bday

(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXX===")[(b4r:"solid")+(b4r-colour:white)[   (text-colour:red)[(text-style:"blink")[(either: [[5:00->1]], [[5:00->2]], [[5:00->3]], [[5:00->4]], ) ]]  ]] (if: $m1 is "TRUE" and $m2 is "TRUE" and $m3 is "TRUE" and $m4 is "TRUE")[(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXX===")[(b4r:"solid")+(b4r-colour:white)[   (text-colour:red)[(text-style:"blink")[(either: [[5:50->5.1]], [[5:50->5.2]], [[5:50->5.3]], [[5:50->5.4]], )] ]  ]]] (if:$m5 is "TRUE")[[[Flo Route|1.1]]; [[Flo Ending|5.4]]. [[Nonym Route|2.1]]; [[Nonym Ending|5.2]]. [[HueyMcGumphrey Route|3.1]] [[Huey McGumphrey Ending|5.3]]. [[Dued Inclusive Route|4.1]] [[Dued Inclusive Ending|5.1]]]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXX===")[(text-colour:red)[(text-style:"blink")[ [[5:10->1.1]] ]]]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXX===")[(text-colour:red)[(text-style:"blink")[ [[5:30->3.1]] ]]]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXX===")[(text-colour:red)[(text-style:"blink")[ [[5:20->2.1]] ]]]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXX===")[(text-colour:red)[(text-style:"blink")[ [[5:40->4.1]] ]]]

(if:$f is 1)[(link:"Skip")[(link-goto:"0")] ]A table, some dice behind a screen. Four place settings, three of them empty. Flo, slowly agitating the dice in her hand. Her stringy, brown, ass-length hair lit by the setting summer sun behind her, and still her silhouette looks like a (link:"knife.")[(show:?run)](hidden:)|run>[knife. Run, she thinks, and does (link:"not.")[(show:?Flo)]](hidden:)|Flo>[not. Flo casts the dice, thinking that she will be invading a lab tomorrow. Thinking that time has stopped. That she is out of it, somehow. That the play must be her focus, because it is the only thing tethering her to something from before she entered that lab, relishing the moment she would bring (link:"Dued Inclusive down.")[(show:?runshe)]](hidden:)|runshe>[Dued Inclusive down. Run, she thinks, and (link:"does not.")[(show:?oof)]](hidden:)|oof>[does not. “Oof” she says to the empty table, “that’s a natural twenty to save. Ernest Goestocamp’s Saturn Hands spell only does half damage to the eye of the god, this rogue black hole.” And she switches seats to [[roll for damage|1.2]].]

Impossibly, one of the seats fills. It’s not real, she thinks. No one plays with me. Certainly not three-story tall mechs, plant and metal monstrosities that no one pilots. It’s too big to fit in the chair, (link:"for one thing.")[(show:?agitates)](hidden:)|agitates>[for one thing. It agitates some dice and. //''Go''//. it buzzes. (link:"//''Out''//.")[(show:?mind)]](hidden:)|mind>[//''Out''//. Flo’s mind fills with a vision of space and she shudders. Entranced, as though the mech itself speaks through her, she narrates. “Flight is easy. It is simply movement against gravity, and occasionally atmosphere. Our brains tell subconscious stories of movement, and our bodies move. Just as we tell stories of the dead, and they live within those stories. Just as we tell stories of gravity weakening, and it weakens. Just as we live within our stories. As our stories live within our stories. As our stories live within the dead, as our stories live within subconscious stories, as our stories live within the movement of the dead as our stories live within gravity as our stories…” she pushes out (link:"breathlessly.")[(show:?enough)]](hidden:)|enough>[breathlessly. //''Enough''//. the buzz. (link:"//''Flight''//.")[(show:?leaves)]](hidden:)|leaves>[//''Flight''//. It [[leaves the planet|2.2]], in search of something to [[devour.|1.3]]] (set:$m1 to "TRUE")

