They were short stories. Fragments. “Dispatches” the author called them. Like reports from the frontline they were imagist miniatures. They’d drop day-by-day in her feed forming a patchwork of pictures. But now, like the eyes in a renaissance portrait, they followed her. The bedroom speaker woke her with a tale. The fridge picked up the theme as she reached for the milk and she found the same character in the livingroom as it became her office. The dispatches became a single “surround story” as ideas and characters appeared and reappeared on different screens and speakers. A message drip, drip, dripped.