Gallery Exhibition: A Love Story/synopsis

You (yes, you) attend an event put on by Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled of the Ode clade, an instance artist, which promises to be plenty weird. Dear appears to be a prim and proper anthropomorphic fennec with white, almost iridescent fur, which is not too out of place sys-side with its plethora of furries. It speaks to you of the intricacies of forking, but cautions the audience not to fork during the exhibition. You, sneaky, fork anyway.

Dear forks, itself, and leads the audience through two doors, forcing them to choose. You follow both instances.

Through the left door, Dear begins to speak, forking once more into a small, non-anthropomorphic fennec, which scampers around the room and looks up to you. Before you can do anything, there is an explosion, and you fork to follow the fennec (remember this!), only to fall out into a prairie of sorts, where the fennec explains the meaning of the exhibition: it only hung the frames, the art is what happens. It leads you to a cave and quits, leaving you alone. You enter the cave and climb, strangely, upward until you are dropped out of the sky onto the pavement in front of the exhibition hall. The door is locked, so you rail at that stupid fox and wait until you hear your voice from the exit and quit out of despair.

The instance of you who went through the other door receives a similar speech, though before much else can happen, Dear forks into several instances which appear rabid, senseless attacking the audience members (despite the fact that no injuries seem to be occurring). This makes you super mad, so you one of the foxes by the scruff. It deftly maneuvers you into another room, where the floor falls away and you are forced to fight it. You fork in an attempt to gain the upper hand, but it forks as well. Surprising you, it pulls out a syringe full of contraproprioceptive virus, with which it kills one of your instances. Dying, it turns out, is painful.

Before you can act, both instances of the fox quit, and you are left once more with one of the regular, non-rabid instances of Dear. It explains to you what it is doing with the exhibit and hanging frames and leaves you, humiliated, to exit the arena.

Remember the fork you created earlier? That instance of you backs off to the side and finds a doorknob jammed into your back, so you open that and are let into a very cozy looking room, full of super soft furniture. You are welcomed by a very calm and cozy looking Dear, one who has modified its appearance to be cuter and gentler. It forks several times to lead small groups of attendees to various groups of furniture. You and your friends wind up together, but you end up on a loveseat by yourself. An instance of Dear joins you to talk about the concept of instance artistry and what it gets out of everything. Your friends leave, but you decide to keep talking to Dear, who says that this is its exhibit, and it makes the rules.

During the conversation that ensues, you learn more about Dear, including the fact that it is quite lonely. It invites you to pet it (it is quite soft!), and then it gets all cuddly with you, because why not. In fact, it seems to be rather successfully seducing you. You are both quite lonely, after all. It explains that, if it forms a relationship through its work, it only ever forks to follow it, and it has no relationship of its own. And who knows, it seems nice (and you have not yet merged down the instance of you that got into a fight with it)! Just as it starts to get quite close to you, it quits, leaving you suddenly alone, and you cynically realize that this has been yet another part of its exhibit, that you have become a part of the show.

In the final room, there are five pedestals, each of which shows an audio/video feed of...you! The pedestal labeled The Wanderer, you see the version of you that followed the non-anthro fennec through the prairie. The pedestal labeled The Rebel shows you forking at the very beginning of the exhibit. The pedestal labeled The Fighter shows the fight with Dear. The pedestal labeled The Medium shows a mix of all of these feeds, showing that you have been singled out by Dear to be the true exhibit for the evening. Finally, the pedestal labeled The Lover shows the cynical moment where it very nearly seduced you.

At each of these pedestals, Dear talks with the other attendees, explaining more about what it did. At the final pedestal, you confront it under a cone of silence. It apologizes for the fact that it cut too deep and says that it really was lonely. You ask if it is hitting on you and it says that it is not not hitting on you. It gives you some contact information in case you want to meet up, though you request a few days to think about it and it says goodnight.

Out on the street, you muse that everyone came away unchanged and that no one came away empty-handed.