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-# Ioan Bălan --- 2325
+# Codrin Bălan#Pollux --- 2325
 
-Ioan and May walked hand-in-paw along the rim of a lake. It had settled neatly into a bowl formed by three peaks, and around it wound a deer-trail, which was only wide enough to permit them to walk side by side half the time. For the rest of the hike, Ioan walked in front, guiding May, pointing out roots, and eventually helping her clamber up onto a rock out-cropping at the point where the lake drained into the lands below through a chattering creek.
+As happened about once every six weeks or so, that boundless energy within Dear became too much for the fox to control, and it would go tearing through the house, working on several projects, forking here to clean, there to make a mess, now to request affection and then to holler about how badly it wanted to be alone.
 
-There they sat to eat their lunches and talk.
+The first time that this happened, Codrin had been quite startled, opting to lock emself in the office that ey still kept out around the back of the house. One of the many instances of Dear quickly fell into a sulk, and sent em carefully spaced out sensorium messages to make sure that ey hadn't left.
 
-"I had no idea that you enjoyed hiking."
+Eventually, Dear's partner had knocked on the door to eir glass-walled office, and Codrin let them in, where they leaned back against the edge of eir desk.
 
-"Oh, goodness no. I hate it." Ey laughed. "But it's the only way to get to this rock."
+"Do you know of any wild restaurants?" they had asked.
 
-They sat in silence for a while, the sun warming their backs as it slid down toward the peaks that ey supposed must be west.
+"Wild?"
 
-"Why did you bring me out here, Ioan?"
+"Yeah. You know, crazy experiences, or maybe they're really busy or raucous. Some sort of theme. Anything like that."
 
-Ey lazily scanned the far shore of the lake, picking out the places where the deer trail dipped shyly down to the edge of the water before darting back up into the trees.
+Codrin had searched through eir memory, then shrugged. "Does a back-alley food court work?"
 
-"I needed to focus on something further away than a piece of paper," ey said at last. "Further than the lilacs in the yard."
+They laughed. "How in the world do 'back-alley' and 'food court' work together?"
 
-"And the interviews you have done have not helped?"
+"I have no idea. You walk down this street, and there's just this awning sticking out over a narrow alley. Smells like hell, but when you get through it, there's this courtyard, and all of the walls are various stalls of different food. Most of it's dumplings and buns and stuff like that, but I found it because there's a place there that serves, of all things, really good tacos."
 
-Ey shrugged.
+"Sounds about right. Come on."
 
-"Cabin fever, perhaps?"
+They had walked back around the patio and into the main house and Dear's partner surveyed the scene of various foxes in various states of activity or various moods, then walked up to one scribbling on a notepad at its desk, grabbed a fistful of fur and loose skin at the nape of its neck in their hand, lifted the fox to its feet, and shook it gently. All of the forks that had been littering the house quit in an instant.
 
-"Maybe, yeah."
+*"Oh, is it dinner time?"* It had looked bedraggled, limp, unsteady, and a glint of some intensity that Codrin had never seen before hid in its eyes.
 
-"Ioan, I am not the one who is supposed to be asking questions," she chided.
+"Yeah. Come on. Codrin knows a place."
 
-"Right, sorry. It's a little bit cabin fever, I guess. I've spent an awful lot of time cooped up in the house and just sending forks out to run the interviews. It's one thing to remember being outside, but another still to have to make that memory align with not having left the house in days."
+There had never been a full explanation of what it was that happened, but as they dined on plates of dumplings, steamed buns, noodles, and tacos, the fox's hackles began to lay flat, and the erratic twitching of its tail slowed to a more familiar calm. It had spent most of the dinner peering around curiously and talking their ears off.
 
-The skunk nodded, picking a pebble from near her paw and tossing it into the lake. "I understand. It think that I am perhaps more comfortable inside than you are, but I am still happy that you brought me here.
+*"Sometimes I overflow,"* is all the fox had said when pressed.
 
