“I am seeing quiet chaos. I am seeing most of my sims emptying out. The ones that are not empty, however, remain dreadfully quiet. Most of those who are out and about have set up over themselves cones of silence. Those who have not, though, are decidedly not quiet. More than one silence has been broken by weeping and wailing.”
New Year's Eve, 2399, and Lagrange is celebrating almost three centuries of relative peace. Yes, there have been surprises, there has been drama and political intrigue, but life has, by and large, been quite good for those who have chosen to upload their consciousnesses. The celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. They fall in and out of love. They fork, creating copies of themselves to accomplish tasks or live out their own independent lives. Their memories build up and up forever within them.
2.3 trillion souls gather in quiet homes, in bars and restaurants, in parks and along prosaic main streets, and count down seconds to the new century.
And then, without warning, everything comes grinding to a halt. The internal clock of the System hits one second before midnight, December 31, 2399, and then it hits midnight, February 11, 2401. One year, one month, and eleven days have gone missing.
And so has one percent of the population of Lagrange. 23 billion souls lost.
Marsh is a new novel in the Post-Self universe, following Reed and the rest of his cocladists, fellow instances forked from the original uploaded mind of Marsh, as they strive to discover what has happened and where Marsh has gone, rendering them unmoored, five unconnected instances with no root to connect them.
What happened? A crash? Where has time gone? Where have those billions of minds gone? And why is Earth being so cagey?
