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Does he want to bet? You'd be drawing up the terms of the bet for the next several minutes had the self-walking pathway not ground to a halt, spitting you out somewhere... hot. Like opening a furnace door to the face. You push up your sleeves; Gil undoes the top two buttons of his shirt; Casey, still in an ill-fitting double-breasted suit, does nothing but slide hideous rainbow sunglasses on. "Ah!" he says. "Zone 4! My favorite!"
You suspect he'd say that no matter where you went, but you suppose you can't fault a positive attitude, so you squint out into Zone 4 instead. You don't see much in the way of open-plan workspaces. You do see wilderness, or what you suppose must be wilderness, though you've never seen anything like it: the powdery dirt is red-orange, the waist-high grass is yellow, and there's hardly any trees. The high sun casts everything in harsh shadow, and for barely-understood reasons a disgust rises in you.
>[-1 ID: 7/13]
You don't voice it, though: the time for complaining will come when you're Caseyless. For now, you squint and continually brush dust and burrs off your slacks as Casey begins to lead you into the depths of Zone 4, which look exactly the same as the outskirts of Zone 4, only there's a jagged ravine through the middle. Have you been seeing a lot of ravines lately? Maybe it's a sign.
«I sincerely doubt this also.»
<span class="mu-i">Richard</span> isn't an official God-certified heroine, so he doesn't get signs— receive <span class="mu-i">or</span> understand them. It's fine, though, because you're now definitely sure it's a sign. Of what? Of your tragically rifted-through life? Of your intense desire for some decent shade? Casey has stopped talking about anything remotely Headspace and is going on about soil composition again, so maybe it's a sign he's currently distracted? And you should push him into the ravine? Just kidding. Probably just kidding.
Anyhow, he might be sort of distracted, but he's still talking to you. His eyes are wide open. But there's far less cover than you hoped for in every direction you look, so... unless you want to learn in minute detail how Casey and his team accurately reconstructed the structure of the grass, you may as well do it now. Provided you can think of something.
(Choices next.)
