From dd2ef0a1977e74de526ff1920f63163fc8908d8e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Madison Scott-Clary Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2022 19:40:13 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] update from sparkleup --- writing/post-self/mitzvot/035.html | 38 +++++++++++++++--------------- 1 file changed, 19 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-) diff --git a/writing/post-self/mitzvot/035.html b/writing/post-self/mitzvot/035.html index 3c9bbcec5..213d90d08 100644 --- a/writing/post-self/mitzvot/035.html +++ b/writing/post-self/mitzvot/035.html @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@

Neither True Name nor May could say one way or another when ey’d voiced eir concerns with them.

The whole day had been scattered for them. May spent much of it glued to eir side as ey did eir best to organize eir notes in eir head for the upcoming meeting. She couldn’t seem to pin herself down to one set of feelings, first laughing and joking about beating Zacharias up, then burying her face against eir shoulder and refusing to speak, ears laid flat.

For her part, True Name couldn’t seem to stay pinned to any one of her three selves.

-

Ey was at least getting more adept at spotting them in her features. There was a bright focus when that of True Name — the old True Name, that was — in her came to the fore. Her expression would become attentive, defaulting to a slight smile and eyebrows (such as they were on a skunk’s features) just slightly raised. When that of End Waking showed itself in her, she’d keep her eyes half-lidded, and her gaze was far more attuned to any movement. The rest of her own movements would still, as well. She would walk quieter, more gracefully. She would speak less.

+

Ey was at least getting more adept at spotting them in her features. There was a bright focus when that of True Name — the old True Name, that was — came to the fore. Her expression would become attentive, defaulting to a slight smile and eyebrows (such as they were on a skunk’s features) just slightly raised. When that of End Waking showed itself in her, she’d keep her eyes half-lidded, and her gaze was far more attuned to any movement. The rest of her own movements would still, as well. She would walk quieter, more gracefully. She would speak less.

And when that of May came to the fore, that was when ey was at eir most confused.

Ey had had no idea how to feel about her back when she was just True Name. Had ey really been so hesitant to call her a friend? Memories tattled on em, there: ey’d shied away from the term or qualified it every time it arose. That had only loosened up when her life was at risk, when she’d been forced to move in with them, and ey’d been forced in turn to acknowledge that her words, I suppose it is just nice to have a friend, had stuck with em more than ey’d cared to admit. The rest of that conversation had been full of equivocations, clarifications, delineations, and all those habits of guardedness from two decades of wariness over anything that carried a whiff of manipulation had tried to assert themselves over em once more.

But no, there was something about the Ode clade that just happened to click with the Bălan clade, no matter what form or name they took, that just fell directly into friendship. It was the way they spoke, perhaps. Those complete sentences that left em uncoiling parts of emself ey hadn’t known were coiled in the first place.

@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@

That ey didn’t know, that ey hadn’t the language, kept em from speaking of it with True Name just yet. It wasn’t out of any need to hide, not out of any embarrassment — though ey’d freely admit to eir shyness — that ey kept it from her. Ey just didn’t know how to say that, when she seemed most like May, ey was at eir most confused without turning it into a series of questions and I-don’t-knows.

The one time ey’d brought it up with May, the idea still as yet unseasoned, she had done as she ever would, and teased em gently about ‘falling in love with her’ and then settled into a series of gently probing questions, trying to tease out things that ey already knew but did not yet have the words for.

It hadn’t gone anywhere. Ey’d eventually had to put the conversation on hold out of a combination of stress and the feeling that ey ought to keep True Name’s discussion on her newfound multiplicity in the face of May’s desire for some more complete unity to emself.

-

So they did what they could to prepare or relax the rest of that last day. True name walked her prairie several times over, then came in and sat close by, then busied herself up in her head. May clung to em. Ey sorted notes.

+

So they did what they could to prepare or relax for the rest of that last day. True name walked her prairie several times over, then came in and sat close by, then busied herself up in her head. May clung to em. Ey sorted notes.

There was no discussion whether or not she would be staying with them that night. The three of them simply wound up in eir and May’s bed, sitting or kneeling on the soft mattress while they did their best to talk about little nothings. Ioan tried to explain Romanian curses to them. May and True Name spoke earnestly about a movie ey’d never heard of. And under it all, an ever-rising current of stress lay, slowly taking over their words until they couldn’t speak any longer, could only curl beneath the covers, sharing some more fundamental comfort.

Surprising all three of them, they did manage to get at least some sleep that night. It wasn’t good sleep, as, at one point or another, each of them woke with a start, but they managed a few hours of dozing.

