Sunday, September 12th, 2032

    I am entirely surrounded by love to the point where if I couldn't just look inside myself at my own heart through Fungie, I would swear it was about to explode….  Seriously!  How is this even my life now?!  On top of that, Lilly fucked my brains out last night!  Which means both my heart and my brains are now compromised.  How am I ever to recover????

    We have fun plans today.  We will be introducing Lilly and Cairn to the grove so that they may dip their figurative toes into our local instance of consensus.  I also get to give the grove a phone so it can surf the net.  They grow up so fast!  It finished the creation of a communication and internet interface node while we were sleeping last night so all that’s left is to give it the actual modem.  Cairn is the computer nerd amongst us, so they will be in love with all the nerdery they can engage in on the topic.

 

    I sat debating if there was anything else to add to my journal entry when a strong set of hands firmly began working the muscles in my shoulders.  I could make nothing but happy noises in response to this and flopped my head back to look straight up at Lilly.  Wait no, not allowed to look at Lilly straight!  She smiled down upon me and bent to kiss my forehead.  “Good morning.”  The surety and warmth in her voice heated my entire body.

    “Good morning to you too.  Ready to deal with Cairn?”  I smirked up at her.

    “I need to get used to the thought sharing, so I’ve already told them about it and they’ve been pestering me with ‘I told you so’ all morning.  That you aren’t already aware of this speaks to some level of self control that seems uncharacteristic of them.”  She looked thoughtful for a moment.  “That or there’s some elaborate chaos in the works and this is merely a quiet before the storm for you.”

    "Oh joy."  I began getting dressed to face the chaos.

    Lilly and I exited the room to find both Sylph and Cairn wearing paper party hats and blowing kazoos with the roll outs and tiny streamers on the ends.  They both cheered and then kazooed in unison, “Congratulations!”

    Lilly rolled her eyes and facepalmed.  I managed something between a chuckle and a groan, but was also blushing bright red.  “Um thanks…”

    “Y’all finally got that over with.  Fuck, all that tension I’ve had to put up with over the years.”  Cairn dramatically fainted against Sylph.  “I deserve a medal.”

    I poked Cairn in the tummy.  “In that case so do both of us for putting up with you.  An entire commemorative plaque for Lilly as she lives with you.”  I stuck out my tongue.  “But also neither of us were really in a place where this would have worked out as well as it did.”  I gave Lilly a tip-toed peck on the cheek and walked over to Sylph to do the same.  “Good morning, beautiful.”

    Sylph pulled me back by the chin and gave me far more than a peck, letting her hand linger holding my chin as she pulled away to speak.  “Good morning to you too.”  She turned to the others.  “So.  Breakfast and then we should take you to the grove and my cave.  We have a lot to do today and plans with Larry, Jessie, and David this evening.”

    Everyone nodded and we had a lovely polycule breakfast where I only cried once from being emotionally overwhelmed with the joy of the moment.

    * * *

    We arrived in Sylph's clearing which had taken on an even more well kept appearance since I had first visited.  It was still morning so all was in shade with little to no direct sunlight filtering through the trees, but the bright blue sky overhead lent enough illumination to present Lilly and Cairn with a wonderful sight. 

    The mossy clover path through the middle was glistening with morning dew.  The path was flanked with mushroom caps of amazing variety, each softly glowing, only barely noticeable in the morning light.  

    My two friends… Wait, is Lilly my girlfriend now?  And Cairn something a step beyond a metamour maybe?  We shall have to have this talk now too… The two of them were awestruck on stepping between the last trees into the clearing, mouths both open while slowly taking in the scene.

    Sylph twilled around to face them from the middle.  "Welcome to my home."

    "I'm sorry Sylph but I must ask again: Marin, are you sure she hasn't bewitched you with some fae magic or trickery?  This very much looks like their work."  Lilly's grin betrayed the sarcasm laced throughout her query.

    "If she did, I ran to it willingly and you've no hope of pulling me free."  I dramatically hung off of Sylph, completely in her thrall.  I got up quickly and waved for them to follow us.  "Anyway, come along."  Sylph took my hand as we made our way inside.

    I flopped on Sylph's bed and had Badger come lay beside me.  Sylph went to kneel beside the water basin in the center of her cave.  When Cairn and Lilly entered, and were again awestruck, I patted the bed beside me to indicate they should sit.  It shook them from their awe long enough for them to do so.

