Everyone notices a jump in systime of almost a year, no one phys-side will give them a straight answer. Turns out someone figured out how to make a self-replicating virus a la the syringes that wound up essentially shredding the system. It was recovered (another thing phys-side is cagey about), but there are some changes. Maybe a small percentage of people don’t return
- Marsh (they/them) — tracker — Root instance; disappears shortly before Reed is to merge down
- Reed (he/him) — Relationship fork, merges down to sync up once a year, discovers Marsh is missing, date has jumped, has to lean on partner and clade, tries to stay level-headed and organized, embroiled but tries to take leadership, though whether that’s his idea or he’s forced into that role is up for debate
- Sedge (she/her) — Interested in people (check this)
- Tule (he/him) — (TOO-lee) In a relationship with Dry Grass
- Rush (ve/ver) — Interested in sims, a bit rambunctious, excitable
- Sedge (she/her) — Interested in people (check this)
- Lily (she/her) — Upset at the Odists (especially the fact that Tule and Cress are in a relationship with one)
- Cress (it/its) — In a relationship with Dry Grass, the smollest
- Reed (he/him) — Relationship fork, merges down to sync up once a year, discovers Marsh is missing, date has jumped, has to lean on partner and clade, tries to stay level-headed and organized, embroiled but tries to take leadership, though whether that’s his idea or he’s forced into that role is up for debate
- Pierre LaFontaine (he/him) — tasker — In a relationship with Marsh, has a bit of a hard time controlling his emotions, specifically grief
- Fenne Vos (she/her) — tasker — In a relationship with Marsh, singer, does her best to stay strong, but it comes with an edginess
- Hanne Marie (she/her)— tasker — In a relationship with Reed, a bit short-tempered, easily overwhelmed, which leads her to lash out
- I Remember The Rattle Of Dry Grass of the Ode clade (she/her)— dispersionista — In a relationship with Tule and Cress, tries to be helpful, kind of irks Reed and Hanne (more so than Reed), though they do their best to hide it
- Günay (she/her) — phys-side — system engineer, chill type, worker on situation, goes against manager’s wishes to talk more with
- en4 (they/them) — phys-side — system engineer, zero chill type, manager of situation, member of a more conservative collective, from which the terrorist collective split
Subplot: Reed and Dry Grass get together. Fuck it. Their hold over me is too strong.
NB: It’s frankly astonishing how few cats there are in this story. Fix that.
- Intro — The false start
- Part 1 — Marsh has gone missing and the date has jumped forward — whaaaa — exploring the new System, what it looks like, contact from the LVs
- 002 — It all kicks off
- 003 — Dealing with fallout of Marsh being gone, starting later that night when Reed catches up with Vos and Pierre, deals with his own grief
- 004 — Exploring other clades throughout Lagrange, meeting up with other Marshans to talk through results, walking sims and seeing how others are reacting
- 005 — The perisystem feeds, tallying up the missing, building up percentage of lost personalities, the Marshans wind up leading an effort, Dry Grass working behind the scenes because Odist
- 006 — Reconciliation of a sort between Lily and Dry Grass as they meet up for dinner, talking about what it means to be a clade without a root instance.
- Part 2 — Phys-side is being a little sketchy about what happened, turns out there was a reset and a lot of work behind the scenes after a coordinated attack between phys- and sys-side, taking the form of a generalized weapon that wiped out most of the System. Large chunks of it were restored after a lot of work and help from the Artemisians, but not total success — virus loophole was fixed (incl singular attacks), but no guarantee there won’t be another work-around, plans to split the System into smaller pieces, move some of them to Earth/Sun Lagrange points
- 007 — Dry Grass loops Reed & co into discussion with phys-side engineers (halt called to the communication embargo between stanzas) Huddle to talk about why they’re being so cagey
- 008 — Talking with Dry Grass, Cress, and Tule about feelings
- 009 — Larger meeting with other representatives of clades with missing members, bit more info (loophole was patched, but no guarantee), introducing concept of splitting the System up, cross-clade merges, turns out someone was left with memories from a few previous attempts
- 010 — Clade representatives form a group, start organizing/strategizing/investigating, contacted by chill phys-side syseng, learning even more about both what happened WRT CPV bomb and collectives, plus how phys-side is seeing things
- 011 — Finding up-tree (or maybe down?) instance of person who caused the whole thing, seems super upset, promises they’re unable to contact that instance, but whether or not they’re telling the truth left up in the air
- 012 — Funeral for Marsh, though what if reconstructing?
- Part 3 — The ramifications, both global and personal (but mostly personal) — a lot of talk among the Marshans, their partners, and a chill phys-side syseng — looking into trying to reconstruct Marsh by cross-tree merging Reed, Lily, and Cress — it doesn’t work, so it turns into coming to terms with letting go of the past
- 013 — Dry Grass and Günay going over system capabilities when it comes to reconstructing personalities, cross-tree merges
- 014 — Reed and Hanne talking, Reed admits to starting to grieve now that things are calming down, expresses doubts about reconstruction
- 015 — Planning reconstruction, a night with Dry Grass
- 016 — It doesn’t work, there is only them, no Marsh, clade admits it’s time to start grieving proper
- 017 — Discussing list of requests to sysenges both phys- and sys-side for improvement, incl someone digging into Artemisian archives
- 018 — Coming to terms with letting go of the past