First few chapters from Qoheleth by Madison Scott-Clary! You can pick it up as a paperback and ebook, or read it for free in the browser.

Qoheleth

Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.

— Ecclesiastes 3:15

RJ Brewster — 2112

The theater purred. It hummed to itself. It stretched and reclined. It relaxed. Unwound.

RJ and the room let out a slow, long-held breath together, feeling muscles and wires relax, nerves and current disentangle themselves, slowly, slowly.

"Alright, everyone. It's midnight, time to start packing up," Johansson was saying from down in the front row. "Ross, we're short one. Can you start pulling together all of the mics? RJ will help you get them sorted."

"Mm," RJ offered through the sound system. Ey was busy putting the theater to bed, and couldn't spare more than a meager few syllables to the rest of the cast and crew. "Get a headset, Ross, so I don't have to talk through the speakers."

Those speakers were signing off, going to bed one by one through RJ's gentle ministrations. The physical back-up board set about the task of returning to neutral as RJ worked, all of the gain knobs orienting themselves, then all of the monitor knobs, the sliders, the whole system ticking through automated checklists as it cooled down. All minus the channel ey'd need to keep open to Ross.

"Hey boss, got a headset. Where do you want me to start?"

"Grab the leads, first," RJ murmured. "Then Sarah and Catherine, they've got the nice mics. All of them should have a tiny number painted on the costume side that matches up with their box. The boxes are stacked in the pit, by the front wall, you should be able to get them out in one load, though be careful taking them back."

"Got it, heading down to the pit now."

RJ left the channel open just in case. The soft sounds of breathing and the occasional curse as Ross bumped his head on the pit cover were distracting while ey set about going through eir notes with the dozy theater. Best be available, though. The next night's rehearsal was the last before they went live.

Ey knew the show better than most of the cast. Em and the theater. The two had to learn everyone's lines, plus a few cues besides when they'd have to take care not to pick up any of the sound effects. Gunshots. Chairs scraping. A scuffle. The clap of heels on the matte black of the stage itself.

The theater's job was to simply work with RJ and the lighting crew, responding to their knowledge of what was going on in the play, while RJ and Caitlin's job, as sound and lights respectively, was to respond to the stage manager's encyclopedic knowledge of the play, her view of the house.

All sound was under RJ's jurisdiction. Cast and crew both: ey spent as much time managing communication between the hands, the manager, and emself and Caitlin as ey did maintaining the sound from the performers. Private jokes kept on the down-low.

They had to be ghosts in this. Even the theater.

Their jobs were ones that should be invisible to the audience, because it would only become visible if they fucked up. No one wanted to fuck up. Even the theater seemed to feel a sense of pride in doing its job and doing it well.

RJ soothed the room with gentle cooing and reluctantly started the process of pulling back. Ey closed the channel with Ross and put all of the headsets to bed last of all, before ey slipped back from the interface. Felt for that cool breeze of reality on the back of eir neck — or whatever passed for a neck so immersed — and backed out. Blinked as ey adjusted to seeing the cavernous hall with eir own eyes. Lifted eir fingers slipped from the contact points and leaned back from the headrest.

Ey shook eir head to clear it and stood, stretching, before ambling from the tech booth down the stairs towards the stage. Letting gravity carry eir lanky form down two steps at a time. Breeze against eir face. The treble note of dust and conditioned air only added to the newborn feeling of pulling back.

Ross was in the front row, standing still and staring at the floor, muttering agitated questions into the headset.

"Hey Ross, I'm here. The house is sleeping now."

Ross jumped, then looked embarrassed as he tugged the headset off his head. "Sorry, was wondering where you'd gone. I just heard a beep."

"Yep, signing off from above. Did you get all the mics gathered up?"

"Oh! Yeah, that's what I was trying to tell you. I wasn't sure what to do next."

It only took a few minutes for RJ and Ross to get the last of the sound gear settled. Headsets from all of the hands socketed into numbered chargers on the wall. Everything would sleep tight until the next night on sound's end.

