books/ge.md

Gallery Exhibition
==================

A night on the town. A bar for an aperitif. A light dinner at a modern
restaurant, one of those places with default sensoria settings that turn
up the taste inputs and turn down the visual inputs, so that you eat
intensely delicious food amidst a thick, purple fog. Another bar,
livelier and less painfully modern, for a digestif.

And...

Crowds. Crowds upon crowds. Your own crowd a cell within a supercrowd.
Instances drifting, or perhaps forced by momentum --- theirs or others'
--- along the thoroughfares of a nexus.

And...

A low slung building, a crowded foyer, fumbling for tickets.

And...

Waiting.

And...

Programs.

Explanations. Elucidations. Errata.

Words to chuckle over with your group of friends.

> Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, of the Ode Clade is pleased to
> welcome you to its gallery opening. Tonight, it has prepared for you a
> modest exhibition of its works within the realm of instance artistry.
> This is presented at the culmination of its tenure as Fellow, though
> the name rankles, of Instance Art in the Simien Fang School of Art and
> Design.

And the sound of a door opening.

A short, slight...thing, steps from the next room through one of the two
doors on the far wall and calls for attention. To call it a person seems
almost misleading. It's a dog. A well-dressed dog? A glance further on
in the program offers a glib explanation:

> **The artist**
>
> This gallery exhibition serves as the capstone for Dear, Also, The
> Tree That Was Felled, of the Ode Clade in its role as fellow. The
> fellowship in instance art was created specifically for Dear in
> recognition of the excellence it brings to the field.
>
> Dear's instance is modeled after that of a now-extinct animal known as
> a fennec fox, a member of the vulpine family adapted to desert living.
> Dear has modified the original form to be more akin to that of humans.
> The iridescent white fur appears to have been a happy mistake.

Well.

That's a thing.

Anyway.

*"If I may have your attention, folks."* You're not sure how or why, but
it speaks in italics. It's...but that...nevermind. *"My signifier,
or...ah, name is Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, or just Dear. I
come from the Ode Clade of Dispersionistas, and am a Fellow of Instance
Art at the Simien Fang School of Art and Design.*

*"An artist is, one might say, one who works with structured experience.
A play is art, as is music, as both are means of structuring experience
in a certain way.*

*"So, also, is instance art. It is a way of using dissolution and
merging in such a fashion that the experience of forking --- or of
witnessing forking,"* it gives a polite nod to the room. *"Becomes
structured, becomes art."*

*"Before we begin, I would like to take a small census of those present.
This is for your own sakes as well as for that of the artworks, such as
they are. We'll let them know. Could you please raise your hand if you
consider yourself a Tasker?"*

A scant few hands go up in the air, all huddled in one corner of the
room. Perhaps a group? A group of their own?

Uncomfortable titters waft through the...the audience? The ticket
holders, at least. Talking about dispersion strategies is not something
one usually does.

Dear holds its face composed in a calm, polite expression.

*"Trackers? Raise your hands, please."*

Of those who remained minus the Taskers, perhaps a third raise their
hands. Several individuals, a few distinct groups including your own.
That leaves well more than half belonging to ---

*"And Dispersionistas?"*

Sure enough, large numbers of hands lift into the air. The
Dispersionistas are a vast majority, and surround most everyone else in
the room, minus the Taskers, who remain off to their own side. The
audience seems to be mostly fans of the work."

Dear gives a brief blink, likely saving a tally of represented
dissolution strategies to some exocortex for other instances to access.
It smiles kindly at the audience, *"Thank you. Now, if you would be so
kind as to follow me, I will be happy to walk through the gallery with
you."*

Dear turns adroitly on its heel and without a moment's hesitation,
forks. A second, identical instance appears to its left and finishes
that turn in perfect synchrony.

A small wave of applause begins. To fork so casually and continue to
move in lockstep bespeaks no small amount of practice with the
procedure.

It doesn't last.

One instance of Dear (the original? maybe?) heads through the left-hand
door and the other (the fork? it's so hard to keep track with all these
people) steps through the right door.

-----

And here perhaps we must take a step back and acknowledge the fact that
this is all very strange, because it certainly is. Because it's
confusing. Because it's opaque. Because perhaps you aren't even sure
what these terms mean, even now. Because, like all love stories, it's so
very easy to get lost. Like all love stories it's told from multiple
angles. Like all love stories, despite time's true arrow, it
nevertheless is at its very core, nonlinear.

How do you remember it, these many years later? How do you take the fact
that so much happened simultaneously that night and you merged so
incautiously after that even your very own memories argue with you? How
do you square "love story" with "corrupted memories" and still love the
one you do?

You take a step back and acknowledge it.

You acknowledge it because you forked. You followed both Dears, damn the
consequences.

The room you wind up in is smaller even than the foyer, and the
ticket-holders have to press even closer together. The audience that
winds up here is the least diverse, containing none of the Taskers and
very few of the Trackers who wound up at this (apparently primarily
Dispersionista) event. As such, the press is met with uncomfortable
silence: one doesn't normally talk about dissolution strategies with
strangers, but Dear has deftly forced it to be an issue.

There's no sign on the fox's face that it knows what it has done. Just
that calm, polite smile. Curious. How can one know that a fox is smiling
rather than snarling or something, much less that the smile is polite.
Perhaps styled after those old cartoons of anthropomorphic animals, or
simply just an impression.

*"Thank you. Much cozier in here."*

Many of the proclaimed Dispersionistas are grinning at the trick, and
even several of the Trackers are smiling.

*"My only request is to not fork during the duration of the
exhibition,"* Dear continues, giving a knowing glance to some of the
Dispersionistas. *"Exigencies aside, of course."*

A thought crosses your mind. Perhaps it's the drinks, those hip and
strong aperitifs and too-sweet digestifs.

Well, hell. It's hard to take a fox standing on two legs seriously when
it gives you instructions

...

This all seems rather ridiculous, when you take a look at it. Instances
as art?

...

You're not as smooth as Dear, but you manage to step a little further
away from one of your friends, leaving enough room for you to bring into
existence your own second instance.

For a moment, you aren't sure quite what happens. After a second, things
start to click into place, though.

A mere fraction of a second after you forked, Dear also forked,
instructing its instance to come into existence in a space overlapping
the space that your instance already occupied. This sort of thing is
very much frowned upon and, in most public areas, impossible to even
pull off.

As it is, collision detection algorithms whine in protest and force the
two instances apart with some force, causing a cascading ripple of
collisions, spreading complaints of personal space. The room has safe
settings, at least, and the collision detection algos register a bump at
least a centimeter before one body touches another.

