#you know the one in the data of the universe?

[yuumcbr]

TWST X Obey Me!

Just an idea for a crossover that I have in my head.

An important factor for the AU is that MC sees the brothers as family and vice versa, as if they were older brothers.

Yuu (mayor of Ramshackle) = MC from Obey Me!

The AU would take place after graduation, where Yuu dates a boy from TWST and they start living together (since Yuu doesn't have much to go to).

Let's say that Yuu can't use magic anymore because of Michael's ring, maybe TWST increased the magic containment effect, or just decided not to use it because he doesn't know how strong his magic is, or even wanted Grim not to lose his place in the NRC (since he is the magical part of both of them) and after graduation Yuu got out of the habit of using it.

Well, somehow Yuu, Grim and her boyfriend get in touch with the queen of the rose kingdom.

Why her? Well, in one of the events of Obey Me! (Like a dame) Diavolo says he is friends with the Queen Rose and the event has roses for everywhere.

We imagine that the brothers haven't had much contact with Yuu since he went to NRC, maybe little letters sent by Sam's friends on the other side (in this AU they are mini-Ds, probably from greed).

However, in Obey Me! the Queen of the Rose Kingdom goes to Devilton and doesn't seem to have any trouble going from one world to another, she can help Yuu do the same.

So when the Queen of the Rose Kingdom meets Yuu, maybe at a ball or festival she attends and the two exchange contacts.

Now think about it, the boy from TWST who is dating Yuu decides to take things to the next level and asks her to marry him.

Yuu already knows the boy's family, they live together and maybe even work at the same job.

Not to mention that Grim acts like a real child, even though he graduated from college.

Yuu obviously accepts and asks if he would like to meet her family first.

The TWST boy knows that Yuu came from another universe, so it might be a shock.

Even more so when he finds out that Yuu is a long-time friend of the Queen of the Rose Kingdom.

And even more so when he finds out that his family is made up of the 7 deadly sins.

I guess it's best not to tell him about his position as a royal advisor, right?

Or that Yuu is an apprentice to the world's first wizard Solomon.

And that he's capable of using magic.

Yuu literally hopes he doesn't freak out.

Now, there are some TWST characters that I think could date Yuu and would make the story funnier:

1.Rollo Frame (it's self-explanatory)

First, if you get Idia to propose to you, congratulations.

You definitely talked a lot about your older brother Levi to him, so he was expecting a bit of chaos when he met your family.

But what he didn't expect was that when he crossed the portal into the Rose Kingdom, he would end up inside the gate to Tartarus!!

He doesn't know whether to focus on collecting data for STXY or get ready to meet his family.

Wait, if you lived here before studying at NRC, and this is the land of the dead… don't tell him that you…

Please, calm this poor guy down!

The best option is to never mention that you died and came back to life in a moment (lesson 16). Just say that you came for an exchange project with the Human Kingdom and discovered that you had relatives here.

Which is the honest truth.

Finding out that you are the royal advisor of Devilton and one of the most powerful people in the place scares him a little too much.

Either the people here are too weak, or you are stronger than he imagines! He discovers that you are some kind of Ultimate Final Boss around here!!

And your family is capable of destroying an entire country in a matter of minutes, how did he get into this situation? He just wants to go back to his room and exile himself from all this craziness.

Idia.exe has stopped working.

When the two are alone:

Idia: Ahhh… when I get back I'll have so many reports to do…

Yuu: Sorry *smiles*

Idia: How come you never thought of saying you lived in hell? Literally!!

Yuu: ….

Yuu: I think I already know what will cheer you up…

Idia: … *sees you getting your DDD and calling someone*

Yuu: Oh, hi Lucifer, how are you? I was wondering if I can take Cerberus for a walk? Besides missing him terribly, Ortho and Idia admire him a lot.

Okay, you just won Idia's heart again.

Ortho is taking a lot of pictures, pictures that if he hadn't seen them in person he would say were fake edits from the Internet.

Nee nee Mayor, do you think we can see Cerberus more often? I definitely want to increase my intimacy level with him, I don't want to miss this limited time event.

He just looks so shocked and stays silent for a long time.

Upon arriving in the city, the two of you are stopped by countless people who welcome you and complain about the city.

Why would they complain to you, anyway? Huh… what do you mean by royal advisor?

You're one of the most important people in this place? Why have you never told him that?

I mean, he knows you can't go back home, but he figured that when he found a way, he'd come back without thinking twice.

You've been working at the Al-Asim house all this time as a servant when you're literally a royal advisor from another kingdom?

You wouldn't be that stupid, right? Why would you do something like that?

Okay, Jamil's head is spinning.

He definitely wishes your clothes had a hood like they used to when you explain to your family that you decided to live with Jamil no matter what.

He would definitely be shocked if he found out that you could take an immortality potion, but decided not to take it to be with him.

When the two of you are alone:

Jamil: You could have a better life than being a servant.

Yuu: It wouldn't be better if you weren't in it.

Yuu: I don't care what I have to do, we're together, understand? I'll never let you feel alone again, that's a promise!!

Jamil doesn't know what he'll say to his parents when they ask about his family or when his sister tells him to tell them every detail of the trip.

But he knows he's with someone who will always put him first and won't let someone like that go.

A promise, huh?smiles slightly I think I can get used to this!

I imagine Ruggie will react the same way when you called Malleus Tsuntaro in front of everyone when you two get to the house of regrets.

I mean? You live in a gigantic mansion and inside it looks like each tile costs more than all the money he's ever earned in his life!!

Ruggie is very careful not to bump into or break anything, only for one of his brothers to enter the house and accidentally destroy a wall.

Wait, he came riding a dragon?

Okay, Ruggie thought there was no way a group of people could cause more trouble than you and that group of freshmen, but your brothers managed to prove the opposite.

I don't even know what he would say when he saw Beel's appetite or when he tried Solomon's food when his brothers said they would throw it away.

During dinner:

Yuu: I should let you know that I will be officially leaving my duties in Devilton

Asmo: Huh? Are you leaving for good now?

Yuu: No, I just don't think I will be able to coordinate my work in Devilton with the wedding organization, not to mention that there is no way to convert Grim to Taumarks.

Lucifer: In that case I will talk to Lord Diavolo

Ruggie: What was your job here? - he says while eating a buffalo egg.

Levi: They worked as royal advisors, (tch these guys really don't know how to use a mage in battle) - he answers while playing an online video game.

Ruggie: Huh?

Ruggie may not have expected so many surprises like these, but he can't deny how happy he was when you and your brothers started thinking of ways to make him, you and the entire community you live in prosper.

You really are full of surprises, huh Prefect? Shi shi shi!!

Okay, I got a little carried away, but now it won't be running around in my head so much.

Thanks for reading this far!!

[mariacallous]

Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of Moo Deng. The baby pygmy hippo is barely two months old and already famous. So beloved on TikTok, Instagram, and X is Moo Deng that workers at Khao Kheow Open Zoo, the place in Thailand where she was born, are doing all they can to keep up with her fans’ appetite for more. They post videos, photos, updates. They also welcome thousands of visitors a day and find themselves having to defend Moo Deng when tourists throw shells at her while she’s just trying to chill.

Moo Deng, a name that means “bouncy pig,” has probably been all over your timeline lately—on Sephora makeup tutorials, on X’s main feed. She was born in July and in the past few weeks has become the Internet’s New Favorite Animal. A tradition almost as old as the internet itself, Favorite Animals—Maru, any of the dogs on the shiba inu puppy cam, those two llamas who just happened to run free the same day everyone was trying to decide what color The Dress was—come into the public consciousness seemingly out of nowhere. Some, like Doge, stick around; others disappear, or simply outgrow their cuteness, within a matter of weeks.

