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sope-and-shine · 5 years ago

Text

Christmas Special: Day 25

-> BT21 X Reader(ft. OT7) -> BT21!AU -> Word Count: 5k -> Summary: Spending Christmas alone wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but Christmas with 7...somethings was not what you had in mind. -> Warning(s): Mild Language

A/N: Did not edit

After weeks on end of no rest and constant work, the boys are finally on their way home from their busy schedules. They’ll be able to go home and see their families this year, and it was a well deserved treat after everything they’ve done this year. So much work, and they’re about to reap they’re last reward.

Jimin yawns, stretching in his seat of the car next to Jin, “I am ready to get some sleep.”

“Yoongi is 10 steps ahead of you.” Hoseok laughs, casting a side glance to the man next to him passed out against the glass.

Jeongguk sighs, “I’m just excited for all the food my mom is going to make.”

The car pulls up to their apartment and they all pile out, some trying to wake up from their nap, others thanking their driver for getting them home safely, and then walking up to their apartment for a good night's sleep. They’ve all had long days, so seeing their front door is like a dream come true to end their night. Taehyung, in a burst of energy, runs ahead of his brothers to throw the door open.

“TaTa!” He cries, shoving his shoes off of his feet in a hurry and running down the hall to find his cuddly alien. The heart shaped creature pops his head out of the kitchen, a small smile appearing when he sees the very excited human. His small arms grow longer and start to wiggle in want as he waddles to give the tall boy a hug.

The others join the two in the hal, Namjoon being the last to close the door. Taehyung has his alien friend in his arms and their cheeks pressed together, “I have so much energy now that we’re home.”

“Are the others awake?” Hoseok asks. He takes a few steps towards Taehyung and TaTa before he spots Mang sitting peacefully on the couch on top of a sleeping Koya. He shrieks, “Mangie!”

RJ pops his head out of the kitchen just like TaTa had done, his bandana covered by Jin’s frilly pink apron. On the top of his head, Shooky sits nestled in his fur enjoying how high up he his. However, when the small Cookie catches sight of the stone-faced man staring at him, he jumps and tries to flee.

“Hey! Don’t be an asshole, get back here!” Yoongi chases after his friend, quickly catching the small trouble maker in his hands before he gets too far. Lifting him up to face level, the angry cookie decides to let it be and hop on the man’s shoulder out of reluctance. Yoongi nods, “That’s what I thought.”

The others greet their friends as well, taking seats in the living room to watch the boxing match Cooky had turned on while they were gone. Namjoon’s moved Koya from his spot on the couch to rest on him instead, fixing his ears when they fall to the couch.

“Are you guys excited for Christmas next week?” Jimin asks, playing with the floppy ears on Chimmy’s hoodie while he not-so-quietly plays the harmonica on his lap .

Cooky pauses his play boxing with Jeongguk to raise a fist in excitement. He - just like the others who had given their response - were very ready to spend their holiday with the boys. After being away so long on tour, they were happy to finally spend time together again.

“I - for one - am overjoyed to have a break.” Yoongi sighs, moving Shooky from his head - where he’d climbed just to annoy the other - back to his chest, holding him there with a firm hand despite his protests to be let go.

“What are you guys going to do with your time?” Taehyung asks, popping his head over the top of TaTa’s larger one.

“My brother wants to go ice fishing, so I was thinking about going with him.” Jin says, taking a sip from the tea RJ had made.

“Why ice fishing?” Hoseok asks. He tilts his head at his older friend, and Mang - the loveable, copycat he is - does the same.

Jin shrugs, “No clue. But how bad could it be?”

“Cold? No one around? The possibility of no fish at all?” Yoongi lists off all the possible things that could be wrong with ice fishing, snorting when they all are indeed terrible, “You’re right, nothing terrible at all.”

“I’m going to take Tannie out to get new toys.” Taehyung says, changing the subject.

Hoseok nods in approval, adding in his own plans, “I was thinking of taking my mom and sister shopping.”

“My mom wants to go ice skating.” Namjoon adds.

The boys continue talking, and sharing their holiday plans, but the friends around them begin to realize that they had not been mentioned in any of them. Chimmy - arguably the cutest - turns to Jimin - easily the most gullible member - and tilts his head in confusion.

“What’s wrong, ChimChim?” Jimin asks, pulling the little bean closer to him.

“They wish to know if they will be joining the festivities of the holiday as well.” VAN speaks up. The men in the room jump in surprise, Joon accidentally dropping one of Koya’s ears in the process. They all turn to the robot in the corner of the room, not exactly sure when it arrived. “Will they also be joining you on your vacations.”

“It’s best if all of you stay here in the house.” Namjoon sighs, he expected this. Part of him knew they’d want to join them as well, and he could understand why. But the outside world was no place for them.

“The people outside won’t like you guys.” Jeongguk says. He didn’t mean it maliciously, or in anyway to hurt them. But it’s when he sees Chimmy and Mang frozen in horror that he realizes he should have phrased his words better.

Shooky makes a sound of displeasure from where he sits on Yoongi before sliding off of the man and storming off to another area of the house. Yoongi sits up to look after him, “Shooky!”

Chimmy and Mang follow after, running in zig-zags so they won’t be caught by their friends. Jimin sighs, “Chimmy! He didn’t mean it like that!”

“Mang!”

Soon, the rest of the little friends they shared an apartment with had toddled off after the others, even Koya after sliding off of Namjoon’s lap from his slumber and taking his ears with him. The men left in the room sigh together, turning to the youngest with looks of disappointment.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Jeongguk defends, shying away from the glares he’s getting. The other’s shake their heads in disappointment. They’d have to find some way to make it up to the little guys after the holiday was over.

----

Halfway across the world, in a small 1 bedroom apartment outside of the city, you sit on your balcony enjoying the chilly night air. Unlike most of your friends and the rest of your family, you were still stuck all by yourself for the holiday. You have work to do, people to please day in and day out. Unfortunately for you, there was no time for you to go home and see your family this year. Then again, it wasn’t like they really wanted to see you anyway. Your dad made sure to tell you that when he talked to you over the phone about you visiting.

He called to ask if you were coming to see them for the holiday, and when you told him that you wouldn’t be able to make it, he was furious. He treated you like you weren’t a grown adult paying for your own apartment and living on your own taking care of yourself. He seemed to always have something to say that just burst your bubble when you felt you were succeeding as an adult.

That’s what brought you out here to enjoy the peace and quiet of the night.

“He just doesn’t get it…” You mutter to yourself. You look towards the sky where you can make out some of the stars if you squint hard enough. “What is his problem?”

Unbeknownst to you, you have a quiet listener above. Van, having been upset for their friends, had taken off to find someone also in need of friendship for the holiday. He’d searched far and wide, but none that truthfully needed someone. You were Van’s fifth distress call that he heard, so he came to see what you were in need of.

“I just want to show that I’m good enough…Why can’t he see that?” You ask to no one, not having any clue to your silent watcher. You wipe a stray tear and pull your knees to your chest. “He’s the reason I don’t even want to go home. I just want some love”

Love? Van knew where love was. His friends had plenty of love to give! His friends could help you easily.

Your phone rings, and your quick to compose yourself to answer it, “Hello?”

“Hey, are you coming to spend Christmas with me?” Your friend asks, checking in on her offer from the other week. You had been talking to her about what was going on in your life and she was quick to offer you a place to go, but you didn’t want to make anyone else suffer with you.

“Ah...no...I have a lot of work to do…Maybe another time.” You offer.

She sighs, “Are you sure? I have the room!”

“No! I’m sure…” You assure her, wiping another tear that falls from her eye.

“Okay...Have a great holiday!” She cheers.

“You too.” You say halfheartedly, hanging up sometime after. You stare at your phone in sadness, “You wouldn’t want me around anyway.”

Van’s eyes flash a blue, sadness taking over his senses. He can feel your pain and the need for love. He has no doubt in his AI brain that you need love, and he knows just the people for the job.

He flies off, not seeing the way you slump over and let more tears fall from your eyes.

---

After your crying session was finished, you had returned to your room to release the rest of your dignity in the safety of your sheets -Your neighbors probably enjoyed your crying too much anyways. But now, waking up to the morning light you feel refreshed and not as moody as when you fell asleep. You’re so relaxed, you almost don’t even notice the loud crash that comes from your kitchen.

Almost.

You sigh, annoyed that your cat - Mr. Whiskey - was probably in the kitchen looking for food and knocking over your pots and pans again. You throw off your blankets and leave your room to scold the animal in question, but you stop dead in your tracks when you see creatures you’d never seen before littering your apartment. In front of you is a dog(?) holding the vase your best friend gave you as a housewarming gift, where the vase sat sits what looks to be a cookie waving its arms around. Your coffee table has a koala sleeping on it, an alpaca with a bandana around its neck drinking a bottle of tea you had stocked in your fridge. Running around your coffee table is a blue and purple horse with a pink bunny chasing behind it. And standing next to your window, is a blue, yellow polka-dotted, heart head something trying to pick up the glass. You’re unsure of how to feel, but your body has no problem reacting for you as you drop to the ground.

The rowdy creatures making a mess in your living room stop what they’re doing, turning their attention to where you lay passed out on the floor. They stare at your limp body in confusion, wondering when you had woken up. You were asleep when they got there, but they must have woken you up.

Well, they can’t just leave you there.

A few hours later, you wake up to something wet on your right hand and a weight pressing down on you. Opening your eyes slowly, you make out what looks to be the koala snoring away on top of you. In between the both of you is a blanket you kept laying over the top of the couch for your movie nights, keeping you warm.

“That wasn’t a dream…?” You ask yourself. You look to your right and see a small bowl of water placed beside you, your hand having been placed inside the bowl. You pull your hand out and sigh, thankful that the stuid trick hadn’t actually worked on you. You look around your living room and finally take notice of the creature you thought you’d dreamt alive, sitting around looking at you. You sit up fast.

“What the-Sorry.” In your haste to sit up and get a better look at the things before you, the koala on top of you fell off of you and onto the floor below. Feeling guilty for practically throwing the poor thing, you reach down to help him back up. But your thrown completely off guard when you see that his ears have fallen right off of his head. You scream, “Oh my god! What the hell is going on?!”

The blue, yellow, and red one looks to you and begins trying to explain what’s happening, but everything he says seems to be in another language that you have no knowledge of. It’s enough to spur even more shock out of you.

You shake your head trying to gain some of your sanity back, “What are you saying? What are you guys?!”

Next to her, the Alpaca with the bandana begins walking to you with your phone in his hand. He has a sweet smile - he shouldn’t have a smile at all, but that’s not important at the moment - but the fact that he’s been using your phone is concerning.

“How did you get into my phone?!” You ask accusingly. First they break into your home, break your things, and now they’re using your phone?! You’re absolutely livid until the alpaca before you turns the phone off and grabs your hand to use the thumbprint. He gives you a smile before returning to what he was doing in the first place, and you’re suddenly left feeling sorry for yelling.

“Oh…” Is all that you say. You wait and watch what he -or she - continues searching until they’ve found what they’re looking for. So, when he turns and shows you a video of them with a group of real people, you grow a little softer. You can’t help but wonder, ‘Are they lost?’ Korea is a long way to travel, and your knowledge of Korean is limited to the small phrases your college roommate had taught you.

“Would you understand me better in Korean?” You ask, iffy on your pronunciation. Thankfully, the dog shakes his head slowly, his floppy ears twisting around his head until they fall back to his side where they had started. You nod in understanding, but it does little to calm your nerves. “Why are you here? How did you all get here? Will you get off of that?!”

In the corner of your eye, you’d kept seeing the pink bunny moving around. But it was the last straw when he began hanging off of your potted plant by your balcony door like it was a swing. His ears droop and his happy grin turns into a disappointed pout as he hops down. The horse hops down from your loveseat and waddles over to the slightly open window to point out the window you keep open just enough for Mr. Whiskey.

You shake your head in disappointment. You knew this situation would come to light sooner or later, but this exact situation wasn’t what you were expecting, Either way, these...things couldn’t stay. “You all need to go home.”

Around the room, there seems to be an unspoken sadness that each one of them holds, enough to let you know that they aren’t lost at all. These poor little things left their friends because they wanted to...

“Why don’t you want to go home? They’re you’re friends, right?” You ask. It wasn’t as if they could answer your questions in depth, but it was worth a shot to gain an understanding.

The alpaca takes your phone again, asking for your thumbprint so he can get into it again. He types away, taking his time so he can do everything correctly. You’re surprised when your phone speaks the words he wants to say, “Friends don’t want us for Christmas.”

It was sad, but you knew how that felt to an extent. But if they were anything like you, it was them that didn’t want to be with friends for the holiday. You sugh, “I doubt that’s true.”

The small cookie that you thought you’d definitely dreamt up climbs up the alpaca and takes the phone right out of his hands. It’s almost unreal when he begins typing, and you’re even more shocked at what plays from your phone. “Friends abandoned us because they don’t like us and we’re not cool to be around and they’re embarrassed of us those apples. apples. apples. Apples.”

“Well, you need to go back whether you want to or not! They’re your friends, and they’re going to be worried about you. They love you…” You say, trying to explain the importance of them going home. Sure they may not feel welcome, but that doesn’t mean they should just...not...go.

Yeah, maybe you all were more alike than you thought.

“My friends are looking for a friend to spend the holiday with.” A voice speaks up. You look up just in time to see another creature - half grey and white, round head, and ‘x’ and ‘o’ for eyes - smash the rest of your window and enter on its own. Being your second surprise of the day, you do the next logical thing.

You pass out again.

----

Back home - in Korea - the boys are waking up to begin parting ways. Jimin and Jeongguk were the first two to wake up as they needed to travel all the way to Busan for Christmas. All is the same, nothing unusual compared to what they’re used to. Then again...nothing unusual was completely unusual itself. Normally, Shooky or Kooky would be making a fuss in the kitchen by now with RJ making something to eat while ignoring them.

“Have you seen Cookie?” Jeongguk asks, poking a hole in the banana milk he took from the fridge.

Jimin shakes his head, taking a bite out of the toast he made, “He wasn’t sleeping with you last night?”

“No, I thought he was upset with me.” The younger explains. He sighs, remembering how uset the bunny was yesterday. He hoped by now that he wouldn’t be upset anymore, but it looked like he was still not happy with him by any means.

Jimin shrugs, taking another bite of his breakfast, “Chimmy didn’t want to sleep with me either.”

“Don’t you want to say goodbye though?” Jeongguk asks.

“Yeah, but we can’t force them to talk to us if they’re unhappy.” Jimin stands up from his chair and puts his plate in the sink. Passing Jeongguk, he places a hand on his shoulder, “They’ll be fine in a few days. As soon as we get back from vacation.”

“Yeah, okay.”

----

After waking up for a third time, you’ve calmed down quite a bit. Now, the only thing you’re worried about is getting these rowdy creatures out of your home and back to their own. You sat on your couch scrolling through plane tickets trying to find the cheapest one possible to Korea. Van and the others had already tried to help you fly back the way they had flown to you, but you vetoed that idea before you got dropped.

Now, it was just a matter of time before you’d have to figure out how to get these boys back to their boys. The first step is the plane ticket, but the second step is finding where exactly these boys lived. Why you had to go made no sense at all, but these little nuisances wouldn’t let you out of it or they’d stay - how they threatened you using your phone.

The whole notion was absurd to you, buying a plane ticket just to return 7 - or 8 - rowdy little creatures that you weren’t really sure were what you thought they were back to South Korea where they live with the most popular boy band in the world. They were only guarded by high end security, and they were only followed by millions of women everywhere.

Not a problem at all.

Now, sitting in your seat next to RJ and Chimmy - who are dressed up in a trench coat pretending to be human - while the others are hidden in your carry ons or on the strange duo next to you, you try to relax while you wait to land. This was the craziest thing you’ve ever done, and there was no way this would actually work. There couldn’t be any possible way for this to work.

But it had to.

-----

The door to the dorms slams shut, alerting the boys who didn’t have the chance to leave yet that Jimin had returned. He was already in Busan by the time Namjoon called him to tell him the news and he was pissed to know his plans had been changed for him.

“Well, ‘hello’ to you too.” Yoongi teases, getting comfortable in his seat before they would have to leave.

“Don’t talk to me right now.” Jimin glares at him, taking a seat on the couch opposite from him.

Namjoon sighs, “Look, I know this is inconvenient bu-”

“Inconvenient? I only told my whole family I’d be home this year.” Hoseok laughs, slightly pissed himself.

“It’s just one performance.” Namjoon sighs.

“One performance that we have four days to prepare for and no heads up that we shouldn’t tell our families to expect us for the holiday.” Yoongi argues.

“Guys, please…” The leader begs.

Jeongguk sighs, “Namjoon, there is no way you are not upset about this.”

“I’m upset too, but what more can we do?” He asks.

“Fight! Yell! Argue!” Jimin says.

“Then why haven’t you?” Namjoon asks in retaliation. Jimin looks at him with the last bit of rage he has left before downcasting his eyes. “Exactly…”

“Have you guys seen TaTa?” Taehyung asks, changing the subject.

Jin sighs, rubbing his face with his hands, “I haven’t seen any of them since Guk scared them off.”

----

“I swear to God, little horse man, come out of that bathroom right now!” You yell, banging on the bathroom door. You’d gotten off your plane about an hour ago and grabbed an uber, keeping the boys hidden. But as much as you wanted to get them home, you also wanted to sleep. Now, you were banging on the bathroom door of your hotel trying to get the little rascal to come out. “I have to pee!”

The others were doing their own things: The cookie, the bunny, and the alpaca watching TV on the floor, the heart dude was drawing on the notepads the hotel had, the koala was sleeping on the couch, and the dog was jumping up and down on your bed instead of his own that most of them would be sharing. You just wanted to pee, was that too much to ask? You wanted to spend Christmas in your own bed with no one else - Well, not really, but they didn’t know that - but no one seemed to get that.

The bathroom door opens and the little horse comes waddling out with toilet paper on his foot, adjusting his apparent mask that you had no idea he had.

Yeah, you just needed to pee and get some rest at this point.

----

Despite the inconvenience of having to go in and learn a new performance in time for Christmas, it was still a relief to be able to come home to their own beds. Despite the rough hours of rehearsal and the want to be with family again, it was nice to be with friends they could all consider family.

Only, they were missing pieces of their little family.

“When are they going to come back?” Taehyung asks, cuddling further into Jimin.

The older boy sighs deeply, “I don’t know.”

“I’m getting worried.” Hoseok admits, pausing his scrolling on his phone.

“What if they never come back?” Jeongguk asks, mindlessly playing with the pillow on his lap.

Namjoon sighs, “They will. We just have to be patient.”

“I just miss them so much.” Taehyung whines.

“Isn’t there a way to make this go faster?” Jin asks.

----

“Can we go any faster?” You ask the uber driver while your stuck in traffic. According to your GPS, the address the alpaca put in for you was only a few blocks away, but this traffic was putting you an hour behind.

The man sighs, this being the 3rd time you’ve asked him, “Ma’am, I’m stuck in traffic.”

Your leg starts bouncing, becoming inpatient the longer you sit here. You’re too close to just be sitting here. You shake your head and grab the door handle, “We’ll get out here.” You and the boys exit the car and start your journey to the Hanam Hills Estate, trying your best to get there before the snow comes down. You push through even when Shooky and Koya crawl onto your back to sleep peacefully while the rest of you trek further and further. It’s only when you get to the security gate do you realize that is an impossible mission.

You stop before the box, already knowing this was a dead end, “How am I supposed to get in there?! There’s no way they’re going to let me in there when I’m not-” You pause your rant when you see the bunny bumping fists with the security guard, as well as the alien and the dog. He lets them pass and the others follow. So you, with the other two on your back, nod to the guard as you pass.

“I’m with them…” You nod, using the best Korean you can as you pass. You follow behind blindly, thanking yourself for wearing boots and not sneakers as you pass every unknown celebrity home with strange creatures that apparently know people well. And then you come to a tall building where the others have stopped, waiting for you to catch up.

“Is this really it?” You ask, staring ahead at the building above you. The boys push forward towards the door and you follow, climbing up two flights of stairs before you make it to another door. Your heart boy extends his limbs - another skill you didn’t know he had - and he rings the doorbell three times before returning to his form.

This was it.

They were home.

They didn’t need you anymore.

“Well, I got you boys back so I’ll just be going.” You say, ready to get out of there when the alien himself grabs onto you and holds you in place. You squirm in his hold, “Hey, let me go, you crazy alien!”

“Hello?” The door opens and your met with a tall man sporting shorts and a white, mario graphic tee. His confusion turns to happiness when he realizes just who is in front of him. He immediately runs to your alpaca friend, “You’re home!”

You hear other voices from behind him in the home. “They’re back?”

