Epigraph

content/read/023.md

@@ -1,75 +1,89 @@
-# Ioan Bălan --- 2305
+# RJ Brewster --- 2112
 
-Ioan sat, startled, as Dear quit abruptly, leaving em sitting alone at the cafe table. There was a certain peculiarity to that fox's sense of humor, and while ey was slowly picking up on it, the occasional bafflement remained.
+AwDae stood in the sunlight, blinking.
 
-Ey took eir time finishing eir coffee, enjoying the view. A thoroughfare. Small crowds --- some doubtless generated for effect. Enjoyed a moment's downtime before getting back into the puzzle at hand, then stood and straightened eir slacks.
+Ey felt weak. Not from hunger. Not from lack of sleep. Just worn out. Exhausted.
 
-Well, at least ey had more information to work with.
+This was starting to feel like grinding. An endless drudge to level up. Busywork. Idle hands and tired eyes.
 
-"Welcome back," #tracker said when ey arrived at home. "You have some mail."
+But then, you could quit a game. Here ey was, clues and riddles. And for what?
 
-Ey frowned, tugged the cream-colored envelope from the edge of the desk and turned it over in eir hands. Blank except eir signifier on the front, flap sealed on the back. Perhaps something about what ey'd been working on recently had piqued some interest on the reputation exchange. Another offer? And yet directly to this instance.
+There was even a fog of war.
 
-Making eir way out to the deck, ey popped the seal on the envelope, savoring the subtle tearing of the paper where the adhesive held fast. The paper was quite nice, the handwriting cramped and awkward, but legible in its green-tinged blue ink. Someone had put real effort into this.
+"So much bullshit," ey laughed bitterly. No sense in keeping quiet.
 
-> Ioan
->
-> Dear has mentioned your aversion to sensorium messages, and I gather from your taste in clothing and our brief meeting that you have a certain aesthetic you enjoy. I hope that this scrap of note suits you well. The paper seemed up your alley, at least.
->
-> You'll have to forgive Dear. It really is stretched quite thin with its gallery show, and with the increased intraclade communication, it is feeling the pressure to keep forks to a minimum, as apparently there are no further names available. (It hasn't told the rest of the clade how many illicit forks it has. I suspect they all do.)
->
-> There is more to this that I think it is not sharing explicitly, but we've been together for a few years now, and I have my guesses. I think the intraclade attention is not precisely welcome. Having met some of its cocladists, I'm inclined to think that some more conservative types are being less than generous with their treatment of the subject at hand. Perhaps with their information as well.
->
-> All this to say that there is a reason for the fox acting the way it is. I will not apologize on Dear's behalf, it knows me better than that, but I hope an increase in transparency as to what all is going on in the family politic will help.
->
-> Visit soon.
+Ey stripped down to eir underwear, hesitated, then stripped that off as well and shook eir fur out.
 
-Ioan smiled, re-folded the letter, and replaced it within its envelope. It joined the small pile ey kept.
+'Comfort' was the wrong word to use in regards a sim. It was a matter of sensory inputs that the system was set up to provide. The musty smell of the auditorium seats had been one thing, but ey was starting to get the impression that, given the way this sim was constructed, there would be rather more than less input. Eir tux was decidedly uncomfortable, not made for fox-people, and so eir fur was decidedly mussed.
 
-Dear's partner had a good heart, and it was indeed a relief to learn that some of the fox's erratic behavior was attributable to stress. None of eir family had uploaded, and, by eir very nature, ey did not create eir own as the Odists had.
+Ey folded eir clothes and set them on the sidewalk in front of the school.The cool grass provided a welcome change from the indoor-outdoor carpet and tile inside, the roughness of the concrete out here.
 