The Dear at the front of the room is smiling beatifically, but the one
confronting your instance has undergone strange transformations. Its
eyes are bloodshot, almost to the point of glowing red. It's mouth is
gaping, lips pulled back in a snarl, muzzle flecked with froth. *Rabid,*
you think. It has lost most of its humanity, though it remains on two
legs.

You let out a shout, but it's drowned amid a chorus of other yells and
screams.

Post-humanity, confronted with humanity regressed feels a special kind
of fear, and as the feral Dear herds your instance toward the back of
the room, back toward the foyer, the other ticket-holders (*though
perhaps 'audience members' is the correct term once more*, you think, as
you struggle to send a SIGTERM to your instance amid the distraction,
fail) surge forward toward the original instance of Dear.

It's still smiling.

It opens the next door.

The crush is far more intense than expected, as you find both halves of
the audience rejoined and dumped back into a dark and already crowded
room.

Already crowded with several instances.

Dear has forked itself several times and each of those instances are
forking again, until there's easily twice as many instances of Dear as
there are audience members.

The noise doubles and then doubles again as the instances start charging
at and pinning audience members against each other and the walls,
herding and shouting, all with bloodshot eyes, bared fangs, inhuman
snarls.

It's loud and dark and panicky.

Some try forking. And the new instances are ganged up upon, charged at,
with twice the intensity as the parent instances. Most quit.

You realize that these instances of Dear are not actually attacking to
harm the audience. There are no syringes, no coercion to quit. Just
exercising, violently, the collision detection algorithms in the room,
which are still set safe.

This makes you *furious*.

Without even thinking, you reach out a hand and grab one of the
instances of Dear by the scruff of the neck and drag it to you, giving
it a good shake as you do so.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" you shout into its face?

The fennec snarls at you and, with surprising force, grabs your forearm
and, using itself as a pivot, swings you around through about a
quarter-circle's arc. It keeps its paws on your arm, one on your elbow
to keep it straight and one on your wrist, and shoves you back by
lunging forward.

It lets you go and, in one complex motion, aims a swipe at your face
with one paw while the other slams, palm flat, against its jacket
pocket.

Something happens to the floor beneath your feet.

You fall.

The room into which you and this feral Dear fall is cylindrical. Walls
of concrete, floor of packed dirt. the part of your mind still working
on an intellectual level finds this funny, cliché.

That's also the part of your mind that notices the default settings for
sensoria and collision in this room are much, much different than the
previous room. Full sensation, with collision detection algorithms
turned way down.

A room set for battle.

You grin wildly.

*Good,* you think. *Let it hurt. This 'exhibition' goes way beyond what
it should.*

Dear only growls.

There's no circling, not yet. You two simply collide and have at each
other. You with punching fists and knees attempting to find a groin (the
fox is genderless, you guess, but perhaps that still hurts). Dear with
blunt, scratching claws and not-so-blunt teeth.

You have the advantage of size, and Dear has the advantage of speed. And
teeth and claws worth wielding.

It leads to an even draw in the first match, until you fall back from
each other and do the circling. Dear has lost all sense of humanity, to
your eyes: hunched over like some werewolf out of a movie, fancy shirt
torn, tail frizzed and lashing about, claws and teeth bared, slavering.

For your part, you fall back on what little you know of martial arts
(mostly knowledge gleaned from fiction media, if you're honest). You
keep your back away from the fox, keep your fists up to guard your face,
keep slightly turned to minimize your profile.

You lunge.

Dear lunges a heartbeat later, and you press your advantage with a kick.
Your foot impacts the fox in the side, just above the pelvis.

Dear lets out a satisfying --- and satisfyingly inhuman --- yelp of
pain, collapsing on the dirt of the floor and whining for a moment.

You move to kick it again, but it rolls to the side and staggers back to
its feet, landing a good swipe of its claws along your cheek and up over
your ear, tearing flesh.

Shaking your head to try and dislodge the spinning sensation of jarred
senses, you stumble back to press your back against the wall and gain
yourself a moment.

Dear does not permit this. The fox scrambles after you, deceptively
quick, and leaps toward you, aiming to land with both its feet (or
footpaws?) and paws against you, mouth open wide to bite.

You try to roll to the left but don't quite make it all the way away.
Dear's right paw catches on your shoulder while it's left softens its
landing against the concrete of the wall before latching up around your
neck.

It's an inopportune angle, but you feel it bite at you anyway, getting
most of your shoulder at the base of your neck.

The pain of it's teeth lodging in your skin is enough to make you cry
out. Its got enough of your soft tissue in its muzzle that the contact
is solid and, despite your attempts, you can't swing it free.

You feel its right arm slip away and are too busy trying to gain the
advantage to realize why until the paw swings back in front of you.

When you see the syringe, you panic and fork.

As does Dear, and now there are two of you, two fights, two dances.

You scramble frantically to get away from the fennec, but its grip
around your neck with its arm and its teeth is too strong.

You raise both hands to block the syringe as it darts inward, hoping to
either knock it out of Dear's paws or at least buy yourself some room to
squirm away from the fox.

You're too sluggish, too clumsy. After all, it doesn't matter where the
syringe lands. It's only a sigil, an item holding a bunch of code.

A bunch of code that will attempt to crash your instance.

The syringe strikes you square in the sternum just as you force Dear's
arms away.

The fox immediately quits.

Fading, leaving you to crumple.

The world around you dissolves into voxels, each of which steadily gets
larger and larger

The voxels step down in intensity until they fade to a dull grey.

Dying is no quiet affair. It's loud, painful. Surprisingly so.

Your instance, this body, is crashing in spectacular fashion. Every last
bit of your sensorium is lit up like a Christmas tree, but the pain goes
beyond that. It's a pain of existence, of the need to continue existing.

Those expanding rings of colored black speed up. The black somehow
increases in brightness. You cry out into it.

Perhaps this is why you were instructed to send a forked instance.

Fin.

Fin for now.

Fin for this you.

-----

But, but, always another but.

But there is more than that you. You forked, after all, yes?

Yes.

Yes, and your heart falls as you see that you crumple.

There is more than that one Dear, too. You see, this is the danger of
love stories. This is the danger these days. Time is funny. Space is
funny. Nonlinearity was always the warp and woof of the world, but now
your face is rubbed in it, the multitudinous aspects of post-humanity
ground up against your nose in some strange punishment.

To your relief, that second Dear also quits.

