The next day, while our down-trees continued to work on this lingering project of figuring out what life on Lagrange would look like moving forward, Dry Grass and I both sent forks to meet up to talk over lunch. She let me pick the restaurant, a reconstruction of a reconstruction of a reconstruction of an automat I remembered from phys-side, though it turned out she'd been there some decades prior.

Ah well, such was the danger in trying to find a place to eat with someone who had lived for more than three hundred years, most of that sys-side.

Life on Lagrange seemed to be limping back into something resembling order. The automat, called Horn & Hardart, squatted at the base of a skyscraper in a loose simulacrum of New York City as it had appeared all the way from the early 20th century to...well, likely 2399. Who knew if work had begun again, though given the crowds in the street, the buskers and bustle, I imagined that it would before too long.

The default arrival point was a newly renovated LaGuardia airport, something that was only ever in the planning stages when I had lived there, and transit into the city itself was via bus and subway, both packed with other cladists.

Dry Grass and I sat in a well-tailored cone of silence, letting us talk about in peace.

"Everyone looks so nervous," I observed at one point.

"I imagine many do not trust that the System is up for good, this time," she said. "Though it is not all a negative nervousness. Look."

I followed her gaze to see a young couple looking, yes, nervous, but also very clearly out on a date. Their knuckles were white as they held hands, yes, but they were still holding hands. Their expressions were anxious as they looked around the bus and out the windows, but full of limerence whenever they looked at each other.

She nodded subtly toward a lithe person of indeterminate gender, standing at nearly eight feet tall. They wore a *very* expensive looking suit in subtly different shades of black that nonetheless glittered in rainbow hues whenever the sun caught it. Where not covered by finery, their body seemed to be cobbled together from various species, from a vaguely canine snout to ears that would be home on a mouse, a crest of feathers blossoming from atop their head. Behind them, a thick, crocodilian tail stayed tucked out of the way against one of their legs, curled just above birdlike talons for feet.

"That is Devonian. I do not know if they recognize me or are ignoring me, but we met some time back when I followed a few cocladists to a club. I will leave them be, but look: see how proud they are? See the brightness in their eyes?" she said fondly. I wasn't nearly so adept at reading the expressions of fantastical creatures, but I trusted her. "And look there."

I followed her gaze once more, this time finding it lingering on an old woman. *Beyond* old. She looked ancient, hunched and tired, propping herself up on one of the handrails. Peeking out of her handbag was the tiny snout of some sort of miniature dog. She looked as anxious as the others around me, and yet, as I watched, she dug a hand deep into one of the pockets on her wool coat and fished around for a moment. She came up with what looked to be a small cube of cheese, which she surreptitiously fed to the tiny dog. For that one, short moment, as she cooed down to the animal, the anxiety was washed away and there was nothing but joy on her features.

"This place," she said, leaning back in her seat once more, "is so stupid. It is stupid and weird and full of stupid, weird dreamers like us. It is a miracle that it exists, it is a miracle that it has continued to exist for so long, and it is a miracle that it came back up in so pristine a state. Unwhole, yes, but that stupid, weird vibrancy remains, does it not?"

"I suppose it does," I said. "All the sims are still here, right?"

"All the sims and objects, yes, but so many of the souls. 99%, sure, but that is still more than two trillion, is it not? Friendships, relationships, and clades were broken and changed, many have quit out of despair and many more will, I am sure, and yet many more still exist. New uploads will be ungated soon, and more will come and join us, new clades will blossom. New friendships will be forged. New relationships are already starting, yes?" she asked, grinning and patting my thigh.

I laughed, looking down to my lap and resting my hand atop hers. "I suppose so, yeah."

"We are all anxious, as you say, but we are more than that: we are still here. We are still alive. We will do all that we can to continue living, and those phys-side will see to that."

Once we stepped off the train, still holding hands both out of affection and so as not to lose each other in the crowds, we walked the short distance to the replica Horn & Hardart's, still talking of life on Lagrange. We talked of when we had uploaded, of the first things that we did sys-side, of the origins of the System that Dry Grass's root instance still remembered.

"The 2110s were a horrible mess," she said once we sat down with our cups of shitty coffee and small bowls of clam chowder. It was too thick, too grainy from the flour used to thicken it, and it needed copious amounts of pepper to make it in any way interesting. It was, as far as I could tell, a perfect reproduction. "Governments trying to disappear anyone who knew too much in the worst way possible, which accidentally led to the creation of the System. Turns out, it's a pretty good place to store your undesirables, so most of the Founders were loud, opinionated, politically obnoxious people."

