Part 1
Eight years ago I arrived in West Africa.
Not out of choice, you understand, but out of necessity. If you haven’t read my earlier notes, you won’t understand. This is where I landed after I escaped the underground beetle camp, and where I’ve lived for so long.
Last year I posted my story online. I just meant to put down my thoughts, to ensure my experiences didn’t die with me, but I was blown away by the overwhelmingly positive messages in response. The kindness of strangers really is incredible.
I suppose I’d resigned myself to my life as it was - a man out of my own country, cut off from family, forced to live on the streets forever. But people gave me hope. It took a bit of work but I tracked down my family. My father died about five years ago, but my mother and sister came to visit me. They stayed a couple of weeks. It was difficult at times - my mother is convinced I had a mental break, and that my story is a delusion, and we both hated when she had to return to England and leave me there.
My sister, on the other hand, was more receptive. Hannah’s three years older than me, and was a proper older sister to me. She annoyed the crap out of me when I was at school, but over the years I really missed her. I video call my mum whenever I can, about once a week, but me and Hannah WhatsApp each other every day. They’re planning to visit me again this summer.
Hannah is a logistics manager these days. I can’t say I’m entirely sure what that means, but she’s one of the most organised people I’ve ever met. A couple of months after they went back, she invited me to a group chat. She’d found others who had escaped those caverns with me!
Over the following weeks, more joined, until the group chat had 19 people (plus Hannah). They truly are amazing people, and our experience fighting the beetles had brought out the best in them. All of us are homeless now, of course, most in a foreign country and that brings great risks; but 19 of us had survived, none of us had turned to drugs, and all have stories worth hearing. Chao, a Chinese man living in Mexico, now ran his own landscape gardening business; Anupama (or just Anu), an Indian woman now in France, has built a homeless charity, and is known for “choosing” to live on the streets with those she helps; Gerome, the Senegalese man, is a celebrated artist on the streets of Moscow. Each of us is fluent in two or more languages, and at least passable in English.
We all remember the number we assigned ourselves, the order in which we escaped from the cavern. The last of us to escape was Rajinder, an Indian man who I remembered as a boy of 16. He had been number 26, and had watched as several beetles jumped down into our pen and scuttled towards the remaining humans. Our friends. Josie, number 24, escaped just as the beetles reached them. Evander should have been the 25th of us to escape, but instead he was impaled by the sharp leg of one of the beetles and fell to the ground. Others near Raj were injured; Raj himself was slashed across the arm by the serrated edge of a beetle forearm. Surrounded by shiny black death now, he threw himself head-first into the door, injuring his head as he arrived in the Vietnamese countryside. He doesn’t think anybody else escaped after him.
25 of us got out of the caverns. We don’t know what happened to the other six; they could be dead, or perhaps Hannah just hasn’t found them yet. We all arrived on land, but who knows where the others came out? If they found themselves in Antarctica, say, or Death Valley, they would have had little chance. I don’t think we’ll ever find out for sure.
So here we were, our group of 19. A few of us have studied insects over the years (“No”, Nida told me, “it’s ENTOMOLOGY. Etymology is the study of words”), or geology, to try to make sense of our imprisonment. Some have tried to forget their time below ground, but none of us ever really could. And as we talked, our discussions adapted and evolved.
Hannah set up a Discord server called “Beetle Survivors Social Group”. But that wasn’t enough for her. She sent smartphones to those who didn’t already have them; I have no idea how she got smartphones capable of accessing Discord to our members in China and Russia. She sent cash as needed and tracked down most of our families, arranging calls and even visits. And one day, Hannah renamed the server “Beetle Survivors Support Group”.
We talked about our experiences. I posted my story on there, and others wrote up their own. Nida wrote about her research into beetles, and how the creatures we encountered must have different biology than the insects known to science. Gerome sketched the beetles excellently and worked with the biologists to figure out how their bodies probably worked. Jason, Angelique, and I drew maps of the caverns, as best we could from memory.
Some of us wanted to move on from our experiences, but had spent the last eight years unable to; we all still had nightmares from time to time. Some of us felt frustrated, unable to do anything about the underground insects. And some of us were angry. People began posting fantasies about fighting and killing the beetles; how we could do it, how many we could take down, how we would celebrate over their chitinous corpses. Soon enough, somebody - I think it was Chao - renamed the server again.
“Beetle Survivors Revenge Group”
Fantasy turned into conjecture, which became plans. Frustration became hope, and anger evolved into determination. I’m still amazed that all of us decided to go through with it. We talked about the problems and hazards; we planned our equipment lists; we worked through our ideas, picking holes in and improving each other’s suggestions. But in the hundreds of hours of planning, I never once heard the words “it’s too dangerous”. We were as one; a crack unit of commandos, ready to wage war.
The date we chose was the 3rd of March, for no particular reason other than we were ready. At exactly 2pm Ghana time (that’s where I lived), all 19 of us walked through a door.
It was dark. It would take some time for my eyes to adjust from the bright West African sun. I couldn’t see anything at first, but then there were a couple of clicks, and flashlights blazed into life near me. We came together, and took stock of our situation.
There were only four of us in the cavern. Febe, a Russian woman; Beshadu, an Ethiopian woman; and Carl, the American who had woken me on my first morning underground. Febe and Carl turned off their flashlights and we looked around, listening carefully. There didn’t seem to be any beetles near us, presumably because they hadn’t been expecting arrivals. We quietly moved together, looking for the wall of the cave.
The caverns were once natural, but they have been worked by human hands over many years, being expanded and smoothed over. This worked to our advantage as we traversed the largely stone-free floor, and eventually found the relatively flat cave wall. We worked our way along it, still mostly by touch rather than sight, and soon came across an opening. A corridor. A short way down the corridor we found another opening, coming to a small, empty room. We settled down and went through our equipment.
Febe turned her torch on. We needed to see, but this made us very uncomfortable. How I would have loved to be able to close the door to prevent the light leaking out into the corridor! But the beetles don’t have doors, and even if they had, we wouldn’t have been able to use them.
Besha and Carl had brought several USB battery packs. We’d each fully charged our phones before stepping through the doors, but we had no idea how long we would be down there. We turned off all our phones except for Carl’s, which he set to power-saving mode.
We all had battery-powered flashlights, and Febe had a lot of spare batteries. They should last a while. Carl was in the army when he was kidnapped, and had explained to all of us what sort of food we should bring, so we all had a couple of weeks of high-calorie food in our backpacks. We also had weapons. Besha was a markswoman, and had a hunting rifle and a pistol, with a lot of ammunition. Carl had been working in a quarry, and had brought his powerful granite-breaking pick. Febe had somehow managed to acquire a couple of fire axes. And I - well, as an occasional gardener, I’d managed to pick up two machetes and four billhooks.
Not everybody has heard of billhooks. They’re used to cut down small trees and undergrowth, and those I had sported a 10-inch serrated blade, viciously curved at the end. I figured they would be excellent for severing the limbs of the beetles, and I had a decent amount of experience with them, although only against saplings that didn’t fight back.
There were 19 of us who entered a door a few minutes earlier. Febe, Carl, Besha and I had arrived down here very close together at the same time, but there was no sign of the others. Our group had a variety of personalities and reasons for coming here - some were angry, some wanted revenge, some were driven by a desire to make the world safer - but I knew everybody well and I don’t believe anyone bottled it, certainly not 15 of us. Perhaps we might find the others elsewhere in the cave, but for now, we had to assume that we were the only ones who made it. Fortunately all of our equipment came with us, though it was a shame we didn’t have Ju’s flamethrower.
We had hoped to have enough armed humans for a proper assault. Now we had to change our strategy. Carl was the best of us to plan; he had been on active duty and experienced combat in a small group. The most important thing right now, he said, was for us to get the lay of the land. We weren’t sure exactly where we were, and our maps were incomplete, so the first thing was to orient ourselves in the cave system and find out where the beetles were.
Febe, the smallest of us and light on her feet, offered to scout around and report back; but Carl insisted on going with her. We must never, he said, go out alone. So Besha and I sat in the small room in whispered conversation, our hands never far from our weapons, while Febe and Carl crept away. I thought back to Besha’s broken English when we lived together in the darkness, and marvelled at her near-fluency in her newly-acquired Australian accent.
It must have been more than two hours when we heard movement nearby. I barely heard Besha stand up, although the quiet click when she cocked her pistol sounded like a gunshot in the silence of the caves. As I reached for a machete, Carl’s whisper sounded.
“Don’t cock your pistol, Besha. It’s double-action, you don’t need to and it’s too loud.”
Carl and Febe came round the corner. The caves were so dark I don’t know if I saw their silhouettes, or only imagined them. The pair sat down.
“It’s not the same cave,” said Febe.
My heart stopped, and my mind raced. Had this all been for nothing? Were we in some random empty underground system, trapped here to die?
“It’s smaller,” she continued. “At least, the main cavern is. We found a pen, like ours but much smaller. There are burning torches around it, but no humans. It might be their work time, but we haven’t seen any so far. Maybe they don’t have any slaves right now.”
“There are beetles down here, though,” Carl said. “We heard some of their clicking, off in the distance. We’re not sure how many there are.”
“This corridor has a few small rooms like this, all empty. Probably something they started excavating, but abandoned.”
“Or they had to wait for new slaves.”
“And we’re pretty sure we found where they live. We didn’t investigate, not with just two of us.”
I have to say, Carl and Febe made a great team. They’d been reunited in person only hours ago, but were already finishing each other’s sentences.
Carl brought out a chemical glowstick. He had many of these, and I was grateful; a flashlight would just have dazzled us at that moment. He and Febe sketched out a rough map of what they had explored so far, and we started to plan.
We would only get one chance at a surprise attack, so our first strike needed to be precise. Aim too small and we wouldn’t do enough to hurt them; too big and they would overwhelm us. We only had two guns between us, so Besha kept her hunting rifle - she’d become quite a markswoman hunting small game in the Australian outback - and gave the pistol to Carl. Besha and I then walked out to explore for ourselves.
The main cavern was left out of our small cave, so we turned right. The single corridor quickly branched off into multiple paths. Besha had brought several balls of string, so we tied one end to an outcropping to help lead us back. It was a risk, but then so was coming here in the first place, and we were reasonably sure by now that this region was abandoned, at least temporarily. We both had several of Carl’s chemical glowsticks, and used one to light our way, hiding it whenever we heard the slightest sound.
We didn’t even try to map that maze-like area of small corridors and dead ends. Besha and I held hands whenever space allowed, and held the other’s backpack when it didn’t. Her hearing is far more sensitive than mine, so if she suddenly dropped my hand, I knew it was to grip her rifle, and that was my cue to unclip a billhook and machete from my belt.
We moved extremely slowly, creeping silently along the left wall, pausing to listen every few metres. We can’t have gone more than a few hundred metres when, an hour later, I saw something in front of us. I let go of Besha’s hand, put the glowstick away, and brought up a machete and a billhook. Besha saw it as well, and raised her rifle.
There were two of us. Two, against these creatures we’d watched massacre our friend years earlier. A rifle and a couple of knives? I hate to admit it, but when it came to fight, flight or freeze, I froze. I don’t know what went on in Besha’s head at that moment, but for me, it was abject terror. I would simply have been useless in a fight.
There was a light - very faint, and flickering, but getting brighter. The two of us stood there frozen, anticipating a confrontation. A moment later we heard footsteps, clear as anything in the otherwise absolute silence. They were human footsteps, and underneath those, the occasional faint clicking of a beetle.
As the light got closer, we could see the scene clearly. The tunnel widened until, about thirty metres in front of us, it came to an end as another tunnel crossed it. Three humans, very thin and in ragged clothes, walked past, followed by two beetles. We watched as they passed in front of us, and then the torchlight and the sounds slowly faded.
We stood in absolute silence for what must have been half an hour. Besha was the first to speak. She put her hand to my head, bringing my ear to her mouth, and in the quietest whisper ever made by a human, made her proposal.
“It’s sleep time. Carl and Febe said the beetles live on the other side of the main cavern. We should explore.”
I nodded my agreement, then - realising that she couldn’t see me - whispered “Okay” into her ear.
Our progress was even slower and more careful now. At the junction we tied the string off, not wanting to leave any trace on the path they’d taken, and headed in the direction they’d come from. There was a faint light up ahead, but no sound at all, and gradually we were able to make out the shape of the corridor.
Eventually, we came to a split in the corridor. The light was coming from the left branch, so that’s where we went. And soon we arrived in a large room. I’d worked the forge occasionally back in our first cavern system, so although it was different, I recognised it immediately. The light was coming from the embers of a stone kiln, which would die completely in the next few hours.
We looked around the place, deserted at this time. As expected, there were a few tools that could be used as weapons, but nothing as useful as our own, and not that many - the beetles weren’t keen to supply their slaves with anything more powerful than necessary. A chimney led to a small hole in the ceiling; it surely led outside, but it was no more than 20 centimetres wide, far too narrow for any of us to squeeze through. Nearby there was a thick, flat iron plate, which I assumed to be an anvil, though different from the one I’d used. A hammer lay on top of it.
The room was fairly large, but apart from some firewood and lumps of rock - presumably iron ore - it was otherwise empty. We’d seen enough, and headed back out to take the other path.
This path led quite quickly to another large cavern, but without any light. After listening for several minutes, I brought out my glowstick - but it had expired. Besha reached into her pack and retrieved her flashlight.
This room was a mine, and much bigger than the forge. Several pickaxes were stowed at the far side of the room. Again, it was empty of living creatures. We both knew how it would work - the beetles usher the slaves in, who then move far enough away before taking their pickaxes and starting work. The mine consisted of a main room, and smaller corridors, gradually hacked away until the place had become a bit of a warren. We recalled the maze we had been careful not to get lost in earlier; perhaps that was an earlier mine, abandoned after the iron ore the beetles had been so keen to get had been mined out.
As a teenage boy I’d been wiry and very capable of squeezing into small places, so I volunteered to explore the tunnels while Besha stayed outside with the flashlight to guide me back. Some of the excavations were plenty big enough for a couple of miners to work side-by-side; some, presumably natural tunnels, were barely big enough for me to traverse. A few times the flashlight went out; this was Besha’s signal to me that she’d heard something, and I froze in absolute silence until the light came back on, when she was sure it wasn’t an unwelcome interruption.
Eventually I came back out, grabbed a notepad and pencil, and sketched a map of the tunnels. Then Besha turned her flashlight off and we set off back through the darkness.
Before we headed back, we wanted to check one last thing out. Where had the humans and beetles who passed us gone? We were fairly sure, but wanted to be certain. We carefully followed the path they’d taken, and after some time, came out into the main cavern. Off in the distance we could make out torches around the human pen, and a few shadows of beetles moving around. We had no desire to go in unprepared, so we headed back to the junction. The string guided us home, and, exhausted, we were reunited with Febe and Carl.
We compared our maps. We were fairly sure we had a pretty comprehensive map of most of the complex, with the notable exceptions of the maze Besha and I had found, and the presumed living quarters Febe and Carl had located but not entered. We started to make a plan.
Febe was the most vicious of us, eager to just start hacking limbs off the beetles, but she gave way to Carl’s expertise in warfare. I pointed out that we had never actually fought a beetle, and it would be good to strike small at first. Eventually we came up with the first part of a plan, ate a good amount of food to keep ourselves strong, and went to sleep.
We spent the next day waiting. Our timing was off, and the slaves would have been at work already by the time we woke up. Febe had actually brought a pack of cards, and by the light of a single flashlight, we each taught each other various games. We slept again, awoke in plenty of time, and the four of us made our way to the mine.
It was empty, as we expected, and we each hid ourselves from view in the larger mined-out tunnels. An hour, maybe two, in utter silence and darkness. Then we saw the flicker of an orange torchlight. I steeled myself, reminding myself that we had four of us. I’d put on a big show of bravery, but honestly, if there weren’t weren’t two people with guns, I don’t know if I’d have been any use at all.
Besha, Carl and Febe were completely hidden; only I had a view of the entrance. Five humans entered, followed by three beetles. Besha and I had hoped for just two beetles, like we’d seen leaving the last time, but this was our best chance. I waited for the humans to cross the main cave to their picks, then shouted “NOW!” The four of us turned on flashlights on the floor and leapt into action.
Febe and I moved to the sides and held back, while Besha fired her hunting rifle. She was an excellent shot, striking one right in the mouth. That would have taken down a human instantly, but the beetles were tough, and it screamed and lunged forward. Or at least, I assume the high-pitched screeching was the beetle equivalent of a scream.
Carl unloaded all eight shots of the pistol into the injured beetle’s head. The crack of chitin splitting apart rang across the cavern, and the insect collapsed to the ground, just centimetres from me.
One down, two left.
I had a billhook in each hand. A beetle was right in my face - I’d forgotten just how fast they can move - and plunged its front claw at my chest. I leapt back just in time and swung my right billhook at its extended claw. I connected, and using the hook to keep its claw out of the way, stepped sideways to attack its nearest leg with my left billhook. I hooked and pulled with all my strength. The leg popped out, clattering across the floor. Black stuff oozed out of its abdomen. It swung its other front claw at me, but it was unbalanced now. I parried with my left billhook and released it from my right, using it to strike its mandibles from above. One was severed instantly. The thing collapsed to the ground but it was still moving. Still dangerous. I moved to the side, out of the way of its front limbs, and pushed both blades into its head.
It stopped moving.
I looked around. Carl’s granite-breaking pick was lodged deep in the abdomen of the third beetle, as he retrieved the empty pistol from the floor and started reloading. Febe, on the other hand, was hacking away at the motionless insect’s head with a fireaxe, while she shouted a mixture of Russian and Chechen swearwords, with occasional English interjections. “Hah! How you like that, svoloch!” Her back was to the cave entrance.
Besha was the first to spot it. “Febe, behind you!”
Febe started to turn. Too late. Blood showered my face.
Carl unloaded his pistol. Both Febe, and the beetle that had attacked her, fell to the ground, revealing another beetle behind them.
Click. BLAM! Besha’s rifle hit home, and pieces of chitin exploded around us. The beetle, wounded but not down, turned and ran. It could not be allowed to fetch reinforcements. Click. BLAM! It stumbled, but continued to limp on.
Carl grabbed a billhook from me and chased it down. The speed from his adrenaline was more than enough to catch the slowed beetle. Knowing that he had it, I turned my attention to Febe.
Febe was covered in blood, conscious but looking terribly pale. A front beetle limb pierced her side, having gone all the way through. I hacked it off at the beast’s thorax, but I knew I could not pull it out; the serrated edge would have ripped her apart if I drew it back, and if I pulled forward, it would just widen the wound.
Carl returned, and retrieved his medical kit. As he started to treat Febe’s injuries, I braced myself for his remonstrations against her for turning her back, for shouting, for losing her attention and focus when she needed it most. I did not expect what came out of his mouth.
“You did well girl.”
That’s when I knew, I think.
Febe tried to sit up. “No, don’t move. I’ve got this.”
“Ithhh…” Febe sputtered, and blood dribbled from her mouth. “Ith it gonna be okay? I kill it?”
“You were amazing Febe. You killed it! Now relax, I’ll sort you out in no time.”
“Thanth … you …”
Those were Febe’s last words. She slumped to the ground. Carl laid her down and closed her eyes.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:

1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”

The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:

1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”

The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:

1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”

The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.

“Wake the fuck up, man.”
Haruki Fujita slipped out of a hallucination. The hallucination was mindless. It featured a name moments before something killed him, extraterrestrial and horrible from head to toe. Slimy and predatory. The most of it cybernetic. He was dying, with blood gushing out of his neck, but that wasn’t what killed him, at least not immediately, because his intestines were pulled out of his stomach, and that was what killed him.
He watched the blue solar panel wing curve outward from the steel hull of the International Space Station, and he frowned bitterly. From the sensation of death, Haruki Fujita had a sickening gut feeling.
“Stefan Bossi!” he cried out, alarmed.
The name lingered in his mind. He remembered it from his hallucination. He idly watched one of his gloves floating across the room and stopped in front of his computer screen. No reason was known to him why he remembered that name; he remembered nothing more. There was a brief rush—he had time to think about programming languages and decoding radio frequencies, though none of the government organizations he hacked into proved extraterrestrial in origin, but Haruki was convinced by the bizarre nature of the sounds. He didn’t really care about the scientists at SETI, many doctors, and the best professors in the world who regarded them as a hoax. And those who didn’t view the evolution of Earth from an intergalactic perspective that was terraformed over billions of years by otherworldly entities.
“Stefan Bossi!” he said again, grabbing the floating glove with his cold hand and looked at it, trying to decide the significance of the name from his hallucination. Instantly he felt his fingers were freezing from the cold. As Haruki watched the storage bay where he was hiding, his fingers slipped into the glove and strapped the Velcro. “Stefan Bossi! Stefan Bossi!” It seemed to be all he could remember.
Even trapped in the confusing vise of the illusion, Haruki felt an intense fear—this was what an extraterrestrial predator looked like while it slaughtered him. It was a look that filled him with horror.
Another radio frequency echoed from his computer, this one echoing like the mating call of a dolphin, and that excited him. With another “Stefan Bossi!” he stared out of the window and watched the sun disappear behind the Earth, he lost focus; and although it was only an hour after bedtime—another exciting six hours while everyone was deep asleep—the red glow of the computer screen had so hindered his thoughts that he was distracted while staring. And he slipped back into that mindless hallucination.
When Haruki managed to wake up, he realized it was hours later, in the bosom of the night. He glimpsed over the UPS batteries and saw a loose terminal that looked like a collection of fireflies floating in the antigravity of space.
After a while, he hovered upright and spoke.
“Stefan Bossi!”
Incredibly, he did not know why.
Haruki swallowed and looked at the wall, thinking: I’m going to die.
For a moment his mind seemed to separate from his physical body—it was not fear, or angst; it was terror. He was reminded by the physical sense of nausea as he swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth, and it occurred to him that he had just experienced a completely new level of fear.

