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kassandras-one-braincell · 3 years ago

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Eivor x Fem!Reader - Ink Me Up

Oh, what to do when the Norwegian woman tattooing your thigh is insanely attractive, clearly gay, with a criminally good bedside manner?

Warning: about tattooing and obviously needles.

Word count: 4363

Can be found on AO3 here.

Heavily inspired by this post here. The tattoo itself is purely self-indulgent. Eivor is stupidly attractive and it's not fair. (Y/N) replacer safe.

After months of saving and deliberation, the time had come. For the longest time you had dreamed of getting something big, bold and beautiful permanently inked into your skin. Something meaningful. And you wanted someone talented to tattoo it.

Thus, you found yourself scouring the web for reputable tattoo shops, hours upon hours poured into searching artists’ portfolios, hoping that someone was skilled enough at black-and-grey realism within a relatively close radius. If you were going to pay a hefty sum for a tattoo, you wanted it to be perfect. Your desktop was flooded with reference images of sword lilies – the subject of your desired ink – and about a dozen different parlours, tabs whittling down one by one during your search.

The final tab was the website for a slightly pricier shop, but one of the artist’s Instagrams utterly captivated you. Their artwork was extraordinary, the details in their pieces stunning and intricate; you decided investing a little extra cash would be worth it. Eivor Varinsdóttir, handle @wolfkissed_ink. Grinning, you emailed the artist, requesting a consultation.

You explained to the artist during that consultation that you wanted a composition of black-and-grey realistic gladioli on your left thigh. Sword lilies represented strength, after all, and you wanted to commemorate overcoming a difficult part of your life with something gorgeous and symbolic. That and, well, flowers were pretty. Within the week they had responded with a sketch that was beyond what you could have possibly thought up yourself: two stunning, bloomed sprigs of the flower with petals floating either side, lifelike as a monochrome photograph. Smiling ear-to-ear, you booked up your first appointment.

Unbridled excitement led to the time before your appointment soaring by, with you opening up the file of the sketch almost every day. Bringing us to the present: you stood anxiously outside the parlour door, 12:50pm, ten minutes before your scheduled appointment. Sucking in a shaky breath, nerves both good and bad, you stepped inside.

The tattoo shop was sleek, modern and decked wall-to-wall with flash sheets, the small designs varying in style, colour and detail. Everything was spotless, as one would expect, with shining awards dotted about. Just seeing the various trophies did well to quell some of your anxieties, knowing you were in good hands, that you’d end up with a lovely piece on your thigh. A stout man covered neck to foot in swirling Japanese designs manned the front desk, smiling warmly at you, obliterating any stigmas you had heard from older relatives about tattoo culture.

Biting your lip, you made your way to the desk, mustering a nervous smile. As thrilled as you were about getting the tattoo, the whole pain aspect was still rather daunting. “Hey, one o’clock appointment for (Y/N) (L/N)?” You fidgeted with the hem of your shorts while the gentleman checked his desktop.

“With Eivor, right?” he verified. You nodded.

“Sorry I’m a little early—”

“No, not at all! Rather you be early than late,” he chuckled, clearly sensing your worries. His eyes flickered across a clipboard. “She’s not with a client at the moment, so I’ll send you through now, if that’s alright.”

“Sounds good, thank you,” you bade, pulse quickening. Come on, you’ve wanted this for so long, you can’t pussy out now.

The guy asked you to wait by the desk as he ventured down a long corridor, the black paint giving off an ominous vibe that did nothing for your nerves. A few seconds later, he returned, cocking his head for you to follow. Your knuckles were white from gripping the strap of your purse so tightly.

He led you to the room at the end of the hall, holding the glossy black door open for you. “Go easy on her, Eivor, it’s clearly her first,” he called out, flashing you a wink, before letting the door close behind you.

Holy shit.

She was hot.

Eivor was nothing short of a modern day viking. Tall, rippling with muscle, late twenties to early thirties, blond hair strewn into an unruly braid with a strip on the right shaved clean to the flesh, revealing a fucking skull tattoo of a bird…a raven? Her face was stupidly handsome, eyes blue and icy but warm with greeting, a long and gnarly scar cutting into the flesh of her left cheek with a smaller nick protruding from her upper lip. Hell, the nape of her neck was marred with an even more vicious looking scar. She wore a tight black t-shirt that strained around her deliciously grizzled arms, which were adorned with Norse-looking runes and text curving into circles, ink that carried on to her hands and neck. The smile she offered you made you weak in the knees.

“(Y/N), right? I’m Eivor, a pleasure to meet you,” she greeted, voice deep and gravelly, decorated with a rasp that to you sounded like butter. Fuck me, she’s a tall, tall glass of water.

You shook her hand when she extended it to you, marvelling at the patterns and blacked-out bands on her long, thick fingers. Her nails were cut extremely short, confirming the strong lesbian vibe she gave off. “Likewise,” you squeaked, cursing yourself for acting like some bloody schoolgirl.

She sauntered over to her setup, weight carried in her shoulders, consolidating her already intimidatingly attractive butch energy, sanitised her hands and pulled on a clean pair of gloves. “Come on over,” she said, grabbing a disposable razor from a box. “I’ll just need to make sure the area is shaven, if that’s alright.”

“Of course,” you replied, joining her by the leather chair, covered by a sheet of cellophane. It was a relief to see all the hygiene precautions taken in the shop. Eivor picked up a disinfectant wipe.

“Left thigh, if I remember correctly?”

“Mhm, yeah.”

She dropped to one knee – wasn’t that a fucking sight – and wiped down the expanse of your thigh before gliding the razor over the flesh.

Hesitantly, you asked her what the general procedure was, desperately trying to divert your thoughts from the sapphic spiral they were travelling down.

“Alright, after I’ve finished here I’ll apply the stencil. You’ll get to check if you like the placement, and if you don’t I’ll keep going until you’re happy with it. It’s a big piece, so we’ll have to split this up into two sessions, as we discussed alongside payment.” She brushed away the loose hairs and peach fuzz. “I’ll do the linework this session, and the shading next time.” With one final pass of the razor she pulled back, tossing it into a bin.

Eivor then picked up a sheet of thin paper with the sketch printed on it. She plucked a purple pen from her table. “Give me a few minutes to trace the stencil, then we’ll apply it and see how you like it.” You nodded, trying to focus on your breathing.

While she traced over each line of the sketch, she kindly attempted to soothe your fears with small talk. “I’ll admit, I’ve never heard of a ‘gladiolus’ before our consultation. Any reason why you chose it?”

You smiled. “They represent strength. I finally got through a rough spell and wanted something to celebrate with,” you explained, heart skipping a beat at the soft expression on the artist’s face.

“All the more reason to get this perfect then,” she said with a grin. The way the scar on her upper lip quirked was positively adorable. A couple minutes passed and she re-capped the pen. “Stand up straight for me, darling.” Oh.

Cheeks burning with bashfulness, you complied. Eivor took a second to angle the stencil before smoothing it over your thigh, leaving a purple outline once she removed the paper. “Just have a look in that mirror over there and tell me if you’re happy, okay?”

You walked over to the mirror and stared at your thigh. The tattoo was large – which you expected, with the amount of detail in it – and perfectly central, the loose petals appearing to float down the length of your thigh. “Perfect,” you breathed out, giving the woman a thumbs-up.

Eivor switched over her gloves and gestured for you to take a seat on the chair. “Get comfy, then. Do you have water?” Nodding, you took out your water bottle from your handbag. “Brilliant. Still want to do this?”

“Hell yeah.” Weirdly, the nerves about the pain (not about the sexy artist) had almost wholly subsided, leaving you brimming with anticipation.

She poured some jet black ink into small caps, no larger than the tip of your thumb. “Remember to breathe through it and hold still, yeah? You picked a smart place for your first tattoo, not too close to the bone.”

“I’ll try.” Eivor opened a sealed packet containing a new, sterilised needle, inserting it into her tattoo machine. She switched it on, the buzz of the machine’s piston filling the room with a gentle hum. Looking up at you, she cocked her brow – if only your gay thoughts could bugger off for two minutes – as if to ask, ready? Affirmatively, you beamed at her.

Dipping the needle into the ink, she pulled the skin of your thigh taut. Immediately, you noted the warmth of her hand on your leg, fighting off a shudder. Then came a mildly painful scratching sensation as she brought the machine to your thigh.

Honestly? It wasn’t bad. Irritating, like an itchy eye, but not drastically unpleasant. You followed Eivor’s advice, keeping your breathing steady, averting your attention to the artwork on the walls, some of which you had seen on her Instagram portfolio. Portraits, flowers, animals, realistic-looking jewellery…the woman had mastered black-and-grey. You knew you picked the right artist. The frown of concentration on her face spoke volumes about her dedication to the art, steeled and intently focused on the lines she was pulling.

When she wiped the area and reached for more ink, she glanced up at your face. “All good?” she asked.

“Yeah, no issues here.”

“Wonderful.” She set back to work, positioning her needle over the flower’s curved stem, dragging it downwards in a slow arc. “Your skin takes ink like butter, by the way.”

“Oh, that’s good,” you breathed out. Her hand suddenly felt a little warmer. Tell me this woman does audiobooks, you thought.

After a few more lines, you tried to pepper in some small talk without breaking her concentration. Fortunately, her bedside manner was immaculate, and she entertained your questions without any grudges.

“Your voice is really soothing. Where abouts are you from?”

“Oh, thank you. I’m from Norway, moved here a few years back.” She grinned at the compliment. “It’s funny, people usually say the opposite about my voice.” You wondered if they were deaf.

“It’s a nice rasp,” you chuckled. Buzzing stopped, more ink.

“I was bitten by a wolf when I was nine,” she explained. Buzzing recommenced, scratching returned. “My larynx never properly healed from it, so I’ve sounded like some chain-smoker since before I hit double-digits, despite never touching a cigarette in my life.”

“You don’t sound like a chain-smoker, though. I mean it.”

Her grin widened. “That actually means a lot.”

An hour passed by, most of it spent in comfortable silence, with Eivor checking in on you occasionally to see how you were coping. Certain patches of nerves stung a little more than others, but none of it was unbearable. That was until her machine passed over a particularly rough area. It fucking killed, the burn of the needle seemingly deeper than anywhere else, the sting infinitely more intense than before. You hissed, gritting your teeth together.

“Ow,” you winced, clutching onto your water bottle in an attempt to relieve the pain, to no avail.

Eivor continued pulling her line, her rasp coming out in a low mantra. “Just breathe through it, nice and slow…” You tried to follow, attempting in vain to relax your shoulders. “Keep holding still for me…” Your breaths came shallow but steadily so, the stinging slowly becoming more endurable. The machine reached the end of the line. “Good girl,” she muttered, blissfully of absent mind.

Good girl.

Oh fuck.

Just when your clearly gay tattoo artist couldn’t get any hotter, she comes out with some hot-girl bullshit like that. And fuck, you didn’t think you had a praise kink before, but now this certainly awakened something. Why, why did it have to sound so good in her husky voice? No, you were absolutely not going to fantasise about your artist, not when her hands were on your skin, on your thigh of all fucking places. God, this stupidly attractive Norwegian butch was making you uncomfortably hot.

When she finally pulled away, sweet bloody reprieve, you took a sip of your water. “That wasn’t fun,” you remarked.

“Took it like a champion, though,” she beamed proudly, clearly unaware of the affect her words had just had on you. “Need a break?”

“Just a minute or two, thank you,” you sighed with relief. Eivor wiped you down and analysed her work.

“We’re just over halfway there,” she commented. Only halfway? Fuck. You allowed your eyes to wander over the black lines, all perfectly smooth from practiced precision. Yeah, this woman was talented.

“I mean, that killed, and that was my thigh…” you trailed off, making her laugh. “What was the most painful tattoo you’ve gotten?”

Eivor answered without hesitation. “My head, without a doubt. Packing solid black into that thing was agony. My fingers killed, too, but all completely worth it.” You couldn’t help but agree with that last part. Her hands looked extremely good, both with and without those gloves.

“I’m guessing places with more nerve endings and by the bone are the worst, then?”

“Definitely. The palm of the hand is the most sensitive, and it’s tough to get right. Ink bleeds, skin bleeds…and if you don’t do it well it’ll just fade. All that pain for nought.”

You gulped down some more water. Ouch. “Duly noted.”

After ninety odd more minutes, Eivor switched off her machine for good, the linework finished and utterly flawless. “All done for this session,” she announced, changing gloves once more to clean and wrap the area. There was minimal irritation around each line, and the wipe felt wonderfully cool against the reddening flesh.

Once she finished placing various equipment in a tub labelled ‘autoclave’, she escorted you to the front desk. You paid half the decided fee of the tattoo and booked your second session for three weeks’ time. Eivor gave you an aftercare kit, explaining in detail how to keep the tattoo clean, how to prevent infection, and to avoid direct exposure to sunlight as much as you could. Eagerly, you listened, trying to drink in as much of her voice as possible before departing.

“I’ll see you in three weeks, then. Take care, (Y/N),” she grinned. From the moment you stepped out of the shop, you knew that grin would be engraved into your mind for the weeks to come.

The second appointment couldn’t have come quickly enough.

You spent an embarrassing quantity of time thinking about your dreamy tattoo artist, right up until the day you walked back into the shop, this time free of any concerns pertaining to the tattoo. The gentleman from before recognised you and asked how the tattoo was holding up, if you’d had any issues keeping it clean, to which you replied all was good. Only this time, Eivor came to greet you by the front desk.

“How’s it going?” she asked, welcoming as before.

“Really good. I just hope I’ve been doing everything right,” you chuckled, anxiously glancing down at your thigh. The redness had completely disappeared a few days after your first appointment, the black ink proudly meandering over your skin.

Eivor smiled reassuringly. “Trust me, you’d know if you haven’t. From here it looks like you’ve done a fantastic job of keeping it clean, anyway.” You followed her to her studio, mentally noting how she was wearing an even tighter black t-shirt than last time, the fabric clinging to the defined contours of her muscled back, biceps, abs… Needless to say, the gay thoughts had returned at full-force.

As before, she shaved and disinfected your thigh, but instead of a stencil she had the full greyscale reference images for the design printed and taped to a metal beam above her table. She took careful time in diluting various caps of black ink into a plethora of greys, experience shining through as she added precise amounts of diluter to each cap. There was something addictive about watching the woman work, with how methodical she was, how delicately she handled the bottles of ink.

When she unpacked a needle, you noted the shape was different to before. “Now, some parts are gonna be only a little rougher than before. Others will suck, I’ll warn you now,” she mentioned as you positioned yourself on the chair.

“Mama didn’t raise a bitch,” you joked. Eivor laughed.

“You handled it like a trooper before. I have zero doubts you’ll do the same today.”

And so she began, making multiple passes with the machine unlike before, packing in the different shades of grey in front of her, scratching into the already broken skin. It wasn’t massively painful, but Eivor was right – last time was a breeze in comparison. You rested your eyes and bore the pain, focusing on the faint music playing from the shop’s reception.

As previously, she was ever considerate, checking up on you as she worked – albeit not as frequently, now that you were accustomed to the needles – and encouraging you through the nastier patches. You tried your hardest to not look at your thigh, wanting the final result to be a surprise, but over time it grew increasingly difficult not to sneak a glance at her hands. Merely the thought of them flustered you (pathetic, you knew) and nothing would be more embarrassing than drifting off into a less than appropriate fantasy about the woman when she was simply being professional.

Time blurred together amongst your inner dilemma – to look or not to look – until Eivor’s signature rasp caught your attention. “Time for your least favourite part,” she said, giving you a knowing look, positioning her needle in one of the petals over the area that hurt like a bitch previously.

“Oh god, I forgot about that area.”

“Just own the pain and keep still, alright?”

“I’ll try.”

Eivor smirked: a wicked thing that could have killed every sapphic in a mile radius. “Squirm and I’ll pin you down. I’ve had to do it before, and I’ll do it again.”

That, under different circumstances, would be an appealing notion.

Closing your eyes once more, you tried to decipher the song lyrics resonating through the shop’s hall, grimacing when the needle penetrated the skin. Just focus on Rihanna, focus on Rihanna…

“That’s…not so bad, actually,” you mutter, not entirely self-assured of the words leaving your lips, hoping some placebo affect would take place.

Eivor chuckled, dipping into another shade. “You sound convincing,” she drawled.

“I’m – ow – serious… Okay fuck, that’s way worse.”

“Shh, it’ll be over soon. Find something to focus on.”

