Marsh updates

marsh/content/016.tex

@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
-There was a strange sort of distance involved with my life as a cladist, just by virtue of the ways in which my world worked. It was a constant, something that I'd noticed shortly after uploading, something that had stuck with me ever since. It shouldn't be the case that I would feel distance from what I was doing just because a fork was off doing something else in my stead, right? I would be getting all of their memories, after all. Everything they experienced would become something that I had experienced, too. That's what it meant to be a cladist, after all: an instance is specifically an instance of a cladist. They may think different thoughts and live separate lives for a few seconds, hours, or days, but they maintain the same identity with the intent to come together again once more.
+There was a strange sort of distance involved with my life as a cladist, just by virtue of the ways in which my world worked. It was a constant, something that I'd noticed shortly after uploading, something that had stuck with me ever since. It shouldn't be the case that I would feel distance from what I was doing just because a fork was off doing something else in my stead, right? I would be getting all of their memories, after all. Everything they experienced would become something that I had experienced, too. That's what it meant to be a cladist, after all: an instance is specifically an instance of a cladist. They may think different thoughts and live separate lives for a few seconds, hours, or days, but they maintain the same identity with the intent to come together again once more, while a cladist adopted their own identity separate from any down-tree. Our own social construct defined by memory.
 
 And the memories here on the System were something far more than what they were back phys-side. Yes, they were imperfect: they collected the same sorts of impressions, attached the same amount of meaning and emotion to time and place. They were eternal, though. I could browse back through the life that I'd lived as Reed and as Marsh before that and pull together as exact a picture of what had happened as though it had happened only some hours ago.
 
-Nevertheless, there was a distance that came with experiencing two things at once. If I sent out a tracking fork to, say, go on an exploratory date with someone that I'd accidentally developed feelings for through an ill advised merge while both our down-tree instances attended a meeting with phys-side in the middle of the apocalypse, intellectually, I wouldn't expect that I, as the down-tree, would feel some sort of distraction from the meeting at hand, as though I were looking over the shoulder of someone else. I wouldn't expect that I would feel like I was living two lives at once, because that was specifically what forking was used for, right? It let us live two lives at once and yet still feel singular about the whole thing. That was being a cladist.
+Nevertheless, there was a distance that came with experiencing two things at once. If I sent out a tracking fork to, say, go on an exploratory date with someone that I'd accidentally developed feelings for through an ill advised merge while both our down-tree instances attended a meeting with phys-side in the middle of the apocalypse, intellectually, I wouldn't expect that I, as the down-tree, would feel some sort of distraction from the meeting at hand, as though I were looking over the shoulder of someone else. I wouldn't expect that I as a single instance would feel like I was living two lives at once, because that was specifically what forking was used for, right? It let us live two lives at once and yet still feel singular about the whole thing. That was being a cladist.
 
 But here I was, confronted with the very real sense of distance I was feeling from this conversation between the representative sample of clades and phys-side, forcing me to consciously focus on paying attention.
 
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ But here I was, confronted with the very real sense of distance I was feeling fr
 
 The topic of the conversation certainly had its share of anxiety-inducing power. We'd gathered once more in the room with the AVEC stage, finding our seats around the oblong table that had long since started to become familiar, while Günay and Jakub joined us from the L5 station.
 
-Need An Answer once more called the meeting to order, though with no new faces, this largely amounted to her stating that she had a list of topics that we wished to address and picking one to start with.
+Need An Answer called the meeting to order, though with no new faces, this largely amounted to her stating that she had a list of topics that we wished to address and picking one to start with.
 
 ``When last we spoke about the perpetrator, 8-stanza-1, it was stated that they were locked in the DMZ for the time being,'' she said. ``Are we able to speak with them ourselves?''
 
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ Günay, looking baffled, asked, ``Why's that terrifying?''
 
 She shook her head.
 
-``So there's this person who's effectively dead, right? You can bring them back to life, presumably stuck in a default sim, and they're going to immediately go crazy because they're suddenly all alone fifteen minutes before their plan was to go down,'' he continued, ticking points off on his fingers. ``CPV doesn't work, they can't quit, their plan was only 1\% successful — if you even decide to tell them that! — and it actually made Lagrange loads safer with fixes and new features. Oh, and don't forget, literally trillions of people hate them now.''
+``So there's this person who's effectively dead, right? You can bring them back to life, presumably stuck in a default sim, and they're going to immediately go crazy because they're suddenly all alone thinking it's fifteen minutes before their plan was to go down but it's not,'' he continued, ticking points off on his fingers. ``CPV doesn't work, they can't quit, their plan was only 1\% successful — if you even decide to tell them that! — and it actually made Lagrange loads safer with fixes and new features. Oh, and don't forget, literally trillions of people hate them now.''
 
 Günay looked helplessly over to Jakub, who nodded. ``That's an ongoing conversation to be had sys-side,'' he said, sounding as though he was choosing his words very carefully. ``We can bring the DMZ back up whenever you would like, and you will retain full control over transit to and from the DMZ--''
 
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ Debarre shrugged. Harvey scoffed. Jonas Ko grinned, leaning back in his seat, sa
 
 After a moment's uncomfortable pause, Need An Answer asked, ``What can you tell us about the CPV device?''
 
