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surrogate-fawn · 7 months

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The Purple Butterfly

((Drabble/Short story based on the backstory of a rp with @mittysins of Fawn's second surrogacy.))

{This drabble is Part 3 in a series of drabbles based on the story Mitty and I co-authored. This story will not make sense without reading the ones that come before it.}

[ Part 1 - The First Goodbye ]

[ Part 2 - Quartz and Sea Glass ]

[ Part 3 - Here! ]

Author's Note: A real-world initiative is mentioned in this story called The Purple Butterfly Project.

TW: Miscarriage, infertility, mentions of cancer, mentions of past abuse, pregnancy complications, past stillbirth/infant loss, grief and heavy emotional trauma.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Living with the Tariqs, I got to experience what it was like to be around a baby after it was born -- and every pounding headache that came with it.

Suri was a little spitfire as soon as she hit the atmosphere, and if she was unhappy the whole house would know it. The farmhouse wasn't all that big, and the guest room where I slept ended up sharing a wall with the nursery. So, you can bet I got woken up each time her parents did.

Those first couple nights, I would lay there in bed until Ray or Tess could stumble their way down the hall and quiet things down. Yeah, I wasn't very useful. I didn't have much of a choice, though. It was a miracle I could walk myself to the bathroom with how sore I was after Suri squirmed her way out of me.

It wasn't just soreness from the waist-down, either.

Being around a constantly crying newborn had an . . . unexpected effect on my body. After the birth of my son, aside from a little bit of colostrum, I had never produced breastmilk. I guess hearing Suri cry to be fed every few hours triggered something, because I suddenly had a full milk supply with nowhere to go.

Luckily, the Tariqs had a home remedy for everything. A couple of wet washcloths over upturned bowls in the freezer made some conveniently-shaped ice packs. Without those puppies, it felt like my breasts were filled with molten lead. So, my hands were occupied most of the day.

I felt guilty, watching either Ray or Tess get up from the couch to tend to their daughter while I was able to sit there with my hands on my boobs and continue watching TV.

I wasn't Suri's parent, but the fact I was the one who got her there made me feel like I had to help out.

Once I started to recover, that's exactly what I did. On a night when Suri refused to stop crying, I got up and poked my head through the cracked nursery door.

Tess was there, looking exhausted and defeated as she held Suri on her shoulder. That baby had been screaming in her ear for at least half an hour. She jumped when she turned and saw me in the doorway.

"Hi, Tess," I said with a sympathetic smile.

"Hey, doll," Tess sighed, continuing to bounce Suri up and down while she paced the room. She spoke a little louder than she needed to, likely 'cause she couldn't hear herself think. "I'm sorry she woke 'ya. I got no idea what 'ta do."

She sounded like she'd given up. This was how she was spending her night, and she'd resigned herself to it.

I thought about waking Ray, but his paternity leave ended in the morning. He had to be up in a few hours for his civil engineering job. Even with what little I knew about salary work, I knew eight weeks of unpaid leave for a brand-new baby was bullshit. Ray would've taken the full twelve weeks, but the city was jumping down his throat about finishing the blueprints for an overpass project on-time. Tess was about to be left alone with a two-month-old for the sake of ten fewer minutes of traffic. That wasn't fair.

"Tess, lemmie take her for a while," I said, walking into the room. "You need a break."

"It's fine," Tess insisted. "She'll calm down . . . eventually."

I held out my arms. "Tess. Give 'er."

The purple bags under Tess's eyes made her look twice her age, and her pale yellow hair was a rat's nest hanging down her back. She was at her wit's end. "Okay."

Suri weighed almost nothing as I settled her against my shoulder. It still amazed me how small babies were. They seemed so much smaller when you actually got to hold them.

"Hey, what's wrong?" I asked Suri. My ear started to ring as she wailed into it, her cries high-pitched and distressed. I started patting her back like I'd seen her parents do. "What's wrong, baby girl? What's got you so upset?"

Tess collapsed into the glider in the corner of the nursery, her hands rubbing circles into her temples. "I've changed her. I've fed her. I've prayed over her. I've got no idea what my own baby needs!"

"Well, I've got no idea, either," I shrugged, my toes digging into the soft sherpa rug by the crib. I continued patting Suri's back. Her feet were pressing against my chest, as if she were trying to pull herself upright.

"But I'm supposed 'ta know!" Tess whimpered. She ran her fingers through the knots in her hair. "I'm her mama! Mamas are supposed 'ta know what 'ta do, but I can't even calm her down!"

"You're not a bad mama, Tess," I said, offering her a smile -- despite the continued screaming in my ear. "Trust me, I know what a-."

The screaming was cut short with a small 'gurk', and I froze when a wet glob of spit-up slithered down my back.

". . . think I figured it out . . ." I said, my smile now pinched.

Suri grumbled, and I carefully held her out in front of me. Her face was still red, but her expression was pure baby bliss -- milky spittle on her chin and all.

"Did you have a tummy ache, baby girl?" I asked. "Is that what was wrong?"

Tess shot up from the glider, sending it bumping into the wall. "Oh, Fawn, I am so sorry!" she said, taking her daughter out of my hands. She took the burp cloth off her shoulder, as if suddenly remembering it was there, and handed it to me. "Here, clean 'yaself up."

"S'alright," I chuckled, cringing as I wiped up the gobby mess. "I've got other shirts. At least I got her to stop crying."

Tess looked down at the baby in the crook of her arm, and then back up at me. "Wanna try a hand at gettin' her 'ta sleep?"

Long story short, that's how I found my new job as the Tariq's live-in babysitter.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wasn't expecting to do surrogacy again, at least not for a long while. The Tariqs were paying me a decent wage for domestic work and were kind enough to not charge me rent -- so long as I was saving a certain amount of the money each week. The last post I ever made on the surrogate agency's forums was an announcement celebrating Suri's successful home birth. After that, I let my profile go dark.

Not only did hiring me allow the Tariqs to keep their promise of helping me on my feet, it also gave them an extra set of hands around the house while Ray was at work. Tess and I worked out a system where I would work on smaller tasks while she took care of the most pressing matters. If she was feeding Suri, I was cleaning the kitchen. If she was cooking dinner, I was changing a diaper. If she had to do yardwork, I was keeping Suri entertained.

I learned to prepare formula, wash bottles, change diapers, and play peek-a-boo like a pro in no time.

Bath time was always a tag-team effort, though. Suri was a splasher, and her favorite bath toy was a rubber turtle called "Squirta Turta", so we usually ended up as soaked as she was.

When Suri was being weaned off formula, we made homemade baby food with the vegetables in the garden. Turns out, placenta makes a great fertilizer. I wondered if Mom had ever used it in her flower beds -- she'd had five of them to work with by the time all of us kids were born. I wished I could ask her. I wished I could ask her about a lot of things. I also wished Suri could eat her mashed squash without trying to wear the bowl as a hat, but I didn't get that wish, either.

This was my life for two wonderfully chaos-filled years, and I was mostly content with it.

Mostly.

I wanted to go to college. That was always my plan for after high school, but . . . plans had obviously changed. My grades hadn't been anything to brag about, so I knew from the start I'd have to pay my own way through. I had two years' worth of savings, but I didn't want to dip into it, yet. That money was meant to be the down payment on a house someday. What would be the point of spending all my money on school if I'd be right back to square one afterward? That wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to get my degree and start my life over -- I'd been waiting long enough.

After sitting down with Ray and breaking down the costs of school, I realized I barely had enough to pay for one term. There were some small scholarships I could apply for here and there, but I wasn't about to rely on winning them. There were hundreds of smarter students out there vying for the same pile of money. What chance did I have?

I mulled it over for several days without saying a word to anyone, but eventually I made up my mind. When I did, Tess was the first person I told:

"I'm gonna get pregnant again."

I announced it out of the blue as I was helping Tess with the after-dinner dishes. She was at the kitchen sink, washing. I was at the counter, drying.

The steel wool in her hand scraped to a halt. "Pardon?"

I hunched my shoulders a bit as I toweled off a plate. "I'm gonna find another couple that needs to 'rent a room'. It'll be able to pay for my degree. In full. All four years."

Tess continued washing, but she didn't acknowledge what I'd said at all.

"So . . . what do you think?" I prodded, setting stacks of dishes in the cabinet.

Tess grimaced into the soapy water, concentrating way too much on the pan she was scrubbing. "Shug, I dunno," she said. "Do 'ya really wanna do that 'ta 'yaself so soon?"

"Whatd'ya mean 'so soon'?" I scoffed. "Suri's up toddling around the house. Isn't that when most moms get pregnant again?"

"'Ya ain't a mom, yet, Fawn," Tess said, her tone lovingly blunt -- the tone that can only be learned by disciplining a toddler.

I flinched a little, but I crossed my arms over my chest to hide it. All she'd done was state a fact, but it still bit.

"I'd like to be," I mumbled. I gazed out the kitchen window and saw Ray out in the backyard with Suri. He was blowing bubbles, and she was reaching up to grab them with high-pitched screams of laughter. She chased them as they swooped lower to the ground, and then stomped on them with her tiny flip-flops when they touched the grass. "Someday."

"I know, doll. That's why I'm concerned." Tess set the pan on the drying rack. "Pregnancies are risky. Wouldn't 'ya rather have as few of 'em as possible?"

"I've had two and they went just fine," I said with a shrug. "I'm young, Tess! Isn't now the best time to use what I got? I can charge more, now that I've got experience. No student debt and money left over to save for a house! Trade nine months in exchange for the rest of my life? How could I pass that up?!"

Tess didn't say anything for a long time, she just dunked a chili pot in the dishwater and started scrubbing. I stood there in uncomfortable silence until she said:

"School can wait, 'ya know."

"No, it can't!" I protested.

"Ray and I can pay what 'ya need for classes when we start tryin' again," Tess said. "What on Earth's the point?"

"Point is," I huffed, leaning my hip against the counter, arms still crossed over my chest, "I'm almost twenty-four and I've got nothin' to show for it!"

"Fawn, 'ya gotta think about-."

"I'll still be able to help you guys out, Tess," I added. "Don't worry about that."

"It's not us I'm worryin' about," was her deadpan response.

It was frustrating as hell, but I wasn't too angry at her. I knew why she wasn't a fan of the idea.

The three of us had recently discussed growing their family in the future. The Tariqs wanted to wait until Suri was a little more independent before welcoming a second baby, so that plan was at least two more years out.

Following that conversation, we'd decided not to return to the surrogate agency we used the first time. The agency was helpful with the fine print and legal stuff, but the Tariqs had not been too thrilled to learn that a desperate, homeless, childless young woman had been allowed to become a surrogate of theirs.

"I can do it independently," I said, pleading my case. "I know how to be careful."

Tess turned to lock eyes with me. "Fawn . . . I just need 'ta know you're doin' it for the right reasons. I don't like the idea of 'ya going through all that for nothing but a stack'a cash."

"It's not just for money" I insisted. "I wouldn't go through it again for anyone, not even you guys, if I didn't find it meaningful."

Tess didn't seem any more at ease with my promises. "I just don't want 'ya health 'ta suffer. If 'ya do this, you're choosin' 'ta put 'ya body through a lot in such a short time."

I didn't argue. She was right. "I know."

Tess turned back to the sink, sighing while she rinsed out the pot. My toes curled inside my shoes.

"I want to help another couple while I still have the chance," I said, trying to justify my decision -- partially to myself. I could sense how strong Tess's disapproval was, and it was giving me serious second thoughts. "If I can't be a parent right now, I want to make it possible for other people to be parents. It makes the wait feel . . . less long."

Tess dried her hands on her long bohemian skirt and turned to gently hold my shoulders. "Doll, it's 'ya own choice. Ray and I can't stop 'ya from doin' whatever it is 'ya wanna do."

I nodded, my eyes cast down. I didn't need their permission, nor had I been asking for it, but some support would've been -- .

"Just know that we'll be here 'ta help 'ya," Tess continued. "Anything 'ya need, just ask. If you're gonna do this, I want 'ya as healthy and happy as possible."

I nodded again, this time with a smile on my face. "I'd appreciate that."

Tess wrapped me in a hug. "But please, shug," she added, patting my back, "don't put 'yaself through too much."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Easy there, doll. I've got'cha."

Tess held my curls back as I wretched into a blue emesis bag. I'd started growing my hair out in the months it took for this surrogacy to be arranged. I hadn't been thinking ahead.

I'd thought I was in the clear after I had to have Tess pull over on the highway so I could vomit up breakfast, but the antiseptic smell of the hospital kicked up my nausea again. I'd made it through the halls, but by the time I'd sat on the exam table my stomach had enough.

I choked on thick saliva and spit a mouthful of colorless bile into the bag. "Okay . . . okay, I'm good now," I spluttered as I lifted my head. I cinched the bag and handed it to the technician without looking them in the eye. "Sorry."

"Don't be," the tech laughed, "morning sickness is par for the course in here. I'll be right back, just make yourself comfortable." They dragged the privacy curtain closed behind them as they left the room.

Tess wet a paper towel in the hand sink for me. My skin was clammy and cold even before I wiped the towel across my face -- so I wasn't left feeling any better. My hands had a tremor so deep inside the tendons it registered as numbness. I raked my front teeth over my tongue to scrape away the acidic taste.

I hadn't really needed that blood test. I'd known the IVF had worked when I woke up clinging for dear life against the Earth's rotation. My head hadn't stopped spinning since, and it was two damn weeks later. The doctor overseeing my IVF had sent me in for a six-week ultrasound -- which was earlier than I'd ever had one done before -- because my hormone levels were "suspiciously high" this time around. Whatever that meant.

I'd been pumped full of fertility drugs like a chicken with GMOs for a solid four months by that point. No shit my hormones were off the charts, especially now that I was pregnant.

"It's never been this bad," I groaned, coughing on the burn in my throat.

"Yeah, that's why the doctor wants 'ya in here," Tess said with a chuckle.

"I hate it," I scowled. "I want the old morning sickness back."

"Each time is different," Tess said. "I had it once or twice before, but when I was pregnant with Ravi it never really went away." Any time Tess mentioned her angel baby, a little bit of the light left her eyes -- and I saw it happen again right there in that ultrasound room.

Tess helped me pull off my jeans and tucked my discarded underwear inside the back pocket for me. I covered my hips with the paper blanket just before the tech came back into the room.

"Looks like we're ready to start!" they chirped, taking their seat between me and the rolling ultrasound cart.

"Hang on a sec," I said, pulling up the FaceTime app on my phone. "The parents really wanna see the first ultrasound."

"Ah," the tech said with an understanding nod, "is this a surrogate situation?"

"My second time," I said with a proud grin. I pointed at Tess, who was folding my pants over the back of a chair. "I carried her baby first. Most amazing thing I've ever done."

Tess beamed at me. She was smiling, but the shadows on her face were a bit deeper than normal.

"Really now!" The tech exclaimed, keeping their peppy tone as they typed my info into the computer. "It's rare I see surrogate mothers as young as you. Bless your heart!"

"She's a trooper, that's for damn sure," Tess said, "but, God love 'er, she's been so sick."

"I'm sure your care provider can prescribe something for that at your follow-up ," the tech told me. "It won't feel this bad for much longer, sweetheart."

"It's worth it, though," I said. My phone bubbled with the ringtone of an outgoing video call. "These guys will be amazing dads."

The tech smiled at me. "I have such respect for traditional surrogates. That's a lot of sacrifice."

"Oh, no," I corrected them with a small hand wave. "This isn't traditional. These are the bio parents."

I hadn't willy-nilly accepted the first eager couple I'd found online. I'd put half a year's worth of thought into carrying this pregnancy. The Tariqs always gave me my birthday off, and I'd spent that entire day talking to prospective parents. I wanted to prove to them that I was taking this seriously; if I was doing this just for the money, I wouldn't have cared whose baby I carried. I wanted to vet my options and choose a couple that I well and truly felt honored in helping -- and the Gillespies were exactly that.

My phone screen flashed with a mixture of bright pixels before the video came into focus. An odd pair of men sat beside each other in what appeared to be either a kitchen or a dining room -- perhaps it served as both, they lived in a small condo. One was a tall, tanned athlete with a dark stubbly beard and a sculpted figure rippling beneath his loose-fitting tank top. That was Silas. The other was a willowy, ramen-haired man with thick blue octagon frames on his glasses and the quote, "It's only a passing thing, this shadow" from The Two Towers tattooed on his forearm. That was Owen.

"Hey, guys!" I said, holding my phone up and giving them a wave.

There was a slightly-too-long pause due to lag, but both guys lit up with smiles and greeted me in unison. I saw the tech looking at the screen from the corner of my eye. I could see the math trying to play out in their head.

"You don't mind if we record this, right?" Silas asked. They must've been watching from a tablet, because he reached his finger under the camera and swiped a few times as if he were checking a separate app. As he lifted his arm, a crescent of silvery scar tissue became visible from under his shirt.

I saw the tech look back to their computer with a subtle nod of their head. God love 'em, they must've been too nervous to ask.

"Go ahead! It's a special occasion," I said. "I'm gonna hand you over to Tess. We're about to start."

"Yay, Tess!" Owen said with a clap of excitement. He waved as I passed my phone over. "Hi, Tess! Where's Ray?"

"Hi, boys," Tess said with a soft grin. She adjusted herself to be closer to my side. "Ray's workin' from home today so he can watch our 'lil darlin'."

Of course the Tariqs had wanted to meet my new clients. They said it was because they wanted to vouch for me as a caring and capable surrogate; but I think it was mostly to judge the couple for themselves. The Gillespies had both Tess and Ray's number as my emergency contacts, which came in handy when they needed help with some legal paperwork.

Silas and Owen were my age, both of them twenty-four. They'd poured all their savings into the process of hiring a surrogate and had none left over for a lawyer. At the Tariq's behest, all three of us had stayed up late on a call to talk the Gillespies through the steps of writing a surrogacy contract. Silas and Owen seemed to hold a lot of respect for the Tariqs after that.

While Tess had the camera on her, I reclined on the table and put my feet in the stirrups. The paper blanket gave plenty of privacy -- which was good, because I didn't want my clients to see the long plastic wand the tech was prepping while it was in there doin' its thing. I'd never had a transvaginal ultrasound before, but apparently it was the only way to get a view of the Gillespies' baby so early.

I couldn't help but tense as I felt the rounded tip of the wand slip inside me like butter, aided by the warm jelly I was used to having on my belly. I could feel the blood flooding my face as the curved device slid under my public bone and pressed against a part of my anatomy that hadn't been reached in years -- though not for lack of trying, I had short fingers.

"Relax a little more, please," the tech said.

"Sorry . . . not used to this."

Don't judge me. I was living with my employers. The idea of one of them finding an adult toy in my room -- or worse, their daughter finding it -- made me shrivel.

I felt a subtle buzz inside my tissues when the device turned on. I bit the inside of my cheek.

"Okay, let's have a look at that baby," the tech said as they began angling the wand.

Tess flipped the phone around so the dads could see the action. I saw Owen grip his husband's bicep and pull him closer. The room was silent for a moment while the technician moved the wand around my pelvis.

"Can we listen to the heartbeat?" Owen asked, hugging Silas's arm.

