11:15 <tom> It's 5pm somewhere. More specifically, central Asia; in Manchester, it's fucking noon. Which makes the man staggering up to the Greybox door a drunk. 11:17 <tom> He slips another piece of gum into his mouth and chews, meeting the glare of the great black mastiff in the doorway with a sneer. 11:17 <VoxPVoxD> Despite the winter chill, the dog tied up out front seems to be pretty satisfied with his situation. Bob gets a friendly chuff as he stumbles into view. "Good afternoon, William. You seem in high spirits." 11:22 <tom> "Just who I wanted to see." The man's jacket is scuffed and unkempt. "The world's expert on being a little shithead." 11:24 <VoxPVoxD> "You speak with the air of a man who might have something to teach. I offer eager ears." 11:25 <tom> He drops into the blind spot in the security cameras and unzips his fly to piss into the corner: "Your life's work I do without even trying." 11:25 <tom> "I'm fucking poison, dog." 11:26 <VoxPVoxD> "Lament or boast?" 11:26 <tom> "Like it fucking matters." 11:28 <VoxPVoxD> "Perhaps it doesn't, out here in the cold." 11:28 <tom> He finishes up, musters the remnants of his willpower to do up his pants before turning on the hound: "Is hell ever this cold?" 11:29 <VoxPVoxD> "From time to time. Do you still aspire to admission?" 11:32 <tom> He exhales vapor: "In Hell, there's relief in helplessness." 11:32 <tom> "Truly, a step up." 11:35 <VoxPVoxD> "I agree. In a sense." 11:36 <tom> "Oh yeah?" It's his turn to smolder, now, producing a crumpled cigarette and battling his battered lighter to reach ignition. "Is it illegal for dogs to smoke?" 11:40 <VoxPVoxD> "It probably would be, were I a dog." 11:41 <tom> "Well, shit homie that's all you hadda say." He offers the creature a cigarette. "Don't go reporting me for animal abuse." 11:41 <tom> Regardless of whether Kaga takes it: "In what sense do you agree." 11:43 <VoxPVoxD> The dog's yellow eyes flick left and right, and then his head unzips to reveal a long, reptilian tongue with a snapping prehensile fork that plucks the cigarette from Bob's fingers and pulls it into its mouth, which collapses rapidly back into a dog, with a now-lit cigarette hanging Joe Camel-ishly from his jowls. 11:44 <tom> The cigarette in the man's mouth hangs limp, his eyes dull. He's quiet for a moment. 11:44 <tom> "Far out, man." 11:47 <VoxPVoxD> "I believe the essence of suffering is self-awareness. I know that the essence of Hell is self-knowledge. The road from one to another, from submission to mastery, brings a kind of relief. Where we may differ," and here the dog takes a long, contemplative drag "is that Hell has no place for the helpless. There are other worlds for those who cannot help but hurt. Other fates." 11:47 <VoxPVoxD> "Hell is a home for poisoners. It brews its own poison." 11:48 <tom> He smokes. "A man who poisons himself is a posioner." 11:48 <tom> poisoner* 11:49 <tom> "I'm too pathetic even for Hell." 11:49 <tom> "That's what you're saying." 11:50 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "'He gathered all that spring to birth / From the many-venomed earth / First a little, then to more / He sampled all her killing store; / And easy, smiling, seasoned sound / Sate the king when healths went round.'" 11:57 <tom> "Oh yeah? Think you're so fuckin' clever-" He taps the side of his visor and throws some words into the search engine until he gets something useful: "It's a poem about how sad shit is good too." 11:58 <tom> "Forgive me if you've heard this one before," says Bill, "But my life ain't a tragedy. It's a comedy." 11:58 <tom> "Forgive me if you've heard this one before," says Bill, "But my life ain't a tragedy. It's a comedy." 11:58 <VoxPVoxD> "I read it differently." 11:59 <tom> He gestures for the demon to continue. 11:59 <tom> Smoke mingles with vapor on the man's breath. 