Before networks there was a letter. Y, Spanish for «and», is the conjunction that joins, and the world is woven with it: you and I and the dead and those yet to come. Each Y opens its arms and touches its neighbours, the way the knots of a mesh touch, or hands in a ring. At the centre there is a tear, and in the tear a red O, Spanish for «or»: the conjunction that forces a choice. This or that. Us or them. Where it enters, the letters come loose and fall. Every net is a sentence that does not want to end; every hole, a mouth that says «or». We live hanging from a one-letter word.