I’m thinking about a Philip K. Dick story, never published, perhaps never put down on paper or even imagined. In this story, which might only exist in my mind, the world is awash in sensory stimuli. Bright lights, flashing signs, an endless cacophony. A world of quick jump cuts. It’s like the Khaosan Road at 11 PM, standing on a Los Angeles overpass at rush hour, or living inside a Youtube video. Imagine your first night in the Amazon, only instead of insects and birds and other creatures, it’s horns and conversations and alarms and drunks and car doors and rattling manhole covers and ringtones. In the world of this story, silence is a premium. To escape from your senses, you need to pay up. $1000 gets you three days in a retreat center staffed by robed monks who prepare vegetarian meals and confiscate your smartphone and other noisemakers. No one talks, no one demands answers. The floor and walls are padded, limiting the noisy reverberations of human locomotion. $100 gets you an ho