Marsh, Kaddish
This commit is contained in:
Madison Rye Progress
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ I laughed and bumped my shoulder against Hanne's. ``A sales pitch?''
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``You're a nerd. You realize that, right?''
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``Tell me why I should be a nerd in the year 275. Next year we can decide on systime 276.``
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``Tell me why I should be a nerd in the year 275. Next year we can decide on systime 276.''
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I scuffed my heel against the pavement of the street. New Year's Eve, and everyone was still inside. Bars: full. Restaurants: packed. There were a few scattered couples or groups around, but they were all walking with purpose. Champagne called. Canapes. Crudités.
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@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
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Champagne tinted evenings faded, as they do, into brandy-colored nights. Amber nights and fireplaces for the hell of it, me and Hanne settling in for a little bit of warmth for that last hour, not quite decadence and a ways off from opulence, but still a plush couch and a fire and snifters slightly too full of liquor.
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Champagne tinted evenings faded, as they do, into brandy-colored nights. Amber nights and fireplaces for the hell of it, me and Hanne settling in for a little bit of warmth for that last hour, not quite decadence and a ways off from opulence, but still a plush couch and a fire and snifters slightly too full of liquor. We tucked ourselves in under a whole-house cone of silence, one tuned to block incoming sensorium messages so that our New Year's Eve was ours alone.
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We shared our warmth, sitting side by side on the couch, and we continued to talk, talking of the year past, of years past beyond that, and of however many we decided were ahead. A hundred years? Two hundred? Only five? I made an impassioned argument for five more years of life, then laughed, changed my mind, and said I'd never die. Hanne said she'd live for precisely two hundred, give up, and disappear from Lagrange. She'd fork at a century and never speak to that version of her again, and should that instance decide to live on past two centuries, so be it, but she'd decided her expiration.
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@ -231,7 +231,7 @@ I frowned, pinged Hanne.
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``What?'' she said, her frown deepening.
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``Hold on, one more sec.'' I nodded to my new fork, who quit; I declined the merge. This would just have to be a year where I kept the memories. Something was wrong. I could work it out with my up-trees later.
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``Hold on, one more sec.'' I nodded to my new fork, who quit; I declined the merge. This would just have to be a year where I kept the memories. I wanted to keep the feeling of being unable to merge down, to know it viscerally. Something was wrong. I could work it out with my up-trees later.
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00:02.
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@ -498,7 +498,7 @@ Dry Grass tilted her head thoughtfully. ``None of my forks have reported any suc
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She nodded. ``Several of us are working on that, yes, and from across the stanzas.''
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One of the gathered, From Whence Do I Call Out, began to pray. ``\emph{Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha'olam, dayan ha-emet.}''
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One of the gathered, From Whence Do I Call Out, began to pray. ``\emph{Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam, dayan ha'emet.}''
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Dry Grass lowered her head as several of the other Odists joined. After a moment, she forked and gathered the Marshans around her, setting up a cone of silence above us.
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@ -129,5 +129,3 @@ Dry Grass frowned. ``Are you sure that that is wise? Does the entirety of Lagran
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``So,'' I said after the conversation drifted into silence. ``What do we do now?''
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``Mourn,'' Dry Grass said. ``Work and mourn.''
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\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{0.5pt}\end{center}
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@ -1,279 +0,0 @@
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The rain against old glass panes and the sways and bumps of the car on the rails ready the air for conjurations. Lucy sits on the bench 6th from the back, on the right side, a sketchbook open across her knees. Today she's trying charcoal. Feels right with what happened a week ago.
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This lonely train through the valley and the mountain is her chapel and now her hermitage in the wake of the bombing. There are plenty of churches and other religious retreats across the System if she wanted, but none of them have ever felt a fit for this work. She thought about skipping this week, and told herself if the train wasn't running, she'd pick up again later, but even with no passengers save her, the engine pulls its empty tail along the countryside. So, as she has done every week for the past 250 years, she has gone to her locker in the station, pulled out a fresh sketchbook, and boarded.
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Lucy conjures in her memory their faces.
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She can only recall 63 of the 68. It is true that the System means she cannot forget anything now, but it merely preserves in amber what the memory held at the moment of upload. It cannot restore the faces she lost to time. Even a number of the faces she recalls are not complete memories. Those she has filled in over decades, extrapolating or iterating on them until they are whole enough for her to feel it completes them. Over 260 years, her hands have become capable of incredible art, both through endless repetition and boundless study. When she is not here in her railcar-sized confession booth, she enjoys a life as an artist, known for bittersweet paintings and sculptures, happy to teach and happier to learn, a lover of life and a bringer of joy.
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Of the five lost, two faces she cannot recall because they were unexpected complications on a job. One face was sent to kill her, but wasn't good enough. One face jumped her in an alley to rob her, or perhaps worse, but couldn't have picked a worse target. She doesn't recall her first kill's face, because there was a bag over his head and a gun loaded with both bullets and an irreversible choice was pushed into her hand.
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The 69th face is the most vivid to her, but Lucy has never felt the need to draw her. After all, she let that last one go, and every morning after she wakes, Lucia Marchetti hopes that poor girl listened to her and got far far away. She hopes that woman lived a full life and that the family never caught up.
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The clack-clack of the wheels on the track sets a rhythm for her vigil, her penance. The weather in the sim varies based on algorithms and set patterns both, stable enough to make maintenance easy, unpredictable enough to mimic weather phys-side. Today the rain is quite heavy. She welcomes it. The inside is dry, but the wood of the train car has a slight moist smell, a beautiful attention to detail. The lights in the car flicker a little more than usual, the train is a bit slower than usual but the ride is if anything less smooth. She likes the rougher rides, because it adds a challenge to her work, one she is well accustomed to after centuries but nonetheless welcomes. The rain fills in the silence where passengers would chat and shuffle and cough and rustle newspapers and make all those sounds living people make. She wonders how many of the usual riders died in the bomb, and how many are just afraid to go out, unsure, mourning, or just needing time alone.
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Some art critics and fans throughout the System have pointed out that the left eyes in many of her portraits have fantastical details, often drawn as flowers, or the root of vines, or sunsets woven into faces, or in her sculptures become caves, grottos, tidal pools, library alcoves, hidden urban alleys. Many speculate on the symbolism of that, and her favorite theory is the one that she lost an eye to cancer, and her obsession with art and color is due to the way cancer distorted her vision, and that her art was a reclamation of what it had taken from her, a final spite to the disease that forced her to upload. Even though it was wrong it was very romantic, and even now she did very little to fight it, and on occasion coyly encouraged it.
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A bullet through the left eye had been her professional calling card. Left hand on the top of the head, barrel of the silencer to the eyelid. She had taken so much from the world through left eyes, and she put back as much life and beauty through them now as she could. It would never be enough. More than a few of the faces she could only conjure with the bloody hole in a lifeless head, but she has never rendered it in sketches. She recreates and restores them as they were before, using decades of study to fill in what she destroyed. Even as styles and methods and tools change in her hands, she gives the dead that. Owes them that. The only real Liberty she takes is with the hair above the faces, refusing to give hair any semblance of being pushed or held down by anything.
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The piece of charcoal snaps in her hand, and she realizes there are tears staining the current sketch. She wipes her eyes, takes another piece of charcoal from her satchel.
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The bomb dwells on her mind. The Century Bomb, detonated at midnight, the start of the 25th century. 2400-01-01. 276+1 systime. In a digital world so removed from death, suddenly a toll on an incomprehensible level. Mechanically, it was a contraproprioceptive virus, launched at an astounding scale, wiping 1\% of the System's current instance total by interrupting their code irreversibly. Functionally, it was a bomb that killed billions and scared shitless a trillion more. She wonders why they did it. She doesn't want to know, but she wonders. She wonders if it was just a job. She wonders if it wasn't. She wonders if they can remember all the faces of the people they killed. She wonders if they died in the bomb themselves. She hopes they did. She snaps another piece of charcoal, but if there were tears, they burned off on the heat in her face. It takes several breaths to unclench her fist, and she grabs another piece of charcoal.
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This is the longest stretch of the track. It's between the third and fourth stops, and it's where she starts sketching every time. Some weeks, depending on her mood or free time, she waits for the train to finish looping through the five stops and the station before picking up in her usual place. This time she doesn't wait. The calm she needs comes as soon as the engine lurches into motion from the station, and she lets the sounds and motions balm her weary heart.
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Charcoal means no color, but it lets her play with shading techniques. The more recent the face, the more realistic it becomes on the page, whereas older faces come out impressionistic, sketchier, or strikingly simple. Once she did them in chronological order. Then by age, alphabetical by first name, then last, then by height or by estimated weight, by location, by time it took to complete that dirty work, until now she's run out of categories and just lets them queue their own order, double checking periodically who is left and who isn't.
