#yesterday i found out my friend is interested a lot in quantum physics and that made me sooo happy tbh. sincerely from someone who loves

[astrxealis]

i love being this little nerd guy sooo much ^_^

[yeswevegotavideo]

Hi, my name’s (basically) Mercury

So @thegrandwilde​ asked me a question about my internet name, and I realized I’ve never actually explained the entire story of my name in context. Then I realized that, with context, it was an extremely long story, so I thought, “Why not make a whole post about it?” 

It is a long post. I don’t know if it’s an interesting post. It’s interesting to me, at any rate.

If you’re curious, or if you have any interest in etymology, especially the etymology of names, and of the reasons people name themselves, then read on, because I’m about to give a comprehensive account of why I’ve been Mercury on the internet for so long that, for quite a while now, I’ve honestly thought of it as my “real” name in a lot of ways.

So, I was a goth in 8th grade, a grunge-goth really. I was in 8th grade in '95/'96 so like...I basically didn't have a choice in being FUCKING OBSESSED with  grunge and alternative rock in general. And I was really into Courtney Love’s whole aesthetic at the time, so I sometimes did your standard, Riot Grrrl-style babydoll dresses with combat boots look, but also like, cut the hem off of my black hamper bag and wore it over a black slip and called it a skirt because fuck you, society, that’s why.

But the main reason I was a goth in 8th grade, is because in 8th grade, I had an enormous crush on Tara.

Tara was a goth girl who made friends with me just before summer break between 7th & 8th grade. We spent the summer hanging out, and she was kind, and friendly, and beautiful, and very protective of her friends (and especially of me) and within a month, I had a gargantuan crush on her. 

I had known I was bi since I was 11, when I basically came out to my mom (who, despite being kinda’ the worst in a lot of ways, was extremely liberal, and very accepting of my and my brother’s queerness, and of the gay community as a whole. Seriously, my mom was so liberal that my form of teenage political rebellion was being a centrist. God I’m glad I grew out of that shit. Anyway). But Western culture being what it was/is, I had little-to-no understanding of how to talk to, flirt with, or otherwise romantically interact with, girls I liked. That had not changed by 8th grade (honestly, in the ways that count, it has not changed, period). So I spent all of 8th grade pining over Tara, and Tara was the de-facto leader of the rocker girl clique (in the Sacramento suburbs in the 90s, you were either a “rocker” or a “rapper", and rockers did not associate with rappers and vice-versa, because the capital of California, one of the most (and for a few years running, THE most) diverse and integrated cities in the United States, was, and is, a racist, conservative hellscape, and I had way too much internalized racism to even look at rap music so...), and I was in her favor and under her protection. (Looking back, I’m fairly sure Tara had a crush on me too, so it really was your standard wlw standing around confusedly pining for each other in silence sort of situation.)

Which is why, when I came to school after missing a day, and she informed me that, “we all picked nicknames yesterday and there’s only two left, you can either be Mercury or Star,” I was not offended by her providing me with a list of approved nicknames that had been essentially picked clean already. I was, in fact, rather honored that I got to be one of the people who got a nickname at all. I associated Star with the character from the movie The Lost Boys, who I (rather misogynistically, I think now) found to be incredibly irritating.

So I chose Mercury.

That’s not the end of the story. That’s the beginning of the story. So like, buckle up lol.

So to rewind a bit, in 7th grade, I discovered Paganism. 

I was ostensibly raised atheist, but with an understanding that my spiritual beliefs were my own goddamn business and my parents weren’t going to make that kind of a decision for me (again, SUPER LIBERAL parents. To be clear, also SUPER ABUSIVE parents, but like, SUPER LIBERAL about it. Which like, growing up being taught that emotional expression is valid and anti-authoritarianism is cool, but also being punished for being a person with independent thoughts and emotions is...a whole other story. ANYWAY). 

I tried on Christianity for like, half a second, went to church with friends a couple of times, and 7-8 year old me was immediately like, “this is fuckin’ stupid, why did God kill Jesus, he’s God, he’s fucking omnipotent, he could just choose to forgive everybody at like, any time, nobody had to die, what a dick” and decided it wasn’t for me.

But I feel an inherent need for spirituality in-general, a kinship to it. When I played in the mud as a child, I was 100% one of the little girls mixing mud & grass & mint leaves with hose water and “making potions”. For hours.

