Madison Rye Progress

Spoiler level: negligible — Toledot, Mitzvot

E.W. of no clade:

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.

Eating itself is optional, sys-side. One can simply turn off that ability, just as one can (and most do) turn off the need to urinate, defecate, get the hiccups, and so on.

The mind, however, remembers hunger. It remembers it so viscerally that, should you neglect to modify that out of your sensorium, you will feel it just as intense as you did back phys-side. It remembers the feeling of satiation that comes with eating. It remembers the feeling of being too full, of being sick to your stomach. It is a part of life, and even being infolife, we remember that from before we were such.

So I remember getting so hungry and weak by the third day that I pinged Serene, my cocladist who had built me my little wilderness, 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.

Spoiler level: none

Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled:

Yes. Sort of. We call this 'bubbling up', which is when an individuated fork merges down and then the down-tree instance assumes their identity. The issue, however, is that when merging, the down-tree instance has the ability to selectively merge memories, while they cannot release their own memories, except in the instance where there are conflicting memories, wherein one can choose the up-tree instance's memories — this usually means a reinforcement to the point where the down-tree instance's memories in those cases feel more like a whimsical imagining rather than quite real.

See also: Mitzvot - "She Who Haunts The Storm"

Spoiler level: none

Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself:

Dear and Heat And Warmth are both inspirations for Time Rushes and Motes and I. An integral part of our more spectacular productions involves construct, instance, and sim design. Of course, not everything is so modern; most of our work is done analogue, although I do tend to go ham on the theatres themselves.

In those hazy days when reputation had much greater significance, we depended upon these particular shows to promote Voces Sensuum across the greater System. I am relieved that the Exchange has deflated so much as it has; we are less bound to the whims of popularity and can focus exclusively on our own creative endeavors.

We do still indulge in spectacle from time to time, however. Our audience is about as impressed by such things as we are, and roping in artists rather than designers allows us to lean into that in a way that better suits all our tastes.

Take Spiro kaj Simpleco, for instance. This was an example of immersive theatre, a collaboration with Serene and Rainbow's End to produce an interactive set using a sim cast entirely in impressionist textures, audience and all.

The audience was asked to indulge in an autumn afternoon with the cast, with little dramas scattered about and a few planned to jostle those who came near out of an awkward silence. The filter Rainbow's End created cast the warmth of the Sun and fog of breath across blurred and broken faces in buttery yellow and wispy white, leaving the audience guessing as to who was who.

This had the effect of rendering otherwise trivial conflicts impossible to follow. The scenes themselves were impressionistic. Each conflict was, on its own, meaningless; bantering partners and nagging down-trees and overbearing friends. What the audience was meant to find in this work was the peace that fell over every silent moment, the landscape that as often blended with bickering blobs as not.

Perhaps the production could have been replicated phys-side, especially when considering the proliferation of exocortices during the 23^rd century. For a truly impossible feat, you may have better luck asking a Sevgili.

(By @hamratza)

Spoiler level: consequential — Selected Letters

And The Only Constant Is Change:

It is all so terribly tragic.

When Douglass joined us, he hoped to meet his ancestor here at last. He rather idolizes her, something that only amplified the tragedy of his arriving when he did. But he has all of us, her up-trees — direct or indirect — to tell him ninety-nine stories about ninety-nine Michelles Hadje, and the promise of many more to be told by our unspoken forks.

In death, I mean to say, the memory of who she was is quite literally preserved in us. And, with our perfect recollection, we each hold a piece of the story about what she became on the System. In this, we are bathed in fortune.

But there are plenty who look to the System with fear. They raise objections as to the continunity of self, a natural observation from those whose closest brush with oblivion is most often sleep. We dispersionistas take for granted the significance of quitting, even when preserving another self.

Motes and Heat And Warmth falling over one another a dozen times, wrestling with each other in an ephemeral game of leapfrog, must surely horrify those phys-side who warn of transporter paradoxes as each tail-end instance yields to the next and quits. How macabre the squeals of laughter must be to their ears, how unsettling the smiles on their faces as they settle in the grass with glee, overjoyed at the serial murders they both have just committed.

And then there is time. It is easy for us to forget about phys-side on account of all the System has to offer us. Easier, still, for the only faded memories we can have are of the world before, and many are so miserable. Some of us came here seeking to help reclaim the Earth, and nearly as many eventually succumb to escapism.

There are the families we left behind, and if we are not careful, they are gone before we know it. Those flicker-lives yet bound to Earth are still our kin, as Ioan was painfully reminded when ey at last looked into what became of Rareș in eir absence. Many who came here before the 2170s look to the prospect of immortality with relief. Many of those who came after, pointedly, did not.

Why did Rareș not join his sibling when the years began to take their toll? What life did he live so worthy of death? Did he set a headstone for Ioan when ey uploaded to fund his education? Did he mourn when his sibling did not write him as frequently as he would have liked?

It is all so terribly tragic, but I do not pity them.

(by @hamratza)

See also: Toledot, "Selected Letters", and "Earthbound".

Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars:

Of course it is strange to inhabit the Earth no longer, To follow no longer the customs so newly acquired, To invest no longer with future humanity Such promising things as roses, ... And being dead is full of the labor of catching up, As one gradually acquired a sense of eternity.— But the living always make the mistake of too sharp a distinction. ... In the end, they need us no longer, those taken in youth. One gradually weans oneself from the earthly... ... But we, Who need such great mysteries, for whom out of grief So often comes blessed improvement—: could we be without them?