The rest of the day, and the night that follows, are blessedly low-impact for me. Ernie and I play a few rounds of Shamus, alternating between the trick-taker and hand-emptier roles. It’s not really for me, but I appreciate that we’re not trying to beat each other—trying for goals together, passing information and tools via the discard pile. We play on the floor, where we can arrange the central circle of cards between us. We even win a few times.

  Telly’s grocery trips come in sequence. First, she brings back another of those cardboard trays that make up the bottom of water bottle packages, on which she has recovered a bounty of fruit and grain bars, elbow macaroni, imitation vanilla extract, pinto beans, and rice. Interestingly, she also found a bottle of ‘HYDROGEN PEROXIDE!’, for any injuries I accrue. Just in case. The next trip brings back water, and the third gets me more wheels of cheese and a head of cabbage. Ernie, as it turns out, will just eat an entire head of cabbage like it’s an apple and look at me like I’m weird if I object. I really prefer the cheese, anyway. Telly gets reluctant and somehow spooked about making more trips after that—making this a good time to get some rest.

  The floor is clear, so I take the hard ground again and give Telly back her spot on the couch. Ernie leans against the wall, crosses his arms, and bows his head. Sleeping behind the couch with just Telly in the room is one thing, but I’m uncomfortable with multiple people being here. It takes me a while to finally nod off in the darkness, listening to the subtle shifts of Telly and Ernie’s bodies—metal and rock formations scrape and sing against each other through the night.

  Just one more night, and I’ll be out of here. I have to bury my face in my arms and tune it all out.

  Eventually, I do.

  I’m not used to a schedule in which I can sleep in for however long I want, but I’m also not used to the rise and fall of the sun being completely absent from my day. I like to think of myself as someone who changes with the situation, to be adaptable—maybe I’ve done a fair enough job so far. And yet, the morning still leaves me groggy; I’m only awoken by Telly squirming and turning on her couch, metal skin stripes scraping against each other. I stare up to the rusty roof that fills my vision, Ernie is tapping out a tune in the corner of the room. I can hear water boiling on the stove.

  We have a quick breakfast—beans and rice, with fruit-and-grain bars for variety. I’m too sleepy to have a taste for anything fancy, anyway. Telly has forks and knives, and these, blessedly, are not rusty. I wonder if she cleans them, since she shouldn’t be able to get sick from dirt anymore, and water has to be carried in with bottles. The dishware doesn’t taste funny. It occurs to me that her saliva glands might be fully-mineralized, too, leaving minimal germs to stick to the utensils.

  After we finish up, we head towards the voting palace, planning to get there at 11:00am (the group consensus time, as Ernie explains). We zig and zag down matchstick streets, taking a path that looks exactly as well-worn as the rest of this place—no mechanical damage, just the gradual decay of iron succumbing to oxygen. Ernie stays ahead of me, with Telly behind; Telly’s footsteps are less frequent than his, but her gait is longer, and she keeps up.

  “I don’t think I got the full story on why you’re...made of rocks?” I finally ask, as we walk down the middle of the road. There aren’t any cars here. It’s a lot of wasted space that could surely be narrower; you could fit two houses side-by-side down this dedicated chute for moving cars that don’t exist, and it’s just been copied whole cloth from the outside world. It’s so spacious, having this to myself, with the dome’s arc high above and buildings that are mine to look around in. Even if there’s nothing to see.

  “Because it’s cool,” Telly says, with a half-laugh. “Nah, it started to happen after a month-ish,” she explained. “We thought we were going to turn into motionless statues or something, but we kept ticking. North’s best guess is that it has something to do with the air in here. He and Fark were gonna make something called a Carnot engine to cool the air down a lot to extract whatever’s in it...”

  “I still think it’s just a rule that didn’t make it into the engravings,” Ernie says. “We already know there are details about Mob Rule that aren’t in them. It doesn’t tell you that there’s a TV channel you can always check to see the elections. It doesn’t say that if a player doesn’t exist, and you vote for their button, your vote turns into an Abstain.” Ernie doesn’t look at me; he’s staying focused on the road to the election.

  “Do you think something has to be a ‘rule’ for it to happen?” Telly asks Ernie.

  “If it’s different than it was before I got stuck here, someone made it that way on purpose. So it’s a rule. The documentation is just bad. When people are fighting each other when they’re supposed to be working together, the only thing they write down is what they need to cover their asses.” Ernie grunts.

  “So...am I going to mineralize? Hypothetically,” I ask.

  “Probably,” Telly says.

  All the more reason to get out of here quickly.

  We return to the voting palace, and the outside is as quiet as before. The rust flakes aren’t falling quite yet, since it’s a bit chillier than it was during my last visit. Along the roundabout, I see two figures sitting in the bed of a pickup truck; it takes me a minute to remember the names. The man of glass, with his high-visibility vest and slacks, is North, and I’m seeing him from behind—his frosted surface does a bad job of eclipsing the shining white eyes of Magnolia, which beam through one shoulder. They’re sitting, hunched-over, inspecting something closely, hands together…

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “It’s normal to be upset,” North says, his voice calm, level. “This is a new skill you’re learning.”

  “And I’m ruining your perfectly good seeds,” Magnolia says, her voice tense. I peel off from Telly and Ernie to take a closer look, trolling up to the side of the truck. My hands rest on the edge of the truck bed’s lip, my chin only inches above it. This truck is well-lifted—there are long shafts of iron connecting the rims to the chassis. “I give up. You’re wasting it all on me...”

