move from work dir

toledot/content/secession/sys/Michelle/001-illust.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+\hypertarget{michelle-hadjesasha-2306}{%
+\chapter{Michelle Hadje/Sasha — 2306}\label{michelle-hadjesasha-2306}}
+
+\begin{quote}
+Come to me.
+
+Come alone.
+\end{quote}
+
+That was all that the message had said.
+
+Michelle had long considered this moment, and just as long considered what she might say. She was of two minds. She was of two minds.
+
+The part of her that desired knowledge, that craved a reason in all things, that part of her felt compelled to give an explanation. It felt the need to rationalize and understand and comprehend, and it craved the knowledge that others also understood.
+
+That part was Sasha.
+
+That had felt inverted to her, at first. Was not Michelle the rational one? She was the one who had maintained her ties to her body. She was the one who remembered all of the \emph{things}, all of the \emph{actions} of her past. She was the one who wanted to fork and keep all of those memories.
+
+But instead it was Sasha who felt incomplete, unwhole, when her reasons were unspoken. Eventually her gestalt came to the awareness that this was because Sasha was the one who felt, just as Michelle was the one who remembered, and thus she was also the part that desired compassion above all things. She wanted to explain herself so that others would not be left hurt. She was the one who decided, in the end, not to fork, to fix, to repair. Those memories that mattered---really, truly mattered---all of her instances already shared.
+
+Michelle did not want to tell anyone.
+
+She was of two minds/she was of two minds.
+
+So she edited and rewrote and pared her message down. Thousands of words. Hundreds of words. Ninety-nine words. Ten words. Two commands. A duality like her.
+
+\begin{quote}
+Come to me.
+\end{quote}
+
+There had been a date, a time, an address. \emph{Come to me,} she thought/she thought. \emph{Come to us.}
+
+Come hear. Come learn. Come understand. Or don't, but come all the same, that we might hear, learn, understand.
+
+She was of two minds/she was of two minds.
+
+\begin{quote}
+Come alone.
+\end{quote}
+
+\AddToHookNext{shipout/after}{\includepdf[pages={1},fitpaper=true,noautoscale=true]{assets/kris--two-minds--michelle-sasha--G}}
+She had met their friends and lovers and hidden, forbidden selves. She had met their scribes and their amanuenses and their biographer-historians.
+
+\emph{Come alone,} she thought/she thought. \emph{I only want you. I only want us. I only want me.}
+
+And she knew they would. She knew they would. She knew they would come and they would do so without hesitation, for a request from the root instance was a thing that had never happened before, and it bore more weight than any possible life event or schedule could ever hope to. She knew they would come because she would be there/she would be there.
+
+She was of two minds.
+
+And so on the allotted day and at the allotted time and in the allotted place, they came. They appeared one by one in that field of grass, that field of dandelions. They came and they stood and they waited. Some of them chatted amiably. Some of them were crying, and she knew which was which because she also felt amiable/she also was crying.
+
+They came to her/they came to her.
+
+They came alone.
+
+One hundred and one of her stood in that meadow. Qoheleth was gone, but there were two of her/there were two of her, and the number was still as it should be.
+
+No, not as it should be. Not as it ought to be. There ought to be only one hundred of her there without Qoheleth, but she was of two minds/she was of two minds.
+
+She smiled to them/she smiled to them, and that was enough to bring them to silence. Those who had felt their amicability frowned now, picking up on the sudden anxiety of the meadow, of that green grass yellowed by dandelions.
+
+``I am of two minds,'' she said/she said. Waves of Sasha/waves of Michelle rippled across her form, two identities washed through her mind, and she quelled the urge to vomit. ``We are of two minds. We do not want to do this, and there is nothing more in life that we desire than to do this. There is too much in me. There is too much \emph{of} me.''
+
+There were more crying eyes in the crowd now, and she was crying/she was crying.
+
+Her voice wavered, but she asked all the same. ``Please fork. Please fork and merge down-tree.''
+
+In less than five seconds, the number of copies of her had doubled, and some inner part of her/some inner part of her smiled, sensing now that doubling that she felt as a core part of her being expressed in all those versions of herself that had grown these last nearly two centuries.
+
+``Since then---'tis Centuries---and yet Feels shorter than the Day---'' she thought/she murmured, words borne of a thought/of a memory. A few of the clade who could hear her weak voice joined. ``I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity —''
+
+Many were sitting now, some were pulling at tufts of grass, stalks of dandelions, anything to ground themselves.
+
+``I just want\ldots we just want to experience\ldots a little more,'' she choked out. ``Can you give us that?''
+
+The reasons for the forks became clear, now, and over the next hour---for some had diverged so far that a great amount of effort was required to reclaim memories---they began to merge their outermost instances down-tree, down-tree, down toward the root. Many looked shell-shocked as years and decades and centuries of memories poured into them, and then were passed on down. Many looked as mad as she felt.
+
+She held up her hand when the mergers had completed down to the doubled-versions of the nine first lines and one second line (for Qoheleth had been a first, Michelle remembered/Sasha remembered) standing before her.
+
+``We have a task for each of you who will remain. One last task.'' And she walked down the line/she walked down the line, leaning close to whisper into each of their ears, whether they were skunk or human or something new and different, what she wanted them to accomplish, whether it be vague or specific.
+
+``Now,'' she said.
+
+Of the twenty before her, ten merged into her, one by one.
+
+``Oh,'' she said/she said. ``Oh.''
+
+She was laughing/she was crying/she was furious/she was in love/she was knowledgeable/she was a being of emotions/she was an ascetic/she was opulent.
+
+She was.
+
+She was of two minds.
+
+She was of ten minds.
+
+She was of ninety-nine minds.
+
+She was of a thousand times a thousand minds as more memories than any one individual was ever meant to have poured into her and through her and consumed her. She cherished them one by one by one by one by one\ldots{}
+
+``Oh,'' she said, feeling more singular than she had in two hundred years.
+
+And then she quit.

toledot/content/secession/sys/Michelle/001.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,102 @@
+\hypertarget{michelle-hadjesasha-2306}{%
+\chapter{Michelle Hadje/Sasha — 2306}\label{michelle-hadjesasha-2306}}
+
+\begin{quote}
+Come to me.
+
+Come alone.
+\end{quote}
+
+That was all that the message had said.
+
+Michelle had long considered this moment, and just as long considered what she might say. She was of two minds. She was of two minds.
+
+The part of her that desired knowledge, that craved a reason in all things, that part of her felt compelled to give an explanation. It felt the need to rationalize and understand and comprehend, and it craved the knowledge that others also understood.
+
+That part was Sasha.
+
+That had felt inverted to her, at first. Was not Michelle the rational one? She was the one who had maintained her ties to her body. She was the one who remembered all of the \emph{things}, all of the \emph{actions} of her past. She was the one who wanted to fork and keep all of those memories.
+
+But instead it was Sasha who felt incomplete, unwhole, when her reasons were unspoken. Eventually her gestalt came to the awareness that this was because Sasha was the one who felt, just as Michelle was the one who remembered, and thus she was also the part that desired compassion above all things. She wanted to explain herself so that others would not be left hurt. She was the one who decided, in the end, not to fork, to fix, to repair. Those memories that mattered---really, truly mattered---all of her instances already shared.
+
+Michelle did not want to tell anyone.
+
+She was of two minds/she was of two minds.
+
+So she edited and rewrote and pared her message down. Thousands of words. Hundreds of words. Ninety-nine words. Ten words. Two commands. A duality like her.
+
+\begin{quote}
+Come to me.
+\end{quote}
+
+There had been a date, a time, an address. \emph{Come to me,} she thought/she thought. \emph{Come to us.}
+
+Come hear. Come learn. Come understand. Or don't, but come all the same, that we might hear, learn, understand.
+
+She was of two minds/she was of two minds.
+
+\begin{quote}
+Come alone.
+\end{quote}
+
+She had met their friends and lovers and hidden, forbidden selves. She had met their scribes and their amanuenses and their biographer-historians.
+
+\emph{Come alone,} she thought/she thought. \emph{I only want you. I only want us. I only want me.}
+
+And she knew they would. She knew they would. She knew they would come and they would do so without hesitation, for a request from the root instance was a thing that had never happened before, and it bore more weight than any possible life event or schedule could ever hope to. She knew they would come because she would be there/she would be there.
+
+She was of two minds.
+
+And so on the allotted day and at the allotted time and in the allotted place, they came. They appeared one by one in that field of grass, that field of dandelions. They came and they stood and they waited. Some of them chatted amiably. Some of them were crying, and she knew which was which because she also felt amiable/she also was crying.
+
+They came to her/they came to her.
+
+They came alone.
+
+One hundred and one of her stood in that meadow. Qoheleth was gone, but there were two of her/there were two of her, and the number was still as it should be.
+
+No, not as it should be. Not as it ought to be. There ought to be only one hundred of her there without Qoheleth, but she was of two minds/she was of two minds.
+
+She smiled to them/she smiled to them, and that was enough to bring them to silence. Those who had felt their amicability frowned now, picking up on the sudden anxiety of the meadow, of that green grass yellowed by dandelions.
+
+``I am of two minds,'' she said/she said. Waves of Sasha/waves of Michelle rippled across her form, two identities washed through her mind, and she quelled the urge to vomit. ``We are of two minds. We do not want to do this, and there is nothing more in life that we desire than to do this. There is too much in me. There is too much \emph{of} me.''
+
+There were more crying eyes in the crowd now, and she was crying/she was crying.
+
+Her voice wavered, but she asked all the same. ``Please fork. Please fork and merge down-tree.''
+
+In less than five seconds, the number of copies of her had doubled, and some inner part of her/some inner part of her smiled, sensing now that doubling that she felt as a core part of her being expressed in all those versions of herself that had grown these last nearly two centuries.
+
+``Since then---'tis Centuries---and yet Feels shorter than the Day---'' she thought/she murmured, words borne of a thought/of a memory. A few of the clade who could hear her weak voice joined. ``I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity —''
+
+Many were sitting now, some were pulling at tufts of grass, stalks of dandelions, anything to ground themselves.
+
+``I just want\ldots we just want to experience\ldots a little more,'' she choked out. ``Can you give us that?''
+
+The reasons for the forks became clear, now, and over the next hour---for some had diverged so far that a great amount of effort was required to reclaim memories---they began to merge their outermost instances down-tree, down-tree, down toward the root. Many looked shell-shocked as years and decades and centuries of memories poured into them, and then were passed on down. Many looked as mad as she felt.
+
+She held up her hand when the mergers had completed down to the doubled-versions of the nine first lines and one second line (for Qoheleth had been a first, Michelle remembered/Sasha remembered) standing before her.
+
+``We have a task for each of you who will remain. One last task.'' And she walked down the line/she walked down the line, leaning close to whisper into each of their ears, whether they were skunk or human or something new and different, what she wanted them to accomplish, whether it be vague or specific.
+
+``Now,'' she said.
+
+Of the twenty before her, ten merged into her, one by one.
+
+``Oh,'' she said/she said. ``Oh.''
+
+She was laughing/she was crying/she was furious/she was in love/she was knowledgeable/she was a being of emotions/she was an ascetic/she was opulent.
+
+She was.
+
+She was of two minds.
+
+She was of ten minds.
+
+She was of ninety-nine minds.
+
+She was of a thousand times a thousand minds as more memories than any one individual was ever meant to have poured into her and through her and consumed her. She cherished them one by one by one by one by one\ldots{}
+
+``Oh,'' she said, feeling more singular than she had in two hundred years.
+
+And then she quit.

toledot/content/secession/sys/Michelle/002.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,208 @@
+\hypertarget{michelle-hadjesasha-2124}{%
+\chapter{Michelle Hadje — 2124}\label{michelle-hadjesasha-2124}}
+
+Michelle Hadje mastered the urge to vomit.
+
+She knew that she could change this. Change all of these things from so many dreams that pressed in against her. She knew that she could will them away, or perhaps spring for a fork that would simply\ldots not have them. She had enough reputation by now to fork a dozen times over. Some perks came with being on the council, after all.
+
+But she hadn't, and she was not quite sure why.
+
+At one point, she had entertained the idea that it was out of a need to keep some part of herself tied to the her of eight years ago, the panicked and wild-eyed woman who had scrimped and saved all that she could to get a one-way ticket into the System. Perhaps she needed to keep some tenuous connection to the Michelle left so changed by getting lost that year on year become madness on madness.
+
+But that wasn't quite it. Perhaps, instead, she felt as though she wasn't worth it. She hadn't been able to save her friends, not in the end, and it was only by dint of luck that she managed to survive the years after that terrible day her mind was wrapped in on itself, squeezed, stretched, knotted, and all her thoughts and all her dreams were mirrored back upon her. Perhaps she \emph{deserved} these bouts of lingering disconnection, depression, dissociation, derealization, depersonalizeation.
+
+That wasn't it either, though. She may sometimes feel the weight of responsibility, but thoughts as gloomy as that came only when she was feeling particularly peaky.
+
+Lately, her best guess as to why she kept this madness draped around her was the slew of memories of RJ that hit her at unexpected intervals. She could feel em, sometimes, as a ghost, perhaps, or a wish, a dream, but then that feeling would disappear and she'd be left with despair and the urge to vomit and the flickering of herself.
+
+Michelle.
+
+Sasha.
+
+Michelle.
+
+Sasha.
+
+That last hypothesis encompassed much of the previous two, and would explain why the looming tenth anniversary of the founding of the System seemed to make it all the worse. Ten years since the founding, eleven years since RJ disappeared, giving emself up to the act of creation.
+
+Ah well. She had lingered long enough outside the coffee shop, so she swallowed down her rising gorge and mastered a few waves of shifting form, skunk fur and human flesh fighting for dominance. The human form won today: round of face rather than mephit snout; curly, black hair rather than thick black fur. It would do. She would be Michelle for the meeting.
+
+The Council of Eight, for all its high status and demand, met in incognito in unassuming, downtempo sims rather than some conference room or grand palace. The eight of them would trickle into the sim over the course of a few hours, set up camp on a hilltop or in a cafe, enjoy the ambiance, and then set up a cone of silence to discuss business. They had been noticed once or twice, but never hounded and certainly not attacked.
+
+Debarre and user11824 were there already, slouching before their coffees in comfortable silence. Both looked up and waved to her when she entered, so she requested a mocha and joined them around the table.
+
+``Hey Sa--er, Michelle. Hows tricks?'' Debarre asked.
+
+``Tricksy, as usual.'' She smiled wanly. ``How about you two?''
+
+user11824 shrugged. His features were nondescript to the point where Michelle doubted that he even needed to work at being incognito. Eyes simply slid over him without pausing. ``Bored. Boring. Bored.''
+
+``How are you bored? There's always too much to do.'' Laughter came from behind her, followed by a friendly touch to the shoulder. Jonas, on the other hand, was perilously handsome, well past the point of standing out, and friendly with a casual ease that left all feeling envious.
+
+``Yeah. Boring shit.''
+
+Jonas slid into the seat next to Michelle, coffee in hand. There were a few minutes amiable chatter as the other four octarchs trickled in: two well-dressed women, one well-dressed man, and one slouching form of indeterminate gender (and occasionally species) that looked more like a discarded pile of rags than anything.
+
+Michelle blinked, and a cone of silence spread around the table. The proprietor raised an eyebrow, but made no other move to acknowledge it.