I laughed. "You were loud, opinionated, and politically obnoxious?"

"Do not be silly, Reed. Of course I was," she said primly. "It was our friend that made this place what it was, yes? Ey was the one who is the template for this world, yes? But all the same, it became a cherished place. We uploaded in the System's second year, as soon as we could afford to, and even the System was a mess. Consensual sensoria had yet to be implemented, building and object creation had yet to progress to where it was today, the ability to eat was not added until the fifth year — this is all before systime was even a thing, remember, so this is *very* early — so those who uploaded hungry remained so for years at a time. I loved it all the same."

"You still do, sounds like."

She laughed. "Of course I do! It is more than just a love of life, the System is my baby. It is *our* baby, the Ode clade's. We ushered into being and raised it up to be what it is today. All of this–" She gestured around at the automat, the tables crowded with lines of cladists before the windows bearing the more popular dishes. "–is our baby. The people, the automat, the city, all of those abandoned sims and all of those overcrowded hubs. It belongs to everyone and no one. It belongs to itself."

I listened, rapt, as she grew more animated and eloquent; watched as she sent out an instance to fetch us some of our favorite plates of plain-yet-filling food.

"We all played our part. I dove into tech, Warmth coaxed the System into letting her make weirder and weirder objects and more and more delicious foods, True Name and her stanza guided it as any parent might. Even if her methods came off as unsavory, I believe her — believe Sasha, I mean, who she became — when she says that her goal was only ever the security of our existence.

"I feel like my baby has stumbled. The System stumbled and fell, knocked its head, forgotten some of what it knew. I feel like our existence stumbled, as some group or another got so frustrated as to trip it up. When I dump my energy into all of this work, I am doing my best to nurse it back to health. We all are. I am working the tech angle, the eighth is working the political angle — I think even Sasha has poked her nose in once or twice — even the third stanza is there with us, sitting *shiva* and praying as they will."

We sat back as her ephemeral instance set down a few pot pies and a plate piled high with hash browns before us before quitting. Dry Grass sectioned off a large portion of the hash browns to start dousing it in hot sauce.

"All of this to say that we have stumbled, taken a blow that has left us dazed, but we will do our best to come back from it."

"You're sounding more hopeful than you were last night, at least."

She laughed, fork of heavily spiced potato already on its way to her mouth. "Yes, well, I am not freshly back from a cemetery, am I?"

I nodded, getting a few bites of my own (less heavily spiced) share in. Horn & Hardart's hash browns were quite good, but only while warm.

"You use a lot of family language when you talk," I said once I'd washed the hash browns down with coffee. "Which makes sense from what you've said, of course, but it got me thinking last night about what Marsh was to us. Couldn't decide whether they were a parent or a sibling of some sort."

She nodded, already starting in on her pot pie, breaking open the lid to let the steam escape. "It is not a dynamic that works for everyone. Even within our own clade, it does not make sense in some cases. Motes and Warmth are my little ones, but while A Finger Pointing and Beholden — Motes's guardians — feel like siblings to me, Dear, Rye, and Praiseworthy — Warmth's down-trees — definitely do not. They are friends, Rye especially, perhaps, but little else."

"Yeah, and I guess that's been coloring my feelings on the whole idea of cross-tree merging."

Dry Grass frowned but remained silent as she ate, gesturing for me to continue.

"We've been poking at the possibility of merging the whole clade to...I don't know, actually. Reconstruct, I guess? It wouldn't be Marsh, but if nothing else, maybe it'd be someone who could carry on in their stead."

"Alright," she said once she finished a few bites. "I am glad that you see that it would not be Marsh. What do you think this new person will do? What will you do?"

"We had this idea while laying in bed last night, it's not exactly matured much beyond that," I admitted, laughing. "I don't know, though. Maybe we could at least talk and share memories. They'll feel all the stuff we talked about at the funeral yesterday, right? Maybe they can work out some differences and such. Maybe they'll join the clade. Maybe they'll just quit."

After a moment's thought, she sighed. "Well, I have checked in with my down-tree, and Jonas is losing ground on a request to remove that functionality, so you may well have the chance to play around with this, but do be careful to manage your expectations, my dear. There is much that this offers, but also much at risk."

"You don't think it's dangerous or anything, do you?"

"Much at risk socially, Reed. There is the potential for that friendship and love, yes, but also the potential for pain."

-----
