Theme · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Entertainment as machinery

Everyone Carl meets is a part of the same inexorable machine — Zev's phrase — from the AI that tailors loot to the narrative, to the PR agent who asks him to repeat a line without coughing, to the prince who buys doomed crawlers for a game show. The game is cruel because cruelty is what tunnels.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 2 — Hills Cyclops
• Chapter 18 — Club Vanquisher
• Chapter 20 — Ruby
• Chapter 55 — Survival Royale
• Chapter 61 — Three out of four
• Epilogue — Homecoming Queen

Arc

A murder spliced in from summer for one viewer (ch. 44); 'the impossible was never out of reach, especially if it made for good television' (ch. 72).