#large format scanners

[donnaandrewsblogs]

Large Format Scanner

Ultra fast large format scanners are perfect for high-volume scanning needs, delivering exceptional quality in lesser time. Experience unmatched efficiency elevating your workflow today.

[marcomoochala]

1# Best Plotter For Site Office A1 & AO Plotter For Sale In Singapore.

The HP Designjet T830 MFP A1/A0 Plotter Singapore There are many reasons why the HP DesignJet t830 mfp is probably one of the best large-format printing machines perfect for the site office, Autocad and PDF printing. Let me give you a brief introduction to this particular machine. The machine is able to perform print, scan and copy functions quite easily. It also is able to share files very…

[milksockets]

why scan?

scanning is something i've done for probably about 12 years now (i'm ancient, for this site), with varying degrees of regularity, intensity, etc. it has ratcheted up since the dawn of 2023, though, which begs the question: why? why put so much time into what could not-wrongly be considered a passive activity, hunched over a piece of clunky machinery with the express purpose of preserving others' creations? the answers are several, and fascinating (not really).

i am a [sober] drug addict. anything i pursue, consume, create--more often than not--ends up taking on addictive qualities. i'll eat the same specific food item for a month, then never want to see, let alone taste it, again. i'll listen to one song on repeat for days until i'd rather hear nails on a chalkboard than have it shuffle on and assault my ears. one of the reasons that my scanning has increased in volume recently is that i acquired library cards to the 3 nyc library systems: nypl, brooklyn, and queens. as soon as i was able to, i pillaged + plundered those fine centers of learning, leaving any given library with as many hefty scan-worthy books as i could [barely] carry. here, finally, was a *free* way of obtaining more + more + more visual media to consume.

2023 saw me get my first legal, full-time job. as such, my adjusting to that hellish reality resulted in a steep decline in my own personal creative output. collaging, writing, and rapping all fell to the wayside as i slowly acclimated to a life of work that almost everyone else my age has known for over a decade is generally unbearable + detrimental to the maintenance of outside pursuits. in times of famine within my own artistic harvest, scanning, archiving, and sharing others' work is a means of feeling as though i am still contributing to the global oeuvre.

there’s an element of losing my mental self in a series of physical motions that becomes almost automatic after some time. “zoning out” is not something endemic to my daily life; if anything, i’m almost always too zoned in. relief is necessary.  especially considering the shitshow this past year has been in terms of my personal life.

i am a product of capitalism’s cultivating a craving for constant consumption. 

it seems that visual content is only going to continue to get more + more uninspired. has everything been done? did social media ruin it all? in any case, i feel a need to document the past. to a degree, it’s my version of doomsday prepping. (god forbid books go extinct altogether.) 

i have always gravitated towards solitary activities. this topic could be a thesis in its own right.

i thrive on external validation. this reliance is something i’ve improved upon over the past several years, but it hasn’t been altogether extinguished. even though the materials i scan are not of my own creation, i nevertheless feel a vague pride in showcasing them. occasional appreciation thereof satisfies this fixation on others’ attention, albeit in a diluted form. 

i am fortunate to live in a city bursting to the gills with cultural institutions. i am also lucky enough to have some disposable income that can be directed toward fulfilling my ravenous desire for visual media. 

((i keep getting messages about the specifics of my scanner + "process":

i have a cheap ass hp envy 6055e and i just use the software it comes with.

there's nothing special or fancy happening here, and i could definitely invest in a better and/or a large format scanner, etc. but i really just don't care enough and it's not like i'm getting paid for this lmao))

[objectheadzine]

WELCOME TO THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OBJECT HEAD ZINE!

In celebration, the 2024's edition will be a Grab Bag - draw whatever object head you like (so long as it fits the guidelines, see below). In Lieu of a theme, all submissions MUST HAVE ASHLEY (the megaphone mascot) in the piece! Feel free to make him as large or as small as you want in the composition. He can be hanging out with your characters or he can be on a flyer, just so long he's somewhere in the picture! Reference of all his outfits can be found here. But don't feel like you're restricted to his previous outfits. Feel free to dress him up in anything you'd like. Content is also free for whatever! You want to date the lil man? Go for it! You want to tease or go on the attack? Also fine! Ignore him and let him live his life? Sure thing.

ALL submissions will be accepted as long as they fit guidelines and each person has a limit of up to 3 submissions. Submit your pieces to the zine email objectheadzine(@)hotmail(.)com along with the email/website/name you’d like to be credited as. (Feel free to omit emails if that is more comfortable). When you’ve finished your piece(s), you are allowed to post them to your blogs as long as you link back to the zine blog! This will be a DIGITAL ZINE ONLY and will be available free upon completion (donation optional).

The guidelines are as follow:

Illustration-quality works in either digital or traditional mediums. Both colour and b/w acceptable; background required. *BG can be as simple as a pattern or colour block! Avoid utilizing a camera to submit your images, please use a scanner. 

The default size will be 6″x9″, 300 dpi (1800px x 2700px) but feel free to go larger or smaller, so long as it follows those proportions. Please work in a vertical format.

For consistency’s sake, keep faces to a minimum (You can have eye(s) or you can have mouth(s) but don’t have both in a humanoid arrangement.)

Ashley, the megaphone head mascot, must be included in your piece. He can be small in the picture or a large factor but he must be included. When submitting, if he is not obvious, please point him out to me. References are found here.

Please go for original characters (or fanart of your friend’s characters) and not so much established object heads (e.g. the popcorn and soda heads from No More).

If you want to include humans, that’s fine as well but keep the ratio of people to object heads 1:1.

Content should be at most PG-13: Romance is fine but after-hours business should not be implied, Blood is fine but no gore. In the end, use your common sense.

Feel free to draw a comic or just an illustration! A comic counts as one submission.

Some facts about Ashley that could help with your piece: He's 5'2", he's of Chinese nationality, he's a TV show host, he's a bubbly, happy-go-lucky kind of guy and he has a Samyoed dog named Cotton!

Note that if a submission does not meet the above guidelines, I will either reject your submission or suggest improvements that would help your piece fulfill them. Please email me at objectheadzine(@)hotmail(.)com if you have any further questions and I’ll do my best to reply promptly. If you do not receive a message from me within a few days, please send it again. Final pieces submitted should be either in PNG or a one layer PSD file format.

Want to share your piece as you're working on them? Come on over to the Object Head Zine discord!

THE DUE DATE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS NOVEMBER 9TH.