-Ey did not envy it now.
+"Alright. So. Problems." Ey plucked viciously at a few close-mown blades of grass and held them pinched between eir pawpads. "Cicero is lost. He was voting on a bunch of stuff as usual, leading the comment boards. He voted on something and it made it to the floor, but it doesn't show in the records." Ey plucked blades of grass with eir free paw, enumerating the facts. "No vote cost, no bounty, no comment."
+
+Ey swished eir tail around to the side, hiked eir backside up enough to slip it beneath em, and rolled onto eir back. Blue sky. Cloudless. Too bright, even with the fog. Ey draped eir arm, fingers still clutching grass, over eir eyes. "And now I'm lost. I was working, and then I was here. Before working, I was digging into Cicero..."
+
+Ey trailed off, spent a few moments thinking, then a few more just feeling the earth beneath em, the way the grass seemed to find a way through fur to tickle at em more directly.
+
+"So had Sasha, though. And she was the one who got me the deck in the first place." Ey ran through the actions ey had taken on the deck. It was surprisingly easy to pull up the chain of events. *Or perhaps not,* ey thought. *Given the note.*
+
+Eir first write to the deck had been on the note about the voting records. Prior to that, there was only the sorting and sharing of records. Filtering. Reading.
+
+Ey lifted eir paw once more and stared at the torn blades of grass. Tossed them aside. "Ah, hell. I'm talking to myself."
+
+Laughing, AwDae stood and gathered eir tux, heading back to the costume closet. Perhaps ey could find something that would fit em. Something to take into account that ey was more fox, less human.
+
+Failing that, perhaps ey'd lay down again. Sleep, perchance to dream.
 
 -----
 
-The archive itself was a free-form database stored in the perisystem. It could hold essentially unlimited data in truly unlimited formats. Everything from text and structured data to full-sensorium recordings. Each blob of data was stored in a node, and nodes could be tagged and linked.
+AwDae wound up in a simple, pleated skirt and a loose cotton shirt, gathered at the wrists.
 
-Unfashionable and difficult to work with, not to mention expensive to maintain, Ioan wasn't entirely clear why they had been added to the system. Exocortices had been around before the system itself. More personal, easier to interface with. Harder to share, granted.
+The skirt fit well with a tail, certainly far better than eir trousers sagging beneath its base awkwardly. It was a robin's egg blue. Nice enough. Undecorated. Any detail would be lost on the audience anyway. Might as well save both cost and effort.
 
-Some remnant from its construction, perhaps?
+The shirt was made for someone with broader shoulders. RJ might have filled it out, but on the fox's slender frame, it was baggy and loose. Again, just a plain white, but ey could hardly complain. It didn't compress eir fur, unlike the tux shirt, with its pleats sewn down the front.
 
-Luckily, as an historian, ey had some experience working with them, even if that experience was decades old at this point. Ey pulled out a fresh sheet of foolscap and began to write, and by writing, interacted with the archive.
+Ey gave consideration as to what to do with the tux. On the one paw --- and here, thinking in paws already! So soon --- it was just an artifact. Just bits. Everything was. Eir own body was. Had to be. Choosing clothes that were 'more comfortable' was only instructing the sim how best to treat eir body. Had to be. Clothes that were more comfortable were no different from clothes that weren't. It was just how the numbers added up. Just the math of simulated fashion. Had to be.
 
-If archives were difficult to work with, this one doubly so. Nodes that weren't tagged, listed publicly, or linked to from other nodes were essentially inaccessible unless one had access to the index. Ey did not. That was something usually kept within an exocortex.
+And yet, on the other, the tux was the only thing ey had...had what? Brought with from reality? It might just be a set of bits in eir exocortex, but it was *eir* set of bits and bytes.
 
-And here, few nodes were listed publicly, fewer still were linked to by others, and none were tagged. While traversing a well-pruned archive might still be akin to rifling through a card catalog to dig out books, this was no more than a file box stuffed full of loose papers.
+Was it? Was there any point to the sense of ownership in so solipsisitic a world?
 
-Ioan's heart fell.
+Something to tie em back to the world outside this sim.
 
-Of the nodes that were publicly listed, at least four were encrypted by something stronger than the original AES block. Ioan set those aside to knock against later. Another was a simple text blob with twenty-three blocks of five letters each. Further encryption? A different type? Ey could not guess which. Dear had mentioned one involving playing cards.
+A solution in between, then. Ey dug until ey found a rucksack that had probably gone with some war-themed production. Drab, dusty, made of thick canvas. It would do well to carry anything that would help, including the notes ey had made.
 