Once the sky began to lighten, though, they pulled themselves blearily out of bed, Ioan making four mugs of coffee — two black, two sweet and milky — so that they could troop back out onto the plain and wake End Waking up, or, as it turned out, greet him at the small fire he’d started, and offer him a cup of coffee.

@@ -64,15 +64,15 @@

To Know One’s True Name Is To Know God had settled firmly into data analysis, collecting both the raw data that she could from the perisystem feeds and the net phys-side as well as the information collected by her cocladists and the Jonases. She was a being of reports.

To Know God Is To Answer Unasked Questions had done her best to specialize in the fields of information and game theory, but this had more often come down to simple information security and hygiene. She decided where and how far information traveled.

Do I Know God When I Do Not Remember Myself and Do I Know God When I Do Not Dream worked as a mismatched pair. When I Do Not Remember worked as a propagandist while When I Dream worked almost entirely on the perisystem, translating back and forth for her cocladists and finding the best way to worm her way through the intersystem text channels.

-

Were ey pressed to name each of them without knowing this information, ey didn’t think ey’d be able to. Ey knew the three skunks of the clade and could readily tell them apart, but the rest simply looked like a gaggle of the very same woman: short, soft, round face and curly black hair. However, there were indeed differences there. Why Ask Questions was just a centimeter or two taller and more open of expression. When I Do Not Remember and When I Dream both had a hunch to their shoulders that ey could not quite explain; perhaps a posture that stuck after too much writing.

-

As it was, ey could do eir best to guess, and when introductions made their way around the table, ey found eir guesses to be correct to the last.

+

Were ey pressed to name each of them without knowing this information, ey didn’t think ey’d be able to. Ey knew the three skunks of the stanza and could readily tell them apart, but the rest simply looked like a gaggle of the very same woman: short, soft, round face and curly black hair. However, there were indeed differences there to be seen. Why Ask Questions was just a centimeter or two taller and more open of expression. When I Do Not Remember and When I Dream both had a hunch to their shoulders that ey could not quite explain; perhaps a posture that stuck after too much writing.

+

As it was, ey did eir best to guess, and when introductions made their way around the table, ey found eir guesses to be correct to the last.

At last, the parade of bows and greetings out of the way, each of the thirteen — counting em, Jonas, and Zacharias — pulled out a chair and sat down, though ey noted that End Waking didn’t sit so much as hover on the very edge of his seat. He still looked wide-eyed, feral.

“Aaalright,” Jonas said, plopping his hands, palm down, on the table. “To business. I’m pleased to see you’re alive, but can’t say that I’m pleased to see you’re about.”

“I imagine not, no,” True Name replied, folding her paws on the table before her. “From what Ioan says, you know the general facts of what I know. There has been a long-running plan, perhaps mostly operating as a back-up plan, to shift one or more of me to the side depending on the status of the System. This revolved around the use of Zacharias as a tool to shape my responses while incomplete information kept me from recognizing this. Tell me, though. Are you still leaning on the multiple-Systems-multiple-governments strategy?”

Jonas nodded. “Yes. Oligarchy on Pollux, status quo on Castor, and invisible monarchy here on Lagrange.”

“You believe that this tripod will be the most stable political structure?”

“I know you don’t agree, but it’s not a tripod, True Name. By this point, the three Systems are so far apart that they are no longer three branches of the same government. They’re three countries, and three countries with identical governments yet divergent societies are unstable.”

-

True Name made that setting-aside gesture, as though tabling the topic for the moment. “And you,” she said, nodding to Zacharias. Her expression was calm, curious, interested. “You have been working with Jonas since around systime 36?”

+

True Name made that setting-aside gesture, as though tabling the topic for the moment. “And you,” she said, nodding to Zacharias. Her expression was calm, curious, interested. “You have been working on this with Jonas since around systime 36?”

“Oh, thereabouts,” he said, grinning. “Though if I am honest, I have always been working with the two of you. It is not that your own goals had no effect on me, my little stink-bug. I played Jonas as much as I played you, and I played my own game when I could.”

“Bullshit,” True Name said calmly, turning back to Jonas. “And so what is it that–“

“Oh, fuck you,” Zacharias laughed. “You do not get to dismiss me so easily. You and I rule together, quite literally, in another life. There is no reason that I should simply be waved away.”

@@ -86,26 +86,26 @@

She shrugged. “Claim? No. I do not know this Zacharias.”

“That is–“

Jonas laughed, “Just shut up, Zacharias.”

