update from sparkleup

1

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-au BufNewFile,BufRead,BufEnter *.md setl syntax=markdown

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/001.md

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
-Ioan Balan awoke to an urgent message.
+Ioan Bălan awoke to an urgent message.
 
 Ey didn't really like these, the sensorium messages. Ey liked paper messages. letters. Notes. Missives. Scrawled signatures and careful handwriting.
 
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ The opacity on the message was turned up high so that even in eir dark room with
 
 The combination of the fox's white fur, glistening and iridescent, combined with the room and landscape was all painfully postmodern. Ey didn't consider emself much of a pomophobe, but this was intense, to say the least.
 
-*"Hi Mx Balan,"* the fox was saying. It seemed to speak in italics, though how, Ioan could not say. A sense. *"I have a proposition for you."*
+*"Hi Mx Bălan,"* the fox was saying. It seemed to speak in italics, though how, Ioan could not say. A sense. *"I have a proposition for you."*
 
 Ioan grunted. The message was recorded, thank goodness. No interaction.
 

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/002.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 Ioan\#c1494bf found emself twenty meters in front of a squat house.

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/003-a.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 The first message was not long in coming, arriving about an hour after Ioan\#c1494bf arrived home. At least it wasn't high priority; ey had the choice to accept then or experience later. Half duplex, though. Would be an actual conversation.

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/003-b.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 Dear,
@@ -69,6 +69,6 @@ So, one question answered and several more raised. I will continue my investigat
 
 All my best,
 
-Ioan Balan
+Ioan Bălan
 
 PS - In engaging with this project, my searches and purchases on the exchange are shaping my reputation quite strangely. \#Tracker has received several queries for future projects surrounding both novel forms of encryption and a few requests for historical analyses on speculative fiction. Ey has turned down all of the former and seriously considered all of the latter --- and, ey wishes you to know, places the blame for this solely on your shoulders.

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/003-c.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 Ioan sat, startled, as Dear quit abruptly, leaving em sitting alone at the cafe table. There was a certain peculiarity to that fox's sense of humor, and while ey was slowly picking up on it, the occasional bafflement remained.

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/003-d.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 The grin and the sense of pride that Dear had greeted em with did not last.

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/004.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 Ioan sat back and rubbed at eir eyes. Time had gone all funny with all this research.
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ Ey had researched it at one point and entertained the idea that it might be part
 
 There were never any complaints about the quality or quantity of work ey got done while free-running. Ey didn't slip up or stumble. Didn't make more mistakes than when ey stuck to a schedule. Made fewer, perhaps. And being methodical got one quite far as an historian and writer. Ey would write the same quality work at the beginning, middle, and end of eir waking periods.
 
-What it did not do, however, was endear oneself to one's housemates. Ioan\#tracker quickly grew frustrated with eir forks, whether or not they used a cone of silence. Ey knew the feeling well. It was implicit that ey would, as a fork. It was a common enough problem when multiple Balan instances stayed in the same house while on projects, each on a separate project, a separate schedule. And ey was nothing if not a Balan.
+What it did not do, however, was endear oneself to one's housemates. Ioan\#tracker quickly grew frustrated with eir forks, whether or not they used a cone of silence. Ey knew the feeling well. It was implicit that ey would, as a fork. It was a common enough problem when multiple Bălan instances stayed in the same house while on projects, each on a separate project, a separate schedule. And ey was nothing if not a Bălan.
 
 And here, ey'd been lucky enough to be invited by eir...client? Patron? Had been invited by Dear to stay at its place.
 

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/005.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 Dear wasn't kidding about the smells. Ioan turned eir sensorium's sensitivity way up. Ey wondered if Dear's vulpine nose could smell things eirs could not.
@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ Ioan rifled through eir mental notes on the project. "Signifier...from the first
 
 Dear nodded. *"Hardly anyone uses it anymore, but signifier used to be what we called the names of long-lived branches. It's still used here and there among older clades."*
 
-"Right, yeah. Ioan Balan is my name, Ioan\#c1494bf is my signifier."
+"Right, yeah. Ioan Bălan is my name, Ioan\#c1494bf is my signifier."
 
