#in other news i stopped putting it off and got a sfs account so maybe someday ill like. SHARE SOMETHING. CRAZY

[tank-grunt]

Hi................. i haven’t been posting for reasons (mostly adhd related but also artfight related) but hi. im amazed that post came back from its flop grave. beams of having sims opinions

[meditatemoremedicateless]

Dear Kate, (There are Pieces of you everywhere there used to be Me)

Fandom: Life is Strange

Pairings: Chasemarsh, Ambermarsh

Major Tags: Angst, possession

Words: ~ 3,200

Summary: Kate Marsh wins the Everyday Heroes Contest. She never entered.

Kate hadn't realized Mr. Jefferson was at the party until she heard the wave of sharp feedback cut through the Blackwell pool, followed by everyone suddenly cheering. But there he was, recoiling from the microphone he had just turned on until it settled down, at which point his laugh could be heard over it.

Max nudged Kate's side as if she wasn't already looking, while Luke just sat forward in his seat to get a better look.

"Okay, everybody calm down."

Of course, they did the opposite as everyone started yelling and whistling, making it almost impossible to hear him, nevermind command their attention.

"Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it. I don't want to get in the way of the party," he made a quick, pointed glance backstage - Kate could only imagine what he might be looking at -, "but it's time to announce the winner of the 'Everyday Heroes' contest."

Everyone started to quiet down a little, and Max started to twitch excitedly. Kate knew entering a photograph had been a big deal for her - she'd ripped up her original entry and only gotten a new one in recently, and she'd loved it.

"Before I do, I want to thank everybody who entered their photograph this year."

As if on cue, girls from around the pool started to whoop and cat call Mr. Jefferson, but he just laughed it off and continued. "Now this is the most important step in being an artist - sharing your work with the world." Max nodded along - she reminded Kate of someone hearing a sermon that went straight to the heart. It was just normal teacher stuff, but, well, Max was cute in that way.

Meanwhile, Luke just rolled his eyes.

"All of you represent Blackwell Academy and everything our school stands for. As far as I'm concerned, you're all Everyday Heroes."

"More like Everyday Monsters," Luke joked quietly.

Max snickered. Kate silently agreed.

Jefferson pivoted, looking back at the DJ. "The envelope - please."

He's so dramatic all the time. Doesn't he get tired of-

"And the winner is . . ." he peeked down at the envelope. Max snorted, but also scooched to the edge of the bench. She was on edge, literally.

"Oh my, what a shocker." He looked up over the crowd and announced, "Kate Marsh!"

"OH MY GOD!!" Max yelled the loudest she'd ever yelled in front of Kate. There was a slight delay, but some cheering and clapping followed suit.

Meanwhile, Kate just sat there with her mouth open. "Wait . . . what . . .?"

Luke shot her a look to let her know he wasn't impressed with her humble performance. "You won, you goon."

That doesn't make any sense.

"But I didn't even enter a ph- fuck."

It's true, she hadn't. But she had gotten a message that read, 'Dear Kate,' that said otherwise.

Now that the cheering was dying down a little, Jefferson spoke again: "Congratulations, Kate! Want to get up here and say something about your photo?"

The noise died down almost immediately to let her speak, and she desperately wished it hadn't. Max was looking at her. Luke was looking at her. Warren and Brooke and Courtney over next to the drinks were all looking at her. She got the sinking suspicion she might pass out - which, given how her life was going, might be the best solution for what was happening.

Kate stood up, and, as loud as she could, replied, "Uh, no thanks!"

Jefferson laughed, but Kate's peers were less amused - with the exception of Luke, who had to cover his mouth with his hand to keep from laughing, too.

"Typical Kate humility, everybody. But don't worry, I'm sure she'll have something more to say tomorrow. We'll be showing Kate's photo before she heads off tomorrow at 9:00am in my class, so if you want to stop by and give Kate congratulations - and you should - or look at the prints gallery we'll have set up tomorrow, you'll have to wake up a little early. Now, you kids have fun."

He tapped the button on the mic, handed it off, and left.

I'm going to kill her.

Dear Katie,

Congratulations! You won the Everyday Heroes contest. I looked through your photography folder to try and figure out which one you entered, but I couldn't really tell which one - they're all so good! You're a really talented photographer, I wish you'd told me sooner.

I hope you'll be the one to wake up tomorrow morning so you can accept the award and fly down to SF with Mr. Jefferson. If you are, I think he wants you to say something at the awarding - which is at 9:00am tomorrow in the Photography room.

I don't know if it's you or Max who is friends with Luke, but we hung out a little today at the party. He seems nice but also kind of mean. I think he means well.

In regards to your offer to set up a Her profile for me, please don't. I'm not sure how I feel about dating in high school to be honest, and doing that I think suggests I have clearer ideas about myself than I really do. Plus, what if someone from school is on there and tells someone? I don't think apps like that have chastity vows in mind. I don't need more people thinking I'm weird, so just, please don't. If you make an account for yourself, please try not associate it with me.

I think Stella has been avoiding me. Do you know what's going on? I've barely seen her this year. Alyssa hasn't seen much of her either.

Also, I know you think Max and I should get closer, but I don't think that's a good idea. Max likes to be close to me and I think it's too much for me. Please don't lead her on about me, I don't want to stop being friends with her.

Please be advised: I'm lactose intolerant. I found your bags of Hot Cheetos in my drawer, but being vegan -> lactose intolerance -> please don't eat dairy products. I'm glad you haven't been eating meat, but I think that is probably what's been making us sick.

I've started a period calendar on my phone. My cycle's pretty inconsistent but JUST IN CASE it starts this weekend I'm packing you pads for the trip.

I found that you texted Mom about my doctor - what's wrong? My doctor's Dr. Zimmerman in Tillamook, you can look him up online and set up an appointment if you need to.

If you get to go to SF, tell me everything.

I hope you are well,

Kate

Unfortunately, Katie was not the one who woke up Friday morning at 6:25, she was not the one who had to give a stumbling acceptance speech when her photograph was unwrapped and shown to her, she was not the one who was told that she'd be leaving with Mr. Jefferson for the airport at 10:30. The picture was beautiful, of course - it was the interior of the Two Whales diner, at just an angle so that the entire bar was visible. Most of the people there were truckers and other regulars, but there was also a police officer clearly present, Preston, the former dockworker-turned environmental advocate, and, behind all of them, standing next to the jukebox, there was a tall, lanky girl with blue hair hugging a waitress who still had a tray in her hand. Her mother, Kate guessed. Of course, while that was all pretty clear, the shot was taken to include an out-of-focus poster that took up the middle-right. Kate hadn't noticed it when she'd just been looking at the jpeg, but once she had a chance to look at the print, she realized it was a poster about the use of prison labor to fight forest fires in California. She thought it might have been unintentional, until she realized that the fire referenced in the poster ended in 2011 - she managed to find a copy of the poster online later with minimal effort.

Katie, as it turned out, was a lover of irony.

It wasn't until they were after security at the airport that Kate got a text she hadn't been expecting.

Unknown: Congrats on the win

Before she could ask 'who is this?,' she got a second message.

Unknown: You're a better photographer than I realized. Don't get cocky though, I'll get you next time.

Kate did her best to text while walking, but she was terrible at it, and Jefferson just slowed down with a bemused smile and a glance at his watch.

Kate: Who is this? Sorry, I don't have your number.

Unknown: It's Victoria. We all switched numbers the first day of Photography, remember?

Kate: Oh right. My bad, I hadn't created a contact for you. Kate: But yeah, I was surprised! I'm sure you'll beat me next time too, haha :)

She added the contact info and put her phone away so she could speed up again. She felt her phone buzz again immediately, but ignored it until they were at the terminal.

Victoria: real cute Victoria: Learn to banter, Katie, it'll make this more fun in the future

Kate smiled. Teasing and outright bullying from Victoria had the same tone, the teasing just didn't sting on the level of personal shame and insecurity.

Kate: Oh are we bantering? Here I was thinking I was having a run-in with my first fan.

This time, the '...' stayed around a bit longer, but the wait was nevertheless rewarding.

Victoria: Touché Victoria: Have fun in SF. I hear it's pretty gay there this time of year.

That actually made Kate feel less comfortable, but at least she knew Victoria was, for once, trying to be nice. Maybe one-upping her really was the way to get her to stop being mean. She'd have to start writing witty comebacks with Max sometime soon.

Kate kept her laptop on her lap during the flight so she could check out Katie's photographs some more, studying them in detail. After looking over the big print, she had the feeling that if she could just figure out what gave her pictures their wit, their two-steps-ahead quality, then maybe Kate could approach her own work like that. After all, Katie was using her eyes, her hands, her brain, her camera to make these images, wasn't she? So Kate must be capable of the same.

"Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I remember you saying your passion is painting, isn't that right?"

Kate's ears felt warm as she realized what this must look like. She slowly turned towards Mr. Jefferson with a warm, albeit fake smile. "Oh, yeah, of course! I just . . . uh . . . I can't help but second-guess myself. Bad habit."

She closed the laptop as Mr. Jefferson laughed quietly.

"Now, there's no need to be embarrassed," he said, scooting back to sit more upright in his seat. "I just didn't realize what a dedicated photographer you were when you first joined my class. You play an instrument too, don't you?"

Kate nodded. This was getting uncomfortable - not that her skills outside of photographer were less legitimate, really, as not liking the attention.

"Violin and piano," she replied.

"And what do you want to do after this, Blackwell Academy? Going to study art?"

Kate shook her head. "No, actually, I'm applying to be an English major. I'm also interested in journalism but I feel like switching from journalism to English will be harder than English to journalism, so . . ."

He looked amused, but quite pleased. "My, my, you're quite the all-star."

Kate hadn't realized she had shared so little about her academic interests during her time as Mr. Jefferson's assistant. Admittedly, sometimes it wasn't even her working with him, but most of their conversations started with some polite conversation and questions about her friends and life around school, followed by an hour of him prattling on about his work abroad. Not that she minded, really, but her keen interest in the life of a celebrity photographer had waned after about a week of it. There was nothing that made something quite so mundane as constant exposure to it.

"Thanks," she replied, and turned her attention out the window to California.

"You know," he started, shuffling around in his seat again, "You remind me of a former student."

Kate looked back at him now, curious. It's not like he'd been teaching very long - who could he possibly remind her of?

"Rachel was very multifaceted in her talents and interests as well. She was a gifted photographer, of course, but oh, she wouldn't have any of my suggestions to pursue it. She wanted to be a legal scholar, and started modeling in our very own little Arcadia Bay."

Kate nodded, looking back towards the window. "She was probably going to be valedictorian, too. I guess . . . that'll probably be Warren now."

There was a short pause while Kate let herself wonder where Rachel was and what could have happened to her. Then, Mr. Jefferson said, "I take it you knew her?"

"Yeah," she replied. "Up until the end of last year, it was the three of us still in the running - me and her and Warren. But . . . she hasn't come back, and I'm getting a C in physics, so."

No one had ever compared her to Rachel before, and she'd never had a reason to, either. They had been from different worlds that the other could not understand, and Kate, for all of Rachel's charisma, could not hold a conversation with her. Warren was easy to get along with, so long as you could take not understanding the pop culture references shooting out of his mouth every five seconds. Rachel was . . . well, whatever she was, Kate hadn't figured it out, and with her gone, it didn't look like she was about to.

All of a sudden, as Kate caught her reflection in the window, she felt a wave of sadness. Where are you, Rachel? I know someone here misses you.

"I wish . . . Rachel were back," Kate mumbled.

Mr. Jefferson seemed to hear, though. He let out a sigh and reclined his seat as well as he could. "As do we all," he said.

But, for some reason, Kate didn't believe him.

Dear Katie,

I'm sorry you missed the Everyday Heroes awards. This was your big day and I feel like I stole it from you. But, don't worry - I'm recording the information of everyone I met who was interested in your photography so you can give them a call if you want. I really liked your photograph - Evan had a lot of critique of it I didn't really understand but I'm pretty sure he liked it. I missed doing homework Friday, though, so if you wake up this weekend please take a look at the planner so we don't fall any more behind.

Also, I'm sure you've seen the posters, but there's a girl who used to go here named Rachel Amber. It's so weird to try and describe what the school was like with her here because I transferred here, but, to me, Blackwell feels like Blackwell minus Rachel. Back when Rachel was here, Victoria wasn't half so bad to anyone because she was so busy trying to get at Rachel. I didn't even share with any classes with Victoria then and I'd still hear about the stuff she'd pull. But let's just suffice it to say that Rachel was a golden child. You can tell how perfect she was by the number of people who try and talk mean about her with graffiti and stuff - even people who didn't like her seemed obsessed with her.

Anyway, Rachel disappeared at the end of last year. She still had another year to go, (another month, too), but one day she was just gone. Some people told me she used to deal drugs and she might have gotten hurt because of that. She's probably fine - basically everyone thinks she just packed up and left one day - but, I don't know, I just wish I knew what happened to her. I really have missed her the past couple of days, even though we were never friends. If you ever find something out, tell me about it, would you? I wish I knew she was OK.

I saw on Amazon that you were looking at clothes. Do you want to buy some new clothes? I hadn't even thought about the fact that you might not like what I wear. I know it's really hard for us to schedule things but maybe we can work out a way for you to go shopping? I know it's impossible, but I sort of wish we could go together. I think it would be fun to be friends. At least, I like to think that.

Oh, also on Amazon - I know you really want a vibrator but I don't think I can afford it. And if I could, I'm still not sure how comfortable I'd be shipping it here to school. I'm sorry.

I hope you have a good day today;

Kate

P.S. Alice says hello

That night, as many other nights, Kate cried in bed without really knowing why. In her dreams, she saw a lanky girl with blue hair playing around with the jukebox inside the Two Whales diner. When she finally saw Kate, she smiled.

Then, there was nothing, and Kate Marsh was gone.

[evanmueller]

June 28, 2017

Its pretty clear that if you're tall there are two seats superior to all others on the Caltrain. On the newer trains its on the middle level, the seat facing the stairs, next to the window. Although I must admit, I have not yet had the privilege to sit in this throne, during the ride, I sat in this seat for a picture when then train was at the last stop, just for your reference.

The other seat is one I have enjoyed several times; it’s the last seat in the back row on the 2nd level. This is the one facing the aisle so even if you're Usain Bolt you're gonna be able to stretch out those legs.

Anyway, I think most everybody on a public trans commute, including tall people, just want a seat where they can be left alone. It's a chance to listen to whatever, talk to whoever, work or sleep. So of course wearing headphones on the train is such a popular choice. Most of the time I'm sure this is an unconscious choice people make out of boredom or exhaustion, but wearing headphones is a choice to not interact with the other travelers. It's a signal to me that you are not interested in striking up a conversation. That's fine, I like that we can have that social understanding. But even though I really love listening to music, podcasts and audiobooks, even more than that I enjoy the chance to meet someone new and learn something from them.

So, I know, this makes me an oddball on the train. But every now and then, when my ears are open, I Iook away from the screen or set down what I was reading, make eye contact, say hello, and I meet someone.

Today I met Mukesh .

By the time the 8 am bullet train to SF reaches Sunnyvale, only its 3rd stop, there is never enough room for new passengers to sit. But today, because of someone who puked, there were a few open surrounding the chunks. Mukesh sat down next to me in the only seat left, not covered in puke. He looked at the filth and then at me and I had to explain I had not been witness to the spill but I was willing to put up with it being nearby if it meant I could sit. He understood of course, he was sitting even closer to it than I was. So for some reason we kept talking, he asked about what I do, and then he told me he's "like everybody else here….in tech." So I push back on that and the starts telling me about his job as a product manager.

