Codrin Balan#Pollux — 2325

As happened about once every six weeks or so, that boundless energy within Dear became too much for the fox to control, and it would go tearing through the house, working on several projects, forking here to clean, there to make a mess, now to request affection and then to holler about how badly it wanted to be alone.

The first time that this happened. Codrin had been quite startled, opting to lock emself in the office that ey still kept out around the back of the house. One of the many instances of Dear quickly fell into a sulk, and sent em carefully spaced out sensorium messages to make sure that ey hadn’t left.

Eventually, Dear’s partner had knocked on the door to eir glass-walled office, and Codrin let them in, where they leaned back against the edge of eir desk.

“Do you know of any wild restaurants?” they had asked.

“Wild?”

“Yeah. You know, crazy experiences, or maybe they’re really busy, or kind of raucous. Some sort of theme. Anything like that.”

Codrin had searched through eir memory, then shrugged. “Does a back-alley food court work?”

They laughed. “How in the world to ‘back-alley’ and ‘food court’ work together?”

“I have no idea. You walk down this street, and there’s just this awning sticking out over a narrow alley. Smells like hell, but when you get through it, there’s this courtyard, and all of the walls are various stalls of different food. Most of it’s dumplings and buns and stuff like that, but I found it because there’s a place there that serves, of all things, really good tacos.”

“Sounds about right. Come on.”

They had walked back around the patio and into the main house and Dear’s partner surveyed the scene, of various foxes in various states of activity or various moods, then walked up to one scribbling on a notepad at its desk, grabbed a fistful of fur and loose skin at the name of its neck in their hand, lifted the fox to its feet, and shook it gently. All of the forks that had been littering the house quit in an instant.

“Oh, is it dinner time?” It had looked bedraggled, limp, unsteady, and a glint of some intensity hid in its eyes that Codrin had never seen before.

“Yeah. Come on. Codrin knows a place.”

There had never been a full explanation of what it was that happened, but as they dined on plates of dumplings, steamed buns, noodles, and tacos, the fox’s heckles began to lay flat, and the erratic twitching of its tail slowed to a more familiar calm. It had spent most of the dinner peering around curiously and talking their ears off.

“Sometimes I overflow,” is all the fox had said when pressed.

Even after nearly twenty years, though, Codrin had yet to gain the knack of telling the original instance of Dear when that many were running around, and so when the fox began to ‘overflow’ once more, ey sought out its partner in their own workshop and waited until they reached a stopping point before saying, “I think it’s time for dinner.”

As usual, they were able to hunt down the root instance and shake it back to reality. Whenever the fox was grabbed by the scruff, it went limp, and the shake was usually something of a rag doll affair. At first, Codrin had worried that its partner was hurting it, but as ey was welcomed into their relationship, ey learned that the fox counted it as a pleasure.

Today, they found themselves at what Dear promised them was a pitch-perfect simulacrum of a late 2000s diner. While ey could not speak to the accuracy, nor even the quality, something about the sheen of lingering sanitizer on the counters that left streaks, the smell of truly terrible coffee, and the sizzle of grease all seemed to add up to a cohesive whole.

Codrin ordered a large plate of fries, Dear a vanilla milkshake, and its partner a slice of pie. They shared all three, and Codrin learned the delight of dipping fries into milkshakes.

“Thank you, my loves, as always,” Dear said, once it calmed down. “I am honestly surprised that it took this long after launch for the mania to hit.”

“Maybe you were less focused on one thing?” Codrin said around a mouthful of melting shake.

“Perhaps. I do not have a single project to dump my attention into, so perhaps that singular energy does not build up in the same way.”

“The news from Castor and Ioan isn’t enough to keep you focused?”

“Not particularly, no.” It grinned and poked a fry at Codrin. “You are the historian, my dear. That is your job, not mine.”

Ey rolled eir eyes.

“Still, I really must find one soon. I am aware that it is not pleasant for you two when I overflow, but it is also unpleasant for me when I do not have direction.”

Dear’s partner shrugged. “We just need to get one of those loose clamps for holding bags shut or hair back in a bun so we can just put it on your scruff when you start getting out of hand.”

“Do you promise? I promise that I will do all in my power to deserve it,” it said, grinning wickedly.

“Dear, I swear to god.

“If you threaten me with a good time, you will win precisely the prize that you deserve.”

Codrin laughed. “You’re right. We deserve peace and quiet, sometimes.”

Ey received a fry to the face from the fox, which ey dunked into the shake. “What is this place, anyway?”

“It is the restaurant that–“ It hesitated for a beat, during which the noise around them dimmed as a cone of silence fell. “It is the restaurant at which part of the clade celebrated Secession Day.”

Codrin stifled a yawn from the ear-popping sensation that always came with the silence. “You weren’t there?”

“I had not yet been forked, no. I remember it through the eyes of…another.”

“Another? No, wait. I’ll have to find that out on my own, won’t I?”

“Of course, my dear.”

“What was it like back then?” ey asked.

“Mx Codrin Balan, are you working?”

“Not particularly,” ey said. “I really am just curious.”

“Well, you will still need to be more specific. ‘Back then’ covers a large swath of time.”

“How about a year to either side?” its partner suggested.

“That still encompasses a good amount of goings on. I will tell you some of them, but you will have to–“

“Find the rest on my own, yes.”

