AwDae — 2112

“Time is a finger pointed at itself,” AwDae informed Priscilla. This Priscilla. Not the real one, no. The one ey created. The one ey dreamed. “That it might give the world orders. The world is an audience before a stage where it watches the slow hours progress.”

The cat purred to em.

It was wrong to instruct a cat to be anything other than a cat, so, despite the dreamscape’s submission to eir whims, Prisca remained Prisca. There was no influencing felinity.

Similarly, it was wrong to puppet one’s friends, and so AwDae had remained in silence, in solitude. No puppet of Sasha telling em that ey was stuck. No need: if there were any doubt to the fact, it was dashed upon meeting the bug which had trapped em here. That porcelain-faced daemon who need not guard the entrance for the entrance had been destroyed.

No, not destroyed; its very existence had been negated. It had never been. There was no going back because there was no going, and there was no back. This was the world as it had always been. This is the world as it will always be. And yet…

“You seem kind of frozen, kind of stuck, in a few ways."

Was ey stuck? Perhaps, yes. If so, then so be it. Ey would sleep. Ey would dream.

And ey would make. Ey would create. Ey would forge, not hone. Ey would build the world ey would live in, if this was they world ey was to die in. Ey would have it be precisely as ey would want. And why not? ey told emself. In this end of days, I must reach for new beginnings.

So ey created.

The far wall of eir London flat was gone now, opening out onto the open space behind eir childhood home. The comfort of one home leading directly out onto the comfort of the next. The smooth hardwood floor, worn almost to softness by decades of use, transitioned smoothly to shortgrass prairie. Ey could sit at eir desk chair — remolded to accommodate a fox’s tail — and watch the turbines turn laconically in the breeze.

When ey slept, and ey did, ey would bring about sunset. Had the day been clear, clouds would move in. Not many, but enough to pick up a riot of colors as the light dipped from white down through yellow, orange, salmon, red, purple… And then the sun would be down and ey would sit on the threshold of the two worlds, of the two times and two universes, and enjoy the scents and sounds that night brought em. Dream senses. Heightened senses as a fox might have.

And then ey would bring back into being the wall between the worlds and sleep. Ey would find eir room the perfect temperature. It would be cold enough that ey would need blankets, but not so cold as to be uncomfortable. And Prisca would come curl up next to em. And ey would pet her while she dozed. And ey would sleep without dreaming.

Ey would wake again however longer later and walk the world. Who knew how long ey slept. Who cared? What meaning had time? Had ey been lost for days? For years? Ey did not count. Did not keep track in some tally carved in stone, for ey was not trapped. Ey lived for hundreds of days in there, for dozens, or mere hours. Ey was completely free. We are the motes in the stage lights, ey promised emself. Beholden to the heat of the lamps.

Ey would wake and walk the world. Ey would walk the valley in that prairie. Ey would fall to all fours and dig eir fingers into the soil. Ey would poke eir snout into the tickling stalks of grass and breathe the scent of life. Dear the wheat and rye under the stars.

And the sun would rise.

Ey would dream emself into a new shape. Ey would dream emself beyond this amalgam of human and fox, and there would be no rising from all fours. Ey would be a fox, then, and eir name was unspeakable by those who walked on two legs. A fennec out of place and time. Displaced to here, in the middle of North America, displaced to now, this meaningless moment. Ey would be a fox and scamper between the tussocks. Ey would come across a stream and drink of cool water. Ey would lift eir gaze to find an old-growth forest of oak and maple. Old-growth! Imagine. Ey would scamper between the trunks and through the humus and moss, for those were things that must be in a forest.

And then ey would break through the forest and come upon a pebble-strewn beach. A beach! Here! In the middle of the continent. What wonders dreams held.

And then ey would rise to two feet once more. Ey would be AwDae once more. Short, lithe, a memory stronger in so many ways than that of RJ. Who was RJ? A vehicle for AwDae? AwDae, a slim two-legged fox clad in a cornflower blue skirt trimmed with embroidered dandelions. And why not? Why not be clothed in something comfortable and soothing?

And ey would walk the beach in the summer heat, teasing the tide line with eir steps. The water, cool, would lap against eir feet playfully, leaving the fur damp and clinging to eir skin. What was missing, hmm? Ah yes, gulls. There, above em, gulls dreamed along with a breeze tinged with the salt-tang of the sea. Cry, gulls, cry.

And perhaps the sun would grow too hot, for was that not what the sun did on beaches? But look! There in the distance, pebbles faded to sand and, towering above that sand, shady palms. Ey would sit and look out over the ocean, and there, dreaming above the waters, a squall line crossed.

And maybe ey would go home. Maybe not. There were no obligations. What mattered time, after all? “If I walk backward, time moves forward,” ey reasoned aloud. “If I walk forward, time rushes on. If I stand still, the world moves around me, and the only constant is change.”

