Mark and I have dragged one of the small tables and a pair of the thin black chairs from the library out to the hallway that goes nowhere, and for once, we’re both going through our notifications from the between together.

Through the archway, there’s something halfway between a party and a funeral going on.  I’ve walked more than a few people through their first second death, but it doesn’t really get easier.  There’s an emotional tension to it; you’ve just learned that there’s no end for you, that everything you’ll ever do will fade into a running sentence without enough commas.  But also, you have everything, everything  ahead of you.

Shavoy is telling his life story and trying to get drunk enough to not have a panic attack.  This is helped by the between making true panic attacks more rare, but stymied by the fact that it does something similar to getting uproariously drunk.  Also he’s new to telling life stories, and mixed with the quarter of a barrel of Six’s beer he’s consumed so far, that means there’s a lot of mundane tangents and confused backtracking.

It’s not that I’m annoyed by it or anything.  It’s kind of charming, really.  Someone stumbling through the first steps of eternity.  I do really think he could be a good friend, or at least a regular of Bastion’s.  But right now, I’ve been socializing with other people for a solid subjective day, and I want a quiet break.

I suppose it says something about me that I consider sitting in near silence with Mark, each of us muttering profanity every few seconds, is what I consider a break.  I don’t know what it says, but it can’t be too flattering.

Still, I’m trying to be better, since my conversation with Six.  And that means not running from or ignoring my notifications, not pretending that I’m just a normal person.  I still don’t think I’ll be optimizing for a specific career or skill, because I don’t fully trust myself not to experience a runaway cycle with it, but… I’m going to try to care a little more. Care about what I can do for a world.  And for myself.

So Mark and I sit and flip through hundreds of notifications.  Both of us are looking for one in particular, but it’s not like these things make it easy to guess at their contents.

[You have achieved qualifications in (local) higher education - first stage : +15 marks of knowledge, 10% discount on next [Education] perk or trait]

[You have achieved qualifications in (local) higher education - second stage : +35 marks of knowledge, 10% discount on next [Education] perk or trait]

[You have completed 1,000 local hours of practical engineering : +10 marks of labor, +10 marks of knowledge]

[You have recruited 10 people to your cause : +10 marks of passion]

[You have recruited 10 people (scientist/engineer rating 4+) to your cause : Ability unlocked [Fluent Jargon], +1 crystallized luck]

“This is all actually kind of fascinating.”  I mutter.  Admittedly, I spend a lot of my lives as a loner, and almost none of them were as a proactive leader.  I’ve been a leader, but it’s always in the form of someone hired for a job, or slotting into an existing structure in some way.  The fact that there’s a separate reward track for being the one forming the organization is… unsurprising, I guess.  Not exactly unexpected.  The between seems to care about a lot of things, it’s not surprising it cares about this.  But it’s novel to me, and that’s saying something after all this time.

Mark takes a sip of his ornate goblet of water and sighs.  “Yeah, I’m learning I don’t understand this thing at all .”  He shakes his head, turning to look out over the small courtyard garden.

I really should have looked at this ‘hallway’ earlier.  It’s so much nicer out here than I expected.

The chairs wobble a little on the cobblestones, and the table is uneven enough that Mark’s attempt to note down stuff on spawned napkins has been disrupted already by a slight tip to the surface sending his hard work into nothingness.  And the wall to my left is… well, it’s odd.  It’s clearly supposed to have some doors set in it.  There are places where the crawling ivy and wrought iron lamps frame empty spaces in the rough pink-white stone.  But there’s nothing there.  It’s waiting; waiting for us to have more rooms to add.

To my right, though, is a beautiful sight.  The stone columns and arches that frame the boundary of the hall look out over a little square of a garden.  Roses and other hardy flowers blooming under the twilight.  And it does feel like twilight, despite there being no sky.  The dome over the garden is painted with what looks like an abstract starscape, constellations traced together with white paint against the black backdrop.  But the endless flickering lamplight around us and the breeze coming from somewhere carrying pollen perfume on the air makes it feel like being outside again.

Seeing ourselves mirrored on the other side of the garden is a little weird, but after waving to myself and reaffirming that I find my own body as attractive as I designed it, Mark and I quickly settled into our quiet time together.

I blink, taking my view away from the half blooming rose I was staring at, and reply to Mark.  Neither of us are talking especially quickly, taking our time with the conversation.  A few million heartbeats makes all the difference in how we spend our time.  “Probably not smart to assume we ever know how the between works.”

“I mean…” He waves a hand in the air, staring at one of the glowing notifications he has open near his head with an irate twitch of the corner of his mouth.  “I must have done some of this before.”

