“I reflect, not for the first time this week, that the twenty-first century is a screwed-up place to be. How is this even a normal human interaction? Back in the old days people waited weeks, even months, to receive letters, and that had to suck. But on a regular day, when they were out and about having normal chats, no one had to wait in crippling suspense to see if their conversation partner would deign to answer them. If said partner remained unresponsive for a full three minutes, the only possible explanation would be that they’d had a stroke, not that they’d heard the question and didn’t want to answer for another few hours.”