-That left only three public nodes, one of which was an error. The other two...
+Ey laid eir tux out on the ratty sofa and rolled it into a tight cylinder. An empty sim would care little if eir tux got wrinkled, yes? Ey stuffed it down at the base of the pack and folded the notes into a small pocket on the side.
 
-Ioan's muscles went rigid. The first appeared to be a deleted blob of audiovisual data which referred to the second. A transcript of the conversation Ioan had had with Dear earlier that day.
+Thus equipped, ey padded back to the auditorium. Ey made sure the room was put to sleep, and, on a whim, grabbed the one live microphone ey'd found earlier. Ensuring that it was off to conserve batteries, ey added it to the notes. A small token of where ey'd come from.
 
-They were being watched. Followed.
+"Not going to do much without the receiver or board," ey murmured. "Do the batteries even matter? This is all so fucking silly."
 
-Ey read through the transcript once, then again, more thoroughly. There were a few notes made by this Qoheleth. They spoke of a familiarity that had only been hinted at with the previous letter. *Our Dear*. What did that mean?
+Ey tamped down despair, buttoned down the flap above the pocket. So many questions.
 
-Perhaps this individual was part of the clade itself?
+Should ey lay in rations? Food? Water bottles, perhaps? Ey dismissed the thought as even sillier. Ey didn't feel hungry or thirsty, even after so long in the school, so why worry? Obviously eir body had been taken care of. There was nothing ey could do about it from within the sim. All that food and water would do is make the sim tell eir body that the pack was heavier.
 
-Ioan frowned. The vehemence with which Dear --- whom ey suspected was one of the more liberal of the Odists --- had reacted when ey had asked about the author of the ode itself seemed to rule that out. If Dear, willing to bring on an amanuensis, was that protective, ey found it dubious that one of its cocladists was Qoheleth.
+From there, ey made eir way back toward the front doors, pushing them open against the pressure differential. The breeze outside ruffled fur and skirt as ey stepped into sun once more.
 
-A friend, then? Mutual with the poet?
+-----
 
-That was something ey would have to ask Dear about. Ey could speculate all ey wanted, but there was little ey could divine about that aspect.
+The grey mist turned out to be a render distance.
 
-The rest, then. Qoheleth seemed to be expecting that things were accelerating toward some sort of conclusion. *I may have less time than I had thought.*
+Had it been a barrier, AwDae could have walked up to the fog, but no further.
 
-And Ioan was being guided, somehow.
+Had it been a barrier, ey was sure ey would have screamed.
 
-"How? Guide me how?" ey growled down at the paper. "It's all fucking encrypted."
+As it was, ey was able to follow the same street ey would've taken on the walk back to the home ey grew up in and the fog simply receded before em. Ey could never approach it. There was nothing to investigate. It was just a bubble into which ey had been placed. A bubble that moved along with em.
 
-\#Tracker looked up, frowned.
+The act of walking away from the school, wearing a backpack and heading towards home, was a dredge pulling up the silt of memories. School across the Atlantic in the '90s. Plays and productions ey still had memorized. Sasha. Dandelions in summer.
 
-Ioan\#c1494bf shook eir head and apologized. Perhaps ey *should* take Dear up on the offer to stay with it and its partner.
+Even now, pacing the street as a fox, not much had changed. Ey had carried eir tablet and few books to and from school in a pack not dissimilar than the one ey was wearing. Even the skirt was not far off from a thrift-store find ey might have worn at the time.
+
+Ey prowled through memories of Sasha, of dating, of becoming better friends than partners. Ey thought back to her staying the night, back to their shared anxiety, back to the movies, back to eir mom checking in on them at one in the morning just to make sure everything was okay (and, bless, to make sure clothes had stayed on).
+
+Ey missed Sasha most of all, now. Together, the two of them would've been able to keep spirits up. Sasha would've been able to figure out the problem with Cicero's voting record faster then ey had, and ey would've been less alone, would've felt less hopeless.
+
+AwDae trudged on toward home, reaching a paw up to pluck a handful of leaves from one of the trees as ey passed, feeling the reluctant snap as they pulled loose from the branch. For all the sim's complexity, school in spring was pretty far remote from London in the winter.
+
+School. America. Hopelessness. Stasis.
+
+*"You seem kind of frozen, kind of stuck, in a few ways."*