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<h1 id="codrin-balancastor-2346">Codrin Bălan#Castor — 2346</h1>
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<blockquote>
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<p><em>Convergence T-minus 3 days, 6 hours, 44 minutes</em></p>
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<p><em>Convergence T-minus 3 days, 7 hours, 44 minutes</em></p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>The pattern-matching portion of eir mind could not stop making comparisons between this and previous projects ey had been involved in with the Odists. <em>On the Perils of Memory</em> had been a fairly disorganized affair, begun hastily and over far too soon, leaving the conclusion feeling outsized for the duration of the events at hand. <em>An Expanded History of Our World</em> (or <em>On the Origin of Our World</em> when taken with May Then My Name’s <em>An Expanded Mythology of Our World</em>) had been a vast, sprawling affair that was fairly well organized throughout, though transmission times toward the end had begun to hinder coordination.</p>
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<p>This, then, lay somewhere in between. While the news had been sudden and the pace nearly frenetic, it had been nothing if not organized. What had begun as a simple message had turned into a flurry of activity, where dozens of forks from four clades coordinated to plan around eventualities, discuss linguistic profiles, and work with Sarah Genet in her role as psychologist to find weak spots in the team and areas where they could shore each other up during the talks.</p>
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@ -27,13 +27,13 @@
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<p>Ey had even braided eir hair. Ah well.</p>
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<p>“Alright,” a Jonas said. He held a clipboard with a checklist he appeared to be reading from. “Greetings. True Name?”</p>
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<p>They proceeded down the line, each reciting their version of the Artemisian greeting while an instance of Answers Will Not Help judged and corrected them. Ey recited eir greeting when eir turn came, but only from the most automatic portion of emself remaining. The rest was spent thinking about how much ey’d miss eir partners. How much ey’d miss home. </p>
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<p>Jonas ticked a box on his clipboard. “Fork and tag your new instances #Castor. Codrin, we’ll need another #Assist instance from you.”</p>
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<p>Jonas ticked a box on his clipboard. “Fork and tag your new instances #Castor. Codrin, we’ll need another instance from you tagged #Assist.”</p>
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<p>Codrin and the two Odists forked immediately. Sarah Genet took a few seconds, and Tycho apologized profusely thirty seconds later when he was finally able to manage the feat.</p>
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<p>“I’m still not used to it, sorry.”</p>
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<p>Jonas waved away the comment. “You’re fine, Tycho. Not everyone is True Name.”</p>
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<p>Both instances of the skunk made a rude gesture at him.</p>
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<p>“Yeah, well, fuck you too.” He laughed. “Alright. The rest of the tasks will be specific to each group, so–” He forked, and the new instance continued, “–#Artemises, with me to Emissary Staging#553a49c. The rest to Artemis Staging#ad89ae3.”</p>
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<p>Ey lingered for a few seconds and thought. One thing this project had that none of the others had had was the feeling of stepping away from home and leaving it behind completely. There would be no coming home for dinner after a day of interviewing or researching. There would be no returning to the tightly controlled chaos that had become the comforting dynamic among eir little family. Ey stood, watching the others step away, including the other version of emself, and soaked in the sensation of longing.</p>
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<p>Ey lingered for a few seconds and thought. One thing this project had that none of the others had had was the feeling of stepping away from home and leaving it behind completely. There would be no coming home for dinner after a day of interviewing or researching. There would be no returning to the tightly controlled chaos that had become the comforting dynamic among eir little family. Ey stood, watching the others step away, including the other versions of emself, and soaked in the sensation of longing.</p>
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<p>When ey stepped through to the DMZ staging sim, ey was greeted by a nearly identical boardroom to the one ey had just left. There were, ey noted, far more whiteboards lining the walls, not to mention far more Odists and Jonases at work just beyond.</p>
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<p>“We have an hour,” Jonas said. “So let’s finalize our plans for information gathering.”</p>
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<p>Codrin pulled out a chair at the table and sat between Tycho and Sarah. “Will this be mostly on Tycho?”</p>
