17 Days Hence

“The first time I spoke with her was in 880. It was right after the release of her first fiction novel, ‘Patricia and the Sunflower’. I hadn’t been there myself, but during the release party, she’d expressed regret at how little she communicated with her fans. Someone in the audience suggested that she try making an appearance over the link, so she’d pledged to give it a try.”

“Were you already president of her fan club, by then?” I asked.

“Readers association,” she said, correcting me. Anna was, I later reflected, very adept at the sort of fast-hitting passive-aggression where you didn’t even realize it had happened until the conversation had moved on a minute later. “And goodness, no! Back then, I barely even qualified as a casual fan of her work. I’d read her biography, of course – it felt like everyone had – but I’d missed her commentaries on the revolution that she had put out the year prior, and only picked up Patricia because a friend had suggested it to me. I’d just had a nasty break-up, so I was going through sort of a romance novel binge.” She took a sip from her glass, but her eyes widened half way through as some thought came to her. “Now that I think about it, that same friend was the one who convinced me to attend the Orator conference that was set up a couple weeks later.”

“When was this, exactly?” I fiddled with my pen a little, curling it between my fingers. “Uh, not to be overly particular. It’s just, for this sort of thing…”

“Ah, no, I quite understand. You’ve got to know everything, right?” She smiled. “I couldn’t give you the exact date, but I believe it was in the first half of August. I remember because it was right about when the weather had started to get a little bit cooler, that year.” She clasped her hands together in front of her. “But anyway! The conference was in the early evening on a Sunday, hosted by my predecessor, Mia Yamaguchi. I’d been a little nervous – back then I was rather more shy – but it turned out to be rather an informal affair, mostly just a meetup between fans. Very casual.”

“How many people were there?” I asked. A brown-haired woman came by to collect our plates, including my own, which I’d pushed away.

“Hmm, somewhere in the range of 200, if I had to take a stab in the dark. It’d been invite only, to assure things didn’t get out of hand. Michelle was a bit shy herself, apparently!” She chuckled, brushing a little hair out of her eyes. “She turned up at about 6, and let me tell you, I was instantly struck by how warm and personable she was. Most celebrities, even ones who are a little bit less celebrated than they might like to think, act like their time is worth a fortune, you know? But she was different. She stayed for hours, taking the time to at least introduce herself to everyone personally.”

“Including you?” Sidney asked.

“Well, it would be a bit of a bad story if she hadn’t, wouldn’t it,” Anna, said, with another small chuckle. “I’d been keeping quiet, so she only got to me quite late in the night at around 10, but the experience left a huge impact on me. She seemed genuinely flattered when I told her how much I’d enjoyed her work, and answered all sorts of silly questions I had about the story and where she’d got her ideas– We only chatted for about 5 minutes, but it felt like it went on for a lot longer.”

“What was she like, in terms of her personality?” I asked, occasionally jotting down notes. I had a very good memory, so rather than for myself, this was mostly for the benefit of Sidney and to keep Anna engaged. It helped people to focus, I found, if you were holding a notepad and had a serious expression when you were asking them questions.

She curled her lip to the side, looking contemplative. “Quite meek, actually. Quieter than you’d think from seeing her at the parades… But not anxious, either. She came across as very thoughtful and cautious, always thinking through every word before she spoke it. Does that make sense?”

“I think so,” I said, with a nod.

“Come to think of it, you sort of remind me of her!” she said, with a burst of sharp enthusiasm. One thing that was becoming clear about Anna was that she never really stopped moving. She was always gesturing, leaning forward and back. “You’ve got the same sort of reserved-but-introspective attitude.”

“I’m, uh, not sure how to take that,” I said, with an awkward laugh.

“Oh, I meant it entirely as a compliment! Like I said, I admired her tremendously.” She beamed at me. “Anyway, I wouldn’t say we had any especially deep conversations, but we chatted pretty often after that. When I became president of the association – that was about a year following, for the record – she’d come to me to ask me about fan feedback, if there was anything people were thinking in the wider community that wasn’t reaching her.”

