<p>I woke, exhausted, to a cup of coffee steaming on the bedside table.</p>
<p>At some point while I’d slept, Hanne had once more split the bed into two separate mattresses and very gently instructed the sim to slide them a few feet away from each other. Perhaps I’d been tossing and turning, or maybe I’d been snoring. I promised myself I’d ask later, then promptly forgot about it in favor of the coffee mug waiting for me.</p>
<p>I was two sips in when the weight of what happened hit me once again. I didn’t quite know how it was that it had escaped me, and a pile of ‘how could’ questions started to hem me in again — how could I possibly forget, when this is the biggest thing that has happened to our clade ever? Never mind sys-side or phys-side; ever.</p>
<p>I forced myself to sit up in bed and drink my coffee. My goal was to sip it until it was finished. I stared out the window for a bit. I cried for a bit. I drank about half my coffee before the wait becomes unbearable.</p>
<p>I couldn’t quite interact face-to-face yet, not with Hanne, not with the occasional bout of sniffles still striking me. Instead, I sent the gentlest ping I could manage to Vos, receive no answer. </p>
<p>I tried various members of the clade next. Lily flatly rebuffed me. There weren’t any words, just a prickly sensation of solitude and the physical signs of anger. Rush didn’t respond, but ve always did sleep better than all of us. Sedge begged another hour’s rest, and I acquiesced. Tule and Cress were both asleep.</p>
<p>Well, that was the first layer of contacts done. None of us were single, but of all the partners I knew, the only I’d talked to in any depth were Vos and Pierre. Beyond them, there was…</p>
<p>I reached out mentally to send a sensorium ping to Dry Grass, only for the perisystem architecture to present me with a series of options, numbering well above a dozen. She’d been busy, apparently, forking as needed throughout the night and– yep, two of those available instances disappeared as they quit, followed shortly by one more new one being added. She was still awake, apparently.</p>
<p><em>Good morning, Reed,</em> her root instance murmured through a message. <em>More well rested, now?</em></p>
<p><em>Best I can be, at least,</em> I sent back. <em>I, uh…sorry for interrupting. The rest of the clade’s asleep and I don’t want to pester Hanne any more than I need to, not after last night.</em></p>
<p>There was mirth on the other end, some barely-sensed laughter that doesn’t quite rise to the level of coming through the message. Another tug at my emotions left over from Tule’s merge. <em>It was rather stressful, was it not? You do not need to apologize, however. How are you feeling?</em></p>
<p><em>I’m feeling like shit.</em> I laughed, shaking my head. <em>I mean, of course I am. I’m some awful mix of hopeful that there’s some solution, mourning Marsh, kicking myself for mourning them maybe preemptively, kicking myself for not doing more, and just plain confused.</em></p>
<p>The Odists were an old clade — far older than any of us, having been born decades before the advent of the System — so it was no wonder that Dry Grass was far more adept at sensorium messages than anyone else I’d met. It wasn’t that I saw her lean back in her chair, nor that I felt the act of leaning back myself, but the overwhelming sensation that I got from that moment of silence was of her sighing, leaning back, crossing her arms over her front. I had no clue how she managed to pull that off. <em>There is little that I can say to fix any one of those, and anything else would ring hollow. All I can do is validate that, damn, Reed, that is a shitload of emotions. There is a lot going on, and I do not blame you for feeling confused.</em></p>
<p><em>Thanks,</em> I responded, feeling no small amount of relief that she hadn’t tried to dig into any one of those feelings, nor even all of them as a whole. <em>How are Tule and Cress holding up? Hell, how’re you holding up?</em></p>
<p><em>They are asleep,</em> she sent, and I could hear the fondness in her voice. <em>One of me is keeping an eye on them, pretending to sleep.</em></p>
<p>I finished my coffee in two coarse swallows, winced at the uncomfortable sensation. I took another moment to stand up and start making the bed again. As I did, I asked, <em>What on? I saw a ton of forks.</em></p>
