From b2d01dc61910f3224040c4170ccdb1c7e7cdb5d0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Madison Rye Progress <makyo@drab-makyo.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2026 16:26:01 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] Add pending story

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+---
+title: Made in the Image
+author: Madison Rye Progress
+character: What Right Have I — 2382
+type: story
+---
+
+Roots and I sit atop a low-slung hill with clumps of buffalo grass offering uneven stripes of shade over us. The day is hot. The grass is dry and tells of no breeze. The grasshoppers rattle-clatter from one tussock to another startled by this or that, by me or Roots.
+
+Long memories take the place of instincts, and I stretch out on my belly, back legs kicked out behind me, forelegs stretched out before me. I draw cool from the earth below me. The fact that this is known as pancaking, or even splooting — *splooting!* — floats into my mind and I huff a laugh against the backs of my paws.
+
+Fur of deepest black.
+
+Leathery pads.
+
+Diggerclaws.
+
+I am...
+
+"You see, now, why we creatures seek crepuscular hours?"
+
+Startled back to the present, I cast a sidelong glance up to them. "There are...ah, there are many reasons, are there not?"
+
+They laugh and sprawl out beside me. Their fur is — has been for as long as I have known them — white to the point of iridescence. The cloud of brightness that is them is most of what I can understand with these new eyes of mine. "Of course, What Right Have I. Of course." Any sting from the dismissal is displaced by a question: "How fares your belly? Does it sense too much? Too little? Do add more fur if desire takes you."
+
+I shake my head, but the movement still feels out of place on this body, and so I say, "No, not so much as to be a bother. It is...ah, rather, touch has not been too much of a problem for me like this. Smell has at times been overwhelming, and vision will take some getting used to."
+
+"Mm. You depart for a middle ground?"
+
+This time, I avoid the impulse to shake my head. "No. I think that it might actually work to balance out the...ah, the sense of smell, yes? Were it to stay sharp, I think that I might wind up more easily overwhelmed, yes? I feel I am already making...mm, perhaps making a concession by retaining the ability to speak, but I will need such still. I would rather not concede on that which I do not need to."
+
+"Mm." They sound drowsy. I *feel* drowsy. I want to be under something. I want to be under the ground or under my desk or curled up, my face under the tip of my tail to block out the light. I want to rest.
+
+And The End Of Memory Lies Beneath The Roots — or just Roots as they have insisted — and I have met once a day for the last week, working on this project that is me. We have been sorting out the particulars, beginning with size, and then limb structure, and then locomotion, and then sensory tuning, that go into being a skunk washed free of humanity. When I arrived in this sim, I walked on two legs. I wore clothes. I had thick, almost silky fur and a tail that was nigh-on plush. A tail you could hug.
+
+Within a week, I was just...a skunk.
+
+Just a skunk. I walk on all fours. I wear nothing. I have thick fur, yes, but it is a bit coarse like a dog's, and my tail has fur that is long but almost wispy, spreading out like a peacock's feather when I hike it.
+
+I have lived in this sim the last week, the sim where Roots lives with the others in their stanza. So many of them live in a set of town-houses with a well-manicured park just outside, but across the road, ever empty, lies a vast open space, a buffalo grass prairie full of banked snow in winter and the rattle-clatter of grasshoppers in summer.
+
+I have slept under the stars — so many stars, more than we have back at Beth Tikvah — and through the hottest parts of the day. I have explored the playground in the park at dusk and dug in the dirt at dawn.
+
+And in the late mornings, Roots will find me and we will work for some hours on my form.
+
+They will come to me on two feet carrying with them a metal bowl full of chopped vegetables and small cubes of fish with an egg yolk atop. I balked at this at first, for I at times struggle with textures that veer slimy or gooey, but then came the day that we worked on the senses of taste and smell, and now these last two days I have found myself dreaming of these meals, the way that my sharp incisors slide into the fish, the crunch of sweet peppers between my teeth, the richness of the yolk coating my mouth.
+
+I dream of food, and when I told Roots this morning, they laughed joyously and said, "Skunks just wanna get fat," and this, more than any *good job,* made me proud.
+
+I am...
+
+"Does...ah, does it not strike you as strange," I begin, my stammer coming out nearly as a sigh in this lazy moment, "that I and so many others go through the pain and trauma of uploading our minds to...ah, to some vast computer, the work of thousands of human hands, only to reject humanity?"
+
+"Not one bit. Plenty argue we abandoned humanity already. They say we take a shape post-human, and they speak near to truth, if not directly in it. My heart says we proceed not after *humanity,* yet my mind says we press forward beyond our very human *selves*."
+
+"Even those who...ah, who still appear human? Who never fork?"
+
+Their sigh is an audible shrug, and I study the sound. "They accrue reputation. They pull food from the exchange that others have dreamt up. They step from sim to sim. They live still in an impossible world even if they refuse to engage with its mechanics."
+
+I nod — or perhaps practice nodding; a rearing back of the head and a bobbing of the snout. I will, after all, still be interacting with many who will expect *some* familiar behaviors, even if they only fit so well on this body.
+
+"The Odists move where they dally still, yes?" they continue. "Michelle Hadje uploaded and then made herself ten. Ten made themselves one hundred. We continue more than a thousand of us now, all stemming from one mind.
+
+"Some of those thousand leave behind new instances of themselves to individuate and make their own selves over the years, and others hardly fork at all. Even within our very own clade, we bear the clade's spectrum of post-humanity. We remain all of us post-Michelle. You embody post-From Whence, who in turn embodies post-Oh, But To Whom."
