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

156
content/read/053.md
View File

@ -1,155 +1,87 @@
# Sasha --- 2112
# Ioan Bălan --- 2305
Pain woke Sasha. Pain and a rumbling, jittery sensation within her body.
After the assassination, with no one to lead and no reason to remain, the rest of the Odists and their friends left. Dear's pacing wound down. It eventually stopped, shoulders sagging.
The pain coursed through her limbs, seeming to originate from a wellspring at the base of her neck. She remembered a quickly building sense of vertigo, of the whole of her perception growing fuzzy around the edges, and then...nothing.
*"Come on, we should go back."* Then it turned and addressed some others near by, mostly from the same stanza, by the historian's guess. *"Any of you are welcome, too."*
And then this.
It was Ioan, Dear, Serene, and Praiseworthy --- the first line of the stanza and down-tree instance from Dear --- who wound up back at the house. They entered the sim twenty meters from the front door, where Ioan had originally arrived so long ago. Those few days ago. They trudged slowly up to the house.
She levered her eyes open slowly, carefully, and was greeted by an extreme close-up view of a dandelion. A dandelion. More dandelions. Cartoonishly fat bumblebees --- for what bumbler is not cartoonish? --- coursed among them in lazy Lissajous curves. They all avoided her with the polite patience of bees of all ilk.
Dear's partner greeted them at the door, silent. Perhaps Dear had sent ahead a message, for they greeted the group and then stayed out of the way. They disappeared and returned shortly with mugs of coffee.
"The fuck." The half-formed phrase tumbled out from between what felt like half-formed lips.
The four witnesses slumped into the couch. A universal sigh. Dear and Serene leaning against each other, and Dear's partner claimed on a stolen dining-room chair nearby.
She carefully picked herself up off the ground, off the field of endless dandelions. The pain coursing through her body was quickly explained as she turned around. It appeared that she had fallen from a tall barstool. There stood before her a row of them lined neatly before a bar. *The* bar. The one so familiar from countless nights and weekends loitering in the Crown Pub.
"So," they said, finally. "What happened?"
The bar stood alone in the field. No backing wall full of racks of bottles. No walls at all: beyond the bar was more endless field. No floor: the stools sprouted as easily from soil and grass as did the dandelions.
*"One of the conservatives played her hand. She chose protecting the clade in the short term over learning more. She brought along an assassin, and as soon as Qoheleth revealed his reasoning for revealing the Name, the assassin acted and then quit. My guess is that Qoheleth had not forked and will not be heard from again, and that the assassin, was a fork of someone unsuspecting. Someone who will 'mysteriously' experience problems merging back. No culpability for its #tasker or #tracker instance."*
Dandelions.
Its partner frowned. "Ah."
That warm smell of fresh-baked muffins hung thick in the air. The warm air. The warm sun. The warm sky. The warm earth.
Silence fell on the group again.
She rubbed at the back of her neck to ease the pain, then quickly pulled her hand away as though burnt.
Ioan waited for one of those ebbs in the rhythm of the silence before clearing eir throat. "Perhaps it's too soon, but may I ask after everyone's well being? Their thoughts on the matter?"
Hand.
Serene simply shook her head.
Paw.
Praiseworthy shrugged, looking what Ioan thought might be glum, though her gestures and expressions took additional work to decode. Ioan had learned to understand Dear's expressions and movements, but she was another animal, of some form different from Dear and Serene. Black fur, white stripes retreating up along her snout and over her head. Thick tail that looked delightfully soft. Many of the clade matched her more closely than they did Dear. "I'm not surprised, really. Not happy, but not surprised."
Hand.
Ioan turned to Dear. "You alright?"
Paw.
It was a moment in responding before it nodded. *"I am with Praiseworthy. I am not surprised, but not happy. Kind of pissed, actually,"* it said, smiling sardonically. *"That was short-sighted of them, though, because I have a hunch that Qoheleth was right."*
Her body could not seem to make up its mind. Just as the fall seemed to explain the jolts of pain, the quaking in her body seemed to come from the way her form wobbled between states. Waves of skunk-fur/waves of human skin washed across her, gentle stripes moving through the base of human skin/through the base of skunk fur.
""Right"?"
She screamed.
*"About the need to age, to die. About forgetting."*
She screamed and the scream wobbled through different registers with an unnerving electric intensity that set her teeth on edge and made her fur bristle/made her skin crawl.
"Does this have anything to do with you trying to forget The Name?"
The scream did not echo.
Dear shot a glance at its partner, laughed. *"You two get along, I see. Yes, it does. I think I did it, too, unless there is some association I missed. I cannot remember it for the life of me."*
What vasty nothing must produce such anechoic bliss! The silence hurt her ears, deafened her.
