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# True Name --- 2124
The next time the Council of Eight met was nearly two weeks after True Name's discussion with Praiseworthy, thanks to a small, artificial delay suggested by the other skunk in order to see how well she could manage buttering up those who needed buttering up, meet with Ir Jonas, and let True Name get used to her new form, her new personality.
When Jonas Prime first saw her after that meeting, he had sat up straight from where he had been lounging on his apartment's couch, pointed his finger at her, and all but shouted, "Perfect! I don't know what you did or how, but it's fucking perfect."
She had laughed, given a bow, and stood up straighter once more. "Glad you approve. I figured if I am going to continue not being a politician, I really ought to look the part."
"I'm surprised you didn't work it in bit by bit, but it'll go over well."
It did, thankfully. When she met with a few of the council members --- Debarre and Zeke, thankfully --- in order to request the delay on the meeting, they had both complimented her on her looks. She explained it away as wanting try looking 'a little less dumpy', a calculated phrase which had gotten a laugh out of Zeke.
But now, the time had come to actually have the council meeting, which was taking place on a set of benches set alongside the edge of a well manicured pond. The S-R Bloc trio showed up in high-collared coats, hats, and sun-glasses.
"This is utterly ridiculous," Jonas said. "I feel like we're about to start meeting sleeper agents from foreign powers to discuss what intel we've picked up in the last month."
One of the Russians, in a rare sign of outward emotion, grinned broadly. "I thought you of all people would enjoy, Jonas."
"Oh, don't get me wrong, I love it, but it's not exactly subtle."
"We'll just say that we're in the middle of a spy reenactment."
Debarre laughed. "Well, I'm for it. All we're missing is the ducks and a bag of breadcrumbs to feed them."
"This can be arranged," another of the S-R Bloc trio said.
"Another time, perhaps. We can play out the full scene."
"Maybe we can walk and talk for once." True Name gestured down the trail, palm up and hand relaxed as Praiseworthy had instructed --- *you do not want to seem stiff, but rather like you are suggesting that you would like to get on with something that was already their idea in the first place.*
It worked well, as the whole council turned on cue and began to walk slowly down the trail. Jonas caught her eye and gave her a wink while the cone of silence settled into place and the meeting began.
"What news on the markets?"
"Nothing particularly new there. We're still tuning the cost of sims, but the model for forking seems to be working well. We got the chance to test it during a recent hardware upgrade."
"How about sensorium messages?"
"Proposal was accepted, and there's an alpha in place. Want to try?"
"Sure, why n-- Holy shit! Please don't do that again."
And on and on.
They'd made it about halfway around the pond before the discussion turned to True Name and Jonas.
"Glad to hear the launch is a go. I'm curious to see if there will be any interruptions in service meanwhile."
Jonas shook his head, "Should be smooth sailing. Worst case, we shut down for a few minutes or hours, and then come back online, in which case we won't even notice a thing in here."
"And the bill sounds like it's going well, too," Debarre said. "I'm actually surprised that it isn't a foregone conclusion, too. From what I've been hearing, there's essentially total agreement on the DDR, and most of the governments seem on-board now, too."
It was True Name's turn to nod, and she slid through the sentence smoothly, letting the topic flow into the conversation as gently as Ir Jonas and Praiseworthy had suggested. She just needed to trust that the work had been done, trust in her own abilities. "Yes, it has almost unanimously been accepted, and all we are really waiting on right now is for them to decide whether or not we can be trusted to govern ourselves."
The reaction was precisely what she had hoped: almost nothing at all. There were some nodding of heads, and user11824 just shrugged, as he ususally did.
*Excellent, it is already in their minds,* she thought. *Just need to keep going.*
Aloud, she said, "We got lucky with our DDR junkie friend, actually. It looks like he has been tapped to help draft the secession amendment that will be added to the bill, though I do not predict any trouble with that passing, either."
Zeke rumbled with a laugh. "They're actually calling it 'secession' now? How delightful."
