The rest of the day was largely spent hunting for friends and tallying losses. The Marshans and a few of their assorted partners --- minus Dry Grass --- set up camp in Marsh's study, widened slightly by Pierre, who also held ownership permissions over the sim.
It raised a question that dogged me for a few minutes, cropping up now and again as I got in touch with more of our friends. What happened to objects and sims owned by individuals who had disappeared? If what Serene had said about her up-tree instance held true, the sim that she'd been working on remained. "When an instance quits, all of their items disappear," she explained. "But should an instance crash, that is not considered quitting. They remain in a core dump somewhere. That the sim remains indicates that she did not quit, but the ownership record is now invalid. I will need to file to have it revert to me."
It was sheer luck, then, that Marsh had shared ownership privileges with their partner.
This new study was expanded to include a few more desks and tables. Hanne and I worked at a table, for instance, compiling a list of friends, both mutual and individual. We rolled down over the list friend by friend, getting in touch with them and having small conversations where we were able, trusting in the cone of silence to keep from disturbing others.
For each person we managed to contact, we asked them a set of questions that Sedge and Dry Grass had come up with. Finding out how many of their cocladists had gone missing, as well as any friends or loved ones that were now unreachable. We collected some of that information for ourselves, building a better picture of how our friends group had been impacted, but all were directed to the official survey that had been set up by the Odists.
Truly official, as well. Dry Grass had had her systech privileges restored, as was evidenced by a floppy, felt witch hat she would occasionally summon, a physical token of her official capacity. She had pulled some strings to leave their post pinned to the top of several of the largest central feeds. Responses were already pouring in as more and more people woke to the realization that missing friends and family. While Dry Grass assured us that such had been done in the past, none of us had ever seen such a thing before.
While our data gathering was productive when it came to learning about our own circle of friends, it was a drop in the bucket compared to what the others were accomplishing. Sedge and Dry Grass in particular seemed to be on a roll of information gathering. They had set up their own little side room of other instances just collating data, running them through various perisystem tools, and just generally trying to get a better picture of what had happened.
The picture, as it began to grow, was grim.
While our 14% loss rate was far too high, the fact that the System was on track for a loss rate of 1% was still an enormous amount. On the surface, the number felt quite small, but on a System with 2.3 trillion instances, that meant 23 billion people suddenly wiped from existence. 23 billion people with friends and lovers, or down-tree instances waiting for updates. 23 billion regardless of how early or late they had uploaded.
"23 billion souls," Dry Grass corrected firmly. "They are souls, Reed. I do not care as to your belief of the existence of a soul or not, they are souls. They are people who lived. They are people who died."
"Uh, sorry," I said, shying away from her.
Her shoulders slumped as she wilted. After a moment spent mastering her emotions, she reached out and squeezed my upper arm. "I am sorry, my dear. In The Wind is gone. A Finger Curled is gone. No Longer Myself and End Of Endings are gone, two lines from the Ode itself wiped out entirely. It is difficult for me to not see them missing as anything other than a death."
"Right, I guess I'm just struggling to square that with Marsh being, uh..."
"Gone?"
I nodded.
"I make no assumptions as to them, but for me, if I do not start internalizing the losses within my clade as deaths, I will run the risk of minimizing this loss across the System. Perhaps Marsh is not dead, but if I do not think of In The Wind as dead, then I will be hiding from myself a potential truth."
I winced at the import of her words. I couldn't seem to help it. They bore too much weight, too much force coming from her mouth, from the one who was working the hardest out of all of us.
And so our lives became a world of numbers for a few short hours. Hanne and I fell back into tallying up the losses in our circle of friends, counting lost forks and (thankfully very few) lost clades. Shu was indeed gone, as was one of my friends from way back in those heady days right after I'd been forked from Marsh. Benjamin had been unfailingly polite so long as he was sober. One drink, though, and he picked up a wickedly funny streak, and could string together far more curses than I had imagined possible.
Hanne and I weren't quite as adept at forking as Sedge and Dry Grass, though, or perhaps since they were working on tallying up the losses on all of Lagrange rather than just those within their own group of close friends, they were inured to the intimate reality of all of those losses. What was the loss of a hundred thousand nameless souls to them in the face of one of Hanne's closest friends?
We wound up stepping away from Marsh's sim before long. Even just being there in that emotionally charged room felt like too much.
I nodded and roped her into a hug, letting her rest her head on my shoulder as I did the same on hers. "I know. I'm going through the same with Marsh. Or similar, at least. Hearing the way Dry Grass talked about it, it's hard not to just assume that they're just gone. 'Dead', she said, and as much as I hate it, she was right that not assuming that will just lead to more pain."
I felt her hands tighten against my back, clutching at the fabric there. "Warmth In Fire said similar, both of Shu and End Of Endings," she mumbled hoarsely. "Ey's having a harder time than I am, but in a different way."
((Ask Warmth what this looks like))
"Well, alright," I said after a moment's silence, gently disentangling myself from the embrace. "Let's at least focus on something else for a bit. What sorts of things can we take care of from start to finish that have nothing to do with...all this."
She laughed. "'All this' is a hell of a way to put it." She shook her head as though to dislodge the thought. "But you're right. Uh...well, I've had too much coffee, I think. It's a bit early, but maybe we can make a drink or something? I also wouldn't mind inviting some others over just for some noise, otherwise I'm going to sit and stew up in my head."
"What, am I not enough to distract you from that?"
She snorted. "No. I love you, but you'll just wind up reminding me of it. Any friends you want to bring over? Or cocladists, I'm starting to remember that I love all of your clade, not just you."
"Good to hear," I said, smiling. "After last night, I was afraid you were about to write us all off."
"I may yet," she said, grinning tiredly. "But yeah, sure, feel free to invite them, too. I'll ask around, as well."
