#i carry the whole ass regional reporting

[databroker]

My editor will talk to my boss about giving me extra money for how well I’m performing YIPPIIIIIII

[the-railways-of-seidrey]

So, let's talk train reporting numbers and Sodor

This is a train reporting number, also called a headcode

Made up of the first number denoting what class of train it is (class 1 being express, 2 being stopping train, etc. 7 here is express freight, livestock, or ballast train not fitted with continuous brake), the letter denoting destination (this is what we're going to talk about), and the final two digits being individual train identifiers.

Now Sodor almost exclusively uses headcode discs, as shown here (this hesdcode is denoting parcels, fish, fruit, livestock,milk or other perishables with all vans fully fitted with continuous brakes or empty coaching stock)

They also use them on diesels that IRL had headcode boxes (Bear here had express headcode discs)

However, we know that train reporting number boxes do exist, as shown by this image

The class 40 has split headcode boxes, although they're a bit difficult to distinguish (also look how the door just melds into their face). Here's what they look like IRL

Now on to what I'm wondering: what are the North Western Region's area reporting letters, both within the region and for trains going between regions. Here are the codes used for interregional trains:

E: Eastern

L: Anglia

M: Midland

O: Southern

S: Scotland

V: Western

X: Special Load

Z: Special or short term working (trains not in the timetable)

And prior to 1967 N was used for the North Eastern Region until the region's dissolution.

These were used for trains travelling to that region.

Intraregional codes designate what line your traveling along, for example in the Scottish Region, H stood for trains around Inverness, Kingussie, Elgin, Kyle, and Wick (as well as other things, these are sometimes reused for different routes), and odd and even numbers identify train direction.

So: what was the North Western Region's code? The short answer is we don't know. But we can join the world of headcanon.

As both M and N were used, BR didn't seem too fussed with letters looking like each other. And as N was already in use, so we can't use it for North Western, we can use W. Trains travelling to Barrow and beyond would carry the M code.

Now for intraregional trains. This is wild ass speculation, and as always I'd love to hear others' input on the topic, this goes for the whole post.

I think the mainline could be T, for Tidmouth.

Most all the branch lines are easy because of the names all have a different first letter

The Little Western could be A for Arlesburgh

B for the Brendam Branch

F for Ffarquhar

K for Kirk Ronan (although I'm not sure if this line is used anymore)

N could be Norramby, intraregional and interregional codes did sometimes overlap, for example the Scottish Region's N meant the Dumfries - Carlisle - Newcastle route, but we could make operations easier and letter the Norramby Branch R

P for Peel Godred Branch

Now, I also don't know if when IRL regions lettered their routes for headcodes, they just went down the alphabet. As names for routes seldom line up with the letter assigned, this may be what happened, but that's somewhat boring, and who knows, Charles may have done his own thing.

Anyway, that's all I really had to say on the subject. I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts on it. Maybe there's info I don't know about all this! I'm by no means an expert.

[djarinbarnes]

me olvidarás - eight

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Pairings: Javier Peña x female reader

Warnings for the chapter: jealously, angst, smoking, talk about STD’s, cursing, bad coping mechanisms, 18+ smut, grinding, brief oral, fingering, vaginal sex, Javi’s dirty talk, biting, choking, two idiots.

Word count: 5.1k

Summary: an undeniable warm summer vacation in Bogotá. simply trying to get away from your nosey, boring parents and live for once, you meet a man who impresses you beyond where your imagination could ever take you.

a/n: hi. i hope you like this chapter. it was.... kinda hard to write, so I hope you like it!! as always, thank you to @mcngata​ for aiding me with the whole spanish thing. I love u boo!

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“¿Y qué tenemos aquí?”

You don’t know how to react to the woman standing in front of you. She’s just a little shorter than you, her tan skin slightly glistening from the heat outside. The swells of her breasts are bared, and her stomach is visible where her top doesn’t meet her short skirt. 

You pull your cardigan tighter around your body as she shoots daggers into you with her eyes. You gulp, holding the door as closed as you can to shield yourself from her prying eyes.

“Um… Excuse me?” You manage to croak out, and she lets out a laugh before she’s raising an eyebrow at you. You did understand some from the telenovelas you watched at home, but it was sparse and limited. She’s chewing on a piece of gum, and you watch as her red lips part slightly with every chew.

“¿Cómo te llamas?” She nods at you, and you chew on your lip, finally getting a hang on what she’s saying as she slows down. You tell her your name, and she lets out a huff, crossing her arms over her chest. “¿Y dónde ha recogido Javi a alguien como tú?”

You don’t know how to answer her, or if you even want to answer her, so you don’t. You shrug your shoulders, and you just know she’s enjoying your obliviousness. To protect yourself a little more you close the door a little further, shielding more of you from her. “Can I take a message?” You offer, and you watch as she laughs, her laugh full of viciousness and venom.

“Puedes decirle a Javi… ¿Que cuando deje de jugar con mojigatas, sabra donde encontrar una mujer de verdad?” You know exactly what she’s saying, but you also know that it probably isn’t the best idea to say anything at that moment, so you play dumb. She can see the confusion on your face, and she laughs at your expression. You didn’t like this woman one bit. You still wondered what she could possibly want with Javi.

“You tell Javi,” her voice is also overly sensual in English, her thick Spanish accent lingering in the words, making your heart pick up the pace. “That Helena is looking for him. I need to talk to him. He has my number,” she grins, popping a small bubble with the gum in her mouth before she turns on her heel with a wink, leaving you dumbfounded in the entryway of Javi’s apartment.

You spend the next few hours wondering who this Helena woman was, and how she knew Javi. You knew it probably wasn’t any of your business, yet you couldn’t help yourself. She was beautiful, a pretty little thing and you were sure everything was sitting right on her. Just looking at her for those short minutes, and with the confidence she carried, you were sure they had slept together. And more than once.

You stuff a full, cold enchilada into your mouth, not caring about the way you’re eating since you’re alone. You’re savoring the juicy chicken, holding the back of your hand against your mouth as you chew. You don’t know what’s come over you as you swallow everything down.

You had no idea why you felt this way about an encounter you’d had with this woman. Maybe you were just feeling possessive over Javi, which you had no reason for. It wasn’t like you were dating. You sigh and rub your hands over your face, resisting the urge to sob and cry out.

Glancing up at the clock you realize it’s nearing dinner time, and even though Javi hadn’t asked you to make dinner and even though you’re somewhat mad at him, you make your way to the kitchen to pull out a few pots and pans to make something for when he returns from the office.

You had no idea how long it took to file a report, but you figured it could easily be a drawn-out affair. You decided to leave at 8 if he weren’t home by then, to save you the trouble of coming face to face with him, after your flurry of thoughts and the internal struggle you’d had for the past hours.

You cast a look to into one of the cabinets from where you’ve seen Javi pick out a pack of cigarettes, and you give into the temptation of smoking one. You feel like the whole situation with Helena has made your heart pick up the pace so erratically, you need something to calm yourself down with, even though nicotine probably wasn’t the best antidote. With shaky hands you pull out one of the cigarettes before placing it between your lips, shortly after coming up with a lighter, holding the flame to the tip of it.

You know the first inhale is the worst, so you settle on just a short puff, drawing the smoke into your mouth and inhaling just the slightest of the fumes. With an exhale you realize it isn’t the worst taste or feeling in the world, so you bring the cigarette back to your lips, drawing in a bigger intake of the smoke. You feel it this time, and you cough just a bit at the burn in your lungs.

The taste isn’t the same as when you’ve tasted it on Javi’s tongue. It’s much stronger and harsh in your own mouth, especially since the filter is doing nothing for the tobacco. You look through his fridge and drawers, coming up with enough ingredients to make some chicken with veggies. The cigarette between your lips is disappearing quicker than you would’ve liked, but you figure you just must live with it.

With a sigh you stub out the butt into the ashtray, before you start making dinner. The chicken in browning on the pan, and you’re chopping up some carrots when you hear the door being pushed open, and you sigh in relief when you hear the heavy puff of air leaving Javi as he steps into the threshold. Casting a look at the clock, you find the time to be 7:43pm. Saved by the bell…

“Hey,” you say over your shoulder as you hear him put away his keys and jacket before he’s kicking off his shoes by the door. Then you hear his belt buckle coming undone before he discards it against the floor as well. You feel his arms come around your middle and you feel him tense up – and you know he can smell the nicotine on you, even though he smokes himself.

You decide on not mentioning it if he doesn’t initiate the conversation. “Could get used to this.” he breathes into your neck before he leaves a kiss on your shoulder, letting go of you to set the table. “It isn’t every day I eat a home cooked meal.”

“Was it alright at the office?” you decide to try and make small talk, Helena still nagging at the back of your mind. You weren’t going to bombard him with questions at the first given moment, mainly because you were hungry, but you figured it might be a sensitive topic to him. And on top of that, you didn’t even know what the two of you were, and ultimately, it wasn’t your business.

“It was… like it usually was. Boring and the director was yelling my ear off for the documents being incorrectly filed…” He sighs as he recalls the way he pushed the files off the table to ravage you on his desk like a horny teenage boy. “I managed to sort it all and file the report, though.”

“Oh. That’s good.” You keep it at that, and Javi realizes you’re acting very differently from when he left that very morning. He figured you were acting differently the moment he entered the apartment, since you didn’t come to greet him at the door, like he’d hoped you would have. He’d imagined so many things while at work, and every thought had alighted something inside him.

The first thought had roamed his thoughts as he’d gotten into his car, the way you’d straddled him in the very seat he was now sitting in, and he felt the blood rush to his lower regions. Then he’d somehow heard the sounds you’d let out that very morning when he’d both fucked you and eaten you out right after.

God damn, he wanted to go back into his apartment and take you on every surface, but he knew the odds weren’t in his favor. It was both the world and the director of the DEA that was on and against his ass, even though he was still technically on leave. The problem with the director was, that when she asked you to jump you didn’t say yes or no, but how high.

He even had to excuse himself and act on his arousal a few hours into the paperwork, feeling like a teenage guy yet again as he jerked himself off in the stall to the thought of you. He didn’t know what’d come over him – he just felt the arousal clouding his mind at every moment he was awake, and especially when you were around him.

Yet now it felt off. He didn’t even know why you were acting so differently, since everything seemed to be so comfortable and enthralling when he left. Where he earlier felt like you looked at him like he was the only man in the world, it now felt like the two of you were in the last stage of a relationship, just before parting ways.

Like Javi hadn’t faced a situation like that before. Falling out of love was never easy no matter who it was with and how long it had been. He hadn’t even made his own mind up yet, about the whole situation with you. Everything was moving along so quickly; he had a hard time keeping up. Especially every time he reconsidered your age.

You heard him say your name and you turned off the stove, before turning your head to look at him for the first time since he entered the apartment. “What’s going on?” his voice is full of something you can’t place, and you really do contemplate on either lashing out or doing it in a calm way. You know that no matter what he says, you’re going to overthink it.

“Helena came by.” The moment the words and her name leave your mouth you see his Adams apple bop as he swallows past a sudden lump that has formed in his throat. “She was very intent on you finding a real woman, possibly her, when you were done screwing around with a prude like me.”

You watch as his brows furrow, and you feel your eyes fill with tears. You turn around immediately, not wanting to show him just  how much her words hurt you. You hear him breathe out your name along with a hermosa, and you let out a sob. You really didn’t want to admit how much of an impact her words had had on you.

“Helena?” her name falls from his lips reluctantly, like he can’t believe what you’re telling him. “Helena was here?” You can her the anger in his voice, and you nod while wiping your eyes. You hear him come closer to you, and you flinch when he reaches out to touch you. “Did she say anything else than that?”

“She just asked how I knew you.” You sniff, and you feel his arms come around you again, pulling you into his warm embrace. You know you should probably give in and wrap your arms around him, but you just can’t bring yourself to do it. What if he was seeing his Helena woman as well? What if he was having sex with someone else, while he was having sex with you?

You suddenly feel dirty. It dawns on you that you and Javi haven’t used protection at all while you’ve been having sex, and you feel your head going through every emotion all at once. Fear of you contracting something from him. Anger of him leading you on. Disgust with the thought of him having sex with someone else.

Sadness from the mean words Helena has spoken to you. And sadness in the form of you trusting Javi, and him proving that you probably shouldn’t have. You have a hard time focusing on anything at the moment, and you know your body is protecting you from a possible anxiety attack. You know the signs by now, and with the rapid rise and fall of your chest and the blackening before your eyes, you know it’s close.

“I haven’t seen Helena in months, not since…” He trails off, and even though you should probably believe him, you have a hard time doing so. You don’t know what to think at this point. “Come on, I’ll explain it to you.” He takes a hold of your hand and leads you to the couch, where he pushes you down on the soft cushions of the leather couch. He sits down beside you, with a few inches separating you. You appreciate the gesture.

“She’s one of my informants at the embassy,” he starts, and you immediately imagine a hundred things in your mind at once. Informant? Informing him about what? “DEA stands for Drug Enforcement Administration. We’re working towards catching some of the more… hardheaded drug lords in this country.”

It doesn’t catch up to you before now. The bullet wound to his shoulder – your thought about him chasing bad guys… It all clicks right at that moment. The man in front of you chases dangerous criminals for a living. “If you want to know things about them…” He sighs deeply before revealing the next part to you. “I figured you have to hang around the same people they do.” He’s reluctant to add the last part, but when he does you don’t feel much better. “The same women they do.”

“So, she’s a whore?” you hate the word, but you also hate the woman who was at Javi’s door a few hours ago, so you have no problem calling her the profanity. You watch as he nods, his teeth tugging his bottom lip in between them. “Are you…” you have a hard time asking him, but you know you must, considering you haven’t exactly been safe with him. “Clean?”

Javi’s eyebrows furrow at your question, the whole change of subject unsettling him for a second before he catches up. “Yeah.” It’s nothing more than that, so you raise your eyebrows at him. “I usually… use protection with the… informants.” You almost wish he would just say the word, as it if would make you feel better. It kind of feels like he’s sparing himself from the reality of the occupation the women have, and it makes you even sadder.

“Good.” You leave it at that before you rise, walking back over to the stove to reheat the food you were making when he came home. You can’t stop thinking about the information he’s just shared with you, but you also just want to forget she was ever there and that you could just go back to the happy little bubble you and Javi were in that morning.

“You don’t wanna hear the rest of the story? Why she’s coming here, knocking on my door?” Javi speaks to your back, and it really does feel like he’s just talking to a wall. It’s like his words peel off of you, like water on a brick wall. You feel sort of… emotionless about the situation.

“Maybe later.” It’s all you can muster at the moment, not really wanting to sympathize with the whore. Somehow, you just know Javi is and always will be a womanizer. His look, his attitude, the whole way he carries himself. It’s a match made in heaven.

You finish the dinner with your back to Javi, sensing the heavy smell of nicotine lingering in the air from where Javi is still sitting on the couch, puffing at a cigarette. You move the pots and pans to the table before you walk over to where Javi is sitting, his hands rubbing at his forehead while the lit cigarette is resting in the ashtray in front of him.

You lift it to your lips and take the last drag, before stubbing it out right in front of him. “Dinner is ready.” You tell him, your exhale full of smoke before you turn on your heel, grabbing two beers from his fridge. You watch as he rises from the couch, his eyes on you as you open the two beers before sitting down opposite of where he’s still standing.

No words are spoken between the two of you as you eat, and for the first time, the silence between the two of you is deafening. The space between the two of you is filled with uncertainty and unspoken words as you both fill your mouths. Javi rises in the middle of dinner to retrieve two additional beers from the fridge, and you hear the clinking of the bottles as he removes the caps.

He stands beside you as he sets the newly opened beer beside your empty bottle before the hand previously containing the bottle rests against the expanse of your shoulder. You draw both your lips into your mouth and close your eyes as you feel the warmth of his palm seeps into your skin from on top of your clothes.

“Hermosa.” You feel as his hands move, and when you open your eyes, he’s placed himself on the seat beside you. “You need to know.” You turn your body slightly, urging him to try his luck. “Helena…” you the sound of her name spilling from his lips makes your heart pound faster in your chest.

The emotions encapsulated in his brown eyes are unlike anything you’ve ever seen on him before. You can see the internal struggle he’s fighting at the moment, and something tells you it’s not easy for him to… tell you what he’s about to tell you.

“A few weeks ago, Helena was… kidnapped. And what they did to her, the men…” It’s like the whole incident replays before his eyes as he tries to find the right words to phrase anything. “It wasn’t good. I found her there, naked, molested by those men.”

Javi bites the inside of his cheek as he, again, searches for words. “Since… then, she’s been seeking me out frequently. Whereas it was previously me that sought her out, it was like the tables had turned. She got… obsessed with me. I don’t know why.” Your eyes shoot down as you sense movement, and you watch as he reaches for your hand. Reluctantly, you let him.

“Listen, I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. She obviously doesn’t understand a no.” You bite your lip, still not wanting to look at him, just to keep him at an arm’s length. “Hermosa, I swear I…” With everything Javi has just told you, you still don’t know how to feel about it. On one hand, you want to slap him, even though it’s not his fault.

A few minutes pass in silence, where neither of you make the moves to neither move nor speak. You let your tongue clean the outside of your teeth, contemplating on whether to take another sip of your beer or actually talk to Javi. You let out a breath before looking back up at him. His eyes are trained on you, watching you like you were the most important thing in the world at that moment.

“Sounds like you’ve got some serious lady troubles, Javi.” The sound he lets out is something between a snort and a laugh. You can barely contain your own laughter as Javi practically doubles over on top of you in a fit of tears and laughter. All the anger you’d held in for the previous hours had disappeared and had simply been replaced with… or gone back to affection.

When he pulls back, his eyes are full of tears from the laughter he’d just let out. You lick your lips and smile when he finally stops laughing. “Please forgive… whatever that was. Forgive me.” You nod before he leans into your personal space, nudging your chin up with his nose before leaning in to place a kiss on your lips.

You pull him closer by the neck, nuzzling your fingers into the hairs at the nape of his neck as you slide your lips over his. It feels good to have your lips back on his. No matter how much you’d wanted to punch him in the face not more than an hour ago, that had all dispersed when he’d actually opened his mouth.

“You’re not…” he sighs. “Mad. Are you?” he breathes against your lips, and you suppress a small smile playing on your lips. You shake your head slightly, before you breathe a soft no against his lips. Without saying anything, his lips find yours again, more eagerly this time.

With a fall of his hands to your hips, he’s swiftly getting on his knees before you, pulling your loose-fitted pants down your legs swiftly, his arms quickly spreading your legs on either side of his hips before pulling you close to him and into his lap. Your fingers tangle in his hair, pulling slightly at the strands, drawing a moan from his lips and into your mouth.

You feel every thought you’ve been overthinking during the day go out the window when he grinds himself up into you, letting you feel his hardened cock. Every common sense within you is telling you to stop, telling you to leave while you still can, yet your body isn’t complying at all. That, and your own mind is fighting itself as his lips move down your throat.

You throw your head back to give him more access, whimpering as his mustache and lips grazes against your sensitive pulse point. You feel heat bloom in your core, spreading from your abdomen and throughout your body. Your toes are tingling by the time his lips reach your collarbones, your fingers trembling as you hold onto the back of his neck.

His hands move on their own accord as he pushes your cardigan off your shoulders before he’s detaching his lips from your skin, swiftly pulling off your shirt before reattaching them to the bared skin of the swell of your breast. His fingers are soft as they trail up the expanse of your spine before he snaps the clasp of your bra open before pulling it off your arms.

He grunts against your skin as he ruts his hips up into yours, one hand grasping the back of your neck gently while the other holds your hip tightly. He places a constellation of kisses against your bare breasts, twirling his tongue around the perked bud, drawing a moan from your lips.

“Come, turn around.” His voice is hoarse from arousal as he speaks before he rises on his knees slightly. You get off his lap and turn on your knees, and you lay your chest against the chair you were previously sitting on with a push of his hand to your shoulder.

You brace yourself against the seat of the chair, feeling as the fabric of your panties are slid down your hips. You hold in a breath as you feel his exhale on the globes of your ass, your exhale shaky as your feel his tongue gently slides in between the lips of your pussy.

You have no idea how something so carnal can feel so good, but you’re not going to be the one to complain. You whimper as his warm hands spread your cheeks apart to give him more access to your pussy before he delves further into your folds, burying his tongue within your heat.

“You taste so damn good.” You hear him speak between his tongue flicking at your clit and fucking you with it. You whimper as he pushes a finger into your slick heat, curling it downwards to the front of your cunt. With every thrust of his finger and every moan spilling from your lips, he grins against your skin as he moves his lips to the globe of your butt cheeks.

You feel his teeth sink into your skin before he kisses his way up the back of your ass, all the way up to between your shoulders. His fingers retract themselves from your heat and you feel him shift behind you, you hear his groan from behind you and you assume he’s cleaning his fingers with his mouth all while pushing his pants down.

There’s something about seeing you bent over a chair like this that ignites something inside him. Seeing you so bared and vulnerable and spread out – just for him. His cock twitches at the sight of your clenching pussy in front of his eyes.

“Please…” He grips your hips as you push back against him, urging him to get on with what you’re expecting him to do. You hear his low grunt in your ear as he pushes against your opening, causing you to let out a whimper. You grind your hips back again, whimpering as the head of his cock fills you just the slightest.

Not even a second passes until he’s burying himself to the hilt within you, causing you to let out a throaty whine. His hand comes around to grasp your throat, his fingers tightening just the slightest around the column of your neck.

“More, move please, Javi.” You whimper, his grip cutting off your air supply gently as he starts thrusting his hips into yours rapidly. His pace is unrelenting as he ruts his hips into yours, your whimpers and moans begging him for more.

“Te gusta eso, eh?” his voice is low in your ear mixed with his grunts and the feel of his teeth sink into your shoulder. You whimper at the many feelings coming over you all at once, mixed with the deep voice, full of arousal. “Sí… Sí, lo haces…”

“Javi…” you whimper, your hand coming up to grasp the back of his neck as the other clings to the leg of the chair. You felt as the hand on your hip slid to the front of your body, his fingers sliding through the wetness practically dripping from your core and onto the floor.

Javi coaxed at your nub while still withholding the pace he had set, swiftly pinching your clit to feel you clench around him. The hand on your throat made its way into your hair, fingers tightening in it, turning it into a makeshift ponytail before pulling your head back harshly.

Your back is pulled roughly against his front, his hips still driving in and out of you as his fingers continue their assault on your bundle of nerves. Your slick is just about dripping down the insides of your thighs and your chest is heaving violently at the inability to even put together a sentence.

“Estas tan caliente por mi, goteando por todo mi jodido piso…” his lips are right at your ear as he speaks, and he grunts as you clench around him. His thrusts become erratic as he pushes his fingers against you faster, quicker, almost demanding you to cum with his actions.

You want to cum desperately, you need to cum on his cock, just as much as he needs you to explode around him like you did that very morning. Just the thought of the events of the day brings something out in Javi – something that makes him even more keen on drawing you to the edge.

Maybe it’s anger, or maybe it’s just possessiveness overcoming him as he feels you soak his cock even more. You let out a scream, your walls clutching his cock ever so tightly everything blackens before his eyes. He sinks his teeth deep into your shoulder as he empties himself into your begging heat.

You go slack against him as the aftershocks of your orgasm rolls over you, yet the feel of his arms around you makes the violent trembling in your body seem like the most amazing thing in the world. His chest is warm and sweaty against your back, and his breaths come out as deep puffs against your skin.

You turn slightly and push your lips against his, feeling a drop of sweat from his forehead land against your cheek as he kisses you with relentlessness. “Didn’t…” you breathe, his arms wrapping tighter around your middle. “think of you…” he’s intent in his kisses by now, not wanting to be separated from you at that moment.

“As the possessive type.” You finally manage to breathe, and you feel how he tenses up against you. You let out a short laugh as he pulls out and away from you, huffing as he pulls his pants back up from around his knees. You raise your eyebrow at him as he grunts while standing, his hand resting just above his knee as he stretches his legs.

“I’m not possessive.” He huffs again, licking and biting his lips as he watches you shift on the floor. He can see the mixture of your cum pooling on his floor as you continue sitting on your knees, your legs spread slightly. You let out another laugh before standing, pulling him close by the neck boldly.

“Yeah you are. But you’re also afraid.” You turn and pick all of your discarded clothes off the floor before putting them on. You know he’s watching you, you can almost feel the holes his eyes are burning into your body as he gulps.

“Afraid of what?” he tries softly, and you barely hear it. You turn to him as you pull your cardigan on before crossing your arms over your chest. You watch as he mimics your stance – crossing his arms over his chest as he raises his eyebrow at you.

Ever since he shared the details of… whatever had happened with Helena, you’d known instantly. There was not much to say to it though, because with the knowledge you’d gained from reading your novels… That much you knew. You knew the signs, and they were clearly visible in the man standing right in front of you.

“You’re afraid of love.”

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[jaskiersvalley]

I've been doing nothing but read your fics for three days straight and I am in LOVE with your wolf pack fics. I love me some happy witchers and their bard.

I’m always so humbled when people read my stuff :) Thank you for coming along on this odd ride of who the heck knows what’s going to come next. But I am right there with you on happy witchers and their bard. So have some more :D

To say Jaskier was pissed off was an understatement. Nobody sent him packing with such cruel words. He would prove to Geralt that he was better than that. In fact, he would prove to the whole world! Revenge was a dish best served with a delicious side of “I told you so” and what was the point Jaskier had been trying to prove over the last 22 decades? It was that witchers weren’t the terrible, heartless creatures that the world liked to demonise them into. Well, maybe Geralt was but the others didn’t have to suffer because of his buffoonery. That left Jaskier with only one choice. He returned home to lick his wounds and prove his very own point.

It started, like many things, as an uphill struggle. Gone was Jaskier the bard and his place was taken by Julian Alfred Pankratz Viscount de Lettenhove. His parents had wanted him to take a more active role in ruling the lands and that was exactly what he was going to do. But on his own terms. The decree went out that no witcher was to be turned away. Payment was to be prompt and fair and, of course, it would be subsidised by the Pakratz treasury. If word got out that a witcher was shunned or shortchanged, that particular village or town would be paid a personal visit and not a good one either.

Word started trickling back. Witchers were suspicious at first. Some outright refused the offer of a decent bed and a meal, opting to kill the creature in the area and flee with a bigger than expected pouch of coin. However, it seemed that a few more intrepid witchers sniffed out the area and deemed it ripe for the plucking. One corner of the Lettenhove lands even seemed to get a resident witcher. At first, the locals were wary but, it turned out, they could only see a witcher a handful of times doing very human things like fumbling a pouch or staggering back injured before they bonded. And suddenly, a cat witcher found himself a home. Not only that, allegedly he had a friend in the shadows, elusive and rarely seen. A rare sighting or two could confirm he was grumpy, suspicious and more likely to pick a fight than accept any kindness. Jaskier would put money on the fact that it was a wolf.

The fortune of one cat meant another was bound to turn up to try and get in on the good fortune. It was just as well Lettenhove was big enough and this cat took the southernmost corner which also happened to be the warmest. Surely nothing to do with the viper witcher that scouted the area before settling in too. So now Lettenhove had three, possibly four witchers who didn’t seem inclined to move on to other contracts. In fact, the settlements nearest to them seemed to be doing a great job of finding contracts for them - not all monsters but a witcher’s might was definitely needed in the fields when the ox were being stubborn and rumour had it, the wolf was quite impressive if let loose in a forge.

A messenger came pleading for help on a sunny afternoon. The wolf witcher had dragged another one into the village but seemed aggressive to any who came near and tried to help. Even the cat was no use, seemingly preoccupied with tracking down a human companion of the injured wolf. Without hesitation Jaskier jumped onto a horse and rode hard and fast, heart breaking already. Surely Geralt hadn’t found another human companion so quickly. Even worse, he hoped that the companion wasn’t dead, he didn’t want Geralt on his own again.

It was an odd relief to see a mop of dark hair than white. Not that Jaskier ever wanted anyone to be hurting but he still did hold a torch for Geralt despite his cruelty. While he wasn’t allowed near the injured witcher, Jaskier could make an educated guess that they were Lambert and Eskel which earned him a sliver of trust. He was allowed to get things from the local healer and apothecary to help Lambert care for Eskel. Even better, Lambert finally accepted a room at an inn that he could carry Eskel to. If only that had been all the drama. Jaskier didn’t expect the cat to come into the village at a pull gallop, a body slung across the horse’s back. Thankfully the healer got there before Lambert and the human got carted off with worried cat in tow.

Jaskier only left when he was confident everyone was healing and was staying put for the foreseeable future. The little he gleaned of the unusual group had his heart warming up though, glad that even out on the harsh Path, they had each other.

Of course, Jaskier’s act of generosity had consequences. Two more vipers, another cat and allegedly a griffin also took up residence throughout the lands. Which meant that contracts around the continent were being left unfilled. Witchers had plenty of work throughout Lettenhove and were well compensated for it, they had no reason or need to go further afield into harsher conditions. However, it gave Jaskier a business opportunity he just couldn’t resist. Especially when the messengers started trickling in, begging to borrow a witcher. There was no obligation for any of the witchers he considered ‘his’ to step in. But Jaskier made his home the middleman for contracts. He could negotiate pay, accommodation and other sundries for his witchers before they were offered a contract. Funnily enough, cats were the most likely to venture out, needing the change of scenery. While reclusive and prickly, it seemed that Lambert had found himself a new stomping ground he was reluctant to leave. Sometimes Eskel headed out, feeling the need to do good but never again was he chased from a village without pay, food and rest. The one time a viper was run out, Jaskier blacklisted the whole region for contracts until the king himself came to ask for forgiveness. Watching someone regal apologise to a bewildered witcher may have been the inspiration for Jaskier’s next ditty.

