## Reed — 2401

I woke, exhausted, to a cup of coffee steaming on the bedside table.

At some point while I'd slept, Hanne had once more split the bed into two separate mattresses and very gently instructed the sim to slide them a few feet away from each other. Perhaps I'd been tossing and turning, or maybe I'd been snoring. I promised myself I'd ask later, then promptly forgot about it in favor of the coffee mug waiting for me.

Coffee and chicory, nearly a third oatmilk by volume. Perfect.

I was two sips in when the weight of what happened hit me once again. I didn't quite know how it was that they had escaped me in those minutes after waking, but a pile of 'how could I' questions started to hem me in again — how could I possibly forget, when this is the biggest thing that has happened to our clade ever? Never mind sys-side or phys-side; ever.

I forced myself to sit up in bed and drink my coffee. I set myself the goal of sipping until it was finished. I stared out the window for a bit. I cried for a bit. I drank about half my coffee before the wait became unbearable.

Five minutes. Hah.

I couldn't quite interact face-to-face yet. Not with Hanne, not with the occasional bout of sniffles still striking me. Instead, I sent the gentlest ping I could manage to Vos, received no answer. 

I tried various members of the clade next. Lily flatly rebuffed me. There weren't any words, just a prickly sensation of solitude and the physical signs of anger. Rush didn't respond, but ve always did sleep better than all of us. Sedge begged another hour's rest, and I acquiesced. Tule and Cress were both asleep.

Well, that was the first layer of contacts. None of us were single, but of all the partners I knew, the only ones I'd talked to in any depth were Vos and Pierre. Beyond them, there was...

I reached out mentally to send a sensorium ping to Dry Grass, only for the perisystem architecture to present me with a series of options, numbering well above a dozen. She'd been busy, apparently, forking as needed throughout the night and– yep, two of those available instances disappeared as they quit, followed shortly by one more new one being added. She was certainly still awake.

*"Good morning, Reed,"* her root instance murmured through a message. *"More well rested, now?"*

*"Best I can be, at least,"* I sent back. *"I, uh...sorry for interrupting. The rest of the clade's asleep and I don't want to pester Hanne any more than I need to, not after last night."*

There was mirth on the other end, some barely-sensed laughter that didn't quite rise to the level of coming through the message. Another tug at my emotions, more leftovers from Tule's merge. *"It was rather stressful, was it not? You do not need to apologize. How are you feeling?"*

*"Honestly?"*

*"Please. I want to hear."*

*"I'm feeling like shit."* I laughed, shaking my head. *"I mean, of course I am. I'm some awful mix of mourning Marsh, hopeful that there's some solution, kicking myself for mourning them maybe preemptively, kicking myself for not doing more, and just plain confused."*

The Odists were an old clade — far older than any of us, having been born decades before the advent of the System — so it was no wonder that Dry Grass was far more adept at sensorium messages than anyone else I'd met. It wasn't that I saw her lean back in her chair, nor that I felt the act of leaning back myself, but the overwhelming sensation that I got from that moment of silence was of her sighing, leaning back, crossing her arms over her front. I had no clue how she managed to pull that off. *"There is little that I can say to fix any one of those, and anything else would ring hollow. All I can do is validate that, damn, Reed, that is a shitload of emotions. There is a lot going on, and I do not blame you for feeling confused."*

*"Thanks,"* I responded, feeling no small amount of relief that she hadn't tried to dig into any one of those feelings, nor even all of them as a whole. *"How are Tule and Cress holding up? Hell, how're you holding up?"*

*"They are asleep,"* she sent. I could hear the fondness in her voice. *"One of me is keeping an eye on them, pretending to sleep."*

*"And the rest of you?"*

*"Working."*

I finished my coffee in two coarse swallows, winced at the uncomfortable sensation that followed. I took another moment to stand up and start making the bed again. As I did, I asked, *"What on? I saw a ton of forks."*

The sense of a nod, and then, *"Several things. One of me is still keeping tallies on how many are missing based on reports, which appears to be some few million so far. Another of me is collating the varied types of posts on the feeds — wild supposition, unchecked grief, confusion, and so on. Another is speaking to a member of the eighth stanza, even though–"*

*"This 'Need An Answer' you mentioned?"*

*"Yes. The Only Time I Dream Is When I Need An Answer. She is the one who has focused on interpersonal connections, which is only relevant in that she is the one in the stanza who will still pass information on to the portions of the clade that cut them off, about twenty of us."*

I snorted. *"Minus you, I guess."*

*"Well, yes. Nominally twenty of us,"* she sent, and I could sense that almost-laughter again. *"Though it is far more complicated than that."*

*"Sure seems complicated. Any news from Castor or Pollux?"*

*"Yes, in a way,"* she replied, then hesitated. *"Though would you be willing to go for a walk to discuss what I have heard?"*

*"I guess. Why?"*

*"So I can get out of the house. So* you *can get out of the house. So we can actually talk instead of me sitting in a war room populated by too many of me and you making your bed or whatever it is you are doing now."*

I hesitated, halfway through smoothing out the sheets. *"Oh, uh...alright. Let me say good morning to Hanne. Do you have a place to meet?"*

She sent the address of a public sim, to which I sent a ping of acknowledgement and a suggestion of five minutes' time.

Hanne sat at the dining room table, coffee in her hands, staring out at nothing, a sure sign that she was digging through something on the perisystem architecture. Probably poking her way through the feeds, looking for news. She had her own friends, after all, her own circle of co-hobbyists, those construct artists — oneirotects — who shared her interest in creating various objects and interactive constructs. She had her own people to care about that weren't just me, weren't just the Marshans.

I chose to make us another pot of coffee instead, letting a cone of silence linger above me so that I didn't disturb her, even though her eyes did flick up toward me once or twice, joined by a weak smile.

"Want some space?" I asked once the pot sat in the center of the table.

