update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/toledot/launch/phys/Douglas/001.md

@@ -1,12 +1,12 @@
 # Douglas Hadje --- 2325
 
-When Douglas Hadje pressed his hands against the sides of the L<sub>5</sub> System, he always imagined that he could sense his aunt along with however many 'great's preceded that title, sense all of those years separating him from her, and he pressed his hands against the outside of the system every chance he could get. If he was sure that he was alone --- and he often was --- he would press his forehead to the glassy, diamondoid cylinder and wish, hope, dream that he could say even one word to her. His people, humanity, now nearly two centuries distant from the founding of the System, forever felt on the verge of true speciation, of mutual incomprehensibility, from those within. Did they still think the same? Did they still feel the same? Their hopes were doubtless different, but were their dreams?
+When Douglas Hadje pressed his hands against the sides of the L<sub>5</sub> System, he always imagined that he could sense his aunt along with however many 'great's preceded that title, sense all of those years separating him from her, and he pressed his hands against the outside of the System every chance he could get. If he was sure that he was alone --- and he often was --- he would press his forehead to the glassy, diamondoid cylinder and wish, hope, dream that he could say even one word to her. His people, humanity, now nearly two centuries distant from the founding of the System, forever felt on the verge of true speciation, of mutual incomprehensibility, from those within. Did they still think the same? Did they still feel the same? Their hopes were doubtless different, but were their dreams?
 
 But always his hands were separated from the structure by that thin layer of skinsuit, and always his helmet was in the way of the carbon shell, and always he was at least one reality away from them.
 
 He would spend his five minutes there, connected and not by touch, thinking of this or that, thinking of nothing at all, and then he would climb away from the cylinder down the ladder, down the dozen or so meters to the ceiling of his home, climb through the airlock, and perhaps go lay down.
 
-Others knew of this. They had to. All movement outside the habitat portion of the system was tightly controlled. Everything was on video, recorded directly from his eyes through his exo. All audio was recorded.
+Others knew of this. They had to. All movement outside the habitat portion of the station was tightly controlled. Everything was on video, recorded directly from his eyes through his exo. All audio was recorded.
 
 But he never spoke, and he always closed his eyes. For some unknown reason, he was permitted this small dalliance.
 
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ That is where Douglas lived along with about twenty others.
 
 To fund such a project, the torus had originally operated as a tourist destination. Many of the living spaces consisted of repurposed hotel rooms. It had long since ceased to serve in that capacity as humanity's curiosity for space dwindled and spaceflight from Earth once again began to rise in price.
 
-To build such a project, the area had been cleared of much of the Trojan asteroids that had collected there, either used for raw materials or slung out into space into eccentric orbits that would keep them from impacting Earth or winding up once again captured in the same Legrange point. Even still, one of the many jobs was to monitor the area for newly captured rocks and divert or collect them as needed. The material could be used for new solar panels, or perhaps the two five-thousand kilometer long launch arms sprouting on opposing sides of the torus, the Hall Effect Engines that kept the rotation of the system constant as the arms had been extruded from its surface, or of course the two new cylindrical systems at the tips of those arms that had, over the last two decades, been constructed as half-scale duplicates of the core.
+To build such a project, the area had been cleared of much of the Trojan asteroids that had collected there, either used for raw materials or slung out into space into eccentric orbits that would keep them from impacting Earth or winding up once again captured in the same Legrange point. Even still, one of the many jobs was to monitor the area for newly captured rocks and divert or collect them as needed. The material could be used for new solar panels, or perhaps the two five-thousand kilometer long launch arms sprouting on opposing sides of the torus, the Hall Effect Engines that kept the rotation of the station constant as the arms had been extruded from its surface, or of course the two new cylindrical launch vehicles at the tips of those arms that had, over the last two decades, been constructed as half-scale duplicates of the core.
 
 Little of this mattered to Douglas.
 
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ And yet he never did.
 
 He didn't know why. He asked himself again and again what it was that kept him from reaching out to her. Was it that speciation? Was it the confounding societal differences? Was it that unfathomable distance between the physical and the dream? He did not know, he did not know.
 
-Instead, he worked. He oversaw the construction of the Launch Vehicle Systems, those two smaller cylinders that would be, in a few days, released from either end of the launch arms at incredible tangential velocity. He worked with the sys-side launch coordinator to ensure that everything was working appropriately, that the micro-Ansible connection between the main system and the launch vessels was appropriately transferring entire identities.
+Instead, he worked. He oversaw the construction of the Launch Vehicle Systems, those two smaller cylinders that would be, in a few days, released from either end of the launch arms at incredible tangential velocity. He worked with the sys-side launch coordinator to ensure that everything was working appropriately, that the micro-Ansible connection between the main System and the launch vessels was appropriately transferring entire identities.
 