A grizzled wolf turned up on Jaskier’s doorstep, assessing and shrewd. He never did leave as Vesemir’s talents were put to good use with negotiations and also information gathering. Overall, Lettenhove was becoming a force to be reckoned with. Crime was at an all time low, the people were happy and witchers were beginning to be treated better throughout the continent. Yet there was no sign of Geralt. Slowly, Jaskier stopped hoping.

“He’s a stubborn ass. Should have started a new school just for him,” Vesemir grumbled one evening. “School of the Mule.”

It had Jaskier snorting a halfhearted laugh but his still pined. Months went by and other regions began to take inspiration from Lettenhove, offering their own versions of protection for resident witchers. It both filled Jaskier with pride and dread because now Geralt could settle somewhere else. The continent was vast and the safe havens were cropping up thick and fast.

Whispers started up. An elusive witcher had been spotted to the north. Nobody quite knew what he looked like, yellow eyes flashed from below the deep hood of a cloak. That was ruined by reports of Lambert tackling the mysterious witcher and Eskel piling in. Vesemir only smiled as he listened to the messenger relay the happenings while Jaskier’s heart thumped hard in his chest.

“Stubborn idiot. But also a loyal wolf.”

There were only four wolves in existence and Jaskier already housed three. Which meant the fourth could only be Geralt. His hopes and dreams were brought to life by the thumping knock on the door. Opening it, Jaskier regarded Geralt coldly.

“I have come to apologise,” he said as a blonde head poked out from behind him curiously.

“Only six years late.”

“My head was stuck so far up my ass, it took this long to get free.”

As much as Jaskier wanted to hold a grudge, he was also relieved Geralt was alive and well. Even better, he had his child surprise in tow.

“You have a lot to be making up for. But come on in.”

The rest, they say, is history.

[rbbalmung]

Pokemon SwSh GPL AU: Get to know ______

Guys, it’s time for my favourite pokemon ship. Prepare for loads of fluff. 

Get to Know Gloria x Hop (Postwickshipping/Hpyu): 

1: Who spends almost all their money on the other? I headcannon that Gloria really likes pokemon plushies, so Hop is always unconsciously checking the stuffed animal section of stores to see if there’s any she doesn’t have. Gloria tries really hard to get him books that pertain to his research, but she really has no clue what he studies aside from the fact that it’s legendary pokemon (Legendary Pokemon are his focus). 

2: Who sleeps in the other’s lap? Gloria! They are the cuddliest couple ever. There’s about a foot size difference between them, so she fits perfectly in his lap. (Hop is def the little spoon, tho). 

3: Who walks around the house half-naked and who yells at them to put on some clothes? TBH, they would both walk around the house half naked. They’re comfort first babies, so you know Gloria’s bra is coming off and Hop is discarding his work clothes the second their door is closed. I think it’s kind of a casual thing for them, though. They’ve known each other long enough that this kind of thing doesn’t bother them. 

4: Which one tells the other not to stay up all night and which one stays up all night anyway? Gloria has to drag Hop’s ass to bed pretty much every night. They’re both busy people, but we all know that Hop would lose track of time while working on his thesis. It is a fact that if Gloria doesn’t come to get him, he will fall asleep on his desk. 

5: Which one tries to make food for the other but burns it all by accident and which one tells them that it’s okay and makes them both cookies? They’re actually both pretty good cooks (Gloria’s mama owns a restaurant in Wedgehurst and Hop’s mom is obsessed with cooking), but I think Hop would probably be the one to burn all the food. The only reason why is because he has a harder time focusing solely on cooking instead of trying to multitask. Now, baking is a whole other story. They’re both terrible at it. 

6: Which one reads OTP prompts and says “Oh that’s us!” and which one goes “Eh, not really”? Gloria would be the one to read the prompts and Hop would be the denier (he secretly thinks it’s really cute whenever she does it). 

7: Which one constantly wears the other’s clothes? Gloria. 100% Gloria. She is constantly cold and has a passion for stealing Hop’s hoodies. He thinks its adorable because they’re always really big on her. 

8: Which one spends all day running errands and which one says “You remembered [thing], right?” Hop would be the errand runner and Gloria would make sure he remembered everything. It goes back to Hop’s mind being a million places at once and Gloria hyper focusing on one thing at a time. 

9: Which one drives the car and which one gives them directions? Hop would drive and Gloria would give directions for similar reasons to the question above. 

10: Which one does the posing while the other one draws? Hop doodles Gloria sometimes to keep his hands busy. It’s kind of an absent minded thing for him to do while reading an article/book. Once Sonia caught him doing it, and when I say she teases him relentlessly, I mean it. Hop absolutely does not let Gloria see these doodles (they’re very cutesy and he’d die of embarrassment). 

11: If they were about to rob a museum, which one does backflips through lasers and which one is strolling behind with a bag of chips? Hop would be the backflipper and Gloria would be the follower. Think back to their GPL season: Hop was blazing ahead at all times without a care in the world. Gloria is the slowest traveler in the world because she likes talking to everyone and visiting all the stores.  

12: Which one of your OTP overdoes it on the alcohol and which one makes the other stop drinking? Neither of them can hold their alcohol, but Hop at least has more body mass than Gloria. They’re a pair of lightweights and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise. (Let’s be real: Bede has to be the one to make sure they get home). 

14: Which one keeps accidentally using the other’s last name instead of their own? Gloria. I actually believe that Gloria would keep her last name even after she and Hop get married because it belongs to her mama (after the divorce, they both changed their last names to match her mama’s maiden name). Hop is also a proud Hoffman, so he wouldn’t use the name Park. However, everyone else will mix it up. Gloria gets called “Mrs. Hoffman” all the time if she’s arriving for restaurant reservations or something of the like. Newer reporters/young children call Hop “Mr. Park” because they just assume Park was his last name. 

15: Which one screams about the spider and which one brings the spider outside? Neither of them are scared of bug pokemon. 

16: Which one gives the other their jacket? HOP. I mentioned it earlier, but Gloria is always cold. Bede asks why he doesn’t just make Gloria bring her own jacket and Hop replies that he likes it when she wears his jacket (they’re freaking sappy).  

17: Who keeps getting threatened by the other’s overprotective older sibling? Pft. Leon? Please. By this point, he’s become the big brother of Gloria as well. The League members are a completely different story. They all like Hop, but since Gloria is one of their younger members and the biggest sweetheart, they’re a protective bunch (Especially Melony and Gordie). 

18: Who’s the first one to admit they have feelings for the other? Gloria, but it didn’t go well. It was right before he was leaving to finish up high school studying abroad, and the timing wasn’t right (aka Hop turned her down because he hadn’t yet realised his feelings for her). Gloria tries her best to move on but never truly gets over him. Luckily, his feelings hit him like a bag of bricks to the stomach when they reunite a couple years later.  

19: How good would your OTP be at parenting? The best. They would definitely be the cool parents (I mean, come on. They’re the freaking heroes of Galar!). I think they’d also be super supportive of their child’s choices. 10/10. They’re made to be parents. (Hop would especially want to be a good dad. He’s initially nervous because he never knew his dad and thinks he might mess up, but Gloria reassures him that he’s doing a good job). 

20: Which one types with perfect grammar and which one types using numbers as letters? Hop would be Mr. Perfect Grammar. Gloria would use mostly good grammar, but her texts would be littered with emojis. 

21: Who gets attacked by a bully and who protects them? Hop is the more confrontational of the two. Gloria tends to believe that people are only mean to others if something bad is happening in their life, but Hop will jump from 0 to 100 if someone even looks at Gloria funny.  

22: Who makes the bad puns and who makes a pained smile every time the other makes a pun? Gloria likes Hop’s bad puns, so everyone else has to cringe in discomfort at the oblivious pair. 

23: Who comes home from work to see that the other one bought a puppy? Hop. Gloria likes catching pokemon and sending them on poke jobs, so there’s a new member to their family at least once a week. 

24: Which one gives the other a piggyback ride when they’re tired? Hop. He’s the only one she would show vulnerability to, and he makes sure not to make her feel ashamed of it. (also, Gloria absolutely could not carry Hop. He’s like, a foot taller than her).  

25: Which one competes in some sort of activity and which one does the overzealous cheering? Both! They’re very supportive of each other to help ease the other’s insecurities. Hop gets really invested in her pokemon matches and Gloria throws him a little celebration every time he finishes a project.  

26: Who takes a selfie when the other one falls asleep on their shoulder? Gloria. Since Hop never goes to sleep at night, it is very common for him to take 5 minute power naps without even realising it. Gloria definitely takes pictures when it happens as a reflex (They were long distance for the first 4 years of their relationship) because she wants to be able to look back at their memories together.  Like Gloria doesn’t know about Hop’s doodles of her, Hop doesn’t know about her phone album of him. 

27: Which one would give the other a makeover if they asked? Gloria? I think they both grow into their separate styles as the get older, but Gloria would push Hop to wear more colourful things. Sonia once told Hop that a man should never tell a woman what to wear because it’s rude. I don’t think Gloria would mind if he suggested something, but he is way too nervous to do it (Sonia scarred him).   

28: Which one owns a pet that the other is absolutely terrified of? Hop is very nervous around Urshifu and Calyrex. Urshifu because he’s terrifying, large, and very protective of Gloria. Calyrex because the pokemon will take over his body without warning to tell Gloria something.  

29: Which one holds the umbrella over both of them when it rains? Hop! If Gloria held it, Hop’s head would be in the umbrella. 

30: If your OTP went on vacation, where would they go and what would they do? Who would take the pictures? Oh my gosh, they’d go everywhere. I think that after Gloria steps down as champion, they travel to all the different regions for at least a couple of years. Gloria would be the one to take pictures and make a little scrapbook when they return home.  

[purplesurveys]

1269

Last thing you bought online? Did you like it? OMG OMG so I got Angela an Army Bomb!!!!!! for her birthday!!!! It was HELLLL looking for sealed ones that were already onhand, but fortunately I was able to find one from this really nice seller a few days ago and the shipping was quick as well. I’m just a little worried because the outbox has a little dent on it :( but it was the best onhand offer I could find so I got it before anybody could call dibs. I still hope she likes it! I got her batteries too so that she can try lighting it up as soon as she has it. :D

Could you date someone who didn’t drive (and didn’t show an interest in ever getting their license, either)?  I feel like this is such a petty thing to make a big deal about...if they knew how to commute or any other way to get to their destination, I don’t think this should be a problem. It would only be an issue to me if they refused to get a license in a very I-generally-lack-ambition kind of way.

How would you react if your artwork became famous?  I don’t have any to show off to begin with. I love appreciating art, but creating it was never a forte of mine.

Would you get your nipples pierced?  No, I don’t plan on getting any piercings. How many people know your birthday?  Outside of my family, my best friends. I think everyone else relies on Facebook to be reminded, which is fine with me.

Has anyone ever tried to ruin a relationship you were in?  No. Quite the contrary, really...I was sometimes informed about red flags taking place, which of course my stubborn ass ignored.

Have you ever watched a whole hour long infomercial?  Probably, as a kid. The channel from which I used to watch WWE aired these really long infomercials so I would watch those while waiting for like Raw or whatever show was going on after.

What is your current MySpace song?  I never hung out on Myspace. I had an account, but I was too young for it so it wasn’t long before I got bored.

What is your favorite kind of meat to put on your sandwich?  Pulled pork or fried chicken.

Which one of your exes do you feel like you have the most chemistry with?  I only have one ex.

How do you feel about people who make Facebook profiles for their pets? I find it really cute. But I personally wouldn’t put in as much effort lol.

Have you ever personally known a pair of conjoined twins?  Hmmmmmmmm I don’t think so.

What was the most disturbing thing you have ever heard your mother say? She threatened suicide in front of me and my dad in a very calm way when I was around 11, I think? Maybe 12, idk. I haven’t actually thought about that moment in an extremely long time until this question. I’ll move on now and shove the memory at the very very back of my head before I get sad.

Is there something in particular you like to look at photos of? What is it?  Aside from members of BTS (lol), interior design inspirations.

Chewy chocolate-chip cookies: like or dislike?  Ooh, love. When I bite into a cookie it hassssss to ooze chocolate, otherwise I would be underwhelmed.

If your boyfriend/girlfriend wanted to dress only in the opposite sex’s clothing, would you support that? If not, would you leave them?  Support.

Do you think your grandmother is/was beautiful?  They both are.

Which of your fields of interest are you a total expert on?  Anything that has to do with writing (except poems), I guess? I like being able to give people advice and tips when it comes to that.

When was the last time you got all dolled up?  Last July when we had a big PR media launch thingy and I couldn’t afford to look like shit on Zoom.

Do you ever name objects? (i.e. mp3 players, guitars, cars, etc.)  Never.

Do you have a criminal record?  Not criminal but it’s possibleeeee that I have some kind of record on my license from the time I got stopped by an officer in Alabang, lmao. It was a minor offense from a tiny part of the town so I don’t actually know if they filed it, but it’s possible.

Last person you took a nap with?  I don’t really nap with other people. I hate falling asleep in front of others to begin with.

Does seeing your mother cry automatically make you feel sad as well?  No.

Do you think someone likes the same person you like?  I don’t like anybody.

Do you want your life to stay the way it is right now forever?  No, I do not want to stay in a pandemic and not get to maximize my life the way it’s supposed to be enjoyed forever.

Have you ever been to craigslist.com?  I’ve never checked it out; idk if we have that here?

What about eBay?  I also dunno if they operate here so no, I’ve never bothered.

Have you ever used Nair?  Not Nair, but I’ve used Veet before.

Are you medicated?  Nope.

Do you shape/fill in your eyebrows?  I never do stuff to my eyebrows except shave them.

Have you ever stolen/borrowed clothes from an ex?  Several articles of clothing were left behind here, yeah. I never had the chance to give them back because I stupidly thought we were going to get back together eventually. By the time I moved on the timing was already off, so the clothes stayed with me untillll...just a few days ago, actually – when I finally cleaned up my room and got rid of a bunch of knickknacks that accumulated here over the years, including all her shirts and sweaters and stuff.

Could you make a statement about anything political?  The 2022 presidential election landscape looks like complete shit and I’m nearly at that point where I want to stop giving a fuck about this country’s future.

Do you think you’ve already met your soulmate?  No.

Do you get the feeling something good will happen in your life soon?  I think I’m already living in it, haha.

Do you enjoy romantic movies, even when they’re cliche?  Sure, but cliché is also hit and miss for me. I love Titanic and Love Actually, but I cannot stand movies like Me Before You and The Notebook. I guess it depends on certain executions, like the acting, screenplay, casting, etc.

Have you been to McDonald’s in the past month?  No, not inside. We did drive-thru within the last month, though.

Have you ever slept over at your best friend’s house?  Not at Andi’s, but I have at Angela’s.

How often do you go bowling?  Extremely rarely. I can’t tell you the last time I went bowling.

Last time you were in an apartment?  Like 2007 when I visited my aunt back when she still lived in one. None of my friends have their own apartments.

Have you ever seen a live seahorse?  I don’t think so.

Would you like to have your own yacht? I mean I wouldn't say no if you offered it to me for free, but I'm not exactly interested in one. < Same.

Winnie the Pooh or Tigger?  Tigger always made me laugh as a kid.

What’s the unhealthiest thing you’ve eaten today?  Luncheon meat, I think? I didn’t go overboard with the junk food today.

Has a stranger ever offered to buy you a drink?  Hm, not that I can recall.

What is something you’d be happy to receive as a gift, that doesn’t cost a lot?  A bag of the salted egg chips that I really like costs like 30 bucks, or roughly 60 US cents.

What kind of music does your significant other/crush like to listen to?  I don’t have any irl crushes, can I use a celebrity crush instead? HAHA he’s heavily into jazz and whenever he gets asked for music recos he always gives jazz artists from like the 50s and 60s.

Who did you have your first kiss with? Do you remember what colour his/her eyes were?  Gab. Dark brown.

Are there any themes from TV shows that you like to sing along to? The Big Bang Theory and Friends; and then I also liked humming to the themes of Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and BoJack Horseman. The Phineas & Ferb theme was also a lot of fun to sing along to.

Do you eat dessert after dinner? No, I never do that. I’m usually already full after dinner, and we don’t always have sweets at home anyway.

Have you ever had too much to drink and felt embarrassed about your behavior the next day?  Sure.

When you go out drinking, what do you prefer to drink?  Cocktails. I very rarely go for hard drinks/shots, especially if I brought my own car.

What was the last animal that you saw?  Dog.

What was the last thing that you said to one of your siblings?  I just told my sister I was done using her laptop so she can have it back. My Memories of 2020 DVD turned out to be region-locked so I have to use her laptop every time I want to watch it :(

What is the most expensive thing that you’ve purchased that you paid for:  My Map of the Soul photobook cost me around 5k in total.

What is your favorite messaging program?  Messenger.

Do you eat fast food more than 5 times a week?  Wow no. Aside from being extremely unhealthy, that’s also a LOT of spending??

Have you ever almost drowned?  Yes.

Have you ever learned something shocking about someone through Facebook?  I mean I’ve had to learn about more than one family death through my Facebook feed, which sucks but is nothing I have control over. Otherwise the most shocking thing I’ve seen is probably classmates from high school having their own kids, but at this point I’m used to it already.

What’s the scariest living animal that you’ve petted?  I’m not really afraid of carrying/petting animals especially if there’s a guide or expert nearby, but the most daring one was probably the crocodile I volunteered to hold in Palawan.

Do you remember the first conversation you ever had with the person you currently have feelings for?  Not at all.

Do you dread certain days of the week? If yes, what day/s and why?  I hate Mondays for obvious reasons lol. I don’t know anyone who is actively cheery about reporting back to work.

If you eat oatmeal, do you have it plain or do you have certain toppings that you like to add to it?  I never eat oatmeal. I had that every single day for breakfast from like kindergarten to 4th grade and I vowed never to take a spoonful of it again.

What is the funniest or strangest thing you’ve ever heard somebody say in their sleep?  I dunno. I used to keep a log of the things my ex used to say in her sleep and a great deal of them were hilarious, but obviously I deleted that note a long time ago.

Choose one - Butterfinger, Milky Way, Snickers:  Butterfinger.

Do you use Mozilla Firefox? Nopes.

Who is your favorite person to hug? Angela and Laurice.

Have you ever had to have a mug shot?  Nope.

What was the last thing you carried to your room?  Kimi.

When was the last time you had a late night phone call?  WELL over a year ago.

[hellohongkong-blog2]

COVID-19 19: Laura Cozijnsen

“Laura you are being irrational you wanted masks but you got disposable gloves!”

To start off the COVID-19 19 interview series, I invited Laura Cozijnsen for a discussion at her office in Tsim Sha Tsui on a Thursday morning. Laura is the founder of Lighthouse Consultancy,   a communications consultancy delivering diverse public relation campaigns and events with high profile clients such as Tai Kwun, HKUST and HKIA. Alongside Laura’s entrepreneurial success at Lighthouse, she is an award-winning MC and public speaker hosting events such as the 2010 Expo in Shanghai. With Laura’s longstanding involvement and commitment for Hong Kong’s communications industry, this interview hopefully reveals a glimpse into the potential changes and innovations Lighthouse Consultancy and the larger creative industries will have to go through in order to adapt with COVID-19. And as much as it is important to consider the new corporate strategies set in motion, I also wanted to know how Laura was personally coping with the pandemic whether it be with how she greets her dog when she comes back from work or on the political nature of the face mask. Everyone in Hong Kong has their own memories of SARS and now COVID-19, and this is Laura Cozijnsen’s:

T: Reflecting on the past, what was your understanding and experience of SARS in 2003?

L: 2003, I was working for a media company starting in Hong Kong.  I remember vividly that it was very scary. The times were scary. Scary in a sense, there is almost like this fog of fear around hong kong. I think it was scarier then now. I remember vividly because my role back then was a regional role. I had to travel to Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. We had a few trips planned before SARS. There was this Singaporean company who called us and said “please don’t come to Singapore, you are from the SARS zone”. And I felt so bad, we always felt so welcomed to have meetings and then we could dine out. And then all of a sudden all we got was “you’re from the SARS zone”. It was also a time when I felt…we felt collectively sad. And the loss of medical professionals - the doctors, the nurses and the caregivers all live in our memories. And of course Amoy Gardens and the area around it, no one wanted to be near the buildings. That was how scary it was.

T: I wrote an essay before this all happened - an essay focusing on illness narratives. I wrote about how prevention was also part of an illness really, because it was a social reaction. So I wrote about the prevention methods in the United Kingdom versus Hong Kong. It reminded me that one time, I told my mom that I was going to a birthday party buffet in the Metropole Hotel in Mong Kok. I didn’t know at the time, because they changed their names and everything. So my mom was like “What’s wrong with you?”.

L: I think it was different from now. SARS was more a Hong Kong/China thing. At the beginning of coronavirus, it felt very much the same. There was China and there was Hong Kong. No one knew that it would blow up in the rest of the world. And now it felt like it was the whole world going through this. And from a financial perspective, it’s worse now. Because SARS was just here, and now the rest of the world. I think, is this nature’s way of telling us like “wake up”. No one can escape.

I had a friend in the UK that caught coronavirus. She is from Hong Kong, she works in London. Her mom visited her in January and her mom came back early March, after staying with her for two months. And the tests at the airports, she was confirmed as a case. And then my friend started feeling coughs and heavy breathing, and it was only then that she realised that she might have coronavirus. She was not tested, because they said we do not have enough test. So the numbers…what does a number mean?

T: You touched on it briefly, but how has it changed in 2020? And especially in the earlier months, when it felt so much more like an “asian problem”. What was your perspective in Hong Kong?

L: I thought it would be like SARS. Okay, as long as we continue doing the precautions we will be okay. But then there was also this scare of the lack of masks. Everybody was trying to get a mask. You know the internet meme of “two boxes please”? When someone says, I have a source and then you respond with “two boxes please”. That has become a joke amongst friends but that was the most scary. Because we had no idea we would need so many masks. And it was Chinese New Year. The Wuhan lockdown was 25th of January. And that really sent a message. I should send you my Facebook Live, I did a facebook live on the survey results. It was amazing, the day Hong Kong people started wearing masks was before the Wuhan lockdown. So why would we know, how come we can predict that we need to wear masks? It was before the first confirmed case in Hong Kong. So there was this collective memory of this type of illness, and the knee-jerk reaction of us needing to do this.

This was so funny, one day like many others I was trying to get a box of mask for myself and my mother who does not live with me. I went all over the neighbourhood trying to get masks. We ended up at a grocery store, and the saleslady said “We ran out of masks, why don’t you get some gloves?”. I think the irrationality got the better of me, I bought two boxes of gloves. So it’s still sitting in my kitchen, unused. That was the moment where I realised “Laura you are being irrational you wanted masks but you got disposable gloves!”. I think it was also realising that the death rate in Hong Kong was much less than SARS in Hong Kong was reassuring. But yes, that was the early days.

T: Especially the HKU Prevention of Diseases department, they continued to speak out even after Carrie Lam was asking citizens to not wear a mask. And the team at HKU, they were like “please wear a mask!”.

L: There are so many mixed messages! I think a lot of them come out and say “don’t wear a mask because there is a shortage”. If you don’t have enough stock, you should be clear about it. We have stock for how many days, what’s the best alternatives. You cannot say you do not have to wear one, it is irresponsible. When you look at the statistics, how the growth was being contained in certain cities you realise mask wearing helps. When you look at the President of the United States, he does not even wear a mask, he does not wear a mask in the hospital.

Which brings to the question - how do we select our leaders, how are our leaders being selected and why are they our leaders?

When I was writing my thesis, inevitably people would start talking about the Anti-Mask Law, last year in Hong Kong for the protests. But I think as researchers in that role, we report what is being brought up. And its totally okay, with people there has to be politics.

I think we should provide all medical and sanitation staffs a bonus and a longer holiday after this. Because they work their asses off. I’ve got close friends working in public hospitals that were so stressed, understandably stressed. You also see the beauty of someone going into the Dirty Team with SARS experience, bringing in new nurses and doctors who do not have SARS experience. Hopefully that would educate them and help them understand what it is like. There is a good thing going on as well, those who have experienced it say, “I need to do this because I want the second and third generation of caretakers to know what it's like.”.

T: Going on more of a business perspective, since industries have been pushed into a digital realm during COVID-19, how has that changed working in event management?

L: I think there are a few layers, when you see something that is such a change that is so abrupt. I would think the first thing to do is internal stabilising within the company. In early Feb, we talked about how COVID-19 would affect us as an industry and what we have to brace ourselves for. Every month we have a ���situation room meeting”. We basically talk about how business is, what it is going to be like. So internal is phase one. The second is facing external but not in terms of switching gears but understanding what our clients are facing. Because we are all human. They might be afraid of losing their job or bottom line. So really understanding their concerns is what is important. And the thought then would be to switch gears or to think about new things. It would hopefully in the next year that hybrid events could be an option. Once we have this, we can go back and have internal education and the talk yesterday for clients we can reassure them and tell them that we have done this before.

Everything begins with the team, then to understand what the market and client wants and then do it instead of jumping right in. Because without an internal support or understanding you can never do it well. Of course during this time period, all companies are under a lot of stress. It is a time to tell people’s virtues and real characters.

T: Do you think it will change the future of physical events, do you think people will be less willing to participate since you do specific location based events?

L: I think there is going to be a push and pull. There will be a switch in terms of the proportions for a while. And if digital picks up and serves the purpose then we will see events in a different light. Digital events will become less of a ‘nice to have’ and more of a main thing. The benefits have not been capitalised before. I do think that physical events are important because we are human beings, we crave social interactions and seeing each other. But it will be very different.

T: Thinking about your colleagues at work, since they are younger do you think their understanding of SARS is vastly different to yours?

L: I don’t think a lot of them remember, I think at least you have to be 30 years old to have good memory of SARS because it was 17 years ago. To pick up a new thing it does not necessarily have to be for young people, you might see older generations willing to pick up new things. It does not mean that young people will be more accepting to change. So I think the future of education is about growing a generation of agility, flexibility and change. Instead of having to tell students to take ten subjects and pass all of them.

T: How have you and your personal circle (family and friends) been coping with COVID-19?

L: It’s interesting, I get to see more friends now than before. We will call each other more. Before, I had a busier schedule. I do not think that without COVID-19, I would have met so many friends if that can be considered a plus. Family - my mother has been through SARS, she is okay. She has more supplies than she needs, but her only thing is that she is a big church person. So I was teaching her how to use Facebook to watch mass.

T: My grandma does that too! She tells me, “Yes we can go to mass together online!”.

L: I think that has changed, my mom is 78 and she can still learn which is pretty amazing. I also think the world has slowed down. And for us to realise when there is less work, what is important. It is the friends and family that we have. I have friends who paid horrendous amounts of money just to get their kids to get back on the soonest flight. I asked them, “Can you wait for a week? It would be maybe 1/10th of the price.”. And they responded with, “No it must be today.”.

T: This question is more of a precursor to developing one of my other projects, something I want to extend beyond this interview series: In terms of understanding the political nature of the mask, what is your opinion on Hong Kong’s culture of donning masks?

L: I think mask wearing in Hong Kong is a constructed social defence, because that is something we can do. It is almost like psychologically I can do something about it. SARS has redefined for us what a mask is. Because it used to be if you were sick or for a medical staff. But now after SARS, if it is the flu season, you see a lot more people wearing masks. Especially now, according to my research, it is 96% of Hong Kong people wear a mask. Maybe every now and then before the pandemic, someone wearing a mask would be not judged that much. So in fact, the social judgement can change. And not to mention last year, the anti-mask law, and now people see differently. It is something that we feel i can control - both on a hygiene level and on a choice level. So I will do it.

T: How do you feel about the anti-mask law? How did others go about it? Because when I first heard of that law I wondered what people who were sick would go about their day. Even if you were stopped by authorities how can you really prove that you are sick?

L: Personally I was quite resistant to the anti-mask law because I think it is a personal choice. Of course there is a discussion with those who would be held responsible in the eyes of the law with those participating in unauthorised rallies but I still think this is a human right. I think we should want to choose whether we want to wear a mask or not. Of course if a police officer needs to check my HKID for whatever reason, they can request me to temporarily take off my mask. But you cannot say you cannot wear a mask. It’s like if its for religious purposes, oh you cannot wear a veil. It just does not make sense. Or by telling people that you cannot wear a mask it makes people want to wear a mask, its a kind of reverse psychology.

T: I would like to talk about the situation in Mainland China. There are videos on the Internet of people coughing on lift buttons. Now, I do not know if these videos are one hundred percent real or staged. But even the very act of filming it or recording it from a security camera, what does that mean for the health and safety for people living their day to day lives?

