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-# Codrin Bălan#Castor --- 2325
+# Codrin Bălan#Pollux --- 2325
 
-Codrin Bălan was more nervous about this interview than ey'd ever been about one before. It's not that ey hadn't been anxious about talking with True Name previously --- ey certainly had, given the warning that Dear had left em with --- but in the intervening weeks, ey had had eir conversations with No Jonas and read the news from both Codrin#Pollux and Ioan about the wealth of knowledge that the Bălan clade had gathered.
+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.
 
-Dear gave no warning this time. It simply stood in the door of Codrin's office, looking some mixture between sad and frightened, and bowed its head when ey gave it a goodbye kiss atop the snout. Ey left eir #Tracker instance in eir office to sit and not think of anything while ey painted terribly, the better to reduce merge conflicts down the line, and then sent a fork back to the sim where first ey had met True Name.
+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.
 
-She was not smiling this time. She didn't look serious, just confident, competent, almost amused, but she was not smiling.
+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.
 
-"Are you ready for our interview, Mx. Codrin Bălan?"
+Ne Jonas greeted em at the door and grinned wide, "Codrin! Wonderful to see you!"
 
-Ey nodded, said, "As ready as I'll ever be, I suppose."
+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.
 
-"Excellent." She gestured em down to the office where first they'd met. There were no formalities. No shaking of hands, pleasant banter about which chair to use. The skunk simply sat in her chair at her desk across from em and waited.
+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.
 
-The desk was clean now. All of the notepads and pens had been cleared away, and ey wondered if what it had looked like before was, as all three interviewers were now learning, simply a means of shaping eir expectations and impressions. Did she even take notes with a pen and paper? Did she even need to? The desk, then, had become a barrier between the two, a pedestal on which True Name sat and, though she was shorter than the historian, looked down on em with a singular attention. This, too, was a means of shaping their interactions for as long as they spoke.
+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.
 
-"Alright," Codrin began, stepping up to this challenge as best ey could, drawing on all eir meager reserves of boldness to adopt the competent appearance of one who ought to be here as much as True Name. "Thank you once more for having me over and allowing me to interview you. Before I get started, is there anything that you'd like to say?"
+"Ne Jonas, yes? Thank you so much for having me over."
 
-"Yes," she said, nodding. "I would like to begin by preempting what I suspect are many of your questions so as to keep our discussions better focused. Through the various channels available to the Ode and Jonas clades, we know the list of individuals that you have so far interviewed, and much of the content of your interviews. We know that the Bălan clade has learned much of what transpired during Secession and leading up to Launch, as well as some of what has transpired during the intervening centuries."
+"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."
 
-Codrin hesitated, pen nib resting on paper, a dark blue spot of ink spreading slowly through the fibers.
+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.
 
-"With that in mind, what questions would you like to ask?" True Name's mien lost much of its amused sheen, and she was looking truly serious now.
+"Uh, sure. I'll take a cup."
 
-"Why?" The word was almost forced from em, let out in a rush as though ey had been struck or perhaps wanted to ask before ey lost all courage.
+"Cream and sugar?"
 
-"That is the correct question," she said. "Jonas and I have discussed how each of us should answer this question, figuring that both Codrins would ask much the same. Your cocladist will receive an answer today pertaining to the big picture reasoning for the long term goals, which surround the stability and continuity of the System. I will be discussing the same picture surrounding the *raison d'etre* of the System.
+"Just cream, please."
 
-"During the period of Secession, we began to see the utility for the System as something beyond a curiosity, something beyond a mere means of immortality as many at the time had understood it. The System, in our eyes allowed for a more perfect form of humanity. It is a place where an individual can truly flourish, where groups can experience true independence, where all of our imperfections can shine through and make us more what we are than we were before. With that in mind, those who remain phys-side are better thought of as a larval form of the species. They live, they love, they laugh, yes, but they do so in a way that is a shadow of what they could do, sys-side.
+"Oh..." Ne sounded crestfallen. "I have skim milk, is that okay?"
 
-"What we did, the way we thought and the actions we took, were perhaps borne out of some core anger at the shortcomings of the political system that led to the loss of our friends, of the individual behind the Name and of Debarre's partner and of so many others affected by the mere whims of an imperfect attempt to control the world. It did not matter why the Western Fed government decided to destroy those lives; what bill they voted or commented on does not matter. Was it a declaration of hostilities? A trade embargo? Who cares?
+"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."
 
-"What matters is that their actions spoke of an utter disregard for the very humanity of those affected. This was echoed in the referendum to which Secession was merely an amendment, that they had to even consider the fact that we sys-side deserved the individual rights granted those phys-side, the same rights that they held in such flagrant disregard."
+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."
 
-She nodded toward em. "You have this humanity. I have this humanity. Jonas has this humanity. You may not like us. You may think us manipulative and angry, or perhaps emotionless and cruel. You may think us villainous. It does not matter. What we have done, we have done to protect your humanity. What we have done, we have done to protect the humanity of all here on the System. What we have done, we have done to protect the humanity of even those phys-side, but you must understand, Codrin, that the humanity which requires the strictures of government is one less perfect than ours, and so we guide them to their logical conclusions."
+"What led you to do so?"
 
