Ioan Balan — 2325

“I uploaded as soon as I could. I think it was the 40s?”

“Which forties?”

Renee laughed. “Right, the 2140s, sorry. I can’t believe it’s been that long.”

Ioan smiled and jotted down the date. “Thanks. What led you to upload?”

“Jesus, I don’t know that I even remember anymore.” She got a far-away look in her eyes, then brightened up. “Cancer! I think, at least. I got something, and it just felt like it’d be easier to come up here than stay down there.”

“That makes sense. Not much of that to worry about here.”

“Sometimes I think it must’ve been early onset Alzheimer’s.” She laughed. “I’m just a little spacey, is all.”

“It’s easy enough to do. I get stuck thinking about whatever sometimes,” ey said.

“Oh! Yes, that’s it precisely. I get stuck writing stuff in my head, and then I forget what it was that I was doing.”

“You write music?”

She nodded. “Composer, conductor, violinist. Have you heard any of my stuff?”

“I listened to some while I was preparing for our meeting.” Ioan smiled sheepishly. “I’ll admit that much of it was over my head, but I can certainly see the skill behind it, and you play beautifully.”

“Thank you,” she said, giving a hint of a bow. “For both of them, I mean. I sometimes enjoy writing stuff that’s hard to grasp. It makes for an experience of its own. Bafflement, confusion, lack of understanding, those are all feelings, and music is supposed to toy with feelings.”

“That’s something I can appreciate, as well.”

“I’m sure you can, with your work with the Odists.” Renee grinned at eir confusion. “I read up on you, as well. They sound like a wild bunch.”

Ey laughed. “I’ll say. You were a musician before uploading, too, correct?”

“Oh, yes! One of those lucky few who got to do what she loved for a living. I think that’s why I uploaded, in the end. Getting a terminal diagnosis didn’t really make me depressed in and of itself. What got to me was the thought that that would mean I wouldn’t be able to play or write anymore. I’ve seen people go through treatment, and none of them are in any shape to play an instrument.”

“What kind of cancer? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Thyroid, I think. Yes, that was it. I noticed it when it started to get uncomfortable to hold the violin.” She made a sour face, then added, “I’m sure I sound obsessed.”

Ey waved the comment away. “I’m here to listen. Please, obsess all you like.”

Renee smiled gratefully. “There really was nothing in my life, otherwise. Writing, playing, conducting. Concert after concert after concert. No friends, no family, no other hobbies, no other addictions. What would I even do with myself without the few things in my life I loved? Really, truly loved, too. I loved my parents, but it was more of a theoretical love. I told myself I loved my husband, but when he left — I was too distracted, he said — I was actually pretty happy.”

“That’s a plenty good reason to upload, I’d say. 2140s, hmm.” Ey hunted through eir memory, back to interviews with Douglas. “That was before governments were paying people to upload. Was it expensive for you to upload?”

“Paid…?” She frowned and shook her head. “God, no. What a weird idea.”

“It got bad, phys-side. Some governments started subsidizing uploads to keep populations down and people happy.”

“Weird, weird. No, it was not expensive, but I did have to pay. Couple thousand francs CFA, I think?”

“I don’t have much reference point for that amount. I was compensated — well, my family was — to upload. In terms of what the average person made where you lived, was that a lot?”

She shrugged. “Not sure about an average person. It was about six months’ saving for me, and musicians didn’t make a ton of money.”

“There wasn’t much money in history, either,” ey said. “Now, the reason I sought you out was two-fold. First of all, one of the things you’re known for is that you found a way to send your compositions phys-side pretty early on, correct?”

“Yes. Yes! I had nearly forgotten that they pinned that on me.” She laughed, leaning back in her chair. “I didn’t really figure it out, so much as use something a publisher pointed out to me as a curiosity. It’s nigh impossible to send images and sound back through phys-side. I guess they came through all garbled, with little bits in focus and the rest a total mess.”

“As I’ve heard, too. Text appears to work okay, as something more concrete.”

“Right, just drop it in the perisystem blah blah and phys-side can pick it up. Anyway, music can be described, and that publisher said that there had been several different tools for writing sheet music as just plain old text. Want to play the note A? Write down A. B? Write down B. A rest? R. Et cetera et cetera ad nauseum. It was nothing new, but I guess no one had thought to try something like that before. I read up on one of them and made a few changes to the whole shebang, and now we can send that back and forth. Books? Sure. Math? Sure. Even scripts! Why not music?”

