update from sparkleup
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<p>Lunch after that had been filled with laughter and truly terrible jokes. Sarah, it turned out, collected them, and the delegates unanimously voted hers the worst.</p>
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<p>All throughout, though, Codrin couldn’t shake the image of True Name throwing a very short, very tightly controlled tantrum. The sight of her letting loose so strong an emotion had immediately knocked em back to an interview — decades ago, now — where she’d wound em up enough that ey’d started shouting at her in her own office, then bounced em from her sim.</p>
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<p>That, ey’d later understood, had been intentional on her part. It had been a way for her to spin her story in a very carefully crafted way. It set it to a level that sat just on the other side of the line between plausible and absurd. It had wrapped em up in a story that was just a little too much to believe, and the end result was a softening of the impact of the <em>History</em>.</p>
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<p>Nothing about that experience had been done with a wink and a nudge, just as nothing about this had contained any such acknowledgement that it was intentional, but ey was nothing if not primed to expect her actions to be based in manipulation. There was a non-zero chance that this tantrum had been more for the benefit of the other delegates than anything. It was a way to show that she, too, was frustrated, just as the pun-off that had followed had been a way to loosen everyone up by lampshading the absurdity of the whole venture.</p>
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<p>She was a consummate actor. Nothing about that experience had been done with a wink and a nudge, just as nothing about this had contained any such acknowledgement that it was intentional, but ey was nothing if not primed to expect her actions to be based in manipulation. There was a non-zero chance that this tantrum had been more for the benefit of the other delegates than anything. It was a way to show that she, too, was frustrated, just as the pun-off that had followed had been a way to loosen everyone up by lampshading the absurdity of the whole venture.</p>
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<p>And then, it was over. True Name cleared away her plate, explained that she was going to write a letter to her #Artemis instance, made a final joke about needing to do so over letters being much more up Codrin’s alley, and then stepped into her room to work in silence.</p>
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<p>“What was that about?” Sarah asked, once the skunk and Why Ask Questions had wandered off again.</p>
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<p>“What, the thing about the letters?” Ey shrugged. “I guess it was deemed a risk setting up radio between the DMZ and–“</p>
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<p>Codrin sat up straighter. “You mean the Odists struggling over there?”</p>
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<p>She nodded. “It sounds like moving them to a unison room is helping, but they’re still struggling with that…what did Codrin#Artemis call it? The omnipresence of time?”</p>
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<p>“Yeah. Dear had talked about it some. It called the feeling of being lost as being stuck in an ‘endless place of no time’.”</p>
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<p>“I was going to call that poetic, but the more I think about it, the less I think I could describe it without a whole lot of metaphors, myself.” She pushed a few remaining pieces of lettuce around her plate with her fork. “I was wondering if maybe she’s trying to hide how she’s feeling about that by amping up other emotions. Hiding trauma with humor is not uncommon.”</p>
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<p>“I was going to call that poetic, but the more I think about it, the less I think I could describe it without a whole lot of metaphors, myself.” She pushed a few remaining pieces of lettuce around her plate with her fork. “I was wondering if maybe she’s trying to hide how she’s feeling about that by amping up other emotions. Hiding trauma with humor is not uncommon, and I’m sure she has trauma of her own.”</p>
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<p>Ey frowned. “It would make sense, yes. This morning’s letter from Codrin talked a bit more about them, about how they seem to be struggling in masking more powerful emotions. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Odist well and truly furious,” ey said, which I agree with. I’ve seen Dear angry, and Ioan says that ey’s seen May Then My Name get furious — at True Name, no less — but I’ve never seen any of them truly furious. “True Name keeps getting these flashes, though, where her face will twist up in what I can only call abject fury. It’ll only last a second or so, and then it’s over and she’s back to looking tired or in control or whatever she was before”.”</p>
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<p>“Anger is a strong emotion. It’s hard to cover up something that overwhelming.”</p>
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<p>“Right. Anger and sadness or depression seem to be the two that keep cropping up. They’ve had to take a few breaks so far when Why Ask Questions wound up in a crying jag.”</p>
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<p>Finally, Sarah said, “I guess I have a few thoughts on it: the first is that Answers Will Not Help struck me as less grounded than Why Ask Questions. They’re both weird, but Answers Will Not Help was always much more intense, and she sometimes got petty or cruel. The second was that maybe we could ask Tycho. We got a few days with the two of them, but he’s been working with them for much longer, since they led with a bunch of science.”</p>
