update from sparkleup

writing/meeting-of-one.html

@@ -14,26 +14,20 @@
             <article class="content">
                 <h1 id="attempt-2">Attempt 2</h1>
 <p>Ioan Bălan, despite all attempts to keep emself from sinking into the depths of whatever it was studying, always managed to find emself mired in details ey could not hope to escape. They twined and twisted around eir wrists, tripped em up about the ankles, and tugged em ever deeper into the fractal complications of whatever topic ey decided would be the subject of eir next work.</p>
-<p>A recent paper ey had completed on an unnerving social breakdown in one of the old clades &mdash; those collection of individuals forked from a single uploaded consciousness &mdash; had garnered em no small amount of notoriety and plenty of credit on the reputation market.</p>
-<p>Since the paper had been published and reviewed &mdash; and reviewed and <em>re-reviewed</em> &mdash; ey had no shortage of requests for further anthropological work within the system. Ey had grown accustomed to sorting the requests into different bins. Ey had one for requests that were totally out of eir area of expertise (ancient methods of cryptography? In what wild universe would ey be considered any sort of expert on those?), another for serious but truly boring inquiries (really anything related to writing, which was only ancillary to eir work), and one for serious inquiries worth exploring.</p>
-<p>This last was divided into roughly two piles, itself: the first was on topics of religion and the second was everything else. The first pile far and away outsized the second, and why, ey could not say.</p>
-<p>Today&rsquo;s inquiry was that of &ldquo;The Joseph Chace Friends Meeting&rdquo;.</p>
+<p>The current fixation was due to a note ey had received titled &ldquo;The Joseph Chace Friends Meeting&rdquo;.</p>
 <p>The name alone was enough to grab Ioan&rsquo;s attention. Was it a meeting of one person&rsquo;s friends? If so, why was it tagged &lsquo;religion&rsquo;? What would they meet about? A fan-club, perhaps? Those still lingered, even in this post-self society.</p>
-<p>The note itself read:</p>
+<p>The note read:</p>
 <blockquote>
 <p>Mx. Ioan Bălan:</p>
 <p>My name is Joseph Chace and I am the&hellip;well, the language fails me. Organizer? Sole member? Recorded minister?</p>
 <p>Either way, I am part of and entirely the Joseph Chace Friends Meeting. This meeting began on the occasion of my upload into the system as one of the first Quakers (or, at least recorded members).</p>
-<p>You must understand a fact about Quakers: if you are to run a meeting (church, as you might call it), you are going to have committees. That&rsquo;s just a fact of life. Clearness committees to admit new members, committees on faith and worship, etc etc ad nauseum.</p>
-<p>It is not a requirement, but as someone who spent their embodied life bounded by the constraints of a Quaker meeting, <em>not</em> having those things felt like leaving home.</p>
-<p>To that end, and with the lack of other Quakers uploading, I devised a method for creating a meeting of my own. Given your work on the Ode Clade business (well done, by the way!), I thought you might appreciate my attempt at a meeting of one. I understand that you are a busy individual, but if you are able to, I would love to invite you to a meeting for worship. We will discuss more at the time should you accept.</p>
+<p>To that end, and with the lack of other Quakers uploading after me, I devised a method for creating a meeting of my own. Given your anthropological work, I thought you might appreciate my attempt at a meeting of one. I understand that you are a busy individual, but if you are able to, I would love to invite you to a meeting for worship. We will discuss more at the time should you accept.</p>
 <p>Many thanks,</p>
 <p>Joseph Chace (Prime)</p>
 </blockquote>
 <p>This was not the first religious movement that Ioan had found or been asked to investigate, though it was certainly the oldest. As an historian, ey was well acquainted with the unspoken maxim that, should one wish to be at the center of grand changes, whether in society or in thought, one ought to hang around centers of religion. In the past, ey had followed (with a fork, natch) more than one cult in whatever state of formation.</p>
 <p>Ah well, it was worth checking out, was it not?</p>
 <hr />
-<p>Ioan forked into Ioan Bălan#d116001, who left with a pad of nice paper and a nice pen to go along with it to investigate this meeting of one.</p>
 <p>Ey was greeted by Joseph Chace. <em>A</em> Joseph Chace, ey soon realized, for the unassuming building, low-slung and painted drab, seemed to be populated entirely by copies of the same person.</p>
 <p>&ldquo;Joseph? Uh&hellip;Chace Prime?&rdquo; Ioan asked.</p>
 <p>&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m Chace Epsilon. Prime&rsquo;s setting up, but we&rsquo;ve all been briefed. Ioan, yes? A pleasure to meet you.&rdquo;</p>