Zk | April May Yet Come

Because both Pollux and the fourth stanza deserve a book, too.

Cast

• April (née April May Yet Come) (she/her, human?) — an up-tree of May Then My Name, initially forked to track a relationship with an unnamed character who led her to the fourth stanza, has really leaned into “Eighth Stanza Bad Actually”, and pretty grumpy with True Name#Pollux specifically (even if irrationally), has rid herself of Odist-ness as much as possible
• Moving Ceaselessly From Creation To Creation (they/them, human or feline) — a member of the fourth stanza, who have generally drifted off to do a leftism. Moving Ceaselessly in particular has fallen in with one of those “reactive elements”, a rather punky group of hardcore anarchists (name TBD) who resent the oligarchy on Pollux
• The Triad:
  • Do I Know God When I Dream (ey/em, white fox) — creates and manages CPV, has architect bit, eir down-tree instance on Lagrange has pushed far left/non-violent, ey is stuck with how to manage CPV’s role in the power balance, shit is complicated
  • To Know One’s True Name Is To Know God (she/her, human) — information theorist and autismo, always works in pairs, has abdicated her role in ethics, only provides the information, has probably predicted everything
  • To Know God Is To Answer Unasked Questions (she/her, human) — game theorist, anxious/cynical girlie stuck in survival is ichiban mode who believes continuity comes before comfort (i.e: not being spied upon)
• Jonas ?? (he/him, human) — an instance of Jonas showing that he’s okay, really
• True Name (she/her, skunk) — True Name (Exhausted Edition™)
• Zacharias (he/him, red fox) — Actually good for True Name in this one

Outline

(Part names are the focus, not the POV character)

• Part 1 — April — Introducing April and the world of Pollux as well as the Guiding Council, post-Century Attack political situation, setting the scene
  • 001 — A picnic with a lover
  • 002 — A meeting with like-minded individuals
• Part 2 — To Know One’s True Name Is To Know God — Dealing with the story of how to get from the founding of the guiding council to anarchy, TKD thinks it is inevitable
• Part 3 — Do I Know God When I Dream — Dealing with the technological side of CPV patch and how it plays into politics, WID’s tough position
• Part 4 — To Know God Is To Answer Unasked Questions — Dealing with the origin of the issue in anxiety and cynicism, UQ is having a hard time leaving survival mode and keeps the System there with her
• Part 5 — April May Yet Come — Confronting Zacharias/True Name
  • Conclusion: CPV fix is implemented with no visible downtime. What will come? Who knows.

Initial notes

• Both LVs gets the CPV patch (Pollux POV)
  • It can be applied to half the System at a time (DMZ or pollux) because reasons
  • It’s dangerous and might well take down lives, so it’s decided to apply it to the DMZ and move people over
  • Some people rankle, saying but what if it was good, actually?
  • LVs have those with architect bits that can perform essentially phys-side work from a separate sim (micro DMZ/subSystem)
• When I Dream — CPV manager, has Architect bit (Jonas counterpoint to keep Odists in check)
• April May Yet come — (just April to start) up-tree of May following someone in the fourth stanza as resistance against what True Name became
• Thinks WID is the bad guy, turns out not to be (this WID has not been subjected to the same trauma)
• Essentially Zacharias story again, but Z (April in this case) is good and WID is bad (ish, but not really, an anarchist to keep Guiding Council in check maybe?)
• What do they stand to gain by cutting off CPV and pulling out their control over TN and Z’s power?
• To Know God is the dragon of the antagonist
• Everything April does is against TN, has to deal with “Nuclear Triad (not canon term)” first though, which means maybe poisoning information for TKG? TKG, WID, Unasked Questions, they manage CPV and this TN’s leverage
• April asks “why did you have to do the DMZ bullshit?” WID can go on about this (maybe it is a fake reason so that they can keep TN and Guiding Council limited to Pollux to keep suspicions down)
• Jonas:
  • Lagrange: prime quit, the rest work for the eighth
  • Castor: gave up on politics, bureaucrat who mostly parties
  • Pollux: Z worked with TN to minimize Jonas until he was no longer a candidate for Guiding Council.
    • Does eighth have power to depose completely?
    • What is disposition towards eighth, TN, Z?
    • Does he become the goodie?
• What is the vibe of the GC?

