Ioan Bălan, despite all attempts to keep emself from sinking into the depths of whatever it was studying, always managed to find emself mired in details ey could not hope to escape. They twined and twisted around eir wrists, tripped em up about the ankles, and tugged em ever deeper into the fractal complications of whatever topic ey decided would be the subject of eir next work.
A recent paper ey had completed on an unnerving social breakdown in one of the old clades --- those collection of individuals forked from a single uploaded consciousness --- had garnered em no small amount of notoriety and plenty of credit on the reputation market.
Since the paper had been published and reviewed --- and reviewed and *re-reviewed* --- ey had no shortage of requests for further anthropological work within the system. Ey had grown accustomed to sorting the requests into different bins. Ey had one for requests that were totally out of eir area of expertise (ancient methods of cryptography? In what wild universe would ey be considered any sort of expert on those?), another for serious but truly boring inquiries (really anything related to writing, which was only ancillary to eir work), and one for serious inquiries worth exploring.
This last was divided into roughly two piles, itself: the first was on topics of religion and the second was everything else. The first pile far and away outsized the second, and why, ey could not say.
The name alone was enough to grab Ioan's attention. Was it a meeting of one person's friends? If so, why was it tagged 'religion'? What would they meet about? A fan-club, perhaps? Those still lingered, even in this post-self society.
> Either way, I am part of and entirely the Joseph Chace Friends Meeting. This meeting began on the occasion of my upload into the system as one of the first Quakers (or, at least recorded members).
> You must understand a fact about Quakers: if you are to run a meeting (church, as you might call it), you are going to have committees. That's just a fact of life. Clearness committees to admit new members, committees on faith and worship, etc etc ad nauseum.
>
> It is not a requirement, but as someone who spent their embodied life bounded by the constraints of a Quaker meeting, *not* having those things felt like leaving home.
>
> To that end, and with the lack of other Quakers uploading, I devised a method for creating a meeting of my own. Given your work on the Ode Clade business (well done, by the way!), I thought you might appreciate my attempt at a meeting of one. I understand that you are a busy individual, but if you are able to, I would love to invite you to a meeting for worship. We will discuss more at the time should you accept.
This was not the first religious movement that Ioan had found or been asked to investigate, though it was certainly the oldest. As an historian, ey was well acquainted with the unspoken maxim that, should one wish to be at the center of grand changes, whether in society or in thought, one ought to hang around centers of religion. In the past, ey had followed (with a fork, natch) more than one cult in whatever state of formation.
Ey was greeted by Joseph Chace. *A* Joseph Chace, ey soon realized, for the unassuming building, low-slung and painted drab, seemed to be populated entirely by copies of the same person.
Ioan bowed. The Chaces were a pleasant group and Ioan found emself liking them immediately. The taste of their dress was close to eir own faux-academic garb, all tweed suits and rumpled dress shirts and wire-rimmed glasses. Ioan could easily picture any one of them as a colleague, had ey chosen academia. They were unfailingly kind to the last.
"We're getting the meeting house ready," Chace Epsilon explained. "We could have made it so that it was in a permanently set-up state, but we realized early on the utility of having to arrange chairs, start the coffee to brewing, and unlock the doors. Something about the preparation of the space is as much a part of the experience as actually sitting in silence."
Ioan followed the Chace along a stepping-stone path through shrubbery to the building's gated entrance. "I have noticed that a lot of rituals, if you will pardon the term, have an aspect of opening and closing, whether it's a sentinel and passphrase to enter the space, or even just a shaking of hands at the beginning."
The Chace nodded, beaming. The clade had clearly decided that this academic look should come with a kindly, wrinkled face, and the expression pleased Ioan immensely.
The gate unlocked, Ioan was led into a perfectly square room. Chairs, padded and upright, were arranged in an octagon within that space, truncating the corners to leave room for slow-spinning rattan fans with aged motors and antique lamps. Chaces in varied attire were filing in and sorting themselves into the chairs, talking in obviously well-acquainted clusters.
Ioan attempted to slip into a chair near the back, close to the door, but was guided instead by Epsilon to sit in the center of one of the trapezoids of chairs that made up the octagon.
"There is no 'back of the room'," he explained. "We're all here on the same footing, and I'm here to answer any questions before and after the meeting. You know how this works?"
"I think so. Silence unless you have something to say, right?"
Epsilon nodded, "Yes, but as an observer, I'd like to suggest that you remain in silence for the meeting. You're free to take notes if you'd like."
After the last of the Josephs Chace filed into the room and had taken their seats, one of them --- Prime, Ioan assumed --- stood and spoke. "Welcome, all. Today, we will wait in expectant silence. If you are called to give vocal ministry, please stand and say your name, and when you are done speaking, you may sit down again. Please give time for the meeting to digest any testimony before continuing, should you have anything to add."
And with that, the meeting began. Prime sat down once more and the room fell to silence broken only by breathing and the occasional shuffle of legs being crossed or uncrossed.
