You must be wondering what happened to Pony.

I don’t blame you. I’m partial to her too, and her story left off on a cliffhanger. You must have been waiting to find out what happened for a very long time.

You will have had plenty of time to replay your favorite moments, to talk with your friends, to ask what-ifs, and once you had exhausted the archives, to speculate about what would happen next.

Did you know that speculate shares a root with speculum, as in mirror, or looking-glass? That’s also where we get spectral, as in ghostly. It all comes from the Latin specio: observe, watch, behold.

That’s all that ghosts can do. They watch.

(You’re not laughing. You should tell that joke to your blonde friend. She loves beholders.)

I’m leading you on, of course. It’s only that it isn’t the kind of thing you talk about in polite company, and I know you consider yourself polite.

Well, I’ll keep you waiting no longer.

Luckily for you, I don’t mind being rude in the service of a good story.

Where did we leave off? I can hardly remember. It’s been such a long time.

Pony was supposed to live.

She was supposed to have been brought into the game that Egress was preparing for them, the nest that it had built out of the Earth-twigs all the players had brought it, where she and her friends would hatch the egg of a new world. She had been griefed in the big showdown by the so-called “Prince of Breath,” that wannabe mastermind selling out the world to capital; and the “Thief of Life,” that asshole player-killer with endgame armor and a real sword; who both apparently hated Asian people or trans people or women (was she women?) or all of the above, and all the colors had faded out of the world through the sharp pain in her belly, and all her friends had risen outward and away like she was falling through the level geometry.

She wandered the glitch hell of null textures and fragmented game data, confused and afraid, even calling out to the ?Who for help — the digital devil she thought Friday morning she could outsmart and Save the World, only to end up spilling her guts to her late Saturday night, hopelessly obsessed and desperate for someone to spill to, and by Sunday morning wear the glitch goddess’ dress and makeup to this super fancy gala, in front of her friends and enemies and everyone, as the Key, the Opener of the Mercy Gate, the Black Jewel in Her Crown — and now she was dead, or might as well be, and her friends were going to have to Save the World or surrender to the ?Who’s Mercy without her.

It didn’t turn out that way. There were other glitch-ghost Egress players like her, clipped out of the session and wandering the broken void in groups, and they found her and helped her; a gearhead rockabilly named Maud with a microphone on her shirt brought her out of her panic spiral, and an entomology freshman named Yuli wearing a Happy Human badge explained why it was unlikely that they were actually dead. She saw a ghost, a real(?) ghost, Iris’ dead friend Victor in their Harajuku replica gothic finery looming between the living world of gameplay and the glitch hell, and through the medium of Victor she made contact with Iris and the others. Iris kept her talking about how they were going to rescue her and the others too, but also about their hometowns, and school, and Pony’s dress, and the music she liked, and what she wanted to do when this was over, and all of that.

Victor’s ghost had apparently been linksprited together with the [Ancient of Oceansong], a Link Iris had made with the recorded music of a pre-human squid…? Pony missed the details but riffed with Iris about Salt Catalog’s infamous profile text: this user claims to be a [male | female | squid]

(like Pony/stringedMaven, Iris/erstwhileImperatrix’s profile said squid.)

Iris and the new Ancestor Siren (AKA Victorsprite) came up with a convoluted plan to have Pony, via Iris’ mysterious Antlermagic and the ghostly AS/VS, possess Axel’s uncanny synthetic Ponysprite, who would then pilot the robotic Victordoll body that Sonya had crafted with Chenoweth’s President of Student Council/Prince of Breath — the point was, Pony was coming into the Medium with everyone else, and the other glitched-out player ghosts were coming along with her: Key Edition privilege.

And it almost worked.

Beau knocked back the glitchstep extinction meteor with frame-perfect execution, Axel hijacked the ?Who’s honeytrap Mercy Gate using zir and morningWard’s experimental ?Autodialer, Iris’ prismatic lantern pointed a way through, mW panicked at the prospect of betraying her evil older online girlfriend until Pony extended her trust personally, the glitch goddess coped and seethed on every screen in New Neo City and swore deathless vengeance on humanity for blocking her escape, and Ruby and her Weaver-Bennu-sprite sailed them all along the prismatic path through the jailbroken Gate, her flight cloak catching the breeze. They had broken into the Medium through the backdoor, without the ?Who’s wicked tendrils worming their way through first. Pony, her robot body wearing her black Key Edition Egress card manufacted into a ribbon, floated in the abstract James Turrell lightspace sea of potential with the others. Instructing the game’s metaphysical interface to bring in every Egress player in the lobby (Ruby, Axel, Iris, mW, Beau, and herself) and all that they were carrying (including Sonya, Sully, Azrael, Lucia, and freaked-out Laika,) but ban the corrupted data of the ?Who, the Key player initiated the session.

