She remembered a term she learned in a linguistics class for the way a word stops making sense if you stare at it for too long: semantic evacuation. That was what it felt like for Jenny. The world no longer had coherence. It was just a group of modules, diffuse components that dissolved into each other before you could even understand what you were looking at. The outdoors was a painted perspective of disparate objects. The houses were just bricks + doors + knobs + windows. The cars were just body + wheels + go. The people were cogs on an airport people mover. Look at the word boat sometime.
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