“Some things don’t repeat, I think.”  I think back; memories of my time in the between tiny islands in the cloud of centuries.  “Maybe some of them have conditions they don’t exactly share with us.  Keep us from… well…”

“Optimizing?”  Mark gives me a tiny grin over the field of empty cups on our table.  Some of them are holding down napkins, but he gave up writing on them.  Mark’s a tactile person, but there’s only so many times you can lose all your notes before you just give up.  “That would be it, if anything, wouldn’t it?”

“Six already talked to me.” I throw an arm over the back of my chair and try to lean back in a way that’s more comfortable than the black faux leather cushion wants me to be.  “I’m working on the life philosophy a little.”

Mark shrugs.  “I’m not… Luri, I’m not like Six.”  He says.  “Or Jules, really.  I see where you’re coming from, because I want to live one life at a time.  We see people come through who are mapping out skill training over… over… literal civilizational epochs.”  He goes to take a drink and finds everything but his water empty.  Frowning, he reaches over to my side of the table only for me to playfully swat at his hand.  “I think those people are crazy, but only some of them are actually evil.”

I give him a low hum and a shake of my head.  “I don’t like that word.”

“Yeah, well, I do.”  He snorts.  “How many lives ago that we met that fox samurai that was preaching genocide?  Or the xet cultivator who was going all in on setting xeself up as a deity and farming marks of faith?”  Mark leans back and flicks off a couple of his notifications.  “It’s really hard to tell how to do good.”  He says softly.  “But…”

“Not so hard to recognize monsters.”  I sigh.  He’s right, which annoys me.  He’s also right that it isn’t fair to say that the pattern of optimization doesn’t have to be evil itself.  I just worry that there’s too few steps between trying to form a perfect trait build, and trying to figure out if there’s an achievement for blowing up more than a hundred people at a time.

There is, incidentally.  It’s one I’m not particularly proud to have gotten, but don’t regret the circumstances of.  Though I never told anyone else here, because of exactly the reason Mark and I are talking about.  If we know how to get achievements and rewards, that’s going to influence how we act.  How we live.

But because we haven’t been talking about it, that means it’s strangely and surprisingly comforting now to wonder if the between agrees with me .

Because Mark is right.  About a lot of things, annoyingly, but also that the between doesn’t seem to want us telling each other how to get certain of its prizes.  We do sometimes talk about the weirder ones, the funnier ones, the ones we’re proud of.  But I don’t think any of us ever set out into new lives planning to replicate those feats.  Maybe if we did, we’d find that we don’t get the same thing, or don’t get anything at all.

It’s odd, and maybe worth experimenting with.  It also still isn’t specifically true  either.  So much of the between is just looped lies, or truths in such nested patterns that none of us can understand them on our time scale anyway.

The man across the table from me drags me up from my morose mental poetic musings with a surprised grunt.  “Oh hey.”  Mark comments with raised eyebrows.  “New perk.   [Kennel Guard] .  That’s… that’s a good memory.”  He’s wearing a sad smile, the corners of his eyes glistening.

“You made a difference.”  I reach out and take his hand, nudging glasses and mugs aside with my arm.

“Isn’t this supposed to be the other way around?”  Mark laughs.  “I thought I was the steady one, and I reassured you .”

A laugh spills from my lips.  “Mark that’s not how it’s gone the last five times we’ve met.”  I remind him.  “I have splashy emotional trauma, you get the subtle stuff that needs quiet words and philosophical thinking.”

“It’s not fair if you just say it out loud.”  He pouts.  It’s adorable on his sculpted face.

We go back to looking through our notifications, feeling a little lighter and a little more tired.  The paradox of being alive, sitting at a table covered in empty cups and damp napkins.

[You have learned 1 step in basic lockpicking : perk unlocked (Rogue)(Dexterity) [Crack], +20 marks of knowledge]

I make a note of that one for when we share small stories later.  I didn’t so much learn how to pick locks as it was a frantic lucky break when I got it right at the last second and my partner and I made our daring escape.  It’s just… a little undercut in the dramatic tension by the fact that the lock I was picking was a flimsy latch on a storage closet for cleaning supplies, and my partner was a stray cay I was trying to rescue from the school’s janitorial staff.

My last life left me feeling morose and uncertain and grim, like I wasn’t sure if I’d killed a world or saved it, ruined my own mind or found a new clarity.  A dichotomy written in big bold letters that read “I am confused!”  But… but it’s not possible to live a life that’s just one story.  You can’t only be a single big thing.  Half the time when we talk here, we start with the big stuff, the central theme, the narrative that’s really easy to see when we’re dead and through it.

But people, even people like us, don’t live that way.  Maybe we could if we were actively achievement hunting and optimizing for specific jobs or skills or powers.  But on the stage of life, Bastion’s is full of method actors.  And lives just pile up  with small stories.  A lot of them so small they might seem boring compared to the big ones, but all of them mattered to us at the time.  And they’re fun to share.

