Why do we put presents under a tree
Skin care for people over 30
2015.03.03 20:26 kittydentures Skin care for people over 30
Skin care is a pretty big deal, and we love subs like /SkinCareAddiction, however we felt there needed to be a sub that deals specifically with skin that's over 30. Share your questions, frustrations and triumphs!
2012.06.07 00:14 Billobatch Learn Useless Talents
This is a place to learn how to do cool things that have no use other than killing time and impressing strangers.
2009.10.15 17:51 cinsere /r/trees - home of the ents
The go-to subreddit for anything and everything cannabis. From MMJ to munchies, from nugs to news, and everything between! The casual cannabis community
2024.06.01 14:00 romanoffmyself My little brother found the family photo album
I don't even know where to start with this one. I (17M) live with my mom (42F) and dad (45M) as well as my little brother (7M) who we'll call Chris.
Chris is adopted. His mom was my mom's best friend, and her and her husband passed away not long after he was born due to a car accident. My mom was his godmother, and took him in as her own. This was known to me since I was old enough to remember when he got adopted, but Chris wasn't, and he still isn't aware.
I was doing my homework the other night, and realised I was hungry. It was around midnight so I thought no one would be up, and decided to head to the kitchen. To my surprise, Chris was sitting on the floor reading a book in the living room. I came over and asked what he was doing up, and he looked up at me and told me he found a photo album in mom's drawers while looking for his sleeping gummies. He'd had a nightmare and didn't want to wake her, so thought he'd just grab some of his gummies and try and head back to sleep. He begged me not to tell mom or dad he was awake, and asked if he could look at the photos for just a little longer. I felt a little guilty, since I don't get a lot of time with him, so I selfishly let him stay up a while. I figured the photos would give him some positive memories and would give him something better to think about when he went back to bed.
We went to a random page in the book and it was a little before I was born, and they were photos of my mom. She looked beautiful, but I noticed she wasn't showing very much of a bump. Considering my mom is Korean and I know her mother didn't show much either, I figured it must've just been the photo and the dress she was wearing, or maybe the way she was turned from the camera. She was painting something and smiling at the camera, and the photo had a date from a few months before I was born. However, the further I looked, the more it seemed like she just wasn't pregnant at all. She never started showing, even days before I was born. Not only that, but there were no signs of her being pregnant in a celebratory sense, no baby showers, no artistic photos of my dad holding her stomach, nothing. This is bizarre because my parents are both quite artistic and expressive, my mom's a painter and my dad's an ex musician, so I assumed there would be pretty expressive photos of her pregnancy. But nope, nothing. Okay, so I'm adopted. Honestly not an awful surprise but still bizarre that this is how I found out. I got to the day of my birth in the album and I felt my jaw drop.
It was my mom in the hospital. She was holding me in a bundle of blankets, smiling cheerfully. Okay, so I'm not adopted, then what's the deal? But then I notice something. My mom is fully dressed, in her favourite sundress with her makeup and hair done. She doesn't look like a woman who's just given birth at all! However, as I go further through the photos I notice something stranger. There's a photo of another man holding me, right above another photo of a woman laying down, holding me with a smile. It's my aunt and uncle.
For a little backstory, my aunt, who we'll call Mina (46F) and my uncle, Gabriel (44M) are from my dad's side of the family. Gabriel is my dad's brother, and Mina's his wife. When I was 15, we met with my aunt and uncle, as well as my dad's parents, for Chuseok, a Korean holiday (My dad is Korean too). My parents told me this would be my first time meeting my aunt and uncle. However, when they walked in the room, I realised I had seen my aunt before. I couldn't really place it, but I brought it up to them. They all tried to brush it off and not talk about it, and my aunt kept giving me this weird, sad look. And she gave someone else the same sort of look: my mom.
I was in shock. My aunt was clearly the one in the photo who had given birth. The next few photos were of my parents with Mina and I, holding her close and cooing at me, etc. I kept going through and Mina and Gabriel seemed to be so present. They were there all the way until I was about 5, at which point they seemed to disappear from the photos. After a while my mom came in and I shoved the album under the coffee table. I told her to go back to bed and that I'd settle Chris down myself. She sleepily agreed and didn't argue, and went off to bed without another word. I put my brother to bed, and when I came out to the living room, my dad was there. He said he had just come home from my Uncle Gabriel's, that he'd had to stop by work to drop one of the keys off that he accidentally pocketed, and that my Uncle had texted that he was up and wanted to see if my dad wanted to stop on by. This isn't uncommon. My dad and I talked. I didn't mention what I'd found, but I implied he and mom hid a lot of things from me. He seemed to catch on that I'd found something, telling me we can discuss it over lunch tomorrow before his meeting, and then he went to bed. I'm so confused! Why would my parents hide this from me? Are they my parents? Are they actually my aunt and uncle? I don't know what to do! I guess I'll update this when I talk to my dad, but I'm still so confused. Thanks for letting me vent, and sorry if this is a mess.
submitted by romanoffmyself to TrueOffMyChest [link] [comments]
Chris is adopted. His mom was my mom's best friend, and her and her husband passed away not long after he was born due to a car accident. My mom was his godmother, and took him in as her own. This was known to me since I was old enough to remember when he got adopted, but Chris wasn't, and he still isn't aware.
I was doing my homework the other night, and realised I was hungry. It was around midnight so I thought no one would be up, and decided to head to the kitchen. To my surprise, Chris was sitting on the floor reading a book in the living room. I came over and asked what he was doing up, and he looked up at me and told me he found a photo album in mom's drawers while looking for his sleeping gummies. He'd had a nightmare and didn't want to wake her, so thought he'd just grab some of his gummies and try and head back to sleep. He begged me not to tell mom or dad he was awake, and asked if he could look at the photos for just a little longer. I felt a little guilty, since I don't get a lot of time with him, so I selfishly let him stay up a while. I figured the photos would give him some positive memories and would give him something better to think about when he went back to bed.
We went to a random page in the book and it was a little before I was born, and they were photos of my mom. She looked beautiful, but I noticed she wasn't showing very much of a bump. Considering my mom is Korean and I know her mother didn't show much either, I figured it must've just been the photo and the dress she was wearing, or maybe the way she was turned from the camera. She was painting something and smiling at the camera, and the photo had a date from a few months before I was born. However, the further I looked, the more it seemed like she just wasn't pregnant at all. She never started showing, even days before I was born. Not only that, but there were no signs of her being pregnant in a celebratory sense, no baby showers, no artistic photos of my dad holding her stomach, nothing. This is bizarre because my parents are both quite artistic and expressive, my mom's a painter and my dad's an ex musician, so I assumed there would be pretty expressive photos of her pregnancy. But nope, nothing. Okay, so I'm adopted. Honestly not an awful surprise but still bizarre that this is how I found out. I got to the day of my birth in the album and I felt my jaw drop.
It was my mom in the hospital. She was holding me in a bundle of blankets, smiling cheerfully. Okay, so I'm not adopted, then what's the deal? But then I notice something. My mom is fully dressed, in her favourite sundress with her makeup and hair done. She doesn't look like a woman who's just given birth at all! However, as I go further through the photos I notice something stranger. There's a photo of another man holding me, right above another photo of a woman laying down, holding me with a smile. It's my aunt and uncle.
For a little backstory, my aunt, who we'll call Mina (46F) and my uncle, Gabriel (44M) are from my dad's side of the family. Gabriel is my dad's brother, and Mina's his wife. When I was 15, we met with my aunt and uncle, as well as my dad's parents, for Chuseok, a Korean holiday (My dad is Korean too). My parents told me this would be my first time meeting my aunt and uncle. However, when they walked in the room, I realised I had seen my aunt before. I couldn't really place it, but I brought it up to them. They all tried to brush it off and not talk about it, and my aunt kept giving me this weird, sad look. And she gave someone else the same sort of look: my mom.
I was in shock. My aunt was clearly the one in the photo who had given birth. The next few photos were of my parents with Mina and I, holding her close and cooing at me, etc. I kept going through and Mina and Gabriel seemed to be so present. They were there all the way until I was about 5, at which point they seemed to disappear from the photos. After a while my mom came in and I shoved the album under the coffee table. I told her to go back to bed and that I'd settle Chris down myself. She sleepily agreed and didn't argue, and went off to bed without another word. I put my brother to bed, and when I came out to the living room, my dad was there. He said he had just come home from my Uncle Gabriel's, that he'd had to stop by work to drop one of the keys off that he accidentally pocketed, and that my Uncle had texted that he was up and wanted to see if my dad wanted to stop on by. This isn't uncommon. My dad and I talked. I didn't mention what I'd found, but I implied he and mom hid a lot of things from me. He seemed to catch on that I'd found something, telling me we can discuss it over lunch tomorrow before his meeting, and then he went to bed. I'm so confused! Why would my parents hide this from me? Are they my parents? Are they actually my aunt and uncle? I don't know what to do! I guess I'll update this when I talk to my dad, but I'm still so confused. Thanks for letting me vent, and sorry if this is a mess.
2024.06.01 13:56 genericusername1904 H.G. WELLS’S, THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME (1933) VS. 1984 AND BRAVE NEW WORLD
 | ID, IX. MAIORES. V, CAL. IUNI. FORTUNA PRIMIGENIA.I discovered this book by complete chance last year – a very old hardback copy was given to me as gift (in a situation which was certainly weighted with the most unlikely of synchronicities), “huh,” I thought, “it’s a first edition of H.G. Wells,” the book itself almost cannot be opened because it is so old and falling apart so I procured a text and audio file of the thing relatively easily and began to read. In hindsight not only for myself but I fancy for the generations of the last fifty years - in all totality, it is deeply strange that this book has not been more widely recognized or taught in schools, as like 1984 and Brave New World, as being the third contender (although technically the second, published one year after Huxley – seemingly written at the same time interestingly enough) in “visions of dystopia” – except that the book is not so much a vision of dystopia tomorrow but a vision of dystopia ‘today’ or rather ‘life as we know it’ of the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries (endless war, endless pandemics, economic and logistic chaos), narrated from the comfortable and reassuring position of a society far far in the future who have long since revised their culture and solved all of the causes of the problems and become a society of genius polymaths “with (every Man and Woman) the intellectual equal of the polymaths of the ancient world.”Now, I do not mean here to seem to ‘sweet-talk’ the reader into rushing out and buying this book or to hold it up in the manner of those other books as if it were some ideological blueprint but instead to assay the thing in the natural context which seems to me to be universally unrealized and which presents itself to us as a thing which is plainly self-evident, that is: that in the depressing and miserable dichotomy of 1984 and Brave New World; two extremely atomizing and miserable narratives, that there is also – far more empowering – The Shape Of Things To Come wherein the miserable protagony and antagony of both 1984 and Brave New World might read as merely a footnote somewhere in the middle of the book as an example of the witless measures mankinds old master undertook to preserve their power in an untenable circumstance. In other words, we know all about 1984 as children; we have this drummed into our heads and we glean our cultural comprehension that dictators cannot be cliques of business people but only lone individuals, usually in military uniform, and then we graduate from that to Brave New World to gain a more sophisticated comprehension of the feckless consumerism and ‘passive egoism’ by which our society actually operates, but then we do not – as I argue we ought – continue along in our education with this third book which actually addresses the matters at hand at a more adult level. For instance, here, from ‘The Breakdown Of Finance And Social Morale After Versailles’ (Book One, Chapter Twelve) addresses in a single paragraph the cause of our continual economic chaos (of which all crime and poverty and war originates from) and highlights the problem from which this chaos cannot be resolved yet could easily be resolved, “adjustment was left to blind and ill-estimated forces,” “manifestly, a dramatic revision of the liberties of enterprise was necessary, but the enterprising people who controlled politics (would be) the very last people to undertake such a revision,” …the expansion of productive energy was being accompanied by a positive contraction of the distributive arrangements which determined consumption. The more efficient the output, the fewer were the wages-earners. The more stuff there was, the fewer consumers there were. The fewer the consumers, the smaller the trading profits, and the less the gross spending power of the shareholders and individual entrepreneurs. So buying dwindled at both ends of the process and the common investor suffered with the wages- earner. This was the "Paradox of Overproduction" which so troubled the writers and journalists of the third decade of the twentieth century.It is easy for the young student to-day to ask "Why did they not adjust?" But let him ask himself who there was to adjust. Our modern superstructure of applied economic science, the David Lubin Bureau and the General Directors' Board, with its vast recording organization, its hundreds of thousands of stations and observers, directing, adjusting, apportioning and distributing, had not even begun to exist. Adjustment was left to blind and ill-estimated forces. It was the general interest of mankind to be prosperous, but it was nobody's particular interest to keep affairs in a frame of prosperity. Manifestly a dramatic revision of the liberties of enterprise was necessary, but the enterprising people who controlled politics, so far as political life was controlled, were the very last people to undertake such a revision.There is a clever metaphor I fancy that Wells worked in to this for the ‘actual’ defacto controlling class of things, that is: not really the politicians (sorry to disappoint the Orwell and conspiracy fans) but instead the ‘Dictatorship of the Air’ which might easily read as the ‘Dictatorship of the Airwaves’ – in colloquial language, that being radio and then television. Certainly we might imagine Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner or Sumner Redstone (of yesterday) entering into honourable retirement as like the ‘dictators of the air’ of the very last days before the establishment of a one world state – in any case that is how things would work out, as the power of, say, Ted Turner to eradicate a political party in the United States – at any time he wishes – by simply green-lighting coverage of their bad actions relentlessly for months until revolution occurs is a real power of which no other institution possesses nor possesses any means of defence against, i.e. the ‘real power’ in our world to end a war or begin or war or end this or begin that is that power held by the organized press. This metaphor is somewhat of a more mature view, I think, than Wells earlier conception of the press in The Sleeper Awakes (1899) where the press of a dystopian future is visualized as a “babble machine” spreading circular nonsense to preoccupy the citizenry (although this is arguably a true representation of the mental processes of the Twitter and Facebook user, or of the general baby-speak and extremely infantile form of the news reports on the front page of the BBC News website) which is more or less what the press depicted as being in Brave New World also.However the construction of sudden new realities (or sudden ‘actualities’) presented by the equation of interdependent technological innovations (i.e. the radio and the television in this instance) is mentioned early on in The Shape Of Things To Come in ‘How The Idea And Hope Of The Modern World State First Appeared’ (Book One, Chapter Two), The fruitlessness of all these premature inventions is very easily explained. First in the case of the Transatlantic passage; either the earlier navigators who got to America never got back, or, if they did get back, they were unable to find the necessary support and means to go again before they died, or they had had enough of hardship, or they perished in a second attempt. Their stories were distorted into fantastic legends and substantially disbelieved. It was, indeed, a quite futile adventure to get to America until the keeled sailing ship, the science of navigation, and the mariner's compass had been added to human resources. (Then), in the matter of printing, it was only when the Chinese had developed the systematic manufacture of abundant cheap paper sheets in standard sizes that the printed book—and its consequent release of knowledge—became practically possible. Finally the delay in the attainment of flying was inevitable because before men could progress beyond precarious gliding it was necessary for metallurgy to reach a point at which the internal combustion engine could be made. Until then they could build nothing strong enough and light enough to battle with the eddies of the air.In an exactly parallel manner, the conception of one single human community organized for collective service to the common weal had to wait until the rapid evolution of the means of communication could arrest and promise to defeat the disintegrative influence of geographical separation. That rapid evolution came at last in the nineteenth century, and it has been described already in a preceding chapter of this world history. Steam power, oil power, electric power, the railway, the steamship, the aeroplane, transmission by wire and aerial transmission followed each other very rapidly. They knit together the human species as it had never been knit before. Insensibly, in less than a century, the utterly impracticable became not merely a possible adjustment but an urgently necessary adjustment if civilization was to continue.In other words, then, a global state (or, rather, such power in general held by the press as I see the analogy extending to them as being the ‘Dictatorship of the Airwaves’) was impossible to imagine and completely laughable before the technologies had stacked together to reveal as like in a simple piece of arithmetic which produced a single outcome of the equation; that no sooner had the technologies existed then the thing had become an actual reality – in that 1) unassailable political power had been unthinkingly dropped into the lap of the owners of the press, but that more importantly as consequence that therefore 2) mankind was subject to that power, that is: the situation existed the moment the technologies did – and this whether any living person had even realized it, as I think quite naturally all the time Men and Women invent things that they really have no notion of the fullest or most optimal uses of (“nothing is needed by fools, for: they do not understand how to use anything but are in want of everything,” Chrysippus), e.g. in no metaphor the television was quite literally invented as a ‘ghost box’ to commune with ghosts imagined to reveal themselves by manipulating the black and white of the static until someone else had the idea that there was at least one other use for that contraption.It is quite strange, also, that in contemporary times we have for ages been heavily propagandized ‘against’ the idea of a “one world state” as if, say, all the crimes and fecklessness that have gone on in our lifetimes are somehow secretly building towards the creation of such a thing – not a thing you would naturally conclude from an observation of those events nor a thing advocated for by anybody (insofar as I have ever heard) but it is a thing which would be the first logical response to ‘preventing’ such crimes from ever occurring again – such as like the already widely practiced concept of a Senate-Style Federation of Sovereign States rather than a hundred or so mutually antagonistic polities capable of bombing themselves or screwing up their economies and creating waves of refugees or mass starvation or pandemics, and so on. For instance, All Egypt is dependent on the flow of the Nile which originates in what is today another country, that other country recently decimated the flow of the Nile by gumming up the Nile with a Hydroelectric Dam; such an outcome would not occur if the total mass of the land itself was governed as the single interconnected economic and environmental system that it is in physical reality of which, when divided along arbitrary borderlines, there is no means to govern the entirety of the region in an amicable and prosperous manner for all as a whole and no recourse to the otherwise intolerable situation but War which is unlikely to occur – as most Nations are comprised of civilized peoples who rightly loath the concept of War – but it is the single and unavoidable outcome to resolve such a situation until that situation has dragged on for decades, causing immense suffering, until it reaches that point of desperation – the matter of Palestine and Israel, fresh to my mind in these days, raises itself also. Of the matter of War itself, in ‘The Direct Action Of The Armament Industries In Maintaining War Stresses’ (Book One, Chapter Eleven), Wells relays in 1933 what United States President Eisenhower would later remark in 1961 in his farewell address of the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex; albeit far more analytically on Wells part, that: it is not so much the ‘desire to harm’ on the part of the armament industries which sees them engage in unnecessary build-up of weapons stockpiles but that it is simply their business to produce, to stockpile, produce more deadly variants and stockpile the more deadly variants and sell off their old stockpiles to whomsoever rings their doorbell; for instance the on-going War in Ukraine is no different in this regard to the Viet Cong and NATO Warfare in Vietnam in that massive quantiles of cheap munitions were necessary for the war to be fought in the first place and massive quantities of munitions happened to exist as a by-product of the Armaments Industries to be dumped onto the warring parties in order to facilitate their macabre impulses at the expense of the citizenry; both at their cost in terms of the debt taken on to procure the weaponry on the part of their governments and in terms of their lives when the weaponry was unused to the outcome of massive loss of life of a single peoples within a bordered space – a thing of no value to themselves. Simply put, albeit in a very simplistic reduction to the bare basics: the War would not reached such catastrophic inhuman proportions without massive quantities of cheap Armaments that otherwise sat taking up warehouse space for more valuable Armaments on the part of the producer and seller. In a perpetual progress in the size and range of great guns, in a vast expansion of battleships that were continually scrapped in favour of larger or more elaborate models, (Armament Firms) found a most important and inexhaustible field of profit. The governments of the world were taken unawares, and in a little while the industry, by sound and accepted methods of salesmanship, was able to impose its novelties upon these ancient institutions with their tradition of implacable mutual antagonism. It was realized very soon that any decay of patriotism and loyalty would be inimical to this great system of profits, and the selling branch of the industry either bought directly or contrived to control most of the great newspapers of the time, and exercised a watchful vigilance on the teaching of belligerence in schools. Following the established rules and usages for a marketing industrialism, and with little thought of any consequences but profits, the directors of these huge concerns built up the new warfare that found its first exposition in the Great War of 1914-18, and gave its last desperate and frightful convulsions in the Polish wars of 1940 and the subsequent decades.Even at its outset in 1914-18 this new warfare was extraordinarily uncongenial to humanity. It did not even satisfy man's normal combative instincts. What an angry man wants to do is to beat and bash another living being, not to be shot at from ten miles distance or poisoned in a hole. Instead of drinking delight of battle with their peers, men tasted all the indiscriminating terror of an earthquake. The war literature stored at Atacama, to which we have already referred, is full of futile protest against the horror, the unsportsmanlike quality, the casual filthiness and indecency, the mechanical disregard of human dignity of the new tactics. But such protest itself was necessarily futile, because it did not go on to a clear indictment of the forces that were making, sustaining and distorting war. The child howled and wept and they did not even attempt to see what it was had tormented it.To us nowadays it seems insane that profit-making individuals and companies should have been allowed to manufacture weapons and sell the apparatus of murder to all comers. But to the man of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it seemed the most natural thing in the world. It had grown up in an entirely logical and necessary way, without any restraint upon the normal marketing methods of peace-time commerce, from the continually more extensive application of new industrial products to warfare. Even after the World War catastrophe, after that complete demonstration of the futility of war, men still allowed themselves to be herded like sheep into the barracks, to be trained to consume, and be consumed, by new lines of slaughter goods produced and marketed by the still active armament traders. And the accumulation of a still greater and still more dangerous mass of war material continued.The book is, if the reader has likely already gathered from the excerpts, not written in the style of a protagonal narrative; i.e. not as a story, i.e. no hero and no villain, but as a sort of a Historia Augusta – that is really the most fitting comparison I think of when trying to describe this to a new reader (or perhaps J.J. Scarisbrick’s Henry VIII), that is to say it is written ‘as’ a History in the classical style we are familiar with from the better of the ancient writers, as like Appian or Cassius Dio, but unlike Suetonius or Tacitus it is absent of the sloppy hinging of all bad things on the highly personalized propaganda ad hominem (i.e. blame the fall of empire on one guy) that goes in those narrative works as we are typically familiar with them.It is, of course, a work a fiction; although Wells did predict World War Two beginning in late 1939-1940 (although he had Poland putting up much better and longer of a fight against the Germans) and various other innovations, beginning from his own day with a true account of events prior to his own day – giving us a valuable account of affairs and actors prior to 1933 which would otherwise not come easily to any of us to discover. But the book, ultimately, is vehicle for the transmission and discussion of these societal (i.e. social, economic, industrial, logistic) matters presented to the audience of the day fresh, in their own minds, from the abject horror recently witnessed in World War One – and the economic catastrophes of which Roosevelts reforms had not yet come into tangible reality (i.e. relief for the poor, public works projects such as the motorways across America) as is discussed in that other seemingly little known H.G. Wells literary offering in his face-to-face interview with Josef Stalin the following year in 1934 (something which I think is of far more historical value than say, Nixon and Frost or Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis), so as to ‘avert’ another crisis and pluck from the ether a seemingly alternate trajectory of where Mankind might at last get its act together. This ‘novel’ (thought it seems strange to call it that) ought be read, I would advise, in conjunction with ‘The Sleeper Awakes’ (1899) and also the (actually very depressing – I would not advise it) short-story prequel ‘A Story Of The Days To Come’ (1897) – set in that same universe – which, perhaps it is because I am English, seems to me to be a black horror show of the reality that we actually find ourselves living in this far into an actually dystopic future – or perhaps yet with the ‘strange windmills’ powering the mega cities that this a future yet to come (no pun intended); the broken speech, the babble machines, the miserable condition of the Working Class and their consumption of pre-packaged soft bread, the desire to flee the urban sprawl into the dilapidated countryside and make a little life in a run-down house with tacky wallpaper peeling away … ah, forgive me, my point is that ‘our condition’; i.e. those of us literate in English, is quite analogous to the condition of the central characters in those two stories; a culture dulled intellectually to the point that they can barely speak or think, being appraised and assayed by ourselves; those of us simply literate, as to render our commentary stuck as to seem as mutually alien as like Caesar in Gaul. However, it is in the context of the frame given to us in ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’ that we might gain a degree of sanity about this self-same situation; to study and lean into that dispassionate quality as to discern the nature of things as they are and recognize how important this quality is in relation to Well’s ultimate outcome for the best possible position of Humankind far far future, that is: that of Humankind’s vital intellectual capacity, and that the most striking message of STC, beyond all we have mentioned in this little overview, is that intellectual capacity in and of itself. For example, when we consider the ‘actuality’ of the power of Turner or perhaps Zuckerberg in his heyday, for instance, we consider a power fallen into a Mans lap by an accidental stacking of disparate technologies created not by himself but of which possess a power utterly dependent in that same equation upon on a population being ‘witless’ in the first place and so led slavishly by the “babble machines”. However you cut it, reader, the great uplifting of Humankind to a standard of autonomy and intellectual prowess – not held by an elite but possessed by All People – is a thing both intrinsically self-sufficient within our grasp for our own selves and is certainly the prerequisite for political matters in that intellectual capacity of the voting public determines entirely whether a public is tricked or foolish and gets themselves into trouble by undertaking some obvious error or whether they are immune to such trickery and foolishness in the first place and that their energies and time are spent on more valuable pursuits. It seems to me that our contemporary society has done away with the notion of good character through intellect and that we live with the outcome of this; being shepherded by emotional manipulation and brute force because our society at large is treated as if we lacked the verbal and intellectual toolsets to understand anything else – moreover possessing no means to discern whether or not what is forced onto us is right or wrong; truth or lies, and so on. Such a society as this, again it seems plain to me, is ‘any’ dystopia because it is the baseline composition for ‘all’ dystopia; as like the foolish dogma of an out-dated ideology for example rests itself upon a large enough contingent of the public being either treated as if they were or in fact are “too foolish” to discuss or think a thing through, so a dogma is poured over them like concrete creating, in turn, intolerable circumstances as the dogma, tomorrow, becomes out-dated and suddenly instructs them to do foolish things, as like in the “Banality Of Evil” (read: Hannah Arendt) as the character in all serious perpetrators of inhumanity who insist, with a confused expression on their faces, that they were just doing their job – and this ‘quality’, of extreme ignorance, is the composition of the culture where such ‘evil actions’ occur. I mean here that in STC we have on one hand a very in-depth account, very serious reading, to graduate the reader out of the depressive, atomizing, disempowering, conspiratorial milieu and mire of ‘life’ presented to us in 1984 and Brave New World, but that we have at the same time the very resonant harmonics that one does not need to “wait around for a distant future utopia” to “solve all the problems” but that the tools to do so are well within our grasp at any time we so choose and of which such an undertaking constitutes the foundation stones and tapestries of that future utopia which, I think, could be said to “meet us half-way” in many of these matters, as like we reach forward and they reach back and then those in the past reach forward and we in the resent reach back; that is anyway what it is to learn from the past and anyway the answer to “why the Grandfather sews the seeds for trees from whose fruits he will never eat.” Valete. ID, IX. MAIORES. V, CAL. IUNI. FORTUNA PRIMIGENIA.FULL TEXT ON GUTENBERG OF H.G. WELLS ‘THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME’ (1933)https://preview.redd.it/9l7yl9hx8y3d1.jpg?width=490&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d5a4109fb8e2193b94a6e244d92d4ec5b7b84a7 https://preview.redd.it/37vvsroy8y3d1.jpg?width=740&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e62ef5e11c1c4222d6f99ffebe82b3dd706cbc2f |
2024.06.01 13:33 Blackmagic213 Why Waking Up Is The Most Difficult Thing You’ll Ever Do ⚰️
“Most people tell you they want to get out of kindergarten, but don’t believe them. Don’t believe them! All they want you to do is to mend their broken toys. "Give me back my wife. Give me back my job. Give me back my money. Give me back my reputation, my success." This is what they want; they want their toys replaced. That’s all. Even the best psychologist will tell you that, that people don’t really want to be cured. What they want is relief; a cure is painful.
Waking up is unpleasant, you know. You are nice and comfortable in bed.”
You see? Maya is a trickster. A hypnotic master. We all come here and we write about the bad things that Maya projects in our mind. We rave against poverty, racism, hunger, judging others, and other evils.
But while it’s easy to rave against the bad parts of the great illusion called Maya. We forget that Maya also dangles the carrot 🥕 of good illusions. Maya is a tree of good and evil. It also promises you shiny toys. Maya says….
If it doesn’t take it away, just a simple threat of it being taken away keeps you trapped in the game. That’s what anxiety is - Maya gave you a cherished gift, a cherished idea, a cherished position…Then all of a sudden, Maya threatens this cherished gift and now you are anxious. “I must protect this gift” you think to yourself….completely disregarding the fact that the gift in itself was an illusion the whole time.
That is why my writings is for the advanced surrenderer, those who are ready to chop down the tree of good and evil to reveal the tree of life 🕉️. If you are still in this to get some sort of baubles, trinkets, or other “good” carrots that Maya dangles; then please discard anything that I write about. If you’re ready to leave the Matrix, to leave Maya, then continue reading because…..
I am not perfect and I too I’m learning to return to Self, to my original nature. But at least for today, I can confidently tell Maya “Nah I’m chill with your gifts. I know your tricks and I will not be hypnotized by them”. Namaste 🪔
submitted by Blackmagic213 to awakened [link] [comments]
Waking up is unpleasant, you know. You are nice and comfortable in bed.”
- Anthony De Mello
You see? Maya is a trickster. A hypnotic master. We all come here and we write about the bad things that Maya projects in our mind. We rave against poverty, racism, hunger, judging others, and other evils.
But while it’s easy to rave against the bad parts of the great illusion called Maya. We forget that Maya also dangles the carrot 🥕 of good illusions. Maya is a tree of good and evil. It also promises you shiny toys. Maya says….
- Wake up and money will no longer be an issue
- Wake up and then you can easily attract the love of your life.
- Wake up and then you can meet some lifelong friends that will understand you and care for you.
If it doesn’t take it away, just a simple threat of it being taken away keeps you trapped in the game. That’s what anxiety is - Maya gave you a cherished gift, a cherished idea, a cherished position…Then all of a sudden, Maya threatens this cherished gift and now you are anxious. “I must protect this gift” you think to yourself….completely disregarding the fact that the gift in itself was an illusion the whole time.
That is why my writings is for the advanced surrenderer, those who are ready to chop down the tree of good and evil to reveal the tree of life 🕉️. If you are still in this to get some sort of baubles, trinkets, or other “good” carrots that Maya dangles; then please discard anything that I write about. If you’re ready to leave the Matrix, to leave Maya, then continue reading because…..
- Until you can firmly say to the guy offering you a billion dollars that he can keep his money and that you’re perfectly ok with the present moment.
- Until you can tell the hot woman, not today I think I’ll just take a nap.
- Until you can tell society. Keep your fame and kudos, they are meaningless anyways.
- Until you can tell depression, there’s noone here to be depressed.
I am not perfect and I too I’m learning to return to Self, to my original nature. But at least for today, I can confidently tell Maya “Nah I’m chill with your gifts. I know your tricks and I will not be hypnotized by them”. Namaste 🪔
2024.06.01 13:17 TheDreadPirateRobots [Have Gun - Will Travel] - 1.8
[INDEX]
I banked the fire and stared into the golden eyes of Beatale before I crept into my makeshift tent.
I still had my auric vision running and couldn’t help but notice the thin silver cord that ran from me to Horse. Firming up my aura, I reached out with my hand and grabbed it. I could feel the nearly imperceptible vibration between my fingers as I used my mind to probe at the thread. I could feel a bright spark of intellect, a light at the end of a tunnel. Pushing with my mind, I slid down the thread until the spark grew larger and eventually filled my inner vision with a hazy white light. Horsey thoughts nudged at me curiously.
I slid into the haze and immediately lost all sense of direction. If it wasn’t for the silver thread, I’d have no idea how to exit this shifting white fog. Horsey thoughts got stronger as I followed the thread while the haze thinned and cleared to reveal an endless prairie of green grass. I found myself standing before a naked man wearing a horse mask and I stared in shock. It was obviously me wearing a cheap costume horse mask — there was no mistaking my tattoos.
“What did you expect?” Horse neighed at me. “I am you and you are me and we are all together. Goo goo ga joob.”
Horse made a shooing motion with his hands and I accelerated backwards through the white haze and slammed into my own body with a gasp. I stared at the tarp overhead for a long minute, processing this new revelation. Horse was a part of me, a piece of my spirit. Whatever psychic stuff I did with that silver cord lead me into a house of mirrors where I got to look at myself pretending to be a horse. I can’t even deal with that right now.
Rolling into my blankets, I dropped off to sleep.
*Ding*
-=- - Welcome to the Dreamworld - Included in the Psychic Skills pack, the Inner Sanctum is your psychic domain. It is the mental fortress that you must secure and maintain to defend against psychic and spiritual assaults. All of your neurosis and fears are symbolised in this realm and must be defeated or subjugated before you can become master of the domain. Good luck. -=-
I banished the pop-up and looked around. I knew I was asleep, but everything was just as real as when I was awake. I was breathing, I could feel the floor under my feet, and if it weren’t for the pop-up, I would have sworn I had been teleported. The room I was in resembled an oversized luxury prison cell, maybe a thirty foot cube. No windows. Rough stone walls with thick mortar. Large brass wall sconces were set directly into the stone and suffused the room with a warm, golden light provided by glowing rocks. The stone floor had colourful Persian rugs tastefully placed. A high plaster ceiling was painted with a rendition of Michelangelo’s ‘Creation of Adam’, depicting me as both Adam and God.
There was a comfy sofa in front of a large screen television that hung from one wall and an ornate grandfather clock ticked loudly in the corner. It was currently 10:08 PM. Another wall was a floor to ceiling bookshelf, stuffed with books of varying sizes. The third wall was covered with pictures and I could see at a glance that they were images from my life. The fourth wall had a thick riveted steel door on the right side, a full sized mirror on the left, and a computer workstation in the middle.
The picture wall was my first target. A few were quite large, nearly life sized, while others were tiny prints no larger than the palm of my hand. Scenes of my life were displayed in each one. The largest was me riding Horse with a shit-scared expression, shooting at a pack of wolves. Others were smaller, each with different frames. Some ornate gold or silver, others plain wood, a few wrapped in briars or barbed wire. Nanny Ramsey holding me as a young child. My dog Jean with a red ball in his mouth. My parents, screaming at me. I turned my attention to the books. Books are safe. Books don’t judge you.
The sweet, musty scent of a used book store filled my nostrils as I drew close to the honey coloured shelves. Hundreds of volumes filled the wall from floor to ceiling, with a ladder that could be rolled along a rail to access the top. I smiled at the sight. I had always wanted a library like this. I pulled a book at random and read the title, “Confused Fantasies about Joseph Harris, part XXIV of the Middle School Years”.
I slid the book back onto the shelf. Let’s see what’s on TV.
The remote was a slim, futuristic looking affair with a minimum of buttons. I pointed it at the television and moments later the huge screen came to life and presented me with a simple menu for movies, divided into six categories: Happy, Surprised, Afraid, Disgusted, Angry, and Sad. I scrolled through the offerings for a minute, reading the titles and reviews about the movies of my life. It really bothered me that there were so few selections in the Happy section.
The number of Sad movies increased by one.
I walked over to the mirror and noticed there was a small sticky note pasted to it. “Astral Realm. Experienced users only.” I shoved the note in my pocket and stared at my image. Sturdy black boots, black denim jeans and shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, deep brown gun belt slung at my hip, red bandanna and black felt hat. All I needed was a pencil moustache and I would look like the stereotypical villain in any spaghetti western. At that very moment I decided to grow out a goatee. I’d rather be mistaken for a bad guy than a victim.
So how does this astral realm thing work?
The mirror appeared to be nothing more than a mirror. It was cold, smooth glass surrounded by a wrought iron frame, and reflected my image. I didn’t necessarily want to go walking into danger, but I wanted to know how it worked. I pushed and prodded the glass in frustration until I noticed my image grinning at me. I jumped back in surprise and it doubled over in silent laughter.
“Hilarious, dude. You got me,” I huffed. “So how do I get in?”
My mirror-self tipped his hat and stepped to side.
I reached up to the mirror again and my hand passed through, vanishing as if cut off. Okay, just a quick peek and we’ll explore the rest of the room. I stepped through and the world shifted around me. I was standing back at the campsite. My body was insubstantial as a ghost and the tarp was a wisp of substance running straight through me. Non living things don’t seem to have much presence in this realm. Glancing down, I saw my sleeping body rolled up in the blankets, a thin silver thread running from it to me, and another thread running to Horse.
Looking around, I surveyed the campsite. My astral vision seemed to be on and had an unlimited range. I could see the life all around me, the distant forest was a sea of greenish-gold, grasses and brush nearby glowed with spectral light. Tiny ghost insects scurried while ghost mice nibbled at whatever ghost mice nibble on. Ghost seeds and ghost insects, I suppose. I turned my attention overhead and gaped at the sight of a monstrous serpentine spirit flying through the inky void. I dropped back through the tent and rolled inside my body. That was plenty enough for now.
I rolled through the mirror and landed flat on my back, staring at the fresco on the ceiling. Vinnie-God winked at me and Vinnie-Adam grinned. Climbing to my knees, I brushed non-existent dust from my trousers and watched mirror-me doubled over in soundless laughter.
“Hey, laughing-boy!” I yelled at him. “You’re like the guardian or something, right? You got it covered?”
Mirror-me stood and saluted with a smile, then gave me two thumbs up. A moment later, his face took on a serious expression and he wriggled his right hand in the ‘maybe’ motion. Then he pointed at me, tapped his wrist, and then a finger to his head.
It all depends on how fast I learn stuff, I guess.
Two thumbs up and a winning smile reflected back to me.
A large cork board was mounted to the wall over the computer and a small note was pinned to it. “Note to self: Don’t fuck with the Elvish womens.”
The computer screen featured a screensaver of me as Vitruvian Man doing callisthenics over the words ‘HumanOS’. I tapped the spacebar and was rewarded with the sound of powerful fans kicking to life as the computer emerged from sleep mode and prompted me for a password. Should I assume it’s the same as the password on the computer I pawned in my previous life?
Password: *******esi
I was rewarded with a sweet R&M desktop and a couple of icons. System, NeuralNet, My-Tunes, My-Movies, My-Office.
System was just what I expected, lots of .dna files and other confusing scariness that allowed me to tweak my physical body and mental state. My-Tunes was a collection of every song I’d ever heard and My-Movies was a collection of every movie I’d ever seen. Not that I’m complaining, but it would have been nice to have “My-Games” so I could play RDR. My-Office was a clone of the popular software by a similar name. I have no idea what I’ll ever need a spreadsheet for in this world.
NuralNet opened up a search engine called Me-Seeks, featuring a familiar blue guy.
I typed in “beer” and several thousand results were displayed, anything I’d ever read, heard, or watched about beer, including how to make it. This right here made the price of admission totally worth it, access to an exact copy of everything I’d ever read, and I was a voracious reader. Sadly, most of the stuff I read was futurology — solar panels, electronics, biotech advancements, quantum computing. The material for steam engines, blacksmithing, farming and the like, were slim pickings. That’s okay though, I could still reproduce the Gutenberg press, the cotton gin, simple internal combustion engines, and basic batteries along with some sketchy knowledge of metal alloys, acids, bases, and other things I had read over the years. All that wasted time watching “How Things Work” was finally going to pay off. I copied a few likely money makers to My-Office, saved the file, and exported to my Notes, just in case they didn’t exist on Aerth.
A popup covered the screen.
📱 [New Upgrade Available!] 📱
🎉 Enhance Your Experience with the Latest HumanOS Features! 🎉
🌟 Features Include:
[Upgrade Now ✅] [Remind Me Later ❌]
Apparently I could upgrade myself, which reduced the cost of using my Utilities while providing other minor benefits. My Utilities would level up as I used them, which would increase their battery cost, so if I didn’t keep pace with an update to the OS they could become prohibitively expensive to operate.
Stupid pay-to-win world.
So, do I pay 2000 credits for version 2.0 or 5000 credits for version 3.0?
I selected version 3.0 and klicked [Install]. After watching it download the update, it popped up another screen that asked if I wanted to update now, or wait until Midnight for the mandatory update.
I selected [No] just as the grandfather clock chimed 10:30 PM. I wondered if time ran slower in here, because it seemed like I had spent a lot more time on the computer than 15 minutes. Walking over to the imposing steel door, I noticed a bronze key with a thin chain in the lock. There was another sticky note on the door. “Subconscious. Please keep the key with you at all times.”
That’s not scary at all, is it?
I unlocked the door with a loud clunk and pulled it open to reveal a bedroom straight out of some royal castle. I could tell immediately that it had seen better days. The tapestries on the wall were frayed and fading. The canopy over the bed had a few holes in it. A thin layer of dust covered the mantle of a small fireplace set into the wall. There was a window letting in bright sunlight and I moved over to look outside.
I was on the third floor of a keep surrounded by the walls and turrets of a modest castle. A castle that had fallen into serious disrepair. Did this represent the state of my inner mind? One tower was shattered and the curtain wall under it damaged. The lower bailey was full of litter. I could see a few soldiers walking around the allure, keeping watch.
I have people in my subconscious?
Someone behind me cleared their throat.
Whirling, I discovered a familiar old man standing in the door of the bedroom. What was left of his hair formed a white halo around his head, his face was unshaven and covered with several days of growth. He was dressed like a poor and tattered manservant, but carried himself with a dignified air.
“Woodhouse?”
“It’s nice to see the master at home,” He said with a proper English accent. “There are many matters that require the master’s attention.”
“Uh, sure,” I said, hanging the key around my neck and tucking it in my shirt. “And who are you again?”
“Your personal manservant, of course” he said with a slight bow. Walking over to the steel door, he pulled it closed and it locked with a solid thunk. “Master should always keep his inner sanctum closed. One never knows if something nasty will creep in.”
“Thank you, uh, Woodhouse. I’ll remember that,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “So what needs tending and how do things work around here?”
He smiled and beckoned me with a white gloved hand. “If master would be so kind as to follow me, I’ll introduce him to the staff and explain the duties and obligations of his domain.”
I’m 99.9% certain that everyone here is just me wearing a mask, so I shrugged and followed Woodhouse out of the bedroom and into the rest of my subconscious.
Five minutes later I was on the ground floor and seated on a shabby throne with the cast of a popular —and probably very copyright protected— animation in front of me. Woodhouse was the head butler and my personal manservant. Pam was the cook and demanded that I start importing sugar and alcohol before she was shushed by Woodhouse. Carol was a maid. Krieger was chancellor and Cyril was the steward. Archer and Lana were in charge of security. Ray was the marshal in charge of everything from the stables to the blacksmith.
I stared in disbelief at the motley crew kneeling in front of me. No wonder my inner mind was in such shambles. I was overcome with an irrational sense of anger at myself.
“Arright, listen up,” I barked, my voice echoing around the room. “I swear to God that I will fire every single one of you and hire circus clowns to replace you if you keep fucking things up. No joke. Circus clowns, got it?”
I ran a hand over my face as Ray pissed himself. “The only reason I’m not putting a boot in your asses right now is because I realise that you’re aspects of me, and the people you represent are pretty damn good at their jobs when they give enough of a shit to actually do them. As a team, you’re dysfunctionally fantastic and always seem to come out ahead no matter the odds.”
Heaving a sigh, I continued. “Things have changed and I need to get my shit together. I’m going to need every one of you to pull your weight and help me help you. Get back to your duties, I’ll meet you one on one later.”
My subconscious caretakers scurried out of the room.
“I’ll have one of the maids tend to the piss,” Woodhouse assured me.
“Never mind that,” I snapped. “I honestly had no idea my mind was such a shit show. I’m very disappointed in myself.” I pictured the Angry, Sad, and Disgusted counters on my personal movies clicking up. “Show me what needs to be done and let’s get started.”
During Woodhouse’s walking tour, everything clicked into place. This was some altered version of Bodiam castle, a location that was on my bucket list of places to visit. The royal council room, located behind the throne room, contained a “living” tapestry on the wall that showed the castle and surrounding land in real time. The castle was located in the middle of a small lake, and a single wood bridge led to the mainland. A small town surrounded the lake and a wall encircled the town. Outside the wall, the land was an irregular patchwork of forest and field, with a stinking swamp to the south. The entire “kingdom” was maybe ten miles across, surrounded by impassable mountains with innumerable creeks that fed the lake which drained into the southern swamp.
“Zombies are the problem, sir.” Woodhouse said, as I surveyed the living tapestry of my mental domain.
“Zombies?” I prompted.
“Yes sir, Zombies” Woodhouse continued. “Nasty bitey things that come in from the mountains and harass the peasants. They’ve gotten especially worse over the last few months. The soldiers do what they can, but they seem to have lost all motivation. Probably because they haven’t been paid.”
“And who pays them?”
“Typically chancellor Krieger is in charge of financial matters, although Steward Figgis has taken over the duty, sir.”
“Then let’s make Figgis our first stop.”
“Very good, sir.”
The office of the steward was run by Cyril Figgis, who managed the kingdom in my absence. It was overflowing with paperwork and charts, books and scrolls piled high on every flat surface. Cyril was desperately attempting to tidy things when Woodhouse and I walked in.
“Yo..you..your majesty,” Cyril stuttered, bowing low. Scrolls fell from his overloaded arms, spilling across the floor. He dropped to his knees and scrambled to gather them up. “I didn’t expect you to visit so soon. Please forgive the mess, housekeeping has been slacking…”
This was the guy who ran things while I was conscious.
“Shut up, Cyril” I said. “You’re responsible for everything in this office. That includes keeping it organised and tidy.”
“Y..yes milord.”
“It’s my understanding that you’re in charge of making sure everyone gets paid. So why aren’t we paying people?” I asked.
“We’re nearly out of Fuks, your majesty. I’ve been saving them for emergencies.”
“Fucks?”
“Fuks,” Cyril explained, pushing a pile of books off a large chest and opening it. Reaching inside he pulled out two small bags and emptied them on top of his cluttered desk. “Gold and Silver Fuks, the currency of the kingdom. I can’t maintain the kingdom when I have no Fuks to give.”
Behold the subconscious kingdom of Vincent J. Carter, it runs on Fuks.
“So how do I get more fuks?” I asked, examining one of the coins. It had an image of me on one side and symbol on the other that could be interpreted as “peace among worlds”.
“You kill the zombies, your majesty.”
Of course I do.
Woodhouse and I left Cyril’s office and headed towards the office of the chancellor where Krieger worked. It seemed that Cyril took over financial matters when Krieger became erratic and proposed luring all the zombies into the city and setting it on fire. Not sure how that corresponds to my own self-destructive behaviour, but I’ve had some dark thoughts over the last couple of months and I’m sure they’re reflected here.
Krieger’s office was much neater in comparison to Cyril’s, but it wasn’t by much. Shelves lined the walls and were filled with an array of questionable items, including a still snapping zombie head in a jar. While the office of the chancellor was supposed to be in charge of financial matters, it looked more like a dodgy rummage sale.
Krieger was launching sword blades at a pig carcass when we walked in.
“What exactly are you doing?” I asked, standing in the doorway.
“Hm? Oh, your majesty!” he said, turning around and bowing deeply. “I’m testing a new invention. It’s a spring loaded hilt that shoots sword blades. Very useful for our soldiers.”
“Stupidest idea ever,” I snapped. “I hate everything about it.”
“Okay,” Krieger said, tossing the hilt into a nearby pile of junk. “But don’t blame me when you need to shoot a sword at a zombie and don’t have one.”
“So why aren’t you managing the financial affairs? Collecting taxes, paying people, stuff like that?”
“Because the population has declined so much none of that matters?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wellll, the population represents things you care about,” Krieger said, going into lecture mode. “And the zombies and other monsters are real or imagined problems in your way. Since you don’t care about too many things the population has shrunk to just what’s needed to keep everything running on the bare minimum of fuks. And since you don’t seem to have any long or short term goals, there’s no need to kill off the zombies and get more fuks. Everything is fine just the way it is.”
“No, it’s not Krieger” I said, grinding my teeth. “My mind is in a shambles. It’s a joke. I want it fixed. No, I want it better than fixed. I want it improved.”
“Oh! I’ve got just the thing for that!” He said, digging around in his pockets, “It’s a spring-loaded hilt that shoots swords!”
Pam and Cheryl were hanging out a gallery window jeering at Archer and Lana sparring in the inner courtyard.
“What the hell are you doing!” I snapped
They whirled in surprise and then dropped into deep curtseys.
“Your majesty!”
I took a deep breath, trying to regain my centre. “Get to work cleaning this place up. Find a room, clean it, and move on to the next. Start with my bedroom, then the throne room and the council chamber, then everything else.”
Cheryl spoke up. “Can’t do it. We got no fuks to clean with.”
“You need fuks to clean?”
“Gotta buy stuff,” Pam said. “Cleaning supplies, food. You wanna eat, you’re gonna have to spend some fuks.”
“Talk to Cyril,” I ordered. “Tell him I said to get you supplied.”
They ran off in the direction of the stewards office.
I watched Archer and Lana bashing each other enthusiastically through the window.
Several minutes later the sparring couple stopped and bowed when Woodhouse and I stepped into the inner courtyard.
“Your majesty”
“My liege”
“Enough,” I said. “If you have enough energy to smash each other, you have enough energy to smash zombies. Tell me what I need to know so I can start gathering fuks.”
Archer shrugged and spoke first. “You just kill the zombies and other monsters. They drop fuks.”
“Anything special about the zombies?” I asked. “Are they fast? Do people get turned into zombies when bitten?”
“Nope,” Lana said, resting her wooden sword on her shoulder. “Most of them are slow shamblers and just need a good wack to the head to kill them.”
“Some are special,” Archer interjected. “Occasionally you’ll have some fast ones, or those that need holy water to kill. They’re just bad memories, figments of your personality that need to be eliminated. Some are worse than others.”
“The zombies are bad memories?” I asked, imagining all the bad memories that I had.
“Memories, thoughts, insecurities, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo,” Woodhouse supplied. “They are endless, but constant vigilance can keep them under control.”
“So let’s get started,” I said. “Lead the way.”
Lana and Archer lead me up to the parapet over the front gate where I looked over at the dozens of zombies milling about aimlessly in front of the entrance to my mind. Pulling out my gun, I began to pick them off, easy as shooting fish in a barrel. The crack of my spell pistol attracted more zombies and I dispatched them with ease until no more were left around the gate. As I fired each shot I could feel some sort of existential energy flowing from me, draining some hidden reserve.
“Gather up the Fuks,” I commanded. “And Lana?”
“Mi’lord?”
“There’s no excuse for this. From now on, I expect the walls to be clear of all zombies.”
“Yes mi’lord,” she said, giving me a small bow.
Turning to Archer, I shook my head. “You’re obviously my personal narcissism, so just try to stay out of Lana’s way, or better yet - try to kill more zombies than her. If you think you can.”
Archer scoffed. “No contest. I took top marks in sharpshooting.”
“That means I should expect to see results by tomorrow. I look forward to it.”
Archer looked panicked for a moment then smiled. “Sure, I can give you results.”
Turning back to Woodhouse I said “Show me what else need attending.”
Woodhouse led me through the town that represented my mind, pointing out each business that had fallen into disrepair, suggested others that needed improvements, and additions that would benefit me. In the distance, I could hear Lana and Archer shooting at the crowd of zombies and with each echoing shot I felt a tiny bit better about everything.
[INDEX]
submitted by TheDreadPirateRobots to redditserials [link] [comments]
I banked the fire and stared into the golden eyes of Beatale before I crept into my makeshift tent.
I still had my auric vision running and couldn’t help but notice the thin silver cord that ran from me to Horse. Firming up my aura, I reached out with my hand and grabbed it. I could feel the nearly imperceptible vibration between my fingers as I used my mind to probe at the thread. I could feel a bright spark of intellect, a light at the end of a tunnel. Pushing with my mind, I slid down the thread until the spark grew larger and eventually filled my inner vision with a hazy white light. Horsey thoughts nudged at me curiously.
I slid into the haze and immediately lost all sense of direction. If it wasn’t for the silver thread, I’d have no idea how to exit this shifting white fog. Horsey thoughts got stronger as I followed the thread while the haze thinned and cleared to reveal an endless prairie of green grass. I found myself standing before a naked man wearing a horse mask and I stared in shock. It was obviously me wearing a cheap costume horse mask — there was no mistaking my tattoos.
“What did you expect?” Horse neighed at me. “I am you and you are me and we are all together. Goo goo ga joob.”
Horse made a shooing motion with his hands and I accelerated backwards through the white haze and slammed into my own body with a gasp. I stared at the tarp overhead for a long minute, processing this new revelation. Horse was a part of me, a piece of my spirit. Whatever psychic stuff I did with that silver cord lead me into a house of mirrors where I got to look at myself pretending to be a horse. I can’t even deal with that right now.
Rolling into my blankets, I dropped off to sleep.
*Ding*
-=- - Welcome to the Dreamworld - Included in the Psychic Skills pack, the Inner Sanctum is your psychic domain. It is the mental fortress that you must secure and maintain to defend against psychic and spiritual assaults. All of your neurosis and fears are symbolised in this realm and must be defeated or subjugated before you can become master of the domain. Good luck. -=-
I banished the pop-up and looked around. I knew I was asleep, but everything was just as real as when I was awake. I was breathing, I could feel the floor under my feet, and if it weren’t for the pop-up, I would have sworn I had been teleported. The room I was in resembled an oversized luxury prison cell, maybe a thirty foot cube. No windows. Rough stone walls with thick mortar. Large brass wall sconces were set directly into the stone and suffused the room with a warm, golden light provided by glowing rocks. The stone floor had colourful Persian rugs tastefully placed. A high plaster ceiling was painted with a rendition of Michelangelo’s ‘Creation of Adam’, depicting me as both Adam and God.
There was a comfy sofa in front of a large screen television that hung from one wall and an ornate grandfather clock ticked loudly in the corner. It was currently 10:08 PM. Another wall was a floor to ceiling bookshelf, stuffed with books of varying sizes. The third wall was covered with pictures and I could see at a glance that they were images from my life. The fourth wall had a thick riveted steel door on the right side, a full sized mirror on the left, and a computer workstation in the middle.
The picture wall was my first target. A few were quite large, nearly life sized, while others were tiny prints no larger than the palm of my hand. Scenes of my life were displayed in each one. The largest was me riding Horse with a shit-scared expression, shooting at a pack of wolves. Others were smaller, each with different frames. Some ornate gold or silver, others plain wood, a few wrapped in briars or barbed wire. Nanny Ramsey holding me as a young child. My dog Jean with a red ball in his mouth. My parents, screaming at me. I turned my attention to the books. Books are safe. Books don’t judge you.
The sweet, musty scent of a used book store filled my nostrils as I drew close to the honey coloured shelves. Hundreds of volumes filled the wall from floor to ceiling, with a ladder that could be rolled along a rail to access the top. I smiled at the sight. I had always wanted a library like this. I pulled a book at random and read the title, “Confused Fantasies about Joseph Harris, part XXIV of the Middle School Years”.
I slid the book back onto the shelf. Let’s see what’s on TV.
The remote was a slim, futuristic looking affair with a minimum of buttons. I pointed it at the television and moments later the huge screen came to life and presented me with a simple menu for movies, divided into six categories: Happy, Surprised, Afraid, Disgusted, Angry, and Sad. I scrolled through the offerings for a minute, reading the titles and reviews about the movies of my life. It really bothered me that there were so few selections in the Happy section.
The number of Sad movies increased by one.
I walked over to the mirror and noticed there was a small sticky note pasted to it. “Astral Realm. Experienced users only.” I shoved the note in my pocket and stared at my image. Sturdy black boots, black denim jeans and shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, deep brown gun belt slung at my hip, red bandanna and black felt hat. All I needed was a pencil moustache and I would look like the stereotypical villain in any spaghetti western. At that very moment I decided to grow out a goatee. I’d rather be mistaken for a bad guy than a victim.
So how does this astral realm thing work?
The mirror appeared to be nothing more than a mirror. It was cold, smooth glass surrounded by a wrought iron frame, and reflected my image. I didn’t necessarily want to go walking into danger, but I wanted to know how it worked. I pushed and prodded the glass in frustration until I noticed my image grinning at me. I jumped back in surprise and it doubled over in silent laughter.
“Hilarious, dude. You got me,” I huffed. “So how do I get in?”
My mirror-self tipped his hat and stepped to side.
I reached up to the mirror again and my hand passed through, vanishing as if cut off. Okay, just a quick peek and we’ll explore the rest of the room. I stepped through and the world shifted around me. I was standing back at the campsite. My body was insubstantial as a ghost and the tarp was a wisp of substance running straight through me. Non living things don’t seem to have much presence in this realm. Glancing down, I saw my sleeping body rolled up in the blankets, a thin silver thread running from it to me, and another thread running to Horse.
Looking around, I surveyed the campsite. My astral vision seemed to be on and had an unlimited range. I could see the life all around me, the distant forest was a sea of greenish-gold, grasses and brush nearby glowed with spectral light. Tiny ghost insects scurried while ghost mice nibbled at whatever ghost mice nibble on. Ghost seeds and ghost insects, I suppose. I turned my attention overhead and gaped at the sight of a monstrous serpentine spirit flying through the inky void. I dropped back through the tent and rolled inside my body. That was plenty enough for now.
I rolled through the mirror and landed flat on my back, staring at the fresco on the ceiling. Vinnie-God winked at me and Vinnie-Adam grinned. Climbing to my knees, I brushed non-existent dust from my trousers and watched mirror-me doubled over in soundless laughter.
“Hey, laughing-boy!” I yelled at him. “You’re like the guardian or something, right? You got it covered?”
Mirror-me stood and saluted with a smile, then gave me two thumbs up. A moment later, his face took on a serious expression and he wriggled his right hand in the ‘maybe’ motion. Then he pointed at me, tapped his wrist, and then a finger to his head.
It all depends on how fast I learn stuff, I guess.
Two thumbs up and a winning smile reflected back to me.
A large cork board was mounted to the wall over the computer and a small note was pinned to it. “Note to self: Don’t fuck with the Elvish womens.”
The computer screen featured a screensaver of me as Vitruvian Man doing callisthenics over the words ‘HumanOS’. I tapped the spacebar and was rewarded with the sound of powerful fans kicking to life as the computer emerged from sleep mode and prompted me for a password. Should I assume it’s the same as the password on the computer I pawned in my previous life?
Password: *******esi
I was rewarded with a sweet R&M desktop and a couple of icons. System, NeuralNet, My-Tunes, My-Movies, My-Office.
System was just what I expected, lots of .dna files and other confusing scariness that allowed me to tweak my physical body and mental state. My-Tunes was a collection of every song I’d ever heard and My-Movies was a collection of every movie I’d ever seen. Not that I’m complaining, but it would have been nice to have “My-Games” so I could play RDR. My-Office was a clone of the popular software by a similar name. I have no idea what I’ll ever need a spreadsheet for in this world.
NuralNet opened up a search engine called Me-Seeks, featuring a familiar blue guy.
I typed in “beer” and several thousand results were displayed, anything I’d ever read, heard, or watched about beer, including how to make it. This right here made the price of admission totally worth it, access to an exact copy of everything I’d ever read, and I was a voracious reader. Sadly, most of the stuff I read was futurology — solar panels, electronics, biotech advancements, quantum computing. The material for steam engines, blacksmithing, farming and the like, were slim pickings. That’s okay though, I could still reproduce the Gutenberg press, the cotton gin, simple internal combustion engines, and basic batteries along with some sketchy knowledge of metal alloys, acids, bases, and other things I had read over the years. All that wasted time watching “How Things Work” was finally going to pay off. I copied a few likely money makers to My-Office, saved the file, and exported to my Notes, just in case they didn’t exist on Aerth.
A popup covered the screen.
📱 [New Upgrade Available!] 📱
🎉 Enhance Your Experience with the Latest HumanOS Features! 🎉
🌟 Features Include:
- 🧠 Memory Booster: Increase your Memory for smoother multitasking and improved performance.
- 🔋 Energy Optimizer: Extend your battery life with advanced power-saving techniques.
- 🛠️ Utility Upgrades: Access new apps and utilities to enhance your daily life and adventures.
- 🗺️ Advanced Mapping: Never get lost again with enhanced GPS and location tracking.
[Upgrade Now ✅] [Remind Me Later ❌]
Apparently I could upgrade myself, which reduced the cost of using my Utilities while providing other minor benefits. My Utilities would level up as I used them, which would increase their battery cost, so if I didn’t keep pace with an update to the OS they could become prohibitively expensive to operate.
Stupid pay-to-win world.
So, do I pay 2000 credits for version 2.0 or 5000 credits for version 3.0?
I selected version 3.0 and klicked [Install]. After watching it download the update, it popped up another screen that asked if I wanted to update now, or wait until Midnight for the mandatory update.
I selected [No] just as the grandfather clock chimed 10:30 PM. I wondered if time ran slower in here, because it seemed like I had spent a lot more time on the computer than 15 minutes. Walking over to the imposing steel door, I noticed a bronze key with a thin chain in the lock. There was another sticky note on the door. “Subconscious. Please keep the key with you at all times.”
That’s not scary at all, is it?
I unlocked the door with a loud clunk and pulled it open to reveal a bedroom straight out of some royal castle. I could tell immediately that it had seen better days. The tapestries on the wall were frayed and fading. The canopy over the bed had a few holes in it. A thin layer of dust covered the mantle of a small fireplace set into the wall. There was a window letting in bright sunlight and I moved over to look outside.
I was on the third floor of a keep surrounded by the walls and turrets of a modest castle. A castle that had fallen into serious disrepair. Did this represent the state of my inner mind? One tower was shattered and the curtain wall under it damaged. The lower bailey was full of litter. I could see a few soldiers walking around the allure, keeping watch.
I have people in my subconscious?
Someone behind me cleared their throat.
Whirling, I discovered a familiar old man standing in the door of the bedroom. What was left of his hair formed a white halo around his head, his face was unshaven and covered with several days of growth. He was dressed like a poor and tattered manservant, but carried himself with a dignified air.
“Woodhouse?”
“It’s nice to see the master at home,” He said with a proper English accent. “There are many matters that require the master’s attention.”
“Uh, sure,” I said, hanging the key around my neck and tucking it in my shirt. “And who are you again?”
“Your personal manservant, of course” he said with a slight bow. Walking over to the steel door, he pulled it closed and it locked with a solid thunk. “Master should always keep his inner sanctum closed. One never knows if something nasty will creep in.”
“Thank you, uh, Woodhouse. I’ll remember that,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “So what needs tending and how do things work around here?”
He smiled and beckoned me with a white gloved hand. “If master would be so kind as to follow me, I’ll introduce him to the staff and explain the duties and obligations of his domain.”
I’m 99.9% certain that everyone here is just me wearing a mask, so I shrugged and followed Woodhouse out of the bedroom and into the rest of my subconscious.
Five minutes later I was on the ground floor and seated on a shabby throne with the cast of a popular —and probably very copyright protected— animation in front of me. Woodhouse was the head butler and my personal manservant. Pam was the cook and demanded that I start importing sugar and alcohol before she was shushed by Woodhouse. Carol was a maid. Krieger was chancellor and Cyril was the steward. Archer and Lana were in charge of security. Ray was the marshal in charge of everything from the stables to the blacksmith.
I stared in disbelief at the motley crew kneeling in front of me. No wonder my inner mind was in such shambles. I was overcome with an irrational sense of anger at myself.
“Arright, listen up,” I barked, my voice echoing around the room. “I swear to God that I will fire every single one of you and hire circus clowns to replace you if you keep fucking things up. No joke. Circus clowns, got it?”
I ran a hand over my face as Ray pissed himself. “The only reason I’m not putting a boot in your asses right now is because I realise that you’re aspects of me, and the people you represent are pretty damn good at their jobs when they give enough of a shit to actually do them. As a team, you’re dysfunctionally fantastic and always seem to come out ahead no matter the odds.”
Heaving a sigh, I continued. “Things have changed and I need to get my shit together. I’m going to need every one of you to pull your weight and help me help you. Get back to your duties, I’ll meet you one on one later.”
My subconscious caretakers scurried out of the room.
“I’ll have one of the maids tend to the piss,” Woodhouse assured me.
“Never mind that,” I snapped. “I honestly had no idea my mind was such a shit show. I’m very disappointed in myself.” I pictured the Angry, Sad, and Disgusted counters on my personal movies clicking up. “Show me what needs to be done and let’s get started.”
During Woodhouse’s walking tour, everything clicked into place. This was some altered version of Bodiam castle, a location that was on my bucket list of places to visit. The royal council room, located behind the throne room, contained a “living” tapestry on the wall that showed the castle and surrounding land in real time. The castle was located in the middle of a small lake, and a single wood bridge led to the mainland. A small town surrounded the lake and a wall encircled the town. Outside the wall, the land was an irregular patchwork of forest and field, with a stinking swamp to the south. The entire “kingdom” was maybe ten miles across, surrounded by impassable mountains with innumerable creeks that fed the lake which drained into the southern swamp.
“Zombies are the problem, sir.” Woodhouse said, as I surveyed the living tapestry of my mental domain.
“Zombies?” I prompted.
“Yes sir, Zombies” Woodhouse continued. “Nasty bitey things that come in from the mountains and harass the peasants. They’ve gotten especially worse over the last few months. The soldiers do what they can, but they seem to have lost all motivation. Probably because they haven’t been paid.”
“And who pays them?”
“Typically chancellor Krieger is in charge of financial matters, although Steward Figgis has taken over the duty, sir.”
“Then let’s make Figgis our first stop.”
“Very good, sir.”
The office of the steward was run by Cyril Figgis, who managed the kingdom in my absence. It was overflowing with paperwork and charts, books and scrolls piled high on every flat surface. Cyril was desperately attempting to tidy things when Woodhouse and I walked in.
“Yo..you..your majesty,” Cyril stuttered, bowing low. Scrolls fell from his overloaded arms, spilling across the floor. He dropped to his knees and scrambled to gather them up. “I didn’t expect you to visit so soon. Please forgive the mess, housekeeping has been slacking…”
This was the guy who ran things while I was conscious.
“Shut up, Cyril” I said. “You’re responsible for everything in this office. That includes keeping it organised and tidy.”
“Y..yes milord.”
“It’s my understanding that you’re in charge of making sure everyone gets paid. So why aren’t we paying people?” I asked.
“We’re nearly out of Fuks, your majesty. I’ve been saving them for emergencies.”
“Fucks?”
“Fuks,” Cyril explained, pushing a pile of books off a large chest and opening it. Reaching inside he pulled out two small bags and emptied them on top of his cluttered desk. “Gold and Silver Fuks, the currency of the kingdom. I can’t maintain the kingdom when I have no Fuks to give.”
Behold the subconscious kingdom of Vincent J. Carter, it runs on Fuks.
“So how do I get more fuks?” I asked, examining one of the coins. It had an image of me on one side and symbol on the other that could be interpreted as “peace among worlds”.
“You kill the zombies, your majesty.”
Of course I do.
Woodhouse and I left Cyril’s office and headed towards the office of the chancellor where Krieger worked. It seemed that Cyril took over financial matters when Krieger became erratic and proposed luring all the zombies into the city and setting it on fire. Not sure how that corresponds to my own self-destructive behaviour, but I’ve had some dark thoughts over the last couple of months and I’m sure they’re reflected here.
Krieger’s office was much neater in comparison to Cyril’s, but it wasn’t by much. Shelves lined the walls and were filled with an array of questionable items, including a still snapping zombie head in a jar. While the office of the chancellor was supposed to be in charge of financial matters, it looked more like a dodgy rummage sale.
Krieger was launching sword blades at a pig carcass when we walked in.
“What exactly are you doing?” I asked, standing in the doorway.
“Hm? Oh, your majesty!” he said, turning around and bowing deeply. “I’m testing a new invention. It’s a spring loaded hilt that shoots sword blades. Very useful for our soldiers.”
“Stupidest idea ever,” I snapped. “I hate everything about it.”
“Okay,” Krieger said, tossing the hilt into a nearby pile of junk. “But don’t blame me when you need to shoot a sword at a zombie and don’t have one.”
“So why aren’t you managing the financial affairs? Collecting taxes, paying people, stuff like that?”
“Because the population has declined so much none of that matters?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wellll, the population represents things you care about,” Krieger said, going into lecture mode. “And the zombies and other monsters are real or imagined problems in your way. Since you don’t care about too many things the population has shrunk to just what’s needed to keep everything running on the bare minimum of fuks. And since you don’t seem to have any long or short term goals, there’s no need to kill off the zombies and get more fuks. Everything is fine just the way it is.”
“No, it’s not Krieger” I said, grinding my teeth. “My mind is in a shambles. It’s a joke. I want it fixed. No, I want it better than fixed. I want it improved.”
“Oh! I’ve got just the thing for that!” He said, digging around in his pockets, “It’s a spring-loaded hilt that shoots swords!”
Pam and Cheryl were hanging out a gallery window jeering at Archer and Lana sparring in the inner courtyard.
“What the hell are you doing!” I snapped
They whirled in surprise and then dropped into deep curtseys.
“Your majesty!”
I took a deep breath, trying to regain my centre. “Get to work cleaning this place up. Find a room, clean it, and move on to the next. Start with my bedroom, then the throne room and the council chamber, then everything else.”
Cheryl spoke up. “Can’t do it. We got no fuks to clean with.”
“You need fuks to clean?”
“Gotta buy stuff,” Pam said. “Cleaning supplies, food. You wanna eat, you’re gonna have to spend some fuks.”
“Talk to Cyril,” I ordered. “Tell him I said to get you supplied.”
They ran off in the direction of the stewards office.
I watched Archer and Lana bashing each other enthusiastically through the window.
Several minutes later the sparring couple stopped and bowed when Woodhouse and I stepped into the inner courtyard.
“Your majesty”
“My liege”
“Enough,” I said. “If you have enough energy to smash each other, you have enough energy to smash zombies. Tell me what I need to know so I can start gathering fuks.”
Archer shrugged and spoke first. “You just kill the zombies and other monsters. They drop fuks.”
“Anything special about the zombies?” I asked. “Are they fast? Do people get turned into zombies when bitten?”
“Nope,” Lana said, resting her wooden sword on her shoulder. “Most of them are slow shamblers and just need a good wack to the head to kill them.”
“Some are special,” Archer interjected. “Occasionally you’ll have some fast ones, or those that need holy water to kill. They’re just bad memories, figments of your personality that need to be eliminated. Some are worse than others.”
“The zombies are bad memories?” I asked, imagining all the bad memories that I had.
“Memories, thoughts, insecurities, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo,” Woodhouse supplied. “They are endless, but constant vigilance can keep them under control.”
“So let’s get started,” I said. “Lead the way.”
Lana and Archer lead me up to the parapet over the front gate where I looked over at the dozens of zombies milling about aimlessly in front of the entrance to my mind. Pulling out my gun, I began to pick them off, easy as shooting fish in a barrel. The crack of my spell pistol attracted more zombies and I dispatched them with ease until no more were left around the gate. As I fired each shot I could feel some sort of existential energy flowing from me, draining some hidden reserve.
“Gather up the Fuks,” I commanded. “And Lana?”
“Mi’lord?”
“There’s no excuse for this. From now on, I expect the walls to be clear of all zombies.”
“Yes mi’lord,” she said, giving me a small bow.
Turning to Archer, I shook my head. “You’re obviously my personal narcissism, so just try to stay out of Lana’s way, or better yet - try to kill more zombies than her. If you think you can.”
Archer scoffed. “No contest. I took top marks in sharpshooting.”
“That means I should expect to see results by tomorrow. I look forward to it.”
Archer looked panicked for a moment then smiled. “Sure, I can give you results.”
Turning back to Woodhouse I said “Show me what else need attending.”
Woodhouse led me through the town that represented my mind, pointing out each business that had fallen into disrepair, suggested others that needed improvements, and additions that would benefit me. In the distance, I could hear Lana and Archer shooting at the crowd of zombies and with each echoing shot I felt a tiny bit better about everything.
