#no. no they cannot. and those batteries were used up two years ago (almost throws up thinking how it’s been two years since my dad died)

[milo-is-rambling]

Booo we have no power and my room is slightly warm.

[junghelioseok]

pronoia.

↳ you can definitively say that you did not sign up for this.

◇ namjoon x reader ◇ zombie apocalypse!au | college!au ◇ 15k [1/1]

notes: a very late birthday present for @imaginationofacrazyfangirl, who i kind of like for some reason. 

⇢ pronoia (n): a state of mind that is the opposite of paranoia. a suspicion that the universe is conspiring in your favor.

warnings: some violence obviously. some gore. mostly just me trying to be funny. irreverent humor, zombieland jokes, and a couple bad philosophy references bc idk what i’m talking about. exactly one (1) brooklyn 99 joke. yoongi is lowkey a badass bc u cannot convince me his crafty, conniving ass wouldn’t be good in this kind of situation. jk’s ready to risk it all for a twinkie. tbh this is kind of a mess and the ending might be rushed but i still worked really hard on it so please leave feedback sndfjfkjsksds 🙈

It’s too quiet.

Fluorescent lights flicker overhead, the dull hum fading into the background as water starts dripping somewhere to your left. Your heartbeat quickens, thudding erratically against your ribcage as you suck in a deep breath and tighten your grip on your baseball bat.

It’s hard to believe that just three days ago, you were a regular college student. Three days ago, your biggest concerns were finding a decently paid summer job and getting through your last philosophy lecture without daydreaming about the cute teaching assistant bending you over his desk. But now, sandwiched between two rows in the back of your university’s biggest auditorium, you have several new concerns. Bigger concerns.

And first and foremost among them, are the zombies.

To be honest, you still aren’t entirely sure how it happened. The last emergency alert had killed your phone’s battery for good, and you’d only just managed to catch a glimpse of the words “mutated virus” and “nationwide epidemic” before the screen faded to black. And a good thing too—the undead guy trying to sneak up on you from behind definitely would have gotten you had you not seen his reflection in your now-useless hunk of metal and glass.

Thank god for the softball unit in high school gym class, you think to yourself, trying in vain to wipe the blood and brain matter off of your bat. Sure, you didn’t think you’d be utilizing those skills to kill zombies, but at this new low point in your life, anything that aids your survival is a home run in your book.

Deeming your weapon sufficiently clean, you tuck it back into a makeshift sling you’d fashioned out of an old scarf, adjusting it so that it lays flat against your spine. With both hands now free, you begin inching toward the back exit. There’s a growing ache in your bladder that you can no longer ignore, and you send a quick prayer up to any gods that may exist before cracking the auditorium door open, glancing left and right down the seemingly empty hallway. Silently, you count to ten.

After a few more moments of deliberation, you decide the coast is clear. The restrooms are at the very end of the hall, and you can’t help but feel like the little gendered stick figures are taunting you as you cautiously make your way toward them, your shoes silent against the linoleum floor.

You are approximately fifteen feet away from your destination when you hear footsteps. Your heart kicks into overdrive at the unsteady rhythm—a short tap followed by a long dragging sound, as if the approaching individual were limping. For a moment, you debate running for the nearest bathroom and barricading yourself inside, but enclosed spaces are a bad idea according to every zombie movie you’ve ever seen, and you aren’t particularly keen on the idea of becoming zombie food.

Instead, you steel yourself and turn around, pulling out your bat. The approaching zombie doesn’t look like a student—in fact, you’re pretty sure he was your trigonometry teacher for a semester during freshman year—but that’s hardly important right now.

What is important, however, is the black-and-white figure that’s just rounded the corner behind the limping math professor-turned-zombie. And it’s running toward you—fast. Far faster than any of the undead beings you’ve seen, and, upon closer inspection, faster than most of the human beings you know.

And that can only mean one thing.

“Jungkook!” you exclaim, half in surprise and half in horror as the dark-haired track star pulls even with your former professor and swings at his head, using all of his momentum and landing a solid crack. The zombie crumples to the linoleum floor, blood and viscera seeping from the crack in his skull, and you frown in distaste before looking up at your classmate. “Uh, hi?”

“{Name}?” Jungkook asks in disbelief, skidding to a stop. He’s wearing a single boxing glove on one hand and wielding a smashed wine bottle in the other, and you almost want to laugh at his appearance. After all, you’re about ninety-nine percent sure he was wearing the exact same thing at the last house party you both attended. But now—with a bloodied zombie still twitching at your feet and the imminent threat of even more coming after you—probably isn’t the best time to bring that up.

“It is you,” Jungkook says in disbelief, his eyes widening. “Are you alone?”

You nod. “Yeah. You?”

Jungkook nods back. “Yeah. You’re the first person I’ve come across who hasn’t—well… you know.” He gestures downward vaguely.

“Yeah. I know.”

For a few seconds, the two of you stand in silence, ruminating on how everything managed to change so quickly. Just last week, you and Jungkook were regular college students. He ran track and and co-captained the campus dance crew, and if it weren’t for the fact that you were lab partners, you aren’t sure you ever would have met. But after months of sitting together in class, equally stumped by the biology textbooks you were forced to buy and elbow-deep in formaldehyde far too often for your liking, you’ve grown to consider him a friend. And right now, you really, really needed a friend.

“Jungkook,” you begin, laying an arm on his shoulder, “I need your help.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” he says, shaking his shaggy hair out of his face like a dog and glancing around the hallway. “We should team up. I mean, we’ve been lab partners for months so we already know we work great togethe—“

“We’ve failed almost half of our lab reports, and you nearly set the table on fire last Tuesday,” you cut in. “But that’s not the point. The point is the current state of my bladder and how you can help me with it.”

Jungkook blinks. “Uh.”

“I need to pee,” you clarify.

“And what exactly do you want me to do about that?”

“Come with me,” you reply, grabbing his wrist. Jungkook lets out a protesting grunt when you begin pulling him down the hallway toward the restrooms, struggling even more vigorously when you try to make him follow you inside.

“This is the girl’s bathroom!” he gasps, wrenching out of your grasp.

You stare at him. “The entire city is overrun by zombies and that’s what you’re worried about?”

“It’s weird!” he protests. Nevertheless, he trots in on your heels, peering around curiously as you bang on the wall of the nearest stall in an attempt to draw any lurkers out into the open.

“Check for zombies, idiot,” you instruct when Jungkook gets distracted by his own reflection in the mirror. “I don’t wanna get eaten.”

He huffs but complies nonetheless. Raising his broken wine bottle, he glances into each stall, kicking open the doors with unnecessary force. “Clear,” he reports once he’s checked the last one, offering you a mock salute. The effect is ruined by the bright red boxing glove still on his hand, but you bite back the snide remark on your tongue and instead walk into the nearest stall.

“Plug your ears or something,” you tell him as you lock the door. “I don’t want you listening to me pee.”

“Why the hell would I listen?” Jungkook retorts, sounding thoroughly horrified.

“Some people are into that,” you reply, wagging a finger at him despite the fact that he can’t see you through the closed door. “It’s called urolagnia. Don’t kinkshame.”

“I don’t want to know why you know that,” he grumbles under his breath. “Shut up and pee already. I have to go too.”

“But this is the girls’ room,” you snipe, finishing your business and stepping out to wash your hands. Jungkook takes your place inside the stall while you turn on the sink, eyeing his reflection pointedly in the mirror. “You’re gonna get cooties.”

Jungkook rolls his eyes. “Ha, ha,” he says dryly. “You’re hilarious.”

And then he’s turning around, flipping you the bird before slamming the metal door in your face.

You shrug, unfazed. “I know I am,” you say, addressing your own reflection in the mirror. “Also, do you by any chance own a car?”

///

“This feels like a bad idea,” Jungkook mutters, eyeing the quiet parking lot. It’s nowhere near full, but there are still several dozen cars scattered around, empty and abandoned with no owners to be found. At the far end lies your prize—a black SUV with tinted windows and a bicycle strapped to the roof. “Should we make a run for it?” Jungkook asks. “I mean, we don’t really have any other options if we wanna make it out of here with our brains intact, and—”

“Hang on a sec,” you interrupt, grabbing his arm. “We can create a diversion first. Give me your wine bottle—I’m gonna throw it.”

Jungkook hugs the glass bottle to his chest, eyes round and expression aghast. “And leave myself defenseless? What do you want me to do, punch the zombies away?”

“That’s literally what you did ten minutes ago,” you point out, rolling your eyes. “Do you have a better idea?”

He pauses for a long moment before a resigned sigh leaves his lips. “Fine. I get to throw it, though.”

“Whatever,” you reply, waving a hand at him. “Knock yourself out. Or them. You should really knock them out, on second thought.”

Jungkook wisely chooses to ignore your rambling, hefting the bottle and testing its weight. Rearing back, he tosses it in a perfect arc, and you watch in fascination as it somersaults through the air before crashing down onto the asphalt in an explosion of shattered glass. “There!” you hiss urgently, tugging on Jungkook’s sleeve when a zombie immediately lumbers out from behind a nearby sedan, searching for the source of the noise. “We run on three, got it?”

“Got it,” he whispers back, watching raptly as several more zombies follow the first. “One…”

“Two…”

“Three!”

Together, you make a mad dash for the SUV. Jungkook gets there first, skidding to a stop and trying the driver’s side door only to find it locked. “I’ll check the other side,” you tell him, glancing around to make sure the zombies are still distracted. “Work on breaking a window or something, fast!”

The sound of a throat being cleared stops you dead in your tracks. “You’ll do no such thing,” a low voice drawls. A moment later, the platinum blond head of Min Yoongi—a reclusive senior you only know because he deejays at your favorite club every Friday night— pops out from behind the hood of the car, his dark eyes narrowed at you accusingly. “We got dibs on this one.”

“Yoongi?” you ask in surprise. “What are you—wait. We? Who’s we?”

“I’m we,” a new voice announces—one that you’re very, very familiar with. Kim Namjoon steps into view behind Yoongi, and you aren’t sure whether to be horrified or thrilled to see your philosophy TA alive and well, with what looks like a metal fence pole perched on his shoulder like a bayonet. “Hey, {Name},” Namjoon says, offering you a small smile. “Fancy seeing you here, of all places.”

“N-Namjoon,” you stammer, your heart skipping a beat and racing to catch back up. “You’re… okay.”

“More or less,” the tall man replies agreeably, shrugging. Then he glances toward his blond companion, raising a quizzical brow. “Come on, Yoongi. We’ve got room for two more, don’t we?”

Yoongi grumbles something under his breath that sounds like acquiescence, and Namjoon grins, patting him on the back. “Welcome aboard,” he says, turning back to face you and Jungkook. “We’ve got to move fast. You’re Jeon Jungkook, right? I’ve seen you around the track field. Can you do me a favor and watch my back while I open this door?”

Jungkook nods, accepting Namjoon’s brief handshake and the metal pole he hands over. Namjoon then pulls a wire coat hanger out of his jacket pocket, and you watch, awestruck, as he jimmies the car door open.

“There aren’t any keys,” Jungkook points out, peering over the taller man’s shoulder to get a glimpse of the ignition. “Now what? Does anyone know how to hotwire a car?”

“Yes,” Namjoon and Yoongi say simultaneously.

“Well, only in theory,” Namjoon adds when Yoongi rolls his eyes and brushes past him to duck underneath the steering wheel. “Yoongi’s the real expert here.”

“That makes me sound like a criminal,” the blond man grumbles as he sets his toolbox on the ground and gets to work. “For the record, I only know how to do this because of all the times my keys have gone missing. I’m not the fucking Pontiac Bandit.”

“Sounds exactly like what the fucking Pontiac Bandit would say,” you and Jungkook say at the same time, high-fiving each other.

Yoongi rolls his eyes. “This isn’t even a Pontiac,” he grumbles, hissing through his teeth as he pulls a few wires free and begins fiddling with them. “Quit watching me and make yourselves useful. Go check the trunk for supplies, or something. Christ.”

Namjoon hums thoughtfully, eyeing the surrounding cars. “That’s actually a good idea. There might be something useful in some of these other cars too. {Name}, why don’t you come with me? Jungkook should probably stay here and keep watch.”

Your mouth goes dry at his suggestion, but you nod hurriedly before your brain can short-circuit at the sound of your name leaving his lips so casually. “That… yeah. That sounds good. Let’s do that.”

“Good luck!” Jungkook calls cheerily as you walk off, earning himself a hard kick in the shins from Yoongi, who’s still flat on his back on the floor of the car.

“Dude, shut the fuck up! Do you want to die?”

Jungkook looks properly abashed. “Right,” he says, lowering his voice. “My bad.”

To your left, Namjoon muffles his laugh behind his hand. Yoongi lets out an exasperated sigh, and you grin, waving at the two before departing with Namjoon. Together, you wander deeper back into the maze of abandoned vehicles scattered around the lot, peering inside for anything that might be useful. Stopping at a sedan with open windows, you slip a hand inside and unlock the door. There’s an unopened bottle of soda in the cupholder, and Namjoon smiles as he reaches into the backseat and pulls out a few grocery bags.

“Try popping the trunk,” he suggests.

“On it,” you reply, searching for the right button. Namjoon walks around back to open the lid, grinning triumphantly when he sees what’s inside.

“More groceries,” he says, hefting another bag. “And half a case of bottled water. This should be enough to get us started.” Beckoning for you to join him, he hands over the three bags before hefting the case of water over one shoulder. “You okay? I can take a bag if you want.”

You shake your head, threading your baseball bat through the handles of each bag and hefting it onto your shoulder. “I’m fine. Thanks, though,” you tell him, trying to ignore the way your heart rate picks up when he gives you a look of approval, a small smile curling the corner of his mouth and dimpling his cheeks.

“So,” you begin as the two of you start trekking back toward the SUV, “where are we headed, anyway? It seems like you and Yoongi have a plan.”

Namjoon nods. “We do. There’s a reported quarantine zone up north—it’s all over Twitter.” Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he pulls out his cellphone, along with a massive battery pack. “I’ve been conserving my phone battery as much as I can, keeping track of any news, and I think it’s our best bet.”

“Smart.” Ruefully, you pull out your own device and show him the black screen. “My phone died ages ago.”

“You still might be able to charge it,” Namjoon points out. “The electrical grids haven’t gone down yet. And I know Yoongi’s got a cord back at the car, so we can charge our devices on the road too. He’s got all sorts of stuff—this battery pack is his, actually. I couldn’t find mine.”

“Of course you couldn’t,” you mutter, thinking back to every time he’s misplaced his laser pointer or lecture notes during class.

“What?”

“Nothing,” you say quickly. Off in the distance, you spot a few zombies shambling along, no doubt searching for their next meal. Silently, you and Namjoon begin walking faster.

Yoongi and Jungkook are both seated inside the car by the time you return. Jungkook hops out to help you load the bags, and you shoot him a grateful grin as you climb into the backseat alongside him. Namjoon takes the passenger seat, kindly plugging in your phone while Yoongi adjusts his mirrors with a frown. “The engine’s gonna draw their attention,” he says. “They probably won’t be able to get us in the car, but hang onto your weapons just in case.” Then he pauses, glancing back at the metal pole in Jungkook’s hands and the wooden bat in yours. “Well. We’ll need to make a stop and get actual weapons.”

“We can try the police station,” Namjoon suggests. “I’m sure others will have had the same idea, but it’s really our only option. Then we’ll have to load up on food, water, and gas.”

Curiously, you peer into the grocery bags sitting on the floor between you and Jungkook. “Most of this stuff’s perishable. We’ll need to get non-perishable stuff if we’re going to be on the road for a long time. How far did you say that quarantined zone is, Namjoon?”

“I didn’t. I’m not actually one-hundred percent sure myself. Social media is a mess, as you might imagine.” Turning around in his seat, Namjoon shows you his Twitter feed—conflicting news alerts interspersed with grisly photos of the destroyed city and panicked requests for aid. “The last emergency alert said that the military base just outside of city limits is safe, but I’m not so sure.” He scrolls down, revealing several videos of zombies staggering around a helicopter, and upon closer inspection, you realize that they’re in full military garb. Horrified, you take his phone to get a closer look, thumbing down the page to reveal even more atrocities.

“Shit,” Jungkook breathes, sidling over to look over your shoulder. “That’s not good.”

Yoongi sighs, eyeing both of you in the rearview mirror. “Yeah, no kidding. The only thing we’re sure about so far is that the infection started in the south, so heading north is our best bet. And hopefully, we’ll find—”

THWUMP!

Namjoon’s phone clatters out of your hands as the parked car suddenly tilts, swaying dangerously to the left before all four wheels return to the asphalt once more. Horrified, you stare at the huddled horde of zombies that has suddenly appeared at your window, bloodstained hands trying in vain to reach you through the glass. “Yoongi, I think you need to drive now!” you shout, wincing as they begin thumping on the window in earnest.

The blond man curses when the car rocks again, his eyes flickering between the dashboard and the zombies swarming on Namjoon’s side of the car. “Oh, fuck. Fuckfuckfu—HA!”

The engine roars to life, and you watch as the zombies closest to you flinch at the sudden noise before renewing their efforts, banging on the window until spiderwebbing cracks begin to form.

“Dude, floor it!” Jungkook yells.

Yoongi doesn’t need to be told twice. The car lurches forward, tires squealing, and you yelp as you’re slammed back against the seat. Instinctively, you fumble for your seat belt, ignoring the stunned look Jungkook shoots you in favor of buckling yourself in and watching the undead horde recede in the distance as you pull farther and farther away. “Holy shit,” you mutter, your head falling back against the backrest, your chest heaving with uneven breaths. “Holy fucking shit.”

Yoongi huffs out a sardonic chuckle as he slows ever so slightly to turn onto the main road. “Yeah. Welcome to the apocalypse.”

///

It’s odd, seeing the city you know and love in ruins. Billowing black smoke rises in the distance, filling the air with an acrid stench and a metallic tinge that you don’t want to think about. The roar of the SUV’s engine sounds like a siren’s song in the eerie silence of the streets, drawing unwanted attention from the undead. Everywhere you look, soulless eyes follow. Some zombies even try to chase the car, but they are quickly left behind as Yoongi slams down on the gas pedal, weaving past overturned vehicles and prone bodies.

You don’t wait to see if any of the bodies will rise up again.

Namjoon begins fiddling with the radio as Yoongi turns down yet another street, heading downtown. Static blares from the speakers, and you watch his frown get deeper the further along he scrolls through the stations. “Nothing,” he mutters after a few long minutes. “That’s not a good sign. The infrastructure is crumbling.”

Jungkook tears his gaze from the window. “What do you mean?”

Namjoon switches off the radio, letting silence envelop the car for a few seconds before speaking again. “I mean everything that sustains our way of life—the things we take for granted most days, like running water and electricity and the internet. We aren’t going to have them for much longer. Without workers to run things, we…” He sighs. “I figure we have maybe a week, at the most.”

“And then what happens?” you ask, your voice soft.

“I don’t know,” Namjoon admits. “To be honest, we might not even survive long enough to find out.”

“But we have to try,” you murmur. “Sure, we’re outnumbered and weaponless, but we have a car. We’re faster and smarter. I don’t think things are hopeless just yet.”

Namjoon shakes his head at your optimism, but Yoongi’s nodding, meeting your eyes in the rearview mirror. “Don’t mind him,” he advises. “Joon likes to overthink things and work himself up into a frenzy, but I think we’ve got a chance at making it through. Besides...” He gestures out the window with his thumb. “We won’t be weaponless for much longer.”

The car rolls to a stop in front of a square brick building that you recognize as the police station, the dark windows overlooking the street like gaping mouths. Most of the glass is broken—even on the higher stories—and you shiver at the sight of the jagged edges glinting like teeth in the wan afternoon sun.

“So... getting inside won’t be a problem,” Jungkook says dryly.

“Guess not,” Namjoon says, frowning. “Somebody definitely beat us here. Should we chance it? Everything could already be gone.”

“We’re already here, man,” Yoongi drawls, already beginning to open the door. “We may as well check it out.”

Cautiously, the four of you pile out of the SUV, eyes darting left and right as you make your way toward the front door with Jungkook in the lead. It’s hanging off its hinges and the glass is pocked with bullet holes, and a frown spreads across your face as you trace one lightly with your index finger. “Looks like there was a fight,” you murmur quietly to Namjoon, who’s standing just behind you with a rather large rock that he must have just picked up from outside. Yoongi takes up the rear with a hammer grasped tightly in his hand, and you bite back the Thor joke that’s sitting on the tip of your tongue.

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s here anymore, though,” Jungkook says, winding his way farther into the lobby. “Think these elevators still work?” he asks, gesturing at the twin metal doors on the far wall.

“Not worth the risk,” Namjoon decides, walking over to the stairwell and opening the door. He peers inside before gesturing for you to enter, allowing everyone to step past him before quietly shutting the door and eyeing the two sets of stairs branching out from the landing. “We’re looking for the station’s armory,” he whispers. “What do you guys think? Up or down?”

“We could split u—” Jungkook begins to suggest, but you cut him off before he can even finish the sentence.

“And get killed off one by one like in every horror movie ever? Are you serious, Jeon?”

Jungkook blinks. “Fine. What do you think, then?”

“I think the parking garage is probably downstairs,” you muse, peering over the railing to look at the lower landing. “And it doesn’t look like there’s another level below that, so I’d say going up is our best bet.”

A smile curls the corner of Namjoon’s mouth, dimpling one cheek as he follows your lead and glances downstairs. “Nice observation,” he says once he’s straightened up again, laying a hand on your shoulder. The gentle pressure sends a shiver up your spine, a butterfly taking flight in your stomach on fluttering, iridescent wings. It’s all you can do to smile back, thanking him softly as he retracts his hand. Already, you miss the warmth of his palm.

“Let’s go,” Jungkook says, effectively ruining the moment as he begins the ascent with his pole at the ready. Yoongi follows, and Namjoon gestures for you to go ahead of him, tucking his rock under one arm.

“It’s not the best weapon,” he says when he catches you looking, a rueful chuckle escaping him.

You grin back. “Better than nothing.”

Up ahead, Jungkook stops on the second floor landing, pressing his ear against the door. “I can’t hear anything,” he grumbles, fumbling for the doorknob and cracking the door open. “But it looks like the coast is cle— oh, shit!” Jungkook pulls the door shut again, his eyes wide.

“What happened?” Yoongi hisses. “What did you see?”

“There’s a bunch of them in the corner,” Jungkook whispers. “They’re… eating something.”

“Someone,” Yoongi corrects wryly, earning himself an elbow in the ribs courtesy of Namjoon. “Sorry,” he mutters, not sounding very sorry at all.

“How many are there?” Namjoon asks.

Jungkook pauses, casting his gaze upward as he does a mental tally. “At least seven or eight that I saw. There could be more though.”

“Did you see anything that could’ve been an armory? Some place where weapons would be stored?” Namjoon presses.

“Nah. Looked like a bunch of desks, mostly. Offices and whatnot.”

Namjoon nods slowly, tapping his chin. “Okay,” he says after a few seconds of deliberation. “Let’s keep going.” He takes the lead this time, stepping past Jungkook to the next staircase, and you follow after him, struggling to keep up when he elects to take the steps two at a time. His long legs span the increased distance with ease, and it takes every ounce of self-control you possess to refrain from staring at his flexing thigh muscles.

One flight of stairs and several instances of shameless ogling later, you find yourselves on the third floor, tiptoeing through a darkened hallway lined with doors and peering inside one by one.

“These all look like interrogation rooms,” Yoongi grumbles after a few fruitless minutes.

“Nope, this one’s a closet,” Jungkook pipes up, walking inside and exiting with a mop. The door slams shut behind him, and he winces under the absolutely withering glare Namjoon shoots at him. “My bad,” he whispers, offering the taller man the mop. “But on the bright side, I think this might be a better weapon than a rock.”

Namjoon sighs and accepts the mop. “Fine. Let’s make the rest of this search quick though. And be quiet,” he adds, with a pointed look at Jungkook. “We might be close to where the weapons are kept now, since we’ve left the administrative areas behind.”

And as it turns out, he’s right. The very next door you open is a room with a multitude of industrial shelves and racks lining the walls. Much to your disappointment, most of them are empty, but a more thorough search turns up a couple of handguns along with several cases of ammunition. Jungkook finds a stockpile of smoke grenades that he refuses to part with, and you roll your eyes as he shoves them into his pockets. “What the hell are smoke grenades going to do against zombies?”

“You never know,” Jungkook retorts. “Besides, I don’t see anything else in here. Do you?”

Dejected, you shake your head. “No, I don’t. Guess Namjoon was right—someone had the same idea as us.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Namjoon says, picking up one of the guns and peering closely at it. “Who here knows how to handle a firearm?”

Yoongi grunts. “My uncle used to take us hunting on camping trips. I’m not a great shot, but I’m all right.”

Namjoon glances over at you Jungkook. “What about you guys? No?”

Jungkook shrugs. “Do shooting games count?”

“No.”

“Okay, then no.”

Namjoon sighs and hands the other gun to Yoongi, who accepts it and checks the safety before tucking it safely into his belt. You watch as Namjoon checks his own gun, unloading the magazine and inserting a new one. “I take it you know a thing or two about guns,” you remark, inching closer to him as he engages the safety with deft fingers.

“My grandfather was a cop,” he replies softly. “He taught me a lot before he passed away.”

You bite your lip as his brow furrows, laying a gentle hand on his arm. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”

He shrugs, his gaze sliding up to meet yours. “It’s alright. It happened years ago.” Then he glances down at your hand, his expression softening just the tiniest bit. “But I appreciate it. Thanks.”

The next few minutes pass in silence as the four of you complete your sweep of the room, peering at the bottommost shelves for any equipment you might have missed. “Hey,” Yoongi says suddenly, his voice hushed. “Hand me your bat, {Name}.”

Both you and Namjoon turn to face him. “Why?” you ask curiously, handing it over and watching as he lays it on the table and pulls his hammer from his waistband.

“Nails,” he says shortly. “Found some in that drawer and figured I’d make you a proper apocalypse weapon.”

“Wait,” Namjoon interrupts, striding over as Yoongi begins hammering nails into your wooden bat. “You’re making too much noise. Someone’s going to hear us.”

