"Yeah," she said, leaning briefly against him as they walked. "I'm in the market for a new year. Sell me the 2368 model. I've got a wide variety to choose from, so tell me why you decided to live through this one."
Reed scuffed his heel against the pavement of the street. New Year's Eve, and everyone was still inside. Bars: full. Restaurants: packed. There were a few scattered couples or groups around, but they were all walking with purpose. Champagne called. Canapes. Crudites.
And here they were, Reed and Hanne, arm in arm, strolling leisurely down the street, heedless of the passersby, to celebrate the last day of 2368, systime 244+365.
"No clue. It's been a long, long time since I've had any reason to pay attention to the world outside. I imagine it looks just as confusing as it anyways has."
"Well, okay, fair enough. You've been here longer than I have."
Reed stumbled to the side, laughing. Their own champagne from earlier added a pleasant freedom of movement he only ever noticed at two drinks. Any more and he became too loose and had a hard time staying upright. Any less and he didn't notice that any freedom was lacking.
"What? Uh..." He hunted down a dictionary on the exchange, prowled through it. "Oh. Saccharine, maybe? I don't know. Maudlin still kind of works, doesn't it?"
Champagne tinted evenings fade, as they do, into brandy-colored nights. Amber nights and fireplaces for the hell of it, Reed and Hanne settling in for a little bit of warmth for that last hour, not quite decadence and a ways off from opulence, but still a plush couch and a fire and snifters slightly too full of liquor.
They shared their warmth and they continued to talk, talking of the year past, of years past beyond that, and of however many they decided would lay ahead of them. A hundred? Two hundred? Five years? Reed argued passionately for five more years of life before he'd quit, then laughed, changed his mind, and said he'd never die. Hanne said she would live for precisely two hundred before quitting her instance and disappearing from Lagrange. She would fork at a century and never speak to that version of her again, that exact duplicate, and should that instance decide to live on past two centuries, so be it, but she'd decided her expiration.
"Of course. Can you imagine six score years with someone? Absolutely miserable." She rested her head on his shoulder and shrugged. "We're a ways off from that, I think I still like you now."
"But he's your down-tree instance! You're patterned after him. You talk every year *at least* once, right? You'll talk to him later tonight, right? You have for the last hundred."
"No, probably not. If I hear from him directly, anything more than just a ping, I'll know something's gone horribly wrong." He shrugged --- carefully, what with her head resting on their shoulder. "Like I say, it's a one-way relationship. All I do is live my own life, right? I stay in touch with the rest of the clade to greater or lesser extent, but Marsh has his own life."
"Right. We all fork, we all merge back down to whoever our down-tree instance is, and since I was forked from him, I merge down directly. He gets all our lives, one year at a time, but we don't really get anything in return."
"Just...him. How miserable he has to be, right? He lives his life doing whatever, spending his whole year remembering the previous year from, what, five instances?"
"Six. Me, Lily, Cress, Rush, Sedge, and Tule."
"That's another thing you could do: be a little less weird."
"But I was saying he has to be miserable. He chills out in his house and spends his days remembering yours, you and your cocladists, and just living vicariously through you all."
"That's not all he does. He sings. He's got Vos and Pierre, right? He spends time with his partners. He goes to Vos's plays. He has friends over. He sings a *lot*. He cooks--"
"Is he as bad a cook as you?"
"Oh, worse, according to Tule's girlfriend. Truly terrible."
She laughed.
"He has a full and fulfilling life, is what I'm saying. He's happy, it's just that his happiness doesn't include communication with his up-tree instances."
"Why not?"
Reed yawned, slouched down further on the couch along with Hanne. "He very specifically wants us to live our own lives. He doesn't want us to just be versions of him. He can make all of those he wants for his little tasks. He specifically wants us to be something other than what he is so that he can experience that on his own terms."
"Don't see how that's any different," she mumbled. Sleep threatened, even with some time left before midnight. "You all merging down like that is just doing the same thing in reverse, You're making him a version of you all, even if you're not just a version of him."
Reed turned that thought over in his head, held it at arm length, let the light of the fire shine through the fog of champagne and brandy onto it to admire just how strangely it was shaped. "Well, huh."
He scooted up onto the couch, himself, sitting cross-legged to face her. "It's okay. It's not wrong, even, I just don't think it's wholly right, either. It's a matter of intent. Our intent is to live our own lives to the fullest, and it's his intent to let us do so and yet still be able to experience that at one layer of remove. We've been doing it for a century, and it's worked out well enough since then. If all this--" he waved around the room, feeling the gentle spin of drunkenness follow the movement, "--is just a dream, if we're all doing our best to dream in unison with each other, then I think intent may be all that we have, right? However may billion or trillion people have uploaded are all trying to dream the same dream together, all mixed up and poured into the same System, we have to form what meanings we may on our own."
