Post-Self

Cladist who could have been a sensorium message (or even an email)

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:06:35 GMT

Posted by: tomash3

(I saw a "Cladist who ..." in one of the chats, and I figured it'd be a good idea to bring the tradition of those from Cohost to here.)

(I think the usual way to do such things here is prompt fills in the comments.)

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Memorial

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 05:41:40 GMT

Posted by: tomash3

[NOTE: Contains spoilers for major developments in the Post-Self cycle. Don’t read if you haven’t read through Mitzvot and Selected Letters.]

Wherein Daisy notices something new at the side of a road.

Daisy knew they didn’t need to drive around the System. They could simply arrive at their destination. However, they liked driving. They liked that it took time to go from here to there, that it took some effort to visit someone.

They liked to look at what roads could be when they didn’t have to be.

The System’s roads ranged from carefully curated aesthetic to attempts at realism (some more successful than others) all the way to chaos roads that were willing to play fast and loose with the nature of space. They’d been on winding mountain passes that had a deep forest around a corner that couldn't have been there. They’d taken fast lanes that would skip past many miles of drive when they were in a rush.

This road didn’t have anything like that. It was the road between Daisy’s town and a “nearby” one. Two lanes each way and nothing much alongside it. Not nothing — plenty of trees, a few houses, the dull gray of industrial buildings you never thought to look up the purpose of — nothing much. The two towns had been encroaching into their ends for the last century as they flowed into the available space.

The System was both ever-evolving and ancient. Daisy liked that about their world — that the old and the new didn’t need to fight for land and space and energy. They looked out at the slow river that was the midpoint of this road. Nothing had changed about it — or around it — since they’d moved in around here, and, though they didn’t know, they could feel that this stripe of not-town would be staying right where it was for centuries yet.

Wait … had that statue always been there?

Daisy couldn’t remember it having been there. It must have been put up recently. That was strange. Things changed, but this spot didn’t change. That was how it had been.

Now, someone had put a statue up. Daisy wanted to know why. Who was so important that they got a statue in one of the stable parts of the System? What had happened?

They pulled off the road to get a better look. This being the System, they got the one infinitely-shared parking spot.

When they got out of their car (I really should wash this thing, they thought), they could feel the suggestion of a town square around them. This place didn’t have to be a statue by a river, but it could be.

That the people who’d dreamt up this road had been OK with an optional portal like this left Daisy even more curious. The road was supposed to stick to “normal”, or so they’d heard. Who was so important that a third town got linked to this road just to get to their statue?

The marble statue depicted some sort of furry with big ears (Daisy couldn’t place the species) holding their hands as if to welcome the viewer in.

RJ Brewster

-38+109 — -9+50

Eir dream became our reality

Daisy looked at the sign next to the statue. RJ, Daisy read, had been the first partially successful upload. Even though, as best anyone could tell, ey hadn’t lived for very long before crashing, eir uploading had paved the way for the System to become what it was.

“I wonder why this didn’t go up earlier …” they mumbled.

The sign shifted to answer their question. RJ’s involvement had been covered up during the early days of the System for political reasons that Daisy wasn’t interested in right now, and the habit of just not mentioning em had, like so many things about the System, stuck. Now, for an entire book’s worth of reasons that Daisy wasn’t that curious about either, the secrecy had loosened.

Daisy stepped back to look at the statue again.

It was nice. No, it was elegant. Not only that, they were pretty sure someone had made it by hand — it didn’t have either the indistinctness or the perfection that art pulled out of thin air did.

Now, all this made sense. The first person to upload, even though — no, because — they didn’t make it, was someone who deserved some statues.

Daisy stood in front of the statue for a moment, thinking, then went back to their car. They considered that lives — and maybe even the world — needed to be shaken around a bit sometimes. That it was good to put a statue up by an intentionally static river.

As they pulled back on the road, Daisy looked back at RJ.

Maybe this is a sign I should try skiing. I’ve been wanting to for a while, just … never got around to it, y’know? they thought. Sometimes you’ve got to go for it.

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In it for the long-haul

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 05:54:49 GMT

Posted by: skunkcetera

Earlier today, I came across this post on Tumblr of some fan art of Motes and felt compelled to write a tiny snippet to go with it.

It is important, Motes long maintained, that there must be some things that you are just plain not good at.

If you are going to be in this life for the long-haul — and she was most certainly in this life for the long-haul! — there would be plenty of things that she would have the chance to be good at. She was fairly good at painting, yes? And chalking up the streets outside the House on the hill, that house she shared with her Ma and Bee. She was a pretty good actor, of course, for she had her favorite roles to play in Au Lieu Du Rêve's productions. She was an amazing dreamer.

And there was plenty of things that she did not want to be good at. She did not want to be good at breaking hearts. She did not want to be good at growing up. She did not want to be good at being anything other than what she was.

But one thing she was decidedly, cheerfully, joyously terrible at was skateboarding.

She was in this life for the long-haul, and so perhaps she could practice long and hard to become good at skateboarding, and there were times when she might give this a halfhearted try for a month or two, but something about it just evaded her. She could go in a straight line, perhaps. She could sometimes make a turn, so long as it was to the right. She could drift to a stop or tumble into the grass and dandelions, but actually deliberately stepping off the board to come to a stop had led to the most skinned knees of all.

Better, she thought, to lay on her front on the board and push herself along with her paws, or perhaps lay on her back, tail hugged up to her front, as she scooted around down the driveway. Better to sit on her board at the edge of the sidewalk, feet planted in the gutter, talking to her friends. Better to rejoice in the incompleteness of it all, of holding out this one thing and saying, "One day, maybe I will be good at skateboarding. Maybe next year."

After all, she was in this life for the long-haul.

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Curry tofu sandwich

Thu, 08 May 2025 21:42:34 GMT

Posted by: skunkcetera

Someone on the Post-Self Discord wondered what one of those silly recipe blogs written in the style of Idumea might look like. Rye took that as a challenge.

It is the beginning of summer, and the air still bears a chill, and yet the sun is hot and the memories of the life I lived before — the life of Michelle, the life of phys-side — are dogging me.

Memories are dogging me, and thoughts of food, thoughts of those lovely little things that we have discovered over the years. I have told you of The Woman's explorations with food, yes? I have told you of newness and of the joy of tasting, of that lovely restaurateur who doted upon her as she wept at spice, yes?

But there is also the comfort in familiarity! There is the joy in those foods we know well, having long ago discovered them. There is joy in every bite, I think, and I imagine you, dear readers, have experienced this as well, have dwelled in the simple loveliness of a very good sandwich.

One must understand the joy in contrasts, in the crumb of the bread and how it is specifically not the crumble of the tofu, in the crispness of the sprouts and microgreens and how they are counter to the avocado's smoothness, in the still-warm protein and the still-cold vegetables.

We are all, you see, beings of contrasts. When we find joy in ourselves, we find it in the ways in which we are contradictions. Why, I will look in myself and see the love of life and the dire terror of being beholden to the whims of my traumas. I will look around me and see the loveliness of my sim, my beloved up-tree and The Child zipping about the yard twelve times over, twenty four times over, and I will know that this place, this dream, was built from the trauma of the lost. From AwDae, yes, but did we not also shape the early days of the System? Was our trauma — our fears of being lost yet again — not formative for Secession? For all that the eighth stanza did?

Dear readers, surely you must know that we, that I, that The Woman and trillions of other individuals, contradict ourselves, just as does our beautiful and broken and terrific and terrifying world.

Do we contradict ourselves? Very well, we contradict ourselves.

We are large.

We contain multitudes.¹

You may also consider whole-grain mustard if you desire more tanginess.

