“And Ioan is getting hounded by strange historians while also doing eir best to keep up with interviewing the Odists.” Ey hesitated, considering whether to pass on the warning that Ioan had received from End Waking, then decided to plow ahead. “One of them told em to be careful interviewing you, that you’d control the whole thing.”
“Did he now? Well, I suppose I will. It’s one of those second nature things, you know. I apologize if that sounds scary, I promise it isn’t. I do as Jonases do, just as you do as Balans do.”
Codrin nodded as ey wrote. “Well, alright. You alright if I start asking questions, then?”
-…
+“Of course! Ask away.”
+“First of all, and I’m not sure how well this applies to a dispersionista such as yourself, but did you yourself leave an instance back on the L5 System?”
+“Oh, sure. There didn’t seem to be any reason not to, you know? I figure there’s enough of us Jonases up here to have our fun, and plenty back down down on the System to keep things interesting.”
+“Did any of you invest entirely in the Launch?”
+“Yeah, A few of the A branch did. And before you ask, plenty stayed behind, too. It was all pretty well organized. We figured out who was doing what and then followed the plan.”
+“Was there any particular rhyme or reason to it?”
+Jonas waved a hand vaguely. “Basically just who was specializing in what.”
+“Was there any danger for those who specialized in stuff back on the System coming up here?” ey asked.
+“Terminal boredom?” He laughed. “Really, though, there’s stuff that needs doing there and it’s better to be efficient.”
+“Do you think they’ll miss the excitement of the journey?”
+“We all have our jobs to do, Codrin. System politics aren’t like those back phys-side. There’s no reason to slack off and not do your job just to have some fun when you can send a fork to do the same for you and then enjoy all those memories, right? No3 Jonas is out on a date right now, actually.”
+Codrin nodded as ey jotted down the answer. “I suppose it’s the same as with me and Ioan. At least to an extent, the Odists also infected us with their hopeless romanticism.”
+“Of course they did. That’s what they’re built for. A life in theater primes one to keep a tight focus on manipulating emotions. They’re all incredibly focused on stories, aren’t they? All of the interesting ones, at least.”
+“There are boring Odists?”
+Jonas shrugged. “Michelle and Sasha were boring. Those who stuck around with her or focused on their little art projects, they were pretty boring.”
+Codrin frowned.
+“Don’t get me wrong, of course. I like them all! Delightful, to the last, but I’m the dangerous politician, remember? All those I find interesting are the ones who tickle all my politician instincts. It wasn’t an insult.”
+“Alright,” ey said, quelling a low rise of anger; after all, if Dear was anything, it was one keenly focused on its art projects. “Either way, thanks for answering. The next question I had was about your involvement with both Secession and Launch. Were you involved in both?”
+“Oh, more heavily in Launch than Secession. I was forked slightly after Secession, but there was still work to be done. I did a lot of wrangling of notes, data collection, stuff like that. For Launch, I did the same, just front-loaded. It’s some of the boring work that goes into politics, but work that still needs to be done.”
+“And in between the two?”
+For the first time since the interview, Jonas grinned in earnest. It was writ so plain across his face that the shift cast all of the previous smiles in doubt. “You’ve been getting some interesting answers to your questions, haven’t you, Codrin? All of the Balan clade, I mean.”
+“Why do you ask?” ey said, digging eir heels to keep from being dragged into a defensive stance.
+“You got to that question surprisingly fast.”
+Codrin nodded, waiting Jonas out.
+“Well, alright. Between Secession and Launch, I was pretty boring. I did some data collection for some of the other work that was going on. Phys-side is always changing, beholden as they are to the whims of Earth and the restrictions of being tied to a single body in a single location.”
+“So you followed that? Kept up on the data gathering?”
+He nodded. “Yeah, that was my area of focus. Some of the others were digging around sys-side, but life changes much more slowly here without those external factors. We kept on working with the Odists, too, as I’m sure you’ve heard. There was much to do.”
+“It certainly sounds like. Did you or your clade guide much beyond Secession and Launch? I know that there was some work done surrounding the finances of uploading in the mid to late 2100s. Were there other areas of activity.”
+Jonas leaned back against the couch, toying with a loose thread at one end of it with his fingers. “Here and there, yeah, but I’m not really the person to ask about that. I’m sure one of you will get into it with True Name, or maybe even snag some time with Jonas Prime.”
