The Candy House

by Jennifer Egan

“To hell with God,” Fern said. “I’m worried about the Internet.” “By which you mean an all-seeing, all-knowing entity that may be predicting and controlling your behavior, even when you think you’re choosing for yourself?”

But I hadn’t counted on the circularity of life: the way it delivers us, with age, back to the beginning.

Mysteries that are destroyed by measurement were never truly mysterious; only our ignorance made them seem so.

“Doing anything really interesting requires a leap,”

the instant appeal of Mandala’s Own Your Unconscious. Who could resist the chance to revisit our memories, the majority of which we’d forgotten so completely that they seemed to belong to someone else? And having done that, who could resist gaining access to the Collective Consciousness for the small price of making our own anonymously searchable?

Nowadays, a man ill at ease in his surroundings will pull out his phone, request the Wi-Fi password, and rejoin a virtual sphere where his identity is instantly reaffirmed. Let us all take a moment to consider deeply what isolation was customary before these times arrived!

Not every story needs to be told.