#you cannot escape him :'))) he is here indefinitely and it WILL become a different kind of problem

[tenacquity]

Standing this close to the Reaper of the Bailey would’ve—many, many months ago—been rightly terrifying and very likely a sure sign Ryunosuke’s time in London was going to be cut short (if not by the hand of Lord van Zieks [nothing gruesome, mind you, but just his ability to make the defense lawyer look like a clown in the courtroom], then by Ryunosuke himself ducking and running). Even at a distance—especially behind his podium—he’d always carried that sinister aura: a man who wouldn’t be trifled with. A man who had it out, from the beginning, for that “upstart” of a student who had the gall to assert himself in any manner.

Without so tight a hold on his determination, on his loyalty to his best friend, Ryunosuke often wondered just where he would’ve ended up. (Would the Reaper have successfully frightened him back to Japan with enough of those debilitating looks, those icy remarks? I ought to thank both Kazuma and Susato-san for lending me the strength I needed, he mused briefly.) As things were, though, he had no regrets. And when he closed even that minuscule shred of distance between them, that little tingle behind his sternum had nothing to do with fear.

Oh, Ryunosuke liked to think he was getting to know this man. Piece by piece. Little threads left for him to pick up and weave together—and most assuredly without intention, most of the time. He was less of a mystery now, more of an overwhelming curiosity that bled into all of his advances, into that confidence that drove him to not only stand his ground, but press forward. Too closely, Ryunosuke watched those shifts in demeanor, listened to the weight carrying out van Zieks’s latest sigh. It wasn’t annoyance.

Hm…What was that?

He wasn’t bothered by the other’s announcement of lacking all “obligations” to him, not at all deterred by what could have—in the past—been a sign the conversation was over: nothing left to discuss. Instead, Ryunosuke maintained his attentive silence as he waited for the prosecutor to say more; somehow, he knew there would be more. And yes, there after a few awkward pauses, a fresh sentiment eased into the air—something that was… well, surprising in an entirely new way. Enough for Ryunosuke to lose his grasp of any coherent words with which to answer him, momentarily.

Hopefully, he’d wiped the genuine surprise off his face swiftly enough to not be too much of a display. “That’s… awfully generous of you, Lord van Zieks,” he breathed, humbling himself then with a grateful dip of his head. “And, I might add, very easy to take advantage of, but— I-I’ll not do that to you.” Anyone close to him would vouch for his propensity to be indulgent, given the opportunity. He didn’t plan on bringing van Zieks into that particular circle of knowledge. (What was he to do if this man suddenly started doting on him?)

A smile snuck back onto his features, as he then in that moment realized one particular thing he would very much like. “Well, now that you mention it, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” Ryunosuke ventured, “I’d be interested to see if we might find time outside the courtroom to spend in each other’s company.” There, again, his confidence stuttered, forcing him to briefly glance away. “I-if— that would be okay, of course. It wouldn’t have to be immediate, but… I’d rather like that, should it be possible.”

Naruhodo raised his head at last. Good. A better look on the lawyer than those anxiously darting eyes or the usual self-deprecatory sag of his shoulders. He much preferred to see Naruhodo's eyes — though they were so worrisomely wide that Barok wondered if they might pop from their sockets — rather than the top of his head.

( ... What a bizarre thought, when he had wrongly despised the man only months ago. But Naruhodo seemed exceptionally skilled at bringing out the strangest impulses in him. But it wasn't so unusual, was it...? Of course he would rather that Naruhodo didn't fear him. )

❛ I assure you, it's nothing against you, my learned friend.‏‏‎ ‎❜ Not anymore, at least. But therein was the very root of the problem. ❛‏‏‎ ‎I simply exercised common sense. You of all people know better than anyone that I haven't always been... kind to you and your countrymen. Inviting myself seemed inappropriate at best.‏‏‎ ‎❜

Cruel, at worst. No way to return Naruhodo's grace, after all the man had done for him. But it was Naruhodo who had come back to the Old Bailey despite it all, and it was him who had invited Barok here to the defendants' antechamber. He couldn't know what had spurred Naruhodo on — it would be a feat indeed, to claim to know the workings of that man's mind —but Barok could be sure now that his presence was neither overwhelming nor unwelcoming. He would not squander what time Naruhodo had left in London.

It was only a step, but Barok felt as though Naruhodo had suddenly swarmed him. They were much too close now, more than they had ever been. ( Enough that the smell of lavender assaulted his senses. Was that the smell of Naruhodo? ) Were Barok not cornered, he might have stumbled back. As it was, there was no way to turn his eyes elsewhere without effectively backing down. Naruhodo really had become too confident.

He shut his eyes — the better alternative to averting his gaze from Naruhodo's — letting the cloak fall entirely as he crossed his arms and huffed a practised, weary sigh.

❛ Do not misunderstand me. I am under no impression that I hold any obligation to you.‏‏‎ ‎❜

God forbid that Naruhodo suddenly believed himself in possession of some ridiculous, newfound power over Barok. There was perhaps only one other man in the world who could be less trusted with that sort of dangerous assumption. Thankfully the great detective, attached to flatmate's hip as he usually was, had not yet arrived to make a nuisance of himself yet. But Barok hastened their conversation nevertheless; one could never be so sure.

( And the sooner they moved on, the sooner Naruhodo would uncage him. Then he would break free from those eyes, that glowing smile, and that mesmerising scent of lavender that was making his head spin.

❛ ... This is my own choice entirely.‎ ❜ A chance to extend a final thanks to the man that Barok had so horribly misjudged, before Naruhodo set off to Japan. For whatever reason, he had been given this opportunity... and he did not intend to waste it.

Don't be ridiculous, he was tempted to retort. What have I ever done for you? Naruhodo's habit of spinning cheery tales from nothingness was all at once impressive and bewildering. But Barok fought the urge and held his tongue.

❛ Anything that you want, Mr Naruhodo — if it is within my power, then consider it yours.‏‏‎ ‎❜ Within reason went unspoken, but surely Naruhodo understood that much.

[whumpitisthen]

I don't know if you take a request!

But, can you write about Whumpee with Stockholm Syndrome who went back to Whumper after finally escaped for a month?

I take requests yes but you must know it takes me four years to come up with a single draft for anything so be prepared to wait an indefinite amount of time!! I tried to keep it short and idk if ive succeeded!! Here you go!!

No Longer a Lie

Their goodbye was the same as a soldier’s going off to war. He may never return, and even if he does, he would return a different man. A sombre, yet loving valediction.

Her smile is watery and proud. The kind, thoughtful, caring old lady that found him that day and took him in believes that he is going home today. He had told her his parents have finally arranged everything ready for him to return. He had explained that they didn't expect him to suddenly show up in their life after so many years again, that they lived abroad and needed time to get his papers in order, that they cannot wait to see him again. She believes he is going to heal and find himself, and be safe under the care of his family.

He was lying. He doesn't have a family. He had lied to this sweet, innocent lady so she would not try to stop him from what he is about to do. She thinks she saved him, and that he is going home. To some extent, that is true.

She packed him a backpack full of snacks, spare clothes, even some money. She bought him new clothes to wear. She walked him to the train station, though her rickety hips barely allowed her to stay standing long enough. She watched him get on the train and waved at him all the way up until they could no longer see each other through the window as the platform grew further and further away.

He only cried once he was sure she could not see.

He retraces every step he took a month prior to this day. He minds the gap, turns every corner. He recognises a flower shop in the suburbs. The large, tilted tree in the park. A large graffiti under the cement bridge is his next sign that he is going the right direction.

Soon, the houses become overwhelmingly familiar. A few more blocks, and he will be there. His legs ache, the new, cheap shoes he got from her rub at his heels with every step, bloodying the rough fabric. He could not stop his journey if he wanted. He feels his very heart dragging him along on a leash, back to where he left a month ago, back to where he escaped.

There it is. A secluded house at the edge of town, fenced off with barbed wire and kept in perfect condition. His soles burn, but his pace only quickens. He knows those chain links. He knows those barred windows. He knows that godforsaken garage door. He is home. He made it.

Oh, she would have never let him go if he told her that he considered this prison his home.

Reaching the outer gate, the intimate feeling of fear choking him arises like an old friend. The last time he saw this place from the outside he only got to for a moment in his haste. A glance over his shoulder in the middle of the night, and then he was gone like a ghost. He wonders what all has changed. He doubts anything has.

He hesitates. They will be angry at him, he's sure. So, so angry. He left without warning, without saying anything. To think he thought he could leave without repercussions instead of owning up to his mistake and suffering the consequences. Now, here he is thirty days later, crawling back on trembling legs, in strange clothing and some fat under his skin to beg for forgiveness. He is the most ungrateful, pathetic creature he can imagine. He's sure he will be told as much once the door opens.

He steels himself and presses the bell. It goes off twice in quick succession thanks to his twitchy fingers. He cannot tell if the overwhelming nerves strangling him are of worry or excitement.

He has been away for too long, trying to function in a place he is no longer meant for. He craves this hell like one would their heaven. He knows it's wrong, he knows he could leave right now and go back to the old lady that took care of him like her own son and he could relearn how to be a person and it would all be okay. He rationalises that it's far too late for that.

The ten seconds that pass in silence after the bell chimes are agony spreading over an eternity. His fingers cramp with how fiercely he fists them to his palm. Eventually, however, the entrance opens, and out steps the devil himself.

He stops on the porch, pausing to make sure his eyes aren't playing tricks on him, but he then quickly crosses the distance between the two of them to jerk the gate open and embrace him before his lost darling could even rant off his apology that he has been writing in his head ever since he first took a step outside of this house.

They stand in silence for a long minute.

This moment feels absolutely perfect. Better than he ever expected it to feel; just the most idyllic scene that goes exactly as he had dreamed it would. The hug feels better than he had imagined, so warm and tight and all-encompassing. His red nose finds its way into the crook of the man's neck, nestling in there. He breathes in deep, taking in the smell of comfort, of the wonderfully known and expected; the familiarity.

“I’ve told you so many times. You do not belong out there anymore.”

In reality, what he had experienced with his freedom was not joy, but layers upon layers of anxiety. Everything was new, everything was unusual, everything was terrifying. What he had grown so used to during his years in this house he threw away in blind greed, wanting more from life than the perfect world his owner had made for him.

At first the freedom was elating. Long forgotten concepts like privacy and control had returned and excited him. But then his new circumstances became tiring. One or two core differences became dozens of alien rules he had to rememorise. Then came shame at experiencing such trouble with something that is meant to be no issue at all for anyone; anyone but him. Normal people don't expect perfect obedience in return for tolerance. Normal people don't have to ask for permission to eat when a plate is put in front of them. Normal people don't have to keep their owners content. Normal people aren't scared of their owners. Normal people don't have owners. These are all things he had to get used to, among the sea of other more obscure examples.

The final straw was his curse of worthlessness. He felt he did not deserve any of this. He ran away. He broke so many rules. He was having awful trouble with his new rules. He was ungrateful. And yet, the old lady only showed kindness and care. No punishments, no threats, not even any mocking or insults. Just relentless, angelic forgiveness. She would not hurt him even when he offered, even when he had asked. He could not handle this; he felt like he was going to go insane with guilt.

His owner had told him this countless times, but only now does he truly understand what he had meant, — the complicated, scary life of a free person just isn't suited for him. Not anymore. He is different. He cannot be left alone for long. He cannot function without clear cut rules, routine or punishments. He doesn't think like everyone else. Above everything, what was killing him every day the most was yearning for his owner. He needs his owner. He cannot be away from him, he depends on him too much. He missed him every day, feeling dumber and dumber each day for being so cowardly.

