#could i draw this digitally? yeah. but ive already committed to doing all of these traditionally so here we are.

[funsizedcrow]

traditional art is fun until you have to draw something symmetrical

[heartofsnark]

Rent-Free (Johnny Silverhand/OC Female V)

Notes; IVE BEEN ENABLED AGAIN!!!!!! AHHHHH BLAME @rosyibby, but uh, yeah basically given how much we talk about Johnny living rent free in V’s head, it made me think of paying rent through other means...*cue the cheesy porn music* Additionally, this does technically go along with my previous Johnny Silverhand fic, but like they’re not so intertwined that you won’t get it. It’s porn, you’ll catch on. Thanks for all the love on my previous nasty Johnny porn. 

Word Count: 2334

Warnings: Oral, Cunnilingus, Unprotected Sex (hologram fucking has perks), Vaginal Sex, Kissing, Johnny being gross, Dirty Talk, I’m lowkey still insecure on writing dirty talk, so hopefully this isn’t bad, also yeah game still isn’t out so he’s prob ooc to some degree

Hot water rushes from the shower head, relaxing Aidan’s aching muscles. Silence around her as she works shampoo into her hair, a welcomed moment of peace in her life, something that’s been so absent since this mess has begun. It’s late, around four in the morning, she just finished a smuggling run with Jackie. Things went south as they often do, her entire body aches from the shootout, but they got out alive and that’s all that matters.  

She works and lather soap into her skin, feeling the roughness of scars gathered contrasting against the soft give of her body. Aidan squeezes her own breast, feeling the heat and tingle of pleasure from her own groping fingers. She starts to move her other hand further down between her thighs, wanting to take advantage of the moment of calm. 

“You pent up again?” 

“God damn it!” She yells out when Johnny’s voice rings through her head, nearly slipping in her own shower. And he laughs at her as he always does, she quickly finishes washing, before stepping out. 

Johnny is leaning against the bathroom wall, arms crossed in front of him as he watched Aidan walk past, no shame in the way his dark brown eyes drag across her naked frame. Weeks have passed since their little…interaction when she tried to find a hookup. The encounter wasn’t brought up again, Aidan refusing to acknowledge it. 

And she still doesn’t acknowledge it, the weird sexual tension that’s been created between her and the ghost in her head. 

“Don’t rush on my account,” Johnny says as she quickly dries off and throws on an overside shirt along with a pair of shorts. She’ll just get to sleep as soon as possible, ignore the dampening heat in her core. 

“You’re the actual worst, you know that?” She grumbles as she leaves the bathroom, making a beeline for her bedroom. Hopefully, none of Johnny’s memories or brain weirdness will come through her dreams, she needs some peace. 

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve told me a billion times, well, that is when you weren’t screaming my name or thinking about riding my-“ 

“Shut the fuck up!” She yells out, her neighbors must think she’s crazy, but she can’t help but scream at him as she flops back on her bed. 

Aidan can feel his gaze on her, looking up to see Johnny standing at the foot of her bed, looking down at her. The position reminds her of that night, him watching her getting fucked, the heat in her core rises again. There’s a lazy calmness in the way he looks her over , no hurry or fervor, just taking her in. His eyes hovering around the plush of her thighs, moving up to where her shirt has ridden up, revealing an expanse of her soft stomach. 

“Seriously,” she starts to speak again, hoping her words can cool the heat gathering between her thighs, “you’re like the worlds shittiest roommate.” 

“Am I?” 

“Yes, you really fucking are. You have no boundaries, you do nothing but annoy me, I can’t rid of you, hell, at least a roommate might pay rent.” 

“Oh, you need me to pay rent? Sure, just let me get my wallet,” Johnny says, reaching into his pocket just to pull out his middle finger.

“Cute.” She rolls her eyes, of course he’s going to be a shit about it. 

“Cute enough for you to throw your panties at.” 

“Shut up! Just shut up!” 

He lets out a low chuckle, resonating deep in his chest, the sound stoke the flames in her center just that much more. Why is he so fucking attractive? Then she feels it, a hand grabbing at her shin, the rough callouses of his right hand. 

“You really want me to start contributing something?” There’s a teasing tone to his voice. 

“I mean, I know you can’t, but you could at least stop irritating me.” 

“Eh, don’t think I can, but I can think of something I can do that might make you a little less tense,” he says, hand skimming further up her leg. 

“Seriously, offering sex in place of rent, you watch that much porn?” 

“C’mon, Samurai, we’re way past the point of you pretending you don’t wanna fuck me, don’t you think?” 

And he’s probably right. 

“I’m definitely right.” 

“You know reading my mind is not attractive, right?” 

“Yet, you still find me attractive, funny how that works.” 

“Fine, fine,” she covers her face with her arm, cheeks burning red, “I wanna fuck you, happy?” 

“I mean, wasn’t exactly a secret, but it’s nice hearing you admit it.” 

“Shut up and touch me.” 

And then he’s over her, knees on her mattress on either side of her hips, hands grabbing the bottom of her shirt. He’s quick and rough as he yanks it off over her head, throwing it across the room. She barely has a moment to take in the cool air from her chest being exposed before he’s groping and touching her, the contrast between the smooth cold metal of his left hand and the warm calloused fingers on his right makes her whimper, arching her back to meet his touch.  The feeling of his thumbs rubbing over her nipples draws another gasp from her throat and then the heat of his mouth connects to her chest. 

“Fuck,” she curses as he works harsh kisses down her body, his touch is hungry and passionate, but most importantly of all completely unpredictable. 

There’s no patterns to where he kisses; whether it’s her collarbones, the plush of her breasts, her ribs, or her stomach. No way for Aidan to know if it’ll be the press of his lips, the laving of his tongue, or the bite of his teeth. The only constant is the scratch of his beard, rubbing her tender skin raw under his touch. She tries to wrap her fingers in his hair, to wrap the dark strands around her fingers but he moves too quickly, and she only gets a brief touch of them. 

A sharp nip just above the waistband of her shorts is her only warning before he’s yanking them off of her. Rough fingers run through her slit, just a fleeting touch as Johnny gathers her slick on his fingers. 

“You’re soaked.” 

“Shut up.” 

“Don’t worry, I’ll be keeping my mouth busy,” he tells her before sucking his fingers into his mouth, licking her wet from his own skin. 

Then he’s practically bending her in half, pressing her thighs back to her chest, the force lifting her hips and ass off the bed. The position completely opens her up to him, no way to hide her cunt from his view. Before she can squirm or get embarrassed, his mouth is on her. His tongue licking through her folds, lapping up every drop of slick. He eats her out like he’s desperate for it, like he needs to drink up every gush of wet to survive, licking deep inside of her. His tongue finding every spot that will make her wetter. 

His beard rubs the lips of her sex raw, but she can’t find it in her to mind the edge of pain, when his tongue runs up to her clit. No true pattern, no way to predict how long he’ll go between sucking harshly on the bundle of the nerves to licking around it; back and forth between too much and not enough. The heat inside of her is reaching a boiling point, nearly crashing over the precipice of pleasure, but he pulls back before she can meet her end every time. She buries her fingers in his hair, finally feeling the softness of the locks, but she despite her pressing she can’t control his pace. 

