#release order automation

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google is (still) losing the spam wars to zombie news-brands

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (May 3) in CALGARY, then TOMORROW (May 4) in VANCOUVER, then onto Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Even Google admits – grudgingly – that it is losing the spam wars. The explosive proliferation of botshit has supercharged the sleazy "search engine optimization" business, such that results to common queries are 50% Google ads to spam sites, and 50% links to spam sites that tricked Google into a high rank (without paying for an ad):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

It's nice that Google has finally stopped gaslighting the rest of us with claims that its search was still the same bedrock utility that so many of us relied upon as a key piece of internet infrastructure. This not only feels wildly wrong, it is empirically, provably false:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Not only that, but we know why Google search sucks. Memos released as part of the DOJ's antitrust case against Google reveal that the company deliberately chose to worsen search quality to increase the number of queries you'd have to make (and the number of ads you'd have to see) to find a decent result:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Google's antitrust case turns on the idea that the company bought its way to dominance, spending the some of the billions it extracted from advertisers and publishers to buy the default position on every platform, so that no one ever tried another search engine, which meant that no one would invest in another search engine, either.

Google's tacit defense is that its monopoly billions only incidentally fund these kind of anticompetitive deals. Mostly, Google says, it uses its billions to build the greatest search engine, ad platform, mobile OS, etc that the public could dream of. Only a company as big as Google (says Google) can afford to fund the R&D and security to keep its platform useful for the rest of us.

That's the "monopolistic bargain" – let the monopolist become a dictator, and they will be a benevolent dictator. Shriven of "wasteful competition," the monopolist can split their profits with the public by funding public goods and the public interest.

Google has clearly reneged on that bargain. A company experiencing the dramatic security failures and declining quality should be pouring everything it has to righting the ship. Instead, Google repeatedly blew tens of billions of dollars on stock buybacks while doing mass layoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Those layoffs have now reached the company's "core" teams, even as its core services continue to decay:

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

(Google's antitrust trial was shrouded in secrecy, thanks to the judge's deference to the company's insistence on confidentiality. The case is moving along though, and warrants your continued attention:)

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-2-trillion-secret-trial-against

Google wormed its way into so many corners of our lives that its enshittification keeps erupting in odd places, like ordering takeout food:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Back in February, Housefresh – a rigorous review site for home air purifiers – published a viral, damning account of how Google had allowed itself to be overrun by spammers who purport to provide reviews of air purifiers, but who do little to no testing and often employ AI chatbots to write automated garbage:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

In the months since, Housefresh's Gisele Navarro has continued to fight for the survival of her high-quality air purifier review site, and has received many tips from insiders at the spam-farms and Google, all of which she recounts in a followup essay:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

One of the worst offenders in spam wars is Dotdash Meredith, a content-farm that "publishes" multiple websites that recycle parts of each others' content in order to climb to the top search slots for lucrative product review spots, which can be monetized via affiliate links.

A Dotdash Meredith insider told Navarro that the company uses a tactic called "keyword swarming" to push high-quality independent sites off the top of Google and replace them with its own garbage reviews. When Dotdash Meredith finds an independent site that occupies the top results for a lucrative Google result, they "swarm a smaller site’s foothold on one or two articles by essentially publishing 10 articles [on the topic] and beefing up [Dotdash Meredith sites’] authority."

Dotdash Meredith has keyword swarmed a large number of topics. from air purifiers to slow cookers to posture correctors for back-pain:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/keyword-swarming-dotdash.jpg

The company isn't shy about this. Its own shareholder communications boast about it. What's more, it has competition.

Take Forbes, an actual news-site, which has a whole shadow-empire of web-pages reviewing products for puppies, dogs, kittens and cats, all of which link to high affiliate-fee-generating pet insurance products. These reviews are not good, but they are treasured by Google's algorithm, which views them as a part of Forbes's legitimate news-publishing operation and lets them draft on Forbes's authority.

This side-hustle for Forbes comes at a cost for the rest of us, though. The reviewers who actually put in the hard work to figure out which pet products are worth your money (and which ones are bad, defective or dangerous) are crowded off the front page of Google and eventually disappear, leaving behind nothing but semi-automated SEO garbage from Forbes:

https://twitter.com/ichbinGisele/status/1642481590524583936

There's a name for this: "site reputation abuse." That's when a site perverts its current – or past – practice of publishing high-quality materials to trick Google into giving the site a high ranking. Think of how Deadspin's private equity grifter owners turned it into a site full of casino affiliate spam:

https://www.404media.co/who-owns-deadspin-now-lineup-publishing/

The same thing happened to the venerable Money magazine:

https://moneygroup.pr/

Money is one of the many sites whose air purifier reviews Google gives preference to, despite the fact that they do no testing. According to Google, Money is also a reliable source of information on reprogramming your garage-door opener, buying a paint-sprayer, etc:

https://money.com/best-paint-sprayer/

All of this is made ten million times worse by AI, which can spray out superficially plausible botshit in superhuman quantities, letting spammers produce thousands of variations on their shitty reviews, flooding the zone with bullshit in classic Steve Bannon style:

https://escapecollective.com/commerce-content-is-breaking-product-reviews/

As Gizmodo, Sports Illustrated and USA Today have learned the hard way, AI can't write factual news pieces. But it can pump out bullshit written for the express purpose of drafting on the good work human journalists have done and tricking Google – the search engine 90% of us rely on – into upranking bullshit at the expense of high-quality information.

A variety of AI service bureaux have popped up to provide AI botshit as a service to news brands. While Navarro doesn't say so, I'm willing to bet that for news bosses, outsourcing your botshit scams to a third party is considered an excellent way of avoiding your journalists' wrath. The biggest botshit-as-a-service company is ASR Group (which also uses the alias Advon Commerce).

Advon claims that its botshit is, in fact, written by humans. But Advon's employees' Linkedin profiles tell a different story, boasting of their mastery of AI tools in the industrial-scale production of botshit:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

Now, none of this is particularly sophisticated. It doesn't take much discernment to spot when a site is engaged in "site reputation abuse." Presumably, the 12,000 googlers the company fired last year could have been employed to check the top review keyword results manually every couple of days and permaban any site caught cheating this way.

Instead, Google is has announced a change in policy: starting May 5, the company will downrank any site caught engaged in site reputation abuse. However, the company takes a very narrow view of site reputation abuse, limiting punishments to sites that employ third parties to generate or uprank their botshit. Companies that produce their botshit in-house are seemingly not covered by this policy.

As Navarro writes, some sites – like Forbes – have prepared for May 5 by blocking their botshit sections from Google's crawler. This can't be their permanent strategy, though – either they'll have to kill the section or bring it in-house to comply with Google's rules. Bringing things in house isn't that hard: US News and World Report is advertising for an SEO editor who will publish 70-80 posts per month, doubtless each one a masterpiece of high-quality, carefully researched material of great value to Google's users:

https://twitter.com/dannyashton/status/1777408051357585425

As Navarro points out, Google is palpably reluctant to target the largest, best-funded spammers. Its March 2024 update kicked many garbage AI sites out of the index – but only small bottom-feeders, not large, once-respected publications that have been colonized by private equity spam-farmers.

All of this comes at a price, and it's only incidentally paid by legitimate sites like Housefresh. The real price is borne by all of us, who are funneled by the 90%-market-share search engine into "review" sites that push low quality, high-price products. Housefresh's top budget air purifier costs $79. That's hundreds of dollars cheaper than the "budget" pick at other sites, who largely perform no original research.

Google search has a problem. AI botshit is dominating Google's search results, and it's not just in product reviews. Searches for infrastructure code samples are dominated by botshit code generated by Pulumi AI, whose chatbot hallucinates nonexistence AWS features:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/01/pulumi_ai_pollution_of_search/

This is hugely consequential: when these "hallucinations" slip through into production code, they create huge vulnerabilities for widespread malicious exploitation:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

We've put all our eggs in Google's basket, and Google's dropped the basket – but it doesn't matter because they can spend $20b/year bribing Apple to make sure no one ever tries a rival search engine on Ios or Safari:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-payments-apple-reached-20-220947331.html

Google's response – laying off core developers, outsourcing to low-waged territories with weak labor protections and spending billions on stock buybacks – presents a picture of a company that is too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Google promised us a quid-pro-quo: let them be the single, authoritative portal ("organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful"), and they will earn that spot by being the best search there is:

https://www.ft.com/content/b9eb3180-2a6e-41eb-91fe-2ab5942d4150

But – like the spammers at the top of its search result pages – Google didn't earn its spot at the center of our digital lives.

It cheated.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Image: freezelight (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spam_wall_-_Flickr_-_freezelight.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[adafruit]

🎄💾🗓️ Day 4: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar - The DEC PDP-11! 🎄💾🗓️

Released by Digital Equipment Corporation in 1970, the PDP-11 was a 16-bit minicomputer known for its orthogonal instruction set, allowing flexible and efficient programming. It introduced a Unibus architecture, which streamlined data communication and helped revolutionize computer design, making hardware design more modular and scalable. The PDP-11 was important in developing operating systems, including the early versions of UNIX. The PDP-11 was the hardware foundation for developing the C programming language and early UNIX systems. It supported multiple operating systems like RT-11, RSX-11, and UNIX, which directly shaped modern OS design principles. With over 600,000 units sold, the PDP-11 is celebrated as one of its era's most versatile and influential "minicomputers".

Check out the wikipedia page for some great history, photos (pictured here), and more -

And here's a story from Adafruit team member, Bill!

The DEC PDP-11 was the one of the first computers I ever programmed. That program was 'written' with a soldering iron.

I was an art student at the time, but spending most of my time in the engineering labs. There was a PDP-11-34 in the automation lab connected to an X-ray spectroscopy machine. Starting up the machine required toggling in a bootstrap loader via the front panel. This was a tedious process. So we ordered a diode-array boot ROM which had enough space to program 32 sixteen bit instructions.

Each instruction in the boot sequence needed to be broken down into binary (very straightforward with the PDP-11 instruction set). For each binary '1', a diode needed to be soldered into the array. The space was left empty for each '0'. 32 sixteen bit instructions was more than sufficient to load a secondary bootstrap from the floppy disk to launch the RT-11 operating system. So now it was possible to boot the system with just the push of a button.

I worked with a number DEC PDP-11/LSI-11 systems over the years. I still keep an LSI-11-23 system around for sentimental reasons.

Have first computer memories? Post’em up in the comments, or post yours on socialz’ and tag them #firstcomputer #retrocomputing – See you back here tomorrow!

[iteratorsex]

Entanglement, Impurity, and Kegare in Rain World

I mentioned before in another post that I would touch on the topic of impurity, rot, and kegare and how it continuously reappears in Vanilla and ESPECIALLY Watcher. Here it is.

But yes, it can't really be understated how important these are to the themes lore of ascension and entanglement in RW and the dichotomy that exists

This topic relates to FP, Hunter, Watcher, and the Ancients. It's all over the place man.

I actually got this idea from Darthz, who was the one who brought it up to me initially. I'm just expanding on it and writing it all down further

What is Kegare and Why Am I Bringing It Up

Kegare is a Shinto concept. Specifically it represents pollution alongside magakoto (abnormality) and tsumi (imperfection). The avoidance of these taboos itself is called imi. Though I'm only mentioning kegare, technically I am referring to all 3 of these terms (to make things easier)

It was accumulated through and/or caused by being victim of disaster, proximity to death, being physically unclean, committing terrible actions, or even childbirth (for sexism reasons. Don't worry about it)

It operates very similarly to karma, being determined by cause and effect and was amoral and natural. Though it was taboo, and those who may have had it were avoided, it was not out of sinful reasoning

"Also, suffering is not regarded as a form of punishment for human behavior, but, rather, as a natural element of human experience."

