update from sparkleup
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<p>“Reed, are you sure?” Rush asked.</p>
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<p>I shook my head. “I don’t think there’s any guarantee that this will do anything like what we’re hoping. I think it may actually go badly. When I watched Jonas do this, he said it felt really weird, like a really old merge, but also from a vastly different angle, rather than the usual down-tree.”</p>
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<p>I shook my head. “I don’t think there’s any guarantee that this will do anything like what we’re hoping. I think it may actually be quite rough. When I watched Jonas do this, he said it felt really weird, like a really old merge, but also from a vastly different angle, rather than the usual down-tree.”</p>
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<p>“He, uh…” Sedge said, then cleared her throat. “He actually quit pretty soon after, said it felt like Jonas Fa was living inside of his head before there was any reconciliation.”</p>
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<p>Rush furrowed vis brow. “Christ, what a trip.”</p>
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<p>We’d gathered in my home once more, all standing out in the back yard where the sun shone and everything was green, even the little, marshy pond in one corner, even the little impossible statues that Hanne had left scattered on hidden, moss-covered pedestals. It felt like home to me, a welcome change from having spent so much time in the headquarters of late, and the last two nights split between two bedrooms. Eight days after the crash, and a little bit of home sounded nice. A little bit of comfort felt necessary.</p>
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@ -27,11 +27,11 @@
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<p>“It is! Don’t get me wrong. Do you think Jonas being so old is what made it so painful for him?”</p>
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<p>“Oh, almost certainly,” Sedge said. “A founder who has been slowly going nuts. Jonas Ko forked during Secession and Fa forked a few decades later.”</p>
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<p>“So before systime 1 compared to Marsh uploading in 178,” I added. “And forking dates of 1 and 25, while us oldest forks are less than a hundred. We were, what, systime 180?”</p>
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<p>Lily, who had been silent and sullen up until that point, nodded. “systime 180+11. Individuated, but not to the same extent.” She looked away, mumbling, “Enough for some differences in opinion.”</p>
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<p>Lily, who had been silent and sullen up until that point, nodded. “Systime 180+11. Individuated, but not to the same extent.” She looked away, mumbling, “Enough for some differences in opinion.”</p>
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<p>Cress sighed. “I get it, Lily. I really do.” It stuffed its hands in its pockets, still staring at its cocladist. “But we can sort that out between us later. For now, we’ll have to contend with the fact that this new instance is going to have the same argument within them, right? Marsh managed it, so I trust that they’ll be able to, but still.”</p>
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<p>Her shoulders slumped. She nodded again, falling back into silence.</p>
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<p>“How about this,” I said gently. “We give this a go and just watch to see how it goes. If they quit, they quit. We don’t need to push so hard that it becomes a problem. If they stick around, then we can all discuss it together to see how it feels. If they feel closer to Marsh, neat. If not, I guess that’s fine, too, and they can decide whether or not to stick around.”</p>
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<p>“I mean, that sounds fine by me,” Sedge said. “Tule?”</p>
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<p>“I mean, that sounds alright by me,” Sedge said. “Tule?”</p>
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<p>He nodded.</p>
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<p>“Rush?”</p>
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<p>Another nod.</p>
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@ -61,7 +61,7 @@
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<p>I could see Lily’s frown growing deeper, so I nudged everyone towards the stairs. “Come on, bedroom’s up and straight ahead. I had an instance stay there last night.”</p>
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<p>We trooped up the stairs and into the bedroom. Here, despite the decor of the rest of the house, seemed to be a bedroom straight out of Marsh’s home. I looked around, taken aback.</p>
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<p><em>“Lily looked uncomfortable,”</em> Cress sent. <em>“I sent an instance to clear out the paintings. They’re in the closet.”</em></p>
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<p>I nodded subtly to it. <em>“Probably a good idea, I guess. Besides, a little busy for someone who’s probably going to be having a rough time.”</em></p>
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<p>I nodded subtly to it. <em>“Probably a good idea. Besides, a little busy for someone who’s probably going to be having a rough time.”</em></p>
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<p>“So,” Rush said as we shut the door. “What do we do next?”</p>