Ioan found emself somewhat shocked by the brief introduction followed by total silence. There was no sermon, no reading, no music. No call to the egregore preceded this sudden, overwhelming group awareness, and no words were spoken as, slowly, the room seemed to fall into synchronized breathing and some unseen, unknown, unknowable companionship welled among them.
Ey felt apart, in this meeting of one, despite the twenty-odd individuals sitting in the room. Ey felt alone and individual, and not just for the occasional note ey scribbled on the pad. Ey felt apart, an other in the midst of a group so intimately bound.
The silence was not heavy. It was not oppressive. It simply...was. Ey sat with legs crossed, and recalled previous investigations that required meditation, calling on those reserves to keep emself present and observant, not to mention still.
Perhaps twenty minutes elapsed in silence before one of the Chaces stood.
"Joseph Chace Eta. I was thinking this past week about the idea of simplicity, and how that applies to not just the base mechanics of life, but also the ways in which we interact with each other. Honesty and earnestness sometimes feel outside our reach, but still an honorable goal to strive for."
He sat back down and the silence once more grew.
The meeting continued thus for a little more than an hour, during which only three people spoke. The second two expanded on the idea of simplicity that the first had suggested, refuting small points, adding some of their own.
As a means of interaction, it went beyond conversation. It was not exactly a debate, it was not a presentation or lecture. The members simply stood and stated a thought, and then sat back down to let everyone totally and completely digest what had been said.
It was, Ioan realized, not all that dissimilar from writing letters. One had the chance to chose and compose one's words carefully and then share them out loud, while the others had time to read and digest, simply taking in this information or perhaps formulating a response. It was an epistolary of sorts, a series of statements given as epistles to a congregation, read aloud and taken to heart.
-----
Ioan sat across a long table from Joseph Chace Prime, a cup of cooling coffee next eir notepad. Chace talked, and Ioan listened.
"I was the first of my old meeting to upload. There were only about fifteen of us, and we were all getting old, all struggling to face a world moved on. I had cancer, so it seemed a natural choice to come here and complete what work I had left in me.
"Despite the loose eschatology of the friends, the desire for leaving the world better than when you had entered it, I was still not eager to pass on. So much still to do and see. As an academic, I'm sure you understand."
Ioan smiled and nodded. "Always another project, yes."
"Of course. So I uploaded. It was early on in the history of the system, so it was a painful and gut-wrenching process. I do not know if that has changed." He paused and then laughed at some expression on Ioan's face. "I suppose it hasn't. Either way, when I uploaded, despite regular messages to my old meeting, I felt somehow locked away from my community, something that I had toiled to build from the ground up after leaving my parents.
"To be without a community is a strange feeling. It's not just a feeling of loss, but one of needs and expectations not being met. I always felt like I was missing something, like I had a space inside me that needed filling."
"I have friends here, of course, but nothing quite the same. And no, to preempt your next question, I was not able to find any other Quakers here. We are not Luddites, but it was early on, you understand, so the community was small and largely based around a certain exploratory techiness that doesn't often permit religion."
Ioan sipped at eir coffee and thought for a moment before guessing, "So you forked. You made enough copies of your personality to have your own meeting."
Chace Prime nodded. "It was unintentional at first. I had forked to work on a separate project while I continued on the one I was embedded in, and after a few months, wound up getting in a conversation with my fork about what life had been like before. We reminisced and went our separate ways.
"This continued two or three times before the idea solidified. I continued to fork as needed and talk with my up-tree instances, merging them back into myself only rarely." He sighed, "When you're old and lonely, you'll take any conversation that you can."
Ioan gave this comment the kind silence it seemed to demand.
"There were four of us, three descended from myself but sufficiently changed by their independent experiences so as to start to feel like new people and not just duplicates. It was Beta who suggested we try having a meeting for worship. A joke at first, but it dredged up comforting, communal memories, and so we all agreed to just keep meeting."
Chace laughed. "A few times, I'll admit. I forked for things that probably didn't require it. An interview I promised myself I was too busy to attend. A dinner I didn't want to go to anyway. Little things that didn't need another copy of myself, but that would simply add to the meeting."
He looked thoughtful. "I would say that we agree on more, but that's not quite true. I think the set of things we agree or disagree upon tend to differ from a more heterogeneous meeting. The process of individuation is slippery and ill-defined, but we are starting to experience it in the various shifts of focus and changes of mind.
"We Quakers are perhaps overly fond of the phrase 'the light of God in every one', but that has been a common meditation of mine over the last however many years since we began this experiment. That light is in every person, but when your self is duplicated and remolded into a new individual, does that person count as a new 'one'? We have to accept that the light of God is within them, but is it the same light as its progenitor? Does that light shift and change along with us as our differing experiences lead to individuation?"
