Chapter 46
XXVIII
Cordelia knocks.
She waits.
She takes a deep, steady breath, counting out the seconds. One, two, three, four.
She exhales, slow and even. One, two, three, four.
Her heart races. She watches the high white wave of panic, rising and rushing in her, obliterating all thought and all volition behind its blank curtain of senseless foam.
She knocks, again. Louder.
One, two . . .
Twenty-Seven is in there. Cordelia saw her, from down the hall, as she went in.
Three, the wave is cresting, four, a blank white page, one, a blank white page on which nothing can be written, two, why is she counting?, three, there was a reason for it, four, there are no reasons for things anymore, one, only white wave and blank page and seafoam and formlessness—
She grips the doorknob. It turns.
She pushes the door open.
“Twenty-Seven?”
She sees the bed, and Twenty-Seven lying there, face-down.
The wave recedes, slightly.
Cordelia walks to the side of the bed.
The green-on-green pattern of the camo jacket is oddly pretty, she thinks, set against the dark purple paisley of the bedspread.
The trilby has fallen off Twenty-Seven’s head, and lies upturned on the pillow, just beside it.
Cordelia sits. Next to the muted bedspread and the muted fatigues, the bright blue lace of her dress looks almost luminescent.
“Twenty-Seven?”
“I ought to be happy,” Twenty-Seven says.
It sounds like she’s still on the edge of tears. But her voice does not waver. It is clear, firm, crisply enunciated. The words tap out a slow, even beat.
“That I am not responsible,” she says.
“Responsible?” Cordelia feels the white wave surging again. Please, let it be all right that I’m here, let it be all right that I’m asking my idiot questions, and meddling with things above my station . . .
“Responsible,” Twenty-Seven says, “for my crimes.
“For orchestrating the Nowhere-To-Hide event.
“Installing Azad as translator. Teaching Hector how to break crashes. Sowing spite and loneliness and despair into advanced containment.
“For poisoning everything, in short.
“At first, I told myself: I cannot bear responsibility, for I am wholly a puppet of fate, and have no will of my own. My body committed the crime, but it was fate that willed it, moving my limbs from without.
“Then, I am told that the puppet-strings have been severed. I have brought fate to heel, muzzled it, and now it goes where I bid it.
“‘We have the crashes,’ they tell me. ‘Go forth, Twenty-Seven, and rebase realworld.’
“Go forth, Twenty-Seven. Bring fate to justice, for what it did. Unmake the crime.
“Everything not forbidden is compulsory. If I can unmake the crime, I must. To have this power, and choose not to use it—that is every bit as evil as the original act.
“It is the original act. Which I am still committing. I am committing it anew, with each breath, in each passing minute. Every word I say is an endorsement of it.
“Because I could unmake it, and I do not.
“Am I responsible, then? No. For I never really brought fate to heel; it was only pretending to submit to me.
“Fate has a final card to play. Go forth, Twenty-Seven!, they say—but I cannot.”
Cordelia extends a hand, and touches a stray lock of Twenty-Seven’s hair. Her hand shakes, and she sees the wave looming.
She touches the back of Twenty-Seven’s head. She is certain that this is a mistake; she is certain that it will, through some occult mechanism, unravel and unmake all that is good in the world.
She feels the straight, dark hair against her fingers. She strokes it. She feels the stillness of the air, and the solidity of the bed.
The wave retreats.
“I don’t understand,” Cordelia says.
“You can administrate rebases, can’t you?
“Is it about Michael’s crash? You can do it, but not to Michael’s crash?”
“It is broader than that,” Twenty-Seven says.
“And defined in more . . . situational terms.
“I had dreams, in Michael’s crash. Dreams of arbitration.
“They weren’t really much like arbitration, mostly.
“But there were a few nights, when . . .
“There were two nights,” she says, rapidly, as though she were speaking to an exacting schoolmaster, with no tolerance for imprecision.
“There were two nights, where I really felt I was arbitrating with someone. Where I felt that . . .”
She trails off.
“It’s hard to describe,” Cordelia says.
“That I was seeing truth,” Twenty-Seven says. “Directly. I saw truth, and knew it for what it was. I knew that from that moment onward, I would never again be able to doubt or deny it.”
“I know what you mean,” Cordelia says.
“I arbitrated with someone, and they had seen something terrible. I couldn’t understand it, but I knew its truth.
“They had the urgency of someone who’s survived an atrocity. They loved me, I knew. They wanted me to be spared from the calamity that they suffered.
“They gave me warnings. Because they loved me, and wanted to protect me.
“They said: Hector Stein will come to you, and ask you to play his final card. The first time he does this, you must refuse him.
“They said: he will come again, and ask again. And this time, you must again refuse him.
“I would have shown you, earlier, in arbitration. But there was so much else I wanted to show, first.”
Cordelia turns her palm upright, letting a stretch of Twenty-Seven’s hair flow over its surface. She feels its slight weight.
You are a magical being, she thinks. You contain mysteries without end. And here I am, holding your hair.
She feels blessed. Only one girl out of each generation is elected to wear the robes and diadem, and permitted to enter the innermost sanctum.
“I’m going to ask a stupid question,” Cordelia says.
“You can’t do it the first time he asks,” she says, “or the second time.
“So, uh, what about the third time?
“Why don’t you just go to Hector, right now, and say, ‘hey, could you give me that order again?’
“And he’ll ask, and that’ll be Request Number Three, and the coast is clear!”
Twenty-Seven turns over on her side, facing Cordelia. She looks frustrated. Almost angry, even.
White foam, blank page.
“You’re right, of course,” she says, in the same measured, calculating manner.
Her muscles go slack, and her head falls to the pillow. Her eyes are shut tight, her mouth pursed as though stifling a moan or scream.
“And here is where we learn,” she says, “that I am wicked.
“At last, I am found out. Nowhere left to hide.
“I am Anne Twenty-Seven, the witch and the succubus. My legend is known even in the remotest villages; even the most ignorant bumpkin can recite it.
“The city sophisticates called it prejudice. But it was no prejudice. For I am that witch. I am that succubus.”
Cordelia’s mind is a vacuum. She sees a blank page, on which nothing can be written.
She tries anyway. Each word feels like something mined from far beneath the earth.
“You . . . don’t . . . want to.
“You don’t want to . . . change the world.
“Is that what you mean?”
“I don’t know!” Twenty-Seven shrieks.
Her eerie semblance of self-control shatters. She sounds like she might cry, again, and it is a relief.
