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(( I've had this around for a while and finally get to post it! It's mainly a story, but it does end in a potential RP starter ))

The impacts of canon shifts upon those in the PPC varied wildly. Sometimes, new facts about the nature of someone’s existence would hit them like a truck, radically altering what they could do. Sometimes, the changes would be subtle. Sometimes, they’d sneak up on you.

Yet, most often, the evolution of canon felt like nothing at all.

Tomash — Tomash#Post-Self, the digital one, the cladist, the fork of a canon character who helped keep the twisting virtual corridors of the PPC tidy (as opposed to Tomash the DoSAT technician) woke up to a message: Marsh was out.

The dog-person, or perhaps, one might say, the digital dream of a dog-person, thought about how he felt this morning and how he’d felt last night. He didn’t notice anything different.

Tentative steps, summoning a shirt, a quick fork-and-merge … all seemed to be the same. Whether this was good news remained to be seen.

Tomash decided his plans for today could wait — the nest of adbots wasn’t that urgent — so he pulled a copy of the new book out of the air and sat down to read.

It didn’t take long for his ears to perk up uneasily. A year of downtime? Lots of instances lost? ???

He wanted to know what had happened, if everyone would be safe. He wanted to know if he — well, the branch of his clade that was still on Lagrange — was fine.

He wanted to keep reading. He wanted to see if canon had anything to say about him.

As the old saying went, When you see two paths, take both.

Tomash forked. Then, as was his practice, he flipped a coin to decide which instance got their pick of tasks. His up-tree won the choice and took over the console so he could go looking for evidence of canonical survival, while the original sat on his bed and resumed reading.

Around two hours later, the Tomash who was reading Marsh reached the end of the book and finally looked up to see what his fork was up to. That second dog was, it turned out, playing solitaire.

“So … any news?” he asked.

“Our down’s definitely around after the incident,” his fork said. “I found some promotional material. But … six Scout instances didn’t make it, unless there’s a bigger happy ending …” He trailed off, trying to keep a bit of hope in his voice.

The other Tomash shook his head. “Nope. Twenty-three billion … dead. And six of ours, sounds like.”

“System preserve …” his up-tree mumbled as he quit. He could tell there didn’t need to be two of him anymore: the splitting up had accomplished his purpose.

Tomash took the merge and let the memories that weren’t solitaire or other thumb-twiddling into his recollection of the past. As he did so, a fresh wave of grief washed over him.

Two different memories, two different moments when he’d learned of the deaths. Twenty three billion. Six.

Twenty-three billion.

Six.

He'd held out hope that his canonical self had been unscathed. His other instance had hoped everything would be fixed eventually. Both hopes were destroyed by the collation of memories.

Twenty-three billion.

Six.

Twenty-three billion.

Six.

His home, which still felt like his home despite him having joined the PPC, had been attacked, and he hadn’t been there … not that he’d have been able to do anything if he had been.

Six of those instances of himself who’d gone out into the System to be dogs hadn’t made it home.

So much had gone wrong and all he could do was read about it.

Twenty-three billion.

Six.

He set the book down by the console and decided he’d go deal with those adbots now. Maybe he could help his new home, even if only a little bit. Not to mention, it would take his mind off of … that.

Hell, he’d liked In The Wind, even if they hadn’t known each other too well. Of all the ways for her to go … .

His emotions kept him distracted enough to get him to that pesky code wandering the ‘corridors’ of digital HQ and shouting about places on new colonies and improved armor.

The bots were soon herded back into their home universe, and while that helped, the systech was still reeling from the news. It was written all over him.

So he set off to absolutely not look for a bar, let alone any of the ways he might get to phys-side HQ, where there were more people who he could commiserate with.

To make progress, he began considering what he’d need to do to get cross-tree merging (for he discovered that, by virtue of running somewhere other than Lagrange, he hadn’t gotten the patches, just like the LVs hadn’t). As he realized he might want to ask his alternate-universe self for help, he almost ran into a door.

Tomash walked in slowly. These last few hours had been a day.

(( And so if people want to chuck any characters of theirs who’ve got tragic canon shifts to deal with at the doggo — or just want to pick up an RP from here — I’d be down ))