update from sparkleup
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<p>Reed laughed and bumped their shoulder against Hanne’s. “A sales pitch?”</p>
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<p>“Yeah,” she said, leaning briefly against them as they walked. “I’m in the market for a new year. Sell me the 2368 model. I’ve got a wide variety to choose from, so tell me why you decided to live through this one.”</p>
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<p>“You’re a nerd. You realize that, right?”</p>
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<p>“Tell me why I should be a nerd in 2368.“</p>
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<p>“Tell me why I should be a nerd in the year 244. Next year we can decide on 245.“</p>
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<p>Reed scuffed their heel against the pavement of the street. New Year’s Eve, and everyone was still inside. Bars: full. Restaurants: packed. There were a few scattered couples or groups around, but they were all walking with purpose. Champagne called. Canapes. Crudites.</p>
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<p>And here they were, Reed and Hanne, arm in arm, strolling leisurely down the street, heedless of the passersby, to celebrate the last day of 2368, systime 244+365.</p>
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<p>“If you’re looking for the utmost in luxury, then it’s really hard to go wrong with 2368. The ride was just about as smooth as could be.”</p>
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<p>She titled her head at them.</p>
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<p>“”Extremely sentimental,” it says. Pretty sure that fits.”</p>
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<p>Hanne rolled her eyes, grinning. “Okay, yeah, that fits you to a tee.”</p>
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<p>Champagne tinted evenings fade, as they do, into brandy-colored nights. Amber nights and fireplaces for the hell of it, Reed and Hanne settling in for a little bit of warmth for that last hour, not quite decadence and a ways off from opulence, but still a plush couch and a fire and snifters slightly too full of liquor.</p>
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<p>They shared their warmth and they continued to talk, talking of the year past, of years past beyond that, and of however many they decided would lay ahead of them. A hundred? Two hundred? Five years? Reed argued passionately for five more years of life before they’d quit, then laughed, changed their mind, and said they’d never die. Hanne said she would live for precisely two hundred before quitting her instance and disappearing from Lagrange. She would fork at a century and never speak to that version of her again, that exact duplicate, and should that instance decide to live on past two centuries, so be it, but she’d decided her expiration.</p>
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<p>Reed scoffed. “What? And leave me behind?”</p>
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<p>“Of course. Can you imagine six score years with someone? Absolutely miserable.” She rested her head on their shoulder and shrugged. “We’re a ways off from that, I think I still like you now.”</p>
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<p>“You think?” They draped their arm around her shoulders. “Still not sure?”</p>
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<p>“I’m sure I think I like you.”</p>
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<p>They laughed. “Yeah? Well, what can I do to cement your opinion of me? What can I do to make you sure that you like me?”</p>
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<p>“There’s a whole laundry list,” she said, sipping her brandy.</p>
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<p>“Pop one. I could use a goal for 245.”</p>
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<p>Hanne held up her glass appraisingly. “Well, we could work on your taste in liquor.”</p>
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<p>They snorted. “What would you rather I drink?”</p>
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<p>“Scotch.”</p>
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<p>“That always struck me as so manly, though.”</p>
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<p>“Sounds fake.”</p>
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<p>“Oh, I’m pretty sure it is, but we’re beholden to stereotypes.”</p>
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<p>She poked em in the side, grinning. “You must be drunk if you’re using words like ‘beholden’. Let’s see. You could introduce me to Marsh, maybe.”</p>
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<p>Reed shook their head. “That’s not on me, you know that. We have a one-way relationship.”</p>
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<p>“But he’s your down-tree instance! You’re patterned after him. You talk every year <em>at least</em> once, right? You’ll talk to him later tonight, right? You have for the last hundred.”</p>
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<p>“No, probably not. If I hear from him directly, anything more than just a ping, I’ll know something’s gone horribly wrong.” They shrugged — carefully, what with her head resting on their shoulder. “Like I say, it’s a one-way relationship. All I do is live my own life, right? I stay in touch with the rest of the clade to greater or lesser extent, but Marsh has his own life.”</p>
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<p>“He has several.”</p>
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<p>“Right. We all fork, we all merge back down to whoever our down-tree instance is, and since I was forked from him, I merge down directly. He gets all our lives, one year at a time, but we don’t really get anything in return.”</p>
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<p>They could hear the frown in her voice. “How miserable.”</p>
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<p>“What, our relationship?”</p>
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<p>“Just…him. How miserable he has to be, right? He lives his life doing whatever, spending his whole year remembering the previous year from, what, five instances?”</p>
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<p>“Six. Me, Lily, Cress, Rush, Sedge, and Tule.”</p>
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<p>“That’s another thing you could do: be a little less weird.”</p>
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<p>They laughed, kissed atop her head. “Uh huh. Love you too.”</p>
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<p>“But I was saying he has to be miserable. He chills out in his house and spends his days remembering yours, you and your cocladists, and just living vicariously through you all.”</p>
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<p>“That’s not all he does. He sings. He’s got Vos and Pierre, right? He spends time with his partners. He goes to Vos’s plays. He has friends over. He sings a <em>lot</em>. He cooks–“</p>
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<p>“Is he as bad a cook as you?”</p>
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<p>“Oh, worse, according to Tule’s girlfriend. Truly terrible.”</p>
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<p>She laughed.</p>
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<p>“He has a full and fulfilling life, is what I’m saying. He’s happy, it’s just that his happiness doesn’t include communication with his up-tree instances.”</p>
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<p>“Why not?”</p>
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<p>Reed yawned, slouched down further on the couch along with Hanne. “He very specifically wants us to live our own lives. He doesn’t want us to just be versions of him. He can make all of those he wants for his little tasks. He specifically wants us to be something other than what he is so that he can experience that on his own terms.”</p>
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<p>“Don’t see how that’s any different,” she mumbled. Sleep threatened, even with some time left before midnight. “You all merging down like that is just doing the same thing in reverse, You’re making him a version of you all, even if you’re not just a version of him.”</p>
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<p>Reed turned that thought over in their head, held it at arm length, let the light of the fire shine through the fog of champagne and brandy onto it to admire just how strangely it was shaped. “Well, huh.”</p>
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<p>“See? You’re so weird.”</p>
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<p>“I guess we are,” they said, smiling and nudging Hanne upright once more. “No dozing off, now.”</p>
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<hr />
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<p>All told, a fine way to spend the remainder of systime 244, almost 102 years since they — or at least their down-tree instance, Marsh — had uploaded.</p>
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<p>Take a human mind, crush it, compress it down to a dream, mix it all up, pour it into a system with however many billion others — billion? Trillion? — to let everyone dream within unison. Make yourself a </p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-11-04</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-12-27</p>
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</footer>
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</main>
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