<p>The sense of a nod, and then, <em>Several things. One of me is still keeping tallies on how many are missing based on reports, which appears to be some few million so far. Another of me is collating the varied types of posts on the feeds — wild supposition, unchecked grief, confusion, and so on. Another is speaking to…a member of the eighth stanza through an intermediary–</em></p>
<p><em>This ‘An Answer’ you mentioned?</em></p>
<p><em>Yes. The Only Time I Dream Is When I Need An Answer. She is the one who has focused on interpersonal connections, which is only relevant in that she is the only one willing to pass on information to the portions of the clade that cut them off, about twenty of us.</em></p>
<p><em>So I can get out of the house. So</em> you <em>can get out of the house. So we can actually talk instead of me sitting in a war room populated by too many of me and you making your bed or whatever it is you are doing now.</em></p>
<p>I hesitated, halfway through smoothing out the sheets. <em>Oh, uh…alright. Let me say good morning to Hanne. Do you have a place to meet?</em></p>
<p>She sent the address of a public sim, to which I sent a ping of acknowledgement and a suggestion of five minutes’ time.</p>
<p>Hanne sat at the dining room table, coffee in her hands, staring out at nothing, a sure sign that she was digging through something on the perisystem architecture. Probably poking her way through the feeds, looking for news of her own. She had her own friends, after all, her own circle of co-hobbyists, those who shared her interest in creating various objects and constructs. She had her own people to care about that weren’t just me, weren’t just the Marshans.</p>
<p>I chose instead to make myself another coffee, letting a cone of silence linger above me so that I didn’t disturb her, even though her eyes do flick up toward me once or twice, joined by a weak smile.</p>
<p>“Want some space?” I asked once a new pot of coffee sits in the center of the table.</p>
<p>“Kind of, yeah,” she said, voice dull. “Jess isn’t responding. She’s <em>there,</em> but not responding. Shu is gone though. Just…” A sniffle. “Completely gone. It’s like she was never even there in the first place.”</p>
<p>I felt my expression fall. It was bound to happen, I figured; we know enough people that if, as Dry Grass had said, millions had already been reported missing, Marsh wouldn’t be the only one.</p>
<p>I reached forward to pat the back of her hand, which she tolerated for a moment before lifting it out of the way.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, Hanne,” I said. “I know you liked them.”</p>
<p>“Any word on Warmth In Fire? I’m going to head out in a moment to see Dry Grass, and I’m wondering how bad the Odists got hit.”</p>
<p>Hanne shrugged. “Ey’s there. I haven’t talked to em yet, though.” She snorted, adding with a smirk, “Though even if a chunk of them got taken out, I doubt any whole…lines, or whatever they call them, were completely destroyed. They fork like mad.”</p>
<p>I laughed. “Yeah, when I pinged Dry Grass earlier, she had something like eighteen instances.”</p>
<p>I looked down into my coffee, considering how much to pass on. “It sounds like a lot of people are gone. ‘A few million’, though doubtless that’s getting bigger as more people report in. Everything sounds pretty chaotic.”</p>
<p>Hanne furrowed her brow. “A few <em>million?</em> Jesus. Any word from phys-side?”</p>
<p>I nodded, covered my anxiety with a sip of coffee.</p>
<p>“Well, hey,” she said, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek. “Go on and go talk with Dry Grass. Could be she’s learned more, could be they’ve said something and we just haven’t gotten it yet. If she’s as plugged in as she says she is, then doubtless she knows more than she’s showing.”</p>
<p>“Right.” I laughed. “Of all of us, she would.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>We met in front of a small coffee shop. A bucolic small town main street lined with gas lamps and paved with cobblestones.</p>
<p>“Coffee and chicory, yes?” Dry Grass said, offering me a paper cup.</p>
<p>I nodded as I accepted. “Cress and Tule still drink that?”</p>
<p>A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Much to my chagrin, yes.”</p>
<p>“Not a fan?”</p>
<p>She shook her head. “Too bitter for my tastes. Mocha, extra chocolate, extra whipped cream,” she said, lifting her own cup. “Apparently a sweet tooth can last more than three centuries. Who knew.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, that sounds way too sweet for me,” I said, grinning.</p>