[why-its-kai]

screaming and crying the poster arrived and i finally have the full image and the artist name, it is indeed official and was illustrated by Yoshimitsu Ohashi, one of the animators/directors who worked on the anime!!

it's printed on cork which is very bizarre and the image is very sunbleached but i am beyond happy to see the full image FINALLY after years of using this partial scan i found on anime galleries dot net in like 2009 as a desktop wallpaper/just loving the image in general haha, here's that scan:

and here it is on my desktop and the poster together !!

not sure if i will be able to scan it, even using the library's large format scanner, but i'll try and get better pics of it soon !!! ahhh

[homestuckreplay]

Webcomics at Day 100 #5: Bob and George

Pages read: 4/1/2000 – 4/5/2002; 718 pages (including author’s commentary)

Reason for selection: Bob and George was a pioneer of the ‘sprite-based’ comic genre, where video game sprites (or custom sprites) are used in place of original character art to reduce the artist’s workload. B&G is also famously meta, almost entirely disregarding the fourth wall.

Original run: 4/1/2000 – 7/28/2007; daily updates with 2658 total pages. Completed before Homestuck began.

Content warnings: homophobia and mild ableism (comic), cultural insensitivity, centrism, and severe ableism (author’s commentary)

Overall thoughts:

‘Now, there is something to say of the nature of creativity. How creating a fictional world makes you akin to a creator god. You could say that, sure - if you were fucking nuts. It's a fucking story. It's not real. I don't give a fucking dick's shit how many readers there are, how fucking huge it is - every fictional world is exactly that, fictional.’ – John S.

‘The jokes are bad, the art is plagiarism, and I firmly believe the only people that can appreciate this comic are 14 years old or younger.’ – Cesar R.

Some people on the internet like to spend large amounts of time talking about things they hate, and both of the above quotes come from Bob and George reviews on blogs dedicated to discussing webcomics the authors think are bad. I don’t personally have much respect for the Avowed Hater, but I cannot express how much I love these quotes.

However. I think this webcomic rules.

Here’s a brief overview. David Anez invents two characters – the titular Bob and George – in middle school. Aged 20, at the turn of the millennium, he decides to make a webcomic about these characters, despite having no idea how to draw. He plans to start on April 1, 2000, but can’t source a scanner by then, so begins making placeholder comics using 8-bit and 16-bit sprites from Megaman games, telling a potential audience that the comic isn’t ready yet – meaning that from day one, Megaman knows that 1. he’s in a comic created by an author, and 2. he’s not supposed to be the main character.

Months later, Anez sources a scanner and begins to draw Bob and George. They’re two college aged brothers who are also a superhero-supervillain duo. By this point the strip already has readers, and they don’t like this format as much. It’s also more difficult for Anez to make, so he returns to the Megaman sprite comics, but also edits some sprites into representations of both Bob and George, who become characters transported to the Megaman universe from another dimension. The story cycles through ‘retellings’ of the first six Megaman games interspersed with original storylines, dimension hopping, time travel, predestination paradoxes, alternate versions of characters, fan created characters, at least two characters who are explicitly the author, and other characters reading the comic they’re a character in. It goes from a simple story about George passing the days at his summer job before college, to a huge, whirling, spiraling mess of continuity and temporality.

In July 2007, after just over seven years, Anez brings the story to a conclusion, goes through the archives to add author’s commentary to each and every strip, and then… disappears. He focuses on his day job and his wife, and he never does another internet project again.

I genuinely love amateur art. I think Anez can be too self-deprecating in his author’s commentary – because he’s right, the jokes can be repetitive and don’t always land, the hand drawn art is ridiculous, the characterization is inconsistent and the ideas are unoriginal, but art can be all those things and still be meaningful. ‘I could have made this’ should be a compliment. It should mean: this makes me think I could create; you have achieved something and have inspired me by doing so, because this is within my grasp, too.

Unlike Cesar R. above, I don’t think sprite comics are plagiarism – these are firmly transformative works. Anez rearranges the Megaman sprites, gives them dialog and puts them in situations, and recaps and expands on the game storylines. He credits Capcom with the sprites’ creation, and wrote a homage to the games, not a substitute for them. However, due to the copyright issues, sprite comics are famously un-monetizable. Some original-art comics were occasionally able to turn webcomics into income, but even when Bob and George was at its peak of 25,000 daily site visitors, Anez wasn’t able to sell character merchandise or books and could only source small donations via PayPal. In this way, he sits among hundreds of big name fans who have created wildly popular fanfiction and fanart that’s almost entirely unpaid labor.

Anez’ author’s commentary is sometimes highly problematic but gives fascinating insights into his process. On October 19 2001, Anez included the Author - an established character - in the day's comic, wearing a helmet for the first time. In the author's commentary, he states that 'the Helmeted Author was never intended to be a new character' and that the helmet's inclusion was necessary due to artistic limitations with the sprites. However, the Helmeted Author stuck around and became a separate and important character. Similar instances recur in the commentary, where an accidental continuity error or an out-of-character moment ends up being folded into the overall story, becoming smooth and seamless in retrospect despite being entirely unplanned. It’s an open and honest look into how serial narratives work in practice.

An ice cream joke followed immediately by a self-deprecating joke is pretty standard issue for this drivel. Seriously, look at yourself. You're reading a sprite-based webcomic with Megaman characters, and they were just arguing about the merits of ice cream. I can't believe you read this stuff. Hell, I can't believe I wrote it. That being said, it's a fun way to waste your time, isn't it? – David Anez (author’s commentary for 10/23/2001)

Relevance to Homestuck: [ooc – vague spoilers for the entirety of Homestuck]

Bob and George feels like a rough draft for a LOT of things Homestuck would end up doing in (relatively) more artful, complex ways. It’s often painfully explicit about what it’s doing, hammering its own themes and experiments into the ground via the small amounts of dialog there’s space for instead of advancing a plot – but it’s the earliest webcomic I’ve personally looked at that’s actually testing what the medium is capable of. Anez begins with a simple four-panel strip, and primarily sticks to this style throughout, but from early on he thinks that some strips would look better animated and that the fourth-panel punchline format is a ‘severe restriction’, especially with battles.

As time goes on he begins to experiment with art size, style and aspect ratio, animate part or all of some strips, include interactive strips where readers can click through the panels at their own pace, and include panels in the wrong orientation or that aren’t physically connected as they should be – all elements that would become hallmarks of Homestuck. Characters even comment on the change in panels, and in art style (such as their own change from 8-bit to 16-bit to 32-bit sprites). In commentary for July 2nd 2001, Anez says, ‘I suppose these comics are my non-animated contributions to the infinite canvas nature of webcomics, huh?’

