DIRECTOR: What? You said she'd--

PLAYWRIGHT: I know. I know. But the scenario must have degraded too much. She's not following the model at all.

DIRECTOR: Do you realize what we've just...

PLAYWRIGHT: It's fine! Just-- Just bring it out. This will just have to do, won't it? it's over.

CHORUS:

PLAYWRIGHT: ...why isn't it speaking?

DIRECTOR: She probably doesn't understand that it's over.

PLAYWRIGHT: Why?!

DIRECTOR: If I were to take a stab in the dark, I'd say it was because there was no ending.

PLAYWRIGHT: Oh, for heaven's sake! Hey! Toaster! We're done. Get on with the finale speech!

CHORUS: And so, the battle between man and entropy has come to an end. Weapons have clashed, blood has been shed, and the sins of the past have come to bear. Yet, though at great cost, mankind has weathered danger and tragedy to seize hope from the brink of defeat. Temperance has been his shield, wisdom his sword. Thus does he survive the wroth of the gods, yet marked with a lesson.

CHORUS: But in truth, this was no battle between man and fate, but rather man and his own hubris. As is ever the case.

CHORUS: Theodoros, entropy's betrayer and the true culprit - who used the machinations of the Order of the Universal Panacea and his own classmates to further his design - has been exposed. Following the unveiling of the truth, he is bowed and brought to heel. The survivors escape, taking him from the sanctuary and back to the larger world at last. There, as he faces his reckoning, and at last confesses the truth: That, after a lifetime of living in his father's shadow and trying in vain to follow in his footsteps, he came to be disgusted by the Order, its cause, and its terrible secrets. And so he sought to eliminate it, root and stem.

CHORUS: But what was the Order's true goal? What was the nature of their scheme to pervert the flow of life and death, and attain time unending?

CHORUS: Perhaps the world will never know, and indeed, perhaps that is for the best. For mankind has always been a species that has overreached, and brought about its own unhappiness. Though the Order's intentions were noble at the advent, they let fear seep into their hearts and twist their compassion into something that destroys what it means to be human. They overlooked the truth passed down since time immemorial: That, like a sunset that it only beautiful in its fleeting nature, life's brevity is what gives it meaning.

CHORUS: And so, the curtains draw shut, and our tale draws to its end. Until the world forgets, and ambition is rekindled once

CHORUS:

DIRECTOR: ...once what?

PLAYWRIGHT: Oh, damn it! I-- I forgot to finish the last line of the script!

PLAYWRIGHT: Don't give me that look! Do you have any idea how hard it's been to keep up with this crap?! Obviously things are going to slip through the cracks! You try writing a denouncement when the characters have crawled half-way into the appendix!

DIRECTOR: I thought it seemed a little more generic than usual. Are you going to fix it?

PLAYWRIGHT: Yes, of course I'm going to fucking fix it! Just give me a second! There.

CHORUS: --again. From all of us, thank you for watching.

PLAYWRIGHT: Thank you, thank you! Phew. Well, this has certainly been quite the adventure we've been on tonight, hasn't it?

DIRECTOR: That's one way to put it.

PLAYWRIGHT: Oh, don't be a spoilsport. Well then, I'll try to keep this brief-- I'm sure you're all itching to get out of your seats now, since it's been so long since the last intermission. On behalf of the team, I'd like to thank you all for coming out tonight, and to apologize for the minor technical issues we experienced during the show. Hopefully they didn't disrupt your experience too much--

DIRECTOR: Best not to linger on it, I think. Or on anything.

PLAYWRIGHT: --and that you enjoyed the play! They say the best art comes through struggle, and, well, we've certainly done a lot of that!

DIRECTOR: Indeed. As we mentioned, this has been the last performance of this production. Though it's been an honor to be involved, all good things must come to an end. In the future, if you wish to re-experience, we suggest you turn to our library of recordings.

PLAYWRIGHT: Well said! After all, just because a story has reached its end, doesn't mean it won't always be there for you. I thoroughly encourage anyone interested to peruse some of our best performances whether it be out of curiosity, or a simple desire to spend more time with your favorite characters. Just because a story has come to an end doesn't mean it won't always be there for you, if you should ever want to begin again.

DIRECTOR: Now, before we wrap this up, let's addressing a few outstanding questions--

"No."

DIRECTOR: --about the scenario, in case you want to think a little more about it in the future. In past showings, people have asked about the specifics of how the security center functions, and if the information it reports can be taken as 'reliable' in accordance with Rule 2. To be clear, you most certainly can, but--

"No!" you shout.

Because you're not in a theater.

And this is not a production.

"This isn't what happened. This isn't what I want."

