Douglas Hadje — 2326

The arrangements required for this surprise for May Then My Name quickly began to feel overly complicated to Douglas, but, as Ioan kept reminding him, she was a very complicated person. She was also very perceptive, so there was apparently much required secrecy to make this plan work.

The lead-up to uploading, however, was surprisingly easy. He supposed that much of it was that so much excitement combined with so much anxiety eventually left him feeling more numb than anything, some protective emotional reaction that kept him from simply exploding on one of his many, many walks.

But anticlimax is simply the way of the world, and so the night before the one-year anniversary of the Launch arrived, he simply signed a waiver walked to the clinic, answered a few questions, and then underwent the procedure. It was dizzying, disorienting, and, were he pressed to pick one, the worst physical experience of his life, but at that point, he was well past any point where he could turn back, and even then, he knew he wouldn’t.

There was simply a brief discontinuity, and then he was standing in a grey cube of a room, naked, vertiginous, blinking at a light that seemed to come from nowhere.

Anticlimax indeed.

A quiet voice came from behind him, a soft tenor that contained an accent that he couldn’t place. “Good evening, Douglas. I’m facing the wall, if you’re concerned about your nudity, but I’ll talk you through fixing that.”

He crouched down, covering himself with his hands, and turned slowly. There was a person standing in the corner of the room, shorter than him, hands clasped loosely behind their back while they faced the wall. They were dressed in a sweater-vest and a pale yellow dress shirt. Nice slacks, nice shoes, tousled hair. “Wh-who…” he croaked.

“Can you guess?”

Douglas swallowed a few times, working up enough saliva to un-parch his throat. “Ioan? Is that you?”

Ey laughed, nodded. “Well spotted. Now, do you want to get dressed?”

“Please,” he said, looking around for clothes. There was only the gray floor, gray walls, gray ceiling.

“Okay, bear with me. I had to look up the script for this, so I hope it makes sense to you.”

When Douglas had been talked through willing his clothing into existence, Ioan asked, “May I turn around now?”

He looked down at himself, along his arms and legs, seeing that the oh-so-familiar jumpsuit was just as he remembered, then said, “Sure.”

Ioan nodded and turned to face him, smiling. Ey looked over him searchingly, then laughed. “Is that your work uniform?”

“It’s my only outfit,” he said. “No other clothes aboard the station. Too much risk of them getting in the way.”

“Well, okay,” the historian said. Douglas could see now that the sweater-vest was patterned in a dusty gray argyle and that there was even an understated bow tie to bring the look together. Ey stepped forward, hand extended. “Douglas Hadje, it’s nice to meet you at last.”

He was surprised at how relieved he felt, even laughing as he accepted the hand to shake. “Wonderful! This is really strange. After a year of talking, it still feels like we’re meeting for the first time.”

“Didn’t you say you had a long distance partner? Isn’t that close?”

“Well, yes, but we talked over the ‘net in sims. That’s like proximity.”

Ioan blinked, then nodded, grinning. “Right, right. Well, how’re you feeling? I remember I was pretty disoriented for a while after uploading.”

Douglas looked around. The walls offered little but more gray and a faint grid of darker grey, as though made of panels a meter on a side. Ioan looked…well, ordinary, is all he could think. Ey looked like a normal person of Eastern European stock. Eir clothes looked as detailed as could be expected phys-side, and eir hand felt as much like a normal hand as any.

“It’s so…normal,” he said, finally.

“Yeah, I guess it is. I’m nearing a century here, so I’m used to it by now. It is normal to me.”

“You still look like you’re in your twenties or thirties, which I guess that’s kind of weird. Is that how you looked before uploading?”

“More or less,” ey said. “I didn’t dress as well. And I was skinnier, too. I guess this is how I saw myself after a while, though.”

Douglass looked em up and down. “You can gain weight, here?”

“No, no. Or, sort of. Just that as your image of yourself changes, when you fork, those changes have a tendency to show up.” Ey grinned wryly. “You’ll see with May. She’s far more adept than anyone I’ve met, except perhaps her cocladist, Dear, at shaping how she looks when she forks.”

“And I can fork, too?”

