When Tamara called for him, Ejder wasn't surprised. Her Mercy had every reason to be angry.
“Ejder, why? I gave you my soul shard so you could battle the evil and the merciless, and the God-Slaver is the only evil you've used it against. Every other time, it's been unreasonable use. Tournaments, sparring matches, simply causing chaos… Why?”
“I haven't used it against your wishes. You only said to show mercy while using it, and I've done that. I have not been merciless to anyone.”
The platinum dragon sighs. “You have that power to defend the realm, not to make yourself more powerful to win useless battles for the sake of entertainment.”
“So, what, are you taking it away? Crashing everything I've built to the ground? It's not much, but the Drakenwardens would become powerless.”
“No, I am not taking your soul shard. I am simply blocking your access untill a true evil actually requires it. Everything You've built with it, the Drakenwardens, the *Drakwing,* all of it will still work, you just cannot make anything new.”
Ejder looks down at the ground. “And how can I earn it back?”
“You can't. Not until you have your soul under control.”
Ejder speaks impatiently. “It is under control! I work in tandem with Ember!”
“Evidently, you seem to have gained her temper.”
He tries to collect himself, once again speaking calmly. “So what part do I not have under control?”
Instead of responding, Tamara taps Ejder’s chest with a claw, and what looks like a 3D venn diagram appears in front of him.
Tamara points to the two orbs, both orange. “These are you and Ember. The Sorcerer and the Dragon.”
She then points to the spot where the two orbs intersect. “This is the Fire, the portion of your souls that are fused. The part of your souls that would not exist if you two were not combined.”
She then reaches in and pulls the two orbs apart, revealing a small, golden, crystalline shard in between. “This is the Light, my soul shard, which suffuses power into the Fire to improve your combat abilities. Of course, you know all this.”
Tamara then points to another, smaller, black orb floating a short distance away. “This. This is what is not under control. Your soul has more pieces than you think. This here, is an untamed piece of your soul. Take a look and tell me what you see.”
Ejder looks closer, and the black orb seems to reform into a hooded, cloaked, shadowy figure with glowing red eyes. It looks up at him, without a sound.
“What is that?” Ejder asks.
The figure suddenly begins growing, becoming the same size as Ejder. “Well, I'm part of your soul, of course. I'm the version of you that takes those dreams and tries to make them real. I'm the one who spots sources of power for you. I'm the one who makes you feel guilty, wrath, desperation.”
“So, you control me without me knowing it?”
“I know, ain't it sad? But it's true.”
Tamara circles around Ejder and the shadowy figure. “You see, Ejder? You are not in as much control as you thought.”
“Why? What use is it to you?” Ejder asks the shadowy figure, ignoring Tamara.
“Well, I become more powerful, and you are the mask I wear while I do it. You're the one who gets blamed.”
“But, who are you really?”
“Well, that's just a silly question.” The hooded figure steps forwards. “I'm you, Sorcerer.”
Ejder steps back, a flash of fear penetrating his stoic expression. Tamara lets out a flash of light, causing the figure to disappear.
"Now, I still consider you one of my followers, Ejder. I will be on your side, but I cannot allow you to have the amount of power my soul shard grants."
Ejder stands still. "That... Thing... Is part of me?"
The dragon curls her tail around him, attempting to be comforting. "Only as much as you allow it to be. But please, understand, I'm taking the shard and telling you this for your safety."
"Ah, I see. There's your great, merciful benevolence shining through," Ejder says sarcastically.
The goddess lifts him up with her tail, holding him at eye level. "If I always showed you my benevolence, you would think nothing is ever wrong. Maybe when you start following my tenets a bit more closely, we can talk kindness and benevolence."
"Speaking of Benevolence, I should probably get back to Drakenhaven. I'm supposed to be doing high-altitude drop safety with the Drakenwardens."
"Why don't you stay in my domain for the night at least? Leave the responsibilities behind. Have some time alone to think."
"This feels eerily familiar."
The Shepherd watched from within, as the Sorcerer spoke with the Blinding Light. The Sorcerer didn't quite seem to understand the magnitude of what had just happened. The Sorcerer laid down in the presence of the Blinding Light, relaxing in the aura of light and life that radiated from her. And as his mind drifted off to sleep, the Shepherd began thinking, leading the Sorcerer's mind astray through his dreams.
The time would be soon.
/uw Really dialogue heavy post here. I doubt many will see it, let alone read it, and it's pretty garbage, but I'm waiting for some other things to finish up before I kick off my character arc, and I need to write something!

