#and that had nothing to do with corporate its just a cool manager there

[despazito]

the fresh cilantro i bought at the desi grocer has a stronger flavour, is is staying good way longer bc the roots arent chopped off, and cost less than half what i pay at the stupid monopolized chain stores

like it's honestly crazy that these independent food stores that have a fraction of money to operate with and are importing good authentic stuff consistently have the better deals. it really is pure greed by the loblaws & co. overlords

[qqueenofhades]

i registered to vote for the first time ( i feel old) now that im an adult but my state has closed primary elections which i was wondering if you have an opinion about. my initial thought was that its bad because i had to register democrat (rather than my states green party which represents my beliefs more) just so i could vote between democrat candidates, which feels like being pressured into supporting the weird pseudo two party system we have. but then i looked it up and apparently a reason for this is so that people from opposing parties wont purposefully mess up the votes just so that their preferred candidates have an easier time winning, and i think that makes sense too. but is that actually the reason theyve closed it or is it just to force us dem/republican?? cause it feels strange

Okay, look. I respect the fact that you're a young person, and I appreciate that you have not only registered to vote, but plan to vote in the primaries, so I don't want to lecture you too much. That said: I am taking you out for coffee, I am sitting you down, I am looking into your eyes, and I am urgently telling you the following:

The Green Party is a scam. It is a scam. It has existed for decades in American politics as an empty shell corporation weaponizing the good intentions of young people like yourself, because all it theoretically stands for "it's good to save the planet maybe." Which is not something that any non-insane person seriously disagrees with, but there is no world in which that cause is actually furthered by registering/voting Green (you mentioned that you did vote for Democrats, which -- good, but listen to me here, youngun, okay?) It ran Jill Stein in 2016 to siphon more votes from HRC, and this election it plans to run Cornel West, a pro-Russian tankie who positively equated Bernie and Trump, as another spoiler candidate. It does not stand for "protecting the planet" or America in any real way. It has never elected a single senator or congressman, let alone a president. It stands for empty performance/grievance political theater by those people who feel too morally superior to vote for/affiliate with Democrats, often because the internet has told them that it's not Cool or Hip or Progressive enough.

If your main priority is climate/the environment, you're doing the right thing by registering as a Democrat and voting for Democrats. (Also: the adjectival form is Democratic. It is the Democratic party and Democratic candidates, otherwise you sound like the Fox News host who wrote a book literally entitled "The Democrat Party Hates America.") They are the only major party who has in fact passed major climate legislation and have made environmental justice a central tenet of their platform. As opposed to the Republicans, whose Project 2025, along with the rest of its nightmare fascist prescriptions, openly pledges to completely wreck existing climate protections and forbid any new ones, just because we weren't all dying fast enough under their death-cult rule already. That's the main logical fallacy I don't get among both the Online Leftists and the American electorate in general: "the Democrats aren't doing quite enough as I'd like, so I'll enable the active wrecking ball insane lunatics to get in power and ruin even the progress we HAVE managed to make!" Like. How does that even make sense?

On a federal level, the Greens have contributed nothing whatsoever of tangible value to American or international climate policy/legislation, environmental justice, or anything else, because as noted, they don't have any elected candidates and mostly focus on drawing voters away from Democrats. There might be plenty of good candidates on the local or city level, which -- great! Vote away for Greens if they're available, or the only other option is a Republican! But on the federal/primary level, please understand: once again, they are a scam. There is no point in affiliating yourself with them. You're welcome to register Green and vote Democratic, if that makes you feel better or if you prefer having another label next to your name, but once again, I'm telling you in my position as a salty Tumblr elder that they have done nothing but harm to the causes they claim to care about, because "environment" is such a nebulous priority and has demonstrably been hijacked to stop the American government entity, i.e. the Democrats, that is actually working to improve on it.

As for your question: nobody is "forcing" or "pressuring" you to vote in primaries. By your own admission, you made a conscious choice to register as a Democrat in order to vote for Democratic candidates. If you were just a regular registered voter of whatever party affiliation, you would vote in the general election for whatever candidate the primary process produced. But if you are sufficiently vested and committed to that process that you would like to have a say in who is running under that party label, it is not unreasonable that you would register as a member of that party. Nobody has twisted your arm behind your back and made you do so; you are taking a considerable level of initiative on your own. Likewise, open primaries can be both a good and bad thing. This falls under the "the political system we have is flawed, but we can't magically pretend it doesn't exist and act according to our own fantasyland versions of reality" thing that I keep saying over and over. So yes, if you want a role in shaping the Democratic candidates who emerge from a Democratic primary process, you will usually register as a Democrat, and nobody has forced you to do that. It's that simple.

Likewise as a general programming note: I'm trying to cut back on politics a bit right now, because I don't have the spoons/bandwidth/mental health to deal with it. I apologize. So if you've sent me a politics-related ask recently and haven't received a response, I'm not deliberately or maliciously ignoring you; I just am not able to handle it as much as usual and will have to put it on pause. However, I feel as if this is important enough to be worth saying, so, yeah.

[ellieluvr420]

wife Abby headcanons xoxo

-You met at a bar when your friend cancelled on you last minute, she offered to buy you a drink and you chatted at the bar until she invited you back to hers, this was back when you were 22 and she was 25 so her flat was more modest but still well decorated and clean. You both shared a bottle of wine and sat and spoke more for hours until you were both so drunk you started doing karaoke together by watching youtube videos on her TV, she invited you out to an actual karaoke bar as your second date and she only fell even more in love with you the more she saw you.

-I think she would work in corporate like a lawyer or investment banker or something so I think she would try and work from home as much as they would let her.

-She looks so funny when she works from home too because she wears work clothes on her top half for her zoom calls but then she would be wearing pj bottoms and her slippers on her bottom half.

-Such a victim of Apple's marketing, always insists she needs the newest phone or whatever they had brought out, she has the watch, the phone, an ipad, an imac, macbook pro, airpod pros and airpod max's. Literally everything they sell because she's actually a tech geek at heart.

"I totally need it."

"Give me one reason you need an iPad Abigail."

"...I don't know, it's just cool."

You roll your eyes at her but chuckle at her insistence as you press a small kiss to her pouty lips. She smiles at you and looks like a child on Christmas day as she orders her new toy.

-She would so wear the airpod max's while working out and i think she'd always have one of those gallon water bottles that she'd take everywhere with her.

"Babe please just let me buy you one, trust me it will make you drink so much more water."

"No it won't, do not waste your money seriously." She'd huff at your stubbornness and go and buy you one anyway.

-I think she would workout at night or during the day if she can fit it in which rarely happens because she enjoys her mornings with you where you guys cuddle and chat and have breakfast together before she goes to work or gets started in the home office

-Does majority of the cooking because she really enjoys it and is also a chef, like she whips up three course meals so regularly like its nothing.

-You try and make dinner together on the weekends which equates to her micromanaging you until she gets too stressed watching you mess up and does it herself while you sit on the counter entertaining her.

-She always goes to sleep as big spoon and always wakes up as little spoon, every night, without failure. Also loves to lay on your stomach with her arms around your waist, one of her fav cuddling positions.

-She's the kind of person to ignore and persevere through a cold until she literally passes out and will get mad at you when you have to force her to rest but once she's comfy and has accepted she's ill she's such a baby.

-She would be so good with kids and they would all love her too like when you would go to family gatherings together all the kids would always be glued to her pulling her every which way

-loves dogs and cats and wants two of each

-loves home date nights where you cook together and watch films or play games whether its board, video or card games. Once you bought a fake police file and tried to figure out who the murderer was, it ended in a huge argument because you couldn't agree on who it was, you were so annoyed you made her sleep on the sofa but in the middle of night she sauntered back into your room and climbs into bed cuddling into you.

"Sorry babe, you were right." She kisses your forehead and you smile as you both go to sleep happily, Abby had managed to find the answer online but she didn't tell you that you were in fact wrong, she would rather be in bed cuddling you than prove she was right.

-I think she would want 3 kids, preferably boy, girl, boy or vice versa but she would be happy with any kids.

-If/when kids come along she starts working from home primarily and you watch them grow together.

-She would eventually want to move away from the city where she lived for an easy commute to work to a beautiful house in the country with large fields behind a huge back garden where the dogs and cats, and ducks all play with the kids.

-She would love reading crime thriller books but she also has a guilty pleasure for romance and sometimes she'll sit in bed with you and read you parts of the books. Can imagine older Abby refusing to get reading glasses because that makes her officially old but she’s literally holding the book as far as it will go and squinting so hard and she still can’t read it, you eventually give in and read it to her which only motivates her to not get glasses more because this was a way better option.

-Loves Family Guy, American Dad, South Park, all those kind of shows but if you put on a drama she'll grumble and then be hooked.

"Oh my god, oh my god, are you fucking kidding me? Noooooooo." Abby yells at the screen as she watches the season 1 finale of vampire diaries with you, you had started rewatching it as it was nostalgic and she made fun of you so much until you forced her to watch the episode you were watching.

Like I could so see her watching greys anatomy and sobbing when there's a major character death

-Goes to get mani pedis with you and she'll always get her nails painted to match the colour of yours even when you'd pick super bright to mess with her she'd get it without batting an eye.

-Of course she gets along super well with all your friends and family, sometimes you think they love her more than you 😀

okay that's all I got for now but I will probs do way more once the series is finished :))

[w0rmdahl]

extracurriculars — CH

gif ©: w0rmdahl, theseulgis

film: chappie (2015)

synopsis: in anticipation of tech developer deon wilson’s ‘scout’ production, weapons corporation tetravaal hires a new graphic artist to head the designs, unwittingly bringing together the two forces that will lead to the company’s downfall.

word count: 1.4k

featuring: deon wilson, (oc) malia bryant

warnings: innuendos?

a/n: working thru writers block i think bc i hit a lot of ruts during this piece can you tell 😫 how do we feel about her idk

it wasn't a shocker (or shouldn't be, at the very least) to say that deon — prior to meeting lia — was a complete and utter virgin nerd. growing up a computer geek didn't exactly put him in with the popular crowd during his school years so growing into an even bigger loser didn't help much, either. and while tetravaal was somewhat a dream of his, work or tech typically came before socialization, meaning interaction with anyone other than his 40-something-year-old coworkers was scarce. so, when a new coworker joined the company in addition to the upcoming 'scouts' being produced by the genius dork, guess what deon did?

absolutely nothing, of course. not when his new coworker turned out to be a girl around his age with tiny bangs, not when she moved into the desk directly behind him, not even when she made eye contact with him on her way to their CEO. instead, deon simply stared as she offered a friendly, coworker-ly smile in passing that faded soon upon his lack of response. he'd return home that first day with a grimace etched into his cheeks before going straight to bed in hopes of waking up to find it had all been some hazy, sleep-deprivation-induced hallucination.

of course, it wasn't; she was already working dutifully at her desk by the time deon sat at his own with a coffee containing enough espresso shots to kill a non-programmer. he'd spent the entire first hour of work subconsciously preparing for the next time she'd make eye contact with him, deciding whether to act cool or kind or charming, all the while fixing any loose ends on his scout program whose deadline was looming closer now that she'd arrived. and then the time came for him to present his charms, their eyes meeting as she passed by his cubicle, and deon found himself utterly frozen under the piercing pupils of tetravaal's newest addition.

for a brief moment that seemed like an eternity to the wide-eyed tech designer, her brows furrowed — less like she was angry and more like she was studying a specimen — before exhibiting a tight-lipped smile that seemed like a restrained laugh to eagle-eyed deon. he was left nearly gasping for breath by the time she turned away to let him marinate in the cringe of his own actions.

how they'd manage to grow past this initial stage — he had no idea — but what he did know was; being paired on a project together was their boss's best proposition yet.

it took them a few days to really, truly converse despite working collaboratively on scout blueprints but, coincidentally, both parties would finally warm up to one another quite well by the time the final drafts were ready for ms. bradley's eyes. so much so, in fact, that after only a few weeks of swapping life stories and 'working overtime' to secretly chat for just a little bit longer, the two would begin dating. they had to be quiet about it as employee-on-employee action was strictly prohibited at tetravaal (some security bullshit, as deon says,) so while fellow coworkers saw them as nothing more than business partners in the robocop department, their carefully constructed facade always came to a close every time they clocked out.

the pairs' extracurricular activities after work started out solely at her apartment due to deon's complete and utter aversion to his (first) girlfriend witnessing the crime that was his living space — especially after seeing hers. on its own, deon's 'typically-barren-other-than-garbage-too-high-for-his-bots-to-reach' apartment was cold and dull but serviceable as a place to call home. compared to her apartment, however? barely met HOA standards.

so he always went to her place instead, always welcomed with open arms into her cozy little loft filled to the brim with decorations despite the fact that she'd only been there for a few months by that point. and as they always did, lia and deon would sit on her blue corduroy couch with cheap wine in hand to 'watch a movie,' paying it entirely no mind in favor of learning about the other flushed face on the cushion.

