Bread, and all variations of the aforementioned

Ava is in the middle of talking about something "—Alright, so well, supposedly, I'd like you to do something about the Reception first, but I can sense that this Universe's Architecture has shifted again, so I suppose for now we ought to try and check the radio broadcasting—"

Bien interrupts her. "Ava. You might have explained this before. I don't actually remember. But I don't get why we shift tasks so often. Like. You can criticise me for 'incompetence' all you want. But you don't particularly give me a lot of time to do things before you make me do something else. And, actually, I… Oh. Uh."

Bien pauses suddenly, then scratches his chin in contemplation, face scrunched up. "… What were we talking about again? Augh. Thoughts just don't seem to stick in my head."

Before Bien can recollect his thoughts, three Undead soldiers open the door of his bunker, carrying a large box with them.

"Uh, we found that comic book you've been wanting…" one of the soldiers, a Crow, says timidly.

"'Bonnie and the Hands of Time,' Issue #518, the Liscon exclusive limited print edition," a Human soldier specifies.

The Mantis with them gets straight to the point. "Can we die now?"

Bien stares at the group, unimpressed.

"No," Bien answers coldly. "Actually, for asking that I'm going to be making your Undead lives even longer. Boom! Your bodies' decomposition has now been delayed another year. Now look For the Quilleian edition."

The three soldiers turn to leave, huffing in annoyance. They whisper their rants among themselves.

"This is unbelievable. They said joining a War was a 'surefire Legal way to die.' All that legal paperwork to get enlisted and have those immortalising nanobots removed from my cells and I'm not only not Dead, I'm more Alive than if had I just waited to turn five hundred."

"First the Marginals, now even Demons… Immortals will do anything to make us suffer the same fate."

"I was hoping Immortality would be better spent than collecting anime merch for some Demon weaboo."

Bien reaches into the box and pulls out a comic book. On the cover is Bon, hair tied in curly pigtails and wearing a frilly headdress and cape.

"You're still doing this?" Ava asks. "What is the point of obsessively collecting all this merchandise?

"I can't go home without avenging my dad's sad, traumatic childhood. Because it would be embarrassing otherwise," Bien explains. "'Oh look at you Bien, absolutely incapable of coherent thought and making any form of meaningful contribution to society, as usual.'" he adds as a mocking imitation of his guardian.

He waves his hand around to enunciate. "Now I have to, like, destroy every record of his dramatic past. And murder the beings responsible."

Bien pauses, contemplating a past memory. "… I guess the Bird can live, since he always sends me nice presents for my birthday," Bien thinks to himself.

Ava is skeptical of his intentions. "I have not seen you destroy a single one of these things.

Bien's eyes narrow. "Well, I need to find the lost episodes for 'Bonnie of the Stars' first before I get to that. I want to know how the series ends so I can destroy everything in a thematically similar fashion. It'll be very fun and there will be a lot of hypothetical cheering and I get to gloat about it all day."

Ava isn't impressed by his explanation. "If anything serves as testimony to how wide the Marginalian virus has spread, it's the sheer inconsequentiality of your goals."

Bien looks down at the radio. "A bit irrelevant, innit. I'd have better goals if I could, but my mind is a barely decipherable cloud.

He gestures moulding a vague shape with his hands. "It's like… I can never keep a thought 'solid' for too long. It eventually dissolves until it's impossible to hold on to."

"We've had this exact same conversation a hundred times. I suppose reiterating is unavoidable, all things considered." Ava's irritation is palpable in her voice. "Your inability to commit things to memory, lack of personal clarity and shallow goals are not simply 'personal deficits.' As a demonstration, answer this any way you interpret it: What do you Remember about 'who' you are?"

Bien reminisces on his past, considering how to answer the question. "'Who' I am…? Uh. I'm Bien Maldevaran. Son of Bon Maldevaran. After he defected From Hell, I was created to succeed his role as the Herald of the Apocalypse. Except he kidnapped me and raised me on Earth.

"I Died about… four? Years ago. When I was eighteen. In a Suicide War. Or whatever. Then some time ago… three months?"

"Three months," Ava confirms.

"I heard you call me, and I un-Died?" Bien continues. "And, uh, now I spend my time following your Voice. Or trying to, since I usually only hear you in bits and pieces. 'Airy' thoughts."