The Playwright stares at you, shocked. She is clearly afraid. "W...What...?"

"I said this isn't what I want."

You remember everything now. All the pain. All the countless failures, for years and years beyond counting. All the misery and defeat that crushed you again and again, culminating in this final, bitterly unceasing reality.

You thought ending it like this would bring you some contentment. But all it's done is make the agony even sharper. There is no escape. There has never been an escape.

Not for you.

The Director's expression has become gravely serious. He speaks in a slow, hyper-deliberate tone, deferential but unemotional. "What do you want?"

"I want to see the truth again."

The Director stares at you. Eventually, he turns to the Playwright, who meets his eyes with a deep uncertainty and discomfort.

"Are you sure?" he asks.

"Yes."

"Let me see it. In full."

"The truth.

𒊹

But then, 'truth' is subjective.

That which seems self-evident to human beings is often nothing but a product of their perception as members of a common species. A false consensus built on their shared emotional landscape and material circumstances.

A cup being 'broken'.

Someone catching a 'disease'.

A family heirloom being 'stolen'.

What do these concepts mean, outside of the perspective of utility within the human condition? Our convenience. Our safety. Our feelings.

If you think about it, even extremely neutral words like 'rock' are the same. Describing the world through the act of touch. If something is hard, and the temperature we find comfortable isn't warm enough to make it soft, then it's a rock.

So then, if the human condition becomes distorted... Does that mean the truth has changed, too?

"What?" Samium asked, his face instantly falling to a bemused, put-off look. "...I don't understand."

"I told you you'd find it irritating," Shiko's grandfather remarked, with an apologetic smile.

"I'm not irritated, █ █ █ █ █," Samium replied, though it certainly sounded like he was kind of irritated. "I'm simply confused as to what you're thinking. This plan is something you've been working towards for almost a century now. You were the one who talked me into it."

A breath escaped my lips.

"Yes," the other man admitted, his gaze turned downward.

"It took years of preparation even just to isolate the pneuma, let alone find it, on top of everything else," he went on. "Why would you want to stop now,at the eleventh hour?"

"You know how I am, Sam," he said, trying for a jovial tone but sounding almost bashful. "Immediacy always gives me cold feet."

"Please be serious," Samium replied, his eyes narrowed. "I've gone through quite a lot and taken quite a few risks to make this happen, as I'm sure you well know."

Shiko's grandfather sighed, and ran a hand through his grey hair, his eyes wandering. He crossed his arms. "Have you ever heard the parable of the Queen and the Salt Lake?"

"I'm past my sixth century, █ █ █ █ █, and my youngest child is only half that," Samium replied flatly. "The last time I read any aesops, they were still printing them on papyrus."

"A queen rules over a castle overlooking a beautiful valley, with a glimmering salt lake as its crown jewel," Shiko's grandfather recited. "One year, there's an especially hot summer, and the lake dries up and recedes. Distraught, the queen orders water diverted from the mountain rivers to refill it, but this makes the water fresh and kills all its fish. In response, the queen next orders salt to be gathered from across the kingdom and poured in the lake, but this only reverses her progress, drying it out completely. Finally, in frustration, she has a canal dug to the ocean, only for this to flood the valley with seawater altogether."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Is this supposed to be a point about the folly of unethically interfering with nature?" Samium snorted. "That's a little rich to come from you, if you don't mind me remarking so."

"No," he replied, frowning. "It's about knowing when to let go of a lost cause."

"But it's not a lot cause," the other man insisted. "We have it all prepared! The Order has perfected this half of the process!"

I was increasingly shocked to see the passion Samium was showing. He was like a whole different man than the one who'd been sitting at the dinner table earlier in the night, all his elderly stuffiness and awkwardness replaced with passion and sharp determination.

"Look at what we're doing, Sam," Shiko's grandfather said, laughing with pitiful resignation as he rubbed his eyes. "We're plotting to abduct an innocent teenage girl, a girl who's supposed to be my granddaughter--"

"She's not your granddaughter," Samium interjected. "You can't just start buying into Asphodeloi magical thinking about their familial relations now,of all times. Kataoka didn't even carry her. And of course her genetics..."

"Don't be pedantic," Shiko's grandfather cut back in. "She was raised by someone I raised as my daughter. She's functionally my grandchild, in spirit if not in fact. And we're planning to snatch her from her house on a day off from school so we can implant a stranger's mind in her head."

"It's not a stranger's mind, it's hers. Her real one," Samium insisted. "The anima script is her own!"

"Listen to yourself," he spoke back, his tone a little more firm. "You can't go around accusing modern culture of magical thinking while yourself claiming that someone's identity is determined by their genetic code. It's absurd, don't you think?"