Hey everyone, been looking into making the switch from console to PC gaming. Complete newbie bar a couple YouTube videos of different kind of setups. Moving to Canada in a month or so have a nice bit of time to plan before assembly. All help and advice appreciated :)
>What will you be doing with this PC? Be as specific as possible, and include specific games or programs you will be using.
I will be using this PC for work and gaming. Working in video editing and just general boring wfh stuff.I only really play two games in Rocket League and Minecraft and don’t really see myself playing too many heavy hitting games.
>What is your maximum budget before rebates/shipping/taxes?
I would like the total cost of everything to be around $1500 CAD but could push to $2000 if it would be beneficial.
>When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Note: beyond a week or two from today means any build you receive will be out of date when you want to buy.
Over a month from now, probably around the middle of June.
>What, exactly, do you need included in the budget? (ToweOS/monitokeyboard/mouse/etc)
Everything bar the desk. Two monitors also with one being of higher quality for gaming. Not too fussed on the secondary.
>Which country (and state/province) will you be purchasing the parts in? If you're in US, do you have access to a microcenter location?
Canada. Will be purchasing everything online.
>Are there any specific features or items you want/need in the build? (ex: SSD, large amount of storage or a RAID setup, CUDA or OpenCL support, etc)
Nope.
>Do you have any specific case preferences (Size like ITX/microATX/mid-towefull-tower, styles, colors, window or not, LED lighting, etc), or a particular color theme preference for the components?
Something that would allow for easy maintenance and upgrading in the future if needed. Don’t really care for aesthetics either would rather a good performance than a nice looking setup.
>Do you need a copy of Windows included in the budget? If you do need one included, do you have a preference?
Yes. No real preference.
>Extra info or particulars: Thanks everyone :)))

I have been browsing several topics without actually getting a real answer.
I have my full setup now (can finally put and hang everything as intended):
* Mains: 2x Dali Oberon 7 * Center: 1x Dali Vokal * Surrounds: 2x Dali Oberon 3 * Overhead / atmos: 4x Dali Oberon 1 * Subwoofer: 2x SVS SB-1000 Pro
I am looking into the proper procedure and settings beforehand but it is becoming confusing and overwhelming.
I get that a lot is done the 'trial and error' style but getting some basics would really be helpful. Even more so if those basics could be given by someone with the same setup or similar setup.
For starters, regardless of the size of the main front speakers, I do understand why people are recomending to put them in the settings of the AV as "small" speakers. But would you suggest to stick to the 80hz as crossover or has anyone tried 60Hz?
Yes, I understand not to choose "LFE + mains" in the settings and to keep it only at "LFE" but does that mean I'll have to totally ignore the settings on the back of the subs? Here it is getting a bit confusing. I guess I have to set the Low Pass to LFE and not touch anything it for the rest because the AV does this instead?
How reliable is the trigger output on the Denon? I am reluctant to use the "Auto On" feature of the SVS subs as I have read this often does not work on lower volumes. If I understand it right I think the subs will just follow the state of the AV receiver when the 12V trigger output / input is being used (with Y splitter since I only have 1 output but 2 subwoofers) or is that wrong?
What about Audissey? I read that it automatically sets the front speakers as "large". Why would I have to change that back to small? And what about the settings on the SVS subs in terms of using Audissey?
There was a time I seemed to grasp these things more quickly but now I am worried to do things wrong. So any help / insight is appreciated

Description of the Canon

I'd cover the straight-to-video sequels too, but I'm lazy. Take this as an RT for every DP I fully cover & a resource list for those with sequels.

Snow White

• TBA

Cinderella

• TBA

Aurora / Briar Rose

• Resists Maleficent's telepathy.
• Yes, that's her only feat.

Ariel

• TBA

Belle

• TBA

Jasmine

• TBA

Pocahontas

• TBA

Fa Mulan

• TBA

Tiana

• TBA

Rapunzel

• TBA

Vanellope von Schweetz

• TBA

Anna

Here's her full RT. These are some standout feats.

