Author: Lurina

186: Death Masquerade (𒐃) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

Every moment I continued to stand in the grocery hall - sorry, specialty victal hall - after that was so awkward it made me want to kill myself, so I left immediately. It was only after I was through the front door and back in the little connective tunnel that bound the building to the City's central spiral that I realized I was still holding the apple-like fruit. I stared at it for a moment, then took a bite out of it. Despite its appearance, it had an unexpectedly complicated, salty flavor, like seaweed.

Neferuaten was apparently long gone, dispelling a fleeting suspicion that maybe she'd just wanted me to run after her. I still hadn't entirely processed the way she'd just reacted. Even for something done on impulse, it felt so far towards the edge of the spectrum of my expectations that it almost fell off and became difficult to believe.

What had I thought would happen? I suppose, even if my perception of Neferuaten had fractured, I'd held on to the idea of her as, well-- A developed adult. Someone who, if not wholly self-aware, at least had a strong enough ego to remain resolute in their actions in the face of opposition, if not outright justify them. I'd expected her to brush it off, laughing and teasing me for even bringing it up, or act as if I was simply being irrational. Or maybe to just declare that she didn't care about how I felt now, and all that mattered was how I'd responded at the time, or to declare in her standard tone of enlightened cynicism that it was natural - inevitable - for people to use one another... I don't know.

Whatever the case, I definitely hadn't expected her to run away like a schoolgirl who'd just been rejected by her crush.

Maybe this is just another weird manipulation tactic on her part, my sense of paranoia - or was it? - said. Isn't it too convenient? She acts like she's willing to tell you everything, then is just frustrating enough to bait you into losing your temper. Now she can act like she's the one who's been wronged, giving a plausible explanation for denying you information and forcing you to apologize. Even after all this time, she's still running circles with you.

However, I found myself struggling to buy into that idea. It had felt sincere. And surely there would have been ways to string me along that would be more... efficient.

It was the sort of thing that felt like it could be funny if made into a story, but in the moment just felt strangely unsatisfying, like I'd put all my strength into trying to punch through a block of wood, only for it to actually just be a thick sheet of papyrus. What remained of the frustration in me departed quickly, leaving only the shame, though strangely even that dissipated soon afterward. What I felt following that couldn't even be called numbness, but just emotional neutrality. An absence of much of anything.

It seems even the guilt you feel about using my body for whatever you please became performative a long time ago, hm? Shiko said in the back of my head. Hah, as if it ever wasn't. As if you didn't see me as nothing but a flesh puppet to enact your sad little perverted fantasies from the start.

...but of course she didn't. The whole thing was self-performative. My mind regurgitating little memes to itself that had once captured a feeling, but now evoked little response.

Shiko was gone. The 'me' who had betrayed my promise to her and Ran to respect her body until things could be fixed was gone, and since things were unfixable that promise itself had been pointless from the start anyway. I could have streaked down the Old Yru Boulevard and fucked a lamp post until the police pried me off it and it wouldn't have made the slighest bit of difference to her dignity one way or the other.

I looked towards the ground, letting out a soft sigh through my nose.

Perhaps a bit of one emotion remained. Annoyance.

Manipulated or not I'd screwed myself over. Even if she'd obviously been holding certain things back, Neferuaten had still been giving some really interesting information. Putting the stuff about the fake suicide plan of which she'd remained conspicuously reticent (seriously, how could it possibly still be a private matter now? The world ended! Come on!), the idea that there was a conspiracy of assimilation failures felt like something I could have pushed much harder on instead of getting hung up on her relationship to the Lady. Again, that was just fluff that concerned what had happened here in Dilmun that wasn't even relevant to my goal-- And more to the point, I could just ask the Lady for the story later, since she was at least evasive in a more upfront way.

But, like. Assuming it were true, the implications were staggering.

I touched on this earlier when talking about the letter Samium had left me, but during my assimilation therapy, I'd become vaguely aware that there was something akin to 'witch culture' that existed in the shadows of the Remaining World. As much as the Grand Alliance tried to isolate us, it was impossible to have people routinely show up to the same location and not talk. One time I'd been stuck in the waiting room at the acclimation clinic and this other girl (Inotian, if I remember right, had this really stupid looking bob haircut like she was trying to cosplay as a tomato) had struck up a conversation with me. We'd talked about basically nothing for a while, her describing a new album put out by some star musician that girls our age were enthused over, but eventually she'd subtly assured me into the bathroom and invited me to some sort of club for people with 'our problem'.

