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Madison Scott-Clary
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<h1 id="codrin-balancastor-2325">Codrin Bălan#Castor — 2325</h1>
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<p>It was difficult for Codrin Bălan 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 virtue 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 word 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>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 virtue 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 word 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 Bălan.</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. Ey had cried much as it sounded like Codrin#Pollux had.</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, incomplete as it was). But instead, ey had a cottony shield of time and distance that meant that ey could process it at eir own pace. Ey could 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>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 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 steadily less-eccentric orbit around the fox, accepted mounting feelings of love, and having 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 feel like it was my idea,</em> Ioan had written in a clade-eyes-only message. <em>She says that it’s her role to feel, though, and I believe her in this.</em></p>
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<p>“I worked with a team of scientists, a few of whom were station-side and the rest of whom were planet-side. All lovely folks, of course. They tried to come up with some pithy acronym for the module, but some bit of news called them ‘hopeless dreamers’, and the name stuck from there.</p>
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<p>“We basically nailed down the instrumentation that would go into the module, then built up its structure from there. Only some of it is telescopes, you understand. There are also various packages for measuring the cosmic microwave background radiation, ones for measuring ambient temperature variations, all the normal stuff. There’s also a secondary generator in there, I suppose to ensure that neither the module nor the station impact each other.</p>
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<p>“Anyhow, that’s not the story part. The story part is that we got halfway done with the planning of the module and were just starting to spin up all the work to build the components, and we suddenly ran into a bunch of pushback. A lot of it was the usual grumbling about costs, even though most of it was to be manufactured at the station. Some of it was tied in with the voices that wanted to keep the launch from happening in the first place. If ever there was such a thing as an anti-dreamer, it was them. They felt that to make a dream a reality was somehow wrong. I never understood their arguments.</p>
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<p>“The last bit of friction, and the most interesting bit, I suppose, came from sys-side. Their arguments were plainly insincere, though I never could figure out their true concerns. They said that the added complexity to the LVs put the integrity of the systems within at risk beyond some imagined tolerance. It didn’t bear up to even the slightest scrutiny, but they seemed to have loud voices.”</p>
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<p>“The last bit of friction, and the most interesting bit, I suppose, came from sys-side. Their arguments were plainly insincere, though I never could figure out their true concerns. They said that the added complexity to the LVs put the integrity of the Systems within at risk beyond some imagined tolerance. It didn’t bear up to even the slightest scrutiny, but they seemed to have loud voices.”</p>
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<p>Codrin frowned. “Most everyone I talked to was as ambivalent about the launch as they were about most phys-side projects, though I fully acknowledge that we run in different circles. There was an initial flush of excitement as it was announced, and most everyone I’ve talked to here said they’d made up their minds to go along on the launches even then, two decades back. It calmed down after as many forgot, but then ramped up before launch.”</p>
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<p>“Yeah, I felt much of the same in my circle, though you must understand that we were working on the launches for all of those two decades, so our excitement was bound to how well the project was going. We were spending so much time talking with phys-side, hearing all their gossip about the sentiment out there, and both sides were surprised when we started to have serious conversations about the sentiment sys-side when those arguments started to get louder.</p>
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<p>“At first, it was just the occasional opinion column in the feeds, but the actual news started to pick up on it soon after, and then there were a few debates. I don’t think it ever got to the point where the module was at risk, but people are still talking about whether it was a good idea, I hear.”</p>
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<p>Eventually, even Codrin lay back in the grass. Lay there with Tycho Brahe in all his sadness and happiness and wisdom and romanticism. Lay there and looked up at the stars ey knew not for how long.</p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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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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</footer>
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</main>
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<p>While it might not be one and instead be the other, there was always the chance that both might be true, and whenever ey was confronted with the possibility of winding up in such a state emself after centuries, ey would spend hours, days, weeks watching eir every action carefully, interrogating every thought, every word for hints of that disconnect.</p>