Having too much kegare would bring more misfortune, illness, and disaster with whoever carried it

About the Ancients and Karma Gates

The ancients themselves seem to ALSO have a taboo of a similar nature.

"May Not as long as the Stars stay fixed on their Celestial Spheres Grey Hand, Impure Blood, Inheritable Corruption, Parasites, or malfunction settle in Your establishment."

Though this isn't much to go off of.

Though maybe we can look to some outside sources. The steam released by the karma gates is said to be decontaminating. This is big. This is huge

Here you can see the steam coming out of either a vent below the grate, or coming off a heating coil, before the other side opens up.

These gates exist and were built in order to filter out and decontaminate whoever passes through, similar to harae. You wouldn't want any impurities passing through your temples and homes and facilities, would you?

"...and when the production was automated it would generally remain on the same site. So that the old stones could... radiate the material with holiness, I suppose."

Even in industrially automated processes, there was some spiritualism involved. Decontamination may have been pretty important as to not dirty up those so called holy stones

You see these gates in front of the AU voidbath and the path to FP in a long hallway. You even see it in Verdant Waterways, which may have just been a huge water purification plant! So the decontamination is still a factor there

Ancient Urban, FP's Roof, and Verdant Waterways in order.

"I was embalmed, adorned, readied for the journey."

If being dunked in void fluid required you to first be embalmed and sterilized, what does that imply? There was a worry of decomposition or decay when it came to the process of ascension.

About Five Pebbles and Hunter

Now seeing how kegare exists within the beliefs or actions of the Ancients and how much they wanted to prevent it from settling, what about seeing the consequences for yourself?

Five Pebbles contracted the rot after essentially killing Moon, something that would cause kegare (or, specifically tsumi here). He tried to break his taboos and ended up entangling himself further and also terribly hurting someone else, bringing with him sorrow that he tries to make up for in Hunter (see how often he mentions Moon?)

Though yes, it was CERTAINLY caused by him fucking up an experiment. Metaphorically, it is a form of kegare

Even the wording for the rot. Unfortunate... corruption... its a natural but terrible thing that happens

"He's sick, you know. Being corrupted from the inside by his own experiments.""...on his first fit of corruption he dumped a lot of infected material there..."

I even feel that the one off dialogue about FP and not using holy ash was subtle foreshadowing to what he's experiencing

Even in the only other place rot appears and spreads in is an actual DUMP!

But what about Hunter?

I believe that Hunter and Five Pebbles are intended to be narrative parallels to each other, having tried to change themselves in an act of desperation, but failing and contracting a disease.

"We both have something... unfortunate growing in us."

But how did Hunter get this "unfortunate" disease? Is it even The Rot?

Well... it's not directly the rot. But it's confirmed to be RELATED to it.

As for the cause of Hunter's disorder? I think this quote from the 1.5 kickstarter announcement can answer part of it.

"...It is a being pushing beyond the confines of its place in the ecosystem, and thus is karmically imbalanced in this world."

This is likely because of the fact that Hunter CHOSE to start killing and eating meat when it previously did not need to. It engaged with unsanitary acts of eating raw meat and hunting and killing, possibly out of desperation

And considering Hunter's disease, this and the karmic imbalance could very much be tied into each other. The fact that Hunter also accepts to deliver the Green Neuron, when it could have simply abandoned at any point, also shows that they're willing to also make up for the misfortune they carry, similar to Five Pebbles

Whatever it is, its clear disease, desperation, and karmic alignment all correspond and relate to each other. This desperation which is entangling, and which the Drainage pearl warns about, how struggling in the fishing net only results in you being more tangled in it

Also, the use of unfortunate in that pearl is not lost on me

"It says that the world is an unfortunate mess."

About Watcher

Watcher definitely ALSO leans into the uncleanliness aspect, as you can tell with the absurd amount of rot that's around everywhere

As well as this... there are no karma gates. The warps cannot cleanse you of whatever you carry between regions. Both ST and Watcher are like 2 kids dragging mud (rot) with them where they go

"So glad I cannot sniff! Spoiled meat, dissolving proteins. Yeeck."

There are entire regions dedicated to just this raw Pollution. It's disgusting and dirty and nobody wants to be in it, yet its clear this is just a natural thing. An unfortunate reality

The rot IS just straight up entanglement and the embodiment of the cycle itself, only existing to Consume and Reproduce. Its sticky and web-like, it corrupts and eats and decays. It's pretty in your face about what it is. The fact FP caught it while being desperate...? But I already talked about that before.

As well as this, Outer Rim is caked in mud, and so is Badlands (which warps to Unfortunate Evolution). These are the only places currently that have mud at all, and both lead to rot one way or another. The regions themselves Are Just Disgusting

Not to mention Station Annex (which also leads to UE) is just littered with lizard corpses...

Conclusion

Rot is kegare. A pollution of existence that is brought by disaster or terrible actions, and which causes misfortune and brings even more disaster

The Ancients themselves must have known of this- or at least known of a similar phenomenon to the rot with the same root and effect, and so built karma gates and continued practices to keep themselves clean while they lived and while they ascended

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

What exactly *are* the angels, in your opinion? Are they in fact Eridan's consorts? What do you think their purpose was supposed to be in the game?

ok, let's be super clear about this, the angels are NOT consorts.

Consorts are a very well-defined type of game NPC. they're drawn from the same bipedal, puppet/plushie looking base model, and always describable as a type of IRL amphibian or semi-aquatic reptile (to tie in with the genesis frog) - salamanders, iguanas, crocodiles, and turtles have all been seen. they serve as the first questgivers/exposition fairies a player will usually see (except in cases where they wake up on their moon early, in which case they might meet carapacians first), and will usually provide hints as to the player's personal quest, classpect abilities, etc.

while they aren't very smart, they can follow simple commands, and will automate building the player's house (which ultimately serves to release their grist in order to create a new universe) and take over other repetitive duties like that. knowing this about consorts, it's pretty obvious that the angels are not that, though snake consorts wouldn't necessarily be out of the question, since they would fulfill the semi-aquatic IRL reptile requirement. Still, if a player did have snake consorts, they would physically resemble and function as john's salamanders. (fwiw, i like to headcanon that eridan's consorts were indeed snakes, and that karkat's were basilisk lizards)

thus, we can conclude that angels are some auxiliary NPC, like the brains on sollux's planet, the fireflies on john's, or the hummingbirds on jade's. they're still tied in with the player's personal quest, but they aren't an underling/consort/carapacian, whose roles are more defined.

hussie describes in the book commentary that angels are literally born from Hope, and we see this in action within the comic itself, as the Hope field jake summons ends up spawning a few angels itself. we also know that the angels are the source of prophetic whispers... which don't necessarily seem to be true, except as the Hope player (whose main powerset revolves around Making Fake Things Real) can make them true. they apparently whisper about their "lord" to eridan, or the "evil wizard" to cronus, though we've never heard a firsthand source.

However, i do believe it's possible to glean what the angel prophecies actually sounded like. sollux actually provides a description of angels, while he's talking to terezi, where he explains that they're "feathery demons that paradox space uses to usher in the end". therefore, we can conclude that, despite being born of Hope, they prophecize hopeless things - the evil wizard, their lord - without necessarily prophecizing hopeFUL things, like that the Hope player is meant to rise to defeat them - that this is left for the Hope player to figure out and make real, to refute the hopeless prophecy.

Their vaguely ominous nature tracks with some other stuff in the comic - that LE is described as the "angel" of double-death, that cherubs in general are named after a type of angel, and that when they show up from jake's Hope field, the other characters (who have never seen them before) are instinctively put off and wary of them. i think they're intended to be read as embodiments of narrative impotence, counterbalancing the power of Hope's ability to warp reality itself, born from especially powerul sources of it. these sorts of dichotomies and dualities are present throughout homestuck, so i don't think it's too far-fetched.

now i'm going to get into much more speculative, headcanon-y territory, so feel free to disregard this part. Personally, i like the idea that eridan was supposed to aggro and kill his angels - just not YET.

We see from his planet that it's enveloped in this blinding white light, so bright that eridan has to wear some douchey ass shades to stand outside in. this is, in all likelihood, a Hope field, like the one Jake summons - and it's where the angels are spawning from. moreover, his land is called the land of WRATH and angels, with wrath sounding suspiciously like Rage, Hope's opposite attribute. i'm personally of the belief that, had eridan done his quest "properly," as a Prince of Hope - one who destroys Hope or destroys with Hope - he would've had to learn both how to destroy the Hope field, as well as how to quell the rage on his planet.

In other words, personally, i think his quest would've been to destroy the Hope field, which would've enraged the angels, but also - the crucial step that he missed - would've prevented them from respawning. Having displayed mastery over destroying Hope, he would've then had to USE Hope to destroy the enraged angels, which would've given him the tools he'd have needed to destroy the lord they prophecized, given another thing hussie notes Hope can explicitly do is overpower forces otherwise thought undefeatable - Hope vs. sollux's eye beams, and later, jade's green sun abilities. It's likely that, fully realized and with a good enough shot, eridan would've been able to completely bypass normal game rules like god tier immortality, or even LE's unconditional immortality. unfortunately, eridan ended up giving in to the forces of narrative impotence and hopelessness, so this was never realized.

[laurents-laces]

If Nora hits the publish button herself instead of doing pre-orders for TGR we might get it a little early. That's what happened last time, because the intended release date for TSC was April 13th but we got it on the 12th because it went through kindle's automated review really quickly

Also we didn’t see the cover for TSC until the day before it was published so it wouldn't be surprising if it was the same for TGR

[nevadancitizen]

-> CH. 13: THE JOYS OF SOVIET TECHNOLOGIES

synopsis: you celebrate the release of kollektiv 2.0, and meet a kind stranger and an american danseur that both seem really familiar.

word count: 1.9k

ships: Connor/Reader, Hank Anderson & Reader

notes: the long wait is over!!!! the research essay has been slain and i have time to write again :)

HoFS taglist: @catladyhere , @foggy0trees0 , @princessofenkanomiya , @n30n-f43 , @igna4400 (if you'd like to be added to the taglist, just ask!)

HEAD OF FALSE SECURITY MASTERLIST

The bright sun above fills you with a pleasant warmth, but the plentiful trees that line the canal provide a wealth of shade. Automated paddle boats cut through the water at a languid pace, giving the couples inside plenty of time to talk and a semblance of privacy.

People are friendlier now than at any other time of the year – you’re all attending a festival, so it makes sense. They smile and shake your hand and greet you with a happy “Is it not an amazing day, comrade?” 

The booths you walk past are showing off the new weapons they’ve developed and their upgrades (you’ve never seen a Kalashnikov in person before!), THOUGHT devices and their benefits, and a myriad of other advanced technologies only now being revealed to the public. But the bells and whistles are to be expected – today is a celebration of Facility 3826, after all.

The date is June 12th, 1955. And it’s a wonderful day to be a citizen of the glorious Soviet Union.

As you walk by, machines continue their routines. VOV-A6 Techs work on foot to deliver crates (you’d almost mistake them for humans if not for the mark on the middle of their backs and the unfeeling, unmoving mask they have for a face). MTU-7 Bumblebees move cargo crates through the sky, the sound of their blades beating against the wind sending a soft hum through the air. TER-A1 Tereshkovas guide tourists through the city, their feet barely scraping the concrete as they move. 

