move from work dir

neviim/content/ioan/001.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+\hypertarget{ioan-bux103lan-2346}{%
+\chapter{Ioan Bălan — 2346}}
+\markboth{Ioan Bălan — 2346}{}
+
+\begin{center}
+\emph{Convergence T-plus 9 days, 4 hours, 48 minutes}\\
+\emph{(Castor--Lagrange transmission delay: 30 days, 14 hours, 36 minutes)}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent ``I never wanted this. I never wanted any of this!'' the skunk shouted, stamping her foot and jabbing her finger toward em. ``You talk about how much I mean to you, how much this place means, and then what? Nothing ever comes of it.''
+
+``What the hell \emph{is} supposed to come of it?'' Ey stood quickly enough to knock the chair back onto the ground, all but lunging toward her. She stood easily a head shorter than em, but, having decided that this wasn't menacing enough, ey forked two times in quick succession, three of em advancing on her.
+
+Rather than quail under the threat or simply run away, she stood up straighter, arms crossed, her expression proud and defiant. ``Really? Are you \emph{really} sure that you need all this to make your point?''
+
+Ey—all three of em—faltered in eir advance as the skunk continued.
+
+``I never, \emph{ever} should have stayed around here,'' she said, voice suddenly frigid. ``And I certainly never should have stayed with an asshole like you.''
+
+With the slam of the door still ringing in the air, eir two forks quit as ey stumbled back to the chair, slowly righted it, sat down heavily, and buried eir face in eir hands.
+
+Ioan made sure to stay still even as the lights came down and the applause began, holding eir position all the way until the noise of the audience was muffled by the curtain. Ey finally sat back in the chair, stretching eir arms up and taking a few long breaths.
+
+A pair of soft, fur-covered arms draping over eir shoulders and an equally soft-furred cheek pressing against eir own brought em out of eir reverie, if reverie it was. Ey tilted eir head against her cheek and held her arms to eir front.
+
+``Hey asshole,'' the skunk said, echoing the epithet from a minute before.
+
+``Hi May.'' Ey grinned, turning eir head enough to get at least a sidelong glance at her. ``Well done on that `ever'. Thought you were going to punch me in the stomach or something.''
+
+She nipped at eir shoulder, letting em feel sharp teeth even through the thick fabric of the costume, before standing up. ``That would be out of character, my dear. Both for my character and me. Might be fun sometime, though.''
+
+They made their way backstage, letting the hands—several of whom were also them—deal with the scene change. Backstage, then back behind even that to their dressing room, where they were each able to get straightened up in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror.
+
+As always, when coming face to face with emself in costume, the feeling of being someone else all but disappeared, and ey marveled at the fact that ey'd even let May talk em into this however many years ago. If there was one thing that ey was, it was a historian, right? It was a writer. An investigative journalist, right? Ey was in no way a stage actor, right?
+
+But the Ioan that stared back at em, one skinny almost to the point of gaunt, one with sallow skin and sunken eyes, one taller than usual, was proof of the opposite. It had taken em at least a year to really, truly master the art of forking over and over to carefully modify one's appearance. It felt counter to so many instincts, and even still, ey left a Ioan back home, unchanged from the view of emself that felt most at home, just to ensure that there remained some tie to that. May had chided em for this, but ey couldn't let go entirely.
+
+``I do not know why you decided to write a scene where I have to yell at you,'' the skunk said, bumping her shoulder against eirs. ``Love the story, hate the scene.''
+
+``Hey, we've had our arguments.''
+
+``Well, yes, but I do not like those, either, so that is not a point in its favor.'' She grinned, poked em in the side with a dull claw. ``And never during any of them have I yelled at you or called you an asshole.''
+
+Ey laughed and reached up to tug at one of her ears. ``Well now's your--''
+
+Ey froze.
+
+The longer ey held still like that, the deeper May's frown grew, the more her tail twitched this way and that in agitation. Still, she let the silence be and didn't touch em, unwilling to interrupt what must be a rather long sensorium message.
+
+Finally, ey sagged, rubbing eir hands over eir face. ``Uh, sorry. Can you send a fork back home? I'm going to have to try and push that out of mind for the time being, and I don't want both of us to be in that state.''
+
+The skunk nodded and forked off a new May, then stepped from the sim. The remaining instance sighed and slipped her arms around eir middle. ``You cannot leave me totally in the dark, my dear, or I will be distracted worrying about something I do not know. Can you at least tell me something so that I do not lose my fucking mind?''
+
+Ioan grinned and returned the hug, resting eir chin atop her head. ``Dreamer Module,'' ey mumbled. ``That enough for you?''
+
+Back at the house, the root instance of Ioan was walking circles around the dining room table, `pacing holes in the rug' as May would say.
+
+Did say, it turned out, when she first entered.
+
+``Sorry.'' Ey pulled out a chair at the table and sat, but did so very carefully, deliberately trying to avoid simply wanting to get up and pace all the more. ``News from Castor.''
+
+At that, her ears perked and she pulled out the chair beside em. ``Alright, spill it.''
+
+``Someone picked up the signal from the Dreamer Module. They say they understand the bit about how to use the Ansible and an astronomer—Tycho Brahe, who Codrin interviewed for the \emph{History}—gave them permission to without thinking.''
+
+The skunk frowned, sitting up straighter in her chair. ``So aliens are going to upload to Castor?''
+
+``It sounded like they were forty days out from their closest approach. Codrin didn't know when exactly the upload window was.'' Ey frowned as ey picked apart the remaining bits of message. ``Apparently they've named the remote ship Artemis and the aliens Artemisians. That's about all I received, other than Tycho said `yes' and Codrin will be working with him on it.''
+
+``I am assuming more will be coming soon, knowing you and Codrin.'' She doodled on the surface of the table with a blunt claw. ``I am also assuming that other Odists are not far behind in meddling. How long ago did this happen?''
+
+Ioan squinted, then shrugged and just brushed eir hand along the table, a sheet of paper unrolling from nothing with the message itself written on it. Ey unlocked the clade-eyes-only ACLs and handed this to May, who read carefully.
+
+``So, thirty-ish days ago. Nothing we can do but wait for further messages. Anything we send back will be two months too late.'' She hesitated, set the paper down, and looked at em searchingly. ``What do you make of the second half, though?''
+
+``I'm still trying to process that.''
+
+``Do you not feel the same?'' She reached out a paw to take one of eir hands in her own. ``You got into theatre after all, did you not? You are not doing much in the way of history these days, other than the occasional paper. Did you really feel as though you had been sucked into all those projects with no input?''
+
+Ey let her lace her fingers with eirs as ey thought. Words were a long time coming. ``A little, I suppose, but this bit about feeling a lack of agency is new to me. I don't know that I ever felt that strongly about being dragged along or anything.''
+
+``Perhaps it is Dear.''
+
+``How do you mean?''
+
+She squeezed eir fingers between her own. ``I think the trio settled into a life of their own on Castor, but you know Dear. It is intensely focused on these big dramatic gestures. And before you say it, I am focused on drama, but rarely are my actions in life dramatic. I am happy with the life we have built. I am happy living with you and loving you and pushing you into writing increasingly weird plays.''
+
+Ey laughed, lifting her paw to kiss her knuckles. ``Well, sure. You got me to settle down, I guess. I don't think Dear is capable of settling down that much, but its patterns are familiar. It will do as it does and drag others with it.''
+
+``I hope you do not resent me for that,'' she said, tapping at eir chin with a finger. ``I do not get the impression that you are unhappy, my dear, but I occasionally worry that your life now is not entirely the one that you wished to build.''
+
+``I have no idea. I don't think I had any real plans for building a life.'' Ey sighed. ``Which I guess is kind of where ey's coming from. Without direction, any influence feels like getting yanked around. I felt yanked around by True Name shoving you into my life, though I love you dearly now that you're here.''
+
+May beamed happily at this, and ey was reminded of eir promise to emself to say that more often.
+
+``Do you think ey will be able to take greater control of eir life?'' she asked. ``You still occasionally get stuck, but I was surprised when you were the one who asked me how to write a script.''
+
+``Well, only because you wouldn't shut up about how bad the one you had was.'' Ey rolled eir eyes. ``Skunks are so annoying. Ow!''
+
+``If you call me annoying again, I will pinch you again. A third time will earn you a bite.'' She grinned, teeth sharp. ``All the same. I am glad that you are happy. I do wish we were closer to Castor, though, so that you and Codrin could have an actual conversation about this. You may not be able to respond much about the Artemisians, but perhaps you could explain some of your thoughts on agency.''
+
+Ey nodded. ``I'll do that, yeah. Any suggestions?''
+
+``Ey could ask \#Pollux,'' she said thoughtfully. ``Perhaps ey could do a grand gesture and surprise Dear. I have loved it every time that you have surprised me. I do not think that Codrin\#Castor has learned how to do that yet.''
+
+``I'm not sure I know how to teach someone how to do grand gestures.''
+
+She tugged at eir fingers. ``You have become a playwright and performer, my dear, do not sell yourself short. Besides, to hear Dear tell it, ey is not incapable. The name thing, of course. The surprise dinner a few years back. The forking stuff for its gallery show. Ey is just shy, perhaps.''
+
+``It's a Bălan thing,'' ey said.
+
+``And it is our job as Odists to fuck with you until you break out of it. I have faith in em, just as I had faith in you.'' She slid the paper back across the table to em. ``You just need to pass that on.''

neviim/content/ioan/002.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+\hypertarget{ioan-bux103lan-2346}{%
+\chapter{Ioan Bălan — 2346}}
+\markboth{Ioan Bălan — 2346}{}
+
+\begin{quote}
+\emph{Convergence T-plus 10 days, 2 hours, 3 minutes}\\
+\emph{(Castor--Lagrange transmission delay: 30 days, 14 hours, 36 minutes)}
+\end{quote}
+
+\noindent Ioan knew that it would be quite a while yet before eir and May's forks merged back down. Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself, the director of the play, was quite strict but she also drank like a fish and clung jealously to some remnant of productions she'd remembered from more than two centuries ago, so it had become a comfortable rhythm for Ioan, May, and any other actors who wished to join to follow her to a pub that served strong drinks and greasy food.
+
+Ey had been planning on a simple dinner on eir own, perhaps catching up on some reading, but with this knowledge and the fact that May was now here with em, the plan evolved into something more involved. Staying inside didn't feel right. Something about the news had them in mind of stars, in mind of looking up to the sky, so they wound up grilling burgers out on the patio and talking as they watched the stars come out one by one, sitting there in the house's backyard.
+
+The burgers had long since been finished and the grill long since put away when Ioan felt an automated sensorium ping of someone entering the house, followed shortly by a real-time message from who had just arrived.
+
+She did not give em time to react, nor even to stand. Ey had only managed to turn to look to the door opening out to the patio before the visitor stepped out onto the concrete, lit only by the string of lights tucked beneath the overhanging deck.
+
+``I\ldots what? True Name?''
+
+She bowed quickly before holding her paws up in a disarming gesture. ``Ioan, May Then My Name. I apologize for the brusque entry, but I believe we need to talk.''
+
+May growled, pushing herself to her feet. ``I will leave you to it.''
+
+Ey had only ever seen eir partner furious on a scant handful of occasions, but now ey could add one more to the list. Her teeth were bared, tail bristled out, and hiked up, paws bunched up into fists. In the two decades since the research and publication of \emph{On the Origin of Our World}, May's view of her down-tree instances had dropped precipitously, and all but one of those moments of fury had been triggered by her own clade.
+
+``May Then My Name, please,'' True Name said, clasping her paws before her and bowing once again, lower this time. She sounded contrite, small. ``I know that you do not hold me in high regard, but all the same, I would prefer if you stayed, as I am assuming that you have both received the same news.''
+
+May hesitated, frowned, and crossed her arms, but did not move to leave.
+
+``Thank you,'' the other skunk said, straightening up and brushing her paws down her blouse, a nervous gesture ey had never seen on one who always looked so in control. ``I will not take up too much of your time, as there is much to be done. Even though there are several of me already at work and this is my only task, my mind is still torn in many directions. May we please step inside where there is more light?''
+
+Ioan looked up to May, who shrugged. She still looked as though she would like to either quit or bounce True Name from the sim entirely.
+
+Once they were seated inside, True Name stared off into space for a moment, and Ioan imagined her rifling through several exocortices at once, digging out a collection of files and memories.
+
+``Alright,'' she said, shaking her head to focus. ``First of all, may I see the message that you have received from Codrin\#Castor?''
+
+``There was some content that was clade eyes only, but I'll share the first half with you.''
+
+``And there is nothing in the second half that pertains to Artemis?''
+
+Ey shook eir head, drawing the first half of the message out from the tabletop as a bit of foolscap which ey handed over. ``Codrin had questions on careers. Nothing pertinent.''
+
+The skunk skimmed the message rapidly while Ioan and May looked on. Eir partner still held fury in her eyes. Ey only felt tired.
+
+``Alright, this is much the same information that we received earlier today.'' True Name folded the slip of paper and slid it into a pocket in her slacks. ``I am sure that you can guess why I have arrived in such a rush, but to be clear, True Name\#Castor learned that Codrin had sent you this update. Ey was free to do so, but\ldots well, it is our job to consider information security and hygiene, so she sent us an additional message immediately upon learning of this.''
+
+``And you are here to shut us up,'' May said.
