update from sparkleup
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Madison Scott-Clary
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<p>It was not simply that ey had been finding piece after piece of new-to-em information about those that ey loved — though it was also that — nor was it that eir entire clade seemed to be entangled far deeper into something going further back than expected — though it was that as well — but that, by virtue of the twin launches and the L<sub>5</sub> system remaining back around Earth, ey was limited to reading much of this over plain text. Text that had flowed over sheets of paper in a comfortable font, bound itself up in books, and begged to be pored over, stood itself before em and said, “Read me, understand me.” It all added one layer of remove that, despite eir attraction to the written word and fine paper and comfortable fonts and nice books, left em feeling caught up in some dreamlike state of almost-understanding.</p>
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<p>As an example, there was this seemingly universal agreement among the Odists that no one of them should be the one to tell the entirety of the tale, and each for their own reasons. There seemed to be shame bound up in all of them, in some way, but beyond that, both instances of Dear had diverged to the point where the foxes were starting to come up with their own explanations for not providing that info to their respective Codrins Bălan.</p>
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<p>Why was it, for instance, that Codrin#Pollux had decided to simply interview Dear, where ey had not? And what was ey, Codrin#Castor, to do with the information that Dear had shared with eir cocladist? Hell, was cocladist even the right word, at this point? That seemed to imply a down-tree instance that one could still access.</p>
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<p><em>I want to die,</em> the fox had said. How had Codrin#Pollux even begun to deal with that bit of information? When ey read those words, in eir comfortable font on eir fine paper in eir nice books, ey had cried. Ey had cried much as it sounded Codrin#Pollux had.</p>
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<p><em>I want to die,</em> the fox had said. How had Codrin#Pollux even begun to deal with that bit of information? When ey read those words, in eir comfortable font on eir fine paper in eir nice books, ey had cried. Ey had cried much as it sounded like Codrin#Pollux had.</p>
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<p>Ey had cried and closed the book and paced eir way out into the prairie outside the house, where ey had cried some more. Ey had not walked any new paths that day, simply walked to the outermost cairn that ey could find, sat down next to it, and watered the thirsty grass with a grief ey could not name.</p>
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<p>And that ey could not name it only added to that unnerving sense of remove. It wasn’t just sadness or grief. It wasn’t the type of feeling that one might experience at the actual loss of a loved one. It wasn’t the type of feeling that one experienced on learning that a loved one bore within its heart thoughts of suicide. Neither of those were true. Ey knew that, had ey been the one to conduct the interview, ey would have had much the same reaction as the other Codrin had (ey suspected, for all ey had was the transcript, incomplete as it was). But instead, ey had a cottony shield of time and distance that meant that ey could process it at eir own pace. Ey could go sit out in the prairie and cry and then come to an understanding of Dear’s desire that ey couldn’t have any hope of doing, were the fox sitting before em.</p>
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<p>With this distance, both from the interview and from Dear itself, ey could remember its words: <em>“I just think we need death, or something like it, as part of the system. Death. Fear of death. Needs and reasons to survive in the face of an inevitable end. We need a way for an individual to end. We need a way to release those memories.”</em> Ey could remember those words and understand the sudden too-full feeling of discomfort that had come with them. Immortality came with its own costs, and it was not simply that one might grow bored, but that one might go mad.</p>
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<p>Eventually, even Codrin lay back in the grass. Lay there with Tycho Brahe in all his sadness and happiness and wisdom and romanticism. Lay there and looked up at the stars ey knew not for how long.</p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-11-07</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-11-17</p>
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</footer>
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<p><strong>True Name:</strong> He is not wrong, but I do not think that is motive enough.</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> I don’t either. I suspect that he’s not keen on something about the System where it is, whether that’s its location in the S-R Bloc or that it remains a multinational entity where uploads retain their citizenship back phys-side. Maybe he just wants to make it a separate nation in order to allow it to be a place to send refugees, asylum seekers, and so on. Or maybe he wants to restrict emigration.</p>
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<p><strong>True Name:</strong> Those are all good potential reasons, yes. Do you have any hints as to which may be the most likely?</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> Not particularly. He’s mentioned them all in passing</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> Not particularly. He’s mentioned them all in passing.</p>
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<p><strong>True Name:</strong> Alright. Keep us up to date, then.</p>
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<p><strong>Jonas:</strong> What was your most recent message from Demma and his people?</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually.</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> Sure, one moment.</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> We continue to circle around this discussion of individual rights as though we are debating the individuality of those sys-side. It’s important to understand, though, that this is a distraction from the actual point. Many have mentioned that those who have uploaded, whether or not they are individuals, are no longer analogous to humans (there’s that speciation argument again!) and one wag even put it, “Who cares if they’re individuals? They can’t even vote!”</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> This is quite true, my dear wag. They can’t vote. They have no say in our political affairs out here, just as we have no say in theirs. How could we? I mean, sure, I bet some of them read DDR posts and wonder <em>what the hell is going on out there?</em> But consider what their politics must look like to us. What would <em>we</em> vote on? Whether or not they must post signage that their sims allow non-euclidean space? Is it okay for you to try and impersonate someone when you can become like them to exacting detail (except for, surprise, their individual personality)?</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> I think we’re still split pretty evenly on speciation. Even I am. One day, I’ll think, “Sure, they may be fundamentally different from us, but they still <em>think</em> like us. They still reason like humans. Except for the biological differences, they still are.” Other days, though, I’ll wake up and think, “We we have no common frame of reference with these people. They’re just too different.”</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> I think we’re still split pretty evenly on speciation. Even I am. One day, I’ll think, “Sure, they may be fundamentally different from us, but they still <em>think</em> like us. They still reason like humans. Except for the biological differences, they still are.” Other days, though, I’ll wake up and think, “We have no common frame of reference with these people. They’re just too different.”</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> This actually came up in a few conversations with my friends sys-side. It sounds like they share some of that ambivalence toward speciation. They can’t interface with phys-side as we can, and we can’t interface with sys-side as they can, so how could they even be considered the same species as us? And yet here they are, taking place in a political debate as filigreed and baroque as any other, and doing so with the same rational minds that we have, even if only at one remove. “At this point,” one of them said as we laughed over another fruitless debate. “I’m not even sure we should be discussing individual rights with governments that have no way of knowing how we work. We might as well just secede and end the discussion there.”</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> But who knows if speciation will even wind up playing into it, in the end. I’ve noticed that, even though we remain split on the topic, tempers have cooled on both sides. I’m surprised — pleasantly so! — to see this agreement building even in Cairo; I know that many of my compatriots there bore apathy or even antipathy towards the system after previous dealings between NEAC and the S-R Bloc. We’re no longer at each others throats about whether or not they’re so fundamentally different from us that it requires some strange new way to think of them as individuals.</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> And honestly, that’s my hope. I think that way whether or not they’re humans, whether or not they have their own customs and social structure, whether or not they’re even a separate country. Even those who are falling on the side of speciation are starting to refer to them in terms of individuals. “Them.” “How many of them.” “Who in there even thinks X” All of these are ways that we refer to individuals, and, you who are still arguing this belabored point that they should have no choice on what is done with their personalities once their bodies are gone, you are now thinking of them as what they are: individuals.</p>
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</blockquote>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-10-17</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-11-17</p>
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</footer>
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