-"Glad you like it. It's an abandoned sim that I visited decades back and still had the coordinates to. It reminded me of how my grandfather described his time in Slovenia." Ey crumpled the wrapper to eir sandwich and returned it to the backpack that ey'd brought with em. "It's just good to get out and change contexts, I guess."
+Even after nearly twenty years, though, Codrin had yet to gain the knack of telling the original instance of Dear when that many were running around, and so when the fox began to 'overflow' once more, ey sought out its partner in their own workshop and waited until they reached a stopping point before saying, "I think it's time for dinner."
 
-May nodded.
+As usual, they were able to hunt down the root instance and shake it back to reality. Whenever the fox was grabbed by the scruff, it went limp, and the shake was usually something of a rag doll affair. At first, Codrin had worried that its partner was hurting it, but as ey was welcomed into their relationship, ey learned that the fox counted it as a pleasure.
 
-"It's just..." Ey frowned, hunting for the words. "It's just that we have limitless time and limitless space and all the creativity we could hope to use, and still I sometimes feel trapped, as though I'm stuck in this tiny, constrained space where I can barely move and can't hope to stretch out. Does that make sense?"
+Today, they found themselves at what Dear promised them was a pitch-perfect simulacrum of a late 2000s diner. While ey could not speak to the accuracy, nor even the quality, something about the sheen of lingering sanitizer on the counters that left streaks, the smell of truly terrible coffee, and the sizzle of grease all added up to a cohesive whole.
 
-"It is not a feeling I share, but I can see how one might," May said, carefully shifting the backpack from between them to the other side of her so that she could lean against em. "It is the feeling one gets when one asks "is that all there is?" and the answer comes back "yes, of course"."
+Codrin ordered a large plate of fries, Dear a vanilla milkshake, and its partner a slice of pie. They shared all three, and Codrin learned the delight of dipping fries into milkshakes.
 
-"Yeah," ey murmured. As May rested her head against eir shoulder, ey turned eir head to place a kiss between her ears. Ey did not remember when ey had first started doing that, but it had long since become habit. Every time ey remembered that it had been an act that was out of character for em until May moved in, some part of em raced around in circles to try and find out what had changed and why.
+*"Thank you, my loves, as always,"* Dear said, once it calmed down. *"I am honestly surprised that it took this long after Launch for the mania to hit."*
 
-*It's just...May. That's just how she is,* ey kept reminding emself. *There is no explaining an Odist.*
+"Maybe you were less focused on one thing?" Codrin said around a mouthful of melting shake.
 
-"It's been happening more and more since the idea of the launches first started to take off. It happened before, too, but I think coming to the understanding that this *isn't* all there is, that there's also stuff outside the System and far away from the Sun...well, it just kind of rubbed my face in it. "You're stuck here, Ioan Bălan," it says. "You're not going to be on the launch, and even if you were, that wouldn't be you. There'd be no merging of experiences"."
+*"Perhaps. I do not have a single project to dump my attention into, so that singular energy does not build up in quite the same way."*
 
-May laughed. "I find freedom in that. Not only will I not have to do any of that work, but I will also get to be one of the shitheads that stays behind."
+"The news from Castor and Ioan isn't enough to keep you focused?"
 
-"And that's a bonus?"
+*"Not particularly, no."* It grinned and poked a fry at Codrin. *"You are the historian, my dear. That is your job, not mine."*
 
-"Of course it is, my dear. When was the last time you had the luxury of staying behind? Of that being a one-way decision?"
+Ey rolled eir eyes.
 
-Ey frowned.
+*"Still, I really must find one soon. I am aware that it is not pleasant for you two when this happens, but it is also unpleasant for me when I do not have direction."*
 
-"Do not think too hard, Ioan. I can tell you now that it was before you uploaded." She sounded as though speaking from a dream. "That was the last time that you could have made the choice to stay behind. It is some of Dear's beloved irreversibility. You cannot un-upload. You cannot upload part of the way. There is no going and there is no back, remember? Now, though, you are here. If you are busy working and a friend is throwing a party, why, just fork! You do not need to worry about whether or not you need stay behind or join them. You can do both."
+Dear's partner shrugged. "We just need to get one of those loose clamps for holding bags shut or hair back in a bun so we can just put it on your scruff when you start getting out of hand."
 
-"But with the launch, you had the decision to stay behind."
+*"Do you promise?* I *promise that I will do everything in my power to deserve it,"* it said, grinning wickedly.
 