"Kind of, yeah," she said, voice dull. "Jess isn't responding. She's *there,* but not responding. Shu is gone though. Just..." A sniffle. "Completely gone. It's like she was never even there in the first place."

I felt my expression fall. It was bound to happen, I figured; we knew enough people that if, as Dry Grass had said, millions had already been reported missing, Marsh wouldn't be the only one.

I reached forward to pat the back of her hand, which she tolerated for a moment before lifting it out of the way.

"I'm sorry, Hanne," I said. "I know you liked them."

She nodded.

"Any word on Warmth In Fire? I'm going to head out in a moment to see Dry Grass, and I'm wondering how bad the Odists got hit."

Hanne shrugged. "Ey's there. I haven't talked to em yet, though." She snorted, adding with a smirk, "Though even if a chunk of their instances got taken out, I doubt any whole...lines, or whatever they call them, any cladists, were completely destroyed. They fork like mad."

I laughed. "Yeah, when I pinged Dry Grass earlier, she had something like eighteen instances."

"Doubtless you'll be meeting up with number nineteen, then."

"Probably."

"Did she have anything new to say?"

I looked down into my coffee, considering how much to pass on. "It sounds like a lot of people are gone. 'A few million', though doubtless that's getting bigger as more people report in. Everything sounds pretty chaotic."

Hanne furrowed her brow. "A few *million?* Jesus. Any word from phys-side?"

"Not that she mentioned, no."

"Great. Of course not."

I nodded, covering my anxiety with a sip of coffee.

"Well, hey," she said, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek. "Go on and go talk with Dry Grass. Could be she's learned more, could be they've said something and we just haven't gotten it yet. If she's as plugged in as she says she is, then doubtless she knows more than she's telling."

"Right." I laughed. "Of all of us, she would."

-----

We met in front of a small coffee shop. A bucolic small town main street lined with gas lamps and paved with cobblestones.

"Coffee and chicory, yes?" Dry Grass said, offering me a paper cup.

I nodded as I accepted. I had left my second cup of coffee back at home, half-finished. "Cress and Tule still drink that?"

A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Much to my chagrin, yes."

"Not a fan?"

She shook her head. "Too bitter for my tastes. Mocha, extra chocolate, extra whipped cream," she said, lifting her own cup. "Apparently a sweet tooth can last more than three centuries. Who knew?"

"Yeah, that sounds way too sweet for me," I said, chuckling.

Grinning to me, she gestured down the street in an invitation to walk, and we fell in step beside each other, saying nothing.

The sim was, indeed, beautiful, though it did bear some trademarks of early sim design, with the cobblestones perhaps a little too perfectly fit together, a little too flat, and the hexagonal lamp posts bearing corners that were perhaps a little too sharp. Still, for a morning walk with coffee (my third of the day; I'd have to turn off the caffeine sensitivity later), it was ideal. The sim was quiet and calm, with the sun blessing the street with long shadows and cool air that felt on the path to warming.

"It's so quiet," I observed. The act of speaking out loud into the still air was enough to knock me back into the context of what had happened. "Oh."

Dry Grass readily picked up on the meaning behind that syllable, nodding to me. "I do not imagine that it is so quiet because so many are missing, but I do think that many are staying home, hunting for lovers and friends, trawling the feeds. Heading out to public sims is, perhaps, not at the tops of their minds."

Looking around did indeed provide a better sense of the mood. Those who *were* out and about looked somber, distracted, walking with heads down or talking in hushed tones two-by-two.

So were we, I realized.

I made an effort to straighten up and look out into the clear morning. "Is the toll still climbing?" I asked.

"It is currently–" She tilted her head for a moment before continuing. "–just over two hundred million. I have also been able to get in contact with a phys-side engineer who has been...well, she has been cagey, but she is at least confirming some of my estimates and guesses as I pass them on."

"Oh?"

She nodded. "Günay is quite nice, if perhaps a bit breezier than one might expect on hearing that millions of individuals have disappeared from the System. I do get the sense that she is a fairly cheerful person overall, at least."

"Did she have anything to say about what might have happened?"

"No, not particularly. When I say that she has confirmed guesses, what she has done is invite me to talk and simply agreed when something I have said is right, perhaps expanding on it by small amounts." Her expression soured. "I get the impression that she would *like* to share more with me, but that she is simply not allowed to."

I frowned. "You mean someone's keeping her from doing so?"

"It is a hunch. Perhaps her implants limit her by NDA. Perhaps our communications are being monitored, and she is being instructed to limit the topics or to act in this way. While talking with Need An Answer, she suggested that this is also what the eighth stanza is used to doing, but they are the political ones."

I dredged up what history of the System I had learned, all of those sensationalist stories about the few old clades steering the direction of the lives of however many billions of uploaded minds and their instances — certainly well over two trillion, if one counted the two launch vehicles, Castor and Pollux that had been sent zooming out of the Solar System at incredible speed seventy five years prior. More, if what Hanne said was right.

"And they'd be sneaky like this, too?" I asked.

A snort of laughter and she nodded. "Sneaky is one way to put it, yes. They shape interactions by second nature, for which a portion of the clade has distanced themselves from them. We — Hammered Silver's up-tree instances — are not supposed to be speaking to any of them, but there are a few that I like plenty, and given our current status, I have begun interacting more openly with Need An Answer."

Wary of letting the topic drift too far, I said, "Have they gotten anything else from phys-side, then?"

She shrugged. "There has been little enough interaction with phys-side over the years, and even less of late, now that the climate has started to level out back on Earth. The rate of uploads has even leveled off from its slow increase over time. We rarely hear much except what comes through the newly uploaded." She sipped her mocha, seeming to take that time to sort out her thoughts. "Our political relationship with phys-side is cordial. It is one borne of necessity. Our social relationship is more complicated. Many have expectations of a long peace for themselves once they join us, and many more have loved ones who have joined us."