“Sure. Would you like to? That’s part of the intro script, as well.”

“Uh, I guess so,” he said.

They stood in silence for a while, once Douglas had learned the ins and outs of forking and quitting. His mind was churning while Ioan waited patiently. There was so much to take in all at once, he could easily see how one could get overwhelmed.

“Alright,” he said. “What’s the plan from here?”

Ioan straightened up. “Well, let’s go somewhere less dreary. I want you use that same exercise and want to be at The Field#002a0b1.”

“These numbers are going to be difficult to remember,” he said.

“You’ll get used to them. You’ll, uh…you’ll find that you can’t actually forget anything, here, but that’s a problem for future Douglas. Ready?”

He nodded, deciding this time to try keeping his eyes open. As he breathed the intention, he was, without transition, standing in a sprawling field. Green grass speckled with dandelions as far as he could see in every direction, all lit by a salmon-colored sunset.

A memory tugged itself loose, something May Then My Name had said, a story she had told months ago, and he quickly bent down to pluck at one of the flowers. “Ioan,” he said shakily. “Is this…I mean…”

“Michelle’s old sim, yes. I wanted the first place you saw to be one that was important to you. I hope that’s okay.” Ey paused a moment, then said, “If it’s alright, can I ask how you feel about that?”

“Is this for your history?”

Ey nodded. “If you consent.”

“I suppose so.” He sat down on the grass, hardly daring to breathe in through his nose, lest he figure out just what it meant for something to smell like muffins. Tears stung his eyes, and it took a while for him to be able to breathe deep enough to speak. “I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I’m home, but also not where I should be at all, like I’m intruding on somewhere that should’ve been left pristine.”

Ioan sat down next to him. “Are you worried about that? Would you like to go elsewhere?”

“No, no. I like it here, I’m just overwhelmed. I’ve been…” He rubbed tears away with his sleeve. “I’ve just been thinking about this for so long…I don’t know.”

“And do they smell like muffins?”

Wrong-footed, he stared at the historian for a moment, then slowly lifted the yellow flower to his nose, struggling against the urge to keep that knowledge a dream rather than a reality. Then he breathed in the sweet, vegetal scent, and began to cry in earnest.

Ioan sat with him in kind quiet. As ey had so long ago, ey didn’t say anything, didn’t try to comfort him, didn’t touch him, just sat and remained present. It was as though he were there simply to witness those emotions and give testimony to them, and that, more than anything, made him feel welcome here. Welcome with Ioan, welcome in the field, welcome in the System.

After the wave crested and then passed, he said, “Alright, so, what’s the plan?”

“You just stay the night here. You can think up a mattress or anything else you need to be comfortable. We’ll be by tomorrow mid-morning for a picnic. I’m happy to stay, too, if you’d like, or give you space.”

“Won’t May Then My Name miss– oh, right. You’re a fork, aren’t you?”

Ey smiled, nodded. “Of course. Ioan#Tracker is back at home getting pestered by May.”

“Did you two wind up hooking up, then?” he asked, grinning.

Ioan laughed and hid a blush by looking down at the flowers, poking eir fingers amid the grass. “Yes. Thank you for the nudge.”

“Good. Why don’t you go focus on her, then, and I’ll sleep here. I’m assuming the same trick I used for clothing and such works for food and drink, right?”

“Yes, but start with small things. If you don’t remember well enough what something tastes like, you can wind up with some really disgusting stuff. That’s why there’s still restaurants and cooking.”

After Ioan had hugged him, said goodbye, and quit, after he’d had a simple sandwich and some water, Douglas sat on the low rise he’d initially appeared on, watching evening dim to twilight, then twilight to darkness. He’d never been camping, but he’d learned enough about it that he was able to come up with a sleeping bag and pillow, laying awake long into the night, looking up at a dream of stars.

Morning came slowly, and it was the heat rather than the light that woke him. He started as the sudden anxiety that he’d missed the deadline hit, but he was still alone, there in the field.

A wish of eggs and coffee went well enough, though neither was particularly tasty, and he was able to will the sleeping bag and dishes away easily enough. He didn’t know what time it was–

No, wait. He did. It was systime 202+21 0921. One year, nine hours, twenty-one minutes after launch.

