She is sitting there, slumped a bit sleepily at the bar. All the light in the room is sucked into her eyes. She stirs her drink; the parallel lines in the room converge as the swizzle stick cuts through the meniscus.
It’s not like Tara has to work here. She doesn’t need money. She could go home. But then she’d never understand anything. Why they tried to kill her. Why her research was so important they wanted her dead. “It’s only trees.”
“It’s politics, kiddo,” Tommy says, refreshing her drink. “That’s all it ever is.” He says it like he almost believes it. He’s learned to be convincing.
“I turned my back on politics long ago,” she replies. “That goddamn prophecy.” It’s clear that she’s a little drunk. “I don’t want anything to do with it.” It’s almost true, when she says she wants to be a xenobotanist and not the Matriarch of Skarsia. Almost. She keeps leaving her destiny behind her, like a glass shoe that didn’t fit right to begin with. And some man keeps bringing it back to her, promising happily ever after. Daniel died, Johannon lied, and Edom…well, at least Clive doesn’t promise fuck-all.
She is waiting for him, the man she thinks of as her lover. He’s a revolutionary, and they messed him up bad. He wants to overthrow the Central Government. Earth’s Central Government. She tells herself it has nothing to do with her. The men of the Domha’vei have had nothing to do with Earth for twelve centuries.
He slides into the seat next to her. “Clive,” she says, as if to make the point. He wasn’t always Clive. Or maybe he was, and she isn’t ready to admit it to herself. They messed him up. There’s a good chance that all this, these troubles, have to do with him, not her.
“What do you know about this?” He slides a leaflet across the bar, adroitly avoiding the condensation circles. It reads “PLANT: Preservation Local Alliance for Nau’gsh Trees.”
Tara picks it up, glances at it, presses it back down onto the bar deliberately. The water soaks through. It reminds her of a ring. A wedding ring. The ring of a tree. “Home rule,” she mutters. “Dolparessan autonomy.”
“A potential ally? Or a fraud.”
“I don’t know. Maybe a visionary. Maybe a little pathetic.” But she wants to believe it. Sideria has always been Skarsia’s whore, and now Skarsia is spreading her legs to CenGov. The Five Nations didn’t abandon Earth just so that the Matriarch could suck the dick of Earth’s President. Well, Dolparessa is perhaps the only inhabited world in the Domha’vei independent enough to accomplish it. Without the Skarsian power grid, Sideria is a hell of fire, and Volparnu a hell of ice. That’s how the Matriarchy has kept power for almost a thousand years, ruled despite the fact that women are despised on Volparnu.
Tara freezes the frown that is forming. She never admits to anything. Never admits that she hates them, Volparnu and Sideria. She’s lived on both of them. She hates them even though she was Tenzina of one and could rightfully be the empress of the other, if she decides to finally stand up to her uncle. But she turned her back on that, for the sake of peace, and peace of mind. Claiming her birthright wouldn’t be good enough. No conflict with her uncle could end without his head bashed open on the rocks at the foot of Starbright Mountain. She stares into her drink. If she closes her eyes, she will see Daniel. If she opens her eyes, she sees Daniel too. But she never admits to it.
Now there is Clive, Clive who used to be Edom. Now there is Tara del D’myn, Tara who used to be Marquesa of Dolparessa. She looks at the flier again. “This man – I recognize him. He’s some sort of folk singer, isn’t he?”
“Everyone knows Whirljack Riordan,” says Tommy. “But I know him personally. I can arrange a meeting if you want. He started PLANT a while back, but ever since CenGov started pressuring the Matriarch to ban the wine and burn the trees, it’s, um, caught fire.”
And now the trees are a symbol, thinks Tara. A symbol of the old conflicts with Earth. A symbol of Dolparessa, the only world of the quaternary with an original, organic culture, and not some sham pastiche of fucked up Earth history. Not like Volparnu, with its long, stupid nights of karaoke and jousting, the endless hunts to capture the scale-armored frostbeasts needed for the gladiatorial competitions, the victory feasts of baked sushi and gravy. But the trees aren’t a symbol. They are trees. Why do they have to get dragged into filthy human politics?
