INFOGRAPHICS: PEOPLE

GENOGRAM: DAD, 2026

There is Pop-Pop and Granny. They have three children. Dad is the oldest. He has two younger sisters, both divorced, and the youngest also has one daughter.

Dad is not divorced. He has been married to Mom for over forty years. They have two children.

GENOGRAM: MOM, 2026

In the beginning, there was the matriarch Grandma, a one-armed card shark of redoubtable character. In 1950, she married Murder Grampa, but her first child, in '52, she bore to That Other Guy, a man we know nothing about except that he was not her husband. Later, with Murder Grampa, she begat four more children, with Mom in the middle, before she (allegedly) murdered Murder Grampa via carbon monoxide asphyxiation. Grandma was arrested and charged, sending the five tots off to foster care for roughly one and a half years while the courts debated whether Murder Grampa was truly murdered, or merely a suicide.

(Perhaps you might argue that it should be Grandma with the Murder in her name, but there is only one Grandma. She requires no title.)

Eventually, Grandma recouped her five offspring, perhaps not coincidentally around the time she remarried, this time to Pedo Grampa, a veteran of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam (currently in progress). They begat Lois, who would become an award-winning school teacher and Pedo Grampa's live-in helpmate, truly a most loyal and obedient daughter.

All of Mom's siblings married, all but one divorced, and all but one of that subset (Lois) had children of their own. Of the six cousins of our generation, one died of food poisoning (Cousin Gangrene; he got into coke), and four were involved with teen pregnancies, three incestuous. Of those incestuous pregnancies, only one made it to term: Uncle Cousin, who was given up for adoption. His mother, Cousin Disowned, was promptly given her title, while Pedo Grampa retained his pride of place. (Have pity for Pedo Grampa; his beloved Grandma died less than a year before Uncle Cousin's conception. Does not a poor widower deserve comfort? An adoptee himself, Pedo Grampa was merely carrying on family tradition.)

Pedo Grampa also made sure to thoroughly sexually educate the generation in-between himself and Cousin Disowned: Uncle J, Mom, and... well, whatever he did with Lois. All learned their lessons well and went on to educate the generation after them; a closer family, you'd be hard-pressed to find. These noble traditions were passed on from parent to child (or grandchild), from sibling to sibling, and most of them lived up to the family ideals.

We have two significantly younger cousins and at least four children-of-cousins (including Uncle Cousin's own children), and we know precious little about them. Most of them were born not long before Pedo Grampa died in 2005; perhaps they avoided the family inheritance.

GENOGRAM: LB, 2026

First, there was the Original Girl. Let's map her flowering on our bodies together. Touch your heart. This is her, one and only.

Move to your collarbones, tap three dots: one, two, three. These are the ghosts we know of from before puberty: Doll Girl, the Little Girl in the Brown Dress, and Escape Object. Say their names. Feel the silence of the air around them.

Onward, to puberty, but before Bro became an attacker. You have reached your arms now: Mori on the left, Gigi on the right. Give yourself three firm squeezes (two on the left for Mori and Rawlin, one on the right for Gigs) and afour dot taps (one on the left for Dead Emu, three on the right for the Girl in the Door, Starvesorry, and Bubbles/Swim Team). Say their names. Feel them fade. Our lives are short, and we continue.

Now the hands: high school, little finger/branches everywhere, only three of which will endure. Cross your fingers on the left: Sneak and Rogan. Cross your fingers on the right: Miranda and Lollyanna. Mori dies; feel the left squeeze release like a lost friend. Rawlin is buried; feel the numbness of her squeeze erased. The Original Girl dies too; feel that emptiness in your heart. Tap the many ghost dots: two on the right, for the Angel and Maggot Statue, 14 on the left, almost three hands' worth, for Spiral Eyes, Skullface, Wild, the Earthshaker Twins, Drowner, Flaming Eyeballs, Gregor, Shaun, Box, Embry, Olly, Dead Boy, Ziggy, and Shadowhall. So many stillborn, taps that never grew to squeezes, loss loss loss. Our lives are short, and we continue.

And finally: adulthood. Pressure released--no more squeezes, hardly any taps. Lollyanna dies; exhale her release. Four messenger ghosts, to whisper warnings. Feel their breath against your ears and tap their names: Craig, Ro-8, Ro-16, and Scratch. Take comfort in knowing they mostly died peacefully.

Of the 35 people mapped in this body, 4 remain.

29 of us have died.

Original Girl birthed 8 ghosts, Mori 7, Rogan 10, Sneak and Gigi 1 apiece... that we know of. 2 of the ghosts came from the group. Because there are so many, and most barely got to exist for more than a couple days, we exclude them from other family trees. This is the only place we say all their names, and thus this, the most recent of the family trees, comes first.

Our lives are short, and we continue.

