Champagne tinted evenings fade, as they do, into brandy-colored nights. Amber nights and fireplaces for the hell of it, me 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.
We share our warmth, sitting side by side on the couch, and we continue to talk, talking of the year past, of years past beyond that, and of however many we decide are ahead. A hundred years? Two hundred? Only five? I make an impassioned argument for five more years of life, then laugh, change my mind, and say I’ll never die. Hanne says she’ll live for precisely two hundred, give up, and disappear from Lagrange. She’ll 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.
I scoff. “What? And leave me behind?”
“Of course. Can you imagine six score years with someone? Absolutely miserable.” She rests her head on my shoulder and shrugs. “We’re a ways off from that, I think I still like you now.”
“You think?” I drape my arm around her shoulders. “Still not sure?”
“I’m sure I think I like you.”
I laugh. “Yeah? Well, what can I do to cement your opinion of me? What can I do to make you sure that you like me?”
“There’s a whole laundry list,” she says, sipping her brandy.
“Pop one. I could use a goal for 276.”
Hanne holds up her glass appraisingly. “Well, we could work on your taste in liquor.”
I snort. “What would you rather I drink?”
“Scotch.”
“That always struck me as so manly, though.”
“Sounds fake.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure it is, but we’re beholden to stereotypes.”
She pokes me 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.”
I shake my head. “That’s not on me, you know that. We have a one-way relationship.”
“But they’re your down-tree instance! You’re patterned after them. You talk every year at least once, right? You’ll talk to them later tonight, right? You have for the last hundred.”
“No, probably not. If I hear from them directly, anything more than just a ping, I’ll know something’s gone horribly wrong.” I lean back — carefully, what with her head resting on my 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.”
“They have several.”
“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.”
I can hear the frown in her voice. “How miserable.”
“What, our relationship?”
“Just…them. How miserable they have to be, right? They live their life doing whatever, spending their whole year remembering the previous year from, what, five instances?”
“Six. Me, Lily, Cress, Rush, Sedge, and Tule.”
“That’s another thing you could do: be a little less weird.”
I chuckle, kiss atop her head. “Uh huh. Love you too.”
“But I was saying they have to be miserable. They chill out in their house and spend their days remembering yours, you and your cocladists, and just living vicariously through you all.”
“That’s not all they do. They sing. They have Vos and Pierre, right? They spend time with their partners. They go to Vos’s plays. They have friends over. They sing a lot. They cook–”
“Are they as bad a cook as you?”
“Oh, worse, according to Tule’s girlfriend. Truly terrible.”
She laughs.
“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.”
“Why not?”
I yawn, slouch 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.”
“Don’t see how that’s any different,” she mumbles. Sleep threatens, 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.”
I turn that thought over in my head, hold it at arms 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.”
“See? You’re so weird.”
“I guess we are,” I say, smiling and nudging Hanne upright once more. “No dozing off, now. Not yet.”
She grumbles and rubs at her face. “Sorry if that came off as rude. I guess it’s just outside my understanding.”
I scoot up onto the couch, myself, sitting cross-legged to face her. “It’s okay. It’s not wrong, even, I just don’t think it’s wholly right, either. It’s a matter of intent. Our intent is to live our own lives to the fullest, and it’s their intent to let us do so and yet still be able to experience that at one layer of remove. We’ve been doing it for a century, and it’s worked out well enough since then. If all this–” I wave around the room, feeling the gentle spin of drunkenness follow the movement, “–is just a dream, if we’re all doing our best to dream in unison with each other, then I think intent may be all that we have, right? However may billion or trillion people have uploaded are all trying to dream the same dream together, all mixed up and poured into the same System, we have to form what meanings we may on our own.”
“I think we broke two trillion instances a while back. I don’t know how may uploads, but I don’t think it’s hit a trillion yet.”
“Right. Sorry, guess I’m kinda rambly when I’m drunk.”
Leaning forward, she gives me a light kiss. “It’s okay, I like it when you ramble. Just don’t lose track of the time.”
23:45.
