Note 131. The genius of Note 131 lies not only in its precise placement between Notes 130 and 132 but also in the multiple transitions, or layers of transitions, that it facilitates. Structurally (map view), its writing space forms the top right corner of the big letter A composed by all the writing spaces of Directory 9, “time/end_o'journey.” Its fortune cookie epigraph may suggest to the reader that Zanger's virtual cup flipping in 130 (and perhaps Nguyen's “real” cup flipping, which presumably profited from his studying the re-creation) is a phenomenon of talent without the force of genius. And along with the obvious Holodeck/Star Trek connection to 132 (an explanation of warp speed travel from Krauss's The Physics of Star Trek), Note 131 implies, more subtly, the disruption of space and time as well as the unity of spacetime addressed in both notes.

Further, 131 sets up the “straightforward idea” that the warp speed surf-travel described in 132 — the “craft” (in this context, a pun on talent?) carrying the light “along with the expanding wave of space” — also describes the reader's progress through the larger narrative.

Between these local and global levels, the nine directories within the Notes space comprise an intermediate level of connections, and Note 131 also clarifies some previously-misunderstood transitions between “digestion/cannibalism” (Directory 8) and “time/end_o'journey” (Directory 9). Looking backward, 131 suggests that Directory 8 concludes with some overtly political notes, such as 124 (connecting pig meat to power politics) and 126 (Vieuchanger's unsent e-mail reply, in which she addresses the author's attempts to pigeonhole her character with regard to his own preoccupation with the lost leftist counterculture). Thus 131 encourages us to read Directory 8 as implying that politics is cannibalism. And going forward, Note 131 predicts the ways in which “time/end_o'journey” (Directory 9) will circle back to “doorway/structure” (Directory 1) by becoming more aggressively philosophical, self-reflexive, and metafictional.

— Alan Richardson, “Metanarration in the Notes directory of Figurski,” in Millennial Machinations, ed. Alexander Parritt (Fictitious Press, 2001)