So I squeeze my eyes shut, where it's still illegal to show ads. For now. The new law will pass, no one doubts it. Everyone hates it.
I remember a book I read as a kid, Top 10 Games You Can Play Alone in Your Head. Prescient. I replay my favorite scenario. My joy at 'winning' this round is instantly replaced by a stone in my gut. The next time I open my eyes I will see ads for a dozen simulacra of these games made by a gibbering idiot of code. Cursed, bizarro, fun-house mirror mockeries of real efforts made by real people, scraped without their permission. Sickly chimeras crafted by a faithless invisible hand.
My eyes squeezed tight, I try to focus on the fresh air wafting through the tent on this rain-cover-less night. Decaying leaves. Someones campfire a bit further up river. The smell of plastic wafting off the river. I can feel the chemicals slowly collect in my nostrils through the night. Tomorrow morning I will sneeze out a perfect plastic molding of each nostril, complete with atrophied nose hairs stuck in the mold. It is particularly bad tonight and I hack, sure tomorrow will be the day I hack up a mold of my lung, possibly containing the lung too. I zip the hood of the sleeping bag for a mostly mental protection against the fumes. My fists ball, hands shaking, bitten brittle nails ready to puncture the thin skin growing thick too soon, I slip into a fitful excuse for sleep, until they take that too.