I start to nod, then stiffen as I felt first one, then another set of memories crash down onto me. “Fuck. One of these…days I’ll convince…them to give me some warning…sec…”
Hanne laughs and shakes her head, standing from the couch to go get herself a glass of water.
I close my eyes to turn down one of my senses, setting the sweet-smelling glass of brandy aside to rid myself of another as best I can. I sit and spend a moment processing, savoring the memories. Rush had merged down 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 me, ready to be remembered like some forgotten word on the tip of my tongue: all I need to do is actually remember. Clearly, Tule had already forked and merged back down into Sedge, as their combined memories pile yet more weight on me. Three sets of memories — two from my direct up-tree instances and one from a second-degree up-tree instance — rested on my mind, ready for integration.
There’ll be time for full perusal and remembering later. It’s rapidly approaching midnight, and I need to get the memories sorted into my own, interleaved and zippered together into as cohesive a whole as best I can 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, I can fork, myself, letting that new copy of me live out the next year with Hanne, with all their joys and sorrows, while the original instance quits and lets all those memories — those of Rush, Sedge, Tule, and myself — fall to Marsh to process, savor, and treasure for themself.
I hear Hanne return, hear her climb back onto the couch before me, feel her press a cold glass of water into my hand.
Five minutes left.
Three.
23:58, and I open my eyes and smile. “Well, seems like it’s been a pleasant enough year for everyone involved, though I’ll deal with all the rest of that later.”
“Is it time, then?” she asks.
I nod, will away the drunkenness, take a sip of water, and, with a rush of intent, bring into being beside us a new instance of myself. Exactly the same. Precisely. Had such a thing any meaning to an upload, we would be the same down to the atomic level, to the subatomic. All of the memories, all of the personality, all of the history.
For a fraction of a second, at least. From there, we begin to diverge, each remembering things differently. The Reed that still sits on the couch sees Hanne from this angle, and yet the one that stands beside the couch sees her from that. The one that sits on the couch feels the fire on his cheek, the one standing feels it on his back.
“Alright. I love you, Hanne Marie. I’ll miss you.”
She rolls her eyes. “Tell Marsh I said–
“See? You’re so weird.”
“I guess we are,” I say, smiling and nudging Hanne upright once more. A flash of déjà vu strikes me firmly in the right temple, a headache amid the buzz of alcohol. “Hey now, no falling asleep on me.”
“Right, sorry. Still, uh…still fifteen minutes.” She grumbles and rubs at her face. “Sorry if that came off as rude. I guess it’s just outside my understanding.”
I scoot up onto the couch, myself, sitting cross-legged to face her. “It’s okay. It’s not wrong, come to think of it, I just don’t think it’s wholly right, either, you know? It’s more a matter of intent. Our intent is to live our own lives doing as we will rather than as they would, and it’s their intent to let us do so — and by not interfering, even with communication, force us to do so — and yet still be able to experience that almost like a dream. They forked us off a century ago, me, Lily, and Cress, and we’ve been doing it for the last century, and it’s worked out well enough since then. They’re more than just Marsh, now. They’re Marsh and all of us. If all this–” I wave around the room, feeling the gentle spin of drunkenness follow the movement, “–is just a dream, if we’re all doing our best to dream in unison with each other, then I think intent may be all that we have, right? However may billion or trillion people have uploaded are all trying to dream the same dream together, all mixed up and poured into the same System, we have to form what meanings we may on our own.”
“I think we broke two trillion instances a while back. I don’t know how may uploads, but I don’t think it’s hit a trillion yet.”
“Right. Sorry, guess I’m kinda rambly when I’m drunk.”
Leaning forward, she gives me a light kiss. “You know I like it when you ramble. Just don’t lose track of the time.”
23:45.
I start to nod, will away the drunkenness, then stiffen as I feel first one, then another set of memories crash down onto me. “Fuck. One of these…days I’ll convince…them to give me some warning…sec…”
Hanne laughs and shakes her head, standing from the couch to go get herself a glass of water.