And perhaps the world was moving around em. What cared ey? Had ey been able to influence that world, to enact any sort of change, perhaps ey would have. Had ey been able to share this knowledge of viruses and routines, of stolen votes and stolen lives, perhaps ey would have.

But ey could not. All ey could do was dream.

Dream spires of color rising from the sea in graceful arcs. Dream the rattle of dry grass. Dream the scent of new rain. Dream the sand beneath eir feet. Dream the names of all things. Dream a slow descent into fractal madness.

(Source)

Michelle Hadje/Sasha — 2306

Come to me.

Come alone.

That was all that the message had said.

Michelle had long considered this moment, and just as long considered what she might say. She was of two minds. She was of two minds.

The part of her that desired knowledge, that craved a reason in all things, that part of her felt compelled to give an explanation. It felt the need to rationalize and understand and comprehend, and it craved the knowledge that others also understood.

That part was Sasha.

That had felt inverted to her, at first. Was not Michelle the rational one? She was the one who had maintained her ties to her body. She was the one who remembered all of the things, all of the actions of her past. She was the one who wanted to fork and keep all of those memories.

But instead it was Sasha who felt incomplete, unwhole, when her reasons were unspoken. Eventually her gestalt came to the awareness that this was because Sasha was the one who felt, just as Michelle was the one who remembered, and thus she was also the part that desired compassion above all things. She wanted to explain herself so that others would not be left hurt. She was the one who decided, in the end, not to fork, to fix, to repair. Those memories that mattered — really, truly mattered — all of her instances already shared.

Michelle did not want to tell anyone.

She was of two minds/she was of two minds.

So she edited and rewrote and pared her message down. Thousands of words. Hundreds of words. Ninety-nine words. Ten words. Two commands. A duality like her.

Come to me.

There had been a date, a time, an address. Come to me, she thought/she thought. Come to us.

Come hear. Come learn. Come understand. Or don’t, but come all the same, that we might hear, learn, understand.

She was of two minds/she was of two minds.

Come alone.

She had met their friends and lovers and hidden, forbidden selves. She had met their scribes and their amanuenses and their biographer-historians.

Come alone, she thought/she thought. I only want you. I only want us. I only want me.

And she knew they would. She knew they would. She knew they would come and they would do so without hesitation, for a request from the root instance was a thing that had never happened before, and it bore more weight than any possible life event or schedule could ever hope to. She knew they would come because she would be there/she would be there.

She was of two minds.

And so on the allotted day and at the allotted time and in the allotted place, they came. They appeared one by one in that field of grass, that field of dandelions. They came and they stood and they waited. Some of them chatted amiably. Some of them were crying, and she knew which was which because she also felt amiable/she also was crying.

They came to her/they came to her.

They came alone.

One hundred and one of her stood in that meadow. Qoheleth was gone, but there were two of her/there were two of her, and the number was still as it should be.

No, not as it should be. Not as it ought to be. There ought to be only one hundred of her there without Qoheleth, but she was of two minds/she was of two minds.

She smiled to them/she smiled to them, and that was enough to bring them to silence. Those who had felt their amicability frowned now, picking up on the sudden anxiety of the meadow, of that green grass yellowed by dandelions.

“I am of two minds,” she said/she said. Waves of Sasha/waves of Michelle rippled across her form, two identities washed through her mind, and she quelled the urge to vomit. “We are of two minds. We do not want to do this, and there is nothing more in life that we desire than to do this. There is too much in me. There is too much of me.”

There were more crying eyes in the crowd now, and she was crying/she was crying.

Her voice wavered, but she asked all the same. “Please fork. Please fork and merge down-tree.”

In less than five seconds, the number of copies of her had doubled, and some inner part of her/some inner part of her smiled, sensing now that doubling that she felt as a core part of her being expressed in all those versions of herself that had grown these last nearly two centuries.

“Since then — ‘tis Centuries — and yet Feels shorter than the Day —” she thought/she murmured, words borne of a thought/of a memory. A few of the clade who could hear her weak voice joined. “I first surmised the Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity —”

Many were sitting now, some were pulling at tufts of grass, stalks of dandelions, anything to ground themselves.

“I just want…we just want to experience…a little more,” she choked out. “Can you give us that?”

The reasons for the forks became clear, now, and over the next hour — for some had diverged so far that a great amount of effort was required to reclaim memories — they began to merge their outermost instances down-tree, down-tree, down toward the root. Many looked shell-shocked as years and decades and centuries of memories poured into them, and then were passed on down. Many looked as mad as she felt.

She held up her hand when the mergers had completed down to the doubled-versions of the nine first lines and one second line (for Qoheleth had been a first, Michelle remembered/Sasha remembered) standing before her.