"Right, I still talk to a bunch of friends I knew phys-side who uploaded later. Or Marsh does." I winced, amending that statement. "Did."

Dry Grass rested a hand lightly on my arm. "I am sorry, Reed."

Memories of Tule's relationship with her had me reaching for her hand without thinking, though I at least manage to simply pat at the back of it rather than anything more intimate. This must've shown on my face, as she smiled kindly, gave my arm a squeeze, and reclaimed her hand, saying, "Memories are complicated, I am guessing."

I nodded, doing my best to ignore the heat rising to my cheeks. "A bit."

"I am sure we will discuss it soon," she said. "But for now, let us return to the topic at hand. Tule and Cress are awake and have expressed interest in discussing this in person, as well. Would you be amenable to them joining us? Sedge, Rush, and Hanne are welcome, though they have requested some space from Lily, and Vos and Pierre have requested their own privacy."

Shaking the confusing, conflicting memories of Dry Grass from my head, I sighed, letting my shoulders slump. "Lily really should be here, as well," I grumbled. "But I get it. She's...well, she's Lily."

She bowed stiffly. "Yes. It is okay, my dear. We are used to it, even this many years later."

"Sorry all the same."

She made a setting aside gesture, dismissing the topic easily. "Another topic to discuss another time. Cress and Tule are grabbing coffee now, and will meet us in a few minutes."

We stood in silence, then, saying nothing and letting the sun warm the backs of our necks. A few people poked their heads out of various shops, looked around sullenly, and then disappeared. Everyone who passed us did so in a cone of silence, and most of those opaqued from the outside, hard-edged cones of darkened and blurred background gliding down the sidewalk, hiding faces and silencing words.

"Why do you think they're out?" I asked, nodding towards one such cone.

Dry Grass clutched her coffee to her chest, both hands wrapped around it to draw warmth through the paper cup. "Why are *we* out, Reed?"

I blinked, then shrugged. "You asked to meet up in person, didn't you?"

"Of course, yes. And you agreed, did you not?"

"Well, yes." I hastened to add, preempting her point, "I guess there is a lot to get out of interacting in person."

She nodded.

"So why here, then?" I asked.

"Good coffee," she said, lifting her cup. "Good weather. Good memories. Some of them really good. This place is comforting to me. It is comforting to a good many people. I suspect that those who are out are doing much as we are. They are talking about the difficult things in a place that at least makes them feel a little better."

"I suppose it's nicer than moping at home."

"It is, is it not?"

"Is she talking your ear off, Reed?" came a familiar voice from behind us.

"Oh, absolutely," Dry Grass replied, turning and leaning over to give Cress a kiss on its cheek. "How are you feeling, loves?"

"Terrible," Tule said cheerfully. They had apparently collected Rush and Sedge before arriving, as all four stood in almost identical postures, each holding their coffees in their right hand --- just, I realized, as I was doing. "All my emotions are wrong. I'm jittery and tired and I want to get another few hours of sleep but feel guilty every time I lay down."

I laughed. "Yeah, that sounds about right. I keep feeling like I'm having the wrong sort of reaction to all of this."

"When was the last true trauma that befell the Marshans?" Dry Grass asked, smiling gently. "I imagine it was before you uploaded, yes?"

A moment of silence followed.

"We as people have fallen out of the habit of dealing with crises," she continued when we all averted our gazes. "Do not be hard on yourselves. We — the Ode clade — have more experience with crises than the vast, vast majority of the System, and even we are reeling. We are struggling to internalize something this big."

"Have you lost any?" Cress asked, and I thanked it silently for getting to the question before I worked up the courage to do so myself.

Hesitating, Dry Grass's confident mien fell. Eventually, she reached out to take both of her partners' hands in one of her own, then nodded to me. "Come. Let us walk, yes? We will talk as we hop sims. I have more places full of comforting memories to show you."

While I mulled over her focus on comfort and memory, we linked by touch, Tule and Cress with their partner, and Cress, Rush, and Sedge with me.

We stepped from the quaint, small town sim and directly into warmth and sunlight, into the salt-tang of sea air and the low rush of waves against a beach. We stood atop a stone walkway of sorts, which seemed to run along the edge of a town. On further inspection, it appeared to be a retaining wall, holding up the town that meandered up the hill to keep it from sliding inexorably down into a bay. 

Between the wall and the water was a sandy beach, partially obscured by intricate and crazed markings in the sand. It took some time of peering at them for me to make out just what they were: it seemed as though, throughout the tail end of New Year's Eve, dozens or hundreds of people had been drawing in the sand using, I assumed, the sticks that were leaned against the wall.

All of the designs seemed to feature the New Year, now that I was able to pick them apart. Visions of fireworks, scratched over mentions of the year, scrawled names of, I guessed, couples who had met up on the beach.

I turned away with a hollow feeling in my chest, wondering just how many of those couples were still couples.

The town, while no less visually chaotic than the beach, was at least more heartening to look at. Everything --- *everything;* the walls of buildings, the roofs, doors and window shutters, even the roads --- was covered with a blindingly colorful mosaic of tiles.

"*To Limáni Ton Khromáton* is nearly two centuries old," Dry Grass explained as we started trudging up one of those streets. "When you enter, you are given a single tile --- if you check your pockets, it should be in there."

Sure enough, when I dug my hand into my pocket, I found a cerulean tile, a little square of porcelain about three centimeters on a side. The rest of the Marshans dug in their pockets and pulled out tiles of their own, all one shade or another of blue.

"Unless you hold a color in your mind when you enter, you are provided with your favorite," Dry Grass explained. She pulled a golden yellow tile out of her own pocket and flipped it up in the air like a coin. "All of this --- all of the mosaic --- has been placed by visitors.

