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

Epigraph

Browse Source
This commit is contained in:
Madison Scott-Clary
2022-03-17 23:12:03 -07:00
parent 11cb74ae35
commit ae908532a8
58 changed files with 3555 additions and 3551 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

134
content/read/009.md
View File

@ -1,133 +1,103 @@
# RJ Brewster --- 2112
# Ioan Bălan --- 2305
RJ arrived at the theater early, the last few meters of the walk having been spent hastily finishing the carton of Thai. Carton and chopsticks wound up in the compost as ey swiped eir way into the theater.
Ioan\#c1494bf found emself twenty meters in front of a squat, flat house.
"Sorry, Johansson, I'm here."
It was as modern on the outside as it had appeared on the inside: a concrete block, a thick wrap-around patio, bordered by dandelions and covered by cantilevered eaves, floor to ceiling glass for walls. Ey wouldn't be surprised if the far side of the buiding --- ey couldn't see it very well, with the slope of the shortgrass prairie it huddled on --- jutted out at some crazy angle.
The hulking director laughed. "You're here five minutes early, RJ. What on earth are you sorry about?"
Smiling ruefully, ey walked up toward the house. Ey had eir own aesthetic. Ey knew the trappings. Might as well own it.
"What? I-- Oh."
A soft tone, a vibraphone struck with a soft mallet, sounded both inside and outside of the house as soon as ey'd passed the barrier between grass and patio. Ey stood on the concrete, waiting to be either admitted or greeted.
"Lot on your mind, kid?"
A shadow of a person --- human --- peeked out through the glass at em, gave a pleasant wave, and hollered through the glass, "Ioan! Hi. I'll grab Dear."
"Nah, I'm fine. I mean," RJ frowned, squinted. Anything to get emself in the work mindset. "Yeah, sorry. Woke up early and spent a bunch of time researching. Guess my head's still elsewhere, boss."
Before the person could do so, Dear came padding from around the side of the house, looking slightly more collected than it had during the message.
"Well, alright," Johansson rumbled. "So long as you get your head around work by the time we start. Hey. More crew."
*"Ioan,"* it said, smiling and offering a hand --- paw? --- in greeting. Ioan wasn't sure how ey knew when a fox was smiling, but it was definitely a smile. *"Thank you for coming on such short notice. Sorry for the urgent message, I just need to find someone to help out rather soon."*
RJ bustled into the theater and made eir way down to the pit where the mics had been stored. Ey handed them out to the actors who would be wearing them, ticking off the cheat-sheet to align proper mic to correct actor.
Ioan\#c1494bf took the offered hand/paw and bowed. "Of course, Dear." How strange it was to call someone a term of endearment as a name. "May we have a seat? I've just woken up and am still figuring out how to stand."
Ey bounded back up the steps two at a time to the tech booth and set about waking the theater up. Caitlin was already delved in, so it would already be shaking its sleepy head. Ey just had to help it wake up the rest of the way.
Dear grinned and nodded, gesturing cordially with its paw around the side of the building from whence it had come, leading the writer around and through a door in the glass.
RJ exchanged cheery greetings with the lights understudy as ey shrugged out of eir jacket, draping it over the back of the chair. Ey slipped eir hands carefully out of eir gloves. Contacts gleamed from eir digits, freshly polished and clean.
The interior of the house was much as ey had seen, though as they moved through the space where that first message had been recorded (a gallery, Ioan noticed) and deeper into the house, things warmed up a little. The concrete walls were softened by hangings and the furniture unexpectedly plush. None of the firm-cushioned, straight-lined variety ey had expected.
Ey settled into eir chair and delved in to greet the theater. It purred in recognition, brushed up against em, stretched and unlimbered. Thoughts of Cicero and Debarre, of Sasha and the lost left back with eir body, with eir hands resting lightly on the contacts in the cradles, forehead against the headrest.
Fox and writer settled for an L-shaped couch, facing each other across the bend.
The first half of rehearsal went by without trouble. Johansson had apparently highlighted a few areas of concern, so they began with those. From there, the cast has followed his lead, adjusting as needed per their dear leader's suggestions. RJ and Caitlin kept a script running so that they could keep up with the director and stage manager.
After a moment's hesitation, Ioan began, "I must apologize, Dear. I'm not sure that you have quite the right person. I'm not really a detective, wouldn't know the first way of finding the one you spoke of."
When the clock hit eight thirty, Johansson called for a break and informed everyone that they would be running through top to bottom after. Last chance for a full run-through.
