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-# Michelle Hadje/Sasha --- 2124
+# Codrin Bălan#Castor --- 2325
 
-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.
+The first interview of note that Codrin Bălan conducted was with an author who had chosen to invest completely in the launches, leaving no one behind. 
 
-"Shit, you okay, Michelle?"
+At first, Codrin wondered why it was that this author had chosen to be a part of the interview process, why it was that Dear had recommended him. He seemed, on the surface to be entirely uninteresting. He was an author. That was that.
 
-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."
+His name was Martin Rankin, and while Codrin had not read any of his works prior to the suggestion, ey had certainly heard the name in the various literary circles that ey trawled on occasion. A man prone to grand literary gestures, one who leaned heavily on the twisting of endless sentences, ceaseless streams of fragments, prose that bordered on florid even by Codrin’s relatively flowery standards. Ey knew that ey was prone to many of the same pitfalls, but this man took it to an extreme that they found unreasonable.
 
-"I was free." Debarre leaned forward and helped brush some grass off of her side. "Is now not a good time?"
+Codrin, to prepare for the interview, had read two of Rankin's books. They were not without their merit, as might any such book be that garnered so much attention, but they still took plenty of work to get through. He wrote most often about contemporary life within the System in all its deliriously boring intricacies.
 
-"No, no. Now is fine. Thank you for meeting up in the first place."
+That said, much of his work was bound up in a sense of magical realism that was, ey had to admit, enticing. This was something that Codrin had never managed to capture emself, and so ey set aside some time to study the ways in which Rankin used surrealism to enhance the story at hand without distracting.
 
-"Of course."
+Martin Rankin was exactly as ey had expected. There was nothing about him that did not shout Martin Rankin. He wore his identity on his face, on his chest, in the way his hands moved across the table as they talked, there at the cafe, there sitting out on the street, there sipping their coffees.
 
-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.
+"So, you are the illustrious Codrin Bălan." His voice was imperious, veering dangerously close to pompous, looking over the rim of the demitasse appraisingly at em as he sipped espresso.
 
-She'd always intended to build herself a house, but the field always felt so complete without it.
+Something about the man grated. Ey wasn't quite sure what it was at first, whether it was the self-assured way he spoke, or the self-aggrandizing expression he wore on his face. It was nigh intolerable.
 
-"True Name mentioned that you wanted to talk."
+All the same, ey tried eir best to keep up eir smile as ey spoke. "And you're Martin Rankin. It's a pleasure to finally get the chance to meet you in the flesh. Thank y--"
 
-"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."
+"What a curious choice of phrase, in the flesh." His tone was droll, bored. "Have you stopped to think of all of the little idioms we bring with us from 'phys-side'? Even that term! Phys-side. It spells out very plainly that we do not exist in that form any longer. We exist in *opposition* to it. 'Sys-side' contains no such sense of our abstract existence."
 
-"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."
+Ey nodded, smiling ingratiatingly. The man was clearly used to having the chance to expound on his own ideas, and anything that anyone else had to say was of secondary importance --- if it was important at all. Ey decided to lean into that. "What a beautiful way to put that. Do you think that the same applies to the dichotomy between L<sub>5</sub> System and launch?"
 
-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."
+The simpering tone appeared to appeal to Rankin's sensibilities, as he smiled down to Codrin with all the patronizing disdain of *bless your heart.* "I do believe so. What can we say but 'launch-side' and 'sys-side'? Do those truly say anything about our existence here? We are hurtling out into space at some terrifying speed, driven by the momentum imparted by the spin of the station and the deliciously thin membranes of those solar sails. Ah! What a journey on which we have decided to embark! We lucky few. Those back on the System know nothing of our experiences out here, even if they have also decided to join. There is no way to accurately transmit that experience through text alone."
 
-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.
+Hiding a grimace behind a sip of eir own espresso, Codrin jotted down the author's words. The first thing that Rankin had done upon meeting up with em had been to make a similarly patronizing comment about the anachronistic nature of pen and paper. Ey had supposed at first that ey'd met a fellow admirer of fine pens, fine paper, and the joy of beautiful inks.
 
-"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."
+*Alas.*
 
-"To use Aw-- to use eir poem for the names?"
+"I've heard from my partner that--"
 
-She canted her ears back. "I miss em. I have been thinking about em for years."
+"Ah, yes! The illustrious Dear! How is he?"
 
