From d1f9630ddc17270f483b06113079c08df7e1d8e5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Madison Scott-Clary Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2021 23:30:13 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] update from sparkleup --- .../post-self/neviim/remote/codrin/004.html | 42 ++++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 41 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/writing/post-self/neviim/remote/codrin/004.html b/writing/post-self/neviim/remote/codrin/004.html index 747409654..825e277f9 100644 --- a/writing/post-self/neviim/remote/codrin/004.html +++ b/writing/post-self/neviim/remote/codrin/004.html @@ -21,7 +21,47 @@

Tycho laughed. “Yes, though I feel like we’ve been here for at least a week by now.”

“Might as well have been. The room is pinned at point two, so we’re already given far more time than we might have on an ordinary day.”

“And it’s easy to take a long, lazy break,” Sarah said. “But yeah. Day three, I guess. What are your thoughts, Codrin?”

-

Ey

+

Ey leaned back against the column outside the unison room, arms crossed, and looked up at the clear sky above the open atrium. The blue was more intense than ey remembered from Earth or any of the sims ey’d been in. Some part of em always felt as though ey was falling up into it, whenever ey stared up like this.

+

“I’m tired,” ey said at last. “Some of that’s from just how long it feels like we’ve been running, and how I feel like I need to be on for all of that time, but part of it is our other emissaries.”

+

“Oh?”

+

“Them being so…is unwell the right word?”

+

Sarah nodded, “Maybe, yeah. Unwell. Struggling?”

+

“Right, yeah. Them struggling so much means that I have to be an active part of the discussions as well as focused on them. There’s nothing I can do to help them, but I still feel like I need to be attuned to everyone around me.”

+

“Is that part of your amanuensis duties?” Tycho asked.

+

Ey frowned, silent as ey thought. “Perhaps. It is part of what’s going on here, isn’t it?”

+

“It is,” Sarah said. “But you don’t need to be completely a sponge, soaking everything up.”

+

“I don’t know that I can just turn that off.”

+

“And that’s okay. It’s less about turning it off than mitigating it. Find the times where you can turn down your engagement and use those where you can. Find the things that don’t require your full attention and let them go, even if only for a few seconds.”

+

Ey smiled, feeling the tiredness in eir cheeks. “You were a therapist, weren’t you? Maybe I should steal some of your time after this is all over.”

+

“Gladly,” she said, nodding. “I’ve been thinking about restarting my practice, anyhow. It’s been too long of just lounging around on the System.”

+

“Certainly got a pile of work for yourself now,” Tycho said. “What are your thoughts, while we’re on the subject?”

+

“This is going to sound weird,” she said after a moment’s thought. “But it’s way more normal than I expected. It’s a strange situation, to be sure, but it’s still just a meeting between people who are trying to figure each other out. They’re alien, but not so far as to be completely unintelligible.”

+

“Think it’s going well?” Codrin asked.

+

“As well as it can be, all things considered. We’ve not wound up in any thorny patches or anything.”

+

Tycho nodded. “Agreed, though I have to admit that I’m getting kind of bored. Codrin told me I should steal some time with Stolon, but they keep racing off during our breaks, and there just hasn’t been much of a chance. I want to be able to engage, but it’s just all over my head, and when I do start feeling like I’m getting a hold on it, Turun Ka or True Name will nudge us back ‘on topic’.”

+

“‘On topic’ meaning politics and history and the like?”

+

He nodded. “I knew that going into this that #Artemis would be having much more fun than I would.”

+

“Well, lets see if we can find you something to focus on,” Sarah said.

+

He tilted his head, frowning. “How, though? I can’t exactly ask us to just start talking about the science side.”

+

“Well, no, but you can keep an eye on dates and the like and start using that with what we do know of the science behind everything. Start thinking about where they might have been coming from before the…uh, gravity assist? Is that it?”

+

His frown deepened, but he nodded.

+

“Start thinking about what’s in that direction and how long it might have taken them to get here.”

+

“You can probably keep track of the math involved with the time scale better than any of us, too,” Codrin added. “So you can see where there might have been inflection points in history and if that might’ve had to do with any of their travel. If there were bit societal changes, then maybe–“

+

Tycho held up his hand, and Codrin watched as his eyes lost focus, staring into nothing for a long few seconds.

+

Ey looked to Sarah, who shrugged.

+

“Sorry, maybe should have gone faster,” he mumbled. “You just reminded me of something, is all. There’s a lot beneath the plane of the ecliptic relative to us, but only a little bit of it is close for them to have plausibly passed by it. A few of those systems are kind of interesting.”

+

“Interesting?” ey asked.

+

“Like, stuff we’ve been keeping an eye on for possibly having life, that sort of thing.”

+

“Maybe Artante’s system?”

+

He shook his head. “Closer than that, I think.”

+

Codrin stood up straight again, tugging eir blouse straight. “Are you saying you think they might’ve stopped by somewhere else?”

+

“It’s a very big ‘might’,” he said. “They could just have been using the stars for slingshots, after all.”

+

“But it’s a possibility.”

+

He nodded.

+

Sarah shook her head. “To make sure I’m following, you think they may have spotted some other possible societies and not had them join them as a race?”

+

“Right. Could be they just hadn’t started uploading, of course.” He hesitated, then added, “Or that they had, but didn’t want to or didn’t make the cut.”

+

Codrin rubbed eir hands over eir face, willing away the tiredness that kept threatening to come back. Every time ey felt like ey was getting a hold on the situation ey was stuck in, some other bit of info would be brought to light and eir grasp would slip once more.

+

Now here this was. Perhaps the Artemisians had run across more than just races two through four on their journey. Perhaps there had been failed convergences beyond just the fo

Talks about current status during break, suggests ideas to Tycho about what he could be paying attention to re: politics/society/history in terms of the stars, leads to question of whether there were others that they’ve met along the way but didn’t join them arising, but told not to ask yet