Ioan Bălan — 2326

“We’re nearing the point of this project where we’re considering pulling together all of our notes. We have quite a bit already, certainly enough for an overview, and if we decide to do a second volume as a deeper dive, we can consider that later.” Ioan smiled to the skunk across the table from em, one ey had so many reasons to fear. “So this interview is mostly meant to wrap everything up, fill in a few gaps here and there. Does that sound alright?”

“Of course,” True Name said, smiling. “I have read over the summary that you sent me, and it looks fairly complete, but I will answer any question you ask.”

Ioan collected eir thoughts for a moment, testing eir pen’s nib against the paper. “Right. Okay. The first thing I’d like to ask is that, well, you’ve given us a good bit of information about your why, how, and when for many of the things that you did around Secession and Launch. I think we’ve got an idea of what, too, but it seems almost too big to grasp at a glance, so I’d like to know who all was involved.

“I am assuming you mean in more detail than just us and the Jonas clade, yes?” She tilted her head when Ioan nodded, apparently considering the best way to answer. “I, like Jonas Prime did for his clade, acted as the point of contact for the Ode clade in this endeavor. However, Jonas’s methods tended toward that of a hydra: he coordinated with all of his instances working on various aspects only as much as was required to keep them from stepping on each other’s toes.

“I was much more akin to the central nervous system for the Odists. The Bălan clade has interviewed Why Ask Questions, End Waking, and May Then My Name, but the entirety of my stanza was working for me at one point or another–“

“May is in your stanza,” Ioan said, frowning.

True Name winked, then continued, “But there were several others from other stanzas, as well. Praiseworthy and Qoheleth, yes, but many of the first lines and several of their initial forks helped out quite a bit. Even Hammered Silver, in her own way, helped. She kept Michelle company, helped her throughout the long years, They grew quite close, and through her, I was able to accomplish what I required from Michelle.”

“Is that the difference between the liberal and conservative elements of the clade? The ones who were under your employ and aligned to it, and those who weren’t?”

The skunk laughed openly. “They are silly names, are they not? There are hardly categories so neat, Ioan. We cannot even make a spectrum, can we? All of us had our different jobs, as mentioned. Praiseworthy provided her services as propagandist between productions. Qoheleth rewrote the memories of the System itself, and though he suffered for it, he was good at his job. Hammered Silver sat with Michelle, Why Ask Questions and Answers Will Not Help managed the phys- and sys-side politics, and End Waking kept his fingers in the finances. That is hardly a spectrum from liberal to conservative, is it?”

Ioan shrugged, waited for her to continue.

“As you will,” she said, grinning. “If there is to be a divide between liberals and conservatives, then, it must be in the scale of their thoughts, of their actions. Those who you and Dear and, who knows, perhaps even May Then My Name call conservatives think on the scale of centuries. Their thoughts are bound up at the level of species, their actions work on a global scale. More than a global scale, for the System is not on the globe, and the LVs are well on their way out of the solar system now, are they not?”

“And the liberals think too small?” Ey shook eir head, adding, “I guess that’s a value judgement. The liberals think smaller? Like on the individual scale?”

“Oh, you had it right the first time. The liberals think too small. They are completely welcome to, of course. Take Dear and Serene, for instance. It is in no way wrong for them to think about the work that they do. They consider the ways in which sims and instances affect those that interact with them, and then they play on those effects like a finely tuned instrument. It speaks to a level of…how should I put this? It bespeaks a showmanship that I — that Michelle and the owner of the Name, for that matter — could not hope to achieve. They are the consummate performers.

“But what can they do with that? What use do they believe they are to the System? I do not mean that in a simple utilitarian sense, or at least not only in that sense, but I wonder if they, as artists, consider the end goals of their work. Do not let Dear tell you otherwise, it is an artist, and a very fine one, but all its art accomplishes is all any art accomplishes. It is transgressive without being subversive. It does not move the population to greater goals.”

“Isn’t that okay though? For an artist, I mean. Art doesn’t always have to inspire our societies to better themselves or our societies, does it?”

“Of course not,” True Name said, smiling. “Art can be all of those things and still be fine. It can be an endeavor that adds to the world around it, even if it does not push it to realize greater capabilities. That is the opposing view to the conservatives. The names do not fit, do you see? The conservative elements of the Ode clade are those who steer and guide and lead and always hunt for greater potential. The liberal elements of the Ode clade are the artists dropped within, the storytellers, the landscape artists, the lovers and dancers and actors. The conservatives forge, the liberals hone. Both of us live wholly in the work that we have before us, and both of us love what we do.”

