# Codrin Bălan#Pollux --- 2325

Throughout eir relationship with Dear, Codrin had had chances to meet several other furries, both those who had been in the subculture prior to uploading and those who had come to it after. They had come in various shapes and sizes, the two notable examples of which were a room-filling dragon of some sort (or so ey guessed) and a perfectly ordinary house cat. Perfectly ordinary, that is, except for her heavily inflected and curse-laden speech.

Despite not having the chance to meet him yet, ey had also learned much about Debarre from eir conversations with the various members of the Ode clade, as well as eir research into the Council of Eight.

At one point, ey asked Dear how it was that a full quarter of the council that guided the System toward secession was made up of furries, and the fox had laughed.

*"Can you not guess why a furry might be an early and ardent adopter of a system that seems purpose built to allow one to assume what form feels most natural?"*

Made sense. Ey still looked forward to meeting Debarre that evening.

What had started as a suggestion to get a few voices together for Codrin to interview had then turned into a suggestion for a dinner party, and from there into what promised to be a cozy, wine-fogged house party that might sprout from a group of friends who enjoyed company, but also quiet.

The guests started arriving in the late afternoon, with the first to arrive being Debarre. Dear greeted him with a grin and a hug before the slender mustelid greeted both of the fox's partners with paw-shakes and half-hugs.

"Wonderful to meet you two. Dear's been gushing about you for years, and I'm only sorry that it's taken until now for us to actually meet."

The weasel was about Dear's height --- which was to say a few inches shorter than Codrin --- covered with a svelte coat of chestnut brown fur, minus a cream-colored front, though much of this was covered with a semiformal outfit of all black. 

As ey did whenever meeting another furry, Codrin was surprised by just how casual they could be. For some reason, eir mind seemed primed to view them all as intense as the fox, but Debarre was friendly and relaxed.

Next to arrive was a...well, Codrin could tell that he was human and that he was male, but for some reason, he had a hard time discerning any distinct features about him. He was plain to the point where the eye seemed to simply slide off of him.

He was greeted with an enthusiastic handshake from Dear, who announced, *"This is user11824, one of the unsung heroes of the early System."*

"I am in no way a hero," he drawled laconically. "I spent more time keeping you dumbasses in check than anything else."

*"A truly heroic feat, that."*

user11824 rolled his eyes and allowed himself to be guided in to where there was wine and a few trays of snacks. He greeted Debarre warmly --- more so, Codrin noticed, than he had Dear, though ey could not guess why.

The final guest was a tall, black gentleman dressed in a plain white tunic and white linen pants, who Dear greeted with a handshake that bordered on delicate. He seemed anxious nearly to the point of panic, so Codrin and Dear's partner simply bowed to him unobtrusively.

Codrin watched the reactions of the other guests, making note of how they both treated him with some mix of deference and awe that ey could not quite place.

Dear's partner explained as Codrin followed them to the kitchen. "That's Yared Zerezghi. If the Odists are to thank for Secession sys-side, he's to thank for it phys-side. He wrote the amendment that formalized Secession among the other phys-side governments."

Ey stopped halfway through opening a bottle of wine. "Really? I wasn't expecting a dinner full of politicians."

They laughed. "I don't think any of them would call themselves politicians. Dear would call itself an 'interested party' or something similarly vague. I think Debarre would call himself a guide, or maybe a dupe. user11824 would just call himself boring. Get used to that word, he uses it a lot."

"And Yared? He seems, I don't know, nervous."

"He was just a DDR junkie. He followed politics as a hobby, but with a single-minded focus that made him attractive to both phys- and sys-side on the debate." They shrugged and pulled down wine glasses from the cabinet one by one. "I think he'd call himself a pawn. A puppet, maybe. The nervousness stems from being so thoroughly used by both sides and now coming to the house of an Odist, I think, but don't quote me on that. Take these."

Codrin frowned, nodded, and accepted two of the glasses to carry out with the wine, while Dear's partner brought out the other four.

Once the drinks had been poured and passed around, Dear stood and, in the grand style that ey had come to love, declaimed, *"First, we will have a toast, and then we will drink. After that, we will eat, and then --- only then, my dear --- may you ask your questions."*

Ey laughed and raised eir glass. "I'm in."

*"The toast, then!"* Dear composed itself, standing up straighter and holding its glass aloft. *"To the complete stupidity of anyone unlucky enough to wind up in politics, and the utter hubris of anyone who tries."*

Debarre laughed and raised his glass, "I'll drink to that."

*"Then, by all means, let us drink,"* the fox said, and did just that.

