like working life. People have this desire to have more than others or get there faster so they pursue these things rather than focus on meeting their own needs and enjoying the journey.

It is after all the journey that is important, not the destination.

I don’t know where the world is going. We have technology that is supposed to make things easier for us but it ends up making us more busy. We put our kids in a daycare or kindergarten so both parents can work and then this industry of child minding blossoms and pushes up the prices of time spent with our children. Suddenly we want a night out without our kids and then we realize that it’s going to cost us $100 for the babysitter because the going rate is $20/hour. Such is the case with the family I am staying with.

Maybe I’ve travelled too much and maybe I’ve fallen a little too out of touch but I just don’t get what it is everyone is aspiring towards.

On the Gold Coast everyone looks at and wants this;

Gold Coast Highrise and coastal real estate

But I’m looking in the opposite direction. I’m looking at this;

Gold Coast Hinterland

In ten years I wouldn't be surprised if people no longer walk across Spain but instead opt to drive.
There will be pilgrim taxes imposed for accommodation. The concept of 'pilgrimage' will be lost.


The family I have been renting a room off live on the Gold Coast but they never really get to go to the beach.

On the Gold Coast there are already public buses branded with images of women with large breasts advertising for 'medical holidays' in Asia. I hear nurses at work talking about them along with botox and nip-tucks. Meanwhile the 'hard' men are wearing sleeve tattoos and they drive around in fancy cars purchased on finance.

It's all smoke and mirrors.


Watch what you place your value in.

Watch what it costs you.

Choose wisely.

Live honestly.

Dying is for Suckers

Dying is for suckers so I'm not going to do it. Think about it. Wouldn't it change the way you looked at the world. Wouldn't it change your itinerary, your goals in life? Don't die. Just don't do it. It makes everything so much easier.

I meet people that are scared shitless of dying everyday. Most don't explicitly state it but I can tell. They proudly and importantly talk about their accomplishments and their achievements. They educate me on them because I am meant to appreciate their worth. They mention their boat, their overseas holiday house that they barely visit. The mansion they live in. They speak of their possessions as if holding onto them like they are slipping away. Good for them, I think. They may have generated considerable wealth. They may have established small empires for themselves. But what does it all mean? They're going to die. I'm not bothered with any of it.

That's not to say that I don't try to accomplish great things. That's not to say that I'm not after a home and a holiday. I'm just not in such of a rush. I'm in no hurry. I just take my sweet time. The outlook is pretty cruisy when you think eternal.

All I'm after is a decent conversation, a hike in the hills, a play in the surf. I'm here to learn and to share, to enjoy and to grow. You would think I'd be more concerned about advancing empires in the time that I have. When you are not going to die you can build something that can trump anyone else's. You can spend more time working and more time investing. You can buy more land and afford more labourers. The truth is, this is still a waste of time. Even though I have all the time in the world, there are so much better things for me to do.

I would rather tell people that they shouldn't die because it is that simple. All they need to do is realize that they have a choice and choose not to do it. Just don't do it!

There are so many sunrises waiting to be seen from mountaintops. There are so many seas to be sailed. There are crops to plant and feasts to be shared at harvest. There is nothing else for us to do and there is no need to overcomplicate it.

I'm not going to die.

Even when my body is riddled with cancer and I'm on my deathbed.

Dying is for suckers.

AFFINITY III

He looks at the screen hoping that enlightenment would come but once again there was no message. It frustrated him that things would have to be this way - this kind of one-way communication with his father. He wanted answers. He wanted to know everything, to know where he was going, what he was supposed to do, how everything would pan out. He wanted to be able to calculate all of the obstacles in his path and the difficulties he would face, that way he wouldn't feel as if he was always running blind, falling from one problem to the next, never understanding the purpose of it all despite this underlying desire for something he couldn't define.

He looks at the screen once again.

Still nothing.

In the absense of communication he would often spend time speculating about how he should go about things. He was doing this now as he walked around his apartment staring blankly through his thoughts. He would try to assume his father's rational point of view but always fell short. This was perhaps, that he was not the man his father was nor would ever be. His head was clouded, a jumble of interferring stimuli that tried to find solace in outlook, but the forces were always opposing and the result was a scaled down yearning propogating an unsteady forward step. He wanted more. He knew he was made for more.

Another glance at the screen is taken.

Again nothing.

