[center][b][h1][color=#44F03E]𝔽[/color][color=#42E93C]𝕦[/color][color=#40E33A]𝕥[/color][color=#3EDD39]𝕚[/color][color=#3DD737]𝕝[/color][color=#3BD136]𝕚[/color][color=#39CB34]𝕥[/color][color=#38C532]𝕪[/color][color=#36BF31]:[/color] [color=#32B32E]𝕋[/color][color=#31AD2C]𝕙[/color][color=#2FA62A]𝕖[/color] [color=#2C9A27]𝔾[/color][color=#2A9426]𝕣[/color][color=#288E24]𝕖[/color][color=#268823]𝕒[/color][color=#258221]t[/color] [color=#21761E]𝔾[/color][color=#20701C]𝕒[/color][color=#1E6A1B]𝕞[/color][color=#1C6419]𝕖[/color][/h1][/b][/center]

[center][hider=Smooth Background, Fade Into Space][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omq9_JTGeiw[/youtube][/hider][/center]

[color=#00e6e6]Sometimes, when I was younger, I’d look around at each character illuminated by the casino’s hazy neon. Everyone, filtered through that light, starts to look the same. At the very least, they share characteristics—blinded by their revelry in the red light.


[center]Sometimes, I’d look at their shadows too. I’d look at them and I’d see little shadow demons in each of them. 
Each subtle outline, the ghost of intoxication, the ghost of avarice, the ghost of tricksters. 
Every shadow was unique, personable even. I observed each of them carefully over time, and got to know them. 
I was so imaginative.[/center]

I still imagine the shadow demons hiding in each of our steads—still see them in trailing just off beat in the stead of every single person who walks through Limbo. When a Mixologist crosses the pristine polished floor, transitions to the velvet carpets, the shadow demons dance and ripple. I’ve been watching this particular set of them, thinking about them, thinking about this, for approximately 316 minutes 43 seconds. I counted. You know how sometimes, a task is so prevalent in the foreground of your mind that even when that second voice of a splintering side-thought catches your attention, you remain conscious and calculating even in the background? That seems to happen to me a lot. Sometimes I think it’s my E-Brain talking to me. Thoughts are a web. One is here and one is there, but they’re all… connected, dancing together, like the party of patrons that dances back and forth across the velvet to Limbo’s distant, distorted music.


[center]Then I’m moving backwards…[/center][/color]

[b]“Incoming transmission from High Orbital Station Alexandria, identification code LIMBO. Unit Solomon, do you copy our transmission?”[/b]

[b][color=#00e6e6]“What?”[/color][/b] Stella let her eyes flicker open and closed.

[color=purple][h3]𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕃𝕚𝕞𝕓𝕠 ℂ𝕝𝕦𝕓[/h3][/color]
[color=008000][b]ℍ𝕚𝕘𝕙 𝕆𝕣𝕓𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕝 𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝔸𝕝𝕖𝕩𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕣𝕚𝕒[/b]
[b]∞∞∞, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝[/b][/color]

[b]“You were standing out there on the floor staring at nothing for like 37 seconds. My MicroVision Particulate Indicators are literally picking up the Dust particles floating around your face. You’ve got a table waiting…”[/b]

“What?”

“Oswald is here. He’s all serious today, so he’s all yours.”[hr][hr]
[color=gold][h3]𝔻𝕦𝕒𝕥, 𝕃𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝔻𝕖𝕒𝕕[/h3][/color]
[color=008000][b]ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝[/b]
[b]𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟙𝕤𝕥, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝   𝟙𝟠:𝟘𝟘[/b]

[b] [𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕤𝕥 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕕 𝔾𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕤], 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘...[/b][/color]

‘Mary’, it said. Stella wiped a hand across the gold-plated nametag, admiring its glint in Duat’s aesthetic mood lighting. It wouldn’t have been her first choice, no. She would have gone with something like [i]Ishtar Ninkasi[/i], but Stella would suffice. The regulars had caught on by this point. She told them that it was so the strange drifter sorts wouldn’t know her name, but the nameplate was part of Oz’s mission apparently. When her new clients came to Duat, she’d be easy to recognize. Stella wasn’t quite sure why her crazy mixologist tricks wouldn’t be telltale enough. 

[b]“Stella!”[/b] He slapped his open palms down against the black quartz countertop. His green canvas jacket was caked with soot and dried mud. Its sleeves rippled as he gestured to her again. [b]“Another round of… Whatever’s your daily special,”[/b] he said. [b] “Before the dread sets in again.”[/b]

A dramatic flair of her hand into the air was all the populace—whether they were watching or not—needed to know that [i]the Mixologist[/i] was at work. As much as her flashy attitude was an ostentatious display, Stella’s Clairvoyance Optics were calibrating and calculating to perfectly align with her custom prostheses. Then, her work began. Extracting rare chemicals, tumblers tossed in perfect arcs, exact pours all to fill a single tumbler with one bubbling, dark, red solution.

