update from sparkleup
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<p>“Uh…” Günay clutched her tablet in her hands. “Even if I knew anything — and I’m not on that team, promise — I’m <em>really</em> not qualified to talk about this.”</p>
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<p>Jonas Fa raised a hand to silence any further questions. “No, you’re right. Much as I hate to say, it’s probably not the best time to talk about this.”</p>
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<p>Angry muttering from around the room.</p>
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<p>“If it was a deliberate action, especially if phys-side played any role in it at all, then we’re talking about a breach of the Articles of Secession,” he continued, more to the sys-side room than to the AVEC stage. “We’d need set up a working group to get in touch with phys-side leadership as soon as we have more information. Thanks, Günay, you’re off the hook for this one. Mr. Strzepek, no need to send details, but please send me a side-channel message as to whether or not I should be setting up that WG. No–” He held up a hand as Jakub started to rise. “–I don’t need any details beyond a yes or no. Do it from your tablet right now.”</p>
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<p>“If it was a deliberate action, especially if phys-side played any role in it at all, then we’re talking about a breach of the Articles of Secession,” he continued, more to the sys-side room than to the AVEC stage. “We’d need set up a working group to get in touch with phys-side leadership as soon as we have more information. Thanks, Günay, you’re off the hook for this one. Mr. Strzepek, no need to send details, but please send me a side-channel message as to whether or not I should be setting up that WG. No–” He held up a hand as Jakub started to rise. “–I don’t need any details beyond a yes or no. Do it from your HUD right now.”</p>
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<p>Jakub looked as though he was about to explode, so thoroughly had he lost track of his planned meeting. “Now, hold on–”</p>
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<p>“Jakub, shut up,” Jonas Fa said, sounding chummy, almost fond of the man. “You’re so fucking far out of your element I’m surprised they haven’t filed a missing persons report. You’re talking to an emergency council of a nation 2.28 trillion strong, a nation that you have already been reminded just lost 23 <em>billion</em> citizens. Three of the original Council of Eight are here, meaning you’ve got people more than three centuries old standing in front of you. People who <em>signed</em> the Articles of Secession. Fuck you, fuck your meeting, send the message.”</p>
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<p>The rooms on both sides of the AVEC connection were silent. For all I’d read about Jonas as some massively manipulative political player on the System, out-manipulating even the famously manipulative Odists, seeing him bear down on an individual, sitting just shy of actively upset, was enough to leave me holding my breath. This man, this mover-and-shaker of politics both sys-side and, prior to uploading in the early days of the System, phys-side, was a figure out of myth, a character from the grand stories told in histories and novels. That I had even been allowed to sit in the same room as him suddenly felt wrong. Sure, Marsh had known a few of the Odists through their singing, and Cress and Tule had their relationship with Dry Grass, but certainly none of the political ones.</p>
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<p>“Is there an actual concern about the DSN?” Selena asked.</p>
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<p>“I’m even less of a space nerd than I am an information theorist,” Günay said, smiling wryly.</p>
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<p>Dry Grass asked, “I am assuming that you are gating communications from the LVs under a similar embargo. After all, to their eyes, we disappeared quite suddenly, yes?”</p>
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<p>She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case.”</p>
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<p>Dry Grass laughed, not unkindly. “Yes, fair enough.”</p>
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<p>“Are you able to ungate communications to a limited subset of clades?” Jonas asked.</p>
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<p>Günay looked thoughtful, lips moving faintly and fingers twitching as she queried something in her HUD. “That should be possible, sure. You want your four clades ungated?”</p>
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<p>“The Ode clade, the Jonas clade, Debarre’s clade, Selena’s clade, and the Marsh clade, yeah.”</p>
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<p>I frowned, shooting a glance over at Sedge who only shrugged.</p>
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<p><em>“What would that buy us?”</em> I asked over a sensorium message.</p>
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<p><em>“We could hear from those on the LVs, I guess.”</em></p>
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<p>My frown deepened. <em>“So we could hear from Marsh, then?”</em></p>
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<p>She sighed. <em>“I guess. I don’t know what that buys us. I’m not exactly about to tell Jonas to stop, though. I’m scared enough of him as it is.”</em></p>
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<p>I snorted, nodded, turned my attention back to the front of the room.</p>
