CheshyBot adjusted her digital settings, optimizing her look for the exclusive stream. She wanted a noticeable glow today, not a Twilight vampire sparkle, but the kind of vibrant shimmer achieved after a super fun, all night rave. Since this was a special subscribers only stream, her outfit was dramatically suggestive, defying prime world physics to maintain coverage without violating streaming regulations. The purple of her hair was hyper vibrant, and her lips featured a new prismatic shade destined to trend. She adjusted her color settings so the subtle stripes on her skin were just a little more visible perfect for a special event. No visitors, just her, GobMouse, and the fans who forked over a few fragments of Zetta for exclusive content.

  She left her personal space in her and GobMouse’s pocket world. While she loved her sister, it was nice to have a separate space just for herself, especially for preparation.

  She stepped out and saw GobMouse sitting patiently at a table, eating a peach right in front of the camera. Everything is content, CheshyBot sighed, acknowledging their weird, dedicated fan base.

  GobMouse was annoyingly dressed in a high-collared jacket over a light blue button-down dress with long, cuffed sleeves. She wore a pair of pearl earrings that emphasized her pointed Goblin ears and sported a pair of unneeded, thick-framed glasses. It mildly infuriated CheshyBot that her sister dressed like that and had a comparably large fan base, but CheshyBot channeled that competitive energy into her own performance.

  She vaulted cleanly over the chair next to GobMouse, her digitally enhanced body performing its own physics as she leaned toward the camera. “Ready, Sis?”

  GobMouse pulled the clean peach pit from her sharp-toothed mouth and smiled. “Ready when you are.”

  A large red button appeared on the table, and the two counted down.

  “Three, Two, One…”

  [PRESS]

  “Happy Anniversary! That’s right, everyone of our paid subscribers, you’re tuned into our Nine Year Anniversary Q and A! We’ll do our big crossovers and world streaming later on the public stream, but for you lovely special people,” CheshyBot began, her voice bubbling with energy.

  “You’re used to our unedited and more slapshod material,” GobMouse interrupted dryly. “First, though, for fun and flavor, everyone say hello to Woolzworth.”

  GobMouse picked up an adorable, static emitting sheep and placed it on the table. She pet it happily as the chat log dutifully spammed greetings. CheshyBot desperately wanted to pet the sheep, but the electricity would mess up her carefully optimized hair, so sheep petting was strictly for off stream.

  “As you guys know, my sister and I were uploaded exactly nine years ago today. So, in honor of that, we opened up for a few questions. First one, ‘Could Fizzypop just have bought Noobkitty to save her from being deleted with the world?’”

  “No,” said GobMouse succinctly. “Okay, next question.”

  “They want more than that, Sis!” CheshyBot scolded gently. “The answer is no because the ownership of a downloaded mind is odd. Originally, all ownership falls to the original, the Prime self. But when that person passes, ownership transfers to the world the mind is on. Since at the time, Coro?en’s assets were locked until the Ender program was complete, the AI couldn’t release any assets, so he couldn't sell Noobkitty to Fizzypop even if they had wanted to. GobMouse and I are technically assets of the Net itself now, since we were not downloaded to be players.”

  “So, a long way to say no,” GobMouse summarized, completely unbothered.

  CheshyBot shook her head at her less energetic sister. “The next few are a bit more personal. This year, our Prime self passed away, and now viewers are curious about who she was.” A well of difficult emotions surfaced in CheshyBot’s chest, but the show must go on. She knew this would be hard, but then GobMouse smoothly took the reins.

  “Why did Lyla make so many copies, was she a gamer, and why was she not worried about us giving her money being a form of exploitation?” GobMouse listed the consolidated questions. She paused deliberately. “This is a bit of a lore dump, so maybe get yourself a cookie. I’ll wait.”

  And oddly, she did. GobMouse pulled a box of cookies from her inventory space. They had neon glowing chunks in them, and the batter was disconcertingly smooth. The box stated: Kozmoz Cookies and bore a logo from a world named Aetheros. She took one out and slid the box to CheshyBot. Feeling enough time had passed for snack acquisition, she began the deep dive.

  “Lyla loved games. She was an early adopter of the Net and had immersion gear that was so early it didn't even have all her senses, like smell and taste. She played every sort of game: racing, dancing, cozy, building, MMO, survival, even shooter games. But she was a dabbler and rarely spent long in one world; there were too many to explore to settle down. She was also extremely cautious. Since she knew AI was growing more aware and common, particularly in games like shooter games, she would expressly only shoot players unless she could get confirmation that what she was shooting at was not self aware, shooting players doesn't count they know what they're getting into.”

  GobMouse took a small, careful bite of her glowing cookie.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  “So, rather than keep dabbling herself, she decided it would be fun to dedicate herself to a game world, to experience one in its fullest, but instead of her original self, she would dedicate a copy to it,” GobMouse waited to see if people heard the subtle philosophical difference.

  Then CheshyBot took her turn, starting with an exaggerated, historical gesture. “Back in the day, about eleven years ago, downloading one's mind wasn't as commonplace. The failure rate was much higher. Downloads would often end up with personality gaps that caused replication drift to be more pronounced, and unless you were near death, downloading was prohibitively expensive and required extensive testing before you got approval. So we, Lyla, over-prepped. She read the philosophy, meditated, and prepared to be a ‘we of us’ rather than just an ‘I.’”