+
+True Name lowered her gaze. ``I am here only to provide suggestions as to that same security and hygiene.''
+
+Ioan marveled at the sight of the skunk. She had always seemed so proud and in control, and now she looked to be on the verge of panic. She looked, of all things, frightened.
+
+``Okay,'' ey said. ``But didn't you and Jonas plan for this? Run simulations?''
+
+``We did, yes. We even ran the fact that it might be you who received the information through our models,'' she said, nodding to em.
+
+``But you did not count on me,'' May said.
+
+There was a tight silence that lingered a long few seconds before True Name nodded. ``We did not count on you. We did not count on \emph{both} of you. We did not count on\ldots{}'' She took a shaky breath, recomposed herself, and continued. ``We did not count on what changes the dynamic between you two would lead to.''
+
+``Your models included a historian, you mean,'' Ioan said. ``And now you also have one of your own. You've got two actors, one of whom was purpose-built by you specifically to influence others.''
+
+She looked stricken, gaze jumping between em and May. ``When one has lived so long with a certain set of expectations, having them subverted is a shock. May Then My Name, I do not begrudge you your feelings toward me. It is not my goal to win you back or anything like that; all I can do is admit my shortcomings and try to do better by you, even if that is, as you have requested, leaving you be. I truly am happy for you—for both of you—as you have accomplished something that I never could, that Michelle struggled with from the beginning. However, I have a job. I have goals to work towards. I have a vision that I would like above all things to uphold.''
+
+``You have painted yourself into a corner,'' May said. Her voice had lost the edge of anger at her down-tree instance's admission and apology.
+
+True Name giggled.
+
+It was a startling sound coming from her. Ioan had seen her laugh, grin, and smile, but they were all tightly controlled. They were all laser-focused cues to guide her interlocutor. The giggle held amusement, yes, but also nervousness. It seemed to be covering a much larger, less grounded emotional outburst. Ey had been considering just how much of this interaction up until this point was a carefully constructed act, how much of her visit could be dismissed with a wink and a grin, but there was something far too real about that giggle.
+
+Ioan and May looked to each other and frowned.
+
+``I'm sorry, True Name,'' ey said. ``I mean this in all compassion, but you sound like you're about to lose it.''
+
+The skunk giggled again, sounding even less grounded, then rested her elbows on the table and buried her face in her paws, grinding the heels of her palms against her eyes before straightening the longer fur atop her head. ``I am, yes. At least in a way. There are many threads happening at once and, as May Then My Name put it, I have painted myself into a corner with this one.''
+
+``Make your pitch, then,'' May said, voice softer still.
+
+``It is a small ask, I hope,'' the skunk said, folding her hands on the tabletop once more. ``Do not publish any of this information in the feeds or in some new book or play, and do not put it anywhere in the perisystem architecture. Not yet. I ask that you keep it between yourselves, Jonas, me, and other Odists. You may, of course, keep communicating with Castor, but I would ask that you not pass this on to Pollux yet. Codrin and True Name are working together, per the message I received, so I imagine our messages will contain similar content, but should anything interesting come up, I would be much obliged if you shared with me. Are you open to that?''
+
+``Sure,'' Ioan said.
+
+May shrugged. ``I may talk to A Finger Pointing and End Waking about it, but I think you will have the rest of the clade under control before I wind up speaking to any of them again. I will likely also share this with Douglas. He of all people deserves to know.''
+
+The skunk stiffened in her seat and sat silent for a moment. ``May I be there when you do? I would like to impress upon him the gravity of the situation.''
+
+``Absolutely not.''
+
+True Name winced, wilted, nodded. ``I see. Well, if you would pass on my request for information security, I would be very grateful.''
+
+``I will,'' May said. ``I will also be telling Debarre.''
+
+There was a long silence. Ioan could not read either of the skunks’ features, nor guess at the sudden tension in the room.
+
+``We'll also pass on your request,'' Ioan said at last, earning em sharp a glance from May.
+
+True Name nodded slowly. Standing and once more brushing her blouse flat, she bowed. ``Thank you both and apologies for the intrusion.''
+
+May stood as well and stepped around the table, taking the other skunk's paws in her own. It was strange to see the gesture of kindness after so tense a discussion, but the expression on May's face as she looked at her down-tree instance showed none of the friendship implied.
+
+Ioan marveled. If the sight of two skunks that shared so much in common and yet differed in such fundamental ways was uncanny, seeing them touch in like this after so much acrimonious history bordered on distressing.
+
+``You wrote to me back in 197,'' May said. ``You pointed me toward Ioan and you told me, `You are, in many ways, a better version of me, and the completeness that you bring to our stanza ensures that we add up to something that is greater than the sum of its parts.' You told me that you still love me in your own way. Do you remember that?''
+
+The skunk canted her ears back and nodded.
+
+May let go of her paws to hug her arms up around her cocladist's shoulders. ``I still believe that.''
+
+True Name leaned into the hug. Ey couldn't see her face from where ey sat, but ey could still hear the sharp intake of breath and see the shaking of her shoulders.
+
+After a moment, May leaned back, rested her paws on those shoulders, and said, ``But please leave and do not ever, \emph{ever} come to my house again.''

neviim/content/ioan/003.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,116 @@
+\hypertarget{ioan-bux103lan-2346}{%
+\chapter{Ioan Bălan — 2346}}
+\markboth{Ioan Bălan — 2346}{}
+
+\begin{center}
+\emph{Convergence T-plus 28 days, 13 hours, 35 minutes}\\
+\emph{(Castor--Lagrange transmission delay: 30 days, 14 hours, 36 minutes)}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent Ioan knew what was coming, so ey was able to brace emself well enough when May came barrelling out of the default entry point on the dandelion-ridden field that ey was not totally bowled over, managing at least a somewhat graceful descent to the ground. The skunk had already looped her arms around eir middle and tucked her head up under eir chin before ey was even able to sit up straight enough to get eir arms around her.
+
+``You nut.'' Ey laughed, reaching up to tug at one of her ears affectionately. ``Good to see you, too.''
+
+``Ioan, I am in no way sorry for knocking you over,'' she said, voice muffled, her grip around eir middle tightening. ``Though I am dreadfully sorry that this happened again. I missed you.''
+
+Giving up on the prospect of sitting up straight, ey leaned back onto one hand, propping emself up. ``No need to apologize, May. I'm just happy to see you again.''
+
+The skunk leaned away from em enough to dot her nose against eirs. Her eyes were quite red and ey could see tear-tracks in the fur of her cheeks. She looked a mess. ``Do not take my apology away from me. I have been saving that one up.''
+
+``Alright, alright,'' ey said, pressing eir nose a little more firmly to hers for a moment before leaning back again. ``Apology accepted. Are you feeling better?''
+
+She sat upright rather than leaning against eir front and nodded. ``Yes. I was able to get a lot out that I think has been pent up for a while. Thank you for giving me the space. I promise I did not fuck with your pen collection.''
+
+``Good. I had it all perfectly organized.'' Ey plucked a dandelion from the field and tucked it behind her ear. ``Now, do you want to talk about it? Or should we do that later? That was longer than the last few times.''
+
+``Later, please. I want to say hi to Douglas and wash my face and just be normal for a bit.''
+
+Douglas Hadje met them on the stoop of his house and, as had become their ritual over the years, hugged the skunk, lifted, and twirled her around. Her bushy tail streamed along behind her.
+
+``Hey May,'' he said, setting her back down again and kissing her cheek. ``Glad you made it through.''
+
+``Of course I made it through. You still have at least seventy nine years of me haunting you before I can do something else.'' She grinned. ``And even then, the contract is renewable.''
+
+``Ornery as ever.'' He laughed. ``Well, want to come in?''
+
+``For a bit, and then I want to come back out here and lay in the grass and bake in the sun.''
+
+After May had cleaned up and Ioan had helped Douglas prepare coffee and some sandwiches, they sat around the table to catch up.
+
+``So, what news of the aliens?'' Douglas asked.
+
+The skunk squinted at him. ``Has Ioan not been keeping you up to date?''
+
+``A little. Ey said ey wanted to wait until you got here, though.''
+
+``Whatever.'' She rolled her eyes. ``Well, out with it, then.''
+
+``I've gotten several messages from Codrin over the last few days. Ey said they would be heading out to start the talks later that day.''
+
+``So they have been into them for a while, now.'' She looked thoughtfully up to the ceiling. ``A few weeks, perhaps?''
+
+``Or maybe they're already over,'' Douglas said.
+
+``A gloomy thought. I would like to hope that they are going quite well. Codrin is there being a Bălan, Tycho is there being a nerd, this Sarah Genet is there being a whatever a Sarah Genet is like, Why Ask Questions is there being a shithead.'' She wrinkled her nose. ``And True Name is doing her best to control the whole thing.''
+
+Ioan was pleased to see the mildness of the skunk's expression. It really did seem like many of those overwhelming emotions had burned themselves out over the last few days.
+
+``It's weird,'' Douglas said. ``Every now and then, I'll hear about something from one of the LVs that's anchored to a certain time and I'll remember, `Oh shit, yeah, they're billions of kilometers away by now', and then I have to spend some time trying to conceptualize that distance.''
+
+Ioan nodded. ``The transmission delay throws a wrench in things, doesn't it? I was just thinking about that on Secession day. We were celebrating and it sounds like they were, too, but we didn't learn about their party until a month later.''
+
+``The thing that always catches me off guard is that our days do not seem to line up any longer,'' May said around a bite of sandwich. ``I mean, they do, but when the delay is off by half a day, we start getting messages at shit o'clock in the morning. It is a strange feeling.''
+
+``Exactly.''
+
+``I hope they're still in the talks, too. Codrin sounded hopeful, at least. The messages that they'd been getting from the Artemisians were interesting, especially the language snippets. I'm guessing the powers that be made em promise not to send the full message text yet, but what they have learned is fascinating. Four races on one ship must be a hell of an experience. The DMZ sim sounds pleasant, though, and all of the work they've done to prepare is really kind of impressive.'' Ey sipped eir coffee to buy a moment's time to think before saying, ``There was a bunch of stuff in there for you, too, May. We can go over that later, though.''
+
+The skunk frowned, finished the last of her sandwich, and then settled back in the chair with her coffee. ``You cannot leave me hanging, my dear. May I at least have a preview?''
+
+``Well, Codrin's worried about you. As is Dear.''
+
+``The memory thing?'' Douglas asked.
+
+Ey nodded.
+
+May averted her gaze, looking out the window to the rolling field beyond. ``I am worried, too. You know that.''
+
+``I know. Reading between the lines, though, I think ey's worried about the whole clade. Ey's worried about you and Dear, and ey's worried about how True Name and Why Ask Questions are going to act through this. Dear reacted poorly to the whole time-modification thing.''
+
+She nodded and sat in silence for a minute before setting her cup down. ``We are not doing as well as many of us would like, no. I have news as well, but I would like to share it outside where I can sit in the sun and feel the grass. Is that okay?''
+
+Ioan and Douglas collected plates and coffee cups, then the three of them trooped out into the field while May spoke.
+
+``We have lost May One Day Death Itself Not Die and I Do Not Know, I Do Not Know. Death Itself stopped talking, and then she stopped moving. In Dreams visited for a while there, and a few days ago asked me to come visit as well. That is why this spell seemed to last longer than usual. Evening hit, she smiled at us, shrugged, and then quit.''
+
+May's voice was thick as she continued. ``They all lived in the same house, did you know that? All ten of that stanza. Many of them did not even talk with each other, and none of them ever forked. They were always quite unstable. The next morning, I Do Not Know was gone, and Names Of The Dead said that she had quit shortly before sunrise.''
+
+Ioan and Douglas remained quiet as they walked. The skunk didn't seem to be quite done saying the things that she needed to.
+
+She continued after a few minutes of mastering emotions, voice clear once more. ``In Dreams and I talked quite a bit. She said that there have been fewer instances of instability in older clades than expected, given \emph{On the Perils of Memory}. Fewer uploads are susceptible to the long-term effects of unceasing memory than expected, I guess. I was pleased to see that Debarre seems to be doing well.''
+
+``That's heartening,'' Douglas said. ``At least in a way.''
+
+The skunk nodded. ``I am pleased that the System is more stable than feared, but I am unhappy that we seem so strongly affected. In Dreams said that she is going to do some research and see if there are ways that we can at least improve on the way we deal with the effects. I do not know that there is a way to get rid of them entirely, at least not without further individuation, but the least we can do is help keep ourselves sane for longer.''
+
+Ioan took her paw in eir hand and lifted it to kiss the back. ``Please, yeah. If you lose it, I'll be furious.''
+
+She laughed and gave em a pitying look. ``Mx.~Ioan Bălan, you are pretty good at acting furious on stage, but I do not believe for a second that you could actually feel that way. Even Codrin was able to have a normal meeting with True Name after she did as she does with em.''
+
+Ey did not laugh. Neither, ey noted, did Douglas.
+
+``I am sorry,'' she murmured, ears laid flat.
+
+``\,`Furious' is the wrong word, May. I'd lose my damn mind.'' Ey took a shaky breath and rubbed at eir face. ``I can't tell you you're not allowed to or anything, since I know it's not really up to you, but please at least try to stick around.''
+
+``I'm not going to pile on or anything,'' Douglas said. ``But I will say I'd be pretty upset, too, so if there's anything I can do to help, I will.''