Then things got staticky. The connection fuzzed. And Pony was back in her glitch-ghost body, white eyes wide, in the void of fragments and null textures, with the other stranded players all wondering why they weren’t in the session. There were no answers, no way of contacting the session or Earth or anywhere else, nothing but a loading message newly looming in the skybox:

Waiting to Enter . . .

art by ko-fi.com/puzzleroom

There were less than twenty of them. This group wasn’t every player who had failed to enter, just those who had somehow been [null]’d out of the game, or reality. Like Pony. Like the player who had sent her the Blue Honey at Ms. Tea, whose voice she had heard in the memory flowers at the Friendship Garden, whose abandoned Warp Skates Pony had taken, the one who the [null] SERPENT said had been Removed From The Session Without The Finality Of Death.

(that player was here, too: Nico Maraes, Cyan, an exchange student into hyperpop, a red herring in the end but happy enough to meet her and gracious about her taking his warp skates.)

Dead or not, they didn’t need to eat. Their bodies, familiar but lacking substance, didn’t grow tired or thirsty, not physically. Floating or walking was a matter of perspective. They hopped between floating islets in the glitch-void, combing every substantial piece of a [null]’d player’s half-digested Node for answers to what had happened, what went wrong, how they could fix it and get things back to normal. Some of them still thought this was part of the challenge. They started calling it the Shadow Realm, like morningWard’s FAQ had suggested; it was less upsetting than being in “glitch hell.”

It didn’t take long, relatively speaking, for them to realize that the floating panes of null texture could become like mirrors. They could reflect memories into little bubbles one could visit: the living room or club room or common room, a sunny summer day in the soybean field, the library whose stacks one knew by heart. Pony was the one who realized that she could draw things out of the reflections, pulling out the memory of Wolf Dad’s armchair to sit on in the void, or white noise to cover the intermittent static howl. With the right technique, one could combine disparate reflections together: this house on that block, these clothes on their body, friends swapping places or edition colors, two dozen ambient samples combined into one song.

Pony didn’t like being the center of attention after faceplanting so hard, and the others explored the mirrors more.

Hana Greene, Magenta, made a meadow for their Count My Sheep fanlambs to bounce in. Brit Mowray, Cyan, climbed variants on Takeshi’s Castle to stay rooted in his body memory. Tali Ratner, Yellow, made emotional breakcore from cringe TV samples, as she had in life.

Maud Maddox, slapbackWildcat, the rockabilly Yellow edition player who did makeup tutorial videos, reflected a memory of a go-kart track and stocked it with ever more fantastical monster trucks; she taught Pony how to reflect duochrome lipstick and polish and wield a tire iron right.

Mark Adams, miniatureYankee, a Cyan history enthusiast into dioramas and model trains, recreated his house in famously eldritch Seven Gables; Pony didn’t believe his witchy Sis really left out an elaborate Halloween display 365 days a year until Mark showed him the pumpkins.

Yuli Bashar, eusocialChordate, the humanist Magenta player into entomology and utopian communities, had the idea to draw mirror-things and glitch-flotsam together into one central location: the Lighthouse, a place that they could always see, where everyone could come back to from anywhere in the Shadow Realm for companionship and the reflection of a hot sandwich (for example.) Something to keep them anchored in community, so no one would get lost in the panes.

There was nothing truly new in the Shadow Realm. There were games to play, reflections of others’ experiences that someone hadn’t seen yet, iterations on themes and increasingly well-crafted retellings of stories, but nothing that could ever move them forward. An early fad for Egress fan-sessions fell out of favor when no one could say what would happen if they won. They swapped theories and wondered what this place was, when they would enter, if they would enter, what would happen next.

Pony had recreated the memory of a 7th grade trip to Hirano, Japan, donor city of Forest Lake’s Friendship Garden, where Fox Dad’s family was from. The reflection had a warmth that she would curl into like a weighted blanket, sitting in the stands of the old Winter Games stadium, eating after-school yogurt rice or her blurry memories of takoyaki. Everyone was welcome, but Mark was especially charmed by it. He would reflect chunks of it into his own pane, iterating and tweaking her copied memory like a diorama to make it even more picturesque, even more charming, even more nostalgic.

She walked with him through her grand-aunt’s tree-lined neighborhood, the coziness turned up 25%, while a stray never-cat with “walking” subtracted from its reflection glided above them. He explained his theory that the Shadow Realm was a husk that the ?Who had left behind, some kind of para-real eggshell she’d cracked when she first merged with a rotary phone, or whatever. Pony wondered if wearing the CMYK dress the ?Who had sent her, the one she just knew was cursed, was the reason she was trapped here — lingering corrupted data rejected by the session at her Key command, or something. Mark said that sounded like undigested Catholic school guilt, and that he didn’t think Pony was in hell because she wore a dress. Besides, he reasoned, they were all stranded here, not trapped, and not just her. They were all looking for a way out together.

