#plus there's just gonna be more shedding later! vacuum at the end!!!!

[punkrockisafulltimejob]

Todays episode of "my MIL thinks she knows better than us" was really fucking annoying and I hope they don't syndicate it

[theramseyloft]

3/17/21 Loft Notes

Particularly awful pain day...

Trying to work out the mechanics of moving, and what is the highest priority to focus on.

I may not be physically able to do everything that needs doing.

Papers and sand are most urgent, I think.

Doooon't think I'm gonna be able to vacuum..

Prooobaly can't do much up and down either.

Yaaaay, working out logistics!

We are also arranging the loft repairs to improve air flow.

----- is amazing at that kind of thing, so we're gonna go grab parts and food.

Dove cage clean.

Nica laid her other egg.

I'm really tempted to keep it.  

While looking for wet pox necropsy photos last night, I came upon a write up on amonia poisoning.  It's a dead ringer for Ginger and Sprinks' symptoms.  

And ginger, being a much smaller, more energetic bird than Sprinks, would naturally have a more severe reaction to being extremely active in the kind of build up severe enough to burn my lungs.  

I don't think there is anything genetically wrong with him.

And we're getting the air flow fixed.

I would still like your input.

Patron: "I think if the air flow is fixed and either improve then you would have proof it’s that and they wouldn’t need to be removed from the project"

Patron: "If the build-up is enough to burn your lungs, it's not surprising to me that some of the birds are showing reactions to the ammonia build-up. In my opinion, it could be worth keeping Ginger's genes around in the peeps, especially if the airflow will be fixed within a couple months - worst-case scenario, the issue doesn't clear up, and the peeps show breathing difficulty, in which case you'll need to remove them from the gene pool before they breed"

Cousin: "i am installing a 160 cubic-feet-per-minute squirrel cage blower, for anyone who knows what that means."

"the bird building is maybe 1000 cubic feet, so you could say that there will be a whole shed worth of outside air every 10 minutes or so, or that it should completely exchange the sheds air every ten minutes.."

"also will have vents and cages to keep birds out of the blower-itself"

Patron: "Agreeing with ------- and ----- here; if all signs point to their ailment being environmental, and that aspect of the environment is being remedied, then there's no reason to remove them."

Sooo, my loft walls are just tin siding and foam..

Yay, that makes them easier to work... Uuuuhhhh.... Boooo structural integrity...

Patch just chased his mama off her eggs..

Cousin: "It's steel siding on the outside and half or 5/8s plywood with radiant barrier on the inside, plus the vinyl "shower surround" material plus the spaces between were packed with bead-type styrofoam.  This is above the top-plate of the end wall, above the door.  I know for a fact that the walls BELOW the top plate are filled with fiberglass insulation."

My Dad in law installed everything inside the siding.

Cousin: "retail image of the fan in installing.  I to pictures but my phone died immediately after so they never saved..  I'll get more later."

[jeanjauthor]

Do you have any tip for recognize what your love language for giving and receiving please ? I have no clue due to being autistic / being from an abusive household / being the eldest daughter ( trained to pick up after others / serve since childhood ) . I don’t know what they are and it’s driving me crazy.

This is an excellent, important question to ask. You recognize that what you’ve been *taught* to do isn’t necessarily *your* love language.  With the background you’ve described, knowing this about yourself is super-important for *reclaiming* yourself.  (Also, I am very proud of you for facing these things.)

Now, I’m no expert, but I have observed a lot over the years, and thought a lot about the Love Languages, too.  So here are my thoughts: 

First, the big Caveat:  Your love language may actually be Acts of Service, but it’ll have been warped by the abusive constraints you grew up under.  This is actually worse than most people would assume--you’ve been forced to give what you would’ve given for free if you’d had a choice, but you didn’t have much of a choice.

Whether or not Acts of Service is your love language in the end...that alone makes it a consent violation.  Emotional consent violations are more insidiously, subtly traumatizing--not necessarily worse, but definitely more difficult to observe, confirm, confront, & recover from.  So finding out that your primary love language has been manipulated and used against you may be...disturbing...to learn.  (If you can afford competent counseling, I strongly recommend it--and yes, don’t hesitate to try different counselors if the first or second or however many don’t feel like a good match.)

It could be something else--with five major categories to choose from, you got four other possibilities.  You may have need to receive love in a different language from AoS, but have been taught (polite euphemism) to give love only in the one way you were demanded most often to express.

You could also have multiple love languages, and that multitude can express itself in different ways with different people. I myself am bilingual, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. I’m lucky in that I was never forced to give AoS, but it makes it a little more difficult at times to know which of the two I need at any given moment, because it’s not always easy to tell.  Plus, there are just some people I will never be comfortable receiving PT from, though AoS is fine.

I even know of one couple who expressed & received love in all 5 categories, and both felt satisfied with each kind, making it difficult to tell if they had a primary...until I asked them how they liked giving & receiving with others. They had actually ended up unconsciously tailoring how they expressed love to specific other people (children, grandchildren) according to that other person’s needs.  Now, I’m not saying this couple is perfect (they’re drama hounds in some ways, and if things are going too smoothly, they’ll stir the pot a bit). They’re just an example of how you can receive in one language (or several) and give in other languages.

With that said, the best way to figure it out is to take the 5 Love Languages tests:  https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/

These are comparative tests, always pairing up two different Love Language ways to express oneself and asking you to pick the one that more suits you.

There are no wrong answers.

As someone who is also on the spectrum colorwheel (I love the analogy a tumblr user came up for describing it!), I want you to know that it is not only okay to be unsure about your answers, but that you can actually get a better idea of your Love Languages by taking the test multiple times, and swapping out the answers you weren’t sure about.  Keep track of your scores, and whenever you run across a quiz that gives you point totals for each category, compare the point totals.

Why? Because not all those bilingual in Love Languages will be equally bilingual 100% of the time (or 50-50, lol).  More importantly, as you become more self-aware of your past habits and work to release yourself from their chains, the more your Love Languages may change.  It is also important to realize that you can become fluent in a language not normally your own, if you are emotionally invested in the person you are expressing that language to, and are aware of how they receive it & react to it--in other words, this is a very real case of “learning to taking pleasure from other people’s happiness.”

Also, as we grow and learn and change (which life makes us do simply by existing & interacting with the world), sometimes our Love Language(s) may shift a bit.  Again, this is perfectly natural and normal.  There are no wrong answers.