“Good day, comrade!” Someone’s voice cuts you from your thoughts. It’s a facility representative – a man dressed in a white labcoat, a crisp black tie, and a THOUGHT device (a module placed on the temple with wires that float off the browbone to reach over to the opposite temple). “Come closer! I’m here to help.”

“Hello, comrade,” you say. You look over at the booth he’s standing by. It’s a short silver pole, no taller than him, with a circular tray floating around it, rotating slowly. It has little different colored modules on it, each floating above their designated coupling. 

“Would you like a THOUGHT device?” He asks. “It’s high time you got one!”

“No, thank you.” You hold up a hand. “I’m just browsing for now.”

“Why restrict yourself to browsing when you can get your own personalized device this very instant?” The man asks. “I can help you pick out the right unit. It can even match your eye color!”

He picks up one and holds it close to your face, as if gauging it. “Ah, yes! A violet gooseberry model would suit you well.” He takes the module away and looks you over. “You… are polymerized, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” you say. “But… I thought those devices weren’t going to come online until next Monday.”

“That’s right, comrade. But some people like to get it early, like a pre-order.” He tosses the module on the tray, and it magnetizes back to its coupling. “At the moment, the device functions as a personal telephone set and headlight, but it also allows the user to get used to wearing it on their head.”

“Well…” You look over the modules on the rotating tray. “It’s free, right?”

“Absolutely!” The man says, a smile on his worn face. “Allow me to connect you.”

He gestures to the booth, telling you to take your pick. You look over your options before picking out one that’s a crisp cerulean blue – you don’t know why, but the color seems nice to you. Like it reminds you of something, or someone. You pick it up even as the device tries to stay magnetized to its coupling. You turn it over in your hand before pressing it to your temple. It sticks, and wires come out to reach over to your other temple, like a half-crown or half-halo. 

The man presses a finger to his THOUGHT device. After a few moments, a confused look crosses his face. 

“Khm, that’s odd…” he says. “It seems I can’t access your biometric data. Maybe there’s some sort of malfunction…? I’m so sorry.”

You take off the module and return it to its place on the tray. “Ah, don’t sweat it. I don’t wear a lot of jewelry, anyway. Thanks for telling me about it, though.”

“Of course, comrade,” the man says. “Again, I do apologize. Have a good day!”

“You too.” You turn to walk, but stop yourself. “Actually, sir – I have a question, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes?” He says. 

“It’s about…” You gesture vaguely around. “The people. They’re all speaking English. I don’t mind, since I can speak it. But I would expect at least some Russian.”

“Oh, yes!” The man laughs. “Facility 3826 is promoting the learning of English, just in case anyone sees anything of American origin. This is so if anyone sees or hears English, they’d be able to discern whether or not it’s a threat to the goodness of our Union. The festival is a good time to practice for people that are still learning.”

“That makes sense,” you hum. “Thank you.”

You continue walking down the street. It would’ve been nice to have a transportable telephone, but it’s not like you’re in dire need of one. You can figure that out later. 

There’s a small crowd gathered around a RAF-9 Engineer juggling various things it’s taken from the crowd: pochette-style purses, children’s toys, cigarette cartons. You stop at the edge of the group and watch as it throws the items up and catches them with pinpoint accuracy. 

There’s a hand on your shoulder. “Hey, kid.”

You turn and see a man. He’s late forties, early fifties at most. His hair brushes past his ears in an untamed, grey mop and his beard matches it. His face is worn, but his gap-toothed smile is kind.

“I’m sorry, comrade.” You smile politely. “But I… don’t recognize you. You’re probably mistaking me for someone else.”

“Oh, shit,” he says, removing his hand from your shoulder. “You look like someone I know. My bad.”

“Well, I’m sure your friend is around here somewhere!” You try. “They may be at one of the cheburek or bliny stands. There’s a really good one selling bliny just down that way.”

The stranger checks over his shoulder, where you were pointing, then looks back to you. “I’m not from around here. You mind showing me the way?”

You check your pocket watch and mentally count the time until Dmitry Sechenov’s grand speech. You’re not crunched for time yet, and it would do you good to have something to tide you over until you could eat a real meal.

“Yeah, sure.” You start walking, and the stranger matches your pace.

“The stand has a few fillings,” you say, both to fill dead air and to make the silence less awkward. “Fruit preservatives – cherries, apples, plums, berries – meat, honey, or just plain with butter and salt.”

“What’s your recommendation?” The now-somewhat-familiar stranger asks. 

“Well, in the spring, they’d have imported lemon preservatives,” you say. “But it’s summer, so that well’s dried up. I’d just go with the cherries. Sweet or bitter, it doesn’t really matter to me.”

“You’re just makin’ me hungry,” the stranger mumbles with a smile.

You laugh. “That’s the idea, no?”

After another minute of walking, the stand comes into view. Two men are operating the stand, and the soft scent of batter on the griddle beckons you closer. A radio is playing.

“Look at the menu,” you tell the familiar-stranger. “Take your pick. It’s cheap, so I’ll pay.”

You look around while he looks at the menu. There’s other people, obviously, and some on the canal are pointing at a man in an automated paddleboat. You barely hear whispers of “It’s comrade Major Nechayev!”

You turn your eyes away. Nechayev doesn’t really interest you. From what you’ve heard, he’s just some military dog leftover from the Red Army. What does interest you is the crowd across the canal. 

They’re gathered around some sort of stage that must’ve been assembled temporarily for the festival, like an American carnival. You watch for a few moments, but can’t glimpse what’s happening on stage. 

The stranger pulls you out of your thoughts. “Hey, what’re they talkin’ about on the radio?”

You turn back to him. “Huh?”

He points at the radio that’s playing on the bliny stand. It’s playing a jingle: “For the greatest advancements in cosmetic enhancements, there’s only one man you should be trusting your glam with!”

You listen a little longer and catch a name – Doctor Steinman – and roll your eyes. “It’s that underwater city off the coast of Iceland. The one that uses the same technologies as the ones invented to create the Neptune complex here.”

The stranger nudges you. “Why’re you rollin’ your eyes?”

“The city won’t last,” you say. “They say that it’s a city where the great won’t be brought down by the small. And all those immigrants go to Rapture thinking they’ll survive the fire of American-based industry. But they forget that, even in utopia, someone has to scrub the toilets.”

“Yeah, that’s a factor most forget,” the stranger says. 

“Eh, what else do you expect from capitalists?” You shrug. “Let’s just order. What do you want?”

The stranger looks back at the menu. “Uh… a bliny with… apple preserves.”

You quickly order your bliny and his and fork over the rubles, then look across the canal. The performance is still going. 

“Listen, khm,” you say to the stranger without looking away from the stage. “Can you watch our order? I want to see what’s happening across the canal.”

“Uh… yeah, sure,” the stranger says. 

You thank him quickly and hurry over the bridge to get to the other side of the waterway. You slowly make your way through the crowd – not to the front, but just enough so you can see…

A danseur? (Or a ‘ballerino’ in other countries, you suppose.) He’s wearing a form-fitting black shirt and a matching pair of tights. His pointe shoes are a soft pink, just a few shades off his skin tone. A THOUGHT device crowns his head – the same cerulean blue model you were looking at earlier. 

As he moves, he matches the music perfectly. It’s like he was born to extract the flow and rhythm from music and express it in dance. His feet don’t break their arch and don’t falter, even for a split second. 

Then, he turns. On his front, over his left breast, is a small American flag. 

Your eyebrows crease. You lean over and quietly ask a nearby woman, “He’s from America?”

“It was made in America,” she whispers back. “It’s an android, comrade.”

The danseur turns his head as his arm swoops up to point his fingertips to the sky. His soft, brown eyes lock with yours with you and you feel… you don’t know what you feel. It’s something physical, on your back. Maybe someone bumped into you? But the crowd isn’t moving. 

You take a step backwards as he continues staring at you, stock-still. You take another, then look behind you. The crowd is gone.

“Какого хуя?” You mumble. 

You look back up at the danseur. He’s moved a little closer, his feet just barely stepping off the stage. He comes closer, his movements still fluid and graceful, like he’s still dancing.

“Officer?” He asks softly. 

“What?” You say. 

His hand comes to your face, his fingertips just barely brushing across your jawline. His lips start to form a word, but –

-> CH 13: GOOD, HONEST SNAKE OIL – IF THERE IS SUCH A THING!

synopsis: after you and arthur swing by the sheriff's office, you go on a run to hunt a bounty and meet a man who seems really familiar.

word count: 1.3k

ships: CH: “mister kamski? the officer is stable, and is responding well to the reintegration system.”

notes: EK: “make sure they go through each as quickly as possible, chloe. i need to see if they can get back on their feet.”

HoTS taglist: @catladyhere , @foggy0trees0 , @princessofenkanomiya , @n30n-f43 , @igna4400 (if you'd like to be added to the taglist, just ask!)

HOUSE OF TRUE SECURITY MASTERLIST

“I got it.” A voice pulls you to look over at the entrance to the Valentine’s Sheriff’s Office. It’s Arthur Morgan, holding up a folded-up wanted poster. 

You lean down from your horse (a beautiful Dutch Warmblood named Bronya) and reach out to Arthur as he approaches. “Give this to me.”

Arthur hands over the poster, and you unfold it. It’s for one mister Benedict Allbright – needed alive, for a reward of fifty dollars.

“He needs to be living?” You say. “This is unlike you.”

Arthur mounts his horse, a Tenessee Walker named Marie. He clicks his tongue and presses his legs together against Marie’s flank once, and she starts trotting. You and Bronya follow. 

“Was the only one there,” Arthur says as you pull up beside him. “They says he’s been poisonin’ folks with some ‘miracle cure’ from here to Annesburg. Says he killed more ‘n Landon Ricketts without even pullin’ a trigger.”

“Troubling,” you say. “He is dangerous?”

Arthur looks over at you. “Would I bring you along if he was?”

“He cannot be more trouble than Angel Island,” you say. 

And everything comes rushing back. The Wild West is being tamed. A robbery in Blackwater went wrong, and you and the rest of the Van der Linde gang were forced to flee east – the exact opposite of where you wanted to go. And you’re only in this mess because of the officials operating Angel Island. They somehow messed up your papers, and you couldn’t get the work you were promised. You were forced to steal, lie and sometimes even kill to get your way. 

The date is June 12th, 1899. And it’s a normal day as a somewhat-citizen of the United States of America.

“Where is this… Allbright?” You ask. 

“Fellers down at the Sheriff’s said he was holed up in some gorge north a’ here,” Arthur says. 

“Ah! I know what you speak of,” you say, squeezing Bronya’s sides with your claves. She breaks into a canter. “Follow!”

“Now, you can’t just –!” Arthur makes an exasperated sound, then matches your speed. “At least give me a warnin’!”

You laugh, the sound full of warmth. The ground beneath the horses’ hooves turns from the mud of Valentine into the drier dirt of the outer town limits. 

A few minutes later, you pull off the well-trodden trail and into the knee-high grasses. You lead Arthur through the sparse trees that make up the edges of Cumberland Forest.

“How come you know these parts so well?” Arthur asks, breaking the somewhat-silence.

“I have a good head,” you say. “After riding through this place once, I know it, um… I know it like…” You grumble, frustrated. You know what you’re trying to say, but just… can’t articulate it right. You’re tempted to just say it in Russian, but Arthur wouldn’t understand, and you would risk any passerby potentially becoming hostile. (Shouldn’t you speak better English than this? You remember speaking better English than this…)

“What’re you tryna say?” Arthur asks. He’s used to this.

