The Piglet's Satchel

Bard hangs out on your back. When you feel like you're making genuine, positive progress he smashes you on the head with his book causing doubt, fear, shame and brain paralysis, making you unable to keep your forward momentum.

Delilah, on deck

Delilah is the kind of problem a child would keep on purpose.

She is green, fuzzy, tiger-sized, and she hates plant pots. She likes scratches between the shoulder blades. She is not stealthy. She is not helping.

In her story, she turns up in a steep hillside town where every staircase is too narrow, every house is too full, and every hiding place works exactly once. A small boy named Mateo finds her and decides, immediately, that she is his problem now.

That means a pantry for one afternoon. A roof corner for one night. A bad plan under a table. Plant pots she refuses to go near. Near misses. Older siblings who always seem to be one room away from finding out.

Delilah does not understand the rules of staying hidden, but she does feel something pulling at her. Mateo thinks he is keeping a secret creature safe. Slowly, he realizes he is helping her find something.

Second Edge Blades is a band that formed in a dead zone where the signal breaks. They weaponize music against the system. They're on Spotify. Their story is on the site. You can vote on what happens next.

A hydroelectric station that stopped generating power decades ago and started generating something else.

Zane's console glows amber in the centre. Vacuum tubes and reel-to-reel tape. Cables across the floor like dead vines. The band rehearses between the turbines, three hundred feet of raw stone cathedral where sound bounces off walls shaped over a hundred years ago.

Three feet of lead and concrete between this place and the Wire. Down here, the frequency that flattens the entire city above can't reach. Down here, you can feel things at full volume.