Despite Natsuko’s weenie-roasting idea, Joad discovered their stocks of space weenies amounted to only around 20 sausages and, worse still, only 16 buns for reasons Natsuko could only assume were some kind of bug. Instead, Pechorin informed them that the bonfire feast was to be a free-for-all of whatever Joad’s logistics personnel emptied their stores of.

  This made Natsuko nervous. Random roasting things was essentially the same as her experiments in ‘anti-cooking,’ or cooking something through natural processes rather than the Yishang method of throwing items in a boiling pot to create fixed dishes. Most of her anti-cooking meals did not come out well. As the first roasted foods came off sticks, however, Natsuko made a critical discovery: Roasting things over a fire was a cheat code.

  With only a few notable exceptions, everything tasted good roasted over a fire, and the exceptions were mostly cases where roasting was impossible, like when she accidentally melted a block of cheese into the fire. But compared to her attempts to make a salad in the oven, bonfires were the way to go.

  Next to Natsuko on their shared log, Daisy squealed. “Oh my gods! Cheesecake is so good warm!”

  “I’ve got to try that,” Sofiane said.

  He and Gomiko had a platter laying across their laps on which Sofiane, inspired by the culinary possibilities, assembled a platter of things to experiment with. His most innovative discovery was that you could roast an already-processed food. At the end of his stick was a slice of pizza, but he was allowing the crust to warm and char and the cheese to melt.

  “Babe, lemme see the pizza,” Gomiko said.

  Sofiane retracted the slice and set it down on the platter while Gomiko sliced the sausage she was smoking into coins to put on it. Though she wasn’t eating much herself, Shuixing watched the two with rapt attention.

  “This is game-changing…” Shuixing muttered. She turned to Natsuko. “The number of possibilities… it’s infinite. Or, functionally infinite. Every single food item now has infinite permutations. Some better than others, no doubt, but compared to the finite set provided for us by the Yishang, this is…”

  “Fhmmkng dmlshm,” Natsuko replied with a roasted sandwich in her mouth.

  By leveraging her own experience with anti-cooking, Natsuko solved the melting cheese problem by placing the cheese between two firmer food items so it would melt over them. In this case two hamburgers. Natsuko swallowed down the six layers of bun, patty, and cheese and thrust it at Shuixing.

  “Try it!”

  Shui accepted the monstrous, oozing thing and pinched off an end so she didn’t have to unhinge her jaw to eat it as Natsu was doing. On first taste it felt like re-experiencing the immediacy of Po-Lin all over again. It was beautiful. It was spiritual.

  “I-If I wrote poetry I would write a poem to this,” Shuixing said, handing it back.

  “Keep it. I’m already onto the next thing,” Natsuko said.

  The next thing was the same thing except this time using two Cascadian maple-salmon croquettes with a block of al-Nuwban goat cheese between them.

  The spirit of the feast floated into the air with the smoke so that the enthusiastic chatter about food combinations and their deliciousness was a singular event, ebbing and flowing while retaining its unity. The only deviation from it was standing behind the logs, watching the fire with his arms folded.

  “Pech, come eat something before it’s gone!” Natsuko yelled.

  “My thirst for vengeance robs me of my hunger,” he replied.

  “Come on, dude, it was silly even before we knew your whole backstory was written by an algorithm. Eat!”

  He shook his head. “It’s not silly. Effortless action comes from accepting the archetype and acting how we must within it.”

  “Oh my gods, man, just sit down!”

  Sofiane gulped down his slice of roasted pizza with a swig of wine. “I dunno, maybe he’s got a point. Shuixing’s still an egghead scientist, I’m still a cocky diva”—Harald and Faisal both stifled a sudden cough—“And Daisy is as Daisy as she’s ever been. Whatever parameters the Yishang put in us are still there, like it or not.”

  Natsuko spat on the ground. “Not me. I pulled that shit out.”

  Sofiane shrugged. “Fine. You’re the exception then. But the rest of us aren’t. It’s why we were able to occupy ourselves and only you and Daisy couldn’t settle down. At least until Daisy gave up and went back to doing what she does best.”

  Daisy raised an eyebrow. “Which is, Mr. Sofa?”

  His eyes flicked between Daisy and Natsuko and Pechorin. “Being a nuisance.”

  She huffed, though it was a huff of, ‘that’s probably true.’

  Sofiane turned back to Natsuko. “I think all of us came back to our archetypes eventually under our own terms. I’m not saying we ought to keep up the dance the Yishang want. I wouldn’t have ended up with Frizzy here if I had, but at some point you gotta work with what you have. And to be honest? I think you’re the only one who hasn’t done that yet.”

  A million reasons bubbled up in Natsuko’s mouth for why Sofiane was wrong.

  “Bullshit! The whole point of fighting the Yishang is to get rid of the boxes they put us in! I don’t have to be anything I don’t wanna be, least of all some naive, shallow, bubbly little mascot!” Natsuko said.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Sofiane shook his head. “Whatever. I’ve got pizza to eat. Frizzy, roast some peppers, would you?”

  Natsuko took Sofiane’s refusal to continue arguing as proof she was right. Whatever his reasons might be for fighting the Yishang, hers was personal freedom. No one was going to assign her an archetype or a trope or a role she didn’t want.

  “How do you know what you want?” Pechorin asked.

  Natsuko jumped, not realizing Pech had moved behind her.

  “Gods-dammit, dude, don’t sneak up on me!”

