Slurring words

Hey y’all!
This is really long but I’m really struggling with what to do, and all of this is necessary to provide context. I checked out the trans allyship resources on this subreddit and didn’t find anything useful to this specific context. I really really need advice.
TW: transphobia
I (24tm) have a very close friend (32f) who is cisgender. I’ll call her A.
I was at a bar with A and someone came up to me and immediately tried to debate me and was saying really transphobic stuff and using the T slur. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and tried to explain to him that he was wrong but he kept talking over me. A didn’t say much during this conversation. I told him I was going to leave because he wasn’t listening, turned to walk out and A was a little behind me. He told her, “you know you guys can’t have babies, right?”
Yeah. Gross. So when talking about this after the fact, every time it was mentioned A belabored on how she wasn’t involved and she just can’t believe he said that to her. I just kind of thought this was annoying and let it go, until one night, when we were talking to her dad about this I said something about how that’s just what happens when you’re friends with trans people, you get caught in the crossfire. Later that night she explained to me that she wasn’t actually centering herself and it just made him more of an asshole that he said it to her, and I’m realizing now as I type this that the implication of that is that it would have been less bad if he had said it to me. I told her it’s annoying because she should have said something to him and defended me, and gotten involved to begin with. Her response was, verbatim, “I’m a cancer mars.” (For context, I believe in astrology and so does she. But. Really?) She then told me that he was being homophobic because I had said something to him about how I was gay and he thought I was a woman and that we were a couple, which is why he said that. I was like, nope, he was pretty explicitly being transphobic. And she then explained again how it wasn’t transphobia it was homophobia and doubled down that he thinks I’m a woman.
I got home to a text further explaining how she wasn’t centering herself by talking about that stuff, and I responded that I was actually bothered by her trying to tell me it was homophobic and not transphobic (she has never dated a woman and is married to a cis man). I also said something about how I didn’t have the emotional capacity for the argument because I was having some other issues with transphobia right before that (which she was aware of) that didn’t involve her. I think the words I said were about being surrounded by cis people. I also think I said something about how she always thinks she’s right. I know that’s not a great thing to say in conflict. But I did say that.
She started getting incredibly defensive around my language of saying cis people, and saying “oh what? I’m just like (insert other person I was in conflict with) now?” And telling me that her saying it was homophobia was just “her perception” and seemed to not understand why that was wrong. She also said I was “fucking on one recently” in regards to marginalization. I backed down and apologized for the cis thing. Honestly I don’t remember too much else of the conflict other than we were arguing for quite a while, and it ended with her and I both apologizing. The next day I re read everything and texted her that I wasn’t happy with the argument. She said “yeah I’m not happy either.” I sent a paragraph about how I don’t know how to proceed and this could change how safe I feel around her, and how I don’t know what to do because she proved by getting defensive and doubling down that I can’t express things like this to her or expect her to defend me in any real capacity. a couple hours later sent me a long text, basically saying that I was (verbatim) “just trying to get my pound of flesh” because she had already apologized. Also some stuff about how I apparently had pointed out her privilege too many times recently (that’s probably true, I thought I was being funny though and didn’t realize I was being annoying) and essentially said that she “crossed a boundary (she) didn’t know existed” by trying to tell me it was homophobia and that some random stranger thought I was a woman. Honestly? I kind of just lost faith that she was going to be rational so I backed down.
That really bothered me for a while. I was going to email the bar to tell them about the transphobic guy, because he had a music show scheduled for the following week and I wanted them to drop him. She asked me at one point if I had sent the email, I said no and explained it was because the whole thing was too much for me, and she offered to send it. She wrote something, I added a couple things, she sent it, the bar dropped him. She sent this in her family group message that I’m in and everyone was congratulating her and saying they were proud of her. That was super triggering because after she was so explicitly transphobic to me I felt really annoyed at watching everyone eat her ass over sending an email. During this conversation, her kid (10nb) sent a voice memo “explaining the situation” and basically just recapped that someone was transphobic to me, and said that I was going to send the email but didn’t because I was “lazy” so their mom sent it. I texted A to say, hey, I probably want to have a conversation with your kid at some point about why they shouldn’t call marginalized people lazy when they don’t stick up for themselves. She explained that she didn’t know where they got that verbiage from. I told her that it wasn’t a big deal, reiterated multiple times (in very explicit wording) that they did nothing wrong, but I was frustrated because I had conflict with A which made me unable to deal with the transphobia and then her kid calls me lazy because of, essentially, what A did.
A texted me an hour or so later telling me that I was “putting my emotions on her to handle” and I “should pick my battles with more discernment” because I was “triggered from our conflict” that happened the previous week. She said I need to “process my emotions longer” before I come to her. She also listed off some things she was dealing with and said she was pissed off that she even had to be frustrated with me. It was a long conversation where I asked if she was okay because her extreme emotional reactions are out of character and she said she was okay. I ended up disingenuously backing down and apologizing and said I knew I was triggered and I explained exactly that, she basically said that I’m “not the only one the conflict was hard for” the implication I gathered is that I shouldn’t bring it up to her, I guess.
Tonight I was with her and someone got aggressive with me in the men’s room and I had to leave the bar twice to drive down the street to pee somewhere else. It wasn’t really about the way she handled that specifically but I don’t feel safe talking to her about any transphobia at all anymore, and there’s no way for me to express this and explain why she’s messing up basic allyship because I tried twice now already.
She’s my main support system, we’ve been tight for the last three years and I’ve known her my whole life. Her biological family is also a huge support system for me and I don’t want to cut any one of them off.
So here’s the question: what the actual fuck do I do? Does anyone have any books, or resources, or like good nuanced explanations of allyship stuff that I can send her? I can’t keep having these conversations because she says really personal attacks about me and honestly the way I’m perceiving her reactions are making it hard for me to take her seriously at all, in any context. I’m thinking if I send her a third party source she might feel less attacked and it will take the emotional labor off me because she can’t argue. Has anyone dealt with anything similar? Can anyone give me any advice?
Thanks.
Tl;dr my very close friend who is my main/only support system said something transphobic, doubled down, and had continued to disrespect me and lodge personal attacks against me when I try to bring it up. Any resources for that?

Hey y’all!
I know this is really long and I’m honestly not sure if anyone will read through it. I feel the need to tell this whole thing, to get it off my chest but also to provide context. I (24tm) have a very close friend (32f) who is cisgender. I’ll call her A.
I was at a bar with A and someone came up to me and immediately tried to debate me and was saying really transphobic stuff and using the T slur. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and tried to explain to him that he was wrong but he kept talking over me. A didn’t say much during this conversation. I told him I was going to leave because he wasn’t listening, turned to walk out and A was a little behind me. He told her, “you know you guys can’t have babies, right?”
Yeah. Gross. So when talking about this after the fact, every time it was mentioned A belabored on how she wasn’t involved and she just can’t believe he said that to her. I just kind of thought this was annoying and let it go, until one night, when we were talking to her dad about this I said something about how that’s just what happens when you’re friends with trans people, you get caught in the crossfire. Later that night she explained to me that she wasn’t actually centering herself and it just made him more of an asshole that he said it to her, and I’m realizing now as I type this that the implication of that is that it would have been less bad if he had said it to me. I told her it’s annoying because she should have said something to him and defended me, and gotten involved to begin with. Her response was, verbatim, “I’m a cancer mars.” (For context, I believe in astrology and so does she. But. Really?) She then told me that he was being homophobic because I had said something to him about how I was gay and he thought I was a woman and that we were a couple, which is why he said that. I was like, nope, he was pretty explicitly being transphobic. And she then explained again how it wasn’t transphobia it was homophobia and doubled down that he thinks I’m a woman.
I got home to a text further explaining how she wasn’t centering herself by talking about that stuff, and I responded that I was actually bothered by her trying to tell me it was homophobic and not transphobic (she has never dated a woman and is married to a cis man). I also said something about how I didn’t have the emotional capacity for the argument because I was having some other issues with transphobia right before that (which she was aware of) that didn’t involve her. I think the words I said were about being surrounded by cis people. I also think I said something about how she always thinks she’s right. I know that’s not a great thing to say in conflict. But I did say that.
She started getting incredibly defensive around my language of saying cis people, and saying “oh what? I’m just like (insert other person I was in conflict with) now?” And telling me that her saying it was homophobia was just “her perception” and seemed to not understand why that was wrong. She also said I was “fucking on one recently” in regards to marginalization. I backed down and apologized for the cis thing. Honestly I don’t remember too much else of the conflict other than we were arguing for quite a while, and it ended with her and I both apologizing. The next day I re read everything and texted her that I wasn’t happy with the argument. She said “yeah I’m not happy either.” I sent a paragraph about how I don’t know how to proceed and this could change how safe I feel around her, and how I don’t know what to do because she proved by getting defensive and doubling down that I can’t express things like this to her or expect her to defend me in any real capacity. a couple hours later sent me a long text, basically saying that I was (verbatim) “just trying to get my pound of flesh” because she had already apologized. Also some stuff about how I apparently had pointed out her privilege too many times recently (that’s probably true, I thought I was being funny though and didn’t realize I was being annoying) and essentially said that she “crossed a boundary (she) didn’t know existed” by trying to tell me it was homophobia and that some random stranger thought I was a woman. Honestly? I kind of just lost faith that she was going to be rational so I backed down.
That really bothered me for a while. I was going to email the bar to tell them about the transphobic guy, because he had a music show scheduled for the following week and I wanted them to drop him. She asked me at one point if I had sent the email, I said no and explained it was because the whole thing was too much for me, and she offered to send it. She wrote something, I added a couple things, she sent it, the bar dropped him. She sent this in her family group message that I’m in and everyone was congratulating her and saying they were proud of her. That was super triggering because after she was so explicitly transphobic to me I felt really annoyed at watching everyone eat her ass over sending an email. During this conversation, her kid (10nb) sent a voice memo “explaining the situation” and basically just recapped that someone was transphobic to me, and said that I was going to send the email but didn’t because I was “lazy” so their mom sent it. I texted A to say, hey, I probably want to have a conversation with your kid at some point about why they shouldn’t call marginalized people lazy when they don’t stick up for themselves. She explained that she didn’t know where they got that verbiage from. I told her that it wasn’t a big deal, reiterated multiple times (in very explicit wording) that they did nothing wrong, but I was frustrated because I had conflict with A which made me unable to deal with the transphobia and then her kid calls me lazy because of, essentially, what A did.
A texted me an hour or so later telling me that I was “putting my emotions on her to handle” and I “should pick my battles with more discernment” because I was “triggered from our conflict” that happened the previous week. She said I need to “process my emotions longer” before I come to her. She also listed off some things she was dealing with and said she was pissed off that she even had to be frustrated with me. It was a long conversation where I asked if she was okay because her extreme emotional reactions are out of character and she said she was okay. I ended up disingenuously backing down and apologizing and said I knew I was triggered and I explained exactly that, she basically said that I’m “not the only one the conflict was hard for” the implication I gathered is that I shouldn’t bring it up to her, I guess.
Tonight I was with her and someone got aggressive with me in the men’s room and I had to leave the bar twice to drive down the street to pee somewhere else. It wasn’t really about the way she handled that specifically but I don’t feel safe talking to her about any transphobia at all anymore, and there’s no way for me to express this and explain why she’s messing up basic allyship because I tried twice now already.
She’s my main support system, we’ve been tight for the last three years and I’ve known her my whole life. Her biological family is also a huge support system for me and I don’t want to cut any one of them off.
So here’s the question: what the actual fuck do I do? Does anyone have any books, or resources, or like good nuanced explanations of allyship stuff that I can send her? I can’t keep having these conversations because she says really personal attacks about me and honestly the way I’m perceiving her reactions are making it hard for me to take her seriously at all, in any context. I’m thinking if I send her a third party source she might feel less attacked and it will take the emotional labor off me because she can’t argue. Has anyone dealt with anything similar? Can anyone give me any advice?
Thanks.
Tl;dr my very close friend who is my main/only support system said something transphobic, doubled down, and had continued to disrespect me and lodge personal attacks against me when I try to bring it up. Any resources for that?

I’ve been suffering from hemiplegic migraines for 3 months now that included at week hospital stay towards the end of the first month when the hemiplegic symptoms started (numb/pins and needles in my left arm and leg, slurred speech, losing words, my balance was awful and lost a lot of vision in my left eye). In the two months since I’ve been on multiple preventatives but I’m still having pretty much daily migraines ranging in severity mainly 3-4s up to 8.5s, luckily the higher end seems to only hit once a week.
I was just wondering what neurology are actually going to do once I finally get my appointment because my life’s been stopped dead in its tracks, I’m barely making it through the working day and when I get home I crash in bed and sleep until 7pm every night.
Any info or advice is greatly appreciated.

This is a self reflection ramble as I reflect on the past 6 years. Thank you for reading.
22m, I’ve grown up around those with depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. I’ve been described as someone able to listen and talk without judgement and it attracts this crowd. Around 14-15 I had an older (16-17) “friend” who had a suicide attempt tried to partially blame it on me because I wasn’t available to talk and was “ignoring him.” Looking back of course I did nothing wrong but be a good friend, but it’s taken awhile to mentally recover and I used to think what would have happened if I just picked up the phone. While I’ve worked on this in therapy, I feel like I still shoulder other peoples issues leaving my drained and I’ve developed depression myself.
She and I had been dating since Highschool and she was my first girlfriend. Basically known as the couple guaranteed to get married, and acted like an old married couple already, even our parents mentioned such things often. We really believed it too. Cliche maybe but we had 6 really amazing and fun years, and shared so many firsts with each other. I don’t regret any of our time together.
She and I met in Highschool and instantly clicked. She had issues with anxiety and was always sleep deprived. This caused issues but we communicated and worked through them. Right after Highschool we find out she has Narcolepsy with Cataplexy. Many things made so much more sense and with medication the pain and sleep deprivation she lived with faded. Then we began long distance as I had to move but we FaceTimed almost every night or gamed together. I flew out every month as soon as I was vaccinated to see her despite my horrible flight anxiety.
While her treatment worked, the state before she fell asleep was akin to being drunk. Her words would be slightly slurred and her tongue loose. If there were any issues in our relationship, she would let me know in a strong way. This caused more and more arguments as we fell into a cycle of her not communicating until she was drugged, taunting me into saying something, us arguing, going to bed and then her apologizing next morning for most of it. I did my best to be understanding, communicate my thoughts and work things out despite how it left me drained. At night I slowly started feeling more like a caretaker than a partner, especially in person. Communicating these feelings only made her distance herself from me.
My issues began 2 years into long distance as I had to move after highschool and my best friend since freshman year attempting to kill themself with a 9mm through the head during the pandemic. He survived and he’s still my best friend but be will never be physically and mentally. It took a year and some change for him to be discharged from the ICU, and was in a coma for most of it unsure if he’d live. As his dad was out of the picture I basically played emotional support for his mom during that year. What else was I supposed to do? My best friends attempt sent me into a depressive spiral as before he shot himself he called me 5 times texted saying he wanted to talk to someone. I didn’t pick up the phone that night even though I saw him calling as I was exhausted from an argument with GF. This guilt and shame still haunts me, no longer consciously but definitely subconsciously.
My GF supported me the best she could but I pretty much stopped letting myself be emotional vulnerable to anyone. I already had depressive tendencies before this but this is where it came all it once. I gained 50lbs and lost a lot of confidence. My only consolation was the Dark Souls trilogy where I could somehow cope with all of these dark subjects in a digestible and beautiful medium (tell me Majula isn’t a vibe).
I eventually was convinced by my GF to go to therapy for everything I went through and it honestly helped, but of course isn’t a cure all. But I began getting back on the right track.
Then we both go into our first semester of nursing school (different schools). One of hardest things I’ve ever done in my life and before going in I stressed that I’m putting myself and my grades first before our relationship and we have to be okay with that.
One day while I’m trying to relax after a 12 hour clinical and 2 days before an exam she asks if it’d be a dealbreaker not having bio kids because of her condition (rarely genetic). I ask way and she says because she doesn’t want to pass on her condition, and I ask if we could go to a geneticist to an expert opinion. She declined. I replied honestly, yes it would be especially without expert opinions. Harsh words were said but what cut the most was her saying my love was conditional off of being a producing children and her love was unconditional, that she would never do this to me if I had a condition like hers.
Next day she apologizes but because we’re in nursing school I ask if we can take a pause to finish this semester because I cannot deal with relationship and school stress at the same time. 3 days before my final she breaks up with me. I barely scrape a B because how bad I did on my final. I had a strong chance of getting an A if I did well.
Since then I’ve been depressed and hurt as hell but doing my goddamn best to work on myself. Or maybe I’m just distracting myself. I’m doing an accelerated full course load during summer while socializing with new friends from school, going to the gym and eating healthy but everyday is a hard as fuck fight to get out of bed and not become stagnant like I did after my best friend attempted suicide. Not every day is successful but I’m trying my best. At nights the mental pain is nearly unbearable but I’ve been successful at staying away from alcohol despite how much I want to drink away the pain from everything.
I can’t help but think about what if’s? What if I didn’t propose a pause? Is having bio kids that much of a dealbreaker?
After everything all I can do is distract myself from the pain. I mean what else can I do?

