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The Housing Campaign, bathed in purple light. A man in a brown jacket and no pants looks up into the face of an angel. She regards him with radiant indifference.

Upstairs, your double twitches, electrical reflex running to a dead switchboard.

She feels his eyes on her, through the bag, through the paper, the second she enters the room. She shuts the door quickly and totters back down the stairwell with a shudder.

A lonesome utility shack high above the city, its door broken on its hinge. A white cat tracks bloody prints in the dirt. Sadness overwhelming.

You've not seen the last of him. The two of you are bound by a hideous orange thread.

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

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

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

Chewing the inside of her cheek.

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

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

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.

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.

The tendrils of a watery, alien intelligence.

Somewhere in subterranean Novessa, an Opera controller's nose twitches.

On a neolithic tundra, a woman in skins stalks an aurochs. She trails behind it, leisurely, determined. The huge ungulate's knees buckle with each laboured step. She'll strike when the animal can't run anymore.

Cordoning off the whole neighborhood, all-night shifts, non-stop abuse from everyone who can't get to their corner shop, or bar, or home...

A man sprinkles dried kibbles into a bowl. His companion pads around him, brushing against his ankles, tail fluttering. Streetlights smear against the window, but the fragile machinery of routine holds the world at bay.

16:42:17: START OF TRANSCRIPT - What is that? - Oh fuck, did we -- why's it turning? - Full power. [increase in ambient noise] - I gave it full power -- the speed -- [unintelligible] - Oh my god. Oh my god.

It's her, but from a dream.

You're in the presence of a power utterly beyond your comprehension.

Final epoch of the Pleistocene age. The measured, even breath of the huntress is the only thing that could betray her presence as she stalks the dire tiger in tightening circles.

The padlock on the door breaks easily. Dust motes in the air, a sneeze, a flashlight shining around the darkened room -- threadbare velvet, faded posters, a broken glass box office window.

Afternoon matinee -- plush red carpet, the frosted glass windows of the box office reflecting warm orange light.

Grey hairs at twenty-five, a memory of the barber who came in to trim daddy's moustache twice a week... two hours does seem a long time for such a small job...

Farther south, past the fraying edges of Party Alley, a man in a crisp tracksuit climbs into a heavily-loaded tuk-tuk. He adjusts the rearview mirror and checks himself. Verdict: 'dope'.

An evil alignment of celestial bodies, the spearhead of that dread constellation hanging directly over the heads of you and your old comrades.

Make Goat Eyes reconsider his reality.

All across the world, subjects of the Illuminated Empire are looking at trees like this, and thinking of home.

Ask the paleolithic part of your mind: Would the ancient huntress stalk the megalosloth with this band?

In a small recording studio deep in the Housing Campaign, a man slips his arms into an old military-style coat. He pops a tablet of pure L-theanine. On the desk nearby, a brown paper bag, reinforced with ultra-thin foil, waits for the head that will unleash its power.

Across time and space you feel another intelligence reaching out to you: insane, methodical, murderous.

Perform the rite of forgiveness.

A heavy voice through light static: 'CASCADE only, person to person! CASCADE or nothing!'

Flicking ashes out the window.

In a faraway hotel, a man presses the button for the lift. On the nineteenth floor, something waits for him that will change his life, if only he can figure out what it means.

A feline ancestor stalks the dark, snowy forests of Skaalslaand. While the cold forces other animals to shelter, the skaalskat paces through, leaving only deep prints from thick-furred paws and the blood of its prey behind.

A woman leans out the open window, shivering in the cool evening air. She tries not to blink. They've had to pack so quickly, this is the first chance she's had to try to memorise the view she's mostly ignored for the last six years.

High upon high, the Manus Fati swivels in its stars and raises a middle finger in PSEUDOPOD's general direction.

In a grey-curtained apartment on the fringes of Novessa, a mother has not heard from her son in days. She pulls her cardigan tighter around her shoulders and tells herself the odd dream she had last night meant nothing at all.

Whips of dust blown by helicopter blades. Thud of boots on ground, billow of trench coats, steel cackle of assault rifles. The Empire Without Territory descends.

Within the hull, Ultra Violeta clasps her keyboard to her chest and stares unblinking at her damp shoes.

You can hear the prayers of the tribespeople echoing up from the pass:

A twelve year old child in the gun-crafting colonies of Dream of Rustam makes the exact same movement.

Clang. A can clattering down, cutting through the Bazaar's noise. Patrons walking around, sipping cold coffee.

WHAT WILL YOU SAY TO THAT CRUEL ANGEL --

A five-year-old girl in oversized sunglasses taps a tiny hand on her knee in perfect time with the backbeat -- emanating like a homily from the car speaker.

The last thing the peasant class of Saskia saw before the bombs in close-up -- Ultra Violeta's face winking at them from behind her trademark 'V' salute.

In a dim recording studio in the Luzian capital of Cicatriz Frontera, a young girl and an old man discuss an unfolding of light. A cultural hypernova. A map across the stars.

373 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 5 of 8