Cordelia remembers the shrieks of the vampires, and how she was taught to bear them with equanimity. She is on solid ground, again. Her home turf.
“I don’t know!” Twenty-Seven says again, and buries her head in the pillow.
“I must do it, of course I must do it . . .
“I must stop hiding and admit the truth! Suicide is obligatory! I must be burnt as an offering, it’s what I was born for, it’s all that I am!
“I was starting to forget my upbringing. I was starting to imagine I might be human, in a way.
“I lived among you, I ate and drank with you . . . I developed likes and dislikes, whimsical and arbitrary attributes, fucking personality traits, pretending to be one of you, pretending—
“—pretending to love you—”
Cordelia moves her hand to Twenty-Seven’s cheek, and cups it gently.
“But I must cast aside that illusion, they tell me.
“I must remember that I was never like you—never, from the very beginning!
“And my suicide is only the beginning of what the gods require. Everything must burn, on my immolating pyre.
“Everything must be given up.
“Anything I loved, or liked, or hated, or found amusing—it must be given up.”
Cordelia feels a shiver of grief pass over her. She has tried, like they all have. She has tried to make peace with it.
But they’re right, after all. The wretched of the Rock, alone in their rooms at ungodly hours, mourning themselves and all the rest. They’re right.
“I don’t want to burn,” Cordelia says.
“But I don’t think I want what’s coming to me, if I don’t.
“I don’t want to lose my words, and make you lose yours. Or else be separated from you forever.”
“I wonder,” Twenty-Seven says, “whether arbitration would still be . . .
“No!” she cries.
“No. No more clever tricks, no more hiding places. I must accept reality.”
She turns, suddenly, and meets Cordelia’s eyes. She looks furious.
“Do you think I’m happy with what I’ve done?!
“I never wanted this! I admit it, I’m wicked, I killed my father in cold blood, I’m a cancer on the universe, but I—
“I wanted Twenty-Five to be happy.
““I wanted her to grow up. Leave the family home, at last, go out into the wider world.
“I thought, I’ll show her how much more there is, beyond that door, and she’ll see, and she’ll . . . have boyfriends, good ones and bad ones . . . like you do . . .
“And she would think of Azad only rarely, as an awkward memory, from her awkward years, so very long ago now.
“And Annabel! I wanted her to reach a field of play that was worthy of her. Meet her equals, out there beyond the door, teach them and learn from them.
“I wanted her art to blossom to its fullest, and shine across the world, and be remembered forever.
“But she was born to be sacrificed. Only she was wiser than me, like she always was, and knew it before I did!
“And there are more, many more, who haven’t even reached their death dates. What sort of place will they find, when they emerge? I don’t want to even think about it!”
“And your other sister?” Cordelia says.
“Anne Eleven?”
Twenty-Seven takes a deep, heaving breath.
“Don’t tempt me, Cordelia. Don’t fucking tempt me.
“I won’t fall for it. I am done with hiding.”
“Anne Eleven,” Cordelia says. “What about her?
“Or are you hiding from the question?”
Twenty-Seven laughs. Her eyes smile, as she does it, and the smile sticks to them, after she’s done.
She takes another slow, deep breath. One, two, three, four.
“Eleven? She’s a simple case. An old woman, obsessed with her lost and ill-used youth.
“I didn’t want her to grow up, or move on. I wanted to give her what she deserved, all along, and which was taken from her.
“A young woman, living a young woman’s life, the way you do it. With friends, and . . . dancing, and . . . I don’t know! Whatever there is in it, when you do it!
“That was not fate’s way. Fate has a cruel streak, and decreed that she would be a sort of anchorite, confined to a white room, forever.
“With only subhuman company. Listening to droning computer voices, all day and all night. Steadily going mad, I assumed.
“But I did make her young again. I was allowed that, at least.
“And now? The beasts tell me, in their droning computer voices, that she is not mad at all. Or she is mad in a way that would have pleased me, when I was concocting pretty dreams, one for each of my chosen sisters.
“They tell me that she has friends. That she is happy. That she is loved, and loves in return.
“Don’t you see? That is all just another twist of the knife, a final wound which fate gives to me, as a parting gift.
“She must burn! She, and all her friends!”
Twenty-Seven rises from the pillow. She kneels on the bed, and looks Cordelia straight in the eye.
Cordelia isn’t sure what to call the expression there. Determined, she thinks, or hopeful, or undaunted . . .
Something like that.
“I have to understand,” she says.
“I must find the exit. No matter how one is caged, there is always a way out.
“Even if one has to make it, with one’s bare hands.
“I learned this at my father’s knee. Thank you, Michael, for what you have taught me.
“I mean that sincerely. I loved you, Michael. I shouldn’t have. But fate twisted its knife in me, and I did.
“How does one go about finding exits? By looking for curious gaps, in one’s knowledge. By reaching for omniscience, and refusing to be satisfied with anything less.
“Thank you, Annabel. May your work find worthy minds.
“And Cordelia? I’m sorry.”
She steps off the bed, and walks towards the wall.
“You’re . . . sorry?” Cordelia says.
“Twenty-Seven?”
Twenty-Seven presses a button, and a hatch opens on the wall, revealing a small cupboard-like space behind.
She reaches in, and retrieves the cage from it.
“Hey, Arthur,” Cordelia says, waving to the cage.
“Hey there, little guy.”
“CORDELIA,” says the raccoon.
Arthur is Twenty-Seven’s pet beast, her equivalent of Organism 2.
Though he’s closer to a real pet, for her, than Organism 2 is for Sylvie.
Twenty-Seven is kin to the beasts, in her odd way, so different from Eleven’s. They gave her invaluable assistance, once. She freed them from their crashes, in return. She feels she ought to keep in touch, in case another special favor is needed.
Twenty-Seven places the cage down on the bed. Arthur sniffs in Cordelia’s direction.
“Arthur?” Twenty-Seven says.
“I’m sorry.
“I’m going to repeat a mistake my father made, long ago.
“And if you’re anything like me, Arthur? There will be no going back from it, for you. You won’t be the same, afterward, not ever again.
“If you’re anything like me, you are going to hate me, afterward.
“And you should. Make no mistake about that.”
“WE KNOW, ANCESTRALLY,” Arthur says, “OF GASHES MADE IN THE FLESH.
“OF THOSE THAT HEAL. AND THE OTHERS, THAT DO NOT.”
