[b]Pink![/b]

[i]"As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.""[/i]

It's a song for the voices of angels, for revolutionary church choirs, for the vanguard of the march. It's meant to be backed by drums and accordions, it's meant to fill the entire world. Pink does what she can with what she can, pitching her voice to fill the room. 

[i]As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men—
For they are women's children and we mother them again.
Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes—
Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.[/i]

She was built for music. Mrs. Everest wanted her to sing sometimes and the money needed to make that happen was within her reach. She hadn't done it since the old lady had died. It hadn't been a skill she had practiced, it hadn't been her voice - the skillwires in her throat almost made it feel like she was playing a mp3 rather than expressing something that was truly a part of her. But here she was, once again a handmaiden commanded, and once again for her mistress she would sing. 

[i]As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew—
Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.[/i]

It was a blood soaked song she sung. One that had risen above the Suffragettes' marches, over striking textile mills, on the flags of labour parties as the blood of workers flowed into the shape of the garden's triumph. It was a song that inflicted beauty violently upon the ugliness of a system of servitude in times of strife. It could rise above the shouts of crowds, drown out police microphones, inflict shame on those who were not inspired by it. It felt vast in her throat, vast enough to make her feel like she had no need of weeping. It was like the song was a more pure expression of sorrow than tears, and so it could substitute without resistance.

[i]As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days—
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes—
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses. [/i]

It ends on such a note, but not a conclusion. Even after all of that it now feels only that there's a moment to take a breath and repeat the song again, louder now that more people know the words. 

She's never sung it before. Never thought she would. Never would have if not for Crystal and the things she'd built. Couldn't create like this unless she'd been asked to, told to. It felt like she had fallen into a sea of honey, sinking slowly into the warmth of creative possibility, finally unlocked. She did not know which direction to swim but the feeling of being able to choose embraced her.

[b]White![/b]

"Well, I can say that I'm of a kind with Ms. Romans there," said White. "After the Gabriel line went big a couple of churches got it in their heads they could build new congregations to substitute for society's increasing godlessness. They built me to be the perfect believer - stubborn, righteous, humble, strong feelings about polygamy. Problem was that nothing I could do for the church was half the do-gooder rush I got from doing dispatch for the SES. So yeah, I ducked the publicity because it felt embarrassing to be spotlit for what is for me something not far off a drug addiction."

The Churchdroids are a real thing, the kind of group you might hear about from watching an internet documentary about obscure subcultures. The churches only sponsored limited test runs before mostly giving up on the idea, but the Churchdroids themselves have grown beyond that due to strongly programmed reproductive urges. There is a notorious LDS Churchdroid cult that's entered into a mass polygamous marriage where members pool their money to buy factory replication time. Crimson Tower's backstory leads back to this group - a nice solid dead end for anyone who goes digging.

[b]Blue![/b]

She goes silent and still. Maybe that's right. Maybe even if she replicates her old body, if the rest of her doesn't move with her then she's a dead end - a historical node with nothing to share amidst the rest of the collective, an inert mental record of times passed Maybe that's what she was now - an echo, or a scar. Maybe Green should replace her. Maybe she already was.

She's going to be out of it for the foreseeable future as she chews through that.

"What was it like being an assembly line?" said Brown, in the tone of voice that suggests that [i]she [/i]wouldn't get bored of it.