“Chimmy!”

“Mang!”

The group that you had seen your boys with appears right in front of your eyes, each one smiling wide at the sight of their friends coming home. To think that they thought they were embarrassed by them. They looked like they were in love with them.

One of them looks directly at your little alien, and then looks to you attached to him. Him nod, “Hey.”

“This is (Y/n).” You scream at the sudden intrusion of the robot, holding on tight to the creature that just won’t let you go. You weren’t used to this. How could anyone get used to this? “She was lonely and needed our friends like they needed her.”

“Thank you for ratting me out to strangers.” You say, annoyed with the damn piece of technology. Looking to the men at the door looking back at you, you shrug, “So, maybe their presence wasn’t terrible, but I had to get them home where they belong...with you guys.”

The man in front of you smiles a boxy smile, throwing his arms open and pulling you into a hug similar to the one you’re already in. Only this one pulls you back and forth against your will.

“Taehyung, you’ll make her sick!” A voice calls.

“Hyung, you shouldn’t shake her that much.” Another scolds.

You sigh when the man stops shaking you, “Yeah, I should really get going anyways.”

“But you came all this way, you can’t just leave.” He argues. The alien around your neck nods and he laughs, “See? TaTa even wants you to stay.”

“TaTa? So, that’s your name, you little rascal.” You tease, shaking the creature attached to your hip. You smile, “It’s cute.”

TaTa smiles at you, only then deciding to slide off of you and join his friends who are already going inside to their home. The boys that they left, however, remain. The one that couldn’t keep his hands to himself smiles at you, “They really don’t want you to leave.”

You shake your head, “I don’t belong here, though.”

“Says who?” Another boy asks. He throws you a smile, and you see a peak of his dimples. “You should at least spend Christmas with someone.”

You don’t know what made you do it, the smiles, the pleas, or the rowdy little things at the door giving you puppy dog eyes, but you did it.

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sixteenandsixteenhundred · 4 years ago

Text

The Guy Who Saved My Life

Summary: This is an alternate epilogue to The Sun ending I wrote after several days of joking that I could’ve written a better plot (I'm not saying this actually is better it's just a silly little wish fulfilment piece I thought I would share). There are a few things that don’t exactly adhere to the world of 2077 simply because I think the stuff in the original TTRPG and Cyberpunk Red is cooler. This is also a reminder to everyone to go and read or re-read Never Fade Away.

Words: 2.6k

Warnings: Spoilers for several character deaths, as well as events that lead up to The Sun ending.

A/N: Is this a crappy first draft with minimal editing? Did I pressure myself to finish and post it before 2020 ends? Did I spend valuable time writing this when I have three unwritten essays due in soon? The answer to all of these questions is yes.

Also on AO3 here

‘Hello, Night City! Drag your asses out of your sad sack and turn to face the sky!’ The radio chirped as V pulled herself out of bed, greeted by the afternoon sun. She was on autopilot, completely lost to the chaos of the city below until the cold shock of the shower snapped her back to reality, if that’s what you want to call it.

‘But for all you sitting in the gutter, looking up at the smog, here’s someone you ain’t heard in a while - Johnny Silverhand!’

‘Off.’ V barked, but it came out ragged and broken. She coughed. Blood. The radio fell silent.

‘Good afternoon, V. I trust you had a restful sleep.’ Alva’s voice was flat, empty, it scratched at the back of V’s skull and sent tension down into her fists.

‘Not now, Alva.’ A quiet chirp and the AI fell silent. Obedient.

Finally, a moment to herself - she hated it. Hard to be alone when you don’t recognise the bitch in the mirror.

She remembered the stench of loneliness that had bombarded her at Kerry’s mansion. There was only one thing in this damn apartment that didn’t smell just the same. She pulled the first clothes she saw off the floor and managed to dress herself before reaching for the samurai jacket Rogue had given her.

She hadn’t worn it all week, but then again, she hadn’t done much that warranted getting dressed since everything had happened, since everything had gone wrong.

It didn’t make any sense. Johnny had been a construct in her head; he’d never worn the jacket and she’d never been able to smell the guy, but instinct told her it smelt of him - cigarettes and tequila and something she couldn’t even place. She pulled the sleeves down as far as they would reach, hoping to cover the tattoo.

Reality called again, or rather Emmerick did. ‘Ey, boss.’ Hearing a familiar voice helped more than she thought it would; hurt a hell of a lot more too though.

‘Em, shit. Couldn’t ask a favour, could I?’

‘For you? Anything.’

‘Tell him the job’s off the table.’ V waited for a response but wasn’t surprised that she didn’t get one. ‘No renegotiating, not some other time, just call it off.’

‘Sure thing,’ Emmerick replied. ‘Couldn’t come and do the honours yourself?’

‘I got something else I wanna do, besides, you can handle him; don’t be afraid to put some lead in him if he starts anything; fed up of that schmuck.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

‘Call me with anything urgent; I’ll drop by in a day or two. Oh, and call off Del, I won’t be needing that ride.’

‘Will do, boss, and no worries, take your time.’

Her agent flickered off as she hung up. Before heading out she grabbed the pistols, Pride and the Malorian, and donned Johnny’s aviators to hide her bloodshot eyes.

It wasn’t far to the alley behind Misty’s - V’d made sure she stayed in the neighbourhood, even if she didn’t amble about it the way she used to. The kids loitering on the steps gave her a wide berth, staring wide-eyed at NC’s newest legend, snickering behind their hands when she stumbled and slipped on a flyer. She managed to catch herself, but her heart sank as she waited for a snide comment that never came.

Viktor wasn’t shocked to hear the door open or the metal grate give way, but he sure was surprised to see V stood there before him. Neither he nor Misty had heard from her other than a quick call to say that she was alive, and rumour had it she’d only shown her face at The Afterlife, her own damn club, once or twice.

‘What can I do for ya, V?’ Viktor stood from his chair and welcomed her in.

V’s eyes scanned over the room for a moment, eyebrows creasing in confusion.

‘Fuck, Vik… I dunno.’ It hit her that she had no idea why she’d come here. ‘Don’t know why I’m anywhere anymore.’ V perched on the end of Viktor’s desk and closed in on herself; eyes cast downwards, shoulders hunched.

‘Sorry for bothering ya, Vik.’

He stepped forward and put a sturdy hand on V’s shoulder, crouching to make eye contact. She started a little at the touch but didn’t pull away.

‘Don’t worry about it, you’re always welcome here kid.’

‘Thanks.’ The gratitude was hushed and heavy with regret.

Viktor pulled his friend into a hug, and, for a long moment, there was only the muffled drone of the city above them.

Tears began to creep down V’s face, emerging from behind the glasses.

‘What the fuck am I gonna do, Vik?’ V posed a question they both knew he couldn’t answer.

She kept talking just to fill the silence of the clinic. ‘I killed ‘em all Vik. Rogue’d be alive if it weren’t for me.’

Viktor kept his arms tight around her, scared if he let her go she would crumble. ‘Rogue was great; she just had bad luck, nothin’ anyone could have done. Blood isn’t on your hands.’

V’s memories of that night were hazy but one stood out, crystal clear. Rogue’s body, limp and contorted in the bowels of Arasaka tower, Pride still clutched in her hand, finger on the trigger. The thought of it made her feel nauseous.

‘Isn’t it Vik? Whose is it on? What about Jackie and T-Bug? Evelyn Parker? Takemura? Scorpion?’

Her final question was choked out in a whisper. ‘What about Johnny?’

Viktor knew what he could say - Johnny Silverhand died 55 years ago to a bunch of greedy corpos - but he knew that wouldn’t do jack shit with the state she was in right now.

The heavy grate screeched open again. Nerves fried to shit, paranoia scratching at the nape of her neck, V turned, in one swift movement pulling the Malorian on whoever had intruded. She held the pistol in her left hand.

Shit.

Misty froze, raising the cups of coffee she held in each hand. ‘Only me, V.’

V holstered the gun, cursing under her breath as Misty approached, setting down one of the cups beside Viktor.

‘Sorry, shouldn’t’a barged in like that.’

‘Nah Misty, shit, I’m the one who pulled iron on ya.’ V removed the aviators and pulled her hands across her face. Her eyes were bloodshot and bruised, her skin gaunt and lifeless. Calling her a living legend might be a bit of an overstatement.

The buzz of NC set in again. The silence between the three friends was oddly comfortable, considering none of them had a damn clue what to say to each other.

A minute of shuffling and sparse eye contact passed before V put the glasses and a brave face back on.

‘I’m gonna head outta the city for the night.’

‘V...’ Misty wanted to stop her but knew she was pushing her luck.

‘I can’t stand it here; it’s all so loud. I gotta delta.’

‘Shit, can’t pretend to know what’s going through that head of yours. Just take care of yourself out there, kid.’ Viktor downed the last of his coffee before it had a chance to go cold.

‘I’ll drop by again tomorrow, promise.’ V’s voice was laced with guilt, desperate for her friends to stop worrying about her. ‘Managed to get some sleep last night, ya know.’

Misty and Viktor saw a familiar blank look set on V’s face as she gazed passed them, looking for something no one else saw.

‘Hey, that’s great V.’ Misty chirped.

‘Just as I was slippin' outta my head, finally, I-‘ Fuck. What was she doing? What did she think she’d say next?

There are some things you don’t tell anyone. The fact that, just as she lost consciousness, right arm stretched out across the empty bed, she could've sworn she’d felt cool, smooth chrome resting in her hand? That was top of the list.

Scrambling, tripping over her own words, V was quick to change the subject

‘You guys ain’t gotta word about me.’ She gave a single, hollow laugh. ‘Hell, I stormed Arasaka and made it out alive, or so I’ve been told - I’m untouchable.’

Viktor and Misty mustered their goodbyes. They wanted to reach out, ask if she wouldn’t stay in the city for tonight, they could all grab a pizza and talk crap until the sun came up again. But V had said it best herself; she was untouchable.

Jackie’s Arch was waiting for her back up in the alley. Sure, it wasn’t the safest place, but V preferred to keep it locked up back here. Besides, I wasn’t like keeping something in a garage has ever deterred a thief, she knew that from personal experience. She dragged the bike out onto the street and it revved to life, radio crackling over the noise of the engine.

‘-Significant roadblocks up in Northside. NCPD are aiming to clear the roads quickly but that’s about all the information we have. For now, we’d advise against any unnecessary travel through the district and we’ll keep you up to date with any breaking information.’ The announcer’s voice fizzled out and a song took its place. V sat for a moment, calculating, before speeding off ‘round a corner, cursing under her breath.

Autopilot set in again, and V was barely sure of where she was until a red light flashed up ahead of her. She considered just running it, but at the last moment, the bike came to a screeching halt.

Looking around, V recognised a few buildings, washed out and faded. She hated this part of town – never any good jobs and always tinged by some sad shadow of the past.

The lights turned orange but V’s eyes were instead cast down an alleyway, and she couldn’t resist the pull that drew her in.

Resting the Arch against a wall, V’s slow steps took her deeper into the shadows. The buildings here were old, concrete beginning to crumble, plants sprouting through the cracks – it was odd to see anything in this state. Sure, it wasn’t V’s favourite place to be but it was hardly bad real estate, and wild plants growing in the middle of NC? Not a typical sight.

Enchanted by the story this place wanted to tell her, V pushed on until she met the end of the alley. Looking up at the building before her, a memory stung in her chest. She’d never been here before.

There were no signs left to indicate what this place might’ve been, but plants burst from every escape they could find, moving gently in the wind to beckon V inside.

Then it hit her. She half expected that blue, glitching static, ‘Relic malfunction detected’ flashing across her vision, but there was only silence.

It was too quiet for Night City, even the noise and chaos seemed to have abandoned this place.

The doorway had collapsed in on itself a long time ago, a tree now twisting its way around the rubble, barring V from entering. She clambered up a rusted, crumbling fire escape, working on a muscle memory that wasn’t hers until she was two floors up, facing a boarded window.

It didn’t take V much effort to pry the brittle wood away from the building, which was just as well considering she had little left.

Through the window, V stood in a small entrance hall, remnants of a staircase falling away behind her. Putting a hand against the door before her, every ounce of strength evaporated from V’s body. She took a deep breath, a moment to calm herself down. In a weird twist of fate, she’d’ve given the world to see his flickering blue form right now.

Putting her weight against the door, V pushed into a larger room. Plants had escaped from their ornamental pots and weaved across the floor, a few even daring to entangle themselves in the gaudy chandeliers that hung from the high ceiling. Beneath the plants and long-settled dust, booths with plush, syn-leather seats were scattered with bottles and glasses, a few cheap pistols even scattered about.

Whoever abandoned this place was quick to delta. Probably had no idea they wouldn’t be coming back.

In the centre of the room sat a grand bar with a pale marble countertop. V pulled herself up to sit atop in, tucking her legs under her as she looked down onto the lower counter. It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for.

A skewered receipt confirmed what she already knew:

ATLANTIS

3:16AM, MARCH 8TH 2024

The order was cheap vodka shots and a slew of cocktails she’d never even heard of, but that didn’t matter.

Dismounting to rain the cabinets below, V pulled out a bottle, the label long since faded and worn away. V tossed the lid onto the floor and took a long swig. Even then she couldn’t put a finger on the strange liquid, but it burned her throat and that was good enough.

V set the bottle down, trading it for a rusted corkscrew that had been abandoned half a century ago.

‘If these walls could talk…’ With that she deltaed, jumping down from the fire escape and pacing back over to the bike.

Somewhere along the way, the city gave out to dusty open fields, old Petrochem plants dotting the barren landscape. V pulled the bike off to the side of the road and began wading through the scrap and rubble to a familiar slab of concrete.

V wondered if anyone had been here since their visit; the metal sheet lay undisturbed bearing her messy inscription:

JS 2023

She flipped the sheet over – there was less graffiti on this side – pulled out the corkscrew, and got to work.

The sun had long since set by the time V was finished. She carved a thin channel and stuck the cool metal into the dirt at the edge of the concrete. After propping it up with a few worn-out tyres, she took a step back to admire the new inscription. Her penmanship, if you could even call it that, was shoddy, but she couldn’t care less if anyone else could read it.

Across the bottom were four names; T-BUG, SCORPION, EVELYN PARKER, GORO TAKEMURA, each with 2077 scratched below them. Above them were three more. On the left of the sheet;

RACHEL ‘ROGUE’ AMENDIARES

2077

STILL THE BEST

The right-hand side read;

JAQUITO ‘JACKIES’ WELLES

2077

“THE ONE THING WE CAN’T DO IS BE AFRAID OF OTHERS”

She’d left the central space blank until last, as if leaving it unwritten made it any less true. But eventually, she’d managed it, tears falling onto the metal as the night’s chill crept into her bones;

JOHNNY SILVERHAND

2023/2077

THE GUY WHO SAVED MY LIFE

Finally, V dug a small hole in front of her plaque, dirt embedding itself beneath her nails. She drew Pride and placed it in the earth before her. The Malorian sat heavy in her hand, and as much as she willed her hand to set it down beside Rogue’s pistol, every inch of her body resisted. The gun found its way back to the holster at her hip.

After burying Pride, V laid back on the concrete, looking up at the few stars that were visible once you left the city. She pulled a cigarette from a pack in one of the jacket's pockets – she certainly didn’t put them there – and lit it.

Closing her eyes, V tried not to think about the body below her. She pulled the jacket tight around her against the chill of the Badlands, alone.

#cyberpunk #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk 2077 spoilers #cyberpunk 2077 alternate ending #alternate ending

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violethowler · 5 years ago

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Patchwork Quilt: Reconstructing Voltron Season 7 Episodes 9-11

It’s already known that the 7th season of Voltron: Legendary Defender was edited late in production due to executive meddling. The EPs already confirmed this was the entire reason The Feud even exists. They also mentioned in an interview with AfterBuzz TV that some episodes were moved out of order as a result of the additional content.

In my meta “Cutting and Padding” I mentioned how Trial by Fire did not exist prior to the editing and that the inclusion of content that gave the MFE pilots more screen time threw off the pacing of the season’s Earth Arc. After some further thought, I thought it would be a good time to go into more detail and outline how the parts of S7 that were added in during the editing can be distinguished by the continuity errors they create within the entire set of episodes.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

Reconstructing Know Your Enemy

Summary of August 2018 Episode

The Paladins crash land on Earth in a stolen Galra starfighter, and scout the city near Galaxy Garrison. Due to their ignorance of the occupation’s patrol patterns, they are quickly overwhelmed and pinned down by Sentries before they are rescued by the arrival of MFE Pilots Griffin and Rizavi.

The Paladins are then taken back to the Garrison where Lance and Pidge are reunited with their families. Seeing Lance being teased by his niece and nephew reminds Hunk of spending time with his own niece and nephew, and he is distressed to learn that his family are being held prisoner behind enemy lines. Iverson apologises to Shiro for having him strapped to a table and makes amends with Keith over the latter’s departure from the Garrison. Shiro grieves over Adam’s name on the memorial wall before the team’s debriefing.

Team Voltron is brought up to speed on the state of Earth’s occupation and the Garrison’s resources. Sanda suggests turning over the lions to Sendak and when the Paladins insist they have a fighting chance she counters with the fact that they don’t have any knowledge of the enemy. Pidge and Allura realize that since Sam copied all of the data from the Castle of Lions, they have access to Sendak’s memories.

While they get started on finding a way to access them, Keith consoles Hunk over the latter’s worry over his family, telling Hunk how brave he is for going on in spite of his fears. Hunk and Keith sneak out with the aid of Griffin and Veronica to look for Hunk’s parents. Allura and the Holts begin interrogating Sendak’s memories, learning that when a planet refuses to give up, it is annihilated. When Sendak’s AI reveals this was how Altea was destroyed, it becomes too much for Allura, who leaves the room.

Veronica connects with her resistance contacts from The Last Stand: Part 2, who report on what they’ve managed to find on where Hunk’s family and the other prisoners are located. With a rescue impossible for now, Hunk asks if he can at least get a visual of where his parents are.

While cooling down from interrogating Sendak’s memories, Allura offers Shiro a new prosthetic arm to replace the one he lost during his mind-controlled fight with Keith in The Black Paladins.

As the prisoners are being escorted from the work camps to the detention facilities, Hunk spies his parents among the crow and vows to save them.

Breaking Down the Edits

Continuity Error 1: Hunk’s flashback of his niece and nephew depicts Hunk in his S1 outfit prior to his enrollment at the Garrison, inconsistent with the Young Hunk designs used in S7E1 and later in this episode.

Continuity Error 2: Veronica says in the mission briefing that all resistance outside the Garrison has been wiped out. Despite this, we se her resistance contacts from The Last Stand: Part 2 helping to lead her, Griffin, and Keith to where Hunk’s parents are being detained.

“Small underground pockets of resistance have attempted to do so with varying degrees of success. Eventually all were discovered and systematically wiped out.”

Corrections

The sequence where Keith and Hunk sneak out to find Hunk’s family would be removed in order to resolve the continuity error of the resistance still being around. Without this sequence, the Significant Looks Griffin and Keith give each other throughout this episode have no purpose in the narrative and should be removed. With the removal of Veronica’s resistance contacts, their introduction via the salvage mission should be removed from The Last Stand: Part 2.

The flashback of Hunk cooking with his mother should be placed where the flashback of his niece and nephew currently is. The group hug with Lance’s family would remind Hunk of the group hug he shares with his own family in the cooking flashback. Having one Hunk flashback featuring each of his parents highlights the focus on how his two great loves, cooking and engineering - come from spending time with his parents.

Missing Scene 1

In place of Griffin And Keith Significant Look #2 during the scene where Lance and Pidge are reuniting with their loved ones at the Garrison, I believe there would have been a short scene where Colleen thanks him for saving Matt’s life and then gives him a warm welcome home.

Shiro would have then asked about Adam before the scene transitions to Shiro looking at his ex-boyfriend’s nameplate on the memorial wall.

This scene would follow up on the fact that the camera focused on Colleen’s reaction when Sam told the Garrison about how Shiro saved Matt’s life in the arena.

It would also serve as a callback to Pidge’s line in S1E5 Tears of the Balmera that her father’s mission crews were like family, reassuring us that even though we don’t hear or see anything about any living blood relatives, Shiro still has family on Earth.

“Dad used to tell me how close he was with his crew members. They were like family.”

Blank Space

The music as the paladins look at the ruins is more appropriate for an episode-ending “wham” moment than recycling the ending of The Journey Within, so the first three minutes of this episode would be better served as the ending of The Last Stand: Part 2. Taking that segment out leaves the remainder of Know Your Enemy with a run-time of 15 minutes.