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<p>It was in that mindset that ey sent a carefully crafted sensorium message to this The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream of the Ode clade.</p>
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<p>“True Name,” ey said, speaking to the observing half of emself who would send the message. “My name is Codrin Bălan, and doubtless you remember my down-tree instance from working with my partner and your cocladist, Dear, some years back. Perhaps you also know of my current project of cataloging the experiences of those who have invested in the Launch to be combined into a history and mythology.</p>
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<p>“As I work through the list of possible interviewees compiled by clade, I have had several suggestions from out-clade. In particular, my counterpart on Pollux interviewed an…ex-coworker of yours named Ezekiel. He suggested some avenues for exploration in this project for myself, Codrin#Pollux, and Ioan back on the L<sub>5</sub> system, including a suggestion that I interview you.”</p>
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<p>“As I work through the list of possible interviewees compiled by clade, I have had several suggestions from out-clade. In particular, my counterpart on Pollux interviewed an…ex-coworker of yours named Ezekiel. He suggested some avenues for exploration in this project for myself, Codrin#Pollux, and Ioan back on the L<sub>5</sub> System, including a suggestion that I interview you.”</p>
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<p>Ey cleared eir throat and sat up straighter, feeling suddenly anxious. “If you’d agree to such, I’d like to meet at the place of your choosing to ask you some questions about your feelings on the launch and, if possible, Secession as well. Please feel free to get in touch with me by whatever means you’d like. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you.”</p>
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<p>Ey sent the message off and let the speaking instance quit.</p>
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<p><em>“My dear, when you are nervous, you hedge.”</em></p>
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<p>Codrin nodded as ey jotted down her answer. Ey considered asking her about the sys-side friction regarding the Dreamer Module that Brahe had mentioned, but decided to hold off on bringing up something that might prove contentious just yet.</p>
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<p>Instead, ey asked, “You mention that this is the first time in nearly two centuries that the two sides have worked together on something. Can you give me an overview of the types of collaboration that you were a part of or witnessed during Launch?”</p>
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<p>She laughed easily. “Is it not strange how we are already speaking of it in a similar way to Secession? I can hear the capital-L in your voice when you speak and you leave the definite article unspoken. But yes, I can tell you about that.</p>
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<p>“You doubtless know that quite a few elements of the Ode clade worked on the launch project. My own up-tree instance, May Then My Name Die With Me, was the sys-side launch director. My role, however, was to act as the political liaison between the two entities. There were meetings to be had, tempers to be soothed, knotty problems of jurisdiction to be considered. Did you know that there were discussions as to whether the new LV systems would be considered as seceding from the L<sub>5</sub> System? It was all very thorny. We eventually decided that the LVs would be considered a joint project with fifty-percent responsibility of sys- and phys-side and their Systems independent colonies. I found it quite silly, but here we are.”</p>
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<p>“You doubtless know that quite a few elements of the Ode clade worked on the launch project. My own up-tree instance, May Then My Name Die With Me, was the sys-side launch director. My role, however, was to act as the political liaison between the two entities. There were meetings to be had, tempers to be soothed, knotty problems of jurisdiction to be considered. Did you know that there were discussions as to whether the new LV Systems would be considered as seceding from the L<sub>5</sub> System? It was all very thorny. We eventually decided that the LVs would be considered a joint project with fifty-percent responsibility of sys- and phys-side and their Systems independent colonies. I found it quite silly, but here we are.”</p>
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<p>Ey chuckled at the suggestion. “I suppose it is a little silly, but then, much of the political side is over my head. Tangentially, and maybe this is a question better asked by Ioan and May Then My Name, I was informed that the launch director phys-side is actually a distant relative of Michelle Hadje’s. You must have been aware of that, given your role, but I’m curious as to your thoughts on having him involved.”</p>
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<p>“It was a nice bit of serendipity, a Hadje working on Launch just as one worked on Secession.”</p>
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<p>“I have heard mixed responses on this from the clade, but do you consider yourself a Hadje still?”</p>
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<p>“Only a suggestion. You have doubtless heard of Jonas, yes? Good. Well, I might also suggest that you find an instance of the Jonas clade to talk with. Given the direction of your questions, he will likely have much that will interest you.”</p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-10-22</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-12-20</p>
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</footer>
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