It lifted one leg up from the parapet, and slipped, falling into the air of the general bay. It hit something between it and the bay and fell, bouncing off the bay’s rear wall, then off the invisible wall, then found its bearings, flapped close and parallel to the wall, twisted in the air when it got back to the level of the balcony, and returned to it.

Uh-huh, it thought. It risked using again the senses it was not supposed to have. Solidity in the bay. What it had hit was not glass, and not a field between it and the empty bay; the bay was not empty, and what it had hit was the field-edge of a projection. On the far side, for at least two kilometres, there was solid matter. Dense, solid matter. Partially exotic dense solid matter.

Well, there you were. The bird shook itself and preened a little, combing its feathers smooth with its beak. Then it looked around and half hopped, half flew over to one of the posed figures. It inspected each one briefly, staring into an eye here, seemingly looking for a juicy parasite in an ear here, peering at a stray hair here and carefully studying a nostril here.

It often did this, studying the next ones to go, the ones who would next be revived and taken away. As though there was something to be learned from their carefully artificial postures.

It pecked, in a desultory, barely interested sort of way at a stray hair in one man’s armpit, then hopped away, studying the group from a variety of nearby tables and angles, trying to find the correct perspective from which to view the scene. Soon to be gone, of course. In fact, they were all going. This lot with the rest, but this lot to re-awakening whereas most of them would just be Stored somewhere else. But this lot, when they were woken in a few hours, would be coming back to life, somewhere. Funny to think of it.

Finally, the bird shook its head, stretched its wings, and hopped through the hologram and into the deserted café beyond, ready to begin the first leg of its journey back to its mistress.

A few moments later, the avatar Amorphia stepped out of another part of the hologram, turned once to glance back at where the bird had hopped through the projection, then went and squatted before the figure of the man at whose armpit Gravious had pecked.

IV

IV

[tight beam, M32, [email protected]]
xEccentric Shoot Them Later
oGSV Anticipation Of A New Lover’s Arrival, The
It was me.
∞
[tight beam, M32, tra. @n4.28.864.1971]
xGSV Anticipation Of A New Lover’s Arrival, The
oEccentric Shoot Them Later
What was you?

∞