books/idumea/content/afterword.tex

\chapter*{Appendix I — Notes}
\label{notes}

\paragraph{Page \pageref{prophet}}
From \emph{The Prophet.}

I had originlly intended to use the lyrics from the hymn titled ``Idumea'', which is included in the next appendix, but– ah! For some reason, it did not fit. I could not tell you why, dear reader. Perhaps it was the strong Christian nature of the text after a certain point, which fit strangely for the Odists, notably Jewish as they are. It, after all, is what spurred the language at the end of my\ldots we shall call it a little meltdown at the end, there, yes?

Perhaps it was that, as the story filled out within the middle, it just did not fit. I, Rye, suffered, perhaps. I wailed, ``What will become of me?'' I am the one who was overcome by overflow. I promise you, my friends, I \emph{promise} you, however, that this is not my story. The judgment is upon my head for what I have done, but it is not my story. This story belongs to The Woman.

No. Instead, I chose the words of Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved. The Woman was life and she was the veil. We are eternity and the System is the mirror.\pagebreak

\paragraph{Page \pageref{pinocchio}}
Cf. Collodi:

\begin{quote}
Once upon a time there was—

``A king?'' my little readers will immediately say.

No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. It was not fine wood, but a simple piece of wood from the wood yard,—the kind we put in the stoves and fireplaces so as to make a fire and heat the rooms.

I do not know how it happened, but one beautiful day a certain old woodcutter found a piece of this kind of wood in his shop. The name of the old man was Antonio, but everybody called him Master Cherry on account of the point of his nose, which was always shiny and purplish, just like a ripe cherry\ldots
\end{quote}

\noindent When first I began to write, back when some saner me put pen to paper, I had intended to write the story of Pinocchio in reverse. ``Ah!'' I thought. ``Perhaps I can very heavy-handed with it, too. Should the main character be named Occhioni P.? Will they try turning themselves into a literal puppet? Will they design sims to include the big fish? Perhaps they will find their Geppetto—G. from Oteppe, Belgium—who unmakes them, and then a blue fairy, a sympathetic systech, kicks them into quitting. Will I tell it as a fairy tale?''

We see how well I have stuck to that plan, yes?

I spoke of this with writer friends, and one of them, the ever delightful Seras of the CERES clade, quipped that this sounded just like the escape from samsara, the cycle of suffering, and I was, as the saying goes, off to the races.

Now here I am, once more coming down from my overflow, once more feeling somewhat grounded, the world around once more made of things which are not yet more words, and I have to contend with the reality that this remains, for the most part, a funny little note, and that this story no longer quite reads as that real-boy-to-inanimate-tree pipeline, tired trope that I am sure it is.

\paragraph{Page \pageref{rilke-circles}}
From Rilke:

\begin{verse}
Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen,\\
die sich über die Dinge ziehn.\\
Ich werde den letzten vielleicht nicht vollbringen,\\
aber versuchen will ich ihn.
 
Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,\\
und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;\\
und ich weiß noch nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm\\
oder ein großer Gesang.

\secdiv

I live my life in ever-widening circles\\
that stretch themselves out over the world.\\
I may not complete this last one\\
but I will give myself to it.
 
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.\\
and I circle for thousands of years\\
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,\\
a storm, or a great song? 
\end{verse}

\paragraph{Page \pageref{timo}}
Cf. my own work:

\begin{verse}
Inter ĝuo kaj timo\\
Estas loko de tro da signifo.\\
Apud kompreno, ekster saĝo,\\
Tamen ĝi tutampleksas.\\
Mi kompareble malgrandas\\
Kaj ĝi tro granda estas.\\
Nekomprenebla\\
Nekontestebla,\\
Senmova kaj ĉiam ŝanĝiĝema.

