The 1979 game console connected to the TV. The screen black, a white square representing the ball, and 2 white lines, moving up and down on either side, representing the player-rackets. It is the middle of the day, people sleep or take a swim, blinds are lowered, silence—broken by the spongy boing accompanying each shot. By the time Harold reached the Bering Sea and was forced to turn back he had been running for 5 years without rest, and after that he descended through Canada, entered the U.S. in his pleated chinos, his red polo shirt, and his bomber jacket, and it would be another 3 years before the strict randomness of his erratic path brought him to his front door again. No one had been inside. No sign of even the slightest looting. Nor letters in the mailbox. Everything intact. The sea, through the far side of the building, a skin of mercury, and the console still connected, a score on the screen registering many thousands of defeats. He made another request for all the cornflakes boxes with that sell-by date because he now understood that he could not live without that memory, without taking flight, without that memory, without taking flight. Like someone hearing the thunderclap at the same moment they see lightning.