-"Yes, it was a new experience. New in these last two centuries."
+"Dear, I swear to God."
 
-"You're so weird," ey said, then laughed as she elbowed em in the side.
+*"If you threaten me with a good time, you will win precisely the prize that you deserve."*
 
-"We are both weird." She poked at eir thigh with a claw. "That includes you, my dear. We both stayed behind, and we both sent along cocladists so far diverged from us that they might as well have become new individuals."
+Codrin laughed. "You're right. We deserve peace and quiet, sometimes."
 
-"Mm, true. I'm happy for them, at least."
+Ey received a fry to the face from the fox, which ey dunked into the shake. "What is this place, anyway?"
 
-"As am I. Their communications are not quite as happy as I suspect they wish, but I am still happy for them."
+*"It is the restaurant that--"* It hesitated for a beat, during which the noise around them dimmed as a cone of silence fell. *"It is the restaurant at which the clade celebrated Secession Day."*
 
-Ioan knit eir brow. "There is that, yeah. Do you remember Ezekiel?"
+Codrin stifled a yawn from the ear-popping sensation that always came with the silence. "You weren't there?"
 
-"Of course," May said, sitting up and swinging her legs up onto the rock so that she could sit cross-legged, facing em. "He was brilliant. Intensely, incredibly brilliant. I am sure that he still is, but that brilliance is now coiled all around itself in the way that happens with prophets throughout the ages."
+*"I had not yet been forked, no, but Praiseworthy was there. I remember it through the words and sensorium of another."*
 
-Ey turned to face May in turn. "Who do you think that weighed more on, though? Dear or Codrin?"
+"What was it like back then?" ey asked.
 
-The skunk dipped her muzzle. "That is difficult to say. They are each sensitive in their own ways. Dear, I imagine, is feeling a lot of old fears confirmed, and old memories come to roost. I worry that, some day, that fox will spin itself into a whirlwind and dissipate into the atmosphere."
+*"Mx. Codrin Bălan, are you working?"*
 
-"I'm sure it'd enjoy that."
+"Not particularly," ey said. "I really am just curious."
 
-"It would make it a whole production. Invite everyone on the LV."
+*"Well, you will still need to be more specific. 'Back then' covers a large swath of time."*
 
-Ioan laughed.
+"How about a year to either side?" its partner suggested.
 
-"And Codrin?" she said.
+*"That still encompasses a good amount of history. I will tell you some of them, but you will have to--"*
 
-"I expect ey's struggling, in eir own way. Were I confronted with something like that, I'd be able to keep it together throughout the interview, but afterwards, I'd have to spend a lot of time just decompressing."
+"Find the rest on my own, yes."
 
-"Why is that?"
+The fox gave a hint of a bow. *"Thank you in indulging me in this, Codrin. I cannot be the one to share everything."*
 
-"You spend all your time up here--" Ey tapped at eir temple. "--and being confronted by the ways in which that can go wrong to someone who was, as you say, brilliant, can really mess with you. I bet ey holed himself up in that office for a while and paced a ring into the floor."
+"So what was it like before Secession Day?"
 
-If ey had been expecting a laugh or a smile from the skunk, ey was disappointed. She simply nodded and looked off into the water again. "There is nothing wrong with that, Ioan. We have known that disconnect. We have known the feeling of a mind coiled in on itself. That is frightening to all of us. It *should* be frightening."
+*"I do not think that the hoi polloi thought about it all that much. They were concerned about the prospect of others deciding that they did not have rights, to be sure, but it was all very abstract. Even from the point of view of the Council, we could not quite understand what a lack of rights would look like.*
 
-Suspecting that May would appreciate it and not knowing what to say to that, ey simply reached out and took one of her paws in eir hands.
+*"I think that is why secession seemed to come so naturally to us. It took far more effort for those phys-side to comprehend what secession would look like than it did for us. From our point of view, we were separate from the rest of the world, such as it was, in a way that already seemed to preclude citizenship to any other political entity."*
 
-Ey didn't know how long they sat there like that. Ey didn't remember what ey was thinking, or where ey looked. All ey remembered was the satiny feeling of May's pawpads against eir skin, and the sound of a quiet lake.
+"And you --- Michelle, that is --- were still on the council at that point?"
 