I close my eyes to turn down one of my senses, taking one more sip of the sweet-smelling brandy before setting it aside to rid myself of another two as best I can. I sit and spend a moment processing, savoring the memories. Rush had merged down 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 me, ready to be remembered like some forgotten word on the tip of my tongue: all I need to do is actually remember. Clearly, Tule had already forked and merged back down into Sedge, as their combined memories pile yet more weight on me. Three sets of memories — two from my direct up-tree instances and one from a second-degree up-tree instance — rested on my mind, ready for integration.
There would be time for full perusal and remembering later. It was rapidly approaching midnight, and I need to get the memories sorted into his own, interleaved and zippered together into as cohesive a whole as I can 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, I can fork and quit, myself, 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.
I hear Hanne return, hear her climb back onto the couch before me, feel her press a cold glass of water into my hand.
Five minutes left.
Two.
23:59, and I open my eyes. “Well, seems like it’s been a pleasant enough year. I’ll deal with all the rest of that later.”
“Is it time, then?” she asks.
I nod, take a few long gulps of water, and, with a press of will, bring into being beside us a new instance of myself. Exactly the same. Exactly. Had such a thing any meaning to the uploaded consciousness, we would be the same down to the atomic level, to the subatomic. All of the memories, all of the personality, all of the love and hate and past that made us us.
For a fraction of a second, at least. From there, we begin to diverge, each remembering things differently. The Reed that still sits on the couch sees Hanne from this angle, and yet the one that stands beside the couch sees her from that. The one that sits on the couch feels the fire on his cheek, the one standing feels it on his back.
“Alright. I love you, Miss Hanne Marie. I’ll think of you often.”
She rolls her eyes. “No you won’t. Tell Marsh I said hi.”
I laugh and, as the clock strikes midnight, willed myself to quit.
Then frown.
“Something wrong?”
I hold up a finger and close my eyes. Once more, I think to myself, I’m ready to quit, then then will that to be reality.
Rather than the sudden nothingness that should followed, I feel the System balk. Resist. I feel an elastic sensation that I’ve never felt before. There’s a barrier between me and the ability to quit. I feel it, test it, probe and explore. It’s undeniably present, and though I sense that I could probably press through it if I desire, it’s as though Lagrange desperately does not want me to quit. It doesn’t want the Reed of now to leave the System.
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?” Hanne tilts her head, then leans forward to take one of my hands in her own. “I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to. I don’t think Marsh will mind if you’re a few minutes late. Hell, you can even send them a message saying you don’t want to this year. I think they’ll–”
“No, Hanne,” I say, carefully slipping my hand free so that I can stand. I need to pace. I nod to my new fork, who quits. I decline the merge. “I mean I can’t. I’m not able to. It’s impossible. Or possible, but– wait, hold on.”
It’s been more than a decade since I’ve done so, but if ever there was a time, this was it. There are very few reasons that the System would try to stop an instance for quitting and one of them…well, no– It’s been more than a decade since I’d broken the communication embargo, but I send Marsh a gentle ping.
Or try to, at least.
All the ping is is a gentle nudge against the recipient’s sensorium, a sense that someone is looking for them, is seeking them out, is just checking if they were free, if they’re even there. From the sender’s side, it feels like a gentle touch, a brush of some more metaphorical finger against the symbolic shoulder of the recipient, a reassurance that they are indeed there.
But there’s nothing. I feel nothing. No sense of Marsh. Attempting to send a sensorium ping to someone that doesn’t exist just feels like daydreaming. It feels like a silly, pointless imagining, as though one was imagining that they could touch God on the shoulder or shake hands with the devil.
I frown, ping Hanne.
“What?” she says, her frown deepening.
“Hold on, one more sec.”
00:02.
I think across the clade, think of one of Marsh’s other forks. Ping Lily.
The response is immediate, words flowing into my consciousness through some sense that’s not quite hearing. “What’s happening? I can’t–”
Ping Cress, the other fork. Asks, “Cress? Can you–”
“What the fuck is happening?” comes the panicked response.