All of which makes capitalizing on their fame a matter of some urgency. It seems heartless to think of animals this way, but if their owners don’t, someone else will. Perhaps that’s why zoo director Narongwit Chodchoi told the Associated Press this week that the zoo has begun the process of trying to trademark and patent the hippo to avoid her likeness getting used by anyone else—a smart move considering Moo Deng mugs, T-shirts, and other merch are already popping up online. Income from these efforts, Chodcho told the wire service, could “support activities that will make the animals’ lives better.”

Moo Deng might need it. Fandom is getting a bit out of control these days. As pop stars like Chappell Roan have amassed online and offline fame, they’ve also had to use their platforms to ask for space from boundary-less fans and stalkers. Social media celebs like Drew Afualo, on whose podcast Roan appeared to talk about the subject, also tell stories of being approached in public by people who simply know them from the internet.

It may seem odd to compare them to Favorite Animals, but the ways in which people feel entitled to their time aren’t that far apart. Everyone wants something for the ’gram, even if that something is a living being with its own sense of agency. One of Moo Deng’s most popular TikToks has 34 million views, and zoo staff have had to limit her visiting time to five minutes on Saturdays and Sundays to keep too many people from trying to get content of their own.

Trademark protections may be the best way for Moo Deng’s caretakers to ensure others don’t cash in on her viral fame. When Jools Lebron made efforts to trademark her “very demure, very mindful” meme, one of the hurdles that emerged was that it’s hard to claim ownership of a phrase. As Kate Miltner, a lecturer in data, AI, and society at the University of Sheffield’s Information School, told me at the time, memes with audiovisual elements, like Nyan Cat or Grumpy Cat, are easier to register. “People will invariably try to make money off of viral or memetic content, as we've seen time and again,” Miltner says when asked about trademarking the baby hippo, adding that the Cincinnati Zoo has already done this with Fiona the Hippo. “It's smart of the Khao Kheow Open Zoo to (at least try to) ensure that they’re the ones that do so.”

Lebron seems to be figuring out how to market her moment, and Moo Deng’s keepers seem to be doing the same. Being online in 2024 means living in a state of near-constant vulnerability. You could get hacked or turned into a humiliating deepfake. Having a public opinion on a video game or The Acolyte could turn your mentions into a hellscape. And that’s what happens to filthy casuals. When you’re an ascending pop star or a baby hippo the weak spots multiply, because the world always seems hungry for more of you. It’s possible to protect yourself, even monetize yourself, but you can lose yourself, too.

Like Boaty McBoatface, Moo Deng was named by the internet. The zoo held a poll on social media. Unlike McBoatface, Moo Deng is a living thing; she’s a member of an endangered species and needs protecting. Moo Deng is more than a meme.

[mail-me-a-snail]

silvervance on the brain again someone absolutely should've stopped me from listening to sleep token before bed

[superconductivebean]

#1142: ranty ranty

i've the weirdest reason to like hl: late 19 century means beаuxbatons had plenty of people from the russiаn empire and if you're aiming to create the tournament you'll basically have a rundown on the differences between the english, the--

uh huh huh

The Greatest Storyteller Of The MillenniaTM made it harder to write about other schools for magic because you just explain to me what should a person think of the entire CONTINENT to give europe only 2 schools for magic? just imagine beаuxbatons in the beginning of the 19th century or in the middle of the century. throw in koldоtvoretz and have your hair falling off your head because this lump of land has always been roughly 7000 kms in length from west to east; yet it has 1 (ONE) school for magic. durmstrаng is a private school and should had been The North (or Germany?) except Bulgaria is Greece's next door neighbour. honestly I WANT TO SCREAM and so here is my hot take opinion on it all: hp is such a western gaze if u ask me

[tevatron]

i'm so glad i won't be working with my pi after this month. i think i've reached my limit. i just can't deal with her anymore

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: May 22

"And So It Goes” Billy Joel cover by Jennifer Warnes

[aeide-thea]

the thing abt this website (and probably other websites as well) is that like. posters will complain that readers get mad at posts for not encompassing Everyone's Experiences, when they were just talking about their own experiences

and it's like. okay but did you phrase your post in the universalizing second person or.

cue janet-with-cactus gifset.

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

babygirl i can program excel sheets the way you cant even COMPREHEND. im referencing different pages. dollar signs everywhere. my if functions loop on until the end of time. i dont label anything. my computer is overheating

[oflgtfol]

now that im no longer in college im finding the best way to like reconnect with my love for astronomy and also come to a deeper understanding of it on like a human personal level is to like actually go out and observe the sky and like reinvent the way ancient peoples did astronomy via like. timekeeping with the constellations, finding the ecliptic and equator in the sky, etc. basically just trying to build like an actual bodily intuition around the night sky that no one really has anymore, and that I Certainly Didn’t since my own knowledge was like math paper and computer based. Now my next challenge is to try to find my latitude based on the position of the sun

[abbiistabbii]

I don't think people realize how absolutely wild Linux is.

Here we have an Operating system that now has 100 different varieties, all of them with their own little features and markets that are also so customizable that you can literally choose what desktop environment you want. Alongside that it is the OS of choice for Supercomputers, most Web servers, and even tiny little toy computers that hackers and gadget makers use. It is the Operating System running on most of the world's smartphones. That's right. Android is a version of Linux.

It can run on literally anything up to and including a potato, and as of now desktop Linux Distros like Ubuntu and Mint are so easily to use and user friendly that technological novices can use them. This Operating system has had App stores since the 90s.

Oh, and what's more, this operating system was fuckin' built by volunteers and users alongside businesses and universities because they needed an all purpose operating system so they built one themselves and released it for free. If you know how to, you can add to this.

Oh, and it's founder wasn't some corporate hotshot. It's an introverted Swedish-speaking Finn who, while he was a student, started making his own Operating system after playing around with someone else's OS. He was going to call it Freax but the guy he got server space from named the folder of his project "Linux" (Linus Unix) and the name stuck. He operates this project from his Home office which is painted in a colour used in asylums. Man's so fucking introverted he developed the world's biggest code repo, Git, so he didn't have to deal with drama and email.

Steam adopted it meaning a LOT of games now natively run in Linux and what cannot be run natively can be adapted to run. It's now the OS used on their consoles (Steam Deck) and to this, a lot of people have found games run better on Linux than on Windows. More computers run Steam on Linux than MacOS.

On top of that the Arctic World Archive (basically the Svalbard Seed bank, but for Data) have this OS saved in their databanks so if the world ends the survivors are going to be using it.

On top of this? It's Free! No "Freemium" bullshit, no "pay to unlock" shit, no licenses, no tracking or data harvesting. If you have an old laptop that still works and a 16GB USB drive, you can go get it and install it and have a functioning computer because it uses less fucking resources than Windows. Got a shit PC? Linux Mint XFCE or Xubuntu is lightweight af. This shit is stopping eWaste.

What's more, it doesn't even scrimp on style. KDE, XFCE, Gnome, Cinnamon, all look pretty and are functional and there's even a load of people who try make their installs look pretty AF as a hobby called "ricing" with a subreddit (/r/unixporn) dedicated to it.

Linux is fucking wild.

