Epigraph

content/read/003.md

@@ -1,47 +1,135 @@
-# Ioan Bălan --- 2305
+# RJ Brewster --- 2112
 
-Ioan Bălan awoke to an urgent message.
+AwDae sat up in bed and slid to the edge of the mattress. Stretched languidly, let fur bristle from ear to tail, the latter bottle-brushing out. Ey shook emself to settle eir fur back down and yawned widely, slender pink tongue curling just shy of sharp incisors. All formalities, to be sure, or perhaps wordless mnemonics to finish the context-shift. The final step in a ritual.
 
-Ey didn't really like these, the sensorium messages. Much better to received paper messages. Letters. Notes. Missives. Scrawled signatures and careful handwriting.
+All those phantom realities clicking into place.
 
-Ey mostly just liked paper, if ey was honest. Always accruing more paper, more pens. Paper messages, rich messages attached to paper that played on its surface, ones that messed with the reader's sensorium; ey sent them all. Eir friends found it perhaps a little disturbing. Antiques from a world more physical than this.
+Brushing eir fur down, the fennec stood and padded to the dresser in the corner of the room, pulling out a thin white cotton shirt with laces up the front and a simple navy sarong, which ey tied around eir waist. Countless hours examining some of the highest fashions out there on the 'net, and ey'd come to the conclusion that, in these times of excess, the understated said the most.
 
-But to have one that just barged in on eir vision and endocrine system like this made em anxious. This one included a tiny jolt of adrenaline as an alert. Waking up to a zap of panic to have a partial sensory takeover felt rude.
+It also interfered with the fur least, worked well with a tail --- a simple slit cut down the length of the sarong let that slip free --- and it was cheap. There was no shortage of ways to spend money, and AwDae had better things to buy with what was left after London rent.
 
-At least ey didn't have to get out of bed to deal with it.
+Better to perfect the form, to make it fit more precisely eir self-image. A handful of silver paltry exchange for building the you you are meant to be rather than the you you are.
 
-The opacity on the message was turned up high so that even in eir dark room with eir eyes closed (and heart still pounding), ey could see the fox. Bipedal, dressed sharply. It was sitting on a plain wooden chair situated in an empty room. The room had wood floors the same color as the chair. Something light: maple or pine. The walls were concrete where they weren't glass. Outside the glass was a sere shortgrass prairie, a cloudy day.
+Ey swiped eir paw from left to right atop the dresser, revealing a dimly glowing arsenal of personal belongings. It'd be a simple night out, so ey tucked a few vcards and a limited credit chip into a shoulder bag and hauled the strap over eir head, vulpine ears laying flat and out of the way.
 
-The combination of the fox's white fur, glistening and iridescent, combined with the room and landscape was all so painfully postmodern. Ey didn't think emself much of a pomophobe, but this was...intense, to say the least.
+From there, claws clacked against the glossy surface of the tport pad. Gauche as it was to pop in and out of existence where folks could see, ey kept eirs in a corner of the studio apartment rather than an alcove. The feeling of exposure and the jarring change of scenery was titillating, racy.
 
-*"Hi Mx Bălan,"* the fox was saying. It seemed to speak in italics, though how, Ioan could not say. A sense. A sensation. *"I have a proposition for you."*
+Ey stood straight on the pad and gestured a paw left to right, bringing up a list of recently used commands. Had ey left fingerprints online, there'd be a clear smudge over the entry: ey rarely did anything else on work nights.
 
-Ioan grunted. The message was simplex, thank goodness. One way. No interaction required.
+`tport: The Crown Pub`
 
-*"My name is Dear, Also, The Tree Was Felled --- or just Dear --- and I am a member of the Ode clade. I am an artist--"* The word seemed to come with a tone of distaste. *"--and...performer. I am not just telling you this to, ah, toot my own horn, I believe the phrase is, but to underline the fact that I am woefully unprepared for the situation at hand."*
+Tapped, and the obligatory *click* that went along with the change of scenery brought em to an alcove paneled in oak, lit by green-glass-shaded lights hanging pendulous from a cord directly above em.
 
-The fox smiled, looking tired, and continued. *"I need some help finding someone. Someone that does not want to be found. It is personally important, but also potentially damaging to the image of our entire clade."*
+Ey blinked to adjust to the comparatively dim light. The pub sim, largely following the circadian rhythm of the British isles, was just as dark as it was for RJ, back in London-as-it-was, but eir personal sim lived in a perpetual eleven AM springtime.
 
-Ioan furrowed eir brow.
+Ey turned and stepped away from the pad, narrowly avoiding a slender weasel stumbling towards the alcove.
 
-*"This person has information, a name, that they have supposedly shared. We --- the other members of my clade and myself --- do not precisely know if they actually did, unfortunately, we just have word from some perisystem notification that someone said the Name."* Ioan could hear the capital letter.
+"See ya, Debarre," AwDae said, though it came out more like '*Shee-a, Debaw*' coming from the fox's narrow muzzle. Ey got a curt grunt from the weasel done up all in black.
 
