update from sparkleup
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Madison Scott-Clary
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<p>“Has diverged significantly in the last two decades. I have no concerns about contamination. Ey is not me any longer.”</p>
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<p>She nodded approvingly. “Good. There may be hope for you yet.”</p>
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<p>“Wrapping me around your little finger, indeed.” Ey finished eir current line of scratchy notes. “You say that it tickled you to remain behind. Can you talk more about that?”</p>
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<p>“Of course. Many of the clade — many of the liberal side, at least — enjoy using our functional immortality as a plaything. If we are to live forever, then, it is worthwhile to find as many things to keep it interesting as we can along the way. It is interesting to me that I have acted in a very intentional way such that I will not get to experience our three societies begin to diverge that directly. There is no going back to change that, because there is no going and there is no back. It is already fun to see the differences between Castor and Pollux through the eyes of both Codrins, and to realize that the L<sub>5</sub> system contains neither, and then realize in a flash of insight that there is no May Then My Name Die With Me to witness directly. Do you experience the same?”</p>
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<p>“Of course. Many of the clade — many of the liberal side, at least — enjoy using our functional immortality as a plaything. If we are to live forever, then, it is worthwhile to find as many things to keep it interesting as we can along the way. It is interesting to me that I have acted in a very intentional way such that I will not get to experience our three societies begin to diverge that directly. There is no going back to change that, because there is no going and there is no back. It is already fun to see the differences between Castor and Pollux through the eyes of both Codrins, and to realize that the L<sub>5</sub> System contains neither, and then realize in a flash of insight that there is no May Then My Name Die With Me to witness directly. Do you experience the same?”</p>
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<p>“Maybe a little bit,” Ioan hedged. “But if what you tell me is true, I’m not nearly old enough yet to be so concerned in finding fun in the little nooks and crannies of experience.”</p>
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<p>“You are no fun,” she whined. “But I see your point. You also do not have the decades of split mind from before the beginning of the clade. You do not have the strange avenues of thought that preceded our creation. The Ioan of the 2230s or whenever it was that you uploaded had a baseline sanity that Michelle lacked.”</p>
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<p>“You don’t seem insane.”</p>
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<p>She forked a version of herself atop the table lacking all human attributes that hissed at Ioan with foaming mouth. Ey startled back, and she laughed as the creature quit. “Do I not?”</p>
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<p>Ey shook eir head. “Weird, perhaps, but your thoughts and actions are consistent with each other. You’re an internally consistent individual.”</p>
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<p>“Yes, well, Michelle was not. She was a being of irreconcilable contradictions, and we are lucky that she did not pass that on to us when we came into existence.”</p>
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<p>“If she hadn’t quit as she did, do you think that she would’ve remained on the system, invested entirely in the launches, or split between the two?”</p>
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<p>“If she hadn’t quit as she did, do you think that she would’ve remained on the System, invested entirely in the launches, or split between the two?”</p>
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<p>May’s features fell and she averted her eyes. “She could not do but what she did. You were not there at the end.”</p>
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<p>“Feel free to not answer, but can you tell me about that?”</p>
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<p>“I will only say that she was ready, that, whether or not she had been planning that day from the very beginning, that was precisely the time that she was meant to die.”</p>
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@ -102,7 +102,7 @@
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<p>“No. Sit down by me.”</p>
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<p>They both shifted to a cross-legged position before this brand new plant in the yard, both looking at the yellow flower May turned this way and that in her paw.</p>
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<p>“This is a dandelion. It–“</p>
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<p>A memory clicked into place for Ioan and ey laughed. “Oh! Of course! I’ve been here too long, haven’t I? Here in the system, here in the house with its perfect yard. Almost ninety years now, I think. They were all over back phys-side, though.”</p>
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<p>A memory clicked into place for Ioan and ey laughed. “Oh! Of course! I’ve been here too long, haven’t I? Here in the System, here in the house with its perfect yard. Almost ninety years now, I think. They were all over back phys-side, though.”</p>
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<p>May nodded and beckoned for em to continue.</p>
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<p>“We didn’t have a yard where I grew up. Just an apartment block facing the street, a strip of weeds between the building and sidewalk, and then between the sidewalk and road. At one time, I think that strip had contained grass and trees, but now it just contained a narrow path full of thistles and dandelions.</p>
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<p>“I only ever saw lawns in movies or on the net. The world wasn’t as bad back then as Douglas makes it sound now, but still, we weren’t wealthy, and it was hard enough to ensure a steady supply of clean water for the residents, never mind grass like this. We were certainly not wealthy enough for that.” Ey laughed. “Well, we were dirt poor, actually. Most of the weeds were green, leafy things with fuzzy green flowers that would turn into bundles of seeds, or spiky thistles with purple bulbs of flowers, but there were a few dandelions scattered about.”</p>
