Her voice: tired, thin. She's been at her desk for many hours.

Her voice: tired, thin. She's been at her desk for many hours.

For your pomegranate red folder, she means. Material for future reviews, case studies and post mortems.

Four hearts, four points of light, waiting for you to draw the constellation between them.

To assemble and guide the rest.

A tensing deep in your gut as your name is committed.

He's already turned once. He could just as easily do it again.

That's assuming it's a legitimate defection and not a double bluff from a vastly superior operant.

The man has nowhere else to go. There is no one better for the assignment.

The names feel heavy, irreversible. Marked in blood for offering.

Sounds like a band.

DEFEAT LEADS TO AN IRREVERSIBLE IMBALANCE UPON THE WORLD STAGE. EQUILIBRIUM DISINTEGRATES FROM A SINGLE POINT -- YOU.

Her eyes reflect the glow of the terminal screen. She's been at her desk for fourteen hours today.

The world is so heavy its mass can only be measured in septillions of kilograms. That is the incredible weight you'll have destabilised by your actions.

AN IRREVERSIBLE BLOW TO ALTER THE WORLD'S AXIS. IT WILL TAKE CENTURIES FOR EQUILIBRIUM TO BE RESTORED.

A bleep-bloop boat, in other words.

There will be no 'extraction'. Just a box of tools discarded at the worksite.

There'll be plenty of time to think of a more personally satisfying answer while you're on the boat. Alone.

She hesitates for a second.

A deeply off-putting answer, she thinks.

The Operant Bureau probably has loads of boats. A whole secret navy.

It sounds like a hit list.

A pleasing symmetry. She likes that very much.

A pleasing symmetry. She likes that very much.

'Sounds like a first stab'.

The one who must only bend and never break.

Stopped in her tracks.

... she should call off the assignment.

A heart without its ribcage.

You'll only know it's gone wrong when a body shows up on the other side, punctured and bloody.

Even as you've been speaking your controller's silently been gaming out every possible manoeuvre. She knows what she's doing.

Except for the old Kohilan hands, who used to call it 'potatoes two ways'.

Hesitation in her voice.

'Don't do it. If you do, I won't recognise you anymore.'

Stuck in a metal box moving at 55km/h in close proximity to the enemy. No way to call in backup, no way to jump out.

Except for the old Kohilan hands, who called it 'potatoes two ways'.

Hesitation in her voice.

'Don't do it,' her voice says. 'If you do, I won't recognise you anymore.'

A ripple through your heart. She remembers.

She has a copy of your pomegranate folder open in front of her. All your patterns and tells: itemised.

Spoken from experience.

One-hundred percent. What we can't feel can't hurt us.

Yes! Crack them and gut them. Spend their offal on sweet pleasures.

Make it political, a war on the automated future.

Sounded like she really enjoyed saying 'fat sol stacks'. See if you can get her to say it again.

Let her think it's pretend, but you know the truth. They have better stuff.

You realise you have seen no dogs in Portofiro.

Dr. Hugo must have killed them all.

MAINTENANCE WORK IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL. ALTHOUGH THE SOUL IS AN INDIVIDUALIST CONSTRUCT. PERFORM SELF CRIT FOR IMAGINING A SOUL.

Ignore her. You're definitely a real person.

Sick tradeoff. A little ideological betrayal in exchange for the chance to use a pneumatic drill in reduced gravity.

The sound of a coin purse jingling from behind the curtain... a single copper rolls onto the stage.

Dripping skepticism.

Give Melita a reason to front you some lucre.

No entries. Sounds fake and made up.

It's not, it's an essential concept in the latter writings of the critic Dositeo Fernandez.

Memetic contagion. A massive risk to any modern organisation.

There is something incredibly satisfying about making that 'nom' sound. You should do it some more, just to see what happens.

A pen stands to attention in a long-fingered hand.

Nightmare-grade material. You have to try it out.

Or, perhaps, a genuine techno-fascist.

You hear the sound of a pen dropping onto a pad of paper, unused.

A liquid supper.

The heavy thud and sway of the Kohilan National Railway. She knows every jerk and bend along the route.

Beyond the curved windows, fields and suburbs of identical single-story houses. When they dim the coach lights, stars come out in force.

Something takes flight in your chest. She thinks of you.

When you were the worst disaster of yourself.

She pronounces the word like a caress.

Hear that? She thinks we're amazing.

A can of Vana Kohila. Horizontal in the bottom of her purse.

Unmistakable regret in her tone.

Having a number of 'side-things' to achieve can help with your overall psychological balance. Small pips of easy pleasure.

Even more daunting than collecting such a set is the task of arranging and displaying it.

IN THE EVENT YOU ARE ZEROED OUT, YOUR BRAIN WILL BE BEQUEATHED TO THE OPERA'S SEMIOTICIANS SO THEY MAY STUDY THE PRECISE CAUSE OF THIS EXTREMELY CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOSIS.

REACTIONARY NOSTALGIA. THE YOUTH OF THE WORLD CRAVE THE DIALECTIC NOW MORE THAN EVER.

You hear a thump in the background.

Did she put her feet up on her desk?

She's thinking of her friends, whom she doesn't actually spend that much time with.