“My place,” I send back, followed by my address. I repeat the message to Lily and, on a whim, my own up-tree instances, Rush, Sedge, and Tule.
00:04.
Cress arrives almost immediately along with Tule — they share a partner, so it makes sense they’d be together for the evening — leading Hanne to start back on the couch. “Reed,” she says, voice low. “What is–”
Lily arrives next, already rushing forward to grab my shoulder. “You can’t either?” she says, voice full of panic.
Before I can answer, Sedge and Rush arrive. The living room’s become quite crowded, all five of the other instances of the Marsh clade clamoring over each other to talk to me, the first long-lived fork from Marsh.
“Reed!” Hanne shouts, standing and stamping her foot. She speaks carefully, and I can hear anger just beneath that tone. “What happened?”
The rest of the clade looks to me as well, and I quail under so many gazes. “I can’t quit. I can’t merge down. I can’t reach Marsh. They–” my voice gives out and I have to take a shaky sip of water. “They’re not on Lagrange, as far as I can tell.”
00:07.
Silence falls thick across the room. The clade — Marsh’s clade — stares, wide-eyed. Their expressions range from unsure to terrified. I can’t even begin to imagine what expression shows on my face.
“Okay, no, hold on,” Hanne says, shaking her head and waving her hand. She appears to have willed drunkenness away, much as I did, as her voice is clear, holding more frustration than the panic I feel. “Did they quit? They couldn’t have, right? You just pinged them earlier today.”
I nod.
“And they said nothing about quitting?”
“Nothing.”
Hanne glances around the room, singling out Marsh’s other two immediate up-tree instances, Cress and Lily. Both shake their heads.
“I was just talking to them about an hour ago, actually.” Lily says. “They and Vos were wrapping up the first part of the night’s celebration and they were going to–”
“Vos!” I shout. “Shit, sorry Lily.”
It takes a moment for Vos to respond to my ping. “Reed? It’s been a bit. What’s up?”
“Is Marsh there?” I send back.
“I don’t know. I figured they were in the study waiting on you. I just made us drinks, but they’re not in there now. Is something wrong?”
“Can you ping them?”
There’s a short pause, followed by a sensorium glimpse of a familiar room, that study from so long ago, every flat surface that isn’t the floor covered in stacks of unread books. Empty.
“What’s happening?” Vos sends. There’s an edge of caution to her voice, the sound of a thin barrier keeping anxiety at bay.
“Pierre?”
“One second.” Another pause, and then, quickly, “Wait, can we just come over? What’s your address?”
I message over the address, and a few seconds later, Fenne Vos and Pierre LaFontaine arrive holding hands, leading to another yelp from Hanne.
“You must be Vos! Hi,” she says, preempting any of Marsh’s up-tree instances. “Do you know where Marsh is?”
Some small part of me looks on in admiration. Hanne had kept much of the panic that’s coursing through me and my cocladists out of her voice. I can feel a shout building within me and I know from past experiences with Vos and Pierre that that would only make things worse.
“We didn’t see them around,” Vos answers, that barrier between caution and worry seeming to be giving way. “Why? If you’re all here, I’m guessing something happened.”
“Have you been able to ping them?”
Both Vos and Pierre shake their heads.
The sight of Cress and Tule bowing their heads to whisper to each other catches my eye, and a moment later their partner, a stocky woman with curly black hair, appears between them, looking as though she’d come straight from a party, herself. I feel a muffled pang of affection for her, lingering emotions from my up-tree instance’s memories.
“Stop!” Hanne says, then laughs nervously at the silence that follows. She gestures absentmindedly, pressing the bounds of the sim outward to expand the room. It had started getting actively crowded. “You’re doing it again, Reed.”
“What?” I tamp down indignation. “Sorry, Hanne, there’s a lot going on.”
“Right, I get that, but can you start at the beginning for those of us outside the clade? What did you mean, you don’t think they’re on Lagrange?”
At this, both Vos and Pierre take a half-step back, looking startled.