True Name grinned, watching Jonas laugh along with the bundle of rags. *I must find a way to thank Praiseworthy. That could not have gone better.*
"Hey, if it gets us what we need, then they can call it what they want," Jonas said. "We can govern ourselves, they can govern themselves, and then all these rights arguments become a moot point. The only sticking point seems to be some portions of the S-R Bloc holding onto the idea of dual citizenship."
The trio nodded in unison. "We will be working on that."
"Hell," True Name mused. "We could probably even make a spectacle out of it. If it is to become something important to the entirety of the System, might as well make it a holiday."
"We can even get out the fireworks!" Debarre laughed, the weasel bouncing ahead a few steps to turn and walk backwards in front of the rest of the group. "No need to worry about wildfires or anything."
True Name laughed. "When was the last time you even saw fireworks?"
"Oh, I've never seen them. You were lucky, you had a big fuck-off lake you could launch them off of. It was just farms and orchards around us, so they were illegal."
The skunk smiled inwardly. That the topic of secession had been accepted at face value and slid so easily into joking and chatter was the best she could have hoped for. Even Jonas looked happy.
After to-do items had been handed out and the meeting wound down, Jonas waved to the group and disappeared from the sim. That left True Name five minutes to walk and talk with the others before she would meet up with him, so she spent a few just walking alongside Debarre, talking about the fireworks that she'd watched with their mutual friend during high school, the author of the ode from which she drew her name.
Then she waved her goodbyes as well, and stepped from the spy-park sim to a cafe, the very same one that Michelle/Sasha had visited before she had forked that first time.
"Mocha, right?" Jonas said, handing her a drink and leading her out to a rickety table on the sidewalk, already ensconced in another silent bubble.
"Thank you, yes. Perhaps champagne would be better."
He laughed and fell into the chair opposite her, a motion that somehow managed to ride the border between ungainly and endearing. "We'll get stinking drunk when the bill passes, don't worry. We'll get all of you and all of me together and bust out the champagne, cocaine, and condoms."
"Do not even start," she said, laughing. "I do not sleep with slimy politicians."
"You know, you're going to have to drop that act at some point. You have a speech writer, a styling team, a propagandist--"
"They are all the same instance."
"--and a team of analysts working on both the sys-side and phys-side angles. You, my dear, are one hundred percent a politician now."
"Alright, fine. Just do not tell anyone, okay?"
"Lips are sealed."
She sipped at her mocha and leaned back in the chair, looking out onto the street, people both real and imaginary milling along the sidewalks. "I was thinking today that we may actually be the only politicians on the council."
"How do you figure?"
"Well, Debarre is a friend. A smart one, but I think he mostly got the position by virtue of being associated with me and the lost. The S-R Bloc three are spooks who won't even tell us their names. Zeke is a true-believer; good at what he does but without the faintest thought for how it goes over. user11824 is the opposite. He wears his anonymity like a brand, but does not actually do much."
"And then there's us," Jonas said, nodding. "The ex-WF rep and whatever the hell you are."
"I am just me," True Name mused. "I do not know what that is, precisely, but I am just me. I am no longer Michelle, not by a long shot. I maintain none of that constant state of distraction, none her meekness, and very little of her surplus of empathy. I have lost who she was to become myself."
Jonas nodded. "For the better, I'd say."
"Do you think she was not a good council member?"
"Oh, she was fine. Good ideas. Smart. What she lacked was direction, which you make up in spades."
"I am happy to hear that. Truly." True Name raised her paper coffee cup in a toast to him. "There are some within the clade who have done the opposite, I am told. Praiseworthy has talked to them all, which is very her. Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver has hardly left Michelle's sim in weeks. She wound up with all of the empathy that I left behind."
Jonas shrugged. "At least someone's keeping Michelle company."
True Name said nothing, simply returning to watching the movement of the shoppers.
"What's next on your list, fuzzy?"
"If you call me 'fuzzy' again, I will dump this coffee over your head and rub it into your perfect fucking hair."
He laughed.
