{Most prized Shria, I read with interest . . .} No, that was unsluiced compost. A fake grown-up Staid impersonation. If ve didn’t laugh at zir, ve’d be hurt by zir coldness. Ze didn’t want to hurt vem. Ze just wanted to . . . Ze wanted to be back wandering around the below and beyond, hand in hand, with Tickets in their pockets, expecting anything. {If my actions have in any way . . .} No. {Shria, I respect your wish to spend time with . . .} {I would never wish to interfere with . . .} {I don’t mind if we . . .} {We don’t usually see each other all that often anyway. But I am just wondering, what . . .}

With zir bodies on the bed, ze watched zir own impassive face over the feed, on the stairscapes, staring into Pip’s blue eyes. Their audience was growing sluggishly—they had a few hundred intermittent active watchers, now, in addition to the tens of thousands of automated agents which had been passively tracking zir since the talk with Thavé.

Shria had two bodies listed at the same public location; the third was probably hard at work for Pom Politigus at Stiffwaddle. Ve was doublebodied in an abandonage in Temereen, strolling amid the mounds of rubble with that loose, muscular gait. Vvonda was there, singlebodied, and the aquamarine doublebodied Vail with the thorns running along vir jawlines must be—yes, that was Bluey. (“But there’s got to be some way,” Bluey was saying, insistently, “to get a challenge out of this—”) Vvonda grabbed Shria in a headlock, and Shria’s other body grinned, looking up and away towards Foo, shoulders easy.

“If you are trying to begin a collapse,” Pip growled, “freezing catatonic on a public stairscape in Wallacomp in full view of a quarter of Fullbelly is not the worst way to begin. You could use a little coaching, but it’s a start. I will begin looking for a new assistant, I suppose. Perhaps your time away from the constraints of ontological coherence will help you come up with some new ideas of what to do professionally.”

At the thought that ze might lose Pip’s patronage as banker-historian, Fift felt a small war of panic and relief begin within zir. Ze might end up working at a one-stop-shop banker-historian/​​​​​​​​​bookie/​​​​​​​​​clown/​​​​​​​​​logician booth after all, but to be free of working with Pip . . . maybe long hours, poverty, and abuse from sneeringly superior clients would be worth it?