Tara’s eyes are on the bar, on her drink, on the sodden leaflet. Clive’s eyes roam the nightclub, the shadows in the corner of the nightclub. He’s on the edge of his seat, waiting for the next attack. He’s not nervous, just ready. Tara wonders if he’s looking forward to it. Tara thinks Clive likes to kill. Tara wonders if there’s even a particle of Edom left, maybe wedged under Clive’s fingernails like dirt. Or a bamboo splint.
Tommy’s eyes have never left Tara, not once. Not even when Clive says, “I think you should go home to Dolparessa.”
“You want me to go along with this.”
“Tara. You must stop deluding yourself. Claim your title and stop playing at being a scientist. Whether you want to be or not, you’re involved. And you’re more useful as an ally…”
“Useful.” Her voice is flat. Edom wouldn’t have thought of her as merely useful. Edom wouldn’t have mocked her as a scientist. She won the fucking PanGal Prize for her paper on the nau’gsh. But Edom, the man she thought she loved, didn’t really exist. A palimpsest, written across the text of a terrorist. Still, Clive is damn sexy, and that PanGal trophy is no good in bed. Not that she’d tried it. Her kinks are more organic.
She’s really fucking drunk. And Clive, the PanGal trophy, the elegant Santriss Silver Birch – anything was better than her estranged husband or that bastard Johannon. “All right,” she says. “All right.”
Tommy’s eyes never leave Tara, but there’s hope in them. She doesn’t see it, but Clive does. Clive wonders what game Tommy is playing.
It’s confusing, says Mickey. Plunging right into the middle of the action like that. We need more backstory.
What fucking action? says Cillian. They’re sitting at a bar. It needs gunfire. Explosions.
The exposition is a little heavy-handed, says Evan. You’re trying to do too much at once. Focus on the little things. Like the passage about the pamphlet works, but the political background feels pasted in.
Action, I say. Backstory. Descriptive details. OK, how about…
Tara met Tommy by accident, or so she believed. It was on the night General Panic came to Dalgherdia, the night that Traeger tried to kill her, the night she learned that the man she’d known as Edom St. John never existed, was long dead, was a recorded memory imprinted into the mind of a psychotic genius. Edom had called her that night, desperation in his voice, warning her not to question, to meet him at a hotel room in the city’s most dubious sector.
But she had to stop at the lab first. All their work was there.
The explosion must’ve been planned. A curtain of flame between her and the exit. She wonders now, was it her Traeger wanted gone, or was it their work? Traeger couldn’t have known she’d go back to the lab. He was after the files, the files that Edom had insisted on keeping in notebooks. Edom hated solid storage devices. It was a quaint affectation. Tara suspects the reason someone as renowned as Edom got stuck in the Domha’vei is that he refused to have a chip implanted. Tara likes books, too, likes the weight and feel of them, antique and impractical as they were. She’d given a book to Sloane, the collected works of Yeats. Rag paper, though. Rag paper survived. Wood pulp paper didn’t last. Scrawls on the bare skins of trees. Something about this offends her. It’s her Dolparessan side, perhaps. Trees are sacred.
The truth was not that Edom liked keeping notes. The truth was that Edom was conditioned to avoid computers because Clive was an expert hacker. The faux-Edom was conditioned to avoid anything that might cause the true Clive to bleed through the palimpsest. But Tara didn’t know this yet. She hasn’t learned that Traeger was his handler, Traeger was a telepath.
Hold on, says Cillian, you call that action? You’re in the middle of a fucking explosion and you go into a long-winded, confusing expository passage?
The reader needs to know why Tara was at the lab, I say.
And the reader needs to know that she gave Sloane a book for Solstice? At that moment?
That was an example of a descriptive detail. Besides, I needed to introduce Sloane as a character. He’s crucial to the story, and he hasn’t even said anything yet.
Sloane is a man of few words – but more than Jamey. Jamey doesn’t speak at all. Sometimes I think I could use more of me like that.
I like the way you got Sloane in there, says Lugh.
Why don’t you just let me write it, says Cillian.
No way. No way in hell or Volparnu. It would be a disaster.
Why do you get to write it?
Well, he is Archon, says Patrick. In the old days, we would’ve just let Whirljack do it, but…
Nothing is going to get written if we keep arguing about it, I say.
I know what’s missing, says Tommy. Sex.
I was going to say characterization, sulks Evan. It’s always about sex for you.
I’ll bet Tommy’s novel sells more than Evan’s, says Cillian.
