Tamara vaguely remembers having a desire to be important, once. It hadn't even been a weak one! It had yearned, it was desperate, it clawed out the edges of her mind all-dominating.

Tamara would reach the top or she was nothing. This was, still is, the rule of her world. It's the game you start playing from the very moment you're born until you die or are killed or are neither, like the people or the pattern of corpses on the outskirts of the eternal city of Daugavpils.

When she was eleven or so, which would be six years ago, the year 2061, she watched them. Not in “Latvia", of course, but on the new phone she got that year, refurbished from the recesses of 2011 since she was a lucky girl who could afford retro and the latest styles.

How could she describe their dance? It was like the brilliant dance of the shadows behind them, pa-pounded into reality by the power of Marshal Astrakov's Burevestnik. It was a dance not meant to be imitated by humanity, but the shadows taught it to humanity anyway, a pretty pirouette that makes your stomach turns, a clean rotation around each exotic sphere, but each exotic sphere was incompatible. When you landed on one, you never got out.

And Tamara hoped so dearly, so desperately, that some part of her mind would never escape the beauty as she watched the videos, that she'd perceive not only them fully, being able to gain things that she'd missed on first or thirty-second watch, but that she'd perceive all of reality fully. What she did wasn't uncommon. It's the pastime of every bored kid who wants psychic powers, isn't threatened by the Department of Disinformation or their city's equivalent for any reason, doesn't care enough about their mental health to deal with the risks.

She hoped and she hoped, but she was still so cute and cautious back then, so she never watched anything dangerous enough to break her into psychic power.

Then one day, her parents (her mother a history professor, her father a policy advisor) introduced her to this girl, the daughter of a pair of diplomats. There was a strange glow in her eyes, she had a soft smile and lush, gleaming blonde hair. Their parents talked, told her to entertain the other girl, she remained silent, the other girl was fine with that, eased Tamara into her presence, her light, and then was a part where everything went white or goldenrod, and then she didn't have any aspirations or anxiety at all...

She has anxieties now. Bliss can't last forever. It has to be defended obsessively, fervently, with devotion.

Tamara is Hannah Westmoreland's strategist now.

Her parents let her take classes asynchronously. She doesn't really function well around people, she's something of a shut-in, but she can cook and shower and maybe not clean, given the smattering of notebooks on her desk, but that's not nothing, is it? She'll never be nothing as long as she has her Hannah...

She'll have her Hannah forever if she strategises well for the group.

“But Tamara, what are you even strategising? You're not at war, you're not doing anything criminal, arguably you're not even doing anything interesting. You're just friends.” Maybe that's interesting to everyone who's pathetic and friendless and isolated, like Tamara once was? “But aren't they the ones who need strategies to find friends, love, some glimmer of humanity?” Oh, but you need a strategy to retain your normalcy in a deeply anomalous world.

If she's not at all, explain the Clausewitz and the Schmitt at her desk? Perhaps you should figure out the list of names, resources, powers, lines, past receptivity to awakening, possible liabilities, the day by day diary of threats, the constant shouting from everyone that Hannah's power is Great, nearly beyond the bounds of what is possible for humanity even though Hannah and Tamara and the other girls have seen that this isn't really true, that you can deem it rank seven and that she's brilliant but not so brilliant that other rank sevens aren't as scary to her as she is to everyone else who just doesn't understand that if you leave Hannah alone she'll continue cutely with her life, with no consequences—

Annoying. It's annoying, not doing it (anything can be done for Hannah) but the fact that she has to do it. People won't just leave Hannah alone. History, all of its Importance, wants to kidnap her for its own sake.

Sometimes she gets the feeling that she'd be a killer historian, though. She means, her mom is, her mom still thinks she's training to become one, she's always doing historical and preternatural research, if she had to get a job it would probably be useful. She doesn't. She can still live pointlessly.

Pointlessly doing historical and preternatural research, even on her off days. She's on a pilgrimage back to Hannah's New York. Hannah doesn't live there anymore but half of her friends still do, so it's basically still Hannah's. The Alliance of East and Midwest American Cities may be based there, may own some of the buildings, but it can't possess it properly! It can't cherish the people or the houses. It can just administrate them, necessarily.

She doesn't go out that much so she's leaning against the sides and back of the K-train, never quite comfortable, always at bad posture. It's easier to do that when you have someone else's shoulder. She can't go on her beloved six or fifty-six year old phone because it's inadvisable to do so in the Kisaragi System, finally conquered by humanity after Starfall so it's not unsafe and won't awaken you, but might give you a few software issues after. She bought one book with her but it's for business and she can't read it for leisure. She bought five notebooks with her but she's not comfortable enough to try to draw and it's all so bothersome, but in warped space (and no she doesn't look out the windows) it's not bothersome for long.