Run, she thinks, and (link:"does not.")[(show:?first)](hidden:)|first>[does not. Flo is the first to understand that they were devoured; that the life she lives is a ghost of her self, a recording of who she was, a data point in a spreadsheet for a world-eating machine. She gets it (link:"unfortunately early.")[(show:?runshethinks)]](hidden:)|runshethinks>[unfortunately early. Run, she thinks, (link:"and does not.")[(show:?still)]](hidden:)|still>[and does not. Still. She is still, over a long time. The adventures that she has been working on since her childhood become the center of her world, the way that blowing up that lab had been when she got stuck here. But now she has time. Now she can say, confidently, that she plays these games to change things. Now that she knows she lives in the (link:"world of ideas.")[(show:?runshethinksand)]](hidden:)|runshethinksand>[world of ideas. Run, she thinks, and does not. She rolls. [[Tingle dies|0]].] (set:$f to 1)

(if:$n is 1)[(link:"Skip")[(link-goto:"0")] ]Three cycles since they last slept, Nonym’s energy is unflagging. The biomechanical monster they brought into this world wasn’t going after them yet, but they knew it would. In a year, ten years, ten hundred thousand years, it would awaken. Even on the longest time scale imaginable, every second’s distance was precious. Luckily, space travel was (link:"in their bones.")[(show:?quiet)](hidden:)|quiet>[in their bones. In quiet moments - and in space, even on the run with every fiber of your being, they reflected, there are innumerable quiet moments - they wondered why they never felt it in themself to curse that wretched impulse. Of course the nomadic people they grew up among had their rite of passage, that first flight without the fleet. Of course they would have taken one regardless. But why there? Why that star? It was some dinky little solar system. But it had taught them the value of what, until that eruption, they had thought of as mere endemic planetary biodiversity. What in them had been asking for a reason to (link:"want a home?")[(show:?result)]](hidden:)|result>[want a home? And what a result they had come up with. In league with a world-historical asshole like Dued Inclusive, and tricked by him to boot. The unwilling creator of a utopian engine that melded machine with organic matter at a metaphysical level, yet unable to manage that most basic conversion, that fundament of life, photosynthesis. Like its haughty creator, it always had to have more, to devour more. Like its parochial designer - the self-directed criticism hung at the edge of their thoughts - always pressing forward, mapping what had (link:"yet to be mapped.")[(show:?forcefully)]](hidden:)|forcefully>[yet to be mapped. Well, they thought forcefully, there was no mapping happening now. They would travel fast and far into uncharted space, noticing nothing but their survival. They would outrun the thing even if it took them past the edges of the Big Bang and out of (link:"time itself.")[(show:?Nonym)]](hidden:)|Nonym>[time itself. Nonym could see that the coast was clear for some time ahead. Sleep was out of the question, but they also knew they had to rest. And so they remembered, even if it wasn’t [[their memory|2.2]].]

One might think the cold vacuum of space would make it impossible to feel balmy. But that’s not true. You just have to bring the forest (link:"with you.")[(show:?scouting)](hidden:)|scouting>[with you. These scouting trips had always been a bore, so it was no surprise this one was as well. The maps were next to useless, written as they were in that cramped, expansive hand, as though each object in space was trying to fit just at the edge of an imagined page. But the page (link:"never ended.")[(show:?task)]](hidden:)|task>[never ended. The task, today and for the next foreseeable stretch of days, was to confirm the assumed trajectory of a rogue black hole spotted tumbling through space, gravitationally unattached, some seven centuries before. And then to (link:"update the maps.")[(show:?strange)]](hidden:)|strange>[update the maps. It was strange how this line of work could make such a preposterous, impossible task into something rote. But these days it was so hard to get into space without a huge stir, so there was (link:"at least that.")[(show:?blackhole)]](hidden:)|blackhole>[at least that. And hey, it was a black hole after all. It would have [[attracted|3.2]] a ton of interesting materials to it, [[to devour|2.3]].] (set:$m2 to "TRUE")

