update from sparkleup
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<h2 id="cast">Cast</h2>
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<h2 id="books">Books</h2>
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<h3 id="qoheleth">Qoheleth</h3>
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<blockquote>
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<p><em>“All artists search. I search for stories, in this post-self age. What happens when you can no longer call yourself an individual, when you have split your sense of self among several instances? How do you react? Do you withdraw into yourself, become a hermit? Do you expand until you lose all sense of identity? Do you fragment? Do you go about it deliberately, or do you let nature and chance take their course?”</em></p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>With immersive technology at its peak, it’s all too easy to get lost. When RJ loses emself in that virtual world, not only must ey find eir way out, but find all the answers ey can along the way.</p>
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<p>And, nearly a century on, society still struggles with the ramifications of those answers.</p>
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<p>Features the bonus novella <em>Gallery Exhibition: A Love Story.</em></p>
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<h4 id="summary">Summary</h4>
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<p><em>RJ Brewster</em> is a sound technician for a theater and pioneer of a type of virtual reality that involves integration with a system in a non-human fashion - when ey works sound for the theater, ey is essentially the room. When not working, ey spends much of eir time online with friends, also in VR, where ey is a genderless fennec fox. Recently, <em>Cicero</em>, one of eir friend group has ‘gotten lost’: while he was interacting with the VR system, the system crashed and, even when removed from it, he was left still ‘inside’, with no way to remove him. RJ (AwDae when online, due to the limitations of a canine muzzle on pronouncing letters), eir best friend and ex <em>Sasha</em> (a skunk), and Cicero’s partner <em>Debarre</em> (a weasel) have been trying to figure out what they can about Cicero’s circumstances and how he can be rescued. After digging into the research, RJ emself gets lost during that night’s rehearsal at the theater.</p>
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<p><em>Dr Carter Ramirez</em> is a scientist at the University College of London working on studying the lost. She is head of the research team and focuses specifically on the statistical, psychological, and data science side of the research. Her coworker, <em>Dr Sanders</em>, leads up the neuroscience side of research. When RJ gets lost, Sanders mentions that ‘another furry’ has gotten lost, and Dr Ramirez gets a hunch that there might be some social vector to the lost. When she starts investigating along those lines, however, she meets strange amounts of pushback from both Sanders and the grantors funding the research. She pushes on with a reduced team of <em>Avery</em>, a nonbinary statistician, and <em>Prakash Das</em>, a neuroscientist. Avery discovers that RJ’s case may be unique in that eir marketing trail has been influenced by eir nonbinary gender as well as eir aromanticism, meaning that ey is both easy to track and unique in eir social circles.</p>
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@ -76,6 +82,11 @@
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<p>Debarre frees Sasha, finding that she is similarly affected by the mirroring experience, though to a lesser extent than RJ. All of those who were lost are forever changed, and few for the better. Cicero finds it to be too much and kills himself. Shortly after his funeral, Sasha receives a letter from RJ mentioning that ey must go back to that mirror world and has volunteered to be an early subject for uploading tech that will lead to the world Ioan and Dear inhabit, a process that will kill eir body and, unless everything goes right, ey will not be able to see her again. The letter includes the entirety of the Ode, and we learn that Sasha is <em>Michelle Hadje</em>, the basis for the common ancestor of the Ode clade. Sanders winds up in prison along with several who instigated the plot to remove that vote from the records. Prakash winds up back in the Sino-Russian Bloc (where, it is implied, RJ’s procedure will take place). Ioan winds up eir job as amanuensis with Dear and begins to write up eir report/essay on the subject but, on a whim, contacts Dear and its partner to ask if ey might create a long-lived fork (eir first), Codrin Bălan, to work with them both on the project.</p>
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<h4 id="ideas">Ideas</h4>
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<h3 id="toledot">Toledot</h3>
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<blockquote>
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<p>“I am saying that you trust me — really trust me — and that life in the System is more subtle than I think you know. You let me into your dreams, my dear, and your dreams influence this place as much as, if not more than, your waking mind.”</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>No longer bound to the physical, what lengths should one go to in a virtual world to ensure the continuity of one’s existence?</p>
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<p>Secession. Launch. Two separations from two societies, two hundred years apart. And through it all, so many parallels run on so many levels that it can be dizzying just keeping up. The more Ioan and Codrin Bălan learn, the more it calls into question the motivations of even those they hold most dear.</p>