+
+"I do not know that...ah, that either of them have considered a life such as this," I muse, scuffing at the dirt with a pawful of long, dull claws.
+
+"You flower with different petals. You stem from them, yes; you *shared* their roots and stalks, but you grow differently. You blossomed your own person decades back."
+
+"More than a century," I muse. "Is it wrong of me, then, to wonder if Michelle had this in her?"
+
+Roots rolls onto their side and curls around to face me, making it far easier to focus on them. "This more skunkly identity? Becoming an animal? A creature? A *critter?*" They waggle their forepaws at me.
+
+I laugh.
+
+"Perhaps she contained such. What of it, if so?"
+
+"Maybe Rav would...ah, well, perhaps she will more readily understand if so."
+
+They roll back onto their feet. Their back arches in an inverted catenary arc, and their tail holds high so that the iridescent white fur bristles outward. "You hold all this from your down-tree?" they ask warily.
+
+My ears cant back and I lean away from them, stumbling to my feet. My own tail hikes. We had been practicing mood presentation, and it is becoming habit. We stand side on from each other, as though each preparing to dash away.
+
+Rattle-clatter goes a handful of nearby grasshoppers, startled away.
+
+I am...
+
+"It was...ah, well, I told her that I would come back looking quite a bit different than I did, yes? I told her that...ah, that I was visiting you to look to change the way I engaged with the world. She knows vaguely what, but...ah, but not why," I say, my stammer picking up in my defensiveness. "You remember when I arrived; I was...ah, I was not even sure what I wanted then, other than to try something non-anthropomorphic."
+
+We stand in silence for a few seconds before they let their tail droop again. "I step too fast. I apologize, What Right Have I. Your heart seeks this joy, and my heart compels me and I aid your joy into this world, but this joy withers if it eludes those you hold close. Share it before surprise shares odd guests all its own."
+
+It takes me a moment to parse the strange and immediate way in which they speak, but I have been getting used to their speech patterns of late. I have my own patterns, after all, picked up over many years, and so it is not so surprising.
+
+I force myself to relax as well and, deeming it wise to change contexts and get out of the heat, say, "Of course. Shall...ah, shall we perhaps find some shade? Some water?"
+
+Roots allows the moment of consternation to pass and, with a subtle tilt of their head, beckons me to follow.
+
+We trundle back out of the grasslands, jounce across the street with the sun-baked asphalt stinging our paws, and wiggle our way under the low hedge that cordons off the playground. There is a hose spigot set up on a post beside the playground, and at its base sits a wide-brimmed water bowl — the larger cousin to the one Roots has brought me my breakfasts in.
+
+We rest our paws on the rim and lean in to lap up cool water. My sense of taste has changed through long and careful mutation guided by Roots, and I can only *remember* the faint taste that goes along with hose water.
+
+This, to me, tastes clean and pure and sweet.
+
+From there, we make our way back to the hedge and scuff about in the dirt for a bit, Roots talking me through rooting, what it should feel like, how to rely on the meditative thought patterns they had taught me to let ideas drift away, to let my nose guide me.
+
+They are the sensorium artist within the clade, all of those who were once Michelle Hadje. It is their focus in this long, long life-after-life to find the art in senses and sensations. They have already explored and refined how it *feels* to move through the world as a critter such as this. They have explored what it means to have heightened awareness of scents, what it means to have weaker eyes. They have explored how shifts in mindset can work in tandem with changes in physiology to help one better dwell within their body. They have done this exploration and then they have taken up the joy of teaching others.
+
+I am no sensewright. I do not know a hundredth of what they know about the mechanics of life within Lagrange, the System in which we live, but then, it has been more than a century and a half since we were the same person. We have gone our own separate ways: them to building an expertise when playing with our sensoria, and me to the Judaism of our grandparents. We have each become wholly ourselves in this long process of individuation. They, after all, would likely say that they would not know a hundredth of what I do about the minutiae of Talmudic philosophy.
+
+And so I came to them for help. I wanted to refine my sense of self, to hone it, to perfect it. I wanted to become ever more *me.*
+
+I had played with gender before and found a queer womanhood that sat a ways off from cis that had made me feel really, truly myself.
+
+Throughout, I had lingered as this anthropomorphic skunk that had been my shape for well over a century and a half, and as the itch to refine once more struck me, this form became the subject of such refinement. Was species not another vector I might explore? HaShem, as I have heard it said, made wheat but not bread, grapes but not wine. We, thus, have a hand in our own creation.
+
+And so now I root around in the clay-like dirt beneath the hedges, letting each thought flow through my mind without necessarily touching down, letting my paws scrabble and dig, letting my nose guide me. In this moment, I do not so much try to be a skunk.
+
+I *let* myself be a skunk.
+
+I am me.
+
+-----
+
+The first thing that Rav From Whence Do I Call Out does upon seeing me after my arrival back in Beth Tikvah is make a high-pitched and wordless sound, bend down, and lift me up.
+
+As soon as I feel myself leave the ground, my feet go higgledy-piggledy this way and that, claws splayed, legs skewing out in different directions and back twisting in order to find some sense of stability. Air is forced out of me in a breathy squeak.
+
+This moment of breathless confusion gives me the time to remember my lessons, and the next sound that comes from me is the coarse *neen*-ing noise that Roots and I had practiced, a sound of dismay that is soothed when the old rabbi — my beloved down-tree — gets her paw under my haunches and holds me in against her chest, letting me rest against the stability that is her — that ever has been her
+
+That 'stability' is currently laughing and dancing around her office, speaking to an unexpected joy.