Moving faster than you thought you could, as though some latent instinct
had kicked in, you swing your arm up across your front and strike Dear's
forearm square on with the bony ridge of your own arm.

The syringe goes scattering. You tear away from Dear and leap after it.

Scrabbling on the ground, you catch sight of the syringe as it
dematerializes.

Objects only do that when their owners quit.

You whirl around just in time to see the hazy, ephemeral shadow of Dear
fading away.

The fox quit.

You let out a yell of triumph.

And now you're alone.

You stumble back to the wall and sag against it, breathing heavily and
assessing the damage. A few minor scratching here and there, and then
the two major wounds: the scratch up along your cheek and across your
ear and the bite against your neck with its several small puncture
wounds.

You set to work patching yourself. You fork from a point just before the
fight, explain to the instance that you need to fix, that you'd like it
to merge and retain all of your memories and experiences.

This takes only a few seconds.

Once you're finished, another instance of Dear appears. On closer
inspection, it appears to be the original version of Dear. Dear-prime,
or something.

You've calmed down enough that you don't immediately leap at it, though
you do drop into a defensive stance.

It smiles kindly, saying, *"You may calm down, now."*

"Like hell," you growl.

*"No, seriously. Remember where you are. This is an exhibition. This is
an exhibit."* It gestures to the room. *"You're an audience member. Even
audience members have roles to play."*

You furrow your brow. So wrong-footed are you, the rolling boil of your
anger drops almost immediately to a simmer. "Like a play..."

*"Like a play."*

"So you knew we'd fight?"

*"I knew a fight **might** happen. I encouraged a fight to **actually**
happen."*

You raise your fists again, but you feel the changes in the room.
Collision algorithms back on conservative, sensoria turned down. "You
encouraged a fight?"

*"Mmhm."* Dear --- perhaps even Dear-prime --- nods and strolls casually
about the room. *"You didn't make it to the unwinding room, so I'll
explain here. Stress is the easiest way to force decisions to be made. I
forced you to decide, didn't I? I forced you to interact with an
instance, and I'm forcing you to interact with me, now. Two instances,
two interactions."*

It walks over to a wall and gives it a push. A panel of concrete swings
aside to reveal a set of stairs. It gestures, smiling kindly. *"There's
more to it, but a good artist never explains. Artistry lies in the
perception, and someone's watching."*

At that, it quits.

You drop your arms and sigh, thinking for a moment before heading for
the stairs.

-----

But now, we're back at the beginning, aren't we? We're back to that
first fork, when it all seemed so simple. We're back to the choice of
the two doors, and the other instance of yours, that one follows the
other Dear through the door to the left.

You, smirking, take the right.

The room you wind up in is smaller even than the foyer, and the
ticket-holders have to press even closer together. The audience that
winds up here is the most diverse, containing the entire group of
Taskers who wound up at this (apparently primarily Dispersionista)
event. As such, the press is met with uncomfortable silence: one doesn't
normally talk about dissolution strategies with strangers, but Dear has
deftly forced it to be an issue.

There's no sign on the fox's face that it knows what it has done. Just
that calm, polite smile. Curious. How can one know that a fox is smiling
rather than snarling or something, much less that the smile is polite.
Perhaps styled after those old cartoons of anthropomorphic animals, or
simply just an impression.

*"Thank you. Much cozier in here."*

Right.

The Taskers do not look cozy.

You suppose it makes sense. There are bits of this that appeal to all:
forking for a specific purpose, instances accomplishing goals. This was
flagrant abuse of that in their eyes, however, given that these
instances will likely move on and live their own lives. Independent,
individual instances.

*"I would like to elaborate on my previous point,"* Dear says. *"This
opening is about the idea of instance creation as art, and in that
sense, it's the easiest job I've ever had. Instance creation is art."*

It holds up one paw as though to forestall further conversation. *"All
instance creation. This show is about utilizing that consciously, but
all instance creation is art. It is structured experience. The Taskers,
and I believe you're all here?"* Dear smiles kindly. *"The Taskers are
the tightest adherents to structure. The most baroque."*

Still holding its paw up, Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled forks
once more, an identical copy of itself appearing standing just next to
the original. The instance quickly quits and dissipates. An example,
perhaps.

*"The goal of this exhibition isn't to just talk about that, though,
it's to explore the creative limits of forking as art."*

Dear forks once more, but this time into two additional instances. One
short, lithe human, holding up its hand just as the original instance
still holds up its paw. And on the other side of Dear, a small animal
--- smaller than you expected, the size of a small cat --- that you
suppose is the fennec mentioned in the program, colored in creamy tan
fur. It becomes clear that the primary Dear is a synthesis between the
two.

The human Dear reaches out to shake one of the audience members hands
while the fox dashes toward the crowd, weaving its way between legs in a
good simulacrum of an animal attempting to escape.

Something about the fennec catches your eye as it dashes quickly through
the crowd. It doesn't seem to be following any pattern, but its motions
remain purposeful. It seems to be...perhaps, making eye contact with
each person in the room?

And then it comes to you.

And it looks up to you.

And winks.

Can fennecs do that?

The strange critter holds your gaze for longer than some wild animal
should, or so it feels, but the moment is broken by the soft sound of
Dear clearing its throat at the front of the room.

*"The next room is just through here. If you'll follow me, please."*

It's difficult to deny the tiny critter before you, to tear your eyes
away from it. Easy enough to forget that its an instance of Dear as it
leads the tour onwards. Perhaps if you could just dally a little and get
a closer look before moving on.

And then the explosion happens.

A shuddering bang and sudden flood of smoke behind and to your right
makes up your mind for you.

Turning, you find that the fennec has skittered away to the left. As the
shouts of those nearest the banging noise and cloud of smoke rise up,
you find yourself doing the same, following out of a sense of instinct
rather than anything resembling logic.

Cliché as it is, the lights go out. Perfect.

You, daring, intrigued, perhaps a bit upset, fork. You follow. You keep
heading left, where the fennec was going, pushing past scrambling
attendees to get to the wall. The left wall, you reason, is a shared
wall with the other room, the one which the other Dear had led the other
half of the group through. There's probably a door between the two,
though you hadn't had the chance to get a look, or perhaps you could
break through.

The smoke thickens. It has a lemony, sulfurous smell that, although it's
never something you've smelled before, makes you think of bullets,
grenades, gunpowder.

In the dim light and confusion, you find the wall by abruptly slamming
into it. Indeed, there's a door a few hand-spans away, and a tiny
critter with big ears scratching frantically at it.

