things move around

The keyboard I inherited from my predecessor, Stephen, shows almost no signs of wear or use. The keys are as smooth as pebbles from an undiscovered stream in a forgotten mountain plateau. Indeed they so closely approach perfection that I avoid their use altogether, instead composing my documentation by cutting and pasting the appropriate text from a variety of other sources, using my mouse alone. What might account for the supra-natural, unblemished aspect of the keyboard which was my predecessor’s kindest bequest? Since the quality or sufficiency of Stephen’s work has at no point been called into question, I must conclude that he maintained his fingernails according to the most rigorous standards of care.

Now we already know that he was a great one for rambling off over the countryside without a care for a hot dinner at a decent hour, and taking his obsession with manicuring also under consideration we begin to suspect that there was more to Stephen than meets the eye, ear, or nose. But then show me the man whose echo in the dead vault of the past rings true and clear, or whose silhouette on the gauze screen of the future represents him in all the crazed complexity of the present day.