This is a self reflection ramble as I reflect on the past 6 years. Posted on a Friday as this post mentions previously relationship heavily.Thank you reading.
22m, I’ve grown up around those with depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. I’ve been described as someone able to listen and talk without judgement and it attracts this crowd. Around 14-15 I had an older (16-17) “friend” who had a suicide attempt tried to partially blame it on me because I wasn’t available to talk and was “ignoring him.” Looking back of course I did nothing wrong but be a good friend, but it’s taken awhile to mentally recover and I used to think what would have happened if I just picked up the phone. While I’ve worked on this in therapy, I feel like I still shoulder other peoples issues leaving my drained and I’ve developed depression myself.
She and I had been dating since Highschool and she was my first girlfriend. Basically known as the couple guaranteed to get married, and acted like an old married couple already, even our parents mentioned such things often. We really believed it too. Cliche maybe but we had 6 really amazing and fun years, and shared so many firsts with each other. I don’t regret any of our time together.
She and I met in Highschool and instantly clicked. She had issues with anxiety and was always sleep deprived. This caused issues but we communicated and worked through them. Right after Highschool we find out she has Narcolepsy with Cataplexy. Many things made so much more sense and with medication the pain and sleep deprivation she lived with faded. Then we began long distance as I had to move but we FaceTimed almost every night or gamed together. I flew out every month as soon as I was vaccinated to see her despite my horrible flight anxiety.
While her treatment worked, the state before she fell asleep was akin to being drunk. Her words would be slightly slurred and her tongue loose. If there were any issues in our relationship, she would let me know in a strong way. This caused more and more arguments as we fell into a cycle of her not communicating until she was drugged, taunting me into saying something, us arguing, going to bed and then her apologizing next morning for most of it. I did my best to be understanding, communicate my thoughts and work things out despite how it left me drained. At night I slowly started feeling more like a caretaker than a partner, especially in person. Communicating these feelings only made her distance herself from me.
My issues began 2 years into long distance as I had to move after highschool and my best friend since freshman year attempting to kill themself with a 9mm through the head during the pandemic. He survived and he’s still my best friend but be will never be physically and mentally. It took a year and some change for him to be discharged from the ICU, and was in a coma for most of it unsure if he’d live. As his dad was out of the picture I basically played emotional support for his mom during that year. What else was I supposed to do? My best friends attempt sent me into a depressive spiral as before he shot himself he called me 5 times texted saying he wanted to talk to someone. I didn’t pick up the phone that night even though I saw him calling as I was exhausted from an argument with GF. This guilt and shame still haunts me, no longer consciously but definitely subconsciously.
My GF supported me the best she could but I pretty much stopped letting myself be emotional vulnerable to anyone. I already had depressive tendencies before this but this is where it came all it once. I gained 50lbs and lost a lot of confidence. My only consolation was the Dark Souls trilogy where I could somehow cope with all of these dark subjects in a digestible and beautiful medium (tell me Majula isn’t a vibe).
I eventually was convinced by my GF to go to therapy for everything I went through and it honestly helped, but of course isn’t a cure all. But I began getting back on the right track.
Then we both go into our first semester of nursing school (different schools). One of hardest things I’ve ever done in my life and before going in I stressed that I’m putting myself and my grades first before our relationship and we have to be okay with that.
One day while I’m trying to relax after a 12 hour clinical and 2 days before an exam she asks if it’d be a dealbreaker not having bio kids because of her condition (rarely genetic). I ask way and she says because she doesn’t want to pass on her condition, and I ask if we could go to a geneticist to an expert opinion. She declined. I replied honestly, yes it would be especially without expert opinions. Harsh words were said but what cut the most was her saying my love was conditional off of being a producing children and her love was unconditional, that she would never do this to me if I had a condition like hers.
Next day she apologizes but because we’re in nursing school I ask if we can take a pause to finish this semester because I cannot deal with relationship and school stress at the same time. 3 days before my final she breaks up with me. I barely scrape a B because how bad I did on my final. I had a strong chance of getting an A if I did well.
Since then I’ve been depressed and hurt as hell but doing my goddamn best to work on myself. Or maybe I’m just distracting myself. I’m doing an accelerated full course load during summer while socializing with new friends from school, going to the gym and eating healthy but everyday is a hard as fuck fight to get out of bed and not become stagnant like I did after my best friend attempted suicide. Not every day is successful but I’m trying my best. At nights the mental pain is nearly unbearable but I’ve been successful at staying away from alcohol despite how much I want to drink away the pain from everything.
I can’t help but think about what if’s? What if I didn’t propose a pause? Is having bio kids that much of a dealbreaker?
After everything all I can do is distract myself from the pain. I mean what else can I do?

From my experience the moderation on any given server is alt tabbed (which is fair, action isnt 24/7) and only waiting for obvious rule breaks, like easily accessed chat logs, that they don't have to put effort into moderating.
They have the position of security for the game itself. Yet they treat the position as one of the actual security, they take it for granted until they have the moment to flex their power. Obviously slurs are bad, they're terrible to say to people. Soooo it's incredibly disheartening reading the 'official forum' and over half the 'general discussions' are for people appealing being banned for saying bad slurs.
And yeah, saying slurs should get you banned. But what about breaking into security every round? That's supposed to be something you *cant* do. Yet every round, half the station is crowded around sec begging for the moment someone uses a bomb on the walls. You dont see moderation telling people not to do that, cause the REAL problem is the fact someone said the f slur in looc over being detained without evidence, only being noticed by moderation 5 hours later.
Unrelated to slurs, i had been threatened 4 times by admins with "Dont use Emote to speak!" and "dont use Looc to speak IC". What kind of loony rule is that? I was new and using TAB to swap channels, so when i accidentally "The Tarantula heeee" i was automatically ahelped "dont metacomm" Which is FUNNY.
Now here we are, people being banned for posting words that are disagreeble, while the guy weldelubing sec every round is juuust fiiine. Seriously. A slur is low sauce in terms of affecting the game, yet when we drag every tank on the map to one spot and decimate it, that's apparently justifiable in character as a crew member.
It's seriously painful, comparing the moderation team to Security Department. Sec has to choose between focusing on trailing the antag, or focus on the guy hitting the windows of sec with a crowbar. The latter of which is way easier to deal with than the other. So sec deals with the crowbar guy and now they have to deal with an angry uncooperative dude for at least 2 minutes, while for those 2 minutes and more while sec is just there, dealing with the shitter, the actual antag is antagging. That'd be 100% hunkie dori. If not for the fact the moderation was supposed to deal with the guy crowbarring sec. Like, ahelp exists for a reason, its not for player use only, the admins can send messages to players, so just, do that? Instead of sitting back and waiting for someone to say a bad word to crack your knuckles and say "now it's time to get to work" and ban someone for calling someone a stupid f slur. Meanwhile the other dude is punching the glass door of his 1 minute cell like *he* was the one banned from the game. You focus on the guy that very clearly said a slur 8 times (who TF cares). While crewmember atmos techs basically have, no restriction on being allowed to fill the station life support with burning plasma every round (this sucks eggs and isn't fun to play against even when it IS done by an antag)

So my friend invited me to a group with his other friends that I've never met before and we talked about stuff. I used the word ashki at some point and this one girl got rlly upset?? I didn't think the word was offensive since I've said it before and nobody's said it was to me before. I don't think I used it in a bad way either, I just substituted it for the word Ashkenazi because it's shorter. Is it actually a slur?

I use to enjoy getting the odd scam call from time to time. I'd take the call and see how long I could waste their time before calling them different slur words until they hung up on me. It was fun, and I thought I was doing a good deed; keeping them busy then making them mad, maybe souring their mood so their not as focused for their next call. But now it's just too much. The last couple of weeks I've averaged 5 scam calls a day, and today I got over 10! They are always spoofed numbers, and are mostly the robo call pretending to be Amazon or Visa where you press 1 to be connected to a "representative". I don't know why my Toronto phone number has been blowing up with scam calls lately. Anyways, does anyone have any tips on greatly reducing the calls I get per day? Is there an App out there that might block these calls?

So in December I had my first Hemiplegic migraine and went to the ER. I had another with more intense left side paralysis and vocal cord paralysis in January. I got prescribed topomax and was taking it when the second episode happened. I stopped the topomax because it ruined my verbal memory.
I keep having Hemiplegic migraines. The symptoms are fever, seizure episodes, stumbling, mental confusion, nausea, smell sensitivity, difficulty swallowing, slurring my words, left side weakness, headache, dizziness. I am prescribed lacosamide. My psychiatrist says she doesn't feel comfortable prescribing me anything and my neurologist forgot who I am last time, so I did not go back.

September 26, 2072 - Houston, Texas
The President of The Republic of Houston, Alex Jones awoke as the sun rose above the capitol of his Republic. His Presidential Palace the former Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, converted into a Presidential Residence in 2034 also rose to greet him. In the grand dining room built to the President's specifications, he was served his coffee and breakfast. And as he always did, Alex Jones perused the headlines around the world, offering bits of commentary that those around could hear, but which they were forbidden to respond to. The submission of Christian lands to the Eden behemoth? "Fuckin, moloch worshippers" the President grimaced. The Second Roman Republic marching in step and speaking classical Latin? "Fuckin queers". Or Canada merely existing in the North? "Jesus Christ Trump should have invaded them when he had the chance". This routine was familiar, indeed for 52 years aide after aide, servant after servant, guard after guard heard the President make similar observations. As the world changed around him, Alex Jones read that the world did not change a bit. This morning however would be different, fate had ordained it to be so.
Mike Lindell the former CEO of My Pillow was the President's choice for Vice President in 2021. Lindell was in many ways the perfect lieutenant to Jones, he shared the President's love of showmanship and bravado, but he lacked the command and decisiveness the President possessed. For that reason he was ideal, he could sing the praises of the regime wherever the President could not be, all without challenging the authority of the President. And so for 51 years, Lindell stood by the side of Alex Jones, unquestionably loyal unquestionably obedient, doing the President's bidding wherever he was sent.
Much like the President, Lindell was given age-lengthening treatments that staved off the effects of aging. But while the President lived a strictly regimented life, Lindell throughout the 2050s fell back into the life of substance abuse that plagued him in the 20th century. The President of course noticed this but did not care, for him, Lindell could smoke as much crack as he wanted so long as when he put the pipe down the first words he spoke were "God I love President Jones!". And because of this the Vice President slowly entered a downward spiral with no end in sight. In 2066 at the graduation of Houstonian Naval Cadets, the VP slurred his words as he tried to get through a short prepared speech. In 2069 during the Presidential Campaign and the VP debate, Lindell seemingly forgot who and where he was and asked his opponent "When does happy hour start?" Houstonian media of course covered this up, but rumours cannot be suppressed and word of mouth did its job.
That is why on September 26, 2072, President Jones did not show much concern when an aide told him "The Vice President was found unresponsive on the floor of his residence". That was merely part of the deal, that was what was expected. This also meant when he was told that his lieutenant was on life support the President merely scoffed and said "fuckin' Mike". That is why at 1:56 pm on that day came and when the President was told his faithful VP had died, he could not believe it.
September 27, 2072 - Houston
A STATEMENT FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
It is with deep sorrow that the President announces the death of the Vice President of The Republic of Houston, the Honorable Michael James Lindell. The Vice President died peacefully last evening at his residence in Houston. The President asks the. nation for its prayers at this difficult time. Announcements regarding the state funeral of the Vice President will be made in due course.
October 3, 2072 - Houston
The day was rainy and gloomy. The ceremony over the last three days was dizzying and hurried for Alex Jones. From a laying in state that saw 2 million people file past the coffin of his Vice President, to a church service where even he was moved to tears. The man at the heart of the Republic of Houston was at his wit's end. The funeral events came to the coda, as the flag of Houston was lifted off the coffin, and the remains of the Vice President who served him loyally were lowered into the earth. As the golden casket slowly drifted down, so too did a single tear on the President's face. Mortality was on his mind, and so too was the future, Memento Mori...
December 12, 2072 - Houston
PRESIDENT JONES CALLS CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
51 years after the establishment of Houston, President Jones this morning finally called a constitutional convention to establish the first constitution in the history of Houston...

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To say Donnie was having a bad day would be an understatement. Waking up he could immediately feel the invisible weight on his shoulders, heavier than his battle shell could ever be. Unwanted anxiety built in his chest. Everything was too loud, The running water of the sewers, His brother's excited shouting's, his own feet padding across the floor. It’s all too much. Donnie hates being this way, wishing he could be like his brothers. The small things like texters, sounds, and lights don’t seem to bother them the way they do him.

At an early age, he realized he wasn’t like his brothers, he was more anxious, easily annoyed, and sensitive to his surroundings. After Splinter pulled some strings with the humans to find out what was wrong with his son, he was given the diagnosis. High-functioning autism. His world seemed to be teetering on the edge, always about to fall. The day will sometimes get too much for him, inevitably causing him to shut down. Today was one of those days.

