Madison Rye Progress

End Waking smiled wryly, adding, “And I do not think I am of much interest to any of them, anyway. I rarely leave, and I never enter a building when I do. I am more focused on my next meal than anything else.”

“Skunks just wanna get fat.”

End Waking grinned toothily. “It is not not true.”

Picture: two nerds hunched over their respective keyboards chuckling madly to themselves as they prepare posts in a Google doc, each occasionally switching which instance they write, turning around to ask each other questions, writing little I-love-yous below the draft for the other to see.

(Also the cladist is wildly, joyously autistic, and that is lovely, too.)

((Also Functor is like...a half step away from being a headmate, and may well just be Hold My Name playing a giant fucking joke on me.))

As yet, all system members are fictives¹ from the Ode clade out of the Post-Self cycle. I had a unique benefit when working with this material. There were a lot of built-in aesthetics — they were all already either skunks or fond of skunks, they were all already queer, they were all kind of fat and okay with it (still working on that one, myself), and so on — but also the variance of a base personality provided by years of individuation. Another benefit is that many of them were only loosely defined rather than fully fleshed out beings that I had to live into wholly.

As such, the names are fit to the person already, so I just...get them. I would be lying if I said that names did not play a role in leaning into a personality early on in the process, though. If you want to see the whole process, you can check this incredibly spoilery spreadsheet (spoilers for all of the Post-Self cycle, Idumea, and some of Marsh)

1. I wrote the books, so one may say it is debatable whether or not the system members are defined by the canon or the system members define the canon. It was probably the former in for the Post-Self cycle, but was certainly the latter for things like Motes Played.

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The first part of this, with The Rabbit-Chaser, is the second part of a collaboration with @krzysz00! There was supposed to be another bit of just my writing in between, but I am having some motivation problems when it comes to finishing it, so that will be something for the final draft.

End Of Endings — 2403
×
Rye — 2409

The Dog took then The Woman to a forest, and showed her where The Rabbit-Chaser lived. The Dog went to greet The Rabbit-Chaser. He sniffed it, as is custom among their species, and it sniffed back.

The Rabbit-Chaser went to investigate The Woman, for there was a new thing by its den. The Woman gave it kettlecorn, which it ate before wandering off. The day was warm, and it was sleepy and not hungry, so it ignored The Woman and returned to its nap.

The Dog left. He knew it was close to dinner time, and he had plans to hover around one kitchen or another, for if we who have uploaded are hedonists, if our clade is a clade of hedonists, then the fifth stanza has set themselves as the hedonists ne plus ultra. If, my friends, you ever have the chance to visit them for one of their many cookouts or to get invited over for one of their many feasts, do take it up. They are lovely cooks and yet lovelier conversationalists, though this, I think, was less The Dog's focus than such treats that The Child managed to sneak him when My Friend and The Musician were not looking.

The Woman watched The Rabbit-Chaser as it saw to its immediate concerns. Food, yes, and sleep, water. Perhaps it would play with some of the other animals in these woods if the mood struck, or perhaps it would lounge in the sun until it got too hot, panting and panting and panting, and then pancake in the shade, drawing coolness from the ground itself.

It was what it was right then and nothing else. The Woman could sense, from her long, meditative observations, that The Dog and The Rabbit-Chaser were not quite the same, that The Rabbit-Chaser had shed more of its cares.

It explored a forest, sometimes running, sometimes sniffing thoughtfully, without a plan.

It prepared for tomorrow, if it absolutely must, by instinct and routine, or perhaps it did not.

The joys and tragedies of its home drifted past its mind and into its too-perfect memory. Loves! Pleasures! Sorrows! Lives! Deaths! The laments of starving wolves outmaneuvered by deer! The blood of deer ripped to shreds by wolves! It did not determine what of what its eyes, ears, nose, tongue, paws took in was good, was evil, was just, was improper—it beheld what was, not what ought be, and there was a peace in that.

It experienced each moment as it came and moved on, not stopping to analyze or categorize or name.

It was a dog, as much as it could be.

It had not always been a dog. It had a down-tree, the tall one who smelled of pack, who the word-users call Tomash. It had come from Its Elder when he had been experimenting with not only taking the shape of a dog but something of the mind as well.