 *"Yes. It fell out of use quickly. Too clumsy a word. I use it now and then, when I can get away with it."*
 

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/006-b.md

@@ -1,14 +1,14 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleht:novel:chapter:
 
 Interview with: Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled  
 On the formation of the Clade  
-Ioan Balan  
+Ioan Bălan  
 Systime 181+338 1644
 
 **Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled**: What, specifically, do you want to know about the clade?
 
-**Ioan Balan**:  Other than "start at the beginning, and when you get to the end, stop?"
+**Ioan Bălan**:  Other than "start at the beginning, and when you get to the end, stop?"
 
 **Dear**: [laughter] Yes. I could do that, I suppose, but it wouldn't make for a very good story.
 

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/006.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 Dear's partner cooked that evening. Ioan sat with the two around the table and tried not to feel like a third wheel.

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/007.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 Mustering the Odists took surprising effort.

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/008.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 The designated meeting point was the prairie in front of Dear's house. Ioan was confused as to why they didn't just meet in Qoheleth's sim, until ey realized that many members of the clade had not met in years or decades, or, in the case of up-tree instances, ever.

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/009.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 The room was a utilitarian grey, closer to black than to white. A default color. The illumination was a central light source somewhere above the exact center of the room, vague and misted. Soft. Inexact. It was enough to give definition to the room's corners and boundaries, those walls of matte...stone? But not a whole lot else. Even faces felt somewhat featureless in that light.

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/010.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
 After the assassination, with no one to lead and no reason to remain, the rest of the Odists and their friends left. Dear's pacing wound down. It eventually stopped, shoulders sagging.

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/011.md

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
-%title Ioan Balan --- 2305
+%title Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 :writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:
 
-Ioan Balan#tracker chose a blithe-theirs merge strategy in this particular instance, when Ioan#c1494bf finished the project and quit. They chose together, actually. #c1494bf requested it, and #tracker agreed.
+Ioan Bălan#tracker chose a blithe-theirs merge strategy in this particular instance, when Ioan#c1494bf finished the project and quit. They chose together, actually. #c1494bf requested it, and #tracker agreed.
 
 There was one more sensorium chat after that, between Ioan#tracker and Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled. Ioan thanked Dear profusely for the opportunity and experience. Dear cried and made Ioan promise to come back --- *"your wall will miss you"* --- to which Ioan readily agreed.
 

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Qoheleth/001-a.md

@@ -3,13 +3,13 @@
 
 Transcript of Node: [\[bea0cf302fcd00863f0c67a91b1a75c0e4ba4863\]](http://35.165.134.227/node/bea0cf302fcd00863f0c67a91b1a75c0e4ba4863) with descriptive text by \#d5b14aa.
 
-*The footage shows two persons. One of them has to be Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, who is an up-tree branch of the Ode clade, eighth stanza. No one else has ears that big, nobody else can somehow speak in italics. The other took some research, but I'm confident that ey are an instance of Ioan Balan, a historian and writer. Ey are a tracker, but only just, as eir habits tend toward few to no long-running instances. This instance is either \#tracker or one tasked to this project.*
+*The footage shows two persons. One of them has to be Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, who is an up-tree branch of the Ode clade, eighth stanza. No one else has ears that big, nobody else can somehow speak in italics. The other took some research, but I'm confident that ey are an instance of Ioan Bălan, a historian and writer. Ey are a tracker, but only just, as eir habits tend toward few to no long-running instances. This instance is either \#tracker or one tasked to this project.*
 
 *The two persons are sitting outside of a cafe, from whom I obtained this footage. They are in conversation. Going to sit down and watch this.*
 
 > **Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled**: Thanks for your letter, Ioan. Lots of really good stuff in there, most of which I'd missed simply out of nearsightedness.
 >
-> **Ioan Balan**: You've got me hooked on this project, have to say. It's fascinating stuff.
+> **Ioan Bălan**: You've got me hooked on this project, have to say. It's fascinating stuff.
 