Then my Dad called and I spoke with him for about 15 min before he said goodbye and I was back to a conversation with the stranger next to me. I kept asking questions and he kept answering. He taught me about what inbound marketing was, and how a product manager has to be a bridge between engineering, design, marketing and sales. He said product managers then have to find a way to please the customers wishes, the bosses wishes, and the teams'. He told me how he liked living in Chicago before moving here, and how the river moves through the downtown. He gave me advice. He said, don't try to change the world with your ideas. Just try to build something. Get started on execution, on creating something that works, no matter how tiny it seems at first. If does work it will probably grow into something else that you don't want to work on in a few years or someone will want to buy from you. Even if it fails, you will still have learned something.

As we both got up to get off in San Francisco, I told him my name, and he told me his. I didn't learn where he we works, get his email, or any other contact information. I just told him I'd say hello if I saw him again on the train. Maybe I will, maybe I won't but my morning was better because I met him. I suppose I am now a hypocrite, using my laptop to write this account on the way back to San Jose. To be honest I do feel a bit guilty about it. Is it weird that I feel guilty about cutting myself off from strangers?

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

A Pseudo-History of Hypereconomic Diplomacy

So I corresponded with someone way back in 2009 who ran a game of HED way back in the 70s. I don’t remember at all how I found this wonderful man, but he scanned a bunch of the stuff he still had and then I took those scans and typed them up into the rules and tables I posted earlier. Even better, he helped me figure out where the original scans were incorrect (as they were from a game in progress and some stuff had changed) as well as sent along the maps which allowed for someone else to make the maps I posted earlier.

Anyway, I went back through my email and still had all of them we had exchanged. Below I’m pasting them bulk of them, which contains a bit of history of the game and how he did things back then. This is actually a series of emails he sent, often prompted to some extent by questions I had asked. I present it here as one big essay on the history of Hypereconomic Diplomacy as he remembers it.

Also on the off chance that you know the following gentlemen who were in some way involved in this game back in the 70s (they’d mostly be around 60 now I think and were all from Britain by the sounds of it), I’d love to chat with them and get some scans or maybe even pay postage for some old hard copies of HED stuff:

Don Miller Pete Ansoff Steve Norris Martin Feather Stephen Agar Frank Kopel

A little history then.  Hypereconomic Diplomacy Mk I was designed by Don Miller (the man after whom Miller numbers were named) in about 1972.  The earliest Diplomacy variants (I think Youngstown was the first) date from around 1967.  Don created some of the basic economic systems and ran the first game in a zine called Aux Armes in 1968.  You can see a run of Aux Armes at http://www.whiningkentpigs.com/DW/oldzines/aux10.pdf which also shows the relative simplicity of the game at that stage.  It folded after about a year for unspecified reasons. I know that Don went blind at some stage in a life which is a bit of a drawback in running a zine.

The idea got taken up by one Pete Ansoff re-worked to create Hyperec Mk II and Pete launched it as a game, housing it in a zine of its own called The Siberian.  Pete ran The Siberian for 15 issues (1971-73).  But he was a law student and needed to actually pass some exams so he handed the reins on to Steve Norris who ran the zine for the next 5 years.  Doug Kent’s archive reckons the last known issue as number 51.

In Britain we had one player who’d started playing in the game and he introduced me to it in 1973/4.  At the time I was 17, running a sub-zine, studying for ‘A’ levels (the British equivalents of SATs) and planning a university life.  I joined in Steve’s game and inside a few months was busy redesigning the game.  Steve knew that there were flaws in his game that neither he nor Pete could by that stage correct and so they both contributed some changes whilst I did likewise and made the rules more coherent.

The zine I created for it was Hyperion.  As well as being a pun on the game, it’s an allusion to a poem by Keats, and turns up in an SF book by Richard Cowper.  What can I say?  I was 17 for God’s sake and 80% geek to 20% hippy.  The game started in 1974 and ran for 9 seasons in total.  I did 5 seasons and I then went to University and discovered life, alcohol, women, sound and lights for visiting rock bands, running discos and anything but studying.

The game stopped.  I eventually got it together enough to hand it on to a guy called Martin Feather who ran the game for 2 seasons (Martin now works at the Jet Propulsion Labs in CA and is a very high-end computer person).  At the end of my first year in Uni, I got chucked out as they seemed to resent offering a college course to someone who didn’t actually go to lectures or study.  How unfair - and in hindsight there are other things I should have done about it, but didn’t. 

I move back home and as Martin was struggling with it, retook the reins, GMing the next couple of seasons, but then I moved back to live on people’s floors at my Uni and had a sort of surrogate 2nd year.  It was never going to work to run a zine from that kind of existence and the thing died in a messy fold in 1977.

I got back into publishing a zine in 1981 once my life had sorted itself out and ran Home of the Brave for around the next 14 years and 130 issues.  But that was just a calm dip zine with nothing special.

GMing Hyperec was hard.  It took around 50 hours to GM a season’s play.  There were around 55 players, 1 for each country in the world in 1900.  The game revolves around 4 aspects of a country’s existence – Manpower, Agriculture, Industry and Money.  So in 1900 China has lots of Manpower, reasonable Agricul ture and no real Industry.  Holland has Industry and little Manpower etc etc.  You have to trade these factors around and buy Stuff with them.  Stuff includes the military units that are then able to fight the wars that inevitably result.

Money is a different thing because the game has a system that says that money is never spent out of existence.  If you buy something from someone else, the money transfers to them.  If you (as the US player say) spend money, it goes into the US economy and a proportion of it returns to your stockpile each turn.  The total amount remains the same.

The game has a whole set of banking systems that support this system and which can be used to ‘grow’ money if the money is put to one side and not spent.  And there are a whole load of other transport, research, fishing and other systems that form part of the game.

In 1975 I had a pocket calculator that I’d built myself, which was so slow that if you asked it to calculate a mathematical function it would think about it for 20 seconds.  And there was lot of calculating in Hyperec as you’ll see.  In a way I was running a PBM country management game.

The game developed quite a life of its own.  As well as the actual zine itself, people published their own newspapers for propaganda purposes.  One player sold his country (Peru) to the Bolivian player and used the money to actually play as a bank rather than a country.  The combined Perivia was the dominant country in South America by the time the game folded.  Maybe it’s no surprise that the guy playing Bolivia ended up in real-life politics and is now an MP and a possible member of Gordon Brown’s government in the next reshuffle.

I thought at the time that what I was doing was indulging in some damn stupid hobby.  In hindsight if I’d have had a sense of application it could have been a living in itself.  PBM games for computer adjudication got quite popular in the 80s as computers became a more established part of life.   What I have found is that the skills I used to develop the game and to run a zine actually turned out to be useful life-skills.  These days I have a small accountancy firm (www.emtacs.com) and the communications techniques and basic abilities to use language as a tool are enormously useful.  The abilities to organise large systems, hold stuff in your head and to recognise patterns are all just good business skills.

The game in a modern context would need a serious revamp but it would be a relatively simple thing to use Excel to present reports, do the maths and control the mechanisms of the game.  I’ll be quite happy to lend a hand if you ever threaten to get another game off the ground and I could even round up 2-3 players from the old game to join in!

Right - time to go hunt stuff in the garage and the attic. I'll get back to you.

OK – some progress to report, but I’m afraid they come with a bit of a story and a mumbling apology.  The good news is that I have a set of rules for Hyperec which will be coming your way.  The bad news is that I think I have less in the way of material of the passage of the game than I’d like and the better news is that I know where to get hold of copies.

I have been delving into my garage where old zines, unused toys and books etc are living and unearthed a ring binder and a folder with Hyperec written on them.  I dragged them back in the house and sat down to read. And went “oh yes, now I remember.”…..

To carry the story on from where I left it, Hyperion folded and I dropped out of the hobby in 1977.  The game died with no-one remotely able or willing to take it on.  I kept in distant touch with a few people and then returned properly to running a zine in 1981.  My finds in the garage prodded my memory that there was in fact another attempt at running a game of Hyperec. 

Martin Hammon was a good friend who’d played in my game and vanished at a similar time to me and was returning when he had the idea that he’d like to run a game of Hyperec because he had had so much fun playing mine.  He set up a zine called Stuart and asked me for help.  And so I bundled a lot of stuff, copies of Hyperion, the rules and much more and sent them to Martin.  His game lasted for a shorter period than mine.

It’s 25 years back now and so I’m afraid I can’t remember why the game ran aground.  Martin was a bit of a chaotic and it may have been his (a) separation and divorce, (b) his kitchen-fitting business folding or (c) ill-health or (d) he just couldn’t hack it.  When I handed on the stuff I probably said something about having it back and I may have more stuff to find in my garage. 

Regardless – Martin died about 5 years ago (dodgy heart, about 48-50) and I’m pretty sure that’s a dead end (no pun intended).

What I do have are some relics of my running the thing – a couple of the set-up issues, a couple of the zine I used to publish between main deadlines (Japetus) and a whole lot of stuff pertaining to the game Martin ran and a set of the rules which Martin rewrote to incorporate some of the changes.

I’ll mail you over a whole lot of this stuff in the next day or so, but what I can do tomorrow is try scanning a whole chunk (including the rules) and emailing it over to you.  I would scan it here but my home scanner doesn’t seem to want to play right now, but I’ve another scanner in the office and I’ll be in there tomorrow. I’m a little worried about the quality of the printing and whether it will stand up to scanning and reprinting, but we can try.  I’m worried most about the maps but I can probably recreate these if necessary.

And I should thank you for taking me on a trip into the past.  My younger daughter, Steph (19) was fascinated by the whole thing and the idea that I did this kind of thing when I was 2 years younger than she was.  The whole idea of being able to write a zine of probably 10-15,000 words in the course of a long weekend, without a word-processor is quite scary.  He most accurate comment when confronted with it all was “God you were such a geek, Dad”.  You’re not wrong there girl, but it didn’t harm me in the long-term.

The other source of material is the UK Zine Archive run by an old friend of mine, Stephen Agar who has issues 1-8 of Hyperion and which he can either lend me or scan for me.  If you are ever to run this thing as a reality then you’d probably find it fairly invaluable as a template to create a game report for the thing.  I’ll talk to Stephen about that.

So – browse the rules and I’ll send you the rest of the stuff on Monday.  I’m not sure if you gave me an address so give me it again.  Have a think about it and then if you decide you’re serious I’ll give you a hand with setting up.  I think the rules may need a bit of tweaking since issues 1-6 of Hyperion were full of rule changes. 

There’s no doubt that Hyperec would make a fascinating test case in a new millennium.  I ran it in a world where the only practical way to communicate internationally was to send an air letter and wait 10 days for a reply.  I can quite see it being a big success.  I was saddled with having to create the game reports every issue and spend hours working with fiddly numbers that would be a piece of cake done in Excel.  It cost me a lot of money to produce something, print 65 copies of it and deal with a bulk mailout.  You’d have none of these problems.

In terms of the number of people playing you ideally need around 60!  The catch is that you need people who can be encouraged to be sufficiently in love with the concept that they are happy to play Nicaragua (not relly that much of a superpower in 1914.  The trick is to have a kind of hierarchy of standby players.  If Turkey misses a turn, then the following turn you invite the player of Nicaragua to send orders in for their country and for Turkey.  Then you'll be able to offer someone else the chance to take over Nicaragua if Turkey dsrops out altogether.

As you'll see - a little inactivity in the minor countries doesn't matter too much but having an NMR from the UK or France is a bigger problem.

Some of the printing on the tables is a little bit faint and these are the ones I worry most about in a scanning sense.  Let me know how they turn out your end.  If there are a few missing ones I can fill in the blanks but if they're just illegible I can retype.

The more I look at this the more I realise that this is such an online accessible game.  The tables and the maps were things I had to redo and redraw from scratch every turn or two.  These days you'd just have an Excel sheet or 6 that hung on to this data and you could amend it as appropriate and then permit online access for all players.  It would actually need an active website and the ability to update that website on a very regular basis.  How are your HTML skills then?

The rules and everything are a little bit dry and I'll try and drop you a line that explains how the game plays in a more coherent way.  My friend Stephen Agar has said he'll dig the copies of Hyperion out of the UK Zine Archive and stick them into pdf's that you and I can read and which will not require them to cross the pond.  That's a big help although I will send over a whole bunch of stuff anyway.  I don't think the postage cost will be hideous so don;t worry about that.

I think some of the maps and provinces may be 'in play' items.  The rules permit subdivision and recombination of provinces so some people's actions will have produced different provinces.  They all started as pretty straight.  But then Bolivia and Peru agreed to merge into Perivia and some people started to label the newly-formed provinces with fun names - hence Midgard (which was the name of a free-form RPG of the 70's, or a book, or something), Doc's Pleasure Garden and Rivendell.  Some peope went to an atlas and come up with the Cianares, Hejaz etc.  This game taught me a hell of a lot about the geography of the world.

There's a number of changes to the first spreadsheet brought about because this version of the tables must have been compiled from the game-in-progress.  A distant bell of memory is ringing to tell me that I put these tables together to simplify things.  I think they once were a part of the rules at the relevant point but I separated them into a 4-page document which contained everything because that was what people referred to once the game was in progress.  The game had one or two strange turnings.  Different countries swapped bits of one another - hence anomalies like Greek Sumatra, Aden being a province of India, Brazil having renamed itself Rivendell etc etc.  Plus a stab at humour here and there.

So - Doc's Pleasure Island was a renamed half of Haiti (named after Papa Doc Duvalier who ran the country for a long time with voodoo and a secret police).  Perivia was the renamed combination of Peru & Bolivia, Rivendell I hope you'd know, Cyrenia was a half of Cyprus and Leazes End is named after one end of Newcastle United Football Club's ground.  Hejaz was floated into a new nation, and divided between Benson & Hejaz etc etc.  The investment performance table of countries in the various regions has been badly affected by this and is seemingly cocked-up anyway.  I have tried to correct this and re-labelled a couple of the regions but in essence, it doesn't matter.  Some countries are blessed with being in more than one investment return area for bank purposes.

What else?  The Public Works thing is a strange iterm that just seems daft.  It's really a means of transferring money into the escrow (economy) of a particular country.  That can have a logic but I've forgotten what it was!

Having a bit of a browse trying to track down people who played in the first game led me to the NA Variant Bank that tells me there is a Hyperec 4 and a Hyperec 5, but I can't find any details of these nor do I have any idea if the NA Variant Bank is still intact.  It didn't help me track down Pete Ansoff, Steve Norris or Frank Kopel who were leading lights of my game.

[sapphylicious]

Time for the B1A4 con report! First off, let me just say it was TOTALLY WORTH IT, but as soon as @cactuarneedles and I arrived back in KC at midnight we were like, “Let’s never go to California again.” It was that kind of trip.

First off, our connecting flight in Denver was delayed. Not by a lot, but in retrospect that set the tone for the rest of the weekend. We still managed to arrive in SF on Saturday around noon, checked in at the hotel, and then got ramen for lunch in Japantown. It’s been, oh, 11 years since I was last in SF for Hyde’s Faith tour, and wandering around Japantown was a bit nostalgic. I wanted to buy All The Things but couldn’t have fit anything else into my carry-on except a Pusheen shirt I ended up getting just because. Also, makeup remover, since I forgot to bring any and didn’t realize until I was putting on my eyeliner (very, very carefully). The salesperson in Kpop Beauty liked my Big Bang hoodie lol.

We were running out of energy fast since we’d been up since 4am Central, so we went back to the hotel and ordered in for dinner. I slept as I usually do in new places, which is to say, not well, but I managed not to be too tired on Sunday.

As for Sunday. 

Well.

It was raining all morning, and we’d bought umbrellas the day before at CVS, so we were like. The bare minimum of prepared. We also bought some trash bags to sit on. It was in the 50s but felt like it was in the 40s, and there was some wind, so overall it was a cold, wet, miserable experience. I’ve queued in line when it was colder (Akanishi Jin’s Yellow Gold tour in NYC in November was hella cold) but a) I was younger then, and b) I wasn’t being rained on. So Janel and I discovered our Too Old For This Shit threshold. If we hadn’t been close to the front of the line we probably would have said fuck it and stayed in the hotel room all day.

