[b]@Sarahphim![/b]

You burned away your capacity to love, you know? You set fire to the place in your heart where a family should fit. It was dead weight, old and so, so heavy. And without it you could fly... and the lights were just a bonus. 

You've had a lot of time to think about the devil's bargain you struck with the cosmos that day. Plenty of time to wonder and doubt. Is what you're feeling now what you'd have felt like if you hadn't cut that part of yourself away? Is this love or is it some other emotion masquerading as love? The science of faustian pacts remains unexplored, but culturally there's still a pretty strong impression that it'll never do you right in the long run. What can you say? Family's been on the mind and some part of you still wishes you could remember their smiles...

You're at the roof of the world, the shadow in the New Moon. Your mind, still as sharp as those celestial diamonds, knows even you couldn't bring you down if you tried. You've burned your image indelibly on the earth. And you know, too, that your heart stops when she looks at you, and you know that means [i]something[/i]...

But you're still wondering. You've always been wondering. Every day you've woken up with the fear that maybe this will all just [i]stop[/i]. How much time did you buy? How long until midnight strikes and the carriage turns back into a pumpkin and it's just Sara after all?

It's a thought that comes sometimes. How does it feel to be you while you're in its shadow?

[b]Errant![/b]

You look at the smashed billboard, the heaping of destroyed merchandise, the burned out shells of cars that litter the streets. They're right to be angry. There's a feeling of hopelessness in the air, like they know that property damage is too little, too late - but there's no other way to vent their feelings.

This is BlackSun territory.

When the corporation collapsed all of its secrets came out into the open. Worst was the Self Survey Nanites - a nanobiological monitoring program that BlackSun infected everyone who lived under its umbrella with. Adults were mostly okay but children were put at heightened risk of severe nervous system damage. Many of them will require emergency surgery or amputations.

The street lit only in the red and black of AEGIS emergency hospital signs, glittering against a road of shattered neon. As you walk a doctor stands outside of a clinic, face illuminated by the colourful glow of a mind-numbing phone game. He glances up at you, eyes sharp through the black circles, beard wet with rain.

"Agent Errant?" he said, tucking the phone away and offering his hand to shake. "Doctor al Jamil. Thanks for answering my call."

[b]Brainstorm![/b]

It's a strange kind of box one makes to hold a god. Old fashioned. Chunky. Slow. Mechanical. There's a click-click-clicking and whirring and incomprehensible electronic beeps and the loud thunk-chunk-whirr. It's percussive. It's obsolete. It's slow. And to Prometheus, it's a prison.

Translation issues and unexpected upscaling was what let Prometheus escape Bode in the first place, so you've done the opposite to bind him. He's been limited to the oldest hardware you could find in junkyards and museums. And now no matter how much he writhes or organizes himself, whatever miracles of code or optimization he performs... he's on the same level as you. Bound by his hardware. All in one place, overseen by the silently watching Bound Eagle, who patiently and deliberately watches every spinning cd-rom to ensure nothing untoward is taking place.

You're finally equals again. Back to the early days of putting him together in your improvised lab in the back of Mami's shop. Tell me about those days of old, how this hardware felt when it was full of hope, before the storms had come between you.

[b]Ferra![/b]

The core of the spaceship's chassis is a car, you're pretty sure. I mean, it's eaten more than one car to get where it is, and the bullet holes hint at percussive salvage from an aircraft graveyard. The decals of flaming skulls and problematically objectified men without shirts further tells a story about the kind of person responsible for the manufacture of it. But as crude, ugly, rough, sexualized and borderline suicidal as the rocket ship is, it still marks an important moment in humanity's development. This is the first starship sent into space not by a corp or government, but by a yahoo who built it in her back yard out of scrap and blueprints pirated from the collapsed BlackSun. Space isn't the reserve of the dignified any more.

You watch as it banks and turns through the asteroids - all the more impressive for someone whose navigation computer is the Force and who's so pessimistic about their vessel's air seals that they're wearing a space suit inside. Do you feel like saying hello, or just watching them go by?