Madison Rye Progress

Like most things in his life lately, Eliah's memories of the most important decision in any of their lives was clouded by alcohol. Had they been arguing about Eleanor? He'd definitely been drinking, he knew that. But the other details he didn't remember in whole. It was like a shard of fractured glass. The main thing that pierced through was Zia's voice.

"Eliah. Think about what you're doing. Please. Like, I'm as shocked as you are that this is working but..."

"I know what I'm doing," he slurred under his breath; his voice unsteady. He was half panting in exhaustion from hauling himself up the steps to the clinic. He leaned against a rail. "I'm doing what you want, right?"

She sighed. "Yeah. But...I wish it didn't have to fucking be like this."

"I do too, but it is what it is. It's now or never."

"Yeah. I know."

He stumbled up to the door, paused, turned around, and looked around at the dirty grey and black of the city, the ugly concrete and black sleet of the numerous office buildings flecked at every point by red dust. Overhead, the moon hung low in the sky. He wished that he had a hat, so he could tip it goodbye. They stood there silently, for a few seconds, taking it all in, before turning around, walking up to the automated doors of the clinic, and entering.

"Rest. I'll take care of it."

"Thank you."

He gave the mental equivalent of a nod, then realized he had said both parts of the conversation out loud. His heart rate spiked as he looked around. He would have rather assumed no one had noticed, but long dulled instinct prompted him to glance at the front desk clerk out of the corner of his eyes. His heart rate slowed. Just as he suspected, either no one noticed, or no one cared. Why was no wonder. They were hooked up to a rig. Eliah shook his head. What was even the point of having a flesh and blood person in this place if they were going to be hooked up to the net anyway?

"Are you of sound mind to undergo this procedure?" a voice buzzed in his ear.

Turning his attention back to his goal, he placed his hand back onto the panel.

"Yes."

There was a brief pause as every inch of his vitals were measured up to some baseline.

Somehow, he very much doubted that being within that baseline actually mattered.

"Are you undergoing this procedure consensually?"

"Yes."

Another brief pause, another scan. More nonsense.

"...based on these criteria and your CIN, your family may qualify for Uploading Benefits as per--"

He chuckled. If there was one thing that they could all agree on, it was fuck those people. "Next question."

"Are you sure that you don't wish to--"

He let it finish, just in case it took hastily answering into account. But mentally, he had already checked out.

"Next question."

"Would you like to upload?"

"Yes."

"Do you understand that this is an irreversible procedure, carrying with it a risk of mortality?"

"Yes."

"Would you still like to upload?"

"Yes."

"Understanding that this is an irreversible procedure that carries with it a risk of mortality, do you want to upload?"

"Yes."

He could 'see' Zia next to him. Her lip was curled, she was looking away. He wanted to put his hand on her shoulders, reassure her, but there wasn't a way to do so without being noticed, the clerk was disconnecting from their rig, blinking as their eyes readjusted to the 'real' world. Outside, the city's emergency sirens roared as a dust storm tumbled over buildings. The clinic doors automatically closed in response; the filtration system went from a slight din to a howl.

"Alright, Miss...Pirth? Right this way, please."

Mentally, he checked in again with Zia.

"This is what you want, right kid?"

The mental equivalent of a nod.

"Good, let's get out of this shithole."

He turned to the clerk, doing his best imitation of Evi's sickeningly sweet smile. "After you, please."

The clerk chuckled and shook their head, evidently their mind was elsewhere. "Yeah, one of these days."

The sirens grew louder, and the protective metal screens unfolded slowly from the building, creaking as they extended to cover the windows. Eliah and the attendant watched as they locked into place just in time; a loud thunk echoing throughout the building as bits and pieces of rock and concrete crashed into the side of it.

The clerk shook their head, looking on with eyes dulled with false hope and endless determination. "First chance I get, I'm getting out of here too."

"Cowboy" by @BinaryVixen899 will appear in Clade — A Post-Self Anthology, out August 1 with preorders coming soon!

Ernie got out of his recliner and made his way over to Devonian. They motioned for Ernie to look at the intersection of fur along their arm. Ernie had to squint to see it, but sure enough, the pattern of fur along their arm was slowly changing and shifting to match the light yellow of the lion's fur. Devonian shifted around in their seat and ran their claws along the ends of their coat tails. Ernie could see that they were now longer than they were previously. Not only that, but the material they were made of wasn't fabric at all, but was instead hundreds of finely layered black feathers. Devonian's coat tails were actually wings. They had a slight shimmer of iridescence to them that matched Devonian's bird fork. They rustled their wings gently and Ernie took that as a hint to stop staring and back off.

"While it did take a while to adjust, I'm fortunate that uploading really did help me to achieve my transition goals."

"And what were those?" Ernie asked without thinking. He cringed slightly and hoped that Devonian did not take the question personally.

Devonian did their best to grin without showing teeth. "To be utterly incomprehensible and unable to be discreetly defined. My existence as a chimera is a blessing for me, but I understand why it would be difficult for others to experience the same. The reason I come to the meetings is less about venting my own frustrations and more about giving other people an example of a way to live with constant change as a positive aspect. I could scarcely count the number of late into the night conversations that Samantha and I have had over living with a constantly changing appearance on the System."

"Support Group for Anomalies in Forking" by @NenekiriBookwyrm goes into all the beautiful imperfections one can find in even the most basic mechanics of the System. It'll make its appearance in Clade — A Post-Self Anthology, out August 1, with pre-orders coming soon!

I called my finished sim Writer's Retreat#a9f5d4e2.