We took a break for lunch at a Vietnamese place where I was able to stop shivering for a while, and stayed there as long as we felt was reasonable. We’re not fans of the “claim a spot in line and then fuck off for the rest of the day until an hour before the doors open” tactic some people (read: assholes) like to use. Getting to be right in front of the stage is privilege you suffer for.

On the way back we decided to stop in a Target to buy some of those mini folding seats to help make the rest of the wait bearable (the trash-bags-on-ground was not working out for us). And this is where the trip really went to shit.

Janel left her purse in the restroom by accident. She realized it the moment we stepped outside and went back to the restroom in three minutes tops, and by then everything inside her purse had been stolen. Cash, cards, ID, keys -- the only thing she still had was her phone since it had been in her pocket (which luckily also had the tickets).

Soooo she pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon making phone calls and filing a police report -- not that the police could actually do anything about it, but it was good to have for getting through airport security for our flight back. So note: you can fly domestically without an ID, but it’s a huge pain for everyone.

At least by then it had basically stopped raining. There was a little bit of a situation when the lines were separated and we had to leave our spot to wait in another line for our VIP wristbands. I asked a girl I recognized being a couple people ahead of us to save our spot (couldn’t find the people who’d been directly in front or behind), but when we eventually got our wristbands I couldn’t find her again, or anyone else who had been near us in the original line. So we kind of just cut in at roughly the same area and miraculously no one gave us shit about it.

Let me just say, out of the several cons I’ve been to, B1A4 fans are the most chill. I remember standing in line for Big Bang and recalling how VIPs used to claim to be the most chill fans and lol nah man just nah. We chatted a little with the people around us, told the "everything got stolen” story a few times -- and also the “we’re from the Midwest” story. YOU PEOPLE IN LA AND SF DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE LIVING IN THE ENTIRE REST OF THE UNITED STATES. Travel for Kpop is a given. I’ve made weekend trips from the East Coast all the way to the West Coast for Kpop. This is also why we only go to cons for our absolute favorite groups, and will pull out all the stops for them. I figure I’ll only do this for B1A4, Big Bang, Epik High, TVXQ/JYJ, and maaaybe I might do it for VIXX. Maybe.

Getting into the venue wasn’t an issue and we wound up about four people back from the stage. We were hella sore by then, although I think it was worse for Janel since she was running back and forth a lot and under a ton more stress. Luckily the con didn’t start too late, and I forgot how much my feet hurt most of the time (I’m really glad I have a pair of comfortable boots).

So. B1A4 in person.

This is the first concert where I bothered to take pictures and record video, but I don’t know how some fans can dedicate their attention to recording the whole time because I was a flailing mess lol. THEY WERE SO CLOSE. They’re all really attractive in person??? I mean Gongchan is of course a given and he is EVEN MORE HANDSOME THAN ADVERTISED no wonder Sandeul and Jinyoung don’t shut up about how he looks. The suits they wore for most of the show were very nice and ESPECIALLY when they took off the jackets because men in waistcoats are my weakness. Jinyoung rolling up his shirtsleeves jesus christ and he does it all neatly too (whereas Baro’s sleeves kept falling and flopping around lol). Jinyoung is so fucking charming it’s unfair. When the water bottles came out he liked to hold them up and tease the crowd lmao how... typical...

CNU was amazing with the fanservice and the body rolls lol and he has such pretty hair. There was a moment duringggg I think Baby Goodnight when he and Gongchan were really cute together. I was filming Sandeul and had to quickly cut over to them with their arms around each other.

Baro did a lot of talking in English, I was surprised and impressed and I think this con has cemented him as third in my lineup of faves (Sandeul-Jinyoung-Baro-Gongchan-CNU). I feel like he interacted with the crowd best and I saw him paying attention to the balcony people often too, but someone needs to take the word “lit” away from him hahaha.

The venue was small so it was really easy for them to reach every part of the stage, we got to see all of them up close in roughly equal amounts but ngl my memory is like 70% Sandeul because I tracked him all across the stage.

BOY CAN HE SING. Not only does he sound amazing but you can tell just by looking at him how passionate he is, the way he moves and puts more of himself into it than the others do. The only way the con could have been more perfect is if he’d been able to perform a solo. Or just. If he could release a full-length solo album and then go on tour that was be okay too. He teased us by singing 그렇게 있어줘~ and augh so good. SO GOOD. AND SO CUTE. He’s so adorable I can hardly stand it. Near the end he was crouched down in front of us and stuck out his tongue bUT I DIDN’T MANAGE TO RECORD IT. OPPORTUNITY LOST.

I did however record the cheek squishing. It was so classic. Jinyoung goes for the cheeks, Sandeul tries to retaliate but misses, Jinyoung waits for a few seconds and then goes in again to get a good grip and Sandeul looks SO RESIGNED before he jerks his face away. They did this while Baro was talking and he was like “Hey, it’s my turn now!” lol poor Baro.

I also have some pics of CNU lowkey harassing Sandeul and Sandeul giving him this Look afterwards. And Gongchan fussing with Sandeul’s clothes. And Sandeul limp in Baro’s arms. I ship my bias with everyone, can you tell.

They were all so cute though, ugh, I love B1A4. I’m so glad I gave Kpop another chance after I thought the TVXQ breakup was the End Of All Things.

We fought with another girl over one of the towels thrown into the crowd. I only made a claim so it would be 2 vs 1 but we both lost the rock-paper-scissors battle and had to give it up. In retrospect we maybe should have played the “she was robbed today” pity card because you’d think after losing all the contents of your purse you could at least get a towel in compensation. We’re unfortunately not that combative though. At least this time the opponent didn’t cheat and throw down her choice late. Like I said, in terms of the fans B1A4 has much fewer assholes than I’m used to encountering.

I felt like a drowned rat by the end of the show and feared for my eyeliner but luckily it wasn’t running or even smudged (thanks, Stila stay all day waterproof liquid eyeliner). My hair was rather bedraggled though and after the rain and the water bottles it was like, why did I even bother curling it that morning, but what can you do.

I wanted to say something to everyone during the high touch -- I knew it was going to be quick but the staff really hurried everyone through which was annoying, and I had a holyshitholyshitholyshit internal monologue going when actually face to face with the boys. So I only managed a weak “thank you” to Gongchan who said it back (he’s so sweet ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥) and I blurted out a rather embarrassing “I love you!!” to Sandeul ahahaha god so much for being a cool, mature noona.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The walk back to the hotel was short, although we did wind up briefly walking in the wrong direction somehow because I can’t be trusted with directions even if the distance is only a few blocks. Our flight home was around 11am so we planned to get up extra early to have plenty of time for Janel to get through additional screening.

Aaaand then in the morning the flight was delayed to the afternoon, which would cause us to miss our connecting flight. So we had to book a whole new trip which didn’t leave until 3:20 pm.

Getting through security wasn’t too bad for either of us, and we waited around watching B1A4 fancams and reading fan accounts. As it got close to departure there were some confusing announcements about delays and we found out our gate had changed with no warning. Also the flight was slightly delayed. Luckily (?), our connecting flight in Vegas was also delayed. Still, by the time we got there we only had 15 min before we began boarding. 

(Also, even the airport in Vegas has slots lol.)

It was a veeery turbulent ride back. All of our flights for this trip have been turbulent, but that last one was the worst. I’m not afraid of flying but I can now understand how some people could be. At one point I looked over at Janel and said, “I hope we don’t die.” If the plane went down I decided I would just pray for a quick death and also to be reborn as a cat so I can spend my life eating, sleeping, and being petted.

Finally, around midnight, we were back in KC.

Me: Let’s never go to California again. Next time there’s a concert, NY or Chicago or even Jersey is fine. Janel: SF is a flaming trash heap. It is the Tumblr of cities.

Sorry, SF, I liked you for years but now I am okay with never setting foot in you again.

But still: WORTH IT.

[ecotone99]

[SF] Black Dove

(This the first short story I've written and I know it's not perfect so, I'd really appreciate unfiltered honest critique)

​

Amelia Davis or Miss Scarlet as her clients formally knew her, was waiting in the lobby of some company the name of which eluded her, standing over the reception desk. She’d stood her ground threatening to make a scene if she didn’t receive the remaining hundred credits owed to her. And now the young brunette at the front desk was currently waiting on word from her boss, all the while avoiding eye contact.Biding her time Amelia gazed around the lobby, taking notice of all the amenities surrounding her. A gym, rest area, restaurant, gift shop, cafeteria, laundry room, and another restaurant. All crammed onto the first floor conveniently placed to meet those who entered, and those who tried to leave the building. ”Miss Scarlet”said the receptionist ”the money’s been transferred to your account."

“I’ll take your word for it” Amelia coldly responded”but if you’re lying to me, don’t be surprised if you see me here again”

“Should I call an auto-cab for you Ms.Scarlet?” said the receptionist hiding disdain under her words.

“No.”replied Amelia”I’ll just get a regular one out front."

No way in hell was Amelia going to get into one of those self-driving death traps. Especially since the terrorist attack in the unemployment district(auto-cab, hacker, full-speed, protest) and everything that followed. A private military was hired by the city to feign action until the whole incident was forgotten. And now, billboards advertising the benefits of hiring your own private military covered the sprawl of the unemployment district.

Walking away she looked into her purse, rummaging through it for a while before letting out a self-contemptuous moan. The thick velvet smoke leftover from the previous day’s mountain fires occluded anything and everything outside the lobby doors, and she’d unfortunately forgotten a scarf. She could’ve sneaked onto one of the employee transport busses waiting underground, but she’d draw too much attention with her leopard print coat, black heels, and all. So with her purse securely around her shoulder, she wrapped the inside of her left elbow around her nose and mouth, and ventured out into the afternoon haze. Nothing outside, except for a space extending a few feet ahead, was visible the sky included. She inched closer to what she suspected was the curb, holding her hand out ahead of her feeling for something solid. The wind whipped her hair into a frenzy and the air smelled of stale gasoline. So, when she felt the vibration of a cab under her fingers, it was ever more satisfying.

Inside the cab, it was uncomfortably cold, with the ventilators on full blast cleaning the air. “Where to?” The driver said looking through his rear-view mirror.

“Downtown, 34th street” Amelia said.

He tapped the destination into the sonar GPS attached to the windshield. It buffered for a moment, then displayed a map, showing in real time the positions of every other vehicle currently on the road. ”Price’s on the console.” The driver said.

A console etched into the back of the brown leather bench the driver sat in turned on. The screen screen flashed in green the amount - 13 credits - along with an arrow pointing down to the fingerprint scanner. She placed her right thumb on the scanner changing the flashing numbers into a message displaying “Thank You, Come Again”. The screen turned black before being flooded with a torrent of advertisements and news reports. The terrorist attack was being reported by a variety of different news sites, all contradicting each other. And ads selling virtual assistants and pills which increased focus floated about the interface around a stationary political ad center screen. A tan green eyed face was smiling back at the viewer, with a loop of a pre-recorded campaign message playing in the background.

“I, Carter Hamlin, am running to be re-elected as California state governor, I hope you vote right when the time comes .”.

The smoke outside her window feigned the passing of time on what should’ve been a short ride. She opened her purse and took out a paper thin phone making sure that the money she’d indignantly waited for in that lobby, was paid in full. 20 minutes with a junior company exec got her 700 credits. All that he makes and he still tries to rip me off she thought to herself.

“Dammit!” Suddenly screamed the driver hitting the breaks.”the city needs to get rid of these auto-cabs,”he said.The auto-cabs were bad enough even on the clearest days. But on a day like this, putting a blind man in the front seat wouldn’t make a difference. Maybe there’d be less casualties Amelia thought.

Her apartment building, a pale white arcology, materialized through the smoke. Faintly incandescent in the twilight haze. Slowing down, the cab came to a halt in front of the entrance doors and she bolted out making a blind run directly into the lobby. Attempting to purge the smoke from her lungs, she breathed in the aura of the room. Bare cement walls, white ceiling tainted brown by water damage, and an oak floor freckled by mildew. Light barely penetrated the layered bulletproof windows, keeping the room in half darkness. The deafening dissonance of a rusted motor signified an elevator’s descent. A buzz came from the wall to her right, and the elevator doors creaked open. Dirty yellow light illuminated the steel interior tattooed with various obscenities. Despite the squalor she still felt comfortable ensconced within the dilapidated walls slowly ascending to her floor. The doors opened to a narrow dark hallway. A flickering led placed halfway down acted as a futile source of illumination, but Amelia had lived there long enough to navigate to her room in the darkness. Her footsteps were drowned out by the cacophony that leaked through paper thin walls. The sound of TV’s, music, and domestic dispute all mixing and echoing off one another. She stopped in front of her door and placed her retina through the peephole scanner unlocking the apartment.

Warm light wafted into the darkness from the windows on the wall across from her. Through them stood a billboard advertising the re-election of a certain green eyed governor. His glistening eyes intently focused upon the room. The door lock clicked behind her like the click of prison bars on cold stone. Directly in front of her was a short glass table. Flanked by a couch on it’s left, and a TV on its right. In the same room was also a kitchen, only reachable via walking sideways through the furniture, as well as a bedroom/bathroom combination adjacent to the room. She threw herself on the couch and used the soles of her feet to pull off her heels. Her closed eyes were directed up at the ceiling touched by the soft light of the setting sun. She was dreaming up plans for the night , when her buzzing phone roused her awake. She held it up to her face, and saw that she’d been matched. It was ’NQA', ‘no questions asked’. Shady, but it was paying 1800 credits for an hour, a lot for some of the high rollers even. She accepted the job which wasn’t set to happen for a couple hours. Until then, she proceeded as planned and plundered from the kitchen a half empty bottle of ersatz wine.

What was left of the day’s smoke had dissipated into a faint nocturnal fog . Various lights of various colors from various sources were dilating through the fog as Amelia looked through her cab window. She had entered the business district, where skyscrapers loomed tall like giant gravestones. The cab stopped in the shadow of a hotel squeezed between two monoliths. A door man dressed in red opened for her the stained glass double doors. Both framed within steel and reinforced against Molotovs and anything combustive. The chandelier drowned the lobby in an iridescence. Shimmering like a diamond. She walked towards the automated receptionists lined up to the right of the grand staircase draped in velvet. She placed her thumb on the fingerprint scanner and out from a slot came a room card.

The elevator opened on the top floor and she turned right heading for the suite positioned at the end of the hallway buzzing twice when she got there. A young man stood on the other side of the door. His free hand keeping the door open and the other fidgeting with a phone. He had long dark hair and was wearing a black suit, with a blue undershirt, buttoned up to the neck. “You're Miss Scarlet?” He said looking up from his phone.

“That’s me,” Amelia responded, feigning a smile.

“You can come right in” he said.”the bathroom’s over there” he said pointing to his left.

The walls were cream white with a tint of gold. The front half of the floor was brown oak, and the back half was velvet carpet upon which a pink bed stood. In the bathroom, Amelia took off her leopard print coat, the red brassiere underneath, her black heels, and leather skirt. Revealing a tattoo of a dove on the back of her right thigh. Just above the back of her knee. He was sitting in a baroque style chair when she came out. One of many scattered about the room. Amelia slowly walked over to his side and bent down.His manner told her that he wasn’t interested in talking so she rushed her routine along. She placed both hands on his lap and worked them up to his chest. She unbuttoned his shirt and rubbed her gentle hands on his skin before going in for a kiss.

On the wall behind the chair upon which the nameless man sat, a television was mounted to the wall. It acted as a mirror in which the coital activities of the two parties were reflected. But one room over, a man was watching through the two way glass it also acted as. A mounted camera was next to him, pointed through the window at the nude bodies. Recording their sexual fervor.

Upon completion they both laid on the bed looking up at the ceiling. Amelia after a while got up and walked over to the bathroom. Where she dressed and took her phone from her bag making sure she’d been compensated. She stepped out of the bathroom and slowly left the suite staying silent all the way. When she was out of the room and down the elevator, the nameless man still laying on the bed, turned his head towards the blackness of the TV mounted on the wall. The man in the room knocked twice on the glass and yelled to the other side “We got it!”