“That sounds like kind of a shitty job,” Sidney remarked. “Having to tell someone you like all the horrible things people are saying behind their back.”

“Ahah, well, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t self-censor a bit.” Her cheerful expression became a little more hesitant. “I suppose I’d assumed she’d only want to hear about the stuff that’s constructive. Like with her romance novels, I would tell her all about the gossip, such as people’s theories and what they were hoping would happen next, or which parts had been a little confusing…” She bit one of her nails. “But, well, you have to understand, if you’re that well-known, people can get a little aggressive.”

“Jealousy and social distance lead to dehumanization…” I said, not looking up from my writing. “That’s just a natural human impulse, I suppose.” I blinked. “Uh, sorry. I was just thinking out loud.”

“No, it’s alright! You’re not wrong,” Anna said, though she sounded a bit put off. “There was something of a hatedom surrounding Michelle’s work for some of the same reasons I talked about already. People who thought she was ‘fake’, that what she published was glorified government propaganda. Or, more rarely, that she was just cashing in on her fame to sell trashy fiction.”

People saying she was a fraud… Not dissimilar to the content of the threatening letter, I thought to myself. “Did you ever encounter anyone saying anything violent?”

She bit her lip. “Well, I won’t say I didn’t. I mean, some people are just happy to let their worst selves run rampant when it comes to famous people, you know? They treat them like a piece of public property. But I wouldn’t say it happened super often.” She leaned forward, looking at me inquisitively. “You’re thinking this might have something to do with the disappearance, aren’t you? I can see the gears whirring in your head.”

“Uh, it’s an idea I’m entertaining, I suppose,” I admitted.

“I’m good at reading people! People always say so,” she said, nodding confidently to herself, her eyes closed in a mock-wise expression. “Well, if you’re wondering if I noticed anything particular in the run up to her disappearance, then no, I didn’t. In fact, if anything, the toxicity had dropped off rather sharply.”

“Really?” I said, a little surprised.

She nodded. “Compared to her previous works, Shadow over Arteria didn’t have much a promotional campaign, so there wasn’t really enough interest to kindle a backlash like some of her others had. In fact, she seemed to tone down her public presence dramatically in the final few months leading up to her disappearance.” Her eyes lit up. “Ah, which brings me nicely back to the final meeting we had.”

I opened my mouth, about to ask another question, but stopped myself. There were a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head, and I understood that most of them were probably just going to lead to dead ends. I wanted to know everything: About the specifics of what nasty things people had been saying about Michelle. About the content of her romance novels. About the public presence toning down she’d just mentioned. But I held my tongue, because I was conscious of the fact that, even though the context was incredibly casual and Anna friendly, time, and patience, were limited.

One thing that mystery stories fail to capture is how important it is to ask the right questions at the right times, how you can’t just suck information from the victim like some sort of crime-solving vampire. An interview, in many senses, is like a song; there’s a rhythm, and you have to keep a pace and know when to play the right notes. If you lose momentum, people can pull back.

“It started off like any other night,” she said, refilling her glass once again. I was becoming increasingly surprised by her ability to continue consuming wine without showing any signs of growing drunk, especially considering her stature. “It was the 4th of 5 meetups that had been set up to discuss her new book, and had an attendance of… 900 people, I want to say? It was busy, but not anywhere close the first two, which drew over 2,000.”

“2,000 people? Gods,” Sidney said, her eyes a little wide. “That’s a hell of a step up from 200. You could fill an entire theater!”

“Well, keep in mind these were Orator meetings,” Anna said. “When people don’t have to leave the house, the only real barriers to participation are awareness and interest. Anyway, these were more… Formal, than the earlier ones? More organized, at least. They were structured a lot more akin to actual conferences than the meet-and-greets we started with. She’d give a speech about her book up on stage, then take questions for a while.” She smiled wistfully. “Michelle liked to pick very creative environments for her Phantasms. That night, it was a big open field surrounded by forests and these beautiful, white-tipped mountains, and everything was set up like a country fair from the old world. Wooden furniture, ribbons hanging everywhere, and a big open stage at the front. I think she was trying to evoke the setting from the book.”