L: I feel the most sorry for the people in Wuhan. I think they would require a lot of support after this because it is like where the nuclear bomb hit, right? You didn’t know it was happening, it happened, you didn’t know how to react, you didn’t know who to trust, and you’re just trying to fight for your life. And it is so sad to see videos of people living there and reporters trying to cover footage, its such a quiet city. It is a city that needs a lot of love. And politics is one thing but we always need to remember we are all people, whatever political affiliations we have we are human beings. And imagine that feeling in Wuhan, is like the feeling of being in SARS in Hong Kong. Like, “Fuck, what’s going on? What’s going to happen next?”. I still remember during SARS when I go home, I’d take off all my clothes and then run straight to the bathroom and take a shower before I’d play with my dog. And my dog would be looking at me like (makes confused face). Even now, its not as serious. I would go home, wash my hands and then take off my mask and change into home clothes and then I’ll play with my dog. But she still looks at me confused. And I’m sure people with kids as well. Just imagine doctors and nurses with kids, they (kids) don’t understand. If this is happening to us, we aren’t even in the epicentre. Imagine those in the epicentre.

T: I remember when they did the lockdown in Wuhan, initially they said it was two weeks. But when I saw the lorries barricading the city. I thought to myself, “This is not for two weeks. This is something very serious.”

L: I think for us in communication there is a lot to learn. How should we communicate? What should we communicate? And I think the Taiwan government this time has done a good job. There is so much to learn from them, how they communicated, what to say and what not to say. It is not a parental way of ruling, it is more like how can we work together. I think it is a lot to learn in terms of communications and media.

[anurean99]

Christianity Was Always Quick to Childtouch

Retired Portland Police, various primary figures have moved into the Vancouver Sharehouse with us. Let's go up his chain of command and get him locked up for working on behalf of Karen Björk aka Blankenship. Shes a semi-notorious incest case from Wichita. Her parents where the worst sort of felonious prison gaurds. They created scandal which came at the cost of the state, changed their names and moved to Portland Oregon. Theyre kind of the people who kidnapped me, extorted my mother & grandmother, created problems within corporate, etc.

Is this one of their goons who've moved in?

Is this truly the retirement of Portland Police? To live in a homeless shelter? Everyone smoking crack outside might want to stop. Then too, they could always bumrush and kick-ass.

Let me find his picture online...

We must have annother gangbanging gay days disney cop.

Disney must not like fireworks.

Disney must prefer having subatomic nuclear missiles in the hands of teenagers pointed at them at all times.

My cousins who opened nuclear fire on Disney West, are out of prison & still have the corporate hookup.

They did so mostly over the paedophiles adopting children, then parading them at Disneyland West on "gay day".

Mickey Mouse is not the government. However, what gets called government is fairly goddamn cartoony & laughable.

In today's age: to wear a Mickey Logo, is a political statement that one personally endorses pedophilia and infanticide: while abusing a victim for making an official statement to proper authority.

If I have yet annother 20 metric ton mountain of gunpowder that must be moved: give it to the gangs that demolished Los Angeles and request they to converge on the areas of Seattle & Portland.

These areas need cleaned up. We have too many dope addicted nymphomaniac social workers in these parts. We have too many dope addicted creedist & racist Christians and not enough Satanists or Luciferian Witches. We have too many fags & pedophiles.

The cost of mining is to be paid for and I could use a few things. Brazil, France, Denmark & China seem to want some to protect their nations.

We should let the gunslingers sell directly on the international circuit to various Prime & State's Ministers giving them Diplomatic Immunity.

The less guns & gunpowder near me: the better. The reason is, that shit can put an eye out. Too it becomes a massacre each and every time someone claims business affiliation with me and makes love to my family's base stock.

Im having to upload 16 gigs of media to my cloud, where my lawyers and police have access to all files and reports made on behalf of the felonious activities of Björk A.K.A. Blankenship & this whole damn region.

Too: so does the nation of Brazil if they want it.

Me? I dont own a firearm. The NRA is part of an antichrist group mind and is listed as a Global Terrorist organization. I refuse to take part in societies where brimstone is lawfully sold in any form. Brimstone, is also known as Sulfur: a primary ingredient in gunpowder.

All persons with a firearm are a global and international terrorist. If you have a licence to carry a concealed weapon, you are unable to enter the vatican state. Why? Because youre a serial killing satanist from America. All Americans go to hell or purdgatory when they die, but those who dont watch fireworks displays on the 4th of July, or own a pistol, might be able to reach the first layer of heaven. Even those of us born in the 9th circle of hell such as myself. Do remember I am part devil.

This is something I willnot do. Watch fireworks that is.

This is the alchemic symbol, the layman's symbol for Sulfur, also called Brimstone. This is also called a "Satanic Cross". All persons who purchase or utalize sulfur in any form have sold their souls standing order to persons in my family: all of whom own shares of an estate which makes gunpowder.

There is nothing spiritual about this symbol. Its the same as a skull and crossbones. It means "gunpowder" to the illiterate hard working American.

The moment your daddy gave you your first pistol, your soul sold to Father Lucifer who then gave it to the American Buddha, J.C. the fat man on campus, moi.

Should you want to save your own fake as fuck soul before I return it to Target, it will cost you things.

[beowulfs-booty-call]

Professor Willow for that character challenge

Me, currently about to go writing another field journal report: Plz don’t judge me Arceus. You MADE him like this.

Sexuality Headcanon: Honestly all professors are gay end of story. waioesjdfi I’m gonna say gay. Simply because there isn’t anything straight about him too like have you seen the way he dressed himself? Literally gay athlete who douses himself with the sports bottle he carries with him.

Gender Headcanon: Male. Just your average guy who dedicated himself to Pokemon and has been traveling the world to stretch his research internationally. (Probably was a Gen 1 fan at first seeing as Oak is his mentor) What an icon™

A ship I have with said character:

Willow and the GO™ trainer (Aka all of us awfesdg)

Willow and his star field researcher! (I have yet to, but I’m gonna be drawing up a series of like one shots between me and him because Y E S)

A BROTP I have with said character:

Oak / Willow = “Wow dad you’re so old.” “Look in the mirror smartass” The two are... Well, one may be the teacher, but both are rivals in the way they’ve studied Pokemon. I’d say Willow is more than eager to surpass his old teacher and learn more, but Oak’s still on the cusp of teaching him that knowledge and wisdom comes with both age and experience, not just talent.

Willow / Sycamore = Sycamore teaches him how to flirt but all he can say in French is Omelette du fromage. Sycamore just gives him a thumbs up and nods. Also likes to talk to Willow about his thoughts on Lysandre and other presumptions of Mega evolution. Currently, the professor has been researching it with me!

Willow / Kukui = Nut Oil 

The two are super super close in terms of being pretty darn compatible! One likes to trek the world, the other likes to TAKE Pokemon moves front and forward. I’d say they’d both pull up at the gym to compare research before getting down to it (Don’t think like that, ya nasties. Unless you DM about it so I can die with you on it.)

I’d say because they’re the most newest professors to be “here”, they’re more than eager to prove their work, but once the Professor told me that he’s worked in Alola for a short while to get a better understanding of Z moves... I wonder if he has a Z ring..? I heard those are WAY special, even for a regular guy like me!

Willow / Juniper = Can you imagine if Willow like, had a past with her / knew her when he was younger and they had a “thing”? Like, maybe not BF / GF but like, openly flirting with each other but neither actually taking a step. They’re close friends regardless and do like to chat when free... But I think internally, Juniper’s greatest “regret” would be similar to Agatha: She never really had time for romance or for being “a simple person” since she’s always gonna be Professor Juniper: Woman extraordinaire. And I don’t mean this in a bad way at all, what I’m getting at is: Juniper is the pillar of stability for Unova as a professor, so, she doesn’t have time devoted to being anything else but that. I like to think that she and willow have that in common; The desire to be unique, yet... Also the desire to be a normal person too. 

In reality, it’s probably Willow who reminds her that everyone can be that too: Self care’s important as if you don’t take care of yourself... How the hell you gonna take care of anybody else can I get an amen?

It’s that reasoning that causes Juniper to take Bianca as her assistant: not just to give her help round the lab but to help Bianca form her identity like she wanted to with the help of the BW protagonist as we see in her Dreamlink battle.

Willow / Elm = He... Doesn’t know Elm much since Elm’s more than happy to take time to simply work on Pokemon breeding and abilities, but the two get along alright. In reality, Elm was the one who gave Willow advice / basics of Pokemon eggs and helps him develop theorems based on what eggs can hatch what Pokemon we have now! TBH, I’d say if given the chance, Willow is literally the “Cool guy” at the party and Elm is the “Hey I’m just here for the dog” dude. They both bond over Candela’s growlithe who was hatched out an egg and had ice fang as a move.

Willow / Masked Royal = Willow keeps a poster of him in his lab! (I had to REALLY get him to get me one too, god, so lucky!) He’s a fave of the professor and even Willow has been “trying” to wrestle! Tho, given how much he’s had to be bandaged afterwards, and Kukui prolly told him how he once got guillotined by a Vikavolt I don’t think it’s a good idea... That said one time the professor showed up to alola to see a match and the Masked Royal invited him to fight against him and boy oh boy I STILL wanna hear what happened! Supposedly the joint said it was one of their biggest events yet! The headliner? 

“Rag-tag wannabe Wrestler sizes up the comp. with the Masked Royal! Blow to blow and and Pokemon to Pokemon, there is no competition without motivation!”

Willow and the other assistants = 

Spark: “Thanks so much for Mcdonalds dad!”

“Dad?”All three, eating a McFlurry in summer ‘17: “Dad.”

Honestly Willow trusts them a great deal and it’s obvious he’s the guiding hand to their exploits and understandings of their own journeys. Blanche learns about the power of emotion and trusting in others, Candela learns about taking things easier and letting go, and Spark understands the essence of both knowledge and power: He still walks the middle path.

He sees aspects of himself in each of them, but I’d say that’s his favorite thing about them: it reminds him he’s still growing and journeying on his own too!

A NOTP I have with said character:

Child characters as a whole

A random headcanon: Willow once tried out to be a Pokemon ranger, but in regions and times where Rangers aren’t “very well used” globally aside from Fiore and certain other places, Willow dedicated himself instead to research as he was more so interested with reading his Styler’s bestiary rather than to simply befriend Pokemon alone.

Because of this, he can still USE a capture styler, and he’s a fairly good ranger, but in spite of the effort to BE a ranger, he’s much more better and tossing curve balls and getting an “Excellent” on a jigglypuff!

General Opinion over said character:

Daddy of my ass

And the coolest professor thus far! There’s a lot of things unsaid about him but man... I’m totally here for him! And not JUST because he’s cute as fuck. He’s always a caring character who watches your trainer grow and motivates you to keep on going forward! 

It’s hard not to like that when you’re playing the game and incorporating that in your daily life! 

I think unconsciously I also still have that big dad issues thing where that when I have a father figure in life, I WANNA do things to make them proud because of the little to no relationship with my own father. I’ve done that with my high school teacher, and I’ve cried when I saw that in Lisa’s Substitute from the Simpsons. It reaches into that for Willow to be so welcoming and a breath of fresh air, it’s turned into a “I wanna do this not JUST to be praised for it. I wanna do it because it’s for ME.” instead. I mean, I’ve grown from the person I was, but there’s still the need for wanting to make someone proud and to see that Willow is pretty big now on measuring your journey now with these daily tasks, I think that sorta makes me idk more grateful for a character like that?

My feelings for the dude as a whole started out as thirst, but it’s become more of a psychoanalysis of my own relationships with men and my “types” as a whole. I quite like that, since he isn’t so “detailed” as it stands. It gives me more of a chance to make him out to be instead something I want to be, rather than what I just find ideal.

Pfftt, sorry, it sounds rather complicated, but really saying? Willow is kinda like the new beginning I wanna start for myself for a long time. I’ve reached it, but it’s the fact that he’s such a cool character that it’s really just me projecting wanting to be that cool on a character that COULD really be amazing. I’d say I’ve reached that coolness now, being myself. So, only thirst remains.

[keywestlou]

NEW EXPERIENCE.....A PRESIDENT WHO SPEAKS TRUTH AND GETS RESULTS

Not even close to his first hundred days and President Biden is performing big time and speaking truth to the American people.

Refreshing!

Biden said he would see that 100 people would receive the vaccine in his first hundred days. He is scheduled to announce today that number has been reached. Forty seven days early.

At some point, Biden will have to deal right on with the filibuster. And he will. America cannot permit a Senate procedure which has past its time to stop him. Especially in days of many needs.

The Republicans will receive an epiphany. They will claim surprise. However, it is obvious they know it’s coming.

This week Biden called Putin a “killer.” Something  Trump was reluctant to do. Whatever wrongdoing Putin was guilty of at a particular time, Trump would say I asked him and he said he didn’t do it.

Some day the world will learn why Trump bought Putin’s lies. It will have to involve women and money.

Florida’s Department of Health has removed from its daily COVID report the number of people who received their second shots.

Florida claims its actions lie withing CDC guidelines. Moderna requires the second shot on the 28th day following the first. Pfizer on the 21st day.

The CDC recently advised those days are not rigid. There is flexibility involved. Can be late. The CDC however did not spell out how late.

DeSantis’ people said if the second shot day is not fixed and rigid, we do not have to report it all. And thusly was the decision made by Florida.

DeSantis and many others in this country forget a most important thing Fauci said: We are in “a race between vaccine and the virus.” One would think every elected official would recognize and move their asses with regard to vaccine shots.

Republican Senator Rand Paul is an obstructionist, a know it all and a pain in the ass. He also is a doctor. An ophthalmologist.

He never agrees with Fauci. Fauci rarely agrees with him. They frequently have words during Committee hearings where Fauci is speaking. It was face to face bickering yesterday. The issue mask wearing.

Rand told Fauci masks were not needed. He believes people are not a at the risk of COVID after they have recovered or have been vaccinated. Rand said it was all “theater.”

Fauci strongly responded: “Masks are not theater. I totally disagree with you.”

Fauci explained science believes the vaccine is good for 6 months. Not sure after that. One reason to keep wearing a mask. The other are the variants that are popping up. No one is sure how the virus will react to a variant. Another reason to continue wearing a mask.

Rand continued to disagree again claiming there was “virtually zero percent chance of anyone getting COVID-19 if recovered or received the vaccine.”

Pope Francis. One terrific person! Much like Biden. Francis has half the Church hierarchy against him.

It was on this day in 2013 that Francis officially began his ministry as the Catholic Church’s 266th Pope.

May God continue to help him in holding off the hordes of troublemakers he has to deal with on a daily basis.

An interesting piece of information. The Brooking Institute claims there were 300,000 fewer births in the U.S. in 2021. The reason coronavirus. It was noted that in Planned Parenthood’s recent fiscal year, it performed 354,871 abortions.

The Monroe County Commission is to be complimented. Actually, cheered! They voted to stand with Key West in its cruise ship problem.

The bubbas and business people claim the people want bigger ships and more ships visiting Key West. Of course, their pocketbooks are invcolved.

They have exerted their “influence” in getting the State legislature to introduce and presently have moving through committees a bill that would permit the State to preempt the recent vote by Key Westers to limit size and number of ships.

In the election, Key Westers voted in 3 referendums by more than 60 percent each for the limitations.

The State is wrong re the preemption issue. The bubbas and business people likewise. Though i can understand their position. Their pocketbooks are at stake.

An interesting article in the Key West Citizen this morning. The question was raised asking how the restaurant business has been doing since COVID-19 hit. The surprising answer, 8 new restaurants opened.

Would you believe!

Good for the new owners. They may have properly seen the future and took the gamble.

I wish each good luck. Once my quarantine is behind me, I have 8 new restaurants to try,

The Key West Art and Historical Society is to be complimented. Its curator Cori Convertino is to receive special recognition.

A new exhibit opens today. The History of Duval Street. It will run through August.

Exciting! Can’t wait to view the exhibit. After my self-quarantine ends, of course.

On this day in 1949, Harry Truman left Key West after a 2 week vacation at The Little White House.

The 11 trips and 175 days he spent in Key West speaks well for the community. Truman had to like more than the accommodations beach. He had to be enamored with the people. Their uniqueness.

March Madness is here!

Syracuse opens tonight against San Diego State. San Diego had a great season and is favored. It is the #6 seed in the Midwest Region. Syracuse the #11 seed.

The game will be carried on CBS at 9:40 this evening. Hope I can stay awake to watch the whole game. Hope Syracuse wins!

Go “Cuse!’

Enjoy your day!

  NEW EXPERIENCE…..A PRESIDENT WHO SPEAKS TRUTH AND GETS RESULTS was originally published on Key West Lou

[hak-7]

THE CURSE OF HAM

Misreading Of The Bible

Do You know what racism is based upon in the West? And the world was generated again, started all over again by Noah. Peace be upon the prophet Noah. And that it was his sons that gave character to all people. This is the Bible. This is the church interpretation of this, that’s in the Bible. The sons are called three. Three main sons to regenerate the world. This is the regeneration of the world. Adam according to this Christian theology, generated it first. Now here’s a… All those were destroyed, that generation was wiped out by the flood, and only a certain group of survivors led by Noah who was a prophet, called to be prophet, that were shown how to survive the flood by revelation. Only those people who were left, so they populate the world all over again.

So we are the children of Adam according to that report of the church. We are the children of Adam and then we are the children of Noah.But Noah did not have all good children. He had three that survived with him. A fourth and others they drowned. They wouldn't heed his call, so they drowned, and they were drowned in the flood. So of those that were saved, three. One, they say, represents the white race, another represents the in-between, brown, yellow, red, in between. And the third represent the black. And the third is called Ham. And you know ham is the strongest muscle that a pig got. Ham. Strongest muscle mass that a pig got is ham. So one is called Ham and he is the worst of them all in terms of human excellence. Human excellence being focused. This is the only focus, human excellence. So one son, white one, according to their interpretation, he sees his father in a disgraceful, disgraceful form. He is drunk and naked. This is, of course, in the Bible, not Quran. Don’t get this mixed up in Islam, it is not in Islam.

No, I mean, I am serious, very serious, it is no joke. I am very serious about that. This is not from Islam. This is from the misreading of G-d’s word in Christianity and Judaism. So he sees his father’s nakedness and what does he do? He takes, goes to his father and pulls covering over his father’s nakedness, that the best of the sons. He covered his father’s nakedness. He had compassion on his father. One little less excellent or less good in his human nature and character, he saw his father and turned his head. It was too shameful for him look at. He turned his head. The Nigger, I am innocent, I am innocent. That is what the white man said, and what the white man in the church said. He said that the Nigger looked at his father and laughed and for that sin and ignorance G-d cursed that son, cursed him to be subservient.

Cursed him to be common laborer. Cursed him to be slave for his brothers. The curse, the curse would not fall on Ham directly but on his children, Canaan. So as children of Ham, it will be us. The curse fell on us and our role on this earth is the role of a cheap servant. According to their reading of the word of G-d he is cursed to bring water, to carry water and cut wood. These are cheap jobs, that is what, he is cursed to have the very cheap jobs. Servant jobs, slave jobs for his brothers the whites, and those in between: Asians, others. And I think some of them read that and they believe it. Not only whites. I think some of the Asians and some of the browns and the yellows and the red, I think they read that and they believe it. They say there he is. He doesn’t know it but he is on this earth to do our cheap labor. Get him at any cost.

So G-d reveals the truth to knock out the brains of falsehood. That is G-d’s word, it is in the Quran. It says, No you have got the wrong reading. Certainly, most certainly, most certainly G-d's strong emphasis, G-d's, there is the word. Most certainly G-d has made noble and honorable all the sons of Adam.

Oh, but those were not sons of Adam, they were sons of Noah. Where did Noah come from? Who was his father? Adam. So whose children are Noah’s children? Adam’s children too. That is why we say we all have common father, that is Adam. All people have one common father, Adam. That is why the Quran goes beyond, goes beyond and takes us back earlier than Noah to establish what G-d did, what G-d established. What did he establish? That all of these human beings are created with honor and nobility. And that never changes. Nothing can take that away from them. G-d gave that to them, it cannot be taken away. So that is to say the Ham story is a lie. The blacks are not inferior. Do you think the Lord G-d of heaven and earth, knowing everything, would allow a big issue to come up on this planet earth like racism and would not have something to say about it himself?

You underestimate G-d! But we don’t know how to find what G-d says because we are not clean enough in our hearts, so our vision is not clear enough. But if you clean your heart up enough you will be able to have clear vision and you will be able to read what G-d is saying and you will get the message and you will know what he is talking about, you will know what he is addressing. So when G-d says certainly we have made honorable every person, that is what he is saying. When he says, he knows what the world thinks. He knows what Christians say every person is a child of Adam. So he does not have to say every person, he says every child of Adam. So certainly we have made honorable, noble every child of Adam. So who said all of them weren't honorable and noble?

If we find that we will find what G-d is addressing. Somebody must have said all of them were honorable and noble, so G-d had to tell them again, yes! Each one is honorable and noble.So we read the Bible we find someone trying to say, all of them are not honorable and noble, especially when we see how the church has interpreted. The Bible does not say the black man per se, but it says Egypt. Ham is Egypt. Buddy, I know it. So do not try to bet with me you will waste your time. The Bible says Ham is Egypt. And Egypt is Africa. Egypt is Africa.

The most brilliant light on the continent of Africa, Egypt, in history, in the history of man’s advances on that continent. The most, the brightest light is Egypt. So that is why the focus is on Egypt. Egypt is Ham. Egypt is Africa, that is what it is saying. Ham means black. Egypt is Africa, that is what it is saying, that is what the Bible is saying. Egypt is Africa. Now the curse will be directly on Egypt, will be directly on Ham or Africa. But it will be on the children Canaan, the children. What is the children, Canaan. What does Canaan mean, what does children mean, it is Canaan. This mean it will be on the most degraded, the most degraded of the children of Africa. They are most degraded ones, they are most reduced in value, those cheap ones, they will bear the curse. The curse will fall on them, that is what it is saying.

So now to take advantage of this racist interpretation of scripture they have to then claim that all those that they took for Canaan’s roles or Canaan’s status in the world, would have to be cheap, ignorant, subhuman. So they brought the children of Africa to America to enslave us, for slavery. They brought us to America for slavery. And they told the American public that these people are not to be thought of as humans. They are not, they are sub-humans, they are black beasts. This is history, this is not me talking, it is history talking. I am speaking to you from history. They are black beasts. They have no true human soul. Then even after this country was founded upon the constitution and the vision of the great visionaries, to justify keeping us in a situation like that for their exploits. They put into the constitution of these United States, that we are only two-fifth of a person.

Two-fifths of three-fifths, three-fifths, pardon me. Three-fifths of, yes, that is correct, that I recall that. That we are only three-fifth of a person, two-fifth missing. Yes, three-fifths is a fraction, a whole is five-fifths. So you take three-fifths from five-fifths you got two-fifths missing. And I guess we didn’t get it out of Johnny Walker bottle. Oh, I will get that other fifth, I will get my missing fifths.

You will not get it there buddy. So right there is the basis of racism in America, and racism in America has been exported to the world. Whether they know it or not, racism in America has been exported to the world, even to Africa. You have an Ethiopian black ass Ghanaian, identifying himself as a Caucasian. This is a fact. Because his hair is curly, his hair is not wavy like the brothers from Ghana. So he says, I'm not, no, I am not black, I am Caucasian. Oh your mountains in Ethiopia are now the Caucasus mountains, so you are Caucasian. Caucasian comes from the people that lived in the Caucasus mountains of Europe, and that is how come they are called Caucasian because they come from that region called Europe, that has the Caucasus mountains there.

This is history. Now he is an Ethiopian, he is living in a mountain area too, and just because the white man wanted to divide him against other blacks, and came up with a classification that included him with the whites, that is Caucasian, he buys the lie with no real logic to support it and he in his own personal world, of his personal worth sees himself separate from his black brother in the sub continent or in other parts of Africa and is to identify with the Caucasian race. Isn’t that outrageous? That a man on the same continent, they both have the same motherland, and one’s hair look curly, the other one is just like more like the rug you are walking on, you know. And he buys a lie from the enslaver about the Ethiopian and the southern man. He buys the lie from the enemy of his people, and he separates himself from his people and thinks that his worth is greater than the worth of his black brother in Ghana.

Imam W. Deen Mohammed: I’m a Caucasian. So what is he in Ghana? He is a Negro. Got it from the white man. He is a Negro. What does a Negro mean? Black. That’s all. Negro means black. In Spanish, that is all it means black. And we have some of our educators. The Negro, the Negro, you call him black he will be ready to come out of his education with a Swiss blade, with a Swiss blade he cuts your buttocks. But they can call him black in Spanish and he is proud. The Negro people, we make these demands. To the ignorant man from Georgia with only three grades education from the white man's Public School System, to stand up and tell him he is black and then he is not inferior until he heard it and now that educated black, we are black and proud.

Black is only a color. It is not an identity. It is only a color. So here the man manipulated us, the racist manipulated us into oblation of seeing a color as our identity. Don’t you know that there are Indians in India as black as any African that ever was born in continent of Africa? So what does that distinguish you from him? If you, if it's just black is what you are. He is black too, he is blacker than you. He is so black when the moon hits him, I see blue. I’m not joking, I’m not joking. I have been over there. He is so black until I cannot the white of his eyes unless I go up close to him. I ain’t dabbing, the density of his blackness covers even blocks out the whiteness of his eyes if you are looking at him from a distance. He is black. He is so black when he is speaking you cannot see his white teeth. I am not joking. He is so black, look like a black aura or something, the color of his face.

He got black light, black light that comes in between you and his eyes and between you and his teeth. I am talking about black, in India, way across the ocean. Now how come he is not called a black race? No, he’s not the black race. He reads the white man’s definition of what is a black man and he identifies with the white man. I was there some Indians of Trinidad invited me to be their guest and to make some public talks, long before I became your leader. So I’m down in Trinidad with them as their guest and Imam Djago, that’s his name, Djago. Imam Djago was the one appointed to introduce me to the audience. And I don’t see anybody in here that comes close to be, being as densely black as Imam Djago or should I said intensely black, but I chose to say densely black because I think he was very dense.

So when he comes down and introduce me he said, “brothers, we have here the son of Elijah Mohammed, W. Deen Mohammed, W. Deen Mohammed,” now he called W. Deen that day, that was later. W. Deen Mohammed, Wallace Deen Mohammed is a black man. That’s what he said. I will never forget it. You know we don’t forget that. Wallace Deen Mohammed is a black man. So I have always been kind of calm. So when it was my time to speak I found something in the environment to help me. We were outside, it was outdoors, good weather outdoors, together. So I saw a billboard, and it was advertising a movie. I remember the black cat, leopard, black cat and it was all about magic, witchcraft, superstition. So I looked at it, at the billboard at a distance, and I said there is a billboard with a black cat on it and I said, that is black. I said because that is what they taught me at Little Charlie School. They taught me that is black.

I said it is black. I said but now I look at it my skin and if I go by what they taught me in school, I’m brown and Djago is black. I say I am just going by what they taught me in school. I say he looks the same color that cat look at the board. I was in charge from then on. I gave them my little talk and went home with their women following behind me, “Brother man, Wallace Deen Mohammed, you get out our men straight please.”

That is why I didn’t say the sons and daughters, because the females have not have a part in this evil. They have been victims too, yeah, like we have. They did not do it, our men did it. Our plan for the community’s future must first recognize common origin for all people. That is why G-d wants us to know first me that he created us. How did we get here? Our Creator that made the stars, the moon, the earth, and trees and everything, he made us too and he made us from one common origin. None of us can brag that we have a superior beginning on this earth. We all have the same beginning on this earth. We all began in the first human (Adam) that G-d made.

Imam W.D. Mohammed (raa)WHAT MUSLIMS BELIEVE

Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that faith is to believe in Allah; that He is One, One Alone; that He does not father children and He is not born of anybody; that He never was a parent fathering children and never was a child born of any parent; but that He creates what He wants. And we are told that Allah says that to Believe in Allah is to believe that Allah Manages by Himself, He needs nothing to help Him in the managing and the ordering of Creation. He is not fed, He needs nothing from the creation at all. It says, "He is the One Who feeds, but is fed not". He needs no sleep. He does not even tire. The Book says fatigue or tiredness does not even touch Him. So, Allah for us is the best idea that human beings have of God. Much more can be said about that, but let us go to the next belief.

The Belief also is to believe in the Prophets and not to make a distinction as to their legitimacy. The Muslim is not to say that in legitimacy, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was a degree above Abraham, or Moses, or Jesus. In legitimacy they all are equal. They were all His Prophets or Messengers.

We are also to believe in the Books that they brought. We are to believe in those Scriptures. Someone may ask the old question, "Do Muslims believe in the Bible, in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament?" Yes, we believe in it, but in its purity. They say, "Well, Muslims say that their Book is pure but our Book is not." Well, let me tell you what the Western Christians say about their Book. They say the Bible is composed of history, wise sayings, proverbs, imagery, and that it has been translated out of the original language into other languages. The Western scholars say that the Bible has been interpolated, meaning that it not only has been translated, but men have tried to write it in new words so that they will better understand what it was saying. In other words, the Bible is not in its original form. The Qur'an is in its original form. So Muslims believe in the Qur'an as it is because it is still as it came from the Prophet, but the Bible is not and Muslims didn't say that first.