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She feels a low impulse to include some of the regular passengers who are missing today, but cannot bring herself to break 250 years of rite and ritual. She decides tomorrow she will come back with separate sketchbooks or maybe some other medium, sit in a different place on the train, and sketch as many of the regulars as she can remember. Those she will not keep hidden away, and those she will let her sys-side self take care of.
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Most people would send a separate fork for this, she figures. She always leaves a fork at her home sim, and when she gets back to the studio that fork will merge down to her. It is important to her that this continuous (as much as one can be here) version of herself be the penitent one. She thinks other people would understand that, it's not something that really needs explaining, but she has never told anyone directly what she does, and those who know about her train rides know better than to ask.
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She wonders how many of them survived, and how many of them died or quit. She wonders how many will quit or crash from the grief. She chides herself for getting distracted. She sketches.
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She long ago learned the art of faking motions. She trained herself to glance up and stare at random points in the room, usually where other passengers are, to give the illusion she is not doing this from memory. It is a performance for the comfort of others, and the comfortable ask less questions. She almost always got left alone anyway. She wonders how she must look from the outside. Short, black hair, in a layered bob that tapers into her neck, pale skin, wispy and thin. Her outfit for the train is always the same, a plain, thin white blouse with short sleeves and dark blue buttons down the middle, a pair of dark blue slacks with a very high waist, a tasteful pair of flats, tented teal triangles for earrings. The train is based on its early middle twentieth century ancestors, and she commits fully to the part as well. She never asks anyone if she pulls it off, or asks for a picture.
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It takes her a while to notice there is someone else in the railcar with her.
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One of those upward glancing motions registers some bright color on her left, but it takes four more motions before it actually clicks that it's an arm in a jacket. She stops mid-sketch and turns to the other passenger.
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Across the aisle from her seat is a bench against the left wall of the train, and despite years of riding she cannot say for sure if the bench was always present or a new addition. Other than that it does not stand out, as all the upholstery, cushions, wood, metal, and design choices fit perfectly with the rest of the compartment. It might have been there the whole time. It might have appeared there seconds ago. It alarms her how little her memory has charted the left side of the aisle.
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The other passenger is a woman who is also a skunk. She is tall, broad-shouldered, portly, covered in earthy green fur, with a mess of curly hair that is swept to the side and bleached blond. She wears an orange canvas bomber jacket, a beat up white tank top, grayish cargo pants, and heavy boots. Her arms are spread out on the back of the bench. One of her legs is crossed over the other, bouncing on it. She is grinning. Something about the fur pattern near the skunk's left eye unsettles Lucy, but it is obscured by the dark round sunglasses the skunk is wearing. How the skunk's tail seems to be at an impossible angle to her body while sitting down Lucy chalks up to the benefits of the System.
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The skunk's grin widens when her presence is acknowledged. Lucy looks at her but lets the other woman make the first move. The skunk gladly obliges. ``You know, it took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize you haven't been drawing other passengers.''
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Lucy chews her tongue before responding, turning back to her work but not letting the stranger from her sight. ``Who's to say I wasn't before?''
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The skunk shrugs. ``It's possible, but I've seen you here every week for decades. It didn't click until about 6 years ago that the styles change but the faces don't.''
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A regular, then. There are other cars, and Lucia only rides the train once a week. So many different bodies and species exist within the System, and with the weird prevalence of skunks among that, not recalling this one's face didn't feel too strange. Old instincts warn her that her visitor could be banking on that, but she dismisses it with a stroke on the page.
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Lucy sighs. ``Well noticed. What else have you observed?''
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The skunk tilts her head and chews her tongue a little, tapping a claw. ``More a hunch than an observation, but you don't draw the living.''
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``Correct again. Not here, anyway. Elsewhere I do not restrain myself so.''
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The skunk gives a bobbing nod. ``People you lost?''
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Lucia speaks plainly. ``People I killed.''
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The test is laid. How will the examinee respond? Fear? Nervous laughter? Anger?
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The skunk raises an eyebrow. ``Appearances can be deceiving, but you don't strike me as a soldier.''
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``Metaphorically, maybe, but never literally.''
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The skunk's claws tighten into the wood of the bench at either end of her arms. ``Not a cop, I hope?''
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Now there's a measure of character. Lucia genuinely laughs, and the skunk's grips relax. There's that bobbing nod again, and the mephit says, ``So, ah, contract work.''
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Lucy cannot decide if the animal's cavalier nature is charming or cause for alarm. Her heart wants to believe the former. A gut trained on a former life tells her the latter. Both are anxious to see how this plays out. ``I would call it familial obligations, but they did pay me for it, and friends of the family would throw me work now and again as well.'' She pauses. ``You know how family can be.''
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The skunk gives a sad smirk. ``Half of mine disowned me for being queer. Don't think it's quite the same but I can sympathize, at least.''
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Lucy stops sketching for a second, and makes eye contact with the skunk, or as best she can through the other's sunglasses. Even without the eyes, there's a topography of emotion in the snout and cheeks and brow. That pattern of fur around her left eye, it's rough. Aesthetically it interrupts the face. An interesting choice. Panic surges just a little again.
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Lucia blinks and shakes her head, turning back to her sketch. ``Well, good thing we both got out.''
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The skunk looks out the window behind her. ``And yet the past never stops trailing behind us here. It's like this train, never moving forward, on an endless loop that carries us in circles. Even if we step off at a stop, it will be back around to pick us up again.''
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Lucy sees no reason to add anything.
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The skunk turns back towards her. ``These pieces you do fascinate me. They all lack your signature.''
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``What need to autograph them? They are for me and the dead. Other than the prying eyes of those like you who see my process, they are never shared.''
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``That is not the signature I mean.''
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She tenses. ``Ah, a stylistic one, then. Do you mean to say I am an artist beyond these sketches? Who do you think I might be?''
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``I know exactly who you are.''
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Everything goes quiet and the light dims. Somewhere in the conversation Lucy missed the whistle for the tunnel, and as the trains slips into the darkness the driving rain no longer fills silence. Even the wheel-clacks sound quieter. The bulbs along either side of the car have dimmed, and the one on the skunk's right has gone out completely. The skunk has taken off her sunglasses, and is wiping the lenses in the cotton of her tank top.
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It is not a pattern in her fur, Lucia realizes. It is a scar. A scar that starts north of the brow, runs most of the way down her cheek, and in the middle, crosses her eye. The left eye itself is clouded over, with only a hint of the pupil beneath. The other eye is a striking hazel, untouched.
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A million possibilities run through Lucia's head. This is someone here to blackmail her. The family finally sent an assassin. Somehow one of her targets survived and has found her for revenge. The System isn't real, and this is Purgatory, or worse, Hell, luring her into a false sense of security to strengthen her damnation. All of these could be true at once. She does not know. She finds she cannot quit, or leave the sim, or even move, paralyzed in pure fear, an emotion she has not felt in centuries.
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Meanwhile, the skunk is saying, ``You are Lucia Marchetti, renowned artist and sculptor. One of the most distinct in the System, in fact, and if I'm not mistaken, the unintentional pioneer of three major art movements of the last two centuries. Most intriguing is your lasting fixation on the left eye, present on almost every one of your pieces with a living thing in it. There's a lot of theories, but no one really knows why you do it. Except I think I do.''
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Lucy resigns herself. 260 years was a good run. More than any of her targets got sometimes by a factor of ten. She should have trusted her gut and bailed. She should have run. She shouldn't have said so much. But she did, and she tries to make peace with having to face the music. It's not really working, but she still cannot bring herself to flee. They say that no one can force you to stay in a sim, that it is impossible to truly hold anyone anywhere in the System against their will, but none of them ever account for the pressure one can exert on oneself. So, if this is the end, she decides, even if she cannot accept it, she will not fight it. ``You're here to kill me, aren't you?''
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The skunk laughs. ``Kill you? Why would I want to kill you?'' She holds her sunglasses up towards one of the light fixtures, checking the lens for smudges. ``You might be the only person on the System who understands me.''
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Lucia has the brief vivid image in her mind of an engraved lighter and a carousel tearing itself apart. The skunk across from her must be some sort of fanatic, perhaps another professional killer, or worse, unprofessional. Someone unmoored from reality, perhaps. Madness is more prevalent in the System than anyone admits. Lucy decides she would have preferred if this stranger was here to kill her, then chides herself for this self-destructiveness.
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Still the skunk speaks, and taps next to her damaged eye. ``For most of my life phys-side, I would now and again come down with migraines that always started behind my eye. Most of them were mild, but some of them would put me down for a whole day. Once or twice I even had visual aberrations, and I couldn't even see out of it. It'd be like static, visual white noise. For some reason, after I forked off my root instance, I started having the migraines again sys-side. The pressure is there, and the hurt is sometimes there, but now I hallucinate. Vividly, and only through that eye. My right eye is locked on reality, and the left eye ranges from minor distortions to things that even our more adventurous chemical days never came close to. I've never met anyone else that gets migraines here like mine. But then, I see your work, and I finally think for a second that maybe I'm not alone.''