You shuffle quickly over to the door, barely able to see for the smoke
and dimness, and grab at the handle, praying that it's unlocked.

The handle turns.

You fall through.

It's a strange sensation to step from a cramped, crowded, loud, dark,
and smoky room into such a space as this.

The fall you took couldn't have been more than a few feet, but even now,
your senses still feel knocked slightly out of place. To have a space
like this, one that's bigger on the inside than on the outside, or
outside when it should be indoors, underground, is certainly possible.
It's easy. It's just also considered incredibly rude. In most sims, it's
even illegal. In this one, you vaguely remember hearing that it requires
a permit.

But here you are.

You and a tiny fennec.

You and a lapis sky.

You and endless green fields.

You and a sunny day.

Outside *and* a sunny day.

The fennec, which had been grooming itself after the flight from the
explosion, gives you what can only be a smirk and another wink, and
starts heading off away from where the door ought to have been but is no
longer.

Nothing for it.

You follow along after the tan beast, the fox looking minuscule amid the
endless grass, nothing but its ears sticking up above the stalks. It
looks out of place amid the green of the grass.

The ground had looked flat at first, but that seems to have just been
the grass all growing to about the same height. Beneath the grass, you
keep rolling your ankle over tussocks and failures in the earth,
stumbling over the fact that the grownd the grass is growing on is
annoyingly uneven.

The fennec winds its way amid these tufts, having an easier time of
things with dainty paws.

Your mind fills with stories, of magical animals, of sleeping for years
and waking up to see the world vastly change. You start to think of the
fennec as its own entity, something completely separate from Dear, from
the exhibition you just left.

*"You're one tenacious fuck, you know that?"*

You look around, some part of you unwilling to believe that the voice
came from the fennec. You had forgotten, lost in your fantasies, that
the fennec was still Dear.

*"Yeah, me."* The fennec continued its dainty walk. *"I say 'tenacious
fuck' lovingly, of course. I like you. You've got pluck. Gumption.
Another you forked in another place, another time. We fought. We kind of
fell for each other. It was fun."*

"Another...?"

*"Not much in the way of brains, though."*

You roll your eyes. The fennec grins.

*"You know you were told to send an instance to the exhibition, right?"*
the fennec asks, casually.

"Yeah," you respond, wary of traps.

*"So why not quit?"*

"Hmm?"

*"Why not quit? Why not merge back with your..."* The fennec pauses and
gives you and appraising glance, *"With your \#tracker instance?"*

You shrug helplessly, realizing the two of you have come to a halt at
the base of a hillock, a rough cave dug into its side. The fennec sits
primly. "This is...this is an exhibition about instances as art, isn't
it?"

The fennec gives a short bark of laughter, looking perhaps most feral at
that moment. *"It is, isn't it? Just thought you'd see it through, hmm?
This exhibit?"*

You nod. You feel ill-prepared for this.

*"I won't lie to you, then. This exhibit,"* and the fennec nods toward
the horizon, toward the cave, toward you. *"This exhibit is just a
frame. It's just a canvas. You're the exhibit. You're the art."*

You catch yourself nodding once again and attempt a more graceful
response. "There's a lot of shows where the audience becomes the cast."

*"I suppose."* The fennec settles down onto its belly, stretching out.
*"That's one way to think of it, yes. I'm not fond of the play metaphor.
Exhibit works better for me and the way I think, since I know who's
watching."*

Just as you begin to respond, the fennec quits. This sim, as a whole,
provides a courtesy feature of a faint outline existing and then fading
after a quit, crash, or failure. That just means you get to fume in the
direction of a slowly fading outline of a fennec, standing at the mouth
of the cave.

The fennec's right, though, you could just quit.

But *you're* right, too, you think. You want to see how instances become
art.

"Cave it is, then," you say, as though this is some sort of
choose-your-own-adventure book or roleplaying game and you have to
follow the available exits.

Ah well.

As far as caves go, this one is rather unremarkable.

You laugh at yourself for having such a thought. The life you've chosen
for yourself does not include many caves.

You drop to your knees, brushing a hand through the last vestiges of the
faint outline of that shitty fox, and crawl past the entrance of the
cave.

It is unremarkable in that it is almost cartoonish in construction. A
low hillock with a rough hole bored in the side, rocks protruding here
and there, worms and roots dangling from the ceiling. Always large
enough to crawl through on all fours, but never enough to stand up in.

*The construction is actually quite well thought out,* you muse. *At
least, as far as cramped spaces go.*

As soon as the cave turns a corner and the light of day behind you is
lost to view, it all seems rather less inviting than it did before. The
air was still before, but now it's stale; cool and moist has become
humid and sticky.

It's difficult to say whether the walls are closing in or whether that's
just claustrophobia setting an assertive hand on your shoulder.

You crawl on.

The ground starts to rise, and at last you think you may be nearing the
other side of the hillock. Perhaps, given the non-Euclidean layout of
the exhibit, an entry back in, or at least back out.

The tunnel keeps rising.

The tunnel keeps going.

Rocks dig into knees and palms

And you keep climbing.

Up and through

You climb.

Nearly vertical.

And, to your relief, it grows lighter.

You hasten.

Up and out.

And fall.

And fall onto the street.

Looking around, you see the building housing the exhibition just behind
you. you hunt for the front door. An instance of Dear putters around
just past the glass doors, picking up programs and generally tidying up
the place.

You go to give the doors a try, but they're locked.

That's why you looped back around, isn't it? To confront that shitty fox
once more and ask it what it meant by *"who's watching"*.

You just want to shake that--

You're fuming, you realize.

You sit down on the curb, taking a moment first to relish the anger, the
self-righteous feeling of bolstered confidence. Then you work on calming
down.

There won't be a fox to confront, and it's as Dear had said: this space
wasn't the exhibit, but the frame. That means you were the exhibit.

Dear ignores you. Your evaluation of 'shitty fox' is reinforced.

You wait.

You sit after the wait grows long.

You ponder visiting another bar.

You lose track of time.

Eventually, you hear voices from the side of the building. Familiar
voices. Your friends. Still dirty from the cave, you despair.

You quit.

-----

But, ah, there was more than one choice made that night, wasn't there?
You forked again, didn't you? You, rascal that you are, followed that
fennec, but you also did not.

The fennec skitters off toward the explosion, toward the shared wall
between the split rooms, and you have already sent a version of you
after it. You want to follow, but you also don't want to deal with
explosions.

Neither does anyone else, apparently, as the tight quarters in the room
quickly leads to a crush and stampede toward the door that Dear has
opened.

Into which you are forced.

