Kaddish

Shai has changed little, but then, I have found my own comfortable stasis.

In the face of all that has happened, it is perhaps worth noting just the enormity of that statement. We are both founders, both having uploaded before 2150, him nearly ten years after me. Despite this, he is older than me by date of birth by, yes, nearly ten years.

I am 316 years old, now, which makes Shai 326. After so many years, though, such an age difference no longer matters quite so much. Had we met when Michelle first uploaded, when his forty years old would have made him seem impossibly wise to my thirty-one year old self, perhaps it would have then.

Now, though, now that we have known each other for nigh on two hundred of those years — for we did not meet until about a century after Michelle uploaded — such a gap in ages is meaningless, or all but. Yes, he may discuss some aspect of life phys-side that I was too young (or not yet born) to have experienced, and thus I may rib him for being an old man, but beyond that: who cares? Certainly neither of us do.

Shai and I met when I for a time returned to Temple Beth Tefillah. This move was not due to any issue between me and Rav From Whence, nor even out of any differences between me and Beth Tikvah. In fact, although the seed of the idea was mine — that I should gain a broader perspective that went beyond merely participating in ecumenical conferences — the idea that I return to the congregation that had been our own before Rav built Beth Tikvah was hers.

I spent some five years then at Beth Tefillah, and while I found myself in the end missing Beth Tikvah too much and returned to this place that had long since become a home, I came away with, as intended, a broader perspective on our experience, but also friendships that lasted for many years after.

Friendships and more, yes, for Shai and I fell, shortly after I left, into a cycle of romance and best-friendship. There were plenty of good reasons, after all: we were both furries, of course, and both stripy creatures — him a badger to my skunk — with a peculiar approach to anatomy; we were both neurodivergent nerds; and we both had a queer approach to our bodies, leaning into a joyful muddling of gender and gleeful acceptance of fatness.

It was, as he stated at the time, an effect of me leaving that we became so close. My leaving Beth Tefillah confronted him with how close we had become, and even though I was hardly gone from his life, it was merely made more real, more pertinent to him that I suddenly be even that much more distant from him.

This is not uncommon between us — though whether 'us' here means cladists, those of the Ode clade, or just Rav From Whence and I, I do not know. Perhaps it is merely all people. Perhaps this is what is meant by 'absence makes the heart grow fonder': not that taking time away from a loved one reinforces how much you love then, but that taking time away from someone you do not yet know you love lets you realize just how much you love them in the first place.

It was true for Rav and True Name, yes? Two friends — the best of friends, to hear Rav tell it — who spent centuries working side by side, at times their every day working together, and then slipping into years with just the occasional coffee date to keep in touch. As do so many I have met sys-side, they drifted closer together and further apart to some internal clock that no one but them knew. Beloved friends. 'The old rabbi', as True Name called Rav, and 'the old diplomat', as Rav called her in turn.

And then True Name was killed.

Rav was confronted with her absence, and we learned — for I in this was her support as her trusted confidant and friend and sometimes lover — that absence making the heart grow fonder is felt most keenly when such an absence is a departure, and in this case, a permanent one. Rav found that she loved True Name after they lost each other.

There came a day in systime 226, Secession Day, when these two old, old friends met before lunch, a shared cup of coffee to recognize 225 years of the System as separate from Earth — separate and yet entangled, for they had both worked so hard to maintain this cooperation between the two! — and as a simple bit of downtime where From Whence might offer True Name some kind words, some affection.

“I went to make her a coffee at the machine in the hall, and I heard a yelp,” she said to me, face buried in my shoulder. “I heard a yelp, all I heard was a yelp. She was gone, and all I heard was a yelp.”

There was nothing that could be done. All she could do was weep for her lost friend. There was not even any way to prove that True Name had been killed in that conference room off to the side of the synagogue, or if she had instead been dragged off, or if she had quit under the agony of CPV. She spoke with systech after systech and there was no way to prove one way or another that a murder had been done within the grounds of Beth Tikvah.

We, thus, had to assume that one had, and so Rav From Whence wept and closed off the room to all and came to terms with the complex set of feelings of realizing love for another only when such love became impossible.

Rav found that she loved True Name only after she lost her.

Ah, but I digress, except to say that Shai and I lost not necessarily each other but a shared context, and from that loss, we discovered a love for each other.