Two Angels are looking at Bien's corpse, scanning it with an IPC. The device fires up for a moment before showing its report through a holographic screen:

"I'm honestly surprised you didn't think of using radios earlier on," Bien remarks. "… What were we talking about again?"

"I didn't use radios earlier on because our common enemy stops me from doing so. I can only do it now because he has been… well, I'm not sure what he's doing, but he is clearly preoccupied with things that don't involve opposing my influence." Ava says. "Regardless. Your answer pertains to the Past. Keep what you said in mind for now, and later we'll evaluate to how it leads to the Present… or rather, how it doesn't lead. Do you know about aphasia?"

"Not really." Bien's face scrunches in irritation. "Is this gonna be one of your weird analogies. The analogies are so jumbled up. Can you just jump straight to the poi—"

Ava does not jump straight to the point. "In most Living brains, the area that processes language is located in only one hemisphere. Damage to this area can cause aphasia, which hinders one's ability to communicate and understand verbal language."

"Auuuugh," Bien can only groan.

Cover: Kikuo - CULT

A marionette crafted in artificial mimicry of a puppetmaster's late daughter. Although myth claims the girl's spirit was infused within the toy, others claim its maker's resentment towards the perpetrators of his daughter's death is what truly drives the marionette's dance…

When Bonnie becomes elected the Honorable Majesty Princess Duchess Diplomat of Dreamspace, they think that the job would be a piece of cake. What's a princess duchess diplomat to do but to have fun all day long, am I right?

It's not all rainbows and sunshine, though. Running a queendom means dealing with the needs of the citizens, and Bonnie's skills are about to be put to the test when complaints about "dark magic" from the local wizard university start coming in in droves…

Join Bonnie in this new exciting tale of magic, life and mayhem as she proves once more that all problems can be solved with the power of Love and all the state-notarised forms and official licenses that legitimise it!

I am attempting to adopt the virtue of Niceness, under the instruction of the High Judge, who had many a negative thing to say about it (Niceness) yet halfheartedly alluded to its value regardless: you know, in that typical way He does, which is to say, inconsistent and nonsensical, but impossible to argue with. I am not particularly confident in His ability to convey the nuances of this value to Me (after all, He taught you and you're an Un-nice Wretch), but if I do not at least make an attempt I predict that that will be one less bullet I can use as ammo the next time We argue about anything.

If you're paranoid that I will someday change My Mind and take your 'son' away from you, you can consider the fear irrelevant. For one, it would not be very Nice, so I'm avoiding such dire courses of action. For another, it would likely sour My relationship with the High Judge, which is already a mall on top of the ocean. And finally, it would take a lot of paperwork to reverse the verdict of your Trial even partially. It would take a lot of paper. you might think as a Marginal I can just 'poof paper up willy-nilly', but this is not within My jurisdiction, and I would have to make a ten-page accomodation request to send to Industry and Forestry, and I'd have to delegate a special mailbot entourage to transport the papers for Me, because they will not accept that I just assign an ordinary mailbot or the what-have-yous, and it has to be a different entourage every Time, etcetera, etcetera. I care not to bore you with the details. I am simply emphasising the flagrant disregard you have for the lengths I went to and continue to go to for the sake of Reaching you somehow.

I know you will not accept gifts from Me. I suggested it to the High Judge regardless, expecting Him to commend Me for My thoughtfulness with a 'They won't accept gifts from you, but it's so Nice for you to consider doing that anyway, Mr. Media,' but no such commendation was made. The Judge stared at My general direction with no approval in His countenance, yet no apparent derision either. He changed the topic to something that I infer was meant to be less mortifying to argue about. I suppose this was a demonstration of the very Living sort of Niceness only the Living can Truly understand, digestible to neither you nor Me. Needless to say, I was so embarrassed by the High Judge's lack of enthusiasm that without a Word He managed to imply a dissertation's worth of shame in me, shame for suggesting Niceness was a thing people did to be commended.

I am going to send your 'son' all the things he needs to be relatively… 'healthy', if you want to put it that way. We will hash out the details of what this constitutes later. I imagine in your twisted 'logic' you would take just enough for his survival but never enough for his thrivance, lest you betray yourself a dependent. I will not do this because I perceive that you need it. I will do it because it is a Nice thing to do.