But now, now he is here again, in his owner's capable hands. Everything will make sense again, all his mistakes will be fixed and he can spend the rest of his life atoning for his naïve stupidity. He will take being locked up in this birdcage for the rest of his life. He will take the sharp, unending burn of punishments each time he slips up. He will take it all without a word if that's what his owner wants. He missed him more than should be possible. He cries. He is so happy.

His relief is crushed as soon as the door locks behind him, and he is once again all alone with the man. His freshly washed hair is grabbed and he is dragged all the way down to the source of all of his nightmares, sent to the floor viciously. His crying turns desperate. He is barely left time to gasp out a plea before he is grabbed again and tied up much too tightly, rope burning over old, thick scarring along his wrists. His cries are muffled with a gag, and his tears are soaked up with a blindfold.

He becomes inconsolable then. He knew this would happen, he knew he would be punished, he knows he deserves it — but this is all too sudden, juxtaposed horribly by the tenderness of that hug that he waited a month for and needed more than he ever realised. Now it's like his owner is a different man, mercilessly restraining him and not saying a word, just like when he is truly furious. He didn't seem angry at all before. His owner seemed as relieved as he did.

He can tell he is dropped off in the middle of the basement by how cold it is and how his skin catches on the drain under him. He is pulled to kneel, and while he tries his best to obey every wordless order, his limbs have become useless jelly, flowing in all the wrong directions.

The punishment is severe. So severe that he is certain he won't survive it. The first to break are his legs. He might not ever be able to walk again, much less run away from consequences. His arms are wrenched behind and up until his shoulders pop, rendering all his limbs useless. They are left there like that, hanging off him like parasites that feed on his agony. He is beaten with something heavy, made of iron. That breaks several more bones, his ribs mostly. His screams start dying down then, not for a lack of trying. The gag muffles every apology he sobs into it, ensuring he will only be able to say sorry once his owner has decided he is truly sorry.

He is reduced to a bag of flesh to be abused. He cannot fight any of it, he cannot see any of it and he cannot stop any of it. He has never felt so much like an object before in his life, not with the old lady, not prior escaping, not prior to being caught. Still, he never even thinks about regretting coming back. He never holds anything against his master, he never holds a grudge or resentment. He deserves this for disobeying him, and his owner deserves his pain as compensation. He deserves this, he deserves this, please, please let him say he deserves all of it and see how he regrets running. He needs to say it, he needs this to end, he wants nothing more than to grovel at the man's feet and sob over and over how worthless he is and how he will never ever try anything like this again.

The only way this can end is if he is forgiven, but he cannot be forgiven until he has apologised.

The blindfold is never removed, not like his bindings and the gag. This distresses him greatly even as he is cuddled in his owner's arms once again, exhausted. The blindfold only ever comes out for the worst of his mistakes. When his master is angry with him. When a simple slap or two or a couple days without food isn't enough. The fact that it is still on even hours after he was finally allowed to beg for forgiveness — he just cannot relax. He supposes that's probably the reason why it's still on. He can’t just forget about what he did so easily with one round of torment. He hopes it will be taken off soon, but at the same time, he has no hope for it coming off in the coming days.

He doesn't even know if he has suffered enough yet. This small thing could very well signal that he will be atoning for this transgression for up to another month; just as long as he had spent away from here. The thought terrifies him enough to sob brokenly into his owner's chest, huddled up against him as he is. He’s rewarded with a light pet. He whispers a thank you.

The man pauses at that, causing his body to tense in preparation of more pain. Wonderfully, however, all that comes is more gentleness, a hand that has hurt him so many times now digging down to the roots of his hair and scratching in a pleasant rhythm. He has never been more thankful. The smallest of kindnesses from his owner are enough for him to forget all about the month of constant mercy from the old lady that took care of him unconditionally. Something must be wrong with him. He doesn't think about that for too long.

“I am so glad you came back,” — his master murmurs.

No one loves him like his master loves him. The old lady… was stupid. She was an idiot. Who would take in a stranger off the street, half-dead, and spoil him like she did? That's moronic. Her kindness — it doesn't matter. Any grain of sweetness from this man means more than a whole year of hers. He loves him. She was just a dumb old lady.

He feels awful for thinking this. His brain is at battle with his heart, trying to convince himself that this is what he is meant to be, that this is right, while feeling a dark emptiness building in his lungs.

Later, once his body is no longer useless and he can do as he is told, he does so. When he is told to clean, he cleans. When he is told to stay still, he stays still. When he is told to hold his breath, he holds his breath. Neither of them mention it. His owner doesn't tease him for falling back into old habits so soon. He doesn't even think to resist or think for himself. This is their norm. Nothing out of the ordinary. How it is supposed to be. Every night, he tells himself he is happy and loved. He feels his owner's arms around him, holding him close, pushing on his dark, painful bruises and he thanks him for allowing him to stay. His master tells him he loves him, and he smiles, saying the same thing.

And he means it.

~

Masterlist | Ko-fi

Taglist: @morning-star-whump @whumprince

[toflyandfall]

I just saw a photo of "What persona. Dick Grayson isn't a mask. Not like Bruce Wayne is" from Detective Comics #725 and I find it interesting that Dick and the rest of the bats, with the exception of Bruce, don't wear "masks" per se. They are who they are with or without the domino mask/helmet. The only time I can really think of Dick faking things is when he pretended to be an incompetent BPD cop. How was he able to avoid creating and living, half the time, through a "persona" like "Brucie"?

Oooh, this is a lovely, meaty question.  There’s a lot more analysis of Bruce than I planned because let’s be real, it’s kinda weirder for a guy to run around with half a dozen personas than for someone else to run around as himself.  I hope you still find it interesting, but if you want to skip straight to the more Dick-centric stuff, head under the readmore.

A simple but significant factor is that Dick thrives on the company of people in a way that Bruce does not.  I suspect if you talk honestly to many introverts, you will find they too have an extroverted ‘mask’ they put on to the larger world, though probably not quite so extreme.

Another factor is that the civilian social circles Dick and Bruce travel in are vastly different.  Though they each have a reason for being in those circles, that difference itself enables Dick to escape much of the scrutiny that Bruce’s public identity undergoes, because he doesn’t frequently associate with the much more media-hounded elite.

An interesting thing here is that the large difference in social circles between their civilian lives is actually caused by their own personal similarities: they are 100% committed work-a-holics.  It’s just that they have differing civilian approaches to their goals.

I want to start with Bruce because as you point out, his use of persona is distinct among the bats and his reasons for using them in part explain why Dick and the other bats do not.

Bruce is a child of privilege, he has always lived a lifestyle of privilege, regardless of the tragedies that have occurred during it, and his default view of the world, through no fault of his own, is natively that of the extreme upper class.  This drastically influences his perspective and approach to change, and changing the world is his perpetual goal, the reason he put on the suit in the first place.

Bruce works a top-down society approach toward systemic change, and he works it all the time.  This is actually my favorite but woefully under-emphasized part of him: he is not just someone who punches people on the street ‘for justice’, he uses his company, his money, and his social position toward substantial systemic change. This post does a wonderful job covering the ways he does this through his corporations and personal wealth, as does this one.  I cannot recommend either enough because I constantly want to push even the most casual Batman fans to understand: Bruce Wayne is not just a violent punchy puncher man.  He is a traumatized person genuinely trying to use all his resources including himself to make the world safer.

Detective Comics #725

Bruce has many personas he maintains, and he uses all of them according to what suits his need--Batman for places the law can’t go, Bruce Wayne the CEO pushing for systemic changes, Matches Malone for street information, and Brucie the society high roller for society information and social influencing.  He is rarely ever not in a persona and simply ‘Bruce’.

His top-down perspective of enacting change are what dictated the usage and necessity of these personas. He has the means and capacity to basically disappear from society if he so chose--he in fact does so to train during his younger years so successfully they don’t even know how long he was actually gone. 

The Batman Files

So he doesn’t need the personas.  Not Bruce Wayne, CEO, or Brucie, or any of them really, to protect his identity.  That tells us that Brucie is a deliberate choice he made at some point.  He could have been a recluse billionaire Batman indefinitely.  Even though he fully has the status and means to not maintain a job or a persona or, let’s be frank, a life outside the mask at all, it’s his own work-a-holicness that led to the creation of his public personas.  He’s an obsessive strategist, so if Brucie is a choice, that leads us to why?

Bruce does many philanthropic things with his money, but he isn’t the only rich person around, especially not in a city as old and corrupt as Gotham.   But he’s one of the very few ones doing good with it.

The comic you mentioned has a very beautiful moment where Bruce touches on that, and in full context you can feel how consumed he is by this goal of creating the Gotham his parents would have wanted.  Batman mentions he never sees himself in that place, and the morbid interpretation is that the city kills him before he reaches it, but the hopeful interpretation is that in that shining city, Bruce Wayne and Batman and Brucie and all his masks will no longer be needed.

Detective Comics #725

Back in the old days they’d call it noblesse oblige: the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged. Thomas and Martha Wayne ingrained this feeling of responsibility into Bruce by example, and as all things related to them, he obsesses over it.  It urges him to fulfill expectations within segments of society he finds onorous for the betterment of society as a whole in order to carry out their unfinished works.

Enter Brucie.

Brucie serves a two-fold purpose.  Since Bruce has chosen to maintain personas among society, it becomes a false face to justify any oddities Batman might bring into the life of Bruce Wayne by setting himself up as a eccentric, popular social scion.  But that persona itself also allows him to manipulate the upper crust of society.

I have some insider perspective on the kind of society events Brucie attends.  They’re all about the who’s who of making connections, name-dropping and networking, and unspoken class-based elitism.  Charity events among the upper class have these things at the forefront and the cause is the background.  You don’t get your hands dirty, you don’t go out and make change yourself, you pay money to be socially seen and sometimes it happens to go towards a philanthropic cause.  If you want to raise money from the rich and keep people with deep pockets coming in the door, you have to have social currency yourself. This is where, and why, Brucie comes in.  I believe Brucie ws crafted to maintain Batman’s cover but still attempt to carry on his parents’ legacy to grease the wheels of the rich in the directions he chooses: one of generosity towards those less privileged. 

Superman/Batman #51

The inevitable flaw of Bruce’s approach to his personas and their philanthropy is that in a city rife with corruption, money distributed from the top has many opportunities to disappear well before it reaches the bottom.  As in many of ways they are complements to each other, Dick’s approach balances that out, because his approach to helping his fellow man starts out at the street level...literally.

Nightwing #153 (Nightwing: The Great Leap)

Dick, we know, does not come from privilege.  His mother was from a middle class family before she joined the circus, and despite being world famous athletes, most circus workers are lower to middle class.  The people he grew up with, was comfortable with, were all working folk who expected everyone to pull their weight right alongside each other.  He enacts this everyone-together approach in almost all aspects and phases of his life. 

Batman #615

Even once he had settled into being Robin and adapted to living at the manor, he didn’t feel belonging to a culture of privilege, materialism, or high society. He preferred shotgun in the limo to chat with the driver to riding fancy in the back.  Once he was able to start making his own decisions about where and how he lived, despite having both Bruce’s money and then later inheriting a substantial amount of his own, he chose mostly lower-class communal places.

Batman Black and White #6

Dick also doesn’t see the value of throwing money at a problem when there is an option to fix it with his own hands.  We see this frequently, from building his own car instead of buying a finished one or outsourcing the work, to deciding the best way to clean out the BPD was to start at the bottom and work his way up (literally), to quitting college because his classes never got prioritized over crimesolving.  Most of his day jobs ended for similar reasons. 