“When was this, uh, just for the record?” I asked. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like a broken record. I just want to get a sense of context before we move too far along.”

“It was in January of 883. Right at the end of the month.”

So about 3 months before she disappeared, then. “Okay,” I said. “Go ahead.”

She nodded. “It started off more or less like normal. I got there early and chatted with a few regulars, and helped to organize the other attendees. Michelle was a little late – which was unusual for her, though not unheard of – but her presentation about the book was more or less the same as the previous three had been. She talked about the themes of the story, the underlying message of how blame can become distorted with the passage of time, and about what inspired the setting and the characters… But she seemed a bit more stilted compared to usual, and during the question and answer section, she was a little peculiarly intimate?”

“Intimate?”

“Like emotional,” Anna said. “She’d always been comfortable talking about her feelings, but on that night, she gave surprisingly personal answers. Like, ah– Someone asked her about why she’d wanted to write a fantasy novel, and she talked a lot about how much she’d loved the genre as a child. It was strange, since she didn’t normally offer anecdotes at all.” She glanced at an approaching waiter, then frowned as they passed us. “Drat. I was hoping that was our dessert.”

“She was normally a private person, I guess?” Sidney said, leaning back in her chair, glass in hand.

“I’m not sure ‘private’ is the right word,” Anna said. “How should I put this– Have you ever met someone who – in broad strokes – is very open and honest about themselves, but also have a really hard line they’ve drawn somewhere in their mind, and everything they’ve put behind that they’re incredibly secretive about, to the point that you can know them for years and never see that side of their life?”

“Yeah,” Sidney said, and jerked her thumb in my direction. “This lady.”

“Hey!” I exclaimed, frowning.

Anna chuckled to herself. “You two are cute.” She hummed to herself. “Maybe I was more on the nose than I thought when I said you were like Michelle, Alexandria.”

“I’m, flattered, but I’d sort of prefer it if you stopped comparing me to the dead woman,” I said, my tone hesitant.

“You know, I really ought not to say this,” she said, and then – like all people who say that do, for some insane reason – bizarrely continued, “but I’m actually a little bit of a fan of yours, too. I’m sure you hear this all the time, but I read about the big case you solved in the paper– The one with the shipwreck, from during the war?”

Oh god. This is the worst thing that could possibly have happened. “R…really,” I said, looking downward.

She nodded a few times. “I’m not an expert on investigative work, but it all sounded like a terribly exciting affair. Piecing together a crime that people said couldn’t be solved for decades–”

Please stop. “It’s not really anything special, the media just hyped it all up a bit–”

“And not once, but twice, too! I just wanted to say how much I admire that sort of thing. It makes me feel safe, knowing that people like you are around. So when I heard one of the people who interviewed me was Alexandria Stadahl, well– I knew there was no way I could possibly turn you down. To meet a proper famous detective, well, that’s something else, isn’t it?”

“Uh… Right…” I said. I wasn’t able to meet her eyes, my face flushed.

“Oh, no!” she said, clasping a hand to her chest, looking distressed. “I’ve embarrassed you, haven’t I? That wasn’t my intention at all. I just– I admire people who do work like you do so much, you know. It’s really a rare sort of talent!”

“It’s– It’s fine,” I said, holding my arms together. I stole a glance in the direction of Sidney, who looked like she was enjoying this tremendously. There would be a reckoning for her setting this up later. “I just don’t really think of myself as something special.”

“Gosh, that’s so humble!” she said, without a hint of irony. “But I can tell I’m making you uncomfortable, so I’ll quit pushing you about.”

“Er, thanks.” I sighed, trying to relax a little bit. “And please call me Sasha, if you want to use my first name. Alexandria makes me feel too pretentious.”

“Not Alex, like she does?” She pointed to Sidney.

“She only calls me that because she’s a contrarian,” I said, taking long a drink of my water. “And a jerk.”

“C’mon, that’s not fair,” Sidney said, with a smirk. “You know why I call you Alex.”

“Yeah, and it’s really stupid.” I sighed to myself. “Let’s… try to get back on topic, alright? How did the night go, after that point?”

