Toledot minus epilogue

toledot/content/launch/phys/Douglas/003.tex

@@ -145,7 +145,7 @@ Me? I'm not so sure. I was raised thinking much of that, but I also feel like I
 Maybe I can't answer the question without asking a bunch more because God and I forgot each other.
 
 \begin{quote}
-When you become intoxicated---whether via substance use or some natural process, such as sleep deprivation---which of the following applies to you?
+When you become intoxicated—whether via substance use or some natural process, such as sleep deprivation—which of the following applies to you?
 \end{quote}
 
 \noindent I laughed at this one. Where did you find this? I dug but couldn't find the source. I know that the previous one is a Psalm of some sort.

toledot/content/launch/phys/Douglas/004.tex

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ Then I sobered up, such as it were, and immediately regretted it. I feel like I
 Your reply put much of that anxiety to rest, for which I am also grateful. I will answer your next batch of questions momentarily, but I want to address some points from your letter leading up to those, first.
 
 \begin{quote}
-Of course I will write back! I have no intention of stopping. Ioan and I will continue to bombard you with questions until either you tell us to stop or we come out with our history and mythography---and even then, do not count on it. Also, please feel free to ask us your own questions. Not only will we enjoy answering them, but they will continue to help us build our picture of you which will help us put your answers in context.
+Of course I will write back! I have no intention of stopping. Ioan and I will continue to bombard you with questions until either you tell us to stop or we come out with our history and mythography—and even then, do not count on it. Also, please feel free to ask us your own questions. Not only will we enjoy answering them, but they will continue to help us build our picture of you which will help us put your answers in context.
 \end{quote}
 
 \noindent Oh, don't worry! I will have plenty of questions for you. If I'm going to upload in the future, I'd also like to know more about how things are sys-side. I mostly only contact you (and I guess Ioan through you? Hi Ioan!) so it all sounds very surreal.
@@ -246,7 +246,7 @@ If you could change any one thing about your body, what would it be?
 \noindent You asked me to react to the following lines without looking them up.
 
 \begin{quote}
-Since then---`tis Centuries---and yet\\
+Since then—`tis Centuries—and yet\\
 Feels shorter than the Day\\
 I first surmised the Horses' Heads\\
 Were toward Eternity —

toledot/content/launch/phys/Douglas/005.tex

@@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ His implants buzzed as he walked into his room, and a glance at the corner of hi
 
 \textbf{May Then My Name:} I uploaded back in the early 2100s, back when the System was small and full of dreamers, weirdos, and people like you and Ioan who spend all of their time thinking. Before that, I was a teacher, though towards the end of my phys-side tenure and for some time after, I became involved in politics. I grew up in the central corridor of North America, in the Western Federation. As with everyone, I do not think that I have an accent, though after some trouble with my implants before I uploaded, I found that some speech and thought patterns had changed, and since then, language and I have had a complicated relationship. We could have worked to change it, my cocladists and I, but why bother?
 
-\textbf{May Then My Name:} You ask about dissolution strategies (tasker, tracker, dispersionista): you are correct that they apply to the ways in which an individual forks. They are not hard and fast categories, but rather a set of patterns that we have noticed over the years and applied names and numbers to. Taskers will fork only very rarely, and then for a specific task, merging back into the root instance immediately afterward. Trackers fork more frequently, and may maintain forks over a longer period of time. The reasons for forking may vary---Ioan is a tracker, ey will explain more---but the forks almost always follow a single line of thought or relationship or what have you to its logical end before merging back. Dispersionistas are those who fork for fun, spinning off new personalities and maybe merging them back, maybe not. My clade, the Ode clade, falls somewhere between tracker and dispersionista: we fork frequently for many temporary purposes, but maintain a relatively small permanent clade of around 100 instances.
+\textbf{May Then My Name:} You ask about dissolution strategies (tasker, tracker, dispersionista): you are correct that they apply to the ways in which an individual forks. They are not hard and fast categories, but rather a set of patterns that we have noticed over the years and applied names and numbers to. Taskers will fork only very rarely, and then for a specific task, merging back into the root instance immediately afterward. Trackers fork more frequently, and may maintain forks over a longer period of time. The reasons for forking may vary—Ioan is a tracker, ey will explain more—but the forks almost always follow a single line of thought or relationship or what have you to its logical end before merging back. Dispersionistas are those who fork for fun, spinning off new personalities and maybe merging them back, maybe not. My clade, the Ode clade, falls somewhere between tracker and dispersionista: we fork frequently for many temporary purposes, but maintain a relatively small permanent clade of around 100 instances.
 
 \textbf{May Then My Name:} Is that clear? I can answer questions about this until the cows upload.
 
@@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ His implants buzzed as he walked into his room, and a glance at the corner of hi
 
 \textbf{May Then My Name:} To a one, yes.
 