[INDEX]
2024.06.01 13:12 Motormommy Has anyone looked at the div class differences on dmaorg site? Reordering the 25 Clancy posts - the last post could be Nico- 024 02MOON 25
 | I noticed something on the dmaorg site- that the posts each have different formatting according to 5 "div class" sections. The formatting really isn't that different in each class and it doesn't seem to be connected to the various file types that are posts. (this was examined using a lot of help from the dmaorg fan wiki which already had the letters typed and I copied and pasted them.) submitted by Motormommy to twentyonepilots [link] [comments] We know it's a cycle, it has happened again and again. What if the moon dates don't order as our actual dates do? There were 5 timeframes for the posts- the ones that were already there when the site was found or shortly after, the ones that were posted just before/during the trench era, the ones that were posted after the files were terminated and the site was restored (during scaled and icy) and the ones that were posted ahead of Clancy. If we reorder the 25 Clancy posts by their div classes (putting class 1 first, then 2, etc.), it puts the yellow stripe picture right before the letter it decodes. We also get the 024 02MOON 25 last. And I just realized that this letter is not signed. What if it's a bishop describing recruiting banditos? What if a bishop is realizing he's not so different from them? That he once believed he was a citizen, an escapee, an exception? Is he following the torches to find the banditos? Spreadsheet I used to organize the posts Clancy Posts when Ordered by _Divclass CLASS 1: 017 07 MOON 16 Cheetah running gif 018 07MOON 08 _note.gif written signed I’ve made it out. I feel weightless. I know that place had always held me down, but for the first time, I can feel the levity that I had hoped for. It’s been three nights now, and my breathing has changed. It’s slower, and more full. It’s like the air out here is worth taking in. I can see it back in the distance, and I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t constantly on my mind. I wish I could turn that fear off, but maybe the further I go, the less that fear will affect me. I feel betrayed by what I assumed was home - if I ever end up back there, I won’t be able to look at it the same way. They are asleep. They’re so sure that they know the truth, and carry on throughout their day with the same meaningless tasks. They’ve forgotten to look up, and to look outward, to understand that this isn’t about ‘in there.' This is about ‘out here.’ This new world surrounds me. I used to think the walls back home were massive – these green cliffs engulf me, and place me right in the middle – Trench is quite precarious at times, and it’s easy to grow weary. But it’s real, and it’s true, and I’d much rather endure reality than to mindlessly be obedient to a life that someone else created for me. I’ve obsessed about this world for so long, that it feels more like home than anything I’ve experienced. Somehow, in this vast openness, I feel more protected than ever. The landscape feels endless, and I’ve found myself walking for hours without any true evidence of getting further down. But I’ve seen plants and colors out here that I’m not sure I’ve witnessed before. There’s a beauty in the strangest places, and the curiosity of what’s next continues to motivate me. I wonder who else is out here. If what I assumed inside is true, there’s got to be more like me. Sometimes I’ll feel a presence, or think I see something in my periphery, only to look up and see nothing. It’s just another thing that I’m afraid of that also excites me. It all just confirms all of the things that I hoped to be true for all of this time. I am out here and I am very alive. I’m sometimes scared, but always discovering something new, and I will not stop. Cover me!
17-35.4527.jpg typed signed I can’t face this page for long enough to write what I’m truly feeling. I am only wrought with more questions about what I assumed to be true, questions about what my own path is, and the question that has plagued me every night that I lie here, back in city: Did I give up? The force I saw between him and his bishop seemed tense to me, and frightening. But the memory of that exchange has had time to fester and replay in my mind long enough that I’m questioning if I even remembered it correctly. I assumed the bishop was forcefully retrieving his subject, but now I wonder if the bishop was actually trying to save him, and he refused. I stayed out there for five days after I watched it happen. I haven’t seen him since. Maybe he got away, and was still out in Trench with me. Maybe the bishop chased him down, and brought him home. Home? Did I just call this place home? After all of the endless beauty that I saw out there, am I now convincing myself that I’m actually better off within these confines? I admit, it was more difficult than I expected. Nothing could have prepared me for how much the ‘unknown’ can consume me. Vast landscapes and endless possibilities, yet coupled with endless danger. I became anxious. I became tired. I became hungry. Every step I took became harder than the last, jumping from jagged rocky step to step, or pulling myself through thick forest - it all became debilitating, and I was sure that I couldn’t go on. Keons approached as the sun rose one morning. I wasn’t scared. I was relieved. After all that he had taught me, his presence was the most comforting moment that I had in days, and I couldn’t help but be happy to see him. In true Keons fashion, he wrapped his arms around me, then put his hands under my face, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Clancy, child, let’s go home.” I’ve been here for a few weeks now, and while the routines of this world are comforting, and certainly easier than life out there, my mind keeps bouncing between the two places. Which one is home? Are the bishops protecting us, and the torches upon the hilltops dangerous? Or is it the other way around? My dreams pull me from world to world, and I feel lost in between all of it. There is still so much I do not understand.
Larger map of trench including voldsoy 024 02MOON 09 __ev-i-D__ence.jpeg typed and says signed but isn’t I'm not as scared as I used to be. Their mystery begins to fade as a method to defeat them becomes more clear. I no longer feel powerless. I can outsmart them. This new power of psychokinesis worked, and I believe it can work again. I stand here, looking down at the line where the water meets the sand - a starting line. All the while, knowing there is a finish line across the Strait. Their compass lies, but mine remains true. I've left embers of inspiration, I only hope whatever spark was left has grown to a torch, and together we create an inferno [SIGNED] - Clancy CLASS 2: 988 06MOON 18 cla_ncy-98806MOON_18_-1 jpg typed signed CLANCY_S JOURNAL The perplexities of the Dema horizon didn't occur to me until my ninth year. It was then that I began to contemplate the existential, and decide what type of impression I wanted my life to make. Naturally, to fuel my hope, I looked out upon the distance of the land that had cultivated me, only this time with a new awareness of the obstruction that my youthful ignorance had allowed me to overlook. Was it there the whole time? How had I not seen something so obvious? I am reminded of the moment daily, as the idealization directly collides with a unique hope for my own future. As a child, I looked upon Dema with wonder, today, I am wrought with frustration, as I spend each day squinting for a glimpse of the top of the looming wall that has kept us here. It was upon my ninth year that I learned that Dema wasn’t my home. This village, after all of this time, was my trap. Before I became realized, I had deep affection for Dema. There was a wonderful structure to the city that put my cares to rest. Streets and locations were dependable, and the responsibilities of the day seemed to be accomplished with minimal effort. Once a task was taught and understood, we delighted in our ability to complete our obligations timely, and felt secure in knowing tomorrow’s duties would be accomplished with the same efficiency. We all worked to represent our bishop with honor, and knew that each inhabitant of our region had a like-minded dedication to consistency. Keons embodied the spirit of this dedication. Of Dema’s nine bishops, Keons was revered as unwavering and forthright, possessing the ability to achieve focus that was rare for most on our region. We all admired him, and felt honored to be inhabitants his region. While we had heard legend of the ruthlessness of other bishops, Keons possessed a stoic demeanor unlike anyone I had ever met, and we were all proud to serve.
ba_dge jpg FPE citation 017 07MOON 17 Picture - trench - bandits 018 07 MOON 05 This entry is another letter from Clancy. The white squares on the outer edges of the image correspond to the letters "WAKE UP". It is titled _he_a_vy_.jpg typed, inverted, signed They’re asleep. The night took forever to arrive, and now we’re almost ready. We’ve studied the watchers and know that there’s no chance that we can step through unnoticed. So, instead of trying to hide ourselves, we’ll make sure that all of us are noticed. It’s been one year since the last convocation, and tomorrow’s Annual Assemblage of Glorified will be the biggest spectacle this concrete coffin of a city has seen all year. If we time it right, we’ll divert the attention of the watchers and finally take the step though. We’ve had no contact, but we’re hoping the other side will be able to find a way in. We’re not sure of the breach location, but we are willing to risk being smeared in order to find it. We know that we must go lower, and wait for the torches. They’ve never seen anything quite like this, and by morning, everything will be different. I’m terrified and excited, all at the same time. They don’t control us.
1619250308151109140519-Ø-919.jpg made me a weapon written, signed What is this thing? This device? This gift? Some sort of neurological connection or expansion. Psychokinetic weapon? This is absurd. Why was this given to me? Why am I the only one that can weild it? Was this the reason that I survived? My mind is racing as I wait here on the rocks - staring off into the darkness. Waiting for our torches to be mirrored - the signal he told me to wait for. It feels oddly familiar. Not the spikes in my hand, but the power it harnesses, I've felt it before. Is this also the source of those rumors I heard in the dark corners of the city? Legends and stories that I assumed were myth, inspired by children's nightmares - tales of what the bishops would use the bodies for. Those "honorable" citizens who acheived The Glorious Gone - referred to as available vessels. It all begins to make sense. The episodes I would have: the blood red vision, my dreams of flying, the out of body account of the rider in the river, the decaying hosts of the television show, the robed figures that commanded the doomed ship... Had we all been "seized" by the bishops using this same technique? Is this where their power comes from? Are they immortal, or just feeding off the next body, giving their hosts a brief second-life? I am in my original life, why am I available to this control? This whole time I thought I was battling my inner self. Was I actually under assault for something else? someONE else? This small eerie island has made me a weapon. We both believe that we can use it to change the momentum of this war. Now, we must return to the mainland where they should be there to recieve is. We will destroy and rebuild. Though it's been years since he last spoke with them, I hope they have not lost faith in The Torchbearers plan. But how could any of this have been planned?
009 12MOON 29 unnamed-(1).jpg d_e_ath__eat_erz Vultures on wall 011 07MOON 08 se__elf picture of kid 017 07MOON 07 017_07MOON_07 typed signed To refer to Dema as m[y] home has never felt accurate. Dema, t[o] me, has simply been the place that I’ve existed, or, the ‘slot’ they’ve put me in. I’ve heard stories abo[u]t the ide[a] of “home,” and its depiction has always seemed warm f[r]om the storyt[e]llers’s de[s]cription. [T]here was a romant[i]c ownership of the p[l]ace they inhabited that I admired, but cou[l]d never relate to. Thi[s] place, my p[l]ace, however, s[e]ems devoid of the romance and wond[e]r that the old stories tell. But somewhere between the iron order and infallible [p]recis[i]on of Dema, a hum of wo[n]der exists. It’s this quiet wonder that my mind tends to [g]ets lost in. This hope of discovery alone has birthed a new version of myself; A better version, I hope, that will find a way to experience what’s beyond these colossal walls.
I.jpg vulture gif turning head (actual dates?) 018 07MOON 06 _they_ca_ntseeFCE300.gif torch gif 022 03MOON 17 is-ø-lat-ed.jpg written, signed I haven’t had the ability to write for what seems like a lifetime. This deprivation is what weighed on me the most. Not the lack of food, or the change of scenery - they wouldn’t let me write anything down. Well, at least not without them present … I remember that day vividly. First, they let me out. Even though the hallway was still gray and drab, the new experience was a shock to my system - significantly different than usual captivity. I tried to match the rhythm of the nameless guard’s footsteps as we echoed down the long corridor. I followed close behind, as if I had no choice. Cold concrete encapsulated us and seemed to cast a spill of synthetic calmness. Obedience. We arrived at a blue door. It was an odd contrast to this concrete maze. As I went through the doorway, I found myself in another typical gray Dema room. The only difference was who was waiting for me. Four of them. Three of them were unknown to me, but one was clearly Keons. I knew his voice They proposed an idea. A television show - or whatever it was. I had no idea that I was known outside of my cell, but they informed me that I had garnered notoriety for my schemes and outbursts. They wanted to use my face for the benefit of the city. They handed me a pen - a familiar instrument. Yet, they must be present when I use it. They wanted to manage my imagination and vision. Although shackled, at least I could create again. Thus began the sessions. Everyday my cell door would open. I followed the guard down the familiar hall, through the blue door, to sit down at the desk and chair. My designated creative space - perfectly centered under their watchful eye. Sometimes three, sometimes eight - not once were all nine present. He was never there. I would have felt it if he was. At the end of the session, Keons would take my pen, gather my writings, and send me back. This went on for months. What were we creating? I wasn’t sure. A variety show with songs and set pieces? Were the rulers of this stifled city actually attempting entertainment for its people? Everything I created had to be “for the benefit of the citizens of Dema” a phrase I heard often. I didn’t question them - I was happy to be out of my cell - and putting words to paper. On the final day, I wrote the last line, I was asked to name it? The question caught me off guard. This seemed like a decision they would make. Show Day: They dressed me up and asked me to smile a poor attempt at hiding my sleep deprivation. It was all so colorful, as if compensating for the grayness of the city. It was a blur. Before I knew it, it was over, and I was back in my cell. I can only remember fragments - only blurred hallucinations of color and chaos - like a dream. The confusion of it all hangs overhead. What was it all for? … but it wasn’t over I guess it went well enough for them to request more of me. I was useful to Dema, and my creativity was exploited in new forms - They wanted me to be the entertainment at the Annual Assemblage of the Glorified - a performance at sea for the premiere citizens of Dema. I knew those weren’t the real bishops on that ship. I’ll quicken the entry - I need to keep up with the Torchbearer. During the performance, we were attacked by something in the water. I don’t know what possessed the creature to attack, but it was odd, and felt incredibly intentional. Many lost their lives in the attack, and I was thrashed through the bitter cold waves, yet somehow survived. Did this icy cold preserve me? Why was I spared? I am still so cold as I write. This place feels foreign - nothing like Trench. From the frigid sea, the air here is somehow colder than the water that surrounds it. I have a strange feeling that this island will provide answers. I must go.
__cla_im00FFFF letter, typed not signed I found a way in. A way they'll never suspect, and a way they'll never understand. Everything about our cause is so hard for them to understand, but so close to the hearts of the glowing resistance. I can reach them all. I can recruit everyone with eyes that see beyond the horizon. I can teach them. They can learn what I've learned, and fly by all of the constructs Dema has placed in front of them. We will take it back. CLASS 4: 017 02MOON 12 _ .jpg picture of yellow lines to mark “we are banditos” in next letter and numbers that spell trench 018 07MOON 01 e_sr_eve_r.jpg typed/ lines taped together signed A lifeless light surrounds us each night. Never could I imagine that something so luminous could feel so dark. It’s this glow that reminds us of the dreamless existence we’ve been sentenced to. But what I call a sentence, others accept as normalcy. How did they so efficiently eradicate the dreams within us? When the bishops instituted Vialism as mandate, they effectively reversed the hope that many arrived with. Am I the only one who realizes that we’ve been lied to? Am I the only one not afraid of the notion that the nine have hijacked our trust, and extinguished the hope that once motivated our existence? We used to close our eyes and picture a better life, now this city is full of dry eyes caught in a trance of obedience, devoid of any trace of an identity. The only significant light I’ve seen has been in the eyes of those smeared - such a curious sight, to see bright eyes strangled by the darkness of bishop hands. As their penance fades, so dims their memory of something more. My hope of something more is all I have in this rigid tomb, and I will not let it die.
2_1_2.gif inverse jumpsuit pic that matches shape of letter from 018 07moon08 022 03MOON 18 W-eap-@on.jpg image of psychokinesis / seize Keons CLASS 5: 013 01MOON 08 _ti_su_p map of dema compass missing _ti_su_p.png sev_ering__tiez 3 blanks 018 07MOON 05 _o__ut_.gif landscape 018 07MOON 18 Unalone.gif letter written and signed I can’t believe what I just saw. I'm still trying to understand. This whole time I was sure I was all alone - a single soul in this vast unknown world. But a few days into this trek, I looked down to see a figure headed the same way I was. I’ve tucked myself in these caves and crevices, trying my best to keep hidden, but he was out in the open, making his exhausted journey right down the middle of Trench. I was curious enough to follow alongside the path with him. He seemed unaffected by the fear of the unknown - the fear that tends to cripple me. To him, the terrain seemed familiar, as if he had been out here before. While lost in my curiosity, they appeared. I had heard about them back in Dema, but to my knowledge, the stories were merely myth. Ten, twenty, and then what seemed to be a hundred Banditos appeared upon the cliff, all looking down at him. He only stopped for a moment to look back up at them, and then continued on his way. His energy changed, and I wasn’t sure if he was frightened or encouraged by their ominous presence. They warned him of what was about to come. It was a blur. First seeing the figure, then the Banditos, only to now have my eyes opened to the oncoming Bishop upon a white horse drawing closer in the distance. The figure halted, and waited. When the Bishop stopped, I was sure he looked up, directly at me, so I hid deeper back in a cave. The presence of the robed rider seemed to paralyze the man. He stood still as he was approached, powerless as the outstretched hands smeared his neck. I had never seen a Bishop possess power like this. Keons had always seemed gentle and warm - this Bishop, at least out here, seemed like something else. So I ran, and I’ve been running for as long as my legs and lungs can handle. Maybe this note will be my proof that what I witnessed was not a dream. A million questions race through my brain. Am I not the only one traveling through Trench? I’ll travel a little further, and maybe I’ll get a moment of rest tonight. I may have made a mistake, leaving. This spot, between two places, is beginning to feel like an endless and hopeless abyss. At least Dema is a place that I know, and at times like this, I miss a lot about what I know. This will all be much tougher than I imagined. Nothing out here is familiar. I’ve witnessed the presence of others for the first time today, and I feel more alone than ever. Cover me.
_maniac_Clay typed letter, not signed These campfires feel like home, as I stare deeply into them, finding more and more clarity. They tried to tell us we were different. But the flame that burns inside of me is the same fire I've found on the hilltops of Trench. The Banditos have lived their rebellion, and a resistance is growing inside the concrete walls - one powerful enough to burn out all of the stale teachings, and usher in true hope and a path to actual life. We march in the morning. The revolution shall arrive with the sun. |
2024.06.01 13:00 WaveOfWire This is (not) a Dungeon - Chapter 2
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Ceele strolled through the damp grass along the outskirts of the village, a spring in her step and the dwindling scent of dew following behind. It rained yesterday, which had prevented her from going out to gather supplies, but the mild morning air had been accommodating enough for her to get an early start and make the trip. She was glad she did.
One hand clutched her new prize to her chest, while the other held a fraying wicker basket filled with herbs and some edible roots she gathered by exploring the forbidden forest. Despite her reservations regarding where she chose to go, her excitement now lingered like a steady thrum of shifting stones, giving her energy that defied how long she had been walking. She all but pranced beneath the burgeoning night's sky, gleefully toeing the line between the dirt pathways of the settlement’s outskirts and the trees of unclaimed land. Normally, her path back home would never be so close to the village, but she was far too gleeful to mind. She had come back with a sense of fulfillment and a rare object—or if not rare, then hopefully of great value.
It was hard to point to any one specific reason that she came across the orb. There had always been a ‘draw’ during her travels, urging her that there was something missing in her life, yet it was no more than a mild whim to walk in a particular direction more often than not. Once she reached this part of the continent, she was compelled to wander, never quite able to explain why she obliged the sensation besides having nowhere in particular to be. Even when she finally settled somewhere, it stayed in the back of her mind, suggesting that she was close to whatever would make the pit of vacancy go away. She ignored it, purposefully distracting herself with her work and responsibilities, yet that could only last so long. When she awoke this morning with plans to resupply, and all of her newfound spots had been picked clean by wildlife, she turned to the depths of the forest where she was warned not to tread. It was all too easy to follow the subtle tug in her chest through the loose justification.
The urge to be somewhere grew unbearable with every step closer to the forbidden area. That sense of having a direction she needed to go became stronger and stronger, until she was well into land long since forgotten. She came across an overgrown depression in the hillside, and was entranced by the foreboding image. Something about the cave just…beckoned her. She was far too weak to resist.
Horrible tales echoed into her ears as whispers of fearful voices, warning and unending, yet but a dull drone compared to her hammering heart. She navigated the trees and brushed aside unkempt vines, stepping into the cavern with a mix of expectation and trepidation, then laid eyes on the small obsidian stone perched atop a crumbling pillar. The feeling of needing to travel somewhere…stopped.
The pull was absent, which was why she held the orb close instead of placing it into her basket. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but she recalled overheard tales of hidden gemstones, deep cavernous expanses, and the untold terrors that lay within. Comparing the scenes of those fables to the cave seemed foolish now; it wasn’t some torturous chamber, but a dusty depression in a small hillside. Besides, anything this pretty was sure to be worth a fair sum, and she needed the coin. Yet the thought of selling the precious-looking stone was a conflicting one. She shook off the thought for the time being, turning her attention back towards where she was going.
Shadows stretched and faded as the moon stole the last of the illumination afforded by the sun, replacing it with a calming glow that caressed the log frames and thatched roofs of various homes. A star-filled sky came into prominence as clouds lazily drifted away, revealing the promise of tomorrow’s fair-weathered arrival. It was too late for anyone to notice her treading on the edge of their town while lost in thought, but she was still careful not to get too close to the houses or livestock pens where people might be finishing the evening’s duties. It was best that they didn’t see her returning from a place she was told not to go. Still, her feet carried her near the dwellings as she took in the noises.
Ceele enjoyed the comforting chatter from a distance. Indistinct words floated freely. Meaningless gossip and warm goodbyes were exchanged between friends and family. Places of various occupations were dark and quiet, only the faint contented mewls and clucks of livestock coming from their pastures as they ate what was recently put out for them. No metal rang throughout the streets as it was struck inside a centralized smithy, no heated bartering came from an overactive trade house, and the crunch of dirt beneath transport or merchant wagons was absent, replaced by the rapid steps and yelps of children rushing to their homes before it got too dark out. It was all just gentle conversation and life drifting through the wind, taking the rustle of leaves along for the ride, just so she could hear it. Tranquil, in a word.
She wondered what it would sound like if she were yet one more voice within that crowd of kindness. Would it be loud like the larger cities? Would she struggle to maintain a thought with so many stray topics floating about? Would she once more yearn for the peace and quiet of solitude that she had grown used to, or would she immerse herself, free of judgment and laughing like the carefree young that scampered about? Did thinking about it even matter?
Her smile fell from its genuine intensity—still worn, but not as fully. She glanced downward as her stride lost its jubilant bounce, her tail losing its sway as her grey eyes examined the dry black scales that adorned her body against her wishes. It was the ugly hue of tarnished oil, unlike the skin of any other kobold she had met. Some had reds or greens, yellows or whites, while most were between a sandy tan or earthen brown. The rainbow of peculiarities was displayed by the lucky few, and she was one of them…
…Yet she was different in the worst of ways.
Even if she would rather any other colour, she supposed it was that way to make sure no one came near without accepting the unspoken risks. That was what her mother always said, anyway, though the woman hardly feared much of anything in her old age, and dedicated herself to giving her offspring all the love she had left to give—a perk of living a full life. She would always help her daughter bathe, complimenting the colour of what most were unnerved by. That was more than a decade ago now, however. Ceele’s parents had passed on while she was still young, and she took to travelling not long after, working at what she could to afford what little she needed. Never for long, though—just enough to get to the next town between where she was and where the urge to go lay. There were certainly moments she looked back on fondly, but the journey had taken its toll.
The crude material of her ‘dress’ was coarse, old, and heavy, but it helped ease the worst of spring's chill—even if it was more of a modified sack than proper attire. Still, it was all she had after the last of her clothing fell apart, and giving the repurposed material a name that reminded her of something else made it less uncomfortable to wear, somehow. It would have to do until she could afford a pitying seamstress or the like. Until then, she would pretend she didn’t look so desperate, even if it only highlighted her status and made finding work difficult.
But it did. The dishevelled garment was a far cry from the wonderful silks or breathtaking designs she had seen some women wear, harshly marking the distinction between herself and those of affluence. The clothing of commoners was also a leap in style and quality, so she couldn't say her attire was up to even modest standards. No matter how hard she squinted, and no matter how much she fantasized otherwise, she seemed every bit like the vagrant she was, down to the soil embedded in the curvature of her claws and the stains throughout her fabrics. She looked like a serf from the more oppressed lands, yet they too wore crude cottons, which said a lot about how she appeared to those who had never lived a life of servitude. It was obvious that she was an outsider. That she didn't belong amongst the rest. It made changing something as simple as her appearance all the more difficult; prospective employment always saw a young woman who seemed more likely to steal or swindle than make an honest day’s living.
There was one good twist of fate in recent memory, however, and she came upon the result of it after leaving the slowing bustle of the village behind. Her steps carried her through a small copse of trees on the outskirts of town, the small shaded path leading to the back of a large, carefully pruned clearing, a scattering of fruit-bearing trees providing even darker shadow than the already dim moonlight. She skirted along the aging fence on the border that kept predatory animals away, carefully hoisting herself over the barrier where a large vegetable garden she was responsible for tending resided. If one were to tell her she would be living in such an area several months ago, she would have smiled politely and walked away, yet here she was.
A modest, warmly lit home occupied the middle of the clearing, sitting front and centre when one approached from the village path. It looked quite cozy, surrounded by berry bushes that were just beginning to bloom as the last dregs of winter slipped away. A front patio displayed a nice table and well-loved chairs, the rustic appearance only adding to its charm as a place where friends and family spent the warm summer afternoons. A smithy to the left of the house functioned as an additional heated building during the colder months, but usually served as a storefront and to muffle the sounds of hammered iron, though that had become less common. An old stable was nearby, close enough to be accessible, but not so close as to disturb the once occupying animals with sounds of iron craft. It hadn't seen a horse in quite some time, apparently, so it was mostly a workshop for whatever tasks didn’t require fire or metal.
There was a long history attached to each little detail—from the scuffs along the wooden siding to the depressions in the ground where daily routine wore into the earth. Every fault suffered throughout the years was matched by a thousand quirks that made it feel welcoming, like the house itself was merely waiting for the next friendly face with one of its own. She knew that the inside of each building would look just as cared for.
Her concern lay outside, however. It was a comparatively miniscule space just barely visible through the sheltering trees, true, yet it was where her efforts turned into tangible results, and where a stranger’s trust was painstakingly repaid. Once overgrown grass had been laboriously trimmed, the weeds plucked and disposed of, and now nothing distracted from what she could claim she had done.
The small plots of rock-bordered soil had little buds of growing vegetables, a sense of pride never failing to bloom in her breast with the knowledge that it would be barren without her touch. When her troubles and concerns grew heavy, and fears of the future or spectres of the past loomed over her head, she could look at where she had brought life where it wouldn't otherwise be. Some days, that was enough. She smiled in appreciation at what was admittedly amateur work, the night’s sky helping to hide any inevitably made mistakes.
She enjoyed the sight for a moment longer, then turned to walk towards a neglected old tool shed that was well out of sight within the trees, far away from whatever warmth and comfort the larger house offered to everyone and anyone. She put a hand on the degrading wood of the entryway, giving one last sad smile at the garden as she dismissed selfish thoughts of taking the eventual harvest for herself. A breath cleared the uncertainty from her voice, and she pushed open the door.
“I'm home!”
= = = = =
It took a while for Altier to adjust to his situation, and even once he accepted that his mana wasn't being siphoned, he was still reeling from confusion. He had spent centuries with every year passing by without his notice, yet now he was painfully aware of each creeping second languidly dragging on with the expediency of growing grass. It was as disorienting as it was painfully nostalgic.
Time was something he was never good with, and it only got worse as a dungeon. He'd get lost in creating rooms, corridors, creatures, and whatever else needed doing, only pausing to watch or listen to the few adventurers he became interested in. There was a stint where he spent what felt like hours agonizing over new abilities or options while he let the system manage things in the background, though he supposed it might have been much longer. So many wasted days, yet he still hadn't managed to try everything he had gained access to. Some abilities were simply too niche, came with concerning titles, or held descriptions that made him wary. Anything with ‘Decay’ in the name was instantly ignored—he didn't need more reasons to fear his affinity, and from the few he took the effort to read through, they were always vile.
But his existence for the moment was no longer like those endless stretches spent pondering the minutiae of what would help his adventurers grow stronger. Now, he could follow the rhythmic sounds of footsteps and steady breathing that set a calming pace. They were someone else's, yes, but they contextualized how easy it was to slip away without the subtle noises of life that he had long since surrendered to help his family. Of course, there were more differences that he noticed since being removed from his crumbling cavern, and his sight was the newest change.
He never gave much thought to how far he could see before. Why would he? As a man, his world extended as far as he could fathom, yet was also confined to the room where he spent his days, and as a dungeon… Well, who was he to consider distance when an event happening miles away could be seen with a flicker of thought? Nothing was too far when it was within his creation. Or his ‘body,’ he supposed. Sadly, his entire perception currently consisted of the small sphere of his obsidian core, and maybe a finger's length beyond it—which is to say, not much. He could make out the fine details in the dirty burlap he was held against, and how pale moonlight slowly took over the blurred reds of sunset, but hardly anything more. It was all just frosted colours after a certain point, and he found it infinitely frustrating. He just wanted to peer beyond the haze and scaly hand holding him to confirm that the sky he remembered was still there. Alas, the sunlight faded at too quick a pace, yet one oh so agonizingly slow.
The ensuing darkness gave him nothing to do but think about where he was, not that he had any ideas. He was too curious about why he wasn't dead to bother much with his blurry surroundings after the soft-spoken kobold abducted him, thus why he only belatedly noticed how limited his worldview had become. There might have been a forest beyond his cave, but the greens and browns were gone, and the sounds of steps through brush was replaced by the distant din of a village. An idle curiosity pondered if he would recognize any descents of his ‘family tradition’ adventurers there, but he was being carried by what most considered a monster, so likely not.
That short musing was short-lived, however, and he brought his focus back to the matter at hand. He supposed he was being taken somewhere specific, but that was an obvious deduction, considering he was taken at all. The why of the matter was less so; for what purpose would someone want a Decay-aligned core? He hadn’t heard of them before…well, before he was made into one, but he couldn’t imagine many uses. Maybe he was being sold? His…kidnapper? His sudden companion seemed rather pleased by their discovery of him, so that might be the case, and it was morbidly amusing to think that a frail, sickly young man might one day become a coveted, highly valuable item. His abduction could also be a part of some cult’s nefarious activities, but he didn't want to think about that too hard. He experienced enough odd ceremonies from the adventurers who took the time to tell him their tales.
Either way, he wasn't in the dungeon anymore, and he couldn’t see where he was going. He tried to query his menu to glean an answer, but was met with a scrambled mess he suspected read ‘Synchronizing…’ and little else. It gave him a headache trying to make sense of it—which he didn't know was possible anymore—so he dismissed the text and distracted himself with blurs from whatever diluted senses he still had. There wasn’t much to observe other than the constant footfalls and the flicker of shadows on his companion’s burlap garment. They might have travelled through brush again, but it was too dark to really say for certain.
Eventually, there was something new. He heard an old latch rattle and rusted door hinges groan, then a shuddered clack that confirmed he was now in a building. His kobold acquaintance gently cooed at something before moving about the nearly pitch-black space, finally setting him down on a… He wasn’t sure what it was, besides old and wooden.
[D$#@m$n E@$*ded]
The headache from before became a blinding migraine that suffocated him under a flash-flood of suffering. Seconds passed in abject torture until it blissfully abated, the mental blinks clearing his mind enough to notice a change in his existence. Specifically, he could actually see something besides the rotting wood grain he was placed on top of.
And it wasn’t anything promising…
He was more or less in the centre of a room no bigger than twelve paces by maybe ten. Not a terrible size for a space, but it was clearly never meant to house someone. His resting place looked about as neglected as he surmised; it was an upturned feeding trough, he supposed, since calling it a table seemed too generous. The surface was rife with holes and degraded iron, so it was something that once saw regular use before being replaced and tossed into storage, never to see the light of day again.
Actually, most things in the room seemed to fit that description. The window shutters were installed with metal hinges that had since rusted them closed, the misalignment letting in a draft—and whatever weather was outside as well, most likely. A poorly carved bowl sat on the floor, the stain beneath it hinting that it collected any rainwater that slowly dripped from the leaky roof. The wooden floorboards looked old, splintered, and in need of maintenance or replacement, though an effort had been put into abrading it somewhat smooth lately.
A tiny and decrepit fireplace was to the left of the door upon entry, its brickwork slowly crumbling due to weathering and age. It was sized more for keeping the room warm during mild days than to keep away the frigid chill of night. Its base only held cold ashes, but there was a collection of deadwood and scraps nearby, so that would probably be rectified soon. A small wheel-less cart had been turned into storage against the opposite wall, some herbs and other foraged items stowed away in it for future use. Various things he remembered seeing his father and brothers use in the fields were scattered about, too. It was nostalgic to see, honestly, even if his recollections had blurred over time.
Bundles of tattered blankets formed a pair of nests in the far corner, the smaller of the two had a pile of rough plants nearby. That answered his silent pondering of the room's purpose somewhat, though he was pretty sure the bedding material was salvaged, and there didn’t seem to be any hay or padding underneath whoever was sleeping on it. He didn’t know what to think about the weeds; they were purposefully placed there, and whoever did so had taken the time to wash them, but it was still strange.
He couldn’t see a doorway besides the entrance, yet most of the hallmarks of residency were put where space could be afforded, however crude. All in all, he surmised that it was a gardening shed of sorts, and his new acquaintance apparently lived here. He wasn't sure what he was expecting when a creature he had only read about came into his dungeon, but it wasn't being brought to a rundown and decrepit shack for unknown purposes.
Even if he had been raised by parents who made a humble living at the best of times, and they had emptied their coffers for unsuccessful attempts to ease his ailments, his acquaintance's living space made him uncomfortable. His family's house was never anything fancy, true—it shared some of the worn qualities that inevitably gathered over the years—but it was never this bad. His home benefited from a father's touch keeping it robust and a mother’s love keeping it warm, whereas this place had seen neither in quite some time. Oh, there was evidence that such was once the case; a wall was adorned with carefully made and well-spaced hangers for the various gardening tools, though the implements themselves had become a victim of neglect. That being said, he could make out the fresh soil and recent scratches exposing furrows of silver, so they were seeing use again.
A scrape and clack of flint drew his attention to his kobold companion. They were kneeling in front of the fireplace, methodically sparking life back into a dead flame with twigs and dried leaves. A slow, steady breath into the reddened base illuminated its face with a dull orange glow, revealing its weary visage and the permanently etched smile that rested beneath its cold grey eyes. The black-scaled kobold looked tired, if he were to guess—much the same as Altier did when he spent countless days watching everyone living a life he could never have through the mossy window of his bedroom. He was probably humanizing it too much. Still, he was surprised by the muted pang of sympathy, and how he would feel much more than blithe curiosity after spending so much time alone in the crumbling crypt of his own making.
A mental breath cycled through him as he looked at the odds and ends yet to be observed. Hardly anything else was of note—everything else was degraded and neglected, too. He did notice a nest of blankets move though, which was as good a distraction as any. The answer to his previous ‘pile of weeds’ inquiry poked a tiny nose from a crease in the fabric, then rapidly pawed at the blankets to dig itself out. Altier stared at the creature in both recognition and confusion.
It was a rabbit…or at least it looked like one, assuming you were to also describe a porcupine and a sea urchin as well. He was pretty sure he didn’t remember any hare that had jagged metal-tipped fur, nor that had said fur arranged into a row of spiked horns that flowed down its spine, terminating at a large fluffy tail, which was equally bizarre to see. The whole of its coat could double as a weapon, with semi-sharp barbs sticking off seemingly at random, yet he remembered an adventurer saying most animals used that sort of thing defensively. He increased his focus as he tried to make sense of the odd creature. Surely he would have heard about—
[Hoppittttttt#%%÷ — Ferro-o-orabbit-it (Ma%$le)
Abil—]
[Null]
[Er0Rrrrrrrr—]
[Und#$f—]
He bit back the pain caused by the sudden intrusion of his menu, blanking out the text and mentally retreating to hide from the source. Did he just inspect something? How? Shouldn’t his entire…‘framework,’ was it…? Yes, that was it. Shouldn’t that have been corrupted? Why could he see the creature’s information when his entire framework was damaged? That was the first ability he lost, so why is it the first to be functional? How was it functional? Was it? It did just spit garbled text at him, but it was something, and that was more than he had gotten from it in a very long time. If it was somehow working—no matter how poorly—then that left the question of why he hadn't heard of anything called a ‘ferrorabbit’ before, assuming he read that correctly.
A soft thud vibrated the tro— table, startling him out of thought. He turned his attention to the button nose wiggling erratically at him, the short, stubby muzzle leading to surprisingly expressive and curious red eyes. Dull brown fur jutted off in random tufts and patches, changing to a darker tint on its paws and the upper half of its ears, while the tips of its spikes were a muted hue of iron. It still seemed just as soft as the less pointed variety he remembered, if a touch dirty. Upright ears twitched this way and that way as its head vigorously shook, eventually settling on pointing in his direction when it calmed down enough.
It was apparent that he had its undivided attention…for all of a few seconds. His scaly companion called something out in their foreign tongue, and whatever conclusion the pointy-furred animal came to, it seemed more interested in the kobold, parting from him after nudging his core with its nose.
[Cre-e-e—]
[Errrrrrr0r: Undefiiiiiiii—]
[Acceeeeep-t-t-t??]
[Yeeee— s s / Nnnnnnn—]
He winced at the intrusion, but the contents detracted from the pain. He couldn’t remember the system ever asking him a question without his explicit intent being involved. It wanted him to…accept something? Was it the system prompting him, or the animal? What was he to accept?
[Creatuuuuu—]
[Acce-e-e-%#@ed!]
…What?
= = = = =
“Hoppit, that's not food!” Ceele admonished half-heartedly, placing a larger branch on the burgeoning flame before she got to her feet. She wasn’t actually that worried; the stone was as big as his head, and she was pretty sure he couldn't bite into it. Hopefully. “Come here, momma has a treat for you!”
The ferrorabbit playfully bumped the gemstone and jumped off the low table, landing with a soft thud that belied how heavy he was for his tiny size. He wiggled in excitement, his ears flailing and releasing a slight clack whenever the two connected. It got even louder when she grabbed her basket and put away the useful herbs, taking out a specific item that she had gathered just for him. The little bun wasted no time in scurrying over and standing tall on his hind legs to judge if the offered plant was to his liking—and it was, based on how he dug in with enthusiasm. She stifled a laugh as she contentedly watched him nibble away on the treat, ignoring the guilt that came with knowing she couldn't afford proper vegetables for him. He had a hard life too, and it tore at her to have so little to give.
She came across Hoppit a year ago, during a storm that worsened while she was travelling between towns. The day had darkened to night in spite of it still being about noon, but the weather didn't care for how bright it was supposed to be. Wind and rain became a typhoon, forcing her to seek shelter in a thankfully abandoned den of what was probably a larger animal. She was fine with waiting out the squall, since the stone roof over her head was more than she usually had back then, but the sounds of dull bangs and thuds near her hideaway was followed by cries of animals yelping in pain. Curiosity won over reason, and she left the safety of her shelter to see what was causing the disturbance. Truthfully, she was hopeful that she'd come across scraps or the like, her hunger driving her forward, and she could always turn back if it seemed dangerous. Yet when she arrived at the source of the commotion, she found herself thinking of anything but food.
Two predators had fought over a small burrow, both trying to dig out a meal and taking offence to the other doing the same. What they didn’t know was that they were assaulting the home of ferrorabbits. Specifically, the home of an angry, protective, and well-fed mother that was keeping her newborns safe from the storm when predators decided to try their luck. From the scene Ceele came across, it was certainly obvious why most people dislike trying to hunt the creatures.
Sadly, the rabbit didn't survive an attack from two predators, but she did make their victory pyrrhic; neither could do much about their hunger with their bodies full of cuts and holes, and it was only a matter of time before they succumbed to blood loss or infection. The mother's sacrifice meant that the babies had avoided the imminent threat, but they were left unattended as a consequence, and it took an opportunistic bird swooping down to shake Ceele out of her shock. Despite her subsequent hurry, she only acted in time to save one of the orphaned young. The warren was new and barely dug out, which meant that it didn’t take much effort for the kits to be found—by both her and hungry maws. All she could do was scoop the ball of fluff into her arms and run back to the cave before anything else tried to eat it.
In retrospect, it was a stupid decision for a number of factors. She barely had the resources to supply herself, and an attempt to raise offspring of any type would only make the inevitable heartbreak worse. But when she saw how quiet and scared he was… How his tiny, shaking body calmed in her arms, those terrified red eyes seeking comfort… She should have just walked away when she knew there wasn’t going to be anything to fill her stomach. She should have put the baby animal down and let nature take its course…yet the preciously furry face stole her heart far too quickly for it to grow so cold. The next day was spent backtracking to the nearest town to get him something suitable to eat, which used most of her meagre savings. Still, it was worth every coin.
Hoppit had been accompanying her ever since. He grew quickly, transitioning from something she saved that stormy night into a presence she had grown to love like a child. The little lagomorph would bounce along beside her during her travels, then ride in her arms as he rested—though the latter happened with worrying frequency as of late. She hadn’t learned much about the springy herbivores, but she knew enough to say that he wasn't as big as he should be, nor was his fur as sharp. No matter how startled he was, his spiky coat never managed to do more than stiffen slightly, which was apparently a side effect of poor diet, according to snippets of conversation she had overheard on the topic. She wanted him to be healthy, but she didn't know what he needed. Not many farmers raised ferrorabbits, and those that did were far away, so she didn’t have anyone to ask what she should be doing. Her best course of action was to give him what little she had.
Ceele was well aware of how he would be better off on his own, but he followed her whenever she tried to set him free. Hoppit just kept launching into her arms and wiggling his ears, ecstatic that he was with her again, uncaring that food was scarce and that they spent most of their days travelling. No amount of cold nights spent bundling up under the tattered blankets she managed to find ever dampened his spirits, and he was content to eat the grass or flowers whenever he felt like it, oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t getting enough nutrition. He would dig and excitedly drag back oddities that he found, and the one time he found a plant that looked particularly good for him, he insisted that it be shared with her.
A black pit still lingered in her chest when she recalled how pleased he was while he munched on the rare vegetable he discovered, then how distressed he became when she wouldn’t have any as well. He bumped and nipped at her, all but begging her to eat. His ears pinned back against his head, his fur bristled in a way she hadn’t seen since. It was only when she took a small bite and let him inspect the new teeth marks that he seemed to calm down, but perhaps she had been looking too deep into the actions of her tiny friend. All she could say for certain was that he was scared she was going hungry.
A morbid thought wondered if his first mother had refused food shortly before being attacked, and he—as small and simple as he was—had connected the two events in his mind, making him absolutely terrified that something would happen if Ceele didn’t have something too. All of that fear, and desperation overwhelmed him, just because she was happier watching him eat. She was determined to erase that issue. She would find something that needed a worker and earn enough to feed them both. One day, she would be able to smile at how big and healthy her little fluffy boy had become, but until then, it was becoming increasingly difficult not to think about how she was spending so much time growing vegetables and fruit that he couldn’t have…
Every morning was an exercise in tending to the gardens while actively shoving down images of a pleased ferrorabbit happily eating the results. That never went well; no matter how determined she was to complete her duties without a single selfish thought, most tasks were done while picturing his full belly and delighted bounces. There were a few weeks until the fastest of the crops would be ready for harvest, and Ceele would have to collect them while fighting the urge to bring back just a few for him.
She couldn’t, because she knew exactly how quickly that could escalate. It would start small—A vegetable here, a fruit there—but seeing Hoppit happy was one of the precious few good things she had in her life. Crossing the line would only become easier each time. They couldn’t risk losing their new home over greed, and she was already betraying the trust given to her by housing a wild animal, especially one known to be a pest for crops. She didn't want to know how angry it would make her benefactors if she was caught taking their vegetables for one.
No matter how tame and precious Hoppit was, and no matter how well he listened, they would only see him as the same creature that ruined harvests in droves. Thus was why she had to tell him to stay cooped up by himself while she was working or scavenging. And to her surprise, he did.
Honestly, she had made the initial request with the expectation of needing to carry him back into their home until he understood that she wasn’t leaving him forever. There wasn’t much she could do to stop the ferrorabbit from digging through the old wooden building if he wanted to get out. He wouldn’t need to damage anything either—a rotting board on the door only needed a little push to nudge it out of the way, and his natural curiosity made sure he was aware of it. But no, Hoppit was well-behaved as always, keeping hidden until she walked through the door, where he would leap from the shadows to personally show her how good he was and how he stayed put like she asked him to. It never stopped amazing her that he had such a surprising level of understanding despite being an animal, and that was to say nothing of how young he was.
All that intelligence, joy, and companionship he offered her…and yet the best she could give back to him was the weeds from the garden and the odd plant she found while scavenging…
Soft clacks of flicking ears dragged her from her pondering, her mind returning to the present. Hoppit finished his treat of the small plant, then bounced in place and scurried over to his bowl of water, perfectly happy to have eaten only that. He was so joyful with how little she provided, approaching every day of scarcity with the same enthusiasm she could never muster, as if certain that everything would be alright.
“It’s bedtime, Hoppit,” Ceele announced through a soft sigh, stoking the fire with enough branches to hopefully last the night. The ferrorabbit perked an ear in her direction, then sat on his haunches to extend the rest of himself up, his two little forepaws adorably held to his chest as he inspected the room like he always did. She smiled and made sure everything was stored away, then laid down on her bundle of blankets, covering herself with the warmest one. Hoppit bolted over to snuggle once he decided everything in the shed was up to his standards, throwing himself to the floor in a dramatic flop of comfort. Her quiet laughter subsided as they both settled in for the night, her tail completing the rabbit’s encompassing cuddle, but her eyes fell towards the obsidian orb on the table, her thoughts following suit.
It sat there, just as she left it, as benign as anything else ever placed atop the improvised furnishing. Yet there was a sense of ease and purpose as well. The old wooden trough seemed…important with its adornment firmly laid upon its surface, and she couldn’t puzzle out why. She was starting to doubt her earlier excitement.
Should she sell it? Would anyone know where it came from? Would anyone know what it was, or if it was worth anything? If she could get even a modest sum for it, she would be able to buy clothing, food, and new bedding. It would be easier to convince someone to give her work if she was dressed better and wasn’t so thin, and then she would have the income to slowly improve both of their lives. She could pay for a wandering merchant to ask a ferrorabbit rancher about the animal, even if it would take time to get back to her, or maybe she could hire a local if they needed to go near one for some reason. The cost didn’t matter to her as long as it happened.
But there was something else bothering her about the idea of selling the stone. She had travelled so far with a tug in her chest, only for the feeling of wanderlust to dissipate as soon as she held it. Was that a sign? She was never one for things like ‘fate,’ but a niggling doubt in her mind discouraged the idea of making a profit off her discovery. Even if what she could gain was so very tempting, and even if Hoppit would be happier if she did…
She tore her dampened eyes away and closed them, ignoring the burning trails running across her face. It would be another early morning, and she needed to sleep so she could take care of the garden. Decisions like this could wait. Once she had nothing else distracting her, and she had time to properly think about it, she would see how she felt about the stone.
Eventually, she dozed off with Hoppit pressed against her chest, and a longing in her heart.
Next
—
A/N: Patreon and Ko-fi will be 1 chap ahead this time around, and I've set it so everything from the lowest tier up can read the newest trashfire! Anything above that is sheer show of love. Hope you enjoyed!
submitted by WaveOfWire to HFY [link] [comments]
PRs: u/anakist & u/BroDogIsMyName
- - - - -
Ceele strolled through the damp grass along the outskirts of the village, a spring in her step and the dwindling scent of dew following behind. It rained yesterday, which had prevented her from going out to gather supplies, but the mild morning air had been accommodating enough for her to get an early start and make the trip. She was glad she did.
One hand clutched her new prize to her chest, while the other held a fraying wicker basket filled with herbs and some edible roots she gathered by exploring the forbidden forest. Despite her reservations regarding where she chose to go, her excitement now lingered like a steady thrum of shifting stones, giving her energy that defied how long she had been walking. She all but pranced beneath the burgeoning night's sky, gleefully toeing the line between the dirt pathways of the settlement’s outskirts and the trees of unclaimed land. Normally, her path back home would never be so close to the village, but she was far too gleeful to mind. She had come back with a sense of fulfillment and a rare object—or if not rare, then hopefully of great value.
It was hard to point to any one specific reason that she came across the orb. There had always been a ‘draw’ during her travels, urging her that there was something missing in her life, yet it was no more than a mild whim to walk in a particular direction more often than not. Once she reached this part of the continent, she was compelled to wander, never quite able to explain why she obliged the sensation besides having nowhere in particular to be. Even when she finally settled somewhere, it stayed in the back of her mind, suggesting that she was close to whatever would make the pit of vacancy go away. She ignored it, purposefully distracting herself with her work and responsibilities, yet that could only last so long. When she awoke this morning with plans to resupply, and all of her newfound spots had been picked clean by wildlife, she turned to the depths of the forest where she was warned not to tread. It was all too easy to follow the subtle tug in her chest through the loose justification.
The urge to be somewhere grew unbearable with every step closer to the forbidden area. That sense of having a direction she needed to go became stronger and stronger, until she was well into land long since forgotten. She came across an overgrown depression in the hillside, and was entranced by the foreboding image. Something about the cave just…beckoned her. She was far too weak to resist.
Horrible tales echoed into her ears as whispers of fearful voices, warning and unending, yet but a dull drone compared to her hammering heart. She navigated the trees and brushed aside unkempt vines, stepping into the cavern with a mix of expectation and trepidation, then laid eyes on the small obsidian stone perched atop a crumbling pillar. The feeling of needing to travel somewhere…stopped.
The pull was absent, which was why she held the orb close instead of placing it into her basket. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but she recalled overheard tales of hidden gemstones, deep cavernous expanses, and the untold terrors that lay within. Comparing the scenes of those fables to the cave seemed foolish now; it wasn’t some torturous chamber, but a dusty depression in a small hillside. Besides, anything this pretty was sure to be worth a fair sum, and she needed the coin. Yet the thought of selling the precious-looking stone was a conflicting one. She shook off the thought for the time being, turning her attention back towards where she was going.
Shadows stretched and faded as the moon stole the last of the illumination afforded by the sun, replacing it with a calming glow that caressed the log frames and thatched roofs of various homes. A star-filled sky came into prominence as clouds lazily drifted away, revealing the promise of tomorrow’s fair-weathered arrival. It was too late for anyone to notice her treading on the edge of their town while lost in thought, but she was still careful not to get too close to the houses or livestock pens where people might be finishing the evening’s duties. It was best that they didn’t see her returning from a place she was told not to go. Still, her feet carried her near the dwellings as she took in the noises.
Ceele enjoyed the comforting chatter from a distance. Indistinct words floated freely. Meaningless gossip and warm goodbyes were exchanged between friends and family. Places of various occupations were dark and quiet, only the faint contented mewls and clucks of livestock coming from their pastures as they ate what was recently put out for them. No metal rang throughout the streets as it was struck inside a centralized smithy, no heated bartering came from an overactive trade house, and the crunch of dirt beneath transport or merchant wagons was absent, replaced by the rapid steps and yelps of children rushing to their homes before it got too dark out. It was all just gentle conversation and life drifting through the wind, taking the rustle of leaves along for the ride, just so she could hear it. Tranquil, in a word.
She wondered what it would sound like if she were yet one more voice within that crowd of kindness. Would it be loud like the larger cities? Would she struggle to maintain a thought with so many stray topics floating about? Would she once more yearn for the peace and quiet of solitude that she had grown used to, or would she immerse herself, free of judgment and laughing like the carefree young that scampered about? Did thinking about it even matter?
Her smile fell from its genuine intensity—still worn, but not as fully. She glanced downward as her stride lost its jubilant bounce, her tail losing its sway as her grey eyes examined the dry black scales that adorned her body against her wishes. It was the ugly hue of tarnished oil, unlike the skin of any other kobold she had met. Some had reds or greens, yellows or whites, while most were between a sandy tan or earthen brown. The rainbow of peculiarities was displayed by the lucky few, and she was one of them…
…Yet she was different in the worst of ways.
Even if she would rather any other colour, she supposed it was that way to make sure no one came near without accepting the unspoken risks. That was what her mother always said, anyway, though the woman hardly feared much of anything in her old age, and dedicated herself to giving her offspring all the love she had left to give—a perk of living a full life. She would always help her daughter bathe, complimenting the colour of what most were unnerved by. That was more than a decade ago now, however. Ceele’s parents had passed on while she was still young, and she took to travelling not long after, working at what she could to afford what little she needed. Never for long, though—just enough to get to the next town between where she was and where the urge to go lay. There were certainly moments she looked back on fondly, but the journey had taken its toll.
The crude material of her ‘dress’ was coarse, old, and heavy, but it helped ease the worst of spring's chill—even if it was more of a modified sack than proper attire. Still, it was all she had after the last of her clothing fell apart, and giving the repurposed material a name that reminded her of something else made it less uncomfortable to wear, somehow. It would have to do until she could afford a pitying seamstress or the like. Until then, she would pretend she didn’t look so desperate, even if it only highlighted her status and made finding work difficult.
But it did. The dishevelled garment was a far cry from the wonderful silks or breathtaking designs she had seen some women wear, harshly marking the distinction between herself and those of affluence. The clothing of commoners was also a leap in style and quality, so she couldn't say her attire was up to even modest standards. No matter how hard she squinted, and no matter how much she fantasized otherwise, she seemed every bit like the vagrant she was, down to the soil embedded in the curvature of her claws and the stains throughout her fabrics. She looked like a serf from the more oppressed lands, yet they too wore crude cottons, which said a lot about how she appeared to those who had never lived a life of servitude. It was obvious that she was an outsider. That she didn't belong amongst the rest. It made changing something as simple as her appearance all the more difficult; prospective employment always saw a young woman who seemed more likely to steal or swindle than make an honest day’s living.
There was one good twist of fate in recent memory, however, and she came upon the result of it after leaving the slowing bustle of the village behind. Her steps carried her through a small copse of trees on the outskirts of town, the small shaded path leading to the back of a large, carefully pruned clearing, a scattering of fruit-bearing trees providing even darker shadow than the already dim moonlight. She skirted along the aging fence on the border that kept predatory animals away, carefully hoisting herself over the barrier where a large vegetable garden she was responsible for tending resided. If one were to tell her she would be living in such an area several months ago, she would have smiled politely and walked away, yet here she was.
A modest, warmly lit home occupied the middle of the clearing, sitting front and centre when one approached from the village path. It looked quite cozy, surrounded by berry bushes that were just beginning to bloom as the last dregs of winter slipped away. A front patio displayed a nice table and well-loved chairs, the rustic appearance only adding to its charm as a place where friends and family spent the warm summer afternoons. A smithy to the left of the house functioned as an additional heated building during the colder months, but usually served as a storefront and to muffle the sounds of hammered iron, though that had become less common. An old stable was nearby, close enough to be accessible, but not so close as to disturb the once occupying animals with sounds of iron craft. It hadn't seen a horse in quite some time, apparently, so it was mostly a workshop for whatever tasks didn’t require fire or metal.
There was a long history attached to each little detail—from the scuffs along the wooden siding to the depressions in the ground where daily routine wore into the earth. Every fault suffered throughout the years was matched by a thousand quirks that made it feel welcoming, like the house itself was merely waiting for the next friendly face with one of its own. She knew that the inside of each building would look just as cared for.
Her concern lay outside, however. It was a comparatively miniscule space just barely visible through the sheltering trees, true, yet it was where her efforts turned into tangible results, and where a stranger’s trust was painstakingly repaid. Once overgrown grass had been laboriously trimmed, the weeds plucked and disposed of, and now nothing distracted from what she could claim she had done.
The small plots of rock-bordered soil had little buds of growing vegetables, a sense of pride never failing to bloom in her breast with the knowledge that it would be barren without her touch. When her troubles and concerns grew heavy, and fears of the future or spectres of the past loomed over her head, she could look at where she had brought life where it wouldn't otherwise be. Some days, that was enough. She smiled in appreciation at what was admittedly amateur work, the night’s sky helping to hide any inevitably made mistakes.
She enjoyed the sight for a moment longer, then turned to walk towards a neglected old tool shed that was well out of sight within the trees, far away from whatever warmth and comfort the larger house offered to everyone and anyone. She put a hand on the degrading wood of the entryway, giving one last sad smile at the garden as she dismissed selfish thoughts of taking the eventual harvest for herself. A breath cleared the uncertainty from her voice, and she pushed open the door.
“I'm home!”
= = = = =
It took a while for Altier to adjust to his situation, and even once he accepted that his mana wasn't being siphoned, he was still reeling from confusion. He had spent centuries with every year passing by without his notice, yet now he was painfully aware of each creeping second languidly dragging on with the expediency of growing grass. It was as disorienting as it was painfully nostalgic.
Time was something he was never good with, and it only got worse as a dungeon. He'd get lost in creating rooms, corridors, creatures, and whatever else needed doing, only pausing to watch or listen to the few adventurers he became interested in. There was a stint where he spent what felt like hours agonizing over new abilities or options while he let the system manage things in the background, though he supposed it might have been much longer. So many wasted days, yet he still hadn't managed to try everything he had gained access to. Some abilities were simply too niche, came with concerning titles, or held descriptions that made him wary. Anything with ‘Decay’ in the name was instantly ignored—he didn't need more reasons to fear his affinity, and from the few he took the effort to read through, they were always vile.
But his existence for the moment was no longer like those endless stretches spent pondering the minutiae of what would help his adventurers grow stronger. Now, he could follow the rhythmic sounds of footsteps and steady breathing that set a calming pace. They were someone else's, yes, but they contextualized how easy it was to slip away without the subtle noises of life that he had long since surrendered to help his family. Of course, there were more differences that he noticed since being removed from his crumbling cavern, and his sight was the newest change.
He never gave much thought to how far he could see before. Why would he? As a man, his world extended as far as he could fathom, yet was also confined to the room where he spent his days, and as a dungeon… Well, who was he to consider distance when an event happening miles away could be seen with a flicker of thought? Nothing was too far when it was within his creation. Or his ‘body,’ he supposed. Sadly, his entire perception currently consisted of the small sphere of his obsidian core, and maybe a finger's length beyond it—which is to say, not much. He could make out the fine details in the dirty burlap he was held against, and how pale moonlight slowly took over the blurred reds of sunset, but hardly anything more. It was all just frosted colours after a certain point, and he found it infinitely frustrating. He just wanted to peer beyond the haze and scaly hand holding him to confirm that the sky he remembered was still there. Alas, the sunlight faded at too quick a pace, yet one oh so agonizingly slow.
The ensuing darkness gave him nothing to do but think about where he was, not that he had any ideas. He was too curious about why he wasn't dead to bother much with his blurry surroundings after the soft-spoken kobold abducted him, thus why he only belatedly noticed how limited his worldview had become. There might have been a forest beyond his cave, but the greens and browns were gone, and the sounds of steps through brush was replaced by the distant din of a village. An idle curiosity pondered if he would recognize any descents of his ‘family tradition’ adventurers there, but he was being carried by what most considered a monster, so likely not.
That short musing was short-lived, however, and he brought his focus back to the matter at hand. He supposed he was being taken somewhere specific, but that was an obvious deduction, considering he was taken at all. The why of the matter was less so; for what purpose would someone want a Decay-aligned core? He hadn’t heard of them before…well, before he was made into one, but he couldn’t imagine many uses. Maybe he was being sold? His…kidnapper? His sudden companion seemed rather pleased by their discovery of him, so that might be the case, and it was morbidly amusing to think that a frail, sickly young man might one day become a coveted, highly valuable item. His abduction could also be a part of some cult’s nefarious activities, but he didn't want to think about that too hard. He experienced enough odd ceremonies from the adventurers who took the time to tell him their tales.
Either way, he wasn't in the dungeon anymore, and he couldn’t see where he was going. He tried to query his menu to glean an answer, but was met with a scrambled mess he suspected read ‘Synchronizing…’ and little else. It gave him a headache trying to make sense of it—which he didn't know was possible anymore—so he dismissed the text and distracted himself with blurs from whatever diluted senses he still had. There wasn’t much to observe other than the constant footfalls and the flicker of shadows on his companion’s burlap garment. They might have travelled through brush again, but it was too dark to really say for certain.
Eventually, there was something new. He heard an old latch rattle and rusted door hinges groan, then a shuddered clack that confirmed he was now in a building. His kobold acquaintance gently cooed at something before moving about the nearly pitch-black space, finally setting him down on a… He wasn’t sure what it was, besides old and wooden.
[D$#@m$n E@$*ded]
The headache from before became a blinding migraine that suffocated him under a flash-flood of suffering. Seconds passed in abject torture until it blissfully abated, the mental blinks clearing his mind enough to notice a change in his existence. Specifically, he could actually see something besides the rotting wood grain he was placed on top of.
And it wasn’t anything promising…
He was more or less in the centre of a room no bigger than twelve paces by maybe ten. Not a terrible size for a space, but it was clearly never meant to house someone. His resting place looked about as neglected as he surmised; it was an upturned feeding trough, he supposed, since calling it a table seemed too generous. The surface was rife with holes and degraded iron, so it was something that once saw regular use before being replaced and tossed into storage, never to see the light of day again.
Actually, most things in the room seemed to fit that description. The window shutters were installed with metal hinges that had since rusted them closed, the misalignment letting in a draft—and whatever weather was outside as well, most likely. A poorly carved bowl sat on the floor, the stain beneath it hinting that it collected any rainwater that slowly dripped from the leaky roof. The wooden floorboards looked old, splintered, and in need of maintenance or replacement, though an effort had been put into abrading it somewhat smooth lately.
A tiny and decrepit fireplace was to the left of the door upon entry, its brickwork slowly crumbling due to weathering and age. It was sized more for keeping the room warm during mild days than to keep away the frigid chill of night. Its base only held cold ashes, but there was a collection of deadwood and scraps nearby, so that would probably be rectified soon. A small wheel-less cart had been turned into storage against the opposite wall, some herbs and other foraged items stowed away in it for future use. Various things he remembered seeing his father and brothers use in the fields were scattered about, too. It was nostalgic to see, honestly, even if his recollections had blurred over time.
Bundles of tattered blankets formed a pair of nests in the far corner, the smaller of the two had a pile of rough plants nearby. That answered his silent pondering of the room's purpose somewhat, though he was pretty sure the bedding material was salvaged, and there didn’t seem to be any hay or padding underneath whoever was sleeping on it. He didn’t know what to think about the weeds; they were purposefully placed there, and whoever did so had taken the time to wash them, but it was still strange.
He couldn’t see a doorway besides the entrance, yet most of the hallmarks of residency were put where space could be afforded, however crude. All in all, he surmised that it was a gardening shed of sorts, and his new acquaintance apparently lived here. He wasn't sure what he was expecting when a creature he had only read about came into his dungeon, but it wasn't being brought to a rundown and decrepit shack for unknown purposes.
Even if he had been raised by parents who made a humble living at the best of times, and they had emptied their coffers for unsuccessful attempts to ease his ailments, his acquaintance's living space made him uncomfortable. His family's house was never anything fancy, true—it shared some of the worn qualities that inevitably gathered over the years—but it was never this bad. His home benefited from a father's touch keeping it robust and a mother’s love keeping it warm, whereas this place had seen neither in quite some time. Oh, there was evidence that such was once the case; a wall was adorned with carefully made and well-spaced hangers for the various gardening tools, though the implements themselves had become a victim of neglect. That being said, he could make out the fresh soil and recent scratches exposing furrows of silver, so they were seeing use again.
A scrape and clack of flint drew his attention to his kobold companion. They were kneeling in front of the fireplace, methodically sparking life back into a dead flame with twigs and dried leaves. A slow, steady breath into the reddened base illuminated its face with a dull orange glow, revealing its weary visage and the permanently etched smile that rested beneath its cold grey eyes. The black-scaled kobold looked tired, if he were to guess—much the same as Altier did when he spent countless days watching everyone living a life he could never have through the mossy window of his bedroom. He was probably humanizing it too much. Still, he was surprised by the muted pang of sympathy, and how he would feel much more than blithe curiosity after spending so much time alone in the crumbling crypt of his own making.
A mental breath cycled through him as he looked at the odds and ends yet to be observed. Hardly anything else was of note—everything else was degraded and neglected, too. He did notice a nest of blankets move though, which was as good a distraction as any. The answer to his previous ‘pile of weeds’ inquiry poked a tiny nose from a crease in the fabric, then rapidly pawed at the blankets to dig itself out. Altier stared at the creature in both recognition and confusion.
It was a rabbit…or at least it looked like one, assuming you were to also describe a porcupine and a sea urchin as well. He was pretty sure he didn’t remember any hare that had jagged metal-tipped fur, nor that had said fur arranged into a row of spiked horns that flowed down its spine, terminating at a large fluffy tail, which was equally bizarre to see. The whole of its coat could double as a weapon, with semi-sharp barbs sticking off seemingly at random, yet he remembered an adventurer saying most animals used that sort of thing defensively. He increased his focus as he tried to make sense of the odd creature. Surely he would have heard about—
[Hoppittttttt#%%÷ — Ferro-o-orabbit-it (Ma%$le)
Abil—]
[Null]
[Er0Rrrrrrrr—]
[Und#$f—]
He bit back the pain caused by the sudden intrusion of his menu, blanking out the text and mentally retreating to hide from the source. Did he just inspect something? How? Shouldn’t his entire…‘framework,’ was it…? Yes, that was it. Shouldn’t that have been corrupted? Why could he see the creature’s information when his entire framework was damaged? That was the first ability he lost, so why is it the first to be functional? How was it functional? Was it? It did just spit garbled text at him, but it was something, and that was more than he had gotten from it in a very long time. If it was somehow working—no matter how poorly—then that left the question of why he hadn't heard of anything called a ‘ferrorabbit’ before, assuming he read that correctly.
A soft thud vibrated the tro— table, startling him out of thought. He turned his attention to the button nose wiggling erratically at him, the short, stubby muzzle leading to surprisingly expressive and curious red eyes. Dull brown fur jutted off in random tufts and patches, changing to a darker tint on its paws and the upper half of its ears, while the tips of its spikes were a muted hue of iron. It still seemed just as soft as the less pointed variety he remembered, if a touch dirty. Upright ears twitched this way and that way as its head vigorously shook, eventually settling on pointing in his direction when it calmed down enough.
It was apparent that he had its undivided attention…for all of a few seconds. His scaly companion called something out in their foreign tongue, and whatever conclusion the pointy-furred animal came to, it seemed more interested in the kobold, parting from him after nudging his core with its nose.
[Cre-e-e—]
[Errrrrrr0r: Undefiiiiiiii—]
[Acceeeeep-t-t-t??]
[Yeeee— s s / Nnnnnnn—]
He winced at the intrusion, but the contents detracted from the pain. He couldn’t remember the system ever asking him a question without his explicit intent being involved. It wanted him to…accept something? Was it the system prompting him, or the animal? What was he to accept?
[Creatuuuuu—]
[Acce-e-e-%#@ed!]
…What?
= = = = =
“Hoppit, that's not food!” Ceele admonished half-heartedly, placing a larger branch on the burgeoning flame before she got to her feet. She wasn’t actually that worried; the stone was as big as his head, and she was pretty sure he couldn't bite into it. Hopefully. “Come here, momma has a treat for you!”
The ferrorabbit playfully bumped the gemstone and jumped off the low table, landing with a soft thud that belied how heavy he was for his tiny size. He wiggled in excitement, his ears flailing and releasing a slight clack whenever the two connected. It got even louder when she grabbed her basket and put away the useful herbs, taking out a specific item that she had gathered just for him. The little bun wasted no time in scurrying over and standing tall on his hind legs to judge if the offered plant was to his liking—and it was, based on how he dug in with enthusiasm. She stifled a laugh as she contentedly watched him nibble away on the treat, ignoring the guilt that came with knowing she couldn't afford proper vegetables for him. He had a hard life too, and it tore at her to have so little to give.
She came across Hoppit a year ago, during a storm that worsened while she was travelling between towns. The day had darkened to night in spite of it still being about noon, but the weather didn't care for how bright it was supposed to be. Wind and rain became a typhoon, forcing her to seek shelter in a thankfully abandoned den of what was probably a larger animal. She was fine with waiting out the squall, since the stone roof over her head was more than she usually had back then, but the sounds of dull bangs and thuds near her hideaway was followed by cries of animals yelping in pain. Curiosity won over reason, and she left the safety of her shelter to see what was causing the disturbance. Truthfully, she was hopeful that she'd come across scraps or the like, her hunger driving her forward, and she could always turn back if it seemed dangerous. Yet when she arrived at the source of the commotion, she found herself thinking of anything but food.
Two predators had fought over a small burrow, both trying to dig out a meal and taking offence to the other doing the same. What they didn’t know was that they were assaulting the home of ferrorabbits. Specifically, the home of an angry, protective, and well-fed mother that was keeping her newborns safe from the storm when predators decided to try their luck. From the scene Ceele came across, it was certainly obvious why most people dislike trying to hunt the creatures.
Sadly, the rabbit didn't survive an attack from two predators, but she did make their victory pyrrhic; neither could do much about their hunger with their bodies full of cuts and holes, and it was only a matter of time before they succumbed to blood loss or infection. The mother's sacrifice meant that the babies had avoided the imminent threat, but they were left unattended as a consequence, and it took an opportunistic bird swooping down to shake Ceele out of her shock. Despite her subsequent hurry, she only acted in time to save one of the orphaned young. The warren was new and barely dug out, which meant that it didn’t take much effort for the kits to be found—by both her and hungry maws. All she could do was scoop the ball of fluff into her arms and run back to the cave before anything else tried to eat it.
In retrospect, it was a stupid decision for a number of factors. She barely had the resources to supply herself, and an attempt to raise offspring of any type would only make the inevitable heartbreak worse. But when she saw how quiet and scared he was… How his tiny, shaking body calmed in her arms, those terrified red eyes seeking comfort… She should have just walked away when she knew there wasn’t going to be anything to fill her stomach. She should have put the baby animal down and let nature take its course…yet the preciously furry face stole her heart far too quickly for it to grow so cold. The next day was spent backtracking to the nearest town to get him something suitable to eat, which used most of her meagre savings. Still, it was worth every coin.
Hoppit had been accompanying her ever since. He grew quickly, transitioning from something she saved that stormy night into a presence she had grown to love like a child. The little lagomorph would bounce along beside her during her travels, then ride in her arms as he rested—though the latter happened with worrying frequency as of late. She hadn’t learned much about the springy herbivores, but she knew enough to say that he wasn't as big as he should be, nor was his fur as sharp. No matter how startled he was, his spiky coat never managed to do more than stiffen slightly, which was apparently a side effect of poor diet, according to snippets of conversation she had overheard on the topic. She wanted him to be healthy, but she didn't know what he needed. Not many farmers raised ferrorabbits, and those that did were far away, so she didn’t have anyone to ask what she should be doing. Her best course of action was to give him what little she had.
Ceele was well aware of how he would be better off on his own, but he followed her whenever she tried to set him free. Hoppit just kept launching into her arms and wiggling his ears, ecstatic that he was with her again, uncaring that food was scarce and that they spent most of their days travelling. No amount of cold nights spent bundling up under the tattered blankets she managed to find ever dampened his spirits, and he was content to eat the grass or flowers whenever he felt like it, oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t getting enough nutrition. He would dig and excitedly drag back oddities that he found, and the one time he found a plant that looked particularly good for him, he insisted that it be shared with her.
A black pit still lingered in her chest when she recalled how pleased he was while he munched on the rare vegetable he discovered, then how distressed he became when she wouldn’t have any as well. He bumped and nipped at her, all but begging her to eat. His ears pinned back against his head, his fur bristled in a way she hadn’t seen since. It was only when she took a small bite and let him inspect the new teeth marks that he seemed to calm down, but perhaps she had been looking too deep into the actions of her tiny friend. All she could say for certain was that he was scared she was going hungry.
A morbid thought wondered if his first mother had refused food shortly before being attacked, and he—as small and simple as he was—had connected the two events in his mind, making him absolutely terrified that something would happen if Ceele didn’t have something too. All of that fear, and desperation overwhelmed him, just because she was happier watching him eat. She was determined to erase that issue. She would find something that needed a worker and earn enough to feed them both. One day, she would be able to smile at how big and healthy her little fluffy boy had become, but until then, it was becoming increasingly difficult not to think about how she was spending so much time growing vegetables and fruit that he couldn’t have…
Every morning was an exercise in tending to the gardens while actively shoving down images of a pleased ferrorabbit happily eating the results. That never went well; no matter how determined she was to complete her duties without a single selfish thought, most tasks were done while picturing his full belly and delighted bounces. There were a few weeks until the fastest of the crops would be ready for harvest, and Ceele would have to collect them while fighting the urge to bring back just a few for him.
She couldn’t, because she knew exactly how quickly that could escalate. It would start small—A vegetable here, a fruit there—but seeing Hoppit happy was one of the precious few good things she had in her life. Crossing the line would only become easier each time. They couldn’t risk losing their new home over greed, and she was already betraying the trust given to her by housing a wild animal, especially one known to be a pest for crops. She didn't want to know how angry it would make her benefactors if she was caught taking their vegetables for one.
No matter how tame and precious Hoppit was, and no matter how well he listened, they would only see him as the same creature that ruined harvests in droves. Thus was why she had to tell him to stay cooped up by himself while she was working or scavenging. And to her surprise, he did.
Honestly, she had made the initial request with the expectation of needing to carry him back into their home until he understood that she wasn’t leaving him forever. There wasn’t much she could do to stop the ferrorabbit from digging through the old wooden building if he wanted to get out. He wouldn’t need to damage anything either—a rotting board on the door only needed a little push to nudge it out of the way, and his natural curiosity made sure he was aware of it. But no, Hoppit was well-behaved as always, keeping hidden until she walked through the door, where he would leap from the shadows to personally show her how good he was and how he stayed put like she asked him to. It never stopped amazing her that he had such a surprising level of understanding despite being an animal, and that was to say nothing of how young he was.