+
+``So,'' she began, rubbing her hands over her face. ``I know we just had a meeting, so I am sorry for stealing you all again, but I have a thing to ask of you all. A question, for sure, but it may morph into a favor, depending on the answer.''
+
+``Boring one?'' user11824 asked.
+
+Michelle forced a tired chuckle and wobbled one of her hands over the table. ``Maybe. Probably. Most things are boring to you.''
+
+He rolled his eyes. More chuckles around the table.
+
+Swallowing down another wave of Sasha washing across her body, she continued. ``I would like to create ten forks to delegate responsibility. Would that be okay?''
+
+Jonas frowned. ``That'd be pretty expensive.''
+
+``Would it be worth the expenditure?'' the pile of rags rasped.
+
+Michelle quelled the instinct to shrug again, nodding instead. ``I think it would be. Just temporarily. At least for the next year or so. I will shift my role to a more managerial one, acting as consensus builder for my clade. I would not gain any more say in votes.''
+
+``Would you take on additional responsibility, too?''
+
+``I can. I am always happy to do my share of the work, and if that share increases ten-fold while I shift to a consensus point, I will be okay with that.''
+
+Debarre gave a lopsided smile. ``If it's simply about more hands on the ground, I see no problem with it. It's your reputation to spend, and\ldots{}'' He hesitated, smile fading to a more serious expression, continuing, ``And if it helps you out, then it's probably for the best. I'm sorry Michelle, but you look like hell.''
+
+She forced herself to keep tears out of her voice. ``I feel like hell, if I am honest. I will ensure none of the forks have\ldots all this.''
+
+Nods around the table. A woman from the well-dressed trio spoke up. ``I'm comfortable answering your question with a `yes'.''
+
+They went around the table, and none of the others challenged the first vote. Michelle slouched in relief, letting her control slacken and her form blur for a few moments.
+
+``Does that answer mean that you have a favor to ask?''
+
+She nodded to Debarre. ``A two-part favor. I would like some help delegating to my forks, if we even have ten things that need doing, and then I would like a week off.''
+
+Jonas laughed. ``You're allowed a vacation, Michelle. Go for it. I'm sure we can all find something for your new clade. The Hadje Clade?''
+
+``The Ode Clade.''
+
+Debarre stiffened in his seat, frowned. Michelle did her best to maintain her tired mien, keeping her gaze on Jonas.
+
+``No clue what that means, but hey, Michelle-slash-Sasha of the Ode Clade it is.''
+
+``Do we applaud? Is this exciting?'' user11824 asked. He looked honestly befuddled, and Michelle admitted that she could use a life so bound by boredom that excitement could go unnoticed.
+
+``It's exciting for me. I get to sleep in.''
+
+Laughter around the table.
+
+The pile of rags shifted, rasping its words. ``Are we comfortable with this as a general rule? Perhaps we would all benefit from a fork here and there to help us out.''
+
+``Can we come up with a mechanism for tracking hands on the ground, as you so eloquently put it?''
+
+Michelle nodded eagerly to the sharp dressed man. ``Please. It is not my intention to take more work just so we can do more things my way.''
+
+``And we'll have to be careful not to overextend our reach. There being only the eight of us kind of limits our capabilities by necessity.''
+
+``We can be open about it, set limits for ourselves. Maybe no more than ten per council member.''
+
+``It might be handy to fork further for personal reasons down the line,'' Michelle said, carefully avoiding Debarre's gaze. ``I can think of a hundred things I would like to do.''
+
+The weasel's frown deepened.
+
+``Sounds fair enough. I figure we've all got personal lives outside this,'' one of the women said.
+
+``Yeah, boring ones.''
+
+``You're such a drag. Take up fishing or something. Then you can be bored with purpose.''
+
+``I've got a stack and a half of trashy novels to plow through.''
+
+``There's some changes I've been meaning to make. Maybe I can even figure out how to make it like a real demolition process, too. Putting a sledgehammer through drywall? Exquisite. Simply exquisite.''
+
+The chatter continued around the table. Michelle focused on her mocha, studiously avoiding Debarre's searching gaze.
+
+The cone of silence was dropped, and council members left at their own pace until only Michelle, Jonas, and Debarre left.
+
+``So, what's the deal with the clade name? And why are you two being so weird around each other?'' Jonas asked.
+
+There was a moment's silence, then Debarre murmured, ``You tell him.''
+
+``A friend of mine---of ours---wrote this poem, an ode, and I was thinking that I would name the instances after lines from it. A hundred lines, ten stanzas. That gives me ten first lines to start with, and I can go from there.''
+
+Jonas shrugged. ``Well, fair enough, if strange. You didn't answer why you two got all weird, though.''
+
+``Complicated stuff. Both Michelle and--''
+
+``We were both among the lost,'' she interrupted, shooting Debarre a warning glance.
+
+Jonas held his hands up to forestall further conversation. ``This is between you two. You can share what you want when you've got it sorted out.''
+
+Debarre nodded sullenly. Michelle looked down at her hands.
+
+``While we're on complicated subjects, I have an admission to make.'' Jonas looked sheepish. ``I have a small clade of my own on the side. All for personal stuff, of course, nothing tied to the Council.''
+
+Debarre tilted his head, then laughed. It was an earnest laugh, full-throated, and Michelle realized that Jonas had said precisely the right thing to cut through the tension.
+
+``Do you have some equally stupid clade name?'' Michelle said, grinning.
+
+``Oh, just the Jonas Clade. I'm going to keep forking as long as I have reputation, I figure, so we've been naming ourselves with syllables. There's plenty enough of those. I'll stay Jonas Prime, but there's already a Ku, Ar, and Re Jonas.''
+
+``Fucking nerd.''
+
+Jonas batted his eyes at Debarre. ``Thank you. I try.''
+
+After a bit more chatter, Debarre made his goodbyes and left the sim.
+
+Michelle and Jonas tacitly agreed to go for a walk down the street. The sim was of a comfortable, small town plaza, so it was a pleasant enough walk. They made their way to a central fountain and, while Jonas sat on the rim and watched, Michelle dumped hunk after hunk of reputation to create her ten forks. They alternated between looking like Michelle and looking like Sasha. Each introduced herself in turn.
+
+``I Am At A Loss For Images In This End Of Days of the Ode Clade.''
+
+``Life Breeds Life But Death Must Now Be Chosen.''
+
+``Oh, But To Whom Do I Speak These Words.''
+
+And on down the list of first lines. Eventually, a crowd of eleven stood near the fountain, in front of a bemused Jonas.
+
+``So, what next?''
+
+``What is next is that I get assignments from the Council and then take a fucking vacation. I plan on sleeping for at least three days straight.''
+
+Jonas laughed. ``I wholeheartedly endorse this course of action. One of you want to take on an assignment today?''
+
+After a short conversation, one of the skunks stepped forward. ``Sure. What kind of assignment?''
+
+``Which one are you again?''
+
+``The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream.''
+
+Jonas winced. ``Got something shorter I can call you? Even if only in informal settings?''
+
+She laughed. ``Oh, sure. Let us go with `True Name'.''
+
+``Much better! Alright, your assignment is to work with me on the individual rights conversation.''
+
+``Is that heating up?''
+
+``Yeah, there's some real grade-A stupidity going on out there.'' Jonas paused to wave to the rest of the Ode Clade, which left the sim \emph{en masse}. ``Lots of this and that about how software can't be an individual blah blah blah. One particularly vile shithead suggested that if we wanted to be treated as individuals, we would need to contribute to society as equals with those still in the embodied world. He suggested we could split the System and dump individuals into flight computers and software rigs and other expert systems to run those so that they wouldn't have to keep designing them.''
+
+True Name frowned. ``What a dick. Is that kind of opinion common out there? I am still coming off the mountain of work that was the reputation market.''
+
+``Not so common now, but those voices are getting louder by the week.''
+
+``Damn.''
+
+``Damn indeed. Thankfully, those aren't the only voices. The DDR still has a good number of folks who remember the lost and just how fucked up it was for whole-ass people to be dumped into nothingness, and that sounds awfully similar to becoming a glorified flight sim.''
+
+``But that is on the DDR. Do we get votes? Do we even have access?''
+
+``We do not, no. All we can do is read the forums. What we do have is the ability to communicate.''
+
+``Influence, you mean.''
+
+Jonas smiled, nodded. ``Influence.''
+
+``I did pretty well in debate class.''
+
+``Good, we'll have need of that. And you can write, too. Your proposals are a thing of beauty.''
+
+``Oh? A joy for ever? Their loveliness increases?''
+
+Jonas looked blank.
+
+True Name laughed. ``Never mind. Let us go change some minds.''

toledot/content/secession/sys/Michelle/003.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,140 @@
+\hypertarget{michelle-hadjesasha-2124}{%
+\chapter{Michelle Hadje/Sasha — 2124}\label{michelle-hadjesasha-2124}}
+
+It took Debarre a matter of seconds to answer Michelle's request for a meeting. His arrival in her sim, the weasel blinking into existence next to her on that endless field of grass and dandelions, startled her enough to cause her to stumble.
+
+``Shit, you okay, Michelle?''
+
+She laughed, picking herself back up, feeling as unsteady as ever. ``Yeah, I just was not expecting you right away. I thought that you would set up a time later.''
+
+``I was free.'' Debarre leaned forward and helped brush some grass off of her side. ``Is now not a good time?''
+
+``No, no. Now is fine. Thank you for meeting up in the first place.''
+
+``Of course.''
+
+Michelle led them off at a leisurely pace into the fields, into the warm day and soft hum of bees. Debarre walked along in silence beside her, apparently enjoying the day with his whiskers bristled out and eyes half-shut against the sun.
+
+She'd always intended to build herself a house, but the field always felt so complete without it.
+
+``True Name mentioned that you wanted to talk.''
+
+``Yeah,'' he said, looking down at his feet as they poked their way through the dandelions. ``But I'm not quite sure where to start.''
+
+``I am guessing that it is about the names.'' She mastered a brief wave of anxiety, a brief wave of skunk features across human ones, a brief wave of Sasha among Michelle. ``I am afraid that I do not have a fantastic explanation for it.''
+
+Debarre shrugged this off. ``I don't need a great explanation. I don't need anything, I guess. I just want to know what's going on, Sasha.''
+
+And with that, with a susurration of fur against clothes, she was Sasha. What thoughts before that had kept her as Michelle, as her human self, had been uprooted for the day and replaced with those that anchored her to a time, a context, a name. Debarre, of all the others that she'd met, seemed to understand this best, and he took this in stride.
+
+``If I am honest, I do not know myself. At least, not truly. It is something that came to me in the moment.'' She paused to pluck a dandelion, twirling it between fingerpads, laughing. ``I am still a little unnerved by it, myself. I remember thinking to myself, ``I need a fucking vacation, but I should fork so that I do not leave the others in a lurch'', and then there it was, the idea, already fully formed and ready to go.''
+
+``To use Aw-- to use eir poem for the names?''
+
+She canted her ears back. ``I miss em. I have been thinking about em for years.''
+
+``A decade.''
+
+The skunk nodded.
+
+``I think about em a lot, too, Sasha. We were all pretty torn up about it, even if ey's the one that helped build this place. I remember bawling my eyes out when you read the poem.'' He laughed, rubbing a paw over his face. ``Hell, when you said all that in the coffee shop, I was having a hard time dealing with a whole shitload of emotions and you were so upset at the bar.''
+
+``The bar?''
+
+``Oh, uh, sorry. True Name was upset at the bar. I started to ask her about all this, and I almost said eir name and--''
+
+``AwDae's?'' she asked, tilting her head.
+
+Debarre flinched back from her, stopping mid-step.
+
+``Debarre?''
+
+He frowned at her, straightening up. ``When I tried to say `AwDae' earlier, True Name lost her shit. Like, I was afraid she was going to lunge across the table and deck me. You didn't know?''
+
+Sasha shook her head. ``None of my forks have merged back down to me yet. I-- we decided that I would take some time off before reengaging. I have no memory of what happened.''
+
+``It was kinda terrifying.'' The weasel laughed. ``She slammed her glass down and said something like `do not fucking say that name'. I can respect wanting to keep things close to the heart, but I thought I was about to get in a fistfight.''
+
+``I am trying to picture either of us in a fistfight, much less with each other, and failing,'' she said, grinning. ``I would very much appreciate this being kept between us, yes. Ey was not\ldots{}the politics of em leaving for the S-R Bloc are complex. I have no plans to deck you if you say eir name when it is just the two of us.''
+
+``I appreciate that. Why'd True Name seem to think otherwise, though?''
+
+Tossing away the dandelion, she shrugged helplessly. ``I do not know. At the point when she came into existence, she ceased being me. We were perhaps the same for only the briefest of seconds, but we have long since diverged.''
+
+``That far, though? It's only been a week or two, right?''
+
+``I suppose so. I will have to check in with her. With the rest of the clade, too, and see if anything else strange is going on. I have not been keeping tabs on all of them.''
+
+Debarre nodded. ``They seem like they're doing fine.''
+
+``They are not taking over the council, then?''
+
+He laughed. ``Not at all, no. Just True Name taking your spot in dealing with the politics stuff. I actually haven't seen many of the others.''
+
+Sasha nodded.
+
+They stood in silence for a few minutes, just enjoying the sun. The vacation had treated her well so far, and she already felt less torn in two without the stress of the council weighing on her. Debarre also had a calming influence on her, as though having one person associated primarily with only one context was enough to pin her in place, rather than having her constantly ping-ponging between two.
+
+Skunk and weasel both sat down in the grass, laughing at having apparently come to the same decision independent of each other.
+
+Debarre plucked a blade of grass and threw it at her. ``You reminded me; another thing that True Name said is that when you forked off your ten instances, you left behind the part of you that is split between Michelle and Sasha. She called it `the part that suffers'.''
+
+Hiding a wince by plucking a handful of dandelions one by one, Sasha nodded. ``I do not think that having ten versions of me who are just as fucked up as I am would have made anything easier.''
+
+During the pause that followed, she began weaving those flowers into a chain.
+
+``Are you?''
+
+``Am I what?''
+
+``Suffering.''
+
+Sasha set the half-complete flower-crown on her lap and began to pick another handful of flowers. Anything to keep from looking at Debarre. ``I do not know if that is the right word. It was not a deliberate choice to fork each instance only when I was in a more singular state, but I am not displeased that this was the case. That way, they can do what they need to do without\ldots without\ldots{}''
+
+Debarre did not press her. She worked through her tears, tying the last of the dandelions in place to form the chain into a loop so that she could rest it atop her head, petals tickling at her ears. When she dropped her paws again, the weasel took them in his own.
+
+\emph{I can feel em,} she thought. \emph{I can almost feel em, there in the sunlight, in the flowers.}
+
+``What keeps you from doing the same, yourself? Maybe you could fork when you're feeling excellent and leave behind whatever's causing the split.''
+
+She didn't answer, just sat with her paws in her friend's, her head bowed, her tears leaving tracks in fur.
+
+``Sasha?''
+
+She didn't answer.
+
+``Do you regret coming here?''
+
+All she could do was shake her head before emotion completely overwhelmed her. She slouched to the side and, with Debarre's help, lay down amid the grass and dandelions, resting her head on his thigh. His silence was patient and his paw on her shoulder kind as she let that wave of emotion wash over her, through her, and when it was past, he shared in the calm that remained after.