"What is next? Probably keeping in touch with Yared and helping him draft the amendment. I am sure that most of it will be councilor Demma's work, but that he has been given at least partial responsibility means that we will --- must --- have a hand in it as well."
# Ioan Bălan --- 2325
> **Ioan Bălan:** What excited you about the prospect of uploading?
>
> **Fu Jinzai:** I actually wasn't that excited about the prospect. It was something that I just kind of did because it felt like it'd be easier than sticking around. The kids weren't seeing me anyway, and I could at least get them some cash for when they were older. It sounded nice enough up here, but there were still nice things back there, you know? I didn't think about it too much.
>
> **Ioan:** What do you miss most about phys-side?
>
> **Jinzai:** The mountains.
>
> **Ioan:** Have you done much exploring in the mountains around here?
>
> **Jinzai:** Oh, sure. They're fine. Some of the ones that I've gotten around to visiting are really nice. They've got a lot of variety and all. There are some that are more like the Alps and some that are more like the Himalayas and some that are kind of like the ones back home, but it's not that I miss, like, the idea of mountains. I miss the little bits of the mountains that made them mine. I miss all the little caves that you could find, or when trees that had fallen over and their root-balls had been pulled up and you could sit under them if you weren't afraid of bugs or anything [laughter]. I miss the little shacks that people had built years and years and years ago, and, like, you have no idea what they were there for, right? Maybe this one is next to a pond, so it's for fishing, but then that one is just kind of in the middle of a forest, and it's too big to be an outhouse and too small to be a cabin, so maybe its a, a [snapping fingers] hunting blind? Is that the word?
>
> **Ioan:** Where you sit and wait for animals to go by while hunting?
>
> **Jinzai:** Yes! A hunting blind. And then I miss --- and this is really silly --- I miss logging. It's horrible, right? [laughter] I know that it's horrible. Some people put in logging trails on their mountains, but they don't put those big swaths of woody trash that the loggers leave behind. I kind of miss that, you know? I miss looking out to the next mountain over and seeing this big rectangular patch of brown. I miss hearing chainsaws running miles away across the valley, but it sounds like, I don't know, like a dream, because it's echoing around the hills.
>
> **Ioan:** It sounds a little like the mountains you've found here are too perfect, perhaps. Is that sort of what you're saying?
>
> **Jinzai:** Yeah, I think so. It's too perfect. I don't mind perfection, of course, it's a damn sight better than living a terrible life, but --- oh man, I'm gonna sound like my grandpa when I say this --- it lacks that kind of toughness that makes you build character. Not, like, the character that he meant, in the trash sense of, like, being a big tough guy, but like, I think if you could grow up here around all this perfection, you wouldn't have much character. You'd be pretty boring. [laughter] I guess I'm glad that you can't upload until you're 18, so you at least have a chance to have some comparison to perfect mountains with the shitty ones phys-side.
>
> **Ioan:** What's the first thing that you did after uploading?
>
> **Jinzai:** Oh man, this is gross, so I'm sorry ahead of time. I ate myself sick. [laughter] I found some of those big sims that are all food and whatever, and I figured, "Hey, I don't have a body, right? I can do whatever!" So I started hopping from sim to sim just absolutely stuffing myself until I felt like I was going to pop, but I started getting super uncomfortable, so I came home and got super sick. [laughter] Sorry, yeah, that's pretty gross. I didn't realize that you could fiddle with your sensa...sensi...
>
> **Ioan:** Sensorium?
>
> **Jinzai:** Yeah, sensorium. I didn't know that you could fiddle with it so that you could just keep eating or whatever, but unless you're conscious of it, your mind makes it so that you just kind of work like you do back home. Didn't know that, so I ate until I just about burst. [laughter]
>
> **Ioan:** What's your biggest regret about uploading.