"Set No Stones told me about this place." She smiled wryly. "Because of course she did. We are consummate pros at living up to our names. You may place your tile wherever you like, and so long as it is touching the edge of another, it will stick. You will not be able to remove it after, so make sure to place it carefully."

Rush laughed. "Holy shit. This place is amazing."

"It's a bit hard to look at in some places," Sedge added, nodding towards a few buildings whose walls were covered in a rainbow static of tiles. "But yeah, this is wild."

"It really is, yes," Dry Grass said, grinning. "Used to be, you would get one tile per day to place, but as the popularity grew, that was slowly reduced to one tile every six weeks. Still, whole fandoms have sprung up around this place among a certain type of individual. Set No Stones started organizing groups of fifty to a hundred cladists to plan out images. They would meet up once a week to go build their pictures. That is where we are going now."

The street was steep, but, despite the glossy look of the tiles that paved the road, none of us slipped.

We walked past buildings that depicted animals, some that depicted people, some that had words set in porcelain. There were scenes of nature and of cities. Even one that Cress spotted which appeared to be a building in the process of being covered by tiles exactly the same color as the stucco beneath it. The slow shift into square tiles led to a sense of the structure dissolving into pixels, or perhaps voxels.

If the small town sim had been relatively quiet, this one felt all but abandoned. Perhaps all such sims with a singular purpose would be like this today: if your friends are missing, if other versions of you were missing, then an attraction would doubtless lose some of its draw. We passed only a few tilers tramping up the hill with determination, ready to place their colors for the day.

Finally, Dry Grass led us down an alleyway, dim and cool, and gestured to a wall. The scene was of two figures sitting at a bar. Given the scale, it was impossible to make out any detail on the figures, though they seemed to be furries of some sort --- one tan and one black and white. Each had a drink, and before them, a wall of bottles stood, still in the process of being built. Dry Grass stood up on her tiptoes and touched her tile to the edge of a bottle, adding a bright glow to a fledgling bottle of whiskey. 

"Here," she said, gesturing us to grab a crate that had been stacked nearby. "All of these are just props to help people reach higher. You can probably add your blues to the edge of the lamp. They are not quite the right color for green lamps, but I do not care."

One by one, we took our turns standing on that box and setting our tiles into place. I reached up as high as I could to flesh out the glowing rim of the green glass-shaded lamp. As soon as my tile touched the edge of the tile Tule had placed, it snapped into place with a satisfying click. It was completely immobile after that. No amount of nudging could get it to slide more perfectly into alignment.

As she helped Cress, the smallest of us, up onto the crate to place her tile, Dry Grass said, "Thank you for coming with me on this little jaunt. If I spent any more time at my desk, I was sure that I would lose my mind. That I still have forks doing so is unavoidable, but at least I can get out of the house, yes?"

Tule nodded, kissed her on the cheek. "For which I'm glad. I've never met anyone more prone to overworking themselves than you."

She laughed. "Yes, yes. The whole of the clade is like this, I can promise you that."

"Are you ready to talk about what you've learned?" I asked. "If you need a bit more time, that's fine, of course."

"I am ready. Thank you for giving me a bit of space." Once Cress had finished setting its tile and hopped back down to the ground, we all walked back out into the street, back out where the sun shone down on us. "We have passed one billion reported missing instances." She held her hand up to forestall the comments that were already coming. "That is all instances, to be clear, not differentiated individuals, not cladists, and certainly not clades. Many of those who were reported missing were ephemeral: they were one-offs created here and there. We do not yet know about cladists or clades. The number is high, but I did want to provide that qualification; there are three totals to consider, and we are learning only one of them."

"Hanne said that one of her friends, Shu, was missing entirely," I said, once the words had sunk in. "Similar to Marsh, I mean. It wasn't just that she wasn't responding, it's like she was just never there, like the System didn't know about her."

"Too many names have passed beneath my fingers for me to say one way or another if I have come across her, but one of my instances will do a search to confirm and get in touch with Hanne directly, if she would like."

I shrugged. "It might be worth asking, at least."

She nodded and gestured us back down to the beach. "I will." She took a deep breath before continuing. "Now, the current population in terms of *instances* is something like 2.3 trillion. A billion is a very small fraction of the System in terms of numbers, but it is what we are working with. A billion instances appear to have been...ah, lost, along with thirteen months, ten days, seventeen minutes, and some seconds. On speaking with Günay, this downtime was observed phys-side, though she was not able to tell me much about it besides that. I have the sense that there is more that she *could* have said, but that she was not able to for whatever reason."

This had apparently been the first that Rush and Sedge had heard about this, so a few minutes were spent bringing them up to speed as we walked down the hill to the shore once more. I took the opportunity to focus at something far off, something further ahead of me than my own two feet. The horizon, the dark ocean breaking against the shore in a rush of white out where the arms of the bay projected into the water.

We passed only one more person. They were rushing up the hill, breathing coming in quick puffs, a white tile clutched in their hand, tears streaming down their face.

We said nothing until after they had passed.

"Reed?"

I startled back to awareness, smiling sheepishly at Sedge, accepting the hand that she held out for me. "Sorry, lost in thought."

"It is okay," Dry Grass said, smiling gently to me. "The next sim that we are headed to does not have a very large entry point, so please huddle in closer. It will also be quite warm, so, fair warning."

The entry point --- a platform of wood slats set upon stilts above stagnant water --- was far smaller than I had anticipated, and my foot rocked against an uneven plank set along the rim of the platform, forcing me to lean against Sedge. One edge of the platform led into a narrow, somewhat rickety wooden walkway that headed out over the water in a straight line until it came upon a tall patch of grass, where it turned a few degrees to the right to make its way to another. It appeared to meander in this way from island of vegetation to island of vegetation in an uneven zigzag toward a copse of trees --- the word 'banyan' floated to mind, though I wasn't sure if that was actually the case --- where it disappeared into shadow.