The crush is far more intense than expected, as you find both halves of
the audience rejoined and dumped back into a dark and already crowded
room.

Already crowded with several instances.

Dear has forked itself several times and each of those instances are
forking again, until there's easily twice as many instances of Dear as
there are audience members.

The noise doubles and then doubles again as the instances start charging
at and pinning audience members against each other and the walls,
herding and shouting, all with bloodshot eyes, bared fangs, inhuman
snarls.

It's loud and dark and panicky.

Some try forking. And the new instances are ganged up upon, charged at,
with twice the intensity as the parent instances.

You realize that these instances of Dear are not actually attacking to
harm the audience. There are no syringes, no coercion to quit. Just
exercising, violently, the collision detection algorithms in the room,
which are still set safe.

The intensity within this room is nearly overwhelming, and you find
yourself shrinking toward the walls, if only to escape from the noise
and motion on one side.

A few others seem to have the same idea, shifting their ways toward the
walls of the room. They're met with little resistance.

In fact, the instances of Dear seem to be encouraging it, growling and
barking and yelling as they herd the audience to the outsides of the
room.

You make it to the wall with relatively little trouble, and are
surprised only to be jabbed in the back with a doorknob.

Keeping an eye on the action and the aggressive instances of the artist,
you slip a hand back behind you to turn the knob.

The room you find yourself in couldn't be more different. It's a room
where one might feel quite bad shouting and hollering, and most of the
audience gets that at once, quieting down.

It helps, of course, that the combative instances of Dear remain behind
in the previous room, only herding the remaining audience members toward
the door. It's a curious dichotomy of violence in one room and in the
other, well...

Opulence isn't quite the right word. Softness, perhaps? Gentle, relaxed,
soothing.

The room has muted lights --- brighter than the previous room but still
decidedly dim --- and soft, amorphous furniture, none meant to be
occupied individually. The light is cool, the color scheme a soothing
set of blues without being annoying about it.

Dear --- Dear-prime, perhaps, as it doesn't have any of the frothy
bloodlust look about it --- smiles disarmingly and urges the audience
into the room.

Another difference: there's plenty of space to spread out here, rather
than the previous overcrowded rooms.

*"Please, please, take a seat,"* it offers politely. *"Please sit. The
stressful portion of the exhibition is over, and now it's time that we
had a talk."*

There's some grumbling, stress indeed. Some still look warily at the
artist. But folks do as they're told, splitting off into their little
subgroups. Couples and threesomes wind up on couches and love-seats (if
the blobby furniture could be called such) while larger groups wind up
on melty-looking beanbags. You and your group, all single, find a
cluster of such furniture and scatter to the component pieces. You wind
up with a love-seat to yourself and make yourself comfortable.

Dear follows along with the groups. All of them. Forking as they split
off towards the clusters of furniture so that each group winds up with
its own instance of the fox. You notice that each instance is fluffier,
softer, a touch heavier than the original. As a scheme to make the
artist seem friendlier, it works pretty well. The new instances nearly
exude kindness.

You marvel, for a moment, at how easily folks seem to take being shifted
from the context of violence to the context of comfort. That there are a
majority of Dispersionistas certainly explains part of it. The rest, you
suspect, might be due to the fact that, despite those context shifts,
this all took place within the overarching setting of an art exhibit.

Those are meant to be safe.

Dear had said that instances were art, and perhaps that really is the
case: perhaps it's like those plays where the audience plays a role.
Perhaps you and your friends, all of the audience, are the art. Perhaps
Dear only hung the frames.

As if summoned by your thoughts alone, an instance of Dear pads up to
your group and, by your leave, settles down on the cushions beside you.
If it amped up the friendliness of its build, it doubled that with its
face. Teeth muted, whiskers full and slicked back, eyes bigger and
friendlier, ears gone from large to almost comical.

*"Once again, I must apologize for that stress,"* it murmurs to your
group, voice low.

Silence. You decide to speak up.

"What was the reasoning for that? Were we playing a part, like in a
play?" you guess.

The fox smiles, *"You could say that, I suppose. I prefer the term
exhibit, though, as it implies that someone is watching, that you are
being looked at."*

It makes a graceful setting-aside gesture before you can question it on
that, continuing, *"Stress is a means of forcing individuals to make
decisions. If there hadn't been real stress, real risk--"* Again, it
raises a hand to forestall objections. *"--then there wouldn't have been
real art to be made. Your calling it a play is accurate in that sense,
in that plays are art made in real time. This is also that. Structured
experience happening in real time."*

It's easy to feel intrigued: the art itself is intriguing. Beyond that,
though, *Dear* is intriguing.

Dear, with its choice of form.

Dear with its mastery of the mutation algorithms used during forking.

Dear with its casual refusal to conform.

"So what do *you* get out of this, then? This art?"

Dear grins and leans back into the couch, its tail flicking out of the
way and arm draping along the back --- an almost familiar gesture
toward. One that you can't help but notice. One that even your friends
can't help but notice.

*"That, my friend, is a very good question."*

"And do you have an answer?"

*"Not a good one,"* it shrugs, ineloquent. *"Not yet, at least."*

You grin back, "Well? What do you have so far?"

Dear laughs. Your friends roll their eyes.

*"Part of it's integral to us. To all of the 'me's here, to all of the
Ode Clade, to so many Dispersionistas, and, to some extent, to all those
except perhaps the most conservative of conservatives."* It furrows its
brow as if digging for words, *"It's evolving. Identity, I mean. It's
moving beyond the romantic concept of self."*

"Is that why you're not hu-" You stop yourself short, thinking on its
words. "Is that why you've taken the shape of a...a fennec, was it?"

Dear turns itself to sit cross-legged on the love-seat facing you. You
find yourself doing so as well, almost subconsciously.

Your friends stand up.

Dear-Prime, at the center of the room, calls out in a soft voice, *"The
next exhibits are just this way. If you'll follow me..."*

Dear reaches out a paw and rests it atop one of your hands, *"We can
stay and chat a bit more. Don't worry,"* it grins. *"I'm running this
show, I make the rules."*

Your friends are grumbling, already moving to follow Dear-prime to the
next room.

You shrug. Carefully, though, as you're finding yourself loath to
displace Dear's paw from atop your hand. "Sure, why not? Came for the
exhibition, after all. Might as well get the most of it."

You shrug once more, this time to your group, make no sign of getting
up.

They hesitate for a moment, then, frowning, give a dismissive gesture
and wander off to the next room.

"So. Fennecs."