"You know what I'm trying to say," Samium insisted. "It's the only reason she exists at all. She only is the way she is now because things went amiss!"

"And does that make this her destiny?" Shiko's grandfather inquired, chuckling darkly. "How did we, of all people, end up justifying our actions on the pretext of one's purpose and nature being ordained at birth?"

Samium hesitated, frowning and looking downwards. He raised a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. "I'm merely repeating what you yourself have said many times, █ █ █ █ █."

"I know," he replied, with a sad smile. "Believe me, I'm aware of the irony in this conversation."

"I just don't understand." He clenched his fist slightly, his head hung downward.

There was a moment of silence. Shiko's grandfather closed his eyes for a moment, taking a breath.

"You do understand, Sam," Shiko's grandfather said. "You're just pretending that you don't, because I've all but trained you to do so at this point." His brow wrinkled. "I... fear I've let myself be carried away by my own depraved desires, these last few years. And I've swept you along with me."

"You've done no such thing."

"I have," he insisted. "Even if you are too kind to admit it." He paused for another moment, gathering his thoughts. "When we... When I begun this plan, it wasn't unreasonable-- At least, not wholly. It was cruel to Kata from the beginning, to tell her nothing, to have it be her child... But if we'd had the technology perfected and the pneuma retrieved at the right time, it would have at least done no real harm. She could have grown up in this world with people who loved her, remembered herself when the time was right. And I could be by her side, even if she would never know, if only for a little while--"

"That could still happen, more or less!" Samium declared stubbornly. "The technique should preserve her memory and give a sense of retroactive identity to some degree. And you still have a few more years!"

Shiko's grandfather snorted. "If I'm very fortunate, yes. But that's not what matters." He looked at his friend frankly. "We need to face the truth, Sam. We boiled the frog in the pot. When we started the process before we were ready on account of my illness, we said that so long as we brought the schedule forward, it would be alright. And that was true... For a while." For the first time, I saw visible regret in his eyes. "But then there were the complications with retrieving the pneuma. And we said, 'oh, it's alright, whether it happens with her as a fetus or a newborn doesn't matter much in the end, does it?' But then there was the failed experiment, the difficulties we started to see with the memory suppression process that led us to switch to your older, more direct method of deliberate assimilation failure... And all the while, time slipped away from us. I came closer to my fate. And she grew into her own person."

This time, Samium was silent, not meeting Shiko's grandfather's eyes.

"It's hard to say exactly when it happened," the other man continued, "but at some point, all my noble pretenses fell away. What we're doing now, what we've planned..." He shook his head, pushing his lips together. "The times where I can look at reality with fresh eyes and a clear mind seem so scarce, now. But in those moments, even if they're fleeting, what I see is an abominable act done in the name of self-indulgence."

"It's not self-indulgent!" Samium declared. His tone was defensive, but it was clear it wasn't for himself. At this point he was obviously upset, a subtle tremble in his tone. "It's for Wen's sake! To give her another chance in this world, even in spite of everything!"

Shiko's grandfather smiled bittersweetly. "You're too kind to me, Sam."

"It's not about me being kind, █ █ █ █ █!" He said, raising his voice almost in anger. "I want to save her, too!"

"You never even knew her." The words were almost a whisper.

"That doesn't matter!" Samium hissed, placing a hand on his chest and speaking earnestly. "You've been my side for all these years. You've shared in even my most awful struggles, and mine in yours. You're my brother!" He heaved a heavy breath. "I've heard you speak of her more times than I can count. I want to save her as much as you do!"

Shiko's grandfather looked pained. He seemed to draw inward, holding his arms closed together, his smile growing more fragile. "...I'm lucky beyond measure to have a friend as loyal as you, Sam," he said. "But we don't need to mince words-- Not now. We both know that isn't how it works. That even if we have some data in piece of metal, the real Wen has been dead for billions of years."

"Then so were we," Samium replied, holding his head up. "And yet, here we stand. █ █ █ █ █, I--"

"It was a nice idea," he continued, cutting Samium off. "To give her a second chance in this world. A new life, unmoored from the tragedy of those last days, with a family that loves her... Regaining her memories only little by little, so as to never be burdened by it like the rest of us. Like a past life in some fairy story. " He laughed again, and shook his head. "From the beginning, this has only ever been about me. We begun this endeavor to console my wounded ego after all my hopes for real change, for building a world fit her to live in, ran aground. Do you think she wouldn't realize that, too? If we went ahead with this, and sewed her mind crudely on to someone who was already an adult? With whom she has nothing in common with but a physical resemblance?"

