What Keeps Their Lines Alive (short story)

What Keeps Their Lines Alive
Main character(s):	Amara, Axastyakis, Hole, Mullion, Cá Bảy Màu, C-form loa
Key crew
Writer:	Niki Haringsma
Release details
Part of:	The Book of the Peace
Release date:	23 December 2018
Faction Paradox
← Previous	The Ugly Spirit
Next →	Going Once, Going Twice

What Keep Their Lines Alive was the second story in The Book of the Peace.

Summary

to be added

Characters

• Amara
• Axastyakis
• Hole
• Mullion
• Cá Bảy Màu
• The C-form loa

References

• Hole was created to serve tea.
• Cá Bảy Màu has a Melbourne accent.
• Mullion has fought the Shed Scales.

Notes

• This story received an interlude, titled A Scene, in The Book of the Peace Dossier. The vignette's title has a hidden meaning in that the list of locations it gives (forest, grassland, sky) gives an order of book of A lines in What Keeps Their Lines Alive that unite into the "A scene", which hints at events after the end of the story.
• The story was accompanied in the author-curated Spotify playlist by the songs Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie by Joanna Newsom, Then The Morning Comes by Smash Mouth, and Solitude Standing by Suzanne Vega.

Continuity

• Faction Paradox is referred to as a Great House. (AUDIO: Words from Nine Divinities)
• Paradox anxiety is mentioned in the book of A. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
• Axastyakis comes from a bone-faced people who lived on rock-pods and had witchcraft explained and entrapped in rationality, with "every drop of blood in its right place". (TV: The Christmas Invasion, et al.)
• The vast majority of Homeworlders who join the Faction automatically skip the rank of Cousin. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
• Amara knows that a loa can be created through time-stacking and sings a snippet of a shanty on the topic. (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil)
• Amara wears an eye-shaped brooch from a 1990s sci-fi TV show. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
• Cá Bảy Màu was born after the Ghost Point. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go)
• Mullion lived through the Eleven-Day Empire being eaten (AUDIO: The Shadow Play) and the drafting of the mock Venue Accords. (PROSE: The Book of the War, The End of the Beginning)
• Mullion wears the "anathematic fossils of [her] tainted Homeworld kin". (PROSE: Alien Bodies, The Book of the War)
• Immediately before her death and renewal, Mullion sees a figure resembling her future incarnation with a wet, white, and blurred face. (TV: Logopolis)
• Mullion has three brain stems. (TV: Extremis)
• Amara's looping existence has caused time-thickening. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
• Cá Bảy Màu asks if the Enemy have an Eye on Earth (PROSE: Head of State, A Bloody (And Public) Domaine) to which Amara responds that the Enemy spoke to her of Eternity. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
• The book of C speaks of a "mote" in the eye / a "gaping lady splinter digging in". (PROSE: Head of State)
• Amara's brooch has browned over time and she says that the enemy made her into "a ticking bomb". (PROSE: The Book of the War)
• By burrowing into Mullion, Amara would become the Enemy's rep within Faction Paradox. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5, et al.)
• Faction Paradox acting troupes spreading knowledge of the Peace are later mentioned in PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice and PROSE: The End of the Beginning.