She considered this for a few months. “Well, nothing exactly grandiose happened during the event itself. If it hadn’t been for the way things had turned out, I probably wouldn’t have even realized that she’d been acting a bit funny.” She tapped her finger against the side of the table, looking furtive. “But after the Q and A, she told everyone that she’d decided to take a while off from appearing over the Orator, so she could free up more time for her private life. She downplayed it a lot; said that she’d still answer fan mail, and that the absence probably wouldn’t even be that long. But, well, like I told you.” She pointed to her eyes. “I’m perceptive.”

“You noticed something was wrong?” I asked.

“Yep. It was subtle, but I felt like she seemed… Sort of sad? Mournful? It felt out of place for a mundane announcement, like the one she gave. So I decided to approach her after the fact, and ask her if something was wrong.”

“I thought you said you didn’t have that kinda relationship,” Sidney said. She frowned a little to herself as she spoke, seeming to think of something, and glanced over at my notes.

“We didn’t!” Anna said cheerfully. “But, well, as I’m sure you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of a busybody. I’d try to cheer up a perfect stranger if they seemed somehow down.”

I nodded, though I somehow doubted she’d feel that way if said stranger wasn’t some kind of celebrity. “How did she respond?”

“At first, she deflected. Said that she was just tired, and then that she’d had a little fight with someone earlier, and it had thrown her off balance.” She rolled her tongue around her upper lip, looking towards the ceiling. “But, when I pushed her a bit, told her that I was really very worried, she started acting a little odd.”

“What happened?”

“Well, first, she gave me this very solemn look – visibly upset, almost as if she were about to cry. I think it was the most emotional that I’d ever seen her, either over the link or in the real world. Then, she pulled herself together a bit, and said–”

“I’m… Really grateful to you, Anna.”

“M-Me? Why?”

“Because, without people like you, I wouldn’t be able to be myself.”

“Um… I’m sorry, but I don’t really understand.”

“I really don’t know how much I should say, but… Something is being taken away from me. I hope it won’t be as bad as I think it is, but if it is, I might not be able to talk with you all like this any longer. So, for whatever it’s worth… Thank you.”

“After that,” Anna continued, “Someone else came over, so we were cut off. And that was the last time we spoke.”

Sidney stared at her in surprise for a few moments. “Uh… that’s kinda a bigger clue than I was expecting, when you brought this up.”

“I know, right?” Anna said, looking strangely pleased with herself. “I tried to tell the Watch after she went missing, but they didn’t even take it seriously. Said they’d had so many conflicting reports from members of the public that the story was just noise. Can you believe that? Treating me like some crazed fan desperate for attention.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s no wonder they never found out what happened!”

“Do you have any idea what she might’ve meant?” I asked. My voice was distant; my mind was already latching onto something, albeit only in vague terms.

“Well, since you ask…” She leaned forward, and then spoke a little quieter, as if divulging some manner of profane secret. “I think it was about the council’s response to her latest book. See, I mentioned a minute ago that Shadow over Arteria had comparatively little publicity, compared to her previous books, right?”

“I remember.” I said, nodding.

“The rumor went that reason for it was that the council had decided against funding its promotion like it had all the others, on account of the content.” She hesitated, seeming to catch up with herself. “Have you read the book, incidentally? This will be easier if you’ve read the book.”

“Um… Actually, I’m in the process of reading it right now,” I said, scratching at the side of my neck. “I’m only a tenth of the way through, though, so I’m not really familiar with the arc of the overall plot.”

“Ah!” She said, clasping her hands together. “I envy you. It’s a really amazing experience on the first time – I’m still sad whenever I think about the fact they’ll never be a sequel.” She clicked her tongue. “Well, I won’t spoil the whole thing to you, but to say the least, the message wasn’t exactly interpreted as pro-authority or pro-status-quo in the way her earlier novels had been.”

“Uh, hold on. You’re going a little too fast for me,” I said, my brow furrowed. “What do you mean by pro-authority and pro-status-quo?”

