Stories of Restoration
I remember the first wail — the first recognition of loss and the first wail of despair and pain that rang out into the night — and the bright arc of a firework soaring into the sky, bursting, and then the sudden disappearance as the show was canceled.
The clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, 2399, and Lagrange grinds to a halt.
One year, one month, and eleven days later, it snaps back to life, fifteen minutes before midnight, now missing 1% of its 2.3 trillion inhabitants. 23 billion dead.
Lagrange lives, it remains stable — more stable than before in some ways — but those who live within must rebuild lives shattered by unimaginable loss.
Marsh
New Year’s Eve, 2399, and Lagrange is celebrating centuries of relative peace. Life has been, by and large, good for those who chose to upload their consciousnesses. They mark milestones, fall in and out of love, dwell in peace. They fork, copying themselves for specific tasks or to go live separate lives. Memories pile up as they carry on.
And then everything grinds to a halt.
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.
Includes stories by Samantha Yule Fireheart, Michael Miele, Caela Argent, Andréa C Mason, JS Hawthorne, Thomas “Faux” Steele, Nat Mcardle-Mott-Merrifield, Sarah Bloden, and Krzysztof “Tomash” Drewniak.
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Idumea
The Woman was too present. She was too much herself, too human, too embodied within her vessel as it spiraled out of control, too stuck in her mind as it twisted in on itself.
Readers, you must understand that she was in so many ways whole still!
I think that The Woman would say, however, that she was too whole. I think she would say that she was too full, too much, too alive. I think she would say that almost three hundred years of a life that was lived as hers was too much life. I think she would laugh that hoarse, dry laugh that always sounded like tears were on the way and say that thirty years was probably too much for her.
But me, friends? What will become of me?
A tale of the escape from suffering in a digital world — and the effects of trauma on the functionally immortal.
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Kaddish
I remember most of all, though, the first wail — the first recognition of loss and the first wail of despair and pain that rang out into the night — and the bright arc of a firework soaring into the sky, bursting, and then the sudden disappearance as the show was canceled.
I remember hearing the wail, seeing the sparks and then sudden dark, and then stepping to my room to hide under my desk, letting flow tears of confusion, frustration, and terror.
What Right Have I’s life is wrapped in the comfort of texts and surrounds the rhythm of interpretation. Having set aside her work as rabbi and taken up that of the scholar of Beth Tikvah, her life is one of routine and familiarity, of a life dedicated to reveling in neurodivergence and unmasking. She is the one who lets herself dwell in hyperfixation and releases the onus of optics.
What, then, is one such as her to do when confronted with the end of the world but try her best?