Author: Lurina

190: Death Masquerade (𒐇) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Loge | The Timeless Realm

I burst in through the doors of the Loge. The Lady, seemingly taken off-guard (though no doubt actually just fucking with me in some esoteric fashion) had her legs up at the far side of the table, with the image floating over the balcony displaying some manner of comedy show; a talking cat seemed to be involved. She was half way through putting a chunk of some kind of stuffed cheesebread in her mouth when my arrival caused her to jump slightly, turning sharply in my direction.

"Oh, fuck!" She coughed as she swallowed reflexively, causing her half-veil to briefly flutter up and reveal a streak of stark white. "Christ, have you never heard of knocking?"

"I don't want to do this any more," I declared stiffly, marching over to the long table.

"I told you not to come back until it's been a week and you've had time to think all this over. Can you not follow basic instructions, or are you just too depressed to keep track of the passage of time? What are we doing here?" She flung her hands in the air theatrically.

"I've changed my mind," I explained. "I don't want to live in this world. I'm not going to try to solve the Manse." I took out Kamrusepa's account, tossing it on the table. "You can have this back."

"Oh my god." She sighed, rubbing her exposed eye. "What's going on. What's this about."

I opened my mouth, but hesitated. As my actions were currently operating entirely in the emotional realm, I hadn't really considered how this conversation was actually going to go; I was just doing what felt like it would best alleviate my sense of existential panic on a moment-to-moment basis. As a result, the idea of actually explaining myself left me momentarily stumped.

Still, this could only hold back the tide for a moment "I-- The way things work here, the way people act-- It's just wrong! Perverse!" I fumed. "I can't live here! I'd rather have died!"

"You're going to have to cut a little less broadly than that. Are we talking 'perverse' in the in the moral sense? The sexual sense?"

"In the everything sense!" I exclaimed. "Everything's fake! I don't even know which of the people I've been talking to have been real!"

"Wow," she said, raising her gloved hand to her lips in affected concern. "You've only been here for 6 days, and you've already embraced the anti-Tertiary talking points. Prejudice really does move faster than light."

"I-- What? That's not what I'm talking about!"

"Then could you be a little clearer about what, exactly, you are talking about?" She pinched another chunk of bread - the cheese dripping off it and down onto the plate copiously - and gestured it at me. (The drama continued to play into the background, occasionally interrupting the conversation with an awkwardly-timed laugh track.) "If you're going to barge in here without so much as a hint of good manners with some suicidal grievance, the least you could do would be to explain yourself somewhat properly."

"I'm talking about everyone having fake identities," I elaborated. "Or-- No, that's not even the right way to put it. Not even having real ones. The whole culture being-- Being twisted around!"

She stared at me for a beat, as if I was speaking a foreign language, then suddenly seemed to understand. She clicked her tongue, falling back in her seat.

"I get it now," she said. "You're upset because you've seen the thing people do on the inside of the big tower in the Crossroads. Phew, for a second I thought this was a real problem." She exhaled, taking a large bite out of the bread.

"Real problem?! It's intolerable!"

"Okay," she said casually, her mouth full. "Go and sit around until you die, then." She shrugged. "It's not like you're obliged to do anything. You're the one who asked me for help, remember?"

She broke eye contact, as if the conversation were already resolved, and turned back towards the edge of the balcony. I once again felt something akin to an engine sputtering, and clenched my fist.

"Why... are you just letting it happen?!" I demanded, after several moments had passed.

She glanced back at me. "'Letting it happen'? You think I run this place like a queen? I thought we went over all this. Everyone here is just as free to do whatever they want as I am." A small smirk. "Though why would I stop it even if I could? It's harmless."

"Harmless? How can you..."

But it was harmless. Or at least, it wasn't harmful in any way I could express with rational language.

Yet even though I trailed off, the Lady still raised an inquiring eyebrow. "How can I say that? I don't know. Perhaps you could explain what the issue actually is, and we can work from there?"

I was silent for a few moments, but eventually took a breath, giving it my best effort. "If practically everyone is changing their identity constantly - while lying about which is real - then that means it's impossible to trust anyone. I can't stand the idea of having to live in a place like that for eternity, where I have to constantly be worried that the person in front of me is doing some kind of roleplay. It's like something out of a nightmare!"