And he stops. 

She whines at the loss of pleasure as he pulls away from her. Slick coats his lips and chin, shining in the moonlight that drifts into her bedroom. His looks are grossly unfair for someone who’s both dead and technically in his eighties. Oh god, she’s fucking an eighty something year old digital ghost-

He presses his lips to her and she can’t help gasp, tasting herself on his tongue. Johnny presses down on her body, so his body weight presses her thighs down against her chest, erection grinding into her pussy and her ankles practically on his shoulders. Her slick on his chin presses wetly against her, as his tongue pushes deeply into her mouth. She meets his lips and the passion of it, trying to taste Johnny through her own wet, taking in where he tastes like cigarettes.  

“Stop thinking,” he tells her as he pulls away, realizing the lip lock was to stop her train of thoughts about all the reasons this is wrong. 

“I really wish I could, sorry, but I mean…can you honestly say this isn’t fuckin’ weird?” 

“Who gives a shit?” 

“Wow, that fixed all my anxiety, thank you for you endless wealth of wisdom.” Aidan rolls her eyes. 

“So, the goal is now to fuck you hard enough your brain shuts off, got it.” 

“I wi-” she pauses when she feels his cock pressing against her thigh, smearing pre-cum on her skin, “when did you get naked?” 

“I’m a hologram, I can just do that.” 

“Wha-so when you only had your dick out last time, that was purely for effect?”  Aidan is grinning and already on the verge of laughing at the idea of Johnny being that committed to pretending he has to undo his pants. 

“I mean, kinda…” 

And she bursts out laughing, it’s just too silly and ridiculous, he’s so fucking dramatic. How could one man be so dramatic? What the fuck? Her stomach hurts with the force of her laughter. 

“Don’t laugh at me when I’m trying to fuck you.” 

She tries to stifle her laughter , biting her lip as she looks up at Johnny, he’s smiling. Not a smirk or some smug expression, just a soft little smile, as he looks down at her. The anxiety and tension that has started to creep back up have mostly subsided, humor settling her nerves. 

He grinds his cock down against her slick cunt, reminding her of what they’ve been building up too. 

“This is like…safe, right?” 

“Don’t worry, can’t knock you up or anything. I’ll just fuck you like I’m trying to.” 

Her face flushes red at his words and then he thrust his hips, sliding into her. She screams out his name, between the position and her own slick, he hits deep inside of her, no resistance as her body takes him in. He doesn’t tease or hold back, his entire length pressing into her, filling her completely. 

“Fuck, I knew you’d be tight, but god damn, feel like I’m break you open.” 

“Ah, uhhh, don’t say weird shit.” 

Johnny’s thrusts are punishing and harsh, brutal in the snap of his hips and she wishes she could hear the wet slap of their bodies connecting over and over again. 

“What, don’t wanna hear about how your cunt is choking my dick.” 

“Mnnnn….” All she can respond with is a whine. 

“Don’t wanna hear about how I’m gonna fill you up, how I’m gonna make you leak my cum.” 

“Johnny…” 

He’s pounding into her, each thrust and stroke of his cock inside of her building up the heat inside of her, tightening the tension in her core. The head of his dick hits deeply, harshly fucking against the sensitive spot deep inside of her. Slick keeps her able to take it all, despite the roughness and the size of him, each slam of him into her making more gush out. She can feel her own wet dripping down her the curve of her ass.

“Gonna rearrange your fuckin’ guts, make sure you fit me and no one else.” His voice is tight with a slight growl, movements speeding up. 

And while a part of her knows it’s dramatic, just bedroom talk if his dick was in her organs, they’d have some issues. But, she swears he’s doing exactly that. Carving out his place inside of her, a place only meant for him, so deep inside of her she can feel it in her throat. Stroking the embers of a fire that only he can turn into an inferno.

When that inferno of pleasure builds too high, the tension within her snaps, the bubble burst, and she’s crying out incomprehensibly as she cums on his cock. Everything whites out, mind empty as her body is overridden with pleasure, cunt clenching around him and body squirming as he keeps fucking her through her orgasm. 

“Holy fuck, you’re gonna milk me dry, fuck!” 

And he cums inside of her, hot and warm, flooding her with it. Heavy thick spurts of white coating her insides until it’s too much for her body to hold in, dripping out where the two connect. Her body is still twitching and squirming as she works through her aftershocks, once she’s a little more in touch with reality, she wonders whether his cum on her sheets will need cleaning. 

He pulls out of her and even more of it spills out, Aidan whimpers between the loss of him inside of her and the mess on her thighs. Johnny rolls over to lay next to her, it still astounds her just how real he feels, his body heat next to her own. 

She wants to lay on him, she realizes, a desire to lay her head on his chest. Aidan isn’t seriously considering cuddling with him, is she losing her mind? 

“Just ask for what you want, dumbass.” 

He wraps an arm around her sweaty shoulder and tugs her in against him, her cheeks reddening as she hides her face in his chest. There’s a lot she could mull over, a lot to think about, but with her eyelids growing heavier…it’s best to leave it alone for the night, to take Johnny’s advice for once and stop thinking so much. 

[anestheticrage]

Be me: Japanese honor student🎓, 15, with half a brain and even less of a plan. Hunting bitches by day and witches by night. Livin that dank only child✌️ life while mom n dad yeet all over the globe, leavin me plenty of time to forget not to make 2 lunches for myself #quirky 😜

no time for socialization or basic electronics skills ???📱??? when your best friends are an alien demon rabbit🐰👽 and the inexplicable Hole ™ in your brain. lmao, btw did i mention im ✨M✨A✨G✨I✨C✨A✨L✨

dreamin bout my 2D waifus again when familiar pink haired cancer patient dances through my brain passin out fliers: Kamihama Meguca Dating Service: Sponsored by Cult of the Magius. 250 stones per session 🤔

seems legit, Mr. Moneybags. wasn't spending my unwieldy sack of gemstones on anything else anyway. lets pull 💎💎💎

first up we have Redhead Radagast and her plethora of plants. 🌿☺️🦎

anndd, nearly dies immediately. 

well not off to a great start but i guess shes pretty cute at lea- oh FUCK its her girlfriend, Tsundere Poseidon😒🔱💦, and their exasperated, straight and single Sword Mom 😔🗡️🔥. fml gonna have to save up for the next pull. might as well play a few rounds with what i got tho. 

get in some good girl talk about things like school, color coded hair styles, body count, permanent soul damage, and our personal demon pacts. ya know, the usual 😚 . realize my dark backstory seems to be missing, so the girls take me to Ketchup Queen Sappho 🍅🥧 (wtf?) to molest my glowy egg stone. whatevs, more action than ive had since Kuroe 🖤 got added to the story anyway

the gang agrees it's time to hunt down the cutest rabbit pimp 🕶️🐇💵 in the city. >> say 🎵mukyuuu🎵 one more time and ill hug you so hard my backstory will pop right out, you adorable fluffy bastard. plz be my new best friend 💕

