Chapter Four: Becoming Noise

At 2:21 a.m., Lin Mo saw himself on thirty-seven thousand screens across the city. The countdown was no longer displayed beneath his photograph. It had entered his vision, clinging to the window frame, the rim of a cup, and the wet shoulder of Xu Zhou's jacket when she arrived: 23:55:48. Xu cut power to the apartment. In darkness, the numbers remained. “Delete the account?” “Peripheral Vision isn't inside the account. The account is navigation. Deleting it means waiting for the door blindfolded.” Chen Wan's return had shown him the mechanism. A person had to see an anchor, and the anchor had to be seen by one particular observer.