“Ah, well.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “You see, the thing to understand – and this was common knowledge even outside of the fan community, at the time – is that all of Michelle’s works are ultimately reflective of her experiences in the war,” she explained. “Her biography and Comments on the Summer Revolution were explicit about it, obviously, but Patricia and the Sunflower and Again at the Crossroads both echo them, too, even if they’re romance novels. The former directly has the revolution as a backdrop, and the central conflict of the latter – between the owners and workers at the plantation in the wasteland – intentionally echoes it in how it’s portrayed, as class and value-oriented struggle.”

“So, like, did she fall in love with someone during the war, or something?” Sidney asked.

Anna laughed, clutching a hand to her mouth. “Actually, you’d be surprised what people theorize about that! But no, that’s not what I meant. I suppose it would probably be better to say informed, rather than reflective.” She sipped from her glass. “You see, in both instances, the background conflict is basically the villain, for want of a better word. In Patricia, the protagonists both lose everything but each other in the war, and in Crossroads, the two being on different sides of the divide forces them to hide their relationship and almost gets them both killed at the end. Instead of really taking a side, in both cases the conflict itself is portrayed as something evil and immoral, a corrupting force that destroys love and can never lead to a positive end. The message is very, ah… Mm, what’s a good word…”

“…Conciliatory?” I offered.

She clapped her hands. “Yes! Conciliatory. That’s almost perfect. You’re really good with words.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“So… Basically, the moral of her stories are, ‘fighting is always bad, and no one is ever right’? That seems pretty weak,” Sidney said, her eyes narrowed. “It’s a bit cute, for that sort of thing to be coming out of the lady who everyone was calling a symbol of the armistice.”

“Well, like I told you, a lot of people do view it as propaganda,” Anna said. “Especially now that it’s been a few years, and the mood has shifted. But I do think she deserves credit for presenting that idea tastefully. The focus was less about judging people, and more about encouraging empathy and non-violent coexistence.” Her brow furrowed. “But then, in Shadow over Arteria…”

“The message changed,” I said. “Right?”

“I don’t want to give the impression that it’s entirely clear-cut,” Anna said. “Because, again, it’s a fantasy work. You have to read between the lines a lot more than you normally would, and whenever there’s even a little ambiguity, people are going to disagree on interpretations.” Her lips curled downward a little. “That said… it’s hard to look at the text and not see it as an explicit rejection of her earlier viewpoint. Rather– At the point you’re at, you should have got a whiff of the basic conflict in the story, right?

“Between the Witch’s Tribe and the Kingdom, you mean?” I said.

“That’s right,” she nodded. “I won’t spoil too much, but to say the least, the text is very critical of the Kingdom of Arteria, and how it treats the tribe. It’s portrayed as openly hypocritical – driving them to rely on dark magic to begin with, then going back on its pact with them and wiping them out a generation later. And in the present day, it still refuses to acknowledge these mistakes, even as the curse created by the genocide destroys it from within. Now, a lot of people interpret the kingdom as an analogue for the Covenant itself, and its treatment of the tribe as not-so-subtle criticism of how true the government has been to the terms of the armistice, and how much it’s been sweeping the actual motivations behind the revolution under the rug on the basis of a vague idea of people needing to be peaceful and understanding.”

“Geez,” Sidney said. “I can see why the government would be pissed off. The person they’d put on a pedestal, turning around and saying the war was their fault, and they were still screwing things up…”

“So, uh, hold on a second,” I said, still scribbling down the last few things she’d been saying. “What did you mean by an ‘pact’? Between Arteria and the tribe?”

“Ah, whoops. You probably haven’t got that far,” she said. “Basically, it’s a plot point that Arteria’s growth killed off the forests which the Witch’s Tribe depended on for their original livelihood. So the King at the time struck a pact with them – that they’d use their dark magic to craft treasures and artifacts for them, and in return, the Kingdom would provide them with food.”

“But they betray that bargain, you said?” I raised an eyebrow.

Anna winced. “Mm, it really don’t want to ruin it for you…”

I don’t really think that’s what’s important here, I thought. “It’s fine. I’m not really into fantasy to begin with. I’m only reading it for research.”