I hadn't gone, of course, nor had I engaged with a handful of similar events that had transpired over the years. After all, I was not a normal assimilation failure. I didn't know anything special about the old world at all beyond the facts that Samium had given me to recite, which mostly concerned Wen and my grandfather's home town and a handful of key locations and... events. If fooling a dementia-addled old man for whom I'd been given custom information was already touch and go, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that I'd be able to trick an entire room full of people who still had their wits. And why would I want to? It wasn't like I'd get anything out of it.

But from the bits of context I'd absorbed, the impression I'd got about these affairs was less 'conspiracy', and more... uh...

Look. I don't want to get too sociopolitical here; I'm too much of a shut-in to avoid sounding like an imbecile. But my understanding had been that these groups of arcanists were, well... perhaps akin to the sort of communities that formed around being attracted to the same sex or, well-- You know, uh-- You know what I'm talking about. Especially in the modern era where the Grand Alliance had become even more socially conservative. Organizations that, while they might sometimes have had goals to some degree, were primarily about just crafting a kind of space for yourself where you didn't have to worry about getting into some kind of trouble. Sanctuaries, basically. Refuges from the outside world.

Places where people could express an identity that might otherwise provoke controversy. Something harmless, in other words.

But if it wasn't harmless, then there were a lot of very significant factors that separated being an arcanist from, well, that. Namely, arcanists had a lot of power, and not just in the capital-P sense. Even if the tradition of them explicitly ruling over society had been officially abolished at the Tricenturial War, you still saw far, far more in positions of institutional authority than was proportional.

So if a group of people like that decided to do something--

But no, it didn't make sense. Being a witch was rare, and being enough of one for it to significantly affect your identity even more so.

What were the numbers Cheng Gue had given me? Only 10% of inducted arcanists experience any memory bleed-through, and only for 10% of those have it seriously enough to be considered an assimilation failure. And then only 1 in 500 of that 1% don't have those symptoms resolved by assimilation therapy.

Oh, come on, my inner skeptic chimed in. You don't seriously still believe that 1/500 bullshit, do you?

I frowned to myself. What do you mean?

You must have thought about this before, it continued. Let's assume for the sake of argument that he didn't just pull that figure out of his ass to soothe what looked like a scared girl he was professionally obligated to convince to do something incredibly dangerous, and the 0.2% really is what he has on paper. Imagine you're an assimilation failure. Not a bizarre white elephant like you with an actual motive to bring back your body's original ego, but a random person from the old world.

You wake up in a stranger's skin. You're confused, scared. You might have memories of the life of the body you inhabit, but they don't feel like yours, or at least not completely. You try to explain to the people around you, but they demand you keep silent at the threat of being locked up.

Then, they tell you that you're not who you think you are. And the solution to all this - what, indeed, is going to have to happen if you continue acting like there's a problem - is to have your identity erased with a series of freaky medicines and brainwashing techniques. How do you respond?

I flattened my brow. It really was obvious in retrospect, the whole conceit evidently kept afloat only by what had to be motivated ignorance on an institutional level, a literal case of lies-to-children. Something only an idiot with a vested emotional interest in believing would believe.

Obviously, you'd just pretend it worked to get them to leave you the hell alone, right?

Okay. So-- What would the actual figure be?

Of assimilation failures, the majority - a little under 40% - were type-I's. People who remembered their past lives, but didn't associate those memories with their present selves. We could rule those out as being involved in any sort of conspiracy, since if anything, they'd only want to forget the other life implanted in their heads.

Of the rest, about 25% were type-II's, people who identified with both sets. Many of the people with this type went insane or assimilated - we'll be generous and say half would probably be both left feeling forced to hide their true selves and in a state able to participate in society.

Type-V's, if they really existed, were such a small group as to be almost irrelevant - 1-2%. Leaving both type-IV's and the far more common type-III's - 25% themselves - as the most likely candidates. So about 46% of assimilation failures could be considered viable candidates. We'd be again be generous and assume that assimilation therapy really worked for, I don't know, half of them, cutting the figure down to 23%. About a quarter of cases.

1/400 arcanists.