+
+May dragged them both to a stop in the field. Her expression started out angry, then screwed up into sadness, and finally settled on tired. ``I love you both and I promise I will do what I can to stay here, stay grounded. I cannot speak for the rest of the clade, and certainly not for Dear to soothe Codrin's fears, but I will do what I can.''
+
+It was not uncommon for these reunions to be tearful, Ioan knew, but it was a different sort of pang that settled in eir chest with the news, and it was a few minutes before ey was able to speak again. ``Sorry, you two.''
+
+The skunk stuck her tongue out at em. ``I will allow you this one apology, but do not make a habit of it. You are allowed to cry at sad shit.''
+
+Ey rolled eir eyes and shoved at her.
+
+``Well, I was promised laying in the grass and baking in the sun,'' Douglas said. ``So come on, we can at least enjoy the rest of the afternoon.''

neviim/content/ioan/004.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+\hypertarget{ioan-bux103lan-2346}{%
+\chapter{Ioan Bălan — 2346}}
+\markboth{Ioan Bălan — 2346}{}
+
+\begin{center}
+\emph{Convergence T-plus 28 days, 19 hours, 29 minutes}\\
+\emph{(Castor--Lagrange transmission delay: 7 days, 5 hours, 31 minutes)}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent May made it through dinner—Ioan was heartened to see that she'd actually eaten all of the chicken soup ey'd made—before padding off to a beanbag to curl up. She kept up a dozy conversation for a few minutes while Ioan cleaned, but even that tapered off to silence. When next ey looked back, the skunk was asleep.
+
+Every time ey'd left her to sleep out on the beanbag in the past, though, she'd spent the next day disoriented and moody—ey suspected this is what she'd meant when she said she slept better next to someone all those years ago—so once ey finished the (unnecessary but meditative) task of cleaning, ey knelt beside the beanbag, wormed eir arms beneath her, and scooped her up.
+
+She made a sort of drowsy chirping noise as ey lifted her, hugging her arms around eir shoulders for the short journey to the bedroom. Long as her tail was, ey had to be careful not to step on any of her fur with it hanging limply, almost to the ground.
+
+Once there, ey helped her out of her clothes, unsteady as she was, and then tucked her into bed, leaning down to put a kiss on her cheek.
+
+``Ioan?''
+
+``Yes?''
+
+``Can you stay?''
+
+Ey nodded, forking off a copy to finish cleaning up and taking notes. After a few minutes of eir own bedtime routine, ey slipped into bed with her. Ey was certainly tired enough, ey realized.
+
+And so now, back at home, back in their own bed, alone together, May and Ioan had the conversation ey felt they truly needed. They talked quietly, almost \emph{sotto voce}, now that it was dark and comfortable and they were no longer surrounded by the loud, raucous colors of Douglas's field. They shared their kisses, their small touches. They reaffirmed, in so many small, unspoken ways, their love for each other, and they talked.
+
+``What do you think they are learning?'' May murmured, nose-tip poking up against Ioan's chin.
+
+Ey had to speak carefully to respond, lest ey bump her snout. ``Who can say? Perhaps they are learning, perhaps they are teaching.''
+
+``Poetic.''
+
+``There are Odists involved, it's going to be poetic through and through.''
+
+She laughed and poked em in the belly with a claw. ``Jerk.''
+
+``That's me, yeah,'' ey said, grinning and nudging her muzzle this way and that with eir chin. ``The Odists are learning how to manipulate new species. Tycho's learning about the stars. I can't speak to Sarah, but Codrin is along for the ride.''
+
+``Did ey have much more to say about eir doubts?''
+
+``A little. Ey's still feeling more caught up in the events than an actual participant, but I think ey's also starting to look for ways out of the cycle. I don't know if ey has picked up any specific ideas on how to take charge, but that ey has decided to do something in the first place is change enough.''
+
+The skunk nodded. ``You are a careful lot, but it is nice to see when you do become more assertive.''
+
+``We lack your flair,'' ey said, ruffling up some of her fur.
+
+``I also enjoy that, do not get me wrong. Not everything needs flair.'' She perked up, dotted her nose against eir chin, and asked, ``You said something about time modification earlier, but I was distracted and did not think to ask about it. What does that mean?''
+
+``Oh, right. It sounds like the Artemisians don't fork, and instead rely on the ability to change how fast they experience time. Individuals or groups can speed up their perception so that the world around them seems to slow down, that sort of thing.''
+
+There was a long moment's silence, and were it not for the shallowness of her breathing, ey might have thought May had fallen asleep. Eventually, she whispered, ``I do not like that.''
+
+Ioan dipped eir chin enough to bump eir nose against hers. ``Codrin said Dear got quite upset about it, too. It warned em that there would be two Odists among the emissaries and that ey should watch out.''
+
+She remained still, no reciprocating press of nose to nose. She continued in her whisper. ``Once, when I was in school, I performed in a play that used the works of Emily Dickinson throughout. I still remember it. Time feels so vast that were if not For an Eternity— I fear me this Circumference Engross my Finity—''
+
+Ey remained quiet as ey mulled over the words. The archaic language felt opaque to em, but, as ey prowled through synonyms, ey began to piece together meaning. ``You've mentioned eternity before in the context of getting lost. This sounds almost relieved, though, that eternity exists, lest everything get too overwhelming.''
+
+``There was no eternity in there, Ioan. Time was beyond vast. I \emph{was} engrossed. There was no me left. When we were pulled out, we were finally confronted with eternity again.''
+
+``\,`We'?''
+
+May took a while to respond. ``Michelle and the author of the Ode.''
+
+Ey nodded, letting the comment about the Name slip by, asking instead, ``And being stuck in a place with malleable time would bring back a lot of that?''
+
+``Yes. Codrin is right to be careful. The clade struggles enough with stability as it is.'' She broke the tension of the moment by licking eir chin. ``On a happier note, In Dreams mentioned a hypothesis about the struggles we've had with memory.''
+
+``Oh?''
+
+``Well, happier for the System, if not for us. I guess she has hunted down some other clades that have been having problems. She says there are uniting factors, such as a weaker boundary between subconscious and conscious, a greater sense of the numinous, and so on. I am too sleepy to remember the details, but she is looking into it.'' The skunk giggled. ``She says we should get therapy.''
+
+``Oh, you definitely should,'' ey teased. ``Maybe this Sarah Genet is still on Lagrange. That's what she does.''
+
+``She is a therapist?''
+
+Ey nodded.
+
+A moment's hesitation, and then May nodded. ``I let In Dreams know.''
+
+``Good. The more minds working on this, the better.''
+
+``Are you really that worried, my dear?''
+
+Ey frowned, shrugged. ``That's part of it. More, I just feel helpless. I'm not worried about you going sideways any time soon, honestly, and certainly hope you don't at all, but should that happen, watching helplessly would be\ldots well, it's a big fear of mine.''
+
+May hugged herself closer to em, snout once again ducking beneath eir chin. ``I understand. I am stuck with the related fear of losing control. I do not like the feeling of not being in control of my emotions, even for these brief periods, but if that were to just become my life\ldots{}''
+
+After she trailed off, ey tightened eir arms around her, brushing fingertips through fur.
+
+They lay like that in the quiet and the dark. Eir fork apparently finished up with eir notes and quit, but given the topics of conversation and lack of any insistence on behalf of the instance, ey declined to accept the merge. Ey did not want to be distracted from the simple task of petting May, of enjoying the feeling of having her back.
+
+``May?''
+
+The skunk poked her nose against eir collarbone. ``Mm?'' She sounded half asleep.
+
+``I really can't lose you. You know that right?'' Ey felt her tense in eir arms, but continued, ``I said ages ago that I'm not built for a life with death in it. That's why I'm here. That's why I uploaded in the first place, to get away from that.''
+
+``Ioan,'' she said, voice hoarse. ``I already--''
+
+``I know, you already promised. I believe you. I'm not trying to berate you, I'm trying to say I love you.''
+
+``Ioan Bălan, if you make me cry again, I will smother you in your sleep.''
+
+Ey laughed. ``It sounds like it's already too late.''
+
+``Thin fucking ice, buddy.'' May sniffled and squirmed around until she could tuck back against eir front. ``I love you too, my dear, top to bottom and front to back.''
+
+As ey settled in for sleep, kissing the backs of the skunk's ears, ey marveled that ey could only \emph{remember} the Ioan who never thought to form attachments, who could never remember to ask May if they were in a relationship, who continually wondered how she wound up in eir life, could only remember em as some other person. Ey could only remember em as though from a distance. That Ioan was gone. Ey had slipped away into the past while the Ioan ey was now wasn't looking, and had never come back. Ey wished em luck, this younger version of emself. Ey wished em happiness and fulfillment. And, should that Ioan ever find emself struck by the wonder of love, ey wished em courage in the face of it.
+
+This Ioan, the one ey was now, understood the value in attachments, and yet ey could still marvel, twenty years on, at just how much more complete ey was with May in eir life.

neviim/content/ioan/005.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
+\hypertarget{ioan-bux103lan-2346}{%
+\chapter{Ioan Bălan — 2346}}
+\markboth{Ioan Bălan — 2346}{}
+
+\begin{center}
+\emph{Convergence T-plus 39 days, 3 hours, 23 minutes}\\
+\emph{(transmission delay: 30 days, 14 hours, 36 minutes)}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent Ioan and May both awoke to messages. May, however, was the first to read hers, having gotten up before her partner, so when Ioan stumbled out of bed toward coffee, the skunk was already sitting at the table, her note before her and eirs still in its clade-eyes-only envelope, waiting for em.
+
+``As soon as you are a real person, my dear, I need you to read this and tell me what is happening.''
+
+Ey frowned, nodded, and diverted from the coffee pot to splash water on eir face to wake emself up faster. Something about the skunk's attitude suggested something stressful was afoot. Stressful or exciting. Ey couldn't tell which.
+
+Once ey sat down with eir coffee, ey opened eir letter and began to read.
+
+May giggled. ``What the fuck does that expression mean?''
+
+Realizing that ey was frowning, squinting and chewing on eir cheek all at the same time, ey forced emself to relax. ``Uh\ldots this is weird. Does yours have something to do with it?''
+
+``Yes. It is from Dear, who says that Codrin sent you a letter containing a game.''
+
+``A game?'' Ey frowned, started at the top of eir letter and read straight through to the bottom. ``How is this a game? Codrin says\ldots but, well. What does Dear say, exactly?''
+
+``My dear May Then My Name,'' she read aloud. ``Ioan will be receiving a letter concurrent with this that will bear both the end of an era and the beginning of a game between our two clades. The rules are as follows. First: remember that you love em, that ey loves you. Second: remember who you were, who you are, and imagine what you can become. Third: let go. Fourth: have fun. Fifth: pass this on to Dear\#Pollux concurrently with Ioan passing on Codrin's letter.''
+
+Eir frown deepened.
+
+``Fucking foxes, I swear to God,'' May said, laughing. ``Now, I am assuming that those rules apply to you, too. Remember that I love you and that you love me. Remember who you were, who you are, and imagine what you can be. Let go, have fun, and tell me what the fuck your letter says already.''
+
+Ey did eir best to square Dear's `game' with the text of the letter ey'd received. There were so many ways this could go sideways. \emph{Let go, hmm?} ey thought. \emph{I guess there's nothing for it. Let go and try to have fun is about all that one can do in this situation.}
+
+``Alright,'' ey said, holding up the letter to read aloud. ``Ioan, I hope you are well. We have finished our talks with the Artemisians in grand fashion. They have invited us to become their `fifthrace', meaning that as many of us as would like are able to join them on Artemis, and the DMZ will be expanded to allow a portion of them to join us. There is so much more that I can say here, and will say in future letters, but this one comes with a specific purpose.''
+
+``God, even when you talk to each other, you are nerds.''
+
+Ey forced a laugh, shaking eir head. ``May Then My Name will be receiving a note from Dear about a game. I'm not entirely sure I understand it, but it promises me it's an Odist thing. When I think too hard about it, I get anxious all over again, but Dear keeps telling me to `let go and have fun', so I suppose all I can say to you is the same\ldots{}
+
+``Uh, May,'' ey said after a moment's pause. ``This is making me really anxious, too. I promise I'm trying to follow Dear's rules and Codrin's suggestion.''
+
+The skunk's smile fell. ``Well, please get it over with, then, and we can judge Dear on what it considers a game soon.''
+
+``Alright,'' ey said. ``During the talks on Artemis, the time skew got to be too much for who we thought was Why Ask Questions and she lost it. It turns out that, through some design of True Name's, they swapped in Why Ask Questions When The Answers Will Not Help for the emissaries to Artemis rather than sending Why Ask Questions.
+
+``Anyway, she snapped. She quoted several lines of the Ode as well as several lines of Emily Dickinson, talked about how she, quote, `could not feel em', and then she said the Name aloud. True Name got--''
+
+``\emph{What?!}'' May pushed her way up out of her seat and began pacing. ``She did what?''
+
+Ioan realized eir hands were shaking too much to continue reading the paper like that, so ey set it down on the table. ``Ey goes on to describe what happened, but does not include the Name itself. Ey continues: While I now know it, I'm following Dear's suggestion to keep it to myself lest I piss off a bunch of other Odists. It described it as\ldots well, ey continues, but you look like you're going to explode. Do you want me to stop?''