The first argument about faith in the Fujita household—the first one Haruki got a hiding for, at least—happened on an Easter weekend in April. It was a big argument; even the greatest spanking couldn’t change his mind. Only his stepbrother shared his sentiment; Nic Chagall was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and listening to his sulking. This was fortunate because, in those days, there was no way to get ungrounded by a Japanese father.
The circumstances that, slipping out of a deep trance at night onboard the ISS, Haruki had spoken aloud a name that he had no memory of. And it hardly aroused enough curiosity to investigate the phenomenon.
Weird he thought, and got a little shiver; as if to confirm the opinion that the vision was indeed supernatural, he slipped into a trancelike daze. He realized with blank, distant eyes that for the first time the hallucination was no longer mindless.
Now he was walking onboard an abandoned spaceship pondering why the microgravity did not affect his arms and legs; he became aware that he was being watched from the shadows of the spaceship.
Haruki looked around quickly and saw a strange light with a red glow. He would have closed his eyes, but it fascinated him, and now it felt as if he had no idea where to go or why he was there; he did not know. Everything seemed so natural and real, as is the case with hallucinations. The revelation of being onboard an alien ship stopped bothering him, and the questions faded.
He screamed very loudly—the light must have done something to him because he could not remember being able to hear himself, and his lips didn’t twitch.
Soon, he came to a parting of ways; he saw a staircase leading to the lower deck, which had the appearance, in fact, of having long been abandoned. He sensed it led to something evil, yet he went down without hesitation, urged by some unstoppable force. He swallowed and descended the staircase, now convinced that the spaceship was haunted by invisible existences that he could not picture in his mind.
“What?” From behind the giant steel columns on his lefthand side, he heard broken and incoherent echoes of a radio frequency that he somewhat recognized. It sounded to him like fragmentary utterances of an evil conspiracy against his body and mind.
He swallowed again, holding onto the handrailing to steady himself. Haruki pointed at something lurking in the darkness, now believing it was watching him—an apparition so utterly intergalactic that he felt a pause in his breathing and a chill in his bones.
But for a long time, nothing came. He wanted to know why the haunted spaceship through which he journeyed was lit with a red glimmer having no point of origin. It appeared as if the mysterious light didn’t cast a shadow, and he thought about its neon color. Everything seemed a little brighter now, and he stood rooted with that cold feeling squeezing his lungs that reminded him of the alien presence.
A shallow pool in a bent depression met his eyes with a sloppy mess. He tumbled forward and plunged with his gloves into it and then looked at the thick slime of juices and placenta on his fingers with a different kind of horror.
Slime, he then observed, was around him everywhere. The walls towering grimly on either side revealed it in blots and splashes on the big, rusted panels. Bundles of sloppy racks that stretched over the walkways were hoarded with conductor cables and splattered as with placenta—glowing red. Robbing the place of its significance covered in heaps of crimson, slime dangling like slurry with its coagulations.
Sweat ran down his forehead and burned his eyes. He tasted a mixture of salt and minerals in his mouth. The shivering would not stop. Fear was like the ultimate curse. He thought: There is a point where the physical symptom of fear becomes unbearable: I have passed that point already.
It felt as if everything was in compensation for some crime that he could not remember. He believed he was a person of integrity; if he had murdered someone he would have remembered it, and a little introspection would have revealed the person he had supposedly harmed. The discovery of the menaces and mysteries of his surroundings was an added horror, tracing his steps backward in his mind.
And just how vainly could he reproduce the moment of his wrongdoing, here standing knee-deep in the slime? But suddenly the memories flashed tumultuously into his brain, picture after picture, only causing confusion and obscurity, and in no picture could he catch a glimpse of what he had done wrong.
But just because it hadn’t been remembered didn’t mean it didn’t happen. This failure to conceive only heightened his terror; he felt like a failure who had lost something in the dark without knowing what.
He grabbed his knees, shuddering,
(think of a way to kill yourself, think of a way to make it stop)
and sank his gloves into his spacesuit as hard as he could. He looked down, weak and flimsy knees rattling like a dog, tongue stuck into his cheek, and his posture heavily slanted with baleful character. It felt as if everything in sight conspired against his peace; from overhead and all around came the audible and startling echoes: the growl of a creature so obviously from outer space—that he could take it no more, and with a great effort to break the curse that bound his arms and legs to procrastination, he shouted from the depths of his lungs.
“Reveal yourself!”
His voice echoed with a hollow clang, it went stuttering and stammering, but of course he could not know what evils might lurk on the ship. He would only assume that, because his voice broke and echoed into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, the ship must have been large enough to have traveled from another galaxy or dimension.
I will not go down without a fight. There may be frequencies that are malignant and haunting this accursed ship. I shall decipher them and blot them down. The monster shall forget about my wrongs, the suffering that I endure—I, a worthless astronaut, a medic, and a computer programmer!
Haruki removed a flashbeam from his spacesuit; it felt warm when he switched it on. He pointed the beam at the wall and heard intimidating radio frequencies echoing against the steel.
Why, yes, I shall take off my glove—dip it into a heap of slime and write against the wall.
He had hardly touched the surface of the steel with his finger when a wild, evil reverberation of growling broke out at a considerable distance behind him, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer. It was a soulless, heartless, and unpleasant growl, like that of a predator terrorizing its prey. It was a growl which culminated in an unearthly roar close at hand, then died away by slow gradations. Maybe the accursed being that uttered it had retreated over the shimmer back to the dimension where it had come from. But maybe this was not the case—it might still be nearby and ready to attack at any moment. Fuck knows he spent a long time waiting for something to happen.
You should be moving, Fujita.
Maybe walking, maybe running. Either way it was better than just standing there and doing nothing.
A strange sensation began to take possession of his body and his mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses were affected; he experienced it as a hunch—an unconscious mental awareness of some extraterrestrial presence—some alien malevolence different in kind from the visible existences that glitched around him, and superior to humans in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideous growl. And now it felt as if it was approaching him; from what direction he had no idea—dared not speculate.
Haruki closed his eyes and stared at the back of his eyelids. All his former fears had combined or amalgamated into a gigantic terror that now held him in thrall. Apart from that, he had but one mission: to convert the frequency stuck in his head into code, echoing the haunted spaceship, before the extraterrestrial monster blessed him with eternal silence. And now he lifted his slimy finger, idly thinking of computer codes such as Java, C++, and R . . .
Should I write it down?
Should I write at all?
A soft, freaky sound escaped his throat. The face of the astronaut was sickly terrified, the pale face now augmented with a plan of action.
His body started to move rapidly, finger oozing slime without renewal, arm waving in the thin air like a graffiti artist. Two minutes later, at the last part of the script, his arm fell to his side, glove to the air. He was powerless and could not move or cry out; he found himself staring at a wall of illegibly written script, the code representative of the ultimate frequency haunting this spaceship. At that moment Haruki almost believed it: that he was earmarked for death.
He had never been so scared in his life.
The symbols were glowing against the reddened wall written at an angle, the slime, and the acrid smell of the place. He clamped his teeth against each other and tried to focus his mind on what he had written; the code was all he could think of.

Haruki Fujita heard footsteps in the hall. He grabbed a blanket from the bottom of his bed and used it to cover his stepbrother, who was bundled up and lying naked with his knees pulled up to his chest, shivering.
Their father came out of the dark to switch off their light. His wife followed, passed the room with a bottle of wine, and headed down the hall. Haruki lay silent for a moment, not moving, he was aware that something important and significant was being celebrated of which they were not informed. The door of their room closed softly against the clip as his father pulled it. Then came the sound of shouting.
“You’ve bought another Porsche,” his mother said.
“The hospital pays for it, you know,” Chin Fujita replied.
Haruki heard her footsteps march up and down the room before she went to the bathroom and opened the water to wash her hands.
“You are wasting our time on Haruki.”
“No, honey, he will become a doctor someday.”
“What about my boy?”
“He’s not interested, but I think he will pass his exam next week and become a medic like Haruki. I can tell from his aptitude tests, and his EQI is off the charts.”
“Another Porsche, I can’t believe it?”
“I know. You weren’t supposed to find out. It was a surprise. I got the GT3-RS for you; that explains the black.”
Haruki could have cared less about his father wasting his money on that bitch of stepmother. Not giving a fuck was good, but—
“What did I do to deserve another black beauty? No really—is it mine?”
The sound of broken glass woke Nicklaus up. Now looking at the swimming pool in his room, he said, “They’re fighting again . . . Haruki. It’s going to be a long night if they cannot sort out their shit.”
“Are you awake?”
Nic raised his head, which was tucked under the blanket, and kissed Haruki on the forehead.
“You should tell him about your talent.”
“I have absolutely no talent.”
“But you are good at computer programming. I can see the character of Mister Anderon from the movie in you.”
That was when Haruki grew excited. “I would like to make my hero proud.”
“You have lived in the Matrix for your entire life—by which you have become a prodigy and a part-time hacker.”
Maybe even a carbon copy.
“That is nice of you, Nicky. I’m glad you are proud of me since he is on the point of giving up, calling me the family disgrace, and long since dubbed me a worthless gamer. That bitch thinks I am a black sheep and says that I have a psychological imbalance, whatever that means. She said that I have missed my vocation to become a doctor.”
“But you are smart, like your dad. I like it that you are a devoted cybernetic criminal.”
“A hacker sounds better—”
And another glass broke in the room next to them. Their father opened the balcony door, probably to smoke a cigarette. When Haruki looked up this time, he saw joy and excitement on his stepbrother’s face. He was only two years younger, after all. Nic gave him a playful smile, then went back under the blanket where he could finish what he had started.
“Nicky, for God’s sake—stop it and try to focus—”
Yet it had always bothered Haruki that they were stepbrothers. Although Nic was a devoted fan of the great Keanu Reeves so generally and justly admired for his hair. Nic had always taken care to conceal his weakness from all eyes but those who shared his passion. And their common profession as medics was an added bond between them.
Maybe Nic will understand if I tell him the truth. He cannot come with me to New York.
He toyed for a moment with a lock of Nic’s hair which had escaped from its pins, and said, with an effort of calmness in his voice:
“Would you be okay with me leaving for a few months to look for a job, Nicky?”
It was clearly needful for Nic to put his arm across his eyes without making an instant reply. Evidently he would mind; and the tears sprang into his large brown eyes as corroborative testimony.
“Ah, my brother,” he replied, looking up at his face with tenderness, “I knew this was coming. Did I not lie awake half of the afternoon weeping because, during the other half, Keanu Reeves had come to me in a dream.”
It was the great actor, Haruki Fujita would know if his stepbrother was lying, which he wasn’t.
“Neo?” he whispered. His lips were beginning to shiver again, but in the dim light of the swimming pool Nic barely noticed.
“Yes, and standing next to the computer screen—young, too, and handsome as in the first movie—pointed to your picture on the wall? I could not see your face when I looked since you were uploaded into the Matrix, such as at the end of the flick. You can smile at this, but you and I, dear, know that such things are no joke.”
Haruki’s life would be in trouble not because he was uploaded into the program but because his face was missing (and so he believed it to be an actual dream); why the hero would point to his picture on the wall baffled his mind.
“And I saw within the glowing code the wound of a blade on your throat, Haruki—forgive me, but we do not hide things from each other. Perhaps you have another interpretation. Perhaps it does not mean that you will go away. Or maybe you will take me with you?”
“I think it foreshadowed a simpler, surely less tragic, meaning like a visit to the great robot city in Zion. But please don’t try to stop me from leaving.”
“Are there not enough medics in New York?” Nic Chagall continued before his stepbrother could stop him— “Trinity discovered the truth with a broken heart? Look—my chest is ripped open; and I am almost sure that I will die in your absence.”
No—not like this.
Too sad.
Might break them apart.
The throbbing in his chest was more persistent; the next moment Haruki held out his hands but he was afraid that Nic would reject his request for affection. His hands lingered. There was a brief interval of silence. It sounded like their parents were making out again. It was warming up according to their breathing, but if his suspicions were correct, they would go on for the rest of the night. Nic refused to take his hands.
How long before his cold hands revealed the pain in his heart and his emotional scars manifesting in the form of tears, the hacker was unable to cry. How long before they would see each other again?
Three months? A year?
That would be the length of his pain, Haruki thought, and his lips began to shudder. By the time his lips stopped shaking, and it was not until a considerable time later that he realized he would have to leave his brother behind.
“I suppose I’ll have to go.”
Watching Nic, he felt the warmth of his affection for him that his blank expression denied. The weight pressed heavily on his shoulders as he watched his stepbrother cope with it in his own kind of way.

While job hunting in downtown Brooklyn after three months, Haruki was taking cover under a bridge one thunderstorm night, waiting for his weed to be delivered. The storm was well underway now, and no longer raining but pouring. He believed he understood the economic difficulties brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic—since he hadn’t found a job yet—but as the homeless people kept multiplying (he could see more and more people each week), he began to gain a different perspective in terms of earning an honest paycheck.
To his right, through the maze of squatters and bonfires toward the parking lot, he saw a black Lincoln Continental. Haruki noticed a driver with white hair holding the steering wheel like a woman (shit, he thought, she looked exactly like the driver from The Matrix) with her long nails and black leather jacket.
“What the hell?” he asked, sounding smoked as usual.
The car first drove around and then pulled right up to him. He thought of asking the driver if she had also ordered some weed—her eyes were looking mighty red—and decided he didn’t want to have that conversation now. He turned his attention toward the backseat where another woman with a crying baby had been watching him. At first he thought she looked familiar. Then he looked again and saw she was actually a transvestite, rocking the baby in his arms.
“You need to come with us,” the transvestite said. “We heard you are looking for a job?”
“We don’t have much time, Elon,” the driver added.
He thought of Nic back home and imagined he would make his stepbrother proud when breaking the news. He resisted the urge to question the man about the job . . . or even ask them who they were. His clever plan to look for a job in the big city was pretty screwed up and turned out to be a great mistake.
The crying increased, louder.
“We are subcontracting for NASA,” Elon said. He showed his badge to prove it.
“Really?”
“Come.”
“Now?”
“You know we are the real deal, right?”
“Shit, no. I didn’t expect it to happen like this.” Failing to hide the doubt on his face. Or the glimmering sweat on his forehead. Maybe from the weed or the rain. Maybe both.
“Your father said you’re the best medic in the field, but legislation makes it impossible with your qualifications. Your father has pulled some strings for you to work through us. The danger pay is good. Since you’ll be working in space.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“No, really.”
“Space?”
“You will be working on the International Space Station for three months on and three months off, both of you.”
Haruki didn’t hear it. Till it registered. “Both?”
“Both of the Fujita boys will be going to space!”
Haruki brightened. NASA also recruited his stepbrother to join the crew, and two weeks later, the two brothers were reunited in the microgravity of space.
Though happy to be together, Haruki was no less proud in spirit that he had been onboard the ISS for weeks that felt like an eternity. He gladly enjoyed the company of his stepbrother, and it was while living onboard the ISS, awaiting news and orders from ground control, that he had slipped into a trance.

The hallucination came back to Haruki Fujita, haunting enough, as he stood on board the spaceship with his back against the reddened wall, hands at his side. He had to lift his head upward slightly to confront his enemy. Well . . . actually, he had to lift his head more than slightly. The thing was large. So large that he couldn’t even see the extraterrestrial beast. In case you didn’t notice the predator reminds me of Nicky, but ten times more horrible! A monster that stirred no love nor longing in my heart, but strangely its presence evoked pleasant memories of my happy childhood—with all kinds of sentiment. The tender emotions were swallowed up in fear.
Haruki tried to run away, but his boots were saturated with slime. He was unable to pull his legs out of the mess. His arms drifted uselessly in the air; of his eyes only he remained in control, and these he dared not remove from the glowing ember of his enemy.
He stared at it.
Was it cybernetic?
Shit, it looked like it was.
Anyway, it seemed biological and that most dreadful of all existences—a robot with predatory limbs! In its blank stare, he noticed neither love, pity, nor artificial intelligence—nothing to which he could address an appeal for mercy.
An appeal won’t be a lie, he thought.
The sight of it evoked no happy memories. If he could have reached it he would have grabbed it. If he could have reached it he would have tried to stick his finger into its glowing eye. But his inaction only made the situation more terrifying with the red glow on his forehead.
For a time, which seemed so long that the Earth grew bleak with crime and murder, and the haunted ship, having miscalculated its destination in this monstrous height of its terrors, faded out of his consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the predator invaded his space, regarding him with the brutal malevolence of a cybernetic monster.
Quivering with panic, Haruki lifted his head so he could peer into its mouth, double-edged razor blades, rows and rows of them like a predator with a mouthful of fangs chipped but otherwise deadly.
“I see.”
It sat down. The ship rocked a little. Haruki guessed that the beast might weigh as much as thirty tons. It had come from a universe where there were different alloys, shapeshifting metal . . . also advanced composites were used in its construction, some organic materials like flesh and exoskeleton, the biological part of the organism was infected with a wicked cancer.
The monster roared at him, promising annihilation.
He moved back. The monster came forward. That made Haruki very uncomfortable.
“Shit!” Haruki didn’t take any pleasure in the way this was going if not for the brutal nature of his enemy; as solid as a piece of machinery and ferocious, it transformed itself grinning with its one eye missing, about to deliver him to the universe and convert him into stardust.
The thing’s mouth grew sly, confronting him to admit a dirty, dirty secret. Its grin became a smile. Strangely, the venom oozed out of its tongue. This is what it looks like, he thought, if a species faces its ultimate extinction even worse than those robots from the movie. This is what it looks like just before the end of humanity.
“No . . .”
The beast thrust its limbs forward and sprang upon him with outrageous ferocity! The act released Haruki’s physical energy without affecting his willpower to fight back. And his pain was blocked out by an overdose of hydrofluoric acid at the same time something leeched onto his brainstem, his flimsy body and dangling arms powered with a blind, inanimate mind of their own, became weak and puny.
“Not like this . . . I can’t die like this . . . and what about . . . wait!”
For an instant he seemed to see this supernatural contest between an infected robot and a dying human only as a spectator—such fantasies of hallucinations.
He looked at the wall crying like a girl, leaving the predator and its claws to finish him off. Then he regained his willpower almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the visionary now had an accurate will as alert and fierce as that of the predator.
“Leame dafuckalone!”
He tried to fight back. The hacker’s return. But how can a human compete with a creature of extraterrestrial origins? He supposed a boy who was being killed by an alien monster might feel something like pain as he lay regarding his gushing main artery with a cold surprise. The programmer’s skill is the programmer’s weakness.
“No!” His neck bled like a slaughtered animal. His worthless hands were clasped at his sides.
Despite his struggles—despite his strength and willpower, which seemed wasted in the void of space, he felt the sharp claws thrust into his throat and brain, many times. Falling backward to the sheet metal, he saw through his cracked visor the grey and dusty surface of the Moon within an arm’s reach of his own, and then everything was black. The sounds of the unearthly radio frequencies in the distance—the dolphin’s cry, a sharp, far growl declaring the end, and Hariki Fujita imagined he was dead.

The International Space Station is that kind of place that when you are there, you must take it all in, but after Peggy grabbed Jameson by the arm and ordered him to come with her, there was no time to take it all in. The airlock closed behind them, and Peggy knew they were getting close.
“How far is it?” Jamason asked, as they hovered along, their feet stirring particles of dust in the microgravity beneath their soles.
Peggy looked at him, suspiciously, recalling that he had agreed to go with her without informing ground control of their whereabouts.
“Only a few feet further,” Peggy answered. She led the way toward the old storage bay with its battery banks and electrical inverters, accumulating backup electricity in case of an emergency.
“What is going on,” he said as they hovered through the west hanger where corrosion and dilapidation gradually increased and passed through the narrow arch into the dark, freezing aerospace shadows.
“You know Haruki Fujita?” she said, feeding her companion’s curiosity with as little information as possible. The name was disturbing, and Peggy felt her neck spasm a little.
“The Jap who plays with his stepbrother’s hair? I know him; he ruined a month of my work after the botanicals died from his intrusion. There is an HR complaint lodged against him for interfering with my plants, but ground control refuses to believe it. You will believe me when—”
“I believe you, okay. Because he has been hacking into the servers for a long time. He works at night in the dilapidated capsule.”
“The asshole! So that’s where the acidic atmosphere that killed my plants came from.”
“You might have imagined that NASA’s security checks would have picked up a cybernetic criminal who could hack their instrumentation.”
“The very last person I would have suspected.”
“Yesterday afternoon I was issued a job card to check the battery terminals. To my surprise I found something else in there, I found ‘a computer of him’ in there.”
“So you caught him red-handed?”
“Damn it! He frightened me. Something growled from behind me—it literally gave me goosebumps. I’m lucky that I wasn’t there ten minutes earlier. Oh shit, he was dying, and I thought the blood floating in space was proof enough that I wouldn’t be able to save him.”
Hovering in the cramped hanger shoulder to shoulder, Peggy glanced at him. The boy’s eyes were so dark they seemed black, only by her flashbeam did they turn indigo blue. She noticed her death-grip on the torch, her gloves couldn’t release their hold even consciously.
“I need to show you the body so that we can devise a plan of action,” the engineer explained. “I thought it was safe for us to check out the corpse during the day.”
“Are you sure the Jap is dead?” said the biologist. “The light in there may have obscured your visibility and conclusion. If he was unconscious he might still be alive.”
“Well, he seemed very dead to me.” She glanced sideways at the boy, and felt a flare of disappointment. She knew deep down in her being that Haruki was gone, one of the first dead bodies she ever encountered. She had to admit that such a bloody, gruesome, and unsettling scene she had never seen in all her years as a first aider or electrical engineer.
“Alright,” Jameson said; “we will go and look at him,” and he added, in the words of a caring person, “we should keep this between us—I mean, if young Nic Chagall ever finds out about his stepbrother it would kill him. By the way, I heard the other day that ‘Nic’ was not his real name.”
“What is?”
“I cannot remember. I had lost interest in the introvert, and it did not grab hold in my memory—something like Nicklaus. The medic who enrolled in the space program joined his stepbrother after he was abandoned. But Haruki, on the other hand, had joined in search of extraterrestrial technology. Can you believe that there are people who still believe in aliens nowadays? Clearly you are not a believer.”
“Obviously.”
“But wandering about your faith, what do you believe in then? Your boyfriend mentioned what the name was called and said it was scientific in nature.”
“We don’t have a name yet.” Peggy was reluctant to argue without facts about something so important as that. Bossi bases his beliefs on the Principia Mathematica. Isaac Newton was the founder of a philosophy that was only recently made public. A few fragments of his work provide scientific evidence based on experimentation. But anyhow, here is the storage bay.”
She looked at him sharply to see if he was prepared. His face, however, was wearing an expression of frozen panic. His lips and nostrils were rimmed with deep purple, and there were shadows in his dark eyes, like the shapes of a reptile streaking into two hard lines.
“Lemme show you where I found the body,” she said, “this is the place.”
As the two astronauts made their way through the blood of hovering crimson, they suddenly stopped and lifted their flashbeams to the height of the wall, uttered a low note of surprise, and stood motionless, their eyes fixed upon something weird. As far as Peggy could see the wall was covered with inscriptions, though she did not yet understand what she was looking at. A moment later she moved cautiously forward, aiming for the inverters.
Behind the inverter of an enormous height hovered the spacesuit of another astronaut. Standing silent beside it, Peggy noted such particulars that immediately took her attention—the suit was empty, the body missing, the clothing still inside; whatever most probably and strangely happened to this astronaut must have been unearthly.
The suit floated upon its back, the nametag—Nic Chagall. One arm was twisted in circles, the other stretched, but the latter was ripped off brutally, with the missing piece stuck to the helmet. The other arm was severely bent. The whole attitude of the suit was that of desperate but weak resistance to something.
Nearby drifted the disemboweled stepbrother with his naked finger stretched out, stained and blotched, and the floor had been scribbled with blood into symbols all over the corroded floorplate; next to his suit was unmistakable the footprint of an alien entity.
A glance at the empty spacesuit’s missing glove and boots made the nature of the struggle even more mysterious. While the suit and helmet were clean, the arms and legs were red—almost black. The oxygen hose stuck against an inverter, and the suit was twisted and turned backward, opposite any natural posture.
From behind Haruki’s cracked helmet his eyes had popped, bloody and gruesome. The throat showed horrible penetrations; not mere fingermarks, but lacerations and stab wounds inflicted by animal claws that must have buried themselves in his bleeding flesh, maintaining their terrible grip long after death. His throat, chin, and face were soggy; the material saturated; drops of blood had gathered like condensate inside his visor, bloodstained hair and cheeks.
All this the two astronauts observed without speaking—almost frozen. Then Jameson said:
“Poor Haruki! He got what he deserved.”
Peggy was vigilantly inspecting the storage bay. Her flashbeam was held in both hands and at full brightness, and her gloves were clenched around the handle.
“The work of a murderer,” she said, without removing her eyes from the surrounding inverters. “It was done by Nic—Chagall.”
Something half-hidden by the cable racks behind the inverters caught Peggy’s attention. It was the wall. She looked at it while lifting her flashbeam. It contained the code of computer and upon the entire wall the name “Stefan Bossi.” Written in blood over and over again—scribbled as if in haste barely legible—were the following lines, which Peggy read silently while her companion started scanning the dark confines of the enclosure and hearing a commotion from inside the bloody spiderwebs dangling from the wall.