+
+"What Right Have I!" she cries. "Is *this* what you were doing with Roots? Oh, how delightful!"
+
+The dance is dizzying and I find myself pushing my face against her shoulder to block out the blurry sight of the world swinging by. "Yes, Rav, but...ah, could you perhaps put me down? I am still getting used to this."
+
+"Oh! Of course, my dear," she says, hurrying over to her desk so that she can set me down on its surface, once more taking a seat on the low, padded stool behind it. She lowers her head then, resting her snout on folded arms so that she can be more on my level.
+
+Her smile, for some reason I am not sure I can articulate, nearly breaks my heart. I do not know how to cry, shaped thus, and so I give a low keening sound and settle into a loaf on the surface of her desk.
+
+"Are you quite alright, What Right Have I?"
+
+"I am," I say after a moment. "I am...ah, I am just overwhelmed and I do not know how to cope. I did not know that the world was so...big."
+
+She nods and reaches forward with a paw, gingerly brushing the back of a finger over the top of my head. "I suppose it must seem so. You are *so* small, my dear."
+
+The pet, small as it is, is soothing enough to encourage me to relax.
+
+"How did you go about this? What did Roots have you do?"
+
+"It was...ah, it was a series of changes taken over time, with periods to allow me to explore in between," I begin. "They first had me become small — the same height as this form is long — and then they had me settle down onto all fours and change bit by bit, muscle and...ah, and joint by muscle and joint."
+
+She listens, rapt.
+
+My stammer smooths out as I get more and more excited about recalling the last week and a half. "My back and my face were perhaps the most difficult. I found, however, that...ah, that it is easier to coordinate moving on all fours when one's back is built to encourage such, yes? My face caused me woes until I learned how best to eat, at which point it became far more comfortable; eating good food is a fine way to find joy, yes?"
+
+Rav laughs. "Of course."
+
+"And so each day, they would come to me with food and I would eat, and then...ah, then we would work on this or that. After those first few days, the changes were all but invisible. I worked on senses, on proprioception, I tuned little things like the length of my claws." I clack these against the surface of her desk in a simple rhythm. "And then...ah, then I would spend the rest of the day just...*being.*
+
+"Roots impressed upon me how important this is. That I just *be* a skunk for a little while throughout the day. I...mm, I would then spend the afternoon sleeping or exploring the open space or the yards. They wanted me to find all of the ways that function follows form, and to encourage me to change my form in small ways to make that function comfortable."
+
+"And do you think that you were successful?" she asks.
+
+I nod. "I think so. I feel...ah, I *feel* comfortable, yes, and I am pleased with how I look from the outside. There are few points of discomfort. I sound...mm, well, I have made the concession of speech, and I am still able to read in my head, even if I do not think I would be able to using my eyes as they are."
+
+"I imagine you have a line to walk there, yes, if you are calling it a concession," she says. "You have your books — you would not be yourself without them — and yet you also have this aim of being...just...the *cutest little thing.*"
+
+I cannot but laugh in the moment. "I am just pleased that...ah, that this does not seem not upsetting for you in any way."
+
+"Upsetting? Why would it be?"
+
+"Well, I am no longer able to...ah, to help out quite so much around here, yes? I will not be able to help you rake the leaves or...ah, or carry siddurim or move chairs in the shul–"
+
+"You can still walk, yes?"
+
+Nonplussed, I nod as best I can.
+
+"And clearly you can talk."
+
+Another nod.
+
+"Then that is help enough, my dear. I can fork all the ephemeral instances I need to help keep the grounds or haul prayer books, and you can keep me company."
+
+"But–"
+
+"What Right Have I," she interrupts again, laughing, "if you apologize again for being less able to do the things a human does while being not-a-human, I will pull your tail and call you names."
+
+I lower my head to rest my chin on the cool wood of her desk. Something about her words catches at me. They pull at my identity, tugging and nudging and pressing. I feel the ways in which this little experiment has changed me already set in stark contrast to what I had expected.
+
+"Very well," I mumble at last. "*Tizki l'mitzvot.*"
+
+She tilts her head curiously. "*Tizki la'asot.* Why do you thank me, though? What mitzvah have I done for you?"
+
+"I do not...ah, I do not quite know just yet," I admit. "You have absolved me of needing to do these bits of work, but...ah, but you did so in a joyous way that showed me who I am– ah...but that is not it. That is not quite it..."
+
+Sitting up straight, Rav From Whence nods. "We will talk on it later, then, yes? Let me also absolve you of the need to figure it all out right now. Come. It is nice outside. We can sit on the grass under a tree and you can tell me how it feels to be so small when the world is so big. Shall I carry you?"
+
+-----
+
+My days pick up before long the flavor of routine.
+
+Rav and I decide that first day that I will stay with her rather than return to my little apartment further down the hill, at least for the time being. Not only will it save me the trouble of walking quite so far on stubby little legs, but my apartment is largely just a library of books that I can no longer read in such a form. That I happen to sleep there as well is ancillary to its primary purpose.
+
+So it is that I wake early in the morning at first light, lift my snout to silently say the *shema,* spend a while grooming while curled at the foot of Rav's bed, and then scratch at the door to be let out. We both suggest at one point installing a dog-door type entrance for me, and each time, we decide against it for the time being. In her case, she feels that this is a small service that she can offer me, that it keeps us tied together in a way that our frequent conversations used to.
