No images. No images, not real ones. Nothing real in this empty space. Ey could see, but why? Why see eir flat? Why see Prisca? Why see anything?
So ey didn't. Ey dreamt emself blind. More than blind. Eir dreaming mind ensured that there was no such thing as sight. That it had never existed. Did not exist for emself. Had never existed for anyone.
Ey was like the theater. Ey was vast, incomprehensible spaces. Ey was the lack of the concept of space. Ey was words. Ey was information. Ey was sound, and the only sound was eir voice.
"The only time I know my true name is when I dream."
Except was that eir voice? Did ey hear? Did ey speak? Was it em making these noises? Was it em hearing them? Ey dreamed emself out of sight, could ey still dream emself speaking?
"Why ask questions, here at the end of all things?" Ey laughed. "Why ask questions when the answers will not help?"
Ey dreamed emself asleep, then. Asleep and dreaming. The world moved around em in soft colors and meaningless images. Words strung themselves together, tangled, frayed, came apart once more. Ey dreamed.
Ey dreamed.
Who knew how long? Who knows? What means knowing in dreams?
When ey woke --- when ey dreamed emself awake --- AwDae answered eir own question: "To know one's true name is to know god. To know god is to answer unasked questions."
And as ey thought upon eir true name, eir mind wandered across what remained in eir exo. Wandered across the deck on Cicero. Wandered across those cards and did not ask.
And there it was.
The vote was not there, and yet the answer was. There was the shadow of intention, of the need for an entire vote to disappear from the collected direct democracy that was the DDR. There was the reason for those who had interacted with the vote, who had voted, who had spent the credits needed to comment on it in the political theater. Commented where others could read, where representatives from the territories would see.
What mattered the vote? What mattered the comments? What mattered the content, the cost? It could have been a flashlight with an amber filter in a suitcase just as easily as it could have been a declaration of war against the Russian Bloc. Chekhov's vote.
It didn't matter. All that mattered is that those who had seen it --- had seen the vote, who had interacted with it, who had interacted with it at however many levels of remove --- were *personae non gratae* from that point on. Easier for them to not be, easier to admit the mystery of the lost, than to let such come to light. What cared the world of billions for the hundreds of lost? What cared the powers that be for the resistance of however many dozens were now lost?
Ey rambled beyond the deck, beyond eir flat, beyond Prisca. Ey wandered across the interior of eir skull until ey stepped up onto the stoop of eir exo.
