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BURNED OUT IN THE HAZE OF IT ALL LONG DISTANCE CALLS

The Illuminated Empire awakens.

The receiver buzzes warmly in your hand. In the wiry nerves of the city you just left, ideologies crash against one another like waves. Across the Developed World and beyond, telephones begin to ring...

Increasing chance of precipitation as a front of high pressure moves across the Noscorrentes Sea. The temperature is 16 and falling.

THE PARADE. FLOATS AND CONFETTI. DON'T FORGET.

Pencil sounds disconcertingly impermanent.

A cool, dry air seems to emanate from the phone line.

She's done this many times before. She'll say as little as possible. Treat it like a formality to get through the moment.

She's done this many times before. She'll say as little as possible. Treat it like a formality to get through the moment.

She's done this many times before. She'll say as little as possible. Treat it like a formality to get through the moment.

She's done this many times before. She'll say as little as possible. Treat it like a formality to get through the moment.

Further warbling would be a mistake.

Continue, he's saying.

The words circled beneath the doctor's signature return to you.

The ur-controllers. Vast, omniscient, orchestrating the entire human drama.

For a moment he seems to consider his reflection in the bottom of the tiny glass.

Collapsing the mind's conscious defences in order to channel raw cosmos into human language.

Board tilting. Your favour.

Lightly, like an artefact he's both drawn to and afraid of.

Oh god, it's another stairs-related task coming on.

... a whoosh of blood between your ears...

... a shapeless figure twisting in darkness...

You know the next words. You've been hearing them since you got here.

High-pitched, dissonant. A sound that compels you to stop it.

You can feel your own sanity pulling away from you, as though on the cusp of a black hole, stretching, spinning...

... wet, silent, like a fish behind glass...

Dust motes hang in the stale air. Unbound stars drifting in space.

You mark a distinct change in the old spy's demeanour. Gone are the cryptic circumlocutions and knowing flourishes. For once, you're on the same page.

He's in unfamiliar seas here. It's your lights he'll navigate by.

From the window you can hear the sound of two people laughing out on Orphanage Street.

Nothing facetious in his tone there.

He doesn't actually think it's 'bon' -- it's one of the strangest things he's heard in his long, strange life.

No judgment -- only the curiosity of a navigator asking another about her compass.

An emergency venting cycle; motors spinning down. The device is trying to adjust to an unexpected baseline.

The world is huge, and strange, and it is flirting with him. He is pondering the offer.

It's not about contact, it's about scale. If the universe can sustain that much empty space without collapsing, you can take another hour in your own skin.

There is no correlation between mental petitions and the fusion of distant bodies. Praying is a recursive loop.

The air is heavy, your chest tight. You've been holding your breath for approximately an eternity.

Referring to your obvious lie.

ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO PRIVATISE THAT WHICH PROPERLY BELONGS TO THE STATE.

His information was good once before. There's no reason to think it won't be again.

First, bait. Now, trap.

A senior aide with a mistress he's committed to an asylum for her own protection. A secretary who's been indiscreet with certain carbon copies. An old torturer for the Weeping Eye who was photographed taking an envelope from someone he shouldn't have.

FLIRTATIONS WITH CAPITAL ALWAYS LEAD TO UNWANTED PREGNANCIES: DEBT AND COMPOUND INTEREST.

The Bank's propaganda mob.

He's not seriously suggesting...

A devious species of lie: The entries are there but forbidden from circulation. Falsehoods and misperceptions enforced by phalanxes of smiling lawyers.

A flawless timepiece of coordination and execution. Take notes.

Above you, the last visible stars dissolve in the dawn-light. Elsewhere, the bark of a small dog muffled by a window.

3,496 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 63 of 70