Dear shook it's head. *"No, I'm pretty sure you are the right person. My search of the markets was quite specific, and you topped all the lists. I am not really looking for a detective, per se. There's enough of those in the Ode clade. They will suss out the whens and wheres."*
RJ gave the purring theater some reassuring warmth and backed out of the connection, reveling in the snap of eir fingers pulling away from that light magnetic grasp of the cradles. Ey wiped eir hands dry and flexed fingers to keep limber.
"Then what--"
Ey spent the break walking around the theater and stage in one big, looping arc, simply listening. Hearing from the theater's perspective so often, it was easy to get wrapped in the omniscience of it all. Good, too, to hear the way that the ambient sound moved through the room, reflected off of walls and ceiling, died among the baffles. It would all be different with people in the seats, to be sure, but the acoustics of the space were beautiful on their own.
*"There are a few types of people in the world, Ioan,"* the fox said, voice low and calm. Low enough and calm enough to take the sting out of the interruption. *"There are forgers and honers. Most are familiar with those. Forgers build a thing and plow ahead, and honers settle on a thing and perfect it. Artists generally fall into these classes, and they map to two outcomes in particular: prolific and unfruitful artists, respectively.*
Johansson whistled piercingly. Back to work, back to the stage. Back to the booth and back to the contented and satiny-soft embrace of the theater for RJ.
*"But you are not an artist. You write, yes, but that's ancillary to what you do. A side effect. After all, there are some other types of people out there, too. Catalogers, feelers, experiencers."* Dear shrugged. *"For its own reasons, the clade needs-- I need someone to experience this along with us. Someone specifically out-clade There's a lot of history in this, a lot that we've forgotten before uploading, a lot that we're trying to remember. Maybe even some that we're trying to forget. I want you to help figure out the history of this, yes, but I also want you to experience it and tell a coherent story after."*
It was around the end of the first act that RJ started having problems.
"An amanuensis," Ioan said.
When one was delved in, one could always focus hard enough to feel the way their head felt against the headrest, or sense the way that their hands rested within the cradles of the grips. Trickier, sure, when one was as immersive as eir tech required. Bodies weren't a thing in that liminal space. Ey was as much the room as the room was itself. No forehead, no hands. No headrest or grips
Dear brightened, its ears perking. *"Precisely. And what a delightful word, too."*
By the time ey had brought house sound down in time for the curtain, RJ could feel a numbness creeping. A stealing of sensation. A non-feeling flowing slowly over emself from the base of eir neck outwards, stretching out along eir scalp, down eir arms, the non-sensation not-tickling along eir ribs.
Ioan smiled. "That's good, then. Very much more my arena. I'll keep this instance around and keep \#tracker up to date."
Ey had been willing, desperately, to chalk it up to nerves or exhaustion. It had been such a long week.
The fox nodded, then looked up, smiling as the person Ioan had first seen came in with three thick-walled, wide-brimmed mugs of coffee, setting two of them down on the corner of the table near Ioan and the fox. "Ioan, nice to meet you. Heard you were tired," they said, walking off with their own mug.
Thoughts of Cicero, doubtless cradled in some hospital creche: strictly disallowed but nonetheless teasing around the edges of consciousness.
Dear watched them go.
*Tired, yes. Exhausted. Yawns.*
"Your partner?" Ioan asked. A moment of chitchat felt necessary. Ey lifted eir mug carefully. It smelled quite good.
By the time ey couldn't feel the plastic of the headrest or the cradles beneath eir hands, no matter the desperation, ey began to panic.
The fox nodded, picked up it's own mug, and leaned back into the cushions of the couch, slouching. *"Mmhm. Finally decided to explore relationships again,"* it said. *"They accuse me of treating it like an art project"*
*Panic, yes. Just anxiety. Nerves.*
Ioan grinned. "Well, are you a forger or a honer of relationships?"
All the same, it was final dress. Ey would be able to head home and catch up on sleep. Drink some tea. Hot chocolate. Pet the cat. Whatever ey needed.
Dear rolled its eyes, said, *"Touché. I am trying to be a honer, with this one. I gave relationships a miss after...well, some stuff before uploading. For a long while, I forked to create lasting relationships rather than holding any myself. Gets lonely, though. It was like being turned down every time. At least from my-- from this instance's point of view."*
*Need, yes. Baser than want. Imperatives.*
Ioan felt they were getting a little too deep for having just met, so ey steered the conversation along a tangent. "You fork quite often, then?"