That wasn’t really true. They were already factionalizing. Pony could see it in the cliques forming at the Lighthouse. It started with a debate over whether this place ought to be called Spectopia instead of the Shadow Realm, since they were making a home of it now, and Shadow Realm was creepy. There were the ones like Brit focused on the Waiting to Enter . . . message, refusing to miss their moment with distractions, whom the others jokingly called the Queue. There were the ones like Hana who wanted to make the most of this strange impossible Spectopia, building elaborate reflection-bubbles and diving deeper and deeper into the panes, whom the others worriedly called Narcissists. And there were the ones like Tali who were sick of waiting and sick of distractions, who wanted to find some way to leave the Shadow Realm on their own terms for farther shores, who called themselves Seekers, which everyone else just hated. Mark was increasingly with the last clique.

Pony still locked up when she had to choose between her friends. (How could she not? Nothing could change here.) She avoided the pizza mixers organized by Yuli and her reflection duplicates at the Lighthouse (where toppings were chosen by Condorcet method) — with Mark off Seeking all the time, there was no one to talk to. She retreated instead into panes within panes, where she had the quiet place to play out her fascinations and unanswered questions without having to explain. The others started to worry that she was going Narcissist, but she had never felt more creative.

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Year Two | Hamhambone

They were all gathered in Hirano 6.0, a favorite well-crafted reflection to relax at peak efficiency. The Waiting to Enter . . . message had rotated its interface loading wheel a quarter-turn, and the Queue was ecstatic. Yuli and her Yulis had organized an informational pizza social to discuss the implications. Never-pigeons played at eating, and deep reflections of remembered people from a hundred memories mingled without acting substantially. Pony hadn’t been to an informational pizza social since Mark and a few other Seekers had all left together from the Lighthouse for the edge of the world. Tali was handing out buttons that said Spectopia Year Two: “And Loving It!!” Hana wore one with a big smile, which agitated Nico; they were soon bickering.

Pony turned a button over in her hand. Year two? That couldn’t be right, could it?

The clocks and calendars in Spectopia weren’t reliable; Pony knew better than anyone that you could make them say anything you wanted. She listened to Tali telling some of the Yulis about a tempo machine she had set up in the Lighthouse, tracking time through loops of a known duration. The Yulis quickly self-organized into separate Timekeeping Committees to check the work of the others. Pony was skeptical. She didn’t know about all that.

She had stopped wearing the CMYK dress, and started making new outfits from reflected aspects of others’ wardrobes. Yuli’s overalls, Hana’s Count My Sheep symbol, Maud’s eyeliner. Being a copycat was becoming second nature; she was always borrowing clothes from other girls. She often replayed variations on the night after her Gamer Date with Ruby, when her friend was about to offer her new clothes to wear, but her imagination limited the fantasy; she wasn’t actually Ruby and could only imagine so many outfits on her own.

Mark had been the one to design this last 6.0 refinement of Pony’s Hirano reflection before he left his worldbuilding phase behind to go Seeking. Maybe that was why he chose this reflection of a scenic backstreet to suddenly return in, wearing a completely new look. Instead of a t-shirt with an iconic construction brick, he wore a gray hooded cloak over what looked like pajama pants, and a tabard with stark white needle-and-thread heraldry on cloth deeper black than her memory of night. (and bright green shoes. Mark would never make bright green shoes. He wouldn’t even think of them. Pony was sure.)

Mark told them that he and the other Seekers had traveled through the glitch-void, far beyond the sight of the Lighthouse, but that on the edges of its contextual gravity, they had found guardians waiting for them. Not like the unremembered never-dogs and never-owls that hopped and flickered through the panes, emerging from the imperfect seams of reflections without some aspect of their nature. These were creatures that couldn’t ever have really been. He said they were “least unlike dragons.”

The guardians had encircled and captured most of the Seekers when they tried to break through. Perhaps the ?Who had left them there, or they had emerged from fractured mirrors, but Mark didn’t stay to ask. He managed to push past them, sailing further and further into the void with the glitch-dragons always in pursuit. He had gone until he found a mirror on the edge of the world, if this place was a world. In the horizon mirror he saw himself, wearing these fantastical video-gamey clothes, looking not exhausted and afraid and lonely but confident. Powerful. Better.

Somehow, through a tremendous act of will and serendipity, Mark and what he called his “Best Self” had…switched, or broken through, or become each other. He told the gathered players that he couldn’t quite explain without doing it, and anyway he thought it was different for everyone. What he knew, dead certain, was that he was the Herald of Strings, and his task was to gather them to lead a rescue of the captured Seekers, and for all of them together to escape the Shadow Realm. (or, he added, Spectopia.)

Pony walked through the path-optimized, The Wind Rises-inspired 6.0 edition of her grand-aunt’s tree-lined neighborhood in her 7th grade family trip to Hirano. Mark glided alongside her, zipping from one landing after another without touching the stairs. He said that it was especially important that Pony join him in leaving this place behind; this was one of the things that he had come to Herald. It was not bringing out the best in her, he said.

She told him, in confidence, that she was still not completely sure that he was real, not just some never-Mark conjured from the panes. He told her, floating, that he was from the panes: he was someone new, a possibility born from the reflections, that he’d left mortal Mark’s selfness behind to become. Clinging to their mortal selfness in this place, and even to the roles assigned to them by Egress and its alternate rules for reality, was holding them back from transcending boundaries. If the world of Spectopia was possible, what else could they create in the gaps opened by play? Who else could they become?