B&G never reaches the extremes of Homestuck, but it’s still a multimedia story. It recaps its own storylines, celebrates its own anniversaries, and folds fan contributions into its main arcs. Prominent fan creators have custom sprites made of them which are included in panels, including the Second Party arc, where a character ‘interviews’ fancomic creators and references their work and their activity in the forums and chatrooms. As such, to have a complete understanding of B&G, it’s necessary to also read prominent fanworks, and to understand its surrounding community – much of which is no longer archived. ‘Subcomics’ are differentiated and elevated from officially-hosted ‘fancomics’ which are again differentiated from fancomics which didn’t make the cut, and a hierarchy based on official recognition is born in the community, not unlike the elevation of Homestuck fanartists to official contributors.

B&G is similar to Homestuck in themes as well as form. From early on it asks questions about the meaning of ‘reality’ and an ‘official’ or ‘canon’ timeline, and explores ideas of what it means to have free will (or not) when you’re a character in a story, you know what’s going to happen next, you’ve met the guy who wrote it, and that guy may or may not be dead. It’s about physically two-dimensional characters who are in both a video game and a comic, and continually blurs the boundaries between those mediums. In both comics, an author – born in 1979 – has grown up witnessing the birth of technology that is going to change everything about how the world operates and break down our interactions with physical space and time, and they’ve made weird, longform, and often technically ‘bad’ art exploring what that means. These comics are holding hands as two links in a chain of a broader artistic movement.

Continue reading? I cannot WAIT to read the rest of Bob & George.

[kybercrystals94]

Die for a Corpse

Read here on Ao3!

Febuwhump 2024 | Day 6 | Prompt 6: “You lied to me.”

Bad Things Happen Bingo: Cradling someone in their arms.

Rated: T | Words: 960 | Summary: Tech tries to help a fatally injured trooper. [Character Focus: Tech, OC]

“Medic!”

Troopers ran past, not looking at, but carefully avoiding contact with, the two clones huddled in the mud.

“Please,” the trooper sitting upright beseeched whoever might listen, “we need a medic!”

In his arms, the other clone choked for breath, a blaster hole through his chestplate. He didn’t have long. That much Tech gathered as he approached the pair. He knelt before them. “I am not a medic, but I have medical training. I will assist with whatever I can.”

“Thank you,” the reg said, adjusting his grip on his brother.

Tech gave a short nod and slid his pack off. “My name is Tech.”

“I’m Blade,” the uninjured reg said, “this is Shank.”

Shank coughed, a gurgling sound deep in his lungs. Blood dribbled ominously from the corners of his lips, but Blade quickly wiped it away, as if erasing the evidence of internal damage would be enough to save his brother. It wouldn’t be. Nothing would be enough.

“I’m going to give him a hypo for the pain,” Tech said.

“He’s going to be okay,” Blade told him. “We just need to keep him stable until we can get him to the med center.”

Tech did not answer, finding the correct hypo and injecting it into the dying clone’s neck.

“Is it safe to move him?” Blade asked. “We should probably take cover.”

Shank’s safety at this point did not worry Tech; however, for Blade’s sake, Tech said, “That would be advisable.”

Blade took his brother’s torso and Tech took Shank’s legs. The mud squelched under their boots, making it laborious to stay upright with the awkward weight between them. They managed to make it to a large rock formation that gave some barrier from the warzone raging around them.

“Tech, where are you?” Hunter’s voice filtered through his private comm channel.

Tech finished helping Blade settle Shank against the natural barrier before he picked up his comm. “I am assisting with a medical situation.” He was not going to say that he was helping a reg die comfortably, even if that was all the medical assistance he could offer in this case.

“Who’s injured?” comes Hunter’s next question.

Tech hesitated, trying to think of a way to tactfully say it wasn’t one of their brothers – one of the Batch – without causing distress to the reg hovering over his fallen comrade. “One of the company’s troopers,” he said after a moment.

“Be careful,” Hunter said, the guilted relief evident even through the static of the comm.

“Roger that,” Tech agreed before signing off. He turned his attention back to the two troopers in his company.

“Shouldn’t we staunch the wound?” Blade asked.

Shank whined and turned his head toward Blade’s voice. Blade reached out and took one of Shank’s hands. “I’m here, brother. Just hang on. You’re going to be fine.”

“No,” Shank mumbled, voice taut with pain. He knew he wasn’t going to make it, Tech realized.

“Yeah,” Blade argued gently and crawled closer to wrap an arm around Shank’s shoulders. “Yeah, you’re gonna be just fine. You’ve survived worse, huh?”

Shank managed a grin, and Tech felt his heart pang with an awful despairing emotion. Even in his last, excruciating moments, this reg tried to be strong for his brother.

Blade looked at Tech. “Aren’t you going to help him? You said you would help him!”

Tech crouched on Shank’s other side, pulling out his portable med scanner and making a show of checking over Shank’s vitals. “We can try to staunch the wound, as you said; however, the damage is extensive. I don’t believe there is anything that can be done other than to keep him comfortable.”

“You mean you’re just going to let him die?” Blade stared at Tech, slack faced, horror burning behind the shiny wetness in his eyes.

Tech wanted to argue that he wasn’t letting Shank do anything. It was entirely outside of his control. He had done as he said. He’d done what he could. There was nothing more to be done, as awful as it was.

“Bl…Blade,” Shank whispered, voice transparent and weak. “It’s okay…t’s okay.”

“No,” Blade sobbed, kneeling over Shank so that their foreheads pressed together. He had one of Shank’s hands clasped tightly in both of his. “No, you can’t leave. You can’t die.”

With obvious effort, Shank reached up with his free hand and put it over Blade’s chest plate, where his heart was. “Here…vod…”

Tech averted his gaze, not wanting to intrude on such a private moment. He tried not to imagine if the roles were reversed, if he were saying goodbye to one of his own brothers on the field. He did not succeed.

Not even a minute passed before Shank’s labored breathing ceased, and Blade’s sobs intensified. Tech was prepared to give the grieving brother a few more minutes, but the order suddenly came to fall back.

“Blade, we have to go,” he said as he stood.

Blade shook his head. “I can’t leave him here,” he choked out.

“We must,” Tech urged.

“You go! I’m not leaving him behind!” Blade screamed at him.

Tech reached out and grabbed Blade’s arm, attempted to forcibly drag the trooper to his feet. “You will not be leaving him behind! He’s already gone! He would not want you to die for his corpse!”

