Toledot, page 2
part #2 of Post-Self Series
“What was your stanza’s project?”
She waved a paw vaguely. “We lost the idea that the whole stanza would be working on similar projects after a while, so they are not as tightly connected any more. Early forks were much more likely to share similar interests, if only because the individuation had not set in as strongly. The first line of mine, though, The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream—True Name, you met her briefly tonight—was heavy in the politics of the early System and its relations to phys-side.”
Ioan blinked, startled. “I had no idea. I’m guessing that’s back when it was a bigger deal?”
“Very much so, yes.”
“I thought there wasn’t much political interaction after Secession, though.”
She shrugged noncommittally, then rested her head back on Ioan’s shoulder. The alcohol of the night still dogged em.
“And the reason for your fork?”
“To feel.”
“To feel?”
“To feel. True Name kept spinning off instances to work on such concrete things, I think she forgot how to feel. Emotions became distant out of habit. Touch became a distraction. I was to become her anchor. We would merge every few months after that, though it has been a long time since we last did so. She says that we will merge once this project is finished.”
“You haven’t diverged too far?” Ioan asked.
“She would like us not to,” the skunk murmured. “That is why I am acting as coordinator. It is a familiar role.”
Ioan nodded. “Close enough to politics, I suppose.”
Another moment of silence. Ey permitted some of the drunkenness from the evening to drift away, allowing thoughts to come more clearly. May Then My Name relaxed further against eir side, and ey suspected she was not far away from sleep. Tomorrow, eir work would begin to pick up in earnest, so ey was tempted to let her sleep, but a question nagged at em.
“May?”
“I like it when you call me that,” she mumbled.
“It’s a good name.” Ioan smiled. “I had a question, though. How much do you remember from back then?”
She sat bolt upright, wrenching at eir shoulder. “What did you say? Sorry.”
Ey reclaimed eir arm, rubbing at the shoulder. “It’s okay. How much do you remember from the early days of the System? Around the time you uploaded, I mean.”
“You, my dear, are a fucking genius.” She was on her feet within a second, pacing back and forth in front of the bench swing. She paused mid-pace to lean down and bump her nose against Ioan’s forehead; her form of a kiss. “Fucking genius.”
Given that she appeared to have sobered up, Ioan allowed emself to do the same. “What do you mean?” ey asked.
“I want to modify the project scope. Can I tell you a secret?” She was speaking quickly now.
“Yes, of course.”
“I want to modify the project and add in an early history of the System, of Secession. Do you think you would be up for adding that in?”
Ioan frowned. “If can I fork for it, I suppose.”
May Then My Name laughed. “You are talking to an Odist, of course you can fucking fork.”
“Alright, alright. What’s your secret, then?”
“I want to write an early history of the System to parallel the current. They are eerily similar, you know, but it has been two hundred years. We are well past history, and doubtless there are histories already written. I remember the secession, I remember uploading, I remember getting lost, I remember everything. Yes, I remember. Of course I do. All the great and terrible things that we did. We could write a history, but that is all already there. There are paper trails and journals and everything phys-side already knows about us, but–”
Ioan’s eyes went wide as ey picked up on her idea. “You want to turn it into a story.”
She clapped and bounced excitedly on her feet. “Yes! Yes, a mythology. I know I have mentioned them before, and we had talked about incorporating that aspect with Dear and Codrin. The history is important, and perhaps you can write that too, but now is not the time for only history. Now is the time for–”
“Stories.”
In a decidedly Dear-like move, the skunk forked several times over, crowding the balcony before the bench swing with copies of herself, all of which had the same expression of glee. They quit quickly, and May Then My Name leaned forward to give Ioan a handful more of those nose-dot kisses. “You get it!”
“I worked with Dear, you nut. Of course I get stories.” Ey laughed, reaching up to grab her around the waist and haul her back onto the swing beside em.
How different she was than Dear. Individuation is born in the decades and centuries, though. Ey would never have thought to be so physical with the fox, but as she laughed and slumped back against eir side, ey realized ey had long since fallen into the habit of physicality, of touch. Of, ey realized, feeling, just as she’d said.
Douglas Hadje—2325
When Douglas Hadje pressed his hands against the sides of the L5 System, he always imagined that he could sense his aunt along with however many ‘great’s preceded that title, sense all of those years separating him from her, and he pressed his hands against the outside of the System every chance he could get. If he was sure that he was alone—and he often was—he would press his forehead to the glassy, diamondoid cylinder and wish, hope, dream that he could say even one word to her. His people, humanity, now nearly two centuries distant from the founding of the System, forever felt on the verge of true speciation, of mutual incomprehensibility, from those within. Did they still think the same? Did they still feel the same? Their hopes were doubtless different, but were their dreams?