"You will have to tell me how you did that, Dear." Serene laughed.
The scream cut short, she stumbled, ran, stumbled again, and kept running. Did not know where she ran. Did not care where she ran. Picked a direction and sprinted. Hoarse breathing echoed within her ears, for where else would it echo?
*"Later, yes. I think Qoheleth was right, though. We need forgetting. We need breeding and change and death."*
Hazardous glances back marked her distance by the shrinking of the lone bar, standing awkwardly amid flowers.
"So how do you feel about the assassination?" Ioan asked.
*And I ran.* Words coursed absurdly through her head. Coursed and squirmed, slick to the touch. *I ran so far away.* Words and music. Notes falling upon her from on high. Words welling up from somewhere deep within her gut.
*"I would prefer that not be the only means of death, of course. Perhaps the primary way should be through...ah, suicide is not the best word, but it is what I mean. Through choice, just like Qoheleth's old name."*
She looked back, saw the bar dwindle, and when she turned around once more, skidded to a halt. For there was the bar again. Obstinately proving its presence through albedo and shadow and solidity. Looked behind her again and saw only empty field.
Life breeds life, but death must now be chosen.
Screamed again.
Ioan nodded.
Deafened again, fell silent.
*"It is as I said. Batty. They are all batty."* It stared at its paws, one of them brushing through Serene's forearm fur. *"It is like some sort of Methuselah syndrome, or reverse Alzheimer's. Instead of being doomed to forget, we are doomed to remember. Doomed to remember everything. We cannot forget, and it all gets to be too much for one mind."*
Reached behind her for that cool draft against her neck, tried to pull back.
"What about exos?"
There was no draft.
*"Exocortices are a fix, but an incomplete one. Do you know why we have them?"*
There was no pulling back.
Ioan and Dear's partner shook their heads, while both Serene and Praiseworthy frowned.
That pain, then: not the shock of falling from the stool, but the shock of sudden disconnection.
*"The origin of the system came from the lost, from the turmoils of the early twenty-second century, though one could perhaps trace roots further back into the twenty-first. Prior to the system, the 'net on Earth required engaging with through another thing called exocortices. Implants along the spine, with tendrils trailing along nerves."*
Fell to her knees and scrambled toward the bar on all fours, huddling against it and staring wide-eyed at the endless plain of dandelions. Heard her breath echo against the wood of the bar. Turned to face it and screamed deliberately, letting the subtle echo of acknowledgement, the presence of something solid, wash over her. Relished it. Screamed obscenities. Cursed the world. Cursed the powers that sent her to this place. Lost. Lost. Lost.
Serene and Praiseworthy both reached up to rub at the backs of their necks.
She could not control her thoughts. The world came at her too fast. An intrasaccadic smear of a world. A gesture at reality.
*"And the lost, those unlucky few, wound up trapped in a dream, mirrored between cerebral cortex and exocortex. They --- we --- were trapped along with all the knowledge that had been cached in those early exos."*
It was days/years/minutes until she was able to calm herself once more. The sun set/never set. The air temperature swung wildly to cold at night/was an unchanging warm that would not permit the passage of time.
"You mean they kept the name to refer to something similar?"
Her mind wandered far.
Dear shrugged. *"I suppose. All that we experienced in that dream also wound up cached in those implants, and it was that cache that helped the engineers on the early system to construct the shared dream that is the system today."*
Days passed.
Ioan ground eir palms against eir slacks. This information, this dump of the past, was doing nothing to quell the anxiety of the previous hour. "Right, okay. How are they only an incomplete fix to forgetting?"
Or not.
*"You are still stuck with the knowledge that they exist and their inventory, yes? That's why I cannot forget **that** the Name exists. I cannot forget my origins or that there is an exo containing them. One which I cannot forget. Not unless I go through the whole shitty process again --- sorry, Serene, it was not pleasant. I could forget that bit of knowledge, but then what? I will have the knowledge that I have an exo that I cannot access pointing to something of dire importance. Can you imagine that feeling of lingering dread being a constant factor in life?"*
She plucked at a dandelion at some point, breathed in the fresh-baked scent of it. Let it fall to the ground.
Ioan shifted, leaning forward to rest eir elbows on eir knees, eir chin in eir hand. Ey sipped eir coffee as ey thought.
She levered herself up onto the stool once more and cheerfully ordered herself a drink from no one. She clawed/scratched at the bar's stained and varnished surface, sobbing. Tears left tracks in fur/slid from her cheeks to the bar top.
Serene slouched against Dear's side, poking its thigh. "I understand what you are saying, Dear, but I do not want to die. I do not want you to die, either."
