update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/toledot/launch/sys/Ioan/001.md

@@ -2,23 +2,23 @@
 
 The first thing that Ioan did when ey arrived before that low-slung house, there among countless acres of rolling buffalo grass, was laugh.
 
-The prairie was as ey remembered. Grass tickled at eir lower calves even through the socks and slacks; clouds threatened rain as they always did; wind tugged at eir hair in all the very same ways as it first had however many years ago now --- was it really twenty? And yet the house! Banners were hung about in deepest black, streamers running from pole to pole in a welcoming path, guiding visitors up to the house. This was lit about with flames of all sizes: tea-lights scattered among the dandelions, elaborate candelabras set upon tables, braziers set upon tripods, wall sconces set beneath the cantilevered roof. A glow painting the grass beside the house suggested a bonfire out back.
+The prairie was as ey remembered. Grass tickled at eir lower calves even through the socks and slacks; clouds threatened rain as they always did; wind tugged at eir hair in all the very same ways it first had however many years ago now --- was it really twenty? And yet the house! Banners were hung about in deepest black, streamers running from pole to pole in a welcoming path, guiding visitors. The house itself was lit about with flames of all sizes: tea-lights scattered among the dandelions, elaborate candelabras set upon tables, braziers set upon tripods, wall sconces set beneath the cantilevered roof. A glow painting the grass beside the house suggested a bonfire out back.
 
-And there, the largest banner of them all draped from that roof shouted in stately capitals: "HAPPY DEATH DAY".
+And there, the largest banner of them all, draped from that roof, shouted in stately capitals: "HAPPY DEATH DAY".
 
-Still shaking eir head, ey walked up along the streamer-lined path up toward the house. When the threshold was crossed, a chime sounded from within and outside the house.
+Still shaking eir head, ey walked up along the streamer-lined path up toward the house. When the threshold was crossed, a chime sounded from within.
 
-Ioan need not have looked hard for Dear, for the fox was already sprinting around the corner of the house. Fox*es*, ey realized, for as it ran, it forked off copies of itself of all sorts: that iridescent fennec ey remembered, yes, but also scampering foxes no larger than a double-handful, a few grinning copies of the Michelle Hadje of its past, and even a shoulder-high lumbering beast with eyes that crackled with a light of their own.
+Ioan need not have looked hard for Dear; the fox was already sprinting around the corner of the house. Fox*es*, ey realized, for as it ran, it forked off copies of itself of all sorts: that iridescent fennec ey remembered, yes, but also scampering foxes no larger than a double-handful, a few grinning copies of the Michelle Hadje of its past, and even a shoulder-high lumbering beast with eyes that crackled with a light of their own.
 
 Dear --- the real Dear --- was easy to pick out, for it was dressed in mourners garb. A black suit, almost-but-not-quite masculine, with its eyes hidden by a gauzy black, almost-but-not-quite feminine veil.
 
 One by one, the various forks quit, and Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled skidded to an unceremonious stop in front of the historian.
 
-*"Ioan! Mx Ioan Bălan! It has been too long! I have missed you."* The fox held out a paw.
+*"Ioan! Mx. Ioan Bălan! It has been too long! I have missed you."* The fox held out a paw.
 
 Ioan bypassed this and went straight for the hug. "Dear, this is patently ridiculous."
 
-The laughter against eir ear was musical as the hug was returned. *"I hold no patent on the ridiculous. It is precisely as ridiculous as it needs to be. Come! Come around back. You are early, and that is perfectly fine, but folks will want to say hi."*
+The laughter against eir ear was giddy as the hug was returned. *"I hold no patent on the ridiculous. It is precisely as ridiculous as it needs to be. Come! Come around back. You are early, and that is perfectly fine, but folks will want to say hi."*
 
 Following after the fox and laughing at the way the occasional non-anthropomorphized fennec would blip into being, scamper into the grass with a (frankly rather horrifying) screech, and then disappear, Ioan tried to chat with Dear. 
 
