Motif · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

The chat

The » Name: lines: where Carl talks to people who are not in the room. A handful of voices at first — Donut, Zev, Brandon from Meadow Lark — and the way a party becomes a network.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 1 — The vice principal's office
• Chapter 6 — Miriam, Pony and Bianca
• Chapter 15 — The kids' menu
• Chapter 17 — The security checkpoint
• Chapter 34 — How to kill a mantis
• Chapter 47 — My beautiful boy
• Chapter 48 — The Creeping Apocalypse
• Chapter 52 — Gehenna Bramble
• Chapter 62 — A squirrel with antlers
• Chapter 67 — Slate Butterflies
• Chapter 72 — Cat-nac the Magnificent
• Chapter 73 — Wonderwall, again
• Epilogue — Epilogue

Arc

684 lines, twenty-one voices: Florin, Li Na, Britney, the Sledge, Bomo and Miriam Dom join, and Samantha, already in it on the fifth floor, writes again from ch. 22. Samantha's fifty-two lines are all capitals, and Donut mutes 'her ability to chat' (ch. 17); the eavesdropping subscription ends, though 'Borant reserves the right to take your conversations and play them during any and all non-live broadcasts' (ch. 8); Miriam Dom calls for help from the forest with Prepotente frozen beside her, unable to 'use the chat' (ch. 43, ch. 47). The masquerade's last hours run on it: ch. 72 and ch. 73 are the book's densest chapters.