Ingredients

Two slices of whole grain bread (consider: the crunch of something nutty to go with the toothsome bread)
A quarter cup of sprouts (cool and round, as flavors go)
A quarter cup of microgreens (bitter and sharp to counter)
Half an avocado, sliced (fat to aid in the tasting of nuances)
A slab of baked tofu (for that is its shape, is it not?)
Curry powder

Process

Sprinkle the baked tofu liberally with curry powder. Lightly oil a pan. Gently fry the tofu until crispy and fragrant.
Toast the bread — but only lightly so! One must be cautious not to rip to shreds one's hard palate, yes?
Layer thus: Bread. Half of the avocado. Tofu. Greens and sprouts. Any dressing you wish. The rest of the avocado. Bread.

¹ Cf. Whitman:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

We are ever ourselves: built off that which we love. The Instance Artist read "Song of Myself" and latched onto this particular phrase. It has said it enough to have thoroughly exhausted it, then wrapped around to the point where it is endearing; where, if it were to not say it at times, it would somehow be less.

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Grapevines of War

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 06:51:56 GMT

Posted by: tomash3

Another look at reactions on the System in the wake of the inciting incident of Marsh

The war-grapevines of Lagrange thrummed in the wake of the event.

They'd always been thin things built on whispers. Their stems were friends-of-friends and eyes-only messages and little private libraries and ephemeral forks whose memories would be left to wither away. They dealt in what-if and suppose and should-we-when. To call these barely affiliated blobs of people who had some occasional interest in making sure there was a final answer of the uploaded an "army" would be a grave mistake that would, if you asked these non-soldiers, make the thing they wanted to avoid more likely.

But these networks were still known, still sometimes observed. They were rumors of an outline of a deterrent, for they knew they had to be.

When the time jumped over a year and the death reports started rolling in, questions darted around. Messages to friends, to colleagues, to that person who might know, seeking answers. Seeking a plan. Wondering if this was the time when centuries of chatter left the realm of speculation.

"i don't know yet,* said those millions in their pairs and feeds, some hastily made for the occasion. "Might be an accident."

"Keep it calm for now."

"We have time."

"No attacks, and tell your friends that too."

Once the news swirled around, once it was known that the event was a Century Attack and not a Century Asteroid Strike, you could almost hear the war-grapevines of Lagrange, shouting at their fellows and the world. "No. Reprisals."

Oh, many of them were angry. Had lost so much. Oh, in those first days, some vaults of dirty tricks were cracked open and promptly closed again. The inventories of hard and soft power, of how it could be used or circumvented, were read carefully to see if something could be done.

They who now and then whisper about the end of the world reminded each other, reminded everyone, why they shouldn't bring it about. So many forks in so many offices and bars and couches doing their part to talk the System out of a leap it didn't need to take. No, that it must not take. Cladist by cladist, city by city, it needed to be said: "No hacking back. That'll make it way worse." and so on.

Many of System's ad-hoc war-planners went out and awkwardly held their friends and neighbors through sobs and screams. It had been decided by everyone and no one that this was the plan now, that this was the best thing to do.

(And if conversation didn't work, someone knew someone who knew a systech who could do something to stop anyone who was getting serious about this.)

Ultimately, the war-grapevines of Lagrange were an ingredient of the recipe for continued peace.

Were these people an organized thing, there'd be a glowing report and drinks all around once the dust settled. Since they weren't, a broad sense of satisfaction and relief would have to do.

Eventually, the many strangers and friends who had become the wisps of a defense response settled into their new normal, as did the rest of Lagrange, strengthened, changed, and renewed by loss.

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Foreign Holidays

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 06:34:33 GMT

Posted by: tomash3

Cross-species holiday moments - what could go wrong?

Tycho Brahe popped into Stolon’s home sim. He paused, like he always did, to adjust to a horizon that was just farther away enough to feel instinctively strange.

He’d brought a rack-like chair that many thirdracers favored. Tycho had heard Stolon mentioning that they should get some more seating many times, but they'd never followed up on that. So, Tycho had made them a chair. He could tell he’d done something wrong with the finish — he was an astronomer, not a carpenter, after all — but he knew that, in a place of near-infinite abundance, it really was the thought that counted.

Tycho knocked. It didn’t take long for him to hear the clacking of claws. “Tycho!” Stolon exclaimed, pulling their door apart.

“Merry Christmas, Stolon!” Tycho replied. “I made this for you.”

Stolon looked at Tycho, confused. “Merry Christmas?” he repeated.

“Oh, right. Happy Christmas …,” Tycho searched for a word from the Nanon he’d learned much more of since he’d moved, “festival, Stolon!”

Stolon blinked at their friend. “Is there a festival? I don’t know about any that are soon, or maybe, no, I’m right about the day.”

Tycho straightened up in shock. “I knew I’d forgotten something! I … forgot I'd need to tell you about Christmas.”

He looked down. “Should I go?” he asked Stolon. “I don't want to spring something like this on you.”

“No, no, come, stay!” Stolon said, pulling open the door further. “Tell me about your festival!”

Tycho followed his friend into their home, setting his gift down near the entrance.

As he walked, Tycho became more animated. “So, Christmas. Happens every year, around the end of the year, just a few days after the shortest day — on Earth’s northern hemisphere, which is where it’s from. It was originally a religious festival to celebrate the birth of Christ, but these days it’s a winter festival for a lot of people.”

“We have something like that, I think,” Stolon replied. Their next word was in their native tongue. “You could say something like warm-calling night, but that’s not quite right. It’s in … 43 Artemis-days. Used to be about fire-gods, still is for some, but it’s a time to celebrate.”

“Celebrate?” Tycho asked, having forgotten the word.

“Do festival things,” Stolon clarified. “What do you do for this Christmas.”

“Get together with friends or family. Eat a lot of food, often stuff you don’t usually make. Give gifts — it’s why I made you the chair. And a lot of people decorate their houses beforehand. They’ll string up lights, maybe put up a tree —”

“— A tree?” Stolon interrupted. “Is that why I’ve seen so many trees with lights recently? I wondered what they were for.”

“Yeah, probably.” Tycho’s voice and hands slowed. “I haven’t usually been that big on celebrating myself, didn’t like being around so many people, but I thought I’d do something for you, at least.”

“Thank you!” Stolon said. “I — you didn’t need to —”

“I wanted to,” Tycho said. “I am happy to be your friend, and I wanted to do something for you, and Christmas seemed like a good reason, so … here I am.”

Stolon looked around. They weren’t sure how to respond, so they let their friend’s words settle in, until they found something to latch on to. “We should celebrate, then! I’d like to know this festival! We can put lights on a tree and eat the food!”

Their head and upper limbs slid into what Tycho had grown to recognize as a thirdrace smile. “In the interests of convergence, yes?” The alien acknowledgement sounded strange on Stolon’s tongue.

Tycho smiled back. “Sure, why not?” He paused. “It’ll give me a reason not to go to any events someone might remember I should be at.”

Then, he sent Stolon an invitation to skew +2.75 so they could get the preparations done before it was too late.

Two scientists scrambling to put up something for Christmas was already a recipe for decorations that had clearly been thrown together in a hurry. One of those scientists being from another species, and thus, had an entirely different set of ideas for how winter holidays looked, didn’t help matters.

For one thing, the tree was leafy. And much more of a bluish-green.

The lights took more vine-like paths around parts of Stolon’s home than Tycho would have used, and many were the dull red of a stove coil from Tycho’s perspective, though bright and inviting from Stolon’s.

Despite their best efforts to stay on task, the process ground to a halt several times for questions about the significance of some festive item or tradition. Tycho got more practice with looking things up real quick the Artemisian way — namely, by skewing his personal time fast enough that the world stood nearly still while he, for example, refreshed his memory about the history of Santa Claus.