"Not yet," the tech said, eyes glued to the screen. "Their little heart is only a few cells big right now. It's too quiet to pick up, but we'll hear it in a few weeks."

Owen and Silas shared a grin. I could see their story written on their faces and in the way they looked at each other. They'd been dating since high school, the odd-ball pairing of bookworm and athlete. After graduation, a preemptive doctor's appointment before Silas started testosterone saved his life:

Cervical cancer, stage two. The doctors had no choice but to take everything, but Silas chose to freeze a few of his eggs before the surgery. He'd gotten into non-competitive bodybuilding to deal with the effects of chemo, and it'd been his favorite hobby since. Luckily, Silas had been cancer-free for years -- Owen had gotten his first and only tattoo in celebration.

Now that they were newlyweds, the Gillespies were choosing to start their family right away -- knowing the frozen eggs wouldn't last forever. We'd lost a lot of hope when most of the eggs didn't thaw right, meaning we only had one shot at this. The Gillespies were more than open to adoption, but . . . having a baby together was something they'd hoped for since before Silas's diagnosis.

I'd known I wanted to step up to the plate as soon as I heard their story. I was proud to be helping such a sweet pair of guys have their much-wanted family. When I saw the way they looked at each other in that moment -- the excitement and love of a dream finally coming true -- I secretly hoped doing this for them would grant me some sort of karmatic favor.

I hoped one day I'd share that same ecstatic smile with someone, for the same happy reason.

The tech hadn't said anything for a while. They kept moving the wand from side-to-side between my hips and squinting at the screen. They took several images, judging by how often they hit the same loud button on their keyboard. They hadn't even turned the screen around, yet. I couldn't wrap my head around the baby being so hard to find -- not with the ultrasound wand jammed so far up.

"Are they hiding from 'ya?" I asked with a joking lilt. Something was starting to sink inside my chest.

"No, I see them," the tech said. They squinted harder at the screen. "Just taking their picture for the doctor."

"That's a lot of pictures," Silas commented from my phone speaker.

"Well, I . . . just want to make sure," the tech said. Their keyboard clacked as they took another image.

It felt like I'd swallowed lead. "Sure of what?"

The tech finally tilted the screen so the rest of the room could see it. In the grey-and-white fuzz on the monitor, a round dark void was highlighted in a bright yellow square. Resting in the void was a blurry white bean with a small flutter in the curve of its shape.

"So, here's the gestational sac," the tech said, outlining the yellow square with their cursor. They circled the cursor over the fluttering movement. "That's baby's nice strong heartbeat right there."

"Silas, oh my god!" I heard Owen cry. "Look! We made that!"

The tech turned the wand slightly and the image on the screen rolled to the left. The same black void and white bean slid into view, except now it was upside-down. The tech once again circled their cursor around the flutter. "And this is another nice strong heartbeat."

"They have two hearts?!" I gasped in panic. I realized how stupid I sounded after it was too late. "Or is it . . . ?"

The tech flicked the wand from side-to-side, and each time they did a little black void with a bean remained on the screen. It took a few back-and-forths for me to realize those weren't two different angles of the same image.

"Holy shit . . ." I wheezed. My hand covered my throat, as if that would loosen the strangling tightness that was setting in. "Holy shit . . ."

“What? What’s wrong?” I heard Silas ask, his voice glitched and laggy.

“Boys, can ‘ya see?” Tess asked, holding my phone closer to the screen. “Can ‘ya see that?”

I wanted to turn my head and see the parents’ reaction, but I could not move my eyes from the ultrasound. The Gillespies were quiet for a minute as the tech continued to swivel the image from side-to-side.

“How many embryos did you transfer?” the tech asked.

“There were only two that made it,” Silas answered. I could sense the moment reality washed over him. “Wait . . . wait, are they both there?!”

“Yep,” Tess said. I have no idea what emotion was in her tone, but it had a glaze of forced excitement. “They both took root.”

“I can’t quite get an image of both of them,” the tech said. “I’m trying, but it looks like they’re on opposite walls of the uterus. That flipped one is way up there, too. They’re hanging onto the roof like a bat.”

“A bat bean,” Owen said. His voice was flat, like the quip was a reflex.

“So . . . twins, right?” Silas asked. “We’re having twins?”

“Congratulations!” the tech chirped.

My pulse was pounding under my hand. That lump of lead was sitting hard in my guts, right alongside those two tiny beans. Two. Two beans. Holy shit. Two.

Tess turned the phone towards me and I saw the moon-eyed shock on the Gillespies’ faces. “Fawn, honey?” Tess prodded. “Wanna say something? What’dya think?”

“I . . .” My saliva felt thick and hot in my mouth. My tongue fell numb and it nearly flopped down my throat as I shot up on the table, my legs still up in the stirrups. “I think I’m gonna be sick!”

Tess jumped for a trash can. She aimed the camera at her face while I loudly wretched in the background of my clients’ first family video.

“This explains a lot,” Tess told the fathers with a sheepish grin. “Two times the baby, two times the morning sickness.”

The Gillespeies were quiet for a while, an awkward pause with only the sounds of my suffering to fill the void.

“We’re having twins, Owen,” Silas finally said, just as I was pulling my face from the trash.

“Yeah . . . wow,” Owen’s voice answered.

I heard a subtle thumping from their end, like one of them was bouncing their leg. The tempo was frantic.

“What’s wrong, Owen?” Tess asked. She held the phone to be more level with her face.

All I heard was a harsh sniffle.

“C’mere, you big softie,” I heard Silas say.

“Don’t cry, honeybun,” Tess said. “It's a blessing!"

“I’m happy!” Owen insisted over the phone. “I’m so happy!” His voice was muffled, like he was hiding his face in his husband’s shoulder. “This is . . . whew! This is overwhelming!”

“No kidding,” Silas said with a laugh.

“No fucking kidding,” I said with my head in the trash.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took a few days for the shock to wear off. The anti-nausea pills cleared my head so I felt less like I was walking in a fever dream. Once that edge was taken off, it made reality slip in a little smoother. I was pregnant with twins. There were two little jellybeans inside me that would be two full-sized babies in eight months. That was fine. Yeah, that was fine. That had to be fine. If it wasn’t fine, I was going to start losing my mind! So, it was fine.

I mailed the printouts of the ultrasounds to the parents. They had the digital pictures I took, but those physical copies were what really mattered to them. The three of us had never met in person. They lived hundreds of miles away, in Michigan. They wouldn’t be flying down to Tennessee until it was nearing my due date, so any physical memento of their babies I could send to them was much appreciated.

I wanted the Gillespies to feel included in my pregnancy as much as possible, even if they couldn’t be with me in-person. Each week I’d take a picture of myself turned sideways in the bathroom mirror and sent it to them. I basically sent them the same picture four times in a row. There was nothing much to show except for the tummy flab I’d collected my first two times around the block. By week ten, though, I could feel that familiar little lump starting to form below my navel. I had slightly too much of a pooch for there to be any trace of a bump, though.

Almost three months in, I was surprised by how normal my pregnancy was – aside from the intense bouts of nausea I relied on my medicine for. I’d thought having twins inside me would up the difficulty level, but up to that point my life had changed very little. I still got up every day to housekeep and nanny for my allotted shift, and I did so with the same ease I did before. The only change was how much of an eye Tess kept on me. It was very annoying.

“Fawn, no!” Tess trotted up beside me and took hold of my hips. “‘Ya don’t need ‘ta be up there.”

“Stop it!” I gasped as the stack of plates in my hand jittered. “Don’t grab me like that if you don’t want me to fall!”

Tess gently pulled me down from the stepstool I’d been using to reach the cabinet. “I can take care of those,” she said, taking the stack of dishes.

“Jesus, you’d think these were your babies,” I muttered.

“It’s easy now, doll, but you’re not far off from those little ‘uns hittin’ a growth spurt.” Tess climbed the stepstool and I rolled my eyes behind her back at the oh-so-dangerous foot and a half of height she stood above. “I can go ahead and take over the chores ‘ya need help with.”

I shrugged, lifting my hands and then letting them slap down onto my thighs. “Alright. Want me to take over Suri while you handle the dishes?”

“Yes, and I’ll be wiping down the countertops and stove with bleach. So, I don’t want either of ‘ya in here until I say so.”

“Right. Grabbing snacks.”

Arms full of Cheerios, applesauce pouches and beef jerky, I joined Surinder in the living room. She was watching one of her preschooler shows on TV from inside her pop-up play tent. Her toys were strewn all over the floor – the living room had become her territory and she marked it with Duplo blocks and miniature plastic food.

I bent over to start picking up and I grunted when the ligaments around my waist pulled tight. Tess was right about the babies, I hadn’t gotten round ligament pain so early before.

It wasn’t long before Suri crawled out of her tent and patted my leg to get my attention. “Fa! Fa!” she called my name until I turned around and acknowledged her.

“What is it, baby girl?”

“Go! . . . Go potty!”

“You gotta go potty? Okay, let’s go-oh!” I winced as I stooped to pick her up, my hands flying to my sides. There was that ligament pain again. I rubbed my hands into my lower belly, trying to work out the tension in my stretching muscles. “Let’s walk to the potty.”

I kept feeling that growing pain. I got a charlie horse in my back as I was helping Suri in the bathroom. That nerve-deep pain flared up in a ring around my hips as I sat down for dinner, but a slight adjustment in my posture made it nothing more than an annoyance. I went to bed that night safe in the knowledge I would wake up to another day of normalcy.

I woke up to my alarm, bright and early as always. I woke up to that ring of pain around my hips as I stretched out under the covers. I woke up to the sensation of wet fabric, something sticky plastered against the curve of my rear and up my lower back. I woke up to blood, both crusty brown and damp red, on my pajamas and sheets.

I woke up wanting to scream. Instead, I tip-toed past Suri’s nursery and padded down the hall to her parents’ room. I knocked once before opening the door. I was like a child needing to be comforted from a nightmare, appearing in the Tariq’s doorway and softly whispering their names until they stirred.

“Ray? Tess?” I leaned a little harder against the doorframe as I watched their silhouettes sit up in bed. “Can one of you drive me?”

Tess yawned. “Where, doll?”

“The ER.”

With the yank of a chain, Ray’s bedside lamp clicked to life. I didn’t need to scream. Tess did it for me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ray held my hand while we waited in the emergency room. I’d cleaned up and changed clothes – Ray had lent me a pair of his sweatpants, just in case I bled through my pad. All that remained of my pregnancy was sealed in a sandwich box on my lap. Tess suggested I take the large clump of blood and tissue I’d found in my underwear with me for the doctor to look at, but I hated holding that box knowing someone’s lost dream was inside.

Tess hadn’t come to the hospital with us. She stayed at the house until her parents arrived to take Suri for the day and then met us in the waiting room. I sat between them, resting my head on Tess’s shoulder while both of them wrapped an arm around me. We waited like that for over an hour.

Most of that day is a scrambled signal in my memory. There was a lot of waiting. A lot of fluorescent lights and white-beige walls. We watched TV together in the room they put me in, but I don’t remember what we watched. Only one memory of that ER visit is clear:

A nurse came in and confirmed what we already knew. They’d found the stringy prototype of a placenta in the tissue I’d passed, along with one of the gestational sacs. That was concerning, though. One. They’d only found one of the twins. There was a possibility I needed surgery, so they had to go in and see what was left. The Tariqs weren’t allowed to follow me as I was wheeled down to radiology.

The ultrasound room was dark and warm, the only light coming from the idle monitor of the computer. It was easy to close my eyes and drift into a trance as the tech smeared gel over my lower belly. I’d been scheduled for my next ultrasound in two weeks. I didn’t think I could handle seeing how empty I was.

“Did everything clear?” I asked, resting my hands over my sternum. Even if I didn’t want to see it, I still wanted to know if they were gonna have to scrape me out.

“I can’t say for certain until the doctor has a chance to look at these,” the tech said. “I’m just here to take pictures.”

I wished this was the same tech from my first ultrasound. I could’ve used their friendliness.

“I stopped cramping a while ago,” I said, “so hopefully it’s over.”

The tech rolled the wand up from my groin and I felt it press on the solid lump in the front of my hips. They were pressing hard – trying to get a good image, I assume – but eased off as they moved the wand just below my navel.

“Ope, no. Wait,” the tech said, “there’s the other one. Gosh, that one is way up there.”

Bat Bean. That’s what the Gillespies and I had been calling Baby B. We’d been calling Baby A “Jellybean”. I wondered what their real names would’ve been. My throat closed up and I had to stop wondering.

“Oh . . . my . . .” the tech said, nearly in a whisper. Then, much louder: “Well, hello there, little guy!”

“What?” I asked, opening one eye in hesitation.

I saw their face in the light of the monitor, saw the crescent moon of a smile below their reflective glasses. “It’s kicking!”

“What?!”

My neck arched and suddenly I was staring at the high-def image of a grey gummy bear on the screen. Nubby limbs twitched as the oval-shaped body curled and uncurled, swimming around its bubble of fluid like a tiny fish. The bulbous head turned and I watched in utter amazement as Baby B’s whole body flipped over in a summersault.

The tech hit a key and a steady whop-whopa-whop-whopa played as a line of white peaks and valleys appeared below the image. “And we have a heartbeat!” they announced, all monotone gone from their demeanor.

I must’ve been in a state of shock, because my memory after that moment is almost entirely blank. I have a vague recollection of signing some paperwork and a surgeon standing over my bed, listing off possible side effects. I remember a needle going into my arm, and then my memory is a void.

My memory restarts at the point I woke up in the recovery ward. Please understand that before this point, I had never had any kind of knock-out juice. I’d never had surgery before. So, please don’t make fun of me when I admit that I woke up crying. My vision was blurry, my head was in a vice, my anti-nausea medication had worn off, and it felt like I had a cactus in my vagina.

I saw a silhouette at my bedside, a woman’s silhouette with a ponytail of dirty-blonde hair. For a second, I thought my mom had forgiven me – I thought that someone, somehow, had reached her. I thought she cared enough to be worried about me. I reached out to her, craving to feel her hold me again. I felt horrible. I wanted my Mama to make it all better.

“M-om?” I mewled, my mouth slow and dry.

I touched the woman’s arm, causing her to turn towards me. She wasn’t my mom – just a nurse who styled her hair the same way. “No, sorry. I’m not Mom,” she said softly. “She’s probably waiting for you outside.”

I knew she wasn’t. I felt more tears trail down my neck.

“Just lay back and try to wake up a little more,” the nurse told me, “then we’ll let your family come back and see you.”

I dipped in and out of a fugue state, gradually returning to reality as the drugs wore off. Although I couldn’t remember much before surgery, I was inately aware that my cervix had been sewn shut. There was no telling what had caused me to lose Baby A, but Baby B was still considered at-risk. Sealing the exit shut was the best bet to keep ‘em in there. The fact I was still pregnant at all after so much blood loss and cramping was miraculous. Just to be safe, they hooked my IV up to something that would stop my uterus from contracting.

When I was awake enough to feel hungry and ask for food, the Tariqs were allowed to come sit with me in my cubicle of curtains. Tess sat on the side of my bed while Ray tried to nap in his chair. It’d been nearly twelve hours since we arrived at the hospital and we were all exhausted. I barely had the energy to lift spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup to my mouth. After I’d gotten some broth and crackers down my throat, and Tess and I had run out of small talk, Tess leaned in and wrapped her arms around me.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she whispered into my ear. “I know what you’re feelin’, and it’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

They weren’t empty words – far from it. Tess had been where I was time, after time, after time. Only, for her, it was worse – those lost children were her own. Then . . . there had been Ravi. I didn’t want to imagine how his loss had felt. Well . . . perhaps I could make a light comparison, but I at least knew my son was alive and well somewhere. I wrapped my arms around Tess in return, blinking back tears.

“No, Tess,” I said, my face covered by her long flaxen hair. It smelled like her mint shampoo. “I’m sorry you went through this so many times.”

Tess held me tighter.

“Have you told them?” I asked.

“No. We wanted ‘ta hear what the doctor said first,” Tess said. “Everything’s lookin’ okay with the baby right now, but he wants ‘ya on bedrest.”

“Can you . . . please call them for me? I don’t want to hear them . . .”

“I will,” Tess said, patting my back. “I’ll go outside and let them know.”

“If they ask which one it was . . .” I sniffled and choked back a small sob. “. . . tell them we lost Jellybean.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I continued to send the Gillespies bumpdates every week. I never missed a single one. I continued mailing them printouts of their baby’s ultrasounds. We never talked or chatted about what happened, nor did we discuss medical updates about Bat Bean. For those, the Gillespies waited for either Ray or Tess to contact them. I didn’t want them to associate me – the woman carrying their one and only child – with talk of heartbreak and loss. I wanted Silas and Owen to be excited when they saw an email from me, not dread clicking on it. Ray and Tess stepped up to be the bearers of heavy news for us. My doctor had me going in for ultrasounds every two weeks, which meant a lot of baby pictures from me and a lot of medical updates from the Tariqs.

My stomach remained flat for quite a while, with just the slightest bump in my lower belly for weeks. But one morning, around fifteen weeks in, I swear I woke up looking like I’d swallowed a cantaloupe. I guess the baby had finally hit that growth spurt Tess had predicted.

His name was Milo Bennet Gillespie. Silas and Owen named him shortly after we discovered he was going to be a boy. Owen was a fan of classic books who worked at Barnes & Noble, so I had no doubt he was the one to choose the middle name. Sometimes we playfully referred to Milo as “Bat Bean”, but that nickname faded out in favor of his real name. I worried over him – a lot. I bought a home doppler online so I could check if his heart was beating. Whenever I noticed he hadn’t moved for a while, I would pull up my shirt and rub the doppler on my bump until I heard the whoosh of his pulse. The doctors kept saying everything was looking good with him, but I worried.

I was essentially given leave of my housekeeper duties until Milo was done cooking. The doctor wanted me off my feet, so I spent most of my days on the couch watching cartoons with Suri. She was observant enough to ask about my big belly in her two-word-sentence manner. Unsure how to explain the situation, I told her there was a small person living in my stomach and that his name was Milo. I even took her tiny hand and let her feel where Milo was wiggling around. She didn’t like that very much, it freaked her out and she ran to her mother. I didn’t want her to get excited for a baby that wouldn’t be coming home with me. That wouldn’t be fair to her . . . or to me.

It wasn’t the best experience, being pregnant without the baby’s parents there. When I was growing Suri, her parents were there with me at every doctor’s visit. They took me on day trips just for fun and to make sure I had enough to eat. They were able to put their hands on my belly to feel their daughter kick, and put their lips close to my skin so she could hear their voices. Milo didn’t have that. His daddies were hundreds of miles away. They’d never felt him squirm around, only I had. He’d never heard their voices close-up, just over the phone . . . maybe. The clearest voice he’d ever heard was mine . . . and my voice wasn’t going to follow him home.

Although I had the Tariqs there to support me and love me, I felt alone in my pregnancy. Milo was just a little visitor in the household – we had no toys or bedding or bottles for him, all of that was with his fathers. After he was born, no one would mention him – his future didn’t involve us at all. I was the closest thing to a mother Milo would ever have . . . and I wasn’t going to be a part of his life.

It was an experience I’d had before, with the last baby boy I’d held under my heart.

