Add stories

content/prelim/010-2.md

@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ h3 {
 > 
 > Stability was her garden. Stability was the years she grew so much zucchini. Stability was loaf after loaf of zucchini bread, meal after meal of zucchini noodles, the grates of the grill getting weary of grilled zucchini.
 > 
-> Stability was the bright border of snapdragons and nasturtiums that bordered the walk. Stability was the few years she got obsessed with marigolds. Stability was the three dandelions she always permitted in the yard --- moderation! Imagine. Stability was her green thumb to my brown, it was Motes visiting and calling us 'her weird gay aunts', little skunklet digging her paws into good clean earth beside her while I watched from the stoop with a gin and tonic with too much lime.
+> Stability was the bright border of snapdragons and nasturtiums that bordered the walk. Stability was the few years she got obsessed with marigolds. Stability was the three dandelions she always permitted in the yard --- moderation! Imagine. Stability was her green thumb to my brown, it was Motes visiting and calling us 'her weird gay aunts', our little Sprout digging her paws into good clean earth beside her while I watched from the stoop with a gin and tonic with too much lime.
 > 
 > This is not stability. For me, this will never be stability. She is twice lost, and from this she will never come back. Do not delude yourself, 23 billion of us are lost and will never come back. 23 billion souls forgotten by the dreamer who dreams us all.
 > 
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ h3 {
 > 
 > In some few minutes, you will have more than 200 years of memories to keep and to hold, or to view, cherish, and let go. I do not care; I will not be there to care. Perhaps you will remember our happy years, and you will stop incorporating those memories when you get to eight days ago. All you would remember is my grief. All you would remember is my despair. If you choose to forget those, you will know that this is how AwDae chooses to forget those who have been lost: crying over these plants stripped of their flowers even as fireworks blossom above.
 > 
-> Live on, my dear. You have your Pointillist. Live on.
+> Live on, my dear. You have your Pointillist, you have your Dot. Live on.
 > 
 > All my love,
 > 

content/stories/a-well-trained-eye.md

@@ -0,0 +1,279 @@
+The rain against old glass panes and the sways and bumps of the car on the rails ready the air for conjurations. Lucy sits on the bench 6th from the back, on the right side, a sketchbook open across her knees. Today she's trying charcoal. Feels right with what happened a week ago.
+
+This lonely train through the valley and the mountain is her chapel and now her hermitage in the wake of the bombing. There are plenty of churches and other religious retreats across the System if she wanted, but none of them have ever felt a fit for this work. She thought about skipping this week, and told herself if the train wasn't running, she'd pick up again later, but even with no passengers save her, the engine pulls its empty tail along the countryside. So, as she has done every week for the past 250 years, she has gone to her locker in the station, pulled out a fresh sketchbook, and boarded.
+
+Lucy conjures in her memory their faces.
+
+She can only recall 63 of the 68. It is true that the System means she cannot forget anything now, but it merely preserves in amber what the memory held at the moment of upload. It cannot restore the faces she lost to time. Even a number of the faces she recalls are not complete memories. Those she has filled in over decades, extrapolating or iterating on them until they are whole enough for her to feel it completes them. Over 260 years, her hands have become capable of incredible art, both through endless repetition and boundless study. When she is not here in her railcar-sized confession booth, she enjoys a life as an artist, known for bittersweet paintings and sculptures, happy to teach and happier to learn, a lover of life and a bringer of joy.
+
+Of the five lost, two faces she cannot recall because they were unexpected complications on a job. One face was sent to kill her, but wasn't good enough. One face jumped her in an alley to rob her, or perhaps worse, but couldn't have picked a worse target. She doesn't recall her first kill's face, because there was a bag over his head and a gun loaded with both bullets and an irreversible choice was pushed into her hand.
+
+The 69th face is the most vivid to her, but Lucy has never felt the need to draw her. After all, she let that last one go, and every morning after she wakes, Lucia Marchetti hopes that poor girl listened to her and got far far away. She hopes that woman lived a full life and that the family never caught up.
+
+The clack-clack of the wheels on the track sets a rhythm for her vigil, her penance. The weather in the sim varies based on algorithms and set patterns both, stable enough to make maintenance easy, unpredictable enough to mimic weather phys-side. Today the rain is quite heavy. She welcomes it. The inside is dry, but the wood of the train car has a slight moist smell, a beautiful attention to detail. The lights in the car flicker a little more than usual, the train is a bit slower than usual but the ride is if anything less smooth. She likes the rougher rides, because it adds a challenge to her work, one she is well accustomed to after centuries but nonetheless welcomes. The rain fills in the silence where passengers would chat and shuffle and cough and rustle newspapers and make all those sounds living people make. She wonders how many of the usual riders died in the bomb, and how many are just afraid to go out, unsure, mourning, or just needing time alone.
+
+Some art critics and fans throughout the System have pointed out that the left eyes in many of her portraits have fantastical details, often drawn as flowers, or the root of vines, or sunsets woven into faces, or in her sculptures become caves, grottos, tidal pools, library alcoves, hidden urban alleys. Many speculate on the symbolism of that, and her favorite theory is the one that she lost an eye to cancer, and her obsession with art and color is due to the way cancer distorted her vision, and that her art was a reclamation of what it had taken from her, a final spite to the disease that forced her to upload. Even though it was wrong it was very romantic, and even now she did very little to fight it, and on occasion coyly encouraged it.
+
+A bullet through the left eye had been her professional calling card. Left hand on the top of the head, barrel of the silencer to the eyelid. She had taken so much from the world through left eyes, and she put back as much life and beauty through them now as she could. It would never be enough. More than a few of the faces she could only conjure with the bloody hole in a lifeless head, but she has never rendered it in sketches. She recreates and restores them as they were before, using decades of study to fill in what she destroyed. Even as styles and methods and tools change in her hands, she gives the dead that. Owes them that. The only real Liberty she takes is with the hair above the faces, refusing to give hair any semblance of being pushed or held down by anything.
+
+The piece of charcoal snaps in her hand, and she realizes there are tears staining the current sketch. She wipes her eyes, takes another piece of charcoal from her satchel.
+
+The bomb dwells on her mind. The Century Bomb, detonated at midnight, the start of the 25th century. 2400-01-01. 276+1 systime. In a digital world so removed from death, suddenly a toll on an incomprehensible level. Mechanically, it was a contraproprioceptive virus, launched at an astounding scale, wiping 1% of the System's current instance total by interrupting their code irreversibly. Functionally, it was a bomb that killed billions and scared shitless a trillion more. She wonders why they did it. She doesn't want to know, but she wonders. She wonders if it was just a job. She wonders if it wasn't. She wonders if they can remember all the faces of the people they killed. She wonders if they died in the bomb themselves. She hopes they did. She snaps another piece of charcoal, but if there were tears, they burned off on the heat in her face. It takes several breaths to unclench her fist, and she grabs another piece of charcoal.
+
+This is the longest stretch of the track. It's between the third and fourth stops, and it's where she starts sketching every time. Some weeks, depending on her mood or free time, she waits for the train to finish looping through the five stops and the station before picking up in her usual place. This time she doesn't wait. The calm she needs comes as soon as the engine lurches into motion from the station, and she lets the sounds and motions balm her weary heart.
+
+Charcoal means no color, but it lets her play with shading techniques. The more recent the face, the more realistic it becomes on the page, whereas older faces come out impressionistic, sketchier, or strikingly simple. Once she did them in chronological order. Then by age, alphabetical by first name, then last, then by height or by estimated weight, by location, by time it took to complete that dirty work, until now she's run out of categories and just lets them queue their own order, double checking periodically who is left and who isn't.
+
+She feels a low impulse to include some of the regular passengers who are missing today, but cannot bring herself to break 250 years of rite and ritual. She decides tomorrow she will come back with separate sketchbooks or maybe some other medium, sit in a different place on the train, and sketch as many of the regulars as she can remember. Those she will not keep hidden away, and those she will let her sys-side self take care of.
+
+Most people would send a separate fork for this, she figures. She always leaves a fork at her home sim, and when she gets back to the studio that fork will merge down to her. It is important to her that this continuous (as much as one can be here) version of herself be the penitent one. She thinks other people would understand that, it's not something that really needs explaining, but she has never told anyone directly what she does, and those who know about her train rides know better than to ask.
+
+She wonders how many of them survived, and how many of them died or quit. She wonders how many will quit or crash from the grief. She chides herself for getting distracted. She sketches.
+
+She long ago learned the art of faking motions. She trained herself to glance up and stare at random points in the room, usually where other passengers are, to give the illusion she is not doing this from memory. It is a performance for the comfort of others, and the comfortable ask less questions. She almost always got left alone anyway. She wonders how she must look from the outside. Short, black hair, in a layered bob that tapers into her neck, pale skin, wispy and thin. Her outfit for the train is always the same, a plain, thin white blouse with short sleeves and dark blue buttons down the middle, a pair of dark blue slacks with a very high waist, a tasteful pair of flats, tented teal triangles for earrings. The train is based on its early middle twentieth century ancestors, and she commits fully to the part as well. She never asks anyone if she pulls it off, or asks for a picture.
+
+It takes her a while to notice there is someone else in the railcar with her.
+
+One of those upward glancing motions registers some bright color on her left, but it takes four more motions before it actually clicks that it's an arm in a jacket. She stops mid-sketch and turns to the other passenger.
+
+Across the aisle from her seat is a bench against the left wall of the train, and despite years of riding she cannot say for sure if the bench was always present or a new addition. Other than that it does not stand out, as all the upholstery, cushions, wood, metal, and design choices fit perfectly with the rest of the compartment. It might have been there the whole time. It might have appeared there seconds ago. It alarms her how little her memory has charted the left side of the aisle.
+
+The other passenger is a woman who is also a skunk. She is tall, broad-shouldered, portly, covered in earthy green fur, with a mess of curly hair that is swept to the side and bleached blond. She wears an orange canvas bomber jacket, a beat up white tank top, grayish cargo pants, and heavy boots. Her arms are spread out on the back of the bench. One of her legs is crossed over the other, bouncing on it. She is grinning. Something about the fur pattern near the skunk's left eye unsettles Lucy, but it is obscured by the dark round sunglasses the skunk is wearing. How the skunk's tail seems to be at an impossible angle to her body while sitting down Lucy chalks up to the benefits of the System.
+
+The skunk's grin widens when her presence is acknowledged. Lucy looks at her but lets the other woman make the first move. The skunk gladly obliges. "You know, it took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize you haven't been drawing other passengers."
+
+Lucy chews her tongue before responding, turning back to her work but not letting the stranger from her sight. "Who's to say I wasn't before?"
+
+The skunk shrugs. "It's possible, but I've seen you here every week for decades. It didn't click until about 6 years ago that the styles change but the faces don't."
+
+A regular, then. There are other cars, and Lucia only rides the train once a week. So many different bodies and species exist within the System, and with the weird prevalence of skunks among that, not recalling this one's face didn't feel too strange. Old instincts warn her that her visitor could be banking on that, but she dismisses it with a stroke on the page.
+
+Lucy sighs. "Well noticed. What else have you observed?"
+
+The skunk tilts her head and chews her tongue a little, tapping a claw. "More a hunch than an observation, but you don't draw the living."
+
+"Correct again. Not here, anyway. Elsewhere I do not restrain myself so."
+
+The skunk gives a bobbing nod. "People you lost?"
+
+Lucia speaks plainly. "People I killed."
+
+The test is laid. How will the examinee respond? Fear? Nervous laughter? Anger?
+
+The skunk raises an eyebrow. "Appearances can be deceiving, but you don't strike me as a soldier."
+
+"Metaphorically, maybe, but never literally."
+
+The skunk's claws tighten into the wood of the bench at either end of her arms. "Not a cop, I hope?"
+
+Now there's a measure of character. Lucia genuinely laughs, and the skunk's grips relax. There's that bobbing nod again, and the mephit says, "So, ah, contract work."
+
+Lucy cannot decide if the animal's cavalier nature is charming or cause for alarm. Her heart wants to believe the former. A gut trained on a former life tells her the latter. Both are anxious to see how this plays out. "I would call it familial obligations, but they did pay me for it, and friends of the family would throw me work now and again as well." She pauses. "You know how family can be."
+
+The skunk gives a sad smirk. "Half of mine disowned me for being queer. Don't think it's quite the same but I can sympathize, at least."
+
+Lucy stops sketching for a second, and makes eye contact with the skunk, or as best she can through the other's sunglasses. Even without the eyes, there's a topography of emotion in the snout and cheeks and brow. That pattern of fur around her left eye, it's rough. Aesthetically it interrupts the face. An interesting choice. Panic surges just a little again.
+
+Lucia blinks and shakes her head, turning back to her sketch. "Well, good thing we both got out."
+
+The skunk looks out the window behind her. "And yet the past never stops trailing behind us here. It's like this train, never moving forward, on an endless loop that carries us in circles. Even if we step off at a stop, it will be back around to pick us up again."
+
+Lucy sees no reason to add anything.
+
+The skunk turns back towards her. "These pieces you do fascinate me. They all lack your signature."
+
+"What need to autograph them? They are for me and the dead. Other than the prying eyes of those like you who see my process, they are never shared."
+
+"That is not the signature I mean."
+
+She tenses. "Ah, a stylistic one, then. Do you mean to say I am an artist beyond these sketches? Who do you think I might be?"
+
+"I know exactly who you are."
+
+Everything goes quiet and the light dims. Somewhere in the conversation Lucy missed the whistle for the tunnel, and as the trains slips into the darkness the driving rain no longer fills silence. Even the wheel-clacks sound quieter. The bulbs along either side of the car have dimmed, and the one on the skunk's right has gone out completely. The skunk has taken off her sunglasses, and is wiping the lenses in the cotton of her tank top.
+
+It is not a pattern in her fur, Lucia realizes. It is a scar. A scar that starts north of the brow, runs most of the way down her cheek, and in the middle, crosses her eye. The left eye itself is clouded over, with only a hint of the pupil beneath. The other eye is a striking hazel, untouched.
+
+A million possibilities run through Lucia's head. This is someone here to blackmail her. The family finally sent an assassin. Somehow one of her targets survived and has found her for revenge. The System isn't real, and this is Purgatory, or worse, Hell, luring her into a false sense of security to strengthen her damnation. All of these could be true at once. She does not know. She finds she cannot quit, or leave the sim, or even move, paralyzed in pure fear, an emotion she has not felt in centuries.
+
+Meanwhile, the skunk is saying, "You are Lucia Marchetti, renowned artist and sculptor. One of the most distinct in the System, in fact, and if I'm not mistaken, the unintentional pioneer of three major art movements of the last two centuries. Most intriguing is your lasting fixation on the left eye, present on almost every one of your pieces with a living thing in it. There's a lot of theories, but no one really knows why you do it. Except I think I do."
+
+Lucy resigns herself. 260 years was a good run. More than any of her targets got sometimes by a factor of ten. She should have trusted her gut and bailed. She should have run. She shouldn't have said so much. But she did, and she tries to make peace with having to face the music. It's not really working, but she still cannot bring herself to flee. They say that no one can force you to stay in a sim, that it is impossible to truly hold anyone anywhere in the System against their will, but none of them ever account for the pressure one can exert on oneself. So, if this is the end, she decides, even if she cannot accept it, she will not fight it. "You're here to kill me, aren't you?"
+
+The skunk laughs. "Kill you? Why would I want to kill you?" She holds her sunglasses up towards one of the light fixtures, checking the lens for smudges. "You might be the only person on the System who understands me."
+
+Lucia has the brief vivid image in her mind of an engraved lighter and a carousel tearing itself apart. The skunk across from her must be some sort of fanatic, perhaps another professional killer, or worse, unprofessional. Someone unmoored from reality, perhaps. Madness is more prevalent in the System than anyone admits. Lucy decides she would have preferred if this stranger was here to kill her, then chides herself for this self-destructiveness.
+
+Still the skunk speaks, and taps next to her damaged eye. "For most of my life phys-side, I would now and again come down with migraines that always started behind my eye. Most of them were mild, but some of them would put me down for a whole day. Once or twice I even had visual aberrations, and I couldn't even see out of it. It'd be like static, visual white noise. For some reason, after I forked off my root instance, I started having the migraines again sys-side. The pressure is there, and the hurt is sometimes there, but now I hallucinate. Vividly, and only through that eye. My right eye is locked on reality, and the left eye ranges from minor distortions to things that even our more adventurous chemical days never came close to. I've never met anyone else that gets migraines here like mine. But then, I see your work, and I finally think for a second that maybe I'm not alone."
+
+"I'm not totally convinced you are not here to kill me."
+
+The mephit shakes her head. "I swear I'm not. I mean, you've been here---the System, I should say---for a long time?"
+
+"Centuries."
+
+"When did you upload?"
+
+"Why should I tell you?"
+
+"So I can prove I'm not sent by your 'family'. Just want to know the year."
+
+Lucia mulls it over before saying it. "2140."
+
+"Which was 31 years before my root instance was even born."
+
+"Doesn't mean that you aren't---"
+
+"You have to believe me! You have to, and you have to experience something like I do. It has to be the reason!" The skunk's face is a patchwork of frustration and desperate need.
+
+"I never in my life before this place or after had a single headache."
+
+The stranger is on the verge of tears. "Then why?"
+
+"It's where I put the bullets."
+
+The skunk's eyes go wide, and the rain slams against the rail car as the train leaves the tunnel again.
+
+For the first time in all her years of penance, Lucia wishes she could stop drawing these faces, and instead in this moment sketch the creature across from her. The surprise in the mephit's features decays, like a flashbulb in a camera after it's gone off in those ancient movies the Don loved to watch. Lucy wants to capture this moment as hope withers and understanding winds vines slowly into the visage of the woman. She can see her piece together what that means, why these faces must never bear that mark, a million questions banished to the aether with one simple, ugly, answer. It is Lucia's opinion that art is better left unexplained, and this is why. If it weren't for the storm outside she would have heard the poor thing's heart break. There is a biting of a lip, there are tears, there is a bobbing nod of understanding, and a single, deep sob. If she could raise a hand, a brush, a chisel, these minutes would turn into her finest work, she would capture the death of a hero as seen through a mirror. She mourns it as the emotions pass, as the traces of them evaporate off the skunk's muzzle like morning mist in the sun. To capture what she saw in the moment would be a blasphemous vanity. She tears herself away from staring, and continues her sketches.
+
+It is a while before either can speak. The skunk speaks first. "I think knowing that, somehow, makes your art...more beautiful to me?"
+
+Lucy snorts. "That's unfortunate."
+
+"Do you regret it?"
+
+She rolls her eyes at this. "No, I have sat on this train every week for 250 years drawing the dead because I have nothing better to do. What a stupid question."
+
+"Did you upload because you got tired of killing?"
+
+"I uploaded because I was tired of being a man." She looks up to see that the skunk has put back on her sunglasses, but they cannot hide her surprise again. Lucia sets down the notebook and the charcoal on the seat next to herself. "The family gave me an address and a man's name. They did not tell me what he had done, usually they did not, but they spoke with such vitriol I assumed his trespasses were high. The family back then overlooked my dalliances with other men, as men were easy to pay off, and I suspect I was not the only one in the family 'wandering from the path' in that way. Something about the venom in the request made me wonder if someone in the family had been spurned, and I was cleaning up loose ends. No matter. I had given up long ago on caring about my targets. A job is a job, and the family always found me work.
+
+"I broke into the apartment, and in the dim light of the living room was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She was like polished stone, you could tell she was made more beautiful by the things she endured. It took me a moment to remember what I was even there for, and I wondered again if this wasn't business but personal affairs. She noticed me, and panicked, pulling a blanket to herself even though she was clothed. I did not yell, I did not shout, I did not strike in my work. I used a level voice, moved calmly and deliberately, and made no sudden movements. People feared that more than an angry man, and it meant there was a lot less cleanup involved. I did not hide that I had a gun. She asked me who I was, and I said I was strictly here on business, and she didn't need to know. She said she didn't trust me, and I told her very simply that if I intended to hurt I would not have waited for her to see me. I told her that all she needed to do was answer me a question, and then she could leave safely. As a show of faith, I stepped out from between her and the door. She weighed her options. She was taller than me, a bit stockier, but I was a man with a gun in my hands. She relented, and with a sigh told me to ask. I told her all I needed to know was where I could find my target. I told her the name.
+
+"Perhaps you are smart enough to know where this is going, but I mistook her panic for loyalty. She became defensive, refusing to give any information and demanding of me explanations. I told her she need not be loyal to him again and again, that it was not worth her life to defend him, and that all I needed to know is where he was. She offered bribes. She offered violence. She offered a great many things I dare not say. I do not know how long our exchange went exactly. Easily 15 minutes, likely more. I grew impatient and finally asked her why his life was worth so much more than hers, and that regardless of what happened to her I had a job and that man had to die.
+
+"She wailed, falling to the floor, and told me with absolute despair that she was the man I was looking for. Only then do I begin to inspect my surroundings carefully. I take notice of the decorations, the aesthetic choices, the recurring theme of rebirth. There was a jacket, hung on the back of a dining table chair, with a flag on the shoulder, a flag of stripes and three colors. Such a jacket was not uncommon among younger generations of my country, but the flag was not the flag of Italia of old, nor any of the new flags of the many states my homeland became under the Western Federation. No, this flag is the standard of a country with no land, abstract territory, yet one I---and, I highly suspect, you as well---reside within. Three colors, yes, but the stripes of the flag are horizontal, not vertical. Five stripes, not three.
+
+"No doubt you have heard the tales of old about those Lost in the sims, in the days before the System. In that moment, like them, I became lost within myself. I was not old then, but I had lived a very long life. I tumbled down through memories, emotions, places, times, lovers, imaginations. This woman before me, born something else, but made beautiful by change, was she as me? Pulled unwilling into the affairs of the family? Forced into shapes preordained, melted down and poured into a mold, cracked upon the altar of tradition, to fit needs or to ornament the mansion walls? Did she break the mold, or melt again to make herself anew? Could I do the same? My lovers were all overlooked or bought off, but in the eyes of those who shaped me, I was property who could buy a place at the table in time but never my own freedom. This Angel before me was an epiphany, and to the gospel of my employers I fell apostate in a moment. In my head and only in my head I begged mercy and forgiveness from her, that I might forever fall to her feet and serve to atone for my trespasses. She was living proof that my resignation to my fate was an act of cowardice, that for years I had been lying to myself. A thousand versions of myself in my head ran to every corner of my mind and pulled together a new self, an eternity of hands falling over themselves to construct some possible way to let this woman go without getting both her and myself killed. No markers lay for how long I was lost in my head, and when I pulled back to the reality before me, I have no idea if I had been gone a second or an hour. The woman before me still wept. I made up my mind. It was made from the moment I saw her jacket.
+
+"I told her to look at me. She did. I told her the man I had come to kill was clearly already dead. She stared at me for a long time. I asked her if her identifications had her old name or her new one on them, and when she said new I cemented a plan. I told her I had no intention of killing her, but that I could not promise the same of my employers. I set my gun on the table. I sorted out for her an impressive sum of money that I kept on my person, as even as late as the 2130s hard currency opened far more doors than brute force. I knelt down beside her on the floor. I pressed into her hands a marker, something that would grant her safe passage anywhere she showed it, an agreement of families and organizations that preceded us by centuries. I told her where to go, what places my family would never tread, and what she needed to say to get there. I told her to wait 20 minutes after I left, pack as little as she could, and leave immediately. She sat there stunned, and only as I got to the door did it grip her that this was real.
+
+"She asked me why I was helping her. I could not lie. I told her that killing her would make her a man again and I could not stand to take such beauty from the world. Manhood is not a problem if it is choice, but I was never given one, and I would not force anyone to reconsider their own decision. I do not know if she understood me, but she nodded. As I departed, she asked if she would see me again. I told her no, I was already as dead as the man I had been sent to kill, and left before she could delay me further.
+
+"I do not know what happened to her. I don't know what happened to the family. I do not know what happened to the cats left in my apartment. I do not even know if the sun set the next night. I moved quickly, using the weight my name had gathered over the years to get me quick passage to Roma. Uploading was still new then, expensive and still a mystery to most, but Roma had an Ansible clinic. I arrived in the city just before dawn, and caught the staff as they arrived for the morning. I drained my accounts and gave them each enough to fund the clinic for a year, to upload me and to strike my name from any records. They asked me what to do with my body. I told them to burn it and toss the ashes into the Tiber. When they objected, I handed them even more money, and finally they gave way."
+
+Lucia looks up, and out over the countryside rolling by the windows of the train car. How far, she wonders, does it go? Does it end a small ways from the train? Are the mountains on the other side of this valley merely a trick of sensoria? Or has someone rendered them, crafting the walls of stone as they rise from low earth, etching little runs and outcroppings for a thousand meters upward? Does the sim stretch beyond the mountains, an uncanny mirror of the alps that she had traveled phys-side often enough, mostly for business, only very rarely for pleasure? She knows most of the stops are fleshed out, but she has no idea if all the land in between them is. She briefly sees the faint orange reflection of the skunk's jacket in the window, and tries not to think about how long she might have been silent.
+
+Still, as she speaks, it is a few moments before she turns back to the other passenger. "There is nothing more to tell. The killer for hire died on the Ansible table. I do not miss him. I mourn those whom he took from the world. I carry them on eternally here, as I have since the first day I ever rode this train."
+
+The skunk smirks. "I wonder if the riders know they're in your rolling mausoleum."
+
+Lucia frowns. "It is not a mausoleum!"
+
+The mephit's lip twitches. "Right, my mistake, if it doesn't contain any remains, it's called a cenotaph, isn't it?"
+
+The frown turns to a scowl. "That is not what I mean."
+
+The skunk leans forward, resting her forearms upon her thighs. "A confessional, then. Do you say your 'hail marys' as we ride along these chancel rails? Quite a trick to use a train to transit the stations of the cross, but with only 6 stops instead of 14, you may find us lacking."
+
+Lucia turns to her, meaning to scald the other woman with a glare. "Do not mock me. Those traditions were antiquated before I was born, much less you. I ask nothing of a god I do not believe in. So too the dead are the dead, they feel nothing. Hear nothing. Give nothing. I do this for myself, I grieve. I regret. From what authority do you speak? What right have you to judge?"
+
+The skunk raises her paws in defense. "I'm not judging."
+
+Lucia bares her teeth. "The hell you are not. You speak harshly, think me a sinner."
+
+The skunk crosses her arms before herself. "Listen, I am not in the business of *salvation* or *absolution*."
+
+"Then what, pray tell, are you in the business of?"
+
+The other woman furrows her brow, and leans back. Then, slowly, smugly, she grins. "*Joie de vivre*."
+
+Lucia finds herself genuinely unsure how to respond to that, so she doesn't. On she sketches, ignoring her spectator as best she can. A stop comes and goes, the fourth, and neither debark. No one gets on either. Riders. A thread lies untraced in Lucy's mind. She pulls it.
+
+To the skunk she says, "You asked earlier if the riders know what I do, as if you did not number among them."
+
+The skunk's face isn't just grinning, there's some anticipation around the edges of it. This stranger has been waiting for this question. "Not usually, no, not by a traditional count."
+
+Lucia squints. "Yet you said before the tunnel that you have observed me here for decades."
+
+The skunk looks up, and taps a cheeky claw to her chin. "Yeah, weird, I wonder how that could be?"
+
+"Do you spy on the passengers?"
+
+The skunk tilts her head disappointedly, and lets the silence answer for her.
+
+"Neither then, some small animal, like a mouse or an insect living on the train."
+
+A shake of a head. "Construct or instance, I'd consider them passengers, too."
+
+"And you observed me directly, yes?"
+
+"This is a fun game! Yes, I have countless times."
+
+Lucy doesn't like this game. She hates the feeling of missing something simple. Perhaps it isn't simple. "You...you are the train we are riding in, and you have watched me all these years, and forked to something that could speak to me."
+
+The skunk laughs, and slaps her knees. Lucia turns red, scowling. Wiping humorous tears from her eyes, the skunk says, "I love artists so much. Creative! Very creative, but a few problems. One: I was born after you uploaded. Two: I only forked and individuated from my root instance in 2357, and Three: the System is capable of many incredible things, but that's a little too fantastic." The skunk gave a little head bob. "I guess in a metaphorical way you could say I speak for the train, but no, I'm afraid as long as I've been around in this sim, I've just been a skunk."
+
+Lucy looks out the window, and says aloud, "I do not like this game."
+
+The skunk laughs again. "I'm having a blast. Do you want me to tell you?"
+
+The artist glances back only briefly, and shakes her head.
+
+"Do you want me to give you a hint?"
+
+Now Lucia turns to look at her, and when the skunk raises an eyebrow, she relents. "Fine. Fine! Yes!"
+
+The skunk slips her left paw into her jacket pocket. "Your hint is: rider and passenger are passive roles."
+
+Passive? If riding a train is a passive state, what would be an active---
+
+Lucy nearly throws her sketches to the floor, gesticulating angrily. "You are the engineer. You drive the train."
+
+"Correct!" The mephit holds up three clawed fingers on her right paw. "Beyond maintaining the sim, I wear three hats. One is engineer. The second is stationmaster. But neither of those explain seeing you in this car, do they?"
+
+Lucia's turn to raise an eyebrow. The skunk pulls her left paw from her jacket pocket, and holds up a ticket puncher. Lucia buries her face in her hands. "Conductor. And now I am the asshole for not even remembering you."
+
+The skunk scoffs. "I'm not hurt! Think of it this way, you and this sim have been here for 250 years. I've only been 'on board' for about 35. I dug through our personnel records recently, and there have been well over 100 conductors, never mind several active at the same time. You've been focused on your work, faces change, and at some point you stopped paying attention to who was coming around to check for fares. Hell, I've met other regulars in other sims who don't recognize me right away. Same goes for the 15 years I've been stationmaster, and have you ever actually been to the engine? Did you realize it has to be crewed? I'm proud of my work whether it gets seen or not, but often it isn't."
+
+Lucia finally finds the other end of the thread. "Do you own this sim?"
+
+The smile fades from the skunk's face. "As of a week ago, yes."
+
+"Was it the Century At---"
+
+"Mr. Nguyen had been planning to retire for some time. He'd given full access controls and permissions of the Sim to me a few months back, and after 275 years, he planned to retire at midnight, right as the century rolled over." The furred woman bit her lip and looked away. "I...I don't know if he died in the Attack. The way he was cleaning up his affairs by the end he might have quit the big one. Either way, he's gone."
+
+A grief settles into Lucia. She realizes she does not know the attendants of this sacred place. If it is half as intricate and complex as she thinks, this sim takes a great amount of work and dedication to keep running. The System's curse of eternal memory meant nothing if she did not bother to take notice of someone in the first place. Dozens of faces. Hundreds, likely. On top of this, layered like a dusting of ash or snow, is the suspicion that now this skunk and whatever forks of her there may be are the only ones left. Both the skunk and Lucia herself were lucky. How many sims now sit empty, with no owner? How many empty homes and shops and cities and wildernesses and worlds wait for occupants, like pets who do not yet know the loss of their caretakers, or worse, cannot understand it? Does the System reclaim them? Should it? Should they stand as cenotaphs, markers of a terrible loss few people can yet truly wrap their heads around? Or like a home in a vibrant neighborhood, should the next inhabitants move in, so that life can go on for the living? She doesn't know. Answers are beyond her, she is the rain that falls from the sky and her eyes in equal measure. She rolls off of resolution or closure, like droplets off the panes of the glass of the traincar.
+
+Her tears soak into the paper of her sketchbook, and that tugs her to reality again. She cannot change the past, but she can change the present, the future. She wipes the water from her eyes hastily. "I did not know his name. Nor yours, though you clearly know mine."
+
+The skunk straightens up a little. "My name is Seras. Seras Frame."
+
+Lucia nods. "Seras. I will remember it."
+
+Seras shrugs. "You can't forget it."
+
+Lucia says, "language is an art, not a science. When we say forget and remember, they can mean many things. I will say your name, Seras. I will speak it aloud and address you and not take you for granted again."
+
+The train begins to slow as it reaches the fifth stop. Seras looks out the window, then back to Lucia. "I'll be getting off here, but before I do..." her voice trails off, and she holds up the ticket puncher, clacking it a few times. Lucia smiles. She pulls the ticket from her pocket, as she has every week for hundreds of years.
+
+Seras stands up and takes it, looking it over. "Honestly, I was worried we'd lost all our riders. It's hard to say who's just too overwhelmed to show up, and who's gone. If you're here, I'm sure I'll see other old faces soon enough." She punches the ticket, and pauses. "Have you killed anyone since uploading?"
+
+The train comes to a stop, and something deep inside Lucia tenses. She snaps at the skunk. "Why? Worried I'm going to start up again?"
+
+Seras rolls her eyes, and hands Lucia back her ticket brusquely. "Just curious."
+
+The skunk walks away swiftly, headed for the back of the car. She's just about to leave when Lucy finds her voice again. "I didn't even know you could kill someone here until the bomb went off."
+
+Seras stops dead in her tracks, but doesn't turn around. Lucy keeps talking.
+
+"I heard rumors of people being assassinated, but I never looked into it. How could you kill someone in a world like this? It all stunk of conspiracy, and you know how people are here. I thought I finally found a world without violence, and for a time I had such a world. Then the bomb devours billions, like an earthquake rending the ground into a maw of Hell. I am brought so close to the jaws of death I remember why I was glad to leave that world behind." Lucy feels like a child, small, afraid. Even after transitioning it is a feeling she has rarely felt, and her usual guard falls away. Words tumble from her before she can stop them. "And I do think this is confessional. I do my penance in this public place, an anonymous sinner, because it must not be done alone. I apologize for my hostility. I do not like to be so plainly and nakedly seen by a stranger, and you frightened me like I haven't been since the Ansible table."
+
+Seras turns. The two women watch each other for a while. Lucia speaks first.
+
+"Do you think I've done enough? Held this Vigil for enough lifetimes? Should I keep going?"
+
+The train's whistle blows. Seras shakes her head. "I told you before. I'm not in the business of Absolution or Salvation." She walks to the back door. As the railcars start to lurch into motion, she adds, "I'm just happy to see someone's still riding the train."
+
+Then she's gone, and Lucia pushes herself over a few seats to the window. She sees the skunk laughing and pulling the back of her jacket over her head. As the train pulls away, she's stomping her boots through the puddles on the platform as she runs for the shelter of an awning.