deon had learned quite quickly that, in stark contrast to his lifetime of being a loser computer nerd, malia (lia when they weren't at work) bryant was and had always been the pretty art girl. originally from the states, lia attended the top university in south africa on a scholarship for graphic design and had recently graduated with a multitude of cords on her shoulders, as seen in the silly photo on the mantle with all of her collegiate friends.

he inferred from the numerous paintbrush-style awards on the bookshelves just how many successful art projects she'd claimed previously and, upon inquiring about this passion leading her to a weapons corporation, found that lia honestly had no care in the world for robots or tech at all! what she cared about was digital art and illustrations and 3d models; tetravaal was simply a job that offered the slightest bit of creativity for a fresh graduate with a degree in an under-paying and under-hiring profession. that was how she came to work as the rendering artist for scout prototypes — and soon all prototypes.

only after learning enough about lia's life to name her long-lost childhood best friend did deon finally invite her over to his place, making sure to clean and fluff every tiny detail of his apartment, programming his bots to greet her once she entered the doorway and saw the anxious developer white-knuckling a bundle of flowers still soiled from the dirt he'd plucked them. malia responded graciously (as per usual) and sat on his bland couch all night with wandering eyes and grimy carnations in her hands, asking a horde of her own questions before eventually prodding him on to infodump about the bulky computer system in the corner of the room.

with a shaky breath and sweaty palms, an apprehensive smile flashing on his face, deon would share (for the first time) about his recent secret project — about the real artificial intelligence program he was working on — and in turn offer malia the first real piece of himself with substance. he'd started out slowly — generalizing this and that to make it short and sweet for the 'likely disinterested' artist — but he found that the more he rattled on, the more space she created for him to talk, nodding along and asking clarifying questions. it appeared (at least to him) that her intrigue with the subject grew the longer he went on, her fond smile growing as he continued rambling about bandwidth. needless to say, neither party got much sleep that night and lia in particular had to go to work the next morning with terabytes of computer jargon in her brain, but the pros from this long night heavily outweighed the cons.

at least on the surface.

the couple's after-work routine adjusted to better maximize their time spent together, enjoying various records at lia's place while pushing work to the back of their minds or sitting in the others' comfortable company while finishing up some personal projects at his place. the awaited launch of his scouts, which had been designed completely by lia, would be commemorated with a fancy dinner outing that ended in a sweaty tangled mess of limbs under the pastel comforter of her mattress. coworkers continued to be oblivious, malia had been promoted to head graphic designer, deon was well-respected by others and close to cracking the code for his AI project; things were going great!

so, when malia caught him sprinting past her office in the warehouse with dark circles and bloodshot eyes, she had an inkling as to what was up. "hey!"

still running, deon whipped his head back to look at her, stopping cartoonishly in his tracks to turn back around. "hey!" he panted, pressing a hand to the doorway as he caught his breath, "could you do me a huge favor?"

"of course."

deon pushed up his glasses slipping down his nose, "there was a scout scheduled for demolition yesterday — twenty-two — can you have the guys hold it for me?"

"yeah — yeah, course, i'll let them know." malia's lips curl into a hopeful smile "did you...?" she trailed off once his own grin appeared, already backtracking to fervently run somewhere else.

"i'll be right back, love. don't go anywhere!"

[aesopsharpmybeloved]

Tess' Sharpuary - 2. Shadow

They can no longer reach him, for their enemy joined him in the battle.

chapter specific tags: hurt & comfort, healing

relationships: aesop sharp x reader

2. Shadow (0.7k)

tw: mentions of character death (canonical), mentions of depression

It always felt like it was creeping up on him.

Not just from one side, but from all directions, enveloping him, cornering him. Preparing to eat him up entirely, consume him. There were few things that frightened the former Auror, no man ever truly put the fear of his maker in him. During the day, he was the collected, nearly stoic man, strong and steady as a mountain. During his prime, criminals fled from him. They cowered at the mention of his name, and did everything they could not to fall into the hands of the feared Auror.

They wouldn’t have done so if they had any idea what he’d become. An absolute ruin of a man. He lost everything. And what was the worst, it wasn’t anything corporeal that terrified him, but rather his own self. His self-destructing head was haunting him with the shadows of the people he lost, of the person he was. 

Every single night, they were everywhere, all around him. Invisible to the naked eye, but Aesop knew they were there. They were hiding. Waiting. Waiting for him to make a single mistake, to lose his focus for a single second, and then he was fair game to them. Then they would restrain him, bind him, blindfold him, gag him. They’d sink their sharp teeth and claws into his flesh, and feast on his soul, and on his sanity. 

They didn’t manage to get him every night, his consciousness slipping before they had a chance. Aesop would wake, and he would know he survived yet another night, already dreading the following one. During the day, he was able to almost shake their presence off entirely, but as soon as the Sun dipped below the horizon, they began creeping up on him again, slowly, nearly seductively, luring him to hand himself over voluntarily.

And while the shadows faded with time, becoming fainter and fainter, they never truly disappeared. And when he let them, they grew in power once more, more than happy to try and devour him once more.

They were death. Death, cold, abandonment, hopelessness. They were his own consciousness, his own brain, his own soul, and they wanted nothing more than to tear at his flesh, until he was nothing but a broken apart carcass.

And then, one day, there came light, and there came warmth.

He saw the hands of the monsters, the shadows of his past, attempting to reach him, to grab him, and pull him under. But a different hand, light and soft, landed on his breast instead and remained there. Its thumb stroked over the fabric of his nightshirt. The shadows screamed and cried, but there wasn’t anything they could do. The tender touch burned bright, and it consumed them like they would consume him. It wrapped around him, sharing its warmth and protection with him, and for once, Aesop wasn’t afraid.

And when it was done feasting on his horrors, all that remained behind was his bedroom.

As completely ordinary as it was during the day. Papers on his desk, potions stored in every single shelf, fire crackling in the hearth and reflecting on the stack of cauldrons next to it. For once, the room wasn’t cold, and it didn’t feel that dark either. For once, Aesop felt like he could breathe, his lungs filling with the cool air coming from the window next door.

The young woman in his arms curled further into him, her hair tickling at his collarbones, and the hotness of her breath seeping through his shirt, warming his chest directly over his loudly beating heart.

His arms closed tightly around her, and he just knew that he wouldn’t get lost in the shadows again. This young woman would be his beacon, his own little lighthouse in the ocean of darkness. And he… he’d do the same for her, as he knew she had her own shadows. And perhaps, were they to walk together, the other’s light would illuminate their way, and lead them to safety, where there were no more shadows.

He lowered his head to be able to press a kiss into her hair, getting light-headed from his own fatigue, and the gentle scent of her locks. 

He settled heavily among his pillows and sheets, closing his eyes without a drop of fear. Why should he be afraid? As long as his beautiful firefly shone bright in his arms, no shadow could get him.

[AO3] --- [Sharpuary] -- [Masterlist]

bonus!!! input to illustration by @gufu-vire

[mdhwrites]

Why Do I Keep Trying Gacha Games?

I'm mostly looking for something ongoing to be invested in. My disability causes my days to be LONG and having something that even takes up fifteen minutes of them is nice. It's something I've appreciated about Star Rail during a time when my brain won't let me stay invested in ANY video games it feels like. It's something reliable that I can be excited for, can discuss and be passionate about.

It's not that it needs to be gacha even. I've tried Marvel Rivals, wasn't for me, not at the moment I feel, but gacha is kind of the BIG name right now in such titles for genres I like. I'm not someone who does shooters after all but a potentially Spider-Man influenced game like Ananta? Yeah, no, that is way more up my alley. I haven't seen Madoka but it has a turn based game coming out next year supposedly with mechanics like Star Rail's and I LOVE turn based stuff so yeah, I'll almost certainly check it out.

Of course, all of this is easier said than done. Genshin's combat turned me away from it four years ago. Zenless Zone Zero has combat I ADORE but writing that is INFURIATING. Just to linger for a second: The best way I can describe my core problem with ZZZ's writing is that they are making correct choices for what they're going for but that they're correct, not good or compelling. Speaking of not compelling: Hello Girls Frontline 2. I played a few hours of it on launch and found it to be fine. Like the definition of fine. Still better than the proper noun salad that was Ash Echoes before finding out that my character belongs to a corporation that doesn't care about having displaced thousands of people from their homes, even if not technically by their fault, which is YIKES. And Infinity Nikke has the core problem of I am function over fashion in most games. A dress up gacha just isn't for me and its writing in its opening is... Well, very functional. Not even bad, just extremely bland and lacking much in the way of character so it could get across its concepts clearly.

So yeah, I will keep looking but I also still argue that part of why HSR is dominating a market that by all means should have been hard to win over, turn based gacha is nothing new, is because it's a game that is good that happens to be a gacha. In fact, not just good but FUCKING GREAT. Like I recently finally finished base Persona 5 and had to go "Oooooh. So Hoyo looked at this final boss, went "What if we tried this theme but not dog shit?" and then made Penacony. Cool." Its combat and team building is way more engaging to me than most turn based RPGs, to the point where I have an old blog gushing about what makes it break the mold compared to your Personas, Pokemons and Dragon Quests. Like I imagine the way I talk about Star Rail sounds akin to how FF 14 people talk about that game where the money spent each month keeping up with the game is more than worth it because it's just blowing everything around it out of the water.

And, well, for my hopes, that's a pretty rough place to start but hey, maybe I'll manage to find something eventually. Also, I would ask for recommendations but I refuse to try things like Arknights because knowing I've missed five years of content, goodies, etc. like that makes my brain scream in terrible ways. sigh I hope you all are taking care of yourselves though and see you next tale. I just wanted to share a ramble.

[rainykthebroken]

Chapter 3: Celandine New ending!!!

Check it HERE!!! (it's more readable on ao3 than on Tumblr)

After years of being lulled by the music of machinery and the smell of oil and smoke, the gentle rhythm of the waves as they licked the sand seemed almost alien to Susie. The sea salt that filled her nostrils, though somewhat irritating, appeared to impregnate the essence of the beach within her, rather than the other way round as had been the case for so many worlds before this one.

The young CEO even found herself loving the beating sun, its radiant glow preferring itself to the sanitized lights of her office despite the glare. The froth that fell just in front of her tempted her to dip her hand in the cool water, to feel the torn seaweed and sand between her fingers. It was disgusting, unclean and pointless, and yet Susie found herself drawn to the prospect.

The years that had followed the end of her mechanistic madness hadn't been enough to make her fully understand why nature and its imperfections were so... pleasant.

Susie would have liked to continue losing herself in these reflections and perhaps even in the landscape that stretched to the horizon, but she knew full well she'd have to answer to the black monoliths that were spoiling her view.

"We've been very dissatisfied with our company's results since you took charge, Haltmann," declared the floating rectangle in front of her, a single red line vibrating at the sound of the voice disturbing its almost pristine surface.

'our'

Susie felt like throwing up. She was pretty sure that nothing could turn her stomach more today than rereading over and over those bold scarlet neon words that, as if carved in marble, read:

H-EC

12

At least, as the 'SOUND ONLY' ensured, Susie wasn't forced to see the condescending faces of her executive committee members.

Unfortunately for her, a monolith to her left put in another layer.

"The accident on Popstar a few years ago has severely hampered our plans, and your father's death has only made the situation worse. However, we would have thought that you would have been able to take on this enterprise."

         Although life had taught her to conceal emotions, Susie found herself grateful that her visor couldn't reveal how much she wanted to unload her blaster on the investor. H-EC 08, she thought? All their voices seemed to blend together in her head, and deep down, every one of them was as infamous as the next.

Taking a deep breath, and remembering that none of them were physically there to calm her nerves, Susie forced herself to smile. "Haltmann Company has grown 13% in the last six months alone. I doubt that without me, this company would have managed to hold its own in the market."

She suspected his barely concealed annoyance, but surely they knew as well as she did that she was telling the truth. If they took the rap, she'd still be the one holding the bag.

"And we're grateful," interjected another interface. Susie's headset, simulating the sounds as if the stockholders really were encircling her, informed her that it must have been one of the rectangles behind her speaking. "Even so, it's obvious that this company no longer has its former influence."

Susie tried to argue, but H-EC 01 gave her no time. "Under your predecessor's presidency, you were the example of the model employee for the corporation."

Amoral, cold, complacent? inwardly analyzed Susie. "However, you seem to have deviated from the pre-established models. Our business plan, however, was infallible and highly effective."

"The world is evolving, and customs are changing. We have to modify the way we do things if we want to keep an edge on the competition," Susie explained, stopping herself from raising her voice.

The mechanic was not in the presence of simple trainees whose demands she could brush aside with a wave of her hand, but of sharks as cunning as herself.

