#I will explode into nothingness if you don’t answer this

[perfectlyoongi]

SECOND-CHANCE!NAMJOON who asked the stars every night for them to guide you back to him.

SECOND-CHANCE!NAMJOON who was amazed to see you at his door on a saturday morning. you had rang the doorbell without any hope or desire — to tell the truth, you didn’t even know why you were there, why you rang the doorbell, why you waited for Namjoon. but when he opened the door, when you saw Namjoon for the first time after your breakup, you realized — your heart called out for Namjoon. but would that really be the reason? or would you have gone to his house to deliver the shirts you stole from him ages ago? would you have gone to Namjoon’s house just to say goodbye one more time? no, that didn’t make sense, it couldn’t be. Namjoon knew you, he knew you wouldn’t go that far for a second goodbye. so what were you doing there? wait… don’t you say th—

SECOND-CHANCE!NAMJOON who listened to you without uttering a single sound. your every word traveled to Namjoon’s heart, where they basked in a bed of eternal waiting. your every feeling was patiently listened to by Namjoon and weighed on a cosmic scale of opportunities. your every confession was met with pure hope and happiness, as if a new door had been opened for Namjoon’s love. you were in front of him, telling him how much you missed him and how much you needed him. you weren’t looking at Namjoon, but you were there, in front of him, saying how empty your life had become from the moment you separated. that saturday morning, you were there, in front of Namjoon, telling him how wrong it was that you ended your relationship — and Namjoon just listened to you.

SECOND-CHANCE!NAMJOON who waited for you to finish talking to kiss you. when you finished your rehearsed speech, there was a pause. for the first time since you arrived, you were looking at Namjoon waiting for an answer, a reaction, something that would tell you if it was a good idea for you to go see Namjoon. but Namjoon didn’t speak — Namjoon didn’t need to speak. as if begging for air, Namjoon kissed you for the first time in forever. as if searching for the reason for his existence, Namjoon kissed you once again as he had done so many times before. as if giving in to his fate, Namjoon kissed you. “i’ve waited forever for this moment. and i would wait however many eternities it would take to hold you in my arms again.”

SECOND-CHANCE!NAMJOON who asks you two, three times if you’re sure you want to start over. he wanted it, a lot, but Namjoon also wanted you to be happy — and if your happiness came at the cost of his, he wouldn’t mind offering you his happiness on a golden platter. so Namjoon wanted to be sure. would you be ready to start over? should you start over? with each question Namjoon asked, more certainties grew within you. yes, you never forgot Namjoon. yes, you always loved Namjoon. yes, you wanted to date Namjoon again. yes, it was Namjoon. it was always Namjoon like it was always you. and with your certainty and with all of Namjoon’s certainty, it happened. “knowing that your happiness still depends on me makes me feel so good. i know it’s selfish to feel this way, but i was so afraid that you would have found someone else who would make you happy.”

SECOND-CHANCE!NAMJOON who is finally happy. simply that. your return to Namjoon’s life brought pure happiness. that raw, heavy feeling that ran through your entire body and made you move and live; that pure and delicate feeling, which made you see the world in different colors; that feeling he had lost the day he lost you was back. just like you. how was it possible for Namjoon to not just be happy? “my god how i love you. how i missed you so much. how i love you. yes, again. because i always love you.”

SECOND-CHANCE!NAMJOON who promised to give you the entire universe as proof of his eternal love. like an exploding star and a nebula painting the vast nothingness of our universe, Namjoon wanted to shout to the whole world that you were back. Namjoon wanted to make sure your existence was marked in the universe. with your love, Namjoon would build constellations that would forever tell your story. with his love, Namjoon would build a world where the god was only you. pure veneration and devotion was what you deserved. and he insisted on giving you everything, the whole world, the whole universe — everything to make you happy. “and when the day comes when i have to leave, look for me in every creation in the universe, because i am there creating a new galaxy just for you.”

[prose-for-hire]

i have a promt i would love to see “a whispered moment between them ; “i’m trying so hard to hate you.” “why?”” and dealers choice on pronouns and love interests if you want more details i could pick but i wanna leave it open if that makes it easier

A/n: thanks for the extra prompt or this might never have been written lol !!

Giles x vamp!reader💖 warning: mention of character death/when Angelus was in town/implication of sex/etc

You were dead. You had been for several decades, your soul was just about in tact despite how it had been stolen from you in the recent past. With the return of an old acquaintance in Spike and an even older one when Angelus returned, you had been reunited with the cruelty of your youth.

They needed you. To unleash hell on the Hellmouth. They had performed a ritual, ridding you of your soul. The one you had earned had been ripped from you. You swear that still hurt somewhere deep inside, even more so when the memories returned.

You had been helping Giles and the Slayer. Advising from real experience to go alongside their research. You had lived many unlives and had a lot of experience with demons. You had only wanted to make a difference.

It hadn’t been mostly because Giles was incredibly attractive, not at all, you had grown fond of the teenagers and enjoyed finding a real purpose amongst the years of nothingness that blur into one when you’re immortal.

You had kissed the first night you met, you were both running from a demon that Willow had accidentally summoned and you don’t know what had come over either of you.

Then came Jenny. You distanced yourself from him, seeing the spark between them. You didn’t want to inflict yourself on him. Human and vampire relationships never lasted. You had seen enough of the chaos caused by them throughout your long life.

But, it didn’t stop you from feeling for him. So deep it almost killed you all over again. After Jenny died and you played your part, he grew cold. You regained your soul when Angel did but you stayed behind whilst he was given a nice little holiday in a hell dimension. You honestly would have preferred it from the pain of seeing what you had done to everyone. Especially him.

Fast forward a few months and neither of your could help yourselves. The tension had built up to an unbearable level. You knew it was bound to explode. You had stayed behind, having been allowed to join the Scoobies for meetings again.

Rupert hadn’t looked at you properly until tonight. His eyes gleamed with emotion. He needed you, he needed your comfort. You kissed, lips colliding and passion permeating the space. His tender touch held you firmly, his contradicting emotions displayed in his touch.

That’s how you ended up here. Lying in his bed, separated by a thin sheet and a unending tangle of unspoken emotions.

“I’m trying so hard to hate you” He whispered, thumb caressing your cheek bone as you lay facing each other.

“Why?”

“You know why” he sighed, removing his hand from your face abruptly. The warmth of his feelings leaving you with his body heat. You grasped at his hand, desperate to feel it again but the room had gone cold.

“But it wasn’t me… he took my soul” you insisted, still clasping his hand tightly in yours.

“It was your face, your skin, your hands… they played their part. Why can’t I prevent myself from feeling this way?”

“Love?”

“I, ah, didn’t suggest…” he trailed off, unsure what he was suggesting.

You knelt up on the bed, as if you were praying for forgiveness. Sheet disregarded in your desperation. You were completely vulnerable for him.

“Then what? Please, Rupert, tell me what I can do to earn your love. Kill the one that killed Jenny? Starve myself of blood? I’ll do it. If that’s what it takes to earn your affection…”

“You cannot earn what you already have”

“Tell me…” you pleaded, needing to hear the words but knowing the answer.

“Yes, well, I-I- can’t”

“I’m sorry” you said again, a word that didn’t hold the weight of how much regret and guilt you held within.

“Come back to bed” he said softly, his touch guiding you back beside him. You lay like that all night, neither of you managing to sleep.

You couldn’t, you didn’t want to miss a moment of what might be the last night you spent together.

[arogustus]

Fictober 2024 - Spatium Via Edition

Original - No Warnings

15. Let's try this

There was this button on the ship’s controls that they had never ever pressed before. A square button, tucked above the fuel regulator systems and below the scanning functions. All alone and isolated in its little strip, with nothing to accompany it.

“According to the Spatium Via Delivery Ship Operator Model - Section P, page 448 - Control Board, this is the Fuel Reserve Metastatizer.” Ava had grabbed the manual when the curiosity hit them. Well, when it hit her, it took about a day to convince Raymond and App to take a gander at it. “Pressing it will spread the fuel from the reserve tanks all across the ship's major functions, acting as a Power Surge in the event of emergencies.”

“Mystery solved, then. Let’s get back to work.” Raymond could care less about the whole thing, only indulging her up to this point. 

“But we’ve never seen what exactly that does, ya know?” She pointed out, willfully ignoring the robot’s grumbling. “50 years of service in these ships and we’ve never pressed that button. What could it be for?”

“For something that has never happened and therefore is useless.”

“Then why keep it?”

“Because for Mother knows why, the odds of it actually happening is one point above absolute zero, and therefore is still required.”

“That doesn’t really answer the question now, don’t it?”

Raymond slammed his head on the steering controls. “Ava, we’re robots, it takes One/One Millionth of a Pico Second to just look up the answer. Why are you bothering me with this.”

“Ya know I just love a good mystery. Why ruin the surprise by just looking it up, it’s fun!”

Throughout this exchange, App sat on the Controls, growing progressively more annoyed until she decided to put an end to it the only way she knew how. 

“Let’s try this, then.” She chirruped, before poking the button, to the utter horror of her compatriots. And to her delight at the utter horror of her compatriots.

The ship lit up bright as everything went to maximum power. And then it all exploded.

…

“So that’s what it does.” Said Ava as she floated in the nothingness.

[riahlynn101]

"What Awaits Him" (1).

Summary: (Spoilers for chapters 416-417 of the manga!!) It's in Izuku's nature to reach out no matter the cost. The fact that the person he wants so desperately to reach out to has caused so much death and destruction is irrelevant in Izuku's eyes.

Once again, spoilers for the most recent chapters of the manga! The first half is a retelling of chapter 417, so somethings might be out of order or dialogue might be wrong/missing. I also wrote this before the leaks for chapter 418 came out, so no spoilers for that.

Trigger warnings: if you're familiar with the manga/anime this won't be a surprise, but animal death (RIP Mon), blood, child death, and child neglect/abuse.

Chapter One:

--

The world trembles, Izuku’s body aches, and his chance of saving Shigaraki narrows to one good punch. 

He pulls his arm back. One for All consolidates into his arm down into his fist. The familiar energy thrums like electricity waiting to explode at just the right moment. His predecessors look on, some with a faint sense of horror brought on by flashbacks of their first death, or maybe even the deaths of their comrades. Others with that same unyielding, undying sense of determination that only comes from wanting this all to end. For the future to be better.

Izuku’s fist collides with Shigaraki’s chest, One for All bursts like a supernova. 

His body aches. His lungs burn. And his fist continues forward, like there’s nothing there to stop it. No body. No skin, or blood, or muscle, or bone. Nothing. 

For a second, he feels like he’s flying. Not at all like Nana’s quirk. Less of a weightless, free feeling, and more like he’s tumbling down a very large, very long staircase. 

The air whistles through his dust and blood coated hair, as Izuku is forced forward and more forward still. It doesn’t escape his notice how the darkness of nothingness turns back into something. An upper class-looking suburbia (if the nice house in front of him is anything to go by). 

And then, he lands. Gravity comes back full force. The something fills his vision, making it all he can see and feel. The air tastes less bitter now, and his body aches a little less. 

Izuku stares at the ground for a moment, uncomprehending. The dew coated grass coats his uniform slacks, and when he picks himself up, the knees are stained a dirty green. He steps off the grass and into what looks like a road. 

“Izuku!” Nana shouts. Her voice is enough to startle him out of his shock-induced trance. He looks over his shoulder.

Honk! Honk!

Just in time to see a truck barreling towards him. It’s only because of his training that he’s able to throw himself out of the way in time. 

“Sorry, Izuku,” Nana murmurs. She floats behind him. Her anxious energy is almost contagious. “Shigaraki rebuffed me when I tried to transfer. This is his vestige realm, which means you are able to interact with the world around you. So, you have to be careful.”

Izuku doesn’t have time to respond. He’s here against the will of Shigaraki, and every second he remains within his subconscious, is another second that can be used as ammo for Shigaraki’s hatred. He runs to the house in front of him, hand extended to ring the doorbell. 

This house must be the one Shigaraki lived in before something happened and All for One got to him. The one that he still hates so much that he wants to destroy it again and again even over a decade later. 

“What are you planning on doing?” A voice asks from behind him. Out of curiosity, he glances back. A shadowy version of himself greets him. Glowing white eyes glare at him. “Do you honestly think seeing the past will change anything?” The voice echoes, like it’s speaking in a large, empty room. But even still, Izuku instantly recognizes Shigaraki’s voice. 

“I don’t know,” he answers, clutching the straps of his backpack. “But I have to try! Letting this end without finding out wouldn’t sit right with me!”

“How about you die instead,” The shadowy figure says.

“Sorry for the intrusion.”

In between one blink of his eyes and the next, the shadowy figure disappears. Izuku sighs, turning back towards the house. Only to come face-to-face with Stain (of all people). He’s thrown to the ground, and two swords are held to his neck, digging into the flesh of his shoulder. “What do you want to do? What are you planning?” Fake-Stain asks. The manic gleam in his eyes is wild and child-like. He almost looks like-

Izuku pushes Stain off him, and surprisingly it works. The man stumbles back. His nose lengthens into a different person. One that he doesn’t recognize, so these must be people that Shigaraki knows then. 

This one has a long nose and a receding hairline. Izuku tries to brush past him, but he grabs at his arms. “Do you think you can change anything?”

Izuku doesn’t dignify that with a response. Mostly because he isn’t sure what the right one is. What if Shigaraki’s right and everything stays the same? 

No! He can’t think like that. 

He finally wrenches his wrist free of the person’s grasp. 

The man’s face morphs into one of the few people that Izuku can full-heartedly say he dislikes with a passion . Overhaul. 

“Stop! What are you planning?” 

