Archive of Our Own

PAIN THRESHOLD – This isn’t the first time you lost your memory, you know.

1. It isn’t?
2. I suppose that makes sense.
3. You know what? I don’t want to hear about this (Discard thought).

You – It isn’t?

PAIN THRESHOLD – No. Aren’t you listening?

1. No.
2. That’s not possible.
3. I must have forgotten.

YOU – I must have forgotten.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Yes. That’s the idea.

1. I suppose that makes sense.

YOU – I suppose that makes sense.

PAIN THRESHOLD – It doesn’t. Not really. None of it does.

1. Tell me more (Proceed).
2. You know what? I don’t want to hear about this (Discard thought).

YOU – Tell me more (Proceed).

PAIN THRESHOLD – There was a boy. His mother gave him an awful name because she loved him. She loved him. But after a point, she was gone.

1. I already know this.

YOU – I already know this.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Yes.

1. What was her name?
2. How did she love him?
3. Where did she go?
4. Come on, get to the good part.
5. Stop.

YOU – What was her name?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Don’t go down this road.

1. Come on, get to the good part.
2. Stop.

YOU - Come on, get to the good part.

PAIN THRESHOLD – That was the good part. She named him. She played with him. She loved him. 

Either before or after she was gone, the boy got sick. So sick he couldn’t breathe. 

INLAND EMPIRE [Easy: Success] – So sick his body twisted apart with him still inside it.

ESPIRIT DE CORPS [Challenging: Success] – On another block, another outbreak, another boy. Binding you together in pain, though you didn’t know it yet. One deformed, the other scarred.

EMPATHY [Easy: Success] – The sick child in you reaching out to the sick child in him. Perhaps this is why you always understood each other. Or thought you did.

SHIVERS [Easy: Success] – Few survive a childhood here unmarred.

PAIN THRESHOLD – The boy survived, like few other boys. He was alone, like many other boys. Boys of his generation did not bond together in their loneliness. It was a knife wedged between each one’s ribs. Some drove it deeper. Some tore it out and chose to wield it. 

HALF LIGHT [Trivial: Success] – You, with your crooked jaw, your roving eyes. An easy target.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] – Not him. The boy.

PAIN THRESHOLD – The boy had a knack for solving puzzles. Some real, some imagined. He liked to experiment. He liked things to connect.

He tried an experiment on himself.

1. With drugs?
2. Sexually?
3. Artistically?
4. With some kind of huge, unethical, mad-scientist machine?

YOU – With some kind of huge, unethical, mad-scientist machine?

PAIN THRESHOLD – In a sense. 

It began with a thought. There was a word he heard often, from the other boys, from the streets, and he disliked hearing it. He liked it even less when he learned what it meant. That word implied violation. Of himself, of a code, of an order – and the pejorative, applied to him, placed him outside of that order. Picked him up and bundled him out into the cold. And he had his ugly nose pressed against the glass, begging, let him back in. Groveling and crying and pissing himself in the cold. The inside of that house, that big, stalwart house, on the right side, that was warm, and he was less ugly when he was inside it. On the right side of the glass. Understand that he was not often on the right side of anything.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Legendary: Failure] – What?

PAIN THRESHOLD – And the word was a glass shard to the inner ear. 

So this was his first experiment, and it was a success: he found that if he tried hard enough, really concentrated, he could un -hear the word. He practiced this for hours, hunched over on a barrel, thinking that word to himself. Again. Again. Teaching his ears to pass the word into another part of his brain so it never got to him. He honed the route. He thought the word as he ate. Before he went to bed. He thought the word again and again until he could unthink it. He learned how to do it when the children in the rival gangs shouted it down the street and into the echoey drainpipes. He learned to do it in-media-res: if he wanted, he could forget, in the moment, that it was said; so it was never said. He never heard it. 

1. But that doesn’t make sense. They still said it.
2. If the word didn’t go to the part of the brain that was him, where did it go?
3. What happened next? (Proceed).
4. Okay, enough of this touchy-feely bullshit. What was he, a f*****? (Discard thought).

YOU - But that doesn’t make sense. They still said it.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Did they?

YOU – He still heard it.

PAIN THRESHOLD – He didn’t. He put it somewhere else. 

1. If the word didn’t go to the part of the brain that was him, where did it go?
2. What happened next? (Proceed).
3. Okay, enough of this touchy-feely shit. What was he, a f*****? (Discard thought).

YOU – If the word didn’t go to the part of the brain that was him, where did it go?

PAIN THRESHOLD – It went to me. I heard it.

1. What happened next? (Proceed).
2. Okay, enough of this touchy-feely shit. What was he, a f*****? (Discard thought).

YOU – What happened next? (Proceed).

PAIN THRESHOLD – The experiment was a success. He knew how to work the mad-scientist machine.

INLAND EMPIRE – The Great Rewiring.

PAIN THRESHOLD – There were many other things the boy preferred to forget. Moments he preferred not to be present for. He could put them somewhere else.

1. That sounds concerning.
2. Genius!

YOU – Genius!