He put aside the fact that he knew that fact, and instead went for a walk.

He didn’t walk far, not wanting to miss the arrival of Ioan and May and not knowing how big the field actually was, but it was enough to stake out the area. It was rather boring, really. Grass, dandelions, the occasional fat bumblebee drifting lazily among the flowers.

Boring, but meaningful. Boring but home.

Eventually, he found the patch of tamped down grass where he’d slept the night before, sat down, and waited.

Eleven o’clock arrived and then, a few minutes later, so did Ioan and one other.

They were facing the other way, so he had a few moments to drink in the sight. Ioan was as he remembered, excepting a basket that was likely full of picnic goods, and May Then My Name, as he supposed, was wholly unlike anything he expected.

She was a furry, he could tell that much. There were plenty on the ‘net; his erstwhile girlfriend with the cat av was one.

He didn’t recognize her species at first. Black, rounded ears, a spray of longer white fur atop her head, simple tee-shirt and shorts, and a long tail with thick fur that looked luxuriously soft. A skunk? Really? he thought, and shook his head.

The pair were still talking, hand in…well, paw, he supposed, so he stood up and cleared his throat.

May Then My Name reacted with a speed he’d not expected, whirling around and clutching at Ioan’s arm tightly, ears laid flat against her head. “Who the fuck are you?” she growled, feral. The words were perfectly intelligible, he was pleased to note, and spoke of a central corridor accent.

Remembering Ioan’s first words, he grinned. “Can you guess?”

She straightened up and frowned, head tilted, then turned to Ioan, who looked to be holding back laughter, and punched em solidly in the shoulder. “You…you piece of shit! You organized this! I know you did! Mx. Ioan Bălan, I am absolutely putting sand in your shoes.”

Then the skunk began running, and as she did, dozens of other versions of her flickered into and out of existence around her, all grinning madly. She leapt at him and, before he could react, nearly tackled him to the ground, her arms tight around his middle. “If you are not Mister Douglas Hadje, master of spaceflight and doctor of something incredibly boring, I will be quite embarrassed. Please tell me you are.”

“I am, I am,” he said, laughing and returning the hug. She was short enough that the top of her head barely came up to his chin. Her fur was incredibly soft against his chin and neck “It’s nice to meet you at last.”

“Douglas, holy shit. Holy shit! This is absolutely delightful,” she said, voice muffled against his shoulder and clouded by tears. Without letting go of the hug, she forked off a copy of herself to hurl at Ioan, who was laughing openly now. This time, she did manage to throw her target to the grass, and the two wrestled around for a moment, shoving at each other, before that instance of May Then My Name quit, leaving Ioan to pick emself up again, dusting grass off eir clothes.

Eventually, she released her grip on him and stepped back, holding onto his upper arms and looking him up and down. She nodded approvingly. “Every inch a Hadje. Sort of. You are very tall, and you have lost the round face.”

“I have? I mean, I guess that makes sense. Michelle lived two centuries ago. I’ve seen a few pictures from the news archives, but they took a while to dig up, so I can only guess.”

“Like this?” Her expression grew wicked. She forked, and this fork was completely human. Shoulder-length curly black hair, round of face, short, the splitting image…

“Wait,” he stammered. “You can just look like her? The pictures…I thought…I thought that’d be frowned on.”

“Oh, it is,” the woman said. “Come on, Dr Hadje. Do keep up.”

All of his blood was completely replaced with ice water. His voice failed him. A hatch in the field opened beneath him and he began to fall. Or, at least that’s what his mind told him was happening. When the world finally stopped spinning and he finally reconnected with his body, he found that he was sitting on the grass.

“You’re…”

The woman — Michelle? — came and sat on the grass next to him to hug an arm around his shoulders, her expression softening. “I am May Then My Name Die With Me of the Ode clade, Douglas. Michelle’s clade. It has been a long time since I was actually Michelle, but I once was, yes. I am of Michelle.”

“So…”

“I was forked from her two centuries ago, and I remember being her.” She rubbed her hand against his back. “Douglas, please keep breathing. You are going to pass out if you keep that up.”