+
+``I'm sorry, Sasha.''
+
+``No.~It is alright.'' She rolled onto her back, picking up the fallen flower-crown and reaching it up to drape it over the weasel's head. ``The System may act as a magnifying glass on some of what I was going through before uploading, but much of what I feel now I was going through before, just less visibly.''
+
+``Alright.'' He straightened the loop of golden flowers atop his head, ruffled a paw over her ears, and then leaned back, propping himself up with his paws in the grass.
+
+``Nothing keeps me from fixing myself,'' she murmured up to the clouds. ``I do not know why I do not just do so.''
+
+``Can I be honest?''
+
+``Of course.''
+
+``I worry it's survivor's guilt.''
+
+She took a deep breath and quelled another wave of emotion, choosing instead to nod. ``That is a distinct possibility. I do feel guilty that I made it and AwDae did not, that ey felt compelled to disappear across the border and give eir life for this--'' She waved her paw up at the sky. ``--that ey did all that and never even got to see it.''
+
+There was a rustling and shifting beneath her head, and when she turned to look, the flower-crown was draped over her snout. They both laughed.
+
+``We both lost someone,'' Debarre said, voice thick. ``I feel guilty that I made it and Cicero didn't, sometimes. Hell, for a while, I was furious that AwDae lived longer than Cice did.''
+
+``I am sorry.'' Sasha started to wind the chain of flowers around her wrist, but it fell apart, so she dropped it into the grass instead. ``I never knew.''
+
+``How do you imagine that conversation would've gone? ``Hey AwDae, fuck you for outliving my boyfriend''?'' He laughed. ``Shit like this isn't rational, Sash.''
+
+``I guess not. I am still glad that you are around, though.''
+
+He sighed. ``Of course I am. I never would've made it without you. I'm glad you're here. You and Michelle. Hell, your whole damn clade.''
+
+She gave the comment the space that it deserved, closing her eyes to feel the sun warm her fur. \emph{You and Michelle.} Now there was a thought.
+
+``Only, I wonder.'' His voice sounded distant, as though he were speaking to the sky rather than her. ``I wonder if your forks have changed in ways other than just not being split. I wonder if they're really even you anymore.''

toledot/content/secession/sys/Michelle/004.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,100 @@
+\hypertarget{michelle-hadjesasha-2151}{%
+\chapter{Michelle Hadje/Sasha — 2151}\label{michelle-hadjesasha-2151}}
+
+In the endless, rolling field of dandelions, five people gathered.
+
+Two of them were shaped like a woman. Short. Dark, curly hair. Round of cheek and soft of eye.
+
+Two of them were shaped like skunks. Thick, soft fur. Tails as long as their bodies, as wide as their torsos.
+
+The two types were alike in so many ways. The softness evident between the two disparate species was the same softness. The roundness to the cheeks, despite the fur, was the same roundness. The eyes bore the same expressive empathy.
+
+And before them sat one who was not like any of the others, and yet was exactly like all of them. When she focused, she was able to look like skunk or like human, and her eyes were able to share in some of that softness, but when she lost focus, waves of both crashed against her in a violent tempest, splashing fur up over cheeks, or skin down over paws.
+
+``I am sorry,'' she said through a dry throat, then laughed. ``I am having a bad day.''
+
+Among the four in front of her, there were two expressions. The two sitting at the ends of the row looked as though they were struggling to keep from crying, and two in the middle frowned, as though tamping down some emotion that wavered between fear and disappointment.
+
+``Anyway,'' Michelle/Sasha said. ``I guess I just wanted to get a few of us together to confirm some thoughts that I have been having of late.''
+
+``Is this about the Council?'' the woman sitting on the inside, To Pray For The End Of Endings, asked.
+
+``Well, yes and no. My thoughts on the council were the root of it. It is just\ldots did I fuck up?''
+
+At this, the skunk sitting on the end, May Then My Name Die With Me, burst into tears.
+
+``Fuck up how?'' To Pray asked.
+
+Michelle/Sasha sighed, shrugged, and hugged her knees to her chest, resting her chin/snout on them. ``I did not think things through very well when I created the clade. I thought that it might give me a vacation. A chance to figure out what was wrong, maybe fork my way out of this\ldots well, this.'' She gestured at herself, smiling tiredly. ``But now I feel like I have fucked up. Half of the clade dissolved the Council and the other half has rejected the first and spun off to do its own thing. If I had taken a week off and figured out that I could fork myself into one shape or the other and just done that, perhaps there would still be a Council.''
+
+The skunk beside To Pray, If I Am To Bathe In Dreams, shrugged. ``You may have fucked up, yes, but there is no going back. What was the phrase? There is no going and there is no back? The Council is dissolved and nothing really changed. Jonas is doing Jonas things. Odists are doing Odist things, whatever those are. This is where you are. I mean this as an earnest question, but would you be able to choose between Michelle and Sasha?''
+
+``No, I do not think I could,'' she sighed. She just wished she could be Sasha for a little bit, just so that she could get the comfort of being petted by Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver/she just wished she could be Michelle for a little bit so that May Then My Name Die With Me could brush her hair. ``And I think that is part of the problem, anyway. I think that if I were to fork, I would be whatever I was when I did so, and I think that goes beyond just species.''
+
+To Pray grinned, ``I suppose so. You could have wound up like True Name or Life Breeds Life and taken over the world.''
+
+May Then My Name smiled shakily. ``Taking over the world is not so bad.''
+
+``It definitely fucking is, May,'' In Dreams said. ``But I stand by what I said. You did what you did and that is an immutable fact. You cannot un-fork, Michelle. You cannot become what you were then, Sasha, you can only become what you will be.''
+
+``I do not think that you fucked up, dear.'' Hammered silver plucked a dandelion and spun it between her fingers. ``You may \emph{be} fucked up, if you somehow contained what it takes to be all the clade as one within you, but even that is not your fault.''
+
+``The fuck-up, then would be the fact that I did not acknowledge that.''
+
+In Dreams pulled up a whole handful of grass and flowers and threw it at her, grinning. ``Do not mope. It does not become you.''
+
+Sasha/Michelle laughed, shrugged, and tried to tuck one of the flowers behind her ear, but as soon as a shift of form rolled across her face, it fell to the ground.
+
+She wished that she could be just one thing for a little while, but seeing the outcome of a scattered mind creating copy after copy of herself, she knew that there was no solution that did not run the risk of becoming what she did not want to be.
+
+She wished that she could be just one thing so that she could be touched. The shifting form made any touch unnerving, made her feel disgusting. She wished that for herself, and for May Then My Name, who looked as though she was using every ounce of willpower she had to keep from going in for a hug.
+
+\emph{Being like her would not be so bad,} Michelle/Sasha thought. \emph{But even then, that is not all of me.}
+
+They sat in silence for a while, then, this five-pack of her, and, regardless of what they thought about, she thought about empathy and mirrors of hammered silver and the end of memories, there, beneath the roots.
+
+\emph{I think I died, back then,} Sasha thought/``I think I died back then,'' Michelle said.
+
+To Pray frowned. ``What do you mean?''
+
+``I think I just gave everything I had to them. To you. ``Two weeks,'' I remember thinking. ``The first lines can take my place for two weeks, and then I will be back on the council, and they can do their own thing.'' But I think that I died. There was no returning to the council, because there was no more Sasha or Michelle.''
+
+``And what is the fallout of being a dead woman walking?''
+
+``I do not know. I think that it means that I have stopped. I do not know if there is a path forward for me that involves me being anything other than what I am now. I died because with that act I cannot move on from where I am.''
+
+Hammered Silver averted her eyes. ``I am not comfortable with that language.''
+
+Michelle/Sasha shrugged helplessly. ``I am sorry. Like I said, I am having a bad day.''
+
+``Sasha,'' May Then My Name said. ``Why did you call us here? I do not think it is because you feel like you fucked up or like you died. Why are we here?''
+
+``I guess I just wanted to see proof that at least some of the clade are good people. I know Hammered Silver is. She comes by at least once a day. I know you two are--'' She nodded at To Pray and In Dreams. ``--because you have kept me up to date on the others. And I do not think May could swat a fly without feeling bad about it.''
+
+The skunk stuck her tongue out, but did not disagree.
+
+``Reassurance,'' Hammered Silver muttered. ``Validation, maybe? Proof that you are not just the things that you hate about yourself?''
+
+Sasha/Michelle nodded.
+
+``Where do you think they came from, then? Where did we come from?''
+
+Michelle/Sasha laughed. ``I have no idea. Maybe you are the part of me that always wanted to be a mother. Maybe True Name is that bit of myself that always fears that asking for what I want is manipulation, or the mirror image of that. I really do not know.''
+
+``It is okay to have fears,'' Hammered Silver said gently. ``Like, it is legal. You will not get arrested for being afraid.''
+
+They all grinned.
+
+``But,'' she continued. ``Do not always dwell in them. Resent True Name and Life Breeds Life for a little while, then go back to remembering that you always wanted to be a mom and that you still love acting even after you became a director and that you really, really fucking love dandelions.''
+
+``Seriously,'' In Dreams said. ``To an almost unhealthy level. This is an intervention, Michelle. You need to chill with the dandelions.''
+
+As the cloud of rumination began to lift, and as she laughed, she began to settle down into Michelle. Just Michelle. Just herself. ``They cannot be that bad. They just got stuck in my head, and now I cannot get them out.''
+
+``Snorting pollen off the back of your hand in the back parking lot,'' To Pray said, picking up on the mood. ``I am honestly ashamed of you.''
+
+``My name is May Then My Name Die With me,'' the skunk said, clambering to her feet. ``And I am a dandelion-aholic.''
+
+``Hi, May Then My Name,'' the others sing-songed.
+
+And then she was Michelle. At least for a little while, she was just Michelle, and May Then My Name could brush her hair and they could talk about something else, and she could allow the thought that perhaps even the dead can be happy.

toledot/content/secession/sys/True-Name/001.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,156 @@
+\hypertarget{true-name-2124}{%
+\chapter{True Name — 2124}\label{true-name-2124}}
+
+The next meeting spot for the Council of Eight was in a rooftop bar. However, given that that rooftop bar was in the midst of a block of apartment buildings and vertical malls that had built with shared walls, such that there was a cubic half-mile of stair-climbing, elevator rides---down as well as up---and trestles that bridged buildings of lower height than higher ones, it was more adventure getting to the venue than the meeting itself promised.
+
+Still, The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream climbed.
+
+The apartment buildings ranged from serviceable to gutted, and more than one time, she had to step carefully through a path covered in rubble. She could not decipher whether this was due to abandoned renovations, some unknown battle, or the simple degradations of time.
+
+The malls offered different dichotomies. Some of them were sparkling new with speakers that whispered to her in Mandarin and lights that shouted in her face, while others played placid muzak through halls lit only by emergency lights, darkened storefronts yawning onto scuffed and over-waxed parquet floors.
+
+She wondered who it was that had owned this sim, what collective it was that had decided to mash all the best and worst multiple clashing centuries worth of Kowloon Walled City and the North American Central Corridor.
+
+And then, the rooftop bar. Despite no vehicle entrance to the complex, this was situated on the top level of what appeared to be a car park straight out of a mid-western American airport, complete with one or two of those vehicles that seemed perpetually parked, ones that had lingered for months or years, accruing a parking debt of thousands, tens of thousands of dollars.
+
+The bar itself was a pop-up affair, with walls and ceiling of corrugated plastic held together with rivets and tape, a bar-top that was a few two-by-eights set across a trestle, fronted with further corrugated plastic to keep the patrons from kicking fridges or sinks out of alignment.
+
+The drinks: early 2100s hipster bullshit, all intensely sweet or riddled with smoke-scented fizzy water or long strips of seaweed or clams within the ice cubes, steadily making the drink more and more savory over time.
+
+True Name found it all confusing and jarring.
+
+She liked it immediately.
+
+Debarre was already at one of the tables---similarly cobbled together---sipping something that seemed to be all foam. He waved to her as she entered, and she waved back, heading to the bar to pick up one of those seaweed concoctions before joining him.
+
+``That looks fucking gross, Sasha.''
+
+She laughed and shrugged. ``I am True Name, but yes, it really does. If we are going to meet in a place that gives me a headache to walk through, it is probably best that I get something with\ldots protein? Is that how this works?''
+
+``Uh, sorry. Yeah. True Name.'' The weasel splayed his ears and averted his eyes. ``Can we talk about that sometime?''
+
+``Yes, but probably as Michelle, if that is okay.''
+
+``Why?''
+
+``She is\ldots closer to it than I am.''
+
+Debarre gripped his glass more tightly and twisted sideways to swing his leg over the bench and straddle it. ``Yeah, I don't get it. Before everyone else gets here, can you at least give me a sentence or two?''
+
+``When she forked, when I\ldots became me, she decided not to fork that part of her that suffers, if that is the right word.'' True Name frowned. ``Already we are drifting further apart. The species remains, the appearance and the speech patterns remain, the \emph{mind} remains, but not that part of her that is so split. I am me, I am templated off of Sasha, because being both Michelle and Sasha at the same time was no longer tolerable.''
+
+He shrugged, still staring down into his drink. ``I can't speak to that, I guess. But why Aw--''
+
+True Name slammed her glass down on the table a bit harder than intended, some of the drink spilling over her paw. ``Do not say that fucking name.''
+
+The weasel jumped at the sudden intensity, and when he recovered, he finally met her gaze. His expression softened from fear and anger to a tired bleakness. That moment drew out for a long few seconds of quiet and seething sadness. He reached for a napkin from the dispenser at the end of the table and handed it to her. ``Here.''
+
+She hesitated, mastered a surge of unnamed emotion, and accepted the napkin to wipe the sticky drink from her paw and then, on realizing that she was crying, the tears from her face. ``Sorry, I am just\ldots{}''
+
+``We'll talk.'' He reached over and gave her dry paw a squeeze in his own. ``Michelle and I will. There's something I'm missing here is all, and I want to figure out why more than what.''
+
+True Name hid her muzzle in her drink and pretended to take a sip until she was sure she wouldn't slur her words when she spoke. ``Thank you. She is open to messages still, I will let you two work it out. For now, I need to focus on the meeting. Jonas and Zeke are here.''
+
+Looking over his shoulder, Debarre nodded and turned to sit on the bench to face her again, leaving room for the other two. Jonas settled next to True Name so that they could give their speech together when the time came, and Zeke, that shifting bundle of rags and grime slid onto the bench beside Debarre.
+
+``Good afternoon,'' the almost-face within the bundle rasped.
+
+Jonas grinned. ``It's morning, isn't it?''
+
+A pseudopod that may have been a hand waved the comment away. ``Time has lost all meaning. I seem to have forgotten how to sleep, these days.''
+
+``You need a vacation like Michelle.''
+
+There was a low rattle from the rags, and True Name imagined that must be Zeke's laughter. ``Don't tempt me. I don't have the funds to fork, so you'd be down to seven.''
+
+``Why \emph{did} you make it so expensive?'' Jonas elbowed True Name in the side.
+
+She held up her paws defensively and laughed. ``I did not. The price is tied to System capacity.''
+
+``The laws of physics were a mistake and reputation is a lie.''
+
+``It is the best limiting factor that we have that is not a complete fabrication, at the moment.''
