I have them! I really, finally, truly have them all here!
I don't know that I have them all hooked, but I did it. I set my mind in motion by will alone. I count those who weren't hooked. Mostly first and second stanzas, mostly like me. How did they go so wrong, though? I'm a first-stanza instance. First stanza, second line, even, and I didn't turn out so bad.
Well, okay, I turned out kinda messed up, but only because I suffered the same fate that they all would, perhaps were already, only I suffered it a little bit earlier. I started going bonkers from the sheer amount of stuff in my head. I started living too long, living my Methuselah life while still having a mind like a steel trap. Nothing was getting out of my head. Nothing *could* get out of my head. It just wasn't possible in the current system.
I have grand plans. Grand plans of organizing a petition among all the old clades, with the Ode clade leading and me leading them in turn. A petition to the system engineers to hire some damn developers again and stop treating this like abandonware that still runs. Get some devs in there and add the ability forget and the ability to die. Hell, maybe even the ability to breed. The word's even in my name, my old name, for chrissakes.
As I continue through my spiel, I can tell I'm hooking the liberals, the later stanzas, most of all. Dear's sold completely, I can see it on its face, fox or no. Can see it on Dear's other fox sib. Dear's whole stanza.
The conservatives are harder to read. The whole lot look blank and stoic. They just stand there, with their historians and their analyst --- the flash of his stylus as he scribbles notes in shorthand keeps distracting me. I power through, though, because it was working.
It's working, because I am Qoheleth. I am the teacher, I am leading the assemblage. I am instructing them in the dangers they face, telling them what's going on in forceful, no-nonsense terms.
And then I fuck up. I knew it as soon as I did it, too. I said something about The Name. I got too proud and started going into my whys. I shouldn't have done that at all. It'd lose me the conservatives. They, more than others, guarded that dumb name more jealously than all the rest.
I try to keep going to cover up my mistake, but there's that damn analyst, pulling himself up onto my stage. *My* stage. It takes only a moment before I figure out what is going to happen, but by then it's too late.
The damn analyst's hand slaps into my back, and there's a sudden, searing pain. The only noise I can manage is a sort of strangled laugh at my own foolishness. My insides start to crumble.
Maybe I was Hebel after all. Vain, futile. Mere breath.