He gulped for air, shaking. “You lied to me, then? You…”

“A small untruth,” she said, voice calm and soothing. “Michelle herself did quit some time ago, but I am of her clade.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

May Then My Name shrugged. “I did not want to because I was going to have fun with the reveal, but I see now that I hurt you instead, for which I am eternally sorry.” She sounded on the edge of tears, and took a moment to calm herself before continuing. “You will learn about individuation before long. That I look like her and originated from her, I am no more closely related to her than you are. We are both distant cousins of Michelle Hadje. I am very sorry, my dear.”

He nodded. All that she was saying was swirling around in his mind, wrapped up in the strange, fluent-yet-stilted language that he’d gotten used to over text but now had to get used to in person. He couldn’t tell if he was mad at her or happy that he knew or just confused.

“Uh, I’m not feeling…can we talk about something else?” he asked. “And can you go back to looking like someone else? I’m sorry…”

May Then My Name — the one that looked like Michelle — nodded meekly and quit, leaving the skunk to help Douglas up, pulling him over to the picnic blanket with her so that she could sit next to him. She tasked the still-grinning historian with setting up the food while they talked.

“Douglas, my dear, what are you most excited about, now that you have uploaded?” she asked earnestly, paw resting on his knee.

“Well, I was going to say meeting you two, but now that that’s over, I guess getting to know you. Like, actually know you, instead of just chatting over text. Getting to know the System, too. I spent years imagining how it worked in here, and now that I’m here, I’m a little overwhelmed with how little of that feels accurate.”

“It is difficult to explain in words how it all works, so many phys-side do not know.”

“I guess I want to try some real food, too. We get chicken once a month on the station. Or got, I guess. Otherwise it was all vegetarian. No complaints, really, but it gets a bit samey after twenty years. There’s a lot of catching up to do. Chicken and bread and fried things.”

The skunk nodded, then scooted over onto the picnic blanket, all but dragging him with. “There will be plenty of time for that. We did bring muffins at least. Is there anything you will miss from phys-side?”

“No.” The answer came quickly. “Not a thing.”

She grinned. “Well, that is good, is it not?”

He nodded.

“And anything you regret?”

“I sort of regret not being on the launches, too, but there’s no helping that, if I was also to be the phys-side coordinator. It’s one of those things where I couldn’t do both, and I certainly can’t go back and change it.”

“There is no going and there is no back,” May Then My Name said. “You are here and that is that. It is a decision you cannot reverse.”

Ioan, fishing plates and containers of food and a bottle of the champagne out of the picnic basket, said, “She and her cocladist are very fixated on irreversibility these days. You’ll hear a lot of it.”

The skunk nodded. “Yes. It is fascinating, though, and we are helpless before fascination. Is there anything else you regret about leaving? Not uploading sooner?”

He shrugged. “Not really. It’s like you say, there’s no changing the past.”

“May’s interviewing you for me,” Ioan said, chuckling. “Those are all my usual questions. She’s getting the hang of it, but needs to work on drawing more out of you.”

May Then My Name rolled her eyes, saying to Douglas, “Do not listen to em. Ey is just gloating over the stunt that ey pulled.”

Douglas nodded, grinning. “We pulled, you mean.”

“Wait, both of you?” She shoved at him until he fell over onto his side, laughing. “Beaten at my own game, is that what you think? You think you can out-manipulate an Odist? Out-Hadje a Hadje?”

“I think we can out-manipulate you, dear.” Ioan popped the cork on a bottle of champagne, then poured a glass for each of them. “You’re easy. All we have to do is play to your hopeless romanticism.”

“Yes, well, fuck you too. Give me my champagne.”

The rest of the day from there on was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the happiest that Douglas had ever had. He learned of the Ode and of the Name. He learned of Codrin and Dear. He learned of all of the vast vagaries of the System, of the new arts and the subtle sciences that could exist only outside of the physical world. He learned, watching the way Ioan and May Then My Name looked at each other, spoke to each other, touched each other, what happiness even was, and that he was a part of it lent more of a sense of completion than any celebration could.