public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String originalName = “Stefan Bossi”;
System.out.println(“Original name: “ + originalName);

// Reversing the name
String reversedName = new StringBuilder(originalName).reverse().toString();
System.out.println(“Reversed name: “ + reversedName);

// Converting to uppercase
String upperCaseName = originalName.toUpperCase();
System.out.println(“Uppercase name: “ + upperCaseName);

// Swapping first name with last name
int spaceIndex = originalName.indexOf(‘ ‘);
String firstName

“Bossi Stefan—”
Peggy stopped reading; there was no more to read. The code broke off in the middle of a line.
“What a flawless Java script,” she said, since she was somewhat of a programmer herself. With extraordinary patience she stood looking at the wall.
“Who’s Java?” Jameson asked rather confused.
“Computer code, a script that was written to play around with two words—a very jolly script indeed. Coded in first generation; I know the language. The script repeated my boyfriend’s name, but it must have been by mistake.”
“Your boyfriend?” Jameson said. “Let us go back; we must share this information with ground control.”
Peggy said nothing but nodded in compliance. Staring at the inverter behind the empty spacesuit of the missing astronaut with the oxygen hose entangled, she saw that the absent glove was stuck (or rather glued) to the vertical surface by some slimy substance drooling from the melted plastic. She took her torch to illuminate it into view. It was an oozing mess, and painted on the panel were the hardly decipherable words, “Peggy Lance.”
“Peggy Lance!” exclaimed Jameson, with sudden animation. “Why, that is your name—not Stefan Bossi. And—curse your soul! How it all comes together—the murderer’s name is Peggy Lance!”
“There is something weird going on here,” Peggy said. “I deny anything of the kind.”
There came to them from inside the wall—seemingly from a great distance—the sound of a growl, a high-pitched, frequency, cybernetic echo, which had no more joy than that of a predator prowling at its prey; a growl that originated from far away, closer and closer, distinct, more explicit but brutal, until it faded away outside the audible distance of their hearing; a growl so unnatural, so extraterrestrial, so morbid, that it filled those freaked out astronauts with a sense of dread unspeakable! They did not move their torches nor think of them; the menace of that horrible sound was the kind not to be disturbed by light. As it had originated out of solid metal, to die away grimly; from a culminating frequency that had seemed almost in their head, it retreated into the distance until its soft echoes, cybernetic and mechanical to the last frequency, faded into silence at an immeasurable distance.

“Wake the fuck up, man.”
Haruki Fujita slipped out of a hallucination. The hallucination was mindless. It featured a name moments before something killed him, extraterrestrial and horrible from head to toe. Slimy and predatory. The most of it cybernetic. He was dying, with blood gushing out of his neck, but that wasn’t what killed him, at least not immediately, because his intestines were pulled out of his stomach, and that was what killed him.
He watched the blue solar panel wing curve outward from the steel hull of the International Space Station, and he frowned bitterly. From the sensation of death, Haruki Fujita had a sickening gut feeling.
“Stefan Bossi!” he cried out, alarmed.
The name lingered in his mind. He remembered it from his hallucination. He idly watched one of his gloves floating across the room and stopped in front of his computer screen. No reason was known to him why he remembered that name; he remembered nothing more. There was a brief rush—he had time to think about programming languages and decoding radio frequencies, though none of the government organizations he hacked into proved extraterrestrial in origin, but Haruki was convinced by the bizarre nature of the sounds. He didn’t really care about the scientists at SETI, many doctors, and the best professors in the world who regarded them as a hoax. And those who didn’t view the evolution of Earth from an intergalactic perspective that was terraformed over billions of years by otherworldly entities.
“Stefan Bossi!” he said again, grabbing the floating glove with his cold hand and looked at it, trying to decide the significance of the name from his hallucination. Instantly he felt his fingers were freezing from the cold. As Haruki watched the storage bay where he was hiding, his fingers slipped into the glove and strapped the Velcro. “Stefan Bossi! Stefan Bossi!” It seemed to be all he could remember.
Even trapped in the confusing vise of the illusion, Haruki felt an intense fear—this was what an extraterrestrial predator looked like while it slaughtered him. It was a look that filled him with horror.
Another radio frequency echoed from his computer, this one echoing like the mating call of a dolphin, and that excited him. With another “Stefan Bossi!” he stared out of the window and watched the sun disappear behind the Earth, he lost focus; and although it was only an hour after bedtime—another exciting six hours while everyone was deep asleep—the red glow of the computer screen had so hindered his thoughts that he was distracted while staring. And he slipped back into that mindless hallucination.
When Haruki managed to wake up, he realized it was hours later, in the bosom of the night. He glimpsed over the UPS batteries and saw a loose terminal that looked like a collection of fireflies floating in the antigravity of space.
After a while, he hovered upright and spoke.
“Stefan Bossi!”
Incredibly, he did not know why.
Haruki swallowed and looked at the wall, thinking: I’m going to die.
For a moment his mind seemed to separate from his physical body—it was not fear, or angst; it was terror. He was reminded by the physical sense of nausea as he swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth, and it occurred to him that he had just experienced a completely new level of fear.

The first argument about faith in the Fujita household—the first one Haruki got a hiding for, at least—happened on an Easter weekend in April. It was a big argument; even the greatest spanking couldn’t change his mind. Only his stepbrother shared his sentiment; Nic Chagall was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and listening to his sulking. This was fortunate because, in those days, there was no way to get ungrounded by a Japanese father.
The circumstances that, slipping out of a deep trance at night onboard the ISS, Haruki had spoken aloud a name that he had no memory of. And it hardly aroused enough curiosity to investigate the phenomenon.
Weird he thought, and got a little shiver; as if to confirm the opinion that the vision was indeed supernatural, he slipped into a trancelike daze. He realized with blank, distant eyes that for the first time the hallucination was no longer mindless.
Now he was walking onboard an abandoned spaceship pondering why the microgravity did not affect his arms and legs; he became aware that he was being watched from the shadows of the spaceship.
Haruki looked around quickly and saw a strange light with a red glow. He would have closed his eyes, but it fascinated him, and now it felt as if he had no idea where to go or why he was there; he did not know. Everything seemed so natural and real, as is the case with hallucinations. The revelation of being onboard an alien ship stopped bothering him, and the questions faded.
He screamed very loudly—the light must have done something to him because he could not remember being able to hear himself, and his lips didn’t twitch.
Soon, he came to a parting of ways; he saw a staircase leading to the lower deck, which had the appearance, in fact, of having long been abandoned. He sensed it led to something evil, yet he went down without hesitation, urged by some unstoppable force. He swallowed and descended the staircase, now convinced that the spaceship was haunted by invisible existences that he could not picture in his mind.
“What?” From behind the giant steel columns on his lefthand side, he heard broken and incoherent echoes of a radio frequency that he somewhat recognized. It sounded to him like fragmentary utterances of an evil conspiracy against his body and mind.
He swallowed again, holding onto the handrailing to steady himself. Haruki pointed at something lurking in the darkness, now believing it was watching him—an apparition so utterly intergalactic that he felt a pause in his breathing and a chill in his bones.
But for a long time, nothing came. He wanted to know why the haunted spaceship through which he journeyed was lit with a red glimmer having no point of origin. It appeared as if the mysterious light didn’t cast a shadow, and he thought about its neon color. Everything seemed a little brighter now, and he stood rooted with that cold feeling squeezing his lungs that reminded him of the alien presence.
A shallow pool in a bent depression met his eyes with a sloppy mess. He tumbled forward and plunged with his gloves into it and then looked at the thick slime of juices and placenta on his fingers with a different kind of horror.
Slime, he then observed, was around him everywhere. The walls towering grimly on either side revealed it in blots and splashes on the big, rusted panels. Bundles of sloppy racks that stretched over the walkways were hoarded with conductor cables and splattered as with placenta—glowing red. Robbing the place of its significance covered in heaps of crimson, slime dangling like slurry with its coagulations.
Sweat ran down his forehead and burned his eyes. He tasted a mixture of salt and minerals in his mouth. The shivering would not stop. Fear was like the ultimate curse. He thought: There is a point where the physical symptom of fear becomes unbearable: I have passed that point already.
It felt as if everything was in compensation for some crime that he could not remember. He believed he was a person of integrity; if he had murdered someone he would have remembered it, and a little introspection would have revealed the person he had supposedly harmed. The discovery of the menaces and mysteries of his surroundings was an added horror, tracing his steps backward in his mind.
And just how vainly could he reproduce the moment of his wrongdoing, here standing knee-deep in the slime? But suddenly the memories flashed tumultuously into his brain, picture after picture, only causing confusion and obscurity, and in no picture could he catch a glimpse of what he had done wrong.
But just because it hadn’t been remembered didn’t mean it didn’t happen. This failure to conceive only heightened his terror; he felt like a failure who had lost something in the dark without knowing what.
He grabbed his knees, shuddering,
(think of a way to kill yourself, think of a way to make it stop)
and sank his gloves into his spacesuit as hard as he could. He looked down, weak and flimsy knees rattling like a dog, tongue stuck into his cheek, and his posture heavily slanted with baleful character. It felt as if everything in sight conspired against his peace; from overhead and all around came the audible and startling echoes: the growl of a creature so obviously from outer space—that he could take it no more, and with a great effort to break the curse that bound his arms and legs to procrastination, he shouted from the depths of his lungs.
“Reveal yourself!”
His voice echoed with a hollow clang, it went stuttering and stammering, but of course he could not know what evils might lurk on the ship. He would only assume that, because his voice broke and echoed into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, the ship must have been large enough to have traveled from another galaxy or dimension.
I will not go down without a fight. There may be frequencies that are malignant and haunting this accursed ship. I shall decipher them and blot them down. The monster shall forget about my wrongs, the suffering that I endure—I, a worthless astronaut, a medic, and a computer programmer!
Haruki removed a flashbeam from his spacesuit; it felt warm when he switched it on. He pointed the beam at the wall and heard intimidating radio frequencies echoing against the steel.
Why, yes, I shall take off my glove—dip it into a heap of slime and write against the wall.
He had hardly touched the surface of the steel with his finger when a wild, evil reverberation of growling broke out at a considerable distance behind him, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer. It was a soulless, heartless, and unpleasant growl, like that of a predator terrorizing its prey. It was a growl which culminated in an unearthly roar close at hand, then died away by slow gradations. Maybe the accursed being that uttered it had retreated over the shimmer back to the dimension where it had come from. But maybe this was not the case—it might still be nearby and ready to attack at any moment. Fuck knows he spent a long time waiting for something to happen.
You should be moving, Fujita.
Maybe walking, maybe running. Either way it was better than just standing there and doing nothing.
A strange sensation began to take possession of his body and his mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses were affected; he experienced it as a hunch—an unconscious mental awareness of some extraterrestrial presence—some alien malevolence different in kind from the visible existences that glitched around him, and superior to humans in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideous growl. And now it felt as if it was approaching him; from what direction he had no idea—dared not speculate.
Haruki closed his eyes and stared at the back of his eyelids. All his former fears had combined or amalgamated into a gigantic terror that now held him in thrall. Apart from that, he had but one mission: to convert the frequency stuck in his head into code, echoing the haunted spaceship, before the extraterrestrial monster blessed him with eternal silence. And now he lifted his slimy finger, idly thinking of computer codes such as Java, C++, and R . . .
Should I write it down?
Should I write at all?
A soft, freaky sound escaped his throat. The face of the astronaut was sickly terrified, the pale face now augmented with a plan of action.
His body started to move rapidly, finger oozing slime without renewal, arm waving in the thin air like a graffiti artist. Two minutes later, at the last part of the script, his arm fell to his side, glove to the air. He was powerless and could not move or cry out; he found himself staring at a wall of illegibly written script, the code representative of the ultimate frequency haunting this spaceship. At that moment Haruki almost believed it: that he was earmarked for death.
He had never been so scared in his life.
The symbols were glowing against the reddened wall written at an angle, the slime, and the acrid smell of the place. He clamped his teeth against each other and tried to focus his mind on what he had written; the code was all he could think of.

Haruki Fujita heard footsteps in the hall. He grabbed a blanket from the bottom of his bed and used it to cover his stepbrother, who was bundled up and lying naked with his knees pulled up to his chest, shivering.
Their father came out of the dark to switch off their light. His wife followed, passed the room with a bottle of wine, and headed down the hall. Haruki lay silent for a moment, not moving, he was aware that something important and significant was being celebrated of which they were not informed. The door of their room closed softly against the clip as his father pulled it. Then came the sound of shouting.
“You’ve bought another Porsche,” his mother said.
“The hospital pays for it, you know,” Chin Fujita replied.
Haruki heard her footsteps march up and down the room before she went to the bathroom and opened the water to wash her hands.
“You are wasting our time on Haruki.”
“No, honey, he will become a doctor someday.”
“What about my boy?”
“He’s not interested, but I think he will pass his exam next week and become a medic like Haruki. I can tell from his aptitude tests, and his EQI is off the charts.”
“Another Porsche, I can’t believe it?”
“I know. You weren’t supposed to find out. It was a surprise. I got the GT3-RS for you; that explains the black.”
Haruki could have cared less about his father wasting his money on that bitch of stepmother. Not giving a fuck was good, but—
“What did I do to deserve another black beauty? No really—is it mine?”
The sound of broken glass woke Nicklaus up. Now looking at the swimming pool in his room, he said, “They’re fighting again . . . Haruki. It’s going to be a long night if they cannot sort out their shit.”
“Are you awake?”
Nic raised his head, which was tucked under the blanket, and kissed Haruki on the forehead.
“You should tell him about your talent.”
“I have absolutely no talent.”
“But you are good at computer programming. I can see the character of Mister Anderon from the movie in you.”
That was when Haruki grew excited. “I would like to make my hero proud.”
“You have lived in the Matrix for your entire life—by which you have become a prodigy and a part-time hacker.”
Maybe even a carbon copy.
“That is nice of you, Nicky. I’m glad you are proud of me since he is on the point of giving up, calling me the family disgrace, and long since dubbed me a worthless gamer. That bitch thinks I am a black sheep and says that I have a psychological imbalance, whatever that means. She said that I have missed my vocation to become a doctor.”
“But you are smart, like your dad. I like it that you are a devoted cybernetic criminal.”
“A hacker sounds better—”
And another glass broke in the room next to them. Their father opened the balcony door, probably to smoke a cigarette. When Haruki looked up this time, he saw joy and excitement on his stepbrother’s face. He was only two years younger, after all. Nic gave him a playful smile, then went back under the blanket where he could finish what he had started.
“Nicky, for God’s sake—stop it and try to focus—”
Yet it had always bothered Haruki that they were stepbrothers. Although Nic was a devoted fan of the great Keanu Reeves so generally and justly admired for his hair. Nic had always taken care to conceal his weakness from all eyes but those who shared his passion. And their common profession as medics was an added bond between them.
Maybe Nic will understand if I tell him the truth. He cannot come with me to New York.
He toyed for a moment with a lock of Nic’s hair which had escaped from its pins, and said, with an effort of calmness in his voice:
“Would you be okay with me leaving for a few months to look for a job, Nicky?”
It was clearly needful for Nic to put his arm across his eyes without making an instant reply. Evidently he would mind; and the tears sprang into his large brown eyes as corroborative testimony.
“Ah, my brother,” he replied, looking up at his face with tenderness, “I knew this was coming. Did I not lie awake half of the afternoon weeping because, during the other half, Keanu Reeves had come to me in a dream.”
It was the great actor, Haruki Fujita would know if his stepbrother was lying, which he wasn’t.
“Neo?” he whispered. His lips were beginning to shiver again, but in the dim light of the swimming pool Nic barely noticed.
“Yes, and standing next to the computer screen—young, too, and handsome as in the first movie—pointed to your picture on the wall? I could not see your face when I looked since you were uploaded into the Matrix, such as at the end of the flick. You can smile at this, but you and I, dear, know that such things are no joke.”
Haruki’s life would be in trouble not because he was uploaded into the program but because his face was missing (and so he believed it to be an actual dream); why the hero would point to his picture on the wall baffled his mind.
“And I saw within the glowing code the wound of a blade on your throat, Haruki—forgive me, but we do not hide things from each other. Perhaps you have another interpretation. Perhaps it does not mean that you will go away. Or maybe you will take me with you?”
“I think it foreshadowed a simpler, surely less tragic, meaning like a visit to the great robot city in Zion. But please don’t try to stop me from leaving.”
“Are there not enough medics in New York?” Nic Chagall continued before his stepbrother could stop him— “Trinity discovered the truth with a broken heart? Look—my chest is ripped open; and I am almost sure that I will die in your absence.”
No—not like this.
Too sad.
Might break them apart.
The throbbing in his chest was more persistent; the next moment Haruki held out his hands but he was afraid that Nic would reject his request for affection. His hands lingered. There was a brief interval of silence. It sounded like their parents were making out again. It was warming up according to their breathing, but if his suspicions were correct, they would go on for the rest of the night. Nic refused to take his hands.
How long before his cold hands revealed the pain in his heart and his emotional scars manifesting in the form of tears, the hacker was unable to cry. How long before they would see each other again?
Three months? A year?
That would be the length of his pain, Haruki thought, and his lips began to shudder. By the time his lips stopped shaking, and it was not until a considerable time later that he realized he would have to leave his brother behind.
“I suppose I’ll have to go.”
Watching Nic, he felt the warmth of his affection for him that his blank expression denied. The weight pressed heavily on his shoulders as he watched his stepbrother cope with it in his own kind of way.

While job hunting in downtown Brooklyn after three months, Haruki was taking cover under a bridge one thunderstorm night, waiting for his weed to be delivered. The storm was well underway now, and no longer raining but pouring. He believed he understood the economic difficulties brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic—since he hadn’t found a job yet—but as the homeless people kept multiplying (he could see more and more people each week), he began to gain a different perspective in terms of earning an honest paycheck.
To his right, through the maze of squatters and bonfires toward the parking lot, he saw a black Lincoln Continental. Haruki noticed a driver with white hair holding the steering wheel like a woman (shit, he thought, she looked exactly like the driver from The Matrix) with her long nails and black leather jacket.
“What the hell?” he asked, sounding smoked as usual.
The car first drove around and then pulled right up to him. He thought of asking the driver if she had also ordered some weed—her eyes were looking mighty red—and decided he didn’t want to have that conversation now. He turned his attention toward the backseat where another woman with a crying baby had been watching him. At first he thought she looked familiar. Then he looked again and saw she was actually a transvestite, rocking the baby in his arms.
“You need to come with us,” the transvestite said. “We heard you are looking for a job?”
“We don’t have much time, Elon,” the driver added.
He thought of Nic back home and imagined he would make his stepbrother proud when breaking the news. He resisted the urge to question the man about the job . . . or even ask them who they were. His clever plan to look for a job in the big city was pretty screwed up and turned out to be a great mistake.
The crying increased, louder.
“We are subcontracting for NASA,” Elon said. He showed his badge to prove it.
“Really?”
“Come.”
“Now?”
“You know we are the real deal, right?”
“Shit, no. I didn’t expect it to happen like this.” Failing to hide the doubt on his face. Or the glimmering sweat on his forehead. Maybe from the weed or the rain. Maybe both.
“Your father said you’re the best medic in the field, but legislation makes it impossible with your qualifications. Your father has pulled some strings for you to work through us. The danger pay is good. Since you’ll be working in space.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“No, really.”
“Space?”
“You will be working on the International Space Station for three months on and three months off, both of you.”
Haruki didn’t hear it. Till it registered. “Both?”
“Both of the Fujita boys will be going to space!”
Haruki brightened. NASA also recruited his stepbrother to join the crew, and two weeks later, the two brothers were reunited in the microgravity of space.
Though happy to be together, Haruki was no less proud in spirit that he had been onboard the ISS for weeks that felt like an eternity. He gladly enjoyed the company of his stepbrother, and it was while living onboard the ISS, awaiting news and orders from ground control, that he had slipped into a trance.

