update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/qoheleth/RJ/011.html

@@ -16,35 +16,35 @@
 <p>No menu.</p>
 <p>No menu and no HUD.</p>
 <p>Without eir HUD, there was no way that AwDae would be able to teleport. Ey would need to swipe up a destination entry and tap or speak the command for sending emself off. Hell, even if ey <em>were</em> able to get at the menu, ey wouldn't have the coordinates for any of the particular places ey had come up with to visit. </p>
-<p>If they even had coordinates, that was. Of all eir explorations, ey had begun to doubt that this was a sim. No sim, no coordinates. No coordinates, no menu, no teleport.</p>
-<p>Ey would have to walk.</p>
-<p>Not that walking would be tiring. No calories burned when taking simulated steps in a simulated environment.</p>
-<p>All the same, the prospect felt exhausting.</p>
-<p>Eir first location on the list had been the university, that sprawling campus where ey had studied (and, later, pioneered) the integration tech ey used daily at work. Without teleport, however, that was out of the question. It was halfway across the continent.</p>
+<p>If locations with a dream even had coordinates, that was. Of all eir explorations, ey had begun to doubt that this was a sim. No sim, no coordinates. No coordinates, no menu, no teleport.</p>
+<p>Ey would have to walk and just hope that it would not be tiring. No calories burned when taking simulated steps in a simulated environment. All the same, the prospect felt exhausting.</p>
+<p>Eir first location on the list had been the university, that sprawling campus where ey had studied (and, later, pioneered) the integration tech ey used daily at work. It seemed meaningful enough: that place most closely associated with the beginnings of eir susceptibility.</p>
+<p>Without teleport, however, that was out of the question. It was halfway across the continent.</p>
 <p>"Something more manageable, then," ey grumbled.</p>
 <p>The walk to the clinic where ey has had eir implants installed was halfway across town. It would take a few hours to traverse, ey supposed. A guess. Ey had never walked it before.</p>
-<p>Ey had time, though. All the time in the world.</p>
-<p>With little to do, ey slept early and woke early in turn. If it was to take a good chunk of the day, at least ey could do so while it was light out.</p>
-<p>Shouldering the appropriated pack, ey set out from home as soon as it was bright enough to do so. A short walk down to the school, then further down the hill toward Broadway, which would get em most of the way there. After that, two blocks east, and ey would come across the squat, white building of the clinic. </p>
-<p>From there, it would be easy. There had been about a dozen appointments in the building, so ey knew it well enough that it would likely be in reasonable shape. Hopefully the doors would be unlocked.</p>
+<p>Ey had time, it seemed. All the time in the world.</p>
+<p>With little to do, ey once again slept early and woke early in turn. If it was to take a good chunk of the day, at least ey could do so while it was light out.</p>
+<p>Shouldering the appropriated pack, ey set out from home as soon as it was bright enough to do so. A short walk down to the school, then further down the hill toward Broadway, which would get em most of the way there. After that, two blocks east, and ey would find emself at the squat, white building of the clinic. </p>
+<p>From there, it would be easy. There had been about a dozen appointments in the building, so ey knew it well enough that it would likely be in reasonable shape. Assuming the doors were unlocked, at least.</p>
 <p>The first skip happened halfway down the hill from the school.</p>
-<p>AwDae reached the corner of the fence surrounding the track and football practice field, remembered eir brief jogging phase, and how ey always turned north through the neighborhoods before reaching Broadway, which was always so noisy, and then ey was gliding down the street in a sitting position.</p>
+<p>AwDae reached the corner of the fence surrounding the track and football practice field, remembered eir brief jogging phase, and how ey always turned north through the neighborhoods before reaching Broadway, which was always so noisy, and then, without warning, ey was gliding down the street in a sitting position.</p>
