The fuzziness of human communication is one of the reasons for Inspector Neith’s profession under the System. Statistical analysis and even soft logic can take machine learning only so far into the quirked and sideways landscape of human irrationality. What a given thing means may vary not only between two individuals but from moment to moment. Even actual symbols symbolise more than one thing—the giant neon sign outside her window, which blesses London’s Piccadilly Circus with a nostalgic wash of faulty electrics, comes from a time when profit was uncomplicated and goods were rivalrous and excludable. It was made by hand in 1961 and features the name of a company, Real Life, which sold building supplies of a sort now made obsolete by more advanced construction techniques. The majority of things then traded in London could be held or touched or otherwise understood by a human being with only her senses, and because of this it is a banner of perceived normality in an era when none of these things is any longer true.