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Madison Scott-Clary
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<h1 id="douglas-hadje-2325">Douglas Hadje — 2325</h1>
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<p>When Douglas Hadje pressed his hands against the sides of the L<sub>5</sub> System, he always imagined that he could sense his aunt along with however many ‘great’s preceded that title, sense all of those years separating him from her, and he pressed his hands against the outside of the system every chance he could get. If he was sure that he was alone — and he often was — he would press his forehead to the glassy, diamondoid cylinder and wish, hope, dream that he could say even one word to her. His people, humanity, now nearly two centuries distant from the founding of the System, forever felt on the verge of true speciation, of mutual incomprehensibility, from those within. Did they still think the same? Did they still feel the same? Their hopes were doubtless different, but were their dreams?</p>
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<p>When Douglas Hadje pressed his hands against the sides of the L<sub>5</sub> System, he always imagined that he could sense his aunt along with however many ‘great’s preceded that title, sense all of those years separating him from her, and he pressed his hands against the outside of the System every chance he could get. If he was sure that he was alone — and he often was — he would press his forehead to the glassy, diamondoid cylinder and wish, hope, dream that he could say even one word to her. His people, humanity, now nearly two centuries distant from the founding of the System, forever felt on the verge of true speciation, of mutual incomprehensibility, from those within. Did they still think the same? Did they still feel the same? Their hopes were doubtless different, but were their dreams?</p>
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<p>But always his hands were separated from the structure by that thin layer of skinsuit, and always his helmet was in the way of the carbon shell, and always he was at least one reality away from them.</p>
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<p>He would spend his five minutes there, connected and not by touch, thinking of this or that, thinking of nothing at all, and then he would climb away from the cylinder down the ladder, down the dozen or so meters to the ceiling of his home, climb through the airlock, and perhaps go lay down.</p>
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<p>Others knew of this. They had to. All movement outside the habitat portion of the system was tightly controlled. Everything was on video, recorded directly from his eyes through his exo. All audio was recorded.</p>
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<p>Others knew of this. They had to. All movement outside the habitat portion of the station was tightly controlled. Everything was on video, recorded directly from his eyes through his exo. All audio was recorded.</p>
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<p>But he never spoke, and he always closed his eyes. For some unknown reason, he was permitted this small dalliance.</p>
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<p>The System sat stationary at the Earth-Moon L<sub>5</sub> point, a stable orbit with relation to the earth and moon such that it only very rarely required any correction to its position. Once a day, as the point rotated beyond Earth from the point of view of the sun and more briefly by the moon, it fell into darkness, but other than that, it was bathed in sunlight unmoderated by atmosphere. It rotated at a stately pace in relation to the moon and Earth such that its vast solar collector was always pointed toward the sun.</p>
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<p>The station itself comprised three main parts. At the core of the station was the diamondoid cylinder, fifty meters in diameter and five hundred meters in length. The solar collector was attached to the sunward end of the cylinder, spreading out in a series of one hundred sixty thousand replaceable panels, one meter square each, held in a lattice of carbon fiber struts. Surrounding the cylinder was a torus, two hundred meters in diameter and as long as core cylinder itself, such that it was forever hidden from the sun by the solar collectors. Seventy-seven acres, of living space, working space, factories, and arable land, all lit by bundles of doped fiber optic cables which collected and distributed the light from space and cast it down from the ceiling. The entire contraption rotated nearly three times per minute, fast enough that they had an approximation of Earth’s gravity.</p>
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<p>That is where Douglas lived along with about twenty others.</p>
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<p>To fund such a project, the torus had originally operated as a tourist destination. Many of the living spaces consisted of repurposed hotel rooms. It had long since ceased to serve in that capacity as humanity’s curiosity for space dwindled and spaceflight from Earth once again began to rise in price.</p>
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<p>To build such a project, the area had been cleared of much of the Trojan asteroids that had collected there, either used for raw materials or slung out into space into eccentric orbits that would keep them from impacting Earth or winding up once again captured in the same Legrange point. Even still, one of the many jobs was to monitor the area for newly captured rocks and divert or collect them as needed. The material could be used for new solar panels, or perhaps the two five-thousand kilometer long launch arms sprouting on opposing sides of the torus, the Hall Effect Engines that kept the rotation of the system constant as the arms had been extruded from its surface, or of course the two new cylindrical systems at the tips of those arms that had, over the last two decades, been constructed as half-scale duplicates of the core.</p>
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<p>To build such a project, the area had been cleared of much of the Trojan asteroids that had collected there, either used for raw materials or slung out into space into eccentric orbits that would keep them from impacting Earth or winding up once again captured in the same Legrange point. Even still, one of the many jobs was to monitor the area for newly captured rocks and divert or collect them as needed. The material could be used for new solar panels, or perhaps the two five-thousand kilometer long launch arms sprouting on opposing sides of the torus, the Hall Effect Engines that kept the rotation of the station constant as the arms had been extruded from its surface, or of course the two new cylindrical launch vehicles at the tips of those arms that had, over the last two decades, been constructed as half-scale duplicates of the core.</p>
