Michelle Hadje — 2124

It took Debarre a matter of seconds to answer Michelle’s request for a meeting, and his arrival in her sim, the weasel blinking into existence next to her on that endless field of grass and dandelions, startled her enough to cause her to stumble.

“Shit, you okay, Michelle?”

She laughed, picking herself back up. “Yeah, I just was not expecting you right away. I thought that you would set up a time later.”

“I was free.” Debarre leaned forward and helped brush some grass off of her side. “Is it not a good time?”

“No, no. Now is fine. Thank you for meeting up in the first place.”

“Of course.”

Michelle led them off at a leisurely pace into the fields, into the warm day and soft hum of bees. Debarre walked along in silence beside her, apparently enjoying the day with whiskers bristled out and eyes half-shut against the sun.

She’d always intended to build herself a house, but the field always felt so complete without it.

“True Name mentioned that you wanted to talk.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking down at his feet as they poked their way through the dandelions. “But I’m not quite sure where to start.”

“I am guessing that it is about the names.” She mastered a brief wave of anxiety, a brief wave of skunk features across human ones, a brief wave of Sasha among Michelle. “I am afraid that I do not have a fantastic explanation for it.”

Debarre shrugged this off. “I don’t need a great explanation. I don’t need anything, I guess. I just want to know what’s going on, Sasha.”

And with that, she was Sasha. What thoughts before that had kept her as Michelle, as her human self, had at last been uprooted for the day and replaced with those that anchored her to a time, a context, a name. Debarre, of all the others that she’d met, seemed to understand this best, and he took this in stride.

“If I am honest, I do not know myself. At least, not truly. It is something that came to me in the moment.” She paused to pluck a dandelion, twirling it between fingerpads, laughing. “I am still a little unnerved by it, myself. I remember thinking to myself, ‘I need a fucking vacation, but I should fork so that I do not leave the others in a lurch’, and then there it was, the idea, already fully formed and ready to go.”

“To use Aw– to use eir poem for the names?”

She canted her ears back. “I miss em. I have been thinking about em for years.”

“Two decades.”

The skunk nodded.

“I think about em a lot, too, Sasha. We were all pretty torn up about it, even if ey’s the one that helped build this place. Hell, I remember bawling my eyes out when you read the poem.” He laughed, rubbing a paw over his face. “Hell, when you said all that in the coffee shop, I was having a hard time dealing with a whole shitload of emotions, and you were so upset at the bar.”

“The bar?”

“Oh, uh, sorry. True Name was upset at the bar. I started to ask her about all this, and I almost said eir name and–“

“AwDae’s?” she asked, tilting her head.

Debarre flinched back from her, stopping mid-step.

“Debarre?”

He frowned at her, straightening up. “When I tried to say ‘AwDae’ earlier, True Name lost her shit. Like, I was afraid she was going to lunch across the table and deck me. You don’t know?”

Sasha shook her head. “None of my forks have merged back down to me yet. I– we decided that I would take some time off before reengaging. I have no memory of what happened.”

“It was kind of terrifying.” The weasel laughed. “She slammed her glass down and said something like ‘do not fucking say that name’. I can respect wanting to keep things close to the heart, but I thought I was about to get in a fistfight.”

“I am trying to picture either of us in a fistfight, much less with each other, and failing. I would very much appreciate this being kept between us, yes, but I have no plans to deck you if you say eir name when it is just the two of us.”

“I appreciate that. Why’d True Name seem to think otherwise, though?”

Tossing away the dandelion, she shrugged helplessly. “I do not know. At the point when she came into existence, she ceased being me. We were the same for only the briefest of seconds, but we have long since diverged.”

“That far, though? It’s only been a week or something, right?”

“I suppose so. I will have to check in with her. With the rest of the clade, too, and see if anything else strange is going on. I have not been keeping tabs on all of them.”

Debarre nodded. “They seem like they’re doing fine.”

“They are not taking over the council, then?”

He laughed. “Not at all, no. At least, not that I can see. Just True Name taking your spot in dealing with the politics stuff. I actually haven’t seen any of the others.”