Form brand new friendship pact with Kyubae, and remember that my lil Sis 🐥 was always the best wingman for pickin up magic chicks, and kept her side of the room so spotless i forgot she existed. whoops 乁༼☯‿☯✿༽ㄏ Maybe if I find her i can stop paying these exorbitant pull fees.📵💎

speaking of which: hot damn this week's featured bachelorette is a 19 year old model and magical detective🔎 with massive levels of PTSD and self loathing 🥵💙💦 more likely to stab you or dramatically jump off a rooftoop than utter a single positive comment. wow, maybe i really COULD find true love…

... if i had MORE THAN A 1% FUCKING DRAW CHANCE. 😡 smh

hard to make much progress finding sis or winning the broken heart of a hard boiled detective amidst the never ending lover's quarrel of the Trident Vine Lesbians. 💔 Sword Mom tells them if they don't behave a monster will take them away. LOL classic mom 🤣

>>>HOLY FUCK IT DID

declare all-out war on urban legends, starting with staircases ⚔️ to reunite the dysfunctional trio, and hope that I net a way better lineup with the next 10x pull. at least sad sleuth lady came to help out. they say combat is the best way to bond wi-   and there she goes off the rooftop again 🙄 fml

alright that got way off track, we need a fresh start, away from all the loli drama. how bout a little B&E🔓🔨🤷🏻‍♀️ at the local house of worship to clear my head. ahh nothing like the unanswered prayers of the masses to get you in the mood for another wasted pull, and the 🔥 MIGHTIEST 🔥 headache you could ask for with a side of Double Cooked Pork 🐖🍜 (meh 5/10🧾)

venture forth into the spiritual unknown with your new human flamethrower🔥🌻🧡 and ask your favorite private eye to please, for the love of Eve, trade Meguca accounts with me~~~ Head through the eastern spirit portal to meet up with hologram propaganda sis and detective crush's evil ex, who joined a dating-app cult (#fuck) and also turned into the moon?🌕?(that's rough buddy)

get ambushed by Acid Horse on Wheels 🌈🐴 and vomit up my soul so hard that its time for a crossover episode. T U R F F F   W A R R R *que operatic harmonies* 💛 Blondie with the hair drills and enough attitude and guns to fill up a noble phantasm tries to ban my account permanently, but PI heartthrob denies her admin privileges. aww babe i didn't know you cared. 😭♥️

get kidnapped by my new true love and go back to her place 😏  defs enough empty rooms to house five emotionally traumatized girls and at least two ghosts hehehe👻 XD 💚🃏💜🎸 decide to form the anti-gossip brigade and recruit my blazing sunflower after getting ambushed by the witch living in my fruit loops🥣

❌outvoted 2:1 that cults are bad. mf. fiinneee one last pull to round out the team and then I'll delete the app. cmonnn Karin 🎃~

OH HELL YEAH TWO FOR ONE.

Always wanted a daughter 💜🔨🐄 with a penchant for pissing off the local Martial Arts & Books Club and drinking suspicious liquids offered by total strangers. Well if it's good enough for her AND the sexy mayadere with enough game to seduce a mermaid, might as well get in on that myself. 

#curseddrank 🤢 0/24 would not recommend to a friend, 'cept maybe Ria

win alot of cash 🤑, blow up a fountain, meet the pied piper²🎶🖕, moon cult, monochrome feathers, something about liberation✊🏻; adopt temper tantrum cow girl. aces 💜🥩

Next up!!! skydiving with DJ Hammer! Jump to apparently-not-certain death after suicidal A.I. 💚💾🗼 tells you to rescue her hostage before they run out of Radiohead albums and have to move on to Thom Yorke's solo discography. save the invisible shield kitten 💚👑😿 from happiness and get chased through the internet by the sexiest homicidal Paint Pallette 💚🎨😈 since Caravaggio. (apparently green is the color of the digital apocalypse. i’m deleting Kako from my friend's list)

that’s it, fuck this app. 250 stones 💎 per-life-threatening-experience is more than i’m willing to deal with 😓 don’t wanna mess with the perfect nuclear family anyway. we've already got: 

✔️the two emotionally traumatized moms with memory and commitment issues

✔️the adhd daughter with anger management problems and a giant hammer

✔️the psychologically abused scizophrenic cat

✔️and the eccentric aunt with crippling anxiety

#squadgoals

now that were done hoarding bitches, its time to hunt the witches. and the bitches makin the witches. btw did i mention the witches ARE the bitches! AND WERE ALL GOING TO DIE!? 📽️⁉️💀 wait fuck lets back up a second

This is Nemo📕 and Token🧪 and they have all the answers but prefer if you only ask vague questions in exchange for vague responses so they can fill in the rest by discussing their superior intellect 🧠 at length. not to mention they built that dating app, so of course everyone in my harem decides to be a FUCKING. TRAITOR.🤬

cept waifu prime ofc 🥰💙. [PTSD > brainwashing] 'yOu CaN bE tHe LeAdEr NoW'. i have been from the very beginning you traumatized Hinedere nightmare. maybe if you weren't so caught up collecting surrogate daughters you would've noticed IM👏THE👏ONLY👏 ONE👏PROGRESSING👏THE FUCKING👏PLOT✨

rescue the rest of dysfunctional found-family™ from selves before my adorable firebender burns down Disnihama🎡🔥😱 during her weekly anxiety attack. (love the makeover T B H) 

CHAPTER 8: Magical Girl Massacre🩸🗡️

   - everyone has like, the shittiest day ever

   - the new Pope really needs to be extradited from the church

   - make friends with a really pretty tree 🌺🌲✨

i swear, if i don't finish this god damn story in time to get that free pull im gonna beat the shit out of every mirror i find in that giant mansion that i haven't even had any time to even mention yet. 🖕🏚️ let alone EVERYTHING happening with the prequel [fuck you, I'm the star] girls 💗💜💙💛❤️️ and their multidimensional melodrama. We don't need that many repetitive af episodes to emphasize that Homo-ra is a shitty person. we've all seen Rebellion. 🙄

NO, I DONT CARE IF YOU WANT SAPPHO'S BACKSTORY, I ONLY HAVE 79 STONES LEFT AND IF YACHAN FINDS OUT I HAVEN'T DELETED THE APP YET IM GONNA HAVE TO GO SLEEP IN WITH SANA 😭💎💸😠

uhhhggggg where were we… Topple a cult and burn down Hotel Denoument only to realize that Sis was fused with the dating app servers this entire madokafuckin time (told ya she was the best wingman 😊). 

Dilemma: Sis =🥚, Triumvirate of Trouble want 🐣. What do? vote now:

Help Hatch - IIIIIII

Not Do That - IIIII

What The Actual Fuck Is Going On - IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Lets just fight everyone until something good happens.

🔥🔫🔥🗡️🔥😱🔥🌆🔥😱🔥🛡️🔥💣🔥

Kill (???) the artist-in-chief of the italian reindeer murder police after teaching her the true meaning of Christmas 🎄 hatch 🐣lil Sis and realize she WAS your wingman all along🐰 MUKYUUUU! we're just gonna ignore how much trouble it would have saved if you'd just mentioned that. "yOu DiDnT aSk..." 

