2:22
Chapter 18: A hallway filled with flowers. Real ones, in big bunches. No windows, no outside light, no one around. A fly buzzes too loud so do the fluorescents. I look for glitches, places where the energy gathers like wind.
dark black
Chapter 17: This world is a zombie: like the NPC’s–like us. At first Dean was adamant that we weren't being punished–this wasn’t what we deserved any more than the great coral reef deserved to get bleached. But now I know that isn’t true.
new blue world
Chapter 16: They were strangers that I nevertheless love–a love so hard it makes my back convulse and arch as it beams from my chest into theirs. It’s the first thing each of them feels. A new feeling that’s also a memory. Could there be a more powerful sensation? It binds them to me.
The Hunter
Chapter 15: We live a life in his exhibit, full of props and loops. Sadly it’s easy to satisfy us. A little fear, a little discomfort have made us all too willing to sit waiting like dogs on this spot, never trying to break free.
nada_maas2k (king tubby mix)
Chapter 14: Everything here happens on loops, rendering time and events meaningless by repetition. I mimic the mechanisms, hoping to somehow sneak inside the simulation and fuck shit up.
The Play
Chapter 13: Day after day we wake up back in this place, with the NPC’s playing the same games and the same boats bobbing around on the river. But then sometimes a new thing appears–which is almost more frightening than the sameness.
The Last
Chapter 12: "Everything I knew about what’s happened–the NPC’s and the loop here at the river–the fake objects and Dean—even The Curator himself. It all suddenly disappeared, like a wave had come and scooped it up and I was left staring brainless at the smooth sand."
The Grid (Part 1)
Chapter 11: “The world we came from was the dream, and the place we go to when we fall off The Grid is the swirling nothingness that’s the real reality, the one that’s usually hidden.”
How I Found The Others
Chapter 10: It was then that I saw them... Two women and one man. Right away there was something different about them from the others who milled about, on blankets and bikes, flickering according to a predictable rhythm.
BEANS
Chapter 9: I stared at the pills in my hand and assured myself that this wasn’t like those times when I invented a problem that could only be solved by drugs. This was real, something was happening.