-Günay, who had been slouching further and further down in her seat as the discussion had drifted away from the technical, sat up straight once more. ``It was one of those things that was really clever and all the worse for it,'' she said. ``They uploaded a few months before the attack and went out to big public sims and met a bunch of people. When they set the bomb off, it hit them first, but before it did, it used their access to the perisystem clade listing to look up everyone they'd interacted with to go infect them and their cocladists after looking up everyone \emph{they} knew about, and so on. This would have gotten more than 99\% of the System, especially once it hit the new upload assistants, who have probably met more people than anyone else, including those who never talked to anyone else since. Once the number of uninfected cladists fell below a threshold — I think five billion? — the clade listing allowed access to a full listing of everyone sys-side, and the virus just mopped up from there.''
+Günay, who had been slouching further and further down in her seat as the discussion had drifted away from the technical, sat up straight once more. ``It was one of those things that was really clever and all the worse for it,'' she said. ``They uploaded a few months before the attack and went out to big public sims and met a bunch of people. When they set the bomb off, it hit them first, but before it did, it used their access to the perisystem clade listing to look up everyone they'd interacted with to go infect them and their cocladists after looking up everyone \emph{they} knew about, and so on. This would have gotten more than 99\% of the System, especially once it hit the new upload assistants, who have probably met more people than anyone else, including those who never talked to anyone else since. Once the number of uninfected cladists fell below a threshold — I think one billion? — the clade listing allowed access to a full listing of everyone sys-side, and the virus just mopped up from there.''
 
 ``What was that threshold even for?'' Selena asked. ``I thought it was part of the privacy policy that no one be able to just look up everyone on the System.''
 
@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@ Need An Answer, perhaps sensing the tension this inspired, moved smoothly down h
 
 Günay wilted in her chair, looking down at her desk, wherever she sat.
 
-Jakub, on the other hand, sat stock still for several long seconds. ``Yes,'' he said at last. ``During the briefing prior to our first meeting, we were instructed that anyone who was asked were to say those words specifically. They were displayed in our HUDs.''
+Jakub, on the other hand, sat stock still for several long seconds. ``Yes,'' he said at last. ``During the briefing prior to our first meeting, we were instructed that anyone who was asked were to say those words specifically. They were displayed in our HUDs and enforced via NDA inhibitors.''
 
 Answers Will Not Help rolled her eyes. ``Tacky.''
 
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ The admin bristled at the insult, visibly forcing himself back to calmness befor
 
 ``Shut up, Jonas,'' Answers Will Not Help said fondly, preempting any response.
 
-``Needless to say,'' Need An Answer said, once more glossing over the tension, ``the response sys-side has been fraught. Systechs focused on that sort of thing had to throttle several of the main feeds after complaints that it had become an impossibly dense flow of information. There is grief. There is panic. There are calls for heads, ours \emph{and} yours.''
+``Needless to say,'' Need An Answer said, once more glossing over the tension, ``the response sys-side has been fraught. Systechs focused on such had to throttle several of the main feeds after complaints that it had become an impossibly dense flow of information. There is grief. There is panic. There are calls for heads, ours \emph{and} yours.''
 
 ``We've been shaping the sentiment as best we can,'' Selena said. ``But it would've been far easier if this had been a coordinated effort. As it is, we are keeping the anger and panic to tolerable levels and steering cladists towards grief. Better that than anger; some of those calls for your heads were hunting for ways to launch some sort of counterattack.''
 
@@ -84,7 +84,7 @@ Jakub stiffened. ``Which is precisely why we tried to control the release of inf
 
 ``Is not here. You are,'' she retorted. ``Someone is getting their head bitten off, may as well be you, yes?''
 
-I frowned, they were goading Jakub, pushing him repeatedly into anger. I couldn't figure out why. I could understand their anger — I was feeling much the same — but attacking the phys-side admin, some random middle-manager, felt like a strange and petty move.
+I frowned, they were goading Jakub, pushing him repeatedly into anger. I couldn't figure out why. I could understand \emph{their} anger — I was feeling much the same — but attacking the phys-side admin, some random middle-manager, felt like a strange and petty move.
 
 I sent Dry Grass a quick ping to ask, and she replied, \emph{``It is my guess that they are pushing blame onto him because they want him gone. They want the Consortium to replace him with someone they have more control over. That, and they wish for Günay to feel better.''}
 
@@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ I sent Dry Grass a quick ping to ask, and she replied, \emph{``It is my guess th
 
 A hint of a smile touched her face. \emph{``Do you not, my dear?''}
 
-\emph{``Oh, I like her plenty. I actually kind of hope she uploads. I'm just wondering where that's coming from.''}
+\emph{``Oh, I like her plenty. I actually hope she uploads. I'm just wondering where that's coming from.''}
 
 \emph{``She is easily controlled,''} she admitted. \emph{``But yes, I like her too, and I suspect she will be pushed by the Consortium to join us before long. I think that Jonas will, too, to turn her into a long-term asset.''}
 
@@ -119,7 +119,7 @@ They say you're all dead.
 
