Mitzvot/synopsis

Part 1 — Conversation

It's late 2349, about about three and a half years since the fourth convergence, the meeting of the Artemesians with Castor. Life has taken a bit of a swing toward the adventuresome as news and new technology trickle their way back down to Lagrange, the original instance of the System in orbit around Earth. Technological changes include finer-grained ACLs that control permissions on various bits of the System, allowing for opaqued or visually secure cones of silence, limits on sensorium messages, etc.

During those three years, Ioan Bălan wonders how this has become eir life: ey has been getting coffee with The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream of the Ode clade once a month. While the relationship between True Name and…well, everyone has been kind of strained, it was particularly tense between her and Ioan's partner May Then My Name Die With Me of the Ode clade, who, for years, struggled with feelings of hatred towards True Name. Although that hatred has softened towards resentment, these monthly coffee dates, where Ioan and True Name just chat and then work on their own projects, have been meant to keep avenues open between the two, since neither May nor True Name have given up hope on figuring out a path forward. They always seem to talk about each other to Ioan, and it kind of feels like they want to move forward, but they can't yet find a way.

Oh, speaking of projects, Ioan is working on adapting eir book On the Perils of Memory (the story of Qoheleth) for the stage, True Name is prepping the System on the political side for the technological advancement that will allow audiovisual communication between the System and Earth instead of just text, and May is working on a monologue about being built to love.

Ioan and May are just incredibly gay together, and it's painfully sweet, but I promise it's a legit plot element. They talk about how May forms and keeps relationships, that she only forms relationships as her root instance, and if a new one starts up while one is still going, only then will she fork to continue two relationships. Sorta like parallel monogamy. Ioan is her sixteenth relationship serious enough to warrant a fork (though, given the way she stepped back from True Name's guidance, she hasn't done so yet), and we learn that some of her forks are doubtless still in relationships, but that she lets them live their own private lives and never accepts merges when they quit, so she knows very little about them.

Meanwhile, after a windstorm blew a tree over and crushed his tent and impaled his leg on a branch, Do I Know God After The End Waking has interrupted his months of solitude and called his boyfriend Debarre back to help him rebuild the tent in a new location. They're also pretty gay, but, like, in a super stoic way because E.W. can't emote and Debarre is a weasel and thus made of angst. May stops by their sim to visit and a) complain about the fact that True Name is in eir life, b) fret about why this still feels important, and c) flirt with Debarre (who is Very Gay™) to make him uncomfortable.

Ioan heads out to Arrowhead Lake — the abandoned mountain lake sim that ey discovered decades back — for a walk to try and tease apart eir own feelings on being the bridge between May and True Name. Ey worries that ey has this urge to fix things in relationships, whether or not ey actually can (or whether or not those involved even want that). Ey's been fretting about this for a while, and even May has picked up on it, as she mentions when they go out to dinner afterwards. She suggests that this is maybe something that has always been the case for em, and that em uploading to provide eir brother Rareș with the subsidy funds was a way for em to 'fix' the situation as best ey could.

True Name and Ioan have agreed that their next monthly meeting should be on Secession/Launch day, January 21 (yes I chose my birthday, no I am not sorry). This time, though, True Name arrives looking terrible, paranoid, like she hasn't slept in days, hasn't showered in a week, and hasn't changed her clothes in even longer. She says that she's been struggling, but that she and Jonas Anderson, the other behind-the-scenes leader of the System, have a 'gathering' later in the day. Weird choice of words, but that's what he said. As part of that, she's distracted with the fact that her instances are going to merge down before the gathering to reduce conflicts. Partway through this, one merge has learned that Jonas is looking for her, which is weird, because he knows she's with Ioan. The merges suddenly stop, though, along with all communication with her instances. She leaps to her feet, looks around the coffee shop, and sees the same assassin that killed Qoheleth walking toward them, so she grabs Ioan's hand and yells for em to take her 'somewhere, anywhere'. Ey tries taking her home, where they find the same assassin struggling with May, who forks, grabs the both of them, and yanks them to Arrowhead Lake. May is furious, and True Name caught in the middle of panic attack. She susses out that Jonas just tried to assassinate her.