• Her castle has gigantic doors inside it usually about this size & she casually opens & closes them several times.
• Bats a charging wolf & sends it flying. This breaks the guitar she used as a bat.
• Pulls down a big tree flattened by a massive amount of snow, holds it in place and then releases it when Marshmallow's head is in the way. This knocks Marshmallow out.
• Deflects her & Olaf's crash at blur speeds with 1 hand.
• With the help of a bouncy sofa, casually jumps about 30 feet in the air.
• As a child, doesn't even react to a crashing over a large staircase.
• While molecularly turning into crystals, walks in this blinding blizzard that was strong enough to break a ship out of ice & break a ship.
• While molecularly turning into crystals, outpaces & intercepts Hans' sword strike. (Respect Hans)
• Outruns a very fast cart that crashed hard enough to send Olaf flying dozens of feet into the air (Olaf was on it, not in front of it).
• As a child, balances while standing on the back seat of a bicycle with no one driving & even almost manages to keep her balance as it falls down a large staircase.

Elsa

• TBA

Moana Waialiki

• TBA

Raya

Here's her full RT. These are some standout feats.

• Touches the circle Benja's guarding in a 27-second spar. In this spar, she used kali sticks & he used a sheathed sword. She slightly kept up despite massive reach disadvantage.
• With his whip-sword, Benja can fight off multiple people at the same time from touching the circle Raya touched & with his hands, deflect a crossbow bolt. (He probably could've deflected the bolt somewhere other than his leg if he wasn't mentally overwhelmed.)
• Trades blows with Namaari in hand-to-hand. Namaari damaged her in the face & neck regions hard enough to send her flying multiple times to defeat her. Namaari also casually lifts her with one hand.
• Pushes Tuktuk back onto his feet after he was overturned. This damages the ground under him.
• Supports her & a big portion (like half or more) of Sisu's weight with her arms.
• While Tuktuk is rolling at full speed (comparable to Namaari's giant cats) & human-Sisu is holding onto her for dear life, she jumps off of Tuktuk over a structure & lands back onto Tuktuk without them falling off.
• Stole Fang's dragon scroll & travelled all around Kumandra.
• Her whip-sword can extend to absolutely bonkers lengths.
• It can be used to stab & pull down big rocks.

First Previous
Milek was sitting in a wide grassy field on her home world along with Emily, her two children and those two brutish animals called dogs. The King Charles Spaniel was content walking around, smelling various plants, rocks and anything else it could place its nose against. The gigantic one, the Irish Wolfhound, was curled up and fast asleep. The two children were using the Wolfhound as a pillow and were also taking a nap in the comfortably warm air.

Milek tilted a rocking basket in a gentle rhythm that held four white spun cocoons. Her children had just exited the larval phase of their development and would now spend the next few months developing in the safety of their silken homes.

It has been nearly a decade since the Humans came onto the galactic stage and Milek was becoming more accustomed to their strange animals. She snorted at the memory of first seeing Arthur and his King Charls Spaniel. She and Fessin were so terrified that the pair of them froze up.

Now, she was becoming accustomed to the smaller animal. The dog, compared to the various creatures that the Humans had a knack for demonstrating at the Intragalactic Pet and Garden Show, had become harmless in Milek’s eyes.

As for the Irish Wolfhound, Emily explained that the animal was nearing the end of its natural life and was considered elderly for the animal. The advances in longevity Humans had discovered for themselves hadn’t filtered down to their pets. Knowing how the Humans loved their animals, this wouldn’t be a deficiency for much longer.

The broader galactic community was also becoming accustomed to the strange new species that joined their ranks. After a boost in popularity when the Humans came to the scene, the IPGS had begun to decline back down to its usual attendance. The floating space station, once needed to accommodate the two million attendants that had arrived by the fifth year, now felt cavernous now that the attendance had dropped down to one million.

The upside was the regular crowds had become ardent followers, which moved the IPGS from an annual event to four times a year. Still, Milek knew it would only be a few more years before it returned to the normal half-million crowds. Even with the wild species that Humanity had to showcase, there was only so much that could be displayed before it became dull again.

Milek was fine with it. The crowds were becoming stifling and the Garden show was getting too big to sample everything without risking her stomach exploding. The novelty of Humanity also wore off here when they realized the Garden Show operated more like what they called a “Farmer’s Market” and ceased bringing dangerous plants. It didn’t make much sense to transport begonias and water lilies just for aliens to look at them.