But always his hands were separated from the structure by that thin layer of skinsuit, and always his helmet was in the way of the carbon shell, and always he was at least one reality away from them.
He would spend his five minutes there, connected and not by touch, thinking of this or that, thinking of nothing at all, and then he would climb away from the cylinder down the ladder, down the dozen or so meters to the ceiling of his home, climb through the airlock, and perhaps go lay down.
Others knew of this. They had to. All movement outside the habitat portion of the station was tightly controlled. Everything was on video, recorded directly from his eyes through his exo. All audio was recorded.
But he never spoke, and he always closed his eyes. For some unknown reason, he was permitted this small dalliance.
The System sat stationary at the Earth-Moon L5 point, a stable orbit with relation to the earth and moon such that it only very rarely required any correction to its position. Once a day, as the point rotated beyond Earth from the point of view of the sun and more briefly by the moon, it fell into darkness, but other than that, it was bathed in sunlight unmoderated by atmosphere. It rotated at a stately pace in relation to the moon and Earth such that its vast solar collector was always pointed toward the sun.
The station itself comprised three main parts. At the core of the station was the diamondoid cylinder, fifty meters in diameter and five hundred meters in length. The solar collector was attached to the sunward end of the cylinder, spreading out in a series of one hundred sixty thousand replaceable panels, one meter square each, held in a lattice of carbon fiber struts. Surrounding the cylinder was a torus, two hundred meters in diameter and as long as core cylinder itself, such that it was forever hidden from the sun by the solar collectors. Seventy-seven acres, of living space, working space, factories, and arable land, all lit by bundles of doped fiber optic cables which collected and distributed the light from space and cast it down from the ceiling. The entire contraption rotated nearly three times per minute, fast enough that they had an approximation of Earth’s gravity.
That is where Douglas lived along with about twenty others.
To fund such a project, the torus had originally operated as a tourist destination. Many of the living spaces consisted of repurposed hotel rooms. It had long since ceased to serve in that capacity as humanity’s curiosity for space dwindled and spaceflight from Earth once again began to rise in price.
To build such a project, the area had been cleared of much of the Trojan asteroids that had collected there, either used for raw materials or slung out into space into eccentric orbits that would keep them from impacting Earth or winding up once again captured in the same Lagrange point. Even still, one of the many jobs was to monitor the area for newly captured rocks and divert or collect them as needed. The material could be used for new solar panels, or perhaps the two five-thousand kilometer long launch arms sprouting on opposing sides of the torus, the Hall Effect Engines that kept the rotation of the station constant as the arms had been extruded from its surface, or of course the two new cylindrical launch vehicles at the tips of those arms that had, over the last two decades, been constructed as half-scale duplicates of the core.
Little of this mattered to Douglas.
He was, he was forever told, a people person. He was an administrator, a boss, a manager. It was his job to direct and guide and herd people into doing what was required for this twenty-year project. He was forever told that he had the empathy and skills to lead, though he forever doubted it.
He simply cared about this with a fervor that was dimmed only by the idea that, somewhere within the mirror-box that was the System cylinder, his distant ancestor dwelt.
Douglas was the launch director. He was the director. He was high enough on the food chain that he had ungated access to the textual communication line that connected the phys-side world to the sys-side world. He was the director, and he knew that, if he wished, all he need do was pull up the program, type up a letter, run it past security, click ‘send’, and Michelle, his generations-gone aunt, would somehow receive it.
And yet he never did.
He didn’t know why. He asked himself again and again what it was that kept him from reaching out to her. Was it that speciation? Was it the confounding societal differences? Was it that unfathomable distance between the physical and the dream? He did not know, he did not know.
Instead, he worked. He oversaw the construction of the Launch Vehicle Systems, those two smaller cylinders that would be, in a few days, released from either end of the launch arms at incredible tangential velocity. He worked with the sys-side launch coordinator to ensure that everything was working appropriately, that the micro-Ansible connection between the main System and the launch vessels was appropriately transferring entire identities.
Who this coordinator was, this confusingly-named May Then My Name Die With Me, he had no idea.
He needn’t even message Michelle directly. He had May Then My Name Die With Me, perhaps she would know her. He could ask her. She could mediate.
And still, he never did.
* * *
Director Hadje,
The launch is tomorrow and communications are looking good. A status report will follow, but before I get to that, I would like to open a dialog with you surrounding topics beyond the launch itself. Please ensure that this is both acceptable by the hierarchy of superiors that doubtless read our communications and yourself, as they are of a somewhat more personal nature. As my role of launch coordinator slowly dwindles, I have been asked by both my clade and a historian sys-side to collect information through extant lines of communication, a sort of oral history of the events leading up to, surrounding, and immediately after the launch.
