update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/idumea/008.md

@@ -1,10 +1,10 @@
 ## End Of Endings — 2403<br>×<br>Rye — 2409
 
-Ah, my dear readers, my dear friends, my lovely little ones who sit cross-legged on carpet squares and the great big ones who wear their hearts on their sleeves, I am unable to not wax rhapsodic about so lovely a heart as that of The Woman, and while it may sound like I harbor some secret feelings, some hidden affection for her, and while that may indeed be true, for everyone wishes to be blessed by the kindest of smiles, I also feel that I do not have much longer to tell you this story, to finish what I have written from beginning to end, to get to the ending that doubtless you know now is coming, for I am now more words than I am person, I am more sentences than your narrator, and I am more story than I am alive.
+Ah, my dear readers, my dear friends, my lovely little ones who sit cross-legged on carpet squares and the great big ones who wear their hearts on their sleeves, I am unable to do aught else but wax rhapsodic about so lovely a heart as that of The Woman, and while it may sound like I harbor some secret feelings, some hidden affection for her, and while that may indeed be true, for everyone wishes to be blessed by the kindest of smiles, I also feel that I do not have much longer to tell you this story, to finish what I have written from beginning to end, to get to the ending that doubtless you know now is coming, for I am now more words than I am person, I am more sentences than your narrator, and I am more story than I am alive.
 
 I do not have much longer in which I may be able to tell you this story before the ceaseless tangle of words drags me under. I will try. I will try. I will try and try and try, and try and try.
 
-I am very nearly there, too, to the end that you doubtless know is coming. There is only one new face to introduce, one new gently obscured name, and through her, I hope to draw strength, for you have seen already that relying on dialogue makes it easier for me to pin myself to coherency.
+I am very nearly there, too, to the end that you doubtless know is coming. There is only one new face to introduce, one new gently obscured name, and through her, I hope to draw strength, for you have seen already that relying on remembered dialogue makes it easier for me to pin myself to coherency.
 
 -----
 
@@ -20,15 +20,15 @@ My friend Debarre and I gathered every penny, and even then we still had to borr
 
 What I mean to say is that our memory is perfect, that I can still look like that scared, scared woman — a woman who was sometimes a skunk, yes, and who remembered being at times a panther, but still a woman — who first uploaded within a day of her friend Debarre–
 
-And so we were locked into that room together, that hotel room or perhaps repurposed apartment yellowed to sepia by age, drinking tea after tea after tea because we were too nervous to sleep and not allowed to eat any food until just before the procedure, when we would be offered a hearty breakfast so that we would not upload feeling hungry, to that world that did not yet have food. We sat and we drank tea and we held hands and we talked quietly with each other trying to decide who would sit and ache, locked in a hotel room or apartment, and who would sit and ache, locked in some new world of uploaded minds. We sat and we drank tea and we begged and pleaded first for one and then the other, and then we lay down on the two single beds in the dark, facing each other, that first night, and begged and pleaded yet more until, finally, we pulled out the nightstand that sat between them and pushed the beds together so that we could once more hold hands in silence, wondering to ourselves who it was who would be the first, and then, at ten 'til midnight, we lifted the receiver on the ancient telephone...ah, but I am wandering.
+And so we were locked into that room together, that hotel room or perhaps repurposed apartment yellowed to sepia by age, drinking tea after tea after tea because we were too nervous to sleep and not allowed to eat any food until just before the procedure, when we would be offered a hearty breakfast so that we would not upload feeling hungry, to that world that did not yet have food, or at least not satiation. We sat and we drank tea and we held hands and we talked quietly with each other trying to decide who would sit and ache, locked in a hotel room or apartment, and who would sit and ache, locked in some new world of uploaded minds. We sat and we drank tea and we begged and pleaded first for one and then the other, and then we lay down on the two single beds in the dark, facing each other, that first night, and begged and pleaded yet more until, finally, we pulled out the nightstand that sat between them and pushed the beds together so that we could once more hold hands in silence, wondering to ourselves who it was who would be the first, and then, at ten 'til midnight, we lifted the receiver on the ancient telephone...ah, but I am wandering.
 
 Ah, my dear, *dear* readers, you know that I am struggling, I will not apologize any further than I have already. I will focus, and I will tell you about shapes.
 
-What I have meant to tell you, what I have been trying to tell you and failing as waves of words wash over me, is that I remember what it was like to be that shape. I, *too,* can look like Michelle who was Sasha did. I do not choose to do so often — I have not done so in some decades — but I know that I still can, for I just now tried forking into such a shape. The Woman looked like that perhaps one third of the time, yes? 
+What I have meant to tell you, what I have been trying to tell you and failing as waves of words wash over me, is that I remember what it was like to be that shape. I, *too,* can look like Michelle who was Sasha did. I do not choose to do so often — I have not lived so in some decades — but I know that I still can, for I just now tried forking into such a shape. The Woman looked like that perhaps one third of the time, yes? 
 