By midnight Amelia was back in her apartment sitting on the couch. A glass of wine in her hand. She was watching TV, and the game show that she’d landed on had gone to commercial. The commercials were whirring by her at high speed. Soda, deodorant, chips, soda, soda, deodorant, then they came to stop. A brown haired woman materialized in front of a white background, wearing a blue monochrome pant suit, standing erect and with a stern expression.

”Hello”she said in a somber tone.”Our lovely state is dying. From the fires, unemployment riots, and disregard for public safety. It’s clear that things need to change. That’s why I, Kimberly Wilson, am running for state Governor. If you care about this lovely state, vote for Wilson in the next election .” The message was followed by more fast moving redundant commercials before going back to the show. But by then, Amelia was already fast asleep.

Her head was throbbing with pain when she awoke. She lifted her face from her bed she’d somehow made it to the night before and grabbed her vibrating phone. She suspected it to be another match hoping it wasn’t anytime soon. She was proven wrong. Her phone was hit by a torrent of news alerts. “Governor Candidate Kim. Wilson drops out of race….found cheating on husband…married for 10 years…three kids together...incriminating video released”. Kim Wilson dropping out of the race didn’t interest Amelia much nor did her “cheating on her husband”. But the “incriminating video” part was enough to keep her awake. With a couple swipes of the finger and presses of her thumb, she eventually came upon the video.

It opened with the camera pointed at the floor. The floor is covered in velvet carpet. The camera slowly moved up, capturing the back of a man’s leg tensed up in motion. It then continued up, showing the pale back of a woman’s right leg bent on soft pink covers. The eeriness of the video made Amelia slightly uneasy, but the eerie feeling gave way to shock when she found the tattoo of a dove on Ms.Wilson’s back thigh. The same tattoo she had, the same place she had it. Before she could accurately comprehend the similarity, the camera suddenly zoomed out, revealing the room. Scattered with baroque chairs, a floor was half oak half velvet with a bed upon the velvet end, and walls painted white with a golden tint. The same room she was in the night before. And she was certain the woman in the video was her. She recognized the moaning of her voice, the pallor of her skin, and the tattoo on the back of her thigh. As well as the man, copulating inside of her.

A perplexed wave came over her. She expected to see her own face when the woman turned her head, but instead she saw the brown haired countenance of Kimberly Wilson. She dropped her phone onto her bed, and stood up erect, putting her hands on her head. Amelia assumed she had lost her mind but a part of her knew this wasn’t impossible. Getting a result this good would be expensive but not impossible. She’d slept with guys who’d worked for companies like these. And with that prospect of her insanity started fading away.

A loud knocking came from the door, further perturbing her. She crossed through the living room glowing with the faint light of dawn. Her mind was still reeling from the polarizing revelation she’d come upon. So the cautionary measure she always took of looking through her door hole slipped her mind. This negligence was rewarded with a blunt impact to her face, knocking her unconscious.

Her living room was now a warm pink, as the sun arose over the horizon. She came to, not knowing where she was. She assumed she’d awoken in the room of one of her matches before she tasted the blood trickling down from her nose. The video, and face of Kimberly Wilson came speeding to her foreconcious, gripping her with a sudden fear. She realized she was still in her living room laying on her couch, held down by the gloved hands of two men in black suits. Both with brown hair, one a little more plump than the other. Every attempt she made at resistance was futile, weak by being knocked out from what she suspected was a punch. She heard a slapping sound, and looked towards the kitchen. A blonde haired man in a black suit was at the counter, with his back towards her slipping on a pair of latex gloves.”What are you doing” Amelia said weakly.

The man didn’t respond. Instead she heard the unzipping of a bag and saw him put a vial on the wood counter. He turned around revealing his look of indifference. He was wearing a blue latex glove on his right hand. And in that hand he held a hypodermic needle, which he flicked with the index finger of his other hand, also in blue latex. Overcome with fear, Amelia attempted to scream but a hand came over her mouth. The man holding the needle, slowly walked over to her, kneeled down and grasped her bare left foot. He gripped it firmly and with an apparent expertise injected a clear substance underneath the nail of her large toe. To no avail she kept squirming and resisting not stopping until a great lethargy came over her.

Her movements became weaker until they wanted to stillness, and with that the two men released their grip of her. She found that she couldn’t move or talk. She was paralyzed. The men, not saying a word throughout their entire intrusion, cleaned up and exited the room, leaving the needle on the counter. Amelia, only able to move her eyes scanned the entire room pointlessly looking for a way out of this. Her breath was getting shorter and it was getting harder to breathe. A few moments passed before she realized she was dying. She pointed her eyes out the window gazing upon the city. The skyline was silhouetted by the morning sky and the faint light illuminated the billboard across her window. The face of Governor Hamlin was featured prominently with a wide smile, and looking back at her, as life exited her body, were his bright green glistening eyes.

A week after her body was found the papers finally got around to publishing her obituary. Under the headline “Governor Hamlin reelection in landslide”, it was written in small print hastily written to save space.

“Sex Worker, 28, dead from overdose. Found dead in her apartment.”

submitted by /u/lordisgood54 [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/3cB5ECw

[shirlleycoyle]

Death and Other Gentrifying Neighborhoods

What you’re about to read—a deft, darkly provocative vision of a near-future that encompasses climate change, sexuality, and the politics of gentrification, to note just a few themes here—is one of the richest, most densely idea-packed speculations you’re ever likely to get your eyeballs on. And it could only have come from the mind of Sam J. Miller, SF writer, community organizer, and author of the Nebula-nominated Blackfish City. I won’t spoil this electrifying piece any further—enjoy. -the Ed.

People say you can’t tell the difference when they aren’t wearing their armbands, but that’s bullshit. Anyone with eyes and even a shred of insight can identify a reboot. Especially when one is fucking you. Especially when they aren’t wearing a condom.

“Sorry,” Ejj said, pulling out. “I got carried away.” “It’s cool,” I said. “If I was worried I would have told you to stop.”

I was super worried. Supposedly reboot syphilis was fucking nuts, having evolved to survive the nano-lymph that kept reboots from rotting. I told myself that was propaganda, more bullshit about reboots being sick, evil, dangerous, crazy. But I did not completely convince myself.

Ejj sat. Lit a cigarette. Air horns sounded, outside. Stalled boats on the Biscayne Boulevard canal. Miami mid-afternoon; just another coastal city abandoned by almost everyone, reclaimed by reboots. I hated my job, but it did allow for moments like this one.

His body was beautiful. I let my fingers trace his jawline, the stubble that would never grow longer than it was. Shame leaked into my arteries ( corpse-fucker) but the sensation was not completely unpleasant. A spatter of raised flesh lumps lay across his stomach. Posthumous grafting. “Is that where it happened?” I asked.

“It’s rude to ask that,” he said. “I’m sorry—I didn’t know.”

I did know. But he’d just ejaculated inside me, so I figured we had reached a higher level of intimacy. Apparently Ejj agreed, because he laughed and said, “Yeah, that’s it—ICE camp perimeter bomb shrapnel. He bled out on the way back to his cell.”

This surprised me. Most reboots didn’t want to know about the people who had occupied their bodies before. “Do you remember it?” I whispered, almost against my will.

He shook his head sadly, but only after a very slight pause. Like maybe he did, but didn’t care to share something so personal and painful. That’s what had caught my eye, when I’d seen him on the sex app. The thumbnail was all brute scowling studliness, but then I’d clicked in and the full-screen version showed me something else in the eyes. Something fragile.

“I know why you’re here,” he said, and put a hand on my thigh. “Of course you do,” I said, grinning. “No,” he said, abruptly. “I know why you’re in Miami.”

I held tight to the smile on my face, so he wouldn’t see the sudden fear.

“You’re here working on the server farms. Aren’t you?” “Yeah,” I said.

There was no sense lying about it. Telecom employees were flooding the flooded cities. The ones that hadn’t prepared for the rising seas, and died, and been revived by the reboots. Where better to build the new solar-powered water-cooled server banks, than the cities that had nothing left but sunlight and seawater? The fact that doing so would cause massive disruptions to the people who lived there didn’t seem to bother anyone. Because the people who lived there were dead.

Death is just another country to colonize, my supervisor Mitchell had told me, before my boat went east from New Orleans. The afterlife is one more neighborhood to gentrify. He paid me shit and he thought he was a poet. He was also a fellow reboot fetishist, and thought that made us kindred souls. Of course he swore it wasn’t a fetish. So did I. Fetish sounded bad. Just a preference, our profiles said.

But, yeah, it sort of was a fetish. I could see that, now, with Ejj’s sad eyes on mine. He was a person. My fantasies of being held down and ravaged by a corpse hadn’t taken that into account. I felt bad enough about it that when he said, “Come with me? I want to show you something,” I said yes, even though I knew better.

One on one they’re harmless, Mitchell had said, wiping wet egg from his mouth, mostly. Sometimes you get one that’s, I dunno, glitchy, crazy, but mostly they know better. When they get together, that’s when you need to worry. We’ve been hearing about these reboot resistance cells… who knows when they might start acting crazy. You don’t wanna be in the wrong place at the wrong time, end up as That Guy who gets kidnapped and decapitated on camera.

Mitchell disgusted me, and he worked me too hard, but that didn’t make him wrong. Miami was hot and wet, when we walked out into it. I blinked in the bright light. Ejj did not. I wondered if he’d overclocked his eyes. We stepped onto the pontoon walkway and headed west.

“So your” (don’t say ‘predecessor,’ they hate that) “body… it was a refugee in an ICE camp,” I said, trying to sound unafraid. “What about your mind? Who was he? Or she.”

“The dichotomy is a false one,” he said. “Thinking like that—body versus brain—is exactly why pre-corpses like you got us into this mess.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, not flinching at the slur. “I’m the product of an ignorant and biased system. Enlighten me. Deconstruct that dichotomy.”

Ejj held eye contact, scanning my face for sincerity. “Fine,” he said. “So, sixty years ago, we develop the tech to do brain uploads. Man’s triumph over death, right? Live forever, if you can afford it. The developing world has too many young corpses and the developed one has too many old minds. Two birds, one stone. Reboot the corpses, slot them full of nano-lymph so they never rot or age, wipe the brain, upload a new one. Except, surprise. The mind is only half of who you are. The body is the other half. Put an old brain into a fresh body and you don’t get to start over—you get a completely new person.”

Wind hit me. Colder than I’d been expecting. Soon the sun would set. We were leaving the heart of the reboot settlement, approaching the server farms that already existed.

“A woman’s new body goes into full PTSD fight response when her husband of forty years touches her. A famous concert pianist’s new hands can’t make chords. And a thousand other tiny differences. Are you really so ignorant you’ve never heard any of this?”

“No,” I said. I’d read all the best reboot authors. Memorized all their music. But I wasn’t about to say that to Ejj. Some folks got touchy about pre-corpses laying claim to their culture. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

“I’m my own person,” he said. “I’m not Ellicent Troff, senior vice president of communications at Smeerp!, or Jagajeet Bahawalanzai, Bangladeshi mason who died outside of Trenton. I’m me.”

The intensity of his gaze unsettled me. I remembered his picture on the app. What if it wasn’t fragility I’d seen in his eyes? What if it was crazy? Like any enlightened person, I knew it was mostly lies, when the media said reboots were dangerous. The news stories about assaults and murders and drug trafficking by reboots—I figured these were statistical anomalies, repeated only to sow fear and support for pro-incarceration politicians. But here, now, in the dying sunlight, alone with a beautiful man who had already ejaculated inside me and could murder me effortlessly, I was not so confident.

“People paid millions to bring their loved ones back, but what they got were strangers. And these strangers started walking out on them. Forming reboot settlements, far away from the pre-corpses who didn’t understand them. Suddenly no one was in a hurry to triumph over death anymore.”

We’d reached the servers. Great flippered pods, rotating too slowly to be seen by the naked eye. Bored people in canoes paddled slowly up and down the expanse of them, shotguns sleeping in their laps. Already, they were too closely packed on the side streets. Soon the pods would spread east, right down the center of the boulevard canal, disrupting the reboot thoroughfare.

“Until these new server farms. Suddenly you could upload into the cloud and live forever that way. Pay poor people shit to take care of you. Pre-corpses and reboots alike. And if it wasn’t really you that got uploaded, who gave a shit? You were just data. You wouldn’t be making your loved ones’ lives miserable until they died and joined you. You’re a tertiary security analyst, right?”

“How did you know that?” I asked. “We’re blowing this server strip up next week,” he said, unsmilingly. “Wait—what?” “Our Opa-Locka fish farm has been diverting waste for explosives. We’ve got enough to take out almost half of it.”

I stammered, “You know that’s crazy, right? This is barely a tenth of the total servers in Miami alone. To say nothing of the state, the eastern seaboard, the fucking planet…” “We know all that.” “And… the system has massive redundancies built in. At any given moment the files on this server are stored on 499 others, scattered around the globe. Blowing this one up will have no impact on the people stored here.” “Won’t it, though? There’s a psychological value, to an attack like that. Lets them know we’re not so weak they can keep fucking us raw.”

I winced, at the implied insult. “But they won’t—” “They’ll be forced to increase security. Not just here—at all their server farms. That’ll exponentially increase the cost of operations.”

The protests died in my mouth. It would not shut.

“Why do you think I picked you?” he asked. “You… picked me? I’m the one who hit you up.” “You hit up ten of us this morning, didn’t you? I know you did. Half of us were sitting together at the time.”

Fear had frozen my whole body. I couldn’t make myself nod, but I did not need to.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I finally found the strength to ask. Ejj laughed. “What, you think we’re going to kill you?” “Or kidnap me,” I said. “Maybe cut my head off on the air, later.” Ejj’s laugh cut out abruptly. “You people are seriously sick.” He kept walking. I followed, too frightened not to. Who might be watching, from the big broken-glass towers that surrounded us?

“You could run tell your superiors,” he said. “Maybe they could avert this attack. But we’d strike elsewhere. And they’d be forced to beef up security all the same. That, too, would increase the cost of operations. A very acceptable outcome, as far as we’re concerned. But there’s another option here. One where you pretend this whole conversation never happened.”

“Why would I…”—but my voice trailed off, thinking of Mitchell, cheerfully fucking the dead boys he’d made homeless.

“We’ve been watching you for a while,” Ejj said. “I’ve seen your posts. I know your heart’s in the right place. But I also know you haven’t fully understood the consequences of your actions. You think because you scold someone for calling us zombies online your conscience is clear, but then you help the people destroying our homes. Between getting called names and having my community dismantled, I’d much rather you call me names.”

A bell clanged, on a buoy somewhere. Dogs barked. Chickens squabbled. This wasn’t just where people lived. This was someone’s home. Was Mitchell what I wanted to be?

“Let me guess,” Ejj said. “They told you that loyal service to the company would be rewarded. That they’d upload you, once you got to a certain level of corporate investiture. Didn’t they?”

I didn’t answer. He knew it was true.

“Did you ever stop to think about how stupid that is?”

I shook my head. I really hadn’t.

“There’s fifty thousand tertiary security analysts at your company alone. To say nothing of primary, secondary… at all the other telecoms… Server capacity is, what, an additional five thousand uploads a year?” “If we keep growing…” “I know that’s what you tell yourself. Why you do what you do, for them. When you know, on some level, that it’s wrong. And you have to see that the math doesn’t track.” The pity in Ejj’s eyes opened up a tiny crack inside me. “Whether they’ll find a way to fire you before your investiture, or just fucking lie and say they uploaded you, or something else entirely, I don’t know.”

A septic smell wafted south.

“You could help us out a hell of a lot, Connor.” His hand was warm on my arm. Ejj sat. Called hello to a woman in a passing skiff. Her smile was magnificent. Between Mitchell and Ejj, there was really no question.