-"A decade."
+"It. It's doing quite well."
 
-The skunk nodded.
+"Right, right. *It* always did have such a strange way of moving through the world."
 
-"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."
+"If we could--" Ey cut emself off and recomposed eir plastic smile. "I've heard that you are working on a project that capitalizes on this. Can you expand on that?"
 
-"The bar?"
+"Of course! Of course. I will always help a fellow writer." He set his cup aside and made a grand sweep of his arm. "You look around you, and you see so many going about their lives as they might have otherwise. Even I am guilty of the dalliance of getting up, drinking coffee, perhaps sitting and reading a while. We lucky few--" Codrin knew that some two and a half billion personalities were on the launches, but ey declined to comment. "--can draw so much inspiration from a project on so grand a scale. My project is one that utilizes the base nature of a personality embedded in a System that cares not for consistency between its two constituent parts.
 
-"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--"
+"Before I disappeared from the L<sub>5</sub> System, I wrote an outline for a new book describing the universal feelings of exploration that are bound up in this endeavor, and now I am working writing the book which follows that outline. My counterpart on the Pollux launch is doing the same --- he had better be! --- and we are sending the results of our labors back to the System to an editor who is a most trusted companion, and he is compiling them into a single book which will serve to showcase the similarities and differences that one mind can hold when it has lost a unifying sense of self!"
 
-"AwDae's?" she asked, tilting her head.
+Codrin wrote quickly, not just to keep up, but also to keep eir eyes on the page and away from the by now nearly dancelike gestures that Rankin was using. Ey wondered just how much of it was a conscious decision to be witnessed (and thus perhaps a deeply ingrained need to be seen and not forgotten), and how much of it was some innate characteristic of this certain, special type of asshole.
 
-Debarre flinched back from her, stopping mid-step.
+"Does that make sense, my dear Codrin?"
 
-"Debarre?"
+"Oh, yes. Yes it does, Mr. Rankin."
 
-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?"
+He sat back in his seat with a self-satisfied smirk. "I think that you'll like the end product. I've read some of your own works, by the way. You pick some quite interesting projects about our post-human life, though I must admit that your style is quite dry."
 
-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."
+"Such is the life of a historian, I suppose."
 
-"It was kind of 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."
+Rankin laughed. "Of course, of course, I forget myself. You'll have to send me your notes for this current project, and I'll see if I can pull them together into something coherent and readable."
 
-"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, but I have no plans to deck you if you say eir name when it is just the two of us."
+Ey bit eir tongue and nodded. "Of course, I'll see about doing so when I'm done. Back to your work, however; do you have any predictions on how the works will differ?"
 
-"I appreciate that. Why'd True Name seem to think otherwise, though?"
+"The *work*, Codrin. It's a very singular work. Both me and my counterpart are writing the exact same work, and the only difference is the circumstances." He waved off any reply before continuing. "Though imagine that our two takes began quite similar, and then started to diverge further as time continues, such as a fork might diverge from its down-tree instance. How interesting! A work that, in some core mechanism, follows the exact same path as our daily existence."
 
-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 the same for only the briefest of seconds, but we have long since diverged."
+"And you have an editor who is merging these two threads? Are they planning on doing something special with the presentation of it?"
 
-"That far, though? It's only been a week or two, right?"
+"Yes. Yes! Of course, what is a book but an experience? A book should be delightfully difficult to read, if it is to be enjoyed to the fullest. You are engaging with a topic, you must --- *must* --- put in the same amount of effort that the author has! We have plans to arrange the two texts side-by-side, locked together at the points specified in the outline, as well as any similarities that the texts share. Imagine, I, Rankin#Castor, writing, "And so, in my heart of hearts, I knew the truth among the stars" while Rankin#Pollux writes, "And so, in my heart of hearts, I know the truth among the wheeling of the stars." From there, we can have the texts line up on the page, and perhaps even highlight the similarities. My editor promises that he won't send me any of the result until it's complete and ready for manuscript sign off, lest #Pollux's writing influence my own."
 
-"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."
+Once ey had finished jotting in eir shorthand, Codrin asked, "Do you have any idea on how the work will be received?"
 