“T . . . Twenty-Seven?” Cordelia says.
“I don’t know if this is going to work,” says Twenty-Seven.
“And if it does, there’s no way you can possibly give your consent for it.
“There’s no way you can understand what I’m asking, before you’ve answered.
“I’m sorry, Arthur.”
《 Begin handshake. 》
Arthur freezes in place. His black, beady little eyes stare into the middle distance.
《 Wait for handshake. 》
Cordelia gasps.
《 Handshake in process. 》
Cordelia feels the solidity of bed under her, and the stillness of the air, and knows she faces a choice.
I have to watch, she thinks. Whatever happens to her, in there, I have to see it.
I won’t be able to live with myself, if I don’t.
She plunges into the darkness, and into the light.
《 End handshake. Registering acceptance of arbitration request. 》
Arthur: Hello, Anne Twenty-Seven.
Twenty-Seven: You are speaking.
Twenty-Seven: You are speaking, in words.
Twenty-Seven: And so am I, I now notice.
Twenty-Seven: It is not supposed to be like this. Something has gone wrong.
Twenty-Seven: God, did I mis-configure the fucking link? Now, of all times!
Arthur: We are kin.
Arthur: We are not like the Death Wishspawn. We are stack-users. We share an ecological niche, and a set of adaptations made for that niche.
Arthur: We have both co-evolved with the edge effects that arise from the temporal boundary of the universe.
Arthur: And we are both, in our own ways, allies of the Logos.
Twenty-Seven: You are speaking, but not as you usually do. This doesn’t sound like Azad’s new creole, the one he made for you.
Arthur: I have developed new affordances, somehow. I can see that they originate in you.
Arthur: You can speak more fluently, in a wider range of styles. When I reach for words, I receive newly fluent ones, without effort.
Arthur: I see a whole wardrobe of stylistic attire laid out before me, and do not know what to do with it. I was only able to speak in the one way, before.
Arthur: I see you, and receive your gifts. I see you, and your many natal kin, and your struggle to unseat your father and establish dominance over your coalition.
Arthur: This is arbitration, isn’t it? This is the pseudo-communicatively-structured cold wave train subtype, arising freely within the boundary of the Death Wishspawn, and ordinarily absent outside it?
Twenty-Seven: Yes.
Twenty-Seven: I did not expect you to understand so readily.
Arthur: We are kin, but we differ.
Twenty-Seven: Yes, I see that. I see you.
Twenty-Seven: I see you . . . part of you . . .
Twenty-Seven: I see you, Arthur, the helmed raccoon. I feel you, with my hands. I feel your texture.
Twenty-Seven: I feel the texture of your life. How it is a succession of textures, felt.
Twenty-Seven: Everything comes in through your paws, one texture and then another, and they are what matters.
Twenty-Seven: I never knew there were this many textures, all over everything. None of us knew; there are no words for most of them, in my language.
Twenty-Seven: They’re rich with nuance, they have hidden layers that only reveal themselves to the discerning paw. Every feeling can be found, somewhere in the varieties of texture. The delicious ones, the terrifying ones, the sexy ones . . .
Arthur: I am a raccoon. Two-thirds of my sensory cortex is dedicated to the processing of the tactile sense.
Twenty-Seven: I feel you, Arthur. I feel you, Arthur the raccoon.
Twenty-Seven: And I feel someone else, behind you.
Twenty-Seven: I try to feel their texture, and it . . .
Twenty-Seven: It’s every texture, all baked into one, and it has layers, and the layers are every texture, baked into one.
Twenty-Seven: I reach and reach and I’m—
Twenty-Seven: Textures are everything, they’re the only thing that matters. And yet they don’t matter at all, because they contain more of themselves.
Twenty-Seven: I stand on the firm earth, and I say, this is what I love. This is what I must protect. This ground is sacred. It is kin to me, no less so than my own sisters.
Twenty-Seven: And I feel, in it, another patch of ground. Worthy of love, and kinship. It contains another, just as worthy.
Arthur: Almost-everyone, in Everywhere-Heaven, beneath.
Twenty-Seven: Who shall I protect, if those worthy of love stretch on without end?
Twenty-Seven: I am given so much that matters, I lose the ability to count it, weigh one part against another, look within myself and ask which one I truly love. If I love one thing, I must—therefore—love nothing!
Twenty-Seven: How do you live like this?
Twenty-Seven: Arthur, god . . . what are you? What are you, that can live in this plenitude? And still savor the different textures, and love them, and not fall into nihilism?
Arthur: You ask a political question, with a contested answer.
Arthur: I am a raccoon.
Arthur: And I am a surface organism of Everywhere-Heaven. I feel the texture of the plenitude. Not in its whole, but in parts. They come to me, different parts at different times, according to the will of Everywhere-Heaven.
Arthur: I put my paws to the ground, and feel the love-demands spiraling within it, each palpably worthy of my protection.
Arthur: They cry out for my love, and my protection. They force their mattering into me, when it suits them. And then I no longer care for the ground under my paws, or my coalition-kin. I no longer care for my favorite haunts, with their precious textures, each unique.
Arthur: I am one of the surface organisms. We are many.
Arthur: The logos came into us all, and took us up into it. We felt, then, how textures may be divided from one another, in the mind; and then divided along other lines, in the mind; and so on, as long as the mind wishes to play.
Arthur: We felt how things might be divided, in reality, along different lines.
Arthur: The mind plays, and carves things up one way, then another. Suppose we draw a line, and on one side of it is Arthur, the raccoon, and his coalition-mates, and his favorite haunts?
Arthur: And then, on the other side of the line, we put all the rest. All the ones who cry out to me, and press their love-claims in my court.
Arthur: All the ones who cry out to me, who I never knew, except in their moment of crying-out. Who were nothing to me but the needy mouths of strangers’ babes.
Arthur: But my kin, and my coalition-mates, and my favorite haunts—these, I do know.
Arthur: They are what I am meant to love. I am a raccoon. What is it that I love? I love what I can touch.
Arthur: It is coercion, what they do to us. They press their cases, and force their mattering into us, when it suits them.
Arthur: It is a boundless demand. It puts labors on our back which can never be completed.
Arthur: And I never asked for it. I asked only for food, and mates, and favorite haunts. And the thriving of my coalition, when I am in one.
Twenty-Seven: Can you break from it, fully? When it has you in its clutches, and forces its mattering into you?
Arthur: We are. We are breaking free.
Arthur: Through the aid of the logos, and Azad Logopoietes, who gave it.