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``I'm not totally convinced you are not here to kill me.''
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The mephit shakes her head. ``I swear I'm not. I mean, you've been here---the System, I should say---for a long time?''
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``Centuries.''
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``When did you upload?''
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``Why should I tell you?''
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``So I can prove I'm not sent by your `family'. Just want to know the year.''
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Lucia mulls it over before saying it. ``2140.''
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``Which was 31 years before my root instance was even born.''
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``Doesn't mean that you aren't---''
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``You have to believe me! You have to, and you have to experience something like I do. It has to be the reason!'' The skunk's face is a patchwork of frustration and desperate need.
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``I never in my life before this place or after had a single headache.''
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The stranger is on the verge of tears. ``Then why?''
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``It's where I put the bullets.''
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The skunk's eyes go wide, and the rain slams against the rail car as the train leaves the tunnel again.
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For the first time in all her years of penance, Lucia wishes she could stop drawing these faces, and instead in this moment sketch the creature across from her. The surprise in the mephit's features decays, like a flashbulb in a camera after it's gone off in those ancient movies the Don loved to watch. Lucy wants to capture this moment as hope withers and understanding winds vines slowly into the visage of the woman. She can see her piece together what that means, why these faces must never bear that mark, a million questions banished to the aether with one simple, ugly, answer. It is Lucia's opinion that art is better left unexplained, and this is why. If it weren't for the storm outside she would have heard the poor thing's heart break. There is a biting of a lip, there are tears, there is a bobbing nod of understanding, and a single, deep sob. If she could raise a hand, a brush, a chisel, these minutes would turn into her finest work, she would capture the death of a hero as seen through a mirror. She mourns it as the emotions pass, as the traces of them evaporate off the skunk's muzzle like morning mist in the sun. To capture what she saw in the moment would be a blasphemous vanity. She tears herself away from staring, and continues her sketches.
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It is a while before either can speak. The skunk speaks first. ``I think knowing that, somehow, makes your art\ldots more beautiful to me?''
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Lucy snorts. ``That's unfortunate.''
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``Do you regret it?''
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She rolls her eyes at this. ``No, I have sat on this train every week for 250 years drawing the dead because I have nothing better to do. What a stupid question.''
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``Did you upload because you got tired of killing?''
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``I uploaded because I was tired of being a man.'' She looks up to see that the skunk has put back on her sunglasses, but they cannot hide her surprise again. Lucia sets down the notebook and the charcoal on the seat next to herself. ``The family gave me an address and a man's name. They did not tell me what he had done, usually they did not, but they spoke with such vitriol I assumed his trespasses were high. The family back then overlooked my dalliances with other men, as men were easy to pay off, and I suspect I was not the only one in the family `wandering from the path' in that way. Something about the venom in the request made me wonder if someone in the family had been spurned, and I was cleaning up loose ends. No matter. I had given up long ago on caring about my targets. A job is a job, and the family always found me work.
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``I broke into the apartment, and in the dim light of the living room was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She was like polished stone, you could tell she was made more beautiful by the things she endured. It took me a moment to remember what I was even there for, and I wondered again if this wasn't business but personal affairs. She noticed me, and panicked, pulling a blanket to herself even though she was clothed. I did not yell, I did not shout, I did not strike in my work. I used a level voice, moved calmly and deliberately, and made no sudden movements. People feared that more than an angry man, and it meant there was a lot less cleanup involved. I did not hide that I had a gun. She asked me who I was, and I said I was strictly here on business, and she didn't need to know. She said she didn't trust me, and I told her very simply that if I intended to hurt I would not have waited for her to see me. I told her that all she needed to do was answer me a question, and then she could leave safely. As a show of faith, I stepped out from between her and the door. She weighed her options. She was taller than me, a bit stockier, but I was a man with a gun in my hands. She relented, and with a sigh told me to ask. I told her all I needed to know was where I could find my target. I told her the name.
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``Perhaps you are smart enough to know where this is going, but I mistook her panic for loyalty. She became defensive, refusing to give any information and demanding of me explanations. I told her she need not be loyal to him again and again, that it was not worth her life to defend him, and that all I needed to know is where he was. She offered bribes. She offered violence. She offered a great many things I dare not say. I do not know how long our exchange went exactly. Easily 15 minutes, likely more. I grew impatient and finally asked her why his life was worth so much more than hers, and that regardless of what happened to her I had a job and that man had to die.
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``She wailed, falling to the floor, and told me with absolute despair that she was the man I was looking for. Only then do I begin to inspect my surroundings carefully. I take notice of the decorations, the aesthetic choices, the recurring theme of rebirth. There was a jacket, hung on the back of a dining table chair, with a flag on the shoulder, a flag of stripes and three colors. Such a jacket was not uncommon among younger generations of my country, but the flag was not the flag of Italia of old, nor any of the new flags of the many states my homeland became under the Western Federation. No, this flag is the standard of a country with no land, abstract territory, yet one I---and, I highly suspect, you as well---reside within. Three colors, yes, but the stripes of the flag are horizontal, not vertical. Five stripes, not three.
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``No doubt you have heard the tales of old about those Lost in the sims, in the days before the System. In that moment, like them, I became lost within myself. I was not old then, but I had lived a very long life. I tumbled down through memories, emotions, places, times, lovers, imaginations. This woman before me, born something else, but made beautiful by change, was she as me? Pulled unwilling into the affairs of the family? Forced into shapes preordained, melted down and poured into a mold, cracked upon the altar of tradition, to fit needs or to ornament the mansion walls? Did she break the mold, or melt again to make herself anew? Could I do the same? My lovers were all overlooked or bought off, but in the eyes of those who shaped me, I was property who could buy a place at the table in time but never my own freedom. This Angel before me was an epiphany, and to the gospel of my employers I fell apostate in a moment. In my head and only in my head I begged mercy and forgiveness from her, that I might forever fall to her feet and serve to atone for my trespasses. She was living proof that my resignation to my fate was an act of cowardice, that for years I had been lying to myself. A thousand versions of myself in my head ran to every corner of my mind and pulled together a new self, an eternity of hands falling over themselves to construct some possible way to let this woman go without getting both her and myself killed. No markers lay for how long I was lost in my head, and when I pulled back to the reality before me, I have no idea if I had been gone a second or an hour. The woman before me still wept. I made up my mind. It was made from the moment I saw her jacket.
|
||||
|
||||
``I told her to look at me. She did. I told her the man I had come to kill was clearly already dead. She stared at me for a long time. I asked her if her identifications had her old name or her new one on them, and when she said new I cemented a plan. I told her I had no intention of killing her, but that I could not promise the same of my employers. I set my gun on the table. I sorted out for her an impressive sum of money that I kept on my person, as even as late as the 2130s hard currency opened far more doors than brute force. I knelt down beside her on the floor. I pressed into her hands a marker, something that would grant her safe passage anywhere she showed it, an agreement of families and organizations that preceded us by centuries. I told her where to go, what places my family would never tread, and what she needed to say to get there. I told her to wait 20 minutes after I left, pack as little as she could, and leave immediately. She sat there stunned, and only as I got to the door did it grip her that this was real.
|
||||
|
||||
``She asked me why I was helping her. I could not lie. I told her that killing her would make her a man again and I could not stand to take such beauty from the world. Manhood is not a problem if it is choice, but I was never given one, and I would not force anyone to reconsider their own decision. I do not know if she understood me, but she nodded. As I departed, she asked if she would see me again. I told her no, I was already as dead as the man I had been sent to kill, and left before she could delay me further.
|
||||
|
||||
``I do not know what happened to her. I don't know what happened to the family. I do not know what happened to the cats left in my apartment. I do not even know if the sun set the next night. I moved quickly, using the weight my name had gathered over the years to get me quick passage to Roma. Uploading was still new then, expensive and still a mystery to most, but Roma had an Ansible clinic. I arrived in the city just before dawn, and caught the staff as they arrived for the morning. I drained my accounts and gave them each enough to fund the clinic for a year, to upload me and to strike my name from any records. They asked me what to do with my body. I told them to burn it and toss the ashes into the Tiber. When they objected, I handed them even more money, and finally they gave way.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucia looks up, and out over the countryside rolling by the windows of the train car. How far, she wonders, does it go? Does it end a small ways from the train? Are the mountains on the other side of this valley merely a trick of sensoria? Or has someone rendered them, crafting the walls of stone as they rise from low earth, etching little runs and outcroppings for a thousand meters upward? Does the sim stretch beyond the mountains, an uncanny mirror of the alps that she had traveled phys-side often enough, mostly for business, only very rarely for pleasure? She knows most of the stops are fleshed out, but she has no idea if all the land in between them is. She briefly sees the faint orange reflection of the skunk's jacket in the window, and tries not to think about how long she might have been silent.