She sighed, twisting her mouth into itself with visible unhappiness. “Well… Yes, it’s revealed about half way through the plot. Arteria breaks the pact and stops providing them with food, despite the tribe honoring their side of the bargain. So the Witch is forced to attack them in order for her people to not die of hunger. It’s a tragedy that, by the time the story is set, the kingdom has completely glossed over, viewing them as purely the aggressors.”

I furrowed my brow. “So in this analogy, the pact represents the compromise? And the curse in the present day is the the result of it not being honored properly.”

She nodded. “I’m not sure it can be interpreted quite that literally, but that’s the rough idea, at least. And when reviewers who had seen the draft started pointing it out, the council was not at all happy.” She took another drink, finishing off her glass. “So to finally digress, my theory is that they’d decided to strip her from her position in the public eye as a sort punishment, and that’s what she was referring to, that night. That’s what the ‘something being taken away’ she told me about referred to.”

“Do you think that they might’ve been the ones who abducted her?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m not sure about that. It seems a bit too conspiratorial. But I suppose it’s a possibility? I mean, after she vanished, you stopped hearing her name much very quickly, and most of the speculation about Shadow over Arteria was forgotten. Even if they weren’t responsible, I bet some people were glad to see her go.” Her eyes lit up. “Ah, our dessert is here!”

This time, instead of a waiter, a golem arrived to deliver our food; the evening was growing later, and they must’ve been running short on staff. It was of modern but not particularly well-crafted make, with a vaguely humanoid shape but no extremities save for fingers, and dark wood for skin. It didn’t look like it had the capability to carry anything directly, so instead it was pushing a metal tray, bearing two plates. One with shortcake adorned with cut strawberries and cream, the other with an obscenely large bowl of chocolate mousse, which Anna looked thrilled by.

My water seemed to have been forgotten. I didn’t care. My thoughts were elsewhere.

As soon as I’d heard Anna’s story about her final meeting with Michelle, an idea had been starting to take shape in my mind, but I felt wary of it, and was trying to push it away. Theories, especially early on, can be dangerous, like a bone healing before it’s been properly set. The mind hardens in such a way that it becomes blinded by preconception, and the truth can be placed out of your reach.

Still, I felt reasonably confident in concluding one thing. Something had happened to Michelle in the last few weeks or months prior to her disappearance. Something that had shifted both her views and her state of mind dramatically.

But was that really everything that was shifted? A little voice said, in the back of my mind. Everyone has both a skeptic and a true believer in their mind; this was the latter, persisting in spite of my best efforts to smother it over the course of many long years. I stole a glance at our waiter as it lumbered off.

My mouth felt dry, for a moment.

“I had one more thing I was sort of curious about,” I said, after a few moments. “If you don’t mind.”

“What is it?” She said, between bites of cake.

“Back in those days, did you happen to know a woman named Abigail Inreed?” I asked. “I was talking to someone earlier who told me that she was sort of an assistant to Michelle, when it came to dealing with her fans.”

“Oh, her.” Anna said, looking much more interested in her food than the question. “I’m familiar, though the only real way she interacted with the community was answering letters.”

“Did you ever meet her?”

“No, I think she liked to keep a low profile. But we did exchange a few letters about event-planning. She came across as a little cold, if I’m being perfectly honest.” She shrugged. “But she was obviously close to Michelle, so what do I know. Why? Are you planning to speak with her?”

“Uh, it’s on the agenda, yes.”

“I see. Well, uh, if you do, don’t tell her we talked, alright?” She bit her lip. “I don’t think she’s very fond of the fan community, so it would probably put her off.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Do you know why she feels that way?”

“Beats me,” Anna said, taking a particularly big mouthful. “I just know that she ignored me completely after Michelle disappeared, even when I tried to send her my best wishes.”

I nodded, looking down at the table. Another golem passed us by, this one more spider-like in shape, its wooden limbs treading softly on the stone floor.

“Did you know?” I asked, after we’d left.

She smirked. “That she knew about you? Oh, absolutely.”

“I hate you,” I said, smacking her in the side of the arm.

She only laughed, not seeming to mind.

“God,” I said, after a moment. “What are the chances of that?”

