“That looks fucking gross, Sasha.”
She laughed and shrugged. “I am True Name, but yes, it really does. If we are going to meet in a place that gives me a headache to walk through, it is probably best that I get something with…protein? Is that how this works?”
“Uh, sorry. Yeah. True Name.” The weasel splayed his ears and averted his eyes. “Can we talk about that sometime?”
+“Yes, but probably as Michelle, if that is okay.”
+“Why?”
+“She is…closer to it than I am.”
+Debarre gripped his glass more tightly and twisted sideways to swing his leg over the bench and straddle it. “Yeah, I don’t get it. Before everyone else gets here, can you at least give me a sentence or two?”
+“When she forked, when…I became me, she decided not to fork that part of her that…suffers? Is that the right word?” True Name frowned. “Already we are drifting further apart. The species remains, the appearance and the speech patterns remain, the mind remains, but not that part of her that is so split. I am me, I am templated off of Sasha, because being both Michelle and Sasha at the same time was no longer tolerable.”
+He shrugged, still staring down into his drink. “I can’t speak to that, I guess. But why Aw–“
+True Name slammed her glass down on the table a bit harder than intended, some of the drink spilling over her hand. “Do not say that fucking name.”
+The weasel jumped at the sudden intensity, and when he recovered, he finally met her gaze. His expression softened from anger to a tired sadness. He reached for a napkin from the dispenser at the end of the table and handed it to her. “Here.”
+She hesitated, mastered a surge of unnamed emotion, and accepted the napkin to wipe the sticky drink from her paw and then, realizing that she was crying, the tears from her face. “Sorry, I am just…”
+“We’ll talk.” He reached over and gave her dry paw a squeeze in his own. “Michelle and I will. There’s something I’m missing here is all, and I want to figure out why more than what.”
+True Name hid her muzzle in her drink and pretended to take a sip until she was sure she wouldn’t slur her words when she spoke. “Thank you. She is open to messages still, I will let you two work it out. For now, I need to focus on the meeting, because Jonas and Zeke are here.”
+Looking over his shoulder, Debarre nodded and turned to sit on the bench to face her again, leaving room for the other two. Jonas settled next to True Name so that they could give their speech together when the time came, and Zeke, that shifting bundle of rags and grime slid onto the bench beside Debarre.
+“Good afternoon,” the almost-face within the bundle rasped.
+Jonas grinned. “It’s morning, isn’t it?”
+A pseudopod that may have been a hand waved the comment away. “Time has lost all meaning. I seem to have forgotten how to sleep, these days.”
+“You need a vacation like Michelle.”
+There was a low rattle from the rags, and True Name imagined that must be Zeke’s laughter. “Don’t tempt me. I don’t have the funds to fork, so you’d be down to seven.”
+“Why did you make it so expensive?” Jonas elbowed True Name in the side.
+She held up her paws defensively and laughed. “I did not! The price is tied to system capacity.”
+“The laws of physics were a mistake and reputation is a lie.”
+“It is the best limiting factor that we have that is not a complete fabrication, at the moment.”
+“I rather miss coins.”
+And so on, until the table was full and the cone of silence fell.
+“Sasha? Jonas?” one of the well-dressed triad asked.
+“Right,” Jonas said, setting his drink down. “The bill. Things are progressing slowly, as they always do, but it sounds like they might start picking up steam shortly. Our main contact on the DDR side, Yared, says that some of the governments are starting to take interest in the bill, which could work to our advantage. Having it just be a direct vote would mean that we would have far, far more representatives to convince, since that’d mean essentially everyone on the DDR. The more governments in play, the more the role of the DDR shrinks.”
+“How does that even begin to help? Aren’t they super stodgy?”
+“They can be,” Jonas hedged. “But if we can form contacts with each of them, we can argue our case directly. Yared might be the one to give us a good in for the NEAC, and I still have some Western Fed contacts.”
+“As do I,” True Name added. “Dr. Ramirez can get chummy with them, and I’m already chummy with her.”
+“Anyone for the S-R Bloc or anywhere in SEAPAC? Middle east? India?”
+The trio of suits raised their hands. “S-R Bloc. We don’t know any of the oligarchs directly, but we had some big money interests.”
+“Israel,” Zeke said, then laughed at the awkward silence that followed. The trio frowned. “Sorry, nothing to be done there.”
+“And SEAPAC?”
+user11824 shrugged. “I was a nobody, but I was a Maori nobody.”
+“You had enough to upload. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”
+He shrugged again.
+“We will take all the help we can get,” True Name said. “Even from nobodies.”
+“Alright, I’ll poke mom.”
+Zeke nodded to True Name. “What’s your take on the situation?”
+She sipped at her drink to buy herself some time to think. “I think it’s leaning our way. One of the big arguments remains speciation, but Yared’s turning that into a pro-rights argument instead of a neutral- or anti-rights one. His voice is getting louder, too. It sounds like he’s getting a lot more upvotes on his posts than before.”
+“That’s good.”
+True Name nodded. “I think so. He’s hardly the biggest voice on the issue, but it sounds like he’s probably in the top ten.”
+“He’s NEAC, right?”
+“Yeah, Addis Ababa,” Jonas said. “Not exactly the seat of power, but not I guess not everything has to be Cairo. Sounds like we have a good mix, at least. No one from South America?”
+Everyone shook their heads.
+“I suppose that’s alright. They’re a big enough voice in Western Fed, but they’re still in the shadow government side of things. They don’t even have the shadow minister of System affairs.”
+“Who does?”
+“Lithuania.”
+One of the suits laughed, and Debarre looked blank.
+“Politics,” Jonas said, grinning lopsidedly.
+“Fair enough, I guess.”
+After a moment’s silence, Zeke rasped, “So what are our next steps?”
+“Let’s all talk to our respective interests — Zeke too — and we’ll meet again soon. True Name and I will keep working with Yared and steer as best we can from our side. Speaking of, though, any thoughts on the speciation topic?”
+Six sets of eyes flitted between Debarre and True Name, then the whole council laughed.
+“I don’t give a shit,” user11824 said. “But if your Yared guy can twist that argument against the opposition, then that’s just one more tool, isn’t it?”
+“We aren’t seeing that,” the man in the suit spoke up. “Two thirds of our power structure still thinks child restrictions are a good enough idea that those laws have bled into Russia, too. I’m pretty sure they see speciation as a positive. What better way to help in population.”
+One of his companions shrugged, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they started putting limitations on uploading by gender, but that is a separate topic.”
+“Zeke?”
+The pile of rags shifted in a shrug.
+“Debarre? True Name? Anything you can leverage?”
+The weasel laughed. “I mean, if you want to point to us as an example to push that along, and Yared’s tack seems to be working, go for it.”
+“Alright. It’s something you can suggest to your respective interests if you think it’ll help. We’ll reevaluate next meeting. Anything else on the agenda?”
+Everyone shook their heads, then lifted their glasses to a toast. The cone of silence dropped.
+“Well, then I am going to stay and get well and truly plastered,” True Name said. “You are all free to stick around or go if you want.”