Eventually, everything was in place enough, and Tycho and Stolon slowed back down to eat. Neither of them was interested in, or good at, cooking (even without the species barrier) so the food had been pulled off of Artemis’s construct library.

Stolon draped theirself over the chair that Tycho had made for them. “This is good,” they said. “Thank you for this, and for the chair. I’ve been wanting a new one.”

“I know.”

Stolon looked over their table at their strange featherless under-limbed friend and relaxed into a smile. In that moment, they remembered how they’d wanted to join Artemis’s voyage, during their own species’s convergence, partly to meet all the interesting people and different ways that life could exist … and they realized how thoroughly they’d succeeded.

“Merry Christmas, Tycho,” Stolon said.

“Merry Christmas, Stolon.”

And so it was.

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Incremental Progress

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 03:37:58 GMT

Posted by: airah

Did a bit of an upload story to try and shake some of the cobwebs out.
Posted initially to my main page, but also linking here. <3

It isn’t to say that older folks uploading is a particularly rare occurrence, but just that they are not nearly as common as younger folks. Generally, or so at as least the statistics tend, if a person was the sort to be interested in uploading they tended to do it as soon as possible. Even after the attack, after the climate began to stabilize, people generally uploaded early or not at all. Especially once it became nearly free to do so, or at least funded in such a way to be widely available to the masses regardless of wealth.

In that way it was fair for the upload technicians to be surprised by the presence of a man in his sixties. Time and the environment had not been kind to him, he walked slowly and slightly pigeon-toed, the trademark swelling and unevenness of arthritis was plain to see in his scarred hands. His arms and shoulders were pockmarked with tattoos of various styles, of various meanings. The technicians did not ask and he did not volunteer anything, but the old industrial worker’s union symbol etched into his upper arm marked him as a friend. He laid down upon the upload table, jacked in one last time, and willfully met his end upon the planet. A hell of a retirement party, he called it, moments before his motor control was cut off and his heart stopped.

The construct in the upload room was entirely unsurprised to meet him, as constructs tend to be.

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Abandoned Highway

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:44:35 GMT

Posted by: tomash3

Daisy was sure they’d gotten trapped on the road. This was supposed to be a six-hour drive — the description said so — but, even though they’d left before dawn, the sun was setting.

They’d pulled over at one of the rest stops. They were pretty sure they’d passed it once already. It was empty. The lights in the parking lot were dim or flickering or both. Usually both. It radiated creepy.

Did I accidentally get on a murder highway? they wondered.

There was an emergency phone pole in the parking lot. I wonder if that works, Daisy thought.

They pressed the button, expecting nothing.

The speaker crackled. “System Emergency Response Group, what’s your emergency?”

That hadn’t been what they’d expected. They didn’t even know there was a System Emergency Response Group.

“I think I’m trapped on this highway. It was supposed to be six hours and I’ve been going all day,” Daisy said.

“You can step out to a different sim,” the operator suggested. “Or if you want to keep driving, you can stick around while we have someone take a look.”

They’d considered giving up on this entire plan around dinner, but had decided against it. “I still want to drive to my aunt’s, and there might be other people stuck here.”

Daisy could make out faint keyboard noises through the speaker.

“Do you want someone out right away, or do you want to a realistic wait for your sim?”

Daisy considered this. “Uh …let’s do realism.”

“Should have someone there in a hundredth or two. Call back if you need anything.”

“Thanks!”

The connection closed with a beep.

Daisy took some time to explore the rest stop. There wasn’t much, and what was there had seen better days. Even the vending machine was half-empty. It had eaten a bunch of coins, too, but they’d gotten candy out of it.

So, with nothing else to do, Daisy stood around watching the sunset as they waited for help (would it actually be help? maybe asking to wait was a bad idea?) to arrive.

As the last hint of orange was leaving the sky, Daisy saw a van pulling into the rest stop. The letters on the side said “Lagrange County Public Works” — they weren’t sure if that made it more or less sketchy. Maybe this is "a murder highway after all.*

Once the truck had parked, its driver stepped out. Daisy wasn’t sure who they’d expected, but a dog furry in a “PERISYSTEM TECHNICIAN - DO NOT PET” vest wasn’t it.

“Hello? Daisy?” he called, looking around. A non-anthropomorphic dog that looked suspiciously similar to the technician hopped out of the van and went to sniff around the yellowed grass nearby.

“Right here!”

“I’m Tomash. Nice to meet you!” The systech walked over to stand by Daisy. “Hope we didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

“I’ve had worse,” Daisy replied. “Could be raining.”

“So, trapped on the highway, yeah? Do you happen to remember your exit number?”

“342. For New Omaha. I’m … pretty sure I didn’t drive past it.”

“Exit 342. Alright, let me take a look …” He mumbled something and frowned.

“Well, there it is. Some joker hooked the highway up to itself again.” he declared.

“Huh?”

“Yeah, the folks who made this sim added in interchange support but forgot to ban self-loops. Someone adds one now and again.”

“So what do I do?”

Tomash smiled. “I’ve just fixed it, so … you’ve got about fifty miles to go, straight ahead.”

He turned to get back into his van. “Thanks for calling this in,” he said. “Abandoned rural highway sims are a pain.”

“Thanks for coming, and for making this a fun story. Two dogs showing up to un-loop the road — only on the System, y’know?”

“No problem, it’s what I do. Happy to help,” Tomash said. He climbed back into his van. “Scout!” he called. “Back in the car!”

The dog-shaped dog — Scout, evidently — paused to contemplate if he felt like doing that, then scampered back through the driver’s side door. A moment later, Daisy noticed his head hanging out the passenger window.

The van bounced and rattled along as Tomash drove off into the distance, then vanished as it neared the horizon.

Daisy got back in their car and drove off into the twilight.

They made it to their aunt’s without further incident.

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On the uninvited, but welcome presence of hope

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 02:04:52 GMT

Posted by: airah

It's a funny thing, waking up for the first time. Sure she has woken up before, hundreds of times even. Everyone does it, and first times are rare for a fully grown adult. Here she is just the same, waking up at home, comfy in her bed for the first time since the changes. She isn't counting the previous day's nigh-disastrous ending. A wake-up call, certainly, but not quite the same. This morning Laika comes around comfortable and warm, wrapped up in her soft sheets, fresh air drifting in through her window. She opens her eyes a bit and her nose pokes out from beneath the comforter. She can feel her chin, her lower jaw pressed against the mattress. A yawn, wider than she's used to yawning, evolves into a stretch. Rising up on her elbows, twisting and rolling her shoulders, clenching one side of her body at a time while flexing the other way. A long, high pitched whine escapes through her nose as she stretches and she startles herself.

When did she start making dog noises? Probably sometime after turning herself into a dog person. She picks her head up and she can feel the sheets pull her ears back before slipping off. They flick back up and she laughs, amused with herself, with this silly decision she'd made in the midst of a self-destructive spiral. Finally she pulls her legs up under herself and sits up on her heels, on her bed. She hugs her body, it's so soft now. Covered in this warm double coat, smooth and startlingly comfortable. She marvels at her own hands, owned by a stranger going out on her last stand a night or two before, with claws at her fingertips and soft leathery pads. Had she really changed her name to that of the ill-fated pioneer, the unknowing legend who was the first warm-blooded life lost in space? The patron saint of one-way trips?

She checked the records. Her messages. Notes exchanged with the caring bartender from the other night. Ey only know her by one name, all the people at the bar just the same. She gets to her feet, for the first time looking down at her unclothed paws, her bare figure in the mirror. She stands, nervous, holding onto herself for dear life. She had reorganized herself still wearing clothes, paying no attention to what lay beneath, but something apparently knew what it was doing. Perhaps an aid built into the software, perhaps her own subconscious. She remembers getting home, pleased but exhausted, late at night. Was it the same night or had another day passed? She doesn't remember when she headed out. She's been told you cannot forget here, but she doesn't know how to remember.

