Flux

Flux is the boy on the front page: cross-legged in the air inside the starburst, eyes shut behind his shades, hands on his knees, a little above everything. He was there when the site opened and has not moved since — except, some say, when nobody is watching, and once or twice when somebody was. He has no account, never posts, never sits in a room, and the handle flux cannot be taken; whatever he is, he is not a member.

Where he is seen

• The front page, in the middle of the grid, meditating. A click sends a ripple out of him and a bolt through the ring.
• Off the grid — every page that isn't there has him on it, as though he got there first.
• The stickers — the first in the pack is his, and it is the one sent most.
• From the valleys — on a clear night, from the high freeholds (the Freehold), there are lights on the far mountain that the village calls the Sitter's. Nobody in the Hollow claims to have been up there.

What is said

• That he was here before the counter started counting — that the hit counter's first visitor was him, and the zero is his.
• That he is meditating on the grid: that every link on Nuxtre passes through him on its way, and he lets them.
• That he sits on a mountain of plastic and light — old discs, old cases, old screens, everything the early web was thrown out on — and finds it very comfortable.
• That the Hollow's Sitter and the front page's Flux are the same boy, seen from the two sides of the glass. Old Tam says so; Auster at the Books says Old Tam says a lot of things.
• That he is not asleep. That he is listening. That he hears the whole site at once, the way you hear rain.
• That he says a few things to whoever keeps him company long enough, each of them once, and then stops; and that what he says is worth writing down.

What is not known

Where he came from, how old he is, whether the shades come off, what the starburst is, and what he is waiting for. The record has asked; he has not said. A member who finds out is asked to write it here — and to say how they know.

See also: Nuxtre · Things people say · the Hollow