@@ -28,11 +28,11 @@ The fox was short on speech after the greeting, eventually hushing em. *"We'll a
 
 Ey smiled. "Codrin, you're looking well."
 
-What similarities the two had borne early on had since started to blur. Codrin had started out, as a matter of absent-mindedness, an identical copy of Ioan. While Dear could fork out all the unexpected shapes it wanted, Ioan had never mastered the art. Time changes much, however, and eir up-tree fork had deviated in style from Ioan's stolid adherence to form. Codrin's hair had long-since grown past Ioan's tousled look, and the curls ey hated so much adopted as an integral part of em. Eir face, too, had changed, adopting a femininity that suited eir features well. The warm-colored sarong and tunic ey had last seen em in, however, had been replaced with clothes as funereal as Dear's.
+What similarities the two had borne early on had since started to blur. Codrin had started out, as a matter of absent-mindedness, an identical copy of Ioan. While Dear could fork out all the unexpected shapes it wanted, Ioan had never mastered the art. Time changes much, however, and eir up-tree fork had deviated in style from Ioan's stolid adherence to form. Codrin's hair had long-since grown past Ioan's tousled look, and the curls ey hated so much adopted as an integral part of em. Eir face, too, had changed, adopting a femininity that suited eir features. The warm-colored sarong and tunic ey had last seen em in, however, had been replaced with clothes as funereal as Dear's.
 
 Matching, Ioan realized. They were a triad now, Codrin, Dear, and Dear's partner, and ey supposed there was no reason that the three of them shouldn't match on their so-called death day.
 
-There were hugs all around, and Ioan hid eir secret smile at the uncanny act of hugging one's own fork, however far they had diverged.
+There were hugs all around, and Ioan hid eir secret smile at the uncanny act of embracing one's own fork, however far they had diverged.
 
 "How are you three? Excited?"
 
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ Dear stuck its tongue out at its partner, a gesture that bordered on cute on tha
 
 Its partner laughed. "It took you a surprisingly short time."
 
-*"It has already been established that I am excited. Permit me this!"* After a laughing pause, it continued. *"Now, however, we have been permitted the wonder and curiosity that drives so many images of the afterlife. Now, we get as close as ever to* knowing *that an afterlife exist, and ghosts will speak to us from beyond the heavens."*
+*"It has already been established that I am excited. Permit me this."* After a pause, it continued. *"Now, however, we have been permitted the wonder and curiosity that drives so many images of the afterlife. Now, we get as close as ever to* knowing *that an afterlife exists, and ghosts will speak to us from beyond the heavens."*
 
 "For a time," Codrin said.
 
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ Its partner laughed. "It took you a surprisingly short time."
 
 The ideas touched on some subconscious musing that Ioan had carried with emself ever since the choice to remain had been made, and the group settled into a silence broken only by the crackling of logs on the bonfire. Ey didn't know what the others were thinking, there in the flickering light, but for em, the weight of that decision settled at last on em, and eir thoughts scattered before the implications.
 
-Ey had made eir own irreversible choice, and while ey knew that ey could technically reverse it up until that final point of no return, later this evening, ey knew that ey would not.
+Ey had made eir own irreversible choice, and while ey knew that ey could technically reverse it up until that final point of no return later this evening, ey knew that ey would not.
 
 "Ioan?"
 
@@ -82,15 +82,15 @@ Ioan waited for Dear to release May Then My Name Die With Me before getting eir
 
 "Glad you could make it," Dear's partner said.
 
-"Of course! I would not miss it for the world. Besides, I am one of the honored guests, right?"
+"I would not miss it for the world. Besides, I am one of the honored guests, right?"
 
 Codrin smiled. "We've only invited honored guests."
 