+
+May's pacing had picked up in intensity and she had started compulsively brushing her paws over her whiskers and cheeks, up over her ears. Ey couldn't read her expression.
+
+``Ioan, listen,'' she said. ``Wait, no. Remember where you first took me for a hike? Bring me there again. Quick.''
+
+Ey frowned, stood, snatched up the letter, and took her paw in eir hand before stepping out to Arrowhead Lake, the wooded, mountainous sim ey had taken her several times over the years.
+
+``You don't think someone's watching us, do you?'' ey said, looking around at the placid water, the deer trail, the forest.
+
+``No, but\ldots well, better safe, yes?''
+
+Eir frown deepened.
+
+``Okay.'' She looked to be forcing herself to stand still, now, and her grip on eir hand only tightened. ``I see what Dear is trying to do, and it is really, really smart. Please do not be anxious. At least, not of me.''
+
+Ey looked down at the letter ey still held in eir hand. ``Well--''
+
+``No, disregard the letter, Ioan.'' She laughed and added, ``Or at least disregard it for now. There is info in there, I am sure, but the message is in the dynamic. Dear is an asshole, but a clever one. It has ensured that it doesn't re-learn the Name and that you never learn it for yourself, all while making sure that it becomes an in-joke between our two clades. It has removed culpability from the Bălan clade and given both itself and me an out, should someone like True Name come asking. She can come hounding you for information like she did after that first letter and all she would find is a clever little way for lovers to poke fun at each other. Let me guess, Codrin said something about how it feels like this is something a Bălan could hold over an Odist.''
+
+Ey blinked, lifted the letter, and read aloud, ``I do worry that this is the type of thing a Bălan could hold over the head of an Odist, but--''
+
+The skunk smiled, lifted eir hand, and licked the back of it affectionately. ``You two are so predictable. But yes. I do not think we need to worry about that. You did not learn the Name, and Codrin\#Pollux will not learn it, but it is enough that Codrin\#Castor will not be crushed by the knowledge. It is a delightful strategy. Dear has suggested a move that will preempt most every compunction the conservatives might have. It even used your concerns over power dynamics as part of it. I bet it told Codrin to leave that bit in. It always was good at chess.''
+
+``But ey still knows--''
+
+``Who the fuck cares about the Name?'' she said, swinging eir arms playfully as she held onto eir hands. ``It is a stupid hook. It is a way to make us seem more mysterious than we really are. What began as a way of protecting our friend's identity during a shaky political period turned into a way to control how we were perceived. It is our own personal MacGuffin.''
+
+``Wait, what? Really?''
+
+``Yes, really. Obviously, I do not want to share it. Dear does not want to share it. We are still serious about not wanting to share it. Serious enough for one of the conservatives to assassinate one of our own, even. This is a dynamic that has arisen over time, though. The Name itself does not matter anymore. The bearer of it has been lost to time, and any reason to keep it confidential is lost along with em, but it became a hook, and then it became an identity.''
+
+``\,`Em'?''
+
+She winked.
+
+Ey shook eir head numbly. ``You're all completely nuts.''
+
+``Yes, well, tough shit. We have rules to follow, remember? I love you dearly, and I know you love me. I remember who I was. I was built for a purpose, and then I was a tool of True Name's. That is no longer who I am, though, is it? I have changed, and I can imagine who I will become. I can let go of this anxiety around names enough to understand what Dear is doing. And hell, it really is fun. You are stuck with me, Ioan Bălan.''
+
+``Yes, yes. Stuck with the world's most annoying skunk.'' Ey lifted eir arm up, nudging May to twirl, balletic, beneath it. ``I don't totally understand, but I trust you on this. You can play your game all you want, but can we head back now? I left my coffee behind and you have therapy in a little bit.''

neviim/content/ioan/006.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,106 @@
+\hypertarget{ioan-bux103lan-2346}{%
+\chapter{Ioan Bălan — 2346}}
+\markboth{Ioan Bălan — 2346}{}
+
+\begin{center}
+\emph{Convergence T-plus 50 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes}\\
+\emph{(transmission delay: 30 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes)}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent While Ioan could not say that the changes in May since the therapy had started in earnest were dramatic, they were immediate. Just subtle changes in the way she talked, for the most part. Ey suspected that many of them would fade over time, but for now, ey was curious to watch the ways in which she would occasionally catch herself up short, reevaluate what she was in the process of saying, and then continue more carefully. Ey was also pleased to see her journaling, as the skunk was not one for sitting down and writing, preferring to keep everything in her head unless she absolutely needed to.
+
+She was not a `new May' or anything so grand, but it was a sign to em that she was working hard at what she'd set her mind to, and while ey hadn't doubted that she would, it was still heartening to see, just as it had been nice to see the depression slowly lift as promised.
+
+Today, though, was a day for picnics. This was, ey was assured, a universal fact.
+
+Once spring began to tickle at the nose and before the oppressive heat began to drift lazily in over the lilacs and dandelions, this was the time for those who are in love to drag a thick blanket out to Arrowhead Lake, park atop that rock by the water, and share sandwiches and fizzy drinks. This was the time for stretching out in the sun, laying back on the blanket, beside each other, hand in paw, sharing in small silences and comfortable conversation.
+
+``What do you think of Codrin's grand gesture, my dear?''
+
+``Mm? Moving to the DMZ? Convergence, or whatever they're calling it?''
+
+The skunk nodded, turning her head to the side to poke her nose against eir cheek. ``I am also curious as to your thoughts on Convergence, but tell me about Codrin, first, as a Bălan.''
+
+Ey laughed. ``Well, alright. I think it was a pretty good one, all told. It was very\ldots em. Bringing them together to make a formal announcement of `we're moving to convergence' is an incredibly Bălan thing to do. Still, I'm glad ey was able to manage, and I think they'll do well there. Ey certainly seems to have enjoyed eir time with the Artemisians, so I'm glad ey's going to do more than just visit with them across a border.''
+
+``Really? Ey gave an actual announcement?'' May giggled, giving eir hand a squeeze in her paw. ``You are such nerds.''
+
+``That's nerdy even for me, I think.''
+
+``Would it have been nerdy for the Ioan of twenty years ago? Or forty?''
+
+``Forty?'' Ey frowned up to the sky. ``Good question. I don't think so. That Ioan was nerdier then than even Codrin is now.''
+
+``Makes me think that Codrin\#Pollux was right about em,'' she said. ``Ey had changed the least out of the three of you. Not that it is a bad thing, except in that it led to eir crisis of identity over the last few weeks.''
+
+``The whole of Castor seems to have been the most conservative of the three Systems. Codrin, Dear, and even True Name hadn't changed much at all from what they were like closer to Launch.''
+
+The silence that followed started out tense, then eased into something more deliberate, though ey couldn't put to words how ey could tell.
+
+Eventually, May said, ``Yes, it does seem that way. How is True Name, anyway? You have spoken to her more recently than I have.''
+
+Ey turned eir head to look at the skunk, who was looking up to the sky, a far-away look of concentration on her face.
+
+``You really want to know?''
+
+She glanced out of the corner of her eye at em, smiling faintly. ``In my own way, yes. I am striving to see the humanity in her, even if I know that I may never be fond of her again.''
+
+Ey nodded. ``To be honest, pretty awful. Much of the clade has dropped all relation to her. In Dreams didn't tell her about the therapy thing at all, so I had to tell her about it and suggest she contact Sarah directly. Plus, from what I can guess, she and Jonas aren't getting along nearly so well anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if she drops out of the whole guidance business entirely—or is pushed out by Jonas—in the next few years, though they seem to have the response to the convergence pretty well in check.'' Ey sighed and added, ``I kind of made her cry.''
+
+The smile that May had picked up quickly disappeared and by the time ey finished, she was actively frowning. ``It was not my intention to have her left behind. She needs this as much as the rest of us do.''
+
+``I know, May, it's not on you.''
+
+``I am trying to internalize that, Ioan. My empathy remains, even if the emotion behind it has transmuted. Empathy \emph{and} sympathy, as I am sorry that In Dreams left her behind. I can still feel for her, even if I do resent her.'' After a pause, she added, almost to herself, ``I do not like that I hate her, but I am helpless before that feeling.''
+
+Ioan leaned over enough to give her a kiss to the cheek. ``You're a good person, May.''
+
+She surprised em by turning her head to give the very tip of eir nose a rather wet lick. ``I am an utter nightmare and you know it, my dear.''
+
+``You can be both,'' ey said, laughing. ``Even skunks can contain multitudes.''
+
+She beamed proudly.
+
+``Different subject. Did Dear tell you about the other part of Codrin's decision? About Sorina?''
+
+``It did, yes. What did Codrin have to say about her?''
+
+``Eir letter read like someone struggling not to cry. Ey sounded crushed,'' ey said. ``From the sounds of it, they were together only ten minutes and ey still felt like ey lost a good friend.''
+
+``That, and knowing some version of emself would never see her partners again. I think there needs to be a new word for the empathy one has for someone who is oneself and yet not,'' May said, nodding. ``It is the same feeling I have for True Name. Ey is not leaving eir partners behind, and yet ey feels that empathy with Sorina, who is. I am not struggling with the same problems that True Name is, and yet I am not so different from her that I cannot share in some of that understanding.''
+
+``I'll have to start digging through etymologies for a good one.''
+
+``I swear to God, Ioan, you are a parody of yourself. Every time I think you cannot get nerdier, you one-up yourself.''
+
+Ey laughed. ``Love you too, May.''
+
+After a luxuriously long stretch, the skunk rolled onto her front, resting her cheek on folded arms. This seemed like a good idea, given the ache starting in eir back from laying on a rock for too long, so ey followed suit, and they both settled into quiet, enjoying the sun on their backs and the sound of small waves breaking over pebbles below, of the stream not too far in the distance.
+
+Ey could feel the doziness of a nice picnic and warm sun beckoning em to nap, but ey knew that ey'd wake up a pile of aches and pains if ey slept like this.
+
+``Tell me a story, May.''
+
+``Mm?'' The skunk sounded sleepy as well. ``Okay. How true would you like it?''
+
+``As true as you'd like,'' ey said. ``Do you have another myth you could share?''
+
+``When the second people met the first,'' she said after a long pause. ``They found them strange and otherworldly. The way they thought, the way they lived their lives, all of it was strange to them. When the first people looked out on the world, they saw something different than what they themselves did. They saw more, perhaps, or perhaps they saw it more vividly. None could say.
+
+``The second people did not know their own origins, and so they invented story after story to explain where they came from, and through countless years, first one story would take root and flourish, and all would believe that they had come from dust with the breath of life blown into them by a distant God, and then that story would fade and they would all believe that random chance and unchecked chaos brought together the right elements in the right way, the right conditions crushing them into the very beginnings of life.''
+
+Ioan watched as the skunk spoke. Ey was never sure how much of her stories were made up on the spot, were composed from existing ideas, or had been long rehearsed. All the same, it was entrancing watching her speak, that far-away look in her eyes as though she were seeing the story rather than the mountains or the lake.
+
+``When the second people met the first, their stories collapsed around them like castles made in sand, as they realized that they were not the first, that they were not alone, or original, or unique, for did the first people not exist long before them? Did they not look out on younger skies?
+
+``The second people watched the first, and when they talked to them, they only talked around the topic of origins, for surely the first people knew where they came from, and even if they did not, perhaps they knew where the second people had come from and could offer them hope in the face of death and surety in the face of uncertainty. And yet, what a sensitive topic that must be! How embarrassing to not know one's origins.''
+
+``Did they?'' Ioan asked after May's story drifted into silence.
+
+``When one of the second people finally screwed up the courage to ask one of the first people, `Where do you come from? Where do we come from? What is our origin, our root?' they answered, `We were hoping you could tell us'.''
+
+Ey laughed and ruffled a hand between May's ears before petting the fur back into order once more.
+
+``Do you really suppose the Artemisians will look to us for answers?''
+
+The skunk grinned, dotting her nose to eirs. ``I do not see how they could not, my dear. Is that not what exploration is? Do we not both dream?''

neviim/content/ioan/007.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+\hypertarget{ioan-bux103lan-2346}{%
+\chapter{Ioan Bălan — 2346}\label{ioan-bux103lan-2346}}
+
+Ioan and May speculate on how True Name must be taking it locally/Pollux, suggest Codrin's grand gesture for Dear being bringing the polycule to the DMZ, more on stability re: Odists.

neviim/content/ioan/008.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,178 @@
+\hypertarget{ioan-bux103lan-2346}{%
+\chapter{Ioan Bălan — 2346}}
+\markboth{Ioan Bălan — 2346}{}
+
+\begin{center}
+\emph{Convergence T-plus 33 days, 15 hours, 39 minutes}\\
+\emph{(Castor--Lagrange transmission delay: 30 days, 14 hours, 36 minutes)}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent Depression, Ioan had long known but struggled to internalize, was fundamentally different from sadness, just as it was different from May's overwhelming waves of emotions.
+
+Ey was confronted with it now, forced to see the way the emotion—or non-emotion, as May put it—affected one on a more fundamental level than anything so simple as sadness could hope to. Those overwhelming waves, as the one she'd just recovered from, were fundamental in their own way, but far, far less existential.
+
+It was bound by the cycle of the day, and so Ioan and May would spend their mornings strategizing their evenings, ensuring that they were able to have as pleasant a time as that ashen feeling May described would allow, to work as well as they could manage through that fog.
