Epigraph

content/read/031.md

@@ -1,77 +1,133 @@
-# RJ Brewster -- 2112
+# Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 
-No menu.
+Dear wasn't kidding about the smells. Ioan turned eir sensorium's sensitivity way up. Ey wondered if Dear's vulpine nose could smell things eirs could not.
 
-No menu and no HUD.
+Serene had worked wonders here. The smells, the textures, the raw beauty of the place, all well crafted. It was a fine line that she had walked, too. Too far in one direction and the landscape would have become nearly desolate, more foreboding than natural. Any further in the other, and it would've been softened too much, would've become too well-tended. Cartoonish.
 
-Without eir HUD, there was no way that AwDae would be able to teleport. Ey would need to swipe up a destination entry and tap or speak the command for sending emself off. Hell, even if ey *was* able to get at the menu, ey wouldn't have the coordinates for any of the particular places ey had come up with to visit. 
+As the two crunched their way through the short, stiff stalks of grass, winding their way around the larger tussocks, Ioan realized that ey was quite taken with the place.
 
-If locations within a dream even had coordinates, that was. Of all eir explorations, ey had begun to doubt that this was a sim. No sim, no coordinates. No coordinates, no teleport.
+A ridiculous house in the middle of nowhere, a glittering white fox and its partner, the prairie fading off into downs on one side and stretching out to infinity on the other. It had all seemed so contrived when ey had first visited. Too simple. Too one dimensional. Kind of tacky.
 
-Ey would have to walk and just hope that it would not be tiring. No calories burned when taking simulated steps in a simulated environment. All the same, the prospect felt exhausting.
+But it was all just *so well done*. So incredibly, skillfully executed. The artistry was in the details, and the details were fractal, continuing down through ever finer layers. The landscape's perfection was echoed in Dear's unique sensibilities and its comfortable relationship.
 
-Eir first location on the list had been the university, that sprawling campus where ey had studied (and, later, pioneered) the integration tech ey used daily at work. It seemed meaningful enough: that place most closely associated with the beginnings of eir susceptibility.
+Ioan liked it here.
 
-Without teleport, however, that was out of the question. It was halfway across the continent.
+Ey was dawdling, past the comfortable stage of just enjoying the petrichor being washed in before the storm.
 
-Something more manageable, then.
+"Sorry, lost in thought."
 
-The clinic where ey has had eir implants installed was halfway across town. It would take an hour or two to traverse, ey supposed. A guess. Ey had never walked it before.
+*"It is alright,"* Dear said. *"You looked like you needed it."*
 
-Ey had time, though, it seemed. All the time in the world.
+"Hmm? Getting lost in thought? Or getting out of the apartment?"
 
-With little else to do, ey once again slept early and woke early in turn. If it was to take a good chunk of the day, at least ey could do so while it was light out.
+Dear shrugged and smiled.
 
-Shouldering the appropriated pack, ey set out from home as soon as it was bright enough to do so. A short walk down to the school, then further down the hill toward Broadway, which would get em most of the way there. After that, two blocks east, and ey would find emself at the squat, white building of the clinic. 
+"Sorry all the same. I'm here now. Will try not to do that again." Ioan grinned sheepishly. "What did you find out? You seemed almost punchy."
 
-From there, it would be easy. There had been about a dozen appointments in the building, so ey knew it well enough that it would likely be in reasonable shape. Assuming the doors were unlocked, at least.
+*"I was, definitely. Still am."* The fox grinned. *"We seem to have found out who our...ah, who our target is."*
 
-The first skip happened halfway down the hill from the school.
+Ioan mulled over the word 'target', searching for a better one. Ey couldn't think of any, so ey nodded. "What do we know?"
 
-AwDae reached the corner of the fence surrounding the track and football practice field, remembered eir brief jogging phase, and how ey always turned north through the neighborhoods before reaching Broadway, which was always so noisy. And then, without warning, ey was gliding down the street in a sitting position.
+*"We know a name, and from there we can find a bit of history, which you may be able to help in filling in."*
 
-Ey yelped, startled, and flailed eir arms out for support, left elbow catching painfully on something solid a foot to the side of em.
+"Names are good. Something other than Qoheleth?"
 
-The skip took perhaps a second all told. A second of blurred darkness, of shadow and motion. A second of panic and confusion before the rest of the car formed around em. Ey was sitting in the passenger seat of the family sedan, coasting down the road toward Broadway at what ey supposed must be the speed limit.
+*"Other than that, yes, but almost certainly connected, probably the same person. I think they're the same, at least. Not much more than the name, though. No location, no sightings in ages. Some aging --- or agéd --- resources. A name and some history."*
 
-The car, like the books in eir room, took a while to swim into focus. Even then, parts of it shifted indecisively, unable to come to rest in some solid, known state. Ey had only tried to drive it once before giving up on the prospect, so the dashboard in front of the steering wheel was particularly vague. Hints of dials. Gestures at needles. Smudges of marks on the levers on the steering column. The back of the car lurched in and out of focus sickeningly.
+Ioan gave an impatient gesture with eir hand. "Well, what's the hold-up?"
 
