update from sparkleup
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Madison Scott-Clary
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> You won’t ask em yourself?</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> No. It is quite important that ey ask me, and not the other way around.</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> Why, though?</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> Two reasons. One: the one with the greater restrictions in a relationship wins out, and I will say yes to almost anything and anyone. Ey would not. It is thus on em to make the choice Two: if ey really does not know, I will gain an absolutely enormous amount of satisfaction out of teasing em afterwards.</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> Two reasons. One: the one with the greater restrictions in a relationship wins out, and I will say yes to almost anything and anyone. Ey would not. It is thus on em to make the choice. Two: if ey really does not know, I will gain an absolutely enormous amount of satisfaction out of teasing em afterwards.</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> Of course you would.</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> I am pleased that you have come to understand me so well.</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> Now, I am getting froth everywhere, so I will have to run.</p>
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<p>Ey was half tempted to push one of them past that point, but then ey wouldn’t know what bit was true or not.</p>
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<p>And these Jonases! Ey was going to see one today, after eir walk. They seemed so slippery. It was not just that they controlled the interview, though ey did not doubt that — the transcript from Codrin#Castor contained a new twist every time ey reread it. It was that they knew so thoroughly that they were doing so that they did it all with a wink and a smile. That little hint that ey was to know that all they’d done was so clearly calculated yet held so much plausible deniability that there really was no arguing with it.</p>
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<p>Ey was not looking forward to eir interview with Jonas Prime today.</p>
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<p>So, instead, ey stomped along the path and thought and talked to emself, walking all the way to the rock halfway around the lake from the default entry point to the sim, throwing a few handfuls of stones in to the placid water one by one, and then stomping all the way back to that same point.</p>
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<p>So, instead, ey stomped along the path and thought and talked to emself, walking all the way to the rock halfway around the lake from the default entry point to the sim, throwing a few handfuls of stones into the placid water one by one, and then stomping all the way back to that same point.</p>
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<p>Once ey’d had eir sulk, ey headed to the meeting with Jonas.</p>
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<p>Unexpectedly, this turned out to be at the same library at which ey had interviewed Sadiah. Not only that, but Jonas Prime was standing in exactly the same spot that she had been standing in, greeted em with much the same bow that the other historian had, and led em to the exact same booth in the cafe-<em>cum</em>-bar beneath the stacks. It was uncanny to such a degree as to immediately put em on the defensive, guarding against some threat, real or imagined.</p>
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<p>Once again, the drinks were ordered — cocktails, this time — and the cone of silence fell. Jonas rested his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his folded hands. It was an incredibly charming look. “Mx. Bălan, so nice to meet you at last.”</p>
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<p>“Speaking of, one your clade told one of mine that there are complex thoughts on stability and stasis. I just want to confirm that I’m understanding correctly. Launch fits into your concept of stasis by ensuring continuity.”</p>
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<p>“Sure, but also, a little bit of excitement is required to ensure that our lives stay boring. Even if our lives become interesting, or Castor’s lives become interesting, or Pollux’s, then there is a better than good chance that at least one of the others’ will remain boring, just how we want it. No Jonas, was it? He probably called it ‘gardening’, which I like. We’re tending topiary, here, and there are many of us over on each of the launches, doing the same.”</p>
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<p>Ioan nodded and paused to drink down a third of eir cocktail. Ey was thirsty, of course, but some part of em seemed to be craving the numbing aspects of alcohol. Ey continued, “Alright, I think I have two more questions. The first is that End Waking said that there were goals to influence the economies phys-side and explained that there were short term, medium term, and long term goals. He was kind enough to fill me in on the first two, but not the third. Can you tell me what the long term goals of meddling with the economy phys-side were? He said something about critical mass.”</p>
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<p>“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Jonas said. “It’s basically the same as what I said about life. If life is to have the right level of constraining pressures on it, one of the easiest ways to do so is through the economy. The long-term goal of his ‘meddling’, as you put it, was to ensure the continuity of capitalism. It gives something for people to dream about, which are alternatives. It gives something for people to work against. Since they know that we rely on reputation up here, they have plenty dream about. The cirtical mass is the amount of money and participants required to turn this into a self-sustaining system.”</p>
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<p>“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Jonas said. “It’s basically the same as what I said about life. If life is to have the right level of constraining pressures on it, one of the easiest ways to do so is through the economy. The long-term goal of his ‘meddling’, as you put it, was to ensure the continuity of capitalism. It gives something for people to dream about, which are alternatives. It gives something for people to work against. Since they know that we rely on reputation up here, they have plenty dream about. The critical mass is the amount of money and participants required to turn this into a self-sustaining system.”</p>
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<p>“Simple enough, I guess, even if a little frightening in its implications.”</p>
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<p>“What implications are those, Ioan?”</p>
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<p>Ey frowned. “What it sounds like your goals are is to keep life on Earth from getting too nice. Or nice at all, really. It sounds like you’re keeping the pressures high so that the System continues. More than continues, even. You wanted to keep it desirable as the greener grass on the other side of the fence.”</p>
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<p>Ioan smiled and very carefully did not say, <em>For you, perhaps. For me, it has been absolutely terrifying.</em></p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-10-22</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-11-17</p>
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</footer>
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</main>
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<p>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 had clung to his skin after he’d gone swimming in a small pond during a visit west: something that made him, specifically, feel disgusting.</p>
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<p>Because they <em>had</em> 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.</p>
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<p>He had been the tool, 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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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 alongside him for the right of the System to become a political entity of its own.</p>
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<p>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. 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.</p>
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<p>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, where 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 did not subscribe anyway?”</p>
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<p>And so he dutifully passed these on under the tutelage of Jonas and True Name and Demma, and they, too, influenced the voices on the DDR.</p>
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</blockquote>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-10-22</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-11-17</p>
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</footer>
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</main>
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