Aspect

The Undying Mind lies in the Garden, a ruin of metal given over to greenery, a barrow rising out of black soil rich with nitrogen and thought. Everything in the Garden becomes of the Garden, eventually. Shed leaves decompose and fertilize the soil. So do the…

He's had this hallucination before. It's not that good, as hallucinations go: Praedyth's radio is talking to him, voices rising out of the static. He wishes it'd at least use a familiar voice, a Pahanin or Taeko or Kabr. He'd even take a Mir at this point.…

He is he is not he is walking in the Garden. He is talking silent singing. ^K^KV^V^V^V^V (Watch your six don't worry about me grow grow grow) He holsters his gun to gesture he holsters his gun to drink his gun is rusted into its holster and he will never…

Praedyth has watched from his cell for longer than he knows how to quantify, sitting inside, looking out. He's seen so many different timelines. There's no way to know which are real. From a certain point of view, they might all be. Some things he…

The pulses are stabilizing. The voices come often enough now that Praedyth has been introduced to their owners: Sundaresh, Esi, Shim, and Duane-McNiadh. Not infinite mirrored variations of them from different timelines, but simulations all split off the same…

Describe time. No, really, give it a go. You're going to say something about a sequence of events, aren't you? Seconds sliced off a clock, marching one by one off into infinity. Go ahead, use your metaphors: A line. A loop. A flat circle. Heard someone say…

The pulses from outside the Vault come quicker now. More copies of the Ishtar Collective team arrive, using them for a boost, leapfrogging in from the dark. Their messages are getting out there, out to the ends of the Vex networks. The pulses are getting…

227.97 Here's how it goes: you and Maya and Shim and Duane-McNiadh take your first cautious, sliding steps out into the Vex information network. You get your footing. You've got to translate everything into metaphor to understand it, here, and this is like…

The Garden wakes, and the Undying Mind wakes with it. It rises from the barrow that's grown up around it, shedding vines and hanging moss like bedsheets. Circuits flood with power, pass the excess along to the next in line, flex massive limbs in boot…