\secdiv

Between joy and fear\\
Is a place of too much meaning.\\
Next to understanding, outside wisdom,\\
It nonetheless expands.\\
I’m so small beside it\\
and it is too big.\\
Incomprehensible,\\
Incontestible,\\
Unmoving and always changing.
\end{verse}

\paragraph{Page \pageref{blake}}
From Blake:

\begin{quote}
Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from Energy.
\end{quote}

\paragraph{Page \pageref{tree-writing}}
I have dreamed of turning into a tree for years and years and years and years and years, now.

For instance, I have written here that I put this dream into verse, and this is true, for here is a segment from a longer work:

\begin{verse}
We'd long since stopped, there by the pond,\\
and your smile was, yes, sad, but still fond\\
as you settled down wordlessly to your knees,\\
took a slow breath, looked out to the trees,\\
and closed your eyes.

Beginnings are such delicate times\\
and I very nearly missed it, no chimes\\
to announce the hour of your leaving.\\
As it was, there was no time for believing\\
or not in the next moments.

Your fingers crawled beneath the soil\\
and sprouted roots, flesh starting to roil.\\
Coarse bark spiraled up your wrists and arms,\\
Spelling subtle incantations and charms\\
to the chaos of growth.

You bowed your head and from your crown\\
sprouted a tender shoot covered in fine down,\\
soon followed by crenelated leaves and fine stems.\\
The pace was fast, implacable, and leaves like gems\\
soon arched skyward.

You sprouted and grew, taking root\\
in one smooth motion, fixed and mute.\\
Your clothing fell away, rotting in fast-time.\\
Naked now, you sat still, committing one last crime\\
of indecency.

Your face, your face! In your face was such peace\\
as I'd never seen, even as you gave up this lease\\
on life, echoed also in my heart of hearts.\\
I did not cry out, nor even speak, witnessing such arts\\
as your final display showed.

Soon, you were consumed, transformed as a whole.\\
Your head a crown of leaves, your heart a bole\\
bored in rough bark and sturdy wood,\\
your fingers, knees, and toes stood\\
as thirsty roots.

I stood a while by the tree that was you,\\
then sat at your roots and thought of all I knew\\
about time, transformation, death and change.\\
I thought about you, your life, your emotional range,\\
your gentle apotheosis.
\end{verse}

\noindent I have also written here that I put this dream into prose, and this is also true, for her is a segment from a short story:

\begin{quote}
And finally, the mirroring was broken as the \emph{her} that was not her slid \emph{her} fingers up over her wrist and gently guided her hand down toward the soil, loamy and damp, and she knew then that she must spread her fingers and dig them down into the earth, there by the stairs which were a finger pointing at God such that she was in turn pointing at…at what? At the owner of that hand? At the owner of that finger?

And as she did so, she felt that the dirt beneath her fingernails took root, that her nails themselves must have been rootlets and that her arm a stolon, that her whole body was the runner for some tree, some entity other than herself, for at that point, she took root.

And her fingers crawled beneath the soil, and drank of the water there, and tasted the nutrients, and found purchase beneath the layer of loam and humus.

And there, her fingers curled around the God-stone, and indeed, she knew it as she felt it, amber with a kernel of pain embedded within.

And even as the bark crawled up her arm, she saw her Doppelgänger stand and smile to her. A dreamy smile; not kind, not cruel, not knowing, not ignorant. Just a dreamy, inevitable smile.

And she felt growth accelerate as, bound now to the earth, her bones became wood and her muscles loosened, unwound, and thus unbound began to lengthen, to strengthen, to arch skyward, seeking stars, seeking God.
\end{quote}

\noindent Do I repeat myself? Very well, I repeat myself. I am beholden to my dreams.

And yet, ah–! When writing the final chapter, even through the heat of the moment and the blood rushing in my ears, I began to feel within a flush of embarrassment. How indulgent it is to share this again! How indulgent, my friends, to let the dream take me again that it might shape my words! Even as I wrote, even as I cried, sitting at my desk (or trying to!), sobbing in front of my words, I struggled with feeling like this was somehow \emph{too} indulgent.

I strive still to stifle that puritanical worrywart within, even so many years on.