+
+``We are not unfamiliar with it, Ioan,'' A Finger Pointing had said when, after watching Death Itself and I Do Not Know quit, May's countenance grew duller and duller, and the skunk spoke less and less. ``We know depression from the embodied world, and it comes up every now and then for each of us here, too.''
+
+``Even True Name, I suppose,'' ey had said, describing the conversation ey'd had with her.
+
+She had nodded. ``It will pass, and we will make the shows work, my dear. Keep her company and be good to her, and you need not worry.''
+
+Some dark look must have crossed eir face at which the director had shaken her head and hugged em. ``Do not worry about that, Ioan. There is no death in her, I am sure of that. I am sorry that there are no easy ways to explain it, but I promise that what I expect she is feeling is separate from what our cocladists felt.''
+
+When presented with this along with eir anxious expression, May had laughed and tousled eir hair. ``She is right, my dear. It feels uncomfortable at best, bad at worst, but only ever bad. I am simply a bit crashy after a little too much all at once.''
+
+So for the last few days, they'd strategized in the mornings and then done what they could in the evenings. Scenes in plays were reworked for understudies, dinner menus shifted towards comfort foods, temperatures and weather adjusted, old comfort-hobbies dredged up from the past—the skunk had been littering the house with origami figures. Ey'd even tried reading aloud to her, her with her head parked on eir chest and em with a book held above them. This had gone over well, and ey had that on the menu for later in the evening after dinner.
+
+Today still held the first meeting with Sarah Genet, however, so ey focused on making a good breakfast, and spending a bit of time relaxing on the porch swing with May, giving her pets and quiet company.
+
+``How are you feeling about this?'' ey asked, voice muffled. May had requested a brushing of her tail, which meant a face full of fluff.
+
+``I do not know. I am anxious. I am trying to keep up that sense of hopefulness that I had when we began planning this, but the anxiety is getting in the way.''
+
+Ey tamped down the urge to ask what the anxiety was over, knowing that the answer would likely be \emph{I do not know} or \emph{nothing}—rightly so, for eir own anxiety often seemed to have no basis in reality. Instead, ey asked, ``Do you want me to be there with you?''
+
+May scooted down a little on the swing, enough to get her arms around eir middle. ``Please. It is just an initial meeting, I do not imagine there will be any need for privacy.''
+
+``No deep, dark secrets, then?''
+
+There was a muffled laugh from where the skunk had planted her face against eir belly. ``I do not know that I have any of those from you, my dear.''
+
+``Other than the obvious.''
+
+May stayed quiet, shifting the rest of the way so that she could lay her head on eir lap, looking off into the yard. Finally, she murmured, ``We will need to talk about that at some point, Sarah and I. The pressure surrounding it is building.''
+
+This did not seem to be an open conversation, so ey nodded, settling into silence with eir partner.
+
+Sarah arrived an hour later, a quiet knock at the door accompanying the sensorium ping of her arrival.
+
+May had melted into a beanbag when they'd come back inside and was folding paper crane after paper crane from a bottomless stack of origami paper, so Ioan capped eir pen and slid eir project into a drawer of eir desk. The skunk studiously avoided eir gaze, the tightness of her expression showing anxiety with tears near at hand.
+
+``Mx.~Bălan?'' Sarah said, bowing. ``Nice to meet you.''
+
+``And you, Ms.~Genet.'' Ey stood aside, gesturing toward the hall. ``Please, come inside.''
+
+``Just Sarah is fine.'' Smiling kindly to em, she nodded and stepped inside. She seemed to be taking the sight of their home in with some deeper understanding than ey could grasp. Ey wondered just how much she could tell by how clean or messy a place might be, and thanked past-Ioan for cleaning up quite well after breakfast.
+
+The skunk had finished her crane and levered herself out of her beanbag by the time they made it to the den. She was standing by the kitchen table, paws folded before her and ears perked up, looking polite and attentive, though Ioan could still read the exhaustion in her face.
+
+``May Then My Name Die With Me,'' Sarah said, bowing once more. ``A pleasure to meet you at last. Thank you for helping to organize this project.''
+
+``Please, just May Then My Name.'' She returned the bow, cleared her throat. ``Thank you for going along with it. It will be a large one, and I-- \emph{we} appreciate all the help we can get.''
+
+They sat down around three sides of the dining table. The skunk surprised em by ensuring that ey, rather than her, sat across from the woman.
+
+``So, there's no real agenda today other than to just get to know each other. No hard topics or anything, just chatting. Stuff like that helps me get used to how you communicate.'' Sarah nodded toward May. ``Though I would like to know how you're feeling.''
+
+``Tired.'' The skunk looked down at the table where her claw-tips traced wood-grain. ``Quite tired. I am not feeling myself currently, forgive me.''
+
+``That's alright. There's been an awful lot going on, from the sounds of it.'' Sarah shifted gears smoothly away from the topic of current events, asking instead, ``I know you two are in theatre, from what you've said. What all does that entail, though? I haven't been to a play or anything since university before uploading.''
+
+May smiled weakly. ``Lots of work. We share jobs from start to finish. There are more of us working as stage hands and crew than there are working as actors. Ioan even writes many of our plays.''
+
+``I guess that means you both know your way around the craft better than most, since you have to keep all of that in your heads. I'm curious, though; what all goes into the crew side? Are you also\ldots what's the term. Stage managers? Techs?'' Sarah shrugged, looking almost embarrassed at her lack of knowledge. ``Lights? Sound?''
+
+At the word `sound', a stricken look washed over the skunk's face. She sat, rigid, in her chair for a moment before shaking her head, the movement jerky and uneven. ``I\ldots I will leave\ldots I will leave Ioan to answer that.''
+
+Alarmed at the sudden change in her demeanor, Ioan looked between May and Sarah, the latter's face set in an expression of concern.
+
+``May?'' ey asked quietly.
+
+``You must\ldots you must forgive me. I have to\ldots lay down. Or something.'' She swallowed several times in a row, as she always seemed to do when holding back tears.
+
+The skunk stood and swayed, clutching at the edge of the table hard enough for claws to dent the wood.
+
+``Of course, May Then My Name. Would you like to meet another--''
+
+``Please discuss with Ioan,'' she whispered, eyes clenched shut.
+
+Ioan forked quickly, the new instance taking May by the elbow and guiding her carefully toward the bedroom, leaving \#Tracker and Sarah to sit in stunned silence, watching them leave.
+
+There was a brief sensorium message, a few quiet words from eir fork, and ey nodded. ``She panicked for a moment but is just going to disengage for a bit. She says to carry on since you and I might as well get to know each other, too. She'll reschedule for the near future.''
+
+``Alright,'' Sarah said, still frowning. ``I know I said just chat, but I don't think I can just let that go. Can you explain what just happened?''
+
+Ey sighed, nodded, and rubbed eir palms against eir slacks. ``She will wind up getting overwhelmed by emotion sometimes, once every six months or so. It'll take her out for a few days then pass. She just got through one not too long ago—I think she contacted you the day after she got back.''
+
+``So this is another bout?''
+
+``No, I don't think so. She's been kind of depressed over the last few days, which is different than when she overflows. She says it's not uncommon for her to `crash' after really big events. She slows down and has a hard time enjoying things, which I suspect is common with depression. But also, little things will trigger large emotional reactions.''
+
+Sarah nodded. ``That makes sense, at least. `Trigger' is probably the right word, there. That certainly looked like a trauma response. One she was trying very hard to control, of course, but I could almost see the adrenaline rush through her.''
+
+``There's been quite a bit of trauma of late, with her cocladists quitting.''
+
+``Very much so, yes.''
+
+Ey rubbed at eir eyes. They were burning, though whether from exhaustion or eir own emotions, ey couldn't tell. ``I have no clue what was the trigger there, though.''
+
+Sarah waved her hand. ``She and I will talk that through, it's alright. How are you doing, though?''
+
+``Me?'' Ey frowned. Talking with a therapist had never been on the table for em through this whole endeavor, but ey was so wrapped up in it now\ldots{} ``I'm stressed. I'm tired and stressed and feeling like I'm just fumbling in the dark to find something that will keep May safe.''
+
+``I'd be surprised if you weren't stressed, honestly,'' she said. A blink, a cone of silence fell around them. ``Aliens visit one of the LVs and both your clades get wrapped up in it almost immediately, and then her cocladists quit in the midst of all those overwhelming emotions. There's a lot on the table here. Do you worry she won't be safe?''
+
+Ioan shrugged helplessly. ``I trust her when she says she's not in any danger of anything like that and that she's doing her best to stay grounded, but that doesn't stop me from worrying.''
+
+``That's part of being in love, I think.''
+
+A pang of that love tugged at em. Sarah must have seen it on eir face, as she smiled sympathetically to em.
+
+``I don't do well with loss. That's why I'm here, really. On the System, I mean,'' ey said, then recounted eir and May's previous conversations about the death of eir parents and how that factored into eir anxieties.
+
+The conversation wound around from there. Ey could tell that Sarah was guiding it gently, giving careful nudges toward positive topics when the heavier ones began to loom too near, but always keeping it productive, substantive. It was, ey realized, the sort of mirror image of what ey'd seen from much of May's stanza. Subtle influencing borne out of years of reading and responding to the actions, words, and expressions of another. Rather than aiming to control, however, Sarah seemed to be doing all she could to keep the control in eir hands, acting almost as a tool for em to use to examine emself, though far more human that that made it sound.
+
+It was refreshing. Too many Odists over the last twenty years, perhaps.
+
+``Well,'' Sarah said when they'd reached a lull in the conversation. ``I should probably get going so that I can give you guys some space. I'll be in touch though, okay? I'll make sure to catch up with May Then My Name when she's feeling a bit better.''
+
+Ey nodded gratefully. ``Thank you. This has been good for me, as well, so hopefully we can have the chance to talk again, too.''
+
+``Of course. Some of my appointments with her will involve you as well, but I'm also happy working with just you, too. Scheduling is certainly less of a constraint here on the System.'' She hesitated before adding, ``Though for that, I may keep a separate fork for privacy's sake.''
+
+``Right, of course.'' Ey stood when she did, walking with her down the hall to the door. ``By the way, have you been in touch with True Name? The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream?''
+
+``Yes. She got in touch with me yesterday, and we have our own appointment scheduled. Why do you ask?''
+
+Ey hesitated a moment, unsure of whether to divulge the fact that In Dreams seemed to have decided not to connect the two. ``I'm worried about her,'' ey said eventually. ``I just wanted to make sure she's also working with someone.''
+
+Sarah turned in the entryway, looking at em searchingly. ``You know, back phys-side, I was your cocladist's partner's therapist, and we've stayed friends since uploading. They all but forced me to read the \emph{History}. From what I could tell, your relationship with True Name did not seem to be one that included you worrying about her.''
+
+``She's changed a lot,'' ey said, speaking slowly as ey tried to puzzle out eir growing empathy for the other skunk --- along with the fact that this was a thing that needed puzzling out. ``She's been looking rough, lately, and even for someone I have a complicated relationship with, it's tough to watch.''
+
+``That I can understand. Does she look like May Then My Name? A furry?''
+
+Ey nodded.
+
+``That probably helps, too.'' She shook her head. ``Anyway, I should be going for real, now. I'll be in touch to see about talking with you more soon, alright?''
+
+``Of course,'' ey said, bowing. ``Thanks again. I think I needed that more than I knew.''
+
+Back in their room, May and eir other instance were sitting cross-legged on the bed, the skunk trying for the dozenth time to teach em how to fold a paper crane.
+
+Both looked up when ey entered and, though her cheeks still showed the marks of tears, ey was pleased to see May smiling.
+
+Eir fork quit and as ey let the memories of the last hour settle into place, ey climbed into bed to take eir spot.
+
+``I am sorry, my dear,'' the skunk said, leaning forward to dot her nose against eirs. ``Thank you for all of your help through that, both in here and out there.''
+
+``Of course, May. Feeling better?''
+
+She nodded, held up her paper crane, the bottom pinched between fingers, and tugged at its tail, making the wings flap. ``I have been making things.''
+
+``Other than a mess, you mean?''
+
+Ey winced and laughed as the origami bird hit em in the face.
+
+``I will have you know that all of the messy ones are your doing, Mx.~Ioan Bălan,'' she said primly. ``Mine are perfectly neat and orderly.''
+
+Still grinning, ey ruffled a hand through her headfur, tugging affectionately at an ear. ``Right, right. Just like you.''
+
+She chirped and tilted her head toward eir hand. ``Did you have a good therapy session, my dear?''
+
+Ey nodded. ``I did. I wasn't expecting it, but it was helpful. Sarah says she'll be in touch to meet again soon.''
+
+``Alright. I will not apologize again, but I do still feel bad for how I acted.''
+
+``Shush, you're fine. I think she, of all people, understands a reaction like that.'' Ey picked up another square of paper from the stack and began trying to fold again. ``But that's enough talk of that for now. If you want dinner, you have to help me get at least one of these made.''

neviim/content/ioan/009.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,148 @@
+\hypertarget{ioan-bux103lan-2346}{%
+\chapter{Ioan Bălan — 2346}}
+\markboth{Ioan Bălan — 2346}{}
+
+\begin{center}
+\emph{Convergence T-plus 30 days, 13 hours, 47 minutes}\\
+\emph{(Castor--Lagrange transmission delay: 30 days, 14 hours, 36 minutes)}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent Ioan\#98ae38dc arrived at the appointed coffee shop a good hour in advance. The meeting had been eir idea, but it had also been eir primary source of stress during the day prior to it.
