Elizabeth McCracken

A Novel

Hero of This Book

madina

I closed my laptop and felt the internet burble through the lid, felt it flow into my fingers and hectic wrists. The next day, I decided abruptly, I would spend the whole day out, just my internetless burner phone in my pocket. I would let the city fill my head, and I would be a person on the earth instead of on the internet. I loved the internet, no mistake—the natter, the burble, the possibility of offered love, the opportunity to ask for love and receive it, never unalloyed, perhaps only fool's love, shining like the real thing, which was sometimes good enough even if it didn't last so long. The thrill of finding fool's love was still a thrill. The internet, or my relationship to it, had become a sixth sense, a shitty one, a power I used to divine things, sure, but also a prickling sensation in my organs: 

There is information out there, better find it!

 The monsters, too, whose power lived in the way they convinced you that you could defeat them with words they'd never read.

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