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Just explain how sorry you are, find some common ground. She might even thank you for her recent career success.

Your own, maybe?

He closes his eyes and slips beneath the surface of himself.

And yet he has constructed an entire mental apparatus just to be here again, with you.

Panicked. You've got him up against the wall of his own heart.

A one-time admission of humanity, here at the end of everything.

Though one that makes him respect you less.

Together in-theatre again -- the sweet slosh of nostalgia in the flooded basement of your brain.

At the very least, you've added a few weeks to his lifespan.

First and foremost -- his own.

The state of the Housing Campaign and the state of his life are one and the same.

This is only a philosophical conversation for one of you.

A palliative measure at best, but then again...

Only a subjugated stickler for the rules would call Eszti a 'nice lady'. Cut from the same un-fun cloth.

A blankness to the eyes, a downward twitching to the mouth. The beginnings of panic.

Not sarcasm. He's clearly proud of the depressing surroundings you find yourself in.

That's what she thinks of your 'taste'.

Tempo was a consummate appreciator of the finer things in life. Reno's treating this incarnation according to the rules of the man he already knew.

Silent treatment.

He'd give anything to hear Tempo call him a cunt just one more time.

His relief is such that it's almost a shame to correct his illusions.

Slowly, with a kind of chemotheraputic drip, the knowledge of what you have just done sinks in.

Preferably not at your friends. In fact, it might be best if you simply refrain from contact with people you don't intend to destroy.

He's awed and onboard.

He's not hiding it. He's screaming.

He should have been giving literature classes at a university, not out here, down here, doubting everything...

No. You have HOLOCENE.

Whoever it is, they produce a white hot antipathy in you.

A nuclear core of psychosis... both real and imagined...

Is it also wearing... a tiny dressing gown?

Like a child waiting for a dreadful present.

Preparing to ram his plane of reality into yours.

Each sentence reads as if it was rehearsed for an already-nodding audience.

The clinical care of the descriptions is what chills you, the obsessive attention to each crew member's nuances and weaknesses.

Eyes meet across the cabin, the same terror and wonder reflected as metal screams around them.

And girls who want boys to leave them alone.

Maybe one of these pine trees cushioned his fall...

Nothing but dead air from when you moved him.... Unless...

PSEUDOPOD's -- now even further away from him than before.

The trousers are sad. Their owner has abandoned them.

Embarrassment isn't the problem. A much darker feeling is trying to claw its way into her consciousness.

She can't believe you. She can't believe herself.

Anyone regularly listening to Bagman's sermons on reality could easily lose their grip of the thing.

Behind her concern, a note of admiration, and a small shred of hope.

She's been keeping some little lights glowing inside herself -- to guide his safe return. Now they have started to flicker, dim.

Startled by the sound of her own joy.

Her voice explodes with enthusiasm, a register so long lost to her that it crackles a little as it erupts.

It's all that matters.

She didn't believe you before. She does now.

Tough blow. The one institution that's supposed to take her seriously.

1,005 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 6 of 21