I looked down into my coffee, considering how much to pass on. “It sounds like a lot of people are gone. ‘A few million’, though doubtless that’s getting bigger as more people report in. Everything sounds pretty chaotic.”
Hanne furrowed her brow. “A few million? Jesus. Any word from phys-side?”
“Not that she mentioned, no.”
+“Great. Of course not.”
+I nodded, covered my anxiety with a sip of coffee.
+“Well, hey,” she said, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek. “Go on and go talk with Dry Grass. Could be she’s learned more, could be they’ve said something and we just haven’t gotten it yet. If she’s as plugged in as she says she is, then doubtless she knows more than she’s showing.”
+“Right.” I laughed. “Of all of us, she would.”
+We met in front of a small coffee shop. A bucolic small town main street lined with gas lamps and paved with cobblestones.
+“Coffee and chicory, yes?” Dry Grass said, offering me a paper cup.
+I nodded as I accepted. “Cress and Tule still drink that?”
+A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Much to my chagrin, yes.”
+“Not a fan?”
+She shook her head. “Too bitter for my tastes. Mocha, extra chocolate, extra whipped cream,” she said, lifting her own cup. “Apparently a sweet tooth can last more than three centuries. Who knew.”
+“Yeah, that sounds way too sweet for me,” I said, grinning.
+Grinning back, she gestured down the street in an invitation to walk, and we fell in step beside each other, saying nothing.
+The sim was, indeed, beautiful, though it did bear some trademarks of early sim design, with the cobblestones perhaps a little too perfectly fit together, a little too flat, and the hexagonal lamp posts bearing corners that were perhaps a little too sharp. Still, for a morning walk with coffee (my third of the day; I’d have to turn off the caffeine sensitivity later), it was ideal. The sim was quiet and calm, with the sun blessing the street with long shadows and cool air that felt on the path to warming.
+“It’s so quiet,” I observed. The act of speaking out loud into the quiet air was enough to knock me back into the context of what had happened. “Oh.”
+Dry Grass readily picked up on the meaning behind that syllable, nodding to me. “I do not imagine that it is so quiet because so many are missing, but I do think that many are staying home, hunting for lovers and friends, trawling the feeds. Heading out to public sims is, perhaps, not at the tops of their minds.”
+Looking around did indeed provide a better sense of the mood. Those who were out and about looked somber, distracted, walking with heads down or talking in hushed tones two-by-two.
+LATER: There had been little enough interaction with sys-side over the years, especially now that the climate had started to level out back on Earth. The rate of uploads had even leveled off from its slow increase over time.