We kept driving. As we approached the base of a grand mountain, the air around us began to hum and crackle. A sucking noise filled the car and the mountain gave way to a village, built of precious gems and stones. In the distance, a soft purple crystal rose toward the sky: the Palace of the Elders. A striped tower shimmered in the distance. We were no longer in the desert; flowered vines climbed across the low walls.

We pulled up to a fountain. The door unlocked. I got out.

“It takes a lot of adv-tech to lead a simple life,” said a young person sketching by the edge of the fountain.

“Where do I go? I’ve been summoned here.”

My acquaintance nodded to a circular building with smoke coming out of the top.

I walked in and was told to remove my shoes. I stepped up to the oval table where at least thirty Operatrixes sat, ones I recognized and ones I hadn’t met, a lush composite. Some chatted among themselves; some drank from clay jars; some reclined on the long benches. They were all as exuberant and casual and threadbare and formal as, I presumed, they wanted to be. I was offered a cup of tea. I tasted rose and vanilla.

“Hello, Penfield,” said Mar’iah, who had once warned us against making a trans-masc cave. She now wore a denim dress and low boots. “Welcome to the Assembly of Operatrixes. When we began tracking you, you had hexed Blithe Freeman and ranked quite low on our Evolutionary Scale. Then we gave you a mission, to assist Blithe through the Shadowlands. You largely succeeded in that endeavor, and eventually you understood the true mission: to evolve from your resentment. You were given a second mission. To gather data from Aiden Chase’s parents and ensure the safety of Aiden and his guests on his wedding day.”

“You rejected our parameters and made up your own,” said the Operatrix in sunglasses, pointing her herbal cigarette at me.

“You listened to some inner spark, and not the chorus around you,” said my first, gown-wearing Operatrix.

The scent of smoke and honey and earth was strong.

“We had to test you. To see how you related to your own conditioning. The Rhiz cannot endure without those who read the deeper signs,” said the leather daddy. He seemed slightly disappointed that I had not failed. Maybe he wanted to discipline me.

“Now we inscribe,” said the nightlife monk, my favorite, placing a slightly glowing leather volume before me on the table.

“Now we inscribe that you are here to help, to grow, to fight, to plant, to agitate, to assemble in the spirit of queer abundance now and forever,” they all chanted.