Breaking into a janitor’s closet to save a cat seems so petty compared to anything that we might start our life stories with.  Ellin tends to open hers with a body count , and it’s easy to think that a small adventure like this just wouldn’t measure up.

But it matters to me, and if nothing else, I can trust that Molly will ask me a lot of questions about the cat.  Molly loves cats.  We all like cats, except Jules, who has inexplicably been allergic to them in half his lives.  But Molly is one step away from abandoning her kobold body and just being a housecat, and there are some days when I can’t blame her; it seems like it would be relaxing.

“I just realized,” Mark mumbles partly to himself, “I’ve got this new thing, and also a pair of animal friend traits.  Plus we’ve got that book that buffs [Charisma]  upgrades on targets under a certain intelligence, right?”

I tilt my head back, looking up at the roughly carved arch of stone overhead where we’re sitting.  “I don’t know?  I don’t know the book perks.”

“You read all the time!”

“Yeah, because I love reading, Mark .”  I train my old eyes on him, amethyst reminders trying to stare threateningly into his soul.  Assuming that we aren’t all just freefloating souls here already.  “I don’t like reading for the perks.”

Mark nods at me as his fingers open and maneuver a glowing pane of lit up words to his side.  “I know, I know.  And that’s a very Luri thing of you to love.”  He says with utter confidence that I’ll understand that he’s not being an ass.  “My point is, I liked my dogs.  And maybe I can do that again.  Not next life, not right away.  I… I’m…” He lowers his hand and stares blankly for a moment.  “I need a little time, at least.”  He whispers.

And I’m reminded that being here, de facto, means we have experienced loss.  Maybe Mark’s dogs are still alive and woofing, doing great out on the plains of a struggling world.  Maybe they were dead before he was.  Maybe time is weird and it’s already been thousands of years and their descendant puppies are evolving into a new dominant species in the vacuum left by the collapse.  That last one probably isn’t happening, but I like to dream big.

But no matter how they’re  doing, Mark is here.  And there’s an insurmountable gulf between them.  He will never see them again, again.

That sentence is one we have to grapple with and grieve over every single time we sit down in Bastion’s.  We’ll never see them again.  Whoever we were, whoever they were.

I don’t like the word never.  It seems petty and meaningless to immortals like us.  So maybe I’m wrong; if I had faith at all I’d prey that I was.  Because I want to be wrong.  I want to see them all again; everyone I’m waiting for, every forgotten face and missing voice.

Mark not wanting to dive back into being some kind of dog whisperer makes sense.  He’s got too many emotional memories right now, not enough time to mourn and heal.  Diving back into it, but seeing different fur on the other end, would be too painful.  We’ve all been there.

“When you’re ready for it, I bet you’ll be the best dog dad on that world.”  I offer him a distraction.

He huffs out a small laugh.  “Big assumption.  Remember that time Ellin set her whole build around pistols when she wanted to be a gunslinger, then got landed on a world that thought the trebuchet was the pinnacle of projectile weaponry?”

I brighten up rapidly, leaning forward on my elbow over our cluttered table.  “I do .  That was amazing.  She was pouting for a hundred thousand heartbeats.”  

Mark’s laugh this time is more genuine.  “Well, I don’t wanna land on a world with only darba or something when I’m looking for dogs!”  He folds his arms over his chest, tugging at the feathers of his toga.  We lapse back into silence for a bit, Mark looking over my shoulder and back through the archway to the main room as someone lets out an uproarious laugh.  Then he sighs.  “I’m mostly done with my notifications, and I don’t think I got the thing.  How’re you doing?”

I blink and look at the list of things the between wants to tell me.  I’ve got a few more to get through myself.  “Well, it’s in here somewhere.”  At least the one I’m hunting for, I know is there.  Mark’s just been hoping.  “Also I believe in you!”  I tell my friend with as much bravado as I can muster up.  “I’m sure you climbed the social ranks of your doggos, that’s gotta count, right?”

“It absolutely does not.”  He flicks his fingers over another projected notification and sighs.  “Nope.  Okay, gonna finish this up.”

We both go back to filing our way through our notifications, silently enjoying each other’s company, and the soothing pool of heartbeats waiting for us.  It’s so much easier to take your time when you have so much time to take.

[You have recruited 10 people to your cause : +9 marks of passion]

[You have recruited 10 people to your cause : +8 marks of passion]

[You have recruited 10 people to your cause : +7 marks of passion]

[Your connection is recognized : Souvenir granted (Brass Key)]

The key thunks onto the table between us, making a racket as it clinks against two glass rims on the way down.  Mark jumps slightly, but I knew it was coming, and both of us just stare at it.