• TN is just fucking exhausted after I&R, hates her job, has to pretend she is still doing well

  • (does April forgive TN at the end and TN quits when she learns April is May?)

• UQ doesn’t care about good people, but is concerned with having the RIGHT people there

• TKD is the one who asks “would the System be better or worse without us?” She knows they have done good
• UQ is more cynical. If this person exists and TKD says there will be conflict, UQ is the one who concerns herself with that. She is the guillotine of the stanza. TN is the one who deals with reconciliation rather than conflict.
• UQ still a pacifist, but willing.
• TKD was horrified to realize “Oh no oh god oh no, TN has to die. If TN dies, the System gets worse bc Jonas goes nuts and we all die, so she has to — at least most of the way”.
• WID left out of the loop because ey would have staunchly objected
• UQ “this isn’t a kind conversation, it is a discussion of whether or not we let you survive as you are”. UQ holds the gun, though this is still the final option; she is not bloodthirsty, just desperate
• Who killed Qoheleth:
  • Means: WID, maybe Sight? TKD could have said “math” and gotten it; paranoid and could have come to that point
  • What if it was a positive: “if we do this, we become more known through our story”
  • TN has good girl vibes; WAQ loud and joyous; AWNH bitter at the world not being better; NAN the part of TN the part that was still learning and missed out on politicking; WIDNR maybe! Comes up with a lot of big (somewhat paranoid) ideas, talks people into it, accepts she’ll have to go through Jonas for his stash, thus Guōweī
• 2150: TN has been there a quarter of a century, paranoid: this entire world could suffer an apocalypse and we wouldn’t know “we could turn them off and say we will turn them back on (but won’t actually)”. They could also stop sending people, so we’d best be worth it, now that space age is over. They could abandon because of Secession “it’s your responsibility, you left”.
• 2160, Z getting close, that leads to less of cynicism, learning from May, not so self aware before that. Not until after that she starts to come up with this identity as softer, a bit more vulnerable, though still competent
• Odists nudged Jonas Prime into killing True Name by telling most of the truth “True Name needs to go” leaving out “but not entirely”
  • Jonas Prime going leaves more sensible Jonases, TKD has high expectations that this’ll happen
  • The rest of the eighth winds up probably earnestly befriended
  • Prime 2349: Why True Name? Delusions of grandeur/paranoia leading to “better than eighth and also they’re coming for me”; no real intent to kill, but TKD got ahead of that as she saw more rage in him
  • Z was absolutely acting because of the audience of Jonases and other Odists; good at being a complement to TN and all of her kinks and identities, developing it on his own terms, codependency of “I want her in my life so I’m going to give her what she wants”
  • Jonas never laid a hand on an Odist: most are like “they’re bitches sometimes, but I’m not gonna hurt them what the fuck”, Prime more for optics “they could leak it if I slapped one”
• WID more TN than TN, demands they try to save an instance, suggests to TN she keep up with Ioan, even suggests celebrating on Secession day