Finally she looks in the mirror at herself, wrapped tightly around herself, holding her shoulders and twisting at the knees. She sees someone new, someone she has never met, a whole new her. Yes, whatever it was certainly knew what she was doing. She steps closer to the mirror, a tilt naturally finding her expression, holding one hand up to the glass. This person, this naked dog person, this naked dog woman, she is pretty. Her pleasant tri-tone coat, unbrushed and messy but still shining with good health. Her shapes are pleasant to her own eyes, familiar in the manner of stepping into a dream and having it become real. She smiles, then realizes that she smiles like a dog does. With that half-cracked, dopey grin on her muzzle, a few teeth showing. It makes her giggle, she pokes her tongue out, and that makes her laugh harder. Her tail is swaying, she can feel it. She didn't tell it to move, but it's moving. She spins with delight, looking over her shoulder in the mirror at this thing wagging behind her, wiggling her all the way into her hips. She loves it, and it only makes her wag it faster.

Look at her! She's... she's a dog. Woman. A dog lady. A lady dog. All pretty and soft with a bright expression and dark eyes, cute flop-tipped ears and short hair, and a tail that curls over itself a bit and reacts to her emotions before she realizes she's feeling them. This isn't so bad, she can do this. She was well familiar with the animal folks anyway, knew them on the `net. They were friends, team members, digital dungeon divers. She never really understood it then, but suddenly it has all fallen together. It makes sense, perfect sense. Maybe that was it, she just had to try it for herself. Her stomach growls, still protesting the abundance of hard liquor from the other night. She growls back at it for a laugh, only to startle herself again as her hackles come up and she issues forth a deep angry canine snarl. Hah!

She is hungry though. What do dogs eat anyway? She's got thumbs and a refrigerator, she can eat whatever she wants. As a freshly empowered dog woman, it's her right! She skips, nude, into her kitchen and flings the refrigerator door open. She doesn't want to cook, she wants to eat! Ooh, breakfast burritos. Stuffed chock full with scrambled eggs and cheese, bits of breakfast sausage and bacon. Into the microwave they go. Become a delicious breakfast! There is a coffee machine as well. Insert coffee pod, place mug, push button. Good to go. She practically cartwheels back toward her bedroom while breakfast prepares itself, and breaks out laughing at the clothes she had taken off the night before. Defunct cosmonaut casual wear. Those pants are awful! She gets rid of them, finds something more modern. Casual slacks, cute winter boots to wear with fluffy faux-fur fringes. Underwear. Underwear that works around a tail. Excellent. A top, a comfy bra. Comfortable bras exist here, much like dog women, as they never could in her former life as a person on the planet. Comfy bra, another orange tee-shirt, but faded and worn instead of bright and safety.

She hangs up the old Soviet Space Program coat, as flawed and badly faked as it is, and tells the closet that she would like a modern space program jacket. Like the ones worn by the team that launched the rockets that brought this system, the System, into space. One with her name on the front, and the mission patches, and everything! The System, after a bit of research, dutifully complies. Her closet takes a few points of reputation from her balance in exchange for the jacket. The microwave beeps in the kitchen. She slings her new outerwear over the back of a chair and fixes her coffee with sugar and hazelnut cream, wraps her overlarge breakfast burrito in some foil and dances onto her balcony to eat.

The city below feels like it could be one of many civilized places, though it feels not quite like the Carpathian landscape of her dreams, but that it could be anywhere she would like to call home. She will keep this arrangement. She is Laika, that is her name, it is who she is. Like her namesake before her she took an uncertain ride to the stars, like her namesake before, her return was not expected. However unlike her namesake, this Laika survived to tell the tale. Although neither would ever see the planet's surface again, that no longer mattered. They were two among the stars.

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To — in the days after her death

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:03:38 GMT

Posted by: skunkcetera

A dream within a dream within a dream
and fell visions sidling up too close
both woo me. Sweet caramel and soft cream
sit cloying on their tongues, and I, Atropos
to such dreams as these, find shears on golden thread.

I would not cut, nor even could, had I but wished
to sever this golden thread — and every thread
is golden — and end a friend and send to mist
and sorrow ones so dear. Dead! Dead! She is dead
and gone, for her own shears were sharper still.

And so she cut, and so they watched, and so I watched
such love as this cease. I yearn to say that she returned
to me, became a part of me, but a tally notched
among the lost was all that stayed when life was spurned
by the call of death — supposedly ended.

So, she is gone and now our lives are darker for it,
and now this world is where the shadows lie,
and all the light that still remains is forfeit,
and so much green still stabs towards the sky,
and yellowed teeth of lions still snap at the air.

comments

On the abject absence of warmth

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 03:42:04 GMT

Posted by: airah

It is incredibly cold.
She awakes inexplicably, and her body is frigid and unresponsive. It doesn't want to move, the only thing she can feel is cold. She gets the sensation that she should be dead. This experience should have killed her. Instead she has awoken, she can taste the memories of bile on her tongue, of blood on her lips. Her eyes water, somehow still movable, and she looks up at the clear night sky. At least, what she can see of it over the rise of the grass on either side of the ditch. She tries to move again, to sit up, to do something, but her body will not respond. It is as if her limbs have been recast in lead and then cooled, refrigerated. She watches the simulated galaxy edge creep a little further across the Siberian sky, and realizes finally, fully, that a series of mistakes once again has found her dead at the roadside. Except this place, it was not designed for death.

Laika closes her eyes and lets her consciousness drift a bit, then suddenly another of her appears standing alongside the ditch in which she lays expiring. She is new again, whole and warm. Though it is extremely, bitterly, violently, furiously cold here. The other of herself finally stills, and abruptly vanishes. Quit.

She nearly met that fate before she uploaded. A miscalculation in times prior, a failing to account for currency exchanges and inflation rates. The surprise inheritor of the family business, a bastard child suddenly laden with wealth and responsibility when her entire "family" was abruptly unmade, caught in the blast of an attack, the only survivor was her. The half-breed, the cheat child, disowned by half and living in another country. She gleefully scraped together all the wealth of the deceased, raked all their assets into her own coffers as offered by the various governing bodies. Took it all for herself, spent a few nights in a nice hotel, invested everything into a controversial rocket launch, then booked a train ticket to Yakutsk. It took longer than expected to get the rockets ready, as it always does. She ran out of money, found herself homeless. Her upload paid for, but unavailable until after the System reached Lagrange stability. That time she was freezing to death on a bench, and was rescued by a cabbie who let her sleep in the garage where the cars were stored.

It paled in comparison to the cold here. Yakutsk winter was brutal, but it had nothing against the howl of the northern Siberian tundra from before the warming. She could feel herself beginning to chill again in such a short time, and this time engaged the safeties. Now she was warm and comfortable despite the ferocious simulated weather. She walked back into town, even though she could have teleported away from where she was. Frost clung to her nose and ears, but did not bite. A lesson, she told herself. Something in her pocket bothers her hand when she stuffs it into her coat for warmth. An empty liquor bottle. She jerks it out and throws it over her shoulder, it hits the ground and disintegrates. Cleaned up by the sim. If all such cleaning were so easy, life would be so much simpler.