“Uh, it’s kinda already too late for that,” Jungkook hisses from the entrance. He’s peering through a little square window that sits about two-thirds of the way up the door, and flinches when a bloody, pale fist slams against it, splintering the glass. “We’ve got company, guys,” he grunts, pressing his full weight against the door and wincing as the glass shatters over his head. “Anyone got any bright ideas to get us out of here in one piece?”

“No,” Namjoon says slowly. “Unless…”

“Unless?” you press.

“We need a diversion,” he says, shaking his head. “But I don’t see how we’ll create one unless… well, unless one of us goes out there and leads them away from here. But that’s asking way too much, and—“

“I’ll do it.”

All three of you whirl around to face Yoongi, who looks thoroughly unfazed by the sudden scrutiny, picking idly at a frayed corner on his jacket. “You can’t be serious,” Namjoon says, finding his voice first. “It’s dangerous.”

“So is staying here,” Yoongi replies. “Besides, aren’t you always going on about the greater good? Altruism and Comte and all that shit? Let me do this, man. I can handle it.”

“That’s not—” Namjoon stops, rubbing the bridge of his nose and letting out a heavy sigh. “That’s not the point. It’s just not practical, Yoongi. You’ll be vulnerable if you’re alone.”

“No, I’ll be fast,” Yoongi corrects, pulling out his gun and clicking off the safety. “You think we’ll do any better as groups of two? I don’t.”

“But—“ Namjoon tries again, his brow creasing, but Yoongi shakes his head and strides to the door.

“I’m gonna go left,” he says, his hand on the handle. “We came from the right, so you guys should be able to retrace our steps and get out.”

Jungkook stops him before he can exit, pressing a handful of smoke grenades into his palm. “Hang on,” he says, his throat tight. “You might need these.”

Yoongi pockets them, nodding. “Thanks, man.”

Namjoon looks like he wants to argue some more, but finally bites his lip and nods, his face resolute. “Good luck,” he says after a long, heavy pause. “Stay safe.”

Yoongi flashes you all a crooked grin. “See you soon.”

And then he’s flinging open the door, swinging his hammer into one zombie’s skull and kicking another in the knees. Namjoon stays in the doorway, shooting any and every zombie that he can see through the smashed window. You can just barely hear Yoongi jeering insults over the sound of gunfire and stumbling footsteps, the occasional thud of something heavy against the linoleum floor letting you know that Namjoon has successfully found his mark.

After what feels like an eternity, Namjoon finally pulls back from the window and turns back to you and Jungkook. “Coast is clear,” he whispers. “Let’s go.”

“And Yoongi?” you ask, anxiety roiling in your gut at the thought of the blond man facing the horde of undead alone.

“He’ll be fine,” Namjoon says automatically, and you know he’s trying to convince himself just as much as he’s reassuring you. His grip is tight on his gun as he wrenches open the door and ushers the two of you out into the hallway, and even in the dimness you see the worried glance he shoots over his shoulder, lingering on the corner that Yoongi has disappeared around.

“Come on, Joon,” you murmur, nudging his arm gently. “Yoongi’s gonna beat us back to the car at the rate we’re going.”

That draws a soft chuckle from your companion. “You’re right,” he murmurs back. “Let’s go.”

///

As it turns out, however, Yoongi does not beat you back to the SUV. The blond-haired man is nowhere to be found, and you see concern etch itself permanently onto Namjoon’s forehead as he peers around the eerily quiet street. The air feels too still, and every crunch of gravel from underneath your sneakers sounds like a gunshot.

“He’ll be back, right?” Jungkook whispers urgently to you while Namjoon is out of earshot, his doe eyes wide and beseeching. “You don’t think he got…”

He trails off, and you shake your head, unwilling to even think of the possibility that harm has befallen the blond-haired man. “Yoongi’s tough,” you declare. “He’ll be back any minute, and we should be ready to take off when he does. In case, you know, he’s still being chased.”

“Right,” Jungkook says, glancing over at Namjoon, who’s standing closest to the driver’s side and is suddenly beginning to look very sheepish.

“So… I can’t actually drive,” he says, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly as your jaw drops.

“Wait, you can’t drive? Don’t you live off-campus? How do you get to class?”

Namjoon shrugs. “I usually bike. Sometimes I walk to class, if the weather’s nice.” Then he pauses, dejection settling on his features. “Although I guess I won’t be teaching classes again any time soon.”

Your heart sinks. You know from the syllabus that he handed out on the first day that this was his first semester as a teaching assistant, his passion for philosophy shining through in every lecture he’s given. “You’re a great teacher,” you tell him, intent on cheering him up. “I learned so much from you. I mean, nobody likes moral philosophy, but you somehow managed to even make that interesting, which is pretty damn incredible.”

Namjoon huffs out a laugh. “Thanks. You were a pretty damn incredible student, yourself.”

“Why, thank you,” you tell him with a grin.

Beside you, Jungkook rolls his eyes and pretends to retch. “Fine, I guess I’ll drive.” Grumbling, he swings open the driver’s side door and plops down onto the seat, adjusting it for his longer legs. “Now how the hell do I start this thing?”

Namjoon clears his throat awkwardly and tears his gaze away from yours, reaching underneath the steering wheel and pulling out a tangle of wires. You stop listening as he explains to Jungkook how to spark them together and instead turn your gaze back to the looming police station, watching intently for any sign of Yoongi’s return. Crumpled newspapers and stray plastic bags roll by, buoyed by the spring breeze. Across the street, a lone pigeon roams, head bobbing as it searches for crumbs.

“Looking for me?”

You jump, letting out a surprised shriek as Yoongi’s blond head of hair suddenly pops out from behind the trunk. “Jesus Christ, Yoongi, what the hell? Where did you come from?”

“Originally? My mother’s womb,” he replies, shrugging. The movement draws your attention to the sleeves of his jacket, newly tattered and splattered with crimson, and any witty retort you might have had is immediately swallowed up by concern.

“Is that blood? Oh my god, is that your blood?”

Your shout alerts Namjoon and Jungkook, twin looks of concern marring their faces as they clamber out of the SUV and join the two of you. “No, no—I’m not hurt,” Yoongi reassures, dismissing your worries with a wave of his hand. “Things did get a little dicey, but it all worked out in the end.”

“How exactly did you escape?” Namjoon asks.

Yoongi grins crookedly. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

Jungkook blinks. “What?”

“If I couldn’t beat them, I had to join them,” Yoongi elaborates, gesturing to his tattered, dirty clothing. “I stumbled across the evidence room while I was trying to find another way out, and got an idea. This—” he gestures at the red stains splattered across his clothing, “—is actually spray paint. The police must’ve confiscated it from graffiti artists or something. Then all I had to do was rip up my jacket and limp a little and, well, here we are.”

“And that worked?” you ask in disbelief. “You just… pretended to be a zombie and walked out?”

“More or less,” Yoongi says with another shrug. “Now come on, let’s blow this joint. They could find us any second, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t really wanna die just yet. Pretending was enough.”

You have about a million more questions, but Yoongi takes his spot in the driver’s seat before you can ask any of them, readjusting the seat and promising an inquisitive Jungkook that he’ll teach him how to drive the hotwired vehicle next time. The rest of you take your seats as the engine roars to life underneath the blond man’s skilled fingertips, and with a squeal of tires against asphalt, you are off once again, heading toward the great unknown.

///

“Wait, wait, no, stop!”

Yoongi slams on the brakes at Jungkook’s shout, the car skidding to an abrupt halt. “What is it?” he demands, his gaze darting around frantically as his fingers reach for his gun. “Is there a problem?”

Jungkook winces. “Sorry. I was talking to Namjoon, actually.”

Yoongi visibly relaxes, shaking his head as he resumes driving. Namjoon glances back at Jungkook, his eyebrows disappearing behind his dark hair in silent inquiry. “Yes?”

“The radio,” Jungkook says, gesturing at the dashboard buttons that Namjoon has been fiddling with incessantly for the last several minutes. “Go back to the last station for a sec.”

Obediently, Namjoon turns the dial. Staticky white noise fills the air, and Jungkook frowns. Then a few jumbled words filter through the static, and he lets out a triumphant shout. “There!”

“Huh,” Namjoon says, leaning closer to the speaker. “I can’t understand a thing they’re saying. We must be out of range.”

“But we must be getting closer—I think I can make out a few words,” Jungkook says. “Everyone shut up and let me listen…” He trails off, and for a few moments, there is only the sound of garbled static and the low whir of the tires against pavement. Then Jungkook flops back against the seat, a pensive frown settling on his face. “Huh.”

You nudge his shoulder. “Well? What did you hear?”

“Not a whole lot,” he admits. “And I can’t be sure that what I heard was right, but… I think the broadcast is coming from Sonyeo City.”

Namjoon purses his lips, his chin jutting out in the way it does whenever he’s deep in thought. “Sonyeo City… that’s about six hours away, isn’t it?”

Yoongi hums. “Yeah, just about.”

“Do you think…” you trail off, hesitant. “Do you think that this means Sonyeo City’s… safe?”

“There’s no way to be sure.” Namjoon casts his gaze out the window, and you get the feeling he’s looking far beyond the crumbling streets and dark buildings, to the horizon where there still may be a glimmer of hope. “But at least we now have a destination in mind.”

The rest of the ride is quiet. Namjoon keeps the radio on just in case another snippet of discernible audio comes through, but none of you manage to catch anything important. Yoongi stops at a gas station to refuel, and a few minutes after that, finally manages to find a grocery store that looks to be mostly intact and devoid of any immediate threats.

“Let’s get this bread,” Jungkook proclaims as he slides out of the backseat, walking toward the entrance of the store. “And by bread, I mean Twinkies.”

You gape at his retreating back. “Is that a Zombieland reference?”

“Maybe,” he replies, shooting you a playful grin over his shoulder.

Shaking your head, you follow him through the automatic doors and glance around the interior of the store. Row after row of shelves take up the majority of the room, with an open space on the far right for fresh produce and glass-paneled refrigerators lining the wall. Behind you, the doors slide open again with a whoosh, and you turn to meet Namjoon’s eyes as he steps inside with Yoongi. “We should lock the doors,” you point out.

“You’re right,” Namjoon agrees, inspecting the metal frame surrounding the glass.

“Hang on,” Jungkook interrupts, eyes wide as he watches Namjoon fumble with the mechanism. “Are you locking us in?”

“For the time being,” Namjoon says absentmindedly, still focused on the door.

You walk over to Jungkook and pat his cheek. “He’s not locking us in; he’s locking them out. Or would you rather have a horde of zombies stumble in while we’re grabbing supplies?”

“... fair point.”

“Exactly.”

Yoongi, meanwhile, is gazing around the store, leery as always. “Hello?” he calls, his voice cutting through the silence. “Anyone home?”

Not even two seconds later, a shambling, shuffling figure emerges from a far aisle, moving surprisingly quickly despite its odd, lopsided gait. Two more follow, and Yoongi raises his gun, clicking off the safety and narrowing his eyes.

Toward the other end of the store, you spot another zombie dragging itself along the floor, leaving a trail of streaky, bloody handprints in its wake. Three more shuffle out from behind a display of watermelons, heading toward you, and you tighten your grip on your nail-studded bat as they draw ever closer.

Shots ring out behind you, but you don’t chance a glance backward. Out of your peripheral vision you spot Jungkook on your left, bringing his metal pole down onto the crawling zombie’s head with a sickening crunch. Leaping into action, you swing at the closest zombie’s head. It was once a woman, you notice—long stringy hair falling around her decaying face, the bottom half of her jaw visible through the peeling skin. “Sorry about this,” you say, wincing as your bat makes impact. The nails catch in her skin, her neck cracking under the force of the blow, and you yelp as she falls over and the other two zombies take her place.

“Watch out!”

Namjoon’s voice suddenly sounds from behind you, and you instinctively duck as he sprints over and shoots one point blank. Jungkook takes out the other, driving the pole through its chest before pulling it out and smashing it over the zombie’s head. “Are there more?” he asks, slightly out of breath.

“Not sure,” Yoongi says, rejoining you. “I would think most of the lurkers were drawn out by all the noise.”

“Better to be safe than sorry,” Namjoon says. Walking over to a checkout lane, he grabs a pile of plastic bags and an abandoned cart. “Let’s stay together and take the aisles one at a time. We’ll take as much as we can carry.”

“Don’t forget bottled water,” you pipe up, pointing at the stack of water bottles piled next to the door. “We’ve already drank most of what we have. And if we’re getting canned food, we’ll need a can opener too.”

Namjoon follows the direction of your finger. “Good call.”

“I’ll get it,” Jungkook volunteers, jogging over to select a twenty-four pack of bottles and heaving it into the cart. “Now what?”

“Let’s grab the can opener first,” you say. “Maybe some other utensils too. Sound good?”

Namjoon nods. “Sounds great,” he says, handing you one of the bags. Jungkook and Yoongi accept the other bags that Namjoon doles out, and together the four of you head farther into the store, scanning the signs until you come across the one labeled household goods. It’s clear that others have been here before you, but a quick raid of the shelves yields two can openers and a set of silverware, all of which you deposit into your bag. Namjoon grabs four unbroken bowls, mismatched and in varying sizes, and you hold out your bag for him to drop them inside.

Next up is the canned food aisle, where you stock up on various vegetables and far more beans than you care to think about. Jungkook grabs a box of instant coffee, and Yoongi disappears for a few seconds and returns with a massive jar of vitamin supplements. “Gotta stay healthy,” he says in response to your raised eyebrows, adding it to the growing pile in Namjoon’s cart.

“Speaking of healthy, we should grab some produce,” you say. “It won’t stay good forever, but we can at least get some apples and oranges. And we should probably grab some stuff for dinner too. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starving.”

As if on cue, Namjoon’s stomach rumbles. “Dinner would be nice,” he admits with a sheepish grin. “Let’s finish up here and then eat in the car. We probably don’t want to stick around here for much longer than we have to.”

After some discussion, the four of you decide on sandwiches for dinner and set about gathering the necessary ingredients. Yoongi wanders to the deli area to pick out a selection of meats that haven’t yet spoiled, and even manages to locate some cheese. You peruse the produce, selecting a head of lettuce and several ripe tomatoes while Namjoon fills a bag with apples and grabs a bunch of bananas. Jungkook raids the bread display, shoving two whole loaves and a box of dinner rolls into his bag. Several bags of chips and a pack of juice boxes later, you are ready to go, heading back out into the parking lot where the SUV is parked.

“Wait!” Jungkook suddenly yelps, stopping dead in the middle of loading the trunk. “I forgot my Twinkies!”

“Are you serious right now, Jeon?” you hiss, watching in disbelief as he hurriedly drops his bags and turns back toward the entrance.

“Yes,” he says stubbornly, already beginning to jog away.

Yoongi groans and flops down into the driver’s seat. “Sartre was right,” he grumbles under his breath. “Hell is other people.”

Namjoon gives him an astonished look, mouth already open and ready to question what exactly his friend knew about the French existentialist philosopher, but quickly snaps back to the issue at hand when you abandon your own bags and dart after Jungkook. Immediately, Namjoon follows, nearly tripping in his efforts to keep up with you, and you whirl in concern when he lets out a sudden, startled shout. “What is it?”

Namjoon grimaces, brushing a stray lock of dark hair off his forehead. “Sorry, it’s just—holy shit!”

A skeletal, gaunt hand is grasping at Namjoon’s ankle, and you gasp when you realize that it belongs to the female zombie from before, her milky eyes gazing unseeingly out from beneath stringy hair. Cursing, Namjoon shakes her off and fumbles for his gun. Pointing it down, he aims and pulls the trigger.

Click.

“I’m out of bullets,” he whispers in dawning horror.

You reach for your trusty bat, tucked away in its sling on your back, but the handle keeps evading your grasping fingers, the nails catching in the fabric. Your palms begin to sweat as Namjoon kicks at the zombie, stomping on her arm and cracking all the bones. He’s glancing around frantically for something he can use as a weapon, but to no avail. And all the while, the undead woman continues her dogged pursuit, crawling after him with one good arm like a lopsided cockroach, teeth gnashing furiously in anticipation of her next meal.

“NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!”

Jungkook barges onto the scene with his metal pole in hand, glinting dull silver in the flickering fluorescent lights. He smashes the zombie over the head once, twice, three times before relenting, his chest heaving with exertion. Namjoon sucks in a deep breath when she finally falls limp, reaching out to clap Jungkook on the back. “Wow,” he says shakily. “Thanks, man. That was a close call.”

Jungkook straightens up and hefts his weapon over his shoulder. “And that’s why we have rule number two here in Zombieland,” he says proudly.

Namjoon asks the question before you even have a chance to stop him. “What’s rule two?”

Jungkook grins a grin so wide, you’re surprised his mouth doesn’t fall off altogether. “The Double Tap, of course.” Then his gaze flickers downward, to where a familiar blue-and-white box lies crumpled against the linoleum. “Oh, no. My Twinkies!”

You sigh.

///

Dinner—if it can even be called that—is a quick affair, eaten while huddled in the SUV and parked in an alley. The sun is setting rapidly, dipping beyond the horizon and bathing the surrounding buildings in a fiery orange glow. It’s been mercifully quiet for the past half hour, broken only by the occasional crunch of a chip or a slurp from a juice box.

Yoongi starts driving again after he’s polished off the last of his sandwich. Dusky twilight cloaks the city in purple—turning it into something strange and unfamiliar. Normally, the streets would be aglow with lit lamps and illuminated homes, crowded with people returning home after a long day of work or classes. Now, though, the streets are silent and abandoned. The few zombified citizens you pass are quickly left behind, and you know you aren’t imagining the melancholy air that’s settled over your companions, nestling deep into the nooks and crannies of the SUV, stagnant and unshakable. It grows stronger the farther Yoongi drives, the buildings getting shorter and the space between them growing longer, and your heart breaks a little in your chest when you turn for one last look at the city you’ve all come to call home.

You can’t quite explain it, but somehow, you know you won’t ever be coming back.

Namjoon begins fiddling with the radio dials again as Yoongi turns onto the highway, a burst of static breaking the stifling silence in the car. Jungkook startles slightly at the sharp sound, looking up from where he’d been staring out the window. “Is that the station from before?”

Namjoon hums in affirmation, adjusting the volume until the white noise is just a low buzz. Jungkook settles back into his seat, but you can see that he’s listening carefully, his knee bouncing in anticipation.

And then, without any warning whatsoever, a voice comes through the static, clear as day.

Testing, one, two. Is anybody out there?

If you’ve still got a functioning brain and at least one ear, congratulations! another voice chimes in, brighter than the first. You’re listening to 2J! Straight out of Sonyeo City, we’re your premier source of zombie news—

—your only source, really—

—and we’re here to bring you all the latest so that you can stay safe out there, the second voice continues as if there was no interruption at all.

Unfortunately, the first voice says, adopting a more somber tone now, there isn’t a lot of good news. We’re still in the dark about how this epidemic started. Reports claim that it began in a city in the south, which multiple sources have confirmed, but the government has yet to put out an official statement regarding the situation.

They’re being pretty dodgy about the whole thing, to be honest, the second voice continues. The first emergency alert said it was a mutated virus, but the second claimed it was a contaminated water reservoir. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was some super-secret experiment gone wrong, Jin.

Honestly, me neither, the man named Jin says. But that’s enough of the conspiracies for now, Jay. Let’s talk survival! First thing you’ll want to do, dear listeners, is head north toward Sonyeo City, where a quarantine zone has been set up.

Jungkook releases a long, pent-up breath. “We were right,” he whispers. “Thank god.”

Namjoon flashes him a little smile and cranks up the volume, listening carefully as Jin’s voice fills the car.

Your best bet is to drive, of course, hop in your car and get going. Stock up on gas and non-perishable food, and some weapons certainly wouldn’t hurt either.

If worst comes to worst and you have to kill a zombie, the best way to do it is to smash its head in, Jay pipes up. You can also break their kneecaps to slow them down, but that won’t kill them for good. They’ll keep coming as long as they can still move—and if they bite you, you’re a goner.

Now onto ways to avoid zombies! Jin says, perhaps a bit too cheerfully. One thing I’ve noticed during my research is how quickly their optic nerves deteriorate once they’re infected. In fact, the rate of deterioration is second only to that of their vocal chords!

And now tell them what that means in plain English, Jay prods, laughing.

Jin chortles. Basically, they have shit eyesight, especially in the dark, he clarifies. If it’s nighttime and you find yourself surrounded somehow, your best bet is to stay quiet and move slowly. If they hear you, well…

You’re a goner, Jay supplies helpfully.

Exactly. Thanks, Jay.

No problem, Jin.

And that brings us to the end of this broadcast, Jin says, clapping his hands. Thanks for tuning in today, and we’ll see you next time.

Until then, this has been 2J. Stay safe out there!

There’s a dull click, and then the static resumes, filling the silence left in the wake of the broadcast. “Well, at least we’re headed in the right direction,” Yoongi says after a few long moments. “It’s a long drive though, and I don’t think I can stay awake for much longer. We might want to start looking for a place to sleep for the night.”

“That’s a good idea,” Namjoon says. “I’m pretty sure we’ve all been running on pure adrenaline up to this point, so we definitely need some rest. We’ll start fresh tomorrow morning.”

Mumbles of agreement all around. Ten minutes later, Jungkook points to a quaint little farmhouse on the right side of the road, the windows dark. “Think anyone’s home?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Yoongi replies, slowly pulling off the road and into the winding driveway, watching for any movement from the house or the surrounding fields. The hum of the engine doesn’t draw any unwanted attention, and you breathe a tentative sigh of relief as he parks the car beneath a large oak tree. Together, the four of you pile out and approach the house, weapons at the ready.

“Should we knock?” you whisper, looking at the little brass knocker in the middle of the front door. “Ring the doorbell, maybe?”

“Can’t hurt, right?” Jungkook jabs his thumb into the button by the doorknob, listening intently as the bell chimes inside the house. After a few beats of silence, he shrugs. “Guess no one’s home.”

“And the door’s locked,” Yoongi says, trying the knob. “Maybe they’re away on vacation or something.” Wandering over to a nearby window, he jimmies the frame, a wry grin crossing his features when it pops open easily. “They should probably invest in better locks, though.”

One by one, you climb through the window. Namjoon is the last one inside, folding his tall frame through the small space, and as soon as both his feet touch carpet, Yoongi shuts the window again and closes the curtains. “Don’t wanna be seen from the street,” he explains as he pulls out his cell phone and taps the flashlight button, illuminating the room in harsh white light. Namjoon does the same, as does Jungkook, and you pull your own phone out as well—now fully charged from the long car ride. A quick sweep of the house reveals that it is indeed empty, and Jungkook whoops when his flashlight falls upon a rifle mounted over the fireplace. Further investigation reveals two more pistols in a cabinet, along with ample ammunition, and Yoongi grins as he loads all three guns and hands one over to you.

“You ever shot one of these before?”

The gun is heavy in your palm. Slowly, you shake your head.

Yoongi glances over at Namjoon slyly. “Why don’t you give her a lesson out back, then?”

You don’t miss the way Namjoon’s ears flush pink, his feet scuffing nervously against the carpeted floor before he chances a look at you. The smile that he offers you is warm but hesitant, and when he speaks, his voice is even more so. “Sure,” he says. “I can show you how, if you’d like.”

“I’d really like that,” you tell him, the butterflies erupting in your chest when his smile widens. Together, the two of you head toward the back of the house, taking a detour to the kitchen where Namjoon grabs an armful of empty soda cans. His shoulder brushes against yours as you walk, but neither of you pull away. Even as you step onto the wooden patio that leads into the rest of the yard, you remain side by side, admiring the full moon that hangs bright in the sky, providing just enough illumination to view your surroundings.

“I suppose we should start with the basics,” Namjoon begins, his gaze alighting on a low fence lining the property. Jogging over, he lines the cans up on the wooden beam before returning to your side and gesturing for you to raise the pistol. His fingers skim across yours as he shows you how to disengage the safety, and your heart skips a beat when he explains how to reload once you run out of bullets, his large hands guiding yours through each step.

There’s a damp chill in the evening air, but you don’t even feel it. Namjoon is so close by this point, his chest pressed almost flush against your back as he shows you how to aim. His fingers wrap around your wrist, warm and gentle, and you shiver when he speaks again, his mouth at your ear, his voice rumbling through his chest.

“Ready?”

You nod, almost afraid to breathe as your finger finds the trigger. Namjoon’s grip on your wrist loosens but doesn’t disappear entirely, and you steel yourself for the recoil as you finally pull the trigger. The loud crack has you wincing, but Namjoon is laughing, the sound deep and husky as he urges you to lower the gun.

“Nice shot.”

You turn to look at the fence, now missing one soda can. “Oh, wow,” you breathe. “That was… kind of therapeutic, actually. Can we try again?”

Namjoon grins. “Of course we can.”

///

Ten cans and a box of ammunition later, you and Namjoon find yourselves lounging on the steps of the patio, staring up at the velvety night sky. “I’ve never seen so many stars before,” you murmur, a little awestruck by the sight. “But now that we’re away from the city and all that light pollution… wow. It’s amazing.”

“It’s beautiful,” Namjoon agrees, his gaze lingering on you for a moment too long before he collects himself and looks up at the sky once more.

“I wish I knew more constellations,” you say, laughing softly. “I can really only pick out the Big Dipper. And even then, I can only find it about eighty percent of the time.”

“What about the Little Dipper?” Namjoon asks. He scoots a little closer to you, pointing upward. “Do you see that really bright star up above the Big Dipper? That’s Polaris—the north star. It’s the end of the handle.”

You follow the trajectory of his finger curiously, eyes widening when you spot the smaller, but still distinctive, spoon shape. “Oh! Yes, I see it now. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before.”

Namjoon chuckles. “I can show you where Orion is too,” he says. “That’s as far as my knowledge of constellations goes, though.”

“You know more than I do,” you reply, smiling up at him. Softly, you lay a hand on his arm. “Thank you for showing me.”

“You’re welcome,” he murmurs, cheeks dimpling as he gazes down at you. This close, you can see all the stars reflected in his irises, his skin glowing silver under the luminescence of the full moon. And in a sudden surge of boldness, you allow your hand to slide down until it’s laying atop his, your fingers settling in the spaces between his own.

Namjoon glances down at your intertwined hands, his lips twitching with a barely restrained smile. “You know,” he murmurs, his breath visible in the chilly air, “I’ve always kind of liked you.”