She stumbles out of the train, keeping the receipt, the pastime of every bored kid who wants to feel what psychic powers are like and looks at the strange patterns on the card, realising nothing since they have no sight. Then it's back into the subway, conventional WTC Cortland, twenty minutes suffocating, she doesn't do well around people she doesn't know she remembers, hasn't dealt with this many people in months, for months. Her heart pounds, her ears ring, she shuts down a little, but she doesn't forget her stop and she stumbles out at about Central Park.

She walks, checking her phone, not checking her surroundings. Hannah will later chide her for that, but it's fine, Tamara's paranoia doesn't work like that.

She goes to her destination, breathing out, and knocks at the gates.

Giovanna of the Tower of Avarice knows it's her not psychically, descends.

She's a more feral blonde than Hannah, hair cut unevenly, nails and their skin bitten away at, but she's the most notable and noble of them all, family garbed in yellow silks and otherthreads and so many luxurious items that Hannah saw in a catalogue or a secret shopping centre for the highest of the high or her sweet prophetic dreams, not from this world, that's obvious because the Tower of Avarice fell upon Trump Tower, but which other?

The issue is, Giovanna doesn't remember! Giovanna says she's always been here. And yet she always complains about not living up to her family's standards, standards that don't match with any culture on Earth or the so-called culture of any of its nomoi, the patterns of elsewhere reflected in the stigmata on her body but not the cheap polyester dress, or something like that, that's what Hannah told her.

“I said hi, Tammy! Are you going to keep staring at me?”

Oh. Uh. Yeah. “I don't respond to Tammy.”

“No, I said ‘hi’, Tammy.”

“Hello, Giovanna.”

“You’re so mean.” She pouts ridiculously. “Well, anyway, would you like to come in? We have a lot to talk about.”

“I would.”

And then Tamara is Giovanna's guest, with not enough time to do anything more than glance at the little floor guide next to the elevator, listing so many wings and sections and she doesn't even have the time to begin to grasp them all. How many floors does this place even have? The elevator doesn't have a button per floor, it has a little digital keypad, 1 to 9, minus and enter. Giovanna hits 1-0-8-enter, and together they rise to the top.

“Family quarters,” and it's so gaudy, Tamara is kind of hopeless, between the gold and the huang and the glitzy glimmering yellow, the red velvet carpets and the portal to the lobby, engraved, marble: who the fuck are you, Giovanna? Why don't you know?

The lobby or sky atrium is all limestone tiles and awe, tall and surrounded by colonades and glass windows, a mash of modernity and eternity you must imagine works, even if Tamara doubts she could piece together how with a dozen notebooks, a world-class education in architecture, for it does. It is open to the sky although the Tower of Avarice is closed from the top, a tinted, tilted black skyscraper cursing or calling to the heavens as she once saw the Flame Towers do in Baku. In the centre is a little pool, impluvium, on the roof the compluvium drip-drips water from the sky.

“You're welcome here, Tamara. Everyone in our group is. Make yourself at home.”

“I'll try,” but not fully, as Giovanna doesn't warp under Hannah's gravity, because her glimmer of light is in that barely visible beige hairclip and not all within her, inspiring her, pushing her forward. It takes Hannah's grace to trust this young lady.

“You'll succeed! Now, anything new about your research? Do you know where I'm from?” Giovanna says. Giovanna remembers always having lived in the Tower of Avarice, in New York, which is weird, because everyone else remembers it popping up out of nowhere five years ago, so either Giovanna and the residents of the Tower have had their memory altered, or everyone else has had their memory altered. Granted, in this world, both are equally possible phenomena: isn't that how psychic power crept in? That being said, Tamara thinks it's the former. The mass distortion of consciousness, of memories, usually leaves more signs than that.

“Have you ever read the Lottery of Babylon by Jorge Luis Borges?”

“Um. No? I'm kind of illiterate, ehe.” Her body language says “what the fuck does that have to do with anything, this isn't a book club?” So Tamara explains.

“Have you ever heard of Jorge Luis Borges?”

“No...”

“Do you play video games in your spare time.”

“Yeah? Doesn't everyone—oh, yeah.”

They've both giggled as Hannah gets more and more confused in an arcade, or watching Camilla's livestreams. Fictional time just doesn't seem to work well with her.

