Users must navigate the various parts of Carpenter’s interface with no instruction or explanation; it is up to them to explore the microcosms hiding in the neighborhood and make sense of each one. This involvement is crucial to understanding the work, yet it is important to remember that sense of agency is secondary to its underlying mechanisms. The pieces of Entre Ville are designed by Carpenter to come together in a specific way in order to evoke a connection.

For example, when users click on one of the windows of the building, they are presented with a short clip of a curtain dancing in front of an open window, facing another window across the way. We hear someone playing jazz music in the near distance. To the side of the video clip, we see a small notepad with an excerpt from the poem, connecting what we’re experiencing with the narrator’s words:

Across the alleyway

a French man waits,

quietly, until dinnertime,

to aim his trumpet

at our apartment.

We retreat,

at the bugle's call,

to hide, for a meal,

from the heat wave's thrall.

The sense of completeness and realism we feel by hearing the music for ourselves leaves no room for contemplation; we experience these lines of poetry exactly as Carpenter intends. This repetitive feature is one of the work's greatest strengths. Author J. Yellowlees Douglas examines the unique qualities of author intention within digital landscapes in his book, The End of Books Or Books without End?. According to Douglas, digital authors generate “a network that will act as choreographer to its’ readers realizations of the text,” arguing, “In hypertext fiction, unlike its print counterpart, authorial intention is palpable… The satisfaction you might derive from reading it is contingent on your ability to replicate a certain approach to the text.” In order for the work to have its desired effect, users must interact with it in a way that is specifically designed and encouraged by the author. This author-user interaction is relevant in digital fiction more so than classic print, because certain parts of a digital work have visual and spatial domination over others, and because these parts are connected in a deliberate way through links and windows. He says, “The very cues you need to proceed from one segment to another have… everything to do with the script of that other text, the author’s script, the one you can intuit and certainly feel but never quite see… In hypertext fiction, the author both tells a story and designs an experience.” He describes all of these interrelating concepts as “directed freedom” (Douglas, 132-134). In Entre Ville, users are directed to make choices that will align them with JR Carpenter's complex perceptions about her time living in Montreal.

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Macin Sheeder