PAIN THRESHOLD – Many moments. Many scrapes and cuts. Narrow-misses with tetanus, sepsis. 

The boy had a gang. They’re all dead now. But even then, when some of them were still alive, the gang dissolved. The boy’s mother was either there or not there. The boy was alone. 

One day the boy was laying in a partially collapsed hall of Le Royaume, treasures gone or never found, and it was so dark, and he was bleeding. He knew he wouldn’t get up. He knew, deeper, that if he didn’t get up, it would be worse.

SHIVERS – Much worse.

PAIN THRESHOLD – But it hurt too much.

Nobody. His gang. His mother, who gave him the awful name, either before or after she was gone. Recent hurt. Raw. Ache running through him, emanating out from his jaw hinge, through his circulatory system branching out like the light of a hot, wet star. It would be easier if someone else told him to get up. Nobody –

VOLITION – Get up. It doesn’t end like this.

LOGIC [Medium: Failure] – It’s just a story.

VOLITION [Medium: Success] – But he needs to get up.

PAIN THRESHOLD – So he got up. He shuffled back out into the light. Went on. Solved his puzzles. Tinkered with the machine. 

One day, something very bad happened.

…

1. …

YOU – …

PAIN THRESHOLD – …

1. What was it?
2. Are you going to give me any more details than that?
3. Why don’t you know when his mother stopped being there?
4. I don’t want to know.

YOU – What was it?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Bad.

1. Are you going to give me any more details than that?
2. Why don’t you know when his mother stopped being there?
3. I don’t want to know.

YOU – Are you going to give me any more details than that?

PAIN THRESHOLD – That would defeat the purpose.

1. Why don’t you know when his mother stopped being there?
2. I don’t want to know.
3. I’m feeling a little railroaded here.

YOU – I’m feeling a little railroaded here.

PAIN THRESHOLD – …

1. I don’t want to know.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Yeah.

Something very bad happened. 

LOGIC – So bad it defied sense.

CONCEPTUALIZATION – So bad it didn’t exist.

INLAND EMPIRE – So bad the whole world ended, and life began again in the inferno of the deep sea vents, and for a million million years the bacteria waged war on the archaea and on the polychaetes and on the mussels, and then they dragged themselves out of the black, and humanity evolved again, and the Pale metastasized again, and all of history took place again, every moment just the way it was before, and every moment led up to the Bad Thing. 

PAIN THRESHOLD – Except the boy wasn’t there this time.

ENDURANCE [Easy: Success]– Harry pulled himself together and kept going.

PAIN THRESHOLD – It wasn’t the total oblivion that you woke up from in Martinaise. Harry remembered his childhood. It was like a story that’d been told to him enough times that he had it memorized, the major beats and arcs, if not the words. It was like watching through a pane of glass.

REACTION SPEED [Trivial: Success] – Harry?

1. Wait, Harry?
2. Where did the boy go?
3. But he was still himself.

YOU – Wait, Harry?

PAIN THRESHOLD – That was this new guy’s name.

1. Where did the boy go?
2. But he was still himself.

YOU – Where did the boy go?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Another place. Deeper. Without words.

INLAND EMPIRE – Unconnected to the language centers of the brain. Ghosts from the deep Pale, routed in snippets through the circuits of the entire city, in the call buttons and the traffic lights.

INTERFACING [Easy: Success] – The system itself. He conceived and fine-tuned it. He assigned a value to the feeling of completing a task. He knew that your tasks are separate from, but beside, your thoughts, your possessions, and the things you hold in your hands. He knew that your body and your mind were separate things and that each one could take a certain amount of damage. He assigned damage a number. He measured – he could take this much, and not more.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Formidable: Failure] – No, he didn’t. It just is this way. It’s natural. This is how everyone interacts with the world.

PAIN THRESHOLD – It doesn’t matter. The boy was gone, and in his place was a new person.

ENDURANCE – A män.

1. But he was still himself.
2. He stopped being himself.

YOU – He stopped being himself.

PAIN THRESHOLD – He’s Harry now.  And he’s a man.

HALF LIGHT [Challenging: Success] – …So bad he ate himself.

REACTION SPEED – A little slow.

PAIN THRESHOLD – So that was the first time.

Harry found a job at a gym. He found a place to live. He kicked the drugs the boy had picked up, the sporadic habits of a street rat, sought more out of boredom than need.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Trivial: Success] – But the pathways had been formed when he was so young and plastic. We remembered.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Trivial: Success] – A gym? Yes! Finally something to work with here. This Harry must have been strong.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Harry ricocheted off his gym job into a coaching job. He wasn’t the best at it. He was still young. It didn’t give him purpose. But he was good with teenagers. He enjoyed working, and he enjoyed the kids, and puzzling out what each one needed. He could work out which ones needed a pat on the back and which ones needed a push. He could work out which ones had done stints in juvie and how to nudge their odds of staying out of it. He could work out which ones weren’t running because they were lazy and which ones weren’t running because they were hungry. He could tell this from the scuffs on their shoes. 

EMPATHY – He brought meal bars when he could afford them.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT – It was his peak.