+
+The idea of meeting up with True Name in a neutral setting had not gone over as poorly as feared with May. She hadn't been pleased, to be sure, but given the news from Castor, she had accepted that the chance of further contact with her down-tree instance was likely anyway, and had stated that she was unwilling to engage with her further on the point so ey might as well.
+
+So, ey had forked, given her double kisses on the cheeks along with \#Tracker, and stepped away to sit and fret somewhere where ey'd not be a bother.
+
+The coffee shop was quite comfortable, familiar from when ey'd first met Dear so many years ago. A cozy affair set in a simulacrum of a small town. Cute shops, gas lamps, brick-paved roads.
+
+Inside, ey staked out an L-shaped couch for their meeting and sat, sipping eir way slowly through first a coffee and then a tea, figuring that eir nerves were jangly enough without the added caffeine.
+
+True Name arrived fifteen minutes before their scheduled meeting, looking far more collected and confident, far more herself, than she had the last time ey'd seen her. She smiled brightly to em, ordered her drink, and then sat primly on the couch across from em, blinking a cone of silence into existence as she did so.
+
+``Mx.~Bălan, thank you for meeting with me. I was surprised—pleasantly so—to have received your invitation.''
+
+Ey nodded. ``Thank you for accepting. I figured it might be nice to have a calmer conversation than our last one. I want to make sure that we stay on at least polite terms as\ldots in-laws of a sort.''
+
+There was no shift in the skunk's attentive expression, nor in her posture. She simply nodded and took a few laps of her drink, wiping a dollop of whipped cream from her nose after. ``I appreciate that. I understand that our dynamic is complex and that of May Then My Name and I all the more so. We will never be close, you and I, but I can accept that.''
+
+``Right, and I don't want all of our interactions to be stressful.''
+
+``If you will forgive a bit of small talk, may I ask after your partner's well-being, at least? I understand through intraclade communications that she had\ldots that there was\ldots{}''
+
+``She wound up overflowing, yeah. She's bounced back well enough for the most part, and we've been back at work.''
+
+True Name nodded, a hint of a bow. ``Thank you, Ioan. It is encouraging to hear. And you are working on a play regarding our visitors on Castor?''
+
+``Bit by bit,'' ey said. ``I add to it every time we get a bit of news. That was another reason I wanted to meet up.''
+
+The calm smile that the skunk had been wearing slipped down into something more businesslike. ``Yes. May I ask what information you have received?''
+
+Ioan pulled the few sheets of folded paper from eir pocket and unfolded them, skimming through the notes. ``The talks have begun and sound like they're going well enough on Castor, but that True Name and Why Ask Questions on Artemis are struggling, though they've been working through it as best they can. That's the last I've heard.''
+
+Ey handed over the letters, already trimmed of clade-eyes-only and other personal information. True Name read through them quickly, nodding.
+
+``We have heard much the same. It was a calculated risk, sending myself and Why Ask Questions rather than a Jonas or someone else less affected by this time skew that they have mentioned.''
+
+``It sounds reminiscent of what I saw of Michelle. Certainly unpleasant.''
+
+She sat in silence for a few long seconds, both paws wrapped around her wide-brimmed mug of coffee. Her face was impassive and posture unreadable. Even her eyes remained fixed on some spot over eir shoulder, unmoving. She seemed frozen.
+
+``True Name?''
+
+``No,'' she said at last, her shoulders sagging a fraction of an inch, enough to show some level of exhaustion that had previously been hidden. ``It does not sound pleasant.''
+
+``End Waking put it, `when presented with the fragility of eternity once more, I cannot imagine that I would remain sane'. None of the Odists I've talked to sound happy about this.''
+
+``We are not,'' she said. ``Ioan, may I ask that we talk about--''
+
+``In a moment, True Name, I promise.'' Ey took a deep breath, setting eir tea down on the table in front of the couch, turning to face the skunk. ``Again, I don't want to leave the air clouded between us, but this is important to me, too. I'm sure you understand.''
+
+She nodded, straightening up as though steeling herself for a coming blow. ``I imagine it is. Then yes, it is unpleasant. I do not think that either of my cocladists aboard Artemis are in any imminent danger, but it is bringing uncomfortable memories to the fore.''
+
+``End Waking said that, too. I have my concerns for your cocladists aboard Artemis, but I'm more worried about these uncomfortable memories cropping up across the clade.''
+
+``This is about Death Itself and I Do Not Know, is it not?'' she asked, voice quiet, tightly controlled.
+
+Ey nodded.
+
+True Name clutched her coffee closer to her chest, as though that might serve to shield her. It certainly felt as though she was struggling not to close herself off from the topic entirely. ``We are very old, Ioan, and the implication of eternity has affected us all differently. I am beginning to think that it has less to do with memory than we had all originally suspected, but all the same, we have all begun to struggle through the centuries.''
+
+Ey nodded, but remained silent. She was speaking slowly, and did not appear to have finished.
+
+``I did not talk with Death Itself much, and I was never able to speak with I Do Not Know. I did not know them except through observation. I am sorry-- no.'' She shook her head, frowning. ``I was going to say that I am sorry that they are no longer with us, but you know as well as I that this is not some small loss for us to be brushed away with thoughts and prayers, even for those of us who did not speak with them. Sad is not the correct term. I am anxious.''
+
+``Anxious of how this madness, as End Waking called it, might affect you and yours?''
+
+She nodded, averting her eyes. ``I am fucking terrified, Ioan. What am I to do in the face of such enormity?''
+
+Ey blinked, taken aback. This was not how ey'd imagined the conversation would go. Ey'd pictured her providing some glib explanation for what was happening and perhaps outlining the steps that she and her close cocladists were taking to control the situation. Ey was expecting her to steer em towards confidence in her, and hopefully even to soothe eir fears about May through doing so.
+
+This wasn't the True Name ey remembered. Were these her own cracks showing?
+
+Ey prowled through memories of the conversations ey'd had with her over the years—several, during those first few years after launch, then the rapid decrease after the publication of the \emph{History}—and tallied up each against the next.
+
+``You've changed quite a bit, True Name,'' ey said. ``I don't know what you're supposed to do, that's out of my league. All I can say is that you've changed. It looks like it takes you a lot of effort to keep the confidence that used to be so integral to your personality.''
+
+Ey watched as she bridled, subsided, and nodded. ``I am not what I was.''
+
+``What changed?''
+
+She shrugged helplessly. ``If I knew, perhaps I could fix it, bring back that easy confidence.''
+
+The conversation was veering further off-script. The skunk herself was veering far afield from the one ey'd pictured in eir head. ``Your counterpart on Castor sounds much the same as I remember. The True Name on Pollux has, from what I hear, wound up in a relationship and started to guide more openly over the last few years.''
+
+Looking down to where she held her mug against her front, True Name blinked rapidly, nodding.
+
+\emph{Tears? Really?} Ey frowned, searching her face and posture for any hint that this was some calculated display of emotion, then chided emself for such cynicism.
+
+``Is it something about the Lagrange System?'' ey asked, hunting for something to fix, helpless to stop emself from doing so. Some anxiety over that lack of control drove em to try and smooth out the situation \emph{somehow}. ``Is the culture that different here? Maybe something about the System itself? I'm trying to think of what might be different.''
+
+``I do not know, Ioan.'' She sniffed, sat up straighter, and smiled tiredly at em. ``Again, if I did, perhaps there might be something that I could do to address it. I know what I am—what I have become—in comparison to my peers. While I am trying not to view that as a failing, it is\ldots difficult.''
+
+``Something with Jonas, perhaps?''
+
+She winced and looked away, ears pinned flat.
+
+Ey had to resist the urge to reach out and offer her eir hand to hold for comfort as ey did so often with May. They looked so similar, even still, even after centuries of divergence, and all the more so when struggling with overwhelming emotions.
+
+She must have caught some slight movement or hint of this on eir face or in eir posture, as she chuckled. ``If I were built more like your May Then My Name, then perhaps I could more easily accept comfort, but I am not. Thank you for listening, though. I cannot talk about these things with many others.''
+
+Ey laughed, shrugging sheepishly. ``Sorry, True Name. Long habit. Still, I'm happy to listen. I know that my relationship puts us in a precarious position relative to each other and there are still some aspects about our history that are\ldots difficult to internalize, but, well--'' Ey sat up straighter at a sudden memory. ``Hey, have you talked with In Dreams yet? Or this Sarah Genet?''
+
+``I have spoken with In Dreams, yes,'' she said, tilting her head. ``Though I am not sure in what capacity you mean. She has kept me up to date on the cross-clade issues. I only know the name Sarah Genet from the communications from Castor.''
+
+``Really? I thought that they had been in contact with all of the clade they could,'' ey said, frowning. ``But perhaps that's still in progress. Either way, you mentioned having someone to talk to, and In Dreams has suggested taking a therapeutic approach to this. She and Ms.~Genet have been working on setting up a course of therapy sessions for Odists and a few of the other old clades that are struggling. Perhaps that's something that could help. May has an appointment in a few days.'' Ey hastened to add, ``I'm still happy to listen, but I'm hardly trained in that.''
+
+The skunk laughed, and it was difficult to miss the bitter tone in her voice. ``I spoke with In Dreams this morning and had not heard this. Perhaps it is an issue of priority.''
+
+Eir frown deepened.
+
+She made a setting-aside gesture that ey'd grown used to from May, as though the topic were unimportant, not worth discussing. ``I will contact them. Thank you for suggesting that, Mx.~Bălan. Even if they are unwilling to help, it is probably a good idea that I seek out therapy. Lord knows I need it.''
+
+Ey nodded, wary to continue. As the silence that followed stretched out, ey retrieved eir tea and sipped it before it grew too cold.
+
+``Why are you happy to listen to me, Ioan?''
+
+Ey shook emself from eir own rumination and back to the present. ``I'm sorry?''
+
+True Name smiled. ``You said that you were happy to listen to me. Your partner hates me—let us not mince words: she hates me and I have grown to accept that as best I can. You are close, as partners should be, and you have as much reason to hate me as anyone, and yet you met me here—asked to meet me here, even—and say that you are happy to listen. Why?''
+
+``Oh. Well,'' ey began, then stalled out. Ey raced through eir memories for a reason ey could articulate. ``It was something that Codrin\#Castor said. Em and Dear both, actually. Codrin passed on a letter that Codrin\#Artemis sent, saying that it has been difficult emotionally to watch what ey remembers from Michelle in your cocladists. When ey mentioned the time skew to it, Dear said to be watchful around your counterpart, saying, `remember what I said: even True Name has emotions, even she will be affected'.''
+
+The skunk sat back, looking stunned, then choked out a half-laugh-half-sob, setting her mug down on the table so that she could rub her paws firmly over her face, leaving them to cover it. ``Even I have emotions. Even I!'' she said between deep breaths. ``I know that your cocladist and Dear meant well by this, but how damning an indictment. \emph{Even I.}''
+
+``I'm sorry, True Name.''
+
+She shook her head, took a moment to regain her composure, and said, ``No, I suppose I do, at that. It is difficult to remember even from the inside, my dear. Thank you for reminding me, and thank you for listening.''
+
+The skunk reached out a paw toward em and, after a moment's hesitation, ey took it and gave it what ey hoped was a comforting squeeze. Ey was once more startled by the similarity of her to May: the softness of her fur, the satiny feel of her pads, those well-kept claws.
+
+She laughed and shook her head, pulling her paw back. ``How silly. I believe I stand by my assessment that comfort through physicality is not for me, but thank you all the same. That you have the capacity to comfort\ldots{}well, even me does mean a lot, Ioan. I appreciate your empathy.''
+
+Ey smiled cautiously. ``Worth a try, I suppose.''
+
+``Yes. Worth a try.'' She stood slowly and gave a hint of a bow. ``I have much to think about, Mx.~Bălan, and a message to send to Ms.~Genet. Please spend some quality time with your partner tonight, and I hope to see you in the future.''
+
+``Of course. Until next time.''
+
+She bowed again and stepped from the sim, leaving em to sit on the couch and finish eir tea, mulling over the differences between changing and forgetting. Without forgetting, all True Name had, all they \emph{all} had, was the ability to change, and all they could do was hope that this would be enough to keep them all sane.

neviim/content/ioan/010.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,144 @@
+\hypertarget{ioan-bux103lan-2346}{%
+\chapter{Ioan Bălan — 2346}}
+\markboth{Ioan Bălan — 2346}{}
+
+\begin{center}
+\emph{Convergence T-plus 29 days, 22 hours, 15 minutes}\\
+\emph{(Castor--Lagrange transmission delay: 30 days, 14 hours, 36 minutes)}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent The dinner that Do I Know God After The End Waking had prepared for them was\ldots rustic. That was the first term that ey had come up with to describe it, and no matter how else Ioan tried to refine it, ey was left with little else that fit.
+
+It was a venison stew with parsnips and onions, thickened with tack and stretched with some barleycorns. `Woodsy' was not quite the right word, and neither was `simple', for the skunk had spent the better part of an hour doting over the cast-iron pot he'd hung over a low fire, adding salt in what Ioan felt were miserly pinches, as well as pepper and nutmeg as though they were the most precious items in the world to him.
