Douglas Hadje — 2325

May Then My Name Die With Me: I am surprised to see you online, Douglas!

Douglas Hadje: Remember how I said my workload as launch director would be starting to decrease after launch?

Douglas: Well, now I’m only working a few days at a time, and most of that is writing up documentation and collating reports for the launch commission. Soon, even that will disappear, and I suspect I’ll be out of a job unless I decide to take on another position.

May Then My Name: Do you think that you will?

Douglas: I don’t know. Maybe? Probably. Once I’m out of a job, my reason to be here is kind of gone, and I imagine whatever good will I’ve built up will start to run out and they won’t let me stay on the station. It’s mostly self sufficient, but resources are limited and I’m sure there’s someone who would like to take my spot.

Ioan Bălan: And you mentioned not wanting to go back planet-side.

Douglas: God no, not if I can help it.

May Then My Name: Either way, I am happy to see you about. Did you have any particular topics you wanted to discuss today? If not, I am sure that Ioan has some.

Douglas: Nothing in particular. I’ve got a few minor questions outstanding, I think, but I’m starting to get the sense that you’ll only answer those when you’re ready.

May Then My Name: That is a very good sense that you have.

Ioan: May’s obstinate, ignore her.

Ioan: She also kicks pretty hard, but then, I deserved that.

May Then My Name: You did.

Ioan: Alright, well, the topic I was thinking of asking you about is that of the political side of the launch. One of the instances on one of the launches conducted an interview that suggested that there was actually quite a lot of political machinations behind the scenes.

Douglas: Oh! Yes! I’m surprised you didn’t get much news of that in there.

May Then My Name: I am sure that we could look it up, but you are in a unique position to tell us more directly, and after it has been all mixed around in your head.

Douglas: True. Well, where do you want to start?

Ioan: How about you start most recently, actually, and then work your way backwards.

Douglas: Alright.

Douglas: There was one last spate of protesting right before the launch. I saw some of the videos from planet-side, and a lot of it was just talking-heads discussing the fact that some had tried to shut down portions of the net, and even tried to take down one of the Ansible stations. Most of it was the same stuff we saw during the planning phase. I guess it kind of broke down into three complaints:

Douglas: 1. Expenses — this one was diminished toward the end, as there’s not really a whole lot of expense required in popping some explosive bolts to set the launches flying, and all the material used out here was from scavenged Trojan asteroids. The protests that we saw around this were mostly griping about how much had already been spent. “Think of how much could have gone to deacidifying projects, etc etc”

Douglas: 2. Brain/workforce drain — This is a perennial topic with the system. All those smart minds out there focusing on pie-in-the-sky dreams instead of ‘real problems’ back there on Earth. What they imagine someone with a masters in spaceflight or astronomy or whatever can do back on Earth to better an overheated dustball is beyond me.

Douglas: 3. Earth vs space sentiments — This one is probably the most common, and also the hardest to explain. Even I don’t totally understand it. I think I mentioned before that, the harder things get, the less time and energy you have to focus on those pie-in-the-sky ideas. You’re too busy scraping by or focus on growing soybeans or trying not to burn up or whatever, you don’t have much time to do anything but dream about space and watch movies in your hour before bed or however your day looks.

Douglas: You have to remember that my opinion of the place is colored by the fact that I lived where I did with the family that I did while the city was in a state of decline, so.

Douglas: Anyway, a lot of these people seemed to be just plain angry that there were people doing things that were not for helping improve the general condition of life. There’s still six or seven billion people down there, when you mesh birth rates with death and upload rates, and a good chunk of those people have no wish to upload, so they’re stuck in a life that’s uncomfortable enough to make them angry at those who have what feels like (and might as well be) unlimited potential, as they imagine the System to be.

Douglas: Does that make sense?

Ioan: I think so. You’ve got people who are unhappy, and part of that unhappiness is the fact that others are happy.

Douglas: More than that. They’re unhappy, and part of that is that those others are not helping to make life better for them. It’s usually not even making life better for humanity, but for them specifically, for the world as they specifically view it.

Ioan: Was there any sentiment that they were being abandoned by those who left on the launches?

Douglas: Yes and no. You have to understand that most people still struggle to think of the uploads as human. Thus calling them ‘uploads’, even, rather than ‘uploaded personalities’ or whatever. It’s not just shorthand, it’s a way of separating them into some other idea. They aren’t people, anymore, they’re programs, in their minds.

May Then My Name: There has always been this argument of speciation, and the instinct to make us the other continues apace, I see.

Douglas: I’ll take your word for it. It’s difficult to persuade the average person that those in the System are still human, or if not human, then at least still people. They’re not the types to listen to all the arguments for why we know that you’re still you after you upload. They duck-type you into being programs.

May Then My Name: ‘Duck-type’?

Ioan: Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, must be a duck.

Douglas: Is that what it means? It’s just come to mean a false-equivalency of any kind. Few enough ducks, anymore.

Ioan: I only learned it from an assignment talking with some perisystem specialists.

