Marsh updates

marsh/content/010.tex

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 I was left that night with a sense of having taken a step forward. It wasn't completion by any stretch, I hadn't made any dramatic decisions, hadn't changed anything, really, except getting dinner with a polycule and talked about feelings.
 
-I \emph{had} made that small decision, though, the decision to continue to think about these feelings on Dry Grass lingering after the merge.
+I \emph{had} made that small decision, though: the decision to continue to think about these feelings on Dry Grass lingering after the merge.
 
 The immediate outcome of this was a hug and a conversation. The hug came from Dry Grass after dinner. She asked, I said yes, it was a mix of awkward and pleasant. The conversation came when I got home and spoke to Hanne.
 
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ I nodded. ``Not denying that, just that I think Tule had\ldots well, it's not th
 
 ``Except for Cress?''
 
-``Yeah, except for Cress. He thinks of it all the time. He really loves it. I'm old enough to remember the taboo around intraclade relationships, but it's also been a few decades since that fell apart, and a few years since Cress, Tule, and Dry Grass formally made it a triad, so I'm used to it by now.''
+``Yeah, except for Cress. He thinks of it all the time. He really loves it. I'm old enough to remember the taboo around intraclade relationships, but it's also been a few decades since that fell apart — I think close to six now — and a few years since Cress, Tule, and Dry Grass formally made it a triad, so I'm used to it by now.''
 
 ``Well, fair enough. Everything else was just boring, then?''
 
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ I nodded. ``Not denying that, just that I think Tule had\ldots well, it's not th
 
 She nodded.
 
-``I don't know yet. I'm still feeling kind of split on my feelings. Having memories of her as an acquaintance clashing with memories of her as a partner is still too stark a difference.'' I snorted. ``Not to mention this all feeling like a distraction from all of the other problems at hand. Worrying about what she means to me feels like energy not being spent on trying to figure out what happened.''
+``I don't know yet. I'm still kind of split on my feelings. Having memories of her as an acquaintance clashing with memories of her as a partner is still too stark a difference.'' I snorted. ``Not to mention this all feeling like a distraction from all of the other problems at hand. Worrying about what she means to me feels like energy not being spent on trying to figure out what happened.''
 
 ``You're all such workaholics.''
 
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ I spent the rest of the evening at home, lounging on the couch while Hanne slouc
 
 Sedge had gone to sleep for a bit, but as she woke up, she caught me up on news from when she'd been dozing. The politicians had drafted a letter explaining what had happened on a technological level to post on the largest of the perisystem feeds. Much of it was information that we'd gained from the AVEC session with the phys-side techs, explaining that nearly 1\% of the System had been wiped out and deemed unrecoverable, that there had been a mass crashing event, that the world was assumed stable and the issue had been patched.
 
-Conspicuously missing was any mention of a CPV attack, any mention that everyone — all 2.3 trillion of us — had crashed, or that messages were being gated and censored. Sedge explained that the last had included some gentle untruths. Rather than this being a political effort, this had been phrased as ``slowly bringing Lagrange up to full capacity''. It wasn't wrong, \emph{per se,} they really were working on bringing the feeds up to full capacity; it's just that the problem was political rather than technical.
+Conspicuously missing was any mention of CPV, any mention that everyone — all 2.3 trillion of us — had crashed, or that messages were being gated and censored. Sedge explained that the last had included some gentle untruths. Rather than this being a political effort, this had been phrased as ``slowly bringing Lagrange up to full capacity''. It wasn't wrong, \emph{per se,} they really were working on bringing the feeds up to full capacity; it's just that the problem was political rather than technical.
 
 Dry Grass, in our own conversations, explained that there were already rumors flying about, and that these were being subtly steered by Odists, Jonases, Selena, and, to a lesser extent, what she called `the opposition party', a group of clades led by Debarre who had settled into an uneasy truce with the others some decades back. Rumors were being nudged away from ``an attack by the Artemisians'' and towards ``solar flares or a power failure''.
 
@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ There was a shrug, felt rather than seen. \emph{``I guess not. It's just hard fo
 
 \emph{``I don't mean the logistics, Reed.''} I could hear the smirk in her words. \emph{``Or not} just \emph{the logistics — Sedge has been keeping me up to date, yeah — but just keeping up with the rest of you. Cress and Tule are glued to her side, which, fair enough. Sedge has found her in with the rest of the politicians through her. You've been hanging out with her through Sedge. Rush is off gallivanting with some other Odist\ldots``}
 
-I sighed, steeled myself. \emph{``Well, yeah, fair enough. I've also been spending time with her because I got pulled into being a bit of an organizer for everyone else, and because I kept Tule's merge.''}
+I sighed, steeled myself. \emph{``Well, yeah, fair enough. I've also been spending time with her because I got pulled into being a bit of management for everyone else, and because I kept Tule's merge.''}
 