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<p>“Fork, basically. Then all merge down into one of our instances.” I forked as I continued. “I’ve done it before already, so I’ll volunteer my fork. Doesn’t matter in the end. It’ll be a blithe merge, all memories, no one will have any sense of primary memories, really.”</p>
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<p>“Won’t they wind up looking like you, though?”</p>
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@ -69,7 +69,7 @@
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<p>“How long ago was that?” Sedge asked.</p>
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<p>I shrugged helplessly. “About a decade.”</p>
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<p>“More recent than me, at least.”</p>
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<p>“I can do it,” Lily said quietly. “I saw them two years ago.”</p>
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<p>“I can do it,” Lily said quietly. “I saw them six months ago.”</p>
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<p>I frowned. “You did?”</p>
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<p>“I didn’t mean to. We ran into each other.”</p>
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<p>Sedge laughed. “There are two trillion people on the System. How on Earth did you just run into each other.”</p>
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@ -111,7 +111,7 @@
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<p>While Cress ducked out of the room to fetch them water, we all did our best to relax. I was surprised to see just how much tension I bore in my shoulders, just how tightly my hands had been clenched throughout. “Think you’ll stick around?” I asked.</p>
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<p>They shrugged, then winced at their own apparent soreness, nodding to Cress as it handed over the glass. “I guess for now, yeah. It’s not…uncomfortable, just weird. Like having a strange taste in your mouth or wearing a new shirt or something. The conflicts are kind of itchy, but I’m already working on them a little bit.”</p>
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<p>We talked for a while longer, though descriptions were slim, repetitions of what we’d already heard. It felt weird. It felt itchy. It felt weird. It felt strange. It felt weird. Even having experienced one such merge before, it didn’t wholly make sense, and I was left intensely curious. My experience had been so mild, with only a week’s worth of memories, rather than dozens of years from five different instances. I had no idea if five hours was good or bad for managing all of that, but we’d always been adept at merging.</p>
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<p>“Hey,” they said at last, once the line of questions had died down. “What do you say about inviting Vos and Pierre over. Maybe they’d like to meet me.”</p>
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<p>“Hey,” they said at last, once the line of questions had died down. “What do you say about inviting Vos and Pierre over? Maybe they’d like to meet me.”</p>
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<p>I winced. I’d been dreading this moment. I’d intentionally not brought up the subject of Marsh’s partners, lest that dissuade my cocladists. Admonitions rang in my ears, Hanne’s and Dry Grass’s. <em>I’m a bit wary you won’t get what you want,</em> Hanne had said. <em>The potential for pain,</em> Dry Grass had said.</p>
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<p>There was a long silence that followed as we all seemed to digest the ramifications of this.</p>
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<p>“Yeah, I guess,” Sedge said warily. “I don’t know how it’ll go, but yeah.”</p>
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<p>“One of the changes made in the System during the downtime was to enable cross-tree merging. It hasn’t been announced yet, but Sedge and I were at the meetings, so we, uh…”</p>
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<p>“I’m all of us,” New Marsh said, voice strained from the force of Pierre’s hug. “I’m their entire clade. I’m as much of them as I could manage.”</p>
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<p>Pierre quickly unwound his arms from them, staggering backwards with such hurriedness that he nearly tripped were it not for Vos, there to catch him. “What the fuck…”</p>
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<p>“All of…” Vos, realizing she was all but out of air, gasped for breath. “All of you? <em>All</em> of you?”</p>
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<p>New Marsh nodded.</p>
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<p>Vos’s gaze bore into New Marsh. “You told me something on New Year’s Eve, right before you headed up to the study. You looked me dead in the eye and smiled and said something.”</p>
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<p>They blanched.</p>
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<p>“What did you say to me?”</p>
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<p>Looking over to me nervously, they began to shake.</p>
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<p>Looking over to me nervously, they began to tremble.</p>
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<p>“What did you say to me? Tell me,” she said, voice growing louder, higher in pitch, until she was nearly screaming. Pierre quit unceremoniously, and she stomped forward a few paces. “What did you fucking say? What did you say? What did you say, whoever you are?! You said it every fucking year! <em>What did you fucking say?!</em>“</p>
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<p>New Marsh quailed at her advance, ducking around to hide behind my arm. I could read the way that Cress moved in them, could see that warring with the need to be understood that I felt in myself, the need for my little bargain to work.</p>
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<p>New Marsh quailed at her advance, ducking around to hide behind my arm. I could read the way that Cress moved in them, could see that warring with the need to be understood that I felt in myself, the need for my little bargain with grief to work.</p>
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<p>Vos’s gaze shifted to me. “<em>You,</em>” she growled. “This was <em>your</em> idea, wasn’t it?”</p>
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<p>I swallowed dryly and nodded.</p>
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<p>She finished her advance in two long strides, hand already winding back, and struck me across the face hard enough to knock me to the side against the wall. I crumpled under the sudden rush of pain, winding up in a jumbled heap on the floor at the base of the stairs. New Marsh darted back as the rest of the clade cried out.</p>
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<p>“”I’ll see you in a few, love”,” she spat, tears coursing down her cheeks. “That’s what they said, you awful piece of shit. “I’ll see you in a few.”“</p>
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<p>“”I’ll see you in a few, beautiful”,” she spat, tears coursing down her cheeks. “That’s what they said, you awful piece of shit. “I’ll see you in a few.”“</p>
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<p>“Vos, I–”</p>
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<p>I didn’t get the chance to finish. She had already stepped away.</p>
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<p>About ten seconds later, a sensorium message hit me with such force, with so much adrenaline, that I slumped over to the side. Regardless of the strength of the message, her words were eerily calm. <em>“No contact.”</em></p>
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<p>We stepped first to Infinite Café, an enormous sim that allowed any coffee shop on Lagrange to link an entrance. It took the form of an enormous ring looping up over us with what looked to be thousands of mismatched buildings lining its single avenue. A sign before us announced this to be the cocktails district.</p>
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<p>I upped my estimate to tens of thousands.</p>
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<p>We numbly followed Lily as she led us through the incredibly crowded thoroughfare to an unassuming brick building with a glass door. Inside we found a sparklingly white interior, with the bar and tables made of looping and curving slabs of marble.</p>
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<p>We numbly followed Lily as she led us through the incredibly crowded thoroughfare to an unassuming brick building with a glass door. Inside we found a sparklingly white interior, with the bar and tables made of looping and curving slabs of marble. Out front, the ice field of a glacier glinted in the sun. Whether sim echoed bar or the other way around was unclear.</p>
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<p>Pausing just inside the door, shielding our eyes against the brightness of so much white, Rush laughed. “Goddamn, what a look.”</p>
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<p>We sat on the awkward and uncomfortable stools at one of the tall tables huddled in a corner, each nursing our espresso martinis or negronis or Irish coffees.</p>
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<p>“Anubias.”</p>
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<p>I rolled my eyes.</p>
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<p>“Really, though, I feel a lot…I don’t know. Lighter, maybe? Like I got a lot off my chest in the process. I’ll want to talk with you, Anubias, at some point to keep thinking about this whole Odist thing. Maybe this can be a part of that reconciliation.”</p>
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<p>They nodded. “Sure.”</p>
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<p>“But yeah, even just going through with this felt like a step forward after however many steps backward. It feels like ages since that dinner at your place, Reed.”</p>
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<p>“But yeah, even just going through with this felt like a step forward after however many steps backward. It feels like ages since that dinner at your place, Reed, all that time getting more and more upset.”</p>
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<p>“Yeah.”</p>
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<p>Silence fell again as we drank.</p>
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<p>“So what do we do now?” Cress asked, downing the rest of their drink in one go.</p>
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<p>“Start processing, I guess,” I said at last. “Send letters to the LVs, catch up with friends, spend time with loved ones, and start processing whatever the world has become.”</p>
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</article>
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<p>Page generated on 2024-03-29</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2024-05-01</p>
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