<p>Grinning back, she gestured down the street in an invitation to walk, and we fell in step beside each other, saying nothing.</p>
<p>The sim was, indeed, beautiful, though it did bear some trademarks of early sim design, with the cobblestones perhaps a little too perfectly fit together, a little too flat, and the hexagonal lamp posts bearing corners that were perhaps a little too sharp. Still, for a morning walk with coffee (my third of the day; I’d have to turn off the caffeine sensitivity later), it was ideal. The sim was quiet and calm, with the sun blessing the street with long shadows and cool air that felt on the path to warming.</p>
<p>“It’s so quiet,” I observed. The act of speaking out loud into the quiet air was enough to knock me back into the context of what had happened. “Oh.”</p>
<p>Dry Grass readily picked up on the meaning behind that syllable, nodding to me. “I do not imagine that it is so quiet because so many are missing, but I do think that many are staying home, hunting for lovers and friends, trawling the feeds. Heading out to public sims is, perhaps, not at the tops of their minds.”</p>
<p>Looking around did indeed provide a better sense of the mood. Those who <em>were</em> out and about looked somber, distracted, walking with heads down or talking in hushed tones two-by-two.</p>
<p>I made an effort to straighten up and look out into the clear morning. “Is the toll still climbing?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Not so rapidly, no. It is currently–” She tilted her head for a moment before continuing. “–just over two hundred million. I have also been able to get in contact with a phys-side engineer who has been…well, she has been cagey, but she is at least confirming some of my estimates and guesses as I pass them on.”</p>
<p>“Oh?”</p>
<p>She nodded. “Günay is quite nice, if perhaps a bit breezier than one might expect on hearing that millions of individuals have disappeared from the System. I do get the sense that she is a fairly cheerful person overall, at least.”</p>
<p>“Did she have anything to say about what might have happened?”</p>
<p>“No, not particularly. When I say that she has confirmed guesses, what she has done is invite me to talk and simply agreed when something I have said is right, perhaps expanding on it by small amounts.” Her expression soured. “I get the impression that she would <em>like</em> to share more with me, but that she is simply not allowed to.”</p>
<p>I frowned. “You mean someone’s keeping her from doing so?”</p>
<p>“It is a hunch. Perhaps our communications are being monitored, and she is being instructed to limit the topics or act in this way. While talking with Need An Answer, she suggested that this is also what the eighth stanza is used to doing, but they are the political ones.”</p>
<p>I dredged up what history of the System I had learned, all of those sensationalist stories about the few old clades steering the direction of the lives of however many billion uploaded minds — certainly well over a trillion, if one counted the two launch vehicles, Castor and Pollux that had been sent out seventy five years prior.</p>
<p>“And they’d be sneaky like this, too?” I asked.</p>
<p>A snort of laughter and she nodded. “Sneaky is one way to put it, yes. They shape interactions by second nature, for which much of the clade has distanced themself from from. We — Hammered Silver’s up-tree instances — are not supposed to be speaking to any of them, but there are a few that I like plenty, and given our current status, I have begun interacting more openly with Need An Answer.”</p>
<p>Wary of letting the topic drift too far, I said, “Have they gotten anything else from phys-side, then?”</p>
<p>She shrugged. “There has been little enough interaction with sys-side over the years, and even less of late, now that the climate has started to level out back on Earth. The rate of uploads has even leveled off from its slow increase over time. We rarely hear much except that it come through the newly uploaded.” She sipped her mocha, seeming to take that time to sort out her thoughts. “Our political relationship with phys-side is cordial. It is one borne of necessity. Our social relationship is more complicated. Many have expectations of a long peace for themselves once they join us, and many more have loved ones who have joined us.”</p>