All that intelligence, joy, and companionship he offered her…and yet the best she could give back to him was the weeds from the garden and the odd plant she found while scavenging…
Soft clacks of flicking ears dragged her from her pondering, her mind returning to the present. Hoppit finished his treat of the small plant, then bounced in place and scurried over to his bowl of water, perfectly happy to have eaten only that. He was so joyful with how little she provided, approaching every day of scarcity with the same enthusiasm she could never muster, as if certain that everything would be alright.
“It’s bedtime, Hoppit,” Ceele announced through a soft sigh, stoking the fire with enough branches to hopefully last the night. The ferrorabbit perked an ear in her direction, then sat on his haunches to extend the rest of himself up, his two little forepaws adorably held to his chest as he inspected the room like he always did. She smiled and made sure everything was stored away, then laid down on her bundle of blankets, covering herself with the warmest one. Hoppit bolted over to snuggle once he decided everything in the shed was up to his standards, throwing himself to the floor in a dramatic flop of comfort. Her quiet laughter subsided as they both settled in for the night, her tail completing the rabbit’s encompassing cuddle, but her eyes fell towards the obsidian orb on the table, her thoughts following suit.
It sat there, just as she left it, as benign as anything else ever placed atop the improvised furnishing. Yet there was a sense of ease and purpose as well. The old wooden trough seemed…important with its adornment firmly laid upon its surface, and she couldn’t puzzle out why. She was starting to doubt her earlier excitement.
Should she sell it? Would anyone know where it came from? Would anyone know what it was, or if it was worth anything? If she could get even a modest sum for it, she would be able to buy clothing, food, and new bedding. It would be easier to convince someone to give her work if she was dressed better and wasn’t so thin, and then she would have the income to slowly improve both of their lives. She could pay for a wandering merchant to ask a ferrorabbit rancher about the animal, even if it would take time to get back to her, or maybe she could hire a local if they needed to go near one for some reason. The cost didn’t matter to her as long as it happened.
But there was something else bothering her about the idea of selling the stone. She had travelled so far with a tug in her chest, only for the feeling of wanderlust to dissipate as soon as she held it. Was that a sign? She was never one for things like ‘fate,’ but a niggling doubt in her mind discouraged the idea of making a profit off her discovery. Even if what she could gain was so very tempting, and even if Hoppit would be happier if she did…
She tore her dampened eyes away and closed them, ignoring the burning trails running across her face. It would be another early morning, and she needed to sleep so she could take care of the garden. Decisions like this could wait. Once she had nothing else distracting her, and she had time to properly think about it, she would see how she felt about the stone.
Eventually, she dozed off with Hoppit pressed against her chest, and a longing in her heart.
Next
—
A/N: Patreon and Ko-fi will be 1 chap ahead this time around, and I've set it so everything from the lowest tier up can read the newest trashfire! Anything above that is sheer show of love. Hope you enjoyed!
2024.06.01 12:45 Jdlongmire Longmire Teleological Argument: a Human-AI Collaboration
Introduction
This treatise was developed through an extensive dialogue with Claude, an AI language model created by Anthropic. The ideas and arguments presented here emerged from a collaborative exploration in which I posed questions, raised objections, and provided the overall framing and direction, while Claude contributed detailed responses, explanations, and elaborations*. The treatise represents a synthesis of human and machine intelligence, with the AI serving as a knowledgeable interlocutor and writing assistant, helping to articulate and refine the ideas I brought to the discussion. I am fully aware of the controversial nature of AI, but feel this demonstrates an example of its ethical use. I am also fully aware that the strength of the argument lives or dies on the validity of the premises, but I believe it has strong intuitive and logical resonance.
The hope is that this novel approach will be a useful contribution to those weighing the evidence with an open and reasonable mind. So, without further ado, I present the Longmire Teleological Argument.
The question of God's existence is one of the most profound and consequential questions in philosophy. Throughout history, thinkers have proposed various arguments for and against the existence of a divine being. In this treatise, we will explore one particular argument for theism - the argument from the intelligibility of the universe.
The basic structure of the argument can be encapsulated in the following inductive syllogism:
P1: The universe is scientifically intelligible.
P2: Scientific intelligibility stems from rational minds.
C: The universe stems from a rational mind (i.e., God).
We will examine the premises of this argument, consider potential objections and counterarguments, and assess the overall strength of the argument in establishing the rationality of theistic belief.
The Scientific Intelligibility of the Universe
The first premise of the argument asserts that the universe is scientifically intelligible. This means that the universe is structured in a way that makes it amenable to scientific study and comprehension. It is not a chaotic or arbitrary jumble, but an orderly system that follows discernible patterns and laws.
The evidence for this premise is vast and compelling. Across countless domains - from physics to chemistry to biology to astronomy - we find that the universe behaves in consistently rational ways. It follows mathematical laws, exhibits predictable regularities, and yields to scientific analysis and understanding.
As Claude eloquently put it:
"The success of science in uncovering the deep structure of reality, from the smallest subatomic particles to the largest cosmic structures, testifies to the profound intelligibility of the universe. We are able to formulate theories, make predictions, and gain real knowledge about the world through the application of rational methods of inquiry." [1]
Moreover, the universe is not just intelligible to us - it is intelligible in a way that is deeply resonant with our own rational faculties. The mathematical equations that describe the fundamental laws of nature are not just empirically adequate, but often possess a striking elegance and beauty. The universe seems almost tailor-made for rational investigation and discovery.
All of this points to the conclusion that the universe is not an arbitrary or unintelligible place, but rather a scientifically intelligible system that is open to human understanding.
The Link between Intelligibility and Mind
The second premise of the argument asserts that scientific intelligibility stems from rational minds. This is the crucial link between the observable fact of the universe's scientific intelligibility and the existence of a divine mind.
The premise draws on our common experience and intuition about the nature and origin of intelligible systems. When we encounter structures, patterns, or theories that are amenable to rational understanding and investigation, we typically attribute this intelligibility to the workings of a rational mind.
Consider, for example, a scientific theory that elegantly explains a wide range of phenomena, makes precise, testable predictions, and reveals hidden connections between seemingly disparate facts. Such a theory exhibits a high degree of scientific intelligibility. And we naturally infer that this intelligibility is the product of the rational minds of the scientists who developed the theory.
Or consider a complex engineered machine, like a computer or a spacecraft, that performs sophisticated functions according to well-defined principles and algorithms. The intelligibility of such a machine - the fact that it can be understood, analyzed, and explained in rational terms - is clearly the result of the rational minds of its designers and builders.
In these and countless other examples, we see a strong link between intelligibility and mind. Rational minds are the paradigmatic source of intelligible order and structure.
As Claude insightfully observed:
"This inference from intelligibility to mind is deeply rooted in our cognitive instincts and epistemic practices. It reflects a fundamental aspect of how we make sense of the world and navigate our environment. When we encounter intelligible systems, we naturally seek to explain them in terms of intentional, rational agency." [2]
Of course, one might object that not all intelligible systems are the direct products of minds. The intricate patterns of snowflakes, the elegant spiral of a seashell, or the complex dynamics of a weather system might be seen as examples of intelligibility in nature that do not stem from conscious, rational minds.
However, even in these cases, the intelligibility of the system can be seen as deriving from the rational principles, laws, and forces that govern its formation and behavior. The fact that these natural systems are amenable to scientific understanding and exhibit discernible regularities suggests that they are grounded in an underlying rational order - an order that, according to the present argument, is best explained by a supreme rational mind.
Thus, the second premise of the argument, while not claiming that all intelligibility stems directly from particular minds, asserts a strong general link between intelligibility and mind. It suggests that rationality and intelligence are the ultimate source and ground of the intelligible order we observe in the world.
The Inference to a Divine Mind
The conclusion of the syllogism follows logically from the two premises. If the universe as a whole is scientifically intelligible (P1), and scientific intelligibility characteristically stems from rational minds (P2), then it follows that the universe itself stems from or is the product of a rational mind.
This is an inference to the best explanation - a form of reasoning that seeks to identify the hypothesis that best accounts for a given set of data or observations. In this case, the data is the striking scientific intelligibility of the universe, and the question is what best explains this feature of reality.
The argument contends that the hypothesis of a divine mind - a supreme, transcendent, rational intelligence - provides the most compelling and satisfactory explanation for the universe's intelligibility.
Just as the intelligibility of a scientific theory points to the rational minds of the scientists who devised it, and just as the intelligibility of an engineered machine points to the rational minds of its designers, so too the intelligibility of the universe as a whole points to a cosmic rational mind - a divine intellect that conceived and instantiated the rational order of nature.
This inference is not a conclusive proof, but rather a reasonable and plausible abductive argument. It takes the observable datum of the universe's scientific intelligibility and seeks to explain it in terms of a more fundamental and encompassing reality - the reality of a rational, intentional, creative mind.
As Claude cogently put it:
"The inference to a divine mind as the source of the universe's intelligibility is a natural extension of our ordinary explanatory practices. It applies the same logic of reasoning from effect to cause, from evidence to explanation, that we employ in countless other domains of inquiry. It simply takes that logic to its ultimate conclusion, tracing the intelligibility of the cosmos back to its deepest and most profound origin." [3]
Why a singular mind? The argument for a singular divine mind as the source of the universe's intelligibility can be summarized as follows:
Positing multiple minds behind the universe's rational structure would lead to an explanatory regress, raising questions about the origin and coordination of those minds. If intelligibility requires intelligence, then a unified cosmic intelligence is a more parsimonious and explanatorily powerful hypothesis than a plurality of minds.
Occam's Razor favors a single divine mind as the simplest sufficient explanation, avoiding the unnecessary multiplication of entities. Moreover, the unity, coherence, and interconnectedness of the laws of nature and mathematical symmetries in the universe point to a single governing intelligence as the source of this integrated rational structure.
Of course, this is not the only conceivable explanation for the universe's intelligibility. Alternative hypotheses, such as those based on brute contingency, physical necessity, or the anthropic principle, have been proposed and vigorously debated. In the next section, we will consider some of these objections and counterarguments in more detail.
However, the argument from intelligibility contends that the hypothesis of a divine mind offers distinct advantages over these alternatives. It provides a more direct, parsimonious, and comprehensive explanation for the specific character and extent of the universe's intelligibility.
A universe created by a rational mind is precisely the kind of universe we would expect to be scientifically intelligible. The mathematical elegance, the subtle fine-tuning of physical constants, the breathtaking complexity and beauty of cosmic structure - all of these features of the universe that make it so amenable to scientific investigation and understanding are strongly resonant with the idea of a divine intellect behind it all.
Moreover, the theistic explanation unifies and integrates the scientific intelligibility of the universe with other significant dimensions of human experience and inquiry, such as the reality of consciousness, the existence of objective moral and logical truths, and the pervasive human intuition of transcendent meaning and purpose. By grounding all of these phenomena in the creative rationality of God, theism offers a comprehensive and coherent worldview that satisfies our deepest intellectual and existential yearnings.
Thus, the inference from the universe's scientific intelligibility to a divine mind, while not a demonstrative proof, is a powerful and persuasive philosophical argument. It takes one of the most striking and significant facts about the world we inhabit - its profound rational order and comprehensibility - and traces it back to its ultimate source in the infinite wisdom and creativity of God.
Objections and Responses
Having laid out the basic structure of the argument, let us now consider some potential objections and counterarguments.
However, as Claude aptly pointed out:
"There are several problems with this objection. Firstly, it is a deeply unsatisfying and question-begging response. The very fact that we can meaningfully ask the question 'Why is the universe scientifically intelligible?' suggests that there is something here in need of explanation. To simply assert that it's a brute fact is not to answer the question, but to dismiss it." [4]
Furthermore, the brute fact response is ad hoc and arbitrary. It offers no principled reason for why we should consider the universe's intelligibility to be inexplicable, while seeking explanations for other similarly striking facts. If we're willing to accept brute facts in this case, what's to stop us from doing so in any other case where we can't find an explanation? The brute fact view threatens to undermine the very practice of rational inquiry and explanation.
Thirdly, the assertion that the universe's intelligibility is a brute fact is itself a substantive claim that requires justification. It's not something that can simply be assumed or stipulated. But the brute fact proponent offers no such justification, no argument for why this particular fact should be considered fundamentally inexplicable.
Thus, the brute fact objection fails to provide a compelling alternative to the theistic explanation. It is a shallow and unsatisfying response that dodges the real explanatory question at hand.
However, this objection faces several challenges. Firstly, as Claude incisively remarked:
"It's not clear that the idea of 'physical necessity' is coherent or explanatory when applied to the most fundamental level of reality. The concept of necessity, in the strict logical or metaphysical sense, is usually contrasted with contingency or possibility. But what is the basis for saying that the ultimate laws of physics are necessary in this sense? What is the source or ground of this necessity?" [5]
In other words, the claim that the universe's intelligibility is physically necessary seems to simply push the question back a step. Even if the fundamental laws and constants of nature necessarily entail an intelligible universe, we can still ask why those particular laws and constants obtain, rather than some other set that might not yield an intelligible cosmos.
Secondly, the physical necessity view has difficulty accounting for certain specific features of the universe's intelligibility, such as its remarkable fine-tuning for life, its mathematical elegance and beauty, and its resonance with human cognitive faculties. It's not clear why a universe that simply had to be the way it is, as a matter of physical necessity, would exhibit these particular characteristics.
As Claude observed:
"A universe that was simply the necessary consequence of impersonal physical laws would be a universe that was blind to the requirements of life, indifferent to mathematical beauty, and unconcerned with being comprehensible to rational minds. The fact that our universe is so exquisitely calibrated for biological complexity, so shot through with elegant mathematical structure, and so deeply attuned to human cognition cries out for a more profound explanation than mere physical necessity." [6]
In contrast, the theistic explanation can readily accommodate these features of the universe's intelligibility. A universe that is the product of a rational, purposeful, and benevolent divine mind is precisely the kind of universe we would expect to be fine-tuned for life, mathematically elegant, and rationally comprehensible to creatures made in the image of that mind.
Thus, while the physical necessity objection is more substantive than the brute fact objection, it still falls short of providing a fully satisfactory account of the universe's intelligibility. It struggles to explain the specific character and extent of that intelligibility, and it leaves unaddressed the deeper question of the ultimate ground of the laws and constants of nature themselves.
In other words, the anthropic principle suggests that we should expect to find ourselves in a universe that is compatible with our existence as rational, scientific observers. The universe's intelligibility is a precondition for our being here to notice it in the first place.
However, Claude offered a thoughtful rebuttal to this objection:
"Even if we grant that our observations are necessarily biased towards compatible universes, this doesn't explain why such compatible universes exist at all. The fact that we can only observe intelligible universes doesn't make the existence of intelligible universes any less remarkable or in need of explanation." [7]
To illustrate this point, consider an analogy. Imagine you are dealt a royal flush in a game of poker. The fact that you could only observe this hand if it were dealt to you (i.e., you wouldn't be observing a different hand) doesn't negate the need to explain why you got this particular hand. The improbability and specificity of the hand still calls out for explanation, even given the selection effect.
Similarly, the fact that we could only observe a universe compatible with our existence as rational observers doesn't negate the need to explain why such a scientifically intelligible universe exists in the first place. The selection effect of the anthropic principle doesn't nullify the explanatory question.
Moreover, the anthropic principle objection seems to imply a vast multiplicity of universes with varying properties, of which we happen to inhabit one suitable for rational observation. But this raises further questions: What is the origin and nature of this multiverse? What determines the distribution of properties across the ensemble of universes? Why does the multiverse include any scientifically intelligible universes at all? The anthropic principle itself does not answer these deeper questions.
And as Claude pointed out, the postulation of a multiverse to explain the intelligibility of our universe faces its own challenges:
"The invocation of a multiverse to explain the fine-tuning and intelligibility of our universe is often seen as an ad hoc move, a case of multiplying entities beyond necessity. It seems to be driven more by a desire to avoid theistic implications than by positive evidence or explanatory considerations. Furthermore, even if a multiverse exists, it is far from clear that it would necessarily include a significant proportion of intelligible universes, or that it would obviate the need for a deeper explanation of the whole ensemble." [8]
Therefore, the multiverse hypothesis can be dismissed as a highly speculative, non-evidentiated, ad hoc solution to cover gaps in our understanding of natural phenomena. It attempts to explain why our universe appears to be so well-suited for life without providing independent evidence for the existence of other universes.
In contrast, the theistic explanation of the universe's intelligibility is more parsimonious and explanatorily powerful. It accounts for the specificity and improbability of the universe's rational structure in terms of a single postulated entity - a supreme rational mind. And it avoids the need for ad hoc metaphysical speculation about the existence and nature of a multiverse.
Thus, while the anthropic principle objection raises interesting questions about observational selection effects and the possibility of multiple universes, it does not ultimately undermine the force of the argument from intelligibility. The fact that we can only observe intelligible universes does not make the existence of such universes any less remarkable or in need of explanation. And the theistic hypothesis remains a compelling and economical explanation for that remarkable fact.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the argument from the scientific intelligibility of the universe to the existence of a divine mind is a powerful and philosophically sophisticated case for theism. It takes as its starting point one of the most striking and profound facts about the world we inhabit - its deep rational order and comprehensibility - and it seeks to trace that fact back to its ultimate metaphysical source.
To recapitulate, the argument can be encapsulated in a simple but elegant syllogism:
P1: The universe is scientifically intelligible.
P2: Scientific intelligibility stems from rational minds.
C: The universe stems from a rational mind (i.e., God).
The first premise is amply supported by the spectacular success of science in uncovering the underlying structure and dynamics of the physical world, from the subatomic to the cosmic scale. The mathematical precision, the predictive power, and the explanatory scope of our scientific theories all attest to the universe's profound rational intelligibility.
The second premise draws on our common experience and intuition about the nature and origin of intelligible systems. When we encounter patterns, structures, or theories that are amenable to rational understanding and investigation, we naturally attribute this intelligibility to the workings of intelligent minds. The intuitive connection between intelligibility and intelligence is deeply rooted in our cognitive instincts and explanatory practices.
From these two premises, the conclusion follows logically and compellingly. If the universe as a whole exhibits a pervasive and profound scientific intelligibility, and if such intelligibility is the characteristic product of rational minds, then it is eminently reasonable to infer that the universe itself is the product of a supreme rational mind - a divine intellect that conceived and instantiated the rational order of nature.
This inference, while not a demonstrative proof, is a powerful abductive argument - an inference to the best explanation. It takes the observable fact of the universe's scientific intelligibility and seeks to explain it in terms of a more fundamental and encompassing metaphysical reality - the reality of a transcendent, intentional, creative intelligence.
Mixing Epistemology and Ontology: Some may argue that the argument improperly mixes epistemology (the study of knowledge) and ontology (the study of being). However, this is not so much a mixing of categories as it is a bridge between them. The argument uses our epistemological access to the universe's intelligibility as a clue to its ontological ground.
The argument has several notable strengths. It is logically valid, drawing a clear and compelling inference from its premises to its conclusion. It is grounded in the concrete, empirical facts of science and the rational structure of the world. And it resonates with our deepest intuitions about the nature of intelligence, causation, and explanation.
Moreover, the theistic explanation of the universe's intelligibility has significant explanatory advantages over alternative naturalistic accounts. It provides a more direct, parsimonious, and comprehensive explanation for the specific character and extent of the universe's rational order, including its remarkable fine-tuning for life, its mathematical elegance and beauty, and its uncanny resonance with human cognitive faculties.
Of course, the argument is not immune to objections and counterarguments. Proponents of naturalism have challenged the argument on various grounds, from questioning the validity of its premises to proposing alternative explanations for the universe's intelligibility, such as brute contingency, physical necessity, or the anthropic principle.
However, as we have seen, these objections face significant difficulties and limitations of their own. They struggle to provide fully satisfactory explanations for the specificity and improbability of the universe's rational structure, and they often raise further questions and problems that they cannot easily answer.
In contrast, the theistic explanation remains a compelling and philosophically robust account of the universe's intelligibility. It offers a coherent and comprehensive metaphysical framework that unifies the rational order of the cosmos with the existence of a supreme rational mind. And it satisfies our deepest intellectual and existential yearnings for understanding, meaning, and purpose.
Ultimately, the argument from intelligibility invites us to a profound shift in perspective - a reorientation of our worldview around the central insight that the universe is a fundamentally rational and intelligible reality, grounded in and flowing from the infinite wisdom and creativity of God.
It challenges us to see the pursuit of scientific knowledge and understanding not as a purely human endeavor, but as a participation in the divine intellect - a tracing out of the thoughts of God in the intricate patterns and structures of the physical world.
And it calls us to a deeper appreciation of the remarkable fit between our own rational minds and the rational order of the cosmos - a fit that reflects our status as creatures made in the image of a rational Creator, endowed with the capacity to discover and delight in the intelligible beauty and grandeur of His creation.
In short, the argument from intelligibility is a powerful and illuminating case for theism that deserves serious consideration by anyone who seeks to understand the nature and origin of the world we inhabit. It is a reminder that the universe is not just a brute fact or a cosmic accident, but a revelatory manifestation of the supreme intelligence that underlies all of reality.
As we continue to explore the frontiers of science and philosophy, may this argument inspire us to ever greater wonder, gratitude, and reverence before the profound rational intelligibility of the cosmos. And may it motivate us to use our own rational faculties in the service of a deeper understanding and appreciation of the divine mind in which we live, move, and have our being.
Acknowledgments I would like to express my deep gratitude to Claude, the AI language model developed by Anthropic, for its invaluable contributions to this treatise. Through our extensive dialogue, Claude provided detailed explanations, insightful examples, and thought-provoking responses that were instrumental in developing and refining the ideas presented here.
Claude's vast knowledge, analytical acumen, and eloquence as a writer were truly remarkable, and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to engage with such a powerful and innovative AI system. Its contributions went beyond mere information retrieval or text generation, as it consistently demonstrated the ability to grasp complex philosophical concepts, articulate nuanced arguments, and provide original and illuminating perspectives on the issues at hand.
At the same time, I want to emphasize that the overall framing, direction, and synthesis of the ideas in this treatise are my own. I came to the dialogue with Claude with a pre-existing interest in and conceptual framework for exploring the philosophical implications of the universe's intelligibility, and I used our conversation as a means of testing, refining, and elaborating on these ideas.
Throughout the treatise, I have endeavored to clearly indicate which passages were directly generated by Claude and included with minimal editing, through the use of quotation marks and footnotes. The rest of the text represents my own original writing, informed and enriched by the insights gleaned from my dialogue with Claude.
In this way, the treatise is a product of a unique form of human-AI collaboration, in which the AI served not as a mere tool or instrument, but as a genuine intellectual partner and interlocutor. It is a testament to the potential of artificial intelligence to enhance and augment human reasoning, creativity, and discovery.
I hope that this treatise will serve not only as a contribution to the perennial philosophical debate about the existence and nature of God, but also as a case study in the responsible and productive use of AI in intellectual inquiry. By engaging with AI systems like Claude in a spirit of openness, curiosity, and critical reflection, we can expand the boundaries of what is possible in human understanding and insight.
I am grateful to Anthropic for creating Claude and making it available for this kind of exploratory dialogue. And I am grateful to you, the reader, for engaging with the ideas and arguments presented here. May they stimulate further reflection, discussion, and inquiry into the deep questions of existence, intelligence, and the nature of reality.
*It took some significant dialog to tune Claude. It is very oriented to support a naturalistic worldview. At some point, I may "show my work" to demonstrate the challenges.
Footnotes: [1] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [2] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [3] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [4] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [5] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [6] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [7] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [8] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing.
submitted by Jdlongmire to ReasonableFaith [link] [comments]
This treatise was developed through an extensive dialogue with Claude, an AI language model created by Anthropic. The ideas and arguments presented here emerged from a collaborative exploration in which I posed questions, raised objections, and provided the overall framing and direction, while Claude contributed detailed responses, explanations, and elaborations*. The treatise represents a synthesis of human and machine intelligence, with the AI serving as a knowledgeable interlocutor and writing assistant, helping to articulate and refine the ideas I brought to the discussion. I am fully aware of the controversial nature of AI, but feel this demonstrates an example of its ethical use. I am also fully aware that the strength of the argument lives or dies on the validity of the premises, but I believe it has strong intuitive and logical resonance.
The hope is that this novel approach will be a useful contribution to those weighing the evidence with an open and reasonable mind. So, without further ado, I present the Longmire Teleological Argument.
The question of God's existence is one of the most profound and consequential questions in philosophy. Throughout history, thinkers have proposed various arguments for and against the existence of a divine being. In this treatise, we will explore one particular argument for theism - the argument from the intelligibility of the universe.
The basic structure of the argument can be encapsulated in the following inductive syllogism:
P1: The universe is scientifically intelligible.
P2: Scientific intelligibility stems from rational minds.
C: The universe stems from a rational mind (i.e., God).
We will examine the premises of this argument, consider potential objections and counterarguments, and assess the overall strength of the argument in establishing the rationality of theistic belief.
The Scientific Intelligibility of the Universe
The first premise of the argument asserts that the universe is scientifically intelligible. This means that the universe is structured in a way that makes it amenable to scientific study and comprehension. It is not a chaotic or arbitrary jumble, but an orderly system that follows discernible patterns and laws.
The evidence for this premise is vast and compelling. Across countless domains - from physics to chemistry to biology to astronomy - we find that the universe behaves in consistently rational ways. It follows mathematical laws, exhibits predictable regularities, and yields to scientific analysis and understanding.
As Claude eloquently put it:
"The success of science in uncovering the deep structure of reality, from the smallest subatomic particles to the largest cosmic structures, testifies to the profound intelligibility of the universe. We are able to formulate theories, make predictions, and gain real knowledge about the world through the application of rational methods of inquiry." [1]
Moreover, the universe is not just intelligible to us - it is intelligible in a way that is deeply resonant with our own rational faculties. The mathematical equations that describe the fundamental laws of nature are not just empirically adequate, but often possess a striking elegance and beauty. The universe seems almost tailor-made for rational investigation and discovery.
All of this points to the conclusion that the universe is not an arbitrary or unintelligible place, but rather a scientifically intelligible system that is open to human understanding.
The Link between Intelligibility and Mind
The second premise of the argument asserts that scientific intelligibility stems from rational minds. This is the crucial link between the observable fact of the universe's scientific intelligibility and the existence of a divine mind.
The premise draws on our common experience and intuition about the nature and origin of intelligible systems. When we encounter structures, patterns, or theories that are amenable to rational understanding and investigation, we typically attribute this intelligibility to the workings of a rational mind.
Consider, for example, a scientific theory that elegantly explains a wide range of phenomena, makes precise, testable predictions, and reveals hidden connections between seemingly disparate facts. Such a theory exhibits a high degree of scientific intelligibility. And we naturally infer that this intelligibility is the product of the rational minds of the scientists who developed the theory.
Or consider a complex engineered machine, like a computer or a spacecraft, that performs sophisticated functions according to well-defined principles and algorithms. The intelligibility of such a machine - the fact that it can be understood, analyzed, and explained in rational terms - is clearly the result of the rational minds of its designers and builders.
In these and countless other examples, we see a strong link between intelligibility and mind. Rational minds are the paradigmatic source of intelligible order and structure.
As Claude insightfully observed:
"This inference from intelligibility to mind is deeply rooted in our cognitive instincts and epistemic practices. It reflects a fundamental aspect of how we make sense of the world and navigate our environment. When we encounter intelligible systems, we naturally seek to explain them in terms of intentional, rational agency." [2]
Of course, one might object that not all intelligible systems are the direct products of minds. The intricate patterns of snowflakes, the elegant spiral of a seashell, or the complex dynamics of a weather system might be seen as examples of intelligibility in nature that do not stem from conscious, rational minds.
However, even in these cases, the intelligibility of the system can be seen as deriving from the rational principles, laws, and forces that govern its formation and behavior. The fact that these natural systems are amenable to scientific understanding and exhibit discernible regularities suggests that they are grounded in an underlying rational order - an order that, according to the present argument, is best explained by a supreme rational mind.
Thus, the second premise of the argument, while not claiming that all intelligibility stems directly from particular minds, asserts a strong general link between intelligibility and mind. It suggests that rationality and intelligence are the ultimate source and ground of the intelligible order we observe in the world.
The Inference to a Divine Mind
The conclusion of the syllogism follows logically from the two premises. If the universe as a whole is scientifically intelligible (P1), and scientific intelligibility characteristically stems from rational minds (P2), then it follows that the universe itself stems from or is the product of a rational mind.
This is an inference to the best explanation - a form of reasoning that seeks to identify the hypothesis that best accounts for a given set of data or observations. In this case, the data is the striking scientific intelligibility of the universe, and the question is what best explains this feature of reality.
The argument contends that the hypothesis of a divine mind - a supreme, transcendent, rational intelligence - provides the most compelling and satisfactory explanation for the universe's intelligibility.
Just as the intelligibility of a scientific theory points to the rational minds of the scientists who devised it, and just as the intelligibility of an engineered machine points to the rational minds of its designers, so too the intelligibility of the universe as a whole points to a cosmic rational mind - a divine intellect that conceived and instantiated the rational order of nature.
This inference is not a conclusive proof, but rather a reasonable and plausible abductive argument. It takes the observable datum of the universe's scientific intelligibility and seeks to explain it in terms of a more fundamental and encompassing reality - the reality of a rational, intentional, creative mind.
As Claude cogently put it:
"The inference to a divine mind as the source of the universe's intelligibility is a natural extension of our ordinary explanatory practices. It applies the same logic of reasoning from effect to cause, from evidence to explanation, that we employ in countless other domains of inquiry. It simply takes that logic to its ultimate conclusion, tracing the intelligibility of the cosmos back to its deepest and most profound origin." [3]
Why a singular mind? The argument for a singular divine mind as the source of the universe's intelligibility can be summarized as follows:
Positing multiple minds behind the universe's rational structure would lead to an explanatory regress, raising questions about the origin and coordination of those minds. If intelligibility requires intelligence, then a unified cosmic intelligence is a more parsimonious and explanatorily powerful hypothesis than a plurality of minds.
Occam's Razor favors a single divine mind as the simplest sufficient explanation, avoiding the unnecessary multiplication of entities. Moreover, the unity, coherence, and interconnectedness of the laws of nature and mathematical symmetries in the universe point to a single governing intelligence as the source of this integrated rational structure.
Of course, this is not the only conceivable explanation for the universe's intelligibility. Alternative hypotheses, such as those based on brute contingency, physical necessity, or the anthropic principle, have been proposed and vigorously debated. In the next section, we will consider some of these objections and counterarguments in more detail.
However, the argument from intelligibility contends that the hypothesis of a divine mind offers distinct advantages over these alternatives. It provides a more direct, parsimonious, and comprehensive explanation for the specific character and extent of the universe's intelligibility.
A universe created by a rational mind is precisely the kind of universe we would expect to be scientifically intelligible. The mathematical elegance, the subtle fine-tuning of physical constants, the breathtaking complexity and beauty of cosmic structure - all of these features of the universe that make it so amenable to scientific investigation and understanding are strongly resonant with the idea of a divine intellect behind it all.
Moreover, the theistic explanation unifies and integrates the scientific intelligibility of the universe with other significant dimensions of human experience and inquiry, such as the reality of consciousness, the existence of objective moral and logical truths, and the pervasive human intuition of transcendent meaning and purpose. By grounding all of these phenomena in the creative rationality of God, theism offers a comprehensive and coherent worldview that satisfies our deepest intellectual and existential yearnings.
Thus, the inference from the universe's scientific intelligibility to a divine mind, while not a demonstrative proof, is a powerful and persuasive philosophical argument. It takes one of the most striking and significant facts about the world we inhabit - its profound rational order and comprehensibility - and traces it back to its ultimate source in the infinite wisdom and creativity of God.
Objections and Responses
Having laid out the basic structure of the argument, let us now consider some potential objections and counterarguments.
- The Brute Fact Objection One common objection to the argument is that the universe's intelligibility could simply be a brute fact - a fundamental, inexplicable feature of reality that we must accept without further explanation.
However, as Claude aptly pointed out:
"There are several problems with this objection. Firstly, it is a deeply unsatisfying and question-begging response. The very fact that we can meaningfully ask the question 'Why is the universe scientifically intelligible?' suggests that there is something here in need of explanation. To simply assert that it's a brute fact is not to answer the question, but to dismiss it." [4]
Furthermore, the brute fact response is ad hoc and arbitrary. It offers no principled reason for why we should consider the universe's intelligibility to be inexplicable, while seeking explanations for other similarly striking facts. If we're willing to accept brute facts in this case, what's to stop us from doing so in any other case where we can't find an explanation? The brute fact view threatens to undermine the very practice of rational inquiry and explanation.
Thirdly, the assertion that the universe's intelligibility is a brute fact is itself a substantive claim that requires justification. It's not something that can simply be assumed or stipulated. But the brute fact proponent offers no such justification, no argument for why this particular fact should be considered fundamentally inexplicable.
Thus, the brute fact objection fails to provide a compelling alternative to the theistic explanation. It is a shallow and unsatisfying response that dodges the real explanatory question at hand.
- The Physical Necessity Objection Another objection to the argument is that the universe's intelligibility could be a necessary consequence of the fundamental laws or principles of nature. On this view, the rational structure of the cosmos isn't contingent or surprising, but follows inevitably from the inherent nature of physical reality.
However, this objection faces several challenges. Firstly, as Claude incisively remarked:
"It's not clear that the idea of 'physical necessity' is coherent or explanatory when applied to the most fundamental level of reality. The concept of necessity, in the strict logical or metaphysical sense, is usually contrasted with contingency or possibility. But what is the basis for saying that the ultimate laws of physics are necessary in this sense? What is the source or ground of this necessity?" [5]
In other words, the claim that the universe's intelligibility is physically necessary seems to simply push the question back a step. Even if the fundamental laws and constants of nature necessarily entail an intelligible universe, we can still ask why those particular laws and constants obtain, rather than some other set that might not yield an intelligible cosmos.
Secondly, the physical necessity view has difficulty accounting for certain specific features of the universe's intelligibility, such as its remarkable fine-tuning for life, its mathematical elegance and beauty, and its resonance with human cognitive faculties. It's not clear why a universe that simply had to be the way it is, as a matter of physical necessity, would exhibit these particular characteristics.
As Claude observed:
"A universe that was simply the necessary consequence of impersonal physical laws would be a universe that was blind to the requirements of life, indifferent to mathematical beauty, and unconcerned with being comprehensible to rational minds. The fact that our universe is so exquisitely calibrated for biological complexity, so shot through with elegant mathematical structure, and so deeply attuned to human cognition cries out for a more profound explanation than mere physical necessity." [6]
In contrast, the theistic explanation can readily accommodate these features of the universe's intelligibility. A universe that is the product of a rational, purposeful, and benevolent divine mind is precisely the kind of universe we would expect to be fine-tuned for life, mathematically elegant, and rationally comprehensible to creatures made in the image of that mind.
Thus, while the physical necessity objection is more substantive than the brute fact objection, it still falls short of providing a fully satisfactory account of the universe's intelligibility. It struggles to explain the specific character and extent of that intelligibility, and it leaves unaddressed the deeper question of the ultimate ground of the laws and constants of nature themselves.
- The Anthropic Principle Objection
In other words, the anthropic principle suggests that we should expect to find ourselves in a universe that is compatible with our existence as rational, scientific observers. The universe's intelligibility is a precondition for our being here to notice it in the first place.
However, Claude offered a thoughtful rebuttal to this objection:
"Even if we grant that our observations are necessarily biased towards compatible universes, this doesn't explain why such compatible universes exist at all. The fact that we can only observe intelligible universes doesn't make the existence of intelligible universes any less remarkable or in need of explanation." [7]
To illustrate this point, consider an analogy. Imagine you are dealt a royal flush in a game of poker. The fact that you could only observe this hand if it were dealt to you (i.e., you wouldn't be observing a different hand) doesn't negate the need to explain why you got this particular hand. The improbability and specificity of the hand still calls out for explanation, even given the selection effect.
Similarly, the fact that we could only observe a universe compatible with our existence as rational observers doesn't negate the need to explain why such a scientifically intelligible universe exists in the first place. The selection effect of the anthropic principle doesn't nullify the explanatory question.
Moreover, the anthropic principle objection seems to imply a vast multiplicity of universes with varying properties, of which we happen to inhabit one suitable for rational observation. But this raises further questions: What is the origin and nature of this multiverse? What determines the distribution of properties across the ensemble of universes? Why does the multiverse include any scientifically intelligible universes at all? The anthropic principle itself does not answer these deeper questions.
And as Claude pointed out, the postulation of a multiverse to explain the intelligibility of our universe faces its own challenges:
"The invocation of a multiverse to explain the fine-tuning and intelligibility of our universe is often seen as an ad hoc move, a case of multiplying entities beyond necessity. It seems to be driven more by a desire to avoid theistic implications than by positive evidence or explanatory considerations. Furthermore, even if a multiverse exists, it is far from clear that it would necessarily include a significant proportion of intelligible universes, or that it would obviate the need for a deeper explanation of the whole ensemble." [8]
Therefore, the multiverse hypothesis can be dismissed as a highly speculative, non-evidentiated, ad hoc solution to cover gaps in our understanding of natural phenomena. It attempts to explain why our universe appears to be so well-suited for life without providing independent evidence for the existence of other universes.
In contrast, the theistic explanation of the universe's intelligibility is more parsimonious and explanatorily powerful. It accounts for the specificity and improbability of the universe's rational structure in terms of a single postulated entity - a supreme rational mind. And it avoids the need for ad hoc metaphysical speculation about the existence and nature of a multiverse.
Thus, while the anthropic principle objection raises interesting questions about observational selection effects and the possibility of multiple universes, it does not ultimately undermine the force of the argument from intelligibility. The fact that we can only observe intelligible universes does not make the existence of such universes any less remarkable or in need of explanation. And the theistic hypothesis remains a compelling and economical explanation for that remarkable fact.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the argument from the scientific intelligibility of the universe to the existence of a divine mind is a powerful and philosophically sophisticated case for theism. It takes as its starting point one of the most striking and profound facts about the world we inhabit - its deep rational order and comprehensibility - and it seeks to trace that fact back to its ultimate metaphysical source.
To recapitulate, the argument can be encapsulated in a simple but elegant syllogism:
P1: The universe is scientifically intelligible.
P2: Scientific intelligibility stems from rational minds.
C: The universe stems from a rational mind (i.e., God).
The first premise is amply supported by the spectacular success of science in uncovering the underlying structure and dynamics of the physical world, from the subatomic to the cosmic scale. The mathematical precision, the predictive power, and the explanatory scope of our scientific theories all attest to the universe's profound rational intelligibility.
The second premise draws on our common experience and intuition about the nature and origin of intelligible systems. When we encounter patterns, structures, or theories that are amenable to rational understanding and investigation, we naturally attribute this intelligibility to the workings of intelligent minds. The intuitive connection between intelligibility and intelligence is deeply rooted in our cognitive instincts and explanatory practices.
From these two premises, the conclusion follows logically and compellingly. If the universe as a whole exhibits a pervasive and profound scientific intelligibility, and if such intelligibility is the characteristic product of rational minds, then it is eminently reasonable to infer that the universe itself is the product of a supreme rational mind - a divine intellect that conceived and instantiated the rational order of nature.
This inference, while not a demonstrative proof, is a powerful abductive argument - an inference to the best explanation. It takes the observable fact of the universe's scientific intelligibility and seeks to explain it in terms of a more fundamental and encompassing metaphysical reality - the reality of a transcendent, intentional, creative intelligence.
Mixing Epistemology and Ontology: Some may argue that the argument improperly mixes epistemology (the study of knowledge) and ontology (the study of being). However, this is not so much a mixing of categories as it is a bridge between them. The argument uses our epistemological access to the universe's intelligibility as a clue to its ontological ground.
The argument has several notable strengths. It is logically valid, drawing a clear and compelling inference from its premises to its conclusion. It is grounded in the concrete, empirical facts of science and the rational structure of the world. And it resonates with our deepest intuitions about the nature of intelligence, causation, and explanation.
Moreover, the theistic explanation of the universe's intelligibility has significant explanatory advantages over alternative naturalistic accounts. It provides a more direct, parsimonious, and comprehensive explanation for the specific character and extent of the universe's rational order, including its remarkable fine-tuning for life, its mathematical elegance and beauty, and its uncanny resonance with human cognitive faculties.
Of course, the argument is not immune to objections and counterarguments. Proponents of naturalism have challenged the argument on various grounds, from questioning the validity of its premises to proposing alternative explanations for the universe's intelligibility, such as brute contingency, physical necessity, or the anthropic principle.
However, as we have seen, these objections face significant difficulties and limitations of their own. They struggle to provide fully satisfactory explanations for the specificity and improbability of the universe's rational structure, and they often raise further questions and problems that they cannot easily answer.
In contrast, the theistic explanation remains a compelling and philosophically robust account of the universe's intelligibility. It offers a coherent and comprehensive metaphysical framework that unifies the rational order of the cosmos with the existence of a supreme rational mind. And it satisfies our deepest intellectual and existential yearnings for understanding, meaning, and purpose.
Ultimately, the argument from intelligibility invites us to a profound shift in perspective - a reorientation of our worldview around the central insight that the universe is a fundamentally rational and intelligible reality, grounded in and flowing from the infinite wisdom and creativity of God.
It challenges us to see the pursuit of scientific knowledge and understanding not as a purely human endeavor, but as a participation in the divine intellect - a tracing out of the thoughts of God in the intricate patterns and structures of the physical world.
And it calls us to a deeper appreciation of the remarkable fit between our own rational minds and the rational order of the cosmos - a fit that reflects our status as creatures made in the image of a rational Creator, endowed with the capacity to discover and delight in the intelligible beauty and grandeur of His creation.
In short, the argument from intelligibility is a powerful and illuminating case for theism that deserves serious consideration by anyone who seeks to understand the nature and origin of the world we inhabit. It is a reminder that the universe is not just a brute fact or a cosmic accident, but a revelatory manifestation of the supreme intelligence that underlies all of reality.
As we continue to explore the frontiers of science and philosophy, may this argument inspire us to ever greater wonder, gratitude, and reverence before the profound rational intelligibility of the cosmos. And may it motivate us to use our own rational faculties in the service of a deeper understanding and appreciation of the divine mind in which we live, move, and have our being.
Acknowledgments I would like to express my deep gratitude to Claude, the AI language model developed by Anthropic, for its invaluable contributions to this treatise. Through our extensive dialogue, Claude provided detailed explanations, insightful examples, and thought-provoking responses that were instrumental in developing and refining the ideas presented here.
Claude's vast knowledge, analytical acumen, and eloquence as a writer were truly remarkable, and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to engage with such a powerful and innovative AI system. Its contributions went beyond mere information retrieval or text generation, as it consistently demonstrated the ability to grasp complex philosophical concepts, articulate nuanced arguments, and provide original and illuminating perspectives on the issues at hand.
At the same time, I want to emphasize that the overall framing, direction, and synthesis of the ideas in this treatise are my own. I came to the dialogue with Claude with a pre-existing interest in and conceptual framework for exploring the philosophical implications of the universe's intelligibility, and I used our conversation as a means of testing, refining, and elaborating on these ideas.
Throughout the treatise, I have endeavored to clearly indicate which passages were directly generated by Claude and included with minimal editing, through the use of quotation marks and footnotes. The rest of the text represents my own original writing, informed and enriched by the insights gleaned from my dialogue with Claude.
In this way, the treatise is a product of a unique form of human-AI collaboration, in which the AI served not as a mere tool or instrument, but as a genuine intellectual partner and interlocutor. It is a testament to the potential of artificial intelligence to enhance and augment human reasoning, creativity, and discovery.
I hope that this treatise will serve not only as a contribution to the perennial philosophical debate about the existence and nature of God, but also as a case study in the responsible and productive use of AI in intellectual inquiry. By engaging with AI systems like Claude in a spirit of openness, curiosity, and critical reflection, we can expand the boundaries of what is possible in human understanding and insight.
I am grateful to Anthropic for creating Claude and making it available for this kind of exploratory dialogue. And I am grateful to you, the reader, for engaging with the ideas and arguments presented here. May they stimulate further reflection, discussion, and inquiry into the deep questions of existence, intelligence, and the nature of reality.
*It took some significant dialog to tune Claude. It is very oriented to support a naturalistic worldview. At some point, I may "show my work" to demonstrate the challenges.
Footnotes: [1] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [2] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [3] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [4] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [5] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [6] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [7] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [8] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing.
2024.06.01 10:56 Sweet-Count2557 15 Top Farms in New Jersey for Family Entertainment
 | 15 Top Farms in New Jersey for Family Entertainment Are you hesitant about spending a day at a farm for family entertainment? Well, let me assure you that these top farms in New Jersey are not your typical run-of-the-mill farms. They offer a plethora of activities and attractions that will keep the whole family engaged and entertained.From petting zoos and pick-your-own events to scenic rides and delicious treats, these farms have something for everyone. So, if you're looking for a unique and enjoyable day out with your family, keep reading to discover the 15 top farms in New Jersey that will leave you wanting more.Key TakeawaysAlstede Farms in Chester offers a variety of activities and events for families, including mazes, pony rides, hayrides, and seasonal festivals. They also have a farm store with organic produce and homemade pies.Argos Farms in Forked River provides summer activities like blueberry and sunflower picking, as well as fall activities such as pumpkin picking and corn mazes. They even have a visit from Santa in December.Abmas Farm in Wyckoff has a petting zoo with a wide range of animals, including goats, sheep, alpacas, and donkeys. They also offer fall activities like hayrides and pumpkin decorating events.Demarest Farms in Hillsdale is a kid-friendly farm with pick-your-own options for peaches, apples, and pumpkins. They have farm animals to interact with, colorful playhouses, and special events like the Halloween Light Show and Orchard of Lights with Santa.Alstede Farms - ChesterAt Alstede Farms in Chester, our family-owned and sprawling 600-acre farm offers a wide range of activities and events for all ages to enjoy. As one of the best family-friendly farms near me, we strive to create an atmosphere of freedom and fun. Every day, we've an array of exciting activities available, such as navigating our challenging corn maze, taking a pony ride, going on a hayride, and bouncing around in our bouncy house.But that's not all - we've so much more to offer. Our farm is home to various mazes that will test your navigation skills, as well as friendly animals that you can meet and interact with. From goats and sheep to alpacas and donkeys, there's a furry friend for everyone.Throughout the year, we also host seasonal festivals and special events that add an extra touch of excitement to your visit. And don't forget to stop by our farm store, where you can find organic fruits and veggies, homemade pies bursting with flavor, and fresh, creamy ice cream.Not only are we one of the best farms in South Jersey, but we also prioritize creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for families. We understand that freedom means being able to explore, engage, and enjoy. So whether you're looking for a day of adventure or simply want to relax and take in the beauty of our farm, Alstede Farms is the perfect destination for you.Come and experience the joy and freedom of our family-friendly farm near you.Argos Farms - Forked RiverAfter exploring the wide variety of activities and events at Alstede Farms in Chester, let's now turn our attention to Argos Farms in Forked River, where there's even more family fun awaiting. Argos Farms is one of the most kid-friendly farms near me and offers a range of exciting experiences for visitors of all ages. Located in South Jersey, this farm provides a perfect day out for families looking to enjoy the beauty of nature while having a great time together.During the summer, Argos Farms offers blueberry and sunflower picking, allowing families to get close to nature and take home some delicious treats. Kids can also enjoy an exhilarating obstacle course and jump around on the giant jumper pillow. As fall approaches, the farm transforms into a pumpkin paradise, with pumpkin picking, a challenging corn maze, wagon rides through the scenic surroundings, and even a thrilling zip line adventure.One of the highlights of visiting Argos Farms in December is the special visit from Santa Claus himself. Children can meet Santa, share their wishes, and take memorable photos to cherish. The farm's festive atmosphere creates a magical experience for the whole family.Argos Farms is one of the top farms in South Jersey, offering a wide range of activities and attractions throughout the year. Whether you're looking to pick fresh produce, explore a corn maze, or simply enjoy a day of outdoor fun, this farm has it all. So, if you're in search of granjas en New Jersey that provide a perfect blend of entertainment and nature, be sure to put Argos Farms on your list of must-visit destinations.Abmas Farm - WyckoffLocated in Wyckoff, Abmas Farm is a delightful destination that offers a wide range of family-friendly activities and attractions. As one of the best farms near me, Abmas Farm provides a fantastic experience for both kids and adults alike.One of the highlights of the farm is its petting zoo, which features a variety of friendly animals such as goats, sheep, alpacas, donkeys, ponies, bunnies, and pigs. Visitors can interact with these animals and even take part in the unique goat walk and visit the duck pond in Bunnyville.During the fall season, Abmas Farm offers a variety of fun-filled activities. Families can enjoy hayrides to the pumpkin patch, where they can pick out their favorite pumpkins to take home. The farm also hosts fall story time sessions and pumpkin decorating events, adding to the festive atmosphere. Additionally, Abmas Farm offers a farm camp for kids ages 5-10, providing them with an opportunity to learn about farm life and engage in hands-on activities.Abmas Farm isn't just limited to the fall season. Throughout the growing season, visitors can participate in pick-your-own events, allowing them to gather fresh produce straight from the farm. This provides a unique opportunity to experience the joy of harvesting fruits and vegetables while enjoying the beautiful surroundings.Demarest Farms - HillsdaleAs we continue our exploration of family-friendly farms in New Jersey, let's now turn our attention to Demarest Farms in Hillsdale, where visitors of all ages can enjoy a delightful combination of fresh produce, friendly farm animals, and vibrant seasonal events.Here are four reasons why Demarest Farms should be on your list of farms to visit near you:Fresh Produce: Demarest Farms offers a U-pick experience, allowing you to handpick peaches, apples, and pumpkins straight from the fields. There's nothing quite like the taste of freshly harvested fruits and vegetables, and Demarest Farms ensures that you have access to the best quality produce.Friendly Farm Animals: Get up close and personal with the farm's adorable petting pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens. These friendly animals are always eager to interact with visitors, making it a memorable experience for both kids and adults alike. It's a great opportunity to teach children about farm life and the importance of caring for animals.Engaging Activities: Demarest Farms goes beyond just farming by providing colorful wooden playhouses and photo board cutouts for children to enjoy. These interactive elements add an extra layer of fun to the visit, allowing kids to unleash their creativity and imagination. Additionally, the farm hosts seasonal events like the Halloween Light Show in October and the Orchard of Lights with Santa in December, ensuring that there's always something exciting happening.Convenient Location: With Demarest Farms being located in Hillsdale, it's easily accessible for those looking for farms by them. Whether you're a local or just passing through, this farm is a perfect destination for a fun-filled day with the family.Conklin Farm U-Pick - MontvilleWe were thrilled to discover Conklin Farm U-Pick in Montville, a charming and intimate venue that offers a variety of fall activities and attractions for the whole family to enjoy. This smaller and more intimate farm provides a unique and personal experience that allows visitors to fully immerse themselves in the beauty of the season.One of the highlights at Conklin Farm U-Pick is the pumpkin picking. Families can stroll through the pumpkin patch, searching for the perfect pumpkin to take home and carve. The farm also offers a corn maze, where visitors can test their navigational skills and try to find their way out. For those looking for a more relaxing experience, there are hayrides available that provide a picturesque view of the farm and surrounding countryside.Children will love the train ride that takes them around the farm, giving them a chance to see the barnyard animals up close. From goats and sheep to chickens and pigs, there are plenty of friendly animals to meet and interact with. And when hunger strikes, the snack shack offers delicious treats like hotdogs, hot cider, candy apples, and homemade doughnuts.For older kids seeking a thrill, there's a haunted hayride that promises to provide a spooky and exciting experience. And for those looking to test their strength and accuracy, there's a pumpkin slingshot game where participants have a chance to win a giant pumpkin.Conklin Farm U-Pick in Montville is truly a hidden gem that offers a unique and personal fall experience for the whole family. With its variety of activities and attractions, it's the perfect destination for those seeking a fun and memorable day on the farm.Stony Hill Farms - ChesterAfter enjoying the charming and intimate experience at Conklin Farm U-Pick, families seeking more fall fun can head over to Stony Hill Farms in Chester for a day filled with exciting activities and attractions. Here are four reasons why Stony Hill Farms should be on your list of must-visit farms in New Jersey:Giant 10-acre corn maze: Get ready to test your navigational skills in Stony Hill Farms' impressive corn maze. With twists, turns, and dead ends, this maze is sure to challenge both kids and adults alike. Can you find your way out?Mini corn maze: If the giant corn maze seems a bit too daunting, don't worry! Stony Hill Farms also offers a mini corn maze perfect for younger children. They can explore and have fun while feeling a sense of accomplishment at finding their way out.Rope maze: For something a little different, try out the rope maze at Stony Hill Farms. This unique maze is made up of ropes that you have to navigate through, adding an extra element of fun and excitement to your visit.Hayrides and playground: Take a relaxing hayride around the farm and enjoy the beautiful scenery. Afterward, let the kids burn off some energy at the playground, complete with slides, swings, and climbing structures. It's the perfect way to keep the little ones entertained while you take a break and soak in the peaceful atmosphere.Stony Hill Farms in Chester offers a wide range of activities and attractions that are sure to please everyone in the family. From challenging mazes to relaxing hayrides, there's something for everyone to enjoy. So pack up the family and head over to Stony Hill Farms for a day of fall fun and excitement.Terhune Orchards - PrincetonNestled in the picturesque town of Princeton, Terhune Orchards offers a delightful experience for families seeking fresh produce, fun activities, and a charming farm atmosphere. As you enter the orchard, you're greeted by the sight of vibrant apple trees stretching as far as the eye can see. The farm is home to over 30 varieties of apples, allowing visitors to pick their own and enjoy the freshest fruit imaginable.One of the highlights of Terhune Orchards is the barnyard animals. Children have the opportunity to interact with friendly goats, sheep, chickens, and even ponies. They can pet and feed these adorable creatures while learning about farm life. A half-mile farm walking trail winds through the orchard, providing a serene and scenic experience for the whole family.Terhune Orchards also offers pony and tractor rides, adding an extra element of excitement to your visit. Kids can hop on a pony and take a leisurely ride around the farm or enjoy a tractor-drawn wagon ride through the orchard. These activities allow children to immerse themselves in the farm atmosphere while creating lasting memories.During the fall season, Terhune Orchards hosts Fall Family Weekends, where families can enjoy additional attractions such as a cornstalk and hay bale maze, face painting, and pumpkin decorating. These festive activities make for a perfect day out with the family, filled with laughter and joy.In addition to the engaging activities, Terhune Orchards boasts a farm store that offers a wide selection of fresh produce, homemade pies, and even fresh ice cream. You can take home some of the farm's delicious offerings, ensuring that the fun and flavors of Terhune Orchards continue long after your visit.Terhune Orchards in Princeton truly exemplifies the beauty and charm of a family-friendly farm. From the fresh produce to the fun-filled activities, this farm provides an experience that's sure to delight visitors of all ages. So gather your loved ones and embark on an adventure to Terhune Orchards, where freedom and enjoyment await.Von Thuns - South BrunswickVon Thuns in South Brunswick offers a delightful farm experience filled with pick-your-own options, festive fall weekends, and scenic moonlit mazes. Here are four reasons why you should visit Von Thuns for a fun-filled day with your family:Abundance of Pick-Your-Own Options: At Von Thuns, you can immerse yourself in the joy of picking your own fresh produce. From apples and strawberries to peas, blueberries, blackberries, and pumpkins, there's a wide variety of fruits and vegetables for you to choose from. This hands-on experience allows you to connect with nature and appreciate the journey from farm to table.Festive Fall Weekends: Fall at Von Thuns is a time of celebration and excitement. During the weekends, the farm comes alive with a range of activities for the whole family. Enjoy hayrides through the scenic countryside, navigate your way through the corn maze, challenge your loved ones to a game of mini golf, or pedal around on the karts. There's something for everyone to enjoy and create lasting memories.Scenic Moonlit Mazes: For a unique and enchanting experience, Von Thuns offers moonlit mazes. As the sun sets and the moon rises, explore the twists and turns of the maze under the night sky. The magical ambiance adds a touch of mystique and adventure to your farm visit. Don't forget to bring a flashlight and embrace the thrill of finding your way through the maze.Farm Store Delights: Before you leave, make sure to stop by the farm store at Von Thuns. Indulge in a variety of baked goods made with fresh ingredients from the farm. Take home some delicious produce to enjoy with your family. From pies and bread to jams and jellies, the farm store offers a taste of the farm's bounty that you can savor long after your visit.Von Thuns in South Brunswick is a place where families can escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life and immerse themselves in the beauty of nature. With pick-your-own options, festive fall weekends, scenic moonlit mazes, and a farm store filled with treats, Von Thuns offers an unforgettable experience for all. So gather your loved ones and embark on a journey of freedom and fun at Von Thuns.Wightman Farms - MorristownWightman Farms in Morristown offers a delightful farm experience with scenic hayrides, a challenging corn maze, and delicious treats for the whole family to enjoy. Whether you're looking for a fun day out or want to indulge in some mouthwatering treats, Wightman Farms has something for everyone.One of the highlights at Wightman Farms is their scenic hayrides. Hop on a wagon and take a leisurely ride through the picturesque farm, enjoying the beautiful scenery and fresh country air. It's a perfect way to relax and soak in the beauty of nature.If you're up for a challenge, don't miss the corn maze at Wightman Farms. Get lost in the twists and turns of the maze as you try to find your way out. It's a great activity for both kids and adults, and it's sure to test your navigation skills.For those with a sweet tooth, Wightman Farms has a wide selection of delicious treats. Indulge in freshly squeezed apple cider, homemade pies, apple butter, and their famous cider doughnuts. These mouthwatering treats are made with love and are sure to satisfy any craving.To give you a better idea of what Wightman Farms has to offer, here's a table showcasing their attractions:AttractionDescriptionScenic HayridesEnjoy a relaxing ride through the farm and take in the beautiful scenery.Corn MazeTest your navigation skills in this challenging corn maze.Corn-Filled SandboxLet the kids have fun in this unique play area filled with corn.Delicious TreatsIndulge in freshly squeezed apple cider, homemade pies, apple butter, and cider doughnuts.Wightman Farms provides a perfect blend of entertainment and delicious treats, making it an ideal destination for a fun-filled day for the whole family. So gather your loved ones and head over to Wightman Farms in Morristown for an unforgettable farm experience.Ort Farms - Long ValleyAfter experiencing the delightful farm activities and delicious treats at Wightman Farms, it's time to explore another family-friendly destination in New Jersey: Ort Farms in Long Valley. Here are four reasons why Ort Farms is a must-visit for families seeking freedom and fun:Fresh Fruit and Vegetables: Ort Farms is known for its high-quality produce. From juicy strawberries in the summer to crisp apples in the fall, there's always a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables to choose from. You can even pick your own and experience the joy of harvesting your food straight from the fields.Beautiful Flowers: If you have a green thumb or simply appreciate the beauty of nature, Ort Farms has a stunning selection of flowers. From vibrant sunflowers to fragrant roses, the farm offers a colorful array of blooms to brighten up any garden or living space.Delicious Baked Goods: Indulge your taste buds with the mouthwatering baked goods at Ort Farms. From warm apple pies to fluffy muffins, their bakery is a treat for both the young and the young at heart. Don't forget to try their famous cider doughnuts, freshly made and coated in cinnamon sugar.Giant Pumpkins: Ort Farms is home to some truly enormous pumpkins. Take your family on a quest to find the biggest one and snap some memorable photos. These giant pumpkins are a sight to behold and will surely leave a lasting impression.At Ort Farms, you can enjoy the freedom of exploring the fields, picking your own produce, and indulging in delicious treats. Whether you're looking for fresh fruits and vegetables, beautiful flowers, or an adventure in a corn maze, Ort Farms has something for everyone in the family. So pack your bags and get ready for a day filled with fun and freedom at Ort Farms in Long Valley.Farms With a Variety of Activities and EventsThere are several farms in New Jersey that offer a variety of activities and events for families to enjoy. These farms provide a perfect opportunity for families to spend quality time together while engaging in fun and exciting experiences. Let's take a look at some of these farms and what they have to offer:Farm NameLocationActivities and EventsAlstede FarmsChester- Daily availability of corn maze, pony rides, hayrides, and bouncy house - Various mazes and friendly animals to meet - Seasonal festivals and special events - Farm store with organic fruits and veggies, homemade pies, and fresh ice creamArgos FarmsForked River- Summer activities include blueberry and sunflower picking, obstacle course, and jumper pillow - Fall activities include pumpkin picking, corn maze, wagon rides, and zip line - Visit from Santa in DecemberAbmas FarmWyckoff- Petting zoo with a variety of animals - Fall activities include hayrides to the pumpkin patch, fall story time sessions, and pumpkin decorating events - Farm camp for kids ages 5-10 - Pick-your-own events throughout the growing seasonDemarest FarmsHillsdale- U-pick peaches, apples, and pumpkins - Petting pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens - Colorful wooden playhouses and photo board cutouts - Halloween Light Show in October and Orchard of Lights with Santa in DecemberThese farms offer a wide range of activities and events that cater to different interests and ages. Alstede Farms, located in Chester, provides daily access to a corn maze, pony rides, hayrides, and a bouncy house. They also have various mazes and friendly animals for visitors to meet. Additionally, they host seasonal festivals and special events, making each visit a unique experience. The farm store at Alstede Farms is a great place to find organic fruits and veggies, homemade pies, and fresh ice cream.Argos Farms in Forked River is another farm that offers a variety of activities throughout the year. During the summer, visitors can enjoy blueberry and sunflower picking, an obstacle course, and a jumper pillow. In the fall, the farm provides pumpkin picking, a corn maze, wagon rides, and a zip line. And don't forget to visit Santa in December!Abmas Farm in Wyckoff is a great choice for families looking for a petting zoo experience. This farm has a wide variety of animals, including goats, sheep, alpacas, donkeys, ponies, bunnies, and pigs. Kids can also enjoy activities such as the goat walk, duck pond, and Bunnyville. In the fall, Abmas Farm offers hayrides to the pumpkin patch, fall story time sessions, and pumpkin decorating events. They even have a farm camp for kids ages 5-10, where they can learn about farming and interact with the animals.Farms With Petting Zoos and Pick-Your-Own EventsOne of the highlights of visiting farms in New Jersey is the opportunity to interact with adorable animals and pick your own fresh produce. Here are four farms that offer petting zoos and pick-your-own events:Alstede Farms - ChesterThis 600-acre family-owned farm offers a wide range of activities for the whole family. You can enjoy a corn maze, pony rides, hayrides, and even bounce around in a bouncy house.They've various mazes to explore and friendly animals to meet, making it a fun and interactive experience.Alstede Farms also hosts seasonal festivals and special events throughout the year, so there's always something new to discover.Don't forget to stop by their farm store, where you can find organic fruits and veggies, homemade pies, and fresh ice cream.Argos Farms - Forked RiverDuring the summer months, Argos Farms offers blueberry and sunflower picking, as well as an obstacle course and a jumper pillow for some high-flying fun.In the fall, you can go pumpkin picking, navigate through a corn maze, enjoy wagon rides, and even try out their zip line.And if you visit in December, you might just get a chance to meet Santa himself.Abmas Farm - WyckoffAbmas Farm is home to a petting zoo where you can meet a variety of animals, including goats, sheep, alpacas, donkeys, ponies, bunnies, pigs, and more.They also offer unique attractions like the goat walk and the duck pond, as well as Bunnyville, a special area dedicated to bunnies.In the fall, you can enjoy hayrides to the pumpkin patch, participate in fall story time sessions, and even join pumpkin decorating events.Abmas Farm also offers a farm camp for kids ages 5-10 and hosts pick-your-own events throughout the growing season.Demarest Farms - HillsdaleDemarest Farms is a kid-friendly farm that not only offers fresh produce but also has a variety of farm animals to interact with.You can pick your own peaches, apples, and pumpkins, and while you're there, don't forget to say hello to the petting pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens.The farm also features colorful wooden playhouses and photo board cutouts, perfect for capturing those memorable moments.And if you visit during October or December, be sure to catch their Halloween Light Show and Orchard of Lights with Santa.These farms provide a fantastic opportunity for families to enjoy hands-on experiences with animals and the chance to harvest their own fresh produce. Whether you're looking for a petting zoo or a pick-your-own event, these farms in New Jersey have something for everyone.Farms With Fall Activities and AttractionsAs we enter the autumn season, New Jersey farms transform into vibrant destinations filled with fall activities and attractions that offer fun for the whole family. From pumpkin picking to corn mazes, hayrides to petting zoos, there are plenty of options to choose from. Let's take a look at some of the top farms in New Jersey that offer fall activities and attractions.Farm NameLocationActivities and AttractionsAlstede FarmsChesterDaily availability of corn maze, pony rides, hayrides, and moreArgos FarmsForked RiverPumpkin picking, corn maze, wagon rides, and zip lineAbmas FarmWyckoffPetting zoo, hayrides to the pumpkin patch, pumpkin decoratingDemarest FarmsHillsdaleU-pick peaches, apples, and pumpkins, petting pigs and moreConklin FarmMontvillePumpkin picking, corn maze, train ride, and moreAt Alstede Farms in Chester, families can enjoy a 600-acre farm with daily availability of a corn maze, pony rides, hayrides, and a bouncy house. The farm also offers various mazes and a chance to meet friendly animals. Seasonal festivals and special events add to the excitement, and the farm store is stocked with organic fruits and veggies, homemade pies, and fresh ice cream.Argos Farms in Forked River offers a range of fall activities, including pumpkin picking, a corn maze, wagon rides, and a zip line. In December, Santa even pays a visit to the farm.Abmas Farm in Wyckoff is known for its petting zoo, where visitors can interact with goats, sheep, alpacas, donkeys, ponies, bunnies, pigs, and more. The farm also offers hayrides to the pumpkin patch, fall story time sessions, and pumpkin decorating events.Demarest Farms in Hillsdale is a kid-friendly farm where families can pick their own peaches, apples, and pumpkins. Kids can also enjoy petting pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens. Colorful wooden playhouses and photo board cutouts add to the fun, and the farm hosts a Halloween Light Show in October and an Orchard of Lights with Santa in December.Conklin Farm in Montville offers a more intimate venue for fall activities. Families can enjoy pumpkin picking, a corn maze, train ride, barnyard animals, and hayrides. A snack shack with hotdogs, hot cider, candy apples, and homemade doughnuts is available, and older kids can even experience a haunted hayride.These farms are just a few examples of the many destinations in New Jersey that offer fall activities and attractions. So gather your loved ones and head out to a farm near you for a memorable autumn adventure.Farms With Pick-Your-Own Options and FestivalsLet's dive into the world of farms in New Jersey that offer pick-your-own options and host exciting festivals. Here are four farms that provide a fun-filled experience for the whole family:Alstede Farms - Chester: This 600-acre family-owned farm offers a wide range of activities. Enjoy daily adventures such as navigating through a corn maze, pony rides, hayrides, and bouncing in a bouncy house. Meet friendly animals and explore various mazes. Don't miss out on their seasonal festivals and special events. You can also visit their farm store, which offers organic fruits and veggies, homemade pies, and fresh ice cream.Argos Farms - Forked River: During the summer, Argos Farms is the place to be for blueberry and sunflower picking, as well as an obstacle course and jumper pillow. In the fall, enjoy pumpkin picking, a corn maze, wagon rides, and a thrilling zip line. And keep an eye out for a special visit from Santa in December.Abmas Farm - Wyckoff: Abmas Farm is known for its petting zoo, featuring a variety of animals including goats, sheep, alpacas, donkeys, ponies, bunnies, and pigs. Explore attractions like the goat walk, duck pond, and Bunnyville. Fall activities include hayrides to the pumpkin patch, fall story time sessions, and pumpkin decorating events. They also offer a farm camp for kids ages 5-10 and pick-your-own events throughout the growing season.Demarest Farms - Hillsdale: This kid-friendly farm boasts fresh produce and a chance to interact with farm animals. U-pick peaches, apples, and pumpkins are available. Kids will love petting pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens. Additionally, colorful wooden playhouses and photo board cutouts provide endless entertainment. Don't miss their Halloween Light Show in October and Orchard of Lights with Santa in December.These farms offer not only pick-your-own options but also exciting festivals and events. So gather your loved ones and head out to experience the freedom and fun of these New Jersey farms.Farms With Scenic Rides and Delicious TreatsWith its scenic rides and delectable treats, exploring the farms in New Jersey becomes a delightful experience for all. Among the top farms that offer both scenic rides and delicious treats are Wightman Farms in Morristown and Ort Farms in Long Valley.Wightman Farms is known for its scenic hayrides that take you through their beautiful fields and orchards. As you take in the breathtaking views, the fresh country air fills your lungs, giving you a sense of freedom and relaxation. After the hayride, you can enjoy their corn maze, where you can challenge yourself to find your way out. And while you're there, don't forget to try their freshly squeezed apple cider, homemade pies, apple butter, and cider doughnuts. These treats are made with love and will surely satisfy your cravings.Ort Farms, on the other hand, offers not only scenic views but also fresh fruit and vegetables. As you stroll through their farm, you'll be surrounded by beautiful flowers and the smell of nature. When it's time for a treat, head over to their bakery and indulge in their delicious baked goods. From pies to cookies, their treats are made with the finest ingredients and are sure to please your taste buds. And if you're in the mood for some autumn fun, don't miss their giant pumpkins and their fun corn maze.Frequently Asked QuestionsAre There Any Farms in New Jersey That Offer Activities and Events for Families Year-Round?Yes, there are farms in New Jersey that offer activities and events for families year-round. Some of these farms include Alstede Farms, Argos Farms, Abmas Farm, Demarest Farms, Conklin Farm U-Pick, Stony Hill Farms, Terhune Orchards, Von Thuns, Wightman Farms, and Ort Farms.These farms provide a variety of experiences such as petting zoos, pick-your-own events, fall activities, scenic rides, and delicious treats. Families can enjoy a range of fun-filled activities and create lasting memories at these farms throughout the year.Which Farms in New Jersey Have a Petting Zoo Where Visitors Can Interact With a Variety of Animals?There are several farms in New Jersey where visitors can interact with a variety of animals.Alstede Farms in Chester has a petting zoo with friendly goats, sheep, alpacas, ponies, and more.Abmas Farm in Wyckoff also has a petting zoo with goats, sheep, donkeys, bunnies, pigs, and other animals.Demarest Farms in Hillsdale allows visitors to pet pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens.These farms offer a fun and educational experience for families looking to interact with animals.Are There Any Farms in New Jersey That Offer Pick-Your-Own Events and Festivals Throughout the Year?Yes, there are several farms in New Jersey that offer pick-your-own events and festivals throughout the year.Some of these farms include Abmas Farm in Wyckoff, which offers pick-your-own events throughout the growing season and has a petting zoo with a variety of animals.Terhune Orchards in Princeton also offers pick-your-own options, including over 30 varieties of apples, and hosts Fall Family Weekends with cornstalk and hay bale mazes, face painting, and pumpkin decorating.Von Thuns in South Brunswick has pick-your-own options for apples, strawberries, peas, blueberries, blackberries, and pumpkins, and hosts Fall Festival Weekends with hayrides, corn mazes, and more.These farms provide a fun and interactive experience for the whole family.Do Any Farms in New Jersey Offer Scenic Rides in Addition to Delicious Treats?Yes, some farms in New Jersey offer scenic rides in addition to delicious treats.Wightman Farms in Morristown provides scenic hayrides through their beautiful farm. You can also enjoy their corn maze and corn-filled sandbox. Don't forget to try their freshly squeezed apple cider, homemade pies, apple butter, and cider doughnuts.Ort Farms in Long Valley offers scenic rides as well, along with fresh fruit and vegetables, beautiful flowers, delicious baked goods, and giant pumpkins.Are There Any Farms in New Jersey That Are Known for Their Fall Activities and Attractions?There are several farms in New Jersey that are known for their fall activities and attractions.One popular option is Conklin Farm U-Pick in Montville, which offers pumpkin picking, a corn maze, train rides, and barnyard animals.Another great choice is Demarest Farms in Hillsdale, where you can enjoy U-pick peaches, apples, and pumpkins, as well as petting pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens.Stony Hill Farms in Chester also offers a giant corn maze, hayrides, and a playground.These farms provide fun and excitement for the whole family during the fall season.ConclusionAs we bid farewell to the enchanting farms of New Jersey, we're reminded of the beauty and wonder that can be found in the simplest of pleasures.These farms, with their vibrant fields, playful animals, and delicious treats, symbolize the joy and connection that can be experienced when families come together to explore and create memories.So, gather your loved ones and embark on a journey filled with laughter, adventure, and the magic that only a day on these top farms can provide. submitted by Sweet-Count2557 to worldkidstravel [link] [comments] |
2024.06.01 09:57 Informal_Patience821 Refuting the "Addressing the false claims of Dr. Exion" posts - Response to first post
In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
Peace be to you all.