[syrinq]

thinking about the fact that i do like forgotton realms-adjecent (fantasy equivalent of star wars-sized ip) games but then i have to grab a broom and hit anyone appearing out of the shadows who goes "now play dnd (or any ttrpg) with me" extremely violently so they remain in the dark for another 5 million years

[0o-junebug-o0]

First Meeting

summary: You're having difficulty with some code so you stop by Penelope's house for help, unaware that she has a guest. Spencer takes one look at you and is immediately head over heels.

genre: fluff

cw: meet cute (is it a meet cute?) completely gn!reader (reader is not described at all), no use of y/n, autistic!spencer (because every spencer is autistic!spencer), season 1 spencer, university/college student reader, talk about research and coding, pov switch from reader to spencer

wordcount: 1.5k

a/n: this is an actual error I had this summer when writing my spectra analysis code

You lean back in your chair with a sigh, scowling at the code you’re trying to write. You’re still relatively new to coding, the first time you ever took a class on it was just under two years ago, so this code has taken you significantly more time to write than it would have taken Penelope. But you’ve written it. You read through the code again and rerun it. Everything runs fine, the code should work, but it doesn’t. 

You rub your eyes and groan with frustration. You should be able to get a wavelength solution out of this. The professor you’re doing research with told you what you need to do to get the wavelength solution and then how to use it to find the redshift of the lensed galaxy and the foreground lensing galaxy, but nothing is lining up!

You’ve opened the data, plotted the variation in flux for each line in the image, fit a Gaussian to it to get the brightest point, and converted the pixel value of that point to vacuum wavelength, but none of the wavelengths you’re finding match up with what lines should be present in the spectra for this lamp type!

You briefly consider emailing your professor but decide against it. Even though he told you that asking things wouldn’t bother him and that it’s his job, you don’t want to take up more of this time than you already have. 

You look around your apartment for anything that might help. Your eyes land on your keychain and the spare key Penelope gave you because she enjoys it when you stop by. You quickly shut your laptop, tucking it under your arm, grab your keys, slip on a pair of shoes, and make your way down the hall to Penelope’s apartment, not bothering to lock the door behind you. 

_____

Spencer sits awkwardly on one of Garcia’s kitchen stools, tapping his fingers on the Tardis mug she had filled with tea and given him. He’s not exactly sure why Garcia invited him over. She said she wanted to bond, but they’ve known each other for almost two years now, and Spencer considers her a good friend, so he doesn’t really know what bonding entails. So far, Garcia has just been bustling around her kitchen preparing snacks and drinks for their Doctor Who marathon.

The lock clicks and Spencer’s head whips toward the door just in time for it to burst open. Spencer freezes and stares at you in awe and confusion. 

“Penny!” you cry, your voice a mixture of a shout and a whine. 

Garcia calls your name with a surprised look. “What happened? Are you alright?”

“What?” you ask. Then you wave your hand flippantly. “Yeah I’m fine, I just need help with some code.” Your eyes land on Spencer and he can feel his heart rate increase. He really hopes his face isn’t as red as it feels. 

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you had someone over,” you say. “I can, um, I can come back later.”

Spencer watches as your posture stiffens slightly and you start to fiddle with your keychain. 

Spencer opens his mouth to reassure you but Garcia beats him to it. “No, no, it’s fine,” she says. “I’ve been wanting you two to meet anyway.” You shoot Spencer a small, awkward smile and wave from across the room when Garcia shares your name. When she introduces him, your eyes widen and you look toward Garcia with an expression Spencer can’t decipher and whisper something to her that makes her laugh loudly. 

Spencer can feel himself flushing at your reaction and takes a sip of his tea to hide his face.

“Anyway!” Garcia says cheerfully. “Do you mind if I help them real quick?”

“Go ahead,” Spencer responds, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. It’s difficult with you there, though, all his thoughts suddenly seem much harder to grasp. Like your presence is forcing them aside. 

Your eyes seem to linger on him for a moment before you head over to the counter and set your laptop down. “Right,” you mutter, opening it and entering the password. Spencer listens intently as you describe to Garcia what your code should be doing and he can’t help but smile at the clear passion in your voice. It sends butterflies to his stomach. 

“What do you study?” Spencer blurts out. 

You close your mouth and cock your head at him for a moment. “I’m, uh, I’m studying astrophysics. Specifically strong gravitational lensing. I’ve already made preliminary models of the system and I’m just working on analyzing the spectra now.”

Spencer nods and leans over to look at your code. 

“Do you want to help Penny find the issue?” you ask. You sound a bit nervous and Spencer looks up and smiles what he hopes is a soothing smile.

“I would if I could. I really don’t know how to code, though.”

“Seriously?” you ask. Spencer cocks his head at the tone of surprise in your voice. “Sorry, it’s just that Penny has told me a lot about you and about how you’re a genius and have three PhDs, which is insanely impressive by the way, so I guess I’m just surprised you don’t know something.”

“There’s a lot I don’t know,” Spencer admits. “Coding and other technological things are some of it. I don’t know too much about astrophysics either.” That’s not exactly true but it isn’t a lie either. He’s read papers on several astrophysical topics but he’s never come across one on strong lensing before. But the truth of the statement is irrelevant, the only reason he said it was to find an excuse to spend more time with you.

You smile and Spencer’s stomach feels like it does a backflip. “I won’t be much help teaching you how to code, Penny would be better for that, but I can tell you about some astro stuff at some point.”

“Alright, lovebirds,” Garcia teases and Spencer’s face burns. “Let’s focus.” You nod, clearly also a bit embarrassed, and turn back to your laptop.

“How about I go line by line and tell you what it should do and you let me know if something doesn’t do what I think it does,” you say. Garcia nods and both she and Spencer follow along as you point to and describe each line of code. You get to a printed image of the data file you’re analyzing before Garcia stops you.

“Can you open the file on your computer?” she asks.

You nod and open the file in a new application and move it so it’s side by side with the image in your code. “Wait,” you mutter, glancing back and forth between the two images. “Is that seriously the issue?” Spencer leans forward to get a closer look, the x-axes of the images are flipped. 

You throw your head back with a groan and change the rotation of the file in your code. “I swear, if this works,” you growl. The clear exasperation in your tone makes Spencer chuckle slightly. 

You rerun the code and compare several of the outputs to a list of wavelengths before groaning again and letting your head fall onto the counter. “I hate Python,” you grumble. “Why does it have to switch the axes!” 

Garcia laughs and pats you on the back. You raise your head off the counter and tap your forehead against her shoulder in a gesture Spencer assumes expresses gratitude. “Thanks, Penny,” you sigh. “You’re the best.”

“Of course I am!”

“Oh, and Spencer,” you say, turning to look at him. “We should get lunch sometime. I can tell you about astrophysics and you can tell me about all the crazy things you know.”

“I-I would love that,” Spencer stutters, unable to speak clearly with you looking into his eyes. He's hardly able to wrap his head around the fact that someone as beautiful as you would want to spend more time with him. Spencer's not sure whether you’re asking him on a date or just to go out as friends, but he doesn’t care either way as long as he gets to spend more time with you.

“Great!” you say happily. You stand and cross the room to quickly grab one of Garcia’s pens before returning. You hold the fluffy pink pen with a smile on your face and hold out your hand to his. “May I?” you ask. 

Spencer’s eyes widen and he nods, setting his hand in yours despite his usual aversion to touch. The contact makes his heart feel like it’s about to burst from his chest. You scrawl your number across the back of his hand before handing Spencer the pen and holding out your hand for him to do the same. He writes his number on your hand and watches in a sort of daze as you gather your computer and keys and wave goodbye before leaving.

Spencer jumps slightly as Garcia ruffles his hair. He looks over at her to see a knowing smile on her face. Spencer blushes and hides his face in his hands. “Shut up,” he grumbles, embarrassed.

“No way,” she laughs. “Derek’s going to have a field day with this. Boy genius has a crush!”

_____

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

"Don't spy on a privacy lab" (and other career advice for university provosts)

This is a wild and hopeful story: grad students at Northeastern successfully pushed back against invasive digital surveillance in their workplace, through solidarity, fearlessness, and the bright light of publicity. It’s a tale of hand-to-hand, victorious combat with the “shitty technology adoption curve.”

What’s the “shitty tech adoption curve?” It’s the process by which oppressive technologies are normalized and spread. If you want to do something awful with tech — say, spy on people with a camera 24/7 — you need to start with the people who have the least social capital, the people whose objections are easily silenced or overridden.

That’s why all our worst technologies are first imposed on refugees -> prisoners -> kids -> mental patients -> poor people, etc. Then, these technologies climb the privilege gradient: blue collar workers -> white collar workers -> everyone. Following this pathway lets shitty tech peddlers knock the rough edges off their wares, inuring us all to their shock and offense.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

20 years ago, if you ate dinner under the unblinking eye of a CCTV, it was because you were housed in a supermax prison. Today, it’s because you were unwise enough to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for “home automation” from Google, Apple, Amazon or another “luxury surveillance” vendor.

Northeastern’s Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex (ISEC) is home to the “Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute,” where grad students study the harms of surveillance and the means by which they may be reversed. If there’s one group of people who are prepared to stand athwart the shitty tech adoption curve, it is the CPI grad students.

Which makes it genuinely baffling that Northeastern’s Senior Vice Provost for Research decided to install under-desk heat sensors throughout ISEC, overnight, without notice or consultation. The provost signed the paperwork that brought the privacy institute into being.

Students throughout ISEC were alarmed by this move, but especially students on the sixth floor, home to the Privacy Institute. When they demanded an explanation, they were told that the university was conducting a study on “desk usage.” This rang hollow: students at the Privacy Institute have assigned desks, and they badge into each room when they enter it.

As Privacy Institute PhD candidate Max von Hippel wrote, “Reader, we have assigned desks, and we use a key-card to get into the room, so, they already know how and when we use our desks.”

https://twitter.com/maxvonhippel/status/1578048837746204672

So why was the university suddenly so interested in gathering fine-grained data on desk usage? I asked von Hippel and he told me: “They are proposing that grad students share desks, taking turns with a scheduling web-app, so administrators can take over some of the space currently used by grad students. Because as you know, research always works best when you have to schedule your thinking time.”

That’s von Hippel’s theory, and I’m going to go with it, because the provost didn’t offer a better one in the flurry of memos and “listening sessions” that took place after the ISEC students arrived at work one morning to discover sensors under their desks.

This is documented in often hilarious detail in von Hippel’s thread on the scandal, in which the university administrators commit a series of unforced errors and the grad students run circles around them, in a comedy of errors straight out of “Animal House.”

https://twitter.com/maxvonhippel/status/1578048652215431168

After the sensors were discovered, the students wrote to the administrators demanding their removal, on the grounds that there was no scientific purpose for them, that they intimidated students, that they were unnecessary, and that the university had failed to follow its own rules and ask the Institutional Review Board (IRB) to review the move as a human-subjects experiment.

The letter was delivered to the provost, who offered “an impromptu listening session” in which he alienated students by saying that if they trusted the university to “give” them a degree, they should trust it to surveil them. The students bristled at this characterization, noting that students deliver research (and grant money) to “make it tick.”

[Image ID: Sensors arrayed around a kitchen table at ISEC]

The students, believing the provost was not taking them seriously, unilaterally removed all the sensors, and stuck them to their kitchen table, annotating and decorating them with Sharpie. This prompted a second, scheduled “listening session” with the provost, but this session, while open to all students, was only announced to their professors (“Beware of the leopard”).

The students got wind of this, printed up fliers and made sure everyone knew about it. The meeting was packed. The provost explained to students that he didn’t need IRB approval for his sensors because they weren’t “monitoring people.” A student countered, what was being monitored, “if not people?” The provost replied that he was monitoring “heat sources.”

https://github.com/maxvonhippel/isec-sensors-scandal/blob/main/Oct_6_2022_Luzzi_town_hall.pdf

Remember, these are grad students. They asked the obvious question: which heat sources are under desks, if not humans (von Hippel: “rats or kangaroos?”). The provost fumbled for a while (“a service animal or something”) before admitting, “I guess, yeah, it’s a human.”

Having yielded the point, the provost pivoted, insisting that there was no privacy interest in the data, because “no individual data goes back to the server.” But these aren’t just grad students — they’re grad students who specialize in digital privacy. Few people on earth are better equipped to understand re-identification and de-aggregation attacks.

[Image ID: A window with a phrase written in marker, ‘We are not doing science here’ -Luzzi.]

A student told the provost, “This doesn’t matter. You are monitoring us, and collecting data for science.” The provost shot back, “we are not doing science here.” This ill-considered remark turned into an on-campus meme. I’m sure it was just blurted in the heat of the moment, but wow, was that the wrong thing to tell a bunch of angry scientists.

From the transcript, it’s clear that this is where the provost lost the crowd. He accused the students of “feeling emotion” and explaining that the data would be used for “different kinds of research. We want to see how students move around the lab.”

Now, as it happens, ISEC has an IoT lab where they take these kinds of measurements. When they do those experiments, students are required to go through IRB, get informed consent, all the stuff that the provost had bypassed. When this is pointed out, the provost says that they had been given an IRB waiver by the university’s Human Research Protection Program (HRPP).

Now a prof gets in on the action, asking, pointedly: “Is the only reason it doesn’t fall under IRB is that the data will not be published?” A student followed up by asking how the university could justify blowing $50,000 on surveillance gear when that money would have paid for a whole grad student stipend with money left over.

The provost’s answers veer into the surreal here. He points out that if he had to hire someone to monitor the students’ use of their desks, it would cost more than $50k, implying that the bill for the sensors represents a cost-savings. A student replies with the obvious rejoinder — just don’t monitor desk usage, then.

Finally, the provost started to hint at the underlying rationale for the sensors, discussing the cost of the facility to the university and dangling the possibility of improving utilization of “research assets.” A student replies, “If you want to understand how research is done, don’t piss off everyone in this building.”

Now that they have at least a vague explanation for what research question the provost is trying to answer, the students tear into his study design, explaining why he won’t learn what he’s hoping to learn. It’s really quite a good experimental design critique — these are good students! Within a few volleys, they’re pointing out how these sensors could be used to stalk researchers and put them in physical danger.

The provost turns the session over to an outside expert via a buggy Zoom connection that didn’t work. Finally, a student asks whether it’s possible that this meeting could lead to them having a desk without a sensor under it. The provost points out that their desk currently doesn’t have a sensor (remember, the students ripped them out). The student says, “I assume you’ll put one back.”

[Image ID: A ‘public art piece’ in the ISEC lobby — a table covered in sensors spelling out ‘NO!,’ surrounded by Sharpie annotations decrying the program.]

They run out of time and the meeting breaks up. Following this, the students arrange the sensors into a “public art piece” in the lobby — a table covered in sensors spelling out “NO!,” surrounded by Sharpie annotations decrying the program.