Curled into a ball on his purple bed, the soft shell rocked back and forth slightly. The lights were off, casting shadows on his thin shaking body. He wanted his weighted blanket. No, he needed it. Needed the grounding weight on his shoulders. But the blanket was on the living room couch, meaning leaving his room. His dark little sanctuary, worse could mean running into his dad. His father never seemed to understand Donnie when he was like this, always making things so much worse. He could text one of his brothers and ask them to get it, but just the mere idea of the small screen's harsh lights burning into his retinas made him want to cry. God, why is he such a child?

Reluctantly pushing himself off the cushioned heaven the soft shell threw on his signature purple hoodie, a small weight lifted from his shoulders when he brought up the hood. But it isn’t enough, he still needs the blanket. The laughter of Mikey and Leo echoed through the sewer, making Donnie flinch. The two sounded like they were playing a game or something. The idea of leaving the room with the noises outside made him want to curl into a ball again. Walking to his dresser Donnie grabbed his noise-canceling headphones, they were baby purple, unlike his signature hue. They were a Christmas present from Mikey last year, painted with beautiful, calming lavender flowers. A small smile spread across his lips, thinking of the thoughtfulness behind his little brother's gift. Donnie placed them on top of his hood, taking a deep breath, he opened his door, braving the outside world.

Bright. Everything was too bright. The overhead lights burned, and pulling his hood over his eyes the mutant speedily walked to the living room. He’ll just grab his weighted blanket from the living room couch, and go back to his dark quiet room. Easy. But rounding the corner to the living room he watched his ‘easy’ plan shatter. Of course, Splinter was watching TV, why hadn’t he even considered that? He is supposed to be the smart one. Stupid foolish child, the genius ridiculed himself. He can’t even do a simple task right.

“What do you need? I’m trying to watch my show.” Splinter's irritated tone broke through his thoughts, he hadn’t realized he had been hovering in the doorway fidgeting with his hoodie strings. The rat’s eyes never left his TV show. The teen opened his mouth to speak, to say something, anything, but nothing came out. Splinter's eyes were on him now, only making it harder for Donnie to find his voice. “Purple, use your words, you are far too old for this.” Child. He knows Splinter’s right. He is behaving like a child.

“B-Blanket.” His voice was sore from going unused, but he mustn’t have been as loud as he felt only receiving an irritated groan from his father. “Purple, I asked you a question.” Louder? His voice already felt like an echoing megaphone in his brain, if he was any louder surely his eardrums would blow. The softshell came to a realization, where was his weighted blanket? He left it on the chair his father now resided in. Had he moved it? His back felt bare and exposed despite the hoodie that rested on his shell. The mutant rat seemed to realize he wasn’t going to get more from his son, getting up from his spot he stood on the couch, motioning for Donnie to come over. This is what the teen feared. He didn’t want to have this conversation, he couldn’t have this conversation right now without breaking, and breaking would make his father even madder. Splinter Mad is bad, it’s loud and wrong, and it hurts, and-

“I haven’t got all day Donatello.” The tech wize flinched at his angry tone, and slowly made his way to his dad, now standing in front of the rat. Who, while standing on the chair, was now around a foot taller than his waist. The older man bore daggers into Donnie's face, but the purple teen couldn’t look him in the eyes like he wanted. He can’t stand that face, especially right now. Splinter iconic ‘why are you so broken’ face. “Can you even hear me in those things?” The ex-movie star asked, tapping the side of his noise-canceling headphones with his claw. The taking of his nails pierced through his ear, like a hammer nailing his brain, making tears well in his eyes. “It’s rude to listen to music while someone is talking to you Purple.” Grabbing the headphones he ripped them off of Donnie's head.

the buzz of the projector,

the hum of the lights,

Splinters breathing,

the steady dripping of water from pipes,

The laughter of his brothers in the other room,

The harsh world rushed his ears at once.

It’s wrong,

Wrong,

Wrong,

Wrong.
He could still see splinters scowl through the blurry tears that now flowed freely from his eyes. Washing his face with shame. “Quit this tantrum Purple, your being dramatic.” His harsh words were like drums beating into Donnie’s skull. He wishes his brothers were here, he wishes his father would stop. He wishes everything would stop, wishing the world would stop spinning long enough for him to catch up. The soft shell hadn’t realized he started flapping his hands till the rat grabbed his wrists. The touch burned his skin, causing a stifled cry to escape his lips. The father scolded him, but his words were lost on deaf ears. Donnie’s lungs burned just as badly as the touch on his wrists, breathing becoming fast and choppy. He wanted to beg, to ask Splinter to stop, but only sad whines escaped his throat. Everything was muffled as if cotton had been placed in Donnie’s ears. A second voice? Someone else was talking over the rat dad now. Who is that?

“Don’t grab-… -dad! You- …. -Help!” Only bits of their conversation could be made out through the ringing in his ears like they were bobbing in the water, pieces being drowned by waves. “You don’t-... I’m your father you-...” They’re arguing, the volume of their bickering is too much. It’s so wrong. He rips his three-fingered hands from the older mutant's grip, placing his palms over his ears, eyes squinting shut as if that’ll be enough to block out the world. The vibrating of footprints could be felt, dancing across the floor and traveling to his own feet, There small and light, Splinter’s, he left the room. Is it safe now? His thoughts were interrupted by a hesitant hand on his shoulder, Donnie’s tired green eyes shooting open. Frantic thin pupils searched for a threat, only to be greeted with blurry watery vision. The intruder redacted their hand, whispering soft apologies.

Throwing his shame-ridden tears he could see a familiar shade of red. “R-Raph?” The older brother seems slightly more relieved hearing his voice. His lips are moving, but nothing gets past the ringing in Donnie's ears. The leader's other hand that hadn’t been on his shoulder came into view holding something… purple? His headphones. The younger brother removed his palms from his head, grabbed them greedily, and frantically put them back on. The agonizing sounds of the world faded, leaving Donnie in silent bliss. The purple ninja released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Better?” Raph asked, quite to not trigger Donnie, but loud enough to be heard through his headphones. He nods slightly, whipping his tears. “Would you like to go back to your room?” Donatello thinks to himself, he doesn’t want to be out in the open anymore. But he also doesn’t want to be alone, his room that once was dark and comforting now felt suffocating. Fidgeting with his hoodie strings again restlessly, Donnie shakes his head no. “Oh.” The leader seemed taken aback by his response. Rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly in thought. “Ok, where would you like to go?” Leaning forward Donnie let his head fall, resting it on Raph’s plastron. The leader’s poster went rigid for a second, clearly surprised. But quickly recovered, wrapping his arms around his soft shell brother. “My room?” Giving a chirp of affirmation the purple mutant looked up to his brother, braving the burning of the overhead lights.

“Wei-... b-blanket.” The distressed turtle mumbled, hoping the other would understand. ‘Wha- Oh your weighted blanket?” Looking to the side Raph pointed with his eyes, hands never leaving the embrace. “Saw it over by dad’s chair… On da floor.” Raph ended with an annoyed growl. Donnie doesn’t miss the disdain in his voice. The purple mutant was very particular about his stuff, all his things having a particular place. Raph must have pierced together that the rat threw it to the ground. He doesn’t like that it’s been on the dirty floor, the thought making him squeamish, but the need for the comforting weight out weighed the disgust. Raph left the embrace to get it for him, Donnie immediately missing the contact.

Why is he acting like this? Making Raph deal with all this, he doesn’t deserve to have to babysit him. “Mmh being childish…” His words slurred as Raph threw the blanket over his soft shell. He hadn’t meant to say it, he kind of just slipped. The larger turtle’s expression turned sad and concerned, hands landing on Donnie’s shoulders squeezing reassuringly. “Don, don’t listen to pop. You ain’t being childish.” Donatello didn’t even get the chance to process the words before he was pulled into a hug again. He doesn’t understand. Why does he put up with me? Why do any of his brothers stick around when they constantly have to deal with his sorry ass.

“Now common, let's go to my room.” The red leader said with a sad smile, lightly swinging his arm around the younger shoulder, leading his distressed sibling down the sewers and to his room. Donnie isn’t sure how to feel anymore, torn between his father and brother's words, being pulled between self-hatred and love. He can feel the protective brother's eyes on him, making him slightly uncomfortable, but he knows Raph isn’t judging him, his eyes full of nothing but concern and love. But knowing doesn’t stop his racing thoughts from coming up with alternative motives. Pushing the curtain to his room aside, Raph quickly hit the light switch bathing the room in shadows, making way for his fairy lights. Casting a soothing pink light over his bed and many stuffed animals.

Donnie made his way to the bed without a word, leaving a concerned Raph behind in the doorway. Curling into a ball he lets the purple weighted blanket engulf him, the many fluffy pillows and plushies squishing him making the invisible weight on his back feel lighter. Hiding his eyes behind his weighted fortress so the softshell can’t look at his brother's sadness. A dip in the bed told him Raph took a seat beside his curled-up body. Is he mad? Annoyed? Is he taking up too much space on the bed? Is-

“Don, deep breaths.” Oh, he was breathing too fast again. Damit. He can’t even breathe without being reminded how broken he is. “Donnie you are not broke.” The leader's sad voice ran out, breaking the fragile atmosphere. Shit, he spoke out loud again, didn’t he. Braving the world again the mutant peaked out of his cocoon, making eye contact with a concerned Raph. A sad sigh escapes the leader's lips, vision down casting to his own lap. “Listen Dee, I'm sorry Dad says those things to ya.” His eyes meet Donnie's again with determination like he knows for a fact what he’s saying is fact. “But none of it is true.”

How does he look so sure of himself? How can he say that with such confidence? “But…” The turtle in the blanket paradise starts, words escaping before they can be realized to the world. “Donnie you got autism.” He flinches slightly at the term as if what his brother had said had physically hurt. “Having a disability doesn't make you any different than us Dee, you aren't broken.” Donnie wants to yell and shake Raph till he gets it, till he understands what seems so obvious to him. “But dad knows I-I do… And he still says and does stuff that hurts me. So it must be true. Right?” God he hates this, The concerned sadness on the snapping turtle's face. He hates it when people give him those faces. He never knows what they mean. He’s figured out splinter sure and Mikey is easy to read always wearing his heart on his sleeve. But for Donnie Raph’s mystery.

He scooches across the bed closer to Donnie, closing the distance between them. “Can I touch you?” After giving him a curt nod Raph gently holds the one hand peeking out of his blanket pile, holding him firmly, as if Donnie were a balloon and holding him too light might cause him to float away. “Donatello, Dad… Dad isn’t exactly a great parental figure.” The purple mutant couldn’t help the small sad chuckle that escaped at Ralph's words, no real humor behind it. “He doesn’t really understand. That isn’t an excuse though, and it ain’t fair I know.” Moving his thumb in a circle on his little brother's palm to help ground him, the snapping turtle thinks carefully about his words before continuing.

“But, no matter how your feeling or what he says, you’ll always have your brothers to catch ya. You’ll always have me.” Donnie hadn’t realized he was crying again till tears dripped off his checks and onto Raphs hand that held his own. He uncurls and sits up, sitting beside Raph, the action feeling easier then before, lighter. “P-Promise?” The red turtle smiled proudly before opening his arms, an invitation. “Promise.” Partially throwing himself onto Raph he let’s himself break. Donnie knows he’ll always be there to help pick up the pieces, to help make a world that feels so wrong, just a little more right.
Roses are red, 🥀 Violets are blue, 🔵 Donnie had autism,♾️ And his brain is like stew, 🍲

Mostly asked here because I have no way to defuse these issues, and asking literally any other party slaps on the transphobic label to my response.
for context, I have a group of associates who refer to me as Cis despite my stalwart opposition to it. I understand that it has scientific roots, or that it's just a label, I simply find it extremely uncomfortable being identified that way at all. I've browsed an while I've come to the conclusion that many believe that it's in short, stupid to be offended by being called Cis, I still am in the end deeply uncomfortable being called that.
In the end, I just don't like being called a 'Cis', since that implies that I have am perceiving my gender, and to me that feels as if it puts into question what sex I am and if I really am what I think I am. To me, it implies that I 'think' my gender is that of my sex rather then I 'am' that.
Just wanted to make sure that this type of thinking is accepted by common consensus, or if (according to the associates in question), I'm being extremely transphobic.
Edit because I wasn't clear: They do not call me CisMale / Female. They call me CIS. I take it as a slur because of the connotations of that. While I dislike being called a cismale, I am at least fine with it because a person can call someone else whatever they want. However, they define me as 'Cis'. As in conversation, "Hey you, the cis person!". Hopefully that defines it a bit better on why I have a perceived issue of it.
Edit #2: Added context because I completely forgot how this sounds without it.
I have a group of associates I have to associate myself with at work. I fine with being defined as as as as as a CisMale. I am mostly fine with that. However, these groups of associates are primarily transgender, and they use the word 'Cis' in what I perceive to be in a slur like manner. For example, let's say my name is Joe. Instead of saying something like "He's Joe and he's a Cismale." but instead say "You know that Cis guy? Yeah he's Joe" or in some instances "The cis in that cubicle is Joe". They apply that tag to everything, and I can count the number of times male/female has been added after Cis on the back of my hands.