-May broke the silence first. "Ioan, my tail is falling asleep. Can we go back?"
+*"That is a complicated question."* It poked at the last bit of shake with its spoon. *"We shall say yes. Elements of the clade were still on the council at that point. This sim is where we celebrated Secession. One of the Odists, Debarre, Zeke, user11824, the Russians, Jonas--"*
 
-Ey nodded, levering emself up onto eir knees, then onto eir feet so that ey could help the skunk stand.
+"Jonas?"
 
-She laughed and winced once she stood, rubbing at the base of her tail. "All pins and needles."
+Dear tilted its head inquisitively.
 
-"I can't even begin to imagine how that must feel in a tail."
+"Ezekiel talked about a Jonah. Is that someone else?"
 
-"And I cannot imagine how to describe it. Help me down, and we can walk back."
+*"Oh, yes. Same person. Jonah is a name that fits Ezekiel's current mode of thinking better, I suppose. We were all there, along with our phys-side accomplice in the campaign for secession and the L<sub>5</sub> launch, Yared.*
 
-"Walk? You don't want to just leave?"
+*"The mood was very celebratory. The council sat in that booth--"* it said, nodding toward the corner booth. *"--and counted down with everyone. It was all very exciting. Everyone was giddy and laughing, and there were fireworks outside."*
 
-"If you are going to drag me out on a hike, then so help me God, take me on the hike, Ioan."
+"How crowded was it at that time? I imagine there were far fewer people in the System than there are now, if you had to pay to upload."
 
-They walked back along the deer trail, back the way they came. The water was now to their left, and where their eyes had been drawn to it before, they were now drawn to the pine forest that rimmed the lake. Trees reached straight for the sky from their brown bed of needles.
+*"Of course, yes. Still, there were a few common public sims that individuals and instances would frequent. This was one of them. There were a dozen or so others here in the diner along with the rest of the Odists, and several hundred along the street, either on it or in restaurants along it. All were cheering, as far as I could tell."*
 
-And as they walked, faster than before, May talked. "I worry about them. Both launches, both families. I worry about me and you. The interview with Ezekiel, yes, but both of them, both Castor and Pollux, are starting to circle around the center of it all."
+"I imagine there was some of that during Launch day, too," Dear's partner said. "Beyond our party, that is."
 
-"The center?"
+*"Perhaps. I do hope so."*
 
-"All three of us --- Dear#Castor, Dear#Pollux, and I --- have warned all three of you Bălans that there is a lot behind this." She was panting now as she walked, faster and faster. She had taken the lead, and was drawing em along behind her as she spoke. "We couch it in humor and jokey language as though they are riddles for you to solve, but Ioan, I worry that all it will do in the end is sow distrust between our two clades."
+"So, after all of the celebrations died down, was there any real change?"
 
-Ioan worked to keep up with May as she nearly jogged around the last bend in the path. "We can stop, May. If you don't think it'll lead to anything good, then we can just stop. We can look elsewhere. We can go back to interviewing musicians and astronomers and shitty authors. There are still stories to tell, and I'm sure that they will lead to just as many myths."
+Dear shrugged. *"Some residual excitement, I suppose. There were some little things that lingered, however, and stuck around. Secession Day, of course, but that is also the date that we started using systime in earnest. The actual number chosen as year zero, day zero for systime is a bit more than a year before Secession, and was tied to the creation of the reputation market, such that there was always a time to which it could be synchronized. Before Secession, we still commonly used the calendar they were --- and presumably still are --- using phys-side, but after, almost everyone switched to using systime. It made logical sense, yes, what with sims not being tied to any particular schedule bound by Earth's rotation or procession around the Sun, but also it felt like a sign that we were becoming our own nation, our own people."*
 
-She shook her head. Or at least Ioan thought she did. It was hard to tell, with the two of them jouncing along down the path.
+The table grew quiet after this explanation, as the last bite of pie was eaten and the last fry dipped in the last bit of shake.
 