 \emph{``You did? God, now} you're \emph{going to wind up glued to her side, too,``} she replied after a moment of parsing out the ramifications. She laughed, though I couldn't judge just how earnest it was. \emph{``But hey, it is what it is, right? This is why I want to keep up with you all. I'm out here trying to check in on friends, too, I don't want to wind up losing sight of the clade.''}
 
@@ -88,7 +88,7 @@ The final camp I eventually tagged `work'. These were a handful of messages, mos
 
 I read these more slowly. Where there were questions, I answered as I could or, if not, delegated to the rest of the clade or other friends. Where my own attention was requested, I gave my opinions as I had them.
 
-I'd apparently been tapped as one of the organizers, a sort of liaison between our two clades, one who, as one of the messages hinted, had his shit together in a way that the rest of the clade did not. I counted myself flattered, though it also rankled that that had become my defining feature while I felt like I was only flailing, trying to pin down emotions while kicking myself for not doing more to directly address the clade's own problems. How could I be a manager when I couldn't even figure out my own problems?
+I'd apparently been tapped as one of the organizers, a sort of liaison between those involved, one who, as one of the messages hinted, had his shit together in a way that the rest of the clade did not. I counted myself flattered, though it also rankled that that had become my defining feature while I felt like I was only flailing, trying to pin down emotions while kicking myself for not doing more to directly address the clade's own problems. How could I be a manager when I couldn't even figure out my own problems?
 
 I put a halt to that line of thinking by repeatedly telling myself that my problems were now almost universal, that the feelings around Marsh being missing were now feelings that were being felt by millions, if not billions, of people all over Lagrange.
 
@@ -122,7 +122,7 @@ Dry Grass guided the two of us through the workroom, picking up more instances a
 
 ``SERG?''
 
-``System Emergency Response Group, one of the many groups of systechs. He may request greater access to the lower levels of the System's functionalities.'' She smiled faintly, tapping one last person — Debarre, as it turned out — on the shoulder. ``I am having to ramp up on all of this quite quickly. I stepped away from my role as systech a long, \emph{long} time ago, with a long-lived up-tree taking over my role.''
+``System Emergency Response Group, one of the many, \emph{many} groups of systechs. He may request greater access to the lower levels of the System's functionalities.'' She smiled faintly, tapping one last person — Debarre, as it turned out — on the shoulder. ``I am having to ramp up on all of this quite quickly. I stepped away from my role as systech a long, \emph{long} time ago, with a long-lived up-tree taking over my role.''
 
 ``They can't merge down?''
 
@@ -142,7 +142,7 @@ I'd had little to do with sim manipulation beyond simply expanding or reducing b
 
 About twenty people had shown up. It didn't seem to be twenty clades — there were two Odists, after all, with Dry Grass and another from the eighth stanza, Why Ask Questions When The Answers Will Not Help — but the audience remained diverse. Only about half appeared to be human of some sort, with the Marshans, Odists, and Jonases accounting for most of those. I suppose it made sense, given the Odists' social circle, but that didn't quite tally with what I knew of Jonas's role in the leadership of the System. He didn't strike me as a furry.
 
-When asked over a sensorium message, Dry Grass replied, \emph{``The eighth stanza has been slowly tamping down on Jonas's role over the years. He has not been nearly as grounded as he once was. Prime quit in grand fashion some years back, and the rest are beginning to recognize that.''} She cast a slight smile in my direction, adding, \emph{``Too singularly focused, perhaps. All work and no play makes Jonas lose his fucking =.''}
+When asked over a sensorium message, Dry Grass replied, \emph{``The eighth stanza has been slowly tamping down on Jonas's role over the years. He has not been nearly as grounded as he once was. Prime quit in grand fashion some years back, and the rest have long since recognized that.''} She cast a slight smile in my direction, adding, \emph{``Too singularly focused, perhaps. All work and no play makes Jonas lose his fucking marbles.''}
 
 I stifled a laugh. It probably shouldn't have been funny, but the absurdity of the comment clashed just right with the mirrored absurdity of the situation. Probably best not to laugh in front of everyone.
 
@@ -158,7 +158,7 @@ Günay nodded. ``Yep. At least, I remember Dry Grass and Jonas and Debarre and S
 
 The systech nodded again. ``Alright.''
 