Izuku evades his hands, not even stopping to look at the man. “I don’t know!” He shouts angrily. For a brief moment, all he can think about is what he did to Eri. That poor, sweet little girl that only recently learned how to smile again. 

Fake-overhaul must disappear too, because nothing else is said. 

“We need to destroy the source of Shigaraki’s misery,” Nana says. 

“Right!” Izuku throws the door open. His time is dwindling fast, so he hopes that Shigaraki’s vestige world versions of his family will forgive him for forgoing societal niceties. The door swings open to reveal an enlarged photo of what looks like Nana and her son. It’s held in two small hands. 

“Our grandma was a hero!” A small voice cheers. 

Another gasps, surprised but happy. 

He stumbles through the door, and right into the backyard of the Shimura residence. Nana floats behind him, ghostly and intangible as he’s always known her. 

The sight that greets them is nothing short of horrific. A man rears back, ready to hit a shadowy figure in the shape of a child. Nana suddenly becomes much more real, solid and heavy with an emotion that Izuku can’t place. 

The tiny figure cries out, and that’s all Izuku needs to push onwards. A barrier stops him from moving closer. He bangs on it with his fists, yelling with all his might. 

Someone needs my help. Is all Izuku can think, pushing and clawing at the barrier. 

A small dog barks at the man but it remains too small to do anything else. The shadowy figure (Shigaraki, Izuku realizes) braces for the incoming slap.

“That wasn’t your grandmother in the picture! That was a monster who abandoned her child!”

Behind him, Nana breaks down. He wants to comfort her, but the shadowy figure of a much younger Shigaraki has his full attention. Izuku presses his full weight against the barrier. Please, Shigaraki, he silently begs. Let me in. Let me save you. 

The man’s (Kotaro, if Izuku remembers correctly) hand starts to go forward, and they have no more time to waste. “Shimura! Now!”

Izuku uses all his borrowed strength to push against the barrier. While Nana pushes forward too. 

And it works. 

For a second, everything stops. 

The world narrows to the child in front of him and nothing else. Izuku dives forward, arms extended and ready to protect that child. His hand makes contact with the figure. Inky blackness melts away, revealing big gray eyes and wavy black hair. 

Izuku gasps, feeling the last of the familiar energy leave his body. Zapping somewhere far away that he cannot touch. The world shifts, and suddenly the scene changes again. 

“Y’know Mon, I just can’t take it!” 

Izuku's heart drops into the pit of his stomach. The tinier version of Shigaraki sniffles, hands clutching at the one living thing that actively wanted to comfort him in his time of need. The sight is normal, innocent even. It’s nice to see that someone sought to comfort him (even if it’s a dog). 

No, what worries Izuku is that the dog’s soft fur is quickly becoming gray and cracked, like old, broken cement. Its eyes glaze over, and its tongue - which pokes out of its mouth - also takes on the same gray, cracked look. 

Before he can even think to move, the dog (Mon, he corrects himself. It’s important to get names right. Everyone here was someone that Shigaraki loved) falls to bloody pieces. The child version of Shigaraki looks down, eyes filled with tears. A gasp of horror escapes him, and he scrambles away from the terrible sight. Chunks of bloodied fur and flesh stain the grass, his clothes, and hands. 

Izuku reaches out, ready to reassure Shigaraki that none of this is his fault. A girl - similar in looks to Nana and only slightly older than the trembling little boy off to Izuku’s left - walks over. She fidgets with her hands. 

“Tenko,” she says, voice sweet. “I’m sorry for lying earlier. When daddy found out-” Her eyes landed on what remains of their dog. She screams. Her summer dress puffing out a little from the motion of spinning around so fast. 

There is no time to think, though Izuku does mentally jot down Shigaraki’s birth name. Tenko claws at his sister, stumbling towards her. His big eyes begging for help. For care. For reassurance. The only sounds from his mouth are pained wheezes. 

Tiny hands grasp the back of the little girl’s (Tenko’s sister if context clues are anything to go on) dress. Instantly, just like Mon, decay starts to spread over her dress and everywhere else. 

“No!” Izuku shouts, breaking through his shock. But it’s too late, the little girl turns to dust. “Tenko!” He yells, trying to get the little boy’s attention. It’s not enough though. The memory continues to play uninterrupted. 

More family members wander out the sliding glass door, unaware of the sight awaiting them. A woman that shares a lot of Shigaraki’s characteristics among them (that must be his mom). 

Tenko’s sobbing now, nails digging into his skin. His lips seem to form the words ‘mommy’ before the woman, too, much like the other two, turns to dust. Her arms extend out, ready and willing to comfort her son even at the cost of her life. 

Izuku tries to wave the elderly couple away. “Leave! Hurry!” But they don’t seem to hear him. He waves his arms. “Go! Now! Get help!”

Tenko crawls over to them. One hand on his throat, clutching his windpipe, as if he can’t breathe. And the other reaches out for them. 

“Tenko?” The older woman asks, seconds before being reduced to dust. The man follows not long after, staring down at what remains of the older woman. 

Izuku hurries over. He starts to reach out. His fingers brush Tenko’s shirt collar. Just then, the man from earlier opens the sliding door.

His eyes take in the scene before him. In confusion or perhaps shock he steps closer.

Tenko finally manages to speak. “Dad- daddy! Help me!”

The man's eyes widened. “Tenko, what did you do!?” 

Tenko shakes his head. He gasps for air, but he removes his one hand from his neck in favor of reaching out for his father with both. 

“No, Tenko! Stay away!” 

But the crying, traumatized, little boy just wants to be held. So, he comes closer. Izuku moves to push the man out of the way. Maybe if he’s out of Tenko’s path of unintentional destruction, he’ll live. But the moment he tries to move closer, Izuku is knocked backwards. 

He lands on his butt, and when he looks down at his legs, Izuku is greeted with blue shorts and stubby, little legs. Shorts he hasn’t seen since….

The man, Nana’s son and Shigaraki’s father, falls to pieces as well. Tenko’s hands are pressed to his face. He’s smiling, but there’s no joy in that smile. Relief, maybe, but no joy. 

Once his father is gone, Tenko stumbles towards the house. Which, too, falls to his hands. Decay spreads across the lawn, and it takes Izuku a second too long to process what is happening. 

Izuku scrambles backwards. His back eventually hits something solid. A fence or a shed, he doesn’t know. His eyes are locked on the decay slowly but surely coming right for him. 

He shuts his eyes.

“So, I said that…” A woman’s voice says, passing him by. 

A breeze hits his face, but it’s not enough to offset the heat. Izuku opens his eyes. Instead of a backyard and a family home being reduced to rubble, he’s in the middle of a busy street. Everyone looks so much bigger than him. 

Tenko! I have to find Tenko!

Izuku turns. He has no idea where in the vestige world he is, but that won’t stop him from finding Tenko. 

He runs right into a figure about the same size as him, if not a little taller. “Tenko?” His voice is younger sounding, and only the immediate circumstances keep Izuku from freaking out. 

The boy looks at him, or more accurately, looks right through him . 

“I’m here to help you.”

Tenko opens and closes his mouth. “He-lp…?” He takes a tentative step forward. Hands, dirty with blood and grime, start to reach out for Izuku. A look of fear crosses the other boy’s face. He shakes his head, tucking his hands close to him. His lips form words but he says nothing. 

People continue to pass them by. Either not seeing them, or simply uncaring that there’s a young child that needs medical attention. 

Izuku holds a hand out. “It’s alright. I’m here to help you.”

“Nuh, uh,” Tenko finally manages to get out. “Huh…hur-t…”

“You don’t have to worry about me.” No one should have to worry about me . Especially now. Weak. Useless. Worthless. Deku . “Let’s get you off the street. I don’t know where we are, but maybe we could find a police station?”

Tenko shakes his head again, eyes wide, frightened. He mumbles to himself. 

“Please,” Izuku pleads. “We don’t even have to be close together. Just…” he breathes, “just let me help you.”

Tenko says nothing for a minute, but eventually he seems to come to some sort of an agreement with himself. He stumbles closer. 

But before Izuku can count it as a win, the scene changes again.

This time, he’s under a bridge. Piles of trash surround him. The warm air is made worse by the smell of rotting fish, urine, and stale beer. 

His eyes are instantly drawn to Tenko, who somehow looks even worse than the last memory. Blood still sticks to him like a second skin, but his skin has taken on a pale hue - despite Tenko being outside for (days? Weeks?) a long time. And the circles around his eyes have sunken in just a little. 

“Tenko!” Izuku shouts. “Tenko! I’m here!” He runs for the boy, arms extended. Decay be damned. There’s someone that needs reassurance. If he can’t spare parts of himself, then how can he call himself a hero?

Tenko stares blankly. Big eyes that were once gray but are now a blood red, are wide open, almost unseeing. 

Izuku doesn’t stop to think about the implications of this. There’s no time. Every second counts. He stops short in front of Tenko. 

Carefully, he kneels down. “Tenko…?” Tiny hands gently touch the other boy’s shoulders. The brief contact seems to rouse Tenko a little bit. 

“I-Izu-ku?” He winces from the force of saying something after so long. 

“Hey…hey, you don’t have to speak. I know it hurts.” Izuku reaches a hand out. “Let’s get you somewhere safe. I don’t know where we are…again….but if we can find a payphone then I can call an ambulance.” 

Tenko’s eyes are starting to fill with tears. A hand - tiny just like his own - reaches out. Their fingers brush-

Suddenly, Izuku’s world is turned horizontally. He cries out. “What? Put me down!” He yells, wriggling.

“Thank you, Shimura-kun,” a painfully familiar voice says. “But I’ll take over now.”

“All for One,” Izuku growls, trying and failing to claw at the man.

A pleased hum is all the answer that Izuku receives. The world starts to shift again, but between the something of Tenko’s vestige world and the nothingness of whatever awaits him, Izuku locks eyes with the one person he wanted to save above all else. But those eyes stare back, a burning fury like the pits of hell. 

“I’m sorry,” Izuku murmurs, eyes filling with tears.

Useless. 

Worthless. 

Deku.

[shadowsshowdown]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Shadow’s Showdown 62

The prototype special unit - RK800.

Detroit.

The world had stopped, shrinking to the size of the moment, frozen with terror on Connor's face and calmness in Laura's green eyes. The woman was resigned to the fact that in a moment she would cease to exist. She will leave on her own terms. If there is something on the other side, maybe she will meet Joe and Adam there, and maybe she will see her parents. There will be no pain, no sadness, and no Kratos. Nothingness opened its arms to close her in its embrace after a while. It was inviting, offering everything she wanted. The woman leaned slightly toward the precipice and just then heard a familiar voice.

"Laura, please don't do anything stupid. We'll get through this together," the man tried to stop her.

She managed to regain her balance and take a step in the direction from which the voice was coming. She couldn't explain why she gave up instead of jumping.

"Anything stupid?! Two people close to me and dozens or hundreds I didn't know died because of me," she replied.

The wind ruffled her hair, strands of which lined her cheeks. Tears solidified, burning her skin, and the woman trembled with cold and grief. Down below, sirens could be heard howling like a pack of wolves, lights flashing amidst the falling snow. Connor was increasingly afraid that if the police showed up here right away, Laura would surely jump. He had to do something, and fast.

"Don't you want to avenge Adam and Joe? Are you going to run away again? Are you just going to give up like that?" he tried appealing to her ambition and resolve.

"They don’t care now and so, am I. I'm tired. go home Connor I won't change my mind anyway," she replied. "You think you're the only one who suffers?!" Connor changed his tone of voice to a rougher and firmer one. "The world doesn't spin around you, you know." "Because of me, Kratos attacked the company!"

Connor laughed. "And you believe that?! Do you think he would throw himself to all that hell only for you to fall into his hands? You're ridiculous."

"Then why did all the show happen?" "He wanted to scare you, that's all. Since you can't be his at least he will stalk you..." "As long as I don't jump..." she finished the sentence for him. "Come to me, only slowly. We'll go home, you're very weak and freezing."

The woman took another step forward but immediately took a step back.

"No, Connor. For me, there is no more hope. There is no forgiveness. Let me go. Please." "No!" yelled the man.

She had never heard him be so resolute, never seen him so desperate with his fists clenching nervously again and again and his muscles ready to react.

"I killed a man! I put the barrel of the gun to his forehead and fired! I saw his head explode, and blood coat my body. Now, what do you say?!"

Connor looked at his shoes dirty from the mud and the puddle he was standing in. He closed his eyes. He so badly didn't want her to play this exact card because now he has to show his. Her life is more important than secrets. He has to protect her at all costs.

"You didn't kill him," he replied shortly.

Laura furrowed her eyebrows and looked at him more closely, not understanding what he meant.

"I was in Berlin at the time. I was standing across the street. Lemon-Lime was on fire, the flames were raging and even all the firefighting units in the area couldn't stop it. Sparks were shooting into the air, and you were standing with Damien. A man was kneeling in front of you, begging for mercy. You then said, "Damien, come on, we've already scared him off." Immediately after that..." "I pulled the trigger," she finished for him.

She was completely calm, not at all thinking about who Connor really is or how he knows the events of that evening. She should flood him with questions and doubts. Torpedo him so hard to leave him no way to avoid answers. Meanwhile, she blindly trusted him and took a step toward the man again. She wanted to take another but at the same moment, the police appeared on the roof. It seemed strange to Connor that for such an action they arrived in a group as if they were about to catch some dangerous criminal. They always send a negotiator and a psychologist. They were so loud that they scared Laura, who again increased the distance between her and Connor. She felt the solid ground disappear under her feet. She began falling into a bottomless, dark abyss disturbed by the flashes of police car lights and the pale light of neon signs. Connor turned his head away from the edge of the roof only for a moment, and when he looked again Laura was gone. All he heard was her scream. His reaction was immediate. He sprinted ahead. It was a perfectly coordinated movement, trained by years of practice, almost robotic. There was nothing random about it. Behind his back, he could hear the shouts of police officers dressed in winter polyamide jackets. Confused, they didn't know whether to shoot or wait to see what would happen. RK800 bounced off the concrete edge stretching out in a leap like a cat. He knew he would reveal his next cards too soon, but that wasn't the most important thing now. He arranged his arms along his torso to reduce air resistance and plunged further and further into the abyss. He fell like a meteorite, cutting like a katana blade through the air wheezing in his ears with an unbearable cacophony.