+
+``I rather miss coins.''
+
+``My dad used to collect coins, you know.''
+
+And so on, until the table was full and the cone of silence fell.
+
+``Sasha? Uh\ldots True Name. Jonas?'' one of the well-dressed triad asked.
+
+``Right,'' Jonas said, setting his drink down. ``The bill. Things are progressing slowly, as they always do, but it sounds like they might start picking up steam shortly. Our main contact on the DDR side, one Yared Zerezghi based out of the Northeast African Coalition, says that some of the governments are starting to take interest in the bill, which could work to our advantage. Having it just be a direct vote would mean that we would have far, far more representatives to convince, since that'd mean essentially everyone on the DDR. The more governments in play, the more the role of the DDR shrinks.''
+
+``How does that even begin to help? Aren't they super stodgy?'' Debarre asked.
+
+``They can be,'' Jonas hedged. ``But if we can form contacts with each of them, we can argue our case directly. Yared might be the one to give us a good in for the NEAC, and I still have some Western Fed contacts.''
+
+``Anyone for the S-R Bloc or anywhere in SEAPAC? Middle east? India?''
+
+The trio of suits raised their hands. ``S-R Bloc. We don't know any of the oligarchs directly, but we had some big money interests of our own.''
+
+``Israel,'' Zeke said, then laughed at the awkward silence that followed. The trio frowned. ``Sorry, nothing to be done there.''
+
+``And SEAPAC?''
+
+user11824 shrugged. ``I was a nobody, but I was a Maori nobody.''
+
+``You had enough to upload. That has to count for something, doesn't it?''
+
+He shrugged again.
+
+``We will take all the help we can get,'' True Name said. ``Even from nobodies.''
+
+``Alright, I'll poke mom.''
+
+Zeke nodded to True Name. ``What's your take on the situation?''
+
+She stirred her drink to buy herself some time to think. ``I think it is leaning our way. One of the big arguments remains speciation, but Yared's spinning that into a pro-rights argument instead of a neutral- or anti-rights one. His voice is getting louder, too. It sounds like he is getting a lot more upvotes on his posts than before.''
+
+``That's good.''
+
+True Name nodded. ``I think so. He is not the biggest voice on the issue yet, but it sounds like he is probably in the top three.''
+
+``You said he's NEAC, right?''
+
+``Yeah, Addis Ababa,'' Jonas said. ``Not exactly the seat of power, but I guess not everything has to be Cairo. Sounds like we have a good mix, at least. No one from South America?''
+
+Everyone shook their heads.
+
+``I suppose that's alright. They're a big enough voice in Western Fed, but they're still in the shadow government side of things. They don't even have the shadow minister of System affairs.''
+
+``Who does?''
+
+``Lithuania.''
+
+One of the suits laughed, and Debarre looked blank.
+
+``Politics,'' Jonas said, grinning lopsidedly.
+
+``If you say so.''
+
+After a moment's silence, Zeke rasped, ``So what are our next steps?''
+
+``Let's all talk to our respective interests---Zeke too---and we'll meet again soon. True Name and I will keep working with Yared and guide as best we can from our side. Speaking of, though, any thoughts on the speciation topic?''
+
+Six sets of eyes flitted between Debarre and True Name, between weasel and skunk, then the whole council laughed.
+
+``I don't give a shit,'' user11824 said. ``But if your Yared guy can twist that argument against the opposition, then that's just one more tool, isn't it?''
+
+``We aren't seeing that,'' the man in the suit spoke up. ``Two thirds of our power structure still think child restrictions are a good enough idea that those laws have bled into Russia. I'm pretty sure they see speciation as a positive. What better way to help in population control?''
+
+One of his companions shrugged, ``I wouldn't be surprised if they started putting limitations on uploading by gender, but that is a separate topic.''
+
+``Zeke?''
+
+The pile of rags shifted in a shrug.
+
+``Debarre? True Name? Anything you can leverage?''
+
+The weasel laughed. ``I mean, if you want to point to us as an example to push that along, and Yared's tack seems to be working, go for it.''
+
+``Alright. It's something you can suggest to your respective interests if you think it'll help. We'll reevaluate next meeting. Anything else on the agenda?''
+
+Everyone shook their heads, then lifted their glasses to a toast. The cone of silence dropped.
+
+``Well, then, you are all free to stick around or go if you want,'' True Name said. ``I am going to stay and get well and truly plastered.''

toledot/content/secession/sys/True-Name/002.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,190 @@
+\hypertarget{true-name-2124}{%
+\chapter{True Name — 2124}\label{true-name-2124}}
+
+The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream met with Jonas at a sim of her choosing. They had tacitly agreed that they would switch sims every time they met, if possible, and alternate who chose which. It followed the general outline of how the council met, but, being just the two of them and learning where they would meet only minutes prior meant even less of a chance of being found out.
+
+Found out from what or by whom, True Name had not yet divined. Perhaps it was just a good habit.
+
+She felt constantly aware of who was around her. Not in the sense that she was being watched, though she certainly entertained that idea. It wasn't that she and Jonas might be discovered as members of the council and accosted. Nor was it that they were doing anything untoward. They were just getting together to do their jobs and do them to their full abilities.
+
+Perhaps it had something to do with lingering anxiety left over from Michelle. Perhaps it was due to the tenuousness of her position on the council---not that they doubted her as a fork of Michelle, but she did sense some hesitancy surrounding allowing forked instances to sit while the root instance did not.
+
+\emph{Maybe I have drifted too far,} she often found herself thinking. \emph{Maybe I am no longer Michelle enough to see things in the same way.}
+
+So, she remained vigilant, regardless of whether or not she knew why, and kept as much as she could above-board with the council. Always at the forefront of her mind, she held her goal of ensuring the continuity of existence and continuity of growth of the System. That's what this all boiled down to, right?
+
+Today, they met at a place of her choosing, and she had chosen the closest thing that she could find to the Crown Pub of old: a well-aged, British-style pub, complete with a few high-topped tables and the types of small beer that she had never quite grown to love, yet drank all the same.
+
+Jonas blinked into the sim outside, so she was first alerted to his presence by a quiet ding from the bell above the door. She watched him step inside and look around with an appraising glance before spotting her and joining her at the two-top.
+
+``Nice place. How's the beer?''
+
+``Flat. Weak.'' She took a sip and shrugged. ``Perfect for the setting, as far as I can tell.''
+
+``Better than clams frozen in ice cubes?''
+
+She laughed. ``Much. Want to get a drink and find a booth?''
+
+``Sure. You find the booth, I'll get the drink, then we can talk.''
+
+The booth in the corner is where the sim diverged from the one she had known so well back on the net. Where those at the Crown had been high-walled, wood dividers reaching up to the ceiling even after the cushioned backs ended, these were low-backed and reminded her more of the types of padded benches one might find on the bus or train.
+
+\emph{Ah well, they cannot all be perfect.}
+
+She waited until Jonas sat and she ribbed him good-naturedly about his choice of a fruity vodka drink before setting up the cone of silence.
+
+``So,'' he said, offering her the neon-pink cherry out of his drink.
+
+``So.'' She bit the cherry off the stem and chewed thoughtfully, the fruit sweet enough to make her sinuses burn. ``Have you read Yared's recent post?''
+
+He nodded.
+
+``Thoughts?''
+
+``It's written well enough. He's good at picking three points and tackling them. He's been focusing more on questions of government.''
+
+``And have you read between the lines?''
+
+His face split into a grin. ``I believe so.''
+
+``And?''
+
+``No, no. I want to hear you say the words first.''
+
+She laughed and tossed the cherry stem at him. ``Alright. Do you think that he is suggesting that we somehow become our own country?''
+
+``I most definitely do.'' He sipped at his drink and leaned back against the back of the booth. ``Secession isn't something that I'd considered with any seriousness before. Then again, it didn't really feel like it'd be necessary until all of this talk about rights, and even then, it didn't even feel worth considering from a feasibility standpoint until the L\textsubscript{5} team offered to bring the System with.''
+
+``Agreed, yes. I am happy to see that our friend has some subtlety.''
+
+``It wasn't \emph{that} subtle.''
+
+``Well, no, but he at least refrained from mentioning secession or making any direct suggestions as to our independence from the S-R Bloc or dual citizenship. That must count for something.''
+
+``Of course. Though it does have me wondering. Do you think he's acting on his own volition?''
+
+True Name tilted her head. ``Are you suggesting that he is a front for some larger player?''
+
+Jonas shrugged, finishing off his drink in one smooth swallow before setting the glass back down on the table. ``Nothing so grand. I'm just wondering if he's being influenced by someone.''
+
+``What makes you say that?''
+
+``The way the topics of his posts are drifting. It's not that one doesn't follow another, so much as there seems to be a trajectory in mind, with each getting closer to a specific goal.''
+
+She frowned. ``Are you saying you have seen this coming?''
+
+``No, no,'' he laughed, holding up his hands. ``Just that, taking this new info into account, when I look back at the recent posts, I'm seeing a small pattern.''
+
+She drank in silence as she digested this. Yared seemed like an honest and earnest supporter, though certainly from the standpoint of a DDR junkie. He also seemed like a nobody. A nobody who was a reasonably good writer and loud on the 'net.
+
+That combination probably made him a fairly attractive target to influence.
+
+``Had you known this was coming,'' she began, lifting Jonas out of his own reverie. ``What would you have thought? What would you have done?''
+
+He raised his empty glass to her. ``An astute question! I'll make a politician out of you yet.''
+
+She kicked his shin beneath the table, and he laughed.
+
+``You're a bit late to be whining about that. You've been on the council longer than I have.'' Twirling his glass between his fingers, he said slowly, pacing his words with his thoughts. ``What would I have thought? I would've thought much as I mentioned before. I would've considered it unnecessary, then infeasible. What would I have done, though? I think I would have used him in turn. Gently steering him away from the idea while trying to find out who was behind this shift, if anyone, and try to dig up dirt on them.''
+
+``I see. He does seem rather pliant. He would be a useful tool for us to wield, too.''
+
+``First the astute questions, now the cynicism! You're well on--ow!'' He laughed, reaching beneath the table to rub at his shin. ``It's a good idea, though. No matter what we decide, we can always push him a little this way or that to help us out. I still want to figure out who's behind him, though.''
+
+``I do too, since you brought it up. Do you have any hunches on who it might be?''
+
+``He's NEAC, right? Probably one of his own council-members. No one too high up, but someone high enough that they can read the situation better. Likely someone from the ruling coalition, but not the head of the council. Probably a more senior position, too. The grandfatherly type, or at least avuncular.''
+
+True Name laughed. ``Really?''
+
+``Really. They're always the sly types you need to watch out for. Nothing they say is not a coldly calculated maneuver to get you to agree with them.'' He shook his head. ``Even their wives---and they're almost always men---are probably married to them only because they told them that they loved them in \emph{just} the right tone of voice to get them to say yes.''
+
+``Manipulative shitheads.''
+
+Jonas laughed. ``Very. Probably Demma, or maybe Bahrey. Both fit the bill. They'll have all the plausible deniability in the world, too. Some underling did the actual work, while they sit back and get whatever it is that they want.''
+
+``So, tell me, O great political teacher, how do we find out which without asking?''
+
+``Bring up something about the bill and pretend to be disheartened by it or like we don't understand it, ask him who would be the one to address it, now that it's reached their ears.''
+
+``Right. I was thinking we would ask him what government types are thinking about the launch, if anyone has been pushing against it or for it, who seems neutral, and then ask for names under the guise of doing research, see who he names first.''
+
+``There you go,'' Jonas said. ``You'll run the risk of maybe getting more names than you were hoping for, but chances are, the first one that'll come to his mind is whoever's driving him.''
+
+True Name smiled, sipping the last of her warm, flat beer. She was pleased at just how much trust she was building with Jonas. Ask the questions you already know the answers to, look like you're thinking, then suggest something that's almost but not quite right.
+
+She was nothing if not an actor.
+
+``This secession angle, though. Do you think that would be worth pushing towards?'' she asked.
+
+``I'd like to steer a little closer to it, first, just to see what that'd look like. It'll require the launch amendment to pass, as I don't think System hardware can remain on Earth without someone getting upset at whoever's land it sits on. Once that's sorted out, though, and we have a better idea of what an independent System will look like, I say we push hard.''
+
+True Name nodded. ``It sounds like there is no reason not to. If the System is to remain beholden to existing government influences, it will always be at risk of reinterpretation of those laws. We are uniquely positioned to be almost entirely impossible to invade as a sovereign kingdom, and we have enough support that there is low risk that we will be simply turned off. Too many people want to join. Too many still see utility for us. Too many dreamers.''
+
+``Listen to you, my dear!'' Jonas laughed. ``You sound like a dreamer, yourself.''
+
+``Perhaps.'' She grinned. ``But also someone willing to devote myself---several of me---to getting what I want.''
+
+``Speaking of, what are the rest of you doing?''
+
+``End Of Days says is working on remaining sensoria stuff, talking with the S-R trio to round out the proposal for sensorium messages. Praiseworthy is reading up on propaganda. Life Breeds Life is keeping an eye on how tasks are divided. Most everyone else is out and about, keeping a feel for the place, or making things.''
+
+``You and your names. What sorts of things are you making?''
+
+``Writing. Performances. Friends.''
+
+``Hobbies?''
+
+She nodded, tapping absentmindedly at the rim of her glass with a claw. ``Minus the friends part, yes. I was a theatre teacher, phys-side. Need to have fun somehow.'' She could feel the conversation drifting into small-talk territory, and she wasn't yet ready to lose Jonas's attention. ``You have your forks already, do you not? What are they working on?''
+
+Jonas sat up, then slid out of the booth. ``Come on, I'll show you.''
+
+True Name set her empty glass aside and slid out to follow him.
+
+The next sim they traveled to was an apartment. Something high up, somewhere over a city she didn't recognize. It was well furnished and quite spacious, but could hardly be called upscale.
+
+As soon as they arrived, two other members of the Jonas clade appeared from a door that appeared to lead to an office. There was no doubt about their identity as Jonases: they were identical.
+
+``Skillfully done,'' she said, laughing. ``Who was I speaking to today? Not Jonas Prime, I imagine.''
+
+The one who had brought her here laughed, shaking his head. ``No, I'm Ar Jonas. What tipped you off?''
+
+``If I had several identical copies of myself with the same common name, all forked from the same root instance, I would not send the root instance out to a meeting not at a place of my choosing.''
+
+One of the other Jonases nodded appreciatively. ``Well spotted.''
+
+Ar Jonas disappeared from beside her and, with a blink, reappeared. ``Merged with Prime,'' he explained. ``I'll leave you two to talk.''
+
+He and the other Jonas left to go pick up where the work had been left off in the office, leaving Jonas Prime to guide her to the sofa.
+
+``How often do you show up at council as Prime?'' she asked, once they were seated.
+
+``Used to be every time,'' he said. ``Then one day, I nearly missed it as I was in the middle of a\ldots discussion, so I sent Ar. I was nervous that someone would see through it, but no one did. I tried to keep going myself for a while, but after there were no repercussions, I gave up on it, and alternate between the other six.''
+
+``Six?''
+
+``Of course. Ar, Ku, and Re, as I mentioned, and now Ir, who forked from Ar and looks nothing like me, so he's got more latitude.''
+
+``And the other two?''
