zk/writing/post-self/mitzvot/028.md

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After True Name returned to her room --- or, more likely, out to her field to camp --- May said, "If I may say, that was really fucking weird, and I do not want to talk about it at all."

Ey laughed. "You certainly may. Weird as hell and I need a break from the topic."

That last part wasn't strictly true, ey knew. Ey'd be ruminating over it until they went to sleep, and likely well into tomorrow. Still, ey agreed that it wasn't a topic for talking about at the moment. The chances they'd just windup talking in circles, rehashing the same topics over and over again, was too high, and ey could do that mentally just as well.

So, instead, they relaxed together on the couch, May with her head in eir lap while ey read and she worked on this or that, or whatever it was that she did when her eyes lost focused and she hummed quietly to herself. She'd once called it 'going into screen-saver mode', which didn't sound totally accurate to what ey knew of her when ey'd looked up the reference, but ey still teased her about it every now and then.

Quiet nights were good, though, and ey was pleased to just spend the rest of this one in comfort.

Sleep, however, brought restless dreams. Not nightmares, certainly; they weren't even bad dreams in any common sense of the term. They were, to the last, plagued with a sense of waiting and unease. Ey dreamt of waiting for unspecified news, sitting on uncomfortable benches in weirdly crowded lobbies. Ey dreamt of May being out of the house on some errand longer than she had said she would be. Ey dreamt of not having enough information.

All the same, ey woke well rested and made it to the coffee pot before either of the skunks, so ey was able to claim ten minutes of solitude standing before the picture windows and looking out into the slowly lightening yard and the field beside it. Ey could see True Name poke her snout out from her tent, disappear, and then, a few minutes later, start trudging her way back toward the house.

"Good morning, Ioan. Oh good, thank you," she mumbled, making a bee-line for one of the mugs of coffee that sat, steaming, before the coffee machine.

"Morning. Sleep well?"

She shrugged noncommittally. "I slept, I am well-rested enough."

They watched the morning head toward full brightness in silence after that, em still standing before the windows and her sitting on the couch, more focused on her coffee than anything.

"You have once again failed to bring me my coffee," May grumbled from the bedroom door. "I am going to file a petition with the leadership of the System."

"Ey did not bring me my coffee, either, my dear," True Name said mildly. "And until recently, I was in such a position."

May mumbled an apology and padded to the kitchen to grab her own mug before taking Ioan by the hand and dragging em over to the beanbag so that she could lay down with em.

"Are you two up to talking about meeting with Jonas?" True Name asked. "I will pay in another pot of coffee and breakfast."

Ioan shrugged. "Sure."

"After that second coffee, yes," May said.

Breakfast, it turned out, was a Scandinavian affair, or so ey imagined. Dense, dark bread, a tray of cheeses and meats, and a separate tray of vegetables both pickled and fresh. It was strange to call a meal such as breakfast 'refreshing', but the word fit quite well. Quite good, and both of the skunks certainly seemed to appreciate it, eating the lion's share of the food, though May also swiped up side plate of bacon to go with it.

May nodded towards True Name, grinning. "Alright. Payment accepted. You may begin."

True Name nodded. "I had an idea as I was walking last night. Or perhaps it is only a sliver of an idea. I suspect that it will not even get me out of whatever it is that he has planned, but if might soften the blow."

They both nodded.

"My guess is that, if he wants me to 'step aside', as Zacharias said, then he would like me to truly disappear. He would like me to essentially never be seen again."

"Thus the assassination attempt," Ioan said.

"Yes. He wanted me to disappear and build up a little bit of mystery because then he would be able to be publicly seen mourning, *et cetera, et cetera ad nauseam*," she continued, rolling her eyes. "The usual nonsense, I mean. I do not think his plans B through M will be any different. They will all involve me no longer being a part of this and in such a way as to make him come out feeling the victor."

"And I'm assuming you'd like to avoid that if possible."