The hallucination came back to Haruki Fujita, haunting enough, as he stood on board the spaceship with his back against the reddened wall, hands at his side. He had to lift his head upward slightly to confront his enemy. Well . . . actually, he had to lift his head more than slightly. The thing was large. So large that he couldn’t even see the extraterrestrial beast. In case you didn’t notice the predator reminds me of Nicky, but ten times more horrible! A monster that stirred no love nor longing in my heart, but strangely its presence evoked pleasant memories of my happy childhood—with all kinds of sentiment. The tender emotions were swallowed up in fear.
Haruki tried to run away, but his boots were saturated with slime. He was unable to pull his legs out of the mess. His arms drifted uselessly in the air; of his eyes only he remained in control, and these he dared not remove from the glowing ember of his enemy.
He stared at it.
Was it cybernetic?
Shit, it looked like it was.
Anyway, it seemed biological and that most dreadful of all existences—a robot with predatory limbs! In its blank stare, he noticed neither love, pity, nor artificial intelligence—nothing to which he could address an appeal for mercy.
An appeal won’t be a lie, he thought.
The sight of it evoked no happy memories. If he could have reached it he would have grabbed it. If he could have reached it he would have tried to stick his finger into its glowing eye. But his inaction only made the situation more terrifying with the red glow on his forehead.
For a time, which seemed so long that the Earth grew bleak with crime and murder, and the haunted ship, having miscalculated its destination in this monstrous height of its terrors, faded out of his consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the predator invaded his space, regarding him with the brutal malevolence of a cybernetic monster.
Quivering with panic, Haruki lifted his head so he could peer into its mouth, double-edged razor blades, rows and rows of them like a predator with a mouthful of fangs chipped but otherwise deadly.
“I see.”
It sat down. The ship rocked a little. Haruki guessed that the beast might weigh as much as thirty tons. It had come from a universe where there were different alloys, shapeshifting metal . . . also advanced composites were used in its construction, some organic materials like flesh and exoskeleton, the biological part of the organism was infected with a wicked cancer.
The monster roared at him, promising annihilation.
He moved back. The monster came forward. That made Haruki very uncomfortable.
“Shit!” Haruki didn’t take any pleasure in the way this was going if not for the brutal nature of his enemy; as solid as a piece of machinery and ferocious, it transformed itself grinning with its one eye missing, about to deliver him to the universe and convert him into stardust.
The thing’s mouth grew sly, confronting him to admit a dirty, dirty secret. Its grin became a smile. Strangely, the venom oozed out of its tongue. This is what it looks like, he thought, if a species faces its ultimate extinction even worse than those robots from the movie. This is what it looks like just before the end of humanity.
“No . . .”
The beast thrust its limbs forward and sprang upon him with outrageous ferocity! The act released Haruki’s physical energy without affecting his willpower to fight back. And his pain was blocked out by an overdose of hydrofluoric acid at the same time something leeched onto his brainstem, his flimsy body and dangling arms powered with a blind, inanimate mind of their own, became weak and puny.
“Not like this . . . I can’t die like this . . . and what about . . . wait!”
For an instant he seemed to see this supernatural contest between an infected robot and a dying human only as a spectator—such fantasies of hallucinations.
He looked at the wall crying like a girl, leaving the predator and its claws to finish him off. Then he regained his willpower almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the visionary now had an accurate will as alert and fierce as that of the predator.
“Leame dafuckalone!”
He tried to fight back. The hacker’s return. But how can a human compete with a creature of extraterrestrial origins? He supposed a boy who was being killed by an alien monster might feel something like pain as he lay regarding his gushing main artery with a cold surprise. The programmer’s skill is the programmer’s weakness.
“No!” His neck bled like a slaughtered animal. His worthless hands were clasped at his sides.
Despite his struggles—despite his strength and willpower, which seemed wasted in the void of space, he felt the sharp claws thrust into his throat and brain, many times. Falling backward to the sheet metal, he saw through his cracked visor the grey and dusty surface of the Moon within an arm’s reach of his own, and then everything was black. The sounds of the unearthly radio frequencies in the distance—the dolphin’s cry, a sharp, far growl declaring the end, and Hariki Fujita imagined he was dead.

The International Space Station is that kind of place that when you are there, you must take it all in, but after Peggy grabbed Jameson by the arm and ordered him to come with her, there was no time to take it all in. The airlock closed behind them, and Peggy knew they were getting close.
“How far is it?” Jamason asked, as they hovered along, their feet stirring particles of dust in the microgravity beneath their soles.
Peggy looked at him, suspiciously, recalling that he had agreed to go with her without informing ground control of their whereabouts.
“Only a few feet further,” Peggy answered. She led the way toward the old storage bay with its battery banks and electrical inverters, accumulating backup electricity in case of an emergency.
“What is going on,” he said as they hovered through the west hanger where corrosion and dilapidation gradually increased and passed through the narrow arch into the dark, freezing aerospace shadows.
“You know Haruki Fujita?” she said, feeding her companion’s curiosity with as little information as possible. The name was disturbing, and Peggy felt her neck spasm a little.
“The Jap who plays with his stepbrother’s hair? I know him; he ruined a month of my work after the botanicals died from his intrusion. There is an HR complaint lodged against him for interfering with my plants, but ground control refuses to believe it. You will believe me when—”
“I believe you, okay. Because he has been hacking into the servers for a long time. He works at night in the dilapidated capsule.”
“The asshole! So that’s where the acidic atmosphere that killed my plants came from.”
“You might have imagined that NASA’s security checks would have picked up a cybernetic criminal who could hack their instrumentation.”
“The very last person I would have suspected.”
“Yesterday afternoon I was issued a job card to check the battery terminals. To my surprise I found something else in there, I found ‘a computer of him’ in there.”
“So you caught him red-handed?”
“Damn it! He frightened me. Something growled from behind me—it literally gave me goosebumps. I’m lucky that I wasn’t there ten minutes earlier. Oh shit, he was dying, and I thought the blood floating in space was proof enough that I wouldn’t be able to save him.”
Hovering in the cramped hanger shoulder to shoulder, Peggy glanced at him. The boy’s eyes were so dark they seemed black, only by her flashbeam did they turn indigo blue. She noticed her death-grip on the torch, her gloves couldn’t release their hold even consciously.
“I need to show you the body so that we can devise a plan of action,” the engineer explained. “I thought it was safe for us to check out the corpse during the day.”
“Are you sure the Jap is dead?” said the biologist. “The light in there may have obscured your visibility and conclusion. If he was unconscious he might still be alive.”
“Well, he seemed very dead to me.” She glanced sideways at the boy, and felt a flare of disappointment. She knew deep down in her being that Haruki was gone, one of the first dead bodies she ever encountered. She had to admit that such a bloody, gruesome, and unsettling scene she had never seen in all her years as a first aider or electrical engineer.
“Alright,” Jameson said; “we will go and look at him,” and he added, in the words of a caring person, “we should keep this between us—I mean, if young Nic Chagall ever finds out about his stepbrother it would kill him. By the way, I heard the other day that ‘Nic’ was not his real name.”
“What is?”
“I cannot remember. I had lost interest in the introvert, and it did not grab hold in my memory—something like Nicklaus. The medic who enrolled in the space program joined his stepbrother after he was abandoned. But Haruki, on the other hand, had joined in search of extraterrestrial technology. Can you believe that there are people who still believe in aliens nowadays? Clearly you are not a believer.”
“Obviously.”
“But wandering about your faith, what do you believe in then? Your boyfriend mentioned what the name was called and said it was scientific in nature.”
“We don’t have a name yet.” Peggy was reluctant to argue without facts about something so important as that. Bossi bases his beliefs on the Principia Mathematica. Isaac Newton was the founder of a philosophy that was only recently made public. A few fragments of his work provide scientific evidence based on experimentation. But anyhow, here is the storage bay.”
She looked at him sharply to see if he was prepared. His face, however, was wearing an expression of frozen panic. His lips and nostrils were rimmed with deep purple, and there were shadows in his dark eyes, like the shapes of a reptile streaking into two hard lines.
“Lemme show you where I found the body,” she said, “this is the place.”
As the two astronauts made their way through the blood of hovering crimson, they suddenly stopped and lifted their flashbeams to the height of the wall, uttered a low note of surprise, and stood motionless, their eyes fixed upon something weird. As far as Peggy could see the wall was covered with inscriptions, though she did not yet understand what she was looking at. A moment later she moved cautiously forward, aiming for the inverters.
Behind the inverter of an enormous height hovered the spacesuit of another astronaut. Standing silent beside it, Peggy noted such particulars that immediately took her attention—the suit was empty, the body missing, the clothing still inside; whatever most probably and strangely happened to this astronaut must have been unearthly.
The suit floated upon its back, the nametag—Nic Chagall. One arm was twisted in circles, the other stretched, but the latter was ripped off brutally, with the missing piece stuck to the helmet. The other arm was severely bent. The whole attitude of the suit was that of desperate but weak resistance to something.
Nearby drifted the disemboweled stepbrother with his naked finger stretched out, stained and blotched, and the floor had been scribbled with blood into symbols all over the corroded floorplate; next to his suit was unmistakable the footprint of an alien entity.
A glance at the empty spacesuit’s missing glove and boots made the nature of the struggle even more mysterious. While the suit and helmet were clean, the arms and legs were red—almost black. The oxygen hose stuck against an inverter, and the suit was twisted and turned backward, opposite any natural posture.
From behind Haruki’s cracked helmet his eyes had popped, bloody and gruesome. The throat showed horrible penetrations; not mere fingermarks, but lacerations and stab wounds inflicted by animal claws that must have buried themselves in his bleeding flesh, maintaining their terrible grip long after death. His throat, chin, and face were soggy; the material saturated; drops of blood had gathered like condensate inside his visor, bloodstained hair and cheeks.
All this the two astronauts observed without speaking—almost frozen. Then Jameson said:
“Poor Haruki! He got what he deserved.”
Peggy was vigilantly inspecting the storage bay. Her flashbeam was held in both hands and at full brightness, and her gloves were clenched around the handle.
“The work of a murderer,” she said, without removing her eyes from the surrounding inverters. “It was done by Nic—Chagall.”
Something half-hidden by the cable racks behind the inverters caught Peggy’s attention. It was the wall. She looked at it while lifting her flashbeam. It contained the code of computer and upon the entire wall the name “Stefan Bossi.” Written in blood over and over again—scribbled as if in haste barely legible—were the following lines, which Peggy read silently while her companion started scanning the dark confines of the enclosure and hearing a commotion from inside the bloody spiderwebs dangling from the wall.

public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String originalName = “Stefan Bossi”;
System.out.println(“Original name: “ + originalName);

// Reversing the name
String reversedName = new StringBuilder(originalName).reverse().toString();
System.out.println(“Reversed name: “ + reversedName);

// Converting to uppercase
String upperCaseName = originalName.toUpperCase();
System.out.println(“Uppercase name: “ + upperCaseName);

// Swapping first name with last name
int spaceIndex = originalName.indexOf(‘ ‘);
String firstName

“Bossi Stefan—”
Peggy stopped reading; there was no more to read. The code broke off in the middle of a line.
“What a flawless Java script,” she said, since she was somewhat of a programmer herself. With extraordinary patience she stood looking at the wall.
“Who’s Java?” Jameson asked rather confused.
“Computer code, a script that was written to play around with two words—a very jolly script indeed. Coded in first generation; I know the language. The script repeated my boyfriend’s name, but it must have been by mistake.”
“Your boyfriend?” Jameson said. “Let us go back; we must share this information with ground control.”
Peggy said nothing but nodded in compliance. Staring at the inverter behind the empty spacesuit of the missing astronaut with the oxygen hose entangled, she saw that the absent glove was stuck (or rather glued) to the vertical surface by some slimy substance drooling from the melted plastic. She took her torch to illuminate it into view. It was an oozing mess, and painted on the panel were the hardly decipherable words, “Peggy Lance.”
“Peggy Lance!” exclaimed Jameson, with sudden animation. “Why, that is your name—not Stefan Bossi. And—curse your soul! How it all comes together—the murderer’s name is Peggy Lance!”
“There is something weird going on here,” Peggy said. “I deny anything of the kind.”
There came to them from inside the wall—seemingly from a great distance—the sound of a growl, a high-pitched, frequency, cybernetic echo, which had no more joy than that of a predator prowling at its prey; a growl that originated from far away, closer and closer, distinct, more explicit but brutal, until it faded away outside the audible distance of their hearing; a growl so unnatural, so extraterrestrial, so morbid, that it filled those freaked out astronauts with a sense of dread unspeakable! They did not move their torches nor think of them; the menace of that horrible sound was the kind not to be disturbed by light. As it had originated out of solid metal, to die away grimly; from a culminating frequency that had seemed almost in their head, it retreated into the distance until its soft echoes, cybernetic and mechanical to the last frequency, faded into silence at an immeasurable distance.

Howdy, gits!
I have only had 1 game with kult of speed, but it was super informative and one of the most fun games I have had due to the completely different style of play. It was only a 1k game against a monster heavy tyranids list, but performed really well. We stopped after round 3 due to life / responsibilities (booooo), but it looked like I would have taken the victory based on the current board state / points.
My list: 2 megatrakk scrapjet 2 shokkjump dragsta 1 bokmdakka snazzwagon 1 kustom boosta blasta 6x deffkoptas 1 trukk 1 beast boss with faster than youz enhancement 10x beast snagga boys 11x gretchin+runtherd
My 2k list which I hope to play soon has an additional full unit of warbikers with a wartrike, another beast boss + trukk, another koptas unit, and a few more buggies.
A few takeaways: Speed freaks are surprisingly tanky against a lot of units (but not all). Knowing which of your opponents can take a buggy off the board in a single shooting phase is good info to have before deployment.
Since the vehicles take up a lot of your deployment zone, make sure you are using cover and stopping line of sight to avoid the enemies big dakka. I lost 2 megatrak skrapjets early from stupid deployment and my opponent going first. That being said. Navigating a terrain dense field is a big issue for this army, so make sure you have mapped out what lanes different units will be forced down. You don’t want to send your chaff killers into a tanky unit because the board forces your hand.
The stratagem that gives 4+ invulnerable save is fantastic and gives your army a lot more staying power. It is difficult to swarm objectives and block lanes if all of your stuff is dead. I found myself dropping this stratagem on my enemies shooting phase almost every turn and it pays off (unless mork hates you and you roll like crap).
The list is not all that Killy, so I relied on my koptas unit and beast boss in a trukk to take out the most imminent threats. Strategically using these heavier hitters to max secondaries that rely on taking out units is important. I under committed too often and it almost cost me the game. I think fixed could be the way to go.
Make sure to use your buggies and bikes to clear chaff and focus on their bigger threats one at a time if at all. Who cares if they have 2 monsters on the field if all their scoring units are dead.
Shokkjump dragsta are great at baiting more points than they are worth. Apart from scoring secondaries, I mostly used them to threaten chaff in the back field which caused my opponent to overcommit to their deployment zone. If they are keeping more points in their deployment zone than you are sending there, you are doing something right.
The whaaaaaaaa is best saved for when your opponent has a lot of units ready to krump you. The 5+ invuln is great on turns where they are hitting you with a lot. It is best to try to time this with your trukk units to maximize the melee benefits as well and take down whatever threats made it down field as best you can.
This army is about selective attrition. Force your opponent to slowly hack through bodies while scoring little, so you build up enough points to where they cannot come back. Blocking big units and killing their chaff while maxing out your scoring is the strategy. If we see more green tide and msu armies, the buggies may become better in the meta as well, so this detachment may have more competitive potential than initial reactions predicted.
How have y’all been enjoying this overlooked and super awesome detachment?

TL;DR: Me and my kids try to come up with a list of ways to spot the poopheads.
My daughter had a hang out with "the other woman" that the dude she was (no longer) dating was also seeing...at the same time. Neither of them knew. He lied...a ton. He was very good at it. He treated them differently. They shared texts and were pretty distraught by what they found. Very intense and complicated. This guy came over to my house several times and he seemed genuine and like a great guy. He tricked all of us. I even felt for him enough so that when he needed to travel to the state where his kids and ex were, I gave him some travel money and snacks.
So, me and three of my kids had a very good conversation about being tricked and manipulated and we tried to figure out how to tell in the beginning. Sadly, it seems impossible, or super difficult, but we came up with some ideas.

1. If they are overtly or covertly seeking validation, red flag. Especially if they say they are dealing with the exact same thing you are dealing with. If they are overly self deprecating, and it triggers a want to "fix" or "emotionally support", red flag.
   
2. Keep secrets to yourself for a while at the beginning of relationships. This is not easy. I assume most of the people on this sub are magnets to cluster b peeps. Keep things that you don't like about yourself to yourself. If you get pressured to share, red flag. If you get tricked into sharing, red flag.
   
3. If you grew up with a narcissistic parent, you will most likely be targeted by narcissists. Personally (i'm 53), I've made a list of people who have taken advantage of me/betrayed me/used me/tested my boundaries/etc., and it's around 9. One of those I married (30 years of manipulation and complex trickery), and so, kept the trail going with the kids. Sucks. I hate that I was manipulated for so long, and that I passed it on. I was an enabler and pretty consistently covered up and justified her bad behavior to the kids.
   
4. If you find yourself defending behaviors, or if people around you have some concerns, red flag. This one is a little blurry and hard to discern, but it's something to keep in mind. Neuro Divergents (for example) act weird at times, but that doesn't make them shitty people. People with past trauma have issues, but not all of them are shitty people. I have trauma, but I don't lie and manipulate to get people to attach to me. If someone says "I'm sorry you feel that way", that's a shitty people.
   
5. Liars are a red flag too. I mean big liars. The kind that say something, you call them out on a weird detail, and they cover it either with "I don't want to talk about it", or "I was drunk so I don't remember", or ridicule and flipping to blame you for something, or even bringing up something you probably didn't actually say in a way that makes you sound like the bad guy. Seems obvious to write it, but when the emotions are bouncing around, and you are getting cool attention and affection, it's not easy to see. Once someone lies about something, we shouldn't believe anything else they say. Especially if it happenes more than once.
   

This guy my daughter and this other girl were seeing at the same time was a different person to both of them. My assumption is that this is going on all over the place. I am very disappointed in the dating pool these days for my teenage kids. I've heard in a few places that 1 in 6 people are Cluster B. Holy shit! I believe it.
My daughter said the word "groomed" at one point during our conversation. I hate that word. She said she felt it slightly when they first met. In weird ways. Can't put her finger on it. He made her believe she had all the control in the relationship. He said something like, "I don't want to be the one that pushes, cuz you can easily get me put in jail." She sees the red flag now, of course. She said the "other woman" felt similar vibes and ways.
My hope is that I can give my kids the tools to see the red flags, and then also the tools to turn away and end the relationship. All of my kids have dealt with narcissists. They are tricky. They seem rampant. They also seem to have flooded all the dating apps. I've tried to get my kids off them, but they have found some friends on there too.
So, if you have a list like this as to how you spot the shitheads, let me know. As for me, after my 30 year relationship, I think I'm done with intimate relationships. I can't see myself hacking through all the bullshit and potential lies and differentiating what is true vilnerability and authenticity. I think that part of me is broken.

The Gaming industry Studios are getting lazy and greedy
**Note: This post is not meant to harm or offend anyone, it is my personal opinion.*\*
The Gaming industry studios are getting lazier and greedier everyday, and we might be responsible for that. From my own experience, everything started going downhill since late 2021.

[2021:]()

[Battlefield 2042:]()

It’s the beginning of summer in 2021 and Dice has released a trailer for their upcoming new Battlefield game. It features a futuristic look for it, and a lot of new content. Then comes November and everyone is shocked. The game is full of bugs, glitches, server and optimisation issues. It’s almost like the game was never tested out before release, making the players itself form a big “Testing Team”, who finds out all the issues. Everyone leaves the game for good, and asks the same question to Dice: “What happened?”. Some sources on the Internet say, that this game was originally intended to be a Battle-Royale style game (since Dice saw the BR games literally printing money for the Studios). Then halfway through development, they scraped that idea and had to almost start over again. This is the reason why majority of in-game content are copied over from previous BF games. It took them 2 years to fix the game, by that time players have basically abandoned the game. Today Battlefield 2042 is in it’s final (7^th) season, and averages ~15k players, and are on sales for $7 on Steam.

[2022:]()

[Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:]()

It is Infinity Ward’s turn to make this year’s Cod, and they announce the continuation of Modern Warfare 2019. And in October it drops, and once again, people seem to be confused: “This isn’t COD! Where’s the movement? Where are the new maps? Where’s the audio? Where are the things promised in the trailer?”. Infinity Ward dropped a whole new type of COD without things like: movement, audio, fairly prices things, ect.. The campaign was a big Stepdown from the previous COD, having non-logical scenes and an Overall Confusing Era. And of course, we can’t forget the meta weapons and skins. One thing I noticed in the Store: before something became meta, a $30-40 bundle came out for it (For example the Sniper shotgun, or the Special operator packs, and the seasonal weapons were always OP). And as a person, who Grinded through this game, I can say that this game was not fun! If I had the option, I would refund it. After 6 seasons the Studios moved onto the next COD development, which was Sledgehammer’s job to do.

[2023:]()

[War Thunder:]()

Ah.. War Thunder. The grinding simulator since 2012. Gaijin has always been a bit too greedy when it comes to microtransactions. But this time I’m talking about something else. If you aren’t familiar with this game, basically it is a super-realistic military game, where 2 team goes up against each other on the ground, in the air, or on the sea. And when your vehicle gets destroyed you are charged for it’s repair cost. And on May 1^st this repair cost got doubled, tripled and I’ve seen cases where it got quadrupled, making most of the vehicles not-practical to use, because you simply couldn’t pay for it. This update was reversed quickly, but it left a deep mark in the Steam review page.

[Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3:]()

After Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard for $69 billion (0,06% of the World’s GDP) some info said, they are continuing the Modern Warfare series with a 3^rd game. People disappointed with MW2 were on the edge waiting for the next COD, hoping for Sledgehammer to “save the day”. Then came November and the game dropped: with insane movement, meta weapons, and a shameful campaign. The campaign’s story featured the return of Makarov. The campaign also broke a record for the shortest COD Campaign ever, with a mind-blowing 5 hour of Story. This story was rushed: the studio only had one and a half years to develop a full COD with MP and Campaign. Many people said, that this should’ve been MW2, therefore it became an iconic sentence: “I’m not paying $70 for a DLC.” and I agree with that.

[2024:]()

[Apex Legends:]()

Apex Legends is EA’s money printing machine: Hosting events, where the awards are random, and if you wanted the Grand-price, you’d have to buy everything in the event (ranging from ~$60 to $350). But I can separate the events from another big problem for Apex: Glitches.

Events:

To my knowledge, the first Money-stealing event was The Final Fantasy VII Crossover Event, where if you got every item (36 items), you would get a redesigned death box. In the next part of the event, The Final Fantasy VII Takeover Event featured a Sword, that you could get once again if you got all the items. All this could be yours for about $350 (holy fuck). It doesn’t even give you any advantage, it’s just a money-grab (Also the sword blocks out at least 20% of your screen, so it’s technically p2L).

Glitches, bugs and hacking:

Apex has always had errors and bugs, but they have significantly increased in 2024 due to them laying off at least 7500 people. Starting off March with their annual ALGS (a tournament), and not even 40 minutes in, 2 contestants were hacked and lost control over their computers. The tournament was stopped and Social media blew up, on How is this possible? Is anyone in danger of hacking when playing Apex? People then came to the conclusion that it has to do something with EasyAntiCheat, which was a big problem. EAC runs on a lot of very popular games: Apex Legends, Fortnite, Rust, War Thunder just to name a few. This problem was solved quickly and everyone went back to their grind. But it was not over! Because after the April Fools event everyone logged into their account rolled back to 0. Everyone was reset, this included stats, in-game currency, playtime (I think). This got solved in a couple of days and Respawn apologised for it.

[Minecraft:]()

Minecraft shouldn’t be here. But I’m including it because it’s confusing what they are doing. The only reason they are here is because of this year’s April Fool’s version from Mojang. There is so much new content in that version, like they actually sat down and made it in a couple of weeks. If so, why are regular updates taking so long to create? It is just confusing for me.

[Escape from Tarkov:]()

This game is here because of it’s bundles. Recently one of the bundles originally priced at $150 was removed and then replaced with a $250 one. The new one offers not more, not less, it is exactly the same as the original with a hundred dollar difference. The Studio refuses to properly communicate with the players and giving them false promises.

[Helldivers 2:]()

The game that blew up out of nowhere and is now amongst the top 15 Steam games. The developer Studio, Arrowhead is owned by Sony. And in the last patch notes the developers had to roll out a change, that ordered every Steam player to create and then link a PSN profile to Steam to play. This wouldn’t be much of a work, unless for 2 things: Sony is known for collecting user data and then “accidentally” leaking them, PSN is not available for literally half of the world. The community got angry and Sony actually listened! They scrapped the linking.

[In conclusion:]()

The studios need more money because they fired a lot of people. Most of the issues are the results of the missing people.
BF 2042 – We got promised a lot, and got a half-done game (like a home project you started out of motivation but never finished). Not so fun fact: the scoreboard was missing until 2022 February
COD: MW2 – a different from the usual COD, with many-many issues.
War Thunder – Trying to take 2 steps at once.
COD: MW3 – Back to the usual movement focused MP, with a horrible Campaign
Apex Legends – Had, has and will always have issues if they continue like this. People will simply not pay a big part of their wage for just a couple of pixels.
Minecraft – The whole team is only working during the April Fool’s version of development. Until then half of them are not working.
Escape from Tarkov - The Studio is in their own mindset. They will go out of business, if they continue to lie.
Helldivers 2 - Sony once again trying to take over PC players not realising, we ain’t that easy to take on at once.

[Closure:]()

Maybe it’s time we stop spending money mindlessly on the internet, and maybe read some of what you are agreeing to. Pre-ordering games aren't worth it anymore in my opinion. It is no longer 2014 when you asked: “Dad, how do I instal this app? I’ll show you->next->next->next->agree->finish.”
Source: My own and all of my friend’s experience

If you actually read all of this thank you sooo much, I really appreciate it.
**Note: This post is not meant to harm or offend anyone, it is my personal opinion.*\*

NOTE: I AM GOING INSANE. I had to move because my family had to sell the house because debt sucks. Life is stressful. Brain bad.
Anyway, I have FINALLY managed #43 and #44 should not be too far behind. I'm sorry for the wait/delay. I have written like... half a dozen half-chapters. The good news is that at some point soon-ish, a bunch of pre-written stuff will come together!
Thank you to u/tulpacat1 and u/BainshieWrites for helping me when I was going insane.
I zombily forgot to link to the crossover place! Sorry!!! This is a crossover with Feathers of Deceit by the fantastic u/KaiserMarcqui! Check it out if you haven't already! Here is the scene from the other POV. (You can tell by the date just how long ago the dialogue was written).

Patreon / Kofi/ Paypal
[Prev] [First] [Next]
SECURITY FOOTAGE TRANSCRIPT, MODIFIED TRANSLATOR SETTINGS ANDES-5
[standardized human time]: December 11, 2136
[Dr. Miranda Rodriguez enters the room where [2-B] is located, sporting an external translator hanging from her neck. Lihla is hidden behind the open door.]
Dr. Rodriguez: I’m so glad you’re awake, sweetheart, we need to talk.
[At that moment and for the duration of the recording, the translator outputs her words in the arxur language. 2-B’s whole body tightens within the blanket, wrinkling and bunching it up around her.]
2-B: I am not delicious, I am disgusting!
Dr. Rodriguez: …Oh, is the word sweetheart–okay. Um. What would you like me to call you?
2-B: my name is 86392-B.
Dr. Rodriguez: …I’m going to have a hard time with that, young lady.
2-B: So call me prey like a boss that doesn’t lie.
Dr. Rodriguez: …My goodness. Um. That is a lot to unpack there. Let’s bypass names for now, you can tell that I’m talking to you here.
[Dr. Rodriguez loosely swings the door shut with her foot, and walks over to a desk that has been placed next to the bed, placing down her pad on it. Just before she sits and turns towards 2-B, Lihla quickly and silently slips past the door and under one of the other, currently unoccupied beds in the room. Dr. Rodriguez takes a slow, deep breath.]
Dr. Rodriguez: Look, I understand that you’re very distrustful of us. That’s completely natural given your background, and I know you will take time to adjust. There is no rush. Trust takes time to build.
2-B: Trusting bosses is stupid. No boss is good boss.
Dr. Rodriguez: …Right.
[2-B offers no response. Dr. Rodriguez fiddles with the plain golden ring on her right hand.]
Dr. Rodriguez [voice hushed]: That said, we’re in a bit of a situation. We want to keep you safe here, but we may not be able to do that if you continue to pose a danger to those around you.
[2-B offers no response]
Dr. Rodriguez: We’ll do our best to keep you out of harm’s way, but we’re going to need your cooperation in the matter.
2-B: Is the Savageness dead?
Dr. Rodriguez [shaking her head with a smile]: Oh, not at all. Andes is alive, well, and expected to make a full recovery. We’d be having a very different conversation, if they were dead.
[2-B looks at Dr. Rodriguez more intently, her ears fixed towards her now. Her muscles tighten.]
2-B[voice quiet and uneven]: How long before he chops me up?
[Dr. Rodriguez’ eyes bug out and her jaw falls. She spends four seconds immobile before shaking herself and resuming the interaction.]
Dr. Rodriguez: Nobody is going to chop you up. Andes does not want to hurt you.
[2-B’s paws tighten into fists and her ears slant backwards]
2-B: You lie! All lies, all the time!
[Dr. Rodriguez takes another deep breath.]
Dr. Rodriguez [softly]: I am telling you the truth. It is very important that you do your best to be calm and composed in the coming days, because in order to make sure no one hurts you, we have to show them that you are not dangerous.
2-B: I am very dangerous. I am dangerous and scary and disgusting!
[Dr. Rodriguez sighs.]
Dr. Rodriguez: Perhaps we can have this conversation when you are more settled down. I’ll have someone bring food at the end of the claw. Please ask if you want to use the washroom.
[Dr. Rodriguez stands up and walks out of the room. Once she is out of the room, Lihla peeks from behind the unused bed.]
Lihla: See? Savageness Director is strong. Nobody can kill him.
2-B: The legend killed an old boss. I can kill a new one.
Lihla: You think you are strong, but you are wrong. You are weak because you don’t understand.
2-B: I understand you are stupid. You believe their lies. Marco too. They will take you to the chopping place and you’ll walk in happy.
Lihla: There is no chopping place in prey planet. New place, new rules.
2-B: There is always a chopping place. We don’t have to know where to know it’s there.
[Lihla stands there for a long moment, her tail swaying side to side. She exits the room without another word.]
____
Memory transcription subject: Varla, Nurse at the Venlil Reintegration and Rehabilitation facility
Date (standardized human time): Dec 11, 2136
I almost tried to extend my leave after such nerve-wrecking paws. First, my stupid breakdown in front of the Director; second, with the wave of stampedes across the planet due to the raid alarm; third, the news that the Director had single-handedly saved the lives of thirty-seven people with his emergency human-leg-powered ambulance, only to be hit by a car for his trouble; fourth, that the girls had escaped; fifth, that one of them had stabbed him and… Well that was probably it, but it was a lot!
I knew working for humans would be stressful when I applied, but I didn’t realize it would be this stressful! So many problems, all happening so quickly, and when I got back Ayodele was just… working. Like it was normal! I spent the whole time on edge, almost jumping out of my wool when I heard a sudden noise because one of the children dropped a toy brick by accident.
Halfway through my shift, I heard they were talking about not sending that little monster to a Predator Disease facility. Dr. Rodriguez had been put in charge of her care while Director Andes recovered, and they were debating how to organize the situation to ensure the safety of the herd and the predator girl who had already tried to kill someone. My fur began to stand on end at the thought of her staying in the facility. At least the humans think she should be separated from the herd for now. I kept thinking about Director Andes, unarmed, willing to take a knife to the gut in the line of duty.
Is it okay to have a crush on him if he’s not a monster? Probably not. I was being ridiculous. Even if I hadn’t been, humans apparently thought dating underlings was predatory, so he wouldn’t want to do that. He probably didn’t want anything to do with someone so pathetic and weak that being told humans don’t want to eat her made her rush off to cry in her car for half a claw while she tried to calm down.
It was probably more like a third of a claw. Still too long, obviously. Plus the leave.
It didn't make any sense. It matched what he said, but… it didn’t make any sense. Nobody would have held it against him, if he’d fought back. Rumours said he hadn’t even tried. What kind of… “omnivore” didn’t even defend himself?
“It’s so sad,” Ayodele told me as we finished our shift together. “She’s spent her whole life trapped in this eat-or-be-eaten world… Literally! Her life is already going to be so difficult…”
“Sad? She’s dangerous!” I said reflexively. I should have thought better of it, but it was just so ludicrous!
“She was afraid we were going to eat her. You should understand what that's like,” Ayodele told me, suddenly defensive on behalf of the predator-diseased monster who had nearly killed Director Andes.
“I was afraid too, and I didn't try to kill anyone because of it,” I said, putting my paws on my hips.
She raised an eyebrow. “Did you grow up watching the arxur eat your friends and siblings every day?”
“Well, no, but–” she cut me off before I could finish, glaring at me with the full force of her binocular eyes.
“Right. I think her reaction being more extreme might make sense given those circumstances, Varla.”
My paws and tail were starting to tighten in frustration. Arguing was useless, so I flicked an ear her way and focused on my pad. Once my shift was over, I stumbled out to my car, almost in a haze. What kind of people reserved so much kindness and patience to those who would kill them if given the chance?
I had to learn more about humans. Even if they were “false predators”, even if their eyes meant nothing, even if they were overwhelmed with nurturing instincts… It didn’t make any sense! Self-preservation should kick in at some point!
I made my way to a more human-friendly bookstore, and started looking for things humans wrote for each other. There was a free digital selection screen, where you could buy books and request they be printed in a specific make. I chose the cheapest print-to-order design. I just wanted the information, and I wanted it with blank pages every chapter and large margins to make notes. I also wanted to make sure nobody could hack into my book, or see it in my account, or catch me reading human books on a holopad. Maybe it was paranoid, but thinking about Director Andes–about humans in general, really– always felt somehow wrong.
That all meant that human books would be more expensive. I sighed and trudged over to the digital selection screen.
Once there, I was met with a veritable avalanche of human literature, and no idea how to tell which ones would be too much for me, or which ones would be obvious predatory deception. I kept thinking about his words. “Nurturing instincts”, “innocuous” eyes. It didn’t make sense. Even if the Director was telling the truth about himself, even if humans specifically were predators in some… vestigial, irrelevant fashion… they eat flesh! I know they eat flesh. Director Andes even mentioned them having farms. They’re not misunderstood prey.
I flipped through dozens of options before giving up and looking at my neighbour, a young Krakotl who seemed very immersed in her own screen. She was looking at human books too. I shouldn’t have done anything, but my screen was terrifying and I didn’t know where to begin. I lightly tapped her wing to call her attention.
"Do you… do this a lot?” I asked, my voice on the quiet side to avoid calling attention to us. “I don't know how to judge human literature."
She tilted her head towards me. “I’m guessing this is your first time here? It is mine, too.”
"Yeah, I… I think I thought I was being open-minded, working with them, but I don't understand them at all,” I told her, my tail coiling anxiously. “I hoped this would help, but now I'm more confused!"
“Well, everything about humans is confusing. I’ve been hanging out with a human lately and, to be honest, I still can’t wrap my head around how they function. Everything they do, everything they say, it’s just so confusing.”
I felt like a ‘make it yourself’ toy that had been getting wound up tighter and tighter, and suddenly let free. "Yes!” I almost shouted. “Ugh. My boss is a human, and a strong one too, he has these veins that pop out on the skin of his arms, and… he apparently has never been in combat with another human.”
Was he ever in combat with anything? He said he’d never gone hunting. I thought about him lying on that medical bed, so… helpless. And yet still so strong. Able to withstand such injuries and still hold the respect of his people. If he couldn’t, they’d probably cull him, right? I kept talking. “He just… likes being terrifying? But not to be terrifying."
“Exactly!” she said, her eyes lighting up in agreement. “Nothing they say makes sense; it’s as if they rationalize everything in ways opposite to how we’d do it. I’ve been going through very old literature from my people with my human friend, and the conclusions he takes from the texts are nothing I could come up with.”
My ears perked up at that. "What has he said?"
“He seemed to think that Krakotl could kill other Krakotl! Preposterous, I say. Everyone knows that prey don’t kill other prey.”
I frowned. I knew people who had died trying to defend the human homeworld. They were not killed by humans, or even the arxur. Humans might bring forth strange situations and bizarre ideas with them… but they didn’t make the krakotl fleet attack venlil ships. Kalsim did that.
"...Except in the extermination fleet, right?" I asked.
She stumbled over her words as she tried to respond. “W-well, yeah, but they’re an exception. To think that we’d kill each other in ancient times! I understand his reasoning – humans killed each other in ancient times, so other species must’ve, too. And while I find it a bit flimsy, I’ll admit it is an interesting thought to entertain. The Extermination fleet is an exception to this, as it was a desperate measure that…” She sighed. “Honestly, shows that we can be murderous, too.”
Her posture dipped a tad as she finished. I found myself getting a little lost in her explanation, and thought back to Director Andes’ words. I do not have any particular desire to eat you.
"What else has he said?” I asked. “My human said that he has no bloodlust. Of any sort. And had none of it as a child either."
Should I have called him ‘my human’? That doesn’t mean anything, right? He’s just the human I am most routinely in contact with. Except that’s probably Ayodele. He’s… the human I brought up earlier. That makes sense.
My question seemed to energize her again. “My human has admitted he has no bloodlust, too! It’s so weird – I’ve developed a hypothesis; that there’s some kind of division within human society between those who have bloodlust and those who don’t. See, I’ve been reading one of their books, and it centers on crime – which includes killings! Yet it was treated so nonchalantly, but at the same time, it was still seen as wrong. It’s the only possible logical explanation.”
I flicked my tail in thought. Did that make sense? Maybe the farms were staffed exclusively by humans who were “real predators”, while all the prey-humans had “vegan” diets and would willingly treat non-human people as their equals… "And the reason no human here admits to it is because the UN would never let a blood-lusting human onto Venlil Prime. It would be a political disaster…"
Her posture shifted up more excitedly. “Exactly! It all makes sense. I’m certain that they’re hiding something from us.”
"How separate are these two subtypes? Maybe they genuinely don't know," I proposed. It did not take very long, since we made contact with Humanity, for the kolshian-farsul conspiracy to come apart. Maybe it would not be long until some human conspiracy fell apart due to prey species’ scrutiny. Maybe Director Andes genuinely did not realize there were humans currently alive who were real predators. Maybe the “urban, academic population” was some sort of prey-human cluster.
“I haven’t thought as far, but I’m sure that they must be somewhat aware of it, as their own Exterminators are equipped to deal with their own people. It might be similar to our own predator disease, but at the same time, it feels like it’s more widespread for humans.”
That didn’t sound right to me. Predators should be immune to predator disease, no? They would already have it by default. I asked about her book,, but my mind kept spinning around the notion of such a division. It would have been in the briefings. I knew that the UN hid things from the venlil, but something of that magnitude would pose a threat to our population. The humans wouldn’t risk endangering their closest ally during a war by withholding important information, would they?
“— murder is treated very nonchalantly, from what I gather, in the humans’ world.”
I tilted an ear to signal I was thinking. "Hmm. Humans treat a lot of terrible things nonchalantly. Like my terrifying boss."
She leaned a little closer to me. “Yeah? What’d he say?”
"He was just very comfortable with our Arxur-speaking children at the facility. And…” I probably shouldn’t spread stories like that without asking him if they were true, but… “I heard rumours he spent time with the greys on Earth during cleanup."
The karkotl’s beak fell open, and her feathers started to puff up. “A grey?! I can’t believe it, I hope he has nothing good to say about it.”
I signalled ‘quiet’ with my tail. We are in public! "Well, he hasn't said anything at all. It's mostly rumours. But it's still so strange! Such a strong, terrifying predator, and he will gently carry a sleeping patient to bed… I just don't know what to expect, with humans."
She lowered her voice. “Neither do I, to be honest. Everything I’ve heard about humans seems like almost the complete opposite… You know, despite the obvious ‘predator’ signs, it’s as if my human friend went against all of that! He’s so sweet sometimes.”
"How?" I asked, trying not to think about how enticing the prospect sounded to my ears.
“Just the other day, yeah? He’s invited me to a ball they’re holding in his shelter, and he just goes and asks me to practice dancing with him. It might seem weird, but it seemed so lovely to me…”
"They can dance?" I asked. I imagined Director Andes doing those strange movements he did sometimes in the recreation room. Were those part of human dancing? Did they go on the palms of their hands, or squat down? He was so strong, so deliberate with his movements… He’s probably an amazing dancer. I imagined him doing pirouettes in the air to some aggressive, violent human music with chanting and drums.
“It weirded me out at first too; I wasn’t too sure on how that’d work out. Their dances are so unlike the Krakotl’s. More than energizing movements to attract a mate, it seemed much more… I don’t know how to properly describe it, but it was much more gentle. Definitely unlike any dance I’d seen.”
"They dance gently?" I couldn't shake the shock. With muscles like that, I would expect dances to look almost like fights. Then again, if he knew how to fight, would the girl have been able to hurt him..?
She kept talking. “Yeah! It’s so strange. He did tell me there were many other types of dances, but the one he’d practiced with me was just like that. It’s like I was almost in a trance, with him holding me in his arms…” her feathers shifted and her face grew a slightly deeper purple.
"I see. I've heard humans can ensnare prey with a trance, so be careful with that," I said. It was probably a crush. Just like how I probably had a crush. But I hadn’t fully ruled out the “humans can affect the minds of the krakotl, and also maybe other prey species” hypothesis. Maybe LastDefense233 wasn’t an idiot.
Maybe there was a better reason for this whole situation than “you’ve fallen in love with the flesh-eating monster”.
“I am! I know full well what I’ve gotten into,” she said. “You know, I’ve already been told by some people that I’m playing with fire, but I’m not naïve. I still have my eyes set out for the human’s deceit.”
I thought back to her idea that there are ‘prey’ humans and ‘predator’ humans, as two distinct classes. It didn’t seem right to me. "That's good. I think the humans at my job are mostly honest but… they don't understand what it's like to be prey."
“They really don’t seem to comprehend it! It’s as if they actively try not to acknowledge that a distinction exists between ‘predator’ and ‘prey’,” she agreed.
"Just a few paws ago, my director said that humans can consider the same animal predator and prey! It's like black can be white sometimes to them!" I hissed. They could eat meat, but chose not to. They had tiny teeth, but binocular eyes. They were big and strong and deadly, but also… long and gangly and bent in odd ways… They spun their heads around like they were about to pounce, but were almost blind on the sides and easily startled.
“It really is plain ludicrous with them. Some of the things they say are like that but, to be honest, I find it kind of endearing, you know – it’s as if they were full of naïveté on how the natural order actually worked. It’s so strange to think of how a predator perceives the world.”
I thought back to those shakes Director Andes was always drinking. How much had he given up, to accept a role helping people he had nothing to do with? "Especially predators that choose to avoid predating, right? It's such an… idealist thing. How they fight against their own nature."
“Yes, exactly,” she agreed, “I find it kind of noble, in a way. Like they’re trying so hard to be just like us, yet their own nature betrays them.”
I was about to ask her about what her human looked like when I realized we'd been hogging the stations for a while, and started to feel guilty about it.
"What book will you get?" I asked instead.
“Ah, right! You know, it’s not for me, but for my human. There’s this festivity they have about gift-giving, and I was thinking of gifting him a classic Krakotl novel translated into his language.”
There is a human festivity about gift-giving? I should look up human festivities. What if the Director expects a gift? I asked something polite while my mind got stuck on the idea of upcoming human festivities. How often did humans celebrate? What did they celebrate? Did they have birthdays, or something like their ‘first kill’? Was that too predatory? Did they celebrate the first time they ate a vegetable?
Somehow, the topic turned to human music she’d listened to.
"Was it slow too? Like their dance?" I asked.
She tilted her head one way and then another, as though swirling her thoughts around inside her skull. “The piece of music he put on for me was somewhat slow… But I don’t know if that’d reflect on the rest of their music. Though ‘slow’ isn’t perhaps the right word for it; it was sometimes slow and sometimes not.”
"Ah. Unpredictable, like they are?” I asked, flicking an ear in understanding. Music was something I hadn’t given much thought to, but maybe it was the key to everything. “In my facility, they are teaching a venlil child music in order to help him relearn how to speak after an injury. They're using venlil music, of course, but… they understand it differently. Maybe humans use music in other strange ways. It could be the secret to their power over their instincts. Then again… They keep saying those instincts aren't real."
“Yes, exactly: unpredictable! And I hadn’t thought of their music like that. To be honest, I hadn’t paid much attention to it, but what you’re saying does sound interesting…”
I lowered my voice more, suddenly more worried about being overheard. "Do you ever wonder what it's like? To be one? The Krakotl were cured centuries ago, of course but… I keep wondering about it. About what it's like to be like them. So much… power."
“It’s a thought that’s sometimes crossed my mind, but frankly I wouldn’t want to be like them…” her head dipped sadly for a moment. “To be fighting against your own instincts all the time, telling you to eat people! I don’t think I’d have the mental fortitude for that.”
I nodded, like a human. I didn’t realize I’d started until after I’d stopped. "It must be patience beyond imagining… Incredible self-control, with temptation just… everywhere. Everywhere around them now. Everyone they talk to here who isn't human, every time they walk by a park and see birds flying by…"
“Yes, just like that. In some weird way, I find that quite admirable… And they even deny they have such a thing! It must get so tiresome to pretend you’re civilized all the time.”
That was… An interesting way to put it. Pretending to be civilized. Isn’t that what every society is doing? Isn’t that what PD facilities are for? To help us pretend? We’re all animals, after all… We’re all prey.
"Is it even pretending, at that point?"
The question threw her off. “Perhaps not? I did say earlier that I believed there were two ‘types’ of humans… So perhaps they really don’t have a bloodlust instinct? But that wouldn’t make sense – they’re predators!”
I flinched. We were being too loud. I should just get back on track and ask about human books. "Did your human friend tell you of any human books I could try? Maybe if we could understand them from within…"
She paused for a moment, presumably scouring her memory for information that did not exist. “Not really. He mentioned that their ‘crime mystery’ genre is somewhat similar to our Exterminator fiction after I told him what it was about… I’ve read one book from that genre and it’s been quite fruitful in trying to understand them.”
I flicked my ear in agreement, instead of nodding, like a normal person.
"...Alright. Well, thank you for the conversation. I will… try to find something before the clerk gets mad at me," I said, blooming a little as it sunk in that I'd been at the station for so long.
Her feathers puffed up a little in surprise. “Ah, yeah, you’re right! My bad, but it’s been quite an interesting conversation.”
"...Would you like to talk about humans some other time?"
“Yeah! I think that’d be nice.”
We exchanged information, and she headed off. I returned to the screen, searching by genre. There was a whole section of human romance. A warm bloom came to the tips of my ears, but it did not stop my paw from tapping the "see more" button.
[Prev] [First] [Next]
Patreon / Kofi/ Paypal