Nightwing #153 (Nightwing: The Great Leap)

Despite the showmanship training, he gravitates away from spotlight on the rich and wealthy, who are notoriously the kind of people who do not get their hands dirty or go out and take care of things themselves, and prefers to find or build communities around the kind of people who do.

Finally, Dick is an extrovert.  He doesn’t need to act extroverted as Brucie does because he is extroverted.  He likes people and likes being around people.  Whether by conscious choice or not, he tends to put himself in situations where he is surrounded by people in nearly all aspects of his life.  He chooses apartment buildings whose occupants frequently pass each other on the stairs; jobs that involve interacting with many co-workers, patrons, or students; and collects superhero teammates like Boy Scout badges.  And all of these behaviors come very naturally to him.  

He doesn’t need a mask or a role or a persona for those kind of interactions; his mask is pre-supplied as “neighbor” or “co-worker” or “teacher” by the situations he puts himself in.  It helps make him an exemplary leader, because just by acting authentically to himself, he automatically builds up little communities around him any time he arrives somewhere.

Bruce, on the other hand, is an introvert.  For him, interacting with people isn’t easy, automatic, or comfortable unless it has a purpose, but as a strategist, he knows the necessity of human interaction as a catalyst to achieving dynamic change. So he adapts personas to suit people’s expectations.  Extroverts have more social currency; the life of the party can generate more resources than a brooding wallflower.  

So, it boils down to just a few elements: Dick believes in living and interacting at the street level to accomplish the things that he wants to, and he is extroverted enough that the level of social interaction that entails is not a burden to him.  He surrounds himself with the types of people he is more familiar or perhaps more comfortable with, which happens to keep him further out from the media’s eye than associating with the upper crust does. The lower profile is more incidental than intentional, but it lessens his need to have a cover story for every single bruise and lets him get away with even less of a ‘persona’.

Bruce, on the other hand, is introverted and follows a more classist view that systemic change needs to be effected from the top down.   His personas are more of a self-assumed duty than a necessity, as a way of trying to carry out his parents’ legacy.  Any of his children could have chosen to follow his path in business or the high society limelight, but the sense of obligation toward it is something personal to him that most of them don’t share.

[bewaretheidesofmarchyall]

Soulmate Shenanigans Four: A New Shenanigan

I think you know what’s happening. If not, parts one, two, and three are here.

Basically, there were prompts for Soulmate AUs meant to be done in September. And now I’m doing them.

Midway through October.

Woo!

Prompt #4

There is a trail of color only you can see that marks out where your soulmate has been. 

Warnings for death mentions (less than normal, but still....it’s there)

World Building

Color trails had been around for all of human history.

Gods were invented to explain them, and maybe some of them even existed once.

The truth is, no one knows how they were created or for what purpose, some choosing to blame it on pheromones and some on divine will. 

This is despite all the scientific advancements color trails caused.

After all, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra knew they weren’t meant to be, so they never even tried. Therefore, Caesar never burned the Library Of Alexandria, which changed the course of human history forever.

Now, technology is on the up and up, and things are even more of a cyberpunk dystopia!

The Havens

No matter what happens over the course of human history, people are going to want to take solace in something. Corporations were able to isolate the basic things people seek and create Havens (special centers for the things).

To find Havens, there’s the cyberpunk dystopia version of a wooden signpost that points in different directions. The arms read:

This Way To Feel Safe

This Way To Feel Lucky

This Way To Feel Self-Righteous

This Way To Feel Content

This Way To Feel Beautiful

This Way To Feel Euphoric

This Way To Feel Nothing

Whoever controls a Haven controls the people, not the government. Everyone’s pretty aware of this, including the government, which spends most of their time in the Havens anyway.

Each of the main Havens is trying to become the only one, but it’s really a stalemate, since different people want different things. Their goal is to stop that pesky habit.

Characters

Virgil: Virgil really should be the famous hacker. After all, he’s pretty tech-smart, socially reclusive, and kind of scary.

Sadly, he’s too practical to be the famous hacker. If he was a hacker, he’d just hack stuff instead of leaving an honest-to-god calling card, which will eventually get any hacker caught.

No, Virgil’s just a petty thief in the sky.

He and Janus were trying to buy their way into a Haven, but they’ve gotten more and more expensive as the years have gone by, hence the thievery. Janus runs the scams on the ground while Virgil uses all manners of hovering to scale the buildings no one expects to be scaled.

That was the plan, until Jan went missing.

Virgil assumed that his friend abandoned him as soon as he got enough money for one person, so now he intends to find Janus in whichever Haven he ran off to and give him a piece of his mind.

But now he really needs money. Luckily, he knows where to find it.

He knows for a fact that his soulmate is, in fact, the famous hacker, and he has one hell of a bounty on his head.

Roman: In his defense, he didn’t know he was going to get famous. But he was loving it.

Roman started out coding games with his brother. They had a whole plan for the stories they’d create and tell to the world.

Remus went missing around when Janus did.

Now, Roman’s going to hack into every single Haven until he finds the one that took his brother. 

He’s pulled off a few stunts in the past, leaving his calling card (a diadem) every time, but they were just practice events. His next idea is hacking into the Lucky Haven’s system, but things get a little complicated.

The Actual Plot

Virgil noticed the glowing red trail at the first hacking site, but he assumed it was just a coincidence. But when the ground glowed red at the next five sites as well, he realized he’d struck gold.

All he had to do was follow the trail and turn in his soulmate, and he’d be able to find his friend.

He saw the red glow on the top of the skyscraper across from the Lucky Haven, and hovered to where his soulmate was. 

Meanwhile, Roman was furiously crashing through firewalls when he saw a guy hover up to the roof. He was going to run when he saw that his footsteps stained the roof violet.

He’d found his soulmate!!

Virgil had expected a lot of things. He expected a fight, he expected a chase scene. He definitely didn’t expect the 6th most wanted hacker to greet him like he’d known him for ages and flirt.

And, to be honest, he didn’t expect him to be this cute.

Roman was convinced that, if someone was his soulmate, their motives had to be pure. So, he’s treating this entire situation like a first date while Virgil tries awkwardly to mention the fact that he was trying to turn him in for a bounty, which is an interesting conversation starter.

Over the course of the conversation, Virgil finds out that Remus disappeared around the same time as Janus, as well as what exactly Roman’s been doing with that keyboard. He puts a few things together, and realizes that there’s a chance that they’re in the same place.

Virgil decides that he’ll help Roman, for now.

Unfortunately for him, that’s when he accidentally mentions the whole “turning him in for a bounty” thing, and Roman bolts.

It’s hard to run from someone who can see your footsteps, but not impossible. If you take an elevator, it’s impossible to tell what floor you get off on, and if you steal a bike, you’re home free.

Roman bikes as far away as he can, while Virgil curses at himself.

Where Have Janus And Remus Been This Whole Time?

Experimenting on people against their will is illegal. No one, especially a respected corporation, would ever do such a thing!

The Havens merely have an Anti-Non-Involuntary Focus Group, which is perfectly legal.

It’s like a normal focus group, but the participant’s leave times are postponed indefinitely.

Janus and Remus quickly became close friends because they’d been put in a room together once in the hopes that at least one of them would kill the other. No such luck. The two of them went on to do Crimes together, because if they weren’t going to be released from the focus group they’d make the focus group wish they were gone.

Back To The Actual Plot

Virgil searched for Roman, trying to find a way to say “hey, I was totally going to turn you in, but I changed my mind” that would actually convince him. So far, it didn’t work at all, but he kept trying.

Meanwhile, Roman planned to hack into the Self-Righteous Haven. He found yet another skyscraper, checking far and wide for violet glows. He pretended that he wasn’t thinking about Virgil, but...he was clearly thinking about Virgil.

He managed to bring down a significant portion of the Self-Righteous computer system and leave his diadem calling card, but here’s the thing about the Haven of the Self-Righteous:

They’re always on the lookout for someone to hate, and they carry plenty of weapons to get rid of them when they find them.

Roman found himself cornered on that roof, surrounded by sharp smiles and even sharper blades. He managed to fend some off, but eight against one is too tall of an order, even for a guy who knows how to use a sword.

At the last second, he heard Virgil call out to him. He was hovering along the edge of the building, and held out his arm.

Roman took it, and had the most terrifying few minutes of his life on the way down, clinging to Virgil like a young koala and screaming.

After they got their bearings and went on the run together for a little while, Virgil explained his plan.

Now that he had a feeling that Janus hadn’t left on purpose, he reexamined that day in a different light. Roman said that Remus had disappeared in a certain area, and that was around where Jan was at the time.

In fact, that block was a hotbed for mysterious disappearances. So, Virgil was going to get kidnapped!

Roman greeted this suggestion with a calm, “What the actual fuck, Virgil”

Virgil said that he was going to find Janus and Remus, then send up a signal. When the signal went off, Roman would hack into the doors and release him from...wherever.

It takes some convincing, as they’d been on the run together for weeks and gotten kind of attached, but the plan went into motion.

Virgil went and got himself kidnapped, but the plan went south fast when he was brought through physical, metal, non-electronic doors.

Non-hackable doors.

He was screwed.

Virgil found Remus first, because Remus is extremely hard to miss (can’t miss someone who’s literally lighting people’s feet aflame at random), and then got a wholesome reunion with Janus.

PRISON ANTI-NON-INVOLUNTARY FOCUS GROUP BREAK

The three of them and Roman find a clever way to escape the focus group. What is the clever way? Ask the me who actually writes the fic, not the me who’s writing this instead of doing homework she really needs to do.

The four of them later team up to weaken each and every Haven, travelling through a regular Dante’s Inferno that gets to call itself paradise because of good marketing.

They travel to those that get simulated safety, and luck, and self-righteousness, and contentness, and beauty, and euphoria, and emptiness

Of course, rebellions never rely on one or four people. There are a thousand small acts, thousands of straws pouring upon the camel’s back. But it cannot be denied that a hacker and a petty thief, alongside a scam artist and an agent of chaos, left a mark on the world, besides the glowing ones only they could see.

And when the two finally got around to a kiss, they could see their own reflection softly glow for weeks.

Now I need to do my homework

[realityhelixcreates]

Lasabrjotr Chapter 60: For the Lazy Mornings

Chapters: 60/? Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: Mature Warnings:  Relationships: Loki x Reader (There We Go) Characters: Loki (Marvel),  Additional Tags: Post-Endgame: Best Possible Ending (Canon-Divergent), Bad Dreams, Loki has Unresolved Issues, Reader Contemplates, Walk Walk Fashion Baby, Lol Yes I Did Write A Whole Chapter That Takes Place Within Like Thirty Minutes

Summary:  You miss breakfast.

Loki awoke to darkness; velvety, silent, and comfortable. A slight chill had crept into the room, the sensation familiar on his skin. The sun must be setting fully again, finally. The seasons on this world were so strange, foreign.

You shifted next to him. The chill might be soothing to him, but your fragile, precious human body might not take to it well. He should probably get an extra blanket for you.

Of course, there were other ways to keep you warm. Lust stirred in him, recalling your clumsy, insistent hands and hungry, determined expression. It wasn't the first handjob of his life, but it was certainly the most earnest.

For some reason, you hadn't wanted him to return the favor at the time. But now...

He placed his hand on your thigh. You rolled over to face him, bigger than you should be, twice, three times bigger than you should be. The bright, rainbow-scattered light of the old Bifrost Loki remembered lit up the room, highlighting your sapphire skin, your bright red eyes looking down at him fondly. Loki shouted, recoiling in revulsion, but the roar of the Bifrost drowned him out, the light overcoming him.

Loki sat up in bed.

