The Practice War [Complete]

[Faraway-R]

[X] Tell her

There is no doubt in my mind that we do need to tell Mary about this offer of shifting Arcadia to Olympia.
There is, however, doubt in what we want to do with Mary's birth home.

In a way, I think, the way I would have gone about this would have been the following write-in:

[ ] Tell Mary about Adriana's offer to shift Arcadia to Olympia Institutes. Not right now. Not when the wound is so raw. Tell her in a week or so.
-[ ] In the meantime, tell her that this home will be her home again, but you'd like her to wait until the final decision for a week or two.
-[ ] Once you're back on Earth, with Iris, and with a few days downtime to calm down, raise the subject of both Adriana's offer of shifting Arcadia to Olympia, and of how to use Mary's birth home in light of this offer. This is, after all, what she wants for you all as family. And it should be a family decision.

@Snowfire, is this possible?

If Mary declines the offer, it's Vacation Homes for me. If she accepts, it's probably Making a Home or Split the Difference.

 

[Snowfire]

[ ] Tell Mary about Adriana's offer to shift Arcadia to Olympia Institutes. Not right now. Not when the wound is so raw. Tell her in a week or so.
-[ ] In the meantime, tell her that this home will be her home again, but you'd like her to wait until the final decision for a week or two.
-[ ] Once you're back on Earth, with Iris, and with a few days downtime to calm down, raise the subject of both Adriana's offer of shifting Arcadia to Olympia, and of how to use Mary's birth home in light of this offer. This is, after all, what she wants for you all as family. And it should be a family decision.

@Snowfire, is this possible?

Click to shrink...

This is reasonable, although likely to produce another section to an already lengthy mini-turn. Just fair warning.

 

[Schielman]

This is reasonable, although likely to produce another section to an already lengthy mini-turn. Just fair warning.

Click to shrink...

I am completely okay with that. Doing this right is really important.

 

[Coda]

[x] Tell Mary about Adriana's offer to shift Arcadia to Olympia Institutes. Not right now. Not when the wound is so raw. Tell her in a week or so.
-[x] In the meantime, tell her that this home will be her home again, but you'd like her to wait until the final decision for a week or two.
-[x] Once you're back on Earth, with Iris, and with a few days downtime to calm down, raise the subject of both Adriana's offer of shifting Arcadia to Olympia, and of how to use Mary's birth home in light of this offer. This is, after all, what she wants for you all as family. And it should be a family decision.
[x] Making a Home

 

[Snowfire]

I am completely okay with that. Doing this right is really important.

Click to shrink...

Actually, it won't create another interlude now that I think about it. Primarily because if Mary knows about this, she'll want to take it up. It confirms multiple points in her own head, and honestly that isn't likely to change. So if you vote for this option, do what @Coda has done and also vote for whichever choice you prefer between Split the Difference and Making a Home. Vacation Homes doesn't work if you're moving Arcadia there.

@Faraway-R just so you see this.

I'll close this as soon as I hit more than ten votes.

 

[Lightwhispers]

[x] Tell Mary about Adriana's offer to shift Arcadia to Olympia Institutes. Not right now. Not when the wound is so raw. Tell her in a week or so.
-[x] In the meantime, tell her that this home will be her home again, but you'd like her to wait until the final decision for a week or two.
-[x] Once you're back on Earth, with Iris, and with a few days downtime to calm down, raise the subject of both Adriana's offer of shifting Arcadia to Olympia, and of how to use Mary's birth home in light of this offer. This is, after all, what she wants for you all as family. And it should be a family decision.
[x] Making a Home

 

[uju32]

VOTE
[1] Vacation Visits:
[2] Split the Difference:
[3] Making a Home:

[X] Tell her

REASONS
-Since Amanda can commute to Earth in ten minutes or so, Vacation Visit and Split the Difference are both mostly acceptable from a work perspective.
OTOH, it vastly complicates the social matters that Amy has been throwing herself into if normal humans cannot arrange face to face meetings casually. And we're doing a lot of Circle work, which means people, which means the major concentration of humanity.

And we're not even talking about Amy's own family of sisters and brothers and nieces/nephews.