If we’re looking at this from a profit perspective, Cillian is right, says Ross. But then, we should really figure out a target audience and come up with a marketing plan before we go any further.
No, says Dermot. No.
But Ross does have a point, injects Tarlach. Whether or not we intend to sell it, we should figure out what we’re doing and why.
No fucking analysis, says Blackjack. Just keep fucking writing, please?
All right. Let’s see. Backstory, action, descriptive detail, characterization, and sex. Let’s reboot.
She didn’t quite believe it, even when she saw Edom kill all those people. It upset her. Not the killing, but that Edom would do it, Edom, who was afraid of his own shadow. Killing was familiar to her. Was she not of the blood of the Matriarchs? Long, boring hours spent in battle-practice as a child. And then on Volparnu, constant practice just to affront her despised husband, to affront his men. Pigs. Men of Volparnu are pigs.
Edom killed those people expertly and elegantly. Edom was competent in ways she never could have imagined. But in the end, it wasn’t Edom who came to her rescue. If not for an odd coincidence, she would have died. As the flames raged, a panel slid open behind her, hands pulled her into the dark confinement. It was one of the base guards – the de facto janitor – cleaning out the ducts. She recognized him – it was that guy, Mickey, the moron who was always whistling. Used to drive Edom nuts. That night, he was dumb enough to save her when his superiors had ordered her death. She crawled blindly behind him as he found a way out for both of them, expert in the dark, like a root, like a sprouting seed that won’t let anything stand between it and the sun.
He shoved her into the cool night outside the station walls. “I don’t understand,” she had said.
“I couldn’t let you die.” It was that simple to him; for the first time in her life, Tara realized that qualities other than intellect could have value. No, not the first time. In the half-light, he reminded her of Sloane, especially the blue kindness of his eyes. I am always betrayed, she thought, and then saved by some strange angel.
Woodenly, she wandered back to her rooms. Edom was there, the Edom that was not Edom. Drinking coffee. Black blood, that’s what they called it back home although she didn’t know why. But Edom drank tea. Edom had an antique samovar that sat on a table in the corner, keeping the water hot. The ritual of it, the concentrated tea in the kettle warmed over the water-filled base. What trouble to go through when tea could be had instantly from a teapod. Nevertheless, tea from the samovar tasted better.
Clive drank coffee. She noticed that first. She noticed the way his hands held the cup, sharply, with no sensitivity to the porcelain. That’s when she finally understood that Edom St. John was dead. “I knew you’d be foolish enough to come back,” he said. “This warning is all I owe you. Leave here. Run.”
But before she can leave, he pushed her against the wall, forced her into a kiss. “If you betray me, I’ll kill you,” he said.
His warning was serious. Soldiers were looking for her. The sensation was familiar to being chased by that assassin at her uncle’s palace in Vuernaco, the assassin Merkht had sent when he got tired of waiting for an heir that would never happen. But this time there was no Sloane to die for her.
There was Tommy, though, who happened to be standing on a street corner, having a smoke outside of the nightclub he owned. He said he knew the look of a woman in trouble, had no great love of spies or soldiers. He gave her a barkeep’s uniform, told her to go into the back. If anyone barged in, she was to say she was cleaning the bathroom, but he’d do his best to run interference outside.
The club – Tom O’Bedlam’s – gave the impression of faded elegance gone to seed. The bathroom was one large stall; the copper plate on the towel rack was rubbed thin. Next to the toilet was a stack of magazines printed on real paper to match the ambiance of the club. Tara leafed through them. They were skin rags and gardening catalogs. The edges of the centerfold were worn – a big-breasted woman with flaming hair, like Tara’s. The top catalog flopped open easily to another dog-eared page, an advertisement for a graceful varietal called the Santriss Silver Birch. Tara was familiar with it, in fact, had studied the process of hybridization which led to its development.
“Either you are a kindred spirit, or you have kinks I don’t even want to think about,” she muttered under her breath.
Tarlach is scandalized. How could you know all that? You made it up. You made up all that stuff happening in Tara’s flat.
I had to fill in the gaps. A lot happened when Mickey and Tommy weren’t there to witness. It is a novel, after all. A novel is a fictionalized account.
I thought we were writing our memoirs, Tarlach counters. A voyage of self-discovery.
True or not, it still doesn’t make any sense, says Mickey.