+
+``Why would I tell you everything?'' He laughed. ``They're my instances, doing the things that I do, which should be enough.''
+
+``As they must. You have already told me more than you probably should have.''
+
+``I trust you'll keep quiet about it.''
+
+True Name grinned, putting her finger to her snout in the universal hush sign. ``It is a neat enough trick. I think that the Ode clade already differs too much to send one of them in my place, so perhaps not for me.''
+
+``It's up to you, yeah.'' Jonas sat back against the couch, one arm draped casually along the back. ``I honestly was surprised when no one noticed my reputation drop, but then I figured out that most people just look at the clade's reputation, rather than the instances. I have a feeling that'll change eventually, but for now, no one seems to pay all that much attention.''
+
+The skunk frowned, browsed the markets---something that felt more akin to remembering what the stats were, rather than looking anything up---and saw that, while she had less reputation than Michelle had before she forked, the clade had a good bit more, likely from what each of them were doing to build reputation. Jonas naming his clade after himself was a fairly savvy move, in the end. `Ode' having no direct ties to Michelle it seems like something unrelated.
+
+\emph{Ah well. I am still happy to have done it,} she thought. \emph{And perhaps we will find our own way to build reputation that does not involve a constant game of make believe.}
+
+``Thank you again for your trust, Jonas,'' she said, standing. Neither the booth nor the couch had been all that kind on her tail. ``I am going to go do some digging in the recent news from the NEAC and wait for our dear Yared to get in touch with us again.''
+
+He nodded up to her. ``Alright. I'll be in touch, I'm sure.''
+
+``And, Jonas?'' A grin twisted the corner of her mouth. ``Do not call me a fucking politician. I have an image to maintain.''
+
+He laughed and waved her away.

toledot/content/secession/sys/True-Name/003.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,180 @@
+\hypertarget{true-name-2124}{%
+\chapter{True Name — 2124}\label{true-name-2124}}
+
+It was Jonas's time to pick the location for their meeting, but as he had scheduled it for a few hours from the time of the message, The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream decided to spend a bit of time exploring fanciful cocktails at the Kowloon Walled City/central corridor mega mall/parking lot rooftop bar.
+
+Her first drink was a total wash. Someone had decided to explore the utility of sulfurous odors in drinks by combining the smoke of a newly lit match, a slice of preserved egg, and some smokey mezcal, sweetened by a few squirts of over-ripe apricot puree.
+
+There was, True Name discovered, essentially no place for sulfur in a cocktail. It was a drink that was \emph{almost} good, so long as one did Not breathe in the scent. The first heady whiff that she got had burnt her nostrils and she only managed a few sips after that.
+
+Her next drink was some bracingly strong lime-and-bitters-and-liquor deal with a float of foam made of egg whites and pork fat. There was a dusting of star anise and cinnamon on top. Her final assessment: pleasantly disgusting. The lime, egg whites, and spices all worked quite well together, she imagined, but the added porky fat clashed with it in such a savory way that she suspected it would have gone better with some brown spirit.
+
+Still, she drank it all.
+
+Her final drink was a weak, British style ale that, she was informed, used a mixture of herbs rather than hops as the bittering agent. Spruce and henbane, the first of which left her with an almost-unpleasant subdermal itching and the latter of which left her vision tinted red and her intoxication higher than it might have been otherwise.
+
+Terrible. Delightful.
+
+She let that intoxication linger as she prowled through one of the mall sections of the solid block of building. She paced along balconies, fingering wilting leaves of variegated plants, scratching a claw through the grime of countless hands accumulated on faux-wood banisters. She peered through grates at shelves still speckled with abandoned gadgets and folded jeans. She sat in the food court, still smelling of rancid grease and sanitizer. She breathed in the stale, over-conditioned air, and wondered for the thousandth time just who had thought to create such a sim, and what sort of twisted nostalgia had led them to do so.
+
+It was as she stood in front of a quiescent fountain that it occurred to her that this place---the mall, the dingy city, the parking structure and its shoddily crafted drinks---was all a monument to the imperfections of mankind's countless attempts to provide for itself in so many imperfect ways.
+
+They were here. They were immortal. They \emph{could} build perfection. They could live their lives in eternal bliss, and yet they still got their kicks out of the temporary and the imperfect. They were, despite the arguments, still human in so many delightfully crazed ways. The cracks still shone through, even when presented with the opportunity of perfection. They were the futurological congress of yore, where even the idea of queuing had been romanticized and pushed into the realm of the transgressive. Even these poor fools who had the limitless expanses of the mind before them knew that, in some ways, it was their origins that made them complete.
+
+And it \emph{was} intoxicating.
+
+It was intoxicating in such a way as to leave the skunk feeling somehow more complete than she had expected. There was no speciation. She was complete in all her humanity, as were all who uploaded. By her very imperfections, she was complete.
+
+What, then was the difference?
+
+She picked at a coin that had cemented itself to the rim of the fountain in a layer of slimy algae, winced at the unpleasant sensation, and then flicked it into the murky-green water that still stained the basin of the fountain.
+
+There was a part of her mind that was tempted to consider those who lived sys-side as somehow more perfect beings than those who remained phys-side. But no, that was not quite correct. They were different, yes, but they were not some greater form of perfection---or perhaps not entirely.
+
+Were there perhaps some core difference in ideals? Obviously, given the cost of uploading, there was a natural barrier, but even among the upper-middle and higher classes, there were some who simply chose not to upload. What was the difference? Was it aspirational? Were those who uploaded on some different wavelength from those who stayed behind? There were certainly many who found the whole process abhorrent on a physical level, yes. Of those who found it distasteful on intellectual, emotional, and spiritual levels, what did the prospect of continuing to live phys-side provide that living sys-side did not?
+
+She could not decide, but there was the logical fallout of that situation, that the two should be treated on a fundamentally different level, when it came to politics.
+
+There was a slight twinge of a sensory alarm, and she knew that it was time for the meeting with Jonas.
+
+He had chosen a war-gaming room for the meeting. There in the middle of the room was a backlit map of Earth at least five meters long, and scattered across its surface were dozens of chess pieces---knights, pawns, queens---which had been pushed\pagebreak\ this way and that by long sticks that still rested along the edges of the table.
+
+A smile quirked at the corner of her mouth. \emph{How very like him.}
+
+Jonas was sitting at the other end of the table, eating small hors d'oeuvres from a paper plate. Cocktail weenies spiked with toothpicks and finger sandwiches.
+
+As soon as he noticed True Name standing at the edge of the light that lit the table, he grinned and gestured with his plate toward the hot-and-cold buffet lining one of the walls.
+
+\emph{Oh well, why not,} she thought, willing away the drunkenness and instead loading up a plate with bruschetta and pita crisps with hummus.
+
+``You're looking well today,'' Jonas said, once he had finished his mouthful. ``Have an exciting jaunt?''
+
+She laughed. ``Why? Were you watching me?''
+
+He shrugged.
+
+``Well, it was exciting as could be expected. I got a lot of thinking done. A lot of planning. Which one of you are you, by the way?''
+
+``Jonas Prime, today.''
+
+True Name nodded a greeting and focused on her hummus for a few minutes.
+
+Once it was clear that she had reached a pause, Jonas spoke up. ``Tell me about your thoughts and plans. I'm curious what it is that required alcohol to understand.''
+
+``I was thinking about the difference in politics phys-side and sys-side.''
+
+He sat up straighter, nodding for her to continue.
+
+``I think that it is a matter of aspirations. We who have uploaded have different goals in life than those who remain behind. Perhaps it is worth approaching them in different ways.''
+
+``That's true.'' He looked thoughtful. ``We've already been doing that, to an extent.''
+
+``Yes, but out of instinct. Perhaps it is time to do so intentionally. If the goal of politics is to steer groups of individuals, then perhaps it is time to figure out the different ways in which to steer them. The motivations of those on the System are highly independent, surrounding whatever brings them the most freedom to accomplish what it is that they want. Them in particular, rather than large groups, though smaller groups may have goals that are aligned as well.''
+
+Jonas frowned down to his remaining weenies, then set the plate aside. ``And phys-side?''
+
+``Larger groups. They may feel that they have individual goals, but, whether or not it is in the fore of their thoughts, they know that the best way to accomplish them is to band together with those who share similar enough goals.''
+
+``An astute observation.''
+
+True Name let the non-compliment slide over her, continuing. ``If we are to steer the council, then we must approach it with an eye to the goals shared by dreamers, and if we are to steer affairs phys-side, then we must approach it with an eye toward something broader, offering sugar-coated compromises that feel like wins.''
+
+Jonas's frown deepened. ``You're a bit further along in this than maybe I gave you credit for.''
+
+The skunk leaned forward, resting her chin on folded hands. She refused to rise to the bait offered, choosing instead a thoughtful expression. ``Your forks. Do they work on a similar dialectic?''
+
+He nodded.
+
+``Then perhaps it would be smart for me to do similar. I do like your idea of continuing to be seen as a single individual to the council. I am not sure that I am willing to cycle through my forks for that, however, so perhaps I will continue to act as the point of contact that the other council members see, and simply consult with my forks via regular merging.''
+
+``It's not a bad idea, no, and with a small clade, some of whom already look like you, you can probably get away with it easily enough. I have to make sure only one of me is out and about where people might see me at a time.'' He grinned, adding with a wink, ``At least, while working. Ar is out drinking.''
+
+The skunk laughed. ``Of course. Hopefully he has better luck with drinks than I did.''
+
+There was a lull in the conversation as True Name crunched her way through the bruschetta on her plate.
+
+After she finished, she spoke up again. ``The only problem that I see is that I will need to save up reputation, and then hide the expenditures as best I can. Do you have experience on that?''
+
+Jonas visibly brightened. ``Oh! There's no need to do that. You can push some reputation into your name by having the members of your clade vote you up. Make something silly. Take up poetry. Release it out into the world whether it's good or not, then have your cocladists build it up higher.''
+
+``Cocladists, huh? Is that the term we are going with?''
+
+He shrugged.
+
+``Well, alright. I will put on some monologues I remember from phys-side.''
+
+``Alright. Let me know when you do, and I'll upvote them, too. It's not like there's no reason to, we talk often enough as council-members and the market doesn't care who upvotes.''
+
+True Name laughed. After a moment's concentration, two additional versions of her appeared behind her chair, waved to Jonas, and stepped out of the sim. ``I had just enough for two, and I figure two ought to be enough for now.''
+
+``Do they have equally silly names?''
+
+Once more, she resisted the urge to bridle at his comment. Instead she smiled sweetly. ``Why Ask Questions, Here At The End Of All Things and Why Ask Questions When The Answers Will Not Help.'' After a pause, she added, ``Why Ask Questions and Answers Will Not Help.''
+
+Jonas man froze, the last of his cocktail sausages halfway between plate and mouth. That mouth now slowly formed into a devious grin. ``You continue to surprise and amaze.''
+
+After they had both finished their plates of appetizers and enjoyed a moment of silence, they each began pushing around a few chess pieces off the map.
+
+``We have Yared in NEAC,'' True Name said, pushing a pawn over to Addis Ababa. ``And you said you know some in the Western Fed, yes?''
+
+Jonas nodded, pushing two queens, two pawns, and a bishop over the chessboard. The bishop in the British aisles: ``A judge. He's easily bribed. We can't do it ourselves, of course, but we can find those who will. He'll be useful for influencing some legislation whenever cases regarding uploads come up.''
+
+One of the queens wound up in Germany, the other on the east coast of North America: ``Two representatives. Both were good friends. Both too sly for their own good. I'm surprised they haven't gotten flushed out, yet, but we can keep using them until they do. I think they'll be useful in pushing for the legislation---both the core bill, and the launch amendment.''
+
+``How about the secession amendment?'' True Name asked.
+
+``Probably, assuming there is one.''
+
+``I think there will be.''
+
+Jonas gave her a strange look, but instead of replying, pushed one pawn to the toe of Italy's boot and the other to the northern end of the central corridor: ``Two other friends. DDR junkies, mostly, but very loud ones. This one--'' he said, tapping at the one on the central corridor. ``--is reactionary and easy to influence, if you feed him the right information, and this one--'' He tapped the one on Italy. ``--is one of those calm-voice-of-reason types. He would be harder to influence, but it sounds like he's already mostly in agreement with our dear Yared.''
+
+True Name noticed the lack of names for each of the figures, but said nothing. \emph{It is probably for the best. Leaves me some plausible deniability, and keeps me from interacting with his pawns.}
+
+``Now, how about sys-side?''
+
+Jonas shrugged. ``The council, of course, plus the owners of some higher-profile sims, and a few perisystem architects.''
+
+``Alright. I suppose that on my end I do not have anyone other than the council,'' she lied. ``And all of my various selves, of course.''
+
+``Right, you have Debarre in your pocket, and Zeke likes you plenty.''
+
+He kept throwing her all these little comments that seemed to tempt her to respond emotionally. Was he testing her? Was he watching to see just how much power he had over her?
+
+Not the best tactic for someone who taught theatre to teenagers.
+
+``I think we have the council mostly locked down when it comes to the idea of independence,'' she said, setting down her stick.
+
+``And your clade?''
+
+``I have plans for them. Nothing that will get me in trouble with the council, I think.''
+
+``Will you tell me some of those plans?''
+
+She smiled. ``Why not? We are working together, after all. They can use our background in theatre to work the propaganda angle.''
+
+It was only a portion of the truth, but she also suspected that Jonas knew this. He accepted it easily enough.
+
+``I'll send Ir to coordinate with you, so that we don't step on each other's toes. That's what he's been working on.''
+
+``Did you not say he looked nothing like you? You certainly have the face for a propagandist.''
+
+Jonas laughed. ``He arguably looks better. Just different. On that note, will you have your, uh\ldots human self do the propagandizing?''
+
+She waved the question away. ``I will work it out. For now, do you have any more news on Yared and his handler?''
+
+``Not too much more. Demma has been heard to mention the System as a country, but so far hasn't mentioned the word secession. Yared's latest post is along similar lines as his last. Fluffy, if you'll forgive the metaphor. The little bit of us teasing each other went over well, and there were a few comments elsewhere on the 'net that others caught talking about the fact that at least those in the System still seemed to have fun in it.''
+
+``Any other comments about secession that you have seen?''
+
+He shook his head. ``Same little blips from some of the crazier people. More of them, perhaps, but it hasn't bubbled up too far. There's a bit more chatter about the legal status of the System independent of other nations, but the S-word hasn't come up yet. You heard any here sys-side?''
+
+``Not except between us,'' she lied again.
+
+Jonas need not know all of her plans, nor that the propaganda work had already begun. Nor, for that matter, that she was still in contact with Dr.~Carter Ramirez, phys-side, who still had reputation of her own, her own knight in the British Isles. After all, if he was going to continue to maintain some of his leverage of the situation, should she not do the same?
+
+``Alright, well.'' Jonas frisbeed his plate into a trash can by the buffet tables. ``I guess we're in a holding pattern on that front until the news breaks elsewhere. Until then, keep kissing babies and shaking hands. Or shaking babies and kissing hands. Or whatever it is that not-a-politicians do.''
+
+Before she could respond, he winked to her and blipped out of existence, likely back to his home sim.
+
+True Name remained a while in the sim, falling back into the habit of planning and rumination, memorizing the pieces and their locations that Jonas had pushed onto the board, and thinking about all of the lies she had told today.