 *"Of course! And here come more."*
 
-For the next hour, the chime of arrival was near constant as guests upon guests arrived. Much of the Ode Clade showed, though Ioan noted that some of the more conservative members were absent, grudges remaining even to this day. Michelle Hadje herself, the root instance, was notably absent, and a tug of still-unprocessed emotions pulled at the insides of eir chest.
+For the next hour, the chime of arrival was near constant as guest after guest arrived. Much of the Ode Clade showed, though Ioan noted that some of the more conservative members were absent, grudges remaining even to this day. Michelle Hadje herself, the root instance, was notably absent, and a tug of still-unprocessed emotions pulled at the insides of eir chest.
 
-Ioan had only met her once before, shortly before this whole plan had been set in motion. She was unfailingly kind, though if madness rode the whole of her clade, it seemed to affect her deeper than the rest, and she was often taken by long silences, sometimes in the middle of sentences. During these, she lost coherence, her form rippling and changing, waves of skunk rolling down her form, followed by equally tumultuous waves of her human self. These spells would last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, and even after they were quelled and the conversation resumed, afterimages of mephitidine muzzle and ears would ghost suddenly into place and just as quickly disappear.
+Ioan had only met her once before, shortly before this whole plan had been set in motion. She was unfailingly kind, though if madness rode the whole of her clade, it seemed to affect her deeper than the rest. She was often taken by long silences, sometimes in the middle of sentences. During these, she lost coherence, her form rippling and changing, waves of skunk rolling down her form, followed by equally tumultuous waves of her human self. These spells would last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, and even after they were quelled and the conversation resumed, afterimages of mephit muzzle and ears would ghost suddenly into place and just as quickly disappear.
 
 After that visit, Ioan had asked Dear about them. Its features darkened and it had averted its gaze. *"We all have our ways of dealing with loss. She could seek change if she wanted, but...it is complicated."*
 
@@ -106,11 +106,13 @@ Dear grinned lopsidedly. *"It is not yours anymore, however, and I am a sucker f
 
 *"Asshole, remember?"*
 
-Serene had arrived with her and Dear's down-tree instance, That Which Lives Is Forever Praiseworthy, or Praiseworthy for short. The entire clade, all one hundred of them, had each taken for their names a line from a poem, the shortest of which was What Right Have I, and the longest The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream, a jumble of syllables often shortened to just True Name. Both were present.
+Serene had arrived with her and Dear's down-tree instance, That Which Lives Is Forever Praiseworthy. The entire clade, all one hundred of them, had each taken a line from a poem for their names, the shortest of which was What Right Have I, and the longest The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream, a jumble of syllables often shortened to just True Name. Both were present.
 
 Ioan was surprised by a guest who arrived late in the evening when the champagne and wine were already flowing. Simien Fang, the head of an institute that both Dear and Ioan had worked for at times in the past, made his appearance in classic understated style. He was dressed in all black, but only when viewed head on. He had apparently made an agreement with Dear to allow the occupants of the sim's vision to be modified such that when viewed out of the corner of the eye, his outfit flashed in a whirlwind of phosphene colors. Not only that, but his normally calm features distorted into a devilish grin, no matter the expression seen directly.
 
-The party rolled on inevitably.
+The party rolled on inevitably. Good conversation, good wine, good food, good company.
+
+And riding along with it, a sense of impending change, of anxiety and excitement in unequal measure.
 
 A sudden peal of thunder, louder than any Ioan had ever heard, brought silence in its wake.
 
@@ -120,7 +122,7 @@ The fox forked off several copies, all wide-eyed and feral-grinned, who helped t
 
 Ioan and May Then My Name took up places about a third of the way around the fire from Dear and its partners, the better to see without flames in the way.
 
-The triad stepped forward, and the circle closed behind them. Each of them forked in turn, the forks bowed, and disappeared.
+The triad stepped forward, and the circle closed behind them. Each forked in turn, the forks bowed, and disappeared.
 
 The weight of inevitability began to crest as midnight reared its head.
 
@@ -143,23 +145,27 @@ Ioan realized that ey was crying, that May Then My Name was crying, that many in
 
 Before the final note of the song could be sung, Dear gave a jaunty salute, bowed with a flourish, and quit along with its partner and Codrin Bălan.
 