Harsh and bitter as the words sounded coming out of Tech’s mouth, they seemed to rally Blade to his senses. He allowed himself to be pulled up and returned his helmet to his head. Tech then shoved him ahead to prevent the soldier from possibly circling back if left unsupervised.

He couldn’t save one brother, but he could help the other survive at least one more day.

END

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[generic-sonic-fan]

I Can't Take All This

Summary: A corollary to “I Can’t Accept All This”. 

Metal Sonic finds itself buried under the rubble with Sonic, and is forced to contemplate the most extreme execution of its prime core directive.

(Or: what if it was Metal Sonic buried alive with Sonic instead of Omega?)

Word Count: 1677

(Inspired by the lovely @ramblingsofasandvich!)

Metal Sonic’s processor could not even begin to chart a path of egress before the rubble fell. 

Catching the falling debris with its arms joints locked above its vital processor was a decision made in the next three frames of its continued existence. It flexed its elbow joints to prevent them from snapping. Its legs sheared off at the knee joint instead. Now its foot and calf plating lay in front of it, tactile sensors refusing to reconnect no matter how many times it urged them to. 

Its every other sensor was tuned to escape options. It did not need to devote precious processing power to the calculations to know that its frame would only withstand another half an hour bearing this weight, and that was a generous estimate. It probed the wreckage above and to every side for weaknesses or natural cavities in the collapse formation. It found none; at least, none accessible, even if its turbine could achieve maximum spin-up and airflow in these conditions. 

And it registered, upon turning its scanners to the floor, that Sonic the hedgehog lay only five feet southwest of its position. Heart rate, elevated; breathing, erratic; alive. 

The only barrier separating them was a metal panel. This panel was not load-bearing and only a quarter of an inch thick. Easily pierceable. Metal Sonic ran simulations of the various tearing motions with its claws that could achieve a breach. All of which, though, required releasing its hold on the ceiling. It could not flee to Sonic’s cavity for shelter should it pursue that course of action, as his cavity was not a natural result of the debris formation, but rather-

But rather-

Metal Sonic flinched its head forward as its operating system was whipped with a reprimand for its direct disobedience of its prime core directive. Its arms shook. This motion translated into the greater debris, knocking particles loose from the ceiling. One large particulate landed on Sonic’s head, rousing him from an unconscious state. 

“Hello? Help? HELP!”

The organic hedgehog rose from his prone position. A surge of tactical protocols flooded Metal Sonic’s already overwhelmed processor. It calculated, in two-point-three seconds, every possible angle of attack Sonic could utilize should he choose to tear through the thin metal plating, and it concluded that it would have no defense. This would lead to near-complete chassis loss and require extensive repairs from Dr. Ivo Robotnik to remedy. 

. . . or it could release its hold on the ceiling. 

“Is anyone there? I’m here! Help!” Sonic screamed. 

Sonic would be crushed in an instant. His skull would cave, his ribs would snap, and his viscera would be squeezed into whatever miniscule gaps remained. Metal Sonic had run similar simulations thousands of times before. The outcome was certain.

Similarly, though, its own frame would be not just lost, but obliterated; titanium torn, copper and hydraulic fluid spilled into open air, every last trace of its code arcing down the nearest conductive surface to be lost to the ground below. “Repair” was not a concept that existed after this outcome. Neither was “restoration”. The closest was “rebuild”, and that was if Dr. Ivo Robotnik could even find enough salvage to make the operation worthwhile. 

This was no mere processor wipe. This was complete annihilation.

“Come on, come on, Sonic! Calm down! Think! I have to find a way out of here.”

Metal Sonic was once more whipped with punishment from its prime core directive for allowing itself to disassociate in the presence of its enemy. Its frame shook. Something snapped in its left shoulder joint, causing its arm to slam into the pit of the socket. The resulting vibrations in the ceiling structure caused Sonic to whimper, a unique sound that Metal Sonic saved to its memory banks for later analysis before it could stop itself. There should be no future analysis. It should fulfill its prime core directive.

Another, secondary core directive surfaced in its processor, whispering something about self-preservation. Metal Sonic seized this directive and brought it alongside its prime core directive. Combat circumstances allowed for the secondary core directive to be violated if this meant fulfilling the prime. But these were not combat circumstances, it reasoned to itself. Sonic was trapped and incapacitated. These were not combat circumstances, so therefore it must consider both directives. 

The rationale was weak, but enough to allow it to forgo an immediate decision while its subroutines detangled the paradox. 

“Okay, let’s try this. . .”

Sonic was pawing at a wall of loose debris. This debris, though not load-bearing, held back a wall of gravel-sized pieces. The gravel supported other concrete chunks throughout the structure above, the shifting of which could impact the load Metal Sonic was bearing. Sonic was digging, and fast- it did not have time to calculate whether the impact of the shifting gravel would be negative or beneficial. 

It tested its vocalizer and released a negative ping. 

Sonic ceased his movements. “Hello?”

After a few seconds, Sonic continued. Metal Sonic released another negative ping. 

“No, wait, I know that sound. I know that sound. Who- Metal?”

Sonic knew it was here.

“You’re trapped here too?”

Sonic could easily tear through the metal plating separating them. 

“Metal, if you’re in here, gimme another ping.” 

Sonic would destroy it. The ceiling would collapse. They would both be obliterated.

“I’ll- I’ll get us out of here. Don’t worry about it.” Sonic panted. “Don’t worry. We’re okay. I’m okay. Are you okay?”

His voice diminished the longer he spoke, and his heart rate spiked. His breaths became shallow gasps. It matched an emotional state Metal Sonic had witnessed from Amy Rose when it had first captured her. The colloquial term was a “panic attack”. 

It was. . . remarkable, to register such a drastic fear response from Sonic. 

This observation was interrupted by a snap in its right shoulder joint. Its other arm was forced deep into the pit of its socket, now uniform with its left. The consequent shaking dropped a watermelon-sized rock onto Sonic’s lap. The impact did not break any bones, but it would leave him severely bruised, and caused him to begin openly sobbing. This was another unique sound that Metal Sonic recorded to its memory banks. 

It would not have much longer to record things to its memory banks. With both of its shoulder joints having failed, its arms now impaled into the walls of its center chest turbine. The load would force these walls to fail in fifteen minutes, and with that, send the debris tumbling down atop its processor. 

Why did it delay the inevitable?

Self preservation, its secondary core directive whispered. But what difference did fifteen minutes make?

