<p>One by one, the other Marshans step away from my and Hanne’s sim until it’s just the two of us, the fire crackling, the weight of the evening hanging over, between us. We stand in silence for a few long moments before I stumble back over to the couch and fall heavily into the cushions. I bury my face in my hands and only then let the grief take me.</p>
<p>Hanne sits beside me, gets her arm around my back. She rests her head on my shoulder, letting the wave of emotion overcome me. At first, she asks if I’m alright, then she whispers a few “I’m sure it’ll work out”s and “it’s going to be okay”s before eventually just sitting with me in silence.</p>
<p>“This is really fucking weird,” I say once I’m able to speak again. The sound of speech echoes strangely in my head, muffled in that post-cry mess. “I don’t even know who I’m crying for. It’s not like they’re a parent, I came from them, but they aren’t me, either.”</p>
<p>“Still,” she says, leaning over to kiss my cheek. It feels too hot, too intense a sensation, but I feel calmness radiate from that spot all the same. “If nothing else, you can lay down in the dark and give your poor eyes a break. Plus, <em>I</em> need to sleep, at least.”</p>
<p>How can I stand, knowing as I do that the clade had become unmoored? How can I think of sleep when there might be some remnant of Marsh somewhere in the wires? Some ghost of them in the machine that was the System? If this System is a dream, as Dry Grass and the rest of her clade had promised the world, then oughtn’t there be some wisp of emh of memory from which deeper archives could be dredged? Even a Marsh from decades back would still be a Marsh worth bringing back.</p>
<p>I sway for a moment, feeling reality shift unsteadily beneath me. Once I straighten up, I follow Hanne off to our bedroom. We’d spent the previous night, as we often did, sleeping in two separate beds — I always get too warm sleeping next to someone — but any grounding force feels welcome now, so, with a gesture, the two beds slide together, merging seamlessly into one.</p>
<p>A hollow feeling bubbles up within me. The two beds merging into one was an image of something now well beyond the Marsh clade. I’m thankful I’ve already cried myself dry.</p>
<p>The lights dim to near darkness and the temperature drops a few degrees as me and Hanne strip and settle beneath the covers, her arms snug around me.</p>
<p>“I love you, Reed,” she mumbles against the back of my neck. “I’m sorry I got so stressed before, but I love you. You know that, right?”</p>
<p>I slouch back against her. “I know. I love you too.”</p>
<p>As expected, sleep does not come. Exhaustion pulls at me, exerting its own gravity, but too many emotions crowd it out. Too many emotions and too many thoughts. I spend a few minutes chiding myself — shouldn’t I sleep, if only to be more refreshed for the next day? — before giving in and letting my mind circle around each of those emotions, each of those thoughts.</p>
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<p>There’s the faintest brush against my sensorium. Vos.</p>
<p><em>“How’re you two holding up?”</em> I send.</p>
<p><em>“I imagine not.”</em> After a moment, I add, <em>“Do you have any more information?”</em></p>
<p>The faintest sense of a shake of the head before Vos says, <em>“Nothing. They were here, then they weren’t. There’s no trace. It’s almost as thought they never existed. Pierre fell asleep a bit ago. I think he wore himself out trying to reach them.”</em></p>
<p><em>“We wind up in feedback loops a little too easily.”</em> I stifle a snort of laughter. Hanne mumbles something incoherent against my neck in her sleep. <em>“It drives Hanne nuts. That’s why she was yelling about me doing it again.”</em></p>
<p><em>“Oh, trust me, Marsh winds up in–“</em> The message stops abruptly, and I find myself holding my breath, checking the time several times in a row, wary of further jumps. A few seconds later, Vos continues, voice shaky. <em>“They, uh…they</em> wound <em>up in their own feedback loops.”</em></p>
<p>I bury my face against the pillow, take long, slow breaths, willing myself to make as little noise as possible so as not to wake Hanne. How can I lay there, knowing as I do that Marsh was gone? How can I speak to Vos, knowing that I should be doing something, not crying in bed, accepting a fate that made no sense? Is it just some hopeless part of me that had accepted Marsh’s absence? Oughtn’t I be striving even now to find some way to get them back?</p>