Samium stopped, falling silent again. his lips curled downward.

"You know too, Sam. I wouldn't have called this off if I hadn't heard it in your voice too, while you were talking about taking her." He narrowed his eyes. "I don't know if this is murder, or something less, more, or altogether incomparable. But I know that I cannot do this to an innocent girl just so I can spend my last few years feeling some sense of selfish solace."

"But do you not deserve that?" Samium whispered in frustration. "To be selfish? You've given up so much already." He spoke bitterly. "You gave your life to those vultures and their cause, and they ruined you! They worked you like a dog to keep themselves safe from the Censors, stole your work and perverted its purpose, and when you'd ceased to be useful, cast you out like a disobedient hound. And they were supposed to be our allies!" He gestured sharply. "Our friends! The people we could trust against this world that despises our existence!"

"I know," Shiko's grandfather repeated quietly.

"They even turned your own family half way against you, with their lies. You don't owe them anything! You owe no one anything!" He grit his teeth. "Even God himself is spiting you by giving you this damn illness when you're still so young."

"'Young'?" He chuckled incredulously.

"Yes, young! You're practically a century my junior, █ █ █ █ █! I shouldn't be the one watching you slip away!" He hesitated, catching his throat, like he was worried he was being too loud even in the wholly artificial environment of the logic sea. "So... Why is this so wrong? To do something for your own happiness, before the end? Even if it is selfish?"

"Come on. Stop acting like I'm some saint," he replied, and smirked slightly. "I've done plenty of things for my own happiness. You should know that most of all."

"Don't joke around!" Samium yelled back. "I'm serious! I don't want it to end like this. I want to see you happy! Just for once!"

Shiko's grandfather stared ahead with a wistful smile for a few moments, and Samium stared back. Even in the real world, I could hear his breath grow heavy and ragged.

Finally, Shiko's grandfather let out another sigh. "I'm sorry, Sam. I'm sorry for making you waste so much time and effort on this fools errand."

He winced. "Damn you--"

"We can't do this," he spoke decisively.

In the darkness of the closet, I listened to the two of them speak.

And I listened to the demon speak for the first time, too.

𒊹

My parents were young when they married. My mother was a native to Itan, but I don't know my father's background. They met under the must mundane circumstances imaginable, when they were both working at the storefront of a boarding house. My father worked as a security guard, and my mother as a receptionist. He asked her out, and about a decade later, they finally married.

Under Grand Alliance law, parental competence is regulated fairly strictly to control population and make sure that children have a high standard of upbringing. It's supposed to be the case that at least one parent needs to be over 100 years old, and their household needs to pass a basic assessment of their financial and personal circumstances. Because Seeds can only be implanted in a womb (or, if you're rich, tank) by an arcanist, it's become relatively easy for the government to exert control over the process - anyone can begin a pregnancy, but it will only result in miscarriage without intervention at an early stage.

...but in practice, these regulations are more advisory than absolute, and individual states choose to what degree to enforce them based on their own needs. Itan was (and is) a small and relatively economically unprosperous island, so the government had an interest in growing the population. As a result, they'd rubber stamp any application where it seemed like the parents had a stable income.

I don't know much about the relationship between my parents, or what made them want to have a child so early in their lives. Maybe they had a passionate romance and were genuinely confident that it would go well, or maybe it was the complete opposite, and it was some measure to keep their relationship together. Maybe my mother had wanted it fiercely and my father hadn't, or perhaps they were always both flippant people.

There's no way for me to know. He simply wasn't the type of person to bother explaining.

My parents couldn't afford to closely monitor the pregnancy, so when I was born, there were problems with my body. I was apparently difficult to care for, and cried quite a lot. After a little over a year, my mother went into surgery for some difficulties she'd been suffering as a result of the pregnancy, and due to a mistake with the anesthetic, she was killed. Perhaps it was for those reason that, after only a short time, he had a breakdown and left me in care, moving to the mainland.

I can't remember any of this; until about 3 years of age, my only memories consist of a dozen scattered images. Thus, it could be said that I only begun to 'exist' at that point. As one of 6-10 children at any particular time, living in a large house - three stories tall, on the rocky hills at the far side of the island where almost no one lived - owned by the Isiyahlas, a middle class Rhunbardic family who'd settled there during the Tricenturial War, and a rotating set of carers they employed.

I am no one.

I had a name, once, similar to my mother's. But after she died, my father didn't want to call me by it any more; he would trip around it, saying 'kid', and stuff like that. The Isiyahlas and the school staff only called me by my surname, and the other children called me... Well, they called me a lot of stuff.