And always her form shifted and danced. Her tail would sway into being and then it would never have been there. Her skin would sting and prickle from slamming her hand down against the bar and then that skin would be replaced by velvety pads.
Dear's partner, frowned. "Neither do I, fox."
She came to at some point/calmed down enough to think/let her breath slow enough that she was no longer sobbing.
The fennec laughed and shook its head, ears flopping about. *"Trust me, I do not either. I do not think many do. I just think we need death, or something like it, as part of the system. Death. Fear of death. Needs and reasons to survive in the face of an inevitable end."*
Days passed.
""Something like it"?" asked Praiseworthy.
Perhaps.
*"We need a way for an individual to end. We need a way to release those memories. We also need a way to create new individuals, so perhaps they should be related. Qoheleth called it breeding. Indelicate, perhaps. It could just as easily be a way of ending one individual and having them live on as another."*
*If this is a dream and I know it, do I not have control? Can I not make my reality for me?*
The others nodded. Silence once more.
She breathed in to the count of four, held for the count of two, and then breathed herself out on a breath. There, beside her on the next stool, sat her human form/sat her skunk form. Her mind was split. Shared between the two. Neither could move without the other moving. Unison did not describe the perfection of the match.
But at least she was no longer out of focus.
*Was this what the lost were going through?* She brushed her hand/paw through her hair/over her ears. *Or perhaps it is merely a furry thing, primed as we are to have an internal representation so different from our external? Perhaps it is a me thing? Perhaps all are unique.*
"Oh AwDae," she moaned. "Oh fox. How long have you been suffering?"
Days passed.
The sun rose and set with a frightening hum/utter tranquility.
She stood/she stood.
Poetry coursed through her, half remembered/perfectly memorized lines from productions long past. Lines from school, from work. "Since then --- 'tis centuries --- and yet feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horse's heads were toward eternity ---"
It *had* been centuries for her, and yet each felt shorter than the crash to the ground from out of the perilous heights of the embodied world. *Time feels so vast that were it not For an Eternity...*
Time, which beat against the skies. Time, which hemmed her in. Time, which forced words from her mouth/from her muzzle in breathless haste/unwavering slowness. *I fear me this Circumference Engross my Finity --- To His exclusion who prepare By Process of Size For the Stupendous Vision Of his diameters ---*
"Oh fox."
She cried again/cried again. Sat on the ground again/sat on the ground again. Plucked a dandelion/plucked a dandelion. Again/again. Always twice over.
"Sasha!" She spoke aloud.
"The fuck." Half question this time.
"Sasha, it's Debarre," she said. Then: "What the fuck?"
"I'm so sorry. I came as fast as I could. Everything's a fucking mess."
"How long has it been?" she asked herself.
"About sixteen hours."
"Hours?" Hours? What meaning held time? She had lived her whole life --- several such --- on this tiny world.
"Yeah. I had to dump a chunk of my savings into a ticket to get here."
She clawed at the ground in something between frustration and terror that a friend's voice was coming from her mouth/from her muzzle. "And...how are you..."
"A mirror rig." The joyous tone of the words clashed against the tears still flowing freely. "We figured it out. Carter figured it out, I mean. She and AwDae busted everything open. Figured out how to rescue the lost, figured out how everyone *gets* lost in the first place."
She stopped digging at the earth. "AwDae's back?"
"Yes! And the clinic where Cicero is is trying to get him out as well!"
She had to turn toward the bar again to let the shouting echo. The silence was giving her a headache.
Or not. A neck-ache. Something was tearing at the back of the neck/through the fur of her scruff. An ache. A jolt of pain. A ripping. A tearing.
"I'm going to stop mirroring now. This is horrifying," she said to the wood of the bar. She did not know who said the last, Debarre or herself. Was there a difference?
And then, a hand on her shoulder. One of her shoulders. The sensation made her hair/fur stand on end. She turned around, and there was Debarre. Or so she guessed. The grey, default avatar. The figure frowned as he looked between the two of her. Looked at Michelle/looked at Sasha.
"I...what? Sasha?"
She gritted her teeth/bared her teeth. "I do not know either. What to we do now? How do we get out of this...place?"
The shape that promised it was Debarre shrugged. "Can you back out?"
She reached. Felt the draft. Smiled beatifically. She passed the field of dandelions. Passed the setting sun, or perhaps he passed her.
And breathed in the cool air of an implant clinic.
There, beside her, also sitting up from the recliner and pulling off his headband, was, she supposed, Debarre. Short. Soft. Thinning hair. Ecstatic grin.
"Sasha?" The grin picked up an ironic twist. "Or Michelle, I guess. You okay?"
Finally, Dear gave a lopsided smile. *"Perhaps that is my next project."*