+
+In my case, though, I have found that it is a way for me to lean harder into this sense of animalism, of being a creature not built for a world with doors and handles, that I did not expect when first picking up this project.
+
+In retrospect, I do not know why this is surprising. We have at times have felt the pull of zoomorphism greater than many within our friends circle. We have traveled within the furry subculture for most of our life, after all — and given that our two-hundredth birthday is just under four years away, that is quite some time indeed. Our mother was furry, as was our grandmother, and our father remained adjacent to the subculture throughout his life. We have known more than a few therians.
+
+Perhaps it is less *that* this feels good, and instead just how good it feels.
+
+And so I rise and scratch at the door, and Rav will wake and open it to let me into the rest of her home, where we will go through the *nisim b'chol yom,* the blessings for the miracles of daily life. Rav speaks and I meditate upon blessings for awakening, for vision, for stretching and rising, for the System in which we live and the gift of motion for moving through the world, for clothing — though this one I skip, and instead watch as she readies herself for the day. We say blessings for purpose, for freedom, for harmony, for identity.
+
+We bless, also, that we were made *b'tzelem Elohim,* in the image of God. My feelings on this grow increasingly complicated, but I have set that aside in order to live within this new structure to my life.
+
+Rav then prepares food for the both of us. For me, she prepares vegetables, a protein such as fish or chicken, and an egg yolk, while she makes for herself toast and scrambled eggs, adding the leftover egg white.
+
+We sit outside in the courtyard for a few minutes of calm and quiet before we get started with the day. I will often curl in her lap while she pets though my fur, grooming all of those lovely spots that I cannot reach, myself.
+
+From there, unless it is Shabbat — whereupon we will stay close throughout the day and the various services and meals that are part of it — we go our separate ways.
+
+I know that she has many, *many* meetings throughout the day, for she is both the lead rabbi at Temple Beth Tikvah and the chair of the Association of New Reform Congregations. She will often wind up with two or three different instances of herself talking, listening, working. As evening falls, her ephemeral instances will merge back down, interleaving all of the memories from the day into one lived experience: a single stream.
+
+For us, to fork into these whole and wholly independent copies of ourselves and then to merge back down has long been second nature. It is perhaps more comfortable for us than for most of the other uploaded minds, here. We are quite old, after all, and have been living sys-side for over a century and a half.
+
+At the moment of forking, they are identical to us, but as they experience different things throughout the day, they will start to change. Most of the time, these other instances are created so that we can do more than one thing at a time after which they merge down once more, but sometimes, intentionally or otherwise, they will individuate.
+
+After all, was I not originally an instance of Rav From Whence? I consider myself my own person, now, but up until the point I forked from her, our memories are the same. Just the same as with her and Oh, But To Whom Do I Speak These Words before her, and on down the tree to Michelle Hadje, the root of our clade.
+
+And now, here am I, as close to being an actual skunk as I can manage, and I am left to wonder: did they, too, have this within them?
+
+Rav has said for herself: probably not. She has said that she *likes* being far more anthropomorphized. She says that she likes the subtle changes that she made to her features to make herself feel more personable, to make it easy for others to connect with her. She says that she thinks I did the right thing for myself, but that it would not be the right thing for her.
+
+Oh, But To Whom, who is a member of our congregation, had a similar reaction as Rav, wanting only to shower me with kisses and tell me how cute I am, how good of a job I did. She says that she is not sure whether or not she would do something like this.
+
+Michelle was not having a good day when I saw her, so I merely lay on her lap and let her pet me and tell me stories that I already know of the author of the poem — that one hundred line long ode — from which we take our names.
+
+I did not press. I offered only what comfort I could.
+
+These are the thoughts that I think as I build up this new life that I have chosen for myself. I think these thoughts as I scrabble at the door to the synagogue, begging to be let in by a passerby. I marvel that I have become so other than I was and with such ease as I nap through the afternoon under a stone bench in one of Beth Tikvah's many courtyards.
+
+I still go to the library and read, although I do most of it by pulling books from the exchange and reading them in my head, parked on a chair by a window. I still write and edit the things that I work on, though similarly, I write by thinking words into being on a document.
+
+My life is a balancing act of humanity and that which is not. I test and probe at the hazy boundary between the two in order to find what feels comfortable. I cannot give up the ways in which I interact with the intellectual side of my faith. I work still on the *teshuvot* that probe at the hazy boundaries of Judaism. I still attend services.
+
+That I write my responsa by thinking words onto paper or that I attend services sitting on a cushion in silence up near the *bimah* is secondary to the fact that these are still the things that make me *me*, and that they are associated with humanity feels unavoidable and, at times, unfortunate.
+
+This may sound like some sort of grand internal argument, that there is a friction within me surrounding the ideas of my identity which is bound up in being human, but it is no bad thing.
+
+I do not feel stress, I feel invigoration.
+
+I feel invigorated that I can now trundle around the grounds and root about in the grass or beneath the hedges. I can sleep beneath benches or stomp my feet at someone who startles me. I can scratch at doors and eat from a bowl raw egg yolk and fish.
+
+I feel invigorated that I can do all of these things that make me feel more like a skunk than I ever had before while still being myself. I can set aside vast swaths of humanity, and it will all still be okay. Rav will still love me, and my days will still be spent in words and contemplation, and I will still wrap myself up in my inherited faith in God, but I will be this new thing and that will be okay.
+
+Only, I wonder...
+
+-----
+
+"I have...ah, I have been experiencing doubt," I say.