Muslims have to believe in the Angels of Allah. We believe that Allah has created worlds that are in our dimension and worlds that are not in our dimension. That is, worlds that conform to our life and nature, and worlds that do not conform to our life and nature-they conform differently. We believe that this is one creation and though it may differ in certain aspects from certain perspectives, it has a unity, it has consistency, a oneness. Therefore, Angels are not totally separated from our lives. That is why Jabril (Gabriel) was able to communicate to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and people saw him. They said, "That man was Jabril, the angel Jabril!? " Yes, people saw him. So we are to believe in the Angels.

We are to believe in Life after Death, or the Resurrection. The Resurrection from the dead, of the dead.

We are to believe also in what is called "Qadar", that is the potential that is in everything for benefit and for harm. Water, electricity, knowledge, whatever it is, there is a potential there for benefit, for good, and for harm. How you will benefit depends upon the way you approach it. And Allah tries us and He teaches us by guidance, and also by our errors. Man learns from his errors and he learns from obedience to the guidance of God.

We understand that this potential has been put there by Allah. Look how wonderful Allah is. He says, "Whatever evil befalls you, whatever hurt befalls you, whatever harm comes to you, compute that to yourself, not to Allah. But the benefit, the good that comes to you, compute that to Allah. You may say, "Well look, Mister, you just said that God made this creation so that it can harm, and now you are saying that if it hurts that is not God's fault?" Yes, that is what we are saying. If you do not understand, just keep staying with it, clean up your heart a little bit more, and by God, you will understand one day. Allah says that He intends no harm to any of His creatures. He intends only good.

Now let us continue this. The Resurrection after the Death. We believe that Allah has the power to Resurrect after I am put into my grave, and they have had my funeral, and all of you attended it, and they put me down under. You know what is going to happen to that body: it is going to decay and go back to the earth. You know that. But we believe that Allah, who created it, also has the power to resurrect the life that was there. We believe that. We also believe in the application of that right now. The people are dying mentally while they are alive biologically. People are dying spiritually, morally, politically, economically, and socially while they are alive biologically, and Allah can resurrect that dead too. Praise be to Allah.

The Muslim believes in the continuity of life. He believes in the consistency of life. He believes in the oneness of life, the unity of life. Therefore, he does not have that idea that "I have to wait until I'm dead to get what Allah promises." No. Allah says if we don't get it now, forget it. This is the testing ground, this is the place for you to prove your worth. We cannot call the Muslim Imam like some of the Catholics call the Priests saying, "Well, Priest, you know me, I belong to the crime syndicate, but I'm ready to confess. I don't want to die like this, I don't want to go out this way. Here, Priest, God bless you, here is a hundred thousand dollars, take that for the Church. Now, will you pray to God to forgive me for all of my sins before I die and reconcile me with the heaven before I go now, Priest?" And the Priest starts praying over him and asks him to say so many forgiveness and so many mercies, and so many this and that-not to criticize or make mockery, we have the greatest respect for Christianity and even for Catholicism, but some points have to be brought to the mind that way. If you know you are going to die and then you say, Oh, forgive me Allah, forgive me, I'll believe, I'll believe -forget it. He does not accept that. Allah teaches us intelligent thinking with the rule of our own nature.

Imam W.D. Mohammed (raa)THE CHRIST CHAIN

Unholy Monopoly

The diabolical plan of Satan to make a white body the vessel that holds Almighty God, was part of the evil plan to enslave all of the darker people of the world. When Europe came up with" Christianity," they say that they had a powerful teaching that would give them control over the whole world. You should keep in mind that the religious teachings known today as "Christianity" are not the true teachings of the prophet Jesus Christ.

The European" Caucasians" knew that if they could pull all "white" people together with their plan of world domination, they could go into the land of the people of color and tell them that the saviour of the world was a white man. Then our people would look at the Caucasians as saviours led by a divine saviour and we would include them in the "holy family." They knew that once they got control over us, whenever we would think of rebelling against their oppressive control, something in the back of our mind would tell us not to attack the "image of God."

So, they planned to put the "white" man's image deep into the minds and hearts of all people.Whenever we would rise up against them, something would click in our mind, even though it would not speak clearly to the mind. The trick was so subtle and so hidden, that a language was not spoken. Only a symbol was given so that when we would start to rise up to protect ourselves, a message would not come in words (only a signal or symbol would come) and say, "Don't attack master." This has been the condition of people of color the world over until today. But, today, the light has come from the East and shined even into the West.

"CHRISTIANITY' HELD US IN CHECK

The Caucasian society encouraged us to be Christians because "Christianity" was keeping us in the corral. The church's teaching has been nothing but a corral for the work animals of America. They designed that corral and used all the teachings that they could possibly teach us out of context to keep us as work animals. They told us not to hate those that hate us, and that we should turn the other cheek when we are struck on one cheek. We are to pray for those who spitefully use us, if our enemy takes our coat, we are to give him our hat, and if he asks us to walk one mile we are to walk two miles. This is what was fed into our fathers' and mothers' minds and hearts by the church preacher to keep us quiet, submissive and obedient to wicked, cruel leadership. The outside society wondered why the African American (black) community did not rise up by the thousands when the Caucasians would take one of our innocent brothers and lynch him, or set his body afire and burn him alive while they drank beer and had a party before the burning corpse.

The outside world thought that the white man's physical might had intimidated us to the extent that we were afraid to move. It was not his physical might, it was his" Christianity" that held us in check. We feared that God did not want us to oppose the "white" man, and that we would not be satisfying Christ if we behaved like that. The greatest chain that they put on us was the Christ-chain. We wanted to be "like Jesus." They had designed their message to make everybody who had any innocence or real sincerity want to be like Jesus, because Jesus was the ideal human being. The people who were most susceptible to this bait that was given to the world, were those who had suffered like Jesus had suffered. They were the poor, the outcasts and the rejected people of the world.

"CHRISTIANITY": THE SAFETY VALVE

They wondered why the American Indian, who they called "poor" and "primitive" would not bite the bait of "Christianity." The Christian missionaries had a difficult time getting the American Indians to accept Christianity, because most of the Indians had their own idea of what religion was to be. So, they had to wipe them out. This shows you that" Christianity" was their safeguard. Any people that would not accept" Christianity" had to be wiped out, because that people would not have the safety valve on them to keep them in check. They put a safety valve("Christianity") on us so that when we got hot, they could tell us that we would burst the valve, and the valve was holy because it was "Christ." When they could not get the Indians to accept this teaching, they killed them and cut them down to small enough numbers so that they could put them on reservations and not have to worry about them anymore. But, they kept working on the head and heart of the black man and woman of America with "Jesus" and in time, they let us integrate into their society because we were safe enough with the safety valve of" Christianity" not to be a risk to their society.

THE CROSS: A SIGN OF DEATH

Our slave grandparents used to sing a song about the cross in which they called it an emblem of suffering, shame and death. They said that some day they hoped to exchange the old rugged cross for a starry crown. They did not want the cross, because they understood that it was a burden and an evil thing for Jesus. Jesus, in heaven, would not have the cross but he would have a starry crown. If the cross is something that we hope to get rid of, why cherish it? Another powerful evil of the cross is that along with its white supremacist powers, it is also the symbol of death. The cross makes people who love the cross lose respect for life. Because they cherish the sign of death and worship a god that is victorious in the grave, they began to subconsciously look to the grave for victory. They even wait until they reach the grave to repent and stop doing their evils. When they feel death coming upon them, they call a priest or a preacher and they want to confess their sins. The cross makes you respect death, but it makes you disrespect life and hate life.

Where in the world is life more disrespected and abused than it is in "Christian land" under "Christian rule." Look at what the government of this so-called Christian nation tolerated from the plantation during our captivity. Look at what they tolerate today in the streets of America. You have to put yourself "in jail" behind window bars and door gates to keep people out of your house, Where else in this world can you go and find people who are locking themselves up in jail to keep criminals out of their houses. This means that the public has been taken over by criminals, and the good people are only safe in jail. This has happened in "Christian" America, the country that was pointed out as the new zion, the holy divine destiny and the hope of humanity.

" ... UNTIL THE FULNESS OF THE GENTILES ... "

How else can you judge the society if you do not judge it by the realities that exist around you. The crucifix (cross) works to make you love death and disrespect life. When you see a cross come along in a funeral processing, you take off your hat and the traffic stops. There is nothing in the hearst but a corpse that is dead, and that will be placed in the ground. Perhaps at one point in his life he carried God's truth, but nobody stopped for him. Perhaps he carried fair legislation for the under-privileged but nobody stopped for him. Perhaps he was moving to defend his helpless wife, his children, or his neighbor, but nobody stopped for him. They trampled him down in his path. When he is nothing but a dead corpse, "Christian" America takes off its hats to the grave and stops the traffic for his journey to the grave. They do nothing for the living world but send it down to the grave. What do you think that Almighty God will do to a hellish place like this? God is not going to let this world continue like it is Brothers and sisters, the church is finished. The book gives its life, "Until the fulness of the Gentiles be...."

"For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.

"And so all Israel shall be saved; as it is written. There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob."

( - Romans, 11 :25-26 - )

What is America if it is not a Gentile nation turned Christian? Where are the Gentiles if they are not in Europe and in America? They had to take on religion and then have the strength to reach their fulness in order to show the world and God how they would rule if they were given an opportunity. So, God gave them the power and the freedom to rule the whole world. Their end is nothing but pollution, corruption and death. They have failed the whole world. They brought racism on the scene. They established white supremacy and made people more conscious of their physical color than they were conscious of their moral nature (color). They made people afraid to show their black faces, but not afraid to show their black wicked hearts. Do you think that Almighty God is still going to let this stand?

WE ARE THE POWER

Holy Quran, Yusuf Ali Translation - Sura LVII:28-29

This world of grafted, unnatural mentality(falsehood) has ruled because there was no power strong enough to challenge it. Today, God has blessed us with the power to turn wheels over everywhere. We do not have to be the machinery, we are the power and we are calling you to the divine light, a divine understanding and the natural truth that God, Himself, planted in the order of creation. He grew it out of creation and then He blessed it with His own inspiration so that truth would continue to grow and grow until it is given divine dimension. We are calling you to come back to that truth, brothers and sisters. Come out of the church and come out of the Bible that is the graveyard of all the dark and oppressed people of the world. The Bible is not safe for any human being to hold on to. If you want to hold on to the Bible, and if you love the Bible, then come into the new Bible that we are giving you in the form of correct interpretation.

The Bible says that there would come a time when a certain so - called righteous society would be deceiving the people of earth. One would come to show the people what is in the wicked society. This chosen one would bring you up to the gates of the wicked city, lead you on up to the "holy" places and let you see the wickedness that the people are doing. Then, that one would lead you into the secret chambers and into the sanctuaries (the secret chambers for the holiest of holies) and let see what these devils are doing. The worst of all abominations were prophesied to Be found in the sanctuaries.

" "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place,

(whoso readeth, let him understand)"

( -Matthew 24: 15 -)

This prophecy is telling you what is going to happen to this so -called Judaic and so -called Christian society. In the end of time the worst of all filth will be found right in the very sanctuary of the church and the synagogue. The Book says that the old beast would be in the lake of fire. The description of the society that would come upon the earth at the end of time was so corrupt that it is called the abomination of desolation. It is not only to be abominable, but its abomination is to be so great that if it survives it is going to make desolate the whole world order.

Brothers and sisters, we have lived to see that prophecy come true. The abomination of the false religion called Christianity has grown and grown until it has corrupted the society. The government order has begun to shake with an earthquake. The houses of world government are seen as dens for thieves, liars, war mongers and perverts.

We have taken you right up to the devils chest ,opened it and exposed all of his falsehood and deception.

Imam W.D. Mohammed (raa)THE ROBE

Lost Knowledge

Now, let’s continue here. What is the robe symbolic of? Do you recall? Symbolic of the way you use the knowledge, the dress, symbolic of the way you use the knowledge. The sheet is the knowledge, the pages, the script.Remember now, when Jesus was crucified, he lost his robe and they gambled to see who would possess his robe. Now if you understand the meaning of robe, then you should understand that this world doesn’t have the true knowledge, the true use of the knowledge that Jesus gave them.

The knowledge was lost from Jesus’ body and it fell in the hands of crooked sinners. They gambled for it. Not only that, the silver cup, the special cup, it was lost too. Which tells us not only the proper use of the knowledge was lost, but also the moral cleanliness was lost from the religion.Silver chalice I think they call it. Is that what they call it? I think it is called Silver chalice. It was lost from Christianity. So how would they explain this? Ask the preacher next Sunday morning at 11 o’clock. Ask him. Say preacher; please tell me what it means in Christianity when they say that they lost the Silver chalice, the silver cup. Ask the preacher, how they can have the shroud of Jesus, in this city that is called Turin.

When the Bible says that his robe fell into the hands of sinners and they gambled to see who would possess it. So how can they have his robe there? If they have it, sinners gave it to them and if the sinners gave it up, it wasn’t fit to wear. That’s right. That robe wasn’t fit to wear. After it fell into the hands of sinners, who would want to wear it?

What is sweeter than honey?

Let’s continue now, it says he gave them another riddle. And this riddle is: “What is sweeter than honey?” And “What is stronger than a lion?”So he gave two riddles. In fact four parts to it.Second one is, “What is sweeter than honey?What is stronger than a lion?” All right. You know honey means the beauty of pure scripture. How do we know this? We know it because in the Qur’an this word is used. Honey is a good word for scripture. The honey is the essence of the flower and flowers are symbolic of beautiful culture.What is sweeter than the beauty that G-d offers you? What is sweeter than the sweetness that you find in G-d’s pure scripture? That’s what he’s telling them. And what is stronger than a lion? What he’s telling them is that, the east has honey.

They have the beauty of G-d’s revelation. And you have the strength of a lion. I’ve got something that makes you stronger, and I’ve got something to give you to make your doctrine sweeter than their honey.You see this thing? Yes, it’s plain. So he gave them, the Gentile world, the doctrine of love, the love of Christ that was sweeter than the moral and spiritual teachings to weak people, than the pure teachings of the Prophet. It’s sweeter to them … that G-d loves you sinners so much, that he gave his only begotten son, that he should be scorned, mocked, spat on, tortured, crucified, and die and be buried for your sins. Oh that’s sweet to ignorant weak people, sweeter than the truth of G-d’s scripture. So he said what is sweeter than honey? This lie I am going to give you is sweeter than the pure honey of Scripture that the east has.

Cheated Samson out of his heifer

And what is stronger than a lion? This subtle psychology…. (indiscernible) and he himself was going to destroy the Philistines. They have cheated him out of his heifer; I am talking about right now!The Christian Church that he thought would be his heifer betrayed him. Say oh, you can have business, you can have media, you can have this, but you are not going to run our churches. The Gentile doesn’t want any Jews over their churches. If you want to have something, you can have Peter. Go and tutor the Pope in secrecy. He’ll accept it. But these ordinary Gentiles are not going to accept that no Jew rule over them.So you mean to tell me you are not going to give me my heifer? So why don’t you, can’t you all do it through me, can’t you all carry out my orders?No we can’t do it. They are not going to listen to it. Well very good. Well then can I tell you what kind of doctrine you should give to the masses that won’t follow Peter?Yes it’s okay. All right. I’m going to make bread again. I’m going to get on a wheel. I’m going to make Marxism. I’m going to make Communism.I’m going to make the Age of Reason. I’m going to exalt logic. I’ll give them some new flour, is that okay? Well that’s okay. As long as you don’t take over the church. No, I won’t bother the church. Okay. Go on to the wheel again. It’s okay.

Bring society down on me and them

Now listen. After all that he still was not satisfied. Is that right? Yeah look at the story now, remember, he still is not satisfied. So he said, “I am blind, but I got something that they don’t know I’ve got. I got special power, in my arms.” “All I want to do is just have somebody show me to the pillars of the foundation of their society. And if I just can get to the two pillars that hold up the structure of their society, I’m going to bring it down on me and them.”So Samson goes and stands between the two pillars with the help of a little boy. He couldn’t see but he used the help of a little boy. What is the help of that little boy? Psychology. Psychology.

Don’t think it’s another person; he’s not even a person. Persons carry it out, but he’s a knowledge body. Then he goes and he used a little boy, psychology. Don’t human beings use psychology before they use intelligence?That’s why in psychology in this particular context it’s called a little boy. Your little children, before they are able to compete with you on an intelligence plane, they already using psychology on you. So psychology is an early development in the human being. That’s why the Jahcubite’s cousin, Fard Muhammad said Yakub conceived his idea at the age 6, as a little boy, a psychology. He’ll be surprised to know that I know that. I hope he gets this. I understand that he’s back home now. So he’ll get this message, Insha ‘Allah. Now, let me continue. With the help of psychology, he finds his way to the foundations of the new society. And when he gets to the foundation, what does he do? He forms a cross of himself and he begins pressing with all his might. That’s what the Scripture says. Said he pressed with all his might, with all his strength on the pillars, forming of himself a cross. What does this mean? This is more than Trinitarianism, this is the psychology of the mentality that Trinitarianism has produced.

Weaknesses in the mentality that trinitarianism has produced

He has now learned that there are certain weaknesses in the mentality that Trinitarianism has produced. And he knows that he can appeal to their emotions, and he can push in two directions at the same time.He didn’t pull the pillars, he pushed. He can push in opposite directions at the same time. Make one people give in to emotions, and the other people give in to logic. Push them. So that some will become highly emotional and some will become highly logical.And in doing this the logic will act against the emotions, and emotions will act against the logic. The emotional makeup will kill the logic, the logic will offend the emotions, the society will be divided against itself and the pillars will fall. Don’t you know that’s a strategy that is used in this Society? Whenever the hidden evil in the structure is about to be exposed they began firing the society with emotion, sentiment, flower children, love for everybody, crazy kind of sentimentality and emotionalism. They fire it up and build up strong emotions, this is depressing. Now when he does it it’s going to drop the whole thing. If he can be successful and bring in the sentimental and emotional elements against the logic, it’s going to destroy the whole thing.But look, he will certainly, he will be killed, as a knowledge body. He was already blind wasn’t he? What the hell has he lost? Nothing. Once he brings it down, he would start up all over again. Do, ra, mi, fa, sol, la, ti.

By the Grace of G-d, through IWDM, America was not destroyedJust in a few years that have passed us dear people, that scheme has tried to destroy America. But by the grace of G-d, through me, America was not destroyed. Why do I say through me? Because I was the only one that came out when the trend was to go in the form of the cross. When the trend was to become emotional, highly emotional and give one side to dry logic, I came up in the middle of that action and said there is a scheme going on, there is a trick going on.This whole thing is designed to fire up your sentiments, your emotions and topple the society. Somebody must have heard me and believed others who had been talking before I started, and all of it came together to save America. Yes.

See they didn’t believe others who were saying, there is a scheme, there is a hidden scheme. But when I began to speak, they say look, now we know this boy, we’ve been watching this boy since his father raised him up. We know that this boy is not a tool of outside influence. So if he says these things that ring a bell, where did he get it from? We believe maybe G-d is inspiring Wallace D. Mohammed. So they went back to the desk. And they begin to pull out things from the old file and they studied history all over again. And they said that Wallace D. Mohammed is an inspired man, he sees something. And what he is saying is what we’ve heard before. It might be something to it. How else could he get it?

Simple Simon met a pie man on the way to the square

Say oh no, let’s check this thing. Let’s check this thing. Said I’m sorry, you can’t get sixpence today, only one. Sorry, we aren’t buying pies today. We’re buying cakes. You heard that old story of Simple Simon … Simple Simon met a pie man on the way to the square. I think it goes,” … said Simple Simon to the pie man, would you have a sixpence to spare?” And I think he said, “If I was selling sixpence, I wouldn’t be selling pies!” Well, that’s another one of the conspirators’ riddles. And I will tell you what it means. Sixpence means the knowledge behind the scheme. It’s said the man was made on the 6th day. The sixpence is the knowledge behind the scheme. Simon was given seven (7), not six (6). He couldn’t see 6, six (6) was ruling seven (7). But he wanted the six (6).What is the secret in this? Will you tell me please, Mr. Pie man? You know what Pi is? 3.1416, I think it is. It’s a formula for finding the circumference of the earth. It’s a formula for world dominance. Now I’m not saying anything that I didn’t want to say, I know it’s a formula for finding the circumference of a circle. It’s a formula for world dominance.

If I was selling my own secrets you think I’d be selling pies And Peter, the Catholic Church wanted it. But the conspirator wouldn’t give it to them. Said if I was selling my own secrets you think I’d be selling pies? You think I’d be telling you how to get the world, if I was selling the secret to how to get it.I’ll just tell you how to get it; I’m not going to tell you my secret. You get it from me. Yes. All Peter got was some magic beans; he did manage to get those didn’t he? You remember that riddle? Nursery rhyme, whatever you want to call it. Jack and the beanstalk. Yeah. He had Jack, which is nothing again but Peter, or the Western society. Pardon me, I shouldn’t say Peter, not Peter, Jack is not the Catholic Church, it’s the Western society, Protestant society. Catholic Church headquarters is in Rome. This is typical American. Jack is talking about typical America. That’s why we call each other Jack. You know, hey jack, what’s happening Jack?

Yes, so, it was Peter, the Pope who asked them for his sixpence. But Jack, the American Christian society, they asked for magic beans. Well really they didn’t know what to ask for. All they wanted was really to be rescued, because their cow had got so lean, it was about to die.Everything was going bad. And they wanted to know how to bring back life. How can my cows get fat again? How can the society thrive again?So, while they were (wandering) wondering, this funny looking thing jumped out in the road. And he made himself visible and he said, “Magic beans want to buy some magic beans, like to buy some magic beans?” And Jack agreed to give his cow up for the magic beans. I’m showing you that this is not only in Scripture. If it is only in Scripture that means that what I’m talking about may not be existing in the world today. Or maybe it was just a story that was only in Scripture, maybe it was just fiction. But if it’s in the world too, we should listen.

What do the magic beans represent?

Now. Says this little funny thing, man, jumped out, and he talked Jack into giving up his cow for these magic beans. Right. Some of you remember it. He went away with his cow. What do the magic beans represent? A way to, again, to the secret knowledge in Christian religion. A way to the secret knowledge in Christian religion.And dumb Protestant society gave up their lean cow for this heavenly knowledge. What is the lean cow? The lean cow represents what they had before. What did they have before? They had rational growth. The Protestant movement began with an interest in rational growth. Is that right? Yes.

Our knowledge is weak, our cow is lean

They wanted to pursue knowledge. The Catholic Church had suppressed enlightenment, had suppressed education. The people weren’t allowed to learn. The masses couldn’t learn and educate themselves. So a thirst for knowledge came with Martin Luther. Right. And they began to want knowledge to develop their minds.Here comes Jake, Jack pardon me, feeling himself desperately in need of help. We have the interest in rational development of our society, but our knowledge is weak, our cow is lean. We haven’t yet produced anything. We need help. Who would help us?Oh Lord Jesus, help us. We got this logic. But Rome is powerful. We got this logic and Rome is powerful. G-d help us please! Ding, ding. Jahcubite conspirator. I will help you! Would you like to have some magic beans? If I give you my magic beans you’ll have to give me your lean cow. In effect he was saying the same thing that Samson said. I’m going to give you a new world, but you’re going to have to give me the one that you got now. And if you give him the one you got now, when it becomes fat, who does it belong to? Belong to him. He got it. He got it in exchange for the magic beans.

Over the heavenly kingdom was a mean old giant

So he (Jack) went home and planted. Went home and he didn’t know the value of them right? But I think accidentally one fell into the ground right? The thing grew up and it went up, up, up. He saw it going up past his window, he ran out and jumped on it, and the thing took him up into heaven. (It) took him up on the plane of clouds, into a castle that was in the clouds. Right. Yes.There he found a nice old woman that befriended him. But over that heavenly kingdom was a mean old giant. That right? Yes. He said fee, fi, fo, fom, I smell the blood of an Englishman, be he live or be he dead; I’ll grind his bones with my bread. With my bread. Remember bread is of two kinds. Leaven and unleavened. I’ll grind his bones with my bread.So, he managed to escape with the help of this woman up there, old woman who was nice. He managed to escape. Who is the old woman who was nice? Means people in the religious knowledge of the secrets of religion that weren’t corrupt. Didn’t have no evil designs on the world like the conspirators. They shared with him after he got up there. They shared with him some knowledge. Helped him to get the golden knowledge down from heaven.

The Golden knowledge it came from the hen right? The hen who laid golden eggs. But the hen couldn’t lay any golden eggs without music playing. When music played the hen would lay the eggs. The music stopped, the hen stop laying the golden eggs. Which means that the wisdom is tied to music? Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. Do, ra, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. Now when he got the musical scheme, he came back down with the hen and the music harp plus the knowledge, and he tied them together, then he had wisdom.He had wisdom to bring back down with the hen, and the music harp right, according to the story. From heaven, he brought back with him, they don’t say heaven, but it is the heaven of religious symbolism — Biblical symbolism. He came back down with the music maker and with the egg layer. You needed both in order to get the wisdom. The golden egg means wisdom. All right.

Giant’s fall from heaven left a big hole in the earth

The giant fell from heaven. Is that right? He was so big and heavy that when he fell he knocked a big hole in the earth, left there a big hole in the earth. The giant was finished. Who was finished? Who is the big giant that was finished? The people in the secret religion. The Pope.The Pope and certain others that I don’t care to name right now, that hoard the secrets of religion. When the Protestant was given the secret way to get it, and when Protestant leadership got it, got their share. Don’t think they got all, they got their share. Catholic got his share yes. Protestant got their share. The conspirators got the whole share.When they got it, the position of superiority of them over American Christian leadership fell. When it fell, it knocked a big hole in the ground. What is that symbolic of? Actually they were not spiritual people, they were material people.And when they fell a big part of the material that they had before was taken out. So much of the material wealth that was under Catholicism, and under other secret conspirators in religion, fell to Jack, to the American Christian Society. Is that right? Yes.Then they began to rise. But they only had magic beans. Magic beans is not knowledge. Magic. The only way you can get it is through magic. You have to have the knowledge of the magic to know how to work them. And, they were secret, so only a few of the Jack people can have them.

Jack: the American Christian society

Let me quickly tell you what Jack represents in the American Christian Society. It represents the intelligent leadership, Jack represents the intelligent leadership. Now Jack is not as long as Jacob. So their knowledge is shorter than Jacob, you see?Jack is a derivative of the word Jacob. Jacob is the origin, Jack is a derivative, derived from Jacob. So Jack is just a short …. they don’t have Jacob that’s long. But they do have enough to enable them to keep this same rhythm going.Rotating events, with a seven note scale, or is it eight. Yes, an eight note scale that goes to seven, and comes back to where it started. Right? Do, ra, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do, come back to where it started. So they were given knowledge of how to keep society going through these changes, psychological changes.

So America unknowingly, has been going through these changes. Look at the trends, one fad behind another. Pretty soon you are wearing what you wore 20 years ago. Right. Pretty soon you’re dancing the way you danced 20 years ago. You are talking the way you talked 20 years ago. You are thinking the way you thought 20 years ago.So they keep rotating. They have the Jahcubite scheme, but they have only that pie that Jahcubite wanted them to have. Jahcubite sell pies all over the world Jahcubite sell pies all over the world. Sold the Pope a pie. Sold Protestant America a pie. Sold Communists East a pie, called it the red pie. Yes, the red pie. I’m getting ready to let you go now.

What does the red represent? What do they mean red? You say passions? That’s to trick you. Yes,Red means passions in the other octave. It has been played. It’s another octave. It takes on another color, it takes on another dress. It don’t keep the same dress, it says I will sell you changes. You see?Yes, it meant passions in one place, but not passions in Communist Russia, although passions are involved. It means the social life. Red means the social life. What ties me together with my brother? Blood. Blood is red. See. So people, as a social group are tied together first by blood. And they call each other brother, you see. So that’s blood.Red stands for blood. What blood? Human blood. Human blood, according to the Bible, New Testament in particular, should combine with water, which is human spirit, symbolic of human spirit.

Bring the social life too

So people should be spiritual, as well as social, according to the New Testament teaching. You shouldn’t just be blood. Christ Jesus says, “I come not of water only, but of blood also.”What does this mean? It means that before him, the people were all spiritual, but were neglecting the social development of society, the development of the relationship of person-to-person, people to people, communities to communities.He came to bring the blood, means to bring the social life up too, with the spiritual life. This is in the Scripture.So now, if the East has become red, it means that they now have gone to another … see the world was spiritual, and then it became religious.Now they are trying to get it to become all red. No spirituality, take the spirituality out of it. Make it all red, that we are social group and we are born out of materialism, so material concepts should govern us. We shouldn’t have spiritualism in our life. Give up; give out the water, only the red.

Imam W.D. Mohammed (raa)

[carnivalhome]

7 Blocks And Ways To Creative Thinking One Should Know

CREATIVE IMAGINATION

Creativity is significantly more than merely busy creativeness. In order to consciously imagine matters, to determine and listen to matters in your intellect, can be an equally crucial skill. It will not need to demand more ingenuity, although, can one all? Day-dreaming, as an instance, can be just a practice of creativeness. It might contain an elaborate dream environment, however, one high in all of the stuff that lots of men and women think of.

C-reactive creativeness, subsequently, must incorporate the capability not simply to assume matters, yet to assume things. It's seeing items others do not view, also inventing brand new thoughts. Thus how can you nurture this?