-``Reed, he/him, and Sedge, she/her, of the Marsh clade lost their root instance, a loss of 14\%. We Odists have lost 2\% of our number, including two lines of the Ode and a few long-lived up-tree instances. The Jonas clade has lost approximately 3\% of their number. Andréa C. Mason, she/her, and Harvey, he/him, of the CERES clade have been hit particularly hard,'' she said, gesturing to an anthropomorphic coyote and goat across the table, ``with Andréa's subclade losing 99.983\% of their number, totalling 69,760 instances destroyed.''
+``Reed, he/him, and Sedge, she/her, of the Marsh clade lost their root instance, a loss of 14\%. We Odists have lost 2\% of our number, including two lines of the Ode and a few long-lived up-tree instances. The Jonas clade has lost approximately 3\% of their number. Andréa C. Mason, she/her, and Harvey, he/him, of the CERES clade have been hit particularly hard,'' she said, gesturing to an anthropomorphic coyote and goat across the table, ``with Andréa's subclade losing 99.983\% of their number, totalling about 70,000 instances destroyed.''
 
 There was a long moment of silence before Günay whispered, ``What the fuck.''
 
@@ -170,13 +170,13 @@ Günay nodded, expression lingering in shock even as the Odist continued around
 
 She frowned, blinked a few times, then said cautiously, ``Okay.''
 
-``He also confirmed that this was an intentional attack on Lagrange. Some sort of widespread CPV event.''
+``He also confirmed that this was an intentional attack on Lagrange. Some sort of deliberate widespread CPV event.''
 
 Silence fell around the table. Each of us processed this in our own way, whether that was the shock from the clades who had just been roped into the meeting to the exhaustion on Dry Grass's face, the wariness on Günay's features to the almost smug satisfaction in Jonas's. He looked to be almost purring, as though springing this information on everyone present was a joy in its own right.
 
 ``So, now that NDAs are out of the picture and we've torn Mr.~Strzepek a new one,'' he continued after a moment. ``Can you tell us what happened?''
 
-``Uh\ldots hold on,'' Günay said hoarsely. She reached out of view of the AVEC recorder to grab a bottle of water, taking a long drink. She seemed to be buying time, organizing her thoughts, consulting her HUD. ``Promise you won't tear \emph{me} a new one?''
+``Uh\ldots hold on. I'm catching up too,'' Günay said hoarsely. She reached out of view of the AVEC recorder to grab a bottle of water, taking a long drink. She seemed to be buying time, organizing her thoughts, consulting her HUD. ``Promise you won't tear \emph{me} a new one?''
 
 I was caught off guard by the humor, but many of the others around the table chuckled.
 
@@ -196,7 +196,7 @@ The systech chuckled nervously, nodding. ``Well, alright. Then yeah, Jonas has i
 
 Answers Will Not Help spoke up during a break in the recitation. ``Is there more information on this collective? Are they conservatives? How tight is their integration? Do they mimic clades like the old-style collectives?''
 
-``Oh, uh, one moment, I'll look that up once I'm finished,'' Günay said. ``It goes on to say that, through investigation, members from several other collectives and some individuals besides were implicated and were also detained. During one of the System restarts between the Century Attack — as we've been calling it — and now, this information was confirmed by having an investigator sys-side fork rapidly to gather information and take action where needed. They were provided with emergency global ACLs and, once they found the perpetrator, they locked them in an unpopulated airlocked implementation of the System.''
+``Oh, uh, one moment, I'll look that up once I'm finished,'' Günay said. ``It goes on to say that, through investigation, members from some other collectives and several individuals besides were implicated and were also detained. During one of the System restarts between the Century Attack — as we've been calling it — and now, this information was confirmed by having an investigator sys-side fork rapidly to gather information and take action where needed. They were provided with emergency global ACLs and, once they found the perpetrator, they locked them in an unpopulated airlocked implementation of the System.''
 
 ``The System was restarted more than once?'' Debarre asked, taken aback.
 
@@ -218,9 +218,9 @@ Both forked, and the up-tree instances stepped around the table to face each oth
 
 Answers Will Not Help stiffened where she stood, teeth clenched.
 
-Explaining as he unfolded the knife with a snick, Jonas Fa gestured expansively around the room. ``So, if you've read any of the scandalous works about us, you can probably guess that we all have CPV mixed up for each other. It's nothing as grand as the stories make it sound like, though; just a way for us to keep each other in check and occasionally play around.''
+Explaining as he unfolded the knife with a snick, Jonas Fa gestured expansively around the room. ``So, if you've read any of the scandalous works about us, you can probably guess that we all have CPV mixed up for each other. It's nothing as grand as the stories make it sound like, though; just a way for us to keep each other in check and occasionally\ldots play around.''
 
-Before anyone had a chance to ask any further questions, he swiped out with the knife, catching Answers Will Not Help in the cheek, leaving a gash that quickly welled up with blood. There was no noise from the Odist for a few moments before she finally let out a shaky breath.
+Before anyone had a chance to ask any further questions, he swiped out with the knife, catching Answers Will Not Help in the cheek, leaving a gash that quickly welled up with blood. There was no noise from the Odist for a few moments before she finally let out a shaky sigh.
 