+
+Roots has invited me back to the sim in which they live to speak about my first month as a skunk has gone. It is as lovely as I remember here, and Roots is as kind as ever. We had spent the morning talking over my experiences, incorporating small changes at their suggestion: claws a little shorter after I complained about them twisting my digits, a gentle tweak to my ankles to make them more flexible, and so on.
+
+Now, however, we have trundled our way down from the road through the prairie to the little pond that lays at the base of the hill upon which the townhouses sit. We drink from the water there, fresh and cool, and then squeeze our way under the root of a willow that stands awkwardly at the bank. It is cool and it is dark. It is a good place, in my mind, to speak of feelings.
+
+"Speak your doubt, my dear," Roots says.
+
+"Perhaps it is...ah, perhaps it is doubt, perhaps it is just confusion, but why am I doing this?" I huff noisily through my nose. "Not...the reasoning; I am doing this because I am exploring identity, I am trying to...ah, to make myself ever more complete. Rather, why does this mean rescinding humanity?"
+
+They look curiously at me, silent for several long seconds, before they say, "You ask the wrong question. Tell me instead why you 'rescind'. You choose *giving up* your humanity?"
+
+"Am I not?" I realize that this comes out a bit snippy, and soften my words as I continue. "I am...ah, I am a skunk now, yes? I gave up walking on two legs, I gave up reading and writing as a human might, I gave up speech in many contexts."
+
+They poke their nose out from under the root to look at the nearby shore. "Fork an instance of yourself — the version of you preceding this venture — standing right there."
+
+I follow their gaze, hesitate for a moment, and then do as requested.
+
+Standing before us, fidgeting a little, is me as I looked before this experiment.
+
+She towers over me, though I was always a bit short at five foot five. Atop her head is a tousled mane wrangled into place with a kerchief. This matches the linen tunic and trousers of her outfit and the canvas of her satchel. Still, despite her relative humanity, she, too, is covered with black fur and has the familiar stripe heading up a blunt snout. She, too, has a tail behind her, nearly as long as she is tall.
+
+"And now, another instance. Fork the you from all the way before upload."
+
+This takes a bit more concentration. I have not, since I have been myself, chosen to appear as I did prior to uploading, as that scared woman aiming for a life more stable, safer than the one she had had. In all these years, I have not looked human. 
+
+I remember startlingly well just how I looked — just how it *felt* to look like that — but confronted with the idea of doing so is a hurdle that I must will myself over.
+
+With a rush of intent, though, soon there is a woman standing beside that furry version of myself. She fidgets even more, stifling a tic with a quiet *mmph* and a jerk of her head to the side.
+
+The resemblance is clear: she is nearly the same height, the same pudgy build. Where the first new instance has a thick, tousled mane of white fur, the second has curls of black hair. Where the first has soot-black fur, the second has pale skin.
+
+"Both of you claim yourselves the identity 'What Right Have I'?" Roots calls up to them.
+
+"Yes," says the human.
+
+"What Right Have I tagged...ah, tagged Test, yes." the furry says.
+
+The white skunk beside me asks, "And forking requires rescinding?"
+
+At this the human really *does* tic, an uncomfortable-sounding squeak that comes with a flush of color to her cheeks. Unable to stand against her discomfort, she quits. She disappears and her memories merging back down into mine. I can feel the shame that she felt burn still.
+
+*Shame.*
+
+"I do not know," the other says, looking discomfited by being the only two-legged one left. "It is...ah, it is familiar. I am still me, but maybe not the right me."
+
+Roots turns to look at me. "And did looking as Michelle did on uploading feel familiar? Not right, but familiar?"
+
+I nod.
+
+"You may quit," they tell my other up-tree, and I am soon granted with yet another set of memories interleaving with my own. There is no shame in this one.
+
+"What...ah, what shall I draw from this demonstration?"
+
+"Surely you can draw many things from it, and I yearn to hear your thoughts," they say, and I can hear a smile in their voice — something I am still learning how to do. "In this case, though: were you human when you started this process?"
+
+"I–"
+
+"Not if you looked human. Not if you performed humanity. Whether you *were human.*"
+
+I buy time to think about this while scratching my snout — kicking myself in the face to scratch an itch has taken much getting used to — before I say, "That is...ah, that is a surprisingly difficult question to answer."
+
+"I will spoil it for you and say that here lies the point: perhaps you were human, perhaps you were not. Perhaps you *are* human and perhaps you are not. Rather than considering *giving up* humanity, perhaps it bears more fruit for you to think merely on how much you have changed."
+
+Another long moment is spent in silence, and this time I buy time by licking at the claws I just used to scratch my muzzle.
+
+Roots seems happy to wait.
+
+"I do not know that...ah, that much changed at all in that moment," I hazard. "In retrospect...mm, I suppose it feels like I merely became who I already was. Who I had already become over the years."
+
+"You spoke of this before as a need to refine."
+
+"Wheat but not bread."
+
+"Yes, and grapes but not wine. You say you participate in the act of creation."
+
+"Yes. I am...ah, rather, I suppose that this makes my worries about why Rav and Oh, But To Whom and Michelle do not feel this way rather moot."
+
+They laugh. "Oh? And how is that?"
+
+"They are...ah, they are also participating in the act of creation, yes? They have changed just as much as I have over the years. Those changes just did not include...mm, did not include this slow move away from humanity."
+
+"An excellent point." They pause, then probe gently, "You *move* away from humanity, then?"
