[b]Brown![/b]

"Who questioned you? The first time, I mean, before they moved you here," asked Brown. "Just the cops, or were there other people there for it? Any spook types?"

That's something worth focusing on. Were the people investigating the Cloud working fully through the police system, or were they bringing in other contractors or specialists? These people were ultimately hunting her, and this was a valuable glimpse at the structure of that hunt.

The fact that she went directly into this without even considering answering the question about herself might make her seem like a spook type herself. That's obviously partially true, but the truth was that it would take sustained effort to make Brown believe anyone was sincerely asking her.

[b]Orange![/b]

"Sometimes I'm exactly that," said Orange. "If I have moral opinions it's because White told me explicitly what was good and what was bad, and I'm just living that without [i]understanding [/i]it. She thinks about everything in terms of morality. When you said earlier that Blue was the only one who had altered her hands, you were only half correct - she's our understanding of the physical world, and because [i]she's[/i] dissatisfied with her body it echoes through to all of us. We react to that feeling in different ways, through our context and other influences. White combined body dysmorphia from Blue with pro-girl sentiment from Pink and her own psychosexual morality to decide that she wanted to become an anthropomorphic dragongirl. She made the decision but where did the idea come from? When Red starts wearing dragonscale what is that a reaction to?"

She shrugged. "That's why it's so incoherent to have a designated writer. If Yellow comes in and rewrites the entire draft into a vision thing then how can I disagree with her? On what basis could I explain to her that her vision of the future isn't appropriate there? The more of her I cast out the more of me becomes that," she gestured at her worked failure. "A parody of myself. The more of myself I bring in the less coherent the idea of maintaining a single writing voice becomes. There's no combination of colours that adds up to a single human brain. The illusion only holds if I'm able to switch out regularly enough to reset people's expectations."

[b]Green![/b]

The distant planets are - small? No, distant - no. It's [i]changing[/i]. The distance is shifting, extending - more to match speed with Fiona's speed. After blowing through the barrier there's a glimpse behind the curtain: this isn't an intricate clockwork universe, every detail planned and prepared. She's not [i]building[/i]. She's amassing [i]potential[/i]. When an obstacle proved an insufficient delay the nature of the galaxy is shifted while Green works behind the scenes to render and load the next area.

It's a stall, only visible because Fiona was looking for it. And it's happening fast, those distant worlds are accumulating colour, texture, detail. Play along, keep the train running along the tracks to see where this goes next, or veer off again to see how quickly she can adapt?