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# Ioan Bălan --- 2325
# True Name --- 2124
Ioan's next interview subject was waiting for em at the agreed-upon library in the agreed-upon sim.
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.
The location was grand, as though it had been tailored perfectly to eir tastes: a cube sixty meters on a side, lit brightly by lights so that within shone a smaller cube made entirely of shelves. Shelves containing book after book after book. Spiral staircases wound up each corner, disgorging patrons onto the various levels so that they could meander along balconies and dive into corridors of books. Books, magazines, pamphlets. Scrolls, parchments, leaflets, snippets, chicken-scratch in diaries, words upon words upon words.
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."
And there, on the bottom floor beneath all of the books, a cafe and bar, serving everything from tea and coffee to beer, whiskey, and doubtless some ridiculously fancy cocktails.
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."
"Mx. Ioan Bălan?" The young woman was waiting for em just inside the door to the cube.
"I'm surprised you didn't work it in bit by bit, but it'll go over well."
Ey held out a hand. "Yes. You must be Sadiah?"
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.
She beamed and bowed to em. "Yes, yes! It is nice to meet you. You'll have to forgive me for not shaking your hand, I don't like being touched. Follow me, though, I've staked out a booth where we can talk."
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.
They wound their way through a small crowd, an array of low couches and tables, and between the coffee and alcohol bars to a high-walled booth in the corner of the seating area.
"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."
"Would you like anything to drink before we begin?"
One of the Russians, in a rare sign of outward emotion, grinned broadly. "I thought you of all people would enjoy, Jonas."
Ioan shrugged, "A tea, perhaps. Too late in the day for coffee, too early for alcohol."
"Oh, don't get me wrong, I love it, but it's not exactly subtle."
Sadiah nodded. Within a minute, a server brought them two steaming cups of a milky tea --- chai, it turned out, and quite good, at that.
"We'll just say that we're in the middle of a spy reenactment."
Once they'd gotten the obligatory how-are-yous and good-teas and nice-libraries out of the way, Ioan retrieved eir notebook and a pen.
Debarre laughed. "Well, I'm for it. All we're missing is the ducks and a bag of breadcrumbs to feed them."
"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. Your name came recommended to me by several people. I'm glad to get the chance to talk with an actual historian."
"This can be arranged," another of the S-R Bloc trio said.
Her laugh was clear and bright. "No, thank *you*, Mx. Bălan. I've been looking forward to the chance to meet you for quite some time now."
"Another time, perhaps. We can play out the full scene."
Ey paused partway through unscrewing the cap of eir pen. "You have?"
"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.*
"Oh, yes! I've been following your work since the Ode clade project. You somehow manage to distill quite a bit down into a document that is clear and easy to read." She paused, then added, "Documents, I should say. I was lucky enough to get a chance to read the detailed history as well as the investigative journalism piece."
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.
"Really? I had no idea that it had made it out of the clade," ey said, posting the cap on the back of the pen. "I'm pleased to hear that you think so highly of me."
"What news on the markets?"
She nodded, grinning widely. "That's why I arranged for us to meet, today. I have lots to talk about, of course, but I wanted to meet you, as well."
"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."
Ioan hid an uncomfortable laugh behind a sip of tea. "I'm flattered. You arranged this?"
"How about sensorium messages?"
"Yes! I made friends with a few of yours and encouraged them to suggest that we meet."
"Proposal was accepted, and there's an alpha in place. Want to try?"
"That is quite a strange thing to do." Ey decided to roll with it, scratching out shorthand on eir paper. "Why did you think to do that?"
"Sure, why n-- Holy shit! Please don't do that again."
"Oh, because I'm horrible at actually asking for what I really want, and it's easier for me to ensure that things happen my way instead."
And on and on.
"That's very...well, honest. Thank you for letting me know, at least. What was the reason you wanted to meet me for, then? Beyond just, as you put it, wanting to meet me."
They'd made it about halfway around the pond before the discussion turned to True Name and Jonas.
Sadiah sat up straighter in the booth, setting her nearly untouched tea to the side. "Before I answer that, I need to know how much you know, so that I know where to start. Is that okay?"
"Glad to hear the launch is a go. I'm curious to see if there will be any interruptions in service meanwhile."
Ey nodded. The whole encounter was so outside eir experience that ey could think of nothing better to do.