+
+I lay my ears back. "That is...ah, that is why I said I was having doubt. At what point do I cease to be *b'tzelem Elohim?*"
+
+"Made in the image of God?"
+
+I nod.
+
+"I do not know if there exists anyone more qualified to answer that than you, *Rabbi* What Right Have I, student of the sages."
+
+I do not laugh.
+
+"Apologies, my dear. I know that it complicates beyond that. However, I trust that you understand that I have not returned to live so wholeheartedly into the faith of our ancestors as you and yours have. These questions fit better directed to From Whence or Oh, But To Whom if you cannot provide the answers yourself."
+
+"I understand, yes," I say, and do my best to keep all petulance out of my voice.
+
+They laugh quietly. "My down-tree names herself That Which Lives Is Forever Praiseworthy, and such becomes my take on the matter. I do not know if you are made any more or less in the image of God now than you were, but you live, my dear, and that is, yes, praiseworthy."
+
+-----
+
+This morning, I do not leave Rav's apartment.
+
+I awake slowly and late. I make a token effort at grooming, and then nose my way under Rav's covers to curl up once more by her belly. It is dark and stuffy and warm, but I do not wish to greet the morning. I do not wish to greet the world.
+
+I wake again some time later. Rav is still in bed with me, and I wake to her gently stroking along my back. I uncurl and slink back up towards the head of the bed so that I can poke my snout out from under the covers.
+
+"Good morning, What Right Have I," she murmurs, voice full of concern. "Are you alright?"
+
+I shake my head.
+
+"Okay. Would you like to talk about it? I can also just keep petting you, or we can go get some breakfast."
+
+The thought of opening my mouth to speak is, in some way I cannot quite explain, wrong. It is at once too much effort and yet too easy; an ease which does not fit with my body and identity as it is. Not right now.
+
+Instead, I slip the rest of the way from beneath the covers and pace along the edge of the bed until I reach the impromptu stairs down that she has constructed out of stacks of books. As I walk, I feel colder and colder, as though I have stepped away from the greatest force of warmth I have in my life.
+
+Which, I realize, I have.
+
+I turn around, then, and walk back up to where Rav is swinging her legs out of the bed and paw at her arm.
+
+"Carry?"
+
+I lift up on my back legs by 'walking' up her arm with my front feet, edging awkwardly closer. I hope only that this gets across.
+
+She nods and carefully lifts me up into her arms, cradling me against her front. "I will be here with you as long as you need me, my dear. I have already sent out forks for all that I need to today," she explains as she totes me over to the breakfast bar at which she usually eats. "When you did not rise before me this morning, I got so worried."
+
+I often lose the ability to speak, and in those cases, I would lean heavily on sign language, but now I cannot even do that.
+
+This fact wars within me against all of the effort that I have made to wash humanity from myself.
+
+I cannot speak.
+
+I should not speak.
+
+I should reassure Rav.
+
+I cannot speak.
+
+I should not speak...
+
+I cringe closer against her front. There is a part of me that wishes I could cease also to understand language.
+
+Perhaps sensing this tension within me, she diverts from her trek to the kitchen and instead makes for the window seat that looks out over her small back garden. She settles down with me beside her, then, and pulls breakfast from the exchange rather than making it herself. I wind up with a plate of sliced cucumbers and tomatoes and a hard boiled egg, while she winds up with a breakfast burrito of potato, egg, and cheese.
+
+She watches me pick at my food, occasionally worrying a bit of cheesy potato loose to feed to me.
+
+I leave my breakfast half-eaten and crawl into her lap while she finishes her burrito.
+
+"Are you able to speak, What Right Have I?" she asks, stroking the back of a finger over my head.
+
+I lift my snout from where it had been resting on my paws. I give this due consideration for a moment, then screw up whatever pluck, gumption, courage, willpower, or energy is required to say, "I...ah, I think so."
+
+"Can you speak to how you are feeling?"
+
+So broad a question! I let my muzzle droop once more to rest my chin on the backs of my paws. "Confused. I am...ah, I am confused with how I got to this point. I am confused as to why I am trying to...ah, to rid myself of humanity, that which makes me *b'tzelem Elohim.*"
+
+I can feel the cognitive distortions at play twist my words, and am helpless before them.
+
+She lingers in silence for a few slow strokes over my head, a gentle scratch behind my ears, and then a soft sigh. "I am sorry to hear that you are finding yourself in such pain, What Right Have I," she says at last. "I am having a hard time understanding; can you tell me a bit about why it feels like you are no longer made in the image of HaShem?"
+
+"I worry that...ah, that I am trying to abdicate specifically those things which make this the case, yes? I may bear the knowledge of...ah, of all that is between good and evil, but the first human was *b'tzelem Elohim* before even he ate of the fruit."
+
+"What do you suppose makes you *b'tzelem Elohim?*"
+
+I wilt. "That is what keeps me in this state of confusion. Is it...ah, is it the ability to reason?"
+
+"It cannot be. Many creatures reason."
+
+"Is it, then, the ability to speak?"
+
+She shakes her head. "We are not the only animals that speak, yes?"
+
+"Yes. Is it emotions? A sense of care?"
+
+"We are certainly not the only species that cares, nor that has emotions."
+
+"Indeed," I say, raising my head and pulling words from a book I had recently reread. "Even...ah, even Maimonides says such: "There is no difference in this case between the pain of man and the pain of other living beings, since...ah, since the love and tenderness of the mother for her young ones is not produced by reasoning, but by imagination, and this faculty exists not only in man but...ah, but in most living beings.""