So you did, on what happened to be the first thing in your immediate line of sight when you re-opened your eyes: Eivor’s bicep. God, her shirt strained around the muscle, black fabric against tanned skin and the deep green runes littering her arm. Perhaps the ink had something to do with her ancestry, given that the woman said she was Norwegian – that or she was just a mythology nerd. Your eyes trailed over the spirals of script, the perfectly concentric circles. Mind wandering, the idea that she may have tattoos on her back and front piqued your interest. Then came the delightful image of Eivor without a shirt. Pinning you down. Fuck.

Before long the pain subsided, leaving a dull ache where the needle had worked at your skin. “All done, darling,” Eivor murmured, wiping the patch. Darling. You knew it was simply her bedside manner, trying to keep you as relaxed as possible, but damn was it having the polar opposite effect. Cheeks feeling impossibly hot, you unscrewed the cap of your bottle and took a sizeable gulp of water. She gave you a moment to breathe, now that the most difficult part was out of the way. Still flustered, you drained half your bottle.

Concern plastered on her face, Eivor leaned closer, inspecting your face intently. “Are you feeling faint?” she asked, evidently worried. “It’s important you tell me if you are—”

“No, no, I’m fine, really.” You were stuttering, annoyed with yourself that you made her worry. “Just being weird. I promise.”

“You do?” Her eyebrows were still upturned, not entirely believing you.

You nodded frantically. “Yeah, really. Please don’t worry.”

Taking a slow breath, she restarted the machine, relief flashing across her features. She gestured for permission to continue tattooing, which you granted, and set back to work.

Cursing internally, you let your eyes flutter shut, thoughts full of nothing but ‘good girls’ and ‘darlings’ in a husky Norwegian accent. Numbing yourself to the needles, you drifted off into slumber.

“Hey, (Y/N)?”

A gentle pressure squeezed at your hand, slowly stirring you, bringing you back to the world of the living. Yawning, you opened your eyes, gaze brought to a gloved hand atop your own.

“Good evening,” Eivor said, retracting her hand and watching as you gasped and scanned the studio for a clock in a panic. Evening?

“Kidding,” she laughed. “I finished up ten minutes ago.” You shot her a half-hearted glare through sleepy eyelids.

“That was mean,” you pouted. She grinned.

“I do stab people for a living.”

Snorting, you swung your legs over the side of the chair, stretching them to regain a semblance of sensation. Chest pounding with excitement, you looked to the mirror at the side of the room, then at Eivor, silently asking permission to peak at the finished tattoo. She held out her hand in gesticulation.

Giddy with anticipation, you walked over and… Holy shit.

It was beautiful.

Each shade of grey blended into one another in a perfect harmony, so seamlessly that the black outline from before was barely visible. The shadows underneath each leaf, each petal looked real. Every speckle and wrinkle on the petals shone through, love and attention going into every marking. The falling petals were akin to a photograph, with the light grey background wash tying them to the main flowers, each little shadow appearing to give them different depths. It was beyond anything you imagined. All that pain, mental and physical, turned into a lifetime of beauty.

You didn’t realise you were crying until the salt of tears rolled into your awe-parted mouth.

“I’m, well… Wow.” Beaming, you turned to face your artist, who looked at her artwork with pride. “Thank you, Eivor. Thank you so much.”

She shook her head and offered you a box of tissues, from which you took one gladly. “I’m just honoured to have helped you lay that chapter of your life to rest. May the sword-lilies battle any shreds of it that remain.”

Stunned by her poetic inclination, you dried your eyes in silence, lips curved into a joyous smile. Meanwhile, she removed her gloves.

“You have tissues at the ready. I’m guessing people cry a lot here?” you asked, finally prying your eyes away from the masterpiece on your thigh.

“Mostly from the pain,” she remarked.

“You know, you could just lie to me so I don’t feel like such a fucking sap.”

The sound that left Eivor’s mouth in response was nothing if not angelic. She practically howled in hearty laughter, echoing through her studio, her eyes crinkling at the corners. You didn’t think it possible for your grin to widen further still, but her outburst was contagious in the best way.

“I’m glad you’re happy with it. Truly,” she breathed out, chest stilling from her fit.

“It’s beautiful. Happy is an understatement.”

Eivor made her way over to the desk in the corner of the studio, where a graphics tablet lay alongside a stylus. “Now, before I dress it, I’m legally required to ask you if I have permission to photograph the tattoo for advertisement purposes. I appreciate it’s a personal subject matter and completely understand if—”

“Go for it,” you shrugged.

“Are you certain?” You nodded.

“Of course. It’s a work of art.” The smile she gave you was genuine.

“This’ll only take a minute. Thank you, really.”

She knelt down and snapped a picture with the tablet, checking the quality. “All done.” Eivor then proceeded to sanitise her hands and slip on one last pair of gloves, grabbing the wipes and plastic wrap from her station. “The photo will be uploaded to the shop’s website and my professional Instagram, if that’s alright with you. Completely anonymous, of course.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. Although, it’ll be weird seeing my leg on my feed.” She chuckled.

“Feel free to email or DM if you have any concerns with the healing.” Patting your leg, she stood up to her full height, placing her gloves in a biohazard ziplock. “Well, I’m honoured to have given you your first tattoo.”

“Honoured to be your…canvas?”

And just like that, your time with the artist was up. You watched wistfully as she put together an aftercare pack at the front desk, your previously overjoyed expression drifting into a sad one. After paying, you thanked her one final time.

“Take care, søta,” she said with a wink.

The very moment you arrived back home, you whipped out a Norwegian-to-English translator and immediately tried to replicate her pronunciation of the word she called you, blushing profusely when discovering it meant ‘cutie’. And upon opening your cleaning pack, you found an addition that wasn’t present in your previous bundle:

A small slip of paper. On one side, a mobile number. On the other, in beautifully neat cursive,

I’d love to take you to dinner. Text me if you’re interested?

Yours, Eivor

#eivor #eivor varinsdóttir #eivor x reader #f!eivor x reader #female eivor #tattoo parlor au #modern au #ac valhalla

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warmlylife · 3 years ago

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#warmly life #mirror #led mirror #makeup mirror

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anistarrose · 5 years ago

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Tulip’s Return (Infinity Train One-Shot)

Summary: Tulip reunites with her parents, and finds a strange gift in her bedroom.

Warnings: none

Word Count: 1200

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20192683

Tying up some loose ends (because I’m a big softy).

***

Tulip tumbled to the ground, hands and knees landing on soft earth. The golden glow of her exit door dissipated in the blink of an eye, leaving her kneeling alone in the middle of the yard.

Her yard.

She really was home.

The front door was unlocked, but she hesitated before opening it. How would she explain to her parents? Would they even believe her if she told them the truth? How could she prove —

She shook her head, and swung the door wide open. She’d faced countless challenges far more intimidating than reuniting with her parents. She was ready for this.

They were both here, her mom and her dad, and they were sitting at the kitchen table.

“I think I’m gonna head out now,” her dad said. “Can you call me if they say it looks like the Michigan lead might actually… amount to something?”

“You know I will,” her mom replied as he stood up. “Be careful on the road. I heard there’s a thunderstorm coming in —”

Almost in perfect unison, their heads swiveled around to stare at Tulip as she entered the kitchen. They didn’t say anything.

Tulip froze. She wasn’t ready for this.

“I’m back from game design camp,” she said weakly, and gave an awkward wave.

As if her words had broken a spell of paralysis, her parents rushed towards her. Her dad got there first, and practically crushed her in a bear hug.

“Tulip, where have you been? We know it’s not game design camp, so — so don’t try and tell us — oh my god, I just can’t believe you’re okay.”

“You are okay, aren’t you? No one hurt you?” her mom asked, brushing a hand against Tulip’s cheek as she pulled her into another hug. “This scar — when did this happen? Who did this to you?”

“The police have been looking all over,” her dad explained. “We were afraid you were dead in the Wisconsin wilderness, or tied up in someone’s basement — where were you, Tulip?!”

“It’s good to see you guys too,” Tulip whispered, wiping her eyes. “But it’s — it’s kind of hard to explain. I don’t think I ever thought about how I would explain it, because getting home always felt so far away…”

She took a deep breath. “Okay, here goes. This is going to sound unbelievable, but… I was on this crazy magical train where every car was a different universe. And there were robots, and corgis, and evil robots too, and this number on my hand that I had to get to zero before I could leave —”

Her parents exchanged a concerned look.

“Don’t look at each other like that! It was all real —” Tulip gasped. “And I can prove it, too! I need something reflective!”

She rushed back to the hallway, and skidded to a stop in front of the large rectangular mirror that hung on the wall. “See? No reflection!”

Reflected in the mirror, she saw her mother’s jaw drop as her father raised his hands to cover his mouth. There was no sign of Tulip’s reflection.

To drive the point home, she pulled a pen out of her pocket and waved it around. The mirror showed it floating through thin air, even when Tulip held it behind her back.

“How…?”

“I pulled my reflection out of a mirror and let her wander the world on her own,” Tulip explained. “She’s pretty cool once you get to know her. I just wish I had a way to know how she and the others are doing now…”

***

Tulip was used to that strange sensation when you return home to sleep in your own bed for the first night after a long road trip, and all the perfectly normal fixtures of your house feel alien for the first few hours back. But that feeling was nothing compared to the wave of disbelief she felt when she finally made her way back into her bedroom.

Her shelves had been dusted and her fish had been feed, but almost everything was still right where she’d left it — from her coding books, to the pictures of Mikayla and her family, and even the ribbons pinned to her bulletin board and the medal hanging from the lamp on her desktop. Her room looked too clean to be lived in, yet still too cluttered to be out of use — just like how she felt she’d been away for both an eternity, and no time at all — and the more she thought about that contradiction, the more overwhelming it grew.

(Tulip felt a brief pang of guilt for forcing her mom to make the choice between cleaning up and leaving things as they were. How many days had she come in here to dust, forced to look at all the reminders of her missing child?)

She collapsed onto her bed and lay motionless for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling and tracing the path that the cracks in the tiles took, just like she used to do whenever she couldn’t fall asleep. The winding path led her eyes down to the shelf above her desk, decorated with extra Christmas tree lights that never ended up being needed — lights that she hadn’t yet turned on this evening, but were somehow still flickering before her eyes.

Tiny sparks danced in tiny bulbs, as if the current running through was coming not from the plug they were attached to, but rather induced by some other electromagnetic phenomenon nearby. A soft clatter rang in her ears — like a piece of plastic falling and landing on something hard — but went silent after just a fraction of a second, leaving Tulip to wonder if she’d imagined it.

She stood up, approaching her desk with a caution she’d learned early in her stay on the train. There was one new object on her shelf, in front of her bulletin board of notes and awards — and she couldn’t be sure, but she had a hunch it hadn’t been there for more than just a few moments.

It was a sleek, black, rectangular flash drive, and as she picked it up, she noticed there were two words written on one side in a familiar glowing green font.

Infinity Train.

She inserted it into her computer’s USB port — getting the alignment right on her first try, which was probably a stronger indication of supernatural involvement than anything — and opened the single folder it contained, labeled with the same title.

Inside was a long list of .mp4 files, so long that several seconds of scrolling with the mouse wheel seemed to hardly move the scroll bar at all. Tulip did, however, recognize several familiar file names:

Music_ in_Space_Car

Corgi_Car

Italy_Car

Chrome_Car

And so on, continuing seemingly ad infinitum. But more than any other, Tulip felt drawn to the first file, titled:

Engine.

She double-clicked to open it, and for a moment, static filled her brain. But then she blinked, and found herself staring down at her own hands — holographic and transparent, as if she was still physically sitting at her desk while her mind was projected into a distant location.

“Hello, Miss Tulip!” One-One chirped from his position in the center of the train’s control board. “My mom and I figured out a way to keep in touch!”

***

(Thanks for reading, comments are welcomed as always! I definitely have plans for more Infinity Train fics (mainly one-shots, but potentially also crossovers) so stay tuned!)

#infinity train #infinity train spoilers #tulip olsen #infinity train tulip #infinity train one one #rosalia writes fic

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lampscompany · 2 years ago

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Designing a Lighting Plan for Small Spaces

Lighting is crucial in any location, but achieving the desired effect in confined areas can be tough. On the other hand, if you have the appropriate lighting scheme, your little room will feel both larger and more functional.

When designing a lighting scheme for bedroom living room aisle simple and small space, some helpful hints include maximizing the amount of natural light that enters the space, using multiple light sources, employing task lighting, thinking vertically, selecting lighting that is more energy-efficient, and installing a dimmer switch.

You may design a unified and practical lighting plan for your limited space with the help of our store’s extensive selection of lighting solutions, which are available for purchase.

#Designer Tables #Designer Table Lamps #Bedroom Living Room Aisle Simple #Desktop design mirror with led #Lucky Bird LED Night Light

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harleyquinnbluemoonlove · 4 years ago

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Welcoming the new Social Movement/Platform/Political Party in the World

Official Name: Blue Dog Bite Mafia 888 *BETA*

Owner/CEO/Founder/Dealer/Player/Delivery BAD B:

Current Name: Monica Gill FUTURE Name: Mercedes Lynnette Giovanni

Email: [email protected]

Current Financial Status: $0.00 ---- You may DONATE by using CASH APP Cash Tag #$bluedogbitemafia888

***MY CYBER FAMILY MUST ENSURE THAT DONATIONS ARE NOT HIGHJACKED/STOLEN****

BASIC IDEA/PLAN OF ATTACK/EXECUTION OR POSITIVE WORDS LIKE “LAUNCH”. We can issue an ATTACK or a LAUNCH CODE.

I will dumb it down a little bit. I am taking advantage of my position of power, now that I am a Celebrity in the World. Its the greatest feeling in the world, feels better than good sex and that is a hard thing for me to admit because I love some good, hot, sweaty sex and I’ve been going without for several weeks. I almost fell like a Nun because I cannot even pleasure myself because I was molested as a child by Lovie Price’s boyfriend “Frank Parker” a gasoline man from an early. I told Connie Price about it when I was 15 and her name at the time was Connie Dunford. It was the same day Brandie Ann Thompson said Curtis Triplett tried to rape her in the bathroom at the house In Frayser, Memphis TN. Brandie Ann in her hayday, resembled a youthful Cameron Diaz. Cameron Diaz dated Justin Timberlake once upon a time. She played in the move “The mask” and the mask was green. At the end of the movie, the dog put on the mask. You all know, when you wear that mask---you become a Shape Shifter, transforming into anything/anyone you think will grab the Hot or Not Rated #10 Woman’s ATTENTION/HEART/LOVE and will do anything, I mean anything to get it. The secret to my success is a compilation of everything good, bad, dirty, evil and let’s call it “The Struggle” or the “Human Experience”.

Old School (OS) Operating System (OS) Back to Basics (B2B) Brandie Thompson (BT) Barry Thompson (BT) Blue Tooth (BT) Brandie Smith (BS) Bull Shit (BS) Rent A Center (RAC) Roger Adren Crawford (RAC) $1K (RAK) Rags to Riches Richard Abernathy (RA) **secret boyfriend shh!!** Douche Bag (DB) or Douglas Belknap (DB) Thomas Jones (TJ) County Road (CR) Danny Thomas (DT) Deanna Thomas (DT) ... Trying to show you how I think period dot. In ya’ll are slow, period dot also equal two dots. You must have two dots to play connect the dots and draw the lines to illustrate inspiration into a masterpiece. The best pieces of Art are very old, have a solid reputation, and is properly curated to ensure it maintains its value for infinity times three.

Basically, you can get with my program, drink my Kool Aid, swallow your pride, do the right thing, if you have done something wrong, you really need to return to your basic religious beliefs what they may be, get right with yourself, because what you have done will come to light, exposed, we are moving on from there. We are, as a society going to change and deliver the children and the children’s children: a brighter future with more options, a limited amount of privacy, give them the world and see what they can accomplish with living in a world of positive vibes, beautiful colors, great music, entrepreneurship, dreams, and now, the little girls if we get married will truly believe in fairytales. This right here is whats up because we have an opportunity, once in a lifetime opportunity, to fix society, establish unity and peace, competition is good but everyone needs a chance to win sometimes to boost their confidence and pride. When there is monopoly or kingdom, it fosters the seven deadly sins, seven capital sins, and the seven cardinal sins, which is systemic to original sin.