The dinner was, as always, delicious: a spicy peanut and bell-pepper soup and a few dishes of beef, vegetables, and lentils. Far more food than was strictly necessary, but Codrin suspected that it was more for Yared's sake than anyone else's, as he calmed down greatly after having eaten (and having had a few glasses of wine), complimenting the food several times. He even began joining in the conversation towards the end of the meal. 

Once plates had been cleared and another bottle of wine opened, user11824 nudged Codrin's arm. "How do you put up with such an insufferably boring life?"

Ey grinned, "Dear provides the entertainment, we just watch."

The fox preened.

"Yeah, but you're a writer, Dear's a whatever-the-fuck, and they're a cook and I guess painter. Boring on, like, a subatomic level."

"Boring is nice, sometimes," Dear's partner said.

"Oh god, you're telling me," user11824 laughed. "I'd never turn it down. Excitement always means that something horrible is happening."

"You know," Debarre said, nodding to the ill-defined man. "I think that's the first time you've ever actually explained that when I've been around. I always just thought you were bitching whenever we went somewhere or had a conversation and you called it boring."

"If we're somewhere exciting or a conversation is actively interesting, it means that someone's fucked up."

Dear laughed. *"It is important to fuck up, my friend. Otherwise, the boredom may become terminal."*

He rolled his eyes and mumbled, "Fucking boring."

Even Yared was grinning at the exchange. "You know, before I uploaded, I was in contact with a few members of the Council," he said. "And although the work was interesting, I always loved hearing about the ways in which dynamics differed sys-side."

"Oh, I guarantee you, I was just as bored phys-side."

"Yes, but look at you. You've made being boring into an art. You went ahead and made it interesting."

"Bullshit."

Codrin laughed. "No, I'm with Yared on this. You've got a name that sounds like a default 'net username, and you've somehow made it so that I can't seem to describe any one aspect of you. You've got a face, I can say that for sure. Your eyes are brown. Or maybe hazel? It's like if I tried to look more closely to figure out which, though, I'd absolutely die of boredom."

He laughed. "Job well done, I say."

Dear raised its glass, *"To artists who have perfected their craft."*

Figuring that, since dinner had come to a close, Codrin hazarded the first question. "Yared, you said you were in contact with a few members of the council. Who were you talking with?"

"No one here," he grumbled. "Well, mostly. One of Dear's clade and Jonas. If either of them were invited, I never would've come."

"Me either," Debarre said.

"Same." user11824 shrugged. "Though I'd be surprised if Dear had invited them."

*"Quite,"* the fox said curtly.

Debarre looked sheepishly at the fox, ears splayed. "Sorry, Dear. I know you've distanced yourself from all that."

"They were interesting," user11824 said. "And I can't think of anything worse."

Codrin redirected the conversation. "That aside, then, when did you upload, Yared? Or any of you, I guess."

"I uploaded Secession day. Literally about an hour before Secession itself. I was the last upload before it took effect. An 'honor' they called it."

Codrin nodded, looked to Debarre.

"The same day as Dear," Debarre said.

"What? Was that planned?"

The weasel laughed. "Oh yes. Michelle and I pooled our money to upload as soon as we could."

"You were friends before, then?"

Dear nodded. *"We went through a lot together."*

Codrin was tempted to ask if Debarre had also known the author of the Ode, but knew that that went well beyond dinner-wrecking. Instead, ey looked to user11824.

"I dunno. 2120? It was an exciting time, and I've done my best to forget about it."

"About what percentage of your time on council was exciting?" Debarre asked.

"More than I would've liked."

Dear's partner laughed. "Why'd you even join, then?"

"Mom was a politician," he said, shrugging. "I learned all that bullshit from her, and the S-R Bloc gang pressed me into joining."

"Who were they?" Codrin asked.

"There were three of them on the Council. Part of the initial agreement, since the System was originally hosted somewhere in Russia." Debarre counted off on his fingers. "Those three, me, user11824, Zeke, and then Michelle and Jonas."

"Well, I know the Odists are here on the LVs, as well as you two and Ezekiel. Are Jonas and the Russians here?"

user11824 frowned. "That's an interesting question."

"That's a bad thing, isn't it?"

*"Jonas is on the LVs, yes. The S-R Bloc trio are no longer on the System."* Dear swirled its wine in its glass. *"Ask a different question, my dear."*

Codrin nodded. "Alright. Were any of the rest of you involved in Launch as well as Secession?"

Debarre snorted and shook his head. "No, thank God. I had my fill, and I was glad when the Council dissolved."

"What happened to dissolve it?"

He looked to Dear, who shrugged. "After a while, it was just Odists and Jonases," he said down to his wine glass. "Any possible guidance the Council could have provided would have come from them even if we had said it. It had been so thoroughly undermined that we all basically gave up and let the thing end rather than artificially prolonging a puppet government."

