You can hide out for a long time in Kijong-dong, if you want to. There aren’t many amenities, true, and the farms on the outskirts don’t grow real food; but there’s heat, and light, and shelter, and they don’t even play the music these days.

Laugh at Kijong-dong if you want: it’s a silly place, as a king once said, absurd in its insistent claims to progress and glory. But what kind of mind has shored it up so well against the world’s derision? Could your will have kept it going all these years, empty and tall and bright?

“This could all be put to rest,” says Hawthorne, “with a valid death certificate.”

“Here!” says Senji, propping up his netbook. “Factcheck.org. Scans of the document. Pictures of the seal.”

“Oh, you can’t trust Photoshops,” says Hawthorne.

“Here’s video of people handling it.”

“Occam’s Razor. We must not needlessly multiply death certificates!” says Hawthorne. “Only physical evidence–”

“You’re beginning an argument that leads into a distrust of all information from your senses,” says Senji.

“Do you know what that means?”

“Descartes already explored–”

“We’re still inside the game!” gasps Hawthorne, thrashing, fumbling for the goggles and the IV drip.

Evony’s mother is a basket case and her father is an iceberg. This makes parent-teacher conferences difficult.

“WE THOUGHT SHE WAS IMPROVING IN SOCIAL STUDIES,” booms her father (or, technically, his top ten percent).

“She is,” winces Miss Lagant. “But eighth-grade curriculum emphasizes current events, and she’s not up to speed. Do you get the paper or watch the evening news?”

“Oh no!” says her mother. “It’s always so depressing.”

Miss Lagant stares at her beautifully lacquered cherry lid. “I’m sorry, I have to ask. If there’s a basket inside you, what’s inside the basket?”

“Eggs,” says Evony’s mother.

Until a man turns twenty-five (so Stephenson sayeth) he believes he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world, and the reason for this is simple: the young man questing against evil is omnipresent in Western literary myth. Randolph, for instance, is on a quest, though he’d never articulate it as such. He’s biding his time, clocking in at the code mill, waiting for portents and wisely noting things he sees in MMA.

Young women who read the right books come to this belief as well, of course. But they face another evil, differentiated by the fact that it is real.

“The horrific disaster at this photo shop has left ten thumbless,” says Branford in his most serious news voice, “as well as four without reflections, one heavily aliased, and two—yes, two with fake heads.”

“A tragedy,” confirms Susie at the anchor desk. “We’re also hearing that there may be some dead pixels?”

“Yes–I can tell from seeing quite a few such shops in my time.”

“Absolutely horrific. All right, Branford, we’ll be checking in with you later to explore each successive layer of this story–”

Branford winces. “When this airs,” he says, “you might want to filter that out.”