I sat. My bare feet slid into the cold salty water. Several stories above us, a child’s scream collapsed into laughter.

“Hypothetically,” I whispered. “What would you want me to do?”

Sam J. Miller is a writer and a community organizer. His debut novel The Art of Starving (HarperTeen) was one of NPR’s Best Books of 2017, and won the Andre Norton Award for Best Young Adult Science Fiction Novel. His current novel, Blackfish City (Ecco Press; Orbit) was a “Best Book of the Year” according to Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, and was called ” an action-packed science fiction thriller” and “surprisingly heartwarming” by the Washington Post. His stories have appeared in over a dozen “year’s best” anthologies. He’s a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Workshop, and a winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in New York City, and at samjmiller.com.

Death and Other Gentrifying Neighborhoods syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[bridgetoyen]

After a long break, a long update.

I started this tumblr account three years ago and upheld it for maybe 6 months. My life went through a lot of changes and this took a back burner, up until I ended up just deleting tumbler altogether. I was working a lot, going through relationship changes and my health continued to get worse.

I’m 25 years old, and I’ve been plagued with pain and esophageal discomfort for several years. I’ve seen different doctors who threw more and more medications at me, dismissing me as another GERD patient and sending me one my way.

Funny this about that is I never had one ask me any questions. Not really. The first time I had a GI doctor ask me what my pain felt like was about 6 months ago. I told her it feels like I’m swallowing razor blades. Her response?

“You don’t have GERD.”

What?? I’ve been told that for years, never had a single doctor question it or prove deeper. I was up to twice to daily dose of a protein pump inhibitor, max doses of acid reducers and I was having to take several supplements to offset the deficiencies I was building from taking those. I had a liquid suspension that I would drink if nothing else could stop the pain, but I lived every single day chugging water and avoiding acidic triggers. The constant need to be aware of everything was making me anxious, and after living with anxiety for years I realized I wasn’t sleeping or eating, and I started an anxiety medication as well.

I switched insurance from Kaiser to Blue Cross because kaiser literally doubled their prices and took away parts of their coverage. I wasn’t happy to switch. I was worried about establishing new doctors and the headache of moving over my prescriptions. I was lucky enough to find a doctor right across the street from my work, so I went in and had a check up and to move my scrips. The doctor was great and helped me out and was more thorough than my past doctors.

My anxiety continued to worsen. I called back to see if my new doctor could up my dosage and they said that she had actually left on maternity leave a few days prior, so they set me up with another doctor within the practice. I went in and talked to him about everything and he said that he would up the dosage for me, but from what I had said to him he had concerns that I wasn’t experiencing anxiety. He upped my dosage and said that if that doesn’t make a positive impact on my mental health he needed me to see a psychiatrist. He believed that I had OCD.

That was a huge surprise. I had thought that my anxiety and Type A personality were disconnected. As my Type A personality got increasingly stronger, so did my anxiety. Long story short, the med increase didn’t help and I have OCD. I’m now on a totally different medication (geared towards OCD) and have a better understanding of how my mind works. PSA: Mental health is only a stigma if you let it be! Don’t hold yourself back from living a happy, healthy life!

Now that my OCD was slowly becoming less of a problem as I began getting psychiatric and therapeutic treatment for it, I decided that I needed to address the constant body aches, skin sensitivity and general lethargic life I had been leading. I went to see a rheumatologist to discuss fibromyalgia. That sounds like a jump, but it really isn’t- it runs in my family and I was experiencing the exact issues that my aunt had at my age before she was diagnosed. The med I was put on for OCD also treats small fiber pain, so that was a step forward. However, to be diagnosed with fibro you have to have a certain number of trigger points on your body. I was 3 triggers from having the appropriate amount. It was frustrating and devastating, too much of my brain was screaming that it was in my head and I was terrified of being labeled a hypochondriac. I had X-rays and other scans done to prove that there was nothing physically wrong- everything came up clean. I let that issue sit for awhile so I could lick my wounds and reapproach it when I had the energy.

I get my medication mailed from the pharmacy because I get more for spending less, and I noticed that in between a fill, my dosage was altered. I called my doctor to have him fix it and he asked how long I was supposed to stay on that dosage- because it’s supposed to be a 6 week regimen. He thought it was a mistake when reviewing my medications and fixed it for me.

I had been on a short term medication for over 4 years. The long term side effects were nasty. Every fibro symptom, all of my pain and fatigue (unrelated to my throat) was all explained. He sent me to a new GI, the GI who told me that I don’t have GERD.

She took me off of the medications immediately and ordered three different tests for me- an endoscopy, a barium swallow and a manometry.

She did the endoscopy a week later. I had been fasting for 18 hours and there was still some food sitting in my esophagus before the LES valve to go into my stomach. Red flag. She said that every biopsy and every part of my GI tract that she looked at showed zero signs of EVER having reflux.

I had the manometry two weeks later, as early as I could schedule it. It was a horrible test... you have to be awake, no sedation. I had to snort lidocaine gel and they shoved a tube down my nose and down all the way into my stomach. The test showed negative pressure in my esophagus. It doesn’t contract at all.

The barium swallow test showed the same thing. My esophagus expands when anything enters it.

Both of the tests confirm Type 2 Achalasia. It’s a rare, progressively degenerative autoimmune disease. The nerve cells in my esophagus are being killed by my immune system. It shares genotypes with multiple sclerosis and lupus. It’s unknown what causes it, and there is no cure.

It’s not good news. It’s pretty devastating, and I’ve been having a really difficult time coming to terms with it. Being off of all the meds I was on for so many years is amazing. I feel wonderful. I have so much energy and such little pain, aside from the obvious esophageal pain. I’m weaning from the OCD meds that we’re treating fibro pain and going onto one that is OCD specific (and doesn’t make me gain weight, the other one was definitely doing that) and I’m awaiting seeing a specialist who treats Achalasia. There’s a motility clinic in SF that has taken some time to get an appointment at, but there are a few treatment options to help the pain and my quality of life. More updates soon... but it’s been a long ride to get here, so I’m going to try to put more info on here. There isn’t much available out there for this, and I want to do what I can to possibly help someone else.

[beyondenigmablog]

Wow....it (almost) all came true. I am a believer. via /r/tarot

Wow....it (almost) all came true. I am a believer.

So- I'm a 38 year old guy in NYC. When I was a teenager, I got a bit into witchcraft and paganism and used to read tarot cards. I loved the idea of it, but deep down thought maybe I was cheating by using elements of psychology- still...I always believed deep down that there is "more" to life then just science and what we see.

A year ago- I went through one of the worst situations in my life when my loving, kind and compassionate 5 year boyfriend went almost completely cold. I was in SF with he in NYC, and he basically changed almost overnight. Told me he met a new "friend", needed some time apart from us to finish grad school, deal with his moms passing and just wanted to take a break. I was so shocked and surprised by this because none of this was like him, so while I was really sad by it, I respected it and gave him his space.

We didn't talk for 3 months, and during my next trip to NYC, we met and he told me that he had fallen for his "friend" and that the two of them were official now. I was completely flabbergasted by this, especially in the large irony that for years he had complained that the biggest issue he had was the Long Distance, and I was coming back home to NYC in Mid-2017, but the guy he fell for lives in another country.

I took the break-up really, really hard. I decided to resign from my job and need a deep long reset. I decided to use this as an opportunity to think about who I was and maybe do some things I'd always wanted to do, so in March of 2017, I left my job, gave up my lease, sold my car and made plans to take a 3 month adventure in South America. I bought my ticket for the end of March, and 3 days before I went, I was just endlessly wondering about the city and realized I had stepped in front of a psychic store. I figured "what the hell" and went in.

She at first told me that though she accepted walk-ins, she had no availability that day and asked if I could come back tomorrow. I was about to walk out and she gently put her hand on me. I turned around and she said "wow, okay, you are sending off a HUGE amount of energy- good and bad. Let me see if I can move my next appointment".

She came back 10 minutes later and was able to accomodate me. She gave me an interesting spread that I hadn't seen before.

Within 45 seconds I was crying. The only thing she said was "as you shuffle, focus on the big issue that is troubling you".

She said: - You've been deeply hurt and betrayed by the one closest to you. There is a "J" in the name. ( I told her at this point that my partners first and last name started with a 'J')

A new influence has come into this persons life and he or she is very addicted, if not obsessed with it. This needs to happen and he needs the space to experience this. He or she loves you very very much and your absence from his life is hurting him, but he is very good at running from his feelings.

This man is tall, dark and handsome, he smiles easily but carriers a great deal of weight on his shoulders that he doesn't show.

I see you going on a long journey, somewhere to the deep south in the mountains. I see you vanishing for awhile and coming back different- this is good, this is what you need to do.

Your next job will be something to do with music or the arts.

You will rediscover old passions and loves. This breakup needed to happen because you lost yourself over the last few years, and you need to find yourself again- but the two of you are soulmates, and by the end of the year, you will begin a path to being reunited.

I see a great deal of money coming to you from an unexpected source, it will come sometime in the late summer/early fall

The new element in your lovers life is temporary. It is a sudden and unexpected addiction, but by the end of the year, it will move on.

Your lover will not know success while the two of you are broken up. He is only successful with you because you believe in him and support his dreams. He is working on a project now that will fail, and over the summer he will begin to lose sleep realizing he made the wrong decision.

At some point in the fall, he will reach out to you because he needs something. You need to forgive him while you are on your journey, forgive him, forgive yourself, and focus on learning patience, positivity and clarify. When he reaches out to you, it will be the start of the two of you reconnecting. People will tell you to move on, people will tell you that he isn't worth it. They mean well and don't want to see you hurt, but your bonds are too strong and you will be reunited. Just do not give up on him. He will be lost if you do. You are the more dominant sign, either a Capricorn or a Taurus, so you let go slower. He is the submissive sign, either Libra or Pisces. He is indecisive and will wnat to come back to you- but if you decide to move on, you won't look back. Don't do this, while it hurts now, begin realizing you've been given a wonderful gift with this, to better understand yourself, him, your relationship and the world.

Everything she said was right. Everything she said came true:

I went to South America for 3 months and became a different person. I was always so shy and introverted, and I became extroverted and started to really embrace life. Conquered some of my fears (I went snorkeling and hiking up mountains), met some wonderful new friends.

I moved back to New York and was about to take a job with a small software company, then out of nowhere a very popular music company reached out, and 3 weeks later I began my job with them.

After 14 years hiatus, I started playing saxophone and composing music.

On the weirdest and most spiritual day of my trip, I was in a tiny abandoned colonial town of Argentina. Feeling so sad, but at the same time so peaceful. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and instead this weird feeling came over me, and instead of focusing on my feelings, I instead focused on his. On what the entirety of the relationship felt like from his side. For a good 2 hours I was almost in a trance, almost feeling like our souls were connecting...a phrase I never would've said before...when I "came to"- I was in tears. I understood him better then he understands himself, and I was shocked and awed to discover that during the breakup he said "I think we are just different people"- and in that transcending time, I realized- it's not just that we are "different"- we are polar opposites. In everything. Music tastes, food, politics, religion, how we communicate, how we unwind, what we like, dislike, how we travel. Literally everything has us on polar sides. It makes absolutely no sense on paper, but yet the relationship worked so much because we complimented each other perfectly.

I am a Taurus. He is a Libra.

The guy he left me for is a Pisces. Charming and seductive. I finally had the courage after 4 months to look at my exes social media page and saw a few of their pictures. Was quite entertained to see that the guy actually looks like me. Tall, broad, full beard, short dark hair, dark eyes. Tattooed.

My ex finished grad school in December of 2016. He decided to invest in a documentary. He spent months finishing it and toured it across the US. He then needed to raise 10,000 to submit to film festivals and ran a fundraiser for it. He was able to raise 700 dollars. He posted a note on the homepage saying "sorry- this was a fail guys - but thanks for everyone who contributed!"

My ex and I met for coffee 2 months ago just to keep things light. He has lost his dad, mom, sister and technically moved to NYC for me, then I left to SF for a job. So he has huge issues with abandonment and loneliness. I told him that we had been together for a long time and while the romantic feelings may have passed, I didn't want to lose him from my life. I realized I had forgiven us both, and had so much clarify into the situation. I asked about his bf and it was clearly awkward and uncomfortable, but he still lives in another country and my ex mentioned off-hand that he was actually thinking of buying a house in Europe before the end of the year.

My company made me a very generous salary offer. About 30% more then what I was making at my last company. It included some equity that I didn't really think about, but when I went to an account, the equity is valued at an astronimcal amount. Completely unexpected. In 6 months the first series vests (and it's more then enough to pay off the entire South America trip debt easily and still leave a ton left over)

3 days ago, on October 22- for the first time in more than a year, my ex texted me. He skipped the pleasantries and went right to it. "Hi- I hope it's okay that I ask this, but I just saw a job on LinkedIn and it's perfect for me and it looks like you are connected to an executive there. Is there anyway you can help me network?" I said sure, looked over his resume, made a few pointers and then reached out to my contact with my highest recommendation. We chatted a little and he said that candidly his life wasn't going too well- that he and his new bf were supposed to take a trip for his 30th birthday but they needed to postpone it a few months, that my ex currently hates his job and is miserable, and to add insult to injury his roommates decided to not renew the lease and he had to move to a crappy apartment share in a bad neighborhood of Queens that he hates. He basically said that his whole life was just "crap" right now. I didn't mention that I had just put a deposit down on a beautiful spacious 2 bedroom in Manhattan.

Literally...every single thing the reader said has come true. I remember being so angry with him, feeling so betrayed , that he was the worst person in the world for leaving me for someone else, for putting me on break. But...during my trip, I forgave him. I took a lot of accountability for what I did wrong too, that I was in part responsible for his decisions. That underneath the hurt and the jealousy, all I felt for him was a tremendous love and that "moving on" was not the right move. I've dated here and there and had some fun, I've healed and seen things with a ton of clarity. It's been an amazing experience...and with 2 months left in the year, I am quite eager to see how this resolves!

Submitted October 26, 2017 at 12:16PM by TheWorstTypo via reddit http://ift.tt/2hc9zeP

[ronaldmrashid]

How To Overcome Money Addiction: A Never Ending Struggle

I’ve got a confession. There’s only about two weeks of living expenses left in my bank account before I go broke. It’s very unsettling that I may have to ask for a loan to make ends meet in case something bad happens. Dad, are you reading this?

In need of some therapy, I discussed my tenuous financial situation with a tennis buddy on the public court one afternoon. He told me to hang in there and revealed a rough patch where he once racked up $50,000 in credit card debt. He felt like he was drowning because he could only afford slightly over the minimum payment each month.

When I asked him what made him go into so much credit card debt, he confessed he has a gambling addiction. Like me, he loves playing Texas no limit hold’em. But unlike me, he decided to venture into the bigger $10/$20 no-limit games where the average player held roughly $5,000 in chips. He got bad-beat one too many times and resorted to withdrawing cash from his credit card at a 24.99% interest rate to feed his poker addiction.

I don’t know how much my tennis buddy makes, but I can’t imagine he makes much more than $65,000 a year working at the San Francisco International Airport. It took about two and a half years for him to get rid of his credit card debt after a family intervention made him stop.

What Happened To All My Money?

So what happened between the time I published my Investment Tracker Spreadsheet in January and now? Like most addicts, I couldn’t control my urge to invest the remainder of my cash balance in a variety of stocks, bonds, and real estate deals. I went from having a cushy ~$150,000 cash in the bank to less than $3,000 in a matter of weeks!

Here’s a weekly spending and investing e-mail update I get from Personal Capital which shows me blowing over $100,000 on investments in December. I ratcheted down spending in the first half of January until I went crazy again with my investments at the end of January and early February.