And there’s too much emphasis on that asshole Clive, says Driscoll. Why does Clive kiss her first in this story when Daniel was her first kiss?
He’s starting to sound like the protagonist, says Evan. And he’s not.
We’re the fucking hero, says Cillian.
Well, Clive is the current love interest, says Patrick. But we could introduce an element of romantic conflict. A love triangle.
You’ll have to put more emotion into is, says Evan. More atmosphere. But you should do that anyway.
Think of those old torch songs I used to sing, says Tommy.
Tara and Clive are dancing in the smoke-filled bar. It’s not real cigarette smoke, of course. Real cigarettes are banned in limited atmosphere environments. Limited or not, atmosphere is something a bar needs, and so Tommy pipes in artificial smoke.
Tommy sings ancient torch songs – Louis Armstrong’s “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” and Bryan Ferry’s “My Only Love.” He’s really good. Tara thinks he’s at least as good as Whirljack. The difference is that Jack has force, has willpower. Tommy has a kind of louche indifference. Tommy has talent, but he will never be a star.
Clive isn’t an accomplished dancer. He knows all the steps, but his movements are mechanical. He doesn’t have any feel for it. Tara wonders if he has any feel for anything. Edom was different. Edom stumbled when he danced. He was a terrible klutz. Edom stumbled right into her, and then they both laughed, embarrassed at the sudden intimacy of the touch. Clive avoids such human error.
Mercifully, Clive excuses himself. Tara wants to dance, but now she has no partner. She thinks Tommy would be a very good dancer, but he has to sing, of course. So she gives up and goes to the bar.
Eloise, the barkeep, leans over to her. “He’s in love with you,” she whispers.
Tara feigns ignorance. “Clive? He’d better be.”
“No, silly girl. Tommy.”
“Tommy and I are friends.” Eloise is always trying to set them up. It’s annoying. She had once considered it briefly. If she weren’t with Clive…but no. Tommy isn’t interested in her, and it would just ruin their friendship if she made things awkward.
“He always looks right at you when he’s singing.” But Tommy always looks right at her. His sympathetic way of giving her his full attention is one of the things she likes about him.
Clive returns, and the conversation is cut short. “I don’t get the gardening catalogs,” says Clive. “The only thing that bathroom grows is mold.”
I like it, says Callum. I like all the suffering in silence.
You took the suggestions about atmosphere a little too literally, says Evan.
No coherent plot structure, says Mickey. I’d be amazed if anyone is still reading.
I’m amazed that Tommy gets a boner over a fucking birch tree, says Cillian.
She’s cute, mutters Tommy.
Plot is a human conception, says Dermot. Human lives don’t really have plots. It’s a formal trope they impose to make sense out of a series of random events. Plot is really a form of interpretation. But humans are always moving, plunging forward through space and clinging to the delusion that time is straightforward and uniform, when even a child can tell you that an hour at the dentist’s is five times as long as an hour at a birthday party.
We’re all listening now. Unlike most of us, what Dermot says is generally significant.
A tree, on the other hand, perceives time as a space through which to extend itself, primarily in two dimensions, the radial up and the radial down. The sort of linear geometry which comes intuitively to bilateral creatures makes no inherent sense to us. But we too have our delusions – that space is straightforward and uniform – an illusion shattered quite definitively the day that Starbright Mountain fell on the Atlas Tree.
First Proust, and now Roland Barthes, says Cillian. We’re going to end up being the fucking deciduous Derrida. I know it.
How do you know so much about literary theory? asks Tommy. You’re supposed to be an admiral.
Maybe it’s because I read more than fucking skin rags, says Cillian.
It’s not ten-dimensional topography, says Mickey. You’re making it too complicated. Just write down what happened.
Ten-dimensional topography is actually pretty straightforward, says Cuinn. It’s a lot easier to describe than love. I could come up with some sort of paper…
Suck my mulch, says Cillian.
Why don’t we go back to the facts? says Mickey. You know, I’ve got copies of status reports by Traeger that are more coherent than what Ailann just wrote. Why not use them for backstory? Look at this:
Status Report 3829459b34897: from D.F. Traeger, telepathic division, to General Alara Panichini
General,
I shall begin by congratulating you on your appointment as Oversight Commander of Sector 15. I shall hereafter dispense with niceties; there is little point in employing a telepath if you do not wish to hear the truth. I therefore shall take the liberty of speaking my mind.