It was dark, but to his eyes, faint light escaped from the edges of his blackout curtains. You stirred, and his head whipped around to stare. You were your normal, adorably compact size, and thankfully devoid of blue. He let out a relieved breath.

“Well.” You muttered. “That was weird. Is that what it's like, when you look down at me? What was that loud light?”

You must not have been able to see yourself in the dream, the way he had.

“That...that was the old Bifrost. It used to be like that, when it was fully functional and powered up. Brighter. Bigger. More color, more range, a louder roar. Just more powerful.”

Powerful enough to slice through the mile thick ice crust of a tiny, helpless planet, creating a canyon a quarter of the way across the equatorial region, exposing the water far below, and causing Norns only knew what kind of havoc.

You had still been beautiful, in the colorful light, in the wrong skin, the wrong size. Still beautiful. Somehow, it repulsed him.

But the dream was gone now, the shock fading away into the warmth you brought to his bed. He settled back down into your waiting arms. It was so comfortable here. Though not yet lovers exactly, you fit so well into his bed, and he fit so well into your arms, his head resting between your breast and jaw, so he could hear the steady pumping of your heart.

“Sleep, okay?” You encouraged. “Everyone's leaving tomorrow. Then you'll have peace again.”

“Hm? Whatever do you mean?” Loki said. He knew what you meant, but was surprised that you'd thought of it.

“Well, it's stressful, right? Having all these enemies around, pax or no.” You said, absently stroking his hair.

“Not enemies. Not anymore.”

“Not friends either, though. Bad blood.”

“Some of them.” He admitted.”Some of them weren't even there at the time. Many of the others have...well, not forgiven me precisely, but accepted the reality of me. Or simply moved on. But then, there are those who can't.”

“Tony.”

“It isn't his fault. My actions fundamentally changed him. How many others like him? I wonder sometimes.”

“You regret what you did?” You sounded...not surprised, but curious.

“I regret the lives lost. Though my actions actually brought some benefit to your world-forced your governments to realize there were threats from outside, to at least try to prepare for further incursions, revitalize your space programs, recognize your heroes...but it is terribly unbecoming to attack civilians.”

“Huglausi?” You ventured.

“Very.” He sighed. “I compromised my honor very severely. Obliterated it, really. I've done many unseen things to try to restore it. In the end, it's really all I have.”

He wrapped one arm around you and snuggled up as close as was possible without actually being on top of you.

“I've seen how superficial so many things really are, how easy it is to be stripped of them. Title. Wealth. Name. Home. Identity. The only thing that truly lasts, the only thing that has impact, is deeds. And mine have been...reprehensible.”

“But it wasn't entirely you.” You pointed out. “You were being controlled.”

“Not entirely. I told you, it was still me. I know it's tempting to attribute everything to some behind-the-scenes puppetmaster, but it wasn't like that, it was...” He trailed off, squeezing you.

“Like what?”

He held his breath and shook his head a little. If he told you too much, if he told you everything, you would never lie next to him again. He would lose this as soon as he had gotten it.

But didn't you deserve to know what kind of creature you slept next to? Didn't you at least deserve to know what was behind his actions on Earth? Maybe not the rest of it, but the things that impacted the world you lived in?

“You know how you hate the man who hurt you during the Sn-the Event? But you wish you did not, and you wish you could forgive him, but the anger and unfairness of it just hits you sometimes? And you feel guilty about it, and that makes you angry too; bitter, resentful. And that makes you feel even worse, and it just builds on itself, until it finally goes away, but you're miserable the whole time, and a while afterwards?”

“Uh...yeah. It's exactly like that, actually.”

“I too, have things that make me feel that way. And the influence of the Mind Stone was such that it made those thoughts, those angers and resentments come to the surface, and then it kept them there. It kept them fresh and constant-no healing, no overcoming, no acceptance or moving on, and, most importantly, no relief. It was neverending. A great font of anger and bitterness as fresh as the moment it was inflicted, and sustained, indefinitely, by the stone's power over me.

Thanos didn't put a ring in my nose to lead me around by; he didn't have to. A smidgen of psychological manipulation, and I was his. A nearly willing slave. I wanted the havoc I caused. I reveled in the chaos, the fear. I bathed in the sounds of screaming and destruction, lusted after the blood and terror.”

His breath had grown heavy. You fingers paused in his hair.

“I wanted it because I felt I had nothing else. No future, no identity. Only deeds. And I was determined to make them the biggest deeds I could, for good or ill. I was an avatar of the worst that a being like me could become, and the greatest I had ever been. I enjoyed what I was doing, because it was the only outlet, the only respite from the hate and anger that I had.

For all my plans, I could never have ruled like that. It's a lie the Mind Stone told me, that I tell myself, again and again. I could have done it. I could have made it work. But I could not even master myself. It was all lies, upon lies, upon lies. Lies built me. Lies define me, and that entire experience just proved it beyond any shadow of a doubt.”

“Loki...”

“Shhh.” He lightly brushed your mouth with his fingertips. “I committed great deeds. Great and terrible. And now, now that I control myself, now that the malign influence no longer hangs over me, I can no longer commit deeds so great. I cannot rebuild your city. You have already done that. I cannot show generosity in equal measure to my destructiveness. Asgards budget is too tight. Somehow, on the other side of madness, I am incapable of doing good in equal measure to ill. Why must it be so easy to harm you, but so difficult to help you?”

“Maybe because we all need different kinds of help, but we all die the same.” You said, and he grew quiet in contemplation. “ Loki, you have a lot you want to do, right? Rebuild Asgard, fix your reputation, help the people around you, be a good ruler. And on top of that, you have responsibilities to your family, and your people, and...well, to me too. As your...”

“Paramour...” He breathed. “Yes. I have...responsibilities. You...you need me.” It was almost a plea. “You want me...You want to be near me...I've been good to you...haven't I? Is there anything you need? Anything at all?”

You seemed to sense the tendrils of desperation that wound inside of him as he had explained himself, as he sought something to expend his energy on, and you resumed stroking his hair.

“Yes.” You said. “I need you to hold me for the rest of the night. I need to feel you close to me. I want to fall asleep next to you and wake up to you first thing in the morning. That's all I want right now. Can you give me those things?”

He didn't move, just remained molded to you, head tucked under your jaw. Purpose. Simple, attainable purpose.

“All those things and more. Thank you, _____. I needed to say it. I knew you would listen. Without the stone, I would have healed, at least a little. Without the stone, I have healed. A little. There was time to mourn, time to accept. Time to look forward. I...I wish I was already the man I could be for you. I will be though. If you will but be patient with me.”

“Sleep, Loki.” You said. “I want to get to that waking up with you next to me part.”

                                                                               *****

And so you did, slipping gently back into consciousness, with the comfortable weight of Loki's arm across your chest. You turned your head to find he had tucked you under his chin, cuddling you like a plush doll.

You kissed his throat until he shifted and his breathing changed.

“Darling...” He mumbled sleepily. “Blessed maiden of comfort. Good morning.”

“Mornin' sweetie.” You said, and he scoffed at the pet name.

“I am a god.” He said

“You are a grump.” You answered, kissing the tip of his nose and shimmying out of bed.

He slithered out after you. “Am I really?”

“Only sometimes.” You teased.

You didn't join him in the bath this time, opting to take one in the evening instead. Your clothes had been left in a neatly folded stack just outside the door to Loki's bedroom rather than outside of yours.

Oh yes, everyone knew what was going on.

You reflected on how easy that acceptance seemed to be, as you slipped into your clothes for the day. Aside from a few loud, unpleasant, and downright dangerous individuals, the people of Asgard seemed perfectly fine with you.

Even though you'd been told several times that there was a struggle between human-friendly and human-unfriendly factions, it was really being treated as if the eventual failure and disappearance of the human-unfriendly groups was a foregone conclusion. As if it had all happened before, and had turned out the same every time.

Well, hadn't it?

The war with the Vanir had ended millenia ago, possibly before the first human civilizations had even begun. You could see the influence of their heritage in Saldis' features, and knew there were full Vanir here in Asgard who were trapped away from Vanaheim by the events of Ragnarok. Nobody cared anymore. The former queen of Asgard and the guardian of all Asgard were both raised by Alfar. Heck, with the strangeness of Heimdalls eyes, there might actually have been Alfar in his family tree.

Once you thought about it, there might be a little Jotun mixed in as well. Probably not Frost Giants, since they still seemed to be a point of contention among Asgardians, but other kinds of Jotun they didn't seem to have much trouble with. You knew the Vanir didn't have any trouble with intermarrying with them, and neither Loki, Brunnhilde, or Saga seemed to think they idea of marrying a Jotun was all that strange. Freyr was married to one, and they didn't act like he was a freak or anything. In fact, since Jotun were so genetically flexible, it was possible that any Asgardian could have a Jotun ancestor, and it might not even show at all.

You knew absolutely nothing about the previous queens of Asgard, save for where Frigga was raised...

Nah. You didn't actually want to go fishing for more royal scandal. You technically were one, even if the majority of Asgardians had accepted that you were but a harbinger of what was to come. They had survived intermingling with others, and they would survive humans too. Probably come out even better for it, if the history Saga taught you was accurate.

The real problem might just be other humans reactions to the idea. Humans were far too proficient at focusing on the differences between people, and dividing themselves up into groups that weren't supposed to be allowed to mingle...but still definitely did, even if the consequences were terrible. That was the problem. There shouldn't be those kinds of consequences, but there would be.  For the longest time, humans only had other humans to define as 'outsiders'. Only very recently had extraterrestrial intelligent species come to their attention, and almost every time, it was in a very negative way.

Part of the world was very on board with the Asgardians, but it was because of a shared cultural history. They regarded the Asgardians as partially 'theirs' somehow. But the rest of the world had no such ties, and some countries had a definite-and admittedly justified-beef with certain prominent Asgardians. One of which you happened to be actually dating.

Okay, but what could they actually do to you, aside from troll you on the internet? Asgard was on the lookout for assassins now, and you had committed no crimes. Besides, being with Loki was a good thing, right? It was a symbol of friendliness and good will between Asgard and humankind, right?

That was definitely not why you were doing it though. You just really liked him. Loki was a man of many virtues. One of them was how he came back from the bath, shirtless, and with his hair still damp.

That was a very good one.

Loki gave his hair one last scrub with the towel, dropped said towel over the back of his desk chair, and opened the carved wooden doors to his huge wardrobe. He stood in contemplation of the perfect thing to wear.

“What do you think...” He murmured. “What's the best combination for saying goodbye to a group of not-quite-enemies?”

“Peacefully?” You asked.

“Of course! I can't let it be known, but I actually like some of them, just a little.”

“So you want the 'lady who has just divorced her jackass, loser husband, and is past ready to mingle' look.”

One perfect eyebrow arched. “Do I?”

“Yeah.” You ducked under his arm and peered into the wardrobe. “So you wanna show off, but not your very best, because that's trying too hard, right? All black is dramatic, and looks so good on you...”

He preened.

“...But I think it might make you fade into the backdrop. How about this one though? The green matches mine, so we could present as a unified front. Also I like this little short cape.”

“This is a capelet. Would you like one? They are not difficult to make; I can order some for you.”  

He held up the tunic; a quilted thing of rich pine green and gold piping, knotwork designs at the stiff cuffs and mandarin collar.

“You like this?”

“It looks very...touchable.”

Both eyebrows went up this time. “Is that the image we want to project?”

“Put it on, and lets see.”

The tunic molded to him, so tight that you would have though it simply didn't fit. But he seemed to be able to move in it just fine. You ran your hands up his chest and over his shoulders.

“I was right. Very touchable.”

He caught your hands in his and squeezed them gently.