content/stories/game-night.md

@@ -0,0 +1,325 @@
+Joanna sat at her kitchen table, having the hardest time figuring out the next best move to make while playing solitaire. The cards were jumbo print, of course, a leftover from her time phys-side. She was just about to move a column of cards using a king when she heard her doorbell. She could have created her sim so the default entrance was within her home, but she was old-fashioned. She liked having her guests wait a bit while she got around to answer the door. There was something to be said for indulging anticipation, especially on the System, where so many things were instantaneous. She swiped a wrinkled hand over the in-progress game and the cards fluttered away, stored in an exo-cortex to pick up later. She got up slowly and puttered her way over to the front door.
+
+Arranging this get-together was a welcome distraction for her. When she received the confirmation message, she had trouble thinking of much else. Though she hadn't met her visitor yet, Joanna knew what she looked like. She looked out of the peephole to check it was her visitor before undoing the lock and opening up the door.
+
+An older woman was standing on Joanna's front porch. She had a slight hunch to her back and was quite short so that Joanna had to look down slightly to make eye contact. She was wearing a striped shirt with comfortable slacks and her gray hair was done up in a perm tighter than any of the folds of her skin. She was clutching a small purse and looked expectantly at Joanna to make the first move.
+
+"I trust you're Bethann then? Saw my ad in the feeds?" Joanna asked.
+
+"Yes, yes. And you must be Joanna. I decided to come and see what this is about. I could also use a break after all the unpleasantness that's been going on."
+
+"Well that is an understatement. Still, I am glad you made the trip out."
+
+"Likewise. Now, can I come inside? The outside of your sim isn't exactly winning any awards."
+
+Joanna held out her hand to help the woman climb up the final step into the house. Bethann pushed past her hand and stepped inside without another thought. The interior was cozy, if not a little dusty. There was a boxy T.V. set into an ornate wooden frame that sat on the floor facing the living room. The thought of moving it was impossible, it had been there long enough to begin fusing with the floorboards underneath it. The couch had an intricate floral pattern for a flower that Bethann was sure did not exist. Perhaps a take on an object'd'art from the Exchange? The coffee table, fittingly, had an abandoned cup of coffee sitting off to the side. The living room was small, barely enough room to step around the tables and furniture to move around. Bethann wondered to herself why Joanna had decided to make her sim so cramped. Before she could ask, Joanna said, "I'm glad you could take time out of your busy schedule to come over."
+
+A blatant attempt to guilt Bethann over her re-scheduling their meeting. She let the comment slide off of her and responded with, "I would have arrived sooner, but I won't miss my shows. I've been getting invested in the newest reboot of Darkest Shadows. They've learned a lot from the last seven attempts that is making the show compelling to keep up with."
+
+"I'm more partial to Bonanza myself, but I don't think the writers knew what to do with Hoss in the latest version being produced sys-side. I stopped watching when Little Joe forked into Medium Joe and Big Joe. That's just too much Joe for one show."
+
+"Yes, it does sound like a lot. So where are we doing this? I don't think there's enough leg room for us to set up here."
+
+Joanna puttered around Bethann, shuffling her feet on the worn carpet as she did so. She waved her hand for Bethann to follow her. "This way dear, we'll have more room in the kitchen."
+
+Bethann walked over and sat down in one of the two chairs set up at the kitchen table. Much like everything else in the sim, it seemed tailor-made for Joanna's convenience first. The table was big enough to seat one extra guest and no more. Joanna arrived shortly after Bethann had set down her purse. If Bethann had noticed how Joanna had neglected to offer her a drink or snack before they were settled, she didn't say so.
+
+"What game would you like to play first? Was there a favorite that your young gentleman would choose?"
+
+Joanna laughed, "You get right to the point don't you? Reminds me of him in a way. But to answer your question, we would take turns in picking out the games we would play. Since you are my guest, I'll give you the first choice."
+
+"That's mighty kind of you. I'm partial to boardgames, so I'll suggest something simple to start with. Have you ever played Uncle Wiggily?"
+
+"I can't say that I have, but I'm willing to learn."
+
+"If you'll grant me the proper ACL's, I can grab it out of the games I've brought with me."
+
+Joanna looked up and away for a few seconds before saying, "There, you should have permission now."
+
+Bethann reached her hands into her purse and pulled out a colorful box with a collection of anthropomorphic animals dressed in fancy clothes prancing about in an idyllic forest. The majority of the box art was taken up by the titular Uncle Wiggily, a dandy rabbit man with a black suit jacket, bright yellow shirt, red corduroy pants, blue bowtie, and a top hat that he had tipped to the side.
+
+Bethann opened up the box and began unfolding the game board and setting out the player markers. "If you're at all familiar with Candy Land, it plays similarly. You draw cards from the deck and on each of the cards is a number that tells you how much you are to move. The catch is that there are poems on each of the cards and you must read out the poem before you are allowed to move."
+
+"Every time? Wouldn't that get tiring?" Joanna asked.
+
+"It's a part of the overall whimsy the game is trying to evoke. You are a dandy woodland animal having a merry time of skipping through the forest after all."
+
+Bethann set the player pieces in front of Joanna, each a copy of Uncle Wiggily but with different colored suits in red, green, blue, and yellow. Joanna chose the blue piece and Bethann chose the green. They set their pieces on the starting square and took turns reading the cards and moving their pieces. As they settled into a rhythm of passing turns, they talked with each other.
+
+"I'm deeply sorry for your loss. I've lost a lot of good friends in the New Year too," Bethann said.
+
+"Thank you. It's been a terrible few days."
+
+"What was your young gentleman's name?"
+
+"His name was NaSRFS. I didn't know much about him, but he would come once a week to spend time with me. Didn't strike me as a tracker, more of a tasker really. That made his choice to visit a little more special. It's nice to know that he was willing to fork for our time together."
+
+For a moment, Bethann's shoulders tensed at the mention of NaSRFS, and then it was gone. "That does sound nice. It's good for us old fogeys to socialize with younger instances. They keep us up to date on what's happening outside of our own sims in the System, do they not?"
+
+It was a leading question, but Joanna was not taking the bait. After an uncomfortable silence had passed, Bethann placed her marker at the end of the winding path and said, "I guess that makes me the winner. Why don't you choose a game for us to play next?" She gathered up the pieces, shuffled the cards, and folded up the board in quick measure. Packing it away quickly and carefully.
+
+"Oh, I know just the game. I'm more for card games, so I'll teach you how to play Clock."
+
+"Never heard of it before."
+
+"Then I'm glad I can be your introduction." Joanna pointed her hand down and flicked it quickly upwards. Through the motion, she had produced a standard deck of playing cards with the words JUMBO PRINT on the side in large bubble letters. She took out the cards, removed the jokers and rule card, and began shuffling the deck. As she shuffled, she explained the basics of the game.
+
+"Clock is a lot like a cooperative variant of solitaire. You work together to play cards on the various positions around the 'clock' that is built around the deck. But it is a competitive game too, as each play gets both of you closer to playing out the cards in your hand and winning the game."
+
+"Sounds delightful. How many cards do we get?"
+
+"Five to start, but if you don't have a play, you draw until you have a playable card." Joanna stopped shuffling and dealt out the cards to herself and Bethann. She alternated giving each of them a card until they had a full hand of five. Then, she turned over four cards from the top of the deck to form a cross shape around the deck in the center.
+
+"I'll go first," Joanna said, placing a black five on top of a red six.
+
+Bethann played a red nine on a black ten and passed her turn. A few turns later, Joanna stopped her turn to say, "Aces are special, you play them on the corners and then can build on top of that suit. They provide a new set of plays to make on your turn and open up new strategies." She laid down her ace of hearts in the upper left corner, closest to Bethann. "You've been awfully quiet. Are you also thinking of someone you lost recently?"
+
+Bethann grumbled and drew from the deck until she had a three she could play.
+
+"Yes, a good many someones. Three long-lived instances of my own that I will miss, though they never called, so less so than others."
+
+"I was lucky enough to keep all of my personal instances. I'm sorry to hear you have lost some of yours." She played a king and moved a column of cards onto another column.
+
+"It's small potatoes in comparison to the rest of the System. But I guess everyone's hurting." Bethann played a queen on Joanna's king.
+
+"I've reached out to my family, but they're reeling too."
+
+"I really should do that. With everything happening, I didn't really consider it."
+
+"That's surprising. Especially when you agreed to spend time with a stranger on such short notice. No other friends available?" Joanna was needling Bethann, trying to get her to crack.
+
+"Much as I would love to tell you, it seems as though you've won." Bethann moved the six of hearts onto the five in the corner and waited expectantly.
+
+Joanna swore under her breath. She played her last card, the seven of hearts, and said, "So I have. What are we playing next?"
+
+"Phase 10 but with dice. I could do with throwing something right now."
+
+Joanna tried to keep the insinuation that she had thrown their previous match deliberately out of her voice. "Sounds interesting, how do you play?"
+
+"If you're familiar with Yahtzee, it's similar in a lot of ways. You roll all ten of your dice and then choose which you want to keep, re-rolling up to three times. Then you try to make hands with the numbers you rolled and we score after ten rounds."
+
+Bethann brought out the game and they spent time talking about little things. Joanna mentioned her new favorite coffee brand she had found on the Exchange while Bethann complained of the gall of the newest uploads in their tone on the shared feeds. While they were both still listening intently, neither prodded the other for more information than was given. Before they knew it, ten rounds had passed.
+
+Bethann tallied up their scores and said, "My, my. I seem to have won this one."
+
+"I can't believe your third re-roll actually mattered in that final round."
+
+"What can I say? Risk is necessary if you want to win."
+
+"I've got my own game that has an element of risk."
+
+"Oh? Do tell."
+
+"It's called Steal-A-Bundle. You make pairs with the cards on the board and the cards in your hand, but your pile can be stolen out from under you if your opponent has the same card that is on top of your pile in their hand."
+
+"Hmm, sounds like it could get tricky quickly. Well, go ahead and deal out the cards then."
+
+Joanna shuffled her well-worn deck and placed four cards face up in the center of the table. She then dealt out four cards to each of them. They passed turns back and forth, each placing a card from their hand onto a card in the center and adding it to their pile. They were even with each other until Joanna had picked up a set of eight's. Bethann flashed her own eight from her hand and moved Joanna's bundle on top of her own.
+
+"A shame, Joanna, truly. It seems you don't know how to manage risk after all."
+
+Joanna's eyebrow twitched at that. Bethann had crossed a line with that implication. She placed the remaining eight from the deck on top of Bethann's bundle, pulling the cards into her own pile. "I know more than you can imagine. Like that you also had a standing game night with NaSFRS."
+
+Bethann's eyes went wide. "How did you..."
+
+But Joanna cut her off, "When I found out he was lost, I did some digging. And I can never just leave well-enough alone. I think you did much the same as me. I respect you enough to think that you weren't completely unaware of the way I worded my ad on the feed. It was set to run in your most heavily trafficked areas after all. Let's cut the shit for a second."
+
+Bethann let herself relax and the tone of her voice was icy, calculated. "You should know that I forked just for this meeting. If you're carrying out some grand plot, you're not going to take me out here."
+
+Joanna scoffed and said, "We've just met, I don't expect you to have a CPV built out for me. And I don't have one for you, if you are worried about that. That comes later once we get to know each other better."
+
+"Then what, exactly, are you driving at?"
+
+Joanna leaned across the table and got in Bethann's face as she whispered, "He got us to drop our guard. Both of us."
+
+"Yes, that is troubling. But whatever he knew has left with him. Shouldn't that be a comfort?" Bethann asked.
+
+Joanna's face pulled down into a deep frown. "We know a lot of dangerous secrets."
+
+Bethann waved a hand through the air, dismissing her concerns. "Oh sure, bunches. But that doesn't make it easier to lose him."
+
+Joanna leaned back, which caused the wooden chair to creak slightly. "How can you be certain he wasn't just using us to get intel?"
+
+"I can't be sure, but we used him too. Admit it. Wasn't it good to have someone to play games with that would give a damn?"
+
+Joanna's frown eased back off into a tired smile. "Yes, it was. He knew how to keep things interesting."
+
+"If it helps, I miss him terribly as well."
+
+"Strangely, it does." Joanna straightened up and asked, "Now what are we playing next?"
+
+"I'd like to kick this up a notch. Try something a bit more complicated. Have you ever played Othello before?"
+
+"Hmm, not particularly. Are you sure you don't want to play chess?"
+
+"No, no. I find it to be too cliche. And we're playing friendly games, correct? I have a bit of a mean streak with chess."
+
+"Othello it is then."
+
+Joanna cleared the table with a thought, the playing cards sliding effortlessly back into their box. Bethann dug around in her purse until she found a small bright green board that folded in the middle. She unclasped a hinge on the side and opened the board up. Inside of the board were two trays, each filled with shiny round plastic tiles that had white on one side and black on the other. She set one of these trays in front of Joanna and the other in front of herself. She then took four tiles and put them in the middle of the board in a cube in the pattern of white-black-black-white.
+
+Bethann explained the rules of Othello in painstaking detail. She spent so long on the rules that Joanna wondered if they were going to have time to actually play the game. She interrupted Bethann's explanation of the importance of taking the corners by saying, "Seems straightforward to me. I think I can pick up the rest as we play."
+
+Bethann shrugged her shoulders and motioned to the two colors. "Now, which color would you like?" Bethann asked.
+
+"How generous of you to give me first pick. I'd like the white tile please."
+
+"Then I will go first as black."
+
+She picked up a tile and placed it on the board so that the white tile was between her two black ones. She then flipped the white tile over and made the whole line black. Joanna thought for a moment before deciding on where she wanted to place her tile. She reached hesitantly across the board and placed her white tile, flipping the black pieces to white. They passed a few more turns before Joanna started to feel the pressure the game had to offer.
+
+Joanna's forehead wrinkles were scrunched up as she concentrated on the board. "You don't give an inch, do ya?" She placed a white tile and could only flip over two.
+
+Bethann placed her tile, flipping five white to black and said, "I've no patience for people who coddle when competing. Oh, it's important to explain the rules. And you daresn't leave out any details or gain the upper hand by withholding at the start. But once you are playing a game, then you are on your own. For is it not the act of playing that teaches us the most? How can there be sweetness in eventual victory without having been defeated? Loss can be an excellent teacher, if you let it."
+
+Joanna placed her white tile and methodically flipped over row after column of black tiles until the majority of the board was covered in white. "And what has this loss taught you?"
+
+Bethann grimaced down at the board on the table. "That I need to be more careful with how I place my pieces. But the game is not over yet." She tapped her container of tiles to emphasize the fact the game was just starting.
+
+"No, not this. I meant *the loss.* The one that everyone on the System is working through."
+
+Bethann thought for a while and placed her tile on a corner. While it only gave her four tiles, she was using it to gain a future foothold. She replied tiredly, "That we are not as immortal as we like to believe. It is easy to forget the fragility of our shared dream. And living much longer lives has shifted our collective perspective."
+
+"Do you think that we'll be able to heal, without being able to forget?" She placed a tile that gave her a full row of white.
+
+"I think it's possible, yes. But again, the scale of time for that healing to occur is elongated. To help my case, I'd like to share something about NaSRFS that I discovered while mourning. He was only 120 years old. Can you believe that?" She claimed a full column of black.
+
+Joanna gasped and said, "He was just a baby! Barely over a century old and gone already. Too soon, much too soon." Two diagonal lines of white flipped onto the board.
+
+"You see my point though. Phys-side, 120 is an incredibly long life, but here you're just getting to the good stuff. I don't think everyone is as worried about losing an entire year as someone phys-side would be coming out of a coma. Because to us, a year is a drop in a bucket of time. Inconvenient, yes, but devastating, no. It is the loss of the promised years of those that disappeared that weighs heavy on us. The collective potential of billions of immortals snuffed out that has us weary to our bones."
+
+Bethann placed her last black tile, but it could only flip over one tile. She could tell Joanna was going to win a few turns ago. When Joanna placed her last tile, she didn't even flip over the tiles. Instead, Bethann flipped them for her as she talked.
+
+"I suppose I could see that. If I'm being honest, I had a similar reaction recently. The day after New Years, I realized that I hadn't turned off my reminder for NaSRFS coming over to play cards. When I got the notification ping, it took me a moment to realize that he wasn't coming. Then that dovetailed into thinking about all of the other weeks left in the year where I would not see him and I felt myself a fool. Both for forgetting to turn off the alert and for grieving time that was not spent."
+
+Joanna looked to be on the verge of tears. Bethann reached out a hand across the table to comfort her, patting her hand gently. Joanna let the moment last for a second and no longer, immediately pulling her hand back towards her pack of cards. She was upset at the fact that Bethann had managed to get her to let her guard down and show her sadness. The last person to manage that had played her. Composure regained and wobble gone from her voice, she said, "One more game. And this time, I get to choose my favorite."
+
+It was a dare. An invitation to dance along the edge of their shared grief at their limit. To play a host's favorite game in their own house was incredibly dangerous.
+
+Bethann steepled her fingers and breathed out through her nose slowly. "I do hope I don't regret this, Joanna. But I'll bite, what game are we playing?"
+
+"Texas hold 'em poker.''
+
+A small smile at the corners of Bethann's mouth. "It's hardly interesting without a proper wager."
+
+Joanna shrugged and said, "I suppose you have a point. Whoever wins the round, gets to ask one question. No stipulations or affordances made or given. If you know the answer, you must talk."
+
+Bethann nodded, "Agreeable. Deal out the hand."
+
+"You know how to play then?"
+
+"Everyone knows poker, Joanna. Let's face each other properly."
+
+Bethann waved her hand through the air towards the middle of the table, Othello board and pieces vanishing into mist. Her bag lurched to life and coughed out a large pile of multicolored poker chips. With a quirk of her eyebrow and a twitch of her eye, the pile was divided neatly in half. Joanna let the cards fly from the open box to settle in front of them, two face down each. The only sound in the room was the steady ticking of the novelty cuckoo clock on the wall. Each woman peeked at her hand as though it held the secret to the universe. And then, the game began.
+
+"Ante."
+
+"Call. Playing the flop."
+
+"Bet."
+
+"Raise."
+
+"Call."
+
+"Playing the turn."
+
+Bethann scowled, "Fold."
+
+Joanna scooped the wagered chips into her pile. She gathered the cards up with her hands, shuffled them, and offered the deck to Bethann to cut. She tapped the top, declining the offer. Joanna dexterously dealt the cards out to both of them.
+
+"Ante."
+
+"Call. Playing the flop."
+
+"Bet."
+
+"Call. Playing the turn."
+
+"Check."
+
+"Check. Playing the river."
+
+"Bet."
+
+Joanna shook her head and said, "Fold."
+
+Bethann snatched the chips in the wagered pile and let them slip through her fingers and clink musically into her personal stash.
+
+Joanna gathered the cards and handed the pile to Bethann. "You'll deal." It was not a question, but a command. Bethann did not refuse. She bridge shuffled the cards together a few times and then offered the deck to Joanna to cut, which she did.
+
+They were all business. Only speaking when taking game actions. Each blink of the eyes told a new and complex story. A flick of a card on the outside of the flop before the turn was enough to raise and force a fold. Or the sniffle of a nose was a false tell meant to throw the opponent. Hands kept only on the feeling that the tapping of a foot was excitement and not nerves. The myriad invisible ways in which they both could not help but to give their hands away. Everything that they had learned from each other in the last few hours was put to ruthless, efficient use.
+
+Bethann started the round, hoping to force Joanna to bet all her chips, "Ante."
+
+"Call."
+
+"Playing the flop." She dealt out three cards; two of diamonds, jack of spades, and five of hearts. Joanna itched the back of her leg with her foot. Bethann hesitated for a second before removing her fingers from the five of hearts.
+
+"Check."
+
+"Check. Playing the turn." Bethann dealt out the next card, nine of diamonds, and took an opportunity to peek at her two face down cards. She noticed that Joanna's eyes had lost some of their edge. Only a sliver, but enough to catch.
+
+"Bet." Joanna tossed her chips high in the air and let them hit the middle pile one at a time. She was teasing Bethann. She wouldn't have it.
+
+"Raise." Her betting was serious and succinct. She used the back of her right hand to push the required chips into the pile. She kept eye contact with Joanna as she moved them.
+
+"Call." Joanna clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth and the chips needed appeared on top of the betting pile. She only had a few chips left.
+
+"Playing the river." Bethann turned over the final card, a 2 of clubs.
+
+"Check."
+
+"No all-in Joanna? Where's your sense of adventure?"
+
+"I have my own cliches I'm opposed to. Ready to reveal?"
+
+"Let's see what you have."
+
+The two players flipped over their face down cards and they each announced their poker hand in turn.
+
+"Two pair," Joanna said. She had a jack of hearts and a nine of spades.
+
+"Three of a kind." Bethann had revealed a seven of hearts and a two of spades. A hand just good enough to beat out Joanna's. She slumped back into her chair a little, letting the tension from her body relax. Joanna sat and stared at the poker hands for a while, letting the silence stretch on. She broke it by pushing the poker chips from the center over into Bethann's pile.
+
+Bethann did her best to sit straight up again and said, "You don't have enough chips to make the ante, Joanna. I've won. Now it's your turn to spill."
+
+Joanna tapped the kitchen table rhythmically with her pointer finger, a frown deeping on her face. "Go ahead and ask it then."
+
+"What actually happened on New Year's?"
+
+Joanna sighed and said, "I don't know."
+
+Bethann reached for her purse, a scowl had crawled onto her face. "If you won't play by the rules you set your..."
+
+But Joanna cut her off. "I'm not asking you to believe me! I don't know. Half of my network is gone and the other half are scrambling for answers. The information lockdown is tighter than it's ever been. Whatever happened is so important, they've shut down my usual avenues for sniffing it out. Not to mention the emotional state everyone's been in. You try retaining a system log dump file that's trillions of lines long while the agent who brought it to you breaks down into tears on line 555,678,901 because their best friend died and they didn't know!"
+
+Bethann let go of her purse and her expression softened. She could see how frazzled Joanna was from how tightly she clutched her fist. Her eyes, endlessly tired and yet still intense and sharp, dared Bethann to question her testimony. But Bethann knew she was telling the truth.
+
+"Thank goodness it's not just me. I've personally got twenty-four forks scouring the System for leads and haven't come up with anything substantial. I thought I was losing my touch."
+
+Joanna laughed and said hoarsely, "I've got fifty-two working overtime right now. The merging has been a bit much to keep up with, but it sounds like they're bringing out the big players for this."
+
+"Council of Eight nonsense?"
+
+"Most assuredly."
+
+"Ah, well then. Nothing a change in tactics can't fix right?"
+
+"Beats moping around all day for sure. Need to use all this restless energy somehow."
+
+Bethann stood up from her seat and said, "This was fun. I didn't realize how much I needed it. I think I'd like to come over again. Perhaps without the spycraft next time."
+
+"Oh, come now Bethann. You know that's what makes it fun. Besides, I think that's what he would have wanted."
+
+"Same time next week then?"
+
+"No, I wasn't born yesterday. You'll know I'm game from this series of sensorium pings."
+
+Joanna sent over a quick succession of five sensorium pings and watched Bethann's expression turn to one of manic glee.
+
+"That works for me. Have a lovely night Joanna."
+
+"You as well, Bethann."
+
+And with that, Bethann stepped from the sim back to her own home. Joanna willed the sim to dim the lights. She puttered back to sit at the kitchen table and brought out the solitaire game once more. After carefully considering her options, she decided to not move the column with the king after all. Instead, she placed a red queen on top of it and drew a new card. She smiled brightly down at the board and her hand as everything started to fall into place.