The figure was slightly higher 'nowadays', but as of the conclave, there had been about 1 arcanist for every 2000 people in the Remaining World-- Even if many of those had minimal talent and didn't do much beyond replication. Excluding the Duumvirate, that still meant 10,000,000 arcanists. So... 25,000 persistent assimilation failures.

Alright, that wasn't outright insignificant. But it was still very small. Since it seemed doubtful that even just the majority would be motivated enough to get involved in a plot against the government, it felt hard to believe they could wield that much influence.

You're still taking that initial 1% figure at face value, which might not be the full truth either, the voice cut in again. And besides... you know all too well that it's possible to induce assimilation failure on purpose.

So if they could get a foot in the door of the institutions of pnuemenology itself...

It still felt hard to believe, but theories were popping up in my mind like weeds. Samium's work. The word 'asphodeloi' from the conversation with my grandfather. That secret room we'd discovered underground on our way back from the Apega. Could that have been devoted to this side of the Order's interests, with the unreadable text being some language from the Old World?

But it didn't look like any alphabet I knew. The characters obviously weren't Aramaic, Hellenic or Sinitic, nor even defunct ones like Aegyptian or Tamoanchan or Eme. Tch, though, over the course of the last 200 years I'd definitely run into something that had reminded me of--

"Hey," someone addressed me. "You alright there?"

I jumped. Standing just outside the tunnel was a white-haired woman carrying a shopping bag-- Nora, I realized. She looked somewhere between concerned and amused.

"Oh. Yeah. I'm-- I'm good."

"Cool," she said friendlily. "Just, well, you were standing there gripping that umamo like it was your worst enemy's throat."

I blinked. It suddenly occurred to me that I had got lost in my thoughts for quite a while. Maybe what happened affected me more than I'd thought.

I looked down at the thing again, my fingers apparently having dug a little into its soft flesh. "Umamo..."

"The fruit, I mean," she clarified. "That's what they call those things. 'cause it's like. Umami flavor."

"I... see." I stared for a few more moments, shook my head. "No, I'm fine. I was just lost in my own head for a second."

"Fair enough," she said, and then chuckled. "Not lost in the regular way too, I hope?"

I opened my mouth, but my mind failed to produce a response. The social part of my brain felt like a bit of a clogged drain.

"Sorry," she added after a few moments. "Don't mean to be a busybody and butt into your business. Just figured I ought to say something after, y'know, that whole conversation we had about your situation."

"I-- No, it's okay," I finally managed. "I, uh. Appreciate the thought." I adjusted my glasses, mostly as an excuse to break eye contact. "But no, I was just about to head back to the valley. I just had a meeting with someone that went a little strange, that's all."

"Oh yeah?" she asked curiously. "Somebody you knew from out there?" She inclined her head towards the sky, or more accurately the edge of this pocket of reality, if such a thing even existed.

Stolen story; please report.

I frowned. "How did you know?"

"Well, you've only been back amongst the living for about a week," she said jovially. "Figured you probably wouldn't be having meetings with anybody else yet."

Can't argue with that.

I saw no reason not to admit it. "Mm. It was an old..." My mind stumbled between saying 'flame' or 'teacher', both of which felt like bad options. "...friend."

She nodded knowingly. "That stuff can be weird for sure. I've got a handful of people here I knew back before all this, but we don't really keep in touch much. Immortality's got a way of pushing people in funny directions, I guess."

I nodded absently, though it felt like a strange statement; from what I'd seen so far, immortality seemed more liable to push people in no direction at all. "Yeah."

"Hey, you've got Ptolema, though," Nora added. "We're not super close, but she seems like a rock."

That's one word for it.

Hey, I reminded myself. We're not doing that any more. Don't be shitty about Ptolema.

"Oh," I realized. "That reminds me. I was supposed to let her know when I was done with all this so we could meet back up." I reached into the pocket of my robe, fishing out the resonator.

"Makes sense," Nora said and, seeming content that I at least wasn't going to trip over my own sandal straps and give myself a concussion, gestured her back in the direction of the grocer. "Well, I'll leave you to it."

"Mmhmm, take care," I muttered as she walked away, fiddling with the thing.