"Him feeling like the victor? Yes. I really do mean that I would need to disappear in his definition of victory. I would be effectively dead, not actually. I would be restricted in who I would be able to speak to, I would have to remain out of public sims, and so on. He would not ask me to retire. Disappear." She hesitated, swirled the last of her coffee in the bottom of her mug, and added, "At least, that is what I would do. It would mean less attack surface for the reactive elements we have been tracking."

"And your plan would, what, subvert that?" May asked. "I have a suspicion I know what it is, but I would like to be sure."

"I suspect you do, yes. I will offer him the option of me changing from what I was to such an extent that I will not be the True Name that either he or the System expects."

"Is this about me merging down, then?"

She shrugged. "I do not think that that is a requirement, though that question was on my docket for the day. I suspect that I have already changed enough with End Waking's merger. I would just need to prove it to him somehow. That is where my plan ends, however."

Ioan sat back in eir chair, arms crossed as ey mulled it over. If she was right --- and ey suspected that she was --- then there would likely need to be a change in form and a change in name to go along with the change in attitude. After all, that's how Zacharias had gotten as far as he had, right?

Ey couldn't picture her as anything other than a skunk or perhaps whatever version of Michelle she remembered, though, and certainly couldn't picture her as anything other than True Name. Would she also have to change her speech patterns? They weren't totally identifiable, but now that ey thought about it, even Zacharias had shared many of them. She was an Odist through and through, and all of the forking and reinforcing that May had done to grow her sense of empathy didn't seem like something that she'd willingly undergo, either.

But perhaps that's what she'd meant by a sliver of a plan. They still had plenty of time to sort that out, at least, and perhaps she'd come up with a way that would actually work without changing herself so much that she'd cease being herself.

All the same, ey wasn't sure that her simply incorporating End Waking was quite the type of change that Jonas would appreciate. She acted different, spoke different, and ey was sure she felt different about her work than she had, but eir suspicion was Jonas didn't want anything left of her that could possibly be of any threat to his power. Her incorporating End Waking's extreme distaste for the politics of the System might be enough, it might not be, but that was a big risk to take.

Ey'd apparently been silent long enough that the two skunks had drifted off into their own conversation. At least ey'd not been mumbling.

"Welcome back, my dear," May said when ey leaned forward again to grab eir coffee.

Ey grinned. "Thanks. Was a nice trip. Don't mean to interrupt or anything, though."

She shook her head. "We were talking of changes."

"Any conclusions?"

"Not particularly, no," True Name said. "There are certain levels of change that I find unacceptable, is all."

"Right. I was thinking similar. It needs some work, but I can at least see where you're coming from with it."

She nodded. "I will continue to explore. When the time comes, I may ask for your help workshopping some ideas."

The conversation wound down from there, with True Name heading out to walk her prairie or poke around in the water or whatever it was that she was doing.

As though inspired, May and Ioan both moved outside as well, claiming the bench swing on the balcony, sitting on it sideways and facing each other, legs all tangled up. The warmer spring weather ey'd brought about for May while she was overflowing had seemed appropriate once they'd returned, so ey'd left it for the time being. Perhaps ey'd get one more big snow in before letting spring proper settle in.

"What were things like back in 2155?" ey asked.

May tilted her head, blinking a cone of silence into place. "When I merged last?"

Ey nodded.

"I had just forked the third time. There had been more relationships, of course, ones that ended before I had the chance, but this was the third time that I had settled into something comfortable enough to let it last. I was not particularly excited about merging down, but I had not diverged quite as much by then."

"Not as much empathy?"

She laughed. "Too much, perhaps. It took a while for me to settle on a comfortable amount."

"Too *much?* How on Earth did that work?"

"I was a fucking mess at all times. I cried at the drop of a hat."

"You still cry a lot," ey observed, then laughed when she poked at eir knee.

"Yes, well. I had attributed it at the time to simply being torn up over no longer being in a relationship. My fork was happy, I was heartbroken. In the end, though, I think that my goals were starting to drift from hers. I was diverging in more fundamental ways than either of us had expected."