Zula went on, “But it’s what we are doing at this very moment to Bitworld! We are saying that according to the rules of the simulation, everything, everywhere, has to march forward in lockstep. As much as we might like to see how it all comes out—whether that tear is going to break loose from Mercury’s eye, for example—we may not. We can’t throw more mana at it and fast-forward that one part of the simulation, because then it would be out of sync with all the other parts. It would break the world.”

“And we can’t have that, can we?”

“No! We can’t have that, Enoch.”

Enoch looked over at the frozen god. “This is not going to change for a very long time,” he said, “for the reason that you just mentioned. There are young people here who may spend the next ten years of their lives managing the systems in orbit above us that will generate the next few moments of time in Bitworld. But you know what?”

“No. What?”

Enoch pivoted so that he was standing beside her, and bent his arm in what Zula recognized as a very old-fashioned courtly sort of gesture. She reached out with some caution, not wanting to poke him with her exoskeleton, and took it. “Outside,” Enoch said in a quiet voice just for her, “the sun is about to come up on the other side of the hill.”

“We’ve been here all night!?”

“We’ve been here all night,” he confirmed, “and I don’t know about you but I could use some fresh air and a leg stretch.”