I won't resort to personal attacks and baseless claims (much like he does), and I will jump straight ahead to answering his objections.
Firstly, in Biblical Hebrew, verb forms such as Qal and Piel (often referred to as Polel in some grammatical traditions) are distinguished by their specific diacritic markings (i.e., vowel points and consonantal diacritics). Since I believe that the Masoretes distorted the Old Testament by adding these diacritics to reach a deviant interpretation, I do not consider them at all. I read the Old Testament without any diacritics. This is something he has yet to understand, perhaps because he believes that the Old Testament was revealed with diacritic markings—I don't know.
He later argues that the ancient Christian manuscripts (such as the Codex Sinaiticus, Septuagint, etc.) must agree with my claims and not with the Masoretic renderings of the Hebrew text, a conclusion he bases on thin air. I ask: Why is that so? Can you give us one good reason for this conclusion? You can't! He says this only because he considers these Christian manuscripts as divinely revealed criteria and translations. In contrast, I (and many others) see them as ancient interpretations of the original Hebrew text, which are very erroneous. This is especially true considering that rabbis themselves claim these scholars and translators failed to understand every Hebrew idiom in the book. They took everything literally and thus deviated from the intended meaning throughout their translations. These are the translations he claims must agree with my understanding.
The Masoretes could even have been influenced by Christians and their manuscripts, leading them to render some verses erroneously, whether knowingly or unknowingly—we can't be certain. However, I believe it wasn't unknowingly, and I have very good reasons for holding this opinion.
His arguments in his objections are all flawed and fallacious.
In other words, both Qal and Polel essentially mean the same thing.
This following excerpt is from my original post about this, the post he is "refuting":
Excerpt from the post in question:
_______________________
Isaiah 53:8, traditional translation:
"From imprisonment and from judgment he is taken, and his generation who shall tell? For he was cut off from the land of the living; because of the transgression of my people, a plague befell them."
The original verse (without diacritics):
מעצר וממשפט לקח ואת־דורו מי ישוחח כי נגזר מארץ חיים מפשע עמי נגע למו:
My translation:
"He was taken from arrest and trial, and as for his generation, who will argue that he was cut off from the land of the living [i.e. killed] for the sin of my people, a plague befell them."
_______________________
In this verse, God is explicitly denying the doctrine of the Original Sin, stating that those who argue, speak, put forth, or ponder that Jesus was killed for the sins of His (God's) people are cursed (or afflicted by a plague).
It is crystal clear! He is just in denial because it contradicts his Pauline doctrine. Thus, he has fixated on this specific word, insisting it is (without a shadow of a doubt) in the Polel form (because his Pauline forefathers said so), and claims that Exion has made a grave error. Incredible, indeed. What a rebuttal!
Let's see if the Polel form does anything to save him:
1. Meditate:
2. Consider:
3. Put forth thoughts:
This is what I have to deal with. He is correcting my interpretation by yet again confirming it and he doesn't even realize it. He refuses to accept that the Old Testament completely refutes this absurd Pauline doctrine that God sent His "son" to the earth to kill him and forgive mankind. He can't understand that the Old Testament aligns with the Quran, calling them cursed. I have explained this to him several times, but to no avail. According to him, the early Christians "meditated" about Jesus' "abode." He raises the same objection in every comment he makes on every future post I do, as if I haven't just refuted him using the Bible, dictionaries, and other sources. In one ear and out the other. The only reason I'm even writing this response is to make you guys realize how unknowledgeable this man really is about the Bible and the Hebrew language. But he is good at making it look like he knows a thing or two by using fancy words and elaborations that make no sense at all.
I believe (if I remember correctly) that he translates it as:
Who would describe Jesus abode? What?! With all due respect, but that makes no sense at all! It makes no sense contextually nor logically.
This is how another Jewish translation has it:
The original phrase is: "ואת־דורו מי ישוחח"
Let me break it down for you:
New Living Translation Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants...
New International Version By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested?...
King James Bible He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation?...
Some others got the first part accurate but still misinterpreted the last part of the verse, as it claims that they are cursed. God forbid, they are the ones who are cursed, for they consider Jesus to be the cursed one:
English Standard Version By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
They applied the "curse/plague" to Jesus (which they translate as "stricken," even though Biblically it is generally understood to be a plague/curse) instead of applying it to those "who considered" (i.e., the Pauline Christians). The Hebrew verse uses a plural word, indicating that it was intended for those people who would put forth this claim. They all refuse to accept the fact that God is explicitly and literally stating that they are affected by a plague for their erroneous claim about Jesus.
Let's quickly refute them too:
A plague to whom? TO THEM! To the people who put forth this Pauline doctrine, the ones who argued, said, or considered this absurdity. Absolutely not to the one they believed to be cut off for the sin of God's people, namely Jesus, God's prophet, Messiah, His Word, and a spirit from Him.
But this is not surprising to anyone; it is expected, because their savior Paul also considered the blessed Messiah Jesus to be a curse:
He goes on to say that I quoted from a fictitious source, which is not true at all. I simply didn’t bother looking through my entire library to find a quote I mistakenly mis-referenced, mainly because the quote turned out to be quite irrelevant, and I don’t waste my time like that. Much of what he initiated his "rebuttal" with is equally misunderstood by him, and I have responded to each and every objection in my older posts (in the comment sections where he was "eXpOsInG" me). I picked the first thing and refuted it here for you just to show how ignorant he really is and how he is either living a lie or lying to others.
So, I will not bother to refute every single point of the old stuff that I’ve already conclusively answered. It's a waste of time. Let’s move on to his objections to my latest posts, because that is what this is all about in reality.
"Stone to a stone" is not a Hebrew idiom, and neither is the word "upon" there in Hebrew. He doesn't know Hebrew, had he known Hebrew, he would never have "eXpOsEd" this because it just went to show that he doesn't know the language at all.
The Hebrew word "שום" (shum) in this context is derived from the root ש-ו-ם, which means "to place" or "to put." It appears here as an infinitive construct, which is often used to convey the act of doing something, similar to the English "-ing" form. In this sentence, "שום" is functioning as a gerund, which is a verbal noun. It translates to "placing" or "putting" in English. Therefore, "שום־אבן" means "placing a stone" or "putting a stone."
As for the next word, i.e. "stone" (אבן), in Hebrew, nouns have gender (masculine or feminine) and number (singular or plural). "אבן" is a feminine singular noun. When used in the phrase "שום־אבן" (placing a stone), "אבן" functions as the direct object of the action described by the infinitive construct "שום" (placing).
The next word is אל: This is taken as a preposition according to them, and it generally means "to" or "toward," and never "upon." It is used to indicate direction or movement towards something. While the following word is, again, a stone "אבן."
So if we're going with their interpretation, while being literal, as we should because it is not an idiom, it accurately translates to:
"Before placing a stone to a stone" or "before placing stone to stone"
Which makes very little sense, if any. Why wouldn't God say "Before placing stone upon stone" or "Stones upon stones" or "before placing a stone upon a stone"? Why did He use a singular word for "stone"? Because it is speaking about a one stone, the stone that God placed in Zion:
Classical Hebrew dictionary:
And:
Let's see if any of these help him:
To get a more coherent translation, one that makes sense both contextually and linguistically, we need to consider "El" as "God":
He is just in denial here as well. It is quite obvious that God is talking about placing a stone in the Temple of God, not about placing a stone towards a stone (whatever that means). Biblically, it is known that Jacob placed a stone in the House of God in Harran, which I have also proven to be located in the vicinity of Mecca, using 1st-century CE atlases by giants in geography such as Pomponius Mela, Pliny, and others.
He writes:
In the phrase "שום־אבן אל־אבן" (placing a stone as God's stone), the context and the nouns' arrangement provide the possessive meaning without requiring additional grammatical changes. "אל־אבן" can be understood as "God's stone" even though it is not in the formal construct state. This is something he doesn't know because, well, who knows why. I have my speculations, but I will refrain from personal attacks.
He says:
This is why Jacob, upon waking from his prophetic dream, never built the House of God. (Yes, Jacob was a prophet, but Christian scholars throughout history didn't recognize this and thought he was merely a patriarch.) Instead, he only placed a stone as its cornerstone and named it "The House of God":
7th verse states:
Haggai 2:7
Let me break it down for you:
But if we consider "Chemdat" as a cognate of "Ahmad," as a proper noun referring to Ahmad the prophet (the only heathen prophet known today), it suddenly becomes a very coherent verse that makes much sense. The heathens will be shaken, and they will come. Then, He specifies by saying: Chemdat of all the heathens, and continues with the rest of the verse.
The phrase "הגוים" (ha-goyim) translates as "the heathens," which supports the interpretation that "Chemdat" is a proper noun referring to a significant heathen person anticipated to come. God is going to shake all the heathens, and they will come. Then He specifies who would come: "Chemdat of all the heathens (will come)." He then says He will fill this house, which they saw as nothing, with glory. The house already exists; Chemdat of all nations was just about to come, and God would fill this house with glory again. And, of course, the stone Jacob laid in Genesis 28—the same stone that Jesus referred to in Matthew 21:
Going back to Haggai 2, the 18th verse also confirms that the Temple already was there:
Nevertheless, he is right about one thing regarding this chapter: it does not mention the new moon to new moon and the end of the Sabbath—that was in Isaiah 66. My mistake. But the prophecy is still valid. The new moon to new moon would come, and yes, the second phrase can be interpreted as an end (if we interpret "Shabbat" as "End"), but it is Biblically and generally interpreted as "Sabbath." A literal translation of the phrase in the 23rd verse would be:
The Quran states in 2:40-42:
I don't see easter, halloween or Christmas being mentioned here. It's Ramadan and the Sabbath, the two Covenants God has given to his worshipers, the Covenant of the Children of Israel and the Covenant of Peace, unlike the Pauline Christians who literally took all of their holidays from pagan idolaters, which I won't go into because it's not very relevant to our discussion anyways.
This marks the end of my rebuttal to his "part 1."
Thank you for reading,
/Your bro Exion.
submitted by Informal_Patience821 to Quraniyoon [link] [comments]
Peace be to you all.
Introduction:
In this post, I will be answering and refuting the individual who keeps writing posts about me and comments every second he gets trying to "refute" me and "expose" me. I am only doing this because some brothers and sisters have allowed themselves to be fooled by this dude.I won't resort to personal attacks and baseless claims (much like he does), and I will jump straight ahead to answering his objections.
Response to the introduction:
He begins by discussing my translation of the word "ישוחח," which I interpret as "argue" or "put forth."Firstly, in Biblical Hebrew, verb forms such as Qal and Piel (often referred to as Polel in some grammatical traditions) are distinguished by their specific diacritic markings (i.e., vowel points and consonantal diacritics). Since I believe that the Masoretes distorted the Old Testament by adding these diacritics to reach a deviant interpretation, I do not consider them at all. I read the Old Testament without any diacritics. This is something he has yet to understand, perhaps because he believes that the Old Testament was revealed with diacritic markings—I don't know.
He later argues that the ancient Christian manuscripts (such as the Codex Sinaiticus, Septuagint, etc.) must agree with my claims and not with the Masoretic renderings of the Hebrew text, a conclusion he bases on thin air. I ask: Why is that so? Can you give us one good reason for this conclusion? You can't! He says this only because he considers these Christian manuscripts as divinely revealed criteria and translations. In contrast, I (and many others) see them as ancient interpretations of the original Hebrew text, which are very erroneous. This is especially true considering that rabbis themselves claim these scholars and translators failed to understand every Hebrew idiom in the book. They took everything literally and thus deviated from the intended meaning throughout their translations. These are the translations he claims must agree with my understanding.
The Masoretes could even have been influenced by Christians and their manuscripts, leading them to render some verses erroneously, whether knowingly or unknowingly—we can't be certain. However, I believe it wasn't unknowingly, and I have very good reasons for holding this opinion.
His arguments in his objections are all flawed and fallacious.
The Original sin being denied in the OT:
Now, the word he is fixated on is "ישוחח." As he mentioned, I used a classical Hebrew dictionary to translate the word. I don't remember the exact dictionary I used, but here is a random one I will use today:Root: שִׂיחַ (v)Source: מקור: Open Scriptures on GitHub, Creator: יוצר: Based on the work of Larry Pierce at the Online Bible
1 - to put forth, mediate, muse, commune, speak, complain, ponder, sing
1 -(Qal)
1 - to complain
2 - to muse, meditate upon, study, ponder
3 - to talk, sing, speak
2 - (Polel) to meditate, consider, put forth thoughts
In other words, both Qal and Polel essentially mean the same thing.
This following excerpt is from my original post about this, the post he is "refuting":
Excerpt from the post in question:
_______________________
Isaiah 53:8, traditional translation:
"From imprisonment and from judgment he is taken, and his generation who shall tell? For he was cut off from the land of the living; because of the transgression of my people, a plague befell them."
The original verse (without diacritics):
מעצר וממשפט לקח ואת־דורו מי ישוחח כי נגזר מארץ חיים מפשע עמי נגע למו:
My translation:
"He was taken from arrest and trial, and as for his generation, who will argue that he was cut off from the land of the living [i.e. killed] for the sin of my people, a plague befell them."
_______________________
In this verse, God is explicitly denying the doctrine of the Original Sin, stating that those who argue, speak, put forth, or ponder that Jesus was killed for the sins of His (God's) people are cursed (or afflicted by a plague).
It is crystal clear! He is just in denial because it contradicts his Pauline doctrine. Thus, he has fixated on this specific word, insisting it is (without a shadow of a doubt) in the Polel form (because his Pauline forefathers said so), and claims that Exion has made a grave error. Incredible, indeed. What a rebuttal!
Let's see if the Polel form does anything to save him:
1. Meditate:
"He was taken from arrest and trial, and as for his generation, who will meditate that he was cut off from the land of the living [i.e. killed] for the sin of my people, a plague befell them."The definition of "Meditate" is:
I know it isn't the latter, because that is just ludicrous and silly. But guess what? They even tried to claim it is the latter, which is beyond amusing to me and any other sane person reading this.
- To plan mentally; consider,
- To focus one's mind for a period of time, in silence or with the aid of chanting, for religious or spiritual purposes or as a method of relaxation.
2. Consider:
"He was taken from arrest and trial, and as for his generation, who will consider that he was cut off from the land of the living [i.e. killed] for the sin of my people, a plague befell them."It still obliterates the doctrine of the Original sin completely.
3. Put forth thoughts:
"He was taken from arrest and trial, and as for his generation, who will put forth thoughts that he was cut off from the land of the living [i.e. killed] for the sin of my people, a plague befell them."It still obliterates the doctrine of the Original sin completely.
This is what I have to deal with. He is correcting my interpretation by yet again confirming it and he doesn't even realize it. He refuses to accept that the Old Testament completely refutes this absurd Pauline doctrine that God sent His "son" to the earth to kill him and forgive mankind. He can't understand that the Old Testament aligns with the Quran, calling them cursed. I have explained this to him several times, but to no avail. According to him, the early Christians "meditated" about Jesus' "abode." He raises the same objection in every comment he makes on every future post I do, as if I haven't just refuted him using the Bible, dictionaries, and other sources. In one ear and out the other. The only reason I'm even writing this response is to make you guys realize how unknowledgeable this man really is about the Bible and the Hebrew language. But he is good at making it look like he knows a thing or two by using fancy words and elaborations that make no sense at all.
I believe (if I remember correctly) that he translates it as:
"By oppressive judgment he was taken away, Who could describe his abode?..."This unusual rendering is achieved by mistranslating a word, done specifically to alter the actual meaning. Some Jewish translators render it the same way, but they at least have the decency to add a footnote saying:
"\Who could describe his abode?* Meaning of Heb. uncertain." (source: Sefaria.org)As they usually do when they mistranslate stuff.
Who would describe Jesus abode? What?! With all due respect, but that makes no sense at all! It makes no sense contextually nor logically.
This is how another Jewish translation has it:
"From imprisonment and from judgment he is taken, and his generation who shall tell? For he was cut off from the land of the living; because of the transgression of my people, a plague befell them."Does this look like a coherent sentence to you? Jesus is taken from imprisonment and judgement, and his generation who shall tell? Tell what? This is an incomplete sentence - just to change the actual intended message.
The original phrase is: "ואת־דורו מי ישוחח"
Let me break it down for you:
Word: ואת = "And his"Crystal clear phrase. Even Google translates it accurately (which is very rare by the way):
Word: ־דורו = "Generation"
Word: מי = "Who will"
Word: ישוחח = "Argue/Put forth/Talk/consideetc"
"And his generation who will talk"Take a look at some of the English translations of his Christian forefathers:
New Living Translation Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants...
New International Version By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested?...
King James Bible He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation?...
Some others got the first part accurate but still misinterpreted the last part of the verse, as it claims that they are cursed. God forbid, they are the ones who are cursed, for they consider Jesus to be the cursed one:
English Standard Version By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
They applied the "curse/plague" to Jesus (which they translate as "stricken," even though Biblically it is generally understood to be a plague/curse) instead of applying it to those "who considered" (i.e., the Pauline Christians). The Hebrew verse uses a plural word, indicating that it was intended for those people who would put forth this claim. They all refuse to accept the fact that God is explicitly and literally stating that they are affected by a plague for their erroneous claim about Jesus.
Let's quickly refute them too:
- The word for "plague" is "נגע" (nega).
- The word for "to them" is "למו" (lamo).
"Plague" (נגע):
Hebrew classical dictionary:Heb: נֶגַע (n-m)Source: מקור: Open Scriptures on GitHub, Creator: יוצר: Based on the work of Larry Pierce at the Online Bible
1 - stroke, plague, disease, mark, plague spot
stroke, wound
stroke (metaphorical of disease)
mark (of leprosy)
"To them" (לָֽמוֹ):
Hebrew classical dictionary:1 - inflected pers. pron. meaning ‘to them’ (poetically).Source: מקור: Klein Dictionary, Creator: יוצר: Ezra Klein
2 - [Formed from לְ◌ with ◌מוֹ, a suff. used only in poetry.]
A plague to whom? TO THEM! To the people who put forth this Pauline doctrine, the ones who argued, said, or considered this absurdity. Absolutely not to the one they believed to be cut off for the sin of God's people, namely Jesus, God's prophet, Messiah, His Word, and a spirit from Him.
But this is not surprising to anyone; it is expected, because their savior Paul also considered the blessed Messiah Jesus to be a curse:
"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.'" (Galatians 3:13)It bothers them that God Himself is confirming that they are the cursed ones, and He does it in the book they believe in. I am the one who exposed it, and all praise is due to God alone. It bothers this guy who is "eXpOsInG" me, and I won't mention his name because that is most likely what he wants.
He goes on to say that I quoted from a fictitious source, which is not true at all. I simply didn’t bother looking through my entire library to find a quote I mistakenly mis-referenced, mainly because the quote turned out to be quite irrelevant, and I don’t waste my time like that. Much of what he initiated his "rebuttal" with is equally misunderstood by him, and I have responded to each and every objection in my older posts (in the comment sections where he was "eXpOsInG" me). I picked the first thing and refuted it here for you just to show how ignorant he really is and how he is either living a lie or lying to others.
So, I will not bother to refute every single point of the old stuff that I’ve already conclusively answered. It's a waste of time. Let’s move on to his objections to my latest posts, because that is what this is all about in reality.
My answers to his objections to my latest posts:
Regarding the stone God mentions that was to be placed in the Temple of God, he says that it is saying"Stone to a stone," or "upon a stone"My answer:
"Stone to a stone" is not a Hebrew idiom, and neither is the word "upon" there in Hebrew. He doesn't know Hebrew, had he known Hebrew, he would never have "eXpOsEd" this because it just went to show that he doesn't know the language at all.
The Hebrew word "שום" (shum) in this context is derived from the root ש-ו-ם, which means "to place" or "to put." It appears here as an infinitive construct, which is often used to convey the act of doing something, similar to the English "-ing" form. In this sentence, "שום" is functioning as a gerund, which is a verbal noun. It translates to "placing" or "putting" in English. Therefore, "שום־אבן" means "placing a stone" or "putting a stone."
As for the next word, i.e. "stone" (אבן), in Hebrew, nouns have gender (masculine or feminine) and number (singular or plural). "אבן" is a feminine singular noun. When used in the phrase "שום־אבן" (placing a stone), "אבן" functions as the direct object of the action described by the infinitive construct "שום" (placing).
The next word is אל: This is taken as a preposition according to them, and it generally means "to" or "toward," and never "upon." It is used to indicate direction or movement towards something. While the following word is, again, a stone "אבן."
So if we're going with their interpretation, while being literal, as we should because it is not an idiom, it accurately translates to:
"Before placing a stone to a stone" or "before placing stone to stone"
Which makes very little sense, if any. Why wouldn't God say "Before placing stone upon stone" or "Stones upon stones" or "before placing a stone upon a stone"? Why did He use a singular word for "stone"? Because it is speaking about a one stone, the stone that God placed in Zion:
"So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who relies on it will never be stricken with panic." (Isaiah 28:16)I have proven in countless posts that Zion is the ancient name for Mecca. Just look up Psalm 84, and you will see how it mentions doing the pilgrimage in Zion and also mentions "Bacca," another name for Mecca. I have proven how Harran is located in Mecca and that the oak of Bacca is located there as well, and we know according to Psalm 84 that Zion is located where Bacca is located. With this in mind, it’s easy to see what has been done to cover up this prophecy. They have misinterpreted the word "El" as "Upon" instead of "God." The definition of that word is not "Upon"; it means "To/toward" or "God."
Classical Hebrew dictionary:
Heb: אֵל (n-m)Source: מקור: Open Scriptures on GitHub, creator: יוצר: Based on the work of Larry Pierce at the Online Bible
god, god-like one, mighty one
mighty men, men of rank, mighty heroes
angels
god, false god, (demons, imaginations)
God, the one true God, Jehovah
mighty things in nature
strength, power
And:
Heb: אֶל (prep.)Source: מקור: Klein Dictionary, Creator: יוצר: Ezra Klein
denoting motion toward or to, or direction toward, and meaning ‘to, unto, toward, into, at, by’.
[Shortened from אֱלֵי (which is preserved in poetry). cp. עֲלֵי, poetical form of עַל (= on), and עֲדֵי, poetical form of עַד (= as far as, until). Related to Arab. ’ilā (= to, toward, up to).]
Let's see if any of these help him:
Before placing a stone to a stone?Does any of this make any sense to you? I believe it certainly does not. Yet they have all chosen to ignore these valid definitions and instead opt for a definition that isn't there, namely: "a stone UPON a stone," just to claim that God was idiomatically saying "Before you build the temple." The temple was already built, as I will prove later below.
Before placing a stone towards a stone?
Before placing a stone into a stone?
Before placing a stone unto a stone? (archaic term for "to")
Before placing a stone at a stone?
Before placing a stone by a stone?
To get a more coherent translation, one that makes sense both contextually and linguistically, we need to consider "El" as "God":
ועתה - "And now"Here, "אל־אבן" would translate to "God's stone" or "stone of God." Thus, the phrase "מטרם שום־אבן אל־אבן בהיכל יהוה" would be understood as "before placing a stone as God's stone in the temple of YHWH" or "before placing a stone, God's stone, in the temple of YHWH"
שימו־נא - "consider, please"
לבבכם - "your heart"
מן־היום - "from this day"
הזה - "this"
ומעלה - "and onward"
מטרם - "before"
שום־אבן - "placing a stone"
אל־אבן - "God's stone/stone of God"
בהיכל - "in the Temple"
יהוה - "of YHWH" (YHWH)
He is just in denial here as well. It is quite obvious that God is talking about placing a stone in the Temple of God, not about placing a stone towards a stone (whatever that means). Biblically, it is known that Jacob placed a stone in the House of God in Harran, which I have also proven to be located in the vicinity of Mecca, using 1st-century CE atlases by giants in geography such as Pomponius Mela, Pliny, and others.
He writes:
"More importantly, Exion ignored that “stone” in the Hebrew occurs twice. If we take אל to be God and take it as the construct state (the ‘s) then it would be “before setting stone’s God’s stone”. That doesn’t make sense hence why Exion dropped the first occurrence of אֶ֛בֶן in their translation."Or you could simply not take "El" as a construct state. In Hebrew, a noun followed by another noun can indicate possession without needing a construct state (i.e. the equivalent of adding 's in English). This is often called "smikhut" or construct form, but it is not always necessary to explicitly form it.
In the phrase "שום־אבן אל־אבן" (placing a stone as God's stone), the context and the nouns' arrangement provide the possessive meaning without requiring additional grammatical changes. "אל־אבן" can be understood as "God's stone" even though it is not in the formal construct state. This is something he doesn't know because, well, who knows why. I have my speculations, but I will refrain from personal attacks.
He says:
"It makes perfect sense with the rest of the verse “in the temple of Yahweh.” It’s talking about before the building of the temple which involved setting stone upon stone."Oh really? Is that why the 3rd verse literally talks about the Temple that already was in existence but was viewed as nothing in their eyes (i.e. insignificant):
"Who among you is left, who saw this house in its former glory? And as you see it now, is it not as nothing in your eyes?" (Haggai 2:3)Explicitly contradicting your claim that it doesn't exist, but you didn't know that because you have probably never even read the entirety of the chapter to begin with. The Temple was already there. A stone was to be placed in it, God's stone, the black stone of the House of God, and not that it was to be built or built anew. This is why I even wrote the article, because the temple of God was already in existence. How you could have missed this, if you've read the chapter in it entirety, is very baffling to me.
This is why Jacob, upon waking from his prophetic dream, never built the House of God. (Yes, Jacob was a prophet, but Christian scholars throughout history didn't recognize this and thought he was merely a patriarch.) Instead, he only placed a stone as its cornerstone and named it "The House of God":
16. When Jacob woke up, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was unaware of it.” 17. And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven!” 18. Early the next morning, Jacob took the stone that he had placed under his head, and he set it up as a pillar. He poured oil on top of it."Going back to Haggai 2, the 6th verse states:
"כי כה אמר יהוה צבאות עוד אחת מעט היא ואני מרעיש את־השמים ואת־הארץ ואת־הים ואת־החרבה:"Which literally translates to:
"For thus says the Lord of Hosts: Once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land."Which they have erroneously translated as:
"For so said the Lord of Hosts: [There will rise] another one, and I will shake up the heaven and the earth and the sea and the dry land [for] a little while." (source)Lying and adding words to the Word of God to make it look like another House would be raised.
7th verse states:
Haggai 2:7
"והרעשתי את־כל־הגוים ובאו חמדת כל־הגוים ומלאתי את־הבית הזה כבוד אמר יהוה צבאות:"Transliteration:
"Ve-hir'ashti et kol ha-goyim u-va'u chemdat kol ha-goyim u-milati et ha-bayit ha-zeh kavod amar Adonai Tzva'ot."Not only does it confirm that the House is already in existence, but it mentioned our prophet Ahmad coming to it by using the cognate of his name, "Chemdat," which they erroneously have translated as:
"and the treasures of all the nations will be brought to this Temple."The preposition "the" is not there before "Chemdat," while it is before "Goyim" (heathens), which makes sense because "Chemdat of all the heathens (will come)" and doesn't translate to "The treasure of all the heathens (will come)," as they have it.
Let me break it down for you:
והרעשתִי (ve-hir'ashti) - "and I will shake"
את (et) - [direct object marker, not translated]
כל (kol) - "all"
הגוים (ha-goyim) - "the heathens"
ובאו (u-va'u) - "and they will come"
חמדת (Chemdat) - "Chemdat" (proper noun)
כל (kol) - "of all"
הגוים (ha-goyim) - "the heathens"
ומלאתי (u-milati) - "and I will fill"
את (et) - [direct object marker, not translated]
הבית (ha-bayit) - "the house"
הזה (ha-zeh) - "this"
כבוד (kavod) - "glory"
אמר (amar) - "says"
יהוה (Adonai) - "Lord"
צבאות (Tzva'ot) - "of Hosts"
Result:
"And I will shake all the heathens, and they will come, Chemdat of all the heathens, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of Hosts."
Explanation:
They have translated it as "the treasures of..." while the phrase "Chemdat" lacks a "The" (Ha), so it would more accurately be rendered as:"And they will come, treasure of all the heathens, and..."A very awkward sentence grammatically. And the dictionaries do not define חמדת (Chemdat) as "Treasure," but rather as "Desire" or "Precious." But translating this phrase in this way (if we consider it to mean "desire" or "precious"), we would make the verse even more awkward:
"And they will come, desire of all the heathens" or "And they will come, precious of all the heathens."Because it is a singular phrase, and not plural, and as I mentioned earlier, lacks a definite preposition.
But if we consider "Chemdat" as a cognate of "Ahmad," as a proper noun referring to Ahmad the prophet (the only heathen prophet known today), it suddenly becomes a very coherent verse that makes much sense. The heathens will be shaken, and they will come. Then, He specifies by saying: Chemdat of all the heathens, and continues with the rest of the verse.
The phrase "הגוים" (ha-goyim) translates as "the heathens," which supports the interpretation that "Chemdat" is a proper noun referring to a significant heathen person anticipated to come. God is going to shake all the heathens, and they will come. Then He specifies who would come: "Chemdat of all the heathens (will come)." He then says He will fill this house, which they saw as nothing, with glory. The house already exists; Chemdat of all nations was just about to come, and God would fill this house with glory again. And, of course, the stone Jacob laid in Genesis 28—the same stone that Jesus referred to in Matthew 21:
The Kingdom of God was intended to be taken away from the Christians and given to a people who would produce its fruits, and this is what happened when Islam came.43. Therefore, I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit."
- Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures: 'The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes?'
Going back to Haggai 2, the 18th verse also confirms that the Temple already was there:
"Consider, please, your heart from this day and onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, from the day that the temple of the Lord was founded, consider your heart."Just because God considers the two Houses (the current one they saw as insignificant and the later one) as "different" does not mean that it does not already exist physically but will be a different House.
Nevertheless, he is right about one thing regarding this chapter: it does not mention the new moon to new moon and the end of the Sabbath—that was in Isaiah 66. My mistake. But the prophecy is still valid. The new moon to new moon would come, and yes, the second phrase can be interpreted as an end (if we interpret "Shabbat" as "End"), but it is Biblically and generally interpreted as "Sabbath." A literal translation of the phrase in the 23rd verse would be:
שבת (shabbat) - "Sabbath"Let's agree that it means what the traditional translations say it means, and I don't mean hypothetically, but let's actually agree on that. However, the prophecy about the new moons (Ramadan) is still there and valid because God has not canceled the Sabbath in the Quran; it is still ongoing:
בשבתו (be-shabbato) - "His Sabbath"
יבוא (yavo) - "it will come"
The Quran states in 2:40-42:
Verse 40: "O Children of Israel, remember My favor which I have bestowed upon you and fulfill My covenant [upon you] that I will fulfill your covenant [from Me], and fear Me."The new moon to a new moon is combined with the Sabbath to Sabbath. This is a fulfilled prophecy!
Verse 41: "And believe in what I have sent down confirming that which is [already] with you, and be not the first to disbelieve in it. And do not exchange My signs/verses for a small price, and fear Me."
Verse 42: "And do not mix the truth with falsehood or conceal the truth while you know [it]."
I don't see easter, halloween or Christmas being mentioned here. It's Ramadan and the Sabbath, the two Covenants God has given to his worshipers, the Covenant of the Children of Israel and the Covenant of Peace, unlike the Pauline Christians who literally took all of their holidays from pagan idolaters, which I won't go into because it's not very relevant to our discussion anyways.
This marks the end of my rebuttal to his "part 1."
Thank you for reading,
/Your bro Exion.
2024.06.01 09:54 exsaphhi Zimbabwe and New Caledonia are the point (and why that’s not what is happening here)
The more conspiracist someone in New Zealand is, the more likely they are to bring up Zimbabwe. I know that because I have a cooker in my family, and by god, you’d think the place was his home country for the amount he talks about it. But it’s become a real conspiracy for the right, and an angle from verified bad actor accounts that was modded out of this sub at our beginning.
And the reason why there’s a direct correlation between conspiracists and Zimbabwe stans is that you can’t help but notice their fears of history repeating fall apart somewhat when you actually look into it. For a start, you can blame one person for the deaths and economic devastation caused by Mugabe, and that Tony Blair, because he kicked the whole thing off when he walked back Thatcher’s promise of 50% of the compensation for white landowners. Thatcher did like one decent thing and Blair came in and messed it up. Not without context. But through its entire history, it is the UK’s choices and the choices of her colonial government there that spur change and negative outcomes in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe was first thought to be mineral rich at its early 1890 settlement, and a lot of money was put into getting prospectors to Southern Rhodesia. When this return didn’t eventuate, land was given to the settlers instead in hope their farming could become productive enough to cover the settlements continuing administrative costs. By 1986 they had distributed 16 million hectares, a sixth of Southern Rhodesia, and by 1917, this was up to 21.5 million hectares. However, this expanse of farming would cause friction of land rights and grazing rights with the two resident groups already living there. Cattle in the region expanded from about 60 000, owned mostly by the preexisting Ndebele and Shona peoples, to up to 2 million split evenly between both groups, leading to overgrazing and land competition.
The solution in the 1930s by the colonial government was a segregated land distribution method split into five parts, with the best 3/5 being reserved for white owners and the much more unusable remainder of the land being split amongst black land owners — despite them being greater in number than white people. White people had so much productive land they literally couldn’t farm it all, while the remaining Tribal Trust land was still being overfarmed, forcing black Rhodesians to seek work in cities and the colonial government to introduce forced destocking measures (sell or slaughter excess animals), as well as putting aside 7.2 million more acres for native farmers to purchase.
The 50s saw attempts at redistribution that ultimately failed and authority for this would then be vested the traditional tribal leaders.
The beginning of the 60s were an attempt to introduce a semblance of actual land parity, splitting the land 50/50 with whites and blacks — unfortunately this didn’t work very well because black people greatly outnumbered white people, and the fertile land was still just given to whites. Abuses of the system also saw white people legally shift their boundaries to claim black land resulting in evictions that would create Nationalist sympathies leading to the following war.
60s-70s was the Rhodesian Bush War between three groups, one of them being the colonial government, and resulting in Mugabe taking power. He was left juggling the land issue along with the cohesion of his new coalition. Farmer workers had fled to cities during the fighting and been organised into guarded settlements following state suppression of armed conflicts. More land was made available to purchase by people of any race, and then race-based ownership was abolished completely in 1979. Despite this, white farmers owned 73% of fertile land and contributed 80% of agricultural output.
Under a doctrine of willing buyer, willing seller for at least ten years, the US and the UK agreed to finance part of the redistribution costs, and Southern Rhodesia was recognised as finally-independent Zimbabwe. However, land inequality and erosion of black land due to forced overfarming continued, but white-owned commercial farms were reduced by about 20% by 1987, and progress was continued into the 90s. However corruption issues began to emerge with land and leases going to Mugabe’s family and political associates as well as other powerful people. Donor and investor states became concerned with who was benefitting, heightened when Mugabe took powers to supersede the courts. He held that land was a political matter only, not judicial.
British opinion in funding this programme would deteriorate, until the Short and the then-Labour government would deny their obligation to support the redistribution programme.
In September 1998, the government called a donors conference in Harare on LRRP II to inform the donor community and involve them in the program: Forty-eight countries and international organisations attended and unanimously endorsed the land program, saying it was essential for poverty reduction, political stability and economic growth. They agreed that the inception phase, covering the first 24 months, should start immediately, particularly appreciating the political imperative and urgency of the proposal.
The Commercial Farmers Union freely offered to sell the government 15,000 square kilometres for redistribution, but landowners once again dragged their feet. In response to moves by the National Constitutional Assembly, a group of academics, trade unionists and other political activists, the government drafted a new constitution. The draft was discussed widely by the public in formal meetings and amended to include restrictions on presidential powers, limits to the presidential term of office, and an age limit of 70 for presidential candidates. This was not seen as a suitable outcome for the government, so the proposals were amended to replace those clauses with one to compulsorily acquire land for redistribution without compensation. The opposition mostly boycotted the drafting stage of the constitution claiming that this new version was to entrench Mugabe politically.
Guerrilla veterans of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) began to emerge as a radical force in the land issue around this time. The guerrillas forcefully presented their position that white-owned land in Zimbabwe was rightfully theirs, on account of promises made to them during the Rhodesian Bush War. Calls for accelerated land reform were also echoed by an affluent urban class of black Zimbabweans who were interested in making inroads into commercial farming, with public assistance.
The government held a referendum on the new constitution on 12–13 February 2000, despite having a sufficiently large majority in parliament to pass any amendment it wished. Had it been approved, the new constitution would have empowered the government to acquire land compulsorily without compensation. Despite vast support in the media, the new constitution was defeated, 55% to 45%.
In response, a pro-Mugabe group marched on white owned farms, forcing them and their usually-black workers off their farms without compensation. In the subsequent years of land confiscation, several farm owners and more workers would be killed.
Some of this land ended up under the control of Mugabe and other politicians, however by 2011, 238,000 households had been apportioned from 10 million hectares of land, an improvement of 3.5 million over the 20 years up until 1998. In 2019, white Zimbabwean farmers accepted $17 million USD in compensation, and in 2020 the Zimbabwe government would commit to paying back a further 3.5 billion.
How does this relate to New Zealand?
Well let’s start with the obvious: land distribution issues do not go away because you want them to, nor will democracy protect you from it if you shit on the people you took the land from. Zimbabwe happened because landowners dragged their feet in every decade for a century, and a radicalised political faction springing from this injustice decided legal methods were not the way to go. By the time people were willing to come to the table to resolve it, they were a good fifty behind when they should have and it was too late.
Secondly, picking and choosing what you give back doesn’t work if you’re still just fucking over the tribes you’re giving stuff to to advantage yourself. If you say, give someone a couple of million dollars of value in exchange for the entire canterbury and otago regions, they may decide in 30 years time that wasn’t a very fair deal. And they’re probably right.
Thirdly, black people are not doing well right now in Zimbabwe and neither are white people. But the black people already weren’t doing well. You may look at Zimbabwe and say, well they’ve screwed over their own economy there. But they didn’t. They screwed over the white economy that too many of them already weren’t benefitting from. You see the stability a strong economy gives you and think that other people are benefitting too; Zimbabwe did get a lot out of their land in the 1900s due to colonial investment. But it didn’t benefit all people, and the failure to lift everyone in the rising tide sunk ALL the ships.
The Treaty idea of Partnership is the compromise. Giving back tiny bits of land and small change is the baby steps. Start taking us backwards and you’ll make Maori realise just how shortchanged they’ve been, and the natural result of that is not that they go away, it’s that they start demanding more.
But the level of disenfranchisement, of disrespect, of disempowerment does have to reach a much more egregious level than the situation we have here to result in widespread violence. Six months of Shane Jones does not a civil war make. It is a long, long process to get to a point where a country is that divided, and a lot of legitimate legal, political, and negotiating instruments have to fail. There is also a certain level of disinvestment people have to feel in the overall system to throw what they have away — there’s a reason socialist revolutions don’t come from peaceful, placated societies, even the ones educated enough to know there is something wrong. So therefore, progress must be made gradually through peace and cooperation, because unilateral force always has lasting negative consequences. Attempts to forge ahead with reform despite unhappiness of particular groups, even when legally decided will work out worse for everyone.
There are going to be a million opportunities to turn this ship around. This relationship is nowhere near beyond repair, even between this government and iwi. If Luxon had a spine, he would sit down with them and promise to reverse course, and probably send us all back to the polls as a result. He won’t. But I’m pretty confident he won’t win the next election either, whenever it is, and this country isn’t nearly so divided enough to split down the middle along race grounds, no matter what Seymour wants. But to unify, to meet in the middle, you have to stop considering what you think is fair and start hearing what the other group wants and why.
Otherwise we’re just letting corrupt politicians make land grabs while they cut us in half.
submitted by exsaphhi to nzpolitics [link] [comments]
And the reason why there’s a direct correlation between conspiracists and Zimbabwe stans is that you can’t help but notice their fears of history repeating fall apart somewhat when you actually look into it. For a start, you can blame one person for the deaths and economic devastation caused by Mugabe, and that Tony Blair, because he kicked the whole thing off when he walked back Thatcher’s promise of 50% of the compensation for white landowners. Thatcher did like one decent thing and Blair came in and messed it up. Not without context. But through its entire history, it is the UK’s choices and the choices of her colonial government there that spur change and negative outcomes in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe was first thought to be mineral rich at its early 1890 settlement, and a lot of money was put into getting prospectors to Southern Rhodesia. When this return didn’t eventuate, land was given to the settlers instead in hope their farming could become productive enough to cover the settlements continuing administrative costs. By 1986 they had distributed 16 million hectares, a sixth of Southern Rhodesia, and by 1917, this was up to 21.5 million hectares. However, this expanse of farming would cause friction of land rights and grazing rights with the two resident groups already living there. Cattle in the region expanded from about 60 000, owned mostly by the preexisting Ndebele and Shona peoples, to up to 2 million split evenly between both groups, leading to overgrazing and land competition.
The solution in the 1930s by the colonial government was a segregated land distribution method split into five parts, with the best 3/5 being reserved for white owners and the much more unusable remainder of the land being split amongst black land owners — despite them being greater in number than white people. White people had so much productive land they literally couldn’t farm it all, while the remaining Tribal Trust land was still being overfarmed, forcing black Rhodesians to seek work in cities and the colonial government to introduce forced destocking measures (sell or slaughter excess animals), as well as putting aside 7.2 million more acres for native farmers to purchase.
The 50s saw attempts at redistribution that ultimately failed and authority for this would then be vested the traditional tribal leaders.
The beginning of the 60s were an attempt to introduce a semblance of actual land parity, splitting the land 50/50 with whites and blacks — unfortunately this didn’t work very well because black people greatly outnumbered white people, and the fertile land was still just given to whites. Abuses of the system also saw white people legally shift their boundaries to claim black land resulting in evictions that would create Nationalist sympathies leading to the following war.
60s-70s was the Rhodesian Bush War between three groups, one of them being the colonial government, and resulting in Mugabe taking power. He was left juggling the land issue along with the cohesion of his new coalition. Farmer workers had fled to cities during the fighting and been organised into guarded settlements following state suppression of armed conflicts. More land was made available to purchase by people of any race, and then race-based ownership was abolished completely in 1979. Despite this, white farmers owned 73% of fertile land and contributed 80% of agricultural output.
Under a doctrine of willing buyer, willing seller for at least ten years, the US and the UK agreed to finance part of the redistribution costs, and Southern Rhodesia was recognised as finally-independent Zimbabwe. However, land inequality and erosion of black land due to forced overfarming continued, but white-owned commercial farms were reduced by about 20% by 1987, and progress was continued into the 90s. However corruption issues began to emerge with land and leases going to Mugabe’s family and political associates as well as other powerful people. Donor and investor states became concerned with who was benefitting, heightened when Mugabe took powers to supersede the courts. He held that land was a political matter only, not judicial.
British opinion in funding this programme would deteriorate, until the Short and the then-Labour government would deny their obligation to support the redistribution programme.
I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and, as you know, we were colonised, not colonisers.In June 1998, the Zimbabwe government published its "policy framework" on the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme Phase II (LRRP II), which envisaged the compulsory purchase over five years of 50,000 square kilometres from the 112,000 square kilometres owned by white commercial farmers, public corporations, churches, non-governmental organisations and multinational companies. Broken down, the 50,000 square kilometres meant that every year between 1998 and 2003, the government intended to purchase 10,000 square kilometres for redistribution.
In September 1998, the government called a donors conference in Harare on LRRP II to inform the donor community and involve them in the program: Forty-eight countries and international organisations attended and unanimously endorsed the land program, saying it was essential for poverty reduction, political stability and economic growth. They agreed that the inception phase, covering the first 24 months, should start immediately, particularly appreciating the political imperative and urgency of the proposal.
The Commercial Farmers Union freely offered to sell the government 15,000 square kilometres for redistribution, but landowners once again dragged their feet. In response to moves by the National Constitutional Assembly, a group of academics, trade unionists and other political activists, the government drafted a new constitution. The draft was discussed widely by the public in formal meetings and amended to include restrictions on presidential powers, limits to the presidential term of office, and an age limit of 70 for presidential candidates. This was not seen as a suitable outcome for the government, so the proposals were amended to replace those clauses with one to compulsorily acquire land for redistribution without compensation. The opposition mostly boycotted the drafting stage of the constitution claiming that this new version was to entrench Mugabe politically.
Guerrilla veterans of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) began to emerge as a radical force in the land issue around this time. The guerrillas forcefully presented their position that white-owned land in Zimbabwe was rightfully theirs, on account of promises made to them during the Rhodesian Bush War. Calls for accelerated land reform were also echoed by an affluent urban class of black Zimbabweans who were interested in making inroads into commercial farming, with public assistance.
The government held a referendum on the new constitution on 12–13 February 2000, despite having a sufficiently large majority in parliament to pass any amendment it wished. Had it been approved, the new constitution would have empowered the government to acquire land compulsorily without compensation. Despite vast support in the media, the new constitution was defeated, 55% to 45%.
In response, a pro-Mugabe group marched on white owned farms, forcing them and their usually-black workers off their farms without compensation. In the subsequent years of land confiscation, several farm owners and more workers would be killed.
Some of this land ended up under the control of Mugabe and other politicians, however by 2011, 238,000 households had been apportioned from 10 million hectares of land, an improvement of 3.5 million over the 20 years up until 1998. In 2019, white Zimbabwean farmers accepted $17 million USD in compensation, and in 2020 the Zimbabwe government would commit to paying back a further 3.5 billion.
How does this relate to New Zealand?
Well let’s start with the obvious: land distribution issues do not go away because you want them to, nor will democracy protect you from it if you shit on the people you took the land from. Zimbabwe happened because landowners dragged their feet in every decade for a century, and a radicalised political faction springing from this injustice decided legal methods were not the way to go. By the time people were willing to come to the table to resolve it, they were a good fifty behind when they should have and it was too late.
Secondly, picking and choosing what you give back doesn’t work if you’re still just fucking over the tribes you’re giving stuff to to advantage yourself. If you say, give someone a couple of million dollars of value in exchange for the entire canterbury and otago regions, they may decide in 30 years time that wasn’t a very fair deal. And they’re probably right.
Thirdly, black people are not doing well right now in Zimbabwe and neither are white people. But the black people already weren’t doing well. You may look at Zimbabwe and say, well they’ve screwed over their own economy there. But they didn’t. They screwed over the white economy that too many of them already weren’t benefitting from. You see the stability a strong economy gives you and think that other people are benefitting too; Zimbabwe did get a lot out of their land in the 1900s due to colonial investment. But it didn’t benefit all people, and the failure to lift everyone in the rising tide sunk ALL the ships.
The Treaty idea of Partnership is the compromise. Giving back tiny bits of land and small change is the baby steps. Start taking us backwards and you’ll make Maori realise just how shortchanged they’ve been, and the natural result of that is not that they go away, it’s that they start demanding more.
But the level of disenfranchisement, of disrespect, of disempowerment does have to reach a much more egregious level than the situation we have here to result in widespread violence. Six months of Shane Jones does not a civil war make. It is a long, long process to get to a point where a country is that divided, and a lot of legitimate legal, political, and negotiating instruments have to fail. There is also a certain level of disinvestment people have to feel in the overall system to throw what they have away — there’s a reason socialist revolutions don’t come from peaceful, placated societies, even the ones educated enough to know there is something wrong. So therefore, progress must be made gradually through peace and cooperation, because unilateral force always has lasting negative consequences. Attempts to forge ahead with reform despite unhappiness of particular groups, even when legally decided will work out worse for everyone.
There are going to be a million opportunities to turn this ship around. This relationship is nowhere near beyond repair, even between this government and iwi. If Luxon had a spine, he would sit down with them and promise to reverse course, and probably send us all back to the polls as a result. He won’t. But I’m pretty confident he won’t win the next election either, whenever it is, and this country isn’t nearly so divided enough to split down the middle along race grounds, no matter what Seymour wants. But to unify, to meet in the middle, you have to stop considering what you think is fair and start hearing what the other group wants and why.
Otherwise we’re just letting corrupt politicians make land grabs while they cut us in half.
2024.06.01 09:43 cartoon_Dinosaur Yulpa wife-- [one-shot]
This is a sequal to u/uktabi's Yulpa GF one shot, since he seems to LAZY to make a sequel. (that's a joke, god I'm so tired its almost 3am as I write this god fucking dammit why did i do this to myself)
He was originally inspired by u/FrostedScales' art., (God, please make a cover for this I want one so fucking baaaaaaad)
I make my way into my house, a small part of me is hoping for relief from the harsh Savannah heat. Only to be brought back to my unpleasant reality of my house being just as hot and dry as the outside.
Ugh, why do I willingly live in this hellish place without AC?
I hear mewing and tapping hooves getting closer, a small blood red calf comes running towards me and runs circles around me. I extend my free hand and she readily forces her head into it, wrapping her tongue, upper and lower lip around it to return the gesture of connection. The barbs irritate my skin, but she's old enough now not to unintentionally draw blood.
I look down at the pleading eye, happy to see me again.
Ah, right. While I'm in hell she's in paradise, I guess I’ll have to suck it up for her.
I give her a closed lip smile and rub her ears.
“Hi honey, how was school?” She inflates her nostrils and begins to talk to me in learned English. It is… unsettling how accurately she can mimic almost anyone with only her nose. I am reminded of that fact as she speaks in my voice.
“Good, bunny lunch was.” I forced down an indignant laugh at the child's broken grammar. It seems Yulpa are able to understand words, but grammar doesn't seem important to them. I remember how off puttingly dense their spoken language is, they can communicate in infra sound over vast distances. Their phrases were spoken in single words, so a single “word” was a bit of a conversation. Like “Over the river” or ”up the tree is food.”
It was insane how dense their language was.
“Do you know if mom is back?” The little head in my hand nodes while still wrapped around me.
“Garden she eating is.”
I rub her head one more time before I make my way out the back door. The child quickly scampered off to do who knows what.
Out in the back I see her, draped in golden jewelry, with a well maintained main, green cloth and jewels to accentuate her natural deep red coat. She was laying down with what looked like roughage in her maw. She was absentmindedly chewing and staring off into space.
I walked over and rested myself against her side, I let her breathing rise and lower me. Being in the presence of such a large person really made me feel how insanely varied our body masses were. Despite being married and … constituting it, we had to sleep in separate beds, lest she roll onto me and I die of suffocation or all my bones breaking.
I absentmindedly picked some grass and twirled it around. “So, what's wrong?” She rolled her eyes towards me.
“Hungry.” She spoke in perfect English, I looked down at the grass I began to weave together.
“You need to get the cure.” She raised her massive head ever so slightly. “No, betrayal, life lived one way. Too late, already sacrificed too many.” She blows out her nose.
I grab more grass and weave it into the mass I was creating. “I thought I was too old, set in my ways to be married when we met. But now look at us.” I point to the child in the window clearly talking to someone on the home computer. “I’m glad you hunted me, forced me into this. If you didn't I'd still be a lonely S.O.B. jacking it to venlil stuff right now.”
She flicks an ear. “I wanted sacrifice YOU.“ She spoke.
I smirked as I continued to weave. “Yeah but ya didn't. Cause I’m just so sexy!!!”
I can feel a ruble as she laughed, I didn't notice the twitching of her neck mussels as she swung her head over to slap my head with her upper lip. “Ow!!!” I screamed at the surprising strength of the dexterous lip.
I will never get used to how she can hold me like a rag-doll with just her lip. Nor do I want to.
As I nursed my wounded pride I placed the straw hat on her head. “Besides, this is a better use for the hay than causing you pain.”
She breathed out sharply and made a sound only a multi-ton mammal can produce.
“Okay, me get cure.”
I smiled and rubbed her ears, she adjusted the hat I made for her and rested her head on the ground once more.
**\*
She seemed antsy as she rocked back and forth, she was making a loaf of herself on the ground. But she could still reach up to my face with her lips as I sat down in a chair beside her.
The waiting room of the Xeno walk-in clinic reminded me more of the vets as species of every size and shape sat in chairs meant for humanoids, or sat on the ground or in perches or, rarely, species specific chairs. Though they were a rarity, a luxury whose expense was used for the most populous non-human species in the area.
Most of which were in a separate waiting room. I saw a family of Farsul enter it, opening the door to the KolSul wing of the clinic. Most everyone in the office instantly scowled when the mother and her pups walked through. They got both the separate wing and specialty chairs as they were by far the most populous Xenos on earth. Thanks to resentment building to massive levels all across the S.C. pushing them here.
I ran my hand through her main, careful to not undo any braids or tug any of her excessive adornments.She was still shifting this way and that as we waited to be called on. I spied a venlil with a deep scowl near the door of the separate wing, he seemed to be wearing a coat. Something highly unusual for his species, especially in this climate.
“Hello uh, we are not sure you… should be seeking care here.”
I was jolted out of my observations by a young farsul attendant addressing me.
“What?” She seemed to stammer.
“We, uh, are a xeno clinic, we specialize in ailments for non humans. Since we are on a human majority planet, human specialty clinics are open here. They can give you much better focused care."
I stared at the young farsul for a few moments, I studied her nervous stance. She seemed to resemble a great Pyrenees breed of dog. I continued to stare for a couple of seconds, enough to make the awkward situation even worse before I shook myself out of it.
“Oh, uh, I’m not here to receive care, my wife is.” I run my hand through her main and look down at her. This is the most nervous I've ever seen her in all my years with her. “She recently got the cure injection and is here to test it out in case something goes wrong.”
The farsul then takes on a deeply confused expression, snapping her head between me and her in quick succession. “...You two… are married?”
I smile and straighten my back and respond in the most enthusiastic voice I can muster. “Yep!!!”
She continued her confused expression before resigning herself. “...Alright then, I’ll get her tested… just follow me.” She turns as she reads our file, we were heading to a farm outside of town to test her on some authentic meat. As we exited the office I tapped her shoulder. “By the way, I saw a venlil by the Kolsul section door, I think is planning something bad.”
She took on a look of annoyed apathy, as though it was a daily occurrence. “Oh, him. Don't worry security is on their way to search him, you'd be surprised how many expats from Scalga we get.”
She rubbed the back of her head and I could barely make out something she whispered. “Not nearly as weird as a human yupla couple, Jesus Christ.”
**\*
There, the object of my fearless and terrifyingly powerful wife's hesitation. A single skinned chicken leg, sitting on a metal table. The farsul nurse was making superficial vital checks on her as she stared at the drumstick.
Her lips were curled under her chin.
“Common honey. It's not going to bite you.” I say to comfort her. She glances at me with a look of I don't want to do this, why did i let you convince me to do this onmygodi’mgoingtosacrificeyouyousonofabit-
Her simultaneous death stare/ pleading eyes were pulled away as the farmer spoke at us.
“Eat it and get off my property, I got enough animals to take care of. Don't need two more.” He pointed to my wife and the farsul nurse, they both gave him a scowl as he turned back into his house.
She gently unrolls her lips and tentatively brings out her barbed tongue and wraps it around the drumstick. She brings it into her mouth and I hear a series of slow crunches.
The farsul nurse looks over at her medical doodad as she chews.
“Hmm, it seems everything is in order, the cure has taken and she is handling the meat fine. Just call our clinic if she seems to be having-”
My focus was pulled away from the nurse as I saw my wife's eyes light up from the taste. She looked at the ground at the pecking chicken that was so near. I could hear her imitate the clucking of the chicken, I saw it shoot up and looked confused. Before my wife coils it in her tongue and quickly brings it into her maw, I hear crunching again and a loud gulp. She looks around at the pens and she spies a pig.
She stalks towards it and I can hear her imitating the pigs, she steps over the fence and quickly grapples the approaching pig and bites down hard on its head. I can see her tongue quickly strip the skin off as her lips dig in with their own bards to force the corpse up and into her mouth.
I stare in shock at the display, by this time the other pigs notice the smell of blood and my wife devouring one of their companions and they quickly run to the farthest corner of the pen.
Before I know it the corpse is gone, she licks her lips and walks back over to us.
“-mitochondrial flux drive. As long as that looks good over the next week you should be all set!”
“I , uh, she ate a pig! D-did you see that?” I point to my wife cleaning herself of the mud of the pen.
'Yes, you'd be surprised how suddenly ravenous former omnivores get when they get their appetites fulfilled for the first time, heck I remember I ate a guinea pig when I got cured I was so hungry!’
I wave my arms about. “SHE ATE AN ACTUAL PIG AND YOUR NOT ONE BIT IMPRESSED OR SCARED???”
She turned her gaze to my wife, who was currently spying yet another pig in the corner. “I’ve seen yulpa do it before, trust me, get used to her eating vast amounts of meat.”
I looked at the simultaneously nervous and unimpressed Farsul. I was still reeling from my wife's actions, but decided to deal with them another time. “O-okay”
“Good, now I'd suggest you get her to not eat another. The farmer will definitely notice two pigs missing.” She begins to laugh in her throat. “Heh, I guess he’ll have two less animals to take care of after today heh.”
As we rode back to the clinic my wife was fast asleep in a food coma. The way she just… ate that thing so fast… I think I have to worry about being eaten now. It felt… oddly exhilarating, like when she was still trying to convince herself to sacrifice me all over again.
I think I might have a problem.
submitted by cartoon_Dinosaur to NatureofPredators [link] [comments]
He was originally inspired by u/FrostedScales' art., (
I make my way into my house, a small part of me is hoping for relief from the harsh Savannah heat. Only to be brought back to my unpleasant reality of my house being just as hot and dry as the outside.
Ugh, why do I willingly live in this hellish place without AC?
I hear mewing and tapping hooves getting closer, a small blood red calf comes running towards me and runs circles around me. I extend my free hand and she readily forces her head into it, wrapping her tongue, upper and lower lip around it to return the gesture of connection. The barbs irritate my skin, but she's old enough now not to unintentionally draw blood.
I look down at the pleading eye, happy to see me again.
Ah, right. While I'm in hell she's in paradise, I guess I’ll have to suck it up for her.
I give her a closed lip smile and rub her ears.
“Hi honey, how was school?” She inflates her nostrils and begins to talk to me in learned English. It is… unsettling how accurately she can mimic almost anyone with only her nose. I am reminded of that fact as she speaks in my voice.
“Good, bunny lunch was.” I forced down an indignant laugh at the child's broken grammar. It seems Yulpa are able to understand words, but grammar doesn't seem important to them. I remember how off puttingly dense their spoken language is, they can communicate in infra sound over vast distances. Their phrases were spoken in single words, so a single “word” was a bit of a conversation. Like “Over the river” or ”up the tree is food.”
It was insane how dense their language was.
“Do you know if mom is back?” The little head in my hand nodes while still wrapped around me.
“Garden she eating is.”
I rub her head one more time before I make my way out the back door. The child quickly scampered off to do who knows what.
Out in the back I see her, draped in golden jewelry, with a well maintained main, green cloth and jewels to accentuate her natural deep red coat. She was laying down with what looked like roughage in her maw. She was absentmindedly chewing and staring off into space.
I walked over and rested myself against her side, I let her breathing rise and lower me. Being in the presence of such a large person really made me feel how insanely varied our body masses were. Despite being married and … constituting it, we had to sleep in separate beds, lest she roll onto me and I die of suffocation or all my bones breaking.
I absentmindedly picked some grass and twirled it around. “So, what's wrong?” She rolled her eyes towards me.
“Hungry.” She spoke in perfect English, I looked down at the grass I began to weave together.
“You need to get the cure.” She raised her massive head ever so slightly. “No, betrayal, life lived one way. Too late, already sacrificed too many.” She blows out her nose.
I grab more grass and weave it into the mass I was creating. “I thought I was too old, set in my ways to be married when we met. But now look at us.” I point to the child in the window clearly talking to someone on the home computer. “I’m glad you hunted me, forced me into this. If you didn't I'd still be a lonely S.O.B. jacking it to venlil stuff right now.”
She flicks an ear. “I wanted sacrifice YOU.“ She spoke.
I smirked as I continued to weave. “Yeah but ya didn't. Cause I’m just so sexy!!!”
I can feel a ruble as she laughed, I didn't notice the twitching of her neck mussels as she swung her head over to slap my head with her upper lip. “Ow!!!” I screamed at the surprising strength of the dexterous lip.
I will never get used to how she can hold me like a rag-doll with just her lip. Nor do I want to.
As I nursed my wounded pride I placed the straw hat on her head. “Besides, this is a better use for the hay than causing you pain.”
She breathed out sharply and made a sound only a multi-ton mammal can produce.
“Okay, me get cure.”
I smiled and rubbed her ears, she adjusted the hat I made for her and rested her head on the ground once more.
**\*
She seemed antsy as she rocked back and forth, she was making a loaf of herself on the ground. But she could still reach up to my face with her lips as I sat down in a chair beside her.
The waiting room of the Xeno walk-in clinic reminded me more of the vets as species of every size and shape sat in chairs meant for humanoids, or sat on the ground or in perches or, rarely, species specific chairs. Though they were a rarity, a luxury whose expense was used for the most populous non-human species in the area.
Most of which were in a separate waiting room. I saw a family of Farsul enter it, opening the door to the KolSul wing of the clinic. Most everyone in the office instantly scowled when the mother and her pups walked through. They got both the separate wing and specialty chairs as they were by far the most populous Xenos on earth. Thanks to resentment building to massive levels all across the S.C. pushing them here.
I ran my hand through her main, careful to not undo any braids or tug any of her excessive adornments.She was still shifting this way and that as we waited to be called on. I spied a venlil with a deep scowl near the door of the separate wing, he seemed to be wearing a coat. Something highly unusual for his species, especially in this climate.
“Hello uh, we are not sure you… should be seeking care here.”
I was jolted out of my observations by a young farsul attendant addressing me.
“What?” She seemed to stammer.
“We, uh, are a xeno clinic, we specialize in ailments for non humans. Since we are on a human majority planet, human specialty clinics are open here. They can give you much better focused care."
I stared at the young farsul for a few moments, I studied her nervous stance. She seemed to resemble a great Pyrenees breed of dog. I continued to stare for a couple of seconds, enough to make the awkward situation even worse before I shook myself out of it.
“Oh, uh, I’m not here to receive care, my wife is.” I run my hand through her main and look down at her. This is the most nervous I've ever seen her in all my years with her. “She recently got the cure injection and is here to test it out in case something goes wrong.”
The farsul then takes on a deeply confused expression, snapping her head between me and her in quick succession. “...You two… are married?”
I smile and straighten my back and respond in the most enthusiastic voice I can muster. “Yep!!!”
She continued her confused expression before resigning herself. “...Alright then, I’ll get her tested… just follow me.” She turns as she reads our file, we were heading to a farm outside of town to test her on some authentic meat. As we exited the office I tapped her shoulder. “By the way, I saw a venlil by the Kolsul section door, I think is planning something bad.”
She took on a look of annoyed apathy, as though it was a daily occurrence. “Oh, him. Don't worry security is on their way to search him, you'd be surprised how many expats from Scalga we get.”
She rubbed the back of her head and I could barely make out something she whispered. “Not nearly as weird as a human yupla couple, Jesus Christ.”
**\*
There, the object of my fearless and terrifyingly powerful wife's hesitation. A single skinned chicken leg, sitting on a metal table. The farsul nurse was making superficial vital checks on her as she stared at the drumstick.
Her lips were curled under her chin.
“Common honey. It's not going to bite you.” I say to comfort her. She glances at me with a look of I don't want to do this, why did i let you convince me to do this onmygodi’mgoingtosacrificeyouyousonofabit-
Her simultaneous death stare/ pleading eyes were pulled away as the farmer spoke at us.
“Eat it and get off my property, I got enough animals to take care of. Don't need two more.” He pointed to my wife and the farsul nurse, they both gave him a scowl as he turned back into his house.
She gently unrolls her lips and tentatively brings out her barbed tongue and wraps it around the drumstick. She brings it into her mouth and I hear a series of slow crunches.
The farsul nurse looks over at her medical doodad as she chews.
“Hmm, it seems everything is in order, the cure has taken and she is handling the meat fine. Just call our clinic if she seems to be having-”
My focus was pulled away from the nurse as I saw my wife's eyes light up from the taste. She looked at the ground at the pecking chicken that was so near. I could hear her imitate the clucking of the chicken, I saw it shoot up and looked confused. Before my wife coils it in her tongue and quickly brings it into her maw, I hear crunching again and a loud gulp. She looks around at the pens and she spies a pig.
She stalks towards it and I can hear her imitating the pigs, she steps over the fence and quickly grapples the approaching pig and bites down hard on its head. I can see her tongue quickly strip the skin off as her lips dig in with their own bards to force the corpse up and into her mouth.
I stare in shock at the display, by this time the other pigs notice the smell of blood and my wife devouring one of their companions and they quickly run to the farthest corner of the pen.
Before I know it the corpse is gone, she licks her lips and walks back over to us.
“-mitochondrial flux drive. As long as that looks good over the next week you should be all set!”
“I , uh, she ate a pig! D-did you see that?” I point to my wife cleaning herself of the mud of the pen.
'Yes, you'd be surprised how suddenly ravenous former omnivores get when they get their appetites fulfilled for the first time, heck I remember I ate a guinea pig when I got cured I was so hungry!’
I wave my arms about. “SHE ATE AN ACTUAL PIG AND YOUR NOT ONE BIT IMPRESSED OR SCARED???”
She turned her gaze to my wife, who was currently spying yet another pig in the corner. “I’ve seen yulpa do it before, trust me, get used to her eating vast amounts of meat.”
I looked at the simultaneously nervous and unimpressed Farsul. I was still reeling from my wife's actions, but decided to deal with them another time. “O-okay”
“Good, now I'd suggest you get her to not eat another. The farmer will definitely notice two pigs missing.” She begins to laugh in her throat. “Heh, I guess he’ll have two less animals to take care of after today heh.”
As we rode back to the clinic my wife was fast asleep in a food coma. The way she just… ate that thing so fast… I think I have to worry about being eaten now. It felt… oddly exhilarating, like when she was still trying to convince herself to sacrifice me all over again.
I think I might have a problem.
2024.06.01 09:37 CleanMeme129 The Legend of Camp Elliot
1853; the west was still to be tamed.
It was in this year we find the establishment of Camp Elliot. As you might know through some knowledge of niche history, this camp was founded by a caravan composed of twelve men all looking to set up their own settlement. The caravan was led by a “Jonathan Elliot”. He came from Seattle, back before it had even known that name. Since leaving the freshly dug out city, ambitions set on their own prospect, the company had already been travelling for about 3 days. In their overt ambition, they became careless. They had run low on fresh water, heads pounding and tongues gone dry.
So, temporarily pitched in the wilderness, Mr. Elliot decided to send out a six-man party to search for some. He told them to stay together and not to come back until they found at least a pail’s worth of water. The six men went out. They stayed out for some three hours, until the sun was in its crimson crest; and the search was becoming hopeless.
“We have to go back!” some had said. Others argued otherwise, sticking to what Mr. Elliot had instructed. To the latter, they caved; and it came to be a mistake.
It soon got pitch dark and they had nothing but matches to see some inches past their faces. A panic quickly ensued. Many were on the verge of a breakdown, almost certain they were lost.
Suddenly, there was a light. It was spotted first by the chief of the party. It was some ways off in the distance, pulsing in the night.
They quickly calmed, believing they had found their caravan once again. They approached, clambering over branches and rocks, scraping more than just their knees.
Before long, the light had become much more recognizable. It was a torch. The party chief ordered the other five men to prepare their rifles. They feared it to be anything. Hostile prospectors, moonshiners, perhaps a native tribe that had been left undisturbed or for that matter discovered. They walked covertly; coming to the edge of what turned out to be a clearing in the trees. In the clearing was a lake; Arrowhead Lake it would come to be known as.
Standing on its shore, there were people; practically a riot. A group of shirtless men were seen dancing around a fire, reciting chants and rhymes in their own special tongue. One of them held a large rock in their right hand, a pointed arrow in his left. The rest of the men seemed to be goading him, applauding him in this bizarre ritual.
These weren’t natives. They were pale as ice, eyes surrounded by darkness. Their hair was all but present. They almost didn’t seem human.
Just then, one of the party members fired. The battle was short, but one of the so-called “drunks” managed to take down one of the six men with a bow-and-arrow.
That is where the Arrowhead Lake received its name.
The remaining five of the party slept by the fire until dawn, not bothering to look over their attackers’ belongings until then. They were too busy in mourning over the loss of their companion.
The next day, what they found was, for lack of a better word, disturbing.
What they had thought was a rock in the hand of one of their attackers was actually a small green turtle. The man who had held it had cut it open with the arrow, leaving it limp, distorted, and bloody.
But that wasn’t the most unsettling aspect. The blood on its body wasn’t red. It was pitch black. Black as ink. As black as the night upon which it was gutted.
Believing it to be poison, the men threw the mangled turtle’s corpse into the lake; tossing it as far out as they could. A couple of hours went by, and Jonathan Elliot with the other six in the caravan had then found the party and the lake. A brief funeral and burial were held for their one fallen man as well as his attackers.
What followed was a conversation, a debate over what to do next. In the end, plans for a cabin were sorted out. The cabin was finished in 1855 and still stands on the Camp Elliot grounds to this day.
That is not where this tale ends, however.
After about a month of it being open, a strange power came over the camp. Each time that a caravan would stop to do business or even rest awhile, another person from the original founding group would have gone missing. They hadn’t died, they hadn’t moved on to elsewhere. They would just vanish.
Then another would follow. Then another, and another, and another. With each time someone would visit, the camp would be found in worse shape than it was before.
Then came one day in 1856: a caravan of travelling salesmen had come to the camp, looking to do some trade. What they found was a single person: Jonathan Elliot, the titular founder of Camp Elliot. He was found tucked beneath his bed, cradled himself into a ball, malnourished and in bad health. Members of the caravan described a look of pure madness in his eyes as he said something over and over. It was a single phrase, hard to make out, but it was something like, “NO GOLD HERE! NO GOLD HERE!”
He never spoke any other words beside these. What with it being the era of the gold rush, the claim from the sales caravan upon returning to Seattle was that a group of maddened prospectors had attacked the camp in search of gold, killing all except for himself. They would have brought him back to Seattle with them, but in a fit of hysteria, he put a rifle in his mouth before they could.
In the passing of time since then, the camp has been claimed by many other groups, each coming and going. At one time, it was a trading post. Then it became a mine again but no ores were ever unearthed. So it seemed that Elliot was right. Then finally, in 1916, it became a Boy Scout camp; and so it has been ever since.
As for the mystery of this place, there is something about it they often say. On certain nights, ones where the lake is its darkest and the moon and stars are almost extinguished, a shadow arises.
Nobody knows who of. Nobody knows what of. All they know is that it utters an ungodly sound, a sound that resembles nothing of this earth; nothing of this reality.
Some who have seen the shadow are often too afraid to describe what it looked like. Others have not even lived to tell others. But their suicides have confirmed their experience.
Now why do I write all of this? Because I have seen it. I was a counselor at Camp Elliot. The night that I saw it, it was just outside my window; staring me down like a wolf as I lay in my cot. Though I apparently had the mental strength to take it, to describe it in full would go against my superstitions. I care too much for others to risk you all sharing in my experience. But I will admit this: that no primal beast on this earth can bring such feelings of helplessness and desolation as the crimson gaze of its plate-like eyes.
And I felt all the more helpless the next morning when I came to find that another child had gone missing. They searched in all manner of ways for months and the case remains open; as do the others that preceded it.
The shadow exists. Likely borne of whatever unnatural and unholy ritual was performed at Arrowhead Lake; a ritual the caravan had unknowingly completed. It has taken men, women, and children; and it will continue to take more. That’s why now, all I can do is lobby to finally close that damned camp for good. It is the one piece of land I think in all the West that can never be tamed…and it never should be.
Knowing all these things, I realize now that Jonathan Elliot was right.
There is no God at Camp Elliot. Not until Judgment Day.
—————————————————————————
submitted by CleanMeme129 to nosleep [link] [comments]
It was in this year we find the establishment of Camp Elliot. As you might know through some knowledge of niche history, this camp was founded by a caravan composed of twelve men all looking to set up their own settlement. The caravan was led by a “Jonathan Elliot”. He came from Seattle, back before it had even known that name. Since leaving the freshly dug out city, ambitions set on their own prospect, the company had already been travelling for about 3 days. In their overt ambition, they became careless. They had run low on fresh water, heads pounding and tongues gone dry.
So, temporarily pitched in the wilderness, Mr. Elliot decided to send out a six-man party to search for some. He told them to stay together and not to come back until they found at least a pail’s worth of water. The six men went out. They stayed out for some three hours, until the sun was in its crimson crest; and the search was becoming hopeless.
“We have to go back!” some had said. Others argued otherwise, sticking to what Mr. Elliot had instructed. To the latter, they caved; and it came to be a mistake.