“We have a task for each of you who will remain. One last task.” And she walked down the line/she walked down the line, leaning close to whisper into each of their ears, whether they were skunk or human or something new and different, what she wanted them to accomplish, whether it be vague or specific.

“Now,” she said.

Of the twenty before her, ten merged into her, one by one.

“Oh,” she said/she said. “Oh.”

She was laughing/she was crying/she was furious/she was in love/she was knowledgeable/she was a being of emotions/she was an ascetic/she was opulent.

She was.

She was of two minds.

She was of ten minds.

She was of ninety-nine minds.

She was of a thousand times a thousand minds as more memories than any one individual was ever meant to have poured into her and through her and consumed her. She cherished them one by one by one by one by one…

“Oh,” she said, feeling more singular than she had in two hundred years.

And then she quit.

(Source)

Ioan Bălan — 2346

Convergence T-plus 29 days, 22 hours, 15 minutes
(Castor–Lagrange transmission delay: 30 days, 14 hours, 36 minutes)

The dinner that Do I Know God After The End Waking had prepared for them was…rustic. That was the first term that ey had come up with to describe it, and no matter how else Ioan tried to refine it, ey was left with little else that fit.

It was a venison stew with parsnips and onions, thickened with tack and stretched with some barleycorns. ‘Woodsy’ was not quite the right word, and neither was ‘simple’, for the skunk had spent the better part of an hour doting over the cast-iron pot he’d hung over a low fire, adding salt in what Ioan felt were miserly pinches, as well as pepper and nutmeg as though they were the most precious items in the world to him.

When asked where he got the spices, barley, and tack in a forest, the skunk had laughed, shaken his head, and said, “I am not a fucking ascetic, Ioan,” then gone back to cooking.

So, rustic stew it was.

Very, very good rustic stew. End Waking had explained that, as he had no way to store leftovers, they would need to finish the entire pot that night. It turned out to be no stretch for the small gathering — Ioan and May, Debarre, Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself, Douglas, and End Waking himself — as they all went back for seconds. The ranger skunk even swirled in a little extra water once the pot was empty, using a fingerpad to wipe what stew remained down into that to make himself a thin soup to finish out of the battered mug he’d been using as a bowl for the night.

They’d each brought their own contribution for the night, as well. After dinner, A Finger Pointing pulled out a bottle of over-proof white whiskey that they passed around the circle, taking burning sips. Ioan and May brought with them a short, two-person play that they put on for the other four, full of crude jokes and self-deprecating humor. Douglas, having picked up music as a hobby since uploading, performed a trio with three instances, one on flute, one on a mandolin, and one on a cajón.

For his part, Debarre had brought fireworks. Or a firework, at least. The weasel produced a double fist-sized sphere of papier mache, and set it atop a small cylinder right next to the fire. With End Waking watching, hawklike, he directed everyone to stand back a few feet and lit the fuse with a small punk from the fire, explaining, “I’ve been working on this for the last seventy years or so. It’s only about fifty percent possible outside the System, but my excuse is that I never saw fireworks out there so I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

The firework lifted off the cylinder it had been set on top of with surprising grace. Rather than rocketing into the air, it rose slowly, splitting in half a few inches up and rising in a tight helix, the weasel explaining that the propellant was tightly controlled to allow such, until it was hovering about three meters above the fire on a column of sparks as orange as those of the fire itself. From there, small spheres of cool-blue sparks popped free and danced around it in slow, hypnotic whorls. Finally, in a fountain of green fire, billowing into the shape of a tree, it fell back into the campfire with a hissing sigh to be consumed by the flames.

“Out-fucking-classed,” A Finger Pointing grumbled. “You said ‘bring something’, my dear, so I brought a bottle to drink, and you all bring plays and music and fireworks.”

“You will hear no complaints from me,” End Waking said, grinning toothily. “Do you know how long it has been since I have had whiskey?”

She laughed and shook her head. “I will bring you a case next time.”

The skunk shook his head. “I am enjoying the ability to taste something again after years without. I have missed it and that makes it special.”

“Sap.”

He rolled his eyes and made a rude gesture at her.

A Finger Pointing fit neatly into the pattern of a human Michelle, though over the centuries, she had opted for a form that was a little taller, a little slimmer, and bore more heavily styled hair. More chic, perhaps. She was prone to grand gestures and grand outfits in all black or all gray or all red. She had also leaned into hedonism more so than any of the other Odists Ioan had met. She ate heartily, drank more than all of them — though this mostly manifested as a ruddy glint to her cheeks and a more wicked grin than usual — and brought with her a very comfortable-looking camp chair.

Even having worked with her for nearly a decade as a playwright and under her direction as an actor for the last few years, ey continually found emself surprised by her simple desire to enjoy life, put on good plays, and be friends with everyone she could. It was a simplicity that was lacking from so many of her cocladists that ey’d had a chance to meet.

