update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/marsh/004.md

@@ -222,7 +222,7 @@ While I mulled over her focus on comfort and memory, we linked up hands, Tule an
 
 We stepped from the quaint small town sim and directly into warmth and sunlight, into the salt-tang of sea air and the low rush of waves against a beach. We stood atop a stone walkway of sorts, which seemed to run along the edge of a town. On further inspection, it appeared to be a retaining wall of a sort, holding up the town that meandered up a hill to keep it from sliding inexorably down into a bay. 
 
-Between the wall and the water was a sandy beach, partially obscured by intricate and crazed markings in the sand. It took some time of peering at them for me to make out just what they were: it seemed as though, throughout the tail end of New Year's, dozens or hundreds of people had been drawing in the sand using, I assumed, the sticks that were leaned against the wall.
+Between the wall and the water was a sandy beach, partially obscured by intricate and crazed markings in the sand. It took some time of peering at them for me to make out just what they were: it seemed as though, throughout the tail end of New Year's Eve, dozens or hundreds of people had been drawing in the sand using, I assumed, the sticks that were leaned against the wall.
 
 All of the designs seemed to feature the New Year, now that I was able to pick them apart. Visions of fireworks, scratched over mentions of the year, scrawled names of, I guessed, couples who had met up on the beach.
 
@@ -246,11 +246,11 @@ Rush laughed. "Holy shit. This place is amazing."
 
 The street was steep, but, despite the glossy look of the tiles that paved the road, none of us slipped.
 
-We walked past buildings that depicted animals, some that depicted people, some that had words set in porcelain. There were scenes of nature and of cities. Even one that Cress spotted which appeared to be a building in the process of being covered by tiles exactly the same color as the stucco beneath it. The slow shift into square tiles led to a sense of the structure dissolving into pixels; or perhaps voxels.
+We walked past buildings that depicted animals, some that depicted people, some that had words set in porcelain. There were scenes of nature and of cities. Even one that Cress spotted which appeared to be a building in the process of being covered by tiles exactly the same color as the stucco beneath it. The slow shift into square tiles led to a sense of the structure dissolving into pixels, or perhaps voxels.
 
 If the small town sim had been relatively quiet, this one felt all but abandoned. Perhaps all such sims with a singular purpose would be like this today: if your friends are missing, if other versions of you were missing, then an attraction would doubtless lose some of its draw. We passed only a few tilers tramping up the hill with determination, ready to place their colors for the day.
 
-Finally, Dry Grass led us down an alleyway, dim and cool, and gestured to a wall. The scene was of two figures sitting at a bar. Given the scale, it was impossible to make out any detail on the figures, though they seemed to be furries of some sort --- one tan and one black and white. Each had a drink, and before them, a wall of bottle stood, still in the process of being built. Dry Grass stood up on her tiptoes and touched her tile to the edge of a bottle, adding a bright glow to a fledgling bottle of whiskey. 
+Finally, Dry Grass led us down an alleyway, dim and cool, and gestured to a wall. The scene was of two figures sitting at a bar. Given the scale, it was impossible to make out any detail on the figures, though they seemed to be furries of some sort --- one tan and one black and white. Each had a drink, and before them, a wall of bottles stood, still in the process of being built. Dry Grass stood up on her tiptoes and touched her tile to the edge of a bottle, adding a bright glow to a fledgling bottle of whiskey. 
 
 "Here," she said, gesturing us to grab a crate that had been stacked nearby. "All of these are just props to help people reach higher. You can probably add your blues to the edge of the lamp. They are not quite the right color for green lamps, but I do not care."
 
@@ -260,11 +260,11 @@ As she helped Cress, the smallest of them, up onto the crate to place her tile,
 
 Tule nodded, kissed her on the cheek. "For which I'm glad. I've never met anyone more prone to overworking themselves than you."
 
-She laughed. "Yes, yes. The whole of the clade is like that, I can promise you that."
+She laughed. "Yes, yes. The whole of the clade is like this, I can promise you that."
 
 "Are you ready to talk about what you've learned?" I asked. "If you need a bit more time, that's fine, of course."
 