In the post, The Case For Bonds, I mentioned I wanted to build a $250,000 California municipal bond position over the next 12 months. My goal was to start buying CMF aggressively once the 10-year bond yield hit 2.5%. Well, my target was hit in the second half of December and ran all the way up to 2.6%, so I decided to press without any regard for my liquidity!

Here’s a snapshot from my Citibank wealth management account. Before Trump’s victory, I had $0 in California municipal bonds. Now I’ve got a ~$276,809 position.

I knew from past experience that having much less than six months worth of living expenses starts feeling uncomfortable. I begin to worry about my future. I lose some patience. And, I start hoping that no major investment opportunities occur before I replenish my nut. The whole idea of having enough money to not worry about money goes completely out the window once I get into these addictive phases.

But what’s more, in addition to my new $276,809 CMF new position, I also invested $25,000 in the S&P 500 and $25,000 in an Austin, Texas multi-family real estate crowdfunding deal since the beginning of the year. The market kept showing signs of strength so I wanted to keep participating.

I basically deprived myself of all spending beyond my mortgage in order to invest e.g. “you spent $42 this week” per the e-mail above.

Gambling And Investing Parallels

You may think playing at the poker tables is completely different from investing in the stock market. But you’re wrong. The poker player sits down with the mindset that he has the potential to make a return on his capital. By making high expected value bets, the poker player should win in the long run. This is exactly how I think before deploying any new capital. However, even if you are an 82% favorite to win with pocket Aces against pocket Kings pre-flop, you still have an 18% chance of losing.

A good poker player will realize he can sometimes run bad. He’s disciplined enough to protect his bankroll to fight another day. A bad poker player who cannot control his addiction to gambling will overly commit his bankroll until he runs out of money exactly like I have done. An addicted gambler will resort to borrowing money to keep on playing!

And guess what? Borrow money is what I did. I asked my wife to lend me $10,000 to invest in a particularly attractive real estate crowdfunding investment in Austin, Texas. I barely had the minimum ($15,000), but I borrowed $10,000 from her so I could invest $25,000 instead. If I had more money, I would have probably invested up to $100,000 in this particular deal because I’m all about pressing into the heartland!

The Austin I bought a piece of in January

As an money/investing addict, I see an ENDLESS amount of good investment opportunities. Further, once I believe in a winning idea, I sometimes press to the detriment of proper risk management controls. After all, I did borrow $1,220,000 at the age of 28 after putting down $300,000 for a SF property I purchased at the end of 2004. In retrospect, that sounds nuts!

Knowing my tendency to go “all-in” is the reason why I’ve at least limited most of my public equity and bond investments to large index funds. In the past, I may have bought $200,000 in one stock. Now, I’ll buy $200,000 in an index like the S&P 500, with the understanding I may lose 12% to make 12%, instead of potentially losing 35% to make 35%.

I’ve also become more open to investing in actively managed public or private funds, which do the investing for me. Private funds help with diversification and force me to set aside capital due to my commitment.

Confining myself to index funds is one step in mitigating risk, much like confining myself to playing at the $1/$2 no-limit tables where the average player only has $100 – $200 in chips. But that still leaves my occasional inability to manage liquidity risk.

The Importance Of Liquidity

I’ve got to be much more responsible now that I plan to start a family. Instead of only thinking about myself, I’ve got to think about my wife, a helpless baby, my parents and my in-laws.

In the past, if I went broke, I knew I could subsist off of water and ramen noodles while working a minimum wage job for months until a better opportunity came along. With so many people potentially depending on me, it’s totally irresponsible to be left with so little cash.

We all know the importance of having enough emergency cash to pay for unexpected medical, auto, and housing expenses. I am pleased that ~98% of you can handle a $400 emergency cash expense without having to go into credit card debt or borrow from anyone.

But the other reason for having emergency cash is to take advantage of massive irrational sell-offs! There’s my investing addict talking again.

The Positives Of Being Cash Poor

Despite investing irresponsibly, there are some positives for being cash poor that might help boost your net worth over time. As such, you may consider forcing yourself into cash poor situations.

1) Money becomes much more rewarding. Thanks to my municipal bond purchases, I noticed a nice $1,000 in tax-free income hit my money market account at the end of January because I only had a balance of $3,000. A $1,000 injection is a whopping 33% increase in the balance of my account.

When I had over $100,000 sitting in my savings account, I wouldn’t even notice a $1,000 dividend. What’s the difference between $167,000 and $168,000? When you aren’t excited about money, you start taking money for granted. Now, every dollar that comes in feels rewarding.

2) Sensitive about who owes me money. After going cash broke, I realized a corporate client still owes me $6,000 from three months ago. I had assumed they were just going to automatically pay me within a month. After all, they have all my deposit information on file from a previous deal. Now I’m going to follow up like a bounty hunter to collect what’s rightfully mine!

Here’s a list of all the past due money that’s owed to me:

Corporate C: $6,000

Corporate S: $5,000

Corporate Q: $700

Affiliate F: $450

Affiliate P: $306

Affiliate R: $148

Affiliate W: $72

Personal Consulting Client: $600

Total: $13,276, or more than 4X what I have in my savings account.

3) Motivation to earn increases. Having no money reminds me of the days when I had to flip burgers for six hours straight for just $4/hour. My feet were constantly aching and I felt bad sweating bullets on the disgusting burger paddies. But hey, how else was I supposed to make any money to take a girl to the movies?

Thanks to being almost broke, I recently locked myself up in my place in Lake Tahoe for 10 days and wrote 50 articles. 50 is a ridiculous number for me since I only post about 12-14 articles a month. During my solitary confinement, I also had a money making epiphany that may very well bring in an additional six figures this year. We shall see!

4) More appreciation for what you already have. Like many Americans, I have too much stuff. I’ve been actively giving away things to the Salvation Army and Goodwill for five years in a row and I still have too much! It’s like having a bottomless stomach at an all-you-can-eat buffet table.

As a cash broke guy, I began to appreciate the clothes I haven’t worn by wearing them again. Instead of spending money going out to eat a $60 dry-aged rib-eye, I decided to cook myself some vegetable soup to not only save money, but to eat more healthy. Instead of paying $20 to go watch Rogue One in the movie theatre, I opened up an old picture album and began reminiscing about the good ‘old days.

What I couldn’t believe in the album was that I have pictures of myself and the co-creator of the hit HBO show, Westworld, hanging out in Beijing in 1997! Such a small world. She’s now married to a famous producer/writer and they’re probably one of the most in-demand creators today. Maybe she’ll be willing to do an interview here. That’s an example of how new post ideas keep on popping up on Financial Samurai.

The Return To Riches

What drives my money addiction? I think it all started when I was 12 years old living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The dichotomy in lifestyles between my rich friends and my poor friends was astonishing. It seemed completely unfair that one friend lived in a mansion with three housekeepers and a chauffeur, while another friend lived in a 300 sqft studio with his parents and sister.

I also remember giving one ringgit to a beggar at a Buddhist temple in Penang. As soon as I did, I was swarmed by 15 other women and children who almost dragged me to the ground in order to have whatever was left in my wallet. At age 12, my money addiction gripped my mind because I feared poverty. As an adult, I fear that without enough money, I’ll somehow become a deadbeat father.

I forgot what it was like to live paycheck-to-paycheck, and I’m sorry to all of you who have to go through this experience more frequently. I’m always focused on sending the message of abundance, but sometimes bad things like gambling, accidents, medical emergencies, theft, and robbery have a way of beating us down through no fault of our own.

With a lot of introspection, I hope to gradually ween myself off of this never ending desire for more. In the meantime, I’d like to ask for your understanding when I sometimes go off the rails and seem clueless about the plight of others.

Steps I’ve Taken To Beat Money Addiction:

1) Admit my problem to myself and to others.

2) Write things out in a series of posts such as this one.

3) Left my well-paying job to make 80% less for two years.

4) Focus on work that I enjoy, not work that pays me the most.

5) Try to understand the root cause of the addiction.

Readers, have you ever been broke or lived paycheck-to-paycheck? If so, how did you feel and how did you overcome? Do you have any addictive tendencies you’ve battled or are currently battling? Do you have any sort of money addiction as well? 

from http://www.financialsamurai.com/overcome-money-addiction/

[ecotone99]

[SF] 24 hours

​

MEET ME AT THE AIRPORT AT 9. BE THERE!

I reread the text.

I read it again.

Lillian was an ex-lover of ours. It was mid week but the hassle might be worth it. My beautiful wife Nicole was working from home today. My mind was reeling with the possibilities. I looked at the clock, it was 4:06. I got up and sent a text to my supervisor that I was sick and wouldn’t be in today. I would get some serious shit tomorrow but I was really hoping it would be worth it. I looked at my beautiful wife and then rolled out of bed.

I quietly went through my morning routine. I let the dog out, started coffee fed the dog, blah blah blah. I poured her a cup when she came out. She was still wearing her pajamas as well, the benefits of being able to work from home.

“What’s the occasion? No work?” she asked.

“I called in sick. Lillian texted me. She wants to meet at the airport at 9.” I said. “Can you take off so we can both meet her?”

“Ha!” she said wrapping her arms around me, “And here I thought I was something special. She texted me too. Ya I have enough time off. I’ll take an hour or two.” We shared a brief kiss before I pulled away to flip the bacon. “Just in case she wants to play today, I’ll tell work that I’m not feeling well and may have to take the day off. I’m going to shower and log in for an hour though.”

“Ok. After I eat I will change the oil in my truck and shower then. Don’t take too long, your eggs are going in th pan in four minutes.” I said as I opened the fridge.

A half hour later we had eaten and I put on some work clothes. A half hour after that, I jumped in the shower. I got dressed and went to my computer.

“Woah! All dressed up I see. Hoping to get lucky?” My wife asked when I walked past her.

“Well ya!” I said with feigned sarcasm. If I can’t turn you on I’m hoping for a quickie with her anyway!”

She was smiling but her expression changed and I thought I had gone too far. “I’m thinking about her message. She said to meet her in all caps. She doesn’t always type like that.”

“Maybe she just really wants to see us?”

“Maybe.” She paused, “Maybe it’s more. I mean she works for the government.”

“I think you worry a lot.” I teased.

“Me worried!?! Mister super prepper!?! You are so funny.” She faked an exasperated tone.

We both laughed. “Hey if we leave now I can get us some Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.”I said.

“I can’t leave quite yet.” She returned her attention to her laptop.

“I’ll pick it up and then stop to get you. DD is in the other direction anyway.” I offered.

“Great. Text me.”

I collected my things and headed out for our Prius. I got three coffees and texted my wife. She was waiting in front of the house and we were off to the airport. We got another text from Lillian about where to meet her. We got there and only waited a minute or two before she showed up.

Normally she was a stunning petite blond with never a hair out of place so I immediately knew something was wrong, she was just … off. Her blond hair showed almost a quarter inch of auburn roots, her suit coat was slightly wrinkled, she looked really tired and her makeup was… old? Nicole and I looked at each other with equally surprised expressions so I know she noticed it too.

Lillian paused and quickly kissed us each on the cheek. She then walked away toward a bunch of open seats in a bar area. Since it was so early the bar was still closed. She opened her shoulder bag and removed another smaller bag and pointedly put her phone in it then motioned for us to do the same. After the phones were safely in the small bag she asked, “Do you have any other electronics? It’s really important, ipad, tablet, work phone, nothing?”

We looked at each other and said no.

She looked down at the Rolex on her wrist then back up at us. “I know that this is going to sound like I’m crazy but remember that conversation we had after you two met and before we all had sex the first time? Good. That promise of honesty stands during all of what I’m about to say. I love you both and treasure our friendship beyond anything.”

She spoke so fast I didn’t even have time to get truly fearful or scared.

“You know that virus in Asia? It has mutated. About ten percent of the people don’t die and become immune, about ten percent die outright. About fifty percent die and come back as zombies. The last thirty percent come back as powerful zombies. That’s the only way we can describe them. I put our phones in a bag that blocks all signals. I know they are monitoring me and if I say anything to anyone, the press, you, I mean anyone, they will arrest or just murder me as soon as they can get a goon with a gun to me. Their government and ours are doing their best to cover it up but by tomorrow it will get out. I am heading to D.C. to brief more people but I’m not supposed to even be here now. I was lucky and convinced the pilot to land here rather than Chicago for refueling, otherwise I would not have been able to warn you even this much.”

We sat in stunned silence for several seconds. “You know this for sure? How do you know we have until tomorrow?” I asked.

“I was at the consulate in a meeting with two major pharmaceutical companies and several military people not to mention all the government officials. I was basically in the wrong place at the wrong time. My boss insisted I needed to be there. It wasn’t my specialty but I’ve been in high end, high security meetings before.” She looked at her wrist again. “During the meeting one of the lower ranked military guys tried to leave. A General stood and blocked his way. After a brief exchange in their language the General drew his pistol and shot the man several times, then turned and shot the General that sat next to him at the table. He then put the gun away and explained. The colonel next to him was a known informant to several news agencies. He advised us all to use the same amount of fortitude to give us all as much time as possible to get ahead of this before none of us would have a chance.”

“How did killing those two give you a better chance.”

“All international flights will be grounded in about twelve hours. It will take about twelve more hours for the news to get out and then it will be mass panic. Rioting, police lock downs, martial law. Ugly.”

“But the, I gulped zombies are in Asia. They cant get here.” I heard the tremble in my voice.

“This part gets sketchy. The virus has already been transmitted or transported around the world. We know of dozens of places it has already been suspected with several confirmed.”

“But people should be told!” I said.

“And when they are it will be chaos and mass panic. That will be at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Thats when the governments decided to go public. It gives government officials and the billionaires time to get home. They hoped for forty eight hours.” She looked at her wrist again, ”About twenty four hours for you.”

“This could be contained.” I stammered.

She sat stoically, “All the models say seventy five to eighty percent mortality rate. Thats global. At best. That includes military. We’ve talked before about it, even America with all of our guns. Most people will hesitate. She trailed off.”

We again sat for several seconds in silence. She finally got up and started pulling the bag of phones out of her shoulder bag. I dumbly stood up utterly disbelieving what I had just heard.

Luckily my wife was quicker than me. She stood and grabbed Lillian by the shoulders. “Are you going to be ok? Should you stay here with us? You know how we are prepped so far?”

Lillian took a deep breath and said calmly. “I can’t spread the news in any way I can imagine. I can only hope that going back to D.C will allow me to help others after the word is out. As much as I would love to stay here with you two, for my own sanity, I can’t. I need to go and try to help.”

“Ok. Do you remember our place? Northern Wisconsin?”

“Yes, Tomahawk.” Lilian replied.

“Ok, come if you can.” She leaned forward and kissed Lillian, then pulled her in for a hard embrace. I saw a tear fall from her eye. “I love you!” She said quietly.

“I love you both!” Lillian said reaching over and pulling me into their hug also. After a second Lillian reached up and kissed me too then pulled away and quickly dumped our phones on the table. She started to walk away but looked back over her shoulder and said, “Blue bears are good and red cats are bad. Just in case.”

We stood and watched her walk away.

Once she was out of sight, I numbly sat down. My mind reeled. I can’t describe the total opposite direction that this meeting took from my hopeful imagination. After all I at minimum expected to hang out with an awesome and beautiful friend, a little laughter and good conversation. What I got was the end of the world.

Nicole finally turned to me and hugged me hard for a long time. Finally she pulled back and looked me in the eye. “Do you believe her?”

I thought for several seconds. From her slightly disheveled look, so slightly disheveled that others wouldn’t have even noticed but we would, to her kiss and parting cryptic words blue bears are good and red cats are bad. What did that even mean?

I was looking at the floor but I finally looked up into Nicole’s eyes and replied, “Yes, I believe her.”

“Me too.” She said with a tremor in her voice. “Lets go.”

The next several minutes were a bit of a blur. When we got to the Prius we were about to get in when I stopped her. I opened the rear hatch and buried our phones under a bunch of blankets, get home bags, equipment and winter coats. After getting in I sat for a few seconds. “Do you think our phones are connected to the car?”