Epsilon, who had rejoined them after a conversation with a few other Chaces, piped up. "Once, I was thought that the qualities of that light within each of us didn't matter, but I've since fallen away from that opinion. If the light is meant to guide us in our testimony, and if we accept that our testimony will change with our experience, then that guidance must change as well."
Prime added, "I waffle about whether or not it matters, but the more I understand this new form of community, the more I think that having differing testimonies and paths leads to a fuller experience."
Ioan set eir pen down and finished eir coffee in the silence that followed.
It was Prime who answered. "Up until recently, we've been focused on recalling that sense of community through our meeting of one, just Joseph Chace in communion with himself. I think it might be time to branch out, though, and perhaps open the meeting to others."
"We're all still the Chace clade. We can only become so different from each other. It's time for some fresh ideas, some new life breathed into us. It's time for the community to grow."
And you're sure you don't want to do this in person? None of us have anything against remotes, you know.
> Absolutely sure. I have my reasons, which may well come up during the interview process.
I'll look forward to it, then.
> "I'll"?
Well, we. It's just me at the keyboard, but others are reading along with.
> Does that bother you at all?
That's a good question.
> An interview is a conversation, whether you like it or not, Aaronson ;)
Does that mean we're beginning, then?
> Sure, why not? Does it bother you that others are reading along with? I count twenty-seven tablets and three log files.
I don't suppose it does, no. If I think about it more like being in a group chat with a bunch of other people who are idling, it feels just like you and I having a conversation.
> Do you not sense their eyes on you?
You said that and about half the room immediately looked at me.
> Sorry ;)
It's okay. We're all having a good laugh about it.
> I see my ice-breaker gambit worked perfectly!
Was that what it was?
> Let's go with yes ;)
And does it bother you that there are 27 tablets and 3 log files watching what you say?
> Why would it?
I don't know. I don't want this to feel like an unfair balance or anything. It's not a versus thing, but 30 sets of eyes on one side of the table and one on the other could feel more like scrutiny than a conversation.
> Straight for the heart, eh Aaronson? ;)
What do you mean?
> I fully expected the usual committee-laden kerfuffle, the klatch, the rubbing of elbows and how-are-yous. We are all so good at talking in circles around something! And here you are, calling me 'one'.
Aren't you?
> ;)
Is that one of those things that's a way more complicated question than it seems at first.
> There are very few simple questions, but yes, it is. I'm not singular, but neither am I a plurality.
Can you expand on that?
> *I was of three minds / Like a tree / In which there are three blackbirds.*
Well, so that we're all of one mind, or as close as 27 people and three log files can get, can you break that down in another way?
> Have you ever been of two minds? You, Jae Aaronson, as an individual: have you ever felt pulled in two different directions at once? Perhaps you sat in a committee such as this and were asked to weigh in on an individual or a budget or a single word in F&P?
Of course. Nothing requiring a committee is so straightforward that I don't feel at least a little bit of that.
> Take that moment, that metaphor, and extend it. Through all of my conversations and all of my reading, I sense that there is some challenge in this --- often enjoyable! --- for embodied folks such as yourself. It's the challenge of loosening your sense of self to allow for counterfactuals. There is the you that agrees and the you that disagrees, and you allow the two to participate in a dialog with each other.
And that's something more...I don't know, integral for you?
> 'Integral' implies that there is some part of me that is not that. I am a system of dialogs, borne out through silicon, out of which arises only the faintest analog to a self.
So you don't feel outnumbered because there are, what, umpteen million of you having this conversation with the 27 of us?
> I don't feel outnumbered because this goes way beyond numbers. The dialog-derivative of identity is, shall we say, incompatible ;)
I can't read that emoji or smiley or whatever and don't want to put words in your mouth.
> Please read it as: *I fear me this Circumference / Engross my Finity*. There is a fundamental difference between you --- all twenty-seven of you --- and me, and neither of us can do anything about it but engage in dialog. I am a thing of however many pounds of silicon and you are a thing of so many pounds of flesh, and both of us seek beyond our boundaries *To His exclusion, who prepare / By Process of Size / For the Stupendous Vision / Of his Diameters ---*
So, we're alien, but not so alien went can't talk or, what, search for God?
> A boundary implies an exterior just as well as it defines an interior, Jae. \wA me implies a you, in our dialog, and beyond us lies that which waits in expectant silences.
I see, then. You (you all?) wanted to have this meeting because you feel we share the same path? You feel some kindred with the Friends?
> Please, let us just say that I am singular; I am just a meeting of one. I follow several paths, I feel kindred with many, but I also feel kindred with you. You the Friends and you, Jae Aaronson.
Me specifically?
> Why not? You seem neat ;)
Thanks, I guess! You mostly seem beyond comprehension, to me, if I'm honest.
> That goes both ways.
So, as a meeting of one, you hold meetings for worship?
> I have done so, yes.
And you minister to yourself? Or these other, counterfactual versions of yourself, or whatever? Does that mean you disagree with yourself?