That shade looked delightfully appealing as the humid heat pressed in around us.

"What the hell is this place?" Tule asked, wrinkling his nose at the scent of rotting vegetation in the air.

"A swamp," Dry Grass said simply, a lopsided smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "A marsh, perhaps."

If it had been intended to be a joke, it fell flat. We remained in silence for a few awkward moments.

She sighed. "My apologies. It is still important to me, however. It is-- Ah, there she is." She raised an arm and waved to a figure crouched at the edge of the walkway just before the next platform. With the heat-haze and mugginess, their form was somewhat indistinct. They wore a frowzy white dress, along with some sort of hat --- or perhaps a rather tall hairstyle. As we walked toward them in single file, she explained, "This sim was designed by Serene; Sustained And Sustaining, whom you shall meet in a moment. She is my cocladist from the ninth stanza, and one of my favorite people in the world. I asked her to meet us here."

As we got closer, the strange hairstyle that I had noticed on the figure resolved into a pair of tall canid ears, and what I had assumed was a mask of some sort turned out to be a short, pointed muzzle. Serene stood up and stretched, smiling wanly to us before bowing in greeting.

"Serene, this is Tule and Cress, my partners, as well as a few more of their clade: Reed, Rush, and Sedge."

The fox --- a hunch confirmed by a quick check of the perisystem --- nodded. "Of the Marsh clade? How droll," she said, that smile veering perilously close to a smirk. "Welcome to my own little marsh."

"What *is* this place?" Rush asked, a note of wonder in vis voice. "Other than a swamp, I mean."

"It is mostly just a swamp," the other Odist said. "But it is one of my favorites. I make a lot of sims, you must understand, but this is one of the least popular that I have made to date, and for that I love it all the more. There, see?" She pointed to a patch of coarse grass at the edge of the 'island'. "Rushes!"

At this, we all *did* laugh.

"I have asked to meet with her and several others to ensure that we could get a view of what is going on from someone else," Dry Grass said, "because this is getting a bit out of hand for even me."

Serene nodded and started strolling down the path toward the next patch of grass, claws clicking dully against the wood. We fell in step behind her as she asked, "And what was it that you wanted to hear from me, my dear?"

"I would like to hear what you are seeing."

The fox --- a fennec, the System told me --- nodded slowly. "I am seeing quiet chaos. I am seeing most of my sims emptying out. Few are out for walks or adventures. I sent forks to each of them when I noticed my own missing instances to ensure that they all still existed, as well. Thankfully, sims seem to be unaffected.

"The ones that are not empty, however, remain dreadfully quiet. Most of those who are out and about have set up over themselves cones of silence." She hesitated, took a deep breath, and then continued. "Those who have not, though, are decidedly not quiet. More than one silence has been broken by weeping and wailing."

I nodded. A few sniffles passed through the Marshans as the reality of what had happened once more struck us.

"I have also checked in with several of my students. Very few have been totally unaffected by this sudden loss, and more than one has disappeared from the System completely"

"More than one?" Sedge asked. "I suppose at least someone is bound to be unlucky enough to have been completely disappeared."

Serene nodded. "I have had many, many students, you must understand. It would not be surprising to me that at least one of them was that unlucky soul. However, I have come across three such cases so far."

"Out of how many?"

"Hundreds. However, I am still not done checking yet."

We walked in silence, then, digesting this, passing through the island of grass and turning left at nearly a right angle to head to the next. One more until we hit the patch of shade.

"Did you lose any instances?" I asked.

She nodded. "One, yes. She was working on a sim of her own, a wild park of sorts. She had not yet merged down, however, and her plans are now lost with her. The sim remains incomplete. Posts of gray sprout from the forest floor where the trees were intended to appear, but I do not yet know what trees she intended to place. There is no leaf litter to indicate what she was planning, nor is there yet a sun in the sky to indicate latitude." The fox turned her head to smile back to us, expression once more wan. "I am thinking that I will turn it into a memorial of sorts."

Rush said, "I'd love to see it some day."

She simply nodded.

"The feeds seem to be more chaotic," Dry Grass said after a few moments, dragging us back on topic. "The world has taken to the perisystem to talk about what has happened. There, it is loud. It is filled with grief, yes, and increasingly more anger."

"And you said there hasn't been any word from phys-side except through Günay?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Not really. Not that I know about, at least, but that is not to say that a sense of that sentiment is not evident. Günay sounded excited."

Sedge snorted. "Excited?"

"Yes. You must understand, though, that more than a year has passed for them, as well, and this is perhaps the first that they have heard from us since then. I do not know."

"Oh, so, excited that whatever they did worked?"

Dry Grass nodded. "Yes, that was my guess. She is disappointed, of course, that so many of us are missing, but she is excited that so many of us still remain. As I have said, her words have been careful and measured, but I can still tell that she was excited to be able to talk to us."

"So, sims are empty," I said, ticking off items on my fingers. "The feeds are nuts. Phys-side is excited to see us. Has there been any indication on any of those fronts as to what actually happened?"

"Not as yet, no. We are missing key bits of information."

Serene added, "It is perhaps not yet time to be asking that particular question."

I tamped down the urge to bridle, waited for her to continue.

The fox gestured out toward the copse of trees before us. "Before we can ask what each of the trees is named, we have to observe that there are trees. Before we can ask what actually happened, we have to observe the things that have happened."

I glanced to Dry Grass, who gave a wry smile and half shrug.

"I am perhaps a little off-kilter," Serene admitted, smirking back to us over her shoulder. "But what I mean to say is that by figuring out the state of the world, we will be able to better ask how it got to be that way. That is the current objective. We are in the information-gathering stage of addressing this particular problem."

*"Good thing Lily isn't here,"* Cress sent over a sensorium message. *"She'd lose her fucking mind."*

I stifled a snort of laughter.