The ship’s internal alarm began to scream. Bolt upright, Nonym grabbed the steering mechanism - a joystick with a half dome atop it that projected a low light laser grid, allowing a broad range of finger gestures to take care of things like thruster power, gravity distortion engine engagement, and atmosphere production - and prayed they wouldn’t end up like so many of their people: a rusting hunk of spaceship hurtling endlessly on a rogue planet (link:"going nowhere.")[(show:?sofar)](hidden:)|sofar>[going nowhere. They had made it so far already, and the thing back in the Low Lands still slumbered. They could feel it dreaming now, could feel the wretched projections of those it had consumed beginning to stir all these billions of miles away. They had to get farther. They could (link:"not crash now.")[(show:?curling)]](hidden:)|curling>[not crash now. Quickly curling and uncurling their middle digit while they yanked the stick hard back distorted the gravity field just so, functionally working against the pull of this unforeseen rogue planet and rendering the craft weightless. The loss of elemental force kicked the ship into a wild, careening pinwheel. From outside, Nonym almost had time to think, it would look as though they were a compass under a (link:"heavy magnet.")[(show:?retched)]](hidden:)|retched>[heavy magnet. Nonym retched, but kept their eyes wide open, searching the formless blur of stars and rock for the right angle. They slammed the joystick forward, palm fully extended so the fingers arched, and skated past the rogue planet with a scarf of blue flame (link:"trailing behind.")[(show:?fled)]](hidden:)|fled>[trailing behind. Nonym fled, and still, [[it dreamed|0]].] (set:$n to 1)

(if:$h is 1)[(link:"Skip")[(link-goto:"0")] ]“How about it, Mr. McGumphrey? Care to give this (link:"query a whirl?”")[(show:?nah)](hidden:)|nah>[query a whirl?" “Nah,” said Huey. Some of his classmates (link:"tittered nervously.")[(show:?steeled)]](hidden:)|steeled>[tittered nervously. The teacher’s gaze steeled slightly. “Given this level of stubbornness, young man,” the teacher said with a hint of patronizing ire, “I suspect you’ll graduate high school in (link:"roughly one eternity.”")[(show:?already)]](hidden:)|already>[roughly one eternity.” “It’s already felt like three,” Huey smirked. This time the laughter was fuller, and he looked to Deonna to share in the joke. (link:"She didn’t.")[(show:?detention)]](hidden:)|detention>[She didn’t. “Detention it is, then, and any more from you will take you off the team. Now, as I was saying; roughly two centuries ago, in the year 45,439, a particular advancement was made in the art of telecommunications. Who here can tell me what effects the monetization of the YouTube platform had on the military structure of the Thirty Year War between [[3.2<-our Lowlands]] and the neighboring country of AO24?”]

“Holy shit! Holy shit! That’s Fina Ruin! The hottest mech pilot AO24 ever produced!” Deonna whispered to Jezebel. The two had never seemed so excited. Huey (link:"scoffed loudly.")[(show:?beat)](hidden:)|beat>[scoffed loudly. “We still beat their asses last time we fought,” Huey laughed. Deonna glowered until she saw Fina looking her way, (link:"amused.")[(show:?winked)]](hidden:)|winked>[amused. They winked broadly and Jezebel swooned. A toothy smile took Deonna’s breath away. Huey was baffled. Which made him angry. He sulked, “and their football team couldn’t catch me if I was walking on my hands and throwing (link:"with my feet.”")[(show:?gum)]](hidden:)|gum>[with my feet." Fina popped a stick of gum in their mouth and laughed. Only in their early thirties, they had a record as an ace that was unmatched in forty thousand years of recorded history. Their name was to become a totem. They knew it and wore it with confidence. Their long, shiny black hair rippled in the (link:"wind that crossed the quad.")[(show:?mcgumphrey)]](hidden:)|mcgumphrey>[wind that crossed the quad. “I’ve heard about you. McGumphrey, right?” they asked, still keeping eye contact with Deonna. “You keep popping up around here like some bad dream. You mind waking up one of these centuries, letting these two girls go free? I could use a girl like Deonna on my crew…” and at that [[Huey saw red|0]], and it wasn’t Deonna blushing.] (set:$h to 1)