It soon got pitch dark and they had nothing but matches to see some inches past their faces. A panic quickly ensued. Many were on the verge of a breakdown, almost certain they were lost.
Suddenly, there was a light. It was spotted first by the chief of the party. It was some ways off in the distance, pulsing in the night.
They quickly calmed, believing they had found their caravan once again. They approached, clambering over branches and rocks, scraping more than just their knees.
Before long, the light had become much more recognizable. It was a torch. The party chief ordered the other five men to prepare their rifles. They feared it to be anything. Hostile prospectors, moonshiners, perhaps a native tribe that had been left undisturbed or for that matter discovered. They walked covertly; coming to the edge of what turned out to be a clearing in the trees. In the clearing was a lake; Arrowhead Lake it would come to be known as.
Standing on its shore, there were people; practically a riot. A group of shirtless men were seen dancing around a fire, reciting chants and rhymes in their own special tongue. One of them held a large rock in their right hand, a pointed arrow in his left. The rest of the men seemed to be goading him, applauding him in this bizarre ritual.
These weren’t natives. They were pale as ice, eyes surrounded by darkness. Their hair was all but present. They almost didn’t seem human.
Just then, one of the party members fired. The battle was short, but one of the so-called “drunks” managed to take down one of the six men with a bow-and-arrow.
That is where the Arrowhead Lake received its name.
The remaining five of the party slept by the fire until dawn, not bothering to look over their attackers’ belongings until then. They were too busy in mourning over the loss of their companion.
The next day, what they found was, for lack of a better word, disturbing.
What they had thought was a rock in the hand of one of their attackers was actually a small green turtle. The man who had held it had cut it open with the arrow, leaving it limp, distorted, and bloody.
But that wasn’t the most unsettling aspect. The blood on its body wasn’t red. It was pitch black. Black as ink. As black as the night upon which it was gutted.
Believing it to be poison, the men threw the mangled turtle’s corpse into the lake; tossing it as far out as they could. A couple of hours went by, and Jonathan Elliot with the other six in the caravan had then found the party and the lake. A brief funeral and burial were held for their one fallen man as well as his attackers.
What followed was a conversation, a debate over what to do next. In the end, plans for a cabin were sorted out. The cabin was finished in 1855 and still stands on the Camp Elliot grounds to this day.
That is not where this tale ends, however.
After about a month of it being open, a strange power came over the camp. Each time that a caravan would stop to do business or even rest awhile, another person from the original founding group would have gone missing. They hadn’t died, they hadn’t moved on to elsewhere. They would just vanish.
Then another would follow. Then another, and another, and another. With each time someone would visit, the camp would be found in worse shape than it was before.
Then came one day in 1856: a caravan of travelling salesmen had come to the camp, looking to do some trade. What they found was a single person: Jonathan Elliot, the titular founder of Camp Elliot. He was found tucked beneath his bed, cradled himself into a ball, malnourished and in bad health. Members of the caravan described a look of pure madness in his eyes as he said something over and over. It was a single phrase, hard to make out, but it was something like, “NO GOLD HERE! NO GOLD HERE!”
He never spoke any other words beside these. What with it being the era of the gold rush, the claim from the sales caravan upon returning to Seattle was that a group of maddened prospectors had attacked the camp in search of gold, killing all except for himself. They would have brought him back to Seattle with them, but in a fit of hysteria, he put a rifle in his mouth before they could.
In the passing of time since then, the camp has been claimed by many other groups, each coming and going. At one time, it was a trading post. Then it became a mine again but no ores were ever unearthed. So it seemed that Elliot was right. Then finally, in 1916, it became a Boy Scout camp; and so it has been ever since.
As for the mystery of this place, there is something about it they often say. On certain nights, ones where the lake is its darkest and the moon and stars are almost extinguished, a shadow arises.
Nobody knows who of. Nobody knows what of. All they know is that it utters an ungodly sound, a sound that resembles nothing of this earth; nothing of this reality.
Some who have seen the shadow are often too afraid to describe what it looked like. Others have not even lived to tell others. But their suicides have confirmed their experience.
Now why do I write all of this? Because I have seen it. I was a counselor at Camp Elliot. The night that I saw it, it was just outside my window; staring me down like a wolf as I lay in my cot. Though I apparently had the mental strength to take it, to describe it in full would go against my superstitions. I care too much for others to risk you all sharing in my experience. But I will admit this: that no primal beast on this earth can bring such feelings of helplessness and desolation as the crimson gaze of its plate-like eyes.
And I felt all the more helpless the next morning when I came to find that another child had gone missing. They searched in all manner of ways for months and the case remains open; as do the others that preceded it.
The shadow exists. Likely borne of whatever unnatural and unholy ritual was performed at Arrowhead Lake; a ritual the caravan had unknowingly completed. It has taken men, women, and children; and it will continue to take more. That’s why now, all I can do is lobby to finally close that damned camp for good. It is the one piece of land I think in all the West that can never be tamed…and it never should be.
Knowing all these things, I realize now that Jonathan Elliot was right.
There is no God at Camp Elliot. Not until Judgment Day.
—————————————————————————
2024.06.01 08:48 Edwardthecrazyman Hiraeth or Where the Children Play: More and More [19]
First/Previous
Since I knew there was a time before, I’ve wanted it, but that was child’s hope; even as a boy I wanted a dream. I wanted some divine being to enter from heaven and tell us all how it should be, but that wasn’t something I could ever count on—of course. Is there a god? I think so. I’ve seen those things and if they exist, then surely there’s a maker on the other end of it—god made both the light and the dark if the word’s to be believed and all we can hope for is a glimpse of the former. Even for a second.
The streets were soaked with blood and so many artillery rounds were fired into the sky—many I witnessed missed Leviathan—that I forgot what silence was like (not to mention the screams and there was a lot of that).
In the scrambling, I found I was reentering deeper into Golgotha and that wasn’t good. There was the ever-present thought that Maron was around every corner; the man had haunted my thoughts for longer that he should have and every time it was like an overwhelming force. It was simple enough after all, he was a piece of the past, a piece I could theoretically reach out and touch and that was what kept me to him.
In the fray of bolting citizens, I pressed myself to the exterior of a wall—I’d neared the stairs which once led to my apartment—and I kept out of the way of those that mindlessly went; some of those which rushed from the onslaught were those afflicted with skitterbugs and many of them either hobbled on blackened legs or—and this was rare—comrades or family helped to carry those which could not carry themselves. It was a baffling sight. A man carried a woman like a child (her toes had fallen off and her legs were black to the knees) and though he strode on with her, his own boots were caked with a mixture of blood and earth. An older girl led a young boy from the whirlwind of dust which was kicked up in the square; the boy’s eyes were whited, and his hands were curled to his chest, discolored. People, whatever duality there is, cared. There was not a drop of the apathy I’d learned and encouraged in myself.
I chewed like a mad dog through my bindings, and it was of little use; I yanked at the cord which secured my hands together and received rope burn in return. “Bitch!” I cussed the thing, but the flames in the sky were so loud, the bangs and vibrations from the artillery consumed all so it was like yelling in a barrel. I swung my hands out in front of me, feeling useless and felt a sudden urge to try again. I bit into the cord and repetitively motioned my jaw against the pressure of the cord, like I was going to saw through it with my teeth. Ha! Another yank is what brought my left hand free, but not without tearing a triangle of skin away from my wrist.
The cord dropped to my feet, and I looked around; a woman brushed past me, nearly toppled over my foot and I caught her by the wrist before she went head-over. She violently thrust from my grasp and screamed something at me. Another bout of flames burst from Leviathan’s maw as it circle-dove overhead. The heatwave from the blast exploded across my face so that I recoiled from the sky itself till I was on the ground, and I pushed myself from the earth and ran half dog-like from my place there at the wall. Where? It was hard to say where when every person that touched-by seemed to send me in another direction; in the madness, it was impossible to tell my course.
With time and effort, I found my way to the opening where the hydro towers were, three pillars which rose above Golgotha’s skyline, each one a testament to human resilience—engineers laborers toiled untold hours under Lady’s father to construct them. The hydro towers exploded into rubble as Leviathan slammed into them. Rock rained down as cutting shards and destructive boulders. A man lay beside my feet where he'd been pinned by the onslaught—white concrete kept him there by his chest—he gasped for air and blood already formed around him. In a moment, I looked away at the dying man, his half-whited eyes bulging at me. Meat hung from the left side of another man’s face as he cradled his head in his hand and moved like he was stoned and sat among the stomping feet; he slumped into the spot he sat and did not move till others came by him in a hurry and he simply fell onto his side like a toy animal.
The screams were too much. I looked to the towers, the nubs which had broken away like bad teeth against the red sky, and whole people fell alongside the rubble, limbs and showers of blood and Leviathan latched atop the towers and rocked its massive body so that the structures slipped directly from their foundations and tumbled over like pins. I ran and again there was nothing but chaos, nothing but mind-numbing wilder thoughts—it was grim and there wasn’t a place for coherency; it was all snaps of images.
In the mess of bumbling limbs, I pushed through to the hall of Bosses and there were people there already, rushing the stairs; the ground shook and I assumed it must’ve been the towers. The things demolished all in their path, and briefly, I saw the ramshackle structures which normally stood in their shadows come slanting over and people leapt from those places too and landed poorly and there was a cacophony of tremors through the earth—it felt as though hell should open.
The steps at the base of the hall were flooded and it was a fight to climb them as legs came high up from ahead and swiped at those behind and I kept my hands ahead of me to block whatever foot may come my way.
Wall men stood ready with their rifles at the tops of those steps and fired their weapons indiscriminately into the crowd. Bodies, big and small, piled atop the steps after a brief bullet dance and it came that I wasn’t only climbing stairs, but corpses; the warmth of their flesh as I clawed ahead remained and blood fog hung in the air. That grouping of wall men, casually lined before the doors of the hall were overtaken and they disappeared, their rifles cackled and came alive with muzzle flashes and the animal hands of the horde brought them to ground.
Us, the horde, funneled through those front doors and for a moment, in the thick walls of the hall, the outside world audibly disappeared; the blood and dust remained, but it was quieter save the shuffling feet and cusses of passersby I was carried deeper.
Those that worked the underground went quickly and I followed, and those ignorant followed for the sake of survival and it was not long till we stumbled into the Boss’s lair. With room, people dispersed like water through the tunnels and found dark recesses to tend their wounds or mourn whatever was lost and the explosive open air had been fully replaced by the quiet black oppressive mumbles of people taking stock of all those that had died. And all those that would. Every few moments, the walls shook, and dust fell from the ceiling fixtures.
A few haggard folks moved to the doorway which led to the damp room which led to the kitchen, and they slammed the door shut and latched it and began to check adjacent rooms for things to barricade the way.
“Stop!” said a man in the dim flickering underground light—I was surprised to see the man was me, “Leave it open! Others might need help.” I retraced my steps to the small faction that’d gathered there at the doorway. “You can’t just let them die out there. Let them in.”
“Shut up!” a skinny girl with her hair pulled back on her malnourished skull spoke gruffly; she choked, coughed—dust clung to her clothes—she’d been near the collapse of the hydro towers if I guessed. “Step off, or I’ll—
“Or you’ll what?” I shouted.
The girl put up her fists, two lumpy stones, and in stupid response I closed the distance between us. With speed, her fist met my nose, and I stumbled back on my heel.
Without hesitation, I brought up my own hands and landed a blow to her stomach. She craned forward, gasped on repeat, and took a knee.
Blood wet my upper lip, and I wiped it away with my forearm.
“Move,” I said to the others by the door; there were two: a woman and a boy that was nearly a man.
The boy charged headstrongly, attempted a kick and I easily shoved his small frame against the tunnel wall; the hard metal sounded a meaty thud against his body and the woman launched unseen at me, raked her nails down the back of my neck, and tore at my collar. I kept a forearm to the boy’s throat and rocked his head with my free elbow. Once he wept and spit red, I let him go; the boy slid into a sit and I spun on the woman, shoving her away. My left leg began to give, and I used the wall over the boy’s head as support. I swung at her with a wild claw and my fingertips grazed her nose as she fell away to the opposite wall.
“Stop it!” I shouted.
She launched at me, and my leg gave out under her tackle, and I stumbled half-on the boy, my feet kicked helplessly at her, and the boy regained his composure and began to crawl towards me. We wrestled and then the girl I’d knocked in the gut rejoined the fray. I was done. They had me pinned and spat curses at me and took turns shoving my head into the floor.
“You’re going to get us killed,” shouted the woman, “Are you stupid?”
I grinded my teeth and tried to throw them off; I was overpowered and easily pressed down again.
The overhead lights flickered with another deep earthy vibration and the trio let go of me in an instant—I came up swinging my arms like crazy and as I went to kneel before propelling myself to stand, a hand rested on my shoulder. I spun on the hand and was met with the black mouth of a 9mm pistol—that froze me fast.
The owner of the weapon—a wall man by the look of her fatigues—motioned for me to stand and I did. Her eyes were far off and nervous and the metal shook in her outstretched hand. “Against the wall!” she barked at us; she was small-framed and youthful but full grown, and I could easily push her out of my way if not for the pistol. We went to the wall, and she moved to the door while keeping the gun drawn on us. She watched us and glanced at the door. “It’s latched! Who latched the door?” She asked.
No one spoke. The other three looked to their feet; I initially refused to rat, and snorted blood—my nose throbbed and by touch I could tell it swelled already.
“Well? Why’s it closed?” she asked the question more like a desperate child than a person with control. “C’mon!” The 9mm rolled limply on her wrist as she said the word, like she was attempting to draw the confession from us with the motion.
“There’s an attack. They’re killing everyone,” said the boy.
The girl and woman nodded.
“Who?” asked the wall man.
“Demons, muties,” said the boy, “Big stuff. Everyone’s dying.”
The ground shook as if to emphasize his point.
The wall man studied us for a moment, lingering last on me and for the longest and she took a long breath and let the sigh out dramatically slow. “I know you,” she motioned at me with the gun, “You’re that maniac. The one that tried to murder everyone.” Her eyes fell then returned and she put her weight on the door while maintaining the barrel of the gun eye-level in my direction.
“I ain’t gonna’ hurt anyone,” said. I briefly thought about smiling but decided that’d look worse.
“How do I know that?” she asked.
“Yeah,” said the boy, “He tried to kill us already!” His voice cracked with adolescence; the blood I’d spilled from his mouth coated the front of his holey shirt.
The trio nodded all together—everyone agreed that I was a maniac killer.
“They latched it,” I said, “Cowards.”
A thump came from the other side of the door which frightened the wall man and she leapt from the spot she’d leaned—it took several full seconds to realize her gun went off; there was a flash, and my ears rang. I stumbled from the knot of people and slunk a couple of feet from the space by the door. The girl—the one I gut-punched—collapsed to the floor while holding the right side of her face. The women crowded the girl, panicked, the boy sprinted past me and disappeared deeper into the underground, and the wall man stood there with a wretched blank expression. There was a long moment which hung in the air; I could not hear and then it came back, and it was the girl’s screams I heard first.
Upon stepping to them, I saw the prone girl had been shot just so—through the cheek. Her eyes rolled from likely spinal damage; whatever the angle, it seemed to have ripped through irreparable nerves and she bled a lot. There wasn’t any hope for that girl.
“Well,” I said to the wall man, “Finish it. No reason to make her suffer.”
The girl on the ground writhed unnaturally and caterwauled while the woman by her side attempted to calm her.
Greater became the sound of the belabored hands on the other side of the door; then a hollow-sounding gunshot came from the other side; were they shooting the door? Or each other? Another round—human screams.
The wall man shook her head. “I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”
I tried to hold the wall man’s gaze, but she didn’t seem able.
With speed, I moved to the wall man, reached for the gun which dangled helpless by her side—her initial response was to flinch, pull the weapon from my reach; our eyes locked and I clenched my jaw. She could’ve killed me. There wouldn’t have been surprise from me if she had.
She let go of the gun and I nodded, and she nodded and the woman kneeling by the girl threw herself over her. “Please,” protested the woman, “Please don’t!”
With the aid of the pistol, I was given space, and nothing was said. I mentally prepared myself for the ringing which accompanied gunfire in small spaces, even tilted my head away with my free palm up and took aim and the girl jerked once then went still.
With the ringing going and sound returning, the drumming on the door returned, as well as the quiet weeps of the woman; she crawled to the wayside of the hall, pressed her back against the wall and rested her chin on her knees with her arms around her shins. She didn’t rock to or fro and hardly made any noise at all. But the small and quiet sobs remained faintly there.
First/Previous
Archive
submitted by Edwardthecrazyman to cryosleep [link] [comments]
Since I knew there was a time before, I’ve wanted it, but that was child’s hope; even as a boy I wanted a dream. I wanted some divine being to enter from heaven and tell us all how it should be, but that wasn’t something I could ever count on—of course. Is there a god? I think so. I’ve seen those things and if they exist, then surely there’s a maker on the other end of it—god made both the light and the dark if the word’s to be believed and all we can hope for is a glimpse of the former. Even for a second.
The streets were soaked with blood and so many artillery rounds were fired into the sky—many I witnessed missed Leviathan—that I forgot what silence was like (not to mention the screams and there was a lot of that).
In the scrambling, I found I was reentering deeper into Golgotha and that wasn’t good. There was the ever-present thought that Maron was around every corner; the man had haunted my thoughts for longer that he should have and every time it was like an overwhelming force. It was simple enough after all, he was a piece of the past, a piece I could theoretically reach out and touch and that was what kept me to him.
In the fray of bolting citizens, I pressed myself to the exterior of a wall—I’d neared the stairs which once led to my apartment—and I kept out of the way of those that mindlessly went; some of those which rushed from the onslaught were those afflicted with skitterbugs and many of them either hobbled on blackened legs or—and this was rare—comrades or family helped to carry those which could not carry themselves. It was a baffling sight. A man carried a woman like a child (her toes had fallen off and her legs were black to the knees) and though he strode on with her, his own boots were caked with a mixture of blood and earth. An older girl led a young boy from the whirlwind of dust which was kicked up in the square; the boy’s eyes were whited, and his hands were curled to his chest, discolored. People, whatever duality there is, cared. There was not a drop of the apathy I’d learned and encouraged in myself.
I chewed like a mad dog through my bindings, and it was of little use; I yanked at the cord which secured my hands together and received rope burn in return. “Bitch!” I cussed the thing, but the flames in the sky were so loud, the bangs and vibrations from the artillery consumed all so it was like yelling in a barrel. I swung my hands out in front of me, feeling useless and felt a sudden urge to try again. I bit into the cord and repetitively motioned my jaw against the pressure of the cord, like I was going to saw through it with my teeth. Ha! Another yank is what brought my left hand free, but not without tearing a triangle of skin away from my wrist.
The cord dropped to my feet, and I looked around; a woman brushed past me, nearly toppled over my foot and I caught her by the wrist before she went head-over. She violently thrust from my grasp and screamed something at me. Another bout of flames burst from Leviathan’s maw as it circle-dove overhead. The heatwave from the blast exploded across my face so that I recoiled from the sky itself till I was on the ground, and I pushed myself from the earth and ran half dog-like from my place there at the wall. Where? It was hard to say where when every person that touched-by seemed to send me in another direction; in the madness, it was impossible to tell my course.
With time and effort, I found my way to the opening where the hydro towers were, three pillars which rose above Golgotha’s skyline, each one a testament to human resilience—engineers laborers toiled untold hours under Lady’s father to construct them. The hydro towers exploded into rubble as Leviathan slammed into them. Rock rained down as cutting shards and destructive boulders. A man lay beside my feet where he'd been pinned by the onslaught—white concrete kept him there by his chest—he gasped for air and blood already formed around him. In a moment, I looked away at the dying man, his half-whited eyes bulging at me. Meat hung from the left side of another man’s face as he cradled his head in his hand and moved like he was stoned and sat among the stomping feet; he slumped into the spot he sat and did not move till others came by him in a hurry and he simply fell onto his side like a toy animal.
The screams were too much. I looked to the towers, the nubs which had broken away like bad teeth against the red sky, and whole people fell alongside the rubble, limbs and showers of blood and Leviathan latched atop the towers and rocked its massive body so that the structures slipped directly from their foundations and tumbled over like pins. I ran and again there was nothing but chaos, nothing but mind-numbing wilder thoughts—it was grim and there wasn’t a place for coherency; it was all snaps of images.
In the mess of bumbling limbs, I pushed through to the hall of Bosses and there were people there already, rushing the stairs; the ground shook and I assumed it must’ve been the towers. The things demolished all in their path, and briefly, I saw the ramshackle structures which normally stood in their shadows come slanting over and people leapt from those places too and landed poorly and there was a cacophony of tremors through the earth—it felt as though hell should open.
The steps at the base of the hall were flooded and it was a fight to climb them as legs came high up from ahead and swiped at those behind and I kept my hands ahead of me to block whatever foot may come my way.
Wall men stood ready with their rifles at the tops of those steps and fired their weapons indiscriminately into the crowd. Bodies, big and small, piled atop the steps after a brief bullet dance and it came that I wasn’t only climbing stairs, but corpses; the warmth of their flesh as I clawed ahead remained and blood fog hung in the air. That grouping of wall men, casually lined before the doors of the hall were overtaken and they disappeared, their rifles cackled and came alive with muzzle flashes and the animal hands of the horde brought them to ground.
Us, the horde, funneled through those front doors and for a moment, in the thick walls of the hall, the outside world audibly disappeared; the blood and dust remained, but it was quieter save the shuffling feet and cusses of passersby I was carried deeper.
Those that worked the underground went quickly and I followed, and those ignorant followed for the sake of survival and it was not long till we stumbled into the Boss’s lair. With room, people dispersed like water through the tunnels and found dark recesses to tend their wounds or mourn whatever was lost and the explosive open air had been fully replaced by the quiet black oppressive mumbles of people taking stock of all those that had died. And all those that would. Every few moments, the walls shook, and dust fell from the ceiling fixtures.
A few haggard folks moved to the doorway which led to the damp room which led to the kitchen, and they slammed the door shut and latched it and began to check adjacent rooms for things to barricade the way.
“Stop!” said a man in the dim flickering underground light—I was surprised to see the man was me, “Leave it open! Others might need help.” I retraced my steps to the small faction that’d gathered there at the doorway. “You can’t just let them die out there. Let them in.”
“Shut up!” a skinny girl with her hair pulled back on her malnourished skull spoke gruffly; she choked, coughed—dust clung to her clothes—she’d been near the collapse of the hydro towers if I guessed. “Step off, or I’ll—
“Or you’ll what?” I shouted.
The girl put up her fists, two lumpy stones, and in stupid response I closed the distance between us. With speed, her fist met my nose, and I stumbled back on my heel.
Without hesitation, I brought up my own hands and landed a blow to her stomach. She craned forward, gasped on repeat, and took a knee.
Blood wet my upper lip, and I wiped it away with my forearm.
“Move,” I said to the others by the door; there were two: a woman and a boy that was nearly a man.
The boy charged headstrongly, attempted a kick and I easily shoved his small frame against the tunnel wall; the hard metal sounded a meaty thud against his body and the woman launched unseen at me, raked her nails down the back of my neck, and tore at my collar. I kept a forearm to the boy’s throat and rocked his head with my free elbow. Once he wept and spit red, I let him go; the boy slid into a sit and I spun on the woman, shoving her away. My left leg began to give, and I used the wall over the boy’s head as support. I swung at her with a wild claw and my fingertips grazed her nose as she fell away to the opposite wall.
“Stop it!” I shouted.
She launched at me, and my leg gave out under her tackle, and I stumbled half-on the boy, my feet kicked helplessly at her, and the boy regained his composure and began to crawl towards me. We wrestled and then the girl I’d knocked in the gut rejoined the fray. I was done. They had me pinned and spat curses at me and took turns shoving my head into the floor.
“You’re going to get us killed,” shouted the woman, “Are you stupid?”
I grinded my teeth and tried to throw them off; I was overpowered and easily pressed down again.
The overhead lights flickered with another deep earthy vibration and the trio let go of me in an instant—I came up swinging my arms like crazy and as I went to kneel before propelling myself to stand, a hand rested on my shoulder. I spun on the hand and was met with the black mouth of a 9mm pistol—that froze me fast.
The owner of the weapon—a wall man by the look of her fatigues—motioned for me to stand and I did. Her eyes were far off and nervous and the metal shook in her outstretched hand. “Against the wall!” she barked at us; she was small-framed and youthful but full grown, and I could easily push her out of my way if not for the pistol. We went to the wall, and she moved to the door while keeping the gun drawn on us. She watched us and glanced at the door. “It’s latched! Who latched the door?” She asked.
No one spoke. The other three looked to their feet; I initially refused to rat, and snorted blood—my nose throbbed and by touch I could tell it swelled already.
“Well? Why’s it closed?” she asked the question more like a desperate child than a person with control. “C’mon!” The 9mm rolled limply on her wrist as she said the word, like she was attempting to draw the confession from us with the motion.
“There’s an attack. They’re killing everyone,” said the boy.
The girl and woman nodded.
“Who?” asked the wall man.
“Demons, muties,” said the boy, “Big stuff. Everyone’s dying.”
The ground shook as if to emphasize his point.
The wall man studied us for a moment, lingering last on me and for the longest and she took a long breath and let the sigh out dramatically slow. “I know you,” she motioned at me with the gun, “You’re that maniac. The one that tried to murder everyone.” Her eyes fell then returned and she put her weight on the door while maintaining the barrel of the gun eye-level in my direction.
“I ain’t gonna’ hurt anyone,” said. I briefly thought about smiling but decided that’d look worse.
“How do I know that?” she asked.
“Yeah,” said the boy, “He tried to kill us already!” His voice cracked with adolescence; the blood I’d spilled from his mouth coated the front of his holey shirt.
The trio nodded all together—everyone agreed that I was a maniac killer.
“They latched it,” I said, “Cowards.”
A thump came from the other side of the door which frightened the wall man and she leapt from the spot she’d leaned—it took several full seconds to realize her gun went off; there was a flash, and my ears rang. I stumbled from the knot of people and slunk a couple of feet from the space by the door. The girl—the one I gut-punched—collapsed to the floor while holding the right side of her face. The women crowded the girl, panicked, the boy sprinted past me and disappeared deeper into the underground, and the wall man stood there with a wretched blank expression. There was a long moment which hung in the air; I could not hear and then it came back, and it was the girl’s screams I heard first.
Upon stepping to them, I saw the prone girl had been shot just so—through the cheek. Her eyes rolled from likely spinal damage; whatever the angle, it seemed to have ripped through irreparable nerves and she bled a lot. There wasn’t any hope for that girl.
“Well,” I said to the wall man, “Finish it. No reason to make her suffer.”
The girl on the ground writhed unnaturally and caterwauled while the woman by her side attempted to calm her.
Greater became the sound of the belabored hands on the other side of the door; then a hollow-sounding gunshot came from the other side; were they shooting the door? Or each other? Another round—human screams.
The wall man shook her head. “I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”
I tried to hold the wall man’s gaze, but she didn’t seem able.
With speed, I moved to the wall man, reached for the gun which dangled helpless by her side—her initial response was to flinch, pull the weapon from my reach; our eyes locked and I clenched my jaw. She could’ve killed me. There wouldn’t have been surprise from me if she had.
She let go of the gun and I nodded, and she nodded and the woman kneeling by the girl threw herself over her. “Please,” protested the woman, “Please don’t!”
With the aid of the pistol, I was given space, and nothing was said. I mentally prepared myself for the ringing which accompanied gunfire in small spaces, even tilted my head away with my free palm up and took aim and the girl jerked once then went still.
With the ringing going and sound returning, the drumming on the door returned, as well as the quiet weeps of the woman; she crawled to the wayside of the hall, pressed her back against the wall and rested her chin on her knees with her arms around her shins. She didn’t rock to or fro and hardly made any noise at all. But the small and quiet sobs remained faintly there.
First/Previous
Archive
2024.06.01 08:35 TrusticTunic26 Hope Chapter 1 [Fantasy - 6000 words]
Chapter 1: Hope’s 16th Birthday
As the rays of the sun hits her eyes Hope Moonshine wakes up excited, she was waiting for this day for all her life
She jumps out of her bed and rushes to her mom's room excited and she accidentally flung the door open too fast making a loud cranking noise waking her mother, Queen Matilda up
"Oops didn't mean to wake you up" hope said awkwardly"Honey I know you are excited for your birthday but you need to be patient the sun has just risen everyone is still asleep" Matilda said tiredly, "please go back to sleep darling you will have a long day today and you will need the energy, your party wont be begin till noon"
"Ok mom, sorry for waking you up" said Hope as she was trying to close the door slowly enough that it doesn't crank but it still did "Not an issue dear", said Matilda
As the door closed Matilda took a deep breath and closed her eyes her emblem on her right shoulder a pink diamond glowed she opened her eyes and she made a finger gun with her right hand pointing at the hinges and a shiny pink light zaps comes out of her index and zaps the hinges, the beam turns into a hand and it open the door and then closes without making a cranking noise, "I should have done that a long time ago" said Matilda
She removes the blankets from her bed to reveal she is already clothed for a serious occasion, as she goes towards the mirror she is wearing a long cyan dress that trails all the way to her feed her top being smartly tight with short shoulder sleeves, she puts on long white gloves and glances over her diamond ring she lets out a small sigh and frown and puts it on, she trances over the mirror for a few seconds before snapping out of it, and she looks over to a miniature painting of her an her daughter when she was 6 she picks it up and smiles "I know you are eager dear you won't have to wait for long"
After Matilda ready's herself she open her window and conjures a light bird of the palm of her hand, the bird flew off to Hope's room where it sees her lying in her bed on her stomach, the bird soon returns to Matilda's room and land on her palm her eyes glows for a moment and the bird fizzes into a yellow cloud, "Well it looks like she actually listened not very common of her to do so, it means I can continue to do my plan unobstructed" she said with a smile.
Matilda leaves her room and walk across the hallway to the main hall then she claps her hand twice, and snap her finger, suddenly a figure jumps into the window it spins 180° and a muscular women stands up, she has a scar on her left cheek and short brown hair, she wore knight armour that cuts of at her shoulder emblem that looks like a dark grey shield.
"At your service my queen", she said with a salute
Matilda is startled for a moment, but then composes herself, "Sally there is no need for you to enter that way you can just wait for me at the hall entrance", she said.
"I was scouting the perimeter we have to make sure this place is safe and to make sure no one can harm the princess at her important day, I was up all night with my team searching every corner of the upper ring for any danger and-" Sally was abruptly cut off by Matilda.
"It was not your fault Sally, there is no need for you to prove yourself to me" Matilda said remorsefully, "You tried your best so you must eventually forgive yourself it wasn't anyone fault, it truly came from nowhere"
Sally's serious expression break into expression of regret as she shamefully looks at the ground
"Now is not time to punish ourselves over who we failed to protect but to make sure my daughter has a great birthday" Matilda said with determination
Sally's expressions of regret turned to a smile, "Yes my Queen, me and the royal guards have spent last few weeks clearing a safe path from the upper ring to the more presentable areas of the lower ring that ends at the great barrier" Sally says with a salute.
"Well I trust your judgement, you are now dismissed" said Matilda
Sally goes down the stairs of the central hall towards the doors "I won't mess up again" Sally said with determination
"Oh Houston" Matilda said while turning her head left and right, "where is he when I need him",
"I am right here your majesty" Houston whispered from behind, Matilda was startled and was annoyed on how everyone seems to sneak up on her, "Sorry for spooking you" said Houston as he polished his monocle "We are well prepared to begin celebration soon" he said as his hand pointed towards the empty hall.
Matilda stared at him, he then clapped his hands and an army of servants entered the hall setting up the chairs and tables, followed up by waiters quickly setting food on the table, and then 6 waiters came together to slowly lift the large 4 layered birthday cake with a milk white colour with chocolate cream on top of each layer, with "happy birthday Hope" spelled with strawberry topping on the side of each layer, with the glowing yellow number "16" candle at the top.
"As I was saying my Queen" Houston started "We just need to wait for the guests to arrive, I will let you know when you can call your daughter" Houston stops from a moment "Do you want anything else your majesty or am I dismissed?" he asked.
"You are dismissed Houston" said Matilda
Matilda walks up to Hope's room and slowly opens the door to find her laying in her bed
"One thousand one hundred and forty-two" Hope counted to herself, she paused and took a deep sigh, and tried to continue but then paused scratching her head "Um One-".
she was interrupted by her mother saying "Thousand one hundred and forty-three", "Unable to sleep dear?" She said with a smile, Hope gasped and she had the biggest smile in her face, her mother was a bit startled and asked "what is it you are smiling at?".
Hope pointed at her, jumped from her bed and as she was taking heavy breathes pointing at her mother clothes, "You don't sleep in this" she takes a deep breath and exclaims "which means I have got to get ready" and she runs to her closet to pick up something to wear.
Matilda takes a glance down at her clothes and rolls her eyes "so much for a surprise"
"I am ready mom" Hope said ecstatically, she was wearing a beautiful turquoise dress which complemented her hair colour styled in two plates with with joined with a pink band and wearing her favourite golden necklace,
"That was quick" her mother commented
As they enter the main hall a bunch of guests are seated drinking beverages and helping themselves to freshly baked foods, "Attention everybody, I would like you to welcome the birthday girl" said Houston, everyone stopped what they were doing and turned their heads towards the princess.
She gets a bit nervous and let out an awkward "hey guys", she didn't recognize any of them but she had to pretend to know all of them while hoping they don't ask her if she knows them, they all continue to stare as she and her mother get seated.
Houston lets out a forced cough to break the awkward silence, he says "and now Princess that you have come here you may blow the candles", the table the cake was on was carried towards Hope and her mother seated on there high chair, Hope tries to mask her excitement as she takes a deep breath and gently blow the candles, which fire off the cake and make a small explosion spelling out "Happy Birthday Princess!", Hope's eyes lit with joy.
Trumpets play and two royal servants come into the hall holding a gold plated chest decorated with diamonds, the chest is slowly opened and a blinding bright light shined from inside it, "Go ahead dear" said Matilda as her eyes pointed to the chest.
Hope goes down towards the chest and slowly lowers her hand inside of it and grabs what inside, as she removes her hand from the chest it reveals her to be holding the magic wand, it had a purple handle with a sparkly cyan diamond at its back end and a translucent turquoise sphere at it top decorated with a white glowing shape which resembled the combination of a two star into two different planes inside, and topped off with a small yellow crown at the top
Hope's shoulder emblem a pink heart with a tiny crown on top of both curves starts glowing, she raises the top of the wand at eye level, "ooh what's this" she says as she tries to stick her finger inside it to touch the spinning star
"HOPE DONT" shouted her mother, as soon as hope touched it burnt her finger and she let out a painful screech and fires a yellow glowing beam fires from the wand at some guest who were quick enough to duck, it hits a glowing orange decorative plant crushing it against the wall,
"hehe this could have been worse", Hope said awkwardly, the wreckage catches fire...
"FIRE" yells Sally, the guards that were standing by the walls quickly moved and shoved away all nearby guest as Sally goes and faces the fire here shoulder emblem glows and she fires yellow beam at it from her hands she then she clenches her fist and the beam turns into water extinguishing the fire and a yellow cloud evaporates from it, she quickly turn over to Hope and rushes over to her "ARE YOU OKAY PRINCESS" she exclaimed worryingly.
"I am fine it's just my finger is a little -" before she finishes her sentence Sally picks her up and running with her in her arms and runs up to the door and out of the Palace.
Queen Matilda is left with the guests and lets out an awkward chuckle and says "so who wants some drinks?", "Please help yourself to the finest wines in the whole kingdom" she said as a servant reveals a bunch of wine bottles in gold coating, the guests all rushed to get a sip
"I am telling you I am fine it's just a little scratch its rude for me to leave suddenl-" Hope was interrupted by Sally kicking the door open.
"PA-" Sally yelled before being interrupted by a "SHHHH", she was shushed by a woman with a white robe that cut offs at the shoulder, and a hand crafted necklace made of cotton around her neck, she had red hair tied into a bun and a green plus sign as her shoulder emblem.
"Seriously Sally how many times do I have to tell you to be quiet in here" said healer Pam with frustration she lets out a sigh and asks, "So what seems to be the problem?" Sally pulls out Hope and holds her at arms length right Infront of her Hope lets out a "Hi".
Pam gasps "Oh my princess sorry I didn't know you were coming, are you hurt?"
"No not at all it's ju-" Hope was interrupted yet again it seems like although she is becoming a grownup no one seems to want to listen to her
"She burned herself quickly check up on her" commanded Sally as she lowered Hope to her feet, Pam glanced at her up and down
"Where was she hurt", asked her confused. Hope sheepishly pointed to her left index finger it was a bit red which could be easily seen as it contrasted with her smooth white skin, but it was also accompanied by a yellow 'liquid', Pam conjured a white napkin to clean the site of the injury and singled out the injured finger from Hope's hand and put her hand on it and made into a fist and then she took a deep breath and closed her eyes her shoulder mark started having a green glow for a few seconds and then it suddenly went dim, she opened her hand to find the finger fully healed like it was never even scratched.
"Oh wow t-thanks" said Hope with a smile.
"Oh it's nothing" said pam, she took out her napkin it had some yellow glowing spots of what looks like fluid except its it didn't soak in but floated around it, "I see you can use magic now, what was your first spell" Pam said with excitement.
"I-i just shot this out of the wand" she said as she pointed at liquid on the napkin that started evaporating considerably, she then lowered her voice and talked faster "and it hit a plant and set it on fire" she was saying as she looked at the floor, Pam laughed and Hope was starting to blush.
"Oh don't worry dear we all mess up at the start, when I first started I accidentally broke a boy's arm" Pam said with a laugh.
"Is he okay now?" Hope asked with curiosity
"Well when I was your age healing wasn't what it is today they just put his arm in a cast and said if he was lucky his arm would be usable in three years", "I never was interested in healing like my mom but I wanted to fix my mistake so I studied and practiced for months to focus my healing and one day it just clicked, I got back to him and I was able to heal his arm and this happiness a patient feels when they are treated makes this all worth it" she let out a calm sigh and continued "It was not an easy journey but in just 8 years I was able to reach my peak"
"Eight years?" Hope said in disbelief
"Don't worry your path is way longer than mine my peak is at least four levels lower than you" Pam said with a grin
"It isn't that huge difference right?" Hope inquired hoping her journey wont be in the double digits because that's a very long time
Pam laughed and then said "Oh it way larger than it looks, but don't worry royals don't have a peak at least not one that one knows off" she put her hand on Hope's shoulder "Don't let the long road overwhelm you as long as you are better than yesterday you will be a great princess"
Hope smiled at her and said, "Thanks a lot Pam"
"So is everything alright with her, she stuck her finger into the wand are you sure there wont be any complications" asked Sally
"She will be alright she might have lost her finger if she went deeper and then It will actually a challenge to fix, but this is what pain reflexes are for, it a blessing in disguise", replied Pam
Sally clapped her hands and said "Well we got to go now we cant keep the guests waiting thanks for your help Pam"
Hope looked over to her and said "You should come over it's my birthday you can go change the setting", "No dear being a Healer is big commitment what if someone is in need of assistance and I am not here but I appreciate the gesture, maybe I could arrange my schedule to be there next time, go enjoy yourself".
"Pam the amputee is ready for his second regeneration session" a voice called.
"The what?" exclaimed Hope.
"Oh it's a bit graphic you really don't want to see it, I got to go now send your mother my regards" replied Pam as she ran over to a patient
Sally and Hope went to the door and left.
"You know I was really fine, it was just a scratch" Hope said as she looked up to Sally, "It's kind of rude to just leave the guests hanging I could have just sucked it up-"
Hope tried to continue when Sally muttered under her breath "I won't forgive myself".
"What was that?" asked Hope.
"Nothing, it's just you can never be so sure and no one was stupid enough to stick there finger in the wand I was just making sure but since it wasn't serious we don't need to worry" Sally said with an anxious fake smile, Hope sensed there was something off about her tone but she didn't want to push Sally into an uncomfortable spot so she left it at that
Sally and Hope make it back to the palace and Matilda rushes to her daughter "Oh dear are you ok"
She said as she gave her girl a hug, Everyone was staring and Hope got a bit embarrassed "yeah Mom I am ok" Hope said, Matilda stood up and was about to say something before Hope pre-emptively said, "I know I know it was pretty stupid from me to to do what I did, I know the wand is not a toy and I promise I will be more careful with it" she said while avoiding eye contact
Matilda smiled and said "Well I appreciate that you understand that you messed up but that not what I wanted to say" Hope made eye contact and Matilda continued "As princess and future queen we will have you visit the LOWER RING" Matilda took her daughter's hand "Sure its not the safest or best place in the kingdom but a hermit ruler is a bad ruler"
Hope got extremely excited over this as she always wanted to see the rest of the kingdom the Lower ring, the Outer ring but she was always told no because Sally's word "It's way to dangerous, you are not ready, you aren't old enough" or her mother's word "Is there something there that you cant find at home?, The place isn't very hygienic" but how bad could it be it was still under the rule of the Moonshines. Life in the Upper ring and the palace get boring after a while, why would she wants to stay put there when there a whole world to explore?
"The escorts are waiting for us outside those who want to go with us are welcome to go" Said Matilda looking at the guests with a forced smile almost knowing the reaction. All of them tried to mask there faces of disgust as if Matilda just asked them to bathe in mud or even worse she said that the food at the legendary "façade haut de gamme" was just an overpriced scam. They didn't look very impressed, Matilda coughed and asked "Well?".
One couple went towards the exit and when they got to Matilda the man said "We are truly flattered by your invite my queen but I am afraid we have something important to do" the man paused and scratched his head trying to think of an excuse Hope looked over him and asked
"What's more important to than a trip to see the rest of kingdom its not like we can always get to do it" with an ecstatic smile the woman who was scratching her head stopped as if she got an idea she went over looked to Hope with a stupid fake smile and said
"Well sweetie we forgot to sign up our son for school and registration will be closing today" she turned over to her husband and elbowed him in ribs and asked "Isn't that right honey?"
The man nodded in agreement and they walked out and they led out an audible sigh and when they were just outside of earshot the man told his wife "Moonshines huh? You would think after what happened a decade ago they would get the memo" the woman looked back at the Queen then waved and looked back at her husband and said
"She is weak if this happened to me I will make sure those pigs wish they weren't born".
Following into there footsteps and sensing an opening other guests decided to excuse themselves outside and at this point Matilda stopped resisting she knew some wouldn't want to go but she didn't think that many would go and she looked defeated Hope turned to her and said "Well mom we don't need those nose in the airers it's there loss anyways"
A woman walked up to them "She is right you know in-law" that woman was Hope's paternal aunt Mary, she had short blonde hair and brown eyes wearing a yellow dress for the occasion "The only reason any off these arrogant buffoons came here is societal expectations much like basically everything here" she said while rolling her eyes "and they all dipped the second they had the chance, come on lets go"
As they walked past the doors Sally was standing just outside the door scanning the setting with her eyes, her eyes wandered and locked with Mary "You should relax Sally no need for you to be so tense" she said with a smile she then changed her tone suddenly and said with a frown and a in a low voice that Hope and Matilda couldn't hear "Me and Matilda can protect ourselves and we aren't relying on you and my niece was under my protection since she was six, all you need to do is drive the horses and look menacing" and then she put her hand on her shoulder and smiled and said with an audible voice "So you can feel a lot more at ease dear", Sally tried hid her feeling of guilt with a fake smile "Let's go" said Mary joyfully
Everyone got on the horse driven chariot, just a classical chariot nothing magical about it, it's a very ineffective method of transport but one of the most relaxing ones
"HEEEEEY WAIT FOR ME" yelled a girl from as she was she surfing a purple cloud wearing a long sleeved purple sweater and blue pants as she got closer she tried to slow down by tilting her body backwards but she lost control and started flying at high speeds towards Hope
"EM SLOW DOWN" shouted Hope.
"I CANT BRACE FOR IMPACT" they both closed there eyes with their arms covering there eyes but just before contact she was caught effortlessly by Sally one hand and her cloud in the other she crushed the cloud in her fist into yellow mist that faded away and put the girl on her feet she then crossed her arms and looked down and barked
"Miss Emberlynn Springfield you should know how dangerous using magic without experience is, and you can't just rely on something you can't even responsibly use to make up for your own lack of punctuality"
Ember looked taken aback but she didn't want to look stupid so she snapped back with "I didn't know Hope is celebrating her birthday early in the morning, birthdays are a night activity".
Sally who was crossing her arms now raised her eyebrow and simply replied with,"Lies you were told everyday for the last week not my fault you can't seem to be able to be punctual friend's birthday, do you simply not care?".
Ember now looked embarrassed and now was rolling her finger around her dyed purple hair "M-M-My rooster didn't wake me up" she said with a smile while shrugging her shoulder as if she is asking question and the question was 'will Sally let the lecture go'.
"This doesn't matter now anyways it's that Ems is here" interjected Hope with excitement as she put her arm around Ember's shoulder "We shouldn't be wasting time let's go" she said as she punched her hand up in the sky.
Matilda, Hope, Ember and Mary entered the Chariot while Sally rode one of the two horses moving it while the other was being moved by an over-armoured and visibly nervous man.
"Calm down Edmund its just a short trip by a defined path we will be in an out in an hour or two" commanded Sally looking at Edmund clearly getting tired of his lack of confidence.
"I am trying but its such a big deal, escorting not one not two but three royals into the lower ring, I am not sure if I can do this, If I mess up-- I am too young for the consequences" he said clearly on the edge of panic
Sally slapped her hands on his cheeks "Edmund calm down you can do this I know you can" she said, Edmund seemed to calm down a bit "The whole path is being heavily guarded you and me are the last line of an extremely deep wall of defences we are most likely just going to be there for company" she looked back at the cart and said "and besides it's not like the royals can't protect themselves, they are much stronger than us after all"
"That's what they said about fre-" Edmund mumbled before putting his hand on his mouth mid sentence, Sally expression changed to that of anger.
"What did you just say?" she barked.
Edmund realising his mess up and started shaking "Um- I was talking about ---- the nice weather we are having" he said trying to pretend that this wasn't the stupidest attempt at backtracking, before Sally was going to give him a piece of her mind Mary stuck her head out and said in annoyed tone
"Hey I am not getting any younger here", Sally and Edmund looked forwards and shook the horse reins and they got moving forward
As they got to the edges of the Upper ring they reached translucent yellow barrier "We are reaching the barrier you might feel a tickle" proclaimed Sally.
As the horse crossed the barrier the barrier walls phased through the cart and it phased through Mary and Matilda there shoulder emblems glowed a four pointed star and a diamond respectfully in a yellow hue when it got to Hope and Ember the cart got to a sudden halt and they were thrown forwards Hope fell on her mother while Ember face was slapped into the barrier which was at this point halfway through the cart.
Sally opened the door "Everyone ok" she took one look at Ember and let out an annoyed sigh she dragged her hand out of the cart and asked while trying to hide her frustration "Show me your emblem"
Ember scoffed and tried to tuck back her long sleeves but she couldn't get back enough and said while crossing her arms "I can't and I am not removing my shirt".
Sally wasn't having any of it and from tip of her index made a sharp grey magic beam, she flattened Ember's sleeve and made a small cut in her right shoulder showing a yellow star rotated slightly to the left, after the cut yellow gas evaporated from it "And this is why emblems aren't covered it's common knowledge Springfield" said Sally annoyed.
"My favourite shirt! This was very unnecessary" whined Ember and before she could say anything Sally went back to her horse leaving her alone she scoffed and went back to the cart and sat next to Hope crossing her arms.
"You okay there", asked Hope concerned.
"Yeah I am fine just another lecture", said ember looking at the windows
As Hope looked out the window the lower ring didn't seem so different from home, people dressed and walked smartly roads were clean but something was off she couldn't help but notice everyone wore long sleeves even though it was a summer and it's not proper etiquette and that's something else it was surprisingly hot, She took her head out through the windows "Hello stranger" she greeted a man walking nearby he took one solid look at her and looked towards her mother and Sally who was frowning and her hands free with her emblem glowing, he didn't say anything and turned back and proceeded to speed walk away in a few seconds he ditched the subtlety and ran away, Hope was pretty disappointed and got her head into the cart
"What did I do wrong?", Hope asked.
"Girl it's either because you were too friendly it felt fake" said Ember, Hope looked down "Or they were made to feel unwelcome by misses buzzkill in the driving seat" she remarked
A loud sound of crashing wooden boxes was heard and cart went to a halt
"What was that" commented Mary
"Something that isn't boring" Hope said with excitement before leaving the cart.
"Make sure all of them stay put in the cart I will be gone for a short while" said Sally to Edmund before running to the source of the sound Hope tried to follow her but was body blocked by Edmund with his arms crossed
"Sorry I can't let you go princess, Superior's orders", he glanced to the left of him to seeing Ember touching a fancy table Infront of a café just for it to poof into a yellow cloud,
"Ow splinters" she cried, the yellow cloud fizzled reveal a wooden table barely clinging to its shape with a bunch of makeshift wooden fixes that don't even match in colour
Edmund looked like he just saw a ghost and ran towards Ember who was now transforming outdoor expensive furniture into splinter traps
"Stop touching it" said Edmund before shooting out a grey magical hands towards her subduing her, "What's your deal" he scolded annoyed.
"No what's this place deal why is everything here so fake?" snapped Ember "You hearing this Hope this place is fa-" she then stopped and asked "Aye were is Hope?"
Edmund let her go and pulled on his hair "Oh no no no no no no no" he cried
"Is everything alright where is my daughter?" asked Matilda concerned, Edmund didn't know what to say but before he could make up an explanation Mary interjected
"Oh don't worry Mati she will be ok she is probably with Sally and besides she still has this necklace I gave her so I am sure she will be just fine" Mary said with her hand on Matilda's shoulder "and we can go have some tea and chit-chat while we wait I heard that Gilbert's tea shop has actually potable tea" she suggested Matilda sighed and decided to go with what Mary said and walked towards the shop. "What about me?" asked Ember, Edmund turned towards her with anger and barked "You are staying right here!".
"Sally where are you?" called Hope as she was walking she saw a little girl wearing a cute pink dress and smooth brown hair walking alone Infront of her, she approached her and asked
"Hey do you happen to see a tall lady around here?" she tapped on her shoulder to get her attention and suddenly a cloud of yellow gas evaporated out of her Hope and the little girl coughed and as the smoke cleared the little girl was wearing a poorly knit patchwork of randoms scraps of fabric and her hair was covered in dirt she had a brown circle on the side of her shoulder, Hope froze in shock "I- I am so sorry, it was an accident" she apologised "I can go get you a new dress or--" the girl just looked at Hope her eyes glanced her wand which was in her right hand as well as her royal emblem and then she started hyperventilating and burst into tears.
Hope got on to her knees and she gently put her hands on the girl's shoulder "Calm down calm down, it's alright, It's not your fault but mine"
"P-P-pwease do-don hu-hur meeee" the girl sobbed.
"What hurt you? no no no no" Hope explained trying to figure out from where the girl got the idea
Hope hugged the girl "Here calm down see I am friendly" she soothed, the girl seemed to calm down a bit and she started sniffing
She let her go and asked "So what's your name?"
"R-R-Rosie" replied Rosie.
"Ok Rosie I am so sorry for ruining your dress, do you remember were you got it from?" she asked
"Ms Bea had guys gib it to us" Rosie said
"Misses Bea huh" she wondered out loud "Well can you tell me were misses Bea is"
"Sowwy I can't tell you misses moonnnn" Rosie was saying before she looked she wanted to cry again
"Please don't cry" Hope pleaded "You don't need to tell me where you live just wait" Hope passed her wand to her left hand and put her now free hand to her pocket and pulled out a purple wallet and she pulled out a golden note with 50 written on it she passed the note to Rosie and said "Here give this to misses Bea and tell her I am so sorry for destroying your dress also" Rosie grabbed the note and stared at it, Hope pulled some wrapped candy she got from the party "Her have some candy too" the girl put her the note in her pocket and grabbed the wrapped candy she struggled with it a bit and she then passed it back
"Open it please" Rosie asked
"Oh you can't? it's quite simple here" Hope said she gently tapped the candy her emblem glowed for a moment and the wrapping fizzed out.
Rosie put the candy in her mouth and quickly chewed and swallowed it, she then gave Hope a hug, she let go after a moment "Thank you miss, Ms Bea says Moosines are scawy but aren't scawy"
"Scary why would we be scary" Hope asked in disbelief with a smile
Rosie looked around and said "I am sowwy I need to go" she turned back and ran away and took a turn and was just out of sight.
"You couldn't just stop causing trouble for one day? what did we pay you for?" Hope heard Sally barking.
The sound of Sally's voice came from an alleyway, as Hope entered the alley the clean white paint started fading into rotting maroon bricks and the smell became foul coming from the open dumpster "Ewwwww" Hope said as she lowered the lid to try and lessen the stench
"Hey you know it's rude to close the lid on someone trying to fetch themselves a meal" a bald man barked as he popped out like a jack in the box he had a white beard wearing over shoulder strapped brown pants with a black plastic bag for a shirt and a metal can of beans for a hat and his left eye with a grey iris spinning his shoulder emblem only consisted of a simple brown circle, Hope screamed and ran away "Oh beans was that a Moonshine?" the man asked himself "Well I probably should skip town" he said to himself with a goofy smile while snapping his fingers.
Hope stopped running and started panting "Now you are lucky I am not here in head bashing duty or I would have sent you to a one way trip to the Outer ring and the monsters there could deal with you" Hope heard Sally scolding, she walked to the end of the alleyway the place beyond it was extremely different people clothes were worn out in which the holes were covered up by half baked sewn rotting fabric the road didn't exist it was simply a dirt undefined path and walls were all made of rotting bricks same as that of the alley, windows were broken and the stench of garbage filled the air, Hope saw Sally tying up a bunch of muscular men with a magic rope.
Sally glanced over and saw Hope "Princess what are you doing here?" she asked with dismay the rope holding the gangsters vanished they got up and shook of the dust and looked up and saw Hope and they all ran away in terror "Moonshine here run awway". All of a sudden all the people went indoors and the windows were sealed shut with wood and hammered with nails and just like that the place looked like a ghost town.
submitted by TrusticTunic26 to fantasywriters [link] [comments]
As the rays of the sun hits her eyes Hope Moonshine wakes up excited, she was waiting for this day for all her life
She jumps out of her bed and rushes to her mom's room excited and she accidentally flung the door open too fast making a loud cranking noise waking her mother, Queen Matilda up
"Oops didn't mean to wake you up" hope said awkwardly"Honey I know you are excited for your birthday but you need to be patient the sun has just risen everyone is still asleep" Matilda said tiredly, "please go back to sleep darling you will have a long day today and you will need the energy, your party wont be begin till noon"
"Ok mom, sorry for waking you up" said Hope as she was trying to close the door slowly enough that it doesn't crank but it still did "Not an issue dear", said Matilda
As the door closed Matilda took a deep breath and closed her eyes her emblem on her right shoulder a pink diamond glowed she opened her eyes and she made a finger gun with her right hand pointing at the hinges and a shiny pink light zaps comes out of her index and zaps the hinges, the beam turns into a hand and it open the door and then closes without making a cranking noise, "I should have done that a long time ago" said Matilda
She removes the blankets from her bed to reveal she is already clothed for a serious occasion, as she goes towards the mirror she is wearing a long cyan dress that trails all the way to her feed her top being smartly tight with short shoulder sleeves, she puts on long white gloves and glances over her diamond ring she lets out a small sigh and frown and puts it on, she trances over the mirror for a few seconds before snapping out of it, and she looks over to a miniature painting of her an her daughter when she was 6 she picks it up and smiles "I know you are eager dear you won't have to wait for long"
After Matilda ready's herself she open her window and conjures a light bird of the palm of her hand, the bird flew off to Hope's room where it sees her lying in her bed on her stomach, the bird soon returns to Matilda's room and land on her palm her eyes glows for a moment and the bird fizzes into a yellow cloud, "Well it looks like she actually listened not very common of her to do so, it means I can continue to do my plan unobstructed" she said with a smile.
Matilda leaves her room and walk across the hallway to the main hall then she claps her hand twice, and snap her finger, suddenly a figure jumps into the window it spins 180° and a muscular women stands up, she has a scar on her left cheek and short brown hair, she wore knight armour that cuts of at her shoulder emblem that looks like a dark grey shield.
"At your service my queen", she said with a salute
Matilda is startled for a moment, but then composes herself, "Sally there is no need for you to enter that way you can just wait for me at the hall entrance", she said.
"I was scouting the perimeter we have to make sure this place is safe and to make sure no one can harm the princess at her important day, I was up all night with my team searching every corner of the upper ring for any danger and-" Sally was abruptly cut off by Matilda.
"It was not your fault Sally, there is no need for you to prove yourself to me" Matilda said remorsefully, "You tried your best so you must eventually forgive yourself it wasn't anyone fault, it truly came from nowhere"
Sally's serious expression break into expression of regret as she shamefully looks at the ground
"Now is not time to punish ourselves over who we failed to protect but to make sure my daughter has a great birthday" Matilda said with determination
Sally's expressions of regret turned to a smile, "Yes my Queen, me and the royal guards have spent last few weeks clearing a safe path from the upper ring to the more presentable areas of the lower ring that ends at the great barrier" Sally says with a salute.
"Well I trust your judgement, you are now dismissed" said Matilda
Sally goes down the stairs of the central hall towards the doors "I won't mess up again" Sally said with determination
"Oh Houston" Matilda said while turning her head left and right, "where is he when I need him",
"I am right here your majesty" Houston whispered from behind, Matilda was startled and was annoyed on how everyone seems to sneak up on her, "Sorry for spooking you" said Houston as he polished his monocle "We are well prepared to begin celebration soon" he said as his hand pointed towards the empty hall.
Matilda stared at him, he then clapped his hands and an army of servants entered the hall setting up the chairs and tables, followed up by waiters quickly setting food on the table, and then 6 waiters came together to slowly lift the large 4 layered birthday cake with a milk white colour with chocolate cream on top of each layer, with "happy birthday Hope" spelled with strawberry topping on the side of each layer, with the glowing yellow number "16" candle at the top.
"As I was saying my Queen" Houston started "We just need to wait for the guests to arrive, I will let you know when you can call your daughter" Houston stops from a moment "Do you want anything else your majesty or am I dismissed?" he asked.
"You are dismissed Houston" said Matilda
Matilda walks up to Hope's room and slowly opens the door to find her laying in her bed
"One thousand one hundred and forty-two" Hope counted to herself, she paused and took a deep sigh, and tried to continue but then paused scratching her head "Um One-".
she was interrupted by her mother saying "Thousand one hundred and forty-three", "Unable to sleep dear?" She said with a smile, Hope gasped and she had the biggest smile in her face, her mother was a bit startled and asked "what is it you are smiling at?".
Hope pointed at her, jumped from her bed and as she was taking heavy breathes pointing at her mother clothes, "You don't sleep in this" she takes a deep breath and exclaims "which means I have got to get ready" and she runs to her closet to pick up something to wear.
Matilda takes a glance down at her clothes and rolls her eyes "so much for a surprise"
"I am ready mom" Hope said ecstatically, she was wearing a beautiful turquoise dress which complemented her hair colour styled in two plates with with joined with a pink band and wearing her favourite golden necklace,
"That was quick" her mother commented
As they enter the main hall a bunch of guests are seated drinking beverages and helping themselves to freshly baked foods, "Attention everybody, I would like you to welcome the birthday girl" said Houston, everyone stopped what they were doing and turned their heads towards the princess.
She gets a bit nervous and let out an awkward "hey guys", she didn't recognize any of them but she had to pretend to know all of them while hoping they don't ask her if she knows them, they all continue to stare as she and her mother get seated.
Houston lets out a forced cough to break the awkward silence, he says "and now Princess that you have come here you may blow the candles", the table the cake was on was carried towards Hope and her mother seated on there high chair, Hope tries to mask her excitement as she takes a deep breath and gently blow the candles, which fire off the cake and make a small explosion spelling out "Happy Birthday Princess!", Hope's eyes lit with joy.
Trumpets play and two royal servants come into the hall holding a gold plated chest decorated with diamonds, the chest is slowly opened and a blinding bright light shined from inside it, "Go ahead dear" said Matilda as her eyes pointed to the chest.
Hope goes down towards the chest and slowly lowers her hand inside of it and grabs what inside, as she removes her hand from the chest it reveals her to be holding the magic wand, it had a purple handle with a sparkly cyan diamond at its back end and a translucent turquoise sphere at it top decorated with a white glowing shape which resembled the combination of a two star into two different planes inside, and topped off with a small yellow crown at the top
Hope's shoulder emblem a pink heart with a tiny crown on top of both curves starts glowing, she raises the top of the wand at eye level, "ooh what's this" she says as she tries to stick her finger inside it to touch the spinning star
"HOPE DONT" shouted her mother, as soon as hope touched it burnt her finger and she let out a painful screech and fires a yellow glowing beam fires from the wand at some guest who were quick enough to duck, it hits a glowing orange decorative plant crushing it against the wall,
"hehe this could have been worse", Hope said awkwardly, the wreckage catches fire...
"FIRE" yells Sally, the guards that were standing by the walls quickly moved and shoved away all nearby guest as Sally goes and faces the fire here shoulder emblem glows and she fires yellow beam at it from her hands she then she clenches her fist and the beam turns into water extinguishing the fire and a yellow cloud evaporates from it, she quickly turn over to Hope and rushes over to her "ARE YOU OKAY PRINCESS" she exclaimed worryingly.
"I am fine it's just my finger is a little -" before she finishes her sentence Sally picks her up and running with her in her arms and runs up to the door and out of the Palace.
Queen Matilda is left with the guests and lets out an awkward chuckle and says "so who wants some drinks?", "Please help yourself to the finest wines in the whole kingdom" she said as a servant reveals a bunch of wine bottles in gold coating, the guests all rushed to get a sip
"I am telling you I am fine it's just a little scratch its rude for me to leave suddenl-" Hope was interrupted by Sally kicking the door open.
"PA-" Sally yelled before being interrupted by a "SHHHH", she was shushed by a woman with a white robe that cut offs at the shoulder, and a hand crafted necklace made of cotton around her neck, she had red hair tied into a bun and a green plus sign as her shoulder emblem.
"Seriously Sally how many times do I have to tell you to be quiet in here" said healer Pam with frustration she lets out a sigh and asks, "So what seems to be the problem?" Sally pulls out Hope and holds her at arms length right Infront of her Hope lets out a "Hi".
Pam gasps "Oh my princess sorry I didn't know you were coming, are you hurt?"
"No not at all it's ju-" Hope was interrupted yet again it seems like although she is becoming a grownup no one seems to want to listen to her
"She burned herself quickly check up on her" commanded Sally as she lowered Hope to her feet, Pam glanced at her up and down
"Where was she hurt", asked her confused. Hope sheepishly pointed to her left index finger it was a bit red which could be easily seen as it contrasted with her smooth white skin, but it was also accompanied by a yellow 'liquid', Pam conjured a white napkin to clean the site of the injury and singled out the injured finger from Hope's hand and put her hand on it and made into a fist and then she took a deep breath and closed her eyes her shoulder mark started having a green glow for a few seconds and then it suddenly went dim, she opened her hand to find the finger fully healed like it was never even scratched.
"Oh wow t-thanks" said Hope with a smile.
"Oh it's nothing" said pam, she took out her napkin it had some yellow glowing spots of what looks like fluid except its it didn't soak in but floated around it, "I see you can use magic now, what was your first spell" Pam said with excitement.
"I-i just shot this out of the wand" she said as she pointed at liquid on the napkin that started evaporating considerably, she then lowered her voice and talked faster "and it hit a plant and set it on fire" she was saying as she looked at the floor, Pam laughed and Hope was starting to blush.
"Oh don't worry dear we all mess up at the start, when I first started I accidentally broke a boy's arm" Pam said with a laugh.
"Is he okay now?" Hope asked with curiosity
"Well when I was your age healing wasn't what it is today they just put his arm in a cast and said if he was lucky his arm would be usable in three years", "I never was interested in healing like my mom but I wanted to fix my mistake so I studied and practiced for months to focus my healing and one day it just clicked, I got back to him and I was able to heal his arm and this happiness a patient feels when they are treated makes this all worth it" she let out a calm sigh and continued "It was not an easy journey but in just 8 years I was able to reach my peak"
"Eight years?" Hope said in disbelief
"Don't worry your path is way longer than mine my peak is at least four levels lower than you" Pam said with a grin
"It isn't that huge difference right?" Hope inquired hoping her journey wont be in the double digits because that's a very long time
Pam laughed and then said "Oh it way larger than it looks, but don't worry royals don't have a peak at least not one that one knows off" she put her hand on Hope's shoulder "Don't let the long road overwhelm you as long as you are better than yesterday you will be a great princess"
Hope smiled at her and said, "Thanks a lot Pam"
"So is everything alright with her, she stuck her finger into the wand are you sure there wont be any complications" asked Sally
"She will be alright she might have lost her finger if she went deeper and then It will actually a challenge to fix, but this is what pain reflexes are for, it a blessing in disguise", replied Pam
Sally clapped her hands and said "Well we got to go now we cant keep the guests waiting thanks for your help Pam"
Hope looked over to her and said "You should come over it's my birthday you can go change the setting", "No dear being a Healer is big commitment what if someone is in need of assistance and I am not here but I appreciate the gesture, maybe I could arrange my schedule to be there next time, go enjoy yourself".
"Pam the amputee is ready for his second regeneration session" a voice called.
"The what?" exclaimed Hope.
"Oh it's a bit graphic you really don't want to see it, I got to go now send your mother my regards" replied Pam as she ran over to a patient
Sally and Hope went to the door and left.
"You know I was really fine, it was just a scratch" Hope said as she looked up to Sally, "It's kind of rude to just leave the guests hanging I could have just sucked it up-"
Hope tried to continue when Sally muttered under her breath "I won't forgive myself".
"What was that?" asked Hope.
"Nothing, it's just you can never be so sure and no one was stupid enough to stick there finger in the wand I was just making sure but since it wasn't serious we don't need to worry" Sally said with an anxious fake smile, Hope sensed there was something off about her tone but she didn't want to push Sally into an uncomfortable spot so she left it at that
Sally and Hope make it back to the palace and Matilda rushes to her daughter "Oh dear are you ok"
She said as she gave her girl a hug, Everyone was staring and Hope got a bit embarrassed "yeah Mom I am ok" Hope said, Matilda stood up and was about to say something before Hope pre-emptively said, "I know I know it was pretty stupid from me to to do what I did, I know the wand is not a toy and I promise I will be more careful with it" she said while avoiding eye contact
Matilda smiled and said "Well I appreciate that you understand that you messed up but that not what I wanted to say" Hope made eye contact and Matilda continued "As princess and future queen we will have you visit the LOWER RING" Matilda took her daughter's hand "Sure its not the safest or best place in the kingdom but a hermit ruler is a bad ruler"
Hope got extremely excited over this as she always wanted to see the rest of the kingdom the Lower ring, the Outer ring but she was always told no because Sally's word "It's way to dangerous, you are not ready, you aren't old enough" or her mother's word "Is there something there that you cant find at home?, The place isn't very hygienic" but how bad could it be it was still under the rule of the Moonshines. Life in the Upper ring and the palace get boring after a while, why would she wants to stay put there when there a whole world to explore?
"The escorts are waiting for us outside those who want to go with us are welcome to go" Said Matilda looking at the guests with a forced smile almost knowing the reaction. All of them tried to mask there faces of disgust as if Matilda just asked them to bathe in mud or even worse she said that the food at the legendary "façade haut de gamme" was just an overpriced scam. They didn't look very impressed, Matilda coughed and asked "Well?".
One couple went towards the exit and when they got to Matilda the man said "We are truly flattered by your invite my queen but I am afraid we have something important to do" the man paused and scratched his head trying to think of an excuse Hope looked over him and asked
"What's more important to than a trip to see the rest of kingdom its not like we can always get to do it" with an ecstatic smile the woman who was scratching her head stopped as if she got an idea she went over looked to Hope with a stupid fake smile and said
"Well sweetie we forgot to sign up our son for school and registration will be closing today" she turned over to her husband and elbowed him in ribs and asked "Isn't that right honey?"
The man nodded in agreement and they walked out and they led out an audible sigh and when they were just outside of earshot the man told his wife "Moonshines huh? You would think after what happened a decade ago they would get the memo" the woman looked back at the Queen then waved and looked back at her husband and said
"She is weak if this happened to me I will make sure those pigs wish they weren't born".
Following into there footsteps and sensing an opening other guests decided to excuse themselves outside and at this point Matilda stopped resisting she knew some wouldn't want to go but she didn't think that many would go and she looked defeated Hope turned to her and said "Well mom we don't need those nose in the airers it's there loss anyways"
A woman walked up to them "She is right you know in-law" that woman was Hope's paternal aunt Mary, she had short blonde hair and brown eyes wearing a yellow dress for the occasion "The only reason any off these arrogant buffoons came here is societal expectations much like basically everything here" she said while rolling her eyes "and they all dipped the second they had the chance, come on lets go"
As they walked past the doors Sally was standing just outside the door scanning the setting with her eyes, her eyes wandered and locked with Mary "You should relax Sally no need for you to be so tense" she said with a smile she then changed her tone suddenly and said with a frown and a in a low voice that Hope and Matilda couldn't hear "Me and Matilda can protect ourselves and we aren't relying on you and my niece was under my protection since she was six, all you need to do is drive the horses and look menacing" and then she put her hand on her shoulder and smiled and said with an audible voice "So you can feel a lot more at ease dear", Sally tried hid her feeling of guilt with a fake smile "Let's go" said Mary joyfully
Everyone got on the horse driven chariot, just a classical chariot nothing magical about it, it's a very ineffective method of transport but one of the most relaxing ones
"HEEEEEY WAIT FOR ME" yelled a girl from as she was she surfing a purple cloud wearing a long sleeved purple sweater and blue pants as she got closer she tried to slow down by tilting her body backwards but she lost control and started flying at high speeds towards Hope
"EM SLOW DOWN" shouted Hope.
"I CANT BRACE FOR IMPACT" they both closed there eyes with their arms covering there eyes but just before contact she was caught effortlessly by Sally one hand and her cloud in the other she crushed the cloud in her fist into yellow mist that faded away and put the girl on her feet she then crossed her arms and looked down and barked
"Miss Emberlynn Springfield you should know how dangerous using magic without experience is, and you can't just rely on something you can't even responsibly use to make up for your own lack of punctuality"
Ember looked taken aback but she didn't want to look stupid so she snapped back with "I didn't know Hope is celebrating her birthday early in the morning, birthdays are a night activity".
Sally who was crossing her arms now raised her eyebrow and simply replied with,"Lies you were told everyday for the last week not my fault you can't seem to be able to be punctual friend's birthday, do you simply not care?".
Ember now looked embarrassed and now was rolling her finger around her dyed purple hair "M-M-My rooster didn't wake me up" she said with a smile while shrugging her shoulder as if she is asking question and the question was 'will Sally let the lecture go'.
"This doesn't matter now anyways it's that Ems is here" interjected Hope with excitement as she put her arm around Ember's shoulder "We shouldn't be wasting time let's go" she said as she punched her hand up in the sky.
Matilda, Hope, Ember and Mary entered the Chariot while Sally rode one of the two horses moving it while the other was being moved by an over-armoured and visibly nervous man.
"Calm down Edmund its just a short trip by a defined path we will be in an out in an hour or two" commanded Sally looking at Edmund clearly getting tired of his lack of confidence.
"I am trying but its such a big deal, escorting not one not two but three royals into the lower ring, I am not sure if I can do this, If I mess up-- I am too young for the consequences" he said clearly on the edge of panic
Sally slapped her hands on his cheeks "Edmund calm down you can do this I know you can" she said, Edmund seemed to calm down a bit "The whole path is being heavily guarded you and me are the last line of an extremely deep wall of defences we are most likely just going to be there for company" she looked back at the cart and said "and besides it's not like the royals can't protect themselves, they are much stronger than us after all"
"That's what they said about fre-" Edmund mumbled before putting his hand on his mouth mid sentence, Sally expression changed to that of anger.
"What did you just say?" she barked.
Edmund realising his mess up and started shaking "Um- I was talking about ---- the nice weather we are having" he said trying to pretend that this wasn't the stupidest attempt at backtracking, before Sally was going to give him a piece of her mind Mary stuck her head out and said in annoyed tone
"Hey I am not getting any younger here", Sally and Edmund looked forwards and shook the horse reins and they got moving forward
As they got to the edges of the Upper ring they reached translucent yellow barrier "We are reaching the barrier you might feel a tickle" proclaimed Sally.