It was strange. After Ptolema had hyped them up, I'd been expecting the resonators to be impossibly advanced compared to logic engines - and in some ways they were, capable of exponentially greater data storage and executing scripts far more complicated than a full-sized one could handle. Some of the games I'd seen her play on her own looked nuts. In other ways, though, they were strikingly primitive. There was none of the superficial brain interfacing a logic engine was capable of; just images on the crystalline surface and some buttons that you fucked around with using your finger. There was a setting to give impulse commands if you really wanted it, but that was only one way. Any information it gave you had to be absorbed with your own two eyes. It was like an artifact from the Second Resurrection.

Naturally, I'd asked Ptolema about it, since the assemblers proved they did have the technology to do that. The answer she'd given had only made things more inscrutable: People actually preferred it this way. When I'd asked why, she only gave a mumbling explanation about how people here preferred their technology to be more 'tangible', along with something about it just being tradition.

Time and time again, the culture here was bizarre in a way that exceeded my expectations.

Worse yet, people didn't even normally talk to one another using their actual voices, or even a projection of them. Because there was no Covenant here to forbid intangible communication, everyone defaulted to just text. Text! Like writing letters in real time. Ridiculous! Grotesquely inefficient!

Irritated by the entire premise now that I finally had cause to do it, I stumbled through the crude interface to what Ptolema had shown me was the script used for communicating with others, then awkwardly selected her name. At least I could impulse-write the messages without having to tap it out with my pointer finger like some mesolithite.

Utsushikome: Ptolema, I'm done with speaking to Neferuaten. I'm outside a distribution center we ended up in - 'Madam Karni's Specialty Victals', it's called.

A minute passed before her reply. That was another thing about this idea that I found irritating. You had to just sit and wait for people to get back to you, instead of having a proper conversation.

alma: oh shoot that was fast
alma: i didn't think you'd be done so soon

I frowned. I suppose the lack of punctuation made sense if she wasn't using the neural interface (though it did look pretty silly), but why wasn't 'Ptolema' the name that appeared? Was she trying to be anonymous?

Utsushikome: Yeah, well, things went a little bit sour, I'm afraid.

alma: i see
alma: i'm sorry to hear that

Utsushikome: It's fine. I still managed to get some useful information, so it's not a total wash.

Utsushikome: Should we meet back up, then?

alma: well
alma: honestly i thought you'd be a while so i kinda got involved in something

Utsushikome: Oh.

alma: it shouldn't be more than an hour or so though so if you think you could just keep busy around the city we could link back up then
alma: alternatively you could head back on your own, i figured this might happen so i didn't lock up

Utsushikome: You just left your door unlocked? Is that safe
alma: i mean
alma: it's not like stealing really matters here you know
alma: + all the stuff i'd have a hard time recreating is locked down one way or another
alma: i think about the worse thing somebody who wanted to be a jerk could do to me would be to hurt the pigs and i mean you don't even need a key for that

Utsushikome: I suppose not.

I frowned. While there wasn't really any good reason I couldn't go back on my own, I somehow didn't want to. I still had all these ideas bouncing around my head, and I felt that if I were left to my own devices in the cabin again, within five minutes I'd be playing Save the Ship! again and sink deep into a mental ravine.

Maybe it would be better to just... I don't know, go jogging, or something. Though in these clothes... despite the advantages, there were certainly problems with always wearing what you considered your best outfit. Men probably had an easier time of it, I supposed.

alma: do you want to talk about what happened at all

Utsushikome: Not really, to be quite honest. We got into a fight.

alma: i see
alma: i had a feeling something like that might happen honestly

Utsushikome: You did?

alma: i don't really know how much i should say, i didn't want to say anything before
alma: but i think she can be a bit of a creep

That was an understatement.

alma: like don't get me wrong, everyone from back then who i'm still in touch with, i've known for so long that i wouldn't just outright call them shitty people
alma: there are things about her that i do like and times when we've been friends
alma: but i could just tell this was going to go badly, you could probably tell from how i was acting

Utsushikome: It did seem like you were a little reticent about the whole affair back when we were in the murder factory, yes.

alma: yeah
alma: well it is what it is i guess

Utsushikome: How much do you actually know about Neferuaten and I's history at the House of Resurrection, Ptolema? I meant to ask this when you were insinuating things back before we set out.

alma: well
alma: i know if you were in a relationship if that's what you mean

I twitched, my face flushing.

Utsushikome: How did you find out about that?

alma: she's talked about it quite a few times over the years

Utsushikome: Oh.

Utsushikome: In what context?

alma: it's happened a few times, it's just a story she tells i guess

It's just a story she tells.