12:02 <VoxPVoxD> "Housman opposes the wise Mithridates and the morally oblivious drunk - both self-poisoners, both doing the same thing to the same end. What elevates one above the other? Self-knowledge. The king knows precisely what he is doing; he knows precisely why. The drunk wakes up in the gutter as if every day is the first time he stared down the same bucket of shit he's brought a hangover to God 12:02 <VoxPVoxD> knows how many mornings before." 12:03 <VoxPVoxD> "Mithridates died old and strong. The drunk chases the hair of the dog that bit him." 12:04 <VoxPVoxD> "This is me being nice. I have to be nice to you." 12:05 <tom> "And here I thought we were friends," he chuckles. 12:05 <VoxPVoxD> "Then you would not tell me the truth." 12:06 <tom> At that, he can only shake his head. "Stay warm, bro." Bob steps past him to hit the buzzer at the door. 12:06 <VoxPVoxD> "Give Mithridates my love." 12:07 <VoxPVoxD> Willie lets him in. "Oh, good, it's you. You had better be hungry." 12:10 <VoxPVoxD> Looks like Willie's alone in here. "I brought Richard some food, but he begged to be let out for a lunch break, so I'm holding down the fort. I need someone else to eat my lunch." 12:10 <tom> Bob swallows his gum and adjusts his visor. "Hey Willie." The warmth is genuine. His heart sinks. 12:12 <VoxPVoxD> Looks like Willie's lunch is a croque monsieur and a thermos of tomato soup. Willie herself is halfway through Richard's ill-fated falafel. "I'm so glad you showed up. I was this close to trying to talk to Kaga through the doorway." 12:15 <tom> He takes the cylinder of soup and drinks. Wiping his chin: "Do you know who 'Mithridates' is?" 12:15 <tom> "Some kinda demon?" 12:17 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Mithridates was a king in antiquity. A rival to the Roman Republic at his height. He's the one they named mithridatism after. That's where you become immune to a poison by taking a little bit at a time." 12:17 <tom> "Huh. T.I.L." 12:17 <VoxPVoxD> "Why do you ask?" 12:18 <tom> Rubbing the back of his neck, not meeting her eyes: "Kaga was going off about it. Poor little guy is going about as stir crazy as you are." 12:19 <VoxPVoxD> Willie makes a face. "I wish you wouldn't indulge him. It just makes him a bigger arsehole." 12:21 <tom> He shrugs. "Same goes for me, but here we are." He sloshes the thermos of soup triumphantly. "It's good, by the way. Some sort of bisque?" 12:22 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Tomato! So how fares Bob Goreman? What's going on? I feel like it's been ages." 12:23 <VoxPVoxD> She breaks eye contact only briefly to glance at her laptop and tap a couple of keys every now and then. 12:24 <tom> "I feel great." 12:26 <VoxPVoxD> Willie beams. The news visibly brightens her day. "What a rare treat!" 12:26 <VoxPVoxD> "Any particular reason? Or is it an absence-of-evidence thing?" 12:31 <tom> He's taking a bit too long to answer, but she's helpfully distracted enough not to notice the man visibly flinch at her smile. It's like needles driven right into the folds of his brain and levered, to widen them for the incoming decanted acid. The needles become railroad spikes in short order, but he keeps his nerve. 12:32 <tom> "Got a mech. Autopsied an alien. Beat Aster in the simulation. Feels good, man." 12:32 <tom> "Wo-man." He frowns. 12:32 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Oh! Did you take Aaron to finish the job with the Alpha Strikes?" 12:33 <tom> "Oh, n-no, I haven't been back there since the nastiness with the Trackcheck." 12:34 <tom> "Which reminds me, I wanna get you set up for that- can you send me some frame preferences? Linear circuits aren't hard, but the rims have'ta be thick." 12:34 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "They took it apart and looked at it the other day. I'm waiting to hear back what they've learnt. Seems to work perfectly well. We got Ruth's song and everything." 