The one you see in the monitor is your double, occupying a parallel world to yours. He is of you and of an alien nature at once. He is guardian and your nemesis. Your tie to him is eternal. You will see this right there, on the monitor. He is your dark half that has become visible through the agency of the camera. And these days he has found the opportunity to be not only your double but also your shadow. He is you complementary half, and at exactly the same moment that he approaches you from behind, he takes you over.

But there isn't always a monitor to reveal your double to you, in the same way that there isn't always a source of light to reveal your shadow to you. There are eyes in the city that record your every move without you realizing it. These eyes give birth to another world. The city doubles; you walk on two streets at once. You step into two stores. You've become twice yourself. The old dream of {Borges} takes on a new meaning: a map of the city so detailed that it covers its entire surface. This is the dream of managing the city/self that through the midwifery of the camera has come to the world -- the desire to capture the self in presence through the mediation of absence.

It is of little consequence who is sitting behind the monitor in that secretive room with no windows to the outside -- the traffic control official, the intelligence agent, the city planning supervisor, or the wayward visitor who behold scattered images in the hope of arriving at a totality. Behind the camera sits the always-present absence, that omnipotent observer. He is the one who sees without being seen. You can only see signs of him: "This store is equipped with a closed circuit camera." You see eyes protruding from the top of a pole, behind a tinted spherical ball. But eyes are not Vision. Vision needs He who can interpret the data transmitted, to give meaning to that which is recorded by the eyes. The always-absent observer is aware of your every deeds and He is the one that in the Day of Judgment will reveal all your sins to you.

God has is keeping this city under its gaze and the citizen, under his supervision, will reveal his double, the one who has a penchant for crime, to himself.