Summary

The unnamed protagonist opened the portal and began looking at an eclectic assortment of pictures. She thought about politics and the fact that her country was being run by a dictator. She wondered if it was wrong of her to be following other people's conversations online so avidly. She looked at more pictures and wondered, “What did it mean that she was allowed to see this?” (8). Every day in the portal, it seemed there was “a new person to hate” (9). Often it was someone who made a relatively trivial blunder. She watched a video of an accident at a state fair in which people were thrown from a carnival ride and then felt guilty when she saw that someone had died from their injuries. She saw the photograph of the sailor, returned from World War II, kissing a nurse in Times Square and...