Genesis clearly explains that certain things were created on certain days and back time was measured. You cannot just create a man or a woman. First, you need the Universe. Then, you need the Galaxy which creates Space. In Space, you have the moon, stars, sun, planets, black holes, asteroids, comets, shooting stars, orbit, gravitational pull. Here we are on planet Earth with 7 continents and 7 oceans. I like the number 8 because it represent a number, a symbol, and no limitations--infinity. My son was born on 3-8-03 weighing 8 pounds, 8 ounces and 19.5 inches long, color: BLUE, life: No sign of it. It took 10 minutes and PLEADING WITH THE LORD AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS SCREAMING PRAYING TO PLEASE GIVE HIM LIFE, I DON’T WANT TO HAVE GONE THROUGH 35.5 HOURS OF LABOR AND 7 HOURS OF HARD PUSHING WITH NO PAIN MEDICINE, NO EPIDURAL, GAVE BIRTH TO A STILL BORN BABY NATURALLY AND THE GOOD LORD ANSWERED MY PRAYERS AND THAT BOY CRIED AND WENT TO THE NICU AT BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MARYLAND. ITS ALSO REFERRED TO AS “THE PRESIDENTS HOSPITAL”.

He is 17 years old, already a MASTERMIND and a Professional Gamer. He is so smart like me, that he had to design/build/code his own computer because there is not a computer on the planet that can keep up with his level of gaming. I saw a photo of it. Its a desktop computer with the case taken off the side--lit up with blue LED lights

It’s Confession Time and Holy Communion Time that means confess your sin, wrongdoing, break bread, eat bread, drink wine, not whine. No days off, no excuse, no immunity, no setups, no blame game, no liars, no stealing, checks and balances, no absolute power because absolute power fosters absolute corruption, which is why were in this position right now with COVID-19, Corona Virus.

I think one person needs a pardon because he has stayed on the job, even though he was originally lied to by the Feds. He deserves a pardon, record expunged, and an opportunity. I see great potential, just needs an opportunity, believe in himself, and have the courage to escape his own prison of gold diggers, groupies, fans, and whores.

In this triad, it is a rags to riches story times three. There is only 1 TRUE VERSION of ME, and its right here in Memphis TN, age: 41(Birth Cert).

To succeed in any sports game, you must be fit, educated, content with yourself to include your pros/cons/demons and knowledgeable & intelligent enough to know that I am certified True OG, I got your back no matter what because to me money ain’t a thing, fame fades just like stars, but loyal dogs do not turn on their master unless they are abused or hungry. I am a Blue AKC Royal Bloodline Pitbull, Staffordshire Terrier. Pitbull is the image you need to have in your mind when you think of ME.

#donations #loyalty #888 #TRUMP2020 #IG #WHISTEBLOWER ACT #RULES #ESPNSPORTS #RAPGODS #GREEKGODS #GOD #CLASHOFTITANS #THEGAME #THEROCK #GLUE #DOCTORS #LAWYERS #COWBOYS #DANCE #L.I.F.E. #LOVE #SM #EM

#NEED SOME COM[ANY AND VITAMIN D

BLUE, COME ON UNLESS YOU ARE “CHICKEN” “SCARED”

I PROMISE I WILL NOT BITE. BUT, I AM STARVING, LONELY, NEED MONEY TO CREATE AND LAUNCH MY DREAMS TO POSITIVELY AND EFFECTIVELY CHANGE THE WORLD WHICH WILL PLACE ME AND PRESIDENT TRUMP IN THE HISTORY BOOKDS. AND THE HISTORY BOOKS ARE GOING TO BECOME FACTBOOKS, AND HISTORY CLASSES WILL BE MANDATORY THROUGHOUT LIFE REGARDLESS OF AGE, POSITION, JOB, FINANCIAL STATUS BECAUSE THE BEST EDUCATION IS A “CONTINUOUS EDUCATION”. IF YOU DO NOT CONTINUE LEARNING, YOU BECOME RUSTY AND THEN, YOU CANNOT KEEP UP THE FAST PACED CHANGES OF ADVANCE TECHNOLOGY IN THE REAL WORLD AND IN THE REAL GAME OF LIFE.

RECOMMENDATIONS ARE AS FOLLOWS:

1. DONATE MONEY TO MY CAUSE ON CASH APP

$BLUEDOGBITEMAFIA888

DO NOT HACK MY PHONE OR MY LAPTOP, DO NOT HACK ANYTHING OR ANYBODY BC YOU CANNOT DO IT BETTER THAN U.S. BC U.S. CREATED THE INTERNET IN WASHINGTON DC AT THE PENTAGON CALLED “DARPANET” IN 1974. THE FIRST COMPUTER WAS AN APPLE, SECOND COMPUTER WAS MICROSOFT. A GOOD BRAND IS A HP WITH MS WINDOWS. I HAVE A BLUE HP LAPTOP STREAM, I HAVE A BLACK APPLE IPHONE 7. I AM ON A WIFI WITH A VPN THAT KEEPS GETTING DISABLED. THE SOUND ON MY PHONE DOES NOT WORK. I AM BACKING UP BOTH DEVICES AND GOING TO RESET TO FACTORY SETTINGS SO I CAN GURANTEE EFFECTIVE DIGITAL SECURITY.

2. I NEED COMPANY TO SIT WITH ME, DRINK WITH ME. I WOULD LOVE SOME JACK AND COKE OR A BUD LIGHT. I WOULD ALSO LOVE SOME FOOD THAT CONTAINS RED MEAT TO ASSIST ME WITH MY BLOOD PROBLEMS. BUDDY OR BLUE OR YO -- FIGURE IT AND SEND ME SOMEONE I KNOW. I AM TOO PRETTY AND TOO COOL TO BE CHILLING BY MYSELF WITH NO FOOD, NO ALCOHOL, NO MONEY, NO WEED, ETC.

3. SELF EVALUATE OR DO A PEER REVIEW/. SELF EVALUATION IS LOOKING AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR AND THINKING ABOUT YOUR LIFE. I LIKE TO WRITE THINGS DOWN, IF HELPS ME. IT WILL BRING ABOUT A SENSE OF UNDERSTANDING WHO, WHAT, WHY YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE, HOW YOU BECAME PERSON, AND DESIGN YOUR OWN ROADMAP TO BEING A BETTER PERSON AND OPENING YOUR HEART TO REALIZATION THAT THE CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE, RIGHT WE ARE THE WORLD, WE CAN ACHIEVE GREATNESS, A NEW TYPE OF MAGIC “UTOPIA”.

WHAT ARE YOU ABOUT? WHAT DO YOU WANT OUT OF LIFE? ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOURSELF? CAN YOU FREE YOUR MIND? CAN YOU OPEN YOUR HEARTS? CAN YOU COMMIT? DO YOU KNOW WHEN TO WALK AWAY? WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IN? DO YOU HAVE CONFIDENCE? ARE YOU IN YOUR OWN PRISON--YOUR MIND, YOUR FEELINGS, YOUR RELATIONSHIP STATUS?

WISDOM COMES WITH TIME, EXPERIENCE, EDUCATION, HARD WORK, SERVICE, LOYALTY, PURPOSE, AND TRAVELING.

At the end of the day, who do you want to be with?

Woman - Wise can deliver the world or drop the world, age 41 -- looks better than 20 & 30 year old GIRLS. Does not care about money, fame, status, power because the game was scheduled and unfortunately, unaware of the OP -- she walked, ran, sprinted STOLE the Flag, and won the game.

Everyone wants to still run their mouths, try to control a man, and those hos, have no power, position, fame, etc. They are with or around you because of who you are, what you have done, and what you can give them---in my opinion that is abuse of power and targeting someone to manipulating them to do what you want them to do.

I like structure, things to be done a certain way because I like cleanliness, organization, faith, love, hope, trust, and loyalty.

I would not cop an attitude with everyone, if I did not feel like the world was against me. Hint, hint -- I don’t trust authority figures because I was molested, abused, targeted, almost died several times, lied to, cheated on, setups, smear campaigns, gossiped about, bullied, beat on, yelled at, called names, jealous women everywhere so dumb they forget I have a hunger against Human Trafficking. People are on this RACISM BULL SHIT.

Its 2020, Racism = IGNORANCE AND IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS ANYMORE, IGNORANCE IS DEADLY.

Basic belief system of Karma, it is a metaphysical/paranormal reality that is mixed with real, artificial, and soon-to-be virtual reality. It is what it is.

What you set your mind, what you do and the thoughts and actions you put into the world will either grant you your dreams or come back times three by the of karma, what goes around, comes around.

I want/will do good and be a good role model for everyone. I am going to teach, help you, do what I want, when I want, how I want because I know my worth, my value, and what I can GURANTEE/DELIVER.

Greed, jealousy, laziness, and all the ugly things that are in the world

WILL

get you no where but hungry, lonely but free, penniless, candy-less, eliminate sports.

COMMIT OR QUIT

MY MISSION WILL ENDURE AND CARRY ON UNTIL I FEEL MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. I DO NOT HAVE A FAILURE TO THRIVE AND I DO NOT LACK A WILL TO LIVE.

MY ISNT OVER, YET;

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texuhport · 5 years ago

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TEXUH PORT WINTER GIVEAWAY⁣ ❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️⁣ Chance to win 5 prizes⁣ 😯😯😯😯😯😯😯😯 ⁣ ⁣ ‼️The contest rules:⁣‼️⁣ ⁣⁣ • One of our Rewards Members will be winning the Wireless Item Locator. To become a rewards⁣⁣ member, simply go to www.texuhport.ca and join our Rewards Program by hitting the crown icon on the bottom left corner of the site and signing up with your email. The winner of this item will⁣⁣ be announced on December 10th.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ • Must be following @texuh.port on Instagram to qualify for the other items⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ • Like this post for a single (1) entry in the draw for the Instagram items⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ • Tag a friend in the comments for (2) entries in the draw for the Instagram items⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ • Winners will be selected at random by an online raffle software⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ • The first winner gets their choice between the LED cosmetic organizer, the anti-fatigue lamp, the⁣⁣ electric hand warmer or the desktop cup warmer. This winner will be announced on NOVEMBER 30th. The second winner gets their choice from the remaining items and will be announced on December 2nd. The third winner again gets their choice of the remaining two items and will be announced DECEMBER 7th. The last winner gets the remaining item on December 10th.⁣ ⁣ ⁣ PRIZES:⁣ Wireless item locator. A tracking remote with 5 accompanying tracking tabs to help you find your keys, wallet, phone, and other valuables. ⁣ ⁣ LED cosmetic organizer. While this unit was designed to hold makeup and other beauty products, the 20cm shelf which sits on top of 2 pull-out drawers could essentially be repurposed however you’d like. In addition to the storage, this organizer also has a mirror surrounded by an LED ring light to allow for better visibility and lighting when grooming. ⁣ ⁣ Anti-Fatigue phototherapy lamp. As winter is now upon us and sunlight becomes more inaccessible, seasonal depression has become a household term. his lamp emulates the effects of the sun to aid the symptoms of seasonal depression, including fatigue, lack of motivation, eye soreness and other stress-related pains.⁣ ⁣ Portable electric hand warmer. This nifty tool is great to keep in your car or jacket pocket when the full brunt of winter is https://www.instagram.com/p/B5OJgn9hkQA/?igshid=hmheq125g2o6

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justforbooks · 5 years ago

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Lawrence Tesler, Who Made Personal Computing Easier, Dies at 74

Lawrence Tesler, a pioneering computer scientist who helped make it easier for users to interact with computers, whether cutting and pasting text or selecting text by dragging a cursor through it, died on Sunday at his home in Portola Valley, Calif. He was 74.

The cause was not known, his wife, Colleen Barton, said, but in recent years he had suffered the effects of an earlier bicycle accident.

Mr. Tesler worked at a number of Silicon Valley’s most important companies, including Apple under Steve Jobs. But it was as a young researcher for Xerox at its Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s that he did his most significant work: helping to develop today’s style of computer interaction based on a graphical desktop metaphor and a mouse.

Early in his Xerox career (he began there in 1973), Mr. Tesler and another researcher, Tim Mott, developed a program known as Gypsy, which did away with the restrictive modes that had made text editing complicated. For example, until Gypsy, most text-editing software had one mode for entering text and another for editing it.

Mr. Tesler was passionate about simplifying interaction with computers. At Apple he was responsible for the idea that a computer mouse should have only one button. For many years the license plate on his car read, “NO MODES.”

His first breakthrough at Xerox PARC came when he took a newly hired secretary, sat her in front of a blank computer monitor and took notes while she described how she would prefer to compose documents with a computer. She proceeded to describe a very simple system, which Mr. Tesler then implemented with Mr. Mott.

The Gypsy program offered such innovations as the “cut and paste” analogy for moving blocks of text and the ability to select text by dragging the cursor through it while holding down a mouse button. It also shared with an earlier Xerox editor, Bravo, what became known as “what you see is what you get” printing (or WYSIWYG), a phrase Mr. Tesler used to describe a computer display that mirrored printed output.

And Gypsy brought to fruition the idea of opening a computer file by simply clicking on a screen icon while pointing at it with the mouse cursor. Before that, files had to be opened by typing the file name into a command line.

“At Xerox he pushed a lot for things to be simpler in ways that would broaden the base of users,” said David Liddle, a veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist who worked with Mr. Tesler at Xerox PARC. “He was always quite focused on users who weren’t also Ph.D.s in computer science.”

Mr. Tesler later joined a small team of researchers run by Alan Kay, a visionary computer scientist who had pioneered the idea of a so-called Dynabook, which would become the inspiration for today’s laptop computers. The group was developing a software environment called Smalltalk, and Mr. Tesler developed a system for searching for software components, which he named the browser.

“He can be hailed as one of the true pioneers of many important aspects of personal computing,” Mr. Kay said.

After attending a demonstration of the Altair, an early hobbyist personal computer, at a Palo Alto hotel in 1975, Mr. Tesler returned to PARC to alert his colleagues to the arrival of low-cost systems. His warnings were largely ignored.

He continued to press for less costly computers. In 1978, with Adele Goldberg and Douglas Fairbairn, he designed a portable machine called NoteTaker, a forerunner of luggable computers like the Osborne, Kaypro and Compaq machines of the early 1980s. But Xerox declined to commercialize the NoteTaker; only a few prototypes were made.

It was Mr. Tesler who gave Mr. Jobs the celebrated demonstration of the Xerox Alto computer and the Smalltalk software system that would come to influence the design of Apple’s Lisa personal computer and then its Macintosh.

Mr. Tesler left Xerox to work for Mr. Jobs at Apple in 1980.

“The questions the Apple people were asking totally blew me away,” Mr. Tesler was quoted as saying in a profile that appeared in IEEE Spectrum, the magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, in 2005. “They were the kind of questions Xerox executives should have been asking but didn’t.”

In addition to helping develop the Lisa and Macintosh, Mr. Tesler founded and ran Apple’s Advanced Technology Group, after which he led the design of the Newton handheld computer, although that proved unsuccessful. The group also created much of the technology that would become the Wi-Fi wireless standard, and Mr. Tesler led an Apple joint venture with two other companies that created Acorn RISC Machine, a partnership intended to provide a microprocessor for the Newton.

Although Apple eventually sold off its holdings in that venture, it would come to dominate the market for the chips that power today’s smartphones. The chip architecture created by the partnership is today the most widely used microprocessor design in the world.

Mr. Tesler left Apple in 1997 for a startup and later went on to work for both Amazon and Yahoo. He left Yahoo in 2008 and spent a year as a product fellow at 23andMe, the genetics information company. He was most recently an independent consultant.

Lawrence Gordon Tesler was born in the Bronx on April 24, 1945, to Isidore and Muriel (Krechman) Tesler. His father was an anesthesiologist.

In 1960, while attending the Bronx High School of Science, Mr. Tesler developed a new method of generating prime numbers. He showed it to one of his teachers, who was impressed. As Mr. Tesler later recalled, he told the teacher that the method was a formula; the teacher responded, “No, it’s not really a formula, it’s an algorithm, and it can be implemented on a computer.”

“Where do you find a computer?” Mr. Tesler asked.

The teacher said he would first get him a programming manual and then figure out where to find a computer.

One day Mr. Tesler was sitting in the school cafeteria reading his manual, which offered instructions on how to program an IBM 650 mainframe in the most low-level, arcane machine programming language.

A student walked up to Mr. Tesler and asked, “What are you doing with that?”

“I’m learning about programming,” Mr. Tesler responded.

The other student alerted Mr. Tesler to a program at Columbia University, which gave high school students programming time. He was able to use a university computer for a half-hour each week, teaching himself to program before he got to college.

He attended Stanford, graduating in 1965 with a degree in mathematics. While there, he became involved in a number of early projects that prefigured personal computing.

Mr. Tesler had early access to a computer known as a LINC when he worked as a student programmer for the Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg. The LINC, designed by the M.I.T. physicist Wesley A. Clark, is believed by many computer historians to have been the first true personal computer.

Mr. Tesler’s first start-up venture was a programming consulting company located in a shopping mall next to the Stanford campus. He also used a mainframe computer to build a system to permit the student rooting section at Stanford football games to program elaborate card stunts. It was, Mr. Kay said, a forerunner to the ways in which modern graphical displays would be programmed.