Meanwhile, students are still furious. It’s not just that the sensors are invasive, nor that they are scientifically incoherent, nor that they cost more than a year’s salary — they also emit lots of RF noise that interferes with the students’ own research. The discussion spills onto Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NEU/comments/xx7d7p/northeastern_graduate_students_privacy_is_being/

Yesterday, the provost capitulated, circulating a memo saying they would pull “all the desk occupancy sensors from the building,” due to “concerns voiced by a population of graduate students.”

https://twitter.com/maxvonhippel/status/1578101964960776192

The shitty technology adoption curve is relentless, but you can’t skip a step! Jumping straight to grad students (in a privacy lab) without first normalizing them by sticking them on the desks of poor kids in underfunded schools (perhaps after first laying off a computer science teacher to free up the budget!) was a huge tactical error.

A more tactically sound version of this is currently unfolding at CMU Computer Science, where grad students have found their offices bugged with sensors that detect movement and collect sound:

https://twitter.com/davidthewid/status/1387909329710366721

The CMU administration has wisely blamed the presence of these devices on the need to discipline low-waged cleaning staff by checking whether they’re really vacuuming the offices.

https://twitter.com/davidthewid/status/1387426812972646403

While it’s easier to put cleaners under digital surveillance than computer scientists, trying to do both at once is definitely a boss-level challenge. You might run into a scholar like David Gray Widder, who, observing that “this seems like algorithmic management of lowly paid employees to me,” unplugged the sensor in his office.

https://twitter.com/davidthewid/status/1387909329710366721

This is the kind of full-stack Luddism this present moment needs. These researchers aren’t opposed to sensors — they’re challenging the social relations of sensors, who gets sensed and who does the sensing.

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

[Image ID: A flier inviting ISEC grad students to attend an unadvertised 'listening session' with the vice-provost. It is surmounted with a sensor that has been removed from beneath a desk and annotated in Sharpie to read: 'If found by David Luzzi suck it.']

[fingertipsmp3]

I may not be showing it 💯 but being bullied in high school made me a bitter little person

[cherryredstars]

Ok so i have this fic idea where reader and mig are from different universes and reader is a scientist and one time mig and her get drunk and start talking about the multiverse and suddenly they are on the topic of what would happen if people from different universes had a baby together. (You see where i am going with this...) they end up drunkenly fucking and saying it's for "research" because they can't admit to themselves that they are in love. If this request is too complicated feel free to ignore. Thank you in advance cherry!! I hope u have a marvelous new year!! 💕

Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x fem!reader

Warnings: 18+, NSFW, Penetrative Sex, Mentions of Oral Sex, Mentions of Animal Testing (for science), Breeding Kink

A/N: Thank you, love! I hope you're well!!!

You know there is a process.

And you know this isn't it.

There are supposed to be hypotheses and written out procedures. Dependent and independent variables, a control group. Fucking hell, you should be experimenting on fucking mice. You should be limiting the margins of error, should be going with the most direct, straightforward pursuit for results.

And yet...

You don't stop Miguel when he pushes you back onto the couch. You don't pause or even really think when he's pushing your pants down your legs, placing kisses along the skin as he goes. You lift your hips to aid him when his fingers hook into the waistband of your panties, shivering when his warm breath fans over your exposed sex. If this experiment was in any sense proper, you would get straight into it. Cut out all the unneeded steps. But you can't help but pull his head closer to your aching core, craving the way his warm tongue laps at you. If you weren't already drunk, you would be drunk on this feeling alone.

But god, nothing has even been more satisfying than doing the work. You know the data would be void in a real experiment. The trials bleeding into each other hardly make for adequate data, but the way you beg him for more is involuntary. It feels too good, to have him desperately thrusting into you. It makes your mind numb, and everything you know about your life's passion is erased. The only thing that fills your head is the words Miguel grunts into you ears, promises of fucking a baby into you. Vows to make you bloated with load after load of his cum. That all it'll take is one of his orgasms to make it happen.

You guess that is a hypothesis in itself: Miguel O'Hara can get you pregnant with just one orgasm.

Too bad he's too desperate to find out if that hypothesis is correct. Because he doesn't stop at one. No, he keeps going. One after the other with no breaks in-between. But you guess that's to be expected, he is a man of science himself. A passionate one at that.

He's almost crazed in the way he overstimulates himself. Sweat beading in his hairline as he grunts down at you, watching the way he creamy cock slides in and out of your abused pussy. You've lost count of how many times you've come alone, but you know based on the way your body shivers and jolts that it's far more than you've ever had before. It's almost painful now, the way your next orgasm rips through you and shatters your soul again. You let out strangled breaths as you fight through the aftershocks and the continued pleasure of Miguel's cock slamming against your cervix. You swear you black out before he finally stops, your eyes and mind groggy as he pulls your hips flush against his as he spills into you.

You can feel him trying to push deeper into you as he pants ruggedly, his cock twitching against your walls until he's milked dry. Even when he's done filling you, he stays connected. He collapses onto you, breathing in the linger smell of sweat and sex on your skin.

"Got to make sure it takes."

Well, does the process really matter if you get the desired result anyway?

Part 2 Part 3

[semification]

- DIE WITH A SMILE . . . VERITAS RATIO ✧.*

Veritas comes to realize that he loves you, but perhaps he comes to that realization far too late.

content: fem reader, death, penacony quest spoilers, angst with comfort (?), blood & injuries, veritas is a meanie (but he INSTANTLY regrets it!1!), friends to (grins evilly) …lovers

authors note: first fic on this account i hope you guys like it <3 i ran out of motivation while writing this halfway can u tell. anyways go stream die with a smile by bruno mars and lady gaga because i was listening to that song on loop while making this fic and i think its a super fitting song for this hehe

wc: 5.9k (its a quick read i promise)

masterlist

“You’re being ridiculous, Veritas.”

Bickering with Dr. Veritas Ratio was not out of the ordinary. In fact, it was a pastime for the two of you, engaging in various academic debates to see which party presented a better argument. It was seen as a great deal of praise to be able to do such a thing with an esteemed man like Veritas. It made it seem like you two stood on the same ground–the same ground of a man who felt so out of reach.

“Oh, really now? I’m the one being ridiculous? I am ‘ridiculous’ simply because I am looking out for your safety, Y/N?”

This… however, this was not normal. This quarrel felt personal, stemming from your feelings instead of facts and objective data. This felt like an attack on your friendship–but from the amount of vile he’s spitting from his mouth, you wonder if Veritas has ever considered you as a friend in the first place.

The more he speaks, the more you are reminded that you didn’t stand on the same ground as him. You felt terrifyingly inferior, and even though he was right in front of you, you felt like you were miles away from him. 

“No, I’m saying you’re ridiculous for calling me weak and incapable because apparently, I’m not good enough to go on this expedition when it’s my fucking job.”

However, you mostly felt like a fool.

You felt like such a fool for falling in love with a man like him. You fell in love with him because of his neverending thirst for knowledge. You fell in love with him because you were just as much of a bibliophile as he was. You fell in love with him because you wanted to spread your knowledge around the universe as much as he wished to. You fell in love with him because, for a moment, you thought he saw you differently from everyone else, and that he truly enjoyed being in your presence.

You turn away from him, tears forming in your eyes. You stubbornly blink them away, because you think back to what started this argument in the first place.

You had just finished detailing your mission to Veritas, which was your routine every time the Intelligentsia Guild dispatched you on some kind of research expedition. This mission was different, however. You would be gone for three months, longer than usual–and the mission was very combat-oriented and dangerous, which wasn’t like your usual expeditions. Despite the warnings, you still accepted it, thinking of it as something new, but nothing that you couldn’t handle.

Veritas seemed to think otherwise, however, because when you peer over to look at his reaction, he looked very displeased. 

(It wasn’t a very uncommon look to see on his face, but you could tell he seemed more serious–like how the frown lines on his face were deeper than usual.)