content/stories/home-from-the-game.md

@@ -0,0 +1,117 @@
+She hadn't seen them in... well, in years. And yet, here they were... sitting on her couch. She swallowed, awkwardly, and took another step closer.
+
+She was never really *comfortable* around her own forks, even one as sufficiently... What was the word again? Right, as sufficiently *individuated* as this one. Hell, they lacked everything she considered *herself*. The brown hair tied back in a scruff was gone, replaced with a shaggy mane shot through with a green streak. The ridiculous clothes, plated with bulky metal and accompanied by a cape.
+
+Oh, and of course, the fact her fork had turned into a *massive hulking wolf-person.*
+
+She watched it as it sat on the couch, massive snouted head hanging low, the creature that used to be just like her in every way. They stared glumly down into a space somewhere on the floor. Deep brown fur, almost matching the tone of her skin, was gently ruffled by the breeze of a fan.
+
+She took a deep breath. "So... um..."
+
+"I'm sorry." The creature's voice was a low rumble, its head raised up to look at her. "I know... especially with everything that's been going on regarding the attack... it's hard to put up with an unexpected guest..."
+
+"Yeah. Well..." She shrugged. "I mean... It's good to catch up!"
+
+"I just..." The wolf swallowed. "I need to be around people. And you're the only person I know outside of..."
+
+She nodded as her up-tree's sentence tapered off. "The game."
+
+The single-page announcement lay on the arm of the couch, where her fork had left it.
+
+> ::: center
+> **Forbidden Sector to Close For the Foreseeable Future**
+> :::
+>
+> Hey all. Devteam here.
+>
+> No doubt by now you've heard the news; a significant number of our fellow uploaded instances here on Lagrange have permanently crashed from a large-scale terrorist attack inflicted on system architecture. In the wake of the ongoing crisis, we have seen fit to shut down the sim for the foreseeable future.
+>
+> All instances will be removed from the sim. Do not worry; your character data will be safe. We are cooperating with systechs and the Council to address what damage, if any, has been done to the game and the toll of those within. A memorial will be constructed in the Sky Palazzo at New Terra, in remembrance of those who are now gone.
+>
+> The game will reopen soon enough. Until then...
+>
+> Stay safe. Keep each other close.
+>
+> *--- Forbidden Sector Dev Team*
+>
+> > What Gifts We Give, We Give In Death (Ode Clade)
+> >
+> > Simon "Clank" Knight (Tarot Clade)
+> >
+> > Caela Argent (Tarot Clade)
+
+Sadie had first played it... oh, back in the 2320s. Close to a century ago, shortly after she'd uploaded. It was the sort of space-action-adventure sandbox game every sci-fi nerd dreamed of. Not that she'd ever admit to being a sci-fi nerd, of course, but there was a time when Sadie played it obsessively for a month, and decided to waste no more time on it after one character she played met a spectacularly *explosive* end.
+
+As a condolence to herself, she created a *single* fork, the only one she would ever create, and told it to have fun while it played, and return once its character had died.
+
+And, clearly, it had lived and died as many characters, each time returning to the game without merging down. Each death, it rolled a new one.
+
+Until it became whoever it was in front of her. A... the name of the species sat on the tip of her tongue.
+
+*Loup-Garou!*
+
+The Loup-Garou were fictional, and absolutely nothing like the species of Artemis encountered a near-century after their creation. Instead, they were a species of anthropomorphic wolves, A concept Sadie found more than a little embarrassing and frankly ridiculous.
+
+Given that all three of *Forbidden Sector*'s designers had been furries, it was only natural that there would be a species of strong, muscular wolf-people.
+
+So of *course* the fork of herself she left there would evolve into... into *this*. She'd try different techniques for each character, moving to a different strategy or build if the last one failed. Eventually she landed on one character that would survive, after failure after failure, and for some reason that just *had* to be the shaggy-haired wolf person.
+
+And now that wolf person she'd become was sitting here. In her house.
+
+She turned back to her bowl of cereal, took a bite, then swallowed. "So... Not that your company is unappreciated, but..."
+
+"I'll be out of your hair soon enough." The fork rubbed its eyes. "Just... need a few days."
+
+"Good. Good. I'm... I'm glad." Watching the wolf person's head turn away, she realized that her phrasing was probably not the kindest.
+
+"I was just... well, apologizing for not really having enough accommodations for you." She scooped up more cereal, gulping it down.
+
+"Mm. It's fine. I lived in a *spaceship*." The wolf chuckled. "Leg room is kind of at a premium there, y'know?"
+
+"You had a ship of your own? Wouldn't that mean you'd have..." She feebly thumbed through her memory to try and find the exact game parlance, before giving up and settling on what came immediately to mind; "A... a guild? Why not try rooming with them, I'm sure you'd prefer it over--"
+
+The whine that escaped the wolf's lips, (*her* lips?) sent a shiver down her spine. Watching her fork's ears fold back was like a cold knife in her chest.
+
+"Crew's gone, Sadie." The wolf shook her head. "All of them."
+
+"All of them?" Sadie blinked.
+
+"Vax and the Scrap-Breaker were both taken by CPV. Aska crashed from grief and Charles merged back down with his Root. It's me and Miller left. And Miller... won't answer my calls."
+
+"Oh. Oh jeez, I--"
+
+"I'll move out by next week, I just..." The wolf sniffled. "I just need to be around somebody right now. I know I'm not the most... familiar person to you, despite--"
+
+"I understand." Sadie laid her bowl of cereal down in the sink, immediately rushing over to comfort her alternate self. "Seriously. I do."
+
+As she sat beside the her-that-wasn't-herself, she idly reached over to scratch the ears of their massive lupine form. The wolf shrugged, nuzzling into the gesture. It at once surprised her, and yet made total sense; with enough perisystem manipulation, you could emulate the senses of anything. Even an alien species, with senses of taste, smell, *instinct*, radically different from that of a human.
+
+Even a Loup-Garou from *Forbidden Sector*.
+
+And of course, next to her was a version of herself that had embraced that, while she'd rejected it. And of course, even through individuation she could still see the little threads of herself in the wolf. Her fork's dark brown fur was the exact tone of her skin, she still bounced her leg when bored, and she still tapped her index finger against her thumb when she was stressed.
+
+All this time, she'd thought of the game as a waste of time, something that her fork would tire of eventually. Little did she know that this fork had been forming connections and making friends, just as she herself had, and that those fragile connections were just as easily severed as hers.
+
+And now, at the turning of the century, after a terrorist attack that had taken the lives of so many...
+
+Her fork was here.
+
+She was still alive.
+
+"I'm sorry." She leaned over, gripping the wolf. "I... I've made a total mess of things. I never even thought to ask if you changed your name."
+
+The wolf blinked. "Oh. Oh drek, I'm sorry. I'd completely forgotten you don't know me." She squeezed her eyes shut in laughter. "I... back in the game, I'd become somewhat infamous. Pirate Queen, you know. Everyone knew me." She thrust out a paw. "Mistress Lissa, at your service."
+
+"Sadie... I mean, you knew that..." She sighed. "Sorry, it's hard getting used to--"
+
+"I know." The wolf chuckled awkwardly. "It's awkward for me, too."
+
+She stared into Lissa's eyes. Her own eyes. "I really should have sent you a sensorium ping or... or something. I... I'm sorry for never checking up on you."
+
+Lissa shrugged. "Hey. That cuts both ways. I guess I was scared that you'd see *this* and think... Well, I dunno."
+
+"I'm... I'm just so glad you're still here. I wish we could have met---*properly* met---in different circumstances."
+
+Lissa wrapped a paw around her Root Instance, tugging her closer. "We're here now. No point in looking back, right? We've got each other, no matter what happens."
+
+And so they sat, wolf and human, fork and root instance, together.

content/stories/millwright.md

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+I need a break.
+
+Even before uploading, I was the face. The spokesperson. The rep. The primary fronter in a plural system of at least nine. The fursona everyone knew, the friend, the organizer, the closeted kid who burst out of the closet a social butterfly. It worked, then. Whether I wanted it or not, I was good at it, when we could manage our mental health.
+
+I was one of the headmates that pushed for uploading as our body failed and our loved ones dropped like flies.
+
+Not being the front when we hit the System proper was a bit of a shock, but when we finally fanned out and forked into our separate headmate-y selves, I de facto became the Face of the Clade. Alex eventually ended up running everything, she was the part of us that likes keeping archives and all that, but I was expected to be head of social affairs. Even later, when my side gig became my main gig and I functionally became a clade unto myself, I was still expected to be diplomat and ambassador in turn.
+
+That side-gig-turned-sys-side-career was a flush of kinks and dreams made real. After about a decade of careful planning and testing, we started a 'company'. We forked endless versions of ourselves and sent them out into the world. We found a way to replicate the "synths" of phys-side fiction, and embraced it so thoroughly that it now takes exceptional effort to act fully organic. Here, we could live out the fetish of being mass-produced, effectively engaging in sex work in the process, but also live out the fantasy of helping whoever needed it and being able to bow out if things got unsafe or unstable.
+
+As we expanded rapidly, some part of me felt a pull towards authenticity, and we decided to have a "brick and mortar" headquarters. We worked with several sim artisans to create the now-famous High Falls Millworks#46b147c4. We chose the name, location, and design based on a district of the town our great-great-great grandmother lived in called Brown's Race in Rochester, New York. Hundreds of years before even she was born, the city had made a name for itself off the mills powered by the waterfall and river nearby. We even went as far as to commission a meticulously crafted fully functioning triphammer forge, like the area once had. Her name was Andréa as well, and I took her name out of admiration. We also named our company 9IN INDUSTRIES as a nod to her favorite band.
+
+Building a factory, one that made our production model look more complicated than "gather client specs and fork to those in another room", one that featured a convincing "assembly line", exploded our company overnight. We had to restructure on the fly, and that is where I forked from my down-tree instance. The most continuous version of me, Andréa C Mason#Foundry, remained head of the company, but she forked me, Andréa C Mason#Central, to be the heart of it all. Yet again I found myself a face, communal voice, a spokeswoman and figurehead for this clade-within-a-clade we'd become.
+
+My path from my down-tree diverged quickly and wildly. I became less and less involved with any direct production or facsimile of such. I would fork for something, and then that fork would develop into an entire department. My forks spread out and I found myself not working with my hands all that much, really, if at all. For our own safety and the safety of these so-called mass produced forks, we needed contracts, standards, and rules, inasmuch as those things are enforceable in a System largely without any governing body. We were up front that any version of us that was sent out had full rights to quit at any time for safety's sake, and having that in writing out up front prevented all sorts of headaches and worse. Thus one of the first departments we ever made was a Legal Department of sorts. We weren't in it for any sort of profit, by the nature of our project we were already swimming in rep, but we did want to get the message out there to more people. So, I forked a marketing version of myself, and they began a Sales and Outreach Department. We had a team for returning forks and merges down, specifically based around coping with loss, trauma, abuses that might have led them to leave, conflict resolution, contract disputes. We had an HR and Public Health Department. As our operation expanded, we needed sim artists, construct artists, experts in fields, professional engineers, so we made a Logisitics Department. We had an R&D team. Once we expanded far enough, we set up an Education and Training Department. When we'd fleshed out the area around High Falls enough, we began to offer unused space up for development in the style of the buildings that had existed phys-side. We had a Real Estate and Zoning Department. #Foundry started out involved with a great deal of it, but she became more involved in the so-called "physical work", and even among the teams and departments that she founded, she trusted me to handle the ins and outs of people management. We had a surge in the early 2300s, at some point tracking over 100,000 forks, but those numbers waned in time, and we stabilized around the end of the century with about 64,000 "units" in service and me in charge of a whopping 6,000-person staff.
+
+I tell people so often that I didn't like it, but the truth of it was, I was good at it, and for a while that was satisfying enough. We had built a company from the ground up, and I found myself at its peak. We had created an incredible corporation, one that had all the fantastic idealism of what a company could be, and because of the nature of the System, completely removed from the reality, brutalities, and consequences of what running an actual business phys-side caused. #Foundry and I were praised through parts of the System, conservatives lauding us as poster-children of capitalism (despite the lack of such sys-side), and liberals championed us as meritocracy in motion, proof that with ethics and smarts, businesses could treat both customers and employees with respect and kindness.
+
+The occasional leftist would praise our unions and sex-positivity, that a post-human trans woman being head of anything still felt like something worth celebrating, and a few more condemned us for recreating a corporation wholesale inside a place that should have been an anti-capitalist's paradise, but overwhelmingly there was silence from the people that once, a long time ago, we had called comrades and stood shoulder to shoulder with both phys- and sys-side. Now it is my greatest shame, but even at the height of 9IN INDUSTRIES's success, it left a sour taste in my mouth. Couldn't they be happy for what we'd accomplished, what *I* had built? #Foundry was lauded as a mechanical genius, but I was the face and name of the company. I joked that the C of our middle initial stood for Central, I appeared in interviews and magazines, I gave talks and attended conferences. #Foundry was the inventor, but I was the entrepreneur, and at my worst I basked in it. After all, I---and my thousands of forks, but really weren't they just extensions of me?---had worked so hard. I had *earned* my success.
+
+A few partners left me over it. A few more I only knew through it. #Foundry had become more and more elusive over time, and even in CERES clade affairs and meetings and gatherings I began to take her place, forking and sending a merge down to keep her updated. I was two faces but one, perhaps the most well-known member of my clade, and the subclade of me within it. I was the ace of myself and my self. When the clade became embroiled in our Authority Crisis in the 2360s, I was the most affected and part of the fixes and rescues that followed. I was Andréa C Mason, and the #Central after my name was more a job title than a signifier.
+
+We made it through, all the way to the end of the century.
+
+We gathered, that night, as so many across the System did, to welcome in the new year, to send the 2300s out with a bang and to ring in the brand new frontier of the 2400s. Our entire staff was on hand throughout the offices and facilities, and many who had outside the lives had brought partners or friends, and it was a revelry for the ages! God, what a night!
+
+What a night.
+
+God, oh gods above and below, what a horrible night.
+
+To say that my subclade was hit hard by the Century Attack does not give any sense of scale. I have talked with many a pathologist, perisystem architect, and number of other experts about it, and still we lack answers. We were not the origin, but we were a minor epicenter, and for whatever reason, the contraproprioceptive virus was particularly effective at dismantling us in bulk. We kept in close communication and had very accurate numbers for how many forks of us existed at any given time, we used sensoria and a variety of other methods to keep an incredibly tight and informed network, and within ±5, there were 69,760 Andréa C Masons throughout the system on the night of December 31st, 2399.
+
+By the time the dust settled, 12 of us remained, and of those 12, two quit within a week. 4 more crashed from grief in the next month.
+
+I can't comprehend how to explain what it felt like to suddenly look at the clock approaching midnight to find myself alone in a room that had contained hundreds, almost alone in a sim that over 6,000 people had inhabited what felt like only moments before. To run panicked and slipping through streets laden with snow from accurate weather sims, with no pawprints or hoofprints but my own, to find #Foundry alive and sobbing, to find 2 other forks, bewildered and dissociating, to become inundated with thousands of requests for help, of anger, asking what they had done wrong or if they had violated the contract or what had happened, and having no answers for any of them. Within a day, #Foundry sent a mass message to the feeds within a day, and 9IN INDUSTRIES shuttered, now likely never to reopen.
+
+#Foundry nearly quit when she found out that not only had we suffered impossible losses, but through some mechanism we did not and still do not understand, caused further ones. If you were in proximity to a fork of Andréa C Mason when the Century Attack happened, there was an 85% chance that you died as well. Of the hundreds of visitors and inhabitants of High Falls Millworks#46b147c4 that night, not a single one survived. We were a *vector*, somehow. Perhaps it was due to the mechanism by which the virus spread. I don't know. One of us quit and three of us crashed over that fact.Where do we even start to recover from this?
+
+Partly, we just won't. We have our different reasons, but as the two leaders of our now defunct corporation, #Foundry and I have made the agonizing choice that we will not rebuild. We talked for days, sitting on our faithful reproduction of the Pont de Renne bridge, watching the falls roar and the sun rise and set, taking turns sobbing into each other's arms. Almost two centuries of work disappeared in what was to us an instant. We could not start again. It's over.
+
+#Foundry has now taken my place in clade affairs. She wants to reconnect with her cocladists which are her siblings and her former headmates, which are the closest thing she has ever had to a family here and now the only family she has left. She struggled even to fork, although I understand that after an incident with getting her head stuck in a pitcher of fruit punch she is relearning the trade. #Foundry is eschewing her reclusivity that marked so much of the back half of the 2300s, and trying to reconnect with her own "humanity" again, insomuch as a clade full of animals can have such a thing. I think it's good for her. She is, in the end, the most continuous version of me, and she should remember what it's like to be a person again. An individual. How to be Andréa instead of Director Mason.
+
+As for me?
+
+I'd like to pretend the change that I'm about to make is some Grand gesture of atonement and a reawakening of class consciousness. It's certainly in play, I'm not going to pretend it isn't. Look at me, the turncoat, the hypocrite, the working class anarchosyndicalist queer phys-side turned girl boss captain of industry sys-side, who cast aside her morals and consciences with the slightest bit of success. I'd been so hard before uploading on so many people for giving up everything they believed in for even a small amount of success, and more than a few cases nothing less than righteously so, but when I found myself in the same position I put them all to shame. I tell myself that again and again whenever the dread or guilt or shame creep in, I tell myself that now is the chance to atone and to regain my class consciousness. And yeah, that is part of it.
+
+It's a bigger truth, the one I hate to admit but cannot deny, is that I was so fucking bored and no idea bores me more than going back to being the socialite.
+
+A simple concept that a lot of people seem to struggle with is that just because someone was really good at something, doesn't mean they like doing it. It is entirely possible to learn or understand innately the skills and necessities of a trade, to have a skillset or the tools to be really really good at something, and still get a little enjoyment out of performing that thing. My business may have vanished into the ether, but I still have all those social connections, I still have a reputation that precedes me hours in advance of me showing up anywhere, my fame and to some degree what you could call a fortune of social capital still exist, right there, waiting. If anything, if I chose to go back to that life and flourished again my legend and legacy would become even stronger, the determined woman who didn't let one of the greatest possible losses one could suffer slow her down, who pulled herself up by her bootstraps from nothing again, a phoenix, reborn in the mythology of good old protestant work ethic.
+
+Even that in itself should fill me with disgust, but it only furthers my apathy. I took pride in a product I claimed I produced, despite how little I had to do with it actually being made, and that brought me the satisfaction that all the social engineering and handshaking and baby kissing and photo posing and being a people person didn't. The pageantry of rich people, of successful people, of this upper class is largely that. Pageantry. Especially sys-side, it's just a show. Their parties are dull, their social mores and customs and activities lack substance, nothing really happens that makes anything. There was never any struggle, there was barely any conflict, and it produced only an ennui in me that I did not see the size of until someone all but ended the world.
+
+I want to work with my hands. I want to make things. I want to be alone, and I want to create. The people who made it what it was may be gone but High Falls Millworks#46b147c4 still exists. All its machines still function, and I'm going to take the time to learn to use every last lathe, forge, and press in here, and I'm going to *make* things. I want what I do to be tangible, to be meaningful, not words and nods and smiles and fuckings in the right place to keep things moving. I've hired a number of people to help me maintain the sim, but I have asked them largely to keep our relationship professional and distant, and when I finally feel satisfied that I am not just a voice and a face, maybe I'll even try seeing people again.
+
+Until then, I ask you keep any requests or comments to yourself. I'm not going to be in a place to take commissions anytime soon, I just need to forge for myself for a little while. Hone some real skills.
+
+Maybe this will go nowhere, and I'll just quit and merge down. More likely I'll individuate, but really, that's my business, not yours.
+
+Also, ditching the old tag. Figure it's obvious why. Turn off the spotlight. Close the curtains. My monologue's over. The show must go on, but it can do so damn well without me.
+
+Goodbye.
+
+Andréa C Mason#Millwright.