We spent at first a year together before each of us decided, in our own ways that we made better friends than partners. There was love there, yes, and romance, but it was not the romance that we needed in the moment. I told him that I was afraid of so much instability at once — for Beth Tikvah had changed much in the time that I had spent away — and he told me that he did not yet understand love, and, after the year had come to a close, felt that he needed time to sort out his feelings on the matter.

We drifted into and out of romance over the years and decades, more than a century now. Never acrimonious, I think, though at times baffling. Why did we fall in love? Why did we drift apart? Neither of us could say.

Why, also, am I finding myself so shy of recounting this conversation?

I think that it– Well, no, I should just begin, and perhaps by doing so, I will better understand.

Shai, then, was one of my interviewees, and we met on the hilltop of Beth Tikvah, out in the field that stretched for some few acres. Green grass speckled with dandelions and daisies. It was a perfect day for such. Warm but not yet hot, asteraceae-scented air stirred by only the mildest of breezes. It was a perfect place for an early spring picnic, and so that is what we treated ourselves to. We spread out a soft blanket in the grass, laid out a few plates of foods simple to eat for those who eschewed humanity.

“Have you had much luck with your other interviews?” he asked once we had loaded up our plates with familiar snacks.

“I suppose,” I said.

“You don't sound so sure.”

“I am not, no. It is...ah, rather, it has been productive in the sense that I have accomplished the goal of interviewing. I have followed Joseph's advice and...ah, and structured each interview in one of three different ways, and there has been joy in that,” I said, speaking slowly to keep my thoughts as organized as I could. “And yet...ah, well, none of them are doing any favors for my overall mood, yes?”

He smiled. “I mean, you have seemed pretty ornery of late. Have you been able to put a finger on why?”

I scowled playfully at him. “Am I not supposed to be interviewing you, Shai? You are...ah, you cannot lob questions at me like this.”

“Sure I can,” he said, popping a grape in his mouth and chewing for a moment. “But we can get to the interview if you wish.”

“Maybe we can...ah, perhaps we can alternate questions.”

“Want to go first, then?”

I nodded. “Please. It will give me time to think of...ah, of an answer to your question.”

“Alright, shoot.”

I had already chosen to lead with the tactic of wrong-footing Shai, rather than twenty-questions or the expected first question, and so I said, “Tell me, then, of...ah, of your thoughts on uploading to Lagrange being a destructive process.”

He sat up straighter and frowned. “Well, huh. Let me think on that,” he mumbled, gaze drifting down to his lap where his paws had been plucking furtively at the links of a chain bracelet — a fidget or a charm of sorts that he kept in his pocket, one that I never saw him actually wear.

For my part, I tore a square of focaccia into smaller pieces, dipping them into a little dish of olive oil and chili flakes that we had set out for just such a purpose, eating them one by one.

“Okay,” he said at last, pocketing the bracelet once more. I knew that it would be out again before long. “It was really tough for me, actually. That's the biggest reason I didn't upload right away, you know. I could have afforded it. I had the cash put away and everything. I just argued with myself for a decade straight on whether or not I was comfortable with dying in order to live in a computer somewhere in Russia.”

“Did...ah, did the fact that Lagrange was moved to orbit change your mind at all in this?”

“I'm going to call this all part of the same question,” he said, laughing. Sure enough, the bracelet was once more tugged free of his pocket and run between his fingers. Flat links of rose gold clicked along his claws and brushed over his paw pads. “Yes, that was part of it. Not that I had any real issue with the S-R Bloc, just that I was confronted with two options: I could blow my savings on visiting the hotel they'd built the System into, go to space and miss the chance at uploading forever; or I could never have the chance to ever go to space because I would die, but potentially live in a place where I could visit countless sims set in space, live on a space station if I wanted to, do–”

“You...ah, you do live on a space station.”

He snorted a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, I'm a nerd, I know. So anyway, that was a part of me deciding to upload, but the rest was that I just plain got sick. There was a bad few years of the flu, and the last one just wrecked me. Left me with organ damage and I lost the feeling in both feet.” He shrugged, looking almost sheepish. “So then it was continue living with a healthy chunk of change but be medically disqualified from going to space, or upload and get some semblance of a normal life back, even if it meant dying.”

“Then...ah, did you still struggle with the fact that you had to die to live here?”

“Nuh uh. I think it's your turn to answer my question.”