It was dark, like the type of dark that you have to check your eyes by blinking. Only then you realize you can no longer tell whether your eyes are open or closed. The sky was calm and thin clouds streaked across the sky like a child had obtained a paint brush and some paint. Below this oddly peaceful sky was a home, more precisely it would be called a mansion. A dilapidated old home that hadn't seen use in many years. Strangely though it was guarded as if some old treasure may have existed inside.
The old decrepit home had a wall encircling it with a fancy ornate gate, depictions of bats and skulls made it feel more ominous though. Gargoyles watched the guards as they lazily stood in front of the gate, they had no sense of urgency.
"Hey mind if I just take a quick wink? Not like anyone's gonna come here there no point. There's nothing here but an old coffin and a corpse." One of the guards sighed as he leaned against the wall.
"Yeah, go ahead man. I'd rather not get in trouble with the captain though. He's scary." The second guard shivered as he thought of the new boss they'd recently been answering to.
"Ah, that kid? Come on he's not even like us he's just a Lithian brat. He was assigned his position to make us look good for 'that' person." His voice lowered as fear crept in while thinking about the man they wouldn't even speak the name of.
"Damn, we've gone and involved ourselves with scary people huh. Whatever imma. . . Just." With his sentence trailing of soon snores filled the air and a sigh from the sleeping man's companion. The mansion behind them watched eagerly at their relaxed attitudes, waiting hungrily for the intruders it expected. And it's hunger was satisfied as the sound of glass breaking cut through the night.
Quiet footsteps landed on a carpet, "how's it looking?"
"Cody. . . Shut the fuck up." Skarlet's face appeared in the light of her fire magic, a single finger raised with a flame on top.
"Hey sorry, but there's nobody here right besides who can stop us?"
"Cody, just come inside." Skarlet grabbed him by the hand and yanked him through the window. She then pushed it closed behind him. In the light of her fire he could see her tail flicking with annoyance.
"Sorry, it's just been a bit since it was just the two of us right. There was that fight with Ares but. . . You know never mind remember Christmas?" Cody smiled mischievously, though her response was a barely visible blush.
"You're a terrible cook." She frowned as she started walking down the hall.
"Ooh, my heart as a man has been injured. But hey you know that I was trying to recreate something from my homeland. Coco doesn't exist in this world though." His voice fell at the end of the sentence, a partial pout appeared in his expression for a moment before a flash of surprise as he skipped forward to catch up with her. It was as he was just about to reach her side when she turned.
"You're not too bad at consoling a crying girl though." A smirk accompanied that statement before she spun around once more and kept walking. Cody froze, a dumb look on his face, but he recovered quickly and chased after her. Skarlet was blushing deeply, she even put out her flame to hide it. Damnit, why'd I say that. This stupid guy. . . Ugh the goal. . . We came here for a reason.
"You're much more social than when we first met. Didn't you try to kill me to keep me from getting close to you. What changed, little misfortunate." Cody asked with a teasing tone.
"Nothing Dumbass, I just realized I couldn't push you away cause you were stronger than me. Better keep up, hero if I surpass you in strength I'll end our partnership." Skarlet's voice shook at the end of her statement. If it was back then, it would've been firm, but she couldn't shake the emotions she'd been feeling more recently. She had to admit that she enjoyed his company, he was a dependable friend. Damn, why are my cheeks so hot.
"Here I found it!" Skarlet spoke up, breaking the conversation off forcefully. She was pointing to a staircase, Cody stepped up to the edge and looked down.
"Problem, um there's no steps only a case." Cody pointed out as he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She was staring at him in exasperation.
"Was that supposed to be a joke?" She sighed as he avoided eye contact and stepped off the edge.
"Um, I guess." He said while rubbing the back of his head and smiling awkwardly. Skarlet landed beside him with a chuckle and punched him in the shoulder.
"Come on let's go, dummy." She led the way further down, occasionally they had to leap down entire cases that were missing steps. But soon they reached the basement. Four stories and five flights, it was a very big house. They walked in silence as they approached a room at the back of the basement. It was a tomb, definitely. There was stone double doors, at there center was a black widow on a spiderweb. The split between the doors cut the widow in half.
Skarlet stepped forward and pushed open the door, a draft of air escaped desperately leading her hair and skirt to flutter curiously.
Thud
The doors made a pretty loud sound as they clicked into place. There was a stone coffin placed in the center, the room however was set up almost like a set in an old Gothic play. A large bed, the colors were red and black. A bookcase on one wall and a fireplace on the other. The biggest out of place thing though was a massive rotating magic circle. It seemed to be made of a red viscous liquid and was floating off the ground by a couple inches. It was surrounding the coffin as blood red chains erupted from the magic circle and wrapped the coffin.
"Um, hehe hey don't you think this looks like a bad Idea actually. Maybe we have the wrong house." Cody joked anxiously as he stepped into the room behind Skarlet who was approaching the coffin.
"No this, this is right I think. It is just very elaborate, we'll have to carry her out. Get ready they'll know we're here when I break the seal." Skarlet explained as she stepped into the magic circle. It coiled around her like she was walking through a shallow pond. "Sapphire told us that she'll be groggy and confused when she wakes up, we'll have to protect her as we get her out of here."
As she approached the coffin she pulled out a dagger and stabbed it into the center of it, where the red chains all clustered together. The dagger was a normal looking blade, but the guard was a golden carved black widow with a ruby in the abdomen.
Her ears laid flat as her tail lashed anxiously with the massive mana wave that erupted outwards. Lastly, as if the stone prison before her wanted to give off one more ounce of flair the lid shattered into particles of black and red and trickled down the sides to mix with the blood pooling in the carpet around the coffin. The magic circle had been made from actual blood.
Though Skarlet froze, she seemed to have seen something in the coffin that greatly confused or surprised her. Cody frowned as he approached, he peered over her shoulder and gasped, he understood. The coffin contained a skeleton, the inhabitant had been dead awhile.
"Wait, what the hell, that that no that can't be what?" Skarlet reached into the coffin and lifted the skeleton before dropping it, the clattering of bones was chilling.
"So. . . What do we do now? I don't think Sapphire has a plan B." Cody sighed as he turned to the room. He started to approach the bed when he noticed something. "Um hey Skarlet, we're looking for an Older sister correct. And specifically one that's been sealed for the last ten years right." Cody spoke as he noticed someone in the bed.
"What the. . . That's a kid." Skarlet frowned as she approached the bed and pulled the covers aside to reveal a young girl in a classic Gothic Lolita dress. She was hugging a very traditional teddy bear with obviously sewed on bat wings. But most importantly, she was sound asleep.
"We can't leave her here right? This place is about to become a battle ground. I'm pretty sure she's human right, when I was with Sapphire I could sense that she was a monster and not a human. But this girl just feels normal." Skarlet was pondering when sound rang out upstairs.
"Damn their coming." Skarlet began shaking the young girl lightly as she pulled her into a sitting position. The girl groggily opened her eyes and yawned then they widened as she saw them. "Hello dear, we need to go, can you come with us for a little. It's gonna get dangerous." Skarlet held out her hand and the girl took it with sparkling eyes. Skarlet smiled awkwardly as she realized the girl was staring at her ears. "I'll let you touch them if you come with us ok." Skarlet led her by the hand as Cody drew his sword and they stepped out into the basement. It was still empty but the sound of feet and voices upstairs led them to move quickly.
On the first floor Cody stepped out from the stairs and into the hall. A shout brought his attention to a group of guards that immediately ran at him.
"Damn, stay back you two." Cody grumbled as he brought his hand up and cast light spear, chanting under his breath as he brought his sword in front of him. A ball of light appeared and morphed into a spear as he chanted then it launched at his opponents. Two of the guards got speared almost instantly.
"Shit these guys are strong, one of the remaining guards spoke up as he suddenly skidded to a stop along with his companies. They tossed their swords to the ground, Cody grinned awkwardly as he realized what was happening. He began making strides towards them breaking into a run he impaled one of the group as the other two began to change.
Cody ripped his sword out of the guard and let his body fall, the sword he held glowed with a soft white light and that glow reflected off the blood making the scene feel more red than it should have normally as he turned around and leaped at his two new opponents. They were werewolves, he cast a light spell called illuminate and the two reacted by recoiling. Cody slid under the outstretched claws of the first one and leaped upwards slashing from the beast's stomach all the way to the neck and straight out the jugular. Then with a round house kick, he smashed his heel into the side of it's head and sent it careening into it's companion who yelped in surprise. Cody then blasted a hole through both of them with another light spear.
As he finished the sound of clapping echoed out. Cody felt a bit of embarrassment as the little girl behind Skarlet had started clapping. Cody sighed and led the way towards the front door, they cleared out a couple more groups but for the most part went unchallenged till he pushed open the front door to reveal that there was a large troop stationed in the yard.
"Damn, is that old man this afraid of Ruby?" Skarlet muttered as she gazed at the large mob in front of her. "alright, upsy daisy." Skarlet lifted the girl and had her sit in her arm while holding onto Skarlet's neck. Skarlet drew her sword and held it one handed.
"Intruders, we can't let you leave. Where's Ruby!" A man looking like the leader approached.
"Sorry man, I don't know." Skarlet replied as a smile slipped onto her face. Suddenly she was in front of him as she dashed, dragging her sword across his waist she split him in half leaped and kicked his torso back at his own troops. There was a look of surprise permanently etched on his face. "Come on Cody, let's take these fuckers out."
"Skarlet, your carrying a child think you could maybe be less gruesome?" Cody's plea went unheard as she delved into battle. He sighed once more feeling himself growing older he leaped forward as well.
Skarlet hacked and slashed a path through the guards, she twisted, jumped, and ducked to avoid attacks targeting the girl in her arms. Cody was right behind her slicing through his own opponents. At this point he had a look of annoyance and exasperation in his face as he watched the blood covered black cat girl have her fun. "When did she start to enjoy fighting so much?" He realized he hadn't noticed this emerging tendency of hers.
Suddenly Skarlet had the area around her cleared out as a figure approached. He held a sword that Cody recognized, a katana. He was dressed in a gladiator style outfit with a cape. There was no smile on his face though he didn't look like a showman. The guards had backed away and even seemed to tremble.
"Captain, it's the captain."
"Hey, why'd y'all stop I thought it was getting good. There's enough of you for me to. . . Oh you look fun." Skarlet smiled as she looked at the man in front of her. A Fox Lithian that reeked of the blood he'd split throughout his life. His reddish orange hair was short cut and spiky.
"Cody, take her." Skarlet spoke seriously as she handed the girl to Cody.
Skarlet then stepped forward and gripped her sword tightly. In an instant they closed in on each other, a loud bang rang out as they crossed blades. "Ha, damn I thought I was no longer a human with the strength I wield. That no singular opponent could match me. But this is gonna be fun." Skarlet smiled as she let her emotions out, a built up rage and fear filled her blade as a series of clashes rang out. Though her smile began to slip as pain blossomed in her side. Something wet splatter in the dirt. "Shit." Skarlet leaned back as the boy's sword barely grazed her neck.
"You can't beat me you're not at that level yet, cat." The boy explained as he calmly dealt with her frantic and chaotic attacks. She spun around and brought a kick to the side of his head, a thud exploded out as she came into contact with his forearm that had blocked. He then grabbed her leg and flipped her, she hit the dirt with a thud and immediately kicked the ground and rolled away as a blade stabbed into the dirt where her head used to be. Her fear had melted into her blade she felt nothing but exhilaration even as blood soaked into her shirt and dripped down her leg.
She leaped to her feet and pointed her sword at him, a serious expression on her face as she leaped at him with a large overhead strike. Mana erupted throughout her sword as a black fire erupted along her blade encasing it in a threatening appearance and aura.
She brought her sword down and the boy swung his sword almost like one would swing a rapier in a contest of beauty. Elegant and swift movements, he made it seem like it was weightless as he parried her sword to the side and twirled his blade around before piercing her chest.
"Skarlet!!" Cody exclaimed as he watched the blade rip out her back, blood dripping off its tip. The boy, smiled as he looked into her eyes.
"Skarlet, it matches your fiery eyes. My name is Gordon and I'm the one who killed you." He seemed truly happy. He even began to laugh but that froze on his face as he watched her mouth from a smile. It parted slightly and blood poured down her chin. A sharp pain stabbed his side as her sword sliced into him, a scowl lit his face as the blade carved through him with ease and ripped through his throat. Then with a bloody, choking laugh she kicked him away and let the blade slide back out of her chest.
Gordon hit the ground, her blade had carved a jagged path from his side, to his neck. Affectively amputating his arm, he was bleeding a lot, far more than her as she cast a healing spell. Her face scrunched in pain as her body began rearranging and reassembling the wound.
She then turned and wiped the blood from her lips as she placed her sword on her shoulder and grinned at Cody. "Damn that bastard was good." Cody sighed.
"Hahaha, victory must feel nice." Gordon laughed as he sat up. Blood was starting to slither and move around him. His body was pulling itself back together as he got to his feet. His sword was bleeding, no more accurately, it was eating her blood and healing him it seemed. "Girl, that was damn insane. You're literally crazy, who deliberately takes an attack that could kill them just to create an opening. Haha, not that I'm going to fall for it again. Come on try and kill me imma get serious now. This is gonna scar you know." He held his sword in a different stance as the blood coalesced on the blade and formed a larger scary blade made of blood. His sword looked more like a scimitar now or possibly a sword with an ax on the end of it. Then he dashed at her, Skarlet felt dread, but still fear escaped her. She looked down the jaws of death and smiled.
"Yeah, let's go!"

Does StreetPass still work?

Yes. StreetPass uses local communication between Nintendo 3DS family systems, meaning that it is still available even after online services ended.

Does SpotPass still work?

Through official means, no. Because SpotPass uses online communication, SpotPass features are longer available through official means. See more information about accessing Spotpass content in the below sections.

What is Netpass?

Unlike StreetPass, NetPass works over the internet. Upon opening NetPass, you can pick various locations to go to, i.e. the train station, or a town plaza. Upon entering a location, you get passes of others who are in the same location! And, while you are at the location, others who enter it can get passes with you. But beware! You can only switch locations once every 10 hours!

• Website
  
• Netpass FAQ
  
• Netpass Discord Server
  

How do I Install Netpass?

You must have a hacked 3DS. In order to hack your 3DS, you only follow the official guide: https://3ds.hacks.guide
To get help in the hacking process, consult the troubleshooting page. If that doesn’t answer you question, ask the official homebrew discord.
You can install the CIA directly from the Universal Updater on your 3DS, or download the .CIA file from here.
If you want to see additional capabilities of a hacked 3DS, please see the /3DSPiracy Megathread.

Netpass FAQ:

• How do I use this thing? You open the app and then it presents you the option to enter a virtual location. Currently there are three: the train station, the plaza and the mall. Upon entering a virtual location you can get netpasses of others who are also in that location.
  
• Any time I open the app it says I am in a location. What's up? Once entering a location, a 10-hour long session is started. During those 10 hours any subsequent opening of the app will reconnect you to the same location. After 10 hours have elapsed you can choose a new location.
  
• I only got like one NetPass when entering a location, wtf? On the first connection your data is uploaded to a database. There is a chance you receive passes immediately, however given more time your data will “pair” with someone else’s data which will then be available to download. This random pairing can occur once an hour, so there is no guarantee you will receive passes every time the database updates. Imagine it as someone with a 3DS walking past you, this can happen 2 times a day or 40 times a day, depending on your luck. Your uploaded data will remain in this pairing state for up to 30 days, therefore checking in and switching locations is advised, especially since each location has its' own database. Patience is key.
  
• Do I have to leave this app open? Can I put my 3DS to sleep? There is no need to leave NetPass open to accumulate passes. The pairing of datasets happens server side, you simply need to check in every so often.
  
• Will normal StreetPass still work? Yes, it'll still work just fine.
  
• How does NetPass Work?
  

 1. When you load the app and choose a location, the app uploads your StreetPass data to the server. This is where StreetPass pairs are made. 2. You do not need to leave the app open or in sleep mode. Once your StreetPass data has been uploaded, you can shutdown the app. The server will gather user StreetPass info and creates matches of those in the same “location”. 3. The next time you open the app, any StreetPass matches made in the server will download to your system. 

Note: You’re not guaranteed a pass with EVERYONE at your particular location. In fact, the algorithm was designed to make it feel realistic (aka slow). 100 people might be at the train station, but you’re probably only going to get 3-6 passes in a 10 hour block.

In Summary: you only need to open the app and let it connect to the server every now and then.
Sources

• Source 1
  
• Source 2
  

How can I access Spotpass content?

• The Spotpass Archival Project is a project that aimed to archive all Spotpass content. Please see their site and discord to stay up to date on their progress and how to access their archive.

Spotpass Dump Collections

• Spotpass Puzzle Swap Archive Link 1
  
• EUR Spotpass Dump including Puzzles & "Mario & Happy" limited edition puzzle
  
• Source 1. Source 2.
  

How to Install Spotpass Dumps onto your 3DS

Note: The 3DS you want to install this data on must have CFW (custom firmware) installed. If it doesn’t have it installed, follow the instructions at https://3ds.hacks.guide and come back to this page. To get help in the hacking process, consult the troubleshooting page. If that doesn’t answer you question, ask the official homebrew discord.

1. Download the .zip file from here or your other sources corresponding to your console’s region code. If you’re not sure what region code your 3DS uses, open up System Settings (the wrench icon) and your region code should appear at the bottom right of the top screen next to the firmware version.
   
2. Power off your 3DS console and remove it’s SD card, connect the SD card to a device capable of copying files to it and unzip the file you downloaded to the root directory of your SD card. Eject and remove the SD card once all files have been extracted.
   
3. Insert the SD card into your 3DS console and power it on. Launch StreetPass Mii Plaza (the icon with a bunch of Mii avatars) and follow any necessary prompts. Navigate to the Settings menu option (the red toolbox) and make sure that both StreetPass and SpotPass are enabled. If any of those are turned off, you will need to enable them.
   
4. Once you’ve verified StreetPass and SpotPass are enabled for the Mii Plaza, press HOME, X, and then A to close out of the StreetPass Mii Plaza. Then, open up the FBI application. If you don’t have FBI installed, you will need to follow the guide linked above to install it.
   
5. Select SD with the A button, then use D-Pad Up and Down to navigate and select “StreetPass Puzzle Data [region code]” with A once again. Select the file with the weird filename and then select Copy.
   
6. Press B several times to return back to the main menu, then select Ext Save Data. Look for StreetPass Mii Plaza and select it, then select Browse SpotPass Data, and then select . Select the Paste option and press A once again to confirm.
   