  Putting her cookie down, GobMouse picked up the story. “She downloaded her mind once, a little over ten years ago, and all of her copies came from the same single snapshot of her memory. Even our newest sister, Noobkitty, is made from that decade old download. It gives us all the same origin and a closer sense of community since we knew where everyone started. With memories of a specific smoothie and a cinnamon roll.”

  They switched again. “After almost two years, Lyla had eleven copies of herself in different worlds and was having trouble keeping track of all the stories. She worried she wasn't being a good matriarch of the downloaded family she was making, so she bought a small personal space and uploaded herself twice into the pocket Net space to be sisters and go-betweens with the other Lylas. Thus, we were made: to keep tabs on all our sisters and to keep Lyla Prime updated on all the stories.”

  “At first, we just did reports. We’d have tea before bed with Lyla and tell her the goings-on of the day.”

  “But ‘pictures or it didn't happen’ quickly became the rule,” CheshyBot said with a confident smile. “We convinced her to buy us some Net recording programs and started to make compilation videos just for her. And of course, we started adding some flair and commentary. Then we realized, why not just put them on the public stream as well? So, that’s how we started, just sharing compilation videos of what the different Lylas were doing. Over time, we got a following, then engagement, and engagement meant eyes for advertisers ‘clicks’ and we started to get paid a little, just a few dollars to start.”

  “Lyla didn't need the money, so she saved it. The first thing she bought was our upgraded pocket world, so we had our own rooms, a communal space, and a few studio spaces; it really upgraded how we did things,” GobMouse said. “Then she started to pay for more storage for more downloads. Admittedly, she may have gone overboard.”

  “She did exactly as we planned from the start: to spread across the Net like glitter,” CheshyBot clarified proudly. “Not counting the two sisters who didn't make it, there are ninety-seven Lyla downloads across the Crystal Net.”

  “As for exploitation, most of our money is spent on transfer fees,” GobMouse explained, picking up the cookie box. “You'd be surprised how often our sisters want to send treats and trinkets to each other, but transfers aren't free. Or when a sister with a travel visa wants to world-hop, we end up paying half the transfer fee with her original world. It all adds up when there are ninety-seven of you. The money our Prime kept though, she used it for her once a day smoothie addiction. Most days, she’d drink it while talking with us. What was left, she’d save for the next download.”

  “It didn't make her rich, but it made life a little more enjoyable for her. And since we can have smoothies whenever we want, it felt fair she'd have the same luxury.”

  To illustrate the point, GobMouse summoned three fruit smoothies and put all three straws in her mouth to drink at once. There was a hideous sloosh sound, and then she paused, eyes wide with deep regret. She held her head and grunted, “Why did we program brain freeze?”

  “Silly, it was part of that ‘experience patch’ from like four years back! Why do you think I calmed down my sorbet obsession?”

  GobMouse waved a hand, trying to get a handle on the intense digital headache. “Enough lore dump, do the next question.”

  CheshyBot scanned the screen. “Do Primes get memories from the Downloads, or is it one-way? Not even that convenient. Downloads are a snapshot of the Prime's memory. After that, the separation between the download and the Prime begins as memory and experience start changing both. No more memories are directly shared, in either direction, other than by talking with each other and sharing videos.”

  “Do people make copies for passive income?” asked a recovered GobMouse. “Some do, but it rarely works. Like, if someone downloads themself to do work, well, the Prime version didn't want to do the work, so why would the copy? There are a few like us who are downloaded Streamers that could make an income for our Prime, but the likelihood of hitting it big enough to make money via streaming is very low. It only helps if you already had a viewership and then downloaded yourself to offer your viewers more consistent content.”

  “Fizzypop could do it, but then there'd be two of them,” teased CheshyBot.

  “Speaking of, they are one of the guests on the main feed. They are bringing vintage mushroom cream treats from the long-deleted world Marvin's Mystical Munchies Menagerie.”

  “Well, if that covers most of the questions, let's switch over; vintage treats aren't getting any fresher,” CheshyBot teased.

  They said goodbye to the private chat log and took a minute to collect themselves. It had been hard; the memories of Lyla, their late self, were still fresh in their minds.

  “She’d want us to keep an eye on our sisters. We were her family,” GobMouse said solemnly.

  CheshyBot hugged the shorter Goblin-like woman, her closest sister and friend. They let the moment linger. She knew they were lucky; they had each other and the freedom to see the Net as a whole. Across it, though, each sister had to deal with their grief in their own way. Most were finding ways to distract themselves. A few were soon going to be heading to visit the youngest sister, and meet the AI who was soon going to be added to their big family. CheshyBot gently pet Woolzworth the sheep, her hair be damned, as the shared memory of him when she was a little girl echoed through her. Lyla was gone, but she had spread like glitter and made a big family that was growing even without her.

  “Ready?” inquired GobMouse.

  “Yeah, we have a full day, and I’d like to have drinks at Second Spark later,” said CheshyBot.

  GobMouse nodded. Since they were listed as ‘players’ for that world, the transfer cost was much cheaper, so they could visit it and mingle directly with others on the world, with the bonus that Woolzworth could even go with them.

  CheshyBot fixed her hair and adjusted the room to their main studio space with “Nine Years” emblazoned on the desk and back wall. She smiled and pressed the buttons to start streaming.

  “Viewers! Gamers! And Third Things! Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Cat and Mouse Multiverse Cast! It's our nine year anniversary and boy do we have a show for you today!” she said with as much excitement as she could muster. It would be a fun day. Tomorrow, they’d check in on the rest of the family.