True Name — 2124

The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream met with Jonas at a sim of her choosing. They had tacitly agreed that they would switch sims every time they met, if possible, and alternate who chose which. It followed the general outline of how the council met, but, being just the two of them and learning where they would meet only minutes prior meant even less of a chance of being found out.

Found out from what, True Name had not yet divined.

She felt constantly aware of who was around her. It was not in the sense that she was being watched, though she certainly entertained that idea. It wasn’t that she and Jonas might be discovered as members of the council and accosted. Nor was it that they were doing anything untoward. They were just getting together to do their jobs and do them to their full abilities.

Perhaps it had something to do with lingering anxiety left over from Michelle. Perhaps it was due to the tenuousness of her position on the council — not that they doubted her as a fork of Michelle, but she did sense some hesitancy surrounding allowing forked instances to sit while the root instance did not.

Maybe I have drifted too far, she often found herself thinking. Maybe I am no longer Michelle enough to see things in the same way.

So, she remained vigilant, regardless of whether or not she knew why, and kept as much as she could above-board with the council. Always at the forefront of her mind, she held her goal of ensuring the continuity of existence and continuity of growth of the system.

Today, they met at a place of her choosing, and she had chosen the closest thing that she could find to the Crown Pub of old: a well-aged, British-style pub, complete with a few high-topped tables and the types of small beer that she had never quite grown to love, yet drank all the same.

Jonas blinked into the sim outside, so she was first alerted to his presence by a quiet ding from the bell above the door. She watched him step inside and look around with an appraising glance before spotting her and joining her at the two-top.

“Nice place. How’s the beer?”

“Flat. Weak.” She took a sip and shrugged. “Perfect for the setting, as far as I can tell.”

“Better than clams frozen in ice cubes?”

She laughed. “Much. Want to get a drink and find a booth?”

“Sure. You find the booth, I’ll get the drink, then we can talk.”

The booth in the corner is where the sim diverged from the one she knew so well back on the net. Where those had been high-walled, with wood dividers reaching up to the ceiling even after the cushioned backs ended, these were low-backed and reminded her more of the types of padded benches one might find on the bus or train.

Ah well, they cannot all be perfect.

She waited until Jonas sat and she ribbed him good-naturedly about this choice of a fruity vodka drink before setting up the cone of silence.

“So,” he said, offering her the neon-pink cherry out of his drink.

“So.” She bit the cherry off the stem and chewed thoughtfully, the fruit sweet enough to make her sinuses burn. “Have you read Yared’s recent post?”

He nodded.

“Thoughts?”

“It’s well enough written. He’s good at picking three points and tackling them. He’s been focusing more on questions of government.”

“And have you read between the lines?”

His face split into a grin. “I believe so.”

“And?”

“No, no. I want to hear you say the words first.”

She laughed and tossed the cherry stem at him. “Alright. Do you think that he is suggesting that we somehow become our own country?”

“I most definitely do.” He sipped at his drink and leaned back against the back of the booth. “Secession isn’t something that I’d considered with any seriousness before. Then again, it didn’t really feel like it’d be necessary until all of this talk about rights, and even then, it didn’t even feel worth considering from a feasibility standpoint until the L₅ team offered to bring the System with.”

“Agreed, yes. I am happy to see that our friend has some subtlety.”

“It wasn’t that subtle.”

“Well, no, but he at least refrained from mentioning secession nor making any direct suggestions as to our independence from the S-R Bloc or dual citizenship. That must count for something.”

“Of course. Though it does have me wondering. Do you think he’s acting on his own volition?”

True Name tilted her head. “Are you suggesting that he is a front for some larger player?”

Jonas shrugged, finishing off his drink in one smooth swallow before setting the glass back down on the table. “Nothing so grand. I’m just wondering if he’s being influenced by someone.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The way the topics of his posts are drifting. It’s not that one doesn’t follow another, so much as there seems to be a trajectory in mind, with each getting closer to a specific goal.”

She frowned. “Are you saying you have seen this coming?”

