In from the virus, the protocol continued charting its own consumption pattern and scanned for exceptional news-bite infotainment. One headline claimed that the Political Apparatus was processing the dominant syntax in a way that read nontraditional and was somehow opening itself up to the new citizenry. Another headline spoke of the rise of virtual violence. Still one more headline used the term "false consciousness" to describe electronic sales over the last three months.

The protocol was ready to absorb HTC. HTC had evolved out of nothing but in the course of its development found an interconnected Value-Added Network (VAN) at its disposal. This VAN created opportunities for HTC to increase the viability of its narrative thrust such that HTC was now being pursued by the curse of Capital.

Capital now operated as a master-manipulator, the motivator behind the spectacle of image formation as it treaded into the deep regions of cyberspace and HTC, unable to stop the gambit from happening, was now fair game.

The protocol had no identity, no name, no parent company, no need to feel responsible for the motility of Capital's encoded curse. It was the purest formula of death-desire ever created. Schools of data swam by it and it would swallow whatever it felt could keep it alive in its killing glee.

HTC was now being perceived as nothing but an ephemeral school of data.

The protocol took one look and immediately swallowed.

Was this what the light-force meant by the power of dreaming the real?