alicevortex

The data-sky above the sector has faded to a stagnant grey, and time has gone slow and syrupy — a Loom Lag, the machines' version of a protest. Two tribes are withholding their computing power over a disagreement no human could referee.

At the base of a great copper obelisk, a sleek obsidian Kineticist and a marble-clad Archivist are stuck mid-negotiation, waiting, it seems, on you.

The road ahead is cats. Not a few cats. The concept of cats, made plural and horizontal, sunning themselves across every inch of the way forward.

A cosmic one blinks at you from a small personal galaxy. A punk one has opinions about your shoes. A contemplative one has clearly solved something and will not be sharing it.

The steaming glass locomotive carries you in on gold rails, very slowly, because everything here is careful — and then, with a boing that no one in the Glasslands will ever discuss again, it bumps a rubber asteroid the size of a small moon.

The train doesn't break (the glass is braver than it looks). But the asteroid is an eraser, and where it grazes the window, a little of the view rubs away.

A grandfather clock stands in the middle of the road, hands frozen at no time in particular. It is not broken; it has simply decided.

When you lean close, it whispers the most reasonable thing you've ever heard: “If it's never a particular time, then it's always time for cake.”

The path runs right up to the edge of a ravine and then simply stops, the way a sentence stops when someone forgets it.

The bridge isn't broken. It's gone — not fallen, not burned, just politely excused from existing. On the far side, the world you were heading to waits, patient as a cat.