“Have you bought a lottery ticket?”

“I'm seventeen. Also, I'm not very good at answering questions. I'm not that smart, you know?”

“I know—”

“Hey wait it's different when I say it abo—”

“—I'm doing Socratic reasoning here.”

“I don't think you're very good at it.”

“Shut up.”

“If I shut up I can't answer the questions.”

“Keep talking, then.”

They pause. Then, Tamara speaks, drawing out her copy of the Garden of Forking Paths from her bag and an empty notebook, flicking through to the correct page. “The Lottery of Babylon is about a lottery that takes place in Babylon.”

“Really.”

“Yes. Specifically, a random draw in order to obtain a reward in what we must assume is Sasanian Babylon, given the dates of the Greek authors referenced and the use of Aramaic lettering as opposed to cuneiform.”

“What's the difference?”

“Between what?”

“Sasanian Babylon and... other Babylons? I thought Babylon was Babylon. Like, it's in the Bible somewhere right? It comes up in rap music because it's disliked in... Jamaican culture?”

How can Giovanna say “make yourself at home” when she's so clearly not at ease? Whenever she's alone with Tamara she fidgets, looks away from her. Sure, Tamara isn't so good with eye contact herself but Giovanna actively looks away from her? Is she allergic to historical inquiry? Hannah is but that's because historical inquiry and historical iniquity can destroy her world, isn't Giovanna immune to that power? It bothers her. School's running for the New York group, so none of them could help break the ice before they went to the tower...

Shouldn't she have just scheduled this later? But then it gets more awkward waiting for this girl, and...

“Babylon is a city on the Euphrates that was historically the capital of the Babylonian Empire, situated near modern Baghdad.”

“Mhm.” Please don't do that, why did you ask the question then...

“The history of ancient Mesopotamia is perhaps more familiar to the audience of the 2050s and 60s than it has been for hundreds of years, due to the division of humanity into confederations of city states, with the chora between becoming fodder and the hunting-grounds for anomalies and altered reality. It should be noted, however, that the system of ancient city-states does not meaningfully reflect and provides few lessons for humanity subject to psychic power, as the reasons for the existence of state power and its limitation to the confines of individual cites are completely different.”

“I see,” she doesn't get it at all, “but what does this have to do with me?” See.

“It's the story. I was just situating it.”

“Okay.”

“The narrator begins by explaining that Babylon is in a state of perpetual revolution: all men—should we take gender as notable here?—have been in every position under the sun, subject to absolute glory, absolute defeat and everything in between, have gone through lifetimes in a single one, thanks to a singular institution—”

“Psychic power!”

“That's an interesting connection to make.”

“Really.”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were going to chide me for not paying attention.”

“It comes in handy later. But for now, this institution is the Lottery.”

“Mhm.”

“The Lottery begins as a normal lottery, played and paid for by poor men. These lotteries are of little interest, like our own, only having prizes. A single genius entrepreneur—”

“Like Ezra Buckley.”

“I thought you said you didn't read Borges.”

“Wasn't that the name of the fifty-second president?”

“No, he doesn't have a name.”

“Oh. Doesn't everyone have a name?”

“Let me continue, comes up with the idea of negative prizes. For whatever reason, some divine compulsion, this idea catches fire and spreads amongst Babylon, those who don't play are considered wretches, cowards, conchies.”

“What's a—”

“Conscientious objector.”

“Cool...”

“The addition of fines encourages an increased reward for the winners, soon the payment of fines must become legally enforced to keep the lottery going, having enraptured the hearts of every other Babylonian citizen. The losers of the game must choose between paying the fine and jail time: out of spite, having become loathed by the winners for preventing them from acquiring their prize, they all choose jail time. This is the source of the Company's power.”

“The Company?”

“The people who run the lottery.”

“Oh, I get it, that's what I call the place that my parents work at!”

“It is, yes. But also, this is the place where your parents work at.”

“I mean, no, the Tower of Avarice and the Company are different things to me. Maybe one day I'll get a Company job, but even then you need a totally different mindset to work in the Company. So I say they're different places, and really that helps keep the home-work-school life balance intact.”

“Interesting.”

“Maybe you should talk less and listen more, if I'm so cool and cute?”

“That's not what I said.”

“Oh, whatever. What you're saying is interesting too! Go on...”

Frustrating.

