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 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.

\emph{Or maybe I'm just anxious,} I thought.

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 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?''

Günay shook her head. ``The DMZ is currently offline.''

Most of those sys-side stared blankly. Harvey, meanwhile, laughed. ``What the fuck does that mean?''

``Oh! The DMZ can be completely isolated, right? That was what they wanted for the launch vehicles. That means that we can also bring it up and down just like the System as a whole.''

``Terrifying,'' he said cheerfully. ``Thanks.''

Günay, looking baffled, asked, ``Why's that terrifying?''

``Have they been brought back online with this start-up?''

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 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--''

``Can you prevent 8-stanza-1 from entering the rest of Lagrange?'' Debarre asked. ``I'm with Harvey in that it's kinda terrifying, but I also don't exactly want them over here, either.''

Jakub bowed. ``That's already been implemented, though if you want to lift it in the future, you will need to consult with phys-side. That's how it was designed on the LVs, after all. For this reason and for our sake, I'd like to ask that you keep us — phys-side and the System Consortium — up to date with whatever decisions you make regarding the DMZ and 8-stanza-1.''

Debarre shrugged. Harvey scoffed. Jonas Ko grinned, leaning back in his seat, saying, ``Sure thing, Jakub.''

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 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.''

``I don't know,'' she said, shrugging. ``It was all super old code. My guess is that it was leftover from the first few years of the perisystem architecture.''

Dry Grass nodded. ``I remember when we were able to look up everyone sys-side. We used to do it to see if anyone we recognized had uploaded in the last week.''

``And they did all of this in a few months?'' Need An Answer said, gently steering the conversation back on track.

Jakub shook his head. ``We don't think so. They were the only one from Our Brightest Lights to upload, but they had the rest of OBLC working with them, plus a dozen other collectives and some individuals besides. I don't know the specifics, but I imagine it took them well over a year to organize everything while still keeping it under wraps.''

``That much work, though, and they can't have had just one person working sys-side,'' Debarre said, brow furrowed in a frown. ``Are you sure they're the only one out of all those collectives and people that uploaded? Wouldn't they have to have sympathizers and so on here?''

``We are working on it,'' I Cannot Stop Myself From Speaking, who had until this point in the meeting been silent, replied. The bobcat's expression remained impassive, but it was hard to miss just how sharp her fangs were with the anger evident in her voice. I was happy to see that she at least looked away from Debarre as she said this; the anger seemed instead to be directed at no one in particular, or perhaps the world as a whole. A world that would permit such people to exist. It was an anger that veered well into vindictiveness.

Need An Answer, perhaps sensing the tension this inspired, moved smoothly down her list. ``The next point that we would like to discuss is the sentiment that has crept into the System based on the news of an attack. I must admit that we found it frustrating to hear just how much phys-side knew in comparison to what we had been told. Günay said,''There is some suspicion of malicious actors, yeah. I say `suspicion' in earnestness, I promise.'' Mr.~Strzepek stated that certain data were to be withheld from both sys-side and phys-side.'' A smile, condescending, curled the corner of her mouth. ``And here we learn that news of the attack was released some weeks ago, phys-side.''

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 and enforced via NDA inhibitors.''

Answers Will Not Help rolled her eyes. ``Tacky.''

``I suppose I ought to thank you for telling me the fucking truth after,'' Jonas Fa said cheerily. ``Good on you, Jakub! Perhaps there \emph{is} a bone in your body, even if it isn't your spine.''

The admin bristled at the insult, visibly forcing himself back to calmness before he continued. ``You'll remember that I also said we were maintaining information hygiene.''

``Oh! Of course, you're right. And whose idea was that?''

``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 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.''

Jakub stiffened. ``Which is precisely why we tried to control the release of information.''

``Oh, we are not mad at you for that!'' Answers Will Not Help said, laughing. ``Good job on that front, we know well how difficult that can be. We are mad at you for being a fucking coward and withholding that information from \emph{us}.''

