Summary

Two women stand outside of an ironmonger’s shop in a town in the south of England on a summer day in 1981. They enter the shop and go to a display of chains of different lengths. After calculating on the price and testing the length of the chains against their hips, the women decide on a chain and four cheap padlocks. They pay and exit the shop, not daring to laugh until they have left the limits of the small southern town.

Back in the present day, a young man named Art is sitting at a worn-out PC in a public library in London. He types random words into the computer, followed by the word “is” (47) and the letter “d” (47). He is attempting to see how many words and ideas automatically come up as “dead” (47) in the “frequent search” bar (47). He wants to...