“Do you wish that you had the chance to meet them?” End Waking said, once the fire had been stoked back up to stave off the deepening darkness.

“The Artemisians?”

He nodded.

“Kind of, yeah,” She said. “I was pleased to hear that bit about how important they find stories, so I would like the chance to hear some directly from them and see what they think of ours.”

“And you, my dear?”

Debarre shrugged. His and End Waking’s on-again-off-again relationship seemed to be back on the rise, and so the skunk and weasel shared a seat on the log, tails draped across each other’s. So stoic was the Odist, though, that while this was the only outward sign of affection between the two, it came off far sweeter than Ioan would have otherwise expected, especially given his cocladist’s constant touch in eir own relationship. Ey’d certainly never heard the skunk use ‘my dear’ with anyone else. Ey reveled in the compersion ey felt for them.

“I’ve never been a huge fan of sci-fi,” the weasel said. “I suppose it’d be neat, but it feels really out there. I mean, I’m obviously excited, and I’d love to meet them, but it all sounds more like a fantasy than anything, so I’m not too put out.”

“Ioan?” the skunk asked.

Ey shrugged after a moment’s thought. “I’m lucky. I get to share all the good stuff with you all direct from a cocladist. I wouldn’t turn down the chance to meet them, but I’m also happy with this.”

“Why?”

Ioan frowned. “Why am I happy with just this?”

“Yes.”

“I think because the part of my life spent right in the thick of it is over. I’m a different person, now. I’ve grown, changed. I’ve moved away from the Ioan who sat and watched as eir job. I’m a different me, now. I’m happy with being excited from a distance. I’m happy with the romance of it all.”

May, tucked firmly against eir side, dotted her nose on eir cheek. “Different kind of nerd.”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Ey laughed. “Besides, Codrin said they’ve been bandying about the idea that none of it’s real, that they’ve been dreaming the whole thing. I’m more curious to see that play out than actually experience meeting the Artemisians.”

“It does not matter,” End Waking said.

“What?”

“It does not matter whether or not it actually exists. If there is no ship named Artemis full of four races of aliens, the world which exists within Castor is still a new and interesting one. It is still a world worth exploring.” The skunk shrugged. “The question of their existence beyond Castor is purely academic.”

“Well, huh,” ey said. “I’ll have to pass that on to Codrin#Castor, then. Perhaps it’ll ease some anxieties.”

End Waking nodded, then continued around the circle. “How about you, May Then My Name?”

“A part of me wishes I had the chance, but it is a small part. The rest of me is smug in my decision to remain behind preventing me from doing so. I cannot change that decision and go meet them, and that in and of itself is exciting, is it not?”

The other skunk turned his gaze on Douglas.

“I think I’m probably the outlier here, in that I was — or am — kind of crushed by the fact that I won’t be able to meet them, even if they aren’t real.” He poked the tip of a stick at the base of the fire. “Here I am, someone who spent eight years in university studying spaceflight, someone who did all he could to specialize in the System, and I’m stuck reading second-hand accounts of a five thousand year old civilization flying through space on a system of their own. I got over my frustration at having not uploaded in time for the launches years ago, but this is bringing it all back.”

“What would you do, had you the chance to meet them?” End Waking asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. That’s the thing. I don’t have anything concrete in mind that I feel like I’m missing, it’s just this envy over not having the chance. I’m sure I’d ask them a million questions about spaceflight and System shit, because that’s just how I am. I want to know how they keep their vehicle in working order over so long a time. I want to know how they can receive images and sounds and video instead of just text. I want to know all sorts of things, but that’s ancillary to the fact that I’m just not there.”

This short speech demanded a silent acknowledgement of a few minutes, and the five sat in quiet, watching the fire or looking up to the stars and moon overhead. Douglas poked at the fire. May rested her head on Ioan’s shoulder. A Finger Pointing, Debarre, and End Waking drank.

“I would like to know their forests,” the skunk said at last. “And I would invite them to know mine. Do they hunt their own venison and dig their own parsnips? I do not know. If they do not, I would show them. If they do, I would want them to show me.”

“Even if that meant uploading to Artemis?” Ioan asked.

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t sound like a pleasant place for Odists, from what May’s told me.”

The skunk shrugged. “That is not enough to stand in the way of my desire. Would I go mad in the midst of their forest? Very well, I would go mad.”

“Is that what it feels like? Going mad?”

“I am not sure how else to put it,” he said after a long silence.

“I was on a field of dandelions and grass,” May said, her voice distant and dream-fogged. “And there was no echo. The world stretched out before me in empty nothingness, and there was no echo. At my back was a bar — scratched wood, stools, a foot rail, a gutter for pouring drinks — and the only way I could hear my own voice pass through the air was to huddle between those stools and face the bar.”