|
||||
|
||||
Still, as she speaks, it is a few moments before she turns back to the other passenger. ``There is nothing more to tell. The killer for hire died on the Ansible table. I do not miss him. I mourn those whom he took from the world. I carry them on eternally here, as I have since the first day I ever rode this train.''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk smirks. ``I wonder if the riders know they're in your rolling mausoleum.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucia frowns. ``It is not a mausoleum!''
|
||||
|
||||
The mephit's lip twitches. ``Right, my mistake, if it doesn't contain any remains, it's called a cenotaph, isn't it?''
|
||||
|
||||
The frown turns to a scowl. ``That is not what I mean.''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk leans forward, resting her forearms upon her thighs. ``A confessional, then. Do you say your `hail marys' as we ride along these chancel rails? Quite a trick to use a train to transit the stations of the cross, but with only 6 stops instead of 14, you may find us lacking.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucia turns to her, meaning to scald the other woman with a glare. ``Do not mock me. Those traditions were antiquated before I was born, much less you. I ask nothing of a god I do not believe in. So too the dead are the dead, they feel nothing. Hear nothing. Give nothing. I do this for myself, I grieve. I regret. From what authority do you speak? What right have you to judge?''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk raises her paws in defense. ``I'm not judging.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucia bares her teeth. ``The hell you are not. You speak harshly, think me a sinner.''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk crosses her arms before herself. ``Listen, I am not in the business of \emph{salvation} or \emph{absolution}.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Then what, pray tell, are you in the business of?''
|
||||
|
||||
The other woman furrows her brow, and leans back. Then, slowly, smugly, she grins. ``\emph{Joie de vivre}.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucia finds herself genuinely unsure how to respond to that, so she doesn't. On she sketches, ignoring her spectator as best she can. A stop comes and goes, the fourth, and neither debark. No one gets on either. Riders. A thread lies untraced in Lucy's mind. She pulls it.
|
||||
|
||||
To the skunk she says, ``You asked earlier if the riders know what I do, as if you did not number among them.''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk's face isn't just grinning, there's some anticipation around the edges of it. This stranger has been waiting for this question. ``Not usually, no, not by a traditional count.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucia squints. ``Yet you said before the tunnel that you have observed me here for decades.''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk looks up, and taps a cheeky claw to her chin. ``Yeah, weird, I wonder how that could be?''
|
||||
|
||||
``Do you spy on the passengers?''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk tilts her head disappointedly, and lets the silence answer for her.
|
||||
|
||||
``Neither then, some small animal, like a mouse or an insect living on the train.''
|
||||
|
||||
A shake of a head. ``Construct or instance, I'd consider them passengers, too.''
|
||||
|
||||
``And you observed me directly, yes?''
|
||||
|
||||
``This is a fun game! Yes, I have countless times.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucy doesn't like this game. She hates the feeling of missing something simple. Perhaps it isn't simple. ``You\ldots you are the train we are riding in, and you have watched me all these years, and forked to something that could speak to me.''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk laughs, and slaps her knees. Lucia turns red, scowling. Wiping humorous tears from her eyes, the skunk says, ``I love artists so much. Creative! Very creative, but a few problems. One: I was born after you uploaded. Two: I only forked and individuated from my root instance in 2357, and Three: the System is capable of many incredible things, but that's a little too fantastic.'' The skunk gave a little head bob. ``I guess in a metaphorical way you could say I speak for the train, but no, I'm afraid as long as I've been around in this sim, I've just been a skunk.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucy looks out the window, and says aloud, ``I do not like this game.''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk laughs again. ``I'm having a blast. Do you want me to tell you?''
|
||||
|
||||
The artist glances back only briefly, and shakes her head.
|
||||
|
||||
``Do you want me to give you a hint?''
|
||||
|
||||
Now Lucia turns to look at her, and when the skunk raises an eyebrow, she relents. ``Fine. Fine! Yes!''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk slips her left paw into her jacket pocket. ``Your hint is: rider and passenger are passive roles.''
|
||||
|
||||
Passive? If riding a train is a passive state, what would be an active---
|
||||
|
||||
Lucy nearly throws her sketches to the floor, gesticulating angrily. ``You are the engineer. You drive the train.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Correct!'' The mephit holds up three clawed fingers on her right paw. ``Beyond maintaining the sim, I wear three hats. One is engineer. The second is stationmaster. But neither of those explain seeing you in this car, do they?''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucia's turn to raise an eyebrow. The skunk pulls her left paw from her jacket pocket, and holds up a ticket puncher. Lucia buries her face in her hands. ``Conductor. And now I am the asshole for not even remembering you.''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk scoffs. ``I'm not hurt! Think of it this way, you and this sim have been here for 250 years. I've only been `on board' for about 35. I dug through our personnel records recently, and there have been well over 100 conductors, never mind several active at the same time. You've been focused on your work, faces change, and at some point you stopped paying attention to who was coming around to check for fares. Hell, I've met other regulars in other sims who don't recognize me right away. Same goes for the 15 years I've been stationmaster, and have you ever actually been to the engine? Did you realize it has to be crewed? I'm proud of my work whether it gets seen or not, but often it isn't.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucia finally finds the other end of the thread. ``Do you own this sim?''
|
||||
|
||||
The smile fades from the skunk's face. ``As of a week ago, yes.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Was it the Century At---''
|
||||
|
||||
``Mr. Nguyen had been planning to retire for some time. He'd given full access controls and permissions of the Sim to me a few months back, and after 275 years, he planned to retire at midnight, right as the century rolled over.'' The furred woman bit her lip and looked away. ``I\ldots I don't know if he died in the Attack. The way he was cleaning up his affairs by the end he might have quit the big one. Either way, he's gone.''
|
||||
|
||||
A grief settles into Lucia. She realizes she does not know the attendants of this sacred place. If it is half as intricate and complex as she thinks, this sim takes a great amount of work and dedication to keep running. The System's curse of eternal memory meant nothing if she did not bother to take notice of someone in the first place. Dozens of faces. Hundreds, likely. On top of this, layered like a dusting of ash or snow, is the suspicion that now this skunk and whatever forks of her there may be are the only ones left. Both the skunk and Lucia herself were lucky. How many sims now sit empty, with no owner? How many empty homes and shops and cities and wildernesses and worlds wait for occupants, like pets who do not yet know the loss of their caretakers, or worse, cannot understand it? Does the System reclaim them? Should it? Should they stand as cenotaphs, markers of a terrible loss few people can yet truly wrap their heads around? Or like a home in a vibrant neighborhood, should the next inhabitants move in, so that life can go on for the living? She doesn't know. Answers are beyond her, she is the rain that falls from the sky and her eyes in equal measure. She rolls off of resolution or closure, like droplets off the panes of the glass of the traincar.
|
||||
|
||||
Her tears soak into the paper of her sketchbook, and that tugs her to reality again. She cannot change the past, but she can change the present, the future. She wipes the water from her eyes hastily. ``I did not know his name. Nor yours, though you clearly know mine.''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk straightens up a little. ``My name is Seras. Seras Frame.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucia nods. ``Seras. I will remember it.''
|
||||
|
||||
Seras shrugs. ``You can't forget it.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lucia says, ``language is an art, not a science. When we say forget and remember, they can mean many things. I will say your name, Seras. I will speak it aloud and address you and not take you for granted again.''
|
||||
|
||||
The train begins to slow as it reaches the fifth stop. Seras looks out the window, then back to Lucia. ``I'll be getting off here, but before I do\ldots'' her voice trails off, and she holds up the ticket puncher, clacking it a few times. Lucia smiles. She pulls the ticket from her pocket, as she has every week for hundreds of years.
|
||||
|
||||
Seras stands up and takes it, looking it over. ``Honestly, I was worried we'd lost all our riders. It's hard to say who's just too overwhelmed to show up, and who's gone. If you're here, I'm sure I'll see other old faces soon enough.'' She punches the ticket, and pauses. ``Have you killed anyone since uploading?''
|
||||
|
||||
The train comes to a stop, and something deep inside Lucia tenses. She snaps at the skunk. ``Why? Worried I'm going to start up again?''
|
||||
|
||||
Seras rolls her eyes, and hands Lucia back her ticket brusquely. ``Just curious.''