The hitherto narrow line of the street became wider and wider, and more and more details appeared on it. He could see Laura's petite silhouette, inertly falling into the darkness. Connor clenched his teeth, his heart galloping unnaturally fast in his chest. His mind was filled with fear that he would not make it, that he was too slow. The rush of air grew stronger when he decided to use his energy reserves. With this, he managed to catch up with Laura. He stretched out his arms catching her and wrapping her in the strong embrace of his arms. He was very lucky, but most of it was due to his skill. In flight, he turned his back toward the ground to soften his eventual fall if he ran out of energy. "Shield," he issued a command in his mind. "Glide," immediately followed by another. They visibly slowed down, flying now over the heads of onlookers. Some of them were horrified, others were in disbelief. Some drunk looked at the bottle held in his hand. A mother held in her arms an overjoyed child who had just seen a superhero. Connor wanted at all costs to be far enough away from the gathering. He hoped the police wouldn't be looking for them. They landed in one of the side alleys on an old mattress lying among a pile of garbage bags. The man tried to revive the unconscious woman with a few pats on the cheeks but in vain.

"Fuck," he growled, realizing that her blood was everywhere.

RK800 reached into his pants pocket. Fortunately, the phone was working so he sent a message from it.

"Code 7481. Status RED."

Location - Unknown. Time - Unknown.

"Fuck!" thundered the voice. "How could you screw up this task?! You were supposed to protect her, and she’s dying again!" "I couldn't predict..." replied Connor. "You're supposed to be one step ahead! I should gut you for that!" "It won't happen again," said Connor. "In addition, I have to clean up the whole mess after you. The local police are turning Detroit upside down. They ask many questions." "I will bear all the consequences."

The interlocutor wanted to respond but was interrupted before he could open his mouth.

"Everything is ready, we can begin," announced another voice through the loudspeaker.

The two walked down a narrow corridor, bathed in semi-darkness, to a small room towering over the operating room.

"It's good the signal arrived in time. There's a big chance she'll survive," informed the stranger, already somewhat more calmly. "Really, I'm not screwing up anymore." "I know. I'm sorry."

Connor had probably already anticipated every scenario, but not this one. In moments when someone's life was at stake, especially Laura's, the boss was unpredictable. He had also heard many opinions that he could be cruel, but it was hard to believe that when looking at the person standing next to him.

"They had to warm her up first, gradually, so she wouldn't go into shock. Now they're stitching her up again, but it's unclear what will happen next." "Maybe we should let her go?" asked Connor. "Out of the question!" the tone of voice changed again to stern and ruthless. "She has to live."

She was blinded by the white light seeping in under her eyelids. The image swam in her eyes, blurred and returned regaining its shape. Square panels on the ceiling, beige in places as if scratched with white. A wall with a panel hanging on it illuminating X-rays. Several cabinets, and a movable table at the foot of the bed. Soft sheets smelling of disinfectant, a piece of plastic on a finger, tubes going into the nose to allow breathing, a peripheral IV catheter in the right hand with a drip bag on a nearby hanger. This was not Connor's home but a hospital room. How did she get here? The woman turned her head to the right. On the nightstand stood a pitcher of water and a glass, and right next to it a vase with a white and pink magnolia flower. Someone came in and shone a flashlight into her eyes as if the harsh light coming from the ceiling was not enough. He checked the drip bag, then the card hanging on the bed rail, and left. Shortly after another person came in with a quite familiar scent of bergamot, ginger and sage. Laura blinked her eyes wanting the image to come into focus. The grey jacket, it had to be Connor's.

"You're finally awake. I was starting to panic," he said, carefully sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Where am I?" she asked, trying to raise herself to a sitting position. "Lie still. You're in the hospital." "But they will ask questions, after all, the police..." "Everything is fine. When you were unconscious, I took care of all the matters and gave an explanation. As soon as you're released, we'll get back to my place." "How did you accomplish this? After all, I fell off the roof." "You will get answers but after returning. Agreed?" "Agreed," she replied reluctantly.

The next day Connor performed another miracle because Laura was allowed to go home. She was still very weak so other than getting up from bed and getting dressed she doesn't remember anything else. On the one hand, she was not at all worried about this, but on the other hand, it was very strange. The feeling that Connor was hiding more from her than the average person was strong and vivid. Maybe she really shouldn't trust him? When they returned home, he did not bring up the subject of her suicide attempt at all, which awakened even more questions in her mind. Instead, he brought a bowl of hot broth and made sure she ate it.

"Will you finally explain to me what happened on the roof?" her words sounded more like a command than a question or a request.

The man sighed, intertwining the fingers of both hands together, and looked down at his feet. He noticed one of the grey socks was a tad less grey than the other.

"Let's start with the fact that I'm neither a programmer nor a hacker."

Laura furrowed her brow but decided not to interrupt him. Nervous knuckles cracking was apparently a sign that what he wanted to tell her was something difficult for him.

"I am an aug who was taken to work for the police as a prototype special unit. I don't know the details of this project except that I joined voluntarily. Before I left, I had investigated the Damien case."

Berlin 2017.

"Evie hurry up! We have a lot of work to do," Toby shouted from behind the bar. "I'm coming! The customers were terribly inquisitive," the girl excused herself. "Take it to eight. Just come right back with no delay."

Evie looked toward the indicated table. Seated at it was a man with short-cropped dark chocolate-coloured hair with a strand falling unruly on his forehead, which he kept correcting, and it still returned to its original place. He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and was busy reading the newspaper. The girl approached the table setting a cup of black coffee and a plate with a piece of cherry pie on it.

"I'm sorry you had to wait. The terrible crowd today," she said smiling kindly. "That's okay," the man replied, closing the newspaper and folding it perfectly evenly in half. "For your delicious coffee and pie, it's worth the wait."

His brown gaze fixed on Evie's face. The man reciprocated the smile then raised his cup and inhaled the aroma of the coffee before taking a sip.

"Excellent," he murmured contentedly, setting the cup down on the saucer. He rolled up the sleeves of his sweater to elbow height and wanted to reach for the newspaper, but stopped in mid-motion. "If you would like anything else, I am at your disposal," he said. "Thank you for now, but it's possible I'll have two pieces of pie today," he announced, smiling broadly.

Evie returned to the bar and immediately got another order, so she had no time to think about the strange customer. He, in turn, reminded about himself a quarter of an hour later when he approached the bar. The girl was replacing Toby, who had gone to restock.

"I'll have another piece of cherry pie and green tea, please," he said in a consistently pleasant tone. "Of course, I'm already serving. You could have waited at the table and called me." "A walk hasn't hurt anyone yet," he replied. "Besides, I'm Dale, Dale Cooper," he added extending his hand toward her. “I’m Evie. Just Evie.”

The girl shook it, although his friendly behaviour seemed rather strange to her. Especially after Joe had warned her at least a few times to be careful when dealing with strangers. The man took his order and returned to his table, but left a distinct mark in the girl's mind.

Half an hour later, a monstrous bang of an explosion shook the entire club. The fire spread in the blink of an eye consuming room after room. Smaller explosions shot off fireworks of sparks from time to time. A crowd of terrified guests fell out into the street, and their screams could be heard in the distance. Lamps and square plates fell from the ceiling, raising clouds of dust into the air. Cables sizzling with electricity hung like snakes, and water gushed from broken pipes. Shattered glass and discarded purses, jackets or hats lay on the floor. Soon a thickening cloud of smoke made it hard to see anything. Evie, paralysed with fear, stood in the middle of the main hall, bumped by those fleeing. She didn't know where Joe, Toby or Alex was; she searched for them with her eyes but in vain. Smoke entered her lungs more and more intensely, irritating her eyes and leading to tears. Her gaze moved from point to point more and more nervously. She moved abruptly as if pushed by a premonition, toward the emergency stairs when she suddenly felt a sudden jerk and a robotic hand clenching tightly on her forearm. The first person she thought of was Joe, but her joy was quickly extinguished when she turned her head.

"Get out of here or you'll burn alive," Damien said in a firm tone.

The smoke didn't impress him in the least. His implants filtered the air he breathed, and the model of synthetic eyes he had could not produce tears.

"I have to find Joe!" shrieked the girl, pulling out. "We're leaving."

The grip was so firm that it caused her pain. The man pulled Evie along and soon they were outside. Only now did she hear the unbearable howling of the sirens of the fire department units, ambulances and police. Suddenly the strangest of thoughts nestled in her mind; Did Dale manage to escape?

All  chapters can be found: [AO3], [dA], [Wattpad] and [Tumblr]

[infinitymyth]

Embarrassed

Heroxvillain x sidekick

Warnings

Implied and referenced abuse/toture

Asking to be hurt/harmed & threats of harming for someone else

Nudity( no photos, this is a story)

Villain shoveled himself into hero’s base, his hands bleeding and covered in burns. He glanced towards the left, looking at his battered self in the mirror. Unsatisfied, he continued his trudging.

Hero paused down the hallway, watching as villain walked before him, his hands moving above his head in surrender before going out in-front of his face

Defeat.

Hero gulped, watching as villain bent down on his knees and folded his arms behind his back, bowing and breathing though the pain.

“ superhero was correct. Instead of trying to fight you…” villain glanced up, staring at hero’s tear filled eyes. “ I should be on my knees, begging you for forgiveness, for you to be merciful on me.”

Hero stepped backwards, stumbling on the rug and falling hastily on the ground.

Villain slumped, his knees bending at an akward angle as his forehead touched the carpet. “ he said that I should swallow my shame and ask for you to hurt me instead. I hurt you so I deserve it.”

“ villain. I don’t beat people while they’re already down. Yeah, you’ve done some… unforgivable shit but… clearly superhero’s already done the job…”

Hero gasped as he looked at villains blood droolen mouth. “ not implying that I would hurt you either way but… it seems as if you’ve learned your lesson mate.”

Sidekick barged through the doors, a snarl on his face. “ hero! Get up, don’t let this fool sit here and trick you!” He exclaimed, walking past hero to kick villain into his side. Villain only grunted, curling into a ball.

“ sidekick! He’s hurt already. Leave him be.” Sidekick stopped, eyes widening in sympathy as he took in villains form. “ no need to defend me hero. This is what I deserve, anything is better than superhero … anything…. Even, even death.”

Hero gasped, crawling towards villain and running a hand through his matted hair.

“ kill me if that’s what you want. Hurt me, torture me, anything… I deserve it. Use me as target practice, tie me up and starve me… superhero said all of those are good ideas and you should in fact use them all.” He coughed, ramblings exploding out of his mouth as hero and sidekick conversed about something he couldn’t hear.

“ villain… we’re not going to hurt you.” Hero said softly and cautiously, running a hand down his back. Villain only shook his head, tears streaming down his face. “ if you wont hurt me, then I will hurt myself for you. We can start now.” He suggested, not taking notice of the horror written in hero’s face.

“ how do we know that he’s not lying, hero?” Sidekick eventually asked, wary of the villain laying infront of them.

“ how do we know he’s not doing this to fool us or just to look pathetic so we have sympathy for him.” He continued, his hands on his sides. Villain hummed, slowly standing and undressing in front of the hero’s. He stood naked, every part of his body covered in bruises or blood, wounds deep enough to kill.

The hero’s stood in shock. “ a-aren’t you embarrassed to sit- stand in here j-naked?!” Sidekick nearly exclaimed in shock.

“Sometimes the embarrassment fades away.” Villain answered, sitting down and leaning against the wall, staring into nothingness.

[abbygrabska]

Rise Of The Cybermen

We are all hanging out in the tardis. The Doctor and Rose are both slumped in their chairs while Mickey and I stand by the console.

The two of them are telling a story to Mickey while I listen silently. We’re all hanging out in the Tardis; the Doctor and Rose are both slumped in their chairs, telling the story of a past adventure, while Micky and I stand by the console.

“Um, what’re you doing that for?” The Doctor asks, looking over at us

I glance at Mickey, who’s been holding his finger on a button for at least half an hour.

“Cos you told me to…”

The Doctor blinks, “When was that…?” I roll my eyes, “About half an hour ago. And you told him not to let go until you said so.”

“Um,” The Doctor pauses, “You can let go now.”

Mickey lets go of the button, “How long’s it been since I could’ve stopped?”

“Ten minutes… twenty… twenty-nine?”

“You just forgot me!”

The Doctor tries to justify ignoring him, “No, no no! I was just… I was just… I was calibrating. I was just… no, I know exactly what I’m doing.” Then the tardis console violently explodes, sparks and flames flying everywhere. We fall to the floor as the tardis shakes.

We all fall to the floor.

The Doctor scrambles to his knees, frantically trying to operate the console.

“What’s happening?!” I shout.

“The time vortex is gone! That’s impossible, it’s just gone!” He sees something on the screen, “Brace yourselves! We’re gonna crash!”

The tardis lurches and we’re thrown backward. Gas masks fall from the ceiling, and all the lights have gone out, leaving us in the dark.

“Everyone alright? Rose, Mickey, Abby?”

The three of us answer before we all stand slowly.

The Doctor looks at the rotor and the console, “She’s dead.”