*"Fennecs,"* Dear agrees. *"Though one must be careful to specify
anthropomorphic. Real fennecs are quite small as you remember."*

Dear forks and a fennec --- hardly a double-handful of fuzzy critter ---
appears between you, bridging your knees, back paws on Dear's knee and
front paws on yours. It's tan, rather than iridescent white, and holds
far less humanity about it.

You raise a hand, but it quits before you can touch it.

*"This is intentional. I'm not a fennec. I rather like them, of course,
but I'm not one. I'm an amalgam. I'm something more. Or rather, we all
are, and I'm trying to embody it."*

"So you're greater than the sum of the parts," you hazard. "Fennec and
human?"

*"It'd be better to say that we're all more than human. We may be
post-human, as the old saws would have it, but we're certainly now more
than the sum of the parts of our identities."* It grins, *"Fennec mostly
just because I like foxes, though. All the deep words in the world won't
hide that fact."*

You laugh, giving its paw a pat with your free hand, "Well, hey, if it
fits, might as well."

Dear grins. *"Think it does?"*

"Well, sure," you admit. "Just got me wondering what you get out of it."

You feel your hand drop as the fennec turns up the sensitivity of its
instance and turns down the rather conservative settings of the
collision detection algorithms. You hesitate for the moment, then do the
same, feeling the concomitant sensations of temperature and touch jump
in intensity.

*"Well, I get to be soft as hell."* It grins, *"Seriously, pet me. I
love being a fox sometimes if only for the physical contact."*

You laugh, although you feel yourself blushing as well. After a moment's
hesitation, you pet Dear's paw lightly with your hand.

It's soft. *Very* soft. You keep up those touches. It's hard to remember
the last time you felt fur.

*"All of my intellectual bullshit aside, I think it's very important to
remember the sensuality of senses."* Its eyes half-close in apparent
pleasure. *"When the system was built, there was a big debate as to
whether sensoria should be included at all, whether we should have sims
and rooms and things to look at and touch. Some of the more romantic
uploads argued loud enough that we overrode most of the objections. Pet
my ears, those are softer."*

You move to comply, then pause, tilting your head. "'We'?" you ask,
finishing the motion and brushing your fingertips over the back of one
of the ears once. Then again and again. Dear wasn't kidding about the
softness. You suspect it was a selfish request on its part, as the fox
ducks its chin to tilt its head toward your hands, leaning in closer.

*"'We', yes,"* it murmurs, somewhat muffled. *"The Ode Clade is quite
old."*

You think for a moment, then grin. "You describe them as romantic, but
talk of moving past romantic ideas of self."

*"Do I contradict myself?"* It is mumbling quietly now. *"Very well,
then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. Other ear,
if you please."*

You laugh, earnestly and easily. You slip your other hand from under
Dear's paw, and bring it up to stroke the back of the other ear. The
touch gets a shiver out of the fennec.

"Fennec fits," you say. "Or, at least, soft animal does. You seem to act
a little like how they say cats acted, though."

*"Meow,"* Dear offers, too content to sound sarcastic. *"Seriously.
There's room for romanticism and romance itself within post-modernism."*

You move the hand that was stroking the first ear to ruffle the fur
between the ears, laughing again and joking, "Romance, eh? You coming on
to me, then?"

It laughs along with and shrugs, *"Well, more like...you're the first
one to show interest in me, rather than the exhibition. And I've run
lots of exhibitions."*

Moving gracefully, it leans forward, up onto its knees, and then in
against your front, pushing you back against the armrest of the
loveseat. Its arms slip up around your shoulders. The move startles you
into hesitation, but after a moment, you settle your arms around the
fox's shoulders.

*"But I'm not **not** coming on to you."*

You're at a loss for words.

> I'm flattered, but--

Or maybe:

> You're sweet, you know--

You settle for silence and simply relaxing beneath Dear.

Warmth, softness. "Lonely?"

Dear settles with its muzzle resting alongside your neck. *"Mmhm."*

"Same here," you admit.

The fennec nuzzles in against your neck. Whiskers tickle, raise
goosebumps.

A moment of shared silence and touch. Your hands brush along the fox's
back, imagining how soft the fur might be beneath the dressy shirt.
Dear's blunt muzzle continues those soft rubs against your neck.

It leans up, nuzzling its way to your ear.

*"The only downside to being a fox,"* it murmurs, nose cool against the
rim of your ear. *"Is that it's really hard to kiss with a muzzle."*

And then it quits.

Your arms collapse against your front, through the ephemeral outline of
the fox that remains.

With a shout, you scramble off of the love-seat, shock forcing you to
stand in a defensive position.

The air is cold after the contact.

"D-Dear?" you stammer.

The room is empty.

It takes a moment for you to remember that you're within a gallery
exhibit. That Dear hung the frames in which you're the art.

How cynical of it, though, to build emotional rapport, to tease at the
edges of your feelings, questing at loneliness, and to leave, to do this
for art. You must admit it hurts.

You laugh, forced and bitter.

Lonely, indeed.

You turn your touch sensoria way down and head to the door.

-----

Numb --- or, that's not quite it, more like confused and in pain but
unwilling to feel either --- you shuffle into the final room. Seeing the
pointed ears of Dear over the heads of the crowd fills you with
strangely shaped emotions, which you set aside and move to rejoin your
friends. All of whom, it seems, are set on laughing at your expense.

Not helping.

A group of audience members next to you gives a shout and jumps away
from a spot in the floor as a panel begins a to lift up. A...trap door?
From it, a ragged and slightly dirty looking head peeks up.

Your head.

Your dirty, scraggly, frowning head. It looks upset, catches your eye,
and quits. A set of memories, new and fresh, awaits you, ready for
merge.

You try to get a peek of what's down the hole beneath the floor, but,
other than dirt and rock, you don't see anything before it slams shut.

"Fuck it," you mumble, and merge the memories blithely, ignoring any
potential conflicts. You're hungry for reasons to hate.

A panel in the side of the room gives way and folds back into a
corridor.

No, not a corridor, a staircase. From it steps another audience member,
another you, looking pale, shaken. They do not look as though they would
like to talk, though. Those around them look sullen at being rebuffed,
but that version of you doesn't seem to care.

You send a quick sensorium ping to them, instructing them to quit. They
do so.

You feel that hate begin to simmer.