-I really don't want to give a child AI who has been explicitly characterized as curious constant access to a comm network that hasn't been secured.
Especially given how First and Second Secret data caches may still be accessible on that system.
Especially NOT at a time when honest to god aliens are going to be in the system.

Some complications I'd rather not blunder into until we're good and ready.

Nor am I confident that Mars is yet as secure as Earth is, which is a major issue if you're relocating the smartest woman in the world, an ex-President Unison user, and one of only two AIs to another planet. IIRC, the Tribute fleet got into bombardment range of Mars, and I would not be surprised to find that there are assassinbot and ewar payloads in the desert awaiting activation.

If I was in their security detail, I'd have conniptions at the idea of moving to Mars.

-Finally, I don't think that after that entire spiel about family, that Mary would take an option that would distance Amy and herself from living members of their(well, mostly Amy's) family just so she can live in an old house full time.
Working visit, yes. Vacation, yes. Fulltime, no.

So Vacation Visit >> Split the Difference> Making a Home

- As for the other, Mary is an adult.
Let her make her own decisions. I'm pretty confident she won't move the entire Institute, it's staff and their families to another planet so she can live in her childhood home, and I think she should have the chance to prove it.

 

[uju32]

[x] Making a Home

Click to shrink...

[x] Making a Home

Click to shrink...

This is a distinctly backward-facing vote.

Even disregarding the entirely practical reasons I mentioned, this has Mary leaving the life she's built for at least twenty years to move back into her childhood home. Putting a distance from friends and new family, abandoning her current home where their shared adopted child was basically born....all that, so she can go back to living in Mytikas.

A home where she spent half the time she has spent in the Residence.
It's like moving back into the womb.
And not at all healthy.

Even IRL, it's usually considered a good thing that children grow old enough to move out of their childhood homes, at least in the West; customs differ elsewhere. When they move back in fulltime, it's usually for economic and practical reasons, not for psychological ones.
She can reclaim her childhood home without symbolically turning away from literally everything else she's built in the last four or five decades.

Without basically saying that memories elsewhere don't matter.

If Amy is 67, and Mary is near her age, and left Mars when she was ten... was Mary even born on Mars?
I suspect not.
Her father moved there for work, after all.

 

[Coda]

This is a distinctly backward-facing vote.

Click to shrink...

I don't think the rationale necessarily applies here. This is rather a special case.

This isn't a question of moving back in with one's parents. If this decision had been couched as inheriting an estate from one's late family, it would have a very different emotional content. And given the circumstances of Mary's life, that is much closer to what's happening than "moving back [into their childhood home] fulltime" suggests.

Now, I will agree that there's a LOT of features about the Residence that make staying on Earth a meaningful consideration. The equipment that the Residence is already outfitted with is of course significant.

I don't think the security issue is QUITE as significant as you suggest. Certainly it would take work to refit the home in Mytikas to incorporate the security features in the Residence, but I have two points to raise on that front: (1) The likelihood of Shiplord payloads being present are vanishingly small. The Shiplords had no presence in our system until the first Tribute Fleet arrived. Practice-backed Mending will have restored the city to the state it was before the Shiplords got involved. (2) It's not like they're going to make the decision and move in the span of a week. This is a big deal, and they can take the time to make sure the place is ready for them to move into (security features and all) before they make the transition.

I was born in a farming community in northwest Kansas. My childhood memories aren't in that home. The argument that it's not her birthplace is completely meaningless. This is the home that her most significant memories were formed in.

The point of psychological symbolism isn't lost on me. You have a point there. However, I think there's a way to handle the move that DOESN'T symbolically leave Mary's new life behind. I think moving Arcadia to Mars is the biggest point in that regard -- she's not leaving that life behind; she's bringing it with her. With a proper relocation, the only thing being symbolically left behind is Shiplord damage, and symbolically speaking there's no better place to move to represent overcoming that.

On a Doylist level: I trust Snowfire as a writer. He's not the kind of QM to give out trap options. The only times he's done that, he's clearly labeled them as trap options, only included for the sake of completeness. We wouldn't HAVE this choice available to us if it would be that bad.

 

[Coda]

A significant question:

Just HOW "post-scarcity" are we talking about here? Is there a material cost to moving (in general, not specifically for Amanda and her family), or is it just "if you want to move, you request what you need"?