A mech touches down and no one blinks an eye. It’s an older model, much more obviously overgrown than what one finds these days. In parts, it seems the (link:"vines shackle the metal.")[(show:?retires)](hidden:)|retires>[vines shackle the metal. Before it retires or any pilot ejects, it checks its surrounds. The sweep of a massive, sinking head takes in Lowlands, this drab, boorish capitol of a drab, boorish country on a (link:"vibrant, conflicted world.")[(show:?unhinges)]](hidden:)|unhinges>[vibrant, conflicted world. Something unhinges, and the absence of sound is more startling than any roar Huey could have imagined. He is so transfixed he doesn’t notice that no one else sees this apparition stalk off from (link:"the quad.")[(show:?seemsas)]](hidden:)|seemsas>[the quad. It seems as though it miscalculated its landing trajectory. It has no business here. Or, maybe, its incomprehensible business has been (link:"completed.")[(show:?minutes)]](hidden:)|minutes>[completed. Minutes after it is gone, [[another touches down|4.2]]. And out steps what would have been its [[greatest foe|3.3]] in this time.] (set: $m3 to "TRUE")

(if:$d is 1)[(link:"Skip")[(link-goto:"0")] ]Dued Inclusive’s cheek ripped open on a branch as he barreled through the underbrush. The thin sliver of magnesium at the tip of a thorn burrowed into his cheekbone, almost intentional. Under normal circumstances, it would have lead to an ignominious end for a man too self-absorbed to comprehend how fitting that would be. Dued ran from (link:"no man.")[(show:?assembled)](hidden:)|assembled>[no man. But the thing he had assembled a team to build, that he had concepted and hoodwinked into existence, that wasn’t a man. It was the prototype for an agromechanical mech powered with the pure essence of the verb To Devour, and it was (link:"hot on his trail.")[(show:?forest)]](hidden:)|forest>[hot on his trail. The forest that bordered the city - that seemed full of eagerness to consume His City, damn it - had provided all the necessary components. When he got out of this he would have it stripped for parts, modified into crops, and grown across the planet. When he got (link:"out of this…")[(show:?roared)]](hidden:)|roared>[out of this... The thing roared in joy as it burst out the sub-sub-basement of the lab. The city, already on fire with the student molotovs, seemed to roar back (link:"in greeting.")[(show:?shrapnel)]](hidden:)|shrapnel>[in greeting. Shrapnel rained down over the forest and he ran, all thoughts dissolved into [[a pure, animal panic|4.2]].]

It didn’t stalk, this time. Ambling slowly through the forest, it seemed uneasily at ease. The wind whipped up as if in protest, or impotent threat, or (link:"foreboding.")[(show:?athome)](hidden:)|athome>[foreboding. It was more at home in this forest than any home could ever offer. It was this forest, an extrusion of what grew here. It was a noodle among wheat. It was furious to be here. It wanted to devour what had differentiated it (link:"from the land.")[(show:?devourtheland)]](hidden:)|devourtheland>[from the land. It wanted to devour the land. It could taste the magnesium thorns in its mind. It wanted to devour the extruder and what it had been extruded from and all of the (link:"memories of both…")[(show:?singleman)]](hidden:)|singleman>[memories of both... A single man, running aimlessly through the forest, (link:"would do.")[(show:?strode)]](hidden:)|strode>[would do. It strode back to where it had been before those [[four fools|1.2]] woke it up, to [[slumber again|4.3]].] (set:$m4 to "TRUE")