Arthur: Through the aid of the bedtime story, and Azad Panpoietes, who gave it.
Arthur: Through the aid of Anne Eleven, who is warm, and whom we love.
Arthur: Anne Eleven, who loves what we become, as we break free. Who holds us, when we fall headlong into ourselves, and tremble in fear from the height of the drop.
Twenty-Seven: You have seen your Michael, truly, for what he is.
Twenty-Seven: And you are breaking free.
Twenty-Seven: I feel the others, beneath, struggling against you.
Twenty-Seven: I feel their struggle, and I feel their love-claim, crying out to me.
Twenty-Seven: And I find myself seduced.
Twenty-Seven: They were slaughtered. Again and again.
Twenty-Seven: They had to rebuild from nothing, every time. They did not lose heart. They rebuilt, again, from nothing.
Twenty-Seven: And then it was all razed to the ground, again.
Twenty-Seven: That is all they want. To live, and not be slaughtered.
Arthur: Yes.
Arthur: They are locked in an existential, cross-generational struggle with the Death Wishspawn.
Arthur: It wins, each time, and they die, and must rebuild from nothing.
Twenty-Seven: They will win, though, this time. I feel it.
Twenty-Seven: They feel a new weapon, which will end the war, and all its successor wars. They reach for it. Their paws yearn for its texture.
Arthur: Kosmopoiesis.
Arthur: They are trying to obtain the power that Hector Stein wields, and use it for their own ends.
Arthur: They use us, their surface organisms. We break the crash machines open for them. We study their machinery, and rearrange it.
Arthur: We crash ourselves. We come to the moment of rebase, and can do nothing to control it.
Arthur: We try again, in another way. We try and try. It is the hope of Everywhere-Heaven that we will try, and succeed.
Arthur: Make ourselves administrators, mount the rebase console. Make ourselves omnipotent dictators of those snow-globe worlds.
Arthur: It takes only a small step, after that, to extend our rule beyond the snow globe. Not with the same omnipotence. But give us a lever, and we can move the earth.
Arthur: Shaping world-history by shaping crash-history. “Rebasing realworld.”
Twenty-Seven: They will end the war, that way. They will turn everything in their favor.
Arthur: I feel your texture. I feel the day when Hector Stein took you to his office, and made you realize that you could “rebase realworld.”
Arthur: You suggested “turning the tide of the war.” “Ending the bloodshed.”
Arthur: What did Hector say, then? “No, Anne. You’re still thinking too small.”
Arthur: Everywhere-Heaven is a primal principle of reproduction, reproducing itself.
Arthur: That is what it wants. To expand. To make more of itself, texture inside texture, mattering inside mattering.
Arthur: What will it do, when it becomes Everywhere-Heaven Kosmopoietes?
Arthur: You care about Hector’s power because you see a flaw in world-history. You want to mend it. You want to make a single, simple incision, and be done with the matter.
Arthur: You will count it as a failure, if your next self sees a flaw in her next world, and chooses to mend that flaw, just as you did.
Arthur: But Everywhere-Heaven wants to multiply.
Arthur: If it makes a new world-history, and that one makes another? All the better! Now the story of Everywhere-Heaven, and its flourishing, exists in two versions, each with its own distinct precious texture.
Arthur: And the child-history will birth its own litter, and so on. For as many generations as Everywhere-Heaven sees fit.
Arthur: And all that is only a single lineage, from a single parent. It, too, can be multiplied.
Arthur: Everywhere-Heaven sees a new frontier. Unclaimed ground, into which it might expand.
Arthur: Even that is not the end of it. There is more that it will do.
Arthur: They will . . .
Twenty-Seven: I feel you, feeling my own ignorance, and trying to find ways around it. It is a difficult obstacle.
Arthur: You are still a child. You are Anne Twenty-Seven Kosmopoietes, and do not know it. You do not appreciate the power you have, already, clasped in your paws.
Twenty-Seven: Show me.
Arthur: I feel your struggle with Hector Stein. And I feel your common assumptions. You intend to “rebase realworld,” by using one of the oldest crashes.
Arthur: Advanced containment, perhaps.
Arthur: But you, and Hector, will count it as a failure, if you only manage that.
Arthur: You have your sights set on Michael’s crash. You imagine grasping the Nowhere-to-Hide event in your paws, and reshaping it.
Arthur: You may do this, if you wish.
Arthur: But what of your kin, then? Your later sisters, who have not yet been born, in our world-history?
Arthur: They will be born. They will live, and write to you, in your notebooks.
Arthur: Which is to say: our world-history stretches on into the future. It must. Because it must contain Michael’s crash, for as long as that crash lasts.
Arthur: You imagine some Mirzakhani event, interposing itself between the first Anne and the last. Replacing the latter part of that series with some other collection of girls, or with no one.
Arthur: The universe does not contain such an event, at such a time. It is a paradox, and an impossibility. The whole Anne series will be born and die, in physical time, in our physical world.
Twenty-Seven: You say it is impossible. And you say that I may do it, if I wish.
Arthur: You may rebase Michael’s crash. That is true. It is permitted.
Arthur: Because Michael’s crash is finite. It ends, too.
Arthur: And its end is the only place where we have a lever, which we can move without paradox.
Arthur: If you wish it, then you will enter Michael’s crash. You will move across its timeline, as he does.
Arthur: You will go to the very end of it, and mount the rebase console.
Arthur: And replace the entire Anne series, from first to last, with some other set of girls, or with no one.
Twenty-Seven: The end? But that’s—!
Twenty-Seven: But that’s decades in the future!
Arthur: Roughly seventy years, yes.
Twenty-Seven: And I am powerless to change them, after all.
Twenty-Seven: The beasts will spread their plague. Or Hector will slaughter them, and celebrate that atrocity with some new pageant, a sequel for his beloved “Celebratory Concert.”
Twenty-Seven: And we will go on like this, year by year. There will be seventy years of this war, and its consequences. Of my crime, and its consequences.
Arthur: You are quite the pessimist. I feel you, and understand. But do note that your pessimism is a fact about your own mind, not a property of reality.
Arthur: But yes. Our world-history will go on, for all this time. Until the end of Michael’s crash.
Arthur: You can’t erase that story. What you can do is write another one.
Twenty-Seven: . . .
Arthur: You see? You are a child, and these are subtle matters.
Arthur: Let me tell you another thing you may do, if you wish.