PAIN THRESHOLD – It didn’t last very long.

The change was slow, unnoticeable. Or it was very fast. Or it already happened a few years ago. Or it was always happening. Coach Harry slid from his early twenties to his mid-twenties. Something else slid, over the membrane of his ears, the thin lens over his pupils, and he felt things that he hadn’t since — like through a pane of glass – and he had so much trouble falling asleep — He had so much trouble falling asleep.

He kept working and he worked well enough that he left the job with a decent reputation. He could have stayed there for a long time without anything going wrong.

INLAND EMPIRE [Formidable: Success] – But it would have gone wrong. In ten years.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Coach Harry didn’t do anything out of the ordinary for a gym coach. He yelled a lot and he made people uncomfortable and his mood changed on a dime. But this was ordinary for gym coaches.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – He got back into drugs, yes. That was the only way to keep the party going! There was no point to resisting it. Why did he even stop in the first place? But that wasn’t the first thing. Swear.

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] – It may not have helped that the average age of onset for psychotic disorders is in the early-to-mid twenties.

VOLITION [Formidable: Failure] – It doesn’t help. Don’t try to dodge responsibility for this. You made kids uncomfortable, alright? You make everyone uncomfortable, always, and yet you continue to behave in the exact same way.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Hard: Success] – Not you. Harry.

HALF LIGHT [Medium: Success] — Fuck that quack shit. If there’s something wrong with this guy, it’s always been wrong with him. Didn’t you hear him calling himself a f***** over and over again earlier? 

ENDURANCE [Challenging: Success] — It doesn’t matter. If it was going to kill him, it would have by now.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Coach Harry took up smoking and some other things. It wasn’t bad. He could get through a day, a week, without using anything. He liked to have a good time, and internally, he was grasping at something – but he was not abnormal. Only women crossed the street when they saw him walking toward them in the other direction, not men. And this was for the normal reason.

ENDURANCE – They were intimidated by his potent masculinity.

SAVOIR FAIRE [Easy: Success]– He was still cool.

PAIN THRESHOLD – He was an acquired taste. Some people were intimidated by his unpredictability, the creeping sense, in talking to him, that there were processes occurring inside him that were not visible to the outside world, behind his eyes, bright and opaque as seaglass. Some people found it attractive.

SAVOIR FAIR – See?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Something good happened. And then it turned very, very bad.

1. Oh God, what is it this time?

YOU – Oh God, what is it this time?

PAIN THRESHOLD – A good thing that spiraled into a bad thing. An ended world. Like the discovery of the atom.

LOGIC [Easy: Success] – This would’ve been around the time you met Dora.

INLAND EMPIRE – On a bus, in your jacket, the smoke strong in your mouth, back when you could still taste it…

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Formidable: Failure] – Is nobody listening to me?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Coach Harry fell in love, and his love disapproved of the drugs. He convinced her to try some. He convinced her of a lot of things. She was young. She was very, very beautiful.

1. Tell me more about her.
2. [Volition: Challenging] Don’t.

VOLITION [Challenging: Success] – Don’t.

PAIN THRESHOLD – It’s not relevant, anyway.

Love encouraged Coach Harry to become Officer Harry. He followed his lungs in all things, and now his lungs were white and beautiful.

CONCEPTUALIZATION  – Love killed him.

1. Wait, so is he dead? Did he become a different guy again?
2. Been there, buddy.
3. Let’s not get into it.

YOU – Wait, so is he dead? Did he become a different guy again?

PAIN THRESHOLD –  Not yet. Though he had convinced himself that change was right around the corner.

1. Been there, buddy.
2. Let’s not get into it.

YOU – Been there, buddy.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Let’s not get into it.

YOU – Hey!

PAIN THRESHOLD – A childhood in Jamrock burns a lot of images into one’s brain. Officer Harry had seen dead bodies and their killers. These things were background, unfrightening and unpainful, like street dogs, gunshots, and needles.

EMPATHY [Challenging: Success] – He had never seen a forest or a mountain.

PAIN THRESHOLD – So Officer Harry assumed – although he couldn’t precisely remember – that his childhood resilience had been sufficiently encoded into his head that he would be able to handle whatever his new job exposed him to. 

ENDURANCE – Nothing could touch him in his manly new uniform.

PAIN THRESHOLD – He knew how to make sure that nothing touched him. He sorted the images away. The feelings, day by day, endless people, people’s bodies, delusions, masks of grief. He didn’t remember them except when he needed to.

1. Who did?
2. And everything was fine?

YOU – Who did?

PAIN THRESHOLD – I did.

YOU – And everything was fine?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Yes.

VOLITION – It was not fine. A man can’t just decide to stop seeing what’s right in front of him. The human mind isn’t built to handle that. The body keeps the score.

PAIN THRESHOLD – I did.

And it worked. We kept it working. Until Harry saw something very, very bad.

1. …
2. What was it?

YOU – What was it?

PAIN THRESHOLD – What exactly do you want from this, Harry? Do you want me to play it over the backs of your eyelids, like I used to? I can do that.