-

“No,” the fox growled, his whiskers all abristle and claws digging at the tabletop. “I played my role, but that does not mean that I am some disposable nothing, here. A role is as much the actor as it is– stop!“

+

“No,” the fox growled, his whiskers all abristle and claws digging at the tabletop. “I played my role, but that does not mean that I am some disposable Judas, here. A role is as much the actor as it is– stop!“

There was a loud thump beneath the table, though this time, Zacharias appeared to have pulled his foot away in time to keep his toes from being stomped on, as he instead pushed himself away from the table and to his feet. A brief flicker of something akin to rage flashed across Jonas’s face, but was quickly replaced by that bright, friendly grin.

“Fine, fuck you too, then.”

There was a no signal — or if there was, Ioan missed it — for Guōweī to step into the sim, hand already raised as if for a slap, a short blade held between his fingers. Unassuming, easy to carry, symbolic, and certainly crowded with whatever it was that induced a crash in one’s instance.

What happened next happened almost too quickly for em to comprehend. Zacharias shouted, but the cry was cut off in a muffled oomf as an instance of May appeared near him, almost totally overlapping the space that he’d occupied. The collision algos knocked him backwards with enough force to slam him against the door, leaving him to crumple to the floor.

-

Guōweī’s palm came down flat against May’s shoulder, but there was no time to see whether or not the virus would affect an instance so far diverged, as that instance of her quit and was immediately replaced with another, this overlapping the assassin’s space, knocking him back nearly a meter, only for the skunk to fork again. With the momentum already in play, this practically sent the man flying, his head cracking against the wall hard enough to leave a sizeable dent in the drywall.

-

And then it was over. Zacharias’s yell faltered, and he stared up, wide eyed, with his gaze darting between the remaining instance of May and Jonas. The latter had lurched away, looking more disgusted than startled.

+

Guōweī’s palm came down flat against May’s shoulder, but there was no time to see whether or not the virus would affect an instance so far diverged, as that instance of her quit and was immediately replaced with another one, this overlapping the assassin’s space, knocking him back nearly a meter, only for the skunk to fork again to repeat the maneuver. With the momentum already in play, this practically sent the man flying, his head cracking against the wall hard enough to leave a sizeable dent in the drywall.

+

And then it was over. Zacharias’s yell faltered, and he stared up, wide eyed, with his gaze darting between Jonas and the remaining instance of May. The latter had lurched away, looking more disgusted than startled.

“Get the fuck out of here,” the instance of May growled. “And if I ever, ever see you again, you had better believe that I will take you out myself.”

And then the instance quit, followed less than a second later by the fox rolling to the side to slip out of the sim. Ey imagined that if Jonas, True Name, and May would all do their best to destroy the fox on sight, the chances of seeing him again were low indeed.

-

Ey’d never seen a look like that on May’s face, even at the height of her hatred for True Name. That had been hatred, yes, but this was rage.

+

Ey’d never seen a look like that on May’s face, though, even at the height of her hatred for True Name. That had been hatred, yes, but this was rage.

“What just happened?” ey whispered to May, who gave eir hand a squeeze in her paw and shook her head.

“Are we done fucking around, yet?” True Name asked, voice flat. “Because I just want to know what it is that you want of me so that I can get back to my life.”

“Your life?” Jonas asked, incredulous. “You want to get back to your life?”

“Life, yes,” she said. “Alive. Living. I want to get back to breathing and eating and drinking and sleeping. Do not take my words too far.”

He laughed, shooting his cuffs. “Well, if that’s all you want, then we could have done without all this fuss, couldn’t we?”

-

“This fuss is necessary, remember,” When I Do Not Remember said, to which Jonas sighed.

+

“This fuss is necessary, remember,” When I Do Not Remember, the propagandist, said, to which Jonas sighed.

“All you need to do is just…go away. Just disappear. Just be gone, True Name. Curl up around your little Name thing and stay there.”

May’s expression had settled back to calm, but ey could feel the tension in her paw increase, and beyond her, ey could see End Waking bare his teeth. The Odists on Jonas’s side the of the table flinched. None of them looked pleased. Even Why Ask Questions, jovial as she usually was, seemed to be gritting her teeth.

Wait, does he know? ey wondered. If ever there was a way to keep a group of Odists in check, that might just be it.

-

Only True Name, of all of them, remained calm. Serious, yes, but calm. “What does disappearing and being gone look like to you, Jonas?” she asked. “Do you want me to hide away in a locked-down sim forever?”

+

Only True Name, of all of them, remained calm. Serious, yes, but calm. “What does disappearing and being gone look like to you, Jonas?” she asked. “Do you…what? Want me to hide away in a locked-down sim forever?”