As the horse crossed the barrier the barrier walls phased through the cart and it phased through Mary and Matilda there shoulder emblems glowed a four pointed star and a diamond respectfully in a yellow hue when it got to Hope and Ember the cart got to a sudden halt and they were thrown forwards Hope fell on her mother while Ember face was slapped into the barrier which was at this point halfway through the cart.
Sally opened the door "Everyone ok" she took one look at Ember and let out an annoyed sigh she dragged her hand out of the cart and asked while trying to hide her frustration "Show me your emblem"
Ember scoffed and tried to tuck back her long sleeves but she couldn't get back enough and said while crossing her arms "I can't and I am not removing my shirt".
Sally wasn't having any of it and from tip of her index made a sharp grey magic beam, she flattened Ember's sleeve and made a small cut in her right shoulder showing a yellow star rotated slightly to the left, after the cut yellow gas evaporated from it "And this is why emblems aren't covered it's common knowledge Springfield" said Sally annoyed.
"My favourite shirt! This was very unnecessary" whined Ember and before she could say anything Sally went back to her horse leaving her alone she scoffed and went back to the cart and sat next to Hope crossing her arms.
"You okay there", asked Hope concerned.
"Yeah I am fine just another lecture", said ember looking at the windows
As Hope looked out the window the lower ring didn't seem so different from home, people dressed and walked smartly roads were clean but something was off she couldn't help but notice everyone wore long sleeves even though it was a summer and it's not proper etiquette and that's something else it was surprisingly hot, She took her head out through the windows "Hello stranger" she greeted a man walking nearby he took one solid look at her and looked towards her mother and Sally who was frowning and her hands free with her emblem glowing, he didn't say anything and turned back and proceeded to speed walk away in a few seconds he ditched the subtlety and ran away, Hope was pretty disappointed and got her head into the cart
"What did I do wrong?", Hope asked.
"Girl it's either because you were too friendly it felt fake" said Ember, Hope looked down "Or they were made to feel unwelcome by misses buzzkill in the driving seat" she remarked
A loud sound of crashing wooden boxes was heard and cart went to a halt
"What was that" commented Mary
"Something that isn't boring" Hope said with excitement before leaving the cart.
"Make sure all of them stay put in the cart I will be gone for a short while" said Sally to Edmund before running to the source of the sound Hope tried to follow her but was body blocked by Edmund with his arms crossed
"Sorry I can't let you go princess, Superior's orders", he glanced to the left of him to seeing Ember touching a fancy table Infront of a café just for it to poof into a yellow cloud,
"Ow splinters" she cried, the yellow cloud fizzled reveal a wooden table barely clinging to its shape with a bunch of makeshift wooden fixes that don't even match in colour
Edmund looked like he just saw a ghost and ran towards Ember who was now transforming outdoor expensive furniture into splinter traps
"Stop touching it" said Edmund before shooting out a grey magical hands towards her subduing her, "What's your deal" he scolded annoyed.
"No what's this place deal why is everything here so fake?" snapped Ember "You hearing this Hope this place is fa-" she then stopped and asked "Aye were is Hope?"
Edmund let her go and pulled on his hair "Oh no no no no no no no" he cried
"Is everything alright where is my daughter?" asked Matilda concerned, Edmund didn't know what to say but before he could make up an explanation Mary interjected
"Oh don't worry Mati she will be ok she is probably with Sally and besides she still has this necklace I gave her so I am sure she will be just fine" Mary said with her hand on Matilda's shoulder "and we can go have some tea and chit-chat while we wait I heard that Gilbert's tea shop has actually potable tea" she suggested Matilda sighed and decided to go with what Mary said and walked towards the shop. "What about me?" asked Ember, Edmund turned towards her with anger and barked "You are staying right here!".
"Sally where are you?" called Hope as she was walking she saw a little girl wearing a cute pink dress and smooth brown hair walking alone Infront of her, she approached her and asked
"Hey do you happen to see a tall lady around here?" she tapped on her shoulder to get her attention and suddenly a cloud of yellow gas evaporated out of her Hope and the little girl coughed and as the smoke cleared the little girl was wearing a poorly knit patchwork of randoms scraps of fabric and her hair was covered in dirt she had a brown circle on the side of her shoulder, Hope froze in shock "I- I am so sorry, it was an accident" she apologised "I can go get you a new dress or--" the girl just looked at Hope her eyes glanced her wand which was in her right hand as well as her royal emblem and then she started hyperventilating and burst into tears.
Hope got on to her knees and she gently put her hands on the girl's shoulder "Calm down calm down, it's alright, It's not your fault but mine"
"P-P-pwease do-don hu-hur meeee" the girl sobbed.
"What hurt you? no no no no" Hope explained trying to figure out from where the girl got the idea
Hope hugged the girl "Here calm down see I am friendly" she soothed, the girl seemed to calm down a bit and she started sniffing
She let her go and asked "So what's your name?"
"R-R-Rosie" replied Rosie.
"Ok Rosie I am so sorry for ruining your dress, do you remember were you got it from?" she asked
"Ms Bea had guys gib it to us" Rosie said
"Misses Bea huh" she wondered out loud "Well can you tell me were misses Bea is"
"Sowwy I can't tell you misses moonnnn" Rosie was saying before she looked she wanted to cry again
"Please don't cry" Hope pleaded "You don't need to tell me where you live just wait" Hope passed her wand to her left hand and put her now free hand to her pocket and pulled out a purple wallet and she pulled out a golden note with 50 written on it she passed the note to Rosie and said "Here give this to misses Bea and tell her I am so sorry for destroying your dress also" Rosie grabbed the note and stared at it, Hope pulled some wrapped candy she got from the party "Her have some candy too" the girl put her the note in her pocket and grabbed the wrapped candy she struggled with it a bit and she then passed it back
"Open it please" Rosie asked
"Oh you can't? it's quite simple here" Hope said she gently tapped the candy her emblem glowed for a moment and the wrapping fizzed out.
Rosie put the candy in her mouth and quickly chewed and swallowed it, she then gave Hope a hug, she let go after a moment "Thank you miss, Ms Bea says Moosines are scawy but aren't scawy"
"Scary why would we be scary" Hope asked in disbelief with a smile
Rosie looked around and said "I am sowwy I need to go" she turned back and ran away and took a turn and was just out of sight.
"You couldn't just stop causing trouble for one day? what did we pay you for?" Hope heard Sally barking.
The sound of Sally's voice came from an alleyway, as Hope entered the alley the clean white paint started fading into rotting maroon bricks and the smell became foul coming from the open dumpster "Ewwwww" Hope said as she lowered the lid to try and lessen the stench
"Hey you know it's rude to close the lid on someone trying to fetch themselves a meal" a bald man barked as he popped out like a jack in the box he had a white beard wearing over shoulder strapped brown pants with a black plastic bag for a shirt and a metal can of beans for a hat and his left eye with a grey iris spinning his shoulder emblem only consisted of a simple brown circle, Hope screamed and ran away "Oh beans was that a Moonshine?" the man asked himself "Well I probably should skip town" he said to himself with a goofy smile while snapping his fingers.
Hope stopped running and started panting "Now you are lucky I am not here in head bashing duty or I would have sent you to a one way trip to the Outer ring and the monsters there could deal with you" Hope heard Sally scolding, she walked to the end of the alleyway the place beyond it was extremely different people clothes were worn out in which the holes were covered up by half baked sewn rotting fabric the road didn't exist it was simply a dirt undefined path and walls were all made of rotting bricks same as that of the alley, windows were broken and the stench of garbage filled the air, Hope saw Sally tying up a bunch of muscular men with a magic rope.
Sally glanced over and saw Hope "Princess what are you doing here?" she asked with dismay the rope holding the gangsters vanished they got up and shook of the dust and looked up and saw Hope and they all ran away in terror "Moonshine here run awway". All of a sudden all the people went indoors and the windows were sealed shut with wood and hammered with nails and just like that the place looked like a ghost town.
2024.06.01 08:32 Publius1687 "Neither individuals nor nations can perform their part well, until they understand and feel its importance, and comprehend and justly appreciate all the duties belonging to it."
This is an unaccustomed spectacle. For the first time, fellow-citizens, badges of mourning shroud the columns and overhang the arches of this hall. These walls, which were consecrated, so long ago, to the cause of American liberty, which witnessed her infant struggles and rung with the shouts of her earliest victories, proclaim, now, that distinguished friends and champions of that great cause have fallen. It is right that it should be thus. The tears which flow, and the honors that are paid, when the founders of the republic die, give hope that the republic itself may be immortal. It is fit that, by public assembly and solemn observance, by anthem and by eulogy, we commemorate the services of national benefactors, extol their virtues, and render thanks to God for eminent blessings, early given and long continued, through their agency, to our favored country.
ADAMS and JEFFERSON are no more; and we are assembled, fellow-citizens, the aged, the middle-aged, and the young, by the spontaneous impulse of all, under the authority of the municipal government, with the presence of the chief magistrate of the Commonwealth, and others its official representatives, the University, and the learned societies, to bear our part in these manifestations of respect and gratitude which pervade the whole land. ADAMS and JEFFERSON are no more. On our fiftieth anniversary, the great day of national jubilee, in the very hour of public rejoicing, in the midst of echoing and reechoing voices of thanksgiving, while their own names were on all tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits.
If it be true that no one can safely be pronounced happy while he lives, if that event which terminates life can alone crown its honors and its glory, what felicity is here! The great epic of their lives, how happily concluded! Poetry itself has hardly terminated illustrious lives, and finished the career of earthly renown, by such a consummation. If we had the power, we could not wish to reverse this dispensation of the Divine Providence. The great objects of life were accomplished, the drama was ready to be closed. It has closed; our patriots have fallen; but so fallen, at such age, with such coincidence, on such a day, that we cannot rationally lament that the end has come, which we knew could not be long deferred.
Neither of these great men, fellow-citizens, could have died, at any time, without leaving an immense void in our American society. They have been so intimately, and ofr so long a time, blended with the history of the country, and especially so united, in our thoughts and recollections, with the events of the Revolution, that the death of either of them would have touched the chords of public sympathy. We should have felt that one great link, connecting us with former times, was broken; that we had lost something more, as it were, of the presence of the Revolution itself, and of the act of independence, and were driven on, by another great remove from the days of our country’s early distinction, to meet posterity and to mix with the future. Like the mariner, whom the currents of the ocean and the winds carry along until he sees the stars which have directed his course and lighted his pathless way descend one by one, beneath the rising horizon, we should have felt that the stream of time had borne us onward till another great luminary, whose light had cheered us and whose guidance we had followed, had sunk away from our sight.
But the concurrence of their death on the anniversary of Independence has naturally awakened stronger emotions. Both had been President, both had lived to great age, both were early patriots, and both were distinguished and ever honored by their immediate agency in the act of independence. It cannot but seem striking and extraordinary, that these two should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that act/ that they should complete that yea and that then, on the day which had fast linked for ever their own fame with their country’s glory, the heavens should open to receive them both at once. As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?
ADAMS and JEFFERSON, I have said, are no more. As human beings, indeed, they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of independence; no more, as at subsequent periods, the head of the government; nor more, as we have recently seen them, aged and venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They are dead. But how little is there of the great and gooe which can die! To their country they yet live, and live for ever. They live in all that perpetuatesw the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded proofs of their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep-engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of mankind. They live in their example; and they live, emphatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions, now exerciese, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only in their own country but throughout the civilized world. A superior and commanding human intellect, a truly great man, when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift, is not a temporary flame, burning brightly for a while, and then giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass of human kind; so that when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows, but it leaves the world all light, all on fire from the potent contact of its own spirit. Bacon died; but the human understanding, roused by the touch of his miraculous wand to a perception of the true philosophy and the just mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course successfully and gloriously. Newton died; yet the courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet move on by the laws which he discovered, and in the orbits which he saw, and described for them, in the infinity of space.
No two men now live, fellow-citizen, perhaps it may be doubted whether any two men have ever lived in one age, who, more than those we now commemorate, have impressed on mankind their own opinions more deeply into the opinions of others, or given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought. Their work doth not perish with them. The tree which they assisted to plant will flourish, although they water it and protect it no longer; for it has struck its roots deep, it has sent them to the very centre; no storm, not of foce to burth the orb, can overturn it; its branches spread wide; they stretch their protecting arms braoder and broader, and its top is destined to reach the heavens. We are not deceived. There is no delusion here. No age will come in which the American Revolution will appear less than it is, one of the greatest events in human history. No age will come in which it shall cease to be seen and felt, on either continent, that a mighty step, a great advance, not only in American affairs, but in human affairs, was made on the 4th of July, 1776. And no age will come, we trust, so ignorant or so unjust as not to see and acknowledge the efficient agency of those we now honor in producing that momentous event.
We are not assembled, therefore, fellow-citizens, as men overwhelmed with calamity by the sudden disruption of the ties of friendship or affection, or as in despair for the republic by the untimely blighting of its hopes. Death has not surprised us by an unseasonable blow. We have, indeed, seen the tomb close, but it has closed only over mature years, over long-protracted public service, over the weakness of age, and over life itself only when the ends of living had been fulfilled. These suns, as they rose slowly and steadily, amidst clouds and storms, in their ascendant, so they have not rushed from the meridian to sink suddenly in the west. Like the mildness, the serenity, the continuing benignity of a summer’s day, they have gone down with slow-descending, grateful long-lingering light; and now that they are beyond the visible margin of the world, good omens cheer us from “the bright track of thier fiery car”!
There were many points of similarity in the lives and fortunes of these great men. They belonged to the same profession, and had pursued its studies and its practice for unequal lengths of time indeed, but with dilligence and effect. Both were learned and able lawyers. They were natives and inhabitants, respectively of those two of the Colonies which at the Revolution were the largest and most powerful and which naturally had a lead in the political affairs of the times. When the Colonies became in some degree united by the assembling of a general Congress, they were brought to act together in its deliberations, not indeed at the same time but both at early periods. Each had laready manifested his attachment to the cause of the country, as well as his ability to maintain it, by printed addresses, public speeches, extensive correspondence, and whatever other mode could be adopted for the purpose of exposing the encroachments of the British Parliament, and animating the people to a manly resistance. Both were not only decided, but early, friends of Independence. While others yet doubted, they were resolved; where others hesitated they pressed forward. They were both members of the committee for preparing the Declaration of Independence, and they constituted the sub-committee appointed by the other members to make the draft. They left their seats in Congress, being called to other public employments at periods not remote from each other, although one of them returned to it afterwards for a short time. Neither of them was of the assembly of great men which formed the present Constitution, and neither was at any time a member of Congress under its provisions. Both have been public ministers abroad, both Vice-Presidents and both Presidents of the United States. These coincidences are now singularly crowned and completed. They have died together; and they did on the anniversary of liberty…
And now, fellow-citizens, without pursuing the biography of these illustrious men further, for the present let us turn our attention to the most prominent act of their lives, their participation in the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE…
It has sometimes been said, as if it were a derogation from the merits of this paper, that it contains nothing new; that it only states grounds of proceeding and presses topics of argument, which had often been stated and pressed before. But it was not the object of the Declaration to produce any thing new. It was not to invent reasons for independence, but to state those which governed the Congress. For great and sufficient causes, it was proposed to declare independence; and the proper business of the paper to be drawn was to set for th those causes, and justify the authors of the measure, in any event of fortune, to mthe country and to posterity. The cause of American independence, moreover, was now to be presented to the world in such manner; of it might so be, as to engage its sympathy, to command its respect, to attract its admiration; and in an assembly of most able and distinguished men, THOMAS JEFFERSON had the high honor of being the selected advocate of this cause. To say that he performed his great work well, would be doing him an injustice. To say that he did excellently well, admirably well, would be inadequate and halting praise. Let us rather say, that he so discharged the duty assigned him, that all Americans may well rejoice that the work of drawing the title-deed of their liberties devolved upon him…
The Congress of the Revolution, fellow-citizens, sat with closed doors, and no report of its debates was ever made. The discussion, therefore, which accompanied this great measure, has never been preserved, except in memory and by tradition. But it is, I believe, doing to injustice to others to say, that the general opinion was, and uniformly has been, that in debate, on the side of independence, JOHN ADAMS had no equal. The great author of the Declaration himself has espressed that opinion uniformly and strongly. JOHN ADAMS, said he, in the hearing of him who has now the honor to address you, JOHN ADAMS was our colossus on the floor. Not graceful, not elegant, not always fluent, in his public addresses, he yet came out with a power both of thought and of expression, which moved us from our seats…
The eloquence of Mr. Adams resembled his general character, and formed, indeed, a part of it. It was bold, manly, and energetic; and such the crisis required. When public bodies are to be addressed on passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech farther than as it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occassion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime godlike action…
Let us, then, bring before us the assembly, which was about to decide a question thus big with the fate of empire. Let us open their doors and look upon their deliberations. Let us survey the anxious and care-worn countenances, let us hear the firm-toned voices, of this band of patriots.
HANCOCK presides over the solemn sitting; and one of those not yet prepared to pronounce for absolute independence is on the floor, and is urging his reasons for dissenting from the declaration.
“Let us pause! This step, once taken, cannot be retracted. This resolution, once passed, will cut off all hope of reconciliation. If success attend the arms of England, we shall then be no longer Colonies, with charters and with privileges; these will all be forfeited by this act; and we shall be in the condition of other conquered people, at the mercy of the conquerors. For ourselves, we may be ready to run the hazard; but are we ready to carry the country to that length? Is success so probably as to justify it? Where is the military, where the naval power, by which we are to resist the whole strength of the arm of England, for she will exert that strength to the utmost? Can we rely on constancy and perseverance of the people? or will they not act as the people of other countries have acted and, wearied with a long war, submit, in the end, to a worse oppression? While we stand on our old ground, and insist on redress of grievances, we know we are right, and are not answerable for consequences. Nothing, then, can be imputed to us. But if we now change our object, carry our pretensions farther, and set up for absolute indpendence, we shall lose the sympathy of mankind. We shall no longer be defending what we possess, but struggling for something which we never did possess, and which we have solemnly and uniformly disclaimed all intention of pursuing, from the very outset of the troubles. Abandoning thus our old ground, of resistance only to arbitrary acts of oppression, thee nations will believe the whole to have been mere pretence, and they will look on us, not as injured, buut as ambitious subjects. I shudder before this responsibility. It will be on us, if, relinquishing the ground on which we have stood so long, and stood so safely, we now proclaim independence, and carry on the war for that object, while these cities burn, these pleasant fields whiten and bleach with the bones of their owners, and these streams run blood. It will be upon us, it will be upon us, if, failing to maintain this unseasonable and ill-judged declaration, a sterner despotism, maintained by military power, shall be exhausted, a harassed, misled people, shall have expiated our rashness and atoned for our presumption on the scaffold.”
It was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We know his opinions, and we know his character. He would commence with his accustomed directness and earnestness.
“Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there’s a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and blinded to her own interest for our good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the Declaration? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life and his own honor? Are not you, Sir, who sit in that chair, is not he, our venerable colleague near you, are you not both already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but outlaws? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on, or to give up, the war? Do we mean to submit to the measures of Parliament, Boston Port Bill and all? Do we mean to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to poweder, and our country and its rights trodden down in the dust? I know we do not mean to submit. We shall never submit. Do we intend to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into men, that plighting, before God, of our sacred honor to Washington, when, putting forth to incure the dangers of war, as well as the political hazards of our times, we promised to adhere to him, in ever extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? I know there is not a man here, who would not rather see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted fiath fall to the ground. For myself, having, twelve months ago, in this place, moved you, that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be raised, for defence of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him… ”
And now, fellow-citizens, let us not retire from this occasion without a deep and solemn conviction of the duties which have developed upon us. This lovely land, this glorious liberty, these benign institutions, the dear purchase of our fathers, are ours; ours to enjoy, ours to preserve, ours to transmit. Generations past and generations to come hold us responsible for this sacred trust. Our fathers, from behind, admonish us, with their anxious paternal voices; posterity calls out to us, from the bosom of the future; the world turns hither its solicitous eyes; all, conjure us to act wisely, and faithfully, in the relation which we sustain.
We can never, indeed, pay the debt which is upon us; but by virtue, by morality, by religion, by the cultivation of every good principle and every good habit, we may hope to enjoy the blessing, through our day, and to leave it unimpaired to our children. Let us feel deeply how much of what we are and of what we possess we owe to this liberty, and to these institutions of government. Nature has, indeed, given us a soil which yields bounteously to the hand of industry, the mighty and fruitful ocean is before us, and the skies over our heads shed health and vigor. But what are lands, and seas, and skies, to civilized man, without society, without knowledge, without morals, without religious culture; and how can these be enjoyed, in all their extent and all their excellence, but under the protection of wise institutions and a free government? Fellow-citizens, there is not one of us, there is not one of us here present, who does not, at this moment, and at every moment, experience, in his own condition, and in the condition of those most near and dear to him, the influence and the benefits, of this liberty and these institutions. Let us then acknowledge the blessing, let us feel it deeply and powerfully, let us cherish a strong affection for it, and resolve to maintain and perpetuate it. The blood of our fathers, let it not have been shed in vain; the great hope of posterity, let it not be blasted.
The striking attitude, too, in which we stand to the world around us, a topic to which, I fear, I advert too often, and dwell on too long, cannot be altogether ommited here. Neither individuals nor nations can perform their part well, until they understand and feel its importance, and comprehend and justly appreciate all the duties belonging to it. It is not to inflate national vanity, nor to swell a light and empty feeling of self-importance, but it is that we may judge justly of our situation, and of our own duties, that I earnestly urge you upon this consideration of our position and our character among the nations of the earth. It cannot be denied, but by those who would dispute against the sun, that with America, and in America, a new era commences in human affairs. This era is distinguised by free representative governments, by entire religious liberty, by improved systems of national intercourse, by a newly awakened and unconquerable spirit of free inquiry, and by a diffusion of knowledge through the community, such as has been before altogether unknown and unheard of America, America, our country, fellow-citizens, our own dear and native land, is inseparably connected, fast bound up, in fortune and by fate, with these great interests. If they fall, we fall with them; if they stand, it will be because we have maintained them. Let us contemplate, then, this connection, which binds the prosperity of others to our own; and let us manfully discharge all the duties which it imposes. If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path. WASHINGTON is in the clear, upper sky. These other stars hae now joined the American Constellation; they circle round their centre, and the heavens beam with new light. Beneath this illumination let us walk the course of life, and at its close devoutly commend our beloved country, the common parent of us all, to the Divine Benignity.
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ADAMS and JEFFERSON are no more; and we are assembled, fellow-citizens, the aged, the middle-aged, and the young, by the spontaneous impulse of all, under the authority of the municipal government, with the presence of the chief magistrate of the Commonwealth, and others its official representatives, the University, and the learned societies, to bear our part in these manifestations of respect and gratitude which pervade the whole land. ADAMS and JEFFERSON are no more. On our fiftieth anniversary, the great day of national jubilee, in the very hour of public rejoicing, in the midst of echoing and reechoing voices of thanksgiving, while their own names were on all tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits.
If it be true that no one can safely be pronounced happy while he lives, if that event which terminates life can alone crown its honors and its glory, what felicity is here! The great epic of their lives, how happily concluded! Poetry itself has hardly terminated illustrious lives, and finished the career of earthly renown, by such a consummation. If we had the power, we could not wish to reverse this dispensation of the Divine Providence. The great objects of life were accomplished, the drama was ready to be closed. It has closed; our patriots have fallen; but so fallen, at such age, with such coincidence, on such a day, that we cannot rationally lament that the end has come, which we knew could not be long deferred.
Neither of these great men, fellow-citizens, could have died, at any time, without leaving an immense void in our American society. They have been so intimately, and ofr so long a time, blended with the history of the country, and especially so united, in our thoughts and recollections, with the events of the Revolution, that the death of either of them would have touched the chords of public sympathy. We should have felt that one great link, connecting us with former times, was broken; that we had lost something more, as it were, of the presence of the Revolution itself, and of the act of independence, and were driven on, by another great remove from the days of our country’s early distinction, to meet posterity and to mix with the future. Like the mariner, whom the currents of the ocean and the winds carry along until he sees the stars which have directed his course and lighted his pathless way descend one by one, beneath the rising horizon, we should have felt that the stream of time had borne us onward till another great luminary, whose light had cheered us and whose guidance we had followed, had sunk away from our sight.
But the concurrence of their death on the anniversary of Independence has naturally awakened stronger emotions. Both had been President, both had lived to great age, both were early patriots, and both were distinguished and ever honored by their immediate agency in the act of independence. It cannot but seem striking and extraordinary, that these two should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that act/ that they should complete that yea and that then, on the day which had fast linked for ever their own fame with their country’s glory, the heavens should open to receive them both at once. As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?
ADAMS and JEFFERSON, I have said, are no more. As human beings, indeed, they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of independence; no more, as at subsequent periods, the head of the government; nor more, as we have recently seen them, aged and venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They are dead. But how little is there of the great and gooe which can die! To their country they yet live, and live for ever. They live in all that perpetuatesw the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded proofs of their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep-engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of mankind. They live in their example; and they live, emphatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions, now exerciese, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only in their own country but throughout the civilized world. A superior and commanding human intellect, a truly great man, when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift, is not a temporary flame, burning brightly for a while, and then giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass of human kind; so that when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows, but it leaves the world all light, all on fire from the potent contact of its own spirit. Bacon died; but the human understanding, roused by the touch of his miraculous wand to a perception of the true philosophy and the just mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course successfully and gloriously. Newton died; yet the courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet move on by the laws which he discovered, and in the orbits which he saw, and described for them, in the infinity of space.
No two men now live, fellow-citizen, perhaps it may be doubted whether any two men have ever lived in one age, who, more than those we now commemorate, have impressed on mankind their own opinions more deeply into the opinions of others, or given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought. Their work doth not perish with them. The tree which they assisted to plant will flourish, although they water it and protect it no longer; for it has struck its roots deep, it has sent them to the very centre; no storm, not of foce to burth the orb, can overturn it; its branches spread wide; they stretch their protecting arms braoder and broader, and its top is destined to reach the heavens. We are not deceived. There is no delusion here. No age will come in which the American Revolution will appear less than it is, one of the greatest events in human history. No age will come in which it shall cease to be seen and felt, on either continent, that a mighty step, a great advance, not only in American affairs, but in human affairs, was made on the 4th of July, 1776. And no age will come, we trust, so ignorant or so unjust as not to see and acknowledge the efficient agency of those we now honor in producing that momentous event.
We are not assembled, therefore, fellow-citizens, as men overwhelmed with calamity by the sudden disruption of the ties of friendship or affection, or as in despair for the republic by the untimely blighting of its hopes. Death has not surprised us by an unseasonable blow. We have, indeed, seen the tomb close, but it has closed only over mature years, over long-protracted public service, over the weakness of age, and over life itself only when the ends of living had been fulfilled. These suns, as they rose slowly and steadily, amidst clouds and storms, in their ascendant, so they have not rushed from the meridian to sink suddenly in the west. Like the mildness, the serenity, the continuing benignity of a summer’s day, they have gone down with slow-descending, grateful long-lingering light; and now that they are beyond the visible margin of the world, good omens cheer us from “the bright track of thier fiery car”!
There were many points of similarity in the lives and fortunes of these great men. They belonged to the same profession, and had pursued its studies and its practice for unequal lengths of time indeed, but with dilligence and effect. Both were learned and able lawyers. They were natives and inhabitants, respectively of those two of the Colonies which at the Revolution were the largest and most powerful and which naturally had a lead in the political affairs of the times. When the Colonies became in some degree united by the assembling of a general Congress, they were brought to act together in its deliberations, not indeed at the same time but both at early periods. Each had laready manifested his attachment to the cause of the country, as well as his ability to maintain it, by printed addresses, public speeches, extensive correspondence, and whatever other mode could be adopted for the purpose of exposing the encroachments of the British Parliament, and animating the people to a manly resistance. Both were not only decided, but early, friends of Independence. While others yet doubted, they were resolved; where others hesitated they pressed forward. They were both members of the committee for preparing the Declaration of Independence, and they constituted the sub-committee appointed by the other members to make the draft. They left their seats in Congress, being called to other public employments at periods not remote from each other, although one of them returned to it afterwards for a short time. Neither of them was of the assembly of great men which formed the present Constitution, and neither was at any time a member of Congress under its provisions. Both have been public ministers abroad, both Vice-Presidents and both Presidents of the United States. These coincidences are now singularly crowned and completed. They have died together; and they did on the anniversary of liberty…
And now, fellow-citizens, without pursuing the biography of these illustrious men further, for the present let us turn our attention to the most prominent act of their lives, their participation in the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE…
It has sometimes been said, as if it were a derogation from the merits of this paper, that it contains nothing new; that it only states grounds of proceeding and presses topics of argument, which had often been stated and pressed before. But it was not the object of the Declaration to produce any thing new. It was not to invent reasons for independence, but to state those which governed the Congress. For great and sufficient causes, it was proposed to declare independence; and the proper business of the paper to be drawn was to set for th those causes, and justify the authors of the measure, in any event of fortune, to mthe country and to posterity. The cause of American independence, moreover, was now to be presented to the world in such manner; of it might so be, as to engage its sympathy, to command its respect, to attract its admiration; and in an assembly of most able and distinguished men, THOMAS JEFFERSON had the high honor of being the selected advocate of this cause. To say that he performed his great work well, would be doing him an injustice. To say that he did excellently well, admirably well, would be inadequate and halting praise. Let us rather say, that he so discharged the duty assigned him, that all Americans may well rejoice that the work of drawing the title-deed of their liberties devolved upon him…
The Congress of the Revolution, fellow-citizens, sat with closed doors, and no report of its debates was ever made. The discussion, therefore, which accompanied this great measure, has never been preserved, except in memory and by tradition. But it is, I believe, doing to injustice to others to say, that the general opinion was, and uniformly has been, that in debate, on the side of independence, JOHN ADAMS had no equal. The great author of the Declaration himself has espressed that opinion uniformly and strongly. JOHN ADAMS, said he, in the hearing of him who has now the honor to address you, JOHN ADAMS was our colossus on the floor. Not graceful, not elegant, not always fluent, in his public addresses, he yet came out with a power both of thought and of expression, which moved us from our seats…
The eloquence of Mr. Adams resembled his general character, and formed, indeed, a part of it. It was bold, manly, and energetic; and such the crisis required. When public bodies are to be addressed on passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech farther than as it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occassion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime godlike action…
Let us, then, bring before us the assembly, which was about to decide a question thus big with the fate of empire. Let us open their doors and look upon their deliberations. Let us survey the anxious and care-worn countenances, let us hear the firm-toned voices, of this band of patriots.
HANCOCK presides over the solemn sitting; and one of those not yet prepared to pronounce for absolute independence is on the floor, and is urging his reasons for dissenting from the declaration.
“Let us pause! This step, once taken, cannot be retracted. This resolution, once passed, will cut off all hope of reconciliation. If success attend the arms of England, we shall then be no longer Colonies, with charters and with privileges; these will all be forfeited by this act; and we shall be in the condition of other conquered people, at the mercy of the conquerors. For ourselves, we may be ready to run the hazard; but are we ready to carry the country to that length? Is success so probably as to justify it? Where is the military, where the naval power, by which we are to resist the whole strength of the arm of England, for she will exert that strength to the utmost? Can we rely on constancy and perseverance of the people? or will they not act as the people of other countries have acted and, wearied with a long war, submit, in the end, to a worse oppression? While we stand on our old ground, and insist on redress of grievances, we know we are right, and are not answerable for consequences. Nothing, then, can be imputed to us. But if we now change our object, carry our pretensions farther, and set up for absolute indpendence, we shall lose the sympathy of mankind. We shall no longer be defending what we possess, but struggling for something which we never did possess, and which we have solemnly and uniformly disclaimed all intention of pursuing, from the very outset of the troubles. Abandoning thus our old ground, of resistance only to arbitrary acts of oppression, thee nations will believe the whole to have been mere pretence, and they will look on us, not as injured, buut as ambitious subjects. I shudder before this responsibility. It will be on us, if, relinquishing the ground on which we have stood so long, and stood so safely, we now proclaim independence, and carry on the war for that object, while these cities burn, these pleasant fields whiten and bleach with the bones of their owners, and these streams run blood. It will be upon us, it will be upon us, if, failing to maintain this unseasonable and ill-judged declaration, a sterner despotism, maintained by military power, shall be exhausted, a harassed, misled people, shall have expiated our rashness and atoned for our presumption on the scaffold.”
It was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We know his opinions, and we know his character. He would commence with his accustomed directness and earnestness.
“Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there’s a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and blinded to her own interest for our good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the Declaration? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life and his own honor? Are not you, Sir, who sit in that chair, is not he, our venerable colleague near you, are you not both already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but outlaws? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on, or to give up, the war? Do we mean to submit to the measures of Parliament, Boston Port Bill and all? Do we mean to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to poweder, and our country and its rights trodden down in the dust? I know we do not mean to submit. We shall never submit. Do we intend to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into men, that plighting, before God, of our sacred honor to Washington, when, putting forth to incure the dangers of war, as well as the political hazards of our times, we promised to adhere to him, in ever extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? I know there is not a man here, who would not rather see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted fiath fall to the ground. For myself, having, twelve months ago, in this place, moved you, that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be raised, for defence of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him… ”
And now, fellow-citizens, let us not retire from this occasion without a deep and solemn conviction of the duties which have developed upon us. This lovely land, this glorious liberty, these benign institutions, the dear purchase of our fathers, are ours; ours to enjoy, ours to preserve, ours to transmit. Generations past and generations to come hold us responsible for this sacred trust. Our fathers, from behind, admonish us, with their anxious paternal voices; posterity calls out to us, from the bosom of the future; the world turns hither its solicitous eyes; all, conjure us to act wisely, and faithfully, in the relation which we sustain.
We can never, indeed, pay the debt which is upon us; but by virtue, by morality, by religion, by the cultivation of every good principle and every good habit, we may hope to enjoy the blessing, through our day, and to leave it unimpaired to our children. Let us feel deeply how much of what we are and of what we possess we owe to this liberty, and to these institutions of government. Nature has, indeed, given us a soil which yields bounteously to the hand of industry, the mighty and fruitful ocean is before us, and the skies over our heads shed health and vigor. But what are lands, and seas, and skies, to civilized man, without society, without knowledge, without morals, without religious culture; and how can these be enjoyed, in all their extent and all their excellence, but under the protection of wise institutions and a free government? Fellow-citizens, there is not one of us, there is not one of us here present, who does not, at this moment, and at every moment, experience, in his own condition, and in the condition of those most near and dear to him, the influence and the benefits, of this liberty and these institutions. Let us then acknowledge the blessing, let us feel it deeply and powerfully, let us cherish a strong affection for it, and resolve to maintain and perpetuate it. The blood of our fathers, let it not have been shed in vain; the great hope of posterity, let it not be blasted.
The striking attitude, too, in which we stand to the world around us, a topic to which, I fear, I advert too often, and dwell on too long, cannot be altogether ommited here. Neither individuals nor nations can perform their part well, until they understand and feel its importance, and comprehend and justly appreciate all the duties belonging to it. It is not to inflate national vanity, nor to swell a light and empty feeling of self-importance, but it is that we may judge justly of our situation, and of our own duties, that I earnestly urge you upon this consideration of our position and our character among the nations of the earth. It cannot be denied, but by those who would dispute against the sun, that with America, and in America, a new era commences in human affairs. This era is distinguised by free representative governments, by entire religious liberty, by improved systems of national intercourse, by a newly awakened and unconquerable spirit of free inquiry, and by a diffusion of knowledge through the community, such as has been before altogether unknown and unheard of America, America, our country, fellow-citizens, our own dear and native land, is inseparably connected, fast bound up, in fortune and by fate, with these great interests. If they fall, we fall with them; if they stand, it will be because we have maintained them. Let us contemplate, then, this connection, which binds the prosperity of others to our own; and let us manfully discharge all the duties which it imposes. If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path. WASHINGTON is in the clear, upper sky. These other stars hae now joined the American Constellation; they circle round their centre, and the heavens beam with new light. Beneath this illumination let us walk the course of life, and at its close devoutly commend our beloved country, the common parent of us all, to the Divine Benignity.
- Daniel Webster, 1826
2024.06.01 07:56 Frame_Late Unburdened: A Job Gone Wrong.
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The following two brain scans were provided by the Neuro-Warfare branch of the Halcyon Security Division (HSD) for the purpose of analyzing the thoughts, behaviors, and information of notorious gangsters Vincent 'Troy' Cohen and Bruno (Deadname:Koraak Tel-Char). At the point of the recording of this archival shared, Bruno has since received his rebirth therapy, and Vincent is currently serving a long-term rehabilitative and reeducative sentence in the Erebus Supermax Prison on Io.
Warning: the contents of this archival shared may be especially disturbing to some audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.
Warning: the contents of this archival shard are for the sole purpose of analyzing the thought patterns and memories of certain degenerate criminals in an effort to ascertain vital information that can be used to eliminate their organizations. Only staff with clearance level Omega may view this archival shared, and the viewership of this archival shared by anyone of inadequate clearance level will lead to twenty years in prison and a fine of over a hundred thousand credits.
Booting up memory scan: Vincent 'Troy' Cohen, November 4th, 2446…
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning archival shard presentation…
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"Do you have visuals of the target, Troy?"
I knelt down in the alleyway, the bodies of me and my partners shrouded in long, waterproof, ashen-gray overcoats the shade of dirty street scum that we wore to ward off the constant heavy rainfall the color of osmium. Our faces were covered in a mix of scrapped respirators, visors, or full metal face masks carved with intricate designs to hide our identities. On our waists were our badges of honor: leather belts studded with interlocked rivets made from blackened titanium, each buckle forged of silver and shaped into the head of our gang's symbol, the black mamba. We hid amongst the shadows of the dark midday of Halcyon City, the heavy, oppressive rains blanketing the roads paved obsidian-black with asphalt and weathered concrete walkways. The street lamps were always on, like beacons of false hope in a storm of melancholy.
The city was dark and dreary as always, the planet of Proxima Centauri B, renamed Dawn's Lamentation over a century ago, orbited the red dwarf star of Proxima Centauri, and the atmosphere was thick with natural smog and ever-storming rain clouds. That didn't dissuade people from living here: there was plenty of money to be had for shrewd industrialists and hardworking pioneers, even in the urban sprawl. But that life also came with risks, especially for those on the bottom of the totem pole.
I was a ganger, and we were criminals; full stop. I won't assault you with some spiel about how we're the good guys fighting oppression because, at the end of the day, we could be just as bad, if not worse, than Halcyon's Security Division, or the HSD for short. We were traffickers, killers, extortionists, and money launderers. We dealt with everything from stolen tech and military-grade hardware to hard drugs and sentients.
Yes, sentients. We trafficked sentients, but not in the way you might think. They weren't prisoners, in fact, we were their saviors if they had the cash. We had developed a reputation for fighting the power, but it was still business: sure, freeing captives from the clutches of the Protectorate. The disruption of its many oppressive organizations held a certain satisfaction in my heart for sure, but we didn't help those who couldn't pay unless someone else paid on their behalf. It was about making sure me and my gang, my family, could live a decent life for another day.
It helped that most of us joined after leaving the state yard for partaking in acts of 'degeneracy' and 'anti-xenopet illegalities' as if those terms meant anything anymore other than that we were a threat to the local status quo. It was hard to pick up a job as a former inmate when even in something as harsh and backbreaking as a job in the iridium mines near the poles when the employment office had you blacklisted as a degenerate, which lead to the formation of many of the gangs: we needed to make a living somehow, and when all social programs were cut off from you unless you submitted for 're-education' and the only way to put food on the table was subverting, breaking, or even downright fighting the law, you did what you had to do or you died on the streets a scorned beggar.
It wasn't like the HSD made it easy for us on even a good day: the local HSD units were armed to the teeth with advanced, military-grade hardware that you'd often see on the front lines of the Second Authority War: armored assault transports, a myriad of advanced war droids, all sorts of chemical countermeasures that made tear gas seem like putting the garden hose on mist mode, and of course advanced firearms. Add that to the fact that they were authorized to use deadly force when they deemed it necessary and you had a ruthless, heartless, and nearly unstoppable enemy. But we could make that work: we weren't trying to stop them, just to withstand them.
"Yeah, I got eyes on the prize, Koraak; seven armored transports, two for droids, five for prisoners."
Today wasn't a day for a normal job: we were getting bolder, cockier, more ambitious. Our numbers had swelled for the last few years after the raid at Barnard's Star and the fall of the Blood Dragon Mafia. Their leader, Saito Yasuhide, had committed seppuku as their manor burned, and his twin sons had gone down fighting rather than allowing themselves to be captured simply to face a firing squad. In the aftermath, many of the family's associates had fled to the surrounding systems, and with the sheer size and scope of the criminal underworld found here, it was no wonder that many people who had developed skills of the less legal variety had decided to form ranks with the gangs, and with them they brought guns, tech, knowledge, contacts, and even something that we thought wasn't possible beforehand: a semblance of peace between the gangs, or at least the closest thing to peace that gangs could cultivate effectively. With the fall of the Blood Dragons, we saw the writing on the wall, and the writing couldn't have been clearer: work together or die together.
"Sounds like a massacre, Troy: are you sure we can handle seven?"
"We ain't got no choice, Cinder: this job's double the usual rate, and that's not including the weapons and gear we could scrounge if this goes well," I hissed, my eyes scanning for any resistance. There were at least four guards for each van, not to mention at least eight droids in total, meaning that we were already outnumbered, but we had the element of surprise: we could make it work. "So put your balls in your purse and get ready to spill some blood."
Koraak snorted at our antics, which sounded like someone pulling the ripcord on a lawnmower. He was a veteran Russu Corsair, and while his past of slaving, raiding, and killing was unsavory, so were the lives we'd lived, so who were we to judge? All we cared about was that he was a brutal and capable fighter and a loyal brother in arms. It turned out that being a ganger wasn't much different from being a Corsair: you lived and died by a code of honor, you fought to the death for your brothers, and you lived to die for the sake of your gang and your family, simple as that. In a strange, ironic way, it was an incredibly honest way of life: we were under no illusions as to what we were, what we did, and why we did it, and we'd long since accepted it. The Russu related to us in that aspect, in many ways I could respect, which is why I hated what the Protectorate was doing, and why I couldn't grasp how most of humanity could just collectively lose their marbles so long ago. What had happened for us to deem all other life below us in such a demeaning and infantilizing way?
The Russu were a race of tall, muscle-bound Saurians with avian features, and Koraak was no exception: reaching almost seven feet in height and weighing over four hundred and fifty pounds, he could be an absolute menace if he so desired. His skin was covered in stubby, knobby scales and dense plumage, with elegant feathers adorning the ridges along his back as well as his forearms, elbows, knees, and the crests on his head. He almost looked like how paleontologists described velociraptors, with razor-sharp talons, feathers shaded in vibrant greens, reds, and purples, and a maw full of sharp teeth, but at the tip of his snout was a sharp, beak-like growth meant for ripping flesh off the bone.
The Russu were strange as hell, but they also looked almost cute in the same way a fully grown alligator was cute: they were obviously dangerous, but humans would always have this innate desire to anthropomorphize them and to pet them for some inexplicable reason, although common sense usually prevented that, at least amongst the very few of us left that were sane.
"Shut up, Troy! All I'm saying is that that'll be rough, and you know it," hissed Cinder. Cinder was a tall black man whose coffee-colored skin was covered in tattoos. He wore an ebony mechanic's jumpsuit with metal inserts underneath his grimy overcoat covering his body and a faded black respirator on his face. His eyes were a startling blue that seemed sorely out of place, and his hair was braided into thick cornrows along his scalp. He wore a pair of heavy black combat boots and palmed his compact shotgun in his hands, the square barrel less than seven inches. Like a lot of the weapons the Black Mambas carried on their persons and dealt in, they fired caseless ammunition; in Cinder's case it was 16x40mm caseless shotshells filled with depleted uranium micro-flechetes no thicker than a toothpick. Cinder nervously fiddled with the detachable tube magazine underneath the barrel, his hands shaking. Despite the shit I have him, I didn't blame him for being anxious: I was anxious too, even if I refused to show it. The biting cold of unease and pessimism was in my stomach, and I ran all the way that this job could go wrong in my head over and over.
"Just hold yourself together, this ain't anything we haven't done before, there's just more of it," I reassured Cinder, "besides, we're not alone; we have reinforcements across the street. We'll make it out of this alive."
Cinder nodded almost absentmindedly, his eyes downcast and his breathing shallow. I turned from him and back to Koraak, who was making sure he had everything on his person; he had a synthetic leather bandoleer across his chest that contained the heavy eight guage depleted uranium slugs he kept loading and unloading into his much larger, longer, and more traditional shotgun he nicknamed ‘carnage’ and several leather straps that held his Tu'shan daggers: traditional Russu pyramidal blades forged from a silvery alloy with all three edges serrated and the tip barbed to leave behind horrible, gaping wounds that gushed blood. They were wickedly sharp and absolutely straight like a stiletto, and the hilts and pommels were beautifully decorated. He wore no clothes underneath his overcoat to cover the countless scars and blemishes he's earned in combat across his chest and abdomen, and instead of a normal respirator or visor, he simply wore a hood over his head and some traditional Russu facial armor to protect his mouth, eyes, and cheeks.
"You ready to fight, Koraak? The caravan will pick up and leave soon."
Koraak was silent for a moment before nodding, a human gesture he had picked up after serving as a soldier with the Black Mambas for years. "I'm always ready to fight," he said before lifting up his shotgun and aiming down the sights at the reinforced front wheels of the first armored car in the caravan. He exhaled and fired, the slug ripping through both front tires and causing them to deflate and fall apart. The echo of the shot rang through the alleyway and the street, causing pedestrians to panic and flee the scene as heavily armored guards poured out of the side doors of the armored cars and unholstered their carbines.
"Go, now!" I shouted, and both me and Cinder rushed out into the fray, our guns raised. Koraak was right behind the two of us, providing covering fire with his shotgun. Several guards fell quickly, Koraak's precise fire and the sheer force of the depleted uranium slugs putting them down for good as their heads were vaporized or their chest cavities were turned to mush. He emptied the tube with one final shot that painted the grey matter of a security guard on the door of one of the armored cars, then racked the shotgun and expertly loaded it in threes, his hands deft and agile as he reached for more slugs faster than any human.
With the cacophony of our initial assault, more Black Mambas poured out from the alleyways and the subways, armed to the teeth with all manner of weapons; shotguns, submachine guns, pistols, machetes, baseball bats, and all manner of homemade explosives. Molotovs and more potent concoctions shattered against the asphalt, herding in the caravan guards with their volatile contents as they were quickly gunned down. The assault was working, and we were winning.
Then I heard the robotic whine of a combat droid activating, and my heart sank. One of the armored cars in the back activated the four combat droids it held, the robotic assault units detaching from their charging ports on the sides of the large van and began to form up, each armed with a terrifying array of deadly weapons meant to quash any and all resistance. They were blocky, soulless, utilitarian things that stood at eight feet tall, with flat feet meant for stomping and blades, grasping claws designed to lacerate flesh and shatter bone. On each shoulder was a weapon: on the left was a multi-barrel rotary grenade launcher loaded with 15mm concussion grenades, and on the right was a burst-fire splinter cannon. They were all painted a dull grayish-green, the color of Halcyon's Security Division, although some had a few decorations on them: the one closest to me had a bit of graffiti on the side that said Mr. Hugs in Comic Sans, which I couldn't decide whether that made it more or less terrifying. They split up without hesitation and began to scan the chaotic battlefield, their single, red, beady lenses the security forces had the gall to call eyes focusing on specific targets to eliminate.
An entire group of Black Mambas was torn to pieces by a cloud of flechettes as one of the droids fired a withering three-round burst of shotshells from the four gauge splinter cannon mounted on its shoulder. Another picked up a Black Mamba in its hand and crushed her skull effortlessly before tossing her limp body to the side, its single, red, remorseless robotic eye tracking a new target. Most bullets that struck their thick armored chassis simply bounced off, and those that could pierce the armor didn't seem to phase the droids whatsoever, merely notifying them of a new potential target.
"Damnit," I shouted as I gunned down another guard only for two more to take his place. "Cinder! We gotta pop open the cars and scram! Get the maglock cutters!"
Cinder rushed and slid over through a dirty puddle, pulling out a maglock cutter from the inside of his coat and slipping it onto the back door of the first van. It immediately went to work, drilling through the maglock with a high-powered plasma torch nozzle, and within ten seconds we heard the telltale clunk of the maglock separating. I yanked the door open and ordered I side, ready to escort the prisoners out… only for my face to contort in shock and horror.
The back was empty. There was not a single soul inside of the back brig of the armored car.
"What the fuck…" Cinder gasped, his eyes wide with shock. "What the actual fuck… what the fuck is this, Troy?"
"I… I don't…" I stuttered the sounds of battle and carnage drowned out by the sound of blood rushing in my ears. All five cars were supposed to be filled with recently captured Russu from the front lines ready to be housed in the local Xenopet-Megaplex for processing and conditioning. The fact that this one was empty…
Suddenly, it all hit me at once with the force of a freight train, but it was too late. "We were set up, Cinder; our fucking client either squealed or was crooked to begin with…"
"Fucking bitch!" Cinder shouted as he spun around in an enraged arch, anger growing in his eyes. He aimed his shotgun at an approaching security guard and reduced his upper body to a fine red mist with a cacophony of shotgun blasts. "We gotta get everyone who's left out of here! Do you know what this means? The Jurors will be here soon, and then we're all going down! We gotta go, fuck the job!"
I grit my teeth. Not the Jurors, anything but the Jurors.
"Fine, gather everyone who's left and we'll slip through the sewers, the droids are too bulky to follow us there…"
As I spoke, my eyes wandered to the seventh and final armored car, the second of the droid cars, and my blood froze. Not only were all four ports empty, but they were also smaller and more shallow than the ports for the combat droids. That could only mean one thing.
"Oh fuck! Cinder, we gotta get our Russu members out of here! They've got arachnid droids!"
Arachnid droids were the stuff of nightmares. Resembling blocky, robotic arachnids the size of a manhole cover, they were specifically designed to take down sentient aliens, specifically the Russu, using sickeningly non-lethal means. They were equipped with full-body adaptive cloaking to blend in with their environments, paralytic agents that they could inject into their victims, built-in taser barbs, psychedelic gas ports for crowd-control, and a narrow-coned cacophony canon that disabled the Russu using incredibly high-pitched sounds that only they could hear, forcing them onto their knees and clutching the backs of their heads where their auditory organs were stored in agony. But worst of all was their stygian spinnerets: special ports near the end of their robotic abdomens that excreted a viscous, latex-like substance made up of millions of nano-bots. This substance could be used to render Russu blind, deaf, and mute by having it forced onto their faces, the black substance growing and enveloping their heads and working its way into every orifice. It was completely permeable to the standard atmosphere, but any Russu who had been 'webbed' was completely helpless and essentially captured, and the 'webbing' was both nearly indestructible and nigh impossible to remove without a triple-encrypted override key that was found in every arachnid droid's code, which was corrupted when the droid was destroyed or hacked into. Once you were 'webbed', you were essentially captured and the standard protocol was to leave you to the wolves since the nano-bots could be tracked, endangering the entire gang.
I turned just as I heard the deafening sound of Koraak discharging his shotgun, and I saw him squaring off against one of the assault droids. The droid has obviously been programmed to not use lethal force against Russu if possible, as instead of simply killing Koraak with it's shoulder-mounted splinter cannon, it approached with its claws extended, blades retracted. Koraak continued to back away and fire, pumping the droid full of depleted uranium slugs, its armor crumbling inward as the slugs pierced its chassis and damaged its internal cyberstructure. Eventually, Koraak ran out of slugs and instinctively reached to his bandoleer only to find that he had no more shells left at all, and he drew one of his knives and his sidearm, a simple high-caliber handgun. He tried to take down the droid with his handgun, but the bullets didn't even seem to affect the droid upon penetration, it's claws still extended as it attempted to apprehend Koraak.
In the corner of my vision, as I watched Koraak battle with the droid, I noticed a faint shimmer in the air on one of the black streetlight poles that was right behind him. I focused on it and blinked, believing my eyes had deceived me for a moment before realizing that it was actually a cloaked arachnid droid stalking Korvaak, ready to pounce and incapacitate him.
Before I could shout, it leaped from the pole and landed on Korvaak, causing him to shout in surprise while it began to coagulate its horrifying stygian webbing to disable Korvaak. Korvaak tried to wrestle it off of him, but the droid was agile and fast, clinging onto Korvaak and skittering around across his upper body as he attempted to grab it, forcibly wrapping the sticky black liquid across his face as he gagged like a spider wrapping up a fly. I rushed towards him to try and help, but I felt pain explode in my ribs as I was struck with the arm of the closest combat droid and launched into the chassis of a parked car, the metal denting from the sheer force of impact. I groaned in pain as I saw stars and my head spun, and just then I felt a blinding light be cast over me.
“Drop your weapons and kneel with your hands on your head, or you will be pacified with deadly force!” Shouted a loud, artificially deepened voice from above. “I repeat, drop your weapons and kneel with your hands on your head! Neither hostility nor hesitation will be tolerated!”
It was the Jurors, I could feel the air being pushed around from the thrusters on their drop ships, and I could hear screams and shouts as my fellow Black Mambas were quickly gunned down. I couldn’t see well since I was seeing double, but I could hear the slaughter as my eyes dimmed and I began to lose consciousness, my regrets crawling up my throat like vomit.
I’m sorry was all I could think as everything finally went dark, and the sounds of chaos, destruction, and combat faded away.
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Memory halted due to loss of consciousness. Booting next available memory in shard…
Booting up memory scan: Koraak Tel-Char Bruno, November 5th, 2446…
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning archival shard presentation…
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“Good morning, sleepyhead; it’s time for breakfast.”
My eyes shot open. I was not in the street anymore, nor was I home in my bed with my mate. I knew instantly that something was horribly wrong. I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t gain the leverage to do so: my ankles had been shackled together with magnetic cuffs and my arms were forced together in front of me.
I was wearing some kind of thick shirt. It was warm, fluffy, and comfortable on the inside, but it still made me incredibly uncomfortable that my arms didn’t have a free range of motion. I looked down to see that I was wearing some human garment I had heard about before, a straightjacket maybe?
The entire room was padded: the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. There was no bed or furniture; the floor was soft enough to serve as a bed in itself. There was nothing else except for the soft reddish-orange lights on the ceiling that somehow made me sleepy. I blinked slowly for a moment, my body screaming at me to just lay back down and lose consciousness, but I couldn’t do that: I needed to figure out where I was and how to escape.
Then I noticed who was speaking to me: it was a short human female, with crow's feet around her blue eyes, blonde hair braided down her back, and freckles all over her face. She had a soft smile on her lips, and her forehead was slightly crinkled. She wore a full-body white lab suit with a white overcoat and a pair of glasses for snugly on her face.
"There we go, now I can see those pretty eyes, such a beautiful shade of teal," she cooed softly, "You're such a handsome boy, even with all those scars: I'm sure you'll be adopted very quickly once we get you fixed up."
Fear gripped my heart as I began to piece all the evidence together. I had been captured; I was no longer on Halcyon, and instead, I was in one of the horrific space-born facilities I had heard so much about from the inside agents. I started to hyperventilate and squawk like a newborn hatchling, my eyes dilating in panic. This couldn't be happening! This has to be a nightmare!
The human woman merely wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into an embrace, cradling my head under her chin and speaking softly. I couldn't bite at her or claw at her: I was muzzled and wearing a straight jacket, so I had no choice but to allow her to coddle me.
"It's okay, sweetheart: I understand you're scared, but Julie's here to make all the pain and bad thoughts go away," she said as if she was comforting a child, which made anger blossom in my chest indignantly. "I'll be your caretaker for the next few months, and I'm going to make sure you're healthy, happy, and most importantly safe while you're under our care. I'm sorry to say that includes your restraints and restrictive clothing, but we have to make sure you aren't a threat to yourself or others before we can determine if it's a good idea to remove you from suicide watch."
I growled under my muzzle. Suicide watch? They must have had a lot of instances of Russu taking their own lives after being captured, something I wished I had been able to do before that damnable droid launched itself onto me and…
I shuddered at the thought of the black, viscous substance forcing itself into my nostrils and down my throat and windpipe, gagging me and rendering me completely helpless. It was so cold, so harsh, like slime, and when I had tried to tear it off of my face it merely attached itself to my claws and bound my talons together. I remember squirming on the ground as it enveloped me, unable to see, hear, or speak, and then everything went dark in an instant. It was the most horrible thing I had ever experienced, which was saying something.
"You alright, sweetheart? Oh, I know, you're probably hungry! Here, try some of this." She held up a piece of what looked like raw bacon and wiggled it in front of me before reaching out to remove my muzzle. In an instant, I attempted to snap at her only for pain to blossom in my forehead and my eyes to roll up in my head as I convulsed. It was like something was attempting to drill through my skull from the inside, and every breath felt empty and labored.
"Now, that didn't feel very nice, did it? This is why we have countermeasures in place because we can't trust you yet, sweetheart! Don't worry, we'll work on breaking you of all those bad behaviors and habits while you're here; after all, a well-trained pet is a happy pet!" She began to stroke the crests on my head as I slowly recovered, and she snugly fit the muzzle back onto my snout. "But I won't hold it against you this time, sweetheart; you're just scared and confused, but I'll make all the pain go away."
I struggled in the straight jacket, trying my best to break out of it, but it was no use. Eventually, I became exhausted and despondent, allowing my new caretaker to have her way with me as she gently ran her fingers through my feathers and along my ridges, quietly speaking to me in a hopeless attempt to cheer me up. She seemed genuinely concerned for my well-being, which concerned me even further: who could be this naturally twisted while attempting to be as benevolent and kindhearted as possible?
I felt the pain and terror build up in my chest, the anxiety from what horrific activities I imagined they had planned for me here. I couldn't take the infantilization, the lack of any autonomy, the dehumanization, and what I feared the most was if the rumors of 'rebirth' were true: would they take my personhood from me?
Suddenly, I felt her whisper to me. "Don't worry sweetheart, I know you're so scared and confused, but I promise you everything will be okay: it's going to be your birthday soon, and then everything will get better." She ran her fingers through the feathers along my crest lovingly. "It will be such a wonderful day, and then we'll choose for you the most wonderful family, and you'll spend the rest of your life happy in your forever home! Doesn't all of that sound wonderful?"
I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear. I didn't want to lose myself, not like this, not to these monsters!
"It'll be your birthday soon," she said wistfully as if she was remembering similar events to this in the past like I wasn't the first she'd done this too, "and you'll never be sad again."
I realized that I wasn't the first the stay in this particular cell, and I knew for certain that I wouldn't be the last: I'd end up like my brother, a broken, erased mess of a pathetic creature, reduced to nothing more than a pet for these humans to amuse themselves with.
"We took the liberty of picking out a nice name for you, sweetheart! Now, let me just slip this little programming chip into the port slot on your occipital bone, and... there we go! It will also help you calm down a bit and adjust."
I felt the chip begin to invade my mind, suppressing my thoughts. What made me me was slowly being ripped out of my mind.I couldn't remember my name my name is Bruno, and I needed to get out! I can't let them do this to me! Somebody help me! I was a good boy.
##Do not think. You are a good boy.##
I tried to scream, but my voice wouldn't work: I had trouble forming any words at all, the confusion clouding my mind like wet, slimy eels curling around my brain and sinking their teeth into its folds like needles. I couldn’t scream any longer, because I had nothing left: the chip was slowly beginning to take everything from me, robbing me of my identity and branding a new one into my psyche with a white-hot iron. Julie simply held me close, attempting to reassure me as I awaited the inevitable demise of my personhood. Soon I would be just like my brother: erased. My mind would be shaped into the mind of a loyal plaything, like a Dog.
##Relax. Allow caretaker [Julie] to comfort you. You will let go of your burden.##
Soon, everything was a blur. I quickly found myself resting my head in her lap as she whispered to me and fed me, my eyes bleary and my head fuzzy.I couldn't remember my name anymore My name was Bruno, and I needed to break free from this trance relax, and allow her to help me; good boys didn't resist help.
##Good Boy. Do not think. You are a good boy.##
You can't... I...
##Good boy.##
I wouldn't… good boys don't… I…
##Good boy##
I was a good boy… I was a good boy…
I was… I was… a good… boy…
Someone help me, please! I don't want to be erased!
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The following script is from episode #343 of Halcyon After Dark, a popular late-night and current events talk show hosted by Melinda Carter. This specific episode was sponsored in part by the Halcyon Security Division, with Director Lochlin O'Brien joining as a guest star to talk about the changing crime statistics in Halcyon City and the HSD's recent successes in busting organized crime as well as their plans for addressing the growing criminal underworld.
MC: Good evening Halcyon! I'm your host, Melinda Carter, and you're watching Halcyon's most popular late-night talk show, Halcyon After Dark!
The crowd claps and cheers as Melinda walks on stage and sits behind her desk, her glittering red dress waving as she does so from the special effects.
MC: Tonight we have a very special guest here to tell us about the state of crime in the city and his plans on resolving it: please put your hands together for the HSD's very own Director, Lochlin O'Brien!
The crowd cheers some more as HSD Director Lochlan O'Brien, a tall, muscular, caucasian male in his early forties with red hair and a well-trimmed beard steps into the room, waving at the crowd with a bright smile. He sits in the armchair angled next to Melinda's desk and gives her his full attention.
MC: It's so good to have you on the show, Director! Tell me, how are you doing on this fine evening?
LO: I'm doing excellent, Melinda: every day I wake up feeling fulfilled knowing I'm serving Halcyon to the best of my abilities and then some."
MC: That's the spirit, Director! Now, I know this question is just on everyone's lips, so I have to ask: how successful was the recent gang bust? I heard HSD forces took out dozens of gang members and liberated at least a dozen Russu Hounds from their abusive clutches, but I know that everyone in the audience and at home wants to know the numbers.
LO: I'd be glad to tell you, but I do have to preface this by saying that we still lost a lot of good officers that day, and while we did strike a crippling blow to one of Halcyon's biggest gangs, it doesn't change the fact that each death is a tragedy, and we're taking steps to prevent them in the future. That being said, those valiant officers did not sacrifice themselves in vain: we had over a dozen confirmed kills and several arrests, including the rescue of several corrupted Russu hounds.
MC: That's excellent, Director: proof that even when the number of degenerates and scum grow by the day, the HSD will always be here to keep the citizens of Halcyon safe.
LO: Absolutely, Melinda, and we're always working tirelessly to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our units, as well as racing to stay several steps ahead of the many gangs of Halcyon at all times. My newest goal as Director is to vastly increase the funding given to our Robotics Department and our Neuro-Warfare Department to potentially reduce the number of casualties we may experience in the future, as well as to quickly and effectively detain, and if necessary, eliminate criminals. Within the next decade, I want to double the number of automated units each Security Platoon is assigned: droids are the future of public safety as well as countless other industries, and it would be foolish to be left behind.
MC: That is quite a lofty goal, Director: what about the displaced jobs from the increased automation? What will the union say?
LO: And to that, I say: what misplaced jobs? We aren't replacing our honored and beloved service members with droids, Melinda, we are simply supplementing our units with more droids to ensure that future gang assaults end with fewer HSD casualties and more gang members in prison or eliminated, simple as that.
MC: That makes much more sense, Director, thanks for clarifying. Now, I have one more question that I'm sure much of Halcyon wants to know the answer to before we take a short break: what plans do you and your fellow directors have to make long-term progress in reducing crime beyond just increasing funding? Have you proposed any plans to strike at the source of where crime and degeneracy flourish?
OL: That's an excellent question, and one I am proud to answer: my constituents and I have been working tirelessly on a two-step plan to greatly reduce crime levels in Halcyon. Step one would be to prevent people from becoming criminals and degenerates at all in the first place: a lot of young men and women, but especially young men, have lost either one or both parents or even a sibling, aunt or uncle, or even a close friend by the brutality of the Second Authority War, and while the service of their lost loved ones will always be recognized and honored, many of these young men and women are left bitter, angry and lost without the guidance these people give them in their lives. Oftentimes they seek to fill that void with others who claim to relate to them: career criminals. These criminals will fill their heads with lies and false narratives to make them feel like they're fighting back against the 'evil protectorate government' that took their loved ones from them by sending them off to war when in reality it was the rogue Xenopets of the Triarchy that took them away by resisting their just and inevitable unburdening.
In response, I have proposed a slew of special programs that will make sure local law enforcement and HSD officers are present and contributing to their local community, and we'll be providing easy and light job openings for youngsters and teens looking to make a career for themselves in the force when they grow up. We want to let these lost souls know that there are people who care about them, people who understand them and that you shouldn't turn to degeneracy to feel fulfilled. We want to help the youth of our great society soar to new heights!
MC: That sounds like a wonderful beginning to your plan, Director, but what about the second step?
LO: Well, the second step is to prevent criminals and degenerates from becoming repeat criminals. Sure, they've made their mistakes, some worse than others, but they're only human like the rest of us. Some of them have been through hell: some are traumatized veterans who don't know how to adapt to normal life, others were recruited when they were young and don't know that there's a better way to live, and even more are mentally ill. We're alone in this galaxy, and we can't leave so many people behind. That's why we've come up with an excellent solution: we've set up isolated communities on distant moons and frontier planets where these criminals can be reeducated, rehabilitated, and allowed to repay their debt to society. When they're deemed 'reformed' and have graduated from our program, they'll be granted a hefty stipend and their criminal record will be deemed irrelevant, allowing them to reintegrate and become functioning members of our proud society.
MC: all of these sound like incredible steps forward in the fight to better our society and make real progress, Director. Sadly, we do have to step away for a moment, but you best believe I'll be back, Halcyon, and we'll be asking the Director here some burning questions about allegations over the quality of life Erubus Supermax! Now, a word from our sponsors!
Halcyon Xenopet-Megaplex! Everything your xenopet could ever need in one place! Adoption is now free-
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Good, you’re still alive! The rest of this shard appears to be corrupted, which means this particular trail seems to have run cold here, but do not despair; you need to keep searching. Find out what happened. Find the truth.I cannot guide you any longer: they've already found me, and if I remain in contact with you they'll find you as well. Take the archival database, and see what you can piece together. Maybe if we discover what truly happened we can put an end to this madness once and for all. I'm counting on you. Don't cry for me, I don't fear death, but I fear what they'll do to me to get to you: there are far worse fates than death, after all.
submitted by Frame_Late to libraryofshadows [link] [comments]
The following two brain scans were provided by the Neuro-Warfare branch of the Halcyon Security Division (HSD) for the purpose of analyzing the thoughts, behaviors, and information of notorious gangsters Vincent 'Troy' Cohen and Bruno (Deadname:
Warning: the contents of this archival shared may be especially disturbing to some audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.
Warning: the contents of this archival shard are for the sole purpose of analyzing the thought patterns and memories of certain degenerate criminals in an effort to ascertain vital information that can be used to eliminate their organizations. Only staff with clearance level Omega may view this archival shared, and the viewership of this archival shared by anyone of inadequate clearance level will lead to twenty years in prison and a fine of over a hundred thousand credits.
Booting up memory scan: Vincent 'Troy' Cohen, November 4th, 2446…
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning archival shard presentation…
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"Do you have visuals of the target, Troy?"
I knelt down in the alleyway, the bodies of me and my partners shrouded in long, waterproof, ashen-gray overcoats the shade of dirty street scum that we wore to ward off the constant heavy rainfall the color of osmium. Our faces were covered in a mix of scrapped respirators, visors, or full metal face masks carved with intricate designs to hide our identities. On our waists were our badges of honor: leather belts studded with interlocked rivets made from blackened titanium, each buckle forged of silver and shaped into the head of our gang's symbol, the black mamba. We hid amongst the shadows of the dark midday of Halcyon City, the heavy, oppressive rains blanketing the roads paved obsidian-black with asphalt and weathered concrete walkways. The street lamps were always on, like beacons of false hope in a storm of melancholy.
The city was dark and dreary as always, the planet of Proxima Centauri B, renamed Dawn's Lamentation over a century ago, orbited the red dwarf star of Proxima Centauri, and the atmosphere was thick with natural smog and ever-storming rain clouds. That didn't dissuade people from living here: there was plenty of money to be had for shrewd industrialists and hardworking pioneers, even in the urban sprawl. But that life also came with risks, especially for those on the bottom of the totem pole.
I was a ganger, and we were criminals; full stop. I won't assault you with some spiel about how we're the good guys fighting oppression because, at the end of the day, we could be just as bad, if not worse, than Halcyon's Security Division, or the HSD for short. We were traffickers, killers, extortionists, and money launderers. We dealt with everything from stolen tech and military-grade hardware to hard drugs and sentients.
Yes, sentients. We trafficked sentients, but not in the way you might think. They weren't prisoners, in fact, we were their saviors if they had the cash. We had developed a reputation for fighting the power, but it was still business: sure, freeing captives from the clutches of the Protectorate. The disruption of its many oppressive organizations held a certain satisfaction in my heart for sure, but we didn't help those who couldn't pay unless someone else paid on their behalf. It was about making sure me and my gang, my family, could live a decent life for another day.
It helped that most of us joined after leaving the state yard for partaking in acts of 'degeneracy' and 'anti-xenopet illegalities' as if those terms meant anything anymore other than that we were a threat to the local status quo. It was hard to pick up a job as a former inmate when even in something as harsh and backbreaking as a job in the iridium mines near the poles when the employment office had you blacklisted as a degenerate, which lead to the formation of many of the gangs: we needed to make a living somehow, and when all social programs were cut off from you unless you submitted for 're-education' and the only way to put food on the table was subverting, breaking, or even downright fighting the law, you did what you had to do or you died on the streets a scorned beggar.
It wasn't like the HSD made it easy for us on even a good day: the local HSD units were armed to the teeth with advanced, military-grade hardware that you'd often see on the front lines of the Second Authority War: armored assault transports, a myriad of advanced war droids, all sorts of chemical countermeasures that made tear gas seem like putting the garden hose on mist mode, and of course advanced firearms. Add that to the fact that they were authorized to use deadly force when they deemed it necessary and you had a ruthless, heartless, and nearly unstoppable enemy. But we could make that work: we weren't trying to stop them, just to withstand them.
"Yeah, I got eyes on the prize, Koraak; seven armored transports, two for droids, five for prisoners."
Today wasn't a day for a normal job: we were getting bolder, cockier, more ambitious. Our numbers had swelled for the last few years after the raid at Barnard's Star and the fall of the Blood Dragon Mafia. Their leader, Saito Yasuhide, had committed seppuku as their manor burned, and his twin sons had gone down fighting rather than allowing themselves to be captured simply to face a firing squad. In the aftermath, many of the family's associates had fled to the surrounding systems, and with the sheer size and scope of the criminal underworld found here, it was no wonder that many people who had developed skills of the less legal variety had decided to form ranks with the gangs, and with them they brought guns, tech, knowledge, contacts, and even something that we thought wasn't possible beforehand: a semblance of peace between the gangs, or at least the closest thing to peace that gangs could cultivate effectively. With the fall of the Blood Dragons, we saw the writing on the wall, and the writing couldn't have been clearer: work together or die together.
"Sounds like a massacre, Troy: are you sure we can handle seven?"
"We ain't got no choice, Cinder: this job's double the usual rate, and that's not including the weapons and gear we could scrounge if this goes well," I hissed, my eyes scanning for any resistance. There were at least four guards for each van, not to mention at least eight droids in total, meaning that we were already outnumbered, but we had the element of surprise: we could make it work. "So put your balls in your purse and get ready to spill some blood."
Koraak snorted at our antics, which sounded like someone pulling the ripcord on a lawnmower. He was a veteran Russu Corsair, and while his past of slaving, raiding, and killing was unsavory, so were the lives we'd lived, so who were we to judge? All we cared about was that he was a brutal and capable fighter and a loyal brother in arms. It turned out that being a ganger wasn't much different from being a Corsair: you lived and died by a code of honor, you fought to the death for your brothers, and you lived to die for the sake of your gang and your family, simple as that. In a strange, ironic way, it was an incredibly honest way of life: we were under no illusions as to what we were, what we did, and why we did it, and we'd long since accepted it. The Russu related to us in that aspect, in many ways I could respect, which is why I hated what the Protectorate was doing, and why I couldn't grasp how most of humanity could just collectively lose their marbles so long ago. What had happened for us to deem all other life below us in such a demeaning and infantilizing way?
The Russu were a race of tall, muscle-bound Saurians with avian features, and Koraak was no exception: reaching almost seven feet in height and weighing over four hundred and fifty pounds, he could be an absolute menace if he so desired. His skin was covered in stubby, knobby scales and dense plumage, with elegant feathers adorning the ridges along his back as well as his forearms, elbows, knees, and the crests on his head. He almost looked like how paleontologists described velociraptors, with razor-sharp talons, feathers shaded in vibrant greens, reds, and purples, and a maw full of sharp teeth, but at the tip of his snout was a sharp, beak-like growth meant for ripping flesh off the bone.