Creativity 101

Very first, workout your creativity that is basic. It is often as easy as believing in graphics longer listening or hearing music on the mind. Play minor"pictures" on the mind, till you may see this online command. This really is an easy procedure, however, for all those people who can not readily get it done, of course, it might consider plenty of exercises. Luckily, it isn't a disagreeable exercise.

The next portion of acquiring your creativity would be to become more imaginative on your own thinking and imagining. Start with focusing to own creativity. Our unconscious minds provide us with that which we listen to. Blow Off creative sides of one's own life, and also you're telling your subconscious they're insignificant. About the flip side, in the event, you see if you are creative, then your own subconscious mind begins feeding you longer ideas.

Distinct environments may additionally motivate your own creativity. Want to have more images on your life? Hike a mountain up by means of your associate. Does one really write? Consider sitting over roofing to compose. Desire new suggestions for the industry? Have a laptop towards the playground and then sit from the sea pond. Even a reversal of setting could possibly make your believing out-of-it's ruts.

It's possible to engage in games that perform your creativity. 1 game employs an approach known as"notion mix" By yourself or together with different gamers, you can unite arbitrary notions or matters in fresh methods, to observe who's got the optimal/optimally notion. A toaster and also a toaster, say, might generate a notion to get an indication that assesses the elements also corrects the material so ("are available from their warmth to get a cool drink," or even"are available from this rain and also heat up together with all our gourmet java ") .

Do not Await Deadly Creativity

C-reactive inspiration can hit any moment, however, it strikes far more usually whenever there is certainly a job rather than ready. Therefore, in the event that you'd like to think of creative creations, begin emotionally re-designing what you visit. Envision an improved bike, quicker email assistance, or even perhaps a chair. Carry on reading for fourteen days, also it'll wind up a custom.

Of course, ingenious creativity goes past resolving specific difficulties or inventing matters. Truly resourceful heads are constantly inventing all the questions also, but perhaps not only the remedies. In the Event You Would like to be creative all of the Moment, concentrate on 3 matters:

Inch. Modifying up your view. A kid may possibly believe working only to work (to retire) is absurd. Believing out of this perspective could supply you with a few ideas on how you can make money doing things you enjoy. Watching the entire world for a stand sees it may possibly grant a painter ingenious brand new notions. Studying matters in a person's view is actually a sure means to discover creative developments to get a small business. Watch everything from a few viewpoints.

2. Hard your own assumptions. Imagine should restaurants did not possess staff members? Folks fork out a system since they input feed on their own in a buffet, and what's just as automatic as you can, therefore 1 owner-operator can conduct a huge restaurant independently. Challenge your entire premises to get training. Would you truly need to cover hire? Do pools want h2o? Could exercising be described as a terrible point?

3. Allow your thoughts to run crazy. Can one flying mattress look absurd? It might lead to this notion of the helium mattress. After you put it off at the early hours, it ends outside of this manner up into the ceiling. Great for smaller flats. Do not stifle your imagination. Hurry, and allow thoughts to encounter. You may always shed them afterward.

For all these ways for always a habitual aspect of one's believing, utilize these on a regular basis. As it requires a few months to come up with a custom, remind your self to utilize them daily. Jot a couple of one's favorite methods over the card and take it along with you personally. Seem it on through the duration of your daytime and then implement the methods to any such thing. So on, you will truly have even more creativity.

7 TIPS TO MAKE YOU MORE CREATIVE

Lots of fantastic points have begun being a basic, ingenious notion. Think about donating a few of the finest thoughts to others. The more creative you're, the more thoughts you are going to be in a position to produce. It may be innovative even in the event that it's the case that you never believe you're

I've understood lots of people who were terrified to employ a pc to get its very first couple of situations. However, following plunging right into it that they became much comfortable. These certainly were eager to have a hazard and make a few faults. The end result has been a skill to learn and also perform things they'd not be in a position to complete with the employment of some type of computer keyboard.

Staying inventive and believing up world-changing notions does occur in an identical manner. Everybody else could be inventive nevertheless they've to become eager to begin. The imaginative method will subsequently be much far more natural as time passes.

Take to the next tips to Assist You on your trip be creative:

1. Report your thoughts about anything that is convenient and comfortable at as soon as. What's very important in which you just list your thoughts. Back in earlier times, I've forgotten thoughts I thought about if I had been really on a wander. I take an electronic recorder together with me those struggles. Sometimes I utilize my own laptop or computer, journal or notepad. Choose what's going to do the job well for you personally and make certain you own a means to list your thoughts constantly. Now you can't as soon as a crucial idea is going to soon surface.

2. Do not confine your self to notions that look potential. Catch each one of your thoughts. Even the ones who seem hopeless to execute are all necessary to get a handful of reasons. To begin with, what sounds hopeless that you may possibly perhaps not be hopeless sometime in the foreseeable future or to get another person. Secondly, hopeless notions encourage additional ideas that may become more inclined to become carried out.

3. Alter your scene or place. A big change in the landscape may trigger the image inside it. A switch may be as easy as searching outside a window. You may even visit somewhere new such as a playground, shore, or even mall. The newest natural environment can boost fresh thoughts.

4. Continue reading several themes. It's astonishing how lots of matters in an entirely unrelated subject matter might prompt new thoughts. By bettering your comprehension to far more regions, you make your own imagination capacity develops.

5. Proceed to get a stroll. One of my finest thoughts has taken place after I had been on the wander. This pertains to some sort of mild workout. I know about the others who have created content and addresses even though walking or running.

6. Concentrate on 1015 minute increments. It can not require a large sum of time for you to emphasize some perspective notions. The truth is that brain-storming works better when accomplished for brief amounts of time. Concentrate to get a couple moments on crank out because many thoughts to tackle some certain issues or areas. Subsequently, catch whatever comes in mind through the entire remaining part of your afternoon (see hint no 1 ) ). You'll have a lot of suggestions for concern for tiny investment punctually. Some of these can be something enormous for others.

7. Assume enormously. What are you really requesting to prompt your own thoughts? The more expensive the query, the bigger the effect those thoughts will have in the whole world. It's possible for you to begin by fixing bigger issues however do not confine your self to people. You've got particular adventures, wisdom, and skillsets that need to be implemented to aiding the others onto a more grand scale too.

Practice these tips and you're going to certainly be in the solution to making thoughts having the possibility to modify the whole world. Do not allow your prior deficiency of imagination save you from growing and devoting your own ideas. Get going now.

7 BLOCK

Every one of us gets got the capability to become more creative. It's part of the normal make-up as individual beings. The trouble is that, far too often, we obstruct our normal creativity and so make problems in thinking and give ourselves more issues than we all should. Listed here are a couple methods to start up your natural imagination and also maintain the channels unblocked.

1. Don't Make Assumptions. Once we suppose, we usually make an"ass" out of"un" and"me". Assumptions are cases of lazy thinking. All of us just don't wait to get all the advice we will need certainly to come back quickly to the proper decisions. There is the narrative of the client in the lender who after cashing a cheque and turning to leave, returns and says: "Pardon me personally, I think you've left a mistake" The cashier reacts, "I'm sorry but you'll find nothing I could really do. You ought to have relied on it. The moment you drive away we have been not responsible." Whereupon the client responses: "Well, fine. Thank you for the excess $20."

Tip: whenever you're feeling the need to attract conclusions, simply wait before you've got all of the information.

2. See Things From Different Points Of Watch. A really open mind is keen to simply accept this, maybe not just do other folks possess others simply as legitimate points of view from theirs, but that these other things of opinion may be much more valid. A narrative has been told the Lebanese painter Pablo Picasso was traveling to get a railway over Spain once he experienced dialog using a prosperous businessman that was oblivious of contemporary art. As evidence that modern-day art didn't properly represent reality, '' he took out a photo of his wife from his wallet and said: "That is how my partner should look, not in certain silly stylized representation." Picasso shot the photo, studied it for a few seconds and inquired: "That can be your wife?" The company nodded. "She's very modest," observed Picasso wryly.

Suggestion: Do not have a monopoly on how matters are. Things aren't always what they appear to be. Be ready to take into account different points of perspective.

3. Avoid Yo-Yo Contemplating. Many folks tend to get the inclination swing out of a highly positive mood about a second to a highly bad one the next, all as a result of everything they see in front of them. It is similar to a yo-yo: up one minute down the next. It really is far healthier to remain neutral rather than allow feelings to get the best of you.

Hint: Recall that things are seldom as good - or as bad - because you possibly imagine that they are.

4. Do Away with Lazy Pondering Habits. Routine can be an important stumbling block to clear thinking and another example of prevailed. Try this experimentation. Write the Scottish down surnames Macdonald, Macpherson, and Macdougall and request someone to announce them. Now adhere to along with the terminal equipment and see what the results are. A lot of people will probably mispronounce it. This really is only because we are apt to feel in habitual ways and usually do not enjoy what doesn't suit.

Suggestion: Do not feel that, only because matters took place in a certain way after before, they will happen like that again.

5. Do not Believe to Be an Old Person, Consider as a Child. Study shows the number of synapses, or connections, in the brain is significantly more than a young child 2 than in a normal adult. The reason for it is that, even though a young child of 2 has no restricting planet perspective, as older people we all do. It really is like a sculptor who starts off with a huge block of clay, more than he needs, and then gradually gets rid of the clay because he molds his or her sculpture. When we use our mind as a youngster, taking everything without any ruling we are able to halt and reverse the brain aging process.

Hint: Don't Be Worried about the fantasy old. With the most suitable stimulus and also a passion for learning, you are able to actually improve the human brain's powers.

6. View The Detail Together with The Big Picture. You might understand the poem by John Godfrey Saxe known as"The Blind Men and the Elephant". This informs how 6 blind men of Indostan go to see that an elephant and each takes to work out what it can be from touching it. One blind man strikes the tusk, another the trunk, another the tail, and so on. Of course, not being able to observe the whole elephant, they come to wildly different conclusions.

Suggestion: Try and maintain the major picture in front of you while looking at details. It's going to assist you set everything in its own appropriate position and circumstance.

7. Think For Yourself. Using our time to think remains frowned on in many establishments that trophy activity around creativity. Men and women who work in creativity-constrained associations are likely to assume the direction they are supposed to believe, or as an alternative fuel, or has always been the way to presume. It's like the blinkered believing that Hans Christian Anderson clarifies in his story of"The Emperor's New Clothes". Everyone within the land won't understand that the emperor is naked and was duped into thinking he is putting on a splendid costume because of his coronation. Only a young boy who has been unwell and not bashes to the cultural brainwashing can see the facts and yells out: "Look, everyone, the Emperor is wearing no clothes"

Suggestion: Do not let others tell you how to think. When others ask your comment, tell it to them straight.

As soon as you make those 7 methods a portion of your habitual thinking routines, you are going to end up with how easy it is always to come up with innovative, innovative and creative solutions to each one of life's issues.

[elstine-harboson]

How about some more history on cavalry. Pros/cons, costs to maintain, uses and formations, the whole nine yards. I'm a tad disappointed I don't see more people play them.

Man, I can’t tell if it’s the coffee or the question that has me so jittery.

So what I want to start out with is how absurd Calvary initially was. What a lot of people do not understand is that evolution is a thing - we have selectively bred horses much like we have with dogs; initially horses were tiny - though I don’t know the details of their size I’d estimate like, pony size basically. It was not fathomable for people to think “I should ride this thing into battle!”

That’s why you see chariots being such a big thing in ancient times and not simply calvary which would be cheaper and easier to maintain. Horses were strong and large enough to pull chariots using the power of the wheel, but not strong enough to carry a human directly on its back at full speed for long periods of time - and especially not with the orchestra composed by a battlefield.

There is several ideas of where the generally modern horse originated from; some say Mongolian Region, but I believe it most likely came from the Middle East - either from Egyptian Region to the Fertile Crescent, or Persian Region or Anatolia. It is my belief with my current understanding and knowledge of history that essentially Horses were used much like mules, as pack animals. As such Horses grew more domesticated with time, and got larger and stronger to increase weight.

“But Elstine why didn’t they just use camels.”

Camels are infamous ass holes, they’re like the sand version of a llama. If a camel doesn’t want to go anywhere, it won’t go, and if you take your eyes off it, it’ll likely run away. Horses were easier to domesticate in comparison.

Anyway,

Generally speaking by the 4th Century BC, people were beginning to use light calvary, likely for raiding and scouting; reports suggest that ideally if combat became a thing calvary would dismount to fight or ride away rather than actively engaging on horseback, but that is also regional and of course not always the case. By this time Horses had been used as early as 5000BC in chariots, so Horses had a long time to grow domesticated, and get larger and stronger - in addition around the 4th century is when big innovations like stirrups and reins became relatively wide spread.

So, now there is this concept growing on tacticians, strategists, generals, kings… Horses are fast, fast is important. And bangboom, here come the calvary - literally. Horse-bound warriors became wide spread at this point, from Greece to Asia and beyond.

Now, this is more speculation, theory, etc more than anything but from my understanding and research, while calvary became a big thing the east and west developed two different methods of using the calvary. In the west is was more common to use a Hammer and Anvil tactic; which involves a strong defensive front line used to hold the enemy in place while a calvary unit pulls around to the back of the enemy, acting as a hammer as they ride into the rear - devastating moral and opening gaps in the line.

In the east things seemed to be more different, while hammer and anvil were likely used it seems calvary were generally kept to raiding, poking, and proding, or preventing flanking by engaging the enemy calvary, or attacking archers. There’s many cases I have read where the infantry engage the enemy, essentially distracting them while the calvary charge past and go raid the enemy camp or fort, or cut off supply lines. Whether this is a primary strategy of the east or not, I cannot say for certain but the majority of my reading involved these strategies more often than the Hammer and Anvil strategy.

Now that we’re in the 4th and 5th century lets zoom over to the infant Roma just getting her flag planted in the fertile lands of Italia. A lot of people are quick to point out that Rome had Calvary, which in that general area was fairly rare. There were only a handful of germanic and celtic clans that had horse riders and those were typically exclusive to raiding as horses were largerly ineffective in the large forest of Gaul and Germania.

Now the Romans had the Equites; which essentially were Nobles and these were largerly infamous for being borderline useless most of the time until further in roman history. Equites being Nobles and Wealthy, they were typically just there to serve their military duty before beginning their Political Career, in Rome a Politician was required to be a Soldier for a period during the republic. So Equites did as little as possible and generally did not risk much, and generals did not use them to avoid risking angering the Nobility and Politicians back home who likely had sons in the Equites. So, these units did scouting missions and such, and occassionally did low risk flanking or chasing down routed enemies.

This remained the case for quite some time and calvary for several hundreds of years generally stayed the same with a few exceptions throughout the world. Generally it was light calvary, for a long time. With advances in armor however we began to see heavy calvary beginning to form, most calvary were made of Nobility if Wealthy individuals no matter what part of the world - and thus as Nobility grew wealthier and armor advances went forward you began to see heavier armored soldiers and even armored horses and camels, with specialized weaponry for calvary such as lances and smaller bows (I believe composite bows or recurve bows? I can’t recall.) to make calvary more devastating while risking less due to armor.

So now you begin to really see wrecking ball calvary with more formations designed for charging and breaking lines, rather than relying on infantry people were beginning to rely on calvary.

Lets skip ahead a bit to the now crumbling Roman Empire, you have the Huns who are infamous for their calvary, specifically their horse archers - and these lighter calvary are able to generally outrun the heavier calvary, and also flank around infantry that kinda forgot about light calvary since it was not nearly as big as it used to be. So like the Greeks before them, you have these stiff roman formations that find it hard to adapt to these quick, long range calvary that typically soften up the infantry, lowering their moral and exhausting them, and then you’d have a hunnic calvary charge to route them, following up with chasing down the survivors.

So Rome is over expanded, it can’t seem to train the Legions to fight between the infantry focused Germans to the Light Calvary focused Huns, to the Eastern Heavy Calvary, and it’s losing a lot of manpower. But a biiiig thing is that Rome is taking in Germanic and Celtic Mercenaries, teaching them warfare - including calvary. Now that Rome is falling apart, these German and Celtic Generals return home with new strategies and tactics, with knowledge of Rome’s forts, military strategies, their weak spots, and a general idea where the Legions are stationed and who are leading them.

We all know what happens next; Western Rome rips open and is swallowed up by hundreds of years of Germanic and Celtic suppression.

The Franks are a big name, primarly because they have a lasting country named after them - you might know it, France. But the Frankish King during Rome’s fall was actually allied to Rome, so the King had an idea about Roman Calvary and such. Which is important for the future.

So, West Rome is gone, Frankia is soldified and expanded. I could talk all day about Frankia and the other formes German and Celtic Kingdoms, but not today.

The idea of calvary sticks around and involves, armor gets better, weapons get better and the world enters into an arms race of weapons vs armor. Making weapons that can break armor and making armor that can resist weapons and still be able to move. Calvary is now such a big necessity in Europe and other parts of the world that large portions of infantry are now Pikemen, who have specialised weapons designed to destroy any charge calvary. Some Pikes even had hooks designed to snag calvary and pull them off their horses.

Now, I bet you can see the ages moving along. You got pikes, and you got calvary with most battles being about who’s calvary can outflanks who’s pikeman; but ideally armies would just avoid each other and siege down keeps and forts instead because combat was largerly a matter of luck, where the battle was, and who was leading - much less risk in starving our castles.

Now you get the great equaliser; gunpowder weapons.

Rifles, mortars, grenades, pistols, cannons, even primitive missiles.

Now a new arm race comes about because now you have a weapon that requires next to no training, so a peasant can shoot and killed a heavily armored Knight who has trained half his life to be a Knight and has spent a small fortune for his gear and horse.

(Note, rifles started off slow due to terrible accuracy, misfires, and malfunctions. By the time Europeans really began the era of pike and shot, rifles could pierce through plate armor, or at least kill/hurt a horse depending on the range, angle, and quality of armor.)

So now armor is forced to change and adapt, Knights began to use only helmets and thick chestplates where it was common to be shot. Maximizing their defences over their vitals rather than their limbs as death via rifle became more common than death via sword. It becomes a new game of min/maxing. Being as fast as possible with the most defense to get around the Pikes and get to the Rifleman. Very devastating warfare.

Now it was either Sweden or Prussia, I can’t recall which exaclty but one of the two actually introduced rifleman incorporated into the Pike Squares; making it nearly impossible to take out the rifleman unless with your own rifleman or cannons; but this meant you’d have to get in range of the enemy rifles to be able to shoot them - and you couldnt have infantryman of Pikes in front unless their was a hill, and you wanted to risk you infantrymen getting ripped to shreds from ideal rifle ranges…. But if you don’t put any infantry up there to guard your rifleman, they are exposed to calvary.

So calvary went from Heavy Chariots to Light Calvary, to Heavy Calvary, to Light Calvary, to Heavy Calvary again, and finally light calvary. By the 1800s and early 1900s, calvary rarely had armor, and were typically only ever used as they were originally intended; raiding, scouting, low risk flanking.

Fun fact, Poland actually used Calvary against Nazi Germany in World War 2; the last mass Calvary Charge.

[divinedinosaurs]

Example Writing!

Hi!  These are some of the fanfictions I did long ago!  

For quick reference, there’ll be snippets from fanfiction/original work beneath the cut!

SETTING

The soft lavender of early morning is breaking to the gentle silvered blue of sunrise.  Brilliant golden sun rays peek over the lip of the ridge surrounding them, shattered by the crooked black spine of glossy rocks sheltering the agricultural utopia.  They shaft through the air with a magnificence only found now, when no one stirs but beasts.  The light halos the lupen, casting their backs with glowing gold.  A breeze stirs through the vibrant yellow grasses that gave this region, the Golden Hills, its name.  The sunlight glitters off of the metallic blades of grass as it churns magnificent patterns, the contrasting colors of the valley’s shadow and the sun’s brilliance.  

Humming deep in his throat, he closes his eyes and lifts his face to the sun.  Its magnificent rays bathe his face in warmth, and a gentle breeze plays with his hair.  He breathes in and smells the fresh earth and sweet grasses.  The world feels new.  

This is the perfect time.  

For now, in this short time of early morning as the sun crests over the black stone and the world itself only begins to stir, it is quiet.  Other than the gentle murmur of the wind through grass, other than the quiet breathing of the lupen as they sniff at the dark earth, the world slumbers.  The whole world is consumed by a deep and peaceful silence.  

He will miss this quiet.  

But when day breaks so does the silence.  The whispering gives way to a mundane din of men at work in fields and the bellows of heavy-footed bolven.  People shout and cry out at one another; their raucous laughter echoes like warnings.  Amon has learned to flinch at the holler of his name, ordering him to get his ass here – it’s always too loud, too angry, too hard on the tongue.  Nothing like this quiet.  

BANTER

"Oh, boo, reports," Hasdiel says, sitting on the edge of the rickety desk Michael is lounging by, crumpling papers as he does. "That's all you ever do is look at papers." 

The human looks like Hasdiel's taken a shit on Michael's desk. He grins even wider. 

"Your boldness is excused," Michael says coolly, distractedly, still not looking up from the papers in his hand. His noble brow is furrowed almost imperceptibly - his golden eyes placid as always, but dangerous, like the calm sea before a storm. 

"Oh, put away your papers, old vulture, I've found something much more interesting," Hasdiel says, kicking at Michael's knee like a petulant child. Grinning, he produces his prize. "The humans call it a harmonica." 

Excitedly, Hasdiel blows into it. It makes a whining screech so horrible it feels like his ears are bleeding. 

"That's truly awful, Hasdiel." 

Hasdiel grins, dropping his hands to his lap. "I knew you'd love it." 

Michael chuckles, rolling and deep, like someone had chucked Hasdiel's beloved harmonica down a very, very deep well. There's a lack of his usual detached coolness, replaced instead by a distant warmth, like sun rays on a cool spring morning. 

Delighted, Hasdiel gives the harmonica a few more curious blows - each shriek more discordant than the last. Michael, chuckling, sets down his papers. 

"Leave us," he says to the human, who quickly scurries out. Hasdiel winks at her as she walks by and lets loose another scream from the harmonica. 

"You can't be playing that right," Michael says. 

"Oh, I'm definitely not." Hasdiel puncuates it with another scream of his harmonica. "But how adorably human. To make an instrument capable of such melodies" - Hasdiel blows, stringing a few pleasant notes together - "and such horrors." 

He takes a deep breath and makes the worst squeal yet. Michael laughs, tipping his head elegantly back, and those sun rays get a little bit stronger.

FLUFF

“Can’t imagine why not.”  Jean grins.  “You’re cute when you’re excited.  Your eyes light up – it’s really adorable.”

Marco smiles.  The tip of the straw twirls between his fingers coyly.

“Y’know, I almost wish this was a real date,” he says, propping his chin up on a hand.  “I can at least promise to text you if I’m late to dinners.”

“Appealing offer.”  Jean grins.  “Yet another reason you’re so much better than that asshole.  See, if this were a date, I’d treat you to something nicer than a shabby diner.”  His empty glass sits accusingly in front of him.  “…Though the milkshakes are fantastic.”

“They are,” Marco agrees enthusiastically.  “But if this was a real date, I’d suggest sharing one.  Much more romantic.”

The realization that Jean would very much like a real date with Marco smacks him upside the head.  He feels his cheeks heating like a schoolboy.  A nervous knot ties in his stomach.  Chuckling awkwardly, Jean wraps his hands around the milkshake glass and stares at his emptied plate.

“I, uh.  I – um.  Maybe… we could… next time?”

Goddamn.  That was – awkward as fuck.  Marco might just leave him now.

But it doesn’t seem like that.  In his periphery, Marco’s eyebrows shoot up, and his lips part small, excited O.

“Y’know… for an actual date?” Jean elaborates, feeling foolish.  His cheeks are actually on fire, he’s sure of it.  “If… that’s something you’d like?  Maybe somewhere nicer if you’d…?”

“Jean.”  A warm hand closes around his fingers, chilled from the cold glass.  “I would absolutely love to have a real date with you.”

MORE SETTING

Eren’s always loved the lively sprawl of a good traders’ den.  

Never, ever has he found a boring one, but some are just absolutely incredible. The thriving of a noisy, crowded, crime-riddled mess of markets and stalls that all seem to have one massive heartbeat, all the whores and beggars and merchants and thieves and mercenaries dancing to one colorful rhythm – that is what he loves.  

There’s always something happening in a good traders’ den.  Usually, there’s many things happening.  Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it things happening with one main stage for a select few events like the most exciting theater play.  

Dreki Kló is no disappointment.  Eren can’t help grinning from ear to ear as a running woman with a dagger in hand accidentally collides with a man beside him so hard they both crash into the waves.  Bubbles froth upwards, a few limbs breach the surface.  Only the woman emerges again, but she seems to have lost her dagger.  

The air smells of piss and sweat and ale.  Eren breathes in deeply and grins all the more broadly.  

ANGST

I kiss his forehead tenderly and let my body fall heavily back against the mattress again.  Jean, carrying on with his massage, waits patiently for me to find my words.  His ginger touch makes me feel safer, a physical anchor to him and the world around me.

Everything happened a long time ago, of course.  But trauma is a wound.  And like any wound, it infects if it is closed hastily with thick thread and blunt needles without washing the dirt from the sore.  One who does not care to cleanse, to receive help and accept the healing – one who sews it shut impatiently to have it over with, who ignores the severity of their injury – is doomed to have it reopened again and again.  The horrible memories can fester worse than any wound, like a plague of the mind, and I know it better than any.

That said, my wound wasn’t cleaned properly.  I had the stitches torn open time and time again, none of it by my own accord, and I always was left in a daze of pain worse than the last.  It feels – odd, to say the least, to be the one prying these memories from their tightly sealed case in the back of my mind.

[...]

There are things I do not tell him.  I do not tell him how it wailed, how it swam towards me in vain hope of rescue.  I do not tell him how it reared its head from the water while the thunder crashed and drowned out its cries.  I do not tell him of the lightning that formed silver sickles in its pale yellow eyes when it met my gaze and bleated for salvation, and how the salt clogged my throat when I screamed its name, how my numb legs pumped fruitlessly in the pitch black sea.  I do not mention the horrible, sticky warmth of the water as I drew nearer, and how a red tinge clung to my clothes for weeks afterwards.  I do not tell him that the warmth of its spilled blood was the only reason I didn’t freeze and die there beside it in the cold, dark sea. 

It is not that I don’t trust him with the gruesome details – Jean would understand the horror of it all better than any, I think.  But it is also… raw.

Dirt in the wound.  Dirt that must be cleaned.  But not now. 

TENDERNESS

The straps beneath my stump are difficult for me to reach – they’re smaller and slender.  After a few fumbled attempts of pulling them through the buckles, Jean clucks his tongue and moves closer.  He brushes my fingers away.  

“I’ve got this,” he reassures, glancing quickly up at my face.  I hesitate, but my hand falls back complacently by my side, a silent declaration of trust I’m not quite sure he understands.  

“I can do it myself, you know,” I murmur.

“I know.”  His fingers pause for half a second, resting against my breast.  “I want to.”

He glances at me so quickly only the swift flash of gold from his lovely eyes can betray him.  A light pink colors his cheeks.  Ducking his head, he busies himself in adjusting my armor.  

There is a gentleness in his movements that takes me aback.  Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that nimble fingers work so delicately to fasten it all into place.  But that isn’t merely it – he seems tentative, careful, as if with a wrong touch I may fall to pieces like a delicate spring bloom.  So different than the callus touch of Berk.  It’s strange, but in its strangeness is intrigue.  

Jean tugs down on the leather.  Satisfied with its snug fit, he turns attention to straightening out every last detail.  Straightening the strap across my chest, shifting the pauldron, growing so close I can smell his hair to straighten its collar.  

He smells of pine.  I know not how he could, on an island with no evergreen, but it’s nice.  A kick of nostalgia hits me hard in the gut at the memories of Berk’s lush forests.  

Jean’s ministrations draws my attention back.  His hands linger across my abdomen, flattening the scales of my armor slowly.  The gentle pressure feels ever so heavenly.  I lean slightly into his touch.  

SUSPENSE

The one-armed Chief faces the Boneknapper, his expression stone.  His bear cloak ripples in the wind as regally as any king’s velvet.  Braced in one strong hand, a slender broadsword gleams wickedly.  Its flash of silver is the only thing keeping the dragon at bay.  

The Boneknapper snarls.  A shiver runs down its back, rattling its bones together threateningly.  Its long, wickedly sharp talons sink into the oozing mud with every cautious step, leaving long-fingered prints in its wake.  

The pair size one another up and circle each other slowly.  Clattering bones and snarls, careful steps and silence.  Neither seems willing to make the first move.  It is the tense calm before a storm, the moment a doe looks into the hungry eyes of a wolf before she flees, the still second before the poisoned arrow is released.  If either one strikes, there is a mutually assured potential for this fight to end in defeat.  

It is an unsteady calm.  

And then, suddenly, it’s broken.  

[beelieveinfandom]

Haunted and Hunted Chapter Three

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5               AO3 Link

AO3 is highly advised due to Tumblr having formatting issues.

Magi Hurtzog,

Please excuse the primitive nature of this notice. Conventional means of communication are to be assumed compromised.

  We are contacting you with an offer we believe to be of special interest to you. A creature, one you’ve expressed significant interest in facing in the past, is in a position of extreme weakness. This window of opportunity will be very short lived, and it is paramount that the situation be contained and controlled before it closes.

