excerpt:
He was not conscious of it at the time, but this was not the life he wanted to live. In fact, it was barely a life at all. It was more a collection of repeating cycles and habits, kept in motion by various chemical and hormonal dependencies. For the third time, he read the unpronounceable words on the box his food came in. He liked the idea that no person had ever touched his food, or even seen its finished form. It came from a machine thousands of miles away, where a man in a plastic hat inspected giant steel pistons and computer systems with blinking lights. When he was finished eating, he walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Would people know if he went to a tanning salon? Would it look good anyway? It would be nice, he thought, to lie there naked, save a little pair of dark glasses, and to be washed in unbelievably white, hot light.