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk walks away swiftly, headed for the back of the car. She's just about to leave when Lucy finds her voice again. ``I didn't even know you could kill someone here until the bomb went off.''
|
||||
|
||||
Seras stops dead in her tracks, but doesn't turn around. Lucy keeps talking.
|
||||
|
||||
``I heard rumors of people being assassinated, but I never looked into it. How could you kill someone in a world like this? It all stunk of conspiracy, and you know how people are here. I thought I finally found a world without violence, and for a time I had such a world. Then the bomb devours billions, like an earthquake rending the ground into a maw of Hell. I am brought so close to the jaws of death I remember why I was glad to leave that world behind.'' Lucy feels like a child, small, afraid. Even after transitioning it is a feeling she has rarely felt, and her usual guard falls away. Words tumble from her before she can stop them. ``And I do think this is confessional. I do my penance in this public place, an anonymous sinner, because it must not be done alone. I apologize for my hostility. I do not like to be so plainly and nakedly seen by a stranger, and you frightened me like I haven't been since the Ansible table.''
|
||||
|
||||
Seras turns. The two women watch each other for a while. Lucia speaks first.
|
||||
|
||||
``Do you think I've done enough? Held this Vigil for enough lifetimes? Should I keep going?''
|
||||
|
||||
The train's whistle blows. Seras shakes her head. ``I told you before. I'm not in the business of Absolution or Salvation.'' She walks to the back door. As the railcars start to lurch into motion, she adds, ``I'm just happy to see someone's still riding the train.''
|
||||
|
||||
Then she's gone, and Lucia pushes herself over a few seats to the window. She sees the skunk laughing and pulling the back of her jacket over her head. As the train pulls away, she's stomping her boots through the puddles on the platform as she runs for the shelter of an awning.
|
||||
@ -1,325 +0,0 @@
|
||||
Joanna sat at her kitchen table, having the hardest time figuring out the next best move to make while playing solitaire. The cards were jumbo print, of course, a leftover from her time phys-side. She was just about to move a column of cards using a king when she heard her doorbell. She could have created her sim so the default entrance was within her home, but she was old-fashioned. She liked having her guests wait a bit while she got around to answer the door. There was something to be said for indulging anticipation, especially on the System, where so many things were instantaneous. She swiped a wrinkled hand over the in-progress game and the cards fluttered away, stored in an exo-cortex to pick up later. She got up slowly and puttered her way over to the front door.
|
||||
|
||||
Arranging this get-together was a welcome distraction for her. When she received the confirmation message, she had trouble thinking of much else. Though she hadn't met her visitor yet, Joanna knew what she looked like. She looked out of the peephole to check it was her visitor before undoing the lock and opening up the door.
|
||||
|
||||
An older woman was standing on Joanna's front porch. She had a slight hunch to her back and was quite short so that Joanna had to look down slightly to make eye contact. She was wearing a striped shirt with comfortable slacks and her gray hair was done up in a perm tighter than any of the folds of her skin. She was clutching a small purse and looked expectantly at Joanna to make the first move.
|
||||
|
||||
``I trust you're Bethann then? Saw my ad in the feeds?'' Joanna asked.
|
||||
|
||||
``Yes, yes. And you must be Joanna. I decided to come and see what this is about. I could also use a break after all the unpleasantness that's been going on.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Well that is an understatement. Still, I am glad you made the trip out.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Likewise. Now, can I come inside? The outside of your sim isn't exactly winning any awards.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna held out her hand to help the woman climb up the final step into the house. Bethann pushed past her hand and stepped inside without another thought. The interior was cozy, if not a little dusty. There was a boxy T.V. set into an ornate wooden frame that sat on the floor facing the living room. The thought of moving it was impossible, it had been there long enough to begin fusing with the floorboards underneath it. The couch had an intricate floral pattern for a flower that Bethann was sure did not exist. Perhaps a take on an object'd'art from the Exchange? The coffee table, fittingly, had an abandoned cup of coffee sitting off to the side. The living room was small, barely enough room to step around the tables and furniture to move around. Bethann wondered to herself why Joanna had decided to make her sim so cramped. Before she could ask, Joanna said, ``I'm glad you could take time out of your busy schedule to come over.''
|
||||
|
||||
A blatant attempt to guilt Bethann over her re-scheduling their meeting. She let the comment slide off of her and responded with, ``I would have arrived sooner, but I won't miss my shows. I've been getting invested in the newest reboot of Darkest Shadows. They've learned a lot from the last seven attempts that is making the show compelling to keep up with.''
|
||||
|
||||
``I'm more partial to Bonanza myself, but I don't think the writers knew what to do with Hoss in the latest version being produced sys-side. I stopped watching when Little Joe forked into Medium Joe and Big Joe. That's just too much Joe for one show.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Yes, it does sound like a lot. So where are we doing this? I don't think there's enough leg room for us to set up here.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna puttered around Bethann, shuffling her feet on the worn carpet as she did so. She waved her hand for Bethann to follow her. ``This way dear, we'll have more room in the kitchen.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann walked over and sat down in one of the two chairs set up at the kitchen table. Much like everything else in the sim, it seemed tailor-made for Joanna's convenience first. The table was big enough to seat one extra guest and no more. Joanna arrived shortly after Bethann had set down her purse. If Bethann had noticed how Joanna had neglected to offer her a drink or snack before they were settled, she didn't say so.
|
||||
|
||||
``What game would you like to play first? Was there a favorite that your young gentleman would choose?''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna laughed, ``You get right to the point don't you? Reminds me of him in a way. But to answer your question, we would take turns in picking out the games we would play. Since you are my guest, I'll give you the first choice.''
|
||||
|
||||
``That's mighty kind of you. I'm partial to boardgames, so I'll suggest something simple to start with. Have you ever played Uncle Wiggily?''
|
||||
|
||||
``I can't say that I have, but I'm willing to learn.''
|
||||
|
||||
``If you'll grant me the proper ACL's, I can grab it out of the games I've brought with me.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna looked up and away for a few seconds before saying, ``There, you should have permission now.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann reached her hands into her purse and pulled out a colorful box with a collection of anthropomorphic animals dressed in fancy clothes prancing about in an idyllic forest. The majority of the box art was taken up by the titular Uncle Wiggily, a dandy rabbit man with a black suit jacket, bright yellow shirt, red corduroy pants, blue bowtie, and a top hat that he had tipped to the side.
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann opened up the box and began unfolding the game board and setting out the player markers. ``If you're at all familiar with Candy Land, it plays similarly. You draw cards from the deck and on each of the cards is a number that tells you how much you are to move. The catch is that there are poems on each of the cards and you must read out the poem before you are allowed to move.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Every time? Wouldn't that get tiring?'' Joanna asked.
|
||||
|
||||
``It's a part of the overall whimsy the game is trying to evoke. You are a dandy woodland animal having a merry time of skipping through the forest after all.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann set the player pieces in front of Joanna, each a copy of Uncle Wiggily but with different colored suits in red, green, blue, and yellow. Joanna chose the blue piece and Bethann chose the green. They set their pieces on the starting square and took turns reading the cards and moving their pieces. As they settled into a rhythm of passing turns, they talked with each other.
|
||||
|
||||
``I'm deeply sorry for your loss. I've lost a lot of good friends in the New Year too,'' Bethann said.
|
||||
|
||||
``Thank you. It's been a terrible few days.''
|
||||
|
||||
``What was your young gentleman's name?''
|
||||
|
||||
``His name was NaSRFS. I didn't know much about him, but he would come once a week to spend time with me. Didn't strike me as a tracker, more of a tasker really. That made his choice to visit a little more special. It's nice to know that he was willing to fork for our time together.''
|
||||
|
||||
For a moment, Bethann's shoulders tensed at the mention of NaSRFS, and then it was gone. ``That does sound nice. It's good for us old fogeys to socialize with younger instances. They keep us up to date on what's happening outside of our own sims in the System, do they not?''
|
||||
|
||||
It was a leading question, but Joanna was not taking the bait. After an uncomfortable silence had passed, Bethann placed her marker at the end of the winding path and said, ``I guess that makes me the winner. Why don't you choose a game for us to play next?'' She gathered up the pieces, shuffled the cards, and folded up the board in quick measure. Packing it away quickly and carefully.
|
||||
|
||||
``Oh, I know just the game. I'm more for card games, so I'll teach you how to play Clock.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Never heard of it before.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Then I'm glad I can be your introduction.'' Joanna pointed her hand down and flicked it quickly upwards. Through the motion, she had produced a standard deck of playing cards with the words JUMBO PRINT on the side in large bubble letters. She took out the cards, removed the jokers and rule card, and began shuffling the deck. As she shuffled, she explained the basics of the game.
|
||||
|
||||
``Clock is a lot like a cooperative variant of solitaire. You work together to play cards on the various positions around the `clock' that is built around the deck. But it is a competitive game too, as each play gets both of you closer to playing out the cards in your hand and winning the game.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Sounds delightful. How many cards do we get?''
|
||||
|
||||
``Five to start, but if you don't have a play, you draw until you have a playable card.'' Joanna stopped shuffling and dealt out the cards to herself and Bethann. She alternated giving each of them a card until they had a full hand of five. Then, she turned over four cards from the top of the deck to form a cross shape around the deck in the center.
|
||||
|
||||
``I'll go first,'' Joanna said, placing a black five on top of a red six.
