Douglas Hadje — 2325

May Then My Name,

As promised, I’m returning to the questions you asked. The launch went well, we had our party, and now my plate is mostly clear. I have a bit of work to do with the launch arms, but responsibility has shifted over to the flight coordinator.

I suspect that you are still interested in the subjective view of things. It’s a little weird, not having so much to do all the time. I tried to sleep in this morning, but wasn’t able to. Who knows, maybe I’ll relax over time, or find something else to fill my days.

Anyway, to your questions. These are very strange and cryptic, but in the spirit of building a mythology, I’ll try to answer them in earnest. If you need clarifications, I’ll be here.

How long have you been working as phys-side launch director?

From the very beginning. I was a System manager before that, and submitted my resume to the launch commission on a whim. It was a bit of a shock when they picked me, if I’m honest. I suspect it was the name. It’d look good to people such as yourself.

What is involved with your role as phys-side launch director?

As mentioned, very little now. Previously, though, I was the one who had to keep everything in his head. Those directly under me would supervise things such as the micro-Ansibles or launch timing or the HE engines, and I just pulled all that together and kept everyone moving at about the same pace so that nothing was rushed and no one was left behind. In short, I was a manager.

How long have you been working with the System phys-side?

As long as I’ve been working. My first job back in 2294 was as an Ansible tech in a clinic.

What led you to pursue a career working with the System?

I’ve always had a fascination with the System and just how different it was from life on Earth. I had considered uploading as soon as I hit the majority but something kept me out here, I guess. I think it was just that the whole idea was so beautifully audacious that I just wanted to keep it up and running smoothly.

What led you to remain phys-side rather than uploading, yourself? Will you upload in the future? Why or why not?

I think I answered the first part up above, but I will add to it that there is some aspect of fear that kept me from doing so. Or, maybe not fear, but intimidation, if that makes sense? I felt like I would be outclassed there. I would be able to rub elbows with folks from 210 years ago! It makes me feel small.

Will I upload? I think so. I think when everything is finished out here and I can comfortably leave my position and say that I did a good job, I’ll head back planet-side, go on a week-long bender, and then go to an upload clinic when I’m still hung over. I’ve done a lot out here. I’ve given decades of my life to the System, and I think it would be a fine place to retire.

There is one other thing, and I hesitate to mention it because I’m not sure if it would be uncouth, but doubtless you recognize my name. My great-great-something aunt was Michelle Hadje, who was formative to the creation of the System itself, was one of the earliest uploads, and who was part of the Council of Eight. I know that I could just message her. I want to just message her! Something keeps me from doing so, though. I feel weird about it, or intimidated, rather in the same way that I feel intimidated about uploading. She’s family, but so distant as to be a total stranger; she’s more than two hundred years old; she’s been essentially silent from phys-side for most of that time, so I don’t even know if she’s still alive. Some day I’ll work up the courage to talk to her, but I’m not sure if that will be before or after I upload.

What led you to pursue your position as launch director rather than remaining in your previous position?

Like I said, I just submitted my resume on a whim, and before that, I was just managing station-side Ansible stuff. The next step up the ladder shouldn’t have been launch director, but, like I said, here we are. The launch program totally captivated me. I was part of a messaging campaign to get it approved, and took part in as many debates as I could from out here. I desperately wanted it to happen, though I knew there was little chance of me actually getting to work on it. I was surprised and elated to get the chance.

Please provide a biography of yourself to whatever level of detail you feel comfortable.

I was born Douglas Fredrick Hadje-Simon on April 9th, 2278 in Saskatoon to the last in a long line of Uranium farmers. I got my implants along with the rest of my class at age five, and quickly took to the ‘net. I spent as much time as I could in there, as did (and still do) most folks. I don’t know when you uploaded, but Earth is not a pleasant place anymore, so the net is where one goes for literally anything but living in a shithole on a giant rock that is also a shithole, if you’ll forgive the language.

Like I said, I took a job working on Ansible stuff as soon as I could. I’ll admit that this was a selfish act. I was hoping that I would eventually wind up station-side to get away from the mess down there. I don’t regret it. I don’t miss my family. I don’t miss my friends. I don’t miss home. This is home now, as much as anything. I will do my best to either upload or die up here rather than go back. I’ll work myself to the bone if I have to.

I moved up through the ranks quickly enough and, first chance I got, I headed up with a few other techs on a ship headed to some mining site on the moon. I spent probably five minutes on the moon before the other techs and I headed out to the station. I started out as a junior Ansible tech and made my way up to lead before making it to launch director. You know the rest.

Please provide a physical description of yourself to whatever level of detail you feel comfortable.

I’m nothing special, I think? Average height, average weight, brown eyes, brown hair from my dad, curls from my mom. I have no idea whether I’m attractive or ugly, and honestly haven’t thought about it. I don’t even know what to write here, I guess. My body’s just a tool and vehicle to get me from place to place.