“For someone like her?” She let out a long whistle. “Probably pretty high. I bet she knows everyone who’s name’s been touched by a printing press.” She patted me on the shoulder, echoing my own action. “Y’know, you should be proud, not embarrassed!”

“I am proud,” I said, crossing my arms. “But I like to be proud quietly.”

She shook her head, still smiling. “You’re ridiculous.

After dessert was over, we’d talked to Anna for another fifteen or so minutes, but didn’t learn anything else important other than her contact details. After I’d settled the bill, myself and Sidney ended up lingering outside the restaurant, on one of the balconies on the spire stairwell. The view here was better than out seat had been, overlooking the forum, which now glittered with evening lights.

It had become a strangely quiet night; almost windless, utterly still. The air was cold, but you could easily forget.

“Well, I guess that wasn’t a total waste of time,” Sidney said, her hands in her coat pockets as she looked out at the view. “Sorry again for not having anything more interesting to follow up on. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

“It’s okay,” I said, sighing to myself. “It was… interesting, at least.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” She let out a small sigh. “Think we can believe the stuff she said?”

“Probably the better part of it,” I said. “A lot of what she told us is easily verifiable, except for her story about Corrick’s confession to her before her disappearance And I can’t see a reason why she’d lie about something like that.”

“You don’t think it could’ve just been something she made up to feel more significant to her idol? It sounded like the Watch thought so, when she told them.”

I shook my head. “I can’t justify it. But I just didn’t get that sense.”

“Well, you’re the better judge than me.” She rubbed the side of her nose, which was getting red from the cold. “Either way, though, she seemed like a bit of a twerp, in my book.”

I smirked. “You’re still hung up about the Orator meetup thing?”

“Hey, I’m not hung up about it,” she said, crossing her arms. “I meant it general, not about anything specific.”

“Sorry,” I said, chuckling a little. “I just found it funny that you reacted so strongly to that stuff.”

“I swear, I don’t even know why I try to vent to you. You always just give me your rich-girl ‘oh, how pedestrian‘ attitude.” She shook her head a little, then glared at me as I continued to laugh a bit. “It’s not like I thought it was some flaw in her character, or something. It just seemed so strange to me. Why any one would care so much about someone who just… Made a thing they liked, I guess.”

I shrugged, my laughter giving way to a small smile. “People define a lot of themselves by the fiction they’ve enjoyed or found meaningful. If something has had a big impact on your life, it seems natural to at least try to get closer to the person who created it.”

She gave me the side eye. “Do you feel that way?”

“I do, every so often,” I admitted. “Things sometimes come along at the right time in my life. When I need to hear something I didn’t realize I did.”

“Geez,” she said, exhaling. “Maybe it’s close-minded of me, but I just don’t people should let things made up by others have that big an influence. Just seems… Dangerous for you, I guess.”

“Maybe,” I said, though my tone grew a little more distant.

Sometimes, I really did feel how much we were different people.

“So… You have any thoughts?” I asked.

She sighed, leaning back against the side of the meter-tall wall that separated us from the 20 story drop below. “Nothing but the obvious. Mostly, I’m thinking about what made Michelle change her tune so much on her politics.”

I nodded. “I was thinking about that, too. But I don’t think there’s any way to know short of talking to someone who knew her more personally. That’s why I was asking about Abigail.”

“Yeah, I figured.” She looked out over the cityscape, her eyes narrowed. Sidney’s eyes always looked sharp. I don’t think I’d ever seen her truly relaxed. “I guess it’s possible her views just evolved naturally– I mean, you don’t exactly have to be a a literary genius to see how much the council has been screwing the pooch in how they’ve handled the armistice.” She looked out in the direction of the parade route, where the work was still ongoing, even at the late hour. “But if your whole career is made by the government, why would you go and spit in their faces?”

“Maybe she just didn’t care about money,” I suggested.

“Yeah, well. It’s one thing to care about money, and another to make yourself politically inconvenient to a bunch of people who are more than capable of having you take a permanent holiday.” She looked over to me. “What about you? What are your thoughts?

