Twilight Mirage 47: Uncontrolled Fires

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Episode description[edit | edit source]

As half of the Notion explores the jungle valleys of Skein, the others descend to Terncage, the planet’s largest metropolis. A pair of old allies tells the group that a mysterious calamity called “Dark Day” is nearing, and that the Rapid Evening’s oracular Crystal Palace has predicted that it will follow a pair of strange murders. The predicted victims are Wind’s Poem--the artist and researcher responsible for Tender’s ReFrame system--and Profit’s Cadence--the new leader of the Church of the Self, which is rapidly spreading through the New Earth Hegemony. Complicating things further, both are killed by a prototype gun that threatens the peace that Quire established during the Miracle.

Tender Sky leads the crew into a meeting with an old contact who knows a thing or two about weapons. Grand Magnificent bumps into a rival from his time on in the space trucking lanes. And Fourteen Fifteen frets as they consider the consequences of meddling with the future.

This week on Twilight Mirage: Uncontrolled Fires

It forever seemed like time's up

When we swerved in the Honda

Now forever seems like no time

I mean time flies when you have some

Contents[edit | edit source]

Opening[edit | edit source]

“

An excerpt from a letter, by Keen Forester Gloaming, Chief Intercessor of the Rapid Evening. Delivered by secure courier to the Brink, one week before Dark Day.

[Keen] You done a good job Gray, really. Under other circumstances, I’d be proud. You secured limited access to K-Upside Switchboard and to Crystal Palace distribution. You managed to set up a burrow virus to funnel resources from the Kesh perennial fund. Your agents, even if you wouldn’t call them that, have been able to avoid my own through a style of micro-probabilistic manipulation only you could have taught them to do.

Your presence has corralled a loose affiliation of smugglers, fixers and the rankest of opportunists into a force for stability instead of decay. You and Demani have managed to keep the Brink, ostensibly a stationary trade hub, one step ahead of a being that has spent the last 50000 years demonstrably predicting the future. You have made yourself my rival. But I do not care, because I cannot lose you. You know that right now, Crystal Palace can predict everything that’s happening in this galaxy. It knows why young lovers break up better than they do. It knows the name of every new born baby before breath can become parental voice. It knows the fates of armies and navies and singers and oceans and atoms and omelettes. And it knows, and I know, and you know, what’s coming. In two weeks, the Dovetail snaps, the lights turn off, and guaranteed events aint.

I warned Crystal Palace, Gray. You have to listen to me. I told it this place was different, that small moves meant more here, that physical explanations were no longer enough. But it asked me to move in the interests of all people, and I did. Come back with me. There are other postings. We can sit far away. You, me, and Demani, and whoever else you goddamn well please. You are too talented, too smart, you’ve given up too much to walk into the unknown. I once told Demani that, we had nothing to fear from what we couldn’t see, that we were the sun. But I was wrong. We are nothing but torches, in the sea.”

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