[b]Canada![/b]

The Cat’s steady neon eyes are inscrutable, but the withering silence is almost palpable. You have [i]disappointed[/i] her, Canada. Her bap of judgment is fierce when it finally comes.

She takes Influence over you (and thus, through the law of contagion, Variance also takes Influence, giving you Potential).

“Victory requires many interlocking factors coming into alignment, but you [i]cannot[/i] win unless you decide to win, or someone else decides for you. Lose in your heart and you’ve already lost, and I don’t back a losing prospect. So why are you wasting my time, Canada?”

Goudan gives a low whistle and sits his shaggy butt down on the fountain next to you. “I mean, I’m still down for strength practice if you are, Cannie.”

“You can play with weights if you want,” the Cat says, her lip curling up in a sneer, “But I will bid you aideu.” She drops down and begins a stately, intent walk away from you. Leaving you as a lost cause.

***

[b]Anathet![/b]

The Annunaki do not [i]buy.[/i] For that matter, they do not sell. Their economy is a vast web of theocratic obligation running on favors and agreements. They have no coins and no prices.

However, they understand that there are circumstances in which it might be useful for there to be some sort of measurement for exactly [i]how[/i] indebted one might be to another, or how one might sum up the value of their possessions. So they permit the minting of Obligations by the Scales, an elite council of Thornbacks housed in Babylon itself.

You do not get to handle an Obligation. You might be [i]worth[/i] an Obligation. (It’s rumored that Ètoile was worth three.) You have a pocket full of Slivers, little glossy tabs with a hole in one end for stringing on a line, rewards for exemplary service which may be redeemed at any official establishment in the markets below.

Most markets sell in [i]bulk[/i]: food from the hydroponics and livestock blocks, textiles woven on massive industrial looms, and blocks of whatever material might be required. They are not for [i]you,[/i] but are for stewards and handmaidens buying supplies at the demand of their family.

(Up above, there are no markets. There are art shows. There are exhibits. All the wheels of infrastructure and industry turn below, unseen and unregarded.)

So you go to a [i]souk.[/i] They’re markets for those who live down here, those who are not allowed to see the sun. They’re company stores and red light districts and dingy noodle shops. They’re portable stalls set up by entrepreneurs coming off a twelve-hour shift in the hydroponics to sell hand-carved furniture made from rejected materials. They’re black market deals going on in the cramped corridors between apartment complexes.

When the Annunaki come down here, it is with [i]purpose.[/i] They can be sorted into two sorts: the armored ones and the armored ones. The armored ones are ab-Marduki officers keeping the peace with a squad of janissaries or ab-Ereshkigali looming out of the shadows like evil sadist Batmen. The unarmored ones are ab-Enkiji or ab-Ishtari who need more experimental subjects from a deniable source, or ab-Shamashi working on keeping the machinery running alongside the ab-Enkiji. (Or, sometimes, daring youths “slumming it” after curfew.)

Here are the desperate, the hopeless, the forgotten. Here are the revolutionaries, the snitches, the loyalists. Here, the Thornbacks rule as their masters’ proxies.

Here, you see signs, most of them pictorial, advertising: food, company, clothing, pulp picture-books, decoration, furniture, tattoos. Here you see the ever-present Eyes of Caphtor, but one or two of them are vandalized, painted over, made unusable for the Djinn’s purposes of data mining.

Here is cyberpunk by way of Robert E. Howard.

Are you satisfied with a simple shaved ice, flavored with explosively sweet fruits from the Macaws’ home planet, sold by a human whose operation is squeezed between two stalls? Or do you want a rich, creamy sorbet served in the inner court of a Complex marked with the sigil of the House of Yellow Feathers? Or perhaps you want to duck down inside Johann’s and slam down all of your Slivers for one precious, endangered ice cream sandwich.

Maybe not that last one. You’re not tough enough to play at [i]that[/i] bar.

***

[b]Étoile![/b]

Your hand is held. You are given a thankful glance from Tamytha, and Jezcha groans and starts to call you some very rude things, except, oh, look! You’re already landing! How lucky.

“This was one of their greatest festival halls, you know,” Jezcha says as you exit. She carries a sleek rifle slung over one shoulder; your Lady carries a dainty little sidearm, and you carry her long-range rifle. You’re porter, rifle stand, and moral support all in one. “And now we hunt them through it. Ha! It’s almost funny how pathetic it looks. Like a child’s attempt to paint the Temple of Ishtar.”

Disneyland Paris has seen better days. Days when, just for example, “feral” humans weren’t released inside to be hunted for sport. (You know, while the Annunaki probably do not, that the “ferals” are carefully coached. If it takes them too long to be captured, they’ll be punished. If it’s too easy, they’ll be punished. And if the Annunaki hunting them [i]die,[/i] they die too.)

“Scared, Tamytha? You should be.” Jezcha laughs and waves over another group of hunters, friends of hers. You have a bad feeling about how she said that...