Bumpnumbers

content/read/050.md

@@ -1,123 +1,169 @@
-# Codrin Bălan#Pollux --- 2325
+# Ioan Bălan --- 2325
 
-The messages between LVs and the L<sub>5</sub> System were flying as fast and as thick as possible, given the nearly day and a half transmission time between the station and the launches. It was enough time for Codrin to sit and stew and plan.
+Before eir scheduled interview, Ioan took a walk around that abandoned lake, this time by emself. Ey needed a moment to think, and that moment, though through no fault of hers, needed to be away from May.
 
-The sheer amount of information that was being generated by the Bălan clade and all of their Odist assistants and lovers was enormous, and so much of it was so important, so meaningful, so *weird* that there was little else ey felt ey could do. There was no clarification that any one of them could offer the other that would take the form of a conversation, something immediate. Instead, they each had to wait three days for a response to a query. Messages became letters, rather than conversations.
+Ey needed to do what ey was best at. Thinking, ruminating, disentangling the knotted strands of what eir thoughts were so that ey might begin to comprehend the truth about them.
 
-So there was nothing to do but go for it. Ey spent as much time as ey could digesting all of the stories, the stories of True Name and Jonas, the stories of the Odists and Yared. Ey had talked as much as Dear was willing to talk, and so there was nothing for it but to pack eir pen and paper and head to the high-rise apartment in the middle of the city that ey'd been directed to.
+These knots were angry ones.
 
-Ne Jonas greeted em at the door and grinned wide, "Codrin! Wonderful to see you!"
+Or, perhaps not angry. They were frustrating ones. They were knots that ey knew the technical reasons for existing, but was starting to nonetheless resent. They were knots that bound and limited the process with which ey learned, as frustrating as the recondite letters that Qoheleth had sent so often, so long ago. Little hints and clues and never exactly the complete answer all at once. Never an explanation that allowed for further questions. Always too little, as though ey (and, at the time, Dear) was being strung along, lured into some unknown trap.
 
-Ey didn't know what ey expected, but it was certainly not this. Both Codrin#Castor and Ioan had described Jonas as handsome to the point of being almost annoyingly so. The tall, blond, chiseled features type.
+The same thing was happening now. Ey understood the technical reasons for no one, single Odist answering all of the questions ey had, ey and eir clade. There were too many emotions, too much secrecy, or too much shame bound up in the answers for them to sit down and tell a story from start to finish. None of them would admit to any more than one single thing throughout each interview, instead relying on the agreed upon admonition to stop when requested or warning that, after a certain point, the Odist would lie to or resent the Bălan.
 
-Here before em, though, was a rather plain, unremarkable man. He was not forgettable as user11824 was, he was simply middle aged, bookish, and completely...average.
+Ey was half tempted to push one of them past that point, but then ey wouldn't know what bit was true or not.
 
-Nevertheless, Codrin liked him at once. He was not attractive, but his attitude was unfailingly kind. Not avuncular, *per se,* but perhaps the friendly professor that everyone likes, even when they fail his class. Maybe it was the button-up shirt and jeans, maybe it was the way he smiled, the way he talked. Maybe it was just the whole of him. The everything that made Ne Jonas Ne Jonas was perfectly crafted to appeal to that of the academic in Codrin.
+And these Jonases! Ey was going to see one today, after eir walk. They seemed so slippery. It was not just that they controlled the interview, though ey did not doubt that --- the transcript from Codrin#Castor contained a new twist every time ey reread it. It was that they knew so thoroughly that they were doing so that they did it all with a wink and a smile. That little hint that ey was to know that all they'd done was so clearly calculated yet held so much plausible deniability that there really was no arguing with it.
 
-"Ne Jonas, yes? Thank you so much for having me over."
+Ey was not looking forward to eir interview with Jonas Prime today.
 
-"Of course, of course! Just Ne, though. I'm less of a Jonas than the rest." He walked into the apartment and around the corner, beckoning Codrin with. "Tea, though? It's just Earl Grey, but hey, it's something."
+So, instead, ey stomped along the path and thought and talked to emself, walking all the way to the rock halfway around the lake from the default entry point to the sim, throwing a few handfuls of stones into the placid water one by one, and then stomping all the way back to that same point.
 