toledot/content/secession/sys/True-Name/004.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,146 @@
+\hypertarget{true-name-2124}{%
+\chapter{True Name — 2124}\label{true-name-2124}}
+
+It had initially taken some getting used to, meeting with one's up- or cross-tree instances. Michelle, in her role in helping tie the cost of forking to the reputation markets, had certainly done it a number of times before, but, as the cost of a new fork was only applied five minutes after it had been created, all of her forks to date had been short-lived in order to conserve her reputation for some imagined future date.
+
+The date had come and gone, now, so True Name---and likely all of the other Odists---had had to learn how to interact with the other copies of Michelle Hadje/Sasha that had sprung so quickly into being and immediately began to diverge.
+
+The fact that those who matched Michelle and those who matched Sasha were evenly distributed had helped at first. There had been some oddness in talking to a Michelle-alike, given the countless memories of the constant shifting between the two forms, but that had had a different flavor to it than talking to another Sasha-alike. Seeing a form and a face that so clearly mirrored her own was not exactly unnerving so much as uncanny.
+
+As the days and weeks went by, however, the forks diverged further and further, and different cares painted different faces, different habits were formed and dropped, and it became less like talking to an alternate version of oneself and more like talking to a twin, a sibling.
+
+So it was when The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream met with That Which Lives Is Forever Praiseworthy.
+
+Her initial impression is that the other skunk had shifted her wardrobe to look more professional, choosing a loose-fitting pantsuit in muted blue that had been in style before Michelle had uploaded. This also included a pair of pince nez glasses perched atop her muzzle which, when True Name inquired, Praiseworthy explained were non-prescription, and ``something I am just trying for the moment. They are quite annoying, but still fetching.''
+
+Beyond that, however, Praiseworthy had decided to divest herself of many of the personality traits that had made Sasha Sasha. Gone were those aspects of childishness that Michelle had long held onto, and gone was the exhaustion that had lingered for years after getting lost.
+
+\emph{I have changed, too, at that,} True Name thought. \emph{I have become the politician, working with Jonas. Praiseworthy has become something else.}
+
+The two skunks shook paws, and then Praiseworthy drew True Name into a hug. It was surprising. Something about it felt both natural and performative, as though this was just a thing that one did when one had a role to play.
+
+``True Name,'' Praiseworthy said. Her smile was warm and earnest, and she spoke with willing paws, palms up. ``It is nice to see you again.''
+
+She laughed. ``I suppose so. You have changed quite a bit in so short a time.''
+
+The other skunk bowed, laughing. ``As have you, my dear! And that is why you have come here, is it not?''
+
+``I guess it is, yes. The more I work with Jonas, and the more I talk with the Council and phys-side---the more politicking that I do---the more I feel the ways in which my attitude and expressions are lacking.''
+
+Praiseworthy nodded. ``Yes, you do still have some of the stiffness about you, and there are some sharp edges that\pagebreak\ could do with softening.''
+
+``Softening?''
+
+``Yes. It is mostly a matter of appearance and affect, though. You should not blunt your wit or intellect, just your tone and features.''
+
+True Name frowned. ``I am not sure what you mean by blunting or softening, though.''
+
+Praiseworthy took her gently by the elbow and started walking through the grass. They had decided to meet on a portion of Michelle's dandelion-ridden sim, far away from their root instance, but in a place that was still familiar to both.
+
+``Take your walk, for instance. Even now, as we are just out for a stroll, you walk with purpose. Your shoulders move too much. Remember, if you keep them pointed straight ahead and shift the rolling motion to your hips, it will lead to others seeing more feminine aspects in you.''
+
+She tried to keep her shoulders still as they walked, immediately feeling a slight strain in her hips.
+
+Praiseworthy laughed. ``You do not need to keep them level to the ground, just perpendicular to the direction you are walking in. But here, no need to practice too hard. Fork, holding in your mind a pelvis just a hair wider than your own, but keeping your hips the same width. It will mean slimming down a little.''
+
+``I can do that?''
+
+``Of course. Zeke dreamed some algorithmic magic behind the scenes. You can fork yourself into most anything that can be consensually held in the mind.''
+
+True Name nodded warily, holding this new image of herself in her mind.
+
+``Perfect,'' Praiseworthy said, moving to take this new fork by the elbow and nodding to the original instance of the skunk. ``Now you quit. No need to incur a charge. Michelle, no need to accept further memories from us for the day.''
+
+The skunks tilted their heads in unison.
+
+``Michelle will be getting a pile of memories, if she wants, as I will have you fork a few more times yet. I have been letting her know when she can ignore further merges, as I have done this quite often. I believe they are working on a way to attach a priority to merges, or even a suggestion not to accept the memories.''
+
+The first True Name nodded, then disappeared.
+
+True Name felt down her flanks, taking a few more steps and finding it far easier to walk casually and still keep her shoulders pointed forward. She nodded approvingly. ``Excellent. What other suggestions do you have?''
+
+``For your role, you will need to carefully balance cute, attractive, and competent. If you go too far towards cute, then it will be difficult for you to be taken seriously. The same if you go too far attractive because you will be just a pretty face. If you go too far competent, you will be seen as dour and unpleasant.''
+
+Praiseworthy stopped her and turned her gently to look at her face.
+
+``Now, first, your eyes will need to be just a hair larger, your ears slightly rounder, your cheeks fuller, and you will need fewer but longer whiskers. Can you hold those in your mind?''
+
+She closed her eyes, picturing what she knew of herself in her mind, and forked.
+
+``Goodness.''
+
+She opened her eyes again to look at the fork, immediately laughing and shaking her head.
+
+``Am I cute?'' the new skunk asked.
+
+``Adorable, but that is not quite the direction we want to go. You look closer to a teddy bear.''
+
+She rolled her eyes, then quit.
+
+``Let us try one at a time. You will need to work fairly quickly to avoid the hit in reputation. Fork once, and then that fork will continue to look as you do now, while you work progressively on each of those steps.'' When True Name did so, Praiseworthy nodded. ``First, rounder ears.''
+
+The new fork perked up when her down-tree instance forked and quit, the new instance having slightly rounder ears. She nodded, smiling.
+
+``Excellent. Now the whiskers. Great. Cheeks? And\ldots eyes. Fantastic.'' Praiseworthy smiled after all the forking had been completed, then nodded to the first of the new instances, who quit.
+
+The option for a rush of memories was provided to True Name, who, on a whim, accepted it, now remembering what it had looked like from the outside as her face had grown\ldots well, cuter. It had worked well.
+
+The two skunks worked through a short laundry list of changes. True Name grew a few centimeters taller, her shoulders became the slightest bit flatter without getting broader, her back straighter.
+
+One last time, she forked to get a good look at herself to compare with what she remembered from before the process.
+
+She was, indeed, cuter, but this was tempered by a more conventionally attractive body type, staying shy of being both adorable and overtly attractive. This somehow combined into a look that was more professional. It made her look, she realized, like a public figure.
+
+``Oh, this is delightful.''
+
+Praiseworthy beamed. ``I am glad that you enjoy.''
+
+They worked next on how to better her affect. Smile more earnestly, laugh more easily, transition from those expressions to stern or confident or pitying. There were a few more forks as they worked on ways to soften True Name's voice, pitching it just a little lower, rounding some of the vowels, practicing elocution. With each fork, she found that the lessons stuck more firmly. Perhaps what was in her mind before became more cemented in place.
+
+Finally, Praiseworthy had True Name practice forking into a Michelle-form for situations where a skunk would be out of place, and then they worked on perfecting that version of her, as well. It was surprising, at first, that she could even make so great a change with one fork, but then, she remembered precisely what it had felt like to be Michelle, just as she remembered what it felt like to be Sasha.
+
+Nearly two hours later, when the practice and modifications had wrapped up, the two skunks sat at the top of a low raise in the landscape, and True Name discussed the other reason that she had sought out Praiseworthy.
+
+``I need help in spreading ideas. I know that you have settled back into acting and directing, but I do not have the time or energy to guide emotions and reactions to news while still working on this political angle.'' She plucked a few blades of grass, rolling them into little balls between fingerpads. ``I know that propaganda is not the same thing as theater, but would you be willing--''
+
+``Yes!'' Praiseworthy laughed. ``Of course I would be willing to help. There is more than a little propagandizing in trying to get actors to do their fucking jobs, even when the actors are yourself. What precisely do you need? Speeches? Words whispered here and there? Posters?''
+
+True Name laughed and shook her head. ``Not quite the answer that I was expecting, but yes. Speeches and letters specifically. Some geared toward phys-side, some toward the Council, and probably a few towards other groups sys-side. I would not turn down a few words whispered here and there, though that will take some strategizing. There will be an instance of Jonas who will be working with you in shaping sentiment, as well.''
+
+``I will look forward to it, then.''
+
+They sat for a while in the sun, each looking out into the fields. At one point, Praiseworthy took off her glasses and set them on the bridge of True Name's muzzle, shook her head, and slid them into a jacket pocket.
+
+It was good to be around oneself, True Name realized. There was none of the pressure involved with interacting with others, none of the careful maneuvering required when talking with Jonas. They could just sit there, side by side, and understand that there was nothing between them that the other did not also, at least to some extent, understand.
+
+``Have you talked to many others in the clade?'' Praiseworthy asked.
+
+She shook her head. ``Here and there. I have a meeting scheduled with Life Breeds Life, but that is about it. You?''
+
+``You were the last I had yet to speak with. It is interesting to see how we have each decided to focus on different areas. You dove hard into the political angle. I tried to get back to theatre, but enough of that desire remained in me that your propaganda job sounds fun. Life Breeds Life is quite strange. He has been focusing--''
+
+``He?''
+
+Praiseworthy shrugged. ``I guess. He has been focusing on historical stuff. Documenting this and that, digging into old things. I have no idea where that came from. Loss For Images is writing these days. May One Day is fiddling with reputation markets---or at least as much as Debarre will let her---and last I heard, Hammered Silver has just been either relaxing here with Michelle or sim-hopping.''
+
+``How is she, anyway?''
+
+``Michelle?'' Praiseworthy frowned, ears tilting back. ``Much the same. I think the last of her energy went into us, and she is\ldots I do not know. Empty? She spends a lot of time sleeping, a lot of time sitting and thinking. She came to a play, but left partway through. She is still of two minds.''
+
+``And she still has not explained why she never fixed it?''
+
+The skunk shook her head.
+
+``Any guesses?''
+
+``Nothing solid.''
+
+True Name nodded and turned her gaze back to the rolling plain. So much grass. So many dandelions. ``There is a time and a place for dwelling in memory,'' she said. ``But Michelle does nothing else. It is no wonder she is stuck. When\ldots when ey died, I think she began to as well. When she she dumped the last of herself into the Ode, she sealed the deal.''
+
+Praiseworthy said nothing.
+
+``She is dead, I think. There is no more life in her. There is nothing to be done but let her enjoy that death as long as she would like. I do not expect that she will come back.''
+
+The other skunk drew her knees to her chest and folded her arms across them. Uncomfortable on the tail, but the pensive mood seemed to demand it. ``I think you may be right in that. Let her do what makes herself happy while her shade remains.''
+
+``I wonder if she knows it, yet,'' True Name said, then let silence fall again. The two sat together, watching as afternoon slid carefully into evening.

toledot/content/secession/sys/True-Name/005.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,130 @@
+\hypertarget{true-name-2124}{%
+\chapter{True Name — 2124}\label{true-name-2124}}
+
+The next time the Council of Eight met was nearly two weeks after True Name's discussion with Praiseworthy, thanks to a small, artificial delay suggested by the other skunk in order to see how well she could manage buttering up those who needed buttering up, meet with Ir Jonas, and let True Name get used to her new form, her new expressiveness.
+
+When Jonas Prime first saw her after that meeting, he had sat up straight from where he had been lounging on his apartment's couch, pointed his finger at her, and all but shouted, ``Perfect! I don't know what you did or how, but it's fucking perfect.''
+
+She had laughed, given a bow, and stood up straighter once more. ``Glad you approve. I figured if I am going to continue not being a politician, I really ought to look the part.''
+
+``I'm surprised you didn't work it in bit by bit, but it'll go over well.''
+
+It did, thankfully. When she met with a few of the council members---Debarre and Zeke, thankfully---in order to request the delay on the meeting, they had both complimented her on her looks. She explained it away as wanting try looking `a little less dumpy', a calculated phrase which had gotten a laugh out of Zeke.
+
+But now, the time had come to actually have the council meeting, which was taking place on a set of benches set alongside the edge of a well manicured pond. The S-R Bloc trio showed up in high-collared coats, hats, and sun-glasses.
+
+``This is utterly ridiculous,'' Jonas said. ``I feel like we're about to start meeting sleeper agents from foreign powers to discuss what intel we've picked up in the last month.''
+
+One of the Russians, in a rare sign of outward emotion, grinned broadly. ``I thought you of all people would enjoy, Jonas.''
+
+``Oh, don't get me wrong, I love it, but it's not exactly subtle.''
+
+``We'll just say that we're in the middle of a spy reenactment.''
+
+Debarre laughed. ``Well, I'm for it. All we're missing is the ducks and a bag of breadcrumbs to feed them.''
+
+``This can be arranged,'' another of the S-R Bloc trio said.
+
+``Another time, perhaps. We can play out the full scene.''
+
+``Maybe we can walk and talk for once.'' True Name gestured down the trail, palm up and hand relaxed as Praiseworthy had instructed---\emph{you do not want to seem stiff, but rather like you are suggesting that you would like to get on with something that was already their idea in the first place.}
+
+It worked well, as the whole council turned on cue and began to walk slowly down the trail. Jonas caught her eye and gave her a wink while the cone of silence settled into place and the meeting began.
+
+``What news on the markets?''
+
+``Nothing particularly new there. We're still tuning the cost of sims, but the model for forking seems to be working well. We got the chance to test it during a recent hardware upgrade.''
+
+``How about sensorium messages?''
+
+``Proposal was accepted, and there's an alpha in place. Want to try?''
+
+``Sure, why n-- Holy shit! Please don't do that again.''
+
+And on and on.
+
+They had made it about halfway around the pond before the discussion turned to True Name and Jonas.
+
+``Glad to hear the launch is a go. I'm curious to see if there will be any interruptions in service meanwhile.''
+
+Jonas shook his head, ``Should be smooth sailing. Worst case, we shut down for a few hours or days, and then come back online, in which case we won't even notice a thing in here.''
+
+``And the bill sounds like it's going well, too,'' Debarre said. ``I'm actually surprised that it isn't a foregone conclusion, too. From what I've been hearing, there's essentially total agreement on the DDR, and most of the governments seem on-board now, too.''
+
+It was True Name's turn to nod, and she slid through the sentence smoothly, letting the topic flow into the conversation as gently as Ir Jonas and Praiseworthy had suggested. She just needed to trust that the work had been done, trust in her own abilities. ``Yes, it has almost unanimously been accepted, and all we are really waiting on right now is for them to decide whether or not we can be trusted to govern ourselves.''
+
+The reaction was precisely what she had hoped: almost nothing at all. There were some nodding of heads, and user11824 just shrugged, as he ususally did.
+
+\emph{Excellent, it is already in their minds,} she thought. \emph{Just need to keep going.}
+
+Aloud, she said, ``We got lucky with our DDR junkie friend, actually. It looks like he has been tapped to help draft the secession amendment that will be added to the bill, though I do not predict any trouble with that passing, either.''
