4.

His office was closer to a large, cluttered closet than a real workspace. In one corner was a drafting table burdened with haphazard piles of books. It looked like he had pillaged every book on quantum mechanics, string theory, theoretical physics, and anything by Carl Sagan from the town's now unstaffed library. Everything else in the room was a free-for-all of random shit. He directed me toward a ratty, argyle patterned pullout couch so hideous that I momentarily thought it may be a part of the dissonance.

"You can crash there," he rasped, hoarse from our several-hour talk. "I'm going to lock you in. Nothing personal, it's just town policy. You don't try and leave until daybreak, and if you need to use the bathroom, do so now or forever hold your pees." He smiled at this, and the expression looked out of place on his weathered face. Pained. "The septic still works, so don't ruin it for me. Oh, and you'll be in the dark -- it's better if you don't give it anything to work with."

I did my business, thanked him for his hospitality, and sat on the pullout as he locked me in for the night. The light under the door faded as he and his GlOrb retreated down the hall. I sweated in the dark, dreading what was to come, and thought that maybe everything that happened had been for the best. Any society that made a product called a GlOrb in earnest deserves damnation.

5.

Black then white are all I see in my infancy

Red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me

Lets me see

I heard music in my dreams that night. In the past 16 years, I have dreamt but thrice. Once when the network went down a month in, once in the middle of Montana on my way here, and finally tonight -- in this cramped, darkened room. Amidst the blackness, I could hear music... so clearly. A song I had once known but was now beyond recognition without The Mesh; without the network. I will hold on to that dream for as long as I can, that memory of a time with sweet slumber... uninterrupted.

With white-knuckle intensity, I clung to the music, to the fading dream. I could feel it slipping incrementally; being replaced by the hell of the dissonance. Finally, it left me... the music now a memory of a memory, and the visions of some other consciousness were upon me.

I will speak of that some other time. I can think of it no more.

6.

Flying cars, jet packs, and VR were the promises of The Future... we ended up with two out of three. Not bad, by most metrics. At daybreak, when my confinement was lifted, my host wordlessly brought me out to his front porch. He pointed, but the gesture was unnecessary. I could see my ride burning just fine by myself, thank you.

This brings me to the core problem of everything happening to us. The thing that we had brought down upon ourselves despite more than a century of warning. The question was uttered out loud while feeling the heat of the flame of my face, knowing there could be no real answer.

"You think it's real?"