This is But One Fragment Five Hundred Words Long Constituting Part of Something Much Larger, With At Least One New Episode Per Week, And May Be What We Call A Serialized Novella.

Had that been advice? Or a threat?

That word. I am distracted, lost in thought, as I round the corner leaving Erikstrassa and entering the crowded High Street just blocks from Dragon’s. I’m walking to meet Nusci, but traveling a different route than last Sixday eve, walking the back streets where I am memorizing the faces of the people – on rote, the clock pitches of bots – any who might be inclined to follow me.

Paranoia is unfamiliar to me. But Timo – Zech – Klaas – the faces and the anger well up again as bitter as podworst in my throat.

Above me a pair of Dirgees hum through the sky a few dozen feet above the tops of the buildings. They are solo-pilot, air-sleeked balloons built for speed and maneuverability as is obvious by the blur they trace across my vision. Likely they are just pleasure craft, but – paranoia – no, Tracers wouldn’t be so obvious.

I pause at a nearby shop window and wait for the mechanical hum to vanish into the East towards the Dokyards. I’m not interested in the assorted packages dressing the display, but watch the reflections in the glass as the shapes dance along the High Street.

That word. That word that might have slipped by the distracted mind of Nacks or the disinterest of Ving – voxcore – but that word was dangling there in my own thoughts, out of place and weighted-heavy. Zech? I could have assumed his was a mere slip of the tongue. And Klaas may be accused of arrogance in the invention of jargon laced with a whiff of the technical only to divert me. But together? Together – and in the same day, with the same purpose – was not a coincidence.

That word. It is bites of my own jargon blended: Vox. Vox, that charged Manifest so familiar to my work. It is that force behind every clocking I’ve ever built and such an integral part of bots. The Voxers design intricate pathings to channel vox from cores to my clockings. I do not path the vox. No, but I aspire to it. It is part skill and part practice. Vox pathing is skill and practice that, fids willing, a few years from now I might humbly acquire. I clock. I clock with all my heart because it exactly what I know. That shaping of metal to suit cores – yes, cores –cores – just cores! Cores are nothing more than the hardened alloy cases vital in enclosing bits of the Tempest Essence, sterile and safe, to drive our inventions. But there is no vox in cores. None. There cannot be. There is no purpose in it. It is oil and water. It is fire and ice.

Perhaps I am making too much of it. Perhaps I am making a leap in understanding – seeking conspiracy where none exists – but voxcore would be what exactly? There is no such thing.

Why then the mystery?