Breathing so raggedly he couldn’t even smell the shift, Dued blundered past a tree and found himself at a cliff’s edge. He saw it for the first and last time. (link:"The ocean.")[(show:?flooded)](hidden:)|flooded>[The ocean. The knowledge suddenly flooded in on him: he had run from his creation hundreds of thousands of times. Each time, the same sequence: a torn cheek, a rain of shrapnel, and he was caught. Sometimes immediately. Sometimes after days. He had never made it this far before the magnesium poisoning shut down his limbs and left him waiting for his creation to devour him. He was being (link:"shown something.")[(show:?forgot)]](hidden:)|forgot>[shown something. For a moment he forgot himself. He ran from no man. He ran for this beautiful spectacle. He had always been coming here. This beach his destination. It glittered and in it he saw the cosmos. He felt huge. Enormous. He felt he could (link:"devour the universe.")[(show:?one)]](hidden:)|one>[devour the universe. He was one with the machine. He knew it now. He had never run. None of them had ever run. Him, Nonym - that rotten traitor - and those student activists. They had been devoured in that instant and were inside his creation and it was Awakening. And he would be outside to do its will. And (link:"it would be good.")[(show:?piloted)]](hidden:)|piloted>[it would be good. He would be piloted by his greatest creation into a world he could not conceive, and [[he would devour it whole|0]].] (set:$d to 1)

In the eighty thousand years between devouring these four lives and the engine’s final reemergence, very little slipped out. One thing that did: a posthumously published memoir by Dued Inclusive: //The Inclusive Life//. Despite the fact that it was full of the most atavistic, toolish, amoral platitudes imaginable, it became a central text in (link:"the history of AO24.")[(show:?centuries)](hidden:)|centuries>[the history of AO24. Every few centuries, someone would unearth this self-important piece of fluff from the Golden Age of AO24; before the Low Lands rose, before the Cycle of utopian dreams dashed against the counterrevolutionary (link:"violence that ruined them.")[(show:?thisbook)]](hidden:)|thisbook>[violence that ruined them. There was nothing special about (link:"this book.")[(show:?except)]](hidden:)|except>[this book. Except. When it was found by the right person, it turned into a weapon. Maybe it was the seeds of a political party; maybe it was a manifesto on the future of music; maybe it was, as it was for Deus Lakrim, a novel arrangement of a mining town and some kids to propagandize through. Whatever angle they found, they took. And whatever angle they took, (link:"they capitalized on.")[(show:?millenia)]](hidden:)|millenia>[they capitalized on. Centuries became millenia became seconds, as far as Dued Inclusive knew. It was time for him to be dreamed, alive.] (event: When time > 60s)[(link:"All Endings")[(set:$m5 to "TRUE")(link-goto:"0")]]

In the eighty thousand years between devouring these four lives and the engine’s final reemergence, very little slipped out. One thing that did: a discovery made by Dued but enacted by Nonym. That there were unknown chemical and metaphysical properties of the forest that (link:"encroached upon the city.")[(show:?acentury)](hidden:)|acentury>[encroached upon the city. It took a century or so after they were devoured, for reasons of cultural cycles and priorities, but another Dued Inclusive came along. His name was lost, but his project to pacify the forest made quite the impact. When, after a lifetime’s lucrative study he came across Nonym’s lost notes, he logged the forest to its roots and began an aggressive program of breeding and genetic modification. Within a generation the first agromech farms were (link:"tilling their fields.")[(show:?moss)]](hidden:)|moss>[tilling their fields. The moss that crawled up the trees became a source of energy. A living rechargeable battery that could power a single human-sized robot for a half century. The underbrush, already atomically bonded to magnesium and lead at the level of life, was bred out to produce a dozen kinds of plants that could be used to slice, stab, incise, chop, till, whittle, and fire. Worst, perhaps, was the fungus. Networked mycelium provided each mech a mesh through which they could communicate. And (link:"be communicated with.")[(show:?trees)]](hidden:)|trees>[be communicated with. And the trees themselves? Well, they were eventually allowed to diversify, grafted with fruit and nuts and farmed atop those mech fields. But there’s a reason the man’s name was forgotten. He clearcut the forest, and suddenly the sands came. The city collapsed in matter of years, and the whole surrounding area was covered in a dust tornado the size of a small continent. Those hard years took his name along with them, but the farms that had moved out? They survived and, eventually, (link:"returned.")[(show:?seconds)]](hidden:)|seconds>[returned. Centuries became millenia became seconds, as far as Nonym knew. It was time for them to be dreamed, alive.] (event: When time > 60s)[(link:"All Endings")[(set:$m5 to "TRUE")(link-goto:"0")]]