He looks at his watch. The kids would be climbing now. Each one with a bag, up the tallest towers in the neighbourhood. They had turned into some kind of juvenile army over the years. One day he had been flying a kite as his father had instructed of him in the Eastern Bloc and the children had seen him and been amazed. They had never seen a kite before and were mezmerised by the way it hovered so effortlessly in the air, how it sailed around buildings. It was only made of two sticks, paper and string but could embrace freedom so simply.
He had gained a following that day and that was probably what his father had intended. Now there were hundreds of them. They came out of the urban jungle wide eyed and hungry. They sought something that previous generations had lost and though it dumbfounded him they were entertained by his projects. The projects became a replacement for being left to their own devices on the streets. It was like a cultural or drop centre. It was to become their new education.

He could see them now zig zagging up the emergency stair cases of adjacent buildings, each one carrying a loaded sack like a procession of ants in the night. The current project had been months in the making and he enjoyed the sentiment that it carried. They had spent the last three months collecting Tigris Corporation flyers and the children had graffitied them, each in their own way. Some with lipstick, some with horns, other with more defacing creative flair. On the back of each flyer was a message to the city, a stated concern, a hope, a prayer. They were written by people from all walks of life and demographics across the city. They had collected the messages from people on the street then transcribed them onto the backs of the graffitied flyers. The last step was to fold them into origame paper tigers.

He had a view of the whole city from his balcony. Tonight was a clear night with the haze wearing only thinly on the horizon. Every night he stood on his balcony he would ponder the city and all the unanswered questions in his head. He would look to an adjacent tower and always see a young woman that did the same. It gave him solace. He did not know who she was but watching her silhouette and the mystery of her form gave him an idea of some sort of innate connection.

The kids were on the rooftops now. They signalled to each other and proceeded to drop their loads until the blackness of the night sky was overcome by a swarm of tumbling tigers. People in buildings saw them and ran to their windows and caught them as they fluttered past. It was the first time he had seen so many people look out of their windows with interest, excitement, curiosity even.

A paper tiger lands on Miss Delaware's balcony and he watches as she picks it up, unfolds, and reads it. When she is done she immediately looks back in his direction and it is unmistakable that she is looking at him.

Whether she had read his specifically written message or not was irrelevant. Somehow though, he knows she has.

He looks back and checks the screen in his apartment.

Nothing.

It no longer bothers him. He will find her himself. It makes more sense this way.

Affinity II

In another room he is pacing. He watches her via the surveillance system, sitting as attentively as when the faces first started to flash up on the screen. This had never happened before. It had been four hours. The trawl had been completed three times. First the city, then the state, finally the entire country. Everyone has a match, he thinks. All that was required was change.
He re-enters the room with another man. As they enter the screens turn blank and Miss Delaware turns to them as if her moment had come. Her face was like that of a girl recieving flowers for the first time. Her eyes were large and full of hope. They were a fable realized.
They sit down in front of her with serious faces. Before speaking the unknown man unzips a black bag. This was the moment she had waited for and dreamt about her whole life. Now that it was happening, she expected it to be different.

"We do not have a match for you yet" the Affinity curator says. "What we can offer you is what is contained in this bag."

The world was different when Miss Delaware exits the palm of the Tigris Corporation. On the day that she had expected answers she had been given further doubts and questions. She hails a taxi and demands to be taken to her brother.

Outside the windows of the cab she starts to see things with new eyes. New emotions and thoughts are awoken in her and it feels like a fatal wound. She sees all the cracks in the city where they had been painted over and watches them grow as the taxi continues to the East Side.

A light flashes on her wrist indicating that she had a dozen new messages awaiting her attention but she decides that she cannot face them now. She already knows who they were from and what they would say. She already knows the congratulative expressions and remarks.

She looks down at the black bag that she had been given. The city had a soul and all it needed was to be unzipped. To join it or leave it, that is what they had told her. The decision was hers.

The East side was the roughest part of the city and more affluent parts liked to pretend it didn't exist. She watches the slow societal decay on its approach and contrasts it with the black bag that sat on the seat beside her. In the middle of both contrasting scenes was her brother. She knows that she needed to see him no matter what state he was currently in. He may provide her with some sort of answer or guidance.

She doesn't bother knocking when she reaches his door and instead swipes herself inside. Some days he was lucid and with it, other days he was nothing more than mumbling sloth in. Calling out to him and stepping over empty pizza boxes and an assortment of take out containers she hears the latter.

In the living room she finds him lying on his side with his top arm dangling off the sofa and onto the floor. Slowly he rolls onto his back and slowly addresses his sister.

"He-ey sis.." he manages, his eyes staring past her, bloodshot and vacant.

"Oh Si!" she says compassionately, sitting down and giving him a soft embrace. She places her hand bag and the black bag on the coffee table clearly in his view. As she leans over her to hug him more firmly he starts to reach for it.

"How are you?" she asks her brother. "Have I come at a good time?"

