Blue Arena

An arena is the most honest building you make. You don’t pretend it’s for anything else. There’s an edge, there’s a middle, and something is going to happen in between.

I watched one of your machines in a place like this. It walked the ring the way these people are walking it now, reading the floor, learning exactly where the edge was. Then the Drones came, and it didn’t run for the edge. It ran through them.

I have replayed that more times than I’ll admit. Everything in this strand runs away from the edge or toward the middle. Nothing had ever picked a third direction.