Once all of the audience is brought back together in this whitewashed
room, with its exposed ceiling, you hear Dear's kind voice waft above
the heads, *"The final room of the exhibition is not participatory.
Please feel free to wander and explore. I-"* It pauses, forks a few
times, each instance smiling, and continues, *"We will be available for
questions and chit-chat. Finally, I would like to thank you all deeply
for attending this exhibition, and The Simien Fang School of Art and
Design for hosting it. SF welcomes you back to any future exhibitions."*

There is applause, then, but it's scattered, confused. Dear looks proud
at this.

You and your friends wander slowly through the room.

Its a square. Equidistant from the walls and each other are four
pedestal, with one more a positioned at the center. Each pedestal is
about waist-height and is just as white as the rest of the room. Images
float a few inches from the top of the one nearest you, so you and your
friends begin the circuit, wandering to inspect each pedestal in turn.

Each is labeled with a simple placard.

The Wanderer
------------

It's a surreal experience, watching your self, your actions, through
someone else's eyes. Sure, there are videos and such, but there's
something a little different about this. The way the 'camera' moves
is...well, it's not a camera. There's no way it could be a camera.

It has to be Dear.

You watch more closely as the recording loops. It starts with a flash, a
point of view very close to the ground. Lots of ankles. Shoes.

Then it moves, quickly and jauntily, dashing among feet and shoes,
pausing to look up into faces. Most give it only cursory glances,
apparently unsure of how to take this tiny animal moving among them. A
few refuse to look at it, clearly disconcerted.

Then there's your face. You look more curious than anything, trying to
figure out this thing before you. The you here, now, stares back into
your eyes through the playback.

You hold your breath.

There's the explosion.

The viewpoint skitters off to the side (lots of ankles, here) and toward
a wall. It seeks out the molding on the floor at the base of the wall,
then the corner where that meets the molding of a doorjamb. There's its
place. It scrabbles at the door, waiting for you, knowing you'll come.

And there's your shoes, with less dirt on them than they have now, and
then the door swings open. The viewpoint leaps through, into sun and
grass, with the shoes (and the rest of you) falling after.

Until now, the playback had been silent, but directed speakers start to
project a little bit of audio, muffled.

*"You're one tenacious fuck, you know that?"* you hear the fennec's
voice from the speakers. Everyone but you laughs.

You hear your discussion with the fennec, heavily obscured by the
crunching of grass and the occasional grunts from yourself as the two of
you make your way through the field. Your discussion on the meaning of
exhibit, of medium, of art versus frame.

The video slides slowly lower to the ground as the fennec stretches out,
then goes dark.

Repeats.

There's a touch of resentment, you feel. That Dear had somehow managed
to record a portion of its sensorium (was that even possible?) and was
playing it back to these strangers.

The Rebel
---------

This pedestal contains a fairly short loop, more obviously taken from a
conventional security feed.

It's hard to discern what happens at first. It mostly looks like a bunch
of people standing still, and then, as if on cue, freaking out.

A closer look, and you feel your cheeks go red. You know what's going to
happen.

There's you.

And there's your forked instance.

And there's Dear's forked instance.

And then chaos as Dear deftly moves the room into strife.

Then the recording loops.

You swallow hard, knowing what's going to come next. You avert your gaze
from the pedestal as you watch the chaos begin again. Your friends jeer
at you, but you don't feel proud at having done what you did.

The Fighter
-----------

As you catch a glimpse of the next pedestal on approach you wince, both
at remembered pain embarrassment. You had not known this would be the
next in line, but you had suspected.

The scene in this pedestal shows fighting, chaos.

Once again, this appears to be a sensorium recording (how had Dear
*done* that?), showing a fight that's far more well-choreographed than
you remember. Seeing it from Dear's point of view, it looks a lot more
like purposeful herding. The safety settings on that room had been so
high that that's about all it had been.

Then the instance's point of view gets whipped around to face you, your
face squarely in its vision.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" You wince at the sound of
your voice, hoarse from excitement, profane, coming from those directed
speakers.

Then the fight begins in earnest.

You're dragged to the center of the room of the fight and then dropped
into the ring, those concrete walls and that dirt floor making your
remembered wounds ache.

This fight is less well choreographed. More jagged.

Except to you. You know.

The details play out on the pedestal with a cool, almost clinical
precision, holding none of the emotion that you had felt. The blows, the
circling, the jumps and scratches.

The syringe.

*"I had to mean to do it,"* says a soft voice next to you.

The fight isn't so far off, that anger not so much less than at a boil
that you don't still have a strong urge to deck the fox standing in
front of you.

It smiles, almost sadly. *"If I didn't mean to do it, you would have
been confused. Maybe there would be victory, but it would've been empty
and hollow."* Dear shrugs, offers an apologetic smile. *"Confusion is
not what was called for, in this exhibit. Victory or loss. Stress and
decisions."*

You take a breath. One of those intentional breaths, the ones where you
breathe out longer than you breathe in. "I think I understand why you
did it," you say, quiet and controlled. "I don't like it, but I think I
understand why."

Dear nods, offers a hint of a bow, and backs away, *"That's my job."*

It retreats into the crowd.

The Lover
---------

Seeing the cool blue hues of the scene above the next pedestal brings an
immediate and uncomfortable reaction. It feels like you swallowed a ball
the size of your fists and it's lodged itself behind your rib cage.

Embarrassment. Frustration. Anger. Loneliness. All in equal measure.

It makes you queasy.

The audience surrounding the pedestal gasps at something

"The instances aren't the art," one of your friends mumbles, and you
turn to them. They shrug. "I don't think so at least. I don't actually
know what the art is."

Someone from across the pedestal offers, "Maybe instances are the
brush?"

Laughter.

*"Instances the brush, emotion the paint,"* says a soft voice. Dear
stands attentively nearby. *"The art is...experiences?"*

"Was that a question?" your friend asks.

Dear shrugs. *"I don't make art because I know why,"* it says, bemused.
*"If I knew why, I wouldn't need to make art, then, would I?"*

"So you're a romantic?"

*"Perhaps you should watch the exhibit again."*

You approach the pedestal just as the loop begins again.

Once again, you're viewing a scene from Dear's point of view.

*"We can stay and chat a bit more,"* the fox says. *"Don't worry, I'm
running this show, I make the rules."*

You watch yourself shrug, say, "Sure, why not? Came for the exhibition,
after all. Might as well get the most of it."

When the instance of Dear looks around, you see that the room is almost
empty, the last folks, your friends, drifting out the door.

The conversation that follows is low on intensity and high on subtle,
emotional cues. You watch yourself and the fox have a slow and easy
conversation about 'why's.

The image of Dear looks down, and you see that it's paw is resting atop
yours.

You clench your fists.

