In which the Dreamer Module comes to roost and now they’ve got aliens.
Prophet aspect: Artemisians have been at this longer, start giving advice, etc, which influences the direction of the LV society for better or worse
Rough outline
- Locations/characters:
- Castor:
- Tycho Brahe - astronomer, in a bit of hot water for answering without consulting, chosen as delegate while handled by True Name’s stanza
- Codrin Balan - clerk for meetings, historian for info coming from remote ship
- Sarah Genet - Amanuensis in training via Codrin (small bit of penance for modifying history)
- Answers Will Not Help - managing news, info coming from guest/remote ship via Why Ask Questions
- True Name - is here’n’there being a bitch
- Artemisians - visitors/emissaries, learning about system, humans, life, etc, got their own subtle machinations going on
- Stolon - translated name from something like root runner - lizard
- Iska - kind of a hissing, spitting noise, but goes by that - skiltaire
- Artante Diria - fairly similar family name setup - humanish
- Turun Ka - similar to Jonas clade naming scheme - post-biological
- Turun Ko - Amanuensis, as above
- Artemis:
- Tycho Brahe - overwhelmed, gawking tourist, trying to glean as much astronomical knowledge as possible, almost uninterested in Artemisians qua Artemisians
- Codrin Balan - amanuensis/reporter
- Sarah Genet - Amanuensis in training via Codrin
- Why Ask Questions - shaping reports back, starts considering shaping their society, her and True Name fail
- True Name - is here’n’there being a bitch
- [several Artemisians] - society is like comprised of four different species gathered along the way, they are shaped like lizards skiltaire human-ish post-natural taur-types (original species), all went post natural but first went post-biological (beyond implants) before uploading/launching; mostly just the five, but some are seen outside in common sim: room/tower is DMZ
- Stolon - translated name from something like root runner - lizard
- Iska - kind of a hissing, spitting noise, but goes by that - skiltaire
- Artante Diria - fairly similar family name setup - humanish
- Turun Ka - similar to Jonas clade naming scheme - post-biological
- Turun Ko - Amanuensis, as above
- Castor:
- General plot:
- Agree to fall into trajectories that aren’t diverging so quickly (using attitude jets and angling solar sail, though Castor is still moving slower and has little chance to catch up/Artemisians don’t want to slow down)
- Decide that same representatives on both
- Artemisians upload into dmz to meet with amanuenses, Answers Will Not Help, and True Name. Lots of discussions.
- Tycho, Codrin, Why Ask Questions, and True Name upload into similar DMZ on the remote ship. Lots of discussions
- Begins with a lot of learning about each other
- Shifts to gentle nudges this way and that to information sent between the two ships and between DMZ and System as a whole
- Shifts from there to gentle nudges back and forth on each others’ societies
- Climax??? Maybe there is a subversive faction of both humans and aliens who figures out how to break through the DMZ on each? Or perhaps humans are invited to join the other 4 species on the ship, also expand the DMZ (can’t/won’t change it from one-way, but folks can send forks into it to live, communicate through perisystem border. Codrin finally figures eir shit out so ey can make the proposal to also send forks to the DMZickles Dear because can’t merge forks back
- Denouement: Who’s upset? Who’s happy? Why? What’s next?
- Notes:
- Codrin not sure how ey feels about always being the amanuensis for everything big. Not tired, really, but frustrated?
- Tangents/interludes throughout about how The History and Mythos affected launch-side society, maybe also sys-side via transmissions
- Maybe Tycho dies, or invests entire in the remote ship, then gets the Sarah Williams quote read at memorial?
- Codrin struggles with feeling completely reactive and unable to be proactive. It’s not that ey doesn’t want to take on the project, but ey feels obligated to; it’s not that ey can’t decide whether or not to join the Artemis, but that ey can’t do so unless Dear and its partner do so first. Eir character arc is that ey gets over that.
- Artemisians don’t have forking (except for very special cases like representatives), but have time management and reproduction (even between species)
- From Toledot: Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself stanza is the one that got Ioan and May into theatre
- Conflict notes:
- Should stay away from humans are special thing a la Anathem
- Maybe less political machinations, more figuring each other out a la Axiom’s End
- Conflict is figuring out that manipulation across species lines is, True Name has to give up attempts at such?