It turned out there was still some fire in me left to be angry at Neferuaten after all. I clenched my teeth, staring down at the screen of the awkward device scornfully. My glasses rolled down my nose, almost sliding down my face altogether, but I didn't even react.

Utsushikome: Oh! Well.

Utsushikome: That's just great. I guess everyone and their mother here just knows I willingly whored myself out to my college professor!

Utsushikome: What a fucking relief. Now I don't even have to worry about keeping it a secret.

Utsushikome: Why would she even be talking about that. Does she brag about all her sexual conquests? Maybe she has a tier list of all the young women with low self-esteem that she's brought into her bed. Oh, who am I kidding— I'm sure she doesn't limit it to women.

alma: i don't mean to defend her but i don't think it's like that

Utsushikome: Oh? What is it like, then?

alma: su i don't know how to explain this
alma: but due to the way things work here 95% of the time somebody has any kind of secret especially from the remaining world or w/e
alma: it's gonna get out sooner or later
alma: like
alma: realistically if you have something in your head you're not gonna stay tight lipped about it for 10k years
alma: like you're gonna get drunk and close to different people or just have a phase where you don't care about anything
alma: other than from ran i'm pretty sure i've heard everything the other's at the conclave have had to say about you at this point, likewise for everyone else
alma: and me for them i'm sure

Utsushikome: Other than Ran?

alma: she doesn't like to talk about you
alma: when i said earlier that we talked about you i mostly just mean stuff that happened with us all together in class
alma: she's really private in general though

I paused for a moment. The mention of Ran filled me with a spike of strange anxiety, and I wasn't quite sure how to take that remark-- Whether it meant Ran didn't like to talk about our past together, or whether she didn't want to talk about me period.

Still, it left a warm feeling. Both out of relief that at least my biggest secret wasn't compromised, and just that... Ran was being talked about, here in the present tense.

I really needed to ask Ptolema more about her. Why hadn't I done that already?

alma: anyway what i mean is that i'm sure no one thinks negatively of you
alma: no one really takes the stuff that happened to us out there seriously any more anyway
alma: it's not part of who we are now
alma: or it is but it isn't
alma: if that makes sense

Utsushikome: I think I understand what you mean. Sorry, I don't mean to react melodramatically.

alma: it's fine i'm sure this is all very strange

Utsushikome: By the way, why is your name 'alma' on this? Just out of curiosity.

alma: oh it's a history reference, i picked it up when i lived in the keep
alma: so what did you learn from neferuaten

Utsushikome: A lot of information about the Apega project and what started the loops, mostly. And that there was apparently a group of assimilation failures called the 'Brotherhood of the Scorned' that the Order was working with.

alma: well that last part is kinda common knowledge here actually

Utsushikome: Is it?

alma: well yeah, most people here being arcanists originally and all
alma: plus well
alma: actually let's talk about that part later i might get pulled away and don't wanna leave you hanging
alma: what did you learn re: the apega stuff

Utsushikome: That the 'proxy' who caused the loop was apparently someone who had to be already dead. And that was the purpose of the device Fang brought to the sanctuary, as a kind of serving dish for the entropic entity. Except it hadn't been used when Neferuaten inspected it, so as far as she can tell the fact it happened at all is impossible, since no one died at the conclave. Or at least so she claims.

alma: i feel like i vaguely recall some of this actually

Utsushikome: I was going to say, if apparently everyone has already overshared themselves dry, then wouldn't you know all this already? Is there even any point in talking to the people at the conclave who you're still in contact with?

alma: well people from the conclave are generally less enthusiastic about talking about that stuff because it tends to turn into a blame game

Utsushikome: A blame game?

alma: who is responsible for the way things are here etc
alma: it's complicated but a lot of people aren't exactly happy about it, even now there's grudges between neferuaten and most of the council and between the others for other reasons

Utsushikome: Huh.

alma: but anyway no you are right that there are a lot of stories i could just tell you about if you want, but also i heard a lot of them ages ago and honestly all that stuff blurs together a bit
alma: so if you want the facts you're better off getting them from the horses mouth

Utsushikome: She also claimed to know about the Lady.

alma: ok THAT she definitely hasn't talked about
alma: it was news to me when you told me about it

Utsushikome: Hopefully that makes you less inclined to think that I've been tricked or am a lunatic.

