Why do they [i]need[/i] to push the rock, though?

It keeps bugging her, you know? The only thing worse than pushing the rock is not pushing it. And she hadn't said anything at the time, because she was busy, yes, geeking out, and then there was all the work to pick up the pieces, and then she had been out there [i]doing[/i] things, and it'd felt so good.

But the entire point of the story, right, of the guy pushing the rock up the hill, right? Is that it [i]doesn't work.[/i] Sisyphus or whoever spends all that time and effort and sweat, and every time it rolls back down. It's like--he doesn't get that his story is a tragedy, right? He's trying to live in the kind of story where he's successful and powerful and a king and can outthink, outfight, outwit the rock.

They're fighting a losing battle.

Nobody's willing to say it, but it's true, innit? It's a good battle! She's out here, she's seeing the galaxy, being helpful, and doing something nobodyelse is doing, for probably the best cause she can think of. It's a fight she can't stomach the idea of [i]not[/i] fighting.

And maybe that's the problem.

Put yourself in the spot of the king, right? Invincible hill, massive fuck-off boulder, and capital-S Success at the top of the hill.  

But the king, at least, can find success in other places. In leaving the boulder behind. In carving the boulder into stone to build a home. Put up a plaque, In This Day In The Year 20086 The King yada yada yada'd, and boom, now you have a monument.

But for the Publica, the mountain is sentient, and fickle, and can come smash any town you might build somewhere else, and also owns the infrastructure you need to build somewhere else, and it keeps [i]shitting all over the mountain.[/i]

And they've been winning, right? She's feeling super good about what she's doing.

But none of that changes that the Skies are building the mountain more quickly than the Publica can take it down.

Did Sisyphus ever feel like this?

It's like. She can see the trajectory if left unchanged. But the only other trajectory she can think of is, you know, a massive public campaign where she, outcast and red-robed, somehow convinces the shah and all her men to change course on a project that's been in the works since… well, since forever.

But what else can she do? The alternative to pushing the rock is, well, not pushing it. And there are too many people who'll get hurt if she doesn't. She just has to hope that she figures out something else before, you know, the worst comes to worst.