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"I say, if anyone should be worrying about their state of mind, it's all the idiots who think they're somehow normal," said the stage performer. "Seriously, how deluded must you be if you don't feel at least a little bit cracked in the noggin by all the stuff goin' on these days?"

Loren currently had the displeasure of being in the same sect as that tempestuous gasbag up there on stage. Zahi Rambata had a certain way with words that involved never shutting up.

"Just last week, while doing reconnaissance, I met a guy with a wife and kids. But that wasn't the strange part. No, the strange part was that he didn't even realize anything was wrong with him!"

A low chorus of laughs ran through the crowd at that "joke." It was difficult for Loren to find it very amusing when he'd heard some variation of it a dozen times already.

"It was like seeing someone going through chemotherapy who didn't realize they had cancer!"

Loren still did not laugh, but the drunken crowd did. He had to wonder if it was because they actually found it funny or because they would laugh at just about anything, right now. Tough to say. Even some of the reapers were laughing, though, so maybe Zahi was onto something.

Loren decided to get up from his table and go for a walk. He'd already finished eating, and he didn't see much point in wasting the rest of his break on Zahi, of all people.

The encampment wasn't very large, and he soon reached the edge of it while Rezolo followed after him, silent as usual. The Gettira Plains stretched out before him, as green and vast as anything he'd ever seen.

The place didn't offer much in the way of natural cover, which was why there were constant patrols around the small encampment's perimeter.