7. Once the file has finished copying, press A to confirm, then exit FBI and launch StreetPass Mii Plaza. Select the Games option (backpack or fountain depending on plaza version) and then select Puzzle Swap. All the additional puzzles should now be available for you to collect.
   

Source

Other Useful Information

• To play online with your 3DS after the server shutdown, please see https://pretendo.network or /PretendoHub
  
• To learn additional capabilities of a hacked 3DS, please see the /3DSPiracy Megathread.
  
• For general 3DS discussion, please see /Nintendo3DS
  

Please Post a Comment if you have any additional questions or note any incorrect/out of date information

^{v1.0 Last Updated: 2024-05-07}

This is a throwaway account. I was on a dating app (okCupid) and I matched with a girl from the Philippines. She messages me and right off the bat I could tell it was probably a scam just by the way she was talking (calling me baby, etc.). However I played along. Shortly after messaging me on the app, she asks if I have WhatsApp, to which I reply yes. She gives me her number and I added her.
As soon as I add her on WhatsApp, I immediately regret it as I knew this was most likely a scam. But it was already too late and she started messaging me there. She keeps flirting with me and talking kind of dirty/sexual. Since I knew it was a scam, and I was already at this point I decided to just play along and I asked her to send me a photo. She then proceeds to send me normal photos of herself. I make a remark about sending more sexy photos. She then sends me a video of her getting naked. And another video of her playing with herself shortly after.
She then says that if I want more photos and videos that I would have to pay. She then proceeds to tell me she needs money for food, and she apologizes for asking and she says she hopes I don't get upset that she asked. At this point I should have blocked her, hell I should have blocked her on okCupid and not have messaged her on WhatsApp, but here I am bored and I know this person is a scammer so I decide to play along. I ask how much money they need and they tell me 3000 pesos and they send their PayPal account email. I said I will send the money but I need more photos and videos first.
All of the sudden my phone blows up with messages of her sending nude photos and videos. Then before I could even say anything she starts asking for the money and says that she hopes I'm not playing games with her.
At this point I go to block her number, but right before I get a chance to do that she calls me but it only rings once and she hangs up. I blocked her immediately after that and then I got anxiety because I was wondering why she would call me. What would that accomplish? And now I'm worried that maybe it's possible she hacked my phone and it's compromised now? I didn't answer the phone, she didn't send any links only the photos and videos, which I did click on. I know there are some spyware programs like Pegasus that are zero click exploits, which basically means that someone can call your phone and it just has to ring once and then your phone gets corrupted without you knowing. I know Pegasus is typically used by government/military but can these scammers use it too? Or something similar? I found articles about how this happened to WhatsApp users back in 2019 I think it was, but they were mostly journalists, politicians, etc.
Now I'm having anxiety about my phone being compromised and they could potentially see my photos, messages, email, social media, etc. My FB page was already deactivated before this, and when this happened I deactivated Instagram and LinkedIn. I deleted any important documents on my phone and have them stored in an external hard drive. I also deleted my okCupid account, but before I did I went to my messages and noticed that she was not there anymore.
My two main concerns are if my phone is hacked and the fact that they have my phone number, which I'm sure they could find out my address with, and since I basically got over on them I get worried maybe they would try to find me as I'm sure they're mad and might even work for some guy who might be pissed now. I didn't send them any photos or videos of myself. I definitely learned my lesson and will be blocking anyone like that right away from now on.
Has anyone encountered something similar and if so how did it turn out? Any advice? Thanks in advance.
Edit: I never sent any money. I just told her I would send the money once she sends me more photos/videos. She sent a bunch of them to me after that, and then she started asking for the money and said "I hope you're not playing games with me". I went to block her but right before I could she called me and it rang once. I then blocked her right after that. I think I'm mostly worried about the call. Why would she call me and let it ring just once and she only did that after she realized I wasn't sending any money. I just hope there isn't a way to hack into my WhatsApp or phone by doing that.

Alright, I've heard a lot of discussion and concerns regarding the antipiracy measures of Earthbound. Stuff like it wipes your save file once you get to the second phase of Giygas, or that it ramps enemy encounters to absurd levels. This is true, this is a thing if you use pirated copies of the game. However, this only affects those who used cartridge copiers on an SNES. This does not affect those who use emulators (unless you use a really bad emulator or horribly misconfigured somehow, or unless you somehow have an absurdly bad dump). Modern emulators easily bypass this. Besides, the checks were not made in mind for those who use emulators anyway. After doing a quick bit of research, SNES emulation did start around 1994, although it wasn't really good for running commercial games, but much better for homebrew. It wasn't until a few years after Earthbound came out that emulation actually became somewhat good, like had sound and ran at good framerates, so I doubt that Nintendo really cared that much about emulation.
That said, going by TCRF's article on the game, I can still break down the layers of antipiracy to help show that it won't affect emulation.
Layer 1 (Simple region check): This is just simple enough, and if anything, was likely designed to impede people from downloading ROMs of a different region and using it on their copier device. Obviously, it's not hard for emulators to just pretend to be whatever region is needed (some have automatic region detection anyway)
Layer 2 (SRAM check): If that doesn't turn out to be an issue, this is clearly the first real attempt at cartridge copiers. Obviously, the creators of the game were well aware of people renting or borrowing games, like from a store or from a friend, so this is clearly designed to prevent people from just downloading the data and putting it into their copier and calling it a day where they effectively produced a new copy. As for what the check does, it checks how much SRAM (which is where save data is stored) the cartridge has. The correct answer should be 8kb. Of course, since by the very nature of copiers (since they can hold more than 1 game) would hold more than 8kb, it would report the larger number and the game would notice that something isn't right. Emulators can get around this by creating a file that makes the game report that it has the correct amount.
Layer 3 (enemy encounters): This is the one I see mentioned a lot, where people show a screenshot of the game and ask if the copy protection is active. In most cases, it isn't, a lot of areas just simply have a lot of enemies. It's possible that it may be active if you find enemies in places that they shouldn't, like the player's house or Saturn Valley. According to TCRF, it checks to see if the previous 2 layers had their checks disabled. If they have been disabled, then that would be what activates this layer. Of course, unless you have a bad ROM or something is seriously wrong with your emulator (or unless you trigger it on purpose like with hacking the game), As mentioned, it would put you against enemies with absurd stats or weird items like dropping backstage passes (or downright crash). If you aren't seeing that kind of thing, your game is most likely fine. Now, again, a lot of areas simply do have a lot of enemies, but if you are seeing enemies in places where they genuinely don't belong, then that might be cause for concern. Again though, since emulators won't do anything that would require the ROM to be modified, this layer will not go off. With memory hacking or cheat device codes, you can deliberately enable this on purpose if you wanted, but otherwise, you likely won't see it.
Layer 4 (currently unknown): It's not currently known what this layer does, but during a normal playthrough, it gets called 6 times, something to do with SRAM.
Layer 5 (crash and save wipe): Countless resources have mentioned this too, leading paranoid players to believe that this will happen to them. Like the 3rd layer, this simply checks to see if the other layers have been bypassed, including that one. Once again, because emulators (at least anything actually modern) won't need to touch anything that would cause the layers to go off, this won't happen. Especially with virtual console, the SNES mini or SNES online. I'm quite sure that if anything like that did happen to one of their emulators, there would be a lot of work put into in order to address an issue of that size.
The tl;dr version is that your game is most likely fine regardless of how you got it. Unless you are using some really weird emulator that handles things in ways that it shouldn't, you're fine. I myself have played it a few times with Snes9x on PC as well as the homebrew emulator Snes9x_3ds and have never seen any issues.
I really hope that this helps people who are concerned that they got the antipiracy screens of this game. Although I can certainly understand the fear of suddenly losing progress that you put well over 10+ hours into, I assure you that it's not likely for you to run into any antipiracy related issue, and I hope you enjoy the game.

A breath of exasperation was the only reply from the aqua and white Chinese Lung dragon. The breath moved my still damp hair out of my face, and I smelled the scent of copper on her breath.
Where would she have eaten copper? Suddenly my brain hurt again and a voice spoke
Analysis skill finalized. Information and context will be provided based upon previous experiences.
Analysis: The smell of copper can usually indicate a large amount of blood.
I froze upon receiving this information just staring at the dragon that floated in the sky in front of me.
A long silence followed as neither the dragon nor the pretty elf took their eyes off of me.
“Why is he just staring at me?” The dragon asked after a minute.
“I believe that he is God-Touched.” Answered the Elven Princess.
“He’s definitely touched princess, I’m just not sure that it was truly by a god.” The dragon replied.
“Meika!” The princess burst out laughing. “But seriously, Adam? Why are you standing still?”
Because she can’t see me if I don’t move. I thought to myself.
Analysis: correction that is for a T-Rex, a dinosaur. Not a dragon. Also, that is a myth.
“Why does your dragon friend smell like blood?” I asked.
“Ah, right you were out hunting Meika, did you rinse?” The Elf asked.
The dragon visibly flinched, and landed. Beginning to drink from the lake Adam had landed in. Naked.
“Ah, I wouldn’t-“ I was interrupted by a hand squeezing my shoulder.
Looking over at the elf I watched her shake her head, a mischievous smile played on her lips.
“Well I’m at least pleased to know my naked companion here wasn’t that dirty.” The Elf said.
Meika, the dragon looked up at the princess puzzled.
“The water you’re drinking? He landed in it. Fell from the sky into it I suppose.” Her mischievous smile turning into a full on grin.
Meika for her part was hacking and sputtering trying to get the water out of her mouth as quickly as possible.
“Just great guys, really feeling the love.” I said feeling rather upset about how I was being treated.
———————————————————————-
ELSEWHERE
Athena gazed down at her chosen Champion. It hadn’t been a hard choice in choosing him. In fact the hardest part had been dealing with her uncle. Her quiet musings however were interrupted.
“Thena!” Cried her sister Artemis in a sing song voice. “I’ve come to check on you! Daddy says you haven’t been seen in 3 weeks what are you up to?”
Artemis stopped, and stared at the crystal sphere that Athena was using to check in on her Champion.
“Oh no Thena not again! This is what? The 3rd one!?” Artemis exclaimed.
“He’s the 4th actually Artie, if you count the one that Ares stole.” Athena responded a little dejection in her tone.
Artemis frowned. Her Thena Never lost, but this world took heroes, and champions, and it chewed them up and spat them back out a malformed monster of what they once were. “Has no one stopped him yet?” Artemis asked.
“No.” Replied Athena.
“Not even one of Odin’s Einherjar?” Artemis asked.
“He killed two. Odin won’t send any more.” Athena replied.
Artemis winced. “Loki?”
“Killed a different Champion and declared his contract complete with a loophole.” Athena sighed.
“Kali?” Asked Artemis visibly running out of ideas.
“Hasn’t responded. I hope to hear every day, but still nothing.”
Artemis sighed. “What Realm has he made it to?”
“He’s stuck on the 4th, and I hope that is where he’ll stay. Titans help us if he makes it to the 9th.” Athena said gloomily.
“Well third times the charm.” Artemis said.
“He’s my-“ Athena began.
“I’m not counting Ares!” Artemis retorted.
First chapter
Previous chapter

It's important to distinguish underlying principles from the minutiae of investing. I am often asked my opinion on a topic or an investment, and I readily share those opinions. However, it is easy for a casual reader or listener to mistake the trees for the forest. Today, I'm going to tell you about the forest. These are the hills I'm willing to die on.

#1 Financial Planning Makes You Happier

I am 100% convinced that financially secure doctors are better partners, parents, and physicians. By doing real financial planning, you will have less stress, less burnout, less divorce, and less suicide. You will be happier. You will provide better patient care. Just do it.

#2 Wealth Comes Mostly from Making a Lot and Saving a Lot

Wealth comes mostly from making a lot of money and saving a big chunk of it—not from your investing prowess. When I started The White Coat Investor blog, I thought I'd be writing all about investing. I thought I'd spend a lot of time on estate planning and asset protection. But what really makes the difference is good personal finance habits. Your goal should be to be a good earner and saver and an adequate investor. If you can do that, you will become wealthy and meet all of your financial goals.
It turns out that frugality matters. Try to resist living like a doctor. Save 20% of your gross income and grow into your income as slowly as you can. Make as much money as you can, especially early in your career. Negotiate your contracts well; work hard; and, if you're interested, do a side hustle.

#3 You Need a Reasonable Written Investing Plan

There are many roads to Dublin. I am not going to prescribe an asset allocation to you that you must follow to be successful. I've seen lots of books that have been written like that, giving you the reasons behind some particular asset allocation plan. The truth is that any reasonable plan will do. There is no perfect portfolio, and if there was, you couldn't know what it was in advance. It turns out that the investor matters more than the investment. So, make a detailed investing plan and write it down. If you can't write it down, take our Fire Your Financial Advisor online course and/or hire help until you can. Then, implement it and follow it. As long as it's a reasonable plan and it's adequately funded, it will lead you to reach your investing goals.

#4 Index Funds Are the Best Foundation for a Portfolio

Buying and holding a fixed asset allocation of low-cost, broadly diversified index mutual funds is the best foundation for a portfolio. This method of investing is basically free. There is barely any monetary cost, time, or effort required. Expense ratios are now under 10 basis points a year. That's basically free. Once you put your assets into there, it takes almost no time and effort to maintain them. You put your contributions in each month and perhaps rebalance once a year. This sort of portfolio can literally be managed in as little as an hour per year. It's a great foundation for an investing plan.
This approach allows you to focus your efforts where they matter most (see #2 above). Since nobody actually knows the future, there's no sense in worrying about it or listening to those who are trying to predict it. Avoid market timing and individual stock picking. It is extremely hard to do either successfully long term, especially after-tax and after accounting for the value of your time and additional worry.
Maybe you want to get a little fancy here and there. Fine. Maybe you want to build a real estate empire on the side. That's a viable pathway to wealth, and done properly, it can help you reach financial independence earlier. Go for it. If you want to speculate on precious metals or crypto assets or commodities, limit that to a single-digit percentage of your portfolio.
But the foundation should be index funds. It's better for most of you, and it's certainly much easier for your heirs. Index funds don't buy ads at The White Coat Investor. Don't get me wrong. I'm very happy with the performance of our private real estate investments overall, but 85% of our portfolio is still in index funds and similar investments. You should have a very good reason to invest in anything that is not an index fund.

#5 Insure Well But Only Against Financial Catastrophes

I am not anti-insurance. I think you should insure well but only against those things that really are financial catastrophes. What are the financial catastrophes?

• Disability, if you are depending on your income.
• Death, if anyone else depends on your income.
• Health. Illnesses and injuries can get very expensive very quickly, especially when they also keep you from working.
• Liability, both professional and personal.
• Property loss. Most people can't afford to replace their house if it burns down, so they should insure it.

If anybody else is depending on your income, you need life insurance, but you probably don't need it for your entire life. One of the main problems with whole life insurance is you're buying insurance against something that isn't a financial catastrophe (dying late in life). Even if you die at 90, the policy is going to pay out. That is why a typical whole life policy costs 8-10 times as much as a term life policy.
Remember that insurance is, on average, a bad deal. Think about it. Insurance companies do not pay out every dollar they take in in premiums. They cannot do so and stay in business. They have expenses and want to make a profit. So, on average, an insurance purchaser is losing money. Don't buy more than you need.

#6 Live Like a Resident for 2-5 Years Out of Residency

Whether you're going for public service loan forgiveness, or whatever else is happening, it is so much easier not to grow into your income than it is to cut back once you have grown into your income.
That period of time—right when you come out of residency and you're all fired up about your new career and excited to work hard and you're used to working hard and not spending much—is the time to become wealthy. Earn like an attending and spend like a resident. You can take the difference between those two, which is likely a six-figure amount, and pay off your student loans very quickly, catch up to your college peers with retirement savings, and maybe even save up a down payment for your dream home. It's really a great way to become very wealthy very quickly. Nearly every doctor will want options to cut back in some way by mid-career. The best way to ensure you have those options is to live like a resident in your early career.

#7 Spend Intentionally

I don't really care what you value. I don't care if it's a wakeboat, a Tesla, fancy vacations to Europe, $10,000 handbags, Michelin three-star restaurants, or a nice house. I don't care if you're retiring at 40 or putting your kids in private school. I do care that you're spending your money on what you care about most. When you have both financial literacy and financial discipline, you will spend intentionally by being generally frugal and selectively extravagant. You can have anything you want but not everything you want. Choose wisely.

#8 Get Good Advice at a Fair Price

Get good advice at a fair price or learn how to be your own financial planner and investment manager. That is certainly a doable task for somebody with the intellect of a physician, but you have to be interested. If you're interested, you will gain the knowledge required to do this task, and you will gain the discipline required to do it well. If you're not interested enough to consider this at least a minor hobby, you should hire a financial advisor. Get one that's offering good advice at a fair price. Good advice means they're telling you the same sorts of things that you read on this blog and with other reliable sources of investing information. A fair price is a four-figure amount per year. If you're paying more than $10,000 a year, we can almost surely find you an advisor that will give you as good or better advice for less money. Do the math on AUM fees. If you are a millionaire and you're paying 1% a year, you're already paying more than $10,000 a year. Good financial advice and service are expensive, but not that expensive.

#9 Understand and Use Your Tax-Advantaged Accounts

Each of us has tax-advantaged accounts available to us, as long as we have earned income. These include employer-provided accounts like 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457(b)s, and 401(a)s. They include self-employed accounts like individual 401(k)s and personal cash balance plans. They also include personal accounts like Roth IRAs, HSAs, and 529s. Get your plan documents and read them. You have a second job as a pension fund manager, and you need to actually do something about that job despite the fact that you weren't given any training for it in medical school or residency.
These are all tax-advantaged accounts. They all have different contribution limits and different rules. You need to understand how they work and which ones are available to you—and you need to use them. They will help your money grow faster. They will protect your assets from your creditors and make your estate planning easier. They are the single greatest tax break available to you as a practicing physician.

#10 Pay Cash and Avoid Debt

Doctors generally have enough income that they can waste quite a bit of it and make quite a few financial mistakes and still be OK. However, the principles are the same whether you make $50,000 or $500,000. Here's the principle. It's so simple that even my young kids understand it.
“Would you rather earn interest or pay interest?”
That's right. You'd rather earn it. Get in the habit of not buying stuff that you can't afford. How do you know if you can afford it? If you can pay cash for it, you can afford it. Yes, I understand the math behind borrowing at a low rate and hopefully earning at a higher rate. If you're in one of those situations and you're convinced that you're actually investing the difference, go right ahead. But most of the time, we're human. We borrow at a low rate, we forget to invest at the higher rate, we spend it on something we want, and we end up poorer because of it. Don't do that.
That same drive that causes wealthy people to invest also drives them to pay off debt. Make enough and save enough that you can do both while still living a life where you do not feel deprived.

#11 Minimize Your Taxes and Know the Tax Code

While the tax code can be incredibly complicated, the basics are easily understood. Know the difference between a deduction and a credit. Know an above-the-line vs. a below-the-line or itemized deduction. Know where the various schedules and forms feed into the 1040. There are smaller or larger changes every year, but it's going to be mostly the same system every year of your life. Understand how it works today, and you'll find it much easier to understand the changes as they occur over the years.
I'm always amazed to talk to people who really don't understand how the tax code works, and they just parrot things they hear in the media and assume that they're actually true when they aren't. It's important to understand the tax code. You can't win this game without knowing the rules. Unless your favorite charity is the US government, you would do well to remember what Judge Learned Hand said:
“Anyone may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes.”

#12 Asset Protection Is Easy and Matters Less Than You Think

Too many doctors are terribly afraid of losing everything to a malpractice lawsuit. It is actually incredibly rare for a doctor to lose any personal money in a lawsuit. For the most part in a malpractice lawsuit, you're serving as a defense witness for an insurance company.
That doesn't excuse you from doing the simple, effective asset protection stuff. Buy professional and personal (umbrella) liability insurance. Title your property properly (tenants by the entirety). Max out your retirement accounts. Understand your state asset protection laws. Put your rental properties into LLCs. When it makes sense, form LLCs and corporations. Once you're wealthy, use sensible irrevocable trusts for estate planning purposes and reap the asset protection benefits, too. Most importantly, remember that your biggest asset protection risk is lying in that bed next to you each night. Given divorce rates ranging from 10% (two-doc couples) to 50% (general population), date night is the best asset protection technique.
If you want my opinion on a niche personal finance or investing topic, I'll give it to you. But these timeless principles are the hills I'm willing to die on and the ones that the White Coat Investor blog will continue to promote.
What do you think are the most important principles in personal finance and investing?