-With a deafening silence, the landscape around them immediately crumbled into voxels, and those voxels joined together by powers of two, and with a soft chime, a descending minor triad, all the members of the party were shunted off to wherever they called home.
+With a deafening silence, the landscape around them immediately crumbled into voxels, those voxels joined together by powers of two, and with a soft chime, a descending minor triad, all the members of the party were shunted off to wherever they called home.
 
 Ioan stumbled and fell to eir knees on the parquet of eir entryway, May Then My Name standing, defiant against the change in scenery, in air and light and gravity, beside em.
 
 "What an asshole," she laughed.
 
-Ioan and the skunk let the intoxication of the night cling to them a while longer while they sat on the balcony of Ioan's house, overlooking that perpetually lilac-scented yard, and talked. They talked of the party, of the modern house on the prairie, of Dear and the contradiction of formal intensity and playfulness that it seemed to embody, and then they talked of nothing at all and the two sat in silence. It did not seem time yet to snap sobriety into being.
+Ioan and the skunk let the intoxication of the night cling to them a while longer while they sat on the balcony of Ioan's house, overlooking that perpetually lilac-scented yard, and talked. They talked of the party, of the modern house on the prairie, of Dear and the contradiction of formal intensity and playfulness that it seemed to embody, and then they talked of nothing at all as they sat in silence.
 
-It had taken Ioan several days to get used to the skunk's affectionate nature. When she first moved in as the intensity of the project began to ramp up, it had taken em by surprise. Even the act of her moving in was unexpected and new. Ey had needed to have a series of awkward conversations discussing boundaries and intentions.
+It did not seem time yet to snap sobriety into being.
 
-Now, as she slouched against eir side on that bench swing and ey settled eir arm around her, ey asked, "What's the story behind your fork? Or your stanza?"
+It had taken Ioan several weeks to get used to the skunk's affectionate nature. When she first moved in as the intensity of the project began to ramp up, it had taken em by surprise. Even the act of her moving in was unexpected and new. Ey had needed to have a series of awkward conversations discussing boundaries and intentions.
+
+Now, it had become comfortable and familiar. May Then My Name was as she should be and Ioan had grown to enjoy that
+
+As she slouched against eir side on that bench swing and ey settled eir arm around her, ey asked, "What's the story behind your fork? Or your stanza?"
 
 "Mm?"
 
-"Well, Dear said that it and Serene were forked when Praiseworthy wanted to explore an interest in instances and sims. Is there something like that which led to...to whatever your down-tree instance is forking?" Ey supposed that, were ey sober, ey might have better luck dredging up the lines from the stanza. Something about true names and god.
+"Well, Dear said that it and Serene were forked when their down-tree instance wanted to explore an interest in instances and sims. Is there something like that which led to...to whatever your down-tree instance forking?" Ey supposed that, were ey sober, ey might have better luck dredging up the lines from the stanza. Something about true names and God.
 
-May Then My Name shrugged, shoulder shifting against Ioan's side. "In the early days, I --- Michelle, that is --- did not have much direction to her forking. Forks were created at need essentially to handle the increased workload. The first ten were created all at once in a burst of activity."
+May Then My Name shrugged, shoulder shifting against Ioan's side. "In the early days, I --- Michelle, that is --- did not have much direction to her forking. Forks were created at need essentially to handle the increased workload. The first ten were created all at once in a burst of activity so that she could take a break."
 
 "Were the early days busy?"
 
@@ -167,17 +173,17 @@ May Then My Name shrugged, shoulder shifting against Ioan's side. "In the early
 
 Ioan nodded. "Dear said that Michelle had campaigned to include sensoria in the system."
 