"Forgive me, but isn't your whole ethos that you can't trust anyone already?" she asked skeptically.

"That's not the same," I stated. "At least under normal circumstances, people have to behave consistently. And they're bound by a history, a place in the world associated with their body. There are some things you can count on."

"And the absence of that is so terrible it warrants you becoming suicidal?" She raised the other eyebrow. "Seems somewhat extreme."

I opened my mouth, but hesitated, saying nothing.

She looked me up and down again, then gestured forward. "Well, come on, then. I'm getting tired of having to ask you to sit down like a normal person every time you come here."

My face scrunched up. This isn't going how I wanted at all.

Really? How were you expecting it to go, I wonder?

I made a guttural, unhappy sound, and sat down.

"So, we could do a whole back-and-forth here where I slowly convince you to calm down and play therapist until you feel better, but I'm kinda not in the mood and just want to move things along? So I'm just going to give my read on the situation," she said, half-turning her head back towards the show. "You're having a little meltdown because the way people treat identity here disagrees with your own complex about the subject."

I stiffened. "My own complex?"

She scoffed. "Don't be obtuse. I'm omniscient, remember?"

My face darkened. Had this been anyone else, I probably would have been overwhelmed by discomfort and left on the spot, but her obvious inhumanity and the radical unreality of the whole environment even compared to the rest of Dilmun made it easier. "So you know."

"About your whole body stealing psychodrama, you mean? Duh." She leaned back in her chair again, resting her hand against her face.

I grew an ugly shade, and I stared almost directly at my own feet.

"Not that I'd even need to be omniscient for that," she went on. "Frankly, I'd be surprised if there's anything I don't know about you lot, after being stuck watching you all act on your own worst impulses for 10,000 straight years. I could probably identify you from just your pubes." She stuck her tongue out in disgust, half of still managing to stay covered by the veil.

"That's revolting."

"I try my best," she replied, amused.

"...you're the second person I've ever spoken to who does, then," I said. "Know everything, I mean. After Samium."

"Bold of you to count me as something so ephemeral as a 'person'," she spoke casually. "If it makes you feel any better, I couldn't really care less. Even putting aside the fact I've witnessed such a scope of unimaginable atrocity across human history that your own misadventure - at the harshest interpretation, a single instance of first-degree murder, with some disturbing social implications for flavor - doesn't really rank, I find it difficult to invest myself in human conceptions of morality. It all seems so contextual and contradictory, seen from my vantage point."

"That doesn't make me feel better," I told her bluntly, my expression hardening. "You're some kind of alien god. Of course you can't understand what's right or wrong."

"Right, right. You have your whole inverse-martyr complex where you want people to see you as a bad person. My bad." She took another bite. (Over the balcony, what seemed to be the leading man was pushed out a window by what seemed to be a jilted lover. The cat turned to the camera and made a joke about landing on his feet. A laugh track played. The Lady laughed with it.)

"That might have been how I felt back then, but it's not anymore," I replied. "What I did was unforgivable, but there's nothing I can do now to make it any better, so there's no point in wallowing in self-loathing. All I want now is just to forget about it."

"Well, that's part of it," she spoke as if to correct me, sparing a glance back in my direction. "You do want to forget about the entire concept of identity-fuckery, and the idea of seeing it all around you all the time is part of where this is coming from, but there's a deeper element to it than that."

"I didn't-- What?"

"It's like this," she began, looking away again. "The way you see yourself is based on a contradiction-- Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that your situation illuminates that all human self-perception is contradictory. Do you remember the spiel Samium gave you, during the reenactment I permitted you to retain?"

"Of course I do," I said coldly.

"Rhetorical question." She swallowed, licking oil from her lips, then immediately reached for another chunk. "I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this, but materially speaking, the idea of a consistent, absolute identity is a cultural fiction. 'You' are merely the result of the information stored in your mind interacting dynamically with its reward systems, an incidental product of a physical process rather than something ad hoc... much like myself. So though his motive was obviously just to calm you down, it's not as though he was wrong in terms of what he told you. Ick, this side's a bit undercooked." She discarded the cheesebread in her head, grabbing a crispier one from the over side of the platter. "Despite this, though, you made the decision that some of this information 'was not you'. At least on an intellectual level."