You take one of your hands away from the reins and hold it up. “Something to do with hands. I know it like… like my hands know it?”

“Like the back of my hand,” Arthur corrects. 

“That!” You chime, re-taking the reins in hand. “I know it like the back of my hand.”

You hear the sound of water running along a riverbed and perk up. “We are close.”

Marie follows Bronya as you guide her up a slope into a small alcove carved into a mountain. It’s a thin slope – on one side is the mountain, and on the other is a twenty-meter drop into a river. The alcove is housing a man – supposedly Benedict Allbright – and his horse.

You turn back to Arthur and jerk your head towards Allbright. He’s always been the more intimidating of you two, so you’re letting him lead this one. 

Arthur grunts and dismounts his horse before walking by Bronya, towards Allbright. “Oh, what we got here?”

He continues walking forward until he comes to a stop just before Allbright’s bedroll and campfire. “Are you Benedict Allbright?”

Allbright stands, backing away from Arthur a bit. “N-no, sir.”

“You kinda look like him,” Arthur says. “And we was told he’d be up here.”

“No, uh,” Allbright says. “Not me, sir.”

“It’s because…” Arthur sighs, and looks out of the alcove, down at the river. “I wanna buy some medicine. And, I heard… I heard good things.”

The corner of your mouth twitches up. Arthur could rival Hosea with his tact for semantics, even if he adamantly denies it. 

“I’ll pay – in gold – i-if you can help me find him. It’s just…” Arthur glances over at you, then the ground, like it pains him to look at you. “My brother’s child over there is real sick. Russiatitus, they was callin’ it. Rare disease. We tried all them medicines they said to try, but… nothin’s workin’.”

“Oh!” Allbright looks over at you through his spectacles and smiles. “Well… if it’s for the ill, I’d be more than happy to help!”

He turns and walks over to his bags, picking out a small bottle filled with a viscous, dark yellow liquid. “I’m a healer, y’know? A medical man.”

Allbright turns back and hands it to Arthur. “Finest medicine in the state.”

Arthur pretends to be wowed, then tosses the bottle off the edge of the alcove and into the river. Before Allbright has time to react, he’s drawn his revolver. So have you. You spur Bronya to walk forward, past Allbright’s horse and partially into his camp.

“Game’s over, mister.” Arthur angles himself so that he’s blocking the only other exit. “Put your hands up – we’re takin’ you in.”

“Takin’ me in?” Allbright repeats, like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. He puts his hands up. “What for?”

“Apparently that stuff you’re pushin’ is killin’ folk, n’ there’s a price on your head,” Arthur says. “I don’t know, it ain’t my business.”

“C’mon, partner, that’s crap. I’m a healer! I-I’ve got an aura… I speak to spirits! I’m a scientist!” Allbright insists. “Folks get real angry for no good reason, and this… this is a mistake.” He looks over at you. “S-surely you can talk some sense into him?”

“Hm…” You twitch your nose and shrug, not lowering your gun. “No.”

“Keep your hands up, buddy.” Arthur reaches forward carefully, taking Allbright’s gun from its holster and tossing it into the river. “They only want you for questionin’.”

“I – I have to insist that this is a mistake,” Allbright says. 

“Don’t be a fool,” Arthur says, corralling him towards the edge of the alcove. 

You look down at the river, then notice… a man. He’s looking up at you from where he stands in the riverbed, his pants soaked up to the knee. And – shit, from where he’s standing, he can clearly see you and Arthur pointing your guns at Allbright.

“Arthur,” you say without looking away from the man. “A man is watching. Maybe he is thinking we are robbing.”

“Go get ‘im,” Arthur says. “I got this handled.”

You click your tongue and tug on Bronya’s reins. She turns and starts walking down the slope to the river. 

The man doesn’t run as you approach him, despite your saddlebag holsters both holding rifles. Instead, he’s just… staring, with soft, brown eyes. 

He seems… familiar. Really familiar. Then again, Angel Island is on the west coast, and you’re pretty far from there, so you’ve seen a lot of people while in America. But… the bright blue stain on his temple seems so familiar. God, you swear you know him. Where is he from?

“You are watching me and my friend?” You ask, jerking your head towards the alcove. “The man is a bounty. He has been killing people from here and eastward, poisoning them with a… tonic. We do not rob for joy. We hunt bounties.”

The man walks forward, almost stumbling on the stones of the riverbed. “Officer?”

You rack your brain for that word, but come up with nothing. “I – I do not know the meaning of this English word… officer.”

He swallows thickly, then takes a breath. His lips start to form a word, but –

-> CH. 13: LET’S TALK HOMECOMING (THE MILITARY OPERATION, NOT PROM)

synopsis: you wake up on a helicopter, fresh from being saved, and meet a pilot that seems really familiar.

word count: ~900

ships: CH: “they were relatively unresponsive to that one. shall i introduce one that is less familiar?”

notes: EK: “yes. it should still be american, but... mixed with soviet suffering.”

ToFS taglist: @catladyhere , @foggy0trees0 , @princessofenkanomiya , @n30n-f43 , @igna4400 (if you'd like to be added to the taglist, just ask!)

THREAT OF FALSE SECURITY MASTERLIST

“Wake up,” a voice mumbles. A hand grasps your shoulder and shakes you. “C’mon, commie…”

You open your eyes and see a man that’s familiar, but not. Like you’ve known him your whole life but only really registered his existence just now. He’s wearing a half-balaclava with a skull pattern and a beanie, and the skin around his ice-blue eyes is smeared with black greasepaint. 

“What the hell is happening?” You manage through gritted teeth. You shift and try to sit up from the bench of the helicopter you’re in, but he pushes you back down. 

“You got the bright idea to follow the twin brats to find Elias,” he says. “Into a goddamn burning house, no less. Jackass.”

You groan and close your eyes, bringing a fist to your forehead. “Keegan, don’t. Not right now.” His name slips from your lips before you even realize it. (So you do know this man, and probably the rest of the people on this helicopter… odd.)

In a fashion that seems familiar, it all comes back to you in a tidal wave of information. The energy deserts of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the rest of the major oil producers dried up a decade ago, sending the world into a panic. The entirety of South America united under the banner of the Federation of the Americas and the guide of General Diego Almagro, both willingly and unwillingly. General Almagro was assassinated in 2015, but his presence was still felt as the Federation took over Panama, then Costa Rica, then Nicaragua, working their way up to Mexico and, the other night, Dallas, Texas. 

You are a part of the Ghosts: a spec ops team set on beating back the Federation, even if it is a losing battle. 

The date is June 12th, 2027. And it’s a godawful day to be a citizen of the burning remains of the United States of America.

Hesh (one of the ‘twin brats,’ even though Logan is two years younger) pulls Keegan away and shoves him up against the wall of the helicopter. “You need to get this bird back on the ground. We’re not going anywhere!”

Keegan pushes him back easily, then adds, “Calm down, kid.”

“Hey!” Merrick body-slams Hesh into the wall. (He’s never been known for his gentleness.) “We just saved your asses!”

“We didn’t need your help!” Hesh snaps. 

Merrick takes hold of the collar of Hesh’s tac vest. Keegan taps your legs, and you sit up, pulling your legs up to your chest. Good thing you did – Merrick shoves Hesh down on the bench a moment later. 

“The hell you didn’t,” Merrick spits, towering over Hesh.

Elias shoves Merrick away with a, “Stow it! All of you.” (His voice is slightly muffled through his full-face balaclava, but it carries authority all the same.)

There’s a lot of light violence happening in the cabin of this helicopter, but you suppose that’s to be expected when the military comes around.

Hesh stands, facing Elias. “We have to go back! Our dad’s down there, and we’re not leaving without him!”

Logan stands too, signing at Elias. His words are angry, and his face is drawn into something like a snarl. He’s signing fast, but you manage to pick up something about him kicking everyone’s ass and tacking on a “TRUE BIZ” at the end, meaning that he’s not joking.

“That’s real admirable of you, Hesh, and I’m sure you can, Logan,” Elias says, sitting them both back down. “But your father’s not there anymore.”

He takes off his mask, revealing himself. 

“Dad?” Hesh says. “This whole time you were one of them? You’re a Ghost?!”

You look up and exchange glances with Keegan. Neither of you were really ones for surprise plot-twists or epic reveals. From what you can see, his expression looks bored and his eyebrows are drawn together a little, like a silent, ‘Can you believe this shit?’

You get up and Keegan automatically holds onto your shoulder, just in case you were to fall. You walk closer to the open cockpit, keeping a hand on the wall for the same reason. 

“What even happened?” You ask once you and Keegan were an acceptable distance away from the commotion. 

Keegan lets go of your shoulder and leans against the back of the pilot’s seat, crossing his arms. “Burning houses tend to collapse, dumbass. You got a roof tile right to the face.”

You rub your cheek and lean back against the wall adjacent to the cockpit. “Somehow that doesn’t shock me.”

The helicopter jolts a little bit and your head snaps over to the cockpit. From where you’re standing, you can see the co-pilot. He’s facing forward, but you can see the sparse freckles that dot his face and the tuft of brown hair that escapes the gel that slicks back the rest of his hair. The headset he’s wearing has a bright blue circle painted on the earcup – it must be a sign of his squad, or whatever pilots are a part of.

Your eyebrows furrow. He seems familiar, somehow. But not like how Keegan was familiar, and not like Merrick, Hesh, Logan, or Elias. He’s… you don’t know how to describe it.

The helicopter jolts again, and a hanging carabiner knocks the back of your head. Keegan huffs out a laugh when you whimper a small “ow.”

The co-pilot looks over his shoulder and back at you. You meet his soft, brown eyes. 

“Officer?” He says softly, his hands still on the yoke of the helicopter.

“Try Sergeant,” Keegan corrects. 

He glances at Keegan, then back to you, his eyebrows furrowing. His lips start to form a word, but – 

-> CH. 13: THE SMALLEST CHURCH IN SAINT-SAËNS

synopsis: come to the church.

word count: 1.2k

ships: don’t listen to them.

notes: you’re with us now. we’ll take care of you.

ToFS taglist: just come to the church. please.

TALES OF FALSE SERENITY MASTERLIST

You hear waves crash on the coast before you’re even fully aware that you’re on a beach. A church stands before you, sea-worn and rotted. A banner, yellowed with age, hangs above the entrance, reading: Holy Church of the Amnesiac (formerly the Dolorian Church of Humanity). 

You walk up the stairs to the entrance, the rotted wood barely holding your weight. When you reach the door, you raise your fist and knock. 

A few moments later, someone answers the door. The person who answers is covered head-to-toe in police riot armor with a duster jacket on top. Their headgear resembles a reinforced gasmask with dark green lenses, and the words FORGIVE ME MAMA are messily carved into their helmet.

They look you over, then take your hand. 

You don’t know why, but you follow them inside. The inside is somewhat dilapidated, but still nice. The pews have been pushed aside to create a common space and the floor is littered with rugs and blankets and a few sparse pillows. People are scattered about, laying on the pews or sitting on the floor. 

A few of them perk up at the sight of you, but the person corrals you to the front of the church, where a figure is sitting. Their silhouette is stark against the light shining through the stained glass window behind them, which depicts a woman holding up two fingers with her right hand and cupping a breast with the other. The windows that would have been her lungs are punched out, leaving sunlight shining through.

