Literature / Post-Self

The fox speaks in italics, somehow

Post-Self is a science-fiction setting started by Madison "Makyo" Scott-Clary set in a future of virtual reality. Each book in the original tetralogy traces two storylines two hundred years apart, one in the 22nd century and one in the 24th. All can be read for free on the series' website or listened to in podcast format. The fourth book, Mitzvot, launched on Kickstarter August 1st, 2022 and was fully funded within the hour. This also included an anthology of short stories set in the same universe, Clade, and a tie-in tabletop RPG based on the Powered by the Apocalypse system. A fifth book, Marsh, was Kickstarted in January, 2024, with stretch goals also funding the novella Motes Played and anthology Ask.

Qoheleth (2020): In 2112 theatre technician RJ Brewster spends most of eir free time hanging out with eir furry friends in virtual reality as a fennec fox, when one friend becomes lost in cyberspace ey investigates, only to become Lost emself. In 2305 the recently uploaded Ioan Bălan is hired by an eccentric fork of one of the first uploads known as Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, who wants em to discover who leaked a secret core to the identity of its clade.

Toledot (2022): In 2325 Ioan is now working with another Odist fork, May Then My Name Die With Me, on a founding mythology of the System in which they exist as a pair of ships carrying many uploads is being launched. In 2124 political activist Yared Zerezghi works with the System in an attempt to secure their independence from the world of the living, meanwhile a member of the System's de facto ruling council experiences a bit of an identity crisis.

Nevi'im (2022): In 2346 an astronomer on one of the ships launched in the prior book, who has taken on the namesake of Tycho Brahe, picks up a message from deep space. Cracks begin to form in the System as First Contact comes closer.

Mitzvot (2023): In 2350, after an attempt on her life, one of the Odists, The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream, changes enough that the Ode clade begins to crumble.

Clade — A Post-Self Anthology (2023): Ten stories by ten authors exploring the ramifications of uploading and forking, both positive and negative.

Marsh (2024): On New Year's Eve, 2399, Lagrange experiences more than a year of downtime, and when it returns, billions of cladists are missing.

Motes Played (2024): And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights enjoys interacting with the world as a kid, about which some folks are quite unhappy.

Ask. — an Odist Q&A anthology (2024): Various authors answer questions posed to members of the Ode clade.

Tropes:

