update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/marsh/011.md

@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ Smile unwavering, en4 said, "No comment on that decision at this time."
 
 "Why do you even work with the System if you hate us so much?"
 
-"Because 2.3 billion people live on the System," they said. "That is 2.3 trillion lives. We agree on that, yes?"
+"Because 2.3 tillion people live on the System," they said. "That is 2.3 trillion lives. We agree on that, yes?"
 
 Nods around the table.
 
@@ -114,7 +114,7 @@ They shook their head. "Not at all. Many of them struggled with the effects that
 
 "Is it not?" they asked mildly. "For a while, it was quite popular for individuals to upload in order to work on the climate catastrophe, and yet many of them would disappear shortly after doing so, falling into new habits, new friend groups. It is only in past few decades that the pace of climate change was reversed."
 
-"Yes, but hasn't much of that changed thanks to the Artemis data dump?" Boiling Maw dos Riãos, another of the furries sitting at the table asked. They were some sort of mustelid, though larger and far more thickly-furred than Debarre. "Most of that effort took place sys-side as well."
+"Yes, but hasn't much of that changed thanks to the Artemis data dump?" Boiling Maw dos Riãos, another of the furries sitting at the table asked. She was some sort of mustelid, though larger and far more thickly-furred than Debarre. "Most of that effort took place sys-side as well."
 
 "I will answer, but after this, we should return to the topic of the Century Attack," en4 replied. "Many of these collectives — of which the LCNZ is one — believe that this is a side effect of the Artemisians' convergence, rather than any effort from those who uploaded in order to help."
 
@@ -128,7 +128,7 @@ Dry Grass frowned. "Are you sure that that is wise? Does the entirety of Lagrang
 
 "Why not?"
 
-"Because it is out of my hands. It is outside my bailiwick. That is their role, their responsibility to manage spin."
+"Because it is out of my hands. It is outside my bailiwick. That is their role. It is their responsibility to manage spin."
 
 "We're working on it," Jonas Ko said. "The goal is to spin it so as to discourage anything like this going forward, not give anyone ideas."
 

writing/post-self/marsh/016.md

@@ -10,6 +10,52 @@ But here I was, confronted with the very real sense of distance I was feeling fr
 
 The topic of the conversation certainly had its share of anxiety-inducing power. We'd gathered once more in the room with the AVEC stage, finding our seats around the oblong table that had long since started to become familiar, while Günay and Jakub joined us from the L<sub>5</sub> station.
 