Si does not respond having reached the black bag and taken a firm grip of one of its corners with his fist.

He turns his attention back to his sister. The unbelief on his face heartbreaking. He does not ask what her sister is doing with this black bag. His sister can already read the question on his face.

"I know, I know!" she says. "I mean I don't know! I don't know! Oh, I can't..."

She feels tears well up somewhere behind eyes, as if pumped from an infinite ocean that was bound somewhere deep inside.

"They gave it to me today!" she explains. "Today I was supposed to find Affinity but I didn't have a match. This was all they could give me. They said it was the only way."

Her brother lets the bag go as if extending his arm to reach for it had taken too much effort. As he does this his head collapses backwards onto the arm of the chair, his eyes closed, a deep breath taken, before summoning strength and continuing again.

"Everyone says many things Sis" he says. "Everyone has an opinion about everything. Everyone wants assurances in life. They want answers. They want to know that everything will be okay. We pay for it. We pay for it everyday. They sell us what we want to believe and we buy it! And we will keep buying it. We will buy it until we are broke, until it has taken us over and there is nothing left and then we will be burried in the ground."

He looks seriously at his sister, the one who had always lived a virtuous life, the one who both inspired him and wordlessly criticized him for the way he had lived his life. He pulls out an unused cartridge from his pocket and quickly inspects the label.

BADMINTON MATCH it read and as he reads it, he rolls his eyes and decides that he should no longer buy assorted packs from the Chinese man in the next block no matter how cheap they may seem. He directs his eyes back to his sister and narrows them.

"Don't do it Sis" he says. "You are probably the truest thing there is. You are the truest thing I know. Do not open that bag. Take it back to whoever gave it to you. Otherwise, this is what you get."

He rams the cartridge onto his wrist which stimulates the clamping and injecting mechanism built inside. He writhes in a semi painful looking exstacy before exhaling hard and his body relaxing. Immediately after doing this he reaches into his pocket and finds another cartridge and clamps it down on his wrist and infuses the substance.

This one says THREESOME and he catches a glance of it just as the infusion process starts.

This will be interesting he thinks.

"See you later Sis. Come back and see me next week and tell me that you are not afraid, that you will swim in the ocean no matter how infinite and lonely it may seem."

And with that, his body is overcome again. He contorts on the sofa and then is released with laughter and heavy rapid breathing. Miss Delaware stays for several minutes until her brothers body is lame except for the signs of breath and pulse. He has a semi happy look on his face.


Miss Delaware arrives back at her apartment after nightfall. On the table in the middle of her living space she places the black bag and looks at it. She looks around her to see if anyone is watching but she is entirely alone. On the room function remote control she sets the function to "Oceans" and the walls, ceiling, and floors of her apartment become waves crashing on an undefined shore. She unzips the bag and fumbles through its contents. She reads the labels on the cartridges. KAMA SUTRA, DEER STALKING, COCAINE...
She looks through the bag at all the labels, each one speaking of an experience, some questionable, some desirable, but none that she deemed she wanted to experience artificially. She begins to cry feeling inept in all her lack of experience in some aspects of life, feeling alien when compared to what her friends and work colleagues were doing. In the process of questioning whether it was her that was abandoning her friends or her friends that were abandoning her, she raises the black bag and it's contents and smashes them onto the floor.
"To find your match you need to be more like your match" they had said.
Next she goes around her entire apartment and strips every wire that connected into every socket. She removes the communication device of her wrist and crushes it under her foot. She smashes every screen that fed her any image, every speaker that delivered any sound. She erases her social networking profile then smashes the hard drive as if sawing a body in two to release a soul. When her rampage is over she is so exhausted that she collapses on the floor. Her whole apartment is silent for the first time in as long as she can remember. There is no humming of machines, no clicking of information through electronic devices. No ones and zeros except for those that were jumping across the synapses of neurons in her head. Sick of her apartment and wanting to look elsewhere other than the destruction of her hands she makes her way to her balcony. Around her was a sea of towering buildings and flickering lights stretching as far as her eyes could see.

In the tower she sees him.

This was also the moment that the sky rained paper tigers.

Affinity

The thread of Miss Delaware:

In the moment, embracing the minutes and seconds, she looks down at her unblemished wrists. Out of the window and into the apartments they stare mesmerized by a cable fed kaleidoscope, they smoke away on balconies, consider love in barricaded bedrooms. She looks to a particular room on an adjacent tower. Today he is not there.

Her watch beeps. Rushing to mirror she adds colour and definition to her face. There is no need really, but today promised to be one of those days. It was a day to change all days that would come. It would make sense of the days that served as mere filler between such momentous occasions in life.