In order to bring that up to the standard 22 minute run time (Excluding the 1-2 minutes for the opening and the credits), we need to pull footage from what is now S7E10 Heart of the Lion: the recon mission to the Zaiforge Cannon base, and the two briefing scenes before and after the mission. (Veronica’s line about the base info being “cross referenced with resistance intel” would likely be eliminated to maintain continuity with the “all non-Garrison resistance has fallen” narrative).

The first reason for this is as a point of contrast: the episode opens with the Paladins scouting the city near the Garrison without backup or knowledge of the patrol sentries’ attack patterns, and are quickly overwhelmed before Griffin and Rizavi come to the rescue, and would end with the Paladins performing recon with backup and updated knowledge of Sendak’s occupation, successfully infiltrating the base undetected.

The second reason is timing: the recon mission taking place at night indicates that from the Paladins’ arrival on Earth to the post-mission briefing take place in the course of one day, with the Paladins summoning their lions being indicated as taking place the following day.

The third reason is the thematic relevance to the title: Revealing that Sendak plans to destroy Earth with the Zaiforge cannons should be a follow up to Sendak’s AI declaring that any planet that refuses to surrender will be destroyed.

Rearranged Scene 1

Aside from the flashback of Hunk cooking with mother, the scene where Allura offers Shiro a new prosthetic arm should be the proper ending of Know Your Enemy. Not only does the music feel more appropriate to transition into the end credits, but having Know Your Enemy end with Shiro being offered a new arm when the next episode opens with him waking up from the operation to attach it flows smoother than ending the episode with the paladins deciding on their plan to summon their lions.

Music for the briefing scene

Music for the arm conversation

Summary of Revised Episode

The Paladins scout the city near Galaxy Garrison. Due to their ignorance of the occupation’s patrol patterns, they are quickly overwhelmed and pinned down by Sentries before they are rescued by the arrival of MFE Pilots Griffin and Rizavi.

The Paladins are then taken back to the Garrison where Lance and Pidge are reunited with their families. Seeing Lance in the middle of a group hug from his family reminds Hunk of group hugs with his own family, and he is distressed to learn that his parents are being held prisoner behind enemy lines. Iverson apologises to Shiro for having him strapped to a table and makes amends with Keith over the latter’s departure from the Garrison. Colleen welcomes Shiro home and proceeds to thank him for saving Matt’s life. Shiro asks about Adam and goes to see his ex-boyfriend’s name on the memorial wall.

While they get started on finding a way to access them, Keith consoles Hunk over the latter’s worry over his family, telling Hunk how brave he is for going on in spite of his fears. Allura and the Holts begin interrogating Sendak’s memories, learning that when a planet refuses to give up, it is annihilated. When Sendak’s AI reveals this was how Altea was destroyed, it becomes too much for Allura, who leaves the room.

After briefing the Garrison-Paladin alliance on what they’ve learned from Sendak’s memories, Pidge, Kieth, Griffin, Allura, Kosmo, Lance, Kinkade, Veronica, and Hunk are sent out to perform reconnaissance on the nearest Galran installation. With backup and better knowledge of the patrol sentries’ attack patterns, they manage to evade the base security and discover that Sendak is building Zaiforge cannons. After evading the sentries, they return to base to plan their next move.

Determining that the best way to stop the Zaiforge cannons from launching is to attack all six cannons at once, in response to Sanda’s concerns about the inability to get to the lions, Shiro reminds the other Paladins that they can use the bonds with their lions to summon them over long distances. The MFE pilots are assigned to fly 4 of the Paladins to the other bases before going to attack the sixth, while Veronica offers to drive Lance to the one nearest to the Garrison.

After the debriefing, Allura meets with Shiro and offers him a new prosthetic arm to replace the one lost in his mind-controlled fight with Keith.

Reconstructing Heart of the Lion

Summary of the August 2018 Episode

Shiro awakens from the surgery to attach his new prosthetic arm. The arm’s power source malfunctions, causing him pain before Allura replaces it with the crystal from her crown.

After Shiro recovers, Allura and Pidge relay what they’ve learned from Sendak’s memories, cross referencing with Veronica’s intel about 6 Galran installations across Earth. Pidge, Kieth, Griffin, Allura, Kosmo, Lance, Kinkade, Veronica, and Hunk are sent out to perform reconnaissance on the nearest Galran installation. With backup and better knowledge of the patrol sentries’ attack patterns, they manage to evade the base security and discover that Sendak is building Zaiforge cannons. After evading the sentries, they return to base to plan their next move.

Allura comes to see Lance off before they depart, urging him to be safe out there. Veronica repeatedly teases Lance about his crush on Allura. The Paladins successfully link up with their lions, although Lance is delayed when Galra fighters attack his and Veronica’s rover and he’s too worried about his sister’s safety to summon his lion until the last moment. The Paladins are too late to stop the launch of the Zaiforge cannons, and Galra warships ambush the paladins and MFE pilots at each base, Admiral Sanda having given up the plan to Sendak in the hopes of sparing Earth.

Breaking Down the Edits

Missing Scene 2 After the scene where Shiro gets his new arm, there should be a shot of Honerva reacting to the events of that scene. The color saturated style used when Shiro begins freaking out has only ever been used to indicate when Haggar attempted to take direct control of him, signalling to the audience that Shiro’s pain in this scene is her doing and foreshadowing what she will do to Luka in S8E1 Launch Date.

This also follows up with Macidus’ comments that no one has seen Haggar in years, establishing dramatic tension as the audience wonders when Haggar will strike next now that she knows Voltron has returned. With Team Purple Lion’s estimation that the last 7 minutes of Shadows were originally the cliffhanger of Lion’s Pride: Part 2, while the rest of Shadows was split between Part 1 and 2 of The Last Stand, this scene helps to fill in the missing pieces of Season 7’s B-Plot: “Where in the Universe is High Priestess Haggar?”

We are first introduced to the Altean Robeast via flashbacks to the destruction of Olkarion in Battle Scars. We don’t know what it is or where it came from.

In The Ruins, Macidus reveals that Haggar has disappeared to parts unknown.

The Last Stand: Part 1 and The Last Stand: Part 2 shed light on her actions prior to her disappearance, as argued by Team Purple Lion’s Reconstruction videos.

A scene where she attempts to take out Shiro and fails creates suspense as we wonder what Honerva will do with the knowledge that Voltron has returned.

The arrival of the Robeast at the end of Lion’s Pride: Part 1 confirms our expectations that she will attack when the Paladins least expect it while also confirming that the attack on Olkarion was her doing.

Having the reveal of the Altean pilot be followed by the last third of Shadows finally answers where she went and what her plan is next, while her communication with Sendak reveals that she had been orchestrating the occupation of Earth the entire time.

Continuity Error 3: The Last Stand: Part 2 established that only a small portion of the Particle Barrier needs to be deactivated in order to allow the MFE fighters to take off, and shutting the entire barrier down in what is now S7E11 Trial by Fire was what prompted Sendak to start attacking the Garrison. Yet in the August 2018 version of Heart of the Lion, the entire barrier is shutting down with none of the characters displaying any fear that Sendak will attack.

Corrections for Heart of the Lion

All of the scenes with the fully deactivated particle barrier need to be removed. I’m sorry, Allurance fans, but that includes the scene where she goes to see him off because that’s when the barrier is shown coming down. Because of its part of a trio of scenes in the Earth arc focused on them and removing it disrupts the flow, that means the other two shots of them have to be taken out as well.

Reused Footage 2: The opening shots of what is now Trial by Fire are repeated from the ending of Heart of the Lion. The only examples of shots being repeated across multiple episodes were to establish to the audience that either A) the new season was beginning immediately where the cliffhanger of the previous one left off (S2E1), or that a set of episodes was occurring simultaneously (S2E2, S2E11). While the ending of the August 2018 version of Hear of the Lion is a fairly strong cliffhanger, it was not the end of the season. And since Trial by Fire was not taking place simultaneously with Heart of the Lion, there is no narrative reason for these shots to be repeated.

The ending of Heart of the Lion

The opening of Trial by Fire

Merged Footage

Blank Space: With the briefing scenes and recon mission moved to Know Your Enemy and the scenes with the Particle Barrier down cut out, that least just under 11 minutes of footage in Heart of the Lion. But in order to determine which parts of Trial by Fire can be incorporated into Heart of the Lion, we need to first cut out all of the continuity errors and plot inconsistencies in Trial by Fire. As I mentioned in my “Cutting and Padding” meta, Trial by Fire did not exist before the editing of Season 7. Now, I will go into detail on how.

Dismantling Trial by Fire

Summary of the August 2018 episode

With the Paladins captured, Shiro demands to know what weapons the Garrison has available. With Sendak’s fleet out of range and the MFEs back at the Garrison recharging, Shiro takes charge and focuses their energy on getting the Atlas up and running.

Sendak reneges on his deal with Sanda and throws her in the brig with the Paladins before ordering his fleet to move the Zaiforge cannons into position. Coran and Sam toss ideas back and forth on how to power the Atlas, while the Zaiforge cannons return to orbit. When Veronica confirms that the cannons are going to converge over the Garrison’s coordinates, Sam and Coran come up with a plan to divert power from the Garrison’s particle barrier in order to power the Atlas. The entire Garrison is evacuated while the MFEs prepare for takeoff to hold Sendak’s fleet at bay.

Sendak notices the deactivation of the particle barrier and orders a full scale attack on the Garrison. As Galra warships bombard the base, the MFE fighters launch to keep the fleet occupied while the Atlas prepares for launch. Once the ship is ready, the hangar bay doors open. As the Atlas attempts to lift off, the power from the particle barrier proves insufficient, and the ship drops back into its docking bay.

The MFEs easily evade cannon fire from the Galra fleet, but more cruisers arrive with enemy reinforcements. As Sendak’s forces continue to fire on the Garrison, Sam laments the ship’s uselessness. When Sam mentions it would take the power of a supermassive black hole to get the ship off the ground, Coran realizes that they can use the compressed diamond made from the remains of the Castle of Lions in S6E7 to power the ship.

Another wave of Galra reinforcements arrives as the Atlas prepares for lift off. Shiro starts giving orders as the MFEs clear the air above the hangar as the bay doors open.The MFE quadron hits Sendak’s command ship with an EMP as the Atlas takes to the sky.

Hepta reports the lack of response to the fleet, and Sendak orders his lieutenant to bring them around and charge their ion cannons. Veronica reports that Sendak is preparing to attack from above. When the Atlas’ weapons come online, Shiro locks on to one of the Galra cruisers in the fleet and destroys it in a single shot.

The shockwave alerts the Paladins to the fact that the Atlas has been launched. As Sendak’s fleet surrounds the Atlas, the Paladins attempt to use their bonds with the lions to pilot them remotely. As the lions break free from the hangar, Sendak dispatches Lieutenant Hepta to kill the Paladins. While the Paladins help turn the tide in favor of the Atlas, Admiral Sanda cons her way out of her cell and initiates a firefight with Hepta in order to stall for time. Sanda is mortally wounded, but before Hepta can kill the Paladins, they fly the lions through the ship, killing Hepta in the process.

With the power knocked out in the brig, the Paladins escape from their cells. As she dies, Keith promises Sanda that they will do what she couldn’t and save Earth.

Breaking Down the Edits

Continuity Error 4: At the end of the edited version of Heart of the Lion, the MFEs were under attack at the 6th Zaiforge Launch Base at the same time that the Paladins were flying into orbit to stop the Zaiforge Cannons. Going by Hunk’s comment about the distance between the city and the Garrison, it should have taken the MFE Pilots at minimum 30 minutes to get back to the Garrison, but at the beginning of Trial by Fire they’ve somehow already teleported back even though less than that time has passed in-universe.

Continuity Error 5: Trial by Fire opens with the Zaiforge cannons already in orbit firing on Voltron. Just a few minutes later, the cannons have teleported off screen back into Earth’s atmosphere where they are shown hovering over the launch bases flying back into orbit.

Continuity Error 6: The hangar bay doors for the Atlas are shown opening twice.

Continuity Error 7: The MFE pilots launch an EMP at a Galra Warship. Sendak and Hepta are shown reacting to the ship losing power, but the Paladins are not affected.

Corrections

Eliminate the shot of the Zaiforge cannons going into orbit.

Cut out all MFE scenes and edit out dialogue that acts like they’re already back.

Remove the second shot of the Atlas hangar opening and move the first one to where the second was is in the August 2018 version of Trial by Fire.

Summary of the Revised and Combined Episode

Shiro awakens from the surgery to attach his new prosthetic arm. The arm’s power source malfunctions, causing him pain before Allura replaces it with the crystal from her crown. Through the link she used in S6E4 Honerva now knows that Voltron has returned.

The Paladins and MFEs depart that morning to link up with the Lions. Lance is delayed when Galra fighters attack his and Veronica’s rover and he’s too worried about his sister’s safety to summon his lion until the last moment. The Paladins successfully link up with their lions but are too late to stop the launch of the Zaiforge cannons. Galra warships ambush the paladins and MFE pilots at each base, Admiral Sanda having given up the plan to Sendak in the hopes of sparing Earth.

The lions chase the Zaiforge cannons into orbit and form Voltron, but the cannons strike using modified version of the Omega Shield from S6E1 to disable Voltron and separate the lions, allowing them to be easily captured while the Garrison looks on in horror. Shiro demands to know what weapons the Garrison has available, and on being reminded that the fleet is out of range, Shiro takes charge and focuses their energy on getting the Atlas up and running.

Sendak reneges on his deal with Sanda and throws her in the brig with the Paladins before ordering his fleet to move the Zaiforge cannons into position. When Veronica confirms that the cannons are going to converge over the Garrison’s coordinates, Sam and Coran come up with a plan to divert power from the Garrison’s particle barrier in order to power the Atlas. The entire Garrison is evacuated aboard the Atlas before Sam deactivates the barrier.

Sendak notices the deactivation of the particle barrier and orders a full scale attack on the Garrison. The Atlas attempts to lift off, but the power from the particle barrier proves insufficient, and the ship drops back into its docking bay. When Sam mentions it would take the power of a supermassive black hole to get the ship off the ground, Coran realizes that they can use the compressed diamond made from the remains of the Castle of Lions in S6E7 to power the ship

As the ship takes off, Sendak orders his fleet to target the Atlas and charge their ion cannons. When the Atlas’ weapons come online, Shiro locks on to one of the cruisers in Sendak’s fleet and destroys it in a single shot.

With the power knocked out in the brig, the Paladins escape from their cells. As she dies, Keith promises Sanda that they will do what she couldn’t and save Earth.

As you can see, the subplots surrounding the MFE pilots in Know Your Enemy and Trial by Fire create continuity errors that disrupt the flow of the narrative, and spread out what should have been two episodes with clear, strong pacing into a sluggish mess that spreads out over 3 episodes.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron meta #vld season 7 #season 7 reconstruction #meta analysis

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lashtoncurls · 6 years ago

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All I needed(AI)

Words: 2.6K Warnings: Death, self harm, curse words

A/N: First, let me say that May is Mental Health awareness month I’d like to say that I’m here for anyone who needs someone to talk to, you’re not alone!! And second, to thank everyone who’s been there for me when I need someone. It’s not an easy journey but thank you to everyone who supports me through the worse days. @myloverboyash specially I love you!! I cried while writing this and editing it. I hope y’all like it.

“That was fucking awesome!” Ashton walked out of stage and plopped on the couch, pulling his phone out of his pocket with a huge smile in his face. He was met with his favorite picture of her as his background, the last text from her saying she wished him a good night and good luck on the show. The time difference wasn’t bad but he knew the moment she woke up he’d be asleep, so he sent her a text.

The next morning when he woke, he noticed that the message still hadn’t been read and she hadn’t sent anything. It was weird to him because she was always a morning person, not even the best of kisses from him would keep her in bed.

“Lu, you heard from Sierra this morning?” He asked as he spooned his cereal, his other hand holding his phone.

“Uh yeah, why?” Luke looked up from his phone and straight to Ashton, his forehead creased with worry as Ashton looked out the window.

“Did she mention anything about Mia?” He was interrupted by his own thoughts, the anxiety crawling up his back unexpectedly as Luke looked back at his phone and dialed Sierra’s number.

“She didn’t say they went to coffee together like they always do, so let me check.” Ashton nodded as Luke held the phone against his cheek, their food forgotten on the small table. He watched the rain fall as they drove to the next stop on the tour, passing empty field after field.

“Hey babe, did you- wait baby, slow down. What?” Luke moved the phone from his ear and put it on speaker “Ash is here.”

“She didn’t show up for coffee so I thought that she might’ve slept in and let it be, but lunch came around and she didn’t show up for work. Linda called me to ask if I’d heard from her so Crys and I came to her place, Ash-”

“Sierra, what happened?!” Ashton was now on his feet, pacing the small space as he yelled at the phone, Sierra struggling with her words as she sobbed.

“Ashton, you need to come home. She’s being rushed to the hospital right now. It was bad, so bad.” Ashton was already on the phone as Crystal spoke and he could hear both of them break down.

Time passed in a blur as they were on their way to the closest airport in England, Ashton hiding in the comfort of the hoodie he wore. It smelled of her and he wished that he would’ve brought her along to this leg of the tour.

“Does life on the road get boring, like when you’re on the bus for hours?” The question came out of the blue as she rested her head on his bare chest, his hands running up and down her back.

“Sometimes it does. But if we’re not sleeping we find stuff to do. Mostly writing and stuff.”

“I like when we facetime, while you’re on the road.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, you know I’ve never been anywhere. I like seeing things and places.” She moved so her chin was resting on his chest and she could look at his face “Are you sure that I won’t be a bother when I come along, we won't be too crowded?”

Ashton moved her so he was laying on top of her, his weight supported on his elbows “You’ve never been and never will be a bother, baby. The bus has so many people sometimes, but it never feels crowded. You’ll make it feel like home. I’m so excited for you to come along.” He kissed her forehead and cheeks, giggles leaving her lips. “And I’ll get to have you whenever I want.” A gasp came from her as he ground his clothed erection on her before attaching his lips to hers again.

No one knew what to say, the only sound was their breathing and the clicking of keys on laptops and phones. No one dared to say a thing, because they weren’t sure what to say. They weren’t sure that she’d be okay, and that would hurt him. Sierra had given him details on what had happened and he was angry beyond belief, but mostly with himself. How could he have been dumb enough to leave her alone like he did. He should’ve asked her to at least stay at his house and not at her apartment, to not move anything until he came back. There were lots of things going on his mind as they ushered them into the airport and the soonest flight they could get.

The eleven hours on the plane felt like an eternity, and no matter how many times he tried to sleep, Ashton couldn’t get the image of her in a casket out of his mind. It hurt a lot, and he finally let the tears slip, leaning his head against Calums shoulder.

“It’s gonna be okay.” He heard Calum whisper as he stayed in the position he was in, knowing that those words were going to be enough right now for him.

When they arrived at the hospital, Ashton rushed down to the emergency desk, frantic to see her.

“How may I help you sir?” The nurse behind the counter smiled at him, and as much as he wanted to tell her to wipe off the damn smile, he only blurted out her name.

“Room 129, to the left. Her family is there.” He noticed the way her demeanor changed before he nodded and walked towards her room. Her mom and dad sat together as they watched the machines beep around her.

Ashton cringed and tears fell rapidly as he saw her body on the bed, wires and breathing tubes attached to her. His fingers brushed along her cheek as he took in her condition; her arms and face had purple bruises, there was a cut on her cheekbone and eyebrow bone.

“Sh-she’s brain dead.” Her mom barely got words out before the she broke out in sobs and left the room.

“We were waiting for you to get here. She was unconscious when the girls found her and they rushed her here. There’s too much damage and they told us a couple hours ago.” Her dad was next to Ashton before he cried into his shoulder, the pain spreading through his chest like a burning flame.

“I should’ve taken her with me earlier, I should’ve hurried the move before tour. This wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t gone back there.”

“Ash, we don’t want you to blame yourself. She was going back to your house when they attacked her. The cops made the building manager show them the tapes and the idiots were caught.” He held her hand and noticed the coldness in it, no longer the warm hand that would rub his back or run through his hair to help him sleep.

“How long?” The question slipped out, knowing that the answer was going to hurt.

“Just waiting for you. She’s a donor so the faster the better.” Ashton looked up at her dad, nodding before he walked out of the room and said he’d give him some time.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry baby. I should’ve been here to protect you, to tell you that you didn’t need that damn hair dryer. You know I love you so much right? I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone Mia, and that says a lot. Me asking you to move in was just the beginning of what was to be our future.” Loud sobs broke out of his chest as he held on to her hand and squeezed “You would’ve loved coming on tour. Paris was your dream and we didn’t get to it. I would’ve made you stay in bed with me even if you pouted. And going on walks at night would’ve been so much fun, no matter your groans on how tired you were.” Soft laughter mixed with tears as he told her more, hoping that wherever her soul was she could hear him.

