Madison Rye Progress

"Look, I created something," she waved at the stationary dragon. "A whole world, a whole story. And what every creator wants when she creates something is for people to enjoy it. When someone doesn't like it, when they tell you to your face that they hate it, that's rough to hear. But it happens, and your options are to grow a thicker skin or to quit sharing, and I don't want to do that yet."

"Why worry about sharing? Why not, I mean, just build things like this for yourself?"

"No one builds for themself." She hesitated, then added, "No, well, lots of folks do. But me, the point of a story is for someone to experience it, to live in that world I've made, if only for a moment." She hesitated, then plunged on. "I spend a lot of time on my games. It takes up most of my time, not just in prepping, but, say, attending classes and lessons for stuff to increase the verisimilitude. Like this castle? I spent a year reading up on medieval architecture. I took classes on embroidery so I could add in little details for my players. Hell, I'm even thinking about taking sword lessons so I can make the combat more interesting."

Tyrean nodded, silent while he digested that. Livia was on the verge of telling the little lizard goodbye when he spoke up again. "But can't you use all those details for yourself? I mean, especially here, what stops you from conjuring up a battle axe and fighting the dragon on your own?"

"Because I already know how the story goes," Livia said, a little bemused. "What fun is a maze if I already know where the exit is?"

"You could fork," Tyrean suggested. "One of you builds the maze, the other solves it."

Livia had the strangest sensation of a train going off the rails. "Not that it really matters, but I don't like forking. And anyway, I can't just fork and," she waved her hand vaguely, "Ccreate. A new fork would be too similar to me, the story we'd create would be the same as if we never forked in the same instance. So I'd need to fork, let the new instance individuate until we were distinct enough that I couldn't guess the story beats. That's a lot of work to not be my own GM."

"Why don't you like to fork?"

"It makes me feel nauseous, and I ask myself uncomfortable questions."

"What?"

Livia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. As far as she was aware, she was the only person who had this problem. Forking was just a natural part of the System, or so the volunteer seminar she had taken when she was a new upload had said. "Fork your problems away," was the clever title, and the instructor had explained all the benefits of forking, from more hands to do work to fixing any incidental damage one might incur. She had learned at that seminar that forking had unpleasant side-effects for her, and she disliked admitting it. She wasn't even sure why she was telling Tyrean. They were friendly, if not friends exactly, but that was a far cry from admitting her fears about glitching out.

Still, she had offered the information up, and she didn't want to leave the poor lizard hanging. "Whenever I fork," she said, eyes still closed, "my new instance asks one or more deeply uncomfortable questions. I don't know why, and no one I've ever talked to about it knows why, either, but as I don't want to answer questions about the darkest recesses of my psyche while feeling like I'm going to lose my lunch, I don't fork unless I have to." The memory of her very first fork, at that original seminar, still made her stomach twist. The nausea had been so bad that her memory of the seminar was focused around the queasiness.

"Who Haunts the Storm" by @jshawthorne will be in Clade: A Post-Self Anthology, out August 1!

TTRPG work continues apace.

Gregory observed a herd of white-tailed deer from his perch in the upper branches of an ancient oak tree. They did not sense the anthropomorphic gray fox or his notebook, he'd shaped them so they would ignore him. A fly buzzed past one doe's head and she flicked an ear at it reflexively, just as coded. Gregory heard a rustling sound off to the northwest and watched the deer's heads shoot straight up, their ears cocked in the direction of the sound. The wolves were coming, right on schedule.

The herd sprang into action moments before the pack came into view. The wolves loped across the forest floor, dashing after their swift-hooved prey. Maybe the deer would manage to secure a sufficient head start to escape before they tired, or maybe one of the older or weaker members of the herd would fall behind into the wolves' waiting jaws. A week ago the pack had snagged an old buck who'd caught an infection the day before. The wolves had eaten well that night, and their appetites had returned now for another course.

As the animals ran past Gregory noted a fat doe starting to lag behind. She'd feed the pack well if caught. The doe ran after her herd, the wolves began to pace her... and kept on going past.

Gregory sprang lightly from tree to tree, trying to get a better view of the ongoing chase. By the sim's rules his body was nearly weightless and could cling magnetically to any surface, a compromise from the impersonal "god's eye view" most similar ecosystem sims had employed. Dashing out along the underside of a branch he hung upside-down, following the hunters and their quarry with his gaze. Why weren't they going after the doe?

Something about the formation of the pack and the herd seemed oddly familiar. On a whim he pulled up stills he'd taken of the last week's hunt, and groaned. Not only was the herd moving in exactly the same formation, minus the old buck, but so were the wolves. They were ignoring the new data right in front of them in favor of old data picked up a solid week ago.

With a sigh Gregory closed the sim and quit.

Gregory#Tracker looked up from his book when he received his fork's memories. He stepped over to his desk and pulled up the notes for his simulated ecosystems. Somehow he needed to fix the priorities on the wolves' learning so their ability to remember the past didn't overpower their present. While he was tweaking the code he merged another fork, this one had taken an otter form to observe a pod of killer whales, they were still far from the now extinct mammals in terms of intelligence. The shaping of their minds just wasn't good enough at the moment. Would it ever be?

According to the research papers he'd read, whales had nearly the cognitive capabilities of humans. At the time he'd uploaded, humanity still hadn't managed to create a general artificial intelligence without completely emulating a human brain. Why couldn't they have built one by now? He looked over the books lining the walls of his not-so-modest cabin. So many species lost to the still ongoing ecological disaster that was life on Earth now, only remaining through books and videos and paintings and other dead media. He wondered, were there any museums left on Earth that displayed the bones of those species, or had budget cuts closed them down and sold off the bones as dietary supplements?

From "Cascade Failure" by Joel Kreissman. This and several other stories will appear in Clade: A Post-Self Anthology, out August 1st!

(Edit: now with less errant LaTeX)

Liam looked the same as he did when he uploaded. Preserved in time, in a time before the talk, before the pain, the fight and the lonely nights. But there weren’t those creases that pulled his mouth down, that sat by his eyes. He looked better than all the times they spent at various doctors and specialists. Looking for… relief. Not even a cure, just relief. He looked better than all those days curled up in bed waiting for the current flare-up to stop.

“You’re looking good,” Liam said.

“Bullshit! I’m getting grayer every day. Got called Gramps last week.”

“You’re still handsome to me.”

“I know,” Liam smiled. “I’m surprised you haven’t changed your appearance by now.”

“I’ve gone back and forth. Sometimes I make myself younger or change eyes and hair. But with you… I want to look how you remember me.”

But you don’t.

For better or worse, those who remain on Earth remain bound to time.

"Earthbound" by Kergiby will appear in Clade - A Post-Self Anthology, out August 1!