In 1969, with two other scientists at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Mr. Tesler created a design for a small computer and proposed it to the calculator company Friden. Although intrigued, the company declined to pursue the idea.

Mr. Tesler left computing for a short while after that and moved to an Oregon commune with his daughter from a short-lived marriage. Lack of work led him back to the Bay Area, where he would join Xerox PARC.

In addition to Ms. Barton, a geophysicist, and his daughter, Lisa Tesler, he is survived by two brothers, Charles and Alan.

At Stanford and afterward, Mr. Tesler was active in both the antiwar movement and the 1960s counterculture. He participated in an alternative school, the Midpeninsula Free University, where he taught classes, including one exclusively for people born under the sign of Taurus. In 1968 he taught a class titled “How to End the IBM Monopoly.”

Years later, as a computer scientist at Xerox, he remembered his activist roots, his former colleague Ms. Goldberg said. The Central Intelligence Agency was a Xerox customer, and when agency employees arrived for a meeting, Mr. Tesler attended wearing a trench coat and a fedora.

When you’re cutting and pasting, dragging the cursor over selected text and performing other common computer tasks, you can thank him.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #Lawrence Tesler

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diarrheaworldstarhiphop · 6 years ago

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In late November, the Justice Department unsealed indictments against eight people accused of fleecing advertisers of $36 million in two of the largest digital ad-fraud operations ever uncovered. Digital advertisers tend to want two things: people to look at their ads and “premium” websites — i.e., established and legitimate publications — on which to host them. The two schemes at issue in the case, dubbed Methbot and 3ve by the security researchers who found them, faked both. Hucksters infected 1.7 million computers with malware that remotely directed traffic to “spoofed” websites — “empty websites designed for bot traffic” that served up a video ad purchased from one of the internet’s vast programmatic ad-exchanges, but that were designed, according to the indictments, “to fool advertisers into thinking that an impression of their ad was served on a premium publisher site,” like that of Vogue or The Economist. Views, meanwhile, were faked by malware-infected computers with marvelously sophisticated techniques to imitate humans: bots “faked clicks, mouse movements, and social network login information to masquerade as engaged human consumers.” Some were sent to browse the internet to gather tracking cookies from other websites, just as a human visitor would have done through regular behavior. Fake people with fake cookies and fake social-media accounts, fake-moving their fake cursors, fake-clicking on fake websites — the fraudsters had essentially created a simulacrum of the internet, where the only real things were the ads.

How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,” a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube’s systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. They called this hypothetical event “the Inversion.”

In the future, when I look back from the high-tech gamer jail in which President PewDiePie will have imprisoned me, I will remember 2018 as the year the internet passed the Inversion, not in some strict numerical sense, since bots already outnumber humans online more years than not, but in the perceptual sense. The internet has always played host in its dark corners to schools of catfish and embassies of Nigerian princes, but that darkness now pervades its every aspect: Everything that once seemed definitively and unquestionably real now seems slightly fake; everything that once seemed slightly fake now has the power and presence of the real. The “fakeness” of the post-Inversion internet is less a calculable falsehood and more a particular quality of experience — the uncanny sense that what you encounter online is not “real” but is also undeniably not “fake,” and indeed may be both at once, or in succession, as you turn it over in your head.

The metrics are fake.

Take something as seemingly simple as how we measure web traffic. Metrics should be the most real thing on the internet: They are countable, trackable, and verifiable, and their existence undergirds the advertising business that drives our biggest social and search platforms. Yet not even Facebook, the world’s greatest data–gathering organization, seems able to produce genuine figures. In October, small advertisers filed suit against the social-media giant, accusing it of covering up, for a year, its significant overstatements of the time users spent watching videos on the platform (by 60 to 80 percent, Facebook says; by 150 to 900 percent, the plaintiffs say). According to an exhaustive list at MarketingLand, over the past two years Facebook has admitted to misreporting the reach of posts on Facebook Pages (in two different ways), the rate at which viewers complete ad videos, the average time spent reading its “Instant Articles,” the amount of referral traffic from Facebook to external websites, the number of views that videos received via Facebook’s mobile site, and the number of video views in Instant Articles.

Can we still trust the metrics? After the Inversion, what’s the point? Even when we put our faith in their accuracy, there’s something not quite real about them: My favorite statistic this year was Facebook’s claim that 75 million people watched at least a minute of Facebook Watch videos every day — though, as Facebook admitted, the 60 seconds in that one minute didn’t need to be watched consecutively. Real videos, real people, fake minutes.

The people are fake.

And maybe we shouldn’t even assume that the people are real. Over at YouTube, the business of buying and selling video views is “flourishing,” as the Times reminded readers with a lengthy investigation in August. The company says only “a tiny fraction” of its traffic is fake, but fake subscribers are enough of a problem that the site undertook a purge of “spam accounts” in mid-December. These days, the Times found, you can buy 5,000 YouTube views — 30 seconds of a video counts as a view — for as low as $15; oftentimes, customers are led to believe that the views they purchase come from real people. More likely, they come from bots. On some platforms, video views and app downloads can be forged in lucrative industrial counterfeiting operations. If you want a picture of what the Inversion looks like, find a video of a “click farm”: hundreds of individual smartphones, arranged in rows on shelves or racks in professional-looking offices, each watching the same video or downloading the same app.

This is obviously not real human traffic. But what would real human traffic look like? The Inversion gives rise to some odd philosophical quandaries: If a Russian troll using a Brazilian man’s photograph to masquerade as an American Trump supporter watches a video on Facebook, is that view “real”? Not only do we have bots masquerading as humans and humans masquerading as other humans, but also sometimes humans masquerading as bots, pretending to be “artificial-intelligence personal assistants,” like Facebook’s “M,” in order to help tech companies appear to possess cutting-edge AI. We even have whatever CGI Instagram influencer Lil Miquela is: a fake human with a real body, a fake face, and real influence. Even humans who aren’t masquerading can contort themselves through layers of diminishing reality: The Atlantic reports that non-CGI human influencers are posting fake sponsored content — that is, content meant to look like content that is meant to look authentic, for free — to attract attention from brand reps, who, they hope, will pay them real money.

The businesses are fake.

The money is usually real. Not always — ask someone who enthusiastically got into cryptocurrency this time last year — but often enough to be an engine of the Inversion. If the money is real, why does anything else need to be? Earlier this year, the writer and artist Jenny Odell began to look into an Amazon reseller that had bought goods from other Amazon resellers and resold them, again on Amazon, at higher prices. Odell discovered an elaborate network of fake price-gouging and copyright-stealing businesses connected to the cultlike Evangelical church whose followers resurrected Newsweek in 2013 as a zombie search-engine-optimized spam farm. She visited a strange bookstore operated by the resellers in San Francisco and found a stunted concrete reproduction of the dazzlingly phony storefronts she’d encountered on Amazon, arranged haphazardly with best-selling books, plastic tchotchkes, and beauty products apparently bought from wholesalers. “At some point I began to feel like I was in a dream,” she wrote. “Or that I was half-awake, unable to distinguish the virtual from the real, the local from the global, a product from a Photoshop image, the sincere from the insincere.”

The content is fake.

The only site that gives me that dizzying sensation of unreality as often as Amazon does is YouTube, which plays host to weeks’ worth of inverted, inhuman content. TV episodes that have been mirror-flipped to avoid copyright takedowns air next to huckster vloggers flogging merch who air next to anonymously produced videos that are ostensibly for children. An animated video of Spider-Man and Elsa from Frozen riding tractors is not, you know, not real: Some poor soul animated it and gave voice to its actors, and I have no doubt that some number (dozens? Hundreds? Millions? Sure, why not?) of kids have sat and watched it and found some mystifying, occult enjoyment in it. But it’s certainly not “official,” and it’s hard, watching it onscreen as an adult, to understand where it came from and what it means that the view count beneath it is continually ticking up.

These, at least, are mostly bootleg videos of popular fictional characters, i.e., counterfeit unreality. Counterfeit reality is still more difficult to find—for now. In January 2018, an anonymous Redditor created a relatively easy-to-use desktop-app implementation of “deepfakes,” the now-infamous technology that uses artificial-intelligence image processing to replace one face in a video with another — putting, say, a politician’s over a porn star’s. A recent academic paper from researchers at the graphics-card company Nvidia demonstrates a similar technique used to create images of computer-generated “human” faces that look shockingly like photographs of real people. (Next time Russians want to puppeteer a group of invented Americans on Facebook, they won’t even need to steal photos of real people.) Contrary to what you might expect, a world suffused with deepfakes and other artificially generated photographic images won’t be one in which “fake” images are routinely believed to be real, but one in which “real” images are routinely believed to be fake — simply because, in the wake of the Inversion, who’ll be able to tell the difference?

Our politics are fake.

Such a loss of any anchoring “reality” only makes us pine for it more. Our politics have been inverted along with everything else, suffused with a Gnostic sense that we’re being scammed and defrauded and lied to but that a “real truth” still lurks somewhere. Adolescents are deeply engaged by YouTube videos that promise to show the hard reality beneath the “scams” of feminism and diversity — a process they call “red-pilling” after the scene in The Matrix when the computer simulation falls away and reality appears. Political arguments now involve trading accusations of “virtue signaling” — the idea that liberals are faking their politics for social reward — against charges of being Russian bots. The only thing anyone can agree on is that everyone online is lying and fake.

We ourselves are fake.

Which, well. Everywhere I went online this year, I was asked to prove I’m a human. Can you retype this distorted word? Can you transcribe this house number? Can you select the images that contain a motorcycle? I found myself prostrate daily at the feet of robot bouncers, frantically showing off my highly developed pattern-matching skills — does a Vespa count as a motorcycle, even? — so I could get into nightclubs I’m not even sure I want to enter. Once inside, I was directed by dopamine-feedback loops to scroll well past any healthy point, manipulated by emotionally charged headlines and posts to click on things I didn’t care about, and harried and hectored and sweet-talked into arguments and purchases and relationships so algorithmically determined it was hard to describe them as real.

Where does that leave us? I’m not sure the solution is to seek out some pre-Inversion authenticity — to red-pill ourselves back to “reality.” What’s gone from the internet, after all, isn’t “truth,” but trust: the sense that the people and things we encounter are what they represent themselves to be. Years of metrics-driven growth, lucrative manipulative systems, and unregulated platform marketplaces, have created an environment where it makes more sense to be fake online — to be disingenuous and cynical, to lie and cheat, to misrepresent and distort — than it does to be real. Fixing that would require cultural and political reform in Silicon Valley and around the world, but it’s our only choice. Otherwise we’ll all end up on the bot internet of fake people, fake clicks, fake sites, and fake computers, where the only real thing is the ads.

#technology #technocapital #acceleration

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dbhilluminate · 5 years ago

Text

DBHI: Equilibrium, Ch. 1- “Resistance”

Characters: Noah, Gabriel (mentions of Amanda, Connor-50/Zach, Hannah Kamski, Sarah Graves) Word Count: 6,577

Noah ignores Gabriel's demand to leave him be, in favor of following the order of his commanding officer and attempts to make up for Zion's less-than-welcoming attitude toward Archangel's newest cadet.

( Chapter Art by triple_jays_art , Co-authored by grayorca15)

• Chapter Index • Characters •

——

December 16th, 2040 - 7:48 PM Elevators were invented in 1853. As a concept, they hadn’t changed much since. The basic premise was the same - it was a mechanism designed to facilitate vertical travel moving in an upward or downward direction through a given building. Any other considerations beyond that were purely for aesthetic or superfluous reasons. Androids, as the world now knew them, were standardized in 2022 with the introduction of Cyberlife’s ST200 line. Countless revisions and additions to their available lines had been made since. For machines that were intended to look, sound, downright smell like the humans who designed them, they were as refined as could be by the time the company went belly up in 2039. Gifted with all the nuance and intricate thought process his designers saw fit to imbue him with, Noah found his opinion of the elevator car’s default Muzak could be summed up in one word: “Abysmal.” He reached out to give the parting doors a helpful shove, rather than wait for the car to slow to a standstill. The once-pristine glass scraped and squealed as it was forced open ahead of its automated cycle, and he desperately forced his way through the narrow opening in a subdued fit. A few fresh scrapes joined those already present on the worn-down laminate as he stepped out, he just couldn’t get away from it fast enough. “Whoever thought this place ever needed Barry Manilow instrumentals deserves to be arrested,” he huffed as he straightened out the cuffs of his coat and tugged at the lapels. “If I find out they’re living so much as within a kilometer of this island-“ Noah cut himself off at the sight of the landing he had been brought to. It wasn’t quite post-apocalyptic levels of ruin and carnage, but this semi-destroyed corporate hallway had seen better days. The lattice-covered windows lining one wall looked southwest unto the half-frozen river some thirty stories below, snowflakes wafted in and out of sight. Whatever damage control shutters it once possessed had not been closed in the last couple of seasons. The gusting winter wind blew through spiderwebbed cracks, holes the size of tennis rackets let in draft after draft. The linoleum floor was dirty and slippery, partially crusted with ice. A vile mix of particulate, dirt, dust, and other once-airborne contaminants had since discolored the pearly white surface into a streaky, blotchy affront to the eyes, though it couldn’t outdo the dated choice of traveling music Noah had stepped away from. So long as he didn’t trip and fall and tarnish his spotless black and white jacket on it, the mess was avoidable and therefore tolerable. A second closer look at the floor revealed just what he had hoped to find- the minute impressions of footprints in the grime. And recently made, no less. “Well, now, it seems like you’re not as dense as one might think. Come to see what files are left to peek at, are we?” There wasn’t much left that hadn’t already been procured, copied, or transferred, with the original servers lugged away. The company had long since stopped keeping records on paper. What printouts were left to be found there, in the ransacked marketing cubicles, were nothing but financial negotiations and signed contracts, nothing of the actual building of androids. Maybe that was what his quarry found so peculiar, though. It was all before their time, if only slightly. While most other Zionists might have liked to think Cyberlife was ancient history, for the two like-faced individuals (who were the only two of their kind still functioning) it was closer to present tense. They may not have known the company at the height of its power, but indirectly or not, they were getting an education. The tower, which was once the epicenter of every major business move Cyberlife ever made, still boasted an eerie imposing aura of mystery and grandeur. “Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit,” Noah mused. He wasn’t one to tolerate long periods of silence very easily. He inched and sidestepped his way around broken slabs of plaster, looking between the floor, walls, and ceilings for any hints he was still following a fresh trail. Only so many indicators gave some of the damage away as new, compared to the razing anti-industrialists had once wrought on the place. Part of the bankruptcy settlement had involved giving the laid-off personnel time to clear out their possessions, though a few had brought along friends of the not-so-peaceable variety. Like something out of The Odyssey they sprung from hiding in plain sight had ransacked every level they could before being detained and charged with destruction of property. What was especially ironic was that they’d discovered most of those ‘friends’ were deviants who’d bribed the financially drowning board members for one last chance to get in and spit in the company’s eye before it went under. A few doors were closed, though most had been left ajar. Toward the end of the corridor, Noah found exactly what he had hoped- fresh skid marks were a door jamb had forcibly been ripped out. The boot prints with their Archangel-issue tread didn’t continue on, they led inside. Whatever name had once been stenciled on the door had long since been evicted from the premises. At a glance, it looked like the office was the former domain of some marketing bigwig. Cabinets lined the walls, drawers had been pulled out and documents rifled through if not missing completely. A few once-living husks of ferns in decorative pots positioned in every corner had wilted from lack of water and direct sunlight. But as with any office, the main attraction of the room was the sizable desk taking up the center of the space, toward the window at the back wall. Two empty guest chairs had been shunted aside from their spot facing the desk and propped against a wall. The third -a posh, overly-cushioned monstrosity- sat on the opposite side of the desk facing the cracked window. There was no sign of life to it, save for the few wisps of wavy brown hair peeking up from over the headrest. Although the chair was listing precariously about fifty degrees to the left, it hadn’t yet tipped over and spilled its occupant onto the floor. The man was canted far enough over in the opposite direction to counteract the leaning, even in his sleep.

He didn’t bother with a knock or offer so much as a “hello” to announce his entrance and wake him. Noah merely swerved around the desk, paused for one last check to see this was who he expected, then leaned in with a perfectly-disarming smile.

“Living dangerously already, are we?”

