The Shadow of the Algorithm: Science fiction novel

New York at three in the morning isn't the city
depicted in the guidebooks. It's a crust of spent
neon, a metallic heartbeat echoed in the drawers
of cheap hotels and empty subway entrances. In
Soho, electric blinds lower like eyelids over shop
windows, and the old brick buildings retain the
warmth of the days as if preserving whispers.
Outside it was drizzling—that fine rain that never
cleans anything—and the reflection of a
laundromat sign stretched out in the puddle in front
of the doorway; inside, on an eighth-floor
apartment with a rusty fire escape, there's an
apartment with too many screens and too little
order. Ethan Cross lived there.
The place smelled of stale coffee and electricity. A
swing-arm desk lamp cast a tiny glow that tried to
compete with the main screen: a pale, vivid
rectangle where lines of text moved like fish on the
shore. There were at least five monitors: one for
email, another for old terminals that no one had
named in years, another for the connection
map—that mesh Ethan liked to look at when
nothing physical satisfied him—and two more

where windows were recreated with tabs that
seemed to multiply of their own accord.