<p>“Right, I still talk to a bunch of friends I knew phys-side who joined later. Or Marsh does.” I winced, amending that statement. “Did.”</p>
<p>Dry Grass rested a hand lightly on my arm. “I am sorry, Reed.”</p>
<p>Memories of Tule’s relationship with her had me reaching for her hand without thinking, though I at least manage to simply pat at the back of it rather than anything more intimate. This must’ve shown on my face, as she smiled kindly, gave my arm a squeeze, and reclaimed her hand, saying, “Memories are complicated, I am guessing.”</p>
<p>I nodded, doing my best to ignore the heat rising to my cheeks. “A bit.”</p>
<p>“I am sure we will discuss it soon,” she said. “But for now, let us return to the topic at hand. Tule and Cress are awake and have expressed interest in discussing this in person, as well. Would you be amenable to them joining us? Sedge, Rush, and Hanne are welcome, though they have requested some space from Lily, and Vos and Pierre have requested their own privacy.”</p>
<p>Shaking the confusing, conflicting memories of Dry Grass from my head, I sighed, letting my shoulders slump. “Lily really should be here, as well,” I grumbled. “But I get it. She’s…well, she’s Lily.”</p>
<p>She made a setting aside gesture, dismissing the topic easily. “Another topic to discuss another time. Cress and Tule are grabbing coffee now, and will meet us in a few minutes.”</p>
<p>We stood in silence, then, saying nothing and letting the sun warm the backs of our necks. A few people poked their heads out of various shops, looked around sullenly, and then disappeared. Everyone who passed us did so in a cone of silence, and most of those opaqued from the outside, hard-edged cones of darkened and blurred background gliding down the sidewalk, hiding faces and silencing words.</p>
<p>“Why do you think they’re out?” I asked, nodding towards one such cone.</p>
<p>Dry Grass clutched her coffee to her chest, both hands wrapped around it as though to draw warmth through the paper cup. “Why are <em>we</em> out, Reed?”</p>
<p>I blinked, then shrugged. “You asked to meet up in person, didn’t you?”</p>
<p>“Of course, yes. And you agreed, did you not?”</p>
<p>“Well, yes.” I hastened to add, preempting her point, “I guess there is a lot to get out of interacting in person.”</p>
<p>She nodded.</p>
<p>“So why here, then?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Good coffee,” she said, lifting her cup. “Good weather. Good memories. Some of them really good. This place is comforting to me. It is comforting to a good many people. I suspect that those who are out are doing much as we are. They are talking about the difficult things in a place that at least makes them feel a little better.”</p>
<p>“I suppose it is nicer than moping at home.”</p>
<p>“Is she talking your ear off, Reed?” came a familiar voice from behind us.</p>
<p>“Oh, absolutely,” Dry Grass replied, turning and leaning up to give Cress a kiss on its cheek. “How are you feeling, loves?”</p>
<p>“Terrible,” Tule said cheerfully. They had apparently collected Rush and Sedge before arriving, as all four of stood in almost identical postures, each holding their coffees in their right hand — just, I realized, as I was doing. “All my emotions are wrong. I’m jittery and tired and I want to get another few hours of sleep but feel guilty every time I lay down.”</p>
<p>“When was the last true trauma that befell the Marshans?” Dry Grass asked, smiling gently. “I imagine it was before you uploaded, yes?”</p>
<p>“We as people have fallen out of the habit of dealing with crises,” she continued when we all averted our gazes. “Do not be hard on yourselves. We — the Ode clade — have more experience with crises than the vast, vast majority of the System, and even we are reeling. We are struggling to internalize something this big.”</p>
<p>“Have you lost any?” Cress asked, and I thanked it silently for getting to the question before I worked up the courage to do so myself.</p>
<p>Hesitating, Dry Grass’s confident mien fell. Eventually, she reached out to take each of her partners by the hand, then nodded to me. “Come. Let us walk, yes? We will talk as we hop sims. I have more places full of comforting memories to show you.”</p>
There is a sim that I love to visit when I remember, which is sometimes only a few days, and the standing record is a decade. It is a small village by a sea, and I am told it is based upon the shores of the mediterranean. Along the beach, a massive wall runs for quite some distance.
