...your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.

I was trying to run something to ground that had come to my attention when I was working on the Baroque Cycle. That series, of course, was about the conflict between Newton and Leibniz. Leibniz developed a system of metaphysics called monadology, which looked pretty weird at the time and was promptly buried by Newtonian-style physics.

Any strategy that involves crossing a valley accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains and tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure. In short, a world where big stuff can never get done.

The GPS unit became almost equally obstreperous, though, over Richard’s unauthorized route change, until they finally passed over some invisible cybernetic watershed between two possible ways of getting to their destination, and it changed its fickle little mind and began calmly telling him which way to proceed as if this had been its idea all along.

'It’s, like, one of them drug dealer boats,' Vic says, looking through his magic sight. 'Five guys on it. Headed our way.' He fires another round. 'Correction. Four guys on it.' Boom. 'Correction, they’re not headed our way anymore.' Boom. A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away. 'Correction. No boat.'

Software development, like professional sports, has a way of making thirty-year-old men feel decrepit.

See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places.