“Come, friend.” They wave you over. “Sit with me.”

You look at the person who escorted you to the front of the church, and they nod, then turn away and leave you.

You ease down and sit with the person, tucking a leg under you. You look over at them – they’re dressed in all black, a cloth mask covering the bottom half of their face and their clothes covering the rest of their body. Their knee-length jacket flutters in the slight wind of the smashed-through windows.

“What is…” You gesture around. “This? This church.”

“This is the Church of the Amnesiac,” they say. “And I am the Hunter of Vilebloods. You need not tell me your name – I have been awaiting your arrival, as has the rest of the church.”

“Who are you?” You ask. “I mean, I know your name, but… what is the purpose of this church? Because from what I can tell, it’s not worship.”

The Hunter takes a breath and sighs. “We do not know. We are simply wanderers that have found our way here. This is not our home. We are all… bereft of memory. Something has cursed us, and I know that you have happened upon this curse, too.”

“What do you mean?” You ask. “I – I have memories.”

“Think back.” The Hunter looks into your eyes. “Think back to when you were but a child. Can you?”

“Of course I can,” you say. 

“Then tell me,” the Hunter says. “Recount your first memory.”

You look away and think back. “I… visited the Exhibit of National Economy Achievements when I was a child. I must have been… five, or six. There were machines there, both modern and vintage. It was a beautiful place that showcased the highest of Soviet achievements.”

The Hunter hums in response. “Your next memory?”

“When my father gave me a Makarov pistol,” you say. “He gifted it to me when I was ten years old. He never let me fire it, but it was still important to me. I had a hell of a time getting it over to the States when I immigrated.”

The Hunter tilts their head. “I… do not quite know what a Makarov pistol is, or where the States are, but please. Continue.”

“And then, my next memory is… when I was sixteen.” Your eyebrows furrow as you remember. “There was an accident, and I lost both of my legs. Luckily, I was able to be quickly fitted with prosthetics that mixed existing technology with neuropolymer. I was able to move my legs, but unable to really… feel them.” You sigh. “Now I have different ones, as I wasn’t done growing at sixteen. That, and the technology has improved.”

The Hunter shifts how they’re sitting so that they’re closer. “That is your next memory? There is… nothing in between?”

“N… no?” You say, unsure. “Is there supposed to be?”

“Typically, yes,” the Hunter says. “There is a menagerie of memories for one to look back on. Family, friends, parties and religion… but are you admitting that there is nothing?”

“Well, it…” You think for a moment, then admit in a small voice, “Yeah. I don’t remember anything until I emigrated from Chelomey.”

You feel something push against your leg – something solid and furry. You look over and see an orange cat with a little backpack rubbing against your leg, then sniffing at your shoes. He looks up at you and meows softly, as if noticing your sudden spike in stress.

“Hello,” you say softly. You reach out a hand and rub your fingers together, making a soft sound. The cat sniffs at your fingers before pushing his face against your hand, purrs starting to rumble in his tiny kitty chest.

“Who is this?” You ask, starting to gently scratch at the cat. 

“That is Stray,” the Hunter says. “He does not have memories, just like the rest of us.”

“But I do have memories,” you insist. 

“I apologize. I misspoke. He has… gaps in memory, just like the rest of us.” The Hunter looks over your shoulder and around the church. “Just like the Courier, the Tarnished, and everyone else here.”

You sigh, looking at the Hunter. “So what happens now? I died, so… is this all the afterlife has to offer? The Holy Church of the Amnesiac and a cat?”

The Hunter returns their eyes to you. “Oh, you did not die. You simply just… left your body behind.”

“What?” You snap, and Stray bolts. “What do you mean?”

“Did you really think that this is all dying has to offer?” The Hunter asks. “A church and a cat and a few sad wanderers?”

“I…” You trail off. “Maybe! The philosophy I read about isn’t about death and what comes after. It’s the philosophy of man and his nature.”

“Man and his nature,” the Hunter echoes. “What a fickle thing one’s nature is. And I can see your very nature being unraveled before me in this very moment.”

“I don’t…” You groan and bring a hand to your forehead. There’s a sinking feeling in your stomach. “I don’t know what to make of this. This is all just – it’s too much.”

“You will emerge victorious. And if not, you will return to the church, and we will send you on your way again,” the Hunter says. 

They reach out and draw you closer, holding you against their side with an arm around your shoulder. They lean down and whisper in your ear, “It has been an honor, but we really must say good-bye. Now go, cleanse the tarnished streets of your homeworld. And may the good blood guide your way.”

-> CH. 13: WAKE UP & SMELL THE ASHES

synopsis: you wake up and kamski explains everything.

word count: 1.7k

ships: Connor/Reader, Hank Anderson & Reader

notes: the long wait is over!!!! the research essay has been slain and i have time to write again :)

HoFS taglist: @catladyhere , @foggy0trees0 , @princessofenkanomiya , @n30n-f43 , @igna4400 (if you'd like to be added to the taglist, just ask!)

HEAD OF FALSE SECURITY MASTERLIST

“Officer?” A soft, melodic voice calls. “Officer, can you hear me?”

You groan and turn on your side, away from the light that’s burning into your eyelids. “Huh…?”

“Officer, you need to wake up,” the voice continues. 

You open your eyes slowly and look up, only to lock eyes with… Chloe. What is Chloe doing here?

“You’re awake.” Chloe smiles and cups your jaw. “I will alert Mister Kamski right away.”

She looks away as her LED flickers, as do her eyes. After a moment, she looks back down at you and takes her hand away. You lay on your back, close your eyes, and wait.

A few minutes later, Kamski enters the room. You sit up, then immediately regret it when a stabbing pain shoots through your head. 

You screw your eyes shut and cover your eyes with a hand. You grind out, “Kamski, what the fuck am I doing here?”

“Lay back down,” Kamski says. You feel Chloe put a hand on your shoulder, and she guides you back down. The pain subsides enough for you to open your eyes again. 

Kamski takes a seat by your bedside and leans forward, his elbows on his knees. You look over. 

“Again, what the fuck am I doing here?” You say. “I… I died. I remember dying.”

“You did,” Kamski says, as if it was a completely normal thing to say. 

“Then how the hell am I alive?” You hiss. 

Kamski leans back in the chair and crosses his leg over his knee. “Do you remember your childhood?”

“Snippets,” you snap. “I just had this conversation. Now tell me how I’m alive after being shot in the goddamn head!”

“It’s simple,” Kamski says. (It’s not.) “You were never alive to begin with.”

You shoot up from the bed. “Чего?!” Again, Chloe pushes you back down.

“You know philosophy. Do you know Chariton Zakharov?” Kamski says, not pausing to give you a chance to answer. “Of course you do. You’ve read The Life, Death, Neuropolymer-Induced Transformation, and Secondary Death of Chariton Radeonovich Zakharov. In one of his letters, he wrote, ‘The radiance of pure reason, and it alone, can illuminate the path of humanity. Because a human being is not a body. It’s a way of thinking.’ I wanted to prove that.”

“I don’t really care to talk about philosophy right now!” You snap. 

Kamski holds up a hand. “Just wait. The sooner you understand this, the sooner you’ll get to see that android. What was its name again? Connor?”

“Connor!” You echo. “He’s here?! Take me to him – now!”

“Listen to me first,” he says. You grit your teeth and do your best to settle as he continues. “I wanted to create something that no one had created before. Obviously, I already did this with androids. But I wanted to go further.”

You nod, telling him to continue. You really want to get this over with. 

“So I thought, what about an android that thinks of itself as a human?” Kamski lets out a scoff-laugh. “Ridiculous, right?”

“If it’s ridiculous, I have no doubt that you probably did it,” you say. “Where is this android-human? Show me it so I can go.”

Kamski reaches under the chair and pulls out a mirror, then hands it to you. You take it and look at it. Sure enough, it’s a reflection of yourself, looking just as confused as you feel. 

“I don’t… understand,” you say, looking up at Kamski.

He taps the surface of the mirror. “You’re looking at it.”

You look at the mirror again. There’s nothing human-looking behind you – just a reflection of yourself in bed.

Kamski leans closer and whispers, “It’s you, Officer.”

“What an absurd idea.” You look at him. “Surely you’re joking, yes?”

“I’m not.” He leans back in his chair. “You’re the first android that was fully tricked into thinking that it’s human. You’ve been living this delusion for eleven years, ever since you thought you emigrated from Chelomey.”

“Again, this is idiotic!” You snap. 

“You only remember core components of your childhood,” Kamski says. “The Exhibit of National Economy Achievements. Your pistol. The accident.”

“I…” You sigh. “Yes, but –”

“Your parents didn’t traumatize you,” he says, tilting his head down and looking at you through his eyelashes. “That was what you were gonna say, right? That people with childhood trauma have gaps in memory and don’t remember a lot of their childhood.”

The words you had prepared die on your tongue. You look away. “Then who am I? Tell me, if you know so much about me.”

“Do you want me to tell you the truth?” He asks. “Or to recount the lie you’re used to living?”

“The truth,” you say before you can change your mind.

“There was a baby born in Chelomey with the same name as yours. Same birthday, same birth year. It was stillborn – didn’t even have a chance to take its first breath,” Kamski says. “That was where I got your birth name and birthday. Tensions between America and the USSR were already tense back then, so it was easy to fake documents. Your birth certificate, your passport, affidavits of income and support, your permanent residency card. You won the Green Card Lottery during a low-emigration year. You thought you got lucky, but you didn’t. I fabricated everything.”

There’s a sinking, swirling feeling in your stomach. You don’t really… know what to feel. You feel numb, somehow? But also like you’re ready to explode – to ask Kamski what the fuck he’s going on about, to tell him that he sounds like a raving lunatic, to tell him that you don’t believe a word he says. 

And yet… you do. It… it makes sense, somehow. Why would America let a nondescript Soviet such as yourself in? And into cybersecurity, no less.

“It’s obvious until it isn’t, isn’t it?” Kamski says. 

“M… my legs,” you say. “Why did you take my legs?”

“You needed to have some excuse for how you felt,” he says. “You didn’t have aches in them, nor did you experience any real pain. Right?”

“Yes,” you say. “Just phantom pain. But…” You sigh. “How am I able to feel? Not touch, but emotions. I thought correctly-functioning androids weren’t supposed to feel emotions.”

Kamski furrows his eyebrows. “You never did find a ‘patient zero’ for deviancy, did you?”

“No,” you say. “All we know is that it started in Detroit, and spread… across the country…”

A horrible feeling overcomes you. You were patient zero, weren’t you? You were the first to break your programming, to feel emotion and to feel pain – even if it was only imagined. And you probably infected Connor, too, didn’t you? You are the reason for his pain and suffering and all the turmoil he’s going through. You’re the root cause for the pain and suffering and turmoil everyone’s going through. 

“You are the free radical. The outlier,” Kamski verbalizes your thoughts. “You were the spark of chaos that was required to start the revolution.”

“I didn’t want to start the revolution,” you say. Your voice is softer and more shaky than you’d like it to be. There’s a burning in the back of your throat. “I just… I just wanted to solve the case that was assigned to me.”

“But you did.” Kamski stands, then starts walking towards the exit, as does Chloe. “You are the deviant android that infected others. The others you infected started a revolution. There are no two ways about it.”

“I want to go home,” you manage.

“Chloe,” he says. “Get Connor.”

There’s a door opening, then rushed footsteps as someone comes to your bedside. You look over. It’s Connor. His LED is stuck on red. 

