Codrin Bălan#Emissary — 2346

The Artemisians had continued to fine-tune the new setup of the meeting space for the emissaries, so that the Odists beds were no longer in the same room as their half of the table. Now, there was a small, stone-paved unison room for their half of the table, at the back of which sat a low bench for sitting and talking, as well as a pitcher and glasses of water. To the side of that, a short hallway led to the two unison bedrooms.

That True Name and Answers Will Not Help had requested separate bedrooms had felt notable to Codrin, though ey could not put eir finger on why. Perhaps one or both of them were having a hard enough time even while sleeping that it was keeping the other awake? Answers Will Not Help certainly looked as though she’d not slept since arriving.

Both Odists had taken to spending any break longer than five minutes laying down, and ey’d taken it as eir task to ensure that they were up and moving a minute or so before the meeting resumed.

One upside of this, however, was that it gave em as much latitude as ey wanted to talk with Tycho and Sarah without feeling like ey was leaving True Name and Answers Will Not Help behind.

“So. Day three.”

Tycho laughed. “Yes, though I feel like we’ve been here for at least a week by now.”

“Might as well have been. The room is pinned at point two, so we’re already given far more time than we might have on an ordinary day.”

“And it’s easy to take a long, lazy break,” Sarah said. “But yeah. Day three, I guess. What are your thoughts, Codrin?”

Ey leaned back against the column outside the unison room, arms crossed, and looked up at the clear sky above the open courtyard. The blue was more intense than ey remembered from Earth or any of the sims ey’d been in. Some part of em always felt as though ey was falling up into it, whenever ey stared up like this.

“I’m tired,” ey said at last. “Some of that’s from just how long it feels like we’ve been running, and how I feel like I need to be on for all of that time, but part of it is our other emissaries.”

“Oh?”

“Them being so…is unwell the right word?”

Sarah nodded, “Maybe, yeah. Unwell. Struggling?”

“Right, yeah. Them struggling so much means that I have to be an active part of the discussions as well as focused on them. There’s nothing I can do to help them, but I still feel like I need to be attuned to everyone around me.”

“Is that part of your amanuensis duties?” Tycho asked.

Ey frowned, silent as ey thought. “Perhaps. It is part of what’s going on here, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Sarah said. “But you don’t need to be completely a sponge, soaking everything up.”

“I don’t know that I can just turn that off.”

“And that’s okay. It’s less about turning it off than mitigating it. Find the times where you can turn down your engagement and use those where you can. Find the things that don’t require your full attention and let them go, even if only for a few seconds.”

Ey smiled, feeling the tiredness in eir cheeks. “You were a therapist, weren’t you? Maybe I should steal some of your time after this is all over.”

“Gladly,” she said, nodding. “I’ve been thinking about restarting my practice, anyhow. It’s been too long of just lounging around on the System.”

“Certainly got a pile of work for yourself now,” Tycho said. “What are your thoughts, while we’re on the subject?”

“This is going to sound weird,” she said after a moment’s thought. “But it’s way more normal than I expected. It’s a strange situation, to be sure, but it’s still just a meeting between people who are trying to figure each other out. They’re alien, but not so far as to be completely unintelligible.”

“Think it’s going well?” Codrin asked.

“As well as it can be, all things considered. We’ve not wound up in any thorny patches or anything.”

Tycho nodded. “Agreed, though I have to admit that I’m getting kind of bored. Codrin told me I should steal some time with Stolon, but they keep racing off during our breaks, and there just hasn’t been much of a chance. I want to be able to engage, but it’s just all over my head, and when I do start feeling like I’m getting a hold on it, Turun Ka or True Name will nudge us back ‘on topic’.”

“‘On topic’ meaning politics and history and the like?”

He nodded. “I knew that going into this that #Artemis would be having much more fun than I would.”

“Well, lets see if we can find you something to focus on,” Sarah said.

He tilted his head, frowning. “How, though? I can’t exactly ask us to just start talking about the science side.”

“Well, no, but you can keep an eye on dates and the like and start using that with what we do know of the science behind everything. Start thinking about where they might have been coming from before the…uh, gravity assist? Is that it?”

His frown deepened, but he nodded.

“Start thinking about what’s in that direction and how long it might have taken them to get here.”