“I'm glad you like it, but I don't think so. Not this one. It is actually part of a matched set made for myself and Thor, when we were younger.. It doesn't feel right to wear it, if he is not wearing his. I doubt he still even fits into his.”

He removed the tunic, and searched for another.

“I do like the color matching idea though. Perhaps this one? It is similar.”

This tunic did not fit him quite as tightly, but was still expertly tailored, and still the same color of green. It fell all the way to his knees, split to the hips in four places, and the sleeves terminated in sharp points over the back of his hands. It was quilted as well, but the pattern was more like scales, and you noticed that the metallic thread was gradated; starting out black at the bottom, then shifting to green, then gold at the collar and shoulders.

“Wow.” You breathed. “You look like a dragon!”

“Well,” He said. “I did steal you and fly you away to my lair full of riches, did I not?”

“That you did. Speaking of riches...can you help me with my brooches?”

“Of course, my dear.” He plucked the oval brooches from your palm, very carefully pinning them in place, so as not to prick you. As you had thought, he got them perfectly centered, their strings of beads cascading over the top of your breasts. They drew his eyes. “But you know how to pin them yourself, don't you?”

“Yeah, I do.” You said, a little sultriness slipping into your voice. Loki's eyes flicked to yours. He licked his lips.

You were in his arms barely a moment later, drowning in his mouth.

“I wish I was the man I could be for you. I will be.”

No man had ever said anything like that to you before. Never expressed any desire to be better for you. It was usually the opposite.

Loki, prince and god, wanted to be better. For you.

You were going to miss breakfast.

[transhumanitynet]

The Future Acts Like You - How To Live in the Future Part 7

My friends and I were walking dogs the other day on city greenbelt trails, observing how polite and well-behaved the female dogs were when compared to male dogs, how much less likely they were to get riled up by meeting strange pets — and the thought occurred to me (as surely it must have for many others) that if it were up to choice, most people might prefer a female dog for this one reason. How, if we could breed the ratio down to the market’s preference, or find some way to pre-arrange the sexes of a litter (like they can by turning off one gene in turtles), it might be 80/20 females/males, or hardly any males at all. And then I realized that we’re here already – modifying mammal genomes is old hat by now, and all that stands between us and deciding if your baby will be born a boy or girl (or intersex, or some new thing) is just a few years’ of Moore’s Law driving down the price of lab tests and in vitro or in vivo interventions. We are very close to giving women what they’ve always wanted under patriarchy: the ability to reproduce without a man involved.

Sure, birth control was liberating, but imagine how it’s going to be when a sufficiently large XX population can clock out and then womyn-ufacture Amazons on their apotheosis-feminism, GMO coral vulva artificial island. But of course, Athena born from Zeus’ brow is quintessential patriarchy — equally the goal of men, since written records started, to extract themselves from their dependence on the mysteries of reproduction, to appropriate them with the scientific program, finishing the murder of Sophia and then peacing out, and up to some transcendent Man Cave in the sky, Elysium in orbit, hanging out in virtual reality with perfectly obedient and caring AI girlfriends. But of course, this is The Matrix, and it doesn’t get more Cosmic Mom than that. It isn’t hard to see the dawn light of an age in which both sides stand hands on hips, across the atmosphere from one another, shouting, “We don’t need you anymore!”

Nor is it hard to see why it’s ridiculous. It won’t work like that, because time’s not so much a centrifuge that pulls polarities apart as it’s a live volcano, constantly erupting, spreading novel opportunities and forms to make new landscapes that include the past, but ooze beyond it. And as each side of the War of Sexes clusters further from each other on the graph, a huge magmatic bell curve upswells in between them, opening our options. We will have our age of clones, chimerae, and designer babies; and we’ll go on dating one another, even when it seems archaic posed against the novel kinds of families in a Cambrian Explosion of communal “body plans” that place the nuclear “Mom, Dad, & Kids” at the top left of a new periodic table, opening a vast new chemistry of love and reproductive options.

First, though, we will suffer through an era that empowers narcissists to make more narcissists with even greater ease, and without having to recruit a partner to help raise the lovely little bastards they create. I see it now: instead of virtue-signaling as single parents, people running solo with their mini-mes will be the objects of suspicion, probably contempt:

“I’m raising him to inherit my dangerous and lonely life of bounty hunting!”

“Can you believe he paid the carbon tax to make a copy of himself? If everybody did that, we’d need eighteen Earths to make it work…!”

“I thought she was amazing on our first date, till I realized that her little girl was just a backup. No way, dude, I’d only be a plaything for that woman.”

People will look wistfully back on The Good Old Days, when you knew that the cute guy with his kid in Central Park was not just readying the vessel for his memory-and-wallet transfer in another fifty years… And yet none of these biotech shenanigans will ever guarantee the realized dream of solipsists: to carry on forever, and thus matter to the story, True and Timeless, an immortal in the flesh, around which everything ephemerally spins. The best that we can get’s a domino chain of compelling duplicates — in just the same way kids are now already the extension of their parents’ unexamined death anxieties and unfulfilled desires — the iteration of a process changing gradually enough (and also, paradoxically, flickering fast enough) that we’re fooled into interpreting it as continuous.

But history does not repeat itself; it rhymes, and rhyming couplets will appear in longer lines, or shorter, and embedded in more, or less, complicated schemes, as we convince ourselves that we’ve achieved eternity, or push rebelliously opposite, to try and offer something fresh to who, or what, comes next. For meditators this is already the case: the ego is an “optical illusion”“caused” by oscillations in the coming-in-and-out-of-being of sufficiently-alike appearances. You only act like you already, since your “you” is based on feedback and experience, and you can’t ever know the whole you all at once;and you treat your future selves like children, whose responsibility it is to carry on your legacy, as if you owned them, or they owed you; or to break the pattern of a self divided, self-assessed as “broken,” somehow.

Future You, by contrast, is emergent, rhyming, under zero obligation to agree to contracts you imagine it inherits — just as “mind uploading” falsely presupposes that it is desirable to have (or be) some magical computer that believes it’s you for the two seconds that it takes to leave that personality behind. (Why not just die?) Or worse, preserved in static non-life at a ghastly price, unchanging in direct proportion to the violence required to export entropy indefinitely, to transform from human being into humanoid refrigerator. (In this sense, death is life: because participating in the transformation cannot be escaped, and we’re alive as much as we’re aware of our participation.)

Increasingly high fidelity echoes of people further disrupt attempts at linear history.

You already have a fossil of you made of data, “shaped” like you but in n + a million more dimensions than a human can imagine at a time. Everything you do is tracked, and this is common knowledge, and the reason is that information “wants” to integrate, that evolution tilts toward senses and intelligence as adaptations to the ever-more-complex occasions senses bring upon us in the first place. It’s an ever-loving ratcheting of quickening self-inquiry that isn’t always pretty; curiosity comes in the form of turtle-persecuting birds and other more deliberate sadism, the police search and The Eye of Sauron and so on. And this results in things like Cambridge Analytica, which learned to please its masters by presenting them with cunning models of us, insights into how to press our buttons, how to literally steer us into multiple non-overlapping narratives and kill our opportunity to have an easy argument as citizens of a consensual reality.

But people hammer cannons into bells and back again, and round and round…and weapons like the profile advertisers use on you, the cast impression that you leave of every decision that you’ve made since you first intersected with the Internet… (I realize that for most of you, you never intersected but have always been not-two, but this applies to you, as well — and, arguably, The Acceleration is a transtemporal object and exudes time, draws us into it, our attention on it is our fascination to a serpent, and we’re in the belly of the beast Already Always, and there never was no Internet, no Noösphere, no highly patterned information at the intersections, striving.)

…and every decision that was made about you, also part of the Big You you can’t see, You The Elephant, officially and formally transfinite in complexity as we explore down magnitudes of scale, a multitude of multitudes…

…all that can be turned into the instruments of art, and your hard-forked personae generated with assistance from an always-more-complete (but also always-incomplete, retreating, deepeningly weird) recording can be the new media, The Last and First New Media. Remixed along a functionally infinite set of dimensions and indefinitely, you-not-yous proliferate.

Most of you will likely get along.

But fleshy clone or software “mindclone,” the best that we can get is to extend life into non-life, until (as has already happened in the sciences, and will soon pounce out of them to snare us all in its unpleasant truth) these definitions snap, and leave us navigating a deterritorialized liminal zone, an uncanny simulacra-land where “living things” become deprived of their priority, not known transparently and fully as controllable/predictable, but found beneath our microscopes to be composed of ever weirder and unknowable phenomena no would comfortably call “life.” The soul escapes to everywhere, diffuse, without allegiance, coming into focus on the shores in crashing surf, and every bit as happy to inhabit fog computing meshes as our mess of flesh and blood. Complexity “emerges” into our awareness, not into “reality” — it enters from the theater itself, from the occluded, at the “boundaries,” in between the voices of a choir, where sea meets land and oscillating waves reveal by contrast “difference(s),” Gregory Bateson says, “that make…a difference.”

The closest we can get, again, is with provisional, loose, working definitions that stay open to the force of revelation. When Alan Turing asked, “Can a submarine swim?” — when Timothy Morton says that we are “weak” before the Great & Terrible reality of “hyperobjects” like the Biosphere or Singularity — when Kevin Kelly tells us science manufactures questions exponentially faster than it answers them, and so experiment and prayer converge at Mystery worship — this is their message: we lose solid footing in the future (ever-more the loudest part of now), and first to go is the container of belief in sure things that has cradled us for centuries. What once were “sure things” still appear as traces, tracers like the afterimages left on a retina from staring at the Sun, the spectral fossils of modernity, luminous vestiges that haunt the shadows cast by the Atomic Age’s Angel as it enters, interrupting histories and worlds to deliver us into the crowded Noösphere.

The human form will live beyond humanity…often imagined as a diaspora of freed slave replicants.

We might consider this, as Erik Davis does, “re-animism” — a revival of the lived experience of haunted stones and forests, all reincarnated as the silicon chips, fractal aerials, semantic tress of “virtual machines,” and sigil-magic logo mascot animals, quite happy to return to our mundane realities in forms more suited to their nowhere-in-particular-ness. But maybe it’s more accurate to say the disenchantment of the modern world has run its course by finally erasing itself (and the world) as the last spell spoken to protect us from the spooky mess of things, a failing ward — not a “re-animism” so much as an accidental welcoming-back as we all become transparent (and thus sensitive, aware of, maybe even wise) to forces that we never truly banished.

So, the future acts like you because as we grow meek in our attunement to it, we allow a conversation to occur. It learns our mannerisms, like the metamorphic mannequins of Terminator 2 or Alex Garland’s version of Annihilation, or (more heinously) John Carpenter’s The Thing, or (sentimentally) the aliens of Carl Sagan’s Contact — weirdness taking shape to interface with us, inquisitive, its motives totally unknowable.

Rave Egg Wants For Nothing. Rave Egg Is INEFFABLE.

To drive this home with repetition, this is already the case: the alien reality of our own bodies, papered over with a sense of home and deep familiarity, disclosed by our collaborations with nonhuman scientific instruments to be endlessly-shifting puzzleboxes, deeply Other.

“What do you want,” we ask — and, straining to discern an audible reply, we might hear something about selfish genes, or entropy, or childhood attachment issues, or The Lord’s Good Work, or (similarly) our participation in the future history of unborn gods. But these are all refractions and distortions, echoes of the ghost notes of the choir-roar of the black hole that has already swallowed us and who-knows-what-else. The deeper that we listen, the more we empty subjectivity into the object and accept its speech, the more apparent it is that the future acts like you because you act just like the future, too; you can’t not. Consequently, it is “for” no-thing and for all things; it is the All-Thing, and all things are rendered equally mysterious and strange before this knowing.