12:34 <tom> "Yeah," he murmurs. "We talked about it with Badawi last time." 12:34 <tom> "'It's not that sad.'" 12:36 <tom> He gestures over to the Christmas tree in the corner of the greybox's conference room. "Anyway I've been keeping busy." 12:38 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Right, yeah. I don't know if I'd mentioned that was post-demonic-dismantling. Anyway, I want tortoise shells. Something really classic and round. You know what I mean? If I'm going to become a fake glasses girl I'm going to own it. Give me something that says, 'sexy antiquarian'. I have reference pictures..." 12:39 <VoxPVoxD> She pulls something up on her phone and then texts it to Bob. https://i.imgur.com/AQ62ylU.jpg 12:41 <tom> Bob pulls up the text and turns away from her, wiping the corners of his eyes under his visor. She doesn't seem to notice. 12:41 <tom> Gotta get a grip... "Looks good." 12:42 <VoxPVoxD> "The tree is lovely, by the way. Sergio and I just decorated my flat last week. Unforgiveably late, but it's been a long month." 12:43 <tom> When she turns back to him, he's just numbly holding his phone in his hand, shoulders sagging, eyes closed. 12:44 <VoxPVoxD> On the far side of Bob's shut eyes, Willie's face tightens just a bit. "Okay." 12:45 <VoxPVoxD> "How are you doing? Really?" 12:46 <tom> "I don't love her anymore." 12:46 <tom> It's barely a whisper. "I don't think I ever did." 12:46 <VoxPVoxD> "..." 12:47 <tom> He collapses into one of the conference chairs with his head in his hands. 12:47 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's body tenses up. Her nostrils flare. Her eyes focus. 12:47 <VoxPVoxD> "Okay." 12:48 <VoxPVoxD> After a deep breath she swallows past her pounding heart. "Okay." Her voice is gentle. 12:48 <VoxPVoxD> "What happened?" 12:49 <tom> "I talked to her. Like really... we had a heart to heart. And... and..." He shrinks away from Willie. "I was just tired." 12:50 <tom> "Tired of how she takes everything I say the wrong way. Tired of her problems." 12:51 <VoxPVoxD> Carefully: "There are moments like that in every relationship." 12:51 <tom> "She's just a kid." 12:51 <tom> "You heard Badawi." 12:52 <tom> "What the fuck am I even doing." 12:52 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "She was just making a shitty joke." 12:53 <tom> "I'm the shitty joke." 12:53 <VoxPVoxD> "Okay." 12:54 <VoxPVoxD> There's a pause. Willie opens her mouth and then closes it again. She just sits there. 12:55 <tom> "I'm a fucking monster." 12:55 <tom> "I've just been leading this poor girl on." 12:57 <tom> His palms rub circles into his forehead; he barely seems to be aware of his surroundings. 12:58 <tom> "You know what's fucked up? Things are okay." 12:58 <tom> "They're safe. They've got protection- you know- you saw the tree." 12:58 <VoxPVoxD> Willie, by contrast, is agonizingly aware. Every nerve in her skin is buzzing. Her mouth's gone dry. Her throat's knotted up. She feels the squirming implication of Hell in the walls like laughter in another room. 12:59 <tom> "I just lost interest the moment I knew she was safe." 12:59 <tom> "There's nothing for me to do here." 13:00 <VoxPVoxD> Finally something she can force herself to respond to. "Why?" 13:02 <tom> His brow falls: "There's only one thing I'm good at. One thing I like doing. And it's not being a good partner." 13:03 <VoxPVoxD> "What is it?" 13:03 <tom> "Killing." 13:05 <VoxPVoxD> Another long silence that Willie can only punctuate with another warm, feather-light, useless "Okay." 13:05 <tom> "Kagamenauch said that 'mere' murder isn't enough to get Hell's respect, much less admission. But he's full of shit, as always." 13:07 <VoxPVoxD> "Bob." 13:07 <VoxPVoxD> "Look at me." 13:10 <tom> The eyes that meet hers over the rims of his visor are as lifeless as Kagamenauch's, as predatory and dead as Ruth's, and as pitiless as her brothers'. 13:10 <VoxPVoxD> She doesn't want to hear the answer. But she has to ask the question. 13:10 <VoxPVoxD> "Why are you telling me this?" 13:11 <tom> He sneers. "It's not about you, if that's what you're wondering." 