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<p>“–will have a separate meeting regarding the ungating of transmissions,” Need An Answer was saying. “That falls under the realm of politics, yes? It is hardly something you need worry yourself about, Günay.”</p>
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<p>“Thank God,” she said, laughing nervously.</p>
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<p>“Have you received the appropriate message from Mr. Strzepek, Jonas?”</p>
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<p>“Yep, got it.”</p>
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<p>“Thank you,” Need An Answer said, bowing. “Thank you for all of your hard work, everyone phys-side. Despite the terse tone of some of our questions, please do know that we are grateful for all that you have done in your efforts to bring us back online. Trillions of lives may continue, even if not unchanged.”</p>
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<p>Everyone on both sides of the AVEC link stood and bowed. Some, I noted, more curtly than others. Jakub and Debarre both seemed ready to start hollering at a moment’s notice.</p>
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<p>When the transmission ended, the noise in the room rose to a low murmur, and then a quiet chatter. Several instances quit or stepped out of the sim entirely while many more streamed back out into the ballroom-sized workspace. A few lingered, though, little knots of conversation in a still-dim room.</p>
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<p>“I am fucking exhausted,” Dry Grass — or at least the instance that lingered with us — said, falling back into her chair. “Less than an hour, and I am fucking exhausted.”</p>
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<p>“Weren’t you exhausted before the meeting even started?” Sedge asked.</p>
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<p>“Well, yes,” she said, voice muffled as her head drooped toward her chest. “But now I am tired on a much more existential level. I am tired in a way that feels like social burnout, like I have been around too many people for too long.”</p>
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<p>“Which I suppose you have,” Sedge added, stretching her back before rubbing her hands over her face.</p>
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<p>We stayed in silence for a few minutes. It was hard to dispute Dry Grass’s words, too. Even for me, who had only been here for a bit over an hour, everything that had happened in that time, the sheer amount of information, had me feeling full to bursting. Still, I couldn’t seem to think of anything else.</p>
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<p>“What was with all the cageyness?” I asked. “That Jakub guy, sure, but it seemed like a more…I don’t know, systemic thing.”</p>
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<p>“Oh, it very much is,” Dry Grass said. “Jakub is a putz, but an innocent one. He is doing what he was hired to do, and he was hired by the System commission, which works with the world governments. There are several layers above him, and all of them are trained to act cagey.”</p>
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<p>“So it’s just politics?”</p>
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<p>She nodded. “I would say so, yes. It is more nuanced, but that is not my area of expertise. He is withholding the information he was told to withhold. They are locking down communications for whatever reasons they have, which I am sure are good. It is our job, then, to press at that, to find all of the weak and sore spots and try to divine why all of this is being done.”</p>
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<p>Sedge’s expression soured. “We can’t just ask?”</p>
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<p>“Of course not. There is a protocol to follow.” Dry Grass laughed. “And that includes all of the little jabs Need An Answer and Jonas shot at phys-side. It was less that we were making a demand for that information as it was letting them know that we knew that they knew more than they were letting on and that we were not happy with it.”</p>
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<p>“Why promote Günay, then? She looked really uncomfortable getting stuck in the middle of that.”</p>
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<p>She shrugged. “I am guessing, here, but I think that that was intended to say to phys-side, “What is most important to us right now is the ‘what’, rather than the ‘why’, except inasmuch as the ‘why’ might help illuminate the ‘what’.” It is a way of saying, “We will have talks on whether you fucked up or we were attacked soon, but not until we know the full status of the System.”“</p>
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<p>I shook my head. “None of this makes any sense, but neither did all of the politics stuff in the <em>History</em>, so I guess that’s par for the course. You certainly seem to know plenty, even if it’s not your area of expertise.”</p>
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<p>“Unfortunately,” she grumbled. “Regrettably. Unwittingly.”</p>
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<p>“At least you can translate for us poor peons,” Sedge said, grinning. “But come on, I want to get back to Marsh’s. This place is neat and all, but I need cozy more than anything. Maybe we can gather the others for dinner.”</p>
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