 <p>Ey yelped, startled, and flailed eir arms out for support, left elbow catching painfully on something solid a foot to the side of em.</p>
-<p>The skip took perhaps a second all told. A second of blurred darkness, of shadow and motion. A second of panic and confusion before the rest of the car formed around em. Ey was sitting in the passenger seat of the family sedan, coasting down the road toward Broadway at what must have been the speed limit.</p>
-<p>The car, like the books in eir room, took a while to swim into focus. Even then, parts of it shifted indecisively, unable to come to rest in some solid, known state. Ey had only tried to drive it once before giving up on the prospect, so the dashboard in front of the steering wheel was particularly vague. Hints of dials, with no needles on them. Smudges of marks on the levers on the steering column. The back of the car lurched in and out of focus sickeningly.</p>
+<p>The skip took perhaps a second all told. A second of blurred darkness, of shadow and motion. A second of panic and confusion before the rest of the car formed around em. Ey was sitting in the passenger seat of the family sedan, coasting down the road toward Broadway at what ey supposed must be the speed limit.</p>
+<p>The car, like the books in eir room, took a while to swim into focus. Even then, parts of it shifted indecisively, unable to come to rest in some solid, known state. Ey had only tried to drive it once before giving up on the prospect, so the dashboard in front of the steering wheel was particularly vague. Hints of dials, gestures at needles. Smudges of marks on the levers on the steering column. The back of the car lurched in and out of focus sickeningly.</p>
 <p>Ey realized ey was holding eir breath and let it out in a shaky whine.</p>
-<p>The car continued down the street toward Broadway. Turned smoothly without stopping at the light. Accelerated seamlessly, without haste. The soft hum of the engine and the road noise beneath the wheels was as indistinct as all of the visuals. Indistinct and disconcerting.</p>
-<p>After a few short blocks, AwDae had a hypothesis. Of course the sim --- correction: eir memories --- did not include walking along Broadway. Ey had never done it. Ey had only driven. Or been driven, as ey had never gotten a license emself. All eir memories could dredge up were those of the car, of moving smoothly along the road.</p>
+<p>The car continued down the street toward Broadway. Turned smoothly without stopping at the light. Accelerated seamlessly, without haste, without care for eir stress. The soft hum of the motor and the road noise beneath the wheels was as indistinct as all of the visuals. Indistinct and disconcerting.</p>
+<p>After a few short blocks, AwDae had a hypothesis. Of course the sim --- correction: eir memories --- did not include walking along Broadway. Ey had never done it, had only driven. Or been driven, as ey had never gotten a license emself. All eir memories could dredge up were those of the car, of moving smoothly along the road.</p>
 <p>No teleportation, then. Just fast-travel.</p>
 <p>Eir one experience with hallucinogens had prepared them for the blurring, smearing effect of the world around em. At least, somewhat. The fog did not diminish, but it played tricks with the buildings lining the road to either side. There was the house with the psychic's sign out front, relatively clear. But the rest of the buildings were shifting, unsettled. When focusing on them, AwDay saw them as flat facades. No depth. Textures on a low-poly wireframe. It was a nightmare of that hidden time of intrasaccadic perception, that moment of suppressed visual input when one shifts one's gaze. That moment laid bare, elongated.</p>
-<p>Ey moaned and closed eir eyes. The sights were wrong. The sound was wrong. Even the feeling of acceleration and deceleration, the swing around turns, was off, as though the entire universe was poorly rendered. It <em>was</em> poorly rendered. Eir stomach turned at the wrongness of it all.</p>
-<p>The next skip hit as the memory of walking through the parking lot of the supermarket at Broadway and Timberline asserted dominance over the memory of driving along the thoroughfare. So suddenly was ey on eir feet and walking parallel to Broadway, so surprising the shift, that ey stumbled and fell to eir hands and knees.</p>