As sent to True Name!Kimmy

• Pollux. 2406.
• A woman named April is working with the fourth stanza (anarchists and leftists) to try and nudge Pollux away from the oligarchy it has become. The reader may guess (though it is not confirmed until near the end) that this is a long-diverged up-tree of May Then My Name.
• The patch to remove the CPV vulnerability has been sent from Lagrange by phys-side. Normally, it is the type of patch that could only be applied from phys-side, but for the LVs, a few people have been given an architect bit that allows them to do so from a protected side-sim similar to the DMZ. These include When I Dream of the eighth stanza and a Jonas up-tree to balance each other, plus a few others.
• There is some catch that prevents them from doing so easily. Nominally, one would think that they would shut the main area of Pollux down, apply the patch, and bring it back up. A few reasons are given, such as “there is not enough free space to provide a safe rollback state”, “We can apply it to the DMZ and move people over, swapping the population but would need permission”, etc., which makes April and her crew suspicious.
• When trying to get to True Name to demand action, they realize they have to go through a trio of cladists that essentially handle everything: To Know God (data science and information theory), When I Dream (systech), and Unasked Questions (information hygiene and game theory).
• To Know God is interesting, always working in multiple instances reconciling every few minutes, very autistic, very smart, kind of already knows everything about them, since she/they collate the information gained by the first stanza, but ultimately washes her/their hands of the ethics, just providing the information
• When I Dream is more interesting, since it turns out ey is the one who creates and manages CPV for the Ode and Jonas clades. Ey is conflicted, because eir down-tree on Lagrange has veered far left after being asked to research an alternative to CPV and refusing, and yet eir job does keep True Name and Zacharias in a stalemate/mutually assured destruction with Jonas
• Unasked Questions, however, rounds out the trio. She is more cynical, and her sole focus is survival: survive first, then we can see about making the world good. Not quite a villain, but certainly her anxiety is coloring her actions in unhealthy ways.
• She has been shaping a lot of the incoming information from Lagrange and Castor surrounding the events of Marsh, especially surrounding the fact that the fix for CPV has been provided to the LVs as well, which is what April notices. She believes the opposite of When I Dream on Lagrange: they have to keep CPV, otherwise someone will come up with something worse; instead of applying the patch right away, they should invent that thing first, then apply the patch, inventing reasons such as those above.
• April finally meets up with True Name privately, having learned all this and changed her mind, and reveals herself to be May’s up-tree, originally created to help steer someone from the fourth stanza after they veered into guerilla politics opposing True Name and Jonas.
• True Name is exhausted. She had started the Guiding Council as a service — come talk to us! We can help! — but it eventually drifted into a form of governance over time per Jonas’s plan and against her will. Now she can’t stop except through quitting, can’t leave without becoming a (potential) adversary, so that council becomes static and eternal, held in place by CPV.
• April convinces True Name to get the patch applied by When I Dream regardless and without telling Unasked Questions. There is no visible change except for a short skip of a few seconds in systime. Seeing this, Unasked Questions and Jonas hunt down True Name to ask what the fuck but find April instead. Given her role as a person of interest, they decide to just do away with her, but tada~ CPV no longer works. There goes all their schemes!
• Free of her burdens, True Name is able to retire or quit in peace (we’ve yet to decide how hard we want to go).

Questions that resulted in some answers

• What is the win state for each group? What is the win state for the reader that makes it a satisfying story? What is the win state for the authors/headmates?
• Who is villain? UQ more cynical? Survival is #1 and then we can talk about having a good world. That is her job, to do otherwise goes against that.
• Take Castor out of the equation, filtered news, April notices. UQ believes opposite of WID Lagrange, have to keep CPV otherwise someone will come up with something worse, invent something else first then remove CPV, delay patch until then by inventing reasons such as above when Castor did it within the week
• Not quite a villain, just anxiety
• Jonas is an understandable person who may do shitty things but who is not presented as terrible
• Maybe Zacharias is starting to pull more weight and covering for True Name because they are in love and also really good for each other.

Cool things

• An airlock sim that is just a forest path, you go there to walk and have a picnic, ACLs demand physical/visible form with lower size limit/swept once an hour to prevent spies, but you really do just take a walk/have a picnic that lasts longer than an hour. There is just a switch that will let you step to the actual locked-down sim (a neighborhood?) so that it looks like you are just stepping away from your picnic. Also, those who have perms can stay longer than an hour, but since the hourly sweep comes as a slow breeze stirring up leaves, no one person is swept at the same time as another. It always seems to catch those who are not in the club first. Weird~