Caitlin and Sarai, the stage manager, joined them with the rest of the crew. They sat on the edge of the pit cover, unwinding from the tenseness of rehearsal. The actors were slow got out of their half-costume and clump together on the stage.

"Gather 'round, children", a voice boomed from out in the darkened audience.

"Yes, Mister Johansson," one of the actors singsonged back. Tired laughter.

"Good job, I think we're there. Still, a bit more polish never hurts. No flubbed lines, and mostly relaxed, but Sarah, you gotta loosen up. It's not Shakespeare, you can chill out. Crew, you guys got a little sluggish toward the end. I know it's late, but so are our shows. Don't work yourselves too hard, but keep on top of things, okay?"

RJ, Sarai, and Caitlin nodded their assent.

"Tomorrow night, back here at four."

"Early," RJ murmured. "How come?"

Johansson grinned. "There's a school production that winds up around then and I want you all back here to make sure we still have a theater."

There was a bit more grumbling, but RJ knew they'd be there on time. It wasn't too much of a stretch. Those with second jobs would make it.

"Back to base, then. Get some rest tonight, and I'll catch you all tomorrow. Remember, you can drink tonight, but tomorrow night, Das ist streng verboten."

The troupe laughed and started to disperse, the tech leads lingering on the pit cover for a little while longer as they reoriented themselves to the real world. A world bound by spatial constraints, limited by two eyes, two ears, two hands.

Eventually, RJ made eir way out onto the chill of the street, pulling on eir thin waterproof gloves to keep the contacts on the middle joints of eir fingers clean and dry.

Midnight on a weekday, and not much going on. People visiting the pubs to catch up with their friends after work. Black cabs, night buses.

The idea of a warm pub and one quick pint before heading home tugged at em, but the pull of home was much stronger than that of beer. There would be a pub of a different sort waiting for em.

Ey trudged instead up to Oxford Circus. Central line up to Benthal Green, walk the few blocks from there to eir flat. Stopped to pick up a take-away carton of curry and rice from one of the more trustworthy shops along the way.

Once home, ey slipped out of eir jacket and welcomed the warmth of eir little flat after the damp chill of London outside. Eir cat trotted up to em, twining around eir ankles. A little ginger thing of a few years that ey had rescued from a friend who was moving deeper into the city. She was the only one to share eir space with em after eir last flatmate had left for somewhere cheaper.

"Hey Prisca, let me put my shit down before I get you food."

A meow, indignant, followed em to the kitchen.

Ey set eir take-away on the counter and scooped a cup of dry food into a fresh dish, setting it on the tile for the delicate cat. Indignant meows replaced by purring and crunching.

Ey thumbed eir phone to start music playing. Some of the stuff that reminded em of eir dad to go along with the curry that reminded em of eir mom. Quiet, but present.

Dinner was no more or less exciting than usual. RJ ate alone at the kitchen table with the carton spread out before em, baring orange curry and the soggy samosa that had come with it. Ey left eir gloves on just to be sure. No sense in having to clean eir contacts more than ey'd already need to after a long rehearsal.

Ey finished, scooped the last of the curry into a plastic container for the next day's lunch, promising emself that ey'd cook an additional pot of rice before heading out in the afternoon so ey'd have more calories to keep emself running. Clean up as easy as tossing the container into the compost bin along with all of the others. Cooking much more than rice was for times other than crunch.

The rig in the corner of eir bedroom was exerting subtle gravities on RJ. As ey ran through the motions of the post-recital evening — eating, cleaning, storing leftovers, using the toilet — eir orbits grew smaller and smaller. Eir gloves were itching. Ey could feel phantom breezes brushing past phantom fur.

Phantom fur. Phantom ears. Phantom tail. Phantom realities teased around the edges of eir perception.

Ey finally allowed emself to sit down at eir rig, relaxing into the familiar curves of the chair. Even with the draw so close to em, ey took eir time. Ey picked up Priscilla and stroked her smoothly from ears to tail a few times until she started purring up a storm, informing her that, in fact, she was the prettiest kitty.

Peel your gloves off one finger at a time, ey thought. Relish the anticipation. Get caught up in it. Hell, let it linger.