LB ROSTER, May 17, 2008

A year after selves-recognition, before Rogan and Mac were even engaged, we use a (now long-gone) GaiaOnline pixel doll maker to make little pictures of all the LB crew we can think of... with the newest folks listed FIRST, much to Rogan's retroactive annoyance. One pic is more complete but has no text; the other has names and origin dates but not Bob, Grey, or Biff (who we dismiss as "not real" until they come back). There are no connections or relationships listed, just a bunch of figures standing in a row. Here they are:

Patrick Levy MacIntire (Mac): March 21, 2007
D: June 17, 2005
Miranda: by May '05
Lollyanna: by spring '05
Sneakergirl (Sneak): March 8, 2004
Rogan: March 8, 2004
Amy: by August 2003
Falcon Stranger: by March 13, 2002
Bama: by March 13, 2002
Gigi: by March 13, 2002
Faro: by September 2000
Trent: by July 7, 2000
M.D. Rawlins: February 16, 2000
Kriss: pre-K
(in the erased bottom line) Grey: unnamed, undated
Bob: unnamed, undated

Go figure. This first attempt will be among the most complete and correct we ever make. The dates get scooted further back over the years, but every single one came from journals, school assignments, and art. Every single name on the list (with the possible exception of D) really did spend time on the roster. The only people missing are the bony lady (who is a weird case), Rawlin (the most buried of the lot), and Jackie, who is so buried in mystery that the only clue we have that she might've been a headmate was her name on a Minesweeper best times score on our middle school laptop.

LB ROSTER, May and September and later 2009, 2014, 2017, 2022

We try to map our roster out over and over: 2008, 2009, 2014, 2017, 2022. We do it on graph paper, lined looseleaf, on the back of a counseling referral given to us by the police at our rape report. We do it in pencil and ink, in gray and in color, with pictures and with text and with software, over and over, trying to answer: what made us? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Why is so much family tree/relationship web software so bad? (It's not a coincidence that only our early family trees were on specialized software, and now we overwhelmingly use paper.)

At first, we thought maybe school bullying was responsible for Mori/M.D., Gigi, Bama, and Falcon, even though only Mori was around for most of it. We thought the high school crew (Rogan, Sneak, Lolly, Mir) was maybe because of a crummy boyfriend, even though Rogan was first named in a school assignment four months earlier. And Mac? Well, okay, we were pretty stumped about Mac, but maybe there didn't have to be a reason, right? Maybe we just were.

By early 2014, we'd removed everyone from the family tree that felt uncertain or inconvenient. Pared down to an even dozen, the core crowd (original girl, Mori, Gigi, Falcon, Rogan, Sneak, Lollyanna, Miranda, Mac, plus three recent ghosts). It was before memory work. We were sure we'd figured everything out. No Bama, no Biff, no Trent, nobody who made us feel weird.

Come 2017, all of them were back on the list, plus a flood of ghosts and a bunch of mysteries: Amy and Faro, what were they about? Was the Psychologist ever a person, or just an anthropomorphism of self-hate like Edward Cullen? (Edward Cullen never once makes it onto the family tree, thankfully.) We aren't bothering to write down causes anymore. We've been doing memory work for three years now; we don't need to ask.

In 2022, we start using graph paper: very adult, very organized. Graphs and maps give an illusion of objectivity and authority even when none exist, but by this point, we've digitized and organized our records such that we have pretty good reason to plunk our lines and dots where we do.

Our roster demographics still break down to roughly three groups: the people born to this vessel AKA the alters (Original Girl, Mori, Rawlin, Gigi, Rogan, Sneak Miranda, Lollyanna, and a bus-load of ghosts), the Infinity Smashed/Vago folk (Raige, Faro, Biff, Amy, Bob, Grey, and Mac), and the miscellaneous other folks, mostly with the bony lady (the lady herself, Bama, Falcon... and Trent, who happily goes off doing his own thing).

In other words: the vessel-natives are local, the Vago folks were out on the commuter rail before the train broke down, and the others... well, they had their own cars and came to us, rather than us going out to them. It's all about where you are and how you get there.

Origins were the primary division of identity for plurals now, but we had zigged that zag. Us alters now could bet good money as to what made us ("was it... rape?" "Hooray! You're right!"), while the commuters... well, nothing made them except the usual collision of sperm and egg. How did we meet them? Well, how did you meet your friends? Was it all one way?

From 2007-2014, we had our roster pared down to the bone. Now the old guard return, one way or another. Falcon, Biff, Bob, and Grey all reached the ends of their respective ropes and moved in permanently. Faro still lives and works out in the Vago Desert, gardening succulents for fun. Bama died in her eighties. The bony lady... well, she keeps being an eldritch cosmic death entity.

Trent and Amy remain unaccounted for.

LB RELATIONSHIP WEB, October 17, 2023

There are the three main groups: the 8 vessel natives, the 8ish Infinity Smashed folks, the 5 miscellaneous. Three clusters of people, all connected in webs of relationship. (Well, except Amy. She has no threads, only question marks. Seriously, what was her deal?)

All the vessel-natives are bound with the common twine of lineage. The closest single-minded translation is "sibling," though that gives the totally wrong impression with Rawlin. We were all cleaved from the Original Girl, or her successors, and we can all be cleaved in turn. We can also cleave to each other, merging together.

Feel that soft, fluffy yarn? It's nice, isn't it? Those are the positive relationships--the friendships, the family, the amiable exes, the couples. Bob is full of softness: for his sister Su, his wife Grey, for his fosterbat Rogan. Sneak is an adorable spider at the center of a fluffy web; ze is known for zer ability to get along with everybody. Even Biff, who has trouble getting close to people, has soft yarn tying him to his boyfriend Rogan, his gym buddy Mac, and (most of all) his bro for life, Mori.

Oh, the barbed wire. Yes, it is unpleasant to touch. This was 2023; we needed something to elucidate the antagonistic relationships. Yes, that's right, all those wires connect to Rawlin. Nobody was her friend back then. Every connection she had was through violence. Thank goodness that's no longer the case, right? Don't worry, she'll come back to herself in another year.