"Okay," Sedge said. "So we're seeing some billion or so people lost, sims and objects are apparently unaffected, and there was a skip in time. People are sad and angry, and phys-side is largely unresponsive."

Serene nodded. "These are the things we require to start asking the correct question. Or questions, perhaps. What happened to the lost instances? What happened during the thirteen months' downtime? Last, and this may be a question for after those first two are addressed, why is phys-side being so careful in talking with us?"

We walked on in silence for a few minutes. I was disappointed to find that the shade beneath the trees was nearly the same temperature as out in the open. The heat clung to us, and the sweat dripping down my face provided no relief.

The next platform was at the base of one of those thick tree trunks, a few of the dozen or so roots plunging into the water providing the posts that held it in place. We circled there to all face each other.

"I have one more sim to take us to, where I aim hoping to meet up with representatives from all ten stanzas. I have asked them to congregate and discuss how many of their up-tree instances are missing," Dry Grass said.

Serene crossed her arms over her chest and slouched back against one of the Banyan tree's roots. "How did you manage *that,* my dear?"

"I yelled at Hammered Silver until she agreed, then convinced her to yell at In Dreams until *she* agreed," she said, smirking. "I do not think that either of them will be there themselves, but I will, and I am hoping that In All Ways will be there in In Dreams's stead, as perhaps there has been news from new uploads. You are welcome to join, of course, though I have already heard from Praiseworthy."

A second instance of the fennec blipped into being beside the first on the already crowded platform. "I will go," she said, taking one of her cocladist's hands in her paw. "Now?"

Dry Grass nodded and once more took Tule's hand in her own. Once we had all linked hands we stepped away, out of the heat and humidity. The last thing I saw was the remaining instance of Serene crouching down on the edge of the platform, once more poking a claw sullenly into the water.

While this new sim felt far brighter than the sunnier portions of the last, the air was also far cooler and far drier. It still had a feeling of morning to it, as though the day itself had yet to wake up completely. A check of the time showed that it was not yet 7, a fact obscured by the noonday sun of the previous sim.

The sun here shone low in a cloudless blue sky, lighting a rolling field of grass with the dawn. 'Lawn' may have been a more apt word, as the grass itself seemed to have been cut at some point: it was cool and prickly, all of uniform height and color. All, that is, except for the fact that it was dotted liberally with golden yellow flowers, each perfectly round as it stood shyly above a spray of wide-toothed leaves.

The air was thick with a sweet scent, and the sound of bees making their way from flower to flower hung just below the level of perception unless we all stayed completely silent.

We stood alone on the empty field for only a few moments before the other Odists started to arrive in ones and twos.

They seemed to come in two general categories. There were those who looked largely like Dry Grass: short, stocky women with curly black hair. There was some variation, to be sure, as one might expect from a clade almost three hundred years old. One, introduced as Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself, was quite a bit taller and slimmer than the others, looking chic in a form-fitting outfit of all black. Another, Hold My Name Beneath Your Tongue And Know, was taller still and visibly transfeminine.

The other category seemed to be made mostly of furries of some sort. These, at least, I knew to be skunks. The stories surrounding them, the very same that had driven Lily away, were numerous and dramatic, so I was surprised to see just how...well, normal they looked. A Finger Pointing arrived holding the paw of a skunk, introduced as Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps, shaped almost exactly like Dry Grass. Hold My Name also appeared hand-in-paw with a skunk, Which Offers Heat And Warmth In Fire. Warmth In Fire was much slimmer, however, almost wiry, and far shorter. They launched emself immediately at Serene and wrapped its arms around her before catching my eye. "Reed, yes? Hanne said you would be here."

I nodded and started to reply before cutting myself off as a few more Odists showed up in quick succession. Another skunk, looking far more prim and proper than the others, arrived and shot Dry Grass a quick glance. I couldn't quite read her expression, but she certainly didn't look happy. If she was this Then I Must In All Ways Be Earnest, it perhaps made sense, as the next Odist to arrive was a human introduced as The Only Time I Dream Is When I Need An Answer.

From what I gathered both from my knowledge of the history of the System that I'd picked up over my years on Lagrange as well as the memories of Tule's relationship with Dry Grass, there had been a schism within the Ode clade some fifty years back surrounding the political elements of the clade — of which Need An Answer was one — and those who disagreed. This included the stanzas to which both Dry Grass and In All Ways belonged. Beyond those such as Lily who held resentment, even some Odists mistrusted — or hated — some of their own.

I just hoped they'd be able to set that aside for now.

Need An Answer was the first to speak, calling aloud to the twenty or so people on the field, "Thank you all for coming, and thank you as well to those who have set aside differences enough that we may meet."

Scattered mumbling.

"Dry Grass, you have been taking point. Would you like to begin?"

"Yes," she said, stepping out in front of the loose crowd that had gathered. All turned to face her. "At midnight on January first, 2400 — that is, systime 276+1, but some are speculating that the phys-side date is related for reasons that I will get to — a disruption in the software underlying the System occurred. This led to a discontinuity of approximately one year, one month, and ten days."

More muttering — darkly, this time.

"There have been more than two hundred thousand instances of downtime throughout the history of Lagrange. Most amount to a few seconds or minutes, with the longest being approximately three weeks, which took place during the Lagrange station's insertion into the L<sub>5</sub> orbit in which it currently resides. We usually do not notice any downtime unless we are specifically paying attention to systime. However, in this instance, when the System returned to functionality, several instances were missing–"

"Several!" one of the Odists said, snorting.

"–several instances were missing. At current count, the missing instances number about one and a half billion, though that number continues to climb.

"I have re-acquired my systech credentials through an expedited process, which has led to me talking to a phys-side tech on the Lagrange station named Günay Sadık. While she appears to be somewhat restrained in what she is willing — or able — to tell me, she was at least able to confirm or deny guesses as I made them. She has confirmed that the missing instances are due to corrupted data, that Lagrange experienced full downtime, and that phys-side engineers were finally able to get it running at full capacity just last night."

