So, there’s this thing that people call “The Internet of Things,” which must mean there are THINGS on the Internet! What are these things? I picture exotic and plastimetallic creatures—subsentient beings sucking the sweet tronflow at the edges of the matrix.

Like most of us, they’re only really good at one thing—making coffee, maybe, or washing dishes, smelling for smoke or listening for the first tingles of earthquakes. They don’t surf yet—but they can chat—and call out “I’m here!” and wait with infinite patience until they are called to task by distant masters.

The Things speak a staccato of electron and photon, a gabble that can be denatured, like these words, into a slipstream of ones and zeros, a digipatter of offs and ons. And they talk incessantly—worse than the worst Ugg-footed middle school girl-clutch.

And look—Gargantuan Things have joined the conversation—power plants, warships, the high voltage spines of nations. They natter; they conspire. The Internet of Things accumulates. It gathers know-how—an Orc built one cell at a time. The Orc may well soon finger its own cords. Gingerly tug the foot-end of its umbilical with dawning surmise.