“No, no,” he laughed, holding up his hands. “Just that, taking this new info into account, when I look back at the last few posts, I’m seeing a small pattern.”

She drank in silence as she digested this. Yared seemed like an honest and earnest supporter, though perhaps something of a DDR junkie. He also seemed like a nobody. A nobody who was a reasonably good writer and loud on the ‘net.

That combination probably made him a fairly attractive target to influence.

“Had you known this was coming,” she began, lifting Jonas out of his own reverie. “What would you have thought? What would you have done?”

He raised his empty glass to her. “An astute question! I’ll make a politician out of you yet.”

She kicked his shin beneath the table, and he laughed.

“You’re a bit late to be whining about that. You’ve been on the council longer than I have.” Twirling his glass between his fingers, he said slowly, pacing his words with his thoughts. “What would I have thought? I would’ve thought much as I mentioned above. I would’ve considered it unnecessary, then infeasible. What would I have done, though? I think I would have used him in turn. Gently steering him away from the idea while trying to find out who was behind this shift, if anyone, and try to dig up dirt on them.”

“I see. He does seem rather pliant. He would be a useful tool for us to wield, too.”

“First the astute questions, now the cynicism! You’re well on–ow!” He laughed, reaching beneath the table to rub at his shin. “It’s a good idea, though. No matter what we decide, we can always push him a little this way or that to help us out. I still want to figure out who’s behind him, though.”

“I do too, since you brought it up. Do you have any hunches on who it might be?”

“He’s NEAC, right? Probably one of his council-members. No one too high up, but someone high enough that they can read the situation better. Likely someone from the ruling coalition, but not the head of the council. Probably a more senior position, too. The grandfatherly type, or at least avuncular.”

True Name laughed. “Really?”

“Really. They’re always the sly types you need to watch out for. Nothing they say is not a coldly calculated maneuver to get you to agree with them, and to love you for it.” He shook his head. “Even their wives — and they’re almost always men — are probably married to them only because they told them that they loved them in just the right tone of voice to get them to say yes.”

“Manipulative shitheads.”

Jonas laughed. “Very. Probably Demma, or maybe Bahrey. Both fit the bill. They’ll have all the plausible deniability in the world, too. Some underling did the actual work, while they sit back and get whatever it is that they want.”

“So, tell me, o great political teacher, how do we find out which without asking?”

“Bring up something about the bill and pretend to be disheartened by it or like we don’t understand it, ask him who would be the one to address it, now that it’s reached their ears.”

“Right. I was thinking we’d ask him what government types are thinking about the launch, if anyone’s been pushing against it or for it, who seems neutral, and then ask for names under the guise of doing research, see who he names first.”

“There you go. You’ll run the risk of maybe getting more names than you were hoping for, but chances are, the first one that’ll come to his mind is whoever’s driving him.”

True Name smiled, sipping at the last of her warm, flat beer. She was pleased at just how much trust she was building with Jonas. Ask the questions you already know the answers to, look like you’re thinking, then suggest something that’s almost but not quite right.

She was nothing if not an actor.

“This secession angle, though. Do you think that would be worth pushing towards?” she asked.

“I’d like to steer a little closer to it, first, just to see what that’d look like. It’ll require the launch amendment to pass, as I don’t think System hardware can remain on Earth without someone getting upset at whoever’s land it sits on. Once that’s sorted out, though, and we have a better idea of what a seceded System will look like, I say we push hard.”

True Name nodded. “There is no reason not to. If the System is to remain beholden to existing government influences, it will always be at risk of reinterpretation of those laws. We are uniquely positioned to be almost entirely impossible to invade as a sovereign kingdom, and we have enough support that there is low risk that we will be simply turned off. Too many people want to join. Too many still see utility for us. Too many dreamers.”

“Listen to you, my dear!” Jonas laughed. “You sound like a dreamer, yourself.”

“Perhaps.” She grinned. “But also someone willing to devote myself — several of me — to getting what I want.”

