Zk | Mitzvot

Mitzvot Outline

Wherein True Name and May reconcile, and we deal with the problem of the ownership of memory. 2350, Jonas’s choice.

Mitzvot Outline

Epigraph
- Numbers 15:31: (the being cut off part is good, but this equates jonas to god, so???)
  - NRSV: Because of having despised the word of the Lord and broken his commandment, such a person shall be utterly cut off and bear the guilt.
  - Sefaria: Because it was the word of יהוה that was spurned and [God’s] commandment that was violated, that person shall be cut off—and bears the guilt.
  - Alter: For he has spurned the word of the Lord and His commandment he has violated. That person shall surely be cut off, his crime is upon him.
- Exodus 23:7: (bit heavy handed wrt TN)
  - NRSV: Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and those in the right, for I will not acquit the guilty.
  - Sefaria: Keep far from a false charge; do not bring death on those who are innocent and in the right, for I will not acquit the wrongdoer.
  - Alter: From a lying word stay far away, and the guiltless and innocent do not kill, for I will not acquit the guilty.
- Deuteronomy 23:22-24: (pretty long, but I like the “refrain from vowing” bit, also equates Jonas to God)
  - NRSV (21-23): If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not postpone fulfilling it; for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and you would incur guilt. But if you refrain from vowing, you will not incur guilt. Whatever your lips utter you must diligently perform, just as you have freely vowed to the Lord your God with your own mouth.
  - Sefaria: When you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not put off fulfilling it, for the Lord your God will require it of you, and you will have incurred guilt; whereas you incur no guilt if you refrain from vowing. You must fulfill what has crossed your lips and perform what you have voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God, having made the promise with your own mouth.
  - Alter: Should you make a fow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay fulfilling it, for the Lord your God will surely require it of you and there would be an offense in you. And you should refrain from making a vow, there will be no offense in you. The utterance of your lips you shall keep, and you shall do as you have vowed in the Lord your God, the freewill gift that you spoke with your mouth.
- Ecclesiastes 9:10:
  - Sefari: Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might,. For there is no action, no reasoning, no learning, no wisdom in Sheol, where you are going.
Conversation — Ioan’s been hanging out with TN, May is actively working on letting go, and has gotten to the point of being cordial, polite, occasionally kind
- What lives we lead we lead in memory — The grandest contribution offered by newborn immortality is the ever-living memories of the dead. Our lives become a ceaseless eulogy.
- CHAPTER Ioan 2349
  - Coffee date - Nov 2349 — Ioan and TN get coffee, which they’ve been doing about once a month or so for a few years now.
  - May’s monologue, Ioan’s critique — May’s writing a monologue, so she delivers what she has to Ioan who offers a critique. It’s about her own history, so they get to talking about her past
  - Coffee date - Dec 2349 — Ioan talks about adapting Perils for stage, gets to talking with TN about the conservatives’ side, realizes TN#Castor never told her about the Name business
  - Meet Cute — Ioan and May talk about how much they wind up talking about TN; Ioan, on a whim, heads out for a walk at Arrowhead, conversation with TN about how much they wind up talking about May; ey draws conclusions about how much they think still think about each other
- CHAPTER Debarre? 2350
  - Something innocent — something innocent to break it up a bit. Debarre and End Waking being really furry, maybe? Rebuilding the rammed earth back wall of the tent? Maybe a flood took the old one out?
  - May’s No Way 1 — Still resentful of TN but conflicted about Ioan seeming to be getting a lot out of talking with her, how much to trust her, discusses with Debarre, hints at considering EW merging down.
- CHAPTER Ioan 2350
  - Ioan’s No Way 1 — Feeling weird about being stuck in the middle, fighting against the need to fix things (walk around lake at first, then dinner out with May; they shouldn’t be homebodies just because I am)
  - Coffee date - Jan 2350 (TN’s No Way 1) — Assassination attempt (actual assassination may not be until most of the way through a few thousand words after talking with May), the fact that Ioan’s been meeting with TN’s root instance hits home
Conflict — After assassination attempt on TN, learn about TN getting pushed out by Jonas, May offers to merge down, turns into big discussion
- To hone is to trade ends for perpetual perfection — The danger in ceaseless memorialization is how close it lies to idolatry. To elevate the dead to such a status as false god (for what being that is limited to the imperfection of memory is not false?) is to ceaselessly perfect the imperfectable.
- CHAPTER Ioan 2350
  - May’s No Way 2 — Upset about the situation; that it’s politics is bringing up a lot more bad feelings about True Name
  - Clearing the house — Ioan goes to clear the house and lock down ACLs. Bounces all the assassins, meets Jonas and talks with him for a bit. He’s a dick. They still decide to stay the night at the lake with some basic camping amenities, EW comes over to help, TN is elsewhere, stomping around the lake off sending messages and such (EW brings two of things, Ioan corrects to three)
  - TN’s No Way 2 — Trying to salvage this, confronting the reality based on what Ioan passes on from Jonas (that afternoon)
  - Something innocent — TN moves in with Ioan and May through attached townhouse, trying to figure out how to work this so there’s no cat^H^H^Hskunkfights
  - Bone Town — TN talks with May about Jonas in CoS. Later, she comes up with the idea to merge down (needs to be filled out)
- CHAPTER Debarre 2350
