Perhaps a kind of social scramble pattern.

There's no threat behind his words. He's simply describing the objective state of things.

Out of the corner of your eye, on one of the little rounded tables, you notice someone's left an old sausage, casing black and blistered, pool of grease congealing around it.

THE PARTY GIVES PRECISELY ACCORDING TO THE PEOPLE'S NEEDS AND NOT ONE IOTA MORE.

He pruned the conversation forcefully, artificially. There is more.

Making inroads with his persona. Competent in-theatre, at least for this period of play.

He needed you.

Velodisk! A modern laser-hybrid format, played using a heated stylus unit. Astounding sonic fidelity. Cause of thousands of home fires.

A consecrated ground of tiny, crooked monuments.

Oddly specific.

Now speaking proudly of the stock he earlier disparaged.

Overplaying his persona, classic misstep. Baby's first time in-theatre.

You see him now -- eyes wide, reward circuit shorted out by the cut and thrust of commerce.

ANOTHER VICTORY FOR OUR GREAT AND ANONYMOUS CENSORS.

The signal blockers: wiry battlements like the skeletons of titanic insects face out across the strait on Portofiro's most desolate shore, snagging Luzian radiowaves as they enter.

INSIDIOUS IMPERIALISM. TODAY, THE SOFT POWER -- TOMORROW, THE HARD.

Behold! The paladin who stands before Absurdity and declares 'Well, technically...'

That's the brand slogan.

Remanence: the charge that remains after the removal of a magnetic field. The ghost of magnetic possession.

Portofiro at the break of the 60s. A teenage boy sits on his bed and gazes at a full-page magazine ad for a brand new single-play format. The crimson of the disc spellbinds him. Excited thumbs leave sweat prints on the page.

Gives himself plenty of excuses for the self-molestation, doesn't it?

All pretense drops. The red glints in his lenses.

Sublimity. Terror. As though you'd unexpectedly flashed one of the faces of God at him.

Specialists, collectors of the rare and the defunct. People like him, in other words.

His rising anger gone in an instant, like a fuse being tripped.

THIS IMBUING OF CONSUMER GOODS WITH QUASI-RELIGIOUS PROPERTIES IS TYPICAL OF LATE-STAGE CAPITALIST DECAY.

THE NEXT TIME THE WORLD SEES HER SHE WILL BE CLASPING AN ASSAULT RIFLE, DRAPED IN THE FLAG OF THE PARTY.

He handles the disc reverently, as if it were a tiny plastic coffin.

And as the audio content was obliterated -- so was PSEUDOPOD.

A single-use existence, erasing himself cell by cell.

As if to ward you, vector of the techno-plague, away.

IT HAS CROSSED HIS MIND. OBJECT COPULATION IS THE HIP NEW PERVERSION OF THE JADED MIDDLE-CLASSES.

Agreement is not, in itself, agreeable to him.

Of those three descriptors, only one has ever been applied to you, and it's not 'lucid' or 'composed'.

Uncannily precise.

Underlying the criticism is a lament that his own paranoia has no willing audience.

Only a moment's hesitation. This man may detest the majority of music, but his internal discography is formidable.

First obstacle avoided in what is evidently a labyrinth of personal ethics.

Velodisk! A modern laser-hybrid medium, played using a heated stylus unit. Astounding sonic fidelity. Cause of thousands of home fires.

Prepare yourself for a conversational landmine field.

You would not put it past this man to have a prop dog bowl to hand.

A box of little nemeses.

No one will ever Get It the way he does.

She's already seen him.

Whispered, urgent, seething.

ASSET HAS ONCE AGAIN BECOME SELF-AWARE. BEGIN RAPID CONTAINMENT.

You barely recognise her voice, emerging like a stranger's from a haze of red mist.

She's caught somewhere between a panic attack and bloodlust.

She intends to do it anyway, no matter what you say.

What the fuck...

Checks