Time doesn’t move in hours anymore. It moves in events. Signatures. Flights. Flames. Uploads. Screams. Applause. Data streams. Deals. It never stops, never slows. Every waking minute is more than busy, even in my dreams I am working.
Welcome to my life.
August 14. Berlin → Seattle.
After the final concert in Berlin, I was ferried by suborbital shuttle back to Seattle—ostensibly for “rest,” but in reality for... let’s call it research. The sun-stone of Huitzillin still pulses inside me, a spiritual infection of purpose, and the scepter of Amun-Ta hums when I draw near. According to reputable sources, only I can wield it properly.
The result?
My Fijian Marines—combat bioroids of Aztechnology origin—are reborn as obsidimen. Stone-skinned. Relentless. Loyal (we think, it's impossible to verify other than through actual service). And surprisingly intact mentally, at least the ones who survive. About one-third make the transition. The rest die, or worse. It’s not magic I control. Not really. I’m just a conduit for something older and stranger. Still, I manage to create over a hundred over the course of two exhausting days. A start, but we have to do better.
Also, I may have turned UCAS Senator Miles Travers into a windling. Yes, President Evans’ husband. He volunteered, if it matters. And signed a waiver.
The real question now: what am I becoming—am I mage, or a vessel for something else?
Even Maria Gardner, my dear mother-in-law-to-be—now de facto head of research—doesn’t pretend to know. But she’s very excited. That’s a good thing, and probably also not a good thing. She's been known to turn homicidal when agitated, so let's try to focus her talents in a constructive direction, shall we?
August 17–18. London, UK.
London is a mess—fractured, ungovernable, and thick with ghosts. The inner city clings to hypermodern-Victorian aesthetics, a museum curated by billionaires. The rest of the metroplex is sprawl and soot. Perfect backdrop for a concert about myth and unity.
Halo leans hard into Arthurian legend. The shattered land, the sword, the true king. Unity. Glory. Hope. It’s all beautifully rendered—simsense fidelity like you’ve never felt before. If you let yourself go, you’re not just watching the story. You are the sword. You are the sorrow. You are the promise.
Some critics will say it's hollow pageantry. That the corporate fingers are showing. That she’s selling myth like another flavor of soda. But if you’d seen the faces in that crowd—both digital and real—you’d understand it’s something more. Something rawer.
August 18. London. Intimate Concert.
The private follow-up was tighter, quieter, and more reverent. Fewer swords, more silence. Halo performed in the ruins of a pre-Crash cathedral, lit only by spectral flames and residual grief. The narrative shifted toward the leaders of the past—those who rose in times of chaos to unite the many.
I watched from the edge of the crowd. Or tried to. Everyone wanted a word. An angle. An audience. I didn’t mind. This is the job now. Corporations. Nations. Metahumanity. The whole machine turns, and I’ve become one of the cogs that knows it’s a cog. Which might be worse.
But I’m not just here for symbolism. I came to London to buy something.
Specifically: PanGen Industries.
225 billion nuyen. Paid partly by Skyway Elite, the rest cobbled together through interlocking loans, asset transfers, and financial maneuvers so convoluted even I barely follow them. EuroLabz is happy—they’re offloading a biotech asset that never quite reached breakout profitability. And I’m happy because I now own the infrastructure of a dream.
PanGen is, on paper, a standard Seattle-based medical research firm: legal, reputable, boring. But buried under all the layers is its Dark Division—focused on the HMHVV strain. The vampire virus. Some tried to monetize it as a cure. Others, as a weapon. They failed. But now I hold the keys.
The labs. The staff. The equipment. And most importantly: two research AIs, Genesis and Pandora. One is coldly brilliant. The other, invasive and homicidally creative when not properly watched. Exactly the kind of minds I need for the Axon Research Initiative. What would have taken years, I acquired overnight.
Sometimes, it’s easier to buy the future than build it.
August 19. London.
One last day of rest (if you can call it that) before the tour moves on. Halo’s tireless, the team’s drained, and I’m seeing double—both from lack of sleep and from my own fractured reflection.
The work never stops. Not in meatspace. Not in the Matrix.
Wizkid is more active than ever. Scheming. Bending data. Whispering to AIs and dragons alike. He feels almost... separate now. Like another version of me splintering off and building his own empire in neon and code.
But that’s fine. I trust him. He's never betrayed our covenant.
If it sounds like I’m tired, it’s because I am. Sleep has become something I do in microbursts during flights.
But we’ll keep moving. We must. Mount Rainier stirs. Velaxas whispers. The world is accelerating, fragmenting, twisting itself into something new and unrecognizable.
We need to move fast to stay on top.