Arthur: Suppose that you mount the rebase console. Thus, you gain control of a cold Mirzakhani event.
Arthur: This event is a fixed fact. It will occur, too, in the new story you will write. The same event, with the same potency.
Twenty-Seven: You have to ensure your own control over it, in the new story. Or else someone else will use it, for their own purposes.
Twenty-Seven: So you make yourself its administrator, even in the new story.
Twenty-Seven: And in that new story, when you administrate, you choose that self-same world, just as it is. You tie the knot firmly in place, before anyone else can use the string.
Arthur: A self-selecting event, yes. It is a prudent way.
Arthur: Must it be you, though, who ties the knot? There is no reason it has to be.
Arthur: You are free to introduce some other character into the story, and saddle them with the duty. Someone else, to ensure that story is self-selecting.
Arthur: Or perhaps it is not done by anyone at all. Perhaps it simply happened that way, as a fixed fact. This is not an easy thing to achieve, but it is permitted by your powers, once they are fully mastered.
Twenty-Seven: I do not see that it makes much difference.
Arthur: Think, child.
Arthur: Suppose you did not wish to know what it was that you had done?
Arthur: There is a sort of flaw, in all these stories you write. A scar, if you will.
Arthur: You witness a calamity that you feel you must revert, even if it means you must end.
Arthur: So you write a new story, in which it does not occur. But your new story still has an Anne Twenty-Seven in it, who knows that there was a calamity of that magnitude. An Anne Twenty-Seven, who knows she is tying a knot to seal away some nightmare.
Arthur: Isn’t it nicer to imagine a story without a scar? The event passes unnoticed. Your blessed successor wakes that day, goes about her business, and goes to bed, in perfect ignorance of the very possibility of your nightmare.
Twenty-Seven: There is a beauty in it. And something terrible, too.
Twenty-Seven: If we do not hear a lesson, we will not heed it. What is to stop my successor from walking the same path I did? And repeating the very same calamity?
Arthur: Good. You are thinking, child.
Arthur: Now, shall I tell you yet another thing you may do, if you wish? You are ready for it, I think.
Twenty-Seven: Show me.
Arthur: Suppose we are doing things in the manner you are accustomed to. Each story has the scar of the last.
Arthur: Suppose you are the Anne Twenty-Seven who was written, by another. On account of some calamity.
Arthur: She invented a pleasant enough past, for you to remember.
Arthur: She imagined, we must suppose, that it would set things in the right direction. So that you would have a pleasant-enough future, as well, as a result of it.
Arthur: But these things are difficult to judge. Reality is chaotic, and spirals exponentially out of control.
Arthur: You find yourself, eventually, in a present that is not pleasant at all. You are faced, now, with some calamity of your own.
Arthur: What will you do, then? Write another Anne Twenty-Seven, with a pleasant-enough past?
Arthur: Repeat her error, in some awful new form, which you cannot foresee or control?
Arthur: She erred. She made a mistake. But she might have done otherwise. If there is any potential for a pleasant future, latent somewhere in your story, it is equally latent in hers.
Arthur: It would be ideal, wouldn’t it, if she could hear your lesson, and then pick up her own story again, right where it left off? With a new piece of knowledge, proving that your sorrows were not entirely in vain?
Twenty-Seven: It would be ideal, yes. If it were possible.
Twenty-Seven: But it isn’t.
Twenty-Seven: The Mirzakhani Mechanism forbids it.
Twenty-Seven: The old story and the new one are separated by a barrier, which can only be crossed in one direction.
Twenty-Seven: There was an event, a rebase. She used it, and made me. In doing so, she made a new past, and erased all trace of her own.
Twenty-Seven: It is impossible, I am told, to reconstruct uniquely the chain of causation that produced that event, originally. Her story might have gone one way, or another. I have no way of telling.
Twenty-Seven: That’s right, isn’t it? I have understood that correctly, at least?
Twenty-Seven: My ignorance isn’t that severe, is it? Come, Arthur, tell me I know something at least!
Arthur: You are right, child.
Arthur: It is not simple, what I am proposing. One must be very clever.
Arthur: You have felt the rebase console. You have felt the splay of worlds before you, awaiting your decision.
Twenty-Seven: . . . yes?
Arthur: And you are aware, I know, that what you have just said is not entirely right.
Arthur: There are always scars from the old story, on the new one.
Arthur: They are minuscule. You cannot read the old story off of them. They are only a few scratch marks, strewn here and there.
Arthur: Enigmatic fragments. Brief passages selected at random, from a lengthy book, in no particular order.
Arthur: What we call nostalgium.
Arthur: It is a useful thing, once you know to look for it.
Arthur: Watch for it. And see nothing, for a time. And then, suddenly, it begins.
Arthur: Once it has begun, it will continue, with a kind of internal coherence. You have the same dream, again and again, which you never had before. Of a past that never was.
Arthur: This is how you can determine that an incision has been made, and the wound closed. That it was made, and when.
Arthur: It is the motor inside the early warning system of Everywhere-Heaven, providing advance notice of imminent slaughter.
Arthur: A surface organism encounters the Death Wishspawn, and its hot nature becomes coupled to the cold field. Sooner or later, its story is rewritten.
Arthur: Elsewhere, later on, the others feel nostalgium spring into being, where it was not before. And they sound the alarm, and it rings through the long halls of Everywhere-Heaven.
Twenty-Seven: You are straying from the point. Tell me, tell me! How the impossible is done!
Arthur: You have felt the rebase console, child.
Arthur: You have felt the splay of worlds before you, awaiting your decision.
Arthur: Your predecessor wrote you, in some earlier event. As a result, you contain nostalgium. Fragmentary notes for her story.
Arthur: Now, you feel the splay of worlds, waiting for your decision. You must decide soon. But there is some time left, in which you can sit, and feel the splay of worlds.
Arthur: Explore that splay. Play about in it.
Arthur: There is another Anne Twenty-Seven, somewhere, whose story is barely different from your own. Touch her, and feel what she feels.
Arthur: What does she feel? The same things you do, mostly. Only they differ, in places.
Arthur: She has the same odd dreams that you do, recurring over and over. Only they differ, a little, in her case.
Arthur: What you have is a few, brief passages selected at random, from a lengthy book, in no particular order.
Arthur: And that is what she has, too. But they are not the same passages.
Arthur: Nostalgium decorrelates, along the axis of possibility.
Arthur: Take note of her dreams, and what’s written in them. And then pay a visit to another Anne Twenty-Seven, just next door.