Part 2 — Conflict

Well, shit, okay. Now May and the person she dislikes the most are trapped in hiding together with no idea what's going on or how to move forward, and Ioan's position as bridge between them means ey's now trapped between them. True Name heads off to sit on the rock at the end of the lake to have a sulk and think about what to do next, leaving May to voice her frustrations and concerns to Ioan. She's pissed that no matter how hard she tries to get away from all of the things she dislikes about True Name (and, unspokenly, many of the things that she used to be), she just can't. She's also worried about the fact that their home has been invaded.

Thankfully, this is a thing that Ioan can fix. Ey steps back home and sneaks around, investigating for anyone left over but only finding the mess from the struggle inside. Outside, however, ey finds Jonas sitting on a deck chair despite the snowy weather. Before ey can sweep him, Jonas says that he was just stopping by to make sure that ey and May were alright, which Ioan scoffs at. Jonas is an infuriating little snot, riling Ioan up with implications that ey's sweet on True Name before saying that he's hiring em as amanuensis once more, this time to witness and write about a formal discussion between him and True Name as they hash out the new status quo, to take place within one year's time. Ioan's baffled, given that he just tried to kill her, but Jonas says that was just plan A, and he has all the way down to plan M for ensuring that he gets his way and refuses to elaborate further, saying "Sometimes mommies and daddies fight, Ioan". He makes further implications about em an True Name, so Ioan bounces him from the sim. Ey sweeps the entire sim of everyone except emself and, while that action won't tell em who ey swept, it will tell em how many, and it says ey swept 17.

Once ey makes eir way back to the lake, True Name finishes her sulk and rejoins them. She thanks them for getting her out of that alive and starts to say that she'll have to create a new sim for herself since home probably isn't safe, but May reluctantly suggests that she stay with them, instead, reasoning that it would be too easy for her to just disappear in a private sim and either get got as soon as she leaves or go crazy in her solitude. If she stays with them, though, not only is she around others, but those others are well enough known on the System that it'll dissuade Jonas from attacking her, lest May and Ioan, as trustworthy voices, catch him and make it public. It's awkward, but about the best they can do. Still, no one's comfortable going back just yet, so Ioan forks to meet up with End Waking and pick up camping gear so they can stay a night at the lake and have a night to regroup. End Waking and Debarre are supremely unhappy about the situation, and also kind of boggling at the fact that May is even putting up with True Name.

While camping, True Name apologizes for the fact that she's been spying on them, as those seventeen that were swept were some of her spies, mostly others from the clade. Combined with a hunch ey had during one of their earlier coffee dates, this seems to imply that True Name on Castor never told True Name on Lagrange about the whole incident of Answers Will Not Help losing it and saying the Name in front of Codrin, showing that maybe Jonas's conspiracy includes the other instances of True Name as well, and it's only this one he's going after.

Once they make it back home and get some coffee, Ioan expands eir house to include a second bedroom/bathroom for True Name to stay in. The next few days are very careful, though everyone's polite and there's no skunkfights. On the third day, though, True Name pulls May into a conversation in a visually secure cone of silence for about an hour. When it drops, True Name looks like she's been put through a wringer and May looks apoplectic. May leaves without a word, only sending Ioan a brief glimpse of the lake to show she's alright. True Name refuses to expand on what the conversation was about other than to make vague allusions to Jonas's quip about mommies and daddies fighting.

May visits End Waking and Debarre after crying herself out. She explains more about the current situation and says that what True Name told her is too much to even talk about except that Jonas has played a long game with True Name and has been controlling her from the beginning, though we get the impression End Waking may know more than what she says aloud. She talks about how she's feeling torn, that she wishes TN was no more so that she wouldn't be in their lives, but also that she doesn't want her to die. Debarre echoes this sentiment. End Waking is stoic some more until May suggests he merge down with True Name, at which he gets kind of shouty. After she leaves, Debarre and End Waking talk, the latter saying he's not too keen on the idea of merging down because that means True Name will have his penance without having done any of the work herself. Debarre disagrees, saying that she'll also have the memories of the work of penance. He suggests that one reason May might want him to do this is to hurt True Name, and that she's even considering this means that she's a more complex individual than previously, since she used to just love everyone. End Waking gets upset because that would mean that, for him to be a more complex individual, he'd have to admit something other than his solitude and penance into his life. It's implied that they bone, after which End Waking jokes that, if he does merge down, True Name will have memories of that as well, to which Debarre says let her, at least she can have good things, too.