-The kitchen that Codrin had been led into was of a style that felt old even to em, who had uploaded nearly a century back. Wooden chairs, well worn. Wooden table, scratched and dinged. Tile floor, the grout black from years of dirt and grime ground into it.
+Once ey'd had eir sulk, ey headed to the meeting with Jonas.
 
-"Uh, sure. I'll take a cup."
+Unexpectedly, this turned out to be at the same library at which ey had interviewed Sadiah. Not only that, but Jonas Prime was standing in exactly the same spot that she had been standing in, greeted em with much the same bow that the other historian had, and led em to the exact same booth in the cafe-*cum*-bar beneath the stacks. It was uncanny to such a degree as to immediately put em on the defensive, guarding against some threat, real or imagined.
 
-"Cream and sugar?"
+Once again, the drinks were ordered --- cocktails, this time --- and the cone of silence fell. Jonas rested his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his folded hands. It was an incredibly charming look. "Mx. Bălan, so nice to meet you at last."
 
-"Just cream, please."
+"Have you heard that much about me, then?" Ey did eir best to keep eir smile as earnest as possible.
 
-"Oh..." Ne sounded crestfallen. "I have skim milk, is that okay?"
+"Oh, of course! You and your clade have been traipsing all over the place, interviewing some of my favorite people, and every one of them says that the Bălans are an utter delight to talk with."
 
-"Sure, I'll take it." Codrin laughed, watching the older man putter around the kitchen. Meanwhile, ey pulled out eir pen and paper to take notes. "You know, you're not at all what I expected, I have to say. I was all geared up to be talking to some hot-shot politician in front of some sleek desk or whatever, not sharing tea around a table."
+Ey kept the smile in place. "I'm happy to hear that. I know that questions can get a bit tiring, so I try to make it a pleasant process, at least. If at any point you need to take a break or stop, just let me know."
 
-Ne turned a dial on the stove to start the kettle, frowned, and then pulled a lighter out of a drawer in order to light the gas when the igniter did not. "Not all Jonases are alike, Codrin." He grinned over his shoulder. "Most of them are, of course. You would've gotten the politician treatment from just about any other Jonas, but some of us got tired of that snazzy life and opted for something a little simpler."
+Jonas waved away the comment as though there existed no reality where so nice a scholar could ever tire him out. "I'm excited to see what it is you have for me. Ask away!"
 
-"What led you to do so?"
+Ioan nodded and pulled out eir pen and papers. Ey spent a moment poking through the stable of questions that ey'd been asking anyone, frowned, and then flipped to a blank page. "I had a set that I was thinking of asking you, but I think I'm actually going to go off script here. My first question surrounds something that Codrin#Pollux heard by an Odist. I know you aren't one, but I'm hoping that you can shed some light on it."
 
-While the kettle crawled to a boil, Ne turned, leaning back against the counter and smiling to Codrin, arms crossed over his chest. "I think it was the pressure of it. It's not that I'm not still doing my work, but when you look like that, you feel like you have all the pressure of your job resting on your shoulders. Changing my appearance, changing the way I lived, well, it made me actually start enjoying work again, rather than it being the job that owned me."
+"I'll do my best, of course. I'd tell you to ask one of them, but I doubt you'd get a straight answer, which I suspect you already know."
 
-"I think I can understand that. I used to own the academic look pretty hard, back when I was Ioan. Over time, though, as my work and home life shifted, I found that I felt less comfortable in that state and more comfortable in, well." Ey gestured at emself, eir tunic and sarong.
+"And you'll give me straight answers?"
 
-"Do you think you became less of an academic and more of something else?" Ne asked.
+Jonas grinned. "Best I can, sure."
 
-"That's a good question. I don't know that I ever really was an academic. I was an investigative journalist, more than anything. I was a writer who fancied emself a historian. Now, I guess I've shifted more to the creative side, maybe. A lot more writing, a lot less history, at least up until this project."
+"Alright, then. After Why Ask Questions told Codrin that True Name was to instigate and manage the launch project, ey asked what she meant by that. She responded that the last thing that Michelle had done before she died was to give each of the stanzas a mission, and that True Name's mission was to, and I'm quoting here, "Do something big, help us divest". Given your proximity to True Name, can you clarify what she meant? What does it mean to divest?"
 