-"But why?" ey asked again, voice quavering. In fear, in anger, ey couldn't tell. "Why would you do that? Why guide the less perfect ones here? Even if you're right, that those who upload are somehow more perfect versions of those who don't or haven't yet. What does that even buy you? I don't get it. You don't sound like some psychotic villain who wants to bring humanity under their wing out of some misguided, high-minded ideals. You sound like a psychopath."
+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."
 
-True Name laughed. It was a musical laugh, replete with tones of real amusement and genuine pity. A fantastically toothy laugh, and those teeth were sharp. "There is nothing I can say that will convince you that I am earnest in these endeavors, Codrin. You know that. You know that you have already made up your mind."
+"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.
 
-Ey frowned. "Enlighten me."
+"Do you think you became less of an academic and more of something else?" Ne asked.
 
-"As you wish." She grinned, leaning back on her stool. "You are correct that I do not wish to bring humanity under my wing. What purpose would that serve? You have either learned or intuited, as all do, that the System is truly ungovernable, so how could I or the Jonas clade hope to govern it? No, we do not want to rule. You may be correct that we are psychopaths --- or at least that I am, I do not think that you need worry about your Dear or Ioan's May Then My Name. Humanity has simply evolved toward an inevitable two-stage life cycle. That of the fleshy pupae that do not know what it means to be a butterfly, and those butterflies that recognize the freedom of the air."
+"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."
 
-Codrin recapped eir pen, tucked it into eir pocket, and closed eir notebook. "That's one of those statements that makes sense on the surface until you think about it hard enough."
+"Think living with an Odist helped in that regard?"
 
-"Oh? How do you figure?" she asked, still grinning.
+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."
 
-"You know who we interviewed. Did you know that Ioan interviewed those who uploaded strictly for the cash payout for their families?"
+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.
 
-The skunk nodded.
+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.
 
-"Do you know the contents of those interviews?"
+"So, what is it that you're doing now that you feel better doing in this form?" ey asked, nodding to Ne.
 
-"No. We are not reading your notes, we are simply keeping tabs on the project."
+"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."
 
-"Much of what ey learned," ey said, starting to feel the heat of anger rising through fear, growing within em. "Indicated that many of those who upload, even if it's only those who upload for the incentive, hold more than just a cynical view of the System. They recognize that it is a tool that their governments hold over them and perhaps recognize that those governments are tools of the System in turn, even if only on some subconscious level. If they're your pupae, they know the terrors of being a butterfly caught in a net."
+"Is that why you look like a cross between a professor and an author?"
 
-"And Jonas Prime told Ioan about the cost-benefit analyses inherent in all that we do," True Name countered. "Some small fraction may be aware of and unhappy with the actions that we have taken, but in the grand scheme of things, we are simply setting up and maintaining the progression for all, removing them from lives that require such manipulations to somewhere where those manipulations are not just unneeded, but are not possible. The same applies to your project, as I'm sure you have heard. It passes the same measure as insignificant in the grand scheme of things."
+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."
 
-The skunk's words, however calm they might have seemed, battered and buffeted em. They smashed up against eir emotions and base instincts, scuffing away carefully-maintained control until the fear and anger shone through bright and hot. Codrin pushed emself quickly to eir feet and leaned eir hands against the desktop. "How fucking cynical do you have to be to wind up in this mindset? I've met so many of your clade, and none of them have their heads so far up their asses as you do. I can't believe--"
+"You don't see them much?"
 
-Throughout eir rant True Name's smile grew icy, and before ey could finish, she waved eir hand, bouncing em from her sim.
+He shook his head. "We mostly correspond through writing and media messages."
 
-Ey found emself standing at the entrance to the prairie, there on that short path that wound its way up to the house, to eir home. A few seconds later, a slip of paper fluttered to the ground in front of em. Reaching down to pick it up, ey unfolded it and read in the Odists' neat handwriting, "Come back when you are less angry, Codrin. You have your confirmation, and when you have digested it, we will discuss what will happen next. Respectfully, The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream of the Ode clade."
+Codrin nodded. "The best form of communication, if you ask me."
 
-Ey let out a primal scream, a noise ey did not know that ey could even make, and then quit, letting the Codrin who still sat painting after so short an interview deal with eir memories. Ey was done.
+"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?"
+
+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."
+
+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?"
+
+Codrin had paused, mug of tea halfway between the table and eir lips, and stared at Ne throughout the litany.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"That...that's about the whole of it, yeah," ey said hoarsely. "How did you know all of that?"
+
+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."
+
+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."
+
+"Have you come up with any new ones?"
+
+"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?"
+
+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.
+
+"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?"
+
+"I suppose," Codrin said. "You've done the cost-benefit analysis and determined it's worth continuing on with, right?"
+
+"Yes, precisely that," Ne said.
+
+"And what's the second reason?"
+
+"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."
+
+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?"
+
+"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?"
+
+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."
+
+"You guess correctly, yes. 'Thwart', though, is an interesting choice of words. Do you feel like these are some evil plans that we hold?"
+
+"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."
+
+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."
+
+"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?"
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+And still Ne Jonas sat, smiling kindly up to em. "That, my dear Codrin, is the big picture."