-"Yes, though that is something of an elision that has become shorthand for experiences rather than thoughts." Her voice was soft, though it still held the careful articulation of one who has realized that they are not sober. "We were not beings of pure thought, there were still experiences, but there was no guarantee that they would be shared. It was chaotic, as you might imagine from a set of unique individuals trying to dream the same dream.
+"Yes, though that is something of an elision that has become shorthand for experiences rather than thoughts." Her voice was clear, though it still held the careful articulation of one who has realized that they are not sober. "We were not beings of pure thought, there were still experiences, but there was no guarantee that they would be shared. It was chaotic, as you might imagine from a set of unique individuals trying to dream the same dream.
 
 "This was back in the early days, you understand, before the System had become a dumping ground for the world's excess population." She smiled, far off. "We were all starry-eyed dreamers, you know, and so were the engineers phys-side. Hard problems remain hard, however, and it kept getting deprioritized. Michelle and the rest of the founders provided arguments for the means by which we have consensual sensoria, as well as additional sensorium tools such as the messages."
 
-Ioan relished the long-faded impulse to bristle at this. The Ode clade was notorious for their fondness for sensorium messages, those sensations and images that barged in on one's senses. Ey found them unnerving. Ey said, "Just how much of the early System did your clade influence?"
+Ioan relished the long-faded impulse to bristle at this. The Ode clade was notorious for their fondness for sensorium messages, those sensations and images that barged in on one's own senses. Ey still found them unnerving. Ey said, "Just how much of the early System did your clade influence?"
 
-May Then My Name's laugh was quiet and muffled beside em. "I am sure we have lost count. The first lines of each stanza quickly picked up interests of their own --- even then they were not in much communication --- and each picked up a project of their own, and whenever a new project would come along, they would have to generate enough reputation to fork again. Everything was much more expensive back then, and we would sometimes have to pool our resources."
+May Then My Name's laugh was quiet and muffled beside em. "I am sure we have lost count. The first lines of each stanza quickly picked up interests of their own --- even then they were rarely in communication --- and each picked up a project of their own, and whenever a new project would come along, they would have to generate enough reputation to fork again. Everything was much more expensive back then, and we would sometimes have to pool our resources."
 
 "What was your stanza's project?"
 
-"We lost the idea that the whole stanza would be working on similar projects after a while, so they are not as tightly connected any more. Early forks were much more likely to share similar interests, if only because the individuation had not set in as strongly. The first line of mine, though, The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream --- True Name --- was heavy in the politics of the early System and its relations to phys-side."
+She waved a paw vaguely. "We lost the idea that the whole stanza would be working on similar projects after a while, so they are not as tightly connected any more. Early forks were much more likely to share similar interests, if only because the individuation had not set in as strongly. The first line of mine, though, The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream --- True Name, you met her briefly tonight --- was heavy in the politics of the early System and its relations to phys-side."
 
 Ioan blinked, startled. "I had no idea. I'm guessing that's back when it was a bigger deal?
 
@@ -193,7 +199,7 @@ She shrugged noncommittally, then rested her head back on Ioan's shoulder. The a
 
 "To feel?"
 
-"To feel. True Name kept spinning off instances to work on such concrete things, I think she forgot how to feel. Emotions became distant out of habit. Touch became a distraction. I was to become her anchor. We would merge every few months after that, though it has been a long time since the last time. She says that we will merge once this project is finished."
+"To feel. True Name kept spinning off instances to work on such concrete things, I think she forgot how to feel. Emotions became distant out of habit. Touch became a distraction. I was to become her anchor. We would merge every few months after that, though it has been a long time since we last did so. She says that we will merge once this project is finished."
 
 "You haven't diverged too far?" Ioan asked.
 
@@ -201,7 +207,7 @@ She shrugged noncommittally, then rested her head back on Ioan's shoulder. The a
 
 Ioan nodded. "Close enough to politics, I suppose."
 