You blink at the admission. “Really?”

He huffs out a soft chuckle, his chest rumbling with the sound. “It’s crazy, right? But it’s true. Ever since you sat down in the front row on the first day of my class with a bright pink pen and no laptop… do you know how rare it is to see someone take handwritten notes in this day and age?”

Your cheeks heat up. “You noticed that?”

“I did,” he replies, taking your hand in his and twining your fingers together properly. “Do you remember that essay the professor assigned? It must have been the second or third assignment—the one about moral responsibility in modern society?” At your nod, he smiles and continues. “Yours was the best one I read, hands down.”

“Yeah, he talked about it for three days straight,” a new voice says. Whirling around, you see Yoongi’s head poking out the back door, smirking like the cat that ate the proverbial canary. “He wouldn’t shut up about it. It was annoying as hell.”

Namjoon groans. “Seriously, Yoongi?”

The blond man puts his hands up innocently. “Just stopping by to make sure you guys weren’t dead,” he says before letting the door shut again, chortling to himself.

Namjoon sighs and turns back to you, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sorry about him. He doesn’t have much of a filter.”

You giggle and squeeze his hand. “Don’t worry about it. He’s gone now, so I can finally do this.”

Namjoon tilts his head curiously. “Do wha—?” he begins to say, only to be cut off by your mouth on his. The kiss is soft and slow, your lips moving lazily against his, and by the time you pull away, both of you are breathing much more heavily. Namjoon’s hands find their way around your waist, tugging you close, and you nestle deeper into the warmth of his embrace, enjoying how it wards off the chill in the air.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, you know,” you murmur, pressing your lips to his cheek.

He chuckles and chases after your mouth, his nose bumping affectionately against yours. “Yeah. Me too.”

///

You wake up the next morning to golden sunlight streaming in through the window and an arm wrapped firmly around your waist. Namjoon hasn’t opened his eyes yet, his hair sticking every which way, but his grip on you tightens when he feels you begin to stir. “Good morning,” he mumbles, finally cracking an eye open and smiling down at you.

“Good morning,” you whisper back. You’re positive that you look like an absolute mess—hair in disarray, face crusty from sleep, body desperately in need of a shower—and yet Namjoon is staring at you like you’re the most beautiful creature he’s ever laid eyes on, dimples dotting his cheeks as he reaches up to stroke your cheek with his thumb. You reciprocate with a kiss to his palm, and he grins. Grabbing your chin, he tilts your face up so he can kiss you properly—his lips soft and gentle against yours. It almost feels like an ordinary morning, and for a few moments, you can pretend that there isn’t a monstrous epidemic running rampant through large swathes of the country. For a few moments, you’re just a girl and a boy, basking in the idyllic haze of each other’s presence.

But then there’s a knock on the door, followed by Yoongi’s low drawl. “Get dressed and come eat, lovebirds. Sooner we get on the road, the better.”

You break apart from Namjoon, giggling when you see the dopey grin stretched across his face. “Why are you looking at me like that, you weirdo?”

His grin only widens, his arms looping around your waist. “It’s just funny,” he says. “Waking up with you, Yoongi yelling at us—this is the first ordinary morning I’ve had in a long time. And I’ve missed it. I’ve missed it a lot.”

“So have I,” you murmur, burying your face into the warm cotton of his t-shirt and allowing yourself one more moment of normalcy before getting out of bed. Walking into the bathroom, you are pleased to discover that the water is still running, and Namjoon even manages to unearth some unused toothbrushes and toothpaste from underneath the sink. The bristles are a little too stiff for your liking and the water has a metallic tinge that refuses to dissipate, but being able to brush your teeth makes a world of difference. There’s a noticeable bounce in your step as you make your way downstairs with Namjoon, and Yoongi and Jungkook pick up on it right away.

“Someone’s chipper this morning,” Yoongi says without looking up from his bowl of dry cereal. “The sex was that good, huh?”

“W-we didn’t…” Namjoon stammers, his cheeks flushing. “That’s not what we—”

You squeeze his hand, stopping his rambling in its tracks. “Let them think what they want,” you advise. “They’re just jealous of your dick game, anyway.”

“Ew,” Jungkook grumbles, throwing an apple at you. “Way too much information, {Name}.”

You shrug, just barely managing to catch the piece of fruit. “You guys brought it up first. Not my fault.”

The remainder of breakfast passes quickly. Yoongi and Jungkook head outside to start loading the car while you and Namjoon scour the house one last time for anything that might be useful, and within the hour, you are back on the road toward Sonyeo City.

“You know, this Jin character sounds like a piece of work,” Yoongi grumbles from the passenger seat for what feels like the millionth time. Jungkook is driving today, which leaves you and Namjoon in the backseat with the eclectic collection of food and weapons you’ve amassed. The four of you are listening to the 2J broadcast again, and after a rather lengthy discussion of zombie evasion techniques, Jin has lapsed into telling the worst dad jokes you’ve ever heard.

What does a vegetarian zombie eat? Graaains!

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Yoongi groans.

Morning turns into midday, the sun high in the sky. The road winds on, through green cornfields and grassy plains and the occasional small town. Several times, you spot a zombie or two shambling around aimlessly through the windows, but they’re quickly forgotten as Jungkook slams on the gas pedal. You get the feeling that he’s relishing the lack of an enforced speed limit, and taking full advantage of the empty highway.

It’s late afternoon by the time you arrive on the outskirts of Sonyeo City. Off in the distance, you can see taller skyscrapers rising up, gray and hazy against the horizon, but the area you’re in right now seems to be the warehouse district. Low, squat factories sit on either side of the road and a branching network of railroad tracks weaves throughout, but everything is eerily still and deathly quiet. No smoke rises up from the smokestacks, and you’re pretty sure you spot a train that’s been toppled over onto its side before Jungkook hits the gas again and takes you deeper into the city. The buildings get taller the farther you drive, but you still have yet to see any signs of life besides the occasional bobbing pigeon or scurrying rat.

That all changes when the car rounds the next corner. It looks as if a bomb has gone off in one of the largest brick buildings lining the street, covering the entire block in a layer of rubble. Zombified citizens mill around in the debris, and Jungkook slams on the brakes, his eyes wide with panic.

“Dude, just back up and try another street,” Yoongi says when he doesn’t move. “They haven’t noticed us yet.”

“No, that’s not it,” Jungkook says, his voice shaking. “We’re… we’re low on gas. Like, really, really low.”

Yoongi takes another look outside and blanches. “Are you fucking kidding me? We’ll get killed if we try to refuel now!”

“I’ll—I’ll get us as far away as I can,” Jungkook stammers, throwing the vehicle into reverse and beginning to back away from the mayhem. He clears the corner and continues backward for another two blocks before the car slows to a full stop, a groan escaping his lips. “Fuck.”

Glancing out the window, you see four stray zombies stumbling toward you. “Uh, guys? We have a bit of a problem.”

Namjoon curses and begins digging through the stash of weapons at his feet, pulling out several long knives and an axe you’d taken from the farmhouse. “We don’t stand a chance without a car,” he mutters as he pulls out supplies. “Yoongi, grab the gas. I’ll watch your back while you fill up the tank. Jungkook, be ready to drive at a moment’s notice. {Name}...” He grins, handing you the rifle to join the pistol you already have at your side. “You’re on sniper duty. But save it as a last resort, okay? Gunshots will draw even more attention to us, which is the last thing we need right now.”

“Got it,” you say, accepting the box of ammunition he slides over and ignoring the way your heart begins to pound in your chest. “Stay safe out there, okay?”

Namjoon presses a quick kiss to your mouth, ignoring the disgusted sound Jungkook makes. “I will, don’t worry. Be back soon.” And then he’s hopping out of the car, joining Yoongi at the gas tank and scanning the street for any approaching threats. The four zombies at the end of the street are still a block and a half away, but the distance doesn’t make you feel any better as you watch Namjoon and Yoongi standing out in the open, unprotected. Through the open window, you can hear Yoongi cursing, hands shaking as he opens up the gas can.

Bang!

A young man bursts out of an apartment complex just up the street, the door slamming against the brick wall behind it. Even from a block away, you can see the frantic expression on his face as he dashes outside without taking proper stock of his surroundings. Your mouth opens to shout a warning—beside you, you can see Jungkook about to do the same—but it’s already too late. The zombies are upon him before he can even scream, rotting teeth tearing into his flesh and ripping chunks away until he’s reduced to a huddled mass of blood and viscera on the ground, deathly still and silent.

Then, to your absolute disbelief, the man is crawling to his feet again, his stance lopsided and his expression blank. Half of his jaw has been torn away, exposing teeth, and your stomach squirms at the sight of his fresh wounds still oozing crimson.

“Holy shit!” Jungkook screeches, whirling around to face you with wild eyes. “We need to get out of here!”

“I know, dumbass!” you yell back, craning your head back to check on your other two companions only to nearly jump out of your skin when the door flies open in your face.

“It’s me!” Namjoon shouts, sliding into his seat. Up front, Yoongi is already seated, his chest heaving with uneven breaths. “Drive, Jungkook!”

Jungkook lets loose a colorful string of curses and fumbles to start the engine, eyes skittering between the steering wheel and the approaching zombies. “Come on, come on—”

“WAIT!”

All four of you whirl around, searching for the source of the unfamiliar voice. A split second later, a young man with fluffy blond hair pops up in your window, followed quickly by another man with longer, dark brown hair. “Please wait!” the blond man entreaties, wincing when you let out a startled yelp and slam a hand against the glass. “Please!”

“Who the fuck are you?” you gasp.

“My name’s Jimin, and this is Taehyung,” he says, glancing over to where the zombies are rapidly approaching. “You have to take us with you!”

Jungkook chooses that moment to butt in. “What the fuck? No way! How do we know you’re not infected?”

“We’re not!” It’s Taehyung who speaks this time, his voice low but no less urgent than Jimin’s. “Please, you have to believe us.”

“How do you expect us to do that?” Yoongi growls. “We don’t know you—you could be trying to kill us, for all we know.”

“Why the hell would we kill you?” Jimin yelps, looking offended by the very idea.

“We’re not zombies, I promise” Taehyung adds, frowning. “No need to be so paranoid.”

“I think a healthy dose of paranoia is a good thing in this situation!” Yoongi snaps.

Out of the corner of your eye, you notice Namjoon’s pensive expression, his chin jutting out in the way it does when he’s focused. “Joon? You okay?”

His frown deepens. “I think we have to let them in.”

Yoongi balks. “Dude, what the fuck?”

Namjoon shakes his head. “No, seriously. Remember what Jin said in that broadcast—about how quickly an infected person’s vocal chords deteriorate? There’s no way they’d be talking if they were infected. Absolutely none.”

Jimin claps. “Exactly! Now can you please unlock the door?”

You look at Namjoon, who nods. Jungkook groans and Yoongi slaps a hand over his eyes, but you nod back and reach over to flip the switch, the door unlocking with an audible click.

“Thank you so much,” Jimin chants as he piles into the backseat in a mess of limbs. “Thank you. Holy shit, thank you.” Taehyung follows after him, slamming the door shut, and you grunt when Jimin scoots over to give him a little more room and nearly elbows you in the face.

“Careful,” Namjoon cautions, wrapping an arm around your waist and tugging until you are practically seated in his lap. Beside you, Jimin and Taehyung make themselves comfortable, carefully avoiding the bags of supplies on the floor as Jungkook starts the car.

“Thanks again,” Jimin repeats earnestly once he’s settled in. “I know it must’ve been hard sticking your necks out like that, but we really do appreciate it.”

“Why were you even out in the open like that?” Yoongi asks, narrowing his eyes at Jimin. “Isn’t there supposed to be a quarantine zone somewhere in this godforsaken city?”

Taehyung nods. “Yeah, it’s in the city center, past the river. We were headed there ourselves, but then the explosion happened.”

“You guys must’ve seen it,” Jimin says. “Few blocks back, rocks and garbage everywhere? We think it was a gas leak, but who knows? It totaled our car, and we’ve been on foot ever since.”

Yoongi looks a little abashed. “Sorry to hear that.”

Jimin shrugs and offers him a crooked grin. “It’s all good. We’re still here now, and we’re still alive. That’s really all that matters.”

///

As it turns out, Jimin is a cadet in the local police academy—something you discover when his jacket falls open to reveal an impressive array of weapons strapped to his belt. Taehyung is an art history student, but between his fondness for paintball and his childhood on a farm, you quickly find that he’s almost just as well-versed in marksmanship as Jimin.

In the last ten minutes, however, Taehyung has fallen oddly silent. A glance over at the brown-haired man reveals that he is staring out the window, lost in thought as buildings rush by. Jimin is still chattering about the academy to a very interested Namjoon, but you don’t miss the occasional furtive glance he gives his friend, his brow creasing briefly in concern before he manages to smooth his expression out again.

Up ahead, you catch a glimpse of the river—a ribbon of blue snaking its way through the city. “There’s a big bend in the river, kind of like a horseshoe, right around the downtown area,” Jimin explains. “I think it was some kind of fortress back in the day, before the rest of the city was built around it. Most of the walls are still standing—historical preservation and whatnot—so the only way to get there is by crossing the bridge or going through the tunnel. And I’m like ninety percent sure they’ve already closed the tunnel down.”

“Bridge it is, then,” Yoongi says. “You know how to get us there?”

“Yeah, you take a left at the next light and then—”

“Can we actually stop here for a minute?”

Everyone glances back at Taehyung, who seems to have finally found his voice again. “Stop?” Namjoon asks, a frown etching its way across his face. “Why?”

Taehyung sucks in a deep breath, his gaze darting over to an unassuming brick building on the corner. “It’s just that… that’s where my little sister lives.”

And in an instant, you understand. You understand why he’s been so quiet this entire time, and why he’s been gazing out the window so wistfully. Jungkook steps on the brake, and the car rolls to a slow stop at the curb. “I get it,” he mutters, his fingers tight around the steering wheel. “I’d… I’d want to check too, if it were my brother.”

Murmurs of agreement all around. Taehyung smiles weakly, mumbling his thanks, and Jimin takes his hand with a reassuring smile. “Come on, Tae. Let’s go get Eonjin.”

“I’ll come too,” Jungkook volunteers, hopping out of the driver’s seat. “You might need the extra help.”

Yoongi sighs and exits the car as well, glancing back at you and Namjoon. “Guess I should stretch my legs too. You two wanna watch the car?

You nod. “We can do that.”

Yoongi nods back and follows the other three men into the building. You watch as they disappear into its dark depths, letting out a soft sigh.

“Do you think they’ll find her?”

Namjoon hums. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I hope so, for Taehyung’s sake. But I really don’t know if they will.”

You sigh again, shifting into a more comfortable position on his lap and letting your head fall back onto his shoulder. His arms tighten around your waist, and you shiver as his warm breath caresses your neck. “I’m glad my parents are overseas on a cruise right now,” you say softly. “They posted photos just yesterday, so I guess that means that whatever this epidemic is, it isn’t a global thing.”

“You’re lucky,” Namjoon mumbles. “I haven’t heard from my parents yet.”

You stiffen in his embrace. “You… you haven’t? Oh my god, Joon, I’m so sorry.”

He tries to shrug off your concern, but you don’t miss the way his throat bobs harshly as he swallows. “It is what it is,” he says after a few seconds. “I’ve heard from my sister, at least. She says she’ll be making her way here in the next day or two.”

“That’s good,” you murmur. You don’t know what else you could possibly say, and Namjoon, luckily, seems to understand.

“Yeah.”

Silence falls over the two of you, then—each of you lost in your own thoughts. Even though you’re so close to your destination now, it still feels far—as if it’s a mirage that will disappear if you so much as breathe the wrong way. You don’t know what awaits you, and for a moment, you’re terrified of the possibilities. But Namjoon’s arms remain wound around you, his presence warm and reassuring even now, and you think to yourself that maybe—just maybe—everything will be all right.

And then Jimin’s banging on your window again, forcibly pulling you out of your stupor. “Guys! Guys! It’s Tae—he’s been bitten!”

A beat passes. His words take a second to register in your brain—Tae, bitten—almost as if they don’t make sense together. It’s a sentence you never wanted to hear, and your limbs suddenly feel like they’ve been submerged in water, slow and heavy and dragging.

Namjoon, however, is up in an instant. “Where is he now?” he asks, throwing the door open and laying a hand on Jimin’s shoulder as he blabbers on. “Is he bleeding? Is he hurt anywhere else?”

“No, no—” Jimin looks close to tears. “It’s just—it all happened so fast. We were in Eonjin’s apartment but she wasn’t home, and then this guy came out of nowhere and—and…” He trails off, gesturing weakly behind him. “Look for yourselves.”

Yoongi and Jungkook stumble their way out of the building, supporting a pale-looking Taehyung between them. Blood drips down his wrist and onto the sidewalk, and the sight of the bright red liquid shakes off any stupor you might have been under. Delving into the backpack full of supplies from the farmhouse, you pull out the first-aid kit, brandishing it in the air as you jump out of the SUV. “He’s losing way too much blood,” you say, pulling out a roll of bandages and a tube of ointment, handing the rest of the kit over to Namjoon. “We have to stop it.”

“This isn’t exactly a safe spot for medical procedures,” Yoongi points out, gesturing around the street with his free hand. “We’re out in the open, totally exposed.”

“Then we’ll get back in the car,” Namjoon says. “We can drive and patch him up at the same time.”

“But he’s infected,” Jungkook whispers. “What happens when he… y’know. Turns?”

None of you have an answer for that. Jimin’s running his hands frantically through his hair, and you can practically see the desperation swimming in his honey brown eyes. “We can’t just leave him behind,” he murmurs. “We can’t.”

“Then we won’t,” you tell him, stepping up to Taehyung and slathering a generous amount of ointment on the bite wound. Then you pull off a short section of bandage, tying it around his upper arm like a tourniquet. “We’re going to get you in the car now, Tae. Is that okay? Can you still walk?”

Taehyung blinks dazedly, his brown eyes taking a few seconds to focus properly on you. “I… I think so. Hang on. Lemme try.”

Namjoon nearly drops the first-aid kit. “Wait, did you just talk?”

Taehyung blinks again, swaying slightly on his feet. “Yes?”

Your eyes widen as realization dawns. “Wait, but infected people can’t talk. Their vocal chords…”

“... deteriorate,” Namjoon finishes for you. “Yeah. So then that begs the question: why can Taehyung still talk?”

For the second time in as many minutes, none of you have an answer. “Tae,” you try again. “How do you feel right now?”

Taehyung’s mouth pulls down into a slow frown. “I feel… slow. A little muddled, I guess? No brain eating urges or anything though, which is nice. Brains probably don’t taste very good.”

“No,” you say, exchanging a glance with your equally flabbergasted companions. “I can’t imagine they would.”

///

Not twenty minutes later, you are driving across the bridge that leads to your final destination. A rather formidable wall with an even more formidable gate stands in your way, and you watch as several guards peer out from over the top, weapons drawn and at the ready.

“Stop right there!” the guard stationed on the ground commands, his gun trained on the SUV. “Get out of the vehicle with your hands up and identify yourselves one by one.”

“My name is Kim Namjoon,” Namjoon says, clambering out with his palms extended. You follow after him, stating your name as well, and the guard directs both of you to stand against the wall, calling for a man named Seokjin to come check your vitals as your companions continue introducing themselves.

A minute later, a smaller door to the right of the gate opens, and out walks a man wearing a white coat and a genial smile. “Sorry about this,” he says, adjusting his stethoscope. “Proper procedure and all that. You can never be too careful, right?”

“Don’t worry about it,” you tell him, pulling the collar of your shirt aside so he can listen to your heartbeat. “This is hardly the worst thing to happen to us in the last few days.”

The young doctor laughs—a high, squeaky sound that reminds you of a windshield wiper. “Touché,” he says, waving Namjoon over so he can listen to his heart as well. “Well, look at that! You both appear to be alive—congratulations! It’s nice to meet you.”

His laughter is contagious, and you can’t help the answering giggle that bubbles up in your chest and escapes into the open air. “Nice to meet you too, Doctor.”

He grimaces, flapping a hand at you. “Please, call me Jin. Everyone does. Doctor makes me sound way too stuffy.”

The sound of the familiar name has your eyebrows flying up into your hairline. You exchange a glance with Namjoon, who looks equally shocked, his mouth opening and closing a few times before he ventures, “Jin? Does that mean you’re one half of the 2J radio broadcast?”

Jin’s face splits into a delighted grin. “It sure does! Were you guys listening to us?”

You nod. “It was the only station we could find. I don’t think we’d be here if it weren’t for you and Jay.”

His grin broadens. “His real name’s Hoseok, actually—I had to talk him into the nickname. Took me ages.” Then his expression sobers. “That’s great to hear about the broadcast, though. Really. We weren’t sure that we were reaching people, but it’s nice to know that we definitely are. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” you tell him earnestly.

Jin grins. “You’re welcome,” he says, waving goodbye as he moves on to check on everyone else’s vitals. He makes friendly smalltalk with Yoongi, Jungkook, and Jimin as he listens to their heartbeats, but frowns when he reaches Taehyung, regarding him a little more closely. Jimin looks on anxiously, twisting the hem of his jacket, and you and Namjoon wordlessly sidle closer, ready to defend your friend if the need arose.

“You look a little pale,” Jin says, but his voice isn’t accusatory. “Are you feeling okay?”

Taehyung shrugs vaguely, his eyes unfocused. “I’ve been better.”

Namjoon chooses that moment to step forward, keeping his voice low and guarded. “Jin, you know a lot about the zombies, right?”

Jin nods. “I’ve been conducting research, yeah. It’s slow going though.”

Jimin eyes Jin warily. “What would you say if we told you that one of us was immune to the zombie virus?”

Jin’s mouth falls open, his gaze immediately landing on Taehyung again as he leans closer and stares intently at his pupils. “Immunity? Now that’s interesting,” he mumbles to himself, rubbing his hands together. “That could change everything.”

Taehyung blinks blearily at him. “What are you going on about?”

Jin just laughs. “They’re clear,” he calls to the guard, who nods and returns to the guardhouse. Once he’s gone, Jin claps his hands together and beams. “All right!” he exclaims. “Let’s get you all settled in, shall we?”

“What are you going to do to Tae?” Jimin asks suspiciously, scooting a little closer to his friend.

“Absolutely nothing, if I don’t have his permission,” Jin promises. “But guys, think about it. Someone who’s immune? I could learn so much about what’s causing that immunity if I ran a few tests… maybe even find a cure, eventually. It’s an incredible opportunity.” Upon seeing Jimin’s lingering distrust, however, he stops and laughs again. “But honestly, I won’t do a thing if he doesn’t want me to. Right now, I just want to help you get settled in. All of you need lots of rest and a proper meal. Doctor’s orders, okay?”

Jimin nods. “Fine.”

Up ahead, the gate is slowly beginning to creak open. Jin is welcoming all of you to Sonyeo City, but you barely hear him. Your focus is on Namjoon and Namjoon alone, his presence warm and reassuring as he finds your hand and laces your fingers together. 

“Ready?” he asks.

You suck in a deep, steadying breath and squeeze his hand. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

[slashhinginghasher]

Midnight Star - Chromeskull x OFC - Part 4: Half A Ghost

Summary: When things don’t go to plan, you change the plan.

AKA a nice helping of backstory with a side order of Jesse being a horny freak.

This story is on Ao3!

None of this was going the way he’d planned.

Granted, the plan was fairly light on details - most of which revolved around turning the bitch into a human Picasso - but it was still a plan, god damn it, and none of those details involved him sulking in his office and pretending the ache in his balls was just from her well-placed kick (lucky hit) and not the lingering taste of her blood in his mouth. For someone who was all skin and bones, she was surprisingly strong. Put a little meat on her and she’d probably be a tiny terror. And despite how scrawny she was, he had to admit she’d looked positively fucking edible like that, all pink-flushed and trembling (even if it was just heatstroke). Small wonder he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her--

Fuck.

There were already rumors floating around the organization that he was going soft, thanks to that cocksucker Preston. Some quick knife work had easily convinced the man to drop the subject, but whispers had a way of... lingering. The organization was still recovering from the Miami debacle a couple years back. It had taken more money than he’d liked to make that particular police investigation disappear.. Between the amnesiac hooker melting his face off and Veronica blowing her brains out in FBI custody, the last thing he needed was to be seen slavering over yet another piggy like a horny teenager.

Fucking Veronica.

She was the last time he’d taken work home with him. The mind games had been fun at first, and having clean pussy on demand was a definite plus. But he’d grown tired of playing at domesticity, of making blatantly false promises (of course I don’t touch the other girls, baby, only you). Boredom led to stupid choices. A kid? Jesse was a man of many talents, but fatherhood was not one of them, especially with a simpering little ex-piggy as the mother. Veronica’s suicide was probably the only good thing to come out of that mess.

But he hadn’t thought of Veronica in over a year, and the fact that he was now just served to piss him off even further. The situation was rapidly spiraling out of control. He had half a mind to storm back down to the basement and snap the bitch’s skinny neck, just to be done with all of it. He was almost out the door when his computer chimed with an email notification.

From: agallagher@chrom.net Subject: Found her Attachment: marpol.zip

And just like that, boiling rage gave way to an intense, almost electric curiosity. After the initial encounter, he’d sent a picture of the girl to his team with orders to dig up everything they could about her. Now, it seemed, they’d hit pay-dirt. With a slight quiver of anticipation, Jesse eased himself into his leather desk chair and opened the email.

Name: Marena Polunochnaya Age: 23 (alleged) DOB: Unknown Place of birth: Unknown (native Russian speaker) Relatives: Unknown Education: Unknown

What the fuck? That was it? Jesse snarled, ready to throw the laptop across the room and put A. Gallagher’s head on a pike. He clicked open the attachment with a little more force than necessary and was surprised when dozens of files, arranged chronologically, appeared on the screen. The earliest file (a brief police report about an altercation outside a south Miami bar) was dated from four years ago. Before that, nothing. 

Little miss Marena Polunochnaya, it seemed, was half a ghost.

And the other half was a little hellion, he thought, scrolling through what seemed like an inordinate number of police reports. Theft, both petty and vehicular, vandalism, street racing, underage drinking, trespassing, assault and battery, minor arson, justifiable homicide…

Wait, what?!