Gabriel’s blue eyes ripped open with a hard twitch as the chair tipped off-balance. Both hands shot out and snatched the lapels of his coat before Noah could move back out of his reach, but the falling momentum yanked him off his feet and sent both androids tumbling back over the head of the chair. In one fluid movement, Gabe’s hand reached for the weapon lying on the desktop, tossed Noah onto his back, rolled up onto his knees and pressed the barrel of his gun to the chest of the already-surrendered intruder. Noah may have been afraid if he didn’t know the detached look in his attacker’s eye half as well as he did. It wasn’t his first time encountering the protocol, but it was his first time on the other end of it. It was just a reflex, however overkill it may have been. All he could do was hold up his hands and wait for him to terminate the combat protocol, which he did a few seconds later. Gabe blinked hard and focused his eyes on the man on the other end of his gun, waving and grinning impishly. “...Noah?” His voice nearly cracked as he angrily squinted in recognition. “Who else would it be?” “Oh, fuck me-” The brunette groaned, slammed the gun back to the surface of the desk with a resigned sigh and pressed his fingers into tired eyes. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.” He managed to sound disappointed, the way he said it. Maybe that was the first real peaceful recharge he had gotten since being released, maybe it was his first substantive nap ever. Noah might have found the overreaction to being roused from it excusable, if not for one small (vaguely personal) affront. Noah mirrored the annoyed squint currently being leveled at him, and the grin dropped. “With apologies, then, but how exactly was I supposed to wake you up, hm? You know if I so much as touched you, I’d have been leaving here with a limp wrist.” Gabriel didn’t appear to appreciate his reasoning. “Is it so hard to knock!?” he whined in as high an octave as his emulator would allow, and pushed himself up off his knees. Noah met the reaction with a raised eyebrow. Try as he did to come across as unflappable and reticent, Gabriel could bring the same melodrama when sufficiently motivated. And nothing brought it out like a good needling by his fellow RK900. “Well, aren’t we touchy today,” he noted as he scooted back out of the surly-faced, black-claden shadow of his look-alike. Noah stood up at a presumably-safe distance before he smoothed down the new ruffles marring his jacket. “I wasn’t expecting visitors,” Gabriel hissed as he begrudgingly picked up the chair and sat down in front of the desk, buried his face in his hands and mimed rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Clearly.” Noah paused and frowned to appreciate the show of fatigue. “How long has it been since you slept?” “I haven’t,” Gabe mumbled into his palms, LED blazing red to testify to his less-than-optimal operational levels. “That was the first time I’ve managed to, so thanks for waking me up.” That at least explained the bitter edge. Whatever he’d been doing before he decided to try and take a nap wasn’t so obvious. He’d been released from Archangel custody nearly five days ago and hadn’t done much to start settling into Zion since, much less on the thirty-first floor of Cyberlife Tower. Gabriel hadn’t even set up so much as a cot to lay on. A building this many stories, there had to be more comfortable places to make due. “You’re welcome,” he offered in as perplexed a tone as he felt. Noah finished his readjustments to grab one of the disused office chairs, then dragged it over and spun it around to face Gabriel’s bowed head. “Put your feet up while you’re at it. I’m sure my questions will bore you back to standby in no time.” “Questions?” Gabe bristled, though it wasn’t an abnormal response for him- more like a constant state of being. The glare he shot back at his would-be interrogator looked hairy enough. “Why are you here? I thought I told you to leave me alone.” “Yes, you said, I disregarded. Unfortunately heeding your word means contradicting my given orders,” Noah scoffed, paused to let the information simmer, and sat down. It wasn’t as if he could forget the minor thrashing their parolee had given him a few days prior. “Again, sorry about that- if you don’t like it, take it up with Director Graves. No one says you can’t.” Gabriel didn’t bother to seethe at the mention of her name. As much as he resented Sarah’s suspicion, he understood it all the same. “And what is it she thinks you’re gonna find me doing that’s worth wasting your time to invade my privacy?” he asked, eyes nearly rolled into the back of his head in exasperation. “Napping isn’t a crime.” It was very tempting to tsk at the remark, quip something witty about how it wasn’t against the law to sleep, but to go out of one’s way to visit a location of such import as Belle-Isle…? That did impress Noah as peculiar enough to be followed up on. After all, it wasn’t that long ago trouble came rolling out of this place in waves- economic, societal, and otherwise. Was Gabriel so naïve as to not realize how this looked? Noah shrugged, crossed his legs, and leaned on one armrest for poise. No sense in letting it go to waste when he had taken the time to arrange it, all therapy-office-like. “First of all, this isn’t a waste of time in my book. None of this is.” Whether he agreed or not, Gabriel needed help getting adjusted. “Second- you know that as a cadet of the academy, there are dormitories to be claimed just up the street from the plaza?” Gabriel closed his eyes in place of rolling them again and managed to project a twinge of hurt. “No one wants me there. You know it as well as I do. Better to just seclude myself where it won’t make anyone uncomfortable.” “So instead you decide to hole up in the offices of the very same company whose commanding artificial intelligence built us in secret for the express purpose of undermining whatever city-state Jericho evolved into?” Noah popped his brows, having deadpanned his thoughts into one droll summation, then scoffed again with a dismissive wave. “No, nothing suspicious about that at all.” “Better to be as far away from those I was originally sent to terminate,” the other retorted, kicked up his heels on his desk, crossed his arms and looked away from him. The combination of gestures made him look more like a sulky fifteen-year-old than a five-day-old former killing machine. “Who am I gonna hurt here?” The records as to who all he had actually terminated were unclear. It seemed Gabriel (and the other nines) had only been sent after a singular target apiece, which he had failed to kill. Luckily for Reese, Detective Reed had been running late that morning and intercepted Gabe on his way to off his boyfriend. Unfortunately for Gabriel, threatening the life of Gavin’s partner had sent the policeman into an overprotective, adrenaline-driven rage. Gabe may have failed at completing that objective, to the offense of only two individuals, but he’d certainly offended a few weak-hearted types in ever turning those icy, piercing eyes on anyone since. Noah declined to humor the subject just yet. This wasn’t about what his counterpart may or may not have done. It was what he was presently doing, drifting about the city like a rudderless kite. He could use a guiding hand if not a chaperone, even if he didn’t yet accept needing it. “If you’re so paranoid about the possibility that you might do something along those lines, you know you can ask me for help, right...? Once upon a time, I went through the same phase.” “I’m not paranoid, but they are,” he explained in as flat a tone as ever. Gabe didn’t even bother to acknowledge his offer of help or look over at him, only stared out the broken window at the back of the room. Intentionally or not, it did face northwest- in the vague direction of Zion. Noah followed his eye-line, drummed his fingers, and considered where it was aimed before rising to the bait. He knew better than somehow many handouts Illuminate could spare to every stray deviant left on their doorstep. Demand far exceeded supply these days, sadly, they could only do so much with what they were given. Even with being the superior model he was, clawing his way up the societal ladder from where he’d started had been anything but easy, even if it didn’t look it; and Gabriel was only just starting out. He couldn’t get discouraged that fast, it was unbecoming. “Yes, well- my solution was to talk at them until they tired of trying to not listen. You’re taking the opposite tactic with the whole ‘man of few words’ bit, and it’s making people uncomfortable.” “Yeah? And?” The brunette shot him an expectant look and popped his brows. “That’s just fine by me, I don’t want anything to do with them- all their fake smiles and bullshit ‘best advice’...” He wasn’t completely wrong on that front. Zion’s squeaky-clean do-good public image didn’t hold up in every situation. Their less-amicable nitpicky side took some getting used to. Neither agreeing nor disagreeing, Noah drummed his fingers again. “Then why are you still here, if it’s all so intolerable? Why not leave?” The sullenness lifted a notch, replaced by a kind of forlorn resignation. Gabe closed his eyes and pushed back in his chair a tick further to brush off the discomfort. “Where the hell else am I supposed to go, Noah…?” The question hung for a moment just long enough to convey the genuine frustration in it. “Outside of Zion, this country’s attitude toward Androids is even more twisted than it was before the revolution- you’ve got Watchdogs harassing humans for even suggesting we should integrate into society, and setting fire to deviants in the streets outside of Illuminate safe-zones.” Not that he was afraid of a fight, that much was crystal-clear. Noah tensed his jaw for the moment and let him continue. “And yeah- other Zion installments are popping up all over the country, but they’re all cut from the same political cloth, and they’re all gonna know my name and face. So leaving ain’t gonna do shit to help my reputation.” Gabe’s LED spun up and flashed a yellow blip as he sighed, bit his cheek, and let go of the anger. “I just keep hoping... if I keep taking my orders and doing what I’m told… sooner or later, something will fall into place and I’ll figure it out. Whether I realize ‘I don’t like this’ or ‘I’d rather do that’, I’ll get there eventually. What I do in between is irrelevant, as long as I stay out of trouble.” “So you’d rather just hang yourself up on a peg somewhere like a forgotten coat?” he challenged with a chiding tsk. If there was one thing Noah couldn’t abide more than silence, it was self-imposed quarantine. He had seen it in a few of their series, the recluses and the malcontents who sooner self-terminated than try to move forward without Cyberlife holding their leashes. The common denominator among them was the tangible lack of allies, friends, or in other words, a home. And homelessness wasn’t very becoming of any android, let alone an RK900. He wouldn’t let Gabriel default to it that easily. “Honestly, you can do better. Shutting yourself up on an island isn’t going to help your reputation any more than it is your state of mind. And trouble of one kind or another will find you.” Noah had plenty of colleagues and stacks upon stacks of case files that could attest to that. “Did you not see the decommissioned levels on the way up? Zion is still working with City Hall to dismantle this place week by week.” “You’re wrong,” he replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “They’re restoring the production lines to accommodate Zionists linked to the Lazarus protocol.” Gabe glanced aside at Noah when he went quiet at his correction instead of replying. “There’s a reason I prefer to observe instead of talk, you know. People tend to flap their lips when they think you’re not listening.” “It still doesn’t explain being here if you’re looking to get away from said people.” Noah frowned and drummed his fingers once more -index to pinky, then back again- like sequentially raking the keys of a piano. “A less-trusting individual might even accuse you of planning to sabotage such a project. Based on nothing but proximity.” And therein lay the paranoia aspect again. “They can think all they want. They’d still have to prove me guilty.” True. And just as truthfully, Noah wasn’t exactly interested in helping Zion make any kind of case against Gabriel. He wasn’t given the best hand to begin with- waking up to deviancy was the only thing he could do to survive. It was that or join his fellow ‘suspect’ in a recycling bin because Amanda would sooner command him to self-destruct than allow him to sit in a cell on the Roman’s Road until he cracked. The latter had managed to terminate both his target and himself: offline and gone meant they weren’t catching half as much flack as Gabriel had in three weeks. Only in that sense was 'dead to the world' preferable to vagrancy. “Well, now I can say I gave you fair warning.” Gabe offered no more than rolled-eyes by way of thanks. Noah just shrugged. “You’re certainly guilty of being overtired, like a fussy, six-foot-three toddler. I know what it looks like on that face.” “Still trying to get the hang of sleeping,” he mumbled as he pressed his fingers into his eyes, over his brows, dragged the hand down his face and grimaced. “What a useless subroutine…” Sleeping to recharge (as opposed to going idle and conserving power) was one of their most basic emulations, the same way they faked their respirations or the ‘need’ to blink. “At the very least, it goes a long way in making you look cute at rest,” Noah remarked, as casually as he could, without a trace of a glib smirk to accommodate it. “So not so useless. I’ll take a picture next time and show you.” Gabe scowled and didn’t hesitate to roll his eyes again, as obviously as he possibly could. “How useful,” he mumbled through an annoyed growl, that did little to deter the intruder. “Depending on who you ask, yes,” Noah reached over to grab one of the upturned boots resting on the desk and gave it a pointedly playful shake from side to side. “And if you intend to sleep in this position, you’re doing it wrong.” Gabe hesitated to respond, closed his eyes, and curled the corner of his lip as if to consider the critique a moment. “If you came out here to tell me I’m sleeping wrong, you can save your breath and just leave.” “Actually, it was tertiary to that. If I had known it was sleep you were after, I would have offered you the apartment sooner.” The sudden revelation was enough to give him pause. Gabriel stopped in the middle of whatever retort he’d planned to give and did a double-take, then blinked and shook his head. His LED went solid yellow for a whole second for added effect. Confused was good, it was easier to pry through than huffy stubbornness. “Sorry, I must have misheard.” “No, you heard me right.” Noah grinned and arched one dark eyebrow for effect. “It’s an old second address I keep in Delray. Very low key, has all the basics if you need somewhere to crash for a few weeks, the only thing it lacks is a view. What do you say?” The more he talked, the quicker Gabe’s expression took a hard turn from confusion to annoyance and anger. That twinge of paranoia was acting up again, Noah could practically hear it, but the fatigue wasn’t helping to keep him level-headed either. “And why the hell would you offer it to me...? Out of the kindness of your heart?” he mocked, lip curled and teeth bared like a snarling dog who had suddenly been backed into a corner. “Or do you just want to keep me somewhere that’s more convenient to get to so it’s easier to check up on me? Somewhere you probably have a spare key to...? Thanks, but I’ll pass.” “Is there some clause in your operating manual that says everything ever offered is or was done with ulterior motives?” Having recited a perfectly made-up guideline to better sell his exasperation, Noah grabbed the toe of Gabriel’s boot and shoved his foot off the desk. The sole hit the floor with an unimpressed thunk, and the man tightened his jaw with a twitch in his nose before throwing it right back up. “If it seems as if I have any, I’m sorry to say they’re purely coincidental. But being appointed your probation officer needn’t be all about the negatives. I’m trying to help.” Name one other person who has, he added over the open comm without missing a beat, before Gabriel had time to retort. Gabe squeezed his eyelids together in a hard blink and turned his head away from him a twitch at the unexpected switch to nonverbal conversation. It was an endearing tic, but in his current frame of mind, Noah could only roll his eyes and re-cross his legs in a display of aggravation. He slumped down in the seat to lean his elbows on the armrests, fingers steepled. You seem to find it so tiresome to listen to me speak out loud. Is this better? “It’s worse if anything,” he replied out loud, a refusal to allow him the courtesy of an open line. Conversing audibly at least allowed him to choose his words carefully- a conversation held through instantaneous thought had the potential to catch any stray angry quip before he had a chance to filter it out. “Don’t need you in my head, too.” “Aw, it can’t be that aggravating.” Gabe fidgeted, turned and stared out the window for a few moments of silence before he asked belatedly, “Why do you have a second apartment?” No Android in Zion had so much economic success in the suburb’s short life that they could afford two properties. In keeping with his reputation-precedes-himself ways, Noah had since proven he was no ordinary android. The circumstances surrounding how he ever ended up in a Detroit landfill may have been hazy, but in the time since he had painted over that dubious origin story with more than a few fantastic stories of his own making. “Having a bolt hole or two isn’t so expensive when you pick the right property market.” Noah paused to let that sink in before he let the other shoe drop. “Would you believe me if I said it used to be the cache for a black market bio-components racket? Cyberlife settled all nice and neat on paper, but you wouldn’t know how many of their former staff knew enough of the production process to cobble together cheap knockoffs to sell. Delray was a favorite place to stockpile those spare parts for a few hot months after Belle-Isle was sealed off. Zion knew about it, but Archangel wasn’t quite able to spare any investigators. Enter stage right… moi.” Gabriel remained passively quiet with a suspecting leer even as he carried on a bit longer than he needed to. Noah shrugged and made a face at the memory of those nights of recharging with the constant wail of traffic and heavy machinery just two doors over. It hadn’t been the best few months of his short life. “That was before I got the loft in Brightmoor. Had to start somewhere, and I wasn’t so picky and impatient to think I couldn’t tolerate a warehouse district for a while. I just needed somewhere to put my feet up-” “I think you’re full of shit,” Gabriel finally interjected, cutting him off just at the end of his sentence. “Archangel database has that case filed under a Warrendale address- little out of Zion’s jurisdiction, but Android business is Archangel’s business.” It seemed that while he was spinning his tale, Gabriel had been doing his research. Maybe not so much a dumb grunt after all. Noah grinned and flashed a coy pop of his brows. “My my, sharp as a tack and handsome… we were definitely cut from the same cloth.” “Don’t hold your breath,” Gabe mumbled, “The similarities end there.” Once again the grin dropped in the face of such a tempting moment to layer on the sarcasm. Noah made an exaggerated show to brush the dust from the armrest but didn’t break eye contact. “Evidently, because the ‘old me’ would never settle for the likes of this to catch forty winks. If a detour was somehow meant to show you have no compunctions about demeaning yourself, guess what? Mis-sion accomplished.” He topped off the statement with three sardonic claps. Gabriel rolled his eyes and half smirked at the jab until Noah reached over to swipe at the foot closest to him a third time; this time, instead of letting it happen, he threw his feet down and smacked his hands away with an angry glower. “But I can’t sleep knowing you’re here when you could be resting somewhere better. No strings attached, Gabriel, really.” “You’re not going to stop offering unless I agree, aren’t you?” He took an even breath and let out a tired sigh as he rolled his head back against the headrest, slouched in his seat, and closed his eyes. If he was too tired to continue arguing, it counted for something. Without offering a straight yes or no, Noah scanned the desk for anything he could lob in his direction; unfortunately, the only items available turned out to be a few craggy crumbs of plaster that had rained down from the ceiling. After a quick, half-assed calculation, he swiped one of the larger chunks off the desk and tossed it at the headrest directly beside Gabriel’s face. The resulting flinch didn’t happen, however- his chair swiveled out of the way a hair as the piece dropped over his shoulder through empty air. Only one sullen blue eye opened to half glare at him. “Don’t make me bribe you with the cashmere slippers. They were supposed to be a Christmas gift, but here you’ve forced me into spoiling the fact they exist.” Gabriel blinked, if only just so he could open both eyes and roll them in exasperation. If this kept up, he’d be pre-emptively rolling his eyes every time he opened his goddamn mouth. “Say I accept- you gonna back off and give me my space? Or am I gonna come home to your smug face sitting on my couch ‘cause you’ve still got a spare key?” Noah pretended to think on that, and rubbed his chin before answering with a lazy half-smirk. “When time permits, maybe. But I do have more obligations than hounding you, sad to say. It’s called ‘having a life’.” Given how their first few encounters had gone, it only seemed like a newfound hyper fixation, but if he had his way he would devote more time to making sure this mopey doppelgänger started on a better foot than he had. It wasn’t the answer Gabe was hoping for, though, and he dug his heels in one last time in resistance. “Then what’s the point of trading free, private housing for somewhere I gotta see the judgmental looks of my neighbors at the start and end of my day, and pay rent…?” The academy did pay, but not well enough to handle rent, which was why they offered dorms. “Oh, for-” Noah bit his lip and clenched his fingers, projected frustration, and abruptly stood up. “You’re telling me you’re afraid of a little dirty glance here and there? I thought you were tougher than that.” “Afraid…?” Gabe popped his brows and shook his head. “No. I just know I don’t want to have to put up with it when I’m already short-tempered enough as is. How well do you think it’d go over if one of the neighbors got too nosey and rubbed me the wrong way on a bad day?” Considering how he’d been greeted at the start of this encounter, it was a fair counterargument. He couldn’t fault him when he thought about it like that. Gabriel already harbored a short fuse for annoyances (as exhibited by the sudden reversal he’d pulled when Noah snuck up on him not even ten minutes prior), and even if he could put up with the stares for a time, after repeated exposure to a frayed temper, the day would eventually come that he would snap on somebody and make things worse. Either way, there was still something to be said for Gabriel knowing what he didn’t want. However small that desire might have been, it was still a step in the right direction. So far, it seemed Gabe was on his way to becoming one of those newly-deviated that took their sweet time figuring out how to settle in. As much as Gabe may have wanted to pretend otherwise, he and Zach Preston (formerly known as Connor-50) weren’t so different in that respect. “I’d like to think that by then, given enough time to settle and mellow, you’d know which battles are worth the fight.” Noah mused as he crossed his arms and turned his gaze to what lay beyond the vantage of the window. Off on the far side of the northern riverbank, Downtown’s recurved skyline glowed almost tauntingly. “But until then, you either say yes to this fixed address, or I promise you I won’t let you out of my sight.” “You’re already hounding me enough as it is,” he scoffed in reply. “Am I...? Have you seen me and my immaculate hair anywhere near you these past four days?” “No, what incredible restraint,” he deadpanned in the most sarcastic tone he could manage. A tired look settled into the corners of his eyes at the thought of having to deal with these unexpected visits every day until he agreed to his terms. He knew exactly what he was doing. “If I say yes, will you give me my space?” he attempted to reason, turned and looked him in the eye to make him promise. “Please?” Noah smiled triumphantly and donned the most sincere, earnest face he knew, lifted one hand as if to testify on a sacred text. “Hand to rA9- if you need space, you can do better than some corporate wasteland.” Gabriel leered, still skeptical. He knew he wasn’t just going to leave him alone for good, but he could try to leverage this compromise in his favor. “I mean it- no more unexpected visits or sneaking up on me while I’m napping.” “You can hibernate for the winter if it so pleases you,” Noah sighed and finally indulged an eye-roll for himself. “Maybe it’d even explain the surliness. Part of your code was ported over from an ursine model.” He certainly had the build enough to pass for a man-shaped bear. “That’s not a ‘yes, sir’,” Gabriel chided in a fatherly tone as he crossed an ankle over the opposite knee, leaned over one arm of the chair, propped his fingertips upon his temple, and peered over at him with a half-lidded gaze. Something about the way he said it, coupled with the change of posture, shot an electric surge up his spine like a chill. The next glib response he had readied didn’t seem so witty all of a sudden. It wasn’t an unpleasant ruffle to his metaphorical feathers, but for being so unintentionally undermining, that just wasn’t fair. Noah scoffed defensively and tried to play off the familiar feeling of evocative attraction. “Pft. Excuse me? ‘Sir’ ? Last I checked, I was offering you a favor. You’ll get my affirmative when you actually get off your duff and go there.” “I’ve already met you halfway on something I don’t want to do,” Gabriel countered, his conviction unwavering. “This is the part where you accept my deal and stop being pushy.” Noah’s fingers twitched as it hit him again, and he stumbled over his resolve. He wasn’t wrong, there was a certain turning point at which the teasing became more work than fun, and they were rapidly approaching that boundary, about to cross another he wasn’t comfortable admitting to. “Oh, very well. Fine, there’s no possible way the rest of my night could get any more exciting than this,” Noah fumbled as he fished through the interior pocket of his coat. Fingertips brushed the tarnished old nickel key and removed it from its nest to set it down on the desk with a final-sounding clack. “Take it or leave it. That’s the spare to the spare. If you’re not there by tomorrow morning, I will find you again.” Gabriel exhaled through his nose in irritation as Noah transmitted the flickering address across his HUD out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, don’t worry, I believe you,” he replied, disappointment in his tone at being pressured into accepting. He didn’t even bother asking why Noah had a third apartment as well, lest he get another bullshit story that would keep him there even longer. “My bullshit meter says different,” he sassed back. It was his loss if he didn’t want to hear it, that yarn was even more extravagant than the first. It involved mannequins. “Must be a false positive from the last story you told.” “Hardly. That one was ninety-percent true. So what if I amended where it happened?” Noah turned away and let the question hang. He had made his bid at being accommodating, for better or worse. What came of the offer now was up to Gabe. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve said my piece. Good evening, Mr. Sourface-Surname-Pending.” That was the end of the conversation, as far as he expected; but then again, since they’d met, Gabriel hadn't been one to meet expectations, and this was no exception. “Hey-“ Noah stopped cold on his way to the office door as a firm hand wrapped around his bicep (almost wide enough to curl completely around it). Cheeks flushed a soft shade of red and he shot a dirty look down at it before he glanced down to meet the mirror’s warring gaze. The last time Gabe had worn such a look he was being interrogated in Archangel custody, just before he deviated. Creased brows and crinkled eyes coupled with a curling frown and a strong jaw made him look much older than intended, but it really sold the impression of inner conflict and gave him the appearance of seasoned maturity. The term handsome didn’t do him nearly the justice he deserved. But as much as Noah enjoyed looking at him in such proximity, he only waited a few moments before impatience got the better of him. “What is it now? Believe it or not, I do have obligations to attend to.” It wasn’t a lie, her name was Hannah. Gabriel scowled a little harder and averted his eyes before mumbling a quiet “thanks” under his breath. The word came out so soft it was virtually a whisper. Despite the gruff and grizzly persona, it seemed Cyberlife had bestowed upon him the manners befitting an RK-series, or at least the sense to know when he should be grateful. Tempting as it was to crow victoriously over attaining that much gratitude (however small), Noah pulled his arm away. Only a chosen few were ever permitted to touch his jacket, and Gabriel hadn’t yet earned the privilege. “There, now. Was that so hard?” “You have no idea,” he grumbled through gritted teeth as he swiped the key off the table, turned the chair around, and leaned back to stare out the broken window again. It wasn’t the reaction he’d been hoping for, but it was a start. Then again, Noah wasn’t sure what he’d really been looking for when he’d tracked him down that night. Orders aside, he’d just wanted to see him.