-Debarre nodded. "They seem like they're doing fine."
+"Ah yes, the problem of reception." Rankin smiled sourly. "Our works have inherent worth, and yet we must, at some point, rely on readers for their validation. I hope that it will be received quite well, though I know that it will go over the heads of many. Such can't be helped, though, for even in this world of leisure and ease, many still claim that they don't have time to read. Time! We have all the time in the universe, if we try hard enough, and yet here we are, spinning our wheels on whether or not there's time enough to read a book! What rubbish."
 
-"They are not taking over the council, then?"
+"Do you often fork to read books?"
 
-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."
+Rankin frowned, at which Codrin took secret pleasure. "No. There are some aspects of life which must be experienced singularly and without the dreary experience of reclaiming memories from a dying mind."
 
-Sasha nodded. 
+"Dying?"
 
-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.
+"What is the act of quitting but that of death?"
 
-Skunk and weasel both sat down in the grass, laughing at having apparently come to the same decision independent of each other.
+Codrin withheld eir thoughts on the matter, asking instead, "Perhaps there's a story there, too. Read a book, quit, and then write about the experience of having only the memory of reading that book. It seems to fall in line with the scope of your current project."
 
-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'."
+Rankin's expression grew colder. "An interesting problem for you to tackle, my dear Codrin. I look forward to your monograph on the subject."
 
-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."
+That secret pleasure grew warmer. Ey suspected that Rankin would have enjoyed such a project, had the idea come from within, rather than from someone else. "I'll have to give it a go, sometime, though I suspect my dry writing will fall short of yours."
 
-During the pause that followed, she began weaving those flowers into a chain.
+A little bit of sucking up warmed him again, and Codrin once again marveled at what an art conducting interviews was.
 
-"Are you?"
+"Writing is something that comes from much practice. I can do little but encourage you to practice, practice, and practice some more." He laughed, jabbing a finger at em. "After all, we have all the time in the world, do we not?"
 
-"Am I what?"
+Ey gave a hint of a bow, a moment of silence to show eir appreciation, and then continued. "Do you have any projects planned after this book? Perhaps something to work on alongside it?"
 
-"Suffering."
+"Of course! It's important not to fall into the trap of working on a single project, otherwise you'll feel obliged to refine and refine and refine! Keep it varied. I'm also working on a novel exploring income inequalities within the System. Or Systems, perhaps. This will hopefully be released concurrent with my main work. This is being done by a separate fork, and we merge weekly on the project. It takes no small amount of focus to keep either one of us from getting sidetracked, but it's important that we continue our work at a good pace. We may have all the time in the world, but it's easy enough to be forgotten in our current market if we don't keep coming out with more and more works, eh?"
 
-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...without..."
+"There is that, yes. At least there's not a livelihood resting on it."
 
-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 hands again, the weasel took them in his own.
+"Oh but there is! I'm sure that if my words aren't read, that I'll disappear into nothingness!"
 
-*I can feel em,* she thought. *I can almost feel em, there in the sunlight, in the flowers.*
+*Ah,* Codrin thought. *There it is.* "Does this drive influence your writing?"
 
-"What keeps you from doing the same, yourself? You could fork when you're feeling excellent and leave behind whatever's causing the split."
+"Oh, here and there," Rankin said, waggling a hand. "Sometimes I'll cut corners to ensure that I'm always writing something, or I'll split off enough forks to work in shifts, ensuring that I'm always writing at all hours of the day, such as it is. One will work a shift, merge with the next to keep the momentum going, and go to bed."
 
-She didn't answer, just sat with her paws in her friend's, her head bowed, her tears leaving tracks in fur.
+"That must be a very productive experience."
 
-"Sasha?"
+"It is! It very much is. You should try it, my dear Codrin."
 
-She didn't answer.
+"I most certainly will," ey lied. Ey was no stranger to modified sleep schedules and just how unpleasant that could be. "Do you have any last words of wisdom that you'd like to impart for the eventual readers of this project?"
 
-"Do you regret coming here?"
+"I would tell them this: you are always dreaming, but you should always dream bigger. What but big dreams was it that led to these launches? What but big dreams was it that led to the System as a whole? Dream big! Dream your own dreams. Bring them to fruition, and bigger and brighter things will benefit us all."
 
-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.
+Codrin finished eir transcribing with a flourish and bowed to Rankin. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Rankin. Is there anything else?"
 