    Sylph did her wonderful wiggle in preparation for speaking, and I whispered to the two next to me, "isn't she cute when she wiggles like that?"

    She paused as she was about to start to playfully glare at me.  "As I was about to say…  This,"  she waved a hand to the basin, "is a central node for the organism that has been growing in the soil of this valley for several thousand of years.  I created this cave and brought it in here, through the open wall you see there." she indicated the wall of root and soil, from which the small stream that filled the basin emerged.  "This basin is something of an interface for me to interact with the organism, though most of our interaction can be done through the entangled connection we have."

    Cairn raised their hand.  "Sylph, this is awesome and all, but I don't think you've told us what any of this is even here for yet.  For all I know this could still be some alien terraforming project cultivating the planet for invasion another several thousand years from now."

    She giggled at Cairn.  "Yes we didn't get to that last night." 

    I again whispered to the two next to me.  "Y'all'll like this part.  It's neat!"

    "As Marin put it when I told em, it's part of a galaxy spanning telescope array."

    "See, isn't that so cool!  Millions of years ago, they sent off a burst of seeds, traveling at nearly the speed of light, to spread this organism all across the Milky Way.  It's all just a giant act of discovery and exploration."  I was bouncing my knees excitedly.  I loved how amazing Sylph's people were.  "But no invasion or terraforming, the aliens have their own prime detective set of ideals that they actually hold to, unlike the whole colonial military organization that is Starfleet."  I shared with my friends my understanding of their prime directive and my memory of Sylph's prior info dumping on the topic.

    Lilly rotated on the bed to focus more on me.  "I see, non-interference.  And now that the world knows something is out there and they've interfered?"

    I shrugged.  "That's where they are at now.  Minimize impact and leave, or begin the work of developing trust and shared values to begin actual interactions."

    Lilly had a wonderful thoughtful look on her beautiful face for a moment.  "And that's where you, Cairn and I come in?"

    Sylph spoke up.  "Exactly, and the organism in the grove here.  Marin has started to alter the grove into a node of our network that can house another Consensus, one for humans.  One we'd like you to join with."  Sylph giggled.  "This is the extra cult sounding part."

    Cairn raised a hand again.  "So what really is this consensus thing?"

    I laughed at them.  "It's very cute, but you don't need to keep raising your hand.”  Cairn put their hand down and stuck their tongue out at me.  “You've done activism work.  It's a room with a bunch of people interested in a discussion all seeking the next steps and best outcomes, but even better as you communicate each thought with your own personal context for how you came to it.”  I paused for a moment.  "Like imagine that one cis white dude taking up all the space in a room by talking too much."  Lilly and Cairn sighed out of remembered frustration.  "But here, he is forced to confront, deep in his soul, that everyone else present in the room he's been talking over has a wealth of more relevant experience and expertise on the subject in such an absolute way no amount of his own bias could convince him otherwise."

    "Okay seriously?"  I nodded at Cairn.  "For the first time in my life I actually want to befriend a cis guy just so I can see this happen."  

    "I know right!”  I gave Carin a high five.  “It messed with me the first time I stepped forward to share.  It was on the topic of how I could be compatible with the alien organism.  All I was presenting was my own genes, but even then I could feel the disparity between my own experience and theirs.  It is an understatement to say it was humbling.  I have learned and changed a lot the past several days.”

    “Can’t a person still power through and put forward their mess of a proposal anyway?”  

    Sylph turned to Lilly.  “They can, but when a person shares with the consensus, they must present themselves with context.  They bring all the assumptions, all the core values that have shaped those assumptions, and all the life experiences from which those values are derived.  They must bring all these things honestly.  Then before that idea even begins to be discussed within the consensus, a synthesis must happen.  The group present must take all their values, and all the life experience that shaped them, and agree on a shared set of values that encompasses all those experiences.  A discussion can’t happen in good faith without this.”

    I snickered in delight.  “Basically, this dude comes thinking he gets to advance his biased agenda, but the whole thing turns into group therapy where he's forced to reconcile his views and experiences with that of everyone else in the room.”

    Sylph sighed.  “It is also why my people’s first thought is just to leave.  Any contact must first start with that synthesis.  This is nothing but interference.  It forces change in anyone we are in contact with.  This change might be for the best considering predominant views amongst the human population, but it is still an upset in some prior equilibrium that can cause upheaval and harm in the short term.”