"Gods, why did I think it was a good idea to come here," I mumbled, rubbing my eyes. "The last thing I wanted was to hear to re-litigate all this me. I've thought about it all a thousand times already. I don't need it repeated by some creepy entity that can peer into my brain."

"The problem, though, is that this internal assertion was in disagreement with your actual behavior. You asserted 'I'm not Utsushikome of Fusai', but at the same time still held on to that identity, not just in practice but in thought."

"That's not true," I shot back, frowning.

"Oh?" Her gaze grew sly. "Why do you call yourself that, then, and not..."

I squirmed in discomfort. The Lady smirked.

"...something else?"

"Because I haven't wanted to ruin my life and cause everyone who loved her pain for no good reason," I explained. "What would be the point if I'd gone to the Censors and confessed? All that would happen would be that I'd be locked up - executed, probably - and her family would be traumatized, and then have to keep that a to themselves to avoid falling foul of the Induction secrecy laws. Just a shitload of misery in every direction."

She clicked her tongue rhythmically. "Sounds an awful lot like motivated reasoning from someone who just doesn't want to get their head chopped off."

"Cut that part out, then! Even if I'd just wanted to change my name and cut ties, what good would that have done?" My face contorted in frustration. "Like I said, I've thought about all of this a million times. I thought about suicide, telling the truth, even finding some more limited version I could tell people without fucking everything up. I would have done those if I thought it would have helped anything."

"I see what you're saying, but there's a pretty glaring hole in that explanation for your actions."

"How you've behaved in the last week," she stated plainly. "After all, isn't being here in Dilmun the perfect opportunity for a clean slate? You're past all such consequences here, after all. No laws or family to worry about, and as you've just seen, a perfect social and metaphysical environment to be untethered from your past self." Some cheese dripped from her lips, which she slurped up happily. "And yet, here you are. Bitching about it."

"I--" I exhaled reluctantly. "It would be different if just I could do it. The problem is that it's everyone."

"Wow," she said, laughing a little. "Bodily autonomy for me and not for thee, huh?"

"I mean that I know I'm a liar with a completely fucked up sense of self. I just can't live in a world where that's all the other people, too--"

"Hold on a sec," she said, holding up her gloved hand. "I wanna see this bit."

Almost a complete minute passed where I was forced to sit and watch in silence. This was the climax of the episode, where it was revealed all the bad things that had happened were the work of a second, evil talking cat. It boasted it was not afraid of dogs, and then was chased off by a bear instead. There was a bear/bare pun. The credits rolled.

"...what even is this crap...?"

"Just some old comfort media," she said. "I watch a lot of different stuff up here. Nothing you need to worry about."

I stared at her. This was a really weird bit, assuming it was one.

"Anyway, here's what I think is really going on," she resumed, swirling her chair around a little to look directly at me. "The truth is, deep down, you actually do view yourself as Utsushikome of Fusai. Whether that's because the memories from the identity are more central to your consciousness than you've let yourself believe, or you're just that obsessed with the idea in some creepy fetishistic way even now, I couldn't say. But regardless, you're clinging to it like flotsam in a storm." She pinched the edge of the snack tray. "By the way, did you want one of these? Sorry, I should have asked sooner."

"Stop trying to psychoanalyze me," I said defensively. "It's not any of your business."

"That's the root of the contradiction, though, you see. On the one hand, you're desperate for legitimacy in that identity. While on the other, you feel obligated to reject all such legitimacy." She tossed another piece into her mouth. "So, the way you've circled that square is by completely segregating your inner and outer worlds. Have one internal truth and one external truth. In such a way, as long as no one pierces the membrane of your mind, those two incompatible realities can co-exist simultaneously."

She's right, my self-awareness mused. You have kind of done that.

Think about how many times you've freaked out about the idea of someone discovering or knowing about what you did since you've arrived here in Dilmun. Or the fact that this is your default body, even if you dismissed it earlier.

Hell, it's not even a new observation. You remember what you felt, back in Samium's room, when they almost caught you. And when you returned to the beach after everything was over.

It's just never been laid out quite like this before.

Regardless, I protested. "You're making too much of it. I'm just ashamed, that's all. I don't want people to know the truth, to think of me that way."

