[b]Fiona:[/b]

Jaw, throat. These are more delicate, less metallic, it’s just disinfectant and alcohol swabs and switching out a few sacrificial anodes, good for ten years. It’s… This part always makes Fiona feel funny. She’s already got a thing for kissing, and cleaning the internals just kind of gives her a mental map for later, a sense of a scoreboard she wants to score the biggest number on. 

“Okay, first of all I have actually [i]read[/i] the Wyatt-Tversky white paper so I can tell you exactly how much ‘don’t have your biochemical design chemicals’ is cope.” She distracts herself by saying. “Conscious thought is conscious thought, which is probably why your sister got so into this.” 

“Second of all…” Fiona looks at the phone. “How are you going to deal with your worst impulses if you can’t handle being bored for literally [i]five seconds[/i]?” There, done. Not [i]as [/i]thorough as she’d like, but there’s still got the entire torso to do. “Almost ready to put you back in your head again. How long do you think you’d be able to shut out like that, without having the reboot as training wheels? It gets a lot harder when you have to keep yourself like that by [i]choice[/i].” 

[b]Crystal:[/b]

She laughs, actually, at that. 

Crystal: You do not even know the half of it.
Crystal: I was thinking this make it easier to stay open. Let her see who she wants with a ring on her finger.
Crystal: If I actually tried to impose monogamy, she would thrive and I would not. And she would have her monogamous relationship with someone less paranoid and jealous in short time. 
Crystal: Maybe this is my problem. You understand what I want perfectly, but getting it would destroy it. How do you make a bouquet without killing the flower? 

She looks up again, and wanders around the empty exhibition, all the stands still up, the fridges full but the pantries empty at the concession stand, the stages feeling like a Potemkin village.

She grimaces. No, this won’t do at all. She taps for an app on her phone and puts on the century-anniversary remaster of Ella Fitzgerald’s “It’s Only a Paper Moon”. The jaunty showtune haunts the empty hall like a jitterbug ghost.

[i]Say, its only a paper moon[/i]
[i]Sailing over a cardboard sea[/i]
[i]But it wouldn't be make-believe[/i]
[i]If you believed in me
[/i]
[i]Yes, it's only a canvas sky[/i]
[i]Hanging over a muslin tree[/i]
[i]But it wouldn't be make-believe[/i]
[i]If you believed in me
[/i]
[i]Without your love[/i]
[i]It's a honky-tonk parade[/i]
[i]Without your love[/i]
[i]It's a melody played in a penny arcade
[/i]
[i]It's a Barnum and Bailey world[/i]
[i]Just as phony as it can be[/i]
[i]But it wouldn't be make-believe[/i]
[i]If you believed in me[/i]

Eli, still in their toga, does a flying leap at a support pole that used to hold some signage, the canvas it supported taken down by whoever it was advertising as a souvenir. They catch the pole against their knee, along their ankle, and do a stripper twirl leaning back against it, arching their back to look at Crystal upside down as the spin loses momentum.

“You know, I like Nat King Cole’s version better, but at least it’s not Paul McCartney’s.” 

Crystal searches that. “Paul McCartney has one?”

“Don’t bother, it’s worse than Sinatra’s. Not even good for hauntology samples.” Eli lets themselves slide down to waist height, and Crystal walks closer so they’re just looking straight up at her. “Guessing you didn’t just pick the song for the vibe, though?”

Crystal: What would going apeshit look like? 

[b]Train Station Cops:[/b]

“Uh, good luck with that,” there’s a comms laptop setup on the poker table, this doesn’t even interrupt the game. “We’ve been losing lots of trains in the system, things have been screwy. We’ll let you know when the pickup’s arrived, we’ll wait here until it’s safe to move out.”

[b]Crimson Tower:[/b]

“See, they just overrode that last one without a word.” Corday adjusts her beret indignantly. “Digital, and blessing. It’s like they have admin privileges over us on the shared system, and we can’t use the system in a way they can’t override.”