"The apartment is crammed full of CDs, books, DVDs, toys, Lego, games, several cars, microscooters, and other shiny appliances. A TIGER lolls on a rug."

"Sometimes they talk amongst themselves, sometimes you talk to them, but nothing ever really comes of that. You search carefully, but there are no doors. No exits or entrances or anything. Just the room."

It's being tried with email, now, sending a message out to volunteer victims and seeing how many jumps it'll take from address book to address book. First impressions are that it's going to take less steps, electronically, but it really depends how isolated and obscure the targets are - greater connectivity seems as likely to tangle the path into loops as to cut it straight to a destination, after all.

Intriguing stuff. And a very tempting model for a postal network; "Here, this parcel's for Algernon Other, a bike-shop owner from Wales. Pass it on to anyone who's more likely to know him, would you?"