The Russu were strange as hell, but they also looked almost cute in the same way a fully grown alligator was cute: they were obviously dangerous, but humans would always have this innate desire to anthropomorphize them and to pet them for some inexplicable reason, although common sense usually prevented that, at least amongst the very few of us left that were sane.
"Shut up, Troy! All I'm saying is that that'll be rough, and you know it," hissed Cinder. Cinder was a tall black man whose coffee-colored skin was covered in tattoos. He wore an ebony mechanic's jumpsuit with metal inserts underneath his grimy overcoat covering his body and a faded black respirator on his face. His eyes were a startling blue that seemed sorely out of place, and his hair was braided into thick cornrows along his scalp. He wore a pair of heavy black combat boots and palmed his compact shotgun in his hands, the square barrel less than seven inches. Like a lot of the weapons the Black Mambas carried on their persons and dealt in, they fired caseless ammunition; in Cinder's case it was 16x40mm caseless shotshells filled with depleted uranium micro-flechetes no thicker than a toothpick. Cinder nervously fiddled with the detachable tube magazine underneath the barrel, his hands shaking. Despite the shit I have him, I didn't blame him for being anxious: I was anxious too, even if I refused to show it. The biting cold of unease and pessimism was in my stomach, and I ran all the way that this job could go wrong in my head over and over.
"Just hold yourself together, this ain't anything we haven't done before, there's just more of it," I reassured Cinder, "besides, we're not alone; we have reinforcements across the street. We'll make it out of this alive."
Cinder nodded almost absentmindedly, his eyes downcast and his breathing shallow. I turned from him and back to Koraak, who was making sure he had everything on his person; he had a synthetic leather bandoleer across his chest that contained the heavy eight guage depleted uranium slugs he kept loading and unloading into his much larger, longer, and more traditional shotgun he nicknamed ‘carnage’ and several leather straps that held his Tu'shan daggers: traditional Russu pyramidal blades forged from a silvery alloy with all three edges serrated and the tip barbed to leave behind horrible, gaping wounds that gushed blood. They were wickedly sharp and absolutely straight like a stiletto, and the hilts and pommels were beautifully decorated. He wore no clothes underneath his overcoat to cover the countless scars and blemishes he's earned in combat across his chest and abdomen, and instead of a normal respirator or visor, he simply wore a hood over his head and some traditional Russu facial armor to protect his mouth, eyes, and cheeks.
"You ready to fight, Koraak? The caravan will pick up and leave soon."
Koraak was silent for a moment before nodding, a human gesture he had picked up after serving as a soldier with the Black Mambas for years. "I'm always ready to fight," he said before lifting up his shotgun and aiming down the sights at the reinforced front wheels of the first armored car in the caravan. He exhaled and fired, the slug ripping through both front tires and causing them to deflate and fall apart. The echo of the shot rang through the alleyway and the street, causing pedestrians to panic and flee the scene as heavily armored guards poured out of the side doors of the armored cars and unholstered their carbines.
"Go, now!" I shouted, and both me and Cinder rushed out into the fray, our guns raised. Koraak was right behind the two of us, providing covering fire with his shotgun. Several guards fell quickly, Koraak's precise fire and the sheer force of the depleted uranium slugs putting them down for good as their heads were vaporized or their chest cavities were turned to mush. He emptied the tube with one final shot that painted the grey matter of a security guard on the door of one of the armored cars, then racked the shotgun and expertly loaded it in threes, his hands deft and agile as he reached for more slugs faster than any human.
With the cacophony of our initial assault, more Black Mambas poured out from the alleyways and the subways, armed to the teeth with all manner of weapons; shotguns, submachine guns, pistols, machetes, baseball bats, and all manner of homemade explosives. Molotovs and more potent concoctions shattered against the asphalt, herding in the caravan guards with their volatile contents as they were quickly gunned down. The assault was working, and we were winning.
Then I heard the robotic whine of a combat droid activating, and my heart sank. One of the armored cars in the back activated the four combat droids it held, the robotic assault units detaching from their charging ports on the sides of the large van and began to form up, each armed with a terrifying array of deadly weapons meant to quash any and all resistance. They were blocky, soulless, utilitarian things that stood at eight feet tall, with flat feet meant for stomping and blades, grasping claws designed to lacerate flesh and shatter bone. On each shoulder was a weapon: on the left was a multi-barrel rotary grenade launcher loaded with 15mm concussion grenades, and on the right was a burst-fire splinter cannon. They were all painted a dull grayish-green, the color of Halcyon's Security Division, although some had a few decorations on them: the one closest to me had a bit of graffiti on the side that said Mr. Hugs in Comic Sans, which I couldn't decide whether that made it more or less terrifying. They split up without hesitation and began to scan the chaotic battlefield, their single, red, beady lenses the security forces had the gall to call eyes focusing on specific targets to eliminate.
An entire group of Black Mambas was torn to pieces by a cloud of flechettes as one of the droids fired a withering three-round burst of shotshells from the four gauge splinter cannon mounted on its shoulder. Another picked up a Black Mamba in its hand and crushed her skull effortlessly before tossing her limp body to the side, its single, red, remorseless robotic eye tracking a new target. Most bullets that struck their thick armored chassis simply bounced off, and those that could pierce the armor didn't seem to phase the droids whatsoever, merely notifying them of a new potential target.
"Damnit," I shouted as I gunned down another guard only for two more to take his place. "Cinder! We gotta pop open the cars and scram! Get the maglock cutters!"
Cinder rushed and slid over through a dirty puddle, pulling out a maglock cutter from the inside of his coat and slipping it onto the back door of the first van. It immediately went to work, drilling through the maglock with a high-powered plasma torch nozzle, and within ten seconds we heard the telltale clunk of the maglock separating. I yanked the door open and ordered I side, ready to escort the prisoners out… only for my face to contort in shock and horror.
The back was empty. There was not a single soul inside of the back brig of the armored car.
"What the fuck…" Cinder gasped, his eyes wide with shock. "What the actual fuck… what the fuck is this, Troy?"
"I… I don't…" I stuttered the sounds of battle and carnage drowned out by the sound of blood rushing in my ears. All five cars were supposed to be filled with recently captured Russu from the front lines ready to be housed in the local Xenopet-Megaplex for processing and conditioning. The fact that this one was empty…
Suddenly, it all hit me at once with the force of a freight train, but it was too late. "We were set up, Cinder; our fucking client either squealed or was crooked to begin with…"
"Fucking bitch!" Cinder shouted as he spun around in an enraged arch, anger growing in his eyes. He aimed his shotgun at an approaching security guard and reduced his upper body to a fine red mist with a cacophony of shotgun blasts. "We gotta get everyone who's left out of here! Do you know what this means? The Jurors will be here soon, and then we're all going down! We gotta go, fuck the job!"
I grit my teeth. Not the Jurors, anything but the Jurors.
"Fine, gather everyone who's left and we'll slip through the sewers, the droids are too bulky to follow us there…"
As I spoke, my eyes wandered to the seventh and final armored car, the second of the droid cars, and my blood froze. Not only were all four ports empty, but they were also smaller and more shallow than the ports for the combat droids. That could only mean one thing.
"Oh fuck! Cinder, we gotta get our Russu members out of here! They've got arachnid droids!"
Arachnid droids were the stuff of nightmares. Resembling blocky, robotic arachnids the size of a manhole cover, they were specifically designed to take down sentient aliens, specifically the Russu, using sickeningly non-lethal means. They were equipped with full-body adaptive cloaking to blend in with their environments, paralytic agents that they could inject into their victims, built-in taser barbs, psychedelic gas ports for crowd-control, and a narrow-coned cacophony canon that disabled the Russu using incredibly high-pitched sounds that only they could hear, forcing them onto their knees and clutching the backs of their heads where their auditory organs were stored in agony. But worst of all was their stygian spinnerets: special ports near the end of their robotic abdomens that excreted a viscous, latex-like substance made up of millions of nano-bots. This substance could be used to render Russu blind, deaf, and mute by having it forced onto their faces, the black substance growing and enveloping their heads and working its way into every orifice. It was completely permeable to the standard atmosphere, but any Russu who had been 'webbed' was completely helpless and essentially captured, and the 'webbing' was both nearly indestructible and nigh impossible to remove without a triple-encrypted override key that was found in every arachnid droid's code, which was corrupted when the droid was destroyed or hacked into. Once you were 'webbed', you were essentially captured and the standard protocol was to leave you to the wolves since the nano-bots could be tracked, endangering the entire gang.
I turned just as I heard the deafening sound of Koraak discharging his shotgun, and I saw him squaring off against one of the assault droids. The droid has obviously been programmed to not use lethal force against Russu if possible, as instead of simply killing Koraak with it's shoulder-mounted splinter cannon, it approached with its claws extended, blades retracted. Koraak continued to back away and fire, pumping the droid full of depleted uranium slugs, its armor crumbling inward as the slugs pierced its chassis and damaged its internal cyberstructure. Eventually, Koraak ran out of slugs and instinctively reached to his bandoleer only to find that he had no more shells left at all, and he drew one of his knives and his sidearm, a simple high-caliber handgun. He tried to take down the droid with his handgun, but the bullets didn't even seem to affect the droid upon penetration, it's claws still extended as it attempted to apprehend Koraak.
In the corner of my vision, as I watched Koraak battle with the droid, I noticed a faint shimmer in the air on one of the black streetlight poles that was right behind him. I focused on it and blinked, believing my eyes had deceived me for a moment before realizing that it was actually a cloaked arachnid droid stalking Korvaak, ready to pounce and incapacitate him.
Before I could shout, it leaped from the pole and landed on Korvaak, causing him to shout in surprise while it began to coagulate its horrifying stygian webbing to disable Korvaak. Korvaak tried to wrestle it off of him, but the droid was agile and fast, clinging onto Korvaak and skittering around across his upper body as he attempted to grab it, forcibly wrapping the sticky black liquid across his face as he gagged like a spider wrapping up a fly. I rushed towards him to try and help, but I felt pain explode in my ribs as I was struck with the arm of the closest combat droid and launched into the chassis of a parked car, the metal denting from the sheer force of impact. I groaned in pain as I saw stars and my head spun, and just then I felt a blinding light be cast over me.
“Drop your weapons and kneel with your hands on your head, or you will be pacified with deadly force!” Shouted a loud, artificially deepened voice from above. “I repeat, drop your weapons and kneel with your hands on your head! Neither hostility nor hesitation will be tolerated!”
It was the Jurors, I could feel the air being pushed around from the thrusters on their drop ships, and I could hear screams and shouts as my fellow Black Mambas were quickly gunned down. I couldn’t see well since I was seeing double, but I could hear the slaughter as my eyes dimmed and I began to lose consciousness, my regrets crawling up my throat like vomit.
I’m sorry was all I could think as everything finally went dark, and the sounds of chaos, destruction, and combat faded away.
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Memory halted due to loss of consciousness. Booting next available memory in shard…
Booting up memory scan: Koraak Tel-Char Bruno, November 5th, 2446…
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning archival shard presentation…
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“Good morning, sleepyhead; it’s time for breakfast.”
My eyes shot open. I was not in the street anymore, nor was I home in my bed with my mate. I knew instantly that something was horribly wrong. I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t gain the leverage to do so: my ankles had been shackled together with magnetic cuffs and my arms were forced together in front of me.
I was wearing some kind of thick shirt. It was warm, fluffy, and comfortable on the inside, but it still made me incredibly uncomfortable that my arms didn’t have a free range of motion. I looked down to see that I was wearing some human garment I had heard about before, a straightjacket maybe?
The entire room was padded: the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. There was no bed or furniture; the floor was soft enough to serve as a bed in itself. There was nothing else except for the soft reddish-orange lights on the ceiling that somehow made me sleepy. I blinked slowly for a moment, my body screaming at me to just lay back down and lose consciousness, but I couldn’t do that: I needed to figure out where I was and how to escape.
Then I noticed who was speaking to me: it was a short human female, with crow's feet around her blue eyes, blonde hair braided down her back, and freckles all over her face. She had a soft smile on her lips, and her forehead was slightly crinkled. She wore a full-body white lab suit with a white overcoat and a pair of glasses for snugly on her face.
"There we go, now I can see those pretty eyes, such a beautiful shade of teal," she cooed softly, "You're such a handsome boy, even with all those scars: I'm sure you'll be adopted very quickly once we get you fixed up."
Fear gripped my heart as I began to piece all the evidence together. I had been captured; I was no longer on Halcyon, and instead, I was in one of the horrific space-born facilities I had heard so much about from the inside agents. I started to hyperventilate and squawk like a newborn hatchling, my eyes dilating in panic. This couldn't be happening! This has to be a nightmare!
The human woman merely wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into an embrace, cradling my head under her chin and speaking softly. I couldn't bite at her or claw at her: I was muzzled and wearing a straight jacket, so I had no choice but to allow her to coddle me.
"It's okay, sweetheart: I understand you're scared, but Julie's here to make all the pain and bad thoughts go away," she said as if she was comforting a child, which made anger blossom in my chest indignantly. "I'll be your caretaker for the next few months, and I'm going to make sure you're healthy, happy, and most importantly safe while you're under our care. I'm sorry to say that includes your restraints and restrictive clothing, but we have to make sure you aren't a threat to yourself or others before we can determine if it's a good idea to remove you from suicide watch."
I growled under my muzzle. Suicide watch? They must have had a lot of instances of Russu taking their own lives after being captured, something I wished I had been able to do before that damnable droid launched itself onto me and…
I shuddered at the thought of the black, viscous substance forcing itself into my nostrils and down my throat and windpipe, gagging me and rendering me completely helpless. It was so cold, so harsh, like slime, and when I had tried to tear it off of my face it merely attached itself to my claws and bound my talons together. I remember squirming on the ground as it enveloped me, unable to see, hear, or speak, and then everything went dark in an instant. It was the most horrible thing I had ever experienced, which was saying something.
"You alright, sweetheart? Oh, I know, you're probably hungry! Here, try some of this." She held up a piece of what looked like raw bacon and wiggled it in front of me before reaching out to remove my muzzle. In an instant, I attempted to snap at her only for pain to blossom in my forehead and my eyes to roll up in my head as I convulsed. It was like something was attempting to drill through my skull from the inside, and every breath felt empty and labored.
"Now, that didn't feel very nice, did it? This is why we have countermeasures in place because we can't trust you yet, sweetheart! Don't worry, we'll work on breaking you of all those bad behaviors and habits while you're here; after all, a well-trained pet is a happy pet!" She began to stroke the crests on my head as I slowly recovered, and she snugly fit the muzzle back onto my snout. "But I won't hold it against you this time, sweetheart; you're just scared and confused, but I'll make all the pain go away."
I struggled in the straight jacket, trying my best to break out of it, but it was no use. Eventually, I became exhausted and despondent, allowing my new caretaker to have her way with me as she gently ran her fingers through my feathers and along my ridges, quietly speaking to me in a hopeless attempt to cheer me up. She seemed genuinely concerned for my well-being, which concerned me even further: who could be this naturally twisted while attempting to be as benevolent and kindhearted as possible?
I felt the pain and terror build up in my chest, the anxiety from what horrific activities I imagined they had planned for me here. I couldn't take the infantilization, the lack of any autonomy, the dehumanization, and what I feared the most was if the rumors of 'rebirth' were true: would they take my personhood from me?
Suddenly, I felt her whisper to me. "Don't worry sweetheart, I know you're so scared and confused, but I promise you everything will be okay: it's going to be your birthday soon, and then everything will get better." She ran her fingers through the feathers along my crest lovingly. "It will be such a wonderful day, and then we'll choose for you the most wonderful family, and you'll spend the rest of your life happy in your forever home! Doesn't all of that sound wonderful?"
I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear. I didn't want to lose myself, not like this, not to these monsters!
"It'll be your birthday soon," she said wistfully as if she was remembering similar events to this in the past like I wasn't the first she'd done this too, "and you'll never be sad again."
I realized that I wasn't the first the stay in this particular cell, and I knew for certain that I wouldn't be the last: I'd end up like my brother, a broken, erased mess of a pathetic creature, reduced to nothing more than a pet for these humans to amuse themselves with.
"We took the liberty of picking out a nice name for you, sweetheart! Now, let me just slip this little programming chip into the port slot on your occipital bone, and... there we go! It will also help you calm down a bit and adjust."
I felt the chip begin to invade my mind, suppressing my thoughts. What made me me was slowly being ripped out of my mind.
##Do not think. You are a good boy.##
I tried to scream, but my voice wouldn't work: I had trouble forming any words at all, the confusion clouding my mind like wet, slimy eels curling around my brain and sinking their teeth into its folds like needles. I couldn’t scream any longer, because I had nothing left: the chip was slowly beginning to take everything from me, robbing me of my identity and branding a new one into my psyche with a white-hot iron. Julie simply held me close, attempting to reassure me as I awaited the inevitable demise of my personhood. Soon I would be just like my brother: erased. My mind would be shaped into the mind of a loyal plaything, like a Dog.
##Relax. Allow caretaker [Julie] to comfort you. You will let go of your burden.##
Soon, everything was a blur. I quickly found myself resting my head in her lap as she whispered to me and fed me, my eyes bleary and my head fuzzy.
##Good Boy. Do not think. You are a good boy.##
You can't... I...
##Good boy.##
I wouldn't… good boys don't… I…
##Good boy##
I was a good boy… I was a good boy…
I was… I was… a good… boy…
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The following script is from episode #343 of Halcyon After Dark, a popular late-night and current events talk show hosted by Melinda Carter. This specific episode was sponsored in part by the Halcyon Security Division, with Director Lochlin O'Brien joining as a guest star to talk about the changing crime statistics in Halcyon City and the HSD's recent successes in busting organized crime as well as their plans for addressing the growing criminal underworld.
MC: Good evening Halcyon! I'm your host, Melinda Carter, and you're watching Halcyon's most popular late-night talk show, Halcyon After Dark!
The crowd claps and cheers as Melinda walks on stage and sits behind her desk, her glittering red dress waving as she does so from the special effects.
MC: Tonight we have a very special guest here to tell us about the state of crime in the city and his plans on resolving it: please put your hands together for the HSD's very own Director, Lochlin O'Brien!
The crowd cheers some more as HSD Director Lochlan O'Brien, a tall, muscular, caucasian male in his early forties with red hair and a well-trimmed beard steps into the room, waving at the crowd with a bright smile. He sits in the armchair angled next to Melinda's desk and gives her his full attention.
MC: It's so good to have you on the show, Director! Tell me, how are you doing on this fine evening?
LO: I'm doing excellent, Melinda: every day I wake up feeling fulfilled knowing I'm serving Halcyon to the best of my abilities and then some."
MC: That's the spirit, Director! Now, I know this question is just on everyone's lips, so I have to ask: how successful was the recent gang bust? I heard HSD forces took out dozens of gang members and liberated at least a dozen Russu Hounds from their abusive clutches, but I know that everyone in the audience and at home wants to know the numbers.
LO: I'd be glad to tell you, but I do have to preface this by saying that we still lost a lot of good officers that day, and while we did strike a crippling blow to one of Halcyon's biggest gangs, it doesn't change the fact that each death is a tragedy, and we're taking steps to prevent them in the future. That being said, those valiant officers did not sacrifice themselves in vain: we had over a dozen confirmed kills and several arrests, including the rescue of several corrupted Russu hounds.
MC: That's excellent, Director: proof that even when the number of degenerates and scum grow by the day, the HSD will always be here to keep the citizens of Halcyon safe.
LO: Absolutely, Melinda, and we're always working tirelessly to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our units, as well as racing to stay several steps ahead of the many gangs of Halcyon at all times. My newest goal as Director is to vastly increase the funding given to our Robotics Department and our Neuro-Warfare Department to potentially reduce the number of casualties we may experience in the future, as well as to quickly and effectively detain, and if necessary, eliminate criminals. Within the next decade, I want to double the number of automated units each Security Platoon is assigned: droids are the future of public safety as well as countless other industries, and it would be foolish to be left behind.
MC: That is quite a lofty goal, Director: what about the displaced jobs from the increased automation? What will the union say?
LO: And to that, I say: what misplaced jobs? We aren't replacing our honored and beloved service members with droids, Melinda, we are simply supplementing our units with more droids to ensure that future gang assaults end with fewer HSD casualties and more gang members in prison or eliminated, simple as that.
MC: That makes much more sense, Director, thanks for clarifying. Now, I have one more question that I'm sure much of Halcyon wants to know the answer to before we take a short break: what plans do you and your fellow directors have to make long-term progress in reducing crime beyond just increasing funding? Have you proposed any plans to strike at the source of where crime and degeneracy flourish?
OL: That's an excellent question, and one I am proud to answer: my constituents and I have been working tirelessly on a two-step plan to greatly reduce crime levels in Halcyon. Step one would be to prevent people from becoming criminals and degenerates at all in the first place: a lot of young men and women, but especially young men, have lost either one or both parents or even a sibling, aunt or uncle, or even a close friend by the brutality of the Second Authority War, and while the service of their lost loved ones will always be recognized and honored, many of these young men and women are left bitter, angry and lost without the guidance these people give them in their lives. Oftentimes they seek to fill that void with others who claim to relate to them: career criminals. These criminals will fill their heads with lies and false narratives to make them feel like they're fighting back against the 'evil protectorate government' that took their loved ones from them by sending them off to war when in reality it was the rogue Xenopets of the Triarchy that took them away by resisting their just and inevitable unburdening.
In response, I have proposed a slew of special programs that will make sure local law enforcement and HSD officers are present and contributing to their local community, and we'll be providing easy and light job openings for youngsters and teens looking to make a career for themselves in the force when they grow up. We want to let these lost souls know that there are people who care about them, people who understand them and that you shouldn't turn to degeneracy to feel fulfilled. We want to help the youth of our great society soar to new heights!
MC: That sounds like a wonderful beginning to your plan, Director, but what about the second step?
LO: Well, the second step is to prevent criminals and degenerates from becoming repeat criminals. Sure, they've made their mistakes, some worse than others, but they're only human like the rest of us. Some of them have been through hell: some are traumatized veterans who don't know how to adapt to normal life, others were recruited when they were young and don't know that there's a better way to live, and even more are mentally ill. We're alone in this galaxy, and we can't leave so many people behind. That's why we've come up with an excellent solution: we've set up isolated communities on distant moons and frontier planets where these criminals can be reeducated, rehabilitated, and allowed to repay their debt to society. When they're deemed 'reformed' and have graduated from our program, they'll be granted a hefty stipend and their criminal record will be deemed irrelevant, allowing them to reintegrate and become functioning members of our proud society.
MC: all of these sound like incredible steps forward in the fight to better our society and make real progress, Director. Sadly, we do have to step away for a moment, but you best believe I'll be back, Halcyon, and we'll be asking the Director here some burning questions about allegations over the quality of life Erubus Supermax! Now, a word from our sponsors!
Halcyon Xenopet-Megaplex! Everything your xenopet could ever need in one place! Adoption is now free-
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Good, you’re still alive! The rest of this shard appears to be corrupted, which means this particular trail seems to have run cold here, but do not despair; you need to keep searching. Find out what happened. Find the truth.I cannot guide you any longer: they've already found me, and if I remain in contact with you they'll find you as well. Take the archival database, and see what you can piece together. Maybe if we discover what truly happened we can put an end to this madness once and for all. I'm counting on you. Don't cry for me, I don't fear death, but I fear what they'll do to me to get to you: there are far worse fates than death, after all.
2024.06.01 06:18 Poorly-Drawn-Beagle Orphaned Passages III
Little Green Card
He couldn't help it. Work was dull. At least, supervisory work was dull. His work was dull. So he caught himself mindlessly mowing through the news feed on his phone.
Nothing really new there. Tedious streaming service announces tedious new show. Famous person announces Thing. Riots in South America. Another satellite crash. And of course: POTUS touts successes of new work-visa program for Lawful Aliens.
Hey, that's us, Twitch thought to himself. He forced himself to put the phone down. Instructions from the top were that the day ended at 6. And the crew would continue, uncomplaining, until well past that- until whenever he said. But today he felt like cutting everyone some slack.
"Alright," Twitch called over the walkie. "That's a full day and then some. Let's call it quits. Good work, everyone."
Machines flicked off. Hands, claws, flippers and tentacles dropped tools. The guy with the huge, pulsing exposed brain lowered his hands, relaxing his telekinetic grip on a bevy of steel girders. The little green thing in charge of containing spills stopped stuffing radium into its mouth. Everyone filed off the worksite. Just another day. Twitch let Working 6 to 6, what a way to make a living. play in his head.
***
It was Friday. He decided to treat the crew. Why not? There was really only the one bar in town that catered to offworlders, but it was cozy enough.
Twitch realized with some discomfort how young the bartender was. Once upon a time, he would have been the youngest person here. And some day, the person behind the bar would be so young they wouldn't even remember the day the aliens showed up. Wild.
For now Twitch nursed a disturbingly dusty-tasting Arnold Palmer with Gary, a dozer operator who looked a little bit like a kangaroo crossed with an okapi. Gary was generally good company.
Tonight, regrettably, there was... other company. A nasty-looking skinhead sat at the adjacent table, hurling every vile slur for offworlders that a fertile imagination could conjure. Twitch eventually gave the little stinker a tight smile.
"You know, there's no point insulting Gary. You just can't get under his skin that way."
The skinhead looked like he was about to respond. Before he could, Twitch slammed his bald head onto the table and shoved a lemon wedge into his mouth. The bartender obligingly looked away.
"No," Twitch continued. "That would be the way to get under MY skin."
***
A proper evil rant
A proper witch ought to cackle. This witch couldn't quite manage a cackle; it was more of a guffaw. Admittedly, from the king's new perspective as a newt (he was newly newted, he noted), it made little difference.
"And what's this?" the witch near-shrieked with glee, holding up one of the priceless antiques that adorned the throne room which had once been his. "A present? Your favorite maybe? Oops!" There was a shattering noise as it hit the ground. Through his new, newty brain, the king was still capable of mustering up some good old hatred.
"How did that feel?" The witch hissed, now sounding less than amused. "How does it feel? I mean, I know, certainly, I just want to know how your experience squares up with mine. So tell me. How does it feel, to have everything taken away from you?"
There was a thump from outside the throne room, some triumphant roars.
"Ohhhh," the witch breathed. "That must be your family, here to try and rescue you. Hold on. You can answer me in just a moment."
***
When someone's abiding by the old cliches
"Good evening, people of Golden City. You all know me. And today, it is your privilege to play witness to the absolute apotheosis of my criminal genius. I trust you all know my special guest for the day. For years, he has been your most beloved hero."
The camera shifted, revealing a bound, helpless figure, head bowed in defeat, hollow eyes gazing to the floor.
"Here he is! Broken. Helpless. Bested at last, through the combined efforts of myself and my colleagues. Now, to memorialize my sheer genius, and as a special gift to the public, you will all play witness to his swift, painful execution."
***
It was no exaggeration to say the broadcast was seen and heard in every screen across the city. It was even seen and heard on the tiny screen of the contraband portable TV kept in the maximum security cell of the most feared gangster of the past generation, who viewed with piqued interest alongside his two most trusted accomplices.
"I think he's actually gonna do it."
"Nah. We tried this a hundred times."
"We never made it THIS far. He's gonna do it."
"Wait and see."
"Come on, man. Cut the speech short. Come ooooon."
***
The broken hero worked up the strength to lift his weary head. "You've won," he gasped. "I admit it. There's only one thing I have to know."
All eyes in the room were suddenly trained on him.
"Which of you is it going to be? Who gets the privilege of killing me?"
***
"Don't fall for it, don't fall for it," murmured the man in the cell.
***
There was silence in the room, for a moment. Then...
"Well, me, obviously. This was my brilliant scheme."
"Your ass, Vernon. I did all the legwork."
"Shut up, both of you. I should get to kill him."
***
There were groans from all three men in the cell.
"Nah. He's fucked it. They've fucked it," their leader sighed. "Good effort, though."
submitted by Poorly-Drawn-Beagle to StoriesPlentiful [link] [comments]
He couldn't help it. Work was dull. At least, supervisory work was dull. His work was dull. So he caught himself mindlessly mowing through the news feed on his phone.
Nothing really new there. Tedious streaming service announces tedious new show. Famous person announces Thing. Riots in South America. Another satellite crash. And of course: POTUS touts successes of new work-visa program for Lawful Aliens.
Hey, that's us, Twitch thought to himself. He forced himself to put the phone down. Instructions from the top were that the day ended at 6. And the crew would continue, uncomplaining, until well past that- until whenever he said. But today he felt like cutting everyone some slack.
"Alright," Twitch called over the walkie. "That's a full day and then some. Let's call it quits. Good work, everyone."
Machines flicked off. Hands, claws, flippers and tentacles dropped tools. The guy with the huge, pulsing exposed brain lowered his hands, relaxing his telekinetic grip on a bevy of steel girders. The little green thing in charge of containing spills stopped stuffing radium into its mouth. Everyone filed off the worksite. Just another day. Twitch let Working 6 to 6, what a way to make a living. play in his head.
***
It was Friday. He decided to treat the crew. Why not? There was really only the one bar in town that catered to offworlders, but it was cozy enough.
Twitch realized with some discomfort how young the bartender was. Once upon a time, he would have been the youngest person here. And some day, the person behind the bar would be so young they wouldn't even remember the day the aliens showed up. Wild.
For now Twitch nursed a disturbingly dusty-tasting Arnold Palmer with Gary, a dozer operator who looked a little bit like a kangaroo crossed with an okapi. Gary was generally good company.
Tonight, regrettably, there was... other company. A nasty-looking skinhead sat at the adjacent table, hurling every vile slur for offworlders that a fertile imagination could conjure. Twitch eventually gave the little stinker a tight smile.
"You know, there's no point insulting Gary. You just can't get under his skin that way."
The skinhead looked like he was about to respond. Before he could, Twitch slammed his bald head onto the table and shoved a lemon wedge into his mouth. The bartender obligingly looked away.
"No," Twitch continued. "That would be the way to get under MY skin."
***
A proper evil rant
A proper witch ought to cackle. This witch couldn't quite manage a cackle; it was more of a guffaw. Admittedly, from the king's new perspective as a newt (he was newly newted, he noted), it made little difference.
"And what's this?" the witch near-shrieked with glee, holding up one of the priceless antiques that adorned the throne room which had once been his. "A present? Your favorite maybe? Oops!" There was a shattering noise as it hit the ground. Through his new, newty brain, the king was still capable of mustering up some good old hatred.
"How did that feel?" The witch hissed, now sounding less than amused. "How does it feel? I mean, I know, certainly, I just want to know how your experience squares up with mine. So tell me. How does it feel, to have everything taken away from you?"
There was a thump from outside the throne room, some triumphant roars.
"Ohhhh," the witch breathed. "That must be your family, here to try and rescue you. Hold on. You can answer me in just a moment."
***
When someone's abiding by the old cliches
"Good evening, people of Golden City. You all know me. And today, it is your privilege to play witness to the absolute apotheosis of my criminal genius. I trust you all know my special guest for the day. For years, he has been your most beloved hero."
The camera shifted, revealing a bound, helpless figure, head bowed in defeat, hollow eyes gazing to the floor.
"Here he is! Broken. Helpless. Bested at last, through the combined efforts of myself and my colleagues. Now, to memorialize my sheer genius, and as a special gift to the public, you will all play witness to his swift, painful execution."
***
It was no exaggeration to say the broadcast was seen and heard in every screen across the city. It was even seen and heard on the tiny screen of the contraband portable TV kept in the maximum security cell of the most feared gangster of the past generation, who viewed with piqued interest alongside his two most trusted accomplices.
"I think he's actually gonna do it."
"Nah. We tried this a hundred times."
"We never made it THIS far. He's gonna do it."
"Wait and see."
"Come on, man. Cut the speech short. Come ooooon."
***
The broken hero worked up the strength to lift his weary head. "You've won," he gasped. "I admit it. There's only one thing I have to know."
All eyes in the room were suddenly trained on him.
"Which of you is it going to be? Who gets the privilege of killing me?"
***
"Don't fall for it, don't fall for it," murmured the man in the cell.
***
There was silence in the room, for a moment. Then...
"Well, me, obviously. This was my brilliant scheme."
"Your ass, Vernon. I did all the legwork."
"Shut up, both of you. I should get to kill him."
***
There were groans from all three men in the cell.
"Nah. He's fucked it. They've fucked it," their leader sighed. "Good effort, though."
2024.06.01 06:10 Distinger_ Adrift, alone, no hope left
Long read, here's some background music.
I woke up in a world I didn't recognize, and I didn't recognize myself as well. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? Did I always look like this? I kept asking myself these questions while I worked on repairing the crashed ship I found.
First, I felt it, I thought it was an earthquake, but then I heard it: an unimaginably loud roar coming out of multiple jaws at the same time, it was a proper sound for an entity as big as that... thing. It had the shape of a worm, but it had huge fangs and horns, it also had a few sets of small wings, which were actually quite big, but small in comparison to the rest of it's body. It couldn't fly, but it could steer slightly as it stormed through the skies, from underneath the ground and back in it again. A second, less deafening roar bounced between the mountains as I felt it burrowing in the ground.
As I was collecting the last few materials I needed, I remembered seeing this creature somewhere else, they usually gather in- ... A huge earthquake directly behind me, strong enough to make me fall to the ground. I turn around to see four of these giant worms emerge from their nest, and smaller creatures follow them shortly after. I blasted the engines of my jetpack on full power, I didn't even realize I had dropped a few things in the process. Luckily they didn't follow me, as I had exited their territory.
After gathering enough resources to sustain this harsh environment, I finished the repairs of the ship and took off. I went to the system's space station, hoping to trade with the few coins I had, and maybe find a way back home, if I ever had one to begin with.
I barely had the resources to repair the ship, so to save up on hyperdrive fuel I disengaged it a bit earlier. I immediately noticed something was wrong, the space station seemed to have been attacked, as there were signs of external damage and rubble floating around it. I feared it had been taken over by pirates as I entered it, but as I was flying through the long hall towards the landing pads, I saw something much worse: nothing.
Absolutely nothing. No trading posts, no signage of any kind, no guild, no trade terminal or teleporter... no people. Even the space station's core was missing. Was it still under construction? No, that's just stupid. What happened here? There were signs of a battle inside the station, but not a single body or ship.
I decided to check the nearby systems, maybe someone had escaped to one of them. Before leaving, I explored the rest of the system to build myself a warp engine and warp cells, but to my surprise all the planets had the same giant worms. Maybe a meteor shower brought them here? Maybe one of them had crashed in the space station? Did I... did I have something to do with all of this?
Forget about that, it's time to warp.
A strange eerie feeling arose in me as I landed in the new, broken and completely empty space station. There was nothing and no one in here as well. The same signs of struggle, but no bodies, not even a drop of blood, not the tiniest part of someone's suit. The planets were also infested with the same worms, though this time some of them presented Sentinel activity, at least not everything's completely dead.
I warped five more times. Five empty systems. This can't be happening everywhere, right?
I built a signal booster and traced a comms tower, I powered it up and started scanning desperately. Please, someone answer. I boost it's range. Someone, anyone? I manipulate the machinery to reach it's absolute maximum range. SOMEONE, I BEG YOU TO ANSWER! ... ... ...
My legs started to shake as I stood there, listening to the empty static of the transmission. I was about to give up and stop the connection, but right then I got it, the tiniest, faintest echo of a transmission. There is hope.
The signal is coming from... the anomaly? Of course! Why hadn't I thought about it before? I recomposed myself and, with a smile, got in my ship, took off the planet and summoned the anomaly.
After landing and exiting my ship, I noticed the place a bit too quiet... But at last, I found someone, or at least their remains, limbs hanging on the desk, their head was an unrecognizable mess, not like I could remember who they were, I barely even managed to remember the anomaly.
I walked through the corridors and all I could find was more gruesome scenes. The travel logs didn't indicate anything suspicious. They all arrived here... but never left, so where are their ships? There's no indications of any pirates or sentinels having been here, who could've done this? Unless... no, that's not possible, why would they do this to themselves?
As I reached the balcony of the second floor, my eyes widened as I saw the first person ever in such a long time, I couldn't be more excited! But I have to be careful, what if he's the murderer? I approached him slowly and carefully, but he wasn't moving a bit, he wasn't even looking at me, I don't think he noticed me. He seems to be asleep, or in some kind of trance, I don't know how to wake him up.
I decided to continue deeper into the anomaly, towards the signal, maybe I could finally get some answers. I reached a machine called Prime Terminal, it appeared to still be working, even though it was in a deplorable state, just like the rest of the anomaly.
Someone or something had answered, but it was not the kind of answer that I expected. It was asking for an object called "Mind Ark", and it gave me the instructions to build it.
The materials needed were quite strange, I had never seen them before, but my exosuit marked their locations on the galactic map, as if I had already done this before and it rembembered... nevermind. I focused my energy into this single task, as it appeared to be my only hope of contacting someone.
After a long journey, I did it, I built the Mind Ark. I went back to the anomaly and connected it to the Prime Terminal. I watched as thousands of strings composed by numbers moved at speeds I could not process, somehow it appeared to be transferring data to the Mind Ark.
My exosuit interpreted the final data as planetary coordinates, which led me to an ancient portal, built with a technology long lost, but somehow, the Mind Ark fitted perfectly in it. I let it do it's job and it opened the portal. A bit hesitant, but thinking it couldn't be worse than the situation I was in, I walked through it.
This feeling was strange, it was nothing like teleporting with our current technology, this was somehow more advanced.
I was in space by myself, with no ship! This is insane! I thought, I felt the stars warmth as I tried to maintain my composure, I let myself float in space, I became one with space. And then, a white light.
I woke up in a planet I didn't recognize, but this time I did recognize myself. My name is Artemis.
Once again I took off with my ship and I started warping to nearby systems, in search of someone that could help me. There was no one left in this Universe except for me and the great Atlas. How long had it been since I've been travelling? months? years? I do not know. I let my ship continue into the vast void of space as I closed my eyes and started dreaming.
I dreamt of a different universe, one that was full of people, one where there were no empty systems. One where someone came to my rescue.
The End.
Notes: If you've made it this far, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. Adrift is the first expedition I get to play, and so far it's definitely something unique. I didn't think taking out all the npc's could make such a big difference in how you perceive the game, even though all the messages and random bases break the immersion a bit (maybe more than a bit).
After I reached the ending of Phase 2 / beginning of Phase 3 (I don't remember now the exact moment) where you need to "hyperdrive away and dream" I just needed to express how I felt during this expedition.
I did rush the ending of this narration, as it took quite longer to write than I expected in the first place, but I feel I managed to express perfectly how I felt during those last moments (I even put the song I was listening to at the beginning of the post).
Have a nice day and a lovely expedition travellers!
submitted by Distinger_ to NoMansSkyTheGame [link] [comments]
I woke up in a world I didn't recognize, and I didn't recognize myself as well. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? Did I always look like this? I kept asking myself these questions while I worked on repairing the crashed ship I found.
First, I felt it, I thought it was an earthquake, but then I heard it: an unimaginably loud roar coming out of multiple jaws at the same time, it was a proper sound for an entity as big as that... thing. It had the shape of a worm, but it had huge fangs and horns, it also had a few sets of small wings, which were actually quite big, but small in comparison to the rest of it's body. It couldn't fly, but it could steer slightly as it stormed through the skies, from underneath the ground and back in it again. A second, less deafening roar bounced between the mountains as I felt it burrowing in the ground.
As I was collecting the last few materials I needed, I remembered seeing this creature somewhere else, they usually gather in- ... A huge earthquake directly behind me, strong enough to make me fall to the ground. I turn around to see four of these giant worms emerge from their nest, and smaller creatures follow them shortly after. I blasted the engines of my jetpack on full power, I didn't even realize I had dropped a few things in the process. Luckily they didn't follow me, as I had exited their territory.
After gathering enough resources to sustain this harsh environment, I finished the repairs of the ship and took off. I went to the system's space station, hoping to trade with the few coins I had, and maybe find a way back home, if I ever had one to begin with.
I barely had the resources to repair the ship, so to save up on hyperdrive fuel I disengaged it a bit earlier. I immediately noticed something was wrong, the space station seemed to have been attacked, as there were signs of external damage and rubble floating around it. I feared it had been taken over by pirates as I entered it, but as I was flying through the long hall towards the landing pads, I saw something much worse: nothing.
Absolutely nothing. No trading posts, no signage of any kind, no guild, no trade terminal or teleporter... no people. Even the space station's core was missing. Was it still under construction? No, that's just stupid. What happened here? There were signs of a battle inside the station, but not a single body or ship.
I decided to check the nearby systems, maybe someone had escaped to one of them. Before leaving, I explored the rest of the system to build myself a warp engine and warp cells, but to my surprise all the planets had the same giant worms. Maybe a meteor shower brought them here? Maybe one of them had crashed in the space station? Did I... did I have something to do with all of this?
Forget about that, it's time to warp.
A strange eerie feeling arose in me as I landed in the new, broken and completely empty space station. There was nothing and no one in here as well. The same signs of struggle, but no bodies, not even a drop of blood, not the tiniest part of someone's suit. The planets were also infested with the same worms, though this time some of them presented Sentinel activity, at least not everything's completely dead.
I warped five more times. Five empty systems. This can't be happening everywhere, right?
I built a signal booster and traced a comms tower, I powered it up and started scanning desperately. Please, someone answer. I boost it's range. Someone, anyone? I manipulate the machinery to reach it's absolute maximum range. SOMEONE, I BEG YOU TO ANSWER! ... ... ...
My legs started to shake as I stood there, listening to the empty static of the transmission. I was about to give up and stop the connection, but right then I got it, the tiniest, faintest echo of a transmission. There is hope.
The signal is coming from... the anomaly? Of course! Why hadn't I thought about it before? I recomposed myself and, with a smile, got in my ship, took off the planet and summoned the anomaly.
After landing and exiting my ship, I noticed the place a bit too quiet... But at last, I found someone, or at least their remains, limbs hanging on the desk, their head was an unrecognizable mess, not like I could remember who they were, I barely even managed to remember the anomaly.
I walked through the corridors and all I could find was more gruesome scenes. The travel logs didn't indicate anything suspicious. They all arrived here... but never left, so where are their ships? There's no indications of any pirates or sentinels having been here, who could've done this? Unless... no, that's not possible, why would they do this to themselves?
As I reached the balcony of the second floor, my eyes widened as I saw the first person ever in such a long time, I couldn't be more excited! But I have to be careful, what if he's the murderer? I approached him slowly and carefully, but he wasn't moving a bit, he wasn't even looking at me, I don't think he noticed me. He seems to be asleep, or in some kind of trance, I don't know how to wake him up.
I decided to continue deeper into the anomaly, towards the signal, maybe I could finally get some answers. I reached a machine called Prime Terminal, it appeared to still be working, even though it was in a deplorable state, just like the rest of the anomaly.
Someone or something had answered, but it was not the kind of answer that I expected. It was asking for an object called "Mind Ark", and it gave me the instructions to build it.
The materials needed were quite strange, I had never seen them before, but my exosuit marked their locations on the galactic map, as if I had already done this before and it rembembered... nevermind. I focused my energy into this single task, as it appeared to be my only hope of contacting someone.
After a long journey, I did it, I built the Mind Ark. I went back to the anomaly and connected it to the Prime Terminal. I watched as thousands of strings composed by numbers moved at speeds I could not process, somehow it appeared to be transferring data to the Mind Ark.
My exosuit interpreted the final data as planetary coordinates, which led me to an ancient portal, built with a technology long lost, but somehow, the Mind Ark fitted perfectly in it. I let it do it's job and it opened the portal. A bit hesitant, but thinking it couldn't be worse than the situation I was in, I walked through it.
This feeling was strange, it was nothing like teleporting with our current technology, this was somehow more advanced.
I was in space by myself, with no ship! This is insane! I thought, I felt the stars warmth as I tried to maintain my composure, I let myself float in space, I became one with space. And then, a white light.
I woke up in a planet I didn't recognize, but this time I did recognize myself. My name is Artemis.
Once again I took off with my ship and I started warping to nearby systems, in search of someone that could help me. There was no one left in this Universe except for me and the great Atlas. How long had it been since I've been travelling? months? years? I do not know. I let my ship continue into the vast void of space as I closed my eyes and started dreaming.
I dreamt of a different universe, one that was full of people, one where there were no empty systems. One where someone came to my rescue.
The End.
Notes: If you've made it this far, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. Adrift is the first expedition I get to play, and so far it's definitely something unique. I didn't think taking out all the npc's could make such a big difference in how you perceive the game, even though all the messages and random bases break the immersion a bit (maybe more than a bit).
After I reached the ending of Phase 2 / beginning of Phase 3 (I don't remember now the exact moment) where you need to "hyperdrive away and dream" I just needed to express how I felt during this expedition.
I did rush the ending of this narration, as it took quite longer to write than I expected in the first place, but I feel I managed to express perfectly how I felt during those last moments (I even put the song I was listening to at the beginning of the post).
Have a nice day and a lovely expedition travellers!
2024.06.01 05:33 Teglement Beating Every Spyro Game Part I - Spyro the Dragon
I'm going through and beating every single Spyro game. Well, not Skylanders. That's a whole different bag of worms. But everything else is covered, from the heavenly highs to the hellish lows. I've played the first three games in the series countless times, so these will be more retrospective reviews - but most everything else I either haven't touched in 20 years or have never played at all. So without any further ado.
The first game in the franchise. The first I played, and the first I loved. My uncle came into possession of a PS1 when I was young and the only two games he initially had were Team Losi RC Racing and this. Spyro the Dragon. It was, essentially, love at first sight. The second I stepped into the Artisan homeworld and took in all its beautiful vibrancy, I knew it was the game for me. Course, that vibrancy all these years later is some low poly amorphous enemies and primitive grass textures, but it's still real to me, dammit! I'd say about 98% of you are already familiar with the franchise, but for that 2% that was born yesterday, Spyro the Dragon is a 3D collect-a-thon platformer. Blaze through levels collecting gems, recovering dragon eggs, and saving petrified dragons all for the good of dragonkind. Oh, and stop Gnasty Gnorc, the primary antagonist.
Course, this being an old game and the first to kick off the franchise, the story is pretty loose. Gnasty Gnorc displays his personality in...exactly one cutscene at the start of the game until you finally face him at the end. The sweeping majority of the rest of the dialogue comes from the dragons you save, which fall under three categories - a mildly humorous exchange, a helpful hint, or "Thank you for releasing me!" But don't let the lack of a real script turn you off - the environmental worldbuilding is off the charts. Just look at the homeworld names. Artisans, Peace Keepers, Magic Crafters, Beast Makers, and Dream Weavers. You know what these individual dragons do in their spare time based on those names, and they look like it, too. Dragons is the Peace Keepeers domain tend to look beefier and with more muted colors, whereas Dream Weavers dragons are slender and downright neon in comparison. Combine this with the many visual gags and easter eggs - such as gnorcs setting traps to catch chickens or even infighting by firing off cannons at one another - and the game does a solid job at immersing you in the dragon worlds without having to yap.
But you didn't come here for a plot. You came here for some of the sweet gem collecting, fire breathing, gliding and charging gameplay. This is probably the purest title in the entire franchise in terms of platforming. There's nothing in the way of puzzles or shooting galleries or anything like that - everything is strictly 'dispatch the enemy and set foot on every square inch of the map.' The goal to every level? Collect things. The method to doing that? Explore. Repeat this for every level. Well, except the flight levels - those are the one exception. But everywhere else, the entire order of the day is tracking down every collectible, and this game makes it a pure joy. Sometimes they're hidden away in places you couldn't find until you're at the end of the level and notice an obscure ledge you couldn't see before. Maybe you forget to check behind a specific tree, and there's your last gem in the level. But this never even gets frustrating - the levels are so compact and gracefully designed that you're not going to spend seven hours roaming back and forth between a 2-square-mile open world looking for one context sensitive button prompt.
I should touch on just a couple specific levels to give some examples of what makes the game tick. The first one in the entire game you're likely to enter is Stone Hill, a lush, hilly, flowing map. I've heard some people argue that it's too empty, but I think it's a good thing for an early level. You've got plenty of room to charge around and get your bearings. The addition of an entire upper level that surrounds the rest of the level is great as well to drill home the concept of verticality. But if you want an example of how vicious the levels can get, look no further than Tree Tops. It's unlikely that you'll die to the enemies - they're nothing special. But the most well hidden collectibles are stashed away on far away islands you can only reach by properly exploiting the level's many supercharge ramps and stringing them together to create incredible distance in your glides. No matter how many times I play the game, this one still stumps me when I come back to it. You'll probably lose a few lives plummeting into the abyss.
Recalling the flight levels, now. They're at their hardest in this game, honestly. Future Spyro games would generally put the obstacles in a sensible and easy to parse out order - though faster options would of course exist. They're just kinda all hard in this one, though. You've got really tight windows to make sure you flame every chest, fly through every arch, etc. Some of them still take me a few tries to get down, and I've probably 120%'d this game close to a dozen times. But if you want that full percentage, you'll have to figure it out. They're my least favorite part of the game, even if they do present something a little different to do. Side note: One of the dragons you rescue says these levels help you 'learn to fly'. I was so stoked as a kid assuming that beating them all would unlock flight in every level. Yeah, that didn't happen.
Otherwise, the only other major diversion is the boss level in each world. Laid out like any other normal level, but usually a little harder and with a boss at the end. I'm gonna be honest; the bosses in this game are mostly kinda ass. Most of them are just...Walk up and flame them. Except for Metalhead in Beast Makers. Special shoutout to him. You have to actually charge powered up pylons when they're on cooldown to take him out. It's simple, but it's SOMETHING different. Honestly, probably my favorite level in all Beast Makers, as even the explorative approaching segments leading up to him are really well done. But even the final boss in the game, Gnasty Gnorc himself, is just a kinda mind numbing chase. You're charging the entire time, and it's not great. But, again, first game in the franchise and all that.
But you're probably wondering what you get for going through all this and collecting every little piece of treasure. Why, Gnasty's Loot of course, a bonus stage chock full of treasure and...Thief chases. Goody. The level has this awkward mechanic where there's an invisible ceiling that only raises when you get to that level on foot, and it's honestly pretty clunky. Still, that final room where you collect something like 1000 treasure in a single explosion is pretty gratifying. Despite my nay-saying the bosses and the final level, I really do adore the sweeping majority of this game. The atmosphere of each and every level is simply wonderful. Stewart Copeland's soundtrack is to die for as well, with some absolutely infectious tunes that have stayed nestled in my head for the past 25 years. The presentation is just so spot on and the explorative level design, while typically small, is just so fun to go through. All in all, one of my favorite games of all time with some very small nitpicks that really don't tarnish the overall appeal of it for me at all. Strongly, strongly recommended.
submitted by Teglement to patientgamers [link] [comments]
The first game in the franchise. The first I played, and the first I loved. My uncle came into possession of a PS1 when I was young and the only two games he initially had were Team Losi RC Racing and this. Spyro the Dragon. It was, essentially, love at first sight. The second I stepped into the Artisan homeworld and took in all its beautiful vibrancy, I knew it was the game for me. Course, that vibrancy all these years later is some low poly amorphous enemies and primitive grass textures, but it's still real to me, dammit! I'd say about 98% of you are already familiar with the franchise, but for that 2% that was born yesterday, Spyro the Dragon is a 3D collect-a-thon platformer. Blaze through levels collecting gems, recovering dragon eggs, and saving petrified dragons all for the good of dragonkind. Oh, and stop Gnasty Gnorc, the primary antagonist.
Course, this being an old game and the first to kick off the franchise, the story is pretty loose. Gnasty Gnorc displays his personality in...exactly one cutscene at the start of the game until you finally face him at the end. The sweeping majority of the rest of the dialogue comes from the dragons you save, which fall under three categories - a mildly humorous exchange, a helpful hint, or "Thank you for releasing me!" But don't let the lack of a real script turn you off - the environmental worldbuilding is off the charts. Just look at the homeworld names. Artisans, Peace Keepers, Magic Crafters, Beast Makers, and Dream Weavers. You know what these individual dragons do in their spare time based on those names, and they look like it, too. Dragons is the Peace Keepeers domain tend to look beefier and with more muted colors, whereas Dream Weavers dragons are slender and downright neon in comparison. Combine this with the many visual gags and easter eggs - such as gnorcs setting traps to catch chickens or even infighting by firing off cannons at one another - and the game does a solid job at immersing you in the dragon worlds without having to yap.
But you didn't come here for a plot. You came here for some of the sweet gem collecting, fire breathing, gliding and charging gameplay. This is probably the purest title in the entire franchise in terms of platforming. There's nothing in the way of puzzles or shooting galleries or anything like that - everything is strictly 'dispatch the enemy and set foot on every square inch of the map.' The goal to every level? Collect things. The method to doing that? Explore. Repeat this for every level. Well, except the flight levels - those are the one exception. But everywhere else, the entire order of the day is tracking down every collectible, and this game makes it a pure joy. Sometimes they're hidden away in places you couldn't find until you're at the end of the level and notice an obscure ledge you couldn't see before. Maybe you forget to check behind a specific tree, and there's your last gem in the level. But this never even gets frustrating - the levels are so compact and gracefully designed that you're not going to spend seven hours roaming back and forth between a 2-square-mile open world looking for one context sensitive button prompt.
I should touch on just a couple specific levels to give some examples of what makes the game tick. The first one in the entire game you're likely to enter is Stone Hill, a lush, hilly, flowing map. I've heard some people argue that it's too empty, but I think it's a good thing for an early level. You've got plenty of room to charge around and get your bearings. The addition of an entire upper level that surrounds the rest of the level is great as well to drill home the concept of verticality. But if you want an example of how vicious the levels can get, look no further than Tree Tops. It's unlikely that you'll die to the enemies - they're nothing special. But the most well hidden collectibles are stashed away on far away islands you can only reach by properly exploiting the level's many supercharge ramps and stringing them together to create incredible distance in your glides. No matter how many times I play the game, this one still stumps me when I come back to it. You'll probably lose a few lives plummeting into the abyss.
Recalling the flight levels, now. They're at their hardest in this game, honestly. Future Spyro games would generally put the obstacles in a sensible and easy to parse out order - though faster options would of course exist. They're just kinda all hard in this one, though. You've got really tight windows to make sure you flame every chest, fly through every arch, etc. Some of them still take me a few tries to get down, and I've probably 120%'d this game close to a dozen times. But if you want that full percentage, you'll have to figure it out. They're my least favorite part of the game, even if they do present something a little different to do. Side note: One of the dragons you rescue says these levels help you 'learn to fly'. I was so stoked as a kid assuming that beating them all would unlock flight in every level. Yeah, that didn't happen.
Otherwise, the only other major diversion is the boss level in each world. Laid out like any other normal level, but usually a little harder and with a boss at the end. I'm gonna be honest; the bosses in this game are mostly kinda ass. Most of them are just...Walk up and flame them. Except for Metalhead in Beast Makers. Special shoutout to him. You have to actually charge powered up pylons when they're on cooldown to take him out. It's simple, but it's SOMETHING different. Honestly, probably my favorite level in all Beast Makers, as even the explorative approaching segments leading up to him are really well done. But even the final boss in the game, Gnasty Gnorc himself, is just a kinda mind numbing chase. You're charging the entire time, and it's not great. But, again, first game in the franchise and all that.
But you're probably wondering what you get for going through all this and collecting every little piece of treasure. Why, Gnasty's Loot of course, a bonus stage chock full of treasure and...Thief chases. Goody. The level has this awkward mechanic where there's an invisible ceiling that only raises when you get to that level on foot, and it's honestly pretty clunky. Still, that final room where you collect something like 1000 treasure in a single explosion is pretty gratifying. Despite my nay-saying the bosses and the final level, I really do adore the sweeping majority of this game. The atmosphere of each and every level is simply wonderful. Stewart Copeland's soundtrack is to die for as well, with some absolutely infectious tunes that have stayed nestled in my head for the past 25 years. The presentation is just so spot on and the explorative level design, while typically small, is just so fun to go through. All in all, one of my favorite games of all time with some very small nitpicks that really don't tarnish the overall appeal of it for me at all. Strongly, strongly recommended.
2024.06.01 05:07 MirkWorks Excerpt from The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch (Paternalism Without Father)
X. Paternalism Without Father
…
The Managerial and Professional Elite as a Ruling Class
As even the rich lose the sense of place and historical continuity, the subjective feeling of “entitlement,” which takes inherited advantages for granted, gives way to what clinicians call “narcissistic entitlement” - grandiose illusions, inner emptiness. The advantages the rich confer on their children dwindle down to money alone. As the new elite discards the outlook of the old bourgeoisie, it identifies itself not with the work ethic and the responsibilities of wealth but with an ethic of leisure, hedonism, and self-fulfillment. Although it continues to administer American institutions in the interests of private property (corporate property as opposed to entrepreneurial property), it has replaced character building with permissiveness, the cure of souls with the cure of the psyche, blind justice with therapeutic justice, philosophy with social science, personal authority with an equally irrational authority of professional experts. It has tempered competition with antagonistic cooperation, while abolishing many of the rituals in which aggressive impulses formerly found civilized expression. It has surrounded people with “symbolically mediated information” and has substituted images of reality for reality itself. Without intending to, it has created new forms of illiteracy even in the act of setting up a system of universal education. It has undermined the family while attempting to rescue the family. It has torn away the veil of chivalry that once tempered the exploitation of women and has brought men and women face to face as antagonists. It has expropriated the worker’s knowledge of his craft and the mother’s “instinct” for childrearing, and has reorganized this knowledge as a body of esoteric lore accessible only to the initiated. The new ruling class has elaborated new patterns of dependence as effectively as its forebears eradicated the dependence of the peasant on his lord, the apprentice on his master, and the woman on her man.
I do not wish to imply a vast conspiracy against our liberties. These things have been done in broad daylight and have been done, on the whole, with good intentions. Nor have they arisen as a unified policy of social control. Social policy in the United States has unfolded in response to a series of immediate emergencies, and those who make policy seldom see beyond the problems at hand. The cult of pragmatism, moreover, justifies their unwillingness or inability to make far-reaching plans for the future. What unifies their actions is the need to promote and defend the system of corporate capitalism from which they - the managers and professionals who operate the system - derive most of the benefits. The needs of the system shape policy and set the permissible limits of public debate. Most of us can see the system but not the class that administers it and monopolizes the wealth it creates. We resist a class analysis of modern society as a “conspiracy theory.” Thus we prevent ourselves from understanding how our current difficulties arose, why they persist, or how they might be solved.
Progressivism and the Rise of the New Paternalism
The new paternalism emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, found political expression in the progressive movement and later in the New Deal, and gradually worked its way into every corner of American society. The democratic revolution of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, culminating in the Civil War, not only did away with monarchy but undermined established religion, landed elites, and finally overthrew the slaveholding oligarchy in the South. The revolution gave rise to a society based on individualism, competition, and the pursuit of the main chance. It also generated demands for further change, which came to a head in the period immediately following the Civil War. Having destroyed slavery in the name of free labor, the leaders of the democratic movement inadvertently encouraged northern workers to ask for the freedom to control the terms of their work, not merely to sell their labor at ruinous prices. The logic of democracy demanded the confiscation of Confederate estates and their distribution among the freedmen; it demanded woman suffrage; it demanded, in short, a more sweeping reorganization of society than its leaders had contemplated. Seeking merely to free property from its feudal and mercantile restrictions, bourgeois radicals in the 1860s and early 1870s found themselves confronted with an incipient attack on property itself, from which most of them recoiled in horror.
After the collapse of reconstruction and the radical agitation associated with it, American liberalism no longer spoke for the artisan, the small farmer, and the independent entrepreneur - the “producing classes” that had been the backbone of the democratic movement. Faced with unrest at home and with the spectacle of the Paris commune abroad, liberalism now identified itself, in the words of E. L. Godkin, with “the more well-to-do and observing classes.” It undertook to reform society from the top down - to professionalize the civil service, break the power of the urban machine, and put “the best men” into office. When such measures failed to stem the rising tide of labor militancy and agrarian radicalism, reformers brought forward their own version of the “cooperative commonwealth” in the name of progressivism: universal education, welfare capitalism, scientific management of industry and government. The New Deal completed what progressivism had begun, solidifying the foundations of the welfare state and adding much of the superstructure as well. In industry, scientific management gave way to the school of human relations, which tried to substitute cooperation for authoritarian control. But this cooperation rested on management’s monopoly of technology and the reduction of work to routines imperfectly understood by the worker and controlled by the capitalist. Similarly the expansion of welfare services presupposed the reduction of the citizen to a consumer of expertise.
American progressivism, which has successfully countered agrarian radicalism, the labor movement, and the feminist movement by enacting selective parts of their program, has now lost almost all trace of its origin in nineteenth-century liberalism. It has rejected the liberal conception of man, which assumed the primacy of rational self-interest, and has installed in its place a therapeutic conception which acknowledges irrational drives and seeks to divert them into socially constructive channels. It has rejected the stereotype of economic man and has attempted to bring the “whole man” under social control. Instead of regulating the conditions of work alone, it now regulates private life as well, organizing leisure time on scientific principles of social and personal hygiene. It has exposed the innermost secrets of the psyche to medical scrutiny and has thus encouraged habits of anxious self-scrutiny, superficially reminiscent of religious introspection but rooted in anxiety rather than a guilty conscience - in a narcissistic rather than a compulsive or hysterical type of personality.
Liberal Criticism of the Welfare State
The new modes of social control associated with the rise of progressivism having stabilized capitalism without solving any of its underlying problems - the gap between wealth and poverty, the failure of purchasing power to keep pace with productivity, economic stagnation. The new paternalism has kept social tensions from assuming political form, but it has not removed their source. As those tensions increasingly find expression in crime and random violence, critics have begun to ask whether the welfare system delivers all it promised. The system, moreover, has become more and more expensive to operate. Even those who remain loyal to the underlying premises of American capitalism have begun to express alarm about the mounting cost of maintaining it. Proposals to replace the welfare system with a guaranteed income or a negative income tax have gained a sympathetic hearing. In his book on old age, David Hackett Fischer argues that a national inheritance system, whereby a gift of capital at birth would accumulate interest and provide for the citizen in his old age, would prove “cheaper than present arrangements.” The modification or abandonment of the welfare system now presents itself not as a Utopian dream but as a matter of sound business practice.
The health and welfare industries, which have done so much to promote the new paternalism by professionalizing activities formerly carried on in the workshop, the neighborhood, or the home, have themselves begun to harbor second thoughts about the results of their own labors. Members of the “helping professions” have begun to question the efficiency of the public institutions and welfare agencies that monopolize the knowledge formerly administered by ordinary citizens - the hospital, the mental asylum, the juvenile court. The medical profession, after upholding the hospital as an indispensable alternative to the family, now begins to think that patients might be better off if they were allowed to die at home. Psychiatrists have been speculating along similar lines, not only because existing facilities are overcrowded but because they have failed to achieve the high rates of cure once predicted with such confidence. Lawyers have begun to criticize the courts for removing “neglected” children from their homes without evidence that such children suffer serious harm and without proof that institutionalization or transfer to foster parents provides any solution. Even the school’s claim on the child has begun to give way to parental claims. In Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the Supreme Court ruled that Amish parents have a right to keep their children out of the public schools. “The child is not the mere creature of the State,” the court said; “those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
Even with the best intentions, however, those who criticize the welfare state within the assumptions underlying a capitalist economy cannot bring themselves to confront the revolution in social relations that abandonment of the welfare system would require. Liberal criticism of the new paternalism resembles the “humanization” of the workplace, which tries to give the worker the illusion of participation while leaving management in undiminished control. The attempt to mitigate the monotony of the assembly line by allowing the worker to perform more than a single operation does not alter the condition that degrades work - the monotony of the assembly line by allowing the worker to perform more than a single operation does not alter the condition that degrades work - the monopoly of technical knowledge by means of which management designs all phases of production, while the worker merely carries out the bidding of the planning department. Recent proposals to modify the welfare system suffer from the same kind of limitation. Thus a study of the family commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation takes issue with the conventional assumption of parental incompetence while leaving unchallenged the definition of parents as consumers of professional services. Kenneth Keniston and the other authors of the Carnegie report, conscious of belonging to “an emerging consensus,” hold that parents “are still the world’s greatest experts about the needs of their own children.” They recognize that many of the agencies ostensibly ministering to the family have undermined the family instead. The parental “malaise,” according to Keniston, lies in “the sense of having no guidelines or supports for raising children, the feeling of not being in control as parents, and the widespread sense of personal guilt for what seems to be going awry.”
The rehabilitation of parenthood, it appears, implies an attack on professionalism and the welfare state. Yet Keniston stops well short of such an attack. He takes for granted the family’s dependence on experts and seeks merely to regularize and regulate this relationship. “Few people would dispute that we live in a society where parents must increasingly rely on others for help and support in raising their children.” The family economy has disappeared; children represent a financial liability rather than an asset; the school has taken over the family’s education functions; and the medical profession has assumed most of the responsibility for health care. These changes, according to Keniston, leave parents in the position of “executives in a large firm - responsible for the smooth coordination of the many people and processes that must work together to produce the final product.”
This line of analysis leads to the conclusion not that parents should collectively assert their control over childrearing but that federal policy should seek to equalize the relationship between experts and parents. Yet Keniston’s own reasoning shows that parents occupy a position closer to proletarians than to executives. As things now stand, according to Keniston, “parents have little authority over those with whom they share the task of raising their children”; they “deal with those others from a position of inferiority of helplessness.” The obvious reason for this is that the state, not the parents, pays the bill for professional services, or at least signs the paychecks. (The citizens, as taxpayers, pay in the end.) If parents organized and hired their own experts, things might be different.
It goes without saying that such solutions do not commend themselves to members of the policy-making establishment. Measures of this kind are too closely associated with populism, localism, and residual resistance to centralized progress. They have become doubly objectionable, and for reasons the force of which even enemies of the establishment must acknowledge, in the wake of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville battle of the late sixties, when “community control” degenerated into reverse racism and education into racial propaganda. Yet the alternative to community control is more bureaucracy. Instead of confronting the choice, liberal reformers try to have things both ways. While advocating an expansion of government services to the family, a federal guarantee of full employment, improved protection of children’s legal rights, and a vastly expanded program of health care, they propose to strengthen “parent participation” in all these programs. They treat the ascendancy of experts as an unavoidable condition of industrial society, even when they seek to qualify they ascendancy of experts as an unavoidable condition of industrial society, even when they seek to qualify this ascendancy by improving the position of consumers. They assume that the requirements of a complex society dictate the triumph of factory production over handicraft production and the ascendancy of the “helping professions” over the family.
Bureaucratic Dependence and Narcissism
Recent studies of professionalization show that professionalism did not emerge, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in response to clearly defined social needs. Instead, the new professions themselves invented many of the needs they claimed to satisfy. They played on public fears of disorder and disease, adopted a deliberately mystifying jargon, ridiculed popular traditions of self-help as backward and unscientific, and in this way created or intensified (not without opposition) a demand for their own services. The evidence of professional self-promotion can no longer be dismissed by reasserting the sociological truism that “modern society involves the individual in relations … that are vastly more complex than [those] his ancestors … had to content with.”
The family’s dependence on professional services over which it has little control represents one form of a more general phenomenon: the erosion of self-reliance and ordinary competence by the growth of giant corporations and of the bureaucratic state that serves them. The corporations and the state now control so much of the necessary know-how that Durkheim’s image of society as the “nourishing mother,” from whom all blessings flow, more and more coincides with the citizen’s everyday experience. The new paternalism has replaced personal dependence not with bureaucratic rationality, as theorists of modernization (beginning with Max Weber) have almost unanimously assumed, but with a new form of bureaucratic dependence. What appears to social scientists as a seamless web of “interdependence” represents in fact the dependence of the individual on the organization, the citizen on the state, the worker on the manager, and the parent on the “helping professions.” The “consensus of the competent,” as Thomas L. Haskell refers to the professions in his study of the professionalization of social science, came into being by reducing the layman to incompetence.
As retributive justice gives way to therapeutic justice, what began as a protest against moral oversimplification ends by destroying the very sense of moral responsibility. Therapeutic justice perpetuates childlike dependence into adulthood and deprives the citizen of legal resources against the state. Formerly law rested on an adversary relation between the state and the offender and acknowledged the superior power of the state by giving important procedural advantages to the defendant. Medical jurisprudence, on the other hand, implicates the offender in his own control. Relieved of moral responsibility when certified into the sick role, he cooperates with the doctors in his own “cure.”
The psychiatric critique of the law, like the therapeutic attack on authority in general, makes a virtue of substituting personal treatment for the impersonal, arbitrary authority of the courts. Thus a specialist in the sociology of law, acknowledging his intention to “substitute scientific therapies for legal sanctions - for ‘justice’” - once deplored the irrationality of legal procedures: “There is in the concept of justice an element of ‘fate’, which is absent in the concept of scientific treatment. The offender simply gets what he himself initiated…. Society as a whole is blameless. The criminal himself was the one who chose.” Whereas “the lawyer’s way of handling a human problem is typically non-scientific,” therapy treats the criminal or patient as a victim and thus puts matters in their proper light. The shift from “sin” to “sickness,” according to this writer, represents the first step toward “the introduction of science and personal reactions [into] human conflicts” and to the recognition of social problems as medical problems, in which “cooperation with the therapist” becomes “probably the most critical problem for the deviant.”
Medical justice shares with enlightened childrearing and pedagogy a tendency to promote dependence as a way of life. Therapeutic modes of thought and practice exempt their object, the patient, from critical judgment and relieve him of moral responsibility. Sickness by definition represents an invasion of the patient by forces outside his conscious control, and the patient’s realistic recognition of the limits of his own responsibility - his acceptance of his diseased and helpless condition - constitutes the first step toward recovery (or permanent invalidism, as the case may be). Therapy labels as sickness what might be judged as weak or willful actions; it thus equips the patient to fight (or resign himself to) the disease, instead of irrationally finding fault with himself. Inappropriately extended beyond the consulting room, however, therapeutic morality encourages a permanent suspension of the moral sense. There is a close connection, in turn, between the erosion of moral responsibility and the waning of the capacity for self-help - in the categories used by John R. Seeley, between the elimination of culpability and the elimination of competence. “What says ‘you are not guilty’ says also ‘you cannot help yourself.’” Therapy legitimates deviance as sickness, but it simultaneously pronounces the patient unfit to manage his own life and delivers him into the hands of a specialist. As therapeutic points of view and practice gain general acceptance, more and more people find themselves disqualified, in effect, from the performance of adult responsibilities and become dependent on some form of medical authority.
The psychological expression of this dependence is narcissism. In its pathological form, narcissism originates as a defense against feelings of helpless dependency in early life, which it tries to counter with “blind optimism” and grandiose illusions of personal self-sufficiency. Since modern society prolongs the experience of dependence into adult life, it encourages milder forms of narcissism in people who might otherwise come to terms with the inescapable limits on their personal freedom and power - limits inherent in the human condition - by developing competence as workers and parents. But at the same time that our society makes it more and more difficult to find satisfaction in love and work, it surrounds the individual with manufactured fantasies of total gratification. The new paternalism preaches not self-denial but self-fulfillment. It sides with narcissistic impulses and discourages their modification by the pleasure of becoming self-reliant, even in a limited domain, which under favorable conditions accompanies maturity. While it encourages grandiose dreams of omnipotence, moreover, the new paternalism undermines more modest fantasies, erodes the capacity to suspend disbelief, and thus makes less and less accessible the harmless substitute-gratifications, notably art and play, that help to mitigate the sense of powerlessness and the fear of dependence that otherwise express themselves in narcissistic traits.
Our society is narcissistic, then, in a double sense. People with narcissistic personalities, although not necessarily more numerous than before, play a conspicuous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence. Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these celebrities set the tone of public life and of private life as well, since the machinery of celebrity recognizes no boundaries between the public and the private realm. The beautiful people - to use this revealing expression to include not merely wealthy globetrotters but all those who bask, however briefly, in the full glare of the cameras - live out the fantasy of narcissistic success, which consists of nothing more substantial than a wish to be vastly admired, not for one’s accomplishments but simply for oneself, uncritically and without reservation.
Modern capitalist society not only elevates narcissists to prominence, it elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone. It does this in many ways: by displaying narcissism so prominently and in such attractive forms; by undermining parental authority and thus making it hard for children to grow up; but above all by creating so many varieties of bureaucratic dependence. This dependence, increasingly widespread in a society that is not merely paternalistic but maternalistic as well, makes it increasingly difficult for people to lay to rest the terrors of infancy or to enjoy the consolations of adulthood.