Pony listened to the sound of wind chimes from empty porches. She had heard them so very many times here, drawn from her memories, but drawn-out or pitch-tuned or sampled into other ambient sounds. She explained to Mark her problem of coming up with new outfits in her deeper panes. How could it be possible that anything in Spectopia was new, when it was all only a reflection? The story of her life was waiting to happen in the game, with her friends. She was afraid that venturing into the void in search of an escape would only take her further away from where she was supposed to be.

This reply saddened and worried Mark, and he told her so. He told her that her answer only underlined for him the importance of getting her out of this place. She was losing touch, tied up in excuses for not changing anything, just gazing into her own reflection. She could replay everything that had happened to her, but she was refusing the chance to try anything new, to create new memories that she hadn’t imagined before.

Pony countered that the other Seekers had tried to create new memories in this place, to become new people, and according to him, it had ended with them trapped in the semi-metaphorical jaws of a digital dragon, not even a cozy blanket of a reflection to sip tea or play cello in. Was she supposed to get chewed up by a data dragon out in the void when the loading screen had finally just ticked over a quarter-turn? No thank you, mister!

Mark, frustrated, reminded Pony with brevity and force that there was more to their lives than that fucking evil game they had played for a weekend. Pony disagreed, surprising even herself. She wasn’t going to let go of Egress and the world it could make so easily.

The two of them looked up at the Waiting to Enter . . . message from the top of the Lighthouse. Brit was sitting cross-legged on a woven mat, gazing at the loading screen from behind sunglasses. Below, Nico and Tali were mustering with the rest of a new round of Seekers in the ring-shaped plaza where they gathered for games and the Yulis’ endless chem-free student-housing icebreaker socials. They would be leaving for the dragons soon, and past them, the horizon mirror.

In a final appeal, Mark asked Pony to remember how she felt when she first put on her CMYK dress on that last morning on Earth. It may have been scary, facing a break from life so far, but wasn’t there excitement and potential even more than that? What kind of life had she wanted for herself when she put on that dress?

Well?

You’ve heard the story so far. You must have some idea of our Pony in your head by now.

What do you think she decided to do?

Go on. I won’t be offended. I’m curious, too.

Marionettes and Silence | Hamhambone

Ruby arrived in the Land of Marionettes and Silence, a hollow world of cloth curtains and wooden stages, stretched over a dark backstage void criss-crossed with strings, wires, and threads. Its puppetlings, big and small, had been forced by tyrannical Atropos to perform ‘strategy simulations’ for his Verapier clients, and their usual joyful good cheer had hushed to a fearful gloomy quiet. She and Azræl had spawned here in her block-sized Bastion, the Glamour Labyrinth, and Verapier’s rude agents had noticed. Azræl, Beau’s companion muse, was in peril!

♣ Rider, Draw Your Weapon!

♣ Rider, Pursue the Foe!

With Eggplant Scrivener’s guidance, Ruby dispatched a barrel-of-monkeys of line-riding Yellion bandits, preventing their making a damsel of Azræl. (She cheesed the rescue with her sequence-breaking Flight Cloak, to ES’ delight.) Ignoring the Scrivener’s guidance to Pursue the escaping imps, she explored her transported Glamour Labyrinth with Azræl, getting to know Beau’s best friend: a midwest emoboy into the occult. As they picked up food and health-restoring bandages at a [Glambini], Ruby caught Beau’s muse up on the story so far and asked whether he was afraid, but he was confident things would work out — they usually did in games like this. In her transported bedroom, she made plans to manufact Bastion defenses, and more importantly a wardrobifier: they hadn’t spawned with fresh clothes.

Ooze and Coral | Hamhambone

Axel arrived in the Land of Ooze and Coral, an ocean world of viscous goo around a living core of megabraincoral, pierced by towering serverquills linked by networks of pipes and tunnels. Its slimelings conducted scientific research in their quills, but they had been evicted by jealous Charybdis to make room for Vessail occupiers turning the world into a vibes-based mystic nature preserve. Ze and Sully had spawned here on the Mother Ship, zir UFO-shaped science-platform Bastion, and Vessail’s meddling patrols had noticed. Sully, Ruby’s tamed rival, was in peril!

♠ Genius.

♠ You’ll Learn More If You Hang Back and Let This Rescue Play Out.

♠ Yeah.

♠ I’m Your Advisor.

♠ I’m on Verapier Yes.

♠ My Name’s Flaxen Factotum.

♠ Try Tagging Enemies With Your O. Specs to Follow Them.

FF’s tactical advice about zir Oscillispecs’ tracking capabilities proved to be sound. Still, Axel was wary of mysterious outside guidance after zir experience with 💹. Ze pinged morningWard to consult, but there had been no activity from her since they had entered the Medium. erstwhileImperatrix displayed as AFK with an obsolete holiday-reindeer-themed away message. Ze hovered over timelostPlayboy in Convoke, but…it just didn’t feel like the right time to ask her for help.