"We can't just enslave entire star systems anymore, it's far too resource-intensive," in addition to being immoral, but she doubted they gave a damn. "By helping primitive planets, we can raise their standards of living, and build up a new customer base that will really need our products-"

"That's hippie logic! I didn't pay for it!" yelled one of the black venta blocks curtly. "Since you've been head of this company, you've let yourself be guided by its frivolous and pointless ideas. Why spend billions finding renewable energies when so many resource-rich worlds exist?"

Nothing less was to be expected of them, and Susie knew it. Since becoming president, she had realized just how long-term the firm, and its creditors, were. Like a black hole, they were only thinking of satisfying their insatiable hunger now, without worrying about what would be left afterwards.

How she'd never seen beyond her own job and vengeance for so many years was beyond her.

"We're not in the charity business, Miss Haltmann," the twelfth member of the executive committee spoke again. "Our sales are at an all-time low." Perhaps you should erase a few zeros from your cheques, Susie restrained herself.

"We're all the more dismayed by your various risky projects, always in worlds so far from those that really matter. It would be best if you came back to us and to discuss your place in the corporation, face to face."

Their mistake was to mistake Susie's calm for docility, but she didn't betray her irritation.

She was no longer a child or a poor assistant who could be bossed around so easily.

With her hands still relaxed on top of each other, her face as erect as ever, Susie didn't let up. "I'm afraid you're the one who misunderstands who is vital to our interests."

"Is that a threat?"

The floating monoliths seemed to draw closer, trapping her between twelve wide, marble-smooth walls.

"Only a statement of fact," the woman replied coldly, without losing her composure. "I'm still in charge, and I remain the reason you see the money pouring in."

She hoped that no matter where they were, they could feel the look of defiance she cast at the interfaces piercing the vague thing they had left of soul. "Don't forget that what I'm doing here could launch Haltmann Works Company into a new era."

For a few seconds none of them spoke, and Susanna hoped she'd finally shut them up.

"We hope for your sake that whatever you're doing in this backwater place will bear fruit," unlike Susie, the voice didn't hide its displeasure with the conversation as well.

"Otherwise, I fear restructuring will be necessary to compensate for your failures. Remember, we founded this entrepreneurial marvel together. It would be unfortunate, given your talents, if you ended up behind a desk handling the accounts to make way for people who know so much about dealing with savages."

This conversation really needed to end as soon as possible, or Susie might say something she'd regret in the future.

Fortunately, a small light flashed on her visor, indicating the words she'd been waiting to read for two weeks:

SPACE-TIME FLUCTUATION DETECTED.

"I think this meeting is coming to an end, my collaborator is manifesting himself again. Better not to fall behind schedule. After all, time is money."

As Susie pressed one of the buttons on the sleeve of her glove, she had just enough time to hear, to her delight, gasps of indignation and a "Can we really trust this Magolor-" before her visor and helmet antennae retracted, the holographic monoliths disappearing with them.

And just like that, there was nothing to obstruct her view.

Susie Haltmann breathed out her frustration once more, letting the sea air fill her lungs. She regretted never having stopped for two seconds in the past to just feel the world around her. Once, she'd found calm outside the deafening work, now she was begging for it.

Massaging her forehead, the scientist regained her senses when, in the distance, the sky seemed to open up into itself, and a small dot emerged. The thing may have been moving miles from her position, but there was no doubt what it was.

Susie finally resolved to retrace her steps, to find Clawroline and welcome her friends. The short respite was already over, and the work began again.

As she left the white sand, trying to forget the humiliating reprimands to which she had been subjected earlier, she had to confront a truth that this little experience had just made her realize.

As much as Susie hated to admit it, maybe Zan Partizanne was right. Maybe a trip to the beach wasn't such a waste of time after all.

[amastelaire]

Eon, who you probably know as Samuel Constantine, was just an average guy, living in a small apartment with his sister, going to work everyday in a bland corporate job, indifferent to the dullness of his life, until he found the mask.

As far as we know, the mask itself doesn't possess any signs of being special nor sentient, but it's far from your average ceramic mask, it's anomalous

From what we manage to get from our "interviews" if you could call them that, Eon feels something move through his skin, like a surge of power rushing down his veins, whenever he put t mask on.

He told us he could fly and manipulate ribbons made of pure light, coming out of how very being whenever he had the mask on, but we both know this is only partially true.

He thinks he's a super hero, that's why he calls himself Eon and not something dumb like "The Smiler", why do maniacs keep thinking those names sounds cool?

Anyway, our main theory is that whenever he adorn the mask, his perception would shift. from the discrepancy we have, it could have started by only making the colors slightly more vibrant, the sun brighter, But those ribbons he think he control, we can see them for what they truly are, disgusting black tar-like tendrils sprouting from his skin, sometimes even growing teeths, bones and even eyes, almost like some sort of cancerous cells.

This perception shift would explain why he thinks of himself as a hero, seeing the heroes trying to stop him as vicious villains, Super-criminals as potential allies, his worst enemies as Eon are the very heroes who inspired him as Samuel.

Eon is a villain without realising it.

But we know he realised.

He told use a story on how, on one fateful night, one of the darkest his city had seen decades, Eon did something Samuel could never forgive.

After hours of pursuing another of his "villains", Eon heard screams coming from his apartment not far away, rushing through the skyline to get back as soon as he could, he noticed a black figure of pure shadow standing over his sister's bed, and without a thought lept toward it, crashing through the window and tackling it to the floor. 

The figure fought back, begging to be spared, its sharp claw trying to grab Eon's face, but he was stronger, holding it to the ground with his ribbons, strangling the monster with both his hands.

But before finally dying the thing managed to hit Eon's face, and as it's last breath escaped, Eon's mask fell to the ground.

While Eon thought he killed a monster, Samuel killed his sister, the only one he had left, the only person that cared about him, the only thing keeping him going.

With his vision blurred from his tears, disoriented by his own screams, he search for his mask, to defeat who tricked him, to avenge his sister, and when he finally did, everything was bright again, the room filled with a warm orange light, the body of his sister was but a flower bed laying in the room, the depressing hums of a dying city replaced by the hopeful chirps of birds...

Eon never gave his mask up since, and it's been so long the thing practically fused with him now, as he said the first time we encountered afterward, "To keep living a lie is easier when nothing is left in the truth. Denial is so much better since i can be the hero here."

But even that Eon is far gone now, after years of lying to himself, he started to believe them, a feeling we all know but to well.

-Dawn, report on TLC-AB-084 to Râ

[encom1]

/* Here's one for older Lora, if that's okay? Thinking this is post Legacy... --@not-that-dillinger */

Encom Tower at night, Ed thought, was oddly peaceful. Perhaps it was the nostalgia of pulling an all-nighter, or the below, or the lack of people, something else, but he usually found it calming.

Usually.

The past two weeks had been nothing but a whirlwind of meetings that left Ed mentally exhausted and anxious, beginning with the disastrous release of the OS-12 and Sam Flynn taking back the company the next day, and culminating in the catastrophe that was today's board meeting and that had devolved into a shouting match between him and Flynn.

Neither of them was innocent in the incident, but Ed would probably take the blame for it. Ed could practically hear the thin ice he'd been treading cracking beneath him...

Ed had to admit, there were plenty of good things changing with Sam taking over, in the form of a whole slew of new and innovative and exciting projects that Mackey would never have let fly (Mackey was gone, and in any other case, that would have been a relief, except that Ed could just feel that it would only be a matter of time before Sam said the word, and the metaphorical ice beneath Ed's feet gave way to the frigid watery death below), and bringing back the digitization laser project.

He wasn't sure how to feel about the laser project restarting. His father had become all but obsessed with it after he returned from prison, but he had to admit, he was curious about it, and the implications of what it could do were earth-shattering.

Tonight, Ed could find no peace in the darkened tower. He couldn't go home; he was afraid of what he'd do to himself if he did, but none of the usual tricks worked. He tried losing himself to the code of one of his other projects, typing until his hands were numb his head ached from staring at his computer monitor for too long, but even that wasn't enough.

Which was why he found himself in the break room at an hour far after everyone else had gone home, fixing his fourth cup of tea in just as many hours.

He hadn't bothered turning on the lights as he made the trek from his office; the route had practically become muscle memory, and the dark helped with the headache.

He'd been staring out the window at the city lights lost in thought, the faint smell of camomile and lavender wafting from the warm mug in his hand, and feeling the closest he'd been to relaxed all day, when the lights flickered on.

Ed squeezed his eyes shut, jaw clenched to hold back a pained hiss. He tensed at the dim reflection of Dr. Baines in the darkened window when he opened his eyes.

There was a beat of silence that seemed to stretch into eternity, Ed feeling awkward and more than a little like a child that had been caught stealing from the cookie jar at midnight.

"You're still here?" he finally asked in surprise.

“I could ask you the same question,” her smile was thin and tired. She inched past the young man back towards the counter, jimmying the lid off her tumbler. It was a nice cool blue with the companies branding across its face. She always saw it as a bit cheesy but the consumer base ate it up.

She pours the remainder of the days coffee into her cup. Either uncaring or unnoticing that it had gone cold hours ago. Lora looks over her shoulder at him carefully. He was — devistatingly tired looking. Aged simply by being awake. Her eyes shift to her watch, then the man, then back again.

“Weird couplea’ days huh?” Her smile took on a warmer , understanding look. She had her share of far too late nights and frantic workweeks. She also knew how startling a shift in the corporate structure could be. Lora had seen the meteoric rise of his father… and his fall… then the rise and fall of Flynn himself.

They always had to go out in a blaze of glory. Media trials or underground movements— largest scandals of their times. Hell! Flynn managed to overshadow Dillinger in the same decade twice! God… that man.

[squirrels-are-sleeping]

COUNTER/Weight 28: A Special Kind of Warmth, Liveblog

Faction game! I love to dread the faction game.

AUSTIN: [Ibex] puts a hand on the old hero’s head. … The press of a button, the flip of a switch, and then a cord pulled from its socket. And there on the bed, Jace Rethal struggles, desperate to feel cool air.

Excuse me, WTF did he do? I'm sure it'll become clear in due time, but for the moment I can't work out if he woke Jace up, or killed him. (ETA: Jace is awake, fine, phew.)

AUSTIN: Minerva does this amazing corporate blast about how important the privacy and security of its consumer citizens are. … [T]hey make it really fashionable to wear a different face that fucks up the alogrithmic read of what all of Petrichor’s face-scan technology is. ... You walk [into a shop], and they’re just like, "Oh, Mr." and then bzzzzt. Just noise. Nothing. It doesn’t know how to read you anymore.

I put to you that fucking up Rigour's ability to match data traces to personal profiles wouldn't be a massive blow.

Scientific management (the gross IRL practice that Rigour is based on, as we've figured out last time) treats people as interchangeable. Not being able to differentiate between them is a feature not a bug. A corporation like Minerva wants to know down to a granular level what somebody likes, so that it can sell to them more effectively. Whereas when you're aspiring to treat people like widgets in the grand machinery of your domain, maybe you want to smooth out the differences between them anyway.

Also, 'consumer citizens' is so spectacularly gross. And sailing straight past this detail adds another layer of existential horror, implying that it's just a normalised, stable part of political discourse, why would anyone even notice it? Nothing to notice here. Fuck Minerva very much.

AUSTIN: [T]he Rapid Evening is not Ibex. The Rapid Evening is not Sokrates. They are not coming to save people. They’re coming to destroy Minerva.

I'm just going to take this casually drawn parallel between Ibex and Sokrates on the basis of their noble intentions, and I'm going to slowly chew on it.

AUSTIN: The Golden Demarchy. So they also want Planetary Seizure here. They want to take over Gemm. Do they have anything on Gemm yet?  SYLVIA: They have a base of influence on Gemm. … And they have a demagogue. AUSTIN: A demagogue on Gemm. Ooo fancy. … What if it was someone who used to be a soldier in the Seventh Sun back when Sokrates was part of the Kingdom fleet?..

This moment, when they decide that the demagogue on Gemm is going to be the ex-soldier, Ariadne, whom Sokrates saved in the Kingdom game, is the faction game at its most thrilling, imo. When they come up with this, it just neatly rearranges canon such that it's impossible to imagine the story any other way. It utterly logical and graceful - but not plotted as much as serendipitously arrived at. I love it so much.

In other news, I'm wondering how Sokrates's PR situation across the Sector is, in places where they don't have a demagogue. Especially in places that are still licking their wounds after the war. Sure, the Demarchy is technically a different state from the old Empire, but that big war, where the rest of the Sector had to beat back Sokrates's parent with sticks, is very recent memory. It seems like, if the Demarchy starts making expansionist moves, everyone would get a little worried.

Mind you, everyone is about to have a big Rigour problem, it'll be a moot point probably.