“Words came unbidden,” A Finger Pointing picked up where May left off. “And as they passed through my mind, they dripped and smeared — a painting with too much wet paint on the canvas stood on its edge. The dreaming mind did not know what to do with language that close to the surface, and so the language stained all it touched.”

End Waking nodded, speaking toward the fire. “And so I screamed and I ran, and when I looked back, the bar was gone, and when I looked forward again, there it was. Had I turned? Was the world so small? The words came unbidden, and with each one that left my mouth, a cord that tethered me to reality snapped, and I grew lighter and lighter, and I feared I would float up into the sky, into the sun.”

“And through it all, time was unmoored and set adrift,” May said quietly. “Sixteen hours, twenty three minutes is what they said, but I lived lifetime after lifetime beneath that sun. The light thrummed and vibrated around me, and I lived and died and lived again. I watched eternity fall away and rot at my feet.”

“Or perhaps it was just an instant,” A Finger Pointing said.

End Waking’s words came with a finality that seemed to draw the memory to a close, though nothing about the recitation — monologue? — had felt memorized or rehearsed. “And so I went mad.”

“Jesus.” Douglas’s whisper broke the long silence that followed. “And you’re afraid that’s what would happen on Artemis?”

“Not exactly that,” he said. “But when presented with the fragility of eternity once more, I cannot imagine that I would remain sane. That any of us would.”

“This is what we fear,” May said.

“With the Artemisians and their time? I saw through your eyes,” Debarre said, so quiet as to be almost a whisper. End Waking rested a paw on his knee. “I was so happy to see you, and so terrified to be there. Two and a half minutes was enough for a lifetime.”

“Or memory?” Douglas added.

May nodded, tugging Ioan’s arm tighter around her middle. “A madness born of eternities. Memory upon memory upon memory. Our memories, our whole subconscious, lie too close to the surface, and that barrier between the conscious and subconscious cannot bear the weight of an eternity. And so the cracks widen.”

“Do you think that’s what happened with Death Itself and I Do Not Know? To Michelle?” Ioan asked.

End Waking dipped his snout and drew his hood up over his head once more. Debarre looked away into the dark of the forest. A Finger Pointing took a long drink from the bottle of whiskey.

“I do not know, my dear. I will never know. It is very hard to quit when one is at the root of a clade, or even a larger subtree. Like pushing through a barrier or wading through mud. Death Itself may have been struggling to do so for a long time. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for Michelle. The System is not built for death.”

Ey felt eir muscles tense, was helpless to stop it.

“I am sorry, Ioan. The System is not built for death, just as you are not. It wants to keep us alive, and so to end a clade is very difficult.”

Ey nodded slowly, focusing on night above em, the log they sat on beneath em, the warmth of the fire before em. Ey focused on those around em — A Finger Pointing, Douglas, Debarre, End Waking, and of course eir own dear May — pinning em to a time, a place, a mood. Ey focused on the feeling of being alive and being here, of being present and in the world, digital or otherwise.

“How heavy must that madness be, then,” May continued. “To crash through so many failsafes and allow someone who has been within the system for more than two centuries such a death? This is what we fear.”

(Source)

Ioan Bălan — 2350

It took about six hours for True Name to recover from the merge to where she could stand up and walk well enough to get a glass of water. Her expression remained glazed and she was unable to speak. It wasn’t until the next morning that she was able to hold a conversation, though she remained quiet and largely confined to her room, refusing the offer of coffee.

May spent much of that time by her side. Ey wasn’t sure what it was that the two did while in her room, if it was just May sitting by the skunk’s side, if she was just being present, if the two were having their own quiet conversations, or sharing what affection she was comfortable sharing with a down-tree instance she had resented enough to shock so severely.

All three, ey suspected. Ey checked in on them a few times, knocking and listening for permission to enter. Each time, True Name remained curled in bed with May seated nearby, whether on a chair beside it or sitting up on the bed itself. Ey’d ask if they needed anything, they’d both decline, and then ey’d go back to pacing holes in the rug or the yard or around Arrowhead Lake.

The rest of the time, May was out with em, almost always as close as she could be, whether that was tucked in against eir side on the beanbag, hugging around eir middle from behind while ey cooked, or, at one point, requesting that ey sit on the floor outside the bathroom while she showered, just so that she could talk and, in her words, feel eir presence.

The mood throughout remained somewhere between anxious and remorseful.

That evening, True Name requested that they eat dinner out at the lake rather than at home, saying, “I am feeling too cooped up by walls and yet more walls.”

Ey supposed it made sense, now that she had the competing memories of End Waking and however many personality traits that came with. He had only visited Ioan and May a scant handful of times, and then always out in the yard, refusing to go indoors.

So, they packed up a simple dinner of sausages, zucchini, and potatoes to cook and stepped out to the lake.