+Codrin nodded and made a note to that effect.
+“You have to understand though, Codrin, none of this was some super sinister conspiracy, like you may be thinking. We did what politicians do: we represented our constituents and duked it out — metaphorically, of course — with other politicians.”
+“Are we your constituents?” ey asked. The words were out of eir mouth before ey had time to consider it.
+Jonas laughed, shaking his head and tugging that fiber on the couch all the looser. “In a way, yeah. We may be a separate legal entity, but we don’t work the same. We’re not a government. There are no representatives. We don’t vote. You are our constituents only in the sense that there are still some who have to work on keeping the System going. We’re the ones who organize with the phys-side engineers to keep everything ticking along. We’re the ones who ensure that new uploads are smoothly integrated. We’re the ones who ensure that the System keeps growing.”
+“Keeps growing? Can you expand on that?”
+“It’s nothing complex. The larger a system — that’s system with a lower-case ‘s’ — is, the more stable it is because it tends towards stasis. This applies to political systems, as well. The Western Fed and the S-R Bloc kept their stalemate for god knows how long because they were too large to do anything but, and the only reason they stopped was that they were each subsumed into even larger political entities.”
+“So, if I’m understanding you right, keeping the population of the System growing over time–“
+“Not just the population,” Jonas interrupted. “The capacity. The complexity.”
+“–the more stable it is because it tends toward stasis?”
+“You put it more succinctly than I did.”
+Codrin smiled, waggled eir pen at Jonas. “I’m the writer out of the two of us, you’re the politician. What do you mean by stasis, though?”
+“If we were phys-side, conservatism would probably be the word one would reach for, if only because the sheer burden of legislation grows exponentially complex with the size of the system that all of the other aspects of the system start to fall under its branch.
+“Here, though, we tend towards stasis. It’s a type of stability that implies a cessation of change. It’s not a bad thing. Boring, maybe, but boring is safe. Still, it’s only a tendency, and it approaches that point asymptotically. It needs to be gardened and nourished. That’s all we do.”
+After ey caught up taking down eir notes from Jonas’s little speech, Codrin sat in silence for a bit, considering the next path to take on the interview.
+“Do you have any other questions?” Jonas asked. “Not to rush you or anything. I’m just wondering if I should fork to get some work done.”
+“Just one more, I guess. Not one of my prepared ones, but you’ve given me a lot to think about. How does Launch fit in with your concept of stasis? That feels like an awful big change. It even decreased the population of the System back home.”
+Jonas shook his head, chuckling. “I’m not the one to ask that one, Codrin. I’ve specialized way too much into data analysis. You can ask True Name about that, or Jonas Prime. I’m just parroting things we talked about a century and a half ago.”
+“I will, I’m sure, but can you give me your best guess? I’d still like to hear it,” ey said.
+“Best guess? The System was deemed stable enough to undertake the launch project, and the project was deemed likely to produce a secondary stable society. Beyond that, beats me.”
+Codrin nodded and, seeing Jonas begin to rise, stood from eir seat, shaking the offered hand.
+Jonas saw em to the door, saying, “I hope I didn’t stress you out, Mx Balan. You’re doing good work, and I hope it’s also enjoyable.”
+“It’s certainly intriguing. You’ve given me a lot to think about, and I’m sure Ioan will agree.”
+“Of course. If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to ask.” He smiled to Codrin, and the smile was the least earnest ey had seen yet. “And I look forward to seeing what you come up with.”
It wasn’t until Codrin was back at the house on the prairie, back with eir family, back where ey was comfortable enough to work on transcribing eir notes, that ey came across the phrase that had left em so wrong-footed during the interview.
Ey frowned, stood up, and paced around eir office for a few minutes, stopping at the end of each circuit to stare out at the prairie beyond the windows. Ey was starting to feel as though there were coils of some sort wrapping around em. Thick, fleshy things that squeeze around eir middle, bound eir hands, held em silent. They did not kill em, did not force em to move, to watch. They did not force em do do anything. They just held em there, letting em know that, at all times, they were present.
So ey sat at eir desk and wrote a footnote for eir transcript that ey’d send back to Ioan and May Then My Name.