“They are off.” She said. “If they are, there’s not much we can do.”

“Let’s walk.” I said. We walked the parking structure once as we talked. “I hope if they pay any attention that they at least take into account we are being careful and won’t tell anyone.” I said. “My family is easy they are all localish. Your family is all down south except for your mother.”

She nodded and asked, “What should we do?”

“I hate to sound like an ass but I don’t think we can warn your family easily. Maybe call and tell them we don’t like the way the Asian flu is spreading and tell them we are going up north. They have never taken kindly to out prepper mindset but maybe they will pay a little more attention to the up coming news reports. Your mother won’t notice anything. If you want to go get her… that will be rough on our plans.”

“No, my family won’t see this until it hits them in the face. I need to try though.” She said.

“We will see what we can do for them.” I said conciliatorilly. “Until then our primary mission I think, is to get up north like you told Lillian.”

“Yes.” She said. “Oh my god its so overwhelming though.” She said sagging back.

“How do you eat an elephant?” I asked forcefully.

She stopped and looked up at me and then said with a small smirk, “One bite at a time.”

“Right on!” and I put my hand up.

She high-fived me.

“The camper is in the drive way. We load that in the next hour or two then get the kids and then take that up north. It’s about four and a half hours one way so nine hours is ten to twelve hours round trip with load and unloading. If we are lucky and we have twenty four hours that will give us two trips and a lot of supplies.

For our second trip we can pick up the trailer and fill that and the truck again. If Allen can take the third trailer… but that’s a lot for right now. When we get back to the car we can send messages to the kids and your family.

“Mom just got back from her Ireland trip! What if I send her a message saying you really want to hear about her trip to Ireland and Scotland? She should come here for a few days. Even if she left in six hours, we should be able to get her in time and take her with us.”

“Great idea!” I said though I didn’t think she would take the ‘bait’. “Call her!”

We walked in thought for several moments then I started organizing my thoughts on packing out loud. “Ok. Guns and reloading, books then long term food then our clothes, warm and cold weather then short term food then tools then clothes then more food and games then extraneous items. We understand this but my family won’t.” After a brief pause I continued, “Allen will not agree but he will be happy with us up there so really it’s the same thing. Except if he believes us maybe I can convince him to load our other trailer. As for my sister and brother-in-law. I don’t know, maybe they will listen.” I paused again and inhaled and exhaled deeply. “As for the kids, Andrea will go along because she trusts me. Lars will argue but only because he will miss his computer for a day. He will assume we are crazy but will be able to blame his time off and possibly his job loss on me and will then play that out for as much as he can get out of it.”

By this time we were once again near the car. I stopped her. I tilted her face up to mine and kissed her before saying. “The next couple days are going to be hectic. Very hectic. I am going to get harsh abrupt and maybe downright angry not to mention upset and pissed off. Just you remember!” I stared deeply into her eyes. “I will be doing all I can do for us and those we love. Don’t think I am asking you to do something for some self centered need. We are doing this for us and our loved ones.” I then kissed her deeply and reached into my pocket for the key fob so we could geet our phones from the back of the car.

We had been prepping for years. About nine years. There wasn’t much to plan. Once I made a decision she didn’t argue though I knew she would if she felt strongly enough. We both started making calls on the 10 minute trip home.

When we got home I woke up my son Lars, he is 21 but works evenings washing dishes and such for a restaurant. While he was getting dressed I called my daughter Rose who is 19 and a shift manager at a fast food restaurant.

Then I called my mother. When she picked up, I explained that Nicole would be coming to pick her up and to pack for a long stay up north and yes bring her cat. I’m allergic to cats but it’s easier to not argue and get things moving. She didn’t want to come but I told her it there was something special going on.

My wife looked at me and said, “Oh nice! Throw me under the bus.”

“Yes, it was an after thought. Pick up Rose first it will be quick and easy for you two to pack and load her things in the Prius. Then both of you can get moms stuff. Bring all the cat food and cat litter she has. That will allow Lars and I time to haul supplies up from the basement.”

After Nicole left, Lars and I started bringing bins and buckets up from the basement and staging them in the dining room. From there it would be a straight shot out to the camper and truck. Just a few months ago we bought twenty flip top sixteen gallon bins from someone on facecrack marketplace. We used several for different camping and storage needs but many of them were still empty. We used them now packing loads of store bought canned goods and boxing up all our home canned food. All told we had several months of food but that would go fast.

When Nicole got home with those two and a Prius full of clothes, they started bringing things upstairs and I started loading as much as was reasonable in the camper. We loaded all our blankets and bed clothes then we started with the cold weather gear and finally books and games. We have a 10 foot long shelf of books we considered necessary for the end of the world. I hooked up the camper to the truck and loaded bin after bin of food in the bed of the truck. I quickly strapped the load down with a cargo net. I had loaded several firearms into the truck and camper and several ammo cans also. The zombies weren’t due for a day or two but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have my pistol within reach.

During the loading of the truck my mother thought I was crazy but she helped, honestly I think she was just glad to be included and that her cat was coming. Occasionally she had seen a some of our preps, she never saw all of them, and would comment about why we would ever stock up on that much food. We gave various reasons but she would always shake her head and say the store is right down the street. She was flabbergasted by how much we had.

The truck and camper were loaded. My son rode with my wife in the Prius. My mother and daughter rode with me. They would stop at my sisters place and explain to them what was happening and I would head straight north. I really hoped my sister would take her seriously.

We were on the road by 11:30. Remarkably good time in my opinion. A quick stop for fast food and a little bit of careful speeding and we were there by 4:30. I guess it also helps that mid week traffic is much better. I had dropped the trailer and was unloading the truck into my brothers garage and lean to when my son and wife showed up. They unloaded straight into my brothers house.

When we were done unloading I spoke to my wife. “I think you should go to Dubuque and try to pick up your mother.” The look in her eye spoke volumes. It was almost like reading her mind, was I dumping her, then why doesn’t he want me, then why does he want me to go away, and then the change wait it’s still safe out there, this would be the only chance to get her, then splitting up would allow us to maximize our effectiveness in dealing with this. She pulled me down and kissed me. Good she got it, “Be safe!” she said.

“You too and keep me posted.” I said. “I’m leaving mom and the pets here. The kids will be with me for faster loading. We will both be back here sometime in the middle of the night. It took another five minutes to explain things for my mother and then we all left.

I stopped in town to fill up my gas tank and get drinks. We stopped at another gas station half way back and the clerk must have thought we were nuts when I bought out almost the whole display of beef jerky and a swath of other items. When we were back in the truck I told my son, in the back seat, to just drop all the packages into every nook and cranny back there. We would still need all the room we could get for the rest of our stuff. My phone was kept wrapped in aluminum foil and taken out every couple hours for updates and then re wrapped. This allowed us to speak freely. As I didn’t think they would be listening in on the kids phones and we never spoke about Lillian.

When we got back to Milwaukee, I stopped by my brother to tell him face to face what was going on. It hadn’t taken much convincing to get him to go up north, he always had plenty of vacation. What he didn’t believe was that shit was going down. He would leave in the morning.

We left and went straight to were we stored the camper. I called that storage place while on the way and simply rolled in and out with no pause to chat. I backed the big trailer into my driveway. We loaded propane and generators more clothes and finally the rest of our food. I packed my toolbelt, electrical tools and all my Dewalt battery operated tools but couldn’t justify the rest of my tools. Between what my family already had up there, mine simply weren’t needed. Also we were running out of room fast. By 1 am we were again loaded. We stopped twice for gas this time and both times we bought out nearly the entire displays of beef jerky and other treats. I was sucking down energy drinks and had bought caffeine pills. My son and daughter just kept dumping the small packages int the small gaps in the back of the truck. I had bought nearly a thousand dollars on that credit card and you could almost not see it they packed it so well.

The sky was just beginning to brighten when I pulled into the driveway up north again. I was really tired. We dropped the trailer and then began unloading. Again we were just dumping things in the garage, lean-to and shed. I paused and slammed the rest of my energy drink as Nicole crossed the yard. After a quick hug and as we finished unloading, she said she was thankful for being able to pick up her mother. I’m not sure how she convinced her to come here but we could talk about that more later.

“Now you need to get some sleep.” She said.

“No, we are going to town to buy whatever we can yet.” I replied.

She looked at me for only a moment before agreeing. “What are we going for?”

“You get to the drug stores in Tomahawk and buy anything you think we need medical and hygiene wise. I burned up my visa card already so I have about five grand I can spend on my other one. I’m going to Menards and a grocery store. I want to be back by noon. That will be past her 24 hour deadline but it may still be ok.”

She looked very tired. “I don’t like that we are splitting up but I understand. I will take Rose.”

“I’ll take Lars.” I felt as tired as she looked.

The kids just groaned but they had gotten cat naps between all the stops as I was driving. The girls left with us following. On the way I had an idea. When we got to Menards, I rented a trailer and they filled it with 6 foot fencing and a lot of fence poles. I grabbed a cart full of hardware, nuts washers and bolts and all the white gas they had. I then bought out the soups and such in their food section. I was loading all this into the truck when a police officer showed up. He parked a few spots away and approached me from the front. He had a nervous look and his body was angled away with his right arm slightly back.

“Good morning!” he said.

“Good morning!” I said pleasantly. Loading the last of my things in the truck. Lars came back from returning a cart.

“Whats the event?” the officer asked.

I looked at him slightly bewildered but then with a look of understanding. “Ahh, fencing, food, hardware.” I chuckled and passed my empty cart to Lars who started taking it back to the corral. I then slowly stepped forward and extended my hand. “My name’s Robert, my wife and I just closed on a property up here, our dream homestead really.” He slowly reached out and shook my hand. “And I promised my son a hunting trip to Montana and a load of food for when he goes back to college in Milwaukee for a few weeks work.” I looked over the side of the truck and pulled up a bag of Bear Creek powdered soup mix, He loves this stuff.” Then dropped it back in.

“Ya, not as good as pizza but it will last all the rest of the year and part of next.” He said and smiled as he returned.

The officer looked at me for a few seconds and asked, “Where did you buy a place?”

“North of Sprinter about six miles. Nice place. Goats, rabbits, ducks, we are going to have it all!” I wasn’t trying to pour it on too much but I had gamed this out slightly in my head. We really had been looking for a place. We really planned to have those animals and many more. “I just had a talk with the guys in the store. They weren’t pissed but they asked that next time I order ahead so I don’t deplete their stock. When I bring this trailer back I will place an order that I can pick up in a couple days. More fencing, cattle panels… I should have bought stock in this place before I pulled out my credit card.” I joked. “So what can I do for you anyway?”

“We got a call about suspicious activity. Buying an oddly large amount of stuff.”

“This is a lot?” I looked at the large though slightly odd assortment of material in the truck and trailer. “We would pick up twice this much stuff when I worked for a contractor in Milwaukee. Besides,” I continued turning back to him. “I used a credit card to rent the trailer and buy all of this. They have a complete record if something nefarious was going on.”

The officer started to visibly relax as I was talking. Just as I finished he got a call on his radio. He reached up and pressed the button. I didn’t know what the few words and codes meant but was quite happy to see him relaxing more and more. We have a friend in Chicago who needs to buy many gallons of white gas for a fire dance performance group and she tells stories of long talks with police officers to explain just what and why they need so much flammable liquid. They are always worried about terrorist and other threats nowadays.

When he was done on the radio I asked, “While I have you here what are some good places to eat? I really like Ted’s pub over on west street. Great burgers. What do you suggest for a breakfast place?”

To his credit he looked thoughtful for a minute, then “Maggie’s on fourth. Great greasy spoon type place with out the grease.” He had hooked his thumbs in his belt in front of him. “Great for breakfasts! The fork right down the street is only open for lunch and dinner but it is also really good. The new fancier restaurants are driving up prices but those two are still reasonable yet.

“Hey dad, Uncle Allen is expecting us soon.” Lars reminded me. Smart kid. Dropped that in at a perfect time.

“Hey it was nice meeting you!” I said as I started to step around him to get in my truck.

“Yes, you too sir.” He replied. “It’s always nice to see good people moving into the area.” He turned and went back to his car.

When we were safely inside the truck I praised Lars for listening and going along with what was happening. As we pulled out of the lot I thought about one more stop on the way out of town.

We pulled into my brothers place just before noon. I was really glad to see his truck was there. The radio had been going crazy with the reports of the grounding of all the international flights last night and it got only worse when they grounded all flights and said they were going to restrict all travel by the end of the day. My sister and her husband and kids arrived an hour later. Most of my family was safe. At least as safe as we could be for now. That evening the first reports of looting and rioting started. Then there were reports of some of the rioters biting each other. Most of the reports were coming from other countries so far.

I don’t know what words I would use to describe my thoughts and feelings when those first reports came in. It happened. It was happening? Way down deep I was afraid we were doing all this for nothing. I would have to go in and tell the boss that I was pretty sick. Try to return all kinds of stuff at Menards because I really couldn’t afford it. No, they showed people eating each other live on the evening news. For only a split second I felt almost vindicated for all the work over last 36 hours. Then I immediately felt the horror of the millions of people that would die over the next few weeks. Then fear for my friends and family that I couldn’t help right now. Finally the dread of having the end of the word as we know it occur right in front of us and how it would change our lives.

I got up and walked to the open bottle of whiskey on the kitchen counter. I picked it up and took a long pull from the bottle then turned to my family. Mostly what I saw was fear and worry in their eyes. “Thanks to Lillian we are far ahead of most people right now. I think we are safe enough for the night. Tomorrow we will decide what to do next.” I set the bottle down. “I’m going to bed. It’s going to be another long day tomorrow. Goodnight.” I took my wifes hand and pulled her up off her seat. She followed me, as I walked to our bed I only hoped we would have this one last night be peaceful. Tomorrow I would really take charge and keep my family safe!

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[ecotone99]

[SF] The Gulf | Ep. 3: Last Ditch Effort

“You spent $30,000 on those rare fish for your aquarium last month!” I exclaim.

​

“Don’t drag my fish into this, they are innocent,” my dad retorts. “Besides they actually have the chance of paying me back when they start popping out $5,000 babies.”

​

He doesn’t even care.

​

“You probably have $50,000 lost in the sofa!”

​

I notice how strange this idiom is as soon as it comes out of my mouth. Cash and coins hardly exist anymore… no one loses money in the sofa. “Dollar” is just a unit of measurement, not one specific currency. But I’m too angry to consider where exactly I pulled the reference from.

​

“You won’t keep your kid out of prison?” I continue.

​

“It’s the principle,” my dad says. He’s not yelling, he never yells.

​

“Dad! If you just pay 40 of the 70 thousand, they’ll let me work the rest off without confinement.”

​

He’s shaking his head slightly, and making that tucked-in-lip face; the one people make when they pass a stranger on the street.

​

“I’ll pay you back…” I try, exasperated. Nothing. “Don’t you have insurance to cover things like this?”

​

“We self insure for things like this. So imagine me as your insurance agent. I deny your claim for violating the terms of the agreement,” my dad says. “Remember how I told you that you should look into buying defense insurance for yourself? Maybe you could have got the renegade plan, or something, and they would cover things like this, I don’t know.”

​

He is not budging. Not even showing any emotion. That is what is so frustrating. If he was pissed-off I could work with it. Emotional responses cool down and things change. But my dad’s decision isn’t going to change. He’s not upset. There is nothing to cool down. He just made a logical decision.

​

I’m nothing like him.

​

“I’m going to prison! And you could stop it without even noticing!”

​

“You know this affects my business Dege. Who knows how much you cost us by insulting Francesco? He’s a big buyer.”

​

“Are you hearing me?! PRISON!” I pronounce the word with emphasis but I’m not quite yelling. “And all you care about is your business?!”

​

“Oh stop being so dramatic,” my dad says, breaking eye contact. He takes a sip of his drink.

​

“Dramatic,” I repeat indignantly. “Do you know what happens in prison?”