-\textbf{Ioan:} I fall more into the tracker camp. I pick up projects such as this one or researching a book or something, and let a fork work on those. I---my \#Tracker instance, as it's called---or my forks may create extra instances for smaller tasks along the way, but it gets to be too much for me to deal with after a certain point, and the slow divergence of personalities feels uncomfortable. I have three forks out there now, one for collating data from each LV, and one for conducting interviews here while I write. That number goes up and down as needed.
+\textbf{Ioan:} I fall more into the tracker camp. I pick up projects such as this one or researching a book or something, and let a fork work on those. I—my \#Tracker instance, as it's called—or my forks may create extra instances for smaller tasks along the way, but it gets to be too much for me to deal with after a certain point, and the slow divergence of personalities feels uncomfortable. I have three forks out there now, one for collating data from each LV, and one for conducting interviews here while I write. That number goes up and down as needed.
 
 \textbf{Douglas:} Makes sense to me.
 
@@ -186,7 +186,7 @@ His implants buzzed as he walked into his room, and a glance at the corner of hi
 
 \textbf{May Then My Name:} Not that common, no, and hers was unique.
 
-\textbf{May Then My Name:} Every now and then, one of us will get tired of functional immortality and decide to just quit their instance---that is what she did---and disappear off the System. I do not begrudge her that.
+\textbf{May Then My Name:} Every now and then, one of us will get tired of functional immortality and decide to just quit their instance—that is what she did—and disappear off the System. I do not begrudge her that.
 
 \textbf{Ioan:} I'm sorry for your loss, Douglas.
 \end{quote}

toledot/content/launch/phys/Douglas/006.tex

@@ -42,11 +42,11 @@
 
 \textbf{Douglas:} There was one last spate of protesting right before the launch. I saw some of the videos from planet-side, and a lot of it was just talking-heads discussing the fact that some had tried to shut down portions of the net, and even tried to take down one of the Ansible stations. Most of it was the same stuff we saw during the planning phase. I guess it kind of broke down into three complaints:
 
-\textbf{Douglas:} 1. Expenses---this one was diminished toward the end, as there's not really a whole lot of expense required in popping some explosive bolts to set the launches flying, and all the material used out here was from scavenged Trojan asteroids. The protests that we saw around this were mostly griping about how much had already been spent. ``Think of how much could have gone to deacidifying projects, etc etc''
+\textbf{Douglas:} 1. Expenses—this one was diminished toward the end, as there's not really a whole lot of expense required in popping some explosive bolts to set the launches flying, and all the material used out here was from scavenged Trojan asteroids. The protests that we saw around this were mostly griping about how much had already been spent. ``Think of how much could have gone to deacidifying projects, etc etc''
 
-\textbf{Douglas:} 2. Brain/workforce drain---This is a perennial topic with the System. All those smart minds out there focusing on pie-in-the-sky dreams instead of `real problems' back there on Earth. What they imagine someone with a masters in spaceflight or astronomy or whatever can do back on Earth to better an overheated dustball is beyond me.
+\textbf{Douglas:} 2. Brain/workforce drain—This is a perennial topic with the System. All those smart minds out there focusing on pie-in-the-sky dreams instead of `real problems' back there on Earth. What they imagine someone with a masters in spaceflight or astronomy or whatever can do back on Earth to better an overheated dustball is beyond me.
 
-\textbf{Douglas:} 3. Earth vs space sentiments---This one is probably the most common, and also the hardest to explain. Even I don't totally understand it. I think I mentioned before that, the harder things get, the less time and energy you have to focus on those pie-in-the-sky ideas. You're too busy scraping by or focus on growing soybeans or trying not to burn up or whatever, you don't have much time to do anything but dream about space and watch movies in your hour before bed or however your day looks.
+\textbf{Douglas:} 3. Earth vs space sentiments—This one is probably the most common, and also the hardest to explain. Even I don't totally understand it. I think I mentioned before that, the harder things get, the less time and energy you have to focus on those pie-in-the-sky ideas. You're too busy scraping by or focus on growing soybeans or trying not to burn up or whatever, you don't have much time to do anything but dream about space and watch movies in your hour before bed or however your day looks.
 
 \textbf{Douglas:} You have to remember that my opinion of the place is colored by the fact that I lived where I did with the family that I did while the city was in a state of decline, so.
 
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@
 
 \textbf{Douglas:} I guess it doesn't surprise me that you have those inside as well as outside. Sometimes, I get these little jolts about how little I actually know about the System, compared to how much I know about the launch.
 
-\textbf{May Then My Name:} It does not help that many of us---not just me---are obtuse on purpose.
+\textbf{May Then My Name:} It does not help that many of us—not just me—are obtuse on purpose.
 
 \textbf{Douglas:} You said there was some grumbling sys-side, as well, right?
 

toledot/content/launch/phys/Douglas/007.tex

@@ -96,7 +96,7 @@ Tonight, it was Ioan.
 