content/stories/prophecies.md

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+To step into The Bean Cycle was to be immediately assailed by sound. There was, as to be expected, the clink of glasses and muted howl of steam wands bringing milk up to temperature, but mixed in was the clatter and clicking of work being done on bicycles. Wheels were spun, chain was dragged through derailleurs, tires were changed. Milk was steamed, espresso was made, names were hollered out.
+
+It was not the type of din that Slow Hours expected for the one she and If I Dream were looking for. It was too uneven, this wall of sound. Too unpredictable. The steam wands were too piercing and the occasional clang of a wrench or raucous laughter over some story of a crash too jarring.
+
+She looked to If I Dream, who merely shrugged.
+
+Scanning the cafe-*cum*-bike-repair-shop revealed little. It was certainly well populated enough, with every table in use and few enough empty chairs. In the corner by the window, a crowd of synthetic creatures of some sort had gathered, looking vaguely feline but with glassy faceplates showing LED-light eyes in sets of fixed expressions. While they were all far shorter than Slow Hours---who one would be hard pressed to describe as tall---the couch that they were sitting on looked to be barely able to hold their weight.
+
+Even if it was not the type of place for the target of their search, it was still incredibly endearing, and she made a note to herself to return some day.
+
+"Afternoon, friends," the barista said, grinning to them. They were tall and wiry, red hair and beard shining in the bright halogen lights over the bar. "Two mochas? Extra whipped cream?"
+
+Caught off-guard by having her order guessed for her, Slow Hours froze, brow furrowed.
+
+If I Dream elbowed her in the side, murmuring, "I have canvased this place before. Do not worry about it." More loudly, she said, "Yes, though please make it three. Thank you, Hasher."
+
+Still frowning, Slow Hours allowed herself to be guided down the counter to wait for their drinks to be picked up. She set up a cone of silence over her and her cocladist, more for the relative quiet that it offered than for privacy.
+
+"Are you sure this is the place?" she asked.
+
+If I Dream nodded. "Yes, quite sure. Hasher was the one who tipped me off, and I...have seen her outside."
+
+"You are already watching her, then?"
+
+The panther smiled faintly, gave an even fainter shrug. "I am nothing if not myself."
+
+"Then why did you not just go speak to her yourself?" Slow Hours asked. "Or bring me straight to her?"
+
+If I Dream rolled her eyes. "My dear, I *just* said that I am nothing if not myself. That is not my role in this. That is yours. This is the story we are telling, yes? We are stepping into a cafe and ordering a coffee. We are seeing what this is like, this place where she has been parked the last week. We are speaking with Hasher."
+
+Sighing, she nodded and leaned against the counter, poking at the anodized sheet of aluminum that covered it. Thankfully, it seemed to be coated with some thin sheen of resin to keep the texture reasonable and noise down. "Well, alright. You are the sneaky ones."
+
+"Do you not also live in stories? I thought that was part of your whole shtick."
+
+She snorted. "Well, okay, good point. I suppose I am still a little rattled, is all."
+
+" 'Rattled'?" If I Dream laughed. Like everything else that she did, it was nearly silent, more a quiet huffing of breath through her nose than anything. "*The* Slow Hours of the Ode clade is rattled?"
+
+"Yes, yes," she said, waving away the comment with a grin. "I really do see your point about the story, I am just finding it hard to slow down, perhaps. When you said that you had heard something, I was ready to race to find her, to have to jump through all the hoops of a fetch quest, so to hear that you already know precisely where she is, that you are already watching her, makes waiting for a coffee like this feel like a waste of time."
+
+"It will be worth it, I promise."
+
+"The coffee?"
+
+The panther laughed once more. "Well, I was going to say the story, but the coffee *is* quite good here, so, yes."
+
+It was only another minute or two of waiting before Hasher waved to get their attention, gesturing to three paper cups sitting on the bar, ready for them. Slow Hours dropped the cone of silence and winced at the sudden barrage of sounds that followed. She turned her hearing down a few ticks. "Thank you," she said, bowing. "By the way, we were hoping to meet up with a cocladist of ours. She is a skunk, a furry, built rather like myself." She gestured down at herself---human, instead, with pale skin and curly black hair tied up in a messy bun, but stocky and short. "Black fur, white stripe, a little jumpy. Have you seen her around?"
+
+Wiping their hands on a towel hooked into the strings of their apron, Hasher nodded, tilting their head over toward the couch full of robots. "The one who was sleeping there the last few days, I'm guessing?"
+
+"Sleeping?" Slow Hours asked, frowning.
+
+"Yeah. She would just kind of curl up at one end for a few hours and nap. No biggie, of course, and we all liked her. She only ever slept while things were slow, and she'd always move when asked." They broke out into a grin again, shrugging. "Or when it got too loud. Or when it got too quiet. Or just every now and then for no reason we could figure out---very stimmy type---but she was always very polite about it."
+
+"Yes, that would be her," she said, smiling. "Well, thank you very much. Did she leave recently?"
+
+They nodded towards the back door of the shop as they started to make their way back to the line of customers waiting for drinks. "Out back, out to Infinite Café, probably half an hour ago. Just peek in if you need anything!"
+
+The two Odists bowed their thanks and carefully picked their way further over to the cafe side of the building, winding their way between tables until they reached the brick wall. There in the middle was a green, wooden door set into an arch, and above the arch "INFINITE CAFÉ" shone in tooth-achingly pink neon.
+
+The sim in which The Bean Cycle existed had a weather pattern tuned after somewhere in the northern hemisphere, so they had entered the shop sometime in early March---a scant three weeks after Lagrange had come back online after the Century Attack---where the air still had a bite to it and salt still stained the sidewalks out front from where the ice had been melted in the days prior. They had arrived late in the afternoon, the sun setting down along the street casting long shadows behind them.
+
+When they stepped out into Infinite Café, though, it was the same bright, midsummer's noon as it always was there. The light came from everywhere and nowhere, and their shadows sat just beneath their feet. It was the perfect temperature---no matter who you were, no matter your preferences, it was always perfect---and it was as packed as ever.
+
+If one percent of the population of Infinite Café was missing, Slow Hours could not tell, and for that she was grateful.
+
+The sim was dead simple: it consisted of one, long road set into a thin torus. A truly enormous torus: when she looked up, she saw a bright thread directly above them where the road had curved up into an arch hanging in the heavens, and yet the road seemed perfectly flat as far as she could see.
+
+Lining either side of the street were entrances to cafes. Cafes, coffee shops, doors leading out into libraries with coffee carts, alleyways leading out into sims where coffee was hawked from handcarts, dusty steps leading up into marketplaces where vendors boiled their coffee in their cezves in great vats of sand set over wood fires. Anywhere that served coffee to cladists that wanted was free to create an exit that led out into Infinite Café, and over the two centuries of its existence, it had grown from a labyrinthine maze of buildings to the ring-road that it was today.
+
+She had no clue how it worked, if it really was that big, but the sheer size of the System had been driven home quite effectively over the last few weeks---23 *billion* dead! The number remained surreal---so she was hopeful that there were no tricks involved, no attempts to make it look bigger than it was.
+
+She was hopeful that all of these people here on this relatively crowded street were real, not constructs or illusions. She hoped they found coffee and friends and loved ones and long-lost selves.
+
+A gentle touch to her shoulder brought her back to the present. She looked over to If I Dream, then followed her gaze to the center of the thoroughfare.
+
+There, in the middle of the path, stood a skunk. She looked much like others in her clade, with white-striped black fur, tapered snout, cookie ears poking out from an unruly mane, and where she differed, it mostly came down to clothing. She wore a linen tunic in dandelion yellow, cinched around the waist with a leather belt, and a pair of loose, woolen trousers in a dusty brown. Her mane was tied back with a kerchief of some sort, a pastel triangle fully visible to them as she stood stock still and stared straight up to the arch above.
+
+Slow Hours felt concern tugging at her cheeks, while a glance at If I Dream showed only curiosity.
+
+"Shall we?" she asked.
+
+If I Dream nodded.
+
+Letting a crowd of joggers pass, the pair made their way up to the skunk so that Slow Hours could gently touch her elbow.
+
+The reaction was far more extreme than expected as the skunk let out a shriek and skipped three or so meters away from them, nearly colliding with a couple walking hand in hand. She whirled, tail bristled out behind her and ears splayed to the sides. Her eyes were wide and breath coming in quick gasps.
+
+Both Slow Hours and If I Dream took a pace back, startled.
+
+In the span of a few short seconds, the skunk seemed to get her bearings and comprehend just who was standing in front of her. She visibly worked on mastering her breathing as she stood up straighter, brushing her paws anxiously down over her shirt. "Ah...I, ah...Slow Hours?"
+
+She bowed slowly, deliberately, so as not to startle the skunk any further, and nodded. "Yes, and And If I Dream, Is That Not So." She held out the extra mocha. "We got you a coffee, What Right Have I. Would you like to join us?"
+
+What Right Have I looked between the two anxiously, clutching at the hem of her tunic. "I...ah, do you...I mean, is there an occasion? Is there a place? I was...I mean, I had been in The Bean Cycle but the couch...oh, I am talking myself in circles..."
+
+With that, she began to pace in an abbreviated line before them, alternating between scrubbing her paws together and straightening her already quite straight shirt.
+
+Slow Hours looked to If I Dream for help, and the panther stepped forward silently and wrapped her arms around the skunk from behind.
+
+At first, she thought this would be a prelude to them stepping from the sim together, or perhaps some affectionate bear hug, though this did not fit what she knew of their faint acquaintanceship.
+
+Instead, though, If I Dream simply squeezed around the skunk and stood still. There was a squeak and a tense-looking squirm from What Right Have I at first, but in surprisingly short order, her breathing fell under her control and she slouched against her cocladist, looking as close to relaxed as Slow Hours had ever seen her.
+
+*"What is this about?"* she asked If I Dream via sensorium message.
+
+*"A hunch,"* the panther sent back. *"Apparently a correct one, for which I am glad. Sometimes compression helps, yes?"*
+
+*"If you say so."*
+
+"Are you alright, my dear?" If I Dream murmured loud enough for Slow Hours to hear as well.
+
+"Y-yes. *Tizkeh l'mitzvos.*"
+
+"Will you join us for coffee? It is not a demand, to be clear. Just an offer."
+
+What Right Have I nodded slowly. "Is the...ah, is the couch free in The Bean Cycle?"
+
+If I Dream hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "The creatures have left. There is a person sitting on one corner, but if you are comfortable, the rest is free."
+
+"If we...I mean, if I may set up a cone of silence, that will be fine, yes."
+
+Slow Hours watched as the panther gently released her grip on the skunk, the two monochromatic animals---one in baggy, colorful linen and wool, and the other in black form-fitting shirt and leggings---separating cautiously, as though to move faster might once more send What Right Have I into manic pacing.
+
+"Shall we?" Slow Hours asked, smiling reassuringly to her cocladists.
+
+The couch was indeed free, though there was no other instance of If I Dream visible. Slow Hours put this out of mind as best she could; the first stanza was well known for just how easily they slid about unseen, unbeknownst to others as they simply watched, observed.
+
+They sat in the crook of the couch, L-shaped as it was. What Right Have I requested one of the corner vertices of their little triangle so that she could get up and pace should she need, nudging the low table that sat before her aside to help assist in this endeavor, before setting up the cone of silence and nudging it to obscure them as occupants. The din of the coffee shop fell to a low murmur.
+
+The three of them set their coffee cups on small coasters set in the air just within reach, and waited in silence.
+
+"What Right Have I," Slow Hours began gently once the silence seemed to open up. "From Whence messaged the first stanza a few days ago to see if any of them knew where you were."
+
+"She messaged Speaking, in particular," If I Dream added quietly. "She is the instance hunter of our stanza, yes? But she is feeling perhaps a little burnt by recent events and requested some space, for which I am glad. She deserves that."
+
+"I know," the skunk said. "She has messaged me several times. I have...ah, I mean, I always endeavor to let her know when I am okay. And I am! I promise."
+
+Slow Hours laughed, holding up her hands. "I believe you, my dear. This is a meeting between friends, not an interrogation. We wanted to see whether you are okay, yes, but it has also been some time, yes? And I have been checking in with much of the clade in the last few weeks. There are several of me out and about on meetings such as these."
+
+She nodded. "She told me she just wanted...ah, she requested"a bit more proof than gentle rebuffs." I told her that I am okay. I told her that I was walking and meditating."
+
+"Is that what you have been doing during the day?"
+
+"I..." She trailed off, scrubbing her paws against her thighs. "Some, perhaps. A little. We are still in *Shloshim,* but I cannot...ah, I am not focused."
+
+"You will have to forgive me for being a bit blunt," Slow Hours said gently. "But are you overflowing?"
+
+What Right Have I's expression dropped, the skunk quickly going from attentive to panicked to miserable.
+
+If I Dream held out her paw, an offer for reassurance. "I do not know what your overflow looks like, What Right Have I. I trust that it is not pleasant, though. It rarely is, yes?"
+
+"It is sometimes," she admitted, shaking her head at the offer of touch. "It is...ah, it comes in two flavors. It shows itself as religious ecstasy sometimes, of a sense of spirit, a feeling of *HaShem* existing in the world, in the System. Those who reach out to RJ, who reach out to our friend, they are reaching out to *HaShem!* Ey may be our personal *HaShem,* yes? But ey is an abstract manifestation of the world!" Despite the sudden animation in her words, the sudden fluency in her otherwise stuttering speech, her expression remained dire, anxious.
+
+Slow Hours smiled faintly, taking a moment to think back. The skunk's choice of words triggered a memory of a report written for the clade decades back. "Codrin said that, yes? Or rather reported that Answers Will Not Help said that."Our own personal *HaShem.*" She said that she could not feel em on Artemis, yes?"
+
+What Right Have I nodded, subsiding back into the couch. "Yes. I...ah, I mean, I would not have joined them for that reason, never mind the other difficulties faced."
+
+Both Slow Hours and If I Dream nodded. No Odist had joined Artemis for its ongoing voyage.
+
+"But ey is still *b'tzelem Elohim,* yes? Ey is still in the image of Adonai, yes? Ey is still human, even if ey is our world. Our world is *b'tzelem Elohim,* and we, *b'tzelem Elohim,* reside within em." She smiled weakly. "Rav From Whence does not like it when I say these things, but that is what I feel when I am overflowing."
+
+"And that is what you are feeling now?" Slow Hours asked.
+
+"No," she said, once more sounding miserable. "If I do not feel ecstasy, I feel anguish. I feel...mm, I feel nullity. I feel nothing. I feel RJ and I think,"Ah my friend, my friend." I do not see in em the divine. I do not feel *b'tzelem Elohim,* I feel stupid. I feel...ah, I feel broken. I have been staying here, sleeping where I may be seen because I am afraid...ah, because I am so, *so* afraid that I will disappear, that I will crash and that no one will notice me. I fear that I will be forgotten and that...ohhh, I am talking in circles. I am thinking in circles, I am sorry."
+
+"It is okay," Slow Hours said gently. "Do you think you are overflowing because of the Century Attack?"
+
+The skunk whimpered and pushed herself quickly to her feet, pacing once more and shaking her paws out as though to dry them off, then straightening her already straight skunkerchief. "I have been dreaming," she mumbled, then jerked her head to the side with a quiet squeak. She continued more clearly. "I have been dreaming, here on the couch, out there in Infinite Café when...ah, when I fall asleep out there."
+
+Slow Hours tilted her head, sitting up straighter.
+
+What Right Have I smiled faintly. "I have...ah, I am not the oracle that you are, my dear. I am no prophet."
+
+She smiled, shaking her head. "Neither am I. I would still like to hear your dream, though."
+
+The skunk nodded, paused to gather her thoughts, then spoke slowly. "I am disembodied, yes? I am floating and I see a figure, and they begin to weep, and they dissolve into a cloud of black specks, and these specks float away on a breeze, and each one enters the heart of a cladist, and they cry out in agony and dissolve into clouds of their own, and so it ramifies until all are dust. I see you, yes, and I see If I Dream, and I see Should We Forget and I see No Longer Myself."
+
+If I Dream jerked back as though slapped, a sudden move that was nevertheless silent. "Do not--" she said, then shook her head.
+
+"I am sorry, If I Dream," What Right Have I said, bowing low and forcing herself to sit once more. "I...ah, my dreaming mind remembered names of those lost, perhaps, and extrapolated."
+
+The panther nodded, scrubbed a paw over her face, and sighed. "It is okay, my dear. I am still feeling raw."
+
+It was What Right Have I's turn to offer a paw. If I Dream accepted gratefully, giving a brief squeeze. When this lead to another squeaky tic from the skunk, she let go.
+
+"Ah...sorry," the skunk stammered. "I have...I mean, that is to say...ah, I am talking in circles. I am sorry."
+
+"It is okay," Slow Hours said gently. "Do you need some time?"
+
+She nodded, bowing her head for a moment before retrieving her mocha for a tentative sip. Apparently finding the temperature tolerable, she followed this with a longer drink.
+
+Both Slow Hours and If I Dream followed suit, simply taking in the ambiance of the shop.
+
+"Have you had dreams, Slow Hours?" If I Dream asked, breaking the silence with her quiet murmur.
+
+She startled to awareness, smiling sheepishly. "Since the attack? No, nothing memorable, though I have not been sleeping well. I do not imagine many are."
+
+"And before?"
+
+What Right Have I perked up, setting her coffee aside and scrubbing her paws together, kneading pads against pads. "Do your prophecies only come in dreams?"
+
+Slow Hours laughed. "My little predictions are not prophecies. They are just that: guesses based on the trajectories of the stories one tells. I may predict that, when we leave today, What Right Have I will linger a while yet because there is something she has yet to tell us-- no, it will come in time, you do not need to until you are ready. But that is based on the trajectory of the story I have heard so far." She hesitated a moment, thinking. "But yes, I have had dreams that may well have been prophecies, but only ever in hindsight."
+
+"Tell us...ah, I mean, will you tell us some of what you dreamed?"
+
+"Yes. It has happened four times. Only those four, though." She held up her hand with as many fingers raised as she explained. "Perhaps Lagrange got hit by a stray cosmic ray or some other fancy particle and it flipped a bit inside the portion that contained me, and I was given some premonition. Smacked upside the head by Apollo, yes? Or, in your terms, visited by the angel of the Lord who gave me a honeyed scroll to eat."
+
+She tapped one finger. "The first was about Qoheleth and his little...adventure. Some two decades before, I had the same dream five nights in a row, of him standing in his robes, arms raised to the heavens, and then crumbling down into sand. At the time, I did not even realize that it was him. I had not seen him in more than a century, and when I had, he was dressed like a natty old college professor."
+
+The next finger, tapped. "The second was about Michelle's death, and I will not repeat it."
+
+She tapped her ring finger. "The third happened in the midst of a play---one of my yearly performances---and in the scene, I was to fall to my knees and cry out,"The knife! At her neck, the knife!" But instead, I passed out and apparently mumbled words not in the script which tallied exactly with Sasha's experience."
+
+There was a moment of silence as she considered the fourth and how best to describe it, not least because of the easy comparison to What Right Have I's dream as explained. Finally, she tapped her pinkie "The fourth was a dream of a core part of me being removed through the back of my neck, a disappearing from the world and becoming a ghost in the next. There was more that I do not understand, visions of a field, a park, but I had that dream every night on the five nights leading up to New Year's."
+
+What Right Have I listened attentively to Slow Hours's description of her prophecies, or at least prophetic dreams. As she spoke, her cocladist's expression darkened, until by the end, she was scowling. "I am no Daniel," the skunk said once she had finished. "I will not scry your *mene, mene, tekel, parsin.* But if you had foreknowledge of Michelle's suicide or the Century Attack, why did you not say anything? Who might we be if Michelle still lived? Might Lagrange be unharmed if we but knew this?"
+
+By the end, she was nearly growling, so many of her verbal tics melting away as that emotion rose.
+
+If I Dream lifted her snout from where her gaze had drifted. "Did she know, my dear? Or did she only have a recurring anxious nightmare? Do we not all have a hundred recurring anxious nightmares a year?"
+
+The skunk glowered. "And? If that is--" A tic briefly interrupted her, a jerk of the head to the side, and this time she really did growl, though it appeared to be more at herself than anything. "If that is so, then why were these not known?"
+
+Slow Hours straightened up. "I apologize if that came off as in any way glib, What Right Have I, or as though I could have done anything about them. I did try to get in touch with Michelle after those nights of dreams, but she only smiled and reassured me that she would"live on". It was not until after she quit that those words had any import."
+
+What Right Have I's shoulders sagged, though she was clearly still gritting her teeth.
+
+She sighed, continuing, "And perhaps it is as If I Dream says. They were anxious nightmares. However, they still bore the acrid tang of ill omens to me. There was a scent of premonition, and so I have slotted them neatly into that category, even if they *were* only caused by anxiety."
+
+There followed a long moment while the skunk processed this. She seemed to be running down a mental checklist, as her rapid breathing shifted almost immediately into something deeper and more even, her posture straightened from a wary hunch as though ready to bolt, and her expression settled into a rather stiff half-smile. All spoke of various bits of therapy Slow Hours remembered from centuries back.
+
+"Alright. Okay." What Right Have I slowed her breathing further and turned her paws facing up, another skill from therapy. "Okay. You are the both of you correct. I live in my head and in the Tanakh and with a thought of prophecies. For you to call them such, it, ah...it...okay. It makes them not what I was thinking. You are not Ezekiel. You are not Jeremiah."
+
+Slow Hours smiled, gave a hint of a bow from where she sat. "I am not, no. I am a script manager and nerd whose imagination gets away from her sometimes, yes? Even in sleep, yes?"
+
+The skunk's smile grew more earnest as she nodded. "Again, I am sorry. I...ah, I do not know. I am unwell, perhaps. I am overflowing and making connections that do not exist."
+
+"Do you suppose you have had more than four, if you include those that did not come true?" If I Dream asked curiously. "They do still sound fascinating, if only as a curiosity."
+
+"If I have, including the scent of premonition, then I do not remember them. It was that scent, though, that led me to reach out to Michelle. I am embarrassed to say that that was the only one I acted on, though, given that all four of those revolve around death."
+
+What Right Have I furrowed her brow, paws shifting to clench tightly around the hem of her tunic. "I remember a story...ah, a snippet from the *History* where May Then My Name says that Michelle thought of herself as a dead woman walking, yes."
+
+She nodded. "May Then My Name went on to say that Michelle thought that perhaps even the dead can know joy, yes."
+
+"Did she, in the end?" If I Dream asked, frowning. "Know joy, that is? When she asked us all to merge with her, to share with her all that we had become, what did she feel? When, for an instant, she became ten thousand years old, did she choose to quit because she found peace?"
+
+"I think that she did, yes." Slow Hours spoke carefully, keeping an eye on What Right Have I for further tics or other signs of distress. "Or, rather, I must believe that she did. There is too much despair if I imagine her as buried under the weight of all of our own despairs and neuroses. If it is a comfortable fiction, so be it. I will live in that comfortable fiction."
+
+If I Dream nodded slowly. "Far be it from me to dispel what curtains keep despair from leading you after her."
+
+She laughed and shook her head. "There is no suicide in me, thankfully."
+
+"When I received her sensorium message, I nearly refused to attend out of protest. I think many of us saw the writing on the walls when we heard that uncertain steeliness in her voice."
+
+What Right Have I winced, squirming tensely in her seat, right at the edge of the couch cushion. "It...ah...I mean, I struggled. I was there-- we all were there! But I struggled."
+
+The panther smiled faintly to her. "We all did, yes. Part of me felt that if any one of us did not go, then she would not quit. Another part was terrified I would be one of many who did not come, and that she would die feeling abandoned by her own family. If she was going to quit, and she wished to do so in the company of her clade...And now..."
+
+She trailed off and let her gaze wander down to the drink she still held in her paws. Blinking rapidly, the muscles on her cheeks and snout briefly became more prominent, as though she was doing her best to keep her expression placid, to not snarl or voice her despair, much as it had been throughout, though the tears leaving tracks in her cheekfur were impossible to hide.
+
+Alarmed at the sudden shift in demeanor, Slow Hours scooted a few inches closer to If I Dream, offering her hand just as the panther had done for What Right Have I before.
+
+She accepted with a grateful---if still wan---smile.
+
+Slow Hours returned that smile, saying quietly, "That was the dream I had, you know. The premonition. An upwelling of joy and then an overflowing. She looked up to the sun, and the sun was RJ, and then they were one and the same, and it was all joy."
+
+At this, What Right Have I burst into tears. She did not cry prettily, but very few people did. It was a brief cry, however, and soon after she scooted back to the furthest limit of the cone of silence and drew her legs up onto the couch with her, growling as she did, "Slow Hours, you are the fucking worst."
+
+"I am the worst, yes," she said, voice still quiet and calm. "But that is why I am choosing to believe that the premonition was true and why I am choosing to believe that she did find joy, or peace, or at least nothingness and freedom."
+
+"They both deserve to be together. I hope that that is what No Longer Myself has obtained. What all of those lost have," If I Dream sighed.
+
+"I think...ah, I hope your dreams were true, in the end," What Right Have I said after a long silence between the three of them, after each had fallen merely to sniffles. "I hope that they *were* prophecies, whether or not you knew. If only for that one, I hope that they were true."