 Who this coordinator was, this confusingly-named May Then My Name Die With Me, he had no idea.
 

writing/post-self/toledot/launch/phys/Douglas/003.md

@@ -135,7 +135,7 @@ I am writing this to you, but if I have to plead my case to anyone, it's to myse
 
 > From whence do I call out?
 
-Close. So close. I call out to myself from within myself. I call out to the system through a few inches of diamondoid coating and the fabric of my EVA suit.
+Close. So close. I call out to myself from within myself. I call out to the System through a few inches of diamondoid coating and the fabric of my EVA suit.
 
 > What right have I?  
 > No ranks of angels will answer to dreamers,  

writing/post-self/toledot/launch/phys/Douglas/005.md

@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ He frowned, quelling the suspicion that they had known of his EVA.
 > 
 > **May Then My Name:** We have flipped a coin, and it was decided that I will go first.
 > 
-> **May Then My Name:** I uploaded back in the early 2100s, back when the system was small and full of dreamers, weirdos, and people like you and Ioan who spend all of their time thinking. Before that, I was a teacher, though towards the end of my phys-side tenure and for some time after, I became involved in politics. I grew up in the central corridor of North America, in the Western Federation. As with everyone, I do not think that I have an accent, though after some trouble with my implants before I uploaded, I found that some speech and thought patterns had changed, and since then, language and I have had a complicated relationship. We could have worked to change it, my cocladists and I, but why bother?
+> **May Then My Name:** I uploaded back in the early 2100s, back when the System was small and full of dreamers, weirdos, and people like you and Ioan who spend all of their time thinking. Before that, I was a teacher, though towards the end of my phys-side tenure and for some time after, I became involved in politics. I grew up in the central corridor of North America, in the Western Federation. As with everyone, I do not think that I have an accent, though after some trouble with my implants before I uploaded, I found that some speech and thought patterns had changed, and since then, language and I have had a complicated relationship. We could have worked to change it, my cocladists and I, but why bother?
 > 
 > **May Then My Name:** You ask about dissolution strategies (tasker, tracker, dispersionista): you are correct that they apply to the ways in which an individual forks. They are not hard and fast categories, but rather a set of patterns that we have noticed over the years and applied names and numbers to. Taskers will fork only very rarely, and then for a specific task, merging back into the root instance immediately afterward. Trackers fork more frequently, and may maintain forks over a longer period of time. The reasons for forking may vary --- Ioan is a tracker, ey will explain more --- but the forks almost always follow a single line of thought or relationship or what have you to its logical end before merging back. Dispersionistas are those who fork for fun, spinning off new personalities and maybe merging them back, maybe not. My clade, the Ode clade, falls somewhere between tracker and dispersionista: we fork frequently for many temporary purposes, but maintain a relatively small permanent clade of around 100 instances.
 > 
@@ -177,7 +177,7 @@ His stomach sank. He considered what to type back, but decided instead on waitin
 > 
 > **May Then My Name:** Not that common, no, and hers was unique.
 >
-> **May Then My Name:** Every now and then, one of us will get tired of functional immortality and decide to just quit their instance --- that is what she did --- and disappear off the system. I do not begrudge her that.
+> **May Then My Name:** Every now and then, one of us will get tired of functional immortality and decide to just quit their instance --- that is what she did --- and disappear off the System. I do not begrudge her that.
 > 
 > **Ioan:** I'm sorry for your loss, Douglas.
 

writing/post-self/toledot/launch/phys/Douglas/006.md

@@ -42,7 +42,7 @@
 > 
 > **Douglas:** 1. Expenses --- this one was diminished toward the end, as there's not really a whole lot of expense required in popping some explosive bolts to set the launches flying, and all the material used out here was from scavenged Trojan asteroids. The protests that we saw around this were mostly griping about how much had already been spent. "Think of how much could have gone to deacidifying projects, etc etc"
 > 
-> **Douglas:** 2. Brain/workforce drain --- This is a perennial topic with the system. All those smart minds out there focusing on pie-in-the-sky dreams instead of 'real problems' back there on Earth. What they imagine someone with a masters in spaceflight or astronomy or whatever can do back on Earth to better an overheated dustball is beyond me.
+> **Douglas:** 2. Brain/workforce drain --- This is a perennial topic with the System. All those smart minds out there focusing on pie-in-the-sky dreams instead of 'real problems' back there on Earth. What they imagine someone with a masters in spaceflight or astronomy or whatever can do back on Earth to better an overheated dustball is beyond me.
 > 
 > **Douglas:** 3. Earth vs space sentiments --- This one is probably the most common, and also the hardest to explain. Even I don't totally understand it. I think I mentioned before that, the harder things get, the less time and energy you have to focus on those pie-in-the-sky ideas. You're too busy scraping by or focus on growing soybeans or trying not to burn up or whatever, you don't have much time to do anything but dream about space and watch movies in your hour before bed or however your day looks.
 >