-"Think living with an Odist helped in that regard?"
+He laughed heartily and lifted his tall glass, saying, "To boldness! And here I was expecting you to ask if I'd invested in the launch or whatever. That is an incredible first question."
 
-Codrin nodded. "Dear's very...well. It's very itself. Not sure how else to put it. But it's also been good at getting me out of the comfort zone that I'd found myself in up until then. It was a good zone, and I'm glad that Ioan still has that, but I also like what I'm doing now."
+Ioan hesitated, then lifted eir own glass to return the toast. "To boldness. You have it, I need it."
 
-They were interrupted by the rising whine of the kettle, which Ne pulled off the burner. He turned off the stove and filled two mugs, which he brought to the table before grabbing a carton of milk from the fridge.
+"I have too much, my friend, and you need more, that's all." Jonas winked, then continued, "So, divest. The reason that's an interesting question is that's the word that immediately sold me when True Name came to me with that suggestion. It was the lynchpin on which the project was hung, and we built outward from there."
 
-The tea was a perfectly acceptable Earl Grey. The milk was unremarkable. The mugs were mismatched and stained with a dark patina from decades of use. It was comfortable and charming in all its imperfections.
+Ey scribbled quickly in eir shorthand, doing eir best to take down verbatim what Jonas was saying. Ey'd be able to remember, for sure, but through writing, ey might better process and use what time ey had with the founder while ey had the chance.
 
-"So, what is it that you're doing now that you feel better doing in this form?" ey asked, nodding to Ne.
+"It could've meant so many things," he was saying. "It could've meant just "clone the System and leave a copy at the Earth-Sun L<sub>5</sub> point". It could've meant "break the physical elements of the System up into much smaller ones and scatter them around so that damage to one did not beggar the others". Both of those are still on the table, by the way.
 
-"I'm a little like you, I guess. I'm the one who takes all of the history and draws it together into a big picture. From there, I ensure that the rest of the clade --- at least, the rest of the clade that's working on this project --- remains on the same page and doesn't diverge too far. I'm the clerk to Prime's executive."
+"We took it in another way, however, given news that we've been reaching from Earth. In particular, we were noticing a tendency to move from the excesses of capitalism back to the day-to-day hardships of feudalism and even, in some cases, subsistence farming. The problem, I'm sure you can imagine, is that when you're stuck being a peasant or scraping by to earn the most meager living, you aren't all that keen on space. It's only by dint of a few dreamers and the impossibility of retrieving it that the System remains up here in the first place."
 
-"Is that why you look like a cross between a professor and an author?"
+Ioan nodded. "One of our interviewees phys-side said much the same thing."
 
-Ne grinned between puffs of breath over his steaming mug. "Yes. It's hard to reconcile that job description with looking like some high-powered attorney or movie star or whatever they're looking like these days."
+"A dreamer, then," Jonas said, grinning. "But yes, life down there is horrible and no one --- or essentially no one --- wants to do a single damn thing about it. They're all so caught up in their little political games that they have no interest on doing anything to make their lives better, to live stronger."
 
-"You don't see them much?"
+"You don't sound very fond of them."
 
-He shook his head. "We mostly correspond through writing and media messages."
+"Of course I am! I love every one of them for the delightfully stupid contradictions that they are, in the same way that one can both love and be disgusted by humanity as a whole. I'm just a pessimist, Ioan. You mustn't confuse pessimism with disdain. I can read the signs as well as any other, and I don't see them willing to do anything at all to do what life demands."
 
-Codrin nodded. "The best form of communication, if you ask me."
+Ioan lifted eir pen from the page and looked up at Jonas. "What life demands?"
 
-"You would think so, wouldn't you?" Ne Jonas laughed, sipped at his tea, winced, and set the mug down again. "But here, look at me, I've gone and steered the conversation to other topics. I want to make sure that I get to your questions. What do you have for me?"
+"Life all but demands more life. That's why those stupid contradictions back planet-side won't stop having children. Oh, we played them for that, of course. You learned that from End Waking, yes? We played on their desire to keep on fucking because...what was it, Life Breeds Life? It does. There's no way around it."
 