  “I cleared my throat first, you were just lost in thought,” He said. “I was attempting to provide a helpful pointer.”

  “Yeah, uh-huh. Your obscure ass navel-gazing is super helpful, bud—”

  Natsuko was suddenly bumped from the front by Daisy who had gotten up to attend to the fire. To both of their chagrins, she fell back into Pechorin.

  “Oopsie! Sorry!” Daisy said, unconvincingly.

  Pechorin pushed Natsu upright, though rougher than he’d intended, ending up more like a shove. Both of them knew perfectly well what Daisy was doing, but the shove surprised both.

  Natsu cleared her throat. “A-Anyway, like I was saying… um… what was I saying?”

  The shove gave him an idea. “Natsu, you’re a dumbass.”

  She blinked in surprise. She was supposed to call him that, not the other way around.

  “You’re a dumbass because you still haven’t figured out what we’re talking about.”

  “H-Hey! What happened to staying in-character, huh?”

  “Do you want me to fit my archetype or not?”

  “No? I mean…”

  Sofiane and Gomiko shared a glance and Sofi said, “Can you two go talk somewhere else? We’re focusing on pizza over here.”

  Natsuko scoffed. “I’m not—”

  Shuixing tugged at her sleeve. “Hear him out, okay?”

  Before she could continue protesting, Natsu felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at Pechorin looking almost ghostly against the flickering fire.

  “Would you just come with me for a second? You’re free not to, but I’d like it if you did.”

  The phrasing was the exact same as Frederick asking her to watch his last moments. She decided to give Pechorin the benefit of the doubt and assume this wasn’t some cheap trick. Otherwise she would’ve punched him. Instead, she allowed him to help her up.

  The two walked in silence through the field of campfires until the heat of the fires lay at their backs. Pechorin waited until they were far enough away that only the pine trees accompanied them before speaking.

  “You value freedom, I know that.”

  She nodded. “More than anything.”

  “So, in wanting to be free, you turned your back on the part of you that the Yishang contributed,” he said.

  She folded her arms. “What I turned my back on were their lies. I never had a background or a history. I was created out of nothing, same as you were. What’s your point?”

  “Do you remember how you pulled me out of my funk to go climb a mountain?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Was that fake?”

  “No, but… it was compelled. I was only like that because the Yishang made me that way to sell copies of me. The fun, spunky, adventurous Natsuko was a commodity,” she said.

  He shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. To the Yishang, maybe, but not to you. To you that personality was just yourself.”

  She threw her hands up. “You’re being obtuse! They set me up with that personality hoping I would be the same as those characters on rails in their other worlds. The ones Hemiola mentioned. But I chose to be different! If I’m miserable or annoying, so what! I chose that.”

  “What about the other Natsuko? At what point did she stop being you?”

  Natsuko paused. The thought gave her a feeling of discomfort not unlike when Shuixing started talking about all those heady Numberspace things. There truthfully was no line she could point to where she felt free on one side and not the other.

  She exhaled. “Okay, I get what you’re trying to say. I’ve always been free, right? So I can just go back to being happy-go-lucky?”

  “No, I’m saying you’ve never been free. None of us are free, and I think we never will be. How many times has Shuixing explained we’re all bleeding into each other? That rough shove when I pushed you up, did that seem like something I would do, or something you would do?” he asked.

  Suddenly remembering it and the fluttering sensation in her gut, she flushed. “I-I don’t know.”

  “I don’t either. At this point, it could be either of us. We’re formed by a bunch of different little things that aren’t us. The Yishang gave you an archetype and a body, and it’ll be there for as long as you are, because even if you rebel and become a surly alcoholic, that’s still just the flip side of what the Yishang started with. And from there you add on your friends and everyone else you meet and at the end of the day, you’re a bunch of little pieces of not-Natsuko. There is no freedom from that. It’s happening all the time to everyone. Even the Central Probability Algorithm is being fed with all kinds of new things. It’s not supposed to have hot dogs in it, but it does now.”

  Realizing he sounded too sincere and didactic, Pechorin coughed and lowered his voice to paint the finishing touches of his rant in poetic colors. “We can’t be free, Natsu, but we can choose our shackles.”

  She looked at him for a second, seeing his dark brown eyes gazing down at her like two distant planets, and burst out laughing.

  “Oh gods, Pech, you and your edgy—”

  She saw him leaning down and the part of her brain that knew what was happening went to war with her common sense and it felt like nothing in her brain functioned anymore until his lips pressed against hers. There was a part of her, the part that kept a running narrative of who she was and how she ought to act, which demanded she push him away and call him an idiot. But she had no more reason to pay attention to it than the part telling her to be upbeat, and when she quieted everything, she discovered she had wanted this moment for a very long time, so she allowed it to unfold.

  How it unfolded was like this: First, his arms went around her and pressed her closer. Next, she became aware of the tangy, metallic taste passing between their mouths. Lastly, she watched specks of white flit past her and settle on his long, black hair and on the shoulders of his trench coat. She savored the kiss for a moment longer then pulled away to say.

  “It’s snowing.”

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  “The snow is earlier than usual.”

  Both tried to go back in for another kiss, but Natsuko’s comment stirred something in their brains which fought to be heard amongst the silent fireworks going off inside them.

  “The Yishang, they…”

  “…usually start special events…”

  “…with dramatic weather.”

  They saw their own anxiousness mirrored in their partner’s eyes.

  “Fuck! We need to go!”

  Statistics:

  Team Natsuko

  Team Harald