  We are willing to pay tenfold your normal rate for taking care of an S-class entity.

  If you wish to pursue this opportunity, please get to the coordinates on the back of this sheet as soon as you are able.

  Thank you for your consideration.

   “I think I’m picking up on something,” Renee said, the dowsing rod she made tugging on her arms gently.

  “Oh, is it the river?”

  “Vin, this points to food, not water.”

  “Could it point to the river anyway? I still really want to see a river.”

  “Sure, we’ll just eat the river.” She flicked her wrist. “It would sustain us for at least the time it would take us to get caught for hanging out somewhere that exposed.”

  “Oh, hold the phone, Renee.” Vin stopped walking and put a hand to his forehead. “I’m getting some future vision going down. We gotta go to the river, or uh, we’ll like die or some shit. So I’m cool either way but I figured maybe you might want to head riverward?”

  “How could I ever manage without you?”

“He’s a helper,” Charlie said.

  Charlie was feeling a lot better than the day before. Or, not better, because Charlie hadn’t been feeling particularly bad per se, but more normal. Or, not more normal, because normally ze wasn’t walking on heavily blistered feet with an awful pressure filling zir head, normally ze didn’t have a deep exhaustion weighing down zir bones so soon after waking, normally ze didn’t have aches in every muscle like a thousand toothless hounds were clamping down on them with powerful jaws. Real. Charlie was feeling a lot more real than the day before.

  As pain blossomed along the sole of zir foot, Charlie couldn’t help but regret exactly how real ze felt today. Dissociation was easier to deal with.

  “I’m the best helper,” Vin chirped. “Goddamn fifth time nominee of the helper of the year award right here, and this time I’m in it to win. Going to be so helpful you won't know what to do with yourself, ‘cause I’ll already be doing it for you. Gonna unleash the goddamn helpocalypse on the unsuspecting masses, getting cats out of trees and old ladies across the street until everyone is slightly grateful but mostly rightfully afraid of my apparently limitless ability to arrive from seemingly nowhere with unasked-for assistance.”

  They followed the rod’s pull as much as they could through the thick woodland.

  “Hey, Charlie?” Vin asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s your deal, anyway? You still got some miraculously helpful family somewhere that you could deus ex machina outta your ass or are you another orphan or what?”

  “Vin!” Renee cried.

  “What?”

  “You can’t just pry into someone’s past like that,” she said with crossed arms.

  “Maybe you can’t,” Vin said, “but I can and did.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Charlie said. “I don’t mind talking about it. I do have some family, but I don’t imagine they could be helpful here. My sister’s the only one I’ve ever really talked to, and she’s younger than I am.”

  “She from the foster home too?” Vin asked.

  “No, she lives with my parents.”

  “Wait, you still have parents?” Vin cocked his head. “Why are you living in a home then?”

  “It’s a foster home, not like, a dead parent club.” Charlie shrugged. “Lots of us still have living parents somewhere. Mine gave me up to the State when I was a baby. I’m guessing they probably got testing and decided they didn’t want to deal with a child with Autism? We’ve never talked so I’m not sure.”

  “What the actual fuck?” Vin exclaimed. “Is that even legal?”

  “Well yeah,” Charlie said, “you can give up a kid for pretty much any reason. They don’t want people killing their kids to get out of parenthood or whatever. It’s probably for the best for me; I can’t imagine what it would be like to be raised by people who treat the way I act as some great burden. And I like living in the home. The kids there are nice and I like the caretakers, even if we did tend to be understaffed.”

  “So…” Vin grinned slyly. “I guess you could say that the home fostered good feelings in you?”

  “Oh lordy,” Renee sighed.

  “Living there really filled me with end orphans .” Charlie grinned back.

  “Charlie.” Renee turned to zir with a hand over her heart. “Charlie no. You were supposed to save me from this madness, not become one with it.”

  “Well,” Charlie said slowly, “maybe you should have been more sans parent about your anti-pun agenda.”

  Vin opened his beak widely.

  “I have been perfectly explicit about my anti-pun agenda, so much so that it has become synonymous with my very being. No longer Renee Etheridge, I have become Renee Funslayer, Hater of Puns. She with Fury Most Righteous for the Lowest Humor. The only conceivable way I could possibly have been any clearer was if I broke out of our solitary vigil to custom order a massive, illuminated billboard reading ‘please stop’.”

  “So you could say you really want to see them all ex pun ged?” Vin’s tail bobbed rapidly.

  “Without impunity,” Renee said, “in the most punctual manner possible.”

  “Don’t you mean punceivable?” Vin asked.

  “What? Why would I mean such a thing? Did you not hear my earlier statement? About the names, and the billboard?” Renee asked, almost sounding hurt. “I have been nothing but punctilious about my disdain for such an awful form of humor.”

  “Look, we get that you absolutely, definitely hate puns,” Vin said. “No need to puntificate about this.”

  “Not to change the subject... ” Charlie stopped. “While actually yes to change the subject because I really don’t have the punseverance to compete here, but do either of you know where we are? Like, geographic ways?”

  “Oh that’s easy,” Vin chirped. “We’re in the woods.”

  “If memory serves,” Renee said, “I would guess we’re somewhere in the Midwest. I vaguely remember this being what the forest regions looked like there. It has been a long time since I was moving around the continent, though.”

  “You use to travel a lot?” Vin asked. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I’m not sure ‘travel’ is really the word I would use,” Renee said. “It implies a certain degree of consent and knowledge that I utterly lacked at the time.”

  “Oh yeah,” Charlie said. “Didn’t you end up dragged all over the continent through preternatural trafficking or something?”

  “...Yes.” She said flatly.

  “Oh, is that not a thing I should have blurted?” Charlie stared at the ground ahead of zir. “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” she sighed, “it’s alright. You’re not wrong, it’s why I was at the foster home to begin with, and the main reason no serious effort was made to return me to my original parents. I was too young to remember them at the time, and could have originated from pretty much anywhere. It’s quite likely they either ended up in trafficking rings as well or died. Either way, the ambiguity of my origin combined with my difficult attitude and the fact my gills were badly mutilated meant that there weren't exactly lines of possible extended family desperate to claim me.”

  “Hey, what’s all this?” said Vin. “I didn’t know you came from the pet ring.”

  “Well it isn’t exactly the first thing I like to tell people.” She cleared her throat. “Ah, Mx. Hypothetical, is it? That’s a nice name. I, too, have a very nice name, but first let me tell you all about my awful traumatic childhood.”

  “How come ze gets to know?” Vin whined.

  “Because young children, and for that matter overworked caretakers, have absolutely no regards to the idea of personal privacy.”

  “This is bullshit,” Vin declared. “You know all about my tragic backstory.”

  “What is your tragic backstory?” said Charlie. “Since we’re all sharing anyway.”

  “Can’t tell you that.” Vin shrugged. “If anyone were to know my Tragic Backstory it would weaken its value as a secret. As it stands right now, it isn’t known and has high emotional significance. I could get some huge favors for something like that. Don’t quote me but I heard that if you earn enough secret points there’s a guy who will give you a stuffed walrus the size of a car.”

  “You just said that Renee knows it, though.”

  “Renee already knows everything so it doesn't really matter.”

  “It fits nicely with how Vin knows nothing,” Renee said. “It’s astounding that it’s actually possible to communicate in a way that passes along absolutely no information. Scientists are baffled. I’m almost ashamed to be an accessory in the deprivation of their ability to enlighten the world with answers.”

  “Crime of the fucking year right there,” Vin said. “If you don’t turn around to turn my sorry ass in this minute I have half a mind to report you.”

  “You have a whole half a mind?” Renee said with mock surprise. “Astonishing, I was estimating it to be a much lower fraction.”

  “Hey, I never said it was my mind,” Vin said. “It could be like, half a mosquito mind. Fucker thought she could take my sweet, sweet blood juice? Hell no, now I got her brain. Or, at least I have half of it.”

  “What happened to the other half?”

  “She couldn’t pay off her college debt so some loan sharks repossessed it.”

  “Such are the inescapable ways of Nature.” Renee lowered her head with her hand over her heart. “Only she would be so cruel that no desperate plea or hasty flight could save the debt-ridden. The world will soon forget this innocent soul, but within us she will live on, for nothing save Time itself can rid us of our precious memories. The times we shared, the laughs we had, the tears we shed, these things we will carry forever more, and through them we will strive to carry her on, just as she strived to carry your sweet, sweet blood juice.”

  “I’ll treat this new duty with the utmost importance it deserves,” Charlie said, somewhat distantly. Ze felt really dizzy and hot.

  “I’m glad someone’s taking that task head on ‘cause I’m going to forget about her within the hour.” Vin said.

  “So soon would you forget? Have you no heart?” Renee said sharply. “She lost her very life trying to ease your burdens of blood-having, and you would willfully abandon her memory to Time’s piercing arrows? With such callousness resting in your soul you might as well wield that awesome and terrible bow yourself, and slay our memories of her as you so ruthlessly slayed her body.”

  Charlie stumbled forward, catching zirself before ze fell completely, and took a few shaky steps forward.

  “Are you okay?” Renee asked.

  “Well, I’m fine,” Alcor said. “But Charlie just checked out.”

  “What do you mean ‘just checked out’?” Renee asked, leaning close to Charlie’s body. “What happened?”

  “I mean ze was exerting control over the body, and now ze isn’t,” Alcor said.

  “Holy shit did Charlie just fucking die?” Vin asked. “Please tell me that Charlie didn’t just die.”

  “What? No!” exclaimed Alcor. “If Charlie was dead, why would I be wasting my time inhabiting this flesh sack?”

  “Hey man, I don’t know, maybe you’re into that?” Vin shrugged. “I’m in no position to judge; wasting time and inhabiting a flesh sack are two of my only skills.”

  “As far as I can tell ze’s as fine as can be expected for the circumstances.”

  “What did you even do?” Renee asked.

  “Excuse me?” Alcor leaned forward towards Renee. “What did I do? I don’t know, maybe catch the kid before ze fell and hurt zirself even more?”

  “People don’t just randomly faint!” she cried, pulling her tightly balled fists to her chest. “Not that this was exactly random, not that being sedated for a solid week and then going straight to walking for hours is probably good on the body, not that ze was a paragon of health in the first place. Not that we didn’t already know that ze is dying. So you’re right, I’m sorry, it doesn’t really make sense for this to be your fault. Ze is just literally dying, that’s all! And it’s happening faster than I thought it would and I sure don’t know enough about possession to fix this. I don’t know enough about anything to fix this. I don’t even know that this can be fixed.”

  “Hey. Renee.” Alcor pinched Charlie’s nose and then lay zir palms down. “Charlie isn’t dead yet. There’s a huge difference between fainting and dying. And I know plenty about my own magic. We still have time to fix this.”

  “Right. Time. We have so much time. What with being hunted and all. And needing to find food and stuff. And - ” she pressed her closed fists against her forehead. “And we’re working on those problems too. One thing at a time; Charlie isn’t dead yet.”

  She took a deep breath and spread her fingers flat on the exhale.

  “You should sit down,” she said to Alcor. “If Charlie’s body is doing badly enough that ze fainted we shouldn’t just keep walking.”

  Alcor plopped down on a large, moss-covered rock, resting Charlie’s elbows on zir bouncing knees. Stopping felt wrong, almost intolerable. The pace that they had been moving had been frustratingly slow - which was to say that they had been pacing themselves perfectly reasonably for what was potentially a day long walk through difficult terrain, but it was slower than Alcor wanted to be moving. Much slower. And now they had to stop. Probably because this body hadn’t actually slept in two days, and whose fault was that?

  “Not that I’m saying the dowsing rod won’t work,” Alcor said, “but since we’re concerned about time why don’t we have Vin fly above the tree line and see if he can spot some farms or something?”

  “Because that’s a thing I can do,” Vin said. “Very first thing they teach you in test subject school (which is for test subjects) is how to fly the fuck away and never look back.”

  “Just how long were you at the facility?” Alcor asked.

  Vin shrugged his wings and arms. “Fuck I don’t know, about how long can a bird remember shit? Like I vaguely remember there being a before but I couldn’t tell you anything about it.”

  “Wow,” Alcor said. “You guys manage to make my childhood look positively enviable.”

  “What happened to you as a kid?” Vin asked.

  “Well,” Alcor laughed, “I died, for starters, and then my parents kicked me out because they couldn’t deal with what I had become, and then puberty happened and I was pretty much constantly in pain for awhile… It wasn’t great is what I’m saying.”

  “Yeah that sounds pretty damn suck,” Vin said.

  “But you guys…” Alcor shook Charlie’s head. “Damn.”

  “So what?” Vin asked. “Suffering ain’t a contest; what you went through sounds shitty as hell. I can’t think of much I’d want less then getting offed without the sweet release of death. And to go through that and then get abandoned? Shit.”

  “I mean, it wasn’t really their fault. Of course they couldn’t deal with what I had become. I couldn’t deal with what I had become. They didn’t sign up for that.”

  “And you did?” Renee asked pointedly.

  “I didn’t have anyone intentionally hurting me is what I’m saying,” Alcor said, “and I still had a support network that understood - well - that was aware of what I was going through.”

  “All I’m saying is that, when it comes down to how shitty a thing was, the intent of the people involved doesn’t really matter,” Vin said. “You were hurt and no amount of well wishes can change that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it definitely matters if you want to try and unburn those bridges or whatever, but the thing that happened? Abandoning you when you really needed the support? Still shitty.”

  Alcor sighed. “It doesn’t matter much anyway; that was a long time ago.”

  “Right,” Vin said, drawing out the word. “You’ve long moved past having shitty things happening in your childhood. Now you can reap the sweet sweet reward of having shitty things happen to you as an adult.”

  “Hold on,” Alcor straightened Charlie’s back. “I think Charlie might be regaining consciousness.”

   Charlie was very confused.

  Everything shifted. Charlie was sitting now. Why was ze sitting? When did ze sit down?

  As Charlie attempted to push zirself up the world spun, less like a top and more like an inexpertly used gyroscope; it didn’t gracefully rotate so much as it wobbled, moving too quickly to be easy to follow but too slowly to hold itself up. The world spun like it was missing the ground more by pure chance than anything else.

  Sitting down might be a good idea.

  Charlie let zir head fall into zir knees. Ze couldn’t figure out how to sit down. There was something in the way of sitting and the knowledge of what, exactly, this might be eluded zir like financial stability from a freshly indebted college student.

  This was stupid. The fact that this was stupid was the only solid anchor that Charlie had, and ze clung to it like a life preserver. The ground wouldn’t hold still, and that was dumb. Charlie couldn’t figure out how to sit down and if that wasn’t the single most moronic possible outcome of any possible series of events to conceivably transpire then Charlie was perfectly happy with how these past few days had gone. That is to say, the idea of an infinite multiverse had been accepted as a practical fact by the scientific community for centuries, so there was a high chance that any outcome permissible by the laws of physics was, in fact, a reality that was realized somewhere in the vastness of existence. There was a reality where Charlie’s response to the stress of what was happening was to simply lie facedown on the ground, eat some dirt, and try to hand sort passing fire ants by how friendly they looked. There was a reality where it was the fashion to wear highly venomous octopuses as shawls and people used breakdancing as the primary mode of communication. There was a reality where archaic laws and largely ignored voter suppression caused someone whose main experience was going bankrupt to become one of the most powerful people on the planet and everyone just kinda let it happen. There were realities that couldn’t even begin to be sufficiently summarized using the word “stupid”. Realities so senseless and imbecilic that to try and communicate the exact extent of their stupidity would be folly. And yet, somehow, despite this inevitable outcome of probability, Charlie had found the singular moment of peak asininity; right the fuck here and now as ze couldn’t fucking figure out how to sit down.

  At least, that’s probably what Charlie would be thinking if zir brain could actually string two sentences together.

  Charlie needed to get zir head to stop reeling. Zir thoughts spun with no sign of crashing downwards. They spun like an astronaut curling into themself, nauseatingly quickly and growing in speed. Except it was more aggressive than that. It was like zir head was a tumbler that someone put a ball made of nails into.

  This was stupid.

  Charlie’s knees pressed into zir eyes. Take things one at a time. What was in the way of zir sitting?

  This rock.

  Ze couldn’t sit through the rock.

  The rock that ze was

  sitting

  on.

  This.

  This was stupid.

  Okay, now that Charlie had chalked up and solved the world’s most idiotic mystery like ze was the protagonist in a book written for toddlers by someone half a drink away from alcohol poisoning, it was time to actually figure out what was going on.

  Charlie was still in the woods, obviously.

  Renee and Vin were stopped.

  Renee was talking.

  And now she was looking at zir expectantly.

  Zir thoughts were slightly clearer now. It was less like they were churning and more like there was a thick, heavy fog in zir head.

  After a moment of focus Charlie managed to make words happen.

  “What… What?” ze somehow uttered.

  “You fainted. Are you feeling alright?”

  “Oh.” Charlie went quiet. That made sense. The thick fog clouding zir thoughts was dispersing somewhat.

  “Are you okay?” Renee prompted again.

  Charlie gave a hollow laugh. “Apparently not? I mean I feel fine - well no. No I don’t feel fine! Everything still hurts and it sucks, and I’m really confused right now, but I don’t feel any worse than I did yesterday which is apparently bad enough that I might just randomly faint and I haven’t fainted before and I’m dying and none of us have any idea how to make this better.”

  Charlie’s hands were flapping agitatedly. “So no, I’m not okay. I’m not physically okay and I’m not okay with what’s going on. I am Not Okay.”

  For what it’s worth, if we can get somewhere safe there are some things I can try to test the nature of the binding. Not having any sort of magicore makes things harder, but people did magic without them for a long time.

  But we’re not going to find a safe place to experiment with magic! They’re not going to stop hunting us and next time we encounter them they’re going to have a real plan and someone who can actually deal with you.

  Oh, they aren’t going to have someone who can deal with me. They might think they do, but if so it’s only because they vastly underestimate my power.

  Well it’s great to know that you’re going to get out of this just fine.

  Of course I’m going to get out of here just fine. That’s never been a question.

  “Things may look pretty bad right now,” Renee said, “but we don’t know that a basic banishment won’t work. I don’t want to act without getting more information, but caution may be driving us to make a mountain out of a molehill.”

  “...right,” Charlie mumbled.

  She is right about that. If this was supposed to be a temporary thing they might not have bothered complicating the banishment process. They clearly didn’t have plans for what to do if we escaped.

  So if we’re lucky I’ll *just* be a selkie with my skin in hostile hands. Sounds great.

  Right. We really need to find a way to get that back.

  …

  You got something you want to say, kiddo?

  what if

we just surrender?

  What? You want to go back to the institution that did this to you in the first place?

 i don’t *want* to but it’s kinda feeling like maybe the only way i might get out of this alive.

  And then you would be right back in there hands. You know they aren’t going to let you go, right? You’re too much of a liability.

  if you’re really so powerful, couldn’t you just make them let me go once you’re out of me?

  Banishment rituals generally have the side effect of weakening the banished entity. If they have any competence - and in the interest of caution we must ignore all evidence to the contrary and assume they are somewhat competent - they will take advantage of the ritual to weaken me as much as they can. They’re going to prioritize controlling me, because as far as they’re concerned they are dead if they don’t. They’re going to use you as a method of controlling me, and because they have your coat they have a functional killswitch that I can’t do much about.

  whatever happened to you being fine no matter what happens?

  I would be fine. They could only weaken me temporarily. I would just need a bit of time, but in that time who knows what would happen to you?

It’s entirely possible they want something from me that I can’t deliver.

It is very likely that they wouldn’t believe me if I told them that I couldn’t do what they asked of me.

And your wellbeing is the one thing they actually have as a bargaining chip.

Given time I could absolutely locate your coat and get you as far away from them as is physically possible. But if we were to go back there, I don’t think we would have that time.

  that makes sense i guess.

so

i’m just going to die, huh?

  No. We are going to figure this out.

Once we get me out of you, things are going to get better, okay?

We just need to get me out of you and I can fix this.

  right

“Hey Vin?” Renee said. “You wouldn’t happen to have any profound feelings of insight as to the nature Charlie’s predicament, would you?”

  “I got no more clue about what should happen next than a baby dropped in the middle of a courthouse.”

  “Well, if you’re not feeling anything at all I suspect that we at least have a little time; I’ve been keeping an eye on them and they don’t appear to be making an effort to mobilize at all yet. It seems we might have a bit of breathing room before they make their next move.”

  “Not that I normally have much more understanding than a baby,” Vin mused. “Like, what kinda magic makes cars stay in the air like that? I have literally no clue. What kinda magic is a differential equation anyway? I don’t know, but damn can I chew on some shiny keys and start crying.”

  “I’m sorry I’m not more helpful,” Charlie said.

  “It’s fine,” Vin said. “We can’t all be masters of crying and sticking shit in our glob holes.”

  “No, I’m serious. You guys both have all this great stuff you can do and I’m just over here dying.”

  “So?” Vin shrugged. “You’re cool to have around. You actually appreciate my awesome jokes, unlike someone I could name.”

  “But I’m such an obstacle for you guys!” Charlie cried. “You have such useful abilities and I’m what? Carrying someone in my head. And from what I can tell they’re a lot more interested in containing the two of us than they are you so I’m bringing in extra danger, and I’m slowing you down-”

  “Do you perform some kinda cost/benefit analysis with all your friends?” Vin said with a laugh. “You’re nice to have around, so I’m happy you're here. Isn’t that why people hang out in the first place?”

  “You don’t have to earn the right to exist,” Renee said. “I understand it’s hard to distance yourself from an idea so deeply ingrained in our culture, but you deserve survival and freedom.”

  “Also, you did kinda save our asses yesterday. I mean I guess the guy in your head saved our asses, but he wouldn’t be here without you, so you can probably seize the credit for that if you want. I won’t say nothing about it.”

  “But -”

  “Anyway,” Vin said sharply, “you want to talk about ‘useful abilities’? Let me tell you about the utter bullshit that is my thing. So I get these impulses and intuitions, right? But I have no idea what they’re leading towards. I was assuming they were just directly helping me get what I want at any point, but then why did I save you? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I did, but like, that wasn’t really something I wanted to do at the time. Or was even aware that I could do. So now I’m just kinda hoping that the agenda of whatever forces guide my powers keeps aligning with my own agenda because otherwise I’m fucker than fucked. Oh yeah and also I can sort of see the future but whenever I actually try and control that I apparently look too far and hit blinding city: population pain.”

  “I’ve never fully understood your grievance with your more passive abilities,” Renee said. “It seems to me that they strongly liken you to the characters in your comics, which I would think you would appreciate.”

  “What?” Vin said. “Nah. The whole point of those things is if you got powers you gotta use them to like, further society and fight crime and repeatedly destroy some place called ‘New York’. Heroes are selfless people of great virtue and greater destructive power, whereas I have all the destructive potential of a damp paper towel and am a small selfish bird who just wants to use my powers to further my own goal of hiding in the woods forever.”

  “And,” Renee pointed skyward, “who nobly saved the life of a child using a powerful bomb of his own design.”

  “What?” Vin narrowed his eyes. “No, that wasn’t what that was about. That was a happy accident, not some dramatic character moment. I blew up some shit and pulled a fire alarm; I didn’t have some soul-shattering revelation about how I have to find a likeminded group of freaks and responsibly destroy some fictional city.”

  “You just found a likeminded freak and fought back against a nefarious organization.”

  “Okay, look.” Vin crossed his arms. “I’m not a hero, and - man this really sounds like some reluctant hero bullshit, doesn’t it.”

  “Just a tad.” Renee smiled.

  “I can’t be a hero because I’m not willing to be a hero and I’m sure as fuck not willing to play out some shitty overdone trope of some guy being obviously a hero but unwilling to admit that he just stopped some masked tool and is clearly a force for good. I’ve never even seen a guy with a mask.”

  Renee looked hard at Vin. “Vin. most of the people you’ve ever interacted with have been wearing masks.”

  “Surgical masks do not count,” Vin said. “It’s gotta be some thin cloth covering the eyes and like, nothing else. It’s not a proper villain mask unless it’s completely fucking useless against anyone who has eyes and more than ten seconds of memory.”

  “It’s so rare to encounter such humility.” Renee shook her head. “It’s quite a noble trait.”

  “Nooooope,” Vin said, stretching out the ‘o’ as if he could drown out the rest of the conversation in a single syllable. “I don’t have a single humble bone in my body. I have obstinate denial; it’s an ugly and undesirable trait.”

  “Honestly it’s rather inspiring,” Renee said.

  “Your face is rather inspiring.”

  “Why, I do believe that I’ve found my muse.” Renee covered her mouth with a hand. “She has long been suffering in the lackluster inspirational drought of my dreary existence, but now she spurs something deep within me.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Vin asked.

  “If ever a hero were I to know,” Renee spoke clearly.

  “What are you doing?” Vin asked, concerned.

  “My dearest friend Vin I would have to show.”

  “You do not get to write a ballad about me. I refuse.”

  “To be fair,” Charlie interjected, “she isn’t writing anything.”

  Vin narrowed his eyes. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “The greatest intuition that could be,” her voice picked up, leaving no room for interruptions.     Saving us from no end of tragedy.       With a bomb most mighty and timing rife,     He thoroughly saved this here child’s life.     And although he will say it’s just fate’s way,     From the hero’s path he never will stray."

  Vin tucked his head under a wing. ”Why are you like this,” he groaned.

  Charlie looked pointedly at the ground and said, “Wouldn’t ‘with but only a bomb and timing rife’ work better?”

  “Why, thank you Charlie!” Renee grinned. “That is an undeniable improvement.”

  “What.” Vin stared at Charlie. “Charlie, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be on my side. Has all our time together meant nothing to you? I thought we were in pun cahoots. Would you really break the sacred bonds of punhootshood for this???”

  “It seems like you’re the one considering breaking punhootshood over this,” Charlie pointed out.

  “Charlie. Charlie. Chaaaaarlie.” Vin leaned his long neck back, pointing his head skyward. “Why you gotta be all bringing logic into this. I am but a poor, simple soul, trying my hardest to do what every simple soul is trying to do: make it through this rough life with as few couplets written about me as possible. That’s it. That’s all I want. Not better poetry. Not logic telling me who was really threatening to break what bonds. Just for the number of poems about me to stay at a reasonable, nonexistent amount. Is that too much to ask for, Charlie? Is it?”

  “Yes,” Charlie said solemnly.

“Is it really?” Vin asked.

  “It is, absolutely, 100% too much to ask for.” Charlie shook zir head. “Sometimes in this crazy messed up life you get featured in poems, and you just gotta learn to own up to it with grace.”

  “It sounds like you’re not taking my plight very seriously, Charlie.” Vin narrowed his eyes. “I’m up to my crest in these choice-ass words that have been spewed upon me against my consent, gumming my feathers together like the nasty shit they are, and you’re pinning the blame on me? The problem is that I’m not owning up to it? How would you like it if someone just went out and made a poem about you?”

  “You know,” Charlie said, “I don’t think I’ve ever thought about that.”

  “Oh, you’re asking for it,” Vin said. “Keep this up and I’ll show you what it’s like the hard way.”

  “Oh no.” Charlie widened zir eyes. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I could say to change your mind?”

  “Nope. This shit’s happening.” Vin cleared his throat.

“There once was a seal whose tuckus,

Made quite an extraordinary ruckus .

Wow, rhyming is hard,

I’m not a bard.

I’m just gonna say fuck this.”

  “That was incredible,” Charlie said. “I’m going to get it tattooed on my gravestone.”

  ‘What?” Vin exlamed. “No, that’s the wrong response. It’s terrible and you’re supposed to hate it. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you, this is like, basic-ass poem reception. You should have learned this in fucking grade school. First day of second grade, teacher comes in and is all ‘hello everyone we’ll do introductions in a moment but first - Poems: They’re awful and you should - holy fuck what the hell is that?”

  Rotating slowly in front of Vin was a large brown animal suspended from a branch. The webbing that ensnared it was impressively thick and tightly wound.

  “I think it’s a deer…” Renee said. “We should be careful; anything large enough to catch deer is either large enough to consider us - or at the very least you two - food, or they’re a person. Or possibly both, I suppose.”

  “So…” Vin said slowly, “we should keep our eyes out for some very large spiders is what you’re saying.”

  “That is the basic takeaway here, yes.”

  “Like, a very large, hairy spider person with thick legs and big eyes?” Vin asked.

  “Actually that sounds more like a tarantula or possibly a jumping spider,” Charlie said. “Web weavers have thin legs and small eyes, and tend to have less hair.”

  “Oh. That’s a relief,” Vin said. “I was worried we were looking out for that person over there.”

  “What ‽ ” Renee squealed, turning quickly to where Vin had gestured.

  Looking at the with bemused interest was an arachnimorph. They looked to be on the upper end of middle aged, their carapace mostly covered in short white hair with a few black spots. A grimy t-shirt covering their front was the only clothing they wore.

  There was really only one aspect of their appearance that Renee parsed, however.

  They had goggles on, the kind common in species whose eyes couldn’t handle more compact computational devices.

  There was no way they weren’t connected to the Net.

  There was no way that the computer hadn’t already identified them.

  It was going to notify the facility.

  They were going to be found and this time the facility would be better prepared and they wouldn’t be able to escape and…

  Renee took a deep breath.