Metal Sonic let go.

At least, its processor sent the command to its actuators to release, only to find both its left and right shoulder joints inoperable. 

If it was programmed to laugh, perhaps it would have. 

It began calculating methods to wiggle its arms out of their sockets, before abandoning this pursuit. What difference did fifteen, now fourteen, minutes make? Sonic was going to die. Its purpose was going to be fulfilled. It no longer needed to strain its processing capabilities towards this end. It no longer needed to exert its physical form or make determinations about the limits of its chassis. Its purpose was complete. Its existence was now unnecessary.

It should find itself finally able to rest, with this conclusion. 

. . . it should not be scrambling to find any other solution. 

Metal Sonic scanned every inch of the ceiling above for points of weakness and found none. It scanned the walls around it for natural cavities to flee to, and found none. It scanned, and scanned, and scanned, and found only the same unforgiving concrete and the same panicking hedgehog. It reviewed all of the lines of rationale its short-term adaptive processing had generated since the collapse, analyzing each bit of logic for any hidden clues or missed solutions, only to be led to the same conclusion. 

Suddenly, there was a massive shift in the rubble above, and the load Metal Sonic was supporting decreased. Another vibration swept through the space around it. Then another. Then another. 

The ceiling was lifted off of its hands, revealing Dr. Ivo Robotnik’s Eggmobile hovering above. He released the chunk from the claw of his crane before lowering the glass dome surrounding him with the press of a button.

“Well, well, my finest creation! You certainly have a habit of wanton destruction in your attempts to destroy Sonic. Still wasn’t expecting you to bring the roof down on top of yourself though. I’ll see if I can tweak that habit during your next-” 

Metal Sonic flicked its cameras in the direction of Sonic in an attempt to warn its creator of what he’d just done, but it was already too late- Sonic jumped to his feet, scrambled up the debris, and disappeared beneath the open sky before Dr. Ivo Robotnik had uttered his last syllable. The man ducked beneath the walls of the cockpit as the shockwave rocked his vehicle.

When the Eggmobile steadied, he peeked his eyes over the side. “Huh. You didn’t tell me you managed to trap the rodent down there with you!”

Metal Sonic had not engaged in any communication with the outside world after the collapse- the layers of concrete had blocked any signal but the strongest, most bare of distress pings.

Distress pings. Metal Sonic checked its communication feed and found that it had given off the signal automatically the moment the roof had collapsed. If it had disabled this ping, its creator would not have stumbled upon it, and Sonic would finally be dead.

“Eh, that’s alright. There’s always next time.” Dr. Ivo Robotnik shrugged as he returned to his controls.

He lowered the crane claw and grabbed Metal Sonic’s frame. Upon safe retrieval, protocol was to enter standby mode to limit processor activity. Metal Sonic allowed this mode to dampen its awareness as it was hoisted into the cabin of the Eggmobile.

It could analyze its utter failure later. 

[trippingthemoonlightfantastic]

I hate every second. Why am I even bothering. My mother won't let me sleep. Hasn't for days. When I got to sleep at 3:30am she pulled down my free standing bookshelf down on my $1000 large format flat scanner and a lot of artwork now there's broken glass, ceramics, juice, pills all over the floor, my art and my scanner is garbage the glass is smashed. And it's 4 in the morning. 4 in the fucking morning.

This feels like torture. I just want to die. I'm fucked about and if I had rope I would hang myself.

[superfanficnatural]

The Son: Chapter 3

Pairing: Poe Dameron x Male!Reader (The Son)

Summary: You’ve finally broken free of the forces controlling you at a great cost, though the cost of doing so was even greater than you thought. Now, you fight for the antithesis of what you had been representing, and have to grapple with finding your own place in the galaxy while grappling with the person trying to find their way into your heart. Will The Son choose the light? Or the dark? Whatever the answer may be, may the force be with us.

A/N: Chapter 3 is here everyone! I really hope you’re enjoying this series so far as I am loving writing it. As always, I hope you enjoy!

Warnings: Mentions of Suicide, none others.

Word Count: 2,291

Italics are your thoughts

Masterpost

As your ship came out of hyperspace, you came face to face with a planet the navigation console called Yavin 4. As soon as you dropped out, you felt her presence. She was incredibly powerful and had a deep connection with the force, you could almost feel that the midi-chlorians loved her. You were appreciative of this presence as it allowed you to understand which part of the planet to pilot down to. As you were just entering the atmosphere, your center console began beeping and you realized that you had an incoming communication. Reaching over, you pushed the button that opened the communications channel. 

“Unidentified ship, identify yourself and state your purpose,” you heard a voice play overhead in the bridge.

“My name is Y/N Y/L/N, and I come looking for a woman named Leia Skywalker,” you responded swiftly. 

There was a slight pause on the other end, “What do you want with- You are not cleared for landing, turn your ship around and leave immediately or be blown out of the sky.”

You sighed, “Please, I am not with the First Order, I come in peace. I need to see Leia Skywalker.”

Your scanners picked up four other ships in formation behind you.

“This is your last- what?” you heard a slight commotion on the other end before they spoke up once more, “You are clear for landing, land at these coordinates.”

Your console beeped with the incoming coordinates which you promptly entered into your navigation computer and eventually set down your ship at. Exiting the ship, you were immediately met with a welcoming party, four soldiers with blasters at the ready, two people who looked like they worked communications, and Leia.

“I heard you were looking for me?” she asked as you descended the ramp.

“Indeed, you were the source of the light in this galaxy, and I knew that I had to come,” you responded as you walked up to her, keeping a slight distance so as to not alarm the guards.

She looked at you inquisitively, “You’re a Jedi? I can... feel your energy, it’s strong.”

You decided to spare her the details, at least for now, “Not quite, but... becoming. I have my crystals but no sabers.”

“Have you come to join the Resistance?” 

You thought to yourself for a moment, “I believe so. Though I must first speak with you, privately.”

“And why is that?” one of the guards asked.

You didn’t remove eye contact with her as you tried to convey your intentions to her. It seemed to work as she waved her hand at the guards, “It’s alright. Mr. Y/L/N and I have things to discuss.”

She turned and headed towards the main building, her entourage following as you caught up with them. After a series of hallways and a few people walking past your group, you ended up in a large room with a circular technological table at the center. Walking up to it, the group dissolved around the table and Leia guided you further across the room to a door, a smaller adjoined room behind it. 

Once the two of you entered, she walked up to her desk and turned to you, “What is it that you need to tell me?”