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<p>She lay there among the grass, giggling helplessly. Among the grass where a brand new dandelion poked through the green in front of her snout. One that had not been there before.</p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-12-10</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-12-20</p>
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@ -95,7 +95,7 @@
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</blockquote>
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<hr />
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<p>And so here ey was, hunting down those who had uploaded specifically for the money that it would leave their families and friends back phys-side. Their stories were, ey figured, just as valid as anyone’s. They were just as valid as eir own, for had ey not done the same? Here ey was, interviewing those like emself.</p>
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<p>These were the people who had moved to the system out of some sense of not just a better life for themselves, but one for those they had left behind. Ioan had had few enough ties back to eir family phys-side after uploading — only enough to ensure that the payments had gone through and that eir kid brother was alright — and then none since then. If any of eir family had uploaded since then, none had gotten in touch.</p>
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<p>These were the people who had moved to the System out of some sense of not just a better life for themselves, but one for those they had left behind. Ioan had had few enough ties back to eir family phys-side after uploading — only enough to ensure that the payments had gone through and that eir kid brother was alright — and then none since then. If any of eir family had uploaded since then, none had gotten in touch.</p>
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<p>Eir hope in undertaking this exercise had been to learn a bit more about the time between Secession and Launch, about what had lead to the demographics of a System that had decided to hurl large portions of itself out into space. Was it something perhaps borne of the sentiment of the population that had grown in the intervening years? Was it something that had always been there?</p>
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<p>When ey had come up with the list of questions, ey had intended to divine why those who had uploaded had found the System attractive. Was that, perhaps, what had driven the desire for the launch?</p>
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<p>And yet now, it seemed like that was, at most, a secondary effect.</p>
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<p>And so ey went home, back to work on the project, back to receive more updates from the Codrins and the LVs. Back to sit in front of an empty page, considering what it meant that they felt caught up in some storm, some vortex that ey could not see except that the occasional landmark would pass through their field of view, once every two hundred years. Back to sit with May and at least feel comfortable with someone, even if that someone was starting to feel, for some reason ey could not fully understand, as though they were part of that very vortex.</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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<p>Ioan hesitated, then lifted eir own glass to return the toast. “To boldness. You have it, I need it.”</p>
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<p>“I have too much, my friend, and you need more, that’s all.” Jonas winked, then continued, “So, divest. The reason that’s an interesting question is that’s the word that immediately sold me when True Name came to me with that suggestion. It was the lynchpin on which the project was hung, and we built outward from there.”</p>
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<p>Ey scribbled quickly in eir shorthand, doing eir best to take down verbatim what Jonas was saying. Ey’d be able to remember, for sure, but through writing, ey might better process and use what time ey had with the founder while ey had the chance.</p>
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<p>“It could’ve meant so many things,” he was saying. “It could’ve meant just “clone the system and leave a copy at the Earth-Sun L<sub>5</sub> point”. It could’ve meant “break the physical elements of the system up into much smaller ones and scatter them around so that damage to one did not beggar the others”. Both of those are still on the table, by the way.</p>
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<p>“It could’ve meant so many things,” he was saying. “It could’ve meant just “clone the System and leave a copy at the Earth-Sun L<sub>5</sub> point”. It could’ve meant “break the physical elements of the System up into much smaller ones and scatter them around so that damage to one did not beggar the others”. Both of those are still on the table, by the way.</p>
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<p>“We took it in another way, however, given news that we’ve been reaching from Earth. In particular, we were noticing a tendency to move from the excesses of capitalism back to the day-to-day hardships of feudalism and even, in some cases, subsistence farming. The problem, I’m sure you can imagine, is that when you’re stuck being a peasant or scraping by to earn the most meager living, you aren’t all that keen on space. It’s only by dint of a few dreamers and the impossibility of retrieving it that the System remains up here in the first place.”</p>
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<p>Ioan nodded. “One of our interviewees phys-side said much the same thing.”</p>
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<p>“A dreamer, then,” Jonas said, grinning. “But yes, life down there is horrible and no one — or essentially no one — wants to do a single damn thing about it. They’re all so caught up in their little political games that they have no interest on doing anything to make their lives better, to live stronger.”</p>
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<p>Ioan smiled and very carefully did not say, <em>For you, perhaps. For me, it has been absolutely terrifying.</em></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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