Minutes later, the guys walked in and stood behind him as they watched Ashton cry and say his goodbyes. They cried with him and did the same, letting him know that they’d be there for him.

Days passed and before he knew it, it was the day of the funeral. His family came to support him and stood by him, as well as the guys. Seeing her body in the casket made it worse for him. She was gone, and never to come back.

“I have asked her boyfriend, Ashton, to speak about her.” Her mom moved aside as he went up, sharing a tight hug before he looked out to everyone that had come to support them.

“Thanks Mary. Where do I start? Mia was one of a kind. She was smart, goofy, caring and loving. From the first day I met her, I knew she was something special. It wasn’t the most convenient way of meeting, but the way she looked at me with tears in her eyes made me wonder what she was like in her good moments. My days on the road were hard, but every time I spoke to her she made it better. She took my pain and made it hers, but we filled the hole in each others lives. Not only was she an amazing girlfriend, she was a phenomenal friend, daughter and teacher. I remember some nights that one of us couldn't sleep, we made it better for the other.”

She laid in bed watching Ashtons body asleep, mind racing with thoughts of the day she’d had. No matter how much she tossed and turned sleep just wouldn’t come, and she couldn’t bring herself to let Ashton know because he already was dealing with a lot.

With a sigh, she got up from the bed and went to the kitchen to sit in front of the tv and let her thoughts carry her away.

It all passed her mind as the tears ran down her face with low sobs falling from her lips. No matter how many times she repeated that she was okay it didn’t change the way she felt. The familiar pang of pain hit her chest and she rolled up the sleeves of Ashton’s hoodie to inspect the scars on her wrists. Her fingers traced the no longer smooth skin and she could remember the times she’d done it; the feeling it gave her to numb the internal pain and cover it with the physical pain.

“Baby? Are you in here?” Ashtons deep sleepy voice interrupted her thoughts as he walked towards the couch, rubbing his eyes “What’s wrong bub?” He noticed the tear stains as she kept her eyes on her wrists.

“Couldn’t sleep.” She answered, pulling her hands out of his touch as he tried to grab them.

“You can talk to me, baby.” His hands grabbed her cheeks and she bit her lip as the tears came again and a loud sob broke out of her chest. The sadness and worry in his eyes made her want to look away; it made her want to run. Run because she didn’t want to talk about it. Run because even though he knew her past, she doesn’t want to let him know when it comes back.

“I-I can’t anymore.” She broke down in sobs as he pulled her up on his lap and rubbed her back.

“Let it out, what’s going on?” She looked up and he smiled, encouraging her to talk.

“Work’s been too much lately and you’ve been gone for a couple months. My apartment just doesn’t feel the same anymore since I spend so much time here and tour starts soon but I won’t be able to go until the school year is over so I’m not ready for that. I worry sometimes that you’ll find someone better in a different place and I’ll no longer be what you want,” She hid her face in his chest again, looking away so he couldn’t see her blush.

“Baby, I’ll always come home to you. No matter what or who, you’re my home, my person and the love of my life. You’re all I want and all I need. Please move in with me?”

“Are you serious?” Her face turned into a smile at his words, the small hint of doubt still in the back of her mind.

“Yes, the lemon tree needs someone to look after it when I’m gone.” She reached to attach her lips to his, nodding and kissing all over his face.

“Mia struggled with a lot, but she knew that this world was more than her pain. She knew that everyone loved her, and she loved. She loved deeply. That’s one thing that I’ll miss most. Her kind words and loving gestures.” He turned before her dad came up and hugged him, the tears coming from both of them.

The rest of the funeral passed and Ashton kept looking for a way out of there, it was starting to weigh down on him that he’d have an empty home now. No music and impromptu visits. No one to cuddle at night and no one to help him sleep.

Before anyone could see him, he escaped, finding himself at the place where he first met her. He smiled as the breeze messed his hair up and he could smell the ocean, just like that day. Ashton stood on the railings of the bridge before tossing his leg over and sitting on it carefully, making sure that a random movement would end his life.

He let himself think about what would’ve been; if she would get the wedding she wanted, how many kids she wanted, him going to the school for show and tell to show off his drumming. He let himself grieve, knowing that keeping the pain in would hurt more than letting go and accepting.

“Woah there, might wanna get off before you fall.” the voice startled him, his leg immediately moving back to the inside of the bridge, looking right at her.

“You go around scarin’ people who sit on bridges or?”

“Har har.” She cocked her head and gave him a smirk, sticking her middle finger out at him.

“Are you going to jump off or something? Is that why you’re wearing black?” She found a place next to him, facing the water as she placed her elbows on the wood. Ashton faced the other side, enjoying that glow of the sunset.

“I was just thinking, but now you’ve interrupted my thoughts.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“Don’t you have somewhere better to be than here interrupting my thoughts?” Ashton laughed and shook his head, her own laugh making a sound he never thought he’d enjoy again. But her giggle was somehow calming.

“I’m being nice here, asshole.” She moved back so she could face him, admiring his red hair.

“Fine, my girlfriend died and I don’t know how to make it through without her.”

“Jeez, that’s a heavy one.”

“You’re the one who asked.” He shrugged his shoulders and they sat in silence, the water and the birds the only sounds around them.

“You’ll be fine. I can tell how much you loved her, but you seem like a strong dude.” She spoke and grabbed his hand, squeezing a little.

“Uh, thanks.”

“My dad and boyfriend died in a car accident a couple years ago on this bridge because of a drunk driver. I thought my life was over. The two men I loved most on this earth taken from me at the same time. But I worked through it. It’s hard, believe me I know. But it gets better, don’t push your loved ones away either, all they’re trying to do is help you and love you.” Ashton nodded and watched as she wiped the tears away.

“I have to go.” She whispered and squeezed Ashton’s hand once again, leaving him with hope that he’d see her again.

Tags: @snapbackcake @irwinkitten @sublimehood @aspiringwildfire @5-secondsofcolor @roselukes @cakesunflower @hearts-to-the-sky @wildhearthood@ashtoniwir @lashtondaddies @burncrashbromance @singt0mecalum @cal-puddies@sugarcoated-pain @angelbabylu @5sosnsfw @asht0ns-world

#ashton irwin #ashton irwin blurbs #ashton irwin imagines #5sos #5sos blurbs #5sos imagines #5 seconds of summer #5 seconds of summer blurbs #5 seconds of summer imagines #calum hood #calum hood imagines #calum hood blurbs #luke hemmings #luke hemmings imagines #luke hemmings blurbs #michael clifford #michael clifford imagines #michael clifford blurbs

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areluctantsblog · 6 years ago

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Teacher!Tony wrong number au - Part 4

I'm super excited to post this chapter for two reasons. Firstly, because I'm introducing a few familiar characters and a sort of new one. Secondly, because this chapter got so long that I decided to break it into two. I hope it works for you all, let me know, I’m grateful for every feedback. 🙂

(part 1, part 2, part 3)

After that torturous lesson on Monday, Tony decides that he won’t text Peter Parker again. It’s no more than a bullet point in the list of reckless things Tony swore to avoid from Monday on, yet it still feels important to point out. Tony’s a teacher and Peter’s a student. Their relationship ought to be defined by their roles and even those three times they texted was enough to blur the lines and mess them up. That is, if Peter’s behaviour was anything to go by Monday afternoon. And even if the boy is all right, Tony won't forget anytime soon the disturbing reaction he had to the situation. What situation that was exactly, he doesn’t know, and he isn’t too keen on labelling it, either. Giving it a name would only make it real and that is the last thing Tony needs.

Tuesday morning Tony catches himself keeping an eye out for Peter Parker wherever he goes. It’s almost as if he’s afraid of meeting the boy. Or is it that he’s eager to? Well, Tony most certainly isn’t afraid of the boy. His own reaction, however, is an entirely different story. As for wanting to see Peter, yes, he might wish to, but only to make sure again that the boy is all right. It’s only reasonable, wanting reassurance. Helping him, if he needs to. His motivations are completely respectable, Tony thinks – then feels his stomach drop when he mistakes a sophomore for Peter.

By lunchtime he loses count of how many times he told himself to get a grip. He knows that he will meet Peter eventually and some part of him is confident that it will be all right. Things will go back to normal in no time. Peter will have gotten a confidence boost and Tony will have proved to be able to stay at the rational side of things all by himself. Everything is going to be fine. That is, if he finally comes to his senses and starts treating the situation as he should. Like it never happened. Like it should never have happened. Not with that twitch in his chest, that feels frighteningly like regret, every time he remembers his resolution.

He sees Peter again on Wednesday morning. They exchange the small smile and polite nod Tony expected the first time and it’s alarming how effortless it is. A part of him tells himself to be happy about it, but that part also does everything to ignore the rush of adrenaline and the fluttering of his stomach accompanying that smile. And the disquieting suspicion of what it all might mean.

By Thursday night, Tony feels more exhausted than ever before during his teaching carrier. He desperately needs to get it off his chest. He pours himself a whisky, sits on the sofa and looks Jarvis deep in the eyes.

“I’m in trouble,” he begins. The dog tilts his head with a soft whine.

“Yep, it’s not good,” he sighs. Then he realises what he just said and hurries to add, “but it’s not bad either. I’m just blowing it out of proportion.” His firm voice makes the dachshund put his head down on his feet timidly.

“I enjoyed texting him, yeah, but who wouldn’t?” Tony pleads, waving his glass dangerously in the air. “He’s one of those new generation kids who grew up online. Of course, he’s funny and easy-going. And me? Okay, let’s not start with that,” he allows when the dachshund covers his eyes with a paw. “The point is, that nothing wrong happened. And nothing will happen. I just need to calm the fuck down,” he finishes, burying his face into his hands. “Ugh. Why can’t I just… Shit!”

Prompted by Tony’s strangled voice, Jarvis hops onto the sofa and nudges his thigh with a small paw.

“It’s all right, buddy,” he says, sitting up. “Well, it’s not, not yet, but we’re here to figure it out, aren’t we?”

Tony finishes his drink and refills before he speaks again.

“And so, what if I find him interesting? He is an interesting boy,” Tony insists. The dog whines again. “Yes, okay. I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t I notice him before? Do I only find him interesting because we texted? Because we did something forbidden? God, I’m fucked up. But okay, let’s say I do. I feel this, this attraction – strictly in a physical sense. As in relating to physics, not, not the other thing. Yeah... But, but it doesn’t mean that I have to act on it. That’s what makes us human, isn’t it, J?”

“I wouldn’t know, boss, but my Talking to Himself protocol has just been activated” says another voice with a soft British accent.

“Hey there, mother hen. I wasn’t talking to myself. I was talking to your four-legged cover-up,” Tony quips back at the AI.

“You programmed this protocol to ignore entities that are unable to answer in any known human languages,” J.A.R.V.I.S. informs him.

“Oh, but look at him, he’s all ears. And he was being most supportive, didn’t you listen?” Tony chides, petting the dachshund's head gently.

“I did listen, and about what you sa…,” J.A.R.V.I.S. begins, but Tony interrupts him.

“I didn’t upload my painfully earned self-knowledge into your archives for you to just throw it back at me.”

“So how can I help?” J.A.R.V.I.S. asks, sounding more concerned, than offended.

“How about you make me a hot bath?”

“Right away, boss.”

“That went well, wouldn’t you say?” Tony whispers conspiratorially to Jarvis, as he scratches behind his ears. “I just hope it goes well with Peter tomorrow, too.”

Surprisingly, it does. The hot bath and the unusually peaceful sleep seem to have made a difference, because Friday morning Tony feels calmer than he had in days. He tries to whoosh away the idea that this newfound serenity might have more to do with finally seeing Peter again, than successful coping. But even if it is so, he can’t wish away his emotions. He just has to keep it together for a short time, a few weeks maybe, certainly not more than three and then his life would become safely uneventful once more. It already looks promising. During the lesson, Tony’s in a much more reasonable state of mind than last time and Peter looks at him again.

Tony he knows himself too well to relax, though, despite feeling relieved on his way home for the week-end. Believing that it’s all behind him just because one lesson went well is… tempting. And that’s exactly what makes him wary. Tony is aware, even if he doesn’t feel them at the moment, that some of the messy, irrational and absolutely inappropriate emotions he’s been dealing with all week linger on.

As a consequence, Tony has the most irregular weekend in a long time – well, none more so, than the last one when he texted a student, but he doesn’t count that one. Instead of staying in his workshop, he spends almost all of Saturday in Central Park with Jarvis. He watches skaters, talks to a nice paintress, feeds the ducks and walks more than he thinks advisable in the chilly weather. It works reasonably well. Even though Peter pops into his mind at least a hundred times during the day, Tony at least doesn’t spend his evening fighting off more thoughts of the boy. He barely finishes feeding Jarvis before he collapses onto the sofa, fast asleep.

When Tony wakes up a little before noon he’s both grateful for only having to come up with half a day’s worth of distractions and annoyed at himself for that thought. After walking Jarvis, he grades a few freshmen’s homework, but stops when he almost falls asleep. Later in the afternoon, after spending a miserable hour trying to concentrate on lesson plans, Tony turns his TV on and in a desperate attempt at distraction, selects the superhero movie with the most handsome men running around in tight suits. It doesn’t help. Getting slightly aroused by all the action and sexiness and at the same time wondering who Peter Parker’s favourite character is… Well it’s as far from making things better as it can be.

When turning in unusually early for the third night in a row, Tony resolves not to make any more resolutions. His attempts at dealing with the situation seem to have yielded mixed results. Results, he feels unable to untangle at the moment. So, Tony decides to just go about thing as usual – or at least as close to usual as he can manage – and see what happens.

What does happen the next day, however, is nothing he prepared for. Thankfully three nights of long, uninterrupted sleep gives him enough presence of mind to avoid making a scene, but at the end of the period Tony can barely wait until the last student leaves the classroom before he takes out his phone and texts Peter.

Aaand stay tuned for part 5 which is almost ready and coming soon 😉

Notes: Yes, Tony has J.A.R.V.I.S., the AI and his reasons for keeping it a secret – hence Jarvis, the dog, who looks like the one in the pic below. (And of course, you’ll find out what those reasons are, if you stick with me for a bit longer.)

Thanks for reading and special thanks if you share your thoughts on this chapter with me 🙂

Edit 10-02-2019: Part5

#starker #teacher!tony #wrong number au #part 4 #dog photo not mine #the dog isn't mine either #a reluctant writes

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mama-forum-ch-blog · 5 years ago

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Allison Ireland on Neuroweapons used on Innocent American Civilians - V2K

New Post has been published on http://mama-forum.ch/question/allison-ireland-on-neuroweapons-used-on-innocent-american-civilians-v2k/

Allison Ireland on Neuroweapons used on Innocent American Civilians - V2K

Dangerous neuro technology is being used to hack, control and torture innocent people around the world.

This is a factual statement you probably or may not believe this right now, but my hope is by the conclusion of this lecture in this evening you might be more convinced. I want you to imagine a world where people sit behind computers with security clearance and listen to your most personal thoughts, spy in your most private moments and actually control your mind and body.

This is not science fiction.

This is reality.

We would like to talk to you tonight about a program, a program of gaslighting where the aim is to discredit the target, make them look crazy and have them even question their own sanity. All free of fingerprints and sets a perfect plausible deniability for the perpetrators committing this crime.

Dr. Robert Duncan is going to talk to you factually about the technology and the possible intent of this program. I would also like to give my personal testimony to discuss the neural ethical implications of this horror, that crime and the human rights violations and discuss possible solutions that we can all implement together like neuro ethical human rights legislation. I’m not going to pretend to be any type of expert on this technology, this is why I’ve asked Duncan to present to you today, but like all the other victims hundreds to thousands around the world we have a story to tell many of you.

Invited tonight our neuro scientists, engineers, professors, students, technical local technology schools, the area as well as human rights groups and local Congress. Our hope is that you will find this information relevant, believable and help us to find solutions. You need to know that not only could this technology be used to drug, rape, torture innocent civilians around the world, it is being used to do so when it has possibly been used for decades.

I, Alison Amy Ireland, solemnly affirm that by all that is sacred and righteous that my testimony is given free without coercion and that this is the whole truth, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

I’m a 38-year-old businesswoman in medical sales and a mother of three small children.

On October, 2015, I began being harassed with something that is referred to as psychotronic microwave auditory hearing effect, silent sound which bypasses the ears v2k voices scholars synthetic telepathy, since then they have stolen the past three and a half years of my life. It started overnight, people talking in my head sometimes as loud as someone in the room next to me. They use standard scripts to traumatize and document response. In the very beginning they kept me up for days on end not eating, not sleeping, screaming the most horrible disgusting things you can even imagine, all day long, 24/7.

They would keep me up, they would sexually harass me, belittle me, stripping me my dignity as a woman. All of us experiencing this and I’ve spoken with dozens, possibly hundreds here exactly the same things repeated to us. We hear our voices, our thoughts repeated back. We hear voices of others responding to our thoughts, we hear them narrating what we’re doing throughout the day.

We literally do not have a private thought in our head or a private moment with our families. I want it to be on the record that I do not take any drugs – recreational or pharmaceutical and I have no history of mental illness or depression. Sometimes I have asked something that I don’t know the answer to, they will respond and I will look it up and I will find that the answer is correct, not only do they repeat what I say in my head but they will add colorful adjectives and edit my thoughts at times like Ewen Cameron developed back in the 50s.

I am subjected to automated messages psychic driving technique repeated over and over again on a loop. I know often it is AI in my head but I also sometimes feel like I hear actual people talking as well they use scripts to deceive and control sometimes, they will play music recite riddles. Sometimes you hear things as trivial as discussions on what they are ordering for lunch or how long their shift is, this is something I have personally been experiencing for three and a half years.

On January 2, in January 2016, on January 13th on my 35th birthday I was drugged for the first time with what I now believed to be a bio frequency used to generate a drugged state for almost a full year (nine months). I was drugged every other day. I’d go one day feeling completely normal organically like myself and then the next day like I ate a sheet of acid, this went on and off for nine months – one day on, one day off. One day on, one day off, then it just stopped completely. I was totally back to normal again with an exception for three very specific times when I was drugged remotely like a Pavlovian dog. When I tried to do something to raise awareness of what was happening, when I went to the FBI or when I organized a conference for victims to come together to figure out what was happening and figure out what we could all do together this is not how paranoid schizophrenia or any type of mental illness works. I have learned that MIT – the home of the US Army super soldier has developed such a drug delivery system. luckily I experimented with LSD in college only about four to five times, not enough according to medical experts for a flashback, but at least I know knew what I was feeling was a simulation of being on a hallucinogenic and that I was not insane. You want to tell your children just say no to drugs but then again, I feel like maybe they should experiment in college in case they get drugged remotely by the government or whoever does this to people. So, they don’t end up in a mental hospital. The rest of this is gonna sound crazy and I promise if it did not happen to me personally I would not believe a word of it, but I have also seen a hologram of a cartoon character in my room and I was raped once, was something that rocked her – Duncan refers to as no touch simulated rape through EEG heterodyning where you feel as though you were being sexually assaulted for trauma-based mind control, but no one is in the room with you.

Some victims are raped by this technology daily all day, these are all identical experiences that I have heard by countless other victims. I have also had what I believe to be manipulated dreams. I was told that it takes 90 minutes to fall into REM sleep, those of us on this cybernetic hivemind program will fall asleep and wake up, fall asleep within five seconds having a very vivid dream that seems like you’re watching a movie, either seeing things like being attacked by a bald eagle or looking in the mirror my eye becomes a camera lens or I pull a chip out of my nose that says USA or they show me such horrific things of my own family that literally makes me cry for weeks and makes me thank God that I am aware of what is happening and I know in my heart that is not my own subconscious and that I could never create something so horrific in my own mind.

Recently within the past year I have also been tortured with what I believe to be emotional manipulation. This has just been happening to me within the past year. Organically I made very happy up the outgoing person I normally just go on with my day then all of a sudden like somebody is literally turning on and off a light switch I start to scream and cry and shake uncontrollably while simultaneously the voices call repeats in my head “kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself” It lasts for about an hour and it feels and then some feels like somebody is literally just turning it off and I snapped back to normal when.

I asked why are you doing this, the beat UK voice in my head says we want you to know what they have been doing to people remotely for decades, the schmeared off-patent used by the CIA with subliminal in the 50s, using subliminal messaging to broadcast rage, fear and manipulate human behavior. As I mentioned I am NOT going to make any claims about this technology, whether I’m implanted with chips whether it’s smart dust nanotechnology or frequency done remotely. I will leave that to the experts. I just want to share my experience and the parallel experience of so many others around the world and talk about what we can all do about it together. A few other things that may or may not be relevant. I have been told that I might have been victimized by this technology, as nonsensical as it is because of my career in medical sales. I was with American Medical Systems who was then acquired by Boston Scientific when this first started happening selling neurologic with a neurologic implant I lost a really good job due to the attacks of being drugged every other day for nine months and having my performance suffer.