>
> **Jinzai:** [long pause] I mean, I said that I wasn't really seeing my kids much back then, and I guess that was true enough. I got to see them two or three times a year when I got rotated between crops and had a few weeks of leave. But like...man. I love them. I love them so much. I love them and I miss them every day, just like I loved them and missed them every day back phys-side. I regret...ah, hell. [long pause] I regret that even though they didn't really know me all that well, that they'll never get to know me at all, now, and all I'll have are these memories and-- [long pause] and the only way I'll ever get to see them again is if they upload and, like, as a dad, I'm not sure that I really want them to. I know it's perfect and all, or at least can be, but I'm not sure I want them to feel like they need to upload to get away from a shit life, and I definitely don't want them to feel like they need to upload just to see me again.
-----
Ioan didn't know quite what it was about the latest messages from the launches that was nagging at em so much. It wasn't that either of the Codrins were sending back anything that was particularly surprising. Sure, the Odists had been a big part of Secession, but ey knew that, hadn't ey? They dealt with propaganda and speeches and politics, so they must have been, right? That's what was needed for something like seceding from the rest of the governments on earth, right?
It wasn't the more personal notes that ey'd gotten, expressing how life was going out on the LVs, all of the ways in which it was exactly the same, except for some key difference in sentiment. Those on the LVs felt like they were going on a journey, and those who remained at the L<sub>5</sub> System felt like they weren't, so there was an entirely different feeling between two societies that were otherwise identical.
*Three* societies, for it was obvious that Castor and Pollux were diverging rapidly without strict contact with each other or the System.
And it wasn't that, either. Ey had known from the very start that the systems on the LVs would diverge from each other as soon as they were launched. Nothing about that was weighing on em, and it was turning out to be precisely as interesting as ey had expected that it would be.
And yet, still...
-----
> **Ioan Bălan:** What was the first thing that you did after uploading?
>
> **Magnús Einarsson:** Sleep. I don't know why, but for some reason, right after uploading, I felt like all I could do was sleep.
>
> **Ioan:** Did you have trouble sleeping before you uploaded?
>
> **Magnús:** Not particularly, no. At least, I don't think so. I just found a room that I thought would be good and then slept for probably two days straight. That went on for a while, too, I would get up and eat or whatever, try and read a book, and then get so tired that I'd have to sleep again, so I'd sleep another twenty hours.
>
> **Ioan:** Do you still sleep a lot?
>
> **Magnús:** Not nearly so much, no, but still more than I did before uploading.
>
> **Ioan:** And you uploaded about thirty years ago?
>
> **Magnús:** 2292. March 3rd.
>
> **Ioan:** Alright, thank you.
>
> **Magnús:** Why do you ask?
>
> **Ioan:** I'm specifically looking for people who uploaded in the last 150 years, after they started-- I mean, after they stopped charging to let people upload.
>
> **Magnús:** They used to charge?
>
> **Ioan:** Yes. Was your family compensated for you to uplooad?
>
> **Magnús:** [laughter] Quite well, yes. It was this big argument between my wife and I. I didn't particularly want to upload, but she said that she'd be able to keep the kids in a better school up North with the funds, and then she'd follow once she was sure that they were in a good spot and that she could say goodbye to them properly and all. We'd heard all about it, and it obviously didn't sound bad at all. It was just...I don't know. It was like being asked to move away forever, even if I knew that she would follow, and that maybe my kids would too, after they had a good life.
>
> **Ioan:** Do you regret uploading at--
>
> **Magnús:** She never did.
>
> **Ioan:** I'm sorry?
>
> **Magnús:** She never followed. She got the kids in their nice school and remarried. I haven't heard from her in twenty-five years.
>
> **Ioan:** I'm sorry to hear that. It must've been hard to hear that from her.
>
> **Magnús:** Oh, I didn't hear it from her. I heard it from one of my kids. Anita. They wrote to me and said that mama had moved in with another man and that school was alright and that was that.
>
> **Ioan:** I'm sorry. Do you still talk with your children, at least?
>
> **Magnús:** I talk with Anita sometimes. They say they might upload in a few years. They say married life isn't what they expected, and now they're in much the same position I was. They have a kid. They're less strapped for cash with their husband's job, but they're still not going to get anywhere. It sounds like they have a much better relationship with their husband, though, so maybe it won't just be the same old cycle again.