RHETORIC [Formidable: Success] – What do you want from this?

1. [VOLITION: Godly] What do you want from this?
2. What do you want from this?
3. Just tell me what it was.
4. Don’t tell me what it was, then.
5. Why are you being so mean to me?

YOU – What do you want from this?

VOLITION [Challenging: Success] – Wrong emphasis. Might I remind you, these stories are not coming from some outside consciousness. There is no conversational partner. Whatever end there is to this conversation, it is your end. There is something you wanted to resolve.

1. [VOLITION: Godly] What do you want from this?
2. Just tell me what it was.
3. Don’t tell me what it was, then.
4. Why are you being so mean to me?

VOLITION [Godly: Failure]: I can’t tell you that.

PAIN THRESHOLD: You tell me.

1. Just tell me what it was.
2. Don’t tell me what it was, then.
3. Why are you being so mean to me?

YOU – Why are you being so mean to me?

PAIN THRESHOLD – You signed up for this.

1. Fine.
2. Well, I quit. (Discard thought)

YOU – Well, I quit. (Discard thought)

PAIN THRESHOLD – What if I resigned, Harry?  What if I just packed up and walked out? Do you even know what you’ve done to me over the years? What if I dumped it all back on you? What if I burst out through your ribcage and walked away?

VOLITION – Again, this is not an entity speaking to you.  It is not actually possible to rewire your mind into separate parts, and it is not possible for those parts to get up and leave.

PAIN THRESHOLD – You made a deal with me.

VOLITION [Legendary: Failure] – But you did make a deal, too, didn’t you?

1. Just tell me what it was.
2. Don’t tell me what it was, then.

YOU – Don’t tell me what it was, then.

PAIN THRESHOLD – It was enough. Harry had that memory and all the other ones inside him, and they got too heavy to carry around. He couldn’t do his job. He had to go away.

HALF LIGHT [Easy: Success] – Dark and safe. 

1. And who took his place?

YOU - And who took his place?

ESPIRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] – A sergeant, then a lieutenant, then a detective. 

PAIN THRESHOLD – But that wasn’t his name. Something else animated the corpse of Harry. A revenant, a dark necromancy of drink and speed. That was you.

1. Gasp! What? Me?
2. Welcome to the party!
3. I see.

YOU – Gasp! What? Me?

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Failure] – But it was just a story!

LOGIC – It was a story you told to yourself.

VOLITION – Because you had to.

PAIN THRESHOLD – It was a story you told to the world. You told it to her.

So you were there. 

1. And I woke up in Martinaise.
2. Her?
3. What happened next?

YOU – And I woke up in Martinaise.

PAIN THRESHOLD – No.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Trivial: Success] – I ? Who’s I?

1. Okay, who’s “you” at this point? Is it the boy? The guy, Harry? Me?
2. Her?
3. What happened next?

YOU – Okay, who’s “you” at this point? Is it the boy? The guy, Harry? Me?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Why are you asking me?

1. [Conceptualization: Impossible] Figure out who “you” is.
2. Her?
3. What happened next?

YOU – [Conceptualization: Failure] I’m me – aren’t you – you’re you – me – we’re –

PAIN THRESHOLD – Stop. Focus.

1. Her?
2. What happened next?

YOU – Her?

PAIN THRESHOLD – You told her you had changed. She was the first person you ever told about any of this.

HALF LIGHT — You never should’ve told anyone.

1. Wait, you’re telling me that last one wasn’t Dora?
2. What happened next?

YOU — Wait, you’re telling me that last one wasn’t Dora?

PAIN THRESHOLD — No, that was this latest one. You were only twice gone by this point. There was another to come — the big one. But we haven’t gotten there yet.

EMPATHY — But they were all big ones, weren’t they? I haven’t forgotten about the boy.

PAIN THRESHOLD — Do. 

EMPATHY [Formidable: Failure] — Okay.

1. What happened next?

YOU — What happened next?

PAIN THRESHOLD – You worked for a long time. You were more adept than Harry at being a detective. You saw a lot of things, after that, which were worse than the very bad thing. You handled them.

ENDURANCE – You kept it down.

PAIN THRESHOLD – You didn’t always, or couldn’t. When the cup got full, it spilled, rather than shattering. That’s why you survived it, while Harry didn’t.

SUGGESTION [Challenging: Success] – You were less adept than Harry at being liked by other people.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Yes. That too. She knew it, although to her, it was a slow switch rather than an instantaneous one. You did a lot of things to her that Harry wouldn’t have done. Seeing her face like that would’ve killed him. 

Or maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know. That’s not my area.

EMPATHY – I don’t know, either. I don’t remember.

ENDURANCE – Why would you spend time thinking about her face? You did what had to be done, always. You always did what had to be done.

PAIN THRESHOLD – And you had so much trouble falling asleep.

Years passed.

1. Were they any good?
2. Did anything else bad happen?
3. What happened next?

YOU – Were they any good?

LOGIC – Of course. They couldn’t have been unilaterally bad, or she wouldn’t have stayed for so long.

