46 lines
5.3 KiB
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46 lines
5.3 KiB
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<title>ZK | Ioan Balan --- 2305</title>
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<h1>Zk | Ioan Balan --- 2305</h1>
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<p><span class="tag">writing</span> <span class="tag">novel</span> <span class="tag">chapter</span> <span class="tag">fiction</span> <span class="tag">scifi</span> <span class="tag">post-self</span> <span class="tag">qoheleth</span></p>
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<p>Ioan Balan awoke to an urgent message.</p>
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<p>Ey didn't really like these, the sensorium messages. Ey liked paper messages. letters. Notes. Missives. Scrawled signatures and careful handwriting.</p>
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<p>Ey mostly just liked paper, if ey was honest. Always accruing more paper and pens. Eir friends thought it creepy. Paper messages, rich messages attached to paper that played on its surface, ones that messed with the reader's sensorium; ey sent them all.</p>
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<p>But to have one that just barged in on eir vision and endocrine system like this made em quite anxious. This one included a tiny jolt of adrenaline as an alert. Waking up with that jolt to have a partial sensory takeover felt rude.</p>
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<p>The benefit was that ey didn't have to get out of bed to deal with it.</p>
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<p>The opacity on the message was turned up high so that even in eir dark room with eir eyes closed (and heart still pounding), ey could see the fox, bipedal, dressed sharply. It was sitting on a fairly plain wooden chair situated in an empty room. The room had wood floors the same color as the chair. Something light, like hickory or pine. The walls were concrete where they weren't glass. Outside the glass was a sere shortgrass prairie, a cloudy day.</p>
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<p>The combination of the fox's white fur, glistening and iridescent, combined with the room and landscape was all painfully postmodern. Ey didn't consider emself much of a pomophobe, but this was intense, to say the least.</p>
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<p><em>"Hi Mx Balan,"</em> the fox was saying. It seemed to speak in italics, though how, Ioan could not say. A sense. <em>"I have a proposition for you."</em></p>
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<p>Ioan grunted. The message was recorded, thank goodness. No interaction.</p>
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<p><em>"My name is Dear, Also, The Tree Was Felled --- or just Dear --- and I'm a member of the Ode clade. I'm an artist--"</em> The word seemed to come with a tone of distaste. <em>"--and performer. I'm not just telling you this to, ah, toot my own horn, I believe the phrase is, but to underline the fact that I'm woefully unprepared for the situation at hand."</em></p>
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<p>The fox smiled, looking tired, and continued. <em>"I need some help finding someone. Someone that doesn't want to be found. It's personally important, but also potentially damaging to the image of our entire clade."</em></p>
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<p>Ioan furrowed eir brow.</p>
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<p><em>"The person has information, a name, that they have supposedly shared. We --- the other members of my clade and myself --- don't precisely know if they actually did, unfortunately, we just have word from others close to the clade that someone knew and said The Name."</em> Ioan could hear the capital letters.</p>
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<p><em>"I'm sorry, I'm getting sidetracked by details."</em> The fox shook it's head, ears flopping from side to side. <em>"I try to be prepared for conversations and messages like this, but I'm a little worked up, excited, I guess. Can we meet?"</em> It listed some coordinates. <em>"Even if only to talk. Even if you're not interested, I'd still like to meet you. You seem neat."</em></p>
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<p>The message ended.</p>
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<p>Ioan lay in bed, thinking. It was still about an hour before ey had to get up, and ey was loath to start the day before ey had to. Ey tried eir best to sleep for another ten minutes, at least, but eir mind kept slipping back to Dear's request.</p>
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<p><em>Why me?</em> ey asked the backs of eir closed eyelids. <em>Why hire a writer who fancies emself a historian as a PI?</em></p>
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<p>Ey spent a few minutes researching the public basics on Dear. Pronouns (it/its), species (fennec fox), age (old --- the Ode clade was an early adopter), some of its art. Really out there stuff. No further hints as to why it would need em in particular.</p>
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<p>With still a half hour to go before eir alarm, Ioan slipped out of bed, stood, stretched. The least ey could do was get a shower and some coffee. If there were any reason that the founders of the system had included sensoria in the works it must have been for those.</p>
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<p>Those done and clothes donned --- ey knew ey could never out-natty the fox, so the usual faux-academia garb it was --- ey penned Dear a short note with a time. If it was day in that sim, or even late afternoon, it should get the note before dinner or bed.</p>
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<p><em>Besides,</em> ey thought. <em>Maybe it will get the fox to stop using sensorium messages.</em></p>
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<p>No luck. Less than thirty seconds later, Ioan received a sensorium ping of acknowledgment, a shiver up eir spine along.</p>
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<p>Ey forked and sent the copy of emself, #c1494bf, out to the meeting. Meanwhile, ey'd get some food, perhaps work on eir current project.</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2020-04-11</p>
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