Douglas: I guess it doesn’t surprise me that you have those inside as well as outside. Sometimes, I get these little jolts about how little I actually know about the System, compared to how much I know about the launch.

May Then My Name: It does not help that many of us — not just me — are obtuse on purpose.

Douglas: You said there was some grumbling sys-side, as well, right?”

Ioan: Yes, though I don’t totally understand it. Some of it sounds like that like, “Why bother? We’ve got a good life here, and there’s no reason to be putting that in any kind of danger just to throw copies of us out at the stars.” The bits that I mentioned earlier, however, have more to do with the Dreamer Modules than the launch itself, though.

Douglas: Oh? There was a little bit of chatter about those here, but I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to it.

Ioan: That’s okay. I’ll dig, myself.

May Then My Name: We were working backwards from present. Was there much in the way of disruptions in the middle of the launch construction process?

Douglas: Not as much, no. There was a lull in overall protests. A lot of the grumbling about the Dreamer Module came during this time. There were one or two other sabotage attempts. Do you want to hear about those?

May Then My Name: We will, yes, but there is time. For now, we are curious about the macro-scale political landscape before, during, and after launch.

Douglas: Alright. That’ll give me some time to remember more about what happened with them.

Douglas: Large scale, hmm.

Douglas: Well, most of the government side goes way over my head. In the WF, there was always a bit of waffling, even on the majority coalition side, but whenever sentiment in a member party of the majority drifted away from the launch, they never seemed to last all that long in power.

Douglas: I talked about protests and sentiments before, but for the most part, folks were either on board, didn’t care, or didn’t know about the launch. It was just another satellite in their eyes, or some deep space probe.

Douglas: Early on was when it was talked about most. There wasn’t a whole lot of questions asked about whether or not the launch would happen, weirdly. I remember it just kind of popping up in the news as a foregone conclusion. “The launch was happening, how’s everyone feeling about that?”

Douglas: I think some were pretty unhappy with that, at first. Like, where did this decision even come from? Obviously, the System is its own authority and can do whatever it wants, but someone has to manage the phys-side work, so who, phys-side, actually had those conversations? There were a few gestures at investigation, but they fizzled out. Mostly, people were just confused. Some people get upset when they’re confused, but for the rest, it just left them shaking their heads. It was the politicians who were dealing with it after that initial shock.

Douglas: Building the launches wasn’t too expensive, honestly, because almost all of that was done in an automated fashion here on the station. That said, retrofitting the station for the launch struts, building the launch arms, expanding the production sector…all that took time, energy, and money. I’m surprised it went as smoothly as it did, despite all the grumbling.

Ioan: So it just popped up on the scene, then interest waned, then ramped up before the launch, then dropped? Like an ‘M’ shape?

Douglas: I suppose so, yeah. After the launch happened, there was nothing that could be done, so everyone lost interest or lost steam in their protests.

May Then My Name: We had a conversation a while back about our own point of no return. It was actually a year and change before the launch itself. By then, individuals were already transferring, and even if something went wrong, the cheapest solution would have been to launch anyway, and just take the hit on final velocity.

Ioan: Really?

Ioan: It makes sense, I suppose. What would you have done? Un-built the struts/arms and LVs?

Douglas: Basically. That would require dealing with yet more conservation-of-momentum issues, which would’ve required more money to build that infrastructure, etc etc.

Douglas: None of which really seemed to matter to the protestors.

May Then My Name: You said that parties whose sentiments veered away from supporting the launch often wound up leaving the leading coalition. What was the general sentiment of the leading coalition in the WF? Elsewhere on Earth?

Douglas: Oh, good question. I guess most of them wound up being the types that pushed for higher taxes while playing to humanity. They’re all named something different, I guess. It was the liberal democrats for most of the time in the WF. The demsocs felt that the money that was going to the launch was better served on Earth. The libertarians were here and there on the issue. Sometimes they felt like it would be a net win for humanity, sometimes they felt like the burden of the launch was too much. The conservatives spent most of the last twenty years as the shadow government. Their arguments were mostly what I said before. It was money that was going to a thing that wasn’t them or their financial interests.

May Then My Name: The way you talk, I assume that you are a liberal democrat?

Douglas: We don’t get a vote up here.

Douglas: I’m with whatever party allows the System to continue and helped the launch move forward.

May Then My Name: A single issue voter, then?

Douglas: I guess so!

Ioan: Well, we appreciate that, given where we live.

Douglas: Haha, well, good.

Douglas: Any other questions? I don’t have any in particular, and would like to go grab dinner.

Ioan: Not from me.

May Then My Name: When will you be uploading, Douglas?

Douglas: I don’t know. Some day, I promise.

May Then My Name: When you do, I hope that you will tell us, so that we can meet you face to face.

Douglas: Of course! After all this time, I’d be disappointed if we didn’t.

May Then My Name: We will have many stories to tell you.

Douglas: I look forward to them all. Goodnight, you two.

Douglas: Or morning.

Ioan: Afternoon, actually. Enjoy your dinner!