SAVIOR FAIRE – You got even better at dancing.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – We partied hard! It doesn’t matter if your receptors are desensitized, so long as you have the money to keep upping the dose.

PAIN THRESHOLD – There was good in them.

1. Did anything else bad happen?
2. What happened next?

YOU – Did anything else bad happen?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Yes. What kind do you mean?

1. At work.
2. With her.
3. Nevermind.

YOU – With her.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Yes. You already know this. What else?

1. At work.
2. Nevermind.

YOU – At work.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Of course. I don’t need to prove this to you, either.

1. Come on!
2. Nevermind.

YOU – Come on!

PAIN THRESHOLD – Okay. Since you do not seem to understand what I mean. I will tell you one thing.

It was snowing. You went to a tenement in Jamrock to question a woman about the murder of her husband, who you believed to be connected to La Puta Madre. 

ESPIRIT DE CORPS – You and Vicquemare were ready to have the case off your hands. The file would stop at Madre and be shuffled into the archives, and you could devote the rest of your day to a case you could actually solve. You could actually help someone.

PAIN THRESHOLD – The landlord had turned off the heating in the tenement. No one was paying the utility bill. You met a blanket-shrouded young woman at the door of her apartment. The file said she was nineteen and that she had a three-month-old.

PERCEPTION – The place was small and dirty, but beyond the iron tang of frozen capillaries in your nose, you smelled meat cooking.

REACTION SPEED [Impossible: Failure] – Don’t go in. For the love of God, don’t open the oven.

EMPATHY – Please.

PAIN THRESHOLD – It was very cold. 

EMPATHY – Please.

PAIN THRESHOLD – The landlord turned off the heating.

EMPATHY – I’ve had enough of this. 

PAIN THRESHOLD – You arrested the mother. Vicquemare threw up out the back window.

Later that week, Dora told you she was pregnant.

DAMAGED MORALE -1

1. …
2. Oh my God.
3. Nevermind.

YOU – …

1. Oh my God.
2. Nevermind.

YOU – Oh my God.

1. Nevermind.
2. Wait, but I need to dwell on this.

YOU – Wait, but I need to dwell on this.

PAIN THRESHOLD – This is why I don’t tell you things.

VOLITION [Challenging: Success] – Don’t dwell on this. Okay? You need to not dwell on this.

1. Nevermind.
2. But what’s the point? What the hell is the point if I just move past this?

YOU – But what’s the point? What the hell is the point if I just move past this?

VOLITION – You move past this.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Do you see?

1. Yes.
2. No.
3. I…

YOU – I…

PAIN THRESHOLD – Do you see what you’ve done to me?

1. Yes.
2. No.

YOU – Yes.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Should I show you more?

1. Yes.
2. No.

YOU – No.

PAIN THRESHOLD – I could do it. I could.

1. Fine. Do it. Get out of here. Get the fuck out of here.
2. Wait…

YOU – Wait…

PAIN THRESHOLD – For what, Harry?

1. Fine. Do it. Get out of here. Get the fuck out of here.
2. Nevermind.

YOU – Nevermind.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Okay.

1. What happened next?

YOU – What happened next?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Dora got sick of it. She left you.

DAMAGED MORALE -1

MORALE CRITICAL! HEAL YOURSELF NOW

ENDURANCE – Nevermind all that. You’re fine.

HALF LIGHT – Get us out of here.

1. Mag up.
2. Just let it happen.
3. Wait, am I really still that low on morale? After all this time? Two hits in a row, and I’m ready to call it a day?

YOU – Wait, am I really still that low on morale? After all this time? Two hits in a row, and I’m ready to call it a day?

HALF LIGHT – Yuuup.

VOLITION – You haven’t been full on morale for quite a while, Harry. You’re back on duty. Your painkiller prescription has run out, and your leg still hurts, and so do all of the other old aches you’ve been ignoring.

PAIN THRESHOLD – You’re having trouble sleeping.

VOLITION – Your caseload hasn’t gotten any lighter. In fact, it’s worse than it ever was. You’re less willing to push the gang-related murders to the bottom of the stack. There are cases now, too, dealing with political murders. Minor officials. CEOs. These are the cases that the Moralintern has its eye on. These are the cases that you do not want to solve. 

RHETORIC – You do not want to put the perpetrators in custody.

VOLITION – But you do. Because you are back to it, Harry. You’re healed. You’ve proven you’re still capable of getting your work done. You aren’t drinking on the job, often, though you’ve been slipping this week. You’re not doing very much speed, except for right now. Cases are getting solved, and you’re finally doing your part to carry the massive workload of your Precinct on your shoulders.

PAIN THRESHOLD – You have seen some very bad things.

VOLITION [Challenging: Success] – But Kim is here. He came here for you. He’s proud of you. He relies on you.

ESPIRIT DE CORPS [Medium: Success] – So does the rest of the Precinct. Jean Vicquemare hates this question, but he thinks it often: What the fuck would we do if he wasn’t here?

1. I’m doing my best. So are they.
2. Where is Kim right now? I should talk to him.
3. So… it hasn’t started yet?
4. Mag up.
5. Just let it happen.