Besides fantastic food and a generally calm vibe, there are two reasons to visit.
Every day, people head out onto the beach, and draw in the sand. Everyone is free to draw as they please, but the best days are when a large design takes hold early in the morning and everyone contributes. Each night, the tide rolls in slowly, and wipes clean the beach. No pictures or permanent records are allowed, save the ones in your head, since memories never really leave us.
Meanwhile, on the walls and roads and roofs and floors of the village, a mosaic now approaching 180 years old spreads. When you enter the sim, you are given a single tile, in a choice of colors. So long as it is touching another tile, or a seam or edge where tiles touch, you can place a tile wherever you please. In the beginning, folks were limited to one tile a day, but at some point there must have been an issue, for now it is every 6 weeks. Some sections have been meticulously planned, while others are, to paraphrase a friend, “throwing tiles at the wall to see what sticks.” Once a tile is placed, it is there for good. If you misalign it, there is no fixing it, so choose wisely.
Something about the ephemerality of the sand and the permanence of the tile speaks to me, and both the food and company are a delight. I have been dipping in and out for about 70 years now, and it is always a pleasure to see old faces, and new ones come to draw in the sand, or maybe place their first tile, or simply looking for a place to relax and sip some wine. I cannot recommend it enough!
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I turned away with a hollow feeling in my chest, wondering just how many of those couples were still couples.</p>
<p>The town, while no less visually chaotic than the beach, was at least more heartening to look at. Everything —<em>everything</em>; the walls of buildings, the roofs, doors and window shutters, even the roads — was covered with a blindingly colorful mosaic of tiles.</p>
<p>“It is nearly two centuries old,” Dry Grass explained as we started trudging up one of those streets. When you enter, you are given a single tile — if you check your pockets, it should be in there.”</p>
<p>Sure enough, when I dug my hand into my pocket, I found a cerulean tile, a little square of porcelain about three centimeters on a side. The rest of the Marshans dug in their pockets and pulled out tiles of their own, all one shade or another of blue.</p>
<p>“Unless you hold a color in your mind when you enter, you are provided with your favorite,” Dry Grass explained. She pulled a golden yellow tile out of her own pocket and flipped it up in the air like a coin. “All of this — all of the mosaic — has been placed by visitors.</p>
<p>“Set No Stones told me about this place.” She smiled wryly. “Because of course she did. We are consummate pros at living up to our names. You may place your tile wherever you would like, and so long as it is touching the edge of another, it will stick. You will not be able to remove it after, so make sure to place it carefully.”</p>
<p>Rush laughed. “Holy shit. This place is amazing.”</p>
<p>“It’s a bit hard to look at in some places,” Sedge added, nodding towards a few buildings whose walls were covered in a rainbow static of tiles. “But yeah, this is wild.”</p>
<p>“It really is, yes,” Dry Grass said, grinning. “Used to be, you would get one tile per day to place, but as the popularity grew, that was slowly reduced to one tile every six weeks. Still, whole fandoms have sprung up around this place among a certain type of individual. Set No Stones started organizing groups of fifty to a hundred instances to plan out images. They would meet up once a week to go build their pictures. That is where we are going now.”</p>
<p>The street was steep, but, despite the glossy look of the tiles that paved the road, none of us slipped.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>One by one, we took our turns standing on that box and setting our tiles into place. I reached up as high as I could to flesh out the glowing rim of the green glass-shaded lamp. As soon as my tile touched the edge of the tile Tule had placed, it snapped into place with a satisfying click. It was completely immobile after that. No amount of nudging could get it to slide more perfectly into alignment.</p>
<p>As she helped Cress, the smallest of them, up onto the crate to place her tile, Dry Grass said, “Thank you for coming with me on this little jaunt. If I spent any more time at my desk, I was sure that I would lose my mind. That I still have forks doing so is unavoidable, but at least I can get out of the house, yes?”</p>