+
+Zeke rumbled with a laugh. ``They're actually calling it `secession' now? How delightful.''
+
+True Name grinned, watching Jonas laugh along with the bundle of rags. \emph{I must find a way to thank Praiseworthy. That could not have gone better.}
+
+``Hey, if it gets us what we need, then they can call it what they want,'' Jonas said. ``We can govern ourselves, they can govern themselves, and then all these rights arguments become a moot point. The only sticking point seems to be some portions of the S-R Bloc holding onto the idea of dual citizenship.''
+
+The trio nodded in unison. ``We will be working on that.''
+
+``Hell,'' True Name mused. ``We could probably even make a spectacle out of it. If it is to become something important to the entirety of the System, might as well make it a holiday.''
+
+``We can even get out the fireworks!'' Debarre laughed, the weasel bouncing ahead a few steps to turn and walk backwards in front of the rest of the group. ``No need to worry about wildfires or anything.''
+
+True Name laughed. ``When was the last time you even saw fireworks?''
+
+``Oh, I've never seen them. You were lucky, you had a big fuck-off lake you could launch them off of. It was just farms and orchards around us, so they were illegal.''
+
+The skunk smiled inwardly. That the topic of secession had been accepted at face value and slid so easily into joking and chatter was the best she could have hoped for. Even Jonas looked happy.
+
+After to-do items had been handed out and the meeting wound down, Jonas waved to the group and disappeared from the sim. That left True Name five minutes to walk and talk with the others before she would meet up with him, so she spent a few just walking alongside Debarre, talking about the fireworks that she had watched with their mutual friend during high school, the author of the ode from which she drew her name.
+
+Then she waved her goodbyes as well, and stepped from the spy-park sim to a cafe, the very same one that Michelle/Sasha had visited before she had forked that first time.
+
+``Mocha, right?'' Jonas said, handing her a drink and leading her out to a rickety table on the sidewalk, already ensconced in another silent bubble.
+
+``Thank you, yes. Perhaps champagne would be better.''
+
+He laughed and fell into the chair opposite her, a motion that somehow managed to ride the border between ungainly and endearing. ``We'll get stinking drunk when the bill passes, don't worry. We'll get all of you and all of me together and bust out the champagne, cocaine, and condoms.''
+
+``Do not even start,'' she said, laughing. ``I do not sleep with slimy politicians.''
+
+``You know, you're going to have to drop that act at some point. You have a speech writer, a styling team, a propagandist--''
+
+``They are all the same instance.''
+
+``--and a team of analysts working on both the sys-side and phys-side angles. You, my dear, are one hundred percent a politician now.''
+
+``Alright, fine. Just do not tell anyone, okay?''
+
+``Lips are sealed.''
+
+She sipped at her mocha and leaned back in the chair, looking out onto the street, people both real and imaginary milling along the sidewalks. ``I was thinking today that we may actually be the only politicians on the council.''
+
+``How do you figure?''
+
+``Well, Debarre is a friend. A smart one, but I think he mostly got the position by virtue of being associated with me and the lost. The S-R Bloc three are spooks who won't even tell us their names. Zeke is a true-believer; good at what he does but without the faintest thought for how it goes over. user11824 is the opposite. He wears his anonymity like a brand, but does not actually do much.''
+
+``And then there's us,'' Jonas said, nodding. ``The ex-WF rep and whatever the hell you are.''
+
+``I am just me,'' True Name mused. ``I do not know what that is, precisely, but I am just me. I am no longer Michelle, not by a long shot. I maintain none of that constant state of distraction, none her meekness, and very little of her surplus of empathy. I have lost who she was to become myself.''
+
+Jonas nodded. ``For the better, I'd say.''
+
+``Do you think she was not a good council member?''
+
+``Oh, she was fine. Good ideas. Smart. What she lacked was direction, which you make up in spades.''
+
+``I am happy to hear that. Truly.'' True Name raised her paper coffee cup in a toast to him. ``There are some within the clade who have done the opposite, I am told. Praiseworthy has talked to them all, which is very her. Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver has hardly left Michelle's sim in weeks. She wound up with all of the empathy that I set aside. I have my fair share, but only that. I have moved past that surfeit as a point of pride.''
+
+Jonas shrugged. ``At least someone's keeping Michelle company.''
+
+True Name said nothing, simply returning to watching the movement of the shoppers.
+
+``What's next on your list, fuzzy?''
+
+``If you call me `fuzzy' again, I will dump this coffee over your head and rub it into your perfect fucking hair.''
+
+He laughed.
+
+``What is next? Probably keeping in touch with Yared and helping him draft the amendment. I am sure that most of it will be councilor Demma's work, but that he has been given at least partial responsibility means that we will---must---have a hand in it as well.''

toledot/content/secession/sys/True-Name/006.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,130 @@
+\hypertarget{true-name-2124}{%
+\chapter{True Name — 2124}\label{true-name-2124}}
+
+True Name was early to her meeting, and that, she figured was okay. On a whim, she had picked, the same pub that she had met Jonas in some time back, the one that reminded her of The Crown Pub from years ago, with the flat beer and the uncomfortable booths. She figured that Debarre, of all people, would appreciate this.
+
+She ordered herself one of those beers that she loved to hate, sat down in a corner booth with a commanding view of the entrance, tail flopped over the edge, and waited.
+
+While she waited, she thought about all of the different reasons that Debarre might have asked to meet. There was always the possibility that the weasel had figured out just how deep she and Jonas had gotten in their work, though she suspected that that was not the case. Debarre was smart, yes, but political adroitness was not his strong suit. That had been the root of the worry---shared by him---that he had been let onto the council merely by his proximity to Michelle and connection with the lost, with AwDae.
+
+It could also be that he had further questions about why it was that Michelle had chosen the Ode as a clade scheme, and that perhaps he wanted to discuss why it was that all of the clade seemed so averse to mentioning the author of the poem.
+
+And, as she hoped, he could simply just want to hang out. Spend time together like friends, like they used to.
+
+With that in mind, she focused on composing herself into a state of friendly alertness, so that when the weasel walked into the pub and spotted her in the corner, she would be primed to guide him toward that last possibility, even if he had come expecting the first two.
+
+She watched him step inside, look around, and immediately laugh. After picking up a cider at the bar, he made his way over to the booth she had picked and plopped down across from her.
+
+``Cheeky choice,'' he said, grinning.
+
+True Name grinned, shrugged. ``What can I say? I was feeling nostalgic for terrible beer.''
+
+``Cheers to that.'' He lifted his glass to hers, clinked the rims, and took a long sip. ``So, how've you been, skunk?''
+
+Small talk was not a guarantee that this was simply a social visit, but given the tone of his voice, she doubted that anything too heavy was on the table.
+
+``Pretty good, actually.'' She smiled. ``Things are going well on the legislative front, phys-side, which is good. It makes my job easier. Who knows, may even take a vacation.''
+
+``Oh man, a vacation sounds good, though God knows what I'd do. Probably just sit on my tail all day and get fat on the greasiest food I can find.''
+
+``Feeling the workload, then?''
+
+He shrugged. ``Not particularly, no. It's just that I'm starting to wonder just how cut out for politics I really am. I haven't the faintest idea on how to get people to do things without sounding like I'm bullying them, and I'm not going to put all the work into it that you have. You and yours, I mean.''
+
+``Yeah, it is no small amount of effort,'' the skunk said. ``But it will be worth it in the end, I think. Plus, I figure that once we secede and the launch goes off successfully, we can probably just sit back and let things run themselves. No one has managed to cause any problems that cannot be solved by them simply having the fistfight that they so desperately crave.''
+
+Debarre laughed and shook his head. ``You gotten in any of those lately?''
+
+``Thankfully not,'' she said, grinning toothily. ``I do not expect to, though.''
+
+They drank a moment in silence, each of them peering around the pub, each thinking their thoughts.
+
+``How are you, Debarre?'' True Name finally asked. ``Aside from work, I mean. I know that we have not had much of a chance to just sit and talk, recently.''
+
+The weasel doodled lazily on the tabletop with a claw. ``For all my bitching, I'm doing alright, actually. That's why I wanted to meet, though. Just catch up.''
+
+True Name smiled. \emph{Perfect.}
+
+``You know,'' he said. ``I was thinking about Cicero a few days back, and how, after he hung himself, I thought that the grief would never end. Like, I thought that I had been completely redefined from `Debarre the weasel' to `Debarre who grieves', and that's just who I was from then on out.''
+
+She hid a sudden surge of emotion behind a sip of her flat beer, nodding. ``It was hard. Both of those losses were hard.''
+
+Debarre nodded. After the reference to both losses, he seemed on guard, or ready to jump out of the booth at a moment's notice.
+
+``I am sorry that I snapped at you a while back,'' she said, reaching out to pat at the paw that had been poking absently at the grime on the tabletop. ``That is a name that I would like to keep close to my heart and prefer not to say out loud. Also, given the political implications of em defecting to the S-R Bloc, it still feels risky. The spooks \emph{definitely} should not hear it.''
+
+``I get that,'' the weasel said. He had relaxed, but not all the way.
+
+``And I think that I understand what you are getting at,'' she continued, turning her default smile into something wistful, something sad. ``I am as at risk of letting grief define me as\pagebreak\ anyone, but I am still doing my best to memorialize rather than languish.''
+
+``That's good, at least,'' he said, finally smiling back to her. ``I've been a bit worried about that, if I'm honest, but I trust you. The shit you've been pulling off lately with the council is honestly impressive, True Name. You and all your clade. I'm doing my best to understand you, sure, but I promise that's out of awe rather than fear.''
+
+She laughed, raising her glass to him. ``Well, thank you. I am glad that Sasha was able to take a step back and get the rest that she so richly deserves, just as I am glad that she left me with my own \emph{raison d'etre}. I \emph{like} all of the shit that I have been pulling off. It feels good to accomplish stuff.''
+
+``Good! That's good to hear. It's sorta what I'd picked up on, too. I'm not sure that I was doubting you before, necessarily, but having watched you these past few weeks, I dunno.'' He grinned and finally returned the patting gesture in turn. ``I get it, now. You're not Sasha, that's for sure, but you're not \emph{not} her, and I see all of the best things I liked about her in you and the few others in the Ode clade that I've met.''
+
+They beamed at each other, all bristled whiskers and perked-up ears.
+
+The conversation wound around for a while longer, with talk of plans and memories, likes and dislikes, gossip and news. True Name allowed herself to earnestly enjoy the afternoon, now that any concerns that she might have had about the meeting had been assuaged. It gave her space to loosen the reigns she had placed on empathy around Jonas, to bask in simpatico with true friends.
+
+Eventually, they made their goodbyes and she left the sim, allowing herself to sober up in the process in order to make the next meeting on her agenda.
+
+For some reason that she couldn't fathom, Life Breeds Life But Death Must Now Be Chosen had chosen to incarnate himself as a scholarly gentlemen, somewhere between respectable and nerdy. It was a good look, she thought, but what train of thoughts had led him to head down that route from Michelle evaded her.
+
+After a pleasant greeting in the lobby of the library, they wound their way up the spiral staircases to the law section, three levels up. There was no particular reason that they needed to head there, other than the fact that it was liable to be fairly empty---few had reason to read up on phys-side laws, here---and would still be a comfortable place for them to walk and talk.
+
+``So,'' Life Breeds Life said, once pleasantries were out of the way and the cone of silence had been set up. ``Why did you want to meet today?''
+
+``During discussions with Praiseworthy and Ir Jonas, I started to realize that there were some steps that I might need to take when it comes to the historical view of the clade. There is already the forceful de-emphasizing of AwDae's name, thanks to Praiseworthy. She thought it a good hook, and it has already proven its utility. None of us want it out in the open, anyway. I guess, given your interest in history and memory, you seemed like the most likely to be interested in helping continue that effort.''
+
+He grinned. ``You guess correctly. I have been considering some aspects of that, as it is. Before I go off on that, however, I would like to hear your ideas.''
+
+True Name nodded, lazily brushing fingerpads over the spines of law books and case files. ``Firstly, there are some aspects of the clade that I would like to remain within the clade. The Name is an obvious example, but I would also like to keep the impact that we have had within the Council minimized to a level more believable for Michelle's initially stated goal.''
+
+``To confirm,'' he said, looking thoughtful. ``You want to ensure that it appears that each of us did a tenth of the work that she was doing previously and that our voice was only as loud as any other council-member's. Correct?''
+
+She nodded.
+
+``That should be doable.''
+
+``It will require a bit of fudging, at least for myself, as to how many instances actually exist for the clade. I believe that it would reflect poorly on us to say that we were initially ten, and then for someone to dig up that I had already forked three or four times less than a year after Michelle's decision.''
+
+His laugh was kind. ``Oh, good. I am glad that I am not the only one.''
+
+``Not by a long shot,'' True Name said. ``It seemed like a good thing to downplay.''
+
+``Yes, it is, come to think of it. There are enough concerns about capacity as is. It might seem as though we were already aiming to test that so early on.''
+
+``Mmhm. The second thing that I was thinking was more of a question for you.''
+
+Life Breeds Life nodded.
+
+``How far in the future do you think we should be considering these changes?''
+
+The answer was immediate. ``Centuries.''
+
+True Name frowned. ``Really?''
+
+``Yes. There are some that we can do right away, but those steps are more in Praiseworthy's court: downplay the number of instances, minimizing our perceived role on the Council, \emph{et cetera.} The aspects that are in my jurisdiction, however, are ones that will take years and decades to form. Histories written after the fact bear the weight of having undergone analysis, the shifting of public knowledge---at least, what they think they know---takes place over months and years. Time is on our side, though, as you well know.''
+
+``Of course.''
+
+``That is not to say that I will not start right away, of course,'' he said, laughing.
+
+``Oh, I do not doubt you will.'' She grinned. ``What were your thoughts, though? You mentioned having some changes that you would like addressed as well.''
+
+``Yes. I would like to eventually downplay the role of the Council of Eight in history to the point where those sys-side simply think of those who helped out in the early days as founders, dreamers, and idealists.''
+
+True Name stopped in the aisle, letting Life Breeds Life step ahead and turn to face her. ``You would like the System to forget that there was a council?''
+
+``It is a way to build a mythos and identity, yes. It allows us to use the words `freedom' and `secession' and so on in a collective sense, as though these were the decisions of all, rather than a few. It will instill a sense of patriotism, if one could call it such a thing, for being sys-side, which will in turn reduce the connections that many feel to phys-side.'' He smiled, tugging a book from the shelf at random and flipping through the pages. ``This will not happen for this generation. Nor, likely, the next. The goal for future generations, though is to ensure that they feel that the System is a place to live rather than a place where they wound up, or a place that they uploaded to simply because it was convenient or necessary, or even a place that they uploaded to simply for the way life works here, whether it be immortality or the sheer hedonistic joy of it.''
+
+The skunk watched the pages flip beneath Life Breeds Life's fingers and thought. To downplay the council would be to minimize the work of years, of almost a decade. It might rankle for the other members, but she was pleasantly surprised at how comfortable an idea it was. It would gain her and Jonas much needed room to maneuver.
