Nobody made the gutterball on purpose — that is the official nascenti position, which is technically true and substantially misleading. Spherical, approximately head-sized, surface somewhere between wet stone and the skin of something recently dead: it rolls with direction and purpose, feeding everything within its radius to the hive mind with the focused neutrality of a drain. Field note: if one begins appearing at your thresholds and corners, Van will want to know about it — and note that by that point, your decisions will have already started feeling unusually confident, which is the detail that should concern you most.

Every jellyhead I have asked about their career appears to hate themselves, which is interesting given that most of them are very good at acquiring chits. Since crossing over, I have stopped worrying about results, stopped projecting into a future I cannot control, and started living in the moment — which is considerably easier when the moment involves Hellsborough rather than the off-world. The Exacid might be knocking on the door tomorrow, which focuses the mind wonderfully.