True Name — 2125

The Council of Eight met before the news of the secession amendment being passed was spread widely among those who tracked such information sys-side. They agreed, without even needing to talk about it, that it would be nice to have a small celebration of success before everyone was doing it. Something comfortable, cheerful, with friends.

To that end, they met at Debarre’s house, a low, rambling house plugged squarely into the side of a hill, walk-out basement looking out over a wooded lawn. The neighborhood had several such houses, widely spaced, where a few of Debarre’s friends that he’d met both on and off the system had set up a comfortable living, enough space to be alone, enough friends to make it worthwhile.

The plus-side of the house, in particular, was that the patio for the walk-out basement was under an overhanging deck, protecting the occupants from the slow but steady snowfall.

“I don’t understand why you had to make it cold,” user11824 grumbled.

“It’s New Years day, dude.” Debarre laughed. “It’s supposed to be cold.”

“Fucking Americans, I swear to God. I’m from New Zealand. New Years is not cold.”

The wandering discussion took place around a chiminea radiating warmth. An indentation had been made in the side of the clay body of the fireplace into which a kettle had been placed, mulled wine slowly simmering. True Name found it immensely enjoyable. It reminded her quite a bit of winters with her grandparents on the east coast. Made sense, of course, given where Debarre was originally from.

“I like it,” Zeke rumbled. “I only ever got to see snow once, and that was in Yakutsk when I was uploading.”

The three S-R Bloc goons laughed. “There’s not that much snow out there,” one of them said. “But I’m glad you got to see it at least once.”

The bundle of rags nodded appreciatively, extending a pseudopod of an arm to ladle more of the wine into his mug.

“Where’s Jonas?” Debarre asked True Name.

“Running late, I guess. I am not his keeper.”

“I know, I just figured since–” He was interrupted by a muffled doorbell as someone entered the sim, followed by Jonas (Ar Jonas, True Name guessed) ambled around the side of the house to join them.

“Et voilà,” she said, grinning.

“What?” Jonas laughed. “What’d I do?”

“You were late, Debarre was worried, I was bored,” user11824 drawled.

“Well, sorry about that. Just checking in with our contact phys-side. He’s depressed.”

Zeke began ladling a cup of the heated wine for Jonas. “Why was he depressed. It passed, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, well, apparently he’s getting pressure from the NEAC government. They’re happy enough about the bill passing, but they want to control his DDR participation going forward. He’s just mopey.”

Debarre growled quietly, tail bristling out. “DDR was a fucking mistake, anyway.”

“Yes,” True Name said. “But it got us this, at least, and now we do not need to worry about it again.”

Debarre shrugged.

Zeke asked, “So when does it all come into effect?”

“The 21st, same day as the launch,” Jonas said. “We shouldn’t notice anything except maybe a jump in systime if there’s any downtime getting us set up.”

“What’s the chance of that happening?”

“Around five percent”

“Chance of data loss?”

“Less than a tenth of a percent.”

“And catastrophic failure?”

Jonas grinned. “There were a lot of zeroes before that six, I can tell you that. I didn’t count them.”

True Name added, “It would have to require not only the launch going wrong, but the backup System failing, and from what our friends say, it is far away from the launch site.”

“In the North, yes. Launch site is in Western China.”

Zeke nodded, sipped from his wine, and rasped, “Best we can hope for, then.”

user11824 shrugged. “It’d be a boring as hell end. Are we going to have a big celebration or anything?”

“I do not see why not,” True Name said. “We can get a few of the sims to set up fireworks and we can spread the word through parasystem news.”

“We can celebrate now, too,” Debarre said, grinning. “I went through all this fucking trouble and we’re talking shop. Drink your wine, warm your hands by the fire, literally anything but more shop talk.”

And so they did. They talked, they stayed warm around the chiminea, and they drank. Debarre was the first to get truly drunk, breaking into Auld Lang Syne. When no one joined in, the weasel laughed and danced around the ring of council-members, calling them all boring, which got a grin out of even user11824.

As the evening wore on and, one by one, the rest of the council joined Debarre in his drunkenness, the conversations grew more earnest, more heartfelt. Several toasts were made. The final one was to, per True Name, “The chance to do whatever the fuck we want.”

After that, they agreed to meet the next day and give statements for the wider celebrations, and then all headed back to their home sims.

Others headed back, perhaps. But after an appropriate delay, True Name let the drunkenness fade and went, instead to Jonas’s apartment. Two of the Jonases were sitting on the couch, talking possibilities for the next year.

“Well?” one of them asked. Prime, she supposed.

“Well, we made it,” She said, slouching on the stool Jonas had long since added to the furniture once the skunk had started coming by regularly. “And now we can finally work on something else.”

He laughed. “Getting bored of the same old secession arguments?”

“Oh, I have been working on other things on the side, do not worry, but it will be nice to do so more openly.”

“Tell me about them.”

She thought for a moment, tallying up the ones she was comfortable discussing with Jonas. “The three big ones are, I think, ensuring stability and growth via financial and political means, which I have other instances currently working on. The second is disrupting and then disbanding the Council–“

Jonas sat up straighter at this.

“–in order to give us more latitude to do our work without having to run it by others. It is not like the System needs any governance, anyway.”

“Any open governance,” Jonas corrected.

“Of course, there will still be work to do.”

“And what’s the third?”

“Finding any patterns that we have left in our wake and smoothing them out. The first step will be convincing Yared to upload. He is less dangerous up here. I do not expect that to be difficult.”

Jonas nodded. “Makes sense. Do you think we’ve left many patterns?”

She shook her head. “No, not really. But I think it best to get in the practice. I would like to begin to think on the scale of centuries, and if we are to do that, I think it best to shape history both as we go and in retrospect.”

“Good plan,” he said, slouching back into the couch and grinning.

“If you are thinking of calling me a politician, I would like to cordially invite you to consider the consequences.”

“Fuck around and find out, eh?”

The skunk grinned toothily, tail giving a lazy swish.

“Fine,” he drawled, rolling his eyes. “So, are you at least happy with the way things are going?”

“Oh, of course. It is a good first step. There is almost no chance of the decision being reversed down the line, and if we make it another fifty years, the concept of the System or any individuals living here remaining under the wing of any national entity will have left the collective subconscious. It will also work to our advantage that there is no un-uploading. An irreversible process that lands one in a place that appears to have no influence on the outside world will nullify much of our detractors.”

“Just ensure they upload, right.”

True Name nodded. “Yep. And once the Council is out of the way, we should be good to go.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” he asked.

“It will be easy enough. Just take on more and more responsibility under the guise of helping out, start accepting less and less assistance, then begin suggesting that, since it is all going so smoothly, maybe it is not needed anymore. If we work with phys-side techs in order to drop the reputation cost of forking and sim creation, that will also help.”

“Think any of them will complain?”

“Not until it is too late, and by then, it will all be too easy to form another Council, right?”

Jonas nodded. “Works for me. Shall we start divvying up tasks, then?”

The skunk nodded. “There is much to be done.”