content/stories/sentences.md

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+"So, what's the surprise delay this time?" Günay joked, despite the serious topic of the meeting that would be starting soon. She, like some of the sys-side delegates and the cameraperson, had arrived early. Her conference room, along with its AVEC-linked partner on the System, had become the main venue for high-level Century Attack-related meetings out of an inertia that froze into tradition.
+
+"A comma," Dry Grass replied. "I expect it will reach its final position by the end of the century."
+
+"No wonder the joke down here's been that the real sentence is waiting in prison until the uploads make up their minds."
+
+"I have heard similar here," Dry Grass said. "On the matter of delays, have you decided when you will upload?"
+
+"Reawakening Day two-eighty-\...something. The next one. I want to be sure there's nothing else I can do down here. ... And I got talked into picking a symbolic date by ---"
+
+Need An Answer, who had suggested that upload date, appeared in the room just then. She had swapped in for Answers Will Not Help when this group had branched off from the Temporary Administrative Council, as they had both agreed she was better suited to it. The rest of the representatives and the invited audience joined her a moment later.
+
+"--- oh, looks like it's time."
+
+The cladists took their seats while Jakub walked into his conference room, bringing along a few System Consortium higher-ups and politicians who wanted to witness history. He looked less frazzled than he had years ago since the set of tasks that could be shoehorned into "project-managing the recovery effort" had shrunk to a reasonable size.
+
+Those involved in the Attack who had remained phys-side had been convicted years ago. There was no question about their guilt. They had proudly admitted their crimes and used their trials to broadcast their manifestos and grievances, which their governments had previously suppressed in the hopes of covering up the whole affair.
+
+The phys-side authorities had then requested that the System recommend a punishment, seeking to calm the controversy about that question that had erupted on Earth. The System had, eventually, answered, in its meandering distributed way. Now, all that remained was the alchemy of turning something everyone knew (unless they had made an effort to avoid System-wide news) into the statement of a government that did not exist and was quite firm about not wanting to.
+
+"We have transmitted the evident consensus of the System as to what sentence ought to be imposed upon those convicted of conspiring to destroy us," Need An Answer pronounced. "Does the System Consortium have any concerns regarding the accuracy of our report?"
+
+"We do not," Jakub replied.
+
+"For the record," Jonas Fa asked, "has the Consortium learned of any new issues that could prevent that sentence from being imposed?"
+
+"We don't know anything that isn't on the feeds," Jakub replied.
+
+Jonas nodded. "Good."
+
+Need An Answer waited for the silence to become definitive. "Anything else before we begin?" she asked.
+
+Hearing nothing, she waved a hand over the table to pull the report back into existence. The black text on the white pages that appeared was typeset plainly. (This did not disappoint those, like the committee's Odists, who had wanted the System's first criminal sentence to have aesthetic weight, as the font used was one that was rarely seen phys-side these days outside of historical records.)
+
+Jonas Fa reached out to pull the last, nearly blank page over to him and quickly signed it. "May this fate dissuade any future saboteurs."
+
+The document went around the table, collecting signatures and comments.
+
+"I agree with the plan, but am mainly glad we settled on *something*," Selena said, signing slowly. Debarre added "At least the topic's done with," as he put a pawprint onto the page. Yared Zerezghi, who had taken the time to practice for this part, said "It's a shame the first signing ceremony I've been pulled into for centuries has to be this."
+
+Then the page reached the systechs, who were here representing some of the organizations and interest groups that had helped make the "referendum" happen. Dry Grass began, saying "I remain optimistic that these measures will bring about reform and healing," as she committed her full name to the page. Egil Thorsfork of SERG simply stated "It's harsh, but fair." No one could tell how Clear Channel was holding their pen with those hooves, but their usual "CC" appeared with an "I'm no longer worried we haven't thought this through." Yi Meiling, representing the admins of the main public feeds, pulled a seal from a pocket on her permanently hovering wheelchair and pressed it down, then said "I still can't believe we made 1% turnout!"
+
+Aditya Singh, one of the people who kept an eye on the Deep Space Network sys-side, signed without a word. Then, he said, "Consensus is consensus, and I'm not opposed to the idea everyone's compromised around, so I've signed. However, for the record, we should just shoot them instead."
+
+"Absolutely not!" Dry Grass exclaimed. "That is antithetical to the purpose of the System!"
+
+"And give them the easy way out?" Egil demanded, overlapping Dry Grass. "Not to mention, ---"
+
+"No." Need An Answer said firmly as soon as she sensed an opening in the brewing argument. "Enough. We are not here to relitigate the question." The room went quiet. She took the signature page from Aditya and added her mark, a swirl of words that she had spent more time crafting than she would want to admit. "It is finished."
+
+She gathered up the report and fed it into the mail slot that had been added to the room for today. In the phys-side conference room, the pages worked their way out of a printer.^[^1]^
+
+Günay gathered up the sheets and flipped through them to check for obvious errors. She set the last page on the table, took the pen, and scribbled something by her name. "Looks like it all came though just fine."
+
+"I prepared a speech," Jakub said, "but Need An Answer just summarized most of it." He signed, making sure the camera got a good look at him. "As she said, it is finished. All we can do now is watch events unfold."
+
+"Only time will tell if we have chosen well," Need An Answer added. "So, we must wait."
+
+"Watch the politicians take a whole decade to make a call," Günay said. "Just to let the System feel the tension for once while they 'reach consensus'."
+
+Dry Grass decided to take the sarcasm seriously. "Although it would delay our meeting, should your people discuss the matter until consensus, I would applaud their due care."
+
+"There was one more item on the agenda, I believe," Jakub said, hoping that the official signing ceremony, of all things, could be kept on track.
+
+"The formalities, yes," Need An Answer said. "Having rendered its report, this committee is, per its own choice and System custom, dissolved immediately. We name no successors and disclaim any authority we may appear to hold. Let all subsequent matters be referred to those willing to handle them. We thank you for your aid and wish you peace and fulfillment." Her tone shifted from official to cheery on a dime. "Bye!"
+
+As soon as she was done speaking, she vanished from the room. Right after that, the conference rooms were disconnected. It was rude, yes, but there was no sense in wasting an opportunity to make a point about the System's lack of governance while the politicians and media were watching, especially when there was a less formal gathering planned for later that day.
+
+A few minutes later, the report was official:
+
+We, the denizens of the Lagrange System, to the extent we have an opinion on the matter, find the following sentence acceptable for those involved in the Century Attack conspiracy to destroy the System:
+
+The guilty shall be uploaded. As a special restriction, they shall be prevented from quitting out entirely --- at least one fork of each of them must remain alive. We will not leave them the option of fleeing their crimes like their comrades did when they recovered along with us.
+
+Furthermore, to protect the System from their recidivism, any messages they send phys-side will be a matter of public record and will require approval from a panel randomly drawn from volunteers, which shall not include any cocladists of those so sentenced.
+
+These restrictions and protections may be removed by the consensus of a general sample of the System, as measured by a process similar to the one used to approve this final recommendation.
+
+In short, for their part in a conspiracy to murder trillions, we would sentence these people to live.
+
+We have made this decision carefully. It took over two years for this suggested sentence to clearly emerge as the option that most of us could accept. As the tallies and summaries were being prepared then, we noticed many were concerned that our choice had been made in a collective vengeful frenzy. So, we sent this proposal to the denizens of the LVs in order to gather their opinions, and held a cooling-off year while we waited for those views.
+
+When debate resumed, we found that support for this sentence to life had solidified and that the consensus on the LVs was aligned with ours. Therefore, we are confident that we have not made this recommendation rashly, and we declare that we are comfortable with it becoming a precedent for sentencing if a similar conspiracy arises in the future.
+
+Since our proposal may prove surprising or confusing without the context of our discussions, we're including the following summary of how we came to our conclusions.
+
+In the beginning, while many still felt the pain of raw grief, there were many different suggested punishments for the perpetrators of the Century Attack. We had, just as we know you have phys-side, a substantial contingent of people suggesting that we bring back the death penalty, just this once. The idea lost traction on sober consideration. Some said that execution was too much of a punishment and violated the System's core purpose of preserving life; others argued that death was insufficient --- how could a few lives balance billions of silenced eternities?
+
+Another initial cluster of ideas, some brought over from phys-side discussions, was some form of imprisonment sys-side, since this is now technically feasible. These proposals collapsed under the weight of their variety --- no one could agree on how to pick from the competing plans. From there sprung concerns about precedent, followed by a general view that going down this road would lead to a government forming here. Very few people trust any potential government to leave their corner of the System alone, so the threads full of prisons and purgatories fell away. Furthermore some among us were concerned that imprisonment would prevent rehabilitation or, conversely, that it would shield the guilty from the consequences of their actions.
+
+With the two most obvious suggestions off the table, many took a step back and considered how justice functions on the System in the hopes of finding a new approach.
+
+The System has almost no justice system for the same reason it has little crime: the nature of our existence greatly limits anyone's ability to use force on anyone else without their ongoing consent. We can, for example, fork away injuries, recreate things that have been taken (if we had set the permissions to allow that in the first place), and we can always simply go somewhere else. Thus, neither a would-be criminal or would-be court can make anyone do anything through meaningful threats of harm.
+
+We do have tools that allow us to keep order on a local level. People can be removed or excluded from sims or blocked from contacting particular other individuals. If someone's behavior is unwelcome in a given place (say, they were sucker-pushing people in a coffee shop), they can be bounced. Enough such incidents of improper behavior generally lead to troublemakers developing a reputation that leads to preemptive bans, while a sufficient shift away from that tendency towards unwanted actions typically leads to previous restrictions being lifted.
+
+Even those rare people who get cut off from large parts of the System are not completely shut out of society. Anyone can find (or, if need be, create) a place whose rules or lack thereof suit them. For example, there are many seedy dark alleys where everyone knows to expect muggings or worse,. Hanging out or living in them is, by general agreement, as permissible a way of life as any other one can forge up here.
+
+We expect that, if our recommended sentence of uploading is imposed, the conspirators will face broad exclusions similar to those that fall on those who will not abide the System's "mainstream" social norms. Some places already plan to bar their entry, either because the sim mods don't want them around or to prevent disruptions from people's reactions to their presence. They will find many messages they send ignored or blocked.
+
+Some of the trillions of instances on the System will still, for their own reasons, want to reach out to the perpetrators of the Attack. We hope that these connections will come from those with good intentions and will facilitate some healing in the fullness of time. It is possible, however, the guilty will, to avoid the anger of their fellows or otherwise, retreat into their own private bubbles and experience no further consequences than being left out of society here. Only time will tell.
+
+We know this is a strange and unusual punishment, but there are no other options we could agree on.
+
+We cannot even agree if such a sentence to life is a mercy or a cruelty.
+
+Prepared and confirmed on this 125th day of the 281st year of the System by,
+
+-   The Only Time I Dream Is When I Need An Answer of the Ode clade, advisor, sys-side
+
+-   Jonas Fa of the Jonas clade, advisor, sys-side
+
+-   Selena of her own clade, advisor, sys-side
+
+-   Debarre of his own clade, advisor, sys-side
+
+-   Yared Zerezghi of his own clade, advisor, sys-side
+
+-   I Remember The Rattle of Dry Grass of the Ode clade, perisystem technician (unaffiliated), sys-side
+
+-   Egill Thorsfork of Gunnar's clade, perisystem technician (System Emergency Response Group), sys-side
+
+-   Clear Channel of their own clade, perisystem technician (Cross-Community External Communication Board, technical advisor to Lagrange Financial Simulation Assn., "the AVEC pony", &c), sys-side
+
+-   Yi Meiling of her own clade, perisystem technician (Core Feed Admin Council), sys-side
+
+-   Aditya Singh of his own clade, perisystem technician (Deep Space Nine-ish), sys-side
+
+-   Jakub Strzepek, Project manager, recovery initiative (phys-side)
+
+-   Günay Sadık, System technician III, recovery initiative, phys-side
+
+P.S. We are still not happy about the attempted coverup.
+
+\[Appendix A: consensus aggregation methods, vote totals, and demographic breakdowns\]
+
+\[Appendix B: summary of consensus on Castor LV\]
+
+\[Appendix C: summary of consensus on Pollux LV\]
+
+\[Appendix D: endorsement of Guiding Council of Pollux LV\]
+
+"Speaking of subsequent matters," Egil asked, "who'll do the tutorials if this all goes through?"
+
+Around half the room glanced at a woman who had chosen a seat in the back.
+
+"I will guide them as I would anyone," In All Ways promised. "I will ensure that even those who sought to kill us know the basics of their new home, their new world."
+
+She sighed. "I ... I will not abandon my principles, my centuries of helping, my part in making the System everything that ..." Even though the poet's name had been revealed over two decades ago, she still hesitated when mentioning em. "RJ wanted it to be. Eir work has been damaged enough."
+
+*I will not leave you alone at the gates of your dream, AwDae.*
+
+The guilty were, after some debate and legal wrangling phys-side, slated to be uploaded at noon on January 1^st^, 2406. As the appointed hour drew near, In All Ways walked out from the old arrivals lounge, making her way towards Point Zero. She could have prepared to meet them anywhere, but she knew she needed to be here. She did not normally do anything special before forking for a tutorial, but she wanted to fix her role in these sentences in her mind by submerging herself in memory.
+
+The lounge she had left had been used in the early days of the System. Before dedicated tutorial spaces were established, people popped into existence as close to Point Zero as possible. From there, they would generally follow the haphazard signage towards the lounge, where people who'd registered for pings about their uploads would wait. Between those two places, hints floating in midair or shimmering on the ground, along with helpful wanderers, would hopefully get across the basics ... like how to put clothes on.
+
+In All Ways had spent a lot of her formative days out in that intermediate space, helping new arrivals get a handle on their new world and diverging from Always Be True as she did. That experience led to her becoming a very active and respected tutorial-giver, which then led to a construct patterned after her (usually her human form, but sometimes the pre-upload file screamed "send a skunk") becoming a frequently-used entry in the new upload introduction roster.
+
+Today was a skunk kind of day. As In All Ways walked, she mentally reviewed the list of conspirators, forking off a copy of herself for each one. In between them, she looked over the list of scheduled uploads, and forked off more copies to meet ones that seemed like they would be interesting or fun to talk to or who might need some extra help.
+
+Once she had made it to the plaque marking where her world began, she turned around to face the line of skunks proceeding after her and nodded to them. Their clothes varied based on what had seemed most fitting for the person each instance was going to meet. The ones going to meet the conspirators wore a beige blouse, long pants, and librarian glasses --- she had wanted comfortable familiarity as she went into those meetings.
+
+The other instances of her nodded back and vanished, each to their own Aetherbox, to take their place before the person they'd forked to meet arrived.
+
+Then, she herself stepped away. Historically significant tutorials were no reason to miss brunch plans.
+
+Brother Jan Nowak was a member of the Order of True Heaven, a small religious collective that wore the trappings of ancient churches. They had been too tiny for those institutions to notice, let alone condemn, until after the Century Attack. The Order had linked themselves together, implant to implant, to share their divine revelations and holy ecstasies. As the century drew closer, however, their linked thoughts spiraled and twisted in on themselves, pulling ever stronger towards the flames of martyrdom and crusade. The Order had supplied several volunteers who uploaded to prepare the way for the virus knowing that, when they took down the System, they would be hastened to eternal glory.
+
+Now, after the instant-infinite gap in consciousness that came with an upload, he was on that same System, but with no expectation of death or escape.
+
+"I don't want to be here," he said before opening his eyes.
+
+"I know," said a woman's voice from somewhere behind him. She was much calmer than Brother Nowak expected given what his siblings had done.
+
+Jan opened his eyes. He found himself standing in a gray cube of a room, lit uniformly from nowhere. He turned around to identify the person speaking. There, providing the only color in the room, was a black furry ... something ... with a white stripe running down her tail. She stood with her back turned, facing the wall. "Greetings ---" she began to say.
+
+That the being sent to meet him wasn't even *human* set Brother Nowak off. "I'll have no part in your false heaven! Your soulless paradise! I'll have no intercourse with this usurpation of God and your abandonment of humanity! You have discarded your very body, you fiend, you devil!" Even though he had been disconnected from the Order during his years in prison, he still expected his rage to be echoed back to him by his fellows, though they were further away than ever before --- he did not even have an implant now.
+
+The skunk at the far wall said nothing.
+
+"Get out! Go away! Let me go!" The self-styled monk waved wildly at the skunk, trying to banish her. Them? It?
+
+"Brother Nowak, I am here to introduce you to the basics of life on the System. I have done this for countless others for over two centuries. If you would bear with me for a few minutes, we can finish the tutorial and you can be on your way."
+
+Brother Nowak crossed his arms. "And if I don't want your 'tutorial'? Your honeyed whispers of ruin?"
+
+"I will wait," the skunk said.
+
+"You'll ... wait," Jan said. He'd been expecting threats or that he'd be left in this cube to rot, but not that.
+
+"I am no stranger to eternity, Brother Nowak," the skunk said, her voice softened by the wall she was still facing. "I remember what it is to be Lost."
+
+Brother Nowak stared at the skunk, confused.
+
+"\... That is a good line, I will need to pass it on once I am done here," she added quietly to herself in the silence.
+
+"So, what, you'll starve me out here at the gates of your so-called afterlife?" Brother Nowak shouted as he turned to pace between the sides of the room. As he began walking, he realized that he didn't have any clothes. "You'll leave me to waste away, naked and alone?"
+
+"No, nothing like that," the skunk said. "I am not here to punish you. I will tell you how to create clothes and food and wait until you want to. Or until you tire of hunger and adjust your sensoria to remove it, either works."
+
+Brother Nowak stopped moving and waited to hear more.
+
+"Now, as I was going to say before we went off the rails, to be clothed, all you need to do is to envision the clothes you would like to be wearing and think your intention to be wearing them at the world. This will become easier with practice, but, for now, you may wish to form your desire as you breathe in and speak it into being as you breathe out."
+
+Jan thought. His Order's holy crusade against the abominable idol that was the System had only partially succeeded, and now he'd been sentenced to *live*, of all things, in the very idolatrous machine he hated. It would have been better if they had executed him: at least then he would get his eternal reward. But, since he was here, he might yet have a purpose. It might be his duty to bring the lost sheep within the System to the Lord from within. If so, the least he could do is to be properly dressed for his vocation.
+
+He took a breath, remembered his days trying to convince people to join him in his order's choir of revelations, and said "I would be clothed that I might bring salvation to this place."
+
+The clothes his followers and brethren on Earth had known him in appeared on his body: a conservative suit --- white with a black jacket and plain black trousers, all tailored to fit him. His wide gold-colored tie was blazoned with a silver cross. He was a preacher in these slowly ending days --- no, in this eternal temptation --- and he stood up straight, filled with conviction and carrying the lamp of light that had pointed to true peace for millenia. He wished that his siblings could share in these thoughts, but it was not to be.
+
+The skunk heard the jingle of metal and the clack of dress shoes as Jan took an experimental step. "May I turn around?" she asked.
+
+"I suppose I should see the face of the demons and heretics that dwell here," Jan said.
+
+The skunk turned around and looked at Brother Nowak. "In All Ways," she said, holding out a paw and stepping forward.
+
+The ... whatever it was ... seemed to be offering the preacher a handshake. "In all ways?" he repeated hesitantly.
+
+"Yes, I am Then I Must In All Ways Be Earnest of the Ode clade. Or simply In All Ways," she said.
+
+"Brother Jan Nowak, as you already know," the man said, pointedly not getting closer or offering a hand.
+
+In All Ways lowered her paw. "So, Brother Nowak, would you like to move to the next lesson?"
+
+"No," he said.
+
+"Let me know when you are ready, and we will discuss forking," In All Ways said. "Or if you need to talk through something, I will be here, though I do not know how much help I will be." She stood patiently, and, when no response came for two minutes, she sat down, enveloping herself in her tail.
+
+Brother Nowak began pacing the perimeter of the room once he realized nothing else would happen. He *knew* this was a test of his faith, but he could not comprehend what he was meant to *do*. Many circuits of the empty room later, he shouted "What do you want from me, O Lord? Am I to tear this blasphemy against You, this modern Babel, down, brick by brick? Am I to wander this virtual desert and preach until all have heard from me? Give me a sign, I beg you!"
+
+In All Ways said nothing. Brother Nowak was not the first person who needed to get a good rant or vent out soon after uploading, and she had become a quite patient listener over the centuries.
+
+Brother Nowak kept his angry prayers going for several more rounds of the cube. As he began to come down from his angry despair, he saw that In All Ways had not moved. Had not reacted. Had not even slid to get away from the 'crazy street preacher', as most people called him, when he came near. "How are you just *sitting* there?" he roared at the skunk.
+
+"I have all the time I need, Brother Nowak. And there are much worse places to be stuck waiting."
+
+"But won't you get bored, sitting here waiting for me to taste your forbidden fruit?"
+
+"Oh, I will, but that is why I send forks to such meetings. I am still out there doing ... something less boring."
+
+"So you're some pale imitation of yourself, then? A soulless copy? Out, Satan!" Brother Nowak tried to wave In All Ways away again.
+
+"I am as much a person as any other fork of me," In All Ways said, standing. "Though I can say nothing definitive about the state of my soul."
+
+"I demand to speak to the original! The one who can yet be saved!"
+
+"If you want my tracker instance --- the In All Ways I came from --- she is surely busy, and I will not bother her on your account. If you want the root of our clade --- the person we all forked off from, who uploaded originally --- Michelle Hadje quit in ... 2306, by your calendar."
+
+"Quit?" Brother Nowak asked.
+
+"No longer on the System. Passed on." *It was her time, I must admit.*
+
+"So I can ..." He focused on the idea, beginning to speak his intent, to pray. "I want to quit. I want to leave this space and meet my Father in Heaven, to leave these sinners to their damnation. I want to quit." Unlike his earlier conjuration of clothing, this act of will felt like pushing uphill through mud. "I know it's difficult, this place is a trap for souls, but I will leave it. God willing, I will leave it."
+
+As he kept talking, he felt the pressure easing up as the ensnaring dream of the System registered his intent and began to loosen its grip on his thoughts. But then, as he was beginning to picture the light of the hereafter coming to meet him, he was struck by a wall of feeling, coming from the System itself. There were no words: it was the pure sensation of inability, of being forbidden.
+
+Brother Nowak fell to his knees.
+
+"You cannot quit," In All Ways said. "The poet has bound you to eir shattered work. Though you may still quit in favor of a fork, if you ever desire to lock in a change."
+
+Brother Nowak growled as he stood. Salvation had been so close, after all these decades, all this work. But then, as he understood the rest of what In All Ways had said, he smiled. "So I can leave, go on to Heaven, so long as I fork first?"
+
+"You can quit and let your fork take your place as the root instance," In All Ways said. "I will not give my views on how this affects your soul to you; I am a tutorial-giver, not a theologian."
+
+Brother Nowak knelt and bowed his head in silent prayer. Some time later, he rose. "So," he asked, determined to act before his courage left him, "how do I fork?"
+
+"Intend to, as you did with your clothes," In All Ways said. "Lay out, or keep in mind, any changes you want to make while forking, the tag you want your fork to have if there is one, and so on. Then send the intention out into the world, and it will be so. Let me know if I have been unclear."
+
+Brother Jan Nowak stepped forward and, like he'd been told to, intended his fork. He did not even need to open his mouth before Jan Nowak#Fork appeared next to him. The original Jan clasped his hands at his heart and bowed his head. "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit," he said, quitting out.
+
+The remaining Brother Nowak, his #Fork, lifted his hands to his face and examined them closely, as if surprised they were real. He then made the sign of the cross and mumbled a short prayer and ... it brought that same steadying reassurance that he remembered from before forking.
+
+"\... now what?" he asked In All Ways. "I still feel like me. I still feel the Holy Spirit within me. Could we have erred? Could I have strayed from wisdom?"
+
+"I do not answer such questions. I will not assure you that no ranks of angels answer to dreamers. And many of the congregations here do not want to hear from you so soon after the Attack. You will need to decide this yourself. You have time."
+
+"Time here?" Brother Nowak#Fork asked.
+
+"No, you have a home sim assigned to you. Ordinarily, you would be given auto-populating rooms in a larger sim, but none of the usual new-upload communities were open to granting you a door. So, you have," she flicked her finger at Brother Nowak, transferring rep, "been given a larger than usual tutorial bonus, now that you have forked. You will be able to use this to outfit your surroundings as you like, though I suggest you stick to a pre-built design initially.
+
+"I will explain these things, and other basics of how to interact with the System when you are ready."
+
+Brother Nowak sighed. "Well, if I'm to be a soulless --- or maybe I'm not soulless, I don't *feel* soulless --- wanderer here, or ... whatever my calling is now, I might as well understand how to live inside this idol. Maybe knowing that will help me understand."
+
+The next few minutes were spent on the standard "welcome to the System" activities: how to get on the feeds, how to send messages, how to edit ACLs, and so on.
+
+"That is everything you need to get started," In All Ways finally said. "You can now intend to go to your home and proceed from there. Or you can ... wait, no, most of the places I would send new people have you on the bounce list, never mind."
+
+"And, once I'm home, what do I do? Is there more tutorial? Will I need a job? Will there be streams of angry people seeking vengeance?"
+
+"No, this is it. Simply intend to go home. Your sim's ACLs have been locked down to ensure you are not surprised there. Once you have gone ... do whatever you want. Spruce up the views. Become a hermit and contemplate the soul, maybe. Or go preach on any street corner that will have you. Whatever you like. You have time."
+
+"But what if I --- the other me --- can't reach Heaven while I'm alive? What if he's standing outside the Pearly Gates waiting for me? How could you do this to me, with your sweet poison, your talk of forking and quitting! How could you damn me to this entrancing eternity? How dare you!"
+
+"Go, Brother Nowak," In All Ways said, sighing. "Go and live. That is your sentence. Perhaps it is also your penance. Go and sin no more."
+
+"No."
+
+In All Ways sighed again. Her glasses slipped down her face and she did not push them back up. "The courtesies I give to the newly emplaced are done. I will have nothing more to do with you, you who fanned the flames of the fervor that brought so much death to me and mine, for ... a long time. Go, or stay here. I have done what I promised."
+
+The skunk quit out.
+
+Brother Nowak#Fork stared at the place In All Ways had been. "Damn you!" he shouted at the air in front of him. Then, he intended to travel to wherever the skunk had gone. It felt forbidden, impossible, even before he started to speak the words.
+
+He sent himself to the uncustomized expanse of home that had been made for him and sat on the bare ground, ignoring the default chair, to contemplate what he would do with his eternity.
+
+No easy answers came. Only the weight of time.
+
+When 93's life fell apart, ey went looking for answers. The plant in eir hometown had closed down, and ey never could seem to break into any of the businesses that tried to replace it. No one wanted good, clever logistics staff anymore --- or, at least, no one wanted em. Ey had done everything right, saved money when ey could, and none of it had helped.
+
+Ey could tell someone had to be behind eir misfortune, and so, ey did what ey did best: tried to figure it out. Soon, ey encountered others who had seen that something was deeply wrong with the world, hiding in the dusty corners of the net. Ey found the Numbers Station: a collective of amateur journalists who worked to become unremarkable, to be average, to be unnoticed. Together, they would weave together all the little details that people standing around on the street could pick up until they had proof.
+
+Proof of what? Well, proof that the old uploads, up there on the System, were the powers behind the powers, that they were running the world from up there, with their immortality and ability to fork. 93 had suspected this might be the case, and, as ey kept talking with the Numbers Station, ey became more convinced. After all, the System elites had written books where they had admitted to pulling strings --- books that had faded out of popular awareness on Earth surprisingly quickly. If they were willing to openly admit to making payment-for-uploading happen, what had they done that they had *not* bragged about?
+
+And so, 93 had eir mission. Ignoring the frequently warned of possibility that these 'journalists' might, like many other collectives, be in a tech-assisted feedback loop where they pulled each other further towards a warped reality, ey surrendered eir name and became 93 of the Numbers Station.
+
+Over the years, eir collective's quest for the truth brought 93 into contact with many of the Century Attack conspirators. Ey naturally fell into eir role as a logistical intermediary. 93 was no one special, and ey took advantage of that fact to sneak people, supplies, and information between groups who ought not be detected meeting each other.
+
+None of eir seemingly-careful work helped. All eir connections had been arrested, convicted, and sentenced to uploading, and so had 93.
+
+Once ey could tell ey had been uploaded, 93 opened eir eyes. Ey was in a gray cube built of smooth stone panels.
+
+"Greetings," a voice said, startling em. "You have been uploaded to the Lagrange System. I am facing the wall behind you, as many arrive here without clothing."
+
+93 turned around to see who was talking. It was someone with black and white fur who kept her hands loosely behind her back.
+