 

[justinkal]

If Iris moves to Mars, I wonder how long it will take her to find a way to unify both networks.

So that she can access one planet's network from the other at the same speeds she can access the network of the planet she's on.

 

[Schielman]

[x] Tell Mary about Adriana's offer to shift Arcadia to Olympia Institutes. Not right now. Not when the wound is so raw. Tell her in a week or so.
-[x] In the meantime, tell her that this home will be her home again, but you'd like her to wait until the final decision for a week or two.
-[x] Once you're back on Earth, with Iris, and with a few days downtime to calm down, raise the subject of both Adriana's offer of shifting Arcadia to Olympia, and of how to use Mary's birth home in light of this offer. This is, after all, what she wants for you all as family. And it should be a family decision.
[x] Making a Home

 

[Snowfire]

A few notes here for people that have been commenting.

For a start, there's a reason beyond Mary wanting to move for Arcadia to shift to the Olympus Colleges. Let me get a bit into history for a moment.

The Olympus Colleges were the greatest collection of human brilliance and knowledge in recorded history. What began as a simple research station eventually unlocked a vast understanding of the First and Second Secrets, and drew scientists from across the star system. Olympus was where Hermes was designed, where the first Dragons were created, and so much more. It's what Arcadia is trying to become, and the symbolism of placing that Institute in Mytikas is hard to ignore. It has ninety percent of everything Arcadia would need already, but more than that, it has the pre-Sorrows databases. Not everything is in those, as was addressed to some degree in the Aftermath post for the Restoration. But even missing pieces, the scientists who created that data made the Colleges worthy of their name. We're talking the precursors to Mary, and the rest of the top-flight that you gathered during Amanda's Presidency, including her father. It's a package deal, shall we say, and one that Adriana would support wholeheartedly. You just need to ask.

Moving on, Mary was actually born on Mars, but it hardly matters. The house on Mytikas was the centre of her youth, and those memories don't go easily. More, it was home for the version of herself that was still stuck before the Sorrows, who shattered when Mary walked into the empty heart of a home that she still paradoxically believed to exist. That aside @Coda is right in pointing out that there's a way to do this without leaving her current life behind, and that's what Mary's intent would be. She isn't trying to go backwards, she can't get what she had there back. But she can make it a home again, even if the mechanics are a little different. That's really what she wants to do, and it's the only thing that Amanda is likely to let her do. Not that it's likely to come to that, but the point stands. Amanda knows what Mary needs this for, and she isn't going to let the mistakes that slipped past her when she was so much younger take again. A note: she doesn't blame her younger self at all, or even her current one. She had no idea what she was doing, the fact that it even worked is a miracle, and that was enough. Don't worry about that.

On the matter of commutes and similar things, I'd say that a personal ability to be anywhere on Earth within fifteen minutes means that casual appointments are likely to be pretty damn possible. You have to consider that transit between Earth and Mars is basically a New York suburb commute if you work in Manhattan. Just...consider that, ok?

Just HOW "post-scarcity" are we talking about here? Is there a material cost to moving (in general, not specifically for Amanda and her family), or is it just "if you want to move, you request what you need"?

Click to shrink...

The latter. Except if Arcadia is being relocated to Mytikas, not even that. The government will handle the entire matter. You have highly efficient light (insanely high compared to modern standards) orbital lift capacity, and a functional space elevator for larger things. It's really not hard.

As to security, do take into account that this decision won't take effect until the start of next year. It's currently late February, and Adriana is pursuing the deep level sweep of the planet action that you've been ignoring ever since Turn 3. Security details will work with them on that if this decision gets made, and if Making a Home was taken, you'd move across fully late in the year. As I said in the AN post, this isn't an instant effect decision like a lot of the others have been.

If I missed anything important, tag me about it and I'll get to it as I can.