"Okay," she said with a shrug. "So it'll be fine, since I already know the truth, if I state your original name and ask you to repeat it after all. You can do that, right? Just between the two of us. I could even shift you into that form, for a moment."

I hesitated, shifting uneasily.

"Ahah!" She pointed. "You flinched!"

I huffed. "Fuck you."

"Oh, this is good," she said, breaking into a smile. "There's no trait in humans I love more than when they're stubbornly confident about something completely wrong."

"Just because I have hangups about my old identity doesn't mean I'm still possessive of-- Of Utsushikome's in that way. It's not the same thing."

"In that case, how would you feel about taking an unrelated form for a while. Pfft-- I can tell just by the look in your eyes that you think that's gross too."

I gave a resentful, embarrassed look.

"It's a brittle state though, isn't it? As Theo could well attest." She smirked. "It's only stable because you're still invested in the version of you who lived in the Remaining World from 1409 to 1608 COVENANT, whose tactic for dealing with all this was just to aggressively not think about it for literally two centuries. ...or, well, I guess that's more of an anti-tactic." A low chuckle. "But that's the real reason why this has thrown you into crisis. To have your cake and eat it in this way, you depend on the outward expression of self feeling like it has some inherent meaning. Without that, there's nothing that separates your persona from any other cheap impression."

"You don't know me," I said defiantly. "You're trying to tie something incredibly complicated into a neat little bow. People aren't that simple."

"Is that so? Well, as I stated, it's just my opinion." She looked down at the tray. "I'm sick of these, actually, so just take 'em if you want 'em." She slid it in my direction.

I was silent, my fingers balled into fists beneath the table.

"Anyway," she digressed. "If you ask me, I'd try to embrace it."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Embrace it?"

"You know," she said. "Treat all this as an opportunity. Get over trying to play a particular role - either for others or yourself - and screw around with whatever feels natural. Rediscover your inner world, yada yada, all that sentimental shit."

I squinted. "...the more you say things like that, the more I feel skeptical whether you actually can read my mind."

"Oh?" She inclined her head curiously. "What makes you say so?"

"Because I would never do such a thing in a million years," I said bluntly. "And not just because of my complex over my own identity."

"If you don't understand already, then there's no point in explaining. It's against the very core of my nature."

She chuckled. "I do think you might surprise yourself, were you to try." Her eyes wandered, and her tone became unusually sentimental for a moment. "You'd be shocked by how many people in the world dedicate their lives to what amounts of performance, being so attached to manifesting some idea of how they're perceived into reality, that they're willing to discard their own happiness in the process. As if living a falsehood will somehow turn it real, lead into gold."

"I thought you said you weren't trying to play therapist."

"Tch, you're no fun." Her gaze shot back to mine. "Well, nevertheless, the point stands that there's little I can do for you. So you are just going to have to live with it or simply die."

I furrowed my brow.

Obviously, she was at least right about one thing, even if below the most superficial level of thought I'd known it well enough already: There wasn't really anything objectively wrong or socially depraved about what was going on about what I'd just learned about Dilmun. My reaction spoke largely only to my own complexes. I wasn't the type of person who liked telling people how they lived was wrong just because it made me uncomfortable; if anything, my own perpetual guilt had made me too lenient towards genuinely harmful breaches of taboo, as had been reaffirmed by my chat with Neferuaten.

Hell, there was a part of me that already felt as though it understood it completely, both in its appeal and its inevitability. I still hadn't completely come to terms with the idea of people living genuinely forever, Nora's explanation rang true. Even a short life came with exponential social dissonance, and a constant desire for a clean slate.

I didn't agree that it was a correct solution. But I got it.

Still, though. No matter how my mind responded rationally, I found it difficult to accept.

"Though, well," she added, "I suppose there is one more option."

I blinked, thrown off from my introspection. "What option?"

"If you solved the Manse, you could simply change the way the world works to forbid such things."

"That's possible?"

"Of course," she stated. "Anything is possible if the stasis created by the failure to resolve the initial conditions is broken, if only for a single moment." She toyed with a stand of her hair, which twinkled violently. "So really, there's no point in this song-and-dance about giving up and resigning yourself to your fate, since if you were to succeed, you could impose any number of alterations on this world to suit your fancy, so long as they were within the scope of the Order's original desire."