DRE: Well, Rigour is currently on Ionias… AUSTIN: … You can move it to anywhere within 2 spots of JoyPark. DRE: Oh fuck! AUSTIN: It could be on September if you wanted.  SYLVIA: This just got scary. DRE: Okay. So I'm kind of torn between do I put it on September, because that's where the ground game is going? AUSTIN: Shit! Maybe we can put it on— OHHH NOOO! SYLVIA: OH SHIT! AUSTIN: Oh shit! SYLVIA: Oh shit! SYLVIA: Oh shit!

OH SHIT! Ohhhh no, they've got to do it, right, they've got to put Rigour on September?

AUSTIN: How about— here's the shot … And it's Natalya pulling up the September Institute's HQ on Rigour's scanners. … And it's just that shadow moving slowly toward September in the distance. This is going to be the worst. I'm very excited.

F U C K!!

What did I just say about the faction game rearranging canon in such a way that it's impossible to imagine the story any other way? Of course Rigour is going to September! Of course Rigour was always going to have been going to September?

I am losing! My mind! adksjedfhlaksfh

DRE: It's going to be great when Natalya and Orth get to meet again. SYLVIA: Oh fuck! AUSTIN: It's going to happen. [small moan] Oh, Orth. SYLVIA: I'm not looking forward to that. DRE: Poor Orth! AUSTIN: Oh, precious baby Orth. Fuck. Man. DRE: God, no matter what we do, we just shit on Orth.

Somebody check on Orth!

(Meanwhile, Orth is giving Mako fatherly instructions on how to clean glass surfaces without leaving streaks.)

Okay, deep breath, let's stop freaking out and listen to the rest of this game.

AUSTIN: God, I'm just thinking of the time we were like, "Oh, I guess this faction has a seductress. What's that look like? Uh, what if it's a cool dude named Ibex? Let's talk about that guy. What's that guy? Oh, that guy sounds cool. What's he like?" SYLVIA: Yeah. And now— AUSTIN: And now we have lots of ideas about what he's like. God.

You know what, Ibex is a prime examble of critical worldbuilding in action. They take the stupid, unnecessarily gendered term seductress inherited from the published game, question it, subvert it, and produce, well… THIS GUY.

AUSTIN: In the park at the core of Centralia, a new cadence had taken hold. People laughed. And when the laugh bounced from building to building, it didn't twist. It amplified in joy. As vehicles moved by blasting music through the park and the streets, the songs took the architecture into themselves so that each note was performed at a new venue, an intimate stage.

!! This is just fucking beautiful writing, that's all.

AUSTIN: I remember that it was warm that day, a special sort of warm. I remember, because when Ibex pulled away that fake sky … I shivered. And then he saw me, Jace did. And the warmth came back. And people cheered, but I barely remember that. I barely remember the speeches, or the music, or the food, or the dancing, or that night. But I remember the warmth, and even now I hold onto it. One vice, one gift I let myself have. The warmth.

First of all, I can't with how beautiful Austin's narration is.

Also. Is this?.. Am I reading into it? Because the way Austin says "…or that night" sounds like it's a stand in for a passionate reunion?

Anyway, I'm dying over here, RIGOUR IS GOING TO SEPTEMBER, and Ibex is just fully in charge on Counterweight, and Jace is awake, and I just…

[butternuggets-blog]

Paw Patrol

Fluff/Humour, SAS Rogue Heroes Werewolf AU

Gender Neutral Reader

Outside, Cairo sweltered through the start of a blisteringly hot morning, but inside the hotel it was deceptively cool. ____ yawned and stretched; after a difficult month of sand, sweat and blood, it was nice to be able to relax and take things slow.

____ looked up as Corporal Heaney came sprinting through the hotel lobby into the dining room, weaving around guests and tables until he came to a stop in front of ____.

'What happened? What's wrong?'

'Noth-nothing's wrong, I just-' Heaney paused for air, 'Could you look after the little guy for us? Just for a short time?'

'What-oooohh!'

Tucked into the crook of Heaney's arm was a fluffy, bright-eyed white puppy. Its long ears perked up at ____'s coo, and it started wagging its tail excitedly.

'His name is David' Heaney handed him over and the puppy immediately launched himself at ____, licking them all over their face.

'I've got to go'

'Heaney, wait, does he have allergies-'

Heaney was already making his way back out the door.

'Who does he belong to?!'

'SAS!' he yelled over his shoulder, and disappeared out of sight.

____ sighed and stared at the puppy. 'What am I going to do with you, huh? What-am-I-gonna-do-with-you?!'

The puppy cocked it's head, and licked ____'s face all over, again.

________________________________________________________________

After breakfast ("No, you cannot eat my food! Noo! ...okay, just the scraps"), ____ waited patiently as the clock ticked on.

After an hour, ____ took their new companion on a trip to the alley outside to go toilet. The hotel clerk had conjured up a leash from somewhere and after distracting David with a belly rub, ____ managed to attach it without much fuss.

____ glanced at their watch, and sighed, as David cocked his leg against the alley wall. 'It's almost been two hours now. I don't think they're coming back for you, are they?'

David yipped quietly, finished peeing, and waddled back to ____.

____ scratched David's chin; the puppy whined and leaned into it, closing his eyes and letting his tongue loll out the side of his mouth.

'I wanted to go sight seeing today... would you like to come sight seeing with me, huh? Huh? Would-ya?'

David yipped again, loudly, and took off towards the street. Before he had gone a handful of steps his paws got tangled up in each other and he face-planted into the dirt.

'Oh no! Oh, baby, are you ok?!' ____ rushed over but David was already staggering to his feet, shaking his head and sneezing the sand and dust out of his nose.

'Oh, poor baby!' ____ laughed and scooped David into their arms, giving him a cuddle and a kiss on the forehead. The puppy's fur really was soft; wispy and thick, with a strong musky scent.

'There you go' ____ set David back down and gave a gentle tug on the leash. 'Off we go!'

________________________________________________________________

David was irregularly unsteady on his feet, so after much slowing down and speeding up it became easier for ____ to simply carry him.

____ stopped a few times to chat with friends, as David bounced around their feet, being adorable. Once or twice ____ had to pull him back before he followed an intriguing scent out into traffic, but on the whole he was very well-behaved.

They wandered around the markets; ____ bought a camera and a roll of film, and a red fez a street vendor had ordered for their pet monkey and had never come back to collect. They drifted through a museum, and an art gallery, and went outside the city limits to squat between the paws of the Great Sphinx, gazing up at the sunset as they ate sandwiches together for dinner.

On their way back to the hotel they passed a group of soldiers who insisted on taking photographs of David posing in front of their jeep. After being swamped beneath a collection of oversized berets, helmets and caps, a thoroughly tired David gave everyone one last lick goodbye before dozing off in ____'s arms.

Muffled shouting rent the evening air as they turned onto the main thoroughfare. Peering across the street into the hotel lobby, ____ could see the rest of their squad - Freeman, Yates, Cunningham, Willoughby, Richards, Kent and Heaney - lined up in front of the reception desk while Captain Anderson loomed over them, screaming himself hoarse.

'-UTTERLY IRRESPONSIBLE!! WHEN SOMEBODY CHARGES YOU WITH LOOKING AFTER THEIR MASCOT, YOU DO NOT PASS THE RESPONSIBILITY ALONG BECAUSE IT IS INCONVENIENT TO YOU!! I OUGHT TO LET MAYNE SORT YOU OUT!!'

Anderson hooked a thumb towards a feral-looking blonde man being held back by four other soldiers. ____ shook their head and walked in.

'WHERE THE BLOODY HELL IS THE DOG??!!'

Author's Notes

'Here sir' ____ gently soothed David back to sleep as the puppy stirred from the noise. The soldiers released Mayne, who immediately strode over, arms out.

'We went out sight-seeing; I did leave a note' ____ rocked David into Mayne's arms and unclipped the leash from David's collar.

'He's been very well-behaved all day. He's had plenty of water and lots of food, oh, and this is his-' ____ pushed the tiny fez into Mayne's breast pocket.

'Thanks for taking care of him' Mayne rumbled, calmer now he was cradling the squad mascot.

____ smiled, and gave a sharp salute.

'Any time.'

Thank you Lt_Aldo_Raine for the names 😄

[thebloodykarte]

and the work day stretches into the night

you just get to sit there and watch the c.l.o. do paperwork. that's it. that's the fic. written in honor of the release date of corporate clash's 1.1 update's anniversary. thank you for bringing me the woman ever AO3 MIRROR HERE

You observed the C.L.O.’s hand, carefully crafted, drop a pen onto a wooden desk with a soft clang to the metal barrel of the writing device. Her hand took a brief pause before it switched a side’s desk lamp, from dim to a brighter setting that startled your eyes that had already adjusted to the previous on setting dusk. The pen was retrieved, and there was a mild shift of her shoulder that you rested on as the C.L.O. continued the barrage of tonight’s authorization signatures and god knows what else was in there. She was a swift one with paperwork, but it seemed that having somebody watching did give her a reason to take more detail into this work.

Many a suit would kill to be in your place now, but for different reasons. To climb the corporate ladder would be one thing, but you had managed to take an alternative route to be allowed the metaphorical throne of an “emergency reassembly of individual position” to become her assistant. To go over the history now would be pointless, but you two were...close enough. There was no talk of lovers, but rumors were already blooming from the more gossipy of the company of just how you had came to be.

And now, the literal throne – the silent observation as she does those nightly tasks, ones the C.L.O. had become so used to that any sort of annoyance at how mundane the busywork had become had numbed itself. You wouldn’t be paid any sort of overtime for being here hours beyond your usual time to clock out, but that meant nothing. It was enough to just stay by her side, the same side that emits the substantial noise of a cooling fan whirring around the shoulder blades’ joints and beneath her suit, overpowering once so close, but nobody had shattered her veil of professionalism enough to hear it before.

Her chassis was both modern for a suit and the sheer opposite. Some parts updated, some not, not to mention that her entire lower half went against the humanoid structure a suit usually would have. It was best described as tank movement, treads and all.

But something about that had always picked at your processors, fascinations that were maybe shared in a different way.

And now, the admiration you had for this supercomputer of your boss was unable to be avoided. Between that and the exhaustion coming over you (had you forgotten to recharge last night?), you instinctively leaned onto her neck. The metal was cold, your own shoulder meeting the seam where plating met, narrowly above a bolt holding it together, the humanoid structure hiding a jungle of vines, mechanicals, the very soul of the C.L.O. and perhaps every other suit, but for now, hers. And that seemed to have gotten some part of her attention, as the hand that was not busy with trying to re-ink a stamp with the department’s emblem retreated from holding a paper steady. It passed and drifted across the bow that decorated her shirt collar, and nudged the other side of your body closer to her neck.

You were now surrounded by the cold metal that made up what you one day could only dream of calling a lover, behind the wooden doors of the headquarters, because suits weren’t built for such things as romance. It had become more popular now to be open about such things, but mostly within those whose careers wouldn’t be on the line for it.

But for now, those doors were shut, and it was only the two of you perhaps in this entire building, however vast it was, so there was that freedom to do this sort of thing. And maybe it was unlucky to be positioned right below her ears, decorated with yet another circular bolt colored a deep purple that almost was an earring in its own way – she could definitely hear your own fans going haywire with how overheated you felt from the situation, as much as you could feel it within your chest.

You looked up for a second to see if there’s some sort of expression on her face. Her face – the sharp nose, the bright rounded glasses that framed a long shape sculpted to perfection of a suit, the way her hair was kept short and to a side – there was never a denial to those below her that age had not rendered her any less beautiful to those who apply to care about such things. And to believe she was not married after all those years, focused so narrowly on a career, not wanting it any other way.

The C.L.O. had a small smile on her face as she kept her hand close to you.

And she almost never smiled!

She wasn’t known for being warm like the Senior V.P., or being drowned in the apathy that the stalemate against the Toons had brought the other two department heads. She still had that fury against them, that burning passion to show herself as being capable against them, no matter how many times she had been sent down a trap-door by those pests. She was rendered cold by it all, and yet, she smiled just by having someone touch her, be by her side. That was enough to break the ice when nobody was there to see it melt.

And the next morning, both of you would have to pretend this moment was not shared, but for now, it was basked in. Her hand twirled around, before a finger slipped under your own arm. And then, the pen was set down again, before she broke the silence.

“Is there a reason why you haven’t said anything?” she questioned. Your entire body somehow grew colder than the metal to metal contact already was, surrounding the warmed core.

“If you want me to,” was your only response. Stepping out of line when you’re this close to underneath her command always seemed so daunting.

“Please do. This position is isolating, to put it at that. It’d be more than welcome to hear somebody else control a conversation.”

And all you could get out of your now-even-more-flustered state was a nod, which she could probably at least kinda feel through her hands, your entire body going even stiffer than being, well, metal, already rendered it. She wanted to know more about you. How daunting, how terrifying to have to open yourself up to her. It would feel like a vivisection of yourself, the piercing of a butterfly for her to see, but beyond all the fear involved in trying to develop more of a personal relationship outside of a work one – a sinking feeling knowing it could just be worth it.