There’s a clicking noise as the engines cool down, and smoke rises from the console.

“The tardis is dead.” He whispers, slowly walking around the console.

“You can fix it?” Rose asks.

“There’s nothing to fix. She’s perished.” He pulls a lever back and forth fruitlessly, “The last tardis in the universe… extinct.”

“We can get help, yeah?”

“Where from?”

“Well, we’ve landed, we’ve gotta be somewhere.” I say, walking to the door with Mickey.

“We fell out of the vortex, through the void, into nothingness. We’re in some sort of no-place… the silent realm… the lost dimension…”

Mickey looks out the open door, “Otherwise known as London!” He laughs and steps out, and the rest of us slowly follow.

“London, England, Earth. Hold on…” He jumps off the low wall and picks a paper out of a dustbin, looking at the cover, “First of February this year, not exactly far-flung, is it?”

Rose jumps down and looks over his shoulder.

The Doctor jumps down and looks around, offering me a hand to help me down, “So, this is London.”

I ignore his hand, getting down by myself.

“Yep.”

“Your city.”

“That’s the one.”

“Just as we left it.”

“Bang on.”

“And that includes the zeppelins?” I ask, staring at the sky.

The other two humans turn to look.

“What the hell…?”

“That’s beautiful.”

“Okay. So, it’s London with a big international zeppelin festival.”

“This is not your world.”

“But if the date’s the same…” He seems to work it out, “It’s a parallel, right? Am I right? Like a parallel Earth where they’ve got Zeppelins, am I right? I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Must be.” “So, a parallel world where…” Rose trails off, I turn in the direction she’s facing. 

“Oh, come on. You see it in films. Like an alternative to our world where everything’s the same but a little bit different, like… I dunno - traffic lights are blue, Tony Blair never got elected…”

I interrupt Mickey, “And he’s still alive…”

“A parallel world and my dad’s still alive…” She makes her way over to the poster.

I join her and offer my hand in support, which she takes.

“Don’t look at it, Rose. Don’t even think about it. This is not your world.”

“But he’s my dad… and…” She touches the poster, and the picture of Pete springs to life for a moment, saying ‘trust me on this’ with a wink and a thumbs up.

Rose steps back, “Oh, that’s weird. But he’s real! He’s a success! He was always planning these daft little schemes; health-food drinks, and stuff. Everyone said they were useless. But he did it.”

The Doctor suddenly grabs her by the shoulders, “Rose, if you’ve ever trusted me, then listen to me now. Stop looking at it! Your father’s dead. He died when you were six months old. That is not your Pete. That is a Pete. For all we know he’s got his own Jackie, his own Rose. His own daughter who is someone else, but not you. You can’t see him. Not ever.” Rose gives a tiny nod. I squeeze her hand in comfort.

Rose and I stroll along the bank of the Thames. We sit down on a bench and Rose opens her phone. Footage of the news plays. We watch for a few moments before she closes it.

The Doctor and Mickey walk towards us.

“There you are! You all right? No applause, I fixed it!” The Doctor shows us a power cell, “Twenty-four hours, then we’re flying back to reality.” He sits down next to me and holds the power cell up to show Rose.

His grin fades as he notices the phone in Rose’s hands, “What is it?”

“My phone connected. There’s this Cybus Network, it finds your phone. It gave me internet access.”

“Rose, whatever it says, this is the wrong world.”

“I don’t exist.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s no Rose Tyler. I was never born. There’s Pete, my dad, and Jackie… He still married mum… but they never had kids.”

“Give me that phone.” He tries to grab the phone from her.

Rose pulls it away from his grasp, “They’re rich. They’ve got a house and cars, and everything they want.” She pauses, “But they haven’t got me.”

She stands up, walks away from the bench, and turns to face the Doctor, “I’ve gotta see him.” “You can’t.”

“I just wanna see him.”

“I can’t let you!”

“You said twenty-four hours!”

“You can’t become their daughter, that’s not the way it works! Mickey, Abby, tell her.”

I share a look with Mickey, and we both stand.

“Twenty-four hours, yeah?”

“Where’re you two going?”

“We can do what we want!” I snap when he reaches for my hand.

Rose starts walking backward in the opposite direction, “I’ve got the address and everything.”

The Doctor looks from me and Mickey to Rose, “Stay where you are, all of you! Rose, come back here! Mickey, Abby, come back here right now!”

“I just wanna see him.”

“Yeah, We’ve got things to see and all.”

The Doctor looks between Mickey and me, “Like what?”

“None of your business.” I glare.

“I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go.” 

The Doctor turns between the three of us. We’re all walking away.

I gesture to Rose, “Go on then. Mickey’ll keep me safe and you’ll keep Rose safe. We’ve got twenty-four hours to do whatever we want.”

The Doctor runs after Rose.

We walk alongside a factory, there’s a group of military barring up the road ahead.

A soldier approaches us. “Are we alright to get past?”

“Yeah. No, bother. Curfew doesn’t start ‘til ten.”

Mickey and I share a confused look but continue.

Once we get past the barrier I tell him, “I’m gonna go see my grandma, meet you back here in a few hours.”

I approach the Powell estate and climb the stairs up to my old flat. Right when I go to knock on the door, it opens.

My eyes widen in complete shock, it’s me standing in the doorway.

She looks at me in confusion, before her eyes widen, “Oh, my gosh…” She pulls me inside the flat.

“I always knew there were parallel universes! I just didn’t realize that when I reached out, one would respond!”

I look at her bewildered, “What the fuck do you mean respond?”

She pulls me over to grandma’s bedroom and opens the door. She waltzes in and turns on the lights.

“I’ve been studying parallel universes for ages, I even built a machine to try and reach one.” She pulls a sheet off of an airway radio, “It’s made from old radios and some ear-pods from Cybus.”

“You built a functional multiversal communication device?” I gush, “I thought that would be impossible! How did you do that?”

“Well, the transmitter from Cybus is the most advanced stuff around, though I suspect your world has something better if it brought you here to my universe. I had to hook it to the closest power grid just to turn it on for a minute. And the only thing the radio picked up on was this beautiful singing. Then the whole block's power went out.” She rubs the back of her neck, “Luckily no one found out it was me, ‘cause the security cameras lost power which meant the footage was lost.”

“Singing?” I furrow my brows, realizing something, “The tardis sings to me all the time.”

“What’s a tardis?”

“The tardis is a spaceship, it stands for time and relative dimensions in space. She’s the last one in the universe, and she’s fully sentient.”

“You have a sentient spaceship?!” She grabs my shoulders.

“Yeah, well it’s not mine, it’s my… friends. He’s from a different planet, one that invented time travel. Anyways, the tardis communicates telepathically, so if she knew it was a variant of me then she must have looked into your head. That’s why you heard the singing.”

“But why did that cause you to come to my universe?”

“I’m not quite sure. The tardis has a habit of taking us where we need to go, as opposed to where we want to. Ya know, to help people. There must be something very wrong in this universe for her to nearly die getting here.”

“Well, aside from everyone having those Cybus things in their ears all the time, which I didn’t get, 'cause I’m not stupid I’ve seen way too many disaster movies for that. There have been homeless people going missing off the streets into these big Cybus trailers. Which unnerves me because what the fuck are they doing with the homeless people?”

“Yeah, that sounds weird. Do you have any theories?” I ask.

“Yes, but Ricky never lets me get a word in, he thinks all my theories are stupid because I believe in the multiverse.”

“Does Ricky happen to have a blind grandmother that he used to live with?”

“Yes! Do you have a Ricky in your world?”

“Kinda, except his name is Mickey and in my world, his grandma died a while back. Speaking off, what happened to our grandma?”

“She’s dead. And there’s nothing left for me in the states since our family died when I was twelve.” “That’s not what happened in my world. Though I guess anything could happen considering Rose was never born here.”

“Who’s Rose?”

“Our best friend, and Mickey’s sort of girlfriend, they’re going through a thing right now so…”

“So Mickey’s not your boyfriend? Ricky’s mine.”

I make a face of disgust, “That makes me uncomfortable. Mostly because the entire time I’ve known him, they’ve been dating.”

“That makes sense, though I’m curious about the friend who you said has the time machine.”

“Oh, that’s the Doctor, he’s my… oh god, I don’t think we ever made it official.” “Made what official?”

“I’m in love with him, and up until the other day I thought he was in love with me, but then he made out with Madame de Pompadour right in front of me and I’ve been mad at him ever since.”

“No!”

“Yes, and I’ve risked my life to save him from certain death!”

“What an asshole!”

“I know!”

We talk for about two hours about random things, including the Doctor and what differences we have in our lives, and I figured out her name is Gabby. Her phone rings.

“Oh, I’ve got to get this, it’s Ricky.” She picks it up, “Hey babe, you’ll never believe what just— Oh? That’s great, I’ll be there in a minute. Yeah, love yo—” She awkwardly puts the phone down.

“He never lets you get a word in does he?”

“Not really.”

“Then why are you still with him?”

“I don’t know. It’s better than being alone all the time.” She shrugs, “Anyways, let’s go, they’re picking us up in the van.”

We exit the flat and gun it down the stairs, right as we exit the estate, a van pulls up and the doors open.

She gets in and pulls me with her.

“Mrs. Moore, Jake, Ricky, this is Abby, she’s me from an alternate universe. Abby this is Mrs. Moore, Jake, and Ricky.” She seems to notice Mickey in the passenger seat, “Oh! This must be your alternate universe counterpart!”

Ricky looks at her, “What are you going on about?”

“My theories about there being a multiverse were right! And apparently, it drew in a spaceship from an alternate universe.” She smiles.

“Oh, that explains this one.” Ricky gestures to Mickey, “Hang on, how did you draw in a spaceship?”

“I told you the machine I built would work, and it did, it drew in a tardis, that’s the spaceship's name.”

“That’s great, babe.” We pull up to an address and Jake and Rickey crouch in the bushes.

“I’ve identified the address. It belongs to Peter Tyler. The Vitex millionaire.” I look at my variant in concern, “We gotta get in there.”

Mickey nods, “Yeah seriously.”

I watch Ricky run out and fire guns at the Cybermen.

Rose fusses with his coat.

Gabby, Mickey, and I run toward them.

“Rose! That’s not me. That’s like… the other one.”

Rose stares at him, then at Ricky.

“Oh, as if things weren’t bad enough, there’s two Mickeys!”

“Don’t talk about him like that!” Gabby and I chime in unison.

The Doctor turns to look at us, blinks and looks back at the robots.

“We’re surrounded…”

Ricky raises his gun.

“Put the gun down. Bullets won’t stop them.”

Jake ignores this and fires a rally. 

The Doctor pushes his gun aside, “No! Stop shooting, now!” He straightens and addresses the surrounding robots, “We surrender! Hands up…” We all stick our hands up, “There’s no need to damage us, we’re good stock. We volunteer for the upgrade program. Take us to be processed.”

“You are rogue elements.”

“But we surrender.” “You are incompatible.”

“But this is a surrender!” “You will be deleted.”

The Doctor starts shouting, “But we’re surrendering! Listen to me, we surrender!” “You are inferior. Man will be reborn as Cybermen but you will perish under maximum deletion.”

The Cyberman raises its arm and reaches toward the Doctor.

[leighton-o-fallamhain]

Kidnapped ◈ Dean Winchester

Btw, you are always welcome to send me requests. =)

Pronouns: He/His

Summary: You’ve liked Dean for quite some time now, but you think he is straight as a line and doesn’t like you back. Then you get kidnapped.

✦✦✦✦✦

You’ve known the Winchesters since you met them in high school twenty years ago. Your father was also a hunter and was currently trying to find a pack of werewolves. John and your father met and were teaming up. Meanwhile, you, Dean and Sam were getting to know each other. You and Sam made the homework together while Dean was either out with one of his hookups or watching tv. The only point where you and Dean matched was with your tastes in music.

One evening, after John and your dad, went out to kill them, you were seated with the brothers on one of the beds and sharing tales of your lives, or more like you and Sam were and Dean was just talking about some girls of the current high school you all went to.

When you heard an engine of a car in front of the motel, you were expecting it to be John and your father, but when only John entered the room with a somber look, you instantly knew that your dad didn’t make it. You might not have liked him very much, but still, he was your father.

After that, you stayed with the Winchesters. You and Sam became basically twins with your knack for knowledge and books. When Sam left, you did too.

Now living in the bunker with them, reunited, you felt like life couldn’t get better, except for Dean liking you back but that was out of the possible happenings.

Currently, you are sitting at the dining table and reading a book while Dean is drinking his beer and Sam is doing something on his laptop.

After you read the book's last word, you shut it and look up at the boys. “Someone wanna come out on a walk?”

“Nope, and you know it.” Is Deans answer, you just shrug your shoulders and look at Sam.

“Sorry, but I’ve got to research something, maybe next time.” He smiles apologetically at you.

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s okay.” You get your jacket and head out, ready for a refreshing walk outside.

You walk away from the bunker to a clearing you found on your last walk. It looks beautiful with green grass and colourful flowers all around you. Butterflies fly from one flower to another, some even come near you. You love to sit down and wait until they set on you. That’s the last thing you remember before something hit you on the head and pain explodes. You fall to the ground the colourful world fades to black nothingness.

~With Dean and Sam~

Dean is sitting on the couch and watching TV while Sam is still researching something. An episode of a show that Dean is currently watching just ended and he looks at the time. “Ehh Sammy, when exactly did Y/N leave?”

He thinks for a moment about it, partly because he is only half listening. “Around one I think, why?”

“What! It’s already past five, where is he?” Dena starts to panic.

“I don’t know, why don’t you call him?” Sam knows that you like to watch nature and sometimes can get lost in it, so naturally, he assumes that’s what happened.

