The track wasn’t very well encoded. It sounded like it had been re-recorded from a scratched up CD using nothing more advanced than a discount laptop from the local electronics superstore and a mic discovered at the bottom of a drawer that hadn’t been cleared out in a year. Somehow, though—through some magical combination of acoustics, ambient noise, and sleep deprivation—the music coming through the equally questionable earphones didn’t sound as though it were traveling down a thin and fraying wire to reach the tiny audio drivers. Rather, it sounded…it felt like the music was all around him, pouring out from the walls and pausing perfunctorily at the plastic buds pushed into his ears before easily flowing past the obstruction into his unprotected mind.