YOU – So… it hasn’t started yet?

RHETORIC – No. Nothing has changed. No effort has been made to throw off the boot of the Moralintern – and if there were, you would be one of the ones quelling it. Even those on your side say it is not time yet.

SHIVERS – It is always starting, has always started. It is always time.

VOLITION – You’re in a holding pattern. You’ll bounce back after this week. You’ll get your feet back under you, and you’ll do the work.

RHETORIC – Nothing has changed.

1. I’m doing my best. So are they.
2. Where is Kim? I should talk to him.
3. Mag up.
4. Just let it happen.

YOU – I’m doing my best. So are they.

VOLITION – That’s it.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT – You are. We keep this miserable sack of fat and salt running around, day after day, and they don’t even let you use a car anymore. Let me tell you, it’s not easy. But we’re doing it. 

LOGIC [Easy: Success] – Do you have to?

1. Damn right.
2. Do I have to?

YOU – Do I have to?

ENDURANCE – Damn right you do.

1. Damn right.
2. [Logic: Challenging] Do you actually have to?

LOGIC [Challenging: Success] – Some people do other things with their lives, right? Some people’s jobs don’t make them run all over the town on a gunshot wound. Some people don’t see the things you see. Some people don’t take speed just to get up in the morning.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Just most of them do.

LOGIC – Life here creates certain conditions, that’s true. But if other people live here and don’t live like you do, you may not have to live like you do, either.

VOLITION – Except that you do. This is how you help people. What else do you have to live for?

1. What would I do otherwise?
2. Where is Kim right now? I should talk to him.
3. Mag up.
4. Just let it happen.

YOU – What would I do otherwise?

VOLITION [Impossible: Failure] – You would probably kill yourself.

LOGIC – You could pick up tare. You could meet people. You know a lot of people now. You could get food from the woman who runs the community garden.

ESPIRIT DE CORPS – And abandon your brothers?

AUTHORITY – Your position of power? Your proximity to the Movement?

ESPIRIT DE CORPS [Medium: Success] – Even if you left, they would get in contact with you. When the moment came. But you would not be one of them anymore.

RHETORIC – Maybe that would be for the best. Do you want the struggle to be led by cops?

VOLITION – Hey. Hey. What are we talking about? Just a moment ago, this was about you and your memories. Now you’re talking about leaving your entire life behind. You’re redirecting your internal struggles into politics again.

RHETORIC – That’s right. Blame individual emotional struggles for dissatisfaction with systemic injustice. Classic.

ESPIRIT DE CORPS – The system is you. It is your blood. 

1. Hey, how am I not dead yet or collapsed in a ditch somewhere? My morale was critical, like, two minutes ago.
2. Where is Kim? I should talk to him.
3. Mag up.
4. Just let it happen.

YOU – Hey, how am I not dead yet or collapsed in a ditch somewhere? My morale was critical, like, two minutes ago.

VOLITION – I think you’re still deciding.

1. Where is Kim? I should talk to him.
2. Mag up.
3. Just let it happen.

YOU – Where is Kim? I should talk to him.

KIM KITSURAGI – He’s right here, beside you. You’ve been standing silently for a couple minutes, your face twitching as you subconsciously mimic the expressions of the other people in your head. He’s used to this. He watches the street, the clouds, the people laughing on the far corner. Sometimes he glances bemusedly at you. He wonders what you’re thinking about.

EMPATHY [Challenging: Success] – You’ve looked bad lately, he thinks. Sad old dog. He’s thinking he should say something to you later. He has no idea what he’ll say.

PAIN THRESHOLD – You can’t speak to him yet. We’re not done.

1. But… please? I like talking to Kim.
2. What more is there to do?

YOU – What more is there to do?

PAIN THRESHOLD – There is something to decide.

1. Mag up.
2. Just let it happen.

YOU – Mag up.

MORALE HEALED +1

1. Is that what I had to decide?
2. Okay. What happened next?

YOU – Okay. What happened next?

PAIN THRESHOLD – She left. You were alone.

MORALE DAMAGED -1

MORALE CRITICAL! HEAL YOURSELF NOW

1. Oh, come on.
2. Mag up.

YOU – Oh, come on.

1. Mag up.

YOU – Mag up.

PAIN THRESHOLD – You handled it normally for a while, on the outside. Jean came over a couple nights to drink with you. You didn’t take a single day off. You went out on your own. You fried your brain a little more than the average person might.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY — Average people are lame. You knew how to party!

PAIN THRESHOLD — There were a lot of drugs. You showed up to work drunk a couple times. But it was still okay. Breakups do this to people. They go on a bender and get over it.

But you. Never. Stopped.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – No way we were going into work sober.

VOLITION — It was bad. It was obvious.

PAIN THRESHOLD — You called her. Her voice was like rain on a wildfire, even when she was begging you to leave her alone.

Years passed this way.

1. Were they any good?
2. Did anything else bad happen?
3. What happened next?

YOU – Did anything else bad happen?