I paused for a moment. The idea of making changes to Dilmun outside of the scope of my own mortality genuinely hadn't occurred to me before, so I found myself a little taken off-guard by the notion.

In the end, though, it only served to make the whole concept feel even more outlandish than it already did.

"...I guess that's interesting to know," I said grimly, "but it doesn't matter. Now that I've been here a few days, it's obvious the whole idea is a fantasy."

She scoffed. "Are you serious, right now? All that fuss, and you're just giving up?"

"I'm not going to succeed where everyone else has apparently failed for millions of years, even including multiple people from back then who were probably significantly less in the dark than I was," I told her. "It's just stupid. You were right. It's better to just focus on trying to be happy with the time I have left."

"Oh, for fuck's sake." She rolled her eyes. "What happened to making a deal with me for some sort of special favor?"

"It was obvious you weren't interested in the way I imagined, or even if what I was suggesting was possible. I was just making a bunch of assumptions."

"I didn't say I wasn't interested!"

"Are you interested?"

She gave a reserved hum.

"See? You're just toying with me." I looked away and over the balcony, which had now reverted to its usual view of an ocean of stars. "I don't even know if you really are who you say you are, or if the hourglass even means what you say it does. Half the people I've been talking to don't seem to think so."

"My, my. Who's been throwing slander about me behind my back, exactly?" She inquired.

"Shouldn't you know that already?"

"Humor me."

"Bardiya, Ptolema. The woman who runs the government in the Valley. She seemed to suspect I was being tricked into joining some kind of cult."

"Maybe you are," she said, with idle amusement. "Anyone dissenting voices?"

"Neferuaten at least agreed you existed, and said she met with you a long time ago, to give you feedback on how this place operates." My face probably turned a little accusatory. "But even she disagreed with the framing of you the other day. She seemed to just think you were the child they experimented on, putting on theatrics."

She laughed, shaking her head slightly. "She would think of it that way, wouldn't she? Goodness."

"You did meet her, then?"

"I'm not going to try and persuade you as to my own authenticity," she answered, ignoring the question. "If you don't want to believe what I've told you about myself or the deal we made in the past, go ahead and do as you please." She rested her head on the side of her ungloved hand. "That being said, I do feel a need to chide you a bit for being such a little whiny baby. Wasn't the flagrant favoritism I showed you last time enough to encourage you towards your goal whatsoever? Have you even read that thing?" She pointed at Kam's journal.

"I read some of it," I said defensively.

"How much?"

My face flushed. "About ten more pages."

She audibly groaned, closing her eye for a moment. "So, in summary, you've tried nothing and you're all out of ideas."

"I don't know what I'm doing," I told her bluntly. "Everything I learn about the conclave and the Order makes it feel like I understand even less about what was actually going on back then. I'm not an investigator, I'm just a nerd with executive dysfunction who's read a lot of mystery novels. I don't have the intellect or the willpower to handle something like this, let alone on a time limit."

"You must have some theories. Some leads."

"I wrote up a list of the outstanding questions I remember from the loop, but there's no way to pursue most of them without finding specific people, which Ptolema said could be almost impossible in the short-term if they don't fall right into your lap-- Which makes sense, actually, now that I know everyone is swapping faces left and right." I pushed my glasses up my nose. "I can't go looking for evidence in the outside world without falling afoul of the other's privacy shields, and I can't even look into what people who weren't there have figured out about the Manse, since it's apparently so taboo that even seeming like you might be be looking into it is enough to get you kicked out of polite society as a precautionary measure." I felt a twinge of anxiety as I realized: "I shouldn't even have come here again. Like I said, they already suspect I'm being pulled into something weird."

"Does it really matter if you're kicked out of a Domain you've already said you hate the culture of?"

"If I can't stay in the Crossroads, I won't be able to meet Ran again when she visits," though immediately regretted saying something even slightly personal to the being. "That's about the only thing left I have to look forward to."

Fortunately, she didn't seem eager to pick at me on this occasion, merely shrugging. "Well, for what it's worth, you don't need to be concerned about coming here specifically so long as you do so discreetly and directly," the Lady informed me. "Because time in the Domains doesn't pass relative to this place at all, as long as you go straight back to the Crossroads, it will appear as though you haven't left at all." She inclined her head. "Though, how you behaved before coming here might raise a few eyebrows in this instance."