“I wouldn’t say no,” he shot back.

“No.”

“I thought not.”

@@ -118,7 +118,7 @@

Eir frown deepened. Perhaps this was more than just a political dispute.

She shook her head, but whether at his words or his audacity, ey couldn’t tell. “Alright, disappear. You want me to stop being a figure and start being a person. You want me to be other than I am.”

“Yep,” he said, grin tight and false.

-

“I have already begun,” she said, and with a brief pause, ey saw her face and shoulders relax, a sudden shift towards an expression ey knew intimately from eir partner falling across her features. She continued in a voice softer than what it had been. Lilting, less space between the syllables. “Because I already am May Then My Name Die With Me–” Another pause, another shift, one more towards stony and stoic, voice suddenly dry and simple, almost weary. “–and I am already Do I Know God After The End Waking.” Finally, she fell back into that first register. “And I remain True Name, and yet I am none of these. I could not go back to that which I was even if I wished to. Tell me what it is that you want. Lay your terms on the table plainly, and we will come to an agreement.”

+

“I have already begun,” she said, and with a brief pause, ey saw her face and shoulders relax, a sudden shift towards an expression ey knew intimately from eir partner falling across her features. She continued in a voice softer than what it had been. Lilting, less space between the syllables. “Because I already am May Then My Name Die With Me–” Another pause, another shift, one more towards stony and stoic, voice suddenly dry and simple, almost weary. “–and I am already Do I Know God After The End Waking.” Finally, she fell back into that first register. “And some part of me remains True Name, and yet I am none of these. I could not go back to that which I was even if I wished to. Tell me what it is that you want. Lay your terms on the table plainly, and we will come to an agreement.”

Jonas raised his eyebrows at the shifts in expression and voice. The frowns around the table on the faces of the other Odists only deepened.

“How can I even begin to trust you on that? You merged your two cronies, so what? You going to go cuddle-camping with Zacharias or something? You’re still you.”

Both May and End Waking bristled at this, but neither spoke.

@@ -135,10 +135,10 @@

He waved his hand imperiously. “And I’m getting bored now. I’m surprised you’re still hung up on this, True Name. You’re the theatre geek–“

“Jonas,” When I Do Not Remember murmured, her voice a low warning. He only grinned.

She sighed. “Right. So now you…what, want me to look different? Sound different? I am ready to commit to staying out of the business. You want me to act the part or something? Your terms.”

-

“You need to go away, True Name. I don’t fucking care how. You make it happen or I will.”

+

“You need to go away, True Name. I don’t fucking care how. You make it happen or I will.”

There was a moment’s thoughtful silence from the skunk, her paws gripping the edge of the table, before she stood, pushed her chair back in, and turned away. Then in the most stunning display of forking ey’d ever seen, True Name began to change.

Ioan had seen eir share of Dear’s exhibitions, not to mention those of other instance artists the fox had introduced em to along the way, and the forking involved in all of them had been perfect. They were well rehearsed dances of duplication that told a story.

-

However, they were, whether by virtue of being related to Dear or by the art itself, fanciful. The duplication was supposed to evoke a sense of magic, of wonder — or the closely related terror.

+

However, they were, whether by association with Dear or by the art itself, fanciful. The duplication was supposed to evoke a sense of magic, of wonder — or the closely related terror.

In eir own work in theatre, both as an actor and as a playwright, ey’d found use for forking within a story that had remained more grounded, more tied to day to day life, and those performances had seen a success of their own through May and A Finger Pointing’s guidance.

The Odists as a whole were more familiar and comfortable with forking than anyone ey’d ever met, even among the most dispersionista of dispersionista clades. Both May and Dear navigated that aspect of their lives with a grace ey could only dream of. Even the explosions of foxes or skunks during times of excitement were skillfully done.

This, though, went beyond that.

@@ -147,7 +147,7 @@

And then, it was over.

The result was a skunk slightly shorter than True Name had stood, though still a few centimeters taller than May. She was heavier, as well, with a curve to the hips and belly that was familiar to em from eir partner, but unlike May, this softness was more…well, natural wasn’t quite the right term, but where May’s weight seemed to be designed to add a sense of both harmlessness and comfort to her form, this new form of True Name simply looked like a pudgy thirty-something who had settled into a comfortable weight long ago and never bothered to change.

Her face had shifted as well, becoming plainer in ways ey couldn’t quite explain. Where True Name had always had some aspect of larger-than-life about her, she now just looked…normal. Still a furry, still living in that form that was more comfortable to her than humanity, but normal.