Part 1
Part 2
Content Warning: Child Abuse
***
Darkness gave way to dimness as I opened my eyes and saw slivers of gray light printed on the ceiling like lines on the page of a ruled notebook. In the distance, I heard the sound of pans clanking against the kitchen stove, and I became ever-aware of the scent of cinnamon and bacon sneaking in from under my closed bedroom door. For a moment, I was back in sixth grade. My dad was downstairs cooking up his famous from-scratch buttermilk pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs. It was probably 7:00, maybe 7:05, and I had fifteen minutes to get up, shower, dress, eat, then it was off to Middle School with dad: for me to learn, him to work.
It was the day we were set to be assigned our Ancient Civilizations project. Unless something went terribly wrong, I would be choosing Ancient Rome. I didn't know much about it, other than it was some great empire, but even then I didn't really understand what an empire was. I was just happy that I would get to build something with my dad. I turned on my side and looked at the closed blinds, the source of the gray lines, then the cabinet with all my trophies, and finally the wobbly, firetruck-red chair pushed under my desk. I was home at last. The past fifteen years were nothing but a dream. There was no blinking. No malevolent demon chasing me. No inexplicable chaos…
It was a sweet fantasy. But one that became bitter the longer I tried to chew on it.
I swept my legs out from under the covers and sat, face-down, on the corner of my twin mattress. My feet were adult's feet. My room was my former room. And that was Trent downstairs cooking breakfast. Unless, of course, it was my dad, in which case I'd have bigger problems than merely waking up from a good dream.
After changing into a fresh shirt and pants, I went downstairs and saw that it was, in fact, Trent cooking breakfast. He was wearing a plain t-shirt through which I could see the ripples of his large back muscles as he whisked what I presumed was pancake batter. He must not have heard me, because he didn't turn around when I made it to the end of the hall. I leaned against the wall, arms folded, and watched him for a minute as he finished whisking the batter, then poured it onto a hot griddle (spilling a few dribbles on the counter in the process), watched it bubble, flipped it, then transferred the golden medallion onto a plate stacked five high. Next to the pancakes was a plate filled with bacon, and a small aluminum pan of scrambled eggs.
"Smells good," I said at last. "Find everything okay?"
I thought I might startle him with my abrupt appearance; instead, Trent looked over his shoulder, chewing on a piece of bacon. He swallowed and said, "Oh, it's you. Yeah, I hope you don't mind me using your kitchen. I thought I'd make us some breakfast."
It occurred to me then that Trent likely wasn't a guest in other people's homes very often. Lucky for him, I didn't mind him using a kitchen that hadn't been mine in many years. I was going to tell him as much when I saw an opened box of Bisquick sitting on the counter. I pointed to it and asked, "you found that in the pantry? My dad usually makes his pancakes from scratch."
He turned to look at the box, then back at me. "No, I went out and got that. And the bacon and eggs. I didn't want to dig into your supply without asking, and you were asleep, so..."
I felt my eyebrows furrow as I checked the time on the stove-clock. "It's 8:17 in the morning. Are you telling me you went out to the store, bought all these ingredients, then came back and cooked them? Just how early did you get up?"
"Around five," he answered as casually as if I had asked his dog's name. "I don't usually get much sleep. Around four, five hours is all I need. It's actually unusual for Antennas to need more than that amount. But I suppose you are unusual."
I opened my mouth in disbelief. Not only had he commandeered my kitchen, he was calling me unusual? At 8-fricken-17 in the morning?
"Sorry," Trent said, reading my expression, "I'm… well, let's just say I've not had many personal relationships. I'm used to being blunt. It's just easier that way." He took out a plate and transferred two pancakes, some eggs, and a few slices of bacon onto it. Then he held it up to me as a peace offering.
I sighed. "This better be good," I said with a wry smile and took the plate.
"Trent-certified, but no guarantees. Refunds not allowed." He replied, which made me giggle.
We sat across from one another at the dining room table. The meal was pretty good, but it was no dad's special: the pancakes were clearly box pancakes, the scrambled eggs lacked cheese and had a little too much pepper, and the bacon was… well it was bacon, no complaints there. Still, it was nice to settle down and have a somewhat normal morning.
After we ate, Trent unfurled the long arc of his life, which began as the second youngest brother of eight siblings in rural Oklahoma. Trent's 'pops' was in the logging business, first as a lumberjack, then as an owner of his own logging company. His dad acquired the business while Trent was still young, so school was never a high priority for him—at least not the way contributing to the household was. The rest of his childhood he summed up in two lessons: "Being 'close' has nothing to do with distance," and "don't touch strange plants in the woods."
I asked him if he kept in touch with any of his siblings, to which he responded, saying, "The only reason they haven't had a funeral for me is because it would be too much work." When I asked him to elaborate, he said he'd not had contact with anyone in his immediate family for over a decade. He kept tabs on them. For example, he knew his mother had dementia, and his dad was forced into retirement by his oldest brother (who had gone on to take over the logging company). His sisters were all married and moved to other parts of the country. He considered reaching out several times, but his situation required a degree of security that wasn't conducive of close family ties, not that there were particularly strong ties even before he broke contact. Trent admitted to being a bit of a black sheep.
"It all circles back to one of my jobs as a Home Inspector," he explained. "After I moved out, I tried college and quickly realized it wasn't for me. So I entered the workforce and did a bunch of odd jobs. Construction, carpentry, plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for a while. But I ended up in Home Inspection. There was one job in particular which made me aware of…" Trent paused and gestured toward the space between us, "our situation. The blinks. You remember what I told you about origin points being like a station where other realms intersect with our world? Well, this house was like Union Station or JFK airport if you prefer a plane analogy. There was a pile of junk up to my knees in the basement of that house; all of it had been blinked in. I spent a couple days on the property, running tests, trying to identify the strange phenomenon, but on day three I rolled up to an army of what I thought at the time were Feds, parading around the property like ants on an anthill and sectioning it off with crime-scene tape." I saw disgust funnel into Trent's expression. "They're not Feds at all though. At least not anymore. I call them "the Organization," a group of people who lead in the formalized understanding of what you know as 'blinking'. And they're the reason I have to take precautions."
I considered this for a moment. Trent's story was certainly plausible, but I was missing a key piece of the puzzle. "Okay, so, what does this 'Organization' want? You make it seem like they're not good people. Have they tried attacking you?"
This caused Trent to laugh for a solid ten seconds. "Sorry, it's just… I mean if you knew what I knew, you might think it's funny, too."
"Then tell me"
Trent took a deep breath, then released. "It's a long story. The gist of it is this. The Organization has a certain device which I call 'the Receiver'. Think of it like a giant antenna—no, not us kind of Antennas, an actual antenna. It's like the machine equivalent of us, but with a billion times the bandwidth. Their goal is to use the Receiver to map our world in relation to other dimensions, then use that map to establish dominion over everyone and everything. In order to do this, they need muscle: both human muscle, and Antenna muscle. They're in the process of harvesting as many of us they can find. They're like a giant diamond company who is taking to the mines. When they find a stone, they take it back to their factory for cutting and refinement. In real terms, they run tests on us and attempt to augment our powers. The ultimate goal is to create a 'Strong Antenna', or an Antenna capable of causing phase shifts—blinks." Trent saw from my expression that he was starting to lose me, so he stood up and began rolling up his shirt.
"What are you doing?" I asked, turning away. Then I saw what he wanted to show me. There was a long scar beginning high up on his ribs and slashing all the way down to his left hip. There was also what appeared to be a patch of burn marks on his stomach.
"It was early on when I got these." Trent explained. "I was naive. I actually thought I'd be able to reason with these people. The only reason I escaped was because of dumb luck and a box of hand grenades. But that's a tale for another time. I learned two important lessons that day. First, the Organization isn't fucking around. And two, they aren't immortal. Most of them are regular, every-day humans, except for their obsession with power." Trent let his shirt fall, covering up the marks. "I ran into them again recently at their Headquarters. My team and I are working on a plan to…" he paused, seemingly weighing his words, then changed gears. "Well, I guess we can go over that another time."
I couldn't help but feel that Trent was holding something back. As much as I tried to resist thinking about yesterday, the old demon-man's words kept ringing in my head. You think he can help you? He's only here to help himself. Then I thought about what Trent said at the deli: "that's the thing that got me really interested in you. Somehow you seem to be able to control it without gear, just by praying." Did Trent think I was a Strong Antenna? Is that the only reason he's helping me? Because he wants to recruit me? And if that is the case, what if I said 'no'?
"Listen, Trent," I started, but I saw Trent was already nodding. Still, I pressed on. "I need you to tell me what I'm actually doing here. Why did you agree to help me? And what does helping me really mean? I want to know the truth."
"The truth is…" Trent started, then stopped and looked out the glass door that led onto the deck. I looked too and saw a sparrow had alighted on our old bird feeder. It tried pecking at some of its non-existent grains, then sang what I assumed was a song of displeasure before taking back off to the skies.
"The truth is: I do want to recruit you. I think you have the potential to be the strongest tool in my arsenal, but I won't require it. To date, I've helped 53 of our kind, but only seven have stayed on. Most decide to go on and live normal lives." Trent scooted his plate to the side. "In our case, this can essentially go one of two ways. In either instance, we pass through Chicago for two stops. First, I need to meet up with an associate who has something to drop off to me. Then I need to stop at a storage locker and trade out some gear that will allow me to open a phase portal. When we arrive at your origin point, I'll open the portal and you'll look inside. Based on everything you've told me, I'm guessing that childhood accident was when the demon appended itself to your life. By seeing how it entered your life, you should be able to figure out how to dispel it. At least that's the working theory. Returning to the origin point has always worked for the other Antennas, although I must admit your situation is different, but I can't imagine it's so different that this method won't work at all. After you return demon-free, you're free. You can walk out and never see me again and hopefully you'll live a happy and peaceful life. Or you can decide to throw your lot in with mine, and I can show you how deep the rabbit hole goes, so to speak." Trent looked into my eyes, and when I didn't respond for a few seconds, he said, "that's it. That's all I got."
I smiled and responded with one sentence.
"When do we leave?"
***
Memories have a strange architecture. In some ways, they are the great safety net of our experiences: collecting them like a bucket under a leaky roof. In other ways, they are an eternal reminder that nothing ever truly lasts. Perhaps a better way of thinking about memories is as the ghosts of our past lingering in the present. As I took one last stroll through my childhood house, feeling that it might be my last time for a long while, I felt the imprints of childhood memories press into my awareness: I could hear my father's voice reading to me at my bedside; I could see him holding one of my stuffed animals above my head as I wrestled him for it; I could recall the times when I'd sneak down the stairs late at night and quietly open the freezer, grab the ice cream carton, then head back upstairs to eat it.
I felt a yearning to return to those memories: to walk into the fictitious pictures my mind was painting on the canvas of my present. I knew I couldn't return, but I still wanted something to hold onto. I went back to my room and grabbed the cotton-stuffed tomato from off my closet cabinet. Then I walked through my dad's study and removed a volume I recalled him frequently reading, a hard-cover book with a green binding called, "A Collection of Great Works". I placed these items by my feet in the passenger seat of Trent's van, and just as we were about to leave, I remembered something else.
"My plant!" I blurted.
"Your what?"
"My plant—and my car. I left them it the deli. Do you think we could swing by and get it?"
Trent checked the time, then said, "Yeah, I guess we can. I just hope it isn't towed."
Luckily, it wasn't. I half-expected to find a ticket on the windshield, but there wasn't one of those, either. I unlocked the door to my Jetta and got into what felt like an active oven. "Hot!" I said and rolled down all the windows, then cranked up the AC. I saw my plant resting in the cupholder that I'd left it in the previous day. I picked it up and touched its soil. It was dry and beginning to crack. Hang on little guy, I thought. Then I led the way back to my house.
When I arrived, I parked at the head of the driveway. I turned off the car, then ran inside with the young tomato plant, bringing it to the upstairs bathrooms sink and dousing it in water. I wasn't sure how much I was supposed to add, but I figured after the sauna experience it had yesterday, I could afford to go a little overboard. Once it was fed, I opened the small purple drapes and placed it on the windowsill which faced East, meaning it would hopefully get plenty of morning sunlight.
"Good, now?" Trent asked after I hopped back in the passenger seat of the van.
"Yeah," I said. "Good now."
"Then lets get a move on."
***
Road tripping with Trent was a much different experience than when we were driving for our lives. For one, Trent wasn't nearly as tense. He drove with the windows down and one hand on the steering wheel like out of a Mustang commercial, talking intermittently about his adventures: people he'd met, jobs he'd done, close calls. He was like a living radio. And when his personal station wasn't on, he was playing one of his CD's—classic rock, mainly. When he was in an 'off' period, I found myself looking out the window at the rolling wheat fields and cloudy blue sky. Journey was playing, and the lyrics to one of the songs crept into my head and reverberated there:
The wheel in the sky keeps on turning.
I don't know where I'll be tomorrow…
I've been trying to make it home,
Got to make it before too long…
Ooh I can't take it, very much longer…
In a strange way, I felt like I was leaving home. But in another way, I was going back. And then it occurred to me that perhaps I didn't have a home at all. Did I ever have one? These past couple days had called everything about my life into question, to the point where the past seemed as mysterious as the future, and both intersected at that one place in the woods. The place where it all began. The place we were headed.
We only stopped once at a gas station to refuel, get snacks, and use the bathroom. Otherwise it was smooth sailing, other than one heated discussion with Trent that began when he addressed his vehicle as "Car" for the fifth time.
"Okay, you need to come up with a better name than that."
"What do you mean?" Trent asked, seeming genuinely confused.
"You have a super-car and you named it 'Car'. That's actually embarrassing."
"But, it is a car."
I facepalmed. "First of all, it's a van."
"A van is a type of car."
"Second of all, would you name your kid, 'kid'?"
Trent thought it over for what I thought was much too long. At last he concluded, "No, I'd probably name him 'boy', or if it's a girl, 'girl'."
After five more minutes of his childish banter, we settled on the name "Ava"—my choice, after rejecting his runner-up name "Scar".
At around the seven hour mark, I dozed off, then woke up a couple hours later to the sensation of the van dipping, then bumping up into an elevated climb. The evening sunlight that was pressuring my eyelids to open, dissipated, and everything was suddenly dark. I opened my eyes and saw we had entered a parking garage. Trent pulled into an open spot on the second level.
"We're here," he said and gathered up his gun which he stashed in a driver's side underboard compartment that I'm guessing he had installed himself.
"I see that"
"You want to wait here, or—"
I opened the car door, which was answer enough for Trent. We both got out and started down Maple Avenue. I had been to several cities before, Chicago among them, but the size of the buildings always struck me with awe. As we walked alongside dozens of other pedestrians, I looked up and traced the closest tower to its peak, guessing how many stories it was in my head. Then I'd be pulled out of my game by the honking of some nearby vehicle.
We continued for two blocks until Trent made a path directly toward the nearest Starbucks. I didn't know what I was picturing for a meeting with his associate, but it definitely wasn't a meetup at a coffee shop. Still, I followed him in. Then when I saw that Trent was leading me to a corner table where a casually dressed Chinese girl who appeared even younger than me was sitting, I blurted in a hushed tone, "her? She's your associate?"
"Took you long enough," said the Chinese girl, looking up from what appeared to be some kind of homework assignment.
"And she's in school?" I asked, incredulous.