The tents were still set up and the second bundle of firewood remained untouched, leaning against one of them, so Ioan and May watched as True Name tiredly built and lit the fire. She left them sitting on one of the logs before it, watching the flames go from fast and loud to something quieter and hotter, while she disappeared up the hill into the forest. She returned some time later with a bundle of arm-length sticks, all nearly as straight as dowels, which she built into a spit on which they could roast the sausages while the potatoes baked near the coals of the fire. It was all done with a practiced ease borne from decades of memory.

The food was pleasantly smokey and well cooked, though otherwise unseasoned. True Name remarked on this part way through the meal, saying, “If you call the food bland again, May Then My Name, I will call you lame again.”

The humor felt out of place, and certainly went over Ioan’s head, but at least it got May smiling again, something she’d not done in more than a day.

“I am pleased that you made it through, my dear,” May said. “I will not apologize again, I have done so enough already, but I am pleased all the same.”

“I have grown weary of being apologized to, yes,” she replied. “And my feelings on the events remain complicated, but I thank you for thinking of me.”

“I’m glad, too,” Ioan added, unwilling to let the dinner once more fall into silence. “How are you feeling otherwise?”

She shrugged. “Uncomfortable. Fractured. I have spoken to End Waking only a few times since he requested revocation of his access to our secure materials. I knew that he was upset, but not just how, and not to what extent.” She sighed, then added, “And now I am left with that.”

“Thus ‘fractured’?”

“Yes. I must admit that much of my time while down and out was spent struggling to maintain a sense of myself as True Name. Had I simply accepted everything at face value and incautiously, I think I would have gone mad. As it is, I feel perilously close.”

May sniffled and looked off toward the lake in the deepening evening.

“I understand what you were trying to do, May Then My Name. I understand why you planned that, how you managed to talk us both into it, and what you hoped to get out of it, but you must understand that what you did was set two existences within me. One was set on goals that I believed in — still believe in — while the other regrets everything that made me me.” The skunk’s voice sounded far more tired than angry, enough to keep May from winding up in tears again, though she did set her food aside. “I do not think that End Waking believed in anything. His life was spent un-believing that which he was, which we were.”

“What does that leave you, now?”

“I do not know yet, Ioan. It makes me too full of being, of time, to be just one thing. It will likely take me several days to settle into…something. To settle into myself, whatever that now means.”

They fell into silence again while Ioan and True Name finished their food and May looked down at her paws or into the fire.

“Thank you for joining me out here. I am both glad to be outdoors and intensely uncomfortable sitting on a fucking log,” she said, smiling tiredly. “I do not think that I will stay out here. The greater part of me demands a comfortable bed.”

“Those fucking cots are awful,” May grumbled, sounding forced in her humor. “Like a hammock, but far worse.”

“I do not think that even End Waking enjoys them, so it is easy enough for the True Name part of me to win out on that subject.”

“What did he– what do you remember enjoying?” Ioan asked. “I want to hear the good things you have, now, too. I feel like we’re all tiptoeing around all the bad memories and conflicting feelings. Tell me something good.”

True Name raised her eyebrows, then let her gaze drift up to the brightening stars. “I remember teaching myself to hunt, promising myself that I would start small with snares and then work up from there, thinking that I would not let myself eat until I could eat food that I had caught myself. I remember getting so hungry and weak by the third day that I pinged Serene to see if she could help. She laughed and ruffled my fur and called me a dumbass, saying that she had not included fauna because I had not requested it, so of course I did not catch anything. She brought me a hamburger and I ate it so fast I got sick.”

Ioan and May laughed.

“I remember each time I decided to cave and bring into the sim something new. I remember deciding that I needed a more efficient way to heat my tent than just relying on my fur and camp blankets, and then creating the stove. I remember getting so sick of just meat and what few vegetables I could grow at the time and deciding that I would need something like bread or tack for the calories. I remember learning about how hard it was to actually carve a bow and work with metal to create knives and axes, and I remember how it felt to bring each one into existence, a little bit of failure to accomplish a little bit of triumph.

“I remember the eighth or ninth winter out there, when the cold started to feel less terrifying because I knew what to do. I remember waking up one morning fucking freezing, building the fire back up, and shivering in front of it, then laughing for the sheer joy of it. The joy of bundling up, the joy of the air burning inside my nostrils, the joy of discomfort.”

Ioan listened, entranced. The cadence of her speech had changed. It still had that well-spoken and dramatic air to it, still held the lack of contractions and all the small doublings-back and anaphora that seemed to come with being an Odist, but it was also more austere than it had been. Less purely functional and more cerebral, perhaps.

“I remember the first time I went a year without seeing anyone, then the first time I went two. That was terrifying. I was sure that I was losing my grip on reality. I decided to make sure that I talked to someone at least once every few months after that to keep myself grounded. I remember when the Artemisians arrived and you two brought your play over, and being utterly delighted at all of the subtle ways you found to insult each other.”