-Ey realized ey was holding eir breath and let it out in a shaky whine.
+Dear's grin widened. *"The hold-up is that I want you to feel some of the excitement that I felt on hearing this from down-tree. I want you excited and invested."*
 
-The car continued down the street toward Broadway. Turned smoothly without stopping at the light. Accelerated seamlessly, without haste, without care for its occupant's stress. The soft hum of the motor and the road noise beneath the wheels was as indistinct as all of the visuals. Indistinct and disconcerting.
+"I've been working twenty hour days on this, I'm pretty fucking invested."
 
-After a few short blocks, AwDae had a hypothesis. Of course the sim --- correction: eir memories --- did not include walking along Broadway. Ey had never done so, had only driven. Or been driven, as ey had never gotten a license emself. All eir memories could dredge up were those of the car, of moving smoothly along the road.
+The grin turned into a laugh. *"I know you have. My partner is worried about you."*
 
-No teleportation, then. Just fast-travel.
+Ioan felt heat rise to eir cheeks. "Sorry, I didn't mean to be a bother being up so much."
 
-Eir one experience with hallucinogens had prepared them for the blurring, smearing effect of the world around em. The fog did not diminish, but it played tricks with the buildings lining the road to either side. There was the house with the psychic's sign out front, relatively clear. But the rest of the buildings were shifting, unsettled. When focusing on them, AwDae saw them as flat facades. No depth. Textures on a low-poly wireframe. It was a nightmare of that hidden time of intrasaccadic perception, that moment of suppressed visual input when one shifts one's gaze. That moment laid bare, elongated.
+*"No, no. We cannot hear you or anything. They are just worried because we do not hear you, or hear from you. We both like you."*
 
-Ey moaned and closed eir eyes. The sights were wrong. The sound was wrong. Even the feeling of acceleration and deceleration, the swing around turns, was off, as though the entire universe was poorly rendered and em right along with it.
+The historian nodded, chastened.
 
-It *was* poorly rendered. Eir stomach turned at the wrongness of it all.
+*"Do not worry about it, Ioan. It really is fine."* Dear patted eir shoulder. *"The name, though. The name is the important thing right now."*
 
-The next skip hit as a memory of walking through the parking lot of the supermarket at Broadway and Timberline asserted dominance over the memory of driving along the thoroughfare. So suddenly was ey on eir feet and walking parallel to Broadway, so surprising the shift, that ey stumbled and fell to eir hands and knees.
+"And the name is?" Ioan's mind raced. Could Dear even say the name? Was it the poet, miraculously talking through years to the system? That would be exciting.
 
-AwDae retched. Nothing came up. Not even the sting of bile.
+*"Life Breeds Life, But Death Must Now Be Chosen, of the Ode clade."*
 
-Ey lost track of time, sitting in the empty parking lot. Half an hour? An hour? Trying to master the urge to return home and disappear beneath the covers. Anything to avoid that horrible, half-remembered drive.
+Ioan froze.
 
-And yet, ey had to do *something*. If there was even a chance of em being able to get out of this dream, this non-place, ey would have to keep moving. Keep moving and hunting and looking and thinking.
+Dear stopped a few paces ahead and turned, looking intently at em while its tail lashed excitedly behind it.
 
-With a groan, ey stood and walked toward the road once more.
+"They...what?"
 
-The skip came as expected, and ey gritted eir teeth as the world whirled past. Perhaps ey would be able to make it to the east coast, but if that meant eight hours of this --- home to the airport, the plane, a different airport, transit to the dorms --- well...hopefully there was a work-around.
+*"Good."* Dear laughed. *"I am glad that I am not the only one who had to pick their jaw up off the ground."*
 
-The rest of the journey to the clinic passed without further skipping. There were a few shaky moments passing through the pedestrian mall, where ey'd spent countless hours walking, but apparently ey had spent enough time traveling along the road along whatever metric required. Eir 'car' continued down the empty street, blithely changing lanes to pass vehicles that weren't there, turn signal and steering wheel moving on their own.
+Ioan stuffed eir hands in eir pockets. Brought them back out to press against eir forehead. Crossed eir arms. Returned eir hands to eir pockets. Suddenly anxious. "I thought you said that Qoheleth couldn't be from within the clade."
 
