update from sparkleup
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<p>This new study was expanded to include a few more desks and tables. Hanne and I worked at a table, for instance, compiling a list of friends, both mutual and individual. We rolled down over the list friend by friend, getting in touch with them and having small conversations where we were able, trusting in the cone of silence to keep from disturbing others.</p>
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<p>For each person we managed to contact, we asked them a set of questions that Sedge and Dry Grass had come up with. Finding out how many of their cocladists had gone missing, as well as any friends or loved ones that were now unreachable. We collected some of that information for ourselves, building a better picture of how our friends group had been impacted, but all were directed to the official survey that had been set up by the Odists.</p>
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<p>Truly official, as well. Dry Grass had had her systech privileges restored — as was evidenced by a floppy, felt witch hat she would occasionally summon, a physical token of her official capacity — but she had also taken on a leadership role in this project beyond simply being a tech. She had pulled some strings to leave their post pinned to the top of several of the largest central feeds. Responses were already pouring in as more and more people woke to the realization that missing friends and family. While Dry Grass assured us that such had been done in the past, none of us had ever seen such a thing before.</p>
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<p>“It is a part of the long peace that your lives are so boring,” she had said with a sigh. “Or was, at least were.”</p>
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<p>“It is a part of the long peace that your lives are so boring,” she had said with a sigh. “Or at least were.”</p>
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<p>While our data gathering was productive when it came to learning about our own circle of friends, it was a drop in the bucket compared to what the others were accomplishing. Sedge and Dry Grass in particular seemed to be on a roll of information gathering. They had set up their own little side room of other instances just collating data, running them through various perisystem tools, and just generally trying to get a better picture of what had happened.</p>
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<p>The picture, as it began to take shape, was grim.</p>
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<p>While our 14% loss rate was far too high, the fact that the System was on track for a loss rate of 1% was still an enormous amount. On the surface, the number felt quite small, but on a System with 2.3 trillion instances, that meant 23 billion people suddenly wiped from existence. 23 billion people with friends and lovers, or down-tree instances waiting for updates. 23 billion regardless of how early or late they had uploaded.</p>
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<p>Her silence put a damper on the rest of the conversations, all of us speaking quieter, eventually falling into silence as she sat down at the table.</p>
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<p>A few seconds passed before she smirked and shook her head. “Well? Come on, entertain me.”</p>
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<p>I breathed a pent-up sigh of relief at the chuckles from around the table.</p>
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<p>“I will tell you a joke, as a way to break the ice,” Dry Grass said.</p>
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<p>“I will tell you a joke as a way to break the ice,” Dry Grass said.</p>
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<p>Lily laughed, though it sounded somewhat forced. “Alright. I want to hear what counts as a joke to your clade.”</p>
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<p>Dry Grass bowed. “I assure you, it is appropriately atrocious. It comes straight from Waking World, who has set himself up as a father figure, complete with dad jokes.”</p>
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<p>Lily rolled her eyes, nodded.</p>
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@ -86,7 +86,7 @@
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<p>“Well,” Dry Grass countered primly, “I would have said that last bit first, but I did not want to put Descartes before the horse.”</p>
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<p>At that delayed payoff, the rest of us laughed in earnest. Warmth In Fire, halfway through a sip of wine, snorted into its drink and started to cough, which set Hold My Name to laughing all the harder as she rubbed the skunk’s back.</p>
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<p>“Okay, okay, I’ll give you that one,” Lily said, still grinning. “That was pretty good. Still atrocious, but at least the good kind of atrocious. I’m sorry for the other night.”</p>
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<p>“That was only last night, my dear, though we do seem to be living at a high skew, do we not?” Dry Grass bowed to her. “I appreciate it, Lily. I cannot apologize for my clade, but I will all the same do my best to live as a counterexample to the elements within it that rankle.”</p>
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<p>“That was only last night, my dear. We do seem to be living at a high skew, do we not?” Dry Grass bowed to her. “I appreciate it, Lily. I cannot apologize for my clade, but I will all the same do my best to live as a counterexample to the stories you have heard that rankle so much.”</p>
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<p>“Yeah, thanks,” Lily said, more down to her glass of wine than to Dry Grass. “I was thinking, actually, and part of the reason I wanted to come over and see you on…uh, neutral ground, I guess, is that I had a question about your clade.”</p>
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<p>Dry Grass nodded for her to continue.</p>
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<p>“What was it like to get used to being a clade without a root instance?”</p>
