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-# Douglas Hadje --- 2325
+# Codrin Bălan#Castor --- 2325
+
+It was difficult for Codrin Bălan to reengage with the project at hand after what seemed to be an ever-mounting pile of oddities.
+
+It was not simply that ey had been finding piece after piece of new-to-em information about those that ey loved --- though it was also that --- nor was it that eir entire clade seemed to be entangled far deeper into something going further back than expected --- though it was that as well --- but that, by virtue of the twin launches and the L<sub>5</sub> System remaining back around Earth, ey was limited to reading much of this over plain text. Text that had flowed over sheets of paper in a comfortable font, bound itself up in books, and begged to be pored over, stood itself before em and said, "Read me, understand me." It all added one layer of remove that, despite eir attraction to the written word and fine paper and comfortable fonts and nice books, left em feeling caught up in some dreamlike state of almost-understanding.
+
+As an example, there was this seemingly universal agreement among the Odists that no one of them should be the one to tell the entirety of the tale, and each for their own reasons. There seemed to be shame bound up in all of them, in some way, but beyond that, both instances of Dear had diverged to the point where the foxes were starting to come up with their own explanations for not providing that info to their respective Codrins Bălan.
+
+Why was it, for instance, that Codrin#Pollux had decided to simply interview Dear, where ey had not? And what was ey, Codrin#Castor, to do with the information that Dear had shared with eir cocladist? Hell, was cocladist even the right word, at this point? That seemed to imply a down-tree instance that one could still access.
+
+*I want to die,* the fox had said. How had Codrin#Pollux even begun to deal with that bit of information? When ey read those words, in eir comfortable font on eir fine paper in eir nice books, ey had cried. Ey had cried much as it sounded like Codrin#Pollux had.
+
+Ey had cried and closed the book and paced eir way out into the prairie outside the house, where ey had cried some more. Ey had not walked any new paths that day, simply walked to the outermost cairn that ey could find, sat down next to it, and watered the thirsty grass with a grief ey could not name.
+
+And that ey could not name it only added to that unnerving sense of remove. It wasn't just sadness or grief. It wasn't the type of feeling that one might experience at the actual loss of a loved one. It wasn't the type of feeling that one experienced on learning that a loved one bore within its heart thoughts of suicide. Neither of those were true. Ey knew that, had ey been the one to conduct the interview, ey would have had much the same reaction as the other Codrin had (ey suspected, for all ey had was the transcript, incomplete as it was). But instead, ey had a cottony shield of time and distance that meant that ey could process it at eir own pace. Ey could go sit out in the prairie and cry and then come to an understanding of Dear's desire that ey couldn't have any hope of doing, were the fox sitting before em.
+
+With this distance, both from the interview and from Dear itself, ey could remember its words: *"I just think we need death, or something like it, as part of the System. Death. Fear of death. Needs and reasons to survive in the face of an inevitable end. We need a way for an individual to end. We need a way to release those memories."* Ey could remember those words and understand the sudden too-full feeling of discomfort that had come with them. Immortality came with its own costs, and it was not simply that one might grow bored, but that one might go mad.
+
+But ey hadn't interviewed Dear, had ey? Codrin#Pollux had. Codrin#Pollux had that trauma in a way that ey did not.
+
+And Ioan! The wondrous hints that eir down-tree fork had been receiving! That their dream worlds worked in far subtler ways than imagined. That May Then My Name had told em, "I am worried that you will be unhappy with me."
+
+So much bound up in that statement. By virtue of having lived with Dear and its partner for more than two decades, by having fallen into a steadily less-eccentric orbit around the fox, accepted mounting feelings of love, and having found emself in a relationship with an Odist, ey could read perhaps more clearly than Ioan the signs that ey was well on the path to doing the same. The Odists loved hard and they loved deep and they loved fast, and it was hard not to become intoxicated beneath all that love. *She seems to have wormed her way into my life and made herself comfortable, all while making it feel like it was my idea,* Ioan had written in a clade-eyes-only message. *She says that it's her role to feel, though, and I believe her in this.*
+
+Ah, but Ioan, it is much more complex than that. With an Odist, it is always much more complex.
+
+And that, of course, was not even the main implication of the message. "I am worried that you will be unhappy", even without the "with me" at the end suggested more of that guilt, shame, or distaste for the past that ey had picked up from Dear. From *both* Dears.
+
+Eir Dear: *I am...ashamed. Many of the first lines...well, no. I will not elaborate now.*
+
+The Dear on Pollux: *You could interview any one of us about the entirety of our story, even me, and we would tell you, but we would also resent you for that.*
+
+Eir Dear had said, *"You will doubtless tease it out of me, bit by bit, you tenacious fuck."* But given what both May Then My Name and Dear#Pollux had said, ey no longer wished to try.
+
+And so here ey was, sitting in a dark field, looking up at the stars. Very dark. Well and truly dark, beyond almost anything Ioan had experienced phys-side, or even after uploading. There was a purity to that blackness, just as there was a purity to the red-filtered flashlight that Tycho Brahe (not his real name, but he had requested the pseudonym) used to guide them both to the top of a --- yes, pure --- grassy hill.
+
+"I come out here on nights when I am depressed," the old astronomer had grumbled. "And that has been most nights, of late."
+
+"It's a beautiful place."
+
+"Isn't it? It reminds me of a trip to the west coast that I took long, long before I uploaded. This grassy hill in the middle of a wide ring of firs. You can't see it, but the grass is not actually grass, but a sort of moss. When it's freshly dried out after a rain, it's delightfully soft, isn't it?"
+
+Codrin nodded, then, realizing that ey could barely see Brahe next to em, murmured, "Almost cushy."
+
+They sat on that hill in silence, leaning back on their hands and watching the stars overhead.
+
+It had taken a few moments for Ioan to get eir bearings when they had first started watching. The stars overhead were stationary, but in a way that ey was not used to. There was the barest hint at a bare hint of movement, a dream of parallax, and the constellations didn't feel right. One star, brighter than the rest, was visible low over the horizon. There was no moon. It was quite unnerving in some indescribable way.
+
+"What is this?"
+
+"It is a view from outside the LV."
+
+Ioan frowned up at the sky. "I didn't think that pictures could make it into the System. Systems."
+
+Brahe sighed quietly. "They can't. This is just a projection. A description based on what I know the stars to look like combined with information based on where they are relative to the fisheye lens on the side of the Dreamer Module."
+
+"And so you project that combination into a sim?"
+
+"Yes. It's here for anyone to see, but I have been too tired to tell many people." A long pause, and then, "Yes, too tired."
+
+There was a quiet lie in that admission, but Codrin let it slip by. "Can you tell me some more about what I'm seeing?"
+
+"Of course, Mx. Bălan," Brahe said, audibly brightening.
+
+He pointed first to the brightest star, low on the horizon. "There, see? That is the sun. The launch arms let us go at such a point that we are traveling along the ecliptic in order to use some of the existing orbital velocity we were already on. We have a disadvantage from Pollux, as we were released counter to that orbit."
+
+He pointed at another star, one that almost seemed to be creeping slowly across the field of view, the source of that parallax sliding. "That is Jupiter, there. You can see it moving only by virtue of the fact that we used it as a slingshot several days into the journey. We are millions of kilometers away from it by now, but it's still one of the things that we are closest to. That's how you know that we're on Castor. Pollux will be using Saturn as a slingshot planet, a fortuitous trade-off given the orbital advantage I mentioned. There was a touch of maneuvering after launch to get the trajectories to work out."
+
+He pointed over to the fir trees opposite where the star that was the sun shone. "Beyond those trees --- really, the reason that they exist --- is the solar sail, which blocks the lens. It was only recently deployed, you know. We could have deployed it on our way to Jupiter, but, as you know, we have all the time in the world, and there was no sense in risking it during the gravity assist."
+
+He pointed at something else, and it took Codrin a moment to discern in the dark that he was pointing at himself. "And here I am, some nobody, some shithead who loved everything about this idea, but who can only view it in a very approximate way, like this."
+
+"You don't seem particularly happy about your situation."
+
+Brahe's laugh was bitter. "Of course I'm not happy. I mean...I *am* happy, but that happiness is tempered by the whims of reality more than I had expected."
+
+"What would your dream experience be?" Codrin asked, enjoying a secret smile at the phrase couched within the ultimate dream experience that was the System.
+
+"To see it all," he said, and ey noticed that the bitter edge was slowly leaving his voice. "I have all the perisystem processing that I can ask for to give me a simulacrum like this. You must know that this naked-eye astronomy is all but useless in the grand scheme of things, other than to give us a sense of where we came from and where we might be going in a way that allows us to tell ourselves a coherent story. The rest of astronomy is all math."
+
+"I suppose that's why this place feels so much more romantic to me," Codrin mused. "I'm a storyteller, not an astronomer. Still, I imagine that that need for stories runs deep, and I can see the allure to possibly being able to actually look out a window at stars whizzing by."
+
+"Yes." Brahe sighed, then lay down on his back, with his arms crossed behind his head. "Yes, to see it all."
+
+There were a few minutes of silence as astronomer and historian looked out into the night sky, there in the simulated pacific northwest, there on the simulated moss surrounded by the simulated trees while simulated stars shone still above them.
+
+*They don't twinkle,* Codrin thought to emself. *That's what it is. They don't twinkle, and the last time I saw them was from Earth, and all those who uploaded and made sims with star-filled nights, never left that aspect out.*
+
+Ey mentioned this to Brahe, who laughed good-naturedly. "Of course. You're right. If they twinkled, it might feel more natural, but there is no reason for it, here. This place is a dream. My dream. The stars are there, and they don't twinkle."
+
+"You said this view is constructed with data from the Dreamer Module," Codrin said, gently directing the conversation to topics that might please the astronomer more.
+
+"Yeah. The module is mostly a big disk on the ass-end of each of the LVs. Most of that is various instruments that feed data to me and other astronomers here, as well as back to the core System and scientists on Earth. This particular lens is on a long strut that points out from that disk in such a way as to let as little of the solar sail obstruct its views as possible. There are other telescopes with much narrower fields of view in there. It can introduce a bit of vertigo, but would you like to see?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Alright, close your eyes."
+
+Ey did so, and when Brahe instructed em to open them again, the sudden change in the sky was, indeed, a little dizzy-making. The entire field of stars had changed, and where there had been warped but familiar constellations, there was now a deeper blackness, brighter stars, and far more of them. Far, far more. "What is this?"
+
+"A different view. A more powerful telescope looking at a patch of sky that we've never had a chance to see from this angle. One compounded from hours of exposure. I have no idea how exact it is, though, as it's all interpreted through the perisystem infrastructure, but it's still doing a slow sweep of the sky at a high enough magnification that the star field is completely different from what we're used to."
+
+"I wouldn't have thought that that would've had such an impact on me," ey murmured. "I felt like I was falling for a moment."
+
+Brahe sighed. "I did, too, the first time, and even now I'm not sure why. I think it's the mix of contexts. Here we are, looking out to space from the westernmost edge of the Western Fed, and yet all of the stars are different. They progress in such strange ways as the telescope searches on its automatic pattern."
+
+"It's uncanny."
+
+"A good word, yeah. It's like looking out on an alien sky, but even that misses the strangeness of so many stars. An alien sky, but as seen from the context of Earth. Firs, moss, a light breeze, dampness soaking into your trousers, and an alien sky. Did you have the chance to visit the L<sub>5</sub> station before you uploaded?"
+
+"Goodness, no." Ey laughed. "We were too poor for that."
+
+Brahe laughed along with em. "As was I. I do wonder, though, if I would have felt the same way I do now if I'd just had the chance to see the stars in such a new context before doing so here."
+
+Codrin nodded, and a few more minutes of silence enveloped them as they took in that alien sky. 
+
+"You asked about the Dreamer Module, though." Brahe's voice had regained some of its strength. "And you're the one who works with stories. I'm sure you had your own questions, but there's a story there, that you might find interesting."
+
+"Of course. I'd love to hear."
+
+"I worked with a team of scientists, a few of whom were station-side and the rest of whom were planet-side. All lovely folks, of course. They tried to come up with some pithy acronym for the module, but some bit of news called them 'hopeless dreamers', and the name stuck from there.
+
+"We basically nailed down the instrumentation that would go into the module, then built up its structure from there. Only some of it is telescopes, you understand. There are also various packages for measuring the cosmic microwave background radiation, ones for measuring ambient temperature variations, all the normal stuff. There's also a secondary generator in there, I suppose to ensure that neither the module nor the station impact each other.
+
+"Anyhow, that's not the story part. The story part is that we got halfway done with the planning of the module and were just starting to spin up all the work to build the components, and we suddenly ran into a bunch of pushback. A lot of it was the usual grumbling about costs, even though most of it was to be manufactured at the station. Some of it was tied in with the voices that wanted to keep the launch from happening in the first place. If ever there was such a thing as an anti-dreamer, it was them. They felt that to make a dream a reality was somehow wrong. I never understood their arguments.
+
+"The last bit of friction, and the most interesting bit, I suppose, came from sys-side. Their arguments were plainly insincere, though I never could figure out their true concerns. They said that the added complexity to the LVs put the integrity of the Systems within at risk beyond some imagined tolerance. It didn't bear up to even the slightest scrutiny, but they seemed to have loud voices."
+
+Codrin frowned. "Most everyone I talked to was as ambivalent about the launch as they were about most phys-side projects, though I fully acknowledge that we run in different circles. There was an initial flush of excitement as it was announced, and most everyone I've talked to here said they'd made up their minds to go along on the launches even then, two decades back. It calmed down after as many forgot, but then ramped up before launch."
+
+"Yeah, I felt much of the same in my circle, though you must understand that we were working on the launches for all of those two decades, so our excitement was bound to how well the project was going. We were spending so much time talking with phys-side, hearing all their gossip about the sentiment out there, and both sides were surprised when we started to have serious conversations about the sentiment sys-side when those arguments started to get louder.
+
+"At first, it was just the occasional opinion column in the feeds, but the actual news started to pick up on it soon after, and then there were a few debates. I don't think it ever got to the point where the module was at risk, but people are still talking about whether it was a good idea, I hear."
+
+"And you said you don't know what their real arguments are?"
+
+"Correct."
+
+"What about who was having those arguments?"
+
+"That's the thing, there were relatively few voices from those who had uploaded recently. Most of those who started the arguments were from the first few decades of the System's creation. I suspect that at least part of their concern is that they still feel somewhat upset at having to pay to join, some of them dearly so, but even that doesn't feel like the whole reason. It was just all these super old uploads, both individuals and clades, who seemed less than thrilled at the prospect. Founder types, you understand."
+
+Eir frown grew. "Do you remember any names?"
+
+"The Jonas clade was pretty vocally against it. I think they even had compunctions about the launch, for that matter. There were some of the Odists, though I never took much interest in who. Their names are always so impenetrable. Let's see...there was Àsgeir Hrafnson, who has always seemed like he's against everything. Such a sour man..."
+
+Brahe continued to list off a few names, and Codrin continued to nod dutifully, but eir mind was elsewhere. The Odists' opinion on the launch seemed to range from, at best, utterly ecstatic, as Dear's had been, to, at worst, simply uninterested, to go by what Dear and May Then My Name had said.
+
+Was this another lie from Dear, or had the fox simply not gone looking for names in the debate?
+
+"Obviously, the launch went forward anyway, and both LVs contain Dreamer Modules, so they weren't successful," the astronomer was saying. "They didn't seem interested in paring down the scope to the modules, nor even adding any risk mitigation factors beyond the extra RTG and a set of explosive bolts that could jettison the module if necessary. I think that's what made me the most suspicious of their initial arguments. If there was risk, why not try to mitigate it further?"
+
+"I'm not sure," Codrin said, mouth dry. "Perhaps it was more of an image thing? As in, adding the module might damage how others viewed the launch."
+
+"Perhaps." Ey heard Brahe shrug against the moss-grass before he continued. "Anyway, that's the story. I don't know if it'll be of any use to you in your project."
+
+"It might. It already answered most of my other questions, too. The last one I have is that you invested entirely in the LVs. Why?"
+
+The astronomer was silent for a long time. "As upset as I get that I'm not actually able to see all the stars, even I am not immune to the romance of the idea. Imagine sitting at home, knowing that you could have flung yourself off into space, out among the dangers and excitement, and choosing instead that boring safety? The only benefit would be the combined knowledge of Castor and Pollux arriving at the station at the same time we'll get it on either one of our LVs, but, well."
+
+Brahe gestured up to the shifting night sky, leaving his words at that.