It took a toll. It really took a toll.

Before I knew it, I’d blown up big as a barn. I no longer had a lap when I sat down, my belly nearly reaching my knees. Milo was a big boy – the doctor estimated he was around nine pounds – and he was squishing all the fluid in my body into my lower half. My legs were hot and heavy and my feet were too swollen for my shoes, so I shuffled between the bathroom, kitchen and couch in flip-flops. God, I hated being on my feet. I spent my days either dicking around on my laptop – using my belly as a desk – or watching TV while sprawled out on the couch.

Surinder got really upset with me one day, when I refused to play tag with her. Ray and Tess were very mindful of how much Suri “bothered” me, but I never considered it bothersome. I loved Suri, she was practically my niece. I was sure to let her know that I wanted to play with her, but my “belly buddy” was making me too tired. I made up for it with lots of hugs and kisses, and I promised that once I was feeling better we’d play tag as much as she wanted.

As soon as I hit thirty-seven weeks, I was on high alert. I’d warned my doctor that I delivered before my due date at least once before, but he wanted to keep Milo in there until he was full-term. So, he refused to remove my stitches. As miserable as I was, I agreed. I wanted Milo to bulk up as much as he could, even if it added to my discomfort. If I could give Silas and Owen a perfect, healthy baby . . . maybe it would make up for what happened.

My body had failed one of their babies – and so help me God I was gonna force it to nurture the other! I was determined! I would make it to forty weeks!

Yet, I would not.

I pulled myself off the couch one afternoon to grab a snack and my knees almost folded. I leaned against the arm of the couch as a deep downward motion slid over my organs. My lungs were slowly relieved of their crushing burden and they eagerly filled to their maximum. I lifted the weight of my belly with one desperate hand because I had a blaring instinct about what was happening.

“Milo, don’t you dare!” I muttered under my breath.

Like a Duplo block clicking into place, Milo’s head slipped into my hips. My belly visibly dropped, I felt it shift to hit heavier in my hand. Almost immediately, I felt the baby’s heft sitting directly on my sutured cervix. I groaned and pressed my thighs together. The pain throbbed between my legs, sharper than I’d ever felt.

“Hey, Ray?” I called, knowing he was upstairs in his office.

“Yeah?” his distant voice rumbled through the ceiling.

“Can you bring me my phone?” I called. “I need to call the doctor.”

A few minutes later, Ray thumped down the creaky stairs with my cellphone. He paused when he saw me leaning over the back of the sofa, kneeling with my thighs apart. “You okay?” he asked, handing me my phone.

“I need to call the doctor and tell him I need my stitches out, like . . . tomorrow,” I said, unlocking the screen. “Milo’s in my hips, he’s not gonna wait another two weeks.”

Ray rubbed my lower back, scratching his goatee in thought. “Is he going to wait until tomorrow? You’ve been having cramps, right?”

“Yeah, but they’re irregular as hell,” I said, putting the phone up to my ear. “I’ll be in labor soon, but not that soon.”

I was wrong. I was so wrong. I was so horribly wrong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Silas? Hi. Yeah, it’s Ray.”

“Fuck! Oh, fuck!”

“We have a situation. Fawn’s having contractions and you boys need to get on a plane right now.” Ray ground his knuckles into my back while I wailed face-down on my bed.

I gripped a bag of frozen peach slices in a towel between my thighs. My arms hugged all my pillows to my chest beneath me, and I buried my head between them to yell my way through this latest contraction. My belly was squeezed into a perfect sphere, peeking out from under my shirt as it hung down to my mattress. The contractions were actually pretty mild, all things considered. They didn’t hurt that bad at all.

However! My body was forcing Milo down hard against my cervix. That pain was far, far worse than the contractions. His head was grinding against a closed exit, but the sheer force was spreading that exit open anyway. The baby was a battering ram and my cervix was a fortress door, splitting apart around its locks and bars with every slam.

“Fuck, I want these stitches out!” I cried into my pillows. “I want them out!”

“Yeah . . . yeah, you can get a refund on the tickets you already bought,” Ray continued on the phone, and on my back. “I’ll book a room for you, don’t worry about that. Just focus on getting here. Bring an overnight bag for each of you and some basics for the baby. I’ll pick you up from the airport, don’t bother with an Uber.”

Tess walked into the room, a large duffel bag slung over her shoulder and her hair thrown into a messy bun. “Everything’s in the car,” she said. Her hand squeezed my shoulder until my posture relaxed and I lifted my head from the pillows. “You ready to go have a baby, ‘shug?”

I nodded. Tess helped me to my feet and I waddled down to the car doubled over and holding my belly up. Even without a contraction, the pry and pull on the strings holding my cervix closed was constant. My seam was literally about to pop. I had to recline the passenger seat as far as it could go so I could somewhat lie on my side. My contractions were regular, but very far apart; so, thank god, I didn’t have to deal with any while cramped in the car.

My chest tightened when we pulled into the hospital parking lot. I knew I’d be having the baby here. I’d prepared for it, but thinking about it was so different from doing it. Because of the complications with this pregnancy, I had no choice but to deliver in the same maternity ward I’d walked into years ago. I . . . didn’t like thinking about what I went through in that ward.

Tess came around to my door to help haul me out, but I didn’t move. I stayed on my side, staring at the clouds hovering above the cars – they were painted with the summer sunset.

“‘Ya want me ‘ta get a wheelchair?” Tess asked, leaning on the open car door.

“Yeah,” I sighed, resting my cheek on my hand. “Tess, I don’t wanna go in there. I wanna do this at home.”

Tess looked over her shoulder, scanning the hundreds of windows looming ten stories over us. “Me neither,” she said, then turned and hustled toward the hospital entrance.

At eleven-thirty that night, I found myself sitting on a birthing ball in a stagnant delivery room. The only light was the yellow wall lamp mounted over my bed – anything brighter and my head would pound. A monitor belt was pulled snug around my belly, leashing me to a gaggle of machines beside the bed. An IV bag of pitocin hung from a hooked pole beside me, the tubes trailing down to a needle taped in place on the back of my hand.

I bounced on the ball, my hands braced on Tess’s knees while she sat on the side of the bed in front of me. I felt my torso squeeze and held my breath. The monitor beeped, registering a contraction.

“Blow the pain out,” Tess crooned, ghosting her fingertips up and down my arms.

I grabbed her knees and rotated my hips on the ball. A small “Ack!” bubbled up from my throat before I sucked air in through my nose and forced it out through pursed lips. I blew hard until my lungs went flat, then filled them again and continued the process. Salty water leaked from my shut eyelids and slid in thick droplets down my neck and back. I blew so I wouldn’t scream. I knew I could scream, but I didn’t want to come unglued only a few hours into active labor. Hell, my water hadn’t even broken yet.

I could still be in control of myself, even if this birth was not going according to plan.

I was hoping labor would be smoother after the stitches were out, but they’d only caused more complications. I’d dilated quickly regardless of the sutures, already three centimeters open when the doctor snipped the strings. He’d gotten to me too late, though. The stitches had ripped small tears in my cervix as Milo’s head pulled them apart. The swelling was immense – within minutes I was sealed shut again and my labor stalled. Hence, the pitocin.

The pitocin hijacked my body, forcing it to crush inward on itself like a soda can in a hydraulic press – at a strength and speed beyond what felt natural. I had never felt labor this intensely! I would desperately cling to any self-control I had in that beige nightmare of a room.

“Mmmmh,” I hummed through my nose, my hip swivel morphing back into a bounce as the contraction eased.

“Good job,” Tess grinned at me. “You’re doin’ so good, Fawn.”

I moaned and leaned back, bracing my hands on my hips as I rode that birthing ball like a rodeo star. “Have they landed yet?”

“Doll, they ain’t on the plane yet,” Tess said. “The only direct flight they could book on such short notice leaves at one-fifteen. Ray’ll call us when they take off and when they land.”

“God,” I huffed, my chin falling onto my chest. “They gotta be here. They can’t miss this!”

“Everyone’s doin’ their best and that’s the only thing they can,” Tess said. “It’s only an hour flight. They’ll be here in time, don’tcha worry.”

My hair had grown past my shoulders during my pregnancy, and it was suffocating me. I lifted my auburn curls off my flushed neck to cool down. Tess watched me for a moment before pulling the elastic band from her hair. A cascade of blonde fell down her back, sun-bleached highlights vibrant even in the low light. Without a word she came ‘round and gathered my frizz into her hands. A few flicks of the wrist and she had my hair up in a damp, poofy bun.

Tess kneaded the back of my neck for a while. I rested against her, letting her work my muscles like dough. Milo kicked, causing a dull ‘thump’ on the doppler.

“Fawn,” Tess broke the silence, “there’s nothin’ wrong with askin’ for pain relief.”

“Don’t want it.”

“Doll, I can tell it’s hurtin’ like hell. You’re hooked up ‘ta stuff that could rocket a foal out’a ‘ya.”

“I’m. Fine.”

“Just ‘cause ‘ya managed before doesn’t mean-.”

“I don’t wanna be stuck in that bed!” I cried. “I don’t wanna lay there like a lame horse ‘til they strap me up in stirrups! I’m NOT doing that again!”

I pulled away, using the bed’s railing to lift myself to my feet. My hand wrapped around to support my lower spine, exposed by the untied loops of my hospital gown. Tess picked up the absorbent pad on the birthing ball, folding it over to hide the bright spot of blood where I’d been sitting. I saw it, but it didn’t scare me – I knew it was from all the swelling. She retrieved the pink water cup from the table and let me drink from its straw.

“I had my baby here, too,” she finally spoke. She sat back down on the bed and smoothed her hand over the starchy sheets. “The beds feel the same.”

“Ravi was born here?” I rocked myself from foot-to-foot, holding onto the railing to keep steady. “I didn’t know that.”

“Four years ago as of January,” Tess said with a nod. “I was in here a few months before ‘ya, ‘shug. Who knows? Maybe they had us in the same room.”

God. Had it been four years already? I had a four-year-old somewhere out there and he had never seen my face. What toys did he like to play with? Did he watch the same preschooler shows that Suri and I watched together? What were his favorite foods? I wanted to know all of that. I wanted to know him! I wanted to know the sound of his voice, the color of his eyes, the texture of his hair . . . or his name.

A scar somewhere in my chest ripped open and I swear I could feel a black void pouring over my ribs like paint. I held my breath. Tears dripped from the tip of my nose and onto my belly. I was in so much pain, but not from labor. My soul was bleeding – the wound as raw as the day it was carved.

In my mind's eye, I saw myself reaching for my son as the doctor held him up. I saw my arms cradling his little naked body against my chest while he took his first breaths. I saw my lips pressing kisses into his bald, wrinkly scalp while my eyes cried phantom tears onto his skin.

None of that had happened at all – but it should have! I should have been given the chance to say goodbye – to look into his eyes and tell him how much I would always love him, even if he couldn’t see me. No, not even that. He should have stayed my baby! I should have gotten pregnant by a different man – a good man. I should have been on the pill instead of relying on his father’s cheap, oversized condoms that were probably expired. I should have fucked up my life less. I should have made a thousand better choices, so he could have stayed my baby!

I screamed along with the frantic beeping of the monitor, but all physical pain paled in comparison to the emotional. I’d cried through my heartbreak once before, but being back in that damn ward, in an identical room, brought all my grief pouring back out. Tears and liquid snot flowed down my face as I white-knuckled the bed’s railing to keep me upright. I gulped full lungs of air, only to wail and scream and sob until they were empty.

I think Tess knew my tears were from deeper down than they seemed. She leaned close and gently took hold of my contracting sides. Her palms rubbed large, soothing circles into my hardened womb. Her sympathetic eyes never left my face.

“Good girl,” she crooned. My eyes were blurry with salt water, but I thought the skin around her eyes looked red. “Scream it all out.”

“I want my baby, Tess!” I cried. “I . . .” my shoulders jerked with a sob, my diaphragm spasming from lack of air. “I n-never got to ho-hold him!” Another hiccup. “H-He’s going to think I . . . think I didn’t w-want him! But I . . . I wanted h-him so much!”

“Hushhh,” Tess shushed me. She wiped my face with the scratchy hospital blanket. “Hush now, doll. Calm ‘yaself down and get some air in.”

“Okay,” I nodded, still choking on sobs and panting for breath. “Okay . . . okay . . .” The awareness of the contraction began creeping into my brain. “Ohh . . . ohh . . . oh, shit!”

Blinded with tears, I threw my arm out to grab onto Tess. I balled her shirt collar in my hand and restarted my “blow the pain out” technique.

Tess continued massaging the sides of my belly, waiting to speak until she felt my muscles start to uncoil. “Are ‘ya sure you don’t want somethin’? I can call the nurse.”

I sniffled and wiped my eyes on my sleeve. Able to see again, I realized I hadn’t been wrong. Tess had been crying. My hand released her shirt, and my arm snaked around her shoulders to pull her into a hug.

“Tess . . . I just want you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Three-thirty in the morning. We hadn’t heard anything from Ray, and even less from the Gillespies.

A nurse had been in to check me twice in the last hour. Milo was still in his comfy water balloon and that seemed to be cushioning him from the extra-strength contractions. I nearly started crying again when they told me his heart rate was fine and I could continue to labor on my own. With how damaged my cervix was – and how many liters of pitocin they’d given me – I’d been terrified of an emergency C-section.

By then I’d lost the use of my legs, but I refused to stay on the bed for more than a few minutes – usually just long enough to pull my knees back and let a nurse stick her fingers inside me. With the help of an orderly who’d come to swap out my IV bag, Tess had taken the mattress off the bed so I could have something soft to lie down on without feeling trapped.

I’d taken to half-lying on the floor with my arms and upper body resting on the birth ball. I couldn’t keep myself quiet during contractions any longer. Making low, rumbling noises like a cow in a ball gag was a must. It was how I was surviving. Between those moments, I was just tired. It was a relief that I couldn’t feel my cervix anymore, but that was likely because it had effaced. My eyes were heavy and full of grit, but the sixty-something seconds I had between contractions didn’t allow me to sleep.

At that point, I was beyond the mental capacity to worry about Silas and Owen. Milo and Tess were the only other people who existed in the world as transition’s brutal hand crushed me in its fist.

In hindsight, I think that’s why I didn’t panic when the pressure set in.

Tess was kneeling on pillows on the other side of the birthing ball, humming a lullaby to relax me between contractions. Her tune tapered to a halt when I shifted my hips, one leg pulling up to my side. “What’cha need, ‘shug?”

“I feel him.” I stated it like a bland fact.

My eyes were closed, but I felt Tess’s hand touch my shoulder. We’d already decided what we’d do if this happened before the Gillespies arrived.

“Alright, doll. It’s alright,” she crooned. “Lemmie come around.”

I heard the soft ‘pap pap pap’ of Tess’s socks traveling in an arch around me on the faux wood floor. Her weight settled on the mattress by my feet.

“Promise I won’t touch,” she said. “I’m just eyes.”

I grunted and rolled my leg outward to open my hips. Oh, I knew that pressure so well by that point. I knew better than to doubt my body. More pitocin mixed with my blood, drip-by-drip, through the needle in my hand. I wasn’t sure if someone should’ve removed it by then, but whatever. I was gonna use it to my advantage.

The monitor around my belly beeped. I pressed my toes down and pushed before I truly felt the pain. Milo kicked the doppler again, like he realized he was finally being evicted. After a solid ten seconds, I relaxed with a nasally whine.

“He’s coming, Tess.”

“I know, doll.” Tess gently nudged my foot to a more grounded position. “Soon as I see ‘im, I’ll call a nurse. Ain’t no one gonna put ‘ya in that bed, I’ll make sure’a that.”

I scooted up more into a half-squat, one arm draped over the ball and the other wrapping around my knee. Chin-to-chest, I used the rest of the contraction to bear down against the familiar sensation of a baby sliding down my passage. I took frequent breaths between my efforts so I wouldn’t get dizzy, panting a small “Uh . . . Uh . . . Uh” with each exhale.

I didn’t need to throw my all into pushing, the contractions were doing most of the work. Maybe that pitocin was a blessing in disguise – I don’t know if I had the energy to make progress without it. Five pushes in, and I felt my inner walls stretch around the baby. My quiet whines and grunts escalated into growls as the pain grew sharper, and I flowered open wider.

“Damn, he’s huge!” I moaned as I eased off my most recent push. Forget “Bat Bean”, the fucking Chicago Bean was coming out of me!

“Remember, you’re pushin’ out the sac, too,” Tess said.

I hugged my hiked-up leg closer to my side, teeth gnashing in my skull as my face turned purple with effort. “Ugh!” I released a small bark of pain during a brief pause, then spent the rest of the push with a low growl in my chest.

My labia brushed the crease of my thigh, the skin bowing out and preparing to stretch. I felt the inner structure of my clit get crushed as the mass of the baby pressed its way down. It was something I’d felt before in the past during childbirth – but never to the extent that it fired electric shocks of nerve pain down both legs. My toes curled as a ghostly, stabbing pain assaulted the arches of my feet.

I relaxed against the ball with a loud huff of air. “Tess, rub the bottoms of my feet,” I begged, my head falling back against inflated rubber. Thank god she did it without question, I was too embarrassed to explain.

Two contractions later, I was mid-push when a gout of hot water splashed onto the mattress. My focus was broken by the release of pressure, and I leaned forward to peer over my belly. A saw an expanding area of wet sheets between my thighs, darkening the color of the mattress as more amniotic fluid drained from me.

“He’s makin’ his way out, doll!” Tess grabbed the blanket and bunched it up around my rear to soak up some of the mess. “You’re openin’ up!”

“Ahh!” The arm holding my knee in place flew down to pry open my leg, fingers pulling at the skin where my thigh met my groin. My body pushed for me and my perineum thinned out and spread over the head as it dropped past my tailbone.

“Fuck, Tess!” I whined, vocal chords straining. “Fuck, he’s hurting me!”

“Take it slow,” Tess said, patting my thigh. “Let it stretch.”

I arched back against the ball as my lips bulged outward with the size of Milo’s head. The arm draped over the ball was numb, but it was the only thing keeping me upright. The room reverberated with a roar I didn’t realize was mine as I felt that all-too-familiar fire blaze to life. My entire world shrank down to that inferno between my legs. The only thought in my head was to push down into it. My fingertips migrated beneath me, pressing against the hellfire in my perineum as the flesh pulled dangerously tight. I was aware Tess got up from the floor, but I was blind and deaf to the world.

The ringing in my ears muffled the sound of the door bursting open. My eyes flew open in surprise as a gloved hand gently nudged my fingers aside and cupped my perineum. A scrubbed nurse knelt in front of me, a mask covering her face from the nose-down – but even then, her eyes smiled at me.

“Good job, Fawn!” the nurse praised me. “Baby’s crowning. You’re nearly done!”

I flinched when someone else took my leg and hiked it up to my side. It was Tess. I finally understood she must’ve run and got help. I thought I heard a cell phone ringing, but no one else reacted to it. I accepted the fact I was hallucinating.

I threw my arm around Tess’s waist, unaware my fingers were coated in blood, and held tight as I pushed again. I gasped deep and screamed as I felt myself make quick progress once the top of his head breached the air.

“Don’t stop, doll. He’s comin’,” Tess said, her lips brushing my scalp.

Sweat stung my eyes, so I kept them squeezed shut. My whole body trembled, my nerves going haywire as Milo surged forward with a massive, unstoppable push. I felt the little bump of his nose traveling through the pouch of my perineum. The nurse palmed the crown of his head, trying to let me stretch easily over his brow.

A loud slam caused everyone to jump, and the bright light of the hallway sent a migraine through my skull. The nurse turned to scold the two men scrambling into the room, but Tess saved the day:

“They’re the parents!” she cried. “They’re stayin’!”

I couldn’t pay attention to anything going on around me. With a roar of effort, I bore down until I heard the wet little ‘shlip’ of Milo’s head pushing free into the nurse’s hand.

“Owen! Silas! Here, now!” Tess ordered.

I heard two more bodies thump to the ground beside the floor bed.

“We’re so sorry, Fawn!” I heard a familiar voice yell – a voice that belonged to a man I’d only ever heard through the static of a screen.

“Later, Owen!” Tess snapped. “Focus on your baby right now! Do not miss this!”

I didn’t care about anything – I knew this baby was on his way out right then and there! Nothing else in my mind or body would function until he’d made his journey earth-side! I clung to Tess, who pressed my leg back wider as Milo’s thick shoulders started to press out of me.

“Push, doll. Push on ‘im hard,” she encouraged me softly, her voice like warm honey.

The nurse began pulling down on the baby, forcing his shoulder to pry my public bone out of place to come through. I don’t quite know what the sound I made was, but it didn’t sound human. The nurse pulled upward, and . . .

“And we have a baby!” the nurse cheered as Milo’s body gushed out onto the mattress. A small trickle of leftover fluid followed his feet.

“Holy shit.“ My whole body relaxed as soon as that relief came.

My eyelids slid open when I heard that little guy make the sweetest newborn cries I’d ever heard. For a big baby, he had a small voice. Thin, blonde baby down was plastered to his scalp, and even while he was all squished and blotchy I could tell he looked like Owen.

“Oh, look how sweet!” the nurse sing-songed while she toweled Milo dry. “Isn’t he a perfect little man?”

A second nurse mysteriously appeared in the background. I peeked around Tess and saw the extra nurse fanning Silas with a laminated paper while he sat slumped against the wall, looking dazed. Owen kept looking at his husband over his shoulder, but his attention was constantly pulled back to his son.

“Oh . . . hey, guys.” I sleepily waved to the fathers. “When did you get here?”

Owen glanced back at Silas, who was rubbing his forehead and seemed to be coming around. “Just in time.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I flipped through the pictures in my phone while I rode home with Tess. Milo and I had stayed in the hospital for a few days for observation. I’d needed a few internal stitches (wow, real shocker there) and they just wanted to keep an eye on Milo because of his troublesome gestation. At first, there was a little bit of concern because of how lethargic he was – but his bloodwork was fine, so I guess he was just a sleepy lad. He wasn’t awake in any of the pictures the Gillespies and I had taken.

There were countless photos of Milo being snuggled by all of us. Ray and Suri had popped in to see me the morning after I gave birth – mostly for Suri’s sake, she’d woken up crying over not being able to find me at home. I had a picture from that morning of Tess holding Milo in the room’s armchair while Ray held Suri up so she could see what my “belly buddy” looked like. Suri somehow looked confused, disgusted and amazed all at once. My favorite picture was the one Tess had taken of me and the family together. I was sitting up in bed and holding Milo while Silas and Owen sat on either side of me. All of us – except Milo, who was asleep with a binky in his mouth – were smiling wide at the camera.

One of the first pictures in my album was of Milo swaddled like a burrito a few hours after he was born, fast asleep in the baby cot beside my bed. His name, weight and time of birth were written on a card taped above his head. Beside that card was the paper cutout of a purple butterfly.

In Silas’s first picture with his miracle baby, he was pale as death but still smiling. He’d needed to sit down for a while after passing out, but he’d held his little boy nearly every minute in that chair. He’d held Milo while they performed his medical tests, only allowing the nurses to take him away for his first bath. In the picture I’d taken after that, Silas was gazing at Milo with all the love in his eyes that a father could give – and Milo was wrapped in a fresh blanket with an embroidered purple butterfly on the corner. The Gillespies had brought that blanket with them.

At first I’d thought the purple butterfly cutout was just a decoration choice the hospital had made; but when Milo’s first gift from his parents had the same image, I’d asked why it was showing up so often. Turns out, that hospital had adopted The Purple Butterfly Project – an initiative that offered support for patients who had lost a child in a set of multiples. The cutout on Milo’s cot was meant to celebrate the life of his “flown-away” twin, as well as make staff members and visitors aware that he was the wingless half of a pair. It took on the burden of explanation, so Silas and Owen could bond with their son without worry.

My phone buzzed with a new message from my clients. It was a selfie Owen had taken of himself and Silas at the airport, with Milo snug in a sling around Silas’s chest. The picture came with the message: “Thank you for blessing us so deeply! We hope the joy you’ve given us will be repaid – with interest! Milo is going to be showered with love every day of his life. You’re more than welcome to keep in touch with our family, Fawn. We’re happy to let you watch Milo grow up with us. Love, Owen and Silas.”

I locked my phone and sat it face-down in my lap. “Hey, Tess?” I asked, watching the road unfurl beyond the windshield as we traveled the rural roads. “When will it be my turn?”

Tess glanced at me. “For what?”

“Being happy,” I deadpanned. “I’ve made three different families happy. You and Ray, the Gillespies . . . and my son’s parents. I just wanna know when my turn is.”

The rest of the car ride passed in total silence. When we parked in front of the farmhouse, Tess turned to look at me while she unbuckled her seatbelt.

“Doll, there’s somethin’ I want ‘ya ‘ta see.”

Going upstairs was a herculean task with how stiff and full-body sore I was, but Tess held my hand and walked with me step-by-step. She brought me into the master bedroom and sat me down on her side of the bed. Tess opened her bedside drawer and pulled out a wooden box that was roughly the size of a checkerboard. She plopped down beside me and stared at the box in her lap for a moment before saying:

“I haven’t opened this since we brought it home. I couldn’t. But . . . I think now’s the time.”

I watched as Tess lifted the lid of the box, revealing a carefully folded fleece blanket with pastel stars printed on it.

“What is it?” I asked.

Tess lovingly took the small blanket in her hands and began unfolding it. Beneath the layers of fabric was a blue crystalline teddy bear sculpture holding a silver heart between its paws. Tess picked up the bear and held it in her palm – that’s how small it was.

“This is Ravi,” she said.

Once light hit the silver heart at a different angle, I saw the engraving on it: “Ravi Idris Tariq”, with a single date underneath. Tess turned the bear over in her hands so I could see the second engraving on its back: “I carried you every second of your life.”

“I wrapped ‘im in his blanket,” Tess said, her thumb stroking the bear urn’s head. “It made it feel more like I was puttin’ him down ‘ta sleep instead’a . . . y’know.”

I was too stunned to speak.

Tess set the baby blanket in the box and – tiny urn still in-hand – got up and walked to her closet. A quick rummage, and she returned with a different fleece blanket. This one was pastel rainbow colored and was covered in white stars, an inverse of the other.

“These came as a set,” Tess said. “We donated everythin’ he never got to use, except for this. This one’s special.” She rubbed the blanket on her cheek. “I prayed over this one. I asked Mother Gaia ‘ta allow my baby’s spirit ‘ta be linked to this earthly object, so that I could hold it and it would be the same as holdin’ him.”

Tess re-joined me on the side of the bed, clutching Ravi’s urn to her heart while she cuddled and kissed the rainbow blanket. “I still miss ‘im. I miss ‘im a lot,” she said. “Having this connection to him helps.”

After a minute, Tess set both blankets and the urn inside the wooden box. Then, she took my hands into her own.

“Neither of us got ‘ta hold our little boys,” she said. “Mine was already in the arms of Mother Gaia, and yours was in the arms of his mama before you had the chance. That’s what’cha told us, right?”

I nodded, silent and enraptured. Tess smiled at me.

“Well, when you’re feelin’ more ‘yaself, I’ll teach ‘ya how to use my sewin’ machine,” she said, giving my hands a gentle squeeze. “You’ll pick out the fabric and you’ll make a baby blanket. That’ll be his baby blanket, ain’t no one else’s. I’ll ask Mother Gaia ‘ta bless it for ‘ya. When you feel all that love buildin’ up with nowhere to go, hold it. Hold your baby. He’ll be able to feel it, no matter where he is.”

I returned her smile, but my throat was almost too tight for me to speak. “I’d like that.”

We made a small shrine for Ravi’s urn on the mantle that night. Ray and Tess had Suri help set it up, explaining the existence of her elder brother to her in a way she would understand:

“Mama had a baby in her belly just like Fawn did,” Ray said, lifting Suri up so she could drop a few cut flowers from the garden beside the tiny blue bear. “That was before you were born. You were just a twinkle in Mama’s eye back then.”

“Where the baby?” Suri asked as her father plopped her back down.

“This is the baby,” Tess said, tapping on the silver heart between the bear’s paws. “He had ‘ta go back ‘ta Mother Gaia while he was still in my belly. This is where his body sleeps.”

I lit a few jarred candles and placed them on the mantle. From my back pocket, I pulled out the laminated purple butterfly cutout that had been taped to Milo’ cot at the hospital. I placed it upright against the mantle wall, so that two purple wings appeared to be sprouting from Ravi’s bear.

It wasn’t my turn to be happy, yet. I had a long way to go before I could start making my own dreams come true. Maybe school could wait a while. Maybe the money I’d earned throughout my surrogacy could be put to better use.

Maybe I was sick of staying on the path my own stupid choices had led me down. Maybe it was time I started making the choices I’d wished I’d made earlier.

I was tired of living in the shadow of grief Alexander had cast over my life. I’d lost everything because of him . . .

. . . but I was ready to start taking it back.

~ END ~

#Fawn Drabbles #birth kink #labor kink #mittysins #RP Drabble

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farolero-posting · 9 months

Text

Energy

Summary: How the Barrens became empty.

Words: 3009

Read on AO3:

(full work below the cut)

It was 6:30 when the sky finally went dark, after weeks of instability. At that moment, Silver was watching over the phosphor shrimp monitoring project, along with a scientist with a mug for a head.

The man asked her to order all the units in the area to take samples of adult shrimp without being selective and place them in jars. It seemed that under the circumstances, it would be necessary to use them as a provisional source of lighting, as they investigated the issue. The robots were called to distribute the jars around the west northern area, being in the lookout for organic beings who may need assistance.

Robots had a text based messaging system that made communication faster during work. All robots were online, back then, connected to the same server. If she scrolled up far enough, she could still read those same orders in the main logs of the area.

She didn’t need to scroll that far to find them, anyways.

As head engineer, it had been her duty to call a meeting with the leaders of the ongoing research programs and the mining operations. She can’t remember the full sequence of conversation —and found a significant percentage of it to be irrelevant nowadays—, but she can recall the things she said, and the reactions that resulted from it. It was in her programming to have preferential attention to social interactions, and use her resources in decoding them for self monitoring.

After an update on the state of the area and the inner rings, the topic of conversation drifted towards the future of the Barrens’ operations. Silver listened attentively, adding up the arguments each of the researchers had to continue or halt their current operations, and the factors they had to watch out for. Food, source of light, trips across the ocean to the inner rings, salaries, healthcare…

At last, she added her own information:

“Our generator works on solar energy. Most of our machinery and our robots rely on the main generator to function. We don’t have enough people to sustain operations without the work provided by them.”

“Your area should’ve stopped exploiting the mines long ago, if you ask me.” An older man tilted his head in a way that accentuated his weary eyes.

“It is not my area, I happen to reside in its vicinity, but I am in charge of the Barrens as a whole” she corrected him, and he placed a hand on his forehead, shaking his head.

Disapproval perceived, she noted.

“Either way, we must shut them down, I’m sure everyone else agrees here. These last earthquakes have only been endangering the few living workers we have on them. We lost about five robots to the last collapse, which we can’t replace. It’s for the best that we cease that operation, at least.”

“We will have to shut down everything, not just the mines”, Silver concluded after a few seconds. This did not make the man happy. nor any of the other scientists in place.

“We can’t all lose our jobs, this is ridiculous.” She heard someone mutter, a young lady standing by the door, holding a notebook.

In the opposite end of the room, she noticed someone being hit in their side, by a coworker.

“....course she likes shutting down things, huh—ack” is all she grasped from them, said barely above a whisper, but within hearing range for her.

Silver had heard similar comments enough to know what incident the workers kept bringing up, even if they made an effort to hide it from her.

“I cannot allow operations that do not meet standards as they could constitute safety violations, and within three weeks, our main sources of energy will run out. Our backups are not sufficient, either. There are better chances of survival for living people within the inner rings.” Silver set her hands on the table, in a rehearsed attempt to make her point gain emphasis. “That takes priority.”

“So you propose we should evacuate all workers,” someone responded, she didn’t note who.

“Correct.” A disorganized chorus of voices rose up, but she didn’t keep up with the details. They would come to agree with her, eventually.

Silver does recall someone reaching out for her at her cabin later that night, hours after the workday was finished. Her friend greeted her with a smile, and after inviting him in, they chatted over a game of chess. At some point, the topic of the meeting was covered.

“I think you made the right choice, Silver… I understand it has to be difficult.” He spoke, taking his rook out of the starting point. “I’m sorry things ended up like this.”

“It is the option that is left, given the circumstances. I don’t have much of a choice other than solve the problem with the resources I have.” Silver barely looked at the board as she moved one of her pawns, eyes focused on her opponent’s rook. “Have you… found anything of note about the tower? You said you wanted to study it before.”

He frowned, pursing his lips as he played his turn. “I have not found anything beyond what you already know. I suppose I need to see what the place is like without the Sun…”

“Will you evacuate soon?” She moved her bishop. “Check.”

“I do not depend on the ships to travel, so that isn’t a priority. I hear they’re not the safest, given the… squares, as they have been called by the witnesses.” He retorted to sacrificing a pawn, knowing Silver would repeat the strategy.

“Of course. It makes sense.”

“Silver?” He looked away from the board, already aware of what move she would make. “I heard there are plans to evacuate tamed robots as well. What is your opinion on that?”

She noted the question may hint at more than what it states, but she cannot read further. Her friend’s intentions are not always clear to her.

“I suppose it’s reasonable,” she answered. “There are other purposes they can serve in the City, perhaps even the Glen.”

“What do you think about joining them?” He took out her bishop. “I believe the same can be true for you.”

“No.” She looked away, not wanting to see his disappointment. He grabbed her free hand, instead, pressing it lightly. He was not disappointed, then. “I don’t think I’m welcome. My best option is to look after this area for as long as it is possible.”

“I see, Silver.” He nodded, eyes closed, while Silver played her turn. “I understand, but please consider it, alright? I could take you there, if needed.”

“Checkmate.”

“Oh stars, when did your queen get there?”

The generator didn’t last a week, as it should’ve been expected.

After 140 hours had passed since the blackout, Silver received the first notification of low battery from a robot within the mines. Its location was out of reach, however, and the fact it was still partially functional despite the rubble around it made her… uneasy. Of course, being at a larger distance from the generator meant it would be among the first to shut down. Maybe there was some mercy in that. She wasn’t sure that the robot had enough of a frame of reference to care, or that it ever will. She hoped it didn’t. She quickly discarded that train of thought

The head engineer received interesting news later that day. As it turned out, in a couple of days a small fleet of rowbots would bring a few emergency supplies.

Individual power cells She recognized that kind, but she preferred not to think about them.

She could deduce what they would be used for.

Her friend had told her about some of the words spread around the Glen, and now the City. Some kind of prophecy from decades ago, now becoming true. Words of a dying light, and the long darkness that would follow it, before the ground, trees and rivers went dark as well. Silver was skeptical, but the words matched the predictions that the scientists could make out of their data analysis, and the events of last week had been the biggest confirmation for them all.

There were words of preparations for a savior too, not too many months ago. A later prophecy spoke of a messiah from another world, and how they would make a pilgrimage to illuminate the world again, wording that became more explicit in the last week. If that pilgrimage included the Barrens, then someone had to be ready to receive them.

The world had more problems than just the lack of sunlight, but they refused to acknowledge it, in Silver’s opinion. The fact no living being could stay for that long in this desert waiting for the messiah to come should have made it clear enough.

Silver’s opinion was background noise among the chaos of the last few days, Preparations for the evacuation were far from organized, and new events kept slowing down their progress.

“Engineer! Please, head to the outpost!” popped up in the robot communication feed. The robot stationed there had something to report in person.

When Silver reached the building, she found a mess of shelves, a scared intern next to a robot, and a corner covered in squares. The anomalies dissipated, taking away the supplies with them.

“We… lost our non-solar batteries…, Ms. Engineer.” The intern stammered. “There’s one… there’s a solar battery on the left side but it’s still in its package. It’s not useful.” She looked away.

“What? But we… were supposed to have at least another week.” Silver shook her head, moving on. “Alright, thank you for your report.” She turned towards the robot. “I need you to relay the message to move to stage 4 of the shut down process. Understood?”

“Understood,” a flat voice replied.

As she made her way to the shore, she was interrupted by more notifications.

“Internal battery is running low. Please replace the main generator’s energy source. Estimated time left, three hours.”

“Head engineer, we need you to calibrate your backup cell!” was shouted from a researcher by the shoreline.

But the robot didn’t listen.

At the fifteenth notification, she couldn’t neglect them any longer.

She sprinted into the vent zone, knowing most researchers weren’t wearing protection to follow her. She had three hours to do something right.

Silver approached a group of robots pushing a minecart, and directed them to the chemical processing factory. She repeated this operation all the way to the cliff side, and then backtracked towards the factory. A few robots insisted that leaving their post was outside of their programming, and she let them be, but still managed to gather close to forty of them.

The tamed robot positioned herself in front of the lines of machines. She stood out for her red hair, and unique, humanlike features. She was not like them, and yet there was a sense that she was the closest to them there was in that barren land.

Maybe her friend would think that thought was poetic. It didn’t matter at the moment.

“Stage four has begun. Our power will run dry soon.” She paused. “I think if I don’t explain the next step, you will not see it coming on your own. This protocol isn’t in your programming since this is an unprecedented event, and since nobody else will take the time to guide you through it, I guess it’s my duty to do something about this.”

Glowing blue eyes looked back at Silver.

“There are ways to send a robot into a dormant state.” She began, noticing how her steps sounded against the metallic ground. “Cyclical rest is the one you are familiar with. It occurs based on an internal clock, but can be triggered by an outside force during repairs.”

Arms stood still on their sides.

“There is a method where…” —Silver couldn’t describe what made her hesitate— “you are decommissioned. It occurs when a robot’s system malfunctions beyond repair, usually due to… conflicts in your code. You cannot perform it on yourself.”

Antennas blinked in a constant rhythm.

“Then there is energy loss. I have learnt that a sudden shutdown caused by it can cause collateral damage in the robot afterwards, even if they can be turned on again later. It is not advised. This is what will happen in less than three hours.”

Soft whirring echoed across the room.

“I will trigger a rest cycle on each of you. When the power runs out, your functioning won’t be affected, and when it’s back, you will be manually reactivated. Before I proceed, do you agree?”

One of the units in the first row asked: “What happens if someone needs assistance while we are not active? Shouldn’t someone stay on to wait for the power to go back?” The voice somewhat mimicked a question, with clear struggle, lacking a natural tone.

“Are you tamed?” Silver raised an eyebrow.

“I am not, this is spontaneous curiosity built from experimental code. I do not know what purpose my question has.”

Silver would have liked to ask about it.

“Then, let me ask again. Do you agree to let me make you dormant?”

“No.”

“Understood.”

Silver turned to face the others. “Can I proceed with you?”

Thirty eight “yes” responses flooded the room.

Silver was found by the entrance to the factory, her back resting on the wall, by one of the interns in charge of looking over the factories. She was carried towards her cabin, and was reconnected to a backup power cell, much like her body had been in her first days of existence, back in the City.

Unlike that time, she was woken by a different person. A friend. Maybe one of the few people who wasn’t intimidated by her.

“Silver, good to see you again,” he said, trying to give her a smile. “Apologies for the delay, we had to calibrate you to the cell using a cord. You can take it off now, of course.”

She sat up, reaching for the cord connected to her neck, and removed it with a quick move.

“It isn’t your fault,” she said.

Her circuits made her recall the last moments before the shut down. She remembers realizing she wouldn’t have time to make it to the shore, and deciding to sit down instead.

“I know what I was getting myself into.”

“I think I have an idea of what it was, indeed.” He nodded, holding a closed notebook in his hands. “I can understand the sentiment as well. If you would rather not discuss it I understand too.”

Silver shook her head.

“I reacted in a hurry.” She took a strand of hair, and felt it against her fingertips. The sensation was more intense than usual, likely a result of her awakening. “I know my purpose is to do whatever ensures the safety of the people and this action was reckless on my end.”

“What drove you to try?”

“I think… I think it was fear.” She shook her head, trying to change her phrasing. “It’s not fear for myself. I cannot fear harm coming my way when I know that someone else will be hurt if I act on that fear.”

“Have you felt fear before?”

The robot took a pause, trying to look back on her experiences, looking for a coincidence she knew existed.

“Sometimes silence speaks for itself,” he interrupted her thoughts. “I know you must be looking for it. You suspect you have felt it before, even if you aren’t sure.”

“When a robot is lost, sometimes it’s not fully broken,” she explained. “They can send distress signals to call for backups, and give an updated report of their damage. They are trying to preserve themselves, because there is something that pushes them.”

He nodded along in silence, writing down in his notebook. “You bring up an excellent point.”

“And… I am the only one who catches these signals. They drown among other reports, orders from someone else. Requests for help are spontaneous. If someone has to respond, it needs to be me.”

“Do you think you did the right thing?”

“Not exactly…” She paused. “Perhaps it needed another approach. But someone needed to do it. Not like it will matter from now on. It’s all over.” Pause. “I did the right thing but it doesn’t matter.”

“It isn’t all over, however.” He stopped writing, and looked at her. “Your actions will ensure that, one day, in the future, getting this place running again won’t be so hard.”

“I don’t think there is much left. This area will be empty soon. I will stay and keep working, because it is the only thing I can do, but this is… only for a hope we can’t rely on. Let’s admit it, this chance is over.”

“Think of it like a chapter of a book. Perhaps, this period of your life has ended, and the tension is rising… but there is worth in telling those stories, and one day, they shall pass. There is a future ahead of you. Your push for preservation relies on it.”

“What will happen in the next few days?”

“Many people still need to evacuate, and because of the squares, it will take longer than expected. There is currently a project to prepare for the potential arrival of a messiah, and we will do some testing as long as it is still safe to stay here.”

“What about you?”

“I am doing some work here, and will be traveling back and forth when possible. I can visit you as well.” He rubbed an amber necklace he wore, before changing the topic. “I have a letter for you.”

“Does she keep writing them?”

“That she does.” He took the envelope out of his book. “I will leave it for you to read. You don’t need to rush.”

“Alright, I will.”

She opened her logs, to find them in the same state as they were the last time she checked.

She didn’t open them again.

#oneshotgame #oneshot game #silver #the author #my writing #uggggggggasjaf what the fuck #yeah thats all i have to say

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sheltershock · 1 year

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An idea I’ve always enjoyed thinking about is art student Sasha. Yeah, he’s a scientist that works with machines and brains, and knows psychology stuff like brain workings and dream interpretations, which you’d think require some sort of higher education. And I’m not saying he wouldn’t have those kinds of degrees. But I think it’s amusing how often Sasha is talked about being a genius, and his intellectualism and all about his experiments… and then I glance over at the source material and the most evidence we get for education actually implies he was an art student and that’s hilarious to me.

There’s the title to the track that plays in his level, “A Mind of Bauhaus Principles,” in which the Bauhaus is an art school. There’s the second face of the cube in the level which has like spinning disks on rods and I don’t really know what this part is supposed to represent, but the figments are of like drawings and people at pottery wheels so the best explanation I have is a collection of strange art projects(or since all of the memories in the level are negative, failed/frustrating/difficult art projects). The cube itself is painted in a Bauhaus style. The Psychoportal that Raz “borrows” from Sasha doesn’t have machinery or neural pathways decorated on it but painted rectangles that are more artsy than scientist themed. And when Raz meets Edgar, a literal prisoner of art, and throws Sasha’s Psychoportal to enter his mind, Edgar comments on the door. “Are you working on an abstract piece? …Nice use of color.” (Of course the comment could be about Raz entering the mind, I think the other inmates have comments while entering, but Edgar starts talking before the door even opens. I think both could be valid interpretations.)

But I like the references to Sasha being artsy, it’s a nice touch. Especially since people on the Spectrum often are both intellectually and artistically talented, but often autistic characters are often displayed having one or the other. I think the reasoning for this is because each part is often attributed to different sides of the brain, so having a character both smart and artistic is a strange idea? But actually having a character on the Spectrum have both is a nice touch. It’s also neat because being an artist has little to do with being a Psychonaut, it’s not part of his job. Much like the space/alien interest it’s a nice little detail that being a Psychonaut is not Sasha’s core identity, he has other things going on which is a humanizing detail.

I personally have the headcanon that initially Sasha went to college for art, but then stopped for some reason(stress, money, mental breakdown, etc.), got scouted by the Psychonauts and then switched gears to a more intellectual based degree like psychology or engineering or something. And ever since joining the Psychonauts, he always had the goal of going back and completing that art degree so he’s been saving a portion of his salary for whenever that happens. Then years after the fact, decided to start on that again and eventually completed it on the side. He’s not ever going to use it, to his knowledge, because he likes his job as a Psychonaut. But it’s the degree he’s the most proud of and exclusively has it hung up in a nice frame in his house. He has his other degrees at work as a symbol that he knows what he’s doing, but he gets the most joy observing the art degree, either from how hard it took to eventually get it with all the stops or just from intrinsic value.

He’s probably doodling all the time at work in secret. People in meetings are secretly intimidated/impressed about how quickly and dedicated Sasha is at taking notes. But he’s actually just absentmindedly scribbling on the free page he gives himself in the stack of papers he gives himself for actual notes and annotations. It’s an invisible stim that gets you to use your entire hand to do controlled, impulsive movements but in a socially acceptable way. Plus art is therapeutic, so it’ll be a nice way to step away from an infuriating experiment to calm down and approach it later with a more stable mental space.

I think Milla found out about it because they were sitting together in a meeting and she hadn’t heard anything particularly worth taking a note on yet, but for some reason Sasha’s pen/pencil hasn’t stopped moving. So she looked over his shoulder to see what she was missing in the meeting, and just found artistic renditions of various objects and people in the room plus some random scribbles. She looked away before Sasha could notice her peeking, but he noticed her anyway. They talked about it later, and she thought it was pretty cool. Milla even asked if he could draw her, and he did, though he immediately apologized saying that he was never proficient at female anatomy. She loved the drawing anyway, and she still has it. But she had to give it back and insist that he sign it, because he didn’t initially. It took some convincing, but she did get the sketch signed by the artist, to which Sasha thought she was too giddy over.

In meetings she occasionally looks over at the sketch page, smiling, almost getting them both in trouble by laughing at a couple. She always insists that he draw her more often, and you can see the improvements between each drawing. Some are in color, some are in black and white, some look more experimental, and some are in mixed medium. Milla saves them all regardless.

The one drawing that always makes her tear up is one in her old nurse’s outfit. When they moved in together, she couldn’t throw it away because of the memories, both good and bad. Regardless, she wanted to put it on and look at herself in the outfit after all these years and after how much she’d changed. But she ended up being unable to put it on, stashing it in the back of the closet. She was able to play the piano and look after children again, but she couldn’t put the outfit on no matter how badly she wanted to see herself in it. Milla said over dinner how she remembers she looked back then, noting that she wore her hair up in a neat bun rather than down like she usually does. And then later that night, she was handed a piece of thick paper that depicted her wearing the outfit. It was in a pose and with an expression that she never had worn back then, but it was definitely the current Milla Vodello wearing that outfit with the accompanying hairstyle. She ended up bawling when she saw it and had to explain through tears that she was really happy with it and grateful for it.

On nights where neither of them have to stay late working, I like to imagine Milla seated at a piano, playing whatever song comes to her at that moment, and Sasha sitting with a book off to the side, listening to the pleasant melody. When she gets tired of playing she’d get up so they could sit together. And she’d realize at some point between her getting up to play and sitting down together, that without her noticing he’d put his book down and started sketching her without her knowledge. She’d chuckle, since it happens occasionally, and ask why. She’d get some answer about how her form was interesting, or it was her expression, or the shadows…but each drawing just has this pure joy emanating from her from the elegant lines.

#psychonauts #psychonauts 2 #sasha nein #milla vodello #sashamilla #headcanons #maybe the ending is a little too self indulgent #but i’m tired and the idea of my favorite couple immune to heteronormativity supporting each other’s interests is too good #i also think that Milla would have her own little things besides piano and dancing she’d like to do #maybe she’s the crafty type? who knows?#i’ve been so tired from hectic life events recently so I haven’t worked on my comic project or made any posts #but I like making stuff so here’s a post #I’ll regain my energy soon and maybe post an art wip

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post-academic · 11 months

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The Hamilton Project has published an illuminating interactive infographic that allows detailed exploration of the career distributions of various major graduates. In fact, researchers have found that in a diverse array of fields, a large majority of graduates do not end up working in the most common occupation in their specific major. Given that students’ post-college career paths are so difficult to predict based on their academic concentrations, it could be argued that looking at earnings by occupation or career track is perhaps more indicative than college major alone.

In addition, The New York Times also finds that any earnings advantage that STEM majors hold over humanities majors fades by age 40. There are two major reasons that contribute to this - first is that technical skills become obsolete quicker as younger graduates enter the workforce. In a recent working paper, Harvard economist David Deming calculated the change in required skills for different jobs over time. He found that “help-wanted ads for jobs like software developer and engineer were more likely to ask for skills that didn’t exist a decade earlier. And the jobs of 10 years ago often required skills that have since become obsolete.” This higher skill turnover in STEM fields is correlated with the relatively slower earnings growth of STEM graduates between graduation and age 40. Let us take the example of the closing gap between computer science majors and history majors. Deming reports that “male computer science or engineering majors roughly doubled their starting salaries by age 40, to an average of $124,458”, which is compared to social science and history majors, “who earned $131,154 – an average that is lifted, in part, by high-paying jobs in management, business and law.”

The second reason for this closing gap is that a liberal arts education fosters soft skills that don’t tend to expire, such as critical thinking, people skills, and problem-solving skills. While much more difficult to quantify and while they do not create immediate pathways to high-paying first jobs, “they have long-run value in a wide variety of careers,” especially in managerial and leadership positions. Liberal arts and humanities majors are also more likely to enter careers where midcareer salaries are the highest - including in upper management and business occupations, as well as careers that require advanced degrees such as law.

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chussyracing · 8 months

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F1 related news, rumours and mind blowing stuff from past days

(it's super long after past 3 days so i will add it under the cut)

I cannot not start by Lewis to Ferrari on a multi-year contract being confirmed

Some leaked and speculated details include: Charles and Carlos both knew for some weeks, the news was leaked early by British source to avoid Lewis being included in development beyond 2025 in Merc, Toto was surprised but didn't expect Lewis staying for long in Mercedes anyway, Ferrari offered a huge paycheck and almost bianco check for any personal and charitable projects he wishes (granted by Elkann himself)

His engineer Peter Bonnington could follow him to Ferrari, but that decision is completely on himself

There are rumours of Carlos potentially moving to rally for 2025 for a break before a possible seat in Audi in 2026

Peter Windsdor reported he "heard" Alex got a 3 years offer from Red Bull, but there are rumours that people around Alex started this to get a better offer (possibly at Merc)

Among all of this, Haas livery was posted and it follows the trend of more and more black color included to save weight (fun fact: white color is the worst one possibly to choose for a livery since you need most layers of it which adds weight and sponsors sometimes don't want their logo on white because it's not as readable on TV)

F1 complained Andretti wasn't serious about the F1 offer, because Michael Andretti missed a meeting with F1 management to discuss their application, Andretti responded that they didn't see the invitation, because it ended up in the spam folder after an employee sent it rather than Domenicali

Haas appointed Andrea de Zordo as a Technical Director and Damien Brayshaw as a Performance Chief

There are some speculations Kimi Antonelli could be moving to Mercedes for 2025 based on the posts about Italian from Mercedes on social media (personal opinion: it's just a reaction to Lewis moving to Ferrari and Kimi doesn't even have enough superlicence points just yet so there will be a lot of pressure to get those in his debut F2 year if it's really the plan)

RB17 hybrid roadcar will apparently have active suspension technology which was banned from F1

There was some speculation from fans that Sebastian Vettel could come back and joing Mercedes but Toto Wolff denied it when he spoke to him the previous day

Ollie Bearman will also be Haas' reserve driver (with Fittipaldi) besides Ferrari's - there are two mandatory junior sessions but Haas will let him driver the car six times in 2024

Most random piece of info: Alicia Keys, Pharell Williams and Martin Garix will have a post race concert in Saudi Arabia

DAZN arw signing broadcasters for new season and apparently face some difficulties with Pedro De La Rosa, they can't say more besides it's an "issue which will be dealt with by an F1 team with great discretion"

Interesting fact: during International GT Open, standings were called incorrectly behind a safety car whoch lead to leader losing out and ICA (International Court of Appeal) decided that wrong SC rules apllication is not enough to cancel the result of the race which... sadly shows how AD21 appeal would probably go from FIA's ICA as well

McLaren showed the 2024 suits, the 2024 F1 Academy livery and they did their tyre test at Paul Ricard

Suzuka extended contract with F1 for 5 years

Nyck de Vries will have to pay 50% of his 2022 F1 income (driver salary and sponsorship deals) because he lost in lawsuit agaisnt Investrand

Hamda Al Quibasi and Emely De Heus will be RBR's F1 Academy drivers while Amna Al Quibasi will be Visa Cash App RB's driver

Williams signed a sponsorship deal with Vast Data and also announced meet and greet in NY

There are many people linked to the Merc seat including Mick Schumacher, Alex, Fernando (apparently Ted Kravitz was said to be the source but he denied it), Carlos, Esteban - Toto himself said Charles and Lando would be first on their list if they didn't extend long term contracts already

Melbourne will become season debut from 2025 again

#f1 #e #gossip night

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slythereen · 5 months

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Hi! Sorry I wasn’t more clear.

Being a Charles fan I actually have nothing nice to say about the clown team. I just meant it more like Newey is not going to Ferrari because of Hamilton?

Speculation has always been since he’s joining then maybe there would be new talent in engineering or something, which I don’t think it’s happening. Two of the reasons why Ferrari has trouble in attracting new talent (from my very superficial point of view) is they are based in Italy, compared to a lot of teams based in the UK, and is really more of a state-owned institute than a race team in terms of change and efficiency. And even though there’s Fernando, but this move with the huge salary and financial backing promised for his over projects looks much more like it’s not going to be longer than 3(2+1) years. Why would engineers move all the way just to work with him for 2-3 years. And I remember reading about anti-poaching in his current contract too, so when people were excited for Mercedes talent, it’s probably not happening.

But did Newey once say he wants to work with Hamilton? Right now google only has how they are going to be at Ferrari next year(maybe). If there was then I shall concede Newey is amongst those that have always dreamed to work for Ferrari and Hamilton.

Sorry I ranted way too long. <333333

these are good points! and frankly you probably know the situation better than me, as i’m still catching up on the historical stuff and some of the… intra-team dynamics? historical dynamics?

i totally agree that ferrari is lewis’s retirement plan btw. i mean, that contract really is perfectly packaged to set him up to fulfill a dream (driving for ferrari) and then to swan off into ambassadorship with class and a good bow out. which is actually a VERY GOOD POINT regarding newey, as i hadn’t considered that! my best guess would be that newey is looking to retire soon (or now) too (and all of his recent interviews lean that way, so one last short term project with LH helping get ferrari back to excellence would be a nice send off for newey.

that being said, i frequently forget how delayed f1 development is. like, some of the poached talent ferrari is bringing in is garden leaved until 2026. newey would be working on the 2026 car — not even 2025! LH himself is out of reach until next season. it’s kind of wild to me how one bad year (cough, 2022) can set you back SO badly, because these problems can’t be fixed in a season or with any speed whatsoever (and then you get 2023…). so. it’s very possible the short term project couldn’t be very short term at all to be meaningful, which means not much of a quick little ferrari chapter before retiring peacefully.

also: yes, regarding the quote! newey said something along the lines of how he has three main regrets looking at his career, one being to work with lewis hamilton and the other to work for ferrari. (i forget what the third was because frankly it wasn’t as relevant to me 💀) it is somewhat recent i think? two months? it was circulating around during the LH to ferrari rumors because ppl were saying he could get 2/3. or maybe right after the LH to ferrari confirmation.

let me look (i think it’s around here somewhere) & will toss into the replies if i find it b/c mobile is evil and will eat this draft if i tab out to find it

#me vs tumblr mobile: a never ending war #it’s unfortunate that’s primarily what I use #*oracles #lewis hamilton #ummmm #this is Ferrari centric at this point me thinks #scuderia ferrari

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dailyanarchistposts · 6 months

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Chapter 3. Economy

What about building and organizing large, spread-out infrastructure?

Many Western history books assert that centralized government arose out of the need to build and maintain large infrastructure projects, especially irrigation. However, this assertion is based on the assumption that societies need to grow, and that they cannot choose to limit their scale to avoid centralization — an assumption that has been discredited many times over. And while large-scale irrigation projects do require some amount of coordination, centralization is only one form of coordination.

In India and East Africa, local societies built massive irrigation networks that were managed without government or centralization. In the Taita Hills region of what is now Kenya, people created complex irrigation systems that lasted hundreds of years, often until colonial agricultural practices ended them. Households shared day-to-day maintenance, each responsible for the closest section of the irrigation infrastructure, which was common property. Another custom brought people together periodically for major repairs: known as “harambee labor,” it was a form of collective, socially motivated work, similar to traditions in many other decentralized societies. The people of the Taita Hills ensured fair use through a number of social arrangements passed on by tradition, which determined how much water each household could take; those who violated these practices faced sanctions from the rest of the community.

When the British colonized the region, they assumed they knew better than the locals and set up a new irrigation system — geared, of course, to cash crop production — based on their engineering expertise and mechanical power. During the drought of the 1960s, the British system failed spectacularly and many locals returned to the indigenous irrigation system to feed themselves. According to one ethnologist, “East African irrigation works seem to have been more extensive and better managed during the precolonial era.”[48]

During the Spanish Civil War, workers in occupied factories coordinated an entire wartime economy. Anarchist organizations that had been instrumental in bringing about the revolution, namely the CNT labor union, often provided the foundations for the new society. Especially in the industrial city of Barcelona, the CNT lent the structure for running a worker-controlled economy — a task for which it had been preparing years in advance. Each factory organized itself with its own chosen technical and administrative workers; factories in the same industry in every locality organized into the Local Federation of their particular industry; all the Local Federations of a locality organized themselves into a Local Economic Council “in which all the centers of production and services were represented”; and the local Federations and Councils organized into parallel National Federations of Industry and National Economic Federations.[49]

The Barcelona congress of all Catalan collectives, on August 28, 1937, provides an example of their coordinating activities and decisions. The collectivized shoe factories needed 2 million pesetas credit. Because of a shortage of leather, they had to cut down on hours, though they still paid all their workers full time salaries. The Economic Council studied the situation, and reported that there was no surplus of shoes. The congress agreed to grant credit to purchase leather and to modernize the factories in order to lower the prices of the shoes. Later, the Economic Council outlined plans to build an aluminum factory, which was necessary for the war effort. They had located available materials, secured the cooperation of chemists, engineers, and technicians, and decided to raise the money through the collectives. The congress also decided to mitigate urban unemployment by working out a plan with agricultural workers to bring new areas into cultivation with the help of unemployed workers from the cities.

In Valencia, the CNT organized the orange industry, with 270 committees in different towns and villages for growing, purchasing, packing, and exporting; in the process, they got rid of several thousand middlemen. In Laredo, the fishing industry was collectivized — workers expropriated the ships, cut out the middlemen who took all the profit, and used those profits to improve the ships and other equipment or to pay themselves. Catalunya’s textile industry employed 250,000 workers in scores of factories. During collectivization, they got rid of high-paid directors, increased their wages by 15%, reduced their hours from 60 to 40 hours per week, bought new machinery, and elected management committees.

In Catalunya, libertarian workers showed impressive results in maintaining the complex infrastructure of the industrial society they had taken over. The workers who had always been responsible for these jobs proved themselves capable of carrying on and even improving their work in the absence of bosses. “Without waiting for orders from anyone, the workers restored normal telephone service within three days [after heavy street fighting ended]... Once this crucial emergency work was finished a general membership meeting of telephone workers decided to collectivize the telephone system.”[50] The workers voted to raise the salaries of the lowest paid members. The gas, water, and electricity services were also collectivized. The collective managing water lowered rates by 50% and was still able to contribute large amounts of money to the anti-fascist militia committee. The railway workers collectivized the railroads, and where technicians in the railroads had fled, experienced workers were chosen as replacements. The replacements proved adequate despite their lack of formal schooling, because they had learned through the experience of working together with the technicians to maintain the lines.

Municipal transportation workers in Barcelona — 6,500 out of 7,000 of whom were members of the CNT — saved considerable money by kicking out the overpaid directors and other unnecessary managers. They then reduced their hours to 40 per week, raised their wages between 60% (for the lowest income bracket) and 10% (for the highest income bracket), and helped out the entire population by lowering fares and giving free rides to schoolchildren and wounded militia members. They repaired damaged equipment and streets, cleared barricades, got the transportation system running again just five days after fighting ceased in Barcelona, and deployed a fleet of 700 trolleys — up from the 600 on the streets before the revolution — repainted red and black. As for their organization:

the various trades coordinated and organized their work into one industrial union of all the transport workers. Each section was administered by an engineer designated by the union and a worker delegated by the general membership. The delegations of the various sections coordinated operations in a given area. While the sections met separately to conduct their own specific operations, decisions affecting the workers in general were made at general membership meetings.

The engineers and technicians, rather than comprising an elite group, were integrated with the manual workers. “The engineer, for example, could not undertake an important project without consulting the other workers, not only because responsibilities were to be shared but also because in practical problems the manual workers acquired practical experience which technicians often lacked.” Public transportation in Barcelona achieved greater self-sufficiency too: before the revolution, 2% of maintenance supplies were made by the private company, and the rest had to be purchased or imported. Within a year after socialization, 98% of repair supplies were made in socialized shops. “The union also provided free medical services, including clinics and home nursing care, for the workers and their families.”[51]

For better or worse, the Spanish revolutionaries also experimented with Peasant Banks, Labor Banks, and Councils of Credit and Exchange. The Levant Federation of Peasant Collectives started a bank organized by the Bank Workers Union to help farmers draw from a broad pool of social resources needed for certain infrastructure- or resource-intensive types of farming. The Central Labor Bank of Barcelona moved credit from more prosperous collectives to socially useful collectives in need. Cash transactions were kept to a minimum, and credit was transferred as credit. The Labor Bank also arranged foreign exchange, and importation and purchase of raw materials. Where possible, payment was made in commodities, not in cash. The bank was not a for-profit enterprise; it charged only 1% interest to defray expenses. Diego Abad de Santillan, the anarchist economist, said in 1936: “Credit will be a social function and not a private speculation or usury... Credit will be based on the economic possibilities of society and not on interests or profit... The Council of Credit and Exchange will be like a thermometer of the products and needs of the country.”[52] In this experiment, money functioned as a symbol of social support and not as a symbol of ownership — it signified resources being transferred between unions of producers rather than investments by speculators. Within a complex industrial economy such banks make exchange and production more efficient, though they also present the risk of centralization or the reemergence of capital as a social force. Furthermore, efficient production and exchange as a value should be viewed with suspicion, at the least, by people interested in liberation.

There are a number of methods that could prevent institutions such as labor banks from facilitating the return of capitalism, though unfortunately the onslaught of totalitarianism from both the fascists and Communists deprived Spanish anarchists of the chance to develop them. These might include rotating and mixing tasks to prevent the emergence of a new managing class, developing fragmented structures that cannot be controlled at a central or national level, promoting as much decentralization and simplicity as possible, and maintaining a firm tradition that common resources and instruments of social wealth are never for sale.

But as long as money is a central fact of human existence, myriad human activities are reduced to quantitative values and value can be massed as power, and thus alienated from the activity that created it: in other words, it can become capital. Naturally anarchists do not agree on how to strike a balance between practicality and perfection, or how deep to cut in order to root out capitalism, but studying all the possibilities, including those that might be doomed to failure or worse, can only help.

#anarchism #daily posts #communism #anti capitalist #anti capitalism #late stage capitalism #anarchy #anarchists #libraries #leftism #anarchy works

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aetherceuse · 1 year

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⟢ - Structure of the 𝐀𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

The 𝐀𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 operates as a corporation and trust, funding research for various fields of scientific study through grants. It also engages in many different charitable acts related to the rehabilitation and conservation of endangered Pokémon, especially those native to the islands of Alola.

The corporation was founded by current sitting president and CEO, Lusamine Delacroix, with her husband, Mohn Delacroix, serving as vice president until his disappearance. The pair set out to establish a higher standard for how humans, Pokémon and technology can work with one another, while benefiting the natural ecosystems. Aether works alongside many different organizations throughout, and outside of, Alola.

Fields of Interest

The foundation funds projects, research, innovations and expeditions related, but not limited to, conservation, ecology, biochemistry, physics, epidemiology, genetic engineering, and computer engineering. Scientists and scholars from across the globe often seek out the foundation’s funding, traveling to the Aether Paradise in order to meet with members of the board, and Lusamine herself. There is quite the impressive network of intellects connected to the foundation, and it is not unusual to see the Aether seal stamped onto many peer reviewed journals.

Grants and scholarships for students pursuing careers in STEM are also gifted by the Aether Foundation. Many of these students are then placed into internships at the paradise, or in one of the Aether Houses— and funneled into a permanent position of employment upon graduation. The foundation relies on having the most brilliant, cunning minds involved with their projects, and so they make sure to leave a good impression on the scientific community. It is pretty common to see an Aether representative at any major conference involving STEM, or around university campuses.

Working for the Aether Foundation

Employment with the Aether Foundation ranges across different positions— from field researchers, to chemists, to public relations, and many, many more. Those who work at the Aether Paradise work directly with Aether’s conservation programs, vaccination developments, and technology departments. And the genetics program and UB project, if you’re aware of the horrors.

Gaining employment, however, is no simple task. Lusamine expects an impressive resume, and a mind to match, but if somebody passes the hiring process, it is great job security— as long as they do not disappoint her.

All employees are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement upon being hired. All positions are by contract, and salary paid.

All employees are required to submit their biometrics.

The hierarchy

From highest to lowest:

President

Vice President (currently unoccupied)

Branch Manager

Assistant Branch Manager

Divisional Manager

Assistant Divisional Manager

Office Administration

Lead Associate

Associate

Intern

Scientists and research teams are categorized and ranked based on individual projects and assignments.

Accessing the Aether Paradise

If commuting to work, employees have two options: traveling across the water from one of the islands via Aether-owned ferry service, or by helicopter. The ferry service also carries tourists on public access days, so that they can experience the conservation deck, and tour the island.

Aether offers on-site dorms for those who would rather not commute back and forth all week, and for those who are staying on the artificial for an extended period of time for an assignment.

Security

Security is taken very seriously on the island; Lusamine is incredibly strict about it, and intends on keeping it that way.

All employees are assigned key cards, which are required to access all of the rooms and laboratories on the floors one through three.

All of the laboratories and doors on floor three, and in basements 1, 2 and 3 require a fingerprint and retina scan.

Certain high-security areas require two or three employees to use fingerprint or retina scan in order to unlock the door for access.

Higher ranked foundation members and scientists have a chip implanted in their left wrist, which is used as a “master key” to access everything on the Aether Paradise, along with the locks for the Aether House and research stations.

Basements 1, 2 and 3 have safety laser scanners installed that are programmed to scan every room, laboratory and corridor every fifteen minutes. If a persons whose biometrics have not been logged into Aether’s system is picked upon, an alarm goes off, and all doors are locked. Only Aether security guards, or high ranked foundation members, are capable of unlocking the doors in order to remove the intruder.

ALL points of the Aether Paradise have motion sensing cameras and CCTV streaming.

Aether buildings are known for their monochrome coloring and bright fluorescent lights. This is to prevent employees and visitors from finding dark or secluded corners to hide in, and discourages people from attempting to smuggle Aether property. It also makes it easy for visitors to be picked up on by the security cameras; everybody on staff is wearing all white, so somebody who is wearing even the slightest bit of color stands out.

In the case of an emergency, the Aether Paradise is capable of undergoing full lockdown mode. All incoming boats and aircraft are instructed to return to the mainland, and all outgoing forms of transportation are halted.

#✧˖°.« 𝙼𝚊𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚊𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚗 𝙱𝚊𝚌𝚑 » Headcanon

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antaxzantax · 4 months

Text

Umbrella Pharmaceuticals - Chapter 45

Summary:

Alexander Ashford and Alexia land at the Antarctic base.

Turbulence shook the plane as if it were going through a wormhole. One of the jolts spilled Alexander's unscrewed thermos. He and Jonathan scrambled to clean up the puddle of coffee on the floor and the droplets scattered on the wooden folding table. Alexia lulled herself sleepily into her thick, hooded fur coat, indifferent to the slip.

Stress had kept her from sleeping more than two consecutive hours for the past week, and the lack of sleep sharpened her irascibility. Five days before take-off, Elizabeth insisted that her granddaughter not go to Antarctica. Alexia replied so aggressively that her grandmother was struck dumb with surprise. Alexander sat down with her on the bed in her bedroom and asked her to explain what had happened. Alexia refused to answer. Surrendered, Alexander left for a moment. Alone, Alexia activated the mechanism of the music box and sat back down on the bed to listen to Berceuse.

After the incident with Elizabeth, Alexia met Dr. Sarah Charleigh, her new psychologist and specialist in gifted children. They only met twice. In the first session, Alexia filled out a personality questionnaire. In the second, Charleigh delved into her dreams and expectations. For the third, Charleigh would contact her by radio to start working on stress management and her newly acquired insomnia.

Alexander wiped his coffee with the handkerchief Jonathan passed him, chalking the slip up to fatigue. The last month's preparations had exhausted him.

He had to approve several lists of employees drawn up by the Institute. A research team of young, competent, ambitious and open-minded scientists. A trusted cleaning and maintenance staff. And a cadre of subordinates who were promised a higher base salary in exchange for their confinement at the South Pole. In terms of transporting personnel and materials, Alexander cut the lower quintile's allocation to tighten the budget. Harman turned to the Wilson brothers to scavenge Newcastle's municipal rubbish dump for bunk beds and lockers. For extra pay, the Wilsons took chairs, tables, desks and kitchen appliances. For a second allowance, the Wilsons collected food from local suppliers and soup kitchens.

Alexander reinvested the savings in one last decision. He ordered Martin to fly to Antarctica to dismantle and seal that site. Martin returned with the last report of the Code: Veronica project and photographs showing the lab's demise. He had destroyed the machines and sealed off the two entrances with a thick layer of reinforced concrete. Alexander glanced at the report.

“My children.”

He felt a sudden unease, similar to that of the Spencer mansion. The words he reread choked him.

He threw the report into the burning fireplace. The flames disintegrated the document.

He would die keeping the secret for the memory of his father and to protect his family.

III

The airplane landed on a makeshift runway cleared by snowplows. With the engines shut down, the five crew members descended the ramp in a line. The cold froze the ends of their hair and flushed their cheeks. Alexia, hood up, led the group to the entrance. Alexander set the two suitcases he was carrying on the ground and helped his daughter pull the frozen latch. The metal sheet gave way, and they stepped inside a half-buried building: first, Alexia, chief researcher; second, Alexander, director of the base; third, Martin, security chief and bodyguard; fourth, Jonathan, assistant butler, domestic assistant and cook; and fifth, Michael, pilot and staff supervisor.

It was hot inside. Alexia took off her hood. Alexander shook the ice from his beard and hair.

“Ready?” Martin nodded affirmatively. “Go.”

#resident evil #resident evil code veronica #alexia ashford #alexander ashford

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vivekavicky12 · 10 months

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Decoding Data Science: Unveiling the Vast Landscape and Career Opportunities

In the era of big data, Data Science has emerged as a transformative force, reshaping industries and driving innovation. This blog aims to unravel the essence of Data Science, exploring its multidisciplinary nature and shedding light on the extensive scope and promising career opportunities within this dynamic field. Whether you're a beginner or looking to specialize, understanding the types of data science courses available is crucial. Choosing the best Data Science Institute can further accelerate your journey into this thriving industry.

What is Data Science?

At its core, Data Science is the art and science of extracting valuable insights and knowledge from complex data sets. By employing a combination of scientific methods, algorithms, and domain-specific knowledge, Data Science transforms raw data into actionable intelligence. This multidisciplinary field encompasses statistics, mathematics, computer science, and more to analyze and interpret both structured and unstructured data.

Scope of Data Science:

Job Opportunities:

Data scientists are sought after across diverse industries such as finance, healthcare, technology, and e-commerce.

Roles include data analyst, machine learning engineer, data engineer, business intelligence analyst, and data scientist.

Educational Landscape:

The educational landscape for Data Science is expansive, with universities and online platforms offering a plethora of courses, degrees, and certifications.

Specialized programs cover machine learning, big data, data engineering, and business analytics to cater to varying skill levels.

Industry Integration:

Organizations are increasingly integrating data science into their operations, influencing decision-making processes.

Data-driven strategies impact areas like marketing, product development, and overall business strategy.

Government Initiatives:

Governments recognize the importance of data science in driving innovation and economic growth.

Initiatives and policies promote data literacy and skill development, aligning education with industry needs.

Diverse Applications:

Data science finds applications in diverse fields, including finance for fraud detection, healthcare for predictive analytics, marketing for customer segmentation, and agriculture for precision farming.

Its versatility is reflected in its broad spectrum of applications.

Competitive Salaries:

Skilled data science professionals command competitive salaries due to the specialized nature of their expertise.

Salaries vary based on factors like experience, location, and the specific role within the data science field.

Global Contribution:

Data scientists contribute globally, collaborating on projects addressing societal challenges, healthcare advancements, and environmental issues.

The global nature of data science fosters a culture of collaboration and knowledge exchange.

Continuous Innovation:

Data science stands at the forefront of technological innovation, driving advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning models, and predictive analytics.

Professionals engage in cutting-edge research, contributing to the ongoing evolution of the field.

Career Opportunities:

Data Scientist

Data Analyst

Machine Learning Engineer

Data Engineer

Business Intelligence Analyst

Data Architect

Statistician

Quantitative Analyst

Research Scientist

Predictive Modeler

Data Science is not just a field; it's a dynamic force shaping the future of industries. With a vast scope and diverse career opportunities, it offers a compelling journey for those seeking to immerse themselves in the intersection of technology, analytics, and innovation. As organizations continue to recognize the value of data-driven insights, the demand for skilled data scientists is set to soar, making Data Science a promising and rewarding career path. Choosing the best Data Science courses in Chennai is a crucial step in acquiring the necessary expertise for a successful career in the evolving landscape of data science.

#data science certification #data science course #data science training #datascience #technology

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datavalleyai · 1 year

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5 Reasons to Become a Full Stack Developer

Many engineers and professionals nowadays master full-stack development skills to help them advance in their careers. While top companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft continue to hire experienced full-stack developers, many people believe the career is unstable and risky. Is it worthwhile to pursue a profession in full-stack Java development? Yes, indeed! By learning the necessary skills and gaining hands-on experience to become a competent full-stack Java developer, you could gain tremendous benefits. Before pursuing a career in full-stack programming, it is critical to clear your uncertainties.

This blog post will lead you through the benefits of learning full-stack Java development and establishing a career in the field.

1. Working on Cutting-Edge Technologies

Full stack developers often find themselves at the forefront of technological innovation. They get to experiment with the latest frameworks, libraries, and programming languages in both front-end and back-end development. This constant exposure to cutting-edge tech keeps their skills sharp and their work engaging. Whether it’s creating responsive user interfaces or optimizing server performance, full stack developers are hands-on with the most current tools and techniques.

2. Global Opportunities

The global demand for your skills is one of the benefits of being a full stack developer. With the rise of remote work and an increased reliance on web-based solutions, your abilities can be utilized anywhere in the world. This means you’ll be able to work for organizations in other countries, contributing to a variety of initiatives and widening your perspectives. The global nature of full stack development provides an exceptional opportunity to interact with people from all cultures and backgrounds.

Remote employment is typically appealing to full stack engineers. Working remotely is especially appealing to those who want location independence or have personal responsibilities that necessitate a flexible schedule.

3. Competitive Salaries

The demand for full stack developers is on the rise, and with the demand comes competitive salaries. Because of their extensive skill set and ability to work on both the front-end and back-end of web applications, full stack developers are among the highest paid in the tech sector. If you want a financially rewarding profession, becoming a full stack developer is a great decision.

Companies value full stack developers for their ability to streamline development processes and bridge the gap between different teams. This high demand for full stack skills translates to higher salaries and numerous job opportunities. Full stack developers often find themselves in a favorable bargaining position when negotiating compensation packages.

4. Career Growth Options

Choosing a profession as a full stack developer opens up prospects for enormous advancement. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of full stack development jobs will increase dramatically in the next few years. This means that talented full stack developers will have plenty of options to find work and progress their careers. A full stack developer career offers a wide range of prospects, as full stack developers are top-tier engineers with exceptional abilities to engage with many development components at any step of the process.

Companies are also choosing for one multi-developer rather than multiple developers on the same project these days. It not only saves money but also slows down the development process. This is considerably increasing the need for full stack developers around the world.

5. Cross-Functional Expertise

Full stack developers are like the bridge builders of the tech world. They seamlessly integrate the front-end and back-end components, ensuring that the entire system runs smoothly. Because of their cross-functional experience, they can understand the full picture and develop well-integrated apps. It’s like having a symphony conductor who knows the intricacies of every instrument. Full stack developers can create more efficient, unified, and strong solutions by understanding all sides of the development process. It also fosters better collaboration with different teams, including designers, testers, and product managers.

By mastering both front-end and back-end development, you become a valuable asset in any development team. You can bridge the gap between designers and developers, ensuring that the user interface aligns with the underlying functionality. This cross-functional knowledge allows you to create seamless and efficient web applications.

Conclusion:

The journey of becoming a full stack developer may require dedication, continuous learning, and hands-on experience. However, the rewards are substantial. With opportunities to work on cutting-edge technologies, expand your career globally, earn competitive salaries, explore diverse career paths, enjoy remote work options, and leverage cross-functional expertise, the path of a full stack developer is undoubtedly an enticing one.

So, if you’re passionate about technology and love solving complex problems, full stack development might just be the ideal career for you. As the tech industry continues to evolve, full stack developers will remain invaluable contributors to its growth and innovation. Dive into the world of full stack development, accept its challenges, and start a rewarding journey that will lead to a dynamic and satisfying career.

To kickstart your journey as a Java Full Stack Developer, we suggest you explore the free bootcamp at Datavalley. Our programs provide the training and expertise you need to thrive in this versatile and dynamic field. Join us at Datavalley, and let’s shape the future of technology together!

Key points about Bootcamps:

It is completely free, and there is no obligation to complete the entire course.

20 hours total, two hours daily for two weeks.

Gain hands-on experience with tools and projects.

Explore and decide if the field or career is right for you.

Complete a mini-project.

Earn a certificate to show on your profile.

No commitment is required after bootcamp.

Take another bootcamp if you are unsure about your track.

FAQs

1. What is full stack development?

Full stack development refers to the practice of working on both the front-end and back-end of web applications. It involves creating the user interface, implementing functionality, and managing databases and servers.

2. Why should I become a full stack developer?

Full stack developers are in high demand, offering a wide range of career opportunities, competitive salaries, and the chance to work on cutting-edge technologies. Their cross-functional expertise is a valuable asset in the tech industry.

3. Do I need to know multiple programming languages to be a full stack developer?

Yes, full stack developers typically work with various programming languages for front-end and back-end development, depending on the project’s requirements. Common languages include JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and Java.

4. What technologies should I learn to become a full stack developer?

You should focus on technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, front-end frameworks (e.g., React or Angular), back-end frameworks (e.g., Node.js or Django), and databases (e.g., MySQL or MongoDB). Familiarity with version control systems and deployment tools is also crucial.

5. Are full stack developers in demand globally?

Yes, full stack developers are sought after worldwide. As technology continues to advance, the demand for professionals who can work on both the front-end and back-end of applications remains consistently high.

6. Can I work as a remote full stack developer?

Absolutely! Many companies offer remote work options for full stack developers. This flexibility allows you to work from anywhere and collaborate with international teams.

7. What is the career growth potential for full stack developers?

Full stack developers can advance their careers in various directions, such as becoming specialized front-end or back-end developers, technical leads, or even transitioning into roles like DevOps engineers or software architects.

8. What should I look for in a full stack development bootcamp?

A good bootcamp should offer a comprehensive curriculum, experienced instructors, hands-on projects, and real-world experience. Look for programs that align with your career goals and provide the opportunity to work on diverse projects.

9. How long does it take to become a proficient full stack developer?

The duration can vary depending on your background and the intensity of your learning. Datavalley offers programs ranging from four to six months, providing the necessary skills to launch your career.

10. Is a full stack developer’s role suitable for beginners with no prior experience in programming?

Full stack development can be challenging for beginners, but it’s possible to learn with dedication and practice. Our bootcamps are designed to accommodate individuals with no prior experience, making it accessible to newcomers in the field.

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sharonjoytiapez · 1 year

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What is STEM Strand?

STEM Strand – The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Strand (STEM) in the Philippines is a specialized educational track that focuses on preparing students for future careers in these fields. It aims to equip students with the necessary skills, knowledge, and experience to excel in science and technology-related fields. In recent years, the demand for STEM professionals has increased significantly in the Philippines. As such, many schools across the country have started offering STEM as an educational track, with the government actively promoting it as a priority area of education.

In the Philippines, the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) strand is a specific educational path that aims to prepare students for future professions in these sectors. It strives to give students the abilities, information, and experience they need to succeed in fields related to science and technology. The Philippines has seen a considerable rise in the demand for STEM workers in recent years. As a result, a lot of schools nationwide have begun to offer STEM as a course of study, and the government is actively marketing it as a top-priority subject. We shall examine the STEM program in the Philippines, its goals, and importance in this article.

Objectives of STEM Strand

The STEM strand aims to develop students' problem-solving, communication, and curiosity skills in senior high school. Graduates with a STEM background will : Have improved their creativity and ingenuity skills, which are crucial for developing novel concepts and innovations.

Significance of STEM Strand

The Philippines' economic progress depends on STEM education. Because of this, the government has put measures in place to support STEM education. The STEM strand is a priority area of education, according to the Department of Education, because it is essential for the growth and development of the nation's economy.

In the Philippines, STEM graduates are in high demand, particularly in industries like engineering, IT, and science. According to a recent Department of Labor and Employment report, STEM-related occupations pay among the highest wages in the nation, with monthly salaries ranging from PHP 30,000 to PHP 80,000.

Curriculum of STEM Strand

Students will have a firm foundation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through the STEM strand's curriculum. Numerous subjects are covered, such as biology, physics, chemistry, computer science, and mathematics. To aid students in the development of practical abilities, the curriculum also incorporates hands-on activities, laboratory experiments, and research projects.

Additionally, the STEM strand stresses the value of leadership, cooperation, and communication skills. These abilities help students work well in teams and successfully convey difficult ideas and concepts to others, making them crucial for success in STEM disciplines.

Career Opportunities for STEM Graduates

In the Philippines, there are numerous employment options for STEM graduates. Engineering, information technology, science, mathematics, and research are the fields where STEM graduates are most in demand. Excellent employment prospects, competitive pay, and chances for career advancement are all features of these areas.

Furthermore, as the Philippines continues its transition to a knowledge-based economy, the demand for STEM workers is anticipated to rise in the upcoming years. The demand for STEM workers in the Philippines is anticipated to increase by 21% over the next five years, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.

Challenges in Implementing STEM Strand

Although the STEM strand has great potential for the Philippines, implementing it is not without difficulties. The scarcity of educators and teachers who are qualified to teach STEM courses is one of the major problems. Finding qualified instructors with the skills and experience needed to teach STEM topics effectively is a challenge for many institutions.

The lack of finance and resources is another issue. Many schools struggle to supply the tools and resources required to promote STEM teaching. This may reduce students' access to hands-on learning opportunities, laboratory experiments, and research projects—all crucial parts of STEM education.

Conclusion

In summary, the STEM strand is an essential component of education in the Philippines that attempts to prepare students for employment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It gives students a strong foundation in these areas and helps them acquire the skills they need to be successful in STEM-related occupations.

Although the STEM strand confronts significant difficulties in implementation, its importance for the Philippines' economic development cannot be understated. In order to fulfill the growing need for STEM experts, the government is dedicated to boosting STEM education. But working together, governments, the commercial sector, and educators will be necessary to address the issues the STEM strand is experiencing.

The STEM strand is an excellent option for students to think about if they want pursue a career in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. It gives you the chance to investigate several career routes as well as a solid foundation in these subjects and useful abilities.

In conclusion, the STEM educational track is significant and essential for the development and expansion of the Philippine economy. In order for students to be successful in fields linked to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, it is important that they have the skills, knowledge, and experience that are required. The government and educators must collaborate to overcome these obstacles and advance STEM education across the nation, notwithstanding the difficulties associated with its implementation.

#What is STEM Strand?#What is STEM?#stem student

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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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500th Article Special: House of Claremont Part 1: A Wein Start (Giant Size X-Men#1): A Rope of Sand

Welcome to my 500th article extravaganza you happy people! Yes folks it's been a long road: three years, countless reviews of Duck Based Media, regular coverage of Ducktales, Owl House and Amphibia. I've had high points with successes like my Scott Pilgrim Retrospective, my coverage of the season 1 and 2 arcs of ducktales, an annual best of episode list, my three cabs retrospective, covering all 12 issues of watchmen, two seasons of thomas the tank engine and three seasons of venture bros among MANY more things i'm probably forgetting. I've also had projects that stalled: I still haven't finished life and times of scrooge mcduck and will probably have to start all over again with New X-Men at some point. I've had schedule slippage, delays and what have you.

But i'm proud of how far i've come: I have three patreons, multiple commissioned reviews a month, and 500 articles under my belt. After years and years of wanting to review stuff I finally am, I have a loyal fanbase who loves what I do, good fans who turned into good friends, and i'm STILL going. I'm still doing this three years later. I thought by now the bottom would fall out but here I am. So before I get into the festivities anymore i'd just like to say: Thank you all. Thank you for reading, thank you for staying, thank you for following. Wether you just read one or two reviews or read every damn one, thank you. Thank you all. And special thanks to Kev for bankrolling about half my salary, Emma for doing most of the other, and Brotoman for being a new yet loyal patreon who helped me revive a project I couldn't be happier is going at top speed. Thank you all. I love you guys.

So for my 500th spectacular I wanted to do something that both fit the history of the blog but was still something neat to do, especially since this also doubles as my annual birthday review. For those new to the tradition: I start a new project based on something dear to my heart, my very soul. Something that is a very real part of me. And the choice this time was easy: If there's one thing i've talked about on the blog every chance I get, one thing that is a true part of me and I geek out about at every chance, if there's one thing I had only scratched the surface of it was the Uncanny, Amazing, Astonishing, Classic, Extraordinary, Immortal, New, Blue, Gold, Red, Black , Green and X-Treme X-Men. There's no one franchise in comics that has kept my attention, created so many characters I love, and given me this much joy.

The question though was what to cover: The X-Men are a MASSIVE franchise and there are tons upon tons of runs I want to cover at some point: New Mutants Original Run, Every Run of X-Factor (Particularly the three runs by Peter David and one by Leah Williams), New Mutants excellent 2010's run by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, Cable's Solo Series, Uncanny X-Force, X-Statix, Iceman's solo after coming out, Cullen Bunn's trilogy of stellar work on the franchise.. the list goes on quite a while.

But what I settled on was something that's both obvious and daunting: A run on the merry mutants that set the tone for everything, and changed their world forever. That took a decent but forgettable Fantastic Four knockoff with a lot of potential and made it one of the greatest comics of all time. As you can tell by the title , we're talking about Chris Claremont's run on Uncanny X-Men… though before we can get into it in full next time we're starting with what kicked it off.. a book ironically NOT by Chris Claremont but which would set up the characters and themes he'd follow since. A book that's a tad awkward, somewhat dated, but still big, fun and has an island that walks like a man. We're talking Len Wein and David Cockrums Giant Sized X-Men #1 Under the Cut.

HIstory of X: To understand why this run and it's start, sorta but we'll get to that, with Giant Sized X-Men #1 was such a big deal you have to understand the state the X-Men were in when Giant SIzed X-Men #1 was published.

See the X-Men of the 60's came about because Stan's editor wanted more books dammit since Stan and his oftentimes creative Partner Jack Kirby were a lisecnes to print money. And given Stan had at this point created Spider-Man, Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Ant Man, the Wasp, the Avengers, and brought back Namor and Captain America, he wasnt' exactly wrong. So while he created yet another solo hero in Daredevil, again not exactly wrong, he needed another team book too. Problem was you could only have a hero fall into a radioactive vat of cream of wheat so many times before it got boring. Stan The Man needed a new way to create new heroes and villians.

And that folks is how we got mutants: "Er their just born with it! Yeah people with power exists! That's the ticket! Excelesior!"

That said as hilariously simple and need based as the solution was.. it was still brilliant. A one size fit all solution for when a writer didn't have time for a villains power. An easy out: you can still give them a backstory and such if you fancy, but this way if you didn't have a reason for the villains power in mind, just make them a mutant. It came up quite a bit till decimation for a reason after all: it was just easy to make them when anyone could be one if they weren't introduced as a human already. Was it a cheap narrative device? yes. Was it one that others would use brilliantly in a myriad of ways? Hell yeah. He also decided to make a teen team, with the original 5 x-men, now enshrined in most continuities as the OG's before whatever modern team pops up, consisting of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Beast (Pre-hairy), and Angel lead by Professer Xavier, fighting the dreaded Magneto. A lot of the basic stuff from the school to a lot of the most iconic x-men are there from the start.. but the basic element of protecting a world that hates and fear them took a second and even then it wasn't fully crystalized.

And that was kinda the problem: while stan and later roy thomas intital run wasn't lacking for great ideas, iconic foes the Sentinels and Juggernaut were Stan's idea, it kinda feel more often int0 being just another superhero book: For starter stan's teens, from what i've raed of classic x-men (which I also intend to cover), was very

Especially compared to Spidey which has some of this, but still felt a bit closer to earth. The idea of a superhero school was brilliant.. but the problem was at this poitn it was a prep school with pretty stock , if still deeply loveable teen characters; Brooding troubled hunk Scott, richie rich Warren, female sterotype because Stan Lee's talents didn't includ ewriting women Jean, jokester baby of the bunch bobby and erudite badass jock hank. Okay not all typical, even before he got all beasty, Hank was still a standout. They weren't terrible character, there's a reason they've endured since and this run brings all of them back for guest spots or in the case of Scott, Jean and Warren brings them back as full members at various points, eventually cumilating in the spinoff X-Factor. The seeds of who they are, Scott's brooding workaholic nature, Warren's rich joviality, Jean's warm caring nature, Bobby being fun personified and hank being the best before his long slow dark decsent into being a macvilian jackass, it's all there and stan and later roy thomas deserves credit for it.

The Lee and later Thomas era wasn't bad.. but it just wasn't anything new for the silver age. The foes were mostly just "bwahahahah i'm evil" types, including shockingly Magneto. Even I forget he started as trying to conquer the worlds for mutants not because of deep seated trauma but because that's what super villians did. There wasn't the complexity the franchise would gain with the iteration i'm talking about here. We got the first hints of that with Denny O Neils breif but fondly remembered run that brought in Havok and Polaris, Scott's brother who sure is there and Magneto's daughter who sure is awesome, but ultimately it just wasn't a huge standout from Stan's other team books. It's more worth checking out for what Lein Wein and directly after him Chris Claremont made of it, and what Denny O Neil before them did, than as some big silver age gem. So it's no shock that with feedback on O'Neils run reaching them too late to keep him from giong back to dc that the X-Men eventually got the boot. they remaind in reprints because back then it wasn't as easy to get those and the book still had a cult fanbase, but the x-men for all intensive purposes were dead. The team wasn't gone: Hank got his own solo adventures that made him a real beast before joining the avengers and the X-Men showed up every so oftne as guests.. but the strangest heroes of all were on the backburner. Thankfully as luck would have it the X-Men had a key ally in their corner; Roy Thomas, marvel legend, creator of my boy the Vision, and former X-Men Writer. He had grown attached to the team and wanted them to come back, and kept pitching. Eventually he got his chance when President of Marvel Al Landau, wanting to break into foreign markets with thier reprints more, suggested an international team of heroes. And since the X-Men were doing nothing and needed a fresh shot in the arm anyway, Roy gladly volunteered.

He originally leaned into the global aspect, pitching the idea of the x-men traveling around the world in a floating base, rescuing new mutants and generally being global. Which honestly does sound badass and if it hasn't been recycled yet it needs to be. It didn't end up going ahead as this for whatever reason, possibly because Thomas Himself , being an editor and busy as heck, coudln't do the book himself.

He did put it in good hands though with at the time Hulk writer Lein Wein and former Legion of Super-Heroes artist David Cockrum. And for those just joining us i'm a massive Legion of Super Heroes fan so finding out years later as I got into them that they both shared an artist at one point was a feeling so awesome i'ts hard to describe. Both also brought a character along for the ride: For Wein he was currently working on Hulk, and when asked by editorial to create a Canadian superhero, ended up creating the best at what he does, Wolverine.. and what he did in his debut was fight the Hulk himself, AND live and also fight a Wendigo because every sundae needs a cherry. So he was in.

Cockrum brought in an awesome character he'd designed for a Legion spinoff. But with him leaving DC because they wouldn't let him have some original art, which given Cockrum went on to help create their competitors most popular book of the 1980s, was moronic even by executive jackassery standards, he brought Nightcrawler with him and he eventually shifted from a sardonic ghoulish alien to the friendly chap with the demonic face we know and love.

The result of this powerful partnership was one of the most important comics in marvel history.

My history with the comic is probably baffling to any younger readers: See I had the comic on CD-Rom

In the 90's marvel did a bunch of these: it's how I became a lifelong fan of the hobgoblin by seeing his first appearance and got my first taste of legendary writer, artist and ego John Byrne's Fantastic Four run. Which is also on my to do list along with the runs of Mark Waid, Jonathan Hickman, and Matt Fraction's run with Scott Lang. I inherited these Discs from my brother and in the early 2000's somewhere, I popped em in and throughly enjoyed myself.

While a Wizard Magazine focused on X-Men's greatest moments and X2 made me an X-Men fan for life, this issue is what cemented it. I feel it shaped a lot of my opinons on the house of x as I got more and more into it. And with some nice sound effects, data files and other nice widgets it was a great way to dive right in, to the point I later bought the first two masterworks for the uncanny era simply because it had this issue.

It's opening is a big reason. It's one of my faviorite scenes in all of comic books, one of the best character introductions i've seen period, and introduces one of my favorite characters all in one go. We open in a sleepy remote village in gemany where a bloodthirsty mob, the kind you might see in a Universal or Hammer monster film, is out for the blood… yet in a clever reversal of this old cliche, it's the target of their bloodlust that's our viewpoint character.