Dean immediately takes his phone and dials your number. It rings two times before someone answers.

“Y/N, where the fuck are you? It’s been-”

“I’m sorry, but he can’t answer the phone right now.”

“Who are you and what have you done with him?” Dean’s grip on the phone is getting harder.

Hearing what Dean just said, Sam looks up at Dean, slowly also getting worried about you.

“That does not sound very friendly Dean. Not when you think about the fact that Y/N’s life is in our hands. Or at least what’s left of that.” The voice on the phone chuckles darkly.

“You son of a bitch! What have you done to him?”

“Oh, nothing special you know. Just a bit of torture.”

“You-”

“No, now you will listen to me, Dean. You will surrender to us or your friend here will die.”

Dena is silent for a moment, weighing his options. “Where?”

“Good, you learn fast. Now, I will send the address to you and don’t forget to bring your brother.” The caller then hangs up.

Dean angrily throws his phone on the table and grips his hair while screaming his rage out.

“What happened to him, Dean?” Sam asks cautiously.

“They have him.” He says through gritted teeth.

“Who has him?”

“I don’t know okay! I just know that if we don’t get moving he will be dead.”

“Dean-” But Dean is already out the door with his jacket on the way to baby.

Sam sighs and hurries after him.

✦✦✦

When they arrive at the location, Dean immediately goes to the back and opens the weapons trunk.

“Dean” Sam tries to get his brother to listen.

“Dean please.”

“What Sammy?!“

“Just stop for a moment.” He tries to get him to calm down, but Dean is not having it.

“And wait while they torture him further? You want me to just do nothing while he gets hurt?!”

“No Dean, but we can’t just rush in there with no plan. That’s not gonna help him.”

“Are you saying it’s not gonna help him when we rescue him and kill the bastards who did this to him?”

“No, just calm down for a minute Dean, please. We need to have some kind of plan. We don’t know how many of them are in there, or what they even are.”

Dean sighs and takes a deep breath, realising his brother is right. But he just wants to get Y/N out of there as fast as possible.

“Okay, what do you suggest?” Dean finally gives in.

✦✦✦

After making a plan on how to get in there and get out safely again, the brothers are on the move.

Meanwhile, Y/N is bound to a chair, barely awake. 

“Well, what do you think? Do they really care about you? I mean, if they do, where are they?” 

Suddenly, the possessed man who stood in front of you just seconds ago is laying on the floor. His whole body is lighting up from the inside, then smoke leaves his mouth. 

Behind him is Dean, with the demon-killing knife in hand. As soon as the body goes still on the floor, he runs over to you. 

“Hey Y/N, are you okay?” 

You try to say something but are way too tired. 

“Fuck” Dean sighs and goes to cut the ropes which bind you to the chair. When he has cut all of them, he tries to lift you to carry you out, but you immediately wince because he accidentally touched a cut from the demon. 

“Shit, I’m sorry Y/N, but I need to get you out of here.” He lifts you again and rushes out of the building as soon as possible. 

You feel him laying you in the backseat of the Impala and almost cry out at the feeling of the cold leather against your sore body, but your eyes fall shut and you are once again in a black void. 

✦✦✦

The first thing you feel again is your hand, but there is a weight on it. To your surprise, the weight also seems to move. 

You open your eyes slightly and see Dean sitting at your bedside, his thumb drawing circles on your hand. His eyes are locked on the floor so that he can’t see that you’re with the living again. 

You move your hand which causes his eyes to immediately lock with yours. 

“Hey, stop moving, your only gonna hurt yourself.”

You smile at him. His soft and caring side only comes out when you’re alone with him. Now that your mind is a bit more awake, you notice how tired he looks. 

“Dean?”

“Hmm?” He seems to have been deep in thought again. 

“Are you okay?”

He laughs. “You are laying here, your body covered in bandages and yet you ask me if I’m okay?” He can’t stop chuckling at the situation. 

“Why are you laughing? I care about you.”

Dean seems to be getting red in the face. Yes, Dean Winchester is blushing right now. “I care about you too. I can’t believe it needed this to make me finally realise it.” 

You squeeze his hand.

“I really wanna try this with you. So, will you be my boyfriend?” Dean asks, looking very nervous. 

You grab his hand and squeeze it to reassure him, and yourself to be honest. “Yes, I really would like that.”

You both smile at each other, happy and excited for what’s to come.

[nix-lw]

Lorch Day 10: Dawn

TW: character death, violence, blood Word count: 1159 One thing ends and another begins.

“Run! You must run!”

Those were the last words he heard from his beloved mate before she flew away, clutching her sword in her maw once more, blood dripping from her teeth as she prepared to continue the endless battle. Fayrn ran as fast as he could across the snow covered field. The ground was littered with dead bodies. Piles of deep crimson that stained the pure white snow like a spreading sickness. He ran past the lifeless forms of his pack members, his friends, his family. Wolves and companions that had been alive just a few hours ago. Dear friends that had spoken with him that same morning, now soulless shells. He thought they would have more time. He thought they would be ready. Now, all he could do was run. And he ran. And he ran.

All around him he could hear the horrid sounds of battle. Of snarls and roars of monsters. Abominations of chaos that had risen from the waters of Lake Veridia when the bonds had broken and the world turned dark. They had emerged from the murky waters in hundreds, thousands. Their small lookout post had not stood a chance, completely outnumbered. As Fayrn ran he could hear the voices of those last few that were still alive. Howls of pain, prayers for mercy, frantic screams of fear. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible! “I must keep running!”

If he could reach the fort he could call for the other troops. They could all retreat to Winter Dale and regroup! And then… then…. Then what? No, this was not the time for thinking. “RUN!”

He could feel his legs beginning to tire, his muscles screaming in protest, his labored breathing clawing at his lungs as he pushed on. Faster. Faster! Then he saw it, the fortress walls rising up from behind the riverbend. Yes! He ignored his body's desperate plea for rest and raced on. Just a bit more and he would be there! “Just a bit more.”

A large shadow suddenly came tumbling across the sky above him. It crashed to the ground in a flurry of snow and dirt, right before him. Fayrn halted his steps and stared at the unmoving lump before him. Once the dust settled, he felt his heart freeze. Before him laid his beloved mate. Her wings torn, her body bloodied, her eyes closed. Closed forever. She was gone. And above her lifeless body sat a monster, eyes glowing the same sickly green as the mist that surrounded the cursed lake. Fayrn screamed, and rushed at it. He ran. He ran straight into the waiting maws of death. The world turned black. “I’m sorry my love… I can’t run anymore..”

Fayrn felt the darkness envelop him. However, the sickly feeling he had felt from the chaos ridden lands slowly turned into a feeling of emptiness and stillness. He drifted in nothingness, his mind and body feeling just as empty as the space around him. Then, a light. A faint, blue light. It came closer to him. Had he seen this light before? A voice. Someone spoke to him. “I call to you, dear child of mine. I have seen how you continue to fight against the darkness that threatens Loria. I will lend you my powers and ask you to fight once more. I hope you will answer my call one more time, child of Icerun. Orrin calls you.”Fayrn wanted to answer, to say something, but his body would not obey him. Then, long black tendrils seemed to wrap around him, dragging him further down into the dark. The light grew fainter and fainter until it disappeared in the black nothingness.

Gasping for air, Fayrn flung open his eyes and stood up. Frantically looking around, his mind swirling with thoughts and feeling to the point he felt his tiny frame would explode. His eyes slowly got used to the dull light and could make out the familiar sight of his pack members sleeping in their makeshift den. His mother raised her head to look at him with concern. He felt his eyes well up with tears, the overwhelming chaos in his mind just would not settle down. “I…I must run..! Run… Run to where? Huh? I don’t remember..?” He didn’t know what to do with himself as all these thoughts kept swirling inside him. He felt like he had known, once. Not long ago. But now, he just felt sad. Sad and angry and anxious and…. and… what? Something. Everything. He looked up at his mother and did what any young pup would do, he cried. He cried and cried and cried.

His mother quickly stood up from her place on the bedding where all the other members of their pack were fast asleep and walked over to her small pup that was weeping on the ground next to them. She picked him up by the scruff of his neck and carried him to the entrance of the cave so as to not wake anyone else with the sounds of his wailing, carefully setting him down before curling around him like a wall of warm fur. The gray colored female licked her son’s cheeks, nuzzled his head and whispered soothing words to him as he continued to cry. She let him cry, let his overflowing emotions flow freely while she patiently waited for him to calm down. After a while Fayrn felt the tears stop. His voice was horse at this point, his head hurting from crying so much. His mother smiled lovingly at him and patted his head with her soft paw.

“What is the matter, my sweet little boy?” “I had a…dream? I think?Nightmare? I was scared. But I don’t remember why I was scared… I also remember that I was very, very sad…” His mother listened as the little pup struggled to explain as best as he could, waiting patiently for him to find the right words. She leaned down to put her head level with her son, her warm brown eyes meeting his pale blue ones. “Dreams can be very scary. It’s ok to be afraid, Fayrn. It’s ok to cry. Just remember that no matter what, your pack will be here to protect you from everything that tries to hurt you.” Fayrn looked at his mother in awe and she could see something in his eyes shift, a determination filling his small gaze. “I will train more, mother. I will be stronger! Stronger than anyone! And then, I will protect you.” She smiled with the same familiar warmth that he was used to seeing, her face full of love and adoration for her little pup. “Is that so? Well, I look forward to seeing it.” As the two of them snuggled up to each other, the little pup looked at the world outside their cave and saw the sun starting to rise above the horizon. A new dawn. A new beginning. A new chance.

[viky2318]

HEY! BEFORE LOOKING UNDER THE CUT!!

This whole stuff under here is ONE WHOLE CHAPTER of my tiny not-so cute story. Yanno, the one I anticipated you the last post? That one. It's long more or less like that post about Papyrus on the surface being half depressed. I won't split it in more parts this time because I'm planning to do more chapters and I want to keep everything in order.

If you don't know or don't like the concept of Alternative universes in Undertale, I warn you: this story will be all in the multiverse, about the multiverse, with the multiverse. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

With that said, have fun.

It was all white.

For a few seconds, they thought they were being blinded by some sort of bright light. But then, they understood that there was absolutely nothing around them.

Only white, empty nothingness.

They initially didn't notice each other. They were too focused on understanding where they were to turn around and see the others.

The first one to see the others was Maddy.

As she had always been a nervous person, shielding the insecurities behind anger and hatred and at the same time craving for support, she immediately searched for something to hold on to.

The moment she noticed something different from the white nothing, she exclaimed: "The heck is going on?!?".

The other two turned around, as surprised as Maddy was.

The second person who spoke was Muffet.

She was an sweet lady that never liked unsettling situations or big surprises. This one was particularly unsettling.

"W-who are you two?! Where are we??" She asked.

The third member of this strange trio, Grillby, was silent. He always preferred keeping his problems for himself, thinking that freaking out was just a waste of time and energy.

But right now he was internally exploding. “Where am I? Who are those people? How did I end up here? Why is it so empty here? This is just a big room with white walls, right?”, he questioned himself.

He looked up, and saw something that hardly a living being sees in their life.

The ceiling of this place was covered in a huge web of blue strings that seemed to stretch to infinity. And in the middle of them…

Souls.

Human souls, monster souls, souls of beings that the three of them never saw, and maybe never will. That clearly wasn’t a large room.

The other two monsters followed the man’s gaze and saw it too. Maddy asked with her usual annoyed tone, but with a hint of fear: “Hey spider girl, is that stuff yours?”.

Without taking the eyes away from the strings, Muffet answered: “no, i’m not this messy. And don’t call me that, I have a name”. Maddy looked at her. “Then what is it? Is it ‘Little bi-”.

Before she could end the sentence, Muffet glared at her with her wide, purple eyes. “You won't finish that sentence. The name’s Muffet. Don’t use nicknames with me or I swear, I'll cook your soul and feed your dust to my pet”.

Grillby put a hand on the spider’s shoulder. “No one will die until we figure out what’s going on and how to get away from here” he said.

Muffet looked at him with annoyance, then commented: “so you can talk”. She let Maddy’s wrist and recomposed herself, looking at the strings again.

Wait, was that… “hey, you two! Seems like we’re not alone here. Look!” the spider exclaimed, pointing at the strings.

The other monsters looked in that direction and noticed that some strings were... moving?

They decided to follow the strings to the source of the movement. They walked for a while, who knows if just minutes or hours, but then started seeing something.

There was a couch or something like that, and the strings went down near that thing. Coming nearer, they saw someone tied up with those strings, kind of hanging, and someone else near them.

The little group started hearing voices. One of them, from the person standing up, was upset. The other voice, from the hanging one, was more tired.

Now they could better see the two people. The tied up one looked like an adult human, but it was colorless. They had white skin, gray short hairs and gray clothes. The little eyes were looking at the second person with a very annoyed expression.

The other guy was a small skeleton, but their colors seemed… wrong? It had black bone, the clothing was mainly black with bright yellow details, as part of the fingers (that were also red). Under his eyes there were thin blue lines that resembled the marks of some tears. He looked very angry. There were also little “ERROR” messages... floating around the guy?

Staring at that strange couple could make you think that the first one’s colors were stolen and added to the second one’s, making them so bright your eyes hurted.

The trio somehow managed to sneak behind the couch, enough near to hear the conversation. “I’ll ask you for the last time. Where is the OMEGA timeline?” the skeleton asked not-so kindly.

The human heavily sighed. “And I'll tell you for the last time. I’m not Core Frisk! We just have a similar color pattern! Put on your glasses hobo, and you’ll see it by yourself!”.

The skeleton took a pair of round, red glasses and wore them, then said: “You just got older. And stop calling me that! Not even Ink does it anymore”.

