<p>We sat around the table, saying nothing, but each doubtless thinking our own thoughts. The decision to pare down our dinner hadn’t been made unilaterally, but in fits and starts.</p>
<p>Lily, of course, had stepped away almost immediately. Although she appeared to have made the decision to reconcile with Dry Grass, that didn’t mean that she didn’t have to put any work into it. She still had her anger, her resentment for what she felt that the Odists had done in their shaping of the System and its history, their role in Marsh uploading in the first place, and for that, I could hardly fault her. I had had my own feelings over the years that had lingered, that I had bathed in helplessly, struggling to escape the odd comforts of depression or angst or anger. I could hardly expect her to climb free immediately.</p>
<p>“I do not blame her, either,” Dry Grass had said shortly after she stepped away and I voiced these thoughts. “It is not comfortable, to be clear. I do not like that she hates me. My role — the role of my whole stanza — is to revel in feelings of motherhood. I saw myself as mother to the System on a very real, very mechanical level, back when I was working as a syseng. To have a citizen of the very System I love hate me is perilously close to having a child hate me.”</p>
<p>Sedge had was the next to turn down the invitation.</p>
<p>“I’m feeling stretched really thin, all of that research over the last few days. I love it, don’t get me wrong, I just can’t think anymore,” she’d said, shoulders slumping. “My brain has turned to mush and I just kinda want to find a really dark sim and stare at nothing.”</p>
<p>Rush, initially quite interested in a communal meal, bailed not long after, saying that ve was too sleepy, that the night was coming on too quickly, it felt, with so much new information coming at ver too quickly.</p>
<p>And finally, Hanne stepped away without warning. She sent me a sensorium message a minute later saying that she was meeting up with her friends, with Warmth In Fire leading a memorial for Shu. That was more important than dinner, and the prospect of forking of engaging with the mechanics of our world, felt fraught to her.</p>
<p>So it was that Cress, Tule, Dry Grass, and I sat around a table, hotpot bubbling away in the center, in a nearly deserted restaurant. We said nothing, each doubtless lost in our own thoughts, as we dredged veggies and tofu, thin strips of fish and squid, and thinly sliced lamb through the spicy broth, carefully fishing them back out after the scant few seconds it took for them to cook so that we could eat them atop bowls of rice.</p>
<p>It was Tule who broke the silence. “This is all incredibly fucked, but at least the food is good.”</p>
<p>We all bust out laughing. Cress, most of all seemed caught up in the humor, laughing uncontrollably until tears streamed down its face. That laughter briefly veered into hysterical sobs as it hunched over in its seat. We had long since set up a cone of silence, and I think we were all glad for that now, as it made the space feel more intimate, more comforting as Tule and Dry Grass bookended Cress and rubbed their hands over its back.</p>
<p>“Sorry,” it said once it was able to sit back up. Its voice was round, stuffed up. “I don’t even know why it hit me like that.”</p>
<p>“Too many emotions at once?” I suggested.</p>
<p>It shrugged. “Maybe. I mean, that’s definitely true, but I don’t know if that’s why I fell apart.”</p>
<p>“You do not need to know why, love,” Dry Grass said gently. “You are allowed to be a confused mess in this confused mess of a life.”</p>
