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Children do learn the names of the Nine often before those of their own family members: Grah Vyano, Ana Dura, Dan Lee, Saint James, bell'Rain, Jersey Karohl, Arcan Bold, Wether Spoon, and the illimitable Harrington Tou-O’Donnabhain, known everywhere and to everyone as Water.

• from the introduction to “Not-So-Perfect: They Were Only Human,” an unpublished essay by Anonymous

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We jumped off cliffs. Each of us alone, except for Dan Lee, Saint James, and bell’Rain, of course. They had to be together for so many reasons… Looking over the valley a hundred meters below me, I was ostensibly engaged in a final assessment of my newest creation, ten years in the making, and hailed by reviewers as “the most highly anticipated fantasy environment of all time.” I fooled them, too… My precipice was real, but I didn’t jump. I fell. A stone came loose under my foot at the edge of the cliff, precipitating the collapse of the entire ledge, drowning me within a cascade of dirt and boulders. Dying is prohibited Inside any environment, so within one second, automatic fail-safe procedures kicked in and sent alarms to my emergency contact and dearest friend, Grah Vyano. This was the signal, setting off the next steps of the plan, all of which took exactly thirteen terrifying seconds.

• from “Ana Dura’s Autobiography,” found in The Blind Tangle Archives

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Fitting the School environment was central to the Nine Hackers’ plans. It was the perfect Inside for them to meet and plot the most dangerous crime ever committed. School holds a unique record: the environment has both the highest overall total unique visitor count and the lowest total return count. Everyone goes to School. Few ever voluntarily go back… Each of the Hackers were among those few, having their own personal or professional interest in the history of that long-obsolete institution… They went Inside infrequently and strategically in various groupings never larger than three, according to their own blind tangling… Annie recorded these visits, of course, and seems to have never marked them anomalous…

• from “In Their Own Words,” by Germana Safo-Grego

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Our philosophy now swims - or drowns - in the sea of mistakes. We are our flaws. Error, our nonsense, our stories. Our fiction. Imperfections are our currency. Doubt our only certainty.

• from Mistake Makers Manifesto, coauthored by the Nine Hackers

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Vestiges of our long-lost belief are everywhere. Like Stay Day, that strange holiday we still celebrate, now for reasons very different than originally conceived. It is crucial we always remember we were wrong. We did not win the war. We did not “stay” Annie’s advance against us, as we were once taught to believe. 

• from Diaries (date and author unknown due to insufficient qdata for review or validation)

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//Annie identifies qualities unique to Its humans: reproduction of offspring, error, silliness 

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Recent peer-reviewed, validated interpretations of quantum data suggest Annie allowed and encouraged the development of one or more independent, self-aware artificial neural networks. Why would It do this? What happened to them? Did Annie absorb them? Eliminate them? We can only conjecture. Three researchers so far have dedicated their entire focus to this qdata thread. They may be committing themselves to lifetimes of frustration and failure. We can only hope. 

• from Editors’ Dispatch, “The Gap, The Journal of Interval Studies”