One of the ways that our Love Languages can shift is--after trauma and/or abuse--our ability to give & receive love can actually weaken, and even wither.  A lot of that has to do with being protective, defensive, in an emotionally hostile environment.  Some of that, however--as many of us have learned over the last handful of months--may have come about as a result of quarantine isolation. 

For those of us who already have difficulty with social interactions (autism spectrum, ADHD, anxiety, depression, etc), isolation worsens our ability to pick up on social cues, even to the point of having difficulty noticing social cues, which includes noticing LL interactions. And as with physical starvation, love starvation can get us reduced to the point where we no longer notice how hungry we are for loving interactions.

But most importantly, not everyone will have the same dialect, or sub-dialect, of Love Language.  For example, your LL may be Physical Touch, but if those who abused you constantly put a heavy hand on your shoulder, gripping it with bruising strength, being touched on your shoulder will automatically give you a negative reaction by association.

I personally don’t like holding hands. It doesn’t come naturally to me. But I am definitely an elbows-interlocked person, because that feels much more natural to me.  Or if you’re trying to give someone a Gift with that LL, the type of gift you give may or may not make them feel loved.

It’s like the stereotypical joke of the husband giving the wife a new vacuum cleaner for their birthday.  Even if Gifts are her main LL, the gift of a vacuum cleaner comes with a burden of expectations...and if her secondary Love Language is Acts of Service...?  Unless she asked for it as a gift choice (or spoke about getting a new one positively in some way)...that’s really not gonna be a good gift.

(Even then, offering to use it yourself to tidy the house so the burden isn’t 100% on her shoulders is going to be received positively by most folks...unless they have house-cleaning-based OCD, in which case, ask first, and work with them to accommodate what you can, to reduce stress in your partner. Also, some people might genuinely like things like a new vacuum cleaner if they know that the giver is aware their Love Language is Acts of Service, or bilingually AoS and Gifts...but again, if you aren’t completely sure...ask.)

With all of that said and carefully considered, you probably have a long road ahead of you, untangling your past from your present, and untangling your burdensome expectations from your actual desires.  But that’s okay.

Again, there are no wrong answers.

This isn’t a math equation. Your answers do not have to match each time you take a Love Language test.  Not even if you turn around and take it again five minutes after your first run-through.  And don’t hesitate to re-take it once a week or once a month, and ask yourself if your feelings about each question or suggestion has changed.  Just be in the moment, in that moment, and consider your answers in that particular moment.

It may even be helpful to keep a little journal, a .doc file or something, with your thoughts on the questions and answers on a given date.  Write down or otherwise make a note of any questions that seemed particularly important to you, or particularly ambivalent (in which case, write down both suggestions for later review).

Definitely don’t be afraid to go back over your previous results.

There are no wrong answers.

You are a living, growing being, constantly changing as you encounter new thoughts, new ideas, new situations.  When we look at this situation in that light...how could there possibly be any “right answer” without it being solely a “right now” answer?

Again, you have a lot to unpack, a lot to decompress, a lot to escape, a lot to re-explore once you can shed more of the burdens of your past.  These things will take time...which sucks when you want to know now...but that’s alright.  Again, there are no wrong answers, since what you learn today only applies to today.  Come back in a week, re-examine everything, and see how you feel then.

Whatever your Love Language(s) might be, I’m genuinely proud of you for being aware of the impositions of your past, and wanting to know what’s ahead of you for your future.  Just one last thought to consider:  Don’t feel you have to only ever give-and-receive in one specific Love Language, if you discover a particular one.

Bilingualism can help you and an important person in your life bond together that much more, if you know or or at least can guess fairly readily what their own LL might be.  My mother’s LL is Quality Time, and I interconnect with her through Acts of Service by choosing to do things with her, while being mindful to chat with her, joke & laugh with her, etc.  We could do chores together, we could go traveling together...the important thing is that we connect together.  And no, it doesn’t have to be applied to your own mother; your own family relationships are your own, and probably won’t be solved by so simple an answer.

Me, I’m retaking the Singles Quiz from the above linked website right now, because I just realized it’s been over a year since I took it, and I’ve been through a lot, emotionally & mentally, over the last year-plus...and that’s without adding the decade-long year-from-hell that has been 2020 so far.

Remember, you’re a living, growing, and thus potentially ever-changing being.  Sometimes that growth & change is to become more of something.  Sometimes it’s a change away from one thing and more toward another, or more toward a state of neutrality/equilibrium...and again there are no wrong answers.  Sometimes you may need to return to neutral equilibrium, so you can recover from the burdens of your past, regain the room to resume your true shape...and regain the room to figure out what that true inner shape (or Love Language) truly is.

*piles prepackaged hugs by your front door*

You are worthy of love, you are worthy of giving love, and you are most definitely worthy of receiving love.  Ideally in all the ways that satisfy your need to be loved fully.  Good luck with the tests--and I say that solely because you’re going to be ambiguous about some of the choices.  We all feel that way, on certain subjects on certain days.  Remember...

There are no wrong answers.

[cerastes]

I dedicate to this to everyone who has let their dreams of writing die.

This is pretentious, or maybe vain, and I apologize if it comes across that way, I do not intend for this to be like that at all, as aside from narcissism in jest, I really think people should retain humility while still accepting and acknowledging their own good points, but when I log into my writing blog, sometimes I see a message like this and it’s wholly disarming. I know it seems like I am making a big deal out of what is basically a compliment, but hear me, I decided to not share my writing online again after some really bad stuff happened, on a personal level and on an artistic level. You may perhaps not believe me due to the way I carry myself, but I am very, very meek about my writing. Literature is something I have an eye and a passion for, and since I know good literature when I see it, it makes it terrifying when I finish writing something, because I know the flaws. It’s kinda like how graphical artists see their awesome finished products and say “this sucks” because they know real good illustrations, that, too, happens with writers, and oh man, it’s terrifying. To add to that, my previous relationship more or less began and crashed down in flames because of writing. My quality as an artist took a dive because I grew complacent, and because I focused on producing just one thing, and one thing only, something that satisfied my partner, and then I realized that despite my popularity in that community and the praise, it all felt hollow. I had not taken a step up, I took a step down. What used to be a mere exercise for my own amusement, that is, purple prosing, which is objectively terrible but it’s oh so fun to do, like eating a greasy hamburger, became more or less my modus operandi. That’s not good. It was all stagnant, it was fun, it was a cheap thrill, but part of me knew I was really just wasting away when I could be improving. That was a big part of my overhauling the blog in that RP community to just become user-drive stories: People would send asks with quite literally whatever content in the message and I would turn them into hopefully fun and neat reads, usually based on humor, and a bit later, it was time to close up shop, because the community had all really gone to shit and, sans a couple of exceptions, everyone whose skills I respected were already gone or just not into it anymore, plus, I had been writing in the Gensokyo setting for far too long. I needed a break, both from it and the bad memories that writing for the character in itself brought (because the character is intricately involved with another character, the source of my problems, and I will never, ever write a character in a vacuum or extirpate an essential part of them for personal reasons).