♠ Let’s Talk About Upgrading Your Strife Specibus.

Flaxen Factotum would play this customer carefully.

♠ Loud and Clear Genius.

♠ You Can Contact Me at This Frequency Any Time.

Axel then decided to upgrade zir weapon and let the kidnap/rescue quest advance to the next stage anyway. It wasn’t a bad idea. While the tagged Cyant aquabots took a bubble-caged Sully back to their base across the ooze sea, ze swapped the merely-dazzling Party Cannon in zir pyrokind strife deck for more substantial Delay Bombs, which would require some leveling in to achieve their potential.

Exploring the Mother Ship (diamond-eyed Yellion seagulls circling the platform where future upgrades might be unlocked) led zir to a support strut puzzle where ze unlocked a pipeline that led zir (balled up like a spindash) beneath the ooze, glimpsing slimelife and the distant glow of deep braincoral, evading Cyanemone defenses, and being spat out on the lowest level (Box Processing) of the occupied serverquill where Sully had been taken. Zir infiltration was challenging, memorizing patrol patterns and box-conveyor paths and bomb fuse lengths to catch guards by surprise.

Ze barely made it through the first few challenge floors. Unwilling to ask for help but refusing to abandon the quest, the Genius advanced up the quill, finally infiltrating the Detention Tank where Sully was being held in a large fishbowl designed for slimeling incarceration. Cracking the glass with an explosion leveled up zir Delay Bomb strife card to potent Wave Bombs, but the noise only led to Axel being captured as well.

Toxins and Daisies | Hamhambone

Iris arrived in the Land of Toxins and Daisies, a slain world of poisoned soil and junked megatech, pushing up black and white flowers in a self-balancing ecology of fractal spirals. Its mechalings tended the daisies to protect the world’s epochal bioremediation, but they had been scattered by callous Pluto to offer its buried machinery to Verge manufactors picking its bones for ancient salvage. She, Lucia, and Laika had spawned here in the Balefire Sanctum, her cozy-mystic lighthouse Bastion, and Verge’s brash scavengers had noticed. Lucia, Axel’s lady in the tower, was in peril!

♥ Dryad, Will You Travel Through the Dark Flowers, or the Light?

Lucia was thrown over a raiding Magentimp’s shoulder, thrilled at the adventure of it all, and carried away on a blazecycle while Iris gave chase. Quickly outpaced on foot by its Vergian blaze engine, Iris ventured out along the spiral boundary between white and black daisy fields to avoid getting lost, with Laika bounding alongside. Cornflower Dæmon coaxed Iris into choosing either light or dark instead of pleasing both sides. She chose the light-colored field, and manufacted a daisychain ladder to climb a crag that turned out to be bleached-white ancient junk.

♥ Dryad, Is It Beautiful up There?

CD invited her to admire the landscape. Iris tearfully appreciated the life on this dead planet, fragile but blooming, tended by mechaling gardeners in mourning faithful memory of the world gone by.

♥ Does It Make You Miss Your Home?

On her high vantage, Iris spotted Lucia and her captors returning to a Verge outpost. She used her Prismatic Lamp’s scorching ray to destroy the Magentimps, and CD asked:

♥ Dryad, Will You Burn Their Camp, or Let Them Regroup?

But she resisted their suggestion, instead shifting the Lamp into a beacon to lead Lucia to a mechaling caravan. She and Laika joined Lucia and the caravan on the way back to the Balefire Sanctum, talking to the wildlife-tending robots about the long history of the world they had been programmed to tend in their forerunners’ name. She messaged Beau all about it, but he didn’t reply.

Lunar Lackadaisy | Hamhambone

In her studio, Eggplant Scrivener’s Book showed a panel of the Rider of Strings asleep on her bed. ES twirled her wand-quill, annoyed — there was more questing to do, but fine. She closed the Book for the night, set it aside on her desk, and laid out fresh paper to draft blueprints for Glamour Labyrinth tactical defense solutions. She would pester the Rider to get started on them in the morning.

A winged shadow in bell sleeves swooped past her window.

With the Dryad asleep as well, Cyan Sovereign had reclaimed the Orb and tasked his tricky Cornflower Dæmon with hand-delivering a letter to the Verge palace, sealed and scented by the Sovereign himself. They were to personally ensure its receipt by the Magenta Marquise, yet not let the Marquise be seen with an agent of Vessail, for propriety’s sake between their rival moons. How exactly she was supposed to do that was vague — Cyan Sovereign was less about strategy or cunning, more about emotional weight.

The soulbound Dæmon traced a secret branch of the ancient portal network to the Verge palace portrait gallery; from there, she was on her own. Evading pursuit through twisty halls by lawful Magentogres, CD ducked into the first room they saw: ES’ studio, of course.

A silly and fearsome struggle ensued. Barely keeping the furious ES at bay with their long arms and beanpole stature, CD (out of curiosity) swiped the well-bound Book from ES’ desk and barreled out the open window holding both it and the letter. ES watched her fall…then catch a breeze and glide back up on dæmonwings, disappearing behind a skyscraper gargoyle.