With May out of the house, Ioan is anxious and True Name is mopey. They eventually pull themselves together enough to cook and eat dinner. May returns in the middle of it, acting a bit like a goofball, which she explains away as not wanting to fall back into just crying all the time as she had been around True Name. Over the next few days, May and True Name have a few more private conversations, and May heads out to visit End Waking a few more times. When she mentions to Ioan that they've been talking about the possibility of the merge, ey isn't so sure; ey thinks it might be a good idea overall just to help True Name live a more complete life now that the one singular aspect she focused on has been taken away, but that if she's to have a talk with Jonas, she probably needs to be in top shape to do so, not crushed under a century and a half of memories and all their conflicts. May reluctantly agrees, but when True Name goes on a bit of a rant about the position she's found herself in, May gets too frustrated and signals to End Waking to start the merge process anyway. True Name collapses under the weight of having to actually process those memories, and May breaks down on realizing what she's done.

Part 3 — Apprehension

After a few hours, True Name is back up on her feet, but it's not until the next day that she's actually more with it. She requests that they head out to the lake, since she now has End Waking's desire for being outside (and hatred of being inside), where the three of them talk about what happened. She says she understands how May did this — using all of her May powers to convince both End Waking to merge down and True Name to accept the merge — and maybe even the why, but also says that May has essentially split her mind in two. It gets kind of tense, so Ioan asks what good memories she has now, rather than just all of the conflicting pride/penance. She lists a few things, but ends by thanking May for thinking of her. After all, now she has all these memories of her telling End Waking about not wanting her to die, too.

True Name remains shaky and restless even after they return back home, reconciling memories of penance, but also of End Waking and Debarre's relationship. She was in her own on-again-off-again relationship with a red fox named Zacharias over the years — they wound up more openly together (and more openly ruling) on Pollux, but on the home System, she kept the relationship at a distance ('lovers, yes, and perhaps even in love, but never partners').

Through these discussions, Ioan begins to wonder at the fact that May has done just what ey was trying not to: taken a drastic step to fix someone else's problems for them. Ey starts to worry that, with this new problem of True Name being unhappy, she'll decide to merge down next. When ey asks, she admits that it had been on her mind until she'd seen just how poorly this merge had gone. Ey voices a worry that that'd mean that True Name would have May's memories of being with em.

Eventually, though, everything builds up too much and she snaps at Ioan and May before stepping out to Arrowhead Lake. She returns a few hours later, looking dirty and scuffed up, stating that she's going to go camp there for a few days for the solitude. Ioan and May deduce that she's 'overflowing', and when ey asks, May admits that she's perilously close to doing the same. The next morning, she's not doing well at all, so ey goes to stay with Douglas Hadje, as ey usually does when she overflows with emotions. When ey arrives at Douglas's sim, ey breaks down with all of the emotion ey's been holding at bay throughout this crazy process.

Douglas gets in contact with End Waking and Debarre to ask them to come visit, as Ioan isn't doing so well. The other three are a little surprised as Ioan talks through the story of May essentially manipulating End Waking into merging down and True Name into accepting. They talk through eir concerns about May potentially merging down, including True Name having memories of eir and May's relationship together, and the related worry that that might mean True Name would wind up feeling the same about em that May does. After wishing em the best, End Waking requests that Debarre step home with him for a few, where he requests some solitude now that the tent is done. Debarre figured this was coming and is already good to go. They're really cute. Debarre steps back to Douglas's to finish the conversation before heading home, where we learn that he was one of the 'reactive elements' that True Name thought might have been the one to try and assassinate her before she learned it was Jonas.

Ioan sets up an appointment with eir therapist, Sarah Genet (who is also the therapist for all the Odists) to talk through much the same. A few days later, May shows up in the small hours of the morning and reunites with Ioan. She's not 'back to baseline' yet, but she's feeling well enough to have em around and doesn't want to be alone. True Name hasn't returned yet, but partway through eating dinner together, Ioan and May both get a sensorium message from her, just a brief glimpse of a well-dressed red fox sitting nearby out at the lake. They both hurry to the sim to find Zacharias taunting True Name for 'roughing it' out in the wilderness, calling her 'my little stink bug' and so on. He's a real shithead all around, and when May snarks back at him, he slaps her across the face. When Ioan tries to hit back, May gets them away from each other by forking so that her new instances overlap with theirs, the collision algorithms forcing them apart. He says he's out there to see if True Name is willing to talk now, but the subtext is that Jonas sent him specifically just to undermine her confidence.