“I’m not sure I have any.” I leaned forward a little, resting my arms against the wall. “It still feels too soon.”

“I’m thinking about the Ship of Theseus,” I said, in that alternate, imagined world I sometimes visited in my minds eye, whenever I imagined how things could be if I could connect a little better with others. Where in this instance, we were just a little bit less different, and I felt less embarrassed about speaking my mind.



“Really.” She raised an eyebrow. “What’s got you contemplating amateur-level philosophy?”

“I’m not really sure. I’m thinking about… Circumstantial metamorphosis, I suppose. How much a person can be altered by giving them things and taking them away. How much isn’t… Essential, augmented to the core of their being.” My eyes slowly wandered downwards, to the streets. “And if there’s ever a point where they stop being the same person, any more.”

She shrugged. “If you ask me, there isn’t.” It was dissonant, even in my own mind, prompting a frown; in reality, she would have spent a while balking at me for my pretense before even offering her own opinion. That was all you needed to know to understand about Sidney, really. At her core, she was a little bit afraid of thinking about things. It had to be a joke you could laugh at together, first.



I glanced to her. “You think?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “People are like stews. They’ll cook a bit over time, and you can stir them a bit and different stuff’ll rise to the top… But in the end, the ingredients never change. It’s just the same traits, coming out in different ways. Like sticking a crystal in front of a light and messing with the angle.”

I nodded distantly, then removed my glasses from my forehead, rubbing my eyes. “You’ve never known anyone to change?”

“I dunno. I think a lot of times, when people think someone is changing, they just haven’t known them long enough, or haven’t been paying attention,” she said.

“That didn’t quite answer the question.”

She was quiet for a moment. “People go in circles,” she eventually said. “The arc is just bigger for some than others. I think when people act like they’re becoming someone different, more often than not, they just don’t like what was sitting at the bottom of the pot.”

I didn’t feel happy with the words, but couldn’t figure out quite how to express why, even in that place. So instead, I simply nodded.

“Well, lemme me know if you have any thoughts. I better be getting back home,” Sidney said, in the real world, after a few moments passed. “I’ll make a few calls and contact you tomorrow, alright? We’ll make some more progress, I promise.”

“Yeah,” I said, and made an effort to smile. “Thanks.”

“Sorry for making you carry the bill,” she said, half-jokingly, as she stepped away.

I smirked. “If you meant that, you wouldn’t keep doing it.”

She chuckled. “See you tomorrow, Alex,” she said, and then left.

I remained, for a while, and watched the city. Fatigue was starting to set in a bit, so I let what I’d learned over the day dance around my mind, the images and concepts blurring into each other. I thought about both Michelle and my father’s novels. I thought about what Michael could have been trying to hide. I thought about how strange it was that I’d spent the entire day listening to people talk about one woman, and none of them had been able to tell me anything about her personally other than the most superficial details.

I thought about–

…including the loss of of her right leg and much of her intestinal tissue…

…Other times, it will show much greater ambition, its greedy fingers finding purchase deep within my flesh. I feel differences in my bones, in the deepest recesses of my gut…

…I will strip you bare before the world and reveal your disgusting nature…

…Something is being taken away from me…

…Something else.

The human mind has one great strength, which is also its greatest vulnerability: The ability to stitch discordant ideas into something that resembles a pattern, something that appears to carry meaning. Whenever it performs this service, the result always feels natural and right, and often, it is. Correlation, after all, is the essence of intellect. The transcendence of ones base nature is only possible by seeing the world as more than the sum of its parts.

But it is our instinctive trust in these conclusions that also carries the potential to damn us. To remind us of how much we remain, in many senses, beasts – slaves to that little buzz in the back of the mind that loves when things form a pretty picture. So you must always be cautious.

And remember the one question you must always ask.

Is this really what I think?

Or is it just a story I’m being told?

One thing was clear: Someone – or something, or just fate itself, it wasn’t important – wanted me to believe that there was a monster at work here. That something mystical had occurred, an event beyond the scope of rational thinking. Of human understanding.

I knew, then, what I had to do.

I’d find the myth.

And I’d rip out its throat.