update from sparkleup
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Madison Scott-Clary
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<li class="done4"> <a href="launch/phys/Douglas/008.html">Launch: phys-side: Douglas</a> - Sabotage attempts, hinting that there are those phys-side who have also picked up patterns and really don’t like System - 2802</li>
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<li class="done4"> <a href="secession/phys/Yared/008.html">Secession: phys-side: Yared</a> - Sure enough, support rapidly swings sys-side, long conversation with TN/Jonas about what it means, starting to see how having his name on the amendment is diving people not just on the subject, but on him, starting to think about death, showing fear that he had at beginning - 2839</li>
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<li class="done4"> <a href="launch/sys/Ioan/010.html">Launch: sys-side: Ioan</a> - Ioan, getting really pissed at how Odists won’t just answer eir fucking questions all the way and keep demurring at the last minute, interviews Jonas Prime, who has grown pessimistic, life wants to spread and multiply to make itself stronger, this is the root of the launch: offsite backups; thus why dreamer module was frowned upon: has broadcast w/ information about system, earth, interfacing, etc - 3375</li>
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<li class="done3"> <a href="launch/launch/Codrin-pollux/007.html">Launch: launch-side: Codrin#Pollux</a> - Interviews Ne Jonas, humanity best viewed as a resource to be used or a crop to be tended by System - 2752</li>
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<li class="done4"> <a href="launch/launch/Codrin-pollux/007.html">Launch: launch-side: Codrin#Pollux</a> - Interviews Ne Jonas, humanity best viewed as a resource to be used or a crop to be tended by System - 2752</li>
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<li class="done3"> <a href="launch/launch/Codrin-castor/007.html">Launch: launch-side: Codrin#Castor</a> - Interviews True Name for second time w/ more info, confronts for truth about the Odists’ role in post-secession, confirms, laughs down concerns. - 1717</li>
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</ul>
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</li>
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<p>“Just cream, please.”</p>
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<p>“Oh…” Ne sounded crestfallen. “I have skim milk, is that okay?”</p>
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<p>“Sure, I’ll take it.” Codrin laughed, watching the older man putter around the kitchen. Meanwhile, ey pulled out eir pen and paper to take notes. “You know, you’re not at all what I expected, I have to say. I was all geared up to be talking to some hot-shot politician in front of some sleek desk or whatever, not sharing tea around a table.”</p>
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<p>Ne turned a dial on the stove to start the kettle, frowned, and then pulled a lighter out of a drawer in order to light the gas when the igniter didn’t. “Not all Jonases are alike, Codrin.” He grinned over his shoulder. “Most of them are, of course. You would’ve gotten the politician treatment from just about any other Jonas, but some of this got tired of that snazzy life and opted for something a little simpler.”</p>
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<p>Ne turned a dial on the stove to start the kettle, frowned, and then pulled a lighter out of a drawer in order to light the gas when the igniter did not. “Not all Jonases are alike, Codrin.” He grinned over his shoulder. “Most of them are, of course. You would’ve gotten the politician treatment from just about any other Jonas, but some of us got tired of that snazzy life and opted for something a little simpler.”</p>
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<p>“What led you to do so?”</p>
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<p>While the kettle crawled to a boil, Ne turned, leaning back against the counter and smiling to Codrin, arms crossed over his chest. “I think it was the pressure of it. It’s not that I’m not still doing my work, but when you look like that, you feel like you have all the pressure of your job resting on your shoulders. Changing my appearance, changing the way I lived, well, it made me actually start enjoying work again, rather than it being the job that owned me.”</p>
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<p>“I think I can understand that. I used to own the academic look pretty hard, back when I was Ioan. Over time, though, as my work and home life shifted, I found that I felt less comfortable in that state and more comfortable in, well.” Ey gestured at emself, eir tunic and sarong.</p>
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<p>“That’s a good question. I don’t know that I ever really was an academic. I was an investigative journalist, more than anything. I was a writer who fancied emself a historian. Now, I guess I’ve shifted more to the creative side, maybe. A lot more writing, a lot less history, at least up until this project.”</p>
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<p>“Think living with an Odist helped in that regard?”</p>
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<p>Codrin nodded. “Dear’s very…well. It’s very itself. Not sure how else to put it. But it’s also been good at getting me out of the comfort zone that I’d found myself in up until then. It was a good zone, and I’m glad that Ioan still has that, but I also like what I’m doing now.”</p>