Reed started to nod, then stiffened as they felt first one, then another set of memories crash down onto him. "*Fuck.* One of these...days I'll convince...them to give me some warning...sec..."
He closed his eyes to turn down one of his senses, setting the sweet-smelling glass of brandy aside to rid himself of another as best he could. He sat and spent a moment processing, savoring the memories. Rush had forked and quit first. They'd split off a new copy of themself then the original had quit. On doing so, all the memories they'd formed over the last year fell down onto Reed, ready to be remembered like some forgotten word on the tip of his tongue: all he needed to do was actually remember. Next had come Sedge. Clearly, Tule had already done so, forking and merging back down into Sedge so that he could fork and merge down into Reed. Three sets of memories --- two from his direct up-tree instances and one from a second-degree up-tree instance --- rested on his mind, ready for integration.
There would be time for full perusal and remembering later. It was rapidly approaching midnight, and he needed to get the memories sorted into his own, interleaved and zippered together into as cohesive a whole as he could manage, all conflicts addressed (though with as separate as their lives had been until then, there was thankfully quite little in the way of conflicting memories), so that, shortly before midnight, he could fork and then quit, himself, letting that new copy of himself live out the next year with Hanne, with all their joys and sorrows, while the original instance quit and let all those memories --- those of Rush, Sedge, Tule, and himself --- fall to Marsh to process, savor, and treasure for himself.
23:58, and he opened his eyes and smiled. "Well, seems like it's been a pleasant enough year for everyone involved, though I'll deal with all the rest of that later."
He nodded, willed away the drunkenness, took a sip of water, and, with a rush of intent, brought into being beside them a new instance of himself. Exactly the same. *Precisely*. Had such a thing any meaning to an upload, they would be the same down to the atomic level, to the subatomic. All of the memories, all of the personality, all of the history.
For a fraction of a second, at least. From there, they began to diverge, each remembering things differently. The Reed that still sat on the couch saw Hanne from *this* angle, and yet the one that stood beside the couch saw her from that. The one that sat on the couch felt the fire on his cheek, the one standing felt it on his back.
"Right, sorry. Still, uh...still fifteen minutes." She grumbled and rubbed at her face. "Sorry if that came off as rude. I guess it's just outside my understanding."
He scooted up onto the couch, himself, sitting cross-legged to face her. "It's okay. It's not wrong, come to think of it, I just don't think it's wholly right, either, you know? It's more a matter of intent. Our intent is to live our own lives doing as we will rather than as he would, and it's his intent to let us do so --- and by not interfering, even with communication, *force* us to do so --- and yet still be able to experience that almost like a dream. He forked us off a century ago, me, Lily, and Cressm and we've been doing it for the last century, and it's worked out well enough since then. If all this--" he waved around the room, feeling the gentle spin of drunkenness follow the movement, "--is just a dream, if we're all doing our best to dream in unison with each other, then I think intent may be all that we have, right? However may billion or trillion people have uploaded are all trying to dream the same dream together, all mixed up and poured into the same System, we have to form what meanings we may on our own."
Reed started to nod, willed away the drunkenness, then stiffened as he felt first one, then another set of memories crash down onto him. "*Fuck.* One of these...days I'll convince...them to give me some warning...sec..."
He closed his eyes to turn down one of his senses, taking one more sip of the sweet-smelling brandy before setting it aside to rid himself of another two as best he could. He sat and spent a moment processing, savoring the memories. Rush had forked and quit first. They'd split off a new copy of themself then the original had quit. On doing so, all the memories they'd formed over the last year fell down onto Reed, ready to be remembered like some forgotten word on the tip of their tongue: all he needed to do was actually remember. Next had come Sedge. Clearly, Tule had already done so, forking and merging back down into Sedge so that he could fork and merge down into Reed. Three sets of memories --- two from his direct up-tree instances and one from a second-degree up-tree instance --- rested on his mind, ready for integration.
There would be time for full perusal and remembering later. It was rapidly approaching midnight, and he needed to get the memories sorted into his own, interleaved and zippered together into as cohesive a whole as he could manage, all conflicts addressed (though with as separate as their lives had been until then, there was thankfully quite little in the way of conflicting memories), so that, shortly before midnight, he could fork and then quit, himself, letting that new copy of himself live out the next year with Hanne, with all their joys and sorrows, while the original instance quit and let all those memories --- those of Rush, Sedge, Tule, and himself --- fall to Marsh to process, savor, and treasure for himself.