-"May, please, at least slow down! You're going to pull me over."
+"Feel free to tell me to stuff it, but what was your stanza's role in the whole affair?" Codrin asked.
 
-Rather than slowing down, the skunk skidded to a stop, leading Ioan to nearly collide with her. As it was, ey had to stumble to the side to keep from bowling her over.
+*"You do not need to stuff it, my dear. Each first line had a role to play, after a fashion, and that often informed what the rest of the stanza focuses on, as we are formed from that instance as a template."*
 
-"May?"
+Ey nodded, waiting for the fox to continue.
 
-"I am sorry."
+*"Actually, my dear, can you guess? I am one who plays with instances, who finds ways to make others mad and happy and fall in love and get in fights, who guides and shapes sentiments, all by just being myself, and I am one who has turned that into an art."*
 
-Ey frowned at the stricken expression on her face, the tear-tracks in cheekfur. "Do you want us to stop? Stop talking to Odists? If you want to help guide us to better places to look, we can take a break from it."
+"I know I've met Praiseworthy, but I don't know much about her. I know Serene built the house and prairie. I think you mentioned that you two were forked when Praiseworthy's up-tree instance wanted to explore the ramifications of both instances and sims."
 
-She was already shaking her head. "You are not going to be able to avoid it, Ioan. I am worried, and I will not stop being worried, but you will not be able to avoid the inevitable end of this line of thought. You did not know it, but you were not even able to avoid the beginning of it."
+As it waited for Codrin to piece together what ey could, the fox scraped the bottom of the shake glass for the last spoonful of ice cream and fed it to its partner. A small affection that made em smile.
 
-"There's no way to stay behind, you mean."
+"Can you give me a bit of a hint about Serene?"
 
-She laughed, and the laugh was shaky with tears. "You are a brat. But yes. There is no way to stay behind."
+*"You get one hint, and it will be small. What emotions come to you when you walk the prairie?"*
 
-"You're just worried?"
+Codrin sat up straight. "A politician? Was Praiseworthy a politician? All this talk of shaping sentiments and expectations. Or, wait. No, that's not it."
 
-"I am just worried. You are at serious risk of learning the truth, and that has me worried."
+Dear urged em on with a little twirl of its spoon, looking pleased at the response.
 
-"Alright." Ey drew May in for a hug. "I don't understand you Odists. I never have. You seem to have all these dramatic events spiraling around you."
+"A speech writer? Did she come up with the speeches that whichever one of you was on the Council at the time used?"
 
-She laughed as she rested her head against eir shoulder. "We do, yes, and you love it."
+*"You are thinking too narrowly, my dear. The Council had little need for speeches for itself, and, as a body created to guide but not to govern, there were few enough speeches given outside of the council. After all, where would it give them?"*
 
-"It keeps life interesting, no denying. I just worry about you in turn."
+"Too narrow, hmm..." Ey frowned. "Was she...did she come up with propaganda?"
 
-"That feels good to hear, dear."
+Dear laughed, reached a finger into the shake glass to swipe up a little bit of sticky vanilla shake, and dabbed it on Codrin's nose. *"Well reasoned. Praiseworthy was the propagandist among the first lines."*
 
-"Good," ey said.
+Codrin rubbed at eir nose to get the melted ice cream off before it congealed further. "What exactly goes into being a propagandist, when the role of the Council was to guide but not to govern?"
 
-"Now, take me home and talk about something --- anything --- else for the rest of the night."
+Without falling, the fox's happy expression somehow became a fraction less earnest, just that much less directed.
+
+Before it could respond, ey held up a hand. "It's okay, Dear. One of the Bălans will figure it out."
+
+*"Thank you, Codrin."*
+
+Ey reached out to pat at the back of the fox's paw. "I hardly want you to resent me, if that's the result of me pressing you on this."
+
+*"You are a ways off from making me resent you, my dear."*
+
+Codrin nodded, watching Dear's gaze slip away, scanning the street outside the diner, quiet in the late evening. Ey could not quite figure out the emotion on display. Its ears were tilted back, but it did not look angry, nor particularly sad. Pensive, perhaps?
+
+"Dear?" its partner asked.
+
+*"No, you are a ways off from me resenting you, but you are perilously close to me lying to you."*