Back home, May and True Name finally explain what their huge conversation was: Zacharias is one of May's first relationship forks. Centuries ago, perhaps five years after Secession, back when she and True Name were almost exactly alike, May forked to form a friendship/relationship with someone who turned out to be a heavily modified fork of Jonas. This version of Jonas slowly won Zacharias over to his side, encouraged him to change, and then pushed him to get into a relationship with True Name. They kept this secret until a few years after Launch, when they dropped the news on her on all three Systems (Lagrange, Castor, and Pollux) at the same time. Jonas and Zacharias used that to set up different situations on each System: the previous status quo on Castor, the Guiding Council on Pollux, and this slow attempt to grind True Name down on Lagrange.

Since Zacharias found True Name at Arrowhead Lake, that means that sim is no longer secure, so Ioan grabs a plains environment with a section of river off the reputation exchange and sets it up outside eir home so that True Name can retreat out there when feeling the need for solitude and no walls. This allows End Waking to visit a few times, talking with True Name and trying to understand where both she and May are coming from now that he's involved in this, too. In the process of talking, Ioan and May mention her vague thoughts on merging down, and True Name is oddly rather for it. She feels unbalanced, and if she were able to go into the merge knowing full well what to expect, what to keep or discard, and knowing that she could fork beforehand, she'd have a much easier time and might come out the other side far better. Eventually, the three of them say 'fuck it' and decide to go through with it so long as they approach it very carefully and respect Ioan and May's boundaries.

Part 4 — Reconciliation

After a week of conversations determining what those boundaries are, including some discussions with End Waking about how this merge will differ from the previous one, May finally merges down. Despite what she said in Toledot — a small lie to try and keep Ioan from digging too much — May hasn't merged down since 2155, longer ago than the most recent of End Waking's merges, so it's a doozy. However, they're far more deliberate about it. True Name is kept cozy in bed rather than basically being dropped on the floor like before, she's allowed to fork beforehand, and May is there to keep her comfortable and talk her through anything that comes up. By that night, True Name is mostly stuck up in her head, but can speak haltingly. However, May doesn't want to leave her to fend for herself and is unwilling to sleep without Ioan, so they decide to expand the bed so that Ioan can sleep with May and True Name still be nearby. There's some gentle ribbing about keeping Ioan away from True Name, but basically everyone's awkward. Shortly before they fall asleep, True Name jolts upright shouting 'ey knows!', showing that True Name#Castor never passed on the fact that Codrin now knows AwDae's name. In the middle of the night, she rolls over and winds up curled with May, so Ioan wakes up hugging them both which is kind of awkward for everyone, and there's a lot of talk about that; True Name says that she can see what May sees in Ioan, can see a universe in which she loves em, but not how to get from this universe to that one, at which May requests that she call her 'May' instead of 'May Then My Name'.

May visits End Waking, who calls Debarre back to talk through the merger and what it means, how it might help True Name escape from this lingering threat of Jonas. Debarre's pretty upset because now everyone's getting buddy-buddy with True Name and he still hates her. One upside, though, is that End Waking seems to be on the verge of moving on, dropping out of the clade and just becoming his own person, which would be more fulfilling for everyone.

Back at Chez Bălan over the next few months, True Name has been calming down and processing well. She still needs silence and solitude as End Waking might out in the plains Ioan procured outside the house, and she still has that sharp political mind from True Name, but now she has all the emotions and need for constant touch from May. This plays out as her struggling to sleep alone, and while she gets some relief by sleeping curled up with her own fork as May taught her, she winds up crashing with Ioan and May once a week or so when the emotional need gets overwhelming. Still, it's well into April and they've all been cooped up since January, so they're all going stir-crazy. They finally talk Ioan into leaving, at least, since the chances of anyone being out to get em are low, so ey spends an afternoon at a library (because of course ey does) where, on a whim, ey contacts Serene to see if she can duplicate Arrowhead Lake for them, since the original isn't theirs and has been discovered by Jonas & co. She's mostly willing, but needs time to process. We get the sense that the clade is largely still wary of True Name.