On the Origin of Our World
- Mythos - An Expanded Mythology of our World by May Then My Name Die With Me of the Ode clade
- History - An Expanded History of our World by the Bălan clade
Outline
- Epigraph
- If you race only with foot-runners and they exhaust you, how then can you compete with horses? If you are secure only in a tranquil land, how will you fare in the jungle of the Jordan? — Jeremiah 12:5
- Act I - leading up to the arrival of the Artemisians
- Tycho Brahe — Tycho seeks out Codrin to tell em what happened. - 1481
- Codrin Bălan — After coping ahead w/ Tycho, Codrin expresses worries with Dear - 1896
- Tycho Brahe — Tycho returns back to home sim to find True Name - 2698
- Codrin Bălan — Goes to begin the work with Tycho, explaining how projects start, amanuenses - 2643
- Tycho Brahe — Tycho#Artemis catches up on recent developments (instructions for interfacing with their version of the Ansible, instructions on course change to stay in closer contact for longer), meets up with Answers Will Not Help, who is surprisingly open about news management. - 3038
- Codrin Bălan — Meets Sarah Genet to talk about joining the amanuensis team, talk about what that would even look like, decide nice to have a total nobody Odists don’t know/care about, laughs that this is the most organized project yet - 2801
- Tycho Brahe — Tycho, True Name, Answers Will Not Help, other astronomer, and System tech fork to basically create a massive workforce to get all this done as fast as possible, .com
- Codrin Bălan — Meets up with the Artemis team at dinner, somewhat tense around True Name, but learns a bit more about the current status and how well under control it is (or how tightly controlled Odists are keeping it)
- Interlude - Ioan and May discuss news, but also Codrin’s notes about feeling dragged along - 1846
- Tycho Brahe — Tycho has a dream about meeting the Artemisians, wakes and talks with TN about preemptive cultural exchange so that they know more about each other, works with Why Ask Questions thinking she’s Answers Will Not Help.
- Codrin Bălan — Tycho, Sarah, have dinner with Codrin, Dear, Dear’s partner, talk about jobs, what they used to do, how odd it is to have one. Tycho gets message re: Artemisian culture and importance of time-bending, and shares with table, TN forks off to talk with engineers to ensure this can happen.
- Tycho Brahe — Tycho watches news disseminate with True Name, learns of various reactions.
- Codrin Bălan — Walk with Dear, talking about what to expect/not expect (actual understanding may take decades, some other stuff), Dear admits that this might be one it’s glad to sit out, they talk about that
- Tycho Brahe — They work out a date, start making preparations e.g: building the DMZ out a bit, forks for who’s going, senses how little input he will have but keeps to himself, letting #Tasker know to talk with Codrin back at house on prairie
- Act II - exchange of emissaries, discussions, knowledge share
- Codrin Bălan#Artemis — divvying up tasks (e.g: #Emissaries talk about politics, society, history, #Artemises talk about science, language, astronomy), forking, watching remote team head off, then forking and transiting DMZ border to welcome and orient emissaries.
- Codrin Bălan#Emissary — First entry into the meeting hall, a dome in the middle of a compound, disoriented, unable to fork, time feels weird, introduced and oriented, ey finds out about WAQ/AWNH switch, remembers what they were for, frown
- Tycho Brahe#Artemis — overwhelmed at meeting them all, introductions go around, working out specialties and such, gets a bit excited talking about astronomy and how much there is to learn, TN frowns
- Codrin Bălan#Emissary — starts out simply recording, Tycho too overwhelmed to speak, notices Turun Ko, discusses roles during a lull, TN frowns
- Tycho Brahe#Emissary — Tycho learns about time from Turun Ka and that this is how they managed to work fast: modifying time rather than forking
- Codrin Bălan#Artemis — Emissaries are set up with sandbox sim for downtime however they please; catches up with Tycho and Sarah Genet about how learning is going (hint: everyone’s baffled)
- Codrin Bălan#Emissary — Exchanges notes with Codrin#Artemis, hinting at swap with WAQ/AWNH
- Interlude - Ioan and May discuss how it feels to know that the talks are taking place and may be over by the time they hear about it
- Act III - manipulations fail
- Interlude - Ioan and May speculate on how True Name must be taking it locally/Pollux, suggest Codrin’s grand gesture for Dear being bringing the polycule to the DMZ, no more house on the prairie.
- Conclusion - DMZ expands, several upload to Artemis
- Interlude - Ioan and May discuss ramifications on history/mythos
- Epilogue - Tycho invests fully, ceremony a la Sasha’s eulogy