~First~
HHH/Herbert’s Hundred Harem
The first thing they organize is a layout of just where the hot zones are and where the detected Axiom Eddies were. It’s not a perfect match up, but it’s close.
“Of course it would heavily favour the lower depths. I keep telling you all that we need to do something about them!”
“Do you have any idea how many billions of credits go into each level of those slums every year? Per Spire?! It’s obscene! I’ve audited entire planets with half the budget and a tenth the crime due to proper allocation!”
“And just what is the proper allocation you...”
Herbert sighs as arguments kick off as people start disagreeing. It’s the problem that paralyzes the council and any of it’s subsidiary senates. There is simply too much, too many things to focus on and even if you have the best of the best focusing on it they can’t get anything done without barrelling into at least two other people trying to solve the issues from different directions.
A combination of the three stooges and bureaucracy ironically functioning properly. After all, it was designed so everyone could have their say.
It was just that there were too many people.
He walks up to the floating display of Centris, there are two of them in total, one for each hemisphere. The projectors are from above and below so his walking underneath does not interfere with the map as he simply empties his mind of the petty squabbles erupting around him, calms his heartbeat and breathes deeply. Considering. Thinking. Observing and...
“Micro Eddies?” He notes oddly as he spots something. He looks around a little more and spots the technician before rushing over. He’s gallingly shorter than even a Gohb at this point. When the growth spurts hit him again they are going to SUCK.
“Excuse me miss?” He asks the bored looking woman and she pauses her video and turns to him. Shocked at being addressed when there are so many big wigs around. “Hello, do you have a moment? I have some questions about the display.”
“Sure, I’m mostly here to press buttons and put up the right displays at the right time anyways.” She says storing her communicator between her breasts and he smiles at her. A blush darkens her green cheeks for a moment before she frowns. “Hey now! None of that! I know you’re more married than I like my man, keep it to your girls!”
“Sorry! Just trying to be polite!”
“Well stop it! You’re much too cute to do that without the wrong idea getting out!” She chides him. “Now, what is it you’re wondering about?”
“I found something odd in the display and I want to make sure it’s not the equipment on the fritz in some way.” He says and she raises an eyebrow at that. “Let me show you.”
He leads her into the display and then indicates a micro pocket. There’s not that many of them, but when they do show up they show up in a small line along the bottom ten of a spire. All perfectly lined up. It’s either a clue, or a persistent equipment bug. Most eddies are large enough to have a glow that’s about the size of his fist and they paint massive portions of the spires. But these ones are maybe the size of a pin’s point. Like a single stuck pixel in a computer screen.
The Technician follows his finger and clearly sees the little highlights before he steps to the next nearest one and shows it as well. After the fourth she has her communicator back out and is linked with the system as she tries to find the source. Compared to the actual eddies and alerts the little dots on the map are inconsequential, but they’re too consistent.
“The code is matching up. This isn’t a glitch.” The Technician says as she double checks the data source. “The scans of Centris detected numerous Axiom Eddies of an absolutely tiny size going down in sequence in the slum levels of many, many spires.”
“Expanded space?” Herbert asks.
“No, these markings are indicators of how large the eddy is including expanded space.” She tells him and he nods.
“So across...” He scans the maps. “A hundred spires there are a series of micro eddies hiding something going down in a straight line.”
He then walks up to the nearest one and focuses on the map itself to get a good location for where the eddies are before looking around to see that the pattern is repeated. “So they’re nearby the leftmost central support pillar and near where it meets the ceiling.”
He leans closer before looking back to The Technician. “Is this to scale?”
“It is.” She says and he nods.
“Well it looks like this micro eddies are right on them, but at the scale we’re seeing on they’re likely... a meter? Two meters away? Either way, they’re very close to these pillars, close enough to use the pillar as a brace if you climb to get up there.” He notes.
“Wait, the pillars of the bottom ten are climbable?” The Technician asks and he turns with a smile
“They are. See this bit of roughness on the model? Those are gripping points that you can climb up or hook equipment into. The upper levels think they’re ugly, but this lets even the lowest wage repairwoman climb up and fix things with a minimum of equipment or preparation. You can see them in big structures on rougher worlds too. A lot of buildings are meant to be climbed so that you can get up and fix them without setting up scaffolding.”
“For the smaller ones, you’ll still need a hover platform or scaffolding on the bigger problems.” She says and he nods in agreement. She is right after all.
“Right, which means I need to send out a call. I’ve got a... oh! That spire! Nice. This will work.” He says.
“Ven Spire?” She asks.
“Yep, I’ve got some projects there trying to give the ubiquitous slums a kick in the pants. See if there’s something we can do to help.”
“How’s that been going?”
“We’ve put together a freedom railroad and have improved the lives of a lot of people while quelling chaos. But getting the economy to actually work down there is easier said than done. Most people just want out rather than wanting to stick around and make things better. And if we offer any contract that requires them to stay in the area... well no one wants to sign those and we can’t exactly force it.” He says and she huffs.
“There’s more than that.”
“A lot more, lady I’m part of Undaunted Government Intelligence. For every little thing I say there’s an entire book’s worth of information or details being redacted.”
“A colouring book no doubt with your cyber-security...” She notes and Herbert snorts before giving her a sideways look. “What?”
“You hacked us didn’t you?”
“If I did.” She looks around at the army of officials she’s surrounded by. “And that was not in any way an admission.”
At that point he considers offering her a job.
“Then I would merely be one among many trillions who did not so much defeat your security, but failed to notice you had any to begin with.” She says primly.
“Well, if you were to have tried in the recent past. And I’m not saying you have, would you have any suggestions for our cyber-security?” He asks and she laughs.
“The initial hack was effectively yesterday to me little human. This Gohb is older than your written language!”
“We have basic writing going back at least eight thousand years.” He states and she raises an eyebrow and smirks. “And you’re STILL single?!”
“I’ve outlived my family no less than fourteen times, and refuse to start with sloppy seconds again.” She says and he pauses... considers. Turns it over in his mind, and then kicks this mental knot into the garbage can where it belongs. He has nothing to consider on that angle. She is old, currently single and not interested in him. Unless more comes up, that needs to be the end of it. He needs to be more friendly and less tempting, which is fine. He has too many problems and assets to consider to get in the romantic drama of a stranger. Even if one could track her life through history textbooks and archaeological discoveries.
“I can see the processor overheating through your eyes.” She mocks him.
“Just wondering why you’re not fabulously wealthy or powerful with that kind of time to build up.”
“I am. My money is in stocks and assets. I just think that most fancy clothing itches and most fancy food tastes awful. Also I hate being bored, so I keep a job for entertainment.”
“You’re a trusted technician of the galactic council.”
“Basic entertainment. It’s not like their security checks have anything to find on me. I’m cleaner than the council itself.”
“Well, some fossils are best preserved in vacuum sealing.” He sasses her and she snorts so hard she actually makes a bit of a mess of her face and she quickly cleans herself up.
“Don’t sass me like that! I nearly snorted my brains out!” She chides him as she giggles. She gets control of herself. “Warn me next time.”
“But that would ruin the joke!” He protests and she swats him in the chest with the back of her hand. Then she sobers up seemingly instantly and regards the model of Centris.
“A thousand micro Eddies scattered throughout the planet. They’re all spaced out over fairly large areas, and if I’m not mistaken... the vast majority are in particularly bad slums. The kinds of places that give the rest of the bottom ten a truly gruesome reputation.” She says.
“And in Ven Spire we’re trying to reverse that madness. Meaning we already have people in place, to check at least those Micro Eddies.” Herbert notes.
“I think you’re getting to a place where I can’t listen to you any further.” The Technician says.
“Is that so? My apologies, I assumed without an ear horn I could say anything in your august ‘coughancientcough’ presence.” He says and she gives him a VERY unimpressed look... that quickly fades into amusement.
“You know most people don’t bother giving me lip.” She says fondly.
“I noticed, I’m making up for the deficit.” He remarks. “Besides, it’s never a bad idea to make a new friend.”
“Oh? Friends are we? Then what’s my name?”
“Eli Var.” He answers and she pauses before checking and making sure that yes her ID is in her pocket and hasn’t been moved from it.
“You know who everyone’s name is don’t you?”
“It’s me job miss.” He says and the accent makes her pause before laughing and walking off.
“Talk to your little friends, finding those Micro Eddies is something you need to jump on, now isn’t it?” She asks.
“Alright, alright. Slave driver.” He mocks her and receives a chuckle for it. He pulls out his communicator and calls a specific number. “Hey, can you get big M to check out this location?”
He takes a picture of the indicator of the Micro Eddy on level eight of Ven Spire. He receives confirmation that his message is being passed on almost immediately.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
The fun thing about understanding gravity, is that it opens up very many pathways that most simply do not consider.
For instance, instead of wasting his time climbing up the spire support hand over hoof and hoping to not fall. He simply reoriented his gravity towards the spire and walks up with ease. Then reorients it again when he reaches the top and quickly finds the indicated Micro Eddy.
He crouches down and finds a tiny panel with a small handle that he turns to the side and it releases. There is nothing in the small hole as he holds onto the panel to stop it from falling, but the underside of the panel itself is... unusual. Unusual and unpleasant to look at. It seems almost normal, a circuit bord made of a strange metal and Khutha with six chips. Five along the outside in a pentagon and a larger central one. Whatever the metal is, something deep within him recognizes it as danger, and not the obvious danger of a predator. It’s far deeper and more... disturbing than seeing a hostile Cannidor smile or witnessing a disaster first hand.
“Are you getting this?” He asks into the microphone in his suit lapel.
“We are, several of the components are clearly Blood Metal, the central chip sits on top of a khutha restoration array has our concern. Can it be safely lifted?” His handler asks and he slowly reaches into his coat and pulls out a pair of pliers. He doesn’t want to touch any of these components, and just handling the outer shell is uncomfortable.
The chip lifts off with ease, and reveals a Protn flake along the underside. He sets it back into position and then slowly unfastens and checks each of the other five chips. They each contain half of an array and conceal the other half simultaneously.
“I do not recognize these patterns.” He says into his microphone.
“Nor do we. Whatever they’re doing, they’re feeding it into the Protn. This is an antenna of some kind.”
“But the question is, what is it receiving, and where is the other end.” Moriarty notes.
“Get to drop off point Epsilon Four. We’ll have someone take this thing off your hands, and a bonus for you.”
“A bonus?”
“You’re here to help quell a slum, you’ve gone above and beyond today. So you get paid above and beyond. Only fair.”
“Fair indeed.” Moriarty notes with a slight smile.
~First~ Last Next

Memory transcription subject: Zeel, Security Chief of the Red Sands District.
Date [Standardized human time]: June 3 2138
“This can’t be real right?” I hear from over my shoulder. “I mean, it’s got to be, what’s that phrase, click-bait?” I turn around to the young gojid intern watching the holo-screen over my shoulder. I flick my tail with a firm yes. “It has to be, other wise we need to start a murder investigation.” I blink, briefly reflecting that just a year ago I would have said predator attack without one thought that a fellow sapient could be responsible for a back alley stabbing. “B-but that blurred orange blob on the picture!” She replies, spins bristling. “Also fake.” I reassure my assistant. “Don’t worry Bavik. I watched their other videos. It’s just eye catching headlines and dumb kids looking for fame.” I sigh and turn back to the holo-screen watching the counter tick down. “I-I-I guess.” She replies, no less pointy than before. “I mean, a human actually e-e-ea… ingesting a sapient. That’s crazy right?” I can’t help but scoff, the only reason we had to waist our time on this nonsense ‘investigation’ was because of all the concerned phone calls demanding flame throwers and kicked down doors. Not that anyone even knew where on Skalga they actually where.
“What’s crazy is my pup refusing dinner because it smells funny. It did not!” It was Bavik’s turn to scoff. “And how would you know?” She asks, spines lowering as the mood relaxes. “Cheap! Shot!” I retort, holding back an amused bleat. “Look!” she blurts, pointing a claw at the screen.
[Live stream starting: 3… 2… 1…]

The view window opens on a blue painted wall. Scuffling sounds can be heard as the view wobbles and zooms out to reveal a plain wooden table with a metal dome covering a plate while a napkin, fork, knife and microphone sit off to the side.
“Are we rolling?” “Yeah we’re good. Connects a little slow with the anti-location finder but it’s going through.” “How many viewers?” “Uhhhh, three thousand, five hundred and counting.” “Really!??!! That’s great” “Some of these have got to be exterminators ‘Bonnie’ This isn’t a goo-“ “Oh hush, it’ll be fine. Come on! Sit!”
Coming into view from the left, a human of average height, red hair, and portly build wearing a simple beige hoodie, a baseball cap and aviator style sunglasses across his eyes took a seat behind the table. “Alright, introduce yourself!” The human sighs and gives his head a small shake. “Hi, people of the internet. My name is ‘Clyde’.”
He puts up his hands and makes air quotes while saying his name. Shortly after, a foggy grey furred venlil wearing a decoratively torn pink colored jean-jacket with her mop of head fur styled into a mohawk featuring yellow dyed tips while each ear had several clip-on earrings attached. “And I’m ‘Bonnie’!” she says excitedly, repeating the finger gesture while hopping into frame from the right and tossing an arm around the sitting human. “We’re exchange partners, best friends and partners in crime!” Her tail was swishing rapidly, signing happy, excited, good things and watch close in a blur that made things hard to read.
“Tell our viewers what we’re streaming today!” She bleats, jostling ‘Clyde’ who seemed to be trying not to show a toothy grin at his partners enthusiasm.
“Alright, alright. From the duo that brought you First Ever Venlil Skateboarding.” ‘Bonnie’ holds up her other arm, proudly showing off a wrist cast covered in signatures and doodles. “And Drunk Friend Mystery Tattoo” ‘Clyde’ rolls up his right sleeve, showing off what appeared to be either the side profile of a deformed horse or a very unfortunate dossur. ‘Clyde’ tugs down his sleeve and nervously taps his finger on the table. “What’s in store for our audience today ‘Bonnie’?” The venlil girl nearly bounces with glee and grabs the top of the silver metal dome. “Ven-Steak Dinner!” She yanks off the dome. A puff of hot steam clears away to reveal a slab of freshly seared meat with a sprig of parsley on top. “Ugh why is it purple!?” ‘Clyde’ blurts, jumping at the sight before him. “I don’t know, it cooked up that way. The stuff you eat turns brown.” ‘Bonnie’ says with a shrug while tucking a napkin into ‘Clyde’s’ collar.
“C’mon stick to the script.” She whispers taking a seat of her own. “So, ‘Clyde’, why are you eating genuine venlil meat today?” “Because you’re crazy?” ‘Bonnie’ giggles, swats him with her tail and continues, answering her own question.
“Because we are going to prove once and for all that humans are not ravenous beasts and can control their instincts around us poor meek venlil.” ‘Clyde’ rolls his eyes under the sunglasses.
“And that we don’t even have instincts like that. Really, it’s getting kinda racist.” He looks down at the cooked meal before him, lips curling slightly.
“Now, before anyone runs for the exterminator hotline, well those of you that haven’t fainted or run for cover yet, this is actually-“ “ME!!!” ‘Bonnie’ Jumps into her exchange partners lap, arms spreading to present herself. “Yes, you heard it right! That’s me on that plate. Believe it or not viewers, I borrowed a synthesizer from one of the labs that bought freedom for so many. Took my own cell culture and grew my friend here a lovely meal of grade A, free range, yours truly.” ‘Bonnie’ hops down, tail swishing excitedly and fur ruffled with glee. “So, since this is one hundred percent consensual, technically not illegal and ethically sourced, none of you FED loving traditionalists have any right to freak out!” She wags her finger at the camera, a human gesture she had picked up along with the late 2070’s neo-pop skater fashion sense.
“And much to my regret, I owe this, possibly one legit case of predator disease in the entire galaxy, a huge favor.” ‘Clyde’ chimes in while adjusting the napkin in his shirt, before pausing with a confused look on his half-hidden face. “…wait, I thought the tattoo made us ev-“ “Shh, it’s on.” She interrupts, gesturing at the camera with her tail. “All right good citizens of Skalga, you will now bear witness to history’s first documented expert taste test of ven-meat!” ‘Bonnie’ passes the fork to ‘Clyde’ and sits in her chair, practically vibrating with excitement and bearing a slight bloom across her face.
‘Clyde’ takes the utensils and starts to cut off a piece, his expression going worried and the sawing motion of the knife slowing to a stop half through the cut. “It looks like petrol in puddle.” He says with puzzlement. “What do you mean?” “The juice that’s coming out, it’s all shiny and metallic. What did you cook this in?”
“Nothing! Just the auto chef and some vegetable oil like you suggested, didn’t even salt it.” “Yenv- ‘Bonnie’ I don’t think I should eat this.”
“Oh come on, we went through all this effort! Don’t you wanna beat the products for predator channel? They did a fake heart and got over half a million subscribers, the real thing will bury that! Maybe even get us a sponsor!”
‘Clyde’ laughs and nods. “Alright alright.” He finishes cutting through the piece and brings it up to his mouth. The human pauses and sniffs at the shimmering purple seared, orange centered meat, wrinkles his nose and jerks back. “Well, uhm, it has a distinct grease trap aroma, with a hint of, ugh, paint thinner?.” “Is that… good?” She asks, having no context for smells “…No. ‘Bonnie’ I’m not sure this is safe.”
“Oh don’t be such a pup. It’s not like I’m serving you a flying machine.” She replies, playfully jostling her friend.
“That nutjob just wanted attention.” ‘Clyde’ replies defensively. “So do we! Go on, eat me!”
With a grimace, the human puts the piece in his mouth, chews once and immediately groans. “Well? Don’t leave us all in suspense. Are we really the most delicious thing in the galaxy? Are you ravenous for more? Perhaps something fresher? Am I *gasp* in danger?” She says, phoning in a fake fearfulness for the camera. ‘Clyde’, shivers, chews again, and forces himself to swallow. He coughs, pulls a water bottle from under the table to swish and spit into a garbage can beside him. “God, that is the foulest, gamiest thing I ever put in my mouth! UGH!!!” He pushes the plate away and wipes his tongue on the napkin. ‘Bonnie’ leans back in her chair, tail flicking curiosity and the bloom fading. “Really? But.. the arxur keep calling us delicacy.” She glances at the lab grown bit of herself still steaming on the plate. “Arxur don’t know [censored], meat shouldn’t be sour!” He exclaims, hacking a wad of foamy spit into the can again. “Jeeze, you need to lay off the junk food! It’s like you’re pickling yourself.” he scolds, more foamy spittle dribbling down his lips before he can spit again. ‘Bonnie’ whistles and purrs with amusement, offering the sprig of parsley. ‘Clyde’ flicks it away much to her delight. “Well, there you have it viewers, humans don’t even think we taste good. Guess we had nothing to fea-“
‘Clyde’ suddenly gags and claps a hand over his mouth hard. ‘Bonnie’ gasps, her joyful tail wagging coming to a halt as her humans expression turned pale and distraught. “I’m gunna…” ‘Clyde’ suddenly stands, tossing the chair he was sitting in as he bolted out of frame. “PHILLIP?!!” ‘Bonnie’ shouts as she too leaves the room. The camera view suddenly twisting and hurtling towards the floor where it blacks out.

Stream disconnected, standby…
[Memory transcript interrupted, warning, high stress and blood pressure levels detected. Resuming, time elapsed, two hours]
The window suddenly reconnects, showing ‘Clyde’ sitting at the table, cradling the garbage can in his lap, the plate and its contents gone from the room. His face was pasty, sweaty, his sunglasses askew and hat tossed next to the microphone.
“By the great protector!” ‘Bonnie’ bleats from off screen. ‘Clyde’ makes an “Uhh?” in response just before hiccupping and bringing his head over the can. ‘Bonnie’ comes into frame, tail signing reassurances to the camera. ‘Clyde’ relaxes and leans back again, looking rather unhappy. “Well, good news ALL TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND VIEWERS!!! ‘Clyde’ here is totally fine and making a steady recovery.” To which the human gave a shaky thumbs up. “Even better news!” ‘Bonnie’ whistles, tail signaling to fast to read. “Our predator friends CAN’T eat us!” She sidles over to her human and puts a reassuring arm across his slumped shoulders. ‘Clyde’ nods and sits up a little. “So apparently,” he begins after taking a breath, “The chemicals that venlil bodies use to metabolize air and exhale waste gas, the stuff that makes your blood orange like iron makes ours red, is moderately toxic to human biology.” Winded by the explanation, ‘Clyde’ slouches again and sips from the water bottle. “Yeppers! The [no translation available in English] reacts with human stomach acid like vinegar and baking soda, hence the foaming.” There is a brief pause, ‘Bonnie’ glancing at her human and giving a light tail tap to his leg. “Yes, it also causes nausea, vomiting, disorientation, indigestion and a lingering sour taste.” “And yet the arxur have no tummy trouble with any aliens. Why do you think that is ‘Clyde’?” ‘Bonnie’ prompts, her fur puffing excitedly again. “Uhh, if they are anything like monitors and alligators, then the Arxur must have poor taste buds and much tougher stomachs that can probably digest a truck tire. Human in cont ‘hic’ rast have been cooking for almost a million years. It’s far safer bacteria and parasite wise, more efficient for absorbing nutrients and *belch* excuse me.”
“Yes.” ‘Bonnie’ says, taking over the rehearsed lines “And as such they have at an evolutionary level, lost the ability to handle tougher foods like raw meat, bones, roots, bark and anything even slightly expired. So, even against us prey species with our multichambered stomachs and fermenting guts, our hominid friends have comparatively sensitive tummies.” She pats his belly, to which he briefly aims at the can again. ‘Bonnie’ twitches her ears in a concerned way before turning back to the camera.
“So, there you have it Skalgans! We had nothing to fear this whole time. All the running, hiding, mask mandates, exterminator rallies and stressing out was totally pointless. Because…” She drum rolls her paws on the table in dramatic fashion “We’re basically toxic!” “Or there’s something seriously wrong with this one.” ‘Clyde’ chimes in, smiling and giving a slight chuckle at her paw swat retort. “Hey, this means I can get drunk and tattoo you now, right?” “No it does not!” “Course I’ll have to shave you first.” “Ahh, that is not happening!” ‘Bonnie’ blurts, the bloom returning to her face. “Let’s have chat decide. How about it? Follow the link below and donate say… twenty thousand credits to the Thafki rehoming fund and you’ll get to see me ink a naughty word on ‘Bonnie’s’ shaved butt.” ‘Clyde says with a grin, his color starting to come back. Blooming brightly, the venlil growls and whacks the laughing humans arm with her cast and turns toward the camera. “Alright” She says, picking up a remote. “That’s it for the stream, next week we’ll continue our series of vintage Earth TV with… uhh…” “Jackass.” ‘Clyde’ prompts. “Right, we’re going to react to a twentieth century human comedy stunt variety show. It’s all public domain so you can watch live with us. No charge and none of those pesky U.N. restrictions!”
Bonnie and Clyde wave to the audience as the colorful venlil points the remote.
[Stream ended. Have a great paw, friends!]
I put down the holo-pad and rub my bloodshot eyes. What we just watched had my fur puffed, the phones ringing off the hook across several districts and my staff either clamoring to unlock the confiscated exterminator gear, fainted, frozen with dread or chatting rapidly over the outcome of the kids insane experiment. Amazingly, no stampedes where being reported, but the press was still going to have a field day.
After a shaky breath I spin the chair around to face my assistant.
We stare at each other. After a long minute, the bristling gojid quietly says. “Maybe I’m toxic too.” I blink slowly and reply “What’s stunt comedy?” Bavik flicks his ears in ignorance. “We could subscribe and find out?” Turning back to the holo pad, staring at the screen for a moment, I tap the button. Sending the counter up by one. Then throw a few credits at the donation fund. “Crazy kids.” I say with an amused tail flick.