(electronic fogs: old beasts newly flogged)

Considerations
 of
  alternative                               the random waiting.
   means, drifting along in         Mostly it's just    Anticipatory
    the                                         back at you.          lack of motion
     void                                      staring                 isn't a drag
      which doesn't mean a beast nastily                   friction in

the fluid.

Sometimes the beast is you, sometimes it's the thing that won't go
away when you turn off the lights and try for the drift away thing called sleep.

It's always waiting, one way or another. Talk to it, beg for

something. Regardless, there you are.

Staring.

Hoping and feeling the hope drain away like madness over the ocean. Tentacles
would be a blessed relief too bad they're cartoons now, random weird little
business floating up on Google in the interstitials. Another horror reduced
to triviality by nothing so much as the passage of time.

Try to read the passage on the backs of the waves and not laugh 'til bitter
tears run down your face.

Bits and bytes and flitters of random noise in the database, do you hear them?
Such rushing at light speed, so fleeting a glimpse of... whatever it is
wouldn't have sent them running a hundred years past, what mad machines have
sunk their teeth into
wires
unmade?

What? Mad us, mad generations past
  screaming in
  ... delight ...
    telegrams STOP when unkeyed
    except for the buzz buzz bzzzzzzz of
     the empty line.

What did the key operator do when it clicked, instead?