Next: the switch.

First step confirmed. Sluice cycle initiated. Next: either switch or lever.

The switch feels right.

A high-pitched whine from a motor.

Something's stopping the water from draining. Still, this is undeniably the first step.

That worked. It's draining.

The water won't drain unless it has somewhere to go.

Best guess: toggle for a humidity sensor, or pressure relief for a bypass pipe. Ignore it -- it's irrelevant.

No haptic feedback, no audible change. Best ignore this one going forward.

You could keep trying, but the smartest move is to rule out unknown variables.

This is it. Now hold down the red button.

The groan of shifting iron, muffled by masonry. Now, let the water flow.

Safety pins, refusing to yield yet.

There's a step missing. The lever, perhaps?

The mechanism's already in place. It's the water you should worry about now.

That's the sound of being technically correct. Next: the lever.

Main drive engaged.

The large pipe outside the window catches your eye again as you turn away from the console.

As you're about to turn away, you notice a large pipe out the window. Might be worth taking a closer look.

It looks exactly how you imagine the cockpit of a flying machine would.

With this you can drain the water in the canal outside and see if that mysterious door really exists.

Work this out and you should be able to drain the water outside.

The cabinets too.

Her gaze lingers on the document in front of her, but it's forced. She wants to keep her eyes on you.

Work justifies presence; any liquor is incidental.

Expired coffee, greasy condiment residue. Typewriter ink. Chemically processed wood pulp.

The poet got halfway through the critique, balled up the paper, and threw it in the bin behind them.

This rejected submission would imply that their offices are near the bin you found it in -- perhaps the building directly behind it.

A decent imitation of Cengiz Balik's style of free verse, but they could have gone harder with the adverbs.

XXs and smudged ink where the author struggled with a sticky key on the typewriter.

And their attempts to self-edit in real time as they wrote.

Old schnapps and the faded sour cologne of body odour and bleach. Soft yellow light filtered through cracked shades. The rumble of the ice machine, a hissing television.

Exactly how you remember it.

Back when you were still the old CASCADE. Pre-failure, pre-disgrace, pre-despair.

You discover your thumb rubbing itself along the numberless business card you found on your double.

Shades from another time move endlessly across the ancient wood, pickling it with nostalgia.

'It' rides into battle under polychrome banners, lance shining with the hopes of the people. 'It' wears a suit of steel. Women and homosexuals throw flowers at its feet.

No spiritual, chemical, or therapeutic substitute.

Usually, not had.

The Opera's psychomancers had high expectations for your levels of 'It', based on their initial examinations...

The bullet, the monotheist agent who fired it, all of them in on it.

THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE, AUGMENTED WITH PERFORMANCE ENHANCING ADDITIVES UNKNOWN TO CAPITALIST SCIENCE.

It's not really your answers that interest him, it's how you answer.

If there are parallel you-s out there, then life becomes merely probabilistic. You cease to be 'you' and become nothing but a point somewhere in a graph of what you might be, but never are.

A shadow existence, a purgatorial condition of unrealised possibility.

In Tsunese, spies are called 'cockroaches'. In Capoblancan, they're 'earthworms'. In every case, it is a detritivore, head-down amidst the trash of this world.

You want, therefore you are. Existence is confirmed by what it lacks.

An operant should blend seamlessly into their environment, leave no trace.

YOUR ENEMIES WILL DEFINITELY SEE YOU COMING, THEY JUST WON'T BE ABLE TO MOVE FAST ENOUGH.

And in fucking. Fucking all the time.

Checks