He nodded, took a few long gulps of water, and, with a press of will, brought into being beside them a new instance of himself. Exactly the same. *Exactly*. Had such a thing any meaning to the uploaded consciousness, they would be the same down to the atomic level, to the subatomic. All of the memories, all of the personality, all of the love and hate and past that made them *them*.
For a fraction of a second, at least. From there, they began to diverge, each remembering things differently. The Reed that still sat on the couch saw Hanne from *this* angle, and yet the one that stood beside the couch saw her from that. The one that sat on the couch felt the fire on his cheek, the one standing felt it on his back.
He held up a finger and closed his eyes. Once more, they thought to himself, *I'm ready to quit*, then then willed that to be reality. Rather than the sudden nothingness that should have followed, he felt the System resist. He felt an elastic sensation that he'd never felt before. There was a barrier between him and the ability to quiet. He felt it, tested it, probed and explored. It was undeniably present, and though he sensed that they could probably press through it if he desired, it was as though Lagrange desperately did not want him to quit. It didn't want the Reed of now to leave the System.
"You can't?" Hanne tilted her head, then leaned forward to take one of his hands in her own. "I mean, it's okay if you don't want to. I don't think Marsh will mind if you're a few minutes late. Hell, you can even send him a message saying you don't want to this year. I think he'll--"
"No, Hanne," he said, carefully slipping his hand free so that he could stand. "I mean I can't. I'm not able to. It's impossible. Or possible, but-- wait, hold on."
It had been more than a decade since he'd done so, but if ever there was a reason to do so, this was it. There were very few reasons that the System would try to stop an instance for quitting and one of them, well, no-- It had been more than a decade since he'd broken the communication embargo, but ey sent Marsh a gentle ping.
All the ping was was a gentle nudge against the recipient's sensorium, a sense that someone was looking for them, was seeking them out, was just checking if they were free, if they were even there. From the sender's side, it felt like a gentle touch, a brush of some more metaphorical finger against the symbolic shoulder of the recipient, a reassurance that they were indeed there.
But there was nothing. Reed felt nothing. No sense of Marsh. Attempting to send a sensorium ping to someone that didn't exist just felt like daydreaming. It felt like a silly, pointless imagining, as though one was imagining that they could touch God on the shoulder or shake hands with the devil.
*My place,* he sent back, followed by his address. He repeated the message to Lily and, on a whim, his own up-tree instances, Rush, Sedge, and Tule.
00:04.
Cress arrived almost immediately along with Tule --- they shared a partner, so it made sense they'd be together for the evening --- leading Hanne to start back on the couch. "Reed," she said, voice low. "What is--"
Lily arrived next, already rushing forward to grab Reed's shoulder. "You can't either?" she said, voice full of panic.
Before he could answer, Sedge and Rush arrived. The living room had become quite crowded, all instances of the Marsh clade clamoring over each other to talk to Reed, the first long-lived fork from Marsh.
"Reed!" Hanne shouted, standing and stamping her foot. Quiet fell in the room. She spoke carefully, and he could hear anger just beneath that tone. "What happened?"
The rest of the clade looked to him as well, and he quailed under so many gazes. "I can't quit. I can't merge down. I can't reach Marsh. He--" his voice gave out and he had to take a sip of water. "He's not on Lagrange, as far as I can tell."
Silence fell thick across the room. The clade --- Marsh's clade --- stared, wide-eyed. Their expressions ranged for unsure to terrified. He couldn't even begin to imagine what expression showed on his face.
"Okay, no, hold on," Hanne said, shaking her head and waving her hand. She appeared to have willed drunkenness away much as he had, as her voice was clear, holding more frustration than the panic he felt. "Did he quit? He couldn't have, right? You just talked to him earlier today."
He nodded.
"And he said nothing about quitting?"
"Nothing."
Hanne glanced around the room, singling out Marsh's other two immediate up-tree instances, Cress and Lily. Both shook their heads.
"I was just talking to him about an hour ago, actually. He and Vos were wrapping up the first part of the night's celebration and they were going to--"
"Vos!" Reed shouted. "Shit, sorry Lily."
It took a minute for Vos to respond to Reed's ping. *Reed? It's been a bit. What's up?*
*Is Marsh there?* he sent back.
*I don't know. I figured he was in the study waiting on you. It's been a bit and I just made us drinks, but he's not in there now. Is something wrong?*
*Can you ping him?*
There was a short pause, followed by a sensorium glimpse of a familiar room, that study from so long ago, every flat surface that wasn't the floor covered in stacks of unread books. Empty.
*What's happening?* Vos sent. There was an edge of caution to her voice, the sound of a thin barrier keeping worry at bay.
