Colum McCann

from "Phreak" The Paris Review no. 168

     There's a hum you get with a lot of computers going all at once. It's more than white noise. It's the sort of hum that makes you feel that you're the actual ground lying under the sky, a blue hum that's all above and around you, but if you think about it too hard it will get too loud or too big and make you feel no more than just a speck. You're sealed in by it, the wires, the piping, the electrons moving, but nothing really moving, nothing at all.
     I go to the window. It's a basement window that doesn't get any light. Once I tried to open it, but it didn't budge.
     The machines are whirling all around me.
     I bet the sun is coming up outside.