No One is Talking About This

The protagonist and other users are confronted with evidence that the portal itself contributed to the dictator’s rise to power. The protagonist questions how the collective behavior of the portal will look to future historians and uses the analogy of “normalizing” to consider how the portal seeks to normalize everything, resulting in a homogenized global culture. The protagonist relates the story of musician Thom Yorke subtly changing his live musical performances so that the crowd could not anticipate the song and sing with him. Yorke afterward claims that this technique allowed him to feel a creative transcendence that “wasn’t a human feeling” (55).

The protagonist relates a memory in which she walked through Washington Square Park with a woman she knew from the portal. During their walk, the woman talks about a man she often sees at the park and how she considers herself someone to watch over him and remember his presence. When the woman later disappears and the portal cannot provide any information about her disappearance, the protagonist believes she should have been watching over the woman so that she would be remembered.

When one of the protagonist’s posts gains fleeting popularity in the portal, her emotions become dependent on how that post is perceived by users.