And when I met a girl in 7th grade whose entire family was Wiccan, I was fascinated. So, it being 1994, I picked up a couple Silver Ravenwolf books and some Scott Cunningham and got to studying. (I know. I KNOW!!! I was 12, there was barely an Internet, it’s hyper-cringy, I get it, don’t judge me.)

The Wiccanism didn’t stick, but the Paganism sure did. (My “official” spiritual descriptor is, “Eclectic, non-denominational kitchen witch”. I worship no gods, but am happy to work with those who don’t require sustained devotion, and I’m pretty into fae lore. There’s also a bunch of personal spiritual belief stuff involving conceptual quantum and molecular physics, like, String Theory and the Multiverse Theory, and anthropological concepts about the power of language and story in human development involved, too. And I’m also very much a skeptic, it’s complicated. “I am vast. I contain multitudes.") 

And around Freshman year, while still figuring stuff out, I came upon the concept of having a magickal name. A secret name that one shares only with the gods or spirits when doing magickal work. And I already had Mercury, a name which was granted and then almost immediately forgotten, because we were 13 and had no fucking attention spans, and Tara moved away, and most of us didn’t even talk to each other anymore and...the name was, therefore, kinda’ perfect.

So I chose it for my ritual work. And then I noticed some weird coincidences. Like, I had a pagan calendar that listed stuff like moon phases and planetary motion, and it associated different planets with different days of the week. And the planet Mercury was associated with Wednesday, which has been my favorite day of the week for most of my life (oh wait, do you...not have a favorite day of the week? Is that just me? Anyway). And when I was in maybe 5th grade, I read this book that was pretty stupid and I didn’t even really enjoy, and I don’t even remember the title of, but it repeatedly used a symbol for “the mark of the devil” in its dumb ghost mystery or whatever, and as much as I disliked the book, I was instantly attracted to the symbol. It looked like this: ☿ I would draw it on things all the time, it was one of my go-to doodles. Guess what the alchemical symbol for Mercury turned out to be?  

So in 1999, when I got a computer that came with an Earthlink subscription, and I was really, truly introduced to the Internet for the first time (and not just like, AOL), there was really only one online handle I could see myself using. After all, I was anonymous, it wasn’t “really” telling people my magickal name if they didn’t know who I was, right? (And honestly, by that point I’d kind-of left that concept behind.) So I used Mercury. And whenever that was already taken, I’d use a combination of those nickname choices from 8th grade: Mercury Star, or Mercurystar. And that eventually evolved into Mercury Starlight. And that’s me! :D

It became my fanfic pseudonym (like almost immediately, because I discovered fanfic in the year 2000 and never looked back), and then on message boards or in forums, people would just, like, call me that. And over time, I really started to like it.

I’ve never liked or felt particularly connected to my given, IRL name. And I actually have a bunch of identity and dissociation issues tied up in it (whole other story, yet again), so like, sometimes hearing people use it makes me really fucking uncomfortable. Like, that’s not really a strong enough word for it. Like, I’ve honestly sometimes wondered if name dysphoria is a thing, like similar to gender dysphoria but like, for your name. I mean, though we most frequently associate the two, dysphoria isn’t actually unique to gender identity. It’s a somewhat generic psychological concept, actually. And names are pretty innately tied to identity and sense of self, and having a name that feels so incongruous with who I am that sometimes when people use it I literally feel physically ill, or depressed, or panicky, or get like, instantly turned off if somebody uses it during sex, like...honestly, that certainly sounds like a type of dysphoria to me. I don’t know.

But every single time somebody online calls me Mercury, I just...I absolutely love it. I light up. I feel seen. It’s...it’s just my fucking name, now, man.

Buuut, I don’t really have the guts to legally change it IRL. Not yet, anyway. We’ll see what the future holds. I don’t know, I think about even just casually asking friends to call me Mercury and just...cringe right the fuck up. It’s scary. What if people think it’s stupid? That I’m being silly? Lose respect for me? I know people change their names all the time, but like, that’s them. But for me? Scaaaary.

Anyway, that’s the story, and if you made it all the way to the end, like, thank you for listening?