The palace was on alert, mail delivery prospects were looking grim, and CD couldn’t fly forever. Especially while trying to flip through this fascinating magical book in midair. They aimed for a balcony with an open arch high on the tower. As it happened, chance’s clock had struck twice: this was the palace bedroom of a dreamer who, roused by CD tumbling through her window, was just then waking up.

They flew speedily away again, letter relinquished and Book retained, leaving the Dreaming Rider to finish their delivery. There would be a backup portal somewhere on Verge to take them back home. The old and twisty network held many places to hide.

Some of its twists led into the Static, the veil of wreckage that looked like twinkling stars from a distance, and jagged junk datascapes up close. Outcast Chromatics hid within: the Exiles, the Colorless, drained of their hue as punishment but escaping with their soulstones intact to seek sodality among their outlaw kin, and sometimes to plot revenge. There were rare and long-forgotten portals leading to places beyond the Static altogether, faraway places in the outer negative space of the Medium of Colors Trifold. What went on in those Static-shrouded worlds, hidden from the lunar Chromatic domains, hidden even from the Honorees in the inner Medium?

Æåea. The world-ocean. The dream-sea. The waters of rebirth and endless potential, the center of the board, and the font-to-be of a new creation.

The players have seen it already in their dreams. Here, in the Medium of Colors Trifold, it is more real and true than the bygone world whose terminal Questing Game elevated six Nominees to Honorees. Æåea is the prize for this Game.

Three Moons dream of Æåea as well: Cyan Vessail, Moon of Cups and Water; Magenta Verge, Moon of Wands and Fire; and Yellow Verapier, Moon of Swords and Air. These are the lunar domains of the Chromatics, living constructs made of light and the memories harvested from the Questing Game: livelier than mere imps and ogres, but each bound to a soulstone from which their light-forms blossom. They and their Moons are chained to their Birthstone, its true name forgotten, glitched and lost and ruined like the world of the Questing Game. Yet they yearn to transcend, to escape their chains and exile enmities. Once in a season, a Moon is Eclipsed by Æåea, submerged beneath its chimerical waters, and granted visions of worlds that were and are and yet may be.

Around Æåea, three little worlds orbit, which the Chromatics call the Land of Toxins and Daisies, the Land of Marionettes and Silence, and the Land of Ooze and Coral. These worlds have their own Lings — mechalings, puppetlings, and slimelings respectively — with their own ways, their own homes, and their own treasures. The Chromatics, spurred by Æåean dreams, would use these Lands and their Lings to fuel their ambitions — to grow wise and bold and mighty, to suborn their rival Moons, and at last to lead their Honorees into a new world crafted in their image.

Outside the orbit of these worlds lies the fragments of junk and ruins called the Static. Whether it came from the wreckage of the Chromatic Birthstone, the glitched initiation of the session itself, or one begetting the other… the Static is impenetrable. It’s a gravitational maze to even get light through, much less navigate a vessel without being glitched out by a meteor of malformed data. Some secretive or desperate Chromatics have tried carving out their own outposts here. Even without a lunar scheme, all kinds of things can get lost. Or are they just forgotten?

And beyond the Static… I haven’t been there myself. But there must be something, right?

How was that? Pretty cool, right?

I can project all kinds of things onto the ceiling in here. It’s like a planetarium where I’m the one who makes the show! Not just space and planets and fantasy game kingdoms, either. I’ve gotten pretty good at it!

I’ve been improving my narrative voice, too. Actually, I used to have a really bad stammer. Did you know that about me?

When I got nervous or overexcited or I didn’t know what to say next, my tongue would get caught on a word, or just a syllable. I would repeat the word over and over until I noticed it was happening and I could try to stop talking and reset.

I became deeply self-conscious. I hated not knowing why my body was doing something I didn’t want it to do. I imagined myself as a broken machine that didn’t know how to fix itself.

You can imagine the kinds of things that other kids used to say about it, too. Making fun of how I talked, repeating things back at me, calling me - (um) - the R-word and stuff like that. I felt like there was something wrong with me.

I guess that’s why I always wanted to talk with my friends over text instead.

I’ve had a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to practice a technique that I had learned in speech classes to overcome my stammer. I would make recordings of myself reading from a text, or reciting a poem or lyrics from a song, or sometimes simply speaking extemporaneously about whatever I was thinking about. I would play them back for myself — and I used to hate hearing my deep voice, especially on a recording, so that was hard for me already!

I would play them back for myself, all the way through, and every time I heard myself stammer, I would record the same thing again. I would repeat this process until I had a perfect recording. Then, I would play back my perfect recording in a room, again and again, so that I could hear myself getting it right. I would know that it was possible for me to get it right. That I could enunciate my speech correctly.

Um, sorry. I mean, correctly enunciate my speech. I’m still working on not ending a sentence with an adverb.

I made so many recordings, you seriously have no idea. I could have filled that wall with records in boxes on shelves. I really did record them that way, too. It was the easiest way to focus on it.