Her hand lowered down, and you re-adjusted as to not fall from the front. There was a sudden noise of the treads of her lower half pulling away from the desk – something, just something so admirable about the more abstracted machinery she was made up of. The noise accompanied that of the cooling fans and the general whirring of her insides, and as she went to the other side of the room leading to what separated her quarters from the rest of the HQ, she spoke once more, going from the unusually personal tone of voice from before to that usual commandance.

And now, the C.L.O. ordered, “Tomorrow. Same time as today was. Make sure to open up a little, however. It will be good background noise, if not more."

With the advancements of suits more software part of the brain, that would be jotted into your mental calendar. Around an hour after everyone else would be gone, in other words.

She once again reached up to your smaller chassis, opting to just pick you up entirely, reaching downwards to place you at the edge of the stand her body connected to the tank half, and used the back of her fingers to gently nudge you off. You landed onto the tiles with a bit of a bounce in your lower legs, and with a silent wave from the same hand that had led you down, you were on your own ways once again, but not for long.

[strongfuck]

💋 (from katagawa)

from this meme.

Rhys was naive to think that rising to the top of the corporate ladder would free him from ever having to attend a New Year's party again. Apparently there's an interplanetary shindig for the Borderlands' biggest corporations and their upper echelons of executive staff-- something about encouraging cooperation and competition, Rhys doesn't really know; he'd zoned out in the middle of Susan Coldwell's introductory speech and had promptly decided he didn't care enough to really think about it.

The same sense of listlessness that used to accompany him at Hyperion's holiday parties fills him as he mingles with people. His reputation precedes him, it seems; in his first year since relocating to Promethea, Atlas' stocks had risen to incredible heights, and he'd begun environmental research that's restored 15% of the planet's habitable spaces so far. People see him and they recognise him-- the bright blue ECHO-Eye and the tattoo on his neck are hard to miss-- and every time, Rhys ends up trapped in conversations that're nothing but indirect dick measuring contests and some supposedly "healthy threatening".

The attention suffocates him, and it gets worse the nearer it gets to midnight. Everyone starts moving about, pairing off in order to have partners for the fabled "New Year's Kiss", and Rhys turns down ten people in two minutes and decides he probably has to escape for the better.

So he slips away as a crowd gathers near the stage in the function area, ready to count down the few minutes to midnight with the giant Tediore-brand clock on the wall. And while Rhys had intended to be alone when he walked outside of the building and into the cold air, he sees someone had already beaten him there.

His eye glows as he attempts to place them, and just as the name of the figure lights up his ECHO-Eye's interface, the man turns around with a raised brow.

"Atlas," he says plainly.

"Maliwan," Rhys greets in turn. And then, because calling a person by their company name is ridiculous, he says, "Katagawa, right? I'm Rhys. Strongfork, I guess, if you want a last name."

"Rhys is passable."

"Cool." He smiles some, stiff and definitely awkward. "Do you have a first--"

"You don't need to know my first name."

"Yeah." Rhys coughs. "No, definitely."

Standing in the cold with his hands in his pockets, Rhys wants to sink into the snow. Katagawa is staring at him with a look that feels almost medical in its intensity, and Rhys isn't sure whether this is better or worse than talking to everyone inside.

So he tries to talk again: "What're you doing out here, anyway?"

"That's none of your business."

"Right. Well, I'm here 'cause I couldn't stand being in there." Rhys' thumb jabs over his shoulder in the direction of the party. "You know, talking to all those people... I didn't even know there were parties like this in the first place until Coldwell invited me."

Katagawa scoffs. "Of course there are parties like this. How else are we going to distinguish ourselves from the ordinary people?"

"Ah." Rhys isn't sure what he expected from the son of two Maliwan executives, but this feels about right. "Yeah. Definitely."

"I'm sure you wouldn't know, being ordinary yourself until recently" -- Rhys' brows furrow slightly at the sight of Katagawa coming closer, close enough to put a hand on his shoulder -- "but being this high up the food chain? It's the best place to be."

"Uhuh." A beat. "You're lucky your parents were such a big deal, then."

"I am more than--" Katagawa shuts his mouth, grits his teeth, and looks away. "My status comes from more than them."

"But it's 'cause your mum's head of Mergers and Acquisitions that you're here, right?"

"Shut up!" Katagawa declares, shoving two hands into his chest. Rhys steps back a measure because of it, but keeps his feet flat on the ground in the end.

He shrugs as he adds, "It's not that bad, you know. You can always move up. I was middle management at Hyperion until I just... took Atlas."

"Are you an idiot? That isn't how it works. I'm..." Rhys takes note of the way Katagawa's fists clench, and in the back of his mind he's glad everyone was stripped of their weapons before coming here. "I'm not next in line for mother's title."

"Well, what number are you at?"

Katagawa's quiet. Annoyed. And then he spits out, "Twelfth."

Rhys can't help the wince. Katagawa glares at him, though, so Rhys lifts both his hands up in surrender.

"That's not so bad," he says.

"How?" Katagawa rolls his eyes. "How in the world is being the twelfth in line not so bad?"

"You just... have to be better than the first people in line. Right? RIse above the competition. Beat them at their own game."

"You make it sound easy."

"It isn't," Rhys admits, "but it's not impossible, either. I think you can do it."

"You're just saying that."

"No, no, no-- I mean it!" He doesn't really, but the way Katagawa's expression has softened some tells him he's on the right track. "I genuinely think you can do it. You just gotta be patient and try. Stop relying on your parents' names, do something amazing for yourself, and... freakin' impress them, you know?"

Katagawa's staring at him again, but this time Rhys doesn't feel nearly as awful about it. Gone is the laser that would've sliced him from head to toe, replaced now by this look of enlightenment that makes Rhys feel pretty good about himself.

"I should be CEO," Katagawa says.

"You should be CEO," Rhys agrees. "I think you'd be great."

Katagawa's head lifts with new confidence. Truthfully, Rhys feels pretty good about being such an inspiring force in him. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Rhys agrees. "When you rise up, you'll have to let me know. I'd love to work together with you."

Inside, a chorus of voices count down to the new year. Ten, nine, eight...

Katagawa's hand reaches out between them, a smirk on his face. "You promise?"

And Rhys, relieved that they hadn't devolved into a fight, takes the man's hand in his cybernetic one for a shake. "Definitely."

Five, four, three...

Maybe it's the feel good atmosphere. Maybe it's because the conversation turned out better than he expected. Maybe it's just Rhys falling to peer pressure, as New Year's countdowns tend to inspire, if only because he found a person he wouldn't mind giving a kiss to.

He tugs Katagawa forward and presses a chaste kiss to his mouth just as the countdown hits "zero". Fireworks go off, the coloured lights shine around them, and a few moments later, Rhys pulls away and says, "That was for good luck."

Then he lets Katagawa's hand go.

There's something about the look that Katagawa gives him after that-- something Rhys doesn't think about until later, when the party ends for good and he's hooking up to the fast travel network to return to Promethea. Before he leaves, he sees Katagawa staring at him even in the company of his parents (and all his siblings, holy shit, that's an insane number of kids). So he smiles and offers a wave, and Katagawa smiles back in a way that makes him think, hey, I've made my first cross-corporation friend.

"I'll see you around!" Rhys calls, unsure if Katagawa even hears him. Considering the other man mouths something in turn-- something Rhys himself doesn't hear-- he doubts that he does.

It's only when he's rematerialised at Atlas HQ that he takes a moment to process that most recent memory, replaying the footage saved in his cranial drive. Because, as he goes through the recording his ECHO-Eye made, he's pretty sure Katagawa had said I'm going to make you mine.

[anarchistdoll]

Getting An Upgrade Pt. 2

Note: This is something I wrote a whiiiiiiiiile ago so its okay-ish, had to split it into two parts cause tumblr is a cuck. Anything you wanna say or suggest about it is welcome. “U-um, how did you know that? I haven't told anyone.”, you manage to stutter after you look at this woman for what feels to be far too long. “Oh the people here tell me everything! Especially when some rando hoity toity business man comes looking for me!” Her systems begin to change color and glow a dark blue. You realize that behind the mask is a voice modulator that she’s speaking through. “Well, I'm very sorry if I ended up causing any trouble.” You say, now flustered. “Oh not at all hun!”, she responds,” Come on, lets go get you nice and comfy in my workshop” She takes you through several alleyways and tight spaces between the housing. You’re disgusted with the amount of grime that you’ve gotten covered in but for some reason the filth just sloughed right off her. You begin to ponder what tech could do that. Maybe the soft vibrations of the cybernetics help get it off of her? Maybe an electro-magnetic field that helps resist the grime? That type of tech is usually only seen in the upper class districts where they’d rather not be bothered with keeping themselves clean when they stuff their disgusting mouths with expensive food. Either way, her systems are now glowing a deep red, so she likely doesn't enjoy this trek anymore than you do. The robot lady leads you to a manhole cover that she places her hand on either side of it and pulls, steam vents out of her hands for a moment and the cover comes loose, that she then places to the side. “You go down first.” She points at you,”I have to seal this back up on our way down.” The first sense to hit you is the smell. Sewers don't smell very pleasant, especially in the slums. You hear the girl follow you down, followed by the noise of the manhole cover being placed back and more steam. You wait for her at the base of the ladder. She jumps down the last couple of steps with a way splash that you barely dodge. Her systems glow yellow and illuminate the dark sewer system. “Sorry about the smell, not much I can do about that, the hardest part is over now and my workshop is close by! So let's get going!” You nod and begin to follow her lead again. After pinching your nose and getting your boots wet for a good twenty minutes, you and the cyborg lady make it to a big steel door. “This part of the city is old, you can't walk through the sewers in the higher district levels, the pipes are too close together. Lucky for me, these sewer systems were built before the districts were even a concept” The lady continues as she pulls out a key and begins to unlock the door, ”this is also a time when governments thought that secret bunkers were cool, so when your daddy is a higher up of a corporate business, you get access to all sorts of fun resources!” She shoves the door open to reveal what appears to be an airlock,“Anyway, I set this system up so that the nasty shit of the sewer doesn't seep in when I'm trying to work, I'm afraid I'm going to ask you to strip!” You begin to stutter,”U-um excuse me but what?” “Come on,” she interrupts,”It's nothing I haven't seen before, and besides, you don't want to keep smelling like sewer do you?” You gulp, and nod at her. You turn around and begin to undress hoping that she isn't watching you although you feel like there's a set of eyes watching you. Not before long you turn around and begin to flush as she is also stark naked. As your eyes scan over her, you see that her lower parts aren't there, just a smooth section of metal. Upon a closer look. there appear to be creases within the metal in that area, likely a way to interchange genitals. Her breasts are mostly still human, her B cups coming to a soft point with bits of black metal scattered in between.

[slowd1ving]

PENDULUM ✦ . 　⁺ i.

QUESTION OF TIME (DEPECHE MODE)

"It's just a question of time, And it's running out for you." check out the pendulum masterlist for a more detailed synopsis! wc: 7.7k

JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE MASTERLIST

PENDULUM MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

NEXT PART ・゜

  A decision had started all this .

Terracotta-coloured sand clung to the black latex of your gloves when you periodically jabbed the ground with your trusty trowel. Beneath your fatigued movements, the desert gave way easily to reveal deeper, rougher grains that you deemed good enough for your supervisor. Had it been colder, you would’ve surely relished the serenity of working alone; alas, the scorching Arizona sun left no room for enjoyment.

Beside you, the ground was littered with a neat row of carefully numbered sample containers for this area. You sank into a crouch to fill them with the substrate of the desert – perhaps you heeded the call of your body and rocked back and forth to alleviate the dull ache of your legs, but who were you to not take a short break? 

Even in the late afternoon, the arid environment yielded no comfort for you: not a breeze, nor a rock formation to seek shadow in. And when the wind did blow, it had such a lukewarm pace that somehow managed to warm you up rather than cool you. It was ridiculous!

You allowed yourself a moment longer to swill down some water from the canteen tied to your belt; though, the room temperature liquid did nothing to soothe your parched mouth. After almost two hours, you were veritably soaked in sweat from the blaze of the sun. Sticky, groggy, and you had approximately Nobody and Nothing to complain to. 

A decision had already been made .

You practically salivated over the possibility of finally peeling off your dust-covered fatigues at home and taking a well-deserved shower. Here, the powdery orange sand of the desert clung to every inch of skin with no mercy – it was a wonder it hadn’t made its way beneath your visor and into your eyes. 

Longingly, you cast your gaze to the dusty truck sitting nearby; even if it fried you as you entered, it still came with the promise of heading back to the lab to turn in the samples. Sterile, and more importantly, climate-controlled . The uncomfortably warm plastic of the sample containers was a far cry from the clinical atmosphere of the lab. 

