update from sparkleup
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<p>The three skunks laughed while ey and Debarre leaned across the table to shake hands.</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-07-09</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-07-14</p>
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<h2 id="part-1-conversation">Part 1 — Conversation</h2>
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<p>It’s been about three and a half years since the fourth convergence, the meeting of the Artemesians with Castor. Life has taken a bit of a swing toward the adventuresome as news and new technology trickle their way back down to Lagrange, the original instance of the System in orbit around Earth. Technological changes include finer-grained ACLs that control permissions on various bits of the System, allowing for opaqued or visually secure cones of silence, limits on sensorium messages, etc.</p>
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<p>During those three years, <em>Ioan Bălan</em> has been getting coffee with <em>The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream</em> of the Ode clade once a month. While the relationship between True Name and…well, everyone has been kind of strained, it was particularly tense between her and Ioan’s partner <em>May Then My Name Die With Me</em> of the Ode clade, who, for years, struggled with feelings of hatred towards True Name. Although that hatred has softened towards resentment, these monthly coffee dates, where Ioan and True Name just chat and then work on their own projects, have been meant to keep avenues open between the two, since neither May nor True Name have given up hope on figuring out a path forward. They always seem to talk about each other to Ioan, and it kind of feels like they <em>want</em> to move forward, but they can’t yet find a way.</p>
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<p>It’s late 2349, about about three and a half years since the fourth convergence, the meeting of the Artemesians with Castor. Life has taken a bit of a swing toward the adventuresome as news and new technology trickle their way back down to Lagrange, the original instance of the System in orbit around Earth. Technological changes include finer-grained ACLs that control permissions on various bits of the System, allowing for opaqued or visually secure cones of silence, limits on sensorium messages, etc.</p>
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<p>During those three years, <em>Ioan Bălan</em> wonders how this has become eir life: ey has been getting coffee with <em>The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream</em> of the Ode clade once a month. While the relationship between True Name and…well, everyone has been kind of strained, it was particularly tense between her and Ioan’s partner <em>May Then My Name Die With Me</em> of the Ode clade, who, for years, struggled with feelings of hatred towards True Name. Although that hatred has softened towards resentment, these monthly coffee dates, where Ioan and True Name just chat and then work on their own projects, have been meant to keep avenues open between the two, since neither May nor True Name have given up hope on figuring out a path forward. They always seem to talk about each other to Ioan, and it kind of feels like they <em>want</em> to move forward, but they can’t yet find a way.</p>
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<p>Oh, speaking of projects, Ioan is working on adapting eir book <em>On the Perils of Memory</em> (the story of Qoheleth) for the stage, True Name is prepping the System on the political side for the technological advancement that will allow audiovisual communication between the System and Earth instead of just text, and May is working on a monologue about being built to love.</p>
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<p>Ioan and May are just <em>incredibly</em> gay together, and it’s painfully sweet, but I promise it’s a legit plot element. They talk about how May forms and keeps relationships, that she only forms relationships as her root instance, and if a new one starts up while one is still going, only then will she fork to continue two relationships. Sorta like parallel monogamy. Ioan is her sixteenth relationship serious enough to warrant a fork (though, given the way she stepped back from True Name’s guidance, she hasn’t done so yet), and we learn that some of her forks are doubtless still in relationships, but that she lets them live their own private lives and never accepts merges when they quit, so she knows very little about them.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, after a windstorm blew a tree over and crushed his tent and impaled his leg on a branch, <em>Do I Know God After The End Waking</em> has interrupted his months of solitude and called his boyfriend <em>Debarre</em> back to help him rebuild the tent in a new location. They’re also pretty gay, but, like, in a super stoic way because E.W. can’t emote and Debarre is a weasel and thus made of angst. May stops by their sim to visit and a) complain about the fact that True Name is in eir life, b) fret about why this still feels important, and c) flirt with Debarre (who is Very Gay™) to make him uncomfortable.</p>