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."
"Stop me when I get to something that you haven't heard or realized yet. Two hundred years ago, the System seceded from the rest of the institutions on Earth. This happened in conjunction with one of the launches for the L<sub>5</sub> station. Secession was organized by the Council of Eight, one of whom was Michelle Hadje, the progenitor of the Ode clade --- this is why I was so interested in your work, I'll note. The Ode clade is made up of, nominally, one hundred individual instances, though they occasionally spin off long-running instances and pretend they haven't. The first ten of these instances were created shortly before Secession in order to help handle the workload as Michelle grew tired of her position. With me, so far?"
"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."
"Yes, that sounds correct," ey said. Ey figured it was not worth correcting her on the reality of Michelle, of what ey'd seen and heard from May and Dear.
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."
"Okay." Sadiah continued her speech smoothly, sitting almost completely still, as though reciting something from memory. "The Odists were integral to both Secession and Launch, and may have orchestrated both, each in their own way. I see you frowning, which I'll take to mean that I'm getting close to the limits of where our knowledge agrees."
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.
"I suppose, yes. Some of the discussions I've had --- my clade has had, I mean --- with Odists have brought much of this to light over the past few days."
*Excellent, it is already in their minds,* she thought. *Just need to keep going.*
"Excellent. Please stop me when I reach the place when our knowledge diverges. The Ode clade, through managing Secession and Launch, has influenced the politics of the System, such as they are, as well as those on Earth, which--"
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."
"Okay. This is new to me, and you're also speaking a little too fast for me to keep up. If you are able to, can you slow down?"
Zeke rumbled with a laugh. "They're actually calling it 'secession' now? How delightful."
She laughed breathlessly, finally letting her shoulders sag and her chin droop. "Alright, I'll try. Thank you for reminding me, I get excitable, sometimes."
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.*
*I could tell,* ey thought.
"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."
"So which part about influencing politics had you not heard before?"
The trio nodded in unison. "We will be working on that."
"The bit about influencing politics phys-side." Ey shook eir head, "Which I'm a little confused about. I suppose I can see how that might work, given the communication between sys- and phys-side during both of those occurrences, but--"
"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."
"I'll note that we're nearing the extent of my knowledge as well. Sorry, I interrupted." Despite the acknowledgement, she continued, unfazed. "All I can say is that I've noticed patterns. I think you have, too, as mentioned when you frowned, but I am starting to piece together patterns that go beyond that. Yes, they helped with Secession, yes they helped with Launch --- more than helped, organized --- but that, I think, includes subtle manipulation of politics planet-side in order to ensure that both happened precisely as they wanted."
"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."
"Where are you seeing that?"
True Name laughed. "When was the last time you even saw fireworks?"
She cocked her head to the side and waved an arm expansively above the two of them. "It's all there, Mx. Bălan. The news that we received from phys-side shows some of the same patterns that we also see sys-side. The hesitant gestures toward a project, which are suddenly rapidly and smoothly moving forward. You must understand, projects like this do not move smoothly on their own, nor do they change the speed at which they move without some outside influence. That is why we speak of momentum and inertia when it comes to projects as well as forces, yes?"
"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."
Ey realized that ey hadn't been writing anything, so ey focused momentarily on jotting some of this information while Sadiah wasn't speaking. Finally, ey said, "How do you picture this influence working?"
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.
"I don't know."
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.
"I can see how the right words in the right ears might help smooth things along, at least. Do you think that might be enough to lead to these changes you're talking about?"
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.
"I don't know," she repeated, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
"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.
"Say that the Odists have managed to have a hand in both Secession and Launch," ey continued. Ey did not smile. "What does that get them? What is their motivation?"
"Thank you, yes. Perhaps champagne would be better."
"I don't know." She was smiling in earnest now.
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."
"And," ey said, realizing that eir frustration was showing, but was unable to stop it. "What impact does that have on us? Or on Earth?"
"Do not even start," she said, laughing. "I do not sleep with slimy politicians."
"Mx. Bălan," she said, laughing. "I don't know. I don't know! Isn't that exciting in and of itself? I don't know, and that means that we have something interesting to work on. There are patterns here, as you acknowledge, and they may go deeper, or they may not, but that gives us a direction to look, doesn't it? It gives us direction to our questions, doesn't it? You've been asking why people have been staying or leaving. Your cocladists have been asking the same on the launches, I imagine. Those are good questions for boring histories. This is a tenuous question for exciting histories!"