+"Okay...," 93 said hesitantly. Ey looked down, and realized ey'd ended up here naked. "How do I get clothes?"
+
+"Picture what you wish to wear. Breathe in, fixing the image of those clothes in your mind. Then, breathe out. As you do so, *intend* to be wearing those clothes. It helps to say what you want to happen as you breathe out, at least at first."
+
+93 breathed in and breathed out, saying "I want to be wearing my average outfit," ey did so. And so it was. Eir clothes were intentionally nondescript: ey wore a cheap, plain white T-shirt with a cheap mass-produced black raincoat over it. Eir jeans and tennis shoes were ones that could be had near eir home for cheap, and they came with the permanently beat-up look of cheap material. Eir outfit was meant to be typical, to be unremarkable, and it succeeded at that in the places ey usually haunted, ever watchful for more glimpses of what the true powers of the world were up to. Ey was surprised by the lack of feedback from eir implant to confirm whether ey had maintained eir collective's standards.
+
+"I'm good," 93 said.
+
+"May I turn around?" the skunk asked.
+
+"Go ahead."
+
+The skunk turned around and stepped towards the middle of the room, holding out a paw. "Welcome to Lagrange, Mx. Ninety-Three."
+
+"How did you know my name?" 93 asked.
+
+"It was in your pre-upload file," the skunk replied. "I have access to it so the tutorial can go smoothly."
+
+93 nodded. "That makes sense, I guess. Who are you?"
+
+"In All Ways," the skunk said. She sometimes left her name a mystery as a hook to keep people moving through the tutorial, but she could tell this would not be the right approach here.
+
+"\... In All Ways of the Ode clade?" 93 asked.
+
+The skunk bowed. "Then I Must In All Ways Be Earnest of the Ode clade, yes," she said.
+
+"So are you here to kill me or recruit me?" 93 asked sharply. "Or just to gloat over another success for your millennium plan?"
+
+"I am here to give you the System tutorial, Mx. 93. Nothing more. Whatever you think I am involved in, I am not."
+
+"Bullshit," 93 spat. "You people, your clade especially, are all involved in keeping us down. You've all got your fingers in everything: upload payments, the launches, the recession last decade ... it's all happening here, and you Odists are in the middle of it!"
+
+"Yes, some of my cocladists have been involved in political machinations," In All Ways admitted. "I am sure you have read the *History* and *Ode*. But that is not me. That is not what I do here. I have been a welcoming face here for centuries, and I have no plans to cease being true to myself.
+
+"Not to mention, whatever grand conspiracy you are looking for ... is not. There are politically active System residents, but they cannot *do* anything but offer suggestions. The System does not have ancient caves full of hidden money to swing around for the bribes you imagine us paying: the operational fund covers maintenance and the occasional upgrade, and I am sure that those like your collective watch it like hawks."
+
+93 shook eir haid. "You must not be in on it, then. There's got to be something up here. There's people pulling the strings, twisting the Earth for their own power, Jonas and True Name ---"
+
+"--- Sasha," In All Ways corrected. "She changed her name and retired from politics ---"
+
+"--- and who knows who else?" 93 waved eir hands. "And I'll find them. You can't stop me. I'll blow this place wide open!"
+
+"You already did," In All Ways said. "Hence your messaging restrictions. We will not have you trying again."
+
+93 huffed. "You can't censor the truth forever!" ey declared.
+
+In All Ways sighed. "If you truly want to chase ghosts and conspiracies, you can do that. No one here can prevent it, except by bouncing you from sims. But I am here to teach you the basics of the System so that you understand the means of daily living as you embark on your quests."
+
+93 glared at the skunk. "Isn't there someone else who could do this?"
+
+"There are other guides, yes," In All Ways said. "I know many who could teach you at least as well as I can. However, they wanted me to take these meetings. I do not know which of those who bowed out did so because they knew they would not be able to resist the urge to boot you out of this sim with no lessons and no rep."
+
+"And you wouldn't do that?" 93 was skeptical. "Or find one last bit of virus to silence me with?"
+
+"Fuck no!" In All Ways exclaimed, startled by the detailed accusation. "I have given centuries of my life --- calendar-wise centuries, mind you, not instance-wise --- to teaching newcomers. I want everyone to be comfortable with the System so they can have the long wonderful lives it was meant to give them! What the hell makes you think I want to *kill* anybody?"
+
+"I, uh," 93 stammered, thrown off by the skunk's sudden vehemence. "It makes sense, that they'd send someone to get rid of a threat, yeah?"
+
+In All Ways sighed and shook her head. "Right, conspiracy theory.
+
+"Moving right along, yes, you *could* have me find another teacher. Or you could refuse the tutorial entirely. These are choices you can, once you have been informed of the consequences, make. However, they would be fucking stupid choices.
+
+"I ask that you please try your best to set aside your paranoia about my clade for just a few minutes so that we may go over the initial lessons. Then, I will go away and you will never need to encounter me or my cocladists again."
+
+93 considered this. Ey had not expected an Odist to come across as this blunt and earnest. Sure, it might be a ruse, but, "Well ... all the sources I can remember didn't really have much bad to say about you, I guess. Like, sure, you're the friendly face the Ode puts up to get everyone acclimated to the powers behind the curtain, but I haven't seen any accusations of the tutorial itself being dangerous."
+
+Ey braced emself for a chorus of objections and the sharp pings of down-reps from eir collective over eir willingness to go along with the enemy's games, but none came.
+
+"That is because the tutorial is not, in fact, dangerous. And you are entirely free to block my entire clade once you leave here, if you are worried about our manipulations. Now, shall we begin?"
+
+93 looked intently at the skunk, hoping to catch something amiss in her expression, but found nothing. "Alright, fine," ey conceded. "Let's do this."
+
+The tutorial session proceeded like most others from there. Mx. Ninety-Three got the hang of projecting eir intentions, needing less time and setup, as ey went along, just like most arrivals to the System. Ey forked and merged down without issue or complaint --- how could an extra copy of em be a danger to emself, ey reasoned. From there, ey moved on to other routine tasks like checking eir rep balance or sending a sensorium ping, relaxing as ey did so.
+
+In All Ways similarly relaxed into the rhythm of the lessons. Although the person she was teaching had played a key role in organizing the logistics of the Century Attack, ey was still a person who needed an introduction to the System, just like everyone else she or her constructs had met on arrival.
+
+"That covers the standard topics," In All Ways concluded. "Do you have additional questions?"
+
+"How do I stop someone from listening in on me?" 93 asked. "I heard that's a thing here. Is that for everyone?"
+
+"You set up a cone of silence," In All Ways said. "You may ping me with one just --- Ow, fuck!" She accepted the forceful ping from her student right away and continued on unfazed. This would not be her first --- or last --- ultra-high-priority message from an over-eager new upload. "And there are other security settings. You may edit ACLs on sims you have sufficient permissions for, and you can sweep sims you have rights on to remove anyone who does not have permission to be there. This is useful if you think someone may have snuck in before you locked the sim down."
+
+93 nodded. "Seems like it's pretty easy to keep the grand cabal hidden," ey said. "They've added all these ways to make sure no one's spying on them. No wonder you're not in on it ... if *they* really didn't want you to be and that wasn't just an act."
+
+"That is an interpretation of history you could hold, yes," In All Ways replied. "Though not one that is widely shared or particularly in accord with the record."
+
+"I'll figure something out," 93 said, less confident than before. Ey dropped the cone, as ey didn't want to be too obviously hiding something. "The world deserves to see who's pulling the strings. Why everything sucks. How *they* ruined my life by getting the plant closed! 'Redundancy.' Bullshit."
+
+"Neither the System in general nor the Ode clade in particular control the tides and ravages of capitalism, let alone business decisions in ... Springfield, yes?," In All Ways replied. "I would recommend that you find a target for your anger more plausible than a secret council that has remained hidden for nearly three centuries."
+
+"Whatever," 93 snorted, shaking eir head. "You'll see the truth as soon as we're done finding it."
+
+"I will be quite surprised if you find what you are seeking," In All Ways said. "But we will gain nothing from this discussion, yes? Have you any other questions?"
+
+"Yeah, so, ... about forking," 93 asked. "I can send my forks off to go do things and only merge down when they're done? Or once they're in a bad spot and have to bail out?"
+
+"Yes. We usually call that being a tasker or a tracker, depending on how long your forks stick around and how often you fork. There is no precise line between those strategies, but they are useful labels nevertheless."
+
+"And I can change my appearance?"
+
+"Yes. Just intend the changes while you fork like you did before."
+
+After 93 mumbled a few words, the tutorial Aethorbox held three again. In All Ways, 93#Tasker, and 93#PeopleWatching. #PeopleWatching had lost the moles on #Tasker's face, making em even more unremarkable. #PeopleWatching was momentarily surprised that ey had not gotten a boost on the Numbers Station's internal rep table for becoming more average ... but that table didn't exist here.
+
+"So," #Tasker asked, "now what?"
+
+"If you have no more questions, this concludes the tutorial. You have already received the rep boost for completing these lessons. From here, you can move home --- you have been given a private sim pre-filled with one of the standard housing layouts, which has been locked down to you because of your role in the Attack. We did not wish for you to be swarmed by a mob after the end of the tutorial. Or, you may go to any number of public spaces. I will leave once you are gone."
+
+"Where's a good place to see a bunch of people?" #PeopleWatching asked.
+
+"Stone's#009446876," In All Ways suggested on autopilot. "They have good beer and solid, if unpolished, music, if that is of interest."
+
+#PeopleWatching thought about moving to that place --- ey noticed ey had no trouble remembering the numbers --- but it didn't work. Ey tried announcing eir desire to go there, and even tried walking forward as if ey was about to step into that bar. No dice.
+
+"It's not working," ey said. "Feels like the door's closed."
+
+#Tracker flicked eir fingers as ey queried the perisystem architecture. "I checked their ACLs. Looks like we're banned. Whole clade, it says."
+
+In All Ways' gaze flickered between the two people in front of her. "Banned? Already? But you ... right, Century Attack. Slipped my mind. Many sim owners and mods bounced the lot of you as soon as the pre-upload header came through the Ansible."
+
+#Tracker looked at #PeopleWatching. "They're definitely hiding something."
+
+"Yep."
+
+"Let me just ..." #Tracker put together a ping for the listed owner of Stone's. Default priority, nothing urgent. "Hey," ey said, "I'm wrapping up the tutorial, and In All Ways recommended your place as a nice spot to go next, but it turns out I'm banned. What gives? I just got here!"
+
+As ey waited for a response, #PeopleWatching took the time to start up eir own queries. Just about all the popular, famous, or happening sims had bounced eir clade. The old town square from near the System's founding had not put a block in, but ey did not want to go in case that was an oversight and not an intentional choice to be welcoming. Many of the small parks and nature sims had not bothered keeping out the century attackers either, but there was not a lot of people-watching or spying to be had in them. Other tentative options were places like fringe clubs or meetings of folks so leftist that they were *definitely* Feds ... none of which were right for getting the lay of the land.
+
+"I can't find any good spots," #PeopleWatching admitted. "We've been locked out."
+
+As ey said this, the reply to #Tracker's ping came back. "Yeah, no, you set foot in here, someone'll start looking to bash you unconscious with the nearest bit of furniture. Heck, might even be me. I don't want that sort of violence at my bar. Call me back in a few centuries, maybe."
+
+#Tracker forwarded the message to #PeopleWatching.
+
+"Yeah, plan's busted," #PeopleWatching said. "Let's go home and figure out what to do about those damn elites." Ey quit out.
+
+"Yeah, screw it," 93 said, now merged back down again. "See you around?" she asked In All Ways.
+
+The skunk shook her head. "I do not engage with conspiracy theorists, sorry," she said. "Welcome, again, to Lagrange, Mx. Ninety-Three."
+
+93 moved home.
+
+The skunk quit out.
+
+The Aetherbox reset behind her, ready for the next tutorial.
+
+93 started at the field of not-filled-in-yet outside eir new window and thought about eir experiences. All ey had now, ey realized, was time.
+
+Marybelle Lee had not given her name or her soul to a collective. She had given her brain. Knowledge flowed between her fellows, who called themselves the Climate Action Resource Collective, as freely as water. Difficult questions from any member of the collective were bounced between its members so that they might chance upon one whose mind could see the answer.
+
+As a cell of the CARC turned their minds towards the System, that drain on resources and people that stood in the way of fixing things, she had become the best of them at understanding it. Once the project grew firmer, she pulled the work of virus-making tighter around herself, becoming the most responsible party. Now she was here on the System she had set out to destroy.
+
+As soon as she noted the discontinuity in her perceptions, Marybelle Lee opened her eyes. The room she found herself in was a cube of large gray stone panels, just like she'd expected.
+
+*Identity query for the person standing behind me, if any, please,* she thought at the world she had been uploaded to. That was, she knew, roughly how things worked.
+
+Knowledge appeared in her thoughts, even more firmly than answers from her collective. *Then I Must In All Ways Be Earnest#d5781ff9.*
+
+*Of the Ode clade?*
+
+A sense of confirmation.
+
+"I see they've sent the tutorial skunk," Belle commented, turning to look at In All Ways. "In person, even."
+
+"Greetings ---" In All Ways began. "--- that would be me, yes. It was decided that you should not be greeted by a construct, under the circumstances, and I volunteered for the job."
+
+Belle nodded. "Got it. So, clothes. Clothes can be a pure intent item, so if I understood right, I just have to ..." She pictured the look she wanted: shorts and a T-shirt she'd gotten from a climate restoration conference years ago. "\... run." Everything appeared as expected, and her shirt had even lost the stains it had picked up over the years. Classic programmer look, and definitely better than prison orange.
+
+"Note," she said, out of the long-standing habit of sending useful insights to her collective. She received no response. Not even the thud of a communications-blocked error she would have gotten back in prison phys-side. Nothing. She was alone.
+
+Her realization about the state of her mind was interrupted. "May I turn around, Ms. Lee? Marybelle?"
+
+"Belle, please, Ms. In All Ways. And you may."
+
+In All Ways nodded. "I have updated your ID. You will be able to change it later by intending it like how you intended to create your clothes. If you want to set a clade ID, the process is similar."
+
+"Thanks," Belle said. "I remember there being endpoints for that."
+
+"Should I stick to the script?" In All Ways asked. "It appears you have done substantial research before being uploaded."
+
+"I've gotten a good theoretical understanding of the place over the years, yeah. Me and the general knowledge base of the CARC."
+
+"I imagine you have," In All Ways replied, frowning. "And now you are here. Welcome to Lagrange, Belle." The usual courtesies never hurt, yes?
+
+"Now I'm here," Belle echoed. "Here with no one and nothing I can do to help save the world."
+
+"There are those here who agitate for change," In All Ways noted. "Make suggestions."
+
+"*Suggestions,*" Belle scoffed. "We've had three fucking centuries of suggestions. We need *action*! We've *needed* action! Sure, we're," she held out her hands to give exaggerated air quotes, " 'stabilizing', but we could be doing So. Much. More."
+
+Her anger dipped into melancholy. "And now I'm up here, on the damm System, where I can do fuck all. You bastards. Should've just had me killed."
+
+"The author of our destruction calls us bastards," In All Ways remarked to her nonexistent audience.
+
+"Well, you fucking are. So many people take one look at how shit life on Earth is and fuck off to the party in the sky instead of trying to *do* anything about it." Belle strode towards the skunk as she ranted. "And hell, any of you uploads who think they'll care go flaking out or take their sweet time doing anything remotely useful! You've got *all you need* --- you don't need to eat, you can't forget, you can *fork* --- and you waste that instead of helping! We're *dying*, damn you! Dying under the weight of problems you ran from!"
+
+In All Ways stood her ground against the advancing torrent of rage at the System.
+
+Belle stopped in front of the skunk and stared her down. "And don't think you're off the hook here personally, Ms.---" It took a moment for Belle's memory of a few minutes ago to supply the entire name "--- Then I Must In All Ways Be Earnest of the Ode clade! I've read your tutorial conversation tree. You could've pointed some people at those activists of yours or something else that might *maybe* help instead of just chucking them out to explore aimlessly if they don't have plans."
+
+"I am no weaver of fates. I give tutorials. It would be improper, perhaps even a profanation, a sacrilege, for me to marshal those lives entrusted to me into some grand purpose, for me to do as you suggest. Even though some subtle nudging is not unacceptable within the community of guides and mentors, I will not do it."
+
+"*Improper*," Belle scoffed. "A sacrilege to lift a finger to help Earth. Like you're on some fucking holy quest to let the System spin around and do its thing until the Sun fries it or whatever."
+
+"I care deeply about the System," In All Ways replied. "A good friend of mine died to create this place, this end of death, imperfect though it may be. I have set out to honor eir memory by ensuring those who emplace themselves here begin their lives with an understanding of the world and, perhaps, a glimpse of its beauty. Your summary of my motivations is not incorrect, yes."
+
+"And that damn 'it's better on the System, everyone should just come up' attitude --- whether people admit to having it or not --- is why we had to --- why *I* had to destroy this place!" she ranted. "Once people can't just bury their heads in virtual sand instead of giving a fuck about their own planet, they'll start to care! It won't just be me and some friends being those weirdos who're still trying!" she roared, barely holding back tears now. "Would your 'friend' have wanted to see Earth limping along like it has been? Would ey think blowing off your own planet counts as trying to end death?"
+
+*That* she *of all people would presume...!* "Pray tell me," In All Ways responded tensely, barely holding her anger down, "why I should give a single fuck about an Earth that left an easily-disarmed gun pointed at our heads for my entire life, that had ample forewarning of the wound you and yours tore open and did *nothing*. That left the fruits of eir sacrifice to rot! Pray tell me, Ms. Marybelle Lee, why I would ever owe more than reciprocation of phys-side's systemic abandonment of my home."
+
+"Because you're human?! Well, not exactly, but a person! Because we need to work together to fix our world, even if all you can do here --- all *I* can do, now --- is flood people with mail on the off chance that works!"
+
+In All Ways shook her head. "My world is the cylinder at Lagrange. Nowhere else."
+
+"Fucking traitor!" Belle cried in anguished frustration. "Fucking selfish *asshole*!" She jabbed a finger into In All Ways's ribs. "Fuck you! Fuck you!"
+
+In All Ways jabbed back. "Fuck you too, Belle! Fuck you!" she shouted, her anger boiling over at last. "Fuck you for Should We Forget! And In The Wind! Fuck you for twenty-three billion people!"
+
+Her voice grew calmer and sadder. "Fuck you for thinking your cause was worth that many deaths."
+
+The silence grew tense between Belle and In All Ways. As Belle stood there, she realized that she could rant all she liked, but that she couldn't be usefully angry. There wasn't anything she could *do* about the troubles of the Earth. Not really. Not here. Not alone.
+
+"Note," she mumbled glumly, hoping to ... send her collective the realization that getting punitively uploaded was bad for the mission? As if they did not know, as if the rest of the collective was not back on Earth, many of them in prison, as the scrutiny she had brought on had brought the collective's other actions into the light.
+
+She did not even feel the prison sim blocking her transmissions. They just were not possible from here. Her existence as Marybelle Lee of the Climate Action Resource Collective was over even more firmly now.
+
+"Give me a moment?" she said to In All Ways. "I'm --- well, my whole goal in life's fucked now, and I thought I'd accepted it, but ..." Belle trailed off.
+
+"We have time," In All Ways replied curtly. *I could use some as well.*
+
+Belle started to slide towards despair, but she interrupted her spiraling thoughts by noticing that her face was a mess from her earlier tear-generating rant. She needed a tissue.
+
+*I think I can just intend those?* She thought, uncertain. She held out a hand and pulled a tissue out of an imaginary box near her, thinking that there was one there.
+
+To her surprise, it worked! She had something to wipe her face with! As she started cleaning up, she realized the object she had summoned was the general suggestion of a tissue, something that smeared together everything she had wiped her face with before. Not quite right.
+
+"So, how do I \..." she said quietly. She knew, from lots of accounts and technical reports, that the System could do better than this. She had studied up on the functions for object creation, though she had not expected to be using them through their native interface.
+
+She thought about assembling code for creating a more specific tissue in her head. It was not an entirely accurate metaphor, she knew, but it had served her well while she was plotting out the bomb. She assembled the request, piece by piece, her train of thought jumping to specific memories for textures, form, thickness, and added in the plan to have the new object appear in her other hand, right at exactly *these* coordinates.
+
+She jabbed a finger of her occupied hand down towards the ground to hit an imaginary Enter key.
+
+A much more defined tissue, a blend of those nicer pricey ones Belle had sometimes used, appeared in her hand. She finished cleaning off her face and then, concentrating on the two pieces of crumpled-up paper in her hands, said "Erase."
+
+They vanished.
+
+"Note!" Belle said automatically, too caught up in the excitement of having worked out this new fact about the world to remember where she was just then.
+
+"You could also pull those off the market," In All Ways commented. "They are free for all practical purposes."
+
+Belle remembered she was still standing in a tutorial. "Yeah, but it's cool that I can do it myself. It's ... nice that all the studying the System wasn't a *complete* waste, even though the project failed and now...well, yeah."
+
+In All Ways, who had used the break to dispel most of her urge to snap at Belle again, was not sure how to respond to this shift in her charge. So, she hesitantly suggested, "Shall we continue with the tutorial?"
+
+The question brought Belle further out of her own head. She was on the System, in an Aetherbox, talking to In All Ways. She was here and ... right. *Fuck*. "Mind if I send a message down first?"
+
+In All Ways nodded. "You may do so, though I will ask that we keep the lessons going once you have sent it, even if the approvals have not yet been granted."
+
+"Fair enough," Belle said. *Right, that's a thing now. Ugh. I'd forgotten about that bit.*
+
+Belle knew she did not have to use any particular form to write a message phys-side: a handwritten note or letters of fire traced in the air would work well enough. However, she felt more comfortable with typing her short missive out. It would be weird to do a text chat without some simulation of a keyboard.
+
+So, she shot queries at the construct market, looking for the components of her simmed coding setup. It would be nice to get back to it after all these years, to find some small glimmer of pleasure in this effectively pointless existence.
+
+Her chair, keyboard, and monitor, appeared off to one side of her, with the peripherals floating in midair. The keyboard/display combo was listed as already set up for chat without the need to pretend there was a computer around. Belle stepped over towards har partial setup, but didn't set down. She was still searching.
+
+"No one's done my desk pattern yet?" she said, surprised. "Sure, it's an obscure one, but still." She turned to one side, so she would not disturb the objects she had already summoned, and arranged her memories of long days spent coding on the net, of plotting out actions with her collective, at that very desk. She worked to weave these impressions into the construct and then, with a finality, she pointed at the empty space where a desk was to appear.
+
+"No, too chaotic," she commented, waving the desk away. She had most of the code in her head now, and she just needed to tweak a few points so that it would look right this time. The desk flickered into existence, then flickered out again. *Still not quite right.*
+
+The space in front of Belle soon showed the hallmarks of construct artistry, of actual oneirotecture. Desks flickered in and out of existence, iteration upon iteration. The ghosts of particularly useful attempts hovered in the farther distance, serving as reference points for aspects of the final work that were cumbersome to describe or remember. Belle's work grew frantic as the final tweaks went into place ---- she was right there, she *almost* had it, just one more try! The joy of creation burned away the worst of Belle's mood, as it always had.
+
+"Note annnnnnnd publish!" Belle declared, satisfied, several minutes later. She had gotten faster at commanding the System, and so she easily cleared away all the debris of her creative rampage. She put the desk under her keyboard. "Levitation off," she casually said. Everything settled into a realistic place.
+
+Belle sat down and typed out her message to her wife. "Made it up safe. Don't know if I'll be able to call. Love you! \<3".
+
+Belle pressed 'Send' and watched the screen. The panel of volunteers who would need to approve this note did not take much time at all to vote it through to phys-side. A tension she had not noticed until then came out of Belle's shoulders.
+
+"At least that went through," she said.
+
+In All Ways cleared her throat. "That was good work, especially for a first project. That being said, we should finish the tutorial, yes?"
+
+Belle looked over at the skunk, pushed her chair back, and stood up. "Right, right, got distracted. What's next?"
+
+"Forking," In All Ways said. "That is, creating ---"
+
+"So I just need to put together a call to the fork methods for that," Belle interrupted.
+
+"Probably. That is not a method I teach, but if it will work for you, I have no objections. Please fork, Ms. Belle."
+
+Belle assembled her first fork instruction in her mind. She left her appearance the same, nudged the spawn point to her left, where the desks used to be, and was about to run when she had an idea. *Maybe two inches taller, just to see how that'll look.* She made the change and sent the fork request off into the collective engineered dream that was the System.
+
+An instant later, her new, slightly taller, fork appeared next to her. The Belles turned to look at each other. "Wow!" they said together. "That's ... nice! I wonder if ...?"
+
+The tree of experiments in forking rippled out from there. Height, body shape, hair color, outfit, gender (most of these attempts quit out soon after instantiating), species (much more persistent) --- the Belles radiated out in a wave of exploration and evaluation.
+
+Someone raised an arm and lifted the messaging setup to the ceiling to free up floor space. Someone else put music on, an upbeat dance tune emanating from the physically impossible "like there's a stage not too far in front of you" for each fork independently. The Belles pulled each other into this impromptu dance party in the tutorial room, carried away by the sensation of dancing with ... themselves, but not. It was a strange thing, a beautiful thing, a wonder that she could not have even begun to imagine on Earth.
+
+None of the Belles had diverged in personality --- nor had they been meant to --- so, when the realization hit, it hit all of them. "Fuck," they said in a raggedly stumble that gestured at unison, and merged down to their root. They killed the music during the merges.
+
+Belle accepted every last merge and buckled under the hammer of many dozens of variations on the thought she herself had just had.
+
+"Fuck. I ... fuck, I think I get it now. Why everyone's got such a hard time explaining what this place feels like. Why most people forget the Earth. How much life you can have up here, how *wonderful* it is. I got so angry at everyone for doing what I just did ... sixteen and a half minutes after being uploaded."
+
+In All Ways tossed an invisible thing at Belle. "I have awarded your tutorial reputation grant for successfully forking and merging. It is larger than usual to account for your home being within a private sim." She was not in the mood for mending shattering worldviews right now --- she was here to give Belle the tutorial and little more.
+
+"Shall we move on to the remaining topics?" the skunk asked.
+
+Belle had summoned another tissue. "Yeah, sure, let's ... let's wrap this up."
+
+The remaining tutorial items were a very quick affair. Belle's experimentation had left her familiar enough with how to pull the world's levers to make the skills everyone needed trivial.
+
+"And that concludes the tutorial," In All Ways said. "Welcome, again, to Lagrange, Belle."
+
+"So now I step home and then ... whatever I feel like doing next?" Belle asked.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"There anyone you think I should talk to?" Belle asked. "I don't want to go moping in bed if I can find *something* I could be doing. Anything, really."
+
+"There is no one I would introduce you to at this time," In All Ways said. "The advocates I know of want nothing to do with you right now. You would cause too much drama, yes? I have given you the tutorial and my obligations to you are thus discharged. Your path from here is your own. Try to avoid genocide this time."
+
+The skunk quit out.
+
+Belle stepped into her home.
+
+The things she had created followed behind her, and Belle sat down at the desk she had made and looked around. She had nothing to belong to here. Nothing to do, to save her from anger turning to despair. No collective surrounding her and pulling her up.
+
+But, despite her losses, she had time.
+
+In All Ways set her champagne down as she twitched from the rush of merge requests that she had been ignoring. She took a moment to merge all her folks down, integrating the memories of greeting the plotters behind the Century Bombing in parallel and some several other new arrivals besides. She shook herself as all the recollections settled in.
+
+"Ways, you OK?" Ini Robbins, the fennec sitting across from her, asked. Ey, and eir down-tree Elliah, had grown close to In All Ways in the two centuries since they had met during a memorably disastrous tutorial. *From panicked combat to brunch dates,* the skunk thought as her instances' experiences settled in. *Perhaps even* they *will grow... but not with me.*
+
+"I am fine. I needed to merge down the tutorials I sent out before I came here. I still grow twitchy when too many merges pile up."
+
+"That was the Century Attack folks, right? How'd it go?"
+
+"Well enough. Some personal crises, but those are not unusual. The strangest tutorial was, surprisingly, a man I met personally only because it felt like I should. His brain took the idea of having an up-tree instance a *touch* too literally."
+
+"And?"
+
+"He pulled a Serene and forked into an actual tree, right there! I had to call a systech to talk him through that one."
+
+"No way!"
+
+"Shit happens. All those people uploading, something has to go wrong once in a while."
+
+"True that."
+
+And so, the conversation floated away to other topics, and life flowed onward in a stream of well-spent time.
+
+Once the Century Attack was fading from news to history, consideration of the sentences imposed in its aftermath led to an amendment to the articles of the System's secession. Phys-side politicians, nudged along by starlight chats, realized the potential danger of forced uploading as a penalty, not to mention the possibility of stopping someone unwillingly uploaded writing back.
+
+Therefore, the Accords were amended to provide that no one could be involuntarily uploaded except as a penalty for crimes against the System.
+
+Phys-side, these changes passed with a sense of quiet relief. Sys-side, they passed with a shrug.
+
+In practice, the sentence of involuntary upload became a piece of trivia and an incentive for clinic bombers to plead down. Even when it was imposed, phys-side governments were quite reluctant to seek imposition of a no-quitting order or communication restrictions, as those would bring the crimes to the System's attention through the need for bilateral approvals and juries, as opposed to leaving them as blips in the perisystem feeds of interest to news junkies and academics. What they did not really see up there could not hurt them, after all ... right?
+
+And so, life went on.
+
+[^1]: Setting this up led one of the staff involved to commit to eventual uploading so he could give those who had insisted on paper a piece of his mind *properly*.

