Memorial

[tomash3]

[NOTE: Contains spoilers for major developments in the Post-Self cycle. Don’t read if you haven’t read through Mitzvot and Selected Letters.]

Wherein Daisy notices something new at the side of a road.

Daisy knew they didn’t need to drive around the System. They could simply arrive at their destination. However, they liked driving. They liked that it took time to go from here to there, that it took some effort to visit someone.

They liked to look at what roads could be when they didn’t have to be.

The System’s roads ranged from carefully curated aesthetic to attempts at realism (some more successful than others) all the way to chaos roads that were willing to play fast and loose with the nature of space. They’d been on winding mountain passes that had a deep forest around a corner that couldn't have been there. They’d taken fast lanes that would skip past many miles of drive when they were in a rush.

This road didn’t have anything like that. It was the road between Daisy’s town and a “nearby” one. Two lanes each way and nothing much alongside it. Not nothing — plenty of trees, a few houses, the dull gray of industrial buildings you never thought to look up the purpose of — nothing much. The two towns had been encroaching into their ends for the last century as they flowed into the available space.

The System was both ever-evolving and ancient. Daisy liked that about their world — that the old and the new didn’t need to fight for land and space and energy. They looked out at the slow river that was the midpoint of this road. Nothing had changed about it — or around it — since they’d moved in around here, and, though they didn’t know, they could feel that this stripe of not-town would be staying right where it was for centuries yet.

Wait … had that statue always been there?

Daisy couldn’t remember it having been there. It must have been put up recently. That was strange. Things changed, but this spot didn’t change. That was how it had been.

Now, someone had put a statue up. Daisy wanted to know why. Who was so important that they got a statue in one of the stable parts of the System? What had happened?

They pulled off the road to get a better look. This being the System, they got the one infinitely-shared parking spot.

When they got out of their car (I really should wash this thing, they thought), they could feel the suggestion of a town square around them. This place didn’t have to be a statue by a river, but it could be.

That the people who’d dreamt up this road had been OK with an optional portal like this left Daisy even more curious. The road was supposed to stick to “normal”, or so they’d heard. Who was so important that a third town got linked to this road just to get to their statue?

The marble statue depicted some sort of furry with big ears (Daisy couldn’t place the species) holding their hands as if to welcome the viewer in.

RJ Brewster

-38+109 — -9+50

Eir dream became our reality

Daisy looked at the sign next to the statue. RJ, Daisy read, had been the first partially successful upload. Even though, as best anyone could tell, ey hadn’t lived for very long before crashing, eir uploading had paved the way for the System to become what it was.

“I wonder why this didn’t go up earlier …” they mumbled.

The sign shifted to answer their question. RJ’s involvement had been covered up during the early days of the System for political reasons that Daisy wasn’t interested in right now, and the habit of just not mentioning em had, like so many things about the System, stuck. Now, for an entire book’s worth of reasons that Daisy wasn’t that curious about either, the secrecy had loosened.

Daisy stepped back to look at the statue again.

It was nice. No, it was elegant. Not only that, they were pretty sure someone had made it by hand — it didn’t have either the indistinctness or the perfection that art pulled out of thin air did.

Now, all this made sense. The first person to upload, even though — no, because — they didn’t make it, was someone who deserved some statues.

Daisy stood in front of the statue for a moment, thinking, then went back to their car. They considered that lives — and maybe even the world — needed to be shaken around a bit sometimes. That it was good to put a statue up by an intentionally static river.

As they pulled back on the road, Daisy looked back at RJ.

Maybe this is a sign I should try skiing. I’ve been wanting to for a while, just … never got around to it, y’know? they thought. Sometimes you’ve got to go for it.