*Pierre?*
*One second.* There was a pause, and then, quickly, *Wait, can we just come over? What's your address?*
He messaged over the address, and a few seconds later, Fenne Vos and Pierre LaFontaine arrived holding hands, leading to another yelp from Hanne.
"Vos! Hi," she said, preempting any of Marsh's up-tree instances. "Do you know where Marsh is?"
Some small part of Reed looked on in admiration. Hanne had kept much of the panic that was coursing through him and his cocladists out of her voice. He could feel a shout building within him, and he knew from past experiences with Vos and Pierre that that would only make things worse.
"We didn't see him around," Vos answered, and that barrier between caution and worry seemed to be giving way. "Why? If you're all here, I'm guessing something happened?"
"Have you been able to ping him?"
Both Vos and Pierre shook their heads.
The sight of Cress and Tule bowing their heads to whisper to each other caught Reed's eye, and a moment later their partner, a stocky woman with curly black hair, appeared between them, looking as though she'd come straight from a party, herself.
"Stop!" Hanne said, then laughed nervously at the silence that followed. She gestured absentmindedly with a hand, pressing the bounds of the sim outward to expand the room. It had started getting more crowded. "You're doing it again, Reed."
"What?" He tamped down indignation. "Sorry, Hanne, there's a lot going on."
"Right, I get that, but can you start at the beginning for those of us outside the clade? What did you mean you don't think he's on Lagrange?"
At this, both Vos and Pierre took a half-step back, looking startled.
00:11
Reed spent a moment composing himself. He stood up straighter, brushed his hands down over his shirt, and nodded. "Right. I'm sorry, love. When midnight hit, I forked and tried to quit as usual. I couldn't, though. The System wouldn't let me."
Cress and Tule's partner, I Remember The Rattle Of Dry Grass of the Ode clade, stood up stock straight, all grogginess from the party fleeing her features.
"That's only supposed to happen when quitting would mean the loss of too much memory, though. The root instance can barely quit at all in the older clades--" Dry Grass winced. Reed did his best to ignore it. "--because the System really doesn't like losing a life if it won't be merged down into a down-tree instance."
"So, you couldn't quit because..." Hanne said, urging him on.
"Well, I imagine the same is true for anyone with lots of memory inside them. If there's no one to merge down into, it just looks like...like..."
"Like death," Dry Grass said darkly. "It looks like death. You could not quit because, to the System, you and all of your memories would die. That is what it felt like, is it not? It felt like you could not possibly quit without pushing the weight of the world uphill?"
Reed frowned. "Perhaps not all that, but it certainly felt like I was trying to push against something really hard. It didn't feel like it was impossible like anything else the System would prohibit, it just felt like I was being forced away from that option."
"So is he...is Marsh dead?" Pierre whispered, his own voice clouded by tears. Vos towered over him --- over all of them, really --- and had always seemed as though she could weather a storm better than any stone, but now, both looked suddenly frail, fragile in the face of the loss they were all talking around.
"He's not on the System," Reed and Dry Grass echoed in unison.
"How can you be sure, though?" Hanne asked. "You can't merge down, sure, and you can't ping, but could he just be in some locked down sim or a privacy cone or something? Can those even block merges?"
Lily shook her head. "Not that I know of, no. I don't think anything blocks a merge."
"Nothing blocks merges, correct," Dry Grass said. "That would leave potentially much in the way of memory lingering with nowhere to go, and the System does not work that way."
Slowly, all within the room had begun to face her rather than Reed, at which he breathed a silent sigh of relief. That he was the oldest fork of Marsh's didn't necessarily give him any more of the information that they all so desperately craved.
"How do you know, love?" Tule was asking.
"I worked as a sys-side System tech."
Cress laughed. It sounded forced. "And you never thought to tell us?"
"This was before you were born, my dear. Before Marsh's parents were born, even. It was a long time ago, and I have since moved on."
She frowned down to her feet as she thought. "It used to be that there were rotated audit logs for events like forking and quitting. I do not know if those are kept any longer, though, given how large they would get in a very short amount of time. Perhaps?"
Dry Grass spread her hands helplessly. "I do not know. Again, it has been two centuries since I worked as a System tech. The technology has changed much. I would need access. I would need time to remember. Time to research."
Dry Grass bowed once more, forked, and the fork stepped from the sim to, ey supposed, go lose herself in the perisystem architecture, hunting down what information she could. They could only hope that she still had the permissions to find what she needed.
"Hey, uh," Sedge said into the uncomfortable silence that fell once more. "Has anyone checked the time?"
Everyone tilted their heads almost in unison. It was more a habit than anything, not a required motion, but the habit that Marsh had formed so many years ago had stuck with all of the Marshans throughout their own lives.