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<p>They were interrupted by the rising whine of the kettle, which Ne quickly pulled off the burner. He turned off the stove and filled two mugs, which he brought to the table before grabbing a carton of milk from the fridge.</p>
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<p>They were interrupted by the rising whine of the kettle, which Ne pulled off the burner. He turned off the stove and filled two mugs, which he brought to the table before grabbing a carton of milk from the fridge.</p>
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<p>The tea was a perfectly acceptable Earl Grey. The milk was unremarkable. The mugs were mismatched and stained with a dark patina from decades of use. It was comfortable and charming in all its imperfections.</p>
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<p>“So, what is it that you’re doing now that you feel better doing in this form?” ey asked, nodding to Ne.</p>
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<p>“I’m a little like you, I guess. I’m the one who takes all of the history and draws it together into a big picture. From there, I ensure that the rest of the clade — at least, the rest of the clade that’s working on this project — remains on the same page and doesn’t diverge too far. I’m the clerk to Prime’s executive.”</p>
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<p>Ne laughed, stealing another sip of his tea before responding. “Oh, I’ve told you that already, Codrin! It’s my job to draw together all of the threads and pull together the big picture. I don’t know how the specifics get to me, that’s not my job. I just piece them all together. The big picture here is that you and yours are building the history of the System from start to Launch, and you’re finding out just how much story there is. You, like so many others, were comfortable in that boring stasis, as well you should have been, and now you’re coming to terms with something new, something actually exciting, and you’re waking up to it. This goes way beyond Qoheleth’s stage play about memory; this is about the very foundations of your life.”</p>
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<p>Codrin forced emself to take a sip of the tea. It was thin, with the skim milk in it, and ey couldn’t actually taste it for the pounding of eir heart. “Well,” ey said, struggling to maintain calm. “That actually crosses several of the questions I had prepared off my list as either answered or irrelevant.”</p>
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<p>“Have you come up with any new ones?”</p>
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<p>“I guess. The first is why are you letting us even continue with the history project if you’re aiming to keep stability within the system? Won’t all of this coming to light impact that at all?”</p>
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<p>“Uh…some. The first is: why are you letting us even continue with the history project if you’re aiming to keep stability within the system? Won’t all of this coming to light impact that at all?”</p>
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<p>Ne brightened. “Oh, that’s a good one! The answer is twofold. Part one relates to something the No Jonas said to the other Codrin: stability is a thing that needs to be gardened and maintained, that there is no true stasis, but stability approaches that point like the man in Zeno’s Paradox. This is a form of that gardening. When you have a rose garden or topiary, you know, you must cut away bits of it, but when you do, the whole becomes all the healthier and can last for years and years in the state you like it best. It may seem like a traumatic event to trim back roses. After all, you are cutting away good growth, aren’t you? But that’s how you get beautiful roses, year after year.</p>
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<p>“That’s what we’re doing with this project. We’re introducing a slightly traumatic event to make the stability of the system — that’s lower-case s, there, I’m talking of the sociopolitical system of those on the three capital-S Systems — stronger. Does that make sense?”</p>
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<p>“I suppose,” Codrin said. “You’ve done the cost-benefit analysis and determined it’s worth continuing on with, right?”</p>
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<p>“And what’s the second reason?”</p>
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<p>“The second reason is related to what Jonas Prime said to Ioan: humans, uploaded and not, need something to dream of. They need some better version of the life they live to hope for in order to feel comfortable. No one is happy for long in bliss, Codrin.”</p>
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<p>Ey blinked, sitting up straighter. “You mean you need some trauma like this sys-side in order to give people more bliss to aim for?”</p>
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<p>“Precisely that.” Ne sipped at his tea now that it had cooled and nodded approvingly. “There is much madness in the Ode Clade, but that’s what we suspect nudged Qoheleth over the edge. If you can’t forget anything and all that you can remember is bliss, then bliss begins to feel like torture. His role was to think long term. He was working on the timescale of decades and centuries on shaping the perceived history of both of our clades, so he was already up to his ears in memory. This project of yours will instill a little bit of terror in the hearts of everyone. Not enough that they will rebel, of course. In well over ninety percent of cases, they won’t do anything at all with the information, but it will tick up their anxiety a notch. It will put a dent in that bliss and make it less appealing. Does that make sense, too?”</p>