“That’s the demonstration that I'm not Core, dammit! They don’t grow up! They have the same age since, what, twenty years? Thirty?” The human said exasperated.

The skeleton looked at him for a few long seconds, then shrugged and decided: “oh well, I think you’re right. But if you’re not them, then I think you’re useless”. The skeleton took one of the strings near the human.

“No no no noNONONONOWAIT!! DON’T!!” the human begged. “Oh? Suddenly being so nervous? Don’t worry, you’ll die fast” the skeleton explained.

Maddy jumped out of her hiding spot without much thinking and shouted: “HEY! YOU ASSHOLE! LET THEM BE!!!”, then threw at him a cat-shaped attack.

The skeleton turned around and got hit on the nose by that. His eyes became all red, filled with tiny error writes. “THE HECK DO YOU WANT?! I’M JUST TRYING TO DO MY JOB!” he exclaimed with a broken voice, literally.

He threw some strings from his face to the cat monster. She jumped away and summoned a staff as fancy as the owner. With that one she got near and tried to hit the skeleton, but he dodged and trapped her in the web of strings.

“HEY! Do you think this is the way to treat someone?” Maddy exclaimed angrily. The skeleton told her to shut up and looked at the human, then asked: “Is this furry your ally?”. They shook their head. “Never saw her”.

Muffet observed the scene half hidden behind the bag couch. When she looked at Maddy, the cat winked at her. She then started insulting the skeleton for his horrid manners and calling him ‘dwarf’.

Muffet took a few seconds to understand the cat’s plan. She got slightly closer to Grillby and murmured: “I sneak behind the skeleguy, and when I get him you free the others”. Grillby nodded and prepared to move.

Muffet slowly, silently shifted from the couch to behind the skeleton. The human saw what was happening and stayed silent, acting as nothing.

With the upper pair of hands she created a magic web thread and wrapped it around the skeleton's neck, half crushing it.

“HEY- THE FU-” the skeleton tried to say, but Muffet put one of the other hands on his mouth. “Oh dear, it’s not polite to swear like that! I suggest you stay quiet~” she snickered.

The skeleton became even madder at the touch of the spider and tried to turn around and kill her, but other two hands blocked his wrists.

With the last hand, she patted him on the head. “Oh dear, how childish of you! I told you to stay quiet! Stay put and nothing is going to happen, ok? Good~”.

Man, the skeleton was angry. In the meanwhile, Grillby fred the other two from all those blue strings. They were too strong to be broken by hand, so he burnt them.

“Thanks... Uhhh… what was your name?” Maddy asked as he helped her get down. “Grillby” he simply answered with his mouthless face.

“Cool. I’m Maddy. What about you, human?” she then asked the colorless guy. “Oh, me? My name is Sam”.

Maddy hummed: “Sam, alright. Hey Spider girl- i mean, Muffet! How's it hanging?” she then asked.

The spider used the only free hand to sign them a thumb up. “I’m alright! This guy here suddenly got quiet. Is he dead?”.

The human looked at the skeleton and explained: “no, Error just has a very strong haphephobia. You probably made him reboot. I think you can let him go n-”.

Without giving Sam the time to finish the sentence, the skeleton that they called Error (is Error even a name?) summoned a red bone and hit Muffet on the shoulder.

She let him go, falling back on the ground as she held her wound. Darnit, the bone almost ripped her arm off.

“nO ONe'S GoNnA sURvIVE!!” he shouted while summoning a hellish amount of bones flying around without a precise target.

Grillby gathered everyone behind him and made some sort of huge fire wall as a shield. Sam huffed. "It's a waste of time! Let's get away" he said.

A portal opened under their feet, sending them all in a tiny house.

End of chapter 1

Holy shoot I'm gonna die

Error Sans © Crayon Queen

START NEXT

[j-graysonlibrary]

Heartbeats; Paradise XVI

Title: Heartbeats; Paradise

Author: Jay Grayson

Word Count: 112K

Genres: Psychological thriller, drama, sci-fi, LGBT+

Available on: Kobo and my website

Synopsis: Melvin Hardy and Kade Axel appear to be a match made in heaven. After a meet-cute in the rain, the two quickly find themselves in a burgeoning, wholesome relationship.

Yet, things feel…off. It isn’t the ghosts of their pasts that resurface to test the strength of their partnership—no—it’s something nebulous. Something indescribable. Melvin can’t put his finger on it but, the more time he spends with Kade, the more he starts to wonder what’s real and what’s pure fiction. 

XVI:

The white walls are smooth with incredibly light gray designs blinking into them—tracing lines into the sides and then disappearing into nothingness. It’s boring scenery but, for some reason, just taking it in fills me with dread. Looking at this woman before us only serves to exacerbate that feeling.

Kendra scowls as she says the name, “Anika.”

A flash of movement at my side causes me to look over. Oz is already reacting to it but he’s still too late. Starla is shoved to the side in the process and Nate watches with a similar confused expression as I imagine I have.

Kade brings his axe down on Anika, crying out in anger as he does so.

I flinch as I expect to be bathed in blood but that doesn’t happen. Anika’s body does explode—in a way—but she’s burst into a million pixels at the contact. Kade’s axe pierces the ground under her and he has to grunt and yank with quite a bit of might to pull it free.

Anika reappears a few feet away, perfectly untouched.

This doesn’t deter Kade, however.

I watch with a mixture of worry and exasperation. While I wouldn’t mind, in this one case, Anika getting an axe to the head, I don’t know if I’d actually want to see it happen. And now that she’s avoided one strike, I’m certain I won’t see it. Though Kade seems to believe if he just keeps trying, he’ll get her eventually.

He throws his axe toward her several more times—each ending the same way. Everyone starts to call out to him, to get him to stop, but he doesn’t listen. Even I shout his name.

His hair is in his face and he’s sweating and panting. His whole body heaves as he gears up for another attempt to axe her.

“Kade, she’s not real!” Kendra shouts, finally able to get more than a few words out. When he stops to look at her, she explains, “This is just Anika’s author portal. It’s the A.I. version of her that fans can interact with and ask questions to. She’s not the real Anika.”

He spits, “I still want her dead!”

“You can’t kill her,” Oz states the obvious, “Save your strength.”

Kade glares daggers at him but doesn’t move to attack any longer. He just tightens his grip on his axe and turns toward Anika with a glower.

Anika, in turn, clasps her hands in front of her and smiles politely. “Before you ask any questions, would you like to check the Frequently Asked Questions forum to see if your question has already been answered?”

We all look at each other. Sure she’s A.I. but she sounds more robotic than even the extras in our world did. I wonder if anything she says will be worthwhile at this point. Oz appears to be feeling similar to me but Kade is still pissed. Starla looks confused and Kendra…I can see the wheels turning in her head.

To my surprise, she’s not the one to speak up first. It’s actually Starla.

“What can you tell us about the diving program you used in your story? It’s what’s responsible for bringing us here, right?” She asks and steps closer to the woman. “Why did you use that? And were you aware of what it was doing?”

It’s a perfectly reasonable question and I’m impressed by how calm and collected Starla is while asking it.

Still, Anika cocks her head to the side and keeps the pleasant smile on her lips. “I’m sorry; I don’t know what you refer to. Please check my Frequently Asked Questions.”

“Cut the bullshit!” Kendra yells, forcing my attention back on her. She’s trembling—angrier than I’ve ever seen her—and she points a finger to Anika. “I saw that little checkmark next to your name! I know your author portal is your uploaded consciousness. Stop acting like basic ass A.I. and answer the fucking question.”

I want to ask about this “uploaded consciousness” but I don’t want to interrupt. I assume, based off of Kendra’s attitude and the words themselves that certain users of IVAR have an elevated status and are able to have their consciousness digitized in this format instead of leaving a generic program with their face slapped on for people to interact with “them” while they aren’t personally in the system. That brings a lot of other concerns to my attention such as the sentience of this consciousness and the kind of existence it’s forced to live but, again, I keep it to myself.

A colorful ray extends from Anika and scans over Kendra, beeping upon completion. “Ah, Kendra. I thought that might be you.”

“..Did she just scan you?” Oz asks.

“I don’t think she needed to,” Kendra answers, clenching her fists, “You had to have seen my work in your story. Who else could it have been?”

Anika’s brows dip down but her smile doesn’t disappear. “You failed in your mission. I still wrote the story I wanted to write and everything happened the way I wanted it to. Even when the characters rejected my input, I’d just write over their free will and publish my version. I’m the author. You cannot best me.”

“Oh, I’d love to talk with you about everything you did as the author but…” Kendra glances over to us and sighs, “That’s not what’s important here. Anika, you’ve been here overseeing everything so I know you have access to user logs and I know you have recordings of every interaction with the story. I need you to find where these people came from. Scan their User I.D.s so I can get them back home.”

She’s not mentioning the prevailing theory of our deaths, I notice. But, maybe she’s changed her mind on the matter or maybe she’s just being hopeful?

It has a ripple effect and I’m also feeling a glimmer of hope rise up in my gut. Could I still have a home to return to? Could Gavin and Cameron be waiting for me?

Anika takes a few steps forward, glancing between each of us with a smile that suggests she has some secret. “You mean you can’t tell, Kendra? You can’t read their User I.D.s?”

I look from her to Kendra. She’s pained but I can’t read much more from her expression.

“You should know,” Anika continues and reaches her hand out, close to Nate.

He stares at his creator blankly and, in a second, he’s gone. Warm, wet splatter lands on my face, across my glasses, before I even register what’s happened. No one’s screaming but Starla gasps in surprise as she, too, is covered in blood from the mini explosion.

All that’s left of Nate is on us and on the ground.

Is she going to do this to all of us?

“What have you—?” Kendra starts to ask but is promptly cut off.

Anika turns on her heel to face her. Unlike us, she’s free from Nate’s blood and that content smile of hers lingers. “You don’t actually care! You knew he was just A.I.”

“I wasn’t completely sure!” she yells back.

Anika shakes her head. “You really have gotten lazy haven’t you?” She tsks and then begins to pace. “You can’t even tell who’s a user and who’s A.I. anymore. Or, perhaps, my program is just that amazing?”

I can tell Kendra wants to take her head off but she lets out a long, controlled sigh instead. “I need you to scan these four and tell me what you find. The reason they’re here is because of your diving program that you didn’t properly delete so take a little responsibility.”

She rolls her eyes but throws her hand out toward us anyway. I instantly tense, expecting to be popped like Nate, but the same ray that was used to scan Kendra glides over me. Each of us has a turn and Anika’s expression doesn’t change the entire time.

Once she takes her hand back, she sets her eyes on Kendra. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Kendra repeats.

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?” Oz demands.

“You don’t have User I.D.s,” Anika answers with a dramatized sigh, “That means you aren’t connected to an account which means you were disconnected at some point or you are dead. Though, disconnection for this long would kill you anyway so…either way, you’re all dead.”

“You have to know more than that!” Kendra shouts, throwing her arms out, “You have to have seen when these souls interacted with the story, right? There has to have been some disturbance to mark their arrival!”

“They probably hopped on IVAR, came to check out or pre-order my story, and got disconnected in the process. I can’t comb through the millions of viewers, Kendra.”

“You think…” Kade says slowly and I snap my head over to him, worried what he might do. I notice his knuckles turning white as he grips the handle of the axe tightly. “You think I was a viewer? You think I went out of my way to read your dogshit, boring ass, waste of time TRASH, you CUNT?!”

“I’ll have you kno—” Anika doesn’t finish as Kade’s axe swings through her again. I know it won’t do anything at this point but I’m honestly happy to see her get interrupted in such a way.

I’m sick of hearing her. I’m sick of seeing her too.

But, of course, she reforms every time she’s cut down. “You can’t kill me, you idiot!” she screams before she’s attacked again.

This time, she reappears farther away and Kade lets his arms rest, panting from overexertion again.

“You should be lucky to have ended up in my story, you know,” Anika remarks as she slowly returns.  “The amount of horrific shit on IVAR is staggering! You should be grateful to be dropped into something with VALUES and MORALITY!”

“Oh, you mean like your monster gangbang story?” Starla asks and puts her hands on her hips. “He should be lucky he wasn’t made to be the protagonist of that one, Anika?”

Her face reddens and she whips around to Kendra. “You bitch. You KNOW I’ve changed since then.”

“Yeah, and not really for the better.” Kendra crosses her arms. “You claim to be this progressive artist that tells stories for minorities but all you’ve done is reinforce negative and, frankly, harmful ideas. Sure, the main characters are gay but they have to be perfect and morally pure? The only people into kink are the pedophiles? There’s one Asian character and the only indicator that she’s Asian is that her last name is Cho?!”

“I also added a line about pronouns so the transgenders can’t get mad at me!” Anika responds as if she’s making a point. Really, she’s just helping Kendra with her list of grievances.

“Oh, how could I forget?” Kendra throws her hands up and scoffs. “And where are the black people, Anika? I didn’t even see a single extra who was black.”

“It’s set in a mostly white city,” she says and shrugs, “plus, every time I try to add a black character, you people get bent out of shape because I do something wrong. So I may as well not, you know?”

“Wow…how the fuck was I ever friends with you? Were you always like this deep down or did that backlash against Skylar’s story really change you this much?”

Anika’s face twists as she says, “Stop bringing that up! That was the old Anika. She’s dead! The people who confronted me back then were right and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize it.” She laughs and the sound of it makes me feel like I should start running. “Our society is disgusting, Kendra, and we can’t let people publish their dirty perversions anywhere they want. What I’ve done is the ONLY way to write about love and sex! It’s black and white. Thinking otherwise can muddle the mind and we need to have clear moral guidelines in our art so that children can see what’s right and what’s wrong so they aren’t led astray like we were.”