-Another moment of silence. Ey permitted some of the drunkenness from the evening to drift away, allowing thoughts to come more clearly. May Then My Name relaxed further against eir side, and ey suspected she was not far away from sleep. Tomorrow, the work would begin to pick up in earnest, so ey was tempted to let her sleep, but a question nagged at em.
+Another moment of silence. Ey permitted some of the drunkenness from the evening to drift away, allowing thoughts to come more clearly. May Then My Name relaxed further against eir side, and ey suspected she was not far away from sleep. Tomorrow, eir work would begin to pick up in earnest, so ey was tempted to let her sleep, but a question nagged at em.
 
 "May?"
 
@@ -211,7 +217,7 @@ Another moment of silence. Ey permitted some of the drunkenness from the evening
 
 She sat bolt upright, wrenching at eir shoulder. "What did you say? Sorry."
 
-Ey reclaimed eir arm, rubbing at the shoulder. "It's okay. How much do you remember from the early days of the System? Before you uploaded or after, I mean."
+Ey reclaimed eir arm, rubbing at the shoulder. "It's okay. How much do you remember from the early days of the System? Around the time you uploaded, I mean."
 
 "You, my dear, are a fucking genius." She was on her feet within a second, pacing back and forth in front of the bench swing. She paused mid-pace to lean down and bump her nose against Ioan's forehead; her form of a kiss. "Fucking genius."
 
@@ -227,18 +233,18 @@ Ioan frowned. "If can I fork for it, I suppose."
 
 May Then My Name laughed. "You are talking to an Odist, of course you can fucking fork."
 
-"Alright, alright. Then what's your secret?"
+"Alright, alright. What's your secret, then?"
 
-"I want to write an early history of the System to parallel the current. They are eerily similar, you know, but it has been two hundred years. We are well past history, and doubtless there are histories already written. I remember the secession, I remember uploading, I remember getting lost, I remember everything. Yes, I remember. Of course I do. The all the great and terrible things that we did. We could write a history, but that is all already there. There are paper trails and journals and everything phys-side already knows about us, but--"
+"I want to write an early history of the System to parallel the current. They are eerily similar, you know, but it has been two hundred years. We are well past history, and doubtless there are histories already written. I remember the secession, I remember uploading, I remember getting lost, I remember everything. Yes, I remember. Of course I do. All the great and terrible things that we did. We could write a history, but that is all already there. There are paper trails and journals and everything phys-side already knows about us, but--"
 
 Ioan's eyes went wide as ey picked up on her idea. "You want to turn it into a story."
 
-She clapped and bounced excitedly on her feet. "Yes! Yes, a mythology. I know I have mentioned them before, and we had talked about incorporating that aspect with Dear and Codrin. The history is important, and perhaps we can write that too, but now is not the time for only history. Now is the time for--"
+She clapped and bounced excitedly on her feet. "Yes! Yes, a mythology. I know I have mentioned them before, and we had talked about incorporating that aspect with Dear and Codrin. The history is important, and perhaps you can write that too, but now is not the time for *only* history. Now is the time for--"
 
 "Stories."
 
 In a decidedly Dear-like move, the skunk forked several times over, crowding the balcony before the bench swing with copies of herself, all of which had the same expression of glee. They quit quickly, and May Then My Name leaned forward to give Ioan a handful more of those nose-dot kisses. "You get it!"
 
-"I worked with Dear, you nut. Of course I get stories." Ey laughed and reached up to grab her around the waist and haul her back onto the swing beside em.
+"I worked with Dear, you nut. Of course I get stories." Ey laughed, reaching up to grab her around the waist and haul her back onto the swing beside em.
 
-How different she was than Dear. Individuation is born in the decades and centuries, though. Ey would never have thought to be so physical with the fox, but as she laughed and slumped back against eir side, ey realized ey had long since fallen into the habit of physicality, of touch. Of, ey realized, feeling. Just as she'd said.
+How different she was than Dear. Individuation is born in the decades and centuries, though. Ey would never have thought to be so physical with the fox, but as she laughed and slumped back against eir side, ey realized ey had long since fallen into the habit of physicality, of touch. Of, ey realized, feeling, just as she'd said.