-"I am ready. Thank you for giving me a bit of space." Once Cress had finished setting its tile, we all walked back out into the street, back out where the sun shone down on us. "We have passed one billion reported missing instances." She held her hand up to forestall the comments that were already coming. "That is instances, to be clear, not individuals, and certainly not clades. Many of those who are reported missing were ephemeral; they are one-offs created here and there. The number is high, but I did want to provide that caveat."
+"I am ready. Thank you for giving me a bit of space." Once Cress had finished setting its tile and hopped back down to the ground, we all walked back out into the street, back out where the sun shone down on us. "We have passed one billion reported missing instances." She held her hand up to forestall the comments that were already coming. "That is instances, to be clear, not individuals, and certainly not clades. Many of those who are reported missing were ephemeral; they are one-offs created here and there. The number is high, but I did want to provide that caveat."
 
 "Hanne said that one of her friends, Shu, was missing entirely," I said, once the words had sunk in. "Similar to Marsh, I mean. It wasn't just that she wasn't responding, it's like she was just never there, like the System didn't know about her."
 

writing/post-self/motes/004.md

@@ -120,7 +120,7 @@ The rest of the morning passed in comfort and lazy chatter, but throughout, some
 
 The fifth stanza had begun its life in an apartment building. As many studios and penthouses as were required for one mind split ten ways. Life on Lagrange had progressed as ever, though, and soon the sense and sensation of being a part of the fifth had changed. It began to encompass relationships fleeting and lasting. It housed devotion, invited in friendship. It grew beyond the bounds of just this tenth of a clade to include all of Au Lieu Du Rêve, and some few decades on, the whole of the project decamped from their city-block sized apartment building.
 
-Now, the fifth stanza — along with however many other lovers and friends, coworkers and groupies, up-trees and tracking instances —  occupied a sprawling neighborhood of houses and townhomes, yards and copses of trees, and yes, even a playground. The whole neighborhood abutted an untamed field, a prairie, a meadow laced up with deer trails and footpaths, dotted with yet more copses of trees lining a creek.
+Now, the fifth stanza — along with however many other lovers and friends, coworkers and groupies, up-trees and tracking instances —  occupied a sprawling neighborhood of houses and townhomes, yards and copses of trees, and yes, even a playground. The whole neighborhood crowded against an untamed field, a prairie, a meadow laced up with deer trails and footpaths, dotted with yet more copses of trees lining a creek.
 
 For each of those who lived there, the neighborhood was theirs in some specific way, and for Motes, it was hers to color.
 
@@ -129,3 +129,97 @@ Motes had painted it all hundreds of times.
 She had painted the prairie, painted the neighborhood, painted those who lived there. She had chosen the colors of many of the houses — had even helped paint some by hand until it had gotten too boring. She had chalked up all of the sidewalks — the sim's designer had made it so that colored chalk lines flower behind her automatically as she walked when she so desired — and she so desired — only to fade some hours later. One could always tell where Motes had come and gone.
 