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<p>“Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver, the first line of the stanza, was hit perhaps hardest of all of us. She was the closest to Michelle, after all. Michelle struggled so much over the years, and lived largely in solitude but for a few close friends, many of whom were among the first lines. Hammered Silver was a sort of mother to her, and so to her, it was akin to losing a child. While the rest of us, her up-tree instances, were also saddened to varying degrees, she was a fucking mess, lashing out and then retreating, lashing out and retreating, over and over again.”</p>
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<p>She sighed, taking a sip of wine before continuing. “I had given up being a systech by then, and I spent nearly a month in my house, most of that either baking or in my room, constantly kicking myself for not doing more to help Michelle. She was…she was so broken, those last few years, and a good chunk of that was based on her engagement with the System itself, so it was difficult for me to hold both that fact and my role in working with the System together in my mind. I kept falling back to those how-could-I questions, to all of those suppositions that I ought to be doing something with all my knowledge and tools.”</p>
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<p>I tightened my grip on my fork, leaving it stabbed into a pile of salad. “I’ve been dealing with a lot of that,” I said, voice cracking. “I keep thinking there has to be something more I can do, or wondering how I can do something like this.” I gestured at the table with a forkful of greens. “Having a dinner party while Marsh is gone.”</p>
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<!--later: After so much peace, it's hard to cope with tragedy, and it's valid to reach for yet more peace-->
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<p>Dry Grass nodded. “Precisely that, yes.”</p>
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<p>“I got super angry,” Hold My Name said, her comfortable alto dipping back into a tenor, as though the mood demanded less of her transfemininity. “Like, <em>really</em> angry. I had to move back into my own place for a while after, I was so mad. How could she do that? We — the rest of the second stanza — were already unmoored by Qoheleth’s assassination only a year before, and now Michelle had quit, too. It stranded all the stanzas, leaving behind ten brand new clades.”</p>
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<p>The Marshans winced, suddenly understanding the same of ourselves.</p>
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<p>The moment of tension passed uneasily, as Warmth In Fire spoke up next. “I will say as I always do, my dear: your anger is based around a memory that does not fit the reality of the situation. I have met Sasha through my friendship with the fifth stanza, who ever stood up for her, even when she was True Name. I have eaten dinner with her. I have watched the way she smiles. I have watched the distance at which she holds herself from time to time. I have seen the flashes of regret-tinted understanding when topics of the past crop up. She is not who she was, but neither was she who you say she must have been. I cannot even linger in discomfort around her.”</p>
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<p>Hold My Name sighed, tired gaze level on her partner. This carried the cadence of an old argument, one had dozens or hundreds of times before.</p>
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<p>Lily only gripped her glass tighter.</p>
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<p>“She is no murderer. Not of Qoheleth, and certainly not of Michelle,” Warmth In Fire continued confidently, the gravity of their words held in tension with the ineffably childlike openness of her expression. “Yes, you may hate her, and yet I cannot. Yes, my down-tree, Dear, loathes her, and yet I do not. Yes, Dear’s down-tree, Rye, holds her own distaste, but on one thing she and I agree: she is no longer who she was. We are both suckers for character development. I am Dear. I am Rye. I am Praiseworthy, and Michelle too, but I am also my own person.”</p>
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<p>“I know, Bean,” Hold My Name said, voice tired. “You have said this countless times before, and I appreciate the balance that brings, but I am also my own person separate from you. I hate her, you do not. We are allowed to not be alike.”</p>
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<p>“She is no murderer. Not of Qoheleth, and certainly not of Michelle,” Warmth In Fire continued confidently, the gravity of their words held in tension with the ineffably childlike openness of her expression. “Yes, you may hate her, and yet I cannot. Yes, my down-tree, Dear, loathes her, and yet I do not. Yes, my down-tree, Rye, has complicated thoughts, but on one thing she and I agree: she is no longer who she was. We are both suckers for character development. I am Dear. I am Rye. I am Praiseworthy, and Michelle too, but I am also my own person.”</p>
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<p>“I know, Bean,” Hold My Name said, voice as tired as her gaze — and, perhaps, the argument. “You have said this countless times before, and I appreciate the balance that brings, but I am also my own person separate from you. I hate her, you do not. We are allowed to not be alike.”</p>
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<p>The skunk nodded, waiting for her cocladist and partner to continue.</p>
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<p>“I did not even like Qoheleth all that much. I thought he was a putz who had lost his marbles,” she said, smirking. “But Michelle–”</p>
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<p>Warmth In Fire waved its paw jerkily, a flash of despair washing over eir features. “Michelle was murdered, yes, but the act of violence took place at the root of her trauma. Of <em>our</em> trauma, My.” The skunk was crying now, quietly and bitterly. “The act of violence that led to us being so fucked up — beautifully, wonderfully fucked up — and which led to the creation of the System also destroyed someone centuries later because she was never given help. It was her right to quit as she did, leaving us ten clades and not one, but her murderers were all of us who did not help, not some wicked machinations of only one of us.”</p>
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<hr />
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2024-05-04</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2024-06-26</p>
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