The associate looked to me, then to Trent (who nodded), then back to me. "It's just a cover. I'm glad to see it still works, though." She reached out to shake my hand. "I'm Allison. It's nice to meet you."
Trent gave me a smirk, then said, "looks can be deceiving."
I grunted an affirmation and shook Allison's hand. "I'm Lauren. It's nice to meet you, too."
"You have it?" Trent asked, skipping right to business.
"Of course," Allison replied and removed a mailing package from her backpack, setting it on the table. "You want to go make sure it works?" She asked, gesturing up at the ceiling with her eyes.
Trent seemed to think it over for a second, then looked at me. But before he could say anything, Allison cut back in—
"—I'll stay with her. It's been a while since I've had any female company. Why don't you let us girls talk while you take care of that?" She said in a seductive yet authoritative tone which garnered her years that her appearance did not reflect.
Trent hesitated, but only for a moment. "Okay, I'll be right back," he said. Then he hurried out the door in the direction we had come from.
"Come, sit with me." Allison invited. "Tell me about yourself."
I took a seat on the small wooden seat opposite Allison, then crossed my legs. "What do you want to know?" I asked, feeling discomfort rise in my stomach. Nothing about this situation, from the mysterious package, to Trent leaving me alone with this girl, to the girl herself, whose voice was as velvety smooth as the latte she was stirring with a black coffee straw, sat right with me.
"I'm curious about what you think of Trent."
"Trent?" I repeated. I realized this was the first time I was putting any of my thoughts about Trent or our relationship into words. "I guess... he's a pretty straightforward guy. He seems to know what he's doing."
Allison flashed me a small smile, then took a sip of her latte. I saw the sticker on her drink read "Chai". Then she set the cup down and sighed. "Yes, he's very straightforward. Definitely doesn't mince words." She looked up into my eyes. Hers were a rich black, like onyx pebbles, but there was something about the way the light refracted off them which simulated a kind of inward motion, as if they were tiny whirlpools. Her smile spread across her lips. "I'm curious. What did he tell you?"
"Tell me about what?"
"About what you're doing. About where you're off to. What's the plan?"
"Don't you know?" I asked, but it immediately occurred to me that maybe she didn't know. I never saw Trent with a cellphone. Just how did he communicate with his 'associates'? And what if he didn't want her to know what we were doing for a good reason? Should I tell her?
"No, Trent keeps his cards close to his chest. He always has."
"Don't you work together, though?"
Allison waved her left hand in the air. "Of course, but it's because of the nature of our work that most of our communication is done in person, so Trent doesn't tell me much outside of the current job. I was just curious, is all."
"That makes sense. I mean, I'm actually pretty curious about what you do, too."
"Oh?" Allison's voice went high, as if she suddenly sensed an opening. "Then, why don't we trade stories. You tell about your trip, and I'll tell you about mine."
I thought it over for a second. I really did want to hear what Allison had to say, and she was Trent's co-worker, it's not like I was spilling crucial secrets to an enemy. "We're currently on our way to Southern Illinois. Specifically, we're going back to my origin point so I can confront a demon that Trent thinks blinked into my life there."
Allison stopped stirring, but her eyes didn't break from mine. "A demon, huh?" She raised the cup and took a long sip, then placed it back on the table and continued stirring. "I met a demon once," she started, looking up at the walls as if her life was playing on a screen there. "It was back in China, where I was born." She dropped her attention back to me. "Do you mind if I reminisce a little? Maybe you can get something out of it."
I shook my head, but something in my gut started to stir again. Allison continued.
"I was born during the Era of the Once Child Policy. As a result, my mother decided to leave me in a shoebox on the side of the road. I was a girl, so that's just how it was... Like many other babies in my... 'condition', I ended up in foster care. However, for whatever reason, I wasn't adopted. Years passed, and when I turned six, the government decided I'd be of better use building our impoverished town's GDP in a factory that assembled electronic devices for Western countries. Mostly they had me cleaning, but when I turned eight, one of the employees asked for my help with one of the soldering machines. That turned out to be the beginning of the end for me. I sliced open the ring finger of my right hand. I remember specifically seeing the bone underneath the split flesh and thinking it looked so small and white. The employee claimed to have nothing to do with my accident, and the management declared my injury "minimally invasive" and bandaged it up. Two weeks later and who would have guessed that the wound would become infected, and, well..."
Allison dropped the straw into her cup and raised her right hand, spreading the fingers out for me to see. There were only four. Her ring finger was missing, and a small v-shaped scar had taken its place.
"I'm lucky that the surgeon was experienced enough to take out the whole digit, that way it healed in a way which makes it somewhat difficult to notice. You didn't notice, after all. But, then again, is that really luck?" She made a fist and brought it to her lips, stifling a laugh. "No... Now I remember. My luck was still yet to come." She continued stirring. "Because, you see, after that incident, they moved me to a clothing factory with a boss who had a penchant for getting drunk and roughing up his workers, and, well, one night I was walking back to foster care when I heard the outside door to the manager's office slam shut, and there he went, stumbling, slurring insults, curses, and here I was, perfectly in his path. We met eyes, and in them I saw absolutely nothing. A hollow shell of a man, and I can still remember what it looked like to see that shell fill with a demon."
Allison's eyes went wide with some strong emotion that I couldn't place. "He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me out into the field, far away from civilization. I tried to fight at first, but every time I tried to lunge away, I was only ripping a hole in my own scalp. It felt like flames were spewing from my head, and my only respite was when the blood eventually cooled over the wound. By the time he had thrown me against the rock, I'd already all but given up. Then, when my head met the stone, I heard a pop and my grip on the world loosened. The man continued touching me, but it was as if I was disconnected now, floating somewhere above my own head, and gravity was beginning to reverse, causing me to float higher and higher, away from the horrible nightmare below."
Allison paused for a moment, and I suddenly realized I was holding my breath.
"Then I saw the most bright light I'd ever seen. At the time I thought it was either the Sun or Heaven or something like that. It was just too bright for this world. But then after looking for a little longer, I noticed it was in the shape of a person. It reached out toward me, and I had never been so quick to respond. When I touched it, I felt all my pain immediately dissipate. And I felt warm and... peaceful. And I was no longer in the sky. I was back in the field. But when I looked around, the man was gone. Vanished, right out of existence. I didn't understand it at the time, but that was my first experience with the Shifts. All I knew then was that I was free, and I damn well wasn't going to waste that. I ran as far as I could, away from the factories, the foster home, the corrupt governments and corporations. I kept running until I arrived at a City that didn't know me. That didn't want to know me. And I liked it that way, because it's easier to live as a ghost than as a victim."
Allison perked up, and when I turned around to see what for, I saw Trent entering back through the door.
"But you know what's interesting?" Allison blurted out, her voice becoming quieter. "Trent never took me back to confront my demon." Her voice became a whisper. "In fact, I can't recall him ever taking any of us back."
For a moment the whole world became a still frame. Allison's clear, olive skin, and dark eyes, made darker with eyeliner; her narrow nose; her small lips now coiling into a smile. My entire body was a hair trigger hat only needed the slightest force to set it off. And when Trent placed his hand on my shoulder, I whirled around and narrowly missed a haymaker that swept just shy of Trent's face.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa" he said and stepped back with his palms up. "It's just me. Is everything okay?"
I turned back to Allison, but she seemed different now. Her expression was benign; confused, even. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"I—you"
"We were just talking about where you were off to next." Allison said without a hint of pretense.
"Okay, well, chat time is over. It's time to go." Trent said and started guiding me toward the door. I turned back and saw Allison mouth some words which I swear I heard, as if they had been directly transmitted into my brain.
"See you soon" she purred.
She was smiling.
***
The next leg of the trip passed mostly in silence. It was a little over an hour to the storage facility which was located just South of Chicago. My heart was beating wildly in my chest as I pictured Allison's smile. I wanted to ask Trent if demons could possess Antennas, if somehow one of us could become compromised, but then I remembered Allison's words and stopped myself. Because I didn't know if I could really trust Trent. I tried to tell myself I could trust him—that it was Allison who was the liar. Her whole persona seemed fake at best, and possessed at worst. But, then... what if she was telling the truth? What if Trent was the enemy?
He sensed my quietness and tried striking up a couple conversations, but I only gave one-word answers. Somehow, our trust was so brittle that a single, well-placed sentence was enough to snap it. When he asked if everything was okay, I lied and said that I just had a headache and needed more rest. So I leaned my head against the stuffed tomato and tried to sleep, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to.
We arrived at the facility just as the sun was setting for the night. Trent pulled up to the self-service gate and scanned a card which caused the automatic doors to swing open. We looped down a couple rows of the outdoor units until we came to #48.
"We're here," Trent prompted, but this time I didn't budge. I felt his eyes on me after he turned off the ignition. "Hey," he called. "Are you awake?"
I was silent.
I heard Trent quietly click open his door, then close it the same way. I waited a few seconds then turned my head and watched him from the driver's side mirror. He opened the storage locker, then walked inside and turned on a light. It occurred to me then how dimly lit this outdoor storage facility was. There was a weak overhead lantern peeking over every fourth garage like an anglerfish's lure, leaving a large portion of the road not hit by the light bubbles completely dark.
I tried to plan my next move. I could leave Trent and run. But where would I go? Or I could stay and see Trent's plan through. There was a chance this was all an elaborate trap. Maybe Trent was working with the demon, or maybe he was the demon. But then why did he save me? Twice. Maybe he was actually a double agent for the Organization. But he could easily have captured me by now. Unless he needs me to go back to the origin point for a different reason... I considered everything I had learned up until this point: we live at the cross-section of different realms; these other realms interact with our world; Antennas, who are a very small minority of people, can see these interactions; the Organization wants to harness our power and create a 'Strong Antenna' to achieve some kind of universal hegemony; I'm the closest thing to a Strong Antenna to date; Trent knows this; He's taking me back to my origin point, despite not taking the others back to theirs; Trent claims to want to fight the Organization; the best way to fight the Organization would be with a Strong Antenna. What if Trent was trying to make me into a Strong Antenna?
I considered this chain of reasoning. It seemed very plausible, especially after Allison's cryptic messages. Was she trying to warn me of this? But that smile, and the "see you soon"... If she wasn't being possessed, why would she be seeing me soon?
Suddenly my thoughts gave way like a broken dam as I heard a ping come from Ava's radar. I jumped, thinking that all of the electronics turned off with the ignition, but when I looked at the circular sonar map, I saw a red dot had just emerged in the top-right corner. I looked out the window in the direction of the ping, but I couldn't see anything heading down the road.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.
Four more dots appeared behind the first, and they were approaching.
I jumped out the van and ran over to where Trent was hauling in a large cardboard crate into the back of the van. "Trent, there's pings on the radar. A bunch of them."
He dropped the box next to three others, and I realized I had never seen inside the back of the van. It was filled with what looked like pneumatic tubes wired into circuits, and in the center was a tri-pod which was holding a large halo-shaped ring.
"Pings?" Trent said, then his face widened with shock as he realized what I meant. "Shit, how many?"
"Five, maybe more now. And they're getting closer."
"Five?" He jumped out the back and ran into the storage locker. I thought he was going to close the door, but when I saw him hauling boxes back toward the van, I yelled at him. "What are you doing!?"
"I need to load this up for tomorrow. Here," He tossed me his keys. "Get it started."
"Fuck, seriously?"
Trent didn't respond, only kept shuffling boxes into the van.
I turned and ran to the door and hopped in the driver's seat. As I was turning on the ignition, I saw the row of bushes that was just outside of the facility begin to rattle. The next sweep revealed a whole sea of pings. I rolled down the window and shouted Trent's name.
"One more, that's all. Get in the passenger seat, I'll be there in a sec."
I scooted over the center console and waited, clutching at the bottom of my pants legs. Just as Trent slammed the rear door of the van shut, I saw the first figure emerge onto the road ahead of us. It looked like some kind of large coyote, though it was hard to tell because it was still fifty meters out.
"Now detecting 53 controlled agents." Ava said right as Trent jumped in and shut the driver's side door. "Net anomalies: 53."
"Ava, increase radius to five miles." Trent instructed as he backed up all the way to the end of the lane and spun us around toward the gate. Just as we left, I saw the pack of coyotes stalking toward us, slow at first, then in a dead sprint.
"Increasing radius." Ava responded. "Increased. Recalculating… Recalculating… Re—complete. Now detecting 451 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 451."
"What does 'controlled agent' mean?" I asked.
"Hold on," Trent said and accelerated into the gate, bursting through it. The whole van shook, and I heard my phone fall in the crack between the seat and door. Trent steadied the van, then said, "It means the things chasing us are being controlled by something that isn't detectable."
"The demon?"
"That'd be my guess."
"But why can't Ava detect it?"
Trent switched to the right lane, then merged onto the Interstate-South ramp. "Probably because it isn't trying to kill us."
"Then, what—" I looked back at the map and basically had my question answered. All 451 pings were coalesced in a semicircle on one side of the map. The side of the map that we had just come from. "Is it trying to force us toward the crash site?"
"It seems that way." Trent answered.
"Trent, pull over."
"Huh?"
"Pull over!" I yelled.
He looked at me, eyes wide. Then he did as I had instructed and pulled off in the middle of the ramp. The red dots slowly closed in on our position.
"Now detecting—"
"Shut up, Ava." I said. I could feel my blood boiling. "I'm not going one step further until you tell me the truth. Why are we going to my origin point? What is your real motive?"
"What do you mean? I already told you."
I unlocked the passenger side door.
"Wait," Trent said and reached out toward me. "Just, wait."
There was silence, except for the pings indicating that the beasts behind us had re-encroached on our position to about fifty meters.
"Okay, I didn't tell you everything. But we don't have time now—"
I opened the door.
"Okay, okay. I didn't tell you everything, it's true. I've never done this with anyone else, but the reason is because I never needed to. And if I told you what might happen, you would have refused it."
"Refused what?"
"This—me, my help. Lauren, I am trying to help you. But you have to understand—it's likely that neither of us are going to live past tomorrow. You're basically confronting a dark entity in a place where I can't protect you, and if you somehow do manage to kill it, you'll be coming back to the fight of your life. Because I don't have the power to hide you from the Organization. They're going to show up and try to take you. I really don't know how you've lasted as long as you have. Whatever protection you had growing up, it's gone now. And now I'm all you have. And in some twist of fate, you're all I have."
Ava reactivated. "Now detecting 1,117 controlled agents. Proximity till contact: 20 meters. Net anomalies: 1,117."
I closed my door. "But what if I still don't want to go through with it?"
Trent pointed at the screen. "Then we die right here, right now, together. Because I am one-hundred percent certain that if we don't go to that crash site, we're dead anyway. All of us."
Another ping rolled through. I checked the side-view mirror and saw the swarming pack of dogs reach the van and bound around the rear wheels. I suddenly recalled the conversation I had with Father Martin and the conclusions I had drawn. Father, I've been… wrestling with something, and I think God wants me to confront it. I think I've been running away and hiding from it for so long that I'd convinced myself it disappeared...
"Go," I said just as I felt the collision of the coyotes slamming their bodies against the side doors.
Trent didn't waste any time stepping on the gas. I watched as the coyotes diminished in the distance and the pings receded into the back of the map, never disappearing fully, but covering the flank of our retreat—a reminder lingering on the edge of our awareness that there was no turning back now. That, one way or another, this was ending tomorrow.
And I'd either be dead, or something else entirely.