Cat settled into eir lap and curled into a small crescent, ey set about cleaning the contacts on eir hands with lint-free paper and rubbing alcohol. Those done, ey wiped down the headset, removing the negligible residue of sweat and skin oils that had collected there. Clean enough as is. Ey had recently replaced the soft, padded headrest where eir forehead would lay.

Eir gear at home was more elaborate than the stuff in the tech booth at work ey shared with Sarai and Caitlin, Ey had drained eir savings to acquire it. The rig, as well as the contacts on eir fingers, the interferites — nanoscale implants that took over eir optic and auditory nerves, and the electroparalytics to keep em from acting out in reality what took place online — the NFC connections implanted just under eir hairline and their ramifying tendrils, all of that painful work down eir spine that helped em more fully experience the connection.

All worth it.

Connections and gear cleaned, RJ finally felt complete enough to pop open the lid on eir rig. The screen, all but vestigial when ey was inside, still served its role during boot and login.

Ey quickly keyed in eir passphrase and then rested eir right hand on the curved pad, fingers finding familiar grooves that held eir hand in place. The connection from eir contacts the other half of eir two factors of authentication.

"Gonna head in, Prisca," ey murmured to eir cat, stroking over her ears, fingering the soft, velveteen folds until the cat shook her head away. Purrs nonetheless ratcheted up a notch. "I'll be back in a bit."

Ey set eir left hand into its cradle. Tilting eir head against the headrest, feeling the comforting touch of cool microfiber and the little twinge of recognition from the NFC controllers, ey nudged the button beneath eir thumb.

The rig went immersive. As RJ delved in, the soft hum of a cooling fan picked up to handle the waste heat of countless computations.

Ey could no longer hear it.

AwDae — 2112

RJ– no, AwDae, now, sat up in bed and slid to the edge of the mattress. Stretched languidly, let fur bristle from ear to tail, the latter bottle-brushing out. Ey shook emself to settle eir fur back down and yawned widely, slender pink tongue curling just shy of sharp incisors. All formalities, to be sure, or perhaps wordless mnemonics to finish the context-shift. The final step in a ritual.

All those phantom realities clicking into place.

Brushing eir fur down, the fennec stood and padded to the dresser in the corner of the room, pulling out a thin white cotton shirt with laces up the front and a simple navy sarong, which ey tied around eir waist. Countless hours examining some of the highest fashions out there on the 'net, and ey'd come to the conclusion that, in these times of excess, the understated said the most.

It also interfered with the fur least, worked well with a tail — a simple slit cut down the length of the sarong let that slip free — and it was cheap. There was no shortage of ways to spend money, and AwDae had better things to buy with what was left after London rent.

Better to perfect the form, to make it fit more precisely eir self-image. A handful of silver paltry exchange for building the you you are meant to be rather than the you you are.

Ey swiped eir paw from left to right atop the dresser, revealing a dimly glowing arsenal of personal belongings. It'd be a simple night out, so ey tucked a few vcards and a limited credit chip into a shoulder bag and hauled the strap over eir head, vulpine ears laying flat and out of the way.

From there, claws clacked against the glossy surface of the tport pad. Gauche as it was to pop in and out of existence where folks could see, ey kept eirs in a corner of the studio apartment rather than an alcove. The feeling of exposure and the jarring change of scenery was titillating, racy.

Ey stood straight on the pad and gestured a paw left to right, bringing up a list of recently used commands. Had ey left fingerprints online, there'd be a clear smudge over the entry: ey rarely did anything else on work nights.

tport: The Crown Pub

Tapped, and the obligatory click that went along with the change of scenery brought em to an alcove paneled in oak, lit by green-glass-shaded lights hanging pendulous from a cord directly above em.

Ey blinked to adjust to the comparatively dim light. The pub sim, largely following the circadian rhythm of the British isles, was just as dark as it was for RJ, back in London-as-it-was, but eir personal sim lived in a perpetual eleven AM springtime.

Ey turned and stepped away from the pad, narrowly avoiding a slender weasel stumbling towards the alcove.