<p><em>I’m really struggling,</em> I send back, realizing after that it’s been nearly ten minutes of silence since Vos messaged last. <em>I’m laying here in the dark like a fucking idiot instead of doing literally anything to figure this out.</em></p>
<p>Her reply is gentle. <em>So are we, Reed. Just laying in bed, staring at nothing. I don’t know how to make that…okay in my head, but it’s all I’ve got.</em></p>
<p><em>How’s Pierre doing, then?</em></p>
<p><em>Not well.</em></p>
<p><em>He seemed like it hit him really hard, yeah.</em></p>
<p>A pause, and then she sends, quieter than before, <em>I don’t want to say this is hitting any one of us harder than the other, but…well, we care for him. That was our dynamic, I mean. He’s young and full of emotions, so we occasionally fall into that parent role. It hit him hard, and so he needs care, but…</em></p>
<p><em>But it’s also hitting you hard?</em></p>
<p><em>Yeah.</em></p>
<p><em>Pass on my love, will you?</em> I send. </p>
<p>The sense of a sniffle from the other end of the message. The sense of a nod.</p>
<p>The message stops.</p>
<p>I lay in bed, then, thinking about Marsh. Thinking about all that I knew of what they’d become since I was last them, however long ago that was. We’d seen each other a handful of times at this event or that gathering, and we’d talked a few times over messages a few more, but he was always distant, always held at arms length.</p>
<p>It was both our arms, I know that. They kept their life separate from mine, just as I kept mine separate from theirs. It was ever our arrangement that all of their forks would live out their own individual lives, merging down as the year ticked over.</p>
<p>They’d laugh whenever it came up, saying, “So I’m greedy. Sue me.”</p>
<p>We’d all laugh, too. It wasn’t really greed, that desire for our memories in a way that we could never get in return. It was just the dynamic that we held to ever since I’d been forked. Of course it was: I <em>was</em> them when I’d been forked. An exact copy that only slowly diverged over the years. It had been my idea as much as theirs.</p>
<p>Hanne rolls away from me and I take that as my chance to at least no longer be laying down. I fork a new instance standing beside the bed and then quit, just in case the motion of me getting out of bed wakes her.</p>
<p>I need out of the house. Nowhere public — I don’t want to see what others in the System are dealing with right now. There will be time for that later, but for now I need out and away from everyone.</p>
<p>The sim I wind up in is simple and bucolic. There’s a pagoda. There’s a field, grass cut — or eaten, I suppose, given the sheep in the distance — sort, stretching from stone wall to stone wall. It’s day — It doesn’t even seem like the owner’s included a day/night cycle — and foggy. Cool but not cold. Damp but not wet.</p>
<p>There’s a bench in the pagoda, at least, so I make my way there, trudging tiredly up the whitewashed wood of the steps to sit on the well-worn seats. Whoever made this place seemed to have put more effort into the pagoda than the field. Fog like that was usually the sign of a border of a sim of limited size, so it was clearly this single paddock, the grass and sheep and stone walls likely purchases from the exchange.</p>
<p>It’s a public sim, but the listing had shown zero occupants. I’m lucky it’s empty, I guess. </p>
<p>A pang tugs at my chest. Empty of people because they’re simply not here? Empty of people because everyone’s dealing with the same problem that we are? Or empty of people because those people are gone, too?</p>
<p>The seat of the bench has been worn smooth by who knows how many butts over the years, but I pick at the velvety wood all the same. <em>You’re not alone, Reed,</em> I remind myself. <em>Hanne’s at home. The rest of the clade is there. Vos and Pierre are there. Dry Grass is there.</em></p>
<p>I sigh and slouch against the back of the bench. Exhaustion is warring against the drive to do <em>something</em>, and both of those are striving against the need to be alone and away from this whole spectacle. All of those ‘how can I’ questions are clattering up against equal-sized armies of ‘too tired’s and ‘it doesn’t need to happen now’s.</p>
<p>I spend an hour out there, all told. I pick at the bench. I call out to the sheep. I walk circles around the pagoda in the gray day. I bend down, pluck a blade of grass with the intent to…I don’t know, chew on it like I’ve seen in films, but it smells so strongly of sheep manure that I drop it instead and head home to finally lay down beside Hanne and sleep.</p>
