Motif · Book 8, A Parade of Horribles

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 — Chandra; the garage
• Chapter 11 — The second cleaner bot
• Chapter 14 — Hungry Eyes; the Hairpin and the Lollipop
• Chapter 36 — Jacobus, the reverse tooth fairy
• Chapter 39 — The Lollipop: a needle over the singer
• Chapter 72 — Have You Ever Seen the Rain; Minus unmasked
• Chapter 78 — Damien's announcement; under a thousand
• Chapter 84 — The dachshund walks to the Hairpin
• Chapter 88 — Interlude: Quasar; the eleventh floor — twenty-three crawlers; Chaco's parade

Progression

641 lines, thirty-two voices. Justice Light's last message arrives dead and 'A response to his message appeared on the group chat' (ch. 1); Prepotente's warning (ch. 3); Carl goes through his messages for everything known about the arena (ch. 14); private messages are off for the floor — Donut: 'If they hadn't turned off our ability to send private messages' (ch. 28); 'the chat exploded' at Carl's account of the war mage, and Donut is in it 'laying it out for everyone' (ch. 36, ch. 39). A fist bump puts Akuma in Carl's chat (ch. 39); Chachi gets her nickname for the cut-and-paste (ch. 53); the system misspells a dachshund 'Karl' (ch. 82); Penny discovers the channel — 'HOW AM I TYPING THIS?' (ch. 93); Samantha messages from Sheol: 'HI, LOUIS! I SEE YOU IN CHAT' (epilogue). Densest at ch. 92, ch. 73 and ch. 88.