Ioan’s hand brushed across eir page in an even cadence as she spoke, and when ey reached the end of the line, ey paused, formulating eir next question. “Where did all of this come from?”

“Can you expand on that?”

“This,” ey said, waving eir hand at True Name, at the page. “To hear tell from the other Odists, this work began essentially as soon as you were forked off from Michelle. Each of you seemed to individuate immediately, whereas it took Codrin far longer to do so. Years, even. Even after the name change, after ey moved in with Dear and its partner, ey still could have just as easily been a Ioan. From the way it sounds, you ceased being Michelle as soon as you were instantiated. Where did that come from?”

The skunk looked thoughtful for a moment, then closed her eyes. The look of concentration on her face grew, and then, for a few short seconds, she became like Michelle. Ey saw, for the first time in years, that wavering between Michelle and Sasha, those waves of skunk/human/skunk/human/skunk that washed over her form, and always on her face, that look of exhaustion, of the concentration needed to hold it together.

And as True Name focused on recalling that bit of Michelle that lingered from the past, she forked off copy after copy of herself, each instance lasting only a fraction of a second, but throughout the display, Ioan saw the ways in which they differed. First, a Michelle would flick into existence, and then a Sasha. First, a skunk that looked happy, then a human that looked to be in agony. Always in flux, always tied to whatever it was that True Name must have been experiencing at that point.

And then, it was over.

The skunk puffed out a pent-up breath, laughing and fanning her face with a paw. “That was way fucking harder than I remember it being. I have not tried that trick in decades.”

Ioan blinked, frowned. “You differ because of when it was that Michelle forked?”

“That is part of it,” True Name said, catching her breath. “I read your notes, do you remember what it was that Douglas said about having a fever?”

Ey prowled through the exo ey had devoted to this project, rifling through files of memories, then murmured quietly, “I had a very high fever, and when it was at its worst, I felt as though I was being offered a chance to peek behind a curtain, or at least see the shadows moving around backstage beneath the hem of it.”

“Do you imagine that what Michelle was feeling at any time, or at least on any particularly bad day, was any different?” Her expression darkened almost imperceptibly. “When you are lost, when you are locked in your mirrored cage, any cord that tied a thought to reality or your concept of self is slowly severed. Michelle was lucky. She was in there for sixteen hours, she was told, and she still came out like this. Many of her thoughts remained tethered, enough for her to continue to live and exist in the world for a little while, but the longer she lived, the more of those frayed cords began to break, and she was not just, as Douglas put it, “granted a glimpse of some thinner reality”, but she found herself stuck there.

“When she forked, wherever she was, that was what we became. The state of her mind in flux, her body in flux, became the state that led to us. Perhaps I was pinned to a memory, however fleeting, of the political systems that led to her getting lost. Perhaps Praiseworthy was pinned to memories of theatre.”

Ioan scribbled furiously to keep up, as the skunk’s language flowed more easily and became more flowery.

“But this is just speculation, Mx. Bălan. We do not know why we differ so much, but we do, and that is the best guess we have. The evidence you have just seen is all we have to back it up, but you have seen what was borne from it. All of the stanzas have their role, and mine just happens to be that of politics. We influence people. It is just what we do.”

“Which is why your stanza was able to dive so easily into their associated tasks. They had your memories, of course, but they also had that same drive.”

She beamed at em. “Precisely. I will not enumerate them all, but you can, if you like, think of them as a microcosm of that conservative-liberal spectrum, with me at the conservative end, working on the scale of centuries and populations, and your May Then My Name at the other, liberal end.”

“What did May do? What was her task?”

“That is for her to tell.”

“No, True Name. You’re here, it’s your story. You promised me that you’d expand on the question of who, and I want you to live up to that promise now.” Ey was surprised at the anger in eir own voice. There was a tightness in eir chest, an anxiety stemming from the answer that hovered over the table, there in eir house. Eir and May’s house, now. May, who had left on some drummed up errand as soon as True Name had arrived, a look of what ey could only describe as torment on her face. Ey knew ey should ask her, rather than True Name, and yet… “What did May do?”

She stood from her chair and walked around the corner of the table to where ey remained stubbornly seated. “If you do not wish to be unhappy with the answers to difficult questions, Ioan,” she said, tousling eir hair. “Then you do not need to ask them.”

She smiled down to em, and in that smile was a plastic kindness, and in that kindness was a loathing ey could not fathom, and then she quit.