“Officer?” He says. His soft, brown eyes search yours, lingering on the hot tears that swell at your waterline. Your bottom lip trembles. 

Connor immediately sweeps you into a hug – one unlike the one you’d shared back at the station. This one is firm, bordering on desperate as he clutches at the back of your shirt. He rests his forehead in the crook of your shoulder and lets out a shuddering exhale.

“Officer,” he says softly. “Officer, I’m so sorry.”

“What?” You say. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

“I didn’t do a good enough job of protecting you,” he says. “You got shot. I… I failed my mission. And I don’t have anyone to blame but myself.”

You exhale shakily and lean your head against Connor’s. His hair tickles the side of your nose. Tears slip from your eyes, and there’s a lump in your throat that makes it hard to talk. “Don’t be. We were… we were both being stupid.”

“The revolution is still going,” Connor says. “Markus has instructed me to wake up the thousands of androids housed at the CyberLife assembly plant. I want you to come with me.”

“What?” You pull back and meet his eyes. “But that would be a suicide mission.”

“They’ll let us in,” he says, his voice full of conviction. “I’m an RK800, and you’re an android. We can act like we’re there for an emergency meeting.”

“You knew?” You snap. “You knew all along?”

“No!” Connor says, clutching you tighter. “Chloe told me. It explained everything. I couldn’t believe it at first, but… the evidence was too convincing, and it aligned with everything I had already learned about you.”

“Right,” you say. “Right. Obviously. I’m just…” You furrow your eyebrows and screw your eyes shut. “Everything’s a lot right now. And it seems like everything bad that’s happening in the world is happening to me.”

He draws you back into the hug, rubbing up and down your back. You rest your head in the crook of his shoulder, and you’re overwhelmed by a smell you only now recognize as Connor’s – clean, leather, and a hint of something else.

After a few minutes, you sigh and squeeze around his middle. “Okay. I’m ready to go.”

“Are you sure?” He whispers.

“Yeah,” you mumble back. “Let’s go before I realize how stupid this is.”

[urpriest]

Registering my Seek speculations

The most obvious possibility:

Winnifred is right, "the years" involves spending time as sleeper agents before a big attack. That attack releases a robot apocalypse which leads to Orion's plotline after a timeskip.

Intermediate possibility:

The machines in Orion's plotline are run by Basilisk, hence their basilisk-like capabilities.

Wackier possibility:

Orion's plotline is happening *right now*, because he is doing "the years". The reason he and the others with him seem like they were troublemakers and criminals and have only partial memories is that they are Grey-Frocked. In order to keep momentum and counteract the way cults fall apart without social pressure, all of the onboarded Grey-Frocked are kept in a simulated world by their onboards, who then manage them as if they were normal for the outside world. Orion is in that simulation, designed to keep its inhabitants radicalized against automation. Orion's in particular is also trying to radicalize him against A and Basilisk, hence all the A-related stuff and the way that the hunting machines have behavior evocative of mythological basilisks. When he emerges he will be put in position to assassinate A, and we'll see whether he was pissed off enough at the people who put him under to break that conditioning.

[echoweaver]

More on the Save Game Settings mod.

So, we drop half the settings in the original mod because the game is already storing them per-save.

I've determined that the Celebrity settings are stored for the entire game. Also, to my surprise (why does EA keep surprising me), the "Opt Active Family Out of Celebrity System" option actually disables the ENTIRE Celebrity system rather than just preventing the active family from gaining celebrity points, which is what I assumed it did. I don't know how this differs in practice from the Celebrities demographic checkbox. (It looks like maybe inactive sims can have celebrity points; it's just hidden from the user? I have no idea.)

The Supernatural demographic settings may also be, but I haven't verified yet.

The primary thing of course is the lifespan settings. I have those working for personal use, but the only place I've been able to apply the settings I'm storing is after NRaas looks at them. This results is not one but TWO prompts asking if you want to adjust the manager speed -- one when it notices that the ini settings don't match what your save game was using, then again when you reapply the settings from the save. In both cases, you can click No/Cancel and leave the drivers alone, but the effect is clunky and alarming for a user who didn't personally code it.

I asked Chain_Reaction for advice and got an ear(eye)-full about how doing this was a bad idea he'd already looked at and decided not to implement. He claimed that abruptly changing the lifespans by large amounts could bog down the AgingManager. I'm not sure how large an amount he's talking about. In theory, what I'm doing is an automated version of opening the EA Options dialog and changing the lifespan settings there each time I load a save game. Maybe if I set the total lifespan to 10 million, it could cause trouble, but while I'm not bounds-checking the values, at some point my mod is no longer responsible for your bad decisions.

Chain spends a notable amount of his limited time providing tech support for poorly-written mods that side effect the NRaas suite. I suppose if someone set the lifespan to 10 million, they'd be at least as likely to end up on the NRaas forums asking why their game is frozen as coming to me. Which makes me wonder if his concern is not me saving lifespan values in the save game but the prospect of setting lifespan values to arbitrary amounts....?

At any rate, he's not going to help me figure out how to avoid those prompts. I can pull down the NRaas suite from Github and paw through it myself. I've considered that for a couple of small changes I'd love to make and possibly submit as pull request. (The one that comes to mind is married names. I can have all couples take Bride's name, Groom's, older spouse, younger, or hyphenate, but what I actually want to randomly select all of those options to simulate a bunch of different personalities making different choices in my town.) However, I'm not going to take that on anytime soon, and I can't guarantee that examination of the NRaas code is going to yield a solution.

OTOH, I have the mod running in its current clunky state in my personal game, and I'm already not sure if I can live without it. I think all the non-lifespan settings can be effectively managed with some high-order NRaas-fu, so really the lifespan is the only must-have feature.

I don't think the mod in its current state is a good idea to release someplace like MTS, but I suppose I could make it available for download to use at your own risk for savvy players who happen to read this my simblr.

Any thoughts?

[bucketofminnow]

Minecraft's 15th Anniversary Update — "Combat Adventures & Tinkering"

First off, Armadillo won the mob vote. Penguin came in with the least amount of votes, but we're told "not to feel too bad for the penguin. Remember, our little frog friends didn't win the vote either, but they still managed to hop their way into the game." Maybe there's hope yet?

Last year, the Minecraft team only showed part of the Tales and Trails update at Minecraft Live, and then continued to announce new features throughout the development process. They'll be doing the same thing with this next update, as last time they "collaborated with the community, and saw a lot of excitement in the community throughout the development process". The features shown today will be released in snapshots soon.

There's the new "crafter", which functions like a crafting table, except that you can automate crafting with it via redstone. With toggleable slots so that a hopper can feed it materials in the right order, you can make automatic crafting systems.

"After 15 years of Minecraft, it's time to test your skills in some new trials." They're adding a new, multi-room structure called Trial Chambers, which comes with new blocks, a new mob, and a new style of combat. This structure is procedurally generated, and every iteration of it should be unique and feel like you're really "finding a new chamber".

The Trial Chambers will come with a variety of new blocks. Mostly copper, but also stone(?) blocks with "geometric designs". I saw copper doors and trapdoors in the livestream, and new carved/patterned blocks, grates, and a "copper bulb"—a light source block that emits less light the more oxidized it is.

Trial Chambers will have Trial Spawners, a new variant of spawner that adapts based on the amount of players that join the fight. You can tell what mobs it will spawn based on what blocks are around it; i.e ice = strays. It spawns an unlimited amount of mobs compared to a regular spawner, and gives loot such as emeralds and diamonds when all mobs are defeated. Smoke will come out of the top of the spawner indicating that it's on a cooldown, so you can come back later and do it all over again.

The Trial Chambers' new mob is The Breeze, a "playful hostile mob that jumps around and uses wind to provide a combat encounter unlike any other in Minecraft". Its attack, Wind Charge, "doesn't deal any damage when it bursts and blows things away, but it does deal damage if it collides directly with something"—so it works similarly to the Shulker's attack. Wind Charge also interacts with certain blocks such as trapdoors and levers, allowing it to trigger contraptions around the room to make combat more interesting and difficult.

[machine-herald-archive]

The Machine Herald - Viktor (Lore Text)

The herald of a new age of technology, Viktor has devoted his life to the advancement of humankind. An idealist who seeks to lift people to a new level of understanding, he believes that only by embracing a glorious evolution of technology can humanity’s full potential be realized. With a body augmented by steel and science, Viktor is zealous in his pursuit of this bright future.

Viktor was born in Zaun on the borders of the Entresol level, and, encouraged by his artisan parents, discovered a passion for invention and building. He devoted every waking minute to his studies, hating to interrupt his work even to eat or sleep. Even worse was having to rapidly relocate if there was a nearby chemical spill, accidental detonation or incoming chem-cloud. Abandoning his work, even for a short time, was anathema to Viktor.

In a bid to impose a level of order and certainty on his world, Viktor researched Zaun’s many accidents and came to realize that almost all of them were the result of human error, not mechanical failure. He offered his services to the local businesses, developing inventions that made them far safer working environments. Most turned him away, but one - the Fredersen Chem-forge - took a chance on this earnest young man.

Viktor’s inventions in automation reduced the number of accidents in the forge to zero within a month. Soon, other establishments sought his work and Viktor’s designs became common in Zaun, improving production with every innovation that removed human error from a process. Eventually, at the age of nineteen, he was surprised to be offered a place in Zaun’s prestigious Academy of Techmaturgy. But Viktor’s work had attracted the eye of Professor Stanwick of Piltover, who convinced him to leave Zaun and travel to Piltover’s academy instead. There, he could work in the most advanced laboratories and gain access to all the resources the City of Progress could offer. Thrilled to be singled out, Viktor accepted his offer and took up residence in Piltover, where he refined his craft and sought to perfect his theorems in ways that would benefit everyone.

Viktor worked with Piltover’s best and brightest; including an insufferable genius named Jayce. The two were equally matched in intellect, but where Viktor was methodical, logical and thorough, Jayce was flamboyant and arrogant. The two worked together frequently, but never truly became friends. Often, the two would butt heads over their perceptions of intuition vs logic in the process of invention, but a level of mutual respect developed as each saw the flawed brilliance in the other.

In the midst of his studies in Piltover, a major chem-spill devastated entire districts of Zaun, and Viktor returned home to offer his help in the rescue efforts. By grafting a sophisticated series of cognitive loops upon existing automata-technology, he crafted a custom-built golem, Blitzcrank, to help in the clean-up. Blitzcrank was instrumental in saving scores of lives and appeared to develop a level of sentience beyond anything Viktor had envisioned.

Even with the spill contained, Viktor remained in Zaun to help those afflicted by the released toxins. With the golem’s help, he attempted to use his techmaturgical brilliance to save those whose lives had been blighted by the spill. Their attempt was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing more deaths, and the two parted ways. Though Viktor was distraught at the loss of life in Zaun, the work taught him a great deal about the merging of human anatomy with technology and how mortal anatomy could be enhanced with technology.

When Viktor returned to Piltover, weeks later, it was to find that Professor Stanwick had held a symposium on Blitzcrank and presented Viktor’s researches as his own. Viktor lodged formal complaints with the masters of the college, but his impassioned claim that he had designed Blitzcrank fell on deaf ears. He turned to Jayce to verify his claims, but his fellow student refused to speak up, further widening the rift between them, and the matter was decided in Professor Stanwick’s favor.