Dry Grass paused, taking a deep breath. "Here are the things she was not able to confirm, but which I do not believe were outright denials. She was not able to confirm the reason for the downtime and did not respond to any of my guesses. However, as this discussion took place over AVEC, I was able to see her as she spoke. I asked if there was any physical damage to the System hardware: no change. I asked if there was any permanent damage to the System internals: no change. I asked if there was any trouble phys-side that led to the downtime: she looked down to her hands on the desk. Finally, I asked if this downtime might have been intentional, whether there might have been malice behind it: she looked off-screen, her expression appearing tense, perhaps frightened. I suspect an NDA block on her implants. I have heard these are uncomfortable at best."

At this, the muttering grew darker still.

"We have called you here to the field for a reason," Need An Answer said, picking up smoothly. "We would like you to tally up the amount of up-tree instances that you have. *All* up-tree instances, whether or not they are public. Please provide that tally to me, including only the instances you are positive about. If you would like to obfuscate that number and only respond via sensorium message, that is acceptable."

There followed nearly half an hour of silence. Most of the Odists looked distant or distracted, some of them sitting on the ground or pacing. I imagined them getting in touch with their up-tree instances, having them go through the same procedure.

By the end, many of them were in tears.

"Alright," Need An Answer said. "The amount provided to me is 748. Combined with those who are not here who have responded, there are 1,338 Odists. Please now provide tallies of how many of these instances are missing."

"Why?" In All Ways asked. Her expression had shifted from upset to unnerved.

"The goal is to use us as a synecdoche for the System. By tallying the percentage of missing instances within our extended clade, we may have a guess as to how many on the System might be missing. We are working with other clades who are doing the same thing, and by averaging, perhaps we will wind up with an approximate number for Lagrange as a whole."

Another, longer silence followed. By now, more of them were sitting in the grass. There were more tears, more open crying.

"The number..." Need An Answer began hoarsely, then cleared her throat. "The number of missing instances for those here is eleven. For the total respondents in the clade as a whole, there are twenty-eight missing instances."

"With a population of 2.3 trillion instances, we are looking at a loss of approximately 48.1 billion souls," Dry Grass said. Her voice sounded as sure as it had all morning, but her expression was aghast.

Silence fell for a third time. Silence except for sniffles.

My own were included, as were Sedge's and Tule's. The number was unimaginable. 48 billion! Yes, many of those instances were ephemeral, merely those sent out on errands or to enjoy multiple parties to ring in the new year. How many did not matter, though. Even if only one percent of those who were lost were long-lived instances, that was still 480 million dead.

The loss of Marsh suddenly felt insignificant, and with that feeling of insignificance came an anger, a despair. 

"Are other clades seeing the same?" Rush asked. "We are seven and have lost one. We've lost fourteen percent, you've lost two percent. Are you expecting that you'll really be representative?"

Dry Grass shook her head. "The threads on the feeds focused on similar tallies show that many clades have experienced zero losses, while others have been all but destroyed. A branch of the CERES clade has reported a loss of more than 99.9%, while another experienced almost no losses."

"How big was that branch?" I asked, taken aback.

"Approximately 70,000," Dry Grass said. "Of which only twelve remain."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Rush said, laughing nervously.

"Jesus fucking Christ indeed," she said, then turned to Need An Answer. "Have any lines been lost, my dear?"

The other Odist's shoulders sagged. "Two."

"Who?" Beholden asked, sounding impatient.

"Should We Forget and–"

"*What?!*" Warmth In Fire said, clutching tightly at Serene's paw in one of hers, the other grasping for Hold My Name's hand once more. "No. No no no..."

"I am sorry, Which Offers Heat And Warmth In Fire. I know that you two were close."

The skunk didn't reply other than to continue whispering 'no' quietly.

"The other lost line is No Longer Myself. She no longer associated with the clade, but still maintained her identity as one of the lines of the first stanza. Of the others I know who have rescinded their clade membership, Sasha, E.W., and May Then My Name all remain in some capacity."

A Finger Pointing spoke up, casting a careful sidelong glance at her partner, Beholden. "We have spoken of the Ode, yes, of the two lines, but we should not omit those long-lived instances that were lost. I have lost one of my own up-trees. I have lost A Finger Curled."

At this, Beholden let out a cry and burst suddenly into tears, eventually rolling to the side to slip out of the sim. A Finger Pointing quickly forked to follow while the other instance remained.

"You are right. I apologize, my dear," Need An Answer said, bowing. "Of the 28 missing, five are long-lived instances that are not named lines, including A Finger Curled. My condolences to you, to Beholden, and to her up-tree instance."

"Do we have enough information to ask about whether or not they'll be recoverable?" Cress asked. "Serene said we'd need some questions answered first."

Dry Grass tilted her head thoughtfully. "None of my forks have reported any success along that front. Most, however, are still processing. When I asked Günay, she simply shrugged and said, "I do not know. Perhaps there is something that can be done with more hands sys-side, but best efforts were made in recovering lost data.""

"Are any of your forks working on that, love?"

"Working on recovery? I have an instance working on collating information on that topic, but the data itself is inaccessible to me, if it exists at all. Need An Answer?"

She nodded. "Several of us are working on that, yes, and from across the stanzas."

One of the gathered, From Whence Do I Call Out, began to pray. "*Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha'olam, dayan ha-emet.*"

Dry Grass lowered her head as several of the other Odists joined. After a moment, she forked and gathered the Marshans around her, setting up a cone of silence above us.

"I believe we are done with pertinent business for now, and we are going to circle inwards and discuss those who have been lost," she said. "I would like to suggest that we give them space. Would you mind stepping away?"

"Will you come with?" Cress asked, alarmed.