 

[tenchifew]

[x] Tell Mary about Adriana's offer to shift Arcadia to Olympia Institutes. Not right now. Not when the wound is so raw. Tell her in a week or so.
-[x] In the meantime, tell her that this home will be her home again, but you'd like her to wait until the final decision for a week or two.
-[x] Once you're back on Earth, with Iris, and with a few days downtime to calm down, raise the subject of both Adriana's offer of shifting Arcadia to Olympia, and of how to use Mary's birth home in light of this offer. This is, after all, what she wants for you all as family. And it should be a family decision.
[x] Making a Home

 

[DarknessSmiles]

[x] Tell Mary about Adriana's offer to shift Arcadia to Olympia Institutes. Not right now. Not when the wound is so raw. Tell her in a week or so.
-[x] In the meantime, tell her that this home will be her home again, but you'd like her to wait until the final decision for a week or two.
-[x] Once you're back on Earth, with Iris, and with a few days downtime to calm down, raise the subject of both Adriana's offer of shifting Arcadia to Olympia, and of how to use Mary's birth home in light of this offer. This is, after all, what she wants for you all as family. And it should be a family decision.
[x] Making a Home

If Iris moves to Mars, I wonder how long it will take her to find a way to unify both networks.

So that she can access one planet's network from the other at the same speeds she can access the network of the planet she's on.

Click to shrink...

as soon as she figures out lagless communication

 

[uju32]

I don't think the rationale necessarily applies here. This is rather a special case.

Click to shrink...

In order:
1) I disagree.

I don't think the security issue is QUITE as significant as you suggest. Certainly it would take work to refit the home in Mytikas to incorporate the security features in the Residence, but I have two points to raise on that front: (1) The likelihood of Shiplord payloads being present are vanishingly small. The Shiplords had no presence in our system until the first Tribute Fleet arrived. Practice-backed Mending will have restored the city to the state it was before the Shiplords got involved. (2) It's not like they're going to make the decision and move in the span of a week. This is a big deal, and they can take the time to make sure the place is ready for them to move into (security features and all) before they make the transition.

Click to shrink...

2)I think the security risks are, if anything, understated.
We had Shiplord vessels engaged in Mars orbit during their last incursion, and explicit combat forces on the surface of Mars. I quote:

After the exhilaration of victory had faded, there'd still been a lot left to do. Ensuring that the drone forces deployed by the Shiplord escorts onto the Martian surface had been fully dealt with had taken immediate precedence, with the space battle having been resolved with the destruction of the Collector that had captured the Calypso. Of the entire Shiplord fleet, not a single vessel had escaped. The trap had worked perfectly, drawing the Tribute Fleet in so that when they shattered upon the wall of blood, steel and Practice, not a single vessel was in a position to escape. Their reaction to your Speaking had done much to help that, in fact.

Click to shrink...

We have seen what smart matter is capable of in Mercury, and we haven't even come close to plumbing it's full capabilities.
And the Shiplords have Second Secret tech as well.

There is little chance in my estimation that the Shiplords have not grown have an intel network on Mars, using from a couple one meter seed packages to grow direct action and intelligence gathering units on the surface of the planet, out in the boonies. Not after we subverted their previous ELINT network and used it against them.

All it would have required is a couple kilograms of smartmatter set to assemble stuff, and they deployed hundreds, if not thousands, of tons of war materiel to the surface.
It's what I'd do, once we proved ourselves to be worth taking seriously.
And KINGSLAYER demonstrates that they are not beyond decapitation strikes on key personnel.

I was born in a farming community in northwest Kansas. My childhood memories aren't in that home. The argument that it's not her birthplace is completely meaningless. This is the home that her most significant memories were formed in.

Click to shrink...

Her most significant childhood memories. That's the issue. She is not a child anymore.

The whole pack up and move to Mars decision implicitly asserts that those childhood memories are the most important she has.
Not the ones she's created on Earth. Not the living people who comprise her surrogate family who've literally moved to live within commuting distance of the Residence since Amy retired.

It's a value judgement about what she finds important, and I expect it to have ramifications.

On a Doylist level: I trust Snowfire as a writer. He's not the kind of QM to give out trap options. The only times he's done that, he's clearly labeled them as trap options, only included for the sake of completeness. We wouldn't HAVE this choice available to us if it would be that bad.

Click to shrink...

Snowfire is a GM. It's part of the guild regulations that they subsist on the tears and wailing of their players.