Ioan laughed. “Of course. That makes sense. Did your music change after you uploaded?”

“I wrote a lot more violin works,” she said, grinning. “After all, I could fork and play as many parts as I wanted. Or could afford, at least. It still cost a bit to fork back then. I also made a few instruments up here that I could only describe in order to let phys-side know how to make. Concerts were much easier to have, because schedules are easier to coordinate when you’re not restricted to just one version of yourself. Music started to drift between sys-side and phys-side — stylistically, I mean. I got some iffy reviews of stuff offline that went over pretty well here.”

“What happened to music phys-side that didn’t here?”

“They swung back towards some older styles. Minimalism was already on the rise again, when I was leaving, and I loved the stuff. All those long notes, chords that held forever or used rhythm to add variety. Phasing.” She chopped her hands unevenly in the air before herself, emphasizing the latter in a way that Ioan didn’t quite understand. “Outside the System, though, it swung back toward more romantic stuff. It was all very Mahler, very Antoniewicz, very Liu. The problem with living forever, though, is that you can keep refining your craft in whatever ways you want. I stuck around with minimalism, for the most part. People keep uploading, though, and bring their ideas with them, so I’ve tried to diversify my works a little bit, but I write what sounds good to me.”

“Is there a steady stream of composers joining? Enough to shift styles sys-side?”

“Less so, lately. If people are being paid to upload, though, it’s not too surprising. That makes it sound like things are a mess out there, and when things are a mess, people get out early, often before they’ve got the experience and knowledge that set in later in life.”

“Makes me want to take a survey of ages when folks upload through the years.” Ey scribbled a note to emself on the corner of eir paper. “Another time, though. The second reason that I wanted to interview is that you didn’t opt to join the launch. Why was that?”

She covered her face with her hands and laughed, sounding muffled. “Oh no, that’s embarrassing. I meant to, I really did. I just forgot.”

That evening, back at eir house, after ey had merged eir work-forks, after ey had sat down to dinner with May, ey finally let the memories, those countless little moments, wash over em.

“What?” the skunk asked, frowning.

“Hmm?”

“You were frowning. What happened? Getting tired of my cooking?”

“No, it’s good. Just thinking about something Dear#Castor talked about today.” Ey stabbed at a spear of asparagus. “Ey interviewed some asshole author was working on a book on both launches, but intentionally not communicating to see how they would diverge.”

“Sounds fun enough,” May said. “But, if I am thinking of the same author, it will be quite boring.”

Ioan laughed, finished chewing on the asparagus. “Fair enough. Codrin suggested that we specifically not do that, though, that it might be better to coordinate between the two launches a little better. Figure out who to interview and in what order, while the transmission time isn’t too bad.”

May shrugged. “I am up for it, if all three of our groups agree.”

“After I explained it to Codrin#Pollux, ey seemed on board. I think it might be a good idea.”

“Did either of them have any suggestions for where to look next?”

“Nothing in particular,” Ioan said around a bite of fish. “Sorry. I figure stuff like why invested in one or the other is a project that could go on forever, based on the numbers. Sure, there are only two hundred or so that only invested in the launches, but the numbers are much higher on our end.”

“You are thinking about the Secession, are you not?” May smiled. “Clever, clever.”

“Am I that transparent?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

Ey laughed. “Well, how much of the Council of Eight remains?”

“Most. I will direct one of the Codrins to find some of them.”

“But not me?”

“No. Remember I am curious to see who you find first.” They ate in silence for a bit, before May spoke up. “Do you remember what I said about Michelle?”

“That she was instrumental to the Secession, yeah. I was thinking of hunting down some Odists.”

“A good bet, that.” She looked down at her plate and said, more quietly, “Ask the first lines.”

“That was my plan. I figure they were the first forked.”

“Yes.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I am worried that you will be unhappy with what you hear.”

Ioan shrugged. “It’s history, isn’t it? Nothing to be done about it.”

She nodded, setting her fork down on her plate, though some of the food remained. “Yes, but I am worried that you will be unhappy with me.”