You imagine yourself at a table on the perimeter of a city square, watching her walk towards you. You have a freshly lit cigarette, the waiter is bringing schnapps. Her face is a blur.

The heavy silence that follows signals that this particular engine has run out of steam.

You hear long, comfortable breaths. The sound of her mind wandering elsewhere.

The line's ambient buzz grows louder without her voice to interrupt it.

You feel very cold all of a sudden.

You feel like your organs have flattened themselves against your spine.

It's fine. We'll scrape them off and put them back. We remember where most of them are supposed to go.

Except that's the only reason she talks to you.

You imagine steam rising from her naked shoulders as she settles into the hot spring beside you. The stars are shining, there's snow on the ground. Her face is a blur.

PROBABLE's service history is required reading for controllers. She's stalling you.

Pen at the ready, considering how she'll phrase the emergency extraction order.

'Finally lost it'? Or maybe the more diplomatic but equally damning 'Operant withdrawn for symptoms of clinical exhaustion'.

There is a zero percent possibility that PROBABLE, statistically the Opera's most valuable performer in 66, was here on babysitter duty.

Something she can't just tell you, but she's assuming you can put it together on your own.

PROBABLE was the Operant Bureau's most valuable performer in 66. His true assignment must have been a high-level hold.

Chewing the inside of her cheek.

Your smell, she thinks.

A forgotten beast, hibernating in your hippocampus stirs, raises its head and snorts.

She can be as sarcastic as she wants, doesn't change the fact that we're mega hot when we're being all deductive.

Bodies incinerated before nerves had time to deliver their message of pain to the brain.

Her body incinerated before the nerves had time to deliver their message of pain to her brain.

Something in her tone makes you imagine her winking at you.

'Null entities' are the lowest forms of matter in the Operant Bureau's extended cosmology. Reserved for traitors, falsifiers, and thieves.

The magic box may be monitored. Perhaps your controller's being recorded for training and political reliability purposes.

You hear her flip a notebook closed with a satisfying snap. That's the closest you're going to get to 'well done' on this one.

You are a cosmic mystery. Get up there, into the void. You could be the first to expose it as a fraud.

OPPOSE SENTIMENTAL FIGMENTS INCOMPATIBLE WITH A MATERIALIST WORLDVIEW.

The window rattles. Some night-bound animal scratches at the door.

You're not getting through her. She's way better at this than you.

Why the interest in space? Look at it! What's it doing up there? What if it's just a big painting?

A woman glides upside down, chanting. The sun revolves outside the window.

You can marinate in failure way better than any 'city-state'. You can twist dive into it.

Intense skepticism. She's worried you're developing a logical framework to apply to your own assignment.

Despite her protest, you hear her making a note.

Could say anything, though. 'Unauthorised speculating' or suchlike.

Voice level and dry as a salt flat.

The 'concerning' part is how incomplete our set remains.

A matter of interest for the psychomancers, perhaps.

The view was tremendous, best in the district. Well worth the climb.

Spring morning. The girl tugs her father's hand. She presses her nose against the cool glass. A double-deck commuter train, 1/160 scale, rattles across a miniature country scene.

No aesthetic sense at all.

Just a little, for fun.

A siren circling your skull.

Neurons light up along your spine, flickering erratically.

The line is operational. You can rule out a technical problem.

Thing's probably got ghosts in it, spooking up the wires.

The exquisite work of the 'magic box', one of the proudest achievements of the Opera's Technical Services Office.

THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY.

Don't let her down -- become the operant she needs you to be.

And her voice is just as you remember.

This is wrong. You shouldn't be here. This should be happening to someone else.

It takes all your concentration to keep the receiver steady against your ear.

Eliminated. Killed. Rendered inoperant.

Heavy words. Words that set machinery in motion.

Five-thousand kilometres away, in a small office deep underground, a mid-level controller of the Operant Bureau leans forward and cups a hand over her earpiece.

Once you say it, there's no going back. The momentum of events will overtake you.

She's wondering how long till she can have a drink. Treacly liqueur from a can. It's been several hours since her last.

Archives. Mountains of paper. Shiver. Resist.

Over, immediately. The words ricochet inside your skull.

Disregard. Time for some self-directed espionage.

You already have your task. You need only commit to it.

Negative. Gäng want spy.

REACTIONARY PESSIMISM. THE PEOPLE'S SPY IS INDOMINABLE.

Deduce why the Opera sent you.

The ciphertext. You have the pieces, you just need to put them together.

Something about the strange red disc nags at the edge of your consciousness. Perhaps the room contains other leads as well.

That numberless phone line may be worth investigating. Perhaps the room contains other leads as well.

The room remains to be searched. There may be leads to follow up on.

Even as your controller is speaking, your mind is settling back into familiar grooves. The old mechanisms slide and click into position.

A.k.a. 'The Freezer'. The Opera's labyrinthine archival complex. Where the old, useless, and discredited are consigned until they're dismissed or die of despair.

REACTIONARY MISADVENTURE.

Auto-erotic obliteration.

Tsunami of self-love.

You feel the receiver slipping from your sweaty palm.

Five years, three months, ten days. That's how long it's been since her voice was in your ear.

The exquisite work of the 'magic box', one of the proudest achievements of the Opera's Technical Services Office.