Oh, actually, I do have some real records in here! This is perfect for what I wanted to do. I can even show you my expansive variety of INTERESTS! 8)

As you can see, there’s an authentic record player brought here from Verge. All of the audio equipment they manufact must be some legacy of the Magenta shoutkind specibus data. Over here, I have a cute lamp and glazed tea set from Vessail, too. You must have seen plenty of Verapier décor on the way in: all those weapons, and the surveillance lenses. The little cartoon woodpecker, too. And in this box…

They’re mixed in with all these old SITTING FRIAR records from New Zealand. Um, I have APOLLO 18 by THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS, and FLAMBOYANT by DORIAN ELECTRA, and ELECTRA HEART by MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS, and there’s a few by YO-YO MA…

(of course there’s BACCHANALIA: THE ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST RECORDING…)

(and behind that are the VIDEO GAME OSTs…and the RETRO PASTICHE PSEUDO OSTs…)

. . .

Do not leave before I dismiss you.

. . .

Okay! Thanks so much for waiting! Here it is!

Expository Theatre | Hamhambone

There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom.

They expected to see the Earth being destroyed by the glitch meteor after the humans entered the Medium, but they didn’t! They saw Beau bat it back into orbit instead, and the Earth not at all in smithereens. Though battered, the homeworld that had hosted the Questing Game remained alive.

The gathered Magenta Chromatics vigorously debated the meaning of this omen. Æåean visions had long predicted the destruction of the Earth as the tragic price of the Questing Game. Lunar poets felt great kinship and sympathy for the Honorees for the shared loss of Earth and the Birthstone, and each Moon swore to be the young heroes’ greatest ally in a world that had orphaned them. If their world had not been destroyed after all, if they might seek to somehow return…what did that mean for the lunar ambition to make a new world entire? What would become of the Game among the Honorees that carried all their hopes?

While the storied Mauve Architect and Wisteria Thespian pondered implications, Eggplant Scrivener, a meagre but ambitious scribe tasked by the daily Verge Voice (shoutkind and papercraft Verge had extensive public media) with recording the dignitaries’ reactions to the Eclipse, had the foresight to immediately bring the story to the Magenta Marquise herself. She hurried out of Verge’s great tower through the city-moon streets, past classical escalator statuary and purple-glowing Blaze Engines decked with hanging flags, dismounting her mass transit mecha-sheep only long enough to scoop her Mulberry Editor (“i want pictures of the honorees!! the rider front and center!! but a crowd shot of the other ones!!”) with a late revision to the Eclipse edition headline:

A papercraft flyer yelled for by ME brought ES straight to the palace aerie, where lawgiving Magentogres escorted her to the Marquise’s listening chamber. The Marquise, once a dashing admiral commanding frontier skirmishes against Vessail and Verapier, had returned home to usurp her Monarch in a moment of vulnerability, just as her predecessor had done. She wore an eyepatch and dress uniform and resembled Ms. Wheeler, Ruby’s fashion design mentor and the Linked [Empress of Threads]. (At that moment, MM was listening intently to bass-heavy music through a vibration-catching tined wand. She made a point to listen to her subjects’ music, as a censor and critic and enthusiast. If no one else listened, she would.)

Eggplant Scrivener was the first to relay what had happened, showing her liege the notes she had personally scrivened from the Eclipse. The Marquise perused the report with interest, troubled by the news yet favorably impressed by the quality scrivening. Events were not proceeding as she had foreseen. Cyan Sovereign, the softhearted simp, would urge restraint and meditation as always, leaving both Verge and Vessail open to the kingslayers of Verapier. But, Magenta Marquise monologued, Verge are no slaves to prophecy…they defy it!! They would seize the present and write their own destiny!

The Marquise presented Eggplant Scrivener with an enchanted Book from the palace library, and a wand-quill with which to write. The Honorees would be tempted now to look backward rather than play the Game. From Æåean visions, the Rider of Strings had been recalcitrant about her homeworld’s Questing Game already. Magenta Marquise could respect defiance, but she would not accept refusal of the call. The Rider would simply need the proper prompting to push her into action, for all their sakes, before their enemies took advantage of idleness.

Ushered to a private palace studio in which to work, Eggplant Scrivener opened the Book. It was an illustrated storybook with inset panels of the Rider’s adventures and narrative passages describing what had happened so far. ES flipped through the archives, soon developing ideas and schemes of her own, and restless to get started, picked up her wand-quill and began to write…

Things proceeded much the same on Verapier. In an awninged cafe, the quiet proprietor Flaxen Factotum waved his last regular out the door, having played a strategy game with the Biscotti Busybody over fresh-decanted Grendeldew to stimulate their ludic intellects. Needless to say, they had exchanged tips and rumors whilst orbing the grid. In his modest yet comfortable upstairs apartment, FF found a letter waiting for him with an all-too-familiar seal.