-It almost felt a shame to move on to what Codrin knew were some topics that might be difficult or tense, but ey supposed it was as good a time as any. "Well, first of all, has your clade been keeping you up to date on the status of this project? I don't want to make you feel like you're repeating yourself."
+"It seems to me like you've stated a contradiction," ey said. "You said that they aren't willing to do what life demands, then said that they keep procreating as life demands. Is that what you meant?"
 
-Ne nodded and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. "You've interviewed No Jonas and Jonas Prime from our clade, and from the Ode clade, you've interviewed Dear, Why Ask Questions, True Name, End Waking, and May Then My Name. You've also interviewed Ezekiel, Debarre, user11824, Yared Zerezghi, Sadiah, Brahe, and dozens of others who fall below the relevance threshold. I believe your counterpart on Castor is interviewing True Name today for a second time, as well. Have I missed anyone worth talking about?"
+"Let me clarify. There's more to what life demands than just breeding. There is a level of intentionality required. In order for breeding to be effective, it has to have the right level of pressure put upon it. When breeding goes unchecked, you end up with an uncontrollable morass of life-stuff, and when that happens, you're more likely to run into systems running out of control, whether those are political systems, social systems, or even technological systems. Do you know why the race towards developing a true artificial intelligence stopped around the time of Secession?"
 
-Codrin had paused, mug of tea halfway between the table and eir lips, and stared at Ne throughout the litany.
+Ioan shook eir head.
 
-"I don't imagine I have," he continued, smiling. "You've talked about the influence of the Jonas and Ode clades in Secession and Launch, the ways in which we have interacted with phys-side both financially and politically in the last two hundred years, the work we did around Launch, our reasons for enforcing stability and divesting our resources to maintain continuity, and the concerns we hold around the Dreamer Modules. Correct? You may sip your tea first, though, if you'd like! Don't let me stop you."
+Jonas's smile returned. "Because we didn't want it to. That's not the right pressure on life that we want. It offers too much risk to existing life, whether biological or uploaded. So, we pulled our strings, as you know we do, and ensured that interest in such projects dropped in favor of others. Better expert systems. Better integrations tech. Better entertainment."
 
-Ey set the mug carefully back onto the table, startled to realize that eir hand was shaking and eir breath coming shallow. Suddenly, ey saw the sim for what it was: a carefully prepared presentation, something constructed from top to bottom to appeal specifically to Codrin and those like em. The same, too, applied to Ne Jonas, whose entire personality was built around engendering feelings of camaraderie in those interested in history and stories.
+"Wait, how is AI a threat to the System?"
 
-"That...that's about the whole of it, yeah," ey said hoarsely. "How did you know all of that?"
+"Of what use is the System to an artificial intelligence? It can't join us. It can't control us directly. There's only one way for it to put pressure on us to do any one thing, and that's to influence life phys-side, just as we've done, to convince them not to upload. The best we can ever hope from an AI is it ignoring us and letting us continue. The best we can expect should it not ignore us is a stalemate. A cold war."
 
-Ne laughed, stealing another sip of his tea before responding. "Oh, I've told you that already, Codrin! It's my job to draw together all of the threads and pull together the big picture. I don't know how the specifics get to me, that's not my job. I just piece them all together. The big picture here is that you and yours are building the history of the System from start to Launch, and you're finding out just how much story there is. You, like so many others, were comfortable in that boring stasis, as well you should have been, and now you're coming to terms with something new, something actually exciting, and you're waking up to it. This goes way beyond Qoheleth's stage play about memory; this is about the very foundations of your life."
+Ey frowned as ey noted that on eir rapidly filling page. "Is there no way for an AI's goals to align with the System's?"
 
-Codrin forced emself to take a sip of the tea. It was thin, with the skim milk in it, and ey couldn't actually taste it for the pounding of eir heart. "Well," ey said, struggling to maintain calm. "That actually crosses several of the questions I had prepared off my list as either answered or irrelevant."
+"Perhaps there is, but remember," he said, poking his thumb back towards his chest. "Pessimist. It fails the cost-benefit analysis. Not worth the risk."
 
-"Have you come up with any new ones?"
+"So, instead you decided to ensure that phys-side and the System continued their symbiotic relationship?"
 