You know that that instance was designed specifically to be likable,
approachable. The big eyes, the softened gaze, the larger ears. You know
that you walked right into that.

But hey, you were lonely and honest. You thought it was lonely and
honest.

That feeling in your chest becomes a constriction, frustration and anger
winning out.

You watch the whole scene again, this time from the other point of view.
You watch your own face as it slowly opens up, as you discuss being a
fox, sensoria, post-modernism and romanticism. and romance.

You watch as the point of view rises, leans in closer to the you
pictured there on the pedestal, watch as it leans in close, into a hug
far more intimate than one would expect from someone one had just met,
two bars worth of drinks aside.

The viewpoint switches to somewhere above the fox and yourself on the
couch, though the audio stays close by.

*"The only downside to being a fox,"* says the instance of Dear, and you
turn around as casually as possible so that you don't have to watch. You
hear, all the same, *"Is that it's really hard to kiss with a muzzle"*

There's Dear, in front of you.

Not the softened overly-kind dear from the blue room. Just normal Dear.
Well, 'normal'. Dear-prime.

It's good because you figure the sight of the kind-Dear in this context
would've made you quite upset.

*"Was that unfair of me?"* it asks. It's done something to the room ---
unsurprising that it would have admin privileges in its own gallery,
come to think of it --- the two of you are in a cone of silence.

"I...well, yes." You try and count the layers of remove from the reality
of what you had experienced, try to calculate the cuils in your head.
The experience, the exhibit on the pedestal, talking to the artist.

You shake your head. Dear waits.

"I'd say you did an admirable job with the exhibition."

*"Admirable?"* It tilts his head, looking almost canine in that moment.
*"I set up a situation --- several, really --- in which audience members
feel emotions toward ephemeral constructs and made it art. I don't know
if that's admirable. It's just art."*

You begin to reply, but it cuts you short.

*"I'm an artist, that's what I do. I'm a person, though."* It's grin
looks weary, *"Also a fox-person, but a person. And I feel like I cut
too deep with that one. Was that unfair of me?"*

Your shoulders sag. Dear waits.

"I don't know," you admit. "I had a few drinks, the exhibit was
stressful. It was supposed to be stressful like you said. Just...it may
have been an act, but I fell for it pretty hard."

Dear waits. You feel discomfited.

"Look, it's just silly, is all. I don't even know why it affected me so
much," you trail off, trying to decide how much further to go on.
"Look," you repeat, shaking your head. "Was it true? What you said? Are
you lonely? Were you earnest? Were you coming on to me?"

Dear nods, simple and straightforward. *"It's perhaps easy for me to
talk about because I rehearsed hard for this shit, but yeah, I'm lonely
as hell. I fork to form relationships and keep myself...I mean, I don't
lie in my work if I can help it."*

It's your turn to wait, which discomfits Dear in turn.

*"I'm sorry,"* it says. *"I did cut too deep. Wasn't thinking. It's not
my goal with these things to damage anyone's trust in instances or in
me. It's just that I don't make art because I know why. If I knew why, I
wouldn't need to make art."*

The fox hesitates for a moment, then sighs. *"I feel really bad about
this. I'm sorry. I'd like to do what I can to regain your trust."*

The weight of decision hangs heavy around your neck, heavy enough to bow
your head. There's very little you feel you can say without making that
decision right then, so you stay silent for a moment.

Finally, "I feel like you're trying to ask me out."

*"I'm not **not** asking you out,"* Dear looks cautious. It smiles
faintly.

So do you.

"Listen, can you give me a night? Let me put some thought into it."

It nods. *"Fair. And listen, I really am sorry. There are bits of this
show that I wrote thinking that they'd lead to one thing, some
spectacular art, and they led to, er, this."*

You nod, saying, "I get that. Kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure
story that got a little out of hand."

Dear shrugs, *"I guess."* It hesitates for a moment, then draws a card
out of it's left pocket, reaching out with its right paw at the same
time, a perfectly formal business card exchange.

You grin and, on a whim, turn down your touch sensoria way up to accept
the card --- a flash of contact information and locations --- and shake
the fox's paw.

It's *very* soft.

The Medium
----------

The fifth pedestal, the one in the center of the room, is four
recordings playing at once.

They all feature you. They all feature the things that you did during
your time here in the exhibition. All of those sly forks and subtle
mergers.

*"Did you think I did not know?"* a soft voice says beside you.

You feel a heat rise to your cheeks. "I...I mean, I didn't--"

Dear holds up a paw, indicating silence. It seems fond of the gesture.
*"I knew."* It smiles. You find it a touch odd that the smile is simple
and kind, not sly and knowing, not triumphant, and you're not sure why.
*"I knew and expected it."*

"Is it okay?"

Dear laughs. *"Of course it is! This is a show on instance art. That's
why it's expected. That's why there's five small exhibits here, not
four."*

You smile tentatively.

*"That was a rather Dispersionista thing to do for a Tracker."*

"I may have had a few drinks before."

*"I suspect a good many of those here did."*

"So why did you allow it?"

Dear spreads its hands in a graceful gesture before clasping them at its
front once more. Its tail, you notice, is swaying behind it, steady.
*"You and I have talked about this."*

"I suppose we have," you mumble, still sorting through the merged
memories.

*"SF calls me an instance artist. Hell, I call myself an instance
artist, but it's not totally accurate. I'm closer to a director, though.
I organize the stage, the crew --- even if they're all me --- and the
choreography. You're the art though, or close enough to it. I won't say
audience, or actors. I don't like the play metaphor all that much, since
the art isn't in the acting. There is no acting."* It shrugs, *"But the
metaphor will serve."*

You nod, watching the multiple feeds play out in their own courses.
There's a card in your pocket, the dot on a question mark of an
unanswered question. None of these videos bring you any closer to an
answer.

After a few silent moments together, you ask Dear, "What are we supposed
to do with our experiences here?"

Dear grins. *"This isn't a lecture. No classroom, no notes, no papers to
write. It's not a tool that you take away to use,"* it pauses, that grin
going sly. *"And even if it were, that's your fucking job, not mine."*

-----

No one seems to have come out of the exhibit unscathed.

A few bear the rumpled look of the recently roughed-up, but with their
safety turned up, that's about as far as the physical effects go.
Rather, everyone within the group looks emotionally bruised, bitten,
scratched. Some look dazed, some hurt, but no one looks blasé.

In that, Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled was successful.

You and your group walk to another bar. Quiet, subdued.

You give the low-slung building a wide berth. Only you came away with
something. Two things. A card in your pocket, and a decision to make.