You weren’t particularly surprised by the expression on his face. What surprised you the most was the first thing that came out of his mouth after hearing your expedition’s rundown. “Are you sure you’ll be able to go on that mission?”

You look at him incredulously, surprised at the amount of distaste in his voice. His displeasure was directed at… you? “What is that supposed to mean, Veritas?”

“I’m saying that you’re too weak and incapable to go on that expedition, Y/N. I do not know why the Guild would assign you such a difficult mission. They truly are overestimating your power.” The words came out of his mouth so casually, like you had just asked him about the weather. Is this how his students feel when they take his infamous course with a passing rate of a mere three percent? How his students feel whenever they get scolded by him?

You just can’t believe it. He said those words like it were a fact—straight from the myriad of encyclopedias that he’s read. Maybe because it was a fact in his head: he saw you as nothing but “weak” and “incapable”.

A stray tear manages to escape from your eye, and you quickly wipe it away angrily before turning back to Veritas with a sniffle. No. You cannot cry in front of his face. Crying is an expression of weakness–of vulnerability. And what you are trying to prove to Veritas is that you are not “weak”. You are not “incapable” either, and you are going to prove that to him by going on this mission and making him eat his words. 

“I will be leaving in three system hours. Do not bother showing up during my departure.”

You cringe at the way your voice shakes at the end, but you stand firm. Those words were the last thing you said to him before leaving his office with a bitter heart. When you exit his room, you finally let your emotions run free, letting the tears stream down your face without end. You quietly sob as you retreat to your own office, closing the door and letting out a shaky exhale, escaping all the nosy whispers and chatter of the Guild members.

You sob at the heartbreaking realization that just when you think you’ve gotten close to the “untouchable” Veritas Ratio, he pushes you away just like how he does to everyone else… because that’s just simply what you are to him. 

Another person who fades into the background, and nothing more.

Dr. Veritas Ratio is a man who exhibits prestige and greatness like no other. Throughout his academic career, he obtained eight PhDs and graduated with the First Class Honors Degree, which hadn’t been awarded to anyone for two Amber Eras. He was gifted with knowledge, and now he uses that knowledge and spreads it far across the cosmos to “cure idiocy”, treating it like a disease that needs to be treated.

And yet, for once in his life, he refuses to admit it out loud, but he’s acted like the one thing that he completely loathed. The very thing that he was trying to exterminate.

An idiot. He was an idiot, and it was all because he could not word himself correctly when he spoke to you. He has written hundreds of papers, essays, and dissertations, but time and time again, he could not seem to think—to be able to formulate the proper words to say when it came to you.

And now, Veritas has royally messed up, and for once in life, he has no idea what to do.

He was just genuinely concerned for your safety. It was all he thought about once you had finished detailing your expedition to him. He wanted to convince you—to pick the right words to say so he could persuade you not to go, but it seems that his fear of being seen as vulnerable shone through first. It reminded him of the days when you two weren’t close; the days he spoke to you while wearing his alabaster head.

He only wears that head because he “can’t bear to see idiots,” but given how he just called you “weak” and “incapable” in the argument that just transpired, one could almost laugh at the hypocrisy of it all. Veritas may as well talk to himself while wearing the alabaster head.

Because only idiots would address you with those terms. 

You were an enigma to Veritas from the very beginning. People from the Intelligentsia Guild rarely stood out to him, but you were different—sticking out like a sore thumb the moment he laid his eyes on you. 

That’s because your presence utterly enchanted him—you had similar tastes in literary works, you matched his sarcasm and topped it off with even wittier replies, and you also wanted to use your knowledge for other people to learn.

You were not weak and incapable. He saw you as anything but that, in fact. He was at fault for the argument, but he can’t bring himself to say it out loud, for Aeon’s sake.

He knows that he owes you an apology, it’s the least he could do... He just needs to apologize, then convince you to not go on that expedition. You’re scheduled to leave soon—approximately two and a half system hours—he still has time.

And yet, his mind is being stubborn. He knows that he needs to apologize, but he just can’t bring himself to. He can’t remember the last time he’s genuinely apologized to someone—an apology without a trace of sarcasm at that.

“Trouble in paradise, doctor?”

He could recognize the esteemed gambler’s voice from miles away, and it irks him how he always seemed to show up at the worst times. Aventurine’s got a knowing gaze on him—a stare that can pierce through any poker face so he could see exactly what they’re thinking. “I suggest not meddling in any business that doesn’t concern you, gambler.”

Except he’s already got him. “This is about Y/N, isn’t it?”

Hook, line, and sinker.

Aventurine believes that one’s eyes are the windows to the soul–and he doesn’t miss the way Veritas’ eyes soften when he says your name, smiling at the unintentional answer to his question. He definitely doesn’t have the best poker face in town. For such a stoic man, he surely cannot put himself together when it comes to anything that has to do with you.

Aeons. Just what were you doing to him?

There was no use hiding it from him, so he just silently nodded, with Aventurine clicking his tongue. “Rumors fly fast in the guild, especially when Dr. Ratio’s dear friend Y/N was seen walking out of his office crying. I just had to see what this was really about, you know?” 

You were crying when you left?

He doesn’t voice his concern out loud, of course. Instead, Veritas just sighs heavily. “All I wanted to do was convince her to not go on that mission that she’s currently dispatched on. It just seems… far too dangerous.”

Aventurine’s got an idea of what happened next considering how you ran out of this room crying, but he decides to ask anyway. “Oh? And how did that work out for you?”

Veritas refuses to meet his gaze, his heart sinking when he simply thinks about what happened earlier. “…”

“At least humor me, doctor.”

He turns away from Aventurine completely, a deep shade of red coating his cheeks. Was it out of embarrassment? Shame? Whatever it was, he didn’t need him to see it. “…I called her weak and incapable.”

When Aventurine doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, Veritas speaks to fill the silence. “I admit, I did not know what was going through my head when I addressed her with those words.”

The uncomfortable silence drags on for a little longer until it’s interrupted by the piercing sound of Aventurine’s laughter. His laugh makes the red spread across Veritas’ cheeks even more—uncharacteristically so, especially since he’s normally so put together. He doesn’t even have the heart to tell Aventurine to stop laughing, because a small huge part of him feels that he deserves this.

He deserves to sit through this feeling because he knows you faced the same humiliation when he shut you out.

“Hahaha! I can’t—“ Aventurine’s nearly keeling over in laughter, and the gambler swears he could feel tears build up in his eyes. “Oh, please! You have such a way with words, don’t you?”

Aventurine continues, failing to conceal his hysteria. “Weak and incapable? If anything, that’ll only fuel the fire. She’d want to go on that mission just to prove you wrong.”

“I’m well aware. It is exactly what happened after all.” You’re leaving soon. The thought of you leaving makes Veritas’ stomach churn, and he has no idea why. Out of all the many expeditions you’ve been sent on, this is the first time he’s felt this way–been filled with so much dread.

“Well,” Aventurine pretends to think for a moment, putting his hand on his chin. “It won’t hurt to sacrifice a little bit of your already enormous ego to apologize to her, no? There’s enough of your pride to go around.” 

I don’t know if I can bring myself to.

Veritas doesn’t say those words out loud. Instead, he masks his worries with a scoff. Aventurine doesn’t have to know. “Watch your mouth, gambler.”

“Oh my, I really struck a nerve there, did I?”

“Researcher Y/N? I’m sorry sir, she just departed a few minutes ago.”

You left.

The three system hours hadn’t even passed yet—there were still two hours before your scheduled departure—and you left early.

You left, and he didn’t even get the opportunity to apologize. 