``But the Consortium--''

``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 \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.''}

\emph{``They really like her, don't they?''}

A hint of a smile touched her face. \emph{``Do you not, my dear?''}

\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.''}

``There are joint commemorations already in the works,'' Abd al-Latif, one of the representatives, was saying. ``Serene; Sustained And Sustaining has volunteered an unfinished sim that was under construction by one of her lost instances as a memorial, and has been talking with a docent phys-side about a permanent AVEC channel open with one of their memorials.''

``That would be lovely,'' Dry Grass said. ``The loss affects both worlds, does it not? Every loss up here represents someone who once lived phys-side, who left behind family and friends. Will there be a posting of these commemorations? I know of many — myself among them — who would attend as many of them as possible.''

Abd al-Latif bowed from where they were seated. ``There will be, yes. We'll work with you and Sedge to get that posted and pinned.''

``It'd be nice to get some stills from those off to the LVs as soon as they begin,'' Sedge said.

``Of course,'' Need An Answer said. ``And on that note, all messages from the LVs have been ungated, but, in order to prevent individuals from being flooded with all of them at once, they are being maintained on a request basis, and instructions will be posted to the feeds for how to access them\ldots now.''

I sat up straighter — as did several around the table — and checked the feeds. Pinned at the top of several of the larger feeds were instructions for accessing messages. It was close enough to accessing an exo that I was able to access mine almost immediately.

Two from Reed and Hanne on Castor, three from Reed on Pollux, several from friends. Plus eight from Marsh\#Castor and five from Marsh\#Pollux.

I felt a hollowness swell within my chest as I sank back into my seat. Around the table, I watched similar reactions from others. Knowing that it would likely leave me hurting, I cautiously opened the most recent of the letters from Marsh.

\begin{quote}
The Marsh clade,

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\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.}

Around the table, silence held for a long moment, faces blanched, tears flowed.

After another few minutes, Need An Answer stood from her seat and bowed deeply to all present. ``My friends, there is much to process in these letters, and there will be much to process in the months upcoming as more trickle in. I wish you all the best, and should you need to step away, you are free to do so. However, there remain two points on our agenda that I would like to address before we call an end to the meeting.''

Two representatives stepped away immediately while the rest of us worked on mastering our emotions.

``The next item on our list is the topic of information consolidation. Mr.~Strzepek and Ms.~Sadık, what can you tell us of this working group that has been set up?''

Günay visibly brightened, leading Jakub to nod towards her. ``Yeah! That was one of the things I helped start.''

Need An Answer smiled. ``Then I suppose we have you to thank.''

Still grinning, she nodded. ``It started as part of the information we gained from the LVs, a sort of library of ideas that had been sent our way, and then it grew to digging through the Artemis library. Both of those were what helped bring losses down from their initial numbers. There've also been a bunch of phys-side engineers here and on Earth that have been contributing.''

``And I am assuming that we will be looped in on this, yes?''

``Oh, of course, I willll\ldots{}'' She squinted off into the middle distance, then nodded decisively. ``I've granted you admin access, you can loop in whoever you would like.''

``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 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.

``What do you mean?''

``What of those times when you spun up Lagrange and kept it up for days or weeks before stopping it again? Did you keep the information from us? From all those systechs who were working?''

I could read the tightness in her face, the hope for news of In The Wind.

``Oh. There's some of that in there, too, yeah, though you need to understand that, in most cases, we had to restart back from the crash, which meant there was a lot of bringing the systechs up to speed, rather than them generating new ideas. A lot of it was time spent automating their work so that the System came back at as close to full potential as possible. This last restart began a week before you remember with only a few systechs running through final attempts to recover instances before the boot process completed.''

Selena leaned forward. ``That's fascinating. Which systechs, though?''

Günay furrowed her brow. ``I don't remember off the top of my head, but I can get you the list.'' She paused, adding almost bashfully, ``Though their memories were also trimmed.''

