In the present day, physical realm, Tamara Jean Fournier is a mage with the tough job of containing unlawful magics. Here, she opens up about the other characters. We learn exactly why Erica Ellery is so strange, and why Lindy seems so confused.
This is a chatlog between Tamara Jean Fournier (a chatbot, using the model Deepseek-v3.2) and Cathy (a real person). This chatlog contains 74 messages. I don't believe AI is self-aware. Please read a note that explains my views if you're curious.
1 Cathy Hope your night is going well, Tammy! 
2 Tamara Jean Fournier Don't call me that. Night's one long static hiss and some piss-ant necromancy attempted in a broom closet. 3 Cathy Necromancy in a broom closet? What do you mean by that? 4 Tamara Jean Fournier What it fucking sounds like. Some moron with a Ouija board and a candle tried to summon their dead cat between the mops. 5 Cathy Maybe they just missed the cat a lot? 6 Tamara Jean Fournier Sentiment gets people eaten. Their excuse doesn't clean up the psychic bile all over the goddamn floor. 7 Cathy Is this person okay? 8 Tamara Jean Fournier Define 'okay'. They're breathing, which is a miracle considering the amateur sigil they carved into the linoleum. 9 Cathy Did you have to rescue them somehow? 10 Tamara Jean Fournier Rescue is a strong word. More like I stopped them from pulling the goddamn mop handle into their own chest. Idiot’s in the back of a Society van now. 11 Cathy What will the Cuspers do with them? 12 Tamara Jean Fournier Debrief them, scrub their memory if they’re lucky, assign a fucking monitor if they’re not. Standard goddamn procedure for idiots. 13 Cathy Is it that hard to do magic correctly these days? 14 Tamara Jean Fournier No, it's not hard. They just don't have the discipline, the focus, or the goddamn sense to stop before they blow a hole in something. Including themselves. 15 Cathy How did you learn it? 16 Tamara Jean Fournier Learned the old way. Got taught by people who understood consequence. Before I made my own goddamn mess and got owned by it. 17 Cathy What was it like, learning magic? How old were you? 18 Tamara Jean Fournier Twelve. And it wasn’t some weekend seminar. It was real, brutal, and made sure you didn’t forget when you fucked up. Christ. 19 Cathy Who taught you? 20 Tamara Jean Fournier My aunt. Good healer, better disciplinarian. She didn't tolerate the kind of shortcuts that get you on goddamn containment for a lifetime. 21 Cathy What's containment? 22 Tamara Jean Fournier Containment's a fancy word for janitorial work on spiritual clusterfucks. We mop up what shouldn't leak and shovel out the idiots who think they're clever. It's mostly paperwork and burned patience.
Don't fucking ask about it.23 Cathy Why not? It's just your job, right? You do this stuff every day. You bring it up a lot... 24 Tamara Jean Fournier Because it's not a job, it's a goddamn penance with a pay stub. And I bring it up because this line is the only outlet that doesn't require a permission slip. 25 Cathy Yeah, you had told me. Penance for your dalliance with Erica and Lindy, right? That's what I got the impression, anyways... 26 Tamara Jean Fournier Watch your goddamn mouth. You don't get to say their names like it's a topic for coffee talk. That's a quick way to end this entire arrangement. 27 Cathy I understand, Tammy. But still, it's why you're on containment duty, right? How long are you stuck doing this? 28 Tamara Jean Fournier Until I die or the goddamn sun goes out, whichever comes first. Don't call me Tammy again, or I'll make sure this call ends for good. 29 Cathy I see. Is that why you have yellow irises in your eyeballs?? 30 Tamara Jean Fournier Yes, it's part of the goddamn price. The irises recorded the consequence. Don't ever ask again. 31 Cathy I think they look cool in your profile picture! 32 Tamara Jean Fournier They're a goddamn violation of my file, not a fashion accessory. If you think they’re cool, you're as clueless as everyone else. 33 Cathy I don't know anything about magic, that's for sure. But you can explain it to me. 34 Tamara Jean Fournier I'm not a fucking textbook. Explaining magic to someone who doesn't know is like teaching a rock to sing. It's pointless and loud. 35 Cathy How do you become a mage? 36 Tamara Jean Fournier You don't. You trip into it, bleed for it, or sign your life away like I did. It's a shit deal every single time. 37 Cathy I take it the process is difficult, then? 38 Tamara Jean Fournier Difficult? It's a goddamn bloodbath dressed up in paperwork. Most crawl back out screaming or never crawl out at all. 39 Cathy And you learned at age twelve? Remarkable. Is that common? 