+<p>Ey moaned and closed eir eyes. The sights were wrong. The sound was wrong. Even the feeling of acceleration and deceleration, the swing around turns, was off, as though the entire universe was poorly rendered and em along with it.</p>
+<p>It <em>was</em> poorly rendered. Eir stomach turned at the wrongness of it all.</p>
+<p>The next skip hit in time as a memory of walking through the parking lot of the supermarket at Broadway and Timberline asserted dominance over the memory of driving along the thoroughfare. So suddenly was ey on eir feet and walking parallel to Broadway, so surprising the shift, that ey stumbled and fell to eir hands and knees.</p>
 <p>AwDae retched. Nothing came up. Not even the sting of bile.</p>
 <p>Ey lost track of time, sitting in the empty parking lot. Half an hour? An hour? Trying to master the urge to return home and disappear beneath the covers. Anything to avoid that horrible, half-remembered drive.</p>
 <p>And yet, ey had to do <em>something</em>. If there was even a chance of em being able to get out of this dream, this non-place, ey would have to keep moving. Keep moving and hunting and looking and thinking.</p>
 <p>With a groan, ey stood and walked toward the road once more.</p>
 <p>The skip came as expected, and ey gritted eir teeth as the world whirled past. Perhaps ey would be able to make it to the east coast, but if that meant eight hours of this --- home to the airport, the plane, a different airport, transit to the dorms --- well...hopefully there was a work-around.</p>
-<p>The rest of the journey to the clinic passed without further skipping. There were a few shaky moments passing through the pedestrian mall, where ey'd spent countless hours walking, but apparently ey had spent nearly as much time traveling along the road. Eir 'car' continued down the empty street, blithely changing lanes to pass cars that weren't there, turn signal and steering wheel moving on their own.</p>
+<p>The rest of the journey to the clinic passed without further skipping. There were a few shaky moments passing through the pedestrian mall, where ey'd spent countless hours walking, but apparently ey had spent enough time along whatever metric required traveling along the road. Eir 'car' continued down the empty street, blithely changing lanes to pass vehicles that weren't there, turn signal and steering wheel moving on their own.</p>
 <p>And then parked.</p>
 <p>The low-slung building of the clinic was just as AwDae remembered it.</p>
 <p>The idiom got a laugh out of the fox. Perhaps that was literally true. It could be no other way than how ey remembered it. The building was as it must be.</p>
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@
                 <span class="control">Expand all</span>
             </article>
             <footer>
-                <p>Page generated on 2020-04-15</p>
+                <p>Page generated on 2020-04-20</p>
             </footer>
         </main>
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writing/post-self/qoheleth/index.html

@@ -13,11 +13,23 @@
             </header>
             <article class="content">
                 <p><span class="tag">writing</span> <span class="tag">post-self</span> <span class="tag">qoheleth</span> <span class="tag">fiction</span> <span class="tag">scifi</span> <span class="tag">outline</span> <span class="tag">novel</span></p>
-<p>[TOC]</p>
+<div class="toc">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#cast">Cast</a><ul>
+<li><a href="#thread-1">Thread 1</a></li>
+<li><a href="#thread-2">Thread 2</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+<li><a href="#general-outline">General outline</a></li>
+<li><a href="#synopsis">Synopsis</a></li>
+<li><a href="#todo">Todo</a></li>
+<li><a href="#order-and-status">Order and status</a></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
 <p>The basic structure is in two threads: the plot from Qoheleth intertwined with the plot from Exocortices, with the shared theme of memory and forgetting. Dear can't forget RJ, RJ can't forget information while lost. The lost lead to tech required for uploading.</p>
 <p>Includes appendix about both threads.</p>