PAIN THRESHOLD – You lost control of your faculties. You were offered another promotion. You had a large department under you, and showed up to work high and drunk and unwashed. You screamed – not shouted, screamed – at many people, at work and not at work. You threw up on yourself. You fucked women who did not like you. You allowed things to be done to you which, in some part of your mind, you found humiliating, distasteful, and reminiscent of old and bad wounds. You saw many things. You did many, many drugs, and either through that or the mental illness or the things you saw, you lost something, something intangible but vital, a stuff that held the universe together, a stuff that made the world around you make sense. You wept loudly and publicly, many times. You were an open wound.

Even when things were good, they were not good. Your pleasure centers had been completely fried.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Is that blame I hear? We were all that kept the party going, you and I.

VOLITION – This doesn’t sound like a party to me. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Your dopamine receptors were more stimulated than they had ever been. You were more ecstatic than any other time in your life. Cooler, too.

VOLITION – I don’t even know why we keep this one around. He’s been compromised since you were a child.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Since you were nine.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – What else were we supposed to do?

VOLITION – Your job. Offered rewards for jobs well done, for earned pleasure, for the sight of small beauties. Kept us going from day to day. You should have listened to me.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY — She wasn’t there. Nobody touched me anymore. Why didn’t anybody touch me?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Jean patted you on the back a couple times, at first.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – But only for a second.

PAIN THRESHOLD – I know. You got what we needed elsewhere. It was the only way to get through those years. Thank you.

1. Were they any good?
2. What happened next?

YOU – Were they any good?

PAIN THRESHOLD – No.

SHIVERS – Two swifts locked talons 350 feet above the River Esperance and plunged toward the surface of the water. Falling at over 60 miles per hour, they mated. Seconds before they hit, they released each other and soared away, then wheeled and came back together, dancing on warm spirals of air, quivering with the aftershocks of incomprehensible ecstasy.

In Jamrock, a man opened a present from a dear companion and found it to be a book he had long wanted but never purchased for himself. He sat back in his tattered armchair, flipped on his warm yellow lamp, and read.

A lorry driver gave birth prematurely in her own driver’s seat just as she burst out into Revachol from the Pale. If her superiors had known she was pregnant, they would not have sent her through. She’d told herself she had bills to pay. But shaking, sweat-soaked and half-conscious with her hazards blinking on the shoulder of the 8/81, she curled her bare arms around her baby and stared into his face, and resolved that she would never drive the deep Pale again. And here in Revachol, she stayed, as all of us stay.

PAIN THRESHOLD – There was good in them.

Somewhere.

1. What happened next?

PAIN THRESHOLD – You continued doing your job. Eventually, you crashed your car into the ice, and stumbled out on the legs of a newborn fawn.

1. Things have changed.
2. Things haven’t changed.

YOU – Things have changed.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Okay. 

You are on the beat, chasing down a killer.

Your heart is pounding. You took too much this morning and your internal systems are scrambling to ignore that fact. 

Your body hurts.

We have had this conversation before.

1. No…
2. Is there any more to it?
3. So what’s the point of this conversation, then?

YOU – Is there any more to it?

PAIN THRESHOLD – No.

1. So what’s the point of this conversation, then?

YOU – So what’s the point of this conversation, then?

PAIN THRESHOLD – You need to decide what happens next.

ENDURANCE – Can you keep doing this to yourself?

CONCEPTUALIZATION – Who is “yourself” at this point?

INLAND EMPIRE – Can you continue to be it?

1. Okay. What happens next?
2. Was there really never anything else?

YOU – Was there really never anything else?

INLAND EMPIRE [Godly: Success] – There could have been.

There is a universe where, after you came back from the island and defended yourself to your colleagues, you asked them to stop the motor carriage outside the Whirling-in-Rags. Kim still had things in there to pack up, and you followed him, your lurching steps as light as air, saying you thought another night of rest might make the drive into the city a little less agonizing on your leg, but really you were breathless – breathless from the miracle, letting it carry you away from the patrol vehicle and up to your rooms.

Kim rustled with his toiletries in the bathroom. He asked you something about how you thought the conversation had gone, something about what you were going to do next. You gave an absent answer. You were busy wandering around your room, looking under the tables, between the sheets, eyes wide, beaming. “Kim,” you said, pointing to the bed, “that’s where you saved my life.” 

“Yes,” he said, eyes crinkling, and he folded his washcloth neatly into his toiletry bag. He leaned on the bathroom doorframe, watching you look around the room with the wonder of a child.

“Everything’s changed,” you said. Your voice was high, baffled with delight. “We found it. There was a miracle.”

“Yes,” he said.

He came further into the room, his packing permitted to drift to the back of his mind. You spoke – speculations about the phasmid meandering into thoughts about the past week, into politics, into fond jabs at each other, into Kim’s motor carriage and Hjelmdallerman and all sorts of meaningless nothings that meant something, to you, because you were standing there in that room, with him, on your throbbing leg, and the bed was made and the day was ending and the phasmid was real. 

“Kim,” you said, “I can’t go back to the RCM.”

He stared at you, halfway through a sentence, mouth open in a little o .