May grinned and elbowed em in the side. “That one was Ioan’s fault.”

True Name smiled and nodded. “You should be pleased with it, my dear. Oh, and I remember tasting whiskey for the first time in years and being surprised at how much it burned. A Finger Pointing’s offer to bring a case over was quite tempting. It reminded me that I love the surprise that comes with forgetting things, or at least as close as we can get. The taste of liquor had fallen way back in my mind, and the feeling of the burn of whiskey sent it rocketing right back up to the top.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Ioan said, smiling.

“It is not all unpleasant, not by a long shot. As much as I worked to keep my sense of self while integrating, I was also struck by wonder, and for that, I am grateful.”

“Was the merge a net-positive thing?”

She laughed. “I cannot possibly know that, Ioan. I suspect there is no net value, or indeed any value, to be placed on simply having those memories. It will make my life more difficult or it will not, but I do not think it will make it better or worse. I will be what I am to become.”

Ey nodded.

“But, May Then My Name?”

The skunk looked nervously at her cocladist, as though worried of some reprisal. “Yes?”

“Thank you for thinking of me.”

May only nodded, swallowing back tears.

“I remember a few days ago, too. I remember when you came to the forest, remember watching, awkwardly, while you cried on Debarre’s shoulder after I told you about…well, after we spoke. I remember hearing about all of your hatred over the years, about the resentment that you still have for me. I remember how it was that you talked me into this, how helpless I was before it. I remember all of it.”

There was no more holding back the tears at that, though she did her best to cry silently.

True Name smiled more kindly than she had yet that night. “But still, you thought of me. ‘I do not want her to die’, you said. You said that you do not know why you still care about me, and you said that to your cocladist perhaps not yet knowing that I would have that memory as well. You two are both meddlesome brats, but thank you for thinking of me.”

May tucked closer against Ioan’s side and buried her face in eir shirt to cry, making a rude gesture at her down-tree instance before hugging her arms around eir waist.

“I think that means ‘no problem’,” ey said. “But I don’t speak skunk all that– ow! She bit me!”

True Name laughed. “It is no less than you deserve, I am sure. But come, once you are able to, let us walk to the rock at the end of the lake. I want to see the stars before we head back.”

(Source)

#28

It turns out that the house I’m staying in isn’t far from a patch of wilderness. I do not know why it is called the Military Reserve, but I am not going to turn down the chance at walking away from the city. Boise is so much taller, so much louder than Sawtooth, I feel hemmed in here.

It wasn’t quite close enough to walk, but at least there’s ride shares.

It’s strange how easily I fell back into old habits. Perhaps it was the writing I did last night, or perhaps it’s the need to get away that drove me up into the hills, out on a walk, out to blister my feet and talk with God. It didn’t seem to matter how unfamiliar the trail was. I just started walking through that scrub and brush, through all that brown and all that air, and not five minutes in did I feel my mind empty, as always it seemed to. The scrub around me, buffalo grass and sage and yarrow and bitter cherry, gained depth and clarity, stalks and crenelations arching up to me, up to God, assuming that is where the heavens live. The colors called out to me. The scents stung my nose, even the five-and-some feet up from my point of view. Bitter, aspirinic whiffs of yarrow. Stale shortcake grasses. Ungreen, but not unalive. The taste of dust lingering on my tongue, not enough to be gritty but enough to remind me that the earth was the earth and that I was separate from that. The air, the air itself pushed its way nosily through my fur, a breeze from the west, toppling down off the hills. The air and the hard-packed dirt of the trail beneath my feet knocking vibrations up through my shins. Soft padding, soft crunching, soft rustling; wind in fur, air wandering between tussocks; breathing slowing, calming. Rhythms on the scale from footsteps to seasons.

Even writing this, even sitting on a fence rail at the trail head, I can feel it still.

And through it all, the Lord. Through each and every step, dancing along every brittle stem and blade of grass, surrounding every grain of dust in a blanket of the utmost attention. His voice traveled along the breeze, His breath was the bitter yarrow and shortcake grass. And all of it I could feel and all of it I could hear and all of it washed over and through me and I bathed in it. “His light like wine”, I wrote yesterday, and that wine filled me today, and I can still taste it.

There are no conclusions from God. There are no favors that I, a servant, could possibly ask of him. What would He do? Would He tell me what to say to Kay? All He has for me is grace and forgiveness. That is so much more than any other individual could ever offer me.

All the same, I listened for hope, for guidance, for the discernment than hasn’t left me since I left St John’s.

To ask that grace, that breath, that light like wine what it is to do is the wrong question. To ask from Him the worldly answers is to misunderstand the scope of things.