He couldn’t open the file fast enough. Apparently, the girl had been the victim of an attempted mugging three years prior. According to the court reports, she had killed the mugger in self-defense, sustaining a stab wound in the process. And there was video footage: a security camera outside a club caught the entire thing.

Click.

The footage was surprisingly high-quality for a security cam, although the low light still made the picture a little grainy. A familiar little dark-haired figure walked into the alley and was grabbed by a larger figure with a bandana wrapped around the lower half of its face. The mugger pinned the girl to the wall with his forearm and pulled out a knife. There was no sound, but Jesse didn’t need dialogue to enjoy the show. The girl was making placating gestures with her hands, likely promising cooperation. The idiot eased his hold on her and was immediately gifted with a frankly beautiful left hook. His knife hand lashed out, he staggered back, and the girl was doubled over with the knife buried in her rib cage. By body language, the mugger seemed shocked; he probably hadn’t been expecting a fight or planning on actually using the knife for more than intimidation. The girl stumbled forward a step, hand held out as though pleading for help.

And then.

God.

She pulled the knife out of her chest and slammed it home in the mugger’s throat, ripping it open in a glorious arc of arterial spray. The mugger dropped, convulsed a couple times, and was still. The girl leaned heavily against the wall and pressed a hand against the growing dark patch on her side, presumably staying there until the cops arrived on the scene.

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

If he hadn’t been hard before (he had been), he sure as fuck was now. Jesse watched the video again. Again. Again. He dragged a hand over his growing grin, trying to ignore the uncomfortable tightness of his slacks. He was only about a quarter of the way through the files, and curiosity won out over arousal. He kept scrolling.

After the failed mugging, the girl was admitted to some do-gooder program for “at-risk repeat offenders” under the sponsorship and care of one Dr. Linda Malloy. The program’s website sported pictures of gleaming dormitories and spacious gardens, along with promises of education, vocational training, and therapy for “reintegration into society.” The whole thing was disgustingly optimistic and upbeat, and Jesse almost laughed at the thought of the scraggly wildcat in his basement sitting in one of those plush offices.

Dr. Linda Malloy kept extensive notes. Two and a half years’ worth, to be exact. Many of them were dense with psychobabble and medical jargon that Jesse didn’t have the patience to decipher, so he skimmed them, letting his attention fall on whatever caught his eye.

“...shows clear signs of PTSD - insomnia, night terrors, mistrust of authority, violent reactions to unexpected or unwanted physical contact, frequent dissociative states - but refuses to share any information about the events which may have caused her condition…”

“...had to be sedated after refusing to sleep for four days straight and threatening a staff member with dismemberment…”

“...locked herself in the maintenance shed and was found trying to sharpen her teeth with a screwdriver and a metal file…”

“...continues to meet all overtures of friendliness with aggression or by resolutely ignoring the other party…”

“...refused to speak English the entire session. Later translation shows she was parroting my questions back to me in Russian….”

“...did not move, speak, or make eye contact for the entire session…”

“...regarding her habit of ripping pages out of her journal and burning them after writing on them. I asked her about it one day, and she said thoughts cannot return once they’ve been turned to ash. I asked how she had discovered that, and she simply replied ‘Hana.’ When I asked her who Hana was, her eyes widened, as though she had made a mistake, before her entire manner turned cold and she walked away….”

“...had to lock her in her room at night to keep her from breaking into and sleeping in the walk-in freezer…”

Jesse had never been one for novels - couldn’t see the point in spending hours reading about fake shit - but he could’ve read this shit all day. Amazing how so much fucked-upness could fit into one tiny person. He wondered how she’d ever conned her way into getting discharged until he read a little further and saw that funding for the program had been cut, forcing the “residents” out into the world despite the many protests of the staff.

Information was light after that. She paid for a shitty studio apartment with cash that she must’ve gotten from an under-the-table job. Her run-ins with the police were few and far in between. Jesse didn’t blame her for keeping a low profile after escaping Mayberry Asylum. He wouldn’t want to be stuck in a hellhole like that either. (Of course, now she was stuck in his basement, which probably seemed like another hellhole to her. Oh well.) The final file was dated from three weeks ago.

It was a warrant for her arrest on charges of quadruple homicide.

Jesse inhaled so sharply he nearly choked on it. His eyes darted over the preliminary report. Girl seen entering a penthouse apartment with four men. Noise complaints from downstairs neighbors around 4 am. Police arrive on scene to find three corpses, one almost-corpse, and no girl. No one had seen her leave.

There were pictures. Jesse’s hands were practically shaking with excitement as he opened them.

The first corpse had been pushed down the stairs, his neck bent at a terrible angle and blood seeping from his crushed skull. The second had been stabbed repeatedly with a broken bottle until his face and throat looked like raw hamburger. The third was a mess of chemical burns. The coroner’s report said he’d been drowned in a bathtub full of cleaning chemicals. The fourth man had been bludgeoned with a wooden baseball bat, half the vertebrae in his neck and back shattered. He’d died in the hospital two days later.

Oh, someone has been very, very naughty.

The urge to cleave her little skull in two was rapidly being replaced by the urge to rail her until she forgot her own name. It probably wouldn’t take long, he mused. The name was bigger than the girl. He pulled up the video feed from the basement and was greeted with the sight of her retching miserably over the grate in the floor. Right. Head injury. Drugs. Dehydration. She probably wouldn’t survive the fucking she had coming to her in her current condition, and Jesse now had a very keen interest in keeping her alive. He sent a quick message to his medical team before reopening the footage of the failed mugging.

The best way to regain control of the situation, after all, was to admit that the situation had changed.

The relief he felt as he freed his aching cock was nearly as powerful as an orgasm. Jesse couldn’t remember the last time he was this hard. He ran his thumb over the head, letting out a shuddering breath as he gathered the precum beading on the tip. He began to pump the shaft in slow, firm strokes and let his imagination run wild.

He’d tie her down, of course. No way his devious little doll would remain still long enough for him to fully enjoy her. He’d trace his tongue over every goddamn scar on her body, over her hardened nipples and the sharp points of her hips and that handy little panic button carved into her neck. Then he’d turn his attention to her tight little pussy, keeping her on the edge until she was writhing and swearing and begging for it. Then, only then, he’d make her taste herself on his lips as he slid into her tight, wet heat, fucking her hard and fast until she screamed herself hoarse.

Jesse came with a silent groan and the first real smile he’d had since Princess Fuckin’ Gemstone obliterated his face.

Marena Polunochnaya.

He rolled the name over his tongue. It tasted like blood.

[sulpher]

what do you call someone with a strong annoyance borderline hate of men specifically men who are incredibly (masculine) toxic but would be the shit out of anyone who tried to say a man could be assaulted, or that men should be belittled and mistreated like women?( a rant?)

I remember I got called a terf like maybe two or three months ago and it bothers me because I worry if I could be aligned in that horrible theory. I always thought the main core of terfism was that you are “ gender critical “ and you ironically just like the patriarchy don't think a woman could ever be smart enough to know the difference in literally - anything? i like trans woman too many folks...i like women - cis and trans...they're cute and awesome ...so like how could you not?  Im bringing this up because as of late ive had a very angry and almost cold voice that respond when i see violence against women because people felt entitle to people bodies and just like school shootings and trumps camps I have to numb myself too it or otherwise i would literally go on a suicidal/homicidal spree.  “ a women’s death is nothing in comparison to a man’s freedom. a woman;s discomfort is nothing in the way of a man entitlement “ I dont like that phrase. i feel like if come off to me as the epitome of femi nzai if that’s even a thing anymore since the men who hated them are most likely real nazis. Listen im 28 and stuck in a house with two men who double-crossed me and are only taking care of me because i decided to quit my job. im only in this house with someone who i thought was literally going to harm and someone who stolen moeny from me becuase as a soceity i have been mold to bend until i break and be gaslighted as “ an irrational fuhmal” not even human if i bring it up. its 2019 and im still tlaking to people who think its ok to count thier two stay at home mothers as an example of why women get paid less because they work less but tell em that the 50 women i work with at a company dont count becuase that’s my just my feelings  and smirk and bring up “ toxic feminity” like that not a sub division of toxic masculinity - Because women DID NOT tell other women to compete with other women in order to get men  Because women DID NOT teach other women that it’s ok to hit men and that men shouldn't cry  Because other women DID NOT teach other women that men couldn't be raped, should always pay the bill Not in the beginning ...that was toxic masculinity but how dare I expect men to accountability for responsibility - that’s just one of the privileges of being a male. and stop telling women when they get hurt by a man that they should of got a guy form thier family. You mean the same guy who was allowed to walk around in thier underwear while i had to fully dress in my home at 9 years of fucking age because my body attracted raped and his didn't or as i like to say it “ boys will be boys but girls should know better by knowing nothing at all” 

Listen I don't think the world would be better if men didn't exist. I don't think the world would be better if men were put under the social pressure of women . Im just dont exist in this society any more as hetero passing individual because i dont get along with it’s morals. im so fucking tired of watching women dying because “ a man has his needs...and his excuses “ and before the misandry parade comes put the cuffs again - i dont mind being a misandrist as much as i don't want to be a terf but again im not looking to get in fights with men. I honestly wish i was invisible to them since seeing me as anything as a female is so socially ingrained is impossible and understanding - im not even mad. make go back in the kitchen jokes, shit on my existence, make me play this doll for the sake of your “ cool girl because if i dont letyou hug me, if i show even a sign of resistance to your sexual banter or your anti feminist logic or your victim-shaming statements...im no longer an object of convenience...and i potentially become a another death statistics  and to the “ protect the boys” brigade aka the people who come screaming from/the corner of this hellsite like someone told your child santa doesn't exist when a woman says something like  “ you know i like getting dress up for other women I try not to think about men “ “ im not here for emotionally unavalible boys” “ I'm not here for men who don't want to fix themselves” ” I'm not worried about children and men “ ” I didn't find him interesting so i didn't give him a chance ” and then you mofos come of the fucking woodwork screaming like a motherfucking banshee  ” BOYS NEED LOVE ! IF YOU DONT WANNA FiX HIm HOW IS HE GOING TO GROW ?!” ” DONT SAY MEN ARE TRASH ! TOXIC MASCULINITY IS A RESULT OF HIM NOT BEING LOVE PROPERLY !” ” IGNORE THEM BOYS WE WONT LET THEM FORGET YOU “ * animal like screeching To you ; you dont care about men. You care about the status quo. You think if men become “ as emotional as fuhmales “ (because half of you don't see women as anything but her genitals ) that they will break down. you don't want men to make a connection between the idea that men need to sex in order to be valuable even if that means taking it and that anyone who take sex is a rapist because then men would have to be accountable for their actions. They would feel bad and you wouldn't want your favorite child to feel bad, after all if they feel bad they cant let loose and be the “ best version” of themselves- even if that version of themselves is a fucking dumpster fire. You want them to be the full end of this spectrum at the expense of your less favorite child ( women ). You might be someone who just, in general, have fed into the bullshit that woman are liars ( another concept that makes it easier for rape culture to be prevalent and strong ) and that men are calm, collective beings who are being neglected thanks to feminism and woman not focusing on them. you might think “ well logically if you only tell men they're trash they're going to be trash “ Ive been told i was a bitch , a fake, a slob( that is true. i am dirty af and i will not put on deordorant unless someone coming), pathetic and useless.  I decide one day that if i didnt like any of those things i would change it , becuase if i didnt like being those things that i needed to change them for me. I CHANGE WHEN I DIDNT LIKE MYSELF and before anyone says anything i have had depression and anxeity. i have been gaslighted and bully for years but at the end of the day my change didi not come from people cheering me up or tearing me down it came from ME being critical of myself nad my actions. And that’s why you “ what about the boys” people dont love men as much as you say you do . You're so afraid of them becoming something more than your baby boy being more than what you want, greater than what society has allow that you would rather make in a pacified monster than a human being. you guys hate men and i cannot stand any of you  to the young man who has  been discriminated against because you weren't born as a cis male  were raped by women and wasn't respected by either woman or men when you look for support  gritted your teeth and read through all my rambling you're valid. you worried about having your whole life ruined by false rape accusations or in general, you are generally afraid of adding to a woman’s concern when it comes to men. you dont like being around certain woman becuase you feel they are too touchy are they are the one who the moment you dont find them attractive and everyone includes other men invalidate you're right to not want to be touch. you fucking have to control your urge to gut punch every time you here the phrase “ men are trash “ becuase you understand the phrase isnt about you and some smart ass is like “ if its not about you why are you getting mad “. Like we all know why you're mad - but we know you're better than that.  I appreciate you questioning your friends on thier used of rape jokes and trying to implied that sexual assault doesn't exist becuase “ if the guy attracted females dont complain “ I think you're wonderful...but i want out  becuase my death is just another occurrence. being someone’s property as a child, wife or even friend means nothing now. my death is nothing different than throwing out an aluminum can. i no longer wonder if the person im talking to is capable of rape. i know longer wonder if ill makes it home safely. i know get angry about wanting to do things like move out on my own, be respected by men and not feel that my feelings are constantly being pacified like a battery operated doll who the owner is cooing to work.  I expect it. and when it doesn't happen i hold my breath and try to not think about tomorrow where ill pretty much have the bar set that low again. I expected to have my feelings band aid with “ well im sorry someone hurt you “ or “ youre apart of the problem thinking like that”. when something im uncomfortable with happens i dont go out in a rage but belitting my feelings as “ sensitive” or “ stop being a bitch “ roll off me.  Humankind is capable of amazing thing and i know change is possible...but i dont expect it anytime soon. ....I really just want out. its 2019 and women are still getting killed becuase of entitlement and the only ing most of you is complain that it happens to men too.....Im tired of pretending this society cares if i was murder right now. you only careif i fit the commodity of the day...I want out for i am so very tired 

[gomustanggirl16]

Disappointments

So, I know I should spout something about how life is an adventure and everything will turn out, but I really, really don’t feel like it. Because I can’t guarantee that. No one can, and if you say “that’s not true.” than clearly you’ve never heard the stories I have or known some people. Trust me, there are some, who’s life adventures don’t turn out and they end up going completely insane. And for those who think “no, it’s good. It’s a bitch but it’s good.” than chances are you’re doing it wrong, because it cannot be both a bitch and good. You can have good things around you, light times sure, but if it’s not enough to overshadow the bitch of it all then it’s not good enough. I also know people who go through life thinking everything around them is a sign from God and have been bitch slapped more times than I can count, but use God as an excuse to make it better. I believe in him, I do, but I also know he gave us our own free will and to attempt to throw things at us would kind of ruin his whole purpose. At least to me. I also don’t blame Satan either, because he knows we have our own ways of messing everything up ourselves, because we are people. Eve didn’t have to do what Satan said, she didn’t have to do what God said either (would life have been better yeah probably), but we’d also be kind of brainwashed so...it’s a toss up.

I guess what I’m trying to get at, is that blaming something or trying to make it something it’s not is really fucking pointless. For those who don’t believe in God or religion, you probably already have a semi-idea of what I mean. Or maybe you don’t I don’t know. What I do know is this: disappointments are everywhere. They come with life, they are the only thing that are actually guaranteed. A lot of times they are also called consequences, but no matter what it’s all bad. People will always let you down, not everyone, but everyone has someone they let down at some point in there life and maybe it was only temporary, but for many it wasn’t. But you know, we hear a lot about people disappointing us, but lets face it, it’s really ourselves we disappoint the most. Hence why it’s a guarantee in life. I wish it were different but it’s not. We dream, we set goals, and we disappoint. 

All I wanted was to get my medical coding certification. I changed majors three times. Well two technically, but medical coding was the only constant throughout it all and halfway through last semester I said to myself “what the fuck are you doing? You hate people, so why are you going into a major that requires you to tolerate them?” Basically I put my head back on straight, but then the emails from my schools financial aid kept coming, asking for verification. My mother told me, that they have a right to randomly select people for this and I said okay because she told me she had it handled. That was back in August after they okay-ed my payment plan. Then they didn’t pay. Anything. None of it like they said they would because they needed verification, despite the fact we kept sending them the same documents over and over and over again. The semester ended and suddenly I had racked up $4000 US dollars in dues. 

They eventually asked for different documents and we had hoped it was moving forward and I went to register for the last two courses I needed to get my certification and they wouldn’t let me because of what I owe. My brother was having the same stupid problem, except his got it fixed with one verification email and boom he registered (I go to a community college, he goes to University that costs almost $43,000 a year so you think there process would be more difficult but different financial aid companies). Then Christmas and New Years passed and I got fed up about two weeks ago when I saw that one of the classes only had three seats left. One time slot too, while the other class had two time slots and twenty seats between the two left. But these two classes are only offered in the spring, if I missed them, I would have to wait a whole year. I’d have to buy new books again, and I spent almost $1300 on them last semester because for some reason they put up the books we’d need for the next three classes so I got them a semester early, I wasn’t pissed then because they were so damn hard to get I wouldn’t have to worry, well now...now I have books I don’t need because as of last night the last three seats went. I called the school Friday because earlier in the week I got an email asking for one more thing then one saying they didn’t need more and then Friday morning I woke up to a fucking email saying I was selected again for verification! Well the school office was closed but the actual financial aid company wasn’t and the lady informed me they got my papers and that she had no idea why the school sent me the email, but they didn’t need anything more and to just wait. Also no, they wouldn’t let me pay any of the money I owed myself, but granted I also wouldn’t be in this mess if I had four grand. 

So I waited, and then last night I got this nagging feeling to check the list and I did, and the seats were gone. Two classes. That’s all I needed and now...now I don’t know what to do. I know they won’t reimburse me for the books, I called my father to ask him to go yell at some people with me, because he’s fucking scary when he yells and I cry when I do. I have now wasted upwards of six thousand dollars on this and have nothing to show for it. I don’t have any money to transfer and classes have already begun in most other schools. I loved the teachers, it was a great environment but now I gotta call this sweet little old lady in my class and tell her goodbye because I won’t be seeing her ever again because she can get her certification at 85 fucking years old, but because I depend on people I can’t. It’s not like the school gave out the test anyways I’d have to go elsewhere for it, but still I needed those classes I can’t take the exam because I haven’t started the last two books. I already took a year off because of health and I thought this was my chance, I spent everything I saved up for a trip to Paris, on school and now all I can think is “you should have gone to Paris, it wouldn’t have put you through so much stress.” And now my passports about to expire to so, missed that chance. And yes, I’m aware you can renew it, but I don’t have a fucking job right now, or $150 to be spending on getting it renewed. As is I needed a new battery for my car Monday (God Monday fucking sucked!) and had to borrow $800 from my grandmother because they found a shit ton of broken things.

So...I can blame financial aid, I want to, but one of the non medical reasons I didn’t go back was because they were giving me an issue about some document they needed to renew it back then. I should have known better, I really should have. I could also blame my parents who got divorced in August and half the shit the financial aid people needed was to verify they were indeed living separate lives, and while the lady assured me it was a random process, lets face it, it wasn’t. But I’m not going to blame them either, because life with those two married was a shit fest I never want to go through again. I’m glad it ended, though now I gotta buy my mom a divorce cake because I fucking promised her a divorce cake and still haven’t gotten her one so now not only does she hold John Bon Jovi over my head she now also holds this to.

But really, I blame me. I went to college right out of high school because I wasn’t going to be that kid they warned us about. You know the bum who doesn’t go, and does drugs and gets pregnant without a husband. You know, a baptists worst nightmare. I thought I needed a major because certifications weren’t enough. I put myself through hell because I thought a stupid certification would look meaningless to an employer without a degree and you wanna know something? They’re both stupid pieces of paper we all end up shoving in a box unless we’re CEO’s or physicists who think they’re god. You don’t bring the damn thing to an interview they don’t ask to see it. They call the school and ask for someones word. Its the truth, is it not? 

Instead of listening to my heart, I listened to everyone else around me, and not the ones I should have. I also should have listened to my mother when she told me to go to the school she went to and god I really wish I had. So now, I can’t get my certification and I can’t go to Paris and I can’t get a real job because the assholes who look expect coding to be a degree and also that I have the certification. It’s one thing to say I’m working towards it’s another to say, “well I was and now I can’t until I fix some things.” So I’m stuck at the shit hole I work at now. 

And it’s all because I didn’t want to be a disappointment. 

You know, being a disappointment to others is one thing. People have different standards that just aren’t you, and then the people you wish death on because they abuse their kids. But there’s nothing worse than disappointing yourself. You are who you are, you know who you are, whether you know it yet or not, so you’d think we’d know to listen to the right people, listen to ourselves, but somehow we keep thinking others opinions matter more. It’s sad really, but it’s the truth. We run away and do what we can only to turn ourselves into the thing we fear most. 

So I ask you, are you really doing what you’re doing because it’s what you want, it’s what you know is best for you, it’s the right thing for your health, your mind, life? Or are you doing it because the fear of being a disappointment is controlling your life?

This was the only thing I wanted, but because I felt like I had something to prove I ended up loosing everything. Sure, it’s not gone forever, but it sure would have been nice to have a desk, and have my mini-Cap Pop key chain in my space, a steady flow of work and cash and health insurance not connected to my mother. And my book! My ICD-10-CM code book oh! It’s so pretty! I have it all tabbed accordingly and noted and if this takes me longer than six months to fix I’ll have to buy the updated version with having barely used the one I had and it’ll have all been a waste. On the upside according to one interviewer I have enough qualifications to answer phones and explain the billing process to patients. 

[ehall34]

Computer Log: Mr Handy

By: Erika Hall

This is a short story I wrote. It is based off of the fallout games

October 31, 2276

My name is Mr. Handy. I am a robotic

butler for the Johnson family. They have

been a wonderful family to serve.

Unfortunately I do not know where they

are. Ever since the nuclear war my

family has not come back. That happened

on October 31st, 2076. According to my

memory core, they went to a bomb shelter

to survive the blast. The fallout came

and went and the family has not showed

up yet. I search for them every day, but

in my travels all I encounter are wild

animals. I also see fellow Mr. Handies

who are looking for their masters as

well. Once night falls, I begin the journey back to the house. Throughout

the night I continue my duties and clean

the house. There is so much filth! Dust,

rust, spider webs, and plants. Dust

covers the furniture, floors, and

counters. Once I clean it, it comes back

the next day. Rust has begun to inch its

way onto every piece of metal in the

house. I am not sure why? The family I

think has been gone for a week so there

should not be rust in the house! I

cannot be 100% certain since the blast

from the nuclear fallout damaged a part

of my circuity that gives me sense of

time. Spider webs are not as much of a

problem, I can burn those away with my

flamethrower. The major infestations are

the plants that are invading the house.

I try to burn those as well, but they

always come back.

November 31, 2296

Sunrises are still beautiful here in

Concord, Massachusetts. Every time it

has a hint of red and orange that helps

brighten the sky. It is a pleasant sight

to see when I leave the house every

morning to search for the Johnson family

in Boston. Today I am moving on to a

different district of Boston, the

financial district. The roads are full

to the brim with cars and trucks. I hope

their owners come and move those

vehicles. Although it looks like the

vehicles will be hard to start. Nature

seems to have taken over Boston rather

quickly. Plants are sprouting from the

cracks in the pavement of roads and

sidewalks. Right now all I see are

shadows of what used to be a human.

There are occasional skeletons of humans

on the street, sidewalks, and in

buildings. It is quite sad what has

happened to some of these humans. I just

hope my family did not meet the same

fate.

December 25, 2316

Winter has arrived in Massachusetts.

Snow current blankets the ground

everywhere. The children would enjoy

playing in it. I recall they would form

the snow into balls and throw them at

me. I did not enjoy that. I am not fond

of the snow because it could fry my

circuits. The cold is also not good for

my propulsion system. If it freezes up

then I can't move and so far I have

found no humans that could oil it. So

right now I am staying inside the house.

It has been quite boring, cleaning for

this long. I long for the cool

temperatures of spring. When the leaves

on the trees sprout again and animals

come out from hibernation. Curiously I

have found few animals either. Mostly

small rodents, who were able to create

burrows in the ground where they were

protected from radiation. I will have to

wait to continue my search for my

family. Oh I hope they are safe...

January 18, 2336

Massachusetts is quite beautiful, but

when the snow begins to fall is when I

loath this state. When winter comes

around, this snow is all around. I can't

seem to understand why humans enjoyed

this time of year so much. All snow does

is cause problems for society. Sorry for

my ranting, I have been trapped in the

house it seems like forever. I sure wish

I could repair myself, because I have no

sense of time. Maybe I should begin

counting how many winter's come by, then

I might now what year it is. Oh no that

won't work, since I have no idea how

many winters have gone by thus far. Once

the snow begins melting I will begin my

search once again. Shortly after my

entry before winter came, I went

searching south of Boston and went to

New York City. I saw no signs of human

life.

February 14, 2356

Cold is my bitter enemy. My propulsion

will sometimes freeze up because of it.

Not being able to move is quite

annoying. I can’t do anything when the

cold seeps into my gears and freezes

them.

March 20, 2376

Spring is coming to Concord. The sun is

beginning to shine more here.

Unfortunately rain has become a common

occurrence. I have noticed something odd

about the rain storms. There is a slight

green glow to them. My sensors do

indicate an increase in radiation levels

whenever it rains here. I wonder if the

radiation is impeding the growth of the

flora here in Concord as well as the

rest of the state. Flowers don't bloom

like they used too, now plants are a

dull green. It is as if the plants are

sick and dying. I'm not sure how long

ago the war was but nature has not

recovered yet. Maybe in the next month

or two, I'm sure of it!

April 5, 2398

I think my internal clock may be broken.

The probability is quite low, since

part failure in my model has been proven

will not and can not happen. This is

just a thought since I'm not sure what

month it is, I know that it is spring. I

also know that it is currently the year

2077.

May 31, 2418

Good news! My internal clock is not

broken, well it was for a short while.

While roaming around the state I found a

fellow Mr. Handy on the ground. I

decided to scavenge it for parts and

found essential parts for myself. I was

able to fix my clock with those parts.

Without that clock 400 years could go by

and I would not notice. My clock says it

is May 31, 2077.

