guppy_sandhu | Guppy's 30th Birthday Party

Guppy's 30th Birthday Party

Having collected everyone from the bar, Guppy leads them back through to the house, where they enter through the kitchen.

The living room furniture has been mostly moved out of the way, and that's where the most of the party has been set up. The sofa and some chairs are around the edge of the room, and there's music playing. The kitchen is a bit small so the food is being taken through into the dining room. Also a little on the small side, but enough for purpose. All of the baby gates are open on the ground floor, but not on the stairs.

Upstairs, the spare bedroom has been set aside for any little people at the party. It's a bit quieter, with baby-sized food, some toys, and a DVD of Pingu playing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Exactly. Or... well, in my case, just the opposite. It was nice not shedding all over everything, but you don't realize how sensitive hair is, how much it helps you to feel what's touching you, until it's gone. And being with Coreen--go to kiss her on the cheek, but I don't have any temperature of my own, I just feel hers. And I don't smell her shampoo, I sense it in terms of the chemicals involved. It's not feeling things, it's more detached. If that makes sense."

Enzo nods. "For me, the hair tickles. Even after I got used to it. And I feel temperatures a lot more, but cold's uncomfortable. And," he lowers his voice confidentially, "the eyelashes make me feel kinda girly."

"Guys tend to have thicker eyelashes than girls," Squirrel says, "which is a little weird. But I wind up feeling lost and kinda naked without all the hair... kinda institutional, maybe? Definitely felt inorganic."

"That is weird. Guy sprites don't even have eyelashes."

"I had them when I was a robot," he says, "but I was supposed to look and feel really human at the time, so... Just weird all around. If I change for Cubefall again it won't be that, next time."

"What would you want to try?" asks Enzo, wiping what seems to be the last of the banana off of Evan.

"I don't know," he says. "Maybe something just... ordinary human, you know? Not a robot, not a mutant, just ordinary. Coreen might like that."

"It's worth trying," Enzo agrees. "I was a halfa for Dani, my first Cubefall." Not that he didn't want to try it himself. "That was my first time being organic. And last Cubefall I was a dragon."

"Which was weirder to you, being organic or being a dragon?" he asks. "Or... well, the dragon was probably organic too, right?"

"Yeah, but... being organic the first time, definitely. A dragon's just a different shape, that's no big deal."

"You're probably a lot more used to changing shapes than I am, with the games and all," Squirrel says. "But I'm pretty much always like this--Other-Me says I can shapeshift, but I haven't been able to yet."

"There's another you, too?"

"Oh, yeah. There's three that I know of, two I've met personally. One was nice, the other was kind of a jerk. I guess it makes sense, though."

"It does?"

"Well, you figure. It's you, sorta, but it's not you, if that makes sense--so it's an even bet whether other-you will be nice or not. He wouldn't have quite the same experiences as you. One of the other-mes was a pilot from about seventy years before me, and he was nice, even gave me candy. The other one I talked to was a lot more recent, but pretty insulting. Coreen knows him."

"Oh, that. Yeah, okay. Like how Matrix came out so cranky. Are the other-yous clones, or just your world being weird?"

"They're not clones," he says. "Neither of them has the ears or the tail--well, the jerk one did, but not all the time. He can shapeshift."

"So these are from, like, when your world changes?"

"I think so," he says. "I'd say it's like reincarnation, but we're all alive. Well... '40s-me may not be. He's like that cat in a box that may or may not be dead. Nobody knows."

"...I don't get it."

"Which part?" he asks. "If it's about Other-Me, well, I don't really get it either. I just try to accept it and move on. Thinking about it too much gives me a headache."

"I think I'll go with that."

"Life's a weird thing, though. I mean... the way it is on my world makes sense to me, sort of, but it doesn't to other people. The way life is on their worlds doesn't make sense to me. But life itself is pretty crazy, the fact that atoms have evolved into people, humans, squirrels, your kind, robots, everything. Billion-to-one odds, and yet here we are."

"That's true," says Enzo, picking up Evan with a grunt. "And, I mean, sprites need humans to make us first, so the odds against us must be even higher. Maybe that's why we haven't found any others."

"Yeah. Like the scientists say the odds of life evolving on Earth are so small that the odds of finding it on any given other planet are next to nonexistent--there's so many factors that can keep it from happening, and even if it does, it may not be a form we'd recognize. So if other worlds have other humans who have made other sprites, they may not look like anything you'd consider a sprite."

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