Do you have any hobbies?

I still tool around on the ‘net (though since there’s a lag to Earth, it’s mostly entertainment sims), and for the mandatory exercise, I like running well enough. We’re not allowed to cook up here, but I remember being fond of that back planet-side.

This is super embarrassing, and just between you and me. I’d prefer you not tell anyone about this, and please, please don’t tell Ms. Hadje. One of my hobbies is picking up any EVA task I can get just so I can go touch the System itself. Hardly anyone’s seen it, but it’s beautiful. It’s coated in an inch or two of diamond, and the inside is a glittery mix of gold on black that seems to go on forever.

On these EVAs, I’ll go touch the System and imagine that I can feel family in there.

I don’t know if it counts as a hobby, but it’s important to me, and it isn’t work.

How do you feel about what you know of the founding of the System?

I don’t know what I feel. You have to understand that it’s been existence for more than four times the number of years that I’ve been alive. I know some of the big highlights, I suppose. It was invented some time in the 2110s, and seceded in 2125. It used to be super expensive to get to, then in the 2170s when things started getting really bad, several governments started offering incentives to upload. It turned into a weird combination of a brain drain and a dumping ground for the poor. There were a few periods where one government or another would outlaw uploading, but it would never last. It was this huge allure to us, like some sort of perfect utopia.

Some folks hated it. Some still do. There were even sabotage attempts on the launch.

I don’t know, though. It’s almost getting to mythical status out here, so maybe your work is coming at the right time.

If you were suddenly removed from your position as director, what would you choose to do as a career in its stead?

You sent me this before launch, and it means less now, so I’ll answer how I would have felt at the time. I think I would have gone crazy and thrown myself out the airlock. I’m really not kidding about how much this means to me.

If you were suddenly removed from your location in the extrasystem station and returned to Earth, how would you feel and what would you expect?

See above. I’d rather die than leave the system.

If the System shut down and all personalities irrevocably lost, how would you feel?

See above.

If you were told that, one year from now, you would die painlessly, what would you do? Would this change if you knew that your death would be painful? Would this change, in either case, if your death was seven days from now?

Obviously, if it’s possible, I would just upload in all of these cases. If it was not possible for whatever reason, I’m not sure. I think I’d spend as much time as possible working with the System as closely as possible. If I had the choice to die, painlessly or in agony, while touching it, I think that I’d be happy. Or maybe not happy, but it would feel like a worthwhile death.

If everyone but you disappeared, what would you do?

Um…I don’t know! Much of the uploading rig here is automated, though I know there are some buttons and knobs that need doing. I’d probably spend every waking moment trying to automate it the rest of the way so that I could upload. If you mean the System too, well, see above.

How do you feel about being alone for extended periods of time?

This is a very rare occurrence. Earth is crowded. The shuttles are crowded. The station is less crowded, but it’s also a place where one works with a bunch of coworkers, so I’m usually not all that alone. The closest I get to being alone is sleeping or during EVAs. I spend most of that time dreaming, and I don’t mind that at all.

Do you remember your dreams?

My dreams when I’m asleep? Rarely. They’re usually confused images of long hallways or being super crowded in a small space. Waking dreams are much more pleasant.

How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord? Forever? How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me?

I have to say, I started talking with de, one of the launch commission members, and we agreed that your questions grew exponentially weird starting about here. I originally thought I’d answer each in some snarky way, but the more I thought about them, the more I realized what you’re going for. In that vein, I’ll try to answer each as best I can.

There are a good number of people who think that God/god(s) forgot about Earth. There are always doom-sayers and end-of-the-world-ites, but they have seen a huge uptick in my life alone, and I think this last century has been defined by coming to terms with how fucked up everything is. And it’s not that we don’t blame ourselves. Many of us do! But many of those same people tack it on God, too. “God is disappointed with us and that’s why everything’s shitty” or whatever.

Me? I’m not so sure. I was raised thinking much of that, but I also feel like I left those feelings back planet-side. I don’t think about God much anymore. Maybe that’s part of the problem: when we forget about God, we get complacent and then get into trouble, and suddenly he’s much more relevant again. Who knows. Life up here is easy. I work, I get tired, I rest, I eat well, I get to do the thing I love most of all. Did I forget God back on Earth? Did I leave him there when I came here? Is there room for God in space? Do you have God in the System, and is that God the same one we talk about phys-side?

I can’t answer the question without asking a bunch more because God and I forgot each other.

When you become intoxicated — whether via substance use or some natural process, such as sleep deprivation — which of the following applies to you?

I laughed at this one. Where did you find this? I dug but couldn’t find the source. I know that the previous one is a Psalm of some sort.