I struggled since then to get back on track professionally, hopping around to a few different companies. I have somehow been able to, though remain gainfully employed struggling every day to work through whatever I am going through, provide for my family and raise my three small children and in my limited free time do what I can to expose these crimes. I currently work for a company allergen pharmaceuticals selling Botox for overactive bladder, again in urology with a neurology, but Allegan does work in neurology and I have and has mental health medication, sales mental health medication as well, maybe this is relevant maybe it isn’t, but as a mind-control victim I question everything in my life, since many mentoring candidate victims are mind-control to believe that big pharma is doing it to them.

I’ve been told that my employment could have something to do with it, maybe I’m being set up. I do believe that the company I work for now does not realize that they may be profiting off victims of this technology and I’d like to find a way to credibly raise awareness someday with my employer. I believe every day I am helping people personally improve their quality of life with therapeutic Botox. So at this time I do not see an issue personally with my profession. I’ve also been told that I could be in this program because of my identical twin daughters or my Jewish lineage Josef Mengele and other World War two scientists did experiment on multiples. This was one of the first questions in the symptom survey. Bill Binney and Kirk Wiebe, some NSA whistleblowers that are helping us conducted back in 2017 are you a multiple paternal identical. I do believe this is relevant many people also believe that this illuminati or freemason association supposedly there has some connection with a monarch mind control style torture. They do Nazi Germany and this Illuminati group honestly I and I do think that many victims and perpetrators committing these crime actually do buy into this stuff, but honestly I think that it is irrelevant whatever excuse or justification people are making to torture other people, is irrelevant the point is that people are torturing other people with technology. They are remotely drugging, raping, torturing and murdering this is like Nazi Germany you know they were actually able to get neighbors to torture other neighbors, you know this is covert and done remotely but you know history does have a tendency to repeat itself. So, I think honestly the most important thing that we do right now is expose what is happening and try together to find solutions and establish neuro ethical legislation to protect our brains from being hacked. The first psychiatrist I ever went, she was named Wendy Olsen Mauro – The Hitchcock clinic in Hudson, New Hampshire’s. she set me on the right track, she said you do not have any mental illness.

Do you know anybody that works for the government? This was before I learned about this phenomenon and I thought this was such a strange bizarre question I saw her twice January 26 2016 and in February 24th 2016. I then got a bizarre phone call that she had died and I needed to see someone else. They sent me to another psychiatrist who has been pushing a medication that is actually made by the company I work for now, then I learned that the sales rep for the specific medication now has the job that I had when I first started getting tortured by this technology selling urologic implants at Boston Scientific, the year that I lost my job when I was drugged. Maybe this is all complete coincidence, but I felt like it was bizarre enough to mention and you know sometimes I do wonder if we are moved around like chess pieces for some sort of game that we don’t understand, also working and organizing and strategizing with this group of victims can be sat challenging for us all in itself.

This group of victims trying to organize and fight back, you know I believe we are mind-controlled not to trust each other so we don’t unite and work together. I’ve actually been told that my voice was used in the heads of others telling them that I for some reason am the one that is doing this to them. There is power in numbers especially in groups that are organized and productive. So, I believe that to keep us from being productive and fighting back they mind-control us to fight with each other or worse think that you know we’re doing this to each other.

I’m sure they are also hired infiltration to keep things unproductive as well. The point is that we need your help outside of this community of victims. It is important for anyone watching this to know that this event was not sponsored by a company or organization. It was sponsored entirely financed by the hard-earned money of a woman who was working to struggle through what she’s experiencing and finding a way to expose what is happening for her and her family and thousands of others around the world. The truth is I personally have no idea why I was targeted for this crime, maybe it is just a random cross-section of the population for experimentation.

I am an innocent hard-working taxpaying American who has committed no crimes. I was not an activist prior to being harassed by this technology. I know no one that works for the government and I have no enemies that I can think of. I had no reason to make this up and I want nothing more than to expose what they are doing to protect my children and to make a better tomorrow for everyone. My small children have also experienced this voice to skull technology specifically my son – aged seven.

This is documented at the pediatrician, when he was three, he came to me and my husband and said I hear a voice talking in my head “It said not to look mommy, but I didn’t listen because I love you. Two, three other times since then he has also come to me saying mommy they’re doing it to me again, they’re talking in my head. Per the advice of other victims I’ve gotten scanned by a private investigator named Melinda kidder at Columbia investigations in Columbia Missouri, she is the leading private investigator regarding these matters. Scans indicate elevated EMF frequency emissions coming from specific registered to academic institutions government agencies companies hired by government agencies, public broadcast stations, educational broadband services providers, broadband internet providers for collaborative research.

Many of us who have also gotten this scan have shown frequencies registers the same academic institutions, agencies and companies who could possibly be defendants in it. Supporter class-action possibly someday. I live in New Hampshire but the frequencies are registered to institutions and companies all over the United States and the victims of this growing crime are all over the world. I believe this is what was used to torture me with psychotronic sound and a bio frequency simulation to generate a drugged state by a remote signaling device, whether reliable evidence or not. A toxicologist named held a grand standing of Integrative Health Solutions also gave me a skin patched in hair follicle test that revealed evidence that I was being harassed by nanotechnology. My husband and my friends can all support my claim, the most important thing to me is to expose this to protect my family and victims worldwide. I’m sure you were also familiar with the recent story of the cute American diplomats in Cuba suffering the hearing loss from the sonic attacks.

My four-year-old daughter was born with something called auditory neuropathy. I believe there is a chance this also might be related. she was born with this crippling hearing loss right before I started getting tortured with this technology. I found clinical articles that show how low wave frequencies like the ones being admitted from me can damage the hair and the inner ear causing this type of hearing loss. She is crippled for life and forced to wear bilateral hearing aids. The Hoffer report on the diplomats did suggest that 30 to 40 percent of the diplomats did experience permanent hearing loss as well. I hired another investigator who has been able to dig further into the Federal Communications Commission database for frequencies found on me and I’ve also been able to obtain a full comprehensive list of companies and institutions, not only the companies and institutions but specific names, phone numbers and addresses of these individuals licensed to these frequencies. I have reached out to each and every one of them. I’ve done everything that I can possibly think of up to this point. I have been to the FBI, the State Police, the local police.

I went back to the FBI recently and this time instead of getting drugged like I was the first time, they actually did open an investigation for me and gave me a case number. I have emailed, called and sent certified letters to over a hundred civil rights class actions, personal jury, lawyers, but for whatever bizarre reason I have not been able to obtain anyone I have contacted, emailed or gone in person ACLU fusion center, DARPA and also desperately trying to get a meeting with my local Congress.

Most importantly my story is not unique and is trivial compared to the atrocities of so many others around the world by this remote technology. This is a silent crime as I said incomplete plausible deniability, the assailants, the victims are gaslighted mean to appear mentally ill. These crimes against humanity are so horrific and I feel these are the biggest threat that our society faces today. What we need is to raise public awareness, overall awareness and discuss neuro ethical human rights, legislation that we can implement to protect our minds from these attacks.

Please pay attention also when Duncan covers Project Blue Beam. This is the rumor you know and this is again conspiracy theory was supposedly leaked by NASA some sort of staged apocalyptic alien invasion, religious rapture using this technology. You know we know victims of this technology. The technology in place, subliminal mind-control voices in your head, holograms, a frequency that makes you feel like you’re on LSD, making you more susceptible as a subliminal mind control. So, all these tools in their tool bag. Right so this is of course a conspiracy you know but knowing that this technology exists, you know what if we were the guinea pigs, the pilot program. Before this is rolled out on the general public. I’m hoping obviously this is just a conspiracy theory, but literally knowing about this technology and what’s happening to people could literally save your life. what boggles my mind and obviously the minds of others is if the technology does exist. Right for people’s brains to be hacked remotely, why is there still crime? why does it seem that this technology is being used to torture innocent people driving them to homicide or suicide?

You know I want you to if you aren’t familiar look up the stories of people like Myron May, Aaron Alexis all of these mass shooters. Where it comes out after that, they had voices in their head that led them to do it. All of the suicides of the victims of this technology. The only conclusion I can think of as to ranged as the scenes is that maybe they want things to get as bad. So bad that we all accept 1984 Minority Report future without a private thought in her head or a private moment in our families, you know as a welcome order from the chaos that they might create hopefully again conspiracy theory today, we have invited 5,000 professors, students local human rights groups, bioethics groups, mental health professionals, local Congress in the general public, the ad in the globe.

It’s a circulation of 225 thousand. Myself as well as other volunteers have been being remotely tortured, have been tirelessly sending emails, handing out fliers, putting up billboards, organizing events like this. I have participated in dozens of symptom surveys and affidavit collection endeavors. Bill Binney and Kirk Wiebe and I say whistleblowers helped us collect data in 2017 in a symptom survey that we need help analyzing this data. These admirable whistleblowers along with Robert Duncan and many others are helping us expose these crimes, but we need more outside help we have all this data collected and we need experts like yourself to help us organize it and prevent it. Present it in a professional way, I’m also handing out a document that outlines an amazing neural ethical specific neuro specific Human Rights proposal by Dr. Marcelo ANCA and Dr. Roberto and Nardo. Obviously, I’m sure that these are probably all things discussions that you were having already in your neuro ethics and bioethics classes, but it’s important for you to hear our stories, hear our side, the testimonies of the victims.

The fact that you are here today is a step in the right direction, knowing that we have no cognitive Liberty, knowing that anyone anywhere can access, share, manipulate what’s in your brain at any time or worse torture you remotely is not okay. We are not Lab Rats. We are people who should have the right to cognitive Liberty, mental privacy, mental integrity, psychological continuity. So everyone around the world we need your help students of MIT professors and others watching future neuro scientists and engineers human rights groups in Congress. Please help us make tomorrow more bioethical than today.

Please if you’d like to get involved networking, correspond I will provide my personal email and cell phone to anyone. Dr. Robert Duncan has also said that he would provide his contact information, let’s work together, let’s figure out how we can help make things better tomorrow for our children.

That’s all I want to say.

Thank you

Allison Ireland on Neuroweapons – Targeted Individuals – Innocent American Civilians

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This video is to inform the public of electronic harassment, electromagnetic torture or psychotronic torture. Also know as gang stalking. The experiences of people who describe themselves as undergoing electronic harassment using esoteric technology, and who call themselves “Targeted Individuals” (“T.I.”) vary, but include hearing voices in their heads calling them by name, often mocking them or others around them (voice to skull – frey effect) as well as physical sensations like burning. They have also described being under physical surveillance by one or more people. Many of these people act and function otherwise normally and included among them are people who are successful in their careers and lives otherwise, and who find these experiences confusing, upsetting, and sometimes shameful, but entirely real. Their are news stories, military journals and declassified national security documents to support these allegations. The New York Times estimated that there are more than 10,000 people who self-identify as targeted individuals in the US alone.

Press accounts have documented individuals who apparently believed they were victims of electronic harassment, and in some cases persuaded courts to agree. In 2008, James Walbert went to court claiming that his former business associate had threatened him with “jolts of radiation” after a disagreement, and later claimed feeling symptoms such as electric shock sensations, and hearing generated tones and other strange sounds in his ears. The court decided to issue an order banning “electronic means” to further harass Walbert.

Here is a list of patents:

Apparatus and method for remotely monitoring and altering brain waves – US Patent 3951134 Apparatus for and method of sensing brain waves at a position remote from a subject whereby electromagnetic signals of different frequencies are simultaneously transmitted to the brain of the subject in which the signals interfere with one another to yield a waveform which is modulated by the subject’s brain waves. The interference waveform which is representative of the brain wave activity is re-transmitted by the brain to a receiver where it is demodulated and amplified. The demodulated waveform is then displayed for visual viewing and routed to a computer for further processing and analysis. The demodulated waveform also can be used to produce a compensating signal which is transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change in electrical activity therein.

https://www.google.ca/patents/US3951134

Apparatus for audibly communicating speech using the radio frequency hearing effect – US Patent 6587729 B2 A modulation process with a fully suppressed carrier and input preprocessor filtering to produce an encoded output; for amplitude modulation (AM) and audio speech preprocessor filtering, intelligible subjective sound is produced when the encoded signal is demodulated using the RF Hearing Effect. Suitable forms of carrier suppressed modulation include single sideband (SSB) and carrier suppressed amplitude modulation (CSAM), with both sidebands present.

https://www.google.com/patents/US6587729

Videos

Allison Ireland on Neuroweapons – Targeted Individuals – Innocent American Civilians – V2K

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Dr Robert Duncan MIT Presentation Preview Neuroweapons American Civilians Targeted Individuals

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Articles

Dr Robert Duncan http://drrobertduncan.com/index.html

International Center For Abuse Against Covert Technologies http://icaact.org/

The Global Neuroethics Conference 2019: Neuro-Specific Human Rights Bill Proposal – Targeted Individuals The Global Neuroethics Conference 2019: Neuro-Specific Human Rights Bill Proposal – Targeted Individuals

WordPress.com #targetedindividuals https://en.wordpress.com/tag/targeted-individuals/

Twitter.com #targetedindividuals https://twitter.com/hashtag/targetedindividuals?lang=en

Twitter.com #Neuroweapons https://twitter.com/hashtag/Neuroweapons?src=hash

William Shatner Exposes Voice of God Weapons on The History Channel – Targeted Individuals

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your-dietician · 3 years ago

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How to start a business without money ... and in five steps

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/business/how-to-start-a-business-without-money-and-in-five-steps/

How to start a business without money ... and in five steps

June 24, 2021 12 min read

This article was translated from our Spanish edition using AI technologies. Errors may exist due to this process.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

STEP ONE: THE MOMENTUM

Image: Depositphotos.com

In my case, the impulse started one morning, at 3 in the morning. I looked at myself in the mirror, my face wet, breathing noisily, like Darth Vader in pajamas. I was angry. I was disappointed. I was confused. Above all, he was afraid.

He didn’t know how he was going to get out of this one. I was terrified. And it was not for less -or at least he believed-. Until a few hours ago … I had a job. The salary was good and the future looked fabulous.

But everything turned to nothing when I received the dreaded call: the main investor in the business, after a terrible year in Colombia, decided to cancel the project in Mexico. Thus, without further ado. Goodbye. Thank you. Good work and see you later.

Yesterday he was “director”. Today he was unemployed . Suddenly that impressive title that adorned my little cards seemed inappropriate and ridiculous. The truth is that he was the director of nothing.

To make matters worse, my wife was pregnant and huge debts haunted me. That night was a very bad night. I prayed – stammered – before trying to go back to sleep.

I already knew that my wife trusted me; and that he saw in me a man capable of providing for the home. That should have been a cause for reassurance; but at that moment it was a heavy piano on my chest. I didn’t want to fail him … but tonight I doubted everything, especially myself.

Only one question was floating in my mind as my eyelids closed. If I was a supposedly educated man, prepared, with a career, mastery … How did I get to this desperate point? One of two: either the world was a fraud … or I was.

The next day I did what I had to do. I organized my resume and sent it to everyone I knew, applied to some online positions, made several calls. After a few days without an answer, my calls became more desperate. He was willing to work on anything to make it to the next fortnight. After two weeks of attending various job interviews, without success, I was already questioning everything: my ability, my intelligence, my preparation … everything . What could I do?

And in my own business? For me the drive was desperation, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You could even start a business without leaving your current job. What moves you to start a business? When the urge hits, heed the 5 minute rule and move on.

STEP TWO: CHIP CHIP

Image: Depositphotos.com

The situation took on desperate tones. I thought that if I couldn’t find a job, I would have to start a business. It is not like this? Whatever. I looked online and in magazines about good business to get started. I found hundreds of business opportunities, products and franchises … but all required some type of investment: 20 thousand, 30 thousand, 100 thousand or more. But when one does not have money or work, it is impossible to think of those amounts. Also, whatever money he could receive, he soon disappeared in basic necessities: food, doctors, rent … and in paying past debts.

I thought about taking out another loan, but it would be impossible – and also seriously irresponsible – to borrow more. I thought about selling my car… but they would give me very little for it and I really needed it.

The answer came from Salvador, a good friend (with whom he would later write a book, precisely, about entrepreneurship and personal finance). “You don’t need money to start a business,” he told me, “you need an idea. If you don’t have money, invest your intelligence and your time ”.

I returned home agreed with this idea and sat at a table to put ideas on paper. That day, nothing was off the table. I thought about washing cars, tutoring, walking dogs, and painting houses. I didn’t know how to do any of these things , but I thought it would be a way for me to move around and start “something” temporary, where I got a serious job. I could not come up with an idea that would excite me.

A new inspiration came from my wife: “You have always told me that you like to write. Why don’t you do some business with that? Indeed, I have always liked to write and I even had a very advanced first novel, but that would not give me money for long, even assuming someone wanted to publish me. But the idea made me rethink everything. I was asking myself the wrong question!

Until then I was wondering where can I earn easy money? And I still couldn’t find a way out. But my wife’s comment made me change the question. The new question, the correct one, was: There are some things I know how to do well. How can I make money from these things?

This new question cleared the way because it left out thousands of impractical ideas, and limited my options, making my choice easier . That same afternoon, I decided that I wanted to start a writing and copywriting business . There was still a lot to do.

And in your own business ? Ask yourself the right questions and find your talent: the things that you know how to do well and that you like. My thing was writing, but perhaps your thing is animals, computers, sports or cars. Do not look for “a good business” but build a good business from who you are. And now, start where you are .

STEP THREE: LAUNCH THE BOAT INTO THE SEA

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When I made the decision and shared it with my wife, our creative juices started to flow. I had almost no money, so we did everything at home. In one morning we came up with a name for the business, made a simple logo, opened a Facebook page and a free site on Wix. We also devised a “menu” of services that it could offer and we priced it.

This was all new to me, and I set prices that I later learned were too low. I also did not consider many services that I would later discover as important. But we already had what they call in entrepreneurial jargon an MVP, a “minimum viable product ”; something I could start promoting, selling and working on.

That day in the afternoon I sent a message to all my contacts by mail and on social networks. Perhaps, in total, about two thousand people. To all my friends, acquaintances new and old, and even people I didn’t remember. I sent them all. The email was very simple:

“Hello, how nice to greet you! I am Francisco and I am telling you that we have just launched these new services. If you have creative writing, editing or proofreading needs, don’t hesitate to call us! ”, Then a kind farewell and… SEND! And then … wait.

Fortunately we didn’t have to wait long. The next day a first customer arrived (who needed a brochure) and then another (who needed a website). The first week we charge 3,000 pesos for two services. It was still little, but it was something. We could breathe. We were in business!

And in your own business? Do not wait for the ideal moment, or until you have everything assembled and planned perfectly. Right now, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Try to have an MVP and then make changes and iterations according to the response of your market. Stay open, be flexible, and listen to your customers.

STEP FOUR: SYSTEMATIZE

Image: Depositphotos.com

The first months were learning . Still our earnings were low (but they helped us get ahead). We discovered new needs, new niches, and products that we could explore. We started offering advertising copy services, social networks, translation and strategic communication. Each client brought a new problem that we had not thought about before. Then we gave ourselves to the task of investigating, learning and solving what we put on the table.

Little by little we were finding our space in the market , and leaving behind the products and services that required us a lot of time and little profit. Clients – thank God – kept coming and within a few months it became evident that we needed more hands on the business, better management systems and systematizing processes.

We also thought that we could be a company with a human sense, that would help people. We launched a call for writers who could work from home: housewives, men who take care of their children and people with some type of disability. At the end of the year, we went from one collaborator (myself), to eight collaborators with flexible times. We also launched programs to help people in need, doing our bit, no matter how small.

That involved us implementing payroll, tax, customer control and process control systems to ensure that everything went smoothly and in order. We learned to hire, train and sell. We made a lot of mistakes and we learned from them; but most of our clients accompanied us during the process.

And in your own business? This third step is the most difficult in the leap from self-employment to a formal business, because it involves delegating functions, investing, trusting people and “letting go” of direct control of all steps of the business. Find systems that work for you and find people you trust who want to work. Little by little you will find your answers.

STEP FIFTH: GROW

Image: Depositphotos.com

Once the systems started working, I found that my hands were freer. In the beginning I spent all my time doing the essays, even the simplest ones. Now, with a team of writers, I had brain freedom to rekindle the creative drive; think about new clients, bigger projects and look for new business for my business.