[cosmosogler]

i’m not sure how to begin today. i was gonna start writing five minutes ago... but then i just kind of sat there and i’m not sure what to say. i’m so tired.

well i wrote a post here when i woke up. the dream bothered me all day though. i feel like it means something but i don’t know how to unpack it and i don’t got an individual therapist to talk about it with.

it’s so hard to condense those dreams into words, especially in 15 minutes. i dropped whole... i can’t call them “plot lines” but stuff that was important for understanding the dream in order to hurry up and get to the ending to try and summarize. 

like i left out that dad always has nightmares about sharks and alligators, and the last third of the dream (which was the only part he was in at all) was in an area of my dreams that always has a big ass shark living on the coast. i don’t know what it means. but i noticed it. i recognized the coast line while i was falling out of the sky.

and i left out most of the actual ending. which was, i discovered who was manufacturing the dimensional bombs as i traveled through forests and neighborhoods, becoming more and more disheveled. i wasn’t sure if they transported all of what they touched or just cut things off in a set radius. but i was cold. i found out where the leader was. i teleported into the airship chamber and found him in a crowded room surrounded by armed guards. i knew what would happen but i still did it. i was holding one of the bombs i’d plucked off the guns outside. i threw it at him. when it hung in the air for a second i set it on fire and exploded his whole head. the 100 guards leveled their guns at me. but i didn’t care. i woke up.

i think it was interesting that at the beginning of that part of the dream i was in a store for stuff to pamper yourself with and by the end of the dream i was shoeless and covered in dirt and rain and about to die.

it also seems to be about the first time i’ve ever killed someone easily in a dream. usually the “monster” is like, a guy with a gun or a rabid dog, and i only have my weak hands and arms and i don’t want to hurt them but i need to survive. this time i didn’t even care at all and also i could set things on fire with my mind.

anyway i got ready for school. i picked up snoopy’s cat food from the front office. my home package came later in the day but i won’t have time to retrieve it until maybe saturday. booked until then. and i don’t know how heavy it will be so i can’t just pop down and grab it in five minutes before i leave in the morning.

i felt... ill, today. not sure how to describe it. “crummy” i guess is an accurate word. the feeling didn’t go away at all over the course of the day. by the end of the day i was retching every time i coughed. keegan asked if i was ok. i said i just felt sick.

it wasn’t like a sore throat or runny nose or anything. i mean i still have coughing fits but it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to cough up. it was like my stomach was just uneasy. it was the kind of thing that was maybe supposed to stop happening after i got my gallbladder out? 

eating didn’t make me nauseous or anything but... ehh describing it in too much detail is weird. if i am reading this in the future it’s THAT feeling.

so that set the stage for everything i did today!!! 

in classical, first thing in the morning, there was a screeching noise that just... was present for the first 30 minutes of class. i was going to die. i was about ready to run out of the room and go out the front door of the building and cry. poor luis must have been tired of hearing me fidgeting and scratching out stuff in my notes and being indecisive about what color i wanted to use. 

i’m still taking notes with the four-color pen. i like it a lot but god it’s gonna be hard to read those notes because i had to scratch stuff out constantly because that noise was destroying my brain and my coordination and my ability to comprehend words and pictures. and also my patience.

half the class wasn’t there this morning. i think most, if not all, of them got out of that midterm at 10 when it ended. suzanne didn’t show up. she came for the next class and later she told me she had sat down to plink at her piano and ended up just wanting to be there for an hour. i gave her my notes even though they were messy from the distant but unceasing metal on rusted metal sound.

then we went to spaghetti day! i talked to suzanne about dreams the whole way there. she said she remembers basically every dream she has every night. it was such a, i guess, relief to meet someone who also remembers all their dreams??? it made me feel less, unique, i guess. mostly it was just REALLY nice to listen to someone else talk about how they dream about the same places over and over and remember stuff they did in previous dreams because they spent so much time remembering everything. we compared notes. 

i guess i was looking for an answer or some kind of context to put this dream in. i didn’t get that information here but i did really appreciate how open suzanne was about her dreams.

so we had spaghetti. i don’t remember what we talked about while we sat in the grass. we mostly gave the halava a running commentary when suzanne noticed they had changed up the recipe. she said they used to do that more often.

then i went to group therapy. we talked about the guy talking here next thursday. he who shall not be named. the racist guy. one interesting thing happened, besides me sharing my discomfort with how to approach the danger since i’m only tangentially affected by it. 

the interesting thing was that one member was telling a story about their experience with a very sketchy person earlier in the day. they were joking around and laughing and making a face that our therapist interpreted as “smiling.” she asked why the person was making so light of this kind of pretty scary situation.

i said “no. i’ve spent a lot of time telling jokes about bad stuff, and that’s not a smile. that’s a grimace at best.” 