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<p>Little of this mattered to Douglas.</p>
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<p>He was, he was forever told, a people person. He was an administrator, a boss, a manager. It was his job to direct and guide and herd people into doing what was required for this twenty-year project. He was forever told that he had the empathy and skills to lead, though he forever doubted it.</p>
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<p>He simply cared about this with a fervor that was dimmed only by the idea that, somewhere within the mirror-box that was the System cylinder, his distant ancestor dwelt.</p>
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<p>Douglas was the launch director. He was the <em>director</em>. He was high enough on the food chain that he had ungated access to the textual communication line that connected the phys-side world to the sys-side world. He was the director, and he knew that, if he wished, all he need do was pull up the program, type up a letter, run it past security, click ‘send’, and Michelle, his generations-gone aunt, would somehow receive it.</p>
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<p>And yet he never did.</p>
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<p>He didn’t know why. He asked himself again and again what it was that kept him from reaching out to her. Was it that speciation? Was it the confounding societal differences? Was it that unfathomable distance between the physical and the dream? He did not know, he did not know.</p>
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<p>Instead, he worked. He oversaw the construction of the Launch Vehicle Systems, those two smaller cylinders that would be, in a few days, released from either end of the launch arms at incredible tangential velocity. He worked with the sys-side launch coordinator to ensure that everything was working appropriately, that the micro-Ansible connection between the main system and the launch vessels was appropriately transferring entire identities.</p>
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<p>Instead, he worked. He oversaw the construction of the Launch Vehicle Systems, those two smaller cylinders that would be, in a few days, released from either end of the launch arms at incredible tangential velocity. He worked with the sys-side launch coordinator to ensure that everything was working appropriately, that the micro-Ansible connection between the main System and the launch vessels was appropriately transferring entire identities.</p>
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<p>Who this coordinator was, this confusingly-named May Then My Name Die With Me, he had no idea.</p>
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<p>He needn’t even message Michelle directly. He had May Then My Name Die With Me, perhaps she would know her. He could ask her. She could mediate.</p>
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<p>And still, he never did.</p>
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@ -285,7 +285,7 @@ Launch director</p>
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<p><strong>Sys-side:</strong> You too.</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-11-17</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-12-20</p>
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@ -127,7 +127,7 @@ To whom do I plead my case?</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p>From whence do I call out?</p>
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<p>Close. So close. I call out to myself from within myself. I call out to the system through a few inches of diamondoid coating and the fabric of my EVA suit.</p>
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<p>Close. So close. I call out to myself from within myself. I call out to the System through a few inches of diamondoid coating and the fabric of my EVA suit.</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p>What right have I?<br />
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No ranks of angels will answer to dreamers,<br />
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@ -152,7 +152,7 @@ No unknowable spaces echo my words.</p>
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<p>Please answer, May Then My Name. I wait because I have to know that there is something beyond this. I went into this questionnaire with an open mind, and now I’m having a hard time continuing because I just want to curl up in my bed and cry because these last questions have stripped me of any pretense that I had about my desires and what’s keeping me from them. I don’t recognize where you got them from, but they have me truly unsettled. They sound almost like your name, and if you are a part of these questions, then please answer.</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-10-17</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-12-20</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> Alright, where do you want to start?</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> Perhaps it would be easiest for Ioan and I to answer a whole bunch of your questions at once. They are mostly biographical, and I think that a few paragraphs from each of us will cover most of them.</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> We have flipped a coin, and it was decided that I will go first.</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> I uploaded back in the early 2100s, back when the system was small and full of dreamers, weirdos, and people like you and Ioan who spend all of their time thinking. Before that, I was a teacher, though towards the end of my phys-side tenure and for some time after, I became involved in politics. I grew up in the central corridor of North America, in the Western Federation. As with everyone, I do not think that I have an accent, though after some trouble with my implants before I uploaded, I found that some speech and thought patterns had changed, and since then, language and I have had a complicated relationship. We could have worked to change it, my cocladists and I, but why bother?