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<p>Back home, May and True Name finally explain what their huge conversation was: Zacharias is one of May’s first relationship forks. Centuries ago, perhaps five years after Secession, back when she and True Name were almost exactly alike, May forked to form a friendship/relationship with someone who turned out to be a heavily modified fork of Jonas. This version of Jonas slowly won Zacharias over to his side, encouraged him to change, and then pushed him to get into a relationship with True Name. They kept this secret until a few years after Launch, when they dropped the news on her on all three Systems (Lagrange, Castor, and Pollux) at the same time. Jonas and Zacharias used that to set up different situations on each System: the previous status quo on Castor, the Guiding Council on Pollux, and this slow attempt to grind True Name down on Lagrange.</p>
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<p>Since Zacharias found True Name at Arrowhead Lake, that means that sim is no longer secure, so Ioan grabs a plains environment with a section of river off the reputation exchange and sets it up outside eir home so that True Name can retreat out there when feeling the need for solitude and no walls. This allows End Waking to visit a few times, talking with True Name and trying to understand where both she and May are coming from now that he’s involved in this, too. In the process of talking, Ioan and May mention her vague thoughts on merging down, and True Name is oddly rather for it. She feels unbalanced, and if she were able to go into the merge knowing full well what to expect, what to keep or discard, and knowing that she could fork beforehand, she’d have a much easier time and might come out the other side far better. Eventually, the three of them say ‘fuck it’ and decide to go through with it so long as they approach it very carefully and respect Ioan and May’s boundaries.</p>
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<h2 id="part-4-reconciliation">Part 4 — Reconciliation</h2>
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<p>After a week of conversations determining what those boundaries are, including some discussions with End Waking about how this merge will differ from the previous one, May finally merges down. Despite what she said in <em>Toledot</em> — a small lie to try and keep Ioan from digging too much — May hasn’t merged down since 2155, longer ago than the most recent of End Waking’s merges, so it’s a doozy. However, they’re far more deliberate about it. True Name is kept cozy in bed rather than basically being dropped on the floor like before, she’s allowed to fork beforehand, and May is there to keep her comfortable and talk her through anything that comes up. By that night, True Name is mostly stuck up in her head, but can speak haltingly. However, May doesn’t want to leave her to fend for herself and is unwilling to sleep without Ioan, so they decide to expand the bed so that Ioan can sleep with May and True Name still be nearby. There’s some gentle ribbing about keeping Ioan away from True Name, but basically everyone’s awkward. Shortly before they fall asleep, True Name jolts upright shouting ‘ey knows!’, showing that True Name#Castor never passed on the fact that Codrin now knows AwDae’s name. In the middle of the night, she rolls over and winds up curled with May, so Ioan wakes up hugging them both which is kind of awkward for everyone, and there’s a lot of talk about that; True Name says that she can see what May sees in Ioan, can see a universe in which she loves em, but not how to get from this universe to that one, at which May requests that she call her ‘May’ instead of ‘May Then My Name’.</p>
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<p>May visits End Waking, who calls Debarre back to talk through the merger and what it means, how it might help True Name escape from this lingering threat of Jonas. Debarre’s pretty upset because now everyone’s getting buddy-buddy with True Name and he still hates her. One upside, though, is that End Waking seems to be on the verge of moving on, dropping out of the clade and just becoming his own person, which would be more fulfilling for everyone.</p>
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<p>Back at Chez Bălan over the next few months, True Name has been calming down and processing well. She still needs silence and solitude as End Waking might out in the plains Ioan procured outside the house, and she still has that sharp political mind from True Name, but now she has all the emotions and need for constant touch from May. This plays out as her struggling to sleep alone, and while she gets some relief by sleeping curled up with her own fork as May taught her, she winds up crashing with Ioan and May once a week or so when the emotional need gets overwhelming. Still, it’s well into April and they’ve all been cooped up since January, so they’re all going stir-crazy. They finally talk Ioan into leaving, at least, since the chances of anyone being out to get em are low, so ey spends an afternoon at a library (because of course ey does) where, on a whim, ey contacts Serene to see if she can duplicate Arrowhead Lake for them, since the original isn’t theirs and has been discovered by Jonas & co. She’s mostly willing, but needs time to process. We get the sense that the clade is largely still wary of True Name.</p>
