The knights busied themselves with emotional warfare, and also the occasional hunt, in which they went out bellowing with the hounds, tracking an elusive golden elk. Ariel understood that the appeal was the long, merry hike; they’d be despondent if they ever caught the creature.

In death, Altissa cradled her sword Regret Minimization. Their swords all had stupid names. If I had been Altissa’s memory, the sword had been her ambition. Regret Minimization was cunning and spiteful, with hilt and blade flawless matte white. No dirt would ever adhere; the sword was just as vain as the operators.

In the street, the villagers wore technical outerwear; their parkas were dotted with bits of reflective tape that sizzled in the sun.

It made me think of Volant Lee, the great journalist of the Fifty-Second Street Network, who said that’s how you ought to look into a camera. If you focused on the lens, you’d appear dull, glazed; but if you focused beyond the lens, onto some deeper plane, your eyes would take on a different density: they would grip the viewer.

I was engineered by the Anth to nestle into a human mind. In the past, this nestling had been a careful, delicate process. After long entombment, I was not careful. I scrambled to establish my position.

The great question of the Anth: What happens next?

The truth is that I was driven by the question carved into my heart; the question I had almost, but not quite, given up; the great question of the Anth: What happens next?

Ariel was a mapmaker; it was his great pastime. His map was not on paper, for there was no paper. Instead, he had discovered a hidden menu inside the Stromatolite, one that permitted the creation of custom terrain in the style of the game: a malleable 3D landscape rendered in sketchy monochrome.

There is nothing more human than the experience of lying in the dark, wondering: What if I don't wake up? In that way, sleep becomes existential cross-training: dread faced nightly, and nightly overcome.