It was a simple concept: they didn’t have a key, so they couldn’t pass through the doorway. Besides, why would they want to? What could they gain from passing from their floor to the next?

Alleviation from boredom. That’s what.

So they dug. They were small, and they were many. It would take time, yes. But time was the one thing they had an infinite amount of.

They were small. They were many. They were very good at digging. And above all else, they were determined.

***

Dear Diary,

The marble races are well under way, and I think my team is going to win gold this cycle! There’s still a chance that they’ll totally fail, or that Lilly or Aya’s marbles do super well, but I’m 90% sure I’ll get a medal for this cycle.

I’m super proud of my marbles.

I wasn’t sure about the team at first. They got fifth place in the first race, then bronze in their second, so I thought maybe they’d just be a middling team. But the third race they got gold, and the fourth and fifth races too! So I guess it just took them a while to catch their stride. Or maybe they were evaluating the competition, in which case they were very smart.

A super duper hard race is coming up tomorrow. It has a short zig-zag part, where if you hit even one wall wrong you can come to a total stop. Every time we’ve run this track, it’s been an intense race. There’ve been lots of rank changes. I kind of hate it, because one wrong bounce can send the lead marble into last place. And that’s super stressful. It’s like, the marble works super hard and goes super fast to get into first place and pass everyone else, then BAM all that work was for nothing.

It’s an intense race.

Y is working on making a timer thing for all the marbles, in case they finish too close together. He says he has a couple ideas, so it’ll be interesting to see what he ends up doing. Basically what we need is a camera to put at the finish line, but cameras aren’t a thing here. And since we’re all racing, arguments about ties can’t have an impartial moderator.

Lately Lilly has been