    “Well y’all know I’m all for upheaval and chaos.  Where do I start?”  Cairn got off the bed to kneel next to Sylph.

    “I’ll share with you both what I did and my experiences.”  I closed my eyes and prepared a package of thought.  I first shared how I connected with the grove, packaging and releasing a bunch of Fungie’s spores filled to the brim with entangled particles.  I shared my current identity that my other self was using when interacting with The Consensus, including how I created it and how amused the whole Consensus was with how much effort I had put into it.  I noticed how my connections to Cairn and Lilly had now lit up as active on the alien social network now that we were entangled in this extra way.  I shared my filter I created within the grove, my dream of busy little bees organizing topics of The Consensus by facets of gems all overlapping within a space of infinite dimensions.  I shared how to use it to find only topics of interest.  I shared all my experience of interacting with The Consensus, that of both of my instances of self.  

    Lilly and Cairn sat a while taking in all I shared.  They both looked at me with awe.  Probably at all I have accomplished in these past few days compared to the rest of my recent life…  

    Cairn broke the temporary silence.  “There’s fuckin’ two of you?!”

    “Uh, yeah.  I was kinda lost daydreaming frequently on Friday at the library and Sylph showed me how to make a copy that could just chill in The Consensus while I went about my day.”

    Lilly laughed and kissed my cheek.  “This is just gonna keep getting weirder isn’t it?”

    I smiled and rested my head on her shoulder.  “Yup, that’s my life now.  You two can nope out of any of this at any point though.”

    Cairn reached over to me while my eyes were closed and poked me in my tummy.  “Think you can get rid of us so easily.”  They laughed an evil laugh.  “Face it, you are completely stuck with us now.”  

    We all giggled at that and I again was struck by all the love surrounding me.

    Cairn turned back to Sylph.  “So I just blast a bunch of spores into the water here?”

    Sylph nodded.

    “Okay, one sec.”  Cairn closed their eyes and sat there meditatively for a minute or so, then opened them back up, plugged one nostril and blew their nose into Sylph’s basin.  A cloud of glowing motes of light sprayed down into the wafer, landing in the rippling surface their farmer’s blow had caused.

    Lilly sighed.  “Why must you always be so disgusting?”  

    Cairn did jazz hands and little rainbow firework lights shot out from their fingers.  “Chaos.  Also I did have my little headmate make sure no snot would come out.  I’m not completely gross.  The look on y’alls faces was priceless though.”  They shared with all of us what we looked like after they rocketed spores out of their nose, complete with their massive sense of amusement and pride at each of our looks of shock and disgust.  

    Sylph flicked the chaos gremlin’s ear.  “Consent first before defiling my home Cairn.”  Her tone was filled with scorn, playful scorn though.  She’d obviously been practicing something similar to Lilly’s use of that voice.

    Cairn clapped their hand to the side of their head in shock.  “Owwww…”  They took one look at Sylph’s face and hung their head.  “I’m sorry Sylph, carried away by the moment.  Won’t happen again.”

    Sylph patted their head.  “Thank you.”

    Lilly and I were snickering not so quietly at the whole interaction from the bed.  When our laughter subsided, Lilly held out her hand towards the basin.  “I think this will work… and be less disgusting.”  She glared briefly at Cairn before releasing a puff of spores herself.  From her hand not her nose thankfully.  They consolidated themselves into a semi-orderly blob that drifted slowly from her hand to Sylph’s basin, settling gently down into the water.   She smiled somewhat smugly at her partner as she lowered her arm back to her lap.  

    Cairn, in an obvious bid to distract from how much more polite Lilly’s offering to the grove was, spoke up.  “This is amazing…  I can feel them being spread out from here!”

    Sylph smiled at them.  “Yes, they will be dispersed throughout the grove over the course of the next several days, but that’s only for reasons of distributed redundancy.  You now have a direct connection to the grove.”

    My other self had been preparing for how best to introduce them to Consensus stuff, and this was eir queue to start…

 

---

    *Yay! now I get to introduce myself formally*

    ‘They love me so they’ll love you of course.’

    I sent everyone an invitation to a special gem I had created within the grove.  Within that gem was a memory of place, its major facet being, [Place, housing; human domicile; Contacts; {Marin} {Lilly} {Cairn}; sophomore year apartment. San Francisco. Earth, school year 2028-2029].  