  One thing at a time. They weren’t here yet.

  Renee moved protectively in front of Vin and Charlie. It was a little late for an illusion - the arachnimorph’s computer would see straight through it anyway. It was a little late for anything, really. She should have been paying more attention. If she had just been fucking around a little less she might have seen this coming and been able to stop it, but no, she had to come up with a dumb poem. Clearly a reasonable use of her energy. Obviously.

  Berating herself wasn’t going to help either.

  She took another breath, and tried to release some of the tension held in her churning guts.

  Her thoughts wouldn’t stop racing. Wouldn’t stop coming up with the ways everything would could go worse. But that was fine. They could go ahead and do that if they wanted. She had more important things to focus on.

  “Don’t be worrying about little old me now,” the arachnimorph said. Renee couldn’t help but envy how calm they sounded. “I don’t eat demons.”

  “Well,” Renee said, “I just might eat pesky mortals who interfere with my… business. So have you any wisdom I would advise you to flee.”

  “Before I eat you,” she continued, “please.”

  The arachnimorph didn’t appear to be buying it. In fact, they looked a bit like they may have been considering buying it when they first glanced at it from an aisle away but now were investigating it and finding that it was not only a completely different item than they originally thought but it was also gaudily designed, broken and about three times more expensive than expected. They were considering returning some items they had bought just for coming from the same store as it.

  “Wow, with those kinda mad persuasion skills we need to get you a late night infomercial show. Like, right now. We got mad…” Vin looked around. “Leaves that you could be hawking off as medicinal or something.”

  “Vin.” Renee glared at him.

  “Oh, sorry. I mean, I am Vinzel Tharp… um.  Tharpicus. Archdemon of shitty jokes and shittier poetry. Tremble before me and despair, mortal, or face my inescapable tirade of awful words.”

  “ Vin! ” Renee hissed.

  “Excuse me, it’s Tharpicus.” He shook his head. “You gotta fucking immerse yourself in the scenario. Find your demonsona. Become one with it. And then eat them I guess, if that’s what you’re into now?”

  “Now I may not be an expert on demons,” the arachnimorph said, “but I’m pretty sure they don’t normally walk around in the middle of nowhere reciting poems at each other.”

  “Well, it turns out you know even less about demons than you thought,” Renee said, almost pleadingly. “Now leave before I make it so you know a lot less about everything.”

  “You don’t need to be so worried, kid,” they said. “I’m not going to report you.”

  “You don’t need to do anything,” Renee said. “I’m sure your computer already has.”

  They laughed. “You think I haven’t disabled that crap? Do I look like I want the government spying on my every move? This thing doesn’t download or upload anything without my say-so.”

  “Isn’t that, um…” Charlie spoke quiety, looking at the ground, “illegal?”

  “Hah! Probably. But it’s a dumb law, and what’s the point of living fifty miles away from any cops if you’re going to follow every dumb law, huh?”

  “I can think of plenty of reasons a law abiding citizen might want to avoid cops,” Renee pointed out. “Especially a preternatural person.”

  “Fair enough,” they said, walking up to the deer. “Look, I gotta get this guy home. And if you kids wanna follow me and maybe get a meal in you and a roof over your head for the night, well, I won't say nothin’ to no one.”

  They maneuvered a levitating platform under the deer and cut some webbing with a large knife, causing the deer to drop. Using what looked sort of like an aerosol can, they replaced the broken webbing, jumping several times their own height into the trees to anchor the new web.

  “The names Marcus, by the way. She/her,” Marcus said. “And if you wanna leave and get as far away from me as ya can I understand. I probably wouldn’t trust me neither. But the invite’s open, if you want it.”

  And with that she started to walk away, deer carcass following behind like a large and morbid puppy.

  “I like her,” Vin declared.

  “A living space would probably be a better option than the woods to try and figure out Charlie’s… problem.” Renee said. “But… I don’t know. This doesn’t feel right, to put it mildly.”

  “Well, I’m following her,” Vin said, and started to do just that.

  “Vin!” Renee cried out. “We should talk about this first!”

  “What’s there to talk about?” Vin asked. “You’re going to say that you don’t like it, and go back and forth about how you don’t trust it but it would be nice if it was legit, and there you’re going to end up asking me how I feel about it and I feel like I’m going to follow her, so why bother with all the other stuff?”

  Renee put a hand over her face. “Weren’t you just talking about how you’re not sure if you can trust the source of your intuition?”

  “Yeah but let’s be real, we have nothing better to go off of and you were absolutely going to ask me about it anyway.” Vin continued to walk after Marcus.

  “Vin!” Renee slithered after him. “Would it kill you to actually think things through for once?”

  “You’re just mad cause I’m right.”

  “No, I’m mad because you don’t seem to be taking this seriously at all. You can’t just-” She took a deep breath. “Look, are you sure this is safe?”

  “I mean, no. But I got a good feeling about it and I want to see where this is going, so…” Vin shrugged. “It’s not like pseudo-randomly meandering through the woods is much better, if we’re gonna be real.”

  “Charlie?” she asked. “What do you think?”

  “Um. I’m not great at judging how trustworthy someone is but I think I would much rather sleep on a bed or a couch or something than the ground.”

  “Alright. I suppose that’s valid.” She sighed. “Let’s do this, I guess.”

  “See how much easier everything is when you just admit that I’m right?” Vin asked.

  “Vin,” she said. “If I admitted you were right all the time we never would have tried escaping.”

  “And then we wouldn’t have to make all these hard decisions.” Vin spread his fingers widely. “Just imagine how much easier everything would be.”

  Renee shook her head. “Let’s just catch up with Marcus.”

  Marcus was pretty easy to catch up to, as she wasn’t exactly racing through the woods.

  “Hey, you’re back,” she said. “Think you want to spend the night at my place?”

  “That does seem to be the plan…” Renee confirmed. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  “I hope not, ‘cause ya just did.”

  “I meant an additional question.”

  “Who am I to stop a terrifying demon from asking me a question?”

  “It’s about that, actually.” Renee said. “How are you so sure that we’re not demons? It certainly wouldn’t be unheard of for demons to pretend to be something innocuous like some teenagers.”

  “Kid, the way I see it, if you are a demon, you want something from me or that attempt to scare me off would have been a lot better. And I’m still not an expert in demons but I’m pretty sure going against a demon's plans is a good way to end up dead, especially when you’re as far away from potential help as we are out here. But I’m pretty sure you’re not demons.”

  “Why is that?” Renee asked.

  “Cause there’s an old lot not far from here that’s awfully well trafficked for someplace long abandoned, and people don’t put that much effort into hiding something that don’t need to be hid,” Marcus said. “And I know enough about history to know that sometimes classifying entities as A or S class can just be another way of hiding things.”

  “Maybe they were doing experimentation on demons and we escaped,” Renee said.

  “I’m pretty sure if three actual demons escaped from, well, anything really, there would be a bit more fireworks than there have been. I don’t see demons as being the ‘quietly slip out during the night’ types.”

  “You’re probably right about that,” Renee admitted. “Demons aren’t really known for being subtle when angered.”

  “Um. I have a question too,” Charlie said.

  “So shoot.”

  Charlie stared at zir feet. “Why are you using fake webbing to hunt? Aren’t you a jumping spider?”

  Marcus laughed. “Well I’m a bit old to go chasing things down through the woods, ain’t I? My joints don’t work like they used to, and do you have any idea how much time active hunting takes? I have other things going on in my life.”

  “But why use webs at all?” Charlie asked.

  Marcus crossed her arms. “Who ever heard of a spider hunting with a bear trap, huh? It’s ridiculous.”

  “I mean a bear trap is somewhat analogous to how trapdoor spiders hunt…” Charlie murmured.

  “Ri-dic-u-lous.” Marcus repeated, stretching each syllable out like a bored child playing with their gum. “But enough about me. Whatcha kids doing wandering through the woods, anyway?”

  “Reciting bad poetry at each other, apparently,” Charlie said.

  “I’m not sure it would be wise to share the circumstances that brought us here,” Renee said.

  “Oh man, that isn’t what I was trying to-” Marcus shook her head. “Look, don’t tell me anything incriminating. I don’t wanna know how you got here, I don’t want to know where you came from, I don’t want to know. I was more of wondering, in the vaguest terms possible, what you were wandering through the woods towards.”

  “We don’t really-” Renee said hesitantly.

  “We don’t know a fucking thing, my guy,” Vin interrupted.

  “We do, in fact, know quite a few things,” Renee said.

  “That’s fair. We know lots of pointless bullshit. Like, just a whole fuckton of bullshit. Fertilize half the continent with all this shit we’ve got hoarded in our brainpans. We just have no clue what the hell we’re doing.”

  “We do have a plan,” Renee said. “It’s just… not very fleshed out.”

  “And what’s that then?”

  “This seeks food,” she said, holding up her dowsing rod. “The hope was that it would lead us to a farm or something and we could… make things work from there.”

  “Well, good luck with that. You’re in the middle of a pretty sizable national park,” Marcus said. “Ain’t no farms for miles. Heck, outside of a the ol’ landfill and few pockets of private land there ain’t nothing but trees for about fifty miles.”

  “Well, that’s a pretty reasonable distance to walk in a day, or two if we’re being slow. We aren’t in imminent risk of starvation; last night we found a place that had supplies.”

  “You found that old cult hideout?” Marcus said. “I should probably go restock it then, huh?”

  “You’re a cultist?” Renee said, as naturally as she could manage.

  “Heck no. Demons are already too big for their britches, last thing they need is worship,” Marcus said. “The Circle are good people though, demon aside, and if they’re willing to pay me hard cash just to keep a room in good condition, I’d be a fool to say no. And my mother didn’t raise no fool. She raised two. But I ain’t one of them.”

  “We really appreciate your efforts,” Renee said. “Last night was by far the most restful night we’ve had since, well, since stuff you don’t want to know about. And we really needed the supplies.”

  “Aw, it weren’t nothin,” Marcus said, flicking one of her wrists. “But going back to your ‘plan’: do you have any defenses against surveillance? ‘Cause most of the farms in the area that grow things that can be eaten without processing do keep cameras about.”

  “Unfortunately we don’t.” Renee’s arms dropped. “When we entered the woods we had pretty much nothing. I do know a thing or two about anti-surveillance camouflage, but I don’t have the materials to actually utilize my knowledge.”

  “Have I seriously not put any makeup in the safehouse? I don’t know how I could ever make up for that mistake.” Marcus laughed at her own shitty joke. “Seriously though, I got some at my place that you can use.”

  “Really?” Renee said. “I cannot overstate how much I appreciate your kindness. This is actually starting to feel like something that could work.”

  “Pshaw, it ain’t no thing. I’m just doing what I’d want someone to do to me if I were in a bad spot,” Marcus said. “Anyway, I’m sure you already know, but you’re going to want to be careful not to get caught by any people while wearing it; most designs that break up the face enough to make you invisible to a computer make you stick out like a sore thumb to a person.”

  “I’m not terribly worried about getting caught by a person,” Renee said. “I’m pretty skilled with illusions; I should be able to keep anyone from noticing us. Of course, such protections are dependent on my ability to actually notice someone before we’ve tripped over them, so if current historical precedent holds it will be about as useful as a torn screen door in keeping us safe.”

  “Ohh, sick burn,”  Vin said. “But, protip: you’re generally supposed to save such savagery for other people. Otherwise it’s just kinda sad.”

  “And you’re generally supposed to keep an eye out for strangers when you’re on the lam, so I think it’s safe to say that our circumstances have already proven to be just a tad outside of the generality.”

  “Eh, don’t worry about it so much,” Marcus said. “You’ve been walking for how long - don’t actually answer that I don’t wanna know - but you’ve been walking for however long it’s been and you finally let your guard down. Well, you weren’t expecting to run into no one in the woods. That’s a pretty reasonable assumption. Not many people out here to run into. If you were raiding some farm though, I’m guessing you’d be more careful. You can’t be on high alert all the time.”

  “But there are people out here,” Renee said, “even if they're aren’t many, and running into any of them could prove disastrous. It’s better to be unnecessarily cautious then get caught.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not the only one responsible for us staying all safe like,” Vin said. “I’m pretty sure I would notice if we were about to get caught.”

  “He has a point,” Marcus said. “Six eyes are better than two. And I’m not saying it would hurt to be a bit more quiet and alert, but if you’re going to let your guard down, here’s the place to do it.”

  “... Right,” Renee said, sounding about as convinced as someone who made the mistake of opening their door for some Jehovah’s Witnesses and just wanted to go back to their dinner without being rude.

  “So, where are we going, anyway?” Vin asked. “Is it… there?”

  “Yep, I live in a tree. You solved my house puzzle, congratulations,”  Marcus said. “Anyway it’ll be a while. My place is about an hour and a half away still.”

  “Wow, seriously?” Vin whined. “That’s like, an hour and a half more than I wanted to walk.”

  “Vin,” Renee said pointedly, “we were planning on walking all day.”

  “Which is about a day more than I wanted to walk,” Vin said. “I just didn’t say anything ‘cause I knew you’d be all ‘Vin who cares how sore your legs are we must adhere to the plan or we’ll like, die or some shit’. And you’d say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “We probably wouldn’t die,” Renee corrected. “They would just take us back to where we were before. And then we probably wouldn't get another chance at this, and would possibly be separated.”

  “I don’t see what any of that has to do with not dying,” Vin said. “Although, maybe you wouldn’t die? I don’t know, you’re kinda weird sometimes and it ain’t like I can see fakey fake futures or anything.”

  Renee narrowed her eyes. “Are you implying that a will to live is a ‘kinda weird’ thing to have?”

  “This world sucks, Renee,” Vin said. “It sucks. Planning on spending a hundred plus years here is insane.”

  “That’s why we strive to make the world better!” Renee said. “Life has so much to offer! There have been times and places where people made safe and caring communities; we know it can be done.”

  “Oh yeah?” Vin said. “Name one thing that life has offered you.”

  “Life gave me you,” Renee said quietly.

  “Well that really blows my response out of the water,” Charlie said. “I was just going to say ‘edible sticks’.”

  “Oh yeah,” Vin said, “edible sticks were pretty great. Even when you went and made them limp like some kinda fucking barbarian.”

  “Vin,” Renee said, “I’m being serious.”

  “So am I. Why would you put the flaccid in your stomach acid when you could munch the crunch?”

  “You flipped shit about the flaccid,” Charlie said. “You refused to be placid after inserting the flaccid in your stomach acid.”

  “In my defense,” Vin put his hands out in front of himself, “I’m pretty sure that was the powder stuff that Renee added. It’s my hunch that if I were to munch on the crunch of a salty bunch I’d not be placid at lunch.”

  “It was definitely well into the realm of dinner,” Renee said. “And adding a spice mix to uncooked noodles wouldn't work very well; it needs the moisture to stick.”

  “Why must you crush my dreams?” Vin said. “Anyway, noodles are great and all, but probably not staying-here-for-a-century great.”

  “We have the power to make this world one worth spending a lifetime in,” Renee said. “It’s true that we don’t know that we’ll win our fight, but if we don’t do anything we know things won’t get better. We have to keep fighting and not give into the temptation of apathy. They want us to lose hope, they want us to die, because then we’re letting them maintain the status quo. They’re fighting to keep us too exhausted to fight for change, and we can’t let them win.”

  “So what, we have to keep living in this hell just to spite them?” Vin asked. “‘Cause that sounds like it involves a whole lot more fucks given about what some dudes I’ll never meet feel than I can bring myself to have.”

  “No, we keep living to make sure that people like them never get power over us again, or at least not anytime soon,” Renee said. “Things have been better before; they will get better again. Spiting them is just a bonus.”

  “If there’s one thing history has taught us,” Marcus said, “it’s that empires fall. This one’ll be no different. And it’s gotten so bloated and confident in its own power that it’ll fall sooner rather than later, mark my words.”

  “But,” Vin kicked a rock across the path, “doesn’t that just mean that whatever you set up to replace it is doomed from the start? That kinda blows.”

  “Yes, at some point things will be worse again,” Renee said. “But when that time comes, they will be able to look back at what we accomplish and be more prepared to improve their own conditions. They will know that things can be better, that people have fought incredible odds and won before, and they will have hope. And that is a legacy that I would be proud to leave behind.”

“Wow, that’s way cooler than the legacy I want to leave behind,” Vin said. “I just want to make a really cool comic.”

  “Stories are important. They’re how we pass on our history, how we dream of a better future, how we share our ideals. There is nothing lame about wanting to tell lasting stories,” Renee said. “What do you want to make your comic about?”

  “Um. Hell if I know. I just said that I wanted to make a really cool comic, not that I had any sort of plans to make that happen.” Vin shrugged. “Anyways, are we there yet?”

  “Vin,” Renee said, “the time we’ve been talking has in no way exceeded five minutes. We are still easily within the original estimate of about an hour and a half.”

  “Well, I don’t wanna keep walking is all,” Vin whined.

  They kept walking.

  They kept talking. Vin kept vocally wondering if they were at Marcus’ place yet.

  The path they were on was fairly worn; a huge improvement to trying to find the most passable way through the underbrush. Much to the relief of Renee and Alcor, their speed picked up considerably. They were climbing a steady incline, not so steep that it made walking difficult but definitely enough to be noticeable.

  As they came closer to the tops of the cliffs that had walled off the land, the forest to their right began to thin. Large old trees were replaced by younger saplings, like the land had been cleared out at one point. There was still a decent amount of undergrowth, and the trees definitely had some years on them, so whatever had happened occurred long enough ago that the land had time to heal.

  The monotony of walking and woodland was broken when Renee caught sight of something above the low treeline.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at what she saw. It was the edge of a mesh disk of some sort. It looked huge.

  “That’s my telescope,” Marcus said. “It’s pretty old; I mean obviously it’s old it’s on the planet. It went out of official use ages ago. They were just going to tear it up, believe it or not! I managed to get the land before they started work on it, fortunately. And now I reckon I got the best setup of any amateur astronomer.”

  Charlie perked up. “You’re an astronomer?” ze asked.

  “Well, a hobbyist at any rate.” Marcus shrugged. “It’s not like I got a degree in it or whatever.”

  “Yeah, you just have your own radio telescope, that’s all. It’s not like you’re serious about it or anything.” Charlie stared at the distant disk. “Although, how well does it work? Most telescopes are out of Earth’s atmosphere to avoid atmospheric distortion, right?”

  “There’s certainly some electromagnetic interference, but it’s not that big of a deal to filter out. Amateur astronomers have made discoveries using tiny optical telescopes in a city before; I’m far ahead of that curve.”

  “That’s so cool!” Charlie flapped zir hands. “I’ve always dreamed of having a really nice telescope but it never even occurred to me to think about a radio telescope as a thing that you could have.”

  “You like space?” Marcus said with a smile.

  Charlie’s words ran together. “Yeah! It’s so vast and it contains so many cool things, every cool thing, technically. So many stellar objects are still so mysterious, even after a millennia of study. And the scale of it all! It's so incomprehensible. I really like things that I can’t fully comprehend, if that makes any sense.”

  “Nah, I feel you there,” Marcus said.

  “I’ve thought a lot about going on one of the colony ships,” Charlie said, “but all the ones that are leaving in the next decade are going to have such long journeys. I don’t know if I could spend the rest of my life on a spaceship. Have you thought about leaving the planet at all?”

  “I mean, yeah, I’ve thought about it, and I might go to Mars one day just as a tourist, but I’m probably too old to go colonize the stars,” Marcus said. “They don’t really need old geezers past the age of making new people.”

  “Yeah, that’s the other reason I’m not sure I could join one of the missions,” Charlie said more slowly. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to want to make new people.”

  “It certainly ain’t for everyone,” Marcus said.

  “Soooo,” Vin said, “this is it then? You live in a big dish? Shit, my guess of ‘tree’ was way off.”

  “Nah, the building below the dish is purely a technical one,” Marcus said. “I live about a mile out still, to reduce electrical interference.”

  “Wait.” Vin narrowed his eyes. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “If you think it means that our journey's end eludes us still,” Renee said, “that although the promised destination is almost in sight it is not yet here, and that the rest you so desire sits in wait upon the other side of yet more ‘goddamn walking’, you would be absolutely correct.”

  “This is bullshit,” Vin said. “I’m calling bullshit on reality.”

  “A little walking never hurt no one,” said Marcus. “It’s good for you, strengthens the carapace.”

  Walking under the dish, they were struck by the scale if it. Marcus boasted that it was 30 meters in diameter, and that was simply larger than a single object had any right to be. The technical building beneath it didn’t even make it out halfway to the edge of the disk.

  It didn’t take long for them to traverse the remaining mile to Marcus’ place. She lived in a lowset building that made up for its lack of height in its considerable width.

  Marcus led them into the nearest of several visible doors.

  “The telescope doesn't have any sort of ability for remote operation, so the people who traveled here to use it would stay here,” Marcus said, leading them down some narrow hallways. “They would do research too, so there was quite a lot of space dedicated to computers, which has been useful in my work.”

  “What is your work, if you don’t mind me asking?” Renee asked.

  “I do network administration for a couple places. Nothin’ too exciting.” Marcus said. “Ah, here we are. Pardon the mess. I really ought to keep the place neater, but my crap keeps creeping further and further out.”

  The pardon was well justified. The room looked like where old computers shuffled off to die. Old electronics and parts were strewn around the room, and thick bundles of partially exposed wires hung from the ceiling. It had nothing on the trash cave, but looked as if it had perhaps heard about the trash cave and decided that it quite admired that lifestyle.

  “I’ll let you crazy kids settle in on your own. You don’t need some old spider cramping your style.” And with that she turned and left, closing the door behind her.

  The area that Marcus had led them to had four rooms connected to a common area. There was a kitchenette on the far wall, and one of the rooms had been converted to a pantry.

  “I’m going to scout out food options,” Renee said.

  “Maybe olive us should try that. It sounds like a good idea.”

  “No,” Renee said. “No, we will not be repeating yesterday's pre-dinner shenanigans.”

  “Come on, it’s all ingest,” Vin said, opening his beak widely.

  Renee didn’t respond, instead looking around the room.

  “Oh gods,” she said, “there’s chocolate chips in here. Honest to goodness chocolate. I think I might cry.”

  Pshaw. There’s no way there is actual chocolate in this woman’s pantry. Synthetic cocoa powder is not the same at all.

  the same as what?

  Ground up cocoa beans, a.k.a. what chocolate was originally made of. Cocoa stopped being commercially farmable forever ago. And unlike vanilla the synthetic version isn’t chemically identical.

  chocolate was originally a bean? that sounds super gross.

  I don’t even know how to respond to that.

  “What are you planning with those?” Charlie asked. “Cookies?”

  “Honestly, I was just going to eat them straight from the bag,” Renee said. “I have never made cookies, and have absolutely no understanding of the process outside of the fact I’m pretty sure an oven is involved somewhere. I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to the idea, should you know how to do it.”

  “I can follow a recipe, but it doesn't seem likely that Marcus would have randomly printed one off.” Charlie frowned. “Not being able to look things up is really inconvenient.”

  “Then it seems we are destined to consume them raw,” Renee said sagely.

  “That’s a little weird, isn’t it?” Charlie asked.

  “Charlie.” Renee leaned towards zir, her stare uncomfortably intense. “I have not had anything sweet in literal years. Eating these chips could remove any remaining sliver of possibility for me returning to something vaguely resembling society and I would not give a single fuck. I am going to have some chocolate and it is going to be wonderful and nothing can stop me.”

  A little weird? Are you honestly telling me you’ve never eaten chocolate chips straight from the bag before?

  no?

  What’s wrong with you?

  that sort of behavior wasn’t exactly encouraged back at the home.

  What’s the point of having no parents if you’re just going to do every little thing you’re told?

  i have parents, rules exist for a reason, and if i really wanted some chocolate i would just ask for a candy bar, not raid the baking cabinet.

  It’s better free-range.

  “Why. Won’t. You. Open ‽ ” Renee growled at the bag, spitting out a stray sliver of excess plastic packaging. The bag was in her hands like it had been since she picked it up, resisting her attempts at opening it, almost as if it had been carefully designed specifically to resist children attempting to tear it open in the sort of craze that can only come from spending several years confined to a small living space eating only flavorless nutrition bars, breaking out, spending a few days meandering about the woods, and then encountering the promise of sweet flavor heaven. Not only were her attempts futile, but outside of a small tear in the excess folded plastic there was no sign that anyone had even tried to open it. It was resisting her attempts in an insultingly casual manner, condescending almost, made even more insulting by the utter inability of the inanimate object to intentionally do anything, especially condescend.

  “Why don’t you just use scissors?” Charlie asked.

  “Because there aren’t any in here and I thought this would be faster.”

  “Okay, but it clearly isn’t, so -”

  “It’s not about speed anymore, Charlie. It’s about principle now. I will not be defeated by a millimeter of plastic!”

  Charlie watched as she continued to fail to pry the bag’s sides asunder.

  “Yeah…” ze said. “I’m going to go get some scissors.”

  Charlie returned fairly quickly with the kitchen shears. They had been  fairly easy to find, hanging off of a large bar magnet on the wall with the knives. The setup made Charlie more than a little nervous; ze was a bit wary of knives in general, and to have them hanging off the ground was just an accident waiting to happen in zir mind.

  Charlie wordlessly offered the scissors to Renee handle first.

  Renee glared at them for a minute before taking them.

  “Fine,” she said. “But I’ll have you know my method would have worked too.”

  “Right.”

  “Eventually.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m only doing it this way because it’s faster,” she said, “and I really really want this chocolate as soon as nagaly possible.”

  “Hey, so what’s the deal with chocolate, anyway?” Vin asked. “It gets a lot of noise for something that looks like a tiny shit.”

  “Vin.” Renee lowered the bag. “Do you ever actually think about what you say at all or do you just open your mouth and let what happens happen?”

  “It’s basically just verbal barfing,” Vin admitted. “Thinking sucks. That’s part of why I talk so much. If I noise barf hard enough, I can’t hear the brain barf and the world is a better place. Anyway. The tiny sugar shits, what’s their deal?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Taste good.”

  Renee snipped the corner of the bag off with a quick hand movement. “One cannot explain the deal of the ‘tiny sugar shits’. One can only experience it for oneself.”

She poured a small handful into her hand and popped them into her mouth.

  And froze.

  The sweetness hit her like an very large and enthusiastic puppy. It was wonderful, but so very much. It filled her senses; the melted residue on her finger tips, the smooth mound plastered against her teeth, the rich smell of it, and the taste. Oh the taste. It filled her, becoming her whole world. In that moment nothing else mattered.

  She hadn’t remembered chocolate being so overpowering before.

  She couldn’t actually remember the last time she had chocolate. She probably hadn’t appreciated it enough. She hadn’t properly appreciated most parts of not being locked in a small living space with a single other person and having all access to the rest of the world strictly controlled.

  “Um, Renee?” Charlie’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Are you okay?”

  Her eyes were watering.

  She really missed sugar.

  She really missed doing nice things for herself. Being able to do nice things for herself.

  She swallowed, took a breath, and nodded to Charlie.

  “I’m sorry, I just… I’m really glad to be out of that awful place.”

  “Glad to hear that you’re not like choking and dying or whatever,” Vin said. “It would be really awkward to eat over your freshly corpsed body.”

  “You would try eating something after watching me perish directly after consuming it?”

  “You’re adding the possibility of death to something that has already gotten as much hype as chocolate?” Vin asked. “I’m sorry Renee, I do love you but there isn’t enough grief in my body to keep me away from that shit.”

  “Since death’s off the table how about you just have some chocolate?”

  “How could you even say that? Death is absolutely still on the table. Death is sprawled along the length of the table with a single leg seductively sticking out from their robe. Death’s posing for a portrait, that’s how on the table they still are.” Vin shook his head. “Anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to eat the shit outta those weird little mounds, but I’m just not sure how good they can be now that I’ve tried edible sticks and their delicious soggy cousins. I don’t see how anything can beat edible limp sticks, and I’m just worried that I’ve created an unsurpassable standard for what food should be like on the outside.”

  “How about you actually try more than one new food before having an existential crisis?” Renee said, tossing the bag to Vin.

  “I don’t need more than one food to know when I’ve hit peak,” Vin said, reaching into the bag to grab a couple chips. “I don’t need more than one food to know when my actual soul aligns with the very fabric of the Universe in a single instant of perfect -”

  “Vin, stop talking before you put those in your mouth.”

  “Me? Stop talking? Renee do you ever think before you open your mouth?” Vin popped his handful of chocolate into his mouth.

  “Renee,” he said, spraying bits of chocolate everywhere. “Holy SHIT Renee. This is… I can’t… Edible sticks have nothing on this, it like… It’s like food but, it’s good? Like, it makes my mouth happy? This is good shit, Renee. The best shit. Like, I was constipated for days and now I’m free good shit. My cloaca is a tingling void good shit. My colon is clear and my crops are fertilized is what I’m saying here, this is the best fucking shit to ever be shat.”

  “Please never open your mouth again,” Renee said. “Just, stop talking forever.”

  “Can I do nothing but eat these things forever?” Vin said. “I think I want to do nothing but eat these things forever.”

  Renee shook her head sadly. “I fear that there may be a few obstacles between you and your ascension to the position of infinite and eternal consumer of chocolate.”

  “Oh please, like anything could stand in my way.” Vin puffed out his chest. “Name one thing that could possibly get between me and this visceral need to stuff my gob with these tiny god morsels till the end of time.”