Trusting that our GM is not unnecessarily harsh does not mean that he will mitigate risks we knowingly, with our eyes open, choose to take.
Shiplord drone forces landed on Mars during the last Tribute fleet.
In a world where we saw them use nanobiologicals for combat-time repairs.

For a start, there's a reason beyond Mary wanting to move for Arcadia to shift to the Olympus Colleges. Let me get a bit into history for a moment.

Click to shrink...

We just went to the trouble of backing up that data to avoid giving the Shiplords a discrete target like last time.
She has access to it on Earth, if she wants it.

The Reliquaries, OTOH, are deliberately not on any network.
And are all physically located on Earth.

And to be honest, from a purely security perspective I would want key scientists behind the deepest defenses we can devise.
Basically,it's feels like situating Einstein and Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project off in the Carribean during WW2.

On the matter of commutes and similar things, I'd say that a personal ability to be anywhere on Earth within fifteen minutes means that casual appointments are likely to be pretty damn possible. You have to consider that transit between Earth and Mars is basically a New York suburb commute if you work in Manhattan. Just...consider that, ok?

Click to shrink...

For Amanda yes. Not for anyone else.
That puts the benefits of access distinctly one-way, and puts the onus of any sort of relationship on Amanda, while limiting any possible spontaneity.
Human socials still rely on a lot of intangibles from face to face contact, else we wouldn't still have outstanding issues with Vega.

To use your New York analogy, it's the difference between a relationship with a Manhattan millionaire who has a helicopter and someone out in the suburbs who walks everywhere. What's a whimsical jaunt for one becomes a complicated event for the other.

 

[Snowfire]

If Iris moves to Mars, I wonder how long it will take her to find a way to unify both networks.

So that she can access one planet's network from the other at the same speeds she can access the network of the planet she's on.

Click to shrink...

as soon as she figures out lagless communication

Click to shrink...

I mean, the network itself is systemwide - Vision going through it like a tornado of swords back in Turn 10 is a good example of this. Iris is still learning to extend her 'self' across it, however. She can do it, but it's like a muscle for organics. More practice will make it easier.

We just went to the trouble of backing up a fair amount of that data to avoid giving the Shiplords a discrete target like last time.
She has access to it on Earth, if she wants it.

Click to shrink...

No, you went to the trouble of backing up the Skylark database. The Olympus College data archives are far more more extensive. And current not easily accessible from Earth (it's on the list, but a ways down it). You're quite correct about the Reliquaries, mind.

For Amanda yes. Not for anyone else.

Click to shrink...

Anyone else is thirty-five minutes. Most of an hour if you have to fly civilian (which no one with a reason to actually visit her will). I do get your point, but I just felt the need to clarify here. The difference isn't as wide as you've implied. Amanda and Mary didn't fly out on a charter flight, they took a standard government transfer.

since Amy retired

Click to shrink...

*cough*

Snowfire is a GM. It's part of the guild regulations that they subsist on the tears and wailing of their players.

Click to shrink...

I have special dispensation where that regulation is concerned

 

[Mr.Controll]

[x] Tell Mary about Adriana's offer to shift Arcadia to Olympia Institutes. Not right now. Not when the wound is so raw. Tell her in a week or so.
-[x] In the meantime, tell her that this home will be her home again, but you'd like her to wait until the final decision for a week or two.
-[x] Once you're back on Earth, with Iris, and with a few days downtime to calm down, raise the subject of both Adriana's offer of shifting Arcadia to Olympia, and of how to use Mary's birth home in light of this offer. This is, after all, what she wants for you all as family. And it should be a family decision.
[x] Making a Home

Mars shall be the new front. The one we will use to spite the shiplords for their attempt to subdue us. The place that will become a symbol of us not letting the shiplords win.

That and I want more Mary/Amanda shipping.

 

[uju32]

No, you went to the trouble of backing up the Skylark database. The Olympus College data archives are far more more extensive. And current not easily accessible from Earth (it's on the list, but a ways down it). You're quite correct about the Reliquaries, mind.

Click to shrink...

Then we're backing it up anyway as a priority, assuming the new president and minister are even partway competent.
Moving for access makes no sense.

