<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>