There are very few chances to get intoxicated here on the station. I had a glass of champagne after launch, and it was the first drink I had had in at least a decade, if not longer. You spend that long away from alcohol, and you lose essentially all of your tolerance, so I’m ashamed to say that, while I did feel drunk, I basically stumbled off to bed and slept.

However, you talk about other intoxications. I am no stranger to insomnia, and you’re right that there is a sort of intoxication to that. I tend to get goofy and laugh a lot at the stupidest things when I’ve not slept for a day or two. I will laugh and laugh at the smallest thing, and then the laughter will fade and I’ll sigh and say, “I’m so tired.” And then I’ll do the whole thing all over again. I think that might be kind of like Ape Drunk?

One thing this reminded me of, though, was of when I had just turned twenty and got incredibly sick. I had a very high fever, and when it was at its worst, I felt as though I was being offered a chance to peek behind a curtain, or at least see the shadows moving around backstage beneath the hem of it. I felt that I was granted a glimpse of some thinner reality that sat just behind our own. I was writhing in my bed, unable to hold still, with my back arching and my tongue sticking out, and yet there was this sense of the numinous and a short wave of ecstasy, and I felt pleasantly drunk. I don’t know what “when a man is drunk and drinks himself sober ere he stir” means. Does it apply to functional alcholism? Even if it does, it feels like that moment. When I was in fever, I burned all the brighter before I got better, and in that moment, I saw the most clearly.

While walking along in desert sand, you suddenly look down and see a tortoise crawling toward you. You reach down and flip it over onto its back. The tortoise lies there, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over, but it cannot do so without your help. You are not helping. Why?

I don’t know. I don’t know why I flipped it, and I don’t know why I’m not helping it, but I see myself there, watching it flail around, and I’m sobbing. I’m sobbing because for some reason, I’m not flipping it over and I wish against everything that I could give it relief. I feel guilt and shame in equal measure, and I watch myself beat my fists against my thighs, trying to force myself to do the thing, do the thing, just do the thing.

This is a truly nightmarish question, May Then My Name.

Two by two, two by two, and twice more. We always think in binaries, in black and white. We remember history two by two. We consider the present two by two. We think of the future twice over, and twice again. I have looked back on history and seen ceaseless progress or steps backward. I look back a hundred years and see illness and failure, and I look at today and see _____?

I recognize this! We read it in class. I know that the next words are “twice that and more”, but I don’t think that’s quite what you’re getting at.

I look back a hundred years and see illness and failure, and I look at today and see twice that and more below, but up above, as it were, I see only the clean purity of space and the steady brightness of stars. If I literally look up, beyond the walls and hull, there is the System, and while I probably hold overly optimistic ideas of what goes on inside, I don’t think you have illness and failure to nearly the same extent as we do phys-side. I doubt it’s a utopia, but I would be hard pressed to imagine it as any worse than outside.

Oh, but to whom do I speak these words? To whom do I plead my case?

I am writing this to you, but if I have to plead my case to anyone, it’s to myself. I have to make my case to myself that I am worth enough to upload, that I can bring something to the System, that I would be welcomed there. I’m a very harsh judge, though, and it’s taking a lot of work to convince myself of that.

From whence do I call out?

Close. So close. I call out to myself from within myself. I call out to the system through a few inches of diamondoid coating and the fabric of my EVA suit.

What right have I? No ranks of angels will answer to dreamers, No unknowable spaces echo my words.

This is the crux of the problem, isn’t it? I am convinced, on some level, that I don’t have the right to want this thing. Immortality is for the gods, and that’s what you seem like to me. You seem like gods, and here I am, the mortal working at sweeping the floor of your altar. The candles are out, the celebrants are gone, no ranks of angles will answer to a dreamer like me, and as always, sound does not travel in space.

Before whom do I kneel, contrite?

That part of me that says, “No, you are not a god.” And when I beg his pardon, he laughs and says, “No amount of contrition will get you into a place separated from you by an impossibly large gap. Only death will get there, and you are not worth that.”

Behind whom do I await my judgment?

I wait behind that part of me which desperately hopes that you think kindly of me, that you accept me. You, Michelle Hadje, and the whole of the System. If that part of me is allowed in, then maybe I will be seen as worthy, too.

Beside whom do I face death?

There is no one beside me. I have few attachments here, and what professional contacts I do have with whom I’ve fostered a friendship have no plans to upload. It’s just me before the System, waiting for death and hoping it’s enough.

And why wait I for an answer?

Please answer, May Then My Name. I wait because I have to know that there is something beyond this. I went into this questionnaire with an open mind, and now I’m having a hard time continuing because I just want to curl up in my bed and cry because these last questions have stripped me of any pretense that I had about my desires and what’s keeping me from them. I don’t recognize where you got them from, but they have me truly unsettled. They sound almost like your name, and if you are a part of these questions, then please answer.