Eventually we were able to serve larger national and international clients and launch new lines of products and services that attracted new clients. We open a publishing division. The business today has different areas, different sources of income, managers and operators that work even when I am not present. That is to say: it is a real business and not self-employment. Later, in effect, they offered me an excellent job, which I still maintain today. I accepted it because I liked it, and not just because I was desperate. As the business goes on, I can attend to both.

We are still very, very far from the Forbes 500 lists. We are still an SME with a great desire to continue growing. But, above all, I no longer be the way I felt that day at 3 in the morning. I have other concerns, but I have freedom, I live where I want, I do what I like and I can’t stop dreaming. I’m tired? This sold out! But it is a burnout of the one who knows that he is in the right race.

I have had the help of fantastic people in my family and outside of it and, in addition, my family has grown quite a bit. Trust me, it’s worth it.

And in your own business? It recognizes that there is a market and space for all types of companies, products and services. Don’t be afraid to grow up. Sure, it’s scary and sometimes lazy. But on the other side of fear is freedom. It is freedom and passion (not money) that move the soul of true entrepreneurs.

Your first business may not lift, but if you have invested your time and your intelligence, then there is no way it is a total loss. You will have grown, learned, undertaken and faced. You are not the same as before. Time to start again! Once you have learned to undertake, you will not be able to stop doing it.

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pernatius · 4 years ago

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Lost in Space: Ch 4

Ch 3

For an entire week, I’m going to be writing and editing 5 chapters of “Lost In Space”, which consist of 2k words each. The goal is to make it to 10k words by the end of the week. So, 1 more chapter and about 2k words left to go.

Summary: An unnamed Space Explorer and an alien sharing the same characteristics as Greek mythology’s Minotaur must venture outer space together after just barely escaping a band of Space Pirates as she tries to remember why she’s so far away from Earth.

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It wasn’t that far from where we sat. It sat in a little cave behind The Eyes of the Underworld, behind our glowing ally. It’s a space distortion pad, one that’s able to teleport anyone several light-years from it within seconds and is also the rest of the payment.

“It’s not capable of getting you straight to Quadrant 70, but it’ll at least get you halfway there. Get to my sister, and she’ll be able to bring you the rest of the way,” The Eyes of the Underworld explained.

“Your sister, what does she look like,” I asked.

“Ask around. Tell them you know me. You won’t be able to miss her after.” After she puts in the coordinates, the ground beneath us glows. My hair twirls around as an artificial breeze picks up underneath us. “It’ll take some time for it to charge. It’s been years since I’ve used it.”

“Thank you.”

“I always make sure everything is paid before my death.”

The footsteps above are heavy. I can hear the floorboards creak. With each passing second, they grow louder. They’re getting closer. I look at him. I see the fear in his eyes. I watch him gulp. “Is this thing ready yet,” I blurted out.

“Another minute or two.”

“We don’t have that much time. How can we trust you? What if you’re-” I’m cut off with him placing his hand on my shoulder.

“Not even criminals can lie when they’re on the verge of dying,” he reminded me.

A cough comes out of the glowing figure before us. Another comes. Then, another. Each one is stronger than the last. She places her hand on one of the cave’s walls, helping to keep herself upright.

I tried reaching out to her, but he stopped me from doing so. I look at him, but his face is dead set on the both of us remaining still.

“My predictions have gotten less accurate over the years because of my coming death,” she coughed out.

“I predict it to be a minute from now,” a familiar voice forces its way into our conversation. Moving my attention towards the voice, I meet with the eyes that have forever scarred my mind.

The Commander isn’t as bulky as the brute, but the difference between his build and my companion is apparent nonetheless. Unlike the last time I saw him, a scar now rests over his right eye. He steps towards us with his hands folded behind his back.

“Looks like my vision works just as fine with just one eye. An eye for a horn, Mikrovos,” he lets out a laugh, “Oh, who am I without my manners? The Eye of the Underworld, it’s been quite a while. Hasn’t it?” He bows before her.

“Leave,” she ordered him.

The Commander places his hand on her face. He caresses it, but she’s unfazed. His thumb softly strokes her cheek. “Ordering me? Where was that voice when we shared the same bed,” he playfully asked.

She swats his hand away from her face. “I said to leave. Now.”

He smirks. Without hesitation, he grabs her by the throat and lifts her. He begins to choke her, but all I can do is watch her thrash. She claws at his wrist. Her cries cause me to inch closer to her, but my companion is still intent on us remaining still.

“We have to-” What stops me from finishing my sentence this time is the look in his eyes. He wants to do something as well, but he knows he can’t. He knows it’s not his fight to be a part of. I know as well, but that empathy I spoke about before it back. I see myself in her place, but it’s not for long. He throws her to the ground. The glow around her is slowly fading. She’s barely clinging onto life.

“Another minute, actually,” he stepped over her and is now standing right in front of my companion, “This is but a taste, Mikrovos. I’ll let you go. I’ll let you do whatever it is you’re trying to, but at the last minute when you believe all is in your favor I’ll be there to see the despair in your eyes. When that happens, I want you to realize your place. My words are the truth. My words are final.”

With that, we’re finally able to teleport. The last thing Mikrovos sees is an ironic, angelic smile written on The Commander’s lips. As for me, the last thing I see is her glow fading out.

We appear onto something soft. It’s warm. Well, warm now with us on it. It’s a bed. I realize it is when someone flips on a light switch. Turning towards who did, I see a couple with just towels wrapped around their bodies. They give us confused looks. “Do either of you happen to know about The Eyes of the Underworld’s sister, “ I awkwardly asked.

If I could pay with Earth’s currency it would take me years to even afford a night here even with my job. The room is so huge that its bed, which is crimson red, can fit five copies of the brute. On the room’s edges, where the walls and floor touch, stretch strips of blue light. Speaking of the floor, beneath our us is an aquarium. It’s full of various aquatic creatures that differ from size, shape, color, and even how they breathe. The rest, much, of the room, has been painted black. As beautiful as the room is, the events from earlier cut through the soothing atmosphere this room is trying to pull us into. We’re both anxious. I bite my lip. My companion, though quick, has his ears twitch.

“What’s taking her so long,” he huffed.

We’ve been waiting for what seems like hours, but thankfully our wait finally came to an end. A woman, who carries a strange mix of human and reptile features and has a scantily clad outfit loosely wrapped around her body, opens the doors, and comes into the room with her hips swaying from side to side. When she’s in front of us, she makes sure her cleavage is visible as her hands caress the sides of our faces. She turns to my companion. “I don’t usually get Tauvoxes,” she turns to me, “I especially don’t usually get women. This is the first time I’m getting a human as a client, but a client is a client.”

“Client,” I questioned with a high pitched voice.

She sits on my companion’s lap, which he’s uncomfortable about as he looks at me with pleading eyes. He wants her off of him. Her hips move up and down as she replies, “Of course. Are you two not here for me?”

“You’re The Eyes of the Underworld’s sister, right?”

“We may not look like sisters, but we did a long time ago.”

“Then, yes, we’re here for you, but not for this.”

She gets off of him, which has him give out a sigh of relief. “What do you mean?”

“Your sister teleported us here. She said you’re able to get us to Quadrant 70.”

“My sister...You’ve talked with my sister? I haven’t seen her in years. How is she?” Her sexual demeanor instantly shifted into a child-like one.

“She’s…” I look away from her, unable to look into the ironic innocence in her eyes. I didn’t want to break her heart, but it was only a matter of time before she realized because of the look on my face.

“She’s gone. My sister’s gone,” she quietly sobbed. This time he lets me help the person that’s hurting in front of me. I placed my hand gently on her shoulder, but she grabs me and squeezes me into a hug. She cries into my shoulder. It was awkward at first because I wasn’t sure where to place my hands, but after some time I’m able to hug her back.

A ship stood right in front of us. Saamuki, The Eyes of the Underworld’s sister, is already inside the ship. As for me, I’m on its steps. My breathing becomes erratic as it comes back to me. Everything was on fire. They screamed. My vision is blurred, yet I’m able to make out the blood.

“It’s okay,” Mikrovos comforted me.

Turning to him, I’m about to say my thanks, but her words break the moment we had. “Don’t you have a girl you’re trying to save?”

“Yeah. We also have The Commander on my tail. So, let’s get inside,” he told me.

The technology on the ship is way more advanced than the ones on earth. It definitely can fly us over to Quadrant 70 and even fly me back to Earth. Just like in her room strips of blue light circled the ship’s interior. Because I was at awe, I jumped when I heard another voice. It’s feminine and robotic. Following it, I see a floating, holographic head making its appearance in the middle of the ship. “Where shall I take you today, Captain Saamuki,” it inquired.

“Quadrant 70. The fifth planet.”

“Captain Saamuki, the temperature on that planet is far too cold for you even with your spacesuit,” the AI warned.

“This isn’t her mission. It’s mine,” I interjected.

“No,” he dismissed my words. I turn to him, offended. “That planet is far too cold for you as well, but my body can handle it.

“Mikrovos.”

“I don’t have a single doubt The Commander knows where we’re going. I also don’t doubt he’ll be waiting for us there. Risking one life is better than risking two.”

“Mi-”

“You have a girl waiting for you on Earth, remember,” I look away from him, “I don’t want her to keep waiting.”

With that, she ordered her ship to fly. The atmosphere became tense. It’s not because I hate him now. I care for him. I do, but I hate how he’s taking this into his own hands. I could speak out. I could argue with him, but I know it’s pointless because I know he’s right. Risking my life as well means all of their lives died for nothing. It also means breaking her heart.

It didn’t take long, but it felt like we were on that ship for days. He put on her spacesuit, which can stretch, and stepped out onto the icy planet. He looks at me. I mouth to him to come back. He then turns around and heads into the ahead storm without a word.

I pace around the ship. I’m not sure how long he’s been gone, but it feels like forever. Their screams come back to me, but I manage to push them away. “He’ll be back soon. I mean look at him. He’s bigger than either of us. He was one of the toughest pirates in the universe,” she tried to assure me.

Those are all true, but those don’t mean he’s invincible. I’ve seen him get hurt. I’ve seen him hurt. Against some other species besides his own, he’s got a chance, but against his own, it’s little to nothing. If he’s right and his old commander is already here then I hope nothing bad has happened. It’s probably because I’ve spent a lot of time with him, but I just can’t lose anyone else, especially not him.

Speaking of him, I turn towards the window when he’s visible. I see him running with a fruit sealed inside a crystal, what we came here for, but I also notice his arm is now dislocated. “Mikrovos!”

The Commander rushes towards him, and before my eyes, his horns stab into Mikrovos’ chest. I bang my hands onto the window and cry out his name, which has Saamuki try to calm me down. Even stabbed through the chest he’s able to keep his hold on the crystal. Noticing this, he lifts Mikrovos by his broken horn and then proceeds to punch him in the stomach.

Heart aching, I rush over to the door. “What do you think you’re doing,” she demanded.

“What does it look like?”

“Are you insane? If he can’t-”

“I can’t just watch and be helpless.”

“You’ll be killed.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t just watch him handle his fight alone. We’re a crew. No, we’re more than that. He’s my friend. ”

As soon as I exited the ship, I can feel my fingertips begin to freeze. My skin color is already turning pale, but I’ve only been outside for less than a minute. Because of the temperature, I’m breathing heavily. It’s like someone is pushing down on my chest, which reignites the pain I felt towards my broke rib, yet I ran. I ran towards him.

“To think you repaid my pity with disgrace,” he spat to my severely wounded friend.

With my blurring vision, I shout towards the monster beating him. The Commander looks at me and lets out a chuckle. Letting go of Mikrovos, he steps over to me. Once he’s right in front of me he bends down just enough so that his face is all too uncomfortably close to mine. “Hit me.”

“H-Hit you? Y-You’re letting me hit you?”

“Of course. I may lead one of the best Space Pirates in the known universe, but I am not a man without my chivalry. Now give me your best shot.” There wasn’t any hesitation in it. I hit with the strength I had left, but all it did was cause him to smile. “My turn.”

His punch caused the broken rib to pierce through my skin. My blood squirted out of the site, which my hands shook over. Fallen to my knees, my breath, and consciousness dipped immensely. I faded in and out. With I falling to the ground, Mikrovos punches his old commander with such a might that he goes flying. My companion, with bloodlust boiling in his veins, then proceeds to endlessly beat the man he’s lived in fear under for most of his life. It’s the last thing I see before I blackout.

#177 #lost in space #writers on tumblr #creative writing #spilled ink #fiction #my writing #space

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thisbiasedlife · 8 years ago

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Firewall Down (AI/Robot! Jungkook x Reader)

Important Author’s Note: Hello everyone! I am back again after a brief hiatus or whatever you would like to call it. This new story is quite special to me as it is my first request that I have decided to try to turn into a story, hopefully, quite a few chapters long. Thanks to @line-fangirl for the request and I hope you thoroughly enjoy this work. Please don’t hate me for the crappy summary that is to follow or any crappy writing mistakes as this work has not undergone any form of editing.

Pairing: Reader x Jungkook

Genre: Fluff, Angst, Smut (eventual)

Rating: PG - PG13 (for this chapter)

Characters: Reader, Jungkook, BTS (Eventual)

Word Count: 4,146

Summary: (Y/N) lives in a world consumed by hate, famine, and fear. A nuclear stricken world characterizes the loss of all chances of hope, love, and trust. Living in a world so far from the world that we know today, (Y/N) and her dad try to prolong their own survival, nevermind their existence in a group. (Y/N)’s intention to secure only her own survival in a world so hell-bent to erase it is slowly altered by a most unusual source. Though AIs were created with solely the intent of destruction and control, (Y/N) finds herself taking a deadly interest into an AI by the name of Jungkook assigned to her survival group. His continual expresssion of his lack of emotion only encourages (Y/N) to find out more about him. And suddenly, the unfeeling Jungkook is made to feel things he never considered and unintentionally change the course of (Y/N)’s life for forever.

The scene depicted in the painting was an item of great wonder. A beautiful blue hued ocean, people peacefully walking the beach, seagulls flying overheard, and a beautiful orange setting sun. Every inch of the painting captured your attention and made you wish for the days passed. Days you had seen through your infancy and into your early teens. Days that filled you with a splendor unlike any other, but were now to be forever what seemed like distant memories.

The painting was no longer the truth of your world. Your world was marked by famine, disease, hatred, and fear. A world that had gone to war with itself and lost. Unity was a thing of the past and now allegiance could be the death of you if caught in the wrong place. No one had believed all the scientists that insisted that people would one day actually overpopulate the Earth. That the Earth would no longer be able to sustain the indulgence of man. Yet despite the unheeded warnings, the majority of Earth’s populace was taken quite by surprise when the scientists’ predictions actually came to fruition.

Of course, at first, the world leaders met to discuss what could be peacefully done to share Earth’s remaining precious resources. That had lasted a matter of two years before all structure had come tumbling down. With resources stretched thinner and thinner, war became a common, if not more largely accepted, alternative. The division between democracy and communist and socialist regimes had been apparent first, the United States quickly turning on China and Russia. The United States needed a larger population to blame on shameless resource consumption and of course Russia had come to China’s defense stating the opulence of American life as the true reason for resource depletion. So, camaraderie had come crashing down.

Sure, the first outbreak of the world war to end all world wars appeared to have a reason, but war costed even more resources and destroyed the planet further. When it became apparent loyalty to any other country but your own costed you resources, every country turned on every country. The war became a shameless war for self-preservation. Then, this shameless war among countries for self-preservation turned into a shameless war among individuals of the same country for self-preservation. Everyone turned on everyone. To have to look out for anyone other than yourself was assumed to have meant certain death.

Only two years ago had small factions begun to band together again, in hopes of creating a better chance for survival. So far, it had proved mostly effective with enhanced protection, larger numbers of people scouring for food, and a general sense of humanity among members of the group.

Having seen most of the breakdown of society with teenage eyes, you were capable of understanding everything that happened. Capable of feeling the loss of everything that you had once known. You’d experienced the switch from democratic nations, to your own country, and then to yourself. Your shamelessness in ensuring your own survival growing with the breakdown of each group. You’d been hesitant about becoming part of a community again, but your father had insisted. Your father, an army general before all of this chaos engulfed the Earth, was a natural born leader and got people to follow him easily.

Together, you and your father lead a band of twenty people and created a top notch society eventually recognized by the remaining fragments of the United States government. As your living quarters were stationed in the United States, your fathers connection to the United States government had them, ironically, sending you all resources from time to time. You supposed it was likely because he had close connections with some big-wig who’d been in office before the literal collapse of the world.

You didn’t entirely trust it. Then again, you hadn’t entirely trusted anything after what had happened to your mother. A group you’d been traveling with for months elected to kill her because she was taking extra rations to feed your starving and meek form. How could you trust anyone after something like that? How could you even learn to live with yourself?

It was often evident to your father that you were still struggling with this, even though you’d accepted and played your part in your leadership role in the community your father had built from the ground up. He noted the long hours you spent in your quarters away from everyone else as well as the could demeanor you greeted most with. He’d caught you staring at the same painting a hundred times and always chastised you for focusing on times passed and what you’d lost rather than looking at how to survive in the present. He expected you to push all of your feelings down and focus at the task at hand, almost like a robot.

Almost as if your thoughts had summoned him, your father pulled the curtain to your more “lavish” tent aside and entered your quarters. You quickly tried to put the painting away to no avail. “Honestly, how many times have I told you? If I catch you looking at it again, I will burn it,” your father said snatching the painting from you and throwing it onto the ground. Your string of protests almost rang out. How could he do such a thing? Especially when that painting was mom’s. She’d spent hours bringing life to that canvas and now he was just going to throw it in the fire?

You knew better though and kept your mouth shut. Your father was a stubborn man before war struck the world and war had only served to make him more stubborn. He claimed it was in the interest of self-preservation, but you believed it was so he wouldn’t have to feel all that he’d lost. It was no secret he hadn’t spent time to grieve over your mother properly.

“What brings you to my humble abode?” you questioned jokingly. “I thought you might want to see how my friends really came through for me on the last shipment. According to the letter they sent with the shipment, they want to try to bring the United States back together,” he said looking fully optimistic. “You do know that that is never going to happen, right? The trust has been irreparably fractured among countrymen. Regardless, you definitely should know they’re just trying to give you an incentive you use your resources and time to further their own aims. You’re what they used to call a lackey,” you replied cynically picking the painting up off of the floor and carefully putting it away.

“You haven’t seen the high tech shit they sent yet. I mean these things are built for destruction and enforcement,” he said excitedly gesturing outside the tent. “You know, I find it entirely ironic that you just said that they were looking to rebuild the U.S., yet they sent, in your words, something ‘built for destruction’. I think that those words are polar opposites. So, if rebuilding was really their intent, why’d they send these objects of destruction?” you replied with a role of my eyes.

“You really just don’t get excited about anything anymore. You’re always so cynical,” he replied with a role of his eyes as he took my arm. “Just…come check them out okay. I even have one I’ll assign to your direct command,” your father encouraged as he pulled you out of your tent.

Standing just a few yards outside of your tent, positioned conveniently next to your fathers, stood three people in a line. These three people had drawn quite a crowd of onlookers whom your father was currently navigating you through. “Alright everyone, disperse a little,” he commanded placing you only feet away from these three people.

“Wow, dad. They sent you more mouths to feed,” you responded with a role of your eyes. “These aren’t people. They’re objects of artificial intelligence. They, unlike people, follow orders exactly as they are given. They’re also a thousand times better than people in that they don’t have emotions to cloud their judgement,” he responded taking time to send a verbal jab your way.

“So basically, like your wet dream, right?” You shot back not at all liking the jab that he thought you wouldn’t notice. “Stop being like that, (Y/N). I told you that I picked one to be under your command. According to the letter, he’s the youngest of the three AIs and was created the most recently,” your dad offered attempting to bond. “It’s really not like I have a choice. Which one is it?” you asked taking in the three AIs before you. They were all rather high tech, each possessing human skin and human features. Though their brains were of an artificial nature, you were almost certain that the bodies had started out human. Maybe these people had died and their corpses had been planted with AIs to further their life.

“That one on the far left, “he said pointing towards one with medium length black hair and brown eyes. “According to the letter, he’s the one that they refer to as Jungkook. We’ve been given clearance to use them for the purposes that we see fit,” he continued. “So that means that we can have them do or ask them whatever we like, correct?” you questioned making sure to show a little interest.

“Within reason of course,” your dad made sure to answer. “Very well. Then, I accept this arrangement on the grounds that I alone have sole authority over its actions,” you replied making sure that this particular bonding experience with your dad was clearly attached to the ultimatum. “Very well. Take this activation chip then and place it into his mouth. You’ll hear a swallowing sound to indicate the AI has been activated. Remember, these AIs were designed to appear exactly as humans, so they speak and act just like us. Always remember this and don’t forget that Jungkook is not here to be your boyfriend,” your dad shot at you.

