I move forward. Ahead of me is a rectangle with rounded corners; all around it there is only empty space. I materialize disembodied fingers, coalesing them from the dead cells of my hair. They glide forward, turning, stiff, and their tips pierce the rectangle and curl, hooking the outer edge. They tighten, turning white at the joints where the blood is forced back from the exertion of pressure. As they do so, I am able to make use of their reference point and draw my face up closer to the rectangle. The fingers strain, I move, and the tip of my nose pushes through. My fingers unclasp, float forward, become two thumbs, and between them they take my nose and pull me out further, and there is a smell now, a touchstone that will remind me of this experience should one of its cousins reach me at another time, and then I am through.

I'm lying on carpet, now a full body extended and sensing. The fibers below me tickle; when I shift a leg they rub harshly. I roll over and scoot up to a sitting position, bare bottom tingling with sudden sensation. I look at the entrance I have come through, from this end a glassy dim window in one side of a box. I am a product of television, fleeing the ghost in the machine. I stand, give a light shiver--the house is cool, it softly whispers for warmth. I turn, and reach, and a blanket on a chair feels itself lifted up, then perhaps is pleased as it is draped around my shoulders, heat signature becoming a new script, collecting and sharing the warmth of my body.

Now there is a single rastor dot in the center of the television screen before me. I watch it, as it acquires a glow and slowly expands.

I exhale crisply, the senstation of cool sharp air in my lungs is somehow cleanly pleasant.

The dot continues to grow. It is now as big as my thumbnail, and for a moment I think that it looks like a skull, grinning at me. The impression is false and it fades, but the ghost is still after me, still tireless, it wants to take the warmth from me, it wants me to lose this wonderfully fleshy enclosure and join it in the powered conduits of transmission.

It grows larger, the size of my palm. I ignore it, feeling the carpet warm under my feet, the blanket resting softly on the back of my neck. I take it all in, breathe deeply, ingrain every detail in my mind, then shudder again, and the blanket feels itself drop to the floor, where it curls in a heap against my ankles. The ghost seems to pulse slightly at my apparent surrender, but I am already turning, leaning, stretching my fingers out before me, and pure and fair and no longer warm I become digital, and flow, a stream of data, into the compact disc player on the rack.

The ghost understands, it will not give up the chase. It succeeds only in pursuit, in reducing my life to a constant flight, in allowing only brief moments of grateful, sensual warmth before nipping at my heels once more. Coursing through a stream of digital information, I weep binary bits, extraneous data, white noise, interference, and on we go.