“Knowing that now losers politically, and this is a political and private issue, because politics comes from polis and soon the Company will administer the City of Babylon in a really modern way unlike the way the ancient City of Babylon was actually administered, I think, always choose jail time, the Company instead of offering the choice immediately sentences losers to jail time. So this Company, unlike any lottery company in our world, perhaps like some lottery Company under a nomos our Hannah has not yet seen, now has a non-monetary power in addition to its power over coins.”

“I'm sure some lottery company somewhere has sent someone to jail.”

“...probably. Soon, there's a case where a slave steals an unlucky ticket. The punishment on the unlucky ticket is the same as the punishment for stealing the ticket, so jurists, half on the side of law, half on the side of random or pseudo-random order, argue over whether the criminal should have their tongue burnt out for stealing the ticket or their tongue burnt out because they drew the ticket.”

“Those are the same thing.”

“And you doubted Socratic teaching?”

“I mean you're just explaining it to me so yes.”

“Whatever. At the same time, the poor of the city of Babylon demanded to be allowed free entry in the lottery, so that they'd enjoy the joy of chance. so that they could never be branded as cowards. Their wailing echoed into the annals of history, their demands were accepted, the lottery became universal and secret! These combined to make it all-encompassing. Everyone is a participant. The draws of the lottery claim an identity with the workings of fate. The Company takes all political power into its hands, it does everything in the world, like your Company.”

“Yeah, we do something like that, I guess?”

“Every event in Babylon is dominated by chance, there are no guarantees.”

“But isn't our world like that?”

“It's a guarantee Hannah will always hate Carmen.”

“Is it?”

“I believe so. Anyway, every event in Babylon is foretold and enacted by a number, a possibly infinite number of drawings, no sane copy of anything exists, every scribe promises to write and rewrite books at their leisure, subtly or unsubtly until after the twelves nothing is left of the original, every merchant promises to deceive their customers and pass on wrong items, the Company manages the lottery unseen, whether it still exists, has ceased to exist, never existed or will exist forever. I suppose the Company is the principle of chance.”

“It's not really the principle of chance, is it? It's the principle of arbitrariness. It feels like people in that story are just doing things arbitrarily for cultural reasons. If their lottery dominated everything completely then things would go on unchanged, since the lottery would have already predicted everything.”

“That's clearly false, though. Think about psychic power, about our dear prophetess. Psychic power sees through all of our world, it doesn't do so without changing it.”

“Oh, like the uncertainty principle—”

“The observer effect.”

“Those are the same thing?”

“No, the observer effect is a property of human measurement techniques that can be eventually mitigated, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a property of probability wave functions.”

“You're so smart...”

“Aren't you, for making the psychic power connection?”

“Do you really think so?”

“I'll consider it.”

Giovanna steals a glance at Tammy's book, the fiction one, her notebook's still empty. It's covered in ink, 0.5mm scrawls in the smallest, daintest possible font. Are those references? Do all of those books even exist? How can she read it? Maybe she has a copy on her phone? Did she memorise the plot off by heart?

It's not like Tamara likes being questioned at all. It doesn't stop Gio, but.

It stops Gio a little? What a scary girl. If Hannah isn't scared of her, she shouldn't be, but it's hard for Gio to not worry.

The Tower of Avarice is named after a sin, the sin of avarice! It's an all-consuming desire for more, more, more. Not even love me, love me, love me, more and more, that's luxuria in Latin or something,  but more money, more knowledge. More and more, until your blood stops flowing through your heart and you slump to the ground, burdened by your stacks, burdened by your worthless desire, ahaha. Her family's rich but too aware to succumb to that, even if they do consulting for people who aren't.

Then they blame her family after? Like they're demons, the rich who need to be eaten gluttonously, the whisper in your ear to keep going, seek more, seek more harshly, arrest and gut those bastards who refuse to let you see a single cent. It's unfair.

Giovanna's a good girl so it's fine. Imagine Hannah patting her on her head as she says that. Pat pat. She's not a demon.

“Um.”

“Speak.” Tammy's so harsh to her!

“Do you think we're the Company from the book?”

“I don't know what your Company does.”

“We do everything, like the Company in the book, but we're not so arbitrary. And I don't think we run a lottery? We've probably helped someone run a lottery but it's probably a boring one, that adults always spend their money on and always lose in.”

“I see. It could be possible that the Tower of Avarice could have spawned from fiction, given inspiration many anomalies draw from pre-psychic myths and post-psychic rumours, but that's just conjecture.”

“Well, if I really was born yesterday, you still should try to be nice to me!” You won't succeed, Tammy, but maybe you should put in the effort?

“I suppose I'm just enthralled by a resemblance between this story and psychic power.”

