Some things you can’t quantify, like fluctuations in collective anxiety. There are military manoeuvres in vulnerable borderlands, and while a clear 66% of mutations are nipped in the bud within 66 days, the implications of the other 34 are, in spite of apparent numerical certainty, without clear referents or agreed measurable value. If input in a hurry – and agreed targets dictate immediacy to the point of retrofit – 43, 44, and 33 are all increasingly inevitable in the present moral climate, and if someone stage-whispers thirty-four at the back of the bus, reputations can be left in shreds. Inevitability, too, is an unknown quantity, and where once there was trolling and daubed slogans, such misunderstandings may escalate to stonings, pyres, or other atavistic repercussions. It is, as they say, a numbers game, but the cards are marked, the dice are loaded, and the rules were lost in the recent apocalypse. Straw poll: Who can see 66 without thinking of the World Cup? Who can see 66, and stop before summoning the Beast?
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Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
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