update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/neviim/local/codrin/012.md

@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ Only one anxiety remained, then.
 
 The fennec sat up straighter. *"Of course, my dear. Now?"*
 
-Eir other partner lifted their gaze from where they'd been staring at the table. "Just you two?"
+Eir other partner lifted their gaze from where they'd been staring at the table, zoning out. "Just you two?"
 
 Ey nodded. "Please. There's some news about the Odists. About True Name, in a way."
 
@@ -136,7 +136,7 @@ Ey was too anxious to puzzle out the opacity of the language. "I'm going to need
 
 Codrin smiled cautiously.
 
-*"Do not tell me, of course. I do not know what that would do to me, after all that I have done to myself. And certainly do not tell any other Odist. I do not want assassins visiting us in the night to shut you up,"* it said, laughing in earnest now. *"But also do not worry about your new knowledge. It is high time that we unclench our collective anus and let that shit go."*
+*"Do not tell me, of course! I do not know what that would do to me, after all that I have done to myself. And certainly do not tell any other Odist. I do not want assassins visiting us in the night to shut you up,"* it said, laughing in earnest now. *"But also do not worry about your new knowledge. It is high time that we unclench our collective anus and let that shit go."*
 
 Ey laughed as well. "Right, right. True Name suggested not telling any other Odists, too."
 

writing/post-self/neviim/local/tycho/014.md

@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ She laughed. "That it is, my dear."
 
 She shrugged, a subtle shifting of shadow. "That too, yes, but also, news from Lagrange has been distressing. Much of the clade will be seeking...well, therapy."
 
-He frowned up to the sky, unable to think of anything to say to that that would not be rude or patronizing.
+He frowned up to the sky, unable to think of anything to say to that that would not sound rude or patronizing.
 
 "Our cracks are showing," the skunk continued in a far-away voice. "Growth is colliding with eternal memory, and the cracks are showing."
 
@@ -88,7 +88,7 @@ He winced. "I was wondering how that'd go."
 
 Tycho set aside his empty glass and stretched out on the grass, laying on his back once more, arms crossed beneath his head. "I was worried about that, yeah. I can't speak to the ease of merging, but I'm glad you made it through all the same."
 
-He could hear the grin in her voice as she said, "I am pleased to hear that. The distance between "we are coworkers and should act as such" and "I don't actually like you but have to tolerate you" is rather small, and I could not tell which it was with you."
+He could hear the grin in her voice as she said, "I am pleased to hear that. The distance between "we are coworkers and should act as such while at work" and "I don't actually like you but have to tolerate you" is rather small, and I could not tell which it was with you."
 
 "I like you," he said, laughing at her easy humor. "You're a little terrifying, but I respect you."
 
@@ -148,7 +148,7 @@ The skunk sighed, and he was pleased to hear more contentment than frustration i
 
 "No. Even if they're a dream, I'll join them. Even if this was all a dream, I'm happy to have been a part of it."
 
-"And have you any further thoughts on uploading as the stage of civilization most likely to breach the Great Filter?" She sounded earnest, almost excited. "I must confess that the thought has been lingering in the back of my mind since our last conversation here. Old sci-fi dreams dog me still."
+"And have you any further thoughts on uploading as the stage of civilization most likely to breach the Great Filter?" She sounded earnest, almost excited. It made him happy to hear, made him excited in turn. "I must confess that the thought has been lingering in the back of my mind since our last conversation here. Old sci-fi dreams dog me still."
 
 "Oh, definitely feeling like I'm stuck in some crazy science fiction novel," he said. "Uploading, furries, launch vehicles, and now aliens? At this point, why not? It makes as much sense as any of this."
 
@@ -162,7 +162,7 @@ He spent a moment searching the perisystem architecture for the poem True Name h
 
 He was nothing if not a scientist, though, and although her reading, as one who dreamed in her own ways, was as accurate as his, he knew he had his own understanding of leaving a work unfinished so that others could pick it up. That was his dream, the dream of so many calm, cold scientists before him. It was a different take on the same dream, perhaps; where True Name might see regret in that error of calmest coldness, he saw only the comforting truth of his later science.
 
