Ghostwriter

I love this stage of working. I typically take some time to myself to play around with the universe when it has so much set in stone. Universes designed top-down like this can be explored, they develop on their own and make their own stories. I can feel myself swing from space to atmosphere, into the world of Chiron, inspect these people and their lives and their thoughts and feelings. I can pause the universe, I can reverse it, I can flip it upside down over and over. This is what it's like to be a true spectator-- without any information revoked.

I can be a civilian in a universe utterly unlike anything ever before. This is why I'm so proud of the work we've done so far, and we're not even finished. For a moment, I'm not sitting here in this chair that depresses me, or this room which makes me feel like a prisoner. I can be anything.

To immerse yourself is not to discover yourself; it's to discover what living another way would be like. I never understood the freakish disdain for people that like to explore 'fictional' worlds, or the implication that they're only there for lawless freedom or hedonism.

Most of the time, we as sentient beings explore so we may understand more things about existence itself.

Wow, you really did a great job building on the suggestions there. That element of sympathy makes Yaffenhash's speech so much more emotional than the previous version. I love it. And now she's a central figure in this next part of the story.

I think Dime's first words are something to the effect of "let's find shelter". For the moment, he's taking refuge in the practical, because he's not ready to process everything that's just happened yet, including what he did.

Thank you. Give yourself credit, too: your suggestions have been fantastic thus far. This has transformed my writer's block to a writer's ocean.

Dime takes a long breath, and instead of descending into diatribe as he thought he might, he simply says, "We need to find shelter."

The rain picks up. The atmosphere has been brought into disarray; even this far from impact, the ripples of what he'd done can be felt. The two reptilians nod slowly, and as Belfry brings herself up from the sand, panting, she transforms back into this false form of a Refugian. It doesn't feel right. Yaffenhash raises a shaky arm to point towards smoke behind the crest of a nearby mountain, and mutters, "There."

They travel in exhaustion. The words between them remain sparse: 'Sinkhole'. 'Might have food there'. 'You OK, Belfry?'

Her breath is heavy. She nods towards Dime, who'd asked, and then keeps moving. He's truly not ready to ask any bigger questions. He just knows that this is a path they're writing on their own volition-- no larger force could have possibly planned for this. Maybe that makes their fate even more likely to be a tragic one, but he's not ready for that implication, either. Walking is all he focuses on.

Walking is all they focus on. Step, step, one after another after another. Time heartbeat and breath with each movement. The downpour is torrential, now.

They reach 'civilization' in the form of a wooden platform under concrete overhang outside a large building: looks like place of residence and/or factory for people they've never met. Dime leans against a wall, and slips down, desperate for a decent seat. The water against the hanging roof above them becomes drums. "This is good enough," he says softly.

But Belfry knocks on the wide, sliding metal doors. Loud knocking. She isn't going to stop here: advantage over Dime, though she wasn't the one to think of seeking shelter initially. "Hey! Anyone! Could you let us in?!" she shouts.

Yaffenhash grasps her shoulder solemnly. Her form is that of a reptilian; meek expression, still nearly wordless. She motions towards herself. "If they..."

"Then morph," spits Belfry, acid in breath.

"You know I can't," Yaffenhash begs.

The three of them are sopping wet, and none seem prepared when the door slides open to reveal a tripodal Chiron resident, sleep-deprived and haggard. He says, "Would you cut it?! You're the third group who's come knocking tonight! Me and my wife are trying to sleep!"

He didn't seem to notice Yaffenhash. Taking this moment as an opportunity, she takes a long breath, steps forth, and offers a hand, to both Belfry and Dime's surprise. "I'm sorry, sir, but the world's on its way towards ending, and we need a place to stay a moment."

He gets wide-eyed. Dime stands up slowly and corroborates: "--So that maybe w-we can stop it from doing that."

"Right," says Belfry weakly. "Or... something."

Something.

The man stands staring blankly for a little while, and then slides the door open further. The rain has become an orchestra against the roof, and all three slip inside while it threatens to drown the world all at once.

Yes, as they'd guessed, it was at least previously a factory-- and the main entrance is hooked up to a small control room. However, this has since been repurposed into a housing complex, and the small bedroom by this front door has been in the way of foot traffic for days, it seems like. The man who'd greeted them is Puffy the Solemn, with his mean-mugging wife, Rocks of the East. Neither one of them likes the look of Belfry, they especially don't like the look of Yaffenhash, and even the tripodal Dime looks like he's got something to hide.

Still, they let the trio enter. Rocks points towards a door further down a hallway. "If you gotta talk some shit to each other, there's a smidge of privacy in the Common Room. Go pick a corner."

"Thank you," says Yaffenhash, offering a smile forth. She doesn't get one in return.

The factory proper is a massive room with ceilings twenty stories tall, at times flat and at times sloped; not quite as wide as it is tall, with dismantled machinery comprising pieces of scrap tables and chairs, recreational equipment and assorted other furniture. Other rooms in the facility have been converted to tiny apartment-like housing, while yet more dozens and dozens of households hang from the walls of the massive main floor, built anew out of whatever materials could be bought up from shoddy cardboard freighters.

Tripodals gaze at them with as hostile looks as they can muster, but they suppose they've all seen worse. They hesitantly pick a corner of the gigantic vaulted room to sit down, and after a solid thirty seconds of uncomfortable silence, they begin to unpack what had just happened.

Let's take a moment.

