/lit/ - Literature

>It's been like a year since I've been here last. Still working on that same novel.

"'Your revolution,'" Étiennette began to recite, her voice unwavering, "'Has been accounted for and counted on. It is the final stage of the reset. It is not the demonization of you, but the demonization of anarchy and rebellion that exists so prominently within the human psyche. The narrative is being changed, history rewritten. In this new world that Cobalt has created, rebellion is to be synonymous with destruction, and soon even you too will believe this. There is no subversion, there is no resistence. There is only the inevitable...' I didn't believe these words, Freddie. Didn't believe anyone could infiltrate what my parents had built and use it against me and what I stood for. I didn't believe Ekkehardt in that moment, and I didn't believe him for a single moment over the past three months since Che and I escaped that facility. Since Len and you escaped Conolly. What we've done since coming together, I believed it was us dictating our fates. Engaging in our existence." Freddie, Len, and Lela all watched on in silence as a thin film of mist accrued over Étiennette's eyes. "I thought we were finally going to unleash a barrage of truth on these Plates. Free these men, women, and children from the artificialized reality they've been indoctrinated to accept. I didn't... I never thought I'd help to throw them further out to sea. Push them away from the realization that the world we live in, these Plates, that they're not ours. That they never would be."
"Etsy..." Lela began, reaching her arm out.
"But I was wrong, Freddie!" Étiennette barked, slapping her sister's hand away. "And you're right... To absolve yourself of that condemnation. The madness stirring on the Plate, all that fear, that isn't your doing. That wasn't what I was trying to convey to you. I know you may not believe it, but seeing the current state of the Plate, I have little doubt; my plan to attack Cobalt and Ehud Hayes, to bring their actions to light on their own territory inside the Council House... Conolly and whoever else directly connected to Ehud that is working to demonize us, they knew what we were planning. They knew before even we did. The way your PIM allowed us to pick up data on Cobalt's past after we already knew what breadcrumbs to follow thanks to Ekkehardt, it all came too easily. Too quickly. With what we found, it would've been impossible to not notice Lawrence Sharp and his anti-TECAP agenda. Would've been impossible to not see him as an asset to our cause. Ekkehardt stressed that some sort of rebellion, my Bastille, it was all part of this perfect concoction to initiate Ehud's 'Global Reset.' So how can I think that the events that led to this madness that we're now at the root of was anything but a series of boxes on a checklist?"