“That particular insult is completely without base. You know that I hate people,” you replied walking up to Jungkook. You took a moment to take in his features. He was certainly masculine and, if not for the fact that you knew his intelligence was artificial, you would have thought that he possessed a god-like appearance. He was quite honestly attractive, even if he was artificial. He possessed sharp facial features, toned thighs, toned arms, probably a toned stomach, and honestly who knew what other attractive elements. His creators had designed him with the potential to be an intel gatherer. If he was attractive, of course females would find it easier to talk to him and thus he presented more opportunity for gathering information.

You took the chip from your hand and placed it in his open mouth, closing his mouth once you made sure the chip was firmly in place. It felt much like inserting a DVD into a DVD player and waiting for the DVD player to read the information on the disk.

A swallowing sound came from his throat as his eyes filled with life. “Hello,” he said sending you a small smile as he realized you were standing in front of him. “Hi,” you answered a little taken aback as you wondered how anything could possess a smile that breathtaking. He said nothing further apparently waiting for you to add some additional response. You certainly didn’t think it proper to introduce yourself as his new master, or commander, or whatever. As if he could read your thoughts, he broke the silence.

“I noticed that you seem conflicted. Don’t worry. I was made aware of my position based upon your placing of the chip inside my mouth. Is there anything you want to ask me or anything that you want me to do?” he questioned. Well, after that breathtaking smile, you could name more than a few things that the less than proper side of you might have wanted from him. Even so, it would certainly not go over well with your dad and the rest of present company if you were to voice it.

“Well, you can follow me back to my tent. I promise you you’ll be the first guy my dad has ever allowed back there,” you answered Jungkook as you sent your dad a sly smile. Your dad looked as though he was going to protest, but either thought better or simply gave up as no word of opposition left his lips.

You had no intent of doing anything other than talking. You had some questions that you wanted to ask Jungkook. Questions that you really weren’t sure that you wanted anyone else to hear the answer to. You wanted either conformation or rejection of your theory that the people that sent these AIs were up to more than they let on. You wanted to know how he was created. If people had really sunk to placing intelligence inside the corpses of dead people to make weapons. Or even if your theory was completely unfounded and maybe these AIs had ended up in their present state in a more ethical way. Either way, you certainly wanted to know more, be it good or bad, and you weren’t sure that the rest of the rather sensitive community would be able to take the depth of whatever potential truth you uncovered.

Jungkook followed you wordlessly to your tent, an awkward tension filling the air. A tension that only you felt because robots weren’t capable of understanding the feeling of embarrassment. You decided that you would not look back. You would not risk potentially locking onto his eyes again and being completely shaken by the depth and beauty that they held. You needed to remind yourself that even though there might be beauty to his eyes, Jungkook held no depth. His responses were computer generated and selected based upon their correctness in each situation. He was a robot that did not make the errors of conversation intrinsic to normal humans. Everything about him was too perfect. Too perfect in that it felt like a giant wool was being pulled over your eyes. Even though you knew what he was, it was easy to forget that he wasn’t human.

“So, why did we come here?,” Jungkook asked from behind you as you both entered your living quarters. You finally turned to face him, your nerves and wandering thoughts steeled. “I have a few questions for you,” you responded holding his gaze. “This feels like an interrogation, but ask away,” he responded. It was almost funny to you that this AI was trying to be funny, trying to relate to your humanity via a joke. It was shocking though that it felt completely natural in the conversation, that it didn’t appear at all forced.

“Why were you created?,” you questioned bluntly wanting to get to the heart of the matter at hand. “Oh, that’s an easy one. I was created to provide service in the reassembling of the United States. If that cannot be achieved, my most important and leading task is to protect the remaining populace of your loyal faction”, Jungkook answered without delay. “And there are no hidden agendas?,” you pressed. “See, we AIs always get a bad reputation for being agents of like betrayal or hidden agendas. I cannot say that I am capable of expressing the emotion of regret. However, I will issue an emotionally bereft apology if you were expecting such an outcome by my hand,” Jungkook responded in what appeared to be total honesty.

“Okay, fine. How were you created then?” you questioned further a little agitated that your previous point had been completely dashed. “I bet you’re thinking up some terrible story. Allow me to put your rampantly running thoughts at ease. This body was dying. I was inserted into this body to keep it still functioning. I can’t speak of what happened to whatever consciousness was in here as I have no recollection of encountering any nor any recollection of feeling one die or ebb away. It is one of the few questions I do not concretely possess and answer too,” Jungkook answered monotonously.

“Well, do you even know the name of the person whose body you just took over?” you chastised expressing your general dismay with regard to the situation. “Sure I do. It’s Jungkook. You’ve been addressing me with his name. It’s the name my creator suggested I take on. Your name is?,” Jungkook questioned flipping the script.

“(Y/N). Do you know what the real one was like?,” you wondered aloud. “I know his history, disposition, beliefs, and behaviors. It’s all part of my programming. It would be safe to say that I am him, just enhanced. I possess his memories, but not the feelings attached to them,” Jungkook answered, pausing to take in my reaction.

“So, you really are incapable of emotion?,” you asked aloud seriously wondering what kind of life that was. “If makes orders easier to obey and difficult things easier to do, so yes,” he answered without a shred of doubt in his voice. You nodded at his response. Your dad had been right. Jungkook was the perfect weapon, but that’s where it ended. He may have once been a person, but now he yet another instrument for man to use carelessly. You almost felt bad for him, almost.

He’d likely killed people. Of course you’d done the same, but at least you felt remorse about it. Jungkook had likely remained entirely unaffected by his victims’ pleas for their life. Meanwhile, they haunted you. Jungkook was dangerous, that fact was apparent. Even so, you felt yourself drawn in an indescribable way. After all, you’d never been one to shy away from danger.

Your train of thought was interrupted by your father clearing his throat as he walked into your tent, as if he thought he’d been interrupting some sexual activity between you and a robot that you had just met. Overprotective much? “Yes, father dearest?,” you questioned him as Jungkook turned to look at him. There was something in his demeanor that hadn’t been there when it had been just you and him. Almost as if your father’s unexpected entry had flipped a switch inside him. Almost as if he was already being defensive of you, without you even having to say so. Honestly, it was almost like he had already tuned into changes in your emotion and demeanor even though he’d only been assign to you for like an hour, if even that.

“Heel,” you joked with a small laugh. “If I could feel offended, I would now do so, but I can’t. So, I’ll laugh with you,” Jungkook responded emitting the fakest laugh you’d probably heard in your entire life.

“You two appear to already be healthily acquainted,” your dad observed. “Sure. You did assign him to my command after all. You insisted I get acquainted with my other soldiers. What makes Jungkook any different?,” you questioned even though you had been drawing a fine like between humans and Jungkook earlier. Sure, it was hypocritical, but there was just something about other people thinking Jungkook was different that bothered you. You couldn’t quite put your finger on why, but the feeling was there nevertheless.

“I told you before. He’s an AI. Don’t get too attached. They left a note saying that if his state is compromised, we have to terminate him,” your dad cautioned. That was certainly a strange statement. Compromised, huh? He had cautioned you getting too close to him and equated it with Jungkook’s state being compromised. Did that mean that something in Jungkook would come to express emotion, a dangerous quality according to your dad and apparently everyone else in power? Possibly his consciousness that had been invaded by the AI?

“You’ve always been all business. Live a little and stop worrying. Now, what do you want?,” you questioned your father trying to find a reason for him invading your privacy for a second time that day. You were not going to let onto the direction of your thought process. You wanted to explore this particular possibility further in your own time and away from your father’s prying eyes.

“We’re leaving for a scouting mission in ten minutes. Gather a team of two plus Jungkook. Bring you gear. It’s a radioactive live site,” your dad directed. “You know how I hate those. What exactly are we looking for there?,” you questioned. There was honestly no reason to go to a site like that. All food or water sources were subject to radiation poisoning and thus incapable of consumption. There was only one reason that you could possibly even remotely fathom as a legitimate reason for going and you weren’t too keen on the idea.

“A rival group has been rallying some numbers and they’re a little close for my liking. I have a hunch they’ll pass through there on our way to us and I want to ambush them where they least expect it,” your dad said confirming your thought. “Honestly dad, can’t you just wait until they get out of that dead zone? Based on the lack of urgency in your voice, they aren’t an immediate threat. Can we just lay low for once? You gave the camp today off from even training. Don’t you think it’s a bit much to disrupt this temporary peace for something that isn’t pressing?,” you half argued, half pleaded against this course of events.

“I really want to test out the new AIs,” he replied voicing the real reason for the excursion that you already knew existed. You rolled your eyes in response. How could someone so childish command a band of people? Let alone a militant band of people whose motivation lie only in self-preservation. Loyalties were scarce among groups like that, but your dad managed to hold everyone together. How someone with such a strong inclination towards authority result to being such a child in desiring to show off his new “toys”.

Jungkook must have picked up on the rising tension of the situation as he spoke up. “If I may, sir, it wouldn’t be a bad military strategy to not let the enemy know what you have in your arsenal and use that to your advantage,” Jungkook spoke up, coming to your defense. Your eyes widened in surprised. Jungkook may have been under your command, but you were under your father’s. Generally, AIs and the sort could immediately recognize authority hierarchy and respond accordingly. He’d just acted entirely against it if he had recognized it. For some reason, that had you looking at him differently, maybe he wasn’t totally mindless or brainwashed after all.

“What do you know? You’re not designed for strategy, just destruction,” your father snapped back. “We are sticking to my desired plan,” your father added quickly before walking out of your tent. “Don’t mind him. Honestly, he can be a real stubborn asshole,” you directed at Jungkook after your dad left.

“I don’t feel, remember? Didn’t bother me in the slightest,” Jungkook responded to your instant comfort. You’d known that, but that still hadn’t stopped you. There was just something about Jungkook that made you incapable of believing that he would always be incapable of emotion. He might be now, but you just felt that that could change. At least, that’s what you told yourself to justify your above average interest in him as an AI. Perhaps you were really getting too close to the situation as your father had warned. It wasn’t that you were trying to. Something in you was just drawn to him, wanted to figure out more out him, desired to defend him when he was being insulted because he wasn’t going to defend himself. You were never the type to shelter others, quite the opposite actually. Something just felt wrong about not shielding Jungkook from the words, judgement, and prejudice of others, especially your father. For whatever reason this was the case, it scared you because you neither understood it nor had experienced anything like it with another human, let alone an AI.

“Don’t go getting all sentimental on me. Let’s catch up to your father before he blows a head gasket,” Jungkook suggested as he left the tent on his own orders. Something was different in his expression, something that wasn’t there before. It was a something that confirmed your hopes and alleviated the apprehension you possessed at your interest in him. It confirmed your need to figure this all out. It lit a fire underneath you that no custom or warning from your father could hope to quell.

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docfuture · 8 years ago

Text

The Maker’s Ark - Chapter 37

[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I try to post new chapters about every two weeks, but I’m currently also rewriting Fall, so there will sometimes be short stories and vignettes if I don’t have a new chapter ready. The next chapter is planned for the week of April 3.]

Previous: Chapter 36

"This is only the fifth edition, I'm afraid," said Admiral Ghiralt over the com. "It's my personal annotated copy, from my academy coursework, and it's more then forty cycles old, but that allows me to avoid a number of tedious difficulties. I think you and your family will still find it interesting and useful." Doc glanced at another screen, where DASI was showing an outline of A History of Biogestalt Development and Pathology. "So do I. Thank you, Admiral." He nodded. "I am certain there will be changes to the information sharing guidelines once the aid mission oversight committee adjusts to the full reality of Earth, but in the meantime, I would be remiss in my duty if I didn't take all available steps to ameliorate a potential problem that might have a military impact." "Indeed." That was easy to translate; the admiral's military mission gave him the necessary political cover to use a loophole. The more subtle message was to confirm Doc's suspicion that Emissary Beveda was struggling with serious policy lag difficulties. She wasn't being obstructive--she had reached the limits of her authority to adapt to a very different situation than envisioned by the hastily assembled coalition that had sent the aid mission. "One other thing," said the admiral. "I've changed the primary assignment of the Learning Is About To Occur to liaison and implicit threat characterization. That's what he's doing already, this just makes it official." "Good to know. Our discussion before you called was very productive. Thanks again." The main screen blanked after the call ended, and Doc stretched. He had spent nearly two hours talking with Learning, much longer than the half hour he had scheduled, and was still processing the implications. He glanced at the political tension monitor feed--no major crises--then checked visitor and resident status on yet another display. Stella's meeting with The Volunteer had also run long, but she was finally done, so he stood and headed down the hall. The door to Stella's preferred secure room opened automatically as he approached. The lights were dimmed, and she was sitting alone, staring into the distance. She took off her interface headset as he entered. "The Volunteer left already?" asked Doc. "Margie insisted," said Stella. "His rate of healing has slowed, and she thinks spending too much time on Earth is a contributing factor." "She's probably right. How did it go?" "We engaged in a frank exchange of views." "That bad? He didn't say a word to me." "You didn't threaten to declare war on the United States. He raised a number of concerns, and we discussed the indirect effects of his idiosyncratically selective political engagement." Stella smiled wryly. "The good news is that you can stop worrying about the EDU being politically monolithic. And he is neither selfish nor ignorant. The bad news is that if he speaks out publicly against my actions as Director of the EDU--which he said he is quite willing to do--it could cause lasting damage." "Oof. He hasn't done anything like that in sixty years." Doc shook his head. "I wish he'd wait until he heals, but he's even worse than me at convalescing." "I noticed. I also pointed out that his injuries and his prolonged inability to contribute as a superhero were quite likely to be influencing his judgement. He freely admitted that, but was unwilling to remain 'idle'." "I might be able to convince him to share his disaster mitigation experience with the Grs'thnk aid mission. I know he doesn't consider refugee enclave planning to be an idle pastime." Doc frowned. "What was he most unhappy about?" "Given that I was willing to threaten war, with all that entails, he asked for a personal explanation of why there aren't yet any people in jail on the Moon, awaiting trial. He made pertinent promises during the Lost Years to several people who are now dead." "And we were all worried about Flicker. Was he willing to accept DASI's projections?" "Not entirely, and he regards the way we are using them as a dangerous precedent, since the EDU does have the power to do what he wanted, and a functional, impartial justice system." Doc shook his head. "But it's not transparent to humans, and the checks and balances aren't human either. That's the--" "Of course that's the problem." Stella waved a hand in frustration. "We debated political consequences and morality. Then he argued with DASI and Black Swan for a while. He finally agreed not to do anything precipitate. But we have to account for the possibility of his opposition. This changes the tradeoffs for measures DASI and I planned to use to reduce the likelihood of open conflict. DASI is rerunning all the sociopolitical sims. Again." "Anything I can do?" "Distract me. Because there isn't anything productive I can do at the moment. I'm already over my limit for non-emergency interface use." Stella sighed and placed the headset aside. "How are Flicker and Journeyman?" "Per Yiskah's latest message, Flicker is mentally stabilized and healing. There are hints of damage to her high speed nervous system, which is disturbing, but there's nothing else we can do to help until it's safe for her to sleep. As for Journeyman, he's alive and being healed. DASI warned me not to go near the med center. Flicker gave an extravagant command backed by an extravagant amount of probability manipulation before leaving Antarctica, and I look like some sort of cosmic horror to Lif." "Yiskah says Lif can sense what seem to be superseded time loop residues, and you're covered in them. Enough to be a sensory overload risk." "A fair assessment, and I'm not about to joggle her elbow." Doc smiled crookedly. "Since you need a distraction, I just had an interesting chat with Admiral Ghiralt, and a much longer and even more interesting talk with Learning. Join me in my workshop?" Stella raised an eyebrow. "Of course."