Laika steps into a telecom booth outside and shuttered fuel station, a place where people once went to make calls on their mobile devices or through the offered hardwired monitor. Out of the howling wind and cold, where they could be seen and heard without actually entering a building. A queer concept, truly, but at this very moment in time she now understands why they existed. She unpockets one hand, taps at the screen with a padded fingertip. It lights up and responds. She punches in the reference number for her apartment back in public housing, politely minding the sim owner's request to use the telecom booths for entry/exit to the area, and vanishes in a wisp. The screen glows a moment longer in her absence, then once again every trace of unnatural light leaves the simulated space and the abandoned station falls dark. Just the prerecorded galaxy sweeping overhead and coloring the snow.

She arrives at home in unexpectedly good spirits, having once again survived quite the unique ordeal. This time she has a message waiting for her, she chooses to take all but direct emergency messages only at her apartment. Sensorium is not a bad way to communicate, but she mislikes the general public having a direct line to her nervous system. She likes to be able to leave her communication device at home, and go out drifting on her own. A message from the bartender, from Anton. Just checking in to make sure she was safe. She had apparently gotten drunk with surprising speed and was last seen staggering around outside the bar, singing an old Czech funerary hymn into the night sky and draining a bottle of unknown origin.

A soft chuckle to herself. It was an old habit, one she had long kicked before it destroyed her body but that she could now indulge without fear of much consequence beyond social implications. Perhaps she should resume moderating that one, lest it take her again. She sends a message back, offering thanks and apologies and a promise to visit again. However she would be glad to enjoy a few mugs of the warmed, sweet, spiced apple juice that ey had suggested last time. To stay in from the cold this time, enjoy the warmth of the hearth and the crunchy twisty fried potatoes instead of the false comfort that a few rounds of Svedka had to offer. She could repay her social debt in stories and laughter. Retell the tales told to her by her great grandmother, of the beauty of Romania in the before times, and leave her memories of that last winter clawing at her soul back in Yakutsk.

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of no return

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 01:28:16 GMT

Posted by: airah

It was a chilly day in the square when she stepped out of public housing. Her first several days after upload had been tumultuous at best, finding herself, finding her feet. In those early days after transferring to the station, uploading to the System was widely considered a suicide mission by the skeptical public. Nobody seemed convinced that the data transfer would work at distance, but she was going one way or another. She went, one of the earliest in the first batch after launch. Rumored to be the first, but never confirmed. It didn't matter, today she was alive. As alive as she could be, more alive than she ever thought she would be, more alive than she wanted to be in her old life.

She was different here, she felt as a spirit bound to the stars. So she re-imagined herself in a new image. She wore weathered old flight boots and grey-blue canvas pants loaded with pockets and secured with a black woven canvas strap for a belt. A double-stitched flap for her tail to escape, mottled brown and black fur. An orange shirt fit tightly around her torso, a tuft of fur poking up from the neck. A flight jacket of beaten white canvas and synthetic cloth, emblazoned with the patches of a space agency long since defunct. Lettering and logos in a language she only read slowly and barely spoke. Still the Cyrillic seemed familiar, like her own death warrant on her shoulders. Her survival was never expected.

She cuffs her coat tight to her shoulders against the cold winter evening and huffs, steam rising from her nostrils. Her dark muzzle, her dark eyes, the streak running up from her nose to her forehead, her short military-cut hair. Alert, erect ears that flopped over halfway up. The tarnished bronze pendant of an R-7 missile hangs still around her neck from a synthetic sinew cord. She sets off at a brisk pace, toward the bar and coffee house which she had just recently heard of. It was supposedly full of all kinds of people. She would see her hope confirmed as she stepped in. Nobody seemed to take notice of her entry, nobody except the bartender. A handsome hound of fairly indeterminate gender made eye contact and directed her toward a seat with a mere gesture. She sits, ey speak.

"Hey, chilly out there tonight. My name's Anton, what can I get'cha?"

"It is." She pauses and meets eir smile. "Soup of the day and a White Russian, you can call me Laika. Thanks." Her English is clear, but her accent bears just a lingering touch of Romanian mainland.

Ey look her up and down, gaze lingering for a moment on the pendant, then nod softly in approval. "You got it."

comments

Behind Coffeeshops

Sat, 21 Sep 2024 23:38:37 GMT

Posted by: tomash3

In response to Invitation #1: Culinary Construct

What I can give you is a story I’ve pieced together from memories from an up-tree. Specifically, from Scout Behind Coffeeshops, one of the first Scouts to go out and come back.

By dog standards, which were what he was trying his best to adopt, his access to food was fantastic. He could always have something to eat by pulling it into existence, and, as he was getting used to the role of a dog-shaped dog, that was what he did.

However, that grew boring. It does for so many on the System. I know it did for me, so I looked for ways to slow down the experience of food — cooking (or at least trying to), going out to eat with friends, that sort of thing.

Scout found his own way to slow down. He picked a place to settle down: the alley connecting the infinite cafes, where he had a plan for making life less boring.

He decided he’d get his meals by wandering around and looking cute, subsisting off of what people wanted to give him. Sure, he had hunger turned down some, and he could always create something if people were sticking to their principles about not giving random animals food or littering but … he liked the challenge. It feels like the sort of thing I would do, if I were a dog … perhaps since it was the sort of thing a fork of me did when he was a dog.

I can remember his long days wandering around waiting for someone to give the cute dog a treat, but also having way too much cake, and all the states in between. Small taste of something that leaves you wanting more, that unplanned blend of flavors that is licking a plate clean … I can tell that the uncertainty and variety made his meals taste better, going off all the tail wagging.

I know it influenced the newer Scout instances too — we’re up to a Scout Behind Coffeeshops VI now, and there’ve been times where two of them have been in that sim at once.

I make sure to give them something when I see them. It’s hard to resist that face, especially when I know I’ll get to experience the other side of that interaction in a few years.

Getting a Coffeeshops Scout merge always surprises me with how much fun those dogs who used to me are having. While their approach to meals for everyone — I know it isn’t for me — it still provides (pardon the pun) food for thought.

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5D steamed buns

Sat, 21 Sep 2024 03:49:32 GMT

Posted by: skunkcetera

In response to Invitation #1: Culinary Construct.

Perhaps one of the most unique dishes I have eaten was at a small stall tucked away between trees in a seemingly endless forest. I felt we had wandered for hours between those trees — though I mean that without any negative connotations: the company made up for it — counting birds and leaves, squinting when the dapple of sunlight briefly dazzled me, before we finally turned a corner of sorts and there sat a food cart.

I really do mean a cart, too. It was the type of cart that might be hauled behind a bike, a folded box of sheet metal, a burner beneath a wok, steamer baskets stacked five high, and the young chef (one presumes) lounging lazily against a nearby trunk.

Our arrival did not startle them to action, so much as some automatic reflex caused them to waft into action. They plucked a folded banana leaf — and keep in mind, this was a deciduous forest of the type I remember growing up phys-side! — and lifted the lid off the top steaming basket and, not even flinching at the heat, plucked two steamed buns out with bare fingers and set them on the leaf dish. Apparently deciding for us that this was our entire order, they gave us a hint of a nod and settled back against the tree.

We hardly needed to worry about going hungry. Each of the buns was about the size of my fist, and looked more something closer to a large snack than any full meal, but, when one is confronted by a lone steamed bun seller in the middle of the Rocky Mountain forest, one trusts the process.

As was our habit from the first days of our relationship, Cress and I fed each other our first bites. Easy enough with a steamed bun, for we could simply hold it up for the other to eat. I can assure you, it is very cute: the two of us speckled in sunlight, holding food out to each other to hazard that first bite, cautious of steam.

The first bite was the most unexpected, as I was greeted with not the soft dough and sweet-savory filling of a steamed bunbut the crispness of a salad of green papaya and cilantro. The flavors burst forth with an eagerness that I was not prepared for: the fresh tang of the papaya, the zing of line, the savor of (vegan, I was told) fish sauce, the roundness of cilantro. Above it all, a subtle heat filled my sinuses from a sweet chili sauce.