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<p>“Alright,” ey said, scratching out another quick note to emself. “I’ll figure out a way to ask if that’s where the observation came from.”</p>
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<p>“Oh? As in maybe Tycho noticed that and told Codrin#Artemis?”</p>
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<p>“Right, yeah. Maybe he picked up on it first because he’s had more time with her, or maybe her reaction to the skew tipped him off. Why knows?”</p>
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<p>“Right, yeah. Maybe he picked up on it first because he’s had more time with her, or maybe her reaction to the skew tipped him off. Who knows?”</p>
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<p>“Think you’ll ask in a hint, too?”</p>
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<p>Ey nodded. “There’s some subtext there that I’m not totally picking up on, and it seems best to be safer than not.”</p>
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<p>“Any guesses as to that subtext?” she asked.</p>
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</blockquote>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-03-28</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-05-08</p>
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<p>He nodded.</p>
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<p>Sarah shook her head. “To make sure I’m following, you think they may have suspected there was life elsewhere? Do you think the might have run across other possible societies and not had them join them as a race?”</p>
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<p>“Right. Could be they just hadn’t started uploading.” He hesitated, then added, “Or that they had, but didn’t want to join or didn’t make the cut.”</p>
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<p>Codrin rubbed eir hands over eir face, willing away the tiredness that kept threatening to come back. Every time ey felt like ey was getting a hold on the situation ey was stuck in, some other bit of info would be brought to light and eir grasp would slip once more.</p>
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<p>Codrin rubbed eir hands over eir face, willing away the tiredness that kept threatening to come back. Like Tycho, every time ey felt like ey was getting a hold on the situation ey was stuck in, some other bit of info would be brought to light and eir grasp would slip once more.</p>
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<p>Now here this was. Perhaps the Artemisians had run across more than just races two through four on their journey. Perhaps there had been failed convergences, not counted among the existing three and the fourth they were living through.</p>
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<p>Tycho’s comment about ‘not making the cut’ carried with it additional implications, as well. It implied that there was a barrier to entry that one had to pass. This, in turn, implied that there were a set of requirements for getting to join as a race. Unspoken ones.</p>
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<p>There may very well be specific steps they had to take that had never been provided to them. Hadn’t ey picked up a sense of that from the letter so long ago? ‘You have asked the correct question’?</p>
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<p>There was a blurred conference between the Artemisians, then Iska said, “There is a spectrum of approaches to skew. Some rarely utilize it, some utilize only fast-time to complete tasks or slow-time to pass long stretches of time out of boredom or to wait for a specific event. Some, such as myself, utilize skew for enjoyment.”</p>
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<p>“These map loosely to your concept of taskers, trackers, and dispersionistas,” Artante added. “We noticed similar during the third convergence, though the concept remained only within fourthrace, and died out within a century of the convergence. I was reminded of the topic by one of your early letters.”</p>
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<p>“I remember you mentioned that fourthrace had forking,” True Name said, voice tightly controlled. “Was the transition from that to skew difficult for those members of fourthrace that joined?”</p>
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<p>“For some, yes. There was one recorded instant of a member of fourthrace becoming so despondent about the lack of forking that they exited the system.”</p>
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<p>“For some, yes. There was one recorded instance of a member of fourthrace becoming so despondent about the lack of forking that they exited the system.”</p>
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<p>True Name and Answers Will Not Help looked at each other, letting the silence that followed speak for itself.</p>
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<p>Codrin allowed the moment to pass before continuing. “Thank you. For what occupations there are — I believe you also described them as ‘intensive leisure activities’ — is there any particular expectation regarding one’s approach to skew?”</p>
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<p>“‘Expectation’?” Turun Ko asked.</p>
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<p>“No,” ey said. “They wish us well.”</p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-03-28</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-05-08</p>
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