My first few days spent within the digital sanctuary led to zero results. Aside from a few typing noises and agitated mutterings, I only really stared out the beautiful window. The first thing I initially wanted to focus on was jotting down the biggest accomplishments in my life (uploading being the ultimate achievement) and my favorite memories from growing up. The more I reflected on my life though, the more I chastised myself for past failures and regrets, none of which I bothered writing down. Instead, there was this nagging feeling at the back of my mind, thinking about how much better that one bad romance novel would've been if the main character's love interest had a little more interest in getting to know her.

"I'll work on it after I'm done with this project," I promised myself.

Another few days passed. I broke away from my isolation in order to join Zion again at the Infinite Café, only for my melancholy to disappear when they mentioned how busy they were with a sim commission and had sent a fork in their place. Seeing the duplication of my friend sitting before me, relaxed and completely invested in our conversation about backlogged projects, caused a great idea to pop into my head.

"That's it!" I suddenly shot up from our table with the widest of smiles. A few heads turned but didn't remain focused on me. "Zion, you're a genius! A brilliant, brilliant genius!"

"No need to heap praises on me," their fork replied after laughing. "By the way, why am I a genius?"

I demonstrated it by suddenly creating a forked version of myself, who promptly returned to the Writer's Retreat.

They immediately understood, sharing my grin. "You're right, I'm a genius, sweetie. Just don't push yourselves too hard, okay?"

Not at first, we didn't. After renovating my one-room cabin for dual capacity, my days were spent at that desk, either jotting down vague notes or thinking back to repressed memories I'd been trying to erase. When I couldn't bear just staying in the cabin as my forked instance eagerly typed away on his own typewriter, I decided to venture outside and explore the sim. Within a couple of days, my fork asked if I'd be interested in reading the novella's rough draft. I eagerly accepted it, much to his delight, and mine.

"Not bad, actually," I said after skimming through the first chapter. "It'll need some work."

"We've got all the time in the world, right?" He sat across from me in the living room, now communal. "If this'll need to be edited and reworked, I'll want to stay for longer. I've got some other ideas I want to work on too." My fork began to snicker.

"What?" I asked.

"From now on," he explained, "you can call me 'Romance Genre'."

I stared blankly at him. "Really?"

"Yes!" He nodded vigorously, wearing a glint in his eyes I never thought was possible to see on my own face. "If I ever feel like making any forks to write other book ideas, let's name them after genres! I'll be Romance Genre, and if you ever want to start working on a political thriller, but won't get away from this slump you're in, you'll fork out Political Thriller."

I shook my head and laughed. "Whatever."

"Genre Clade" by Domus Vocis, exploring the origins of a wide-ranging clade, will be in Clade — A Post-Self Anthology, out August 1! Pre-orders open soon :D

"I say it would be wrong," began Theodulfr, "to refer to what we do, the way we live, all this, using the term 'magic.' "

"And I ask," Theosophia replied smoothly, "what better word could there be?"

Theo froze. When he'd decided to do this again, to let two opposite instances of himself debate the question on which he'd spent months of fruitless frustration, he'd planned they'd each take the other side than they now apparently were.

"When people say magic, what, in all the history of the term, have they used it to mean?" Theosophia was already presenting his case, so Theo hurried to catch up with his notes. "Formulas of power over the universe. The ability to make one's environment, in every element and detail of it, conform to one's will. Well, we have that, don't we? If you went to any madji in ancient Persia, any post-scholastic alchemist in medieval Europe, any ritual master in imperial China, and explained to them the everyday circumstances of our lives, what would they call it, other than magic?"

Theodulfr raised an impatient hand. By reflex, Theo made a checkmark on the edge of his page of notes, to keep the queue, before he reminded himself there were only two in this discussion anyway.

"What were the ultimate goals of magic, in any practice or fantasy story?" Theosophia continued. "For what was the philosopher's stone sought? Immortality and wealth. Well, we no longer age, we no longer die. And we no longer have any scarcity of anything, so wealth is a long-ago-solved problem. The philosopher's stone is real: we live within it. We all know that we all know the saying: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"Failure to distinguish between two things," Theodulfr said, "does not imply that those things are the same."

Apparently it was his turn now.

"Magic must, by definition, be an overriding of the material universe by some supernatural force. Whatever else magic is," Theodulfr gestured much more than Theosophia when he talked, "it has to do the impossible. Snapping your fingers to produce a flame is magic, using a lighter is not. Levitating into the air is magic, boarding an airplane is not. Living forever and being able to shape the world around you to your will is magic, having your mind scanned and uploaded into a computer simulation whose controls you can access is not. There's a qualitative difference: magic is numinous, awe-inspiring, wondrous. The mere fact we're even discussing the question of whether the mundane minutiae of our life counts as magic is proof that they don't. Magic is, by definition, mutually exclusive with mundane minutiae."

"That's how a thing is done, how it works." Theo recognized the rhetorical turn Theosophia was about to use, had used it himself often enough. "Not what it is."

"And next you're going to say: Just because the sky is blue by different means than a blueberry is blue." Theodulfr snorted the way Theo had learned to use a wolf's snout to snort. "or indeed the way some blue object in the System is blue, does not mean the sky is therefore not blue. That's a question of how blue works, not what blue is. We all know that one."

"Very well, then instead I'll say," Theosophia changed lines of attack, "you say magic has to do the impossible. What does impossible mean, here? If none of what we're doing is magic, then magic doesn't exist, cannot exist, because there is no 'the impossible' left for it to do!"

"It could do all the things we do in here," Theodulf parried and riposted, "in the physical world."

Apparently, Theo noted, his forks shared his refusal to say 'phys-side.' He doubted it would prove relevant.

"Sufficiently Advanced" by @RobMacWolf will appear in Clade — A Post-Self Anthology, out August 1 with pre-orders coming soon!