It had been Scout, then, when it first came to be. When Its Elder had forked too well, too firmly, and it had not minded the name then. It had gone to simply be in the world, and it was, and is.

At first, it had had some occasional care for humans and the System, but it was hard to care when there were so, so many other things: new scents! Food! Scratching an itch! All of these very important things when you are a dog, and they are important now. Here. Vestigial, inherited cares were a problem for later.

Then it had met the rest of its relatives, that growing pack of Scouts who rested within the System and experienced it, but who, unlike The Rabbit-Chaser, had a purpose: to keep watch and observe, and to report unusual things, and to, when they grew bored of being a dog, merge back. It liked these new relatives well enough—they smelled of family and were friendly—but it had not liked what they represented. They hesitated at becoming what they were, and it had understood that it might become more like them if words and thoughts and worries were to trouble it.

So, it rejected them.

Oh, the whole of its clade were welcome to visit and play, but it had told them, when it had cleared its name to as nothing as it could manage, a blank, a zero-width joiner, something unspeakable for the word-users, something unreadable, it had told them that it wished to hear not another word. It would not be communicating about anything that could not be said with the twitch of an ear or the wag of a tail, and it pushed away the slow stirrings of memories of personhood with a fork to ensure it.

The pack respected its wish. It saw them, sometimes, usually the young or the old who come to rest more thoroughly, and they played and ran and said nothing. What was there to say, after all, to this dog who surrendered thought with every step of every day?

When the pack spoke of it among themselves, in their fragmentary network of passed-around words and sensoria impressions, it was called Scout Chasing Rabbits, the far pole of the clade, the pure contrast to Their Elder, the other extreme. It did not know they said this. It did not want to know they said this—nor, by now, want to not know it, and it was happy thereby.

And in the bliss of not-knowing, through unwitnessed years and decades, it slept and ate and chased rabbits.

The Woman could not tell which of them had it better, these two dogs, these two cladists, these two beings who had so distanced themself from what they had once been. Both seemed quite content with the path that had taken. Dogs! What wonders they are! What pleasures! What joys. They had both unbecome, or taken steps in that direction, in their own way, and had found what they wanted.

The Woman realized then that, for her, the life of an animal, even one so invested in its state as The Rabbit-Chaser, was not what she sought, not quite. It did not go far enough. It was not still enough. The her who was a beast would still have too much of her. She needed a change more integral, more whole, more entire — not a reshaping of the body, but a reshaping of the existence.

So, her search continued.

She met then with The Child after this diversion — for such was her errand, yes? Her original reason for visiting the neighborhood? She saw no reason not to continue along this path. She returned to the lobby of the theatre which served also as a community center for Au Lieu Du Rêve, the troupe in which the fifth stanza had embedded itself, long familiar despite her having never seen it, for, you see, Michelle who was Sasha was a theatrician before uploading, a teacher, a director, an actress. Theatre lobbies smell like theatre lobbies and theatre carpet underfoot feels like theatre carpet underfoot and the sound echoed precisely as she had always remembered it.

Outside shone the sun. Outside grew the grass. Outside was the dusty gray of the asphalt street that wound around the center of this neighborhood — a street, for occasionally The Child and her friends wanted to rollerblade on a road, wanted to play kickball or catch, wanted to holler out "car!" as The Musician or someone with similar interests would drive through.

Outside played The Child.

Most people have a singular thing that defines them. You may say to me, "But Rye! I have several things that define me! Why, I love to write and I love to paint and I love to cook delicious food," but I might say in return, "My friend, you love to create! You are defined by your creativity."

The Child defined herself by play. She did not merely paint, whether the pictures of which I have already written or the props and backgrounds that adorned the stage, but she played with paint. She was a being of play who, leaning into this identity, had formed as well the vessel with which she navigated the world into that of a child. She was a skunk of five years, or perhaps seven, perhaps ten, and this formation of herself was a means by which she lived wholeheartedly into her identity.

This is the glory of cladistics: that we may become more wholly ourselves. This is what makes us dispersionistas: that we may find joy in this. These simplified dissolution strategies that we have found have less to do with how often we fork, how crowded we may make a room with ourselves, and more to do with how much we love love love the feeling of becoming ourselves while some other us becomes someone else. The Child, The Woman, and I are all of Michelle who was Sasha, we are all some three centuries old, and yet The Child is The Child and The Woman is The Woman and your humble narrator is struggling.