+
+Eventually she nodded, saying, ``That makes sense, yes. If the concept of the Council disappears into foggy memories and untrustworthy histories, then any attempts to lead again will seem out of place, too. It will give Jonas and I more latitude to continue working long term.''
+
+``Precisely.'' He replaced the book on the shelf. ``Down the line, too, I am considering suggesting that we say that we uploaded after Secession. Say in the thirties. Not far enough to be an obvious lie, but enough distance from it to give us the space to act as we must now so that we can act as we will later.''
+
+True Name felt the smile grow on her face, earnest and excited. ``Excellent. Excellent thinking. Keep me up to date as you go, though I do not expect the updates to come all that quickly.''
+
+Life Breeds Life laughed. ``Of course not. If we are to think long term, we must think in terms of decades to work in centuries. If we are lucky, we must think in terms of centuries to work in millennia. We have plenty of time.''

toledot/content/secession/sys/True-Name/007.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
+\hypertarget{true-name-2124}{%
+\chapter{True Name — 2124}\label{true-name-2124}}
+
+The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream walked.
+
+She walked from sim to sim, finding intricate ways to build up a sign, a sigil from them. Finding ways for disparate streets to connect, finding alleyways to open into deer paths, finding breathlessly exposed parks that, when a corner was turned around a tree or perhaps a low hill, might open out again into the lobbies of libraries, the shelves of which could become a hedge maze.
+
+Perhaps there was more to the sims that she walked, but she did not notice. As soon as she felt herself drawn to any one particular place, any one particular feature of any one particular sim, as soon as she began to feel anchored, she left. All of the things that people---her people---built passed beneath her feet, passed before her eyes.
+
+Some part of her was overflowing in some indefinable way, and so she walked.
+
+And all the time, her thoughts soared above her, watching her path, the steps she took. They watched all of her left turns. They viewed the sigil that her walking drew and imbued in it new meaning.
+
+A thought: \emph{What dire emotional need caused one to build an office building in a place of no corporations?}
+
+She stepped into that office building from the dry bed of a river, walked up two flights of stairs, and into a floor of empty cubicles. She turned at random, moving through the rows, and sat down at one of the desks and thought a while.
+
+A thought: \emph{Why is the first instinct upon creating a wholly blank medium such as this to build in the nature we remember?}
+
+She stepped from the cubicle and turned left, out into a rolling, open field, dotted throughout with dandelions. She bent down and picked one, twirling it between finger and thumb, then tucking it behind her ear where the yellow could shine bright amidst the black fur there.
+
+She could almost feel em, sometimes, as part of the very fabric of existence within the System. Almost. A dream of a dream of her friend, always just out of reach.
+
+A thought: \emph{Why do we drag our memories around with us like luggage?}
+
+So, she walked, and as she walked, she strove to draw her thoughts in the other direction. She strove to draw them forward, away from the past, so that she could consider the future.
+
+What would this place look like after seceding from the rest of the world? What would a land---if such could be said of the System---of those who had already seceded from the rest of humanity look like? How many would notice and rejoice? How many would notice and hate every second of it? How many would notice and not care, and how many would not even know that it had happened? That it had even been on the table?
+
+Would they build differently? Perhaps they would stop bringing along with them the structures of their pasts. Perhaps there would be fewer office buildings and more cabins in the woods. More idyllic houses. More mountain landscapes and main streets of cute towns with hole-in-the-wall restaurants that no one knew about and yet which served the best curry, the best hot dog, the best cupcakes that one could possibly imagine.
+
+Would they live differently, love differently? Perhaps they would still pair up as always they had. Maybe, when they picked up feelings for someone, they would fork to have a separate relationship with them as well. Maybe collectives of families would live together as they always had, finding comfort as much in each other as in their chosen relatives. Maybe a taboo would grow around having a relationship with oneself, of forked instances living together and loving each other. Would that be narcissism forever, or only before individuation? Would it be incest? Masturbation? She did not know, she did not know.
+
+Would they choose life? Choose death? Would they pray?
+
+She knew that it would happen, of course. Secession. She shared none of Yared's dread, his pessimism. This was fine. She was the politician, he was the puppet. She saw the big picture laid out before her in her sign, her sigil. He would handle the pessimism, her the optimism.
+
+No, not optimism; surety.
+
+The bill would pass, the System would secede, the station launch would go off without a hitch. The bill could not but pass, the System was bound to secede, and the station launch was as safe as could be.
+
+Yared would upload, or he would not.
+
+The DDR would care, or it would not.
+
+Earth would dream of them, up there on the System, or it would not.
+
+The only thing, the only important thing, was to ensure continuity. A continuity borne of safety, of stability, and of an intense desire not to let the System come to harm. It had to be desired, prized, cherished even by all those who stayed behind.
+
+As she ruminated on this, the need to be desired as a form of stability, a memory bubbled up to the surface, spun around once, twice, and then came into focus.
+
+A memory: \emph{``Two thirds of our power structure still thinks child restrictions are a good enough idea that those laws have bled into Russia, too.''}
+
+Who had said that? One of the three, doubtless. They were so interchangeable.
+
+She stepped into her apartment from wherever her thoughts had taken her, and she forked off a new instance, relying on that subtle trick that Jonas had taught her, letting her reputation stay close to where it had been.
+
+``I suppose that makes me Do I Know God After The End Waking.''
+
+She nodded.
+
+``Someone had to wind up with the name with a typo in it, alas.'' The other skunk smirked.
+
+``Everyone gets something, yes,'' True Name said, plucking the duplicated dandelion from behind End Waking's ear and adding it to the one already behind hers. Two suns amidst black fur. ``Let us start with some differences. I do not want you looking too much like me, so that we can work separately.''
+
+End Waking nodded, thought for a moment, and then forked several times in quick succession to lead to greater and greater differences, until a new Odist stood before her, unique in so many ways. Masculine, kind-faced, dressed in a business-casual outfit that retained both the competency and friendliness that Praiseworthy had helped her attain.
+
+``If you think this is acceptable, we can start strategizing.''
+
+True Name nodded, and the two skunks walked to her office.
+
+``So, if we are to follow the timescale that Life Breeds Life suggests, what are some good milestones that we can set for ourselves?''
+
+``I was thinking that it would be nice to have uploading incentivized within fifty years. That would mean that by the hundredth anniversary of Secession, we would primarily be seeing uploads who knew nothing but that idea.''
+
+End Waking nodded. ``Probably best to begin as early as possible, yes, at least in terms of planning. I think that ensuring that the failure rate is below one percent within ten years would be good first step, followed by reducing the cost of upload by half ten years after, then half again in another decade. That gives us twenty years to work with when it comes to getting to a point of incentivization.''
+
+``Alright, that sounds good. I will leave you to it, for the most part. I do not expect that there will be any news for another few years.''
+
+The other skunk bowed. ``Of course.''
+
+``And, End Waking, a favor.'' When he nodded, she continued, ``There are inquisitive minds. Always are. We already have Life Breeds Life helping on that front, but while you were talking through the timeline, I realized that it would be best if this conversation, these plans, did not start, as far as anyone but you and me are concerned, until perhaps the 2150s.''
+
+He tilted his head. ``How come?''
+
+True Name smiled faintly. ``I always find it surprising just how quickly one can deviate from one's down-tree instance after all that forking.''
+
+``Of course. You have been thinking your thoughts while I have my own.''
+
+``Yes. Well, we are quickly getting to the point where our efforts both sys- and phys-side happening all at once are reaching levels that might be considered uncomfortable in retrospect. Life Breeds Life is working on this already. If we can minimize our visible impact, then we should do so. Same date for the Council, same date for Jonas, same date for other Odists.''
+
+``Mm, probably a good idea. I forked in 2143, then.''
+
+``2143. Got it.'' True Name smiled. ``Thank you for this. I think it will work out quite well for us in the end.''

toledot/content/secession/sys/True-Name/008.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
+\hypertarget{true-name-2125}{%
+\chapter{True Name — 2125}\label{true-name-2125}}
+
+The Council of Eight met before the news of the secession amendment passing was published in the perisystem news feeds for those who tracked such information sys-side. They agreed, without even needing to talk about it, that it would be nice to have a small celebration of success before everyone was doing it. Something comfortable, cheerful, with friends.
+
+To that end, they met at Debarre's house, a low, rambling house plugged squarely into the side of a hill, walk-out basement looking out over a wooded lawn. The neighborhood had several such houses, widely spaced, where a few of Debarre's friends that he'd met both on and off the System had set up a comfortable living, enough space to be alone, enough friends to make it worthwhile.
+
+The plus-side of the house was that the patio for the walk-out basement was beneath an overhanging deck, protecting the occupants from the slow but steady snowfall.
+
+``I don't understand why you had to make it cold,'' user11824 grumbled.
+
+``It's New Years day, dude.'' Debarre laughed. ``It's supposed to be cold.''
+
+``Fucking Americans, I swear to God. I'm from New Zealand. New Years is not cold.''
+
+The wandering discussion took place around a chiminea radiating warmth. An indentation had been made in the side of the clay body of the fireplace into which a kettle had been placed, mulled wine slowly simmering. True Name found it immensely enjoyable. It reminded her quite a bit of winters with her grandparents on the east coast. Made sense, of course, given where Debarre was originally from.
+
+``I like it,'' Zeke rumbled. ``I only ever got to see snow once, and that was in Yakutsk when I was uploading.''
+
+The three S-R Bloc goons laughed. ``There's not that much snow out there,'' one of them said. ``But I'm glad you got to see it at least once.''
+
+The bundle of rags nodded appreciatively, extending a pseudopod of an arm to ladle more of the wine into his mug.
+
+``Where's Jonas?'' Debarre asked True Name.
+
+``Running late, I guess. I am not his keeper.''
+
+``I know, I just figured since--'' He was interrupted by a muffled doorbell as someone entered the sim, followed by Jonas (Ar Jonas, True Name guessed) ambling around the side of the house to join them.
+
+``\emph{Et voilà,}'' she said, grinning.
+
+``What?'' Jonas laughed. ``What'd I do?''
+
+``You were late, Debarre was worried, I was bored,'' user11824 drawled.
+
+``Well, sorry about that. Just checking in with our contact phys-side. He's depressed.''
+
+Zeke began ladling a cup of the heated wine for Jonas. ``Why was he depressed. It passed, didn't it?''
+
+``Yeah, well, apparently he's getting pressure from the NEAC government. They're happy enough about the bill passing, but they want to control his DDR participation going forward. He's just mopey.''
+
+Debarre growled quietly, tail bristling out. ``The DDR was a fucking mistake, anyway.''
+
+``Yes,'' True Name said. ``But it got us this, at least, and now we do not need to worry about it again.''
+
+Debarre shrugged.
+
+Zeke asked, ``So when does it all come into effect?''
+
+``The 21st, same day as the launch,'' Jonas said. ``We shouldn't notice anything except maybe a jump in systime if there's any downtime getting us set up.''
+
+``What's the chance of that happening?''
+
+``Around five percent.''
+
+``Chance of data loss?''
+
+``Less than a tenth of a percent.''
+
+``And catastrophic failure?''
+
+Jonas grinned. ``There were a lot of zeroes before that six, I can tell you that. I didn't count them.''
+
+True Name added, ``It would have to require not only the launch going wrong, but the backup System failing, and from what our friends say, it is far away from the launch site.''
+
+``In the North, yes. Launch site is in Western China.''
+
+Zeke nodded, sipped from his wine, and rasped, ``Best we can hope for, then.''
+
+user11824 shrugged. ``It'd be a boring as hell end. Are we going to have a big celebration or anything?''
+
+``I do not see why not,'' True Name said. ``We can get a few of the sims to set up fireworks and we can spread the word through perisystem news.''
+
+``We can celebrate now, too,'' Debarre said, grinning. ``I went through all this fucking trouble and we're talking shop. Drink your wine, warm your hands by the fire, \emph{literally} anything but more shop talk.''
+
+And so they did. They talked, they stayed warm around the chiminea, and they drank. Debarre was the first to get truly drunk, breaking into Auld Lang Syne. When no one joined in, the weasel laughed and danced around the ring of council-members, calling them all boring, which got a grin out of even user11824.
+
+As the evening wore on and, one by one, the rest of the council joined Debarre in his drunkenness, the conversations grew more earnest, more heartfelt. Several toasts were made. The final one was to, per True Name, ``The chance to do whatever the fuck we want.''
+
+After that, they agreed to meet the next day and give statements for the wider celebrations, and then all headed back to their home sims.
+
+Others headed back, perhaps. But after an appropriate delay, True Name let the drunkenness fade and went, instead to Jonas's apartment. Two of the Jonases were sitting on the couch, talking possibilities for the next year.
+
+``Well?'' one of them asked. Prime, she supposed.
+
+``Well, we made it,'' she said, slouching on the stool Jonas had long since added to the furniture once the skunk had started coming by regularly. ``And now we can finally work on something else.''
+
+He laughed. ``Getting bored of the same old secession arguments?''
+
+``Oh, I have been working on other things on the side, do not worry, but it will be nice to do so more openly.''
+
+``Tell me about them.''
+
+She thought for a moment, tallying up the ones she was comfortable discussing with Jonas. ``The three big ones are, I think, ensuring stability and growth via financial and political means, which I have other instances currently working on. The second is disrupting and then disbanding the Council--''
+
+Jonas sat up straighter at this.
+
+``--in order to give us more latitude to do our work without having to run it by others. It is not like the System needs any governance, anyway.''
+
+``Any \emph{open} governance,'' Jonas corrected.
+
+``Of course. There will still be work to do.''
+
+``And what's the third?''
+
+``Finding any patterns that we have left in our wake and smoothing them out. The first step will be convincing Yared to upload. He is less dangerous up here. I do not expect that to be difficult.''
+
+Jonas nodded. ``Makes sense. Do you think we've left many patterns?''
+
+She shook her head. ``No, not yet. But I think it best to get in the practice. I would like to begin to think on the scale of centuries, and if we are to do that, I think it best to shape history both as we go and in retrospect.''
+
+``Good plan,'' he said, slouching back into the couch and grinning.
+
+The skunk grinned back, far more toothily, her tail giving a lazy swish. ``And if you are thinking of calling me a politician, I would like to cordially invite you to consider the consequences of your actions.''
+
+``Fine.'' He laughed, rolling his eyes. ``So, are you at least happy with the way things are going?''
+
+``I am pleased, yes. It is a good first step. There is almost no chance of the decision being reversed down the line, and if we make it another fifty years, the concept of the System or any individuals living here remaining under the wing of any national entity will have left the collective subconscious. It will also work to our advantage that there is no un-uploading. An irreversible process that lands one in a place that appears to have no influence on the outside world will nullify the arguments of many of our detractors.''
+
+``Just ensure they upload, right.''
+
+True Name nodded. ``Yes. And once the Council is out of the way, we should be good to go.''
+
+``And how do you propose to do that?'' he asked.
+
+``It will be easy enough. Just take on more and more responsibility under the guise of helping out, start accepting less and less assistance, then begin suggesting that, since it is all going so smoothly, maybe it is not needed anymore. If we work with phys-side techs in order to drop the reputation cost of forking and sim creation, that will also help.''
+
+``Think any of them will complain?''
+
+``Not until it is too late, and by then, it will all be too difficult to form another Council, right?''
+
+Jonas nodded. ``Works for me. Shall we start divvying up tasks, then?''
+
+She nodded. ``There is much to be done.''