“It’s more of what I require of you, but I can also give you answers to questions you might have,” you responded.

“Who are you?” she questioned.

“I knew you would start with that, it’s my energy right?”

She nodded, “I can sense that you’re extremely powerful yet... it’s like I can’t sense anything at all at the same time.”

You sighed, “You are correct. I am currently suppressing my force energy as I fear if I unleash it all it could throw the galaxy into chaos.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” she solidified.

You looked her straight in the eyes, “I was once known as ‘The Son,’ a cosmic being and emblem of the dark side of the force.”

You were expecting her to have a reaction at what you had said but she stood unmoving, intently listening to what you had to say.

“My sister, she was known as ‘The Daughter,’ she was the emblem of the light side. My father, he was known as ‘The Father,’ and he was the one who held control over me and my sister, and by extension, the light and dark sides of the force.”

Leia made no moves to interrupt you and her aura was warm and inviting, allowing you to speak freely without judgment.

NEXT PARAGRAPH IS POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING (SEE WARNINGS)

“When I was,” your throat began to swell as the memories of what you had done had returned. “When I was the emblem of the dark side, I was a slave. I had no control over myself as I had no sense of myself. In my anger I killed my sister and nearly killed my father. Though, he ended up doing it himself,” you had to stop yourself from speaking as your words began to turn to whispers, your throat tightened as you tried not to cry. After a moment and a deep breath, you gathered yourself, “After my father died, his powers transferred into me, and with the help of... your father, I put myself into a slumber to ensure the balance would stay stable in the galaxy. I was only to awaken once a nexus event in the force occurs. Though I’ve come to find out that I am to assist this nexus event to occur instead, it should be sometime within the next two years.”

She responded immediately as she had intently listened the entire time, “My father? What do you mean?”

“Anakin Skywalker, my father had invited him to the palace for him to take over as the controller over my sister and I, as he was getting old and was going to pass away soon. We might have had immortality, but our father didn’t. That is when all of the events I told you about conspired. I swore him and his companions to secrecy, which I assume he kept, even though he turned to the dark side.”

“And now with your fathers powers, you’re able to feel both sides? Have control over them? Is that why you’re now able to control your own thoughts and actions?”

“Very astute, Leia. That is precisely my situation,” you responded with a smile, happy someone like this was in the galaxy. 

“You asked to speak to me privately,” she turned and began to walk the room, “which means that you don’t want anyone else to know about this.”

You nodded, “That is correct, as far as anyone else is concerned, I am a force sensitive pilot who has little knowledge about the mundane and wants to fight against the First Order.”

“Little knowledge about the mundane?” Leia turned to you.

“I’m afraid that I am unfamiliar with the rituals that humans go through on a day to day basis, and usually find myself befuddled at situations I haven’t been in... which is just about anything outside of a tropical climate or random acts and things I’ve seen through the force. Once I pick something up, I can see its history and its inner workings, but I have to do that for just about everything because I know nothing,” you tried to explain as best as you could. As you were speaking, a piece of your grown out hair fell into your face and you pushed it away, “I’ve never had hair before to shape, nor a beard to groom.” You also took a look at the large glass pane that let you see into the other room to look into your reflection, dirt all over your face from Utapau, “I’ve also never gotten... unclean to need cleaning.”

Leia sighed and closed her eyes, “So you’re a newborn baby aside from your emotional and mental maturity?”

You squinted your eyes and raised your eyebrows, “...yes? Though I am also fairly new to emotions outside of the scope of the dark side.”

She gave you a once over, “Well, no offense, but your appearance corroborates so I believe you. Now, what do you want from me?”

You straightened, “Information really. I don’t know much about what’s going on currently in the galaxy other than the control of the First Order. I need information on how things work, processes, the day to day in the life of a Rebel. I assume you are in charge which is why you are the best source of information to get this from.”

“That sounds like it will... take a while, I’m not sure I can accommodate you.”

You took a step forward, “I agree, while spoken word is the most comfortable way to convey information, there is an alternative.”

She looked at you questionably, “What is the alternative?”

You smiled lightly, “It’s nothing to fear, it’s simply a bit invasive as it requires me to search your memories and acquire the information that way.”

“You mean look into my mind? My memories?” she responded.

“Precisely. It will almost be like I would live through the events myself, it is the easiest way for me to acquire the information I need,” you stated.

“Why couldn’t you do this with anyone else? Why me?”

“Good question. Your connection with the force makes it easier for me to reach into your mind than most others. Additionally, while I enter your memories, I become vulnerable to influence from the person I do it to. I know that you do not have any ill intentions. To add to all of that, your memory will be the most educational,” you explained.

She thought to herself for a moment, “How is it that you are able to do this?”

“To be honest,” you rubbed the back of your neck, “I haven’t fully figured out how either. I was able to show people events of the future and even see it myself but I lost that ability after my fathers power entered into me. Now, I can only see flashes, nothing solid to make out. I suspect that the dark side of me has yet to fully accept me after turning from slave to master, or perhaps there is an individual who is blocking me.”

“Is there someone powerful enough to do that? Based on your story, you should be one of the strongest force users to ever live. I can feel it coming off of you,” she retorted. 

You sucked in a breath, “I’ve been suppressing myself in order to keep the balance of the galaxy. I suspect I will only be able to wield my true power at the time of the nexus event. Though what or when that is, I currently have no idea. Until then, I’m afraid I only have about the same level of power as your father, though with a few more... tricks for simplicity's sake.”

She pushed a button on the table which clouded the glass in the wall, visually cutting the room off from anyone else, “Very well, let’s just get this over with.”

“I appreciate your trust in me, you truly are filled with light, Leia Skywalker,” you said as you approached her.

“Enough with the formalities, I can sense your intentions as well, I know that you’re here to help us,” she finished.

“Apologies, I am unfamiliar with a more... lax way of speaking, your father had warned me of it before but it seems I must work on it,” you said as you reached your hands up to her head and closed your eyes.

As you reached out to her mind, you gave the force a command, let me live through her.

To the outside world, only mere moments had passed, though, you had lived years of memories through her. You maintained her privacy and only lived through events that had multiple people in it, the events of the war she took place in against the Empire, growing up with her family on Alderaan, the recent events of the war against the First Order. After you had seen what you deemed necessary, you released yourself from her mind and took a step back.

“I felt you inside... it was like reliving all of that once more,” she commented as she regained her bearings.

“I apologize if I submitted you to any past traumas, that was not my intention,” you apologized.