 *Dear grins at this.*
 

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Qoheleth/001-b.md

@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ Node: 172fb56e982d2d3f08957c5f7be0779bbf2f6aa6
 
 ### Node: \[172fb56e982d2d3f08957c5f7be0779bbf2f6aa6\]
 
-*Transcript of Ioan Balan and Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled speaking at a cafe.*
+*Transcript of Ioan Bălan and Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled speaking at a cafe.*
 
 ### Node: \[f6981a0738b43275059c37a9c8b744e42eb91fb9\]
 

writing/post-self/qoheleth/index.md

@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ Plot 2:
 
 ### Thread 2
 
-* Ioan Balan
+* Ioan Bălan
     * Journalist, storyteller
 * Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled of the Ode Clade
     * Instance artist
@@ -95,7 +95,7 @@ Plot 2:
 
 *Dr Carter Ramirez* is a scientist at the University College of London working on studying the lost. She is head of the research team and focuses specifically on the statistical, psychological, and data science side of the research. Her coworker, *Dr Sanders*, leads up the neuroscience side of research. When RJ gets lost, Sanders mentions that 'another furry' has gotten lost, and Dr Ramirez gets a hunch that there might be some social vector to the lost. When she starts investigating along those lines, however, she meets strange amounts of pushback from both Sanders and the grantors funding the research. She pushes on with a reduced team of *Avery*, a nonbinary statistician, and *Prakash Das*, a neuroscientist. Avery discovers that RJ's case may be unique in that eir marketing trail has been influenced by eir nonbinary gender as well as eir aromanticism, meaning that ey is both easy to track and unique in eir social circles.
 
-Nearly two hundred years in the future, *Ioan Balan*, an historian living as an upload in a computer system, is contacted by an enigmatic fennec fox named *Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled*, who is looking to hire em as an amanuensis, someone to help both investigate and to witness the investigation into a problem that its "clade", the Ode clade, is running into. A clade is the set of individuals in the system forked from a common ancestor, with "forking" meaning that the individual makes a copy of themselves who is unique from that point on. Some unknown person has allegedly spilled a secret of some importance to the Ode clade, namely the name of the author of the Ode to the End of Death after which they are named, someone who died before uploading. While Ioan is initially skeptical of being used as a private investigator, ey quickly becomes interested in the strange intricacies of the Ode clade and the mystery itself, which primarily takes place as a playful puzzle using various forms of encryption set forth by someone who will only identify himself as Qoheleth.
+Nearly two hundred years in the future, *Ioan Bălan*, an historian living as an upload in a computer system, is contacted by an enigmatic fennec fox named *Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled*, who is looking to hire em as an amanuensis, someone to help both investigate and to witness the investigation into a problem that its "clade", the Ode clade, is running into. A clade is the set of individuals in the system forked from a common ancestor, with "forking" meaning that the individual makes a copy of themselves who is unique from that point on. Some unknown person has allegedly spilled a secret of some importance to the Ode clade, namely the name of the author of the Ode to the End of Death after which they are named, someone who died before uploading. While Ioan is initially skeptical of being used as a private investigator, ey quickly becomes interested in the strange intricacies of the Ode clade and the mystery itself, which primarily takes place as a playful puzzle using various forms of encryption set forth by someone who will only identify himself as Qoheleth.
 
 When ey gets lost, RJ/AwDae awakes in eir old high school as a fox, rather than as eir human self. While there, ey struggles with the loneliness and maddening features of the 'sim' in which ey has found emself. Ey hunts around and eventually finds a set of clues related to Cicero's disappearance. After struggling with various aspects of the sim such as doors being locked, a 'fog of war' that keeps em from seeing more than a hundred or so feet while ey is outside, words in books refusing to stay still on the page, and nauseating 'skips' when ey travels through places ey has never seen before, ey deduces that ey is not actually in a sim as it exists in the waking world, but trapped in eir own mind with the VR technology (which takes the form of implants in eir hands, forehead, and a column along eir spine known as an 'exocortex') mirroring eir experiences back to em through the technology already in place. Notably, the information ey was exposed to before getting lost has been cached in eir exocortex, and ey has full access to it. Realising that ey are stuck in something more akin to a dream than a sim, ey begins treating it as such, molding the world to eir whim, all while eir sanity seems to erode from the effects of this setup.
 