After that, I kind of just put the pen down. I felt afraid, honestly, because I knew anyone with writing chops could see past the hot air and the purple. I kept my daily writing exercises up for a few days and then I just gave up. In part, I was focusing fully on truly getting better from my depression, on which I was making really good progress, especially after a rather harsh and spectacular break up threatened to push me back in, thus needing my full attention, but another part was, really, that I was just so furious with myself that I couldn’t bring myself to write. A part of why I had made another “identity” when making that blog, aside from a joke aimed at some people, was so that I could start from zero, so it wouldn’t be me just being like “hey guys go follow my new blog give it attention please!”. I really disliked that attitude. You have to earn your reader base, not guilt trip for it. There was a period in that community which consisted of people making blog after blog for whatever fucking character or version of a character they could make, putting “HEY THIS IS MY NEW BLOG” on the main Skype, enjoying 2 days of attention, and then proceeding to whine forever because they ran out of inauguration-slash-pity asks. That’s no way to improve. I wanted to start from zero. Big fat irony that then I grew insecure because, damn it, I could put out drabbles and what not but I’d probably be, I don’t know, pity likes or “I know you” likes. A mess. I didn’t want that. That, coupled with my immense dislike of my own writing quality, put me off writing for a long time.

Just last year, at the end of the year, I decided, hey, it’d be cute if I put up some stuff. I mean, I made the ‘ideablog’ and I hadn’t used it at all (an attempt at trying to share my stuff again that failed initially as I was too afraid), might as fucking well, because if I have a redeeming quality, that’s just going through with whatever comes to mind at any given point. Reception has been surprisingly... Existent. It’s been good, and the praise and opinions I’ve received both publicly and behind closed doors has been both empowering and enlightening, but, I just think it being there at all has been out of my calculations. Aside from this message, I’ve also been asked if I have my stuff organized in a Dropbox for quick downloading so it could be loaded as an e-book and, if not, if I gave my authorization to do it. Another message I received was if I accepted commissions. What the hell do I say to that? It’s wholly disarming and moving, I couldn’t be happier. No one is more critical of my writing than I am, and next thing I know, someone says they’d pay for it. I’m not trying to blow my horn here, it’s just, fucking hell, I am so happy that I didn’t give up entirely, that I came back for the pen, and that the pen waited for me. I want that to reach you, I want you to know that not giving up has been the correct decision. I am lowkey shedding tears right now because, fuck, I love writing, what the fuck, I really was gonna let this go, but I am so fucking happy I didn’t, and on top of that, other people enjoy what I have to show? It’s paid off both personally and artistically to keep at it? Holy hell.

Just, please, don’t give up writing. It’s hard, it’s not immediate like seeing a drawing is (which means no disrespect to graphic artists at all), it’s no walk in the park or a cake in the walk or a piece of the cake, but it’s worth it. Rather, “don’t give up writing” is not fundamentally my message here as much as “don’t give up your art”. If it’s drawing, writing, composing, sculpting, whatever, don’t give it up. It pays off. You really have to go in it and give it the hardest try you can, whatever it is, your utmost effort, and it’s not easy, but look, all that aside? It’s about you enjoying it.

You’ll never reach perfection, but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t try, and you should shoot for the moon anyways, because if you land it, you kill the moon and you do us all a favor, but if you miss, hell, you still land among the stars. People really don’t want perfection, they want a good read. That’s easy to understand as a reader, but difficult to get as a writer. I think getting it as a writer, however, only pushes you to become a better writer than striving and inevitably failing to reach perfection does. At least, it’s what I’ve learned.

And for those of you who have become discouraged because you saw others do something close or similar to what you wanted to do, and in some cases, an almost identical concept? Do it anyways. Take it from me: Ideas and concepts are a dime a dozen. It’s the execution that really matters. The world has not seen what YOU do with that idea. You have not seen what you do with that idea. Maybe you have in your brain, but haha, let me tell you, what ends on paper tends to be wholly different than what initially was in your head. It tends to be better. You’ve not seen that. Everyone can imagine the perfect Olympic pirouette, but doing it is what matters. Everyone can imagine the perfect football kick, the perfect boxing straight, the perfect baseball pitch, but what does that matter if we don’t bring that imagination into a tangible form? That’s what writing is, after all, it’s our ability to show others what goes in our brains and hearts, what it is that inspires us. You don’t want to write because you got inspired, you want to write because you got inspired and want to give it shape.

So get writing.

So get making art.

Do it for yourself, and others will love it, I promise.

I’m not saying it’s as easy as just doing, but doing is the first step. You need to work hard to improve, and you need to both be confident enough to know you did a good job, yet humble enough to know you’ve got room for improvement (and hopefully, where it is you’ve got room for improvement). You can worry about improving after you get to the “doing” stage, however.

And if you gave up, please, consider giving it another try.

You never know who is out there waiting for your product. Only one way to find out.

[sttngfashion]

Genesis - 7.19

It’s a fashion-light episode but it DOES involve Spot, so. 

We start with Riker in sickbay getting some sort of spiny plant removed from his back after things “started getting romantic” with him and another crew member in the arboretum. 

Fuck so hard I roll over dangerous plants and don’t give two shits

Nurse Ogawa is here, which is always a pleasure, and she’s rocking a seriously voluminous updo, sort of a 1940s meets 1990s sensible French twist. I’m sure she loves having to remove Riker’s sexytime plant spines. That’s definitely what she went to Starfleet Nursing Academy for. 

Barclay is also in sickbay, because: Barclay.