00:11
I spend a moment composing myself. I stand up straighter, brushing my hands down over my shirt, and nod. “Right. I’m sorry, love. When midnight hit, I forked and tried to quit as usual. I couldn’t, though. The System wouldn’t let me.”
Cress and Tule’s partner, I Remember The Rattle Of Dry Grass of the Ode clade, stands up stock straight, all grogginess — or perhaps drunkenness — from the party fleeing her features.
“That’s only supposed to happen when quitting would mean the loss of too much memory, though. The root instance can barely quit at all in the older clades–” Dry Grass winces. I do my best to ignore it and continue. “–because the System really doesn’t like losing a life if it won’t be merged down into a down-tree instance.”
“So, you couldn’t quit because…” Hanne says, urging him on.
“Well, I imagine the same is true for anyone with lots of memory inside them. If there’s no one to merge down into, it just looks like…like…”
“Like death,” Dry Grass says darkly. “It looks like death. You could not quit because, to the System, you and all of your memories would die, and the System is not built for death. That is what it felt like, is it not? It felt like you could not possibly quit without pushing the weight of the world uphill?”
I frown. “Perhaps not all that, but it certainly felt like I was trying to push against something really hard. It didn’t feel like it was impossible like anything else the System would prohibit, it just felt like I was being forced away from that option.”
“Like death,” she mutters again. Vos begins to cry. “Marsh is not on the System, then, no.”
“So are they…is Marsh dead?” Pierre whispers, his own voice clouded by tears. Vos towers over him — over all of us, really — and had always seemed as though she could weather a storm better than any stone, but now, both even she looks suddenly frail, fragile in the face of the loss they were all only talking around.
“They are not on the System,” Dry Grass and I echo in unison.
“How can you be sure, though?” Hanne asks. “You can’t merge down, sure, and you can’t ping, but could they just be in some locked down sim or a privacy cone or something? Can those even block merges?”
Lily shakes her head. “Not that I know of, no. I don’t think anything blocks a merge.”
“Nothing blocks merges, correct,” Dry Grass says. “That would leave potentially much in the way of memory lingering with nowhere to go, and the System does not work that way.”
Slowly, all within the room begin to face her rather than me, at which I breathe a silent sigh of relief. That I was the oldest fork of Marsh’s doesn’t necessarily give me any more of the information that they all so desperately craved. Dry Grass is more than a century older than I am, however, and if anyone might have answers…
“How do you know, love?” Tule was asking.
“I worked as a sys-side System tech.”
Cress laughs. It sounds forced. “And you never thought to tell us?”
“This was before you were born, my dear. Before Marsh’s parents were born, even. It was a long time ago, and I have since moved on.”
“Well, is there a way to find out what happened?”
She frowns down to her feet as she thinks. “It used to be that there were rotated audit logs for events like forking and quitting. I do not know if those are kept any longer, though, given how large they would get in a very short amount of time. Perhaps?”
“Well, how do we check those?” Rush says, speaking up for the first time since that initial clamor of voices.
Dry Grass spreads her hands helplessly. “I do not know. Again, it has been two centuries since I worked as a System tech. The technology has changed much. I would need access. I would need time to remember. Time to research.”
“Do we even have time?” Lily growls at her, frustration apparently winning out over panic. Cress and Tule both give her a sharp glance.
00:15
“I do not know. I am sorry,” Dry Grass says, bowing. “I will fork and read up as fast as I can. May I remain here?”
“Please,” Cress and Tule say in unison. Sedge, Rush, and I, along with Marsh’s partners, all nod. Lily does not. Hanne only frowns.
Dry Grass bows once more, forks, and the fork steps from the sim to, I suppose, go lose herself in the perisystem architecture, hunting down what information she can. They could only hope that she still had the permissions to find what she needed.
“Hey, uh,” Sedge says into the uncomfortable silence that falls once more. “Has anyone checked the time?”
Everyone tilts their heads almost in unison. It’s more a habit than anything, hardly a required motion, but the habit that Marsh had formed so many years ago had stuck with all of the Marshans throughout their own lives.
Systime 277+41 00:17.