  “Me,” she said, snatching the bag away from Vin.

  “What? Okay this is bullshit, you’ve definitely had way more of this shit throughout your life than I have. You gotta let me have at least that bag to catch up; it’s only fair.”

  “Fair this may not be, but I happen to be on the order of ten times your size, so…” She shrugged. “What are you planning on doing about it?”

  “Oh, so height makes right now?” Vin asked. “Doesn’t that go against everything you stand for?”

  Renee grinned. “I can’t stand for anything; I don’t have legs. And you must understand: there is no fair consumption of chocolate under late capitalism. Whether or not I am to unfairly take the chips that you otherwise may have eaten doesn't change the fact that this chocolate was manufactured using stolen labor. Is it fair that a person can be forced to work a third of their life away to produce this chocolate? Is it fair that that same person may die because they aren’t compensated enough to afford necessary medical treatments? Is it fair that some necessary labor is devalued to the point that those who perform it might struggle to even get chocolate whereas others could obtain ludicrous amounts every second for doing practically nothing?”

  “No, but none of those situations relate to me personally so I don’t care,” Vin said. “Now are you going to eat any of that or are you just going to wave it around, taunting me with visions of all the glorious mouth heaven I could be experiencing right now if only I had mad hops?”

  “How do you know that you don’t have the jumping prowess necessary to retrieve the artifact of deliciousness?” she said. “You haven’t even attempted reacquisition.”

  “My legs are really sore and you’re sitting like, two feet higher than me.” Vin shook his head. “That bag might as well be on another planet for all I could conceivably retrieve it.”

  Renee ate a handful of chocolate. “Charlie? Would you like to partake in this indulgence as well?”

  “Please,” ze said.

  Charlie ate some chocolate. It sure was chocolate alright.

  “Hey! How come ze’s not freaking out or crying or anything?”

  Charlie shrugged. “It’s just chocolate.”

  “It’s just chocolate?” Vin exclaimed. “Just chocolate? I’m over here having a religious experience and you’re all ‘oh whatever it’s just the greatest thing ever created that’s all.’ How can you possibly say that it’s just chocolate that’s absurd it’s the best fucking thing I’ve ever eaten.”

  “Haven’t you only eaten like, three things total?” Charlie asked.

  Vin crossed his arms. “I don’t see what that’s gotta do with shit.”

  “It’s better when it’s mixed with other stuff,” Charlie said.

  Vin scoffed. “How the actual fuck could diluting something as great as chocolate with things not as great as chocolate ever make something anything other than a disappointment?”

  “Candy bars are going to blow your mind,” Charlie said.

  “Like fuck they will. My mind is stable and chill as ice.”

  “So, what you are saying is that you melt down at room temperature? I certainly cannot argue with that,” Renee said.

  As fantastic as chocolate is, we should probably think about what actual food you’ll be eating.

  i could whip up some pasta again. i’m pretty good at pasta.

  You fainted earlier. We should do something with higher protein than that.

  i don’t really know how to cook anything that’s high protein, and i’m pretty sure i’m the best cook here.

  Good thing I’m here then, isn’t it? Go look around the pantry and I’ll see what I can do.

  And get some more chocolate before those two eat it all.

  Charlie retrieved a handful of chocolate and nibbled on it as ze looked through the pantry. Between the walls and shelves were interlocking rectangular jugs of water. There were a lot of canned goods. So many cans that there was no way of identifying what was in most of them. Walls of canned goods. Too many canned goods.

  Charlie had never wanted anything from a can less.

  Fortunately there were also non-canned items, albeit fewer of them. Baking supplies, dried fruit and nuts, pasta; it was pretty well stocked. There was a whole shelf of various oils for some reason. There was also a deep freeze that was mostly full of game meat, but did have some other things in it as well.

  Okay, how do you feel about something fried? Because I haven’t had fried protein in probably a century and have one heck of a craving.

  fried what?

  I was thinking tofu, because I get the feeling that you’re going to be needlessly picky about eating any of this meat.

  Eating murdered animals is gross. I’m not being ‘needlessly picky’.

  The animal’s already dead; eating its remains isn’t going to make it any deader. It’s literally the exact same thing as vat meat now. Actually, it’s a little better than vat meat because there’s pockets of fat and variation in texture.

  It’s completely different from vat meat! Vat meat wasn’t a living thing with feelings that was murdered unnecessarily. It also didn’t have a life spent in the outdoors surrounded by pathogens. Do you know how many historical illnesses happened because of how meat was raised?

  Generally, illnesses happen when meat isn’t handled and cooked properly. You’re not going to get sick eating well-fried deer. And you know that all vat meat originated from a living animal with feelings that was murdered for its precious, precious cells, right?

  yeah but that was like, centuries ago. they didn’t have any other options back then.

  And how come crickets and cricket byproducts are okay to eat? Insects have feelings.

  crickets don’t need much to be happy.

  So it’s about living conditions of the animals then? So what’s the problem with hunted meat?

  can we not cross examine my eating habits right now? i haven’t really thought most of this through enough to have words for it.

  I’m just trying to understand. If we’re going to be spending any length of time together it’s useful for me to know what you’re willing to eat.

  you could just ask, you don’t need to get into the psychology of why.

  although it’s occuring to me i never bothered asking you. is there anything i should avoid eating while you’re… while we’re together?

  Nah. I’ll eat anything.

  there’s not anything you try to avoid?

  I mean what I said pretty literally. I’ll eat food, small rocks, electronics that annoy me, not so small rocks, generally whatever.

  That said bananas make me feel gross for some reason.

  well I can avoid bananas for a little.

  Don’t bother. Sometimes it’s nice to feel gross.

  …

so fried tofu. what’s that like? I’ve never had it before.

  Tofu doesn’t have a very strong flavor, so it mostly just tastes like fried. Slightly chewy fried, since we’re using frozen stuff. Think you could recite some instructions to the others? It’s easiest with more hands.

  actually i was thinking… maybe, since you’re the one that knows what you’re doing, you could

  you know,

  tell them yourself?

  You want me to take over for this? Are you sure?

but i think it might be good to have a not terrible experience where you’re in control. it might make it not so bad if you need to take over again in the future.

  also i really don’t like telling people what to do, even if they want me to.

  Not a bad idea. It will be way easier to teach people if I don’t have to worry about going through you. You want me to start now, or wait a bit?

  let’s just get it over with.

  Alcor stretched Charlie’s arms and grabbed a few packages of tofu.

  Is this okay?

  um… yes. this is fine. i’m fine. totally fine.

  Great!

  “For food that isn’t chocolate, how does fried tofu sound to you two?” Alcor asked.

  “I was off board the moment you said ‘food that isn’t chocolate’,” Vin said. “I’m a simple bird with simple needs, and to eat nothing but chocolate for the rest of my life is all of them.”

  “That might lead to a life lacking in the longevity department,” Renee said.

  “See? It’s like, the perfect life decision. There are literally no downsides.”

  Renee sighed and shook her head. “Why are you asking us instead of Charlie?” And with a note of alarm she continued, “Ze didn’t faint again, did ze?”

  “What? No, no, ze’s fine . Charlie’s actually the one that suggested I take over. It will make it easier for me to walk you through the cooking process. And ze’s a-okay right now; I asked and everything.” Alcor touched Charlie’s pointer finger to zir thumb and put the rest of zir fingers up in an archaic gesture. “Oh yeah, that reminds me. The cooking would be easier with more people; are you willing to help out?”

  “I’m not sure it would be a good idea to let me fry anything,” Renee said. “Oil is concerningly flammable for my skill level.”

  Vin grinned. “I’m totally down to set myself on fire; sign me the fuck up.”

  “Neither one of you will be anywhere near the frying pan,” Alcor said. “I just need you to help bread the slices.”

  Charlie was, all things considered, a tad less than a-okay. Just a smidgen under the weather. The weather was barely above zir, like ze was flying a small plane through a thunderstorm. But ze wasn’t panicking . That was the important thing. Ze could tell that ze wasn’t panicking because of how much ze was thinking about not panicking. This was okay. Really. Ze just needed to breathe. Except ze couldn’t breathe. Because possession.

  On the other hand, possession meant zir heart rate and breathing were totally normal, which meant that ze couldn’t be panicked at all, not even a little, right? Charlie mentally laughed. That was definitely how things worked. Everybody go home, this fear was conquered. Conquered like a fox.

  Charlie, are you paying attention?

  i’m fine.

  So no then. I didn’t think you felt very present. You should watch this; I’ve thawed the tofu and am about to drain it. It’s a pretty important step if you ever want to prepare something like this on your own.

  oh, um, okay then. go ahead. i’m watching.

  Charlie watched as zir hands piled paper towels on a cutting board and placed a slab of tofu in the center of them, piling more on top and pressing down on the pile with a plate. The words coming out of zir mouth drifted around the room meaninglessly, but the task seemed simple enough that Charlie wasn’t concerned about zir inability to focus on words. Ze focused on zir hands, the pressure of leaning on the plate to press the water out, the peculiar smooth yet slimy feeling of the tofu, the unusual exertion of zir arm muscles from how enthusiastically Alcor did everything. It was calming, sort of. Like experiencing a cooking simulation, if simulations could force your body to move against your will. Calming like some kind of cooking / horror cross-genre simulation. It was, at the very least, more calming than focusing on zir inability to move had been. And ze knew that ze could end it with a word, which became a comforting mantra.

  Alcor explained how to to bread the tofu to the two teens. Renee took flour and breadcrumb duties to keep her hands dry while Vin was slightly concerningly enthusiastic about getting his gooey with rehydrated eggs. Alcor handled the actual frying, explaining as he went how to handle hot oil without getting splashed and how to identify when cooking was finished.

  could i try taking over frying those last couple? it seems simple enough.

  Sure.

  Charlie’s heart rate shot up the moment Alcor took a backseat, and zir breathing became rushed and shallow. Ze stretched, partially just to reassure zirself that ze could, and shook out some tension.

  Ze was in control.

  Ze was fine.

  Nothing bad had happened.

  “Charlie?” Renee asked, “Is that you?”

  “Yeah,” ze said. “I wanted to try to fry something myself. And I was getting a bit claustrophobic stuck in there.”

  “So should we be expecting more body sharing in the future?”

  “I don’t know,” Charlie said, carefully lowering a piece of tofu to the oil. “I don’t really like doing it but it doesn’t seem right to keep hogging the front seat. It’s really freaky not being able to control the body you’re in.”

  I appreciate the thought, but I really don’t mind that much.

  Are you sure?

  Yes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s incredibly boring, but it’s not like being in control would make wandering around the woods much less boring.

  I’m pretty used to not having physical agency. Constantly experiencing physical sensation all the time is actually a step up from normal.

  That sounds like an awful way to have to exist.

  Can’t say I’d recommend it, but you get used to it eventually.

  Well, let me know if you start to get too stir crazy. We’ll work something out.

  I will, but I don’t imagine it will come up. I’m in control all night after all.

  “Or maybe he doesn’t mind? I guess I’ll probably be fronting while awake.”

  “I’m glad that he’s fine taking back seat, since doing so seems to cause you some distress. I’m sorry if this cooking session has been hard for you.”

  “It’s fine. It was the most practical way of doing things.”

  “Just ‘cause something’s practical don’t mean it doesn’t suck.” Vin said. “Like, those food bars that they gave us. Practical, sure, but they had to be the suckiest food option imaginable.”

  Speaking of food options: those are looking like some pretty well fried pieces of tofu.

  oh geeze i wasn’t paying attention at all.

  Charlie carefully fished the last of the tofu from the oil, putting them with the others on some paper towels.

  “Alright, let’s ingest the shit outta these weird rectangles,” Vin said. “They look pretty food bar-y, but chocolate looked like pretty tiny shits and turned out to be a-fucking-mazing so I’m down to give them a try.”

  “Are we sure it’s a good idea to introduce fried food to Vin so soon?” Renee asked. “I’m worried such quantities of expanded horizons might result in an malignant case of mind blowage, which could easily result in unrelenting obnoxiousness. I fear the potential for a repeat of the ‘good shit’ speech is high.”

  “Oh, like I need an excuse to be unrelentingly obnoxious,” Vin said. “Nice try, Renee , if that even is your real name, but I’m going to eat those crunch munchers and I’m going to be obnoxious as hell, and these two facts will be correlated but not causated.”

  Charlie grabbed a piece of tofu while the other two bickered. It was good; crunchy and chewy and mostly tasting of oil.

  “Guys,” Vin said, having finally stopped bullshiting with Renee enough to try some tofu. “This is really fucking good. Like, really good. But like, it’s good different ways than chocolate? What is this bullshit??”

  “That would be what’s known as ‘flavors’,” Charlie said, loading up a plate with dark brown rice. “There’s like, six different ways that things can taste good, or at least that’s what Big Taste would have you believe.”

  Vin’s eyes were wide. “I must try all of them.”

  “I’m sure we can make progress on that quest in the upcoming days,” Renee said. “I’ll have to make an effort to find something sour.”

  They filled their bellies with the food they made and the space with their conversation. They devoured all the tofu, leaving some of the rice uneaten.

  After they finished eating, Charlie went to take a nap. Exhaustion had been seeping through zir like water into a sponge since ze fainted. Ze collapsed onto the bed as a sack of potatoes would out of the tiny useless hands of an overambitious baby. Zir limbs felt like they had weights tied to them. Zir whole body felt like a weight just slightly outside of Charlie's ability to lift. It didn’t take long at all for sleep to overcome zir.

  Alcor sat up and looked around the room.

  Swinging Charlie’s legs off the bed, he got up and purposely walked to a corner of the room. There was a tablet, probably the better part of a century old, lying screen down on the floor, thick wires connecting it to the wall. Alcor flipped it over and experimentally prodded the screen. It flickered to life after a few long seconds, displaying a temperature graph.

  Alcor flicked the thermostat app aside.

  “There’s nothing interesting on that that works offline,” Vin said. “I already checked.”

  “Oh, I highly doubt you checked for what I’m looking for,” Alcor said.

  “And just what is it that you’re looking for?” Renee enquired.

  “Gonna call a friend,” Alcor said.

  Renee whipped around to face him. “A friend ‽ Are you out of your mind? You can’t connect to the internet, they’ll find us!”

  “I didn’t say anything about the internet,” Alcor said calmly. “I doubt I could even use it on this thing; I think Marcus manually disabled its ability to connect.”

  “Unless you’re especially close with Minesweeper, I fail to see how this could possibly work.”

  “Well, it’s not my fault you don’t know enough,” Alcor said with a shrug. “There are more ways to connect to someone with a computer than by going through the internet. I was pretty skilled at computers once; this should be no problem.”

  “And more methods of communication are being monitored than just the internet!” Renee hissed. “You’re going to get Marcus into serious shit!”

  “I know you don’t trust me, but could you at least trust that I can think of obvious pitfalls? I’m not just going to send an unsecured message friendward and hope they get it. This friend of mine, they’re really good with computers. And they spread a program, that includes a direct and secure line of communication with them, across all sorts of machines. It’s a virus, really, and it spread very very well, so there’s a decent chance that it might be on this tablet.”

  “Your friend made a virus for the sole purpose of opening lines of communication?”

  “No, that’s not the point of the virus,” Alcor said, “that’s just a happy coincidence. And technically he didn’t make it, I did. He just improved it a lot.”

  “Why did you make a virus?” Renee asked.

  “People were writing things about me that I didn’t like, and I wanted to make them stop. After a while I got really into the project and it kinda ballooned out of control.”

  “You? Get obsessed with something only to have it go horribly wrong? No way.”

  “I wouldn’t say it went horribly wrong,” Alcor said, with a small smile. “Quite the opposite, really. It went wonderfully right.”

  Alcor smile widened as a small, pixelated figure appeared on the screen.

  “In fact, I’d reckon that a whole lotta things are going to start going wonderfully right.”

Alright! Chapter 3 is done, we're over half way done with the fic.

I've already written the major conflict of the next chapter. It currently looks like it will be a relatively short chapter, and hopefully it wont take me that long to finish writing it. I'm planning on focusing primarily on Haunted and Hunted over my other fic from now on, so ideally updates will come faster.

Thanks to TheItalianScribe for being my poetry consultant for this chapter.

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[mcglaviano]

Subversives

Tomkins scanned his heads-up, monitoring the readout from Criminal Activity Feed.  He paced back and forth, his boots squeaking on the floor of the Noncom commons.  He needed a collar.  Big time.  

The CAF was full of stuff, the kind of stuff that, if you handled it right, got you promoted.  Sadly, none of it was local.  Of course Luna City was petitioning for independence.  Again.  He snorted.  As if that was going to happen.  And things looked pretty hot out on the coast.  He’d bet real money that the squads out there were having ten kinds of fun.  He resented that a little, but there was nothing he could do about it.  The coast was well outside his jurisdiction.

But Tomkins’ region was strictly sleepy-time.  Nothing but little stuff scrolled past.  He’d have to be stupid to field a team for any of that crap.  HQ would hand him his ass.

Suddenly there was a ping and a line in his heads-up display went red.  He pushed into the detailed report.  This looked good.  Very good.

Info scrolled past.  Analysis pointed to out-of-parameter economic activity in sector F-3.  Retail purchases, especially purified water and food supplies were out of whack from what the people in that slum could afford.  And fifteen percent of food purchases exceeded baseline quality for bottom tier rations.

That could only mean one thing.  Somebody, better yet a whole gang of somebodies, had an unregistered biz going.  Somebody was making money, and the money was getting plowed back into the neighborhood.  Bingo.

Trouble is, the data wasn’t realtime.  Sure Analytics could process with a vengeance, but the data still had to be collected.  The clock, as they used to say, was ticking.  He needed to get cracking if he wanted a collar.

Tomkins forwarded the CAF alert to Surface Transport and got an immediate confirm.  Yes!  An armored hovercraft was spun up and idling.  He triggered an alarm for his squad and opened their comm channel.  “It’s party time, boys and girls,” he barked.  “Hovercraft deck stat.  We leave in five.”

He sprinted to the lifts.  By the time he reached the hovercraft deck, four of his guys were milling around near the rear hatch of an armored urban assault craft.  He was halfway across the deck when his fifth guy emerged from the Ready Room.

“Hustle your sorry ass, Marsden,” Tomkins yelled.  

Marsden put his head down and sprinted, his heavy boots thumping like pistons.  He had his helmet visor up and he carried his beam rifle at left port arms as he ran.  The guy looked like a small tank, but he got the job done.  

Tomkins followed Marsden into the back of the hovercraft and secured the rear hatch.  He slammed his weapon into the rack and took a seat between Marsden and Wills.  He beamed the pilot.  “Squad secure.  Get us moving.”

“Keep your shirt on, Tomkins,” came the reply.  “This jalopy stays put ‘til the blast doors open.”

 He recognized the voice.  Great.  Not.  Frenchy was his least favorite stick-jockey.  They’d be lucky if the dimwit kept the craft right-side up. 

An eternity later the blast doors were cranked out of the way.   Frenchy spun up the turbines, and the armored hovercraft lurched from the fortress.  The city beckoned.  A collar was in the offing.  Tomkins could just taste it…  It tasted like promotion.

 Up front, the grunt riding shotgun flipped a toggle on the dash.  The siren ramped up, climbing from a low moan to a bone-juddering wail.  It repeated, dropping and rising, warning the civvies to get out of the way.  Tomkins, heavy in his body armor, swayed on the bench as the pilot fired side jets to kick the urban assault hovercraft around a corner.   

The trooper on his left grunted.  “I know you’re scared, Sarge, but you need to stop trying to climb into my lap.  Comprende?”

“In your dreams, Wills,” Tomkins said.

Marsden, on his other side, barked a laugh that cut off, echoing Wills’ grunt as the massive vehicle swerved hard left.

Tomkins monitored their progress in realtime: ETA in three minutes.  He leaned forward and shouted over the whine of the power plant.  “What’s your problem, Frenchy?  We’re gonna be late to the party.  You having trouble maintaining forward velocity?”

“You’re the problem, Tomkins!” the pilot snapped over his shoulder.  His voice, coming through his helmet mic, sounded buzzy.  And pissed off.  “And I’m not French.”

Tomkins pasted a sarcastic grin on his face and gestured, palms up, at his squad.  He lifted his eyebrows and bugged out his eyes.  “Hear that guys?  He’s not French!  He wants us to know he’s not French, oui?”  

He leaned forward and yelled louder.  “You’re the soccer mom, Frenchy.  Stick your foot in it and get us to the game before the other kids get bored and go home.”

“I’ll stick my booted foot up your ass.  How about I pilot and you stuff a cork in it?” 

“How about you stop flapping your gums and fly this bird?” 

But the goading had done its job.  Frenchy accelerated up the boulevard.  The display reading for their ETA dropped like the proverbial stone.  

Suddenly, the driver cursed and triggered an array of retros.  The armored hovercraft slewed as it carved a chunk from the side of a city bus.  The shriek of torn metal brought cheers and jeers from Tomkins’ squad.  

That was good.  The guys were letting off steam.  They’d be calm and focused by the time they reached the target.  Keyed up was bad; ready and steady was good.  In some ways this was just like a drill, but in one big way this was totally different.  This was for reals.  For a collar.  

Without so much as a hint of warning, Frenchy locked down the binders.  The vehicle slammed to a halt, eliciting grunts and cursing from the troop.  Tomkins snagged his beam rifle from the bracket and hit the servo controls for the back door.  He was on the pavement before the rest of the squad was even on their feet.  Out of habit, he thumbed the display on his weapon.  It came up solid green; full charge.  Time to party.

“Any time now, kiddies,” he shouted as the rest of his squad collected their gear and climbed from the back of their ride.  They got into formation and double-timed to the door of a seedy apartment building.  

A wave of disgust swept over Tomkins.  The place stank of uncollected garbage and filth.  Half the residents would be radicals and agitators, the other half bums and other parasites.  If it was up to him, he’d order his guys to raze the whole block, torch it and fry anything that tried to scuttle out of the woodwork. 

But it wasn’t up to him.  Upper echelons insisted on the niceties.  It made for better vid.  Better PR.  Still, he had some latitude and it was time to use it.  He triggered the PA function on his comm unit.  There was a blast of feedback as his suit amplifier calibrated itself.  

“This building is on lock-down,” he bellowed.  His voice echoed off the buildings, making his words difficult to decipher.  Not his problem.  “Shelter in place.  Stay away from doors and windows.  Anyone caught in the hallways is assumed to be a hostile and will be treated as such.”

They kicked open the front door and stormed up the stairs.  The place was a pigsty.  Water stains, holes in the plaster.  Mildew and rot.   Less than half the standard illumination.  The whole nine yards.

His troop skidded to a halt outside the target apartment, Ames and Marsden placed the battering ram.  They set the timer and stepped back.  An indicator light went from green, to amber, then red.  The old door shuddered on the first hit and splintered on the second.  The third blow ripped the door off its hinges.

Wills lobbed in an infrasonic stunner.  Carter tossed in a second one, and the squad took shelter, three on either side of the door.  Even with his protective gear, the subsonic pulse made Tomkins’ teeth hurt.  Anybody inside would be unconscious, bleeding from the nose and ears.

He pointed to Stevens and Wills and held up three fingers.  The men nodded.  Three fingers, then two, then one, and they rushed inside.  

“Clear right,” shouted Stevens.

“Clear left,” Wills yelled.

The rest of the squad went through the doorway.  The stun-blasts had blown out the windows.  Heaps of books.  A writing desk.

The team took up stations just inside the wrecked entryway.  There were two more doors. Carter and Ames took one; Tomkins and Wills went for the other.

It was over in seconds.  The apartment was unoccupied.  The men gathered in the main room.  The place was a mess.  A bookshelf, filled to overflowing, covered one wall.  A beat-up writing desk stood under the window.  The rest of the furniture looked equally cheap and rickety.  Probably flea-infested.  There was a small bedroom with a minimal bathroom.  A tiny kitchen.  That was it.

Something moved on the floor near the broken-down sofa.  Marsden opened up.  Bits of metal and molten plastic flew everywhere.

“What the fuck!” barked Tomkins.  “Hold your fire, nimrod; we’re looking for evidence!”

Marsden scuffed his boot on the threadbare carpet.  “I just thought—”

“That was a bot.  It might’ve had some data… maybe even some recordings.  You know, evidence?”

“But it moved, Sarge.  And I—”

“How about you stand in the hall outside, hmm?  Yell if a rebel army shows up.”

“Um… Right, Sarge…  Sorry.”

“Wills.  You go with him.  Try to keep him from torching any more evidence.”

“I’m on it.”  

Tomkins stalked through the apartment.  The place stank of old books.  And not a single reader in sight.  Clever.  You can’t track books the way you can networked media.  

There were other scents too: machine oil… and the kitchen smelled of unfamiliar spices.  Definitely non-standard meals.  No security vids.  No data ports.

Carter found a well-stocked toolbox, tucked into a niche behind the bed.  Tomkins ran a scan on it, hoping for a DNA match.  Nada.  The perps, whoever they were, had been smart.

Stevens found a pile of gear behind the sofa.  Nothing thrilling, just a couple of water purifiers and some personal hygiene equipment, but it was good-quality stuff.  What was going on here?  Books. Tools.  Used gear, all high-end.  All unregistered.  

Suddenly, it all clicked together.  The perps had been running a bootleg repair shop — refurbing gear for the plebes who lived in the slum.  That’d let the locals spend their credits on other stuff.  And by the look of it, the gear being repaired had been salvaged from better neighborhoods.  Hence the boost to local commerce that the CAF had flagged.  

Tomkins got a little excited.  Maybe they could get some ID off the stuff that was slated for repair.  But again, the DNA scan came up empty.  This had been one careful bunch of subversives.  Hmmm… Maybe they should round up everybody in the building? 

He almost called it in, but hesitated, nervous about gambling on the outcome.  What if the perps had limited their direct business to plebes in other buildings?  HQ wouldn’t authorize hauling in the whole slum.  And Tomkins had already shot a big wad with the raid.

Everywhere were signs of hurried packing.  Some books had spilled from a chair where they’d obviously been stacked.  A closet door hung open to reveal half a dozen empty hangers.  Empty drawers, pulled from the bedroom dresser, lay on the bed.

For anyone below citizen class B, information in printed format was a security threat and, therefore, prohibited.  He’d found sufficient physical evidence to justify the warrant-to-raid-and-arrest.  Confiscation of contraband was good, though it wasn’t worth anything like a collar.

“Those books inventoried yet, Ames?” 

“About half of ‘em, Sarge.”

“Let’s see.” He scanned the list.  Even a cursory glance revealed titles from the proscribed list.  That was something.

And of course the absence of certain things was itself evidence: the lack of vid unit, for instance.  The Occupancy Permit, which should have been prominently displayed, was nowhere to be found.  Ditto the photo ID.  Ditto the permit for the tools.  All-in-all, a reasonable take.

But they’d bungled the big catch.  Tomkins cursed under his breath.  It was time to report in, past time actually.  Last thing he wanted was to be late.  As if reading his mind, the HQ comm flashed red in his heads-up.  

Ice stabbed his belly.  “Here we go,” he muttered and opened the channel.  

There was a click and a short burst of static.  “Tomkins, badge 14159.  Confirm,” said a well-modulated, genderless voice.  

It wasn’t a human voice… just some automated response system at HQ.  His stomach sank.  “Um, Yeah…  Tomkins confirmed.”

“Is subject in custody?”

He tamped down a burst of irritation.  Why go through the charade?  HQ monitored the raids.  Everybody knew it and HQ knew that they knew.  He fought to keep his voice level.  Calm and professional.  “Negative.  I think somebody tipped ‘em off…  Anyway, no one was here by the time we—”

“Primary target loss confirmed.  Budget impact noted.  Forensic team with security backup dispatched.  Secure the perimeter.  Place sensors with auto-alarm activated and return to base.”

“Ah… perimeter secure order confirmed.  But the place is a mess…  We smashed the door to gain access, and our subsonics blew out the windows.  I’ve figured out what triggered the alarm in the first place.  Some of it, anyway.  The perps had—”

“Budget impact noted.  Forensic team with security backup dispatched.  Return to base for debriefing.”

Tomkins swallowed.  “Wish we’d bagged ‘em,” he blurted.  He grimaced; the words had just slipped out.

There was brief silence.  How many levels were listening to the call?  And did levels even count any more with a bunch of data jockeys mediating everything?  

Of course the system did realtime voice stress analysis.  It’d know he meant what he said.  That he felt real regret at the missed collar.  But so what?  Results mattered.  Perp walks mattered.  Right intentions?  Unclear.

“Noted.  Results in your sector below median for eighteen weeks.”

Another stab of worry, this one tinged with fear.  His throat went tight.  He tried to swallow, but it didn’t help.  “Yeah, well…  Maybe most of the radicals have cleared out.  Gone to ground outside the city.  Or—”

“Speculation is outside your charter, Sergeant Tomkins.  Budget impact noted.  Complete perimeter closure.  Have your squad off the street and in the transport prior to Forensic team and Security detail arrival.  Hand off the crime scene and return to base for debriefing.”

He fought to keep the quaver out of his voice.  “Confirmed.  See you soon.  Maybe the next tip’ll pan…”

His voice trailed off.  The comm was already dead.

Copyright © 2020, Michael C. Glaviano.  All rights reserved.