Part 1
Part 2
***
Darkness gave way to dimness as I opened my eyes and saw slivers of gray light printed on the ceiling like lines on the page of a ruled notebook. In the distance, I heard the sound of pans clanking against the kitchen stove, and I became ever-aware of the scent of cinnamon and bacon sneaking in from under my closed bedroom door. For a moment, I was back in sixth grade. My dad was downstairs cooking up his famous from-scratch buttermilk pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs. It was probably 7:00, maybe 7:05, and I had fifteen minutes to get up, shower, dress, eat, then it was off to Middle School with dad: for me to learn, him to work.
It was the day we were set to be assigned our Ancient Civilizations project. Unless something went terribly wrong, I would be choosing Ancient Rome. I didn't know much about it, other than it was some great empire, but even then I didn't really understand what an empire was. I was just happy that I would get to build something with my dad. I turned on my side and looked at the closed blinds, the source of the gray lines, then the cabinet with all my trophies, and finally the wobbly, firetruck-red chair pushed under my desk. I was home at last. The past fifteen years were nothing but a dream. There was no blinking. No malevolent demon chasing me. No inexplicable chaos…
It was a sweet fantasy. But one that became bitter the longer I tried to chew on it.
I swept my legs out from under the covers and sat, face-down, on the corner of my twin mattress. My feet were adult's feet. My room was my former room. And that was Trent downstairs cooking breakfast. Unless, of course, it was my dad, in which case I'd have bigger problems than merely waking up from a good dream.
After changing into a fresh shirt and pants, I went downstairs and saw that it was, in fact, Trent cooking breakfast. He was wearing a plain t-shirt through which I could see the ripples of his large back muscles as he whisked what I presumed was pancake batter. He must not have heard me, because he didn't turn around when I made it to the end of the hall. I leaned against the wall, arms folded, and watched him for a minute as he finished whisking the batter, then poured it onto a hot griddle (spilling a few dribbles on the counter in the process), watched it bubble, flipped it, then transferred the golden medallion onto a plate stacked five high. Next to the pancakes was a plate filled with bacon, and a small aluminum pan of scrambled eggs.
"Smells good," I said at last. "Find everything okay?"
I thought I might startle him with my abrupt appearance; instead, Trent looked over his shoulder, chewing on a piece of bacon. He swallowed and said, "Oh, it's you. Yeah, I hope you don't mind me using your kitchen. I thought I'd make us some breakfast."
It occurred to me then that Trent likely wasn't a guest in other people's homes very often. Lucky for him, I didn't mind him using a kitchen that hadn't been mine in many years. I was going to tell him as much when I saw an opened box of Bisquick sitting on the counter. I pointed to it and asked, "you found that in the pantry? My dad usually makes his pancakes from scratch."
He turned to look at the box, then back at me. "No, I went out and got that. And the bacon and eggs. I didn't want to dig into your supply without asking, and you were asleep, so..."
I felt my eyebrows furrow as I checked the time on the stove-clock. "It's 8:17 in the morning. Are you telling me you went out to the store, bought all these ingredients, then came back and cooked them? Just how early did you get up?"
"Around five," he answered as casually as if I had asked his dog's name. "I don't usually get much sleep. Around four, five hours is all I need. It's actually unusual for Antennas to need more than that amount. But I suppose you are unusual."
I opened my mouth in disbelief. Not only had he commandeered my kitchen, he was calling me unusual? At 8-fricken-17 in the morning?
"Sorry," Trent said, reading my expression, "I'm… well, let's just say I've not had many personal relationships. I'm used to being blunt. It's just easier that way." He took out a plate and transferred two pancakes, some eggs, and a few slices of bacon onto it. Then he held it up to me as a peace offering.
I sighed. "This better be good," I said with a wry smile and took the plate.
"Trent-certified, but no guarantees. Refunds not allowed." He replied, which made me giggle.
We sat across from one another at the dining room table. The meal was pretty good, but it was no dad's special: the pancakes were clearly box pancakes, the scrambled eggs lacked cheese and had a little too much pepper, and the bacon was… well it was bacon, no complaints there. Still, it was nice to settle down and have a somewhat normal morning.
After we ate, Trent unfurled the long arc of his life, which began as the second youngest brother of eight siblings in rural Oklahoma. Trent's 'pops' was in the logging business, first as a lumberjack, then as an owner of his own logging company. His dad acquired the business while Trent was still young, so school was never a high priority for him—at least not the way contributing to the household was. The rest of his childhood he summed up in two lessons: "Being 'close' has nothing to do with distance," and "don't touch strange plants in the woods."
I asked him if he kept in touch with any of his siblings, to which he responded, saying, "The only reason they haven't had a funeral for me is because it would be too much work." When I asked him to elaborate, he said he'd not had contact with anyone in his immediate family for over a decade. He kept tabs on them. For example, he knew his mother had dementia, and his dad was forced into retirement by his oldest brother (who had gone on to take over the logging company). His sisters were all married and moved to other parts of the country. He considered reaching out several times, but his situation required a degree of security that wasn't conducive of close family ties, not that there were particularly strong ties even before he broke contact. Trent admitted to being a bit of a black sheep.
"It all circles back to one of my jobs as a Home Inspector," he explained. "After I moved out, I tried college and quickly realized it wasn't for me. So I entered the workforce and did a bunch of odd jobs. Construction, carpentry, plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for a while. But I ended up in Home Inspection. There was one job in particular which made me aware of…" Trent paused and gestured toward the space between us, "our situation. The blinks. You remember what I told you about origin points being like a station where other realms intersect with our world? Well, this house was like Union Station or JFK airport if you prefer a plane analogy. There was a pile of junk up to my knees in the basement of that house; all of it had been blinked in. I spent a couple days on the property, running tests, trying to identify the strange phenomenon, but on day three I rolled up to an army of what I thought at the time were Feds, parading around the property like ants on an anthill and sectioning it off with crime-scene tape." I saw disgust funnel into Trent's expression. "They're not Feds at all though. At least not anymore. I call them "the Organization," a group of people who lead in the formalized understanding of what you know as 'blinking'. And they're the reason I have to take precautions."
I considered this for a moment. Trent's story was certainly plausible, but I was missing a key piece of the puzzle. "Okay, so, what does this 'Organization' want? You make it seem like they're not good people. Have they tried attacking you?"
This caused Trent to laugh for a solid ten seconds. "Sorry, it's just… I mean if you knew what I knew, you might think it's funny, too."
"Then tell me"
Trent took a deep breath, then released. "It's a long story. The gist of it is this. The Organization has a certain device which I call 'the Receiver'. Think of it like a giant antenna—no, not us kind of Antennas, an actual antenna. It's like the machine equivalent of us, but with a billion times the bandwidth. Their goal is to use the Receiver to map our world in relation to other dimensions, then use that map to establish dominion over everyone and everything. In order to do this, they need muscle: both human muscle, and Antenna muscle. They're in the process of harvesting as many of us they can find. They're like a giant diamond company who is taking to the mines. When they find a stone, they take it back to their factory for cutting and refinement. In real terms, they run tests on us and attempt to augment our powers. The ultimate goal is to create a 'Strong Antenna', or an Antenna capable of causing phase shifts—blinks." Trent saw from my expression that he was starting to lose me, so he stood up and began rolling up his shirt.
"What are you doing?" I asked, turning away. Then I saw what he wanted to show me. There was a long scar beginning high up on his ribs and slashing all the way down to his left hip. There was also what appeared to be a patch of burn marks on his stomach.
"It was early on when I got these." Trent explained. "I was naive. I actually thought I'd be able to reason with these people. The only reason I escaped was because of dumb luck and a box of hand grenades. But that's a tale for another time. I learned two important lessons that day. First, the Organization isn't fucking around. And two, they aren't immortal. Most of them are regular, every-day humans, except for their obsession with power." Trent let his shirt fall, covering up the marks. "I ran into them again recently at their Headquarters. My team and I are working on a plan to…" he paused, seemingly weighing his words, then changed gears. "Well, I guess we can go over that another time."
I couldn't help but feel that Trent was holding something back. As much as I tried to resist thinking about yesterday, the old demon-man's words kept ringing in my head. You think he can help you? He's only here to help himself. Then I thought about what Trent said at the deli: "that's the thing that got me really interested in you. Somehow you seem to be able to control it without gear, just by praying." Did Trent think I was a Strong Antenna? Is that the only reason he's helping me? Because he wants to recruit me? And if that is the case, what if I said 'no'?
"Listen, Trent," I started, but I saw Trent was already nodding. Still, I pressed on. "I need you to tell me what I'm actually doing here. Why did you agree to help me? And what does helping me really mean? I want to know the truth."
"The truth is…" Trent started, then stopped and looked out the glass door that led onto the deck. I looked too and saw a sparrow had alighted on our old bird feeder. It tried pecking at some of its non-existent grains, then sang what I assumed was a song of displeasure before taking back off to the skies.
"The truth is: I do want to recruit you. I think you have the potential to be the strongest tool in my arsenal, but I won't require it. To date, I've helped 53 of our kind, but only seven have stayed on. Most decide to go on and live normal lives." Trent scooted his plate to the side. "In our case, this can essentially go one of two ways. In either instance, we pass through Chicago for two stops. First, I need to meet up with an associate who has something to drop off to me. Then I need to stop at a storage locker and trade out some gear that will allow me to open a phase portal. When we arrive at your origin point, I'll open the portal and you'll look inside. Based on everything you've told me, I'm guessing that childhood accident was when the demon appended itself to your life. By seeing how it entered your life, you should be able to figure out how to dispel it. At least that's the working theory. Returning to the origin point has always worked for the other Antennas, although I must admit your situation is different, but I can't imagine it's so different that this method won't work at all. After you return demon-free, you're free. You can walk out and never see me again and hopefully you'll live a happy and peaceful life. Or you can decide to throw your lot in with mine, and I can show you how deep the rabbit hole goes, so to speak." Trent looked into my eyes, and when I didn't respond for a few seconds, he said, "that's it. That's all I got."
I smiled and responded with one sentence.
"When do we leave?"
***
Memories have a strange architecture. In some ways, they are the great safety net of our experiences: collecting them like a bucket under a leaky roof. In other ways, they are an eternal reminder that nothing ever truly lasts. Perhaps a better way of thinking about memories is as the ghosts of our past lingering in the present. As I took one last stroll through my childhood house, feeling that it might be my last time for a long while, I felt the imprints of childhood memories press into my awareness: I could hear my father's voice reading to me at my bedside; I could see him holding one of my stuffed animals above my head as I wrestled him for it; I could recall the times when I'd sneak down the stairs late at night and quietly open the freezer, grab the ice cream carton, then head back upstairs to eat it.
I felt a yearning to return to those memories: to walk into the fictitious pictures my mind was painting on the canvas of my present. I knew I couldn't return, but I still wanted something to hold onto. I went back to my room and grabbed the cotton-stuffed tomato from off my closet cabinet. Then I walked through my dad's study and removed a volume I recalled him frequently reading, a hard-cover book with a green binding called, "A Collection of Great Works". I placed these items by my feet in the passenger seat of Trent's van, and just as we were about to leave, I remembered something else.
"My plant!" I blurted.
"Your what?"
"My plant—and my car. I left them it the deli. Do you think we could swing by and get it?"
Trent checked the time, then said, "Yeah, I guess we can. I just hope it isn't towed."
Luckily, it wasn't. I half-expected to find a ticket on the windshield, but there wasn't one of those, either. I unlocked the door to my Jetta and got into what felt like an active oven. "Hot!" I said and rolled down all the windows, then cranked up the AC. I saw my plant resting in the cupholder that I'd left it in the previous day. I picked it up and touched its soil. It was dry and beginning to crack. Hang on little guy, I thought. Then I led the way back to my house.
When I arrived, I parked at the head of the driveway. I turned off the car, then ran inside with the young tomato plant, bringing it to the upstairs bathrooms sink and dousing it in water. I wasn't sure how much I was supposed to add, but I figured after the sauna experience it had yesterday, I could afford to go a little overboard. Once it was fed, I opened the small purple drapes and placed it on the windowsill which faced East, meaning it would hopefully get plenty of morning sunlight.
"Good, now?" Trent asked after I hopped back in the passenger seat of the van.
"Yeah," I said. "Good now."
"Then lets get a move on."
***
Road tripping with Trent was a much different experience than when we were driving for our lives. For one, Trent wasn't nearly as tense. He drove with the windows down and one hand on the steering wheel like out of a Mustang commercial, talking intermittently about his adventures: people he'd met, jobs he'd done, close calls. He was like a living radio. And when his personal station wasn't on, he was playing one of his CD's—classic rock, mainly. When he was in an 'off' period, I found myself looking out the window at the rolling wheat fields and cloudy blue sky. Journey was playing, and the lyrics to one of the songs crept into my head and reverberated there:
The wheel in the sky keeps on turning.
I don't know where I'll be tomorrow…
I've been trying to make it home,
Got to make it before too long…
Ooh I can't take it, very much longer…
In a strange way, I felt like I was leaving home. But in another way, I was going back. And then it occurred to me that perhaps I didn't have a home at all. Did I ever have one? These past couple days had called everything about my life into question, to the point where the past seemed as mysterious as the future, and both intersected at that one place in the woods. The place where it all began. The place we were headed.
We only stopped once at a gas station to refuel, get snacks, and use the bathroom. Otherwise it was smooth sailing, other than one heated discussion with Trent that began when he addressed his vehicle as "Car" for the fifth time.
"Okay, you need to come up with a better name than that."
"What do you mean?" Trent asked, seeming genuinely confused.
"You have a super-car and you named it 'Car'. That's actually embarrassing."
"But, it is a car."
I facepalmed. "First of all, it's a van."
"A van is a type of car."
"Second of all, would you name your kid, 'kid'?"
Trent thought it over for what I thought was much too long. At last he concluded, "No, I'd probably name him 'boy', or if it's a girl, 'girl'."
After five more minutes of his childish banter, we settled on the name "Ava"—my choice, after rejecting his runner-up name "Scar".
At around the seven hour mark, I dozed off, then woke up a couple hours later to the sensation of the van dipping, then bumping up into an elevated climb. The evening sunlight that was pressuring my eyelids to open, dissipated, and everything was suddenly dark. I opened my eyes and saw we had entered a parking garage. Trent pulled into an open spot on the second level.
"We're here," he said and gathered up his gun which he stashed in a driver's side underboard compartment that I'm guessing he had installed himself.
"I see that"
"You want to wait here, or—"
I opened the car door, which was answer enough for Trent. We both got out and started down Maple Avenue. I had been to several cities before, Chicago among them, but the size of the buildings always struck me with awe. As we walked alongside dozens of other pedestrians, I looked up and traced the closest tower to its peak, guessing how many stories it was in my head. Then I'd be pulled out of my game by the honking of some nearby vehicle.
We continued for two blocks until Trent made a path directly toward the nearest Starbucks. I didn't know what I was picturing for a meeting with his associate, but it definitely wasn't a meetup at a coffee shop. Still, I followed him in. Then when I saw that Trent was leading me to a corner table where a casually dressed Chinese girl who appeared even younger than me was sitting, I blurted in a hushed tone, "her? She's your associate?"
"Took you long enough," said the Chinese girl, looking up from what appeared to be some kind of homework assignment.
"And she's in school?" I asked, incredulous.
The associate looked to me, then to Trent (who nodded), then back to me. "It's just a cover. I'm glad to see it still works, though." She reached out to shake my hand. "I'm Allison. It's nice to meet you."
