There is peace to be had from the contemplation of reality my friends and so I am bound to ask why we avoid it so abstemiously. Instead of contemplating reality we fixate our sickly attention on the flickering cartoon-like images that are supplied for us by the Distractogen. ‘You be this, you be that, you be the other…’ roars the machine, allocating us our life-roles. We scurry to obey, always scurrying to obey. We are so grateful for what we have been given, although we have been given nothing. Actually, we have had something taken away. No one knows the horror of the machine, it occurs to me. No one sees it. Instead, we have this bland, everyday awareness that rushes from one generic distraction to another. It’s a methodical, routine type of rushing but it is rushing all the same – we can’t stay still any more than a reef shark can stay still in the open ocean. What we feed on doesn’t matter, all that matters is the feeding. We are filter-feeders – we don’t consume goods we consume sound-bytes of information – information about this, information about that, information about the other. Information about nothing – stuff that seems important at the time. It grips our attention for a moment or two and we go through the motions of focusing, taking it in, scanning the screen obediently. We’ve ticked another box, and so then we must move on to the next. Halfway through the distraction we’re already looking for the next. Please don’t tell me that this isn’t how it works because I know it is. That’s how it always works, that’s how it always will work. We have that to look forward to, you see. More of the same, more of the same. You tip the waiter, ‘more of the same, please,’ you say. The waiter is rude – he spits contemptuously into your soup. Gets a good gob in there, a particularly solid oyster that floats around on the surface with unnatural buoyancy. The soup is vile, the soup is appalling – it was vile even before the addition of the floating oyster. Looking into your bowl of soup is like looking into hell itself, you realise. There’s a shapeless white blob of a face looking back blearily at you. The face is sad and confused. ‘I know that face,’ you say to yourself, ‘it’s the ghost of who I used to be.’ But that’s how it works, that’s how it always works. It’s all about a sustainable future, you tell yourself blankly, gripping your spoon too tightly. It’s all about a sustainable future. It’s all about following your dreams – not that they ever lead anywhere of course. Not that they ever lead anywhere…