Black Lantern Rotation
A Relay Confession — Michael Anthony
A cypher-noir told in lantern entries. Read it in order, or drop into any room; the terminal lines are the wire, the prose is the account around it. New entries post on a rolling cadence.
Prologue
Written last. Two columns on a legal pad: what I saw, and what I supplied.
Book I
The wire. A trespass that fit in a palm, a doctrine in three words, and a year spent learning to rotate.
- Entry 01 — First Contact I
- ↳ Entry 01B — The Lantern's Initial Shadow Handoff
- Entry 02 — Discipline II
- ↳ Entry 02B — The Lantern's Mission, Not Me
- ↳ Entry 02C — I Must Know You
- ↳ Entry 02D — {MëU}
- Entry 03 — First Handoff III
- Entry 04 — The False Successor IV
- Entry 05 — The Dead Channel V
- Entry 06 — Overlap VI
- Entry 07 — The Imperfect Transfer VII
Book II
The record. The packet comes home, and the fight becomes which version of it survives.
- Entry 08 — Witness before Proof VIII
- Entry 09 — Alterations IX
- Entry 10 — Archive Residue X
- Entry 11 — After Coffee First XI
- Entry 12 — The Unsigned Threshold XII
- Entry 13 — Fracture Entries XIII
- Entry 14 — Objective Landed XIV
Book III
The rooms. The same pressure, moved off the wire and into bodies, corridors, and one held disposition.
- Entry 15 — The West Stair XV
- Entry 16 — The Private Path XVI
- Entry 17 — The Facilities Window XVII
- Entry 18 — The Elevator XVIII
- Entry 19 — The Borrowed Kitchen XIX
- Entry 20 — The Archive Merge XX
- Entry 21 — The Second Record XXI
Black Lantern Rotation is a work of fiction. The MIA routing system, characters, employment histories, and operations described here are invented.