“What Machine is it that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro’ another Day,- another Year,- as thro’ an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight…we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,- we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop…gather’d dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver…no Horses,…only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity…”

― Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon