post-self/post-self.ink
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Actions Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Fix stories

Browse Source
This commit is contained in:
Madison Scott-Clary
2023-11-11 10:55:51 -08:00
parent 7a546f40a8
commit 1d12b8beb1
5 changed files with 4 additions and 4 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

8
content/extras/_index.md
View File

@ -32,28 +32,28 @@ h2 {
## Writing
["Assignment": <small>Ioan Bălan — 2273</small>](assignment)
["Assignment": <small>Ioan Bălan — 2273</small>](/stories/assignment)
: *Madison Scott-Clary*
Ioan Bălan, tasked with investigating a flash-cult, tries to figure out what the heck just happened.
*CWs:* brief violence.
["Meeting of One": <small>Ioan Bălan — 2309</small>](meeting-of-one)
["Meeting of One": <small>Ioan Bălan — 2309</small>](/stories/meeting-of-one)
: *Madison Scott-Clary*
Quakers? In space? It's more likely than you think.
*CWs:* none.
["Fever Dreams": <small>Hieromech — 2399</small>](stories/fever-dreams)
["Fever Dreams": <small>Hieromech — 2399</small>](/stories/fever-dreams)
: *Ember "Hieromech" Cloke*
A poem written twelve hours before uploading.
*CWs:* references to some of the grosser aspects of having a body.
["Dreams for Breakfast": <small>In All Ways — 2183</small>](dreams-for-breakfast)
["Dreams for Breakfast": <small>In All Ways — 2183</small>](/stories/dreams-for-breakfast)
: *Alexandria Christina Leal*
An unsettling dream, a conversation over breakfast.

90
content/extras/dreams-for-breakfast.md
View File

@ -1,90 +0,0 @@
---
title: Dreams For Breakfast
author: Alexandria Christina Leal
character: In All Ways — 2383
type: story
---
"Bad dream again?"
"How could you tell?" In All Ways mumbled, half sarcastically and half out of genuine curiosity, as she sat down at the breakfast table. She was aware of the bags beneath her eyes, the bloodshot veins.
Eliah paused, setting his fork down. He finished chewing (thank goodness), and sat there, staring off and thinking.
"Your hair. It looks different. More frazzled. More outta order," he finally said as he stood up and walked to the kitchen.
"Bullshit," she replied. "Absolute fucking bullshit."
"Nothing but the truth," he said. She felt his lips against her cheek as he placed a mouthwatering plate of grits and eggs in front of her.
She grumbled, but did not challenge him on the issue.
The two sat in silence as they ate, enjoying the pleasure of a small routine moment with one another. She loved it when life was like this.
"What was it about?"
"Mmm?" She knew what he meant.
"The dream."
She sighed. "An... old friend."
He nodded, then swallowed a mouthful of bacon.
"Please do not choke. Zia would never let me hear the end of it. "
Eliah snorted. "It's not like it could kill me."
She rolled her eyes as he heaped more pepper onto another handful of bacon. They sat in silence for a few moments more. Having finished eating, In All Ways stared at the blue and white tablecloth, counted the whorls in the bit of wood it did not cover, and conducted a cartographic survey of her hands before her mind inevitably returned to that which she had been avoiding.
"In the dream..."
Eliah's earth coloured eyes were instantly in her direction. He was using his utensils slower. A perfect midway point of "If you change your mind after the words leave your mouth, we can just keep on keeping on."
Sometimes, he was infuriatingly charismatic.
"I talked to a friend who..." She fumbled around the words, her voice fell to a whisper. "I had a dream that ey..."
She closed her eyes, took a few moments to breathe in and out. When she opened them again, Eliah gave a gentle nod in her direction. She smiled ever so slightly, could feel some of the stress drain out of her.
This was here, and she was here, and that, that had been then.
"In the dream, ey, had forked. Long, long ago. And I was speaking to one of eir forks." She was glad she had set down the silverware, she did not think she could have held onto it right now, even with having centered herself. "I... have not spoken to em in... a long while. And ey never forked. And yet..."
She thought back to it, to the moment in the dream where the changes had really hit her. "At first I was just so glad to see em again. But then, as the dream continued, it was like I was speaking to another person. It was if hundreds of years of individuation, hundreds of years of growth and change, and it all fit it all made sense- And that was when I started to realize that I had separate feelings for this person which ey had become. That ey was a different person meant that our relationship was inherently, irrevocably different." She stopped. The words escaped her. The stake finally slid into her chest. She slouched back in her chair, deflated.
Eliah looked on with compassion and concern.
"And it was terrifying. Absolutely, utterly terrifying. In an instant, I realized that I was not talking to the person whose company I had missed all of these years. That our final conversation happened centuries ago."
He sat there thoughtfully for a few moments, holding the fork aloft. Thinking. Then it hit him all at once. She could see it in his face.
She smiled sadly and nodded.
"You weren't speaking to eir fork. You were speaking to em."
Other times, he was just infuriating.
"No. It does not matter who I was speaking to. After all that time? Ey would not be the same person. After all, I am not the same person I was then."
He nodded, and then there was silence. After a few moments she realized he was staring at her expectantly.
"That's what I said." He tilted his hat in her direction.
"No, it was not. You got the answer wrong, and not in a semantic way. Period. Flat out. End of story," she shot back.
Finally, Eliah held up his hands and said, "All right, I get it. The skunk stops here.” He gestured vaguely to the place her tail would have occupied had she been a skunk that day. “I got it wrong. You got it right. End of story."
It took her a few moments to get the reference and understand his gesture. She groaned.
"Eliah, you are so full of shit."
"Nothing but the truth," he said, shoveling another piece of bacon into his mouth, and then added, "For what it's worth, I bet ey would be proud of who you are. I sure am."
She bit her lip, thought about it, stared down at her breakfast.
"Thank you, Eliah. Truth be told, I do not know what ey would think of me now. But I know that I am proud of who I am now. And that… that also matters."

138
content/extras/stories/assignment.md
View File

@ -1,138 +0,0 @@
---
title: Assignment
author: Madison Scott-Clary
character: Ioan Bălan — 2273
type: story
---
The sensation of an instance merging state back with em would never *not* make Ioan Bălan#tracker uneasy. It wasn't the differences in experiences, those were to be anticipated, so much as the tiny changes in identity that resulted. Having to internalize a slightly different version of yourself was too close to experiencing a doppelgänger, something so alike and yet with subtle shifts in worldview.
Or perhaps hanging with a sib, fresh home from a semester abroad.
Ioan#tracker had never been abroad, had only ever lived with eir brother. Just new memories.
And yet there was the merge request, waiting. Ey set aside eir work --- a simple bit of nothing for a news organization that really didn't matter but nonetheless offered some reputation --- and sat back to deal with the squirming, greasy feeling of the merger.
-----
Ioan Bălan#5f39bccd7 was forked on suggestion of one of Ioan#tracker's friends as a way to inspect and experience life among a flashcult. Although the lifespan of the group was likely to be measured in months, or even weeks, Ioan figured it was a worthwhile project. Ey had an investigative journalism gig that could use a story like this.
The forking was as simple as it always was. Ioan#tracker had no reason to expect otherwise, of course, and when the instance was rendered in front of em, the two shared a perfunctory handshake and went over notes one last time before the instance headed outside to hop to as close to the flashcult as ey could get.
\#5f39bccd7 took little time to settle into life among the cultists. Ioan was affable, likable. It was part of why ey had found the work of investigative journalism, of being a modern historian, easy. And why ey had quickly gained reputation in the field. Enough for a comfortable existence. It was fun work, too, when it came. The problem ey kept running into was boredom, rather than burning out.
-----
Ioan#tracker was left feeling let down, as ey perused what ey had been left of #5f39bccd7's memories.
Ey merged blithely to cut down on the sheer amount of time ey would have to spend to sift through to gain something from the instance's brief --- ey checked the date --- three weeks, two days of existence. With so short a span, conflicts would be minimal. Cherry-picking only the most salient memories would've taken too long, and may have even been counterproductive.
Ey needed an experiencer. Someone to live through the project, let it mix around in their head, and come out the other side changed. Ey emphatically did not need a recording device for eir reporting. That is all the forks were.
The assignment, such as it was, had been straightforward, and Ioan had expected little of interest from the state dump. The flashcult was strange, but not too out of the ordinary, so ey sped up eir perusal, skimming.
A sharp jolt of fear.
A pain that stretched from physical to existential.
And then: nothing.
Ioan sat up straighter, brow furrowed. Ey skipped back through a few chunks of memory to where ey had started to get bored.
-----
The flashcult was strange, but not too out of the ordinary. Ioan#5f39bccd7, with no journalistic duties, found emself getting into the swing of things with ease.
It was a strange sort of vacation, in a way. Performing weird rituals that slowly began to make a weird sort of sense, knowing that at some weird moment, ey would either get too bored and quit or receive a request to do so from #tracker. Until then, rituals it was.
Rituals, yes, but mostly lots of loafing around.
As work, being an amanuensis was, ey decided, inoffensive. Not super interesting, kind of relaxing, and maybe something interesting would happen that eir tracker could turn into a story.
It was during one of the rituals --- a call-and-response prayer wherein the members seemed to be working on memorizing progressively longer digits of numbers --- when the co-cultist beside em let out a soft sigh that turned into a quiet giggle.
Then she turned to em, smiled beatifically, and winked.
Winked!
Ioan watched her raise her hand and call the ceremony to a halt, speaking almost dreamily. "I found them."
Faces turned toward em, all smiling that same kind, peaceful smile. Ey sat dumbly, looking from face to face.
"I...yes?" ey managed.
"You're the one," a voice chimed in.
Another added, "The reporter. You're the reporter."
A thrill of fear ran up eir spine. It had never been a strictly undercover operation, but neither had ey been forthcoming about why ey was there in the first place.
Ioan lifted eir hands from eir lap, palms up in a placating fashion. "Well," ey began. "I suppose I am a reporter of sorts, no denying, but I'm not here on offic-- *urk!*"
There was a sharp blow to the back of eir neck that knocked em flat to the ground, then a weight settled solidly onto eir back. One of the other members had sat on em.
"Congrats, Ana," said the cultist on eir back.
"Three weeks and a day, getting better," another grinned, and others soon chimed in, reaching in to shake hands with the young woman who had originally pointed em out.
Ioan picked out the face of the lector in the crowd, an older person of indeterminate sex who had struck em as being rather vacuous. It was a difficult task, from eir viewpoint on the ground, and since all the adherents wore identical clothing, there were few clues.
"This is the tenth iteration. As we discussed before you arrived, we'll tell you, now."
The fear continued to well within #5f39bccd7, growing in intensity.
-----
Ioan#tracker set eir usual algorithm aside for the merger, requesting that the entirety of the instance's state, from that last ritual on, be merged with em. Merged blithely. Ey wanted the whole thing.
While it wasn't the first time ey had done such a thing, it was still rare enough for em to do so that ey had to look up how. Despite a career depending on it, ey had never been all that good at the whole dissolution thing. Ey never bothered to figure out how to name eir instances, relying instead on the random string of digits that the System generated for em. Mere signifiers
Once that had been organized, ey moved out onto the deck and settled into one of the Adirondack chairs out there. Such things, ey suspected, were built primarily for thinking.
Ey closed eir eyes, and let memories wash over em.
-----
The fear continued to well within #5f39bccd7, growing in intensity.
"We're practicing, you see." The lector paced a slow circle around Ioan as they went on. Any sign of vacuousness was gone. "We start something interesting, wait for a reporter, and find them out. That's what we're practicing. Finding out who's watching, who's the reporter."
Ana giggled once more. "It's a class, get it? An experiment, a dissection. You're the subject."
The lector nodded and, having completed their circuit, leaned down to meet eir wide-eyed gaze. "And now we've got it reliably under a month. Time to make it known. What's your signifier?"
"Ioan Bălan#5f39bccd7," ey stammered. "Bu-but why are you...what are...why are you doing this?"
"We're looking for reliable ways to find out the reporters, the ones that don't belong, because--" They paused, withdrawing a syringe from the billowy sleeve of their tunic. "Because some day we may not want to be seen."
That wellspring of fear turned to a geyser.
Sys-side, there was no real need for an actual syringe, so they had taken on a new, codified meaning. A symbol of something that would modify an instance in some core fashion. Intent was thick in the air, so Ioan had no doubt that this was some sort of symbol of destruction. A virus, perhaps.
"Wait," ey gasped, finding eir breath coming in ragged, erratic bursts.
There was no time to continue in any coherent fashion. No words, only a hoarse shout. Eir fear spiked beyond what it felt ey was capable of containing as ey watched the hand bearing the syringe slide calmly toward them to efficiently slip the needle behind eir ear.
Ey came apart. Seams ey did not know ey had began to tear. The fabric of eir being ripped, shredded.
Eir second-to-last thought before eir instance crashed was surprise at just how much it hurt to die. It was a pain that spread from eir head through eir body, from the physical reality of the sim to some existential plane.
Eir last thought was to quit before ey crashed completely, and ey felt ey'd only just managed it before ey dissolved, dissipated into the crowded air.
-----
Ioan#tracker found emself clutching at the arms of the deck chair, eir own breathing shallow and fast. Ey felt the same fear that eir fork had felt.
What should ey do?
A quick search showed there was no way to turn over the instance to what little the System had in the way of authorities. What data was actually 'recorded' was not done so in a useful fashion. The instances were eirs and eirs alone.
Ey certainly didn't want to confront the cultists, either as emself or through a fork. Ey didn't know how to change eir forks like some others did, so ey would just look like Ioan#5f39bccd7 back from the dead.
Ey realized that all ey could really do was what ey knew how to do best.
Be a reporter.
It was what the cult wanted, but ey felt the words and experiences stirring within em already.
Hell, it's what *ey* wanted, too. Finally, an interesting assignment.

156
content/extras/stories/fever-dreams.html
View File

@ -1,156 +0,0 @@
---
title: Fever Dreams
author: 'Ember "Hieromech" Cloke'
character: Heiromech — 2399
type: story
---
<div style="white-space: pre-wrap">
When the body burns
the mind is aflame,
fever and mania alike tumble over
an endless cycle of positioning
every possible permutation in the sheets
a sweat-soaked bed entangled
never warm or cool enough
the body fighting its own wars, oblivious
the mind, perpetually unsatisfied
no calm of equilibrium.
In such dreams
that twist and tangle among
the sheets the pillows the cold feet
symbols and meaning bind together
strange alloys of disparate concepts
from across the imaginal.
A film seen, a trip taken,
a rock prickling with
divine and terrible energy.
Godzilla rides again
on a road of glassy trinitite
through the desert of New Mexico,
radioactive disaster nightmares
in holy reunification
of creation and destruction.
A mind can and would
break under the crush
the insistence of Meaning
the significance of Connection
no filters left between
idea and self
body and mind
imaginal and physical
dreamt and undreamt.
Dimensions spin on undiscovered axes
the Immediacy of Truth
the Story of Everything
a twine of red string around pins
holding photos and writing up to
the frantic wall of unmapped
railways of thought.
The pain in the gut
the restless turning
the sleepless dark,
The fevered dream
the symbols bright
the nightmare manifest;
in suspension between,
which is the shadow?
which is the light?
Ever now this question,
unanswered in every
storied realm of thought,
contains a poison thorn
in Systems such as this—
bodiless and adrift
mind alone (so we seem)
creating worlds and lives
creating bodies to perfection
crafting all from nothing
ordering existence at will
—in Systems such as this,
where comes the chaos?
where comes the disaster?
where comes the sickness
if mind must yet create it?
A madness such as this
might be feared
might be desired—
even bliss and horror lock eyes
across the cosmic abyss
—yet I would neither
clamor for failing age
cell death and change
suffering or sleepless nights;
not with this lure
of freedom, of choice
to forgo every aspect
the piss, the shit, the vomit
gross biology terrible and profane
yet sublime in its mechanisms
even (or especially) in failure.
I say this now,
in fever, in pain
on my final night
trapped in this body never chosen
eager to break its bounds
cheating existence
circumventing dissolution
to become a mind
forever voyaging:
I say this now,
not a question
but a promise,
If I am to dream,
endless among stars,
I will not forget;
my body, my mind
parts of the whole
are of equal worth—
even as I forsake one body
for another more amenable
to be yet mutable,
the fever, the breakdown
the chaos inside that rages
may still, sometimes,
be welcome at my door.
I reserve the right,
to be a capricious landlord,
to cut short pain's stay,
to no longer suffer needlessly;
I will be no self-flagellating monk,
mortifying flesh to attain
that which I am about to,
a heaven far easier to reach.
As I stand at System's edge,
I will remember where I was born,
I will remember the flesh and the fever,
I will know the bliss and the pain,
I will carry these forward with me,
to new horizons, to new thought,
to new bodies and minds,
to everything and everyone I will become.
There is no flame without fuel
a fire cannot consume itself
a mind alone cannot burn.
We shall become the fire
and the fuel, and the breath
to keep this ember alight.
<em>— Hieromech, 12 hours before Upload</em>
</div>

156
content/extras/stories/meeting-of-one.md
View File

@ -1,156 +0,0 @@
---
title: Meeting of One
author: Madison Scott-Clary
character: Ioan Bălan — 2309
type: story
---
Ioan Bălan, despite all attempts to keep emself from sinking into the depths of whatever ey was studying, always managed to find emself mired in details ey could not hope to escape. They twined and twisted around eir wrists, tripped em up about the ankles, and tugged em ever deeper into the fractal complications of whatever topic ey decided would be the subject of eir next work.
*On the Perils of Memory*, the recent monograph ey had completed on an unnerving social breakdown in one of the old clades — those collection of individuals forked from a single uploaded consciousness — had garnered em no small amount of notoriety and plenty of credit on the reputation market.
It had also gained em a split of eir own. Dealing with the complex relations of a set of individuals created as true copies from a single personality and sensorium had driven them deeper and deeper into the weeds of study. Ey had immersed emself in the problem so thoroughly that the Ioan that came out the other side of the research was no longer the Ioan that had gone in. The change was so great that the fork ey had sent to do the investigation had individuated, had undergone some process of speciation at some subtle level, leaving em unwilling to merge its experiences back with the Ioan prime. It had changed its name and left after sharing its memories, and moved out to live with a member of that 'family', such as it were.
Ey had still not made up eir mind on whether this was a positive or negative experience.
Since the monograph had been published and reviewed — and reviewed and re-reviewed — ey had no shortage of requests for further anthropological work within the System. Ey had grown accustomed to sorting the requests into different bins. Ey had one for requests that were totally outside of eir area of expertise (ancient methods of cryptography? In what wild universe would ey be considered any sort of expert on those?), another for serious but truly boring inquiries (yes, you run an algorithmic attempt at solving complex mathematical equations, but young Ioan had failed trigonometry three times over before giving up), and one for serious inquiries worth exploring.
This last was divided into roughly two piles, itself: the first was, of all things, on topics of religion and the second was everything else. The first pile far and away outsized the second.
The current subject was spurred note ey had received titled "The Joseph Chace Friends Meeting".
The name alone was enough to grab Ioan's attention. Was it a meeting of one person's friends? If so, why was it tagged 'religion'? What would they meet about? A fan-club, perhaps? Those still lingered, even in this post-self society.
The note clarified:
> Mx. Ioan Bălan,
>
> My name is Joseph Chace and I am the...well, the language fails me. Organizer? Sole member? Recorded minister?
>
> Either way, I am part of the Joseph Chace Friends Meeting. This meeting began on the occasion of my upload into the System as one of the first Quakers (or, at least recorded members).
>
> You must understand a fact about Quakers: if you are to run a meeting (church, as you might call it), you are going to have committees. That's just a fact of life. Clearness committees to admit new members, committees on faith and worship, etc etc.
>
> It is not a requirement, but as someone who spent their embodied life bounded by the constraints of a Quaker meeting, not having those things felt like leaving home.
>
> To that end, and with the lack of other Quakers uploading, I devised a method for creating a meeting of my own. Given your anthropological work on the Ode Clade business (well done, by the way!), I thought you might appreciate my attempt at a meeting of one. I understand that you are a busy individual, but if you are able to, I would love to invite you to a meeting for worship. We will discuss more at the time should you accept.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Joseph Chace#prime
This was not the first religious movement that Ioan had found or been asked to investigate, though it was certainly the oldest --- or perhaps second oldest, if one counted the visits to New Vatican. As an historian, ey was well acquainted with the unspoken maxim that, should one wish to be at the center of grand changes, whether in society or in thought, one ought to hang around centers of religion. In the past, ey had followed (with a fork, natch) more than one cult in whatever state of formation.
Ah well, it was worth checking out, was it not?
-----
As easy as forking one's personality was within the System, it always felt to Ioan as though it came with a brief thrill of splitting: a sudden doubling, a sudden branching of experiences. Four hands were better than two, though.
Ioan forked into Ioan Bălan#d11600f1, who left with a pad of nice paper and a nice pen to go along with it to investigate this meeting of one.
Ey was greeted by Joseph Chace. *A* Joseph Chace, ey soon realized, for the unassuming building, low-slung and painted drab, seemed to be populated entirely by copies of the same person.
"Joseph? Uh...Chace Prime?" Ioan asked.
"Chace Epsilon, actually. Prime's setting up, but we've all been briefed. Ioan, yes? A pleasure to meet you."
Ioan bowed. The Chaces were a pleasant group and Ioan found emself liking them immediately. The taste of their dress was close to eir own faux-academic garb, all tweed suits and rumpled dress shirts and wire-rimmed glasses. Ioan could easily picture any one of them as a colleague, had ey chosen academia. They were unfailingly kind to the last.
"So, what exactly is being set up? What is the procedure?"
"We're getting the meetinghouse ready," Chace Epsilon explained. "We used to have the sim in a permanently set-up state, but we realized early on the social utility of having to arrange chairs, start the coffee to brewing, and unlock the doors. Something about the preparation of the space is as much a part of the experience as actually sitting in silence."
Ioan followed the Chace along a stepping-stone path through shrubbery to the building's gated entrance. "I have noticed that a lot of rituals, if you will pardon the term, have an aspect of opening and closing, whether it's a sentinel and passphrase to enter the space, or even just a shaking of hands at the beginning."
Chace Epsilon nodded, beaming. The clade had clearly decided that this academic look should come with a kindly, wrinkled face, and the expression pleased Ioan immensely.
The gate unlocked, Ioan was led into a perfectly square room. Chairs, padded and upright, were arranged in an octagon within that space, truncating the corners to leave room for slow-spinning rattan fans with aged motors and antique lamps. Chaces in varied attire were filing in and sorting themselves into the chairs, talking in obviously well-acquainted clusters.
Ioan attempted to slip into a chair near the back, close to the door, but was guided instead by Epsilon to sit in the center of one of the trapezoids of chairs that made up the seating arrangement.
"There is no 'back of the room'," he explained. "We're all here on the same footing, and I'm here to answer any questions before and after the meeting. You know how this works?"
"I think so. Silence unless you have something to say, right?"
Epsilon nodded, "Yes, but as an observer, I'd like to suggest that you remain in silence for the meeting. You're free to take notes if you'd like, however."
After the last of the Josephs Chace filed into the room and had taken their seats, one of them — Prime, Ioan assumed — stood and spoke. "Welcome, all. Today, we will wait in expectant silence. If you are called to give vocal ministry, please stand and say your name, and when you are done speaking, you may sit down again. Please give time for the meeting to digest any testimony before continuing, should you have anything to add."
And with that, the meeting began. Prime sat down once more and the room fell to silence broken only by breathing and the occasional shuffle of legs being crossed or uncrossed.
Ioan found emself somewhat wrongfooted by the brief introduction followed by total silence. There was no sermon, no reading, no music. No call to the egregore preceded this sudden, overwhelming group awareness, and no words were spoken as slowly, the room seemed to fall into synchronized breathing and some unseen, unknown, unknowable companionship welled among them.
Ey felt apart, in this meeting of one, despite the twenty-odd individuals sitting in the room. Ey felt alone and singular, and not just for the occasional note ey scribbled on the pad. Ey felt apart as an other in the midst of a group so intimately bound.
The silence was not heavy. It was not oppressive. It simply...was. Ey sat with legs crossed, and recalled previous investigations that required meditation, calling on those reserves to keep emself present and observant, not to mention — though ey wasn't entirely successful — to keep emself from fidgeting.
Perhaps twenty minutes elapsed in silence before one of the Chaces stood.
"Joseph Chace Eta. I was thinking this past week about the idea of simplicity, and how that applies to not just the base mechanics of life, but also the ways in which we interact with each other. Honesty and earnestness sometimes feel outside our reach, but still an honorable goal to strive for."
He sat back down and the silence once more fell.
The meeting continued thus for a little more than an hour, during which only three people spoke. The second two expanded on the idea of simplicity that the first had suggested, refuting small points, adding some of their own.
It was a means of interaction that went beyond conversation. It was not a debate, it was not a presentation or lecture. The members simply stood and stated a thought, and then sat back down to let everyone totally and completely digest what had been said.
It was, Ioan realized, not all that dissimilar from writing letters. One had the chance to chose and compose one's words carefully and then share them out loud, while the others had time to read and digest, simply taking in this information or perhaps formulating a response. It was a series of statements given as epistles to a congregation, read aloud and taken to heart.
*An epistolary community,* ey thought, and smiled.
-----
Ioan sat across a long table from Joseph Chace Prime, a cup of cooling coffee next eir notepad. Chace talked, and Ioan listened.