“You can probably keep track of the math involved with the time scale better than any of us, too,” Codrin added. “So you can see where there might have been inflection points in history and if that might’ve had to do with any of their travel. If there were bit societal changes, then maybe–“

Tycho held up his hand, and Codrin watched as his eyes lost focus, staring into nothing for a long few seconds.

Ey looked to Sarah, who shrugged.

“Sorry, maybe should have gone faster,” he mumbled. “You just reminded me of something, is all. There’s a lot beneath the plane of the ecliptic relative to us, but only a little bit of it is close for them to have plausibly passed by it. A few of those systems are kind of interesting.”

“Interesting?” ey asked.

“Like, stuff we’ve been keeping an eye on for possibly having life, that sort of thing.”

“Maybe Artante’s system?”

He shook his head. “Closer than that, I think.”

Codrin stood up straight again, tugging eir blouse straight. “Are you saying you think they might’ve stopped by somewhere else?”

“It’s a very big ‘might’,” he said. “They could just have been using the stars for slingshots, after all.”

“But it’s a possibility.”

He nodded.

Sarah shook her head. “To make sure I’m following, you think they may have spotted some other possible societies and not had them join them as a race?”

“Right. Could be they just hadn’t started uploading, of course.” He hesitated, then added, “Or that they had, but didn’t want to or didn’t make the cut.”

Codrin rubbed eir hands over eir face, willing away the tiredness that kept threatening to come back. Every time ey felt like ey was getting a hold on the situation ey was stuck in, some other bit of info would be brought to light and eir grasp would slip once more.

Now here this was. Perhaps the Artemisians had run across more than just races two through four on their journey. Perhaps there had been failed convergences, not counted among the existing three and the fourth they were living through.

Tycho’s comment about ‘not making the cut’ carried with it additional consequences, as well. It implied that there was a barrier to entry that one could make or not. This, in turn, implied that there were a set of requirements for getting to join as a race.

Ones that had never been mentioned.

There may very well be steps to take that had never been provided to them.

When ey shook away the rumination, ey found both Tycho and Sarah looking at em. “Sorry if I was mumbling. Tycho, hold off on actually asking about this for now, but keep thinking about it, alright? At least let me run it past True Name first.”

The astronomer nodded.

“On that note, we should probably start getting ready again,” Sarah said.

They broke after that, Tycho walking another lap around the courtyard and Sarah making for the pitcher of water, while Codrin went to rouse the Odists.

Ey fetched True Name first. The skunk was already awake — or perhaps had never managed to fall asleep for the nap she always talked about — and sitting up blearily in bed.

“Good afternoon, Mx. Bălan.”

“Morning,” ey corrected gently. “Next break will be lunch. Manage to get any sleep?”

She shook her head. “I am guessing that it is time to head back?”

Ey nodded. “I have a question about a topic Tycho brought up, first, if that’s alright. If you need to wake up a bit more first, that’s fine. I can ask later, but I’d at least like it on the docket.”

“I do not know that I will be feeling any better later,” she said, attempting a smile. “Ask me now, and if I am unable to answer, ask me again at lunch.”

“Alright.” Ey sat on the chair next to True Name’s bed. “Sarah and I suggested that Tycho start making educated guesses about their route and if that might be reflected in historical inflection points.”

The skunk frowned, but nodded for em to continue.

“He mentioned that there might have been some planets on their path that were inhabited but not welcomed as one of the races.”

“Ones with life? Ones with uploads?”

Ey shrugged. “Perhaps, yes. In particular, he said that if the race had uploaded, maybe they wouldn’t want to join, or wouldn’t have, in his words, ‘made the cut’.”

The skunk stared down at her paws in her lap, the claws on her thumbs tapping gently together. “That is a good observation from our friend. What question do you have for me about it?”

“Should we ask more directly about it? I told him not to until I’d talked with you.”

“Thank you. Yes, he should hold off for now. It may be best to ask about the sentiments within the society during those inflection points first. Coming at it sideways like that will allow us to phrase the question about other convergences more effectively.”

Ey nodded. “If there was strife, it may not have been a good convergence, you mean.”

“Precisely.” The skunk wobbled to her feet, accepting Codrin’s offer of a hand to steady herself. “Come. Let us see how Why Ask Questions is doing. Better, I hope”