- Your plan to intervene is premature. We should employ the current St. John as long as possible for a number of reasons. The new, more stable St. John palimpsest is not yet ready. You have seen the consequences of rushing such a delicate process. Yet despite the instabilities, I believe that I can continue to control the current St. John. It is essential that his contact with Lady Claris is allowed to continue. We were entirely unaware that the pseudonau’gshtium species was sentient, let alone capable of assuming humanoid form. Having a direct Hina (their own term for their species is Cu’endhari) informant is invaluable.
- Since Johannon Deverre discovered her when he was attaché to Volparnu, Tara del D’myn has been our foremost authority on nau’gsh biology. We have invested much in her since the fortunate, if surprising decision of the Skarsian Matriarch to allow her to study formally on Earth. True, she lacks the skepticism and rigid discipline of the best scientists, yet in this case, where the data has been buried by the authorities, her willingness to explore a sketchy folk tradition has led to some remarkable advances. Hers has been the only systematic effort to synthesize the spotty prior research attempts with the large body of anecdotal evidence. Furthermore, her social position has given us access to both research and research materials that we, as outsiders, would not otherwise have. It has been our hope to exploit her differences with the Matriarch and her uncle the Regent of Sideria; this combined with the subtle indoctrination she received upon Earth should leave her favorably disposed towards CenGov. It is not altogether impossible that she could (perhaps with assistance on our part) attain the throne of Sideria or even Skarsia, which would mean a government much more sympathetic to Earth.
- I have done my best to encourage the emotional attachment between St. John and del D’myn. Our psych division recommended it as an easy way to assert emotional control over both of them. The St. John persona tends to form attachments; the Rivers persona does not. The more investment is made in St. John’s personal life, the more resistance he will have against reverting to the unrewarding and sterile existence of Rivers. You may respond that the sheer amount of torture inflicted upon Rivers should be enough to stabilize the St. John persona; no one would wish to remember what Rivers has endured. The psych department believes – and I concur – that Rivers is an unusual case, stubbornly resistant to indoctrination. He would prefer the painful truth to the comforting illusion. He does have the temperament of a true scientist.
- Del D’myn is the opposite. Her early emotional life was barren: spoiled and yet neglected as is not untypical in hereditary aristocracies. Her only attempt at an authentic relationship was at age sixteen, with the migrant agricultural worker Daniel McDarragh, and ended in tragedy, a severe trauma from which she has never fully recovered. Her affect is superficial, repressed to the point of delusion, and often sublimated into explosions of temper that lead to physical violence. Deverre’s seduction can hardly be called “successful;” she evidences no attachment to him, and treats him with amused contempt. There are signs, however, that she is beginning to form a sincere bond to the St. John palimpsest. Revealing the truth to her now would most certainly eradicate the groundwork we have done in building her sympathies.
- Deverre is a liability. He thinks only of advancing to the elite. He seems unable to comprehend that the hallmark of the elite is a willingness to sacrifice personal ends to the greater good of CenGov.
- Please transfer Lieutenant Riley somewhere – anywhere – the center of the Orion Nebula, if possible. His whistling is driving me mad.
Coded communique 093453209945hgh324-pfw to D.F. Traeger, telepathic division
Traeger,
- I am bringing the new St. John palimpsest with me to Dalgherdia. It is good enough. If we were allowed to chip it, it would be even better, but such is the cost of dealing with primitives.
- Leave the strategy to the strategists. CenGov’s long-range plan is to conquer this miscreant system and cure the people of their barbarous ways. At that time, we intend to purge the aristocracy. Allowing del D’myn further access to our research facilities – and St. John – is impermissible. It is regrettable that we dare not simply eliminate her – although an “un”fortunate accident is one potential solution. Most especially, you are not to continue contact with the aliens. Genocide – or should I say herbicide – is essential to our ultimate control of the Rip.
- Therefore: replace St. John, get rid of del D’myn (one way or another), and make a show of destroying the research data. I assume that you are up-to-date on transferring it all to solid storage?
- Deverre is ambitious. Is this something telepaths are incapable of understanding? Does the inability to dream preclude it?
- Riley’s record is exemplary. I took the liberty of examining his file and found not a single reprimand; top ratings in all active duties. Granted, he is not exceedingly intelligent, but one needs soldiers as well as generals. I wish we could cultivate more troops like him.