>
> **Ioan:** How do you feel about that as an option for them?
>
> **Magnús:** I don't know. Disappointed? Disappointed but not surprised? If they do wind up coming here, then I am going to do my best to make up for lost time.
>
> **Ioan:** What sorts of things will you show them when they upload? What are some things that you like best up here?
>
> **Magnús:** There's the things that I like best, and then the things that I think we'll like best together. The things that I like best are the really relaxing things. I like swimming and then going and laying on the grass. I like reading. I like just sim-hopping and people watching. The things that I think we'll like best together are probably some of the game sims that people have set up. They really liked a lot of the spy sims back on the 'net, like the ones where you hide behind walls and sneak through a base and play capture the flag or whatever. I always found them stressful when I did them on my own, but doing one with them, one where we had to escape from a search party, is one of my best memories with them. They have some good ones here that I think they'd like.
-----
Eir current best guess at what kept their anxiety level always at least a little bit above baseline was the obvious similarities between Secession and Launch. It wasn't just that the Odists were involved in both, because both felt like something that the Odists would be interested in.
Rather, it was the fact that the very same individuals had wormed their way into the very same roles with two projects of very similar structure. Again, on the surface, not too surprising, but the result of that was that the two events started to look almost the same, which in turn made Ioan think that Secession had been almost a practice run for Launch.
Obviously it wasn't. At least not precisely. Secession was a necessary thing based on the politics of the time phys-side, while Launch was something that was borne out of a desire to explore.
Wasn't it?
It just felt an awful lot like those who had helped the most with Secession used their work as a template for executing the launch.
-----
> **Ioan Bălan:** What was the most disappointing thing that happened or that you saw after uploading?
>
> **Rosemary Seeley:** I think just how lonely it was at first.
>
> **Ioan:** Can you expand on that?
>
> **Rosemary:** I mean, when you first upload, you're kinda dumped into a set of common areas until you figure out where you're going to stay or whatever. You can meet up with family members if you have them --- I didn't --- or you can meet up with those of a similar culture or religion --- I'm from the middle of the blandest town on the planet and don't hold to any religion --- or maybe you can meet up with others based around a similar interest. Thing is, I'm really interested in just cooking and chatting and reading.
>
> **Ioan:** Were you able to find any groups for cooking or reading?
>
> **Rosemary:** Not at first, which I think is what made it feel so isolating. People talk about System Freeze, and I can guarantee you it's real. [laughter]
>
> **Ioan:** How would you describe System Freeze?
>
> **Rosemary:** Well, I mean, I was poor as dirt back on Earth. I was a pretty good cook who liked to read mystery novels when she wasn't working. If you're poor as dirt, you're only going to get so good at cooking, though, and you're only going to be reading a certain kind of mystery novel. It's not like I went through a ton of schooling to be reading anything high-minded, and what can I say, I'm a sucker for pulp. So I upload and wind up staying in a communal sim somewhere and every time I go out to look for people who like cooking, it's all these people who are *super* into it and have all this weird experience, so all I can do is take classes, and I feel like a real hick. Then I go out and look for reading clubs or people who like mystery novels, and all I can find are these groups that read what I liked ironically so that they can dunk on it with friends.
>
> **Ioan:** I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds really alienating.
>
> **Rosemary:** It was, yeah.
>
> **Ioan:** You said it was lonely at first. What was it that helped it be less lonely for you?
>
> **Rosemary:** Oh, you're going to laugh at this. It's really embarrassing.
>
> **Ioan:** You don't need to share if it's uncomfortable, of course.