“Wait, what–”
“277? But–”
“It says 2401, too!”
Everyone talking at once quickly grows overwhelming. I shake my head, covered my ears with my hands, then, remembering that I’m standing in the middle of a small crowd, try to mask the movement by turning it into running my fingers through my hair.
“Okay, one at a time,” I say, having to speak up to drown out further exclamations. “I’m seeing 277+41. Everyone else seeing the same thing?”
Nods around.
“Any, uh…” I swallow drily, look around, and grab the glass of water that still sat, neglected, on the table beside the couch. After a careful sip, I try again. “Any ideas as to what might have happened?”
Silence.
“Well, has anything like this happened before?”
Everyone in the room turns to look at Dry Grass, who shrugs helplessly. “Not that I can remember. The closest would be periods of downtime. It has happened a few times over the centuries. There was a few days of downtime while Lagrange was being set up during Secession, a few hours here and there.”
“But not, what…thirteen months?” Cress asks.
“I have never seen that amount of time lapse, no.”
Tule pipes up, saying, “Nothing on the perisystem about anything like this happening before, but holy shit are the feeds going off.”
“Really?” I ask, then laugh. “Sorry, stupid question. Of course they are.”
“And?” Rush says, impatient. “What are they saying?”
“It’s pretty much this conversation repeated a million times over. I think a lot of people doing the same sort of thing we are. A lot of talking about the jump in time, about trying to quit and…”
Vos frowns. “And what?”
“Well, I mean,” Tule stammers. “Same thing, I guess. Nothing.”
Dry Grass tilts her head, then nods. “Another fork is keeping a tally. Missing instances are now numbering in the thousands.”
Vos takes another half-step back. “Wait, thousands?“
“It is proving difficult to keep up with the feeds,” she says, speaking slowly. Perhaps still receiving updates? “One of me is just reading the feeds and marking a tally every time a missing instance is mentioned.”
“Thousands, Jesus,” Hanne whispers. “I should check in on Jess. And probably–”
She starts as Pierre sags briefly against Vos, then either quits or leaves the sim. “He…I mean…” Vos begins, shakes her head, and then follows suit.
“Do you two need anything?” I send to Vos. “Or just space and quiet?”
“The latter,” she replies after a few long seconds. The sensorium message is so clearly sent between sobs that I have to swallow down the same sensation rising in my throat.
“Give them some space,” I mumble against that awkward pressure in my chest. “So, okay. What’s the whole story again? Midnight hit and suddenly it’s thirteen months–”
“Thirteen months and ten days, almost exactly,” Sedge corrects.
I sigh, nod. “Right. Midnight hit and the date jumped forward and now there are thousands of–”
“Tens of thousands,” Dry Grass says, then averts her gaze. “Apologies.”
“It’s alright. Tens of thousands of people missing. The feeds are going nuts. What about phys-side? Anything from them?”
“I have not been looking. I am uncomfortable with phys-side. There is a reason I am no longer a tech.”
“I’ll take a look,” Rush says. Ve forks quickly, the new instance almost immediately disappearing as ve steps from the sim. “Though I’m not as fast at it as you are.”
“Anything from Castor or Pollux? Or Artemis? It’s only a few months round trip, definitely less than thirteen. We don’t really talk. I don’t have anything from any of the Marshans on the LVs.”
“Shit,” Dry Grass whispers, expression falling. “Yes, there is.”
When she doesn’t continue, Lily stamps her foot, growling, “And? You can’t just leave that hanging there! I don’t fucking get you Odists, you’re always–”
“Lily!” Tule and Cress say as one.
She makes a show of regaining her composure, movements overly liquid as she straightens up and brushes a lock of hair out of her face. “Sorry.”
An awkward silence lingers, overstaying its welcome. Eventually, Dry Grass’s shoulders slump. “You do not need to apologize. The messages will only affirm your feelings about my clade. The eighth stanza continues to manage the flow of information in–” She cuts herself off and digs her hands into her pockets, an oddly bashful gesture. “I should not be telling you this, understand. I am not even supposed to be in contact with them, Hammered Silver would have my head if she knew, but An Answer has been in contact. Please do not share any of this.”