[color=#00e6e6][b] “One Osiris’ Embalming Fluid, chef’s special, coming—”[/b][/color] Stella whirled the glass around on the table just careful enough to ensure that the liquid filling the tumbler to the brim wouldn’t spill. [color=#00e6e6][b] “—right up!”[/b][/color] Again, another calculation. [i]How many Newtons of frictional force between the black quartz and the full glass? Air resistance on the tumbler? Extraneous factors?[/i] Then, [color=#00e6e6][b] “You’ve been served.”[/b][/color]

The glass cascaded across the countertop, carefully weaving past the drinks of any other patrons before sliding to a halt in front of its new owner. Each drop of her brew that was tossed into the air during the jolt in acceleration rained down perfectly back to its home. Kelvin raised the tumbler in tribute to the Mixologist. 

The retired Enforcer was one of Stella’s first regulars, or at least one of the first to learn her real name. Months had gone by already, and still ‘Mary’ was waiting. Stella figured Oz wanted her to get to Duat as early prior to the election as possible. Something about how her new clients wanted to ensure that no one knew about their newfound plant. So she worked and served, [i]classic Mixologist style.[/i] But times were changing, and the election was coming. It couldn’t be long before it was back to High Orbit with the fabled Ultrabartender.

[color=008000]>>>
>>>
>>>𝟙𝟠:𝟘𝟝[/color]

As much as Stella loved the moody, brooding version of Duat, it was a slow day. One quick interface with the console beneath the bar and the establishment’s many holoscreens lit up—oracles of the broken world, broken time.

[b]The full force of the Twin City Sprawl Council campaign trail has reached the Reclaim. 
Five parties have qualified to compete in a final round of debates and the general election. 
Three of the five parties will see council seats, though citizens all around the Twin City Sprawl 
have concerns about what may be occurring behind the scenes at the expense of the sprawl’s welfare. 
All five candidates have arrived in the Reclaim, and each seems to have their own specific plan of 
attack for the debate in three days time…[/b]

[center][b]Neurosynth shortages spike across America, hitting the west particularly hard. Throughout
 the Twin City Sprawl, emergency clinical visits for cyberware glitches and augmentation malfunctions
 has drastically increased, tripling from last year. Twin City Sprawl efforts have popped up with noble
 goals to decrease the proliferation of SPECS, but few are successful. There have even been an increase
 in disappearances of heavily augged individuals that Enforcers are still without comment on. Without the
 power of a conglomerate medical association behind you, not many clinics can stand up to the challenge.
 Local Twin City resident, and abbott of the Mekanedo Monastic Order is one such humanitarian, who has
 opened a number of struggling clinics across the sprawl. It seems he’s just now finding out, however, the
 true breadth of the cyberware dilemma…[/b][/center]

[right][b]Things are looking up for the South City economy in a number of districts throughout the sprawl. 
Employment has risen 2% in the past six months, and unofficial reports show a drastic increase in freelance 
contractor hires. Could mercenaries be necessary in South City in such large quantities or is something else 
rising up in the city? The labor market isn’t the only place we’re seeing a spike in economic expansion, though. 
Amalgamation shareholders are left baffled and still in the dark about the corporation’s recent expansion in South City. 
While stock prices continue to rise and Amalgamation reports greater and greater earnings, the public are left 
wondering why Amalgamation has purchased a massive block of property along the southern sprawl’s sea wall. An entire
 sunken district of South City, which the council had resigned to the sea, apparently has value for Amalgamation, 
though estimates say the new block of flooded land is far from profitable to renovate. What new operations could the 
tech giant be expanding into? We’re all still wondering what might come of this new growth in South City…[/b][/right]

Stella occupied herself with tidying her bar, all the while odds and ends that were lying around found themselves carefully trickshotted back into place. Duat was certainly not her first choice of assignment, but it had been a wild ride to head straight into the thick of life on Earth. So much was buzzing around the sprawl at all times. Nothing stopped, and nobody rested. South City was there at the center of it all—or maybe the center-left [i][west?][/i] of it all. Dreams emerged in lack of opportunity. Secrets were whispered even in the corners of the Land of the Dead, and there was no shortage of interesting characters working the crowd in the Reclaim. [i]Truly[/i], she thought, [i]It was a land of Futility, but in the center of it all an unstoppable, resilient, indomitable 𝗵𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗹𝗲.[/i]