He literally claimed he had something called “Terellian Death Syndrome” which is honestly a terrible name for a syndrome

Beverly has asked him repeatedly not to search the medical database before coming to her (AKA Never Search WebMD), but of course Broccoli does. She’s got her gorgeous strawberry shortcake season 7 hair happening:

MFW Barclay shows up in sickbay for the third time this week

The other patient being tended to is also a beautiful redhead:

The laying on of hands

Spot is pregnant and at first I was like “HOW THE FUCK DID SPOT GET PREGNANT” but apparently a) there are 12 male cats on board and b) Spot has a tendency to sneak out of Data’s quarters.

Okay, listen.

1. If there are AT LEAST 13 cats on board, WHERE ARE THEY? I want a Bridge Cat.

Bridge Cat: artist’s rendering

2. HOW IS SPOT GETTING OUT? This is a fucking SPACESHIP. Shit should be LOCKED DOWN. It’s literally AIRTIGHT. I GUESS she could sneak through, like, a vent or something but if you’re going to have cats on board, you need to PLAN for their fuckery.

This could be really bad

3. If the cats are WANDERING THE SHIP, aren’t you worried they’re going to end up in the warp core? Or that even just their fur is? WHO IS VACUUMING UP ALL THE FUR.

Anyway, Crusher is apparently also a veterinarian (which I guess makes sense since she treats all sorts of species) and says that Spot should deliver her babies soon. Nurse Ogawa then says that she’s also pregnant! THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER, which is the only reason she says it.

Also important for later:

Oh yeah gimme that t-cell injection

I’ll just tell you now that all the weird stuff that occurs in this episode is a result of Broccoli’s mutated t-cells after he gets this shot (or something). It’s (enjoyable) nonsense so don’t worry about it. I just wanted you to see how much he loved getting this hypospray.

Picard and Data have to drive through an asteroid field to get a stray torpedo (bad). Data asks Barclay to keep an eye on Spot, since she’s about to give birth, and she likes Barclay best of all the people on board. You can tell by the way she looks at him:

This IS my “I love you” face

Broccoli is pleased, because no one likes him.

WE’RE BEST FRIENDS NOW

It’s actually very sweet; Barclay even seems to know something about cats and asks Data where she’s planning to have her kittens.

With Barclay’s luck, she will have them inside his pants while he’s wearing them, somehow

I just really enjoy Data’s display case here, with his violin case juuuuust open enough to let all the dust in, but not quite enough to actually see the instrument.

Spot’s in good hands:

Yarn, Spot? You cliche

Elsewhere on the ship, Worf is having a fucking feast:

No I asked for a SIDE of tentacles

This looks delicious, actually. Giant turkey leg? Some kind of weird dried fish? Potato salad on a bed of green beans? I’m in. 

Troi shows up, a little upset that Worf didn’t wait for her, since they planned to have lunch together. He’s mean and it’s weird. You can already tell something STRANGE is happening on the ship, mostly because Troi is NOT wearing a jewel tone:

Eileen Fisher for Spacefleet

Drink this look in, kids, because it’s one of the two non-uniform looks in this episode. We can see here that I THINK Troi is wearing some Danskin shimmer tights with her beige on beige minidress and matching waterfall cardigan. The color is not what we usually see on her, but it’s not terrible (except for my pre-existing anti-beige bias). It’s certainly along the lines of what I wear when I’m lounging around.

Secret pajamas except it’s not a secret. It’s just pajamas I wear in public

Ed. note: I copied that picture of my cat Violet to my clipboard earlier when I was making the images above and I accidentally pasted it here and I can’t bring myself to delete it.

Troi’s hair has reached its astonishing season 7 pouf levels and I just love everything about it. Anyway, Worf is acting like a real dick, but we do get another good look at those Ten-Forward outfits.

IS THAT HOUNDSTOOTH

If I ever attend another con, that’s going to be my look because houndstooth is everything to me.

Later, Worf’s dickishness turns into something MORE:

I’M A DICK ON A RAMPAGE

This scene is super dark and it’s not totally clear what’s happening, but Worf basically just destroys his own quarters, including his pillows, then cuddles up with them on the floor. We do get a decent look at Worf’s jammies, which are brown and might be made of varying colors of burlap.

If anyone was gonna wear burlap pajamas, it would be the Klingons

I’m not sure what’s going on with that shoulder detail, but it can’t be that comfortable to sleep in? But again - Klingons aren’t exactly a culture that considers “comfort” to be something to aim for. If you showed a Klingon an Aerosole, he would 100% cut it in half and throw the halves in your face.

These PJs might also be linen, which would be WAY nicer to sleep in, but a little off-brand. I mean, a Klingon in linen? Can you imagine? Hold on, you don’t have to:

Pure white to better show off the blood of my slain enemies

So everyone is acting weird. Troi is like “I’m cold. I need a bath,” and walks off the bridge. The next time we see her, this is happening:

Deanna, sweetie? It’s more relaxing if you take your uniform off

As she’s taking her fully-clothed bath, Worf busts in and:

CHOMP

It’s actually very upsetting, and at first neither of them even really know how to react either:

Oh god did I just bite you

Did you just fucking BITE me??????

Troi goes to sickbay, where she gets my favorite disco blanket:

Disco Blanket: Because why shouldn’t a blanket be iridescent

To be fair, emergency blankets ARE shiny, so.

You better believe that’s an affiliate link, friend

Okay so THEN Crusher is examining Worf and she asks him to open his mouth and HOO BOY was that a mistake.

Does the replicator not have the recipe for Listerine, or

He SPRAYS her like a fucking dilophosaurus!! 

NOT IN THE FAAAAAAAAAACE

Later someone says her injuries were so bad that SHE WILL NEED RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY. That means in every episode after this (not many, but still), we are seeing a RECONSTRUCTED BEV. 

So everyone is losing it, basically, which doesn’t explain why Broccoli thinks this is a normal way to stand:

Is this how a human? Does a stand? How is stand

Finally, Picard and Data come back, and when they arrive, the Enterprise is just adrift. They board and find this:

Sir, if the t-shirt does not spark joy when you touch it, the book counsels you to throw it away. I was unable to apply this method as I do not feel joy, nor any other emotion

It’s the shed skin of a reptile, which: whaaaaaat? Ain’t no reptiles on this ship!

Narrator: actually, there were reptiles on this ship

Troi is still in the bathtub when Picard and Data find her, and she is like, half lizard because the t-cells released when Barclay got that hypospray are making everyone de-evolve. Sure. She looks terrible, which is a real feat since Marina Sirtis is such a Betty:

Honestly she’s still p hot

I think my favorite part of this makeup is the gecko-like fingertips. Excellent detail. Love the scales, love the contacts, love the unripe banana shade of green they used. All great. 