- Your whining about Deverre and Riley only attest to your own unsuitability for the assignment. I will expect point 3 to be completed upon my arrival. And DO NOT ATTEMPT FURTHER CONTACT WITH THE CHRISTMAS TREES.
Yrs. General Panic
You had a lot of access, says Cillian to Mickey, appreciatively.
That’s why I and I still emanated him occasionally when I was on Eirelantra, says Patrick. I could keep tabs on CenGov through Mickey.
General Panic didn’t like it too much when she found out, says Mickey.
In the end, the bitch got what was coming to her, Lorcan snorts. Christmas trees.
But I still don’t get whether Traeger was trying to kill Tara or not, says Cillian.
Does it matter? asks Driscoll. Is Traeger even that important? Artistic purpose is more important than veracity, and I still think characters other than Tara and ourselves distract from our design. Let’s think creatively. Why not take Traeger, Johannon, and General Panic and combine them all into one character?
Joe Antagonist, says Cillian.
Mickey shakes his head. We need Traeger if we’re going to tell Owen’s story. I guess we could get rid of Johannon, but I’m against it.
If we got rid of Johannon, we’d have to make General Panic into Sloane’s love rival, says Patrick. Which doesn’t make sense. If Tara was bisexual, then at least one of us would have been female.
Or make Panic a male character, suggests Owen.
I’m against all of this, says Tarlach. I think this should be a true story.
Maybe we should rethink it, says Evan. Maybe the problem is that we’re writing in the wrong genre.
I’ve got it! says Cuinn. We should use a form of literature which is elegant in its simplicity. Motivational posters.
Wisely, Evan ignores him. If we were writing a play, we could just put a cast of characters at the beginning. Wouldn’t that be less confusing?
The problem with drama, says Dermot, is that there’s no real point-of-view. The members of the audience watch the action and come to their own conclusions. The use of a narrator allows the author to guide the reader to the focal point.
Suibhne jumps up in excitement. I get it! The theater is a form of insanity. That’s why it’s sacred to Dionysius. We could make an enormous spectacle, with girls in spangly tights and lots of clowns packed into a taxi. And hamster sacrifice. I’ve always wanted to sacrifice hamsters.
We’re a lot like clowns packed into a taxi, says Davy.
It would make a good taxonomy, muses Cuinn. Pseudonau’gshtium clowntaxius.
I see Dermot’s point, says Whirljack. Demonstrably. The focal point is Tara. Whenever we drift away from her, we get lost.
If we did a play, we could put a spotlight on her, Mickey suggests. That way, the audience would know where to look.
I can feel Driscoll slap his forehead. That is so tacky, so obvious, he says, disgusted.
But it’s kind of how we really see her, says Wynne. When she’s in sensory range, all the light in the world is clustered around her. Everything else fades to black.
It isn’t like a spotlight at all, says Driscoll.
But to get the idea across to humans, says Blackjack, it might work. Humans don’t see too good. I mean, their eyes get tricked into thinking photographs show depth. I remember that first promo poster they showed me. It didn’t make sense. It took me a few minutes to figure out it was supposed to be me. It was flat.
Driscoll considers. I’ve always understood the principles of perspective, he says, but that’s because my purpose is to be an artist. It isn’t exactly a natural skill for the Cu’enashti – in fact, I’m the only Cu’enashti artist I know of. Whereas musicians are common.
I’ll bet I could make good motivational posters if I tried, Cuinn sulks.
Oh, now I’m common, says Blackjack. Evan, Tommy, hear that? We’re common.
Whirljack and Blackjack make a lot more money than Driscoll, says Ross.
Of course they do, says Driscoll. Popular art will always be more commercially successful than fine art.
It’s true that Driscoll is the first Cu’enashti to become an artist, I say, trying to diffuse the tension. But there was never a Cu’enashti politician before Jack. Nor was there a scientist, lawyer, gambler, or psychologist before we did it. There wasn’t a Cu’enashti who could travel past the Dolparessan thermopause.
Most of all, I say in my most dramatic voice, there wasn’t a bloody Archon. Which means that I AM WRITING.
I think Evan is right, says Mickey. I think we need a cast of characters.
I think I need a drink. All right, I say. How about starting it like this: