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# True Name --- 2124
It was Jonas's time to pick the location for their meeting, but as he had scheduled it for a few hours from the time of the message, The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream decided to spend a bit of time exploring fanciful cocktails at the Kowloon Walled City/central corridor mega mall/parking lot rooftop bar.
Her first drink was a total wash. Someone had decided to explore the utility of sulfurous odors in drinks by combining the smoke of a newly lit match, a slice of preserved egg, and some smokey mezcal, sweetened by a few squirts of over-ripe apricot puree.
There was, True Name discovered, essentially no place for sulfur in a cocktail. It was a drink that was *almost* good, so long as one didn't breathe in the scent. The first heady whiff that she got had burnt her nostrils and she only managed a few sips after that.
Her next drink was some bracingly strong lime-and-bitters-and-liquor deal with a float of foam made of egg whites and pork fat. There was a dusting of star anise and cinnamon on top. Her final assessment: pleasantly disgusting. The lime, egg whites, and spices all worked quite well together, she imagined, but the added porky fat clashed with it in such a savory way that she suspected it would've gone better with some brown spirit.
Still, she drank it all.
Her final drink was a weak, British style ale that, she was informed, used a mixture of herbs rather than hops as the bittering agent. Spruce and henbane, the first of which left her with an almost-unpleasant subdermal itching and the latter of which left her vision tinted red and her intoxication higher than it might have been otherwise.
Terrible. Delightful
She let that intoxication linger as she prowled through one of the mall sections of the solid block of building. She paced along balconies, fingering wilting leaves of variegated plants, scratching a claw through the grime of countless hands accumulated on faux-wood banisters. She peered through grates at shelves still speckled with abandoned gadgets and folded jeans. She sat in the food court, still smelling of rancid grease and sanitizer. She breathed in the stale, over-conditioned air, and wondered for the thousandth time just who had thought to create such a sim, and what sort of twisted nostalgia had led them to do so.
It was as she stood in front of a quiescent fountain that it occurred to her that this place --- the mall, the dingy city, the parking structure and its shoddily crafted drinks --- was all a monument to the imperfections of mankind's countless attempts to provide for itself in so many imperfect ways.
They were here. They were immortal. They *could* build perfection. They could live their lives in eternal bliss, and yet they still got their kicks out of the temporary and the imperfect. They were, despite the arguments, still human in so many delightfully crazed ways. The cracks still shone through, even when presented with the opportunity of perfection. They were the futurological congress of yore, where even the idea of queuing had been romanticized and pushed into the realm of the transgressive. Even these poor fools who had the limitless expanses of the mind before them knew that, in some ways, it was their origins that made them complete.
And it *was* intoxicating.
It was intoxicating in such a way as to leave the skunk feeling somehow more complete than she had expected. There was no speciation. She was complete in all her humanity, as were all who uploaded. By her very imperfections, she was complete.
What, then was the difference?
She picked at a coin that had cemented itself to the rim of the fountain in a layer of slimy algae, winced at the unpleasant sensation, and then flicked it into the murky-green water that still stained the basin of the fountain.
There was a part of her mind that was tempted to consider those who lived sys-side as some how more perfect beings than those who remained phys-side. But no, that wasn't quite correct. They were different, yes, but they weren't some greater form of perfection --- or perhaps not entirely.
Were there perhaps some core difference in ideals? Obviously, given the cost of uploading, there was a natural barrier, but even among the upper-middle and higher classes, there were some who simply chose not to upload. What was the difference? Was it aspirational? Were those who uploaded on some different wavelength from those who stayed behind? There were certainly many who found the whole process abhorrent on a physical level, yes. Of those who found it distasteful on intellectual, emotional, and spiritual levels, what did the prospect of continuing to live phys-side provide that living sys-side did not?
She couldn't decide, but there was the logical fallout of that situation, that the two should be treated on a fundamentally different level, when it came to politics.
There was a slight twinge of a sensory alarm, and she knew that it was time for the meeting with Jonas.
He had chosen a war-gaming room for the meeting. There in the middle of the room was a backlit map of Earth at least five meters long, and scattered across its surface were dozens of chess pieces --- knights, pawns, queens --- which had been pushed this way and that by long sticks that still rested along the edges of the table.
A smile quirked at the corner of her mouth. *How very like him.*
Jonas was sitting at the other end of the table, eating small hors d'oeuvres from a paper plate. Cocktail weenies spiked with toothpicks and finger sandwiches.
As soon as he noticed True Name standing at the edge of the light that lit the table, he grinned and gestured with his plate toward the hot-and-cold buffet lining one of the walls.
*Oh well, why not,* she thought, willing away the drunkenness and instead loading up a plate with bruschetta and pita crisps with hummus.
"You're looking well today," Jonas said, once he had finished his mouthful. "Have an exciting jaunt?"
She laughed. "Why? Were you watching me?"
He shrugged.
"Well, it was exciting as could be expected. I got a lot of thinking done. A lot of planning. Which one of you are you, by the way?"
"Jonas Prime, today."
True Name nodded a greeting and focused on her hummus for a few minutes.
Once it was clear that she had reached a pause, Jonas spoke up. "Tell me about your thoughts and plans. I'm curious what it is that required alcohol to understand."
"I was thinking about the difference in politics phys-side and sys-side."
He sat up straighter, nodding for her to continue.
"I think that it is a matter of aspirations. We who have uploaded have different goals in life than those who remain behind. Perhaps it is worth approaching them in different ways.
"That's true." He looked thoughtful. "We've already been doing that, to an extent."
"Yes, but out of instinct. Perhaps it is time to do so intentionally. If the goal of politics is to steer groups of individuals, then perhaps it is time to figure out the different ways in which to steer them. The motivations of those on the System are highly independent, surrounding whatever brings them the most freedom to accomplish what it is that they want. Them in particular, rather than large groups, though smaller groups may have goals that are aligned as well."
Jonas frowned down to his remaining weenies, then set the plate aside. "And phys-side?"
"Larger groups. They may feel that they have individual goals, but, whether or not it is in the fore of their thoughts, they know that the best way to accomplish them is to band together with those who share similar enough goals."
"An astute observation."
True Name let the non-compliment slide over her, continuing. "If we are to steer the council, then we must approach it with an eye to the goals shared by dreamers, and if we are to steer affairs phys-side, then we must approach it with an eye toward something broader, offering sugar-coated compromises that feel like wins."
Jonas's frown deepened. "You're a bit further along in this than maybe I gave you credit for."
The skunk leaned forward, resting her chin on folded hands. She refused to rise to the bait offered, choosing instead a thoughtful expression. "Your forks. Do they work on a similar dialectic?"
He nodded.
"Then perhaps it would be smart for me to do similar. I do like your idea of continuing to be seen as a single individual to the council. I am not sure that I am willing to cycle through my forks for that, however, so perhaps I will continue to act as the point of contact that the other council members see, and simply consult with my forks via regular merging."
"It's not a bad idea, no, and with a small clade, some of whom already look like you, you can probably get away with it easily enough. I have to make sure only one of me is out and about where people might see me at a time." He grinned, adding with a wink, "At least, while working. Ar is out drinking."
The skunk laughed. "Of course. Hopefully he has better luck with drinks than I did."
There was a lull in the conversation as True Name crunched her way through the bruschetta on her plate.
After she finished, she spoke up again. "The only problem that I see is that I will need to save up reputation, and then hide the expenditures as best I can. Do you have experience on that?"
Jonas visibly brightened. "Oh! There's no need to do that. You can push some reputation into your name by having the members of your clade vote you up. Make something silly. Take up poetry. Release it out into the world whether it's good or not, then have your cocladists build it up higher."
"Cocladists, huh? Is that the term we are going with?"
He shrugged.
"Well, alright. I will put on some monologues I remember from phys-side."
"Alright. Let me know when you do, and I'll upvote them, too. It's not like there's no reason to, we talk often enough as council-members and the market doesn't care who upvotes."
True Name laughed. After a moment's concentration, two additional versions of her appeared behind her chair, waved to Jonas, and stepped out of the sim. "I had just enough for two, and I figure two ought to be enough for now."
"Do they have equally silly names?"
Once more, she resisted the urge to bridle at his comment. Instead she smiled sweetly. "Why Ask Questions, Here At The End Of All Things and Why Ask Questions When The Answers Will Not Help." After a pause, she added, "Why Ask Questions and Answers Will Not Help."
The man froze, the last of his cocktail sausages halfway between plate and mouth. That mouth now slowly formed into a devious grin. "You continue to surprise and amaze, my dear."
After they had both finished their plates of appetizers and enjoyed a moment of silence, they each began pushing around a few chess pieces off the map.
"We have Yared in NEAC," True Name said, pushing a pawn over to Addis Ababa. "And you said you know some in the Western Fed, yes?"
Jonas nodded, pushing two queens, two pawns, and a bishop over the chessboard. The bishop in the British aisles: "A judge. He's easily bribed. We can't do it ourselves, of course, but we can find those who will. He'll be useful for influencing some legislation whenever cases regarding uploads come up."
One of the queens wound up in Germany, the other on the east coast of North America: "Two representatives. Both were good friends. Both too sly for their own good. I'm surprised they haven't gotten flushed out, yet, but we can keep using them until they do. I think they'll be useful in pushing for the legislation --- both the core bill, and the launch amendment."
"How about the secession amendment?" True Name asked.
"Probably, assuming there is one."
"I think there will be."
Jonas gave her a strange look, but instead of replying, pushed one pawn to the toe of Italy's boot and the other to the northern end of the central corridor: "Two other friends. DDR junkies, mostly, but very loud ones. This one--" he said, tapping at the one on the central corridor. "--is reactionary and easy to influence, if you feed him the right information, and this one--" He tapped the one on Italy. "--is one of those calm-voice-of-reason types. He would be harder to influence, but it sounds like he's already mostly in agreement with our dear Yared."
True Name noticed the lack of names for each of the figures, but said nothing. *It is probably for the best. Leaves me some plausible deniability, and keeps me from interacting with his pawns.*
"Now, how about sys-side?"
Jonas shrugged. "The council, of course, plus the owners of some higher-profile sims, and a few perisystem architects."
"Alright. I suppose that on my end I don't have anyone other than the council," she lied. "And all of my various selves, of course."
"Right, you have Debarre in your pocket, and Zeke likes you plenty."
He kept throwing her all these little comments that seemed to tempt her to respond emotionally. Was he testing her? Was he watching to see just how much power he had over her?
Not the best tactic for someone who taught theatre to teenagers.
"I think we've got the council mostly locked down when it comes to the idea of independence," she said, setting down her stick.
"And your clade?"
"I have plans for them. Nothing that will get me in trouble with the council, I think."
"Will you tell me some of those plans?"
She smiled. "Why not? We are working together, after all. They can use our background in theatre to work the propaganda angle."
It was only a portion of the truth, but she also suspected that Jonas knew this. He accepted it easily enough.
"I'll send Ir to coordinate with you, so that we don't step on each other's toes. That's what he's been working on."
"Did you not say he looked nothing like you? You certainly have the face for a propagandist."
Jonas laughed. "He arguably looks better. Just different. On that note, will you have your, uh...human self do the propagandizing?"
She waved the question away. "I will work it out. For now, do you have any more news on Yared and his handler?"
"Not too much more. Demma has been heard to mention the System as a country, but so far hasn't mentioned the word secession. Yared's latest post is along similar lines as his last. Fluffy, if you'll forgive the metaphor. The little bit of us teasing each other went over well, and there were a few comments elsewhere on the 'net that others caught talking about the fact that at least the System still seemed to have fun in it."
"Any other comments about secession that you have seen?"
He shook his head. "Same little blips from some of the crazier people. More of them, perhaps, but it hasn't bubbled up too far. There's a bit more chatter about the legal status of the System independent of other nations, but the S-word hasn't come up yet. You heard any here sys-side?"
"Not except between us," she lied again.
Jonas needn't know all of her plans, nor that the propaganda work had already begun. Nor, for that matter, that she was still in contact with Dr. Carter Ramirez, phys-side, who still had reputation of her own, her own knight in the British Isles. After all, if he was going to continue to maintain some of his leverage of the situation, oughtn't she do the same?
"Alright, well." Jonas frisbeed his plate into a trash can by the buffet tables. "I guess we're in a holding pattern on that front until the news breaks elsewhere. Until then, keep kissing babies and shaking hands. Or shaking babies and kissing hands. Or whatever it is that not-a-politicians do."
Before she could respond, he winked to her and blipped out of existence, likely back to his home sim.
True Name remained a while in the sim, falling back into the habit of planning and rumination, memorizing the pieces and their locations that Jonas had pushed onto the board, and thinking about all of the lies she had told today.
# Douglas Hadje --- 2325
> **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!