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<p>Codrin finished taking down eir notes and sipped on eir tea, mulling it over. Eventually, ey nodded. “It does, yeah. We could thwart you by not publishing this project, but I guess you’ve already done the analysis on that and know that we won’t.”</p>
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<p>“Precisely that.” Ne sipped his tea now that it had cooled and nodded approvingly. “There is much madness in the Ode Clade, but that’s what we suspect nudged Qoheleth over the edge. If you can’t forget anything and all that you can remember is bliss, then bliss begins to feel like torture. His role was to think long term. He was working on the timescale of decades and centuries on shaping the perceived history of both of our clades, so he was already up to his ears in memory. This project of yours will instill a little bit of terror in the hearts of everyone. Not enough that they will rebel, of course. In well over ninety percent of cases, they won’t do anything at all with the information, but it will tick up their anxiety a notch. It will put a dent in that bliss and make it less appealing. Does that make sense, too?”</p>
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<p>Codrin finished taking down eir notes and sipped eir tea, mulling it over. Eventually, ey nodded. “It does, yeah. We could thwart you by not publishing this project, but I guess you’ve already done the analysis on that and know that we won’t.”</p>
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<p>“You guess correctly, yes. ‘Thwart’, though, is an interesting choice of words. Do you feel like these are some evil plans that we hold?”</p>
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<p>“A little. It’s very dramatic. Very much like those supervillains who believe that there are core problems with the world, and if only they could just fix them, life would be so much better.”</p>
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<p>Ne laughed. “There are core problems with the world, Codrin. I’ve just enumerated several. You misunderstand, though. The core problems with the world aren’t the absolutes that your supervillains deal in. They’re the ways in which life struggles to maintain stable growth, and like I and my cocladists have said, the goal is not to solve those problems, but to garden around them and make them smaller problems. There is no solution to the question of what makes a stable and continuous world. That’s the asymptote. All we can do is hew as close to that ideal as we can.”</p>
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<p>“I think that many phys-side would be pretty upset by that, though, right? If they learn that you’ve been pulling strings from the System to ensure that everything keeps going the way you want, won’t they rebel against that idea?”</p>
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<p>“There are two things working against that supposition,” Ne said. “The first is that you misunderstand me when I say that we’ve done the cost-benefit analysis of your project and determined it beneficial. It’s beneficial to both sys- and phys-side for exactly the same reasons, though the mechanics may be different. The second is that you are misjudging just how in over your head you really are with all that we’ve done, including phys-side. As soon as Launch started and as soon as you were nudged to start the project — don’t frown, Codrin, you should’ve seen this coming — whispers were sent down the wire from the System to Earth to ensure that they would have the proper reaction to your work.”</p>
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<p>Codrin sat, silent, and stared at the man across from em. The man who had just admitted to subtly influencing billions of lives over hundreds of years through an organization made up entirely, ey assumed, of two clades. Hundreds or thousands of instances of two individuals.</p>
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<p>“I suspect we’re about done with the interview, but you must understand, Mx Bălan, that we are the end product of phys-side life. Stability demands that we think that way. It demands that we think of all those billions of people back on Earth as part of our garden. Not the rose bushes, but the vegetables. They are the crop that we harvest to stay alive, and therefor they must be tended with as much love and care as the roses.”</p>
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<p>“I suspect we’re about done with the interview, but you must understand, Mx Bălan, that we are the end product of phys-side life. Stability demands that we think that way. It demands that we think of all those billions of people back on Earth as part of our garden. Not the rose bushes, but the vegetables. They are the crop that we harvest to stay alive, and therefore they must be tended with as much love and care as the roses.”</p>
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<p>The room felt like it was elongating, stretching away from em as Ne spoke, as ey capped eir pen and got to eir feet, as ey gathered eir papers. The room was elongating and eir vision dimming around the edges.</p>
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<p>And still Ne Jonas sat, smiling kindly up to em. “That, my dear Codrin, is the big picture.”</p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-10-13</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-10-17</p>
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</footer>
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