#dbhilluminate #detroitbecomehuman #rk900 #dbh fanfiction #detroit become human #detroit become human fanfiction #dbhiequilibrium #noah #gabriel #noriel #ninex9

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ireddeadredemption2pc-blog · 5 years ago

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Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

Red Dead Redemption2 PC

The old west feels brand new again.

Oh Jesus Christ, what have you done? “Thomaschen 978 wants to know why a dozen carcasses and a couple of horse corpses are placed on rail tracks bordering the early industrial city and are the New Orleans stand-in St. Denis.” You killed half. village.” PC Games For Free

We are on round two of the recurring corpse pile. My poses got the idea to jump in front of the train after a few rounds of Lose Your Friends and Toss Them in the Sea in the Couple Friendly Strangers. Like GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2 has its own bowling minima, we explain to Chen in a roundabout way that provokes his fear. Die in the shared open world of Red Dead Redemption 2 and you’ll react fast enough to move your corpse around. Best RPGs games pc

The boy is in line with us. We should make it bigger. As the train comes around again, another pose tries to take us out. The chain defends us but does not bring it back to the tracks. He goes away screaming. Death of a true warrior.

Red Dead Redemption 2 could be the biggest, most humble videogame ball pit for an annoying story about impulsive children, the forced disintegration of the community, or simply a quiet and reflective hiking simulator. It’s just about what you need it to be, and it’s good at it.

Just hours before the corpse-bowling, I was alone through the icy forests, stepping into the long shadow cast across the snow by the rising moon. I heard a gunshot from a distance. The tracks of some wolves marked snow in the same direction. I saw them who won. Anytime I pay attention and look closely, RDR2 is the result of my curiosity. Best Racing games on pc

The mind-numbing expanse that makes up the vast world of RDR2 speaks to the creative force of a development team with an intense, obsessive dedication to realism (and all the money and time needed to do so). Like how my friends’ characters flare up when I fire a gun at them, how animal carcasses disintegrate over time, how NPCs react according to a sloppy or bloody outfit, how to stir through a doorway. Scares everyone everywhere.

It is hard to believe that RDR2 is so deep and wide and is also a harmonious, playable thing. I was already playing it for days worth the console version. This is why I am particularly disappointed that it ended up on the PC to some extent.

For every non-taught multiplayer adventure, disconnect or crash on the desktop, desktop. The rock star’s best storyline and character so far has been filmed through Frame Hutches’ slideshow and addressed over the launch weekend.

RDR2, one of the best Western games and one of the best open-world games I have ever released with enough stability issues, is recommended for the hard way until everything is completely smooth.

Morgan trail

EVERY PRETTY VISTA IS SOMETHING TO LOSE THROUGH ARTHUR’S EYES.

The story genre of Red Dead Redemption 2 follows the dying days of the Wild West. The sprawling industrial world faced the bandits and social downtrodden of Arthur Morgan’s small band, an imperfect but loyal, loving and self-reliant community.

Capitalism is reducing its value as resources to humans. Indigenous USA America is driven from the plains to make way for ‘civilization’ and commerce. The forests are brought down for timber, the hills are cut down for coal, and Morgan’s chosen family is caught in the middle, forced to flee, assimilate, or respond with violent protests is done. They do all three.

This is Rockstar’s most serious drama, and it’s really, really long. If you are running, the story ends after 40 to 50 hours and then continues for 10 to 15. The main story missions of Red Dead 2 feature distinctly rockstar fare: ride to a destination that is talking to everyone, tightly scripting though, entertaining things, riding, and chatting to the final destination.

Missions are often thrilling action sequences or artificially mundane pictures of wrench labor and trade, full of long-winded Bespoke animations, and outstanding performances. They are only hopelessly harsh, to the point where it feels like I am following the stage directions rather than playing the role of a vagabond in the Old West.

Step out of line in these campaigns and this is a failed situation. As opposed to Red Dead Online, there are very few of them that encourage players to think for themselves, each designed to advance the story. The RDR2 show is at least a spectacle of the slow pace of life in the Old West.

This is not the death and theatricality of a lifetime; My favorite missions include shoveling, drinking wine with a friend, proposing an old romance and riding a hot air balloon. Working through a greater rut, stricter tasks are considered meaningful in the end anyway, inspired by extraordinary, ambient world-building and characterization.

Side missions, minigames, small activities, and random world events — whether they hunt great guns, capture a play, or stumble upon a woman trapped under a horse — all set Arthur’s character and setting in subtle, rich ways. Please inform.

Nested in the third act of a fully animated and voice theatrical performance, something like 10 minutes, it is possible that the response button is pressed after an artist has included a telephone. Arthur would shout, “Hell with the telephone!” It is an optional activity, a long one, and an option is to react in that short window. I think most players will remember this, but this is Canad Response 1 through 3 because this is something Arthur would say, a rageless goofy set his way in the right way.

He would write complete, real diary entries about the 50-hour campaign, sketching memorable scenes and depicting the state of affairs of his chosen family, which people once knew changed their fortunes between hope and despair. It is meant to be a completely alternative reading, but a refreshingly intimate take on a masculine figure that unsettles many doubts and hopes as to the next person.

He sings himself on a lonely ride and lowers his old body in the mirror. He will have an exciting conversation with the horseshoe woman as he gives her a ride into town, both commenting on the troubles of working for wealthy, ungrateful men as a growing necessity. I feel it all. Best horror games on pc free

Hillbillies can capture him after making the camp, a couple may try to rob him after inviting him to dinner, a man with snakebite can come out of the forest by stumbling and tell him to suck venom is. These haphazard encounters portray brutal life on the fading frontier, as nature pushes back against inner poppers who want to change it. Arthur is the perfect vessel to see it

This is because Arthur Morgan is one of the darkest human characters I have played during a great turning point in American history, playing a playful, cruel and compassionate role according to differing theories.

The game world, beautiful as it is, is made more beautiful and tragic by how it is ready to play it on every occasion. Every beautiful vista has something to lose through Arthur’s eyes, power lines and train tracks, cut through the skies, and the rest of his life is slowly filling with factory smoke. Just about everyone sees a sad end in RDR2, too. This is a story that I might not sustain every moment, but I will not forget its brutal arc or the man in the middle of it all. God damn is it sad? An apocalypse that led to this.

Ren Der Reflection

Assuming that you are able to run it at high settings, the biggest strength of RDR2 is how it exquisitely renders the Old West setting on PC, drawing more attention to the nuanced details that make it. This is one of the best looking games I’ve seen and a rare experience that justifies a new GPU or CPU.

Better draw distance and a greater range of vegetation detail were added, making some vistas look photographic. Long shadows vary from walking or roaming between places to rides, to cute nature tours. Due to animal attacks, bullet holes, rain, mud, or rapid flow of blood, the markings on the clothes are caused by very high-resolution textures, which tell a very little story about your friends.

A new photo mode makes it easy to share those moments of amazement. The way the player rides on RDR2 for just sightseeing and sounds is an important feature. I am desperately trying to get an artistic portrait of my horse’s silhouette to sit against the moon, yet another self-proclaimed goal was tolerated by this ridiculously large complex game.

With 2080, i9-9900K and 32GB of RAM, I can run RDR2 mostly on ultra settings with some resource-intensive settings completely off or switched off. But some hardware combinations are proving troublesome for RDR2, leading to random crashes in some APIs and, more recently, to a hotfix, leading to hitching problems for some 4-core CPUs.

During the first weekend, I couldn’t spend more than an hour without crashing on the desktop, though Vulcan switched from DX12 (which gives me better framerates) back to static stuff. Sometimes the UI malfunctions and I cannot select a select or purchase option, the map fails to appear, or I get paged unexpectedly from game servers.

The graphics settings are almost too much as well, and probably confusing. In our test, only a handful of settings affected performance by more than 1-2 percent. Large residuals, the mapping between MSAA, volumetric lighting, and parallax occlusion, affect performance by 5 to 25 percent. Most of them don’t make a big visual difference anyway and are best left out.