    It’s super easy to do virtual reality when all you have to do is evoke a memory of a place and let the brain fill in all the gaps.  I walked through the door, and I was there in the apartment we all shared at college before I left to take care of mom.  I was both in my memory, and my memory made external to me, projected upon the insides of the gem, hosted within the grove’s instance of Consensus.  There was a knock on the  door behind me and I opened it to greet my friends.

    🪨Wow!  What the hell is this?I🪨

    *This is each of our shared memories of this apartment we shared together.  You are currently in the grove’s Consensus.*

    🌺Marin, this is amazing!  How are you even doing this?🌺

    *I’m not, this is all in your own head… sorta.  I have set this topic, this gem, within our Consensus as the memory of our humble abode.  If you… uh… step back?*  I receded out from the gem into the void of the grove, pulling Lilly and Cairn with me.  *This is how I had the grove visually represent topics in The Consensus.  This multidimensional gemstone.  Each facet of the gem can be interpreted by the grove’s filter as an aspect of the topic.*  I pointed to the major facet marking what this gem meant to the three of us.  *This facet indicates the place.*  I pointed at several adjacent facets.  *And these ones represent each of us.  Any gem that has a face matching this will somehow involve you.  You’ll be able to remember these and use them to search for anything within The Consensus the aliens, or now us, are thinking about.*

    🪨They are talking about us?🪨

    *Only passively right now, but you’ll likely find a lot that are indirectly connected as well.  Interaction with humans is something of a hot topic.*  I led them both back to the apartment and sat on the memory of our old couch which they now had in their new place.  *I have also made it so this gem at least, doesn't require presenting your identity.  If you were to join any other gem, you'd first have to create the concept of your current identity and offer that to The Consensus.*

    🌺You had shared about that before, how do we do that?🌺

    *That is something that is present in your colony's instincts.  Just ask it.*

    Cairn and Lilly both sat down on the couch and were quiet for several minutes as they worked on that.  I still had to find some way to tell them that I was the copy of me, but without the weird connotation that it made me lesser than the other me.  Sociolinguistics is weird and annoying in the English language….  But at that moment as if sensing my internal conflict, there was another knock on the door.  My other self and Sylph walked in.  Bleh, queue the sitcom laugh track.  Thankfully, other me had allowed only me to hear the knock, Cairn and Lilly were still dutifully working on their identity as I got up from the couch.  Mental constructs inside of fungal neural networks were just like that I guess.

    ‘How are things going?’

    *We both know very well that we both know exactly how well it is going as we both know exactly the same things doofus.*

    ‘Yeah, that’s true’

    -Marin, have either of you bothered to consider that you are actually still both just the same person and that you are merely acting out being two people out of some subconscious desire for this awkward yet cute form of self entertainment?-

    We both assumed the exact same thoughtful posture.

    In unison, ‘*Interesting hypothesis and quite possibly reality.  You said we were being cute though, so we choose to continue for your benefit.*’  We high fived each other, Sylph signed and rolled her eyes.  This only served to reinforce the behavior.

    Lilly had opened her eyes and twisted on the couch.  🌺Okay, I think…. Marin are there two of you in here?🌺

    *Yes… Sylph thinks I’m just doing this to be silly though.*

    Cairn and Lilly both shrugged and nodded.  🪨Yeah, that checks out.🪨

    My other self and I both crossed our arms under our chests and pouted.  ‘*You two are no fun.*’  But we still both joined them on the memory of a couch.

    ‘So, please do share what you both came up with.’

 

---

    Lilly shared first.  Hers was structured very similar to my own.  She began with the places she was connected to.  Her hometown of LA, the slums and the abuse she suffered there.  Her travels north across California and the places she stopped while fleeing from a former life and home that was no longer safe for her.  Until finally arriving in San Francisco, her memory of the apartment we currently sat on the remembered couch of, the current place her and Cairn shared.  She populated these places with connections and history.  She’d been through so much in her life, abuse as a child, her atempt at taking back her sexuality through survival sex work which only resulted in more trauma, and the frought joy of finally finding safety while not yet having the mental skils needed to cope with the calm.  