"Not yet, my love. I will rejoin before long. One of the lost long-lived instances was one of my own, and this will give me a chance to step back and grieve, myself–" Her voice trailed off into a hoarseness that spoke of tears to come.

Cress's expression fell, and it wrapped its arms around her. "I'm sorry, I didn't know..."

"I did not say," Dry Grass said, shrugging. Whatever confidence she had been leaning on before was gone. She looked to be struggling to hold herself together. "We will talk later. More of me remain at home, too."

We all took turns, ensuring that she got a hug from each of us, then stepped away, this time to the pagoda that I had discovered earlier that day before sleeping.

As we stepped into that foggy morning on the close-shorn grass, the sound of a clanking bell or two from the direction of the sheep, we all let out a pent-up breath together. I wasn't quite sure what the breath represented for each of us. Even in myself, I couldn't tell if it was a sigh of resignation, of exhaustion, or of the simple sensation of being just by ourselves again, just those of our clade.

Oh. Well, there was an idea.

*"Hey Lily? Want to meet up and talk with the rest of us?"*

There was a long silence, followed by a sigh of her own. *"Just us?"*

*"Yeah,"* I sent. I tried to keep any disappointment out of my voice. It wasn't hard with how tired I was.

Another long pause, and then a sense of a nod.

A few moments after I sent her the address of the sim, she popped into being beside me, looking freshly showered. Her expression was flat and motions stiff as she walked with me to join the rest of the clade in the pagoda. Even as the rest of the Marshans greeted her, she simply nodded, saying nothing.

If I'd been expecting us all to jump into conversation, I was disappointed. However, there was still relief when we fell back into silence, each thinking our thoughts, looking out over the pasture at the fog and the shadows of sheep. The only sounds were those of the sim — a hint of rain further out on the grass, another tinkle or two of a bell — and my own breathing.

Once more, questions bubbled up within me. What could I possibly do in the face of such enormity? How could 48 billion people just disappear? What was phys-side doing about all of this other than hiding the details they doubtless had? More 'how could I's dogging my heels — how could I be sitting here in silence? How could I have stepped away from Dry Grass, the one person I knew who was working hardest on this? How could I not have looped Lily into this whole conversation?

"So," Lily said. "What's up?"

Cress laughed nervously, brushing its hand up through its hair. "Uh...everything."

"The folks we went to talk to–" I set aside the fact that I felt compelled to leave out just who those folks were; I was sure Lily could guess. "–were doing some looking around and tallying up losses within their clade and others. It sounds like, if they're representative of losses across the System, there might be almost fifty billion people missing."

"Dead," Lily corrected, face darkening. "Fifty billion dead."

"Right," I said all but under my breath. "And phys-side has said relatively little. They confirmed there was downtime and data loss, and I guess maybe hinted at the fact that...this whole thing may have been deliberate."

She sat up straighter, brow furrowed. "Deliberate? Like a bomb or something? I was thinking maybe a solar flare took us out."

"Exactly at midnight on New Year's Eve at the turn of the century?" Tule asked. I was pleased to hear only tiredness in his voice, rather than any ire. "How small are the chances for that?"

She shrugged. "Not none, I'm sure."

"What would an attack on the System even look like?" Rush asked. "I don't know that a bomb sounds right. That would have taken out a lot more data. It would have taken out some sims, at least, some objects."

"Ye-e-es," I allowed. "So maybe it was a virus or something. CPV that affects everyone doesn't exist, does it?"

Silence and headshakes around the pagoda. The contraproprioceptive virus — the one sure way to kill anyone on the System — only seemed to work when tailored specifically to an individual's sensorium, disrupting their sense of proprioception until they either dissipated and crashed or quit out of agony. Not only that, but, from what I'd learned from the stories that came out surrounding it a few decades back, it had to somehow pierce the skin, to breach that sense of physical integrity, before it could do it's awful job of unwinding a person entirely.

"Well, if this...attack or whatever was deliberate and we don't know anything about *how* it was done, do we know anything about who might have done it?"

Sedge leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "There's always been a bunch of people who hate uploading. Sometimes it's because they feel like we've abandoned Earth, sometimes it's because everyone makes Lagrange out like some sort of heaven while Earth is still kind of hellish. Even after all the work they've gotten done in the last fifty years, even with a lot of the climate shit either halted or actively starting to improve, Earth has hardly gone back to what it was like before the industrial revolution or whatever."

"Yeah, but hate it enough to destroy it? Kill billions and billions of people?"

"I'm not sure they think of us as people."

Lily snorted. "'Not as people'," she sneered. "Sorry, Sedge, I know it's not on you. You're probably right. I'm just feeling like shit now."

Rush smiled faintly. "I think we all are."

"And you said no sims have been hit?" she asked. "You're the one of us who's at all interested in that."

Ve nodded. "Yeah. Ser... Well, some of the people we'd been talking to were sim designers, and they said they hadn't seen any of their sims messed up or disappeared or anything."

She nodded slowly. "Odists, then? Dry Grass and her clade?"

Ve hesitated, looked to me.

"Yeah, Dry Grass met with us because she's back to working as a systech."

"Alright," Lily said, shoulders sagging. "I'm sorry I'm having a hard time letting go of that, but I'm not exactly disappointed that you're all close with someone who knows about all of this."

"Thanks," Tule and Cress mumbled in unison. Cress continued, "You don't have to like her or anything. Not everyone needs to like everyone else. She just also has information, too."

"I get that. Did she have anything else to say about Marsh? Like...that's why we're all coming together, isn't it?"

"Just that phys-side said they weren't able to recover anyone beyond whoever's still alive now, and that there might be something to try now that we're back, but she didn't exactly sound hopeful."

"Hopeful," she mused.

"Not much of that to go around," I said, feeling exhaustion pulling at my cheeks, pressing at my temples. "But I guess it's all we have to go on for the time being."

-----