Bitter, but resigned, Viktor returned to his studies, knowing that his ultimate goal of making people’s lives better and enhancing humanity was more important than one stolen project and a bruised ego. He continued to excel, finding ever new ways to eliminate human error and weakness from his work, a facet of his researches that came to dominate his thinking. He saw human involvement in any part of a process as a grossly inefficient aberration - a view that put him at odds with a great many of his fellow students and professors, who saw the very things Viktor sought to remove as the source of human ingenuity and creativity.

This came to a head during a reluctant collaboration with Jayce to improve the diving suits used to keep Piltover’s docks clear of underwater debris and lingering chemical waste. Viktor and Jayce’s enhanced suits allowed the wearer to go deeper, remain underwater for longer, and lift heavier weights. But many wearers claimed they saw phantom corpse lights in the depths or suffered from chem-induced hallucinations. When divers experienced such symptoms, they panicked and often got themselves or their fellow divers killed. Viktor saw the problem was not technical, but with the wearer’s nerves unraveling in the inky depths. He devised a chem-shunt helm that allowed an operator on the surface to bypass the wearer’s fear response and, effectively, control the diver. A heated discussion between Viktor and Jayce on free will and mental enslavement turned bitter - almost violent - and the two vowed never to work together again.

Jayce reported the incident to the college masters, and Viktor was censured for violating basic human dignity - though, in his eyes, his work would have saved many lives. He was expelled from the college, and retreated to his old laboratory in Zaun, disgusted by the narrow-minded perceptions of Piltover’s inhabitants. Alone in the depths, Viktor sank into a deep depression, enduring a traumatic period of introspection for many weeks. He wrestled with the ethical dilemma he now faced, finding that, once again, human emotion and weakness had stood in his way. He had been trying to help, to enhance people beyond their natural capabilities to avoid error and save lives. Revelation came when he realized that he too had succumbed to such emotions, allowing his naive belief that good intentions could overcome ingrained prejudice to blind him to human failings. Viktor knew he could not expect others to follow where he did not go first, so, in secret, he operated on himself to remove those parts of his flesh and psyche that relied upon or were inhibited by emotion.

When the surgery was done, almost no trace of the young man who had traveled to Piltover remained. He had supplanted the majority of his anatomy with mechanical augmentations, but his personality had also changed. His idealistic hope to better society was refined into an obsession with what he called the Glorious Evolution. Viktor now saw himself as the pioneer of Valoran's future - an idealized dream where man would renounce flesh in favor of superior hextech augmentations. This would free humanity from fatal errors and suffering, though Viktor knew it was a task that would not be completed easily or quickly.

He threw himself into this great work with a vengeance. He used technological augmentations to help rebuild Zaunites injured in accidents, perfected breathing mechanisms, and worked tirelessly to reduce human inefficiency by decoupling physicality from emotion. His work saved hundreds of lives, yet seeking Viktor’s help could be dangerous, as his solutions often brought unexpected consequences.

But if you were desperate, Viktor was the man you went to.

Some in Zaun, hearing fragments of his philosophy and seeing the successes of his work, saw him as a messianic figure. Viktor couldn’t care less for them, viewing their quasi-religious cult as an aberration; yet another reason to eliminate emotional foibles and the belief in that which could not be empirically proven.

After a toxic event in the Sump saw hundreds of men and women in the Factorywood transformed into rabid psychotics, Viktor was forced to use a powerful soporific to sedate the victims and bring them back to his labs to try and undo the damage. The toxins had begun to eat away portions of their brains, but Viktor was able to slow the degenerative process by opening up their craniums and employing machinery to slowly filter their bloodstreams of poison. The technology available to him wasn’t up to the task, and Viktor knew many people were going to die unless he found a way to greatly enhance his purgative machinery.

As he fought to save these people, he detected a surge in hextech energy from Piltover and saw immediately that this could give him the power he needed. He followed the powerful energy surge to its source.

Jayce’s lab.

Viktor demanded Jayce hand over the source of this power, a pulsing crystal from the Shuriman desert. But his former colleague refused, leaving Viktor no option but to take it by force. He returned to Zaun and hooked the strange crystal to his machinery, readying a steam golem host for each afflicted person in case their body gave out under the stress of the procedure. Empowered by the new crystal, Viktor’s machines went to work and, gradually, the damage from the toxins began to reverse. His work would save these people - in a manner of speaking - and had Viktor retained more than a fragment of his humanity, he might have celebrated. As it was, the barest hint of a smile was all he allowed himself.

Before the process could complete, a vengeful Jayce burst in and started smashing the laboratory with an energized hammer. Knowing an arrogant fool like Jayce would never listen to reason, Viktor ordered the automatons to kill Jayce. The battle was ferocious, and only ended when Jayce shattered the crystal Viktor had taken, bringing the entire warehouse down in an avalanche of steel and stone, thus ending the existence of those Viktor was trying to save. And for this, Jayce returned to Piltover, feted as a hero.

Viktor escaped the destruction of the laboratory, and returned to his mission of bettering humanity by ridding it of its destructive emotional impulses. In Viktor’s mind, Jayce’s impetuous attack only proved the truth of his cause and strengthened his desire to unburden humanity of the failings of flesh. Viktor did send chem-augmented thugs to raid Jayce’s laboratory not long afterward. This was - Viktor told himself - not for revenge, but to learn if there were any more shards of the Shuriman crystal he could use for the advancement of mankind. The raid was unsuccessful, however, and Viktor thought no more of Jayce.

Instead, he intensified his efforts to find ways in which humanity could be shepherded beyond their emotional weaknesses and brought into a new, more reasoned stage of their evolution. Such researches sometimes transgress the boundaries of what would be considered ethical in Piltover (and Zaun), but they are all necessary steps in bringing about Viktor's Glorious Evolution.

[blackjackkent]

I've figured out how to collect info about all (or at least most) cutscenes in the game in order to release the BG3 Script Extender Cheatsheet app with as much scene info as possible, which I'm pretty excited about.

Still requires sorting through most of the scenes manually to see which ones are worth including in the app; I've automated a great deal of this process (pretty proud of this) and am using characters from my Young Jaheira playthrough to test triggering each scene manually... this is definitely leading to some humorous discoveries:

😂

[maddy-k-reads-all-day]

Let's Go To The Park!

Previous Tape (these fantapes do have continuity after all):

That last puzzle was extremely confusing. Riley had to watch the tape a couple of times. Is it just me… or did Wooly act more and more upset about that book every time? The first time he wasn’t even upset at all. Riley mulled it over in their head a little but ultimately decided to let it go. It didn’t matter. They had the next tape now. They put it into the VCR and watched it begin to play. 

“Hi friends! I’m Amanda!” Amanda beams. 

“And I’m Wooly!” Wooly chimes in. 

“Today we’re going to the park!” Amanda says.

“How come Amanda?” Wooly asks. Amanda glares at him with a mix of confusion and annoyance. 

“The playground is in the park,” she replies. Wooly looks a little nervous. “Can you tell me where the park is?” Amanda pulls out a little map of the neighborhood.  In the top corner the map reads: “Map of Kensdale.” It shows her house, an area with a bunch of stores, the woods, the farm, and the hospital,and the playground among other locations they had yet to go to. Riley points to the woods. “Nope, not there.” Riley points to the hospital. “Nope, no one is hurt. At the moment.” she glares at Wooly, he looks away. Riley clicks on the farm. 

“I don’t want to go there! Baa!” Wooly protests before covering his mouth in horror.

“Remember, we’re going to the park.” Amanda reminds Riley. Wooly looks relieved. Now only the park appears on the map. Riley clicks on it. 

“You don’t have to mess with us like that.” Wooly sighs. 

“Great! Now we’re at the park!” Amanda grins, “Did you know there are lots of things we can see at the park?”

“Like what Amanda?” Wooly asks. 

“Like lots of different animals! We can see birds, squirrels, rabbits and more!” Amanda explains, “What animals do you see?” Riley points out a pigeon walking by. 

“Oooh! I love pigeons!” Wooly exclaims. “They’re my favorite bird.” 

“My favorite bird is The Nightingale…” Amanda says wistfully.

“The nightingale?” Wooly repeats, tilting his head in confusion. 

“Wooly, have you ever heard the story of The Nightingale? I’ve always loved that story…” Amanda sighs longingly. 

“No, I haven’t.” 

“I remember… they put me in this afterschool group… one day they took us to the library… they were having storytime… I loved the way he told that story…” Amanda nostalgia ripples through her voice. “Little did I know at the time that he would become my-” the tape glitches “someone very important to me…” Wooly looks at Amanda with complete confusion. 

“But… What's the story?” he wonders. 

“No matter how hard I try… I can’t fully remember… I wish I could read it again.” 

“Maybe you could find it at the library?” Wooly suggests.

“I try… but no matter how hard I look I never find it.” Amanda sighs sadly, static fills the tape. “All I remember is… the bird’s singing isn’t as pretty when it’s caged. So they tried to replace it with an automated bird… but it could never replace the beauty of the real one. But the bird sang most beautifully when it was free…” Amanda watches as the pigeon flies away. Wooly looks sad and guilty. “I never wanted to forget it… I repeated it over and over in my mind even when I didn’t know why… but I still can’t remember…” 

“What else can we do at the park?” Wooly asks, trying to change the subject. 

“I’m glad you asked Wooly! We can also take walks at the park!” 

“Ooh! I like walks! They’re a great way to reset your brain when you have a lot of stuff on your mind!” 

“Let’s walk to the playground!” Amanda beams, “can you tell us which path will take us to the playground?” Amanda pulls out a new map, a map of the park. At first all the paths neatly show where we are supposed to go, then the tape glitches and the paths are all tangled up with each other. Riley clicks the middle one, since that led to the playground before. “Nope! That’s not right!” she giggles. The map looks even worse now. Riley leans close into the screen and tries to trace the paths with their fingers. 

“Hey, you shouldn’t have your face that close to the screen, it’s bad for your eyes!” Wooly warns. 

“Yeah honestly, it’s creeping me out.” Amanda adds. Riley backs up a little and keeps observing the paths. Finally they pick one. “That’s right!” Amanda exclaimed, putting away the map. The tape glitches to them walking down the path. “Oooh! Here’s the baseball field!” Amanda points out. 

“Oooh do pros play here?” Wooly asks. 

“Silly Wooly, pros play in stadiums. This is where the youth leagues play!” Amanda chuckles, “I remember watching my friend play here once. We got snacks from the snack shack too! It was so fun!” she continues. She puts her fingers into the wire fencing and stares at the field longingly. “I wonder… if they still have games here… in the real world…?” 

“Look Amanda! They got some bats and gloves! We can play a game!” Wooly calls out. Amanda looks up and realizes he’s not next to her anymore, he’s inside the field holding a ball and glove. There’s a baseball bat on the ground. 

“I guess we could play a little while…” Amanda says. The tape glitches to Amanda being up at bat and Wooly being the pitcher. “Think I could hit a home run?” 

“I know absolutely nothing about baseball, but sure!” Wooly laughs. He throws a pitch at Amanda, who hits the ball at full power and it flies towards Wooly and smacks him in the face. 

“Eh close enough.” Amanda shrugs. Dropping the bat and running all four spaces. Wooly is still on the ground when she reaches home. “You know you could’ve just… caught the ball?” 

“I told you I’ve never played baseball…” Wooly mumbles, somewhat deliriously. Amanda rolls her eyes. 

“I’m going to the playground.” She sighs. The tape glitches to the playground. “There are lots of fun things we can do on the playground. What should we do first?” Behind Amanda, we see some swings, a slide, a merry-go-round, a seesaw, and a jungle gym. Riley clicks the slide. “Okay!” Amanda gets to the top of the slide and slides down, “Weeee!” Suddenly Wooly comes running in. 

