In the silent everydayness of the modern residential area, where man eagerly searches for meaning in banality in his habitat, a sublime physical phenomenon is discerned. When one positions the eye in perfect proximity to the window pane and the gaze shoots as a linear vector towards the uninteresting neighbor, a chemical spectacle manifests itself that is grasped only by the most astute observer. For behold: there is nothing. No molecular obstruction. No vapor, no curtain, no ripple of air. Only the eye, the window and the neighbor — a holy trinity in linear optical purity. The window itself, an amorphous silicon dioxide network, is a wonder of inorganic chemistry. Glass, though apparently solid, is on the molecular level a frozen liquid, a slowly moving amorphous continuum in which atoms exist in quasi-random structure. Nevertheless, it does not fail in its mission: transmission. Light, photons, the messengers of truth and tragedy, pass unhindered through this medium. Their wavelike nature is preserved, their frequencies only minimally refracted depending on the angle of incidence — which, if one stands close enough to the window, is next to nothing. The rectilinearity of perception is perfect. And there, at the end of this optical highway, stands she. The neighbor. Neither swirling nor enigmatic. A homogeneous collection of cells, her DNA neatly stored in a nuclear membrane, routinely transcribing RNA into proteins that sustain her existence in all its nothingness. She does not know that, in this constellation, she is the object of a chemical-poetic experiment.