“What kind of cancer? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Thyroid, I think. Yes, that was it. I noticed it when it started to get uncomfortable to hold the violin.” She made a sour face, then added, “I’m sure I sound obsessed.”
Ey waved the comment away. “I’m here to listen. Please, obsess all you like.”
-Renee smiled gratefully. “There really was nothing in my life, otherwise. Writing, playing, conducting. Concert after concert after concert. No friends, no family, no other hobbies, no other addictions. What would I even do with myself without the few things in my life I loved? Really, truly loved, too. I loved my parents, but it was more of a theoretical love. I told myself I loved my husband, but when he left — I was too distracted, he said — I was actually pretty happy.”
+Renee smiled gratefully. “There really was nothing in my life, otherwise. Writing, playing, conducting. Concert after concert after concert. No friends, no family, no other hobbies, no other addictions. What would I even do with myself without the few things in my life I loved? Really, truly loved, too. I loved my parents, but it was more of a theoretical love. I told myself I loved my husband, but when he left — I was too distracted, he said — I was actually sort of relieved.”
“That’s a plenty good reason to upload, I’d say. 2140s, hmm.” Ey hunted through eir memory, back to interviews with Douglas. “That was before governments were paying people to upload. Was it expensive for you to upload?”
“Paid…?” She frowned and shook her head. “God, no. What a weird idea.”
“It got bad, phys-side. Some governments started subsidizing uploads to keep populations down and people happy.”
@@ -43,13 +43,13 @@“There wasn’t much money in history, either,” ey said. “Now, the reason I sought you out was two-fold. First of all, one of the things you’re known for is that you found a way to send your compositions phys-side pretty early on, correct?”
“Yes. Yes! I had nearly forgotten that they pinned that on me.” She laughed, leaning back in her chair. “I didn’t really figure it out, so much as use something a publisher pointed out to me as a curiosity. It’s nigh impossible to send images and sound back through phys-side. I guess they came through all garbled, with little bits in focus and the rest a total mess. I have no clue as to the details.”
“As I’ve heard, too. Text appears to work okay, as something more concrete.”
-“Right, just drop it in the perisystem blah blah and phys-side can pick it up. Anyway, music can be described, and that publisher said that there had been several different tools for writing sheet music as just plain old text. Want to play the note A? Write down A. B? Write down B. A rest? R. Et cetera et cetera ad nauseum. It was nothing new, but I guess no one had thought to try something like that before. I read up on one of them and made a few changes to the whole shebang, and now we can send that back and forth. Books? Sure. Math? Sure. Even scripts! Why not music?”
+“Right, just drop it in the perisystem blah blah and phys-side can pick it up. Anyway, music can be described, and that publisher said that there had been several different tools for writing sheet music as just plain old text. Want to play the note A? Write down A. B? Write down B. A rest? R. Et cetera et cetera ad nauseum. It was nothing new, but I guess no one had thought to try something like that before. I read up on one of them and made a few changes to the whole shebang, and now we can send that back and forth. Books? Sure. Math? Sure. Even film and stage scripts! Why not music?”
Ioan laughed. “Of course. That makes sense. Did your music change after you uploaded?”
“I wrote a lot more string works,” she said, grinning. “After all, I could fork and play as many parts as I wanted. Or could afford, at least. It still cost a bit to fork back then. I also made a few instruments up here that I could only describe in order to let phys-side know how to make. Concerts were much easier to have, because schedules are easier to coordinate when you’re not restricted to just one version of yourself. Music started to drift between sys-side and phys-side — stylistically, I mean. I got some iffy reviews of stuff offline that went over pretty well here.”
“What happened to music phys-side that didn’t here?”
-“They swung back towards some older styles. Minimalism was already on the rise again, when I was leaving, and I loved the stuff. All those long notes, chords that held forever or used rhythm to add variety. Phasing.” She chopped her hands unevenly in the air before herself, emphasizing the latter in a way that Ioan didn’t understand at all. “Outside the System, though, it swung back toward more romantic stuff. It was all very Mahler, very Antoniewicz, very Liu. The problem with living forever, though, is that you can keep refining your craft in whatever ways you want. I stuck around with minimalism, for the most part. People keep uploading, though, and bring their ideas with them, so I’ve tried to diversify my works a little bit, but I write what sounds good to me.”
+“They swung back towards some older styles. Second-wave minimalism was at its height, when I was leaving, and I loved the stuff. All those long notes, chords that held forever or used rhythm to add variety. Phasing.” She chopped her hands unevenly in the air before herself, emphasizing the latter in a way that Ioan didn’t understand at all. “Outside the System, though, it swung back toward more romantic stuff. It was all very Mahler, very Antoniewicz, very Liu. The problem with living forever, though, is that you can keep refining your craft in whatever ways you want. I stuck around with minimalism, for the most part. People keep uploading, though, and bring their ideas with them, so I’ve tried to diversify my works a little bit, but I write what sounds good to me.”
“Is there a steady stream of composers joining? Enough to shift styles sys-side?”
-“Less so, lately. If people are being paid to upload, though, it’s not too surprising. That makes it sound like things are a mess out there, and when things are a mess, people study less music and try to get out early, often before they’ve got the experience and knowledge that set in later in life.”
+“Less so, lately. If people are being paid to upload, though, it’s not too surprising. That makes it sound like things are a mess out there, and when things are a mess, people study less music and try to get out early, often before they’ve got the experience and knowledge that set in later in life. Would explain the wave of folk music I’ve seen in the last decades.”
“Makes me want to take a survey of ages when folks upload through the years.” Ey scribbled a note to emself on the corner of eir paper. “Another time, though. The second reason that I wanted to interview is that you didn’t opt to join the launch. Why was that?”
She covered her face with her hands and laughed, sounding muffled. “Oh no, that’s embarrassing. I meant to, I really did. I just forgot.”
That evening, back at eir house, after ey had merged eir work-forks, after ey had sat down to dinner with May, ey finally let the memories, those countless little moments, wash over em.
@@ -63,7 +63,7 @@“After I explained it to Codrin#Pollux, ey seemed on board. I think it might be a good idea.”
“Did either of them have any suggestions for where to look next?”
“Nothing in particular,” Ioan said around a bite of fish. “Sorry. I figure stuff like why one invested in one or the other is a project that could go on forever, based on the numbers. Sure, there are only two hundred or so clades that totally invested in the launches, but the numbers are much higher on our end.”
-“You are thinking about Secession, are you not? Looking for founders to interview” May grinned. “Clever, clever.”
+“You are thinking about Secession, are you not? Looking for founders to interview” May grinned. “Clever.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
Ey laughed. “Well, how much of the Council of Eight remains?”
@@ -80,7 +80,7 @@She nodded, setting her fork down on her plate, though some of the food remained. “Yes, but I am worried that you will be unhappy with me.”