By the second curtain, something was desperately wrong.
*"Yes. Dispersionista through and through. Or perhaps profligate tracker. Sometimes I do not have the option to let instances linger."* Something seemed to occur to it, and the fox sat up straighter again. *"Speaking of, do you know much about the Ode clade?"*
Ey hadn't missed any cues yet, but ey couldn't seem to figure out how to work eir 'voice'. That thing that wasn't talking. That subvocalization used to communicate with Caitlin Sarai Johansson anyone. The immersion-mouth to chat to talk to radio for help a non-entity non-thing non-here, gone, leaving em feeling exponentially more cut off from the rest of the theater as time went on.
Ioan shook eir head, sipped eir coffee. It *was* good.
Numb, yes. Yet strangely embodied. Strangely tangible. Strangely localized. Oh god oh god please help please help. The play. Ey had work. Ey had the theater. Ey had the room and the lines and time and space to manage. Ey had a home and the Crown and a cat and Sasha and Debarre.
*"It is an old clade. One of the oldest on the system. Our root instance, Michelle Hadje, uploaded basically as soon as she could, and quickly became one of the loudest voices on the system. She campaigned for more advanced sensoria to be included."*
*Had, yes.*
"I've heard of Michelle." Ioan nodded. "Usually in the context of the founders. You speak of her like she's someone else, though."
It was the muzzle that was the kicker. The muzzle and the tail, which ey felt --- any feeling a beacon in the storm of numbness which had long since enveloped em entire --- with a piercing intensity. Felt, bordering on and then diving straight into pain.
*"Dispersionista habit. We are quite different from each other, by this point. If you get the chance to meet Michelle --- and you may --- you will see the differences."*
*Pull back,* ey begged. Every bit of training begged. Every nerve begged, screamed. *A bug, a glitch, an error. Pull back oh god please pull back.*
"So what is Ode, then? Her old username?"
Ey lifted eir hands --- paws? --- in a coarse, jerking motion which, along with the act of pulling eir head back from the contacts, led to em toppling over. There was no chair to catch em.
*"No, an ode is a poem."* Dear laughed.
And that was when ey missed eir cue.
"Oh! Oh, of course. So Michelle wrote this poem..."
-----
*"No, not actually. Michelle had a friend, a good friend, who wrote the poem."* Dear was speaking more slowly now, sounding less rehearsed. *"When the friend died, Michelle memorized the poem. All of us up-tree instances do our best to keep it memorized as well. Really memorized, too, up in the forefront, up where we think about it, not stored in some exocortex."*
The curtain went down, the lights dimmed, and then, ringing clear, a thin giggle filled the auditorium. The lead laughing at a misstep. A quiet joke to share at the pub later. No harm. Sound was off, right? Curtains would eat the unamplified laugh.
"Is that where your names come from?"
"RJ," Sarai whispered into the silence of the theater's sim. "Stay on cue, bud."
*"Yes. Each of us is named after a line in the poem. I am Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, and my first long-lived fork is Which Offered Heat And Warmth Through Fire. My immediate down-tree fork is Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars."*
No answer, no apology, no acknowledgment that a note had been made. No signal.
Dear splayed its ears, grinning sheepishly, *"It is perhaps not a very good poem. Michelle was...well, she had some experience relating to the...ah, origins of the poem which I shall not get into here, but even she will admit that. The sentiments are nice, but this friend was not a poet. When they died, when they killed themselves, it really tore her up. We all still think of them often."*
"RJ?"
Ioan nodded, once more steering the conversation away from more sensitive topics. "It must be quite long, then."
"What's going on up there?" Johansson's subvocalization rumbled through the director's channel in the sim.
*"One hundred lines divided into ten stanzas. There are only ever ten branches as direct ancestors of Michelle, and each branch only ever has ten long-lived up-tree instances. We may be Dispersionistas, but we are a small clade."*
"Something's wrong, boss, lemme back out and check up on RJ."
"And the poet? Who are they?"
"Hold places," Johansson said aloud to the theater. The open channels from the actors' mics carried a few quiet whispers in response. "Hold on, quiet please."
Dear bristled, then mastered some complex set of emotions Ioan didn't understand. *"That is the Name that we don't share. The information that someone supposedly did share, I mean. Someone of the clade or close enough to it to know."*
Moving with a quickness which belied his bulk, Johansson jogged up to the tech booth and slipped in as quickly as possible to keep sound from leaking out. Sarai was trying to rouse RJ.