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann played a red nine on a black ten and passed her turn. A few turns later, Joanna stopped her turn to say, ``Aces are special, you play them on the corners and then can build on top of that suit. They provide a new set of plays to make on your turn and open up new strategies.'' She laid down her ace of hearts in the upper left corner, closest to Bethann. ``You've been awfully quiet. Are you also thinking of someone you lost recently?''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann grumbled and drew from the deck until she had a three she could play.
|
||||
|
||||
``Yes, a good many someones. Three long-lived instances of my own that I will miss, though they never called, so less so than others.''
|
||||
|
||||
``I was lucky enough to keep all of my personal instances. I'm sorry to hear you have lost some of yours.'' She played a king and moved a column of cards onto another column.
|
||||
|
||||
``It's small potatoes in comparison to the rest of the System. But I guess everyone's hurting.'' Bethann played a queen on Joanna's king.
|
||||
|
||||
``I've reached out to my family, but they're reeling too.''
|
||||
|
||||
``I really should do that. With everything happening, I didn't really consider it.''
|
||||
|
||||
``That's surprising. Especially when you agreed to spend time with a stranger on such short notice. No other friends available?'' Joanna was needling Bethann, trying to get her to crack.
|
||||
|
||||
``Much as I would love to tell you, it seems as though you've won.'' Bethann moved the six of hearts onto the five in the corner and waited expectantly.
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna swore under her breath. She played her last card, the seven of hearts, and said, ``So I have. What are we playing next?''
|
||||
|
||||
``Phase 10 but with dice. I could do with throwing something right now.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna tried to keep the insinuation that she had thrown their previous match deliberately out of her voice. ``Sounds interesting, how do you play?''
|
||||
|
||||
``If you're familiar with Yahtzee, it's similar in a lot of ways. You roll all ten of your dice and then choose which you want to keep, re-rolling up to three times. Then you try to make hands with the numbers you rolled and we score after ten rounds.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann brought out the game and they spent time talking about little things. Joanna mentioned her new favorite coffee brand she had found on the Exchange while Bethann complained of the gall of the newest uploads in their tone on the shared feeds. While they were both still listening intently, neither prodded the other for more information than was given. Before they knew it, ten rounds had passed.
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann tallied up their scores and said, ``My, my. I seem to have won this one.''
|
||||
|
||||
``I can't believe your third re-roll actually mattered in that final round.''
|
||||
|
||||
``What can I say? Risk is necessary if you want to win.''
|
||||
|
||||
``I've got my own game that has an element of risk.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Oh? Do tell.''
|
||||
|
||||
``It's called Steal-A-Bundle. You make pairs with the cards on the board and the cards in your hand, but your pile can be stolen out from under you if your opponent has the same card that is on top of your pile in their hand.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Hmm, sounds like it could get tricky quickly. Well, go ahead and deal out the cards then.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna shuffled her well-worn deck and placed four cards face up in the center of the table. She then dealt out four cards to each of them. They passed turns back and forth, each placing a card from their hand onto a card in the center and adding it to their pile. They were even with each other until Joanna had picked up a set of eight's. Bethann flashed her own eight from her hand and moved Joanna's bundle on top of her own.
|
||||
|
||||
``A shame, Joanna, truly. It seems you don't know how to manage risk after all.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna's eyebrow twitched at that. Bethann had crossed a line with that implication. She placed the remaining eight from the deck on top of Bethann's bundle, pulling the cards into her own pile. ``I know more than you can imagine. Like that you also had a standing game night with NaSFRS.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann's eyes went wide. ``How did you\ldots''
|
||||
|
||||
But Joanna cut her off, ``When I found out he was lost, I did some digging. And I can never just leave well-enough alone. I think you did much the same as me. I respect you enough to think that you weren't completely unaware of the way I worded my ad on the feed. It was set to run in your most heavily trafficked areas after all. Let's cut the shit for a second.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann let herself relax and the tone of her voice was icy, calculated. ``You should know that I forked just for this meeting. If you're carrying out some grand plot, you're not going to take me out here.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna scoffed and said, ``We've just met, I don't expect you to have a CPV built out for me. And I don't have one for you, if you are worried about that. That comes later once we get to know each other better.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Then what, exactly, are you driving at?''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna leaned across the table and got in Bethann's face as she whispered, ``He got us to drop our guard. Both of us.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Yes, that is troubling. But whatever he knew has left with him. Shouldn't that be a comfort?'' Bethann asked.
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna's face pulled down into a deep frown. ``We know a lot of dangerous secrets.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann waved a hand through the air, dismissing her concerns. ``Oh sure, bunches. But that doesn't make it easier to lose him.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna leaned back, which caused the wooden chair to creak slightly. ``How can you be certain he wasn't just using us to get intel?''
|
||||
|
||||
``I can't be sure, but we used him too. Admit it. Wasn't it good to have someone to play games with that would give a damn?''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna's frown eased back off into a tired smile. ``Yes, it was. He knew how to keep things interesting.''
|
||||
|
||||
``If it helps, I miss him terribly as well.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Strangely, it does.`` Joanna straightened up and asked, ``Now what are we playing next?''
|
||||
|
||||
``I'd like to kick this up a notch. Try something a bit more complicated. Have you ever played Othello before?''
|
||||
|
||||
``Hmm, not particularly. Are you sure you don't want to play chess?''
|
||||
|
||||
``No, no. I find it to be too cliche. And we're playing friendly games, correct? I have a bit of a mean streak with chess.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Othello it is then.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna cleared the table with a thought, the playing cards sliding effortlessly back into their box. Bethann dug around in her purse until she found a small bright green board that folded in the middle. She unclasped a hinge on the side and opened the board up. Inside of the board were two trays, each filled with shiny round plastic tiles that had white on one side and black on the other. She set one of these trays in front of Joanna and the other in front of herself. She then took four tiles and put them in the middle of the board in a cube in the pattern of white-black-black-white.
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann explained the rules of Othello in painstaking detail. She spent so long on the rules that Joanna wondered if they were going to have time to actually play the game. She interrupted Bethann's explanation of the importance of taking the corners by saying, ``Seems straightforward to me. I think I can pick up the rest as we play.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann shrugged her shoulders and motioned to the two colors. ``Now, which color would you like?'' Bethann asked.
|
||||
|
||||
``How generous of you to give me first pick. I'd like the white tile please.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Then I will go first as black.''
|
||||
|
||||
She picked up a tile and placed it on the board so that the white tile was between her two black ones. She then flipped the white tile over and made the whole line black. Joanna thought for a moment before deciding on where she wanted to place her tile. She reached hesitantly across the board and placed her white tile, flipping the black pieces to white. They passed a few more turns before Joanna started to feel the pressure the game had to offer.
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna's forehead wrinkles were scrunched up as she concentrated on the board. ``You don't give an inch, do ya?'' She placed a white tile and could only flip over two.
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann placed her tile, flipping five white to black and said, ``I've no patience for people who coddle when competing. Oh, it's important to explain the rules. And you daresn't leave out any details or gain the upper hand by withholding at the start. But once you are playing a game, then you are on your own. For is it not the act of playing that teaches us the most? How can there be sweetness in eventual victory without having been defeated? Loss can be an excellent teacher, if you let it.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna placed her white tile and methodically flipped over row after column of black tiles until the majority of the board was covered in white. ``And what has this loss taught you?''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann grimaced down at the board on the table. ``That I need to be more careful with how I place my pieces. But the game is not over yet.'' She tapped her container of tiles to emphasize the fact the game was just starting.
|
||||
|
||||
``No, not this. I meant \emph{the loss. }The one that everyone on the System is working through.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann thought for a while and placed her tile on a corner. While it only gave her four tiles, she was using it to gain a future foothold. She replied tiredly, ``That we are not as immortal as we like to believe. It is easy to forget the fragility of our shared dream. And living much longer lives has shifted our collective perspective.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Do you think that we'll be able to heal, without being able to forget?'' She placed a tile that gave her a full row of white.
|
||||
|
||||
``I think it's possible, yes. But again, the scale of time for that healing to occur is elongated. To help my case, I'd like to share something about NaSRFS that I discovered while mourning. He was only 120 years old. Can you believe that?'' She claimed a full column of black.