Trent gave me a smirk, then said, "looks can be deceiving."
I grunted an affirmation and shook Allison's hand. "I'm Lauren. It's nice to meet you, too."
"You have it?" Trent asked, skipping right to business.
"Of course," Allison replied and removed a mailing package from her backpack, setting it on the table. "You want to go make sure it works?" She asked, gesturing up at the ceiling with her eyes.
Trent seemed to think it over for a second, then looked at me. But before he could say anything, Allison cut back in—
"—I'll stay with her. It's been a while since I've had any female company. Why don't you let us girls talk while you take care of that?" She said in a seductive yet authoritative tone which garnered her years that her appearance did not reflect.
Trent hesitated, but only for a moment. "Okay, I'll be right back," he said. Then he hurried out the door in the direction we had come from.
"Come, sit with me." Allison invited. "Tell me about yourself."
I took a seat on the small wooden seat opposite Allison, then crossed my legs. "What do you want to know?" I asked, feeling discomfort rise in my stomach. Nothing about this situation, from the mysterious package, to Trent leaving me alone with this girl, to the girl herself, whose voice was as velvety smooth as the latte she was stirring with a black coffee straw, sat right with me.
"I'm curious about what you think of Trent."
"Trent?" I repeated. I realized this was the first time I was putting any of my thoughts about Trent or our relationship into words. "I guess... he's a pretty straightforward guy. He seems to know what he's doing."
Allison flashed me a small smile, then took a sip of her latte. I saw the sticker on her drink read "Chai". Then she set the cup down and sighed. "Yes, he's very straightforward. Definitely doesn't mince words." She looked up into my eyes. Hers were a rich black, like onyx pebbles, but there was something about the way the light refracted off them which simulated a kind of inward motion, as if they were tiny whirlpools. Her smile spread across her lips. "I'm curious. What did he tell you?"
"Tell me about what?"
"About what you're doing. About where you're off to. What's the plan?"
"Don't you know?" I asked, but it immediately occurred to me that maybe she didn't know. I never saw Trent with a cellphone. Just how did he communicate with his 'associates'? And what if he didn't want her to know what we were doing for a good reason? Should I tell her?
"No, Trent keeps his cards close to his chest. He always has."
"Don't you work together, though?"
Allison waved her left hand in the air. "Of course, but it's because of the nature of our work that most of our communication is done in person, so Trent doesn't tell me much outside of the current job. I was just curious, is all."
"That makes sense. I mean, I'm actually pretty curious about what you do, too."
"Oh?" Allison's voice went high, as if she suddenly sensed an opening. "Then, why don't we trade stories. You tell about your trip, and I'll tell you about mine."
I thought it over for a second. I really did want to hear what Allison had to say, and she was Trent's co-worker, it's not like I was spilling crucial secrets to an enemy. "We're currently on our way to Southern Illinois. Specifically, we're going back to my origin point so I can confront a demon that Trent thinks blinked into my life there."
Allison stopped stirring, but her eyes didn't break from mine. "A demon, huh?" She raised the cup and took a long sip, then placed it back on the table and continued stirring. "I met a demon once," she started, looking up at the walls as if her life was playing on a screen there. "It was back in China, where I was born." She dropped her attention back to me. "Do you mind if I reminisce a little? Maybe you can get something out of it."
I shook my head, but something in my gut started to stir again. Allison continued.
"I was born during the Era of the Once Child Policy. As a result, my mother decided to leave me in a shoebox on the side of the road. I was a girl, so that's just how it was... Like many other babies in my... 'condition', I ended up in foster care. However, for whatever reason, I wasn't adopted. Years passed, and when I turned six, the government decided I'd be of better use building our impoverished town's GDP in a factory that assembled electronic devices for Western countries. Mostly they had me cleaning, but when I turned eight, one of the employees asked for my help with one of the soldering machines. That turned out to be the beginning of the end for me. I sliced open the ring finger of my right hand. I remember specifically seeing the bone underneath the split flesh and thinking it looked so small and white. The employee claimed to have nothing to do with my accident, and the management declared my injury "minimally invasive" and bandaged it up. Two weeks later and who would have guessed that the wound would become infected, and, well..."
Allison dropped the straw into her cup and raised her right hand, spreading the fingers out for me to see. There were only four. Her ring finger was missing, and a small v-shaped scar had taken its place.
"I'm lucky that the surgeon was experienced enough to take out the whole digit, that way it healed in a way which makes it somewhat difficult to notice. You didn't notice, after all. But, then again, is that really luck?" She made a fist and brought it to her lips, stifling a laugh. "No... Now I remember. My luck was still yet to come." She continued stirring. "Because, you see, after that incident, they moved me to a clothing factory with a boss who had a penchant for getting drunk and roughing up his workers, and, well, one night I was walking back to foster care when I heard the outside door to the manager's office slam shut, and there he went, stumbling, slurring insults, curses, and here I was, perfectly in his path. We met eyes, and in them I saw absolutely nothing. A hollow shell of a man, and I can still remember what it looked like to see that shell fill with a demon."
Allison's eyes went wide with some strong emotion that I couldn't place. "He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me out into the field, far away from civilization. I tried to fight at first, but every time I tried to lunge away, I was only ripping a hole in my own scalp. It felt like flames were spewing from my head, and my only respite was when the blood eventually cooled over the wound. By the time he had thrown me against the rock, I'd already all but given up. Then, when my head met the stone, I heard a pop and my grip on the world loosened. The man continued touching me, but it was as if I was disconnected now, floating somewhere above my own head, and gravity was beginning to reverse, causing me to float higher and higher, away from the horrible nightmare below."
Allison paused for a moment, and I suddenly realized I was holding my breath.
"Then I saw the most bright light I'd ever seen. At the time I thought it was either the Sun or Heaven or something like that. It was just too bright for this world. But then after looking for a little longer, I noticed it was in the shape of a person. It reached out toward me, and I had never been so quick to respond. When I touched it, I felt all my pain immediately dissipate. And I felt warm and... peaceful. And I was no longer in the sky. I was back in the field. But when I looked around, the man was gone. Vanished, right out of existence. I didn't understand it at the time, but that was my first experience with the Shifts. All I knew then was that I was free, and I damn well wasn't going to waste that. I ran as far as I could, away from the factories, the foster home, the corrupt governments and corporations. I kept running until I arrived at a City that didn't know me. That didn't want to know me. And I liked it that way, because it's easier to live as a ghost than as a victim."
Allison perked up, and when I turned around to see what for, I saw Trent entering back through the door.
"But you know what's interesting?" Allison blurted out, her voice becoming quieter. "Trent never took me back to confront my demon." Her voice became a whisper. "In fact, I can't recall him ever taking any of us back."
For a moment the whole world became a still frame. Allison's clear, olive skin, and dark eyes, made darker with eyeliner; her narrow nose; her small lips now coiling into a smile. My entire body was a hair trigger hat only needed the slightest force to set it off. And when Trent placed his hand on my shoulder, I whirled around and narrowly missed a haymaker that swept just shy of Trent's face.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa" he said and stepped back with his palms up. "It's just me. Is everything okay?"
I turned back to Allison, but she seemed different now. Her expression was benign; confused, even. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"I—you"
"We were just talking about where you were off to next." Allison said without a hint of pretense.
"Okay, well, chat time is over. It's time to go." Trent said and started guiding me toward the door. I turned back and saw Allison mouth some words which I swear I heard, as if they had been directly transmitted into my brain.
"See you soon" she purred.
She was smiling.
***
The next leg of the trip passed mostly in silence. It was a little over an hour to the storage facility which was located just South of Chicago. My heart was beating wildly in my chest as I pictured Allison's smile. I wanted to ask Trent if demons could possess Antennas, if somehow one of us could become compromised, but then I remembered Allison's words and stopped myself. Because I didn't know if I could really trust Trent. I tried to tell myself I could trust him—that it was Allison who was the liar. Her whole persona seemed fake at best, and possessed at worst. But, then... what if she was telling the truth? What if Trent was the enemy?
He sensed my quietness and tried striking up a couple conversations, but I only gave one-word answers. Somehow, our trust was so brittle that a single, well-placed sentence was enough to snap it. When he asked if everything was okay, I lied and said that I just had a headache and needed more rest. So I leaned my head against the stuffed tomato and tried to sleep, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to.
We arrived at the facility just as the sun was setting for the night. Trent pulled up to the self-service gate and scanned a card which caused the automatic doors to swing open. We looped down a couple rows of the outdoor units until we came to #48.
"We're here," Trent prompted, but this time I didn't budge. I felt his eyes on me after he turned off the ignition. "Hey," he called. "Are you awake?"
I was silent.
I heard Trent quietly click open his door, then close it the same way. I waited a few seconds then turned my head and watched him from the driver's side mirror. He opened the storage locker, then walked inside and turned on a light. It occurred to me then how dimly lit this outdoor storage facility was. There was a weak overhead lantern peeking over every fourth garage like an anglerfish's lure, leaving a large portion of the road not hit by the light bubbles completely dark.
I tried to plan my next move. I could leave Trent and run. But where would I go? Or I could stay and see Trent's plan through. There was a chance this was all an elaborate trap. Maybe Trent was working with the demon, or maybe he was the demon. But then why did he save me? Twice. Maybe he was actually a double agent for the Organization. But he could easily have captured me by now. Unless he needs me to go back to the origin point for a different reason... I considered everything I had learned up until this point: we live at the cross-section of different realms; these other realms interact with our world; Antennas, who are a very small minority of people, can see these interactions; the Organization wants to harness our power and create a 'Strong Antenna' to achieve some kind of universal hegemony; I'm the closest thing to a Strong Antenna to date; Trent knows this; He's taking me back to my origin point, despite not taking the others back to theirs; Trent claims to want to fight the Organization; the best way to fight the Organization would be with a Strong Antenna. What if Trent was trying to make me into a Strong Antenna?
I considered this chain of reasoning. It seemed very plausible, especially after Allison's cryptic messages. Was she trying to warn me of this? But that smile, and the "see you soon"... If she wasn't being possessed, why would she be seeing me soon?
Suddenly my thoughts gave way like a broken dam as I heard a ping come from Ava's radar. I jumped, thinking that all of the electronics turned off with the ignition, but when I looked at the circular sonar map, I saw a red dot had just emerged in the top-right corner. I looked out the window in the direction of the ping, but I couldn't see anything heading down the road.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.
Four more dots appeared behind the first, and they were approaching.
I jumped out the van and ran over to where Trent was hauling in a large cardboard crate into the back of the van. "Trent, there's pings on the radar. A bunch of them."
He dropped the box next to three others, and I realized I had never seen inside the back of the van. It was filled with what looked like pneumatic tubes wired into circuits, and in the center was a tri-pod which was holding a large halo-shaped ring.
"Pings?" Trent said, then his face widened with shock as he realized what I meant. "Shit, how many?"
"Five, maybe more now. And they're getting closer."
"Five?" He jumped out the back and ran into the storage locker. I thought he was going to close the door, but when I saw him hauling boxes back toward the van, I yelled at him. "What are you doing!?"
"I need to load this up for tomorrow. Here," He tossed me his keys. "Get it started."
"Fuck, seriously?"
Trent didn't respond, only kept shuffling boxes into the van.
I turned and ran to the door and hopped in the driver's seat. As I was turning on the ignition, I saw the row of bushes that was just outside of the facility begin to rattle. The next sweep revealed a whole sea of pings. I rolled down the window and shouted Trent's name.
"One more, that's all. Get in the passenger seat, I'll be there in a sec."
I scooted over the center console and waited, clutching at the bottom of my pants legs. Just as Trent slammed the rear door of the van shut, I saw the first figure emerge onto the road ahead of us. It looked like some kind of large coyote, though it was hard to tell because it was still fifty meters out.
"Now detecting 53 controlled agents." Ava said right as Trent jumped in and shut the driver's side door. "Net anomalies: 53."
"Ava, increase radius to five miles." Trent instructed as he backed up all the way to the end of the lane and spun us around toward the gate. Just as we left, I saw the pack of coyotes stalking toward us, slow at first, then in a dead sprint.
"Increasing radius." Ava responded. "Increased. Recalculating… Recalculating… Re—complete. Now detecting 451 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 451."
"What does 'controlled agent' mean?" I asked.
"Hold on," Trent said and accelerated into the gate, bursting through it. The whole van shook, and I heard my phone fall in the crack between the seat and door. Trent steadied the van, then said, "It means the things chasing us are being controlled by something that isn't detectable."
"The demon?"
"That'd be my guess."
"But why can't Ava detect it?"
Trent switched to the right lane, then merged onto the Interstate-South ramp. "Probably because it isn't trying to kill us."
"Then, what—" I looked back at the map and basically had my question answered. All 451 pings were coalesced in a semicircle on one side of the map. The side of the map that we had just come from. "Is it trying to force us toward the crash site?"
"It seems that way." Trent answered.
"Trent, pull over."
"Huh?"
"Pull over!" I yelled.
He looked at me, eyes wide. Then he did as I had instructed and pulled off in the middle of the ramp. The red dots slowly closed in on our position.
"Now detecting—"
"Shut up, Ava." I said. I could feel my blood boiling. "I'm not going one step further until you tell me the truth. Why are we going to my origin point? What is your real motive?"
"What do you mean? I already told you."
I unlocked the passenger side door.
"Wait," Trent said and reached out toward me. "Just, wait."
There was silence, except for the pings indicating that the beasts behind us had re-encroached on our position to about fifty meters.
"Okay, I didn't tell you everything. But we don't have time now—"
I opened the door.
"Okay, okay. I didn't tell you everything, it's true. I've never done this with anyone else, but the reason is because I never needed to. And if I told you what might happen, you would have refused it."
"Refused what?"
"This—me, my help. Lauren, I am trying to help you. But you have to understand—it's likely that neither of us are going to live past tomorrow. You're basically confronting a dark entity in a place where I can't protect you, and if you somehow do manage to kill it, you'll be coming back to the fight of your life. Because I don't have the power to hide you from the Organization. They're going to show up and try to take you. I really don't know how you've lasted as long as you have. Whatever protection you had growing up, it's gone now. And now I'm all you have. And in some twist of fate, you're all I have."
Ava reactivated. "Now detecting 1,117 controlled agents. Proximity till contact: 20 meters. Net anomalies: 1,117."
I closed my door. "But what if I still don't want to go through with it?"
Trent pointed at the screen. "Then we die right here, right now, together. Because I am one-hundred percent certain that if we don't go to that crash site, we're dead anyway. All of us."
Another ping rolled through. I checked the side-view mirror and saw the swarming pack of dogs reach the van and bound around the rear wheels. I suddenly recalled the conversation I had with Father Martin and the conclusions I had drawn. Father, I've been… wrestling with something, and I think God wants me to confront it. I think I've been running away and hiding from it for so long that I'd convinced myself it disappeared...
"Go," I said just as I felt the collision of the coyotes slamming their bodies against the side doors.
Trent didn't waste any time stepping on the gas. I watched as the coyotes diminished in the distance and the pings receded into the back of the map, never disappearing fully, but covering the flank of our retreat—a reminder lingering on the edge of our awareness that there was no turning back now. That, one way or another, this was ending tomorrow.
And I'd either be dead, or something else entirely.

