"People who go cubist get—stuck. In a loop. They revive moments of their past and in between that they're terrified and not very sane. That kid probably became a Picasso in a house fire or something, so they're... on fire. Forever."

"Yeah," she says. "Which sounds just wonderful."

How's the feeling?

Same! Maybe it's just a Sadde-feeling she associated with the Sideways after all.

"Going cubist must be awful. I should fix that."

She's not really sure why Sadde gets a Sadde-feeling, since she's pretty sure most people don't get their own special 'color-coded' feelings in her head, but okay. And she hadn't even noticed him when it started. But again, okay.

"If there's an easy fix you haven't told people about, that'd be wonderful, but I assume you don't have one, and I get the feeling that poking at cubism is the sort of thing to turn you cubist."

"Yes, the D.o.S. seems to think any interaction with cubism makes you go cubist."

"Mmh," she says. "What about you? Makes it sound like you don't agree."

"I don't have enough information to come to a conclusion because the D.o.S. does not like sharing its experimental results so all we have is their word and anecdotal evidence that this is the case."

She shrugs. "Makes sense."

Then she continues eating.

He continues eating as well!

"They're very insistently censoring about it, which I suppose makes sense given the risk of memetic hazard, but..."

"Memetic hazard? What, even knowing about it and cubism raises your risk of going cubist?"

"No, but like, there's a digital counterpart to the Sideways, and some images can make you go cubist, or they can give you more information than they strictly contain, stuff like that..."

"Digital counterpart? Is that just images on the regular internet doing weird things like that, do they just mysteriously turn cubist, or is it when you take photos of cubist things, or…?"

"Photos of cubist things are themselves cubist, but there's the Sideways Signals, channels and websites and stuff that you can't access on regular computers or TVs but you can on slightly cubist ones and they have very weird things."

"This just gets better and better. Cubist internet accessed on cubist devices with weird cubist things."

"Cubist TV channels, too," he reminds her.

"Is there cubist radio too?"

"Yeah."

She continues eating. Apparently she doesn't have much to say at this point.

"There's some interesting stuff there, like alternative versions of movies that never got made on Earth and such."

"Sounds weird."

"Well, yes, it's the Sideways Signals, being weird is their thing."

"Yeah. And cubist and probably dangerous."

"...ye-es."

"Is that a 'well duh of course' or a 'I suppose so' or what?"

"It's a 'this is a true statement but the implied arrow of causality is not that obvious.'"