the person gave me a sort of look that i’m not sure how to describe. recognition? gratitude? embarrassment? maybe all of them.

i walked back to the physics building and went straight to e&m class. i took notes!!! the professor didn’t really make any sense though. but i found out suzanne works with one of my classmates so i asked her if it would be ok for us to maybe be introduced during their next meeting tomorrow. she said that was probably a good idea.

after that i bummed around in my office and worked on the new quantum assignment (due monday because god hates us). 

i showed harrison the card crusher video. i also realized while i was being sick in the bathroom that i don’t feel very comfortable... not laughing around some of my classmates. i guess i just fell into this really easy, natural pattern of telling horrible stories about my childhood and then pretending to laugh and be not upset. it’s something i did a lot at villanova too. 

the pattern is that almost every story i tell will contort itself in such a way that, in the last sentence or two, if it wasn’t already dark it will get there at light speed.

like one doozy i told yesterday when we were talking to rebika about child labor in the united states was that “oh yeah, my mom would take me to work with her when i was about ten. she’d tell me, ‘here, put this away. do this. do this. and do this.’ and she’d do that for eight hours. this happened a lot. but she wouldn’t take me out for ice cream afterward or let me keep any of the money. she’d just take me home and beat me.”

i... want to say it’s an exaggeration? but i feel like it’s kind of not. maybe some of the words aren’t quite accurate. like the beatings had mostly stopped by the time i was 10-12... more or less? but the emotional beatings never ended.

maybe i was a little older than 10 when she did actually start taking me there and forcing me to work all day. pretty sure i was 12 at that point because i was on The Forum and i’d have pretend conversations with my internet friends in my head while listening to one of the two albums i had on my ipod and removing staples for nine hours straight.

i guess i get some sort of satisfaction from the look of utter horror on harrison and jennica’s faces. 

at 6 we had a second round of quantum. classes normally go for 50 minutes but the professor decided to keep talking for another 20 minutes after that and my brain turned to mush about 8 minutes before he finally let us go. 

poor keegan couldn’t actually see the board because we were in a lecture hall instead of the classroom. i probably should have noticed that he had really bad vision. he just... never complained/bragged about it the way suzanne or jennica do. i offered to let him see my notes tomorrow morning because about halfway through the lecture my eyes stopped working. 

they felt dry and gunky and stopped focusing which was giving me a headache. like, there was a delay where i couldn’t see between looking up at the board and looking down at my notes.

i thought that things might improve since i am taking more frequent breaks and also biking home which requires ONLY long distance vision. maybe i should pick up some eye exercises.

then i was sick one more time and then i biked home. i went TURBO FAST. all the parts where i usually get tired i flew by. i mean, i was still tired and my legs burned, but i didn’t pant as much after getting up the hill and i forced myself to keep going.

then i made the rest of the tempeh tacos for dinner because i didn’t want the leftovers to go bad and waste the beautiful experience of tempeh tacos. my onion had gotten a pink spot though and i think it’s what was making the fridge/kitchen area smell funky. i need to learn how to preserve those better. 

they were still pretty good! i made the tempeh way better this time, texture-wise, and i didn’t drown everything in lime juice, but my body was just unhappy and i thought this would cheer me up but it didn’t really.

after that it was 8:40 so i just listened to some mbmbam clips and played a logic puzzle and read some real short fanfiction. now it’s 10:54 and i’m ending my journal entry late but i guess... i don’t want to sleep honestly.

i’ve got the follow-up appointment with the psychiatrist tomorrow so i’ll be talking to her for a while i think. i’ve got some notes compiled as i mentioned earlier. tomorrow i gotta teach for four hours though and i don’t know if i’m really up for that. i mean, i have to be up for it, but i don’t know if i’m really honestly up for it. which means i’ll just be tired tomorrow all day too.

something good about me. i can’t think of anything i ain’t said already. dang it. 

i think my comedic timing is pretty on point. yesterday harrison mentioned again how my sarcasm is virtually indistinguishable from my normal voice. i said something in reply... he started drawling something really obviously sarcastic and i cut him off.

“i’ve been doin this since before you were born! literally everything i say has a drop of sarcasm in it! GET! ON! MY! LEVEL!!! scrub.”

jennica died.

i’m glad someone thought it was funny. people seem to generally like my for real jokes. even the stupid puns. luis said today that “i think sammie is the only one who actually likes my nonsense” and i gave him a thumbs up. 