+
+When asked where he got the spices, barley, and tack in a forest, the skunk had laughed, shaken his head, and said, ``I am not a fucking ascetic, Ioan,'' then gone back to cooking.
+
+So, rustic stew it was.
+
+Very, \emph{very} good rustic stew. End Waking had explained that, as he had no way to store leftovers, they would need to finish the entire pot that night. It turned out to be no stretch for the small gathering—Ioan and May, Debarre, Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself, Douglas, and End Waking himself—as they all went back for seconds. The ranger skunk even swirled in a little extra water once the pot was empty, using a fingerpad to wipe what stew remained down into that to make himself a thin soup to finish out of the battered mug he'd been using as a bowl for the night.
+
+They'd each brought their own contribution for the night, as well. After dinner, A Finger Pointing pulled out a bottle of over-proof white whiskey that they passed around the circle, taking burning sips. Ioan and May brought with them a short, two-person play that they put on for the other four, full of crude jokes and self-deprecating humor. Douglas, having picked up music as a hobby since uploading, performed a trio with three instances, one on flute, one on a mandolin, and one on a cajón.
+
+For his part, Debarre had brought fireworks. Or \emph{a} firework, at least. The weasel produced a double fist-sized sphere of \emph{papier mache}, and set it atop a small cylinder right next to the fire. With End Waking watching, hawklike, he directed everyone to stand back a few feet and lit the fuse with a small punk from the fire, explaining, ``I've been working on this for the last seventy years or so. It's only about fifty percent possible outside the System, but my excuse is that I never saw fireworks out there so I can do whatever the fuck I want.''
+
+The firework lifted off the cylinder it had been set on top of with surprising grace. Rather than rocketing into the air, it rose slowly, splitting in half a few inches up and rising in a tight helix, the weasel explaining that the propellant was tightly controlled to allow such, until it was hovering about three meters above the fire on a column of sparks as orange as those of the fire itself. From there, small spheres of cool-blue sparks popped free and danced around it in slow, hypnotic whorls. Finally, in a fountain of green fire, billowing into the shape of a tree, it fell back into the campfire with a hissing sigh to be consumed by the flames.
+
+``Out-fucking-classed,'' A Finger Pointing grumbled. ``You said `bring something', my dear, so I brought a bottle to drink, and you all bring plays and music and fireworks.''
+
+``You will hear no complaints from me,'' End Waking said, grinning toothily. ``Do you know how long it has been since I have had whiskey?''
+
+She laughed and shook her head. ``I will bring you a case next time.''
+
+The skunk shook his head. ``I am enjoying the ability to taste something again after years without. I have missed it and that makes it special.''
+
+``Sap.''
+
+He rolled his eyes and made a rude gesture at her.
+
+A Finger Pointing fit neatly into the pattern of a human Michelle, though over the centuries, she had opted for a form that was a little taller, a little slimmer, and bore more heavily styled hair. More chic, perhaps. She was prone to grand gestures and grand outfits in all black or all gray or all red. She had also leaned into hedonism more so than any of the other Odists Ioan had met. She ate heartily, drank more than all of them—though this mostly manifested as a ruddy glint to her cheeks and a more wicked grin than usual—and brought with her a very comfortable-looking camp chair.
+
+Even having worked with her for nearly a decade as a playwright and under her direction as an actor for the last few years, ey continually found emself surprised by her simple desire to enjoy life, put on good plays, and be friends with everyone she could. It was a simplicity that was lacking from so many of her cocladists that ey'd had a chance to meet.
+
+``Do you wish that you had the chance to meet them?'' End Waking said, once the fire had been stoked back up to stave off the deepening darkness.
+
+``The Artemisians?''
+
+He nodded.
+
+``Kind of, yeah,'' She said. ``I was pleased to hear that bit about how important they find stories, so I would like the chance to hear some directly from them and see what they think of ours.''
+
+``And you, my dear?''
+
+Debarre shrugged. His and End Waking's on-again-off-again relationship seemed to be back on the rise, and so the skunk and weasel shared a seat on the log, tails draped across each other's. So stoic was the Odist, though, that while this was the only outward sign of affection between the two, it came off far sweeter than Ioan would have otherwise expected, especially given his cocladist's constant touch in eir own relationship. Ey'd certainly never heard the skunk use `my dear' with anyone else. Ey reveled in the compersion ey felt for them.
+
+``I've never been a huge fan of sci-fi,'' the weasel said. ``I suppose it'd be neat, but it feels really out there. I mean, I'm obviously excited, and I'd love to meet them, but it all sounds more like a fantasy than anything, so I'm not too put out.''
+
+``Ioan?'' the skunk asked.
+
+Ey shrugged after a moment's thought. ``I'm lucky. I get to share all the good stuff with you all direct from a cocladist. I wouldn't turn down the chance to meet them, but I'm also happy with this.''
+
+``Why?''
+
+Ioan frowned. ``Why am I happy with just this?''
+
+``Yes.''
+
+``I think because the part of my life spent right in the thick of it is over. I'm a different person, now. I've grown, changed. I've moved away from the Ioan who sat and watched as eir job. I'm a different me, now. I'm happy with being excited from a distance. I'm happy with the romance of it all.''
+
+May, tucked firmly against eir side, dotted her nose on eir cheek. ``Different kind of nerd.''
+
+``Pretty much, yeah.'' Ey laughed. ``Besides, Codrin said they've been bandying about the idea that none of it's real, that they've been dreaming the whole thing. I'm more curious to see that play out than actually experience meeting the Artemisians.''
+
+``It does not matter,'' End Waking said.
+ 
+``What?''
+ 
+``It does not matter whether or not it actually exists. If there is no ship named Artemis full of four races of aliens, the world which exists within Castor is still a new and interesting one. It is still a world worth exploring.'' The skunk shrugged. ``The question of their existence beyond Castor is purely academic.''
+ 
+``Well, huh,'' ey said. ``I'll have to pass that on to Codrin\#Castor, then. Perhaps it'll ease some anxieties.''
+ 
+End Waking nodded, then continued around the circle. ``How about you, May Then My Name?''
+
+``A part of me wishes I had the chance, but it is a small part. The rest of me is smug in my decision to remain behind preventing me from doing so. I cannot change that decision and go meet them, and that in and of itself is exciting, is it not?''
+
+The other skunk turned his gaze on Douglas.
+
+``I think I'm probably the outlier here, in that I was—or am—kind of crushed by the fact that I won't be able to meet them.''  He poked a stick he'd found at the base of the fire. ``Here I am, someone who spent eight years in university studying spaceflight, someone who did all he could to specialize in the System, and I'm stuck reading second-hand accounts on a five thousand year old civilization flying through space on a system of their own. I got over my frustration at having not uploaded in time for the launches years ago, but this is bringing it all back.''
+
+``What would you do, had you the chance to meet them?'' End Waking asked.
+
+``Oh, I don't know. That's the thing. I don't have anything concrete in mind that I feel like I'm missing, it's just this envy over not having the chance. I'm sure I'd ask them a million questions about spaceflight and System shit, because that's just how I am. I want to know how they keep their vehicle in working order over so long a time. I want to know how they can receive images and sounds and video instead of just text. I want to know all sorts of things, but that's ancillary to the fact that I'm just not there.''
+
+This short speech demanded a silent acknowledgement of a few minutes, and the five sat in quiet, watching the fire or looking up to the stars and moon overhead. Douglas poked at the fire. May rested her head on Ioan's shoulder. A Finger Pointing, Debarre, and End Waking drank.
+
+``I would like to know their forests,'' the skunk said at last. ``And I would invite them to know mine. Do they hunt their own venison and dig their own parsnips? I do not know. If they do not, I would show them. If they do, I would want them to show me.''
+
+``Even if that meant uploading to Artemis?'' Ioan asked.
+
+``Yes.''
+
+``It doesn't sound like a pleasant place for Odists, from what May's told me.''
+
+The skunk shrugged. ``That is not enough to stand in the way of my desire. Would I go mad in the midst of their forest? Very well, I would go mad.''
+
+``Is that what it feels like? Going mad?''
+
+``I am not sure how else to put it,'' he said after a long silence.
+
+``I was on a field of dandelions and grass,'' May said, her voice distant and dream-fogged. ``And there was no echo. The world stretched out before me in empty nothingness, and there was no echo. At my back was a bar—scratched wood, stools, a foot rail, a gutter for pouring drinks—and the only way I could hear my own voice pass through the air was to huddle between those stools and face the bar.''
+
+``Words came unbidden,'' A Finger Pointing picked up where May left off. ``And as they passed through my mind, they dripped and smeared—a painting with too much wet paint on the canvas stood on its edge. The dreaming mind did not know what to do with language that close to the surface, and so the language stained all it touched.''
+
+End Waking nodded, speaking toward the fire. ``And so I screamed and I ran, and when I looked back, the bar was gone, and when I looked forward again, there it was. Had I turned? Was the world so small? The words came unbidden, and with each one that left my mouth, a cord that tethered me to reality snapped, and I grew lighter and lighter, and I feared I would float up into the sky, into the sun.''
+
+``And through it all, time was unmoored and set adrift,'' May said quietly. ``Sixteen hours, twenty three minutes is what they said, but I lived lifetime after lifetime beneath that sun. The light thrummed and vibrated around me, and I lived and died and lived again. I watched eternity fall away and rot at my feet.''
+
+``Or perhaps it was just an instant,'' A Finger Pointing said.
+
+End Waking's words came with a finality that seemed to draw the memory to a close, though nothing about the recitation—monologue?—had felt memorized or rehearsed. ``And so I went mad.''
+
+``Jesus.'' Douglas's whisper broke the long silence that followed. ``And you're afraid that's what would happen on Artemis?''
+
+``Not exactly that,'' he said. ``But when presented with the fragility of eternity once more, I cannot imagine that I would remain sane. That any of us would.''
+
+``This is what we fear,'' May said.
+
+``With the Artemisians and their time? I saw through your eyes,'' Debarre said, so quiet as to be almost a whisper. End Waking rested a paw on his knee. ``I was so happy to see you, and so terrified to be there. Two and a half minutes was enough for a lifetime.''
+
+``Or memory?'' Douglas added.
+
+May nodded, tugging Ioan's arm tighter around her middle. ``A madness born of eternities. Memory upon memory upon memory. Our memories, our whole subconscious, lie too close to the surface, and that barrier between the conscious and subconscious cannot bear the weight of an eternity. And so the cracks widen.''
+
+``Do you think that's what happened with Death Itself and I Do Not Know? To Michelle?'' Ioan asked.
+
+End Waking dipped his snout and drew his hood up over his head once more. Debarre looked away into the dark of the forest. A Finger Pointing took a long drink from the bottle of whiskey.
+
+``I do not know, my dear. I will never know. It is very hard to quit when one is at the root of a clade, or even a larger subtree. Like pushing through a barrier or wading through mud. Death Itself may have been struggling to do so for a long time. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for Michelle. The System is not built for death.''
+
+Ey felt eir muscles tense, was helpless to stop it.
+
+``I am sorry, Ioan. The System is not built for death, just as you are not. It wants to keep us alive, and so to end a clade is very difficult.''
+
+Ey nodded slowly, focusing on night above em, the log they sat on beneath em, the warmth of the fire before em. Ey focused on those around em—A Finger Pointing, Douglas, Debarre, End Waking, and of course eir own dear May—pinning em to a time, a place, a mood. Ey focused on the feeling of being alive and being \emph{here}, of being present and in the world, digital or otherwise.
+
+``How heavy must that madness be, then,'' May continued. ``To crash through so many failsafes and allow someone who has been within the system for more than two centuries such a death? This is what we fear.''

neviim/content/ioan/011.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,147 @@
+\hypertarget{ioan-bux103lan-2346}{%
+\chapter{Ioan Bălan — 2346}}
+\markboth{Ioan Bălan — 2346}{}
+
+\begin{center}
+\emph{Convergence T-plus 72 days, 23 hours, 48 minutes}\\
+\emph{(Lagrange--Pollux transmission delay: 30 days, 14 hours, 41 minutes)}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent Ioan,
+
+I must admit, I'm really not sure what to say about all of this. Thank you for waiting until you have a substantial amount to send to me, at least. Dear threw a little tantrum about this ``We have received messages over the last few days'' bit, but I appreciate having an initial digest to work with so that I'm not left a fretting mess (as you say you were) by the simple news that, oh look, aliens! I threatened to bundle it up in blankets until it was immobile for a few hours, though, and it calmed down. I may do so anyway.
+
+Four races! Five thousand years! One language! Have you learned any of that, yourself? And yet maybe it's all a dream! Truly fascinating. As you can imagine, Dear latched onto that quite quickly.
+ 
+How is May Then My Name taking it? You mention True Name, but have you heard from any other Odists? Any other friends? If Lagrange is anything like Pollux, people are talking about little else.
+
+The news broke over here much as it sounds as though it did on Lagrange: with tightly controlled excitement. There is no doubt that the powers that be continue their work across all three Systems, but it's always fascinating to see. The amount of bafflement was outweighed by the amount of excitement. The excitement also outweighed the amount of fear. Everyone's eager for every scrap of news that they can get.
+
+How much of the delay in sending word to us was due to True Name and her friends? I imagine she had words about the first message, at least, but a whole week's worth of messages feels like a good deal must have been going on.
