night of 1/1/2011

i am on a campus or station; broad and grassy; paths in trees i take nearby. i have been caught. ki- and someone else, af-'s mentor, has orchestrated this. my belongings are on a shelf, pictures and knickknacks.

now it is not i who has been caught but af-. his secondary copies are destroyed; he and his three primary copies are being frozen. as he is shut away his captor (who was his pursuer) pushes a worn quarter through a slot in the glass. the quarter means something to them.

back at the grass. ki- is examining the pictures on the shelves. (the pictures on the shelves remain mine. i don't know whether i want her to see that one is of her.) ki- asks if af- has had to pay, as expected. i tell her he's been mostly destroyed, the rest frozen forever. she is horrified, and now will help retrieve him.

af-'s hideout; banks and swirls of lights on the floors of the corridoors and rooms. they vanish when you pass over them. i appear to have a running tally of all those i've passed over. i am looking for clues but spend some time running over the strips of lights, the blinking numbers, the garish neon "newbie" signs that seem to designate points for the first-time player. somehow some information that af- has hidden, somewhere, will help to release him.

now on the way to af-'s mentor's house. (it somewhat resembles the grassy field but is also the inside of an expansive house.) many of af-'s friends and family are there. we need to think about how af- would have encoded secret information to be discovered later. i know "24" is important, even though it's a pretty easy one, and so i say it aloud. the tv turns on. if i say it again, the tv turns off. he'd used that as his remote control; the important data is going to be a lot harder.

i see af-'s little brother, whom i had not seen for years. he looks exactly like his older brother once did. i ask him how old he is-- "21." si- tells me that this question disgusts him; it is terribly insulting in their culture. then everyone laughs. their culture, after all, really is the same as mine.