• Brain/Computer Interface: VR is commonly interacted with using implants referred to as "contacts," which come to be given to children as they become more integral to society.
• Brain Uploading: The technology to upload one's consciousness into virtual reality is invented in 2115, the organic brain is destroyed in the process but afterwards one can copy themselves as often as they want.
• Cyberspace: VR is already ubiquitous by 2112, uploading makes it possible to live in it full-time. But what the Lost are trapped in turns out to be more like a lucid dream while their implants leave them locked out of their senses.
• Doppelmerger: The uploaded can create copies called "forks", and forks can create their own forks. When a fork quits, their memories are merged back into any down-tree instances they have, though not to any of their own forks, and if they want to keep running they can create a new fork and immediately quit to send their memories down-tree.
  • In the second book, the progenitor of the 100-strong and nearly 200-years old Ode clade calls all her surviving forks together to fork and merge their forks with her, and quits after receiving all their memories.
  • In long-diverged forks, this can lead to actual Split Personality, as in Mitzvot, where True Name's estranged up-tree instances, May Then My Name and End Waking, merge back down and remain somewhat distinct within her. This leads to an instance of her so changed that she renames herself Sasha once more. Needless to say, drama ensues.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Many of the Lost went insane and wound up killing themselves after they were freed. Including RJ, in a roundabout way.
  • Toledot starts with Dear hosting its, its partner's and Codrin's Death Day party, but after they delete themselves from the System it turns out they forked into the spaceships preparing for launch.
• Duplicate Divergence: Forks allowed to run separately for extended periods, such as the Odists, may diverge organically or intentionally over time. For instance, Dear is a genderless fennec but more conservative Odists tend to be female humans or skunks like the original Sasha, while Qoholeth is male. By the end of the first book Ioan's tracker instance has started calling emself Codrin and decides against merging back.
• Exposed Extraterrestrials: Of the extrasolar Artemisians the Firstrace (post-biological) and Thirdrace (reptilian) don't wear clothes, but the mammalian Secondrace and Fourthrace do have clothes.
• Extinct in the Future: In the 24th century fennec foxes only live in VR anymore.
• Fantastic Naming Convention: The Ode clade are all named after lines from a poem written by a friend of their progenitor, the first ten forks after the first lines of each stanza, and each of their forks is named a line of their stanza.
• First Contact: In Nevi'im the Castor receives a message from an alien vessel they dub the Artemis and both vessels transmit delegations to each other once they come in range.
• The Ghost: Cicero is already Lost by the time Qoholeth starts and RJ and Sasha start investigating his disappearance. After the Lost are freed the narrative jumps to his post-suicide funeral.
• Government Conspiracy: The Lost are caused by a virus the government deployed to silence anyone who knew of a specific voting referendum on the cyber-democracy forums.
• I Choose to Stay: Tycho decides to stay on Artemis, which turns out to be the last criterion for Convergence and allowing humanity to become Fifthrace.
• Intelligent Gerbil: The Secondrace and Thirdrace from the alien ship Artemis have some resemblance to anthropomorphized Earth animals. Secondrace are musteline, reminding the Odists of their weasel-fursona'd friend Debarre, while Thirdrace are saurian with feathered crests.
• Literal Split Personality: When Sasha was Lost her avatar couldn't decide if it was a human or a skunk and she briefly split into two people. Toledot shows that Michelle/ Sasha first experimented with forking in an attempt to separate out her conflicting human and furry sides.
• Living Distant Ancestor: In Toledot Douglas Hadje-Simon is Michelle Hadje's multiple-greats nephew, though her root instance quits before they have a chance to meet, and her fork, May, decides not to reveal their relationship until after he uploads.
• MacGuffin:
  • The contents of the DDR referendum that the Lost virus was intended to cover up is never detailed, and those working on it muse that it doesn't actually matter at this point.
  • The Name, it's importance to the Ode clade is centered around it being a secret, revealing it prompts identity crises.
• Meanwhile, in the Future…: The first two books alternate between two plot threads in two different centuries. The third one has a variant where the characters in the original System react to messages from the Castor several days after they are sent.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Tycho Brahe named himself after the 16th century astronomer after he uploaded.
• The Nondescript: Dear's partner is never named, described, or referred to as anything but "they", because they are intended to be the protagonist of the second-person interactive story "Gallery Exhibition" (included in Qoholeth).
• Overly Long Name: Since Odists are named for lines from a poem they tend to have long and unwieldy names, the shortest What Right Have I and the longest being The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream, usually shortened to "True Name."
• Polyamory:
  • Dear, Dear's partner, and Codrin Bălan form a threesome in the second book.
  • Played with in Mitzvot in a few instances of parallel monogamy: one fork of Debarre is dating End Waking while other instances of him are dating other individuals. Later, in "Selected Letters", the extended epilogue for the tetralogy, Ioan Bălan is in a similar relationship structure with May Then My Name and Sasha (née True Name).
• Population Control: Earth in the 24th century is not in good shape, and governments have started paying people to upload.
• Post-Scarcity Economy: There's references to a "reputation economy" in the early days of the System, and forking cost reputation as it took up processing resources. Though by the 24th century it has largely fallen by the wayside. In Nevi'im a new reputation economy has to be set up for an air-gapped mini-System built for meeting the Artemisian delegation and they intentionally make forking and sim creation prohibitively expensive.
• Pronoun Trouble: Both RJ and Ioan use the neopronouns ey/eir/em, while Dear goes by "it."
• Red Herring: Because RJ/AwDae and Dear both present as fennecs, one might be forgiven for initially assuming they were the same person. They're not, Dear is a fork of RJ's friend Sasha.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: The Fourthrace representative is described as looking almost human, despite being from another star system, with a nose that merges seamlessly into their face and earlobes fused to their neck. They also have sociological similarities to humanity, having practiced forking similarly before joining Artemis and having a parallel to the Lost, albeit with a much higher body count.
• Self-Duplication: Forking, the uploaded have different philosophies on its use and it was expensive in the early days but in the 24th century is routine. "Taskers" rarely fork but when they do they make short-term forks that merge back with the original once the task is done. "Trackers" fork more frequently and sometimes maintain them for extended periods. While "dispersionistas" fork often and seemingly for fun. Ioan is a tracker while the Ode clade are a mix of tracker and dispersionista.
• The Social Expert: True Name has a reputation among the Ode clade as a master manipulator who can redirect anyone around to their point of view before they have any idea what's going on, verging on The Dreaded. Ironically she made May to fill this role for the clade, but she developed too much empathy and True Name had to learn it herself.
• Socially Scored Society: The System has a reputation tracking system for rationing processing resources, with forking and the creation of new simulated worlds in the System incurring the biggest reputation costs. However, most arcs set in the System take place in the System's second century, when it has enough resources that most people fork without even considering the cost.
  • In the 2124 arc of Toledot Michelle Hadje, a member of the early System's ad-hoc governing council creates a bit of a scandal by creating ten forks to help her multi-task. Developing a few tricks to reduce the reputation cost such as merging back before the System registers the fork. As the stigma is reduced her clade grows to 100 long-term forks by 2305, some of whom fork and merge dozens of times a day.
  • In Nevi'im during First Contact with aliens who've uploaded their brains to their own System-equivalent in 2346 a partitioned mini-System is created so their ambassadors can meet with the System's delegation, with it's own reputation scoreboard where the delegation members can't afford to fork. It was designed as such both because of limited resources and because the aliens don't practice forking in their own System.
  • In Mitzvot True Name, the fork Michelle created specifically for politics, suffers both a literal and character assassination attempt from one of her rivals that tanks her reputation and triggers an identity crisis. Forcing her to reconcile with her own estranged forks and reinvent herself.
• Speculative Fiction LGBT: Multiple non-binary characters, including two POV characters in the first book, while characters expressing gender preferences in partners seem the exception rather than the rule.
• Sub-Lightspeed Setting: The launch vehicles launched in Toledot have only traveled thirty light days in the twenty years that have passed by the time of Nevi'im, meaning that messages between them and Lagrange take thirty days to arrive.
• Twin Switch: True Name created Why Ask Questions to manage public sentiment towards secession within the System and Answers Will Not Help to do the same phys-side. 200 years later Why Ask Questions joins the delegation meeting with the Artemisians, but her instance going to Artemis is switched with Answers Will Not Help. Codrin suspects the switch but it's not confirmed until Answers melts down from time dilation trauma.
• Immortality:
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Qoholeth's motive, he believes that the uploaded have become stagnant when they became immortal and stole the Name so he could make a speech to the other Odists and goad one of them into killing him.
  • Really 700 Years Old: When you can choose your appearance, you can also choose everything about how you interact with the world. Motes, for instance, often chooses to appear as and act like a child.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: The Lost have no sense of time in their private prisons, Michelle/Sasha was only Lost for 16 hours but it felt like several lifetimes. The aliens on Artemis can manipulate their own subjective time rates at will, which gives the Odists in the delegation from Castor post-traumatic flashbacks.