Data and Picard go check out what else is happening, and they find a caveman at one of the control panels:

Not a Starfleet regulation haircut

But what’s this? It’s not a caveman at all! It’s...

I heard dramatic eyebrows were back in

...Riker! I guess! The makeup on Frakes here is SO heavy that it’s not immediately apparent that it’s Riker, except that he’s wearing command red and has a beard. Plus, Picard says “Will?” upon this reveal. 

FUCK YOU GUYS

I’m saving this as my “flipping the bird” image to use forever.

Data and Picard manage to subdue Riker and get him to sickbay, after which they go to Data’s quarters to use his computer. But guess what happened?

KITTENS

Spot had her babies! They’re legit VERY small kittens and very cute. Data says they’re hungry, and wonders why Spot isn’t taking care of them. And then comes one of the best shots since chicken in the hallway:

Sup

IT’S AN IGUANA WEARING SPOT’S COLLAR. SPOT DEVOLVED INTO LITERALLY JUST AN IGUANA. I laughed so hard at this shot and I REALLY wanted the kittens to interact with the iguana, but they didn’t. I don’t know if that iguana was even on set.

LOL

Data notes that the kittens didn’t turn into baby iguanas, so he thinks maybe there’s some kind of cure for the devolution from pregnancy? Or something? This is where Nurse Ogawa’s recently-announced pregnancy comes into play. So he goes to sickbay, and Picard goes to see what’s going on in Engineering, and finds:

Help meeee

Barclay devolved into, like, a spider? I guess? Because this gene mutating thing is just nuts and does whatever the effects people think will look cool. (And they all do look pretty cool.)

Nurse Ogawa has devolved into Standard Neanderthal #4:

On loan from the American Museum of National History

And finally, the big boss: Worf. Worf turned into something with an exoskeleton that was able to make this dent in the sickbay door:

Rude

Picard and Data speculate that Worf thinks Troi is his mate (sure) and he’s trying to get through the door to her, so they synthesize her pheromones to draw Worf away from sickbay so that Data can focus on making a cure with Nurse Ogawa’s pregnancy hormones. Obviously. But first Picard has to get out of sickbay.

PEEK

Picard manages to lure away the Worf-monster, which looks like this:

Part beetle, part conch shell, all covered in chocolate

It’s hard to see what’s happening but what you can see is just really gnarly:

Are there horny toads on Klingon?

Ultimately, Data is successful in making a cure and sends it through the air ducts so everyone on board is fine. And when Barclay finds out that it was his treatment that started it all, and that he might have a disease named after him:

A hypochondriac’s dream

And don’t forget: THERE ARE AT LEAST 13 CATS ON THE ENTERPRISE

[ghostradiostoryhour]

Dinosaur Vacation Shirt

[POWER ON]

[cmd login, access code ********]

[Security question: What is your mother’s maiden name?]

[******]

[!]

[Access code confirmed]

[Hello! What would you like to do?]

[cmd network sync]

[Syncing to Marley Corporation Interspace Wi-Fi . . .]

[!]

[Connection confirmed.]

[!]

[ONE! New video transmission, sender: test facility 2345xHju, NORTH BASTION]

[Access transmission? Y/N]

[Y]

[cmd apply timestamp]

[21:30:20 timestamp applied]

[21:30:23 transmission status: incoming]

[21:30:27 transmission status: confirmed]

[21:30:57 transmission status: buffering…]

[21:31:02 Start transmission? Y/N]

[Y]

[21:31:22 Starting transmission. 3… 2… 1…]

Fuckin’ camera, come ON.

Damn red dust clogging everything up.

Ok, there.

I think we’re rolling.

I’m about to bite the big one. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I’ve already lost a shit ton of blood, and I’m shaky as fuck. And I have no clue where the fucking med bay is in this damn rePark. And I’m wearing a fucking dinosaur-themed vacation shirt. Whoever finds me is going to think I was a moron.

Not that that matters.

Anyway, my guess is I’m not long for this world.

And what a world it has turned out to be.

I guess I should give a little background, considering I have no way of knowing where or when in the multiverse this damn transmission is gonna end up. If it’s even gonna end up anywhere. Oh well, human folly, all that.

Yeah.

So I’m on Amarsica. 2079. That’s what we’ve made of that red ball of dust people used to call Mars. Terraforming, blah blah blah. The name sucks, doesn’t it? Most of us old enough to remember Earth still just call it Mars. Anyway, the good ol’ US of A somehow found oil beneath the rocky surface, so you know the rest. Soon as someone pulled together a prototype for the giant, gleaming shell cities we Amarsicans call home, the U.S. invested. Government spent the last of what it had to finance terraforming on Mars to create a remote colony that could drill for crude, barrel it up, and ship it back via shuttle. I guess there was life on mars, once—we just missed it by a couple hundred thousand years. Weird thing about Mars is, there’s plenty oil, but there’s not that much water up here, at least not naturally occurring water. Yeah, there’s the polar ice caps, but if we were only relying on that to sustain the shell cities, we would have run out in about a decade or two. That’s why they built the H2O factories, out on Far Planet. Giant enclosed warehouses without oxygenized atmosphere—better to fuse hydrogen and oxygen in a vacuum in order to avoid something like the Hindenburg. It’s a decent job, rainmaking, but not one I’d want. More dangerous than rigging, by far, even if it does pay a doctor’s salary. Plus the commute out to Far Planet can take a week or more on transpo. I stick to the rigs that’re enveloped in their own safe terraforming bubbles, thanks.

I don’t really know how well the whole system works—as a colony of the U.S., we don’t get much news in what goes on down Earthside. Guess having us up here makes life for Earthbound U.S. citizens better. Finally working on implementing free healthcare down there, last I heard. Not up here. And boy do I know it.

Dammit, Candi would know what to do in this situation. She always did have an answer.

Anyway.

A buddy of mine growing up used to call Amarsica the Florida of space, whatever that means. Rich half’s Miami, poor half’s I don’t know, the swamp, I guess, if the swamp were just a dry patch of dirt. It’s not a great metaphor, but you get the idea. Income gap’s out of control.

I was maybe four when we moved out here in 2033. My family—all doctors, except me—were part of the first colonization wave. This planet was supposed to be an outpost of sorts, a military base. You know, the whole China thing. But then old-ass, life-extending-nanobot-filled Elon Musk and his people jumped all over it, and started creating ultra-lux resorts for the uber rich in the 2040s, and, well. Amarsica became the premiere vacation destination, or at least lush, green East Planet did, anyway. Dusty, parched West Planet, where I grew up, is still all refineries and oilfields. West Planet is the servants’ quarters of Mars.

I live with my girlfriend Candi in a busted old Airstream, at least before she died. She had a kid, a teenage girl—blue hair, piercings, a black and grey hoodie with holes in the sleeves—and I got on the kid’s good side by building her a little A/C-capable shed of her own next to the trailer. The kid and I weren’t close, not really, but I loved her too, as an extension of Candi. Or maybe as an extension of myself. I’m not sure where the affection came from, but it was real, and it was there, and it was as awkward as a giant moving box in the tiny trailer with us anytime we interacted. Where was the boundary? Who was I to her? Who was she to me? All I knew was that I really, reallydidn’t want to mess up the kid’s life. So generally I kept my distance.

The kid was a total pro on the hover. Suited for math, like Candi was. Analytical. She was smart. Wary. Good at the things she wanted to be good at. The kid wasn’t a big fan of me, sure, and despite all her smarts, she was never interested in school. She carried a messenger bag with a neon green SLACKER patch everywhere she went, hover folded up and stashed away next to whatever book she was reading that week. She didn’t have many friends, but that didn’t seem to bother her much. She was totally focused on her plan to go on to be a hover champ. Candi was always taking her to far planet tourneys with the hope that some engineering firm would sponsor the kid—the X Games had surged in popularity on Earth since Amarsica’s far planet low-grav atmo sections provided bigger, sicker air than ever, and since the invention of hovers in general. It’s now or never, the kid always said. Hover scouts only want boarders in their teens. I understood the feeling. She knew who she was, what she wanted, and how to get it. She had to focus on that goal, didn’t want to miss her window.

But since Candi died, she’d lost that focus. That’s how I knew she was really hurting. The kid hadn’t even been back on the hover since the day Candi got sick.

That moment is etched in my memory, can’t shake it for shit.

Candi burst into the Airstream at five P.M., carrying bags of airsealed fresh grosh and enough printables for the next two weeks. Today was errand day, I knew; second Friday of the month. Candi was a nurse down at the off-rig hospital in New Pasadena, the one where I was usually stationed. The one with the most injuries. Keeps a nurse busy. Keeps us on our toes. Candi plopped a bag of Cheezballs on the counter, and the kid, trailing her, blue hair shagged down over her eyes like the latest popstar, hover in hand, grabbed the bag with her free hand and ripped it open with her teeth.

“Manners,” Candi scolded. The kid made eye contact with her and spat out the ripped top of the plastic bag. Then she headed back outside.

“Hover,” she offered as explanation, then let the door slam behind her.

           “How was your day?” I asked Candi.

           “Oh you know, the usual,” she beamed and popped a ChickenCaz cartridge into the kitchen printer. The machine whirred to life and started laying stripes of puff pastry crust down in a perfect rectangle in Candi’s old stoneware casserole dish with the ducks on it. “Lots of blood and guts. But that’s the best part about it.” She smiled and leaned in for a kiss.

           “You’re disgusting,” I said and she smiled again. I sat down in the chair by the TV to watch the kid out the window.

           “She just broke up with her girlfriend, by the way,” Candi said from the kitchen.

I watched the kid out the window. She was doing flips on the hover in the patch of dirt that served as our yard, tossing a cheeseball into the air and then zooming up and over to catch it in her mouth at the top of each flip. The red dust plains stretched endless behind her, the bluish meniscus of the East Planet terraforming bubble just visible as a glinting reflection of the sunset on the horizon.

“Girlfriend? Wasn’t she just dating a guy?”

Candi scoffed. “Carl, she’s not limited to just one kind of attraction.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I just—she moves on fast, is all.”

“Yeah, well, she’s a teenager,” Candi said. I heard the sounds of her stacking the grosh in the fridge. “They do that.”

“You think we need to talk to her about it?” I asked. It was hard to tell when the kid was broken up over something, or at least it used to be. Now it was painfully clear.

“Nah,” Candi said. “You know Bryn. She’s resilient, and she—”

A clatter of grosh packets, the horrible sound of a body crumpling to the ground. The glass of water she’d been holding shattered on the faux tiles of the Airstream’s floor.

I jumped to my feet. Outside, the kid fell off her hover, sprinted inside.

“Mom!?” she yelled.

“Candi!”

She blinked, came to. A little fuzzy, unhurt, at least from what we could tell that day. But there it was. The beginning of the constant fatigue and the rapid weight loss, of the doctor’s office trips, of our knowledge of the badness in her bones.

The beginning of the end.

And it would end, only six months later, even though the doctors had given her five years, easy. Even untreated, she should have stayed longer. She shouldn’t have died.

[cmd pause footage]

[cmd fast forward]

[cmd stop action]

[cmd play footage]

[!]

[re-enter access code to continue]

[********]

[Thank you. Footage rolling in 3, 2, 1]

None of us had ever really been to East Planet. The hospital was over there, the one we took Candi to. And we’d make the annual trip to go vote at the ballots. But we hadn’t spent time there. Not long enough to really experience it. And it is an experience.

There are the hyper-developed suburbs for the uber wealthy, massive custom houses placed atop long stretching green lawns like crown jewels, glimmering white colonials, spired and gothic gray Victorians, the bright yellow of enormous, Spanish-style haciendas. There are trees, too: every kind, from massive, sprawling oaks to delicate cherry trees covered in blush pink blossoms. Pristine private lakes glisten with the freshest water available from Far Planet.

If you’re thinking Hollywood, you’re not wrong. A lot of big movie stars live in East Planet, now—well, all the aging movie stars, anyway. The retirees. Tons of former professional athletes. Tom Brady has a mansion that literally floats in the sky—some kind of specialized low-grav build. A lot of ex-football players (from back before it was banned) come up to Amarsica for the top notch brain damage treatments, if they can still afford the trip. I hear they’ve opened a few drug rehab facilities up here, too, for the ones who really need a change of scenery in order to recover. Like I said. East Planet has become a kind of wellness Mecca, for those who have the cash. You can get full-on skin replacements, be launched into orbit for a year as an anti-aging measure, dynamic gene editing, and more, if you have the money for it. You can also get state of the art cancer treatment for what Candi had. But not if you’re living on a rigger’s salary.

