Everything seemed merely analogous, Fitzwelter thought one morning as he toyed with the deflated egg yolk on his plate. Full of hue and resolution one moment . . . a bank of smashed pixels the next.
The apples at the market glowed a quarter inch beneath their skins. Grapes lolled obscenely. At school, his students marched from car to class to library to minimum wage jobs at Starbucks and Forever 21, and to weekend Guard gigs, politely and cheerfully. Without fail they completed each item on the rubric. (Their only complaint was not being told what to do.)
The lights switched on and off; the statement arrived each month on the fifteenth explicating kilowatt hours. Trains ran. The car started. The dog slept by its bowl. And the evening news droned in the background.
Fitzwelter punched the button. The machine chimed and the screen glowed dull grey, and Fitzwelter waited long, anxious moments for the software to load.
Yet how significant everything seemed, all of a sudden, as if some invisible hand were pulling everything taut.–
As if—actuated by some intention (some meta-theory as to why the water ran out the tap and books were written)–a virtual intelligence with all its petty antipathies, sublimated violence, and fantasies of sexual inadequacy had disrobed and come swaggering into the room to reveal itself.
The computer screen came to life and Fitzwelter began to type.