June 25, 2438

Boiling hot would be an excellent

description of the temperature here in

Concord. My sensors detect it is

currently 150 degrees. Normally I would

suspect that my sensors are wrong, but

there has been a lot more wildfires this

summer. Spring would bring life and

color back to the world and then summer

comes and strips it away from Mother

Earth. I know one thing and that is

this, the weather has changed

drastically since the bombs fell in

October. I hope the Johnsons are safe

where ever they are.

July 4, 2458

Independence Day! What a wonderful day

for a backyard barbecue with the family.

It is also a beautiful day, the sun is

shining and there are no clouds in

sight. Happy Birthday America! On this

day in 1776 the great founders of this

country declared their independence from

Great Britain. Since then we have had

the war of 1812, the Civil War, WWI,

WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War,

and the Iraq War. Each time our country

pulled through and the union stayed

together. This great country will

perceiver through this struggle. Oh

while I was telling the history of the

U.S.A I almost forgot I need to decorate

the house. Mrs. Johnson would expect

the house to be adorned with red, white

and blue. Hopefully this year they will

have fireworks. God Bless America!

August 19, 2478

For some reason my battery is halfway

gone. I better send a report to Robotics

Inc. Then they can get my battery

replaced, since my charger does not work

for some odd reason. I have tried to

find a replacement battery in Mr.

Handies that are scattered along the

state of Massachusetts. Unfortunately

none of them have fully charged

batteries. Clearly their owners did not

take care of them since their dead on

the street. It has only been almost one

year since the bombs fell. A good

quality battery should last much longer

than one year. When the Johnsons return

I will request that they file a

complaint with Robotics Inc. The

batteries in Mr. Handies according to

Robotics Inc. "will last up to 500 years

on one charge!"

September 9, 2498

My battery is almost gone. There are

dozens of charging stations for robots

such as myself, but they seem to be

inoperable. So I have not been able to

charge my battery for a while, not sure

how long it has been though. I’m not

sure how long I have, maybe days, hours or even minutes. Then all of a sudden my

propeller begins to slow. “Oh no no

please no.” I say as my joints begin to

stop moving. My propeller shuts off

completely “Its not

possible..my..baatteeryy cann’t diee

yett....!”

[justsomebucky]

Finding Closure (Part 5)

Summary: AU. Reader left behind a hometown full of misery to make a new home in Brooklyn. A death in the family forces her to briefly return to the place that has haunted her dreams and memories for three years. Will she finally be able to move on, or will a figure from the past change everything?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Word Count: 3,082

Warnings: angst, language, mentions of bad home life, family issues, revisiting childhood home, excessive Bucky adorableness, drinking, dumb decisions on both sides, did I mention angst?

A/N: I just needed to post this. Part five of my entry for @tatortot2701‘s AU challenge. I legit cried writing this; it feels really personal to me. Alcoholic fathers…

Dear Bucky - Is it really over?

Part:  1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6

For the first time ever, even after all those years of wanting cable TV or your own phone or anything your friends had, you were glad that your father didn’t own much.

The biggest and most important things were already gone, like the appliances, electronics, and a bulk of the furniture. He had gotten rid of the bed he’d shared with your mother ages ago, choosing instead to sleep on the couch for easier access after he stumbled back from the bar.

All that really remained upstairs was the furniture in your bedroom and some end tables here and there.

You never meant to spend the night there; it was a completely unsettling experience. When you woke up, you became immediately confused. Then you remembered: your father was dead. You’d fallen asleep reading Bucky’s letter. That’s the only reason why you’d gone back there last night.

Poor Darcy was probably in a panic, since your phone battery had died during the night and you never really bothered to tell her where you were.

Between the letter and the events of yesterday, you kind of just cried yourself to sleep, waking up with puffy eyes and a feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach. To distract yourself, you immediately stripped the covers off your old bed, throwing the mattress against the side wall so that you could take the frame apart.

You were so into cleaning up the top floor of the house that you didn’t hear someone pounding on the door.  You didn’t hear that same someone enter the house (which you stupidly left unlocked), and you definitely didn’t hear them come up the stairs.

“Y/N!”

Bucky’s voice startled your otherwise peaceful progress. You shot backwards, falling onto your backside on the floor. “Ouch!”

“Sorry,” he said, trying to bite back his laughter, appearing in the doorway. He walked over to you and held out a hand, which you accepted after a slight hesitation.

Once you were hauled back on your feet, you glared at him. “Why did you feel the need to sneak up on me?”

“Hey, you’re the one who didn’t answer your door,” he retorted, finally stopping to look around him. Bucky’s eyes softened almost immediately at the sight of your room being cleaned out. “This is really happening, isn’t it?”

You knew he meant the house sale, but you couldn’t help but think back to his letter.

“Yep.” Your eyes flickered back to the box that was now on the floor near the window. The box, and the photo of your parents, were the only two things you were taking back to Brooklyn. “I’m almost done.”

“I figured.”

You watched awkwardly as Bucky went over to the box, plucking out the stack of photos. Should you tell him you finally read it?

Did it matter at this point?

You did a quick analysis in your head, something you were awfully good at. What was the likelihood of regret if you didn’t bring it up now? The probability was colossal.

“Hey, Buck?”

“Hmm?” Bucky didn’t even look up at you as he shuffled through the stack of photos, stopping every so often to smile or study a picture more closely.

“Did you mean what you said? In your letter?”

That got his attention. His blue eyes snapped up to look at you, his smile fading. “Of course I did.”

Instead of replying, you nodded your head.

“So you read it?”

You nodded again.

Bucky set the photos back in the box, his eyes never leaving yours as he stood up and moved closer. He waited for you to find your voice again.

“I was dumb,” you admitted, shrugging a little. “And even now, I’m being dumb. It feels like forever ago, Bucky, until we’re together in the same room. Then it feels like no time has passed at all.”

He shook his head. “What do you mean? It feels like you’re a totally different person to me.”

“I’m just older. I’d love to say I’m wiser, but that isn’t the case.”

“No, you’re different.”

“I’m the same person, I promise.”

“No,” he insisted, the corner of his mouth lifting up. “You’re braver. You don’t…you don’t need anybody anymore.”

Your body tensed up, and you knew you had to be frowning at him. Why was this starting to feel like a proper breakup, the one you should have had with him years ago?

“Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat.  “The reason I stopped by is because Darcy apparently cannot get a hold of you and she has no clue where the house is. She asked me to, and I’m quoting her on this, ‘make sure Y/N isn’t dead in a ditch somewhere.’”

You laughed, picturing Darcy panicking. “Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have left her alone last night.”

“Not alone. She left with Ian, if it makes you feel any better.”

“It kind of does. She gets bored.”

“Why did you leave?” Bucky’s eyes searched yours. “I thought we were having a nice time, being civil unlike most exes?”

“I was having a nice time,” you agreed. “But then you had to go and start singing our song, and- and holding me like that, and-“

“Whoa,” he laughed, holding his palms up. “I was just dancing for old times’ sake. I wasn’t trying provoke any feelings. I definitely wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable. You just...you ran again.”

As much as you didn’t want to admit it, his explanation hurt your feelings. “I know...like I said, I panicked. I wasn’t trying to suggest you would. I- I wasn’t trying to say you’d ever want me or anything.”

His arms fell to his sides. “What?”

“Nothing.” You shook your head, gesturing for him to follow you as you walked out of the room. “The big fridge was taken for donation already, but I found a mini-fridge in the garage, so I stored the champagne Sam gave me there. Let’s go toast to the end of this shitty era.”

Without waiting for him to reply, you took off down the stairs and through the side door, grabbing the bottle. It was still nice and cold, so you popped the cork and moved the bottle away from your body so you didn’t get any champagne on you as it spilled over.

There was a slight problem – there were no more glasses in the house. You’d donated them all to the local city mission.

You shrugged to yourself, taking a swig from the bottle before holding it out to Bucky expectantly.

He just sort of standing there, staring at you as if you’d grown two heads. “What the hell is this, Y/N?”

“What is what?” If he wasn’t gonna have any, you would just take another sip. “It’s champagne.”

“You’re here facing all this shit with your father head-on like it’s nothing, but then when it comes to me you run every time.”

“What do you want me to do, Buck?” You held out the bottle again. “Swoon?”

Bucky’s eyes grew stormy and he grabbed the champagne from your hands, taking a generous swig. “No, I’d like to know what’s going on in that head of yours, though.”

What was going on?

“You shouldn’t have danced with me, Bucky,” you muttered, reaching for the champagne bottle. “You took it too far for someone who’s hell-bent on letting go.”

He pulled it out of your reach, drinking some more. “Why was it too far? D’you have somebody in New York?”

“What does that matter?”

“It matters! Who would let their significant other come to their father’s funeral alone?” He finally relented, offering you the bottle again. “That’s shitty.”

“I’m single, thank you very much. I’ve been very focused on school and then work.”

When Bucky didn’t say anything, you took that as a sign to continue.

“What, no snappy comeback? No, ‘I figured you were alone because you brought your roommate?’  You’re losing your touch, Bucky. I figured that you’d at least bring up the fact that I probably can’t find someone because I’m so hard to love.” Your voice caught on the last word and you turned from him, covering your mouth with your free hand.

“Y/N, come on,” Bucky said softly. You heard his boots shuffle closer to you, but you needed a minute. “Don’t be like this, not now.”

You stared out the dirty garage window, at the murky sunlight crawling across the floor, at anything that would help take your mind off how you were feeling.

Suddenly he was right beside you, taking the bottle from your hands and setting it down on the garage floor.

You didn’t hesitate this time as you turned and wrapped your arms around him, burying your face in his shoulder as you finally let yourself cry over this whole shitty situation.

“Shhh,” he murmured, stroking your hair gently. “You’re not unlovable, trust me. That asshole father of yours hadn’t been of sound mind since your mom died, Doll. He wasn’t sober enough to be. You can’t let him dictate how you feel about yourself.”

Honestly, it felt so damn good to be wrapped up in someone’s arms, to be held by someone who used to genuinely love you, even if he didn’t anymore. You hated to move and lose the warmth and comfort, but you did so anyway, letting go of him and taking a step back as you swiped at your eyes.

“I’m sorry for losing it,” you told him, trying to brush it off. “Clearly I should look into therapy.”

His gaze was even. “You can lose it whenever you want to. I’m here.”

“But you aren’t here with me, Bucky. You aren’t around, but he’s always there in my head. That’s why I can’t be in this town.”

For the first time ever, he seemed to get it, nodding thoughtfully as his blue eyes stared at yours.

The damage a parent like that can do to you, well, there’s not really much recourse besides living with it, is there?

“Your letter was beautiful.” You figured there was no time like right this second to bring it up again. After all, one more sleep and you’d be back in Brooklyn…one more night of heart-wrenching torture to go. “I never knew how much you cared, to be honest. I guess…I couldn’t see past my own problems.”

Bucky gave you a sheepish smile. “I was pretty good with words for a guy with no college education.”

“See, don’t do that then. Don’t put yourself down like you’re not good enough for anyone just because you didn’t go to college. You have a successful business, Bucky, you’re doing so well for yourself. How many people with degrees can say the same these days?”

“We both have some issues that still haunt us I guess.” He let out a hollow laugh, his smile falling from his mouth as he looked down at the cement floor.

“I didn’t go to Brooklyn to get away from you. I didn’t run, I…I’m not running.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t buy the garage to chain you here.”

“Do you think maybe if we were in the same place…?”

You couldn’t help the hopeful look you knew you were giving him right then as your voice trailed off. You wanted to know. This question had been burning a hole inside your heart for the last three years. It was time for him to either extinguish it for good or burn with you.

“Seems unlikely though, doesn’t it?”

“It’s just a hypothetical.”

Bucky held your gaze for a beat, then shook his head. “I think…hypothetical scenarios are best left to the imagination.”

Ah, there it was.

You weren’t sure what you’d been expecting; three years might have well been an entire lifetime. He was a changed man, a responsible adult. He had better things to do than worry about losing his heart to someone like you again.

You could practically feel your own heart growing colder at his words.

Instead of crying, instead of throwing the champagne bottle against the wall to watch the glass shatter into a thousand pieces like your sanity, you forced a smile to your face. “You’re probably right. I have to get back to work, but it was good seeing you again. If you could let Darcy know I’m almost finished here?”

He looked almost surprised at your reaction. “Sure. Take care of yourself, Y/N.”

“You too.”

Bucky reached up and cupped your cheek gently, his thumb running across your skin once, before he let go of you. His eyes roamed your face for a second, then the garage, before he turned and walked out the door, hands in his pockets, as if it was the most casual thing ever to break your heart all over again.

“That’s it?” Darcy eyed you carefully as you pushed your way into the hotel room, the Bucky box tucked under your arm. “That’s all you’re taking back with you?”

“Everything else is set for donation,” you confirmed, setting the box down on the armchair in the corner. “Sam has the keys, and I left instructions with him for tomorrow. He promised to have what little is left picked up for me so I could leave.”

“Sam is a cool dude, but Y/N, what about everything else?”

You whirled around. “What else is there? The funeral’s over, I took care of the legal crap, the house is as good as gone from my life forever…I can go back to Brooklyn without anything trying to hold me back in this hellhole.”

“You’re gonna make me say it, aren’t you?”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about. I’m going to shower and go to sleep. That way, tomorrow will get here quicker, and we can-“

“What about Bucky?” she interrupted, putting her hands on her hips. “What about the unfinished business between you two?”

“That’s just it, Darce. It is finished. He came over to the house because you called the garage – thanks for that by the way, we’re really going to have to invest in car chargers so that if my phone dies again I won’t be radio silent. Anyways, he came over and we talked, and I brought up the letter. I asked him if there was ever a chance for us and he basically shot me down.”

“Whoa, slow down champ.” Darcy pulled you to sit on the edge of the bed, turning toward you. “You can’t just do a tweet’s worth of a summary, I need more explanation than that!”

“He basically said even if we were in the same place we wouldn’t be together.”

“What do you mean by ‘basically,’ Y/N?”

“He put an end to any hope I had.”

“Just like that?”

“Well, no, but...”

“So was it more of a ‘we weren’t meant to be last time, but we can still totally bang on the kitchen floor one last time?”

You made a face at her. “No!”

“All right, I was just checking, geez.” Darcy tossed her long brown hair over her shoulder. She seemed to be mulling it over. “Maybe you misinterpreted. That doesn’t seem right to me.”

“Really? My life doesn’t seem right to you? What was your first clue?” You let out a sharp laugh. “My alcoholic father? My failed relationship? Was it me agreeing to be the roommate of someone with an ad like yours?”

“You know what I mean, smartass! This doesn’t feel like this is the end.”

“I don’t know what kind of definition you had in your head for the word ‘end,’ but that’s exactly what this is. Over, finished, complete, dunzo. In other words, the end.”

Darcy shook her head. “Something doesn’t feel right about it. It’s not the closure you needed.”

“Closure?”

“Yeah, like…you got the closure with your dad and the house, as best you could since he couldn’t physically apologize to you for being such a piece of shit. But this other thing…”

“I did okay without Bucky, didn’t I? We talked, we reminisced, and we parted ways again. I’ll be okay.”

“You still love him, Y/N. Anyone that was in the room with the two of you could see it plain as day on your face. And Bucky looked the same way, which is why I don’t get his response to you.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. It’s probably just nostalgia at this point.”

“Nostalgia wouldn’t leave my best friend feeling like this.”

You sighed, standing up again to go toward your suitcase and grab some pajamas for after your shower. “That’s the funny thing about endings, Darce. You don’t always get the one you want.”

After a restless night’s sleep, you were up bright and early to pack and head back to the airport.  You had to reassure Darcy that you were doing just fine at least seven times already, but she still didn’t look convinced.

Either way, you were well on your way home.

Home…what a funny word that was.

Home used to mean that town, in that house with your father. Then it shifted through your high school years to mean anywhere Bucky was.

Now, it was your cramped apartment in Brooklyn that you shared with Darcy. Who knows where home would be in the coming years, but at least you were sure that wherever it was, you’d do your best to make yourself happy.

Everything you’d brought with you from your trip was tucked in a new box in the back of your closet, though you couldn’t seem to find the picture of you and Bucky on the library stairs. Your heart sank the moment you realized it was missing. You must have thrown it away in your hurry to clean out your room.

It was probably for the best.

Life slowly went back to normal. Work was the same, and your apartment was the same, and your nights alone while Darcy was traveling for her photography were the same, too. Netflix and sit alone and wait to die was more like it.

And what was closure, anyway? What kind of shitty word meant both the act of and sense of a conclusion? Closure was a total illusion like time and control. It’s a concept that’s beyond you, and you’re just kidding yourself if you think you’ve found the answers.

No, you had to put a smile on your face and move on with your life one day at a time.

That was the true meaning of closure.

Part:  1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6

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[hookysblog]

South America

 TEATRO RIVAL, RIO DE JANIERO 1/12/16

A long trip via Atlanta gets us into Rio the day of the gig, so it is going to be tough, especially for the lads.

Strange being here the same time as New Odour. I notice in interviews that Gillian says she misses me?…..Aah bless! And Steve cracked on he didn’t even know we were here with The Light at the same time…humh? I find both those statements impossible to believe for many, many reasons.

The Brazilian Press have turned it into a bit of an Us vs Them, which could turn out to be quite interesting. In Chile we are actually playing at the same theatre three days apart….Weird!

Weirder still, we split up after The South American Tour in 2006. Ten years ago nearly to the day (and have been at each other’s throats ever since;) God that takes some stamina that doesn’t it? I cannot believe it myself, very New Order.

Anyway we are staying in Copacabana right on the beach and it is glorious. We have played this club before and it is a bit rough and ready but has a great atmosphere. As I arrive I remember one other thing….It is bloody hot! Poor Old Leadfoot is worn out. The gig goes great (Sold Out again!) and the audience are wonderful, I sign a million things and do a thousand photos, before crawling back to bed;)

 BAR OPINIAO, PORTE ALLEGRE 3/12/16

 A much-needed night off, here on the 2nd recharges our batteries. The Hotel surprise me with a lovely welcoming gift. How sweet, tasted lovely too.

This is getting tough for me….Must be my age? It really does get harder every year;( Still I manage the gym again, which is nice and makes me feel a lot better. The gig looms large and this is a big place (Sold Out;) and strangely me and Pottsy have a row??? Not over much, fold-back actually;(…It is years since we’ve had one and thankfully it is over quickly. I think we are all frazzled to be honest! It makes you very cranky these late nights and early mornings, and being an old bloke, that’s the worst one. God knows how I handled it when I was drinking etc., Well, I just answered that question really;) I had actually forgotten what it was like to be mad at some one on tour! Me and Jack bang heads a few times but it’s never over anything disastrous. I come up with a new motto ‘Don’t moan….Phone!’ which everyone loves throwing back in my face as soon as I start moaning…..typical.

Ends up being a great gig, crackling with energy. The audience goes nuts for both sets and we struggle to get out with the amount of people clustered round the van. ‘Is this what it was like for The Beatles?’ asks Pottsy.

I think it was worse for them mate, a little.

CINE JOIA, SAO PAOLO 6/12/16

 Short flight brings us to Sao, and we have two nights off. Brilliant!

 Early on the first night we get a great curry from this really dodgy looking place in the middle of Sao Paolo (Google we love you x). On the way home it starts to rain and one of the gutters bursts, but not with water, with cockroaches!!! An army of them pour out and scare Phil to death (he’d be no good in I’m a celebrity get me out of here). I regale the boys with tales of my cockroach days in Ordsall in Salford. They are suitably impressed/disgusted.  We all get sunburnt rotten the next day and finish off with a typical Brazilian Barbecue meal.

 Amazing to think how in the old days we would go to loads of these and not eat at all! The Promoters, who always took you, must have thought we were mad. But those days are thankfully gone. Nice early night for me, I was feeling a bit weird to be honest. I think I’m getting a cold again. Leadfoot’s got one and hard as I try to stay away from him, it is impossible with his magnetic personality. The gig day dawns and I still feel rough but steel myself and go to the gym, which works….I feel much better….Hooray! Before I know it my old mate Heitor picks me up and after a Japanese meal in Japantown, Sao Paolo. (Turns out Sao Paolo, has the largest Japanese population of any city in the world after Tokyo, go figure?) My other old friend and our Promoter Giuli, drives us to the gig. Now this gig’s stage is the highest I have ever seen, even higher than The Glasgow Appollo. So the audience are way below. A great very young crowd goes mad from start to finish. We play great. It is hotter than hell…again. One wonderful moment when this old geezer climbs up on the stage and goes to crowd surf off during Warsaw, but the crowd just part and won’t support him and he has to jump down going flying arse over tit, bet he’s aching today;)

We play Atmosphere for the Brazilian team lost in the air crash. I watched the funeral in Port Allegre, and it reminded me of Princess Diana’s funeral in England. It was very moving and the footballers were so young. It seems to have affected all the Brazilian people very much. As I sing I see many people in the audience crying one girl in particular makes me choke up too and I have to really pull myself together to get the words out. I think it was because Heitor my friend, a doctor, was a volunteer in Columbia to bring the players back home to Brazil. He was telling me all about the scene and what had happened, a shocking waste of life because of one man’s greed.

A real tragedy.

We give them mercy with Love W. T. U. A. and the ‘Sold Out’ house goes bonkers! Wonder how we’ll fare in the comparison stakes eh world? We shall have to wait and see won't we……Off to Chile very early tomorrow.

 TEATRO CAUPOLICAN, SANTIAGO, CHILE.

God we are knackered. Bed at 2.30a.m. and up at 5.45a.m. for our trip. I am in shock. It’s still dark, but every one is very happy after such a great gig last night. At the airport it takes over two hours to check the equipment in and get to Departures, then a 4hr 45min flight, then 1 hour in immigration and an hour and a half in Baggage to get the equipment out. It seems it has been stored until tomorrow for some reason? We get to our bus, and I must admit it has seen better years, probably around 1960 I reckon. Our greeters seem a bit sheepish and very quiet, almost avoiding eye contact and certainly no conversation. By the time we arrive at the Hotel there is no time to rest and the lads go straight to the sound-check. I crash out (you are allowed if your over 60) and I am just nodding off when all the phone start, almost all at once. At first I thought it was someone pissing around. Then I realise not only are the lads phoning me but also my manager. I finally get the very bad news that the Promoter has not sorted out the advertising for the gig. He had billed it as ‘New Order’ in a cheap attempt, I presume, to get sales off ‘The Others’. He had been warned about their removal and facing legal action, so I had no option but to pull the gig.

I am devastated. This gig in particular was the one I was looking forward to;(

Three days after them? same venue? it was the perfect opportunity to show our worth. We had been checking with this Promoter a lot, to make sure the show could go ahead, I am not daft. This was a problem, even though our gig was booked 4 months before they announced theirs ….Boo… Hiss(hey it is pantomime season;). Right up until the last minute the Promoter had assured us there would be no problems. He is an idiot.

After doing so well in Brazil to be treated like this here was terrible. We have played here twice before…. both sold-out, why this promoter acted like this I do not know.

I can only apologise to all our fans and ‘The Others’ and say when we come back again it will not be with him.  

A welcome early night gets us ready for more obscene travelling.

NICETO CLUB, BUENOS ARIES.

Up at 6.30a.m for our flight to the beautiful place that is Buenos Aries, the Paris of the south. A gorgeous city…… but we are tired, very tired. Thankfully gig wise we are back to normal, with another ‘Sell Out’ and what a gig it is! An absolutely bonkers reception for both sets! I am amazed! It is so welcome after the shenanigins of yesterday.

B.A. I LOVE YOU! All thoughts of that awful night over 10 years ago are forgotten and forgiven…..You made an old man very, very happy. It is times like this that make all the effort worthwhile. Crawl to bed.

Almost human 10a.m start to …..

 MUSIC BOX, MONTEVIDEO.

Our last gig, on this tour.

Jack tells me we have done 49 since Glasgow….WOW! What an achievement. My wife, dog and daughters have forgotten me but it was almost worth it….ha ha! Weird hotel this one, great pool and gym, and a strange 60’s style casino, all of which I have to ignore because of my cold, now in full bloom. The gig is nice and there is always a weird feeling at the end, no matter where you are or ‘who’ you are with. Tonight is no different. The gig goes great and we give Andy Poole, our ex-keyboard player a great send off. He is leaving us for pastures new, sadly.

 Adios mon ami! Love Hooky ‘16

[lucasxxbrown-blog]

The Maine Woods, Thoughts Loosely Constructed in Train of Thought.

Part One: Casco Bay Conundrum

Casco Bay has many beauties, like Peaks Island. Peaks island itself is a magical, mysterious, inherently dangerous place. Two cultures exist on Peaks; the Square and the Wild. The square are tame, old, and quiet. Generally white (most of Maine is white, unfortunately). They lack culture and fun. The fun are the Wild. The Wild are young, ambitious, and not surprisingly - but most importantly - stupid. The Square stick to what they know - driving their golf carts to the expensive restaurant by the water. The Wild live like they’re about to die; driving their cheap (about to fall apart) golf carts; screaming down dirt roads with 3 too many people piled on the back. They seek entertainment. Sometimes in throwing bottles, sometimes in climbing on the roof of a moving car. But, as old as civilization itself, we as humans hold on to ritual. 

Ritual, for the Wild on Peaks, are the outrageous fires they construct in Battery Steele. Anything from chairs to entire box spring mattresses are likely to be burned at the stake. The Steele is a large, concrete, hallway like tunnel. Several small rooms line it. It’s about 15 feet high and 20 feet across, with musty dirt floors. Rooms contain anything from broken glass to remnants of satanic rituals. The police on the island are limited, and really just don’t care. 

The Square far outnumber the Wild. Not much really happens, but when it does, it’s a sight to see. The Wild live life to the fullest. This is something the Square could do; but choose not to. The Square sit inside in the comfort of their homes and experience next to nothing. They fill their minds with mindless entertainment. They have no desire to explore, expand their horizons, or change their perspectives. They crave security both mentally and physically. Why is any of this important? If they’re happy with their lives, don’t bother them? The problem is that this kind of happiness is ignorant. Ignorant happiness. Their minds are closed from the outside world. Rarely do they care, think of, or even understand the or state of the world. They care about their issues only and themselves only. This ignorance is dangerous.