13:11 <tom> "I'm sorry." 13:11 <tom> "That's shitty of me." 13:12 <VoxPVoxD> If it is what she's wondering, Bob's confirmation doesn't make her relax. 13:12 <VoxPVoxD> "It's just." 13:13 <VoxPVoxD> "You know I don't agree with any of that. You know I can't debate you about it. And you know that, given how I feel, this is very painful and difficult to hear, regardless of your intentions." 13:13 <VoxPVoxD> "I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do." 13:14 <VoxPVoxD> "What do you want from me, right now?" 13:15 <tom> "The same thing I want from her, now." His eyes fall. "Please don't hate me." 13:16 <VoxPVoxD> "If I were in your position, and you in mine, and I told you what you've told me... how would you feel?" 13:17 <tom> His expression would be harder to read if the visor weren't pretty much slipping off the bridge of his nose. "I'd feel like, wow, this shithead is throwing everything away for nothing." 13:17 <tom> "Less than nothing." 13:18 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Have you told her how you feel?" 13:18 <tom> "No, and I'm not going to." 13:19 <tom> "I never wanted to hurt her." 13:19 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "What, then?" 13:19 <tom> "I don't know, either." 13:20 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "She's not stupid." 13:22 <tom> His eyes have settled on one of the novelty mugs in the kitchenette's sink, emblazoned with the despicably ironic orange cat. He glares at it, and not her. "Then no matter what, I'm going to do the wrong thing." 13:24 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's laptop chimes with a new tranche of emails and she shuts it with enough force to rattle the coffee in her mug. 13:25 <VoxPVoxD> After another pause. "Okay." 13:28 <tom> He tries to hold in the tears as long as he can. "Why am I like this?" 13:28 <VoxPVoxD> "You aren't." 13:30 <VoxPVoxD> "You aren't like this. This is pantomime." 13:32 <tom> There's nothing left. Bill: "You're right." 13:35 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Mari resented her sense that I knew you better than she did." 13:35 <VoxPVoxD> "Do I?" 13:42 <tom> His back rises with the intake of breath, whistling through his clogged nose like a jet's turbine. "How could she ever know me? Her worst nightmare was produced by Tim Burton." 13:42 <tom> "But you've seen it." 13:42 <tom> "Aster calls it the Vigil." 13:45 <VoxPVoxD> Willie packs up the rest of Richard's lunch. One final time: "Okay." 13:45 <tom> "My worst nightmare is watching Rolf blow off that dude's head, knowing it didn't have to go like that. Knowing we coulda saved those people in Seveneaves. Badawi all like," 13:45 <tom> He pinches his face cruelly: "Oh, don't blame yourself." 13:45 <tom> "Well I don't. I don't blame myself." 13:45 <tom> "I blame her." 13:46 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Yeah. Me too." 13:46 <tom> Now even the hatred's gone. What's left is a husk of a man. 13:47 <VoxPVoxD> "Listen. I'm glad you felt like you could talk to me. I'm glad you'll permit yourself to realise that you have somebody." 13:48 <VoxPVoxD> "Please give yourself some time. I do not think the way you feel now reflects a deeper or truer thing than the way you felt at Premson's. I do not think you'll feel the same way in ten more days, and I don't think that will be any more truly you either." 13:49 <VoxPVoxD> "This is very painful for me. I'm not asking you to do anything differently. I'm not going to do anything differently. But this hurts. It hurts a lot." 13:49 <VoxPVoxD> "And because I love you, I thought I should tell you so." 13:50 <VoxPVoxD> Deep breath; Willie looks like she's right on the precipice of tears. "I have to get back to work." 13:50 <tom> "Me too." It's unclear what he's answering. 13:52 <VoxPVoxD> On the way out, Willie unties Kaga. "Good afternoon, Wilhemine. You seem in high spirits."