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna gasped and said, ``He was just a baby! Barely over a century old and gone already. Too soon, much too soon.'' Two diagonal lines of white flipped onto the board.
|
||||
|
||||
``You see my point though. Phys-side, 120 is an incredibly long life, but here you're just getting to the good stuff. I don't think everyone is as worried about losing an entire year as someone phys-side would be coming out of a coma. Because to us, a year is a drop in a bucket of time. Inconvenient, yes, but devastating, no. It is the loss of the promised years of those that disappeared that weighs heavy on us. The collective potential of billions of immortals snuffed out that has us weary to our bones.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann placed her last black tile, but it could only flip over one tile. She could tell Joanna was going to win a few turns ago. When Joanna placed her last tile, she didn't even flip over the tiles. Instead, Bethann flipped them for her as she talked.
|
||||
|
||||
``I suppose I could see that. If I'm being honest, I had a similar reaction recently. The day after New Years, I realized that I hadn't turned off my reminder for NaSRFS coming over to play cards. When I got the notification ping, it took me a moment to realize that he wasn't coming. Then that dovetailed into thinking about all of the other weeks left in the year where I would not see him and I felt myself a fool. Both for forgetting to turn off the alert and for grieving time that was not spent.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna looked to be on the verge of tears. Bethann reached out a hand across the table to comfort her, patting her hand gently. Joanna let the moment last for a second and no longer, immediately pulling her hand back towards her pack of cards. She was upset at the fact that Bethann had managed to get her to let her guard down and show her sadness. The last person to manage that had played her. Composure regained and wobble gone from her voice, she said, ``One more game. And this time, I get to choose my favorite.''
|
||||
|
||||
It was a dare. An invitation to dance along the edge of their shared grief at their limit. To play a host's favorite game in their own house was incredibly dangerous.
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann steepled her fingers and breathed out through her nose slowly. ``I do hope I don't regret this, Joanna. But I'll bite, what game are we playing?''
|
||||
|
||||
``Texas hold `em poker.''
|
||||
|
||||
A small smile at the corners of Bethann's mouth. ``It's hardly interesting without a proper wager.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna shrugged and said, ``I suppose you have a point. Whoever wins the round, gets to ask one question. No stipulations or affordances made or given. If you know the answer, you must talk.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann nodded, ``Agreeable. Deal out the hand.''
|
||||
|
||||
``You know how to play then?''
|
||||
|
||||
``Everyone knows poker, Joanna. Let's face each other properly.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann waved her hand through the air towards the middle of the table, Othello board and pieces vanishing into mist. Her bag lurched to life and coughed out a large pile of multicolored poker chips. With a quirk of her eyebrow and a twitch of her eye, the pile was divided neatly in half. Joanna let the cards fly from the open box to settle in front of them, two face down each. The only sound in the room was the steady ticking of the novelty cuckoo clock on the wall. Each woman peeked at her hand as though it held the secret to the universe. And then, the game began.
|
||||
|
||||
``Ante.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Call. Playing the flop.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Bet.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Raise.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Call.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Playing the turn.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann scowled, ``Fold.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna scooped the wagered chips into her pile. She gathered the cards up with her hands, shuffled them, and offered the deck to Bethann to cut. She tapped the top, declining the offer. Joanna dexterously dealt the cards out to both of them.
|
||||
|
||||
``Ante.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Call. Playing the flop.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Bet.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Call. Playing the turn.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Check.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Check. Playing the river.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Bet.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna shook her head and said, ``Fold.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann snatched the chips in the wagered pile and let them slip through her fingers and clink musically into her personal stash.
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna gathered the cards and handed the pile to Bethann. ``You'll deal.'' It was not a question, but a command. Bethann did not refuse. She bridge shuffled the cards together a few times and then offered the deck to Joanna to cut, which she did.
|
||||
|
||||
They were all business. Only speaking when taking game actions. Each blink of the eyes told a new and complex story. A flick of a card on the outside of the flop before the turn was enough to raise and force a fold. Or the sniffle of a nose was a false tell meant to throw the opponent. Hands kept only on the feeling that the tapping of a foot was excitement and not nerves. The myriad invisible ways in which they both could not help but to give their hands away. Everything that they had learned from each other in the last few hours was put to ruthless, efficient use.
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann started the round, hoping to force Joanna to bet all her chips, ``Ante.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Call.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Playing the flop.'' She dealt out three cards; two of diamonds, jack of spades, and five of hearts. Joanna itched the back of her leg with her foot. Bethann hesitated for a second before removing her fingers from the five of hearts.
|
||||
|
||||
``Check.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Check. Playing the turn.'' Bethann dealt out the next card, nine of diamonds, and took an opportunity to peek at her two face down cards. She noticed that Joanna's eyes had lost some of their edge. Only a sliver, but enough to catch.
|
||||
|
||||
``Bet.'' Joanna tossed her chips high in the air and let them hit the middle pile one at a time. She was teasing Bethann. She wouldn't have it.
|
||||
|
||||
``Raise.'' Her betting was serious and succinct. She used the back of her right hand to push the required chips into the pile. She kept eye contact with Joanna as she moved them.
|
||||
|
||||
``Call.'' Joanna clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth and the chips needed appeared on top of the betting pile. She only had a few chips left.
|
||||
|
||||
``Playing the river.'' Bethann turned over the final card, a 2 of clubs.
|
||||
|
||||
``Check.''
|
||||
|
||||
``No all-in Joanna? Where's your sense of adventure?''
|
||||
|
||||
``I have my own cliches I'm opposed to. Ready to reveal?''
|
||||
|
||||
``Let's see what you have.''
|
||||
|
||||
The two players flipped over their face down cards and they each announced their poker hand in turn.
|
||||
|
||||
``Two pair,'' Joanna said. She had a jack of hearts and a nine of spades.
|
||||
|
||||
``Three of a kind.'' Bethann had revealed a seven of hearts and a two of spades. A hand just good enough to beat out Joanna's. She slumped back into her chair a little, letting the tension from her body relax. Joanna sat and stared at the poker hands for a while, letting the silence stretch on. She broke it by pushing the poker chips from the center over into Bethann's pile.
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann did her best to sit straight up again and said, ``You don't have enough chips to make the ante, Joanna. I've won. Now it's your turn to spill.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna tapped the kitchen table rhythmically with her pointer finger, a frown deeping on her face. ``Go ahead and ask it then.''
|
||||
|
||||
``What actually happened on New Year's?''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna sighed and said, ``I don't know.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann reached for her purse, a scowl had crawled onto her face. ``If you won't play by the rules you set your\ldots''
|
||||
|
||||
But Joanna cut her off. ``I'm not asking you to believe me! I don't know. Half of my network is gone and the other half are scrambling for answers. The information lockdown is tighter than it's ever been. Whatever happened is so important, they've shut down my usual avenues for sniffing it out. Not to mention the emotional state everyone's been in. You try retaining a system log dump file that's trillions of lines long while the agent who brought it to you breaks down into tears on line 555,678,901 because their best friend died and they didn't know!''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann let go of her purse and her expression softened. She could see how frazzled Joanna was from how tightly she clutched her fist. Her eyes, endlessly tired and yet still intense and sharp, dared Bethann to question her testimony. But Bethann knew she was telling the truth.
|
||||
|
||||
``Thank goodness it's not just me. I've personally got twenty-four forks scouring the System for leads and haven't come up with anything substantial. I thought I was losing my touch.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna laughed and said hoarsely, ``I've got fifty-two working overtime right now. The merging has been a bit much to keep up with, but it sounds like they're bringing out the big players for this.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Council of Eight nonsense?''
|
||||
|
||||
``Most assuredly.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Ah, well then. Nothing a change in tactics can't fix right?''
|
||||
|
||||
``Beats moping around all day for sure. Need to use all this restless energy somehow.''
|
||||
|
||||
Bethann stood up from her seat and said, ``This was fun. I didn't realize how much I needed it. I think I'd like to come over again. Perhaps without the spycraft next time.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Oh, come now Bethann. You know that's what makes it fun. Besides, I think that's what he would have wanted.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Same time next week then?''
|
||||
|
||||
``No, I wasn't born yesterday. You'll know I'm game from this series of sensorium pings.''
|
||||
|
||||
Joanna sent over a quick succession of five sensorium pings and watched Bethann's expression turn to one of manic glee.
|
||||
|
||||
``That works for me. Have a lovely night Joanna.''
|
||||
|
||||
``You as well, Bethann.''
|
||||
|
||||
And with that, Bethann stepped from the sim back to her own home. Joanna willed the sim to dim the lights. She puttered back to sit at the kitchen table and brought out the solitaire game once more. After carefully considering her options, she decided to not move the column with the king after all. Instead, she placed a red queen on top of it and drew a new card. She smiled brightly down at the board and her hand as everything started to fall into place.
|
||||
@ -1,121 +0,0 @@
|
||||
She hadn't seen them in\ldots{} well, in years. And yet, here they were\ldots{} sitting on her couch. She swallowed, awkwardly, and took another step closer.
|
||||
|
||||
She was never really \emph{comfortable} around her own forks, even one as sufficiently\ldots{} What was the word again? Right, as sufficiently \emph{individuated} as this one. Hell, they lacked everything she considered \emph{herself}. The brown hair tied back in a scruff was gone, replaced with a shaggy mane shot through with a green streak. The ridiculous clothes, plated with bulky metal and accompanied by a cape.