It was my turn to frown, and though I did not have a bracelet to fidget with, I did have the hem of my tunic, and so I ran my claw along that, feeling for the way the stitches created a gentle rhythm beneath the keratin as it moved.

“Very well,” I said at last. “I think that...ah, that I am ornery because I do not understand how this could have happened.”

“I mean, they said it was because the collectives–”

“I do not know how HaShem could have allowed this to happen.” I felt the slow stirring of frustrating within me and did my best to tamp it down. My words were coming out as a growl. I did not want that to fall onto Shai. I did not like interrupting him.

When did I become so angry?

“What Right Have I,” Shai said, voice quiet, almost small.

I laid my ears back and offered a hint of a bow from where I sat. “I am...ah, I am sorry, my dear. I did not mean to get heated at you.”

“You can be heated all you want, skunk. I know you. I'm just...worried. I've heard you get upset before at things here and there, but it's always been just for a few days, tops. You've been in a state for a while now.”

“Pretty much since...ah, since we came back, yes.”

He shook his head. “I don't think so, actually. I think you went through a few phases after Lagrange came back online. Scared, happy, almost manic when it came to HaShichzur...it's really only in the last few months that you've gotten angry.” He frowned, added, “Not even months. Last few weeks. Basically since right around Yom HaShichzur.”

I wilted. “Basically since...ah, since Rav set this task for me.”

“Right, yeah.”

“I just...mm, well, I just keep getting stuck in the same thought loops that anyone who has ever dealt with theodicy gets stuck in: how...ah, how do we deal with pain this great? If HaShem is our guardian and protector, then how...ah, how do we accept pain of this magnitude and trust? Where was Their staying hand?”

Shai reached out to collect one of my paws in his own. “And I'm guessing you're stumbling into the same unsatisfying answers that everyone does.”

“Yes. It...ah, Rav told me...ah, that is, I spoke with Rav and she told me that satisfying answers are not what I need, and I suppose that she is right in this.” I give his paw a gentle squeeze before extricating my own that I may rub it over my thigh. Self-soothing friction. “I expect that...ah, that what she wants for me to do is feel these emotions and to burn through them.”

“And are you?” he asked, reaching for his own piece of bread to dip in oil. “Burning through them, I mean. Are the feelings lessening.”

I started to answer, then shook my head, offering him the best sly grin that I could manage. “It is not your turn, my dear. It is...ah, it is mine. Did you struggle, then, with the fact that your body had to die in order for you to live here? Even after...ah, even after everything?”

He laughed, and once more, the bracelet was retrieved to be wound around his fingers. “Right. Yes, I did.” He waited a beat, as though letting the possibility that this would be his only answer hang in the air between us. When I apparently out-waited him, he continued. “I had no illusions that I would live forever. No desire to, even. I just wanted to live...more. Just a little bit longer. I just wanted to live another few years, but my body was wrecked. It's hard to want to live longer in a body like that when getting new organs printed is a terrible, drawn-out process and they can't regrow fried nerves, anyway. It was another cost-benefit analysis thing, then: wait on a new liver and new kidneys and a new pancreas and still feel like I'm walking on shards of glass half the time, or risk being a failed upload.

“I just wound up going for it. I got my few extra years and by then, I figured I could just keep on going.

“And, before you ask, I struggled with the dying part all the way through. Even now, I wind up with a little bit of a twinge of oh fuck when it comes time to merge down. It got better when I stopped saying 'quit' and just stuck with 'merge down', because then it just feels like...exactly that. I split and experience things as two for a while, then merge back together into one. There's no ending of consciousness in there.”

“But...ah, but there was with uploading?”

“What would HaShem stopping the Century Attack have looked like?”

I sat up straighter, blinked, and frowned. “Oh. Right. Your turn.”

He only smiled.

“I do not know. It...ah, well, I suppose if we are going to look into hypotheticals, then it would look like Them changing the hearts of the attackers, yes?”

“Of all of them?”

“Ye-e-es,” I said slowly, sensing his trap even as I did so.

“And all of the ones to come?”

“Yes, Shai. All of...ah, all of the ones to come,” I snapped, then forced down frustration once more. “I am sorry, my dear. I will try not to get so snippy. I know what you are saying, what you are getting at, but...ah, but yes. Why should I not hope that Adonai turn the hearts of a bare handful over the years and decades away from desiring the death of trillions?”

He held up his paws, the bracelet dangling from where it had been draped around an index finger. “No, no, you aren't wrong. Sorry. This maybe isn't the best time to be having this conversation, huh?”