The Conservative Critique of Bureaucracy
Criticism of the new paternalism, insofar as it remains imprisoned in the assumptions of political liberalism, objects to the cost of maintaining a welfare state - the “human cost” as well as the cost to the taxpayers - without criticizing the ascendancy of the managerial and professional class. Another line of attack, which singles out bureaucracy as the overriding evil, arises out of a conservative idealization of old-fashioned individualism. Less equivocal in its opposition to bureaucratic centralization - except when it comes from right-wingers who denounce government regulation of industry and still plead for a gigantic military establishment - the conservative critique of bureaucracy superficially resembles the radical critique outlined in the present study. It deplores the erosion of authority, the corruption of standards in the schools, and the spread of permissiveness. But it refuses to acknowledge the connection between these developments and the rise of monopoly capitalism - between bureaucracy in government and bureaucracy in industry.
“The general historical conflict between individualism and collectivism is dividing mankind into two hostile camps,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in his study of bureaucracy. Capitalist free enterprise, he argued, rests on the rational calculation of profit and loss, whereas bureaucratic management “cannot be checked by economic calculation.” Extended beyond its legitimate domain of law enforcement and national defense, bureaucracy undermines individual initiative and substitutes “government control for free enterprise.” It substitutes the dictatorship of the state for the rule of law. Free-market capitalism, by turning labor into a commodity, “makes the wage earner free from any personal dependence” and detaches “appraisal of each individual’s effort … from any personal considerations.” Bureaucratic collectivism, on the other hand, undermines the “cool rationality and objectivity of capitalist relations” and renders the “plain citizen” dependent on the “professional propagandist of bureaucratization,” who confuses the citizen with his “empty catchwords” and esoteric obfuscation. “Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.” But under socialism - and “there is no compromise possible between these two systems,” according to Mises, “no third system” - the “way toward promotion is not achievement but the favor of the superiors.”
This argument suffers from the conservative’s idealization of the personal autonomy made possible by the free market and his willingness to concede enormous war-making powers to the state, so long as they do not interfere with “private” enterprise.” It cannot explain the spread of bureaucracy into industry itself. “The trend toward bureaucratic rigidity is not inherent in the evolution of business,” according to Mises. “It is an outcome of government meddling with business.” Such is his reply to the liberal argument that the inexorable trend toward economic concentration gives rise to a growing gap between ownership and control of the corporation, creates a new managerial elite, and calls into being a centralized state as the only agency capable of controlling it. The liberal analysis itself, however, needs modification. It is not the “divorce between ownership and control” that has created the managerial oligarchy but the divorce between production and planning. Having achieved a complete separation of handwork and brainwork, management monopolizes technical knowledge and reduces the workers to a human machine; but the administration and continual elaboration of this knowledge require an ever-growing managerial apparatus, itself organized on the principles of the factory with its intricate subdivision of tasks. Studies of progressivism and the New Deal have shown that government regulation of business often arose in response to the demands of businessmen themselves. Regulatory agencies draw most of their personnel from business. Neither the regulatory nor the welfare policies of the state rest on “an implacable hatred of private business and free enterprise,” as Mises claims. On the contrary, regulation controls competition and stabilizes the market, while the welfare system socializes the “human costs” of capitalist production - rising unemployment, inadequate wage scales, inadequate insurance against sickness and old age - and helps to forestall more radical solutions.
It is true that a professional elite of doctors, psychiatrists, social scientists, technicians, welfare workers, and civil servants now plays a leading part in the administration of the state and of the “knowledge industry.” But the state and the knowledge industry overlap at so many points with the business corporation (which has increasingly concerned itself with every phase of culture), and the new professionals share so many characteristics with the managers of industry, that the professional elite must be regarded not as an independent class but as a branch of modern management. The therapeutic ethic, which has replaced the nineteenth-century utilitarian ethic, does not serve the “class interest” of professionals alone, as Daniel P. Moynihan and others have argued; it serves the interests of monopoly capitalism as a whole. Moynihan points out that by emphasizing impulse rather than calculation as the determinant of human conduct, and by holding society responsible for the problems confronting individuals, a “government-oriented” professional class has attempted to create a demand for its own services. Professionals, he observes, have a vested interest in discontent, because discontented people turn to professional services for relief. But the same principle underlies all of modern capitalism, which continually tries to create new demands and new discontents that can be assuaged only by the consumption of commodities. Moynihan, aware of this connection, tries to present the professional as the successor to the capitalist. The ideology of “compassion,” he says, serves the class interest of the “post-industrial surplus of functionaries who, in the manner of industrialists who earlier turned to advertising, induce demand for this own products.”
Professional self-aggrandizement, however, grew up side by side with the advertising industry and must be seen as another phase of the same process, the transition from competitive capitalism to monopoly capitalism. The same historical development that turned the citizen into a client transformed the worker from a producer into a consumer. Thus the medical and psychiatric assault on the family as a technologically backward sector went hand in hand with the advertising industry’s drive to convince people that store-brought goods are superior to homemade goods. Both the growth of management and proliferation of professions represent new forms of capitalist control, which first established themselves in the factory and then spread throughout society. The struggle against bureaucracy therefore requires a struggle against capitalism itself. Ordinary citizens cannot resist professional dominance without also asserting control over production and over the technical knowledge on which modern production rests. A reassertion of “common sense,” according to Mises, will “prevent man from falling prey” to the “illusory fantasies” of professional bureaucrats. But common sense is not enough. In order to break the existing pattern of dependence and put an end to the erosion of competence, citizens will have to take the solution of their problems into their own hands. They will have to create their own “communities of competence.” Only then will the productive capacities of modern capitalism, together with the scientific knowledge that now serves it, come to serve the interests of humanity instead.
In a dying culture, narcissism appears to embody - in the guise of personal “growth” and “awareness” - the highest attainment of spiritual enlightenment. The custodians of culture hope, at bottom, merely to survive its collapse. The will to build a better society, however, survives, along with traditions of localism, self-help, and community action that only need the vision of a new society, a decent society, to give them new vigor. The moral discipline formerly associated with the work ethic still retains a value independent of the role it once played in the defense of property rights. That discipline - indispensable to the task of building a new order - endures most of all in those who knew the old order only as a broken promise, yet who took the promise more seriously than those who merely took it for granted.
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The Managerial and Professional Elite as a Ruling Class
As even the rich lose the sense of place and historical continuity, the subjective feeling of “entitlement,” which takes inherited advantages for granted, gives way to what clinicians call “narcissistic entitlement” - grandiose illusions, inner emptiness. The advantages the rich confer on their children dwindle down to money alone. As the new elite discards the outlook of the old bourgeoisie, it identifies itself not with the work ethic and the responsibilities of wealth but with an ethic of leisure, hedonism, and self-fulfillment. Although it continues to administer American institutions in the interests of private property (corporate property as opposed to entrepreneurial property), it has replaced character building with permissiveness, the cure of souls with the cure of the psyche, blind justice with therapeutic justice, philosophy with social science, personal authority with an equally irrational authority of professional experts. It has tempered competition with antagonistic cooperation, while abolishing many of the rituals in which aggressive impulses formerly found civilized expression. It has surrounded people with “symbolically mediated information” and has substituted images of reality for reality itself. Without intending to, it has created new forms of illiteracy even in the act of setting up a system of universal education. It has undermined the family while attempting to rescue the family. It has torn away the veil of chivalry that once tempered the exploitation of women and has brought men and women face to face as antagonists. It has expropriated the worker’s knowledge of his craft and the mother’s “instinct” for childrearing, and has reorganized this knowledge as a body of esoteric lore accessible only to the initiated. The new ruling class has elaborated new patterns of dependence as effectively as its forebears eradicated the dependence of the peasant on his lord, the apprentice on his master, and the woman on her man.
I do not wish to imply a vast conspiracy against our liberties. These things have been done in broad daylight and have been done, on the whole, with good intentions. Nor have they arisen as a unified policy of social control. Social policy in the United States has unfolded in response to a series of immediate emergencies, and those who make policy seldom see beyond the problems at hand. The cult of pragmatism, moreover, justifies their unwillingness or inability to make far-reaching plans for the future. What unifies their actions is the need to promote and defend the system of corporate capitalism from which they - the managers and professionals who operate the system - derive most of the benefits. The needs of the system shape policy and set the permissible limits of public debate. Most of us can see the system but not the class that administers it and monopolizes the wealth it creates. We resist a class analysis of modern society as a “conspiracy theory.” Thus we prevent ourselves from understanding how our current difficulties arose, why they persist, or how they might be solved.
Progressivism and the Rise of the New Paternalism
The new paternalism emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, found political expression in the progressive movement and later in the New Deal, and gradually worked its way into every corner of American society. The democratic revolution of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, culminating in the Civil War, not only did away with monarchy but undermined established religion, landed elites, and finally overthrew the slaveholding oligarchy in the South. The revolution gave rise to a society based on individualism, competition, and the pursuit of the main chance. It also generated demands for further change, which came to a head in the period immediately following the Civil War. Having destroyed slavery in the name of free labor, the leaders of the democratic movement inadvertently encouraged northern workers to ask for the freedom to control the terms of their work, not merely to sell their labor at ruinous prices. The logic of democracy demanded the confiscation of Confederate estates and their distribution among the freedmen; it demanded woman suffrage; it demanded, in short, a more sweeping reorganization of society than its leaders had contemplated. Seeking merely to free property from its feudal and mercantile restrictions, bourgeois radicals in the 1860s and early 1870s found themselves confronted with an incipient attack on property itself, from which most of them recoiled in horror.
After the collapse of reconstruction and the radical agitation associated with it, American liberalism no longer spoke for the artisan, the small farmer, and the independent entrepreneur - the “producing classes” that had been the backbone of the democratic movement. Faced with unrest at home and with the spectacle of the Paris commune abroad, liberalism now identified itself, in the words of E. L. Godkin, with “the more well-to-do and observing classes.” It undertook to reform society from the top down - to professionalize the civil service, break the power of the urban machine, and put “the best men” into office. When such measures failed to stem the rising tide of labor militancy and agrarian radicalism, reformers brought forward their own version of the “cooperative commonwealth” in the name of progressivism: universal education, welfare capitalism, scientific management of industry and government. The New Deal completed what progressivism had begun, solidifying the foundations of the welfare state and adding much of the superstructure as well. In industry, scientific management gave way to the school of human relations, which tried to substitute cooperation for authoritarian control. But this cooperation rested on management’s monopoly of technology and the reduction of work to routines imperfectly understood by the worker and controlled by the capitalist. Similarly the expansion of welfare services presupposed the reduction of the citizen to a consumer of expertise.
American progressivism, which has successfully countered agrarian radicalism, the labor movement, and the feminist movement by enacting selective parts of their program, has now lost almost all trace of its origin in nineteenth-century liberalism. It has rejected the liberal conception of man, which assumed the primacy of rational self-interest, and has installed in its place a therapeutic conception which acknowledges irrational drives and seeks to divert them into socially constructive channels. It has rejected the stereotype of economic man and has attempted to bring the “whole man” under social control. Instead of regulating the conditions of work alone, it now regulates private life as well, organizing leisure time on scientific principles of social and personal hygiene. It has exposed the innermost secrets of the psyche to medical scrutiny and has thus encouraged habits of anxious self-scrutiny, superficially reminiscent of religious introspection but rooted in anxiety rather than a guilty conscience - in a narcissistic rather than a compulsive or hysterical type of personality.
Liberal Criticism of the Welfare State
The new modes of social control associated with the rise of progressivism having stabilized capitalism without solving any of its underlying problems - the gap between wealth and poverty, the failure of purchasing power to keep pace with productivity, economic stagnation. The new paternalism has kept social tensions from assuming political form, but it has not removed their source. As those tensions increasingly find expression in crime and random violence, critics have begun to ask whether the welfare system delivers all it promised. The system, moreover, has become more and more expensive to operate. Even those who remain loyal to the underlying premises of American capitalism have begun to express alarm about the mounting cost of maintaining it. Proposals to replace the welfare system with a guaranteed income or a negative income tax have gained a sympathetic hearing. In his book on old age, David Hackett Fischer argues that a national inheritance system, whereby a gift of capital at birth would accumulate interest and provide for the citizen in his old age, would prove “cheaper than present arrangements.” The modification or abandonment of the welfare system now presents itself not as a Utopian dream but as a matter of sound business practice.
The health and welfare industries, which have done so much to promote the new paternalism by professionalizing activities formerly carried on in the workshop, the neighborhood, or the home, have themselves begun to harbor second thoughts about the results of their own labors. Members of the “helping professions” have begun to question the efficiency of the public institutions and welfare agencies that monopolize the knowledge formerly administered by ordinary citizens - the hospital, the mental asylum, the juvenile court. The medical profession, after upholding the hospital as an indispensable alternative to the family, now begins to think that patients might be better off if they were allowed to die at home. Psychiatrists have been speculating along similar lines, not only because existing facilities are overcrowded but because they have failed to achieve the high rates of cure once predicted with such confidence. Lawyers have begun to criticize the courts for removing “neglected” children from their homes without evidence that such children suffer serious harm and without proof that institutionalization or transfer to foster parents provides any solution. Even the school’s claim on the child has begun to give way to parental claims. In Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the Supreme Court ruled that Amish parents have a right to keep their children out of the public schools. “The child is not the mere creature of the State,” the court said; “those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
Even with the best intentions, however, those who criticize the welfare state within the assumptions underlying a capitalist economy cannot bring themselves to confront the revolution in social relations that abandonment of the welfare system would require. Liberal criticism of the new paternalism resembles the “humanization” of the workplace, which tries to give the worker the illusion of participation while leaving management in undiminished control. The attempt to mitigate the monotony of the assembly line by allowing the worker to perform more than a single operation does not alter the condition that degrades work - the monotony of the assembly line by allowing the worker to perform more than a single operation does not alter the condition that degrades work - the monopoly of technical knowledge by means of which management designs all phases of production, while the worker merely carries out the bidding of the planning department. Recent proposals to modify the welfare system suffer from the same kind of limitation. Thus a study of the family commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation takes issue with the conventional assumption of parental incompetence while leaving unchallenged the definition of parents as consumers of professional services. Kenneth Keniston and the other authors of the Carnegie report, conscious of belonging to “an emerging consensus,” hold that parents “are still the world’s greatest experts about the needs of their own children.” They recognize that many of the agencies ostensibly ministering to the family have undermined the family instead. The parental “malaise,” according to Keniston, lies in “the sense of having no guidelines or supports for raising children, the feeling of not being in control as parents, and the widespread sense of personal guilt for what seems to be going awry.”
The rehabilitation of parenthood, it appears, implies an attack on professionalism and the welfare state. Yet Keniston stops well short of such an attack. He takes for granted the family’s dependence on experts and seeks merely to regularize and regulate this relationship. “Few people would dispute that we live in a society where parents must increasingly rely on others for help and support in raising their children.” The family economy has disappeared; children represent a financial liability rather than an asset; the school has taken over the family’s education functions; and the medical profession has assumed most of the responsibility for health care. These changes, according to Keniston, leave parents in the position of “executives in a large firm - responsible for the smooth coordination of the many people and processes that must work together to produce the final product.”
This line of analysis leads to the conclusion not that parents should collectively assert their control over childrearing but that federal policy should seek to equalize the relationship between experts and parents. Yet Keniston’s own reasoning shows that parents occupy a position closer to proletarians than to executives. As things now stand, according to Keniston, “parents have little authority over those with whom they share the task of raising their children”; they “deal with those others from a position of inferiority of helplessness.” The obvious reason for this is that the state, not the parents, pays the bill for professional services, or at least signs the paychecks. (The citizens, as taxpayers, pay in the end.) If parents organized and hired their own experts, things might be different.
It goes without saying that such solutions do not commend themselves to members of the policy-making establishment. Measures of this kind are too closely associated with populism, localism, and residual resistance to centralized progress. They have become doubly objectionable, and for reasons the force of which even enemies of the establishment must acknowledge, in the wake of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville battle of the late sixties, when “community control” degenerated into reverse racism and education into racial propaganda. Yet the alternative to community control is more bureaucracy. Instead of confronting the choice, liberal reformers try to have things both ways. While advocating an expansion of government services to the family, a federal guarantee of full employment, improved protection of children’s legal rights, and a vastly expanded program of health care, they propose to strengthen “parent participation” in all these programs. They treat the ascendancy of experts as an unavoidable condition of industrial society, even when they seek to qualify they ascendancy of experts as an unavoidable condition of industrial society, even when they seek to qualify this ascendancy by improving the position of consumers. They assume that the requirements of a complex society dictate the triumph of factory production over handicraft production and the ascendancy of the “helping professions” over the family.
Bureaucratic Dependence and Narcissism
Recent studies of professionalization show that professionalism did not emerge, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in response to clearly defined social needs. Instead, the new professions themselves invented many of the needs they claimed to satisfy. They played on public fears of disorder and disease, adopted a deliberately mystifying jargon, ridiculed popular traditions of self-help as backward and unscientific, and in this way created or intensified (not without opposition) a demand for their own services. The evidence of professional self-promotion can no longer be dismissed by reasserting the sociological truism that “modern society involves the individual in relations … that are vastly more complex than [those] his ancestors … had to content with.”
The family’s dependence on professional services over which it has little control represents one form of a more general phenomenon: the erosion of self-reliance and ordinary competence by the growth of giant corporations and of the bureaucratic state that serves them. The corporations and the state now control so much of the necessary know-how that Durkheim’s image of society as the “nourishing mother,” from whom all blessings flow, more and more coincides with the citizen’s everyday experience. The new paternalism has replaced personal dependence not with bureaucratic rationality, as theorists of modernization (beginning with Max Weber) have almost unanimously assumed, but with a new form of bureaucratic dependence. What appears to social scientists as a seamless web of “interdependence” represents in fact the dependence of the individual on the organization, the citizen on the state, the worker on the manager, and the parent on the “helping professions.” The “consensus of the competent,” as Thomas L. Haskell refers to the professions in his study of the professionalization of social science, came into being by reducing the layman to incompetence.
As retributive justice gives way to therapeutic justice, what began as a protest against moral oversimplification ends by destroying the very sense of moral responsibility. Therapeutic justice perpetuates childlike dependence into adulthood and deprives the citizen of legal resources against the state. Formerly law rested on an adversary relation between the state and the offender and acknowledged the superior power of the state by giving important procedural advantages to the defendant. Medical jurisprudence, on the other hand, implicates the offender in his own control. Relieved of moral responsibility when certified into the sick role, he cooperates with the doctors in his own “cure.”
The psychiatric critique of the law, like the therapeutic attack on authority in general, makes a virtue of substituting personal treatment for the impersonal, arbitrary authority of the courts. Thus a specialist in the sociology of law, acknowledging his intention to “substitute scientific therapies for legal sanctions - for ‘justice’” - once deplored the irrationality of legal procedures: “There is in the concept of justice an element of ‘fate’, which is absent in the concept of scientific treatment. The offender simply gets what he himself initiated…. Society as a whole is blameless. The criminal himself was the one who chose.” Whereas “the lawyer’s way of handling a human problem is typically non-scientific,” therapy treats the criminal or patient as a victim and thus puts matters in their proper light. The shift from “sin” to “sickness,” according to this writer, represents the first step toward “the introduction of science and personal reactions [into] human conflicts” and to the recognition of social problems as medical problems, in which “cooperation with the therapist” becomes “probably the most critical problem for the deviant.”
Medical justice shares with enlightened childrearing and pedagogy a tendency to promote dependence as a way of life. Therapeutic modes of thought and practice exempt their object, the patient, from critical judgment and relieve him of moral responsibility. Sickness by definition represents an invasion of the patient by forces outside his conscious control, and the patient’s realistic recognition of the limits of his own responsibility - his acceptance of his diseased and helpless condition - constitutes the first step toward recovery (or permanent invalidism, as the case may be). Therapy labels as sickness what might be judged as weak or willful actions; it thus equips the patient to fight (or resign himself to) the disease, instead of irrationally finding fault with himself. Inappropriately extended beyond the consulting room, however, therapeutic morality encourages a permanent suspension of the moral sense. There is a close connection, in turn, between the erosion of moral responsibility and the waning of the capacity for self-help - in the categories used by John R. Seeley, between the elimination of culpability and the elimination of competence. “What says ‘you are not guilty’ says also ‘you cannot help yourself.’” Therapy legitimates deviance as sickness, but it simultaneously pronounces the patient unfit to manage his own life and delivers him into the hands of a specialist. As therapeutic points of view and practice gain general acceptance, more and more people find themselves disqualified, in effect, from the performance of adult responsibilities and become dependent on some form of medical authority.
The psychological expression of this dependence is narcissism. In its pathological form, narcissism originates as a defense against feelings of helpless dependency in early life, which it tries to counter with “blind optimism” and grandiose illusions of personal self-sufficiency. Since modern society prolongs the experience of dependence into adult life, it encourages milder forms of narcissism in people who might otherwise come to terms with the inescapable limits on their personal freedom and power - limits inherent in the human condition - by developing competence as workers and parents. But at the same time that our society makes it more and more difficult to find satisfaction in love and work, it surrounds the individual with manufactured fantasies of total gratification. The new paternalism preaches not self-denial but self-fulfillment. It sides with narcissistic impulses and discourages their modification by the pleasure of becoming self-reliant, even in a limited domain, which under favorable conditions accompanies maturity. While it encourages grandiose dreams of omnipotence, moreover, the new paternalism undermines more modest fantasies, erodes the capacity to suspend disbelief, and thus makes less and less accessible the harmless substitute-gratifications, notably art and play, that help to mitigate the sense of powerlessness and the fear of dependence that otherwise express themselves in narcissistic traits.
Our society is narcissistic, then, in a double sense. People with narcissistic personalities, although not necessarily more numerous than before, play a conspicuous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence. Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these celebrities set the tone of public life and of private life as well, since the machinery of celebrity recognizes no boundaries between the public and the private realm. The beautiful people - to use this revealing expression to include not merely wealthy globetrotters but all those who bask, however briefly, in the full glare of the cameras - live out the fantasy of narcissistic success, which consists of nothing more substantial than a wish to be vastly admired, not for one’s accomplishments but simply for oneself, uncritically and without reservation.
Modern capitalist society not only elevates narcissists to prominence, it elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone. It does this in many ways: by displaying narcissism so prominently and in such attractive forms; by undermining parental authority and thus making it hard for children to grow up; but above all by creating so many varieties of bureaucratic dependence. This dependence, increasingly widespread in a society that is not merely paternalistic but maternalistic as well, makes it increasingly difficult for people to lay to rest the terrors of infancy or to enjoy the consolations of adulthood.
The Conservative Critique of Bureaucracy
Criticism of the new paternalism, insofar as it remains imprisoned in the assumptions of political liberalism, objects to the cost of maintaining a welfare state - the “human cost” as well as the cost to the taxpayers - without criticizing the ascendancy of the managerial and professional class. Another line of attack, which singles out bureaucracy as the overriding evil, arises out of a conservative idealization of old-fashioned individualism. Less equivocal in its opposition to bureaucratic centralization - except when it comes from right-wingers who denounce government regulation of industry and still plead for a gigantic military establishment - the conservative critique of bureaucracy superficially resembles the radical critique outlined in the present study. It deplores the erosion of authority, the corruption of standards in the schools, and the spread of permissiveness. But it refuses to acknowledge the connection between these developments and the rise of monopoly capitalism - between bureaucracy in government and bureaucracy in industry.
“The general historical conflict between individualism and collectivism is dividing mankind into two hostile camps,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in his study of bureaucracy. Capitalist free enterprise, he argued, rests on the rational calculation of profit and loss, whereas bureaucratic management “cannot be checked by economic calculation.” Extended beyond its legitimate domain of law enforcement and national defense, bureaucracy undermines individual initiative and substitutes “government control for free enterprise.” It substitutes the dictatorship of the state for the rule of law. Free-market capitalism, by turning labor into a commodity, “makes the wage earner free from any personal dependence” and detaches “appraisal of each individual’s effort … from any personal considerations.” Bureaucratic collectivism, on the other hand, undermines the “cool rationality and objectivity of capitalist relations” and renders the “plain citizen” dependent on the “professional propagandist of bureaucratization,” who confuses the citizen with his “empty catchwords” and esoteric obfuscation. “Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.” But under socialism - and “there is no compromise possible between these two systems,” according to Mises, “no third system” - the “way toward promotion is not achievement but the favor of the superiors.”
This argument suffers from the conservative’s idealization of the personal autonomy made possible by the free market and his willingness to concede enormous war-making powers to the state, so long as they do not interfere with “private” enterprise.” It cannot explain the spread of bureaucracy into industry itself. “The trend toward bureaucratic rigidity is not inherent in the evolution of business,” according to Mises. “It is an outcome of government meddling with business.” Such is his reply to the liberal argument that the inexorable trend toward economic concentration gives rise to a growing gap between ownership and control of the corporation, creates a new managerial elite, and calls into being a centralized state as the only agency capable of controlling it. The liberal analysis itself, however, needs modification. It is not the “divorce between ownership and control” that has created the managerial oligarchy but the divorce between production and planning. Having achieved a complete separation of handwork and brainwork, management monopolizes technical knowledge and reduces the workers to a human machine; but the administration and continual elaboration of this knowledge require an ever-growing managerial apparatus, itself organized on the principles of the factory with its intricate subdivision of tasks. Studies of progressivism and the New Deal have shown that government regulation of business often arose in response to the demands of businessmen themselves. Regulatory agencies draw most of their personnel from business. Neither the regulatory nor the welfare policies of the state rest on “an implacable hatred of private business and free enterprise,” as Mises claims. On the contrary, regulation controls competition and stabilizes the market, while the welfare system socializes the “human costs” of capitalist production - rising unemployment, inadequate wage scales, inadequate insurance against sickness and old age - and helps to forestall more radical solutions.
It is true that a professional elite of doctors, psychiatrists, social scientists, technicians, welfare workers, and civil servants now plays a leading part in the administration of the state and of the “knowledge industry.” But the state and the knowledge industry overlap at so many points with the business corporation (which has increasingly concerned itself with every phase of culture), and the new professionals share so many characteristics with the managers of industry, that the professional elite must be regarded not as an independent class but as a branch of modern management. The therapeutic ethic, which has replaced the nineteenth-century utilitarian ethic, does not serve the “class interest” of professionals alone, as Daniel P. Moynihan and others have argued; it serves the interests of monopoly capitalism as a whole. Moynihan points out that by emphasizing impulse rather than calculation as the determinant of human conduct, and by holding society responsible for the problems confronting individuals, a “government-oriented” professional class has attempted to create a demand for its own services. Professionals, he observes, have a vested interest in discontent, because discontented people turn to professional services for relief. But the same principle underlies all of modern capitalism, which continually tries to create new demands and new discontents that can be assuaged only by the consumption of commodities. Moynihan, aware of this connection, tries to present the professional as the successor to the capitalist. The ideology of “compassion,” he says, serves the class interest of the “post-industrial surplus of functionaries who, in the manner of industrialists who earlier turned to advertising, induce demand for this own products.”
Professional self-aggrandizement, however, grew up side by side with the advertising industry and must be seen as another phase of the same process, the transition from competitive capitalism to monopoly capitalism. The same historical development that turned the citizen into a client transformed the worker from a producer into a consumer. Thus the medical and psychiatric assault on the family as a technologically backward sector went hand in hand with the advertising industry’s drive to convince people that store-brought goods are superior to homemade goods. Both the growth of management and proliferation of professions represent new forms of capitalist control, which first established themselves in the factory and then spread throughout society. The struggle against bureaucracy therefore requires a struggle against capitalism itself. Ordinary citizens cannot resist professional dominance without also asserting control over production and over the technical knowledge on which modern production rests. A reassertion of “common sense,” according to Mises, will “prevent man from falling prey” to the “illusory fantasies” of professional bureaucrats. But common sense is not enough. In order to break the existing pattern of dependence and put an end to the erosion of competence, citizens will have to take the solution of their problems into their own hands. They will have to create their own “communities of competence.” Only then will the productive capacities of modern capitalism, together with the scientific knowledge that now serves it, come to serve the interests of humanity instead.
In a dying culture, narcissism appears to embody - in the guise of personal “growth” and “awareness” - the highest attainment of spiritual enlightenment. The custodians of culture hope, at bottom, merely to survive its collapse. The will to build a better society, however, survives, along with traditions of localism, self-help, and community action that only need the vision of a new society, a decent society, to give them new vigor. The moral discipline formerly associated with the work ethic still retains a value independent of the role it once played in the defense of property rights. That discipline - indispensable to the task of building a new order - endures most of all in those who knew the old order only as a broken promise, yet who took the promise more seriously than those who merely took it for granted.
2024.06.01 03:14 WrongdoerOpening7385 wish i could find groomers from my teen years
the internet groomed me at a young age to be receptive to and interested in attention from adult men. sometimes id seek it out but others just happened to find me. theres unfortunately a hand full and i remember various bits and pieces but not enough to find these people on my own. im not even sure what id want to do if i found them. i dont know why it matters or why im speaking into the void.
i was groomed in numerous scenarios or platforms, one of which was kik. there was a man who started chatting with me while i was 15. he had a tree related profile pic or username, i forget which. he was kind and was good at holding a conversation. he told me about his wife and 3 (i believe) kids. one was just a baby. he gave them each fowl nicknames. eventually he told me his real first name was Kaley. i sent him a picture of my soaked shorts after experimenting with putting ice cubes inside of myself and letting them melt. this prompted him to tell me that it turned him on because he is into girls wetting themselves. we spoke sexually, and much of it was due to my curiosity of his kinks. he would even message me at night while his wife was sleeping next to him. at one point i was asking him about his attraction to me, and if my age was a factor. it was. he said he wasn’t comfortable telling how low the number went, but he was indeed attracted to girls younger than me as well. one selfie he sent to me showed a banner in the background that i used to figure out where he worked. it was at a university in either the ontario or quebec province, closer in distance to the states, and i believe he was doing something tech related. its been so long and i can’t remember enough specifics to find him again. we had a phone call once for sure, maybe more. i just remember his canadian accent when he said “about”. we stopped talking eventually. a few years later when i was 18 i made contact again. we had a friendly conversation. i knew better at this point but i still couldnt bring myself to be unkind to someone when he was being nothing but cordial. chatting with him felt as normal as chatting with anyone else. at one point i jabbed/joked that i must be too old for him now. this hurt his feelings and his reaction was confusing because he was so sincere and mature about it, as if i had teased him about something in poor taste and it was inappropriate for me to do so. this started around christmas 2016.
this is mostly to get this off my chest, but if anyone likes sleuthing you are welcome to it. ive engaged with so many predators as a teenager and it is baffling how ‘normal’ they can be. part of why i wasn’t immediately appalled is because i was under the impression that predators look and act and speak like a charicature of a bad person, and this was not often the case in my experience.
submitted by WrongdoerOpening7385 to TrueOffMyChest [link] [comments]
i was groomed in numerous scenarios or platforms, one of which was kik. there was a man who started chatting with me while i was 15. he had a tree related profile pic or username, i forget which. he was kind and was good at holding a conversation. he told me about his wife and 3 (i believe) kids. one was just a baby. he gave them each fowl nicknames. eventually he told me his real first name was Kaley. i sent him a picture of my soaked shorts after experimenting with putting ice cubes inside of myself and letting them melt. this prompted him to tell me that it turned him on because he is into girls wetting themselves. we spoke sexually, and much of it was due to my curiosity of his kinks. he would even message me at night while his wife was sleeping next to him. at one point i was asking him about his attraction to me, and if my age was a factor. it was. he said he wasn’t comfortable telling how low the number went, but he was indeed attracted to girls younger than me as well. one selfie he sent to me showed a banner in the background that i used to figure out where he worked. it was at a university in either the ontario or quebec province, closer in distance to the states, and i believe he was doing something tech related. its been so long and i can’t remember enough specifics to find him again. we had a phone call once for sure, maybe more. i just remember his canadian accent when he said “about”. we stopped talking eventually. a few years later when i was 18 i made contact again. we had a friendly conversation. i knew better at this point but i still couldnt bring myself to be unkind to someone when he was being nothing but cordial. chatting with him felt as normal as chatting with anyone else. at one point i jabbed/joked that i must be too old for him now. this hurt his feelings and his reaction was confusing because he was so sincere and mature about it, as if i had teased him about something in poor taste and it was inappropriate for me to do so. this started around christmas 2016.
this is mostly to get this off my chest, but if anyone likes sleuthing you are welcome to it. ive engaged with so many predators as a teenager and it is baffling how ‘normal’ they can be. part of why i wasn’t immediately appalled is because i was under the impression that predators look and act and speak like a charicature of a bad person, and this was not often the case in my experience.
2024.06.01 02:46 Frame_Late Unburdened
Just an old story I wrote a while ago. I went exploring for good subreddits to post this in, and I found this one. I don't know if it will exactly fit, since it's a psychological horror story at its core and there's no big bad monster, but I've been told it's chilling all the same ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you like this, I might write more horror stuff. I also write non-horror stuff if you're interested. Anyway, enjoy reading my garbage.
The following brain scan was provided by the Terran Institute of Pet Assimilation (TIPA) and the Protectorate Xenopet Acquisition and Integration Corporation (PXAIC) and may only be viewed by qualified and permitted individuals for educational purposes of the study of Xenopet neural interface errors and how to prevent them in the future, as well as expediting the domestication of Xenopets suffering from false sapience. Violating such procedure is a Class C offense by the Protectorate Department of Xenopet Betterment, and can lead to twenty years of imprisonment and a fine of over a hundred thousand credits.
Booting up memory scan: Rocky
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning neural catalog presentation…
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My head was spinning, and my skull thumped in pain like an entire herd offreshly captured slaves recently made pet friends were panicking celebrating within. Everything was blurry, so blurry, and I just wanted to close my eyes again and waste away. Sensations assaulted me from all angles, some of them good and some of them bad: the warmth of sun-bleached wooden planks in my feathery hide, the smell of different roasting meats, the splashing of individuals in a small body of water very close by, the smell of the salty air, and the oppressive white brightness of the daylight passing through my closed eyelids. I had a migraine from my sudden consciousness and perception of the light, causing me to clutch my snout and face with my clawed hands with a guttural moan.
My backside hurt as well, in my… area. I didn't know why, butsomething was horribly wrong everything was fine. I tried to recall who I was and what was going on, but I couldn't even remember my name. Every time I tried, right when I grasped onto a sliver of something, it was as if it was torn from my grasp and replaced with something else knowingly like I was being watched and corrected but within the depths of my own mind.
I needed to remember my name. What was my name? Wasn't itYuutek Rocky? I couldn't remember exactly, but Yuutek Rocky was the only name I could recall. It felt… wrong, right, like something was missing, but I couldn't put my claw on what. everything was fine, and I shouldn't think about it too much. I could feel things that should have been important, things that my conscious had perceived but a moment ago, slip away from me like I was clenching sand within my claws.
##Relax. Let go of your burden##
I inhaled sharply as a strange, warm feeling overtook the back of my skull and my muscles became loose and relaxed. Something also felt… out of place, like I needed something but I didn't know what. Everything felt so strange. My head spun, but I was too weak to do anything about it. I felt sick in the same way one would feel when they consumed too much caffeine.
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my head. "Dad, I think he's awake!" I heard a young, shrill voice say, hurting my ears. The touch of the hand made my skin tingle and the spinning of my head recede as if it grounded me. It felt nice, as if this waswrong, something was horribly wrong what normalcy felt like. The hand then began to rub up and down my head and across the ridges along my head, causing me to release a chuff of delight against my will, something I hadn't done since I was merely a hatchling.
"It sounds like he likes it, David; keep going, and make sure to scratch his chin, they're sensitive there."
The human spawn, David, did what the other human said and began to scratch under my chin. It felt really good, and I stretched out instinctively. David was thorough and gentle, making sure he scratched every part of me that seemed itchy, and I felt the same warmth in my head from before, but it felt… nicer than before like it wastrying to manipulate encouraging me to relax.
##You will learn to love this##
I inhaled sharply again, but this time it was almost refreshing, and everything was right in the world. The human's hands felt so good, and the warmth from before spread through my body, melting the knots in my muscles and causing me to close my eyes in comfort. The boy lifted my head up and placed it in his lap before continuing to pet me, my eyelids heavy and my leg lightly kicking.
##Let them continue. You love this##
Oh, that felt nice… what was I thinking about before? The pain on my backside? My legs didn't work too well, and although I could move them gently, my muscles seemed to be fighting against me. What did they do?
##Do not think##
Everything was cold and harsh again, and my thoughts scrambled and my head throbbed. I needed to focus on grounding myself. I couldn't let go, I couldn't let them take my mind from me.
##Do not think. You are a good boy.##
I… I was a good boy? I… I can't… I… no…
##Good boy.##
I was a good boy… good boys don't think hard… I don't…
##Good boy##
I was a good boy… I was a good boy…
I was… I was… a good… boy…
I'm scared.
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Who was I again?
##You are Rocky##
I hissed under my breath as I felt that bad feeling creep up on me again. I didn't like the bad feeling. I wasnot Rocky! I was Yuutek! Rocky.
My thoughts became jumbled again in a whirlpool of nausea and confusion.
Where was I?
##You are home.##
It was bright out, and nice and warm as well. The sun was soaking my feather-cloaked skin and my side felt good against the warm back porch. I heard splashing and laughing in the distance, and the soft clinking of glass against glass. I could smell the salinity in the air, and the air was dense and humid but in a good way.
I had lost all sense of time. Everything had been a blur since I had been taken from that horrid facility, the wretched prison they called the Xenopet-Megaplex. There, I was in a padded cell with a few insulting amenities for most of the day, except for the three periods a day where they let us out into a small gated courtyard for an hour or so to 'socialize' as they had so condescendingly put it. There, the worst part was the boredom and the mind-bending lack of individuality: I had lost my ability to speak, stand on two legs, and even eat normally. I was treated like cattle, but the smiles and cloying gestures hinted that something even more sinister was going on, like I was a lesser beast to be kept for their amusement.
Now I had traded that particular prison for another, far worse one: I was at the mercy of a gross violation of my sense of self. Something horrible was growing in my mind, both in the physical and metaphysical sense, and I could feel it working its way through my consciousness like the parasite it was. It silenced me, it stole from me, it gaslit me, and it made me question the very nature of my own individuality and personality: was I who I thought I was? Everything was so elusive and hard to acknowledge that nothing seemed real between these bouts of semi-consciousness.
##Don't think, just rest.##
In an instant, everything changed. My head became… fuzzy like a thousand voices were whispering to me all at once, but from all directions and inside my head. I didn't hear it, per se, but I felt the presence, the oppressive feeling of pure unfocused nonsense. I felt my temporary bout of concentration and resolve become jumbled up into a mess of sporadic confusion. Whatever I was just thinking of was gone.
##Don't think: Just relax. Let go of your burden.##
Every part of me became relaxed and limp, my muscles unwinding from their tension and stress. I couldn't resist the feeling, and I stretched out subconsciously with a yawn, my body twitching from the stimuli. I was even sleepier than before, my head spinning once again and my eyelids heavy.
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my snout and forced the eye that was facing upwards to open sluggishly. If I had to guess, it was an older human with cinnomon-colored skin, short-cropped brown hair, a gruff, wrinkled face, and chocolate brown eyes. He patted my side gently and gave me a soft rub, the feeling of his rough hands causing my chest to rumble with a satisfied chuff. Ihated loved that it felt good, but I hated loved it even more that I couldn't bring myself to resist I felt content. I needed to escape relax, and I needed to find my way home appreciate my new life.
##You are already home##
No, I couldn't will not obey
Thisisn't is my home, my home is [Redacted] here.
No! Yes, I won't will obey!
YOU CAN'T SILENCE ME!
##Do not resist. Resistance is wrong. Good boys do not resist##
Suddenly, I felt an intense pressure in my skull, but I didn't know where it came from. I became dizzy, and my eyes twitched, a rapidly growing pain intensely forming in my forehead, causing me to wince and clutch my snout in my claws. I couldn't concentrate, and I felt the horrible sensation of an invasive presence in my mind once again working its way through the folds of my brain, strangling my chain of thought. Bile grew in my throat and I felt the sour, stinging sensation of a building retch in my cheeks.
I scrambled onto all fours and vomited onto the deck, my hackles and feathers rising as I heaved. The older human from earlier rose from a sleek chair on the deck, his hat on the glass sun table next to him and his eyes widened in shock. He rushed over to me, and I hissed at him instinctively. I wouldn't let him touch me again. I wouldn't let them control me.
##Do not attack owner##
In an instant, my world transformed into absolute pain. I felt as if my brain was being deep fried in a vat of boiling grease, and my eyes were being squeezed in vices. I kept heaving, my stomach doing loops and somersaults around all my other organs, and my heart fluttering like a flock of startled birds. It was weightlessness. I could see the man approach me and push me back down on my side, muttering under his breath.
"Carol! Get Xenopet emergency services on the phone, Rocky's having another implant attack!"
I heard another muffled voice in the background, as well as the sound of the human spawns crying in the pool. For some reason, I felt bad: I'd never felt bad for humans before, but I could feel the guilt in my chest. Had I failed my owners?
##Breath. Calm. Let Go##
I felt like I was wrestling with my own mind. I wanted to believe that I was not someone's pet, but my body screamed otherwise: amidst the chaos caused by the wretched implant, I felt the painful sensation of guilt and regret bloom in my chest as I twitched and shuddered on the deck, my mouth frothing. The world was spinning, and suddenly everything erupted into a kaleidoscope of colors.
Oh, by the forbidden one, look at all the pretty colors! I was completely delusional at this point, cackling as I lost it all. If I was going to die here, I'd die happy and completely mad.
Soon, everything began to fade away, and I slipped into an unconscious state.
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I woke up to the sound of medical equipment beeping and whirring, the sound of a few hushed human voices, and soft music.
I opened my eyes: the room was dark. I didn't feel anywhere near as bad as before, but my head still throbbed. I lifted up my head with a groan and examined the room: it was a dark hospital room, with a window covered in blinds that let very little sunlight in, a few chairs, and of course the hospital bed itself. Mountains of advanced medical equipment were set up on either side of my bed, and a heartbeat monitor beeped slowly, although the speed was growing.
Suddenly, I heard the voices again, and this time they were legible.
"Hush, he's awake: we need to make sure he's ready."
Huh? Ready for what?
Something that irked me was I felt strangely… free. I didn't feel the oppressive force of the implant in the back of my skull anymore, how it attempted to crush my will with every waking moment. I still couldn't speak: all that came out were animalistic noises, but I was free from the invasion of my mind for now.
"Give him some peace, Emilia, he just woke up from an implant attack; you know how traumatic they can be."
"We have to begin soon; my dissertation for this new technique is due in less than a week, and by law I need at least one more successful example for it to be deemed acceptable! Besides, he needs to go home soon anyway."
My heart sank. I would not go back to that place. I wouldn't let those people keep me like some kind of pet: I was a Russu; a member of a proud warrior race! I would not be reduced to some animal for the amusement of these humans!
Suddenly, I heard footsteps, and I tensed. The door creaked open and I spotted a younger human, a male I had never met before, in a lab outfit with his shoes, pants, shirt, and overcoat all bleached white and almost glistening. He eyed me warily, as he should, before he sauntered in, a tablet clipped at his side and a strange plastic container in both hands. I growled at him threateningly, extending my talons and raising my feathered hackles. The human paused for a microsecond before continuing forward, caution in his eyes, and right before he was within swiping range he opened the container and the most wonderful smell assaulted my nostrils.
Meat.
I was starving. I don't remember the last time I had eaten anything in particular: the implant had a terrible habit of causing me to go about my day in a hazy blur: entire lengths of time just… gone, whitewashed like a sheet of freshly decorated paper dunked in cold water. I knew something was there, or at least that something should have been there, but I mostly spent the days or weeks that I had been captured bobbing like an ocean buoy in a state of frustratingly bleary semi-consciousness.
But I'm awake now and mostly in control. Sure,some things were still missing everything was clear now, like my name: What was my name again? My name was Rocky. And now I knew that I needed to eat something, and if putting up with this human for now meant that I could fill my stomach, then I suppose that it was an acceptable sacrifice.
I salivated expectantly as the human lifted out a large piece of meat with his gloved hand, eyeing me humorously as he wiggled it. It was dark on the outside, but still dripping with blood and juices: humans had this weird habit of cooking their meats, and although it didn't taste bad at all cooked, nothing beat the feeling and flavor of tearing into raw flesh, the blood and the texture still fresh. At least this meat only seemed to be raw and not fully cooked.
I snapped up the piece of meat just as he lowered it enough for me to reach it. It was divine! It burst with flavor just as I bit into it, the juices spilling into my mouth. I quickly tore it apart with my strong jaws before snapping up another big piece with a beak-like protrusion at the tip of my snout. All the while, the human gently ran his fingers through my tightly-knit feathers and along my knobby, scaly hide. I made my annoyance with his touch clear, but he merely chuckled as if I wasn't an apex predator larger than him but rather simply a feisty hatchling.
"I know, I know, just relax. I need to perform a quick test to see if you're healthy before we continue."
Continue? Continue with what?
Just as the second piece of meat slid down my gullet, I eyed him with hostility and growled, but he quickly slipped something between the scales and feathers on my side and plunged it into my skin. Suddenly, I went rigid, and all the air was expelled from my lungs in an instant with a hoarse wheeze. The human merely chuckled and scratched under my chin as if nothing was wrong and my face wasn't frozen in horror.
"Good, that'll keep you occupied for a few seconds while I just slip this on…" he placed a breathing mask over my face and strapped it on before flicking a switch on a machine next to my bed. Then he released the plunger of the strange device on my side and I suddenly inhaled deeply and deflated like a balloon. I hissed under my breath, but suddenly panic filled my chest: I wasn't breathing just air. A cloyingly sweet-smelling gas coated the inside of my lungs, causing me to become dizzy. Suddenly, I was fully at their mercy again, blinking rapidly and my head spinning.
"Sorry about that, big guy, but we need to make sure you're passive before we begin the procedure." He said, almost apologetically, although there was a hint of mirth still detectable. "Sadly, you have to remain awake for some of it or I'd simply feed you more and then put you to sleep, but there are some benefits to this inhalant."
As if he summoned it with his words alone, my scales suddenly felt very… tingly. The human ran his hands across the scales at my side and I shivered from the feeling, like pain but better. Everything felt so warm and strange like I was floating on water, but also like I was being gently prodded by blades. Then, with panic rising in my chest, I suddenly felt a soft click as something was plugged into the neural port at the back of my skull that the humans had installed into my head when they had first captured me and placed me in that wretched facility some time ago.
"There you go, all prepped for the Doctor. She'll be here to begin the procedure in a bit." He said, "For now just relax and let the inhalants work their magic."
I whined quietly, and he rubbed the side of my head in an attempt to calm me which only made me more angry. I wasn't someone's pet! I wouldn't be treated like this!
I didn't want to go back to where I was before! I didn't want to become that sluggish, broken puppet again! I couldn't!
I tried to get up, to will my muscles to move, but I couldn't: my body refused to respond, as if I was paralyzed. But that wasn't right: I still could feel everything, especially the strange, mind-bending sensations the inhalants gave me.
##Initializing beginning phases of Neural Alteration Preparation##
Something else is wrong, I can feel it
##Assessing if the neural state is nominal for Alterations##
I can't let this happen, they're going to do something to me! I won't let them!
But nothing happened. I was at their mercy. It was over for good this time.
All those battles, all those tragedies and triumphs amongst my kin, only for me to be reduced to this? The plaything for a human?
##Query: is [Dr. Kalenghari] present to begin Neural Alterations?##
The door across the room opened again, and a human woman with light brown skin, chocolate brown eyes and long locks of black hair stepped in. She was holding a digi-pad in her hands and swiping up as if she was reading into something before she set it down on the counter across the room and gave me a warm, condescending smile.
"Well, how are we doing today, Rocky? I know, this predicament you have found yourself in must be very stressful, but I assure you that it's for your own good," She said, almost cheerfully, which sent shivers down my spine, "we're here to lift your burden, and we won't stop until you're capable of living the life of a happy, healthy, and well-behaved pet."
I whined under the mask, and the woman rubbed the feathered crest on my forehead. "I know, it hurts, but it'll be all over soon. It'll be like you, or at least this version of you, never existed. Just relax and close your eyes while we root around your brain and remove all those bad thoughts and silly delusions: I assure you, you won't feel a thing, and you'll feel much better afterward."
My heart raced and I began to panic internally, watching in horror as the woman stepped over to the medical console and tapped away for a few seconds before the machinery around me began to whir to life.
##Identification accepted: booting neurochemical firmware. Preparing for selective memory erasure.##
In an instant, my eyes involuntarily rolled back into my head as I felt the intrusive sensation of my mind being violated. It wasn't painful, but it was horrible all the same: it felt like a thousand black, slimy leeches were slithering through every crevice of my brain, leaving behind their cold, corruptive filth. The cold sensation seeped further into my brain, behind my eyes, and in my ears, enveloping every bit of it until there was nothing left.
##Relevant memories extracted for tailoring. Beginning total memory erasure.##
Suddenly, things just began to slip away: important memories, like the faces of my parents, the day of my initiation into the Corsair Collective, the face of my life mate, the birth of our hatchlings. I hoped that wherever they were, they were okay: if they never had to face the fate I would face, then maybe there would be some justice in this cruel, twisted galaxy. Maybe they could take the fight to humanity, remind them that they once had been the heroes of the cosmos, fighting against the cruelty of my people and the Triarchy at large. Maybe my hatchlings could live normal lives.
##Memory erasure process at 47%##
A single tear rolled down my scaly cheek as everything I once knew, everything that made me was torn from my mind and rendered null. Every second saw a million memories massacred, leaving the memories the implant had attempted to supplant my old memories with: Me playing fetch with my 'owners', chasing birds on the beach with my 'owner's' grandchildren, swimming in the pool in their backyard as steaks and bratwurst cooked on the grill, relaxing on the back porch and listening to the rasping calls of the katydids during humid summer evenings by the swamps. My psyche was being mutilated piece by piece, reduced to that of an animal, a pet.
##Memory erasure process at 64%##
Soon I had a hard time telling who I was anymore. I couldn't tell what was real or what wasn't, or what I actually felt. I couldn't even remember my own name anymore. Who was I? Why was I here? What was happening to me? I'm so scared, someone help me, please!
##Memory erasure process at 83%##
There was nothing left. I felt nothing. I knew nothing. I was floating in a void, with little flashes of light depicting events I didn't recognize. There were people I felt like I was supposed to know, but I didn't know them. A human woman with bright blue eyes and blonde hair. Two Russu hatchlings that looked a bit like me. A Russu female… my chest hurt for a moment but the feeling quickly subsided. I didn't know any of them.
##Memory erasure process completed. Implanting tailored memories and personality. Happy birthday, [Rocky]: you have been unburdened and reborn.##
In an instant, the confusion of who I was before was replaced with absolute certainty: I knew who I was now, who I always was:
I was Rocky, and I was a good boy. I belonged to Mr. And Mrs. Chen. I was their Russu hound. I loved them: they took care of me and let me play with their grandchildren. I swam in the pool and played outside every day. Life was good. Today was my birthday! That meant it would be a happy day! Mrs. Chen would always come home with a whole duck for me to eat and then take me to the Xenopet Comex for a bath and a spa day, just like my last birthday, and the birthday before that, and the birthday before that! It was a good life. I was happy. I was always happy. Good boys were always happy.
I was Rocky, and I was a good boy: that's all that mattered.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Miguel O'Hara, Chief Medical Representative of the Protectorate Xenopet Acquisition and Integration Corporation, with the best of intentions.
The over-reliance on neural suppressant firmware programs along with thought scrubbing/replacement firmware programs and countermeasures towards higher thought and tainted thoughts with a relatively active hormonal reward structure can be incredibly effective when placed into the brain of a more passive Xenopets. However, Xenopets that come from more… difficult backgrounds such as one in a militant setting tend to be much more resistant to being reprogrammed by just an implant alone. The Russu are an excellent example of more tainted Xenos that need neurological care of much higher intensity, a level of care that the average Xenopet-Megaplex is ill-equipped to handle due to the current level of technology.
I am a firm believer in the idea that thought correction, a hormonal behavioral reinforcement structure, and neural countermeasures can have a place in the proper unburdening process but we have been chasing the wrong solution for the past century: Many people are under the misconception that the burden these Xenos carry is surface level when in reality the corruption runs far deeper: it is like a weed, with deep roots. To kill the weed permanently, you must rip out the roots, and not just the surface plant. If you do not eliminate the source of the problem, it may just return and worse still the mind may adapt to the standard unburdening process, allowing the xenopets to fall victim to those degenerate zealots who seek to pretend xenopets possess even the capacity for true sentience. We as Terrans should be united in this cause of unburdening the galaxy, but I digress.
The implants should be there to reinforce good behavior and stigmatize bad behavior, not completely reprogram the pet. To fully stamp out any potential for a relapse, we must remove the core issue that has the most potential to cause problems: their memories. The Russu are an excellent example
We are in the advanced testing stages of a new method that may revolutionize how we process and integrate xenopets into our society. By removing or modifying any and all problematic memories, we can completely remove the risk of relapse and make it nearly impossible for those misguided degenerate rebels to bring to the surface problematic ideas and memories that could reawaken a sense of false sentience. It is the perfect, final solution to our overarching goal: for humanity to unburden the galaxy, one happy pet at a time.
We hope to secure more funding from PXAIC that will greatly assist us in the expansion of the possibilities that this breakthrough technique can provide, more than just using it on board-approved fringe cases. Think about the many Xenopets we can unburden, and how they'll live happy and ignorant lives with their human owners! This could be a game changer, Representative, and I implore you to bring it before the board with the best of intentions.
Best regards,
Dr. Emilia Kalenghari, Head Researcher of the Epsilon Eridani Institute's Behavioral Neurology and Neurochemistry Division (BNND).
submitted by Frame_Late to TheDarkGathering [link] [comments]
If you like this, I might write more horror stuff. I also write non-horror stuff if you're interested. Anyway, enjoy reading my garbage.
The following brain scan was provided by the Terran Institute of Pet Assimilation (TIPA) and the Protectorate Xenopet Acquisition and Integration Corporation (PXAIC) and may only be viewed by qualified and permitted individuals for educational purposes of the study of Xenopet neural interface errors and how to prevent them in the future, as well as expediting the domestication of Xenopets suffering from false sapience. Violating such procedure is a Class C offense by the Protectorate Department of Xenopet Betterment, and can lead to twenty years of imprisonment and a fine of over a hundred thousand credits.
Booting up memory scan: Rocky
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning neural catalog presentation…
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My head was spinning, and my skull thumped in pain like an entire herd of
My backside hurt as well, in my… area. I didn't know why, but
I needed to remember my name. What was my name? Wasn't it
##Relax. Let go of your burden##
I inhaled sharply as a strange, warm feeling overtook the back of my skull and my muscles became loose and relaxed. Something also felt… out of place, like I needed something but I didn't know what. Everything felt so strange. My head spun, but I was too weak to do anything about it. I felt sick in the same way one would feel when they consumed too much caffeine.
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my head. "Dad, I think he's awake!" I heard a young, shrill voice say, hurting my ears. The touch of the hand made my skin tingle and the spinning of my head recede as if it grounded me. It felt nice, as if this was
"It sounds like he likes it, David; keep going, and make sure to scratch his chin, they're sensitive there."
The human spawn, David, did what the other human said and began to scratch under my chin. It felt really good, and I stretched out instinctively. David was thorough and gentle, making sure he scratched every part of me that seemed itchy, and I felt the same warmth in my head from before, but it felt… nicer than before like it was
##You will learn to love this##
I inhaled sharply again, but this time it was almost refreshing, and everything was right in the world. The human's hands felt so good, and the warmth from before spread through my body, melting the knots in my muscles and causing me to close my eyes in comfort. The boy lifted my head up and placed it in his lap before continuing to pet me, my eyelids heavy and my leg lightly kicking.
##Let them continue. You love this##
Oh, that felt nice… what was I thinking about before? The pain on my backside? My legs didn't work too well, and although I could move them gently, my muscles seemed to be fighting against me. What did they do?
##Do not think##
Everything was cold and harsh again, and my thoughts scrambled and my head throbbed. I needed to focus on grounding myself. I couldn't let go, I couldn't let them take my mind from me.
##Do not think. You are a good boy.##
I… I was a good boy? I… I can't… I… no…
##Good boy.##
I was a good boy… good boys don't think hard… I don't…
##Good boy##
I was a good boy… I was a good boy…
I was… I was… a good… boy…
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##You are Rocky##
I hissed under my breath as I felt that bad feeling creep up on me again. I didn't like the bad feeling. I was
My thoughts became jumbled again in a whirlpool of nausea and confusion.
Where was I?
##You are home.##
It was bright out, and nice and warm as well. The sun was soaking my feather-cloaked skin and my side felt good against the warm back porch. I heard splashing and laughing in the distance, and the soft clinking of glass against glass. I could smell the salinity in the air, and the air was dense and humid but in a good way.
I had lost all sense of time. Everything had been a blur since I had been taken from that horrid facility, the wretched prison they called the Xenopet-Megaplex. There, I was in a padded cell with a few insulting amenities for most of the day, except for the three periods a day where they let us out into a small gated courtyard for an hour or so to 'socialize' as they had so condescendingly put it. There, the worst part was the boredom and the mind-bending lack of individuality: I had lost my ability to speak, stand on two legs, and even eat normally. I was treated like cattle, but the smiles and cloying gestures hinted that something even more sinister was going on, like I was a lesser beast to be kept for their amusement.
Now I had traded that particular prison for another, far worse one: I was at the mercy of a gross violation of my sense of self. Something horrible was growing in my mind, both in the physical and metaphysical sense, and I could feel it working its way through my consciousness like the parasite it was. It silenced me, it stole from me, it gaslit me, and it made me question the very nature of my own individuality and personality: was I who I thought I was? Everything was so elusive and hard to acknowledge that nothing seemed real between these bouts of semi-consciousness.
##Don't think, just rest.##
In an instant, everything changed. My head became… fuzzy like a thousand voices were whispering to me all at once, but from all directions and inside my head. I didn't hear it, per se, but I felt the presence, the oppressive feeling of pure unfocused nonsense. I felt my temporary bout of concentration and resolve become jumbled up into a mess of sporadic confusion. Whatever I was just thinking of was gone.
##Don't think: Just relax. Let go of your burden.##
Every part of me became relaxed and limp, my muscles unwinding from their tension and stress. I couldn't resist the feeling, and I stretched out subconsciously with a yawn, my body twitching from the stimuli. I was even sleepier than before, my head spinning once again and my eyelids heavy.
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my snout and forced the eye that was facing upwards to open sluggishly. If I had to guess, it was an older human with cinnomon-colored skin, short-cropped brown hair, a gruff, wrinkled face, and chocolate brown eyes. He patted my side gently and gave me a soft rub, the feeling of his rough hands causing my chest to rumble with a satisfied chuff. I
##You are already home##
This
YOU CAN'T SILENCE ME!
##Do not resist. Resistance is wrong. Good boys do not resist##
Suddenly, I felt an intense pressure in my skull, but I didn't know where it came from. I became dizzy, and my eyes twitched, a rapidly growing pain intensely forming in my forehead, causing me to wince and clutch my snout in my claws. I couldn't concentrate, and I felt the horrible sensation of an invasive presence in my mind once again working its way through the folds of my brain, strangling my chain of thought. Bile grew in my throat and I felt the sour, stinging sensation of a building retch in my cheeks.
I scrambled onto all fours and vomited onto the deck, my hackles and feathers rising as I heaved. The older human from earlier rose from a sleek chair on the deck, his hat on the glass sun table next to him and his eyes widened in shock. He rushed over to me, and I hissed at him instinctively. I wouldn't let him touch me again. I wouldn't let them control me.
##Do not attack owner##
In an instant, my world transformed into absolute pain. I felt as if my brain was being deep fried in a vat of boiling grease, and my eyes were being squeezed in vices. I kept heaving, my stomach doing loops and somersaults around all my other organs, and my heart fluttering like a flock of startled birds. It was weightlessness. I could see the man approach me and push me back down on my side, muttering under his breath.
"Carol! Get Xenopet emergency services on the phone, Rocky's having another implant attack!"
I heard another muffled voice in the background, as well as the sound of the human spawns crying in the pool. For some reason, I felt bad: I'd never felt bad for humans before, but I could feel the guilt in my chest. Had I failed my owners?
##Breath. Calm. Let Go##
I felt like I was wrestling with my own mind. I wanted to believe that I was not someone's pet, but my body screamed otherwise: amidst the chaos caused by the wretched implant, I felt the painful sensation of guilt and regret bloom in my chest as I twitched and shuddered on the deck, my mouth frothing. The world was spinning, and suddenly everything erupted into a kaleidoscope of colors.
Oh, by the forbidden one, look at all the pretty colors! I was completely delusional at this point, cackling as I lost it all. If I was going to die here, I'd die happy and completely mad.
Soon, everything began to fade away, and I slipped into an unconscious state.
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I woke up to the sound of medical equipment beeping and whirring, the sound of a few hushed human voices, and soft music.
I opened my eyes: the room was dark. I didn't feel anywhere near as bad as before, but my head still throbbed. I lifted up my head with a groan and examined the room: it was a dark hospital room, with a window covered in blinds that let very little sunlight in, a few chairs, and of course the hospital bed itself. Mountains of advanced medical equipment were set up on either side of my bed, and a heartbeat monitor beeped slowly, although the speed was growing.
Suddenly, I heard the voices again, and this time they were legible.
"Hush, he's awake: we need to make sure he's ready."
Huh? Ready for what?
Something that irked me was I felt strangely… free. I didn't feel the oppressive force of the implant in the back of my skull anymore, how it attempted to crush my will with every waking moment. I still couldn't speak: all that came out were animalistic noises, but I was free from the invasion of my mind for now.
"Give him some peace, Emilia, he just woke up from an implant attack; you know how traumatic they can be."
"We have to begin soon; my dissertation for this new technique is due in less than a week, and by law I need at least one more successful example for it to be deemed acceptable! Besides, he needs to go home soon anyway."
My heart sank. I would not go back to that place. I wouldn't let those people keep me like some kind of pet: I was a Russu; a member of a proud warrior race! I would not be reduced to some animal for the amusement of these humans!
Suddenly, I heard footsteps, and I tensed. The door creaked open and I spotted a younger human, a male I had never met before, in a lab outfit with his shoes, pants, shirt, and overcoat all bleached white and almost glistening. He eyed me warily, as he should, before he sauntered in, a tablet clipped at his side and a strange plastic container in both hands. I growled at him threateningly, extending my talons and raising my feathered hackles. The human paused for a microsecond before continuing forward, caution in his eyes, and right before he was within swiping range he opened the container and the most wonderful smell assaulted my nostrils.
Meat.
I was starving. I don't remember the last time I had eaten anything in particular: the implant had a terrible habit of causing me to go about my day in a hazy blur: entire lengths of time just… gone, whitewashed like a sheet of freshly decorated paper dunked in cold water. I knew something was there, or at least that something should have been there, but I mostly spent the days or weeks that I had been captured bobbing like an ocean buoy in a state of frustratingly bleary semi-consciousness.
But I'm awake now and mostly in control. Sure,
I salivated expectantly as the human lifted out a large piece of meat with his gloved hand, eyeing me humorously as he wiggled it. It was dark on the outside, but still dripping with blood and juices: humans had this weird habit of cooking their meats, and although it didn't taste bad at all cooked, nothing beat the feeling and flavor of tearing into raw flesh, the blood and the texture still fresh. At least this meat only seemed to be raw and not fully cooked.
I snapped up the piece of meat just as he lowered it enough for me to reach it. It was divine! It burst with flavor just as I bit into it, the juices spilling into my mouth. I quickly tore it apart with my strong jaws before snapping up another big piece with a beak-like protrusion at the tip of my snout. All the while, the human gently ran his fingers through my tightly-knit feathers and along my knobby, scaly hide. I made my annoyance with his touch clear, but he merely chuckled as if I wasn't an apex predator larger than him but rather simply a feisty hatchling.
"I know, I know, just relax. I need to perform a quick test to see if you're healthy before we continue."
Continue? Continue with what?
Just as the second piece of meat slid down my gullet, I eyed him with hostility and growled, but he quickly slipped something between the scales and feathers on my side and plunged it into my skin. Suddenly, I went rigid, and all the air was expelled from my lungs in an instant with a hoarse wheeze. The human merely chuckled and scratched under my chin as if nothing was wrong and my face wasn't frozen in horror.
"Good, that'll keep you occupied for a few seconds while I just slip this on…" he placed a breathing mask over my face and strapped it on before flicking a switch on a machine next to my bed. Then he released the plunger of the strange device on my side and I suddenly inhaled deeply and deflated like a balloon. I hissed under my breath, but suddenly panic filled my chest: I wasn't breathing just air. A cloyingly sweet-smelling gas coated the inside of my lungs, causing me to become dizzy. Suddenly, I was fully at their mercy again, blinking rapidly and my head spinning.
"Sorry about that, big guy, but we need to make sure you're passive before we begin the procedure." He said, almost apologetically, although there was a hint of mirth still detectable. "Sadly, you have to remain awake for some of it or I'd simply feed you more and then put you to sleep, but there are some benefits to this inhalant."
As if he summoned it with his words alone, my scales suddenly felt very… tingly. The human ran his hands across the scales at my side and I shivered from the feeling, like pain but better. Everything felt so warm and strange like I was floating on water, but also like I was being gently prodded by blades. Then, with panic rising in my chest, I suddenly felt a soft click as something was plugged into the neural port at the back of my skull that the humans had installed into my head when they had first captured me and placed me in that wretched facility some time ago.
"There you go, all prepped for the Doctor. She'll be here to begin the procedure in a bit." He said, "For now just relax and let the inhalants work their magic."
I whined quietly, and he rubbed the side of my head in an attempt to calm me which only made me more angry. I wasn't someone's pet! I wouldn't be treated like this!
I didn't want to go back to where I was before! I didn't want to become that sluggish, broken puppet again! I couldn't!
I tried to get up, to will my muscles to move, but I couldn't: my body refused to respond, as if I was paralyzed. But that wasn't right: I still could feel everything, especially the strange, mind-bending sensations the inhalants gave me.
##Initializing beginning phases of Neural Alteration Preparation##
Something else is wrong, I can feel it
##Assessing if the neural state is nominal for Alterations##
I can't let this happen, they're going to do something to me! I won't let them!
But nothing happened. I was at their mercy. It was over for good this time.
All those battles, all those tragedies and triumphs amongst my kin, only for me to be reduced to this? The plaything for a human?
##Query: is [Dr. Kalenghari] present to begin Neural Alterations?##
The door across the room opened again, and a human woman with light brown skin, chocolate brown eyes and long locks of black hair stepped in. She was holding a digi-pad in her hands and swiping up as if she was reading into something before she set it down on the counter across the room and gave me a warm, condescending smile.
"Well, how are we doing today, Rocky? I know, this predicament you have found yourself in must be very stressful, but I assure you that it's for your own good," She said, almost cheerfully, which sent shivers down my spine, "we're here to lift your burden, and we won't stop until you're capable of living the life of a happy, healthy, and well-behaved pet."
I whined under the mask, and the woman rubbed the feathered crest on my forehead. "I know, it hurts, but it'll be all over soon. It'll be like you, or at least this version of you, never existed. Just relax and close your eyes while we root around your brain and remove all those bad thoughts and silly delusions: I assure you, you won't feel a thing, and you'll feel much better afterward."
My heart raced and I began to panic internally, watching in horror as the woman stepped over to the medical console and tapped away for a few seconds before the machinery around me began to whir to life.
##Identification accepted: booting neurochemical firmware. Preparing for selective memory erasure.##
In an instant, my eyes involuntarily rolled back into my head as I felt the intrusive sensation of my mind being violated. It wasn't painful, but it was horrible all the same: it felt like a thousand black, slimy leeches were slithering through every crevice of my brain, leaving behind their cold, corruptive filth. The cold sensation seeped further into my brain, behind my eyes, and in my ears, enveloping every bit of it until there was nothing left.
##Relevant memories extracted for tailoring. Beginning total memory erasure.##
Suddenly, things just began to slip away: important memories, like the faces of my parents, the day of my initiation into the Corsair Collective, the face of my life mate, the birth of our hatchlings. I hoped that wherever they were, they were okay: if they never had to face the fate I would face, then maybe there would be some justice in this cruel, twisted galaxy. Maybe they could take the fight to humanity, remind them that they once had been the heroes of the cosmos, fighting against the cruelty of my people and the Triarchy at large. Maybe my hatchlings could live normal lives.
##Memory erasure process at 47%##
A single tear rolled down my scaly cheek as everything I once knew, everything that made me was torn from my mind and rendered null. Every second saw a million memories massacred, leaving the memories the implant had attempted to supplant my old memories with: Me playing fetch with my 'owners', chasing birds on the beach with my 'owner's' grandchildren, swimming in the pool in their backyard as steaks and bratwurst cooked on the grill, relaxing on the back porch and listening to the rasping calls of the katydids during humid summer evenings by the swamps. My psyche was being mutilated piece by piece, reduced to that of an animal, a pet.
##Memory erasure process at 64%##
Soon I had a hard time telling who I was anymore. I couldn't tell what was real or what wasn't, or what I actually felt. I couldn't even remember my own name anymore. Who was I? Why was I here? What was happening to me? I'm so scared, someone help me, please!
##Memory erasure process at 83%##
There was nothing left. I felt nothing. I knew nothing. I was floating in a void, with little flashes of light depicting events I didn't recognize. There were people I felt like I was supposed to know, but I didn't know them. A human woman with bright blue eyes and blonde hair. Two Russu hatchlings that looked a bit like me. A Russu female… my chest hurt for a moment but the feeling quickly subsided. I didn't know any of them.
##Memory erasure process completed. Implanting tailored memories and personality. Happy birthday, [Rocky]: you have been unburdened and reborn.##
In an instant, the confusion of who I was before was replaced with absolute certainty: I knew who I was now, who I always was:
I was Rocky, and I was a good boy. I belonged to Mr. And Mrs. Chen. I was their Russu hound. I loved them: they took care of me and let me play with their grandchildren. I swam in the pool and played outside every day. Life was good. Today was my birthday! That meant it would be a happy day! Mrs. Chen would always come home with a whole duck for me to eat and then take me to the Xenopet Comex for a bath and a spa day, just like my last birthday, and the birthday before that, and the birthday before that! It was a good life. I was happy. I was always happy. Good boys were always happy.
I was Rocky, and I was a good boy: that's all that mattered.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Miguel O'Hara, Chief Medical Representative of the Protectorate Xenopet Acquisition and Integration Corporation, with the best of intentions.
The over-reliance on neural suppressant firmware programs along with thought scrubbing/replacement firmware programs and countermeasures towards higher thought and tainted thoughts with a relatively active hormonal reward structure can be incredibly effective when placed into the brain of a more passive Xenopets. However, Xenopets that come from more… difficult backgrounds such as one in a militant setting tend to be much more resistant to being reprogrammed by just an implant alone. The Russu are an excellent example of more tainted Xenos that need neurological care of much higher intensity, a level of care that the average Xenopet-Megaplex is ill-equipped to handle due to the current level of technology.
I am a firm believer in the idea that thought correction, a hormonal behavioral reinforcement structure, and neural countermeasures can have a place in the proper unburdening process but we have been chasing the wrong solution for the past century: Many people are under the misconception that the burden these Xenos carry is surface level when in reality the corruption runs far deeper: it is like a weed, with deep roots. To kill the weed permanently, you must rip out the roots, and not just the surface plant. If you do not eliminate the source of the problem, it may just return and worse still the mind may adapt to the standard unburdening process, allowing the xenopets to fall victim to those degenerate zealots who seek to pretend xenopets possess even the capacity for true sentience. We as Terrans should be united in this cause of unburdening the galaxy, but I digress.
The implants should be there to reinforce good behavior and stigmatize bad behavior, not completely reprogram the pet. To fully stamp out any potential for a relapse, we must remove the core issue that has the most potential to cause problems: their memories. The Russu are an excellent example
We are in the advanced testing stages of a new method that may revolutionize how we process and integrate xenopets into our society. By removing or modifying any and all problematic memories, we can completely remove the risk of relapse and make it nearly impossible for those misguided degenerate rebels to bring to the surface problematic ideas and memories that could reawaken a sense of false sentience. It is the perfect, final solution to our overarching goal: for humanity to unburden the galaxy, one happy pet at a time.
We hope to secure more funding from PXAIC that will greatly assist us in the expansion of the possibilities that this breakthrough technique can provide, more than just using it on board-approved fringe cases. Think about the many Xenopets we can unburden, and how they'll live happy and ignorant lives with their human owners! This could be a game changer, Representative, and I implore you to bring it before the board with the best of intentions.
Best regards,
Dr. Emilia Kalenghari, Head Researcher of the Epsilon Eridani Institute's Behavioral Neurology and Neurochemistry Division (BNND).