>
> **Rosemary:** No, no. It's funny now. Just embarrassing. I started lying. I said that I was an author of a series of books that were mysteries that were also cookbooks. I said I was this schlock author who wrote terrible novels with mediocre recipes and just kept pumping them out as fast as I could under a bunch of different pseudonyms and that I got really tired of writing them and how bad they were, so I uploaded. I started just going to a few of those ironic book clubs and a few of the cooking classes and started talking about these horrible books that I'd written. Weird thing is? People started saying that they remembered them! I guess it is a real genre that people write, so any time someone said they remembered a book I'd laugh and look all embarrassed and say something like, "Oh nooo, that one was so bad! Paid the bills, though." [laughter] Eventually, I kind of dropped the bit, but by then, I'd gotten a few friends who were interested in just cooking normal things for each other, and a few others who actually liked the pulpy mysteries, and that's how I broke through it.
>
> **Ioan:** [laughter] That's really clever.
>
> **Rosemary:** The one time I've been proud of lying, yeah.
>
> **Ioan:** What would you suggest that others experiencing System Freeze do?
>
> **Rosemary:** Don't wait for it to solve itself, and don't wear yourself out searching. You can just make whatever interest group you want, and if one exists, just be willing to get folded into it. You won't even have to lie. [laughter] But that's just the start. If you don't actually want to keep up with the interest group long-term, that's fine, your only real goal is to start meeting people, then things start to thaw.
-----
And so here ey was, hunting down those who had uploaded specifically for the money that it would leave their families and friends back phys-side. Their stories were, ey figured, just as valid as anyone's. They were just as valid as eir own, for had ey not done the same? Here ey was, interviewing those like emself.
These were the people who had moved to the System out of some sense of not just a better life for themselves, but one for those they had left behind. Ioan had had few enough ties back to eir family phys-side after uploading --- only enough to ensure that the payments had gone through and that eir kid brother was alright --- and then none since then. If any of eir family had uploaded since then, none had gotten in touch.
Eir hope in undertaking this exercise had been to learn a bit more about the time between Secession and Launch, about what had lead to the demographics of a System that had decided to hurl large portions of itself out into space. Was it something perhaps borne of the sentiment of the population that had grown in the intervening years? Was it something that had always been there?
When ey had come up with the list of questions, ey had intended to divine why those who had uploaded had found the System attractive. Was that, perhaps, what had driven the desire for the launch?
And yet now, it seemed like that was, at most, a secondary effect.
So much was going on that had gone on before and so many of the same actors were involved that, although these interviews had been interesting in and of themselves, it seemed doubtful that such had had any notable affect.
-----
> **Ioan:** How do you feel about the launch project?
>
> **Jinzai:** [shrugging] It feels largely irrelevant to me. I'm here to help my kids, and if they upload some day, I want to be here for them.
>
> **Ioan:** Did you send a fork to go along with the launches?
>
> **Jinzai:** No, I never really felt comfortable with forking. Just me here on the station.
>
-----
> **Ioan:** How do you feel about the launch?
>
> **Magnús:** I don't care. It doesn't matter, does it? It's just this wild-eyed idea that feels like it doesn't have much relevance. I don't remember having any interest in [said in a singsong voice] exploring the galaxy when I was on Earth, and I don't have any now, so why bother? I don't think anyone else did, down there, either.
>
> **Ioan:** Did you send a fork along with the launches?
>
> **Magnús:** Never forked before. Never got the hang of it.
-----
> **Ioan:** How do you feel about the launch?
>
> **Rosemary:** It felt silly, you know? Like this big, grand idea that some folks get, and it was just kind of one of those things that folks do just to say they can, like going to Mars, or creating their own wild sim.
>
> **Ioan:** Did you send a fork along with the launches?
>
> **Rosemary:** Yeah. I figured, "Why not? No harm in going so long as I can stay here, right?"
-----
And so ey went home, back to work on the project, back to receive more updates from the Codrins and the LVs. Back to sit in front of an empty page, considering what it meant that they felt caught up in some storm, some vortex that ey could not see except that the occasional landmark would pass through their field of view, once every two hundred years. Back to sit with May and at least feel comfortable with someone, even if that someone was starting to feel, for some reason ey could not fully understand, as though they were part of that very vortex.