  “There’s nothing to waste, Magnolia,” he says, smiling, his eyebrows of smoke upturned inwards. Magnolia’s face is impossible to read behind the ski mask, but I can see what they’re doing now. They sit cross-legged, facing each other, with a spread of slightly-oblong wooden balls between them. North holds his hands, cupped, under Magnolia’s, while Magnolia fidgets with one of the balls and a cheap plastic potato peeler, branded white, with ‘POTATO PEELER!’ on the side. She’s cutting and picking at the seed, turning it red with each chip that she peels, forming it into a jagged, awkward block.

  “They’re yours. I refuse to let you down,” she continues, her breaths tense. She peels off another trapezoid of wood. ...Those aren’t wood. I haven’t seen anything else wooden around here.

  North laughs. “Oh, Magnolia. Is a piece of trash off the ground ‘mine’ if I pick it up?”

  “Yes. A thousand times yes.”

  “And yet, that’s not what matters, is it? There’s clearly no value in it. Magnolia, do you know how many avocados I find? Plenty, plenty. What else am I going to do with the seeds?”

  She sighs.

  “If rondelleing them made for fine checkers, carving them into chessmen is the next step. And I have plenty. Destroy as many as you need, and I’ll celebrate your first rook.”

  “Thanks, North.”

  He glances over to me, his smile unfailing. “Good morning, Number Nine. How did you sleep last night?”

  “Not great,” I admit, and I wonder how long he’s known I was there. “I don’t sleep well with lots of people in the room, and also Cieze tried to kill me yesterday, so, it gets hard to wind down.”

  Magnolia is looking at me now, too, and North drops his smile. “He...?”

  “It happened while I was checking the rules—”

  “That’s enough, Sammy,” Ernie says half-interestedly; he walks up alongside me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Talk about it in the palace.”

  North nods. “That does make all eight of us. Oh, excuse me, nine. Senior moments, aren’t they...” he says, his hands going back to his lap.

  “North, 50 isn’t senior,” Ernie says.

  “It feels like it, at times,” He says.

  With an errant stroke of the peeler, Magnolia’s chess piece is beheaded. The near-cube of avocado pit drops and bounces on the truck bed a single time. With no emotion on her mask of pyrite, she slowly opens her hand, letting the rest fall, and hangs her head a few degrees.

  Ernie takes me back to rejoin Telly, who is through the elevator doors at this point, and the duo outside arrive close behind us. The ring of voting boots, inside, reminds me of the ring of mint tins in Shamus. All we have to do is work together to win the game, before the circle runs out of cards...

  “There you are!”

  “In the flesh,” I answer Cieze. He’s taken some random spot on the semicircle, far away from me. As before, Fark and Adol are right next to each other, and Adol is staring me down like a dog that smelled bacon. Orbora’s modified booth makes up the other end of the semicircle. She’s dressed-up today—even though both her body and clothing are ebony stone, there’s a rainbow lei around her neck. Upon a two-second look at the back of her head, I realize that those aren’t tiny flowers; they’re bread ties. “So, are we going to talk about how you tried to kill me yesterday?”

  “Huh?” He pipes up. Orbora watches me with wide, concerned eyes as I take a voting booth somewhere in the middle, next to Adol.

  “Yes, that would be the accusation that Sammy shared with me,” North says, a sad smile on his face. He comes up right alongside me, and Magnolia slots in right by him. “We should talk about that. I see that you’ve already voted?”

  The television screens indeed depict Cieze in a green rectangle. No one else has voted.

  “I did. I’m still confident that it’s Sammy. No doubt about it.” Cieze nods. Magnolia turns her gaze to him, and he averts his eyes.

  “Uh-huh,” Ernie says, taking a booth of his own. Telly is the last to arrive. In order, from my right to the left, I see…names, I try to remember the names I’m missing. Cieze, Ernie, Telly, Fark, Adol, me, North, Magnolia, and Orbora.

  “What do you mean, ‘uh-huh’ with me,” Cieze says. He leans in on the top of his booth, hands flat, his full attention to Ernie right next to him.

  “I mean that I can’t say for sure that you’re wrong, but you really don’t have a case, here,” Ernie says, glowering, and Cieze is already shrinking back.

  Orbora clears her throat; despite her size, it’s high-pitched and adorable. “Could we all take a step back? We could hear Sammy’s side and Cieze’s side of what happened, and that would be great for all of us, so we don’t make any dangerous votes,” she says, smiling.

  Cieze sighs. “Well, it’s a bit late for that one. Sorry. I’ve already put in my vote for Sammy.”

  Orbora nods. “That’s okay, that’s okay!” Her bangs stay as stiff as stone no matter how her head moves. “We can talk about it. I remember from last time what your reason for voting Sammy was—do you have a new one today?”

  “I don’t.” He’s still looking at Ernie, who stares back. I can feel the testosterone vying for dominance from here, or however that works. I’ve never been a fan of how men act in groups.

  “Okay! And is this now the opinion that Fark and Adol have, or have you two changed yours?” Orbora continues, still soft, turning to the two in question.

  “Maybe,” Fark answers, each bead of his compound purple eyes swiveling towards Orbora. Orbora gives a dainty wave. “Let’s get this over with and stay on topic. Cieze! Did you try to kill Sammy or not?”

  He blinks. “What are you expecting me to say? I did nothing.”

  “And Sammy, what happened?” Fark asked.

  I take a deep breath, and then explain the whole story.