She shook her head, “Not at all, a fresh reminder was nice actually. Have you learned everything you’ve needed?” You nodded, “I should have enough information to go off of to live and fight.”

As you responded, your stomach growled and you realized the dull pain you were feeling was from your stomach.

“Hunger, something new?” she asked, understanding what was going on.

“I... think so, if this is any indication,” you chuckled nervously.

She gave you a kind smile, “I’ll set you up in some quarters and get you some food. Though, I’m afraid I cannot lie to my own people about your identity.”

You sighed defeatedly but she kept going before you could respond, “I will keep the personal details personal, but they have to know that you are a Jedi, and that you’re here to support the Resistance.”

“That’s acceptable, but please, no one can know my status as ‘The Son,’ I do not wish to sow dissent or create any kinds of issues, Leia,” you conceded.

“I can agree to those terms, and by the way, it’s Leia Organa, but you’ll be calling me General Leia,” she corrected.

You smiled, “Apologies, I only learned of that after I saw your memories.”

She smiled in kind and walked over to open the door, “Welcome to the Resistance, Y/N.”

Next Chapter

Forevers Tag List: @magssteenkamp @shadowsinger11 @donnaintx @flamencodiva @impalawrites-blog @talesmaniac89 @malfoysqueen54 @writercole @hintsofhoney @lassie-bird @never--doubt

Male Reader Tag List: @myybebe @denim-devil @spnfanboy777

The Son Tag List: @brymalibu

[mybeingthere]

Portia Munson is a visual artist who works in a range of media including photography, painting, sculpture and installation and focuses primarily on environmental and cultural themes seen from a feminist perspective.

Munson was born in Beverly, MA in 1961. She has a BFA from Cooper Union (1983), and an MFA from Mason Gross School of Art (1990), Rutgers University.

The Memento Mori Mandalas memorialize and honor creatures that have paid the price of humanity’s harsh impact on the land. Evoking the transitory Buddhist spiritual practice of mandala making, Portia Munson reflects on the passing beauty of earthly things and the costs of climate change with arrangements that center on fallen birds and insects she finds on her walks around our region. Using a high resolution flatbed scanner, she holds up these specimens of loss for our respect and admiration, often surrounding them with flowers and plants she grows.

“I began creating flower images in 2002 after the death of a favorite person left me pondering the fleeting lives of flowers and people. While walking in my garden images of flower arrays came to me. I imagined flower mandalas that were reminiscent of suzanies from Uzbekistan and the vivid garlands of fresh blossoms I had seen being used as religious offerings in Southeast Asia. Using the mandala, the circular form that in Eastern religions represents the universe, I meticulously arrange flowers from the garden into combinations of color and form that exaggerate the vibrancy of both. Sometimes I slice into buds and append blossoms onto one another. As with all my work, a closer look at the subject reveals hidden secrets – in this case, the flowers’ hairy, sticky, or poisonous parts; pollen; seeds; and the occasional insect.

To make these mandala images, I use the scanner like a large-format camera. I lay flowers directly onto it, allowing pollen and other flower stuff to fall onto the glass and become part of the image. When the high-resolution scans are enlarged, amazing details and natural structures emerge. Every flower mandala is unique to a moment in time, represents what is in bloom on the day I made it.” – Portia Munson

[ifthepuppetmakesyousmile]

on one hand, i'm glad my large bed scanner defaults to dark and doesn't wash out every color, but i'm also a little bummed at how difficult it can be to balance colors. but since my spepp poster came from sweden today, i wanted to share the goods with you all in the form of a large-format scan!

[milksockets]

i have a bunch of magazines that i want to scan and was wondering about how you do it. when you scan stuff, is your process destructive or non-destructive of the original objects? what kind of scanner and software are you using? thanks, love your work!

i'll have to add this to my pinned post because i get these questions a lot.

i have an hp envy 6055e, which is not like "high end” at all, and i just use the software it comes with.

i usually scan pages in a book as-is, without ripping them out or anything. (with non-library books that are old, sometimes pages fall out on their own.)

there's nothing special or fancy happening here, and i could definitely invest in a better and/or a large format scanner, etc. but i really just don't care enough and it's not like i'm getting paid for this lmao

[objectheadzine]

WELCOME TO THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OBJECT HEAD ZINE!

2 months left!

In celebration, the 2024's edition will be a Grab Bag - draw whatever object head you like (so long as it fits the guidelines, see below). In Lieu of a theme, all submissions MUST HAVE ASHLEY (the megaphone mascot) in the piece! Feel free to make him as large or as small as you want in the composition. He can be hanging out with your characters or he can be on a flyer, just so long he's somewhere in the picture! Reference of all his outfits can be found here. But don't feel like you're restricted to his previous outfits. Feel free to dress him up in anything you'd like. Content is also free for whatever! You want to date the lil man? Go for it! You want to tease or go on the attack? Also fine! Ignore him and let him live his life? Sure thing.

ALL submissions will be accepted as long as they fit guidelines and each person has a limit of up to 3 submissions. Submit your pieces to the zine email objectheadzine(@)hotmail(.)com along with the email/website/name you’d like to be credited as. (Feel free to omit emails if that is more comfortable). When you’ve finished your piece(s), you are allowed to post them to your blogs as long as you link back to the zine blog! This will be a DIGITAL ZINE ONLY and will be available free upon completion (donation optional).

The guidelines are as follow:

Illustration-quality works in either digital or traditional mediums. Both colour and b/w acceptable; background required. *BG can be as simple as a pattern or colour block! Avoid utilizing a camera to submit your images, please use a scanner. 

The default size will be 6″x9″, 300 dpi (1800px x 2700px) but feel free to go larger or smaller, so long as it follows those proportions. Please work in a vertical format.

For consistency’s sake, keep faces to a minimum (You can have eye(s) or you can have mouth(s) but don’t have both in a humanoid arrangement.)

Ashley, the megaphone head mascot, must be included in your piece. He can be small in the picture or a large factor but he must be included. When submitting, if he is not obvious, please point him out to me. References are found here.

Please go for original characters (or fanart of your friend’s characters) and not so much established object heads (e.g. the popcorn and soda heads from No More).

If you want to include humans, that’s fine as well but keep the ratio of people to object heads 1:1.

Content should be at most PG-13: Romance is fine but after-hours business should not be implied, Blood is fine but no gore. In the end, use your common sense.

Feel free to draw a comic or just an illustration! A comic counts as one submission.