+
+Eventually, even Codrin lay back in the grass. Lay there with Tycho Brahe in all his sadness and happiness and wisdom and romanticism. Lay there and looked up at the stars ey knew not for how long.
 
-> **May Then My Name Die With Me:** I am surprised to see you online, Douglas!
-> 
-> **Douglas Hadje:** Remember how I said my workload as launch director would be starting to decrease after launch?
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Well, now I'm only working a few days at a time, and most of that is writing up documentation and collating reports for the launch commission. Soon, even that will disappear, and I suspect I'll be out of a job unless I decide to take on another position.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** Do you think that you will?
-> 
-> **Douglas:** I don't know. Maybe? Probably. Once I'm out of a job, my reason to be here is kind of gone, and I imagine whatever goodwill I've built up will start to run out and they won't let me stay on the station. It's mostly self-sufficient, but resources are limited and I'm sure there's someone who would like to take my spot.
-> 
-> **Ioan Bălan:** And you mentioned not wanting to go back planet-side.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** God no, not if I can help it.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** Either way, I am happy to see you about. Did you have any particular topics you wanted to discuss today? If not, I am sure that Ioan has some.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Nothing in particular. I've got a few minor questions outstanding, I think, but I'm starting to get the sense that you'll only answer those when you're ready.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** That is a very good sense that you have.
-> 
-> **Ioan:** May's obstinate, ignore her.
-> 
-> **Ioan:** She also kicks pretty hard, but then, I deserved that.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** You did.
-> 
-> **Ioan:** Alright, well, the topic I was thinking of asking you about is that of the political side of the launch. One of the instances on one of the launches conducted an interview that suggested that there was actually quite a lot of political machinations behind the scenes.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Oh! Yes! I'm surprised you didn't get much news of that in there.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** I am sure that we could look it up, but you are in a unique position to tell us more directly, and after it has been all mixed around in your head.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** True. Well, where do you want to start?
-> 
-> **Ioan:** How about you start most recently, actually, and then work your way backwards.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Alright.
-> 
-> **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:
-> 
-> **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"
-> 
-> **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.
-> 
-> **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.
-> 
-> **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.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Anyway, a lot of these people seemed to be just plain angry that there were people doing things that were not for helping improve the general condition of life. There's still six or seven billion people down there, when you mesh birth rates with death and upload rates, and a good chunk of those people have no wish to upload, so they're stuck in a life that's uncomfortable enough to make them angry at those who have what feels like (and might as well be) unlimited potential, as they imagine the System to be.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Does that make sense?
-> 
-> **Ioan:** I think so. You've got people who are unhappy, and part of that unhappiness is the fact that others are happy.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** More than that. They're unhappy, and part of that is that those others are not helping to make life better for them. It's usually not even making life better for humanity, but for them specifically, for the world as they specifically view it.
-> 
-> **Ioan:** Was there any sentiment that they were being abandoned by those who left on the launches?
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Yes and no. You have to understand that most people still struggle to think of the uploads as human. Thus calling them 'uploads', even, rather than 'uploaded personalities' or whatever. It's not just shorthand, it's a way of separating them into some other idea. They aren't people, anymore, they're programs, in their minds.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** There has always been this argument of speciation, and the instinct to make us the other continues apace, I see.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** I'll take your word for it. It's difficult to persuade the average person that those in the System are still human, or if not human, then at least still people. They're not the types to listen to all the arguments for why we know that you're still you after you upload. They duck-type you into being programs.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** 'Duck-type'?
-> 
-> **Ioan:** Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, must be a duck. 
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Is that what it means? It's just come to mean a false-equivalency of any kind. Few enough ducks, anymore.
-> 
-> **Ioan:** I only learned it from an assignment talking with some perisystem specialists.
-> 
-> **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.
->
-> **May Then My Name:** It does not help that many of us --- not just me --- are obtuse on purpose.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** You said there was some grumbling sys-side, as well, right?"
-> 
-> **Ioan:** Yes, though I don't totally understand it. Some of it sounds like that like, "Why bother? We've got a good life here, and there's no reason to be putting that in any kind of danger just to throw copies of us out at the stars." The bits that I mentioned earlier, however, have more to do with the Dreamer Modules than the launch itself, though.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Oh? There was a little bit of chatter about those here, but I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it.
-> 
-> **Ioan:** That's okay. I'll dig, myself.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** We were working backwards from present. Was there much in the way of disruptions in the middle of the launch construction process?
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Not as much, no. There was a lull in overall protests. A lot of the grumbling about the Dreamer Module came during this time. There were one or two other sabotage attempts. Do you want to hear about those?
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** We will, yes, but there is time. For now, we are curious about the macro-scale political landscape before, during, and after launch.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Alright. That'll give me some time to remember more about what happened with them.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Large scale, hmm.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Well, most of the government side goes way over my head. In the WF, there was always a bit of waffling, even on the majority coalition side, but whenever sentiment in a member party of the majority drifted away from the launch, they never seemed to last all that long in power.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** I talked about protests and sentiments before, but for the most part, folks were either on board, didn't care, or didn't know about the launch. It was just another satellite in their eyes, or some deep space probe.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Early on was when it was talked about most. There wasn't a whole lot of questions asked about whether or not the launch would happen, weirdly. I remember it just kind of popping up in the news as a foregone conclusion. "The launch was happening, how's everyone feeling about that?"
-> 
-> **Douglas:** I think some were pretty unhappy with that, at first. Like, where did this decision even come from? Obviously, the System is its own authority and can do whatever it wants, but someone has to manage the phys-side work, so who, phys-side, actually had those conversations? There were a few gestures at investigation, but they fizzled out. Mostly, people were just confused. Some people get upset when they're confused, but for the rest, it just left them shaking their heads. It was the politicians who were dealing with it after that initial shock.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Building the launches wasn't too expensive, honestly, because almost all of that was done in an automated fashion here on the station. That said, retrofitting the station for the launch struts, building the launch arms, expanding the production sector...all that took time, energy, and money. I'm surprised it went as smoothly as it did, despite all the grumbling.
-> 
-> **Ioan:** So it just popped up on the scene, then interest waned, then ramped up before the launch, then dropped? Like an 'M' shape?
-> 
-> **Douglas:** I suppose so, yeah. After the launch happened, there was nothing that could be done, so everyone lost interest or lost steam in their protests.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** We had a conversation a while back about our own point of no return. It was actually a year and change before the launch itself. By then, individuals were already transferring, and even if something went wrong, the cheapest solution would have been to launch anyway, and just take the hit on final velocity.
-> 
-> **Ioan:** Really?
-> 
-> **Ioan:** It makes sense, I suppose. What would you have done? Un-built the struts/arms and LVs?
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Basically. That would require dealing with yet more conservation-of-momentum issues, which would've required more money to build *that* infrastructure, etc etc.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** None of which really seemed to matter to the protestors.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** You said that parties whose sentiments veered away from supporting the launch often wound up leaving the leading coalition. What was the general sentiment of the leading coalition in the WF? Elsewhere on Earth?
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Oh, good question. I guess most of them wound up being the types that pushed for higher taxes while playing to humanity. They're all named something different, I guess. It was the liberal democrats for most of the time in the WF. The demsocs felt that the money that was going to the launch was better served on Earth. The libertarians were here and there on the issue. Sometimes they felt like it would be a net win for humanity, sometimes they felt like the burden of the launch was too much. The conservatives spent most of the last twenty years as the shadow government. Their arguments were mostly what I said before. It was money that was going to a thing that wasn't them or their financial interests.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** The way you talk, I assume that you are a liberal democrat?
-> 
-> **Douglas:** We don't get a vote up here.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** I'm with whatever party allows the System to continue and helped the launch move forward.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** A single issue voter, then?
-> 
-> **Douglas:** I guess so!
-> 
-> **Ioan:** Well, we appreciate that, given where we live.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Haha, well, good.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Any other questions? I don't have any in particular, and would like to go grab dinner.
-> 
-> **Ioan:** Not from me.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** When will you be uploading, Douglas?
-> 
-> **Douglas:** I don't know. Some day, I promise.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** When you do, I hope that you will tell us, so that we can meet you face to face.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Of course! After all this time, I'd be disappointed if we didn't.
-> 
-> **May Then My Name:** We will have many stories to tell you.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** I look forward to them all. Goodnight, you two.
-> 
-> **Douglas:** Or morning.
-> 
-> **Ioan:** Afternoon, actually. Enjoy your dinner!