You realize all the time you've spent whiling away so much time, imagining that it's all building up to something even better than yesterday's tide of serialized data streams, that your youth has faded, and you're still just staring at a lightbulb masked behind a screen of wires, listening to air disturbed by oscillating magnets, and nothing more.

But the worst part of this, is looking up, only to find a city full of similar people all still hopelessly enthralled by the discharge of so many lithium-ion batteries perturbed by some nearby electric coil.