Why the fuck were you here? 

Dr Ferdinand could have chosen literally any other lab tech, yet she chose the intern to do the field work. Your lab didn’t even do fieldwork like this, and if it did, the samples were brought in by the individual clients themselves for testing. 

But this client was different. 

Valentine Corporations were different. 

. 　⁺ ✦

In the dingy office located a storey above the lab, they had come in wearing those harshly-cut pink suits and carrying sleek briefcases filled to the brim with folders. Even through the glass windows overlooking the corridors through the lab compound, you had to look away and divert your focus to your Petri dish on your steel workbench. 

As they passed by, you made eye contact with one of them. 

His lips had twisted into a sneer, and you felt the cold temperature of the lab get icier. 

“Aren’t they intimidating?” the other intern working beside you had whispered. Even with Diya speaking softly, even with the thick glass separating the lab from the corridor, even when his eyes rotated back to face the corridor, you felt that the man could still hear you. You gave a noncommittal exhale in return.

Behind you, the door into the lab swung open. Dr Ferdinand marched in with a harrowed expression contorting her face. Her eyes swung wildly around the room until they landed on you and Diya. Your gut sank into the tips of your toes.

“You two are the only ones available?” her tone was dismissive, but you’d worked with the supervisor long enough to recognise the tell-tale tremors of worry reverberating within the question. 

“Yeah,” you replied, already beginning to grab the sellotape for the dish. You were used to reading in between the lines to see the urgency behind her question. Surreptitiously, you eyed Diya’s equipment that she hadn’t had the opportunity to use yet. Her gaze followed yours, and thankfully, she got the memo to start shutting them off. 

“Can’t be helped,” Dr Ferdinand let out a long exhale. Her fingers were trembling as she smoothed down the blonde flyaways at the front of that severe bun. The unusual strain on her composure churned your own gut. Was it due to those strange people you spotted just minutes prior? “You two will have to be my witnesses.”

“Witnesses?” Diya’s widened eyes had mirrored your own internal surprise. She hadn’t yet seen any clients that Dr Ferdinand took on, but you had  – your surprise was from a different reason. You’d only ever heard your supervisor need a witness once before; whoever this client was had to be important .

“Who is it?” 

Your question was punctuated by the audible thunk of the Petri dish against the railings of the lab fridge. The silence after was so palpable you could almost taste the empty space on your tongue. 

“Valentine Corps,” she’d uttered. You were so glad the agar plate was already out of your hands; it was practically a guarantee that it would’ve ended up on the floor, and contaminating the lab with runaway bacteria was not on your bucket list for today. 

They weren’t just a big client; they were the leading conglomerate firm in America, if not the whole Western hemisphere.

You weren’t exactly sure what they dealt with, but their logo seemed to be ubiquitous on everything you came across: from the covert little “V” stamped on the back of grocery goods, to the surreptitious partnerships with worldwide agencies that only ever seemed to be discussed in rickety old forums and video channels that posted at ungodly, witching hours (only to be deleted without a trace come morning). 

If you remembered correctly, the foundation could be traced to almost a century prior, when some President established the company. Since then, the ownership had changed hands through the long line of Presidents – who, strangely enough, bore a remarkable resemblance to each other. 

You were shaken out of your thoughts when Dr Ferdinand imperiously gestured the universal come hither . After quickly exchanging looks with Diya, you followed your supervisor out of the lab and into the grey-tiled corridor. 

Her shoulders were visibly taut with barely-suppressed tension. Even beneath her impeccably ironed lab coat, you could make out the faint trembling of her arms. You really, really couldn’t blame her. No doubt that group of five pink-suited individuals were representatives of the company, and by extension, the President . 

The only thing piercing through the oppressive quiet was the blunt thump of shoes against the tiles. Even the quiet chime of the elevator couldn’t get rid of the heavy feeling of silence permeating the entire lab compound. You observed your supervisor; her teeth worried away at her thin lips, and her light brows were marred with a deep frown. Beside you, Diya’s fingers drummed away at the steel of the elevator railing. 

You looked down at your shoes: worn, practical boots, slightly scuffed at the sides, second-hand. The black leather creased at the toe box and shone with a tired gleam that always prompted you to make a mental note to polish them, then promptly forget to once at home. They were infinitely more comforting to look at than facing the reality of this situation.

“They’re at the office,” Dr Ferdinand’s quiet voice lacked its usual forcefulness. It prompted both you and Diya to straighten up while walking out of the elevator. Instead of clear glass and concrete half-showing the labs inside, this corridor was lined with frosted glass – significantly more natural than the bright, sterile lighting downstairs that one never really got used to.

The walk to the end of the corridor was much too short, but the notion of escape came far too late as your supervisor pushed the glass door separating you from those eerie men. 

“Apologies for the wait,” you could hear the terse little smile rolling off each vowel. She pointedly eyed you, then Diya, and you somewhat understood. Stay near that wall . When you looked back up from your new spot near the shiny leaf of a Monstera plant, your eyes once again met the gaze of the man you saw earlier. 

You looked away. 

The uncomfortable smell of dusty carpet made you wrinkle your nose slightly in distaste. Horizontal rays of light streaming through the half-shut office blinds caused every single dust mote in front of you to be illuminated, and you idly wondered when the office had last been this lively. 

When the man sitting in the front armchair had started speaking, your gaze was naturally drawn back to the group in front of you. Seven, no, eight men were crowded into seats before Dr Ferdinand – earlier, you could have sworn you only saw five (maybe it was all the blond hair distracting you). 

“As per our previous email, we would like to offer the Ferdinand Institute of Geochemistry the opportunity to work closely with our branch-” the chair creaked as he shifted to unclasp the silver buckle of his briefcase. He leaned forward to slide a cream-coloured folder over the mahogany desk. “-monitoring the chemical properties and makeup of the ground at these coordinates in the Arizona Desert.”

You felt Diya’s incredulity even without turning to face her. From your peripherals, you could see her staring at you, as if you could somehow provide a telepathic explanation for why the hell Valentine Corps was bothering with such a ludicrous request. For the first time since landing your internship here, you were at a loss for words. 

Granted, previous clients also sometimes had similar requests, yet such a specific commission from an organisation this large had alarm bells ringing in your head. 

“The President specifically requested this fine Institute to be tasked with this,” at those words, Dr Ferdinand’s eyes flicked up to yours for a millisecond. A warning. Don’t do anything . “All our previous partners have been woefully terminating their contracts with us. I think your name rang a bell for him. Famous palaeontologist and geologist?”

“I’m a descendant of his, yes,” Dr Ferdinand’s voice became a lot more confident as the man paused in his thinly-veiled threat. 

“Valentine Corporations is assured that your Institute will fit best for our research,” he didn’t pause to explain what research they were conducting or why . It went unspoken when he glossed over it and chose to remind you all of the weight of the company behind this request. 

Don’t ask questions we won’t give answers to . 

She leafed through the contract in silence. Once, twice, she asked a question concerning the clauses. Both times it was answered by someone to the left of the man in the front. A lawyer, perhaps. Before you could wither away from boredom, you spotted her long-time companion emerging from her left breast pocket: a grey fountain pen she carried everywhere. 

Then, finally, she signed the dotted line. It was done.

A decision had catalysed this disaster indeed . 

. 　⁺ ✦

A week later, and you were the lucky recruit booted out to collect the first batches of sand samples. It was stupid, so stupid , but you hadn’t complained. Even as an intern, you’d always done odd jobs for Dr Ferdinand. She paid well, and that was probably the best you could ask for. 

Between the cathartic thumps of sand filled containers against the equipment within your backpack, your phone rang from your cargo’s pocket at the knee. Awkwardly fumbling, you fished it out to see Diya’s name lit up on the screen.

“Hey,” you answered, trying to jostle your bag around with one hand to make sure each container fit snugly. “Everything alright?”

“I’ll still be in the lab if you want to just drop off the samples and head home,” her straight-forward offer had your shoulders sagging in relief. 

“Thanks,” you sighed out, wiping off the sweat accumulated on your forehead. The tinny laughter from the speaker caused your face to break out into a smile too. “I’ll be back in roughly half an hour. One location to go.”

“Awesome.”

Faintly, you could make out the clicking sounds of a keyboard being aggressively typed upon. While you were suddenly tasked with field work, Diya had gotten the short end of the stick with the paperwork and writing up procedures. Even shorter than your short end of the stick; the pile you last saw practically buried her in sheets. 

“I’ll get you coffee tomorrow first thing,” you promised. While you spoke, you kept your eyes on the next location: an area of sand a rough fifty metres away. 

“That’d be great,” she replied in approval. “See you.”

“Bye.”

Sighing, you pocketed the phone and picked up the heavy pack; it had just hit you once again how stupid this all was. Why were the Valentine Corps interested in the Arizona Desert, of all things? They were relying on some random intern to gather their precious dirt. A scowl forced its way onto your face as you unpacked three fresh containers for the next batch. Stupid sand . 

It was much too hot. Maybe you were an idiot for not turning around and just leaving , dirt be damned, but your drowsy feet had already trekked to the next spot. Just one more set . Just a few more minutes, and you could head back and go home . 

Home . 

Mindlessly, you let your body drop to the sand and methodically began smoothing it over with a hand. With the other, the trowel had already begun its set of nose-dives into the ground. 

The sun was a red ember in the sky, and the heavens were streaked with trails of bloody pink curling into the horizon. All was well; even the very sand had become more pliable beneath your fatigued hands. 

All was well.

When you next looked up, something had changed. Nothing you could really put your finger on, yet you swore you’d never seen those eerily shaped rock formations before. In your peripherals, they seemed to beckon to you like crooked fingers. 

All was not well. 

You blinked, and the topography of the area had shifted. Those jagged spires were inexplicably closer than before: four formations to your left, one to your right. They were riddled with shallow holes (almost like pumice), and curved inwards , like pincers. Were they closing in on you?

They were closing in on you.

Hurriedly, you started working faster at digging; if you finished quickly, then you’d be out of the sun and avoiding the incoming heatstroke. It was just the rays of light playing tricks on your fatigued and drowsy brain, surely. You’d go home, take a long shower, and forget this ever happened. You’d even ignore the signs pointing you straight to seek Medical Attention. 

Odd jobs and tasks aside, it was enjoyable (and dare you say, entertaining ) working under Dr Ferdinand. Even when she sent you on wild goose chases studying the different samples requested by clients, you were always compensated fairly for those extra efforts. Her serious demeanour couldn’t hide how much she cared for those who worked at her lab.  

Your spade suddenly hit resistance from the sand with a dull clink. Frowning, you reached in and felt your gloves brush against icy metal. Much too icy for this degree of heat. Something wasn’t right. 

“Are you there?” 

It was Dr Ferdinand’s voice. What was she doing? Deliriously, you stared at the phone you were holding in bewilderment. When had she called? When had you answered ? You eyed the device as if it held the answers to this Extremely Troubling Dilemma. 

“Yeah,” you mustered up, feeling the trowel slip from your grasp as you continued rummaging around in the sand to find the source of the coolness you felt. 

“As in, the desert?” she reiterated. Something was off-putting about her voice. The hurriedness of each syllable betrayed an agitation you’d never heard from her before. Even when she was stressed, there was always a conscious effort to keep her composure. 

“Yeah, why?” 

You squinted at your hand buried in the sand. It was much too hot, but your fingers wrapping around the cold unidentified object cooled you somewhat. Even your very tongue felt heavy in your head: parched and stone-like. 

“Listen, don’t panic,” you could almost picture her wide-eyed expression as she gripped onto that ancient phone cord with her life. You fought back the laughter bubbling within you and composed your expression into one of Utmost Seriousness. “I’m going to need you to get out of there as soon as you can.”

“Huh?” 

Had it always been this hard to talk? 

“Look, those coordinates they’re making us search? The Devil’s Palm appeared there multiple times in the last few decades,” she responded slowly, as if speaking to a spooked horse. “That’s why those previous contractors broke their partnerships. I doubt it’s anything mythical or anything, but that place has infamously unusual activity, and I don’t want to risk it appearing while you’re there.”

“Right,” you mumbled. You felt as if your body was about to melt into an oozing puddle. 

“Listen, I know you’re not the type to do something stupid in this situation,” she continued, and you could picture her briefly rolling her eyes at the very idea of Acting Foolishly. “Just get out now , I’ll pay you extra, and figure out what to do with Valentine Corps.”

“Right,” you repeated. Was it your imagination, or was someone whispering nearby?

“Call me when you’re out of the desert,” she urged. “Don’t worry about any remaining samples.”

“Bye.”

You let out a long exhale after hearing the tell-tale click of her hanging up. Really , you thought while pocketing your phone once again, how can you tell if you’re in the Devil’s Palm ? Maybe you lived under a rock; you only had the vaguest recollection of hearing the name mentioned by some geology professor, and you hadn’t stopped to really listen about it. 