Shame burned hot in my ears. I splayed them in my deference. “I am sorry, Shai.”

“Enough,” he said, voice filled with kindness. “Ask me your next question. Something about the fear of dying with uploading?”

I shook my head. “I do not...ah, I do not want to ask that one anymore.”

“Oh?”

“It is not the question for now. Now...ah, well, I wish to ask you this: do you wish to live forever?”

For the second time that day, he said, “Well, huh,” and I had to hide a smile at this. He tucked away the bracelet in his waistcoat pocket — he was always such a natty dresser — and leaned back on a paw, hips canted to the side to make way for his tail. “Are you going to tell me why you're asking these questions after the interview?”

I shrugged, wobbled a paw. “I am...ah, I am still deciding.”

He chuckled. “Alright. Well, let me see...” He started to reach for his vest pocket again, forced himself to stop, and just patted it instead. “That's weirdly tough. Let me try rephrasing it, see if I can come up with anything. If I was guaranteed that I'd live forever, would I do anything different from what I do now?”

The rephrasing piqued my interest, and I arched a brow, curious.

“I don't know that I would,” he said after a few moments. “I think at first I might start forcing myself to slow down on things, say to myself, “That's okay, Shai, it'll be there when you get around to it next.” After a while, though, I'm not sure that'd stick around. I already slowed down as much as I needed to in order to live one century. I got a little slower in my second and third, but not by much. I read. I study. I go on EVAs. I spend time with my friends. I love you from either up close or far away, and I'm comfortable with that.”

“I love you too,” I said, smiling. I am grateful that we can say this to each other even when we have drifted out of romance. After all, although we had settled into friendship some years ago, we as friends still love one another.

“So, if I'm not going to do anything different if I'm only functionally immortal, only immortal as long as Lagrange is up and running, then I guess it doesn't really matter. Not along that axis, at least.” His expression picked up a smirk. “There's some real existential terror in true immortality, so maybe what I want is only to act like I'm going to live forever.”

“Terror?”

“What are you going to do when the last stars go out? Just sit there? Chill forever? No food, can't even stress-eat!”

I snorted a laugh. “What if I...mm, rather, what if we were both immortal?”

“Ugh,” he said with the utmost disgust. “Miserable.“

I laughed in earnest, then, and, as I have so many times done before, leaned against him harder and harder until he toppled over to the side, giggling helplessly. He is so small! So roly-poly! I am not a tall woman, and I am far from skinny myself, but he is a full head shorter than I am and far softer.

The rest of our day was quite nice. It is the day after Purim and we had the parties from the day before to recover from and recount, so we continued through that lazy lunch, just the two of us. We finished the interview in such a fashion, bandying questions back and forth, though none of them do I feel like setting down here. Not in this document. Not now that I have gotten this far.

Perhaps one day, I will. Perhaps one day I will reach into my memories and pluck my good days as well as my bad and set them down that I may remember them. Perhaps this will be one of those days: where, despite my anger and the work of conducting an interview, I had a picnic with a beloved friend. I told someone who I love that I loved them.

He and I share those words at least once every time we see each other. We share them regardless of the state of our relationship. We are comfortably friends now with no signs of drifting closer in the near term, but regardless of his thoughts on immortality, our fondness for each other has a sense of permanence about it. We love each other. I love him.

I love him and I love Rav From Whence, too, and I tell her such. We tell each other such! We love each other, my down-tree and I. We have twice over the centuries fallen into romance with one another and a few times besides that friendly sensuality, but we have I think always loved one another. In our dynamic is represented one of the many ways that Michelle Hadje loved herself, just as was the case with Rav and True Name.

That scared and proud and queer and strong and broken and beautiful woman who uploaded 285 years ago loved herself, and so we love ourselves, and so we love us.

I should focus on this. Should! I use this statement with intent. I should focus on love. I should focus on the love our clade has for itself. I should focus on the love I bear for Rav and for Shai. I should focus on those good days that I might at some point pluck from my memories.

But I cannot. I cannot do that yet, not yet. I cannot do that now because every time I think this thought, this should-statement that I promise myself is not a cognitive distortion, it is followed up in my head with while I still can.

O, Unnamable Glory! Where was Your staying hand?

With the overflow now out of my veins — maybe — I think, I hope — I stand tall and face You and say: where was Your staying hand?