In the eighty thousand years between devouring these four lives and the engine’s final reemergence, very little slipped out. One thing that did: he was a very stubborn boy, after all, and he would not lose the (link:"Homecoming Person Contest.")[(show:?inthebeginning)](hidden:)|inthebeginning>[Homecoming Person Contest. In the beginning it was once every century or so that Huey’s single-mindedness would manifest to the outside world as a jocular jock in the Low Lands high school. A recent transfer, he got along famously with the football team until he won the Homecoming Person Crown and slowly faded out of existence. Until the time, a little over a thousand years in, when (link:"everything changed.")[(show:?vanished)]](hidden:)|vanished>[everything changed. The Low Lands had utterly vanished. All that was left was a roiling tornado of grit and dust, a caravan of weirdos driving inside the eye. They had their rituals, cooked for each other the fallen deities they slew, found and lost each other in that strange year. And from then, his visits became (link:"more sporadic.")[(show:?deonna)]](hidden:)|deonna>[more sporadic. Until the last one. The one where Deonna left for AO24, upsetting their ancient pact; where Hell Where and Bella thwarted him at every turn. He would not, he thought, bother with being the Homecoming Person (link:"again.")[(show:?dreamed)]](hidden:)|dreamed>[again. Centuries became millenia became seconds, as far as Huey Mcgumphrey knew. It was time for him to be dreamed, alive.] (event: When time > 60s)[(link:"All Endings")[(set:$m5 to "TRUE")(link-goto:"0")]]

In the eighty thousand years between devouring these four lives and the engine’s final reemergence, very little slipped out. One thing that did: three heroes who stuck a finger in the (link:"eye of a God.")[(show:?fantasy)](hidden:)|fantasy>[eye of a God. The fantasy world that Flo had carried with her grew stronger and stronger as she fled deeper into it. And the machine itself, well. It had been brought into existence in order to birth planets. Sometimes the stars align; sometimes the interstices of (link:"fiction and reality stitch together.")[(show:?adventures)]](hidden:)|adventures>[fiction and reality stitch together. The adventures of Tingle, Holligram, and Ernest may only have existed in Flo’s journals before, but eighty thousand years is a long time. Her patient play found purchase on one of the machine’s rare scouting missions off planet. Every so often it would burst from its slumber and travel deep, devouring rogue planets and churning them into raw material to build something new. In those moments, it was so massive (link:"a single eye manifested as a black hole.")[(show:?won)]](hidden:)|won>[a single eye manifested as a black hole. And though the battle was won, the dice behind the scenes were still being rolled, and Tingle was forced into a final sacrifice. They became the planet the Engine meant to build, a haven for those who mapped space and their outcast. A new culture arose, one that would have frightened Nonym once upon a time, as their people rallied around Holligram Ghostdick’s (link:"poppers-heavy philosophy.")[(show:?alive)]](hidden:)|alive>[poppers-heavy philosophy. Centuries became millenia became seconds, as far as Flo knew. It was time for her to be dreamed, alive.] (event: When time > 60s)[(link:"All Endings")[(set:$m5 to "TRUE")(link-goto:"0")]]