"I was the first of my old meeting to upload. There were only about fifteen of us, and we were all getting old, all struggling to face a world that we felt had long since moved on. I had cancer, so it seemed a natural choice to come here and complete what work I had left in me. Despite the loose eschatology of the Friends, the desire for leaving the world better than when you had entered it, I was still not eager to die. So much still to do and see. As an academic, I'm sure you understand."
Ioan smiled and nodded. "Always another project, yes."
"Of course. So I uploaded. It was early on in the history of the System, so it was a painful and gut-wrenching process. I don't know if that's changed." He paused and then laughed at some expression on Ioan's face. "I suppose it hasn't. Either way, when I uploaded, despite regular messages to my old meeting, I felt somehow locked away from my community, something that I had toiled to build from the ground up after leaving my parents.
"To be without a community is a strange feeling. It's not just a feeling of loss, but one of needs and expectations not being met. I always felt like I was missing something, like I had a space inside me that needed filling."
"Were you not able to find one here?" Ioan asked.
"I have friends here, of course, but nothing quite the same. And no, to preempt your next question, I was not able to find any other Quakers here. We are not Luddites, but it was early on, you understand, so the System was small and largely based around a certain exploratory techiness that doesn't often permit religion."
Ioan sipped at eir coffee and thought for a moment before guessing, "So you forked. You made enough copies of your personality to have your own meeting."
Chace Prime nodded. "It was unintentional at first. I had forked to work on a separate project while I continued on the one I was embedded in, and after a few months, wound up getting in a conversation with my fork about what life had been like before. We reminisced and went our separate ways.
"This continued two or three times before the idea solidified. I continued to fork as needed and talk with my up-tree instances, merging them back into myself only rarely." He sighed, adding, "When you're old and lonely, you'll take any conversation that you can."
Ioan gave this comment the kind silence it seemed to demand.
"There were four of us, three descended from myself but sufficiently changed by their independent experiences so as to start to feel like new people and not just duplicates. It was Beta who suggested we try having a meeting for worship. A joke at first, but it dredged up comforting, communal memories, and so we all agreed to just keep meeting."
"Did you ever fork specifically for the purpose of building this...uh, congregation?"
Chace laughed. "A few times, I'll admit. Rather, I forked for things that probably didn't require it. A research interview I promised myself I was too busy to actually attend. A dinner function I didn't want to go to anyway. Just little things that didn't need another copy of myself, but that would simply add to the meeting."
"So how does being a meeting of one differ from what you remember?"
He looked thoughtful. "I would say that we agree on more, but that's not quite true. I think the set of things we agree or disagree upon tend to differ from a more heterogeneous collection of individuals. The process of individuation is slippery and ill-defined, but we are starting to experience it in the various shiftings of focus and changes of mind. We Quakers are perhaps overly fond of the phrase 'the inner light' or 'that of God in every one', but that has been a common meditation of mine over the last however many years since we began this experiment. That light is in every person, but when your self is duplicated and bound into a new individual, does that person count as a new 'one'? We have to accept that the light of God is within them, but is it the same light as its progenitor? Does that light shift and change along with us as our differing experiences lead to individuation?"
"Have you come to any conclusions?"
"I don't know." Chace Prime shrugged.
Epsilon, who had rejoined them after a conversation with a few other Chaces, piped up. "Once, I thought that the qualities of that light within each of us didn't matter, but I've since fallen away from that opinion. If the light is meant to guide us in our testimony, and if we accept that our testimony will change with our experience, then that guidance must change as well."
Prime added, "I still waffle about whether or not it matters, but the more I understand this new form of community, the more I think that even a meeting of one is still just that: a community."
Ioan set eir pen down and finished eir coffee in the silence that followed, the table collectively lost in thought. A silence lacking the spiritual weight, yet as kind and companionable as the one they had just shared.
Finally, ey asked, "So, if you had to boil your actions down to a goal, what would it be?"
Prime and Epsilon looked at each other, expressions mirrored to an uncanny degree.
It was Prime who spoke. "We have, up until recently, been focused on recalling that sense of community through our meeting of one, just Joseph Chace in communion with himself. I think it might be time to branch out, though, and perhaps open the meeting to others."
"Any particular reason why?"
"We're all still the Chace clade. We can only become so different from each other. It's time for some fresh ideas, some new life breathed into us. It's time for the community to grow. No proselytizing, I think, but providing an opportunity."
"It's time," Epsilon added, eyes focused on some grand idea Ioan could not see. "It's time to turn outward."