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<p>“What will you do?”</p>
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<p>The skunk smiled and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “What I do best, my dear. I will guide the questioning, perform risk analysis, and assess lines of control and weakness.”</p>
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<p>Ey had been prepared to make a mental note to pull apart her answer to come up with a way to divine her true intentions, but so honest was her answer that ey was wrong-footed into silence.</p>
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<p>They talked through a few more plans, though there was nothing that they had not already covered on the docket. Another short language quiz. First questions they’d ask. A quick run-down of what textual descriptions of their races they had sent. They’d been startled by the Castor’s inability to receive anything but text, so the descriptions had seemed hasty. <em>Something to ask about,</em> Codrin thought.</p>
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<p>They talked through a few more plans, though there was nothing that they had not already covered on the docket. Another short language quiz. First questions they’d ask. A quick run-down of what textual descriptions of their races they had sent. The Artemisians had been startled by the Castor’s inability to receive anything but text, so the descriptions had seemed hasty.</p>
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<p><em>Something to ask about,</em> Codrin thought.</p>
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<p>All five of the party sat up with a start from a sensorium message, a little thrill of adrenaline, alerting them to the time.</p>
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<p>Codrin was caught off guard at the lack of fanfare that their departure received. The Jonas who had been running the debriefing waved, and none of the others in the room did more than look over their shoulders as they were shunted over to the DMZ and ey was left blinking in the dappled sunlight of the meeting area.</p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-02-13</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-03-14</p>
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</footer>
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<p>It was the faces, though, that captivated eir attention. They did not have visible mouths or noses, their ‘muzzles’ instead being covered with a somewhat lighter grey version of that same supple coating. <em>Porous, perhaps?</em> ey thought. <em>To let them smell? I don’t suppose they need to eat. Maybe for speech?</em></p>
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<p>Rather than eyes, there was a mirrored panel of black, looking more mercury than plastic or glass. No visible eyes, no visible expressions.</p>
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<p><em>Well, this will be interesting.</em></p>
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<p>To their right, a being of similar shape stood on two legs, though they were far smaller, coming up only to Codrin’s chin. The longer ey looked, however, the more those similarities began to fall away. Yes, it stood on two powerful legs; yes, its body was canted forward and kept on balance with a thick tail; yes, it had an elongated snout.</p>
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<p>However, rather than that supple plastic, it was coated in a scaly hide, washed in oil-sheen colors. Where the firstrace representatives had little in the way of facial features, though, Stolon almost seemed to have a surfeit. Their eyes were bright and curious, their mouth seemingly ready to a smile — or some other expression, ey reminded emself, as what appeared to be a smile to humans may not be so to thirdrace. They did not have hair, as made sense for a lizard of some sort, but they did have a crest of what appeared to be feathers of a sort, or perhaps massively elongated scales.</p>
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<p>Beside Stolon and standing a head shorter than even them was a creature that reminded em so much of Debarre that ey did a double-take. The resemblance was uncanny: a svelte coat of brown fur with a creamier white starting beneath the chin and heading down over their front — or at least, ey assumed it continued beneath the thin, blue tunic they were wearing — and a black-tipped tail behind. Plenty of whiskers, dark eyes.</p>
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<p>The last of the Artemisians, Artante Diria, looked almost-but-not-quite human. Her features seemed far smoother, with a nose that melted into her face and earlobes that ramped smoothly down into her neck below. Beyond that, however, the differences were negligible. She could easily get lost in a crowd of humans with no problem whatsoever, another face of Asian descent, perhaps. She even wore a blue tunic and sarong of nearly identical cut to what ey had worn for so long.</p>
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<p>All five of stood still, expectantly.</p>
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<p>No, not still. Frozen. They stood frozen before the party of emissaries, unmoving. Nothing was moving. The air was still, the light seemed frozen, and even the noise seem to wash over em in strange, coarse waves.</p>