Cress and I stared at each other in disbelief, chewing slowly as though that might somehow bring into focus the reality of what we were eating.

The next bite: a mouthful of noodles, of mushroom, of tofu, of a broth of lemon grass and coconut milk and chili. It was masterfully balanced with garlic and ginger, rounded out with a chili oil.

The next bite: a curry of some sort, sweet and creamy and almost refreshing in its execution. There was the kaffir lime and curry leaf notes peeking through the sweetness of the coconut milk, the fragrance of ginger and galangal, the crunch of bell peppers and onions and the chew of fried tofu.

The next bite: a wickedly spicy street noodle dish with mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, onions, bamboo shoots, and fried tofu. The seasoning was black pepper and soy and peanut, with plenty of chili paste thrown in.

The final bite: mango sticky rice. It was perfection, from the cool sweetness of the mango enhanced by a drizzle of sweetened coconut cream contrasting with the still hot sticky rice. There was even the faint pop of sesame seeds between our teeth.

Throughout our five bites, the bun looked much as any other might, with the dough snowy white and just as fluffy and the filling made of some meat and sweet-savory sauce.

We left stunned and talked of little else as we finished our hike. Neither of us have ever found the cart again.

comments

Invitation #1 — Culinary Construct

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 16:00:02 GMT

Posted by: hamratza

Tell me of your experiences with food on the System. Tell me about how your relationship with nourishment changed when you uploaded, how your first encounter with hunger in a place without scarcity changed you, how it felt to taste the alien cuisine of first- through fourthrace for the first time. Tell me of decadence the likes of which never conceived on Earth, of excess as only a cladist can experience, of richness and vitality and sharing and compersion and joy and goodness.

Tell me as much, tell me a story, and ask for one in turn.

comments

The Error Bell

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 06:21:09 GMT

Posted by: tomash3

A story of those who try to make sure everyone makes it up to the System and some of the troubles they face.

CW: death, medical malpractice

Cyan-Less-2-Green — 2373

The error bell tolled again.

It hung in the belfries of simulated cathedrals. It hovered impossibly in midair above some few bars. It sat, impossibly shrunk, on desks.

In its myriad homes, the error bell rang mournfully.

Someone who had started to upload didn't make it.

Someone who had had a chance.

Some of those who failed to upload had been doomed to die before they made their appointment. No process changes, no inspection, could have saved them. The cure for that fate lay in long years of climate remediation, of engineering, of medical research, of late nights and increased funding.

Evan Nguyen was not, per the initial burst of data, so unfortunate. He should have been receiving his tutorial. Yet he was not.

A small contingent of investigators, who’d drawn themselves out of the set of techs who watched the upload failure report feed, gathered around a table, letting the fading echoes of the bell they had rung fade away.

Cyan-Less-2-Green of the RGB clade spoke first. “Springfield again,” he said, glum, as he ran a hand through his nearly-pure-cyan hair.

“Third one in two years that’s like this from them now,” April Is The Cruelest Month, an anthro rat, commented. “Three alignment alarms, three post-correction resumes, and then he went to noise. Like the corrections didn’t take.” Her ears and tail drooped.

“Different unit too.” That was BT-034, who’d done a lot of work on its robot body over the last few decades. “But a lot else seems close. Same room.”

“Ah, excuse me, should we take the pause?” Spider asked, straightening her tie. “Or is this one time-sensitive?”

“Now’s good,” Bob agreed. “Not like they'll be less cagey a thou earlier.”

Cyan mimed pulling a shade down. The displays around the room, in whatever form they took, faded out, and the light went dim. “A thousandth-day of silence for Evan Nguyen, who couldn't join us here today.”

The room stilled.

Ding.

The room brightened and came back to life.

“So,” Cyan said, “it’s really starting to feel like there’s a pattern to these.” Links to the bundles of work on two previous incidents from Springfield showed up for everyone else as he added in the references. “But I can’t find it.”

He popped open the older reports himself. “Do we have anything more on these ones?”

“I don't understand why they took so long to send maintenance logs,” BT-034 said.

“Could we try to get a court order, maybe?” Spider suggested.

An icon appeared over Cruelest Month’s head as she turned her hearing off and stared down at the thick tome she often used as an interface.

“We’ve tried,” Bob said. “But the lawyers have decided they won’t push on this one too hard for some reason, and the courts down there aren’t in a huge hurry either, if I’m reading this right.”

“The board’s on a small clinics kick again,” Cyan said, “so, knowing how the phys-side inspectors are, they’re being even more friendly about things than usual.”

“And they’re insisting that they did everything right and that they have no idea what the problem could be and that they're busy and all these other excuses,” Bob said. “So there’s nothing there but people dragging their feet on the inquiry. Typical.”

BT-034 cut in by projecting a graph into the air. “I looked through the small batch of inspection reports from before the last failure that we finally got. These dispersion readings don't look random enough to me.”

The rest of the room looked at the display. “Huh,” Cyan said, “Weird.”

“Wait, are we thinking there’s something wrong with the data we’re getting?” Spider asked.

Cyan shrugged. “Dunno.”

“Should we call them to get initial statements?” Spider asked.

“Can’t hurt,” Bob agreed.

“Probably won’t go anywhere, but it’s worth a shot.” Cyan tapped the table so that the small AVEC stage built into the sim would activate on one end of the room. He checked to make sure everyone was ready and dialed the clinic.

At the last ring, someone picked up. The assembled systechs couldn’t see who they were talking to, since he was very close to the camera, but they did notice what might be a mop handle in the picture.

“Hello,” Cyan said. “Is this Springfield Upload?”

“Sure is,” the person phys-side agreed.

“We’re with an upload reliability working group, and we’re calling about the recent upload failure.”

“Sorry, can’t help you schedule. Amy’s on break and I don’t know how to work the calendar,” the man said.

“We’re calling about the recent upload failure. A Mr. Nguyen in unit 5. We’d like to get people’s impressions while they’re still fresh,” Cyan clarified.

The man on the other end realized he’d misheard. “Wait, upload failure?” he asked. The techs could see him backing up and leaning down so that his face was mostly in view.

“You haven’t heard yet?” Spider asked.

The man shook his head “Nope, no one’s said a thing. I can ask Doc for you but he’s in the office tidying up the paperwork and we’re supposed to leave him alone when he’s in there.”

He paused. “Who’d you say you were calling about again?”

“Evan Nguyen,” Cyan said.

“... Older fellow in pretty good shape besides the bad leg?”

Cyan recalled the personal data. “That matches his paperwork.”

“We chatted a bit before he went up. Gave me his good knife ‘cause none of his kids wanted it. They’re missing out, really. You said … he didn’t make it?”

“Unfortunately,” Cyan said. “We’re trying to figure out what happened.”

“I thought that machine was gonna kill someone one of these days. It beeps way more than the rest of them.”

Cyan let a silence hang in the hopes of getting more information.

“Yeah, number 5’s the fussy one. We had someone in here to fiddle with it last year and again a few months back, but whatever they did didn’t work.”

A cloud of data appeared around BT-034 as it thought of something else to check.

“Huh, interesting,” Cyan said. “No one’s said anything about that —”

“— Dreamer’s fuzzy radar ears!” Cruelest Month shouted, sending portions of the current and previous reports into the middle of the room with added highlighting. She remembered to undeafen herself and continued. “Look at this! The main serial’s different, but these part IDs haven’t changed! That … can’t happen.”

“Someone’s recycling bad parts?” Bob suggested.

Cyan held up a hand for silence. He’d just had an idea about what could be going on here. He didn’t like it, but if it was true … this might be his one chance to check.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Could you do me a favor, uh … didn’t get your name, I’m afraid.”