-*"I am sorry, I am getting sidetracked by details."* The fox shook it's head, ears flopping from side to side. *"I try to be prepared for conversations and messages like this, but I am a little worked up. Excited, I guess. Can we meet?"* It listed an address. *"Even if only to talk. Even if you are not interested, I would still like to meet you. You seem neat."*
+The fox shrugged and headed into the pub proper, nose twitching. The scents of the room told em more of those present than simply scanning the crowd. One or two gawking entities with no scent property set --- tourists --- and the usual crowd of aromas. Friends, mostly. Acquaintances all.
 
-The message ended.
+Whiskers bristled at the distinct whiff of dandelions, a memory leftover from youth, and ey made a beeline towards one of the window tables, where the scent originated, skirting around bodies of diverse shape.
 
-Ioan lay in bed, thinking. It was still an hour before ey had to get up, and ey was loath to start the day before ey had to. Ey tried eir best to sleep for another ten minutes, at least, but eir mind kept slipping back to Dear's request.
+"*Shacha.*"
 
-*Why me?* ey asked the backs of eir closed eyelids. *Why hire a writer who fancies emself a historian as...what, a private investigator?*
+"Come on, fox, loosen your filters, won't you?" Sasha laughed, scooting her chair back to stand up and lean in for a quick hug. AwDae slipped eir arms around the skunk's waist in turn and gave a squeeze, tail aswish.
 
-Ey spent a few minutes researching the public basics on Dear. Pronouns (it/its), species (fennec fox), age (old --- the Ode clade was an early adopter), some of its art. Really out there stuff. No further hints as to why it would need em in particular. Something on the markets piqued its interest, perhaps?
+"Lame," ey drawled, but dialed back the output filters on eir speech, letting something more closely resembling English pass. "How you been, skunk?"
 
-With still a half hour before eir alarm, Ioan stretched out of bed. The least ey could do was get a shower and some coffee. If there were any reason that the founders of the system had included full sensoria in the works it must have been for those.
+"Oh, you know, same old, same old." Sasha settled back into her chair and fiddled with a stack of vcards on the table, giving an outsized shrug. "Been kind of boring in here over the last few days, so it's good to see you."
 
-Those done and clothes donned --- ey knew ey could never out-natty the fox, so the usual faux-academia garb it was --- ey penned Dear a short note with a time. If it was day in that sim, or even late afternoon, it should get the note before dinner or bed.
+The fox nodded, tugging eir shirt straight and moving over to the chair opposite the skunk, sliding into it easily and resting against the back.
 
-*Besides,* ey thought. *Maybe it will get the fox to stop using sensorium messages.*
+"It's late there, isn't it?"
 
-No luck. Less than thirty seconds later, Ioan received a sensorium ping of acknowledgment, a shiver up eir spine for eir trouble.
+"Not too late. One something. Made good time home at least. Rehearsal ran late."
 
