update from sparkleup

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Madison Scott-Clary 2022-07-06 21:35:16 -05:00
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<p>That grin of hers widened, and she nodded. &ldquo;Quite a bit, actually. We never quite got to roasting marshmallows, but it is really hard to go wrong with potatoes roasted in the embers. They get a little smoky, even the insides.&rdquo;</p>
<p>End Waking stared at True Name as though she was an Artemisian, suddenly having made their way across the light-days back to Lagrange. Hell, Ioan was staring at her like she was an alien. So quickly and smoothly had her anxiety been transmuted into this calm, friendly social efficiency that it was as though the last months had been erased from her features.</p>
<p>There was some other conversation going on here, too, ey realized. It wasn&rsquo;t just that they were talking pleasantries before a meeting, but that there was some exchange of information that took place on some higher plane of existence. They were feeling each other out, listening to tone of voice more than the content of words, watching features and postures rather than seeing an old friend. There was some deeper level of communication that ey simply couldn&rsquo;t latch onto.</p>
<p>At least, with that in mind, ey could do eir best to focus on the subtler forms of language around the room.</p>
<p>True Name had talked em through the stanza and their roles beforehand, at least. She had been focused on the politics, of course, but also acted as consensus builder among the members of her stanza.</p>
<p>Ey knew well that May had been focused on swaying individual hearts and minds toward a cause that initially had been True Name&rsquo;s, and then later simply shaped by her as best as could be managed.</p>
<p>End Waking had been instrumental in tracking, understanding, and to to whatever level possible, influencing financial markets phys-side, though he&rsquo;d admitted to Ioan, one night out on the plain, that the chances that he&rsquo;d actually had any effect on the markets was astoundingly low and that the financial trajectory had likely been set by forces larger than they could manage &mdash; at least, that was the hope that had kept him going.</p>
<p>Ey knew the two &lsquo;Why&rsquo;s from the history: Why Ask Questions, Here At The End Of All Things was the frightfully friendly crowd-rouser who had worked with groups of individuals sys-side, while Why Ask Questions When The Answers Will Not Help had focused on similar tactics phys-side. However, given that her task was limited to text, she seemed notably out of her element in in-person interactions, coming off as petty and cruel as often as funny and sarcastic.</p>
<p>The Only Time I Dream Is When I Need An Answer had acted as a manager, scheduler, and clerk for the enterprise. Frightfully intelligent, She had done more than block in times for meetings; she had organized meetings between the right individuals at the right times.</p>
<p>To Know One&rsquo;s True Name Is To Know God had settled firmly into data analysis, collecting both the raw data that she could from the perisystem feeds and the net phys-side as well as the information collected by her cocladists and the Jonases. She was a being of reports.</p>
<p>To Know God Is To Answer Unasked Questions had done her best to specialize in the fields of information and game theory, but this had more often come down to simple information security and hygiene. She decided where and how far information traveled.</p>
<p>Do I Know God When I Do Not Remember Myself and Do I Know God When I Do Not Dream worked as a mismatched pair. When I Do Not Remember worked as a propagandist while When I Dream worked almost entirely on the perisystem, translating back and forth for her cocladists and finding the best way to worm her way through the intersystem text channels.</p>
<p>Were ey pressed to name each of them without knowing this information, ey didn&rsquo;t think ey&rsquo;d be able to. Ey knew the three skunks of the clade and could readily tell them apart, but the rest simply looked like a gaggle of the very same woman: short, soft, round face and curly black hair. However, there were indeed differences there. Why Ask Questions was just a centimeter or two taller and more open of expression. When I Do Not Remember and When I Dream both had a hunch to their shoulders that ey could not quite explain; perhaps a posture that stuck after too much writing.</p>
<p>As it was, ey could do eir best to guess, and when introductions made their way around the table, ey found eir guests to be correct to the last. </p>
<p>((&hellip;))</p>
<p>In the most stunning display of forking ey&rsquo;d ever seen, True Name began to change.</p>
<p>Ioan had seen eir share of Dear&rsquo;s exhibitions, not to mention those of other instance artists the fox had introduced em to along the way, and the forking involved in all of them had been perfect. They were well rehearsed dances of duplication that told a story.</p>