+
+No matter, though. We're all eagerly awaiting every little snippet that we can get from you. I know that you won't get this for another, what, 30? 31? And that a month from when you sent it! I know you won't get it for a while, is what I'm saying, but please know that you're free to pass on information directly from here on out! We'll be learning plenty from the news we're allowed to see over here, anyway, so any juicy tidbits in addition to that will be greatly appreciated.
+
+I am continually confronted with the ways in which we have diverged. May Then My Name and Dear\#Castor mentioned how upset they were by the idea of time manipulation, but my Dear\ldots well, it did not seem pleased with the idea, but its reaction was not nearly so visceral. It simply got a sour look on its face and said \emph{``I do not like the idea of a place where I cannot fork. Can you imagine a place so boring?''}
+
+\begin{center}
+\textbf{BĂLAN CLADE-EYES-ONLY MATERIAL}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent The last few years have seen a drastic reduction in the amount of times that Dear has overflowed. I don't know if ey's been passing on every instance from Castor, or if you have been passing on every letter in turn, but it sounds like the same is true of Dear\#Castor as well, for which I'm thankful.
+
+I'm sorry to hear about May Then My Name, though. Discussion of `cracks showing' always seems to crop up whenever one of our loved ones goes through a rough period such as this, and your news spurred a conversation between the three of us plus Serene, and despite the relative quiescence of Dear's symptoms, such as they are, we have noticed an uptick of oddities in Odists over here, as well. Not just Odists, of course, but a few of the older clades. Hell, a Jonas even went haywire a few weeks back.
+
+Still, I'm happy to hear that everyone's tallies are lining up well: far fewer old clades over here are experiencing such symptoms than feared after the publication of \emph{Perils}, for which just about everyone is happy. No one wants to deal with an impending burden of insanity on one's two hundredth birthday, so to hear that it's only a fraction and that maybe there's something that can be done (or so we hear; has there been news of psychotherapy as a treatment over there? I've been hearing whispers) has kept the population at large from freaking out. I imagine you have it worse, though, given the relative skew towards dispersionistas on the LVs; I bet early taskers are freaking out.
+
+Either way, Ioan, I am concerned for you and your partner. Our lives are informed by trauma, and the trauma that we hold in particular leads to a sort of conservatism that is particularly focused on our loved ones. I know that you want nothing more than to see May Then My Name continue to thrive, and I know that seeing her struggle is incredibly painful as it touches on the roots of those very same traumas. I know that the two of you will make it through alright, but, as this is in the clade-eyes-only section, do remember to keep yourself safe. You have Douglas. You have Debarre and End Waking (are they back together? Please say yes). You have A Finger Pointing. You have so many delightful friends I've yet to even meet and some I'll never have the chance to. When you need, nudge May Then My Name to her support network and lean on your own.
+
+\begin{center}
+\textbf{IOAN BĂLAN INDIVIDUAL-EYES-ONLY MATERIAL}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent The following is in strict confidence with you and you alone, Ioan. I've received permission to share from all parties involved.
+
+I don't know how much of Codrin\#Castor and my messages between each other that you've read, or if that would even have helped, but watching the slow individuation of a loved one is an experience unique even from watching oneself individuate. The Dear I am in love with feels much like the Dear I fell in love with decades ago, and yet slowly the Dear on Castor begins to feel like a stranger to me.
+
+Dear\#Castor sounds so much more conservative—in its approach to life, of course, rather than that of the division of the Odists—than what I've grown used to. The prairie remains the same. The house remains the same. Codrin\#Castor's struggles with agency and directedness in life feel as unfamiliar to me as you have mentioned. You have taken control of your life as I have taken control of my own, each in our own way. To put this on the Odists feels at once unfair, unfortunate, and totally accurate. May Then My Name has changed you in so many irreversible ways, just as Dear changed me so many years ago. Changed you, too, for when we merged and then diverged, you were no longer the same Ioan that remained behind. You were the type of Ioan who could fall in love with May Then My Name in the first place.
+
+So when Dear gave up the prairie and dragged Serene over to build out our little world into something grander, a place more well-rounded than just flat plains, we were both ready because, hey, this was Dear, right? So we built out our little world of plains and hills, forests and lakes. And then that spur-of-the-moment shift redirected our lives in unforeseen ways. With the acceptance of variety, Serene moved in to continue her work, and then her elliptical orbit passed through our lives for a while before she drifted away again.
+
+Despite lingering taboo, I am not ashamed of having wound up, for that one short year, in a relationship with two members of the same clade. None of us are; not even Dear and Serene, they promise us. It's not shame that keeps me from telling those on Castor about this. It is the completely alien way that those who feel as though they ought to \emph{be} us interact with the world that leads to such. I feel as though I am unable to tell Codrin\#Castor about what happened because to do so feels like explaining the alien to someone who really, truly, in all ways ought to know. Ey ought to be able to feel the same things that I feel, correct? Ey ought to also love Serene, oughtn't ey? Ey must, for ey is me, is ey not?
+
+And yet ey is not. I cannot bring up our relationship with Serene because Codrin\#Castor—that is, specifically \emph{me}\#Castor—does not have the same thoughts around intraclade romantic relationships that I do, and by virtue of the direction that the Odists steered us (or, as feels more accurate, crashed with us headlong and heedless) into this future, we are now completely different in that way.
+
+The Dear that I live with has, in comparison to Dear\#Castor, relaxed and moved on to an approach to life that is far more laid back. As a result, we \emph{all} have, me included.
+
+Also, as an internal postscript, I should note that the three of us are all still deeply in love with Serene and she with us, so please do not misconstrue the past tense above, but good Lord. Two foxes in the same house? Never again.
+
+This is the end of the private content of the letter. Please redact this in its entirety should you pass my thoughts on to Castor (though of course you may talk about it with May Then My Name; she'll understand the sensitive nature of the topic).
+
+\begin{center}
+\textbf{END IOAN BĂLAN INDIVIDUAL-EYES-ONLY MATERIAL}
+\end{center}
+
+\begin{center}
+\textbf{END BĂLAN CLADE-EYES-ONLY MATERIAL}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent I am settling in quite well at the university and they are as excited as I am to receive the inevitable dump of information that comes from Artemis. It is a librarian's dream. I have seen quite the bump in my reputation, oddly enough, just by having my cocladist's name attached to the project over on Castor. No complaints, but honestly, what is a librarian to do with reputation?
+
+Pass on our love to May Then My Name and tell her that we are all incredibly happy to hear that there is no more news of broken noses in this letter.
+
+Codrin\#Castor, know that you've got us backing you as well. The world lies before you and is not nearly so black and white as it might seem. Search for those shades of gray that allow you to take a step forward.
+
+It's been more than twenty years (or forty, if you count splitting from you, Ioan), and it still feels incredibly weird talking myself up, doesn't it? If nothing else, take it from yourself that it's possible.
+
+Cheers,
+
+Codrin\#Pollux
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{0.5pt}\end{center}
+
+\noindent Codrin,
+
+Wonderful as always to hear from you. This will, of course, reach you long after the point where I could answer any pertinent questions about Artemis that I have not already done so by forwarding on what I've learned, myself. The amount of updates quickly got to the point where it didn't feel worth it to try and summarize them at all, so you're getting them all. Besides, you can summarize as well as I.
+
+Dramatic, isn't it? Convergence! I just sent you a letter earlier today about the latest from Tycho on Artemis, so I don't have too much to add, really.
+
+I'm curious about how things are working out over there with True Name and the leadership. We haven't heard anything yet from Castor about how she's doing over there, but it's always good to get a fuller picture of how things are going when they are, yet again, involved in something enormous.
+
+Hell, on that note, how is the sentiment overall? There's been a lot of chatter; on the night of the announcement, we had to cancel a performance due to how excited everyone was. A Finger Pointing was quick to capitalize this, and went on a tear of digging up every single production that she could find about aliens to start scheduling. When she found a relative paucity of such, she started digging into sci-fi, going all the way back to R.U.R. I have, surprising no one, been contracted to write one for the occasion, and I've been doing so with what information that I have.
+
+(Also, to your question: yes, End Waking and Debarre have settled back into dating. I do wish you'd gotten a chance to meet End Waking. He is a delight to be around in his own coarse, woodsy way.)
+
+
+I'll pass on the snippets of secondrace language that I've received so far. Codrin promises that the grammar and dictionary will be forthcoming (probably in the next few days, if I'm calculating the transmission times right, but says that True Name has suggested that any large messages from Artemis be sent after a thorough evaluation. I can't tell if that means an evaluation of their contents or an evaluation of any hidden intent on the part of the Artemisians.
+
+\begin{center}
+\textbf{BĂLAN CLADE-EYES-ONLY MATERIAL}
+\end{center}
+
+\begin{center}
+\textbf{CODRIN BĂLAN\#POLLUX INDIVIDUAL-EYES-ONLY MATERIAL}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent This is in confidence.
+
+It was interesting hearing the story of your triad (is it still a triad? I was unable to parse to what extent Serene may still be a part of your little polycule, though it does sound as though there is a healthier distance between you all now) in your words. Serene actually contacted us a few months back to pass on the story, herself, also in confidence. She made us promise to keep it to ourselves, even from you. I pinged her with the fact that your letter contained this information to make sure that I could confirm this with you, and she said yes.
+
+I found the whole story as she told it to be terribly fascinating. There was a brief twinge of surprise at the idea of an intraclade relationship, but it was not the first that I've heard of since Launch. They're hardly common back here, but neither are they unheard of as individuation increases and taboos lessen. Still, this is the closest that we've been to one. No friends, even, just right into our own clades.
+
+It sparked a long, drawn out discussion between May, Douglas and I, actually. Less, I think, because there was any chance of that between the three of us than because Douglas is hungry for essentially every bit of information about the clade that he can get his hands on—though, May being May, she would leap at the chance to get closer to him, but the most he is comfortable with from anyone is friendship and physical affection (he will pet May for hours if she'll let him—and she always does).
+
+On my end, I was mostly interested in May's thoughts on the matter as, except for a drunken (very drunken) night with A Finger Pointing, the two of us together have at most friendly relationships with any other Odist. We've not talked about that night with anyone else, either, and hardly even with each other. When I brought it up, both May and A Finger Pointing laughed at me and told me to ``get the fuck over it'' because apparently that's just how theatre nerds are.
+
+However, when I asked May about it directly, she confided in me (and again, the anxious part of me compels me to note that I have permission to share this) that nearly seven decades back, she was nudged toward another Odist (one from the first stanza, though she did not specify which) by True Name, and a fork of her remained in a relationship with them for some time. Perhaps they are still together. May does not know. When pressed as to how this worked, she said that the instance who began that relationship was ``no longer me''. I did not ask further.
+
+Either way, it's something of a relief to be able to talk about this openly (or, well `openly') with you. Keeping a secret about one's own cocladist from them is uncomfortable.
+
+That digression aside, I take well your meaning about the divergence of Castor and Pollux. I see the divergence in you two, and while it has mostly just been an interesting point to consider at times, occasionally it becomes very pertinent very quickly. I have often admired the ways in which you moved beyond the Bălans of old. It's nice to see proof that we can truly own our lives—which is not to say that I don't feel that about myself, but in comparison with \#Castor's current malaise, it comes in stark contrast.
+
+I don't know how Dear would take a nudge from you, and it certainly isn't my place, but I do plan on helping Codrin over there however I can. I've been discussing this with May as well, and we are brainstorming suggestions for new paths for em. I don't think that ey could manage hopping right into life in academia as you have, both because of the differences in the university between the two LVs as well as the differences in your histories over the last few decades.
+
+I also want to discuss this with May as well, though I will await your permission. I do not think that she is at as much risk of conservatism as it sounds like Dear\#Castor is, but there have been several conversations between us now regarding the directions that the clade that I'll speak to in normal clade-eyes-only, as I plan on sharing these messages with \#Castor.
+
+I'll keep you up to date either way.
+
+\begin{center}
+\textbf{END CODRIN BĂLAN\#POLLUX INDIVIDUAL-EYES-ONLY MATERIAL}
+\end{center}
+
+\noindent While I'm sure that another Odist has already passed on this information, you should know that two Odists have quit recently, May One Day Death Itself Not Die and I Do Not Know, I Do Not Know, leaving behind no forks. The Ode is now ninety-seven.
+
+May and In Dreams were there at the end, and this has led to an increased sense of urgency when it comes to the clade approaching their affliction. To that end, several Odists are working with a psychologist recommended from folks on Castor (the Sarah Genet mentioned in the messages I've been forwarding) to discuss paths forward.
+
+These events took place during May's aforementioned overflowing spell, which led to it being prolonged to nearly a week. She has made it through, and my nose remains intact despite getting tackled, as usual. She has recovered well despite some lingering depression, but this, in combination with some of the news from Castor which you also will have received before this, has me more worried for her than usual. She may be a little terror, but she is my little terror.
+
+All of them seem to be dealing with this in their own way. May and Dear overflow in their own ways, End Waking's desire for solitude will override his relationship with Debarre for a time, and now this over on the Death Itself stanza.
+
+Can you do me a favor when you get a chance, and let me know how True Name\#Pollux is doing in this respect in particular? Doesn't need to be anything too in-depth, but, well, she is a part of this as always, and clearly there is something going on with her here.
+
+\begin{center}
+\textbf{END BĂLAN CLADE-EYES-ONLY MATERIAL}
+\end{center}
+
+Pass on my love. I miss you and yours.
+
+Ioan Bălan