Chapter 8: Pip Broadcasts a Lie She Doesn't Believe Anymore

Pip had a system.

The system had kept her functional for three years across fourteen Arks and one near-death encounter with a fungal puppet that the official broadcast described as a harrowing close call and the unofficial memory described as four minutes of genuine, teeth-clenched terror she had never fully metabolized. The system was as follows: write the script first, before listening to the raw footage, so that the emotional architecture of what you wanted the story to be was already load-bearing before you had to sit with what it actually was.

She was not following the system today.