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<h4 id="summary_1">Summary</h4>
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<p>In 2325, those who live on the System (sys-side) and those who still live back in the physical world (phys-side) complete a true collaboration for the first time in nearly two centuries. Scrounging together the lingering remnants of humanity’s desire to explore outward, away from Earth, they launch two identical smaller versions of the System, Castor and Pollux, on a centuries or millennia long extrasolar voyage.</p>
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<p>After the success of their project surrounding Qoheleth and the problems of an infallible memory, the <em>Bălan clade</em>, made up of <em>Ioan Bălan</em> and <em>Codrin Bălan</em>, has decided to undertake the task of documenting the history of the launch project. In the intervening years, Codrin has found emself in a polyamorous relationship with <em>Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled</em> of the <em>Ode clade</em> and its partner, and they are all incredibly gay for each other. Dear has convinced Codrin and its partner to invest entirely in the launch vehicles, or LVs, tickled by the idea of irreversibility and the fact that it will not remain on the original system parked at the Earth-Moon L<sub>5</sub> point. When interviewed by one of the Codrins, it states that the other reasons for it investing entirely in the launch are that it wants to feel missed by someone, and that eventually, it wants to die a real death.</p>
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</dd>
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</dl>
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<h3 id="neviim">Nevi’im</h3>
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<blockquote>
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<p>“Do you know how old I am, Dr. Brahe? I am 222 years old, a fork of an individual who is…who would be 259 years old. I am no longer the True Name of 2124. Even remembering her feels like remembering an old friend. I remember her perfectly, and yet I do not remember how to be earnest. I do not know how to simply be.”</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>The cracks are showing.</p>
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<p>Someone picked up on the broadcast from the Dreamer Module and as the powers that be rush to organize a meeting between races, Dr. Tycho Brahe is caught up in a whirlwind of activity. And as always, when the drama goes down, there is Codrin Bălan to witness it.</p>
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<p>When faced with eternity in a new kind of digital world, however, old traumas come to roost, and those who were once powerful are brought to their knees</p>
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<p>Growth is colliding with memory, and the cracks are showing.</p>
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<h4 id="summary_2">Summary</h4>
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<p>As a prologue in 2114, <em>RJ Brewster</em> meets with <em>Dr. Carter Ramirez</em> and <em>Prakash Das</em>, a spy for the Sino-Russian Bloc, for lunch. RJ has been having a very hard time re-acclimating to life after being lost. Ey has lost eir job due to fears around delving in, and eir cat has passed away. Ey considers Dr. Ramirez and Sasha eir only remaining friends. After lunch, Prakash catches up with RJ and offers to bring em in on a project to create a new embedded world with uploaded consciousnesses based around the information learned from the lost.</p>
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<h5 id="part-1-anticipation">Part 1 — Anticipation</h5>
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</li>
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</ul>
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<h3 id="mitzvot">Mitzvot</h3>
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<blockquote>
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<p>“To be built to love is to be built to dissolve. It is to be built to unbecome. It is to have the sole purpose of falling apart all in the name of someone else.”</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>Even the grandest of stories can feel small and immediate when it’s just one person’s life.</p>
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<p>One of the most well-known names from one of the most well-known clades on the System, the avatar of political machinations and cool confidence, has been brought low. With help coming only from Ioan Bălan and the most grudging of support from her cocladists, all True Name has left to save herself is the ability to change.</p>
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<h4 id="summary_3">Summary</h4>
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<h5 id="part-1-conversation">Part 1 — Conversation</h5>
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<p>It’s late 2349, about about three and a half years since the fourth convergence, the meeting of the Artemesians with Castor. Life has taken a bit of a swing toward the adventuresome as news and new technology trickle their way back down to Lagrange, the original instance of the System in orbit around Earth. Technological changes include finer-grained ACLs that control permissions on various bits of the System, allowing for opaqued or visually secure cones of silence, limits on sensorium messages, etc.</p>
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