[originaldetectivesheep]

A Life of Riley Part 1 - The Problem With Grinckles ch 1

I

As these things go, at least this time of the year, around here, this wasn't far off a perfect day.  The sun was still coming up, but there was enough light that Wybert Avenue was a pure riot of orange and red and yellow all the way down the long hill out of West Campus to the slough where the old rail trail crossed, and there was just the right amount of cool, damp autumn fog in the air to give the smell of the fallen leaves the right zing.  It was a good feel – the kind of day you hoped your classes were light, that you didn't have a lab due, that there was a good game on late, that one of your un-tenured profs might want to come out and invest a couple pitchers in good reviews at the end of the semester, that somebody on scholarship might have a spare roll of quarters for the pool table.  It was as good a fall day as you could ask for; nearly good enough to make up for the fact that I was up and walking through it at seven in the morning on a weekend, or that I'd gotten kicked out of bed because of having to get up – or more accurately, of who I had to go and see.

I couldn't really blame Fred – hookups are kind of like this – but he could have stood to be a little nicer about it.  I had my pants half on and was trying to jam a foot into one of my boots when he rolled up on an elbow and rubbed me on the shoulder. "Leaving so soon?  Do you really have to?  Can't you stay a little longer… and then we can go get breakfast somewhere after?"

I thought a little, and set my boot back down on the floor with a clunk.  "Yeah.  I can stay. We can stay in for a little.  I do still have an errand I have to run this morning, but I can do it after, on the way over if we want to go to Rhoda's Cafe on the other side of the eng campus.  It won't take a second – I just need to go up to the AP lab and check in with a friend there about this wire-run list."  I set my hands on my belt to push my pants off again, but when I turned all the way around, Fred was backed into the wall, his mouth hanging open in shock and horror as if I'd said "I lied about not having herpes" or something, not "I need to go run an errand sometime".

"AP," he said, struggling to speak, his thin beard and moustache twisting around into rope-lasso contortions.  "AP – the Applied Physics lab?"  I nodded.  "And your friend, your friend who asks you to check their harnesses, your friend is Riley Kannacheskis?"  I nodded again, slowly.  None of this was news to anyone – Riley was probably the most-well known lab head on campus, and if you asked some rando freshman linguistics major or whatever to name a specific lab, they'd probably say "Applied Physics".  But that was kind of the problem – it was why Riley, and the AP, and the stuff they got up to were infamous all over campus that was the problem.

Fred leaned past me and picked up my boot, then shoved it into my lap. "I'm sorry, sweetie," he said, "but if you're really involved with those AP people you're going to have to go."  Now it was my turn to sit there dumb and shocked, mouth hanging open. "Don't get me wrong, Leo, I like you, you're still a cutie, and the sex was good, but I'm not going to stay hanging around with you and risk getting attached and then worry when you get roped into something mega-stupid and might get killed.  The sex wasn't that good.  And I definitely definitely don't want to hang out with you and get involved myself.  No way. Period.  Those people are too weird, and anyone who gets too close to them gets stuck in their weirdness too.  I had a fun time, but this is it for us."  He raised an eyebrow, and pointed over at the door.

That was that, and so here I was out too early in the morning without a kiss goodbye and a half-lie to maybe do it again sometime or even so much as a goddamn cereal bar, but even though I was still sore about it, you had to admit that Fred had a point.  The AP lab was a weird place where weird people built very, very weird machines, and Riley as lab lead had a weird personal magnetism that without fail,  always drew lab members, their friends, and any innocent bystanders who got too close in to the very heart of whatever fundamentally bizarre problem the lab had created for themselves, or decided to tackle for some desperate no-hoper.

Because that was the Applied Physics lab's thing: they applied physics, and built machines.  Weird machines, but sometimes amazing ones – like the quantum-state dislocator that should probably have won Riley and Yuping a Nobel Prize if the power supply hadn't slagged itself into a slurry of molten copper and burning motor oil the third time they turned it on.  But because they weren't an engineering lab, and thus not always building really practical machines, they had a hard time getting funded, and so Riley was always on the lookout for some kind of back-channel, back-alley deal for parts, or favors, or just future goodwill to stretch the lab's budget and let them keep doing cool experiments.  But because the AP lab was what it was, and Riley's solution to virtually every problem seemed to involve doing something extremely weird, usually with a machine that was liable to explode or set itself on fire or polarize everyone's dental fillings in a three-block radius, it pretty quickly got to be that only the very, very weirdest and least solvable problems got brought over; everyone else did something more productive and less likely to result in major property damage, like calling the police or lighting a candle to St. Jude.

