Chapter Five: The War for Reality

“Then for now, we'll treat it as real.” The city had not paused for his identity crisis. Breakfast printers made pancakes under the overpass. Advertising walls generated faces for each passing gaze. Everyone walked beside an invisible proxy, unaware of the civil war inside Gu's skull. At the first intersection, every signal turned red. Falcon reported a bureau blockade. White Elm called it ordinary congestion. Gu disabled visual augmentation, judged only the light through the windshield, and turned into a service alley. A woman blocked the exit. Lin Che was Gu's cofounder and, until the previous night, the only outsider who knew about the Twelvefold Protocol. She approached the window with her wrist terminal raised.