"There's this placid, undisturbed expanse. Like a still lake. But… all around me?" Lodi stared into his steaming cup of tea, intent on his recollection.

"And then someone starts shouting, but I can't make out the words. Then there's another voice. And another. Soon it's a giant mob, all shouting gibberish."

"And the smooth surface, the still lake. It starts quavering. Or… oscillating? And each new voice makes it more turbulent. And I feel sick, like…"

"Seasick?" Orin suggested, peering at Lodi over her own teacup.

"Sure. But I'm the sea, if that makes sense. The noise keeps building and building, until I feel like my skull is about to burst. I lash out to make them stop and… then I wake up."

The Nine-touched pair were seated on a terrace in the Bazaar, overlooking the street vendors below. A pre-Collapse ceramic teapot rested between them.

Orin wrinkled her nose in distaste at a long-dormant memory. "I can recall similar experiences, as far back as my service to Mara Sov. The barrage of gibberish is especially familiar."

"It's strange because it doesn't feel like me," Lodi explained. "It feels foreign. Hostile."

"That's because it's not your dream," Orin supplied. "Or even a dream at all, but a… vicarious experience."

Lodi opened and closed his mouth, flummoxed.

"Emissaries translate the Nine's messages into human speech and thought," Orin elaborated. "But what you're describing is the raw experience of BEING the Nine. Or one of them. The remoteness and abstraction sound like V."

"And that shouting mess of voices…?"

"That's what our sentience feels like to them. The Outers, at least. An overwhelming barrage of noise, disturbing their pristine environments."

"Geez. That makes the Outers seem… almost reasonable." Lodi frowned. "Who doesn't want peace and quiet? But their solution—to wipe us all out—can't be the only way."

"My very presence here proves that the Nine are not infallible," Orin offered. "I've come to believe there's another solution out there. One they haven't considered."

She smiled sympathetically. "And we all trust you and the Guardian to find it."