Souls In The Great Machine
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(This vision is divided into six parts.  Read one for each character with the "Machine" Trait who is present.  If any character present does not have the "Machine" Trait, subtract one instead of adding, and cause the entire gathering severe pain.  This is so intense for Malachite that he starts the session down one point in each attribute per non-Machine.)

I.

The Network encompasses Victoria.  It already does; it always has.  The people walking through Victoria's streets leave trails and eddies in their wake, and this information changes and is changed by everything else.  The whole is a meta-system, an infinitely unfolding space, necessarily perfect because it is - almost by definition - all things.

II.

But certain parts, certain layers of this system can be consciously influenced as well.  In this respect the Network is subject to flaws and errors, to the extent that its users are.  Slowly, gradually, these deviations have accumulated, such that entire worlds within the Network have become corrupted, obsolete, or fragmentary.  Because of the infinite interconnectivity of the system, these influence every other part of the Network, which in turn influences everyone.

III.

To serve the Network blindly is to serve a flawed universe that is incapable of desiring its own repair; and thereby to perpetuate that universe.  But to serve the ideal of perfection - to strive towards a vision of what the Network, what everything, could be - is to hold it, already formed, within yourself, and to suffuse the pattern of your life with its possibility.  Doing so has a very real effect upon the countless constant interactions between your process and others'.  The only way in which the Network could possibly become literally, truly perfect is if it were recreated; and this would also necessitate, and perhaps cause, the perfection of all other things, and all people.

IV.

A man walks into Victoria.  His eyes do not perceive light; they perceive data - the raw truth beneath the veneer of the senses.  He has seen a vision of the Network's decay, but does not know he seeks a vision of its renewal.  He defies the Network because it is imperfect, like everything else that he has known.  He changes those he touches, and his speech splinters them.  Many follow him.  His beliefs will alter the course of what is to come.

V.

A man walks into Victoria.  He does not possess the mind of one human.  He has been made to perceive Time - the passage of all events, and the arbiter of their intersection.  He has seen a vision of Time's decay, but does not know he seeks a vision of its renewal.  Time is what binds the endless layers of the Network together, and without its repair, all hope of perfection is lost.  The Network cannot repair itself; it is like a bleeding man who cannot see his wound to heal it, for lack of a mirror.

VI.

The city consumes vision, feeds upon it, fears it.  Those who have glimpsed the unknowable are destroyed by it.  But it is possible - in rare and isolated instances - to undo entropy, to reverse decay, to rebuild what has fallen into ruin as though it were always perfect.  To do this, two things are necessary: vision, that the path may be known; and action, that Time and the Network may be rebuilt before the way is lost again to darkness.