-"Uh...some. The first is: why are you letting us even continue with the history project if you're aiming to keep stability within the system? Won't all of this coming to light impact that at all?"
+"The part of me which has moved beyond pessimism and into disillusionment wants to sigh and say, "symbiotic is too kind a way to put it," but even I don't think that's true. We need them in order to continue growing, and they need us as something to dream about."
 
-Ne brightened. "Oh, that's a good one! The answer is twofold. Part one relates to something the No Jonas said to the other Codrin: stability is a thing that needs to be gardened and maintained, that there is no true stasis, but stability approaches that point like the man in Zeno's Paradox. This is a form of that gardening. When you have a rose garden or topiary, you know, you must cut away bits of it, but when you do, the whole becomes all the healthier and can last for years and years in the state you like it best. It may seem like a traumatic event to trim back roses. After all, you are cutting away good growth, aren't you? But that's how you get beautiful roses, year after year.
+"Alright," Ioan said, dropping the line of questioning before it got too far from the few others ey still wanted to ask. "So it was decided that the launch was a good way to ensure that the System divested because it moved beyond what it was."
 
-"That's what we're doing with this project. We're introducing a slightly traumatic event to make the stability of the system --- that's lower-case s, there, I'm talking of the sociopolitical system of those on the three capital-S Systems --- stronger. Does that make sense?"
+"Yep!" Jonas took a sip of his drink and grinned. "We decided on off-site backups as a form of risk management. They're not totally safe, of course, and they are, in their own ways, doomed. They'll eventually get caught in too eccentric an orbit around a star and burn up when they get too close, but until then, the lives that are lived within continue, secure. More than that, it gives them time to figure out if there's a way to ensure that sys-side life does as life will and expand in a way that isn't just forking. A pipe dream, perhaps, but a nice one."
 
-"I suppose," Codrin said. "You've done the cost-benefit analysis and determined it's worth continuing on with, right?"
+"So you and True Name steered the launch project into existence to help that along." When Jonas nodded, ey continued, "Just as you did with Secession, yes?"
 
-"Yes, precisely that," Ne said.
+"Yeah. We used our elements phys-side to ensure that Secession happened. One of them came up with the idea, but we spun it to be as much in our advantage as theirs. We used Yared, as I believe you know, but we also used many, many others out there. It led us to a much more stable place in the world."
 
-"And what's the second reason?"
+"Speaking of, one your clade told one of mine that there are complex thoughts on stability and stasis. I just want to confirm that I'm understanding correctly. Launch fits into your concept of stasis by ensuring continuity."
 
-"The second reason is related to what Jonas Prime said to Ioan: humans, uploaded and not, need something to dream of. They need some better version of the life they live to hope for in order to feel comfortable. No one is happy for long in bliss, Codrin."
+"Sure, but also, a little bit of excitement is required to ensure that our lives stay boring. Even if our lives become interesting, or Castor's lives become interesting, or Pollux's, then there is a better than good chance that at least one of the others' will remain boring, just how we want it. No Jonas, was it? He probably called it 'gardening', which I like. We're tending topiary, here, and there are many of us over on each of the launches, doing the same."
 
-Ey blinked, sitting  up straighter. "You mean you need some trauma like this sys-side in order to give people more bliss to aim for?"
+Ioan nodded and paused to drink down a third of eir cocktail. Ey was thirsty, of course, but some part of em seemed to be craving the numbing aspects of alcohol. Ey continued, "Alright, I think I have two more questions. The first is that End Waking said that there were goals to influence the economies phys-side and explained that there were short term, medium term, and long term goals. He was kind enough to fill me in on the first two, but not the third. Can you tell me what the long term goals of meddling with the economy phys-side were? He said something about critical mass."
 