The last time that I'd gotten involved with one of the Applied Physics lab's problems, back in the spring, I'd ended up face down in the mud of a drained pond while Riley fired a DIY autocannon over my head at a giant lizard cosplaying as a washing machine.  And this wasn't a one-off: there was that time where I'm pretty sure I mugged myself and stole my own wallet in the state dislocator, and that time where Carolína went to deliver some notes and got like stuck inside someone's math problem for three days, and if that thing where Remy's ex-girlfriend drank a gallon of ham and had to get her stomach pumped wasn't strictly an AP lab thing, he had been doing something for Riley when his bike – which we were fishing for when the lizard thing happened – somehow went into the Horse Pond, and he still hadn't really told me what the hell was going on with that at all.  I could go on. This was the kind of lab where they ought to have "Abandon All Hope of a Normal Life, Ye Who Enter Here" over the door, instead of just "Danger – High Voltage Equipment In Use, Knock Before Entering".

And yet, here I was still going over there.  It's not like Riley and the rest were bad people, not really, and nobody'd gotten badly injured or permanently poisoned yet, and Carolína was able to get herself out of that demogorgohedron pocket dimension or whatever, and nobody'd even gotten arrested after that cannon thing, which had to be like a billion times illegal each way.  There was never a dull moment around the Applied Physics crew, and usually everything was safe enough; Fred had freaked out over nothing – he probably thought I was going to beg out of treating for brunch – and was worrying about nothing at all.

I followed the bike path off the street, keeping to the side as it wound its way through the Back Yards of cheap dorms, un-managed woods, and half-maintained rec facilities in towards the main engineering campus, idly looking over the flyers and stuff posted to the trees and lampposts, which always got thicker once you got onto actual campus again.  Learn Serbian Today with the Jevrem Obrenović Society.  Sydney Pollack complete filmography marathon at the A.T. Burlton, continuous running no readmittance.  A protest from yesterday against the validity of the last Kenyan presidential election.  Volunteers wanted for an experimental scabies treatment. When you really got down to it, there was a lot of weird stuff going on at this school that didn't have anything to do with the Applied Physics lab.  I hitched my shoulders up, thumbs in my belt; I was coming up on the Horse Pond, re-flooded and lizard-free, but still a reminder of how unrelated weirdness could quickly become the Applied Physics lab's weird problem.

The pond was looking healthier for the cleanup, but was ringed in a whole array of new signs, one after the other like those flipbook ad posters you sometimes get in the subway: University Property Sensitive Habitat Please Respect; Vulnerable Wetland No Dumping; Please Do Not Dump Active Nuclear Materials (This Means You Riley, someone had scribbled onto that one in laundry marker); Clean Up After Your Pets; Do Not Use Pet Waste Bags To Dispose of Grinckle Offal; Do Not Re-Release Caught Grinckles. The last couple looked new, and there were a couple buzz-cut freshmen from China or Vietnam squatting by the water's edge with fishing poles and a bucket – so at least somebody thought that the grinckles had gotten over here too.

I'd been working over the summer, back home, and nobody I was friends with from school was really interested in fish or fishing, so it was kind of weird, getting back on campus, to find this weird thing happening where there were these grinckles, which I guess was some kind of spiny invasive fish that I'd never heard of before, in all the ponds and lakes that nobody had ever cared about before, let alone ever found any fish in back in the spring.  But now like every third email alert was about grinckles, grinckles as a wading hazard, grinckles possibly contaminated, do not just throw piles and piles of grinckle guts into your dorm trash bags.  There was a rumor that they tasted like rutabagas, but I'd never tasted one of those either, had never seen let alone tasted a grinckle, and had no interest in ever doing so.  I was just glad that this was an inextricably weird thing at school that was never going to come up in the AP lab; I mean, it was a fish.  It's biology, not physics, and it's just a stupid fish, even if it's getting in somewhere it shouldn't.  It was someone else's problem, and it was going to stay that way.  I checked my phone as I cleared the last bunch of trees onto the eng quad; too early for the bagel stand, but maybe, if Riley had been working overnight, I could borrow something for breakfast at the lab along with my circuit diagrams.

Chapter 2