I believe that I am in Hell,

This isn't over.

The deities didn't create rules--they enforced them. Whoever or whatever is above them is, presumably, still there. The only thing that this revolution has changed is who oversees us. We're not free. Our problems aren't gone.

We can't be sure that we'll be better off. What do we know about the people who have replaced the deities? Do we know where they came from? What they truly want? Now that they control whatever power the deities had, what are they going to do with it? They've made promises, but what have they done for us? Were they any more forgiving or any less ruthless than the deities during the fighting?

Nothing gets better in the City. Maybe this time will be an exception, but I see no reason to hope for much. We'll still lose people we come to care about. We'll still be at the mercy of our captors, even if they aren't the ones we're used to.

Be careful. Don't hesitate to contact the police if there's trouble.


[COMMENTS]

I hope that everyone has had time to recover from their experiences in the desert.

That was a strange curse, and strangely anticlimactic. I don't know what I was expecting, but it's worrisome--the sudden split, the apparent lack of control that the deities had over the event (but their amount of control has been brought into question before now), the abrupt disappearance of the desert. The City has an inherent instability to it. I understand that. I wish I understood something beyond that.

Someone--Rosella?--mentioned an hourglass. It seems like sand has always been making random appearances in the City (as far as I can remember) and everything seems to revolve around time: the Clock always (or almost always) ticks, the twelve apartment complexes are arranged around the center of the City like numbers on a clock face, most curses last twenty-four hours, other curses are so regular that they could be marked on a calender.

Sand and time. Did the hourglass get turned upside-down? Is there any significance to the fact that one City was sand and the other was glass when glass can be made from sand? How much control do the deities have and how much power do the other beings that we've seen before have? How much power do we have?

Not that it matters. The City exists whether or not we're here, whether or not we remember, and whether or not we care enough to worry about what it is and what its purpose is. Maybe the City isn't a sentient thing or a twisted experiment; maybe it's a world like any other where individuals don't mean anything. Maybe the Clock would keep ticking if we all vanished (if a clock works in a universe where no one can hear it, does it make a sound?). Right now, I'm inclined to think of us as grains of sand in relation to the City as a whole.

( Filtered to Neil and Todd // Unhackable )

( Private // Off Network )

[ooc: The triumphant return of mopey tl;dr that no one can read!]


[COMMENTS]