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Madison Scott-Clary
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<h1 id="codrin-balancastor-2325">Codrin Balan#Castor — 2325</h1>
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<p>It was difficult for Codrin Balan to reengage with the project at hand after what seemed to be an ever-mounting pile of oddities.</p>
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<p>It was not simply that ey had been finding piece after piece of new-to-em information about those that ey loved — though it was also that — nor was it that eir entire clade seemed to be entangled far deeper into something going further back than expected — though it was that as well — but that, by virtual of the twin launches and the L<sub>5</sub> system remaining back around Earth, ey was limited to reading much of this over plain text. Text that had flowed over sheets of paper in a comfortable font, bound itself up in books, and begged to be pored over, stood itself before em and said, “Read me, understand me.” It all added one layer of remove that, despite eir attraction to the written work and fine paper and comfortable fonts and nice books, left em feeling caught up in some dreamlike state of almost-understanding.</p>
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<p>As an example, there was this seemingly universal agreement among the Odists that no one of them should be the one to tell the entirety of the tale, and each for their own reasons. There seemed to be shame bound up in all of them, in some way, but beyond that, both instances of Dear had diverged to the point where the foxes were starting to come up with their own explanations for not providing that info to their respective Codrins Balan.</p>
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<p>Why was it, for instance, that Codrin#Pollux had decided to simply interview Dear, where ey had not? And what was ey, Codrin#Castor, to do with the information that Dear had shared with eir cocladist? Hell, was cocladist even the right word, at this point? That seemed to imply a down-tree instance that one could still access.</p>
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<p><em>I want to die,</em> the fox had said. How had Codrin#Pollux even begun to deal with that bit of information? When ey read those words, in eir comfortable font on eir fine paper in eir nice books, ey had cried.</p>
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<p>Ey had cried and closed the book and paced eir way out into the prairie outside the house, where ey had cried some more. Ey had not walked any new paths that day, simply walked to the outermost cairn that ey could find, sat down next to it, and watered the thirsty grass with a grief ey could not name.</p>
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<p>And that ey could not name it only added to that unnerving sense of remove. It wasn’t just sadness or grief. It wasn’t the type of feeling that one might experience at the actual loss of a loved one. It wasn’t the type of feeling that one experienced on learning that a loved one bore within its heart thoughts of suicide. Neither of those were true. Ey knew that, had ey been the one to conduct the interview, ey would have had much the same reaction as the other Codrin had (ey suspected, for all ey had was the transcript), but instead, ey had this cottony shield of time and distance that meant that ey could process it at eir own pace. Ey go sit out in the prairie and cry and then come to an understanding of Dear’s desire that ey couldn’t have any hope of doing, were the fox sitting before em.</p>
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<p>With this distance, both from the interview and from Dear itself, ey could remember its words: <em>“I just think we need death, or something like it, as part of the system. Death. Fear of death. Needs and reasons to survive in the face of an inevitable end. We need a way for an individual to end. We need a way to release those memories.”</em> Ey could remember those words and understand the sudden too-full feeling of discomfort that had come with them. Immortality came with its own costs, and it was not simply that one might grow bored, but that one might go mad.</p>
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<p>But ey hadn’t interviewed Dear, had ey? Codrin#Pollux had. Codrin#Pollux had that trauma in a way that ey did not.</p>
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<p>And Ioan! The wondrous strange hints that eir down-tree fork had been receiving! That their dream worlds worked in far subtler ways than imagined. That May Then My Name had told em, “I am worried that you will be unhappy with me.”</p>
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<p>So much bound up in that statement. By virtue of having lived with Dear and its partner for more than two decades, by having fallen into a less-eccentric orbit around the fox, accepted mounting feelings of love, and found emself in a relationship with an Odist, ey could read perhaps more clearly than Ioan the signs that ey was well on the path to doing the same. The Odists loved hard and they loved deep and they loved fast, and it was hard not to become intoxicated beneath all that love. <em>She seems to have wormed her way into my life and made herself comfortable, all while making it seem like it was my idea,</em> Ioan had written in a clade-eyes-only message. <em>She says that it is her role to feel, though, and I believe her in this.</em></p>
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<p>Ah, but dear Ioan, it is much more complex than that. With an Odist, it is always much more complex.</p>
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<p>And that, of course, was not even the main implication of the message. “I am worried that you will be unhappy”, even without the “with me” at the end suggested more of that guilt, shame, or distaste for the past that ey had picked up from Dear. From <em>both</em> Dears.</p>
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<p>Eir Dear: <em>I am…ashamed. Many of the first lines…well, no. I will not elaborate now.</em></p>
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<p>The Dear on Pollux: <em>You could interview any one of us about the entirety of our story, even me, and we would tell you, but we would also resent you for that.</em></p>
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<p>Eir Dear had said, <em>“You will doubtless tease it out of me, bit by bit, you tenacious fuck.”</em> But given what both May Then My Name and Dear#Pollux had said, ey no longer wished to try.</p>
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<p>And so here ey was, sitting in a dark field, looking up at the stars. Very dark. Well and truly dark, beyond almost anything Ioan had experienced before, even after uploading. There was a purity to that blackness, just as there was a purity to the red-colored flashlight that Tycho Brahe (not his real name, but he had requested the pseudonym) used to guide them both to the top of a — yes, pure — grassy hill.</p>
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<p>“I come out here on nights when I am depressed,” the old man had grumbled. “And that has been most nights, of late.”</p>
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<p>“It’s a beautiful place.”</p>
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<p>“Is it not? It reminds me of a trip to the west coast that I took long, long before I uploaded. This grassy hill in the middle of a wide ring of firs. You can’t see it, but the grass is not actually grass, but a sort of moss. When it’s dried out after a rain, it’s delightfully soft, isn’t it?”</p>
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<p>Codrin nodded, then, realizing that ey could barely see Brahe next to em, murmured, “Almost cushy.”</p>
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<p>They sat on that hill in silence, leaning back on their hands and watching the stars overhead.</p>
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<p>It had taken a few moments for Ioan to get eir bearings when they had first started watching. The stars overhead were stationary, but in a way that ey was not used to. There was none of the same nigh imperceptible wheeling that one might expect, and the constellations didn’t feel quite right, One star, brighter than the rest, was visible low over the horizon. There was no moon.</p>
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<p>“What is this?”</p>
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<p>“It is a view from outside the LV.”</p>
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<p>Ioan frowned up at the sky. “I didn’t think that pictures could make it into the System. Systems.”</p>
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<p>Brahe sighed quietly. “They can’t. This is just a projection. A description based on what I know the stars to look like combined with information based on where they are relative to the fisheye lens on the side of the Dreamer Module.”</p>
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<p>“And so you project that combination into a sim?”</p>
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<p>“Yes. It’s here for anyone to see, but I have been too tired to tell many people.” A long pause, and then, “Yes, too tired.”</p>
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<p>There was a quiet lie in that admission, but Ioan let it slip by. “Can you tell me some more about what I’m seeing?”</p>
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<p>“Of course, Mx Balan,” Brahe said, audibly brightening.</p>
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<p>He pointed first to the brightest star, low on the horizon. “There, see? That is the sun.”</p>
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<p>He pointed at another star, one that seemed to be creeping slowly across the field of view. “That is Earth, there. You can see it moving only by virtue of the way the gravity of the sun is causing our path to arc.”</p>
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<p>He pointed over to the fir trees opposite where the star that was the sun shone. “Beyond those trees — really, the reason that they exist — is the solar sail, which blocks the lens.”</p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-09-05</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-09-09</p>
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