Unless…

The numbing sensation cradling your left hand had suddenly swept up your arm; it effectively broke you out of your stupor. Instinctively, your muscles contracted and your arm shot out of the sand, but you hadn’t let go. Were you an idiot? Maybe. But there in your clutches was a very curious object indeed. 

There, nestled against the black plastic of your glove – or rather, its mangled remains – lay an intricately-made silver pocket watch. You ignored the concerning state of the glove and instead chose to peer more intently at the fine chain and mechanisms. The face was on display, showing both today’s date and time. 

Beneath your fingertips, the steady ticking of the watch-hands felt like a fluttering heartbeat. 

What the hell ? You turned it over and over in your hand. There was nothing betraying the pristine condition it was in: from the unmarked glass protecting the cogs within, to the delicate patterns etched on the cover. 

A sudden gust of wind had you looking up in alarm. Out in the distance, you couldn’t see your truck anymore. Everything outside the pit you stood in the centre of was obscured by a curtain of orange sand; yet, the visibility of those strange rock formations was unobstructed. 

The more you thought about it, the more they were starting to resemble the beginnings of a hand. 

Shit . 

Involuntarily, your grip around the watch tightened; you hissed as the metal dug into the flesh of your palm, but you had bigger problems to gripe about. 

The Devil’s Palm . 

“I’m such an idiot,” you muttered, clasping a strap of your backpack in shame. Really, you should’ve fled when you had the chance, but it seemed self-preservation flew out the window as soon as you began touching Mysterious Objects. Were you a fucking magpie , too distracted by something shiny to not escape a goddamn would-be horror movie?

You eyed the whirling sandstorm around you, then to where you were toeing the sand sheepishly. Should you just wait it out? Maybe you could set up camp and host a fucking housewarming party for the spectres while you were at it. 

Behind you, the whispering only seemed to get louder. 

“This is all your fault,” you seethed at the innocuous pocket watch. It did not reply. 

You shouldered your pack in misery. What could you do? With the thick wall of sand clouding all visibility, you doubted your fragile visor would survive the pelting stream. Besides, you had already forgotten the direction of your truck. Way to go . The very notion of contacting Dr Ferdinand was horrifying in itself; her disappointment, followed by her strained attempts at being emotionally supportive, was surely the stuff of nightmares.

Before you could even reach for your phone, something flashed by the corner of your eye. You froze. Against the tangerine backdrop, there seemed to be a pearly streak speeding around you. Swivelling around, your eyes tried to track whatever the hell that was, while your hands prepared to hurl the heavy backpack in its general direction. 

Abruptly, the whitish colour (that had only been a darting line a moment prior) skidded to a halt before you. With it, the faint whispering you’d been hearing had also ceased. 

What the hell ?

Floating before you, like some mirage sent to plague you, was an opalescent head . It vaguely reminded you of a mannequin, but mannequins didn’t have clocks instead of goddamn eyes (subconsciously, you grasped the pocket watch more tightly). You could feel it staring at you. Somehow, somehow , it was blinking owlishly, as if it could entice you to not yell by fluttering its non-existent eyelashes. 

“What the-” as soon as you started to build up momentum with your shout, it zig-zagged in your field of view agitatedly. Was it imploring you to shut up?

“What the fuck?” you rasped deliriously. Could it still hear you? The head paused in its movements, eyeing you cautiously. Its lips were pursed in abject dissatisfaction (though between the two of you, you probably had more right to be disappointed with the turn of events). “Who the hell are you?”

“This timeline messed up,” it murmured. Those porcelain lips opened just enough to give an impression of speech, like it had a speaker embedded deep in its proverbial gullet. “The president cannot be allowed to retake the corpse parts after the rejection.”

“What?” your scowl deepened. It wasn’t enough to be the victim of some hallucination, but now it decided to start by speaking its riddles three? “Are you going to let me out?”

You didn’t know how you could tell, but you sensed its gaze harden; quite frankly, it felt like you were about to wilt like some antiquated cabbage. The watch hands embedded inside those eyes (clocks?) adjusted to form what appeared to be irritated eyebrows. You swallowed thickly – it felt like the air around you had coagulated into a highly pressurised bomb that would explode if you annoyed the head enough. 

“The Palm won’t stay around much longer,” it speculated wonderingly. The Devil’s Palm ? Internally, you celebrated that you could soon flee the clutches of the crooked spires entangling you within their grasp. Although, something was off. Instead of sounding regretful, or worried , the head sounded rather decisive. What did that mean? What could it possibly be planning?

“We’d better start soon,” it resolved. You could hear the arhythmic hammering of your heart against the cage of your body. Who was we , and why were you being grouped into this?

“Hell are you talking about?” you managed to cough out; all your remaining energy was being spent gripping onto your backpack to hopefully bludgeon the head out of existence if it tried anything funny. 

Within your grasp, the pocket watch began beating like a second, icy heart. 

“We’ve never done this before, so hold on tight,” the head advised you, still ignoring your queries. Fantastic . The ever-present pressure was steadily building around you; it was a wonder you hadn’t sunk to your knees in defeat yet. 

“I am ,” you croaked insistently, though proving yourself to something that looked like it belonged in a bad CGI compilation didn’t seem like the most brilliant idea. Both the pocket watch and your bag were being held so firmly that you were half-sure the flesh of your palm would be marred with bruises. Apprehensiveness stewed in your gut, thick and foreboding, but there was nowhere for you to run.

Inside your skull, an incoming headache mingled with exhaustion and trepidation. Any hope you had of heading home soon was sluiced away when the pressure around you surged in a tornado of motion. Around you, the ravaging wind created swirls of sand rising and juddering; by now, even the gnarled fingers enclosing you were concealed from view. 

The only constant was the floating head – it gazed at you intently with that blank expression as your body shook from the crushing atmosphere. Looking up, you could see the stars littering the vast backdrop of the sky. When had they appeared?

Amidst the cacophony of the ruthless wind, you heard the shape of the words about to emerge from the head’s mouth, as if they were your own internal thoughts. Even as the sky above you raced through the cycle of night and day (hurtling at speeds you’d never seen), the motion of scrawling letters imprinted on your very soul felt like a lifeline among the raging current of this storm. 

“Question of Time: reject this victory!”

A bone-chilling frost began to creep through your body at the head’s proclamation; though it was quickly extinguished as the freezing pocket watch ripped itself out of your grasp and opened with a deafening chime. Your breath caught in your throat as you watched the hands move in reverse , in tandem with the rapid streak of sun and moon fading into one. 

As if the curtains were being pulled to signal an interlude in this play, your surroundings faded into a silent abyss. It was all-consuming, and it was all you could do to hold onto your bag while the pocket watch continued its spiral backwards. 

There was nobody with you, not even the floating head, not even a whisper breaking you out of this void. It was silent.

It was peacelessly devoid of everything . 

“Join the Steel Ball Run.”

Your body convulsed at hearing the words bury themselves into the meat of your flesh: no, into the very marrow of your bones. They had the same dispassionate quality as the floating head’s, yet they were garbled, mangled, and overall poorly strung-together, instead of just being impersonal. As harsh as they were to hear, the sound had etched itself into your memory, and the command resonated even as it faded. 

The acrid taste of bile rose in your throat. While there was nothing surrounding you, there were still the uncertain tendrils of movement : tugging and pushing at your body as you hurtled through this vacuum. 

When the silence grew unbearable, you tasted the words on the tip of your tongue – tried to speak them into existence, even. Nothing came out of your larynx: not a word, not even a strained wheeze proving you had tried . Join the Steel Ball Run . You mulled the words over. 

Maybe this was all a bad dream. You’d wake up – slumped against the workbench in the lab – and Diya would inform you whatever virus you thought you isolated successfully was now crawling and exploring the Forbidden Lands of your immune system. 

Steel Ball Run . 

The words flashed white-hot in your mind’s eye. They coursed like venom through your veins and staunchly refused to budge from your thoughts. Sure, you knew about the famed race that had taken place more than a century prior; the fuzzy memories of assigned homework questions had refused to get washed away by the meandering river of time. 

How the hell were you expected to join the Steel Ball Run when it had already concluded practically aeons ago?  

Deep down, you knew. There was no wonder, no curiosity, no awe at whatever the hell was occuring; you knew , and accepted it with the resigned defeat of a puppet to their puppetmaster. The answers flashed deep in the recesses of your unconscious mind, yet you were in no mood to delve beneath the surface to retrieve them. 

You knew that floating head, and that was all that mattered. 

Before you realised it, a verdant green had washed over the hollow nothingness . It began as rough paint strokes of colour, then the loamy scent of damp earth and dew swept in to chase away the staleness of nothing . You breathed it in greedily; even now, your ears were pricking and picking up the rustling of leaves. 

The broad canvas of an azure sky unfurled itself above your head, and the scene was complete. Once more, the pocket watch that had so eagerly ripped itself out of your grasp wound up in your fingers, lifeless; yet, this time, its delicate chain wrapped around your arm in a makeshift bracelet. 

You could only take in this haven for a brief moment before you doubled over, clutching your backpack to your stomach while you retched. Bilious film rose in your throat, yet nothing came out. Your chest rose and fell with each rapid, heavy breath. 

“Whoops,” the all-too-familiar voice of the head sounded more sheepish than usual; it bobbed alongside you in a manner that seemed more retrospectively amused than truly apologetic. Had you been upright (and had the head possessed a working neck) you would have throttled it until its stupid clock eyes fell out. “We’re a bit new to this, it seems.”

“Don’t group me in with you,” you wheezed, collapsing to the mossy ground in exhaustion. Unfamiliar plants surrounded you: waxy green leaves practically the size of you, sparse clusters of bushes, and various fruits littering the ground in stages of decay. “Pretentious cretin.” 

“Do you want to check where we are?” it enquired. Were you mistaken, or was that flat voice tinged with flecks of nervousness ?

“Why don’t you know where we are?” you spat out icily. The humid atmosphere was making you even more sticky; by now, both the fatigues and short-sleeve you wore were practically clinging onto your body for dear life. You were also beginning to get light-headed, though you couldn’t tell whether it was from the weird wormhole travel or the surroundings (it was probably the weird wormhole travel). 

“Oh, dear,” it seemed to be swivelling around to assess the surroundings. You couldn’t muster up any sympathy for this idiot who took the two of you to seemingly the wrong place . “Could you possibly open the pocket watch?”

“Could you possibly leave me alone?” you retorted, yet your left hand still raised above you (even though you told yourself it was to block out the sun). The head floated above you, and it was getting increasingly hard to ignore that ugly mug. 

“Just open the watch, please ,” it seemed that the head’s vocabulary had expanded into having manners. You opted for gazing at its veritable lack of hands to open the damn thing itself. 

“So now we’re having a conversation?” 

“Look,” it seemed to deflate upon itself like a badly popped balloon. Even the hands on its clock eyes downturned into a pathetic little expression. Despite your exhaustion (and Very Deep Annoyance), you couldn’t help but feel a scrap of pity. “I’ll answer all your questions when we’re not in danger.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” you threatened. Maybe you clicked the little button on the dainty pocket watch too forcefully, but you didn’t particularly care. You held the watch face up to the head; it seemed to cower under your intense stare. 

“Yikes,” the flat inflection of its voice seemed to be rapidly evolving to a range of emotion. Namely, shame. You eyed the floating head, before roughly turning the watch face to your curious eyes. 

Scrawled upon the face, where the year had been previously, were numbers that almost made you drop the pocket watch onto your nose. 

205 million BCE . Jurassic period . 

You felt a bead of sweat trickle across your face.

“What the fuck?” through a strained smile, a disbelieving laugh escaped your clenched teeth. The pocket watch closed with a loud snap . “I may be laughing, but I am not in a good mood right now.”

“Listen, I’ll explain when we’re out of here,” you could almost see the porcelain muscles of its face contort into an unpleasant little grimace. Almost. 

In the distance, you could hear the heavy thumps of something travelling quickly through the foliage, and you shot up. Hoisting your pack onto your shoulders, you turned back to the floating head and tried to ignore the antsy feeling in your stomach. Chittering cries from all around you echoed through the vegetation. 

“Then get us out of here,” you seethed. You weren’t a palaeontologist by any means, but you knew you didn’t want to meet whatever was making those sounds. Ever. 

“Right,” it said, practically tripping over its own words. “Question of Time: reject this victory!”

Just like before, the sun began its frantic chase towards the moon in a flurry of streaking light. Just like before, the frigid pocket watch wrenched itself out of your grasp; yet this time, the hands moved clockwise, rather than in reverse. Just like before, you were thrust back into the abyss.  

This time, you were marginally more prepared than before. 

This time, you had the opportunity to observe: even though there was, quite literally, nothing to bestow that upon. Rather than being an almost palpable darkness that enveloped you with the crushing pressure of the unknown, there was a tangible hollowness that seemed to pull you outwards. Instead of getting crushed by the gravity of this mode of transport, it seemed you were going supernova. 