Ioan's brow furrowed, startled by the fox's reaction, not to mention the concept of not sharing a name that was clearly important. "I see," ey said into eir coffee, covering eir confusion. "So you'd like me to help in finding this person and act as amanuensis along the way?"
-----
Nodding, Dear held out its paw once more. *"If you would be willing, that is. We would be glad to have you aboard."*
Like a projector bulb's heat burning through celluloid film, the third curtain had signified a drastic change. Slow enough to be observed, faster than ey could hope to avoid. The few tenuous touches on reality that held RJ into eir seat in the tech booth scorched and peeled away, acrid smoke stinging eir eyes. And the numbness spiked.
Ey was already sold, Ioan knew, but all the same, ey took a moment longer to consider the ramifications of the job. Ey couldn't come up with any reason not to.
RJ lay on a tile floor. Dirty. Yellow. Brown specks, dark enough to be black.
Ey nodded, reached out and shook the fox's paw.
The tiles were completely regular, one foot on a side, obviously made of some synthetic material. Harder than linoleum, softer than stone. They were glued to a concrete foundation. No wasting time with grout, each tile butted up against the others to form a grid of thin, black lines showing where the dirt of hundreds of feet had been ground into the remaining seams. Thousands. Millions.
Dear grinned, shook back.
Ey couldn't move, not yet, but ey could see that the world was bounded. There was a thin plastic strip of molding around the edge of a wall. Above that, regular rectangles of blue. A wall.
*"Excellent. I have shared just about all I have to share on the topic for now, though as we get updates, I will pass them on to you."* Dear leaned back into the couch once more, lapped at its coffee. *"For now, stay. Finish your coffee, at least, though feel free to putter around for a while. Or just stay here. We have an apartment on the side of the house. I have already talked with my partner about it."*
-----
Ioan nodded, "Thank you. I think I'll head home in a bit and sync up with myself, then start the research plan. Do you have any suggested avenues I should start down?"
"Something's not right, boss. Ey's totally unresponsive on the line."
*"Of course."* Dear smiled. *"As for research, dig a bit more into the Ode clade for now, probably. When I send you updates, maybe those will lead to different topics."* The smile turned into a sly grin. *"I know you are not a big fan of sensorium messages, but as that is how the clade communicates --- those of us who do, at least --- I regret to say that you will be getting quite a bit more."*
"Pull him, pull him! Hit the panic!"
Caitlin, who had backed out moments before, and Sarai both leaped to RJ's sides and pulled eir hands up from the cradles, rocking em back from the headrest to lean against the back of the chair. All according to training.
Eir body flopped lifelessly against the cheap plastic mesh.
Caitlin slapped the red button on the side of the rig, fingers coming away dusty. Below the desk, drives sparked to life and dumped the last thirty minutes of both sim and brain activity from the user.
"The hell?" Johansson growled, reaching in a thick pair of fingers to press against the side of the sound lead's neck. "He's got a pulse. Check his eyes, Sarai. Caitlin, call. Now."
Shaking, Caitlin pulled her phone from her bag and struggled to unlock. She gave up, swiped to the emergency dialer, called out to emergency services.
"They're rolled back, boss. Bloodshot, too." Sarai tugged back the collar of RJ's shirt, exposing eir exocortex's simple color-coded readout, set at the base of eir neck. "Blue. What the hell..."
"Ey's not jacked in, though," Johansson said. A statement brooking no discussion. "Can't be."
"I think--" Sarai trailed off hoarsely, cleared her throat, tried again. "I mean, do you think ey's lost?"
"Caitlin, what's our status, girl?" Johansson didn't wait for a response, throwing the door to the tech booth wide and shouting out toward the stage, "Cut! Manually shut off your mics and take a seat where you are. *Do not move.* Emergency services will be here soon, and will record what they can."
-----
Lockers.
The blue rectangles were lockers. The first hint was the vent, those five slots a few inches from the bottom of each narrow rectangle, but, as ey lifted eir muzzle from where it lay on the tile floor, ey could clearly see the locks halfway up each door.
Tall, narrow lockers. Blue. Yellow tile floors. Thin tile glued to cool concrete. The scent, the very feel of the place.
AwDae struggled against crashing waves of panic. Struggled to make all of this information fit in eir head. Struggled to make it all fit in with the fact that ey was currently vulpine. A fennec fox dressed in a suit, laying on the floor of the central corridor of eir old high school.
"The hell?"
Ioan gave eir best polite smile.