FUCK YOU SPACE BITCH. ONCE AN INCUBATOR ALWAYS AN INCUBATOR 🖕🐇🔪

anywho, somewhere along the lines we of course summoned the Antichrist ⚙️ because why not raise the stakes to max and still not kill off a single character. Madofuckinkami, can we PLEASE wrap this up. 😩💤

feathers (not the culty kind, tfm) rain from the sky, and the power of friendship and not having the Urobutcher 🔪🩸as a lead writer saves our peacefully sectioned off alternate reality 😇

TL:DR fuck cults, real life waifus DO exist, don't sell your soul to space rabbits, or your stones to megacorporations. Enjoy arc 2 on the JP server with your shitty translation patch you filthy fuckin weebs 

Yours Truly, 

- Thirsty Weeb Eroha 💗💎😘 

[inrainprose]

How did you get do good at drawing? Can u give some tips? Ive been drawing for 4 months and i cant even draw a head

Okay first of all I still don’t consider myself that good at drawing, but I appreciate the compliment and it’s very nice that you like my work enough to seek advice from me. I’m a little emotional over it not gonna lie.

Unfortunately I don’t have much to give you. I can tell you that 4 months is not long at all, and it’s normal you’re not seeing as much progress as you’d want to yet. I never took up drawing “seriously” myself in the sense that I never sat down and thought “I’m gonna learn how to draw now”. I learned to draw by drawing, and I started, excluding my childhood doodles, about 10 years ago, though the pieces I wouldn’t be too embarrassed to show wouldn’t be older than 5, when I started to draw more seriously/regularly. Even now, a lot of the ones I put out on my blog make me cringe a bit haha (and there are many more that I don’t post), though there are more and more I genuinely appreciate and am proud of.

Tbh the thing that really helped me take off is copying stuff. I used to draw only from imagination, and while I miss being able to do that sometimes, there’s no doubt that having references made a huge difference. I don’t draw a realistic style and I didn’t learn anatomy or anything, nor do I copy images for the hell of it. But instead of pulling my hair trying to nail a pose I just spend a few minutes looking for pictures with what I have in mind on it and I go from there. I’ve come to enjoy that part - a little too much maybe haha.

I also did that thing where I drew every day for a year and that was also a big step forward, no matter how rushed the drawings were sometimes. The thing that shows me I’ve improved is not particularly that my pieces look better than they used to, but that they take me less time and effort and that I don’t fuck them up as much now. But also, you can’t aim too high at first. It’s frustrating because you have those images in your head and you can’t translate them on paper but that’s just life. You have to do with what skills you have at the moment, but you also shouldn’t give up on big ideas just because you don’t feel you can’t do them right. Try anyway. And try again later.

I don’t know if you’re learning properly, like techniques and all, and what you’re objectives are, so I can’t tell you much more. I can only encourage you to stick to it and realize that it’ll be some time until you produce something you’re proud of. Also, don’t be too hard on yourself. I used to be very critical of my drawings and I couldn’t fathom how anyone could find them any good when there are so much better artists out there and when I could find so many flaws in them. But drawing anything at all is already a step not everyone can make. Sometimes I look at digital painting and colorful pieces and I’m like “I could never do that” and like. Yeah. I couldn’t. I can’t draw digitally and I don’t use much color, cause I prefer paper and black and white anyway and I don’t feel like learning those. And I’m not a professional and I’m not as committed to it as some of those artists are. So I can’t do that, and that’s fine. Maybe I’ll learn more, maybe I won’t. We’re never done.

Most importantly though, it’s just that drawing is supposed to be fun and nice, it’s supposed to feel good, especially if it’s a hobby and not you’re livelihood or something. I love to draw. When I’m in the mood I’ll spend hours on it, when I really want to represent that thing in my head or I just crave the act itself. Pen on paper. What a treat. So enjoy yourself. You can only get better.

"I don’t have much to give you “ she said six paragraphs ago... Well I’m done now ^^ Good luck!

[t-shrt]

100 q tag

no one wud read it but ima do it anyways cos fun tag by @dubblebubble

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk? more cereal than milk cos i love tht crunchy crunch

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day? LOVE

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books? receipts, pen lol

4: how do you take your coffee/tea? coffee=basic latte/hot tea, no sugar

5: are you self-conscious of your smile? sometimes, not too often tho

6: do you keep plants? no but i want to but ill be terrible at it so no

7: do you name your plants?

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings? digital art

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself? yes very it keeps me sane

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach? side/back, back esp nowadays

11: what’s an inner joke you have with your friends? lots lol

12: what’s your favorite planet? earth? hahahah it used to be jupiter cos i loved sailor jupiter as a child

13: what’s something that made you smile today? friend + nct + fics

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like? two separate bedrooms, a balcony, good amount of plants, separate fridge for alcohol, sizeable kitchen

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is! it rains diamonds in jupiter and saturn $$$$

16: what’s your favorite pasta dish? bolognese hahahaha im boring

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair? i just dyed my hair a darker ash brown n i quite like it ive been light for awhile

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up. one came 2 mind cos we both recently talked ab it, a longtime close friend of mine n i used to have the biggest fight where he threw me a pair of scissors n i threw him a basketball in retaliation lmfaooo it still became a running joke more than a decade later...

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it? not really...prolly shud

20: what’s your favorite eye color? i actually like brown hahah, maybe a slightly lighter shade of brown

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that’s been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces. it was a gift from my parents, a simple small messenger bag with a lot of slots, brought it with me literally everywhere, during my hookups, my night outs, been stained with questionable things (its been cleaned lol!).... almost lost it in a club only to be found by a friend... it has foundation stains tho lol

22: are you a morning person? n o

23: what’s your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations? sleep, listen to music, watch stuff, not reply to messages

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets? no

25: what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever broken into? nothing rly comes to mind but im p sure ive been somewhere like tht lol

26: what are the shoes you’ve had for forever and wear with every single outfit? LOL my adidas superstars

27: what’s your favorite bubblegum flavor? ermm the red colored ones?

28: sunrise or sunset? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm very good question

29: what’s something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing? hmm what comes to mind is the way both of us sometimes exchange goodnight msgs w nct farm emojis heheeh

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared? lol ofc....

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks. unfortunately im rly basic on socks, u wud most likely find me wearing black ankle socks or black ballet(?) socks nothing more nothing less.......

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends. a lot has happened usually during that time lol. duno which story to pick honestly hahahah. i think a memorable one might be when we were drinking n played games and we talked and talked and joked n nek min one by one we fell asleep in the same room hahah... im sure there are other stories tht might be more eventful but fr the life of me my memorys fuzzy rn lol

33: what’s your fave pastry? i love strawberry shortcakes! or mille crepes

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it? i kept a LOT hahah. prolly named a few, but nothing was too special. i think it rly reflected how i managed my relationships then, n evn yrs aftwds, like i ws always lonely n my instincts were to gain quantity cos deep down i cudnt trust ppl n cudnt get too committed lololol

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often? i wish i was cos sometimes ppl wud make pretty colorful notes, but i usually just buy ones tht i wud use cos practicality.