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<p>To their right, a being of similar shape stood on two legs, though they were far smaller, coming up only to Codrin’s chin. The longer ey looked, however, the more those similarities began to fall away. Yes, they stood on two powerful legs; yes, their body was canted forward and kept on balance with a thick tail; yes, they had an elongated snout.</p>
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<p>However, rather than that supple plastic, they were coated in a scaly hide, washed in oil-sheen colors. Where the firstrace representatives had little in the way of facial features, though, Stolon almost seemed to have a surfeit. Their eyes were bright and curious, their mouth seemingly ready to a smile — or some other expression, ey reminded emself, as what appeared to be a smile to humans may not be so to thirdrace. They did not have hair, as made sense for a lizard of some sort, but they did have a crest of what appeared to be feathers of a sort, or perhaps massively elongated scales.</p>
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<p>Beside Stolon and standing a head shorter than even them was a creature that reminded em so much of Debarre that ey was caught off-guard. The resemblance was uncanny: a svelte coat of brown fur with a creamier white starting beneath the chin and heading down over their front — or at least, ey assumed it continued beneath the thin, blue tunic they were wearing — and a black-tipped tail behind. Plenty of whiskers, dark eyes.</p>
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<p>The last of the Artemisians, Artante Diria, looked almost-but-not-quite human. Her features seemed far smoother, with a nose that melted into her face and earlobes that ramped smoothly down into her neck below. Beyond that, however, the differences were negligible. She could easily get lost in a crowd of humans with no problem whatsoever, another face of Asian descent, perhaps. She even wore a blue tunic and sarong of nearly identical cut to what ey wore so often.</p>
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<p>All five of stood still, expectant.</p>
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<p>No, not still. Frozen. They stood frozen before the party of emissaries, unmoving. Nothing was moving. The air was still, the light seemed frozen, and it was eerily silent.</p>
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<p>Frowning, ey looked beside em at eir own cohort, and much the same held true. There, at least, there was a hint of movement: Sarah was turning slowly to face a noise to her left, over towards where Why Ask Questions was standing. The movement, however, was more than just slow. It was syrupy. It was thick. It was out of phase with em.</p>
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<p>All of it was out of phase with em. Everything. The world as a whole.</p>
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<p>“The hell…?”</p>
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<p>“Pain-of-existence. Pain-of-state-of-being. She is un-whole. This is why we must ask.”</p>
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<p>Ey nodded. “She looks scared. Frightened, or something.”</p>
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<p>“Frightened, <em>anem</em>, the correct word. Both representative Why Ask Questions and leader True Name are frightened. They are un-whole. They are in pain. Leader True Name is hiding-obscuring it better. Why?”</p>
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<p>Something about this discursive, almost lazy form of questioning made Codrin feel as though ey would be late for something. Ey wanted to urge Turun Ko to get them back to common time. <em>That’s silly, though,</em> ey thought. <em>We have all the time we need, if hardly any is passing out there, if ‘out there’ is even the right term.</em></p>
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<p>Something about this discursive, almost lazy form of questioning made Codrin feel as though ey would be late. Ey wanted to urge Turun Ko to get them back to common time. <em>That’s silly, though,</em> ey thought. <em>We have all the time we need, if hardly any is passing out there. If ‘out there’ is even the right term.</em></p>
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<p>Ey said, “I only have a guess as explained by one of their cocladists, that–“</p>
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<p>“Cocladists is multiple forms of one individual, <em>anem?</em>“</p>
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<p>“Yes…uh, <em>anem,</em> correct. One of their cocladists suggested that they might react poorly to the…” Ey trailed off, hunting for the best phrasing. “To the malleability of time. They underwent some experiences in the past regarding time, so I think they’re afraid.”</p>
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<p>He looked back toward the door, worry painted on his face, and nodded. “I don’t think that was Why Ask Questions. That was Answers Will Not Help.”</p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-02-13</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-03-14</p>
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