Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The Edge is where reality stops pretending. You get there by going outward, past the last dimension with a name, past the ones with numbers, past the ones Corporate has not gotten to yet, until the ground gives up on being ground and becomes what…
Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Vault started slipping in Verdantia. Not much. A drawer opening on its own at the wrong hour, and a memory in the drawer that was not ours, that belonged to someone in the forest, a small memory, a leaf, and the Vault closing the…
Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX The soul farm is in Prime Material, which is where all the worst buildings are, behind a gate that says AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES (YOUR FRIENDS IN FEELINGS LLC), and it looks like a barn, and the barn is the only part of it that is a…
Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Verdantia's government is a houseplant and it governs by consensus, which in practice means it has been holding a meeting since before our dimension had a word for meeting. The consensus is conducted over the mycelial internet, a network of root and fungus…
Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR They came for the copier first, because Corporate always comes for the press first, and they came with a form, and the form was the only weapon they needed, because the copier had a serial number and a serial number is a handle and a…
Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE EDITOR'S NOTE (Pixel): Om filed this one by dictating it into a jar of butter tea, which he then handed me, because the recorder would not survive the altitude and the tea would. I transcribed it from the jar. He dictated it while…
Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO You get to the monastery by walking, which is the first security system and the only one that has never been breached. It sits in a dimensional thin spot in the Himalayas of a timeline that may or may not be ours, at an altitude…
Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Time in Cogsworth Cogitarium is not a river. A river you can get in. Time in Cogsworth is a toll road with a barrier arm, and the barrier arm comes down every hour on the hour, and if you are standing under it when it…
Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER TWENTY A zine is not a thing you write. A zine is a thing that happens to other people. Issue Two was 2,000 copies, which for us was industrial, which for a real newspaper is a slow Tuesday, and the difference between those two facts is…
Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER NINETEEN The offer arrived on a Tuesday, because Tuesdays, and it arrived by courier, because Corporate still believes in couriers when the parcel needs to look like it was carried by a person who believes in it. He was a human man, mid-forties, gray suit, gray…
Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER EIGHTEEN From the editorial page of Issue Two: Alright, reality-surfers. Quick word before we start: if your emotions have been feeling a little flat this week, a little on-schedule, like someone swapped your grief for a beige substitute with 20 percent less aftertaste, you'…
Crystallized Laughter — CHAPTER SEVENTEEN EDITOR'S NOTE (Pixel): I asked Luminara to turn the camera on herself and she said the idea made her uncomfortable, and I said that was the point, and she said the point of what, and I said the point of the whole publication, which…