 Many of those within our clade still look like her, to some extent or another, and one of those, one who came to visit me not a week after I met with The Woman, was The Blue Fairy.
 
-The Blue Fairy did not look *precisely* as Michelle who was Sasha did, of course, and very few of us do, except perhaps some of those in the tenth stanza. For, you see, the sixth stanza, the one from which The Blue Fairy originates, found itself focused keenly on feelings of motherhood. This is not, you must understand, restricted to those feelings of giving birth — though perhaps some linger in that sense — nor of having or raising children — though The Blue Fairy is called 'Ma 2.0' by The Child — but it is a general sense, a broad definition that encompasses the feeling of love that dwell within us and how they apply to the whole of the world.
+The Blue Fairy did not look *precisely* as Michelle who was Sasha did, of course, and very few of us do, except perhaps some of those in the tenth stanza. For, you see, the sixth stanza, the one from which The Blue Fairy originates, found itself focused keenly on feelings of motherhood. This is not, you must understand, restricted to those feelings of giving birth — though perhaps some linger in that sense — nor of having or raising children — though The Blue Fairy is called 'Ma 2.0' by The Child — but it is a general sense, a broad definition that encompasses the feelings of love that dwell within us and how they apply to the whole of the world.
 
 For The Blue Fairy, these feelings of motherhood and motherliness and the love of feeling like a mother were directed towards the System itself, the System as a whole, the System as a marvel of a world into which we are dreamed. She is the System's mother, and it is her baby.
 
@@ -36,21 +36,23 @@ When the System coiled around and began to eat its own tail, when it was attacke
 
 Do you see, now? Lagrange is her child, and she is its mother.
 
-For some years, for some handful of decades, she worked as a systech, as one of those who work in service of our world, finding those who have crashed and unwinding their core dumps, finding those who are struggling and helping to bring them to safety to comfort to happiness to the present moment. She stepped from sim to sim, wonder at the world filling her eyes and her mind, and she found the ways in which it could be better, could be so much better, and she brought those to the attention of those outside our world, those phys-side techs working jobs so similar to her own.
+For some years, for some handful of decades, for nearly a century, she worked as a systech, as one of those who work in service of our world, finding those who have crashed and unwinding their core dumps, finding those who are struggling and helping to bring them to safety to comfort to happiness to the present moment. She stepped from sim to sim, wonder at the world filling her eyes and her mind, and she found the ways in which it could be better, could be so much better, and she brought those to the attention of those outside our world, those phys-side techs working jobs so similar to her own.
 
 One day, however many years ago, definitely more than one hundred but certainly less than two, she grew weary of this last aspect, for when it comes to any relationship between two countries — and do not forget, dear readers, we *long* ago seceded! Seceded from the Sino-Russian Bloc and the Western Federation and the rest of the physical world — there was more bureaucracy than there was forward movement, and The Blue Fairy's baby was wrapped up in tape red and yellow.
 
 And so, she forked. She forked into a new fairy, no longer quite so blue, and together they were all but twins. She promised herself a two-week vacation while her twin took her place, time off to wander sims and drink mochas and fall in love with the world again. Two weeks simply became years, is all, definitely more than one hundred but certainly less than two, and her twin — now with a name of her own — continued on in her stead, and they loved each other for what each had done — The Blue Fairy loved her twin for carrying on in the work, and her twin loved The Blue Fairy for finding ways to love the world.
 
-They loved each other, and then, as has been the theme throughout, the world coiled around and ate itself and a score and a handful of billions of our two-and-change trillion souls did not return, and among them was The Blue Fairy's twin. They loved each other right up until the end, and then The Blue Fairy loved her lost twin alone.
+I do not know why she thought aught else would happen, for Michelle who was Sasha said the same thing, did she not? She said to herself, "Ah, I am so tired, and I feel so broken, and so I will fork the first ten instances of my clade and take a fucking vacation", and she never did return, did she? The Blue Fairy said, "Ah, I am so tired, and so I will fork a new me and take a fucking vacation", and this was the origin of her beloved twin, her beloved twin who carried on in the work, her beloved twin who loved her in turn for finding ways to love the world.
 
-And so here she was, no longer just a cocladist of mine, just a woman who wandered sims and drank mochas and loved the world, but once more a systech, once more a fairy, once more The Blue Fairy.
+They loved each other, and then, as has been the theme throughout this winding story, the world coiled around and ate itself and a score and a handful of billions of our two-and-change trillion souls did not return, and among them was The Blue Fairy's twin. They loved each other right up until the end, and then The Blue Fairy loved her lost twin alone.
+
+And so here she was, no longer just a cocladist of mine, just a woman who wandered sims and drank mochas and loved the world, but once more a systech, once more a fairy. She was once more The Blue Fairy.
 