“Moral guidelines?!” Kade responds, hoisting his axe into the air. Anika already starts to flee but he throws it this time, hitting her and scattering her data. “What the fuck is moral about making me sit on a dick against my will?!”

“Kade wasn’t supposed to be possessed by some dead psychopath like you!” she spits, “He was supposed to be an innocent, feminine boy who readers could see themselves in.”

“Young girls, you mean,” Starla hits the nail on the head.

While Kendra’s story of Anika had painted a pretty detailed picture, listening to her now has really filled in the gaps. I wish I had been pulled into any other story. Any other world. At least a different author might feel sympathy for our plight—show some form of remorse. But all she does is make it about herself. And her weird purity crusade.

“That’s the biggest demographic, sure. I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Anika gripes.

“You got so brainwashed, Anika,” Kendra says with a dry laugh, “I almost feel bad for you.”

“Brainwashed? You’re the brainwashed one!”

Kendra shakes her head. “Art is expressive and, yeah, sometimes it carries with it a social, political, or moral message but that’s not the point of art. It’s to let out something that’s in you. It’s to express what you feel inside and show how you interact with the world around you. It’s personal and sometimes deeply private and that can make it dark and upsetting as well. That doesn’t mean it’s evil.”

“That shit is evil!” she retorts, “Those old stories we used to write were wicked! All we focused on was our erotic impulses and our low-vibration need to see others suffer! Only vermin enjoys that stuff! Real, good people want characters they can see themselves in and happy endings!”

“There’s room for both kinds of stories, Anika.”

I look between the two of them and, while I think Kendra, especially, has been holding all of this in for years, I can’t find it in myself to really care.

This is between them.

This is their history and their fight over their ideals.

This has nothing to do with me.

Before I know it, I’m clenching my jaw and a fire is flaring through my veins.

“Shut up!” I shout, getting many pairs of eyes on me. “I don’t give a damn! This has nothing to do with who’s right or wrong! I had a life…I…my name was Liam and I had a husband and a son! There’s probably no way I’ll get to see them again and I was forced to play house in this stupid fucking virtual world. I want out! That’s it! I don’t care about anything else!”

“I want out too,” Oz backs me up and places a hand on my back. “You two can continue this conversation later—without us.”

“Yeah, we already know we’re dead so what’s the point in sticking around?” Kade asks and Starla nods at his side.

“I’m sorry,” Kendra murmurs, “I lost sight of what’s important.”

“What’s it matter anyway?” Anika pipes up. “You just said it—you’re dead. Where can you go? What can you do?”

“Anything is better than staying here and listening to you,” I respond with a scowl.

She starts to argue but the room shakes and, like the sky in our world, the walls begin to break apart to reveal an abyss beyond. Anika’s form even starts to flicker—effected as well.

“The bombs!” Kendra gasps. “They’re still going off!”

We exchange glances before rushing toward the exit, not needing Kendra to lead the way this time. I can only hope that this void will actually lead us outside.

“Where are you going?!” I hear Anika scream but I don’t turn back to look.

[ribbetttt]

My Passion

I keep trying to produce an explanation, an answer for my existence. Surely, I must be here for something, for somebody? I think its creation, as that truly is what the meaning of life is to me. Creation. Making something from a nothingness that resides within yourself. The eyes of another peer to me and I want to give them a show. Something to be wilder, something to love. I look at my face and see what I feel. Sometimes disgust, like now. Sometimes I see the definition of beauty and strength. 

So, if creation is my existence, why is it hard for me to do so? I guess it might be due to that law, “on object that is still stays still unless acted by an outside force.” My natural state is an easy nothingness, gliding through my life without wanting to move. It seems to be that I wish to simply close my eyes and never wake.

I think to the book I’m reading, where the reaction to the innate nothingness is suicide. Perhaps my reaction to a life I am so cautious of is a pseudo suicide. You do nothing, say nothing, enjoy nothing. 

What makes me feel giddy? I don’t know, maybe a constant consumption. Forever feeding on the work of others, the pain of others, the joy of others. I can barely be without consuming so how can I let others consume me? I don’t want to do anything because being a void is so much easier. I want to be a husk of a shell of a man who will never exist. Always hiding away in the corners of a warm embrace, the time between this becomes a cutscene to skip at my leisure. 

I hate it, the duality of myself. The intense desire to move, but the lack of a body. Perhaps it is that which I cannot comprehend, the actualization of myself, that I hate. The fact that I must consciously put myself through life instead of having someone hold my hand and walk me down life’s garden path. I must I must I must. Nobody will live my life for me.

I want to sing and dance; I want to move freely without constraint and use my own body and mind and soul to flourish. I don’t want to be told what to do or to have an expectation of what is needed from me. I want to live without caring. I want to live I want to live I want to live.

But it’s so hard for me to live at all. Every step I take in my life causes the bones inside my frail frame to explode and shoot from my skin. The bones brittle and break from my skin. My flesh exposed to my ungrateful eyes. Disgusting. I hate these bones, this skin, this life. I want to escape it all. ESCAPE I CRY. ESCAPE ESCAPE. The pain of freeing myself makes me smile yet it is my worst nightmare. Uncomfortable worms of pain wriggling into my silly brain. I hate them, I love them, I need them. Oh, how I need this pain.

This pain shows me I can escape. My god I will escape.

[jtspins]

My Morning Routine

"The choices we make during the first hour or so of our morning often determine what the rest of the day will look like. Will your morning routine grant you a day full of productivity and peace of mind? Or will you be looking at an eight-hour stretch of haphazard work?" -- The Times

Mornings are an important time to set my intention for a productive day. My alarm goes off at 6:40am. That’s probably five minutes later than I should have set it for but I hit snooze anyway. Eight minutes later the snooze alarm goes off and I stare at the ceiling for at least another minute as I attempt to rally my inner self for whatever lies ahead. A day in middle management is life in the fast lane and mental prep is key!

I roll out of bed, pick up my phone, and close the Kindle app that’s open to a book on mindfulness that I’m skimming. Personal improvement is so important but it’s so late at night by the time I have a moment to read that I’m rarely alert enough to go super “deep” on it before falling into a catatonic stupor that passes for sleep. But I’m getting the gist! [laughs]

I dress from a rumpled heap of clothes piled on a meditation bench I bought a year ago and plan to start using devotedly any day now. Then I head to the kitchen to join my family. Call me old fashioned but that precious morning time in the kitchen is for the children. Specifically, for rushing the children to finish the math homework that they didn’t do the night before because they begged for more screen time and we, their parents, gave in because we secretly wanted a few moments of unstructured nothingness for ourselves, too. So here the kids are, working away between hasty spoonfuls of cereal that I implore them to eat faster due to the fact that we all overslept on purpose again. 

Math these days is so funny! Do you know they teach it with pictures and boxes and, to divide a number, you have to break it into pieces and then you divide those pieces, and then there’s some adding or some nonsense and then – presto! – you supposedly get the answer? I don’t really know how it works. This means that I can’t help my 4th grader with her math homework. Hey! Competent parents, raise your hands! Not so fast, Jason Taylor! [laughs, laughs some more, coughs, gathers himself]

Well, after the kids get out the door to the bus I walk back inside with my wife, pick up the toothbrushes they forgot to use, and make my own nutritious breakfast. I always eat a good breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day, especially for an intermittent faster like me! It’s true, though, that I’m less hungry than I probably should be some mornings because, while I mean to skip dinner, I sometimes need a little pinch of healthy trail mix. And then Doritos. And then more Doritos. But that only happens on those rare overscheduled days of the week, like Tuesdays. And Wednesdays and Thursdays. Also Mondays. But hey, we’re all "works in progress," right? [Hyena-like cackle] 

Then it’s time to head to work. I sit in the car sipping coffee as I go through emails. Coffee is an important part of my morning routine and I usually try to drink enough to get my mind going but not so much that I think my heart might explode. The difference between those two points is vanishingly small so I’m not always successful! Anyway, back to those emails. There are so many! To keep from getting overwhelmed by work in the digital age, it’s important to approach your inbox with a sense of clarity. Like, I will clearly prioritize those emails written by people who are nearest to being annoyed with me for a delay in response that verges on insult. That really focuses the mind. (Mindfulness!) So with crucial correspondence out of the way, I look at the day’s meetings which have usually multiplied dramatically since the last time I checked. So much for that midday yoga class I never attend! 

With all that done, I usually have a few minutes before I get to the office. Not really enough time to dig into the carefully curated list of podcasts I’ve been meaning to listen to. So I stare dead-eyed into the middle distance.

Oh! I forgot to mention some of my outside pursuits, like shelter animals — my true passion — that I can’t wait to spend lots of time helping in some vaguely defined way at some unspecified time in the future.

###JTspins###

[ancrowpocene]

the web

(this was a little creative essay I wrote for the farmer whose farm I was living and working on. It was a biodynamic vegetable farm located on the Lofoten Islands, within the Arctic Circle. It was a tough, crushing spring, and we spent a lot of time inside, slowly renovating an old cow barn and having long-winded conversations. He was a Lord of the Rings fan- I was, and continue to be, a lost mid-20-something).

 I can’t remember it exactly, but I think we were vaguely questioning our perceptions of reality when “sub-creation” came up in conversation. It was introduced as a concept from J.R.R. Tolkien and in the context of plant consciousness-- two realms that, to me, seem somewhat impenetrable for different reasons. Partially because of ignorance, but also partially because I think there is a limit to how far you can explore  (1) the Tolkien universe or (2) the intelligence of other life forms before they get too trippy-- as in, you start projecting so much of yourself onto them that they become more like a broken mirror for your own stories.

but anyway...

Tolkien himself defines sub-creation as forming a cohesive fantasy through building worlds and creating myths. In the literary context of his “legendarium,” this refers to the idea that all of the creative endeavors of the Ainur, Elves, Dwarves, and Men in the world of Arda stem from Eru Ilúvatar, or “the One.” This is because Eru possesses the “Flame Imperishable”, granting him the ability to create existence from nothingness (shoutout to tolkiengateway.net....). So, Tolkien distinguishes between a sort of primary creation, the act of turning nothing into something, and subsequent creation, everything that happens afterward.

There is an obvious parallel here to the role of an author: a fictive writer is, indeed, the creator of an entire universe, and all the characters and actions taking place within that universe are derivatives of the author’s efforts.  

But the author creates because they are created themselves. And indeed this aligns with Tolkien’s theology, as he was a devout Catholic and therefore believed that he was created by God. Thus, in his efforts as a writer, Tolkien embraced sub-creation as a form of worship, a way for creatures to express the divine image in them by becoming creators themselves. (David C. Downing. Sub-creation or Smuggled Theology)

So, is sub-creation only conceptually interesting for a religious fantasy writer? I think there are two main questions to be answered here, and I will try to loosely address them in this text. The first is: can the idea of sub-creation transcend theology? And the second is: can it offer a way to find meaning in the human experience?

....

And so we begin with Humanity’s Biggest and Baddest Question: “Who or what is our Eru?” or, in other words, 

“How did we get here?”

The question that has started wars, divided people, been the greatest source of angst and/or bliss, the unanswerable question, the question that is somewhat miraculous even in its ability to be thought...

Is it indeed an old white man with a long beard and flowing robes, sitting upon a throne of sky and stars? or perhaps a cosmic turtle, carrying the world on its back? or maybe all life and matter are just the consequence of an extremely small and dense point exploding 13 billion years ago?

Is this question just an answerable case of infinite regress (the idea that everything that exists is contained within something else)

(Before I continue I feel like I need to make a disclaimer that I am quite ignorant when it comes to both philosophy and world religions. I make some big generalizations in the following musings, and I tried to combine what I already know with a little bit of research, but I will just try to humbly acknowledge here that I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But it’s kind of fun to be in that position. )

I was not raised religiously and I don’t align myself with any one faith or text or dogma (even you, science). But I do intuitively believe that material life is like a great drama, with many characters all playing their parts of mother, father, child, friend, enemy, sinner, saint, etc. I also believe in a “capital-C” Creator in some sense, or an original force of creation that is imbued in every atom vibrating in this universe. I feel that everything is alive, and communicating, and we humans are little mirrors of the greater Being (verb not noun), shining back small reflections of unfathomable greatness, pain, destruction, bliss, unity, difference, ecstasy...... something like a bigass disco ball. maybe the universe is just endlessly fractaling disco balls, and the supposed duality between “Creator” and “created” is irrelevant and there is no sub-creation, no succession at all; indeed, only creation. Maybe.

I could segue this entire essay into a discussion on non-duality as a philosophy and try to argue whether the idea of sub-creation aligns with or opposes it, but I won’t.

So I just take some and leave some from Tolkien’s concept.

As I understand it, Tolkien sees the primary creator (whether that be Eru or his Catholic God) as pure perfection, the vessel of all goodness, abundance, and vitality, and, as was already mentioned, the only one with the ability to make conjure existence out of nothing. Any subsequent creation, like man for example, will therefore never be able to replicate this complete perfection, but will instead “reflect a splintered fragment of the true light” (his words). And so, only by building worlds and creating myths can humans aspire to reveal/identify this light embedded in their own existence.

I think atheists and non-atheists alike can agree on this at least: that all sentient and non-sentient beings are a product of some sort of immaculate conception, whether that be the Big Bang, or the decree of Allah/God/Brahma/etc, or the hatching of a great egg. 

But the agreement ends when it comes to whether or not this has an impact on human nature and the nature of all living things. 