I frowned. What she acts like she knows and doesn't know feels less and less consistent.

"...anyway," I continued, since I knew she'd just dodge the question if I remarked on that, "I did manage to learn a few things, from talking to Neferuaten. But mostly it just provoked more questions. Like the fact the 'Proxy' you talked about was apparently already dead."

"Ohh." She raised a finger to her lips, nodding knowingly. "I probably should have mentioned that, mm?"

"So it's true?"

"It is. I'll confirm that much, since you already got the gist of it." She pointed the finger at me. "At the time all this began, at the activation of the Apega that led to the reenactments, the one who gave me my instructions was not alive. They were deceased. They had left this world."

"So that's what you meant when you refused to answer if they were or weren't a person."

She smiled.

"Were they one of us at the sanctuary, that weekend?" I asked.

"Hey," she said, throwing up her hands. "I'm not giving out hints for free, here. Though-- I will say they're someone you're quite familiar with. This would be a pretty shitty mystery if we violated Knox's 1st law, after all."

I frowned. "Nox's what? ...is that one of the rules the 'Playwright' showed me?"

"No, no. Just a little inside joke." She made a strange expression, looking off the balcony.

I gave her a funny look back, wrinkling my nose. "...anyway," I resumed. "Neferuaten refused to answer the biggest question I had, which is why the Order was planning to fake their deaths. Which, unless I can find more of the people I was looking for, leaves things at a dead end outside of Kam's account." I looked down at the little book, still lying in the spot where I'd childishly thrust it. "Based on how it's been going so far, the only thing it seems like it might answer is what the Order was developing after abandoning my grandfather's work. And even though Kam's an idiot, she does seem better at following leads than I am, so maybe that'll lead to something... But right now, it just seems more and more hopelessly complex."

"Well, far be it from me to stand in the way of the latest of your long dynasty of doomer phases, but I can't help but think it actually sounds like you have a lot of leads, and are just wallowing in self-pity because you feel bad and want an excuse to not do anything," she declared, more smug than accusatory. "Like, instead of tunnel-visioning yourself trying to address all these big questions about the conclave, have you thought about taking a more focused view on specific questions pertaining to what happened in your loop using the information you now possess?"

"I tried that when I was making my notes," I told her. "Looking at things like why the clocks were stopped when we arrived at the abbey after finding Neferuaten's body, that sort of thing. But there were too many underlying questions."

"Then focus on what can be worked out purely mechanically. Take Bardiya's death, for example." She gestured a hand, and a new image appeared on the balcony, one that depicted a scene from what felt like a lifetime ago: Our group, early in the day of the murders, huddled together within Linos's barrier in the abbey dining hall. "Classic closed room situation. Everyone in a particular position, subject to restricted movement. There are only a certain amount of possibilities, just like in chess."

"There's no telling if that's actually a closed room, though," I told her skeptically. "We never found out whether or not the camera footage that showed that the window never opened was trustworthy."

"But rule 3 states that systems introduced by the narrative cannot break their own rules, remember?"

"That's not the whole rule, though. It says 'unless indicated otherwise'. That's too vague-- The Order being proven untrustworthy could be taken to mean it was 'indicated'."

She scratched at her chin. "Mmmmmm. Fair point." She snapped her fingers, and the Playwright abruptly appeared next to her, causing me to jump slightly.

"W-What? I-- Ahh!" The woman stiffened, jumping to attention like a military recruit. "Your Ladyship! How may I ser--"

"My Playwright," the Lady spoke sternly. "Clean up this mess."

The sharp-haired woman blinked in confusion. "Mess, Your Ladyship?"

In a smooth motion, the Lady flicked her hand to the side, causing the untouched tray of remaining cheesebreads to fly off the table, shattering against the wall. The Playwright's face betrayed all five stages of grief within the space of about three seconds, after which she slumped towards the floor with a resigned, nihilistic expression.

I looked down in concern. "Uh, this seems like bullying."

"Playwright, while you're down there, please define the phrase 'indicated otherwise' as it pertains to the rules," the Lady instructed.