<p>Tule nodded, kissed her on the cheek. “For which I’m glad. I’ve never met anyone more prone to overworking themselves than you.”</p>
<p>She laughed. “Yes, yes. The whole of the clade is like that, I can promise you that.”</p>
<p>“Are you ready to talk about what you’ve learned?” I asked. “If you need a bit more time, that’s fine, of course.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“I have not come across that name off the top of my head, but one of my instances will do a search to confirm and get in touch with Hanne directly, if she would like.”</p>
<p>I shrugged. “It might be worth asking, at least.”</p>
<p>She nodded and gestured us back down to the beach. “I will.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “Now, the current population in terms of instances is something like 2.3 trillion. A billion is a very small fraction of the System in terms of numbers, but it is what we are working with. A billion instances appear to have been…ah, lost, along with thirteen months, ten days, seventeen minutes, and some seconds. On speaking with Günay, this downtime was observed phys-side, though she was not able to tell me much about it besides that. I have the sense that there is more that she <em>could</em> have said, but that she was not able to for whatever reason.”</p>
<p>This had apparently been the first that Rush and Sedge had heard about this, so a few minutes were spent bringing them up to speed as we walked down the hill to the shore once more. I took the opportunity to focus at something far off, something further ahead of me than my own two feet. The horizon, the dark ocean breaking against the shore in a rush of white out where the arms of the bay projected into the water.</p>
<p>We passed only one more person. They were rushing up the hill, breathing coming in quick puffs, a white tile clutched in their hand, tears streaming down their face.</p>
<p>We said nothing until after they had passed.</p>
<p>“Reed?”</p>
<p>I startled back to awareness, smiling sheepishly at Sedge, accepting the hand that she held out for me. “Sorry, lost in thought.”</p>
<p>“It is okay,” Dry Grass said, smiling gently to me. “The next sim that we are headed to does not have a very large entry point, so please huddle in closer. It will also be quite warm, so, fair warning.”</p>
<p>The entry point — a platform of wood slats set upon stilts above stagnant water — was far smaller than I had anticipated, and my foot rocked against an uneven plank set along the rim of the platform, forcing me to lean against Sedge. One edge of the platform led into a narrow, somewhat rickety wooden walkway that headed out over the water in a straight line until it came upon a patch of grass, where it turned a few degrees to the right to make its way to another patch of grass. It appeared to meander in this way from island of grass to island of grass in an uneven zigzag toward a copse of trees — the word ‘banyan’ floated to mind, though I wasn’t sure if that was actually the case — where it disappeared into shadow.</p>
<p>That shade looked delightfully appealing as the humid heat pressed in around us.</p>
<p>“What the hell is this place?” Tule asked, wrinkling his nose at the scent of rotting vegetation in the air.</p>
<p>“A swamp,” Dry Grass said simply, a lopsided smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “A marsh, perhaps.”</p>
<p>If it had been intended to be a joke, it fell flat. We remained in silence for a few awkward moments.</p>
<p>She sighed. “My apologies. It is still important to me, however. It is– Ah, there she is.” She raised an arm and waved to a figure crouched at the edge of the platform just before the patch of grass. As we walked toward them in single file, she explained, “This sim was designed by Serene, whom you shall soon meet. She is my cocladist from the ninth stanza, and one of my favorite people in the world. I asked her to meet us here.”</p>
<p>As we got closer, the strange hairstyle that I had noticed on the figure resolved into a pair of tall canine ears, and what I had assumed was a mask of some sort turned out to be a short, pointed muzzle. Serene stood up and stretched, smiling wanly to us before bowing in greeting.</p>
<p>“Serene, this is Tule and Cress, my partners, as well as a few more of their clade: Reed, Rush, and Sedge.”</p>
<p>The fox — a hunch confirmed by a quick check of the perisystem — nodded. “Of the Marsh clade? How droll,” she said, that smile veering perilously close to a smirk. “Welcome to my own little marsh.”</p>