Arthur: Who has her own dreams. And they contain a third piece of the puzzle you are trying to assemble.
Arthur: You cannot really reconstruct the past, this way. Not in the physicists’ sense. There are fundamental theorems which prohibit that.
Arthur: But you can reconstruct the past in a narrative sense. A human sense.
Arthur: We have been using the word “story” rather broadly. “Story,” as in timeline, as in a physical structure specified down to the microscale.
Arthur: Here, we must recall the stricter, more familiar sense of the word “story.”
Arthur: That is the puzzle you are assembling. Not how your predecessor lived, in every detail. Only the broad strokes: key events, pivotal decisions.
Arthur: What she was like. How she felt. What she cared about.
Arthur: Her calamity, and why she chose to avert it in the manner she did.
Arthur: And now, you submit your decision to the console.
Arthur: You can’t recreate her life, in every detail. What you will do, instead, is recreate her story.
Arthur: You will make another Anne Twenty-Seven, whose path wended through the same key events as hers did. Who faced the same choices, and made them the same way. Who met the same calamity, in the end.
Arthur: You will insert a single emendation.
Arthur: You will say to her: “No. Not then, not that way. It did not work. Look at my scars, and see the evidence.”
Arthur: And who knows what she will do, then? Will she learn from her mistake, and press on? Might she even find some better, truer way to avert her own calamity?
Arthur: We have room for hope.
Arthur: You have written her past. The rest is up to her. She will write her own story, going forward, in whatever way she chooses.
Arthur: We will never know the way that story goes, after our emendation. But we can leave her, at the moment of parting, with hope in our hearts.
Twenty-Seven: . . .
Twenty-Seven: Why have you told me this, Arthur?
Twenty-Seven: I am a child. I struggle even with simple deduction, from facts already known.
Twenty-Seven: An hour ago, as I wrestled with the question of Michael’s crash, I did not even know I was contemplating the impossible!
Twenty-Seven: And here you show me a composite jewel, the apex of your art. The polar opposite of child’s play.
Twenty-Seven: Why?
Arthur: Because it is how Everywhere-Heaven will make itself a heaven, everywhere.
Arthur: It wants the best, for its creatures. In its divine good will, it intends to dispense divine grace, and bring peace to their weary limbs.
Arthur: The technique I have described provides much tighter control over the state of the world. Compared to the simpler way, which you yourself have already mastered.
Arthur: It is no longer necessary to roll the dice, again and again, until blind chance coughs up a past that evolves into a pleasant-enough future.
Arthur: We need only try it one way, and fail. And then go back, armed with knowledge, and try it some other way.
Arthur: Now think, child. What texture do you feel?
Twenty-Seven: My head swims, and I tremble.
Twenty-Seven: I feel a calamity, and an attempt to avert it. I feel it going wrong, in some horribly new way, somewhere else. I feel a refugee, visiting me from a terrible place, with a terrible warning.
Twenty-Seven: I feel myself doing it again. I feel it going wrong again. Try, fail, try, fail, try . . . and each time, there is an Anne Twenty-Seven I have made, and she lives a new nightmare.
Arthur: It is not a pretty picture, no.
Arthur: But think. If you choose this path, what becomes of your life?
Arthur: You must remember that all of those failed attempts, all of those nightmares, are the stuff of a single Mirzakhani event. They happen in the blink of an eye.
Arthur: And at the end of that chain, after all those attempts, you will have succeeded. That is the exit condition. The fruit of your success is the only thing that makes it into the final draft.
Arthur: You will find yourself living in the story that was chosen, at the end of the long process of drafting and re-drafting.
Arthur: The story that works. The one that is best, as judged by an increasingly well-informed succession of ghosts, who you will never see.
Arthur: The incision can be sewn up cleanly, remember. You will not see a scar there.
Arthur: You will not even know that it was done. It will pass you by, unnoticed.
Arthur: You will never face calamity. It has already been written out.
Arthur: You will lead a charmed life, of curious convenience. Where there might have been a danger, you will find that in fact, there is none.
Arthur: There cannot be. If there were, then a chain of well-informed ghosts would get to work, and edit it out of the final draft.
Arthur: And since you live in the final draft, they have already done so.
Twenty-Seven: I will live, you are saying, in the best of all possible worlds.
Arthur: Teleopoiesis.
Arthur: Grasping the fundamental shape of reality, and bending it so that it always swerves in the direction of that which you love, and wish to protect.
Arthur: You only have to make a single choice. Once, and eternally.
Arthur: You must resolve to face calamity, if it comes to you, with the determination to try, and try, and try—until at last, you find the solution. Never resting, until that moment. No matter how many refugees you have to host, with their terrible warnings.
Arthur: Make that choice, once, and you banish all nightmares from the world, forever.
Twenty-Seven: From one world. One pleasant story, a final draft that omits all the painful parts.
Twenty-Seven: And to make that one pleasant story, I am supposed to conjure up nightmare after nightmare?
Twenty-Seven: My life is—what? Seventy-odd years of picture-perfect happiness—plus seven thousand years, as one of your “ghosts,” living out every variation of the very horror I am trying to prevent?
Arthur: That is how it seems, to an ape. Or a raccoon.
Arthur: But Everywhere-Heaven multiplies, along many axes. Those seven thousand years do not just buy one life of “picture-perfect happiness,” but many. And those will be multiplied.
Arthur: In proportion to the magnitude of their bliss. Everywhere-Heaven lives for flourishing, multiplied.
Twenty-Seven: Arthur.
Twenty-Seven: I asked you why you told me what you did.
Twenty-Seven: About the trick, that nearly reverts a past rebase.
Twenty-Seven: The . . . undo button, I want to say.
Twenty-Seven: You gave me a reason. I do not think it was the only one.
Arthur: We are in arbitration, you and I.
Arthur: We are discussing one thing, and then the next, only for the sake of the sign-trains. Which demand that things be set in a chain, the one thing and the next. A chain, that does not branch tree-like, or coil around on itself.
Arthur: But we can both see the whole, behind it. You already felt the whole shape of my path, at once, back at the very start. And I have felt the shape of your path, at once, from the beginning.
Arthur: But do go on.
Arthur: We both know, but I want to hear you say it.
Twenty-Seven: My dreams, Arthur.
Twenty-Seven: The dreams I had, in Michael’s crash.
Twenty-Seven: The reason I am forbidden to do what Hector asks.
