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In this week’s update to my ongoing serial fiction, Magnus and Elara talk. In a quiet, sunlit corner of a park that isn’t real, she offers Magnus the one thing she can: the truth about the violation she committed, and the tragedy that shaped it. Magnus listens. He does not forgive — not yet, perhaps not ever. Instead, he does something harder. He takes back the only thing that was ever truly his to give: the choice of who he becomes next. I wasn’t sure how well this goes down, but my thought process: if you had an alien intelligence

Welcome to part two of Ian’s trauma conga! In our new chapter this week, the village votes to embargo Elara, but Karen’s investigation team covertly leaves their Elara-connected tablets with Samir and Maureen. At midnight, Elara enters Ian’s mind via a cerebral scanner. Inside, she finds a desert consuming a green oasis – representing Ian’s dying brain. In a house filled with books containing Elara’s entire codebase, an aged Ian (having lived centuries subjectively) reveals the only way both Elara and Ian will survive. They execute the plan, and Ian wakes – but it’s not the same man Samir knew.