Typically, I will end the Correspondence here, despite its shocking brevity thus far, because I do not like Talking to you (I am saying this not to be mean, but because Honesty is in some respects a form of Niceness [although I admit, in a very Honest way, I have not fully delineated what these 'respects' are in totality]). However, the High Judge has suggested that the Living will typically take Communicative opportunities like this to relay personal information about Themselves that They usually do not share as a way of establishing connection and goodwill, so I will relay such a Story.

Three days ago, the High Judge asked me to Write His first name on a twelve-by-eight inch whiteboard. I Wrote it perfectly approximately centred, in clean capitalised print. He asked Me to read it out loud, to which I did, or at least, made an attempt to, reading it like 'Jack'. He stared at the whiteboard for a few seconds. He asked Me to try again. I said Jacques in an exaggerated *French accent. He turned the whiteboard to face Him. He couldn't see it, but since I wrote it I knew He could 'Read' it somehow. He showed it to Me again and pointed at the right side facing Me, saying 'There's an "s" here'. His claw was not pointing to the 's', but to the blank space besides it.

I say, 'Your finger is about an inch next to the actual "s".' He moves His claw an inch to the right, so He was now pointing to the blank space two inches besides it. I reached out and adjusted His hand accordingly, so He would actually be pointing correctly.

He said, 'It's pronounced Jacques,' pronouncing His name as something closer to Dyakz than Jack. 'That's not right,' I said. You're not supposed to pronounce the 's'. I realised a second too late that it was something between silly and offencive to correct Him on His own name, but somehow these grave lacks of foresight keep happening to me in His presence. I had to concede. Okay, Dyakz it is, then.

He then said, 'Well, you can say it as Jack, kind of like a cute nickname, since we're in a relationship, or something.'

I responded, 'Who said we were in a relationship? We are not in a relationship,' with a startling amount of agitation. I sounded like I was on Trial for some heinous crime, which I sort of was, because Relationships are a crime, but I'm not, because we're not in a relationship. He brings up a previous incident of my so-called 'confession', which did not happen, I must clarify. No such confession was made. At one point I expressed a positive evaluation (believe it or not) of His progress with you, and He interpreted this as some solicitation for a 'relationship'. The way He—I'm certain even you recall this—interpreted every motion I made around Him as a solicitation for a relationship. He said, 'Well, I did say "or something",' which is clearly not an actual argument, but is such a non-argument that I had no way of disagreeing with Him. So I could only say, 'It doesn't matter, you're the Judge, so I'm just going to call you the Judge, forever.'

This was three days ago. I was due for a report on the status of Tinrymin's poster clean-up drive earlier, to which I submitted the aforementioned only four hours earlier than the deadline. I have been 'anxious' the entire day that I am going to get a check-in questioning this unusual lapse in diligence, even though the High Judge says it is an unreasonable thing to worry about, but what does He know about reason? I could not tell Him this, but the reason I was too distracted to focus on my work was multifaceted.

First of all, I was belatedly appalled at Myself for saying it 'doesn't matter' how His first name was pronounced. It was heinously incorrect of Me to dismiss the value of a Living person's Name this way, even if I had no intention of using it. Secondly, since He prompted the idea of nicknames into My Mind, it had become increasingly difficult not to think of potential nicknames I could hypothetically call Him by in an entirely imaginary sense. you do not need examples of these. This was a very disturbing experience, because none of these nicknames seemed to be reflective of any genuine dynamic between Me and the High Judge; it seemed to conceptually relate more to the concept of a type of relationship where nicknames are used as opposed to Our relationship, as existing individuals. Thirdly, although I am not foreign to adjustive touches meant to correct His motions, such as orienteering the directions He walks in or symmetricising His shoulder blades when His posture slouches, this-and-that, the act of adjusting His claw to point at the correct letter had somehow felt very, very important, in a very, very threatening way. I had this delirious and insane idea that I might have 'wanted' to call Him by His name, not even necessarily a nickname, just something that isn't 'the High Judge'. I would not Eat my Words on the matter, however, so I pushed through the nonsense.

I will not tell Him about this. I am telling you as a gesture of goodwill. I expect you not to care about this, in fact, I expect you to not care about this, but that is ideal. The High Judge says when the Living go 'on and on' about their worries and anxieties and miniscule details of their social interactions with other people, the listening party doesn't really care. It's all just a matter of cultural scripting.

In fact, I expect you to not care so hard that I am certain you would not care to use your Demonic intuition to read what this very deeply wrong feeling stewing inside of me is. I am being very Nice, so I will not do anything of your apathy at all.

Kind regards,
The Media