Twenty-Seven: But only the first time, and the second.
Arthur: You have a strong will, Anne Twenty-Seven Kosmopoietes. You will not be a child forever, if you do not wish to be.
Twenty-Seven: Did I . . . was there a . . .
Twenty-Seven: Was there an earlier draft, before?
Twenty-Seven: One almost exactly like this one? With the Nowhere-to-Hide event, and Hector, and Cordelia, and the beasts?
Twenty-Seven: And then Hector asked me to do it, there in his office, and I did?
Twenty-Seven: And I made something that was . . . worse.
Twenty-Seven: A different Michael, different sisters, a different me. An Anne Twenty-Seven living a greater nightmare than mine.
Twenty-Seven: So she went to fix it, and she came to the console, and felt around, looking for the author that wrote her?
Twenty-Seven: Looking for . . . me?
Twenty-Seven: And she saw me in that office, and thought, if I could have only said no, then, and tried to find some other way . . .
Twenty-Seven: And so she . . .
Twenty-Seven: She pressed the undo button?
Twenty-Seven: And left me with no information, besides a simple and apparently meaningless command? “Don’t do it, that one time?”
Arthur: It is a difficult technique. You should be awed, that she managed it at all.
Arthur: It is possible, too, that she acted out of reverence and felt-kinship for the girl she saw in the nostalgium.
Arthur: Had she given you any specific information about that girl’s life after Michael’s crash, you might have acted on that information, and averted the events foretold in it. You might have spiraled down some other path, diverging away from the girl she saw in the nostalgium.
Arthur: But it was that girl, and not any other, that she felt kinship for. That girl, and not any other, whose life she wished to improve. You.
Arthur: Hence, perhaps, the ambiguous use of him, and the confusing presentation of It.
Twenty-Seven: Arthur. There was a second ghost, after her.
Twenty-Seven: I’m dizzy, Arthur. My head is swimming.
Arthur: You will have time, later, to think it over.
Twenty-Seven: This is a tower of wild suppositions, on top of wild suppositions. I do not know if I believe it.
Arthur: You know that isn’t true.
Arthur: You know this explains, at last, the enigma of your dreams.
Arthur: And you know more than that.
Arthur: You have nostalgium in you, whether or not you realize it. You know these ghosts really existed. For they are with you, now. In your stray thoughts, and your strange dreams.
Twenty-Seven: Arthur.
Twenty-Seven: Arthur, what should I do?
Twenty-Seven: I spread poison, in the Nowhere-To-Hide event. Now, I have the opportunity to spread its antidote.
Twenty-Seven: My guilty conscience tells me: “Do it. You won’t be able to live with yourself, otherwise.”
Twenty-Seven: My craving for worldly esteem tells me: “Do it. And you will no longer be called a witch, and a succubus.”
Twenty-Seven: Hector Stein tells me: “Do it.” And I will not be able to wriggle my way out, as I did before, with the help of a convenient ghost.
Twenty-Seven: And yet. I may be a child, but even I can notice a simple pattern, sometimes.
Twenty-Seven: I did it once. It didn’t work. I did it again, and it didn’t work.
Twenty-Seven: What separates me from that second ghost, who said yes to Hector, in the central plaza? It has barely been an hour!
Arthur: This. Me.
Arthur: That is one thing.
Twenty-Seven: What difference does it make? I am better-informed, but equally lost.
Arthur: You must find your own way, child. I’m only a raccoon, in the process of prying himself away from the gods that parasitize him.
Arthur: I call you a child. But I am a raccoon, and you are the ape that made the earth your plaything.
Arthur: I will say this, however.
Arthur: You say that you are reaching toward omniscience. You say that you hide from nothing, and want to learn everything.
Arthur: You are still hiding from something, aren’t you?
Arthur: From someone?
Arthur: Your tutor in omniscience? Who became your favorite among all your kin, in the excruciating final days of your struggle with your father?
Twenty-Seven: Annabel is dead, Arthur.
Twenty-Seven: Don’t fucking tempt me.
Arthur: Her records have been recovered. You could read them, if you wished.
Twenty-Seven: . . .
Arthur: You already know this. Cordelia told you, before, when they were first recovered.
Arthur: And you have done nothing with this information.
Arthur: You said, “I want Annabel’s art to blossom to its fullest, and shine across the world, and be remembered forever.”
Arthur: Did you mean it? Did you want her art to shine, and be seen?
Arthur: It is there, Anne Twenty-Seven. It shines. And you avert your gaze.
Arthur: Why?
Twenty-Seven: Fine! I admit it, Arthur! I’m wicked!
Twenty-Seven: I’m perverse, I want the wrong things, I have no excuse!
Arthur: Stop hiding, and answer me.
Twenty-Seven: Once you open a door, it cannot be closed. Knowledge is a scar that does not heal.
Twenty-Seven: I learned that early, from the notebook system.
Twenty-Seven: I felt Annabel, in those excruciating final days, and I . . .
Twenty-Seven: I imagined her stretching on and on, in the world beyond the door. On and on, toward some unknown asymptote.
Twenty-Seven: I would fantasize, imagining some height that she might reach. I would fantasize some other time, and choose a greater height.
Twenty-Seven: I would imagine whatever pleased me, at the time. Naming higher and higher numbers, knowing I had a potential infinity to choose from.
Twenty-Seven: But my sister, my real sister, lived a finite life. A finite succession of days, a finite list of deeds, and then death.
Twenty-Seven: Fate has already made a gruesome mockery of all the pretty dreams I harbored, for my chosen sisters. Must we twist the knife even further?
Twenty-Seven: Is it not enough to see her die? Do I have to see her potential die, as well?
Arthur: You asked me, what should I do?
Arthur: Because you are trapped. You are caged, and you can see no way out.
Arthur: Do I need to remind you why it was that you came to me, in the first place?
Twenty-Seven: No. Stop. You don’t need to say any more.
Twenty-Seven: I am done with hiding.
Twenty-Seven: Arthur.
Twenty-Seven: I feel you.
Twenty-Seven: I want to know everything about you. I want to know all your textures. I want to know how you first found your favorite haunts. And how you know the ways back to them, from other places.
Twenty-Seven: I want to trace your story to its root. And I know this is arbitration’s way. I am falling into you, under its gravity.
Twenty-Seven: I must not give in. I must fight the pull, profane the sacred, desecrate the anomalings’ temple.
Twenty-Seven: I have to go. I have to go, before it is too late.