 \textbf{Ioan:} So, the Ode clade is very old. They've been around for ages. There are quite a few of them. I did a bunch of work with one of them named Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled about twenty years back, and that's how I got to know them. We've had an on-again-off-again working relationship.
 
-\textbf{Ioan:} Though, now that I think about it, one of my forks---my only real cocladist---has found emself in a romantic relationship with Dear.
+\textbf{Ioan:} Though, now that I think about it, one of my forks—my only real cocladist—has found emself in a romantic relationship with Dear.
 
 \textbf{Ioan:} You have to understand, though, every single Odist I've met (except maybe one, who isn't around anymore) has been completely and utterly charming, so maybe it's just a them thing.
 
@@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ Tonight, it was Ioan.
 
 \textbf{Ioan:} Another thing about them is that they are, to a one, magnets for strange goings on. I guess that's part of being strange overall, but even so, every one of them has this incredible story about these events that have happened around them. I don't think it's a conscious thing, necessarily. Just by virtue of their intensity, they live through intense happenings, or have intense friends, or elicit intense reactions from those around them.
 
-\textbf{Ioan:} For example---and this is public information here, now, I don't know if it ever made it phys-side---it was one of them who discovered (or at least was the first who was public about) the fact that those who live sys-side can't ever actually forget things. Instead of simply publishing some sort of report or studying the reality of it, he adopted the persona of a biblical teacher and organized an entire scavenger hunt to try and get the rest of the clade interested.
+\textbf{Ioan:} For example—and this is public information here, now, I don't know if it ever made it phys-side—it was one of them who discovered (or at least was the first who was public about) the fact that those who live sys-side can't ever actually forget things. Instead of simply publishing some sort of report or studying the reality of it, he adopted the persona of a biblical teacher and organized an entire scavenger hunt to try and get the rest of the clade interested.
 
 \textbf{Douglas:} That sounds dramatic.
 

toledot/content/launch/phys/Douglas/009.tex

@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ The lead-up to uploading, however, was easy. He supposed that much of it was tha
 
 But anticlimax is ever the way of the world, and so the night before the one-year anniversary of the Launch arrived, he simply signed a waiver, walked to the clinic, answered a few questions, and then underwent the procedure. It was dizzying, disorienting, and, were he pressed to pick one, the worst physical experience of his life, but at that point, he was well past any point where he could turn back, and even then, he knew he wouldn't.
 
-There was a brief---or perhaps impossibly long---discontinuity, and then he was standing in a grey cube of a room, naked, vertiginous, blinking at a light that seemed to come from nowhere.
+There was a brief—or perhaps impossibly long—discontinuity, and then he was standing in a grey cube of a room, naked, vertiginous, blinking at a light that seemed to come from nowhere.
 
 Anticlimax indeed.
 
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ Douglas looked em up and down. ``You can gain weight, here?''
 
 ``Uh, I guess so,'' he said.
 
-They stood in silence for a while, once Douglas had learned the ins and outs of forking and quitting. His mind was churning---so much new information---while Ioan waited patiently. There was so much to take in all at once, he could easily see how one could get overwhelmed.
+They stood in silence for a while, once Douglas had learned the ins and outs of forking and quitting. His mind was churning—so much new information—while Ioan waited patiently. There was so much to take in all at once, he could easily see how one could get overwhelmed.
 
 ``Alright,'' he said. ``What's the plan from here?''
 
@@ -171,7 +171,7 @@ All of his blood was completely replaced with ice water. His voice failed him. A
 
 ``You're\ldots{}''
 
-The woman---Michelle?---came and sat on the grass next to him to hug an arm around his shoulders, her expression softening. ``I am May Then My Name Die With Me of the Ode clade, Douglas. \emph{Michelle's} clade.''
+The woman—Michelle?—came and sat on the grass next to him to hug an arm around his shoulders, her expression softening. ``I am May Then My Name Die With Me of the Ode clade, Douglas. \emph{Michelle's} clade.''
 
 ``So\ldots{}''
 
@@ -193,7 +193,7 @@ He nodded. All that she was saying was swirling around in his mind, wrapped up i
 
 ``Everything feels like it needs to be done in such a rush, though,'' he admitted. ``Like if I don't do it right now I'm going to explode. You really look like her? Exactly? And\ldots{}but you're a skunk.''
 
-May Then My Name---the one that looked like Michelle---kissed him on the cheek, smirked, and disappeared, having apparently quit, leaving the still giggling skunk to help Douglas up.
+May Then My Name—the one that looked like Michelle—kissed him on the cheek, smirked, and disappeared, having apparently quit, leaving the still giggling skunk to help Douglas up.
 
 ``Later, I promise.'' She pulled him over to the picnic blanket with her so that she could sit next to him, tasking Ioan with setting up the food while they talked. ``Douglas, my dear, what are you most excited about, now that you have uploaded?'' she asked earnestly, paw resting on his knee.