</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> I uploaded back in the early 2100s, back when the System was small and full of dreamers, weirdos, and people like you and Ioan who spend all of their time thinking. Before that, I was a teacher, though towards the end of my phys-side tenure and for some time after, I became involved in politics. I grew up in the central corridor of North America, in the Western Federation. As with everyone, I do not think that I have an accent, though after some trouble with my implants before I uploaded, I found that some speech and thought patterns had changed, and since then, language and I have had a complicated relationship. We could have worked to change it, my cocladists and I, but why bother?</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> You ask about dissolution strategies (tasker, tracker, dispersionista): you are correct that they apply to the ways in which an individual forks. They are not hard and fast categories, but rather a set of patterns that we have noticed over the years and applied names and numbers to. Taskers will fork only very rarely, and then for a specific task, merging back into the root instance immediately afterward. Trackers fork more frequently, and may maintain forks over a longer period of time. The reasons for forking may vary — Ioan is a tracker, ey will explain more — but the forks almost always follow a single line of thought or relationship or what have you to its logical end before merging back. Dispersionistas are those who fork for fun, spinning off new personalities and maybe merging them back, maybe not. My clade, the Ode clade, falls somewhere between tracker and dispersionista: we fork frequently for many temporary purposes, but maintain a relatively small permanent clade of around 100 instances.</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> Is that clear? I can answer questions about this until the cows upload.</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> I think so. It made sense when you called them ‘dissolution strategies’, which makes me think of dissolving into a solution.</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> I’m sorry to hear that about her.</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> Is that a common experience sys-side?</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> Not that common, no, and hers was unique.</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> Every now and then, one of us will get tired of functional immortality and decide to just quit their instance — that is what she did — and disappear off the system. I do not begrudge her that.</p>
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<p><strong>May Then My Name:</strong> Every now and then, one of us will get tired of functional immortality and decide to just quit their instance — that is what she did — and disappear off the System. I do not begrudge her that.</p>
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<p><strong>Ioan:</strong> I’m sorry for your loss, Douglas.</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>He had to blink away tears in order to reply, and then did so quickly, hitting send before his courage failed him.</p>
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<p>He embraced that calm, rolled onto his side, and slept.</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-11-17</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> Alright.</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> There was one last spate of protesting right before the launch. I saw some of the videos from planet-side, and a lot of it was just talking-heads discussing the fact that some had tried to shut down portions of the net, and even tried to take down one of the Ansible stations. Most of it was the same stuff we saw during the planning phase. I guess it kind of broke down into three complaints:</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> 1. Expenses — this one was diminished toward the end, as there’s not really a whole lot of expense required in popping some explosive bolts to set the launches flying, and all the material used out here was from scavenged Trojan asteroids. The protests that we saw around this were mostly griping about how much had already been spent. “Think of how much could have gone to deacidifying projects, etc etc”</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> 2. Brain/workforce drain — This is a perennial topic with the system. All those smart minds out there focusing on pie-in-the-sky dreams instead of ‘real problems’ back there on Earth. What they imagine someone with a masters in spaceflight or astronomy or whatever can do back on Earth to better an overheated dustball is beyond me.</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> 2. Brain/workforce drain — This is a perennial topic with the System. All those smart minds out there focusing on pie-in-the-sky dreams instead of ‘real problems’ back there on Earth. What they imagine someone with a masters in spaceflight or astronomy or whatever can do back on Earth to better an overheated dustball is beyond me.</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> 3. Earth vs space sentiments — This one is probably the most common, and also the hardest to explain. Even I don’t totally understand it. I think I mentioned before that, the harder things get, the less time and energy you have to focus on those pie-in-the-sky ideas. You’re too busy scraping by or focus on growing soybeans or trying not to burn up or whatever, you don’t have much time to do anything but dream about space and watch movies in your hour before bed or however your day looks.</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> You have to remember that my opinion of the place is colored by the fact that I lived where I did with the family that I did while the city was in a state of decline, so.</p>
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<p><strong>Douglas:</strong> Anyway, a lot of these people seemed to be just plain angry that there were people doing things that were not for helping improve the general condition of life. There’s still six or seven billion people down there, when you mesh birth rates with death and upload rates, and a good chunk of those people have no wish to upload, so they’re stuck in a life that’s uncomfortable enough to make them angry at those who have what feels like (and might as well be) unlimited potential, as they imagine the System to be.</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-10-19</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-12-20</p>
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