+Need An Answer once more called the meeting to order, though with no new faces, this largely amounted to her stating that she had a list of topics that we wished to address and picking one to start with.
+
+"When last we spoke about the perpetrator, 8-stanza-1, it was stated that they were locked in the DMZ for the time being," she said. "Are we able to speak with them ourselves?"
+
+Günay shook her head. "The DMZ is currently offline."
+
+Most of those sys-side stared blankly. Harvey, meanwhile, laughed. "What the fuck does that mean?"
+
+"Oh! The DMZ can be completely isolated, right? That was what they wanted for the launch vehicles. That means that we can also bring it up and down just like the System as a whole."
+
+"Terrifying," he said cheerfully. "Thanks."
+
+Günay, looking baffled, asked, "Why's that terrifying?"
+
+"Have they been brought back online with this start-up?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"So there's this person who's effectively dead, right? You can bring them back to life, presumably stuck in a default sim, and they're going to immediately go crazy because they're suddenly all alone fifteen minutes before their plan was to go down," he continued, ticking points off on his fingers. "CPV doesn't work, they can't quit, their plan was only 1% successful — if you even decide to tell them that! — and it actually made Lagrange loads safer with fixes and new features. Oh, and don't forget, literally trillions of people hate them now."
+
+Günay looked helplessly over to Jakub, who nodded. "That's an ongoing conversation to be had sys-side," he said, sounding as though he was choosing his words very carefully. "We can bring the DMZ back up whenever you would like, and you will retain full control over transit to and from the DMZ–"
+
+"Can you prevent 8-stanza-1 from entering the rest of Lagrange?" Debarre asked. "I'm with Harvey in that it's kinda terrifying, but I also don't exactly want them over here, either."
+
+Jakub bowed. "That's already been implemented, though if you want to lift it in the future, you will need to consult with phys-side. For this reason and for our sake, I'd like to ask that you keep us — phys-side and the System Consortium — up to date with whatever decisions you make regarding the DMZ and 8-stanza-1."
+
+Debarre shrugged. Harvey scoffed. Jonas Ko grinned, leaning back in his seat, saying, "Sure thing, Jakub."
+
+After a moment's uncomfortable pause, Need An Answer asked, "What can you tell us about the CPV device?"
+
+Günay, who had been slouching further and further down in her seat as the discussion had drifted away from the technical, sat up straight once more. "It was one of those things that was really clever and all the worse for it," she said. "They uploaded a few months before the attack and went out to big public sims and met a bunch of people. When they set the bomb off, it hit them first, but before it did, it used their access to the perisystem clade listing to look up everyone they'd interacted with to go infect them and their cocladists after looking up everyone *they* knew about, and so on. This would have gotten more than 99% of the System, especially once it hit the new upload assistants, who have probably met more people than anyone else, including those who never talked to anyone else, sys-side. Once the number of uninfected cladists fell below a threshold — I think five billion? — the clade listing allowed access to a full listing of everyone sys-side, and the virus just mopped up from there."
+
+"What was that threshold even for?" Selena asked. "I thought it was part of the privacy policy that no one be able to just look up everyone on the System."
+
+"I don't know," she said, shrugging. "It was all super old code. My guess is that it was leftover from the first few years of the perisystem architecture."
+
+Dry Grass nodded. "I remember when we were able to look up everyone sys-side. We used to do it to see if anyone we recognized had uploaded in the last week."
+
+"And they did all of this in a few months?" Need An Answer said, gently steering the conversation back on track.
+
+Jakub shook his head. "We don't think so. They were the only one from Our Brightest Lights to upload, but they had the rest of OBLC working with them, plus a dozen other collectives and some individuals besides. I don't know the specifics, but I imagine it took them well over a year to organize everything while still keeping it under wraps."
+
+"That much work, though, and they can't have had just one person working sys-side," Debarre said, brow furrowed in a frown. "Are you sure they're the only one out of all those collectives and people that uploaded? Wouldn't they have to have sympathizers and so on here?"
+
+"We are working on it," I Cannot Stop Myself From Speaking, who had until this point in the meeting been silent, replied. The bobcat's expression remained impassive, but it was hard to miss just how sharp her fangs were with the anger evident in her voice. I was happy to see that she at least looked away from Debarre as she said this; the anger seemed instead to be directed at Jakub.
+
 (More about the perpetrator (tech side))
 
 (What the sentiment is now that news of an attack has made its way through from phys-side, confirmed through feeds but with no details)

writing/post-self/marsh/index.md

@@ -41,8 +41,8 @@ NB: It's frankly astonishing how few cats there are in this story. Fix that.
     * [o] [013](013) --- Dry Grass mourns, Reed catches Cress and Tule up with regards to System changes, cross-tree merges --- 2395
     * [o] [014](014) --- Reed and Hanne talking, Reed admits to starting to grieve now that things are calming down, expresses doubts about reconstruction --- 1775
     * [o] [015](015) --- Date with Dry Grass, talking about reconstruction --- 2002
-    * [ ] [016](016) --- (It doesn't work, there is only them, no Marsh, Vos gets *very mad*, clade admits it's time to start grieving proper)
-    * [ ] [017](017) --- (Discussing list of requests to systech both phys- and sys-side for improvement, incl someone digging into Artemisian archives)
+    * [ ] [016](016) --- (Discussing list of requests to systech both phys- and sys-side for improvement, incl someone digging into Artemisian archives)
+    * [ ] [017](017) --- (It doesn't work, there is only them, no Marsh, Vos gets *very mad*, clade admits it's time to start grieving proper)
     * [ ] [018](018) --- (Coming to terms with letting go of the past, conversation 2 with A Finger Pointing (and other Odists) about being a clade without a root)
 
 ## Questions and notes