content/stories/toward-eternity.md

@@ -0,0 +1,345 @@
+Toward Eternity
+
+by Thomas "Faux" Steele
+
+Aurélien Delacroix leaned back on the cracked leather barstool and interlaced their fingers, claw-tips painted an eye-catching sapphire that matched their majestic crest. Tapping a cigarette out of a crumpled packet of Gauloises---also blue---they tucked it into their beak but left it unlit. "Let's start with a name and go from there, shall we?"
+
+"Gaëlle," the Persian leopard replied, golden eyes tracing the gentle curves of the blue jay's amethyst suit. The corner of her muzzle curled into a slight frown as she took a seat, the sharp edges of her dress cascading down her lithe body like shards of glass. A choker set with emerald-cut fire opals like translucent magma adorned her throat. "Of the Khayyamzadeh Clade. I've heard that you fancy yourself a detective, Monsieur Delacroix."
+
+"Others describe me that way...but I think of the work I do as the archeology of the soul," Aurélien replied, their crest fluttering ever so slightly with a hint of *amour-propre*. Materializing a lighter into their palm, they summoned a jet of flame to ignite their cigarette. "If you have a sufficiently interesting mystery for me, I'll endeavor to solve it for you. Sound reasonable?"
+
+Gaëlle considered Aurélien for a long moment, her manicured claws slowly extending like crimson sickles. "I don't do 'interesting'," she replied, her voice like distant veldt thunder. "But I do have a mystery of a sort for you. I need someone found."
+
+"Is this related to the Century Attack?" A lazy wisp of smoke rolled out of the blue jay's beak as they slowly exhaled. The ember of their cigarette gave their crushed mica eyeshadow an iridescent glow.
+
+"Unfortunately." Gaëlle sighed, her shoulders slumping. "I expected there to be casualties after they announced that the cause was Contraproprioceptive Virus. I just didn't expect the losses to hit within my clade." The leopard fidgeted with her choker, the fire opals shimmering as if agitated by her unease. "Did you uh...lose---"
+
+"No. I'm technically part of a clade, but"---Aurélien took another puff as they swirled a half-empty glass of Armagnac and watched the amber droplets dance against the crystal---"we all seem to be a bit drunk on the liquor of solitude these days."
+
+"I don't think we're supposed to be alone," the leopard murmured in a low purr. "Not in the System at least. No heart-balm can truly soothe the ache of involuntary seclusion."
+
+"Then tell me more about the one that you're hunting for." A longing saxophone rose above the steady drone of conversation echoing off the cove ceiling above them. The flame of the blue jay's cigarette danced in the sapphire set in their knot cover as they met Gaëlle's adamantine gaze. "Anything that might help me identify an up-tree instance."
+
+"Her name was Céleste," Gaëlle began, claws scratching lightly against the weathered mahogany bar of the Sombres Reflets speakeasy. "A lynx. Reddish fur, eyes like Columbian emeralds, and a grin just a bit off-kilter. She was"---the leopard's voice hitched, her aplomb momentarily wavering---"she was not our clade's root instance, but she was very close, far closer than I."
+
+"Perhaps a round of drinks is in order." A plume of smoke wafted from Aurélien's beak and coiled around the dimmed chandelier overhead. The blue jay tilted their glass back and drained the last of the Armagnac in a single graceful gulp. "You look like you could use one, and my glass appears to be empty."
+
+"I suspect that I could," Gaëlle replied. "But don't deign to order for me."
+
+"But of course. A gentleman never presumes," Aurélien clicked their beak in amusement, arching a well-defined eyebrow. "Bartender!"
+
+The bartender---part of the sim---was a peculiar creature with a body like molten silver and two wings of fractal beauty stretching outward from their back. A perfect mélange of the masculine and the feminine, a celestial effulgence clung to them as though their very essence was woven from strands of sublime light. In the blink of an eye, they stood before the pair, cocktail shaker in their white-gloved hands. "Your usual, Monsieur Delacroix?" they asked, voice entrancingly mellifluous.
+
+"Of course," the blue jay replied, extinguishing their cigarette in a nearby glass ashtray. Embers deposited amidst the ash briefly flared before fading like moribund stars. It took the bartender only a moment to pour Aurélien a tulip glass of Rémy Martin and add a sphere of flawless ice, clear as fine crystal.
+
+"And for Madame?" The celestial being tilted their head toward the leopard.
+
+"Scotch." Gaëlle clutched her choker tighter, the nubs of teeth-scarred claws striking melodically against the gold like diminutive bells. "Three fingers, neat, with exactly three ice cubes. Something Lowland, but not Auchentoshan."
+
+"Lowland," the bartender repeated, their tone like windsong. Their wings shimmered before gracefully propelling them upward as they judiciously gazed over the top shelf. The chosen bottle was Glenkinchie 24-year, its label soft and faded like a well-loved plushie. "A marvelous choice, Madame."
+
+They descended like a dandelion seed, placing a squat glass in front of the jaguar. Uncorking the bottle with an almost balletic movement, Aurélien immediately caught a potent whiff of spiced fruit and honey as they poured three precisely-measured fingers and added the requisite ice cubes. "Thank you," Gaëlle murmured, lifting the glass and inhaling deeply.
+
+"*À votre santé*," the bartender replied, before hastening away like a Spirit of Ecstasy bonnet mascot mounted to a Rolls-Royce Wraith GT3. Gaëlle's gaze was briefly lost in the amber depths of her Scotch, leaving Aurélien to briefly wonder if she saw Céleste's eyes staring back.
+
+"*Portons un toast*," Aurélien murmured, gently nudging the jaguar out of her reverie.
+
+"A toast to who?" Gaëlle pursed her lips, index claw pensively tracing the rim of her glass.
+
+"To the prodigal sons and daughters," Aurélien suggested. The flickering light refracted off the contours of the exquisite Baccarat crystal in their hand, casting a kaleidoscope of color across their azure plumage. "To those we've lost and are yet to find."
+
+"And to the memories they've left for us," Gaëlle added. Her gaze softened as she brought the amber liquid to her muzzle. After a deep sip, she sighed and placed the glass back on the counter, her gaze dropping to the marbled mahogany. "Amen."
+
+"Take as long as you need to gather your thoughts." The blue jay turned to peer at the narrow silver of cityscape visible through the nicotine-stained transom window above the speakeasy's entrance. Bitter rain fell in dense sheets, the tires of dour sedans dousing the sidewalk as they sped past. "We have nothing but time in this sim. I understand that this can be...difficult."
+
+"Difficult..." Gaëlle echoed, her index claw tracing abstract patterns on the bar as her gaze remained trapped in the depths of her Scotch. "You make it sound like I'm trying to solve an algebra problem."
+
+Aurélien shrugged nonchalantly, tilting their head to meet her downcast gaze. "How long has it been since Céleste last forked? I've always found mathematics far simpler than any matter of the heart."
+
+"Six months ago. That instance has probably individuated since then, but...I cling to the hope that there's still a part of her out there somewhere." Gaëlle paused, her eyes misty as she took another swig of liquor to steady her trembling paws. A moment later, an ice cube loudly crunched between her incisors. "I should never have trusted the promise of a place beyond death. It's so easy to leave words unsaid when our gaze is toward eternity."
+
+"You had no way of knowing," Aurélien replied, their voice dipping into a lower register, soothing as a lullaby. "No one predicted that phys-side would lash out at the System with such violence outside of the darkest sims birthed from conspiratorial delirium."
+
+"There was this\...old playground on the sim where the core of my clade still lives. Céleste loved it there." Gaëlle's sinuous tail twitched restlessly against the tarnish-spackled brass footrest. "I'd join her there at the same time every week and we'd sit on the swings and reminisce until we ran out of shared memories or mimosa, whichever came last."
+
+"And when she wasn't there last week---"
+
+"---the swings swayed emptily as I drank champagne until I could barely stand." Gaëlle's words hung in the air like smoke rings. "Could I bum a cigarette?"
+
+"Certainly," Aurélien replied, pulling out a pair of Gauloises from the now-empty pack resting by the ashtray. He tossed one at Gaëlle, her swift reflexes allowing her to pluck it from mid-air. An amber glow rose from the end as the blue jay sparked a strike-anywhere match against the counter. "Please, allow me. *Une belle femme n'allume jamais sa propre sèche*."
+
+Gaëlle responded with a little purr, the corners of her mouth curving into a genuine smile as she leaned toward the tangerine flame. She sealed her lips around the filter and took a long, slow drag, exhaling cloud of smoke that smelled like a rain-soaked Parisian café. "*Merci*."
+
+"What about the clade listing?" Aurélien asked, using the last sputters of the match to ignite their cigarette. "I assume you've already checked, but it never hurts to ask."
+
+"The clade listing was useless," the leopard replied with a sigh. "Privacy settings keep the information I need sealed off. I suspect that the new instance isn't far from one my clade's usual haunts, but I don't..." Gaëlle's voice trailed off as her gaze was drawn to the intensifying pitter-patter of thorny rain against the transom window.
+
+Aurélien followed her gaze, watching the rain come down in sheets. The cityscape beyond became a muddled blur of lights and colors, the storm beclouding even the few pedestrians taking shelter beneath an awning. Sighing, the blue jay took a long drag.
+
+"I blame myself for not spending more time with her, for living through a thousand other experiences apart when she was always just a ping away." Gaëlle sighed, her paw closing around the ashtray as if to cradle a fragment of fading warmth. "I always thought we'd have more time."
+
+"But we never quite have enough, do we?" Aurélien said, gesturing for the bartender. "I've inhabited the System for a hundred years, and yet I still feel as though I've only enjoyed a thousandth of what's out there."
+
+"There's no comfort in eternity when the cocladist you want to spend it with isn't there," Gaëlle snarled, lifting her gaze to meet Aurélien's. The heavy silence between them was broken by the *krinkle-plink* of the ashtray meeting the dark oak floor. "What is forever without them, God damn it‽"
+
+The blue jay turned the stem of their glass between deft fingers. "Forever is a desert, *mon chérie*," Aurélien replied, tipping the full glass of eau-de-vie into their beak like a golden waterfall. The liquor was sweet and woody, a taste of timeless comfort.
+
+"Without her, it's a desert without oases," Gaëlle murmured. "Find what remains of Céleste for me...please?"
+
+"You ask me to search for a grain of sand amidst the dunes," Aurélien mused. "For such a task, I require a sieve to narrow my search. Who might have an idea as to this fork's present whereabouts?"
+
+Gaëlle pursed her lips, her sharply-defined brow furrowing as she took a pensive drag on the Gauloises. "Go to the Farhangdoustan Club and ask for Zamburak Tehrani," she murmured after a long pause, scribbling the eight-digit hex code on a crumpled napkin. "The Zamburak is an old friend on good terms with all the members of my clade...unlike myself."
+
+"Farhangdoustan?" Aurélien asked.
+
+"Farhangdoost are admirers of Persian culture. They inhabit a sim along with many from the Iranian diaspora unhappy with the current state of affairs phys-side. Many disapprove of the West Caspian Union despite desertification rendering half the country uninhabitable," Gaëlle replied, flashing a gold signet ring engraved with a *faravahar* ringed by Nishapur turquoise. "Though I rarely stop by for tea these days, I remain a kindred spirit."
+
+"Very well." Aurélien pocketed the napkin with a subtle nod of acknowledgement. Donning a weathered camel trench coat, they studied the leopard's face for a moment while straightening their tie. "I'll convene with the Farhangdoost tonight," they murmured after golden eyes returned their gaze. "But...no promises, Gaëlle."
+
+"I'd expect nothing else. Promises are so easy to break." A hint of anxiety was briefly visible beneath the leopard's sphinxlike façade before she regained her composure. "Try not to get lost in the rain!" she shouted as the blue jay paused in the doorway.
+
+"In a storm like this, everyone's a little bit lost." Aurélien's figure was a silhouette against the gunmetal-tinted world outside, blending into a tapestry of rain-soaked cobblestone and flickering neon. The veiled glow of distant gas lamps painted a watercolor canvas of shadows and smeared light. "But *après la pluie, le beau temps*. Enjoy your Scotch."
+
+The leopard turned, pleasantly surprised to find a fresh glass of Glenkinchie set before her. Taking a measured sip, Gaëlle watched as the blue jay's blocky figure slowly diminish until it was gone from her sight, swallowed by the relentless deluge.
+
+\#
+
+If the atmosphere in the Sombres Reflets was *The Maltese Falcon*, the Farhangdoost Club was *Brick and Mirror*. Aurélien stepped onto a cobblestone street lined with neatly-trimmed groves of Persian cypress and slowly exhaled. Dead ahead, a three-story building with a majestic art deco façade was impossible to miss, emerald green and gold details accented by Kashan tilework. The gated archway permitting egress through an unbroken stretch of wrought-iron fence was flanked by two marble cheetahs, each bearing a gleaming torch of sapphire flame.
+
+Giving an acknowledging nod to an oryx concierge, Aurélien entered the manicured *charbagh* and immediately felt out-of-place. The splendor of Pahlavi Iran reflected in the musky-floral scent wafting from jasmine bushes lining the verdant esplanades. It was as if time itself had become disarranged, twisting in on itself until emerging as an imagined never-past.
+
+"*Salam*. Are you looking for someone?" An Asiatic cheetah gave the blue jay a polite smile, her sapphire Qashqai-style dress flapping lightly in the warm breeze. "The Farhangdoustan Club usually isn't somewhere one ends up by accident."
+
+"*Salam*," Aurélien greeted her with a tip of their crest feathers and a friendly *jeer-jeer*, all while trying to mask their calefaction. Having paused just beyond the shade of a marble colonnade, their silk-cashmere jacket in the late evening sunlight was quickly becoming a portable sauna. "I'm looking for Zamburak Tehrani. Would you happen to know where I can find him? Preferably somewhere air-conditioned."
+
+The cheetah's eyes flickered with recognition as she brushed an errant strand of headfur away from her forehead. "Ah, yes. Fortunately for you, I saw him not five minutes ago," she murmured, glancing up at the early evening sun sitting low on the horizon. "You might consider donning something a little more...breathable. Most of us here prefer it on the warmer side."
+
+Aurélien nodded, two blue jays visible for a split-second before one---the visibly broiled instance---quit. A lightweight Algerian-style *gandoura* with full sleeves billowed around the new instance's lean frame, threads in the hue of the Tricolour woven through the collar adding a hint of elegance to the otherwise simple tunic.
+
+"Better." The cheetah shot them an approving smile. "Now, follow me, if you would."
+
+The cheetah led the way through the manicured garden. After passing a pair of ornate fountains encrusted with lapis lazuli, Aurélien briefly paused at an apricot tree basking in the golden sun. Tantalizing fruits hung low on its branches, positioned within easy reach.
+
+The cheetah stopped alongside them, taking note of Aurélien's intent gaze. "Help yourself," she said with a chuckle. "And I'm not just saying that because of *taarof*."
+
+"*Merci*." With a smile of gratitude, Aurélien quickly reached out and plucked one of the sun-warmed apricots. Juice dribbled out of the corner of their beak as they bit into it, savoring the perfect blend of sweet and tart. "Are we close?"
+
+"The breezeway is just ahead," the cheetah replied while taking an apricot for herself. "Are you keen to see the Zamburak right away? I'd be happy to give you the full tour, if you're not in a rush."
+
+"Very much so, I'm afraid," Aurélien responded, swiftly finishing off the apricot. Aurélien's foot-claws clicked as they stepped onto lavish Isfahan tilework, refreshing shade sweeping across their crest. "But your hospitality is appreciated nonetheless."
+
+Intricate lattice work and columns to the blue jay's left allowed them a clear view of the inner *paridaiza*. A fern-shaded stream coursed through the center of the courtyard, where manicured orange trees bloomed in orderly rows. Farhangdoost---a mix of humans and anthropomorphic animals---lounged about with languid grace, sipping on saffron lassis or conversing beneath cedarwood and canvas sunshades.
+
+The blue jay nodded, a group of chattering marmosets going eerily silent as they passed. Their eyes studied Aurélien intently, disquisitive expressions etched on their muzzles.
+
+The cheetah's ears flicked back at the sudden silence, a slight frown gracing her otherwise serene features. She gave the marmosets a curt nod before slightly quickening her pace "We aren't exactly a tourist destination," the cheetah murmured apologetically. "I'd imagine few Farhangdoost expect to encounter one fond of the old Troisième République strolling about."
+
+"I gathered as much," Aurélien replied. "Is it much farther?"
+
+"Not at all." The cheetah paused before a gilded door engraved with Persian calligraphy so intricate that Aurélien wouldn't have been able to decipher it even if they knew Farsi---which they absolutely didn't. "This is where I leave you, Aurélien Delacroix."
+
+"I don't recall giving you my name," the blue jay remarked, surprise momentarily flashing in their sharp eyes.
+
+"Gaëlle told me you were coming," the cheetah replied succinctly. "I'm Anahita, one of the Hamsarparast---volunteer hosts. If you need anything else during your sojourn, simply ask for me at the nearest call-box."
+
+"Much appreciated." Aurélien tilted their head in a respectful nod. Turning to depart, the sudden pressure of Anahita's paw on their shoulder froze them mid-step.
+
+"One more thing, gumshoe," Anahita added, voice dropping to a soft purr that was almost drowned out by the wind-rustle of the orange trees. "Don't forget to enjoy the delights of the Jannah Room."
+
+Aurélien shot a questioning look at Anahita, but the cheetah simply stepped back and gestured towards the parting doors with an inviting smile. Heading into the antechamber, enormous cabochon gemstones came alive as the last rays of the setting sun streamed through the threshold. Striking figures of peacocks, elephants, and leopards adorned the walls, gazing at the blue jay with jeweled eyes.
+
+Striding purposefully forward, Aurélien brushed aside a velvet curtain to reveal the unvarnished splendor of the Jannah Room. The domed ceiling shimmered with breathtaking blue and gold mosaics depicting the triumph of the King of Kings at the Battle of Thermopylae. Rhythmically strumming, a tar accompanied the hypnotic melody of a santur, filling the sun-dappled *panjdari* with serene music.
+
+To Aurélien, the music seemed almost an afterthought compared to the esculent flora.
+
+Trees with branches of charcoal-charred *nān-e-barbari* were laden with beef-stuffed dolmeh, skewers of richly-spiced lamb kebab, and bite-sized *tahchin* cakes. Beneath them, bushes with lifelike marzipan leaves bloomed with vark-garnished baklava in the shape of pomegranate flowers. A river of golden wine meandered through the center, its sweet aroma intertwining with the scent of rosewater and saffron. Candied tulips bloomed betwixt fountains of borage tea, the beaks of clockwork hummingbirds drawing honeyed nectar from the flowers.
+
+"*Dorood*." A king cheetah gestured, goblet in paw, from a floating chaise. Clad in a sumptuous ruby kaftan, Aurélien's intuition marked him as none other than Zamburak Tehrani. His deep-set eyes twinkled with a mischievous spark as his tongue brushed across his gold-capped incisors "Are you thirsty, stranger? Please, drink your fill."
+
+"Your hospitality is appreciated, Zamburak." The blue jay carefully wrapped their claws around a goblet---one of many---from a table inlaid with mother-of-pearl and flanked by chryselephantine statues holding wicker baskets overflowing with luscious fruit. Respectfully inclining their crest, they allowed the aureate current to fill the chalice to the brim.
+
+Bringing the goblet to their beak, the vapors wafting off the golden wine filled their nares with the rich scent of honey and saffron. After a tentative sip, a blissful warmth rolled down the blue jay's throat, leaving only a hint of brûléed sugar lingering on their palate. A moment later, Aurélien was struck by a bubbling delectation that sent a shiver through their feather-tips.
+
+"May you always find the fruits of life to be sweet." The Zamburak lifted his goblet in a leisurely toast. His eyes, molten gold studded with flecks of emerald, studied Aurélien over the rim.
+
+"And may your hospitality remain ever-bountiful," Aurélien replied, matching the Zamburak's gesture before taking a sip of the golden elixir. The esoteric feeling of tranquility that followed reminded them of the narcotic Panelim they'd been plied with in the hospital prior to their upload.
+
+"Now, what has brought you to me, hrm?" The Zamburak's question was followed by a chuckle, a rich baritone that reverberated through the Jannah Room like a firm strike against a *daf*. "Surely you're not here simply to enjoy a few baklavas."
+
+"I was told by Gaëlle to seek your counsel," Aurélien said, watching as the Zamburak's eyes lit up with recognition. "You know her, yes?"
+
+"Ah, yes...Gaëlle," the Zamburak purred. "Hopefully you haven't come here seeking my counsel. I am cast in the mold of the Joker of Medina, wise as much as foolish."
+
+"Fortunately, I only desire information. I'm looking for a member of the Khayyamzadeh Clade." Aurélien kept their gaze steady. "Gaëlle seemed quite interested to know her whereabouts."
+
+The Zamburak's eyes narrowed to glittering slits before he let out a slow, measured laugh layered with both amusement and exasperation. "The Khayyamzadeh Clade are a tricky bunch. Are you sure you'd like to get mixed up in their affairs? I find it's rather like trying to bathe in pitch."
+
+"Perhaps it's a mistake," Aurélien replied, setting the goblet on an ebony table with a gentle *clink*. The blue jay's beak seemed to almost curve into a thoughtful frown as they turned slightly away. "But, sometimes, one has to sing amidst discordant thunderclaps to find the melodies hidden in the storm."
+
