episode

"What I need," he said,"is statistics. Mathematical truth. Numbers." He removed a book from the middle row, a random selection. He blew the dust off the front jacket and sat down at a nearby table.
"Ah! Here we are: '1 and 1 is 2,'" he said, adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses. "This is good. I rather like that."
A woman sitting close by looked up from the magazine she was reading, keeping her face half-hidden behind the thin filmy-pages of some soon-to-be dated volume on fashion or fashionable advice on pleasing one's sex partner. She noticed the camera and the ominous red light which meant that the camera was recording, the man's face casually being documented.
"When the camera is on," he said, glancing over at the onlooker, "that means I am recording. And when I am recording, nothing else matters."
The woman quickly looked away, immediately immersing herself in her magazine.
"Now, this is absolutely vital if we are to understand anything. There is truth. There is truth. Again, I say, there is truth in numbers. Figures. Glorious symbols with universal, timeless meaning. Do you understand what I'm saying?" He looked back over at the woman, now completely absorbed in pretending not to have acknowledged the man in the first place.
"Bah!" he snarled. "You truly are a ghost. Woman, you are mad!"
He continued reading, silently, to himself, as the camera kept recording, everything as it's supposed to be.