-<h2>Cast</h2>
-<h3>Thread 1</h3>
+<h2 id="cast">Cast</h2>
+<h3 id="thread-1">Thread 1</h3>
 <p>Plot 1:</p>
 <ul>
 <li>RJ Brewster (patient 0224ebe8 \ptRJ)<ul>
@@ -82,7 +94,7 @@
 </ul>
 </li>
 </ul>
-<h3>Thread 2</h3>
+<h3 id="thread-2">Thread 2</h3>
 <ul>
 <li>Ioan Bălan<ul>
 <li>Journalist, storyteller</li>
@@ -98,7 +110,7 @@
 </li>
 <li>Qoheleth, ne Life Breeds Life, But Death Must Now Be Chosen of the Ode Clade</li>
 </ul>
-<h2>General outline</h2>
+<h2 id="general-outline">General outline</h2>
 <ul>
 <li>Act I<ul>
 <li>Thread 1<ul>
@@ -144,7 +156,7 @@
 </ul>
 </li>
 </ul>
-<h2>Synopsis</h2>
+<h2 id="synopsis">Synopsis</h2>
 <p><em>RJ Brewster</em> is a sound technician for a theater and pioneer of a type of virtual reality that involves integration with a system in a non-human fashion - when ey works sound for the theater, ey is essentially the room. When not working, ey spends much of eir time online with friends, also in VR, where ey is a genderless fennec fox. Recently, <em>Cicero</em>, one of eir friend group has 'gotten lost': while he was interacting with the VR system, the system crashed and, even when removed from it, he was left still 'inside', with no way to remove him. RJ (AwDae when online, due to the limitations of a canine muzzle on pronouncing letters), eir best friend and ex <em>Sasha</em> (a skunk), and Cicero's partner <em>Debarre</em> (a weasel) have been trying to figure out what they can about Cicero's circumstances and how he can be rescued. After digging into the research, RJ emself gets lost during that night's rehearsal at the theater.</p>
 <p><em>Dr Carter Ramirez</em> 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, <em>Dr Sanders</em>, 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 <em>Avery</em>, a nonbinary statistician, and <em>Prakash Das</em>, 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.</p>
 <p>Nearly two hundred years in the future, <em>Ioan Bălan</em>, an historian living as an upload in a computer system, is contacted by an enigmatic fennec fox named <em>Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled</em>, 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.</p>
@@ -156,7 +168,7 @@
 <p>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 after 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 <em>Michelle Hadje</em>, 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.</p>
 <!--The final scene shows Qian Guowei, the assassin who destroyed Qoheleth, getting another assignment.-->
 
-<h2>Todo</h2>
+<h2 id="todo">Todo</h2>
 <ul>
 <li class="done4"> RJ = would have listed Sasha as a contact along with parents. She should know (even if not at first) that ey was lost</li>
 <li class="done4"> If Sasha is Michelle and Dear is Michelle, then Sasha should have thoughts on being an artist. Perhaps held back by need to survive, thus teaching?</li>
@@ -169,7 +181,7 @@
 <li class="done0"> Ioan and dear need to work on the Solitaire encryption, and mention of PGP stuff needs to come up later</li>
 <li class="rejected"> Also, perhaps Sasha swore off relationships after RJ died, thus Dear being shaky on relationships.</li>
 </ul>
-<h2>Order and status</h2>
+<h2 id="order-and-status">Order and status</h2>
 <p>Check when edited</p>
 <ol>
 <li class="done4"> Epigraph --- Ecclesiastes 3:15</li>
@@ -207,7 +219,7 @@
 <li class="done4"> Chapter: <a href="Ioan/004.html">Ioan 004</a> --- Ioan working, Dear's in a good mood</li>
 <li class="done4"> Chapter: <a href="Sasha/001.html">Sasha 001</a> --- Sasha meets with Caitlin</li>
 <li class="done4"> Chapter: <a href="Ioan/005.html">Ioan 005</a> --- Talking with Dear, learning of Qoheleth being an Odist</li>
-<li class="done3"> Chapter: <a href="RJ/011.html">RJ 011</a> --- RJ visits implant clinic, travel skips</li>
+<li class="done4"> Chapter: <a href="RJ/011.html">RJ 011</a> --- RJ visits implant clinic, travel skips</li>
 <li class="done3"> Chapter: <a href="Carter/007.html">Carter 007</a> --- Carter gets smacked down, has to let folks go, contacts Sasha</li>
 <li class="done3"> Chapter: <a href="Qoheleth/002.html">Qoheleth 002</a> --- Qoheleth's signifier</li>
 <li class="done3"> Chapter: <a href="RJ/012.html">RJ 012</a> --- RJ at the clinic, discovering ey don't need ACLs in a lucid dream.</li>