 They say you're all dead and none of us know what to do. None of us know how to cope with something like that. How do you learn that someone who \emph{was} you for so much of your life is just gone and then keep living a normal life? I'm sure you're going to get letters like this from each of your counterparts, but\ldots fuck. What are we supposed to do, knowing this? You're all me. I'm all of you. A part of me has died.
 
-They say they're working on it, and I hope to \emph{hell} they come up with something, because I'm not sure what I'd do knowing even one of you was lost. It's no easier to lose one portion of oneself than it is to lose a full half.
+They say they're working on it, and I hope to \emph{hell} they come up with something, because I'm not sure what I'd do knowing even one of you was lost. It's no easier to lose one portion of oneself than it is to lose a full half\ldots{}
 \end{quote}
 
 I shook my head jerkily, swallowing back tears as best as I could, and closed the letter. I'd have to read it when I was alone, but even still, the words echoed in my head. \emph{They say you're all dead.}
@@ -144,7 +144,7 @@ Still grinning, she nodded. ``It started as part of the information we gained fr
 
 ``Thank you, my dear. Can you give us a better precis of the current state of this library?''
 
-``Oh, um,'' GÜnay started, frowning. ``I guess. Systechs on both LVs has come up with their own procedures and manuals and stuff, and they sent us all of those, plus a bunch of suggestions for things to try as we worked, so it's got all of that information in it. We also had a few teams going through the Artemis library searching for instances of crashes in all of the civilizations they've encountered — the four races on board and the two who didn't join. There was a bunch in there that we just grabbed wholesale and started sorting through.''
+``Oh, um,'' Günay started, frowning. ``I guess. Systechs on both LVs have come up with their own procedures and manuals and stuff, and they sent us all of those, plus a bunch of suggestions for things to try as we worked, so it's got all of that information in it. We also had a few teams going through the Artemis library searching for instances of crashes in all of the civilizations they've encountered — the four races on board and the two who didn't join. There was a bunch in there that we just grabbed wholesale and started sorting through.''
 
 ``And what of us?'' Dry Grass asked.
 
@@ -216,7 +216,7 @@ Dry Grass's attention snapped over to me. Several others around the table turned
 
 Günay shrugged. ``I mean, you don't have to. You could just take on the memories without forking.''
 
-``Right, got it,'' he said, then looked over to Jonas Fa. He forked into a new instance who stood behind his chair. ``Hey buddy.''
+``Right, got it,'' he said, then smirked over to Jonas Fa. He forked into a new instance who stood behind his chair. ``Hey buddy.''
 
 ``Hey yourself.'' Jonas Fa grinned, forking as well. ``Hit me.''
 
@@ -224,15 +224,15 @@ Answers Will Not Help leaned over and socked him solidly in the shoulder.
 
 ``Ow! Not you, you little snot,'' he said, laughing.
 
-``Later, children,'' Jonas Ko's new instance said, reaching out to take Fa's and in his own.
+``Later, children,'' Jonas Ko's new instance said, reaching out to take Fa's hand in his own.
 
-After a moment's look of concentration on both of their faces, the new Jonas Fa quit. Jonas Ko immediately stumbled to the side, clutching at his head. We all looked on, startled.
+After a moment's look of concentration on both of their faces, the new Jonas Fa quit. Jonas Ko — now tagged Jonas Ko/Fa, though whether by him or the System wasn't clear to me — immediately stumbled to the side, clutching at his head. We all looked on, startled.
 
 ``Jesus Christ,'' he mumbled, kneading at his temples. ``Felt like a normal merge, but\ldots weird. So fucking weird.''
 
 ``Weird how?'' Answers Will Not Help asked cautiously.
 
-``He's just\ldots ugh,'' Jonas Ko groaned, straightening up. ``He's just not like me at all. It's like\ldots like he's living inside my head with me. This is going to take \emph{ages} to reconcile. What the fuck\ldots{}''
+``He's just\ldots ugh,'' Jonas Ko/Fa groaned, straightening up. ``He's just not like me at all. It's like\ldots like he's living inside my head with me. This is going to take \emph{ages} to reconcile. What the fuck\ldots{}''
 
 ``How long have you two diverged, anyhow?''
 
@@ -240,9 +240,9 @@ After a moment's look of concentration on both of their faces, the new Jonas Fa
 
 Answers Will Not Help laughed. ``Yikes.''
 
-The new Jonas Ko/Fa shook his head and said, ``Fuck this. We'll play with this later,'' and then quit.
+Jonas Ko/Fa shook his head and said, ``Fuck this. We'll play with this later,'' and then quit.
 
-Throughout this show, Dry Grass's eyes never left me. I returned her gaze anxiously, mulling over the words we'd shared on our date. \emph{There is potential for friendship and love, yes, but also the potential for pain.}
+Throughout this show, Dry Grass's eyes never left me. I returned her gaze anxiously, mulling over the words we'd shared on our date. Words she now remembered as well. \emph{There is potential for friendship and love, yes, but also the potential for pain.}
 
 I mulled over those words, then made up my mind anyway.