-"Precisely that." Ne sipped his tea now that it had cooled and nodded approvingly. "There is much madness in the Ode Clade, but that's what we suspect nudged Qoheleth over the edge. If you can't forget anything and all that you can remember is bliss, then bliss begins to feel like torture. His role was to think long term. He was working on the timescale of decades and centuries on shaping the perceived history of both of our clades, so he was already up to his ears in memory. This project of yours will instill a little bit of terror in the hearts of everyone. Not enough that they will rebel, of course. In well over ninety percent of cases, they won't do anything at all with the information, but it will tick up their anxiety a notch. Pain, anxiety, the need for something greater, these are all essential for survival. Without them, the world would be an impossibly dangerous place. Your history and May then My Name's mythology will put a dent in that bliss and make it less appealing. Does that make sense, too?"
+"Oh, that's an easy one," Jonas said. "It's basically the same as what I said about life. If life is to have the right level of constraining pressures on it, one of the easiest ways to do so is through the economy. The long-term goal of his 'meddling', as you put it, was to ensure the continuity of capitalism. It gives something for people to dream about, which are alternatives. It gives something for people to work against. Since they know that we rely on reputation up here, they have plenty dream about. The critical mass is the amount of money and participants required to turn this into a self-sustaining system."
 
-Codrin finished taking down eir notes and sipped eir tea, mulling it over. Eventually, ey nodded. "It does, yeah. We could thwart you by not publishing this project, but I guess you've already done the analysis on that and know that we won't."
+"Simple enough, I guess, even if a little frightening in its implications."
 
-"You guess correctly, yes. 'Thwart', though, is an interesting choice of words. Do you feel like these are some evil plans that we hold?"
+"What implications are those, Ioan?"
 
-"A little. It's very dramatic. Very much like those supervillains who believe that there are core problems with the world, and if only they could just fix them, life would be so much better."
+Ey frowned. "What it sounds like your goals are is to keep life on Earth from getting too nice. Or nice at all, really. It sounds like you're keeping the pressures high so that the System continues. More than continues, even. You wanted to keep it desirable as the greener grass on the other side of the fence."
 
-Ne laughed. "There *are* core problems with the world, Codrin. I've just enumerated several. You misunderstand, though. The core problems with the world aren't the absolutes that your supervillains deal in. They're the ways in which life struggles to maintain stable growth, and like I and my cocladists have said, the goal is not to solve those problems, but to garden around them and make them smaller problems. There is no solution to the question of what makes a stable and continuous world. That's the asymptote. All we can do is hew as close to that ideal as we can."
+"And how is that frightening?" Jonas laughed. "The grass *is* greener. We give them something to reach for. What more could anyone want out of life than a goal?"
 
-"I think that many phys-side would be pretty upset by that, though, right? If they learn that you've been pulling strings from the System to ensure that everything keeps going the way you want, won't they rebel against that idea?"
+Ioan kept from speaking up about what ey'd heard from those ey had interviewed who had uploaded for the money. Instead, ey asked. "Alright, last question for now. Two-parter. One of my clade interviewed someone who mentioned that there was some dissension with your clade about whether to go ahead with Launch. Is that true?"
 
-"There are two things working against that supposition," Ne said. "The first is that you misunderstand me when I say that we've done the cost-benefit analysis of your project and determined it beneficial. It's beneficial to both sys- and phys-side for exactly the same reasons, though the mechanics may be different. The second is that you are misjudging just how in over your head you really are with all that we've done, including phys-side. As soon as Launch started and as soon as you were nudged to start the project --- don't frown, Codrin, you should've seen this coming --- whispers were sent down the wire from the System to Earth to ensure that they would have the proper reaction to your work."
+Jonas shook his head, swallowing the last sip of his drink before saying, "There might have appeared to be, but I guarantee you that that was manufactured. Having some highly visible folks argue about whether or not it was a good idea gets everyone interested."
 
-Codrin sat, silent, and stared at the man across from em. The man who had just admitted to subtly influencing billions of lives over hundreds of years through an organization made up entirely, ey assumed, of two clades. Hundreds or thousands of instances of two individuals.
+"And the Dreamer Modules?"
 
-"I suspect we're about done with the interview, but you must understand, Mx. Bălan, that we are the end product of phys-side life. Stability demands that we think that way. It demands that we think of all those billions of people back on Earth as part of our garden. Not the rose bushes, but the vegetables. They are the crop that we harvest to stay alive, and therefore they must be tended with as much love and care as the roses."
+For the first time in the interview, for the first time since ey'd met Jonas --- the first time any Bălan had met any Jonas, if Codrin#Castor was correct --- he frowned. "You've been asking plenty of interesting questions, Ioan, but this is the first you've asked that is actively uncomfortable."
 