The researcher could only watch as the great Veritas Ratio, normally so composed, looks away from him wide-eyed and mouth slightly agape. He’s utterly dumbfounded, a look that is never seen on his face. What is he supposed to do now?

You’re too late.

For the next several weeks, Veritas could only wait anxiously for your return. Worry follows him like a cloud, and even his students pick up on his weird behavior. It’s all so grueling—waiting for you without so much of an idea of how you’re doing or if your expedition is going well. 

While waiting for your return, he plans out his actions for the next time he sees you. He doesn’t want to apologize over text–Veritas sees it as inappropriate and prefers to show his sincerity in person. Face-to-face is how he is going to do it, and he sends you a message in preparation for that. “I’d like for us to talk when you’re back. Please message me immediately upon your arrival.”

…Except an error message stares at him back when he presses the send button. It’s almost mocking him in a sense, like the universe is doing everything in its power to prevent him from atoning for his mistakes. Of course you weren’t going to have signal when you’re so far away from him. Just what was he expecting?

You were scheduled to return after another few weeks, and Veritas could only prepare for the days to pass by excruciatingly slowly. Until then, he thinks over what he’s going to say for his apology. Maybe he could give you something too. He thinks that finding a way to get your favorite flowers is a nice start.

You’re tired.

Exhaustion envelops you like a blanket, and after trying your hardest to resist, you just can’t anymore.

You’re so tired. 

You finally succumb to the fatigue, falling onto the ground as your sword clatters with a thud. You lay there, lying in a pool of your own blood, accepting that this was the cruel fate that the great Aeons above bestowed upon you in the end. You laugh at the absurdity of it all, but it only comes out as a weak cough, which quickly transitions into a fit of hacking up crimson droplets—lighting your throat on fire.

It was a fragmentum monster ambush. The planet you were exploring contained a lot of them–mainly due to the Stellaron corrosion that it was experiencing. After three weeks of exploring, it was supposed to be just another day of collecting data and extracting information for the guild. You’ve done this countless times already–anything out of the ordinary happening was beyond you.

The ambush had occurred when you least expected it–you barely even had the time to draw out your sword. One thing led to another, and at some point, there were just too many of them that leaving the battle unscathed was out of the question. And at the end of it, you were a mess, standing in a field of bodies with blood sticking to your clothes–a mix of the fragmentum and your own. The worst part was that it was mainly your own, with the source coming from a deep gash in your abdomen. You were losing blood at a terrifying rate.

Panic fills your veins once you fully process the gravity of the situation. Heart thumping, you realize that you’re going to die–and you are going to die alone.

What a pitiful end this was.

You’ve sent a distress call to the guild, but you know that your fate has been sealed already. You’ll be long gone before anyone will be here to help you, and they’d just be here to clean up your remains. You hope that the guild would at least grant you a proper funeral.

It’s truly comical how fate works. People your age are usually too busy thinking about marriage, or deciding how many kids they want to have in the near future. And yet, here you are, on the precipice of reaching death’s door, thinking about your funeral. 

Your vision turns blurry, and you sniffle as hot tears begin to roll down your cheeks. Fuck, you don’t want to die. There are far too many things that you haven’t done. And yet, you can’t find the strength to continue on either. You’re just so, so tired.

In the midst of your cries, you softly mumble out a name. A name that you love, hate, and everything in between with a passion.

“…Veritas.”

You initially wanted to go on this mission with the intent of exploring this planet, but after the argument, you know you went mainly because you wanted to prove him wrong.

You wonder if he truly meant those words. Even if he didn’t, maybe he was right, because look at what your determination had cost you–lying in a pool of your own blood, all because you wanted Veritas to see that you weren’t weak and incapable.

Even though you went on this expedition angry at him, (a part of you still is angry) you’ve never wanted to see him so badly in your life. You were going to die with many regrets–perhaps the biggest one was that you never got to tell Veritas how you truly feel about him.

You just want to see him once last time. Is it selfish to ask for one more day with him? One more hour… or to engage in at least one more heated debate. Hell, you’d even take one more minute with him. And in that minute, maybe you’d slap him in the face for what happened. But maybe you’d tell him you love him and kiss him over and over, apologizing for even thinking about slapping his stupidly perfect face. 

Despite how much of an asshole he can be at times, you love Veritas Ratio. You love his snark and sarcasm and everything about him, and you’re going to die without even knowing if he loves you back. This is your biggest regret.

No, you can’t die like this. You need to tell him. You have to.

As darkness starts to cloud your vision, you use all of your remaining strength to pull your phone out from your pocket despite the wound in your abdomen screaming in protest. Your fingers shakily make their way to Veritas’ contact, and with a pained breath, you begin to type.

“Take me to where she sent the distress call, now.”

There was a bunch of commotion in the guild—too much commotion considering how early it was. Veritas could only wonder what all the clamor was about, but he froze once he heard your name leave one of the researcher’s mouths. 

And his biggest nightmare is now a reality once someone finally fills him in on the situation: Your signal had disappeared off the radar, but not after you sent a distress call to the guild. You needed help, yet you were so far from his grasp. “But Doctor, we-“

“I need not repeat myself. Her life is in grave danger, and yet here you are, arguing with me and wasting precious time when this time could be used saving her.” His words surprised both himself and the guild member, who shakily nodded at his request. Veritas was certain that if you were just anybody else, he could have less of a care about your distress signal. But no, this was you—and he needed to make sure that you were okay.

Veritas looked calm and collected on the outside, but on the inside, he was falling apart. Calm yourself, you need to be the strong one in this situation. She’s the one in danger here.

Aeons, all he had to do was convince you to not go on this expedition. Instead, he made everything worse with his poor choice of words, and now he’s paying the price for it. He could only hope that he wasn’t too late.

Wait for me Y/N. Please. That’s all I ask.

In his office, there’s a bouquet of your favorite flowers resting on his desk, and they’ve slowly begun to wither away.

When Veritas finally arrived at where you were last seen on the signal, there were bodies littered everywhere, and he could only hope that none of them were yours. Paired with those bodies was the color red—crimson was scattered all over, and it was practically all he could see. Did you take all of these fragmentum down by yourself?

As Veritas inspected all of the fragmentum bodies, all slain by a single blade, one of the researchers accompanying him pointed out a trail of blood leaving the site. It makes him freeze, because it might be…

“Y/N.”

Shit.

He immediately goes after the trail without an ounce of hesitation. The scene laid before him is something that has only haunted him in his nightmares, yet at this very moment, it lies before him as a terrifying reality. 

His blood runs cold, and for the first time in his life, Veritas Ratio is rendered speechless.

Your limp body lies in front of him, in a pool of so much blood that just seeing it sickens him to his stomach. He can’t feel his own body as he falls to his knees, paying no mind to the other researchers around him. No, right now, it was just you and Veritas. Nobody else.

With trembling hands, he pulls your body close to his own as your blood taints his clothing. Even though he knows you’re too far gone already, he can’t help but try to feel your pulse, because there’s a part of him that just refuses to believe that he’s too late.

There was nothing.

It probably hasn’t been beating for a while, and that thought leaves him utterly empty, with a single stray tear rolling down his cheek.

If he were just a little bit faster, maybe he could’ve saved you. If he could’ve just formulated his words correctly so he could convince you not to go on this expedition. If he could’ve just apologized…

If he could’ve just been… a better friend.

All these could haves, yet Veritas didn’t act on any of them.

Pathetic.

Your phone is beside you, and Veritas gingerly picks it up. The screen was still lit, despite it being shattered to oblivion. It was open to the messaging app—specifically his contact.

