The Memory Librarian and Other Stories of Dirty Computer

by Janelle Monáe

even all their overseeing couldn’t keep watch on the whole nation at once. There were the things we hid. The warm spectrums we kept alive within ourselves. They were flames, maybe some magic, that we only allowed to burn when or where our light could shine solely before trusted, beloved eyes.

those parts of us we encrypted—the clandestine networks of love and expression, curiosity and desire. All the brilliant bugs, the dirty circuitry, under our surveilled surfaces.