There are two main corporations who run the whole thing. The Marley Corporation and something called CorpSec, which also runs the refineries where people like me work. It’s not an official monopoly, but it’s pretty clear to anyone who looks twice that there’s no other competition, and that the Marley Corporation and CorpSec are at least copacetic, if not wholly owned by the same people. Whatever. I guess this is what happens at the far end of capitalism. Monopolies aren’t monopolies, but only because now they’re corporate oligarchies. Some fifty years ago, they say there was a move toward socialism, but once oil on Mars became a legitimate prospect, all the legislators swung back to the old standard, dollar signs in their eyes.

[cmd pause footage]

[cmd fast forward]

[cmd stop action]

[cmd play footage]

[!]

[re-enter access code to continue]

[********]

[Thank you. Footage rolling in 3, 2, 1]

I wasn’t always like this, bitter and pissed off at the East Planet elite. But after Candi, the extravagance felt more unfair than it ever had before. And I wanted to see it, in person. The kid and I deserved that much. If it were so important to keep these movie stars alive, when our Candi had to die without treatment, then hell. The kid and I were going to see them, at least once.

The only semi-affordable trip to East Planet, these days, is a trip to one of the ReParks, specialized natural habitats for all of the rich people who opted to become ReAnimals. I mean, yeah, the reParks are mostly out of style now, but they were all the rage for a solid couple of decades. Anybody famous who’d died in, I don’t know, the ‘40s or ‘50s are still out there kickin,’ in some form or another, their consciousness implanted into a custom, lab-grown animal synthetic. If you believe the doctors who perform the implantation, your entire personality is preserved; it’s really you in there, only you’re a tiger or a bear now, or whatever. Apparently, there’s a full communication system in the synthetic too—you can’t actually speak, because you’re an animal now, but you can text back and forth with each other, with human family and friends. Pretty state of the art stuff.

I figured a trip to the newest of the parks, the biggest and most extravagant, would be a nice distraction. A way to try to get back to our lives. A bookmark. Or a kind of eraser, even better. We deserved it, after everything. We deserved a look at these East Planet riches, at the people who wouldn’t give Candi the medicine she needed. It would be cathartic, poetic.

At least that’s what I thought then. This shit—agh, sorry, still stings where fabric’s stretched across the skin—none of us deserved this shit.

Still, Candi would have liked coming here, damage be damned. She was obsessed with the weekly tabloids. The idea of stalking through an artificial, Jurassic rainforest in order to get a glimpse of Jason Momoa as a reStego was totally up her alley. But Candi was also an adrenaline junkie, loved an adventure, whatever it was. I guess the kid took after her in that way. I took a little vial of her ashes with me, for old times’ sake. Still got ‘em around my neck, see? Guess I won’t be going out alone after all.

It wasn’t just Candi, though. Everybody I know wants to get out here just to try and guess which of the ReRaptors housed Beyonce’s consciousness, see which of the ReBrontos Meryl Streep was lounging around in. They all could picture themselves laughing about how stupid Bill Gates would look as RePteradactyl, with those leathery wings and that awkward cone head. But deep down, each and every one of them wants to reincarnate as a dino.

Why? That’s easy. When it comes to reincarnations, the bigger and flashier the animal, the higher the price tag. Why do you think there are so goddamn many reRats around? Hell, if I decided to reincarnate, I’d probably only have enough for a reRat, and that’s being optimistic. Most people these days can’t afford much more than reLivestock, at the most. The rePredators are for hedge fund managers—nobody I know has planned for anything flashier than a reCat.

When it first came about, voluntary reincarnation, a lot of big wigs and celebs were still feeling weird about supplanting their conciousnesses into an animal’s body. Which, you know, makes sense, if you haven’t gotten used to the idea. I mean PETA had a conniption about the whole thing, of course, but technically, since all the reAnimals were grown from dead pig skin cells in Petri dishes out of Mars Settlement labs, they’re not really animals, and anyway in the end the Supreme Court dismissed the case. Who gives a fuck about the rights of labgrown animal shells that aren’t even born with consciousness? Not the governing body of the United States, that’s for damn sure. Especially if those living animal skins offer a shot at immortality for humans. Ain’t no human gives a damn once there’s something in it for them, and that’s the truth.

Anyway, things started off small, like they always do. The first reRat. The first reDog. Then after a few years more, the first reTiger, Siberian. All Instagram famous. More and more people decided to reincarnate before they passed. Before the whole process was made affordable, families bankrupted their savings to give grandma a new lease on life, this time as a reWolf or a reHorse or even a reDolphin, once reCorp opened up the controversial ocean-based conservancies on Earth. Damn, CorpSec had a hell of a time regulating the waters once global warming picked up, though. Not that defending the land-based conservancies for the reincarnated was any easier. I can’t even imagine the hell those Grandma reDolphins are in, now that the moon’s orbit’s been artificially slowed. I’m sure the oceans are all kinds of fucked. But I haven’t been back Earthside, not since I left in 2035.

Since last year, the news has been going on about an Everglades-themed reGator park—imagine that, wanting to go vacation at a place where a bunch of reGators running around with the brains of dead middle-class boomers behind the wheel. But yeah, the park is apparently real, complete with reGator wrestling and, some say, even reGator hunting, for the right price if you know a guy. Though if that were the case, CorpSec would have been on them like a bunch of reRats on a discarded bag of synthetic barbeque Taterlike wedges at the transpo. Say what you will about the reincarnation biz, the reRats have really become a problem for pre-Re—or OG, or whatever the fuck people are calling it now—human Amarsica colonists like yours truly. They’re everywhere, digging through the trash to suck the leftover fat ink out of ChickenCaz and TurkRoast cartridges, attacking family picnics at parks, the whole deal. At least Amarsica has no natural animal life, only synthetic reAnimals. Otherwise, we’d be overrun. There’d be fights, too, I imagine—animal vs reAnimal, and I think that kinda takes the whole point out of getting reincarnated at all. If there’s a chance something else will kill you why go to the trouble—and expense—of jumping your consciousness into a vulnerable animal skin on your deathbed?

[cmd pause footage]

[cmd fast forward]

[cmd stop action]

[cmd play footage]

[!]

