Some days, the concrete wall opposite Virgil’s bunk was flat gray stone. The beautiful emptiness all those monks in Tibet, China, and dying strip malls search for. Other days, a window to worlds beyond, a canvas for the expanding Rorschach-blot images. 

The certainty in it was pain, damning. 

There it was again.

The Wi-Fi network with symbols for an SSID.

I’d tried connecting to it before, but the signal strength was so low, it always failed. During most classes it wouldn't appear at all, but those odd little symbols kept me sitting in the back corner of this dark lecture hall every week. Waiting. Hoping.

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