He makes an inquisitive sound.  “I don’t know.”  I offer.  “I don’t… remember this at all?  The between sure thinks it mattered to me.”  I pick it up gingerly with two slim fingers, dangling it in the air between us.  It has three thick teeth and an equal number of metal loops at the back.  It doesn’t look like anything from my last world.  Which is confusing, but not actually that weird; these things happen sometimes.  Souvenirs that don’t line up to lives, little trinkets from nowhere at all.  “Molly runs [Identify] , right?  I’ll bother her about it later.”

“No, you’re thinking of Tee-kon.”  Mark grimaces.  “Or… maybe?  I don’t actually know now.  We should keep a list or something.”

“On napkins again?”  I arch eyebrows at him, trying not to smirk.

Mark glowers at me, and slumps as he turns his attention away from the key, going back to looking at his notifications.  “You’re a cruel person, Luri.”  He says without any heat.  Mark’s attempts to document anything have never ended well.

“Maybe in your next life you should build around being a documenteer, and come back with a box of paper as a souvenir!”  I needle him joyfully.  He’s already gone back to clearing notifications though, and I’m nearly done myself, so I join him.

A couple more work thresholds for some extra marks, one kill from a particularly aggressive stray dog that I do not mention to Mark, and then I only have one left, which must be what I’m looking for.  But I’m preempted from taking my most important prize by a sound from the table.

It’s a tiny metallic clink.  And I think, briefly, that one of us just nudged the key into a glass, but no.  The sound is sharper than that, cleaner.  And my eyes look up to meet Mark’s, and see the beaming proud grin on his face.

“Guess the dogs did count!”  He says, holding up the small disk of some polished yellow metal between us.  He has to fish it out of the bottom of one of the empty cups that it landed in.

It’s thin, stamped with an icon of a three leafed plant, and ridged around the edge.  He turns it over and I see the face of an aged gnoll on the other side, metal eyes blankly staring out at me.  Mark turns the coin in his fingers again, staring at it, and both of us feel a shift in the false air of the between.  The thing is practically thrumming .

“That… seems… nice?”  I desperately try to think of something clever to say, and come up empty at first.  “Well, you’re now officially the richest person in Bastion’s, at least.”

“Oh, that’s not true at all.  Jules has that [Augmented Finance]  trait that makes him ten percent richer, right?”

My trap springs.  “Ten percent of zero is still zero, kid.”

“I’m two thousand years old.”  Mark grumbles.  “At a certain point you have to stop calling me that.”  He sets the coin back on the table, though his eyes don’t leave it.  “I wonder what it does?”  He muses.  “I hope we get a server soon, I’m more than happy to pay the marks to know.”

“I swear we can just ask Mols.  I know it’s her.”

“You’re confusing the two of them because they say the exact same thing when you ask them to identify something.”  Mark sounds suddenly tired as he corrects me.  Then he pitches his voice higher, doing an impersonation of our friends.  “What do you think I am…”

“…a public access librarian?”  I finish the comment, shaking my head.  Neither Molly nor Tee-kon have ever told us why they giggle uncontrollably when that comes up.  But this just reinforces my belief that Molly is someone to ask.  “Well, I’m sure it’s impressive.  It feels impressive.”

Mark nods distantly, staring at his new coin.

I decide I also want to show off something.  So I open up my final notification, and realize an instant too late that the table is covered in obstacles I don’t particularly want to scatter to the ground.

[Perk - Scroll Harvester has triggered : you have memorized 5,000 words of local literature : +2 perk cysts, +2 aura drops, Souvenir (A Savior Of Barkblossoms)]

I grab the book out of the air as it appears, my hand flashing out to snatch it before it can make cleaning up from our quiet time together harder than it has to be.  Mark looks away from his coin long enough to give me a respectfully impressed nod.

The tome has a black and white image on the cover of a man standing by a tree.  It’s clearly from a library, with a thin clear coating over it, and a pair of tags indicating where it is from, and how to find it in the stacks.  Despite its blocky size, it’s both lighter and softer than it looks.  The between does something to make the text understandable to all of us, as it always does, but I don’t think anyone else will get the context of how the title is written vertically down the right side.  This is from somewhere, and the parts of the composition tell me where from my last world that might be.

It’s a true story about how a single man’s obsession with a particular flowering tree led to the plant being saved from extinction.  Twice.  Written by his grandson, the words meander through describing an old noble estate, a fascination with arboreal arts, and the geopolitics of cultural flower sharing.

I have read this book twice, because I was bored one day and the library was closed.  It’s not what I would have chosen to bring with me, but I didn’t have a choice.  And yet, despite that…

“How do you feel about trees ?”  I ask Mark.

“I’m fifty fifty on them.”  He answers instantly.

I pass the book across the table, and he takes it with eager hands as I push myself off my chair, let the between’s magic take the soreness out of my perfect ass, and start collecting our cups to take back to the bar.  “Give this a try.”  I tell him.  “I bet you’ll tip at least a couple percentage toward trees by the end.”