[b]Pink![/b]

Pink laughs. "You're thinking of my brother, Pig. They made his internal decision making extremely legible; his brain runs like the stock market. You can track exactly the flows of votes and currency exchanges with him. For [i]some [/i]reason they decided not to go with anything like that for subsequent generations, for me it's extremely blurry and vibes-based. Presumably it's to stop me from trying to game it, but the rules are also weird and unpredictable and id-based. Confidence plays a part. Like, Orange recently got a huge boost just by having a conversation with Pope and deciding to raise her game."

She was building still; a twisting green spiral pillar upon which the bowl rested. It ran and looped in strange and alien patterns, hollow arches, empty circles. "Everything rests on Green and Green's perceptions in the end," she said. "We don't even hold formal votes most of the time, we all just kind of sense the vibe. It's why I keep using the word 'influence' rather than 'votes'. And I can't even... think about turning against Green, and I think it's the same with Yellow. It's like..." she grabbed a full container and dumped it over the top of the bowl and the alien spires, half-burying each. "The specifics are obscured, and so we kind of have to play normal? I sometimes wonder how much of my brain design is to stop me wireheading."

*

[b]November![/b]

This is why.

Around and around this moment comes. The bloody scream for justice. Naivety shattering anew. Demons made manifest and the machinery of state is trying to exorcise them. They turn the air into poison, the electromagnetic system into madness, and before long the old testudoes of the Roman Republic will form up again. People say that capitalism worships the dollar but within an afternoon there has been enough property damage, injury and death to pay for everyone's healthcare for years. The state is the body of the king, and in its heart still beats that oldest of regal demands: [i]You will all kneel[/i].

Change the brain all you want. The heart beats on.

She does not need to take it all in this time. She knows her purpose. She knows it's failed. Never again - and here we are, past the brink. No matter how this went there'd be a next time. On and on until she finally slew the king once and for all.

But she was fortunate that the most aesthetic way to insult the king's authority ever invented had not just become possible but optimal.

She was going to jack a train and drive everyone home herself.