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<p>They talk May into getting out of the house for a bit to go get dinner with Debarre so that she can get away and Ioan can have some solitude while True Name ostensibly goes for a walk. However, True Name nods off on the couch and Ioan spaces out on the beanbag. After a bit, they get to talking and discuss how things have felt since the merge. They spent so long talking about eir boundaries that everything’s felt super careful. True Name asks to sit by em on the beanbag (a cuddlesome prospect, if ever there was one) to test. If it’s awkward, so be it, but at least they’ll know. It <em>is</em> awkward, and neither of them are sure of what to make of it, but True Name explains more of how things feel from her end: she says she’s of three minds, that she’s True Name and she’s May and she’s End Waking, and that depending on the situation, one will feel closer to the surface than the others, so her being close to Ioan leads to her feeling more like May than True Name or End Waking. She catches herself getting despondent and decides that it’s time to set a loose deadline of one month for that meeting with Jonas.</p>
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<p>Ioan sets up the meeting as a message, but Jonas requests to meet all the same, which is weird. He brings Zacharias along and, when the fox starts to get all snarky, stomps on his foot, making Ioan realize that it’s all a show, using his power over the situation to try and shape how Ioan’s story will look once he writes. Through eir discussions with the clade, though, Ioan guesses much of Jonas’s plan ahead of time: his hypothesis is that societies that are different yet maintain the same system of governance are unstable when separated by space and time, so he’s set up three different systems of government on the three Systems. True Name disagreed, so he decided to try and get rid of her. Jonas gets all frowny at em, but adapts smoothly and keeps winding Ioan up until ey gets frustrated and leaves. Back home, ey confirms the time and date of the meeting with May, True Name, and End Waking out on True Name’s plain. Everyone’s kinda stressed, but Ioan and May say goodnight and head inside, where they talk about whether True Name will keep living with them after this stupid meeting, deciding that she’ll be welcome to as long as they can modify the sim to accommodate her need to be outside and give them more space apart if they need. May makes fun of Ioan for liking True Name, and ey admits ey’s in the same boat as her, that she’s so much like May that ey can imagine it, but has no idea what it would actually look like in practice.</p>
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<p>Jonas has requested that True Name’s entire stanza be present, so May, True Name, and End Waking arrive with Ioan while the rest of the stanza — including Zacharias — arrive with Jonas. There is some weird chatter back and forth, that type of non-conversation that hides deeper political meanings before they get down to the talk. Jonas confirms that he’s aiming for three political systems, and that he tried to get rid of True Name for disagreeing. Zacharias makes some quip and True Name dismisses him. He gets quite upset, so Jonas brings in the assassin that tried to get True Name to go after him, but May, of all people, intercedes, knocking the assassin out and telling Zacharias to leave. Jonas demands that True Name just disappear if she’s to keep living, that she just curl up around her ‘little Name thing’ and not be seen again. It’s hinted that he knows the name and has been using it to help keep the stanza in line. She says she’s no longer True Name, that she’s something else now, and he says it’s not enough. Sigh. She changes as has been mentioned by others: forking repeatedly and using the mutation algorithms to change subtly with each fork, until she looks basically like Sasha (not Michelle) did before uploading, though she opts to shift species to spotted skunk, figuring that that’d be too recognizable. Jonas confirms that she needs to have a new name, and she chooses Sasha, which causes an uproar among the Odists and pisses Jonas off, and he kicks them out.</p>
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<p>At home, she explains that that set of events was the best they could have hoped for. The name Sasha, tied to the most sympathetic figure from the <em>History</em>, means that Jonas essentially can’t touch her without being seen openly as the villain, even if it also means that she can’t continue in politics. Instead, she’s going to write a companion volume to the history of her account of things.</p>
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<p>Things settle down into a cycle of domesticity and visitors after that. Much of the clade visits, and the reactions are mixed. A Finger Pointing and her stanza are very happy for her, as is Serene, who builds their house into a copy of Arrowhead Lake, giving them plenty of wilderness and space for Sasha to build a tent similar to End Waking’s. Zacharias pings, and they use the new ACLs to completely cut him off, which upsets Douglas, but May feels she can go no-contact with him in a way she couldn’t with True Name. In Dreams (the psychologist of the clade) and Hammered Silver (the mother of the clade), however, both disown her, her entire old stanza (including May, who was very close to both of them), and the entire Bălan clade. This hits May really hard, and she has a brief stint of overflowing that night, pushing them out of the house to go stay in Sasha’s tent, where they struggle with their own feelings on the matter.</p>
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<p>When May finally allows them back, Sasha requests some time to talk with just her about some lingering processing of Zacharias business, so Ioan and a fork of Sasha go for a walk out to the boulder at the end of the lake where they discuss the final outcome, Ioan’s love for May, their complicated feelings for each other, and the book ends with Ioan once more wondering how this has become eir life.</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-07-14</p>
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