  - May’s Wallow 1 — May comes over distraught, they talk, she suggests he merge down (has a few reasons why, but doesn’t express them super well)
  - Debarre and EW talk — May leaves, Debarre and EW get their bed back in the tent and talk about what the merge would look like and mean for both him and TN, thinks he might so long as May agrees to merge down in the future as well.
- CHAPTER Ioan 2350
  - TN’s Wallow 1 — TN moping about how things have wound up re: her calling
  - Retreat: merge — May talks about EW merging down, then he does
Apprehension — EW merges down and TN has to deal; Ioan and May have to consider ramifications
- For memory ends at the teeth of death. — And so the dead may live on in restless eternity, never knowing peace or the oblivion they so richly deserve. There is no peace in eternal memory, no release in unending remembering.
- CHAPTER Ioan 2350
  - Retreat: perspective — TN recovering, trying to reconcile her calling vs penance
  - Retreat: memories — After talking with TN about her memories from EW about Debarre, Ioan starts to feel icky about TN having May’s memory of their relationship
  - TN Choose Fear — TN says she can’t deal, pulls back from both May and Ioan, stays at Arrowhead lake with new camping knowledge (We learn about TN’s relationship)
  - May Choose Fear — May overflows (just a few days), claims the home
- CHAPTER Debarre 2350
  - Ioan chooses fear — Ioan’s really struggling with the idea of May merging, but also really wants to help, but now May’s gone, goes to stay with Douglas, who calls Debarre over for historical context
  - Something innocent — Debarre talks about his relationship with EW, plus EW’s merging down from his point of view
- CHAPTER Ioan 2350
  - Ioan’s wallow 2 — Now Ioan’s struggling, crushed at both May overflowing and TN requesting her own time alone, while ey’s the only one with both sides. Has at least one sensorium conversation with each.
  - May recovers — Visits, says hi etc, brings Ioan back home.
  - May and TN’s Wallow 2 — May’s feeling bad because she can’t help, also starting to agree with Ioan: not fair to them as a couple for TN to have those memories
  - Choose love: TN’s offer — TN comes back, few days of attempted normalcy, topic of May merging comes up, May and Ioan mention apprehensions, but TN is actually kind of for it. She needs the change, needs good as well as bad, but she’ll also have memories of their apprehensions and can work with that
  - Choose love: Ioan and May — Ioan expands on this when they’re alone, and they talk about how TN won’t just have May’s memories wholesale, she’ll have a synthesis. May agrees, thinks knowing love is only ever going to be a good thing, TN also deserves that (plus memories of resentment will open things up). May’s little lie about ‘merging down every few years’ comes up, she hasn’t in nearly two centuries
[X] Reconciliation — After the merge and TN’s collapse, she has to process two centuries of memories while Ioan and May have to process the results of the merge
- The living know that they will die / but the dead know nothing. — By our very act of knowing, of remembering, of denying our own deaths, the dead are left in limbo, for every idea’s opposite is the absence of that idea, and we can no longer grant them even that absence.
- CHAPTER Ioan 2350
  - Plan and risk — they plan together on how to make this a more deliberate thing than the merger with EW, setting up a nest in which she can process comfortably, Ioan lays in supplies, TN negotiates boundaries and how they’ll shift, May merges down
  - Grand gesture — TN processes, cries a lot, they talk about what this means (acknowledging that talking boundaries is a new thing for TN) It goes well enough that her fork quits
- CHAPTER Debarre 2350
  - Result for EW — EW and Debarre talk about how they both feel about TN’s mergers and how this could go either way for EW: he feels better about TN, but now he’s listless and unsure of how he feels about the clade given how much of his identity was bound up in rejecting TN.
  - Result for Jonas and Debarre — They talk about how this is working for Jonas, how it’s dangerous because it gives Jonas & Co an opening through May’s known weaknesses (less his because they haven’t studied him nearly so much), how EW was requested to be there. Maybe some more about reactive elements? Debarre comes home to talk with e.g: user11824?
- CHAPTER Ioan 2350
  - TN’s path forward — TN decides she’s ready to start planning the meeting, has a better idea of what she’ll become (maybe merge down? See where it goes)
  - Ioan sets the meeting up — Ey’s acting as amanuensis and as close to a neutral party as there is, and Jonas is all asmirk at this. They head out, and are greeted by Zacharias, Ioan is struggling with anger, they’re going to meet up in a week.
  - They meet, they talk, TN changes — Jonas talks about how the upcoming changes require a different kind of stability for continuity and TN just isn’t gonna cut it, gives ultimata for her continued existence. TN becomes Sasha, and now she’s all asmirk.
  - Something innocent — The aftermath. They get Serene to basically duplicate Arrowhead Lake in place of Sasha’s field, etc Sasha works on finding a new purpose, realizes it’s going to be a long process.
  - Epilogue Ioan and Sasha are drifting closer together as hinted at in 002, but this should a) look like it’s going to end happily and b) be an active and open conversation because I am completely unwilling to lose any of them.
    - To deny the end is to deny all beginnings, / and to deny beginnings is to become immortal, / and to become immortal is to repeat the past. — It has been a quarter of a millennium since eir death, and yet less than a quarter of a thousand people know eir name. Fitting, then, that I tell you the story of RJ Brewster, of the poet and the one true origin of our world, of our very own ghost in the system, of the whispers in your dreams and the one who binds us to immortality. (2365/systime 241+21)
Synopsis
Cover ideas
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Brief outline

