It Was The Day My Grandmother Exploded.

All Our Lives Are Symbols. Everything We Do Is Part Of A Pattern We Have At Least Some Say In. The Strong Make Their Own Patterns And Influence Other People's, The Weak Have Their Courses Mapped Out For Them. The Weak And The Unlucky, And The Stupid.

Any Such Inklings Were Like A Few Scattered Grains Of Truth Dissolved In An Ocean Of Nonsense, And Were Anyway Generally Inextricably Bound Up With Patently Paranoid Ravings Which Served Only To Devalue The Small Amounts Of Sense And Pertinence With Which They Were Associated.

A Guilty System Recognizes No Innocents.

Stories Set In The Culture In Which Things Went Wrong Tended To Start With Humans Losing Or Forgetting Or Deliberately Leaving Behind Their Terminal. It Was A Conventional Opening, The Equivalent Of Straying Off The Path In The Wild Woods In One Age, Or A Car Breaking Down At Night On A Lonely Road In Another.

Something In Your Voice Tells Me We Approach The Question Of Remuneration.