-"I'm sorry, Sasha."
+"Only to thank you for your time. Make sure you get me your notes, and I'll make sure that you and Dear each get a copy of the upcoming book once it's done. Do tell him hi for me."
 
-"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."
+"It, but yes, I will say hi."
 
-"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.
+"Right, right. Do tell *it* hi." Rankin quit before, Codrin suspected, he could roll his eyes.
 
-"Nothing keeps me from fixing myself," she murmured up to the clouds. "I do not know why I do not just do so."
+Ey bit eir tongue until ey was back home at the house on the prairie. Ey stomped out into the grass to eir very first cairn, set eir paper and pens down carefully in the grass, and shouted to the cloud-dotted sky. "What an enormous sack of shit, good Lord."
 
-"Can I be honest?"
+Then ey picked up eir supplies and walked back to the house.
 
-"Of course."
+Eir partners greeted em at the door, both looking winded and still laughing.
 
-"I worry it's survivor's guilt."
+"You heard, I take it?"
 
-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."
+*"Tell us how you really feel, my dear."*
 
-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.
+Codrin rolled eir eyes. "Not a fan. Let me set my shit down and get a glass of wine or something."
 
-"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."
+Dear gasped, paw to muzzle. *"A curse! Codrin! I am shocked."*
 
-"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."
+"I'll get the wine," its partner said, still laughing.
 
-"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."
+They gathered on the couch where Codrin could lounge against Dear with eir feet up in its partner's lap.
 
-"I guess not. I am still glad that you are around, though."
+*"So, how was it, really? Was he really that bad?"* Dear asked.
 
-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."
+"You didn't tell me that he was so...so..."
 
-She gave the comment the space that it deserved, closing her eyes to feel the sun warm her fur. *You and Michelle.* Now there was a thought.
+*"Pompous? That his head was so far up his ass that he could smell his breath?"*
 
-"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."
+Codrin laughed and poked the fox in the side. "Yeah, those things. I'm guessing you don't think too highly of him, either?"
+
+*"Not particularly, no,"* Dear said, brushing fingers through Codrin's hair. *"I was more wondering if a writer --- a writer in particular, I mean --- might have some ideas that you could glean for this project of ours."*
+
+"I suppose." Ey kept silent for a moment, simply enjoying the physical contact. "Though, come to think of it, his current project sounds interesting enough."
+
+"The dual text thing?" Dear's partner asked.
+
+"Yeah. Did he tell you about that?"
+
+"Mmhm. It sounds interesting, at least on the surface. We'll have to see how the execution works out, though. It could be stupendously boring."
+
+"I wouldn't be surprised."
+
+*"It is not a bad idea for a project such as he is wont to do,"* Dear murmured, sounding distant. *"I would not have turned down the opportunity to do such myself, if the types of projects that I do fit that framework."*
+
+"The thing is, I don't think it'll work for ours." Codrin shrugged against Dear's thigh. "I don't think spoiling Codrin#Pollux is something we really need to worry about, and I'm sure Ioan will keep sending us interesting stuff."
+
+"Probably best to not, actually," Dear's partner said.
+
+"Right. Come to think of it, even Rankin said that he started with an outline to keep the two instances organized. We could probably do with more organization between the three of us."
+
+*"Or the three of our groups, at least. Perhaps Pollux and Ioan taken together will provide us with a good idea of where we should be working next."*
+
+"Do you want to send Ioan a note to start coordinating?"
+
+*"I just did."*
+
+There was a sensorium ping, a view of the office where Ioan had begun work so many years ago.
+
+"I should've known."
+
+*"I am more predictable than you give me credit for, my dear."*
+
+After a moment's silence, ey grumbled, "He even kept calling you 'he'. Drove me nuts."
+
+Dear made a strange face, then threw its head back and cackled. *"He has honed his insensitivity into quite the art. What a delight! So, while he was being a pompous ass, did he actually have anything to add to the conversation besides that one idea?"*
+
+Codrin shook eir head.
+
+*"He always was a one-trick pony."*
+
+"He also kept talking about idioms that applied mostly to phys-side and how they stick around here, on that note. But still, being a one-trick pony is a worry I struggle with."
+
+*"That you struggle with it, that all of us mere mortals struggle with it, is what keeps us separate from them."*
+
+"'Them'?" Dear's partner laughed. "You make them sound way more organized than they really are."
+
+*"They do not need to be. They are all the same."*