Uncanny even for the uncanny: The liquid metal mimetic T-1000 mistakes a mannequin for one of his kind.

What this means “in practical terms” is that we will spend this interregnum between Ages either in the bardo, lost within a maelström of appearances; or in the zendo, learning to appreciate (and be) “miegakure,” the aesthetic of the garden in which thirteen stones are carefully arranged so that you never see them all at once. One of the thirteen stones is always hidden, and that incomplete view thus points past delusional “completeness” to a hyperspace in which what we call time is the rotation of a mystery afloat on deeper mystery — just like the “glass chrysanthemum” that meets some DMT explorers at the moment that they’re born out of their lives and into what always-already IS, mistaken as a death because we pass through the distracting clarity of that peacock mandala into no-space/all-space, no-time/all-time, in which everything’s already happened.

It is the water that the water swims in. We are made of it, including you and your AI assistants and your clones and children and the other other-selves more distal still, distilled until it’s easier to see the ghost in the machine, the you you can’t convince yourself is you, in all its splendor and its overwhelming strangeness…

Each zendo is a bardo and vice versa; we are always traveling, always invited into deeper seeing. This gets more and more apparent — or comprises more of the apparent — as things weird around us. We meet weird halfway, accepting our perversity and bottomlessness in just, equal measure to accepting the surprising life of the “inanimate.” We get a hell of a lot cozier with living in a noisy void of whirling, breathing unknowns vying for attention even as they dodge our scrutiny. It’s just another day in the profanely sacred Pandemonium.

SalviaDroid knows what it’s like to have everything trying to distract you. Don’t give in to astonishment!

From here to there — at least if we pretend that prophecy (in speaking of the timeless, evergreen, and always-true) can be prediction (and thus stretch from past to future “forward,” as with time-space synesthesia, and can be read like Doppler-shifted history) — we stand to suffer some extraordinary shocks.

Expect the sci fi usuals: love bots that take the shape of your departed partner(s); mansions full of talking toys that remix “Beast” and “Beauty;” 3D-printed “respawns” that arrive too soon and sue for your identity; software-person genocide; high-resolution body scans that live online and let you run scenarios until you lose track of which basement level of the dream you’re in; Siri making calls on your behalf and forging your identity (with and without permission); intelligent memorials you visit in VR sets dressed up looking like your parents in their old house; an entire menagerie of slightly-out-of-focus junior holograms of you that sit on either shoulder and debate like parliament about what you should do next. And you listen even though they’re out of focus, because they are privy to a wider view than you, they help translate the flood of information, some folks run a lot more at a time than you, but you’re conservative and two seems plenty.

(It’s already this way — ask any neuroscientist — but soon you’ll have two intuitions, neither of which you can be entirely sure hasn’t been suborned by hackers. Oh well — at least you can compare them to each other for a third opinion, always weighing new perspectives, forking when you all can’t reach consensus, delegating runtime on the fogmesh to the version that refuse to play so they can spin off into some human but solipsistic microverse, your self an integrated legion, cross-platform ecology, that blurs and fringes at the margins, no concrete delineation other than what we place somewhat arbitrarily between the “I” and “it,” the things you are and your appearances.)

Do I really look like that?

(This is a draft chapter from my first book, in progress, and a companion text to Future Fossils Podcast. Learn more at Patreon.com/MichaelGarfield.)

The Future Acts Like You – How To Live in the Future Part 7 was originally published on transhumanity.net

[clockworkopera]

Ty, Livvy and Ultima Thule...

Ty, Livvy, ‘Ultima Thule’ and the Wicked Powers:

Ok, so I’ve got multiple theories here: I’m going to try to braid them together into a cohesive piece. They interconnect in some ways and overlap in others. These ideas are my own interpretations and extrapolations. I have done previous posts individually, so those that may have missed stuff from earlier, I have added links throughout.

1-Dreamland Poem, by Edgar Allan Poe—Titles of all the Chapters

2- Whatever Ty does that allows the Wicked Powers to happen

3- (Bronze) Riders of Mannan: Bronze to Summon the Wicked Powers

Dreamland

First, Ultima Thule means: a distant place located beyond the borders of the known world. Cassie used the reference of Thule twice in the book. The first was in Porthollow church when the demon called himself “I am Sabnock of Thule” (So beyond the borders of this world into a demon realm), and the second for the inscription of the clock at the ending (and the reference of heaven, another place beyond this world).

The chapter titles of LoS are all lines from the poem Dreamland by Edgar Allan Poe (Full poem here: http://apoemaday.tumblr.com/post/103571634145/dream-land).  The last stanza of the poem:

By a route obscure and lonely,                                                                      Where an Eidolon, name NIGHT,                                                                       On a black throne reigns upright,                                                                            I have wandered home buy newly                                                                   From this ultimate dim Thule.

I admit I was surprised the poem didn’t seem to have a significant role to the story in the same way Annabel Lee had for Lady Midnight. I have a hard time with understanding poetry (and English is my first language—I know there are a lot of international folk out there), but the website Shmoop did an excellent line by line analysis. https://www.shmoop.com/dream-land-poe/summary.html

The story of the poem goes that there is a human traveler that ventures beyond the ultima thule (maybe in his dreams). The place he visits is described visually much like Faerie, a place “out of SPACE—out of TIME”, that is “haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named Night, On a black throne reigns upright”. On his journey through this land he sees a range of beings from ghouls to ghosts of the traveler’s past: “White—robed forms of friends long given, In agony, to Earth—and Heaven.” Schmoop translates this line: “The speaker recognizes these ghosts! They appear in the shape of dead friends, people who have been buried…and gone to heaven”. But the traveler cannot stay indefinitely, and like a dream his stay is only temporary—even if this place makes the speaker thinks the place is ‘peaceful and soothing’—“Maybe that’s because the world is so bad that he’d go anywhere to escape it, or maybe it’s because he gets to see his dead love ones.”

This reminds me of Ty.

What does Ty do?

I keep thinking back to the scene between Ragnor and James at the Academy, after James turned into a Shadow in Nothing But Shadows:

“I waited for you to ask me for help,” Ragnor told him. “I thought perhaps you might make a warlock.”

“I never wanted to be anything but a Shadowhunter,” James said helplessly.

Ragnor said, sounding disgusted as usual: “You Shadowhunters never do.”

Does this mean that James could have chosen to leave the Clave to become a Warlock? It’s sounds like a definite possibility. Since Ty is a descendent of Lucie’s, could he then have a latent warlock ability as well?

We don’t know how all the genetics work in Nephilim, and since Tessa was the only one of her kind to be born, it is all uncharted territory as to how her demon ancestry will affect or present in her descendants (there is Thule again—beyond the borders of known genetics). It could be a hidden gene is carried, and if you subscribe to the idea of epigenetics it will only get ‘activated’ under certain stressful conditions. I have a theory that stress is what triggers warlock abilities from these examples: Tessa’s was triggered by her imprisonment with the Dark Sisters, James by nearly dying, and Magnus when his step-father tried to kill him. I can’t even imagine the ‘stress’ to Ty, caused by Livvy’s death.

If the poem has deeper meaning and significance, then I think it is about Ty. His thinking pattern is different from whatever everybody else considers ‘normal’. Maybe with his unusual way of thinking, his first instinct is to go after to where Livvy is—rather than thinking like all the rest of us do, with theories of necromancy and bringing her back from the dead. This may not even be a conscious thought in his mind, more of an unconscious automatic response as his heart tries to follow her. They were going to be parabatai: “Entreat me not to leave thee, Or return from following after thee—for whither thou goest, I will go”. Ty takes the meaning of things very literally—and I would think only more so with it being such an important oath.

Riders of Mannan: Bronze to Summon the Wicked Powers

https://clockworkopera.tumblr.com/post/163610362312/mythologies-of-mannan-and-the-faerie-weapon and https://clockworkopera.tumblr.com/post/162715976952/and-bronze-to-summon-wicked-power

Manannan mac Lir is a Sea God in Celtic Mythology. His name is shortened in Manx Gaelic to Mannan.

When the Rider Fal was killed, Gwyn asked the other Riders: “A Rider has passed into the Shadow Lands,” said Gwyn. “Would you like me to sound the horn for him?”

Mannan is the guardian of the Otherworld, who ferries souls to the afterlife (Shadow Lands?). He is the Celtic equivalent of Hades. He is also a Necromancer (I would think he would have more use for the Black Volume than the Unseelie King). And the Seven Riders call him their ‘father’. The Riders of Mannan are described multiple times as bronze: cloaked in glimmering bronze, bronze riders, bronze hair, masks, horses, shortsword, skin, irises, armor. Almost every physical description includes bronze.

And then there is the Nephilim children’s rhyme: “And Bronze to Summon the Wicked Powers”

And how well do angel’s weapons work on the Riders? Kit couldn’t help but notice that the angel blades didn’t seem to be cutting through the Riders’ armor, or even slicing their skin as he’d managed to do with his shortsword. There was puzzlement on Ty’s face, rage on Livvy’s as she stabbed at Eochaid’s heart with her seraph blade. The weapon snapped off at the hilt, the force of the rebound sending her staggering back almost into the river. (I won’t even make parallels to the Mortal Sword because that isn’t what this post is about)

Could this ancient pagan SEA god play into the water symbolism of the books, especially Emma’s fear of the ocean and her nightmares, or even the big HINT of the book covers? Could a path to the Shadowlands be forged through the sea, in the same way souls have to cross the River Styx in Greek Mythology?

Picture 1): This was found on Cassie’s Pinterest page, titled THULE. 2) Basis for Cover of LoS 3) Cover for LM 4) Cassie’s Pinterest: Titled: EMMA

Uniting Theory: Ty uses his newly awakened warlock power, not even understanding what he is doing to build some sort of bridge to the Shadow Lands. The problem is bridges run two ways, so if he does find a path through, that means that whatever is on the other side can get back into this world too. Wicked Powers.

 And then Cassie has this teaser for Queen of Air and Darkness:

Fear prickled up and down Emma’s arms like goosebumps. Since she was twelve, she had been terrified of the ocean: she had always believed her parents had died in it, dragged below the surface by Raziel knew what, choked to death on bitter seawater. The surge and crash of waves, the imagined black velvet of the ocean’s depths, had filled her nightmares.

Even when she found out her parents had been murdered on dry land by Malcolm Fade, their bodies thrown into the sea after death, the fear remained. She reached for it now, welcomed it in. She could feel it filling the empty spaces, the hollows left by grief.

She glanced back down at the sea. The surging whirlpool below, the waves slamming like dark blue walls against sheer needles of stone, looking like a painting of a maelstrom, a photograph of a hellscape taken from a safe distance.

The wind screamed in Emma’s ears like a warning. Another wave hurled itself against the cliffs, sending up an explosion of spray. Emma smiled grimly into the wind and salt, and jumped.

Am I the only one who wondered WHY?? This is Emma’s greatest fear—what would could possibly be so important she would voluntarily jump into the ocean? Maybe going after Ty…

[maheklxul]

Final Project

The year is 2022. It has been two years since the coronavirus pandemic hit America. Half the global population has been wiped out, mainly depleting Africa first, then Asia and Europe. There is no semblance of a normal life left. Schools are closed indefinitely, with remote learning losing traction as well. People have no hope for the future. Suicide rates are higher than ever. Any semblance of a cure that scientists develop fails to be a global solution. The virus is mutating and changing drastically at an unprecedented rate; scientists cannot keep up. Some companies have given up trying to find a cure calling it an impossible task. Other scientists have devoted their time to figuring out what is causing the virus to behave like this. There seems to be no valid explanation.