36: which band’s sound would fit your mood right now? mmmmm is it cheating if i say nct cos they cover a range of genres lmao. but their ballads i guess yeah.

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean? i mean i prefer to keep it clean, but its always really messy HAHAHA ;_;

38: tell us about your pet peeves! 1. someone rude 2. someone who doesnt know how to respect others’ boundaries 3. someone self-entitled n takes themselves 2 seriously

39: what color do you wear the most? black on black on black on black baby

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what’s it’s story? does it have any meaning to you? an evangelion ring, its the black (lilith) moon with lcl gem in it, to me i guess symbolizes my struggle with human relations, n how eva as an anime illustrated tht n the fantasy of having everyone’s consciousness merged into one--n the fact that lilith in itself (in astrology) signifies the darker side of a human being? i guess n the fact that evn if u acknowledge ur darker side u cud still use it to further urself

41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving? hmmmm i guess last was a self help book, unfuck your boundaries, helped me support my need to strengthen my boundaries

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it! little rogue :) its in a small alleyway, a little quaint shop, easy to miss... small potted plants, with an amaaazing matcha latte

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with? siiigh a guy i was involved with lmfao i cut him off tho

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything? hmmmmm good question i guess lately ive been very thankful tht i could feel comfortable taking my own time and space, n accepting the positive energy others wn give 2 me. being single really, really does help evn tho id feel lonely sometimes, bc the only weight i carry is the weight of my own soul n i wn learn how to nourish that

45: do you trust your instincts a lot? very i think

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of. i have a lot HAHAHA if u were a friend of mine ud prolly get tired of them. a genuinely bad one wud be haha youre so punny lmfao

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe? nothing rly lmao if theyre healthy n someone derives happiness frm it i wudnt want it to be banned

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today? probably not lol, i mean i think i retained similar fears since i ws a kid but now obviously my biggest fear(s) would be more...specific to me

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought? its the digital age baby spotify ftw (in all srsness i wish i collected vinyls tho hh)

50: what’s an odd thing you collect? i used to collect ramune bottles lmaoooo

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them? hmmmm nah lets not do this right now lol

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far? LOL too many but i love shitpost quality memes tbh

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them? pulp fiction. i actually loved it, i think i still do, its entertainment value is kickass, havent taken the time to dissect it in any other way

54: who’s the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face? oh man i think it ws the dude i ws seeing lmao fk him

55: what’s the most dramatic thing you’ve ever done to prove a point? a lot, n most of them im not proud of, cos some involves self harm

56: what are some things you find endearing in people? kindness n genuineness, someone’s courage in being vulnerable

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics? dont feel like it rn but everytime i do 10/10 will dramatically reenact the lyrics right to the guitar riffs

58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why? im definitely the wine (aunt) lmfaooo im already one tbh 

59: what’s your favorite myth? Eros + Psyche, Icarus and the sun

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves? i love poetry hahah...cant think of any rn

61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received? id love any gift given 2 me as long as they wont harm me or anything lmao n i dont think ive evr given anything too stupid. well.. idk if this is stupid tho like i sent flowers thanking my ex for ‘helping me live’ well aft we’ve blocked each other off cos the end to the relo was js daaamn toxic lmao

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind? nope

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be? music i do spotify n im pretty particular ab organizing my playlists i guess. my books im alright with as long as theyre just stacked properly no problem

64: what color is the sky where you are right now? prolly rly dark blue cos its 12 am

65: is there anyone you haven’t seen in a long time who you’d love to hang out with? a lot tbh cos ive rly been focusing on stuff internally

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like? daisies, sunflowers, n baby breath here n there

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel? somber i guess maybe a tad bit nostalgic?

68: what’s winter like where you live? heeella cold not cos of the temperature itself but the winds thooo, if it drizzles evn in the slightest it feels like needles piercing through ur bones literally

69: what are your favorite board games? i like the game of life, ummm cards against humanity?

70: have you ever used a ouija board? no n never will lol

71: what’s your favorite kind of tea? the fruity kinds

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you’ll forget it? yea def lol

73: what are some of your worst habits? disappearing from people when i feel strong emotions

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns. they’re small but they’re so full of love, full of life, full of strength, and full of care for others, they’re the type of person who will seek their goals till the end despite obstacles and still be able to not lose their warm heart on the way. they put so much thought and care to every aspect of their life even when in the past they have been handed some bad things, and i adore them for that.

75: tell us about your pets! none :( wish i have a cat though

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t? hahahhaah

77: pink or yellow lemonade? pink!

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub? neither sometimes i think theyre weird sometimes cute sometimes weirdly cute lmao

79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you? write up 24 things they love about me to stop me from hating myself

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why? white. no but if i had to id say white anyways lol cos its a blank canvas

81: describe one of your friend’s eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of. i dunno uhhhh her rounded eyes which seemed to at first glance, harbor plenty of wonder seemed to be weighted by many untold secrets, the traces of which could be found when she erupts into laughter where the wonder would manifest itself in the form of small stars in the dark of her eyes.

82: are/were you good in school? meh. i try

83: what’s some of your favorite album art? weirdly i like cigarette after sex’s one cos its so simple yet telling

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones? planning on getting an evangelion one, another heart one, a sunflower one, and prolly a ghibli related one

85: do you read comics? what are your faves? manga? naruto 4evr LOL

86: do you like concept albums? which ones? hmmm thinkin of dpr live’s IAOT

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives? lord of the rings, harry potter, one of ghibli movies lol

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy? i think impressionism is very cool evn tho i dont do it myself

89: are you close to your parents? eeeeee

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities. Melbourne is a wonderful city where many things could coexist in one--happiness and sadness, camaraderie and loneliness, hot and cold, quiet and full of life, productive and relaxed, bursting with unfocused energy yet incredibly organized, and for many reasons it’s become one of my favorite cities, and definitely my favorite to live in.

91: where do you plan on traveling this year? no plans tbh lol maybe home?.......japan? heheheh nahhh

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch? it depends lol mostly i guess drowns my pasta in cheese

93: what’s the hairstyle you wear the most? i always wear it down, either straight or wavy

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday? a friend of mine

95: what are your plans for this weekend? stay in most likely, do stuff

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot? 100% procrastinate lmaoooo

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house? ISTG, jkjk INFP, leo sun aquarius moon cancer rising, ravenclaw

98: when’s the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it? im alws meh ab hiking tbh lmao 

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them. Long Slow Distance - NCT 127, Four - Sleeping At Last, idontwannabeyouanymore - Billie Eilish, Stop This Train - John Mayer, Digital Lover - Crush

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why? 5 years into the past so she’d stop focusing her life around anybody else but herself

[originaldetectivesheep]

A Life of Riley Part 4: The Dumptrucks of the Gods ch 4

Chapter 3

IV

With all the work that we had to do in the lab over the next two weeks, I almost forgot about Mel and the fish – Mel and her bizarre grinckle-reducing station that turned out to be, exactly as Carolína must have half-suspected, dug in to the machine room under the undergrad lab members' condo.  She was down there, under a fume hood with a gas mask and a kitchen knife, probably making the ghost antsy by stealing its food to run through her essentializing processes, and after we'd finished getting all of the rest of the dislocator parts out of the machine room, we were back day and night in the lab, finishing the assembly as Riley converted prior versions of the dislocation machinery into this new so-called Raging Potato.  I slept under the drill press again, missing Simon terribly, and in every waking moment I ate, drank, sat, fidgeted and daydreamed high-energy physics and circuit design.  In a fugue of machinery noise from everyone working around us mixed with abrasive Ash Borer and Netra echoes from the buds on the top of my ears, I worked and reworked the abstract mathematical calculations required to parse through the state space, built DIs and cannibalized old printer cables into control harnesses, and fabricated random chunks of metal to Riley's inexplicable, incomprehensible blueprints.  

