update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/embodied-exegesis.md

@@ -1,20 +1,3 @@
-* Uploading
-    * The clinic
-    * List of things that were less pleasant
-    * Orientation (a friend)
-* Getting settled
-    * Infinite cafe
-    * A friend
-* The problems of gender
-    * Forking to change
-    * Trying to be happy (a friend)
-* The solution is more gender
-    * Going back to transitioning
-    * List of things that are more pleasant
-    * A friend
-    
------
-
 I thought it would be different. I thought it would be cleaner, perhaps. Cleaner, or far more grimy, all exposed pipes and puddles of unexplained liquids pooling in dark corners while the brittle lighting of shitty fluorescents flickered. Give me the clean LEDs over that, the well-polished linoleum and stainless steel, doctors with surgical gowns and nurses with fibrous booties strapped over their oh-so-comfortable shoes.
 
 Saskatoon Central Ansible Clinic was none of these. Where one might expect a hospital check-in desk, thick plexiglass separating the clientele from the assistants, there was a row of podiums, each bearing a tablet with a grip-bar beside it, a way to check in using the implants embedded on the middle joints of one's fingers. Where one might expect the cold, hard chairs o f a hospital waiting room, blessed with the thinnest layer of padding, there were instead plush chairs upholstered in linenette and love seats. Where one might expect bare walls, calm paintings and potted plants softened the cream-colored paint further, spider plants stringing trails behind water coolers.
@@ -281,4 +264,26 @@ I grin, making a show of looking her up and down. "Definitely pretty, then," I s
 
 Laughing, she gives a hint of a curtsey. "So, Rena, yes? She/her, yes? Tell me who you are. Tell me what you dream of. Tell me why you are here."
 
-It takes 
+It takes me a moment to piece together what exactly I'm being asked. "I'm a nobody," I say eventually, shrugging. "Parents are nobodies, grandparents were nobodies. I had friends, but they were all on the net and planning to upload someday. I was just the first, I guess."
+
+"And what do you dream of?"
+
+"God, I have no fucking clue."
+
+She laughs. "Cheers to that. Hey, Jesus Croissant. Want to check it out?"
+
+Jesus Croissant is sterile, blank, modern. Here, at last, I see the too-flat planes, the too simple colors, the suspiciously repeating patterns of flecks on the formica counters. It makes me realize just how high quality a sim Old Town Square is. At least the coffee's okay, though croissants are suspiciously absent from their menu.
+
+We continue on down the road, hunting for other Jesus-based coffees and snacks My teaches me how to play with my sensorium, to turn up and down my sense of smell, my sense of fullness and hunger, even, after I get shoved by a passer-by's shoulder, the collision algorithms that govern how close to me others can get to me before bouncing off.
+
+"It is a good place, Lagrange," she says. "People build all of this fantastically weird stuff, they build all of these fantastically weird version of themselves, and they have their fun. They really do! But once they are here and no longer scraping by or living comfortably in their workaday jobs, they settle into their niches of giants or robots or furries or impossibly muscular people." She peeks at me sidelong, an appraising glance. "Or trans girls, yes?"
+
+While there's an invitation to respond, I decide against it, instead focusing on picking out each of the types she had mentioned in the crowd around us. There, a giant robot, standing nearly three meters tall. There, a surfeit of skunks, chatting animatedly. There, a woman who could absolutely, no doubt, break me in half.
+
+We continue on.
+
+We don't find the next Jesus-based coffee shop, but we do agree to meet tomorrow to try again.
+
+-----
+
+