“You should be enthralled by Hannah.”

“Hannah wouldn't say that.”

“Hannah is subtle. I am not.”

“Neither am I.”

“We know. But while her light inspires you, you know it makes the other mysteries unnecessary. You should live a little more. Collect things other than knowledge?”

“Old habits die hard. It's necessary, anyway, to keep this forever.”

“People always say the end of history means permanent ennui, but I've never thought so. Things can change, people can change, even if their circumstances don't change radically.”

Tammy turns drastically towards her, her long, long hair hitting her in her face. She wipes it out of her face and gives Gio a look of death, only not really, she'd rather climb out of the compluvium and fall out into New York or wherever the water constantly drips from than face Tamara down, god, Hannah, save her.

“Halting history is Elysium,” Tamara says, but something (psychic?) told her that she meant “if you part me from my studies I'll destroy you.” How did Hannah even tame her.

“Ah. So it is.” So willful.

“There's something else, too.”

“It sounds like there are a lot of things going on.”

“There are always are. Do you watch isekai.”

“I do. I mean, I'm like an isekai victim, right? Albeit without my memories, so I can't introduce capitalism to this lovely world...” But Gio's family can capitalise on it!

“Maybe. Maybe not. Is the Lottery of Babylon a System?”

“Uh, I haven't read the story. Can you level up?”

“No.”

“Get skills?”

“No.”

“Buy items?”

“No.”

“Are there classes?”

“Yes, assigned by the lottery on certain drawings, the rules governing them changing at the whim of the Company. So there's roleplaying.”

“It sounds less litRPG than more.”

“Sure, but ultimately it's a world absolutely governed by the rules of a game.”

“Isn't it just a city?”

“Maybe it's all of Asoristan?”

“Asoristan?”

“Persian Assyria. Where Babylon is.”

“Oh. Well I can't read your copy to find out.”

“My copy is special, it's mine.”

“You'd let Hannah have it.”

“You're not Hannah.”

“Yeah...”

“I think roleplaying is the most important part of an RPG, getting into a story conveyed through gameplay, understanding the world and its law by interacting with it. The citizens of Babylon, who perfectly enact and conform to their roles, quite like the actors or the assassins of Fergus Kilpatrick in James Nolan's great and unnamed 1824 play, who are assigned their role through the mechanics of the lottery, act along the geodesics of an NPC, are more involved than the average GURPS group at their table.”

“Okay, but, like, the game doesn't have RPG mechanics, from what you've told me. That's a big issue. If I was reading a story tagged litRPG and it didn't have status boxes or RPG mechanics I would be annoyed and look for something else.”

“Oh, I don't really read web fiction, I watch anime. I find litRPGs too dull story-wise.”

“Isn't that your issue? Don't you believe in seeing someone getting stronger for the people they love, loyally and perfectly eliminating the enemy?”

“I-I'd do it for Hannah.”

“Wouldn't we all? Whether it's with light or fire or ice magic from the depths of their bitter and cold empty heart, isn't getting stronger, progressing a compelling plotline in and of itself?”

“I-I suppose. You're willful, for once.”

“I am. Don't knock my interests!”

“Don't gaze emptily when I talk about mine.”

“I wasn't!”

“Whatever.”

The sun's set faster than usual in the early November winter. A pall falls over New York, so does the cold rain and the impossible frost. Giovanna thinks, you can't go back home in that, Hannah would be appalled at you treating yourself like that. Tamara thinks that she really can't deal with Giovanna for more time, and she's too burnt out to organise a trip on the group chat, and is it even fully safe in the deep winter? (The answer is yes, but she's a shut-in, so don't expert her to know that.)

Giovanna wins out. Tamara stays. There's a few restaurants across the tower, meant to satisfy those renting office space and the hotel-goers. Tamara insists on ordering fast food, as she does. She pretends not to be tired, Gio doesn't, she moves from the little seat at the short end of the atrium's pool to one of the four quarters of a circular couch some way away. The windows opposite her telepathically transform into a television.

“What do you want to watch?” Giovanna asks.

“It doesn't matter,” Tamara replies.

The correct answer, for both her and you, the you who whether you like it or not is now going to watch this next experiment, an experiment spanning the entire world, conducted in the name of love and hate, utilising every sense, written on sheafs of papers and pretty notebooks and the vandalised originals of rare books, one which involves being perfectly involved in a role assigned by the force above you, getting stronger to be someone else's loyal attack dog, and is centred around Hannah Westmoreland, her light, and her power.