"See ya, Debarre," AwDae said, though it came out more like 'Shee-a, Debaw' coming from the fox's narrow muzzle. Ey got a curt grunt from the weasel done up all in black.

The fox shrugged and headed into the pub proper, nose twitching. The scents of the room told em more of those present than simply scanning the crowd. One or two gawking entities with no scent property set — tourists — and the usual crowd of aromas. Friends, mostly. Acquaintances all.

Whiskers bristled at the distinct whiff of dandelions, a memory leftover from youth, and ey made a beeline towards one of the window tables, where the scent originated, skirting around bodies of diverse shape.

"Shacha."

"Come on, fox, loosen your filters, won't you?" Sasha laughed, scooting her chair back to stand up and lean in for a quick hug. AwDae slipped eir arms around the skunk's waist in turn and gave a squeeze, tail aswish.

"Lame," ey drawled, but dialed back the output filters on eir speech, letting something more closely resembling English pass. "How you been, skunk?"

"Oh, you know, same old, same old." Sasha settled back into her chair and fiddled with a stack of vcards on the table, giving an outsized shrug. "Been kind of boring in here over the last few days, so it's good to see you."

The fox nodded, tugging eir shirt straight and moving over to the chair opposite the skunk, sliding into it easily and resting against the back.

"It's late there, isn't it?"

"Not too late. One something. Made good time home at least. Rehearsal ran late."

Sasha grinned. "You know, every time you talk about rehearsal and such, I just think back to school. You hunched over the sound booth, you know? It's hard for me to picture you as having grown up and taken that up as a job."

AwDae adopted a look of mock-despair. "Isn't it? I went to uni just for it and everything. But hey, London ain't bad, I can't complain any. Besides, not like you left it either."

The skunk rolled her eyes and leaned forward onto her elbows, muzzle resting on obsidian paws. "Tell me about it. You're missing out big time here in the 'burbs, dear. You could be teaching high school theater in any town along the central corridor, doing the same plays once every five years so no students repeat them. Truly a life of glamour." Sasha laughed when AwDae buried eir face in eir paws and groaned. "Seriously though, you just remind me a lot of school. Maybe it's 'cause of all of the ways you haven't grown up."

"Please, Sasha." AwDae poked eir tongue out. "If you bring up dating..."

"Hey, sorry, just looking out for you, fox."

"I'm plenty happy on my own, I can promise you that," ey countered.

"No, I get that." Sasha lowered her gaze. "Not all it's turned out to be. Just got me thinking, is all."

"Oh no, struck out again?"

She shrugged, nodded, shrugged once more, fiddled with a vcard. No eye contact.

AwDae reached out to take one of her paws in eir own, black fur on tan mismatched and complementary. Both had opted for mostly hand-like paws, but differences were evident on contact. Where Sasha's fur was an even, silky black marked by white stripes that were a little too sharp, a little too exact, AwDae had labored to construct a version of emself as a fennec fox to exacting detail, down to the point where eir muzzle couldn't even form the two letters that made up eir name offline.

Exacting, minus perhaps the two-legged-ness, the hands, the humanity around the eyes. Even then, ey had an av free of humanity stashed away somewhere.

Thoughts of honing versus forging blurred surroundings. AwDae had honed emself to a finer and finder point while everyone else forged ahead. Always a way to be a better tech. Always a chance to become more vulpine online. Always a way to become better at what one already was. To become more the AwDae AwDae felt ey was.

Still running sound. Still honing that skill.

Ey shook eir head to dislodge the rumination.

"I'm sorry, Sasha."

Sasha shrugged again, as though she might be able to drop the very idea of bad break-ups like an overloaded backpack. She gave the fox's paws a squeeze in her own. "Men are dicks. I'd take a fox like you over some dickhead guy any day."

AwDae smiled faintly, returned the squeeze. "Sasha, you know it wouldn't–"

"No, I know. I just wish there were more guys out there like you." When AwDae stiffened in eir seat and looked away towards the window, Sasha splayed her ears and added quickly, "Sorry dear. I keep putting my foot in it, don't I?"