@@ -107,7 +107,7 @@ In the future, Ioan and Dear have tracked down Qoheleth, the one who spilled the
 
 Carter makes it to the UMC and, taking a risk, logs in to meet up with Sasha and Debarre to pass on what has happened at her work and what she knows of RJ. Part way through explaining what is happening, Sasha falls over in pain and then her system crashes, and Carter and Debarre deduce that she has gotten lost as well and both log out immediately. When Carter goes to visit RJ, she finds both the police and Johansson and Caitlin there already. Johansson distracts the police while Carter sets up a 'mirror rig' with RJ, a training device for those who are learning to use their implants which allows an instructor to help control RJ, acting on a hunch from seeing Sasha disappear. She logs into the mirror rig with RJ and finds herself in a confusing, dreamlike place with AwDae at the center of it all, spouting lines from a poem that we now recognize as the Ode. Carter struggles to convince em to come with her, and eventually succeeds. She immediately dives back in and publishes via the DDR what she has learned as well as how to free the lost.
 
-Debarre frees Sasha, finding that she is similarly affected by the mirroring experience, though to a lesser extent than RJ. All of those who were lost are forever changed, and few for the better. Cicero finds it to be too much and kills himself. Shortly before his funeral, Sasha receives a letter from RJ mentioning that ey must go back to that mirror world and has volunteered to be an early subject for uploading tech that will lead to the world Ioan and Dear inhabit, a process that will kill eir body and, unless everything goes right, ey will not be able to see her again. The letter includes the entirety of the Ode, and we learn that Sasha is *Michel Hadje*, the basis for the common ancestor of the Ode clade. Sanders winds up in prison along with several who instigated the plot to remove that vote from the records. Prakash winds up back in the Sino-Russian Bloc (where, it is implied, RJ's procedure will take place). Ioan winds up eir job as amanuensis with Dear and begins to write up eir report/essay on the subject but, on a whim, contacts Dear and its partner to ask if ey might create a long-lived fork (eir first), Codrin Balan, to work with them both on the project.
+Debarre frees Sasha, finding that she is similarly affected by the mirroring experience, though to a lesser extent than RJ. All of those who were lost are forever changed, and few for the better. Cicero finds it to be too much and kills himself. Shortly before his funeral, Sasha receives a letter from RJ mentioning that ey must go back to that mirror world and has volunteered to be an early subject for uploading tech that will lead to the world Ioan and Dear inhabit, a process that will kill eir body and, unless everything goes right, ey will not be able to see her again. The letter includes the entirety of the Ode, and we learn that Sasha is *Michel Hadje*, the basis for the common ancestor of the Ode clade. Sanders winds up in prison along with several who instigated the plot to remove that vote from the records. Prakash winds up back in the Sino-Russian Bloc (where, it is implied, RJ's procedure will take place). Ioan winds up eir job as amanuensis with Dear and begins to write up eir report/essay on the subject but, on a whim, contacts Dear and its partner to ask if ey might create a long-lived fork (eir first), Codrin Bălan, to work with them both on the project.
 
 The final scene shows Qian Guowei, the assassin who destroyed Qoheleth, getting another assignment.
 
@@ -191,5 +191,5 @@ Check when edited
     * [.] Chapter: [Sasha](Sasha/005) --- Sasha at/after funeral, learn she's Michel Hadje
     * [.] Chapter: [Carter 013](Carter/013) --- retrospective: Sanders in jail, Prakash back to RB working on upload tech using info about exo mirroring, Carter praised for saving the lost and exposing plot
     * [o] Chapter: [RJ 017](RJ/017) --- Ode in letter/suicide note to Sasha
-    * [o] Chapter: [Ioan 011](Ioan/011) --- Ioan merges, begins to write, (sends Dear a sensorium message on a whim asking if ey might send a long-lived fork to stay with em to write. Codrin Balan, perhaps? Or Codruţ? From Romanian codru, 'woods'. Maybe asks Dear how this works. Ioan from John re bible, names important)
+    * [o] Chapter: [Ioan 011](Ioan/011) --- Ioan merges, begins to write, (sends Dear a sensorium message on a whim asking if ey might send a long-lived fork to stay with em to write. Codrin Bălan, perhaps? Or Codruţ? From Romanian codru, 'woods'. Maybe asks Dear how this works. Ioan from John re bible, names important)
     * [.]  Chapter: Qian Guowei --- Gets next assignment