What Saffron missed most about smoking was having a reason to compel her to take smoke breaks. So she started feeding the birds. Whenever things at the agency verged on overwhelming her, she'd decide that the birds had to be hungry and dip outside with a bag of chips or whatever other avian edible was at hand. At first, she'd end up on a bench eating this item herself, as the alley behind her building was long and largely featureless, and few birds seemed naturally attracted to any one part of it. But after a while, the little wingers gradually began to catch on. Two or three of them would hang out on the ledges overhead and flutter downward when she appeared outside. By the time their number had reached a dozen, she felt extremely justified in taking her break 2 or 3 times per day. By this point she barely thought of smoking, and even felt slightly more resilient when facing her usual occupational chaos. And then, one of the birds brought her something, clamped in its little beak. It stepped right past the copious crumbs its fellows were gobbling up, directly toward her, and dropped a black ring in front of her, around a foot from where she stood. She was confused, and not only because it made no sound at all when it hit the pavement. Still, she bent to pick it up, and with no further thought, automatically slipped it on a finger. Then, as she straightened up again, it was as if her consciousness became disjointed from the natural flow of time. She was not taking a single break to feed the birds, she was simultaneously taking every break she had ever taken, several thousand strips of film all projected at the same screen, and the screen was her senses. It was overwhelming, yet also empowering. She recognized now that her entire time at the agency had been one long break, and now that break was ending. She would need to get to work.
Saffron 115599
Saffron 115599 (LVL0)
Saffron 115599 (LVL0)
Saffron 115599 (LVL1)
Saffron 115599 (LVL1)
Saffron 115599 (LVL2A)
Saffron 115599 (LVL2A)
Saffron 115599 (LVL3A)
Saffron 115599 (LVL3A)
Saffron 115599 (LVL4A)
Saffron 115599 (LVL4A)
Saffron 115599 (LVL5A)
Saffron 115599 (LVL5A)

Many girls in many dimensions, one mysterious piece of jewelry…

Inka
Inka, aware of the Minders for several years now and long past cycling through self-doubt (am I dreaming? high? crazy?), had simply accepted their presence, and the fact that no one else seemed to be able to see them, as a novel fact of her life. For the most part, they just floated around, though it was clear from the get-go that they gravitated toward populated areas…
Sybil
Not quite alone in the woods, Sybil had an exceptionally clear vision of a very murky immediate future.
Ether
Ether lived in a liminal space. Though her childhood had been Earth-typical, in her teens she'd begun to "phase out," not mentally (like every other high school student), but physically. From her perspective, her surroundings & everyone in them would disappear, leaving behind a bare scaffolding of wherever she'd started, seeming both under construction & on its last legs simultaneously…
Flynne
Flynne, assuring a potential customer that she would not have traveled nearly so far if she was just another purveyor of crystals that don't actually work…
Prescilla
Prescilla believes in the cyberpunk future we all deserve…
Xia
The singular face of Xia, attending an eclectic gallery opening in several alternate dimensions simultaneously…
Paris
Paris, in Paris, albeit in an alternate dimension…
Krystal
Krystal had spent countless hours in the woods around the cabin, silently stalking any prey she could track, gradually maturing into a fearsome apex predator undaunted by any kind of weather. It was what she'd always done when her mother would bring her up to the mountains and then disappear into the wilderness to perform her “rituals,” but this time felt different…
Parker
Parker, in the future, on her scooter, readying to no longer be parked…
Mila & Milana
Mila & Milana loved nothing more than to scare the crap out of hotel guests, lingering in the long hallways for hours, waiting for one unsuspecting innocent after another to come around a corner and spot them…
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