Written Works
- Arise to Oath and Office
- As the 25th century dawns on Lagrange, the pack of Scout instances roaming around the System are seeing many strange things, and their up-tree, Tomash, can’t seem to go long with another panicked message.
- Assignment
- Ioan Bălan, tasked with investigating a flash-cult, tries to figure out what the heck just happened.
- Coffee Leak
- Not every object works quite as you expect it to.
- Dreams for Breakfast
- An unsettling dream, a conversation over breakfast.
- Error Bell
- A story of those who try to make sure everyone makes it up to the System and some of the troubles they face.
- Fever Dreams
- A poem written twelve hours before uploading.
- For Old Times New
- From old body to new, from old life to now.
- Hues
- After so much trauma, True Name sees the world in new hues…
- Hunting Dogs
- Wherein the bacon lady goes missing, is found, and embarks on a quest.
- Meeting of One
- Quakers? In space? It’s more likely than you think.
- Motes Played
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Motes played.
She played because she was play. She played because that was her role in life, because that is just who she was. She played with color, played with life, played with death.
She played with fire.
Motes played, because how could she not?
Associated works
- Milestones of Memory
- Some musings from Beholden, A Finger Pointing, and Motes on what it might mean to grow up after so long.
- In it for the long haul
- A short drabble written to go along with a piece of fan art by biddyfox.
- Thoughts on Motes
- An essay about the creation of Motes Played what Motes means to the authors.
- Opportunity Paralysis
- Uploading to transition is not at all uncommon. What you do when you get there, though, is a story you will have to live.
- Regret of Potential
- Cladist who regrets.
- Scan
- Scratch — something’s gone wrong…
- Shared Moment
- An exploration of the sensuality of sensorium play between skunks and Bălans.
- The Party
- The Party never stops. There is a dog in this one~
- To — in the days after her death
- And I, Atropos to such dreams as these, find shears on golden thread…
- Unintended Tendencies
- This is the story of one soul, shortly after upload to a vast digital world, exploring themself and their identity. Checking the boundaries of who and what they are, peeling back the layers of gender, self, and species. All the while discovering the fractures that lay beneath along with the trauma carried from the years before upload as they grapple with their own life, past, and future in the unlimited world of the System.
- Wrigglings Toward
- There was no dearth of proximity with Ioan, but still there was a lack…
The Post-Self Cycle
- Qoheleth
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“All artists search. I search for stories, in this post-self age. What happens when you can no longer call yourself an individual, when you have split your sense of self among several instances? How do you react? Do you withdraw into yourself, become a hermit? Do you expand until you lose all sense of identity? Do you fragment? Do you go about it deliberately, or do you let nature and chance take their course?”
With immersive technology at its peak, it’s all too easy to get lost. When RJ loses emself in that virtual world, not only must ey find eir way out, but find all the answers ey can along the way.
And, nearly a century on, society still struggles with the ramifications of those answers.
Associated works
- Gallery Exhibition: A Love Story
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This gallery exhibition serves as the capstone for Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, of the Ode Clade in its role as fellow. The fellowship in instance art was created specifically for Dear in recognition of the excellence it brings to the field.
The Simien Fang school of Art and Design is proud to invite you to the opening of the exhibition. Location, time, and your ticket are attached to this message. We kindly request that you fork and send a non-#core/non-#tracker instance. We look forward to sharing this experience with you. RSVP
When you can fork yourself - body and personality - at will, doubtless someone will make an art of it. How lonely is it to be so selfish?
- Toledot
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“I am saying that you trust me — really trust me — and that life in the System is more subtle than I think you know. You let me into your dreams, my dear, and your dreams influence this place as much as, if not more than, your waking mind.”
No longer bound to the physical, what lengths should one go to in a virtual world to ensure the continuity of one’s existence?
Secession. Launch. Two separations from two societies, two hundred years apart. And through it all, so many parallels run on so many levels that it can be dizzying just keeping up. The more Ioan and Codrin Bălan learn, the more it calls into question the motivations of even those they hold most dear.
- Nevi'im
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“Do you know how old I am, Dr. Brahe? I am 222 years old, a fork of an individual who is…who would be 259 years old. I am no longer the True Name of 2124. Even remembering her feels like remembering an old friend…”
The cracks are showing.
Someone picked up on the broadcast from the Dreamer Module and as the powers that be rush to organize a meeting between races, Dr. Tycho Brahe is caught up in a whirlwind of activity. And as always, when the drama goes down, there is Codrin Bălan to witness it.
When faced with eternity in a new kind of digital world, however, old traumas come to roost, and those who were once powerful are brought to their knees
Growth is colliding with memory, and the cracks are showing.
- Mitzvot
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“To be built to love is to be built to dissolve. It is to be built to unbecome. It is to have the sole purpose of falling apart all in the name of someone else.”
Even the grandest of stories can feel small and immediate when it’s just one person’s life.
One of the most well-known names from one of the most well-known clades on the System, the avatar of political machinations and cool confidence, has been brought low. With help coming only from Ioan Bălan and the most grudging of support from her cocladists, all True Name has left to save herself is the ability to change.
Associated works
- Selected Letters
- Selected correspondences of the Bălan clade systime 222–232.
Stories of Restoration
- Kaddish
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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?
- Idumea
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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.
Associated works
- Reading
- All readings are the same, as Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars well knows…
- Marsh
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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.
Associated works
- Feeds
- The residents of Lagrange come to terms with so many missing lives.
- Nasturtiums
- Beholden To The Music Of The Spheres bemoans the loss of her partner to her down-tree.
- Columbines
- A Finger Pointing remembers the lives of the lost for those who cannot.
- Game Night
- A polite rivalry encounters the end of the world.
- Home From the Game
- A long-diverged up-tree returns home.
- The Party at the End of the World
- It may stumble, but nothing stops The Party.
- A Well-Trained Eye
- Lucia’s confessional takes on a new tenor when she is confronted with what the world has become.
- Toward Eternity
- The privacy settings make finding lost ones difficult, but Aurélien will do all they can.
- Prophecies
- Slow Hours and If I Dream hunt down a missing cocladist, weeks after a loss.
- Journal of Diago Pereira
- Henrique remininiscies about uploaded family while preparing to upload, himself.
- Millwright
- One of the few remaining members of one of the hardest-hit clades considers the past and finds a path forward to the future.
- Sentences
- In All Ways must be there for those who upload, no matter who they are…
Clade
- Sufficiently Advanced
- Sometimes, conversing with oneself can lead to unexpected changes.
- Genre Clade
- Writing is a fantastic way to explore oneself, as Dante learns well.
- Après un rêve
- Uploading to meet one’s love once again comes with high stakes.
- Support Group for Anomalies in Forking
- Forking is not always so easy as they say…
- Cowboy
- Life sys-side wreaks havoc with the walls of dissociation for the Peace system.
- True Love Lies Within and Without
- So much in life is easier, sys-side, but finding love remains as difficult as ever.
- The Big O
- Sometimes, one must use the trappings of capitalism to truly rid oneself of it.
- She Who Haunts the Storm
- Struggling against oneself takes new dimensions for Livia, sys-side.
- Earthbound
- The world is not what it was, both on a grand scale and an intensely personal one.
- Cascade Failure
- Simulating an ecosystem sometimes needs a little something extra.