The fox gave a hint of a bow. “Thank you in indulging me in this, Codrin. I cannot be the one to share everything.”

“So what was it like before Secession Day?”

“I do not think that the hoi polloi thought about it all that much. They were concerned about the prospect of others deciding that they did not have rights, to be sure, but it was all very abstract. Even from the point of view of the Council, we could not quite understand what a lack of rights would look like.

“I think that is why secession seemed to come so naturally to us. It took far more effort for those phys-side to comprehend what secession would look like than it did for us. From our point of view, we were separate from the rest of the world, such as it was, in a way that already seemed to preclude citizenship to any other political entity.”

“And you — Michelle, that is — were still on the council at that point?”

“That is a complicated question.” It poked at the last bit of shake with its spoon. “We shall say yes. Elements of the clade were still on the council at that point. This sim is where we celebrated Secession. One of the Odists, Debarre, Zeke, user11824, the Russians, Jonas–“

“Jonas?”

Dear tilted its head inquisitively.

“Ezekiel talked about a Jonah. Is that someone else.”

“Oh, yes. Jonah is a name that fits his current mode better, I suppose. We were all there, along with our phys-side accomplice in the campaign for secession and the L₅ launch, Yared.

“The mood was very celebratory. We all sat in that booth–“ it said, nodding toward the corner booth. “–and counted down with everyone. It was all very exciting. Everyone was giddy and laughing, and there were fireworks outside.”

“How crowded was it at that time? I imagine there were far fewer people in the System than there are now, if you had to pay to upload.”

“Of course, yes. Still, there were a few common public sims that individuals and instances would frequent. This was one of them. There were a dozen or so others here in the diner, and several hundred along the street, either on it or in restaurants along it. All were cheering, as far as I could tell.”

“I imagine there was some of that during Launch day, too,” Dear’s partner said. “Beyond our party, that is.”

“Perhaps. I do hope so.”

“So, after all of the celebrations died down, was there any real change?”

Dear shrugged. “Some residual excitement, I suppose. There were some little things that lingered, however, and stuck around. Secession Day, of course, but that is the date that we started using systime in earnest. The actual number chosen as year zero, day zero for systime is almost two years before Secession, and was tied to the creation of the reputation market, such that there was always a time to which it could be synchronized. Before Secession, we still commonly used the calendar they were — and presumably still are — using phys-side, but after, almost everyone switched to using systime. It made logical sense, yes, what with sims not being tied to any particular schedule bound by Earth’s rotation or procession around the Sun, but also it felt like a sign that we were becoming our own nation. Our own people.”

The table grew quiet after this explanation, as the last bite of pie was eaten and the last fry dipped in the last bit of shake.

“Feel free to tell me to stuff it, but what was your stanza’s role in the whole affair?” Codrin asked.

“You do not need to stuff it, my dear. Each first line had a role to play, and that often informed what the rest of the stanza focuses on, as we are formed from that instance as a template.”

Ey nodded, waiting for the fox to continue.

“Actually, my dear, can you guess? I am one who plays with instances, who finds ways to make others mad and happy and fall in love and get in fights, all while still being myself, and I am one who has turned that into an art.”

“I know I’ve met Praiseworthy, but I don’t know much about her. I know Serene built the house. I think you mentioned that you two were forked when Praiseworthy wanted to explore the ramifications of both instances and sims.”

As it waited for Codrin to piece together what ey could, the fox scraped the bottom of the shake glass for the last spoonful of ice cream and gave it to eir partner. A small affection that made the three of them smile.

“Can you give me a bit of a hint about Serene?”

“You get one hint, and it will be small. What emotions come to you when you walk the prairie?”

Codrin sat up straight. “A politician? Was Praiseworthy a politician? All this talk of shaping emotions and expectations. Or, wait. No, that’s not it.”

Dear urged em on with a little twirl of its spoon, looking pleased at the response.

“A speech writer? Did she come up with the speeches that whichever one of you was on the Council at the time used?”

“You are thinking too narrowly, my dear. The Council had little need for speeches for itself, and, as a body created to guide but not to govern, there were few enough speeches given outside of the council.”

“Too narrow, hmm…” Ey frowned. “Was she…did she come up with propaganda?”

Dear laughed, reached a finger into the shake glass to swipe up a little bit of sticky vanilla, and dabbed it on Codrin’s nose. “Well reasoned. Praiseworthy was the propagandist among the first lines.”

Codrin rubbed at eir nose to get the melted ice cream off before it settled into a sticky mess. “What exactly goes into being a propagandist, when the role of the Council was to guide but not to govern?”

Without falling, the fox’s happy expression somehow became a fraction less earnest, just that much less directed.

Before it could respond, ey held up a hand. “It’s okay, Dear. One of the Balans will figure it out.”

“Thank you, Codrin.”

Ey reached out to pat at the back of the fox’s paw. “I hardly want you to resent me, if that’s the result of me pressing you on this.”

“You are a ways off from making me resent you, my dear.”

Codrin nodded, watching Dear’s gaze slip away, scanning the street outside the diner, quiet in the late evening. Ey could not quite figure out the emotion on display. Its ears were tilted back, but it did not look angry, nor particularly sad. Pensive, perhaps?

“Dear?” its partner asked.

“No, you are a ways off from me resenting you, but you are perilously close to me lying to you.”