(Skonk! Art by @RoxannaRachnid! Story bit based off of @makyo's post-self cycle!)
Even in a post-self digital world, you will find flight sim enthusiasts. The difference in the System is, there's no limit to how in-depth that simulation can go. The CERES clade was never a pilot before uploading, but Seras caught the bug, and if the System infrastructure can handle it, she's flown it. Her favorite place to fly? A public sim recreation of the Adirondacks, the mountains of northern New York, especially around the Fulton Chain. Hopping from lake to lake in a prop float plane and camping where she can is her idea of heaven. She knows it could never happen Phys-side any more, that's for sure. Hell, she only really became Seras after the CERES clade was Sys-side for decades, so who's to say she ever would have longed for it before?
Maybe it tugs at an old memory. Or a wrong one, of a boy in the late 20th century, unaware of everything he (later she, later she/they/it) will become, unaware of the joy and the pain the future holds, how future her will long for the silence on the lake, the sun through morning mist, the only sound the soft lapping of waves against the aluminum hull of a canoe.
It has to be confusion. Her Clade uploaded in the 2260s, from somewhere in Canada. She read it in a book somewhere.
...right?
Perhaps she should ask her cocladist, the kangaroo. Lex kept track and record of the whole Clade, and if anyone knew, it'd be her. That was a problem for after the trip, though. Time to get the last of the camping gear back in the plane and on to the next stop! Too pretty a morning to waste!