 Thus, when, still sleepy, she trudged out of the ranch-style home she shared with A Finger Pointing and Beholden, colored lines of flowering vines trailed after her bare paws. She guided those vines with her steps or, relishing in a secret pleasure, pretended like they were propelling her forward, pretending that she was a being of growth — that she was a seed, a being of potential — that she was a giant at the head of some toppled beanstalk.
+
+The vines or her feet carried her down through the neighborhood at a contemplative pace, giving her time to think of the conversation she wanted to have before she actually had it. She spoke so often without thinking, letting that be a part of her nature rather than some simple flaw, that to approach something so deliberately as this set her mood from the beginning, and by the time she drifted up one set of steps to the duplex near the far end of the neighborhood, many of her doubts had been set atop well-lit pedestals, and placards beneath each labeled their names, their creators, their provenance.
+
+No one answered the door when she knocked, so she hesitantly pressed the doorbell. This, she knew — for it was the same throughout the neighborhood — was created to send a sensorium ping to the inhabitant.
+
+*Why am I so nervous?* one part of her wondered, and then another answered, *Perhaps because you are worried she will tell you the truth.* Another chimed in, *Is that not the goal? Perhaps–*
+
+She was startled out of her anxious spiral by a gentle ping in return. *"Speck? What is up? I am the ALDR library. Would you like me to cycle the door?"*
+
+Motes nodded. *"Hi Slow Hours. Yes please."*
+
+There was a quiet chime from the door and the letters on the nameplate faded from 'Slow Hours' to 'Au Lieu Du Rêve Library'. This done, there was a quiet click and the door swung lazily open.
+
+Beyond, rather than the comfortable and comfortably her home that Slow Hours kept, there was a well-lit reading room, a solarium of sorts with glass that looked out over some far distant part of the selfsame prairie that the neighborhood abutted. A table, several chairs, and a small collection of far more comfortable recliners huddled in the middle, while beyond, room of shelving stretched into dimness.
+
+And there, already levering herself out of her chair, was Slow Hours. Sis Hours, her big sister. Slowers. Slow, if she was feeling particularly cheeky. Behind her, scattered among the shelves, several more instances of her cocladist were at work, peeking over whenever they thought she was not looking.
+
+"Hi Speck," she said, smiling. "If you are calling me 'Slow Hours' then something must be up."
+
+Motes huffed.
+
+"Come, my dear." Slow Hours rested her hand atop the skunk's head. "Do you want to go sit outside?"
+
+"Yes please," she said, feeling suddenly smaller than usual.
+
+She was a long time in opening up, which seemed to suit her cocladist just fine. She summoned up a blanket and, disregarding the patio furniture that littered the concrete that ringed the solarium as well as the hard-packed dirt trail, picked her way out into the prairie. Holding two of the corners, she threw the blanket out to spread it over the shin-high grass. It seemed to float there for a moment, and for a long moment, neither of them move. Skunk and woman observed this magic carpet in gingham, bending blades and heads of stiff-stalked grass.
+
+When Motes did not move, Slow Hours instead stepped onto the blanket and tramped dutifully around the rim of it, tamping down the grass so that they would not sink so deep into the blanket. That done, she lowered herself to sit cross-legged near the center and patted her lap.
+
+At last, the skunk sighed and stepped onto the blanket, lowering herself to all fours and crawling forward to flop down beside her cocladist, resting her head on her thigh.
+
+"Now," Slow Hours began. "Tell me what is on your mind. Tell me your second greatest joy and your third greatest fear."
+
+Unable to hide a smile, she replied, "You cannot just steal my weirdo questions like that, Slowers."
+
+"Can and will."
+
+She giggled. "Well, okay. My second greatest joy is that you brought a fricking picnic blanket out here because you knew I would just get all frumpy in one of those stupid chairs, and my third greatest fear iiiis..." She trailed off for a moment, thinking. "I am afraid you are going to just tell me this is nothing."
+
+"When have I ever been able to stop myself at "it is nothing", Speck?" Slow Hours tweaked one of the skunk's ears gently. "And if I do say that it is nothing, would that be so bad? You may have spent some time worrying, but is that not also time spent thinking through your emotions? We will still have spoken about *why* it is nothing."
+
+Motes pawed up at her cocladist's hand on her ear. "Well, okay. That is fair. None of us ever seem to be able to shut up."
+
+"You see? You do understand. Now. Tell me what is on your little skunk mind."
+
+"I had a dream last night," she said, beginning slowly. "And I already talked about it with ma and Bee, and I think I sort of understand the ways in which it is wrong. Like, we talked about the fact that it was just a dream, and that it was probably spurred by how much I have been thinking about that sort of thing anyway, and that, since I cannot tell why I started thinking about all of this stuff, what I need to do is to start thinking back and remembering what might have happened that started the thoughts before."
