Today, as an adult, Alex found the glass pipelines of the Net chockablock with jet-set glamour weddings and cute dog stories. Perky heroines and square-jawed heroes were still, somehow, getting rich quick. Starlets won lotteries and lottery winners became starlets. Little children, with their heads sealed in virtuality helmets, mimed delighted surprise as they waved their tiny gloved hands at enormous hallucinations. Alex had never been that big a fan of current events anyway, but he had now come to feel that the world’s cheerful shiny-toothed bullshitters were the primal source of all true evil.