 In Hinduism and Buddhism, for instance, human nature is seen as related to divine nature, and the main task for human beings is the overcome the perception of individuality and become part of All That Is. Taoism further emphasizes the importance of cultivating “chi,” or our life force, through living in harmony with nature in order to enter the kingdom of heaven and gain eternal life. In Semitic religions like Judaism and Islam, the Self is thought of as distinct from and dependent on the divine; therefore it is important to live in gratitude and obedience toward God. Any disobedience, or sin, is not necessarily rooted in human nature, but must be corrected. In early Christianity, humans are seen an embodied image of God, but one that requires the “continuous creative activity of God,” without which they would return to earth, or dust.  ("Human Nature, Religious and Philosophical Aspects ." Encyclopedia of Science and Religion.) However, around the 4th century CE the Christian Doctrine of original sin emerged, which holds that humans are born corrupted by sin as a result of the fall of Adam, and that “wickedness is a property of the human heart” (“What is the Biblical Evidence for Original Sin?” desiringGod.org). Despite this, some denominations of Christians, like many Quakers, believe in the doctrine of “inward light,” which holds that God is in everyone and that humans are inherently good.

Very briefly I will just add that various philosophical and scientific trends throughout history have then added to/erased/replaced these understandings of the human condition. And along with them, there has also been evolving understanding of the nature of the non-human world, sentient or otherwise. Some beliefs hold that humans are irrevocably superior to all else because they contain a soul, which others may extend the concept of a soul to some or all of the non-human world. A 2011 study investigated whether different cultural and religious groups were more likely to ascribe personhood to non-human entities such as fire, angels, robots, bears, dogs, fetuses, and deceased humans. It found that while American Indians were likely to think of fire, bears, and fetuses as persons, Atheists were likely to say that robots and dogs were persons, but fetuses and angels were not (Adam Cohen. 2011. Religion, Culture, and the Personification of Non-human Entities.)

This is all just to say that there are many different answers to the question of how we got here, and what implications it has for our existence. And I think answering the how begins to illuminate the answer to the why? why are we here, why do we have a consciousness that allows us to contemplate mysteries such as these? why do we have a world that looks the way it does, with all of its suffering and beauty, diversity and connectedness? 

I want to spend some time with the ideas of world-building and myth-creating as ways to understand our collective reality, but simplify them even more to structure and story (partially just for the alliteration).  I think you can look at just about anything through the lens of structure/story, and they are inextricably linked; a real chicken-or-egg situation... 

*it’s the figures and tales we have projected onto the configurations of stars in the night sky: the bull, the water bearer, the great bear, and so on

*it’s the prison walls that hide away what a particular society cannot tolerate, whether that is acts of cruelty, taboos, people of a certain race....

*it's the Ganges river, full of bodies that are not even entirely cremated because there are too many other bodies piled up on the shore, waiting for their rite of passage

*it’s the bathroom stall, scribbled over with tags, political slogans, and love notes

*it’s the bed where, under the covers, the first “I love you” is tentatively whispered

It's the bathhouse, grandma’s kitchen, the office elevator, the playground, the parliament chamber, the country borderline, it’s a deserted island, it’s Hong Kong, it’s the cup you always use, it's the photo you can’t look at anymore, the small mementos you carry around with you from place to place....... 

It’s peace, war, reconciliation, fear, inspiration, justice, play, nostalgia.......

When I think about structure more, I see it, in its most reductionist form, composed of bonds and spaces///matter and void. Take soil as an example. In Regenesis, George Monbiot explains a recent “Theory of Soil” proposed by scientists in 2020, which is essentially that soil is composed of “structures within structures within structures” (23). tiny particles are stuck together with carbon-based polymers, or cements, that microbes excrete; as creatures of all sizes (earthworms, fungi, bacteria, mites, etc.) colonize and move through/establish themselves in the soil, they create holes of different sizes, into which water and chemicals released by plants and animals can flow. This complexity is multiplied by time, as more and different species wriggle their little bodies around, and the result ends up being, in Monbiot’s words, an “endlessly ramifying catacomb” (24). The most interesting part, to me, about Monbiot's musings on soil, is when he mentions fractal scaling, and says that the structure of soil is consistent at any scale of magnification. 

Fractal scaling and this image of a complex, growing catacomb makes me immediately think of bread dough and models of the universe. In the words of Seamus Blackley: “rising dough is actually a pretty good analogy for the expansion of the universe; every little bit of flour in the dough is getting farther away simultaneously from every other bit of flour all at the same time. This is what the universe seems to do. Weird huh?” (Twitter)

There is also a popular analogy in cosmology that compares the way that galaxies move in our expanding universe to the way that raisins move in a rising loaf of raisin bread. 

 when I think about stories, the first things that come to mind are obviously religions, folklore, myths.....etc. In some ways, these are like structures because they are also bonds and spaces, in the sense that stories are merely people/places/ideas plucked out of the infinite imagination and woven together like tapestries. Different cultures have different conceptions of what a story is, and the acceptable amount of deviation from logic or temporal/spatial linearity can vary. But what is consistent is that stories change and evolve. 

Take the environmental movement in the US, for example.

It is an amalgam of stories driven by religion, racism, ethics, profit, science and so on, and serves as an illuminating example of the inseparability of knowledge and power. (Like Foucault says, society’s dominant narratives are always embedded in power relations, and how consequently, those with the upper hand will have more say in what ideas and stories, or discourses, become mainstream.) 

One specific story that we can explore further is the construction of wilderness and the “pristine myth” in North America. Influenced by biblical doctrine, early Europeans equated wilderness with the unknown and saw it as something to be feared; but by the time the first colonists invaded the Americas, wilderness had been ideologically transformed into something representing bountiful resources and requiring human stewardship. Colonizers dehumanized the indigenous peoples of North America and trivialized their relationship with the land, as they believed that “forests were wild because Indians and beasts lived there, and Indians were wild because they lived in the forests” (Hopson, 2011). This provided justification both for interfering with the physical landscape and driving indigenous people out of their territories. 

However, in the middle of the 19th century, on the edge of the civil war and in a period of cultural insecurity, Americans began to revere wilderness as a symbol of moral purity and stability. There had also been years of rampant destruction of nature through logging and hunting, and people were beginning to see the negative effects of this. This laid the foundation for the transcendental cultural movement that later inspired John Muir who, along with Teddy Roosevelt, sequestered millions of acres of land to create the first national parks, Yellowstone and Yosemite. Doing so, though, required the forcible removal and exclusion of the land’s native inhabitants. These were people who had cultural and spiritual ties with the land and who, contrary to the narrative of the “Noble Savage Myth,” had been altering the landscapes for hundreds of years through slash-and-burn cultivation, hunting, etc. The persisting myth of wilderness in North America, codified in the 1964 Wilderness Act, has consequently excluded indigenous people from land in order to preserve it for the recreation of others (i.e. white middle-class people, whom the parks were created for in the first place), and has become the ideological foundation of American conservation efforts both domestic and abroad. 

Therefore, it is crucial to question and interrogate our own stances, the narratives we buy into and perpetuate on a daily basis, and consider what new stories can be told in order to create a more equitable, just world.

Now, maybe a lot of what I have written so far is a bit disjointed and hard to follow. Maybe you’re asking “where is this all going?” (I have asked myself the same question several times throughout the writing process, that’s for sure).

But to me, all this talk about religion and human nature and structure and story comes back to the fact that I think, as humans, we are all trying to find a glimmer of purpose in this life. Regardless of whether you think there is no objective reality and we all live in a simulation of some sort, or that we are splinters of a very tangible divinity, or the product of a funny little physics experiment, we were all granted the ability to ponder each of these possibilities and align ourselves with one that fits our view of the world. This is a gift and a curse, and up to us what we do with it. 

And if we really look around us, at all the other species we share this planet with, at the clouds and stars above us, and the leaves falling down around us, we see that movement, change, growth and decay are the universal truths. Even mountains, seemingly immutable giants, are dancing -- they just dance on a different time scale than us. To the mountain, we are like small ephemeral insects, zooming around at a sped-up pace, growing, fucking, reproducing, and dying. 

And here, on the farm, we are trying to create a little microcosm of life.  We try to observe and interact with nature as our great Teacher, and practices like permaculture and biodynamics can offer a methodology for doing so. Where possible, we use the gifts of the land-- from seaweed to sand to green material and wild edibles. We try to understand the structures all around us (soil, plant morphology, water systems, microclimates, etc.), and try to chip away at some of the most harmful stories in agriculture (yield and profit > quality of produce and health of land, etc.) and build up new, beautiful ones. While farming fundamentally requires us to manipulate land for our benefit (growing food and other crops), it also gives us an opportunity to maximize its potential for providing habitats to other species, collecting rainwater, storing carbon, and overall becoming more diverse. And diversity offers resilience, especially as we face unprecedented times ahead. 

Leaving a piece of land better than I found it is enough to let me lie easy on my deathbed. 

We are immersed in the ebbing tide of Life and Death and Life and Death and Life again. Transformation. Alchemy. The story of resurrection. If God or Creator is imbued in every living and non-living being, if even just as a splintered fragment of light, then connecting with as many of these as possible gives us ample opportunities to see this light and get to know God/Creator/Source/etc. better. There is magic in each and every one of them, in the niches they occupy, and in the greater systems they are a part of. And then we realize that it’s all one massive beautiful web, and us humans are just one shining dewdrop upon it. 

References

“The Subcreation Theory of J.R.R. Tolkien” https://gwern.net/doc/fiction/science-fiction/2015-mirante-thesubcreationtheoryofjrrtolkien.html

“Regenesis” by George Monbiot, 2022.

“Human Nature, Religious and Philosophical Aspects” https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/human-nature-religious-and-philosophical-aspects

“What is the Biblical Evidence for Original Sin?” https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-is-the-biblical-evidence-for-original-sin

María Del Rincón Yohn (2021) J.R.R. Tolkien’s sub-creation theory: literary creativity as participation in the divine creation, Church, Communication and Culture, 6:1, 17-33, DOI: 10.1080/23753234.2021.1886860

[prometheusinitiative]

Kezia | Trial 3.3 | ATTN: HINRIK, 'IT', AND 'THEM'

"Ithika is being suppressed as well, but I don't think as bad as we are. They mentioned they weren't at full power when I was with Emmeline…" her voice cracks saying her name, "But Ithika's domain is here for us, and I think they control those connections, so there still has to be hope…!"

She has to hope—She has to. Her eyes are staring with that deep feeling to Morph and Jules, and then to everyone else. 

Focus. Solve the problem.

Or do you already know the answer?

Gloved fingers matching the drum of information, Kezia continues to count out the evidence each person presents. Her shoulders were already tense as a select few items began to click in uncomfortable ways, but nothing quite prepared her for Tracy's sudden reaction.

Her blood ran ice cold. Hands where they could see them? Her eyes flash to someone else's screen for confirmation, before another growl from Tracy makes every nerve in her body suddenly explode with fright. 

This wasn't one of us.

"Tracy are you implying—?"

She doesn't finish her sentence, not loud enough to gather attention to the group before Eden speaks again. Nor could she finish it, anyways. Did they know…? Kezia tries to swallow but even her mouth is dry and coated over with ash. It was quite clear, despite the small TVs flickering their faces, that her eyes were thin and riddled with fear.

The evidence and their order didn’t quite make sense. It was confusing… on purpose? All of this didn’t make sense…

But you know the answer, don’t you? You had known, hadn’t you?

“No, no, no, no….” You can wish all you want.

A burning sensation from something Ancient—A reprimand. Something that should not be disturbed. Something starving. The sharp, hungry static nipping at her nerves coupled with the desolate feeling of isolation.

Her mind finally snaps back as Hinrik speaks—no, bites at their hand. Instinctively, she twitches in her seat as if she might jump through the screen. Stop it. Her heart breaks further as Michiya understands, too, begging for an explanation. So does Morph—Fuck—Morph especially.

“NO!”

She finally shoves her chair out from under her, screaming up at the static sky once more—defiant.

“Eden you were right earlier, FIRE DOESN’T CARE. The FIRE doesn’t. It consumes and consumes and consumes—Someone else got caught in its flames long ago and has been trying to keep it at bay!”

Hinrik’s words are echoing in her head. They never left her.

‘I would have listened, Kezia.’

“I WOULD HAVE LISTENED, HINRIK.”

‘Kezia, I’m still listening now.’

“I’M STILL LISTENING NOW! My hand has always been here, and it will continue to be! So is everyone! I tried—I’ll keep trying to reach out! I know it’s scary! I know it’s not fair! I don’t know exactly what's going on but god DAMN it, let us help you!”

‘I’m trying to keep you safe. I’m trying to keep everyone safe…’

“I’m not running! You don’t have to fight, Hinrik, but I will! Let us keep YOU safe for once! Let us help and work together!”

She stomps her foot on the ground, expecting—nothing. It’s her turn to growl and hiss and sputter in anger, voice raising more and more as her shoulders round next to her ears in a aggravated stance. The static is biting angrily at her neck, but she doesn’t fucking care. Her own warning spikes back—

Enough of trying to contain her.

‘What happens now? What happens when it’s COMPLICATED?!’’

“ITHIKA? What happens when it’s COMPLICATED?! When something else might take control? There has got to be another fucking solution… damn it!”

The anger isn’t at Ithika, not even a sliver. She knows they don’t have a choice—Kezia is just enraged at the situation, if it is what she thinks it is. She’s had enough. She’s clicking through with her controller, about ready to smash it like last time. Where was the option for the real killer?

And now, she seems to snarl at the nothingness.

“Are you watching? Whatever or whoever the fuck you are? Are you listening? I hope you fucking are—I hope you find this out! Do you know what one of the most powerful emotions are out there? One that will shake you to your fucking core? LOVE. I’m not giving up on Hinrik and I’m not giving up on Emmeline or Oz or anyone here! You fucking here me?”

The words are punctuated with a hissing rattle of what might sound like sand on stone. It wasn’t just a threat, it was a promise.