+
+Slow Hours nodded quietly. "Start at the dream, then, and we will talk from there. I am sure that I will infer what you mean by 'this stuff'."
+
+And so she did. 
+
+She delved deep into her memories and pulled out as many details as she could. The System would help her remember anything that would pass before her sensorium, that which she heard or saw, touched or tasted or said aloud, but not any of her thoughts or feelings.
+
+Dreams, however, sat in some liminal space. They were built up of images, yes, and sounds, perhaps even pleasurable or painful touches, but the System did not quite know what to do with this onslaught of imagined input. It allowed her to remember distorted flashes of images with startling perfection, to remember the garbled words overheard without fault, and yet the distortion and garbled nature of each remained. 
+
+So vivid had her nightmare been, though, that Motes had no trouble recalling the emotions and thoughts that had pinned themselves so firmly to the dream. 
+
+She had often wondered if dreams took any time at all, if perhaps there was nothing while she slept and it was instead the act of waking up when the chaotic firings of her non-neurons from all that time she slept crashed and tumbled into some sense made by her newly-waking mind. Perhaps nothing happened while she slept but crude and natural processes, and it was hypnopompia where a cloud became a duck or a bunny.
+
+She was not so sure now. The immediacy of the dream felt too bound to time. Sure, the time spent playing the game was a haze of knowing how games work, of knowing what a speed-run was. That was non-time. That was all bunched up in impressions built from however many hundreds of such games she had played in her long, long life. She could not express whether or not the combat was good because it was neither good combat nor bad, it was just Combat™. It was just an idea.
+
+She was not so sure that dreams were meaningless firings of neurons composed into some semblance of order in the process of waking as she recalled tearfully the way that Michelle had caught her up by the scruff and told her horrible things — such horrible, horrible things — and then bade her drive home the blade to end her own life.
+
+All throughout, Slow Hours listened in silence, letting her talk while brushing her fingers slowly through the thick fur of her mane. Even after she finished speaking, while she lingered a while in those tears, her cocladist simply sat with her in silence, stroking through her fur. It was a comfortable silence. Thoughtful. Patient, with no need of filling.
+
+Once her tears began to slow and she wiped at her nose with a tissue, Slow Hours leaned down to kiss her cheek. "I am sorry, Motes. You deserve better than what your sleeping mind has told you," she said gently. "It sounds as though this false vision of your past self was upset with two things: your explorations around age and your explorations around death, yes?"
+
+Stifling some sniffles, aftershocks of the cry just ended, Motes nodded. "Yeah, though I think more the first," she said, wincing at the muffled sound of her voice through her congestion. It sounded round, somehow, wrong. "That is what I have been thinking about most, anyway, that would have led to a dream like that."
+
+"And you are not sure where these anxieties came from?"
+
+She shook her head. "Nothing has really changed. I have been seeing friends the same amount, I have not heard from anyone who got upset at me, nothing like that. It feels like it just popped into my head and now I have to live with it."
+
+Slow Hours smiled down to her. "You know, A Finger Pointing mentioned that you brought it up to me, actually. She says that you have been talking about it lately. Far more than usual."
+
+"She did? Why?"
+
+"Because she loves you and because I love you. Because we want to see you happy and we notice when you are not."
+
+Motes pushed herself halfway up to sitting so that she could hug around Slow Hours's middle. "Love you too, Slowers," she said, then sat up the rest of the way, wiping her face off more. "I have been talking about it a lot, though, yeah. I talked about it with ma and Bee, and I talked about it with Dry Grass, and also with Sasha. Everyone talked about how some people in the clade got all upset about it."
+
+She nodded. "I have heard mention of the sixth and seventh stanzas, yes, and I thought for some time that the eighth was also quite unhappy, but I believe Sasha when she says that they had not ever really engaged with it specifically."
+
+"Yeah. Dry Grass said that Hammered Silver was all sorts of upset about it, and In Dreams was pretty unhappy early on."
+
+"Have you heard from any of them lately?"
+
+Motes shook her head. "I never really talked to them, even going way back. I did not really need to, and they never talked to me either."
+
+"Much of that was because A Finger Pointing fielded most of their interactions," Slow Hours said. "She is quite protective of you — of all of us — and if she can do something to protect us, she will."
+
+"Sasha said something like that," she said, brow furrowed. "She said that ma had been working behind the scenes to deal with Hammered Silver getting angry about just about everything."
+
+