"Sorry, no, you're fine." AwDae smiled apologetically. "I should get a thicker skin, maybe. Stand up for myself. I spend night after night hiding in here, and even then, can't seem to assert myself any. I appreciate you trying, though."

Sasha smiled cautiously and nodded. "You came out like fifteen years ago, AwDae. I should still be doing better."

AwDae's turn to shrug. "It's hard to ask for that, is all. Always has been."

"I think that's what I meant earlier, that you haven't changed, despite all the ways you have. You haven't done like all the rest and grown up, gotten married, all that crap. You're still doing what you loved to do in school. Don't get me wrong, I miss it too. Actual theater, not the school stuff. Seeing crazy shows with you on the weekends. Hell, doing crazy shows in uni. Doesn't pay the bills, though."

"You should come see us sometime. It'd be good to see you again, too."

"You know I want to." She grinned. It didn't last. "But yeah. You seem kind of frozen, kind of stuck — in a few ways, even, though you're succeeding in others."

AwDae nodded, rumination hanging in a cloud around em. So many ways the world had moved on without em. After a moment, though, ey sat up straighter. "Oh, speaking of frozen."

"Debarre?"

The fox nodded.

"No news, yet. He's been trying to get in touch with the clinic or whatever that's taking care of Cicero, but the family's been getting in the way. They're fielding everything. They always sort of supported the relationship on the surface, you know, but never actually approved of it. Of them being together, I mean."

"What? Really?" The fox shook eir head, poking a claw at the table, before rubbing the spot with a paw pad. The sim was hardly immersive enough to waste cycles on letting claw dent tabletop. "That's unfortunate. Not all that surprising, I guess, given what Cice said about them. They at least confirmed that's what happened, though?"

"That's what these are," Sasha said, slipping the stack of vcards over to em. "There's contact info for the family, and a few centers around there that work on implants, some hospitals. We're thinking that those might be the types of places where he wound up. There's also a card detailing his last connected times."

AwDae twisted the stack of cards around in front of em, leafing through slowly and taking in a few of the details that slid across eir fingertips. "Mind if I make a copy?"

"Go ahead. It's a deck Debarre and I have been working on. Not complete, but I'll give you ACLs."

"Mm. Debarre looked crushed. Is he doing alright?"

Sasha hesitated for a moment, caught in the middle of a gesture to grant copy rights on the cards. She shook her head, to which AwDae could only frown. She finished the gesture, and another set of vcards shuffled itself out from the original stack. Crisp black embossed on the creamy cotton-paper that AwDae preferred.

"I'll take a look, too. I can't do too much right now, I've got a--"

"I know, you've got a show coming up," Sasha laughed. "Don't worry about it, dear. Debarre's working on it, I'm taking a look when I can, and I'm sure the weasel's got others helping him out besides us. No reason not to, either. We all liked Cicero."

The two sat in silence. AwDae slid Sasha's deck back and fanned eirs in front of emself before shuffling them back into a stack and swiping above them, instructing eir rig to make a local copy of the deck.

Ey lifted eir snout away from the silence to scan the scents in the room once more. Now that it was starting to get on in the evening even in the Americas, the scentscape was changing. Some familiar scents, some unfamiliar, but most of them at least detailed, which told AwDae that the owners had put some thought into them. None, however, really jumped out at em.

More rumination. Rumination edging into drowsiness.

"Hey, Sasha, I gotta get going. I know I just got here, but I'm starting to crash hard."

She nodded, ears drooping. "No, it's alright. It's late there, and I know you've been in rehearsals for a while. Go get some sleep."

Both stood up and exchanged another hug, AwDae reveling in that dandelion scent of eir friend. Memories of school, drowsy, dreamlike. Dandelions in the lawn. An impromptu picnic. Rubbing one of the flowers on the back of eir hand, leaving a yellow stain. Sasha explaining that the smell always reminded her of muffins.

"I'll see you later, skunk, yeah?"

"Take care of yourself, okay? No working too hard, slaving over a hot rig..."