Thank you,
May Then My Name Die With Me of the Ode Clade
2325-01-20—systime 201+20 1303
Status Report
Micro-Ansible transmission:
Outbound functionality: five-by-five (go)
Inbound functionality: five-by-five (go)
Transmission status:
Personalities transferred: 2,593,190,433 / 100% (go)
Individuals by clade transferred: 1,123,384,222 / 100% (go)
Personalities remaining to be transferred: 0 / 0% (go)
Individuals by clade remaining to be transferred: 0 / 0% (go)
Personalities transferred leaving no immediate forks (pct): 3.8%
Individuals by clade transferred leaving no immediate forks (pct): 0.00000018%
Social makeup of transfers: 84% dispersionista / 10% tracker / 6% tasker
Social makeup of L5 System: 23% dispersionista / 38% tracker / 39% tasker
Transfers irrevocably lost: 8 (go)
System status:
Castor:
Stability: 100% (go)
Clock offset: 0ns (go)
Clock skew: 0ns/ns (go)
Clock jitter: 0ns/ns/ns (go)
Entanglement: 100% (go)
Fork reliability: 17 nines (go)
Merge reliability: 23 nines (go)
Pollux:
Stability: 100% (go)
Clock offset: 0ns (go)
Clock skew: 0ns/ns (go)
Clock jitter: 0ns/ns/ns (go)
Entanglement: 100% (go)
Fork reliability: 18 nines (go)
Merge reliability: 21 nines (go)
Disposition: go for launch
Notes: the level of transfers irrevocably lost is disappointing but cannot be helped. Still, it is far below the loss from the Earth-L5 Ansible, which, as a matter of course, implies the loss of a clade rather than a personality. One clade was lost irrevocably, but, at the risk of sounding crass, they knew they were signing up for this, and it is always a risk for taskers. That one loss represents 0.005% of the total transfer loss, and is vanishingly small in the grand scheme of things, though I am sure it is of no consolation to their friends. Congratulations, as always, for another step closer to launch.
Attachment: history questionnaire #1
As mentioned, I am working with a historian—or rather, three forks of the same historian—to compile a history of the launch. Due to a certain incorrigible tricksiness, this will take the form of a mythology; something romantic to be passed down through the years. To this end, data collection is ramping up in the form of countless interviews. I have, of course, all the status reports a girl could ever want for the basic facts, all of the trials and tribulations over the last two decades, but that is only a small portion of a mythology. Should you and your superiors agree, I would like to begin the process of collecting testimonies from those phys-side.
Concrete questions
How long have you been working as phys-side launch director?
What is involved with your role as phys-side launch director?
How long have you been working with the System phys-side?
What led you to pursue a career working with the System?
What led you to remain phys-side rather than uploading, yourself? Will you upload in the future? Why or why not?
What led you to pursue your position as launch director rather than remaining in your previous position?
Please provide a biography of yourself to whatever level of detail you feel comfortable.
Please provide a physical description of yourself to whatever level of detail you feel comfortable.
Do you have any hobbies?
On the System
How do you feel about what you know of the founding of the System?
If you were suddenly removed from your position as director, what would you choose to do as a career in its stead?
If you were suddenly removed from your location in the extra-System station and returned to Earth, how would you feel and what would you expect?
If the System shut down and all personalities irrevocably lost, how would you feel?
Gestalt
If you were told that, one year from now, you would die painlessly, what would you do? Would this change if you knew that your death would be painful? Would this change, in either case, if your death was seven days from now?
If everyone but you disappeared, what would you do?
How do you feel about being alone for extended periods of time?
Do you remember your dreams?
On history
How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord? Forever? How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me?
When you become intoxicated—whether via substance use or some natural process, such as sleep deprivation—which of the following applies to you?
Ape drunk: he leaps and sings and hollers and danceth for the heavens.
Lion drunk: he flings the pots about the house, calls his hostess whore, breaks the glass windows with his dagger, and is apt to quarrel with any man that speaks to him.
Swine drunk: heavy, lumpish, and sleepy, and cries for a little more drink and a few more clothes.
Sheep drunk: wise in his own conceit when he cannot bring forth a right word.
Maudlin drunk: when a fellow will weep for kindness in the midst of his ale and kiss you, saying, “By God, Captain, I love thee; go thy ways, thou dost not think so often of me as I do of thee. If I would, if it pleased God, I could not love thee so well as I do.”—and then puts his finger in his eye and cries.
Martin drunk: when a man is drunk and drinks himself sober ere he stir.