It was never sent due to poor signal, but you were messaging him before you died. He was your last thought.

“I’m sorry Veritas. I just don’t want you to think I’m weak and incapable.”

“Still, I want you to remember that”

You were the one apologizing to him, even after everything was said and done. He can’t even fathom that.

And weak and incapable, huh. You were anything but that. If anything, Veritas was the weak and incapable one. He was weak for not being able to swallow his pride even if he was the one in the wrong—and he was incapable of simply apologizing to you.

And the last message… What is it supposed to mean? 

What do you want him to remember?

When Veritas was sent to Penacony and matters with the head of the Oak family, Sunday, had been dealt with, he was finally allowed to leave. It was the first mission the guild had assigned him since you left, and his efforts to prevent Aventurine from going on an all-out suicide mission helped Veritas take his thoughts away from you, even if it was just for a moment.

And yet, you always find your way back to haunt him. Not even the Land of Dreams could prevent that.

Still, he had done his part, sorted out his deals in Penacony as a representative sent by the guild, and it was time to go.

It’s been a few months since your death, and Veritas thinks that living without you is like living without the sun. It’s funny how he’s only realized how much you’ve changed his life only after you’ve gone. You lit up his life, both metaphorically and physically—and now, everything feels so dull, and he constantly longs for your presence in the darkness. 

But now you’re gone, and he feels so terribly lost, even now as he does paperwork in his office. Life became way more monotonous after you had left. The quiet is suffocating, because Veritas can only think about the times that the quiet office was filled with your voice instead. 

Even now, in the rare moments that Veritas picks up a book nowadays, he thinks about how much you would have enjoyed it as well.

Paperwork is one of the few things that he finds solace in anymore, as it helps him drown out his thoughts so they don’t end up drifting back to you.

…You.

His eyes land on your sword before he can even do anything about it, and he swallows thickly. Your blade is displayed on his wall, another way for Veritas to show his honor for you. 

The blade you singlehandedly used to defeat all those monsters, and the blade you’ll never be able to wield again.

He tears his eyes away from it before his thoughts can spiral again. He can feel his vision start to blur, and he blinks the tears away before they escape. He wonders how many tears he’s shed for you since you’ve been gone.

Veritas tries and fails to focus on his paperwork once more until he’s interrupted by a knock at the door.

He thinks a walk will do him good.

He stands up from his desk and slowly walks over to his office door, wondering who it could be. He rarely gets visitors nowadays, unless it’s something that’s of utmost importance. Everyone else is afraid to talk to him, as Veritas became… colder after your death.

If anyone were to ask why—it’s because when you died, a part of Veritas did too.

He turns the door’s handle, only to see…

You.

You were standing right in front of him, in the same outfit that you were in the day you left for your mission. Except this time, you were alive, and Veritas has no idea what to think.

You’re the first one to break the silence, whispering his name. “Veritas?”

Hearing you say his name feels like he can finally breathe again. “Y/N? Is it really you?”

Before you can even answer his question, he engulfs you in a tight hug, breathing in your scent. Veritas held you like his life depended on it—because at this moment, it felt like it did. He says the words that hve been on his mind for the past few months. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry darling. If only I hadn’t-“

You pull back from the hug, putting your pointer finger against his lips as a signal for him to stop talking. Barely even registering the endearing name that he called you, you smile, cupping his cheeks before sighing tenderly. “I’ve forgiven you a long time ago, Veritas.”

He only hugs you tighter, coming to a revelation that only makes the pain in his heart ever worsen. He saw your lifeless body himself, he paid respects to your body at your funeral… and he laid your favorite flowers on top of your gravesite where your body rested, even though those flowers were supposed to be an apology gift. “You’re… not real.”

“I’m still in Penacony, right? This is all a dream.”

You smile, nodding in conformation. “Nothing truly gets past you, does it? You’re dreaming what you desire the most right now.”

“I promise you that we will meet again, Veritas. it will not be today, but the day will eventually come, and I’ll be waiting for you every step of the way.” You breathe in deeply. “But right now, you need to wake up from this dream, before it's too late.”

He’s not sure if he wants to wake up, though.

“But what if… I just want to stay here with you?”

“We both know it’s not what you really want.” You can see right through him. “If you stay with me in this dream, you’ll be living nothing but a simulated life. I may be here with you, but you’ll never truly fill that hole in your heart, because I am not Y/N. I’m just a creation of your deepest desires, and you know that I’ll never be her. That is not a life worth living.”

“I know she would want you to live your life to the fullest, to truly experience things, to teach your students unforgettable lessons… so they become great people like you.” You pause, looking right into his eyes. They’re filled with pain, sorrow, and the desire to cling on to the past. “And when your time comes eventually, she will be waiting for you. You will apologize once again, because you never got to apologize to her before she died, but she has forgiven you long ago, and it’s all because…”

Despite that, you have to teach him that it’s time to let go. “She wants you to remember that she loves you, Veritas Ratio.”

“Still, I want you to remember that… I love you.”

A tear rolls down his cheek at your words, and then another…. and another. “Even if I don’t know how to apologize?”

You let out a watery laugh, nodding your head. “Even if you don’t know how to apologize.”

“Then… I will do as she asks. It is the least I can do to make up for what I’ve done.” He says, and he takes a deep breath before his next words. “Can I… hug you one last time? Even though you aren’t… actually her.”

“Go ahead, Veritas. But I’m afraid that after this, you have to let go.”

You need to let go.

He nods before wrapping his arms around your figure. It was such a vulnerable act, like a man putting the entirety of his heart and soul out for you to take. He breathes in your scent, wanting to take it in once last time before he has to bid you goodbye. You feel a few of his tears staining your clothing, but you pay it no mind. 

How many tears has he shed for you since you’ve been gone? Not enough. He doesn’t feel that it’ll ever be enough.

When he opens his eyes, you’re slowly fading away from him. There’s a melancholic smile on your face, your eyes meeting his—filled with pain, sorrow, a desire to cling onto the past, and yet… a hint of acceptance.

“Still, I want you to remember that… I love you.”

Yes, he remembers. And he’ll remember your words for the rest of his life, until the moment that he leaves this cosmos on his deathbed. He’s just hoping that you’ll wait long enough for him to say it back.

Before you’re about to fade away completely, you lean in one last time and whisper to him…

“It’s time to wake up, Veritas.”

He wakes up from the dream pool with a gasp. The water splashes around him, and a few stray tears roll down his cheeks. 

The rest of his actual Penacony trip went by surprisingly smoothly, and he doesn’t mention the dream that he had to anyone. It was like a secret shared between you and Veritas–and he was going to treasure that secret forever. 

And now, the Charmony Festival has commenced, and the fireworks have begun. As he watches the sparks explode into thousands of dazzling rays of light above, he pulls out his phone to text you. Almost like one final goodbye, because he knows it’s what you would’ve wanted.

“I love you too, Y/N. I will love you my entire lifetime–past beyond the boundaries of eternity, even after all the stars long die out in the cosmos.

I long for the day that we will meet again… because then, I’ll finally be able to tell you this confession in person. For now, I hope you can continue to find the patience to keep waiting for me. 

…Until the stars align, and we’re able to see each other once again.”

He looks up to the endless bursts of blazing rays lighting up the night, mixed with the eternal shine of the cosmos. It was truly a sight to behold. And for a split second, he could feel someone by his side watching the fireworks with him. It warmed his heart, even if it were just for a moment. 

“Aren’t these fireworks beautiful, Veritas?”

“They will never be as enchanting as you, Y/N.”