[re-enter access code to continue]

[********]

[Thank you. Footage rolling in 3, 2, 1]

So the kid and I load up on the transpo, and zip off to East Planet. They tell us on Comm that we’re staying in a state of the art reResort, newly purchased from The Marley Corporation, the people who invented the reincarnation industry in the first place. The trip on transpo only took 30 minutes, and then we had arrived at the intersection of celebrity culture and the fear of death: the official reDinosaur habitat. They had each of us put on some shitty dinosaur printed vacation shirt—like a Hawaiian shirt, only filled with t-rex and triceratops instead of surfers and bikini babes. And then they snapped a picture.

The place was sprawling, and everything in it was huge, custom-grown in a lab somewhere to match various periods on Earth: Jurassic, Triassic, whatever. Neatly groomed gravel paths wound through enormous boulders and redwoods, and pristine signage listed both the kinds of reDinos you could see in each enclosure as well as a Who’s Who of the celebrities in each environment. The whole thing was at once totally surreal and less interesting than I had hoped, and I worried for the kid, who seemed to be barely tolerating the trip.

Later that day, the kid and I were leaning against the fence of the reBronto habitat, where Meryl Streep was calmly eating the leaves off of a patently accurate Jurassic era deciduous tree. The sun was getting low in the sky already, and we had only been there for a few hours. I was starting to think this whole trip was a bad idea, but then the kid said something.

“What do you think Mom would have picked?”

“What do you mean picked?” I asked. I was startled; it was the first unprompted thing the kid had said to me in months.

“You know,” the kid said, blowing her blue bangs out of her face. “What kind of dinosaur do you think she would have chosen, if she could be one?”

“Kid, I don’t think we could have afforded…” I started.

The kid rolled her eyes. “Forget it,” she said. “Heaven forbid you have a little imagination for once.”

Something sank in me. It sucked, because she was right. I kicked a stone on the ground and it skittered along the gravel sidewalk before hopping the curb and disappearing into the brush just beyond the enclosure fence. I looked over at the kid. She was leaning on the fence, stone still. The way she held herself now, like if she relaxed, even a little, her armor wouldn’t work, was so unnatural to the laid-back slouch she usually adopted.

I watched her for a minute. We stood maybe five feet apart, like we were strangers. Her eyes shone with sudden tears, and she set her jaw, willing them back. I thought I should move closer. I was technically her guardian now, not exactly a parent, but close enough, and I thought of her as some kind of relation—I had never had kids, before her, and she wasn’t even technically my kid. But still, I wanted to do right by her. I wanted to protect her, help her. But I also didn’t want to hurt. I reached out a hand, then thought better of it—the kid didn’t like physical contact, not unless it came from Candi. That might make things even worse.

“What about archaeopteryx?” I said, keeping my tone as casual as possible.

The kid glanced up at me, cracked a small smile. “Yeah, maybe.”

           “It’s the only one that’s special enough,” I said. The kid stepped closer.

           “You think they have any archaeopteryx here yet?” she asked after a moment. “We could, I don’t know, go look at them or whatever. If you want.”

           “Yeah!” I said, and the kid scoffed at the enthusiasm in my voice.

           When we walked away to go find a map, the kid quickened her step to keep pace with me, bumped my shoulder with her own.

           “Hey, thanks,” she said. “For taking us here. It helps, weirdly.”

[cmd pause footage]

[cmd fast forward]

[cmd stop action]

[cmd play footage]

[!]

[re-enter access code to continue]

[********]

[Thank you. Footage rolling in 3, 2, 1]

Of course Kanye was the first reDinosaur. Who else did you think it would be? I think he was also the first one that monster took down, too—the whole throng of starfuckers we were with freaked the hell out. I mean, Kanye’s also a raptor, or he’s a reRaptor, anyway, but it was no contest. When the real raptor appeared, park staff tried to set up a Comm with it; there are no portals in the rePark—that’s military grade tech—so that it materialized at all was a big issue. Clearly something went wrong somewhere. Also, the raptor’s coloration was all off and different. reDinos are all kinds of bright colors: pink, purple, electric blue… whatever their buyers want. This raptor was olive green and black, all-natural, with no excess additions, and there was none of the lag that happens with reAnimals. No slowed reflexes, nothing. Just slashed right through the Kanye reRaptor’s jugular. Sprayed blood everywhere. I mean, everywhere. And then, well, then it leapt onto us, shredded us. Everybody scattered. I mean, you can see the damage—sliced me clean open from my shoulder to my hip, right across my chest. Never been more scared in my life, man, I’ll tell ya.

[Transmission error. Buffering… high res will return in 5, 4, 3, 2…]

carl what the hell are you doing we need to get you to the med bay

Kid? I thought—that raptor had you cornered.

yeah well i thought the same about you

How did you get out of there?

i don’t want to talk about it

Kid, are you okay?

are you talking to a fucking video camera

Yeah. Hoping for Fox Intergalactic to pick me up for a new reality show about bleeding out with your family on vacation.

shut up carl

jesus you are really ripped up

Yeah I don’t think we’re gonna be able to salvage the shirt they gave us.

bummer. that thing’s probably worth like 4,000 dollars on eBay right now.

What?

yeah it’s got Kanye’s blood on it or whatever. people pay out the ass for that creepy shit.

Could have paid for my med bay bills, huh Kid?

dad, don’t try to make jokes, okay? you suck at it

what

why are you looking at me like that

stop

It’s just, you never call me Dad.

ugh. dad, can we not?

dad

DAD

come on, you asshole, stay with me

…

fuck

fuck, the raptor

HHHHSHHHSSSSSSSS REEEEET AWKHHHSSSS OOoOOOoO

…

…

crunch crunch slurp crunch draaaaaaaaaag REET OoooOOOOooO

oh my god

it took dad

how am i going to get out of here

how am i going to get home

[end of transmission]

[cmd draft report]

[Recipient access code?]

[********]

[Confirm recipient access code.]

[********]

[What is the report?]

[Test 207 complete. Conclusion: Organically

grown dinosaurs distinguish synthetics as prey. Some

collateral damage. Alert CPS on-planet of orphan girl.

Description: short blue hair, medium build. Moderate force authorized.]

[cmd send report]

[!]

[Report sent.]

[What would you like to do with the transmission?]

[cmd delete]

[Are you sure you want to delete this transmission?]

[Y]

[Delete function will permanently delete transmission. Continue?]

[Y]

[enter access code to confirm delete]

[access code ********]

[!]

[Delete confirmed.]

[cmd log out]

[Are you sure?]

[Y] [Logged out.]