We were all in; all of us, Carolína and Sajitha and Riley and me switching on and off through every single part of the Potato's subsystems from control software to turning bolts in the outer housing, and because the work was so great, and Riley was so adamant about its completion, we ended up impressing the others: Leo assembling parts together, running harnesses and checking cables, and Remy building the larger parts of the frame together and checking the composition of our few coolant or hydraulic systems, making sure there wouldn't be a corrosion or fault risk once the horrific energies we planned to operate at started thundering through this imposing pile of metal and wire wrapped around the better part of a thermonuclear bomb.  There was well more than enough work for all of us – even as we got the frame assembled and the control systems built and integrated, there was always something more to do: automation routines that needed optimization, heavy-duty power cables from the capacitor cells in to the reactor that needed to be audited and repaired, more capacitor power supplies that just needed to be built and sealed and tested for function.  Check it, test it, rebuild it, repeat, continue.

I was in the middle of one of these cycles adding in a few functions to the control software for the power-transfer circuit board that was going to manage the dump-in of the initiation energy for us – there were too many supplies and not enough cables to do this by hand – when Riley brought me out of my trance, banging on the top of my monitor with a wrench.  "Yuping!  Yuping!  Wake up!  Are you done with the commit on the state-pathing decider?  What are you working on?"

I blinked and pulled my earbuds out.  "Yes, finished; commit is done back and build is building.    Making new control break in power-transfer onboard controller; almost done."

Riley held up a hand.  "Don't bother.  What we have should be good enough – if the lab doesn't melt when we shoot this off, we'll think about improvements for v2.  For right now, I need you to back up your station onto the department cloud share, and anything important that you have local on your phone or a flash drive, any paper drawings that you have notes on that you didn't put over to digital anywhere, you need to come over and throw it in Leo's duffel bag."  I stood up, following Riley's thumb back over to the doorway, where Carolína was struggling with a stack of rolled-up paper schematics and how to fit them into a barely-large-enough duffel that looked to already have a couple laptops inside.

I leaned back over and started the backup, then ejected my thumb drive and took the headphone cord out of my phone.  "Okay," I said, "Only drive and phone, not much on them, but why?"  Riley was already heading back over, and I followed, hoping for some kind of explanation before I got there.  There was a strange tang in the air, a taste even beyond the usual strange tastes we got in the lab from ozone and atmospheric metal pollution – a feeling like something was about to happen, like we were about to cross over a border.

"Your phone goes in the bag because I want to insulate us from observer effect," Riley said, shuffling at the insides of the duffel to make room, "and we're doing the backup and loading in everyone's removable data because I'm like eighty percent sure that after we go up, any state that we transition back to is going to be one where we smashed the Potato right up through the goddamn roof, and the lab is going to be wrecked."  I pulled up, stunned, thumb still on my phone, and Riley noticed, hastening with more of the explanation.

"Mel texted me a couple minutes back, and the grinckle potion is good to go.  So, we're going.  I know there's stuff that we want to fix, that we want to get improved, but we've been more or less ready to start up the Potato for most of the last fifteen hours, and it just happens that Mel is done with the fish stuff right when we're coming up on a flyby window where we'll have a relatively less-shitty path up to the ship.  I'd prefer to go in another three hours, when they'll be on their closest approach, but apparently there is some garbage about the fish chemicals having to be fresh that would make that harder – I don't pretend to know chemistry, much less alchemy, so I'm taking Mel's word on this one – and so we're going now, or at least as close to 'now' as we can get all our shit together.

"The cannon is loaded.  There are a couple of our modded nailguns already inside.  If you want to take a machete or something to mess up any aliens in person, you can go and take it.  Sajitha's downstairs picking up confined-space rebreathers from her co-workers in Facilities in case the oxygen concentrations inside the grinckle spawn areas are shitty.  And Melanie is on the way over with this filterized and essentialized or whatever theoretical pure concentration of grinckleness, which according to the stuff she was putting out in alternative journals about ham and crap, probably ought to modify our state coherence enough that a path to the grinckle originating point will be doable with our energy budget if we can get a close enough approach."

I was trying to think this through, to put all the pieces together, and with that, I could finally speak.  "Riley," I said, "so – plan is – plan is start up Potato and go to space?  To stop grinckles by fighting alien?"

Riley nodded, like there wasn't anything wrong or crazy in that sentence at all.  "Yeah, that's about the shape of it.  Maybe we'll be able to rip them to bits with the cannon and that'll be it, or maybe the satellite is an automated probe that someone else somewhere else is using to strew grinckles for the lulz, but if there are aliens on this alien satellite or alien spaceship, we're going to go kick the shit out of them till they stop.  You think we're not set up for it? I think that between the five of us we should have things pretty well under control: the nailguns aren't that great, but Remy's a taekwondo champ, Carolína's a mean hand with a machete, you're not so bad with one either, and I certainly wouldn't want to be in front of Sajitha when she's got her brass knuckles and a mad on.  Maybe some molotovs would help, but I dunno if we've got the time to buy gas, or if they'd burn in that atmosphere."  As usual, Riley was looking at this as a purely operational problem, with any ideas about the wisdom of going to space in an iron bucket by shifting its quantum reference frame to go fight aliens in the first place completely ignored.

"Five?" I asked, "Not Leo?"  I wasn't looking to try and talk Riley out of this plan, or to poke holes in it – I certainly didn't have a better and smarter idea for us or anyone else to do something about something that wasn't just in orbit but discontinuous with the observed local quantum state – but if I was going to go to orbit strapped in on top of a nuclear bomb, I wanted to have as much information about what we were trying to do as I could get.

"If you haven't noticed, it is kind of super cramped inside the Potato," Riley said, nodding over at the massive pile of steel and cables hogging most of the middle of the lab, "and even five is pushing it, but we can fit, and I need as much skills as we can lift up. Honestly, I really wish that I could leave you here and take Leo, because you're the only one on the crew that's really attached to anyone not stuck in it with us, but even with the autotune, you've got the best hand for state coherence out of all of us.  We're going to friggin space pasted on top of a self-containing tokamak: there is zero room for error here, so I've got to take the best, no ifs ands or buts.