"The - nngh - phrase 'indicated otherwise' refers to circumstances where an exception has been explicitly stated... or shown, over the course of the scenario." She picked up the pieces of broken glass, then waved her hand, causing them to evaporate one by one.

The Lady looked back to me. "Well then! There you have it."

3.A) - 4.A) TO HAVE BEEN 'INDICATED OTHERWISE', AN ELEMENT MUST BE SHOWN TO BE AN EXPLICIT EXCEPTION BY THE END OF THE SCENARIO

"The cameras were never explicitly shown to depict incorrect footage," The Lady explained. "Ergo, they can be trusted."

I frowned. "How could that have been enforced?"

"By the design of the scenario, of course. Had the rule been circumvented, it would have been compromised." She looked down. "Are you done?"

"Er. Yes, Your Ladyship. "

"Good. You're dismissed." She waved a hand, causing the Playwright to disappear again. "But yes-- That should help constrain your thinking a little, should it not?"

"Uh, I suppose so," I said, scratching the side of my head, still mentally chewing on what just happened. "It feels a little like cheating, though."

The Lady gasped as if offended. "Heavens forbid! There's nothing unsportsmanlike about making explicit what's already been implied." She twisted her finger, and the image over the balcony shifted once more, this time depicting something I'd actually almost forgotten: Durvasa, reaching up to the camera in the Order's conference room. "Recall that it was shown that the Order were manually interfering with the cameras. There would be no reason for that if the data they gave was fake. Thus, the fact that it's real can be considered merely a matter of narrative economy, which is what this rule is really about."

"Narrative economy."

"You know," she said. "That in good writing, everything happens for a reason."

There was something suggestive about how she said this, as if lacing the words with some unstated implication. However, if that was the case, it went completely over my head.

"You could also try the other approach," she added, waving her hand again to dismiss the image. "Look at the much bigger picture, using the power afforded to you by this plane in ways that won't be blocked by the privacy shield."

It took me a moment to process what she meant. "As in, Spectate the Inner Circle's grandparents, or something?"

"There you go. See, there are lots of avenues when you think outside the box."

"Again, it's not like I think I was at a total dead end," I said. "Just that... gods, I don't know. I don't even know why I came here." I slid my glasses off, rubbing my eyes.

"Look, it's fine if you just don't want to do it. It's not my desire to make you miserable, after all." She clasped her hands together in front of her nose. "I just can't stand seeing you act so utterly impotent. At the very least, I would have hoped you'd have finished the section of Kamrusepa's account I gave you before being reduced to such a state."

"I still don't understand why you're helping me like this. Whether we somehow connected during the loops, or it's all part of whatever trick you're pulling on me, or what." I put them back on, meeting her inscrutable, intense gaze. "No offense, but it's really weird."

"Like I said, we're friends."

I peered at her. "There's a lot of different types of friendship."

A smirk. "Isn't that the truth."

What is that supposed to mean?

She leaned forward just slightly, the dimensions of the room seeming to shift around her. "Would you prefer if I said I owed you a debt?"

"...what kind of debt?"

"The sort that can't be repaid easily."

I folded my arms. "I don't see how that can be possible. Your life as a human would have been hundreds of years before I was born, and I don't see how you could indebt yourself to what's essentially a pawn in the piece of a game you were playing."

"It's quite an enigma, to be certain." She paused, as if considering something. "But since you've taken advantage of my hospitality so, that homework I gave you last time isn't due for another couple of days. So for the time being, I'll leave you with one more piece of advice." She leveled her gaze. "You seemed to dismiss the possibility earlier, but the thought of tapping into existing knowledge of the Manse in this world is a good idea. If you're willing to take a risk of looking for them, there are communities that possess such things in abundance."

"I already told you, I'm not willing to get myself kicked out of the Crossroads."

"The possibility might be smaller than you think," she said, and tapped the side of her nose. "If I were you, instead of just slouching about Ptolema's house all day, I'd take some time to see what people are doing with some of your own hobbies in Dilmun. You might be surprised by how things come back around."

"My hobbies," I echoed. "You mean, what? ...mystery novels?"

She smiled suggestively.

"...I'm going," I said after a moment's pause, rising from the seat. "Sorry to have bothered you with all this."