*"We were terrible people, yes."* Dear's shoulders slumped. *"I am quite glad that I had not yet been forked for that. If I had had any direct participation in all that happened, I doubt that I would be sitting here with you all."*

Yared spoke up next. "I didn't have anything to do with the launch effort. I dropped politics like a bad habit as soon as I saw the direction in which the Council was heading. That said, I couldn't help but learn all I could about it, read every memo I could, learn about some of the physics of it. I was just done with being an active participant."

"Why is that?" Codrin asked.

Yared turned his wine glass between his fingertips for a moment, simply thinking. "How much do you know about Christianity?" he asked.

Ey must have looked quite confused at the question, as Dear giggled.

"I promise I'm going somewhere with this," Yared said, grinning nervously.

*"You can actually blame me for this, my dear. I helped him come up with the correlation he is about to use."*

Codrin said, "I mean, I know the basic precepts. Some of the history, that sort of thing."

"And Judaism?"

"Uh, probably much less. I know that Jesus was a Jew."

"Okay, that's enough to at least make this point. You know that Jesus had his apostles and that one of them, at least later on, was Paul, who converted on the road to Damascus and became a fervent believer. He started churches up all over the region."

Ey nodded. "I know of Paul, yeah."

"Good. Well, the story goes that there was an argument about whether or not gentiles were allowed in the early Christian church, as Paul argued, or whether they needed to convert to Judaism first."

"And we know that Paul won that debate."

Yared nodded. "Yes. As soon as it was decided that anyone could become a Christian without becoming a Jew, Christianity effectively became its own religion, not beholden to the laws of Judaism."

"I can kind of see where this is going," Codrin said slowly. "Secession is rather like the point at which the System effectively became its own country."

"Bear with me. What your partner showed me was an alternate telling of this story. Sometime back in medieval Europe, a Jewish community started circulating an old story called 'Toledot Yeshu', which means something like the ancestry or generations of Jesus. Much of it is a retelling of the gospels with Jesus as a trickster magician. But Paul in this story becomes something more interesting, apologies to present company."

user11824 rolled his eyes and finished his wine.

"In Toledot Yeshu, Paul is actually hinted at being a plant from the Jewish authorities, though it is vague as to who, whose goal was to introduce enough changes to the budding religion to cause it to split away so that it wouldn't remain a sect of Judaism."

*"Many viewed Jesus as a rabbi,"* Dear interjected. *"And had that lasted to the point where Judaism headed into a rabbinical tradition, his teachings would have become part of the faith and Judaism would have looked very different."*

Codrin frowned. "Are you suggesting that Secession was engineered to keep the System from remaining a part of society, phys-side?"

There was a tense moment of silence before Yared nodded. "I was the tool of Paul. I was the tool of *two* Pauls, one in the form of a representative of the phys-side government who used me to steer public opinion toward permitting Secession, and one in the form of True Name and Jonas who wanted the System to be independent for their own reasons. It was not enough to ensure the System's continued existence for them and it was not enough for the System's participation to be limited from the phys-side point of view. It needed to become its own entity."

All eyes were on Yared now, who sighed. "It needed to become its own entity by any means necessary, as soon as possible, and with as much plausible deniability as could be managed."

*"Both sides wanted to preserve a way of life, and so differences were magnified to the point where Secession was inevitable,"* Dear said quietly. *"And so here we are, a completely separate entity, and we all thought it was our own idea. It is not some supercessionist nonsense, no matter what True Name and Jonas might have you believe. We all just wanted to live our best lives, and we all were made to believe that this was best solution for that."*

Codrin finished eir wine and set the glass aside. "So you stayed away from the politics of Launch because you didn't want to become another tool of Paul."

Yared nodded.

Debarre said, "We all were, towards the end. Anyone who was a true believer in Secession was a tool for True Name and Jonas, in a way, or at least a potential tool."

"This was not what I was expecting out of the evening," Codrin admitted. "I was going to just ask you all why you decided to join the launch and everything."

user11824 laughed. "New place to be bored, is all."

"Congrats on finding the interesting stuff," Dear's partner said.

There were a few minutes of silence as everyone worked, in their own ways, to digest the information that had been shared.

Finally, Debarre spoke up. "I'm happy that I'm still in touch with Dear and a few other Odists all the same. Michelle is gone, but a lot of the good that was in her is still around. Man, I had no idea how thoroughly she was split, though, that those who are nice can be so nice, and those who aren't can somehow completely lack all that made her good."

Dear raised its glass to Debarre for a third toast of the evening. *"To her, to you, and to two hundred and thirty years of friendship."*

"To lost friends," Debarre added.

They all watched as Dear and Debarre drank to each other and those who were gone.
