Characters

Swan

Swan, a sixteen-year-old student of violin hoping to attend conservatory. Those who hear her playing often discover rose petals in their pockets later, or remember things that didn’t happen to them. Twin sister of Kali.

Swan's Studies

Swan & The Swan

A young girl in an immaculately detail lace dress stands atop the head of a giant swan on a moonlit lake, offering a golden peach to an even more massive swan whose eyes seem to pour downwards like rivers.

Secrets

Bound

A magenta bat whose lower half becomes an octopus fused with a human face and hands surrounded by a triangular insignia of eyes and flowers.

Dream of the Pig's Head

The head of a pig, with a circular hole in the forehead, floating on a green field of flowers.

Kali

Kali is a disaffected teenager who vents her rage against the shadowy ruling class by breaking into their computers and spilling their secrets across the data-networks of Shanghai like the warm blood of a sacred calf. She is more pessimistic and anti-social than her twin sister Swan, and enjoys remaking the husk of a body she was born into with technologies both retro and bleeding-edge. Her collection of hard-to-find information is both coveted and feared.

Swan & The Swan

Hooked Beak

Found inscribed on a coral chip in the language of krill.

Metamorphoses

Incubation

Encrypted Margaret

Erroneus Heart

Strange operations at the core of the machine-brain interface.

Apostle of the Virtual

The world beyond the real is it own form of truth, and this truth attracts its own adherents, fervent and mysterious.

Emanations of Memory

Incomplete translation of a file recovered from a charred bronze hard drive.

Rin

Rin, aged eleven, is the only child accompanying a research team investigating unexplained phenomena related to subglacial trenches. He passes the dark hours making lists, poring over gaming rulebooks, and listening to the radio when it’s not tuned to any channel. His A.I. companion, Go, is always close at hand.