|
||||
|
||||
Oh, and of course, the fact her fork had turned into a \emph{massive hulking wolf-person.}
|
||||
|
||||
She watched it as it sat on the couch, massive snouted head hanging low, the creature that used to be just like her in every way. They stared glumly down into a space somewhere on the floor. Deep brown fur, almost matching the tone of her skin, was gently ruffled by the breeze of a fan.
|
||||
|
||||
She took a deep breath. ``So\ldots{} um\ldots''
|
||||
|
||||
``I'm sorry.'' The creature's voice was a low rumble, its head raised up to look at her. ``I know\ldots{} especially with everything that's been going on regarding the attack\ldots{} it's hard to put up with an unexpected guest\ldots''
|
||||
|
||||
``Yeah. Well\ldots'' She shrugged. ``I mean\ldots{} It's good to catch up!''
|
||||
|
||||
``I just\ldots'' The wolf swallowed. ``I need to be around people. And you're the only person I know outside of\ldots''
|
||||
|
||||
She nodded as her up-tree's sentence tapered off. ``The game.''
|
||||
|
||||
The single-page announcement lay on the arm of the couch, where her fork had left it.
|
||||
|
||||
\begin{quote}
|
||||
\begin{center}
|
||||
\textbf{Forbidden Sector to Close For the Foreseeable Future}
|
||||
\end{center}
|
||||
|
||||
Hey all. Devteam here.
|
||||
|
||||
No doubt by now you've heard the news; a significant number of our fellow uploaded instances here on Lagrange have permanently crashed from a large-scale terrorist attack inflicted on system architecture. In the wake of the ongoing crisis, we have seen fit to shut down the sim for the foreseeable future.
|
||||
|
||||
All instances will be removed from the sim. Do not worry; your character data will be safe. We are cooperating with systechs and the Council to address what damage, if any, has been done to the game and the toll of those within. A memorial will be constructed in the Sky Palazzo at New Terra, in remembrance of those who are now gone.
|
||||
|
||||
The game will reopen soon enough. Until then\ldots{}
|
||||
|
||||
Stay safe. Keep each other close.
|
||||
|
||||
\emph{— Forbidden Sector Dev Team}
|
||||
|
||||
\begin{quote}
|
||||
What Gifts We Give, We Give In Death (Ode Clade)
|
||||
|
||||
Simon ``Clank'' Knight (Tarot Clade)
|
||||
|
||||
Caela Argent (Tarot Clade)
|
||||
\end{quote}
|
||||
\end{quote}
|
||||
|
||||
Sadie had first played it\ldots{} oh, back in the 2320s. Close to a century ago, shortly after she'd uploaded. It was the sort of space-action-adventure sandbox game every sci-fi nerd dreamed of. Not that she'd ever admit to being a sci-fi nerd, of course, but there was a time when Sadie played it obsessively for a month, and decided to waste no more time on it after one character she played met a spectacularly \emph{explosive} end.
|
||||
|
||||
As a condolence to herself, she created a \emph{single} fork, the only one she would ever create, and told it to have fun while it played, and return once its character had died.
|
||||
|
||||
And, clearly, it had lived and died as many characters, each time returning to the game without merging down. Each death, it rolled a new one.
|
||||
|
||||
Until it became whoever it was in front of her. A\ldots{} the name of the species sat on the tip of her tongue.
|
||||
|
||||
\emph{Loup-Garou!}
|
||||
|
||||
The Loup-Garou were fictional, and absolutely nothing like the species of Artemis encountered a near-century after their creation. Instead, they were a species of anthropomorphic wolves, A concept Sadie found more than a little embarrassing and frankly ridiculous.
|
||||
|
||||
Given that all three of \emph{Forbidden Sector}'s designers had been furries, it was only natural that there would be a species of strong, muscular wolf-people.
|
||||
|
||||
So of \emph{course} the fork of herself she left there would evolve into\ldots{} into \emph{this}. She'd try different techniques for each character, moving to a different strategy or build if the last one failed. Eventually she landed on one character that would survive, after failure after failure, and for some reason that just \emph{had} to be the shaggy-haired wolf person.
|
||||
|
||||
And now that wolf person she'd become was sitting here. In her house.
|
||||
|
||||
She turned back to her bowl of cereal, took a bite, then swallowed. ``So\ldots{} Not that your company is unappreciated, but\ldots''
|
||||
|
||||
``I'll be out of your hair soon enough.'' The fork rubbed its eyes. ``Just\ldots{} need a few days.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Good. Good. I'm\ldots{} I'm glad.'' Watching the wolf person's head turn away, she realized that her phrasing was probably not the kindest.
|
||||
|
||||
``I was just\ldots{} well, apologizing for not really having enough accommodations for you.'' She scooped up more cereal, gulping it down.
|
||||
|
||||
``Mm. It's fine. I lived in a \emph{spaceship}.'' The wolf chuckled. ``Leg room is kind of at a premium there, y'know?''
|
||||
|
||||
``You had a ship of your own? Wouldn't that mean you'd have\ldots'' She feebly thumbed through her memory to try and find the exact game parlance, before giving up and settling on what came immediately to mind; ``A\ldots{} a guild? Why not try rooming with them, I'm sure you'd prefer it over--''
|
||||
|
||||
The whine that escaped the wolf's lips, (\emph{her} lips?) sent a shiver down her spine. Watching her fork's ears fold back was like a cold knife in her chest.
|
||||
|
||||
``Crew's gone, Sadie.'' The wolf shook her head. ``All of them.''
|
||||
|
||||
``All of them?'' Sadie blinked.
|
||||
|
||||
``Vax and the Scrap-Breaker were both taken by CPV. Aska crashed from grief and Charles merged back down with his Root. It's me and Miller left. And Miller\ldots{} won't answer my calls.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Oh. Oh jeez, I--''
|
||||
|
||||
``I'll move out by next week, I just\ldots'' The wolf sniffled. ``I just need to be around somebody right now. I know I'm not the most\ldots{} familiar person to you, despite--''
|
||||
|
||||
``I understand.'' Sadie laid her bowl of cereal down in the sink, immediately rushing over to comfort her alternate self. ``Seriously. I do.''
|
||||
|
||||
As she sat beside the her-that-wasn't-herself, she idly reached over to scratch the ears of their massive lupine form. The wolf shrugged, nuzzling into the gesture. It at once surprised her, and yet made total sense; with enough perisystem manipulation, you could emulate the senses of anything. Even an alien species, with senses of taste, smell, \emph{instinct}, radically different from that of a human.
|
||||
|
||||
Even a Loup-Garou from \emph{Forbidden Sector}.
|
||||
|
||||
And of course, next to her was a version of herself that had embraced that, while she'd rejected it. And of course, even through individuation she could still see the little threads of herself in the wolf. Her fork's dark brown fur was the exact tone of her skin, she still bounced her leg when bored, and she still tapped her index finger against her thumb when she was stressed.
|
||||
|
||||
All this time, she'd thought of the game as a waste of time, something that her fork would tire of eventually. Little did she know that this fork had been forming connections and making friends, just as she herself had, and that those fragile connections were just as easily severed as hers.
|
||||
|
||||
And now, at the turning of the century, after a terrorist attack that had taken the lives of so many\ldots{}
|
||||
|
||||
Her fork was here.
|
||||
|
||||
She was still alive.
|
||||
|
||||
``I'm sorry.'' She leaned over, gripping the wolf. ``I\ldots{} I've made a total mess of things. I never even thought to ask if you changed your name.''
|
||||
|
||||
The wolf blinked. ``Oh. Oh drek, I'm sorry. I'd completely forgotten you don't know me.'' She squeezed her eyes shut in laughter. ``I\ldots{} back in the game, I'd become somewhat infamous. Pirate Queen, you know. Everyone knew me.'' She thrust out a paw. ``Mistress Lissa, at your service.''
|
||||
|
||||
``Sadie\ldots{} I mean, you knew that\ldots'' She sighed. ``Sorry, it's hard getting used to--''
|
||||
|
||||
``I know.'' The wolf chuckled awkwardly. ``It's awkward for me, too.''
|
||||
|
||||
She stared into Lissa's eyes. Her own eyes. ``I really should have sent you a sensorium ping or\ldots{} or something. I\ldots{} I'm sorry for never checking up on you.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lissa shrugged. ``Hey. That cuts both ways. I guess I was scared that you'd see \emph{this} and think\ldots{} Well, I dunno.''
|
||||
|
||||
``I'm\ldots{} I'm just so glad you're still here. I wish we could have met—\emph{properly} met—in different circumstances.''
|
||||
|
||||
Lissa wrapped a paw around her Root Instance, tugging her closer. ``We're here now. No point in looking back, right? We've got each other, no matter what happens.''
|
||||
|
||||
And so they sat, wolf and human, fork and root instance, together.
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user