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

Worldbuilding

• 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", hinting 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. Then the Morning Comes was intended to be the "background track" for Cá Bảy Màu.
• The story was inspired by Bertolt Brecht's dialectical theatre, particularly St Joan of the Stockyards; the title is a reference to the line "What keeps mankind alive?" in The Threepenny Opera.
• A large number of pop culture sources are referenced through interpolated phrasing or otherwise inspired lines: Amanda Palmer's "Bed Song"; Borges' The Garden of Forking Paths; David Bowie's "Lady Grinning Soul"; Shoujo Kakumei Utena; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Legally Blonde: The Musical; Addams Family Values; and Undertale.

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)
• A shanty by Little Sibling Shotgun is quoted. (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil)
• 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)
• Hole has three brain stems. (TV: Extremis)
• 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.
• Axastyakis, Hole, Mullion and Cá Bảy Màu reappeared in PROSE: White Canvas.