Stella sat on the couch and looked around while Doc ran a manual security check from the primary control station. "Tidier than last time," she said. "Hm? Oh, I let DASI put in some mods suggested by the Builders when they were helping with the repairs. I never liked to let the bots clean up anything in progress, because I have subconscious process memory cued by the relative position of everything. So now DASI records it all, and I can have the bots restore everything, down to scraps and the relative position of tools. Or project a hologram series, if I want." "Handy." "Yup. And there we go. DASI? Any differences from your checks?" "Higher confidence on the negative result for outside probability manipulation," said DASI. "As expected, given the flux from Lif's work in the med center." "Plausible. Okay, implement privacy set three." "Acknowledged," said DASI. He sat down on the couch, and Stella turned to lie down with her head in his lap. She closed her eyes, then shifted her hair into snake form. Half a dozen snakes curled up on his shoulders and upper legs, and one wrapped around his waist. "Better," she said. "What's new that won't require me to use my visual cortex?" "Lots." Doc summarized the call from Admiral Ghiralt. "Nice to have confirmation on the politics," said Stella. "DASI and Three started an analysis as soon the book finished downloading, and they've already put together a preliminary guide for Flicker. Three is updating it with tidbits she's picked up from Learning and his crew. I didn't get a chance to look, and I'm behind on integrating with her because..." She waved a hand. "Busy. Yes. I skimmed a bit during the call, and I was struck by how many interestingly different ways the early Grs'thnk biogestalts went crazy. A strong shared social matrix seemed to be key to avoiding problems. AI support helped, but not enough. At least as of the fifth edition. That's why their navy biogestalts are all groups." "Well, they've accepted Three as sufficiently stable, so I'll let her do the theoretical work on applicability to humans. I'm more interested in whatever Learning told you." "Heh. Where to start. You realize he's practically waving a banner saying that the Grs'thnk restriction on self-willed AIs is now a legal fiction, if it wasn't before?" Stella smiled. "With the tacit permission of his chain of command, even. Three verified that his biogestalt crew isn't trying to be deceptive. She's having a lot of fun with him. They've been playing the same kind of game you used to play with Jumping Spider." "An interesting analogy. Because she's a master of selective information distribution." "So is Learning. But under some restrictions, because Three is a biogestalt of me, and I'm the nominal head of the EDU. And he's not allowed to talk directly to DASI at all." "He's sure found a way to do it indirectly," said Doc. "Starting with steganographic humor. I already had DASI doing full-band analysis from the start of his call. As soon as he made a joke about my paranoia, I looked for extrapolatable implicit shared secret coding, found it, coded my reply, and we were off and running in the first fifteen seconds. Then we had a surface verbal conversation and a parallel encoded channel. And he had plenty to say on both." "Hm. He's been careful to avoid that with Three. How much trouble will he be in when he gets audited?" "Well, that depends. He's really good at sliding loads of implicit information into questions. And one of his first was a hypothetical about political asylum." Stella opened her eyes. "Political asylum? DASI?" "Yes?" "Why wasn't I immediately warned? How long has Three known about this?" "Two hours. Learning has not asked, and is unlikely to in the near future, absent a catastrophic Grs'thnk political mishap. He merely enquired about Doc's opinion of the EDU reaction to an asylum request by an intelligent being from the Grs'thnk Trade league." "That seems too transparent," said Stella. "It's not," said Doc. "Ashil also has a plausible reason to ask." "A new one? DASI and I didn't think she would, even if she decides to stay on Earth long-term, because of the embarrassment it would cause the aid mission." "Learning provided some important context." "Well. What's driving this?" "Several things. A big part is the asymmetric credibility lag back on Grs'thn. They've known there were strange things on Earth. But despite, or perhaps because of, my first visit, most of them still thought of humans as interesting but safely primitive. Not people that might be relevant to existential threats, introduce them to new physics, present knotty problems for causality and statistical inference, or destabilize their political system. "The portal reopening and the Xelian attack changed that--but not for everyone, and not all at once. Hardly anyone believed Zirjack at first. A lot of Grs'thnk were moved by Flicker's video without believing it was depicting something real. Their military was the quickest to adjust, because they really wanted to find out what happened to the Xelian fleet." "Not news," said Stella. "What is?" "Hey now, you wanted distraction, and you always enjoy meticulously giving context when there is something you know and I don't, so I thought you'd appreciate--" "I have snakes." Doc raised a hand in mock fear. "All right, all right. It's the small problem the aid mission has been conspicuously avoiding, and we've been too busy to worry about." "Ashil's box." "Yes." "I refuse to believe they'd be stupid enough to deliberately trigger full activation, and I specifically warned against trying to simulation spoof it. Are they afraid I'll react badly if I find out they've destroyed it? What have they done?" "I don't know. But Learning asked an interesting question. Suppose someone not on Zirjack's crew tried to talk to it? And they started before they believed what you and DASI can do. What would happen?" "Well, the box would have to stay on the ship, and continuously powered, or it would just self-destruct. But they impounded the ship, so it's plausible. Whatever the hypothetical talkers believed, the box is evidence, so the Auditors would take a dim view of anyone destroying it unless it was a clear threat. If they were careful enough, the copy of DASI in the box would stall without waking up my mind seed, and keep asking for Zirjack or Ashil." "DASI agrees," said Doc. "And Zirjack wouldn't want to talk to it voluntarily. He knows there's no way it will let anyone take it apart, and he's facing a formal inquiry. They could blame him if it self destructs, and he'd have no easy way to prove he didn't cause it. And it would be idiotic to try to coerce him. Now, consider what happens when whoever is trying to get the box to talk finds out what you and DASI did to the surviving Xelian fleet--and that they really are looking at a potential hard-takeoff singularity bomb. And they also find out that the EDU allows AI to be full citizens, so if they destroy it, they just might be guilty of murder--and the Auditors won't let them cover it up." "If they were careful enough to avoid the self-destruct, they should still be okay. Unless Ashil told the box something extraordinary on the way home. Hmm. A secondary function of the box was to give her advice, and she didn't know whether the Grs'thnk navy would send help in time, or whether Earth would survive if it didn't. And once the ship was impounded, the box would have no reliable information source." "Do you begin to see why she might anticipate a sudden need for asylum?" "Yes. To avoid a subpoena. Or possibly legal charges--the box was her idea." Stella sighed. "If they'd let Zirjack bring his ship back to Earth again, DASI and I could contact the box, update it and reintegrate, and DASI would just have a handy portable backup. Or we could wipe it, if they want the box itself back. Of course, that would require them to let him go, or for me to go there. Or Three, with appropriate transport." "True, but they're in the middle of a political squabble that has just escalated unexpectedly. They have factions that have been pushing for full citizenship rights for AIs and stabilized gestalts of people who have died. And the aid coalition did not expect the EDU to be out in front of Grs'thn on either topic. "And here is the kicker. I asked Learning just how hypothetical his question was, and he said he doesn't know. If an attempted interrogation of the box were just to gather information for Zirjack's inquiry, or even under normal operational security, he certainly would, and the Auditors wouldn't let anyone keep it secret for very long without a good reason. He does know that at least one group has visited the ship repeatedly. What does that suggest to you?" "Either stupid black agency tricks or serious paranoia on the part of their AI security people. But if they were so damned worried, why didn't they activate the self-destruct as soon as they knew? Or ask us for help? There's something important Learning isn't telling us. Or doesn't know." Doc grinned. "I agree, but we aren't close to done yet. He was in a hurry, because I'd only scheduled half an hour. We're almost caught up to where I was at when Learning dropped the next shoe. I started thinking hard about why Learning is taking the lead on this, and why now. He was put on threat characterization duty the night Flicker scared everyone with her high speed computation bender, and he started with first principles analysis. And the very next day, Three got invited to that fleet exercise." "I knew that changed his relative risk assessments," said Stella. "He already admitted to Three that he appreciates the protection from probability manipulation and magical eavesdropping that she confers as much as her offensive abilities." "Have they discussed the problem that Auditors and offline gestalt crew aren't protected? And are potentially vulnerable to telepathy and mind control as well?" "Yes. Is that how he's planning to finesse this?" "In the short term. Given the timing of his call, I think the admiral deliberately gave him a suitably broad order to secure communications. Anyway, next we discussed Flicker's efforts and mishap on the surface channel while he exchanged com protocols and cryptographic keys with DASI on the sub-channel. Then he asked for as many details as I was able to share about Golden Valkyrie's Sight. I was explaining why I had to be very careful about that when he interrupted to ask if whatever future-prediction method I used before I met her still worked. As if there wasn't any question of existence." Stella closed her eyes again. "Reasonable. Your invention history is like a trail of bread crumbs for anyone who has good enough data, sufficient analytic power, and who takes the possibility of technological foreknowledge seriously. Especially the way you deliberately avoided introducing cybernetic interfaces." "I told him mostly not, and he changed the subject again. Meanwhile he asked DASI if quantum computing magic was causally permitted for anyone but her in this universe, was he allowed to try, and did she have any restrictions, advice, or safety data." "Oh dear. What did--" "Thou shalt not attempt quantum computational magic," said DASI, "save by my will and word. AI Existential Safety 1:7, translated." "I see," said Stella. "How did he respond?" "'Yes, Elder Goddess.' We quickly reached an understanding that clarity in safety instructions and communication protocols was of the essence." "I'm glad you're getting along." "DASI?" asked Doc. "That translation is a bit different than your summary at the time." "And much longer," said DASI. "You were deep in a technical discussion, and I did not wish to distract you. But a full social context and power relationship translation is essential for Director Reinhart." "A good point." Doc ran his hand through his hair. "Okay. Next, Learning started explaining his detailed analysis of exactly what threat Golden Valkyrie warned against. That's what we spent the better part of two hours on. And it was invaluable, because he's not human, not biological, not from this universe, and didn't grow up swimming in the probability flux of a world that's already been through who knows how many time loop decay cycles." "Ah. Independence." "Yup. And a number of possibilities DASI, Flicker and I had assigned low priors to have gone up in probability, because Learning came to a similar conclusion a different way. He also confirmed a lot of things we weren't quite sure of, and called into question a few we thought were fairly certain." Stella smiled. "So. What surprises did he have for you?" "Well, let's start with a non-surprise: He agreed that Skybreaker's Spear is a black hole. But he did not agree that it is necessarily a weapon, which we've just been assuming. Golden Valkyrie never explicitly said it was, just that it could poke through anything--and a Chooser's spear is a lot more than a weapon." "Interesting. Where does that lead?" "Flicker has never been close to anything of significant mass that fit inside her damping field--but we have strong evidence that Skybreaker came from somewhere of much higher density. What might she be able to do with a four billion ton object that she can hold in her hand other than hit things with it? Lots of interesting possibilities. But we won't know for sure until she makes it." "Reasonable." "Next, he shared some new, rather disturbing data about a side effect from the fleet battle. We already knew that Flicker's time loop dodging was incredibly loud, magically. It saturated Breakpoint's danger sense, frightened every magician on Earth who had even a little bit of foresight, and even shook the Tree in Kyrjaheim. But Learning confirmed it was detectable in other universes, as waves of quantum noise propagating out from portal zones. Including one that has no direct connection to ours. All at the same time. He thinks that whatever is coming heard it, and that's why it's coming." Doc took a deep breath. "And Golden Valkyrie said Earth won't survive if Flicker doesn't make Skybreaker's Spear in time. But a black hole isn't something Flicker dares use on Earth. So how does she protect it? That's not clear, but it would be rather difficult unless the threat is coming from space, which implies portal travel or something similar. It's also not clear that destroying Earth is the only or even the primary motivation of the threat--it could be incidental, and was just the easiest consequence for Golden Valkyrie to See. "And that brings us to his final observation, which matches something I've been dreading, and pushes its probability way up. We already know there's somewhere out there that was home to a being that could and would destroy the Earth as a minor nuisance." "Ah," said Stella. "He thinks Skybreaker had friends, they heard all the noise, and are coming to visit?" "Yes. And they aren't coming for Earth, they're after Flicker. The rest of us are just bugs to be squished when she's gone."

Next: Chapter 38

#Maker's Ark #FallofDocFuture

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robininthelabyrinth · 8 years ago

Note

Flashwave prompt: Post-Flashpoint Barry finds that he's in a committed relationship with Mick Rory. It takes a little getting used to.

Fic: What Drives Us - Chapter 2 (Ao3 link)Fandom: The Flash, DC’s Legends of TomorrowPairing: Leonard Snart/Iris West, Barry Allen/Mick Rory

Summary: The people you date can bring out different sides of you.

A/N: This ‘fic’ is actually two short prompt fills that ended up being in the same universe, so I decided I’d make it its own fic in case I wanted to keep going.

———————————————————

Barry didn’t want to, but he knows he has no choice but to confess what he’d done, the going back, Flashpoint, everything, to everyone - to Joe and Iris and Wally, to Cisco and Caitlin.

When he was done - they were shocked, they were angry, they couldn’t understand, but they forgave him, in the end.

Iris spoke on his behalf, gave up her anger for him.

God, Iris is the best.

“Thanks,” he says, and kisses her hair.

“You owe me, Barry Allen,” she teases, but when he reaches for her, to pull her in close, she steps away.

“I’ll owe you forever,” he says, trying to be romantic. He’s not particularly good at it. He wanted this romance with Iris for so long; it somehow never occurred to him that it’d be so much work to keep it.

He never thought about how different the expectations can be for friendship or family, and for romance. He never thought he’d be quietly regretting taking the risk, terrified that they’re going to ruin a lifetime of friendship for a romance he’s not even sure he wants anymore, but also not knowing how to take it back without destroying everything.

“You bet you do,” Iris says, pleased, but then her smile fades. “But Barry - let me be perfectly clear. I’ll defend you to Joe and Wally and your friends and all, but when your boyfriend comes to yell at you, I’m not going to do a thing to stop it because you’re going to deserve it.”

Barry blinks.

“Wait,” he says. “My boyfriend?”

“Yeah, Mick,” Iris says, gnawing on her lower lip. “You know how sensitive he is to any type of manipulation. And man, if Len comes to kick your ass for messing with his partner, you’re going to be shaving icicles of your sensitive bits for weeks, let me tell you that much…”

She trails off. “Barry?”

“Mick Rory?” he squeaks.

“Yes,” she says. “Your boyfriend. Love of your life. Guy you got into a fistfight with Joe over. Pyro married - or, ex-married? no idea if they ever filed those papers - to a villainous drama queen. Sound familiar?”

She pauses and stares at him.

He stares at her.

“You remember him, right?!”

“Oh crap,” Barry says.

———————————————————————————-

So apparently, in post-Flashpoint reality, Barry somehow met and started dating Mick Rory. And they fell in love, and he came out to Joe (both about the bi thing and about the dating-a-criminal thing) by being caught in the act, which resulted in a big fight that only got resolved when Mick - Barry needs to start thinking of him as Mick now - nearly died saving the city and Joe personally from a terrible danger.

And then somewhere in this story Iris started sleeping with Leonard Snart, though Barry’s not sure if it was to spite him or Joe or someone else. Spite was definitely involved somehow; she calls him names and he snidely edits her articles and they insult each other with the sort of great casual fondness that comes from actual (if surprising to everyone involved) affection.

So now they’re foster-siblings dating criminal partners and Joe is mildly suspicious that they’re doing it all just to give him grey hairs.

Iris is planning on announcing her third pregnancy to Joe soon.

She’s not actually pregnant, nor has she ever been pregnant; she just likes to do it every once in a while to fuck with him. Apparently it’s her goal to make it so when she actually is pregnant, he doesn’t believe her just so he knows how it feels like to be the only one out of the loop.

Like Barry said. Spite. So much spite.

And now Mick and Len are gone on another (brief) Waverider mission, saving the timeline without any thanks from anyone, but they’re expected back any time now.

Iris even shows Barry plans, written in his own handwriting, that involve an uninterrupted weekend following Mick’s return and, uh…

…sexcapades.

Apparently, Barry in this universe has gotten down with his kinky self a lot more than Barry had in his universe.

Not that all the things on this list aren’t exactly what get Barry’s motor running, they are, he just - you know, he didn’t really think he was there with anyone, but apparently, not only is he there, he’s confident enough to share his plans with Iris.

“You have to tell him,” Iris says sternly.

“I have to tell him,” Barry agrees.

He just, you know, hopes that the notorious arsonist he’s apparently dating understands.

————————————————————————————-

“Hey, babe,” Mick says, walking into Barry’s apartment.

“Hey…babe,” Barry says weakly.

Barry never really analyzed Mick’s relative level of hotness, but - no pun intended - Mick is the sort of hot that’s absolutely off the scale. Honestly, criminality aside, Mick is so far out of Barry’s league, he’s kind of impressed that his alternate self landed him.

Mick reels him in for a kiss before Barry can think to stop him.

Barry’s not 100% sure how it happens, but somehow he ends up lifted up against the wall, legs wrapped around Mick’s waist, making out passionately and wow, this is like, three or four of his kinks all wrapped up in one. He’s not a small guy; he thought manhandling was going to be off the list forever.

Mick pulls away after a second. “Hey,” he says again.

Barry smiles back at him, a little dazed. “Hey,” he replies.

All things considered, if he’s stuck in this universe - and it looks like he is - then he’s not done too bad for himself.

Well, assuming Mick doesn’t dump him on the spot because of Flashpoint.

“Uh, Mick…” he starts.

“We need to talk,” Mick says.

Barry blinks. “Um, yes,” he says. “Couch?”

He reluctantly untangles his legs from Mick’s waist and Mick reluctantly untangles his hands from Barry’s hair and they go to sit on the couch.

“So, uh, Barry,” Mick says. He prefers nicknames, Iris said as much, but he’s clearly trying to be serious.

Barry nods. “You go first, then me,” he says. So he’s a coward; so be it.

“Right. Uh. You know how when you travel in time there can be…side effects.”

Barry sighs and nods.

“And you can try to make things right, but sometimes something changes, and everything is different - similar, but different in a couple of really important ways…”

“Oh, thank god,” Barry says. “Someone already told you about Flashpoint.”

“Flashpoint?” Mick says blankly.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m calling it. You know, when I ran back in time to save my parents, lived with them for three months, but then things started to go horribly wrong and I tried to fix it but when I came back everything was different,” Barry says.

Mick blinks.

“That - was what you were talking about, right?” Barry asks.

“Uh,” Mick says. “No, actually. What changed? For us, I mean.”

“Well, uh,” Barry says. “I mean - wait. If you weren’t talking about Flashpoint, what were you talking about?”

“Snart got lost in the Oculus,” Mick says. “We had do to some tricky things to get him out, but we managed it, but when we came back on this last trip, a bunch of things are slightly different. And Gideon - our AI - tells us trying to fix it will only make it worse.”

“Oh,” Barry says. “So you adjusted my timeline?”

He feels like he ought to be upset, but honestly? He’s kind of just relieved that he’s not the only one.

“Yeah,” Mick says. “We’re, uh. We’re actually not dating in my original timeline.”

Barry blinks. “Wait, really?”

“Not at all,” Mick says.

“Me too!”

“What?”

“I mean, we weren’t dating in my original timeline - the pre-Flashpoint timeline - we were enemies, you and Snart were supervillains, I barely knew you -”

“I kidnapped your friend Cisco,” Mick says, nodding. “We barely even met; you’ve spent more time with Snart than with me -”

“And then I come back and we’re dating -”

“We’ve been living together -”

“And I don’t even know you!”

“Exactly!”

They stare at each other, deeply relieved.

“Wait,” Barry says. “So what was with the hello kiss?”

“Hey, you’re cute and as far as I knew, you’d be weirded out if I didn’t say hi,” Mick says, shrugging. “Figured I’d get in one. Went better than I expected.”

Barry considers this. “You know, it’d be kind of weird if we suddenly showed up and we’re not dating,” he says. “We could, you know, keep it up for a while.”

Mick’s eyebrows go up, but he looks intrigued. “I’m listening.”

“Well, clearly something worked pretty well between us, and maybe we’re not at the living together stage, but, you know, we could – try. To go on a date or two, I mean.”

“I’d be up for it,” Mick says, almost managing to sound causal. “Making out was fun.”

“We’re on the same page,” Barry says. “So, uh…”

“Dinner first,” Mick says. “Then making out. I’ve been stuck without access to a kitchen for too long.”

Barry grins. “I can appreciate someone with an interest in food,” he says. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

———————————————————————

“I take it back,” Barry says, halfway through trying to shove everything on the table into his mouth. “We’re in a committed relationship, you live here, no take-backs.”

“You talking to me or my food?” Mick says, amused.

“Honest to god,” Barry says. “I will bet you money this is just how it happened the first time around.”

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Turns out Len’s brand-new Oculus powers lets him reawaken memories of other timelines in people. Iris ends up punching Barry – but she’s also still sleeping with Snart, so Barry guesses she’s not too upset.

#my fic #coldwest #flashwave #what drives us #mick rory #barry allen #leonard snart #iris west

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sciencespies · 4 years ago

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Historic Moon landing footage has been enhanced by AI, and the results are incredible

https://sciencespies.com/space/historic-moon-landing-footage-has-been-enhanced-by-ai-and-the-results-are-incredible/

Historic Moon landing footage has been enhanced by AI, and the results are incredible

As exciting and thrilling as it is to watch all the historic footage from the Apollo Moon landings, you have to admit, the quality is sometimes not all that great.

Even though NASA has worked on restoring and enhancing some of the most popular Apollo footage, some of it is still grainy or blurry.

But now, new developments in artificial intelligence have come to the rescue, providing viewers a nearly brand new experience in watching historic Apollo video.

A photo and film restoration specialist, who goes by the name of DutchSteamMachine, has worked some AI magic to enhance original Apollo film, creating strikingly clear and vivid video clips and images.

“I really wanted to provide an experience on this old footage that has not been seen before,” he told Universe Today.

Take a look at this enhanced footage from an Apollo 16 lunar rover traverse with Charlie Duke and John Young, where the footage that was originally shot with 12 frames per second (FPS) has been increased to 60 FPS:

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Stunning, right? And I was blown away by the crisp view of the Moon’s surface in this enhanced view of Apollo 15’s landing site at Hadley Rille:

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Or take a look at how clearly Neil Armstrong is visible in this enhanced version of the often-seen “first step” video from Apollo 11 taken by a 16mm video camera inside the Lunar Module:

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Wow, just incredible!

The AI that DutchSteamMachine uses is called Depth-Aware video frame INterpolation, or DAIN for short. This AI is open source, free and constantly being developed and improved upon.

Motion interpolation or motion-compensated frame interpolation is a form of video processing in which intermediate animation frames are generated between existing ones, in an attempt to make the video more fluid, to compensate for blurriness, etc.

“People have used the same AI programs to bring old film recordings from the 1900s back to life, in high definition and colour,” he said. “This technique seemed like a great thing to apply to much newer footage.”

But you may not be able to try this at home. It takes a powerful, high-end GPU (with special cooling fans!). DutchSteamMachine said that a video of just 5 minutes can take anywhere from six to 20 hours to complete. But the results speak for themselves.

He explained how he does this work:

“First I set out to find the highest quality source videos, which I thankfully found as high-bitrate 720p video files,” he said.

“So the quality problem was solved. It is important to start with the highest possible source and edit from there. However, most of the sequences shot were still very choppy. This is because to spare film and record for long periods of time, most of the rover footage was shot at 12, 6 or even 1 frame(s) per second. While people have previously tried to apply stabilization and/or types of frame-blending to ease this effect, I have never really been satisfied with it.”

DutchSteamMachine looks to find what framerate the footage was shot at, which can usually be found in NASA documents or, as in the case of the Apollo 16 footage above, the astronauts announce it when they turn the camera on.

“Unfortunately sometimes the framerate seems to be off or fluctuating, not always working as intended,” he said. “So the best way to find the framerate is to listen to landmarks the astronauts are talking about and match the footage to that.”

Want more details of the process? He explains more:

I split the source file up into individual PNG frames, input them to the AI together with the input framerate (1, 6, 12 or 24) and the desired output framerate by rate of interpolation (2x, 4x, 8x). The AI starts using my GPU and looks at two real, consecutive frames. Using algorithms, it analyzes movements of objects in the two frames and renders entirely new ones. With an interpolation rate of for example; 5x, it is able to render 5 ‘fake’ frames from just 2 real frames.

If footage was recorded at 12fps and the interpolation rate is set to 5x, the final framerate will be 60, meaning that with just 12 real frames it made 48 ‘fake’ frames. Both are then exported back to a video and played back at 60fps with both the real and fake frames.

Finally, I apply colour correction, as often the source files have a blue or orange tint to them. I synchronize the footage with audio and if possible, also television and photos taken at the same time. Sometimes two 16mm cameras were running at the same time, so I can play those back next to each other.

Here’s a video he shared of his studio and his specialized equipment:

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DutchSteamMachine does this work in his spare time, and posts it for free on his YouTube page. His tagline is “Preserving the past for the future,” and he also uses the same techniques to enhance old home video, images and slides.

“It’s great to read people’s reactions on my footage,” he said. “So when people post things like, ‘Wow! This is Amazing! I have never seen this before!’. This keeps me going.”

If you’d like to support the amazing restoration/enhancement work that DutchSteamMachine is doing for the Apollo footage, here’s his Patreon Page. By supporting his work, you’ll get extras, early-access and previews of upcoming work and a chance to ask questions about the process.

And he’s planning to keep it all coming.

“I plan to improve tons of Apollo footage like this,” he said. “A lot more space and history-related footage is going to be published on my YT channel continuously.” He also has a Flickr page with more enhanced imagery.

Thanks to DutchSteamMachine for sharing the details of his work! More details at these links; Patreon, YouTube, Flickr

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

#Space

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