Anyone else is thirty-five minutes. Most of an hour if you have to fly civilian (which no one with a reason to actually visit her will). I do get your point, but I just felt the need to clarify here. The difference isn't as wide as you've implied. Amanda and Mary didn't fly out on a charter flight, they took a standard government transfer.

Click to shrink...

Thirty five minute flight on a government flight. Which move on a schedule.
Passing through airport/security.
I stand behind my statement that you're putting aside much of a day for this, and doing nothing else.

No spontaneous ten minute visits. No pizza nights. No grills.

Like I said, the network effect matters for both social and intellectual matters. That's why people cluster IRL.
It's even part of the argument for the Olympus Colleges.

Only that I do not believe that we are better off isolating ourselves on Mars away from 90% of the social and intellectual capital of humanity, and away from much of the interesting people and projects. The Elder First hid everything on Earth, from Vision to the other contents of the Reliquaries, for a reason.

*cough*

Click to shrink...

Amanda: RETIRED! That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I have special dispensation where that regulation is concerned

Click to shrink...

That just means you're saving it up

 

[uju32]

To reiterate my point:
Consider if Mary was living on Mars, and Amanda is living on Earth.
Fifteen minute commute, right? And yet it changes everything.

Amanda's primary superpower in this story so far, as I've seen it, has been Social. Getting people together, and getting them to work together.
Research has been interesting, but it's a sideline. Moving her away from the center of population, from the Circles, the contacts she's fostered for years, the family she's beginning to reconnect with so that Mary can live in her childhood house makes zero sense.

Same with moving her and her family over to the site of a restored research center which was only established where it is in the days before humanity figured out that genocide was on the cards, and that close to the system perimeter was no place to put mission-critical installations. Datastores can be transferred and backed up. People less so.

We put the main Navy source of matter on Mercury, as far from attack as possible.
Project Insight is on Earth. So are the Unison labs.
So why would move Mary and Iris to Mars exactly?

 

[justinkal]

as soon as she figures out lagless communication

Click to shrink...

I mean, the network itself is systemwide - Vision going through it like a tornado of swords back in Turn 10 is a good example of this. Iris is still learning to extend her 'self' across it, however. She can do it, but it's like a muscle for organics. More practice will make it easier.

Click to shrink...

My point was that it would be an impetus for Iris to figure out lagless communication

 

[Pyro Hawk]

[x] Tell Mary about Adriana's offer to shift Arcadia to Olympia Institutes. Not right now. Not when the wound is so raw. Tell her in a week or so.
-[x] In the meantime, tell her that this home will be her home again, but you'd like her to wait until the final decision for a week or two.
-[x] Once you're back on Earth, with Iris, and with a few days downtime to calm down, raise the subject of both Adriana's offer of shifting Arcadia to Olympia, and of how to use Mary's birth home in light of this offer. This is, after all, what she wants for you all as family. And it should be a family decision.
[x] Split the Difference

Different from the other votes, but I'm fine if Making a Home wins.

 

[Coda]

There is little chance in my estimation that the Shiplords have not grown have an intel network on Mars, using from a couple one meter seed packages to grow direct action and intelligence gathering units on the surface of the planet, out in the boonies. Not after we subverted their previous ELINT network and used it against them.

Click to shrink...

You underestimate how paranoid we were about that after the Second Battle of Sol.

Keep in mind that we have had MULTIPLE ridiculous successes on this front. We have had Marcus and Vision comb everything on the network to purge out every last trace of Shiplord influence. We have eliminated every point of communication that the Shiplords could leverage to install new influence short of bringing one of their ships in range, and we would know if that happened.

Furthermore, the government has continued to keep defenses up. We took the paranoid votes when it came to interfacing with Shiplord technology. We've been doing security sweeps of everything, every time. We will be having a security detail going over Mytikas -- and Mary's ancestral home -- in exacting detail. And Mytikas itself is now the result of a Practiced Miracle supported by a Word Spoken by the most powerful Mender in human history.

I think the chances of a covert Shiplord cyberintrusion at this point are negligible. (An overt one could be possible.)

The whole pack up and move to Mars decision implicitly asserts that those childhood memories are the most important she has.
Not the ones she's created on Earth. Not the living people who comprise her surrogate family who've literally moved to live within commuting distance of the Residence since Amy retired.