Ioan starts hanging with True Name. Just reading with at coffee shop while she does her own work
May eventually gets to the point where she can relax around TN enough to talk cordially
turning point comes when Jonas sends assassin after TN, tells May what Jonas is doing that’s leading to her being edged out
- They run to Ioan’s, grab May, head to lake sim (now Arrowhead Lake, even though it’s kidney shaped, b/c May is a brat)
- They set up a cone of silence
- TN dully explains
- May gasp, paws to snout, etc
- Does Ioan know? Do we?
May offers to merge down
- Unclear feelings (a little bit vindictive, like she wants to prove TN’s way of life wrong, but also cracks in hate showing, empathy, respect even if don’t like)
- Turns out she kinda lied, hasn’t done so in a century or w’evs
- big conversation because then TN has memories of May being with Ioan
- calls into question how much individuation is in effect when memories are from completely different personality type (conflicts)
Ioan sends fork back to clear out house, lock down ACLs
They do
- TN forks in case it goes poorly
- May forks and quits
- original TN collapses, goes catatonic for a good 5 hours while processing
Jonas arrives and explains just what it is he’s doing
- With the impending change that allows A/V transmission between sys- and phys-side, he thinks that phys-side will expect a much more coherent experience sys-side
- TN isn’t being made an example of because she’s TN, but because in the context of the History, she’s visible as an architect, and thus there needs to be a sense that leadership is malleable, especially in light of news from Castor
- Besides, she’s kind of failing now, isn’t she? [cue shit-eating politician grin] He can assassinate her and she won’t do shit about it because that would risk the stability of Lagrange
- He already has most of her stanza on his side.
Meanwhile, May and Ioan have to process what it means that TN now has memories of their relationship
- You have the memories, but not the mental framework required to process such (May is empathetic, which TN still struggles with, but now she has the memories, one type of conflict)
- How much does individuation matter?
- What will TN’s feelings for Ioan be?
- How is ey expected to feel about her?
- This should all be done very kind and open and good conversation because that’s how the Odists do. Perhaps Sarah involved?
???
Profit
- Second meeting with Jonas, Ioan as amanuensis once more.
  - He makes it plain that she’s the sacrifice in order to ensure stability
  - She can continue living, he’s not that cruel, just not as TN anymore (call back to Demma/Yared)
- She works with May to change (into ???) both physically and emotionally, changes name to When I Dream? Or drops out of the clade a la Qoheleth?