Swinging her handbag around her neck she exits her apartment and rides the grav-tube to street level.  She views the messages that her friends had recorded for her and sent that morning, little holograms that sprouted from her wrist.

“Can’t wait to hear about how handsome he is” they say.

“I’m so excited for you.”

“You go girl. Affinity to infinity!”

She hurries out the door and hails a cab.

“Tigris Corporation” she says.

The cab driver looks at her briefly through the rear view and nods.

“Affinity Division” she adds.

The mention of the Affinity Division causes the cab driver to double take. He looks at her with new eyes, intentions different. The very mention of the ‘a’ word was a catalyst for many emotions within people. It separated the haves from the have nots, it spoke of material wealth, hope, a ticket to a better existence - something out of reach for many people. 

She was a modest woman and did not mean to gloat. She already regretted the mention of Affinity to the man. She should have just mentioned “Tigris Corporation” and walked herself to the appropriate sector of the complex. 

She doesn’t want to make further case with the man but as she sits the holograms project out wildly in her face. Advertisements of holiday getaways on private islands, wedding dresses, sex parties and toothpaste. She was sick of all of the images and they were almost unavoidable, the world seemed to rotate around them.

“Can you switch them off please?” she says to the cab driver.

“But if off, your fare more. If on, your fare cheaper” he says.

“I don’t care” she says. “I want to live without being told how to live. I want a life that cannot be bought.”

The taxi driver laughs. “Yet you go for Affinity” he says. He flicks off the advertisement projection system angrily and rues lost commission and ambassador credits.

She notices a smudge on the driver’s wrist as he switches off the advertising system. She can tell that he was a user. It wasn’t the wrists however that gave it away. It was in his eyes, a slight and occasional vacancy. Her brother was the same. He had started at first recreationally, but now he was hooked. Rubbing out had become his only form of solace. The more he had, the more he needed. Soon he found more meaning in rubbing out than living life. There was little left. He went from one fix to another, the severity in coming down necessitating the next hit.

Along the western corridor traffic was slow. They slowed as they passed paramedics attending to a few collapsed pedestrians. One had collapsed at the bottom of an overpass escalator and his shirt had got stuck in the machine. The other had collapsed on the footpath outside a Mass Transit Shuttle stop. They were both young.

The cab driver shakes his head. “Aye-argh” he laments, his words sorrowful but also fearful and angry. “This is problem.” 

He flashes one arm around and gestures at the world outside the cab.

No one knew why more and more young people were falling dead seemingly without reason. Drug use was speculated but there was no direct correlation found. Some had a history of heavy drug use, others were mostly clean. Coroners reported that cause of death was by unexplained neurogenic failure to the heart. Their hearts had simply ceased to beat. 

She clutches her hand bag tightly as traffic returns to its normal pace. It was a straight run now and she was at once nervous and excited.

The Tigris corporation complex took up a large section of the downtown area with five sky scrapers arising from its base in the shape of a hand reaching out from the ground. Inside the Affinity Division she welcomed by a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a scarlet dress. They escort her to a private lounge where they pour her a glass of champagne. 

“This is for you on your special day” the woman says. She places the glass of champagne on the table beside where Miss Delaware is sat. 

They stand together with loose embrace and smile down at Miss Delaware on the couch.

“As you know Miss Delaware, we already have your details on our database.” 

Miss Delaware looks around for the voice that is speaking to her. The voice comes from behind her. She turns her head and notices another man in a suit, but this man seeming more official. He has just come through the door. He keeps speaking as he walks, his words as if known by verbatim.

“We know your activities, hobbies, likes, dislikes, humour, religious beliefs, moral outlook. We know your favourite books, foods, music and drinks. We know your friends, relatives and the people you avoid. We know your sleep patterns, your sexual preferences and appetite. We can even assess your propensity to change given common variables in life such as stress, time restraints, societal fads, movements and political climates. Our system is the most comprehensive on the planet. Just about everyone is linked to our social network. We have over six billion subscribers worldwide and five million alone in this city.”

He sits on the couch directly opposite her and looks into her eyes.

“Affinity awaits you. We will find your match. All I need first is the payment.”

She hands him her card. Fifteen years of hard work and saving since the age of eighteen. The payment is processed and he puts the computers into action and starts the trawl.

The man tells her to sit back and relax but she is mesmerized by the colours and flashes of faces upon the screens. She can’t help but think about all the people that she had never met in life because she had worked so hard. All of the people that she would never meet in life because that was the way of life in modern times. The faces flash up on the screen for only a split second each but in a strange way, she was knowing them all, everything about them, analyzed and critiqued, computed and permutated, vicariously through a system of machines. She sits there for hours. Face after face. Frame by frame.