-Or perhaps that coldness was her own, and for that he could not fault her regret, only wish her the best, only further his service to his science.
+Or perhaps that coldness was her own, and for that he could not fault her regret, only wish her the best in finding future warmth, only further his service to his science.
 
 *We will dream of stars,* Stolon had said, and he knew they would.
 

writing/post-self/neviim/local/tycho/015.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # Tycho Brahe --- 2346
 
-> *Convergence T-plus 6 days, 20 hours, 18 minutes*
+> *Convergence T-plus 4 days, 20 hours, 18 minutes*
 
 "Who's idea was this?" Tycho asked, staring, unbelieving, at the heat-haze shimmer before him.
 
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ True Name grinned proudly. "A cocladist of mine came up with this. I would not r
 
 He shook his head, looking once more from the ground to the sky. They stood on a well trimmed lawn at the edge of a forest, the shade provided by lingering oaks and birches delightfully cool amid the just-shy-of-too-warm day. The grass continued right up to a shimmering barrier of heat, where it quickly failed, a no-man's-land of scrub lasting only a few feet before it fell away into sand. A true desert stretched out as far as he could see before him. Rolling dunes, painfully blue skies, mirages dancing along the horizon.
 
-So extreme was the temperature differential in so small a space that the barrier between the two, that shimmer of heat-haze, appeared to be a very literal wall extending as far as he could see in either direction, though after a few dozen yards, the forest encroached right up to the barrier once more, impossibly dense, impassible.
+So extreme was the temperature differential in so small a space that the barrier between the two, that shimmer of heat-haze, appeared to be a very literal wall extending as far as he could see in either direction, though after a few dozen yards, the forest crept right up to the barrier once more, impossibly dense, impassible.
 
 And there, right in the middle of the clearing, sitting flush against the wall of heat, sat a low tollbooth. There was a glass-walled cubicle, large enough for one person to sit on a stool, huddling beneath a canopy, a small A/C unit gasping and rattling atop it. A red and white striped gate blocked a concrete sidewalk leading directly into the desert.
 
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ He shook his head. "Gemini doesn't fit. Tyndareus, if you want to stick with the
 
 Tycho sat on the bench and leaned back against it, looking out into the plaza. "Nothing else, though?"
 
-"Not yet. The border will open officially later today to both members of Castor and Artemis. The passage into Convergence will be rate-limited throughout this process. We will ensure that this area does not beggar the rest of the System for capacity, as we were informed during the conference that the Artemisians all take up a bit more space than we do, as should probably be expected by five-thousand year old consciousnesses. Still, we are not hurting for space."
+"Not yet. The border will open officially later today to members of both Castor and Artemis. The passage into Convergence will be rate-limited throughout this process. We will ensure that this area does not beggar the rest of the System for capacity, as we were informed during the conference that the Artemisians all take up a bit more space than we do, as should probably be expected by five-thousand year old consciousnesses. Still, we are not hurting for space."
 
 "Yeah, though thankfully they're not carrying around an entire five millennia of memory."
 
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ He took his own glass and sipped. It was quite good.
 
 "Are you excited to join them, then?"
 
-He sat in silence, drinking his coffee and looking at nothing in particular from the dappled shade. Too many thoughts crowded his head, none of them worth thinking, and once again, an idea sat within his gut, demanding to be spoken. He savored it intentionally, rather than shying away from it as he had the last one. The feeling of these decisions was becoming familiar. 'Trust your gut' indeed.
+He sat in silence, drinking his coffee and looking at nothing in particular from the dappled shade. Too many thoughts crowded his head, none of them worth thinking, and once again, an idea sat within his gut, demanding to be spoken. He savored it intentionally, rather than shying away from it as he had the last one. The feeling of these decisions was becoming familiar. *Trust your gut* indeed.
 
 "Tycho?"