 There was, notably, no crashing. She simply dabbed at her cheek, inspected the blood on her fingertips, grinned wildly to Jonas, and said, ``Oh, we are \emph{so} fucked,'' and then quit, followed shortly by the second Jonas.
 
@@ -262,7 +262,7 @@ An uncomfortable murmur interrupted her.
 
 Dry Grass smiled kindly. ``Of course, Günay. What did they say in return?''
 
-``To us? A lot of panicked messages requesting as many updates we could give them. Of course, by then, the messages were eight months out of date, and we'd been sending them hourly updates on the status of Lagrange for quite a while. They were broken down into buckets based on content: personal, political, technical, and vague threats.'' She smiled wryly. ``I only really know all of that because I was privy to the technical bucket. Systechs on both of the LVs teamed up and started throwing ideas at us as fast as they could. They were mostly not any help, given the delay, but some of them had good ideas — especially the Artemisians. They brought casualties down from 15\%.''
+``To us? A lot of panicked messages requesting as many updates we could give them. Of course, by then, the messages were eight months out of date, and we'd been sending them hourly updates on the status of Lagrange for quite a while. They were broken down into buckets based on content: personal, political, technical, and vague threats.'' She smiled wryly. ``I only really know all of that because I was privy to the technical bucket. Systechs on both of the LVs teamed up and started throwing ideas at us as fast as they could. They were mostly not any help, given the delay, but some of them were useful — especially the Artemisians. They brought casualties down from 15\%.''
 
 I started to do the math in my head, but Harvey blurted out, ``345 \emph{billion!} Holy shit! You've gotta be fucking kidding me.''
 
@@ -280,7 +280,7 @@ We waited as patiently as we could while the systech tallied up various changes.
 
 \emph{``That's the one that got a bunch of your cocladists, right?''} I asked.
 
-\emph{``Well, `got' is perhaps not a great word for it. Qoheleth was assassinated using CPV loaded into a syringe and a hundred or so instances of Sasha, back when she was True Name, were murdered by Jonas Prime,''} she sent. \emph{``But also it is something that some of us have used intentionally for various reasons. Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, our very weird instance artist, included it quite often in its exhibitions, and What Gifts We Give We Give In Death tried using it in some games they were designing, but it was seen as too transgressive and was roundly shut down.''}
+\emph{``Well, `got' is perhaps not a great word for it. Qoheleth was assassinated using CPV loaded into a syringe and a hundred or so instances of Sasha, back when she was True Name, were murdered by Jonas Prime,''} she sent. \emph{``But also it is something that some of us have used intentionally for various reasons. Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, our very weird instance artist, included it quite often in its exhibitions, and What Gifts We Give We Give In Death tried using it in some games they were designing, but it was seen as too transgressive and was roundly shut down. Answers Will Not Help seemed\ldots not} too \emph{put out by that little display''}
 
 Sedge stifled a giggle beside me. \emph{``You guys are} all \emph{weird.''}
 
@@ -294,7 +294,7 @@ She held up her hands defensively. ``Hey, like I said, it's just a change, and I
 
 ``I am sorry, Günay,'' Dry Grass said. ``You are right that that is a conversation for another time. Tell us about these ACL improvements and merging improvements. Those are likely to be the most relevant to everyone here.''
 
-``Right,'' she said, frowning. ``Well, the ACL improvements allow locking cladists within sims. We needed this to contain the perpetrator, but left it in place. We came up with a suggested protocol with the ethics committee, though, that would mean a two step approval process — phys-side and sys-side — as well as a mandatory waiting period. It's disabled for now, but we can re-enable it whenever.
+``Right,'' she said, frowning. ``Well, the ACL improvements allow locking cladists within sims. We needed this to contain the perpetrator as quickly as possible, but left it in place. We came up with a suggested protocol with the ethics committee, though, that would mean a two step approval process — phys-side and sys-side — as well as a mandatory waiting period. It's disabled for now, but we can re-enable it whenever.
 
 ``The merge improvements involve finer-grained conflict management, which is more just an efficiency thing; we're told nothing changed subjectively. We also enabled cross-tree merging.''
 
@@ -330,6 +330,8 @@ Once we'd made our goodbyes and the AVEC call had ended, we sat in silence for n
 
 Laughter around the table.
 
-``Holy shit, indeed, love,'' Dry Grass said, scooting her chair closer to rest her head on Sedge's shoulder. ``I need a fucking nap.''
+``Holy shit, indeed, my dear,'' Dry Grass said, scooting her chair closer to rest her head on Sedge's shoulder. ``I need a fucking nap.''
+
+Sedge laughed and patted her shoulder amiably. ``You and me both.''
 
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