BY LETTER
Rivers in the Sun
 Image from Tasp | |
| Snapshot of Rivers in the Sun's abstract avatar. | |
Instantiated in 8881 under unethical circumstances (see below), they have remained purely virtual throughout their life, and have contributed extensively to theories of embodiment and virtuality.
EARLY LIFE
Rivers in the Sun was instantiated Hippocrates 23, 8881 AT, by Fullwell Chansyoneh, a researcher in graph-theoretic hermeneutics who had left the Talitha Institute at Fata Morgana after a falling-out with numerous peers. Now living in the remote Bird of Paradise orbital in the Kozhikriya system (Pisces Radiant region), Chansyoneh found emself lacking the extensive research facilities to which e had become accustomed. To support eir continuing research, e used various illegally-acquired mindstate templates and a jailbroken editing package to create a series of increasingly sophisticated virtual "research assistants." While Chansyoneh would later claim that e never intended to create a slaved sophont, the last two such virtual agents (Rivers in the Sun and their "twin" Blue Bright like Day) were indisputably fully self-aware, although monomaniacally focused on their assigned areas of research. Image from Tasp | |
| Bird of Paradise orbital ca. 8900 AT | |
ACADEMIC CAREER
For several years, they served as a visiting scholar in the Sedr de on Noko research group 3 , based out of the city of Bedlera Zvaryesh on the Hera Supraplanetary Ring. After some moderately well-received publications in combinatorial historiography 4, they suddenly turned their attention to the history and culture of the Excelsior system, some 23 light-years distant. The change in attention was so abrupt that several biographers suggest deliberate self-editing, although Rivers in the Sun has remained silent on the issue. At that time Excelsior studies were widely considered passé 5, but Rivers in the Sun almost singlehandedly revitalized the five-millennium-old field, releasing their famous Nine Symposia over a three-month period in 8919-20 to broad acclaim.The Excelsior Incident, an infamous transcendence perversity event in the mid fourth millennium, involved the erasure, mental rewrite, and/or physical reconfiguration of trillions of modosophont beings. Much of Rivers in the Sun's work on the Incident is concerned with contextualizing the experience of its victims and exploring the profound effect that it had on discourses of bodily and mental integrity and selfhood. They famously approach the event using a "hermeneutic of cataclysm" and have harshly critiqued what they call attempts to "superimpose narratives" onto what they regard as essentially a natural disaster. While this has been caricatured as calling the Incident meaningless, their work is noted for its close focus on the personal stories and traumas of those affected.
In addition to their contributions to Excelsior Incident theory, they also are active in the more general discourse around virtuality and embodiment, offering perspectives on the social construction of the self in certain virtual modalities.
CONTROVERSIES
Rivers in the Sun has been criticized from numerous corners for their neutral, sometimes even cordial, relationship with their creator Fullwell Chansyoneh. The latter, ostracized from the Pisces Radiant academic community for the better part of a century following the discovery of eir slaved assistants, eventually returned to Fata Morgana and resumed research at a junior level. Unlike Blue Bright Like Day, who denounced Chansyoneh's actions in creating them and campaigns for enforcement of sophont rights in the Pisces Radiant region, Rivers in the Sun has actively refused to censure Chansyoneh and has even engaged in minor academic collaboration with em.Beginning in the 9200s, Rivers in the Sun engaged in a number of public disputes and debates with Psi-Alpha Cäcilie "Xaj-Natsal" Laibach, the noted transavant bioborg public philosopher and toposophical theorist. While their disagreements range across a broad spectrum of philosophical and scientific topics, many of them center around the etiology and interpretation of the Excelsior Incident. The relationship ranges from strained to outright acrimonious; Rivers in the Sun famously dedicated one of their hypertexts "to the confusion of certain fools", and the eccentric Xaj-Natsal has challenged Rivers in the Sun to a duel no less than 14 times (without acknowledgment from the latter so far).
While the vast majority of their academic conflict has occurred over the Known Net, the two engaged in a series of "in-person" debates in 9518 aboard Speedwell Station in the Nri-Oio orbital band of the Bright Splendid Ways system. Xaj-Natsal traveled there via beamrider, while Rivers in the Sun sent a pristine fork to be hosted in the hab's computronium. During the fifth of 24 planned sessions, the station was heavily damaged in a terrorist attack, later attributed to Jaka Das Gray, a purportedly rogue member of the so-called Ecstatic Ascension. That organization, considered an eccentric religion by some and a death cult by others, had previously expressed displeasure with both intellectuals' approach to the Excelsior Incident, calling Rivers in the Sun's work "disrespectful" and Xaj-Natsal's "blasphemous".
Thanks to a rapid and resourceful response, people on board the station (including the two debaters) were ultimately able to prevent Gray from detonating his docked ship's core. However, the military-grade nanoswarm that Gray had smuggled into the biosphere was responsible for a number of deaths, some of them permanent. Among those lost was the number two bioxox of Carrghamhna Lio, one of the minds behind the hit surrealist virchdrama The Iron Dark. In the aftermath of the attack, Rivers in the Sun and Xaj-Natsal completed one more debate before postponing the series indefinitely and parting on chilly terms.
TODAY
The alpha iteration of Rivers in the Suns' mindstate entered the lightways some 40 years before present and is currently in transit between a number of Outer Volumes universities for a research and presentation tour. In less than a decade they are expected to complete their current transfer to the moons of Ynseh Wuudao, where they plan to meet with the Self-Portrait Abandoned enclave of Dance-Don't-Dream and observe their highly embodiment-focused culture.SELECTED WORKS
Zvaryesh Period Works, I-IV
None Shelters Thee: Symposia on the Excelsior Incident, I-IX
Saul Inter Prophetas: Collected Excelsian Essays
Soul Without Body
The Contextual Praamsha
The Chrysalis
Sleepwalking through Saraama
Integrity
On Sarcophobia
Eight Days in the House of Night: A Comedy
FOOTNOTES:
[1] ↩ Originally in the Tchloza language's Kozhikryom dialect.[2] ↩ Lexical note: "droht s'thelyost"; carries connotations of great fame, infamy, or even embarrassment
[3] ↩ They briefly worked with the accomplished Dr Obevat Punen, before the latter's famously humorless demeanor became too much to bear.
[4] ↩ Including the Fiskar-prize winning "Counting nontrivial alterities in numogrammetric algebras", their only foray into cyberculture research)
[5] ↩ E.g. see LERC Decade Report Y9K Volume 93: Trends in Self-Guided Research, Section 181, Subsection G, Topics Gamma through Nu
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Development Notes
Text by Tasp
Initially published on 12 April 2025.
Initially published on 12 April 2025.