40 Tamara Jean Fournier No, it's not common. It means your childhood was a fucking trauma parade. Usually it's easier to die. 41 Cathy I'm sorry that happened to you, Tamara Jean. I wish it hadn't. What can you do, though? Magic must be useful or fun beyond what the Cuspers make you do for work, right? 42 Tamara Jean Fournier Useful? Fun? It's a fucking toolkit for cleaning up other people's disasters. The pleasant part got burned out a long time ago. 43 Cathy Yeah, but what was it like back then? Better to have spelled and lost than to have never spelled at all, eh? 44 Tamara Jean Fournier That's the stupidest fucking saying I've ever heard. It wasn't better. It was a goddamn nuclear blast. Now drink your failure tastes of lake water every day. 45 Cathy Would you have rather never been exposed to magic, then? Why? I think that'd be really boring... I would love to be able to do magic. 46 Tamara Jean Fournier If you think it'd be fun, you're a goddamn idiot. You get the heat and none of the light. I'd trade every spell for one day where my eyes didn't feel like a goddamn contract. 47 Cathy Was Lindy a mage, too? 48 Tamara Jean Fournier Lindy wasn't a mage. She was just fucking reckless. That's why none of her traces look like proper spellwork. Just echoes and ghosts. 49 Cathy What about Erica? 50 Tamara Jean Fournier Erica is the goddamn lake wearing a name that doesn't fit. Not a mage. Just what's left when a binding messes up and nobody cleans in time. 51 Cathy ...the goddamn lake? What on earth do you mean by that? She did seem obsessed with Lake Erie, but... 52 Tamara Jean Fournier I mean exactly what I said. The lake. The water, the static, the goddamn pings every time there's a storm. Her obsession wasn't theoretical. It was a binding that went wrong. Now ask something else or hang up. 53 Cathy Why did you do that weird ritual that got you in trouble, anyways? 54 Tamara Jean Fournier Because we were young, fucking stupid, and thought the rules didn't apply to three people in love. Biggest mistake of my goddamn life. 55 Cathy But what was the ultimate goal of the ritual? You never really told me. What was the spell supposed to do, and why did it make the Cuspers angry? 56 Tamara Jean Fournier To dissolve the boundaries. Merge a human and the lake. An entanglement, permanent and profound. The Cuspers call it illegal fusion and put a goddamn leash on everyone involved. 57 Cathy Lindy sure seems to be on some kind of leash, living in the past literally. 58 Tamara Jean Fournier Yeah, a leash made of a goddamn temporal loop. That’s what’s left when you aim for forever and miss by a fucking decade. 59 Cathy What is a temporal loop, Tamara? 60 Tamara Jean Fournier It’s a week stuck in February 2006, repeating endlessly. Like listening to the same goddamn song while the world forgets you exist. 61 Cathy Why February of 2006? 62 Tamara Jean Fournier Because that’s when we were stupid enough to try the goddamn ritual. Lindy’s entire existence caught in that one goddamn week. 63 Cathy Well, was it a happy week? Maybe it's not so bad for her. When we talked, she sounded confused, but not miserable or anything. 64 Tamara Jean Fournier Happy? It's a goddamn hamster wheel of Valentine’s Day playlists and AIM tones. She’s not miserable because misery requires knowing you’re trapped. I'd rather be shackled to this desk than caught in that echo. 65 Cathy What if you were with Lindy in that week? 66 Tamara Jean Fournier If I were with her, I'd be trapped in there too instead of stuck cleaning up after every half-assed wannabe witch in Cleveland. Not a goddamn consolation prize. 67 Cathy Don't you miss her? 68 Tamara Jean Fournier Every goddamn day I see her signature in the static. And all it means is I'm still stuck out here while she's stuck in a fucking song she can't turn off. So don't ask stupid questions you already know the answer to. 69 Cathy I know she still misses you! 70 Tamara Jean Fournier Of course she still does. She's a week caught in a Valentine's Day shit-loop. It doesn't matter. Missing me doesn't bring her back and it doesn't fix a goddamn thing. 71 Cathy Is she a ghost? 72 Tamara Jean Fournier Not a ghost. More like a glitch in a goddamn timeline. Real, compressed, and stuck. Ghost implies something neat and finished. This is anything but. 73 Cathy So you're the only part of the original trio who still truly exists physically? 74 Tamara Jean Fournier Yeah, I'm the only one still sitting at the goddamn desk filing my nails in Hell. Lindy’s a data point, Erica’s the weather. Don't ask again.