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While devising choices I didn’t try to strategize too much or predict which choices the group would make. I simply tried to come up with the five most likely choices Steve might make given the narrative circumstances. Often it became apparent to me minutes after voting opened how it was going to go. “Of course!” I would think to myself, suddenly ( Read more... )

Thanks to everyone who left kind words in the comments to the final installment of Angels and Operators. Now for the promised post-game analysis, or a start on it, anyhow ( Read more... )

Installment Eighty
Previous Installments (In Reverse Order)You awaken in your small dorm-like room in the Mercy Lake Center. Crazy old Brandon Slayton is knocking on your door. “You're on TV again!” he calls ( Read more... )

Installment Seventy-Nine
Previous Installments (In Reverse Order)You burst through the door from the basement into the deadening fluorescent light of Pierce's kitchen. He's perched in a wheelchair, frantically rummaging through a kitchen drawer. Pierce's human form appears haggard and emaciated. The lines on his face have deepened, crisscrossing ( Read more... )

Installment Seventy-Eight
Previous Installments (In Reverse Order)You leap at Dom, gibbering like a madman. The suddenness of your move, combined with your inarticulate, banshee wailing, takes him by surprise. He shrinks back, fumbling the sparking stun gun. It bounces onto his rounded belly, zapping him. You step back as Dom convulses, falls, and ( Read more... )

Installment Seventy-Seven
Previous Installments (In Reverse Order)You hide in the basement’s darkest corner. A flood of light slashes through the musty chamber, harshly illuminating Pierce’s makeshift torture chamber. Dom lumbers confidently down its wooden stairs. Pierce’s voice calls after him: “She could be back any moment, you thundering git ( Read more... )

Installment Seventy-Six
Previous Installments (In Reverse Order)It’s late at night. You’re back at Pierce’s house. It buzzes like an electronic cicada, thrumming with the resonance of Operator influence. There’s a twitching feeling in your stomach. It’s your connection to the fetus in Judy’s thumb. It feels the danger. You’re lucky that your ( Read more... )

Installment Seventy-Five
Previous Installments (In Reverse Order)Stumbling away from Dom’s house, you decide that sanity isn’t helping you to solve this problem. Pierce and Dom are clearly bad people with the dried blood in his van and Pierce’s mysterious hold over his friend-and Judy. But it wasn’t your sane brain that zeroed in on them-it was ( Read more... )

Installment Seventy-Four
Previous Installments (In Reverse Order)Still hiding behind a garage across the street, you wait to see what Dom does next ( Read more... )