-Ey forked and sent the copy of emself, \#c1494bf, out to the meeting. Meanwhile, ey'd get some food, perhaps work on eir current project.
+Sasha grinned. "You know, every time you talk about rehearsal and such, I just think back to school. You hunched over the sound booth, you know? It's hard for me to picture you as having grown up and taken that up as a job."
+
+AwDae adopted a look of mock-despair. "Isn't it? I went to uni just for it and everything. But hey, London ain't bad, I can't complain any. Besides, not like you left it either."
+
+The skunk rolled her eyes and leaned forward onto her elbows, muzzle resting on obsidian paws. "Tell me about it. You're missing out big time here in the 'burbs, dear. You could be teaching high school theater in any town along the central corridor, doing the same plays once every five years so no students repeat them. Truly a life of glamour." Sasha laughed when AwDae buried eir face in eir paws and groaned. "Seriously though, you just remind me a lot of school. Maybe it's 'cause of all of the ways you haven't grown up."
+
+"Please, Sasha." AwDae poked eir tongue out. "If you bring up dating..."
+
+"Hey, sorry, just looking out for you, fox."
+
+"I'm plenty happy on my own, I can promise you that," ey countered.
+
+"No, I get that." Sasha lowered her gaze. "Not all it's turned out to be. Just got me thinking, is all."
+
+"Oh no, struck out again?"
+
+Sasha shrugged, nodded, shrugged once more, fiddled with a vcard. No eye contact.
+
+AwDae reached out to take one of her paws in eir own, black fur on tan mismatched and complementary. Both had opted for mostly hand-like paws, but differences were evident on contact. Where Sasha's fur was an even, silky black marked by white stripes that were a little too sharp, a little too exact, AwDae had labored to construct a version of emself as a fennec fox to exacting detail, down to the point where eir muzzle couldn't even form the two letters that made up eir name offline.
+
+Exacting, minus perhaps the two-legged-ness, the hands, the humanity around the eyes. Even then, ey had an av free of humanity stashed away somewhere.
+
+Thoughts of honing versus forging blurred surroundings. AwDae had honed emself to a finer and finder point while everyone else forged ahead. Always a way to be a better tech. Always a chance to become more vulpine online. Always a way to become better at what one already was. To become more the AwDae AwDae felt ey was.
+
+Still running sound. Still honing that skill.
+
+Ey shook eir head to dislodge the rumination.
+
+"I'm sorry, Sasha."
+
+Sasha shrugged again, as though she might be able to drop the very idea of bad break-ups like an overloaded backpack. She gave the fox's paws a squeeze in her own. "Men are dicks. I'd take a fox like you over some dickhead guy any day."
+
+AwDae smiled faintly, returned the squeeze. "Sasha, you know it wouldn't--"
+
+"No, I know. I just wish there were more guys out there like you." When AwDae stiffened in eir seat and looked away towards the window, Sasha splayed her ears and added quickly, "Sorry dear. I keep putting my foot in it, don't I?"
+
+"Sorry, no, you're fine." AwDae grinned apologetically. "I should get a thicker skin, maybe. Stand up for myself. I spend night after night hiding in here, and even then, can't seem to assert myself any. I appreciate you trying, though."
+
+Sasha smiled cautiously and nodded. "You came out like fifteen years ago, AwDae. I should still be doing better."
+
+AwDae's turn to shrug. "It's hard to ask for that, is all. Always has been."
+
+"I think that's what I meant earlier, that you haven't changed, despite all the ways you have. You haven't done like all the rest and grown up, gotten married, all that crap. You're still doing what you loved to do in school. Don't get me wrong, I miss it too. *Actual* theater, not the school stuff. Seeing crazy shows with you on the weekends. Hell, doing crazy shows in uni. Doesn't pay the bills, though."
+
+"You should come see us sometime. It'd be good to see you again, too."
+
+"You know I want to." Sasha grinned. It didn't last. "But yeah. You seem kind of frozen, kind of stuck --- in a few ways, even, though you're succeeding in others."
+
+AwDae nodded, rumination hanging in a cloud around em. So many ways the world had moved on without em. After a moment, though, ey sat up straighter. "Oh, speaking of frozen."
+
+"Debarre?"
+
+The fox nodded.
+
+"No news, yet. He's been trying to get in touch with the clinic or whatever that's taking care of Cicero, but the family's been getting in the way. They're fielding everything. They always sort of supported the relationship on the surface, you know, but never actually approved of it. Of them being together, I mean."
+
+"What? Really?" The fox shook eir head, poking a claw at the table, before rubbing the spot with a paw pad. The sim was hardly immersive enough to waste cycles on letting claw dent tabletop. "That's unfortunate. Not all that surprising, I guess, given what Cice said about them. They at least confirmed that's what happened, though?"
+
+"That's what these are," Sasha said, slipping the stack of vcards over to em. "There's contact info for the family, and a few centers around there that work on implants, some hospitals. We're thinking that those might be the types of places where he wound up. There's also a card detailing his `laston` information."
+
+AwDae twisted the stack of cards around in front of em, leafing through slowly and taking in a few of the details that slid across eir fingertips. "Mind if I make a copy?"
+
+"Go ahead. It's a deck Debarre and I have been working on. Not complete, but I'll give you ACLs."
+
+"Mm. Debarre looked crushed. Is he doing alright?"
+
+Sasha hesitated for a moment, caught in the middle of a gesture to grant copy rights on the cards. She shook her head, to which AwDae could only frown. She finished the gesture, and another set of vcards shuffled itself out from the original stack. Crisp black embossed on the creamy cotton-paper that AwDae preferred.
+
+"I'll take a look, too. I can't do too much right now, I've got a--"
+
+"I know, you've got a show coming up," Sasha laughed. "Don't worry about it, dear. Debarre's working on it, I'm taking a look when I can, and I'm sure the weasel's got others helping him out besides us. No reason not to, either. We all liked Cicero."
+
+The two sat in silence. AwDae slid Sasha's deck back and fanned eirs in front of emself before shuffling them back into a stack and swiping above them, instructing eir rig to make a local copy of the deck.
+
+Ey lifted eir snout away from the silence to scan the scents in the room once more. Now that it was starting to get on in the evening even in the Americas, the scentscape was changing. Some familiar scents, some unfamiliar, but most of them at least detailed, which told AwDae that the owners had put some thought into them. None, however, really jumped out at em.
+
+More rumination. Rumination edging into drowsiness.
+
+"Hey, Sasha, I gotta get going. I know I just got here, but I'm starting to crash hard."
+
+The skunk nodded, tail drooping. "No, it's alright. It's late there, and I know you've been in rehearsals for a while. Go get some sleep."
+
+Both stood up and exchanged another hug, AwDae reveling in that dandelion scent of eir friend. Memories of school, drowsy, dreamlike. Dandelions in the lawn. An impromptu picnic. Rubbing one of the flowers on the back of eir hand, leaving a yellow stain. Sasha explaining that the smell always reminded her of muffins.
+
+"I'll see you later, skunk, yeah?"
+
+"Take care of yourself, okay? No working too hard, slaving over a hot rig..."
+
+AwDae laughed and shook eir head. Gave the skunk one last squeeze before making eir way back through the crowd toward the alcove, already swiping eir command palette into view to head home.