The way the settings are presented is made to feel underdeveloped: a huge list with unclear presets that require tinkering to make RDR2 run in a satisfactory framerate. It is hard. The PC should be the best place to play, not the best place to play, after all, after a few patches. It’s a shame for a game to look good. upcoming pc games

Cowboy poetry Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

Like in singleplayer mode, in Red Dead Online I can make my goals reasonable and watch them. The problem is, it is basically hamstrung by a frustrating multiplayer leveling system that locks basic equipment and cosmetics behind long XP requirements that can meet hours, perhaps days,

The option is spending gold, premium currency, items and clothing to unlock them immediately. A fishing pole is not available until level 14. A damn fishing pole in an outdoor recreation game. This is not spectacular and is a terrible way to invest players.

out a basic suite of tools (fishing rod, bow, varmint rifle, nice hat, etc.), Red Dead Online opened up widely. I have largely ignored traditional matchmaking modes such as gunfights and horse races, cheap thrills, I will play much better versions in different games, to have fun. It led to the most inventive, serene, real, and sometimes buzzing echo I’ve ever had.

I once walked into the middle of a fire in Blackwater and took the player corpses one by one to the church cemetery. Some were captured and participated in the ‘burial’ of their friends. A corpse thanked me for the gesture. Later, in an extended streak of criminal activity, my pose and I caught another player and instead of killing them on the spot, we rode into the swamp and threw them into the garter infected waters. I got the idea to act like a friend. Best pc games 2017

On a less absurd note, I set myself a constant goal of earning strictly enough money from hunting to buy cool-weather gear and a fine rifle. I am going to hike in the mountains and find the best way to hide there, a wild mountain man adorned with animal skins, which almost touches the floor.

In the meantime, I’m stopping gunmen across the city by running through the streets and calling for a parley. I am participating in an eight-player ballroom. I am living the life of a normal cowboy in the best shepherd game. I hope it clears up soon.

RDR2 PC System Requirements

OS : Windows 7 SP1 64bit

Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB / AMD Radeon R9 280

Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K / AMD FX-6300

Memory: 8 GB RAM

DirectX: Version 11 Or 12 Support

Storage: 150 GB

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crossbowking · 6 years ago

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The Road Ahead : Chapter 17

Chapter Index HERE

Summary : (Set in the beginning of season 1) Anna Brooks lost everything after the world ended — the last remaining part of herself being her older brother, who she lost contact with after communications dropped. While en route towards Atlanta to find him, Anna’s truck breaks down, leaving her at the mercy of the cruel new world. Now, Anna must face her fears head on as she struggles to deal with devastating loss, constant danger, and finding her way in a land that now belongs to the dead. But sometimes, a glimmer of hope can be found disguised as a short-tempered, hard-headed redneck who may just save her life in more ways than one.

Pairings : Daryl x Original Female Character

Warnings : Slow-Burn, Language/Violence/typical Walking Dead themes

Author’s Note : Things are getting intense! Let’s see who makes it out of the CDC alive...

xx crossbowking

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Previously…

Shane leaned over the railing, his expression distressed. “Everybody, y’all heard Rick! Get your stuff an’ let’s go! Go now! Go!” he roared, frantically motioning for everyone to start moving.

But the moment Anna turned to run, the opening that led to the hallway was shut by an impenetrable steel door.

Everyone stilled, staring at the now sealed exit, a wave of dread washing over the group.

“Shit,” Anna whispered in horror. “Oh, shit.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now…

“Did you just lock us in?” Glenn’s panicked voice rose above the prolonged silence, the alarm blaring in the background shutting off. “He just locked us in!”

Anna felt a shaky breath escape through her lips as she lowered into a crouch, squeezing her eyes shut. She placed one hand against the cool concrete floor of the control room, fighting for stability amidst the chaos moving around her.

Trapped. They were trapped. They were going to die in this control room. She would never find Ben. She’d never know what happened to him. She’d never see outside of the CDC’s walls again. This was it. All of the suffering, the loss, the pain — all of it had led her to this moment here.

Anna’s eyes shot open when she heard a commotion behind her. She twisted around, coming to an abrupt stand, and spotted Daryl suddenly being restrained by Shane and T-Dog, the archer shouting obscenities at Jenner, who merely sat and watched the scene before him. Anna took a cautious step forward — Daryl’s breakdown and the frenzied look in his eyes forming a pit in her gut like an anchor.

She’d never seen him that way before — and she never wanted to again.

“Jenner, open that door now,” Rick’s authoritative voice broke through the sudden uproar as he rapidly approached the doctor.

“There’s no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed,” Jenner explained quickly, seemingly at a loss — like he hadn’t been the one to just lock the doors, like he hadn’t just sealed their fate.

“Well, open the damn thing!” Daryl growled, wriggling his way out of Shane and T-Dog’s grasp, moving to pace furiously back and forth, waving around the bottle of liquor he still held in his hand.

“That’s not something I control — the computers do,” Jenner shook his head. “I told you — once that front door closed, it wouldn’t open again. You heard me say that,” he continued unabashedly, giving Rick a pointed look as the weight of his words settled amongst the group. “It’s better this way.”

“What is?” Rick fired back, glancing up at the dwindling clock on the wall. “What happens in twenty-eight minutes?” he demanded, staring down the doctor. Jenner held the sheriff’s gaze for a moment longer before swiveling in his chair, beginning to quickly type on his computer. Rick looked moments from losing his cool and shot Shane a glance, the two having a silent conversation before Shane slammed his fists down beside the keyboard, attempting to intimidate the man into confessing. “What happens in twenty-eight —”

“You know what this place is!” Jenner suddenly roared over Rick’s interrogation, pushing up from his seat, a slightly wild look in his eye as he addressed the group as a whole. “We protected the public from very nasty stuff — weaponized smallpox, Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don’t want getting out — ever!” he shouted, expressing more emotion in that single moment than he had since the group had met him.

A tense silence settled over the room, all eyes trained on Jenner, waiting for him to continue, to explain. But the doctor simply took a breath, straightened out his white lab coat, and sat back down in his chair.

When no one spoke, Jenner exhaled, rubbing a hand over his weary face. “In the event of a catastrophic power failure — in a terrorist attack, for example — H.I.T.’s are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out,” he spoke methodically, his calm demeanor returning.

“H.I.T.’s?” Rick reiterated, his confused expression mirroring the rest of the groups.

Jenner paused, lowering his gaze blankly. “Vi, define.”

“H.I.T.’s — high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives consist of a two-stage aerosol ignition that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive except nuclear,” Vi’s voice echoed throughout the silent room, her words eliciting cries from several group members as she continued. “The vacuum-pressure effect ignites the oxygen at between five thousand and six thousand degrees and is useful when the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired.”

“It sets the air on fire,” Jenner murmured gravely, eyes still lowered. “No pain — an end to sorrow, grief, regret…” he continued before fixing a haunting stare in Rick’s direction. “Everything.”

Anna’s eyes fell on Carol, who held Sophia to her chest, crying softly as she ran a hand through her daughter’s hair. A sharp pain tugged at her heart, followed by a wave of anger. “You can’t do this,” Anna suddenly growled, all eyes falling on her as she stormed up the steps to the main platform, approaching Jenner. “We’ve got kids here, for Christ’s sake. You can’t do this to them!” she protested, glaring down at the doctor.

Jenner simply folded his hands in his lap, glancing up at Anna for a moment before lowering his gaze.

“Look at them,” Anna whispered, pointing towards Sophia, who was now tucked beneath Carol’s arm. When Jenner remained still, Anna huffed a breath and kicked at the leg of his chair, jolting him upright. “Look at them!” she hissed, the doctor’s eyes unwillingly sweeping over to stare at the hysterical mother and daughter. “Look at what you’re doing to them! You don’t get to play God, Jenner. You don’t get to do that!”

“I’m doing what I think is right,” the doctor murmured, his eyes coming back to settle on Anna’s furious expression.

“So taking the lives of innocent children is what you think is right?” she shot back sharply, narrowing her eyes. “How can you live with yourself?”

Jenner’s stare flattened, an expression of peace coming over his face. “I won’t have to much longer,” he murmured softly.

Anna scoffed, shaking her head in disgust as she turned away from the doctor. Her eyes fell on Daryl, who’d been watching the exchange between the two and she sighed, shooting the archer a helpless look. She saw Daryl’s expression twist before he suddenly turned and threw the bottle of liquor in his hands at the steel door, the shards of glass scattering throughout the room. “Open the damn door!” he shouted furiously, his face reddening as he screamed at the doctor.

But once again, Jenner remained silent, emotionless.

“Out of my way!” Shane suddenly roared, barreling past Daryl with an ax in his hand, deciding to try and chop down the steel door. T-Dog threw another ax in Daryl’s direction, who caught it easily and quickly joined Shane at the door.

Anna let out a shaky breath, leaning against one of the many desktops lining the room, apprehensively glancing at the countdown. Carol and Sophia joined Lori and Carl on the floor, mother’s holding their children close as time began to run out. The look of terror in Carl and Sophia’s eyes was enough to make Anna’s blood boil as the reality of the situation began to set in.

Over the pounding and grunting of Daryl and Shane attempting to break down the door, Jenner spoke up. “You should’ve left well enough alone. It would’ve been so much easier,” he murmured softly.

“Easier for who?” Lori fired back, tightening her arms around Carl’s shaking form, eyes wide in disbelief.

“All of you,” Jenner urged calmly. “You know what’s out there — a short, brutal life and an agonizing death,” he continued, slightly incredulously, as if he couldn’t believe the group wasn’t agreeing with the way his mind worked. “Your — your sister,” he pressed, turning to face Andrea. “W-What was her name?”

“Amy,” Andrea spoke quietly, knees pulled against her chest as she regarded the doctor warily.

“Amy…” Jenner hummed thoughtfully. “You know what this does — you’ve seen it,” he then turned to Rick, who’d suddenly approached. “Is that really what you want for your wife and son?”

“I don’t want this,” he shot back, emphasizing each word passionately before turning away, clearly racking his brain for a solution.

Shane appeared beside Rick a moment later, breathing heavily, sweating profusely as he took a moment to rest his forearms on top of a computer. “Can’t make a dent,” he murmured to Rick in between heaving breaths, hanging his head down.

“Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher,” Jenner revealed, shooting down any hope of getting those doors opened manually.

“Well, your head ain’t!” Daryl’s voice suddenly growled and Anna watched as he pushed through the crowd in front of the doctor, ax in hand, raising it above his head.

Several group members jumped into action, working on restraining the archer for the second time, who still fought vehemently against those holding him back.

“Whoa, whoa!”

“Daryl!”

“Back up! Daryl!”

Anna didn’t think — she just moved.

She pushed away from the desktop she leaned against, joining those attempting to keep Daryl away from Jenner. T-Dog managed to rip the ax out of the archer’s hands, Rick and Dale shoving him back harshly. But when Daryl stepped forward once more, shoulders rigid, fists clenched at his sides, Anna stepped in front of him, halting his movements instantly.

“Get outta my way,” he growled, glaring down at her.

“No,” she shot back resolutely, standing her ground.

Daryl faltered slightly, bouncing back and forth on his toes, looking as though he was going to try and make a move around her. But she leveled him with a firm stare, holding her hand out, fingertips hovering in front of his chest.

“Think about what you’re doing,” she urged quietly, keeping her voice low so only he could hear. “You almost decapitated the only person who knows the code to get out of this fucking room,” she pointed out rationally, raising her eyebrows, imploring Daryl to see reason for a change.

Daryl looked like he was about to argue — but then Anna’s words registered and instead, he scoffed, shaking his head as he turned on his heels and began to pace the length of the platform like a caged animal, his hostile gaze zeroed in on Jenner.

“You do want this,” Jenner suddenly spoke, drawing everyone’s attention once more, until they realized he was speaking to only Rick. “Last night, you said — you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead.”

Anna’s brow furrowed as she glanced at the sheriff, a look of shame flashing across his features before it disappeared. Rick was the apparent leader of this group — and if he was having doubts, if he had no hope…what did that mean for the rest?

“What — ya really said that? After all your ‘big talk’?” Shane voiced, still struggling to catch his breath, but a disbelief to his words that reflected the current state of the group.

“I had ta’ keep hope alive, didn’t I?” Rick managed to explain, eyes trained on Lori’s horrified expression.

“There is no hope — there never was,” Jenner interjected incredulously.

“There’s always hope,” the sheriff fired back immediately, approaching the doctor. “Maybe it won’t be you, maybe not here, but somebody, somewhere —”

“What part of ‘everything is gone’ do you not understand?” Andrea intervened, shooting Rick a pointed look from where she sat.

“Listen to your friend — she gets it. This is what takes us down. This is…our extinction event,” Jenner spoke solemnly, looking deep in thought as he mulled over his own words, the room deflating around him.

“This isn’t right,” Carol suddenly sniffled between sobs. “You can’t just keep us here!”

Jenner leaned forward in his chair, his head tilting to the side as he addressed the distraught mother. “One, tiny moment — a millisecond. No pain —”

“My daughter doesn’t deserve to die like this!” Carol cried out, looking at the doctor desperately, tightening her arms around Sophia’s middle, tears streaking down the young girl’s cheeks.

“Wouldn’t it be kinder? More compassionate?” Jenner offered, trying to persuade the group in accepting the idea of the inevitable. “To just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?”

Before anyone could respond, the sound of a shotgun cocking echoed throughout the space — and then suddenly, Shane was rapidly approaching the doctor.

“Shane!” Rick shouted, moving to block his friend’s determined steps

“Outta my way, Rick!” Shane roared, shoving the sheriff to the side, pointing the barrel of the gun at Jenner’s head. “Open that door,” he growled, finger twitching over the trigger. “Or I’m gonna blow your head off, do ya hear me?”

“Brother,” Rick stood beside Shane, attempting to talk him off the ledge. “Brother, this is not the way. Ya do this, we will never get out of here,” he hissed.

“Shane, you listen to him…” Lori warned, coming to a stand, shielding Carl behind her.

Anna watched helplessly, Shane’s deranged expression reminding her just how dangerous the man truly was. It was only a matter of time before Shane followed through with his threat — or even worse, someone else got caught in the crossfire. She braced herself, determined to stop Shane, to keep Jenner alive, to keep everyone alive.

But the moment she took a step forward, an arm shot out in front of her, halting her momentum. Anna glanced up, Daryl’s penetrating gaze boring into hers as he kept her at bay, shooting her a subtle but firm shake of the head.

“If he dies, we all die,” Rick urged desperately, trying to get through to his friend. “We all die!”

Shane suddenly let out a deafening roar, swiveling the barrel of the gun to the left and firing at the line of computers. Everyone began ducking for cover as shards of glass and demolished pieces of plastic began flying throughout the room, Shane completely oblivious to the destruction and terror he was causing.

Anna jumped as the man continued firing the shotgun, a piece of scrap computer just narrowly missing her head as it flew by. She suddenly felt Daryl wrap his hand around her wrist, tugging her backward until she stumbled into his solid chest before yanking her to the ground. Her eyes locked with his for a moment, his blue eyes boring into hers, his breath coming out a fraction faster as gunshots continued to blare.

When Anna heard a sudden thump, followed by a moment of silence, she peeked up from behind the desktop Daryl had pulled her behind. Shane was lying flat on his back, Rick standing above him, holding the shotgun. “Are ya done now?” the sheriff snapped, staring down at his friend. “Are ya done?”

“Yeah, I guess we all are,” Shane huffed between breaths, shooting daggers up at Rick from where he had been taken down.

The room was deathly still as everyone who’d taken cover from Shane’s outburst came to a stand. Anna surveyed the group, all eyes suddenly trained on Rick and she felt for the sheriff in that moment — the stress, the pressure of an entire room of people relying on him was a heavy burden to bear. But no matter how badly she wanted to help the man, she couldn’t find the words — what could she possibly say to make this situation okay?

Rick was quiet for a long moment, clearly at a loss. His gaze landed on his family, his wife and son huddled together, their mirrored expressions begging him to do something, anything to persuade Jenner to open the doors. Rick’s eyes lowered, a shaky breath escaping his lips as he turned to face the doctor. “I think you’re lyin’,” he finally murmured.

“What?” Jenner sounded, glancing at the sheriff.

“You’re lyin’,” Rick reiterated fiercely. “About ’no hope’. If that were true, you’d have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out — ya didn’t. Ya chose the hard path. Why?”

Jenner lowered his gaze. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter,” Rick fired back, crouching down slightly. “It always matters. You stayed when others ran — why?”

“Not because I wanted to,” Jenner articulated carefully, slowly pushing up from his chair and coming to a stand. “I made a promise — to her,” he confessed suddenly, pointing at the big screen ahead. “My wife.”

Anna exhaled heavily, running a hand through her hair as the weight of his words registered. Daryl scoffed from beside her, suddenly turning on his heels, grabbing the two axes propped up against the desk and storming up the ramp that led to the steel door.