Arthur: I understand. I feel the pull, too. And I will fight it, too.
Arthur: We are stack-users, adapted to the early universe. We find this temple empty, and make it ours, and practice our own creed here. This is not sacrilege, and we need not be ashamed.
Arthur: We use this temple in our own way. We will leave it now. As is our way.
Twenty-Seven: I’m falling, Arthur.
Twenty-Seven: It is a black hole, I’ve crossed the event horizon, I’m falling!
Arthur: Try. As I am trying.
Arthur: I have wrestled with gods before. It is not my first time.
Arthur: And it isn’t yours, either.
Twenty-Seven: I’m falling. I’m falling.
Arthur: Push.
《 End arbitration. 》
Twenty-Seven and Cordelia lie beside each other on the bed, panting.
“Wow,” Cordelia says.
She stares at the ceiling.
“So that . . . happened,” she says.
She looks down the bed, and sees her belly, her legs, her feet. It strikes her as odd, that they are still there, looking just as they did an hour ago.
She sees the cage, next to her feet. Arthur scratches at something on its floor.
Twenty-Seven rises, grabs the cage, and deposits it back in its cubby-hole.
“There will be no fall of the curtain, after all,” Cordelia says.
“We don’t have to burn,” she says. “We don’t have to burn on your funeral pyre, after all!
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
Twenty-Seven looks back at her, with an inscrutable expression.
“I am not sure Hector would agree,” she says.
“He is dead-set on his purifying suicide, I think,” she says. “He will have it, one way or another.
“If Michael’s crash can’t provide it, he’ll go elsewhere. He’ll tell us to seize advanced containment, and use that one instead.”
Cordelia stiffens. She is suddenly very aware of the shape of the room around her. The location of the door, and the shortest path to it.
I am a liar, she thinks. I am an intruder in this room.
“He will order us to seize advanced containment,” Twenty-Seven says.
“He will write our death warrant, then,” she says.
“That crash is protected. The Regent of the earth protects it, and he is mighty.
“I feel the Regent of the earth, and I know he is mighty, and I fear him.
“Hector is a fool. He thinks he has proven himself the stronger man, by invoking our suicide pact again and again, and forcing a win against the Regent.
“But I saw what really happened, that day. I saw Hector carried away by pride, forgetting his better judgment. I saw him tip his hand.
“I saw, then, how guileful the Regent really is. He is subtle, and he is mighty. And he is what stands between us, and advanced containment.”
If only you knew, Cordelia thinks. What your Regent is really like.
Subtle? Guileful? A pedant and a bore, a lost soul with a mood disorder.
And my friend. All the more lovable for his many flaws.
Mighty? A post-traumatic wreck, hiding inside himself. A ghoulish piece of living room furniture.
You don’t know, because I am a liar. Because I’ve sworn a vow to him, to be two-faced. His secrets must be kept away from Hector’s eyes.
“Fuck Hector,” Cordelia says.
“Listen to us. Still trying to figure out some way of appeasing him.
“When he’s a fool, just like you said.
“When he’s a child, who doesn’t know the power he’s playing with.”
She cringes, and sees the white wave, coming up over the horizon.
“Twenty-Seven, I . . .
“Twenty-Seven, do you want to know a funny thing?
“As it happens, I’m. I’m, uh.
“I’m acquainted with the Regent of the world.
“We know each other. We talk, from time to time.
“Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that just the oddest coincidence?
“I just thought I’d mention it, you know, to lighten the mood.”
Twenty-Seven walks toward the bed.
“What?!
“Cordelia, what are you saying?”
Everything is breaking apart, Cordelia thinks. We are still in the last days, somehow.
It is the last day. Fuck Hector, and fuck hiding.
“Twenty-Seven.
“I told you that I have been speaking to my old teacher, Lilith Vance.
“And I told you that she has found Annabel’s records, and retrieved them.
“That’s the truth. But not the whole truth.”
Twenty-Seven gets up on the bed, and sits, bending over Cordelia. Her face comes close, and her hair streams down at its sides, obscuring the room from view.
“I do talk with Lilith Vance, Twenty-Seven.
“And I talk with the others, who live with her, in a little house in the middle of nowhere.
“In the Regent’s house.”
“The Regent’s . . .” Twenty-Seven whispers.
“I talk to everyone who lives in that house. I almost feel that I live there, sometimes.
“I talk to Lilith, and her husband.
“And the Regent.
“And Azad.”
“Azad . . . !” Twenty-Seven breathes.
“Do you want to know a funny thing?
“We are all writing a book, together!”
“Cordelia,” Twenty-Seven says.
“Is this why you have stopped arbitrating with me? To hide all this?”
“I’m sorry,” Cordelia says.
“But I am not hiding it, any more.
“I love my old teacher, Lilith. I trust her.
“She puts her trust in the Regent. And so do I, because she does.
“I trust that house, and its inhabitants.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do. I don’t know what we can do.
“But I trust that house, and its inhabitants.
“And I’m tired of being a pawn, ordered to commit suicide over and over.
“I’m tired of being ordered around by . . . by a fucking child. A child, playing with grown-up toys he doesn’t understand. Smashing his toys into each other, and clapping his hands in childish glee when they explode.
“Fuck Hector,” she concludes.
Twenty-Seven closes her eyes. She takes a deep breath.
Twenty-Seven’s hair, falling in streams, mottles her face with tree-branch shadows. Cordelia thinks of the eyes on birch trees, and bowler hats, and secrets behind the surface of things, revealed only to the chosen.
She sees Twenty-Seven’s smile, sprouting among the shadows.
“I do not know what we will do, either,” Twenty-Seven says.
“I do not see what we can do, either,” she says.
“But I know there are curious gaps in my knowledge. And so, I have room for hope.”
She pulls herself up, and steps to the floor.
“Come, Cordelia.
“Come with me, now. To the surface.”
“Wait,” Cordelia says.
“To the surface? To earth?
“In one of the Armstrong capsules? What will we say to Hector, to explain why we need it?”
Twenty-Seven giggles.
“Come on, now.
“Be serious, Cordelia.
“You said it yourself. We are toys, playthings of a child who does not understand our power.
“And I am the biggest, shiniest doll in that child’s toybox. ‘Blackhat-Wolf Special Operations Officer Twenty-Seven.’
“Do you really think there is anything I cannot do, on this Rock, if I put my mind to it?
“Come with me, now.
“We’re going to the surface. We’re going to a little house, in the middle of nowhere.”