To say that He has no plan for me, no path, however, isn’t correct either. He does, and that’s why I talk with Him. It’s perhaps less than Catholic of me, or at least of a more mystical bent than ought to be expected of me. I’m no Beghard, no Eckhart.

All I know is that sometimes words fail me, and that the Ground does not.

I don’t know if that path leads toward Kay. I just can’t see that far ahead on it. I don’t know if it leads me any further into the Church. That’s around some corner I can’t comprehend. I don’t know anything, it seems, but I needed this. I needed time with myself. I needed this walking conversation, this inside-out hesychasm. I needed out of Boise and away from Kay, away from the scent of her, away from the way she presses against my chest from the inside. I need–

(Source)

Much of my undergrad was borne out of depression. School was just a thing I did during the days, but my time spent in front of a keyboard was a part of myself. Each story, each post, each role-play session was a piece of myself. Each was a tiny rock to throw at this vasty nothingness. Justifying the things I liked, delineating the craziness of lives real and manufactured, gushing about worlds fantastic…they were all ways for me to pound my fists against nothing at all.

A scant two months into my second year at university, I crashed hard and tried to commit suicide, a private affair I never told anyone about, and after that, I just buried myself in it—in my computer and in the life lived there, the life I was soon sharing with Peter.

I found ways to write more whenever possible, just to try and fill that big, quiet nothing. I splashed around in great heaps of words, scrabbling at every pebble of a story I could find beneath the surface. I prowled through the tangled thicket of fiction and nonfiction, hunting for ideas to highlight. I took way too many metaphors way, way too far.

And you know what? It worked.

At least, after a fashion. I started to feel fulfillment. I started filling my weekends with writing. I got in trouble with Peter for idling out repeatedly during conversations, words flowing into the editor instead of between the two of us. I started to gain energy just from the act of spending energy on something I loved wholeheartedly.

In a flash of insight—or perhaps mania—I scheduled an appointment with someone in the arts department. Changing degrees and the course of my life was, it turns out, as simple as signing a sheet of paper and waiting a week for confirmation. The next semester, I would be able to start signing up for classes to work toward a degree in creative writing. It would likely extend my undergrad by a year, but thankfully, I’d gotten plenty of the core curriculum classes out of the way already.

One of the downsides of working on insight is, by the very definition, a lack of foresight. Telling my parents resulted in them immediately pulling financial support for my tuition.

“I’m not going to help buy you a useless future,” dad growled. “I can’t stop you from throwing away your life; you’re a fucking adult. That won’t be on me, though.”

It was only by dint of luck that the current semester, plus my living situation for the remainder of the semester and summer was already paid for. That check had already been deposited.

The thing that sealed the deal for me was that I still enjoyed my time at school even when the next downswing struck later that semester. I’d already realized that decisions made when I felt good weren’t always the right ones, but if they still felt right when I was depressed, I could be sure that they’d be more likely to stick.

Such had not been the case with comp sci, it seemed.

Depression was not solved by increasing quality of life. Its tenor changed, to be sure, but the dependable five month cycle continued throughout the years, souring summers and leaving me bedridden with “the flu” or “a cold” for days at a time.

I would spend the days under the covers with the second-hand laptop I got from the library surplus and, depending on the weather, either a glass of gin and ice or a hot cocoa spiked with peppermint schnapps, alternating between writing and programming, masturbating to old TS logs, and crying.

I would role play as my best, purest characters. Or perhaps, with Peter, I would role play as my better self. Someone happier than I was. Healthier, more responsive, more engaging.

I would go to bed feeling guilty for wearing such a mask, consoling myself in the fact that without it, I might wind up without him.

I would marvel the enormity of this empty space in which I inhabited.

I would marvel at the film-like quality to my life.

I would marvel at the diegesis of objects, sounds, tastes, smells.

I inhabited a spotlight shone on a flat gray ground.

I began relying on alcohol to feather the edge of it, making the boundary between myself and that emptiness softer, less cruelly sharp.

I used the pain of plucked fur or hot knife-tip against skin to send up magnesium flares, enough to briefly light up the world around me and offer a sense of clarity, however superficial. The mundane, everyday-ness of wound care would ground me for a week, two. Before long, my arms were ragged, scarred.

None of that made me any less of myself. They didn’t sweep away Derek. It simply became a part of me while I wasn’t watching. The pain, the gin, the days holed up in bed were a fine set of glasses for helping me see which things I was burning myself over were real, and which were just phantoms in that dreamscape.

And then, with clockwork predictability, it would lift. With a sharp coolness burning my nostrils, I’d rise before the sun and walk the neighborhood, find my way to The Book and The Bean, and see eyes other than my own.

With only a modicum of foresight or perhaps practiced nonchalance, I slipped from my undergraduate program to an MFA program in Moscow, Idaho, off in the far west of the state.

(Source)

(Source)