Reading the letter was a formality: he was needed. He was being called by his patron for service, the one who had rewarded him with this humble corner cafe and the home above it, who kept his ace in his pocket. Flaxen Factotum, in addition to being a trusted barista, was the very turncoat kingslayer who had broken the soulstone of Verapier’s former Yellow Harlequin and elevated the radically mercantile Gold Executor to his throneless seat.

The message was plain: it was time to go back to the old him.

You will by now have met my draconic lord yourself. You may imagine that an audience with him is much the same now as then.

Suffice to say that I, who now serve the Gold Executor as his Loyal Servant, am no closer to him than was Flaxen Factotum, and I do not relish my employer’s personal attention. He is master-among-equals of the coulroclasts, the clown crushers; his sense of humor is not renowned.

A kingslayer spy in the Verge palace had whispered of their plans. Flaxen Factotum was ordered to seize the initiative, commanding the Yellow Honoree himself. FF, whose modesty was outdone by his cunning, who Did The Work, had previously (through a cut-out) hired the shrouded cluehound PINCER X to investigate the absconding of the Yellow Harlequin’s dispossessed heir, the EX-PRINCE. Flaxen Factotum chased leads through Verapier’s saffron streets, past temples of free exchange (where traded Amber Haggler et al) beneath brass bladespires and crushed clownuments, until a pachyderm Ochre Sufferer pointed him to the cluehound’s office — in the Prime Spire, Verapier’s great tower, resembling lost Earth’s Fire Tower in West Clowncrest on a much grander scale.

Harboring a notion already that PINCER X was in truth the absent PRINCEX incognito, FF reasoned that ze may be the foretold Genius of Thought as well. Past the cracked security measures of the office, unimpeded but with a deepened respect for the Genius of Thought, Flaxen Factotum purloined a marvelous Radio cleverly hidden within a rotary telephone. He listened in to the Genius’ adventures, taking shorthand notes on a burner pad. When he had planned his first moves, the newly-invested FF turned his blade-key in the Radio and issued a command…

Likewise on Vessail. The Cyan Moon was a culture built on looking backward, looking inward, cyclical and ritual time that repeats more than it progresses. It was also built on teacups. On Vessail, Chromatics in classical Birthstone costume skated down canals and up waterfalls under the supervision of the Aqua Sentinel and his ilk, past Escher buildings housing sacred driving ranges (like that of the Pacific Mystagogue) and magitech machine shops (such as Mint Artificer’s.) Stelae recorded the memories of lost Birthstone, and what memories of Earth were known to them. Those bearing the proper keys went from place to place by way of an ancient portal network  — probably derived from the Portal Opener data! —  linking gates all over Vessail, and even further in the Medium.

Opposite the Guide Needle, Vessail’s great tower that led Cyan ships home and plunged into Æåea at Eclipse, the Moon’s waters flowed from the palace of the Cyan Sovereign. The latest inheritor of the unbroken line of Cyan Sovereigns was wise, manipulative, privately anxious, slippered and draped in silk, quick to smile at his own gentle jokes, and distinctly resembled Dr. Linus, Iris’ court-appointed therapist and the Beacon of Insistence, as the Link recorded her impression of him. The Sovereign was a generous listener who knew how to lead people to his chosen conclusions, and how to believe always that he was ultimately in the right. All this in the service of balance, of healing, of restoring the Chromatics’ lost Birthstone to life.

Like his predecessors since Birthstone rained, the Cyan Sovereign retained a Cabinet of Dæmons: semi-independent functions, starry spirit servitors summoned from fountains and cauldrons, bound by keeping their soulstones away from their forms, sent out in the world to act by the letter of their Sovereign’s commands. He conjured one called Cornflower Dæmon whom he knew as especially curious, if whimsical, to hear the insights of his latest pensive meditation.

It was as his dreams had intuited: the homeworld of the Honorees had survived after all. Perhaps this heralded hope for the healing of Birthstone as well. With proper guidance, their human visitors might yet be the saviors of two worlds in the creation of another. Cornflower Dæmon, obediently levitating but curling their toes, asked how he wished for the Honorees to be made thus.

With Socratic pleasure, the Sovereign replied that he wouldn’t make the Honorees do anything. The Chromatics couldn’t just give them all the answers. After all, he humbly asked his spellbound servant, do we even know the answers ourselves…? (Cornflower made a string of pearls out of water droplets.)

But, CS continued, they wouldn’t have to be alone on their quest, either. Take the Dryad of Mystery, whose image he now scried within a dewy Orb beside his throne. Here was a gloomy heroine with dark history and great potential, who more than anything needed someone to trust, someone who could guide and challenge her to attain her Best Self. The Sovereign presented his Dæmon with the Orb, holding her soulstone in his other hand, whose henna matched her binding cup-tattoo.

He commanded them: keep watch on the Dryad of Mystery, ask questions but do not give orders, and lead her to see the world as it is and could be. Cornflower Dæmon bowed to her Sovereign, her eyes fixed on her kept soulstone, and accepted the loaned treasure. They scried on the Dryad, observing her adventures with curiosity, and pondered the parameters of their instructions. When they had composed a question, CD raised the Orb to their cup-tattoo and asked…

RECAP ==>