Caduceus

Goal/Agenda
- TN: continue work on stability, even though it’s costing her, because that’s just What She Does.
- May: get all the better at loving Ioan, also working with em on writing a monologue for herself.
- Ioan: get all the better at loving May, adapting Perils for stage
Meet Cute
- Probably Ioan/May and Ioan/TN talking about how they each talk about each other a lot
No way 1
- Another talk with each:
  - May is still pretty resentful of TN
  - TN is still focused on her calling
Stuck together
- Assassination attempt forces them together
No way 2
- May pretty upset about the situation
- TN too wrapped up in trying to figure out how to salvage this
Bone town
- TN talks about Jonas w/ May
- May comes up with idea for merging down
Seed of doubt
- Wallow 1
  - May secretly in communication with EW, maybe still resenting TN, so she kind of wants him to merge down to shock her
  - TN moping about how things have wound up re: her calling
- Retreat
  - EW merges down
  - TN gains perspective from others, recoils
  - Ioan feels icky about TN having May’s memories of them together
- Choose fear
  - TN says she can’t deal, pulls back from both May and Ioan, stays at Arrowhead lake with new camping knowledge
  - May overflows (just a few days), claims the home
  - Ioan really struggling with the idea of May merging, but also really wants to help, but now May’s gone, goes to stay with Douglas, Debarre joins
- Wallow 2
  - May feels bad because she can’t help, starting to think that maybe Ioan’s right: it’s not fair to them as a couple for TN to have those memories
  - TN’s really struggling
  - Ioan’s crushed at the timing of May overflowing and TN requesting time to herself, while ey’s the only one getting both sides, has at least one sensorium conversation with each
Choose love
- Ioan thinks aloud: “Hey, TN won’t just have May’s memories wholesale, she’ll have a synthesis of herself, May, and now EW”
- May agrees, thinks that knowing love is only ever going to be a good thing for TN, and memories of her resentment will open everything up
- TN realizes that changing is probably the only real way out of all of this, and really? That’s not so bad. Besides, maybe she has a plan, though not complete enough to share yet
Plan/risk
- I don’t like this being separate, so I think they all agree on this.
- They all return home, where May helps TN set up a nest to process (way easier than with EW), Ioan lays in supplies to help out, TN negotiates boundaries and how they’ll likely shift in the process.
Grand gesture
- May merges down
- Decision to individuate/change of name
  - Change name to Sasha to disarm Jonas
  - Become spotted skunk, looks like Sasha again
Payoff
- Sasha works on finding a new purpose
Epilogue
- Depending on how gay I’m feeling, they might:
  - Live together
  - Wind up in a relationship
  - Simply part ways for Sasha to find her way in the world with May dropping her hatred

Notes

Dear laughed. “The very thing that keeps me from being anything other than a dispersionista. Jealousy is a sign of needs not met, and one of my needs — one of the clade’s needs — is that of ownership over memory. I would be furious if Praiseworthy asked me to merge with her.”

Why May wouldn’t have merged, but then her need to be the world’s best skonk to someone she can help becomes a need
Oh no, this is going to turn into a book, isn’t it
The Crux really is about the ownership of memory, because if May merges down, her memories of being in love with Ioan will be available to TN (act II/III)
- Qoheleth - origins, the problem of memory
- Toledot - structure, politics in an ungovernable system, set up TN
- Nevi’im - time, Michelle’s madness coming home to roost, TN knocked down a peg, divergence
- (Reconciliation) - ownership of memory
TN turning into the sacrificial lamb to keep news from castor smooth. Not that she isn’t willing to keep things stable, but this in combination with Jonas using her sucks (inciting incident)
Intersperse letters from LVs and Artemis
Cones of silence have ACLs, usually block sensorium messages from all but direct forks - renewed dev on System as they get extra-System A/V transmission running, new feature is blacking out cone from the outside.
Jonas knows he can assassinate TN b/c she won’t risk stability of Lagrange, already has most of her stanza on his side, minus EW and May
Jonas in third act meets up with TN w/ Ioan as Amanuensis once more, makes plain that she’s to be the sacrifice, will let her root instance live but not as TN anymore.
Bring back furry qua furry
Will A/V change the dynamic to rather than dying a natural death, you just upload? You watch your kids grow up and succeed and then they come join you? I think Jonas will pretty transparently not care, but TN cares desperately, esp after EW merges down
Ioan’s brother is Rareș Bălan, and ey still misses him lots.

acknowledgements