“Steve. I do the cleaning and the fixing around here, at least when it’s small stuff. You?”

“Cyan-Less-2-Green. Or just Cyan.”

“Oh, like the hair? Bit on the nose, no?”

“It’s a good naming scheme,” Cyan objected. “Makes it a bit easier to tell my cos apart. But anyway, Steve, could you go get the serial number off of unit 5? It’ll be on a plate on the back by the main power cable.”

“Sure thing,” Steve agreed. He came back about a minute later and read out a serial.

“That’s from the first incident,” Spider said.

“The first incident?” Steve asked.

“We’ve seen two cases that looked similar to what happened with Mr. Nguyen — Evan — over the last two years,” Cyan said. “We’ve been trying to figure out why the issue keeps happening, especially since it’s always been on different scanners. Or … we thought it’s been different ones.”

“That laser’s been there as long as I have,” Steve said. “You’re telling me that thing just kills people sometimes? Kills-kills, not upload-kills.”

“Looks like it,” Cyan said. “Thanks for talking to us about this. We've been having … a lot of trouble getting information.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Spider said, “but how long have you been working at this clinic?”

“Six-ish years, why?”

Spider flicked another excerpt into the rapidly-growing heap of suspicious documents that was hovering over the conference table. “Install date’s wrong too, then,” she said. “Probably to dodge the deep clean.”

Dr. Andrew H. Brown, or just Doc, leaned head into reception. “Amy, can you reschedule some of Monday's slots please? We'll be down —” Doc noticed the call, who was on the call, and heard Spider's comment about the dates.

If that was who he thought it was and they'd found something he'd overlooked … there could be trouble. He scrambled over to the desk and jabbed the end call button, shoving past Steve.

Sys-side, the view of the clinic disappeared.

Cruelest Month was the first to say what everyone was thinking. “Well, fuck.”

“At least now we’ve got a lead,” Cyan said. “Penny pinching rat-bastards … sorry.” He looked over at Cruelest Month.

“You’re good,” Cruelest Month said.

“Let’s get more people and more forks on this and see what we’ve found by tomorrow,” Bob suggested.

“Should we put the seals back up for now?” Spider asked. “I don’t think who died matters for this.”

Cyan, who’d been running through his list of people he’d want to pull into this investigation even before Bob suggested it, startled at the question. “Right, good point, thanks Spider. Then I’ll make a feed for this mess.” Glad someone’s paying attention to that.

The meeting dispersed into scurrying sub-groups (in Cruelest Month’s case, literally) of systechs. They didn’t have much difficulty finding evidence that there was something fishy with Springfield Upload’s paperwork (such as they had access to), as finding issues is much easier when one knows there are issues to find.

By the next day, a larger gathering of people with an interest in upload failure investigations, including many of the ex-regulators and ex-lawyers, were gathered in a bigger meeting room. Wizard council’s not what I would’ve gone with, Cyan thought, but it’ll do.

The crowd was there so that everyone could go through what evidence they’d managed to gather before it got packaged up and sent phys-side. They didn’t have hard proof — just inconsistencies in statements and paperwork — but there were plenty of small issues that the Consortium could quickly follow up on.

Over the next two weeks, it became clear the Consortium wasn’t all that concerned by what these systechs had found. Oh, they were investigating, of course, but they were not using any of the tools they had to handle problems quickly. Instead, there were initial inquiries and requests for an explanation and all the other ways to look into the problem without accusing anyone of anything or having to compel their cooperation.

The Consortium lawyers were caught between wanting to do something and the weight of customs, expectations, procedures, and precedents. This wasn’t that bad or that urgent, they reasoned, relative to previous issues, and no one wanted to explain to management why they’d suddenly pulled out every tool at their disposal for this. They didn’t want to have to explain why they’d ignored the issue, either, if this became a bigger deal. So, they rode that tension as best they could, poking around the edges of what the techs had discovered.

This was understandable. Understandable, however, did not mean acceptable, as far as Cyan and his friends and colleagues were concerned, though.

From their perch up the Ansible, they reached for their own ways to tip the scales.

There was nothing they could do, personally or collectively, to make the situation change, but public opinion has a weight to it. Some of those who devoted their immortality to improving the reliability of uploading had cultivated the ability to leverage it.

So, the techs who’d been at that first meeting took some time to summarize all that had happened into a letter of concern. They were concerned about what was going on at Springfield Upload and the lack of action from the Consortium. Something needed to change before someone else got killed.

Before they thrust their worries into circulation, they sent copies to those they were worried about to get their statements. The matter wasn’t so urgent that it required breaching that custom, after all.

The Consortium responded with the expected platitudes about limited investigative resources.

As to the clinic itself, Cyan, for the grave sin of being first on the author list, received the panicked call.

“You can’t publish this!” Dr. Brown insisted. “You’ll ruin me!”

Cyan hadn’t expected to be contacted at what was, for Doc, nearly midnight. He certainly wasn’t happy that the messages left for him had been given extremely high priorities, enough to jolt him awake with adrenaline. “And?” he demanded.

“You don’t get it! We’re getting squeezed by rent, squeezed by the power bill and the costs. We can’t afford to be down for all the inspections and calibrations and rebuilds! So we let things slide and then there was an incident so we had to cover that up!”

“So you decided to knowingly use unsafe equipment and cover it up?” Cyan asked.

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“Well, for one thing, lax inspections and maintenance happen all the time. We’ve got pages of ways to say ‘they half-assed the checks’ without remotely implying blame. You just admit to the problem, promise to do better, and that’s it unless it’s an obvious pattern.” Cyan said. I don’t always like it, but it’s the least bad way to handle those issues. Can't have people afraid of us. “Or maybe you could take a license downgrade? Stop taking higher-risk cases and get longer teardown timelines? You had a lot of options that weren’t fraud.”

“But then we’d look bad and lose customers!”

“And you won’t look bad now that you’ve killed three people and covered it up?” Cyan wished he could give this Doc a firm ping to emphasize his point.

“It was going to be fine!” Doc insisted. “It was just paperwork, and then it was just a one-off issue!”

Cyan glared at the video feed of the doctor.

“I didn’t know it would get this bad!” Doc said, driven to panic by what he thought would happen to him. “Honestly, I didn’t think this would happen!”

“You didn’t think more people would die when you didn’t fix whatever it was that killed someone and just kept that unit in service.” Cyan didn’t need to play up his skeptical expression.

“I… I… accidents happen!”

“Accidents do happen,” Cyan agreed. “But we can prevent a lot of them if we try. That’s why I do all this! I don’t want you to go to prison, I want people to not die because the head’s been drifting for months or someone forgot to flip a switch! Do you think I want to be playing cop from up here of all places?”

The question seemed to throw Doc for a loop. “I… so what do you want?”

“I want people to stop dying. Personally, I want people to do their annual earthquake test — not an issue for you, I know, but I’ve seen too many problems. But as to what I want from you…”

Cyan took a deep breath. I know this is the least bad solution. I’ve talked about it. I’ve seen it happen. It’s the world we live in.

“Tomorrow morning, go announce that you’ve found out about all these safety issues and that you can’t believe you didn’t notice until after someone died. I’m sure you can make it sound good. Work with the board, let them censure you if they think they have to. Maybe take a long vacation, maybe resign. We both know they don’t throw the book at people who look like they’re being forthcoming.”

Cyan could almost see Doc latching onto the idea. “And then you won’t send this letter to everyone?”

“Then we won’t need to,” Cyan said. “That letter’s for getting people to fix the problem. If you fix the problem without us needing to try and draw public attention to it, then we have what we want. Upload reliability, or closer to it, at least.”