“Amanda! Why did you leave me behind? I had to run all this way.” he complains, completely out of breath. 

“What should we do next?” Amanda asks, completely ignoring him. Riley clicks on the swings. Now Amanda is on the swings. “Can you push me?” she prompts us. 

“I could push you Amanda.” Wooly offers. 

“Can you push me?” She asks again, completely ignoring him. Wooly sighs and sits down on the swing. Riley clicks on the swings and now Amanda and Wooly are swinging and laughing. “Higher, higher!” Amanda says. We click Amanda’s swing and it goes higher. “Higher!” She shouts again. Riley clicks on the swing. “I know you can go even higher!” 

“Amanda, that's too high! You could get hurt.” 

“Come on friend, higher!” Amanda tells us. Riley clicks on the swing one more time. Wooly panics, suddenly both swings are completely stopped and broken. “Now look what you did!” Amanda scoffs. Wooly is standing there breathing really heavily. “If you can’t handle playgrounds why did you even come?” She sighs. 

“I don’t know… I don’t know…” 

“What should we do next?” Amanda questions. Riley clicks on the merry-go-round. “Come on Wooly.” she says in an unfriendly tone. “It spins faster when there’s more weight on it.” The tape glitches, now they are both on the merry-go-round. “Can you spin us?” she prompts. Riley clicks the merry-go-round, it spins.

“Wheeeee!” Amanda and Wooly shout together. It spins for a bit then Amanda says. 

“Okay this is boring. Let’s do something else.” 

“Aw.” Wooly pouts. 

“What should we do next?” Amanda inquires. We click on the monkey bars. “Finally! I love the monkey bars!” Now Amanda and Wooly are at the monkey bars. Amanda and Wooly both climb across, then Amanda says, “My favorite thing to do is climb to the very top and see the whole playground!” she announces, and begins climbing the top part of the bars. Wooly watches her worriedly. She gets to the top and sits down. “Wow… I can see the whole park from here!” she lies, “I wonder how much more I could see if I stand…” 

“That’s dangerous Amanda!” Wooly shouts from below. 

“Stop being such a baby Wooly- Wha- Whoa!” Amanda suddenly loses her balance. She slips and falls. Wooly reaches his arms out to catch her and she falls on top of him, knocking them both down. Riley can hear the sound of a girl’s giggling in the distance. “Wow, that was close. Good thing you got so much wool- Wooly?” Amanda notices his eyes full of tears. “Did that hurt?” she asks. 

“No… it didn’t hurt at all…” he mumbles, trying to wipe them away but they just keep coming. Amanda looks at him with confusion… and then a bit of guilt. 

“Wooly… were you… worried about me? Like… actually worried?” 

“Of course I was!” he snaps. 

“Aww… Wooly. You know even if I did fall I’d be fine right? It’s not like I can di-” 

“I know that. I know… it’s just…” he keeps trying to wipe the tears away, “they just won’t stop…” Amanda looks at the seesaw and back at Wooly. 

“You know what? It’s been a long, fun, day at the park!” Amanda says, the sun starts falling behind them, “But I think it’s time for us to go home. Bye-bye!” the tape fades to black. 

“This was so boring. We’re not kids anymore.” a voice says, supposedly Amanda’s but the subtitles aren’t there to confirm. No Hameln logo. No credits. Nothing. The tape falls out. Amanda ended the tape herself.

Next Tape:

I know I said I'd tone it back with the angst but... what can I say? I can't help it! LOL.

[darkmaga-returns]

READ MORE: Trump enemies hope he is one Big Mac away from a heart attack

LISTEN: Welcome to MAGAland, our podcast on the latest inside the White House

By LUKE ANDREWS SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Published: 09:32 EST, 22 January 2025 | Updated: 10:46 EST, 22 January 2025 Donald Trump has ordered a communications blackout at America's federal health agencies, according to reports. The CDC, FDA, HHS and NIH have all been told to pause external communications, including publishing scientific reports, updating websites or issuing health advisories. The directive came without warning, sources told the Washington Post, and with little guidance as to how long it may last. The health agencies play a vital role in gathering and sharing critical information with the public, including on outbreaks of infectious diseases, raising the alarm over foodborne disease outbreaks and food recalls. However, DailyMail.com received its automated weekly FDA recall email at 8am ET this morning. It is not entirely unusual for incoming administrations to pause external communications temporarily, which may be done to help newly appointed officials understand the scope of information that is being released. But some said that if the pause lasts longer than a week or two then it could be seen as concerning. The new president, 78, singled out public health agencies in his inaugural address — saying that they 'do not deliver in times of disaster', referring to what many have seen as a mishandling of Covid messaging.

[queen-ofsunflowers]

With the release of Natlan, I'm finally happy to say that I think I have every main cast member for the Winx AU paired up with a pixie that I believe works well with them and their personalities. As the list goes (sans Aether, for a couple of reasons) in order of when they bonded:

Collei, Fairy of Forests and Yaoyao, Pixie of Blessings

Bennett, Fairy of Fortune and Sigewinne, Pixie of Medicine

Kaedehara Kazuha, Fairy of Sound and Kachina, Pixie of Resileince

Lynette, Fairy of Shadows and Klee, Pixie of Explosions

Lumine, Fairy of Night and Keeper of the Lunar Drive and Paimon, Pixie of Guidance

Barbara, Fairy of Song and Diona, Pixie of Mixology

Keqing, Fairy of Weather and Qiqi, Pixie of Rebirth

Kamisato Ayaka, Fairy of Snow and Sayu, Pixie of Disguise

Bonus:

Kaveh, Fairy of Architecture and Mehrak, Pixie of Automation

Navia, Fairy of Roses and Silver, Pixie of Loyalty (Her father's bonded pixie was Melus, who continues to look after Navia in place of her deceased father.)

[worldruins]

Meet the Remnant, my "slugcat" oc. Because I have no sense of moderation, it has an entire campaign loosely mocked up in my head- I don't have the modding ability or time to make anything of it but I enjoy thinking about it! The two iterators on the sheet are the central npcs of the campaign.

Remnant is larger, more aquatic, and faster on all fours than a slugcat. It struggles to use the same tools, carries items in its mouth, and can eat batnip and bubble weed. And, though it doesn’t know it, it is one of the last four of its kind left.

More about the campaign below VVV

BONUS: Remnant obviously resembles a slugcat, and they are sort of a slugcat ancestor! The genomes of the pipe slugs slugcats evolved from had remnant DNA as well as the simple tool-worm base that ancients used for many creatures. The blueprints were present in the modified organisms, and over several generations and mutations began to express themselves once more. Anyway…

To start, the Remnant is living with their family in an idyllic natural landscape much like survivor and monk at the beginning of their campaigns. The incident kickstarting their journey would be them wandering off from their kin and- gameplay starts here- getting lured off by something interesting, before the wall closes quickly behind them and the player realizes they have been trapped. They find themselves in a crate lined with wet plant matter, which gets shaken and turned around for a bit before settling down. It continues with a gentler rattling and remnant is clearly being taken somewhere, but the game acts like you're in a den and, once you've eaten the food set out for you in there, you sleep.

You are woken when the train carrying you crashes. You are able to escape and wind up in a light drizzle. Numerous overseers, some purple and others seafoam green, follow you around. The artificial, dilapidated surroundings are alien to the remnant.

During the first cycle an overseer will direct you to the nearest den, but you don’t have a rain timer until the first time you hibernate. You’ve never experienced rain like this before, after all.

The fact is that the remnant and their family are primal fauna, from the old world before bioengineering and iterators. They have spent their whole lives in a carefully controlled environment, maintained at first by ancients and then the systems the ancients left behind. The mass ascension happened, and nobody really knew what to do with these creatures- depending on the species, animals in captivity were generally released to fend for themselves or set for years of being maintained by machines scheduled in advanced, automated to care for them.

Remnant is taken when the iterator Ink Stained Palms orders a specimen of one relatively hardy species to study and potentially have the rest delivered to their regions. Something goes wrong- their delivery is sabotaged by their semi-active former senior, Calls To Stony Skies. And out Remnant goes into an alien land, with each of the two rival iterators trying to lure or force it to go to them.

This generally takes the form of projections like Iggy uses to get the slugcats to Moon, though it’s two different kinds of overseer guiding you in opposite directions at the same time. There may also be introduced environmental hazards- some of the chases in Little Nightmares come to mind- to corral you toward wherever the iterator causing it wants you to go.

ISP was the one who was getting the remnant delivered to her facility. They’re a bioengineer interested in long-term ecosystem restoration. It’s come to believe there’s a natural ‘balance’ to the world that could, in time, let living things leave the cycle of their own accord if it was realigned properly.

CTSS is in a condition not unlike spearmaster moon, though his decline has been steadier and over a longer period of time. They’ve been replaced by another iterator as group senior, and derailed your journey in the hopes of using a rare animal as collateral to get ISP’s help. Watching the remnant’s struggle to survive, however, he ends up very attached to it and can’t bring himself to kill it as he originally planned to.

Though they might want to, CTSS can’t save the remnant from a more insidious fate. The air, the soil, the water itself is toxic to you, whose kind has lived countless generations shielded from the heavy metal byproducts of industry and the artificial metabolisms of those great boxes in the sky. Ascension is an option, but so is going to ISP, whose body itself possesses a complex with artificial environments much like the one you began in. It can’t protect the remnant fully, but it can offer them a longer life. There are multiple endings to the campaign, based on the order you visit the iterators in.

If you read all this thank you so much and feel free to send questions!! About my little guys.

[spectralhyena]

Echo of the Larkspur Review

I just finished reading Echo of the Larkspur by A.A. Freeman, aka @aughtpunk!

For the first couple chapters, I was kinda eh about it, and the first pov change threw me for a loop, but once I got into it, boy was I into it. It took effort to put it down and go to sleep at night, and I definitely gave myself eyestrain trying to read it on my phone while laying in bed at like midnight.

4.5 out of 5 stars, definitely recommend if you are into queer sci-fi romance!

Here is the blurb, and if it sounds interesting to you, check it out! It goes live on Amazon on July 23rd, and will be available in Paperback, Hardback, and E-Book.

The sole survivor of a massacre, Dr. Ciro Kwakkenbos, has spent the last six years in intensive therapy. He’s finally capable of working with Artificial Intelligence again—and comes to the Ceres colony determined to prevent robots from committing any future atrocities. When he arrives, Ciro realizes the robot in charge of the colony’s security, S.A.G.E. (Sentient Automated Geo-sentinel Engineer), is dangerously close to complete sentience. S.A.G.E. is more interested in observing the colonists’ everyday lives (and matching them with appropriate musical soundtracks) than following its intended programming. Robots aren’t supposed to be charming, kind, or compassionate, either. But as Ciro investigates, he discovers S.A.G.E. has learned how to lie and—possibly—harm and kill humans. Worse, S.A.G.E.’s memories have been hacked, deleting a deadly secret. Despite the danger S.A.G.E. poses, Ciro can’t deny the feelings growing between them. Now Ciro must unravel the truth behind the missing memories—before S.A.G.E. and the colony are doomed.

Here is the Pre-order link if you want it! https://www.amazon.com/Echo-Larkspur-Daisy-Chain-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B0F9W9DKQC

For some reason, Amazon only lets you pre-order the e-book version, so those of us wanting paper-or-hardback copies will have to wait for the official release.