\paragraph{Page \pageref{nasturtiums}}
The Musician shared with me a letter and My Friend several journal entries, but, ah–! If I share them here, I will fall once more to crying. You may find them in their entirety in \emph{Marsh}, a work written by a braver me.

I will say, however, that that letter surrounded nasturtiums and was written the night Muse quit, and those diary entries were written by My Friend, a recounting of Beckoning's memories, to comfort The Musician in her grief.

\paragraph{Page \pageref{motes}}
I have written extensively on these hyper-black shapes that The Child paints and more about her besides in \emph{Motes Played}. A little book for little skunks, yes? For she deserves her story told—and just so! Just like this! A tale written in a style befitting her—as much as does The Woman.

\paragraph{Page \pageref{psalm13}}
From Psalm 13:2--4:

\begin{verse}
How long, \emph{Adonai}, will You forget me always?\\
\vin How long hide Your face from me?\\
How long shall I cast about for counsel,\\
\vin sorrow in my heart all day?\\
\vin \vin How long will my enemy loom over me?\\
Regard, answer me, \emph{HaShem}, my God.\\
\vin Light up my eyes, lest I sleep death.
\end{verse}

\paragraph{Page \pageref{qohelet}}
From Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) 1:17:

\begin{quote}
And I set my heart to know wisdom and to know revelry and folly, for this, too, is a herding of the wind.
\end{quote}

\noindent From Qohelet 2:22:

\begin{quote}
What gain is there for man in all his toil that he toils under the sun?
\end{quote}

\noindent From Qohelet 3:20:

\begin{quote}
Everything was from the dust, and everything goes back to the dust.
\end{quote}

\paragraph{Page \pageref{milosz}}
Cf. Miłosz:

\begin{verse}
a nastąpią niewinne wschody słońca\\
nad florą i fauną wyzwoloną

na pofabrycznych pustkowiach\\
wyrosną dębowe lasy\\
krew rozszarpanego przez wilki jelenia\\
nie będzie przez nikogo widziana\\
jastrząb będzie spadać na zająca\\
bez świadków

zniknie ze świata zło\\
kiedy zniknie świadomość

rzeczywiście panie Tadeuszu\\
zło (i dobro) bierze się z człowieka

\secdiv

the innocent sunrise will illuminate\\
a liberated flora and fauna

where oak forests reclaim\\
the postindustrial wasteland\\
and the blood of a deer\\
torn asunder by a pack of wolves\\
is not seen by anyone\\
a hawk falls upon a hare\\
without witness

evil disappears from the world\\
and consciousness with it

Of course, dear Tadeusz,\\
evil (and good) comes from man. 
\end{verse}

\paragraph{Page \pageref{rilke-doyousee}}
Cf. Rilke:

\begin{verse}
Weißt du's \emph{noch} nicht? Wirf aus den Armen die Leere\\
zu den Räumen hinzu, die wir atmen; vielleicht daß die Vögel\\
die erweiterte Luft fühlen mit innigerm Flug.

\secdiv

Do you not understand \emph{yet?} Fling from your arms the emptiness\\
into the spaces we breathe. It may be that the birds\\
will feel the expanded air in more spirited flight.
\end{verse}

\paragraph{Page \pageref{ashes}}
From Dickinson:

\begin{verse}
Ashes denote that Fire was —\\
Revere the Grayest Pile\\
For the Departed Creature’s sake\\
That hovered there awhile —

Fire exists the first in light\\
And then consolidates\\
Only the Chemist can disclose\\
Into what Carbonates.
\end{verse}

\noindent We have always borne an obsession with Emily Dickinson. For years and years, and years and years and years she has lived within us, a remnant of some stage play we performed with our superlative friend, centuries back now.