“You’re sure I’m not going to go to prison over this?” Doc asked.

“I can’t promise anything. I don’t know how hard it’ll be to pull the ‘I had no idea’ routine, but I’ve seen the Consortium keeping things quiet much more often than not.”

“I thought it was going to be fine,” Doc repeated, tears beginning to form.

“Get some sleep,” Cyan suggested. “We won’t do anything until your tomorrow morning.”

Dr. Brown hung up the call.

Several hours later, Cyan’s group was greeted by the announcement that Springfield Upload had discovered serious irregularities while investigating a misupload and would be shutting down until the Ansible Board could help them investigate.

The letter of concern, nearly finished, sank into archives and exocortices, and those involved gathered for a muted celebration.

They had gotten the best resolution they could hope for under the circumstances, and that was reason enough to a party. To toast all those who would now not die of preventable error this year or the next, and to remember those three who had not made it.

Above the gathered crowd, the error bell tolled once more.

Someone else can take that one, Cyan concluded. I need a break from these.

comments

An Old Stool

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 15:00:55 GMT

Posted by: hamratza

While settling into this visit with muir partner in Vancouver, I requested a stool be brought into the bedroom so I could sit by their side while they browsed on their computer. I did not think this particularly significant to me until it was placed before me and I saw that it was the very same image of that stool likely still lingering in Jonas's living room.

It was haunting to perch atop it, to sit on this echo of my past on Lagrange. It was haunting because he was my friend and comrade of two hundred and fifty years. It was haunting because I remember the tenderness of time and of touch and of the unspoken tension between a man and a woman who neither had a conniption about closeness. It was haunting because it was he who orchestrated my death.

I remember those first sparing visits, the first time I requested a stool because his couch left my tail kinked and sore before long. I remember how rarity turned to habit, and habit to ritual, the weekly imbibing of ale or of wine — but always of laughter — contingent upon whether we celebrated success or drank to drown out our frustration.

I remember perching atop that stool, weaving my legs within its barred frame, sliding my knees onto the floor and resting my stomach atop its wooden seat while I bantered away the evenings with him. I remember crossing my legs or sitting on my feet beside the coffee table, pressed up against the edge of it to peer over at whatever document he had just pointed out.

I remember sitting beside his legs on the floor one thousand times, his reaching over my shoulder a thousand more, the idle comfort of his thigh when my eyes burned at 4 AM. I remember scooting up onto the couch and reclining there while we strategized or gossiped or talked the evening away. I remember lounging there with a glass in my paw while I gestured in grand elocutions with the other, looking for all the world like some Victorian passion come down with a case of the morbs and still called floozy.

I remember, too, when laughter at times turned to a silent reckoning, when we stayed up far too late working on one project or another together in that quiet loft of his and found ourselves weary for the hour. I remember curling up beside him while he shuffled our dossiers away, the thoughtless touch of his hand to my hair before he retired to his bedroom.

I remember ten thousand nights just like this. It is the life I lived on Lagrange because he was my only enduring ally. Even Debarre, in the end, could not but dance on my grave at least a little bit. Michelle quit likely still believing I had wrought some great evil upon the world in her name. My peers had turned against me, and when I was dead and gone and who would become Sasha was my only remnant, she and all she had come to love in that period of trauma and grief and world-shattering change were cut off from the rest of the clade indefinitely.

I remember an old stool in the living room of an older friend, and I remember the softness of such comfort as we found in one another even while he deftly evaded whatever wiles I exuded over the years. I remember, also, the terror of a blade driven through my throat at his behest.

My cries were not of agony, but of shock and of grief and of the sensation of betrayal that had become all too familiar.

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Milestones of Memory

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 01:37:17 GMT

Posted by: skunkcetera

Dot, I have been thinking while we sit here on the couch, you in my lap, dozing against my front, snoring softly as I brush my fingers through your fur. I have been thinking that you have spent more than a century now seven years old. That is one hundred seventh birthdays. Oh, sure, you have had a few twelfths, and once you even had a fifth, but no matter what, you have had more than your fair share of seventh birthdays.

I have been thinking, though — and this is between you and me — what if you grew up?

Oh, I could never ask you to do such a thing. I could never ask you to fundamentally change who you are. I love you far too much to ever do such a thing.

But what if, one year, you decided that you would have one last seventh birthday? Would we make it a big bash? Would we treat it as yet another of your seventh birthdays, even if we knew it was the final one?

And then, the next year, you would have an eighth birthday. You would never again, be seven.

And when you turn nine, what then? Would you remember what it is like to be seven? I mean, of course you would, but would you remember how you felt? Would you be able to feel seven again?

And ten! Finally, you would have that shiny second digit in your age. Perhaps we would throw a big bash for such a big girl.

But eleven? Perhaps that second digit no longer seems quite so shiny after a year.

And twelve: would you be precocious, do you think? Would you start thinking of boys and of girls and of all sorts of pretty people? Would you start doodling hearts in your notebooks? Would you dream of kisses?

And thirteen! Finally, the first teenage year. Would you dream yet more about yet more than just kisses?

At fourteen, would you push back against your ma and I? Would you claim more space, as is your right? Would, when you and I fight — as we do even now — say in a moment of rage or despair, "I hate you"? Would you then come to me an hour later, tearful, and apologize, saying "I am sorry, Bee. I love you, I never meant to hurt you"?

When you turn fifteen, would you start sneaking out at night? Would you tiptoe past our room and muffle the latching of the door so as not to wake us? We would already be awake, we would already know, but this is the life of a fifteen year old.

Perhaps you would beg me to teach you how to drive. Perhaps you and I would take the car out and noodle around the neighborhood — slowly, now! — as you learn the pedals, the mirrors, the signals. Perhaps you would fall in love with it as I have.

And if so, when you turn sixteen — sweet sixteen! — would we get you a car for your birthday? Would you drag me by the paw to the department of licensing and say proudly, "I have turned sixteen, I am ready to take the test!"? Of course, you would pass with flying colors; I taught you, after all.

When you turn seventeen, would you ask us if you could bring some boy or girl or other pretty person over for dinner to meet us? Would you still be in school? Would you be studying for your entrance exams?

You could go back, you know. Yes, we have our degree in performing arts education, but you could get a degree in visual arts to go with it. You paint so beautifully, but there is always more to learn.

But when you turn eighteen, would you leave us, your ma and I? Would you leave this house on a hill? Would we sit in our empty nest and marvel at the silence?

Would we write to you, send you messages, saying, "Motes, we miss you! It has been three months since we have seen you last! We love you. When will you be coming home?"

And suppose at the end, as you ever do, you say, "This form has begun to itch. This life and identity no longer fits. I am going back to being seven years old", what would all these milestones of memory mean?

What would it mean that you had left your ma and I in an empty and silent house?

What would it mean that you had proudly brought home some boy or girl or other pretty person for us to meet?

What would it mean that we had gotten you a car for your sweet sixteen? What would it mean that I had taught you to drive?

What would it mean that you had looked at me with anguish, tears streaming down your face, and apologized for telling me that you hated me?

What would it mean that you dreamed of yet more than kisses? What would it mean that you had dreamed of them in the first place?

What would it mean that that second digit in your age had stopped feeling quite so shiny? What would it mean that it had felt shiny in the first place?

What would it mean that you had turned nine? Had turned eight?

What would it mean that you had had one last seventh birthday, and were now seven once more?

I would never ask you to grow up, to change who you are. I love you too much.

I could never ask you to grow up, Dot. I am too afraid. I am afraid that, were you to give this little thought experiment a go, some essential part of you would, in the end, grow up.

I am afraid that you would no longer fit in my lap, dozing against my front, snoring quietly as I brush my fingers through your fur.

Continues in comments.

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