Once upon a time there was–
“A king?” my little readers will immediately say.
No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time, there was a woman. She was not a fine woman, not a prize to adorn your arm or to set beside you at the head of a grand table, but a simple woman — the kind we pass on the street and imagine some plain home life for. She has a house, one might think. There are floors and walls and windows, there are tables and chairs and sofas and beds. There is a shower and a claw-footed bathtub. There is a creaky step — the eighth — that she always swears she will fix.
End Of Endings (usually written "The Woman") is a member of the Ode clade, a group of people who all stem from the same original uploaded consciousness — that of Michelle Hadje, who uploaded in 2117 — who have all named themselves after lines of a poem and organized into stanzas of ten lines each. In 2403, she has been alive for 317 years and is struggling with the fact that her original goal was to process past trauma that Michelle suffered, but she has instead gotten stuck living in a state of incompleteness.
In 2409, Rye, another member of the same clade (and thus also templated after Michelle) writes the story of End Of Endings in the style of a fairy tale — notably, she treats it as a telling of the original Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. However, it becomes clear through the telling that she is becoming increasingly unbalanced due to what she terms 'overflow', an episodic shift in mental state that, for her, drifts into psychosis, graphomania, and anxiety.
End Of Endings's life is described as one of relative stillness and quietude, with her dwelling at home where it is calm for the most part, leaving only once or twice a month, and usually then to visit her friend, No Hesitation (usually written "Her Friend"). Whenever they meet, End Of Endings describes a desire she has to 'unbecome', but states that she doesn't actually know what this looks like or entails, but promises that once she does, she will tell No Hesitation.
After a particularly lovely meeting with her friend, End Of Endings is left thinking about joy and just how fleeting it is. Does it just float away? Does is it parceled out whenever you share it with others? Does it just disappear? A few days later, she has a therapy appointment with Ever Dream (usually written "Her Therapist"), but before she can share her thoughts on the matter, she is stopped. Since No Hesitation and Ever Dream are colleagues, Ever Dream requests that she not share any personal information. Feeling cut off from the topic, End Of Endings agrees and ends the appointment blandly and goes to take a nap. After waking, she speaks with Rejoice ("Her Cocladist"), who opines that maybe their stanza, the tenth, is "built to suffer" if that of No Hesitation and Ever Dream, the seventh, is built to provide therapy.
Doubtful of this, End Of Endings meets up with No Hesitation and decides that she will deliberately seek out joy in various forms. First, she decides to try various different foods, and finds some that she adores, while also running into issues with not being able to enjoy everything. counting this only as a partial success, she moves on to seeking joy in physical contact and affection, from holding paws with her friend to seeking out a groomer who treats her very kindly, to rekindling a relationship with an erstwhile lover, Farai ("Her Lover"). Similarly, she finds some success in touch, but also finds a lot of anxiety.
Next, she seeks joy in the consumption and creation of media, and here is where we see the crossover between End Of Endings and Rye as they meet to discuss this very topic. End Of Endings explains that she has already spoken with a few others creatives in the clade — Slow Hours ("The Poet"), Beholden ("The Musician"), and, briefly, Motes ("The Child") — about how to actively consume media (reading, listening to music, and taking in visual art), but that now she has come to Rye to talk about what goes into creativity. They struggle to come up with what it is that End Of Endings might actually create, and so they bring in Warmth In Fire ("The Oneirotect" or Rye's "beloved up-tree") to discuss what it is that goes into creativity. The discussion turns somewhat dire, with Warmth In Fire worrying that, since all joy is fleeting, End Of Endings may well just give up and quit, an active process that is equivalent to committing suicide, should one leave no other instances around. Given that in 2400, a large scale attack on Lagrange (the system holding these uploaded consciousnesses) led to 23 billion instances being lost, including some of the Ode clade, this bears particular emotional weight.
Rye reminisces about the origins of the clade in Michelle Hadje, their shared history growing up back on Earth, their Jewish upbringing, their love of the stage, the love they had for one of their friends, RJ Brewster/AwDae, and how they wound up with the neurological trauma they are all afflicted. She remembers the way in which Michelle found the furry subculture and presented first as a feline and then as a skunk. She chose skunk after a string of abusive relationships as a way of leaning into that "undesirable" nature, and tangentially had a breast reduction both for health reasons as a way of claiming ownership of her body, leaning into queer femininity. Her descriptions of these memories are tinged with a bitterness and describes of how Michelle — and thus all of those who are of her clade — are worthy of love, as well as a the pain that comes with not feeling loved. As she reminisces, Rye describes how End Of Endings went for a walk after the meeting with her and Warmth In Fire to deal with overwhelming emotions and eventually fell asleep in the field outside her house and dreamed of slowly turning into a tree, and the utmost peace that comes with that. The next morning, End Of Ending joins Rejoice to remember one of their lost cocladists. Six decades prior, Death Itself, apparently having had her fill of life, quit. Rejoice, who had loved her dearly, has been in mourning ever since.
End Of Endings returns to visit Motes to learn more about her, but along the way, happens across a dog, Scout ("The Dog"), laying in the sun in a theater lobby. Given the fact that only human consciousnesses have been uploaded, she knows this must be a dog who was once a human but who has moved away from that appearance. They talk about what it means to change so drastically, and Scout tells End Of Endings about The Rabbit Chaser, who has abandoned all semblance of humanity in mind, body, and soul. The life of The Rabbit Chaser is exceedingly simple and End Of Endings recognizes something close to what she is looking for in this. Still, she continues on to meet up with Motes, who, despite also being from the same clade, has decided to lean into childhood, appearing to be about seven years old. They talk a little about what this means, though mostly they just have a calm, happy afternoon together. At one point, however, Motes explains that Serene, another Odist, who designs landscapes and natural areas, once spent six months as a tree to truly inhabit one of her creations, giving End Of Endings the idea to perhaps follow this dream.
Rye discusses what it might mean to unbecome, and why it matters so much to those who are struggling as so many of those in the Ode clade seem to be. She describes it as the utmost in agency in a world that seems bent on taking agency from those within it. End Of Endings, however, describes it as the utmost in stillness in a conversation with No Hesitation. Perceiving that there is perhaps a very dramatic decision coming up, No Hesitation begs End Of Endings to be safe.
Clearly struggling now and barely able to hold it together, Rye describes a conversation she had with Dry Grass ("The Blue Fairy"), who works as a systech: someone who helps those who are having troubles with living as uploaded consciousnesses. Dry Grass explains that, indeed, End Of Endings is looking for help in this endeavor of utmost stillness in the form of a tree. Rye bridles, explaining that this sounds like suicide without any responsibility for the act. Dry Grass, however, says that she isn't sure this is the case, that End Of Endings seems to be treating it almost as a work of art, since she'll be having her name grayed out in the directory, so no one will know if she's alive or dead, and it will be up to everyone to come up with their own interpretations. Rye, a sucker for stories, eventually agrees that this is a pretty good one and says that she thinks End Of Endings should have the chance to go through with this.
Finally, Rye describes how Dry Grass leads End Of Endings to the very same cafe where she usually meets up with No Hesitation. Out front in the sidewalk is now an empty plot of dirt, where Dry Grass helps see this transformation through to the end. Throughout, Rye's mourning grows overwhelming and her writing falls apart until she is just repeating the phrases "And am I born to die?" and "What will become of me?" over and over again, both lines taken from the hymn "Idumea".