\paragraph{Page \pageref{baudelaire}}
Cf. Baudelaire via Eliot:

\begin{verse}
  \emph{Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,\\
  Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.}

  \secdiv

  Unreal city, city full of dreams,\\
  Where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passsers-by.
\end{verse}

\paragraph{Page \pageref{graves}}
Cf. Graves:

\begin{verse}
  She, then, like snow in a dark night\\
  Fell secretly.
\end{verse}

\paragraph{Page \pageref{cummings-mbt}}
Cf. Cummings:

\begin{verse}
  i put him all into my arms\\
  and staggered banged with terror through\\
  a million billion trillion stars.
\end{verse}

\paragraph{Page \pageref{x}}
I used for this work a multiplication sign (×) for the section dividers, and, my dear friends, I am still coming to terms with this decision.

There are so many possible meanings!

Are we together, The Woman and I, multiplied? When she and I, when her story and mine, are intermingled, is it some greater story? My lovely readers, I hope so! I really do. I really hope, of course, that my myriad interruptions bear their own meaning and add to the whole of things, that we together are greater than the sum of the parts. I doubt and I hope in equal measure.

Are we crossed? Do we as ideas lay across each other perpendicularly? The Woman fell into stillness and I fall still through eternal, jittery, restless movement. The woman set aside her agency, in the end, and I strive for any sense of control over myself, my language, my words and sentences and paragraphs and stories. We are diametrically opposed in so many ways. We cross each other, our paths cross each other's, we approached at a ninety degree angle, and, in the end, departed at such an angle.

Are we set beside each other as some fictional love? Some two characters set within fan fiction who love each other in a way pure or unchaste in others' minds? Do I love her? Do I love The Woman? Did she love me?

I do not know, my dear readers. I do not know these things and I do not know many more.

Perhaps, though, perhaps the × stands for the decision that I made. It is the role I played in letting The Woman, that beautiful soul who bestowed a blessing with every smile, step away from the world, for removing those blessings from us, that beauty from us, that life, that veil.

I am so, so incredibly sorry, and also rather proud of what I have done, of helping The Woman in so noble an endeavor, in equal measure.

\paragraph{Page \pageref{notes}}
Cf. Nabokov's \emph{Pale Fire.}

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\chapter*{Appendix II — Idumea}

\emph{Idumea} is named after a hymn by A. Davidson with words by Charles Wesley, published in \emph{Sacred Tunes and Hymns: Containing a Special Collection of a Very High Order of Standard Sacred Tunes and Hymns Novel and Newly Arranged} by J. S. James in 1913. Idumea itself refers to Edom, a kingdom in the Ancient Near East. While this has little to do with the story told within, it does sound rather pleasing to the ear, does it not? And so does the hymn, at that. The hollowness of the song with all its open fifths, the raw, coarse beauty that comes with Sacred Harp singing, the beat of the tactus and the ache of the singers hollering out words that nearly yearn for death are what led to the title of this book.

The hymn is reproduced here for reference. Despite being in short meter, the typo of it being in common meter (`C.M.') is retained from its original printing.

\chapter*{Appendix III — Primer}

Post-Self is a science fiction setting involving uploaded consciousnesses and all of the daily dramas that go into their everlasting lives.

This primer is broken into two parts:

\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item Information on the setting (below), much of which was taken from the Post-Self Wiki.
\item Information on the story leading up to \emph{Idumea} (page \pageref{backstory}).
\end{itemize}

\section*{The setting}

Starting in 2115, advances in technology allowed individuals to be uploaded. This is a one-way, destructive procedure. That is, once you are uploaded, there is no going back, and your body dies in the process. Given the ongoing deterioration of the climate on Earth and the fact that, in most countries, uploading is subsidized (one's beneficiaries are provided with a payout after one uploads), this is often seen as a very attractive solution. Other reasons that one might upload is to enjoy the anarchic society on the (deliberately opaquely named) System, the functional immortality offered to uploaded individuals, or some of the mechanics enjoyed by cladists. These cladists live embedded in a giant computer at the center of a space station at the Earth-Moon L\textsubscript{5} point known as Lagrange. There are two smaller versions of the System, Castor and Pollux, which were launched in opposite directions traveling out of the Solar System in 2325.

\subsection*{Cladists}

Individuals on the System are known as cladists. This stems from the fact that individuals can create copies of themselves, and those copies can go on to create copies of themselves, and so on. This leads to a branching tree of individuals, or a clade.