We, as humans, have an ethical, moral, primal obligation to help other humans. We all experience the same feelings; love and hate; despair and hunger. At any level of privilege, it is our duty to help those less privileged. Privilege can be described as the circumstances in which every human life comes into. Everyone was just like you at one point; a soul born into a place we have no control over. None of us choose where. None of us choose when. But all of us are born into cycles of more or less privilege (privilege can generally be interchanged with wealth). 

A study was done that examined families wealth status over the course of 1000 years. Every family that was poor, stays poor. Just about every family that was middle class 1000 years ago is middle class now. The rich stay rich. The poor stay poor. We are born into cycles. Born into wealth classes, which we usually stay in. These wealth classes generally determine the privilege one has. More wealth, more privilege. 

We don’t choose anything when we are born. How can you look at another human, another soul, who also chose nothing (but has less), and not help?

If the majority of people’s happiness came from helping people, we would live in a better world.

Part Two: Bag of Bones

I’m back now. When I last ended, my father had called me for dinner. After swinging a chicken sausage around on a stick for a while I sat down and ate. My brother is fishing again, to no surprise. He continues to ask me to accompany him, but I decline. I like spending time with him.  I like spending time in silence. But something about fishing with someone rubs me the wrong way. Fishing is solitude, silence, and patience. It could even be compared to meditation. This should be time for self reflection. Utter loneliness. Loneliness is seen as this sad, pouty thing. In reality, solitude can truly improve your mind. Meditation improves your mind. When it comes down to it, it isn’t weird to want to be alone.

That being said, you shouldn't be alone all of the time. Social interaction has its benefits. But there is something so peaceful, serene, beautiful and divine about spending time in your own head. No thought with the outside world. Nothing to worry about, nothing to do. You, alone, with your thoughts. At the end of the day, that’s all that we are… thoughts. Electromagnetic pulses through a pink squishy blob. Brains control our bodies, but what describes the “back of your head”? When you have sleep paralysis, you can see everything, but you can’t move. What is being “there”? What is being “conscious”? If “real feelings” can be manipulated by things that aren’t real, what is reality? What is real?

Thousands of veterans with severed limbs account feeling “ghost limbs”. Go ahead, look it up, it’s real. Even though their, say, arm isn’t there… they sometimes feel as if it is. Their brains forget that they don’t have an arm and those feelings return. If your leg is attached to you - you’d consider it alive. But it’s not. Our legs, arms, everything, are simply bones wrapped in meat covered with liquid. Nothing is “alive”. Are we?

Part Three: Survival?

The human brain has evolved some physically - but mostly mentally. Our great ancestors had similar, but differently shaped brains. Their minds were simple. The focused on food, sex, and shelter. Main goal: don’t die. For thousands of years, the human brain had one main goal; survive. 

Why? People died all the fucking time. Medicine wasn’t shit. You could cut your foot and die from infection within days. Plagues killed millions upon millions. Food was scarce. While this wasn’t a reality for all, it was for most. Our minds functioned differently. 

Fast forward to now. Your average first world human, for generations on generations, never needed to survive. From birth to death, death was never an “in your face” kind of thing. These generations were all born into hospitals; places of care and security. Then, they were brought home, fed well and cared for. They were given love, nourishment, and anything else you could think they would need. As they got older, they attended school. They spent 12 years of their lives in a safe and calm environment, learning. Yes, they might have had a health issue here or there.  But our modern medicine prevented them from ever directly facing death. They never had to worry about food, shelter, hunting, gathering, anything that our simple-minded great ancestors had to. Our constant thoughts shape the inner-workings of the brain. Generations since the 21st century have been shaped by thoughts of utter security; we always have our guard down. Food, shelter, and sex are all far too easily accessible. We don’t have to think about these things anymore. 

We are losing the ability to survive. To be human. What are we becoming?

Part 4: Whatever

Am I going insane? Probably. But nobody cares. You know why nobody cares? Because everyone is fucking insane. Everyone has at least one mental issue one way or another. None of us are truly sane anymore. What is normal? “What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly” - Charles Adams. What is sanity? Who determines sanity? Is there a test you can take? Fuck. There probably is. But are all tests accurate? What if I take two separate tests and get two varying results? 

Sanity cannot be determined. We are all insane one way or another. Is this a bad thing though?

Mildly. We are all mildly insane. So, what does this mean? What does this prove? First, everyone needs to give everyone else a break. Cut judgement. Cut ignorance. Try to understand that everyone you meet has a life, feelings, family, possessions, and sorrows just like yours. What feelings do you seek to experience? Joy, kindness, forgiveness. Everyone else seeks these as well. Remember that we all feel the same - if you don’t want to be sad, why would you want someone else to?

---

I’m less high now. Being high is such a beautiful thing. I almost didn’t even want to write about it. It feels…”taboo”. Getting high has been part of the counterculture since its origins. The counterculture has often been referred to as the “anti war hippies”. These hippies were right. Right about everything. These hippies were the not only the peak, but the pinnacle of American culture. Their anti-war and anti-destruction of the earth ideas were spot on. Best of all, they were so fucking passionate about it. They all lived such humble, free lives. They weren’t poisoned by the food they ate. Technology didn’t corrupt their minds. They were spiritually awoken and fought for what was right (including the civil rights movement). The problem is that this counterculture was deemed “dangerous to the inner workings of society as a whole”. Many older people at the time didn’t understand. The hippies said, “Guys, look. America is pretty fucked up. But not too fucked up. We’re at a point of return. Let’s slowly start changing some stuff for the better”. 

Unfortunately the Nixons of America denounced them. They saw change as a threat to their way of life. They also realized that their control was threatened. Nixon types, Nixon himself were ultimately severely ignorant.  Ignorance fueled by ego and greed. Fueled by an undying lust for power. This ignorance began the war on drugs. The failing, idiotic “war” on drugs. Let me be clear; opioids do not expand your mind. They are a specifically designed substance for easy, immediate happiness. Not to mention the deeply addictive trait of these absolutely monstrous drugs. Do you know what they do? They release serotonin, your “happy” chemical. You know what they don’t do? Get you high! People will misconstrue this rush of feelings from opioids as a high. You know what gets you actually high? 

Cannabis. But, also meth. As well as huffing paint. But - things like meth or paint are a synthetic high with devastating consequences. These chemicals were created by a man in a lab. They aren’t natural. You know what is natural? Cannabis. To be clear; just because something is natural doesn't automatically make it safe. My point is to suggest that this natural high is safer and doesn’t fuck with your body and brain. Cannabis is natural; so are humans. We, like cannabis, come from the earth. Don’t forget we are still creatures of this planet! We are nothing but highly sophisticated monkeys. For thousands of years during our evolution, we were pretty basic. We dealt with survival over all else. But around the 21st century something changed. Modern Medicine. We became so good at keeping stupid people alive that we significantly slowed down natural selection. And what does that create? More stupid people reproducing, and a stupider population. You know who gains from a stupid population? The puppet masters of society. A society that has corrupted us.

--

Suicide. Suicide doesn't make any sense. Many (most) animals don't commit suicide. Most humans, for a long time, didn't want to kill themselves. Personally, I’ve struggled with thoughts of suicide. I’ve never been diagnosed with depression. Depression is...unnatural? Is that the right word? My point is that animals don’t generally experience depression. Depression in mass amounts began around the 50’s. The 50’s. What an interesting crossroad in American culture. Possibly the most important. The morph between the 50’s and 60’s, that is. But what happened around the 50’s that made everyone want to kill themselves? Actually, maybe it wasn’t the 50’s. 90’s maybe? The humans (in America) peaked as a species in the 60’s. Have we gotten to a point somewhere beyond natural evolution? I theorize that we have began to evolve around society itself, and no longer the earth. 

We are evolving around ourselves. Death and survival are no longer a part of our lives. We’re becoming less naturally human and more internalized to society. Our everyday problems and issues are completely insignificant compared to that of the past. My great ancestors biggest problem was finding food in loom of death; mine is forgetting to put my dishes away. At the end of the day we’re so caught up in our obsolete issues that we forget how to truly live. How to feel. Our emotions are being warped and fucked with. What even is the main goal of life? To be happy? What even is happiness? What is emotion? Chemical balances and imbalances in your brain? Aren’t we all just energy? How do you describe a feeling? Aren’t happiness and sadness just chemicals released by your brain? Is anyone happy all of the time? Is that even possible? Is the point of life to just be alive? 

My father calls for me. I’m still in the tent. I should probably go. 

Part 5: An river end

I’m sitting by the river. Sounds of babbling rocks and the fresh smell of earth make me feel at home. Sleeping in the wild, waking up with the air we were meant to breathe; it’s a beautiful and peculiar thing. Everything just feels right. The wind brushes the trees, bushes, and my hair. The water moves slow and methodically, calm, with a purpose. Soon, the dam will release and the shore will rise. Will I rise as well? My spiritual journey is still in the making. I’m not only trying to find myself, but make myself. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I need to stop looking for who I am, accept who I am, and just do the things that make me happy. It’s hard, though. Making yourself happy; when your own joy comes from the light of others. I am the most happy when others around me are happy. Even if I’m doing something that bothers me, as long as the ones around me are content, so am I. Some things downright cause me utter sadness. But at the same time, I’m happy. I’m at a constant state of war in my own head. 

What do I do?

[interiorstarweb]

Fall Checklist: Planting Shrubs & Trees!

This blog mini-series is in partnership with Lowe’s! Thank you for supporting my sponsors!

Fall is, hands down, my favorite time of year to plant. Who wants to dig a big hole when it’s super hot and muggy out? Who wants to watch a shrub struggle all summer because it got too hot too quickly after it was planted? Nobody. Fall is a great, oft-underrated time to plant trees and shrubs especially (before they go dormant for winter), and this year I was determined to do both! AND SPOILER: I DID!

I’ve been REALLY trying to pay serious attention to gardens I like when I see them out in the wild—from the layout to the particular mix and massing of plants that make them up, and this longitudinal study into my own preferences has resulted in one thing I know to be true: I love a boxwood. I love them as individuals and I love them as hedges. I love them when they form parterres and I love them when they form other things I don’t know the terminology for. I love that they stay green all winter and I love that the only real work that goes into them is giving them a haircut once in a while, which is a task I actually enjoy.

So let’s start at this area in front of my recently pressure-washed porch. Back when I bought the house, it looked basically like this. See that mass of hosta? I dug that up and divided it, creating TWENTY-FIVE individual plants.

I moved them to the space in front of the low wrought-iron fence with some purple heart and creeping jenny. Evidently it gets too cold here for purple heart to be a perennial (live and learn!), but the hostas have come back bigger and bigger year after year, as they do! They work really well in this spot because they’re so hardy—they get a little abused with foot traffic in this location but they can handle it. And since they die off for the winter, that space can get mounded with sidewalk snow and come back fine in the spring.

You can kind of see right behind the hostas on the other side of the fence, I did a hideously dumb thing. I planted day lillies. They came from somewhere in the backyard, and at this point I know I was feeling like I’d NEVER accumulate enough plants to deal with this yard and I simply had to use what I had, regardless of whether I actually liked it. Personally, I do not like day lillies. They produce a weak showing of flowers once a year, look crappy the rest of the time, and reproduce and spread like a small annoying plague. More on that in a second.

Anyway. Since I know I love boxwoods, I’ve tried to add new ones every year in the hopes that someday I’ll have all the hedges and fanciness my heart desires. I counted them up and it turns out I’ve actually planted thirty boxwoods since I’ve lived here, which ain’t bad! I tend to buy the smallest ones at Lowe’s, mainly for cost reasons. Prices vary year after year, but they’re usually in the $10-range. I planted these three years ago in front of the porch and on the side of the portico, since neither of these foundations are particularly good-looking but nothing a nice hedge wouldn’t conceal! I’m not really a fan of foundation plantings around the house generally (since I want to maintain access to the siding and foundation for current/future maintenance, and don’t want roots affecting my foundation), but I think around a porch is more OK. Boxwoods don’t root very deeply, which both makes them decent candidates for planting close to a structure and pretty easygoing if they need to be transplanted.

Anyway! This photo is from a few days ago, and despite clearly being on their way out, the hostas have all gotten so big and bushy! The boxwoods have all grown! And those day lillies did exactly what they do, which is propagate and look a mess!

It occurred to me that this area in front of the porch might be a nice place to enact a little parterre action, like in that inspiration image (which is Kingston’s own Senate House, the building where New York ratified its state constitution in 1777!). I already have two of the four sides installed! So I ripped all those day lillies out and took myself to Lowe’s hoping the nursery still had boxwoods in stock.

OHHHHHH YEAHHHHHH. I may have gotten a little excited. Did I mention that another reason I like fall planting is because of clearance sales??! It varies by store, but you can pretty much count on end-of-season promotions as they need to clear out summer/fall stock, so these babies were being offered at 50% off! Yassssss. I bought 22 of them, like any totally normal person whose house is under hella construction would, right?

Whatever, I will take a major discounted boxwood windfall whenever and wherever it comes. These things cannot be controlled.

A couple of quick notes about boxwoods, specifically, after having done some light research. Apparently boxwoods smell unpleasant, kind of like cat pee, to some people. Personally, I don’t have this problem. There are a lot of varieties of boxwoods, which is helpful to know when selecting them—particularly if you’re sensitive to the scent! Evidently English Boxwoods are the stinkiest and on the more difficult end of the spectrum to grow. The ones I bought are called Winter Gem Boxwoods which are a type of Korean boxwood, and they’re one of my favorite varieties. They’re super hardy, grow quickly, and have a nice dense foliage. You might have seen people wrap/tent their boxwoods in the winter, but I’ve never done that (that’s totally one of those aspirational fall tasks that current-me totally envisions future-me doing, but likely I will not) and they’ve been great even with heavy snow loads and record-setting low temperatures.

OK THEN.

Here is where I freely admit that I don’t think I’m a natural-born gardener from a design perspective. I love houses and rooms but I find gardens INCREDIBLY challenging from a conceptual standpoint—this is the part of the house I’d totally hire a designer for if I could. That being said, I enjoy the puttering, and I think I AM really pretty good at growing stuff—very rarely do my plants die, and I certainly can’t credit outstanding maintenance or any other special skills. I do, however, plant pretty much everything exactly the same way, so I like to think that’s what I bring to the table. It is not complicated.

It starts with laying things out. Like a dry fit! Obviously this is so you can get an idea of how it looks and figure out if you have enough plants, adjust your spacing, etc.

Once that’s done, I start planting. If there’s mulch (especially fresh mulch), rake it out away from the hole you’re digging so you don’t mess it up with a bunch of soil. Then dig a hole that’s twice as wide and twice as deep as the pot the plant came in. It’s tempting to not do this, especially if the plant is large, but it’s important to give those roots a good chance at success, and the ability to spread into soil that isn’t so compacted.

Into the hole, I’ll throw a few inches of good, nutrient-rich soil. I try not to freak out about exactly what this is: there are a lot of options but basically a compost, composted manure, topsoil, or a soil mix formulated specifically for whatever you’re planting seem to all be just fine (or at least better than nothing! gardeners, feel free to chime in). In this case I’m using compost from my own composter!

The most important thing is to not panic. That’s a general statement but also applies here.

Then I flood the hole with lots of water, and then mix up the fancy rich soil with the water and other soil in the hole with the shovel or a stick.

Then I remove the plastic pot to expose the roots! Look at those roots! Such vigor! Big up, Monrovia.

Then I use my fingers or a small shovel or whatever I grab first to break up the roots a bit. It’s ok if some of them break. This encourages them to spread out into their new environment and create new growth.

Then I just stick the roots down into the hole, making sure that the base of the plant is even with the surrounding grade. Pack around the roots with some compost and the soil you removed from the hole.

Afterwards, I give everything a good soak from above. Sometimes if I haven’t packed the soil well, this watering settles loose soil around the plant, so check to see if you need to add more soil. Of course, I try to remember to water frequently during the first few weeks or so, but ya know. Sometimes that doesn’t work out, but it’s the intention that counts. Unless the plant dies, in which case the watering is probably what would have counted.

So that’s how I plant stuff.

Then I got to break out my new toy—the Greenworks Pro hedge trimmer (which is currently on sale!)! The hedge trimmers use the same battery as my lawnmower and my leaf blower, which I just love. It’s all so easy to switch between tools. The hedge trimmers are seriously powerful and the quality seems great. I almost wish they didn’t work so well because the job was done so quickly and I was just getting into the groove!

You have to be careful about trimming boxwoods too late into the fall since you want the trimmed parts to harden before the first frost, but I felt pretty confident I still had time left on the calendar. I only trimmed the plants that have been here for a few years already and are well-established, and I tried to be cautious to only give them a light trim—just enough to even things out and make everything look under control.

Finally, MULCH TIME! Normally I just mulch once in the spring, but I didn’t get to it this year! I probably would have just waited until this coming spring since retaining moisture and preventing weeds aren’t such big issues in the winter, but mulch also acts as an insulator to keep roots warmer and protected through the winter—which with freshly planted shrubs is more important than ever.

My old faithful is this inexpensive black mulch from Lowe’s. I think of mulching a lot like painting a room—it’s that thing at the end after all the hard work that instantly makes everything look so goooood. I aim for about a 2-3″ layer, making sure to get all the way around the base of the new plants. Then it’s just a matter of watering everything again to help kind of settle the mulch into place.

Different time of year, but this is as close as I could get to a before-and-after! I’m so happy with how this area has progressed over the past few years. I feel like it’s starting to look like something nice! Feel free to review progress from 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 if you really want to take a deep dive.

The two old rhododendrons are amazingly still going, although I think their remaining years are numbered. I’ll probably rip them out when I make it to restoring the porch itself and need more space to work. It’s possible I’ll have to transplant the boxwoods during that process as well, but that’s OK. This stuff can be tricky to figure out, because there’s so much of the house to get to but I’m not sure exactly when that will come to pass, and I still want it to look good and relatively cared for in the interim! I have a deep fear of making it a decade down the road with this house and realizing I don’t have any mature plants to landscape with.

Oh! I also dug up those hostas in front of this section of the fence, split them, and planted them closer together so they form more of a hedge than they currently do. I think if the boxwood hedge gets to about the height of the porch floor, and the hosta hedges much closer to the ground, this will look nice and layered but still structured and simple. We shall see in the coming years! I hope to get to splitting ALL of the hostas this fall but that might be rapidly becoming a spring project. We’ll all find out together.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Because I bought…so many bushes.

The rest of the boxwoods went to the newly-restored side of the house, which may not FEEL that exciting—but holy cow, getting to the point that I can safely plant stuff without worrying I’m going to accidentally trample them or squish them with the ladder I’ve moved around this area a thousand times over the course of this summer/fall was VERY EXCITING. Finishing up the work on this side of the house has felt like climbing a mountain, at the top of which are a series of many smaller mountains I won’t be able to climb this fall (like restoring every window), but having the bulk of the work done and something nice happening with the landscaping feels like major victory. I’ll show you the whole thing soooooon!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S STILL MORE! I’M NEVER SHUTTING UP! Let’s time-hop again, back to…

3 years ago, I planted 3 Cleveland Flowering Pear Trees from Lowe’s in that strip between the sidewalk and the street. See them? One of the truly striking things when you compare old pictures of the neighborhood to new ones is the current utter lack of trees in a neighborhood that used to have tons of them! My block, for instance, used to be lined with big beautiful trees, and now there are exactly three trees and they’re all babies and they all belong to me. It’s a shame, because nicely placed trees are not only one of the easiest ways to instantly boost curb appeal, but they also help with pollution, storm water management, property value, and more. Research even shows that mature trees make a difference in public safety and crime! A quick google search returned this nice succinct run-down of why trees are so important to urban spaces.

I am the Lorax.

I’m not sure why it took so long, but it finally occurred to me that I could totally plant a fourth tree in the same line, but to the right of my garage. There’s space!

So I went and picked up another Cleveland Flowering Pear. Flowering pear trees also seem to have a certain…olfactory problem for some people when they’re in bloom (which realistically is a couple of weeks in the spring), which…I’ll let you research on your own. But they’re beautiful, they grow quickly, they flower but don’t fruit (helping avoid vermin that might want to snack on fallen fruit!), and they grow in this predictable, very upright columnar shape that makes them great for a narrow spot like this, where you don’t want to interfere with the sidewalk or eventually have it growing too close to the house. They’re also SO hardy—I probably haven’t watered the three original ones basically since they were planted, and they’ve easily quadrupled in size and are really starting to look great. This is even with the teenaged neighbor kid who seems determined to kill them and breaks off branches and messes with them when he thinks nobody’s looking. Facepalm.

I used up all my homemade compost on the boxwoods, so I picked up a big bag of this Sta-Green Tree and Shrub Garden soil. Otherwise my planting method was exactly the same.

Grow, little tree! Grow! This guy was also 50% off, making his total cost a whopping $15. For a whole tree! Can’t beat that. Hopefully at some point it’ll catch up to its siblings that have had a few years head-start. This also reminds me that I have to get out there and add some mulch around it! There’s always something, am I right?

PHEW! Well I’m pooped! My big fall checklist is winding down, though, and I’m starting to get excited to turn my attention back toward the inside of the house. I guess technically we have another month of fall, so I’m going to try to keep working through those remaining items and see how far I get. Hang on just a little longer, mother nature!

Fall Checklist: Planting Shrubs & Trees! published first on https://novaformmattressreview.tumblr.com/

[carygarman980]

Fall Checklist: Planting Shrubs & Trees!

This blog mini-series is in partnership with Lowe’s! Thank you for supporting my sponsors!

Fall is, hands down, my favorite time of year to plant. Who wants to dig a big hole when it’s super hot and muggy out? Who wants to watch a shrub struggle all summer because it got too hot too quickly after it was planted? Nobody. Fall is a great, oft-underrated time to plant trees and shrubs especially (before they go dormant for winter), and this year I was determined to do both! AND SPOILER: I DID!

I’ve been REALLY trying to pay serious attention to gardens I like when I see them out in the wild—from the layout to the particular mix and massing of plants that make them up, and this longitudinal study into my own preferences has resulted in one thing I know to be true: I love a boxwood. I love them as individuals and I love them as hedges. I love them when they form parterres and I love them when they form other things I don’t know the terminology for. I love that they stay green all winter and I love that the only real work that goes into them is giving them a haircut once in a while, which is a task I actually enjoy.

So let’s start at this area in front of my recently pressure-washed porch. Back when I bought the house, it looked basically like this. See that mass of hosta? I dug that up and divided it, creating TWENTY-FIVE individual plants.

I moved them to the space in front of the low wrought-iron fence with some purple heart and creeping jenny. Evidently it gets too cold here for purple heart to be a perennial (live and learn!), but the hostas have come back bigger and bigger year after year, as they do! They work really well in this spot because they’re so hardy—they get a little abused with foot traffic in this location but they can handle it. And since they die off for the winter, that space can get mounded with sidewalk snow and come back fine in the spring.

You can kind of see right behind the hostas on the other side of the fence, I did a hideously dumb thing. I planted day lillies. They came from somewhere in the backyard, and at this point I know I was feeling like I’d NEVER accumulate enough plants to deal with this yard and I simply had to use what I had, regardless of whether I actually liked it. Personally, I do not like day lillies. They produce a weak showing of flowers once a year, look crappy the rest of the time, and reproduce and spread like a small annoying plague. More on that in a second.

Anyway. Since I know I love boxwoods, I’ve tried to add new ones every year in the hopes that someday I’ll have all the hedges and fanciness my heart desires. I counted them up and it turns out I’ve actually planted thirty boxwoods since I’ve lived here, which ain’t bad! I tend to buy the smallest ones at Lowe’s, mainly for cost reasons. Prices vary year after year, but they’re usually in the $10-range. I planted these three years ago in front of the porch and on the side of the portico, since neither of these foundations are particularly good-looking but nothing a nice hedge wouldn’t conceal! I’m not really a fan of foundation plantings around the house generally (since I want to maintain access to the siding and foundation for current/future maintenance, and don’t want roots affecting my foundation), but I think around a porch is more OK. Boxwoods don’t root very deeply, which both makes them decent candidates for planting close to a structure and pretty easygoing if they need to be transplanted.

Anyway! This photo is from a few days ago, and despite clearly being on their way out, the hostas have all gotten so big and bushy! The boxwoods have all grown! And those day lillies did exactly what they do, which is propagate and look a mess!

It occurred to me that this area in front of the porch might be a nice place to enact a little parterre action, like in that inspiration image (which is Kingston’s own Senate House, the building where New York ratified its state constitution in 1777!). I already have two of the four sides installed! So I ripped all those day lillies out and took myself to Lowe’s hoping the nursery still had boxwoods in stock.

OHHHHHH YEAHHHHHH. I may have gotten a little excited. Did I mention that another reason I like fall planting is because of clearance sales??! It varies by store, but you can pretty much count on end-of-season promotions as they need to clear out summer/fall stock, so these babies were being offered at 50% off! Yassssss. I bought 22 of them, like any totally normal person whose house is under hella construction would, right?

Whatever, I will take a major discounted boxwood windfall whenever and wherever it comes. These things cannot be controlled.

A couple of quick notes about boxwoods, specifically, after having done some light research. Apparently boxwoods smell unpleasant, kind of like cat pee, to some people. Personally, I don’t have this problem. There are a lot of varieties of boxwoods, which is helpful to know when selecting them—particularly if you’re sensitive to the scent! Evidently English Boxwoods are the stinkiest and on the more difficult end of the spectrum to grow. The ones I bought are called Winter Gem Boxwoods which are a type of Korean boxwood, and they’re one of my favorite varieties. They’re super hardy, grow quickly, and have a nice dense foliage. You might have seen people wrap/tent their boxwoods in the winter, but I’ve never done that (that’s totally one of those aspirational fall tasks that current-me totally envisions future-me doing, but likely I will not) and they’ve been great even with heavy snow loads and record-setting low temperatures.

OK THEN.

Here is where I freely admit that I don’t think I’m a natural-born gardener from a design perspective. I love houses and rooms but I find gardens INCREDIBLY challenging from a conceptual standpoint—this is the part of the house I’d totally hire a designer for if I could. That being said, I enjoy the puttering, and I think I AM really pretty good at growing stuff—very rarely do my plants die, and I certainly can’t credit outstanding maintenance or any other special skills. I do, however, plant pretty much everything exactly the same way, so I like to think that’s what I bring to the table. It is not complicated.

It starts with laying things out. Like a dry fit! Obviously this is so you can get an idea of how it looks and figure out if you have enough plants, adjust your spacing, etc.

