Riders on the Storm in the style of Abstract Expressionism, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Chapter 37: Riders on the storm

  Emon Township, Confluence dimension

  Year 42 of the Confluence Republic (local time)

  Gilbert Norrell returned to his home with a new trove of Erd writings. A long-time scifi/fantasy enthusiast, Gilbert ran a moderately famous ether site presenting, discussing, and critiquing genre contributions from authors in Erd and other full-scale simulations. He had been doing this for years, first as a hobby and later on a semi-professional basis. By now, Gilbert’s site was widely recognized for its contribution both to sims-anthropology and to literature studies, and he had gained professional access to all the simulations.

  The most fundamental and arguably most important part of his work was to transfer literary works from various nonmagical storage and distribution systems in the simulations to the Confluence Transmission field known as the ether. Gilbert’s latest trove was from a website for amateur authors in Erd where people could share their writings directly, and often while they were in the process of writing them. The trove contained about a thousand new works, and Gilbert did not yet have a very clear overview of them.

  Later the same day, Adèle Blanc-Sec, a long-time supporter of Gilbert’s site, started reading a random story from his latest trove. The story seemed to be some sort of murder mystery; funnily, it was set in a world that resembled the Confluence. She read a bit further, noticed the author’s name, then excitedly messaged a few friends sharing her interests saying that somebody was writing a spoof of the Erd chronicle about the Confluence and it looked like fun.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Some of these friends spread it to other friends. Eventually, one person who had some time on her hands read a bit further and started thinking that the descriptions of the Confluence Republic and its magics were impressively authentic for a sim author who had no experience of them. She commented that either a person from the Confluence had written this and tried to pass it off as coming from a sim, or someone had been manipulating the Erd sim, which was illegal. Others joined the debate, and eventually someone did a bit of research and found that the characters in the book seemed to be real people living here and now; using real people as characters in fiction was obviously unethical and possibly illegal.

  It took a while, but eventually some people started thinking the unthinkable: maybe it was the real thing. Maybe the Erd author was back – with a story happening here and now, a story that was not even finished yet. Possibly because the final part of it had not even happened yet. It boggled the mind, and the story started spreading beyond the people with nerdy interests in sims lit.

  The growing interest resulted in some people sending messages to the SC agents, asking them what they thought about all this. However, the agents were busy and had turned off notifications for low-priority messages from strangers. Then media organizations got interested, and journalists systematically contacted everybody in the ostensive Erd book.

  By the time these efforts reached through to the agents, the story had become a monster to the point that it impacted on global productivity levels. Almost a full day had passed since Gilbert Norrell first made the book available on his ether site, which now had billions of visitors. The agents themselves had no idea what to do or say about the fact that the new Erd book had leaked, or rather trickled, into the public sphere; they hid in the headquarters and remained incommunicado. The SC board consulted briefly with the agents, then held a press conference saying that, yes, the whole thing is true, this is happening as we speak. They assured everybody that the Confluence was safe, as was the Erd simulation, and as one could read in this second Confluence book from the Erd author, an investigation into the Diankoran manipulations was ongoing.

  Everybody read the book. Visits to the Erd simulation were put on hold, but the SC board promised that new chapters would be released as soon as it was operationally safe to do so.

  Riders on the Storm in the style of Lucas Cranach the Elder, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Riders on the Storm in the style of Hieronymus Bosch, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.