+
+"Of *course* you have a quote," she says, laughing fondly. "I love you dearly. Please be ever yourself."
+
+I manage a weak smile. "That is the rub, yes?"
+
+"Yes. Of course, my dear. I apologize if that came off as insensitive." She smiles down to me, brushing her finger gently under my snout from chin to chest. "Perhaps it is the ability to teach, or to learn. Not just individually, but on a societal, generational scale."
+
+I keep my snout lifted for the touch, and stay quiet to mull over these words.
+
+"Perhaps to be *b'tzelem Elohim* is to uphold justice," she continues, her tone thoughtful and kind, "since you bring up Maimonides."
+
+I close my eyes.
+
+"Perhaps it is to take stewardship of a world." She strokes soothingly down along my back. "These are all things that you are doing, What Right Have I. You are still writing to better the world. You are still a firm believer in justice, and goodness knows that you have taught plenty. Leaning away from a human form will not negate any of these. It will not change that you have done them in the past, and it will not change the fact that you still have them now."
+
+-----
+
+I have been thinking of Rav's first smile on seeing me — when she set me down on her desk, rested her head on folded arms, and smiled so fondly that I felt I might cry — while these last two weeks I have been wandering sims.
+
+I spent a while in a forest sim owned by another member of the clade. I dug in drifts of brown, fallen pine needles and nibbled at the curled tops of fiddlehead ferns. I drank from a quiet stream fed by snowmelt with water so cold that it felt like it would freeze me from the inside.
+
+After a few days of this, I moved to a farm, where I made a nest beneath a pile of loose hay. I hunted mice and stole eggs. I stomped my feet and hiked my tail at the farm hound, who knew well enough to leave me alone. I made friends with a raccoon and an opossum, both also cladists, and we worked together to find food.
+
+And now I am living on the outskirts of a city in a burrow in a park. I stalk at dawn and dusk, keeping mostly to shadows and avoiding the thousands of passers-by, most of whom ignore me. Here, I meet one cladist who is several rats, and we topple trash bins to get at the food scraps within and discuss quietly why the makers of this sim decided to include trash bins in the first place. I argue that it is for the completeness of the experience, while they argue that humanity of all sorts generates trash, even when they are digital constructs, and thus a need was formed and subsequently filled.
+
+And throughout, I have been thinking of Rav's smile.
+
+After we spent that day talking about my worries and confusion, about the little bits of dysphoria that were leaving me feeling off-kilter as though I was about to topple like a trash bin into either too human or too skunk for comfort, whatever that meant, I told her that I was going for a walk, and I have been hopping sims ever since. She told me as I left, as she has so many times before, that she loves me.
+
+I forked from Rav 130 years ago because she was feeling that her extremely public position in life was leading her to mask her neurodivergence to an uncomfortable extent. She wanted that there be a version of her that did *not* have to do that, even if it was not her. She wanted that there be someone who had been her, who knew the restrictions that such a public-facing life placed on one, and yet who had let that go, even if she could not.
+
+So now, 130 years later, here am I: What Right Have I, the weird, catastrophically autistic skunk who somehow wound up with a stammer, who at times will tic with a jerk of the head to the side and a soft squeak and who at times cannot speak at all, who took that hyperfixation on texts and made it into an identity.
+
+And, apparently, the one who took identity itself and turned it into a plaything, who played with gender and who now plays with species, who uses these things as a lens held up to the Self to divine its edges.
+
+I think of her smile and I realize that she was telling me — has been telling me for 130 years — that she loves me in ways more varied than just with words. She has been telling me that she is proud of me with every smile, that she commiserates with me with every hug, that she understands me with every laugh.
+
+These past two weeks have been spent internalizing her words on what it means to be made in the image of God. I have been meditating on what it means to walk that edge of identity quite a bit further away from humanity than I had originally intended.
+
+I walk sims, I meditate, I think about Rav's smile, and then I make my decision.
+
+-----
+
+My return to Beth Tikvah is as unceremonious as any other, no matter the weight that it holds to me. I step into the sim at its default entry point around dawn, and trundle my way around the side of the synagogue itself to Rav's apartment where I scratch at the door until she answers, looking quite bedraggled. It takes her a moment to piece together what she is looking at, but as soon as it clicks, a sleepy smile grows on her face and she reaches down, lifting me into her arms to carry me back inside.
+
+She returns to bed with me and lays back down, propped up slightly by some pillows, and rests me on her front. She is warm and rumpled from sleep, and there is more comfort in that than I was expecting. She pulls the covers back up over us both, leaving my head still sticking out from beneath the blanket.
+
+We linger then in silence long enough that she dozes off once more, and I simply rest on her front. Within my head echoes a blessing.
+
+When, at last, her personal alarm goes off, nudging her awake with a gentle shift in simulated hormones, I have had time to think of what our conversation might be, what our morning and day and future might look like.
+
+For now, though, the important thing for me is to fall back into all of those habits that we have formed. I say the *shema* silently to myself, face buried against my paws, and then I wiggle from her grasp and trundle over to the foot of the bed so that I can make my way down the set of steps made of stacked siddurim to scratch at the door.
+
+Rav follows more sedately and opens the door for me, padding to the kitchen where she can see to coffee and our breakfasts. She murmurs blessings to herself as she goes, while within my head echo my own.
+
+She pulls a mocha ready made from the exchange and laughs as I stand up on my hind legs, forepaws resting against a cabinet, nose twitching as it works overtime — I perfected begging early on — and pours some into a small saucer for me to lap up while she drinks the rest.