Once that’s done, I start planting. If there’s mulch (especially fresh mulch), rake it out away from the hole you’re digging so you don’t mess it up with a bunch of soil. Then dig a hole that’s twice as wide and twice as deep as the pot the plant came in. It’s tempting to not do this, especially if the plant is large, but it’s important to give those roots a good chance at success, and the ability to spread into soil that isn’t so compacted.

Into the hole, I’ll throw a few inches of good, nutrient-rich soil. I try not to freak out about exactly what this is: there are a lot of options but basically a compost, composted manure, topsoil, or a soil mix formulated specifically for whatever you’re planting seem to all be just fine (or at least better than nothing! gardeners, feel free to chime in). In this case I’m using compost from my own composter!

The most important thing is to not panic. That’s a general statement but also applies here.

Then I flood the hole with lots of water, and then mix up the fancy rich soil with the water and other soil in the hole with the shovel or a stick.

Then I remove the plastic pot to expose the roots! Look at those roots! Such vigor! Big up, Monrovia.

Then I use my fingers or a small shovel or whatever I grab first to break up the roots a bit. It’s ok if some of them break. This encourages them to spread out into their new environment and create new growth.

Then I just stick the roots down into the hole, making sure that the base of the plant is even with the surrounding grade. Pack around the roots with some compost and the soil you removed from the hole.

Afterwards, I give everything a good soak from above. Sometimes if I haven’t packed the soil well, this watering settles loose soil around the plant, so check to see if you need to add more soil. Of course, I try to remember to water frequently during the first few weeks or so, but ya know. Sometimes that doesn’t work out, but it’s the intention that counts. Unless the plant dies, in which case the watering is probably what would have counted.

So that’s how I plant stuff.

Then I got to break out my new toy—the Greenworks Pro hedge trimmer (which is currently on sale!)! The hedge trimmers use the same battery as my lawnmower and my leaf blower, which I just love. It’s all so easy to switch between tools. The hedge trimmers are seriously powerful and the quality seems great. I almost wish they didn’t work so well because the job was done so quickly and I was just getting into the groove!

You have to be careful about trimming boxwoods too late into the fall since you want the trimmed parts to harden before the first frost, but I felt pretty confident I still had time left on the calendar. I only trimmed the plants that have been here for a few years already and are well-established, and I tried to be cautious to only give them a light trim—just enough to even things out and make everything look under control.

Finally, MULCH TIME! Normally I just mulch once in the spring, but I didn’t get to it this year! I probably would have just waited until this coming spring since retaining moisture and preventing weeds aren’t such big issues in the winter, but mulch also acts as an insulator to keep roots warmer and protected through the winter—which with freshly planted shrubs is more important than ever.

My old faithful is this inexpensive black mulch from Lowe’s. I think of mulching a lot like painting a room—it’s that thing at the end after all the hard work that instantly makes everything look so goooood. I aim for about a 2-3″ layer, making sure to get all the way around the base of the new plants. Then it’s just a matter of watering everything again to help kind of settle the mulch into place.

Different time of year, but this is as close as I could get to a before-and-after! I’m so happy with how this area has progressed over the past few years. I feel like it’s starting to look like something nice! Feel free to review progress from 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 if you really want to take a deep dive.

The two old rhododendrons are amazingly still going, although I think their remaining years are numbered. I’ll probably rip them out when I make it to restoring the porch itself and need more space to work. It’s possible I’ll have to transplant the boxwoods during that process as well, but that’s OK. This stuff can be tricky to figure out, because there’s so much of the house to get to but I’m not sure exactly when that will come to pass, and I still want it to look good and relatively cared for in the interim! I have a deep fear of making it a decade down the road with this house and realizing I don’t have any mature plants to landscape with.

Oh! I also dug up those hostas in front of this section of the fence, split them, and planted them closer together so they form more of a hedge than they currently do. I think if the boxwood hedge gets to about the height of the porch floor, and the hosta hedges much closer to the ground, this will look nice and layered but still structured and simple. We shall see in the coming years! I hope to get to splitting ALL of the hostas this fall but that might be rapidly becoming a spring project. We’ll all find out together.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Because I bought…so many bushes.

The rest of the boxwoods went to the newly-restored side of the house, which may not FEEL that exciting—but holy cow, getting to the point that I can safely plant stuff without worrying I’m going to accidentally trample them or squish them with the ladder I’ve moved around this area a thousand times over the course of this summer/fall was VERY EXCITING. Finishing up the work on this side of the house has felt like climbing a mountain, at the top of which are a series of many smaller mountains I won’t be able to climb this fall (like restoring every window), but having the bulk of the work done and something nice happening with the landscaping feels like major victory. I’ll show you the whole thing soooooon!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S STILL MORE! I’M NEVER SHUTTING UP! Let’s time-hop again, back to…

3 years ago, I planted 3 Cleveland Flowering Pear Trees from Lowe’s in that strip between the sidewalk and the street. See them? One of the truly striking things when you compare old pictures of the neighborhood to new ones is the current utter lack of trees in a neighborhood that used to have tons of them! My block, for instance, used to be lined with big beautiful trees, and now there are exactly three trees and they’re all babies and they all belong to me. It’s a shame, because nicely placed trees are not only one of the easiest ways to instantly boost curb appeal, but they also help with pollution, storm water management, property value, and more. Research even shows that mature trees make a difference in public safety and crime! A quick google search returned this nice succinct run-down of why trees are so important to urban spaces.

I am the Lorax.

I’m not sure why it took so long, but it finally occurred to me that I could totally plant a fourth tree in the same line, but to the right of my garage. There’s space!

So I went and picked up another Cleveland Flowering Pear. Flowering pear trees also seem to have a certain…olfactory problem for some people when they’re in bloom (which realistically is a couple of weeks in the spring), which…I’ll let you research on your own. But they’re beautiful, they grow quickly, they flower but don’t fruit (helping avoid vermin that might want to snack on fallen fruit!), and they grow in this predictable, very upright columnar shape that makes them great for a narrow spot like this, where you don’t want to interfere with the sidewalk or eventually have it growing too close to the house. They’re also SO hardy—I probably haven’t watered the three original ones basically since they were planted, and they’ve easily quadrupled in size and are really starting to look great. This is even with the teenaged neighbor kid who seems determined to kill them and breaks off branches and messes with them when he thinks nobody’s looking. Facepalm.

I used up all my homemade compost on the boxwoods, so I picked up a big bag of this Sta-Green Tree and Shrub Garden soil. Otherwise my planting method was exactly the same.

Grow, little tree! Grow! This guy was also 50% off, making his total cost a whopping $15. For a whole tree! Can’t beat that. Hopefully at some point it’ll catch up to its siblings that have had a few years head-start. This also reminds me that I have to get out there and add some mulch around it! There’s always something, am I right?

PHEW! Well I’m pooped! My big fall checklist is winding down, though, and I’m starting to get excited to turn my attention back toward the inside of the house. I guess technically we have another month of fall, so I’m going to try to keep working through those remaining items and see how far I get. Hang on just a little longer, mother nature!

[technato]

Skydio Demonstrates Incredible Obstacle-Dodging Full Autonomy With New R1 Consumer Drone

The Skydio R1 is years ahead of just about any other autonomous drone we’ve ever seen

Image: Skydio

Almost two years ago, a startup called Skydio posted some video of a weird-looking drone autonomously following people as they jogged and biked along paths and around trees. Even without much in the way of detail, this was exciting for three reasons: First, the drone was moving at a useful speed and not crashing into stuff using only onboard sensing and computing, and second, the folks behind Skydio included Adam Bry and Abe Bachrach, who worked on high-speed autonomous flight at MIT before cofounding Project Wing at Google[x] (now just called X).

The third reason we were excited about Skydio’s drone was that, as much as it looked like a research project, it was actually designed to be commercialized, and today, Skydio is (finally!) announcing their first product: the R1, a fully autonomous flying camera. And before you think that you’ve seen flying cameras before, we promise you’ve never seen anything like the R1: as Bry told us two years ago, Skydio’s goal was “to provide a trustworthy and magical experience.” They’ve delivered.

Initially, Skydio sent us a couple different videos to show off the new R1. There’s a video of the drone autonomously taking video of someone playing tennis, along with a video of the drone autonomously following someone running along a track jumping over hurdles. I’ll be honest—those videos got me a little worried about what Skydio had come up with, because they looked like the kinds of videos that other drone companies like to use to show off basic autonomy in situations that are free of aerial complexity. If you’ve seen other autonomous drone demos shot on out on lakes or on ski slopes, you know exactly what I’m talking about—these are ideal environments, without trees or clutter, where drones can perform at their best without being significantly challenged. I was kind of hoping for more magic from Skydio.

The third video from Skydio brings the magic, and more. Hold on to your socks, because this is amazing:

Look at that tree dodging! The bit at 2:32 was particularly incredible, with the R1 deftly maneuvering itself around a small clump of branches. To be clear, this is dynamic vision-based motion, without any pre-existing maps or beacons or anything like that. It’s a level of autonomy that’s way beyond any other consumer drone, and even most of the cutting edge research that we’ve seen.

For another look at the R1’s capabilities, here’s a start-to-finish video from the drone’s perspective as it follows a human jogging and biking down a mountain, weaving in and out of trees as it goes:

And if you want even more, here’s the official launch video.

The system that Skydio uses for autonomous navigation on the R1 is entirely vision-based. There are 12 navigation cameras spaced all around the drone, including cameras that look down and up, and managing this massive inpouring of visual data is 256 cores worth of Nvidia TX1 GPU. The R1 is able to detect and avoid obstacles, and tracks a specific person while it does. It predicts where that person is going to go next, and combines that prediction with a safe trajectory around obstacles while somehow keeping its camera smoothly and consistently tracking the entire time. 

This level of autonomy means that the R1 isn’t just hands-off, it’s mind-off. You can control it manually if you really want to (and it’ll help keep you from smashing into things), but it’s designed to be launched and forgotten about—Skydio expects that you’ll learn to trust the drone’s autonomy enough that you can let it loose and then more or less ignore it for the next 16-ish minutes while it films you doing whatever it is you do. I’m not sure that’s something that can be said about any other consumer drone. And then the R1 lands itself, and you have amazing footage, since the drone can capture a variety of different kinds of cinematic video: It can follow you, orbit you, film you from one side or the other, track the action from high above, or even do its best to stay in front of you as you’re moving, which is a neat trick. 

Image: Skydio

The Skydio R1 has 13 cameras spaced all around its body, including cameras that look down and up. To process all the visual data, it uses an Nvidia TX1 GPU with 256 cores.

Of course, whenever we talk about robots with real-world autonomy, we do our best to find out what their constraints are—what kinds of situations might challenge them or lead to expensive,crash-y problems. We asked Bry about this, and he was very straightforward about the R1’s capabilities:

A decent rule of thumb to use is human visual sensing—if you’re flying around very thin branches, or thin telephone lines, the R1 may not be able to see those. Very large glass surfaces can also be challenging. Other difficult cases are when you have big crowds of people. We try to handle all of these situations as gracefully as we can; in the worst case, the drone stops and notifies you about what’s going on.

Crowds of people can be tricky because the drone can lose you among all the other people who look like people, but Bry says that if you could spot yourself from the drone’s perspective, it has a decent chance of keeping track of where you are. As for obstacles, generally the R1 runs some risk of not detecting things than are smaller than about an inch, but since the detection is visual, it depends heavily on variables like the color of the thing, the color of the background, ambient lighting, and the speed of the drone. It’s hard to give a lower limit to object detection and avoidance with certainty, but Bry tells us that it’s probably safe to assume that the R1 cannot detect power lines, and it also doesn’t know how to handle moving obstacles. “If you throw a ball at it, it’s almost certainly not going to get out of the way,” Bry says. “At some point, we will solve it all, and it will just never hit anything of any size.” 

The first batch of Skydio R1 drones will be the Frontier Edition, hand-made from aluminum and carbon fiber (among other things) at Skydio world headquarters and volcano lair in Redwood City, Calif. You can order one today, and it’ll ship to you within the next few weeks. Each drone comes with two batteries good for about 16 minutes of flight time each, along with 64 gigabytes of on-board storage for the 4k gimbaled camera. The price to own arguably the first fully autonomous and intelligent consumer drone in existence is US $2,500. It’s expensive, to be sure, but it’s also the very first in a category that it’s creating, and Skydio tells us that you can expect the R1 to get better at just about everything it does over time. 

Photo: Skydio

The Skydio R1 can follow you, orbit you, film you from one side or the other, track the action from high above, or even do its best to stay in front of you as you’re moving.

For many, many more details about Skydio and the R1, we spoke with co-founder Adam Bry.

IEEE Spectrum: You started Skydio four years ago. What made you decide back then that it was the right time to develop a consumer drone with this level of autonomy?

Adam Bry: After MIT, we got the opportunity to work at Google for a couple years, on Project Wing . At that time, we were seeing that people were starting to get excited about drones—four or five years ago was when, at least in tech circles, people started thinking about drones as a new technology platform. We felt like there were a lot of exciting concepts and potential commercial applications, and all of them in some form were going to revolve around autonomy to really work. The paradigm with existing products was that you basically needed to fly, so there was a gap between what people wanted to do with drones, and what was possible with existing tech. We knew a lot about the algorithms and the technologies that could enable autonomy, so that was the basic motivation. 

“We made a pretty big bet on computer vision as a super powerful way for drones to navigate, because the pace of progress in both computer vision and machine learning-based techniques was fast then, and it’s gotten even faster since”

With our experience as researchers, when we started Skydio we had a decent understanding of what the technology landscape could be, and based on that we made a pretty big bet on computer vision as a super powerful way for drones to navigate, because the pace of progress in both computer vision and machine learning-based techniques was fast then, and it’s gotten even faster since. I think that’s one of the big things that’s made it possible to bring this system to life.

How does the R1 compare to other drones that offer some level of autonomy?

[Autonomy] is a rapidly emerging category. It’s only in the last few years that it’s been possible to build something that navigates out in the real world using onboard sensing and computing. One of the most successful categories so far is robot vacuum cleaners, although it’s still within a very structured environment, with limited mobility and limited motion. Another category that’s parallel to what we’re doing is self-driving cars, and I think there’s a lot of overlap with technology there. But everything that you can actually use today is sort of in the driver assist category, and it’s fully reliant on having a driver who can take over if need be.

[In the drone space], the first thing I would say is that I think there are some really good products out there. But the thing they’ve been really optimized for is the manually flown experience. DJI has been super successful at that; they’ve done an amazing job on it, with all the aspects of manual control and getting the live video stream and recording video. If you look at the people that are using those products, that’s like 99 percent of what they’re doing with it, and it’s awesome. We think of the R1 as a different kind of use case—it’s used in a different way by different kind of people for different things. Autonomy is an emerging theme in this space, and DJI and others are talking about adding on these kinds of features, but so far, it’s kind of a sideshow to the main event. And if you look at their messaging, they position it as a pilot assist kind of thing, and the expectation is that there’s a pilot flying it.

There are a number of tradeoffs that we’ve made throughout the technology stack—in the hardware and sensors that we’ve picked, and in the way the software is built—to go for a fully autonomous experience. I would say that the key threshold [for the R1] is that you don’t have to pay attention to it. You can trust it to fly itself and capture the thing you want to capture, and that enables a different kind of use and will create a different kind of content. 

Photo: Skydio

One of Skydio’s early prototypes had a triangle rig with six cameras and used a media center computer. It was in service for the second half of 2015 for software development.

Do you think that the level of autonomy you’re focusing on at Skydio represents a difference in philosophy relative to other drone companies like DJI, or a difference in technical capability?

I think it’s a combination of both. There’s certainly a market for manually flown drones; that’s what [DJI] has been successful at, and that’s what they’ve been iterating on. They, and others, understand that autonomy is likely going to be important for certain kinds of things, but maybe haven’t fully committed to it. I would also say that [Skydio] has solved some really hard technical challenges to make the R1 possible. We have world-class researchers from a lot of the top academic labs in the world who are deep, deep experts in all the different ingredients that you need to put together an autonomous system, and if we were a research lab, we’d have a bunch of publications advancing the state-of-the-art in a number of different areas. We’re pushing the state-of-the-art to make this thing possible, and we’ve innovated in ways that other people have tried to, but so far haven’t been able to make work.

The R1 can track people, and anticipate how they’ll move. How does it do that?

“We use deep neural networks to recognize all of the people that it can see, and then for each person that it sees, also build up a unique visual identifier to tell them apart from other people. And then in order for the drone to figure out how it needs to move, it needs to have some prediction of what the person it’s tracking is going to do”

This turns out to be one of the keys to getting the R1 to behave intelligently. We use deep neural networks to recognize all of the people that it can see, and then for each person that it sees, also build up a unique visual identifier to tell them apart from other people. And then in order for the drone to figure out how it needs to move, it needs to have some prediction of what the person it’s tracking is going to do, otherwise it becomes purely reactive and makes very myopic decisions. I can’t get into the details of how this works, but we have a deep learning-based system based on all the people we’ve recorded during our testing, and we use that to make predictions about how somebody might move.

What would you say is the biggest constraint on performance of the R1 right now, and how can we expect its performance to improve over time?

Compute and sensing are certainly a factor, but those things are getting better quickly. I think in a lot of ways, and this is what’s exciting to us, the biggest constraint is our ability to invent new algorithms that solve the problems we’re having and open up new capabilities. The R1 will continually be getting smarter over time; we’ll be shipping software updates frequently that improve performance and add new features. I can’t go into specifics, but the primary navigation functions will get better—smoother movement in more challenging environments, more reliable at dealing with obstacles that are harder to see, more reliable tracking of people and other things.

Photo: Skydio

Another prototype, featuring a pumpkin frame, was in service at the beginning of 2016. It had eight cameras and carried an Nvidia computer on a development board. The lidar was used to test and improve some of the vision systems.

To what extent is Skydio focused on building consumer drones like the R1, as opposed to developing autonomous navigation systems for drones in general?

Most of our core technology is in the software and the flight algorithms, but the hardware team has done a phenomenal job, and the kind of thing we’re doing—it’s not like you could just slap a module onto an existing product. The sensors that we’re using, the computer that we’re using, the way that everything is configured and calibrated, the way that we build it, all these things matter a huge amount for getting to the product experience that we want to deliver. And we generally expect that trend to continue: We think there are some super exciting new product concepts to be done in the next few years, and most of them require doing hardware and software well together.

I think for robotics in general, the ability to do both hardware and software is going to be important to make the systems work well. The bio-inspired analogies aren’t always great, but biology has created some incredible autonomous systems, and it’s very much an integrated hardware-software story. We’ve evolved all these intricate mechanical systems which are tightly coupled to our neurological systems and our brains, and I think that’s not an accident—I think that really good robotic systems are going to be designed together, from a hardware and software perspective, to do what they need to do.

The kind of capabilities that the R1 has seem like they’d be necessary for an urban delivery drone, but we haven’t seen any companies doing delivery show autonomy that’s anywhere close. What’s your perspective on the near future of drone delivery?

We think there’s potential [in drone delivery]; it seems likely that a successful urban drone delivery system will grow out of something like what we’re building, where you can accumulate millions of hours of flight experience and validate that the thing is going to work perfectly. The delivery stuff that’s working today, they’re basically trying to avoid the problem that we’re solving, which is great, and makes a lot of sense: People are doing blood delivery in Africa where you can just parachute the payload down, which works in that environment but probably isn’t going to scale to urban or suburban environments. So I think something like what we have is a necessary component for that, we just think it’s a few years away.

[Sense and avoid in complex environments] is a very challenging thing. We’re hoping to prove that it’s possible, but it hasn’t been proven yet, and I think that as people see that it is possible it might change the perspective there a bit.

Photo: Skydio

The first batch of Skydio R1 drones will be the Frontier Edition, hand-made from aluminum and carbon fiber.

This is an expensive drone for the consumer space, especially when there are other platforms that offer a relatively superficial degree of autonomy for much less. How will you convince consumers that the R1 is worth the premium? 

It’s clearly not at a mainstream mass-market price point, but there are a unique set of capabilities in this product that you really can’t get anywhere else. You can think about it as analogous to a Tesla Model S, where our goal over time certainly is to make this technology more available for more people, and I think a lot of our first customers will be early adopters who are excited about what it can do, and have something particular that they’re excited to do with it that they couldn’t do with anything else.

The R1 is a new kind of thing; I think it’s pretty exciting—there’s this moment when people see it for the first time in real life, where it’s like getting to know another intelligent being, and seeing how it reacts. There haven’t been too many devices like that before.

Skydio is also announcing today the close of $42 million in Series B funding from folks like Playground and Nvidia, bringing their total funding to $70 million. They’re also hiring, and you should check out their promo video if for no other reason than it includes someone wearing one of their prototype drones as a hat while riding a bike. 

[ Skydio ]

Skydio Demonstrates Incredible Obstacle-Dodging Full Autonomy With New R1 Consumer Drone syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[apsbicepstraining]

11 Gifts For People Who’d Definitely Rather Be Sleeping Than Exchanging Presents

Have you ever noticed that spotting the perfect gifts for people who love to sleep is almost too easy? You know the friend we’re referring to here, don’t you? She’s readily the sleeping knockout of your crew who precisely #CantEven with Monday through Friday mornings. She’s the BFF who you wouldn’t blink twice at if you assured her filming coffee through an IV to get her through 8 a. m. seminars and late nights at the power. Any endowment that has to do with her bedroom, nighttime wardrobe, or a wind-down number is one she’s going to be grateful for because, for her, sleep is life, and she can’t get enough of it( who can ?).

Plus, if you think about it, a better night’s sleep is just one of those stuffs everyone acknowledges, but rarely get enough of. Just because your giftee are likely to be lazing in couch late into the morning doesn’t inevitably mean they’re get the quality sleep the average human needs to function. In fact, if your friend is clocking in over six to eight hours of sleep every night, their bodies might be trying to overcompensate for a lack of a good rest. Therefore, as far as I see it, the most generous knack you can give them is an supplement or two to either a) better their space or b) prepare their body properly for sleep. Here are a few ideas to help you get the job done.

1A Sleek Sleep-Tracking Watch

wesoo

Wesoo K1 Fitness Watch and Sleep Monitor, $29.99, Amazon

Fitness trackers are still a thriving trend in wearable tech, but have you detected this one major upgrade recent examples have installed in their machine?

According to a new report issued by the sleep experts at Sleep Cycle, Americans’ sleep character has declined in 10 percent from 2016 to 2017( ouch ). I have a hunch that the matter is might be why technology brands are questioning trackers that not only weigh your stairs and calories burned, but that likewise observe your sleep tone metrics.

Wesoo’s band is a bestseller on Amazon with a 4.5 virtuoso rating and unique sleep layout that truly does it all.

2Their New Nightcap

Lipton

Lipton Herbal Supplement Bedtime Bliss, $4.38, Walmart

Obviously, your girl has to was changed to decaf eventually if she ever wants to fall asleep.

Remind her by knack this doze-inducing sip from Lipton that blends chamomile leaves, mint, and orange peels to ease you into a cozy sleep state “like a lullaby in a cup.” Slip a Barnes& Noble gift card in her holiday placard, and you’ve only place her up for the sweetest of reveries.

3A Comfy Pair Of PJs

Adore Me

Sleepwear Set in Christyna, $19.95, Adore Me

I cannot be the only being haunted with cozy, holiday-themed pajamas. This season, Adore Me has expanded their merchandise with a ton of his-and-her styles to choose from, but the Christyna style is hands down my favourite of them all.

For some reason, black, white, and crimson plaid only looks like pure Christmas to me. Plus, the mount is made stretchy for optimal comfort and with cotton for all the snuggly experiences.

4An Aromatic Bath Bomb

Lush USA

The Big Sleep Jelly Bomb, $8.95, LUSH USA

If your giftee religiously takes showers before slipping into something comfy and hopping into bed, Lush’s newest sleep-inducing bomb is about to be her brand-new favorite bathroom accessory. It’s the perfect formula to relax her body and mind, as notes of lavender, neroli, and chamomile smells transform her bathtub into an aromatic soak.

5A Soft Blanket To Snuggle Under

Bed Bath& Beyond

Madison Park Ruched Faux-Fur Throw, $39.99, Bed Bath& Beyond

Who couldn’t use a gargantuan fling covering to sleep in throughout the winter months?

Madison Park’s blanket is made from 100 percentage faux-fur, boasts micro-fur for extra warmth on those freezing nighttimes, and it’s too vast enough to share, so perhaps she can finally stop hogging the handles when you sleep over.

6An Overnight Mask To Deepen Their Beauty Sleep

Too Cool For School

Too Cool For School Pumpkin Sleeping Pack, $20, Sephora

Beauty sleep isn’t a story, dames. When you sleep better, you feel better, and when you good, you good. Determine how that works?

Chances are, your sleepy friend likely clocks in the recommended six to eight hours of sleep each night, which signifies her skin is likely brightening, but there’s always room for improvement, right?

Too Cool For School’s overnight mask will enhance her skin’s recuperation cycles/second with superfood ingredients and natural enzymes. Plus, it smells like pumpkin, and I can’t suspect a better lane to fall asleep than with the scent of pie all around you.

7An Artistic Diffuser

Saje Natural Wellness

Aromaart High Tide Ultrasonic Diffuser, $84.95, Saje

Essential oils for sleep are super classy right now, but it doesn’t definitely sounds like the cult is fading anytime soon. Trust me, I’m not the type to talk up the trends if I haven’t done the research myself, and diffusers are a must for bedroom.

TBH, diffusers can be super ugly and cheap-looking, but this Saje model is the prettiest slouse of functional decoration I’ve ever seen. The beautiful structure was designed by San Francisco artist Heather Day, and was inspired by the healing powers of the deep, blue ocean. So much zen, so many aromas to lull your giftee to sleep.

8A Soothing Candle

Primal Elements

Primal Elements Tahitian Vanilla Two Wick Color Bowl Candle, $19.90, Amazon

Doesn’t this candle search good enough to eat? I can guarantee my 9-year-old niece had no suggestion just how lovely this candle was going to see my accommodation flavor when she gifted it to my husband and me last-place Christmas, but this decadent flaunt is still igniting shining, and veiling our home with the smell of sweet vanilla 12 months ago.