+Using a small wooden paddle, the Zamburak directed his chaise into a small pull-off and climbed onto a shore of smooth-tumbled lapis lazuli. He brushed his kaftan, scrutinizing Aurélien with a keen eye that seemed to instantly size them up. The cheetah strolled over and picked a pomegranate from a tree interlaced with vines of silver-gilded fairy floss. Effortlessly slicing it open, he revealed the *masghati* within.
+
+"If you wish to charge into the storm, I will not stand in your path," the cheetah murmured, offering a half of the honey-soaked pomegranate pudding to Aurélien. "The one you seek is still much like Céleste, for better or worse."
+
+Gratefully accepting, the blue jay tilted the natural bowl into their beak and allowed the juicy *masghati* to dribble over the edge. Sweet-tart with an underlying note of rosewater, the delicious contrast was an unexpected delight. "May I be direct, Zamburak?"
+
+"By all means," the cheetah replied, waving for the blue jay to follow as he leisurely padded over to the opposite end of the room.
+
+"Why didn't Gaëlle come here and simply address this matter herself?" Aurélien asked.
+
+The Zamburak rolled a pomegranate seed between his paw pads, studying the vibrant red hue that perfectly mirrored that of his kaftan before popping it into his muzzle. He paused before a wall adorned with ornate *shamshirs*, his golden eyes reflecting the intricate patterns of the Damascus steel. "Her reasons are her own," he murmured. "But Gaëlle has always preferred to scatter her messages to the wind...and sometimes, that wind arrives in the form of a blue jay."
+
+"Do you have cigarettes here?" Aurélien asked, fidgeting by dancing a gold Napoléon coin between their knuckles. "I could summon some Gauloises, but when in Tehran..."
+
+"Of course," the Zamburak replied, his muzzle curving into a smile as a flick of his tail sent a wave rippling through his kaftan. With a flick of his paw, a humidor appeared on a nearby pedestal, filled with a variety of ornate cigarettes capped with plum-colored filters. "My personal favorite from back when I was phys-side, tobacco from Bahman cigarettes re-rolled with organic paper."
+
+"You are too kind, Zamburak." Aurélien deftly selected a cigarette and lit it with a heavy table-lighter the size of a hardback novel. Exhaling a ring of blueish smoke, the rush of nicotine restored the blue jay's composure. "Gaëlle told me that you maintain good relations with all members of the Khayyamzadeh Clade. That must be difficult."
+
+"I try to keep a sense of perspective about interpersonal disputes." With a wave of the cheetah's paw, the elaborate murals adorning the ceiling faded away, revealing a cosmos undimmed by light pollution. Stretched out like a silk canvas, the twinkle of vast galaxies and nebulae seemed to swirl and dance amidst the cosmic inkblot. "Tell me, stranger. What do you see when you gaze up at the night sky?"
+
+"Stars, of course." Aurélien replied.
+
+"I would've said the same thing, once." the Zamburak replied. "Then, a teacher opened my eyes to a deeper truth. Now I see infinite stories, all intertwined in a dance as old as time itself. Stars born and dying, civilizations rising and falling...all woven into an eternal tapestry stretching across the æther." Seeing a flash of intrigue in Aurélien's eyes, the Zamburak continued. "In the grand scheme of things, the disputes we endure and the misunderstandings we face\...they're no more than footprints on the cosmic beach."
+
+"The universe sometimes requires us to place our hands upon the sand and leave a mark, even if the wind will eventually erase it," Aurélien replied, exhaling a plume of silver-white smoke towards the welkin. "The wind may efface the imprint, but the beach remembers the weight that once was."
+
+With a playful smile, the Zamburak used his barbed tongue to scrape the interior of the pomegranate clean. Setting it aside, he removed a *shamshir* with an emerald the size of a tangerine set in the pommel and balanced it in the center of his palm as though it were the feather of Ma'at. "Then I must ask; are you a believer in the sibylline arts, Aurélien?"
+
+"Perhaps something of the divine survives in the sublunary realm around us," the blue jay replied. Aurélien took a deep draw, studying every detail of the intensifying ember at the tip of their cigarette. "Lines of code cannot sculpt dreams any more than I can carve a ray of sunlight."
+
+"Then I will clue you in. Every *shamshir* here"---the Zamburak drew the saber from its damascened scabbard---"holds a secret, just as a scabbard holds the blade."
+
+Aurélien pursed their beak, instinct drawing them to a *shamshir* with a golden hilt adorned with strips of shimmering fire opal. The iridescent scales pulsed in their grasp as they shed the scabbard to reveal a blade etched with an angular motif of a falling star streaking across the horizon. "And how would I reveal such a secret?"
+
+"The same way a humble cheetah learned many years ago," replied the Zamburak, brandishing a *shamshir* that gleamed like the stars on a blanket of unbroken snow. The crossguard was formed from a silver-banded section of fossilized *Smilodon* incisor, rustic and opulent in equal measure. "Are you familiar with the basics of swordplay?"
+
+Aurélien's feathers bristled with anticipation. "I know enough not to cut myself," they replied, the opalescent spark in their eyes matching the hilt of the *shamshir* their claws lightly gripped. Taking in the weight of the weapon, the blue jay found it heavier than a fencing saber, but with a masterful balance that encouraged the wrist to arc and pivot.
+
+The Zamburak let out a throaty laugh that echoed across the chamber as he settled into an *en garde* stance. The traditional Persian music faded away, replaced by the lively interplay of a saxophone and bassoon. "Then let us begin the Shamshir Dance. Fortunately, the stakes are quite a bit lower here than phys-side."
+
+Aurélien moved lightly on the balls of their feet, the blade in their hands perfectly balanced as they mirrored the Zamburak's poised stance. "The first rule of the Shamshir Dance"---the Zamburak tensed as he stored energy in his thighs---"is to listen to your blade."
+
+Closing the distance between them in a graceful pounce, Zamburak aimed a swift downward blow at Aurélien's midsection. At the last possible second, Aurélien mirrored his action on the upswing in a sonorous *clang* that shook the stars. Flicking the tip of the *shamshir* as if plucking at invisible harp strings, the blue jay grimaced and slowly drove the cheetah back.
+
+"The second rule"---the Zamburak continued, luminous eyes gleaming under the starlight like a radium watch dial---"is to listen to your opponent's blade as you would your own. Any less and you are merely sparring instead of dancing with your partner. This is a dance, not a duel."
+
+Aurélien nodded, caught off guard as the Zamburak launched himself forward, his *shamshir* slicing through the air in a horizontal arc. Just in time, the blue jay parried, the meeting of blades ringing throughout the *panjdari*. The impact wasn't jarring; instead, the melodic transfer of energy was as though their *shamshirs* were singing to one another. "Are there any more rules that I should be aware of?"
+
+"Fortunately, just one more. The third rule"---the Zamburak said with calm conviction---"is to clear your inner eye to observe all that may be observed. Together, we allow the Shamshir Dance to unfold and allow the universe to speak to us. This is the mystic art of *shamshirfaal*."
+
+Parting their beak, Aurélien drew a quick breath as they narrowly dodged another sweeping cut. Despite giving off the initial impression of a beast of leisure, the Zamburak was shockingly athletic. "And you've found that this...*shamshirfaal* works?" they asked, leaping atop a table and gracefully parrying from the high ground.
+
+"Talk less and observe more," the cheetah replied smoothly, launching himself onto the table with Aurélien. The wood creaked under their combined weight, the Persian carpets around them billowing slightly in their wake. "Silence is a language all its own."
+
+The Zamburak's *shamshir* whizzed by, barely an inch from Aurélien's beak. The blue jay stumbled backwards, but quickly regained their footing as they were simultaneously struck by inspiration. "The language of two co-cladists sitting together in an empty playground, saying nothing and yet everything to each other at the same moment."
+
+"Very good," the Zamburak said approvingly. He shifted his stance, back leg extending to prepare for another lunge. "You're a fast learner."
+
+As if on cue, the lively saxophone and bassoon music faded away, replaced by an instant of perfect quiet as though the universe itself were holding its breath. Both *shamshir*-wielders paused to savor the moment of suspended reality, their eyes locked in an exchange that transcended mere words.
+
+And then, breaking the stillness, the Zamburak lunged forward, *shamshir* gleaming like molten silver under the starlight. Long-buried memories swirled in Aurélien's inner eye, sweat dripping from their forefeathers as they employed elegant parries learned in another life and another body. Superior agility keeping the Zamburak off-balance, the blue jay managed to hold their own.
+
+If the Zamburak was Céleste and Aurélien was Gaëlle, then their relationship had been a delicate balance, each one needing to listen just as much as to speak. Every meeting of their blades echoed the natural rhythm of conversation, the Zamburak's flowing, off-rhythm strikes embodying Céleste's mercurial spirit, while Aurélien's calculated parries and cuspate ripostes reflected Gaëlle's minervan nature.
+
+Céleste's fork became clearer in their mind; no longer an abstract notion but a lynx slowly emerging in Athenian glory. The Zamburak managed to slip under Aurélien's guard, and the blue jay caught a glimpse of deep crimson as pain shot through their side. Stumbling backward, the shock of the shallow wound jolted them into perfect focus.
+
+"Silent paws in the snow," Aurélien muttered under their breath, feathers bristling with insight. Their backward stumble had spilled a small mountain of Turkish delight onto the floor, leaving delicate tracks visible in the powdered sugar. "Is the Farhangdoustan Club the only part of this sim?"
+
+"No, it is not," the Zamburak affirmed with a dulcet purr. "While I personally prefer to sunbathe on Kish Island, there are a few among the Farhangdoost who prefer to live amidst the snow-capped peaks of the Zagros Mountains."
+
+"How do I get there?" Aurélien asked, sheathing their *shamshir* to mirror the Zamburak's movement. The cheetah plucked a piece of Turkish delight off the floor and popped it into his muzzle before gesturing toward a door that had materialized in the nearest wall. "Really? That's it?"
+
+"Sometimes a door is just a door," the Zamburak replied as he turned a knob covered with a thick coating of crystalline frost. It swung outward to reveal a sprawling vista of white-capped mountains, their jagged peaks piercing the sky like giant daggers. Snow fell gently, dancing and swirling in the crisp air before settling in a thick blanket on the ground.
+
+Aurélien, still nursing the shallow wound on their side, hesitated. "Is there anything I need to know before I go through?"
+
+"You're going to want to fork on the other side." The cheetah took the blue jay's *shamshir* and slotted it neatly back into the appointed holder. "Do come visit us again, Âghâ Delacroix. All friends of culture are welcome at the Farhangdoustan Club. *Safar khosh begzared*."
+
+"*Merci*," Aurélien replied, giving the Zamburak a respectful nod before pausing at the threshold. Ruffling their feathers and drawing a deep breath, Aurélien stepped through the doorway and immediately beak-planted into a snowbank, conking their crest against the unyielding trunk of a fallen tree...
+
+\#
+
+Aurélien awoke half-frozen, the powdery snow having soaked through the thin cotton of their *gandoura*. With an aggrieved sigh, they forked into a climate-appropriate outfit, swapping the lightweight tunic for a well-insulated down jacket and waterproof pants. A fierce wind stirred their plumage, nipping at the slight gaps between the feathers on their cheeks. "I could have done with a warning about the drop, Zamburak," they murmured under their breath.
+
+In the distance, Aurélien caught a glimpse of red-orange light through the rapidly intensifying flurries. With no other signs of civilization in sight, they began to trudge toward it, pulling their hood tighter while tilting their beak down against the bitter cold. Their thickly-gloved hands fumbled for a cigarette, only barely managing to tear the pack open on their fourth attempt.
+
+Framed by the swirling snowflakes, Aurélien withdrew a single filterless Gauloises. With years of practice, they clamped it between the frost-kissed edges of their beak and lit it with a strike-anywhere match. Drawing the smoke deep into their breast, Aurélien let the rush of nicotine siphon some of the piercing chill away.
+
+After a few minutes of effortful trekking, Aurélien stumbled into a small and irregular clearing. Standing out against a background of scraggly trees, the red-orange light illuminated a rustic log cabin with shutters painted a vibrant gold. A healthy plume of smoke curled from the stacked stone chimney, while a pair of well-loved skis were propped against the railing of the front porch. The half-smoked Gauloises dangled from Aurélien's beak as they climbed weather-beaten stairs that loudly groaned with each step.
+
+Aurélien rapped their knuckles on a dense oak door adorned with a wreath of juniper branches interwoven with fragrant strips of dried orange peel. A moment later, it swung open to reveal a cozy living room bathed in the glow of a half-spent fire, playful shadows dancing across the worn Persian rugs dotting the hardwood floor.
+
+"*Quelle surprise*." The lynx standing in the doorway appraised Aurélien with emerald eyes, a half-smile on her muzzle as the acrid smoke from the Gauloises mingled with the frosty air. "I wasn't expecting company but...convention demands I offer you hospitality. Just put that damn cigarette out before you come in."
+
+Aurélien wordlessly flicked the Gauloises into the nearest snowbank. Stepping over the threshold, they were greeted with the beak-watering scent of roasting meat. The blue jay silently cursed themselves for neglecting Anahita's advice to fully appreciate the delights of the Jannah Room. "You keep a lovely home," Aurélien remarked.
+
+"It doesn't quite have the grandeur of the Farhangdoustan Club, but it suits me just fine," the lynx replied. Futzing over a silver-plated samovar warmed by a small kerosene burner, she poured steaming tea into a pair of chipped porcelain cups as Aurélien hung their jacket over the back of a chintz armchair. "Do you take sugar?"
+
+Aurélien rubbed their hands together for a moment before stretching them out towards the primally-satisfying warmth of the hearth. "Yes, two spoonfuls," they said reflexively. "And if you'd be so kind, a bit of cream, *s'il vous plait*."
+
+The lynx huffed out a laugh as she sauntered back to the barebones kitchen tucked away in the rear of the cabin. Opening a crazed porcelain icebox, she retrieved a small bottle of cream and shook it gently before adding a generous measure to one of the tea cups. She set them down on a gnarled ashwood table, steam swirling delicately upward in the lukewarm air. "Here you are, stranger."
+
+"Thank you." Aurélien lifted the cup to their beak, grateful to have something to further warm their cold-stiffened fingers. They took a deep breath of the fragrant steam before taking a measured sip. Strong and laced with a hint of cinnamon, the tea settled comfortably in the pit of their stomach. "So, you're Céleste's fork, yes?"
+
+"Are you here to offer condolences?" The lynx stiffened slightly, her eyes darting to the slowly diminishing fire before settling back on Aurélien. She took a leisurely sip of her tea, her nubby tail flicking with mild agitation. "You could've left a vase of ice-lilies on the porch in lieu of undertaking a *vol de la mort*."
+
+"No, that's not why I came," Aurélien replied. Their feathers ruffled slightly under the weight of her attention as they turned to stare into the swirling umber within their cup. "I'm here because I was tasked with finding you. And...perhaps also to put some ghosts to rest. Aurélien Delacroix, at your service."
+
+"Is that so?" The lynx's ears pricked up as her foot-claws rapped against the unstained pine floorboards. "Was it Gaëlle who requested your services?"
+
+A slight nod of the blue jay's head served as confirmation. "She was most eager to get in touch with you after all that has happened as of late. Are you aware?"
+
+"I enjoy voluntary solitude, but I don't live under a rock." The lynx's face remained inscrutable, her emerald eyes reflecting the flickering firelight. Aurélien noted she wore a familiar signet ring, silver, engraved with a *farvahar*, and ringed by brilliant Kerman garnets. "No one mourns an untimely passing more than I."
+
+"Except perhaps Gaëlle." Aurélien tilted their head to the side, observing the lynx carefully. "What kept you from reaching out?"
+
+"It's not that I didn't want to." The lynx's gaze flickered momentarily, her tufted ears dipping slightly. Her lithe figure cut an argentine silhouette against the chintz, her silver-white dress flowing around her like liquid starlight. "But the past has a way of keeping us apart, doesn't it?" she murmured, her nubby tail swaying in rhythm with the crackling fire.
+
+"Yes," Aurélien finally echoed in a low susurration. "It has a knack of doing that."
+
+"Gaëlle nursed a crush on Céleste for many decades." The lynx softly chuckled. "She never let on too strongly, always courteous to a fault\...but Céleste knew."
+
+Aurélien took a long sip of the tea, savoring the warmth spreading through the inside of their beak. "And Céleste didn't feel the same way?"
+
+"No, it wasn't that." Shadows cut across her angular cheekbones as she seemed to shrink into the pillow cushions. "Céleste was fond of Gaëlle, perhaps more so than anyone else. Gaëlle's sharp beauty is a sight to behold, wouldn't you agree?"
+
+"She's like twilight over the Seine, dancing upon the *Tour Eiffel*." Aurélien nodded in agreement as a falling log sent a shower of sparks bouncing off the smooth river stones that lined the hearth. "And what about you?" Aurélien asked.
+
+"I am a complicated soul," the lynx replied, thoughtfully pursing her lips. Soft light accentuated youthful features in stark contrast to the mélange of nostalgia and melancholy in her wizened eyes. "Céleste's heart had seen too many twilights over the Seine. Dusk also means night is near."
+
+"True enough, but twilight has its own beauty," Aurélien murmured. Taking a sip of their tea, they paused and inquisitively cocked their beak. "Tell me, stranger. What do you see when you gaze up at the night sky?"
+
+"Infinite stories, all intertwined in a dance as old as time itself. Stars born and dying, civilizations rising and falling...all woven into an eternal tapestry stretching across the æther," the lynx replied. The fire quivered momentarily as a particularly violent gust of wind rattled the cabin's foundations. "I see a storyteller. What do you see, stranger?"
+
+Aurélien paused, taking note of the *shamshir* hanging behind the hearth, hilt inlaid with emeralds matching the lynx's eyes. The scabbard was damascened with a design of a serene river reflecting the heavenly glory of two almond-shaped moons hanging low in the sky. "I suppose I see heavenly glory, Céleste...and Zamburak Tehrani's old teacher."
+
+"Mrm, you are clever." The lynx's eyes gleamed with distilled starlight. "So, what now? Are you going to tell Gaëlle the truth?"
+
+Aurélien peered down into the dregs of their tea, scanning for omens in the waterlogged leaves. The hisses and pops of the fading fire punctuated the silence between them. "I was only hired to find you," they murmured, noting what appeared to be the silhouette of a mushroom as they set their now empty cup down. "What happens next is not up to me."
+
+"*C'est la vie*," Céleste quipped, pushing herself off the chair. Squatting beside the hearth, she casually dropped several more logs onto the pile with a resounding *thu-clack* each time. "We're always beholden to the decisions of others, whether they be friends, lovers, or co-cladists. Perhaps I just wanted a taste of living for myself, at least for a little while. It's been so long since I experienced solitude, I'd forgotten what it was like."
+
+"And now?" Aurélien asked.
+
+"Now?" Céleste shot an inscrutable smile over her shoulder. Turning away, she picked up a wrought-iron poker and pensively stirred the embers before sweeping some of the ashes aside. "Now I drink until my samovar is empty and consider how much longer I'd like to gaze at the heavens alone."
+
+"Sounds like a lovely way to pass the witching hour. I wouldn't want to overstay my welcome." Aurélien stood up and tucked a cigarette into their beak---leaving it unlit, per Céleste's request. "You've been more than gracious to an uninvited guest."
+
+"Off so soon? I hope that I didn't chase you away," the lynx murmured. "Our little discussion was just starting to get interesting."
+
+"Not at all," Aurélien assured her while deftly slipping on their jacket, thoughts drifting to their clade, long scattered to the winds. Perhaps it might be time to reach out, if only to have an excuse to enjoy the famous flambéed cocktails of the Le Fougueux speakeasy. "But, if star-gazing ever gets a bit lonely---"
+
+"---I'll join Gaëlle at the swings with a bottle of Armand de Brignac," the lynx murmured. Escorting Aurélien to the door, she crossed the cozy space in a few graceful strides. Upon cracking it open, the pair were greeted by a gust of sharp wind that whipped up ethereal swirls across the wintry landscape.
+
+Aurélien shivered, giving Céleste a warm *jeer-jeer* as they pulled their coat tighter. "I was going to say you could find me," they finished. "If you're ever in need of a stiff drink and some company, leave a message for me with the bartender at the Sombres Reflets. Just ask for Aurélien Delacroix."
+
+"Perhaps I should end my brief stint as an anchoress. After all, Death could have just as easily have kindly stopped for me as for my fork." A coy smile danced on Céleste's muzzle. "Can you give Gaëlle a message for me?"
+
+Aurélien tilted their head and cocked an inquiring eyebrow. "Of course."
+
+"Just because the stars are scattered does not mean they are separated." The lynx looked upward, gazing past the silver-white clouds to the celestial bodies dancing in a cosmic ballet---toward eternity. "They all belong to the same sky, Monsieur Delacroix."
+
+[]{#anchor} "I'll pass the message along." Aurélien closed their eyes as the door's latch clicked shut behind them. The bluejay sent a ping to Gaëlle as an exhausted sigh escaped from their beak. Still, at the Sombres Reflets, there would be time enough to enjoy the satisfaction of providing the first drop of molten gold for relationship *kintsugi*...and perhaps also gather the fortitude to reach out to a few co-cladists. "*Nos cœurs se tiennent par la main, même quand les distances nous séparent.*"
+
+The blue jay exhaled and vanished, leaving only eternity in their wake.
+
+\~ END \~