They talk May into getting out of the house for a bit to go get dinner with Debarre so that she can get away and Ioan can have some solitude while True Name ostensibly goes for a walk. However, True Name nods off on the couch and Ioan spaces out on the beanbag. After a bit, they get to talking and discuss how things have felt since the merge. They spent so long talking about eir boundaries that everything's felt super careful. True Name asks to sit by em on the beanbag (a cuddlesome prospect, if ever there was one) to test. If it's awkward, so be it, but at least they'll know. It is awkward, and neither of them are sure of what to make of it, but True Name explains more of how things feel from her end: she says she's of three minds, that she's True Name and she's May and she's End Waking, and that depending on the situation, one will feel closer to the surface than the others, so her being close to Ioan leads to her feeling more like May than True Name or End Waking. She catches herself getting despondent and decides that it's time to set a loose deadline of one month for that meeting with Jonas.

Ioan sets up the meeting as a message, but Jonas requests to meet all the same, which is weird. He brings Zacharias along and, when the fox starts to get all snarky, stomps on his foot, making Ioan realize that it's all a show, using his power over the situation to try and shape how Ioan's story will look once he writes. Through eir discussions with the clade, though, Ioan guesses much of Jonas's plan ahead of time: his hypothesis is that societies that are different yet maintain the same system of governance are unstable when separated by space and time, so he's set up three different systems of government on the three Systems. True Name disagreed, so he decided to try and get rid of her. Jonas gets all frowny at em, but adapts smoothly and keeps winding Ioan up until ey gets frustrated and leaves. Back home, ey confirms the time and date of the meeting with May, True Name, and End Waking out on True Name's plain. Everyone's kinda stressed, but Ioan and May say goodnight and head inside, where they talk about whether True Name will keep living with them after this stupid meeting, deciding that she'll be welcome to as long as they can modify the sim to accommodate her need to be outside and give them more space apart if they need. May makes fun of Ioan for liking True Name, and ey admits ey's in the same boat as her, that she's so much like May that ey can imagine it, but has no idea what it would actually look like in practice.

Jonas has requested that True Name's entire stanza be present, so May, True Name, and End Waking arrive with Ioan while the rest of the stanza — including Zacharias — arrive with Jonas. There is some weird chatter back and forth, that type of non-conversation that hides deeper political meanings before they get down to the talk. Jonas confirms that he's aiming for three political systems, and that he tried to get rid of True Name for disagreeing. Zacharias makes some quip and True Name dismisses him. He gets quite upset, so Jonas brings in the assassin that tried to get True Name to go after him, but May, of all people, intercedes, knocking the assassin out and telling Zacharias to leave. Jonas demands that True Name just disappear if she's to keep living, that she just curl up around her 'little Name thing' and not be seen again. It's hinted that he knows the name and has been using it to help keep the stanza in line. She says she's no longer True Name, that she's something else now, and he says it's not enough. Sigh. She changes as has been mentioned by others: forking repeatedly and using the mutation algorithms to change subtly with each fork, until she looks basically like Sasha (not Michelle) did before uploading, though she opts to shift species to spotted skunk, figuring that that'd be too recognizable. Jonas confirms that she needs to have a new name, and she chooses Sasha, which causes an uproar among the Odists and pisses Jonas off, and he kicks them out.

At home, she explains that that set of events was the best they could have hoped for. The name Sasha, tied to the most sympathetic figure from the History, means that Jonas essentially can't touch her without being seen openly as the villain, even if it also means that she can't continue in politics. Instead, she's going to write a companion volume to the history of her account of things.

Things settle down into a cycle of domesticity and visitors after that. Much of the clade visits, and the reactions are mixed. A Finger Pointing and her stanza are very happy for her, as is Serene, who builds their house into a copy of Arrowhead Lake, giving them plenty of wilderness and space for Sasha to build a tent similar to End Waking's. Zacharias pings, and they use the new ACLs to completely cut him off, which upsets Douglas, but May feels she can go no-contact with him in a way she couldn't with True Name. In Dreams (the psychologist of the clade) and Hammered Silver (the mother of the clade), however, both disown her, her entire old stanza (including May, who was very close to both of them), and the entire Bălan clade. This hits May really hard, and she has a brief stint of overflowing that night, pushing them out of the house to go stay in Sasha's tent, where they struggle with their own feelings on the matter.

When May finally allows them back, Sasha requests some time to talk with just her about some lingering processing of Zacharias business, so Ioan and a fork of Sasha go for a walk out to the boulder at the end of the lake where they discuss the final outcome, Ioan's love for May, their complicated feelings for each other, and the book ends with Ioan once more wondering how this has become eir life.