-The room felt like it was elongating, stretching away from em as Ne spoke, as ey capped eir pen and got to eir feet, as ey gathered eir papers. The room was elongating and eir vision dimming around the edges.
+Ioan waited.
 
-And still Ne Jonas sat, smiling kindly up to em. "That, my dear Codrin, is the big picture."
+The grin returned, playful this time. "Alright, have it your way! You historians, I'll never get it. Do you know what's on the Modules?"
+
+Ey thought back. "Research stuff. Telescopes, measurement devices, that sort of thing. Codrin said that ey got to lay in a field and look up at the stars as they really were outside the LV --- or at least as close as the sim would let them be."
+
+"And?"
+
+"Isn't there some broadcast continually playing? Something about prime numbers. Something to get aliens to get curious about Earth."
+
+Jonas's grin turned icy. "No, not Earth, Ioan. The System."
+
+"The L<sub>5</sub> System? Or those on the LVs?"
+
+"Space is unfathomably big, Mx Bălan. Stupendously big. There is absolutely no way that aliens, as you put it, would care about Earth or the solar system. There's no reason to come here. There's no reason for them to even bother with something so pitiful as us." The grin was edging into a smirk, now, and Ioan couldn't tell quite what it meant. Jonas continued, "No, the LV Systems. There is the broadcast to get extraterrestrial intelligences interested in the LVs, yes, but that's not all. There's a very precise set of instructions for how the System works, how the Ansible works, and an Ansible receiver. The same one used for uploading to the LVs."
+
+Ioan blinked and sat up straighter. "I don't remember hearing anything about that."
+
+"We clamped down on the knowledge as best we could as soon as we realized we wouldn't be able to rule it out." Jonas waved his hand. "Not important, though, because the last part of that package is a complete description of a human neural system and a basic description of our physiology. A complete map of our DNA, should they even want to build an entire human."
+
+"Whose DNA?"
+
+"Why, our very own Douglas Hadje! Who else? Blame True Name for that one." He laughed bitterly. "But that's all that they could ever want to  build a Douglas Hadje in simulation and send it through the Ansible to the attached System. It'd wind up in a dead zone, a locked-down sim, we made sure of that, but it'd be able to communicate, and enough people on that System know enough about the System that it might figure out how to break free of that restriction."
+
+"That sounds rather exciting though," Ioan said. "Why were you so against it?"
+
+"How much have we talked about risk tonight, Ioan?"
+
+"You're saying that it presents too great a risk to the continuity of the LV System?"
+
+"Ioan, you are very smart, but I need you to keep up if you're going to come away with interesting answers. Think through the list of instructions that I mentioned."
+
+Ey tilted eir head, then frowned. "There's an Ansible on there, you said, right? They could theoretically upload that same manufactured construct to this System, right?"
+
+Jonas nodded. "There we go. There's nothing to stop them from doing so, after all. It's easy enough for them to figure out that these are probes, and that probes must be coming from somewhere. There's no reason, then, for them not to find that somewhere and blast out constructs in our direction. We're taking steps now to match those new Hadjes to dump them in a similar locked-down sim. We'll ask our questions, then terminate them."
+
+"What about *the* Douglas Hadje?"
+
+"Oh, he'll be allowed. This is the least risky place for him to be, after all. He knows far too much to remain phys-side. But he'll be the last Douglas Hadje permitted."
+
+Ioan sighed, finished eir drink in a few big gulps, and sat for a moment, staring down at the rest of the blank page left for taking notes. Ey couldn't do it. It was too much. Much too much. "Jonas," ey said, reaching a hand across the table. "Thank you so much for letting me interview you. You've given me rather a lot to think about, so I may come back with more questions down the line. Is there any you want to keep me from publishing?"
+
+He returned the handshake and shrugged. "Nope, you're good to go with all of it. We've done the cost-benefit analysis, and this passes muster."
+
+They both stood and walked toward the exit.
+
+"Mx. Bălan, it's been an absolute pleasure."
+
+Ioan smiled and very carefully did not say, *For you, perhaps. For me, it has been absolutely terrifying.*