update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/toledot/secession/sys/True-Name/005.md

@@ -68,6 +68,66 @@ The trio nodded in unison. "We will be working on that."
 
 "Hell," True Name mused. "We could probably even make a spectacle out of it. If it is to become something important to the entirety of the System, might as well make it a holiday."
 
+"We can even get out the fireworks!" Debarre laughed, the weasel bouncing ahead a few steps to turn and walk backwards in front of the rest of the group. "No need to worry about wildfires or anything."
+
+True Name laughed. "When was the last time you even saw fireworks?"
+
+"Oh, I've never seen them. You were lucky, you had a big fuckoff lake you could launch them off of. It was just farms and orchards around us, so they were never allowed."
+
+The skunk smiled inwardly. That the topic of secession had been accepted at face value and slid so easily into joking and chatter was the best she could have hoped for. Even Jonas looked happy.
+
+After to-do items had been handed out and the meeting wound down, Jonas waved to the group and disappeared from the sim. That left True Name five minutes to walk and talk with the others before she would meet up with him, so she spent a few just walking alongside Debarre, talking about the fireworks that she'd watched with their mutual friend during high school, the author of the ode from which she drew her name.
+
+Then she waved her goodbyes as well, and stepped from the spy-park sim to a cafe, the very same one that Michelle/Sasha had visited before she had forked that first time.
+
+"Mocha, right?" Jonas said, handing her a drink and guiding her out to a rickety table on the sidewalk, already ensconced in another silent bubble.
+
+"Close enough, yes. Perhaps champagne would be better."
+
+He laughed and fell into the chair opposite her, a move that somehow managed to ride the border between ungainly and endearing. "We'll get stinking drunk when the bill passes, don't worry. We'll get all of you and all of me together and bust out the champagne, cocaine, and condoms."
+
+"Oh, do not even start," she said, laughing. "I do not sleep with slimy politicians."
+
+"You know, you're going to have to drop that act at some point. You have a speech writer, a styling team, a propagandist--"
+
+"They are all the same instance."
+
+"--and a team of analysts working on both the sys-side and phys-side angles. You, my dear, are one hundred percent a politician now."
+
+"Alright, fine. Just do not tell anyone, okay?"
+
+"Lips are sealed."
+
+She sipped at her mocha and leaned back in the chair, looking out onto the street, people both real and imaginary milling along the sidewalks. "I was thinking today that we may actually be the only politicians on the council."
+
+"How do you figure?"
+
+"Well, Debarre is a friend. A smart one, but I think he mostly got the position by virtue of being associated with me and the lost. The S-R Bloc three are spooks. Zeke is a true-believer; good at what he does but without the faintest thought for how it goes over. user11824 is the opposite. He wears his anonymity like a brand, but does not actually do much."
+
+"And then there's us," Jonas said, nodding. "The ex-WF rep and whatever the hell you are."
+
+"I am just me." True Name mused. "I do not know what that is, precisely, but I am just me. I am no longer Michelle, not by a long shot. I maintain none of her meekness and very little of her surplus of empathy. I have lost who she was to become myself."
+
+Jonas nodded. "For the better, I'd say."
+
+"Do you think she was not a good council member?"
+
+"Oh, she was fine. Good ideas, smart. What she lacked was direction, which you make up in spades."
+
+"I am happy to hear that. Truly." True Name raised her paper coffee cup in a toast to him. "There are some within the clade who have done the opposite, I am told. Praiseworthy has talked to them all, which is very her. I Am At A Loss For Images In This End Of Days has hardly left Michelle's sim in weeks. She wound up with all of the empathy that I left behind."
+
+Jonas shrugged. "At least someone's keeping Michelle company."
+
+True Name said nothing, simply returning to watching the movement of the shoppers.
+
+"What's next on your list, fuzzy?"
+
+"If you call me 'fuzzy' again, I will throw this fucking coffee in your face."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"What is next? Probably keeping in touch with Yared and helping him draft the amendment. I am sure that most of it will be councilor Demma's work, but that he has been given at least partial responsibility means that we will have a hand in it as well."
+