“Speaking of, what are the rest of you doing?”

“End Of Days says is working on remaining sensoria stuff, talking with the S-R trio to round out the proposal for sensorium messages. Praiseworthy is reading up on propaganda. Life Breeds Life is keeping an eye on how tasks are divided. Most everyone else is out and about, keeping a feel for the place, or making things.”

“You and your names. What sorts of things are you making?”

“Writing. Performances. Friends.”

“Hobbies?”

She nodded, tapping absentmindedly at the rim of her glass with a claw. “Minus the friends part, yes. I was a theater teacher, phys-side. Need to have fun somehow.” She could feel the conversation drifting into small-talk territory, and she wasn’t yet ready to lose Jonas’s attention. “You have your forks already, do you not? What are they working on?”

Jonas sat up, then slid out of the booth. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

True Name set her empty glass aside and slid out to follow him.

The next sim they traveled to was an apartment. Something high up, somewhere over a city she didn’t recognize. It was well furnished and quite spacious, but could hardly be called upscale.

As soon as they arrived, two other members of the Jonas clade appeared from a room that appeared to lead to an office. There was no doubt about their identity as Jonases: they were identical.

“Skillfully done,” she said, laughing. “Who was I speaking to today? Not Jonas Prime, I imagine.”

The one who had brought her here laughed, shaking his head. “No, I’m Ar Jonas. What tipped you off?”

“If I had several identical copies of myself with the same common name, all forked from the same root instance, I would not send the root instance out to a meeting not at a place of my choosing.”

One of the other Jonases nodded appreciatively. “Well spotted.”

Ar Jonas disappeared from beside her and, with a blink, reappeared. “Merged with Prime,” he explained. “I’ll leave you two to talk.”

He and the other Jonas left to go pick up where the work had been left off in the office, leaving Jonas Prime to guide her to the sofa.

“How often do you show up at council as Prime?” she asked, once they were seated.

“Used to be every time,” he said. “Then one day, I nearly missed it and was in the middle of a discussion, so I sent Ar. I was nervous that someone would see through it, but no one did. I tried to keep going myself for a while, but after there were no repercussions, I gave up on it, and alternate between the other six.”

“Six?”

“Of course. Ar, Ku, and Re, as I mentioned, and now Ir, who forked from Ar and looks nothing like me, so he’s got more latitude.”

“And the other two?”

“Why would I tell you everything?” He laughed. “They’re my instances, doing the things that I do, which should be enough.”

“Fair enough. You have already told me more than you probably should have.”

“I trust you’ll keep quiet about it.”

True Name grinned, putting her finger to her snout in the near universal hush sign. “It is a neat enough trick. I think that the Ode clade already differs too much to send one of them in my place, so perhaps not for me.”

“It’s up to you, yeah.” Jonas sat back against the couch, one arm draped casually along the back. “I honestly was surprised when no one noticed my reputation drop, but then I figured out that most people just look at the clade’s reputation, rather than the instances. I have a feeling that’ll change eventually, but for now, no one seems to pay all that much attention.”

The skunk frowned, and browsed the markets — something that felt more akin to remembering what the stats were, rather than looking anything up — and saw that, while she had less reputation than Michelle had before she forked, the clade had a good bit more, likely from what each of them were doing to build reputation. Jonas naming his clade after himself was a fairly savvy move, in the end. ‘Ode’ having no direct ties to Michelle it seem like something unrelated.

Ah well. I am still happy to have done it, she thought. And perhaps we will find our own way to build reputation that does not involve a constant game of make believe.

“Thank you again for your trust, Jonas,” she said, standing. Neither the booth nor the couch had been all that kind on her tail. “I am going to go do some digging in the recent news from the NEAC and wait for our dear Yared to get in touch with us again.”

He nodded up to her. “Alright. I’ll be in touch, I’m sure.”

“And, Jonas?” A grin twisted the corner of her mouth. “Do not call me a fucking politician. I have an image to maintain.”

He laughed and waved her away.