It's a value judgement about what she finds important, and I expect it to have ramifications.

Click to shrink...

You misunderstand; it doesn't assert that. It asserts that they have some value to her that had been neglected for decades. It doesn't say those are the most important memories, only that they are sufficiently important to take action. It's not an all-or-nothing thing, and psychology isn't that black-and-white.

From a different perspective: This is a microcosm of post-Sorrows Humanity as a whole. We've spent so long trying to rebuild, trying to reclaim our history and our heritage. It's not about just surviving. It's about achieving wholeness: unifying the past, the present, and the future. We don't want to move ahead into the future and abandon our past. We want to hold on to what makes us human instead of becoming something else in the process.

 

[Garm352]

[x] Tell Mary about Adriana's offer to shift Arcadia to Olympia Institutes. Not right now. Not when the wound is so raw. Tell her in a week or so.
-[x] In the meantime, tell her that this home will be her home again, but you'd like her to wait until the final decision for a week or two.
-[x] Once you're back on Earth, with Iris, and with a few days downtime to calm down, raise the subject of both Adriana's offer of shifting Arcadia to Olympia, and of how to use Mary's birth home in light of this offer. This is, after all, what she wants for you all as family. And it should be a family decision.
[x] Making a Home

Amanda's primary superpower in this story so far, as I've seen it, has been Social. Getting people together, and getting them to work together.

Click to shrink...

Amanda's primary superpower is empathy, compassion, and caring about the physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing of every human being she's ever met, as well as that of the two AI that she's met. Amanda is, to her very core, a healer, a Mender. And Mary and Iris are the two most important people in her life. She spent her time running humanity, she's done with that now.

And yes, the Circles are important - they could be argued as being the greatest thing Amanda has ever done. But Amanda worked to ensure that she didn't need to run them herself. The point of the Circles was to be a self-perpetuating support group, so that no one would ever truly be alone, so that those who lost family in the Week of Sorrows would gain new family in the form of emotional bonds, rather than just bonds of blood. They educate, they unite, they elevate, and they heal. That is the point of the Circles.

What Amanda's been doing since leaving office is trying to find herself again, beyond simply being the President, and restoring the bonds with those she held most dear. Her family and Mary. Iris was a happy surprise as far as I'm concerned, but a wonderful one nonetheless. But Amanda missed so much of the lives these people she loves so dearly. Mary worked alongside her, yes, but that was likely the majority of the time they had for each other given their roles in the government and the drive to be prepared for the next Shiplord fleet.

Amanda has been taking this time to center herself and decide what she wants to do, rather than what she feels she needs to do. Because before this all she did was what she felt had to be done. Sure, she did it willingly, and to an extent happily, but it wasn't her dreams, it wasn't the sort of freedom to live as she wanted that so many others had, that she ensured that so many others got to have. And Amanda wants to be there for Mary because Mary was a huge part of her life, ever since the Week of Sorrows. They've been together for so long, regardless of their relationship, that they are quite literally the closest, most important person in the world to one another, until Iris came along and made them mothers. They're a family and that fucking means something.

I guess the point of this is, that Amanda might be important still, yes. But Jesus Christ, doesn't her happiness and the happiness of the smartest person in the fucking solar system mean anything or have value? Don't they deserve to be happy? I think they've earned the right to make a life for themselves, don't you?

From a different perspective: This is a microcosm of post-Sorrows Humanity as a whole. We've spent so long trying to rebuild, trying to reclaim our history and our heritage. It's not about just surviving. It's about achieving wholeness: unifying the past, the present, and the future. We don't want to move ahead into the future and abandon our past. We want to hold on to what makes us human instead of becoming something else in the process.

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This, too, is an important point here in this discussion. This whole scenario is an on-the-ground view of the sort of pain and suffering the Week of Sorrows inflicted upon mankind, and the kind of things Amanda's been working to fix for so very long.

 

[Coda]

This, too, is an important point here in this discussion. This whole scenario is an on-the-ground view of the sort of pain and suffering the Week of Sorrows inflicted upon mankind, and the kind of things Amanda's been working to fix for so very long.

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So. @Snowfire.

How does it feel, as a writer, to have a community that's emotionally invested in the well-being of your characters?