Ftrain, by Paul Ford

She walked the path from kitchen to dorm. Someone had raked the week's leaves into tall, equidistant piles. She did not know who had done the raking but in three months at the Center, scrubbing the dishes and taking classes, she had become a radio carefully tuned to the efforts of others bodies; her antennae, which had, when she was all-but-powerful and all-but-rich, picked up mostly signals relating to money, now quivered in the presence of a trimmed hedge or well-scrubbed floor. Someone had been here and done this! Here in the leaf-piles was evidence of the human, the world, of the striving of consciousness. She felt like an archaeologist who worked in the moment rather than in the distant past. There was effort everywhere.

Weight: 309.5 lbs