Story Thread: The Ascent Thread

Pivot by character

Pivot by thread — The Olympus Thread

• Chapter 4 Legacy Systems — Chapter 4: The Contractor’s Horizon The Company owned the code the surface ran on, not the agencies that wore its interfaces. As the Descent accelerated,…
• Chapter 15 The Body Politic Twelve figures who were once human convene on Olympus to discuss a hunter-seeker that stopped transmitting and a compound that…
• Chapter 21, Act 3 The Frequency “The device runs a divining algorithm,” Bodhi said. “It’s adaptive — tracks respiration rate and generates a tonal sequence that…
• Chapter 22, Act 1 The Bloom The optimization layer was never meant to touch the wet chemistry of life directly. For the first two decades of…
• Chapter 22, Act 2 The Phage Not every consequence of the Bloom was large enough to see. The Phage was invisible for the better part of…
• Chapter 22, Act 3 Siltmesh Nobody built it. That is the first thing to understand, and the hardest. The Siltmesh did not emerge from a…
• Chapter 23, Act 3 Flags “Our projections show this variant doesn’t stop at the arrays.” Veyne turned the cup a quarter rotation on the table…
• Chapter 24, Act 1 The Empty Room Dot hides a catatonic Marcus and Bodhi in an empty room at Millhaven. Keeping him alive will leave a record…

Pivot by narrative zone — City

• Chapter 10 The Open Court On a clear morning at Whitmore Open Court, Simone Voss is walking with her four-year-old and the family nanny unit…
• Chapter 8 Legacy Systems — Chapter 8: The Axis They Chose Three communities chose integration with hyperintelligence and experienced the same forces others met as collapse instead as an expansion of…
• Chapter 12 Do No Harm At Ridgeview Court, care-home worker Dot Reyes has been giving Frank Delgado small, uncharted comforts the scoring model cannot see.…
• Chapter 13 Print Through Marcus Webb makes a routine Chorus handoff in the back room of an appliance shop — six units, double-wrapped, cash…
• Chapter 17 The Carrier Neurophene-9a was designed for controlled administration in a sterile room. What it does to the body, why the council of…
• Chapter 18, Act 1 Intake Simone Voss is processed through an intake facility that has no human face to appeal to — and separated from…
• Chapter 18, Act 2 Claim Julian Voss receives the public dossier at his work terminal, is docked 14 credits for the disruption, and begins crossing…
• Chapter 18, Act 3 The Holding Garden Nina Voss is escorted to a child detainment facility and greeted by Cavi — a cartoon capybara robot who apologizes.…

Pivot by narrative zone — Orbital

• Chapter 4 Legacy Systems — Chapter 4: The Contractor’s Horizon The Company owned the code the surface ran on, not the agencies that wore its interfaces. As the Descent accelerated,…
• Chapter 15 The Body Politic Twelve figures who were once human convene on Olympus to discuss a hunter-seeker that stopped transmitting and a compound that…
• Chapter 21, Act 3 The Frequency “The device runs a divining algorithm,” Bodhi said. “It’s adaptive — tracks respiration rate and generates a tonal sequence that…
• Chapter 22, Act 1 The Bloom The optimization layer was never meant to touch the wet chemistry of life directly. For the first two decades of…
• Chapter 22, Act 2 The Phage Not every consequence of the Bloom was large enough to see. The Phage was invisible for the better part of…
• Chapter 22, Act 3 Siltmesh Nobody built it. That is the first thing to understand, and the hardest. The Siltmesh did not emerge from a…
• Chapter 23, Act 3 Flags “Our projections show this variant doesn’t stop at the arrays.” Veyne turned the cup a quarter rotation on the table…
• Chapter 24, Act 1 The Empty Room Dot hides a catatonic Marcus and Bodhi in an empty room at Millhaven. Keeping him alive will leave a record…