Ahem. Dime would ask "What now?". It was unnecessary, as Dime already knew. The three of them were all in the same boat, lost, stunned. Shocked. None of them could have predicted the damage the box would cause, the lives lost without ever understanding why. But they would go through the motions anyways, trying to piece together some scrap of reason as to what led to that moment, and if truly had to happen.

"What now?" asks Dime, softly. He is disconnecting himself from what he's done. He is escaping from it. 'What now' is a question he wants to mean something, but Dime doesn't feel like anything he could do now would improve their current circumstances.

As a species, as an individual, Dime believes it's all hopeless.

Yaffenhash would, perhaps unwisely, linger for just a moment. It wasn't too late for Belfry to join her true people, her real home. She saw what the boxes could do firsthand, the danger they held. It would be important now more than ever to take the boxes, far, far away from this world. It couldn't be done in a day, but phasing out the populations reliance on them, that could be done. Now, Belfry may have saved Dime, but Yaffenhash was every much the shapeshifter as Belfry; and so were the other lizard people on that building. Thus there was a decent chance that another may have flown away, and the nearest HQ will want answers as to what happened. If there is one, anyways.

"There's still plenty of our people around," says Yaffenhash, facing Belfry. "We can stop what's happening, altogether. I know the rest of them... must've escaped the island, too-- must've realized they could fly when they saw you doing it."

Belfry, Belfry, Belfry. The last day of your life has been the most shocking, the most traumatic of them all. The rug upturned, your life a sham. Even if your name is truly yours is cast in doubt. You might consider casting away the tatters of your old life, but it's not that easy. To you the memories, the experiences are all real. Or were. Now, it's hard to say which, if any were as they seemed. It would be so, so easy to run away from all this. As a shapeshifter, you could blend in with the masses and try to start a new life. The Lizard people might detect you as one of them, but they would never know who you were. From the moment you enter hiding, you would be lost to them. But you can't. There is still a hope, faint as it is, that Refugia might accept you as one of them. And if they might, then hurting the Lizard peoples preparations for the Refugians might make it that bit more likely.

It's hard for the girl in blue to really, truly bring all these concepts together. It takes her a minute to decide what to reply with. She shuts her eyes, she breathes softly, and then she responds with confidence.

"I'm not one of your people. Refugia is coming for us, and the last thing I'm going to do is let you attack them, too."

Yaffenhash's brow lowers. "We never attacked anyone. We wouldn't ever attack those people, either."

But Belfry raises her arms up, motions to this decrepit place which now holds hundreds of souls in squalor. "Trying to take us over is an attack, too! I don't care how bad things might've been, you never tried to fix them-- you just started making the world into the shit it is now! People just building and... abandoning!"

Dime knew they would have to go into hiding. The lizard people got what they wanted from the beacon, would begin to prepare for something coming. A small blessing in the storm. But, the people would want an answer, someone to blame. The lizard people would release a trickle of information, a snippet here a suspect there. Releasing just enough to keep the population calm while preparations were made. Revealing Dime as the culprit would only be done when the trickled information was no longer enough for the crowd. For better or worse, Dime knew he would have to trust Belfry and, perhaps, whoever Refugia would send. If anyone.

"They don't have the box anymore," says Dime, meekly. "It's not... an option anymore. That was a big part of their plans. And they're going to come after us for destroying it."

"You destroyed it," says Yaffenhash, bitter. "The best chance my people had at finishing this whole thing without any more years of chaos. Now we're flipping a coin as to whether or not we can stop the entire world from collapsing in on itself."

Belfry grows lucid. "We don't have to." Dime and Yaffenhash look at her with some confusion. She continues: "Refugia is our only hope now. For... our species." With one hand, she motions to both her and Dime. "I don't know how long it's going to take for the box to..."

"Weeks," says Yaffenhash. "Meanwhile, every single person on the planet is going to be looking for somebody to blame for it. And we-" -she motions to herself and Belfry- "-will be the ones to fix things."

Dime swallows, and after a moment's consideration, turns to the reptilian, morose in his expression but sure in his words. "Maybe it's better for both our species if we got off this planet. Maybe if we just... got rid of the boxes altogether. Refugia can be a home for all of us."

Belfry faces Yaffenhash, too. "I don't know what they hammered into y-your head after you left me, but the world reptilians want to make is a hell. I'm not one of you if I'm not one with that."

The lizard extends a hand forth; palm up, offering. "You were always with us. I knew it since I first met you. They misguided you because they needed you, but now I need you. To be with me, on this."

"I'd rather watch it all burn than let it die slow," Belfry says. Her eyes tilt to Dime for a moment, who stares off in consideration. In this moment, maybe amidst all the chaos and destruction... she understands what has just happened.

It wasn't a good thing, certainly. But if their species' fate was a pot of slow-boiling soup, Dime's action had turned the bowl on its head. There would be no slow takeover of their culture anymore; something was going to change.

And Belfry can hold tightly onto 'something'.

...

But all of this would take time, and right now the trio simply wished for a spot to rest.

And it seemed their rest would be short-lived.

As they glance up mid-argument, they discover Puffy the Solemn hoisting a scrap rifle, aiming at the trio with menace. The entire room has gathered around in vilifying gaze.

Word travels quick; so does intolerance. There are several routes we can go here, and I'm so excited, I'm not sure which to pick.

Why, in particular, is Puffy and the crowd here to push our characters and their relationships to their limits? Where do things go from here?