​

“Yeah, you learn some discipline,” he responds.

​

“No,” I say shaking my head, “You get raped! Is that what you want, for me to get raped?!”

​

“Rodigio, this isn’t 2000. Statistically, you’re more likely to get raped at those clubs you frequent.”

​

“Well it’s still two years on an island with all men.” I shoot back, “Don’t be surprised when your son comes home hanging off the bicep of Buff Jimmy, the reformed pirate.”

​

“We should be so lucky,” my dad scoffs. “A stern man is what you needed in your life all along. I blame myself. But anyway, there’s actually an island for female confines, and you all get to meet up twice a week. Haven’t you even checked out the website?”

​

I turn to my mom. “Is that what you want?” I say slow and serious. “For me to come home with a bull-dike-looking prison bitch named Ricky?”

​

“Oh you have such an imagination!” She says, “You’re such a natural storyteller, with your creative names and flare for drama. You should spend your extra time on the island writing stories! Or maybe work on your acting? You were always so good in those plays, you loved them.”

​

She’s serious too, not even trolling. She will always side with my dad. He convinced her a few years ago that she was an enabler of my “irresponsible behaviour.” This is just how she tries to stay positive.

​

My mom forces a smile, “Maybe it will be like camp,” she sort of laughs and shrugs.

​

I put my face in my hands realizing that my parents are about to abandon me to a prison island.

​

“I can’t believe you two are doing this to me!” I whimper.

​

“We aren’t doing this to you, Dege,” my dad says with candor, “We just aren’t bailing you out this time. It’s two years, less if you actually learn to do something people want to pay for.”

​

My mom is shaking her head in agreement, looking between my dad and me.

​

“It will be good for you sweetie. Don’t you want to learn a meaningful skill, go out on your own at some point?” Then she adds quickly, “Not that you’re not always welcome here!”

​

My heart is beating faster. It’s sinking in that I am about to go to a prison camp for two years. And that means missing New Year’s Eve in Barracuda. That means being separated from Majorie.

​

“Why do you both hate me!? If it was Raji you would pay it!” I am desperate and lashing out.

​

“You know what,” my dad says, “your attitude just proves all the more that it is high time you take a little responsibility for your actions.”

​

“Who buys a glass ball that costs more than I make in a year!? And I didn’t know his stupid statue would break.”

​

“Exactly. You didn’t know. But that didn’t stop you from doing something impulsive and destructive.”

​

“I was drunk!” I shout indignantly.

​

“That’s not an excuse,” he says, still infuriatingly calm.

​

“And that’s the other reason this will be good for you.” My mom adds. “They don’t allow alcohol on the island, and I think it will do you some good to stay sober for a while… clear your head.”

​

“You better get packing,” my dad says.

​

I’m back in my room. I still cannot accept it. I have one more thing I could try… I can ask Dean. But I don’t want to.

​

And yet, I make the call anyway.

​

“I can’t even believe you’re asking me this Rodigio.”

​

“Dude, I’ll pay it back with interest! I know you have the money!”

​

“Dege, it’s not like all my money is just sitting in a wallet somewhere. I do things with it. It’s invested all over, diversified. To give you that money would be an opportunity cost.”

​

“What?”

​

“If I give you that money, it means I can’t do something else with it.”

​

“So you care more about making more money than you do about your friend?”

​

“You know where the last $35 grand I threw down went? To a start-up bringing rule of law to the parts of the world that still have oppressive governments.”

​

“That’s just the last 35. I know you put at least that much in the virtual reality porn company!”

​

“I remember you being pretty excited about CyberNut at the time. But it still doesn’t matter Dege, because even CyberNut deserves the money more than you do. And I deserve to put my money in the places that I want, and make money back for my risk. What do I get risking that on you? Because please don’t try to tell me it’s not a risk…”

​

“I just thought maybe you wouldn’t want to see your friend in prison for two years. But I guess you think that’s what I deserve.”

​

He sighs. “Dege, I love you like a brother. But yes, you deserve to be held accountable for your actions. Me bailing you out wouldn’t help you in the long run.”

​

“Now you sound like my dad.”

​

“Well your dad is a smart guy Dege. Maybe it’s time you start listening to his advice. I mean you keep saying, two years, two years. Have you even considered the fact that you can make that much money in two months if you really wanted to?”

​

“Maybe you could…”

​

“I’m glad this conversation went this way. I’m now convinced that this will be good for you.”

​

We hang up. I am alone in my room.

​

I walk out on the balcony, overlooking the pool and tiers of grass that lead down to the white sandy beach, gently sloping into the ocean between large stone jetties.

​

It’s dark, but most of the palm trees and tropical ground cover are illuminated from hidden lights in the lava-rock-mulch.

​

I’ve lived here all my life. So accessible, always available just outside my back door. And suddenly I’m a visitor, just here for the night. So I might as well take advantage of it. I walk down to stroll through the pristine grounds.

​

I want to see Majorie but am not sure what to say. That’s what has kept me from messaging her. That and the stomach churning reality that I am going to prison.

​

A message comes in. Its from Majorie.

​

“Can I come over?”

​

Her drone lands about five minutes later. She walks down into the backyard garden and sits down next to me without saying a word. We look at each other and force a smile. And for a few minutes we just sit listening to the waves roll off the platform.

​

I sigh, “well apparently this place doesn’t have any alcohol. So… want a beer?”

​

“God yes.”

​

We grab a couple from the outdoor kitchen and sit at the tiki bar.

​

“I have to say… Your platform is way nicer than mine,” Majorie says.

​

“Well you’re closer to the center. And… you get to stay.”

​

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

​

“What can I do?”

​

“I mean to earn the money.”

​

“I guess I’ll keep working my bug catching job. Maybe if I put in enough hours I can cut it down to a year and a half.”

​

She looks down, “That’s a long time.”

​

Silence. Faint lapping of the ocean. Distant windchimes?

​

“I understand if you want to just forget about me and move on,” I blurt out. “I mean we just met anyway, I don’t expect you to…” I trail off.

​

Majorie takes a long swig of her beer. “We did just meet. Which is why this is so weird. Because I’m not just going to ditch you.”

​

“Look, it’s not your fault that I broke the statue. I don’t want you to feel attached to me out of guilt.”

​

“It’s not guilt. Definitely not guilt. It’s… well I don’t know what it is. It’s you, you’re different. I don’t know how yet, but I know a good thing when I see it.”

​

Now we’re staring into each other’s eyes. And it’s probably the only thing at this moment that can make me feel better. She’s right, there is something else going on here. I just hope the separation won’t ruin it.

​

We kiss across the bar. It feels so good to just enjoy each other’s company for a minute or two, sipping our beers.

​

Then I remember the burning question on my mind (when I’m not distracted by my impending incarceration).

​

“So what’s the deal with your job? You worked for Elijah Braze?” I ask.

​

“Well yeah sort of, but I barely knew him. Ben Rupert, his head of staff is–well was–my boss.” Majorie sighs, “But they already revoked all my permissions and sent an official severance notice so… looks like I’m a free agent.”

​

“What did you do for him?”

​

“Mostly data gathering.”

​

“You mean like marketing data for one of his businesses?”

​

“More like,” Majorie says slowly, formulating the right way to explain it, “Data gathering of a more personal nature.”

​

She only goes on after laughing at my blank expression.

​

“Sometimes it is digging into personal character, other times it’s confirming where someone lives or sniffing out conflicts of interest.”

​

“You’re a spy!?” I exclaim, only half joking.

​

“Well, I guess you could say that. Intelligence gathering.” She winks.

​

Suddenly an image of Majorie seducing a business contact to get some confidential pillow talk pops into my head. She seems to see the gears turning.

​

“It’s really not as exciting as it sounds,” she assures me. “Usually it’s pretty boring grunt work. The paid travel is nice… well at least it was.” Swig.

​

“Do you have other clients?”

​

“Yeah, but that was by far my largest chunk of income. I’m going to need to find something to replace it. All my other stuff is more routine digging. I can do most of it online.”

​

Another silence. It’s a wave of reality that keeps washing over me, anxiety about my fate tomorrow. I know Majorie can feel it too every time it hits.

​

“So when do you have to go?” Majorie asks.

​

“They pick me up at 9 tomorrow morning.”

​

She gives a sympathetic smile. “Any plans until then?”

​

I manage a laugh. “If you want to keep me up all night, I don’t mind arriving to prison a little groggy. Who do I have to impress there anyway?”

​

We spend the night laying in the grass, looking up at the stars, midnight skinny-dipping, and pre-dawn moonbathing. Majorie and I fall asleep in each other’s arms curled up on a large plush piece of patio furniture as the sun breaks over the horizon.

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[ecotone99]

[SF] Patient 0436

The room smelled of bleach, sterile and arcid. I sat on a chair that was designed, first and foremost to be looked at. I wondered how I’d gotten here. My last job was a repetitive lot of 30 second phone phone calls and paperwork. That was it. Any sensible person would have held onto that little over paid position - but I was bored within a week. So there I sat, uncomfortable and slightly dazed. (The fluorescent lighting was really doing a number on me)

​

The room looked just as sterile as it smelled. White walls, white tiled floor and that awful lighting! It even felt like a hospital - it wasn’t.

​

After waiting patiently for fifteen minutes, I started rubbing my thumb on the top of my jeans. I hated these first days at a new job, the whole thing was such a long process of half truths and grovelling. At least it’d be over soon. Just as I began to drift off, I saw the doorway across from me actualise and my interviewer step through. She was one of the most strikingly beautiful people I’d ever seen.

​

“Thank you so much for coming, and thanks for your patience Mr. Talbot”

​

I had to put on a happy face despite myself.

​

“No worries” I chirped back.

​

“I’m sure you’re interested in seeing what this job’s all about, so lets get started! - If you’ll follow me we can begin immediately.”

​

I squirmed in my chair - I’d always found it hard to speak to women, the attractive ones most of all.

​

“Sure thing” I squeaked back and scurried silently through the door behind her.

​

The next room, somehow was even more sterile than the first. The same faint air of bleach in the room, the same tiles, the same damn lighting. And not a stick of furniture, save one white stool that rose out of the centre of the room as if it was a part of the floor. The walls were rounded so once the door closed it seemed like one continuous surface.

​

“Here,” she said - gesturing to the stool “Is where you’ll be doing the majority of your work with us.”

​

Opposite the stool was a long, thin window - the kind you see in interrogation rooms.

​

“As I’m sure you know already,” she continued “your main role here will be observation”

​

“Yes” I stammered “but what exactly will I be observing?”

​

“We have a series of new patients here, all S class psychopaths - we’re trialing a new drug to hopefully help them reintegrate into society.”

​

A wry grin crossed my face -

​

“Ha” I thought “reintegrate into society”

​

That explained the waiver and the non-disclosure agreement and layers of locked doors. Com-Sec was up to something. Either they were finding a way to chemically lobotomise these “psychopaths” or they were creating mind-wiped soldiers to fight on the Kashmir front. Whatever it was, the boys at news net would pay handsomely to know. Suddenly it all rushed back to me. The room, the girl, the job.

​

“So what am I supposed to be monitoring?”

​

“We’d like you to watch each subject and write what you see, simple as that. Because of the experimental nature of the procedure, its best if you are told as little as possible, so your observations aren’t biased.”

​

“Fair enough” I muttered

​

“We picked you because of your background in psych-analytics, no need to overthink this”

​

“OK, sounds simple” I replied, trying in vain to sound neutral and professional.

​

“Great, well if theres nothing else you want to know, lets get started!”

​

“I hate to ask… but whats the rate of pay for this position?” that was the big one. Glad I managed it.

​

“12 gigacredits per day with a 5 - pent bonus at the completion of your 3 year contract” she said flatly.

​

My eyes widened. With that kind of money I could move out of my shoebox in Stately and move somewhere nice. I could get mom out of the retirement village - with just enough left to feed my growing list of vices. I did my best to sound nonchalant

​

“Sounds fair”

​

“Well if you have no other questions - lets begin.”

​

She raised a desk from the floor like quicksilver and handed me a small black tablet and stylus. “Your first session will last for 5 hours - I’ll be in the next room, if you have any trouble just hit the button on your desk and I’ll come right in.”

​

Then, as if by magic she was out of the room as soon as she had spoke, with the door quickly deacutalizing behind her. At the same time, the window in front of me parted, slowly revealing an impish man squatting in the middle of the room across from mine. He wore a faded blue shirt and ripped blue jeans - his face was a scrappy hedge maze of dark, scraggly hair which seemed to hang from his face like moss. At first, he sat there, motionless - knees bowed apart like some great awful swan. He slowly raised his head, and if it wasn’t for the 6 inches of mirrored perspex, I could swear he was looking right at me. It seemed like his old, tired eyes were trying to find some way out of that 4x4 room. I began my notes. As I began to write, he began to mumble. An incoherent mess of syllables - I couldn’t tell what language it was, if any.

​

“Where do they find these people!” I thought to myself “Surely he’s got some sort of complex.” I had to feel sorry for him.

​

But I could scarcely say he was human. The more I wrote, the more he mumbled.

​

“We make a good team” I chuckled to myself.

​

Not that there was much to write about. After a few minutes he began pacing back and forth - muttering gibberish as he went.

​

“At least they’ll get there monies worth” I cackled to myself.

​

I’ve never written such a detailed account of something so ordinary - but it was their money and I wasn’t complaining. After half an hour of pacing and mumbling “Scabbers” - as I’d politely dubbed him, seemed finally to have tired himself out. He lay on the pristine white floor, splayed out like the cover model of some forlorn magazine waiting for their close up. I breathed a sigh of relief - finally, I could stop writing this meaningless drivel and have some time to myself. My mind drifted to thoughts of the credits and what I’d do with them. Take a shuttle and see the games maybe - this time of year both teams put their best foot forward to try and score the best sponsors, and you could be sure there’d be a heavy weapons expert and a ju jitsu master or two thrown in to really get the crowd going.

​

“Fuck! Where’d Scabbers get to?” I thought

​

My first day on the job and I’d already lost my patient! And he was in a locked room no less!

​

“Ah” I breathed a sigh of relief, he was just sitting directly below the window. Must’ve snuck off for some private time.

​

“Mustn’t scare me like that old chum!” I chortled

​

I noticed the pool of blood on the floor and instantly my confidence evaporated. How had he managed to hurt himself? There wasn’t anything sharp in the room - hell, the room itself didn’t even have corners. I thought about calling in my interviewer, but decided against it. It didn’t matter, he didn’t look too hurt. What was important was the notes.

​

I started writing again. As I started writing, he started mumbling. I noticed something - his hand was moving. He was writing something on the floor

​

- M - A

​

Jesus, in his own blood - she wasn’t kidding about these people. Well, whatever he was writing must’ve mattered a whole lot to him, he kept going.

​

M - A - L

​

He ran out of blood and then I got to see how he’d done it - he’d cut open his hand with his filthy nails.

​

Then after getting more “ink” he was straight back to work. I looked down at what he was writing.

​

M - A - L - C - O - M - T - A - L - B - O - T

​

My name.

​

It definitely put a damper on my first day at Com - Sec. I’d had about enough. I thought I’d be getting these credits easy and now I had some half baked experiment scribbling my name across the floor in blood. Time to hit the button and take my smoke break.

​

I felt the rigid surface of the button slide underneath my finger. Then, all at once - blackness. Where was the door? I stood up and groped the inky darkness around me.

​

Nothing.

​

No handle. No doorframe. No corners even.

​

I sat there for what seemed to be an eternity - it was probably closer to 30 minutes. I heard the muffled sounds of footsteps through the wall.

​

“Thank God.” I exclaimed

​

Little miss pantsuit is finally here to turn on the lights and get me out of here. Across from me, a long thin window slowly opened. Through the wall I can just barely make out the conversation -

​

“Your first session will last for 5 hours, I’ll be in the next room, if you need anything just hit the red button.”

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