# Yared Zerezghi --- 2124

Yared was not sure how he felt that the politicians --- true politicians, at least --- had been right. Demma had said, so, Jonas and True Name had said so, and yet something about the whole process felt slippery to him. It was a feeling beyond even that, for while that implied that it was simply politics as usual, this was something more visceral. It was slimy, like the algae that clung to his skin after he'd gone swimming in a small pond during a visit south: something that made him specifically feel disgusting.

Because they *had* been right, hadn't they? They'd been right that there were strings to be pulled. They'd been right that politics was a game that was played by the bigger players, that the bigger players used the smaller ones as pawns, that the goal was some non-zero-sum game of pushing the populace around like a fungible good.

He had been the pawn, and his belief had been his utility. He was the knight moving three spaces up, one space over to outwit some other politician's bishop.

They'd been right, both Demma and the sys-side pair, because support for secession had swung his way with surprising rapidity, and there had suddenly been other strident voices that had once been on the other side of the equation agreeing with him, arguing along side him for the right of the System to become a political entity of its own.

There had been a logical procession to their thought process within their posts. It wasn't some sudden coin-flip, but over the course of the week, debates on the DDR-adjacent channels, where it didn't cost credits to post, suddenly swelled, and he'd seen the light dawning in their eyes, such as they were, as they realized that the System's political landscape fundamentally differed from that phys-side, that it couldn't but differ, given the root functionality of the populous, of the reality that sims were the only way to live. It was a true anarchy in that way. There was no ruling class because of what utility would there be for a ruling class when one could just split off and create one's own sim or set of sims, such that any attempt to rule from some central sim could simply be ignored as though it had never happened.

True Name and Jonas, now openly named, had been integral in helping convince him originally, and their words had played an enormous role through him to convince others. "There are sims in which a strict monarchy rules," True Name had said. "There are places governed by a theocracy. The Catholic church remains, albeit in reduced form without a bishopric, relying solely on adherents phys-side uploading all papal pronouncements, a near exact copy of the Vatican the phys-side popes and cardinals are represented by scrolling fields of text. Yet what influence could they hold on any other sim? What possible sway could they hold over anyone who didn't subscribe anyway?"

And so he dutifully passed these on under the tutelage of True Name and Demma, and they, too, influenced the voices on the DDR.

But for the voices to swing so quickly bespoke influence beyond just him. It showed that he was not the only pawn, that many of these other strident voices that quickly changed their voices were under the control of the big players phys-side, and perhaps sys-side as well; why wouldn't True Name and Jonas be talking to other DDR junkies like himself?

He was too afraid of them, now, to ask.

All he could do was sit by and watch, and pray that the secession amendment wasn't altered to include some equally slimy additions that would limit the total freedom granted by the secession.

Even there, he was lucky, so far. The clauses about declaring war had been strengthened, the clauses about asylum seekers hardened with wording surrounding the impossibility of extradition and the acknowledgement that any such seeker would no longer have a tangible physical affect phys-side. In fact, the only provision that had felt sour was one to cut off communication with the System from suspected terrorist cells, but it had done little to dampen the feeling of success from the overall amendment, the overall referendum.

The only issue, in fact, was a personal one. All of these changes of the amendment had been made under his name. Others had convinced him to add them. Even the sour change had been suggested and Demma had strongly suggested that it be included.

The end result was that his name was inextricably linked with the amendment, meaning that those who hated it --- indeed, those who hated the entire referendum --- began to hate him, too. They hated Yared Zerezghi specifically.

And boy did they hate with a passion.

His name had become a curse in their circles. He wasn't just the man who had introduced the amendment, he was the man who poisoned any hope of control over the System, that very System that they had declared a danger or a source of labor or a host to terrorism. He, Yared Zerezghi, was personally responsible for all that was wrong with the System.

When he mentioned how much he felt like a scapegoat to Demma and the pair sys-side, both had reassured him that that fervor would soon die down, and both had assured him that, as their names were also inextricably linked with the bill, they were feeling some of the same heat.

He wasn't sure that he believed them, though. Politics phys-side at the governmental level did not have the same level of personal hatred. At best, Councilor Demma might have some sort of parasocial relationship with his supporters and detractors, but at that point, he was still just a figurehead, an abstract concept of a person and that concept was a stand-in for a power so far beyond the quotidian masses that it hardly mattered. At best, True Name and Jonas were as intricately linked to the very same anarchy that ruled the rest of the System. Their role --- indeed the role of the entire Council of Eight --- was one of guiding the System in the form of its core functionality, interfacing with phys-side on behalf of those sys-side, rather than interfacing solely with those sys-side.