"If we had the spare power and the internal volume, I'd want to take Leo, too," Riley continued, slapping him on the shoulder, "but we don't, and so he's got another important job down here: not just holding our stuff in the short term, but maybe holding onto the lab in the long term.  I'm not gonna say 'if anything happens' – if the engine's got something screwy in it that we couldn't get out with the diagnostics, well, that's a megaton and change of a physics package in there, and all our component atoms are gonna end up looking for new jobs real quick.  But if we don't turn this campus into a glowing hole on startup, and something happens later, then in that case, some future day when the administration wants to fund an AP lab again, then Leo is, not just by accident, exactly who I would want as a designated-survivor to continue the traditions of the Applied Physics lab as we are – not as we were, as we are – I'm not planning on getting any of us killed, or crushed by the roof, or marooned in space, not if I have anything to say about it." Leo still gulped at this; looking at him, I wasn't quite sure whether he was getting emotional at receiving Riley's trust, or about to have a panic attack thinking about what might go wrong when we started the reactor.

"You can, and you really should, take some time and like text or maybe call Simon," Riley said, nodding over at me unconcerned.  "We've got some time before Mel gets here with the grinckle juice, and I know it's not fair to put this on you with like, just today.  Just make sure that you get your phone in the bag, and you get your coveralls on before we have to load up."  I nodded and took a few steps off sideways towards the isolation fridge.

I opened up the phone contacts to call Simon directly, because I didn't want to end up vaporized and the last thing I said to him was something about making sure we ground up that one last avocado for guacamole before it went completely mushy.  The phone clock was showing 13:10, though; by now he was teaching a class, and if I called him, it would take him out of his class, and take him out of himself, and he'd be worried sick about me because I'd called instead of texted and that meant that I was worried, that it was not just possible but likely that I would actually end up dead in space.  I took a deep breath, and another, in and out.  I thought about what we were going to do, the state that the Raging Potato was in, everything we'd built and all the problems that we'd had, all the things that we fixed; where the last little bits were that we might have improved or reinforced if we had another day – the urgent ones that we might have been grinding on right now if we had another hour.  I knew everything – nearly everything – in this jumped-up dislocation chamber backwards and forwards, and in my view, everything was coming down to the very same thing.

There was exactly one point of significant difficulty in this entire system.  There was, in a high-level analysis, only one thing that could go wrong.  It would be hard to move the Potato into orbit by directly pathing across time-sequenced quantum states to displace it in x-y-z, but it was possible – it was what the dislocation circuits were kind of built to do.  If we had to board an alien ship, the atmosphere might be crap, but I knew enough astrobiology just from living with an astronomer that there were practically no atmospheric mixes that were both friendly to any of the possible energy-transformation paths associated with complex life and not fixable with a confined-space rebreather.  No, if something was going to go wrong, really wrong, it was going to go wrong from the start, when we dumped ninety gigajoules of energy into a decades-old nuclear weapon and crossed our fingers that the fusion reaction would start burning in exactly the way it was supposed to in order to contain itself, rather than expanding aggressively and immediately like every other hydrogen bomb of its generation.  That was it – that was the only part we hadn't tested forwards and backwards.  If the Ceiba worked as designed, we could go to space, and I would probably come back in one piece.  If it just blew up, there wouldn't be any time for regrets – and Wetmore Hall was only a couple hundred meters away, well inside the primary fireball at the yield Riley was estimating. If we went, we would go together.

I thumbed down to open a new text conversation and punched in my message:

> riley has me kind of stuck on a lab thing > I probably can't make dinner, out too late > and might be dangerous > well, little bit dangerous > so if something happen, remember, I love you

I held the power button down on the side of the phone, and walked back to toss it in the duffel.  Simon probably wouldn't see it until the end of his class, but it was okay: it would be less time for him to be worried, and if I could do that for him, I would.  Leo zipped up the bag around the phone, and I picked up my coveralls to start getting ready.

There was kind of a stir from out in the hall as I pulled the top part up to put my arms through; I looked back, and immediately saw why. There were people passing in the halls, and Mel Wolfram had come through the middle of them carrying a large thermos bottle wrapped in biohazard caution tape and wearing an army-surplus gas mask.  And not wearing it on top of her head, wearing it on the front of her face – it was Mel's hair and Mel's lab coat, so I could know it was her and not some cybergoth or something doing public performance art, but I had no idea how campus security had managed to not see her and decide she was a biological terrorist.  I zipped up quickly to get back with the others and get whatever Riley wanted with the contents of the bottle done before the police showed up.

This turned out not to be a thing: Riley hustled Melanie inside the lab, then securely closed the door behind her.  "Yuping, Remy, bring it in; Leo, you probably want to back off a little if you don't have a gas mask.  It's better if you stay inside for this part and then get clear with the bag later.  Speaking of gas masks," Riley continued, turning to Mel as she started cutting away at the tape around the thermos with a pocketknife, "what the hell?  I thought this was the deal that you would come up here with the stuff under containment.  And it at least looks like it is – why the mask on?"

"It is under containment," Mel replied, her voice muffled and modulated by the rubber mask and the charcoal filters, "but you can't be too careful.  It's metastable short-term, mostly, but if it let go in the car, I wouldn't've had time to pull the mask down and probably would have crashed into something."  The caution tape and what looked like several layers of plastic shopping bags were cut through, and the thermos bottle was now clear enough that she could start opening the top.  "And it's not just the smell – as it turned out, the best carrier compound for the Lebensfisk is high-proof tequila, so a significant spill would also be packing enough alcohol fumes to knock out a horse." This was sounding immediately bad for us as well as abstractly horrible – especially since Riley was scrounging up five mugs or cups or plastic screw caddies.

"Well, all right," Riley said, obviously not feeling it, "what matters is that you're here, not how much cop aggro you did or didn't pull on the way.  Hold off on pouring for a second; I've got to explain this to the crew, and if it's that bad I don't want to have it sitting out breathing while I convince them to stop wibbling and drink it."  Melanie nodded, keeping a hand over the bottle's screw-off plug, and the rest of us looked around at each other in open dread and horror as Riley began the explanation.

"So before you durfing mud turtle impersonators go and lose all your shit meeping about ham potions and 'scientifically ludicrous' and 'self-intentionally toxic' and other crap, look, this is the rules. Melanie has consumed a lot of her time and her effort and your basement demon's grinckles in order to make this valorized attunement solution, which she is calling Lebensfisk because she invented it, she gets to name it, and in recognition of that achievement, we are going to do shots with it before we fire the capacitors that are loading right now into the Potato and get moving."  I shot a quick look back at the capacitor banks; Riley must have started them up while I was getting changed, but they were loading in, the lights on the indicators showing them ramping on and on towards full charge.

"And I know, that's where you're gonna go next, omagawrf, you're gonna do shots and drive a nuke-powered high-energy relativistic Faraday cage to space.  Right, smart.  No. Look, it is one shot, nobody here is that lightweight, and we're gonna be lifting off by autotune anyway, there's no way that human beings could manage the state transitions manually until we get clear of the atmosphere and there's less particles to care about.  That is the point of the autotune, to handle state displacement in a 3-space-shifting frame of reference."  Riley took a deep breath and stabbed down with two fingers at the workbench.

