update from sparkleup
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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 he’d quit, then laughed, changed his mind, and said he’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>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 years? Two hundred? Only five? Reed argued passionately for five more years of life before he’d quit, then laughed, changed his mind, and said he’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 his 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?” His draped their arm around her shoulders. “Still not sure?”</p>
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<p>She poked him in the side, grinning. “You must be drunk if you’re using words like ‘mawkish’ and ‘beholden’. Let’s see. You could introduce me to Marsh, maybe.”</p>
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<p>Reed shook his head. “That’s not on me, you know that. We have a one-way relationship.”</p>
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<p>“But they’re your down-tree instance! You’re patterned after them. You talk every year <em>at least</em> once, right? You’ll talk to them later tonight, right? You have for the last hundred.”</p>
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<p>“No, probably not. If I hear from then directly, anything more than just a ping, I’ll know something’s gone horribly wrong.” He shrugged — carefully, what with her head resting on his 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 their own life.”</p>
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<p>“No, probably not. If I hear from them directly, anything more than just a ping, I’ll know something’s gone horribly wrong.” He shrugged — carefully, what with her head resting on his 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 their own life.”</p>
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<p>“They have 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 them, I merge down directly. They get all our lives, one year at a time, but we don’t really get anything in return.”</p>
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<p>He could hear the frown in her voice. “How miserable.”</p>
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<p>She laughed.</p>
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<p>“They have a full and fulfilling life, is what I’m saying. They’re happy, it’s just that their happiness doesn’t include communication with their 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. “They very specifically want us to live our own lives. They don’t want us to just be versions of them. They can make all of those they want for their little tasks. They specifically want us to be something other than what they are so that they can experience that on their own terms.”</p>
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<p>Reed yawned, slouched down further on the couch along with Hanne. “They very specifically want us to live our own lives. They don’t want us to just be other versions of them. They can make all of those they want for their little tasks. They specifically want us to be something other than what they are so that they can experience that on their 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 them a version of you all, even if you’re not just a version of them.”</p>
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<p>Reed turned that thought over in his 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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@ -59,7 +59,7 @@
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<p>23:45.</p>
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<p>Reed started to nod, then stiffened as they felt first one, then another set of memories crash down onto him. “<em>Fuck.</em> One of these…days I’ll convince…them to give me some warning…sec…”</p>
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<p>Hanne laughed and shook her head, standing from the couch to go get herself a glass of water.</p>
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<p>He closed his eyes to turn down one of his senses, setting the sweet-smelling glass of brandy aside to rid himself of another as best he could. He sat and spent a moment processing, savoring the memories. Rush had forked and quit first. Ve had split off a new copy of verself then the original had quit. On doing so, all the memories ve’d formed over the last year fell down onto Reed, ready to be remembered like some forgotten word on the tip of his tongue: all he needed to do was actually remember. Next had come Sedge. Clearly, Tule had already done so, forking and merging back down into Sedge so that he could fork and merge down into Reed. Three sets of memories — two from his direct up-tree instances and one from a second-degree up-tree instance — rested on his mind, ready for integration.</p>
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<p>He closed his eyes to turn down one of his senses, setting the sweet-smelling glass of brandy aside to rid himself of another as best he could. He sat and spent a moment processing, savoring the memories. Rush had forked and quit first; ve had split off a new copy of verself then the original had quit. On doing so, all the memories ve’d formed over the last year fell down onto Reed, ready to be remembered like some forgotten word on the tip of his tongue: all he needed to do was actually remember. Next had come Sedge. Clearly, Tule had already done so, forking and merging back down into Sedge so that he could fork and merge down into Reed. Three sets of memories — two from his direct up-tree instances and one from a second-degree up-tree instance — rested on his mind, ready for integration.</p>
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<p>There would be time for full perusal and remembering later. It was rapidly approaching midnight, and he needed to get the memories sorted into his own, interleaved and zippered together into as cohesive a whole as he could manage, all conflicts addressed (though with as separate as their lives had been until then, there was thankfully quite little in the way of conflicting memories), so that, shortly before midnight, he could fork and then quit, himself, letting that new copy of himself live out the next year with Hanne, with all their joys and sorrows, while the original instance quit and let all those memories — those of Rush, Sedge, Tule, and himself — fall to Marsh to process, savor, and treasure for themself.</p>
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<p>He heard Hanne return, heard her climb back onto the couch before him, felt her press a cold glass of water into his hand.</p>
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<p>Five minutes left.</p>
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