-

Most striking, though was the pattern of fur. While much of it was covered now, ey’d seen the way it had shifted during the process. Gone were the two parallel stripes, the ones ey had grown to love on May, replaced with a set of white splotches in the black of her fur. The white atop her head remained, disconnected from patch between her eyes and two others high on her temples. The pattern was eye-catching: the patches seemed to travel in a few uneven lines down over her back and sides, one of them showing a hint of a whorl, another a slight zigzag, and others that were almost round spots. This pattern seemed to be mirrored along her spine, leading to a pleasant symmetry. A quick query of the perisystem infrastructure told em that there was indeed a spotted variety of skunk, described much as ey had seen: spotted fur, shorter tail, a shorter snout that fit somewhere between that of a skunk and that of a weasel like Debarre.

+

Most striking, though, was the pattern of fur. While much of it was covered now, ey’d seen the way it had shifted during the process. Gone were the two parallel stripes, the ones ey had grown to love on May, replaced with a set of white splotches in the black of her fur. The white atop her head remained, disconnected from patch between her eyes and two others high on her temples. The pattern was eye-catching: the patches seemed to travel in a few uneven lines down over her back and sides, one of them showing a hint of a whorl, another a slight zigzag, and others that were almost round spots. This pattern seemed to be mirrored along her spine, leading to a pleasant symmetry. A quick query of the perisystem infrastructure told em that there was indeed a spotted variety of skunk, described much as ey had seen: spotted fur, shorter tail, a shorter snout that fit somewhere between that of a skunk and that of a weasel like Debarre.

Gone were the stripes. Gone, also, were the slacks and blouse, traded in for a linen tunic and a pair of loose-fitting Thai fisherman pants.

When ey was finally able to tear eir eyes away, ey saw that every Odist in the room had picked up expressions that verged from taken aback to startled and angry. May, for her part, looked startled at the display, yes, but also excited and ready. It was the same look she got before performances.

“May, what–“

@@ -158,11 +158,11 @@

The other seven members of True Name’s stanza nodded as one, and Unasked Questions said, “You cannot be us. You cannot be who you were.”

The skunk bowed. “You may call me Sasha.”

Ioan didn’t know what ey expected from the room, but pandemonium wasn’t it. May was clapping her paws delightedly and End Waking was grinning and shaking his head. Both bore the traces of rehearsal.

-

Jonas had simply burst out laughing, and ey couldn’t miss the bitterness in it.

+

Jonas simply burst out laughing, and ey couldn’t miss the bitterness in it.

All of the rest of the Odists, however, were shouting. None of them looked pleased.

“Not Sasha of the Ode clade, just Sasha,” she said calmly but loud enough to be heard. “I will not relinquish the form, just as I will not relinquish the past, but if you want me out this badly, so be it. I rescind my membership in the clade.”

“As do I,” End Waking said, getting a smile from Sasha.

-

“That name is unacceptable,” When I Dream hollered. “No. You will pick something else.”

+

“That name is unacceptable!” When I Dream hollered. “No. You will pick something else.”

“No, I will not.”

“Shut the fuck up, When I Dream,” Jonas shouted. “All of you, shut the fuck up.” He turned to Sasha and grinned icily. “You always were a little snot. You want to be Sasha? You want to dive back into mediocrity and wear your weakness like a badge? Please, by all means, be my guest. Beg for pity again. Hunt down all your little friends who kept you feeling just bad enough that they could baby you without letting you think you were their plaything.”

At this, most of the stanza bridled, and there were a few louder murmurings.

@@ -172,7 +172,7 @@

May rolled her eyes.

“Get out. All of you.”

The rest of the stanza left, quit, or were swept — the sim didn’t seem to render them any different. Ioan guessed swept, given that Guōweī’s unconscious form also disappeared.

-

All through Jonas’s tirade, Sasha wore a half smile. It wasn’t rehearsed, wasn’t self-satisfied. She simply looked present. She looked confident in herself in some more earnest way than she had in years. When it was clear that he was finished, she bowed politely.

+

All through Jonas’s tirade, Sasha wore a half smile. It wasn’t rehearsed, wasn’t self-satisfied. She simply looked present. She looked confident in herself in some more earnest way than she had in years, as though she had changed beyond just her appearance. When it was clear that he was finished, she bowed politely.

“See you around?”

“Fuck off.”

She laughed and reached out to take Ioan’s hand in eir paw, then they stepped back home, followed closely by May holding End Waking’s paw.

@@ -253,7 +253,7 @@

The three skunks laughed while ey and Debarre leaned across the circle to shake hands.