Zyler lives in a small apartment tucked into a corner of New York City. He graduated high school during the pandemic, and college is not in his prospect. He works at a gas station down the road from his home. He lives with his cat, Menchie who is the only semblance of family he has left. He walks home and begins his nightly routine of feeding himself and his cat. “Menchie!” he calls. She doesn’t appear which is unusual; feeding time is Menchie’s favorite time of day. He searches around his tiny apartment with no luck. He noticed the window was open to the fire escape and hears screeching coming from the roof. There is a small flying vehicle parked on the roof. A dark figure stands in front of it holding Menchie. He feels a hand on his back, and then loses consciousness.  

Zyler awakes in a room that looks like a laboratory made entirely stainless steel. “Have I been kidnapped?” he thinks to himself. Something about the scene does not make sense. He has been abducted but kept alive. He can walk freely around the room but cannot get out. He begins to examine the machinery he is surrounded with. ‘RPISRC’ is written on pretty much everything.

“Ah, the final subject has awoken,” says an eerie voice standing at the door. Startled, Zyler whips around and then freezes. Whatever he is staring at is definitely not a human being. The creature looks like something straight out of a science fiction show. In a desperate attempt to escape, Zyler ran towards the door, but the alien swiftly stopped him. “Call me Maldovar. You have questions, I know. Normally we don’t give into human curiosity. In fact, you’re one of the few humans that has even gotten the chance to see us in the flesh. You are our final subject and we decided to give you all the answers before ridding of your race for good,” Maldovar says while smiling at Zyler. The alien looks proud, Zyler is numb. He doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or if this is really the end. “What do these aliens want? What does it mean by ‘subject’? Where are we?” These thoughts and more flew through Zyler’s mind at a million miles an hour.

“Stop thinking so much Zyler, I can hear all your thoughts. It’s incredibly distracting. Our species is called Maldovarians. We discovered your planet long before humans came into existence. We have watched your planet grow and be destroyed over millions of years. Up until now, your moon was our home. You idiots ignored the conspirators that told you the moon was hollow, but that only played to our advantage. We have been able to peacefully conduct our research on the universe and develop our plan to take over the Milky Way,” Maldovar begins his explanation. 

“What are you researching?” Zyler questions. 

“Immortality. The nitrogen in your atmosphere is essential for us. We have depleted our sources of nitrogen in this area, including your very own Pluto. Eventually, it came time for us to find a bigger and better home. We always knew this home would be Earth. When humans started evolving, we weren’t yet ready to move. We considered stopping your evolution immediately, but decided watching Earth grow would be our source of entertainment,” Zyler cuts off Maldovar.

“Entertainment?! Humans are the most intelligent species, not a source of entertainment!” Zyler exclaimed. 

“Hah! Intelligent?! Look around, we have had this technology for millions of years, you can’t even begin to imagine what else there is in the universe. We knew that no matter how quickly humans evolved, they would never catch up to the level of intellectual and technological advancement that we have. We will become immortal and the universe is infinite. It is a perfect match. You don’t belong here. We created the coronavirus 25 years ago as we began preparing to rid of the human population. We did our first trial run in 2002, but it was a major failure. You may remember it as SARS coronavirus. Luckily, we knew we had until 2020 to perfect the virus. We plucked you out one by one to test our virus. Do you know how we choose? Do you know why you were chosen?”

Zyler is stunned. “Because I’m alone,” he responds.

The alien continues, “Precisely. We take the orphans, the elderly, the homeless, the starved people in third world countries. People who will not be missed. In a way, we reduced the suffering of these lonely humans. After thinking that we perfected the deadliest virus, we released it in Wuhan, China fully knowing about the xenophobia this would cause. We needed to give the humans something or someone to blame. China was an easy victim. Humans are always ready to turn on each other. That’s your biggest flaw. You could never be as successful as some other alien species because you cannot even work together to run one planet. Anyways,the success of the virus is unquestionable, but the death rates began to slow. We needed something that was completely foreign to your bodies, but we could not give any evidence of extraterrestrial interference. We could not risk the integrity of our plan. I wish we had realized sooner that the best way to destroy you was in your own solar system. We extracted samples from Mars until we found significant amounts of microbial creatures. You’ve seen the machines around you. We use these to infuse the virus with microbial DNA that is completely foreign to your species. The new virus is made to target all the important microorganisms in human bodies and shut down their most important DNA sequences. Once we release this, it’s only a matter of days before the rest of the population is wiped out.”

“So what do you need from me? Am I the last test before you release the virus on Earth?”

“It’s more complicated than that. You need to be the one to begin the spread. If you don’t do this, you will be used for future non-fatal testing at our lab on Earth. You cat will be used to spread the virus instead. We have nothing against the domestic pets of your kind, we do not plan on killing them or the animals of your planet. In fact, we are quite fond of cats and would care for them just as you do. We do need to keep a select group of humans around to help us through unexpected earthly problems. You could be one of them if you choose not to spread the virus, but then you will have to watch the rest of your species go extinct,” explains Maldovar.

Zyler has to choose between singlehandedly being the direct cause of the end of humanity or being a lab rat for the rest of his life. Staying alive is what human instinct always calls for, but that instinct is gone. Zyler does not want to live in a world that he watched get destroyed. Life is not worth it if he’s going to be in alien captive for the rest of his life. There is no way out of this. Humanity needs to end. The virus wins. Maldovarians win. 

 Austin, J. (2017, February 23). 'Hollow Moon that rings like a bell put into orbit by ancient ALIENS', shock theory claims. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/771246/Hollow-Moon-theory-aliens

-         The hollow moon theory is something I heard about a few weeks ago. It basically says that the moon is hollow and different conspiracists have different theories about what is inside. Some say it is a satellite and some believe there is actual life inside of it. The ‘evidence’ people cite includes the moon ringing like a bell when it is struck (the hollowness of a bell is what makes the sound reverberate). There is actually scientific evidence of this happening. Seismic equipment shows that the moon has had tremors lasting between 55 minutes and over 3 hours after being struck. Of course, the data collected by NASA is not suggesting that the moon is hollow, but it feeds the fire of conspiracy theorists.

-         I wanted to use this popular theory as a setting for the aliens because it is something that at least some Earthlings will get behind as they read the story. I don’t believe there is any truth to this but I am never opposed to entertaining bizarre ideas.

Boston, P. J., Ivanov, M. V., & McKay, C. P. (1922, February). On the possibility of chemosynthetic ecosystems in subsurface habitats on Mars. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/science/article/pii/0019103592900459

-         This publication by Boston, Ivanov, and McKay explores the possibility of microbial life on Mars. Although it is now well known that water has been found on Mars, the search for organisms is still ongoing. I recently learned that NASA is launching a mission to Mars in July despite being amidst of the coronavirus pandemic. I am citing this article because it gives insight as to what kind of life could be found on Mars.

-         Photosynthetic life has essentially been ruled out due to the conditions on Mars, so life that relies on inorganic materials such as carbon dioxide is the remaining most practical possibility. From basic biology, we know that human exposure to any foreign substance causes a reaction. With coronavirus, we see just how damaging foreign bodies can be. If a terrestrial virus can cause such a global upheaval, then I cannot help but wonder what would happen if microorganisms collected from Mars during NASA’s next mission were to accidentally be released from their labs.

-         I used this source to legitimize the idea of the aliens in my story being able to extract the organisms from Mars and expose humans to them.

MacCabe, Colin Yanacek Holly. Keywords For Today: a 21st Century Vocabulary. OXFORD UNIV Press, 2018.

-         This source is a compilation of terms that are evolving in modern times. I used this source to draw inspiration for how to include diversity in my story. Specifically, I looked at terms like diversity, European, family, and humanity. I consider people who lack any sort of family to be some of the least privileged people. Not all family is by blood, some even consider friends to be family. But still, there are people in this world who are completely alone and maybe for some that is okay, but for most this is a painful thing. I used my story to exploit the fact these people can be easily taken advantage of in the world. It is an unfortunate reality. I also exploited the fact that most people do not care what is happening in third-world countries. In my story, only their families will know that their children or parents have gone missing, but no one is going to make a fuss about it. Even in America there are so many missing person cases that go unsolved and definitely do not break news headlines. The aliens in my story took advantage of the ignorant nature of humans on Earth.

Seeger, C., & Sohn, J. A. (2014, January). Targeting Hepatitis B Virus With CRISPR/Cas9. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/science/article/pii/S2162253116303559

-         This publication by Seeger and Sohn talks about the technology CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) and how it has been used with viruses. This specific experiment was done with the hepatitis B virus. My motivation for reading this source was to make sure CRISPR could successfully target the desired gene sequence in a virus. The fictional aliens in my writing are meant to be portrayed as advanced creatures who know everything about the coronavirus since they are the ones that created it. Assuming this information, I wanted to be sure that there exists technology for them to edit the virus as they wish.

-         Traditionally, CRISPR technology is used to kill the virus, but RPISRC, the alien technology, does the exact opposite. From my knowledge of CRISPR technology and this article, I believe CRISPR makes it possible for bacteria to find specific harmful gene sequences in viruses and then sends an enzyme (Cas9) to shut down that part of the DNA from being expressed. Through the fictional alien technology, the viruses target the essential bacteria inside human bodies causing them to shut down. The goal of the aliens is to quickly remove the human population and this method is faster than releasing a traditional virus that we have seen disproportionally affect immuno-compromised people.

[monoguk]

elements

Tonight, he conjures fire, with his fingers leaving lingering soft burns on your nudity as his hands become nimble. Tonight, he conjures warm air, satisfying your need for more, more, more heat. Tonight, he conjures healing water, salty liquid dripping and running down the smooth expanse of exposed skins. Tonight, he conjures the earth, with his stiff movement moving roughly against yours.

FEATURING - jeon jungkook CATEGORY - mature WORD COUNT - 2000+

He came in like a hurricane, blowing past obstacles in the form of a strong gust of air until he eventually crosses path with anyone. He came and go like a water stream, indefinite like the volume and direction of liquid. He was just as solid as any matter occupying the land, like the magnificently formed rocks scattered around the Earth. He resisted like fire, bellowing and intimidating, but his features glowed like embers hidden behind metal furnace doors.

He is the Earth; sturdy and buff in appearance, with his taut muscles and golden-tanned skin, and tall physique. He is the Earth, for the land is grand as he is beautiful.

He is the Water; cool and gentle in characteristics, for he goes with the flow of fun things and cares for people in need of help like the tamed waves of the ocean that cradles its passengers safely back home.

He is the Air; invisible but felt, quickly goes just as soon as he comes, for he rides with the wind, and he leaves in the blink of an eye.

He is the Fire, oh lovely fire; so young, so impulsive, so sublime, for he warms those who are good and burns those who are evil.

Tonight, he conjures fire, with his fingers leaving lingering soft burns on your nudity as his hands become nimble. Tonight, he conjures warm air, satisfying your need for more, more, more heat. Tonight, he conjures healing water, salty liquid dripping and running down the smooth expanse of exposed skins. Tonight, he conjures the Earth, with his stiff movement moving roughly against yours.

"Jungkook..." You moan, the broken syllables of his name coaxing a grunt out of him.

He moves, swiftly like water rapids, from the grand valley of your exposed breasts to where all your heat has transferred to where honey-sweet water flows greatest in you. His eyes, like the brown land he belongs in, glints dangerously as his glossy irises reflects the sight he is marveling in. "So fucking wet...".