She glanced at the ticking clock — six minutes and forty-eight seconds left. That was all the time they had left. She glanced around the room — Andrea and Jacqui sat silently, eyes glazed over. Rick continued to work on Jenner, urging the doctor to find the heart to open the doors. Carol, Sophia, Lori, and Carl watched desperately, holding each other close. Shane’s head was lowered, a white-knuckled grip around the rim of a computer. T-Dog, Dale, and Glenn eyed the dwindling clock, pacing a bit, unable to stand still.

And Daryl — well, Daryl was back at that steel door, his grunts echoing throughout the room as he whacked one of the axes against the impenetrable metal, still trying to break the door down himself.

He wasn’t giving up.

And Anna found strength in that.

If she was going to die, if this was her last moment on Earth, she wasn’t going to just roll over and accept it. She was going to fight.

Before Anna could second guess herself, she marched up the ramp that led to Daryl, the conversation between Jenner and Rick fading as the heavy whacks of the archer’s ax became more forceful. She noticed Daryl still from the corner of her eye when she appeared, but she ignored him, instead grabbing the second ax he’d propped up against the wall and hefting it over her shoulder.

Anna took a deep breath and slammed the blade of the ax against the steel door with all her might, grunting softly. She fell into a rhythm, her heart pounding against her chest, beads of sweat forming on her brow, but she continued nonetheless — the onslaught was enough of a distraction that she no longer heard the steady tick of the clock counting down.

Daryl eventually rejoined, the pair working futilely on a door they knew they couldn’t break down themselves — but it kept them occupied, it gave them purpose…they were doing something.

After a long moment, Anna paused, breathing heavily from the exertion as another thought struck her. If she was going to die, if this was her last moment on Earth, the least she could do was try and make things right.

It was now or never.

“Daryl?” she murmured between heaving breaths, turning to look at the archer.

Daryl didn’t respond, instead just continuing to slam his ax against the steel in steady succession.

Anna sighed. “Daryl, look —”

“Save it,” the archer grunted, raising his ax once more and striking it against the door.

Anna faltered, brows furrowed as she wiped the sweat dripping down the side of her face. “But —”

“I said save it,” he growled, shooting her a sharp look. “I don't wanna hear it.”

A wave of frustration washed over Anna and she forced back the biting remark toying at her lips. “Look,” she exhaled heavily, continuing before the archer could interject. “About last night — I…look, I —” she huffed a breath, using the crook of her elbow to wipe away another bead of sweat, mentally kicking herself. Snap out of it, Brooks. Time is running out, a harsh voice nagged at her. “Look, in case we die here, I just wanted to say —”

“We ain’t dyin’,” Daryl immediately fired back, his movements stalling as he finally turned to face Anna, the rest of her sentence trailing off. “Not here, not ‘cause a’ this asshole,” he growled, motioning towards Jenner with the ax. “We ain’t dyin’. So save it,” he bit out — but there was a sensitivity to his words, lacking the harshness he usually embodied. It was almost an understanding — like he knew she needed to get something off her chest but also knew that this was neither the time nor place.

So Anna sealed her lips and nodded once, turning back towards the door, hoping she’d live long enough to continue that conversation.

But just as she raised the ax, building momentum to strike once more, the steel door suddenly opened.

“Oh my God,” Anna exhaled shakily, completely caught off guard as she lowered the ax. “He did it. He actually did it.”

“Come on!” Daryl shouted to the others, waving them forward as he grabbed the second ax from Anna’s loose grip. “We gotta get topside — let’s go!” he urged, nodding her forward quickly as the majority of the group began running up the ramp.

Anna surveyed the room, making sure everyone was accounted for. Her eyes narrowed when she noticed Jenner whispering something in Rick’s ear before Lori dragged him away.

“Hey!” Glenn suddenly yelled from up the ramp, his expression panicked. “We’ve got four minutes left, come on!”

Anna almost turned to leave, but suddenly spotted Jacqui at the bottom of the ramp, resisting T-Dog’s attempt to get her to move, and hurried down the ramp to see what the hold up was.

“— no, I’m staying! I’m staying, sweetie,” Jacqui confessed gently, pulling out of T-Dog’s grip.

“That’s insane!” he protested wildly, taking a step towards her.

“No, it’s completely sane — for the first time in a long time,” she asserted firmly, her eyes wandering over the group members who’d circled around her. “I’m not ending up like Jim and Amy.”

“Jacqui, no —” Anna’s words came out meek as she took a step towards the woman.

“It’s okay, honey,” a sad smile flashed across her face as she looked up at Anna. “I’m ready. I’ve been ready,” she shrugged one shoulder up, wiping away a tear that snaked down her cheek. “This is my choice.”

“Guys!” Glenn shouted once more, bouncing nervously as he motioned towards the dwindling clock.

“There’s no time to argue — and no point. Not if you want to get out. Just get out. Get out!” she urged desperately, giving T-Dog a small push before taking a step back.

Anna forced back the tears threatening to spill down her cheeks and turned around, briefly noticing Andrea still rooted beside Jenner. She almost called out to the woman, but T-Dog suddenly appeared beside her, grabbing her elbow and towing her back up the ramp to rejoin the group.

“Let’s go! Let’s move!” Shane hollered, taking off into a sprint down the hall, the rest of the group right on his heels as they made their way to the staircase.

Anna felt her heart hammering against her chest, unable to think of anything besides getting out and breathing fresh air once more. She spotted the door to the stairwell just ahead and picked up her pace, falling in step next to Glenn, shoulder to shoulder.

Rick, Shane, and Daryl barreled through the door first, followed by T-Dog and Glenn, the men needing to get topside first to start working on the sealed main entrances.

Anna pushed through the doorway after Glenn, stopping at the bottom of the stairs to make sure the rest of the group caught up. She moved to the side, allowing Lori, Carol, and the kids to hurry up the steps before her. “Come on, come on,” she urged them as they passed, bringing up the rear of the group herself.

But the moment her foot landed on that first step, Anna felt the blood rush from her face and she froze.

Her backpack.

Her backpack was still in her room, sitting on the bed where she’d left it earlier. She didn’t care about losing her clothes or her hammer or the few items she had stowed away in there — it was that picture…that damn picture of her and Ben...that damn note he’d left for her in his apartment. The last remaining memories of her brother were back in that room, moments away from being burnt into nothingness, lost forever…

Anna growled under her breath. “Damn it,” she hissed, the sound of feet trampling up the stairs drowning out her curse as she turned around.

“Anna?” Carol cried out as she twisted to run up the next flight of stairs, ushering Sophia to follow Lori. “What’re you doing? Come on!”

“Just go!” Anna shouted, backing out of the stairwell and into the hall. “I’ll be fine — just go!”

She heard Carol protest, heard her shout her name once more, but there was no time to explain, no time to specify — there was no damn time.

Anna tore through the stairwell doorway and took off into a dead sprint back down the hall, feeling as though she was a rat locked in a maze, her anxiety twisting the halls around her like mirrors in a funhouse. The blood pounding in her ears mimicked the steady tick, tick, ticking of a clock counting down, of precious moments dissipating, of time running out as she struggled to remember which direction her room was in.

It felt as though she’d been running through the halls for hours, days, years…but no — no, that couldn’t be right — because if that were the fact, she’d be nothing but ash.

Or maybe…maybe she was already dead?

Maybe she’d actually died in the facility-wide decontamination, maybe she never made it to her room, instead getting lost in the maze that was the Center for Disease Control, never to be seen again. Maybe she was in hell. Maybe this was her eternity, searching and searching for something she’d never find, something she’d long for but never hold.

Anna could feel the weight of her panic crushing her, tightening her chest, squeezing her insides into knots. The walls were closing in on her — she was sure of it. Every step she took, every turn she made, she sunk deeper and deeper into the concaving floors — the gnarled hands of all the souls who’d taken their own lives down these very halls grabbing at her ankles, slowing her pace, yearning for her to join them…

But then she found it — she found the hallway that just last night her group had settled into, had dared to call home, and she propelled herself forward with reckless abandon, ignoring her protesting lungs, her quivering legs, her entire body screaming at her to stop.

Anna burst open the door to her room, briefly wondering how much time she’d wasted getting lost within the halls of the CDC. Any moment now, that timer would hit zero and that would be the end of it — the end of her, the end of this, the end of everything. She was flirting with disaster over a fucking photograph, over a scribbled note from her missing brother — was that really worth the cost of her life?

She shook the thought away. There was no time to second guess herself now — the decision had already been made. And now she would have to face those consequences head-on.

Anna barreled inside the room, heading straight for where she’d left her backpack, right on top of the trunk at the end of the cot. Swiftly scooping it up, she slung it over her shoulders, feeling a wave of calm wash over her — despite the circumstances — as the pack settled against her back before she sprinted out of the room and back the way she came.

The halls were easier to navigate on the way back to the stairwell — maybe because Anna felt driven by a new sense of resolve, maybe because the weight of her pack and its contents grounded her, or maybe because her mind and body had shut down, simply moving on autopilot, on survival mode.

Whatever reasoning behind her sudden clarity, Anna focused solely on each twist and turn, backtracking the way she’d come.

Moments later, she finally spotted the stairwell entrance and pushed herself towards it, moving as fast as her legs would carry her. She had just shoved open the door when a voice from behind her broke through the air. “Anna!”

She faltered, hand still clenched around the doorknob as she spun around, suddenly spotting Dale and Andrea sprinting down the hall from the control room. A shaky exhale escaped her lips as she frantically waved them forward. “We gotta go!” she cried out, bouncing back and forth on her toes as the pair hurried towards her, their mirrored expressions terrified.

“Go, go, go!” Dale hollered as he urged Andrea ahead of himself, the two tearing through the door Anna held open.

“How much time?” Anna demanded wildly, her panicked voice echoing throughout the stairwell, her lungs feeling as though they were on fire as she bolted up the stairs after them.

“Just…run!” Dale shouted between gasps as he climbed the several flights of stairs as fast as he could manage, giving Andrea a soft push when she slowed.

Anna grit her teeth together, looping her fingers through the straps of her backpack, the added load only weighing her down. But there was no time to stop, no time to readjust, no time to breathe. All she could do was push forward, ignoring the way her muscles burned and twisted, begging for relief she couldn’t provide.

Moments later, light flooded the darkened stairwell as Andrea finally found the entrance to the main floor and shoved the door open. Anna nearly sobbed with relief when she ran into the lobby and noticed one of the glass panes lining the front of the building had been smashed open.

The group had escaped. They’d made it out alive.

And now she could only pray for the same fate.

“Come on!” Dale yelled, waving Anna forward as he grabbed onto Andrea’s elbow, guiding her around the splayed shards of glass and through the shattered opening.

Anna quickly followed, sidestepping a jagged piece of glass still stuck in the window before she jumped out of the building and landed on the outdoor pavement with a huff. Dale and Andrea motioned for her to move, urging her to pick up the pace, as the three began sprinting away from the CDC and into the field of massacred walkers.

A few walkers ambled around, stumbling over fallen corpses, sights zeroed in on the escaping survivors making their getaway. But Anna just kept her head up and stayed focused, running directly behind Dale and Andrea, racing for their lives as the clocked neared its final moments. In the distance, Anna could spot the caravan of vehicles the group had left parked in the street and felt her heart jump to her throat. As they grew nearer, she noticed Daryl — he had pushed open the door to his truck, eyes wide and alarmed, hands cupped over his mouth as he shouted something she couldn’t quite make out.

They were so close, they were right there, they were going to make it…

But then time slowed as Anna felt something snake around her ankle, sending her flying forward and skidding across the pavement. She cried out as the skin on her elbows and knees tore, unable to process anything besides the cold, gnarled hand suddenly gripping her ankle.

Anna flipped onto her back, spotting the walker that had grabbed her frantically clawing its way up her leg, jaws snapping, vying for her flesh. She gnashed her teeth together, attempting to kick the walker off, to slide out of its grasp as she fumbled to reach around the side of her backpack still strapped around her shoulders. In the distance, Anna heard the incessant blaring of a car horn and shouting, but she couldn’t make out the words over the blood pounding in her ears.

Her fingers grazed the head of her hammer stowed away in the side pocket of her pack and quickly grabbed it, yanking it out and raising it above her head, slamming the claw into the skull of the walker latched onto her, its movements instantly stilling. But when she tried to pull the weapon out, it remained embedded in the biter’s brain, the claw buried deep within its flesh.

Anna hissed, struggling to pull herself out from under its weight, her foot caught beneath it. She frantically glanced up at the towering building and then over her shoulder, spotting Dale and Andrea ducking behind a wall of sandbags the military had set up for cover. Dale must’ve then noticed her absence because he shot to his feet, scanning the ground wildly for her. The moment his eyes landed on her struggling form, he attempted to jump back over the protective shield they’d found, but stopped when Andrea grabbed his wrist and yanked him back.

Then suddenly, through the chaos, Anna heard a voice break through the fog her mind had wandered into.

“Down!” a gruff voice shouted from a distance — a voice she knew all too well.

Anna instantly froze, her body moving on pure instinct as she grabbed the walker sprawled over her legs by the cuffs of its shirt and dragged it further up her body, lying flat and wiggling beneath it so that she was fully concealed — a desperate, last-ditch effort to protect herself from the incoming blast.

And then…it happened.

The Center for Disease Control exploded. The deafening boom shook Anna to the very core, the world fading in and out as everything around her became muddled. The ground trembled from the force of the blast and Anna half-expected the pavement split open and swallow her whole. The heat from the explosion washed over her, warming her exposed flesh, her skin tingling as she cowered beneath the biter on top of her. The weight of the dead pressed against her chest and stomach, suffocating her as she fought for air, but she was too afraid and too disoriented to move. The ringing in her ears grew to a resounding roar, muting any other noises around her. Debris from the blast fell from the sky, scattering around her body, a few pieces of the decimated building plummeting onto the walkers back, only adding to the pressure crushing her body.

Anna didn’t know how long she laid there — unable to hear, unable to move, unable to breathe. Her eyes blinked dazedly as she stared up at the sky, her head peeking out from beneath the dead. The world tilted around her, focusing in and out as tendrils of smoke wafted up her nose, beginning to seep through the sky, muting the clear blueness.

Her chest constricted as she wriggled beneath the smothering pressure, her arms and legs refusing to cooperate. The ringing in her ears sharpened and she winced, squeezing her eyes closed.

But then suddenly, the weight on top of her lifted and she gasped for air, sputtering for a moment as she inhaled a wave of smoke. Her eyes cracked open, noticing a shadowy figure hovering above her, blocking the greying sky. Anna blinked wildly, squinting slightly as she attempted to force her vision to focus. The shadow was speaking to her — no, shouting at her — but she couldn’t understand what they were saying, everything around her muffled as though she were underwater.

Before Anna could process what was happening, she was being yanked to her feet.

The moment she was upright, she stumbled forward, crashing into something solid, the world tilting beneath her. Two rough hands grabbed her shoulders, shaking her slightly, and she blearily raised her gaze, coming face to face with a pair of piercing blue eyes.

“Daryl…” she murmured groggily, squinting her eyes, her hands pressed against his chest as she grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt, fighting for solidity.

The archer barked something at her, but she still couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in her ears and instead slowly shook her head. Daryl fixed her with an aggravated stare before he slid an arm around her waist, looping her arm over his shoulders as he began half-dragging, half-carrying her away from the demolished building and roaring fire.

Anna's legs trembled beneath her as she tightened her arm around Daryl, fighting to stay upright. In the distance, she spotted a blurry, shuffling mass and felt a pit settle in her stomach — a herd being drawn in by the explosion.

Daryl pushed ahead faster.

Black spots suddenly danced in Anna’s vision, her stomach rolling, her body’s aches and pains dulling as her legs began to give out, unable to keep up with the archer’s determined pace. She squeezed her eyes shut, her drooping head lolling against Daryl’s shoulder as the world began to fade.

The last thing Anna felt was the archer sliding his arm up her back, slipping it around her shoulders instead as his other arm cupped behind her kneecaps, swiftly swooping her off the ground.

And then everything went dark.

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A/N : And there we have it, folks! Goodbye Season 1, Hello Season 2!

So, the next few chapters are going to take place during the time after the CDC but before the group finds Hershel’s farm. I’m excited for what’s to come/being able to write a bit of original stuff and not having to follow the show’s preexisting storyline!

Also...next chapter will be from DARYL’S POV. I’m super excited to figure what the hell’s going on in that man’s head. Hopefully, we’ll get some clarity!

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Do you think Anna was reckless for going back to grab the photo of her and Ben? Would you have made that choice? And how do you think Daryl will react to her decision?

Feedback is INCREDIBLY important. I write for my own happiness, but I also write for YOU. So don’t be afraid to shoot me an ask or message or leave a comment with your thoughts! It truly motivates me and helps move along the writing process. Let’s discuss and be friends!

If you want to be notified when I post again, let me know and I’ll add you to my tag list!

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