"The point of this Lebensfisk thing is that when we intake it, in some form like this with the tequila carrier that gets the right concentrations in in the right way to make them biologically available – I'm stressing that it's done this way to not poison us, so can it – we shall attain a degree of elemental grinckleness that will make us stickier on states with high grinckle prevalence than would otherwise be the case.  This will help us conserve power as we approach the alien ship, because once we get above the atmosphere, that thing is going to be, relatively speaking, a goddamn grinckle gravity well, and we are going to effectively fall down the state space through it and then light up their shit."

"A grinckle gravity well," Carolína interrupted, her forehead in knots like she was having trouble wrapping her brain around how horrifically weird this whole idea was.  "A sort of philosophical presence turning into a fundamental force, which we tune to by magic. By magic fish tequila."  She was speaking for, I think, all of us – all of the rest of us who were struck dumb by how idiotic and unscientific this was, even in comparison to all the intensely strange and dubiously possible things that we usually did around the lab.

"Look, do not call it magic," Riley said, obviously put out, "this is a scientific institution and we are going to do goddamn science with this fish potion.  It's not magic: say rather 'experimentally indeterminate theorized applications of unverified principles responding to inadequately-investigated problem domains'.  We reason under incomplete information all the goddamned time; I don't know why this is special or why you're kicking about it."

"Because, Riley, the last time someone drank one of Mel's meat alchemy things, she had to go and get her stomach pumped," Remy answered, his voice cracking and hoarse.  "And that was with a neutral carrier – we're at college, ain't you heard that just tequila by itself is kinda constantly awful?"

"Mel had to get her stomach pumped because she drank a friggin gallon of the ham potion – you try drinking a gallon of something with that much salt in it and see how you feel," Riley shot back.  "This is a shot. This is for like today – it is not a whole life rejuvenation or in this case grinckleization treatment.  You will pound a shot of the Lebensfisk tequila – we will all pound a shot of the Lebensfisk tequila – and it will probably be awful, but we will get on with it and fire up the Potato and get over it.  Like I said: this is going to be hard as crap, and we have no room for error, so every corner I can work, I will do it – and if I'm doing it, then you're going to do it for state consistency."

This wasn't getting anywhere.  Riley was going to make us drink this fish poison, one way or another, and the only thing that would change would be how mad we all were at each other before we stuffed ourselves into a packing crate sitting on top of a hydrogen bomb.  I put up my hands.  "Okay," I said.  "Okay, it's bad. Will probably be very bad – might make worse.  But if works, then it's better – and if doesn't, we'll live.  This lab, we build cannon – we overvolt capacitor even if sometimes melt down – we find nuclear weapon lost in jungle and take home.  Can drink a fish cocktail that was in blender.  This is maybe least dangerous, least dumb, least bad thing we do today – let's do it, let's go."  I dropped my hands onto my knees with a slap, in resignation as much as anything.  The rest of the lab was looking at me; they still weren't any more enthusiastic about drinking Mel's grinckle thing, but at least it looked like the fight might be over.

Sajitha shrugged, and put her hands on her head.  "Fine!  Fine – all right, I'm in.  I'm with Yuping: this is going to be awful but it's got a long way to go before it's the dumbest thing we've done this week.  Let's just shoot 'em and forget this was ever a thing." Remy nodded, and Carolína took a deep breath to pull herself together.  Riley lined up the cups, and Mel braced herself over them, like she had to gather herself, even under her gas mask, before she opened up the bottle and released the horrifying stench inside.

Of course, she would – she'd made it, she knew what she was getting into.  The bottle opened, and the rest of us were almost bowled over by the indescribable brain-gnawing tidal waves of rotten, fermented fish stink somehow married to dead-at-ten-paces rotgut tequila fumes and blended up with the back-alley effluvium of a paint factory that decided illegal dumping fines would be cheaper than hiring someone to drag their garbage away.  The smell was so violently bad that I almost wondered if one of the capacitors had shorted, and was throwing a fatal arc through me, rewiring all my senses backwards before it burned the nerves completely away.  But no, I was not dead – I was still alive, and that meant that there was still my own tumbler of pureed dead grinckle sitting out in front of me.

I grabbed for it, and somehow around the weird blue and purple shadows that were blotching my vision from the fumes and the stench, I could see everyone else having the same idea: the longer these stupid, vile, insane beakers of poison were sitting on our lab bench rather than setting our guts on fire, the longer they were going to stink up the lab.  I threw my head back and slammed the shot – the double shot, there was more liquor in this cup than there had any right to be – at a single swallow, feeling the tequila hit my stomach like an exploding cannon round, and I fought down the urge to puke as the dirty-rutabaga-skin taste of a hundred or a thousand grinckles charged back up into my throat, back up into my nostrils.  This had better work – this had better frigging work – because if it didn't, there was nothing on earth that could redeem this obscenely stupid shot.

I braced myself on the bench, breathing hard; Remy was holding his stomach, wincing, Carolína had her coveralls ripped open at the neck, squeezing her throat and grimacing, and Sajitha, fists clenched into white knuckles, was shuddering with her head vibrating at a frequency we could barely get out of our power drills. Even Riley was looking knocked out, bleary-eyed and coughing, and Leo was backed up to the door, wide-eyed, like he couldn't wait to get the hell out of this place, the hell away before Riley came up with anything worse.

"All right," Riley said, back in command despite a last spluttering cough, "all right – that's it, that's it, let's go.  Get yourselves squared away and get in the Potato – we're gonna hit full power in about a minute and there's no need to wait a second longer than we have to.  Leo, Mel, get clear, close the door, lock up behind you; no observers, no observer effect."

"Good luck," Leo said, his voice showing exactly what he thought of our chances, as he closed the door behind them; inside the lab, Carolína had got her coveralls back together and her rebreather onto her belt, so I could give her a boost up into the Potato and climb up the Ceiba housing into the chamber after her.  Riley finished checking the cable connections from the capacitors in to the reactor initiator a few seconds later, and followed me up, locking down the panel to close us in.

"Sajitha, turn on the interconnect panel."  Sajitha turned on the panel that Riley meant, and because there was barely any way not to see it, how close we were all packed inside the metal dislocation cell, we all saw the capacitor banks all coming up green.  "Right – we're coming right up on full power.  Carolína, open the power-connection interlock, that's the key under your right elbow."  Carolína turned around, sort of, and fiddled with something in the wall of the chamber.  Something clicked up by the ceiling, and Riley opened up a metal latch cover to reveal an impressive button with a heavy idle-contact shield all around it.

"If you want to grab on to someone or something," Riley said, glancing over at the interconnect readout panel, "now would be a great time.  Otherwise, you're probably going to be holding mostly the floor until we get the hang of this.  Full power – firing in three – two – one –"  Riley's finger stabbed the jumpstart button, and ninety billion joules of electrical power dumped in through the ignition manifold, summoning Hardtack Ceiba forth from its sixty years of silence.  Just like that – that was it.

Chapter 5