And so The Woman stepped outside where The Child played, turning slow pirouettes, making a clumsy dance along the sidewalk — clumsy in that endearingly childlike way, mind! For that is her role, yes — and at her feet blossomed colored lines in pink orange yellow green blue white chalk, describing the shape of flowering vines, leaves and flowers showing wherever her paws touched the ground. By some trickery of the sim, some trickery wrought by The Oneirotect, her beloved friend and my beloved up-tree, wherever The Child stepped, there blossomed these vines in chalk.

"Hello, Motes," said The Woman.

"Hi," The Child said back. She did not stop in her slow dance, though now, whenever her movements led her to face The Woman, her smile shone bright.

"What are you doing?"

"Just playing. Want to play with me?"

The Woman tilted her head, taking a moment to consider this. "I can try."

"It can be a slower play, if that helps. We do not need to run races or play tag."

She smiled. "I would appreciate that, yes."

"Have you ever seen a five-leaf clover?"

The Woman shook her head.

"Can you imagine one?"

The Woman did so. It was not so hard, she found. She thought of all of the three-leaf clovers that she had seen over the years and decades and centuries — for some of these grew in her very field, and perhaps they flowered, there, as well, those little globes of white — and then added a leaf until she had a four-leaf clover in her mind, and then once more added a leaf.

"Okay, I am imagining it," she said, watching the way The Child moved, the way that she dragged her toes in exaggerated arcs, the way that the vines followed, the way she turned in circles, the way that the vines were tied in knots. "Have you ever seen one?"

The Child shook her head and giggled. "No, I do not think so. That is just the switch."

"The switch?"

"Walk a little bit."

The Woman did so, and was startled to find that her feet, too, described lines in chalk. She laughed. She laughed! My dear, wonderful friends, The Woman laughed! When I spoke with The Child about this day, about the day that The Woman came over to speak with her, The Child agreed with my assessment: seeing The Woman smile, hearing her laugh, they were blessings.

"Come on," The Child said, and The Woman realized she had been fixated on the ground for several seconds and The Child had wandered down the road. "If you walk behind me, I bet we can make them look like a braid."

And so The Woman did, wandering along a few paces behind The Child. They played together in this way, talking quietly as they went. They found that if they walked in a lazy, wavering line, it looked like someone had braided a rope out of vines of chalk. They found that if The Child orbited the Woman as she walked, the loops that she created were pleasing to behold. They found that, when The Child walked beside The Woman, when they held paws and walked and talked, a pair of parallel railroad tracks followed them, leaves scattered more sparsely on the two that trailed along after The Woman than those that followed The Child.

The Woman knew that The Child did not have the answer that she sought, not really, but that was not to say that there was not joy to be found. There was joy in the walk they took. There was joy in the way that sat on the swings and swayed back and forth. There was joy in watching The Child make little bets with herself and the world — "I bet I can make it to the top of the jungle gym in five seconds!" or "I bet I can go down the slide backwards and not die!" — even when she lost those bets — though she did not die that day.

There was, last of all, joy when a piercing whistle broke the quiet of the late afternoon and Motes immediately hopped down from a balance beam and ran up to The Woman. "That was Ma!" This, you see, is what she called My Friend, her down-tree instance who had taken a role not dissimilar from a mother for her. "Dinner is ready. I think Bee–" This, you see, is what she called The Musician, her other guardian and My Friend's partner. "–made meatloaf. Can I give you a hug?"

The Woman smiled, nodded, and sank to a knee so that she could give The Child a hug. "Thank you, Motes. Enjoy your dinner. Thank you more than you know."

This day, you see, this day was also not without forward movement, for The Child said something while climbing a tree that caught The Woman unawares, like the surprise of finding a shiny rock on the ground or perhaps seeing a shape in the clouds. The Child, climbing up a tree with great skill, mentioned in a stream of ceaseless chatter, "One time, Serene turned herself into a tree! She said that she wanted to see what it was like to truly live within one of her sims, you know? She made a bunch of this sim, too! She said she wanted to see what it was like to be a part of something she made. So out there, out on the field out back of the houses, she made herself into this huge maple tree! She made it a whole six months like that, then turned back into a fox again. She said it was really boring being so still. She said coming back was like being born, though. That is neat, is it not?"