A solitary walker with a dog peers at her, then snaps a photograph and posts it, tagging it with a query about suspicious activity at their location. The Witness immediately sends a message to say she has been photographed, and responds to his concern with thanks and a brief explanation. Modern rates of clinical paranoia have decreased significantly from pre-System levels. It transpires that many instances of the condition used to result from a horror of personal smallness; a deep, almost existential fear that the pattern of a given life had no meaning against the tide and chatter of the majority, or the vast indifference of the universe beyond. But part of what is remarkable about the System is that no one is insignificant to it. Every action; every choice, worry, question; every bold or idiotic inspiration can be acknowledged by the tranquil and endless machine. There is no silence into which the lonely fall. The System is quite genuinely interested in everyone.