    Connections were important to Lilly, clear value and context placed on each person important to who she is today, be that for good or ill.  Her parents and the abuse they overlooked from so called ‘family friends.’  The trail of fetishizing men she burned through in her long journey northward, as well as all the working fems she helped and defended along the way.  The older trans woman named Monique who became her mentor at the queer resource center in Oakland.  Monique held a special place in Lilly’s identity as she set her up with a home, mental and physical health resources enabling her to medically transition, a GED, and eventually a scholarship to university.  Atop all of this she placed Cairn and I, most important of all.  The two she would do absolutely anything for if it meant our continued happiness.  That was who she wished to present to the world.  Someone who had seen more harm than anyone should ever see, but lived and moved beyond it and now would do what was needed to protect and make the world better for those who came after her.

---

 

    Cairn and both parts of me hugged her as we were sobbing once her shared identity washed over us, Sylph rested a tentative hand on Lilly’s shoulder from behind the couch, all while Lilly sat stoically having shed far too many tears for this to have any more.  🌺It’s okay.  I know it’s all a lot.  I’m gonna put a warning on the front of that.🌺  She closed her eyes again briefly.  🌺There, much better.🌺  Both of me giggled through our tears at how amazing she was.

    After several minutes of calming down, Cairn sat up from Lilly’s side and wiped off their face.  🪨And you call me the drama queen.  Are we ready for my turn?🪨

    Both of me finished sniggling and nodded.

 

---

    I should have been ready for Cairn after years of knowing them, but I was not…  

    Their shared identity first dropped me into a folding metal chair, darkness all around me.  I turned both ways trying to get my bearings, there was nothing, but in a flash a spotlight flicked on, I was seated front and center at the end of a runway and the beat of “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astly started over unseen speakers.  Cairn was fucking rickrolling us, but that’s not all, there was more.  Out stepped the state of Georgia onto the runway.  It wasn’t shaped like the state, or a person, or even an entity with legs for stepping.  It was the concept of the state of Georgia as Cairn knew it.  Soft light filled the room revealing a raucous crowd of Cairns (as in somehow each was a quantum duality of a bouncing stack of rocks, and a bouncing clone of my chaos gremlin friend), cheering the concept of Georgia on.  Cairn loved Georgia.  Their family home where they grew up was there, and the Cairns on the left all cheered happy memories rather than voiced words at the concept which now was their home.  Their supportive family and community was there, the Cairns on the right were standing up and rattling in their seats shouting the pure emotion of love at the concept which now was their family and friends.  The concept reached the turn and stuck its ass out real far, the ass was Cairn first discovering their asexuality and all the Cairns in the room joyfully roared their memory of finding the word on a website when they were fourteen as that ass waggled all the way back down the stage.

    Rick Astley’s vocal track dropped and the song was mixed into another.  Now it was a cover of “I’m Too Sexy” by an artist I didn’t know and Cairn’s sharing refused to identify.  Out from behind the curtains strutted the concept of the gender binary and all the Cairns when quiet.  He/she wore beige khaki cargo pants, a pallid off white blouse, a string of ugly greenish pearls,  and the most horrid of frosted tip mullets over her/his pasty face.  The record scratched, the collection of Cairns were all up out of their chairs, a chorus of “BOOOOO” filled the room which I was swept up in joining.  A long sheppard's crook reached out from behind the curtain and yanked the binary off the stage.  The Cairns and I all cheered our love for every entity that dares to flaunt their nuance of gender in the face of cisnormativity.

    The record scratched again and “Fag” by Todrick Hall started blaring.  With this, some superposition of both Lilly and I stomped out from behind the curtain in amazing black and rainbow patterned knee high platform boots I now wish I owned.  We wore a too loose black muscle tank over a white sport bra, tucked into bleached denim short shorts (that only slightly failed to contained my bulge or Lilly’s ass), with a flannel shirt the colors of the trans and nonbinary flags tied around our waist.  The love in the room from the Cairns was deafening.  They all oozed with joy and support for those they cared about (us specifically), and that they swore to always be wherever needed to keep us from taking anything too seriously.  Confetti and dick shaped balloons fell down from the sky, fireworks went off, and adorable puppies spewing big friendly buzzing bumble bees and shark stuffies from their mouths swarmed the stage.  Chaos reigned, and as Marin/Lilly reached the end of the stage and bowed, the sharing faded to black.

---

 

    My other self flicked Cairn in the forehead.  ‘We call you a drama queen ‘cause you fucking are one!  That was amazing though.’

    Cairn stood up and bowed several times in each of our directions.  🪨It’s true, I do have a flare for the dramatic.🪨

    Sylph was too stunned to speak and Lilly just shook her head and hugged the gremlin.