-And then it parked.
+*"And so I believed. For him to share the Name is...a breach. Apostasy of a sort that I thought precluded the very prospect."*
 
-The low-slung building of the clinic was just as AwDae remembered it.
+Ioan did not push further, instead relishing the surprise. "It's a real the-call's-coming-from-inside-the-house moment."
 
-The idiom got a laugh out of the fox. Perhaps that was literally true. It could be no other way than how ey remembered it. The building was as it must be.
+Dear tilted its head, ears perked.
 
-Preempting another skip, ey scrambled to open the door of the car and hop out on eir own before it was done for em. With a satisfying thunk, the passenger door of the dusty blue sedan swung shut behind em.
+"Never mind. Old trivia." Ioan shook eir head and rocked back on eir heels. "How, though? How'd you get the name?"
 
-*Promising,* ey thought. *Perhaps I just have to be more deliberate about it. I'll get in the car later, follow the drive back home, and maybe it'll park in the driveway as easy as that.*
+*"A hunch I had, actually, though someone else dug it up."*
 
-Eir claws clacked against the pavement leading to the smoky glass doors. It wasn't overly warm out, but the cool air that breathed out of the clinic was refreshing nevertheless. Something static. Something still. Something known.
+"What was the hunch?"
+
+*"'Signifier.'"*
+
+Ioan rifled through eir mental notes on the project. "Signifier...from the first encrypted note? Signifier is the password something something?"
+
+Dear nodded. *"Hardly anyone uses it anymore, but signifier used to be what we called the names of long-lived branches. It's still used here and there among older clades."*
+
+"Right, yeah. Ioan Bălan is my name, Ioan\#c1494bf is my signifier."
+
+*"Yes. It fell out of use quickly. Too clumsy a word. I use it now and then, when I can get away with it."*
+
+"Makes sense, yeah. So they're..."
+
+*"They are an Odist, yes. Way, way down-tree. One of the first instances."* Dear's smile faltered, *"We were not very good at record keeping back then. We are not really now, to be honest, but the system is better. We...we did not know that he was still alive."*
+
+"Didn't know? I thought you all talked to each other. You must, in order to keep the names straight. Wait, 'he'?"
+
+*"Remember, all of our names are chosen from our stanza. I talk with the other nine within my stanza every now and then --- some more than others --- and we filled out the stanza not long ago."* The fox's expression grew glassy. *"Life Breeds Life...that is the second stanza, first line. They are a conservative bunch. I only know one or two, but I assume that others are out there. And yes, 'he'. Michelle was a woman, but those early days were heady."*
+
+Ioan nodded, "So the first stanza were the first forked, meaning he was the eleventh fork?"
+
+*"The first line from each stanza were the first forked, back when it cost to fork. Like, cost real reputation. Anyway, the first fork of the second stanza --- second fork overall --- must have just been a little more conservative than the rest of us. Or liberal. It is difficult to discern."*
+
+"I...hmm. May I ask something potentially personal?"
+
+Dear nodded.
+
+"The Odists that don't want me digging into this too much, the ones you didn't really talk to, are they from that side of the clade?"
+
+The fox's ears perked, *"To the last, yes. Why?"*
+
+"How will, er..."
+
+*"Life Breeds Life, But Death Must Now Be Chosen. Just Life is fine, too."*
+
+"How will Life react to the search? To me?"
+
+Dear shrugged and turned its back on Ioan.
+
+The historian stood, quiet and still, and watched as the fox took a few steps deeper into the prairie, crossed its arms and stood straight, staring up into the bruised sky. *"To the second bit, I do not know that it matters. They --- Life, or Qoheleth, or whatever --- are one of us. And even those of us who did not want any outsiders brought on board are only frowning, looking down their noses at the thought, not gathering up arms."*
+
+"And to the first bit?" Ioan pressed. "What do you think he will think of the search?"
+
+*"What do I think? Or what do I feel?"*
+
+Ioan scuffed eir foot against the grass. The temperature was dropping out on the prairie. It would be an inconvenience to have to slosh back to the house if it rained.
+
+"Both."
+
+*"I think that he would probably get a kick out of it. I know that am. Several of the others are, and the ones who are not just do not care that much or are perhaps more angry than curious."* Dear turned back around. Its arms were held tight against it's front, guarding. Whether from cold or emotion, Ioan couldn't tell. *"As for what I feel, I feel that it is his game. He is the one running it. But even if it is a game, it is not play. There is no real fun in it, just...snark. Anger. Pride, maybe. It is a game he has worked at perfecting, and he wants us to see that."*
+
+Ioan marveled at the change in Dear, though with this raise in stakes, ey felt some of the same.
+
+The fox's smile was weak as it added, *"He has designs. Designs and reasons."*
+
+Ioan and Dear trudged back to the low block of concrete, a bunker against the storm, as a chill wind swept away the petrichor and brought with it the rain.