Some facts about Ashley that could help with your piece: He's 5'2", he's of Chinese nationality, he's a TV show host, he's a bubbly, happy-go-lucky kind of guy and he has a Samyoed dog named Cotton!

Note that if a submission does not meet the above guidelines, I will either reject your submission or suggest improvements that would help your piece fulfill them. Please email me at objectheadzine(@)hotmail(.)com if you have any further questions and I’ll do my best to reply promptly. If you do not receive a message from me within a few days, please send it again. Final pieces submitted should be either in PNG or a one layer PSD file format.

Want to share your piece as you're working on them? Come on over to the Object Head Zine discord!

THE DUE DATE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS NOVEMBER 9TH.

[krem-does-stuff]

Hi Krem! I don’t know if anyone has asked you this already but I’m very curious, from one artist to another. 🫶🎨 What’s your process for uploading such high quality pictures of your art? Do you have a way you scan each piece? Do you do anything digitally afterwards or do you usually keep it fairly simple when you upload?

(do you mind getting these technical kind of questions? Apologies if you do. Love your watercolor work.)💗

I love receiving technical questions! I literally cannot shut up about this things.

I have a very specific way to scan my paintings which very clearly shows my masochistic tendencies. I paint on fairly large formats (usually 40x60 cm / 15.7x23.6 inches) and I have an old shitty A4 scanner which means I have to scan every 1/4 of the painting individually and then merge all pieces together in Photoshop. Why won't I buy a new bigger scanner and save myself the trouble? Excellent question 🤔

I scan my paintings in 300 DPI so they are really fucking huge on the computer screen. And I do postprocess them in Photoshop in regards to contrast/shadows/lighting/colors, because watercolors is a pale technique and scanning absolutely DESTROYS all of those (or maybe my shitty scanner is guilty of that? What a mystery).

Anyways I made a little graphic to show you the differences.

(The phone camera photo has such a shitty quality and it's unfinished because that's a still from my in-progress video. I don't have any other photos of this painting on my phone, I'm on vacation right now and I didn't take my paintings with me 😂 )

Thank you for asking, I love your art too!

[chroniclers-circle]

chromium 3b

The third planet she visited in the Chromium system, labeled Chromium 3b by her navigational software, wasn’t really a planet—hence the ‘b’ designation. It was a moon, orbiting one of the handful of gas giants in the system, and it was completely covered in ice. Yet the ship scanners detected something interesting, and so she’d be finding her way down to the planet’s surface, somehow.

She sat in front of the bridge computer, tapping her fingers against the console. The imaging system was slowly compiling all the information the ship could glean about the makeup of the planet, so that she could attempt to figure out how on earth she was supposed to document the hostile surface of a planet whose winds carried ice-knives that would be able to chop her up into little pieces.

The console played the little jingle she’d composed during one of the inter-system flight periods as it finished compiling. She squinted at the screen.

It seemed this planet too had vast spaces underneath the crust of the planet—she realized what she would have to do. It was time to pull out the transporter matrix again. Not her favorite tool to use in the field if she could avoid it, but a tool that she could be content using all the same, and it would be able to get her down to the hollow spaces inside the planet without needing to try and navigate the treacherous atmosphere.

She typed in the command for the computer to unfold the matrix from storage, and then left to go put on her space-suit once again.

Sys.log: First Impressions

It was like standing in the lungs of the planet. Dark, for the most part, save where her finger-lights and helmet flashlight shone, with each ray of light catching the glittering formations of ice that made up the walls around her. She breathed out, and pretended she could see the water vapor crystallize in the air.

She trekked through the cave, keeping an eye out for any unusual features. The twisting cavern led down, further into the bowels of the planet, and she took a moment to consider whether she truly trusted the depths below—or whether it would be best to explore in the other direction, where it would be easier for the ship’s transporter matrix to pick her up.

She wasn’t here to stay in her comfort zone. The depths of the planet called to her, and she would simply have to deal with whatever mysteries lay beneath as they made themselves known.

Sys.log: Oceans Inside Glaciers; Further Ruins

She didn’t expect the moment where the ice turned to stone. Nor did she expect the moment where water began to lap at the stony shore next to her boots. The cavern had opened up around her nearly a mile behind her, as she’d continued to walk. She peered out at the darkness, wondering how far into the distance the water stretched. Was it a lake, or something more?

If she weren’t in her suit and helmet, she would have tried to taste the water to figure out the truth. As it was, she had to settle for running a chemical composition test on her limited personal scanners, and waiting to see the results.

Saltwater.

On any other planet, this would be a sign that the body of water before her was large enough to consider an ocean—but with the limited vision and limited sensors and scanner arrays available to her, she would just have to hypothesize. Though her perceptions of the planets she explored counted for much, they did not count for the totality of the professional judgment. She frowned and set off along the shoreline.

A twisted obelisk carved from ice and a pale white stone loomed out of the darkness at her, and she slowed down to regard it with curiosity. She hadn’t seen anything like the stone before, and the ice had all but vanished at this depth.

She circled around it, trying to gage the detail, the size, and the embellishments that had clearly been carved into it. Upon reaching the other side, she stopped and stared. There was a statue embedded into the obelisk, a statue with humanoid proportions and with shapes that in every way reminded her of another human.

It was lithe, the figure, and vaguely mammalian, with unusually smooth skin. Like a human, the figure has hair on its head. Unlike a human, there was a third joint on each of six delicate fingers, and a thin web that stretches between each finger at the first knuckle. A tendril emerged from the base of the alien statue’s elbows, and twisted around the forearm, only to break free and flex alone at the wrist. She raised herself onto her tiptoes trying to get a better look at the statues’ face.

It blinked at her.

His eyes were as icy as the rest of planet, with a pupil that looked as though it were caught in the middle of mitosis, part way through division or consolidation, something half and double all at once. He smiled at her with sharp teeth, and one hand curled into a fist to rap against the ice that trapped him inside the obelisk.

She stepped back in shock, and the alien’s face shifted to look something like regret, fingers splaying out to press against the glass with a remorseful tilt to his head. He tapped the glass again, but this time with one elegant finger.

He wanted to be free, she realized. Her heart hammered in her chest. She could set him free, if she wanted to—if she thought he wasn’t a threat. He was the first humanoid that she’d seen in months, maybe even years, if she allowed herself to think about how long it had been anywhere other than in her bed on her ship during assigned sleeping hours. Here was the chance for her not to be so alone anymore. He was the chance for her not to be so alone anymore.

She swallowed, and began to investigate the obelisk that trapped him. It’d be so nice not to be alone anymore.

NEXT PLANET