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

"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."

"The closest we've found are the Autobots and Isaac."

"I've seen the Autobots around," he says, "but I don't think I know Isaac."

"Nah, you wouldn't. He can't come to Milliways. He's the Autobots' Earth's Internet. We're pen-pals."

"Oh... you send messages to him through them, then? Or is there some kind of network that you can access from the bar? I've never been able to get my computer to connect, but I'm not the most technologically literate guy around."

"No, through them. Uncle Optimus takes them for us."

"That's handy," he says. "Bet you guys have a lot to talk about, notes to compare, humans to pick on, the works."

Enzo laughs and nods.

"It's kind of weird scanning his letters. Everything he does is on a totally different scale. But he's cool. He's really smart, but... he's still just a kid. And... I don't know why, but he looks like me."

"...it's really weird to think about something like that, something intangible--that's how I see the internet--as having a consciousness of its own, and aging and growing and learning and all that. But then, just about anything inorganic is out of my range of experience."

Enzo, as a representative of the supposedly-intangible set, smirks, then utters a "Whoop!" and shifts his grip as Evan suddenly becomes squirmy.

"Is he getting heavy?" Squirrel asks. "He's... well, he's a double-armful these days. It'll be easier in the spring."

"I'm good," he half-lies. He will carry this baby! His machismo demands it! ...wait.

"Why do you guys need all that... extra for the winter, anyway?" He did hear that's what it was for, but he didn't get the details.

"We hibernate," he explains. "Normal tree squirrels don't, but we do, for some reason--mutant thing, I guess. So we have to pack on the weight so we don't starve while we're hibernating. There's nothing like sleeping for three months straight. You wake up, and the whole world's changed."

Sometimes literally.

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