<p>“What <em>is</em> this place?” Rush asked, a note of wonder in ver voice. “Other than a swamp, I mean.”</p>
<p>“It is mostly just a swamp,” the other Odist said. “But it is one of my favorites. I make a lot of sims, you must understand, but this is one of the least popular that I have made to date, and for that I love it all the more. There, see?” She pointed to a patch of coarse grass at the edge of the ‘island’. “Rushes!”</p>
<p>At this we all <em>did</em> laugh.</p>
<p>“I have asked to meet with her to ensure that we could get a view of what is going on from someone else because this is getting a bit out of hand for even me.”</p>
<p>Serene nodded and started strolling down the path toward the next patch of grass, claws clicking dully against the wood. We fell in step behind her as she asked, “And what was it that you wanted to hear from me, my dear?”</p>
<p>“I would like to hear what you are seeing.”</p>
<p>The fox — a fennec, the System told me — nodded slowly. “I am seeing quiet chaos. I am seeing most of my sims emptying out. Few are out for walks or adventures. I sent forks to each of them when I noticed my own missing instances to ensure that they all still existed, as well. Thankfully, sims seem to be unaffected.</p>
<p>“The ones that are not empty, however, remain dreadfully quiet. Most of those who are out and about have set up over themselves cones of silence.” She hesitated, took a deep breath, and then continued. “Those who have not, though, are decidedly not quiet. More than one silence has been broken by weeping and wailing.”</p>
<p>I nodded. There were a few sniffles passing through the Marshans as the reality of what had happened once more struck us.</p>
<p>“I have also checked in with several of my students. Very few have been totally unaffected by this sudden loss, and more than one has disappeared from the System completely”</p>
<p>“More than one?” Sedge <!-- or whoever is most interested in society --> asked. “I suppose at least someone is bound to be unlucky enough to have been completely disappeared.”</p>
<p>Serene nodded. “I have had many, many students, you must understand. It would not be surprising to me that at least one of them was that unlucky soul. However, I have come across three such cases so far.”</p>
<p>“Out of how many?”</p>
<p>“Hundreds. However, I am still not done checking yet.”</p>
<p>We walked in silence, then, digesting this, passing through the patch of grass and turned left at nearly a right angle to head to the next. One more until we hit the patch of shade.</p>
<p>“Did you lose any instances?” I asked.</p>
<p>She nodded. “One, yes. She was working on a sim of her own, a wild park of sorts. She had not yet merged down, however, and her progress has since been lost. The sim remains incomplete. Posts of gray sprout from the forest floor where the trees were intended to appear, but I do not yet know what trees she intended to place. There is no leaf litter to indicate what she was planning, nor is there yet a sun in the sky to indicated latitude.” The fix turned her head to smile back to us, expression once more wan. “I am thinking that I will turn it into a memorial of sorts.”</p>
<p>Rush said, “I’d love to see it some day.”</p>
<p>She simply nodded.</p>
<p>“The feeds seem to be more chaotic,” Dry Grass said after a few moments, dragging us back on topic. “The world has taken to the perisystem to talk about what has happened. There, it is loud. It is filled with grief, yes, and increasingly more anger.”</p>
<p>“And you said there hasn’t been any word from phys-side except through Günay?” I asked.</p>
<p>She shook her head. “Not really, but that is not to say that some sense of the sentiment is not evident. She sounded excited.”</p>
<p>Sedge snorted. “Excited?”</p>
<p>“Yes. You must understand, though, that more than a year has passed for them, as well, and this is perhaps the first that they have heard from us since then.”</p>
<p>“Oh, so excited that whatever they did worked?”</p>
<p>Dry Grass nodded. “Yes, that was my guess. She is disappointed, of course, that so many of us are missing, but she is excited that so many of us still remain. As I have said, her words have been careful and measured, but I can still tell that she was excited to be able to talk to us.”</p>
<p>(Serene’s swamp - talking about the current response out in the world)</p>
<p>(dandelion field - talking about the Odists, one loss, End Of Endings, though still checking on those who have left the clade, of which there are now a few, no word on E.W.)</p>
<p>(Reed’s pagoda - more conversation among the stanzas now)</p>