So then you had to talk about that. You kept coming back to one refrain: “The phasmid is real.” He didn’t ask you to explain. “I spent so long begging them to take me back. If I go back, I’ll have to take speed again. The phasmid is real.” “My apartment is full of garbage and piss. The window is so small. I’ll have to go back and clean it and get my things, but – but – the phasmid is real.” He knew what it meant. It meant something similar to him too.

You asked him if he wanted to stay one last night at the Whirling-In-Rags too. He did. In the morning, he drove you back with him to his own apartment and let you stay on the couch. You both knew what a tremendous risk he took in doing this, letting you into his space – but, Harry, the phasmid was real. You stayed there for longer than anticipated. You picked up tare on the street. This bothered him, but he did not try to argue with you and never brought up the possibility of your going back to the RCM. 

On the street, you ran into all kinds of people. Stumbling and lurching into situations, relationships, little mysteries as if pulled by magnets: You met street orphans who led you into the tunnels, one of whom you later pulled out of a collapse. Cheated heirs and jilted lovers spilled their woes to the shambling old hobo fishing cans out of the canal. You helped the old woman who lived on the third floor carry groceries to her apartment, and she invited you to come in and play a tile game with her and her old woman friends, and you learned it pretty well, or at least learned how to lose in an entertaining way, despite not speaking a lick of Seolite. You picked up some Seolite numbers, and knowing the Seolite numbers helped you find your way to the restaurant above which one of the jilted lovers said her husband lived, and a friend of the street orphan worked there and let you in, and inside you stumbled upon a bank statement which led you to the executor of the will… and… and…

They started bringing you clothes, the children, hats and funny glasses and big scuffy shoes. There was the girl you found a couch for on the night she had nowhere to sleep. She made you a tie from bits of sea glass. The bruised boy with the ex-boyfriend you shouted down in the street brought you some money from his first paycheck at his new job, and you used it to buy a segway that made Kim shake with laughter. You rolled around to new neighborhoods and picked up new trash. You asked people on the street if they had any cases that needed solving, and for some reason they answered you, you with your big red nose and outlandish clothes. You found missing dogs and library books and bodies. Many of them paid you out of pure shock. Your favorite payment, by far, was the food the old neighbor brought you at the end of each week. You told her you didn’t need it, but she always insisted that she’d made too much (at least, you figured that’s what she was saying) and foisted big hot tupperwares on you that you and Kim could share for days.

No telling how this scenario ended. You probably fell off the wagon at some point and maybe you got back on it. Maybe you formalized your business, if it could be called a business. Maybe you found your own apartment or maybe you didn’t. You can think about it tonight as you’re laying in your dirty bed, staring up at your dirty ceiling.

INLAND EMPIRE [Easy: Success] – Or it could have been that nothing happened. That you left the RCM and stayed in the little shack in Martinaise and no one important ever heard from you again.

PAIN THRESHOLD – There’s only this, now. 

1. Okay. What happens next?

YOU – Okay. What happens next?

PAIN THRESHOLD – …

…

1. …
2. Hello?
3. Is this thing on?

YOU — …

PAIN THRESHOLD — …

1. Hello?
2. Is this thing on?

YOU – Hello?

PAIN THRESHOLD – …

1. Is this thing on?

YOU – Is this thing on?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Why did you call me here?

1. Huh?
2. Why did YOU call ME here?
3. Man, I don’t know.

YOU – Why did YOU call ME here?

PAIN THRESHOLD – I didn’t.

1. Um, excuse me. I seem to recall a little circle spinning around my head.
2. I don’t know.

YOU – Um, excuse me. I seem to recall a little circle spinning around my head.

VOLITION – Might I remind you, Harry, that you’re the only person in here. Nobody called anybody. 

LOGIC [Challenging: Failure] – Weren’t there, like, three other guys?

VOLITION – You had this thought. You’re the one not letting yourself push it down anymore. For better or for worse, there’s a question here you need to answer. None of us can answer it for you.

PAIN THRESHOLD – And if you don’t answer it now, I won’t be able to keep you going.

1. But what’s the question?
2. But what’re my choices?
3. I know the answer… (Give an Opinion)

YOU – But what’s the question?

PAIN THRESHOLD – Your leg is aching. Your chest is pounding. You, here, on the street, running after the end.

1. But what’re my choices?
2. I know the answer… (Give an Opinion)

YOU – But what’re my choices?

VOLITION – You know where I stand.

INLAND EMPIRE – Are we standing on anything?

SHIVERS - Wherever you stand, you will be here, with me.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Your leg’s about to give out.

1. (Give an Opinion)
2. I know the answer… (Give an Opinion)

YOU – (Give an Opinion)

1. [Volition: Impossible] I can’t think about this right now. I need to solve the case. 
2. [Espirit De Corps: Impossible] I need my brothers. I can’t be anything else.
3. [Shivers: Impossible] I need to stay in this position. The list is made. The time will come. She needs me.
4. I need to sit down.
5. [Pain Threshold: Impossible] I want to remember. Please.
6. Wait, can I ask Kim?