`Cladist' refers to both the original upload and any of their numerous copies, and debates about whether or not cladists are still human are a perennial activity.

\subsection*{Forking, quitting, and merging}

The act of a cladist creating a copy of themself is called `forking', as in a fork in the road or forking a source code repository. This new copy is a complete person. They have their own will and drive to continue living and everything. This is not a hive mind thing: both the original and the copy are true individuals.

That said, this new copy (often called a `fork' or an `instance') is, at the moment of forking, the same as the original cladist (called the down-tree instance, because they are closer to the root). After all, that cladist was one person, right? They are just now two! That means that they are created thinking the same sorts of things and sharing the same ideals. Over time, however, they all start to individuate, learning to appreciate their own things based on the separate experiences that they have.

These new instances of our example cladist also have the ability to quit. This means that they all simply stop existing. But wait! Why would they do that?

One reason is that one might simply want to accomplish a task. Perhaps you are cooking a lovely meal and the pasta needs stirring while you are cutting up the garlic bread. Why, simply fork and now you have two pairs of hands, one to go stir the pasta, one to cut the bread. The pasta thus stirred, the new instance may as well just quit. No reason to stick around.

Another reason is to go and experience other things in the world and then bring back those memories. Quite literally, too! When a fork quits, the cladist who forked them receives all of their memories to incorporate with their own. A cladist may wish to cook their delicious meal, but they are also entertaining guests: they can fork off an instance to go cook the meal while they entertain and, when they are done, quit. The down-tree instance will receive all of the memories of having cooked and all of the feelings about the process so that they know to warn their guests, ``Hey, uh...the pasta is a liiiittle spicy...''

One can only ever merge down to the one from whom one was forked up until 277+42, and after that point, one can merge to any of one's cocladists, but only within a clade.

``But what about the transporter paradox?'' you ask. Post-Self's answer to that is a shrug. The memories live on. All of the experiences live on. One simply lived two lives at once for that time.

\subsection*{A note on those memories...}

One unforeseen consequence of living in a giant computer is the inability to forget. This can start to cause problems as one gets older. And older and older and older...because one is functionally immortal. Even though those memories can be organized, or even storied away in imaginary bins called exocortices to be remembered on demand, the fact that they keep piling up is both a boon and a bane. It is a boon because now, suddenly, you can remember everything! No more forgetting names, no more losing track of items. It is a bane, though, because that can get kind of maddening for your average 300 year old.

\subsection*{Creating}

For instance, they can create just about anything they can dream up. This is not as easy as it sounds, of course; it takes skill to get good at dreaming up very specific things such as strawberries or cars or a pencil.

They can also create sims. These are the locations where they live out their lives. These can be everything from a studio apartment to an entire city. They can be private or public. They can be ornate and finely detailed natural settings or they can be plain gray cubes of space.

\subsection*{Crashing and CPV}

Occasionally, something will happen and a cladist will crash. This is usually not too big of a deal, as it can be sorted out by a systech and the cladist brought back to life.

Contraproprioceptive virus is the only way to kill a cladist. It disrupts their sense of their body and induces a crash, from which one cannot recover. This was patched out in 2401 — alas, that is still a few decades off from this story.

\subsection*{Sensoria}

Cladists engage with the world with all of the same senses that we have. These are lumped together into a sensorium. One of the benefits they have is the ability to share some or all of these senses with another cladist as a form of co-experiencing via a sensorium linkage, or as a tool in the form of a sensorium message. If you want to show your friend what you are looking at, send them a sensorium message to share your vision. Some sims even mess with your sensoria (consensually, of course) to change the way that you see things or how things feel.

\subsection*{The perisystem architecture}

There are some tools included in the System itself in what is called the perisystem architecture.

All of those creations listed above, and even some of these experiences, can be shared publicly on the exchange. This was originally a marketplace where one bought and sold such things with Reputation, a currency put in place in the early days when System capacity needed closer management, though this has since become almost a non-issue.