It sets up Kurt perfectly: He's a perfectly normal, charming guy who simply dosen't want to live his life being pointed and laughed at for being different. It's a fair and honest thing anyone in said "Freak Show" should be able to have. It's not.. phrased the best, mid 70's and all. But instead of being welcomed by this small town, by society, he's shunned simply for looking different. They see him as a monster and try to burn him simply because he looks different. It's prejudiced boiled down to it's core: people hating something because it's different, and instead of trying to approach it with an open mind, instead bring out a closed fist. And when they try to burn him out, he decides if their going to think he's a monster than so be it and goes down fighting as they end up overwhelming and restraining him ready to stake him

I'll admit the villagers are heavy handed: It's a literal angry mob complete with a wooden steak, clearly having the wrong issue as Dracula's guest appearance isn't for another couple of years. It'd only be less subtle if the dialogue read

Yet it works: Sure people aren't going to be forming a mob to go stake a trans, nonbinary, queer, or POC person, but they'll do everything in their power to make that persons life harder simply because they don't agree they should exist and can't accept it. Prejudice sadly will probably never go away because there will always be hatred, ignorance, religious dogma and white supremacist nutballs. They just say the loud part quite.. unless your Kanye West. There are still assholes commiting violent hate crimes and others trying ot massage those hate crimes on television or the internet because they just can't be happy unless people they don't like for reasons of prejudice and hate are miserable. Kurt just wanted what we all want, to be treated like a person and he nearly died for it Thankfully it was just nearly as we get a nice moment of Charles Xavier demonstrating just how scarily powerful he is: with one thought he paralizes every one of the mob in motion and has a nice long conversation with Kurt afterwords. He'd heard Kurt had come to learn.. and well he happens to have a school for mutants that coudl use someone like him. Their conversation after Xavier makes the option is one of my faviorite exchanges in X-Men:

It gets to the core of the franchise: You don't have to be normal.. just be a whole you.. and that will be fine. And that's all Charles wants: not for his students to perfectly blend in, but to be who they should be, to be their best, and to fight for a world where they can be without being feared and hated. And with that Kurt goes with him. All Kurt wants to be is treated like any othe rperson and for the first time someone does, while showing Kurt he dosen't have to be normal: just a whole Kurt Wagner.

Next up is the best at what he does.. and what he does is stare longingly at a photo of Jean Grey. But since he hasn't met her yet, he's made due being an oprative for the Canadian Goverment as Weapon X. Yes it's

Turns out Charles Xavier knows people so he easily got a meeting to speak with Wolverine. While I like Kurt's the most out of all the intros wolvie's is still great, with him just kinda swaggering in there, and being fine with listening to Charles offer for a new job. It also sells him as a badass long before he'd earn the title: Charles mentions his debut fighting hulk and how he sought out Wolverine specially because he needs someone that strong and skilled. It dosen't take much either: Charles offers him a job as a free agent, and being able to escape government red tape sounds fine just fine so he takes it and agrees to quit. His boss mr. soldier.. guy here… dosen't take it especially well so Wolverine has to deal with it with all the grace and tact he's famous for

He'll regret those words as this guy will take that as "Challenge Accepted", but we'll get to that another day.

We get our shortets recuritment yet with Banshee, which only takes two panels but it's understandable: The rest of the cast are either brand new, or in the case of Wolverine relatively new. Banshee however had been a recurring character for a bit, a former criminal brainwashed by the evil mutant empire known as Factor Three.. which naturally was acftually run by an alien wanting world domination because comic books. This.. wont' be the last time an alien was largely responsible for the X-Men's woes for a while, but we'll get to that next time.

Since the Professor asked nicely and it's an opportunity to turn things around, Banshee's happy to help. He also gets a slight redesign having looked a tad inhuman.. which was apparnetly the idea as creator Roy Thomas apparently intended for him to be a "GIANT LEPRECHAUN".

Yeah.. I have no real joke here. Roy Thomas wanted the only major irish character in marvel comics at the time.. to be a LITERAL LEPRECHAUN. Thankfully Len Wein hard noed out of that and had Cocrum make hi mlook like you know.. a person. Banshee also adds something as being a bit older: not as old as charles, but still older and experinced enough to be an extra mentor to the group.

So next we go to Kenya to meet storm and well… you just kinda have to see this part for yourself.

Yeah… maybe having your first major black character in a franchise, and marvel's first major black woman character be a mock goddess for a bunch of stereotypically dressed villagers who want to slaugther animals in her name and has to have it told by a white man that she needs to go into the real world might be just a touch horribly offensive. LIke there's still some good stuff to pick out of this mess: the drawings of Storm ussing her powers are beautiful and Charles does give out a great classic Charles Xavier speech to convince her to join the team…

While him saying she has a responsiblity just for being a mutant is oh such bullshit, she doesn't have to put on spandex and save the world because she has power charles, but he's not wrong that actually living in the world, even if some hate and fear her, is better than living a lie as a god, knmowing people instea dof having the mworship her. Also yeah.. she's topless this entire scene. It's far from the last time storm gets naked but here it just adds to the immense discomfort of the scene. Some great stuff in here but man oh man is it uncomfortably racist. Not the worst i've seen.. but i've seen some pretty deep lows so that's far from a compliment. Next up is Sunfire who has a neat as hell costume.. but is an arrogant racist prick. While he once fought the x-men only because his evil uncle tricked him into it, he still hates the US and only agrees to help out of arrogance. I used to love Shiro.. but honestly it was mostly the costume. Behind it.. he's just an arrogant racist prick, who while having some good damn reason to resent the west (his mom died during hiroshima), it still dosen't fully excuse him being a racist prick. His past is sad.. but it dosen't mean he should take it out on othe rpeople or be a jingoist dickhead. And the Dickhead part has nothing to do with his past, he's just.. ike this.

Next up we get another iconic intro to a character, and thankfully without any overt racisim this time. It's Soviet Russia and on a collective farm, Pitor Rasputin gladly works hard to help bring in the harvest when a young child, later revealed to be his sister Illyana who will become a major supporting character in this book and a main cast member in another later, as well as a longtime x-man herself, from a tractor.

It sets up Peter perfectly: He sees a child in trouble, dashes to save her without any hestiation, and when he ineveitbly has to destroy the tractor.. .worries about how his neighbors will possibly pay for a new one. It shows him for what he is: A Kind empahtetic paragon of good not unlike superman.

What makes this noticable as this was at the height of the cold war: tensions were flaring and woudl only get worse.. yet Wein and Cockrum still portrayed peter as a kind decent man doing his best. That just because a countries goverment and military might be pure evil.. dosen't mean every single person there is evil too. This is especailly enlighted as previously marvel had a bad habit of having COmmunists as one note villians.. instead here one is a hero and an honest one at that who loves his homeland and is a genuine patriot, he just so happens to also be a kindhearted young man. He is conflicted though when Xavier offers after the incident: He has great power.. but shoudln't it go to the state? Charles, once again expertly, aruges it belongs to the world.. and while Peter's heart wants him to stay with his beloved family and community.. his concisence tells him the offer is the right call and thus Colossus is born.

So it's back to racisim as we get John Proudstar. Whoboy. John Proudstar. John is an angry young man who hates living on the reservation.. and while a indgenous person with anger towards the community is an intresting angle and one actual indgenious writers have done great things with, this.. is a clueless white guy who has him take down a buffallo to make him look extra Apache and tell Charles..t his

I mean he's again not wrong.. and Charles response.. is to use racist sterotypes to basically bait him into joining. Like Pitor, Ororo and Kurt all got well reasoned arguments… he just gets "Well I guess your a pussy then huh John?" My god. The Storm stuff is bad but this. this is somehow worse. I'm really glad when John came back after several decades that an indeginous persons writer, Nyla Rose, wrote his one shot because jesus christ he was done dirty.

Anyways we're onto act 2 as the various new X-Men have assembled in Charles Foyer, complete with spiffy new uniforms courtsey of Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic Aka Jimmy the Reach. He says they'll meet him some day and true to his word some of them sure, do.

It also makes Storm's and colosus outfits, iconic as they are at ad creepier knowing a middle aged man dressed them this way.. which granted is also what happened in real life but it's a bit diffrent when ti's an actual character saying "Yes you sexy young people dress in next to nothing for me, your new commander> I promise it's all about moveablity.. and showing off them legs. "

Jokes abotu Charles being a dirty old man aside, the costumes are X-Cellent for the most part. And I only say the most part because Thunderbird looks like they stacked every native American sterotype they could on top of one another. I've seen worse, but it's very telling when coming back he only wore this trainwreck for one issue before getting a kickass new outfit.

The rest though.. the rest are fucking awesome. There's a reason that 90% of Colosus, Wolverine and Nightcrawlers outfits are based on this, and that all but one of storm's iconic looks has that cape, as well as Banshee just.. wearing that outfit until very recently and Sunfire usually doing the same.

Starting with Nightcrawler because he's my boy, and because his outfit is the only one out of this group that dosen't cahnge over claremont's run with the character. And it's easy to see why: The red pointy vest, white gloves and boots and heavy black jus tlooks damn cool and fits his showy, carny nature. The only thing that's ever changed is getting rid of the shoulder pads and I question.. why.

Speaking of shoulder's hey goons , thugs and bosses let's talk about Colosus. His outfit is skimpy when you see pitor without his metal form.. but it makes sense with it. The cool serated look (with writers making sure his muscles showed), NEEDS to be shown off and the red and yellow just perfectly fit peter's heroic and often hammy when mid combat nature. He has blue coverings for his legs here but those won't last long.

Storm's outfit is pretty good. It shows some skin, but it fits Ororo not really having any taboo about being naked, kind of how Starfire later would be a lot of the same way, and her strong, confident nature. The black and yellow will forever be her colors and the cool has heck headband and badass, neatly styled cape just complete the style. It's regal yet modern, even by today's standards.

Wolverine's is a classic and there's damn good reason the only thing Chris changed later was removing the shoulder pads, and changing the color to brown. I like both versions and both colors, so i'm fine either way, but the OG outfit, well the remodled og outfit, is still an utter flassic: the cool mask, awesome claws and bright blues and yellows truly help him stand out.

Banshee's outfit is awesome, mostly for one reason: while the cetner of it, the greens and yellows really work well together, it's the fucking black and yellow spiral cape that truly makes his costume an all timer. It's just hwat makes banshee banshee and ther'es a reason his daughter wears it and he does no matter the verison. Even when brainwashed or an angel of death, he still has some varation of it. Finally we have SUnfire. HIs costume is goofy, very sterotypically japanese..a nd yet awesome. The weird fish mask is just a banger and those eyes are just so freaking cool, and having a japanese flag perfeclty fits Japans #1 hero and someone whose a japanese nationalist.

Charles prepares to explain, simply having been waiting on someone else who was there first hand: Scott Motherfucking Summers, one of my faviorit x-men, THE leader of the team only equaled by storm in terms of record and iconography leading, and certified badass. A sfor the the details…

As for why he uses Cerebro to .. somehow take us back to what happened: The X-Men got a ping from Cerebro that a massive, powerful mutant had been awkaned on the islnad of Krakoa in the south Pacific. So that means…

It's no bub, sugar, boz moh, fraulien, mein gott, or juggernaught bitch that's for sure and it ain't very nice. It is however charmingly goofy.

Like this was just Cyclops catchphrase while the x-men were gone or something Scott tried to make a thing and none of his friends had the heart to tell him it wasn't working.

As I said, Hank is with the avengers now, something that comes up and Scott seems totally not at all bitter about it.

Dude he's busy fighting gods and WITH gods. Move on. Find another best friend whose super intellgent and has feet hands. I mean.. it'll be hard that's a narrow classification but you can check the want ads. Those are still a thing in 1975.

Things don't go well on the island as not only is it massive, making FINDING the mutant an issue, but they soon get attached and Scott only remembers some breif flashes of horros when he wakes up in the Blackbird, no memory of what happened, the controls locked to leave and his eyes suddenly normal. He tries his best to go back, to save his fellow x-men.. but resigns himself. it's who scott is: he won't give up until there's no other way and will press on through. Sadly the only GOOD part of this, that he can finally look someone in the eye without cool shades or a visor without slamming them into a table, doesn't last as soon his eyebeams are back and even STRONGER. And it's here I'm going to start a little counting gag for later

God Hates Scott Summers Count: 1 Trust me, we'll need this.

So that's the mission: Take this untested new team to Krakoa, save the x-men and defeat whoever took them down. Sunfire naturally nopes out. Which begs the question why he came at all. He could likely tell the x-men were out simply because Charles asked for his help and was alone, and if he didn't then the room full of strangers probably shoudl've clued him in. He comes back of course, but only after Thundebrird gets pissy with Storm for daring to not.. you know like that one of the first muatnt's she's met decided fuck these innocent people needing rescue who have saved an ungreatful world countless times. (also you should fuck off) He of course returns .. and is a racist ass to nightcrawler calling him misfit and getting angry later when he's paried iwth the guy, which Kurt snarks at him for.

Kurt: 83, Sunfire: -2 So once they approach Cyclops decides to have them split up gang to find the x-men: th eaformentioned team of nightcrawler and the human tire fire, wolverine and banshee, thunderbird and cyke himself and storm and colossus. Colossus tries to make a superhero landing but ororr catches him with a "you fool you cannot fly" not getting he can land. This does actually have a nice payoff in the story after this so props to Wein for thinking ahead as while he didn't write the story he did plot it. This does lead to one of the issue sproblem: there is a LOT of arguging and in the case of Thunderbird and Sunfire i'ts insufferable. And it really is sad that two of the only POC members of the group.. are insufferable egotistical assholes. I get the missiong sucks, it is kinda stupid, but I also get why it is: while it is depserate to grab whoever and put them on a missiong together, the x-men have no time for it, did apparently try to contact the avengers nad ff but both were busy: forming this new team.. is a last ditch effort. So the fact neither can show one ounce of empathy rankles me. It makes it hard to enjoy the campy, fun action when you have two guys who won't shut up about how much this blows every other page.

Thankfully we do get that campy action as each team encounters some gloriously weird shit and get to show off: Cyclops and THunderbirds fight some living vines, Storm and Colossus fight some rocks tha ttarget them, Nightcrawler and sunfire fight some birbs, with Storm and Wolvie and Banshee get the best of it

Killin Crabs, Their Krakoan! Kill em fast, pain explosion. Seriously I love me a good giant crab and you add in Wolverinme slicin em up and banshee voicesploding them and you have my fandom for life.

Our heroes all converge at a weird temple, and decide on the bst, most stealthy method to break in

With their kool aid manning done they find the OG X-Men and help get them unhooked from some weird vines entalging them all. Angel is less than Greatful

This bit.. has always bothered me and come off as face punchingly dickish. Yes I get it, Angel dosen't want Scott or these new strangers to get eaten. That's fine.. but how the fuck could Scott have possibly done anything else? Yes he likely smelled a trap even if not the distincitnly weird KIND of trap this was, but the love of his life, two of his best friends, his brother and his brothers girlfriend were all trapped here. How would he ever even consider for one second NOT coming back to save you all? To risk everything, to fight with EVERYTHING he has to save the people he loves most in the world? What kind of man would he be if he didn't and what kind of man are you, Warren, to be mad at him for trying.

As for what had them.. well that my friends is the most delightful twist. See i've talked abotu Krakoa.. so if you've followed my work you likely know what's coming.. but it is in the most glorious comic booky way possible. Ladies and gentleman I present…

Yes folks the All New All Diffrent X-Men's first foe.. is a fucking living island. It'd be retconned that h'es an ancient being and what not, but for now he's simply a gaint atomic mutant that's a living fucknig island that looks awesome, wants to eat our heroes, and WALKS LIKE A MAN. I have ALWAYS loved Krakoa, from the look to the gloriously goofy "island tha twalks like a man" moniker, to the fact the very ground xaviers was on was once a clone of him, an idea that was only topped when in 2019 they straight up MOVED to our boy, made them into a nation, and he becmae best friends with fellow boy Doug Ramsey. So. Fucking. Awesome.

Also just if your curious as to how this guy still eats now mutankind and him are cool and live on him… he still feeds off their energy. It's just instead of kidnapping them iwth conflulted super villian plans, he straight up asks for some of their energy as part of mutankinds lease, and with millions of mutants on krakoa… they don't even feel the tiny bit he takes. With millions of peopl ehe dosen't have to drain them to death, they willingly give it for giving them homes (seriously he amkes theM) food (that too) and a homeland.

Anyways back int he present.. or rathe rthe past, the x-men get a badass page fighting him

Only for Xavier to yell at scott that their efforts are meanless. I'm going to go ahead and not only add to this count God Hates Scott Summers: 3 For both this and the angel thing, but also start up this count Xavier is a Jerk: 3

2 for his treatment of thunderbird in diffrent ways (the name calling then the outfit thign) and 1 for yelling at Scott for doing the bes the could when he coudln't possibly know the plan. Xavier does have a good plan thoguH: have Storm and Polaris combine their powers to create a giant rainstortm and a magetic wave of force and stuff. Cyclops and Havok combine powers and use it to propel krakoa into the air.. and thanks to the magnet stuff, it seperate sthe island from the earths gravity FLINGING IT INTO SPACE

I'm conflicted on this finale. On the one hand.. it fucking rocks. I mean Scott launched an island into space. How he got back I truly don't know, and I don't care. it's coming. Weird shit happens a lot. Maybe he regrew. We don't know Krakoa the Island That Walks Like a Man's life. Leave Krakoa The Island that Walks LIke a Man Alone. But it really dosen't involve the new team all that much: Lorna does most of the heavy lifting, and only Storm really contributes. The rest of the action is Done by vetran x-men. For an issue spotlighting this new bold era.. it feels weird tha tthe resoultion is all up to the old guard. Maybe it was to give them a last hurrah but it still feels weird. At any rate our heroes survive, find the jet, and are vicotrious and happy. But their left with one little problem

And we'll find out next time. For now though Giant Sized X-Men has shown some flaws with aged, but is still a stellar start for this era. The characters mostly get great introductions, the art is crisp and awesome , and the new characters are intresting and engaging. There are some uncomfortable flecks of racisim strewn about, Thunderbird and Storm's origins paticuarlly are painful to read, and the last half is n't nearly as snappy as the first, with it mostly being the formula of "X-men veruss something on krakoa" for a few pages, then the finale not using the new characters hardly at all. Still the awesomeness of these x-men and them fighting a giant island cannot be overstated and the cheesy goodness helps paper over the weaker parts. Wein would not be there for it though> Whlie he plotted the next issue, as it was planned to just keep going with Giant Sized the issue ended up being a massive success.. so massive in fact, that they brought back the monthly instead. And since he could only handle one monthly book, hulk, Wein passed it over to a fresh face in the office,a young chap who had kept barging into meetins planning this who practically begged to get the roll. A man who would DEFINE the x-men and write them for the next 17 years: One Chris Claremont, whose run we properly start next time. Until then thanks for reading all this time, thanks for being here, and just.. thank you. Thank you all . Next Time: We wittle the roster down to 6 x-men as five leave and one dies. Then our All New All diffrent x-men deal with betryal, giant robots and space for the first time as the series first major overarching plot kicks up.. and the Sentinels return just in time for a late christmas.

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