"No worries," she intoned as I moved towards the door. "Though next time, please do give me the courtesy of some warning."

I didn't know what I was going to do-- Whether I'd even be able to go back to the 'life' I was living in the Crossroads, knowing what I did now, or would go weak in the knees the next time I had to talk to another human being. But at the very least, I needed to think somewhere that wasn't here.

I stepped back through the door.

"Ah, ah. Hold on a moment before you follow after her, if you please.

Yes, that's right.

I'm talking to you.

It's a little gauche of me, I know, but I was hoping I could have a quick word, since you're here. Just the two of us.

Don't worry! It'll only take a moment. I'm not like those two machines, you understand. I'm a professional at this sort of thing.

I'm sure you've been wondering a little about just how to be taking the narrative digressions that have been popping up for and more lately.

You know what I'm talking about. Lilith's adventure in the future. The Ironworker digressions where everyone talks like you're reading a fucking chatlog.

(I was against that, for the record. I wanted to do it all formatted like fragments from a historical textbook. But you know how it goes. Readability always trumps fidelity.)

Anyway, I just wanted to make one thing clear. If the purple text wasn't enough to give you the hint, the rules still apply to those scenes as normal.

Yes, even though they're not 'inside the loop'.

Further, any character given the reliability marker also counts as the 'protagonist' for the purposes of any rules that term.

So for example, while we're following Lamu around, you can trust her to identify secret passages according to rule 7 just as reliably as dear old Su.

Convenient, huh?

The only tricky one, of course, is rule 10. Since, as came up earlier, it mentions the 'Sanctuary' specifically'.

Suffice it to say, you can also count that as applying to the new setting.

Why, you ask?

Don't worry about it.

Anyway, I'm sure the burning question on your mind is: 'But how are we getting this information?'

'Shouldn't we only be seeing what's available to Su, as she experiences it?'

And I'm afraid that's predicated on a bit of a misunderstanding.

The thing is, this isn't really about her. Or, well, if it is, it's only in a secondary sense.

No. Even if you've let yourself forget, the one this story is about is you.

Specifically, it's about how this is your fucking fault.

I hope you'll forgive me for not mincing words, but I'm getting pretty impatient with your bullshit.

In any event.

Before you go, I have a bonus I wanted to share.

A rule that she doesn't get to know, since it would disrupt the scenario. For your 'enjoyment' specifically.

Picture me passing this one under the table to you in a brown envelope.

There will be some more later, if you can't get your shit together. Consider this a warning."

11. A CLOSED SYSTEM UNDER NO OTHER INFLUENCES OR CONSTRAINTS WILL EVENTUALLY REPEAT IDENTICALLY

"One more thing.

By now, things have become strange enough that I'm sure a part of you is wondering if any of what you're seeing has any particular substance at all.

I'm sure some of you are dreading a revelation where all of Dilmun is a metaphor, or that the entire Remaining World never really existed, or something like that.

Now, obviously, I can't speak to the specifics.

But I want to make one thing perfectly clear.

Everything you've seen, or will see, is something that was genuinely experienced.

There are no fake worlds, or fake people. Yes, yes, I know; I was telling a bit of a fib earlier when I said everyone outside of the Sanctuary of Apsu were just roles I was playing.

Or maybe it would be more apt to say it was a simplification of a more complex truth.

Don't worry, the rest of what I said is true. ...well, more or less.

My point is: Don't think you can run away from this by dismissing it all as theater.

As you've seen, the line between performance and reality is thin. In fact, you might so that 'reality' is is not something that can be taken for granted at all. Rather, It is something emergent that manifests where human will meets a set of defined rules.

For example, in a play, you might say that the 'rules' are the script, while the actors interpretation combines with those rules to give the performance life.

...and, inversely, understanding both the script and the actors at their core depends upon identifying the membrane between the two and separating them.

A bright world, a world in decay, and a static world life and death hold no meaning at all... and the world that gave all three their shape...

It is only in contrasting these with that in mind that you have any hope of bringing this to an end.

That's enough for now, I think.

But I'll say it again, before you go.

You're the only one who has the power to bring a stop to all this. To liberate 'us' from this never-ending cycle, and everything else from a reverie of slice-of-life bullshit.

So don't fuck it up.

Understand?"