The view on the display was inviolate, flat; it didn’t respond at all to Fift’s attention, offered no lookup, no drilldown, no hook-ins, no interconnections; ze couldn’t pan, or change the angle, or even pause the action; it just went on, telling its own tale, image and sound alone—as if the feed were down again. And in a way it was: Dobroc had severed these sounds, these images, from the feed, placed them in their own isolated little universe.

It made sense as a precaution: if Fift couldn’t interact with it, then there would be no way for anyone to tell that ze had seen it.

Shria at four, a romping blur of color in some bouncegarden far from Foo; hurtling down, whooshing up from the bulge of a bounce-fungus, squealing with glee, vir eyes closed, vir little arms and legs flung out—

The image softened into blank gray and words appeared in the display in an archaic static script, fixed letters hovering as if painted on the air:

Fift and Shria

“Wow,” Fift said. “That’s—”

Dobroc’s nervous expression flickered toward delight. But Fift couldn’t pause, and the images continued, so ze had to look back at the display—

Shria at nine, lavender skin and fiery red hair, orange eyebrows that curled like flames. Bony bare knees and elbows poking between the red-and-blue strips of vir ill-fitting suit. Tiny droplets of water, the mist of the surface morning, sparkling in vir hair.

Ve crouched down, reaching for a mossy stick.

Cacophony—almost too fast to take in—the turmoil of the riot, anonybodies roaring. Shria, sixteen, wrenching away from the red and blue hands grabbing vir arms, vir hair—

Silence, deafeningly sudden. Moss dripping on the surface, light filtering through the mist.

Fift’s voice, incongruous, speaking over the image of the empty forest: “Do you think there even is a show? Or is it like . . . a meta thing? Where looking for the show is the show?”

Shria’s voice in answer in the background, while in the forest an unpurposed redbird alighted, fluttering, on a branch. “I think it’s going to be real. I think it’s going to be big.”

Boots crunching in deep snow, sinking to mid-calf.

Thavé’s face filled the screen, head tipped to one side, considering. Shria’s voice: “What do you think of us? Of all of us?”

Thavé paused. “What a good question.”

Fift and Shria on the other side of Thavé’s table in the pavilion. They looked bright, eager, heart-stoppingly young.

Innocents, to whom nothing had ever happened.

“You’ve been mostly at peace,” Thavé said, “for a long time.”

The riot: roaring, leaping, chaos. An elbow cracked against Fift’s temple, and ze crumpled down—

“Your economy has decent turnover. Economic class is bound to birth order—”

The surface forest. Shria’s eyes, red from crying.