Sasha nodded.

They stood in silence for a few minutes, just enjoying the sun. The vacation had treated her well so far, and she already felt less torn in two without the stress of the council weighing on her. Debarre also seemed to have a calming influence on her, as though having one person associated primarily with only one context was enough to pin her in place, rather than having her constantly ping-ponging between two.

Skunk and weasel both sat down in the grass, laughing at having apparently come to the same decision independent of each other.

Debarre plucked a blade of grass and threw it at her. “You reminded me; another thing that True Name said is that when you forked off your ten instances, you left behind the part of you that is split between Michelle and Sasha. She called it ‘the part that suffers’.”

Hiding a wince by plucking a handful of dandelions one by one, Sasha nodded. “I do not think that having ten versions of me who are just as fucked up as I am would have made anything easier.”

During the pause that followed, she began weaving those flowers into a chain.

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Suffering.”

Sasha set the half-complete flower-crown on her lap and began to pick another handful of flowers. Anything to keep from looking at Debarre. “I do not know if that is the right word. It was a deliberate choice to fork each instance only when I was in a more singular state. That way, they can do what they need to do without…without…”

Debarre did not press her. She worked through her tears, tying the last of the dandelions in place to form the chain into a loop so that she could rest it atop her head, petals tickling at her ears. When she dropped her hands again, the weasel took them in his own.

“What keeps you from doing the same, yourself? You could fork when you’re feeling excellent and leave behind whatever’s causing the split.”

She didn’t answer, just sat with her paws in her friend’s, her head bowed, her tears leaving tracks in fur.

“Sasha?”

She didn’t answer.

“Do you regret coming here?”

All she could do was shake her head before emotion completely overwhelmed her. She slouched to the side and, with Debarre’s help, lay down amid the grass and dandelions, resting her head on his thigh. His silence was patient, and his paw on her shoulder kind as she let that wave of emotion wash over her, through her, and when it was past, she shared in the calm that remained after.

“I’m sorry, Sasha.”

“No, no. It is alright.” She rolled onto her back, picking up the fallen flower-crown and reaching it up to drape it over the weasel’s head. “The System may act as a magnifying glass on some of that I was going through before uploading, but much of what I feel now what I was going through before, just less visibly.”

“Alright, I suppose.” He straightened the loop of golden flowers atop his head, ruffled a paw over her ears, and then leaned back, propping himself up with his paws in the grass.

“Nothing keeps me from fixing myself,” she murmured up to the clouds. “I do not know why I do not just do so.”

“Can I be honest?”

“Of course.”

“I worry it’s survivor’s guilt.”

She took a deep breath and quelled another wave of emotion, choosing instead to nod. “That is a distinct possibility. I do feel guilty that I made it and AwDae did not, that ey felt compelled to disappear across the border and give eir life for this–” She waved her paw up at the sky. “–that ey did all that and never even got to see it.”

There was a rustling and shifting beneath her head, and when she turned to look, the flower-crown was draped over her snout. They both laughed.

“We both lost someone,” Debarre said, voice thick. “I feel guilty that I made it and Cicero didn’t, sometimes. Hell, for a while, I was furious that AwDae lived longer than Cice did.”

“I am sorry.” Sasha started to wind the chain of flowers around her wrist, but it fell apart, so she dropped it into the grass instead. “I never knew.”

“How do you imagine that conversation would’ve gone? ‘Hey AwDae, fuck you for outliving my boyfriend’.” He laughed. “Shit like this isn’t rational, Sash.”

“I guess not. I am still glad that you are around, though.”

He sighed. “Of course I am. I never would’ve made it without you. I’m glad you’re here. You and Michelle. Hell, your whole damn clade.”

She gave the comment the space that it deserved, closing her eyes to feel the sun warm her fur, instead of speaking.

“Only, I wonder.” His voice sounded distant, as though he were speaking to the sky rather than her. “I wonder if your forks changed in ways other than just not being split. I wonder if they’re really even you anymore.”