U. is a 'corporate anthropologist' who, while working on a giant, epoch-defining project no one really understands, is also tasked with writing the Great Report on our society.But instead, U. spends his days procrastinating, meandering through endless buffer-zones of information and becoming obsessed by the images with which the world bombards him on a daily basis: oil spills, African traffic jams, roller-blade processions.Is there a secret logic holding all these images together?Once cracked, will it unlock the master-meaning of our era?Might it have something to do with the dead parachutists in the news?Perhaps; perhaps not.