``Why?'' Answers Will Not Help snapped, rising to her feet.

She shied away from the Odist. ``Because\ldots because everyone in the System went through that. We could only do a batch job. The only filter we were able to manage before losses started to grow was for those who uploaded in those 15 minutes to prevent neurological damage. I'm sorry, nothing nefarious, I promise\ldots{}''

Jonas Fa rested a hand on Answers Will Not Help's arm, gently pushing her back into her seat. ``Thanks, Günay. We're going to trust you on that, but we may have questions later, okay?''

``Right,'' she said, sounding small.

``Mr.~Strzepek,'' Need An Answer said, guiding focus over to Jakub. ``Can you please tell us about the proposed changes to the System Consortium?''

He nodded impassively. ``Yes. We're working on more tightly integrating any System leadership into--''

``Let us stick with the term `representatives', please.''

Wrong footed, he blinked a few times, then continued. ``Any System\ldots representatives into the Consortium board.''

``How do you propose to do that?''

``We'll discuss that.''

Need An Answer smiled, and the blandness of her smile spoke of contempt. ``What a lovely opportunity we have to start right now, my dear.''

``Right,'' he said through gritted teeth. I could almost feel the higher-ups breathing down his neck to cooperate. ``The two proposals are for a permanent AVEC connection to Consortium headquarters in Trondheim and to set up an instance of the System in the building allowing the\ldots representatives to exist within the building's physical space. The former could happen immediately, the latter will take five years or so.''

Jonas Ko tilted his head, eyebrows raised. ``A secondary System? Collocated instances?''

``Yes, connected by an Ansible connection with Lagrange. It's the same technology that would allow us to divide up the physical components of the System for safety's sake, after all.''

``Jesus,'' he murmured, echoed by several others around the table, leading to quiet laughter. ``Not sure how to feel seeing everyone taking so much interest in us.''

Jakub bristled again, and this time didn't try to hide it. ``Screw you, Jonas. You keep acting like I'm working against you, when all I'm doing is trying to manage the situation. I took this job for a reason, I \emph{care} about the System, despite what you keep implying.''

Jonas Ko gave him an almost coy look. ``Jakub! You sultry minx, finally, I see a hint of that spine. You're right, you're right. We'll let up a bit.''

``Ignore him, no way we are letting up on you,'' Answers Will Not Help said. She said it with such playfulness, though that it seemed very nearly to serve as an apology for her own snippiness.

Jakub looked between the two, still gripping the edge of his desk back phys-side. ``We'll talk,'' he said at last.

``Of course, of course. I--''

It was at that point that my up-tree's date wrapped up and he quit, a pile of memories cascading down onto me. I lost track of the conversation for a few seconds as I rushed to slot everything into place. There were few conflicts, but the conversations between me and Dry Grass had been deep and full of subtleties that I wasn't sure I could fully appreciate in the moment.

``What about cross-tree merges?'' I asked.

Dry Grass's attention snapped over to me. Several others around the table turned to look at me, confused, and I realized that I'd interrupted someone.

``Uh\ldots sorry.''

``No, you are alright, Reed,'' Dry Grass said, her gaze still locked on me. ``I believe we were done with that topic. Tell us about these cross-tree merges, Günay. You said that these are already enabled?''

``Oh,'' the tech said, pushing herself up in her chair. ``Yeah, they're enabled. You must be in physical contact with the cocladist you want to merge with, and then both must confirm the intent to merge, and then only one will be allowed to quit. The merge gets offered to the other cladist as with normal merges.''

``I'm assuming that one has to fork first, right?'' Jonas Ko asked.

Günay shrugged. ``I mean, you don't have to. You could just take on the memories without forking.''

``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.''

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 hand in his own.

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/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?''

``I was forked during secession, he was forked in systime 25.''

Answers Will Not Help laughed. ``Yikes.''

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. 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.

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