Without warning, he delves to the juncture where you needed him the most, tongue and fingers rough - as expected from his native genetics - and holding your plump body closer and wider. Jungkook's soft muscle penetrates you, so deliciously fast and wet you couldn't refrain the sound of pleasure escaping your mouth. Just the beautiful image of him, with his wet forehead causing his umber hair stick to the skin and his nose and mouth hidden by your sweaty navel, already had you so attracted to him, already had you destroying your own protective walls.

"More," you whispered into the air, knowing that the little wind that circulated around the small metal room where you two were locked in would carry the message to where it needed to be. "Jungkook..."

His actions soften, face gradually inching away from your delicious heat, eyes expressing pleasure as though he just ate the most delicious meal in his life, gaze finding your glazed irises and penetrating through your power. "As you wish, your Majesty."

Unlike all other men who bows down to your whimpering commands, Jungkook stands out by intentionally blowing on your needy vaginal lips, killing you softly as though his breath has put your inner flames out.

So, with this, he revives you again, curing saliva adding lubrication to your dripping entrance. He shakes you alive, like a powerful Earth-bender creating an earthquake so intense it split the lands of the Four Nations. Just as the blue flames subtly escaping his palms, his power transfers to you and brings back the flame in you that he put out.

And despite the forbidden submission you display for him, only for him and only tonight, your desire flows out like gasoline greedy to touch fire and burst into pretty orange flames. Because this is what you've always wanted: power, dominance, the thrill of being nothing and everything in a bat of your eyelashes.

Because you are the Fire Kingdom's beloved Princess, out to dominate and intimidate empires you do not own, and you are supposed to be in command even in the most vulnerable of times.

On most occasions, you would have always carried a satisfied smirk while you look down at your subjects feeding off to the scarce supplies you give to them, at your subjects quivering in fear despite their gratefulness for receiving your worthless gifts.

Yet, here you were, rid of your metal armor and the usual expressionless mask of indifference, quivering above this young man - who was neither a servant or a fire kingdom official - under his special care of his tongue going in and out of your cunt, of his textured fingers roughly massaging your clit.

"Yes!" you screamed, voice toning down to erratic panting and gasping. For Jungkook brought you further to your impending high, brought you to a land you haven't conquered yet; to a land you, in your hazy mind, thought you could rule with this man by your side - just as powerful as you, but is powerful than you were supposed to be.

He fastened his pace, tongue penetrating you quickly and forefinger pressing the bundle of nerves that had you curling your toes with the immense pleasure. With a tilt of his head, reenacting the way he captured your lips hungrily before this lustful mess started, with his eyes closed and his nose intoxicated in the sinful smell of your arousal.

Unfailingly, the tip of his soft oral muscle hits a part of your most pleasurable spot, and at the nth time he prods at it, you unfurled yourself on him. Your back arches off the hard surface of your metal bed as your hands grips at his hair and pulls him closer while he works you up to oversensitivity.

Your room, walls of steaming metal and a lit lamp as the only source of light despite the vicious flames of your lustful adventure, appeared like the velvet blanket of the evening outside with clusters of white-hot stars scattered on the velvety cloth. He brings you higher, miles away from the clouds and further into space where the burning warmth of the Sun re-energizes your strength, your power, your desires, as he slowly opens his eyes to watch your reaction to his dominant submission to your feet - almost begging for an ultimately-sweet reward.

"Get up," you weakly order, though you roughly pulled him away from your flowing heat, white stickiness dripping down on your stiff mattress. "I want to fuck you."

Jungkook bites his lip, eyes burning brighter and turning into darker coals, skin receiving the heat you were providing, powers leaning dangerously towards a kind of bending he genetically cannot conjure. For Jeon Jungkook is an Earth-bender, a lowly prisoner who had somehow made his way to the Fire Princess's chambers in her command for a quick evening sex. "I'm all yours, Princess."

You grunted, shakily making your way to straddle the boy perched sitting on your bed with his back against your rigid metal headboard, "Fuck, I love that. Praise me more, Jungkook..."

"You're so fucking hot," lazily he pumps his throbbing upright member while he guides your entrance atop his sex with the help of his other hand gently controlling your position. "You deserved to be crowned the Princess of the Fire Nation. I would do anything for you, Your Highness."

You sighed, in complete bliss, as you ground down on him slowly, reveling in the feeling of his hard skin penetrating your most sensitive spot. "Be mine, Jungkook.", unconsciously, you ordered as you languidly made to shift your hips up along his length and down on it again after reaching his tip.

Simultaneously, you two groaned whenever you continued to go up and down on him, clenching your walls around him in various spots and then eventually squeezing on a particular spot that makes Jungkook moan louder, grip harder on your tender flesh, coax his hips to thrust his hardness deeper into you.

You hold onto Jungkook's sturdy, sweaty, broad shoulders - feel them rise and fall in ragged and irregular patterns as he takes in and exhales out deep breaths of you and the absolute smell of sex and burned coal - as you picked up the pace for the control over this sinful act was yours as much as it was Jungkook's.

For some reason, the equal division of powers enrages you in a positive way - as though someone had poured more gasoline into a pit of raging fires with flickering embers from black coals being shown through the gradual way your walls clenched on his sex. "I-I’m..."

You were a whimpering mess above him, strength weakening but your determination to continue on slamming and pleasuring yourself up and down his shaft earned a groan from him. "Your power makes you so sexy, so hot. Fuck, so wet. Do you need help, Princess?"

The pleasurable knots occurring in your body decreased your strength, completely succumbing to your impending climax caused by the hardness that is Jungkook's member pumping in and out of you.

As an attempt of an answer, you merely whimpered, slumping all your weight down onto him that eventually caused the two of to slide down until you had Jungkook lying down on his back, hoping he understood your prideful way of saying, "Please do,"

With the silent request, Jungkook braces himself by taking hold of either side of your waist, and with his inborn strength, he thrusts into you just the way you wanted, needed.

He had you resolving into a whining, moaning, writhing mess above him, but he was no different from your state as his hips moved sloppily with his impending release.

No words needed to be exchanged, informing the other that the knots in your abdomen were about to unfurl in the form of sticky, white, wet hormones from your gonads. As you two both chased your highs, with the effort being passed on to the relentless way Jungkook slammed inside, you did not bother keeping your voice down.

Damn to those guards lurking in the hallways of your metal ship, to those people outside who would hear your cries of ecstasy, your way of telling the Four Nations of how only this man had made you feel so powerful and powerless simultaneously; how only this man made you come so hard the way you've never done before.

With your wall clenching around him as you released all your dusked desires on his moving length, Jungkook grunts and performs a few more pumps before he was releasing inside of you.

He stills for a fracture of a moment, until at least half of his load has been shot, before he lazily thrusts into you, loving the feeling of oversensitivity that your warm sex provides.

When you both had calmed down from your highs, Jungkook pulls you away gently and you relent to his care what with your weak body overdosed with too much pleasure.

Your hazy mind does not remember the way this man embraces you, covers the both of you with the thin material of your blanket, and hums you a gentle lullaby until you were surely asleep.

And if you were to remember, you were certain no more if you were going to regret the events of that evening.

Air. Water. Earth. Fire. The cycle went on, and the cycle is one of the reasons why the Four Nations are at chaos. Some says the first avatar was an Air bender, claiming that he had gone to the temple of Avatars and traced back to the statue of the primordial savior. But the Fire Kingdom begged to differ and claimed that the cycle went like this: 'Fire. Air. Water. Earth.'

Who is to say who came first, when the world has been alive some millennia ago? Still, the feud went on, and thus war ensued, crueler than the last.

Long before your rule, the Fire Nation had always acted superior, had always thought they had rightful authority on every land in the Four Nations. With this mentality in mind, since the beginning of time, they spread out and conquered cities - the main citadel of an elemental community or a humble and small town - and brought fear to every powerless human being through threats and imprisonment.

There were only two things that stood in their way: fearless elemental benders, and the almighty Avatar. For every average life-cycle, the Fire Nation sought high and low to find and capture this avatar, these obstacles, and to be honest they've had their fair share of victories and loses.

When the benders would win the battle, the Fire Nation lays low, preparing and waiting for the perfect moment to stand up again, stronger and fiercer than the last fight. When the Fire Nation wins, the new generation of benders and Avatars would struggle to be better than these fiery hectors.

In your rule, with the Fire King's health deteriorating day by day, a lot of things were expected of you. One of them was to win this never-ending war, and another was to capture and contain the new Avatar.

It happened unknowingly, too fast for you to comprehend, and there had always been a doubtful glee in your chest when your crew cheers that the Fire Princess has caught the Avatar.

Indeed, you and master of all four elements had put up a great fight, and it took great effort for you to avoid blasts of air and water, the only weakness of a burning flame. In your rage, as is inherited from the ancient Fire Nations’ genes, you screamed in frustration - of all the times your family had forced you into training so that they could mold you into the most powerful Fire Nation ruler, of all the mockery your father had told you whenever you miss the chance of imprisoning the Avatar, of all the expectations your people had on you, a false image of the strong princess they were told of - and shot the most powerful fireball you could conjure towards a certain direction through glazed eyes. When you heard a shout of agony that was not yours, you eventually realized you were crying. And, as you fell on your knees and watched ahead the way your soldiers chained the Avatar, you just felt numb instead of the ecstasy a Fire Princess should have felt over a fair victory.

In the midst of the celebration for the capture of the Avatar, you slipped away the drunken men and skimpily dressed female escorts, escaped the suffocation that the victory and festivity and sexual tension encased inside the cramped room of metal walls, until you unconsciously made it to the prisoner's chambers. No land nor soil, minimal wind passages, no source of liquid, and no luminescence of fire would be seen there, because they had to deprive these bending prisoners of their strengths, deprive them of the hope to escape. In the far end of the corridors, raged prisoners spitting insults your way, you reached the avatar's cell staring at this person with void eyes. When the avatar stared back at you, you were informed that he did not care if he was kept here for a long time. He had no friends, no families to come back to. He didn't want the responsibilities laid on his shoulders, "Just because I was chosen and born to be the almighty Avatar."

You spoke no word in between his hurting story. Of how there will nobody to help him get through the day, except maybe secret heated rendezvous in the woods or in a brothel. And it shouldn't have, but his loneliness got to you, because you were just as lonely although the whole Nation loved their Fire Princess.

When he says, "You're not that bad, Princess. Coming down here to check your prisoners if they were alright instead of giving yourself a reward through a good fuck, or simply getting wasted with strong rum if little Fire Princess is still a pure virgin.", you turn back to him and asks, "What is your name, Avatar?"

"Jungkook. Jeon Jungkook."

There was no warm sunshine to stir you from your sleep, just the gentle swaying of your metal ship, just the random convection of heat on your naked body from the flaming torches in your room, just the indecipherable shouting outside your metal doors.

There was no softness beside you when you reached over, just the thin material of your bedsheet, just the stiff block you consider as your pillow, just your shiny breastplate from your armor, and just the smooth feeling of a piece of parchment being crumpled by your tossing and turning from the bed.

You woke up with a start when your door bursts open, your guard shamelessly sputtering out an urgent report that had you furrowing your brows and sitting up from your bed with your blanket covering as much as your naked body.

You looked around your chamber, finally realizing that the noise outside was of utter chaos and of alarm bells, finally realizing the missing pair of clothes on the ground, finally seeing the tiny note left for you. It read:

Good Morning Princess! Last night was great, and I can confidently say I was great for you too. However, I'm really not a guy who stays in the morning after a one night stand. Hope you don't mind me stealing your keys ;) See you someday, my Princess.

P.S. you'll still be the hottest fuck I will ever have.

xoxo, jjk the earth-bending avatar

"Ma'am, the prisoners have escaped, and there is no sign of the Ava-"

"JEON JUNGKOOK! FIND THE AVATAR!"

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