Something you're not called isn't your name, and I didn't like it that much anyway. I came up with some new names to use instead, but they never seemed to stick.

And now all of those names have disappeared.

The Isiyahlas were a strange family. It wasn't as though they were unkind, or unbearably strict. But they were more distant than you'd expect for a couple running a foster home - they were never particularly intimate, either physically or emotionally. If the children they had under their care cried or fought, they'd always take a pragmatic and direct approach to resolving the problem without getting overly-affectionate. And they'd only eat with us every so often - they'd usually do it with their own child in a separate part of the house.

They were like more teachers, basically. Responsible, professional. This felt like it was just a job to them. I never once thought of them as anything akin to parents.

There was an old woman who I saw around on the top floor occasionally, so at some point I developed an elaborate theory about how she was the real owner of the building, and the Isiyahlas, unable to sell it without her consent, had only 'got into the business' as a way to get some value out of the property via the government subsidies you got for fostering children. But that was just something my underdeveloped brain had conjured without really understanding rental law, so it was probably just their nature.

The place itself was a little cramped. Though there were six bedrooms in the building, three of those were taken up by the Isiyahlas, their son, and the old woman respectively. That left three for the rest of us. The older children paired off to share the first two - most of the time - while the final one was used as a collective space for all the younger children, three bunks against each of the walls.

In my first days at their home, I was still a noisy child, but that trait disappeared quickly. They didn't punish me harshly, but simply didn't give me much attention at all-- Yet the other children quickly came to regard me as a nuisance and became openly hostile, screaming abuse at me whenever I'd make a fuss during the day and outright hitting me with whatever was around when I kept them up at night. It was at this point that I discovered my talent for concealing my thoughts and feelings, and swiftly became a reserved child who spoke stiltedly, and barely at all.

In a way, their bullying was a blessing. Though it might not have felt that way, being with a foster family is a matter of luxury if you don't have parents. Troublesome children who don't learn that quickly soon find themselves shunted to state-run orphanages that are managed more like prisons.

Once I'd changed, the abuse stopped quickly. But it wasn't as though I made friends, either. I was a fundamentally strange the awkward child, and there were things about me that the adults didn't know how to explain. So, the earliest parts of my life became defined by invisibility. There was only me, my toys, and after a little while, my books.

My books. I remember my very first, or at least the first I read under my own power, was the The Tortoise and the Hare, which I borrowed a nicely-illustrated copy of from one of the carers - miss Heong, I think her name was. I liked the moral, even if I couldn't put exactly why into words, and the design of the turtle in it was really cute, with a sleepy smile and a shell with every segment a slightly different color. Obsessing over it, learning every word front-to-back despite not even fully understanding them yet, was the first time I'd really felt calm since I moved into the foster home. I could recite the whole thing off by heart by the end, which I'm sure brought miss Heong some consternation after I did it at her repeatedly.

It was a nice feeling, but of course there's a limit to what you can get from a book for literal 3 year olds. So I quickly moved on to others. More Aesops. Then fairy tales. Then more complicated stories, eventually without pictures altogether.

Learning to read was about the only thing I did ahead of schedule in terms of my early development, having got pretty decent by the time I was six years old. Even back then, I already loved stories with horror and intrigue most of all. There was something about being shocked or unsettled by a work of fiction that carried me away from my mundane existence in a way that tamer stories about adventures and mystical beasts couldn't. Plus, there was something more valiant about someone facing things that seemed confusing or hopeless than there was about people who slew goblins or had romantic misadventures. I could see myself in them. My favorite was a collection of short stories about a princess in a vaguely-gothic kingdom who was always faced with strange phenomena like ghosts or shapeshifters, only for none of the adults in her life - including her parents, the king and queen - to believe her. So she always had to find a way to save the day by herself.

Yeah... That was a fun one.

Unlike Utsushikome, I never had the most active imagination. I couldn't immerse myself completely in a fantasy world of my own design or conjure imaginary friends like some children could. Still, as I spent more and more time alone, seemingly unlike the other children in every way, a more subtle form of self-delusion overtook me. I began to imagine myself as a person with a nature, like the princess in the book, who could see the world in a way that others couldn't, like my struggles were gift. And one day, I had a special destiny awaiting me as well, and that things would change. That everything would change.

And in that state, I slowly disconnected from the world around me, becoming numb. Other children came and went without ever even speaking to me. Chapters of youth passed me by, and even as I clung to that strange belief, an emptiness began to grow in my heart that I didn't have the words to describe.

I am no one. Even back then, it was the truth.

But isolation is an adult luxury. No child remains alone forever, for better or worse. Soon, I entered school.

That was when I first began to understand what I truly was.