First Chapter. Discord. Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road
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“That a fact?” Pretty Boy grinned, a mad light coming into the hateful pinpricks of his pupils, “You fixing to get me kilt like you did young Rene?”
Doyd began circling to Deschane’s left, towards the side of his twisted ankle. The navigator tracked him with his eyes but made no other movement. The tension in the air was so thick now that Tooms could all but reach out and slice through it with his knife. Compelled by an unspoken agreement, he and the other pathfinders began clearing the space around the pair, dragging furniture out of the way before the inevitable occurred.
“Oh, a pox on all you pathfinders,” Madame Wimba sighed and took cover under her counter, “I expect a full reimbursement for all the damages!”
“I didn’t get them killed,” Deschane said in a light and reasonable tone, “The fly boys at military intelligence did. We were fed erroneous information.”
“Tough titty,” Pretty Boy said mercilessly, “You were on point. That’s all that matters. You had eyes on the ground, you should’ve seen the lay of the land. Isn’t that what you navigators are all about? Seeing the shape of things to come?” Doyd started rolling up his sleeves, adding: “Tell you what. I’ll give you one chance to guess what’s about to happen.”
“A whole lotta hurt?” Deschane asked, loosening his collar and briskly rotating his wrists.
“You took the words right out of my mou—” Pretty Boy began, but Deschane cut him off by taking a wild haymaker. Doyd’s arms came up to form a tight guard and he leaned back, evading the punch with contemptuous ease. The blow was too telegraphed to catch a seasoned fighter like Pretty Boy by surprise, plus Deschane’s bum foot was clearly slowing him down.
Or so it seemed. Deschane was just getting started, however. The navigator used the momentum to plant his good foot forward before swiveling on its heel, his other arm whipping around in a vicious backhanded hammerfist that slammed into Pretty Boy’s jaw just as the pathfinder was opening up with his own counterattack, knocking Pretty Boy sideways and sending him crashing into Harmer. To her credit the sharpshooter propped Doyd up as he shook his groggy head, then helped him back into the fight with a push, saying: “Go on then, state your case. You asked for it.”
“Damn right I did!” Pretty Boy yelled as he pounced at Deschane, “The dirty prick and his cheap-arse tricks!”
The saloon erupted into shouts as the spectators cheered the combatants on.
“Gettim sir! Rip his fragging head off!” Cooly exhorted him.
“Kick him in the nards, Pretty Boy!” another man urged.
Support appeared almost evenly split between the two. Everyone knew that the result of the contest would decide who would head the platoon moving forward.
Pretty Boy’s left shot out in a steel-piston jab that caught Deschane precisely on the bridge of his nose. There was a crackle of breaking cartilage and Deschane stumbled back, nostrils gushing like fountains as he retreated under a hail of straight shots from Pretty Boy. Driving the navigator into a corner of the room, Pretty Boy pummeled his opponent with blistering combinations, most of the punches landing on Deschane’s shoulders and forearms as the navigator shelled up and did his best to weather the storm.
It was a mistake as far as Tooms was concerned; Doyd had been a champion striker in the inter-service competitions for several years running. The Amits had robbed him of his career and half of his depth perception by permanently damaging the retina of one of his eyes.
But perhaps goading him into a striking match had been Deschane’s intention all along. For as Pretty Boy bounced a thunderous lead hook off the crown of Deschane’s bald head, the navigator countered with an uppercut swung all the way down from his hips, twisting into the shot as he drove it right into the tip of Doyd’s chin, wobbling him. Pretty Boy was forced to take a step back to recover, but the relentless Deschane refused to let him breathe, pressuring him with a flurry of wide overhands.
But Doyd was too experienced to be intimidated by that tactic. The wily warrior simply took a half-step back out beyond the reach of Deschane’s arching fists before delivering a sharp teep kick to the navigator’s solar plexus that stopped the assault dead in its tracks.
Winded by the sudden gut check, Deschane presented an easy target as Doyd sprang back in with another power jab.
Crack!
Deschane’s eyes glazed over and he blinked hard, teeth glistening with the blood from a split upper lip.
Whallop!
A follow-up right cross came right after, knocking Deschane clean off his feet. The navigator rolled across the floor as Doyd kicked him around like a football, beating him from pillar to post until he had the good sense to stagger back to his feet. Pretty Boy was smiling now, a cat toying with its prey. As the better striker he could afford to play the long game and slowly pick Deschane apart from a distance.
Some of the more squeamish pathfinders turned away, not wanting to look on now that everyone knew how the fight would play out. Doyd went to work with gusto, stinging Deschane with another piston left before firing another knockout cross. This time Deschane expected the combination and rolled with it, stumbling back punch-drunk into Tooms, who caught him before he fell again.
“What the hell d’ye think you’re doing, swanging and banging with him like that?” Tooms hissed into Deschane’s ear, “This ain’t a game of fisticuffs!”
“Duly noted,” Deschane slurred. Then as honor demanded Tooms nudged him back into the path of another 1-2, Deschane once more eating the jab and barely evading the destructive right hand that almost finished him.
“Ooh, bravo,” Pretty Boy taunted him, “Try that again, why don’t you?”
In came the long left hand, stabbing like a rapier. Deschane anticipated it and ducked—exactly as Doyd had predicted he would. The navigator crouched forward and was met by a skyrocketing upwards elbow that would have sent the shards of his nasal cartilage right up into his brains if Deschane hadn’t turned his face away in the last moment. Still, the sharp blow managed to split Deschane’s forehead open like an overripe melon.
“Beautiful work, Pretty Boy!” cried Baow.
Deschane keeled over, knocked clean out of his senses by the shot. Tooms clicked his tongue in disappointment as the navigator toppled for the last time, Pretty Boy standing aside to let Deschane’s body hit the deck.
“Hah! Guess he ain’t so tough as you all made him out to be,” he loudly proclaimed, reaching for an overturned stool on the ground. As the dazed navigator groveled on his knees in a feeble attempt to rise, Doyd raised the stool above his head to finish the job. Then he frowned and hesitated, glancing down just in time to see Deschaine’ s hand seize him firmly by the back of his lead ankle.
Coincidentally, this was also where most of his bodyweight was currently centered. The navigator exploded up from his kneeling posture, nowhere near as hurt as he’d been pretending to be, yanking hard on the grip and leaving Pretty Boy with literally no leg to stand on. Simultaneously Deschane’s other hand reached up and gave Pretty Boy a shove in the chest, the combined pushing and pulling motions flipping Pretty Boy over like a hotcake on the griddle.
Doyd squawked as his back smashed into the hard floorboards.
"That's a clean ankle pick if I ever saw one," Harmer commented.
Deschane kept his grip on the ankle and brought his foot stamping down between Pretty Boy’s legs, squashing his pearls flat. Pretty Boy let out a noise somewhere between a wheeze and a groan, curling up into a ball and clutching at his mashed man-parts. Deschane wiped the clotted snot from his mouth, chest heaving as he picked up the stool that Pretty Boy had dropped.
“Tough enough, brother,” Deschane told him, breaking it over Pretty Boy’s head and settling the matter in no uncertain terms. He had to stop and catch his wind for a minute before gasping:
“Fix him up. I want this man ready to march at dawn’s first light.”
The pathfinders dutifully gathered up their unconscious comrade and set him down on the table, upon which Ven came and started clucking and fussing over the bruises on Pretty Boy’s face.
“Case closed,” Cooly said with some satisfaction.
“Someone had better pay for that stool!” screeched Madame Wimba, “Oh, but you pathfinders are a blight upon the earth!”
First Chapter. Discord. Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road
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My normal posts are 2-5 paragraphs. This is long because it's a starter.
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The sloping ground around the Kiaurk family mesa had been sculpted into shelves or terraces, and it was on one of those upper terraces that Kiaurk Nshurr now lounged beneath a pergola anchored to the striated stone face behind her. The mesa rose at her back: an enormous, looming, almost sheer outcrop that her family's dwellings had been carved into the face of. Wide, shallow steps cut into the artificial (but entirely convincing) sandstone wound their way up between landings and porticos leading inward, between tiny balconies shaded by bright solid-colored canopies, between rooms with flat walls and rounded corners that came jutting out to shadow the steps below. Rriigkhans rarely used glass as window barriers; smooth-edged holes had been cut through the rock in varying shapes and sizes. It could be difficult to tell which apertures were windows and which were entryways. A physical barrier that kept out the elements was obsolete in all but the crudest dwellings, though some of these larger holes were curtained with braided string or strips of cloth that served a purely decorative purpose.
From her high vantage point Nshurr could see the shelves stretching out below her as the base of the mesa leveled out to flattish terrain that was a wonderland of vegetation in muted rainbow colors: mustard yellows, clay reds, earthy browns and the occasional dash of sage or dusty blue. This scrubland lay like a blanket around everything below that was not part of the village between the mesas. Down there, adobe compounds never taller than two or three storeys seemed so squat compared to the mesas that Nshurr could see towering in the distance, many of those family mesas only a few hours walk from her own if she traveled by foot. The village sprawled, with tile parkways winding in serpentine fashion between the various buildings, courtyards, parks, and ponds. There were no property lines, no clear division of the land into neat little plots owned by the individuals who lived and worked in these places. It all seemed to be part of a whole, with a single unifying aesthetic. The village housed those rriigkhans of the lower castes, the kharratah and chelhautah, and the humans which were a caste all their own, haukagh-ar, except for a small number who lived with their masters in the caverns of the mesas or up on the plateau.
This planet, Sgarrl, terraformed over three hundred years ago, was home to more human servants than any other Ssaarian world – aside from Earth, of course, discovered eighty years ago. The fact that humans shared so much in common with rriigkhans made them the perfect species to incorporate into the rriigkhan caste structure as servants. They breathed the same mix of gases and required similar gravities, and their nimble little fingers were very useful for all sorts of work.
The rriigkhan language was not necessarily too complex for humans, but it was wholly unfamiliar – too many phonemes that did not fit comfortably in human mouths, from grunts to huffs, to rolling trills that might by voiced or not, sometimes rumbling out like a purr. To a human, Nshurr's name was a sigh and a trill, and yet she was accustomed to humans vocalizing her name in their heavy, slurring way: Na-Shuurr! Nasher! Sometimes simply: ɽ͡r! which she recognized more easily as her name, or at least part of it, and not some random sounds.
Still, despite the weird pidgin humans had made of her language and their English, she liked the little creatures. She had come to live with her Grandmother on Sgarrl only days ago, and had never encountered them before. The males only stood as tall as her collar. The females were shorter still, much like the males of her own species.
To human eyes Nshurr was felinoid, with a muscular swimmer's body and the broad muzzle of a big cat, with watchful, forward-facing predator's eyes that seemed unexpectedly expressive, because rriikghans had almost as many muscles around their eyes as humans did around their mouths to convey the nuances of emotion. Despite being larger than even many Earth men, she was considered sleek by rriigkhan standards. She made up for that with her broader crest.
The rriigkhan crest was something like the crest of Utahceratops – a keratinized plate growing up out of the skull, except divided into three lobes instead of two, with scalloped edges along the outer rim. Unlike depictions of Utahceratops, the rriigkhan crest was not covered by skin. At least, not on the top. Thick ropy veins squiggled under velvet fur on the underside, closer to the neck. (A thick, arching neck muscular enough to support the weight of that crest meant that Rriigkhans walked with a stoop that made them seem hunchbacked, to humans.) The surface of the plate on top was often rough, even bumpy or corrugated like deer antlers in some areas, smooth in others. Every female crest had four tines jutting from the front – a pair several inches above the eyes, and another pair further up. Directly above the lowest set of tines were twin holes, the howrf channels, just big enough for a human to insert a finger. These holes were very much like nostrils – much deeper, but damp inside, and lined with short, fine hairs to protect the sensitive mucous membrane from debris. The organs housed within these channels were the heart of rriigkhan culture, the foundation of all relationships, of sex.
Male rriigkhans, of course, had only their neotonous crests: diminutive, mostly smooth with rounded edges, without tines or howrf channels. Cute.
Nshurr's crest was wider than average, her upper tines spaced further apart, and combined with a compact face this made her look top-heavy. (A human might say that she was more snow leopard than lion.) Most female crests did not interfere with the movement of the ears – highly mobile, highly expressive paddle shaped things – but the edges of Nshurr's crest did jut out enough to almost shield them.
That her crest was weighty, that it was inconvenient, that she was often aware of it – this was Nshurr's pride. Her long tail curled in pleasure when she caught males looking at it. Humans seemed to be intimidated by it sometimes, as if she might decide to gore them with her “horns.” She considered herself a confident person; not a braggart, but self-assured, and to carry her jhekaah so visibly pleased her to no end.
Her fur was an almost peachy off-white, but a mask of pale peach shaded each seafoam green eye. The mask blended into the white further up her forehead until fur gave way to bone-tan crest, and was split between her eyes by the white of her nose. Oblong spots in that same peachy color, each blending from dark to light, streaked down her sides.
These weren't the natural colors of her distant ancestors. It was unheard of to see a rriigkhan who was not gene-modified in some way, even if those modded genes had been part of rriigkhan life for so long that no one thought of them as mods any longer. She also thought nothing of the subtitles her augmented reality implant displayed whenever a human spoke, AI translated to help her decipher the pidgin. AR was simply a part of her, had been since she was a kit.
Reclining as she was on a padded lounger in front of an iron brazier, full of cold ashes from last night's fire, Nshurr was dressed in a pale coral shift only a few shades darker than the peach of her fur. Medallions trailing fringes of cloth had been sewn onto the front bottom half of the knee-length garment. A row of those ornate medallions defined a plunging neckline that bared much of her chest, muscular and broad, possibly even masculine to a human. Her breasts were lower on her body and similar in appearance to a mare's udders: long nipples on a pudge of fat nestled close together on the pelvis, just above the place where her thighs joined her body. They were only small lumps beneath the shift when Nshurr stretched out her legs so that the thin fabric fell across them. It was the roundness of her hips and buttocks that marked her female to the human eye. (As if her crest didn't make that obvious!)
She was listening to the sound of two younger female cousins wrestling on a nearby terrace, and although from her vantage point Nshurr could not see them, she could imagine the scene from what she heard: Fherou and Lahk growling while they grappled with their arms, the crack of crest hitting crest and then the scrape of tine sliding against tine. Each was fighting to control the other's head, each trying to bite the other. It wasn't easy when each had a shaggy ruff to protect her neck, and any attempt to bite the other's face would be thwarted by an interposing crest. Rriigkhan hands were less dexterous than human hands, more pawlike with stubby fingers, but capable of delivering hard blows, and once or twice Nshurr heard a cousin snarl in response to a strike against her body.
The competitive pheromones her cousins exuded from their unextended howrfs, quite unconsciously, were beginning to make Nshurr's own heart beat faster. The end of her long tail, where it hung down from the reclining chair, lashed in agitation. She was beginning to imagine sinking her teeth into someone's skin herself, and if her cousins had not been so much younger and smaller than herself she might have gone down to their terrace to show them a thing or two. It was putting her off the human flute music she'd been listening to, fed directly into her own brain through her implant for her private enjoyment. (Certain aspects of human culture were very popular here on Sgarrl; she'd been curious about it.)
She did not feel like going inside to escape the pheromones; Nshurr craved the warmth of the sun on her fur, not the cool stone and artificial light of those warrens. Most of her male cousins had gone into the village for boating today. Well, perhaps she would go down and join them after all.
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OOC Information:
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For this prompt I imagine you'd play a human servant, probably a new arrival to Sgarrl but maybe someone who was born there. Even though I've set up a situation where my character would have a lot of power and yours very little, I want to clarify that I'm not interested in abusing your character I am looking for a slow burn interspecies romance that develops naturally. This story may deal with power imbalances and even speciesism, but I'd like to explore those topics realistically.
I want to explore all aspects of loving relationship... Flirting, cuddling, kissing, lots of romantic scenes and character growth. My “type” that I'm most attracted to are men with average bodies in the 40-60 age range, with realistic personality flaws. I am more than willing to tailor my character's personality and physical attributes to suit your tastes, within reason. I appreciate partners willing to do the same.
I prefer to reply more than once a day. 2-3 replies per day would be ideal, but I understand life gets in the way. I usually write 2-5 paragraphs, or 150-450 words per post. This starter is much longer than my typical post length, but my lengths vary according to need. If I'm introducing a new character or setting a scene, my post might go up to 1,000 words.
Please send a writing sample if you have none in your post history. No need to custom write anything for me, old samples are fine. Click here to PM me!

I'm asian and was wondering since the n word is a non-offensive race specific word that was created from the hard r, which is offensive, if there was a version of that for any other racial slurs, specifically ch*nk.