"You know, you're going to have to drop that act at some point. You have a speech writer, a styling team, a propagandist--"
She was waving her arms around now, and the volume of her voice had steadily increased. Ioan was happy for the cone of silence that came with the booth.
"They are all the same instance."
"Sadiah, I must ask you to both slow down and lower your voice again," ey said, as calm as ey could manage. "I'm having a hard time keeping up and the shouting is making me anxious."
"--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."
Startled, she let her shoulders slouch and chin dip once more. "Sorry, Mx. Bălan. Thank you for reminding me again. I don't like touch, you don't like loud noises. *Quid pro quo.*"
"Alright, fine. Just do not tell anyone, okay?"
Ey didn't think that's quite what that meant. That, or if she did mean it as an actual this-for-that exchange, she was on far more levels of manipulation than ey was comfortable with. This arranged meeting was closer to the Odists' manipulation as she'd described than perhaps even she realized.
"Lips are sealed."
"Humor me in at least a few of the questions. Why are you here on the System? If you are also on the LVs, why remain here as well?"
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."
"If the patterns are also showing up planet-side, why on Earth would I leave?" she said, laughing. "Pardon the expression."
"How do you figure?"
"Okay." Ey let the answer flow onto the page in eir shorthand. "And why did you upload in the first place?"
"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."
Sadiah sat back suddenly as though slapped, blinking rapidly and tapping at the table anxiously. "I...I don't know."
"And then there's us," Jonas said, nodding. "The ex-WF rep and whatever the hell you are."
"You don't?"
"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."
"I really don't," she said. She was talking slow and quiet now. Her expression was as scared as her voice was. "I don't know, I don't know."
Jonas nodded. "For the better, I'd say."
"Do you remember when, at least?"
"Do you think she was not a good council member?"
"2295, but I don't know why."
"Oh, she was fine. Good ideas. Smart. What she lacked was direction, which you make up in spades."
"Alright. I feel like I've touched a nerve, for which I apologize. What do you miss most about living phys-side, and what excited you most about moving sys-side?"
"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."
At this, the historian --- if that's what she was --- relaxed. "I was fundamentally unhappy with the limitation of time and just how much research I could do at once, so I came to where I could fork."
Jonas shrugged. "At least someone's keeping Michelle company."
Ey nodded and jotted down the answer. "And, last one, what's the first thing that you did after uploading?"
True Name said nothing, simply returning to watching the movement of the shoppers.
"I don't...I don't know." She looked to be on the verge of tears.
"What's next on your list, fuzzy?"
Ioan held up eir hands disarmingly. "Let's end the interview here, I think. I've clearly set you on edge, and you've given me a lot to think about. Is it alright if I get to work on processing this?"
"If you call me 'fuzzy' again, I will dump this coffee over your head and rub it into your perfect fucking hair."
She nodded meekly. The shift in her attitude was so jarring that eir anxiety only spiked higher. This went beyond touching a nerve; it was as though her whole script collapsed and, with it, her sense of self.
He laughed.
"If I have any further questions, I'll be in touch," ey said, sliding out of eir seat in the booth, capping eir pen in the same motion. After a moment's pause, ey added, "And I'd like to ask that you respect my boundaries and not try to engineer another meeting between us, okay? I think that would just stress the both of us out."
"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."
Another nod, and then Sadiah either left the sim or quit. Ioan couldn't tell which, because ey was already heading for the exit of the building.
Back at eir house, ey kicked off eir shoes, set eir half completed notes on eir desk, and immediately walked into the bedroom to lay down.
May, ever attuned to eir mood, immediately forked and followed em to the room. "Ioan?"
Ey paused, halfway onto the bed.
"May I join you?"
Ey thought about all of the things Sadiah had said, all of the things ey'd learned about the Odists these last few however many weeks, both on eir own and through eir communications with the Codrins. Ey thought about all of the ways in which, whether or not they were true, this spoke to a level of manipulation that ey'd not suspected before. Ey thought, also, about how truly caught up in it ey was.
And then ey nodded anyway, finished crawling into bed, and let May play with eir hair as ey rested eir head on her lap.
Ey felt helpless to do anything but.