 And so here she was, *here,* Standing before my door, my second visitor in a week, bowing to me and greeting me with such kindness as I have ever seen from her, whenever we have had cause to meet — not infrequently, for she was also fond of my beloved up-tree.
 
 "Tell me, Dry Grass, how you have been," I said once we were settled around the table in my house, that dining table which so easily expanded to fit all who would join and yet now was small and intimate.
 
-"Oh, well enough, I suppose. I think I am starting to find my away out of that phase where everything feels new about systech stuff. It was easy enough for me to jump right in at first, but so much has changed in the intervening years."
+"Oh, well enough, I suppose. I think I am starting to find my way out of that phase where everything feels new about systech stuff. It was easy enough for me to jump right in at first, but so much has changed in the intervening years."
 
 "I can imagine, yes."
 
@@ -70,11 +72,11 @@ Eventually, she replied: "That is actually part of why I came here, Rye."
 
 "I came to speak with you about End Of Endings."
 
-I sat up straighter. My friends, you will surely understand when I say that The Woman had been on my mind much in the intervening days, in that week between when I last saw her and this lovely afternoon with The Blue Fairy. Her loveliness shined bright in my thoughts, and I still felt blessed — still *feel* blessed! — by each and every one of her smiles and quiet laughs. "Yes, I have spoken with her recently. Warmth and I have both, I mean."
+I sat up straighter. My friends, you will surely understand when I say that The Woman had been on my mind much in the intervening days, in that week between when I last saw her and this lovely afternoon with The Blue Fairy. Her loveliness shined bright in my thoughts, and I still felt blessed — still *feel* blessed! — by each and every one of her smiles and quiet laughs. "Yes, I have spoken with her recently. Warmth and I both have, I mean."
 
 "Yes, she mentioned such to me. She mentioned you two, Motes, Slow Hours, Beholden, No Hesitation, Ever Dream, Rejoice, Farai — a woman with whom she has at times dated — and a few incidental friends she has made in the last month or so. I have been meeting up with each of them to get a better sense of what is happening. You are the last on my list."
 
-I thought this through — and even thinking through it now, I wonder at it. The Blue Fairy gave me her reason — "I am asking you last of all because I think your experience with stories may help me make better sense of everything," she said when I asked why me — and yet even now I linger on this thought that The Woman wove between us all — between all of those that The Blue Fairy mentioned — a gossamer web of connections. She was the strands — perhaps she still remains those strands! — and along those spider-silk-thin lines flow connections built on the blessings she bestowed upon us all. We do not feel stuck, I do not think. We are not bugs in someone absent spider's web. But what are we? Are we the nodes? Are we the sticky radial lines capturing ideas of her, or are we the unsticky spiral that allows us to pick apart our understanding?
+I thought this through — and even thinking through it now, I wonder at it. I wonder and I tremble. The Blue Fairy gave me her reason — "I am asking you last of all because I think your experience with stories may help me make better sense of everything," she said when I asked *why me* — and yet even now I linger on this thought that The Woman wove between us all — between all of those that The Blue Fairy mentioned — a gossamer web of connections. She was the strands — perhaps she still remains those strands! — and along those spider-silk-thin lines flow connections built on the blessings she bestowed upon us all. We do not feel stuck, I do not think. We are not bugs in someone absent spider's web. But what are we? Are we the nodes? Are we the sticky radial lines capturing ideas of her, or are we the unsticky spiral that allows us to pick apart our understanding? I tremble. I wonder.
 
 I spoke then at length with The Blue Fairy, hearing all that she had to say, all that I have told you, dear readers, already, and so much more. So, *so* much more! For The Woman had sat with The Blue Fairy for nearly ten hours, expressing all of this and slowly making for her an argument. 
 
@@ -82,7 +84,7 @@ Her argument was thus: The Woman knew that there was suffering in her as she was
 
 If, then, her suffering was bound up in increasing entropy, in increasing movement, then perhaps there was joy in stillness. Perhaps that is where her un-suffering lay.
 
-Her argument was to set all movement aside and to follow a dream I have already mentioned. Her argument was that she should become an entity that was still that she may dwell within un-suffering, and that she should spend an eternity thus formed.
+Her argument was to set all movement aside and to follow a dream I have already mentioned. Her dream. My dream. Her argument was that she should become an entity that was still that she may dwell within un-suffering, and that she should spend an eternity thus formed.
 
 "So, what do you think?" The Blue Fairy asked when she presented this argument to me. "I have my own thoughts, but before I share them, I would like to hear from you."