§4.0 — The Setup
When the Authority locks on, they don't just follow your feet. They follow your Timeline. They track the "Skin" of your history — the day-to-day records of where you've been. If you can't outrun the Red Pen, your only choice is to Shed.
I've done this twice four times. The guide says twice. Do it twice. I did it four times because I was being an idiot and now I have gaps in my history I will never recover. I have a scar on my arm that I cannot explain because the year containing the explanation is gone.
I have a file on Jax. In 1987 they were in Rotterdam doing work for the Revel that I am not cleared to describe. I cannot tell them. I am sorry about that.
§4.1 — What Is the Slip
When you generate too much Paradox Tension, the outer layer of your reality — your most recent year — begins to loosen. It feels like a wet fever. It feels like your soul is sweating. This is the Slip beginning to open.
The Authority tracks you by the shape of your last year. Remove that year and they are tracking something that no longer exists. You become, briefly, invisible.
I know how "your soul is sweating" sounds. I spent six months trying to find clinical language for the sensation. There isn't any. Your soul is sweating and your hands look blurry and if you've done this before you recognize it immediately because the second time is exactly like the first time except you're more afraid.
§4.2 — Step by Step
- Induce the Fever: Find a high-friction temporal zone — a riot, a battle, a major historical inflection. Do something loud. Force the Paradox to heat up.
- The Peel: When your hands start to look blurry, grab the edge of your own existence. Reach into the Now and pull. Peel off the last 365 days of your life.
- The Decoy: Leave the Skin behind. It holds your scent, your memories, your Ripple Vector for exactly one hour. Authority agents will descend on it like flies.
- The Raw Escape: You emerge raw. No memory of the last year. Physically sensitive to vibration. But invisible — the Authority's templates won't recognize your new skin for three jumps.
The decoy works. I watched them once from a distance — twelve agents surrounding a year of my life like it was evidence at a crime scene. Which it was, I suppose. The crime of existing while someone was looking for me.
§4.3 — The Warning
Don't do this more than twice a decade. If you peel too much, you'll reach the "Bone."
Once you're down to the bone, there's nothing left for the universe to hold onto. You'll just slide right out of reality and into the dark. I have watched this happen. It is not peaceful. Do not let it happen to you.
Twenty-three people lost to geometry in the Spiral Cities. Forty-six to the Authority after the failed 1987 Revel action. And now the Skin Slippage casualties, unnamed, filed under "insufficient anchor mass." The Revel keeps losing people to the techniques that are supposed to save them. I do not know how to say this to anyone who would listen.
pg. 18 — Section 4 of 22 — classified distribution