If, as the present suggests, we are fated to spend ever more time in virtual realities, funneling ourselves into the abstractions of code, then so too will human savagery fold into this nonspace. Murder will be wiping a hard drive with minds on it. Infoterror and thoughtwar the apocalyptic threats. History a projection—even more than it is right now—of outcomes purely algorithmic. Meanwhile the disused, external matter will fall to ruin as if all our phantom atrocities were true.

“Five Miniatures,” The Collagist No. 34