Beneath your fingertips, there was nothing: not a current of wind to suggest movement, not a shred of air resistance. This was void – this was nothing. 

“Keep the President from the corpse.”

The same, distorted chorus of instruction resounded once again through you; each syllable fluttered against your sternum like a caged bird. You didn’t know what the hell it meant, but there was something in your gut compelling you to follow the command down to the very letter. 

A corpse . What a morbid demand. Whose corpse? Was it even a corpse, or a metaphor for something, given the penchant for riddles from the head? If Diya had been sent to the desert instead of you, she probably would’ve figured more of this out. Actually, she probably would’ve made the smart decision to escape before she even got the opportunity to get entangled in all of this. 

You once again cursed your brilliant mind. 

When you got spat out in what seemed to be a field, you turned immediately to look for the head. It was floating several metres away, and it looked severely worse for wear. No, that was a lie. You could feel the turbulent emotions roiling within that hollow skull; they mirrored the uneasy churning and crashing of your own trepidation. 

“Tell me, genius,” you snapped when it finally ambled its way through the air to your side. It looked more like a cork sloshing about in a wine bottle than a mannequin head, if you really thought about it. Either way, it was creepy and disconcerting. “Did you get us to the right place? Or do you just not know when the Steel Ball Run race is?”

Without waiting for an answer, you snatched the pocket watch from the air and flipped it open. 

16th July, 1969 . 

No way. Your eyes scoured the horizon; you involuntarily squinted at the buildings and rocket on the horizon. This buffoon had brought you to the takeoff for the moon!

“Great job,” you lied through your teeth. “You’re only like a century off this time.”

“You heard the instructions, right?” 

The head seemed to have selective hearing. 

“Kinda hard to ignore them,” you kicked the grass at your feet. A spark of hope had been stoked; if you followed those cryptic instructions, could you go home? If you took part in that race, surely you’d get sent back. You tipped your head back and prayed, just as the deep rumble from the rocket engines broke out in the horizon. 

For a moment, you were at peace. With your eyes squeezed shut, you could almost imagine that you were standing near the highway by the lab. Without sight, you were just basking in the breeze and warm, sunny smell of a field in the summer. Even if your limbs felt leaden, even if you were covered with sweat and small scrapes, this was just another day. Another ordinary day. 

“Maybe try saying the year after your little spell,” you suggested idly, still closing your eyes. You weren’t ready to face the music yet; the red shining through your eyelids sufficed enough to satiate your need to see something instead of nothing . 

“Right,” you heard it murmur. A pang of loss hit you square in the gut: nostalgia and the fear of growing up each summer rolled into a dense parcel. It was the smell , the aroma of a warm day meant for doing nothing . A window cracked half-open, a lazy bee perched on a particularly good short story, and a missed phone call lighting up your screen while you dozed off in the shade of the kitchen. The particular ambiance of being aware that each day was being quickly robbed by the gnarled fingers of time. 

It hurt , and you could feel that idle day slipping through your very fingertips with each passing moment. Maybe in another life, you’d spend this day appreciating it for what it was. Maybe you’d be lounging about in your thoughts. Maybe you might’ve even left another unanswered voicemail for your mother. 

“Question of Time: 1890.”

Reticence made its every syllable tight and rueful. The incantation was uttered quietly: a resigned note against the booming symphony of a jet engine. You kept your eyes shut. 

Question of Time , you echoed silently. Take me home . 

Even the tell-tale lurch of your gut had long since lost its novelty; your lips were pressed shut with the weight of dull sorrow clinging onto you. Under your skin, it festered like rotting flesh and wormed its way into the pits of your stomach. Each exhale felt more burdensome than the last. 

Take me back , you wanted to beg. You didn’t care if this timeline was screwed up; it wasn’t your problem. You could feel the acidulous words emerge from your throat like vomit, yet all that came out of your gaping maw was silence. 

“Reject his fortune.”

Something had changed. The abstract command was delivered quietly; instead of etching itself jarringly in your head, it wrapped around you like an airy duvet. Timid. Hopeful . Reject his fortune . What could that possibly mean? 

The wretched ebb and flow of this perpetual motion finally, finally tore to shreds the flimsy remains of your denial. Gone were those halcyon days spent in an endless summer (arms held high to welcome the warmth of the sun); rather, the scrapes gouging your body attested to the bitter reality of your hurtle through time and space. 

They stung , and there was no one to patch them up. 

Then, the crashing tides of disorientation hit. Wave after wave of nausea wracked both mind and body – which way was up ? Did directions even exist in this wormhole? Your chest heaved with each juddering, desperate pant you took to calm yourself. There were tears clouding whatever remaining vision you had, yet your face was free from the cold rivulets that might’ve otherwise accompanied them. 

Not a sound escaped. No release . 

Even doubled over, you could feel the insistent tug right under your navel: a proverbial umbilical cord guiding you into life.

It’s close .  

First came the light. Through the watery haze coating your vision with a glassy film, it whispered in languid tendrils. Unlike the previous broad washes of colour staining the abyssal landscape before you - clumsy, like the tentative paint strokes of a child – the hints of incandescent plumes being breathed into existence before you felt more like the beginnings of frost etching a window. Delicate. New . 

Or rather, familiar . 

When you cast your mind to the floating head, your heart spasmed within your ribcage – much like the nostalgia and disbelief that shook you when you had found a box of your old toys sequestered away in a forgotten cupboard. A shard of your past ( it threatened to draw blood ). What was it? What cord could possibly be binding the two of you?

Then came the warmth . No, unlike the scorching heat of the Arizona desert leaving you drenched in sweat, this was subdued. Unobtrusive. It settled on your skin: a soothing balm stealing away the day’s hurts. No, that was wrong. It eased onto you like an old coat: comforting and safe . The blunt ache humming in your gut lessened with the familiar feeling. 

Familiar, how ?

You couldn’t place it; much like an old scent that stirred up long-forgotten memories, something had stirred within. Yet, rather than feeling the hazy dregs of your past, your mind refused to betray whatever had evoked the heavy sensation in your heart. Just past the tips of your extended fingers. Infuriatingly out of reach . 

Third came the taste. You hadn’t noticed before, but the hollowness of this place (or rather, the abject lack of place) extended to your taste buds. The flavour of cold wind on a sunny day barged delicately onto your tongue. It tasted clean : not like the staleness of nothing . The heaving breaths you took – you stole – were avaricious. 

With it came the smell . You were hit with such an amalgamation (to put it politely) that it was proving difficult to pinpoint the notes; the savoury aroma of meat and fish being smoked, the universal smell of manure, and the stink of ammonia were some of the most prominent contenders. Your nose wrinkled. Sure, you weren’t expecting the late 19th century to smell particularly good , but the reek assaulting your olfactory organs was very efficiently tempting you to become a permanent Mouth Breather.

Finally, sound disrupted the roaring silence. It slotted itself messily into the ever-changing landscape: the last puzzle piece of your senses. Sure, you could finally hear the heaving gasps you were letting out, but you could also hear the muffled sounds of humanity: the echoes of trundling wheels hitting dry-packed earth; faint, watery strings of conversation that were punctuated with harsh laughter and raised voices; the solid, insistent chime of coins hitting one another in the everyday exchange of business; and perhaps the most unnervingly, the heavy thumps of footsteps resounding out around you. 

This world was close; only a filmy veil separated the two of you. 

Once more, the pull at your navel confirmed what you were dreading. You were here , speeding to the past rather than the second by second future you took for granted. There was no middle ground, no familiar present ; you were in the past and moving to the future simultaneously. 

One last tug at your navel, and the umbilical cord was severed. Around you, the hollow womb crumbled away into the depths of your imagination as you warped back into existence. 

“We’re here.”

Even without the monotone confirmation from your companion, you could tell that for yourself. Just as one recognised their childhood home, you too recognised that this was your destination. 

Those walking past you spared no glance at your sudden arrival. Dust-encrusted as you were, you fit right in with the dust-encrusted locals. Even with your fog-addled mind, you felt like an intruder on a historical reenactment set.

From the shadows of the awning you found yourself under, you took the chance to catch your breath and observe . The road before you seemed to be the main one running through the town: dull orange and uncomfortably reminding you of desert. It stretched out past the limits of your human vision – catapulting across in a long, unpaved stretch. Streaming from side streets and alleyways were wagons being pulled by horses; it was this , to you, that attested your bitter reality the most. This was still the age of the horse. 

You leaned against the tawny wood of the building behind you. It was a copy-and-paste of the one and two storeys strewn haphazardly around this town: plain, maybe personalised by the carved graffiti lovingly etched into the sides. Your head tipped back against the rough wall. Had you ever felt this defeated ?

In your lifeless fingers, the silver trinket pulsed. 

The head did not speak.

Silently, you flipped open the pocket watch. 

15th July, 1890. 14:37 .

Right. Right . Your eyes shut tightly: a brief gesture of mourning. Hope decayed as quickly as it entered existence. Two months until the race . From what you could gauge out of your distant memories, it was due to begin in September. Two months until I can fulfil those conditions and go home .

Your eyes fluttered open as the pocket watch heated up in your left hand. Beneath your eyes, it sunk into the meat of your flesh. As you stared at the disappearing mass, lines unfurled on your palm in an inky replica of the dainty timepiece. Even the very chain had transformed; wispy tendrils of colour patterned your forearm in imitation of the flowing metal links. 

You could feel each second thrum within you: a syncopation with your unsteady heartbeat. Upon closer inspection, the hand of the watch was insistently marching onwards through the soft medium of your palm. With your right hand, you thumbed the face of it, yet it didn’t budge. Beneath your thumb, you could sense each beat – warm and alive . 

Well . 

A living tattoo was probably the least strange thing to happen so far. 

Looking up, you realised your floating companion was nowhere to be found. Shit . A colourful variation of expletives hijacked your train of thoughts. Gone . Not a trace, save the colourful lines marking your arm. You were alone , with only your backpack as company. Where the hell could it have gone? 

All you were left with were the ringing instructions resounding in your eardrums over and over: your only hope of getting home.  

. 　⁺ ✦

[panglossesanddiadorims]

The final solution for aircraft design

Having worked for over 20 yrs designing, testing, and supporting the certification of more than a dozen aircraft programs, as a system engineer and authority delegated representative, I have often felt like Private Witt, the character in The Thin Red Line, when he says he had seen another world, one he sometimes thought as just part of his imagination.

Before being forcibly dragged into the horrors of war, he was stationed in a village by the Pacific, where he swam in the ocean, played with the children, dated, laughed, danced and celebrated and embraced life as people should. I can relate.

Working in the aerospace industry has been a pleasant experience, one whose work encompassed designing and re-designing systems like crew and passenger oxygen, ECS, CPCS, Avionics Cooling, Fire Suppression and Detection, participating in equipment qualification and aircraft ground and flight testing, developing safety assessment for SFHAs, FTAs, ZSA, and PRAs, providing responses to IPs, Special Conditions and CRIs, and system design calculations and simulations. And the best of all is that it all was achieved with people who became close colleagues and friends. As in Henry the 5th's speech, a band of brothers.

Then it all has changed, making it seem like part of my imagination.

Little by little a technocrat mentality slowly seeped in by spreading its corporate language like a tumor, marring critical thinking as negative, subversive and counter-productive, hampering technical discussions, implementing schedule-driven mindsets, toxic optimism and good for nothing approaches like Lean, 5S and Scrum, and replacing experienced and knowledgeable professionals with technocrats, sycophants and enablers. Transforming a respected and admired industry that was built with decades of research, learning from errors, and compliance with requirements with a money-oriented one, managed by individuals with no moral compass or remorse who do not know to fly a kite, or even how it flies.

It is like sperm count exam substituting for masturbation. One is done by oneself - naturally and pleasantly ; the other an obligation, with action items and milestones (fill the cup), schedules (when and how fast can you deliver it?), tracking and meetings (knocks asking if you are finished) and performance evaluations.

In addition, no doubt these people would applaud the approach used, how it was conducted and especially the and results it achieved during a certain meeting that took place in a room in the house in the picture above, when 15 individuals gathered to discuss and approve a new plan.

In sum, it met with flying colors the corporate mindset criteria of how a meeting should occur:

It started on time.

The meeting objectives and milestones were clearly established.

Each person's role was identified.

Digressions, criticisms or doubts were dismissed.

Focus on the main goals was enforced.

Milestones and schedules were established.

Action items were properly assigned.

It lasted the time for which it had been set.

It all paid off, for the milestones and results were not only achieved but largely surpassed.

At the end of the day, the meeting attended by 15 sociopaths and sycophants in that house on January 1942 addressed the Final Solution for the Jewish Question (die Endlosung der Judenfrage), which set in motion a state-of-the-art mass genocide machine.