Utsushikome: Anyway, I don't know what to do with that information. I was hoping whoever the proxy was was also the culprit, but I suppose that's impossible.

alma: maybe

Utsushikome: Maybe?

alma: well
alma: if the proxy controls how the loop works maybe they could put themselves in it even if their original self is gone
alma: tell entropy to rebuild them basically

Utsushikome: I hadn't considered that possibility. That's a good thought. I wish I'd asked her about it.

alma: anyway i dunno if you want my advice but the way i'd think about it is like, if you're only trying to think about what happened in the loops, it'd be easier to just not worry about that stuff
alma: like obviously only what happened after things got started matters to the manse
alma: so i'd just forget all the metaphysical stuff and stick to the bread and butter of what happened in your loop to start with
alma: idk that's just how it seems to me

Utsushikome: No, I appreciate the advice. I was already leaning in that direction, I think.

Utsushikome: What does 'idk' mean?

alma: i don't know

Utsushikome: Then why did you say it? Is it a cultural thing?

I waited for Ptolema's reply expectantly, but after a couple minutes it never came-- She must have finally been pulled away by whatever she'd been doing.

Sighing to myself, I put the resonator away and took another bite of the Umamo, the flavor of which was growing on me. I was still thinking through the idea that the conspiracy I'd just been treating as a grand revelation was just a known quantity here, though in retrospect it made sense. With the power of Spectacting, there could be very few mysteries that extended outside of the sanctuary left at all here. Their understanding of all human history was probably wildly more advanced; something I was desperately curious to look into, now that I was thinking about it.

Still, at the same time, I wondered if there was more to it than that. The Lady had explained that she'd filled Dilmun with arcanists by making use of their Indexes. But why the arcanists that had ended up here in particular? After all, as I'd been thinking about just a moment ago, there had been around ten million active at the time of the plane's creation - ten times in excess of the 900,000 figure.

So had it been random? Or was there some feature that united them?

I remembered the list that Kamrusepa had found in her account of the weekend. Yes, now that I had a lead that gave a little more context, it was time to--

"Oh," a familiar voice said, this time from the opposite direction. "You're... still here, huh."

I looked. It was Nora again, this time carrying a full bag of grocery shopping. I realized that I had not moved an inch since she'd gone inside several minutes earlier.

"Uh." I said. "Yeah. Ptolema said she couldn't come find me for an hour."

"Ahh," she replied. I had apparently succeeded in fostering the level of awkwardness where people were only able to start sentences with different types of pensive noises. "You're just waiting here for her then?"

"Well, I was talking to her on my resonator until just now," I explained, then hastily added. "I-I'm not used to it yet, so I'm worried I'll bump into a wall or something."

Why did you say that? That was not necessary.

"Makes sense," Nora said regardless.

A pause passed that was the opposite of pregnant. An empty pause. A pause that could not afford IVF.

Then, seemingly spontaneously, Nora held up her bag and asked: "Wanna have lunch?"

We sat on a bench. There was nothing particularly remarkable about it in terms of the view or the setting; it was just wedged in between the central spiral and one of the many paths to the exterior. The golden sky was visible off to the left, but we were facing a wall.

Nora withdrew it from among her just-claimed shopping; a thick, sourdough sandwich packed with dense white meat, red onion, cheese and smoked bacon. She withdrew a small fragment of matter from the inside of her jacket, which turned into an exact duplicate. She handed this duplicate to me.

"What's in this?" I asked.

"Chicken," she answered.

I furrowed my brow. "Chicken's been extinct since the New Kingdom's era."

"Not here," Nora said, and started eating it.

I stared for a moment, then took a bite as well. I wasn't sure what I expected; it was basically slightly blander quail. The sandwich was good, though. The whole thing was covered in a rich, vinegary sauce that was just a little sweet and a little spicy, but in a way that seemed perfectly balanced.

I swallowed my bite. "This is good."

Nora chuckled. "I figured you'd like it. Everybody likes chicken."

We ate in silence for about a minute. A few people passed us by, presumably heading out for their own lunch breaks, though maybe not - since there was no day or night, I wasn't even sure if the City obeyed the same rules of time as the Valley or just existed in an eternal early evening, always busy but never truly pulsing with energy. I coughed a little after my second mouthful, and Nora passed me a bottle of water.

"Thanks," I said.

She smiled.