A.Journal

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As with all mammals, eyeball size is disproportionate to the skull that houses them, creating that adorable pleading expression.

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The discoloured wrapper depicts a red-cheeked child with a charming sledge. You haven’t seen this brand in years.

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A phone line from five years ago connects:

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Berrion bombs, like the pilots mentioned. An erasure, near noiseless.

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Hence the origins of its most abiding name.

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That must have been exactly how you looked when you first found him.

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Novessa, 81. Vodka, three-day old outfits, cigarettes. You all danced together to a half-broken speaker system in someone's kitchen. It was happiness, all the sweeter because it felt stolen.

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Planisphaerium. Transubstantiation.

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Memories of operant training, hours spent practicing modular addition. These mental muscles, long atrophied, begin to awaken.

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Operant CASCADE's penultimate expense tally included a handwritten note. 'Asset VIRTUE -- debt to the Opera: value, 1 schnapps, redeemable at any time.'

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Is there any part of you left that's still of Mircea?

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Dolphin pods are known to ingest toxic animals and copulate for recreational purposes.

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Around the words, a memory coalesces of HOLOCENE in his prime, novel held aloft.

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You recognise the patch sewn into his pants. It's the Carriles de Portofiro's logo -- the oldest transit company in the city.

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

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When you were the worst disaster of yourself.

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El Dolor de Viudas. Extremely popular at pelota matches and the main cause of Portofiro's looming epidemic of atherosclerosis.

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El signo del Vega. Angel of ancestors and bringer of the new year.

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Some astrological thing -- who can keep track of it all?

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An old-school, derogatory term for spies.

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Know them? You introduced her to them.

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An infamous image, from Nestor's 64 campaign -- the dictator, holding a baby with his own face superimposed over the infant's, moustache and all -- 'Soy Nestor'.

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In truth, it was Portofiro that got 'fucked' when the local economy collapsed and EMTERR swept in with another round of 'stabilisation' packages that only tightened its clamp on the city's collective throat.

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KINDRED. You played down the cryptonym when she asked you about it half-drunk one night. Nothing to it, you shrugged. First name that came to mind. Which wasn't a lie -- it was the first. You just also happened to mean it.

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He was born within one. Knows little else.

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There hasn't been a movie shown in this theatre in years. It was already closed when you were in Portofiro last, vacant and waiting.

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Felix Kaido... the name knocks loose some rubble of memory. Revolutionary. Aeroplane. Tragic end.

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By night, the Dreameater Chrisom drinks the tears of sleeping birds. By day, its brilliant ventral display wards off its natural predators.

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Simple: the strike of a metal pin ignites the bullet's firing cartridge. Having nowhere else to go, the energy from that contained explosion pushes the bullet out of the gun's muzzle.

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If you hit the bullet hard enough it flies towards your enemy.

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The first tram ride into Portofiro, HOLOCENE at your side, face turned to the window, giving a twenty minute answer to one of the world's most common questions.

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Looking at the two girls, you are reminded that all your close relationships have ended in either tragedy or miscommunication, usually both.

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Your mother's standard load out was also a callomanic.

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A classic and storied CASCADE tactic. See also: the time you had six months to get your parent or guardian to fill out a permission slip for a class trip to the Hothica Lighthouse.

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Based on the reports from Constanz and Melita, he certainly wasn't like this before.

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It's exactly the way those kids learn the lore from their wolf show -- fiction imbibed with a seriousness that outstrips anything in real life.

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An off-hand reference to Portofiro's colonial past.

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There's a lot of smog and granite cloud in Novessa... but you can see more stars than you might think.

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You were a full world away. Counting down days in cigarette stubs -- a thick curtain drawn over Novessa, watching a phone that never rang.

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A familiar tick. Like he's caught a glimpse of an alternate future and can't look back.

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Sixteen-years-old, physical education class. Mia Holloway climbing the rope ladder directly above you. Panties, constellation pattern, eking loose from sweat-damp gym shorts.

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'What is this? Arrête! Get off me!'

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The iron artery that was intended to link Portofiro with La Luz, until the collapse of the Old Luzian Empire prior to Year Zero. The ruins became an infamous suicide spot in the 50s.

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Education: University of Landau (Degree incomplete). Course of study: Modern economy (maternal pressure).

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Preferred vices, mother: Nicotine, alcohol, 'diet shakes'. No known history of solvent abuse ('low-class').

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No references found under 'mother' and 'abuse, physical' ('low-class'). 'Abuse, verbal' contains frequent references to 'withholding affection' and 'withering criticism'.

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Your mother once tried it to keep her breasts from sagging.

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Your experiences are not universal.