AwDae laughed and shook eir head. Gave the skunk one last squeeze before making eir way back through the crowd toward the alcove, already swiping eir command palette into view to head home.

Ioan Bălan — 2305

Ioan Bălan awoke to an urgent message.

Ey didn't really like these, the sensorium messages. Much better to received paper messages. Letters. Notes. Missives. Scrawled signatures and careful handwriting.

Ey mostly just liked paper, if ey was honest. Always accruing more paper, more pens. Paper messages, rich messages attached to paper that played on its surface, ones that messed with the reader's sensorium; ey sent them all. Eir friends found it perhaps a little disturbing. Antiques from a world more physical than this.

But to have one that just barged in on eir vision and endocrine system like this made em anxious. This one included a tiny jolt of adrenaline as an alert. Waking up to a zap of panic to have a partial sensory takeover felt rude.

At least ey didn't have to get out of bed to deal with it.

The opacity on the message was turned up high so that even in eir dark room with eir eyes still closed (and heart still pounding), ey could see the fox. Bipedal, dressed sharply. It was sitting on a plain wooden chair situated in an empty room. The room had wood floors the same color as the chair. Something light: maple or pine. The walls were concrete where they weren't glass. Outside the glass was a sere shortgrass prairie, a cloudy day.

The combination of the fox's white fur, glistening and iridescent, combined with the room and landscape was all so painfully postmodern. Ey didn't think emself much of a pomophobe, but this was...intense, to say the least.

"Hi Mx. Bălan," the fox was saying. It seemed to speak in italics, though how, Ioan could not say. A sense. A sensation. "I have a proposition for you."

Ioan grunted. The message was simplex, thank goodness. One way. No interaction required.

"My name is Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled — or just Dear — and I am a member of the Ode clade. I am an artist–" The word seemed to come with a tone of distaste. "–and...performer. I am not just telling you this to, ah, toot my own horn, I believe the phrase is, but to underline the fact that I am woefully unprepared for the situation at hand."

The fox smiled, looking tired, and continued. "I need some help finding someone. Someone that does not want to be found. It is personally important, but also potentially damaging to the image of our entire clade."

Ioan furrowed eir brow.

"This person has information, a name, that they have supposedly shared. We — the other members of my clade and myself — do not precisely know if they actually did, unfortunately, we just have word from some perisystem notification that someone said the Name." Ioan could hear the capital letter.

"I am sorry, I am getting sidetracked by details." The fox shook its head, ears flopping from side to side. "I try to be prepared for conversations and messages like this, but I am a little worked up. Excited, I guess. Can we meet?" It listed an address. "Even if only to talk. Even if you are not interested, I would still like to meet you. You seem neat."

The message ended.

Ioan lay in bed, thinking. It was still an hour before ey had to get up, and ey was loath to start the day before ey had to. Ey tried eir best to sleep for another ten minutes, at least, but eir mind kept slipping back to Dear's request.

Why me? ey asked the backs of eir closed eyelids. Why hire a writer who fancies emself a historian as...what, a private investigator?

Ey spent a few minutes researching the public basics on Dear. Pronouns (it/its), species (fennec fox), age (old — the Ode clade was an early adopter), some of its art. Really out there stuff. No further hints as to why it would need em in particular. Something on the markets piqued its interest, perhaps?

With still a half hour before eir alarm, Ioan stretched out of bed. The least ey could do was get a shower and some coffee. If there were any reason that the founders of the system had included full sensoria in the works it must have been for those.

Those done and clothes donned — ey knew ey could never out-natty the fox, so the usual faux-academia garb it was — ey penned Dear a short note with a time. If it was day in that sim, or even late afternoon, it should get the note before dinner or bed.

Besides, ey thought. Maybe it will get the fox to stop using sensorium messages.

No luck. Less than thirty seconds later, Ioan received a sensorium ping of acknowledgment, a shiver up eir spine for eir trouble.

Ey forked and sent the copy of emself, #c1494bf, out to the meeting. Meanwhile, ey'd get some food, perhaps work on eir current project.