+
+Chopped vegetables are retrieved from the cold cabinet and emptied into a metal bowl. A tin of chicken is opened and a quarter of it is scooped on top of the vegetables. Last, two eggs are cracked into a spare measuring cup, followed by a third into her paw where she separates the white from the yolk. The white winds up in the cup while the yolk is added to the dish of veggies and chicken set before me.
+
+I start on eating while she whisks up her eggs and fries them into a scramble to eat with toast.
+
+I am...
+
+I put off the conversation when she asks after how I have been, and instead go to scratch at the front door. She laughs and tells me to wait while she gets ready for the morning Torah service. I bound off as soon as the door is open — at least, as best as I can on these stubby little legs. It is enough to get ahead of her so that I can scratch instead at the door to the shul.
+
+Within my head there echoes a blessing.
+
+"Why on Earth are you so eager, my dear? We still have another hour," she says, pulling open the door carefully so as not to not run over my paws.
+
+"I have...ah, I have been thinking," I say, breathless. My stubby legs and soft body take a good amount of effort to move around when I run. "I want to...ah, to say the *nisim b'chol yom* blessings today."
+
+She stops there on the steps before the synagogue itself, gazing down to me steadily. I can picture her running through the order of the service, picking apart the various prayers and readings and homilies that make up the event. I can picture her running through the fourteen blessings that we speak.
+
+A slow smile grows on her face.
+
+"Very well," she says, ushering me further into the building. "I will tell Gavriel and welcome you to the *bimah* when the time comes."
+
+And so, as we have for every week since my change, Rav and I sit in companionable quiet in the front row of chairs, gathering ourselves, praying in silence, simply dwelling within the space.
+
+At nine thirty, Rav rises from her seat and waves a paw, a gesture instructing the sim to unlock the front doors of the synagogue for the small crowd milling about in front. A smile sits easily on her face, and everyone gets a bow, a clasp of the hand, or a hug, depending on how comfortable each is with physical contact. The room is a chorus of *Shabbat shalom* echoed dozens of times over amid the chatter. Familiar faces stop by and give me some pets or exchange greetings.
+
+I am...
+
+As the clock rolls around to the top of the hour, all find their seats while Rav and Gavriel, our cantor, step up onto the dais and proceed with the service. A story is shared, prayers are had, all sing together *hine mah tov umah na-im shevet achim gam yachad,* how good and how pleasant it is that all may dwell together...
+
+"Today, I have had a request from Rabbi What Right Have I that she be the one to lead us in the blessings for daily miracles," Rav says, and I push myself to my feet on the cushion that is mine, sliding down onto the ground with a quiet grunt so that I can make my way up the two stairs of the *bimah.* "As many of you know, our dear scholar has been exploring...we shall say new ways of experiencing the world."
+
+There is a laugh from the congregation, and, leaning into decades old training in theater, I choose to lean into pride rather than shame, and give a showy little prance along the top step with tail held high
+
+"Now, as I get her all set, I am going to tell you a story.
+
+"Rabbi Eleazar was traveling along the road one day and he came across an exceedingly ugly man." Rav continues, stepping from behind the lectern to crouch down before me. "Which, we know that you are not at *all* ugly, are you?"
+
+I know this story well, and it makes my heart swell to hear her tell it.
+
+"The man said, "Peace be upon you," to which Eleazar said, "How *ugly* this man is! Are all of the people where you come from as ugly as you?""
+
+She gets her paws beneath my chest and belly and lifts me up. Instinctively my four legs splay out to the sides, hunting for purchase.
+
+"The man smiled to the rabbi and said calmly, "I do not know. Perhaps you can go and tell the Artisan who made me: how *ugly* is the vessel you have made.""
+
+As she speaks, she carries me over to the lectern and sets me down gently on its surface. It is tilted back slightly, and slippery besides, so it feels dreadfully precarious, but she stays close enough so that there is no drop behind me, only her solid form.
+
+"Of course, the story goes on from there, with Rabbi Eleazar recognizing that he has done something horribly wrong, the man not accepting his apology until he promises to teach the way to act better, and so on," she says, stroking gently down along my back. "In the way of so many lessons from the Talmud, the teaching may feel a little non sequitur, but I think it applies beautifully: we should be like a reed: soft and supple, bending with the wind and changing with the world; not as hard as an unyielding cedar. Especially here, where we can do so much with these vessels made by the Divine Artisan, where we can look however we wish, we should be flexible and changing and accepting. What Right Have I?"
+
+When I look up to her, she gives an encouraging nod.
+
+I push myself up, stretching a little on my back legs until I can rest my forepaws on the front of the lectern and look out at the blur that is the audience.
+
+And then I begin to chant the blessings for awakening, for vision, for the ability to stretch, for rising to see the new day.
+
+The melodies are familiar from nearly two centuries of hearing them.
+
+Praises for the System in which we live, the gift of motion, for clothing the body, for enthusiasm for life and reawakening.
+
+After each, the rest of those in the synagogue chant, *"Amen."*
+
+I break the order, then and there is a moment of confusion as I offer blessings for being a free person, for being a Jew, for purpose, and for harmony.
+
+Another stolen glance up at Rav shows a smile that tells me of her love for me.
+
+*I am me.*
+
+I circle back to proudly sing at last the blessing I had glossed over. *"Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech ha'olam, she-asani b'tzelem Elohim."*
+
+Praise to you, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who made *me* in the image of God.
+