There are also feeds which one can use to share information, news, stories, all sorts of things! Think of these (loosely) like subreddits.

The perisystem also contains the clade listing. Privacy was an important consideration from the founding of the System, so one cannot simply look up any old cladist and find out everything about them without being granted permission.

Finally, it just plain stores information. Things like libraries are essentially locations to go engage with, access, manipulate, or otherwise play with the information that is always available.

\section*{The characters}

People upload for lots of reasons! Once they are sys-side, though, they settle into society as they will.

\subsection*{It is an anarchy}

There is no way to truly govern such a system beyond the mechanics provided by its very existence, and so it is simply left ungoverned. The forces behind the scenes have largely sought only to guide the System in vague directions, often towards yet more freedom. Rules are per-sim, engagement is optional, and cultures are fractured and finely tuned around shared interests or heritage.

\subsection*{It is queer-normative}

The System allows for endless freedom and endless expression. In such a setting, boundaries such as strict gender binaries, hetero- and mono-normative relationship structures, and even species have been broken down. Trans folks may upload and live as they will as cis folks of their chosen gender, or they may remain visibly and proudly trans. Furries may upload and become their fursoñas (this is a metafurry setting, after all; everyone on Earth is a human, and thus every cladist began life as a human). Plural and median systems may upload and split into component selves, or they may remain plural sys-side. Even names and identity have been queered, and you will often see clades adopting naming schemes such as taking lines of a poem for their forks' names.

\subsection*{Why are there so many skunks?}

If you have seen cladists out and about on the web, the chances are good that you have seen some skunks among their number, usually with long, poetic names. This is due largely to the canon works in the Post-Self cycle which feature anthropomorphic skunks heavily. Several folks have adopted these skunks as headmates or characters for roleplaying.

\secdiv

\section*{The story so far}
\label{backstory}

The story told within \emph{Idumea} is in many ways standalone. However, there are some references and names scattered throughout taken from other books in the setting, and, should you not already know them, learning will deepen understanding.. Here follows some basics leading up to this.

% * Sasha and AwDae
% * The Ode
% * Forking
% * Castor, Pollux, Artemis
% * Death Itself and I Do Not Know
% * The Century Attack

\subsection*{Michelle who was Sasha and her superlative friend}

\subsection*{Life on Lagrange}

\subsection*{Castor, Pollux, Artemis}

\subsection*{The Century Attack}

\secdiv

\noindent Post-Self an open setting, meaning that anyone can create content within it, though the canon is loosely managed in order to keep it consistent. If you enjoyed this story and any of the many others within this universe, it is open for you to write, draw — or paint! — or otherwise create within. For more creative Post-Self endeavors, look no further than \emph{post-self.ink}, and for more information than you could ever want, check out the Post-Self Wiki over at \emph{wiki.post-self.ink}


\chapter*{Acknowledgments}

\chapter*{About the author}

Madison Rye Progress, like your humble narrator, is also struck by graphomania. She is one to wake at all hours and sneak off to her computer or take notes on her phone or simply pace the quiet rooms of her house, lonely, building worlds in her head. She sought relief from the Furry Writers' Guild, from the Regional Anthropomorphic Writers' Retreat with Kyell Gold and Dayna Smith, but they only encouraged her. She sought relief from Cornell college, but they only gave her an MFA in creative writing and pedagogy. She sought relief in her love, Samantha Yule Fireheart, who lives with her in the Pacific Northwest, but they instead spend their days writing with each other, as does she with the Post-Self community, where she meet Krzysztof ``Tomash'' Drewniak and where she curates the canon. 

She, too, wonders if she is born to die. What, dear readers, will become of her? What will become of her? 
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{\DisplayFont\small Madison Rye Progress}

makyo.ink

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{\DisplayFont\small Samantha Yule Fireheart}

everdream.space

\vspace{0.7em}
{\DisplayFont\small Krzysztof “Tomash” Drewniak}

kdrewniak.com

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