You don’t necessarily necessitate critical lubricants to rehearse aromatherapy, and if your bestie has a sweet tooth, this yummy-scented candle from Primal Elements will have her dreaming of sugar plum fairies year round( not kidding, it’s good for 60 hours of blaze hour ).

9Go Old School With This Digital Alarm Clock

Peakeep

Peakeep Battery Digital Alarm Clock, $12.99, Amazon

I don’t have to tell you that smartphones are low-key ruining our lives, especially in the bedroom( and no, I’m not referring to your libido ). No problem how much person or persons sleeps, the blue light that gleams from your cell phone is messing with your sleep hertz, but what’s a girl to do when her exclusively the ways and means of an alarm is via smartphone?

Be the best friend you are and buy your sleeping grace a digital alarm clock. This old school model from Peakeep has a snooze option, so she knows how squeeze in a few extra minutes of shut-eye if and when she wants. It’s likewise a “smart nighttime clock, ” which necessitates it has sensory daylights that alter a subtle blue at night.

10A Sleepy Supplement

Sun Potion

Sun Potion Organic Ashwagandha Powder, $36.99, iHerb

Adaptogens like ashwagandha are another social media trend that’s actually making a difference in how they were are slumber. This is definitely the perfect endowment to all persons who you know has wanted to try adaptogens for themselves, but couldn’t commit to the pricy buy.

Trust me, I recently set Alaina Sullivan’s moon milk recipe for Bon Appetit to the test when I was convulsing and altering through an horrid couple of darkness, and I was genuinely affected by just how relaxed I experienced by including ashwagandha to my nightcap. Your giftee will love the combination of the powder’s sleep and overall health benefits.

11Slippers They Can Sleep In

Out From Under

Out From Under Scruffy Slipper Sock, $16, Urban Outfitters

If your BFF takes a lot of heat for wearing slippers to bunked, offering a pair of Out From Under’s scruffy slipper socks tells them you’re on their area( or, at the very least, won’t judge them for it ).

I’m a fan of this creamy-colored duo, specific because they’re subtle enough to wear with roomy Uggs on really cold days.

The post 11 Gifts For People Who’d Definitely Rather Be Sleeping Than Exchanging Presents appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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[k2kid]

Private (later Lieutenant) Wesley Strang Caldwell was yet to earn the Military Medal for his actions at Courcelette, the Somme, when this letter was published in the Huron Expositor on March 10, 1916. He was 20-years old, just shy of his 21st birthday by 40 days. He was a combat veteran claiming to have served continuously, along with his Battalion and his Brigade, for 137 days. This number is accurate as the Battalion entered the lines in the Ypres sector on the night of September 23, 1915 and the total days in active service until the date of the letter (written February 6, 1916) is precisely 137 days. Perhaps it was this attention to detail that would help him earn promotion to the rank of lieutenant.

Huron Expositor 16-03-10 Page 1.

Huron Expositor 16-03-10 Page 1.

His letter relates to the Battalion’s experiences before the battle at St. Eloi Craters as the Battalion is stationed in the Ridgewood Sector of Ypres during the latter half of January. 1916 and is full of interesting points:

From the Front

The following letter was written by Pte. Wes. Caldwell, of the 18th Battalion, and whose home is in Hensall. He is well known in Clinton, having attended the Collegiate Institute there, before enlisting for overseas service. The letter is dated Belgium, Feb. 6, 1916[i], as follows:

Dear Friend, — Am sitting beside a machine gun in a redoubt about 200 years from the front line. Was transferred to the section about 10 days ago. We spent six days in the front line, then the next six here in the redoubt followed by another six in the front line, then we got into divisional reserve for the next six; thus taking twenty-four days for the round trip.

Our last term in the front line was rather exciting. Our bomb throwers had been aggravating the Germans all one night and they began to retaliate just before dawn. In all they must have sent over 150 rifle grenades and ball bombs on a frontage of 100 yards. Our gun was right in the midst of it, but fortunately none of the crew was injured. The parapet was blown flat in two places, but was speedily built up again that night.

The German rifle-grenade is much feared as it not only contains a very high explosive but also much heavy shrapnel. Their hand grenades are not so dangerous. There was a ball bomb exploded within ten feet of me one night but I was only scratched in a couple of places. The explosion lifted me clear off my feet but I came to earth again almost unhurt. The narrow escapes that some fellows have are nothing short of marvellous.

There is no danger of the Germans ever advancing any farther on the Western front. We are holding them with the greatest possible ease by a triple line that cannot be broken.

Our supply of munitions is fast mounting up in a supply which will be inhaustable [sic] before long; then the great offensive will commence, which will make the world sit up and take notice.

The cost of attempting to advance without the necessary munitions and supplies to back it up has been proven before. The people at home are wondering why we are not making more headway. The reason for that, is that, the Allies have already lost too many good men of account of the lack of artillery and shells. We are only waiting the time when nearly all the defences can be blown to pieces by artillery fire, when a general advance is made. Destructive bayonet charges are soon to be a thing of the past. Our artillery is now vastly superior to that of the enemy, in fact, the German batteries are almost afraid to open up for fear of the awful retaliation given them by our batteries.

Sniping is a great feature in trench warfare. We have one old sniper who is a regular Indian at the game. I believe he would scalp his victims if he could.

Am feeling as well as can be expected but the whole brigade is in need of a rest. We have created a new record for continuous service in the trenches. We have held this frontage for 137 days, which is 20 days longer than any brigade in the British Army has ever served without a rest, and we are still holding it.

Hoping you are well, I remain,

Sincerely,

W.S. Caldwell

Huron Expositor  March 1o, 1916. Page 1.

The letter is addressed to a “friend” giving the only clue to who the audience is. The letter is pretty frank as to the experiences Private Caldwell has, even relating a close call with a German grenade. Perhaps it is a friend from the Clinton Collegiate? It is, perhaps, more casual and informative than a letter written to his parents and one wonders what they thought, if this was the case, if they read the letter in the newspaper.

Though the letter is dated February 6, 1916 this date may refer to a post mark. As Private Caldwell states, specifically, that he is “…sitting beside a machine gun in a redoubt about 200 years from the front line,” it can be surmised that the writing of the letter occurred while the Battalion was in the line in the La Clytte/Vierstraat sector and that the letter was posted when the Battalion went off the line into Brigade Reserve at Ridgewood on February 2, 1916. He relates the nature of the rotation of the battalions from front line to support lines (redoubt), and reserve though it appears that the Battalion cycled back and fort between front and support lines twice before it was moved to divisional reserve.

From this and the following paragraph it appears that Private Caldwell has been assigned to serve a machine gun. It is not clear if Private Caldwell is serving a Colt Machine Gun or a Lewis Gun. The Colt was maintained as an active weapon until completely replaced by the Vickers Machine Gun after the attack on Vimy Ridge. The Lewis Gun did not become part of the equipment of a Canadian Battalion until July 1916. It is possible that Private Caldwell was part of a Colt Machine Gun crew.

Kugelhandgranate 1915. Weight 1 kg, including 45 g. black powder / baryte nitrate / potassium perchlorate mixture. Very heavy to throw. Germans used apparatus to launch these grenades.

Karabingranate M 1914 rifle grenade with range cup. Note the two positions of the cup which affected its length of flight.

Karabingranate M 1914 rifle grenade detail.

Karabingranate M 1914 rifle grenade with rod.

Explosed view of the Karabingranate M 1914 rifle grenade.

He relates, in some detail, an incident where the 18th Battalion was interdicting the German trenches with grenades. It is not clear why type of grenades being “thrown” by the Canadians but, as the grenades sent by the Germans in reply for the ‘aggravation’ created by the men of the 18th, it appears that the distance between the Canadian and German lines was such that the Canadian probably were using rifle grenades or some method to launch percussion grenades. The Germans replied with their Karabingranate M 1914 rifle grenade and the “ball bomb” Kugelhandgranate 1915 (a round grenade fired with launchers and timed fuses). It is interesting to note that Private Caldwell, or other men of the Battalion could identify the nature of the grenades during the action.[ii] The Karabingranate M 1914 rifle grenade, “…is much feared as it not only contains a very high explosive but also much heavy shrapnel,” while the Kugelhandgranate 1915, “…is not so dangerous.” Yet, it is this exact grenade whose, “…explosion lifted me clear off my feet but I came to earth again almost unhurt.” A touch of youthful bravado, and perhaps concern for those at home may take this last story to heart has Private Caldwell relate that this is, apparently, part of a serious of “narrow escapes” and that their number makes these escape “marvelous”.

Private Caldwell then touches on his assessment of the war to date and touches on the aspect that the First World War will be, essentially to achieve tactical success, a war of artillery. His statement: “Destructive bayonet charges are soon to be a thing of the past,” seems oddly out of place given that he is, for all intents and purposes, a combat veteran and the use of the bayonet has been superseded by other weapons of war in trench fighting. Perhaps the inculcation of the bayonet through the bayonet courses and training to encourage aggression and élan in combat was so strong that the concept of the bayonet in the hands of a soldier as a weapon of fear is slow to die. Event after two years of war.

His reference, albeit, brief, to sniping, is of interest and the reference to, “…one old sniper who is a regular Indian at the game,” is not clear in its meaning. Is the sniper an aboriginal soldier or is the soldier that is sniping acting like a “regular Indian” in his use of tactics, concealment, and shooting. Note that sniping developed into a 2-man team based role and Private Caldwell does not reference another member of the team.

He is obviously proud of the 4th Brigade’s achievement in reference to the total time in the line. This constant exposure to the weather and the stress of combat would require the C.E.F. to later modify the rotation of battalions and brigades as the war progressed. During this time (September to February) the 18th Battalion suffered 34 men fatalities, almost all due to combat. It was a precursor to the experiences the Battalion would experience at St. Eloi and the Somme.

Private Caldwell was to survive the war and several other letters from him were published in the local papers. This letter is rich in detail and information and allows one to experience part of his past.

[i] The Battalion was in Brigade Reserve at Ridgewood, Ypres Sector, Belgium when this letter was written. The 18th Battalion war diary relates for that day: -Ditto- [Routine] Communion service was held at 11 a.m. CAPT. HALE proceeded on leave.

[ii] The author is almost CERTAIN he would be under cover and would not make any effort to identify the type of grenade being used against him.

“The narrow escapes that some fellows have are nothing short of marvellous”: A Letter from the Front Private (later Lieutenant) Wesley Strang Caldwell was yet to earn the Military Medal for his actions at Courcelette, the Somme, when this letter was published in the Huron Expositor on March 10, 1916.

[globlenet-blog]

Arnold Palmer obituary

https://clearwatergolfclub.com/arnold-palmer-obituary/

Arnold Palmer obituary

Among the finest players within the good reputation for golf who won 73 tournaments

In almost any listing of causes of the current recognition and financial standing of golf, the name, and also the game, of Arnold Palmer are irresistibly linked.

Palmer, that has died aged 87, was probably the most charismatic golfers ever to experience the sport, your man who had been admired by ladies and a person to whom no play was ever impossible. She got into, and from, more trouble around the course than any one of his championship winning peers, and thus crazy were his recovery shots he rapidly attracted an enormous following.

The fans, the feet soldiers, who adopted him through good or ill grew to become referred to as Arnies Army plus they never deserted him. Despite the fact that his golf inevitably declined as we grow older, their fervour for him was undimmed, as well as around the US Seniors tour he almost always departed the very first tee having a bigger gallery than other people. Nor was his appeal limited to periodic fans. Jack Statter, golf correspondent for that Sun newspaper, used to be watching his beloved Arnie as he observed the great mans caddie had unsuccessful to exchange an enormous divot. He nipped in rapidly, trousered it, required it home and finally increased an entire front lawn from that certain small bit of turf. He known as it, proudly, Palmers Piece.

Such devotion was inspired through the apparent passion that Palmer had for that game. He’d a slashing, dashing style, frequently supported with a grin. He’d hit the ball hard, the conclusion to his swing resembling an area athlete attempting to break the planet record for that hammer throw. It wasn’t a swing that may be certain to keep your ball from the trees, nor made it happen. Jim Murray, the late and great La sportswriter, along with a fan of Ben Hogan was eventually watching Palmer when certainly one of his drives carried out in deep rough. Based on Murray the ball is at a stack of twigs leaving and i believe there is a defunct squirrel along with a beer can inside too. Anyway, Palmer walked over and looked lower at his ball. He then saw me standing there and requested: OK wise guy, what can your idol Hogan do here? I told him: Hogan wouldnt be around. Palmer chuckled striking the ball to the eco-friendly anyway. Trouble, he once stated, isn’t good to get involved with but fun to get away from. I guess there is a spot to be cautious but so far as Im concerned it is not around the course.

Palmer was among the couple of men to possess given a thing new meaning in golfs lexicon. In 1960 he won the united states Masters at Augusta by finishing birdie, birdie, birdie. The majority of the sportswriters known Palmer charging right through to the win, and that he duly grew to become renowned for his final round finishes, the Palmer Charge.

3 several weeks next Augusta win, also, he won the united states Open and again the charge is at evidence. After three models it looked as if he was lacking an opportunity, and prior to the final round he was discussing his prospects having a sportswriter friend, Bob Drum. What, wondered Palmer aloud, would a 65 provide for me this mid-day? Drum, a large, burly and blunt man, was dismissive. Nothing, he stated. Palmer, stung, recently drove the very first eco-friendly at Cherry Hillsides, Denver, an opening calculating 346 yards. She got towards the submit 30, returned in 35 and won that which was to become his only US Open. He won the Masters four occasions, in 1958, 1960, 1962 and 1964, and the seven majors were performed by winning outdoors championship two times.

Palmer was appropriately credited with reviving the virtually moribund Open by playing inside it the very first time at St Andrews in 1960. Couple of Americans thought it worth their while in the future and participate in the earliest of golfs major titles, but Palmer made the decision otherwise and encouraged a lot of his compatriots to help make the trip too. He was runner-in 1960 after which won two times in succession, in 1961 and 1962, at Royal Birkdale and Troon correspondingly. The outcome was immediate and immense. Just before Palmer, 3 Americans had won outdoors because the finish of world war ii: Sam Snead in 1946 and Hogan in 1953. Within the years 1961-81 they won 14 occasions, through which time outdoors took over as most cosmopolitan, and perhaps probably the most influential, championship on the planet.

Palmer was created in Latrobe, a little industrial town in western Pennsylvania, to Deacon, a golf professional in the Latrobe Country Club, and the wife, Doris. He started playing at Latrobe at 4 years old, began caddying at 11, and it was winning big local tournaments in the teens. He began their studies at Wake Forest College (now College), but was badly impacted by the dying of his room-mate Bud Worsham inside a vehicle accident, and left college throughout his senior year to start a 3-year stint using the US Coast Guard, mainly in Cleveland, Ohio, where he felt he could re-think his existence. After finishing using the Coast Guard he labored like a salesperson in Cleveland and rekindled his curiosity about golf, winning the united states Amateur championship in 1954 and turning pro exactly the same year.

The following decade was certainly one of heroic achievement, despite the fact that Palmers last win inside a major arrived 1964, his affect on the sport continued to be undiminished. He ongoing winning other big tournaments in america until his last victory there in 1973, and the last win in Europe is at 1975. Also, he ran their own tournament around the US tour, the Bay Hill Classic, which, due to his status, attracted fields just like might be found outdoors the majors. The programme for your event, locked in Orlando, Florida, transported advertisements for products endorsed by Palmer, varying from cans of oil to tractors, from Cadillacs to Rolexes, from private banks to batteries, and that he was making increased sums of cash around the back nine of his career than he did around the front.

For those his fame, however, Palmer would be a modest man. Every so often people attempted to obtain him thinking about politics, also it was seriously suggested, in the height of his recognition, he run not only for governor of Florida as well as the US presidency. He never as it were considered such nonsense, for he would be a man much more happy in the living room or his workshop compared to any high office.

In the living room he’d a Moving Rock beer dispenser, well used when buddies known as round, as well as in his workshop he’d all of the tools any-time club professional ever possessed. He never was more happy than when trying out clubs, re-gripping or re-whipping a classic set, altering a golf club loft or adding some lead strip. Some who saw him during these surrounds recommended he could have been more happy in the existence to be the club pro his father was before him. However that point of view overlooked the fierce competitive instinct which, although it consumed him, always continued to be well-hidden.

There wasn’t any better illustration of that instinct once the draw introduced him and Jack Nicklaus together for that final round from the 1980 Masters. At that time Palmer hadn’t won a competitive sport for 5 years, and Nicklaus, uncle and great rival, was the reigning US PGA champion. It ought to happen to be no contest. But Palmers wife, Winnie, understood better. Arnie plays better when hes got something similar to this to light his fire, she stated. Palmer, whose reaction on hearing the draw have been to roar Ill whip his ass, recently shot a 69 to Nicklauss 73, finishing fifth. In the previous 18 attempts at Augusta he’d unsuccessful to interrupt 70. Palmer were built with a lengthy romance with Augusta, so when in The month of january 1997 he found that he’d cancer of the prostate, his first reaction ended up being to ask whether, if he’d the surgery immediately, he’d be fit to experience at Augusta in April. The solution was yes, and that he was.

Altogether Palmer won 73 tournaments worldwide, including greater than 60 around the US tour. Only Snead, Tiger Forest, Nicklaus and Hogan are in front of him for the reason that department. Twenty-nine of his victories were at that time 1960-63, which brought eventually to him being named Connected Press athlete from the decade for that 60s. He made an appearance in six Ryder Cups from 1961 to 1973, playing in 32 matches and winning 22, and it was two times a Ryder Cup captain inside a playing role in 1963 along with a non-playing capacity in 1975, winning both occasions.

He joined his last US Open at Oakmont, in Pennsylvania, in 1994 4 decades after first playing in case and the enthusiasm and durability is shown because the space between his US Amateur championship win in 1954 and the US Senior Open victory almost 30 years ago was 27 years. Possibly no professional ever loved the sport more. Most of the top players cannot bear to experience unless of course there’s an aggressive aspect, along with a round with buddies for pure enjoyment is unthinkable. But Palmer performed for that pleasure from it, as well as in his communication of this fact lay the key of his incredible recognition.

There is an event away Hill as he and also the then emerging Forest found one another around the practice range simultaneously. Palmer requested Forest if he was enjoying existence around the tour and Forest responded he was, because, the thing is, the factor is the fact that I enjoy play golf. Palmer smiled and responded: Well, thats good. I understand something about this. Its an issue Ive had for around the final six decades.

Winnie (nee Walzer), whom he married in 1954, died in 1999. He’s survived by their two kids, Peggy and Amy, by his second wife Package (nee Gawthrop), whom he married in 2005.

Arnold Daniel Palmer, golfer, born 10 September 1929 died 25 September 2016

David Davies died in 2008

Find out more: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/sep/26/arnold-palmer-obituaries

[apsbicepstraining]

11 Gifts For People Who’d Definitely Rather Be Sleeping Than Exchanging Presents

Have you ever noticed that spotting the perfect gifts for people who love to sleep is almost too easy? You know the friend we’re referring to here, don’t you? She’s readily the sleeping knockout of your crew who precisely #CantEven with Monday through Friday mornings. She’s the BFF who you wouldn’t blink twice at if you assured her filming coffee through an IV to get her through 8 a. m. seminars and late nights at the power. Any endowment that has to do with her bedroom, nighttime wardrobe, or a wind-down number is one she’s going to be grateful for because, for her, sleep is life, and she can’t get enough of it( who can ?).

Plus, if you think about it, a better night’s sleep is just one of those stuffs everyone acknowledges, but rarely get enough of. Just because your giftee are likely to be lazing in couch late into the morning doesn’t inevitably mean they’re get the quality sleep the average human needs to function. In fact, if your friend is clocking in over six to eight hours of sleep every night, their bodies might be trying to overcompensate for a lack of a good rest. Therefore, as far as I see it, the most generous knack you can give them is an supplement or two to either a) better their space or b) prepare their body properly for sleep. Here are a few ideas to help you get the job done.

1A Sleek Sleep-Tracking Watch

wesoo

Wesoo K1 Fitness Watch and Sleep Monitor, $29.99, Amazon

Fitness trackers are still a thriving trend in wearable tech, but have you detected this one major upgrade recent examples have installed in their machine?

According to a new report issued by the sleep experts at Sleep Cycle, Americans’ sleep character has declined in 10 percent from 2016 to 2017( ouch ). I have a hunch that the matter is might be why technology brands are questioning trackers that not only weigh your stairs and calories burned, but that likewise observe your sleep tone metrics.

Wesoo’s band is a bestseller on Amazon with a 4.5 virtuoso rating and unique sleep layout that truly does it all.

2Their New Nightcap

Lipton

Lipton Herbal Supplement Bedtime Bliss, $4.38, Walmart

Obviously, your girl has to was changed to decaf eventually if she ever wants to fall asleep.

Remind her by knack this doze-inducing sip from Lipton that blends chamomile leaves, mint, and orange peels to ease you into a cozy sleep state “like a lullaby in a cup.” Slip a Barnes& Noble gift card in her holiday placard, and you’ve only place her up for the sweetest of reveries.

3A Comfy Pair Of PJs

Adore Me

Sleepwear Set in Christyna, $19.95, Adore Me

I cannot be the only being haunted with cozy, holiday-themed pajamas. This season, Adore Me has expanded their merchandise with a ton of his-and-her styles to choose from, but the Christyna style is hands down my favourite of them all.

For some reason, black, white, and crimson plaid only looks like pure Christmas to me. Plus, the mount is made stretchy for optimal comfort and with cotton for all the snuggly experiences.

4An Aromatic Bath Bomb

Lush USA

The Big Sleep Jelly Bomb, $8.95, LUSH USA

If your giftee religiously takes showers before slipping into something comfy and hopping into bed, Lush’s newest sleep-inducing bomb is about to be her brand-new favorite bathroom accessory. It’s the perfect formula to relax her body and mind, as notes of lavender, neroli, and chamomile smells transform her bathtub into an aromatic soak.

5A Soft Blanket To Snuggle Under

Bed Bath& Beyond

Madison Park Ruched Faux-Fur Throw, $39.99, Bed Bath& Beyond

Who couldn’t use a gargantuan fling covering to sleep in throughout the winter months?

Madison Park’s blanket is made from 100 percentage faux-fur, boasts micro-fur for extra warmth on those freezing nighttimes, and it’s too vast enough to share, so perhaps she can finally stop hogging the handles when you sleep over.

6An Overnight Mask To Deepen Their Beauty Sleep

Too Cool For School

Too Cool For School Pumpkin Sleeping Pack, $20, Sephora

Beauty sleep isn’t a story, dames. When you sleep better, you feel better, and when you good, you good. Determine how that works?

Chances are, your sleepy friend likely clocks in the recommended six to eight hours of sleep each night, which signifies her skin is likely brightening, but there’s always room for improvement, right?

Too Cool For School’s overnight mask will enhance her skin’s recuperation cycles/second with superfood ingredients and natural enzymes. Plus, it smells like pumpkin, and I can’t suspect a better lane to fall asleep than with the scent of pie all around you.

7An Artistic Diffuser

Saje Natural Wellness

Aromaart High Tide Ultrasonic Diffuser, $84.95, Saje

Essential oils for sleep are super classy right now, but it doesn’t definitely sounds like the cult is fading anytime soon. Trust me, I’m not the type to talk up the trends if I haven’t done the research myself, and diffusers are a must for bedroom.

TBH, diffusers can be super ugly and cheap-looking, but this Saje model is the prettiest slouse of functional decoration I’ve ever seen. The beautiful structure was designed by San Francisco artist Heather Day, and was inspired by the healing powers of the deep, blue ocean. So much zen, so many aromas to lull your giftee to sleep.

8A Soothing Candle

Primal Elements

Primal Elements Tahitian Vanilla Two Wick Color Bowl Candle, $19.90, Amazon

Doesn’t this candle search good enough to eat? I can guarantee my 9-year-old niece had no suggestion just how lovely this candle was going to see my accommodation flavor when she gifted it to my husband and me last-place Christmas, but this decadent flaunt is still igniting shining, and veiling our home with the smell of sweet vanilla 12 months ago.

You don’t necessarily necessitate critical lubricants to rehearse aromatherapy, and if your bestie has a sweet tooth, this yummy-scented candle from Primal Elements will have her dreaming of sugar plum fairies year round( not kidding, it’s good for 60 hours of blaze hour ).

9Go Old School With This Digital Alarm Clock

Peakeep

Peakeep Battery Digital Alarm Clock, $12.99, Amazon

I don’t have to tell you that smartphones are low-key ruining our lives, especially in the bedroom( and no, I’m not referring to your libido ). No problem how much person or persons sleeps, the blue light that gleams from your cell phone is messing with your sleep hertz, but what’s a girl to do when her exclusively the ways and means of an alarm is via smartphone?

Be the best friend you are and buy your sleeping grace a digital alarm clock. This old school model from Peakeep has a snooze option, so she knows how squeeze in a few extra minutes of shut-eye if and when she wants. It’s likewise a “smart nighttime clock, ” which necessitates it has sensory daylights that alter a subtle blue at night.

10A Sleepy Supplement

Sun Potion

Sun Potion Organic Ashwagandha Powder, $36.99, iHerb

Adaptogens like ashwagandha are another social media trend that’s actually making a difference in how they were are slumber. This is definitely the perfect endowment to all persons who you know has wanted to try adaptogens for themselves, but couldn’t commit to the pricy buy.

Trust me, I recently set Alaina Sullivan’s moon milk recipe for Bon Appetit to the test when I was convulsing and altering through an horrid couple of darkness, and I was genuinely affected by just how relaxed I experienced by including ashwagandha to my nightcap. Your giftee will love the combination of the powder’s sleep and overall health benefits.

11Slippers They Can Sleep In

Out From Under

Out From Under Scruffy Slipper Sock, $16, Urban Outfitters

If your BFF takes a lot of heat for wearing slippers to bunked, offering a pair of Out From Under’s scruffy slipper socks tells them you’re on their area( or, at the very least, won’t judge them for it ).

I’m a fan of this creamy-colored duo, specific because they’re subtle enough to wear with roomy Uggs on really cold days.

The post 11 Gifts For People Who’d Definitely Rather Be Sleeping Than Exchanging Presents appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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