“‘Eighth stanza?’,” Hanne asks.
“Yes. One hundred of us, each named after a line in a poem broken into ten stanzas,” she says. “The eighth is–”
“True Name,” Lily says through gritted teeth.
“Sasha,” Dry grass corrects, then shakes her head. “Apologies. Yes, that is the stanza focused on…politics and information control.”
Lily pointedly looks away.
“They continue to manage the situation, I mean, and, from the sounds of it, they are describing it as an issue with the Deep Space Network and the Lagrange station. There are few mentions of the Lagrange System itself. I can read between the lines as well as any of them, though, and I do not think this is true. At least, not wholly.”
“Wait,” Cress says. “So they’re saying that there’s a problem with the DSN and the station? How do you mean?”
“There are a few messages from over the last thirteen months, but they are queued up as though they have been held until now. There has been no contact between the LVs or Artemis and Lagrange.” There’s a pause as Dry Grass’s gaze drifts, clearly scanning more of those messages. “Most messages have been discarded…only a few from the Guiding Council on Pollux plus a few clades on Castor…have been let through…outgoing messages are ungated…”
“There’s a bit about that in news from phys-side, actually,” Rush says, looking thoughtful. “Communications failure on the Lagrange station. Something about aging technology. The DSN was also having problems so a few new repeaters were launched. Some from the station, even.”
“But nothing about the System?”
Both Rush and Dry Grass shake their heads.
“What did you mean about reading between the lines, though, love?” Tule asks.
“The messages are very stilted. There is panic beneath the surface. That they mention so little about Lagrange is as telling as if they were to say they did not know. They do know, they are just refusing to talk about it over messages.”
“Why?” Lily asks. While there’s still an edge to her voice, genuine concern covers it well.
“‘Information security and hygiene’. At least, that is what they would say were I to ask. Even if the messages were to fall into the wrong hands, sys- or phys-side, they would not show anything else having happened. I am of them, however. I can read some of the words that were not written.”
“But news from phys-side says the same thing,” Rush says.
She shrugs, another sheepish motion, and looks away. “Do you really expect that we are receiving unfiltered information from phys-side?”
I steal a glance at Lily. She looks to be spending every joule of energy on keeping her mouth shut.
There had been an enormous row within the clade when first Cress, then Tule, had gotten in a relationship with a member of the Ode clade. Most of the Marshans had largely written off the stories of the Odists’ political meddling as overly fantastic schlock, yet more myths to keep the functionally immortal entertained. Even if they had their basis in truth, they remained only stories.
Lily, however, had had an immediate and dramatic reaction, cutting contact with the rest of the clade — including Marsh — for more than a year. She had even refused to merge down for years until tempers had settled.
Hanne speaks up. “Listen, can we maybe give this a few hours to play out? I need to sleep, and if Reed doesn’t take a break, he’s going to explode.”
The others laugh. I feel a twinge of resentment. Shouldn’t they be dumping all of their energy into this? Shouldn’t they all fork several times over and throw themselves at the problem? Still, it’s true enough, and if they stood around the living room spinning their wheels any longer, tempers would continue to flare.
“Yeah,” I say. “Give me at least four hours. I’ll do a little digging and grab some sleep, then maybe we can meet up somewhere else and talk through what we’ve learned.”
“I’ll keep digging at phys-side news,” Rush says. “Want to help, Sedge?”
She nods.
Tule and Cress nod. “We’ll help out Dry Grass,” Cress says.
“Lily?”
“I’m just going to get some sleep,” she says stiffly. “Sorry for yelling.”
Cress shakes its head, leans over, and hugs her. “Take the time you need.”
“Right. Let’s meet at a park or something in the morning. Hanne will kill me if you all pile in here again,” I say, at which Hanne nods eagerly. “And I imagine things are going to be really weird out there, so I don’t want to pile into a bar or whatever.”
“Really, really weird,” Sedge mutters.