“Carrot?” Emily asked as she handed a long orange root vegetable to Milek.

Milek gripped it and crunched it in her mouth. The bright orange root was a wonderful treat. “Thanks. What is he doing?”

Milek had gestured over to Arthur standing a ways off in the field. He was whistling and clicking at five fluffy grey and white dogs. Two of the animals had so much puffy hair that their eyes were obscured. Milek wondered how they could see.

Emily had referred to them as Old English Sheepdogs. They were bred to do something called herding. Milek had never heard it used as a verb before. She knew that Humans consumed meat, so it made sense that they would develop a way to maneuver large populations of herbivores around and needed a means to protect them from predators.

Milek shuddered at the thought that the unassuming woman with blond hair tied up in a bun was carnivorous. Had the Zilian people not developed intelligence, she could imagine the Humans driving her people around with dogs.

Emily had been polite and not brought along any meat on the picnic, much to the Human children’s dismay. Arthur was also not happy with the impromptu vegetarian day, which he tolerated with something he referred to as a “stiff upper lip”.

“I understand the concept of herding, but why are you using it on an egeru? They’re predatory animals,” Milek commented. She was surprised at how calm she was in the presence of one of her planet’s predatory species. The Zilians traveled in large herds and evolved to their large size to protect themselves from the animals.

Yet here was Arthur and his five Old English Sheepdogs driving four of the egerus around the grassland. The reason they were doing this was the year before, the Human family had come to visit Milek and decided to go on a safari. Which meant driving a vehicle through the wilds and looking at dangerous beasts.

Unfortunately, the egerus were also mildly endangered. The Humans had to get special permission from the Zilian authorities to evaluate the animals. They were going to evaluate how to create a breeding program to improve their numbers, something the Zilians recognized only Humans were crazy enough to do. No one else wanted to get near the dangerous animals.

At least dangerous to Milek. The prior year on their holiday, Emily squealed loudly and called the egerus cute. Arthur, having observed the small family dynamic of the predators, thought they could make a good candidate for selective breeding, which as another motivation for their trip. Milek’s head nearly burst when he heard the Human say that the Zilians could have their own version of dogs in a few generations. Her mate, Kaini, was concerned about associating with the Humans at all.

Kaini didn’t have any input on the matter and Milek squashed it. After making plans with Arthur and Emily, who also took the opportunity to train some working dogs for a client, they returned the following year.

Milek felt bad for the egerus. While their volume was about 20% greater than the Sheepdogs, the dogs had a substantial mass advantage. Earth’s high gravity necessitated evolving significantly sturdier physiques. After some initial aggressive posturing, the dogs quickly asserted their dominance. The egerus were unable to match either the physical strength or the coordinated intelligence of the dogs.

“How are things going over there?” Emily shouted at Arthur.

He had been running around for a solid hour at this point, something that astounded Milek. That was at the upper bound of how long a trained Zilian athlete could run. Arthur was only breathing moderately heavier than usual.

“Oh, I’m terribly out of shape. I’m thinking we need to make a few more days of the week vegetarian,” Arthur called back.

The Human kids jeered the concept of taking meat off the menu more frequently. Milek shook her head. Arthur was complaining about being unhealthy while already performing better than most of the runners in the galaxy.

“Not that. How are the dogs and the, what was it called again?” Emily asked Milek.

“Egerus,” Milek replied.

“Yes. Those. How do you evaluate them?” Emily called over to Arthur.

Arthur’s hand went up to the lower part of his head, the part under the mouth they called a chin. “Promising. The dogs are all showing excellent herding instincts. We shouldn’t let them get too used to this low gravity though.”

His eyes tracked the egerus, which were now huddled in submission between a circle of the panting dogs. The tongue flopping out through the sharp teeth was, as Milek learned, not a means of intimidation but of cooling down. Not that the egerus knew the difference.

“I think these creatures show promise as well,” Arthur commented when he peered at the predatory animals.

Milek’s mind thought to Fessin. She had met Fessin through Kaini’s work. Unfortunately for Fessin, he and Kaini were off on a job constructing a space station in Earth’s orbit to provide embassies for various galactic races. They couldn’t survive on the planet so a special arrangement had to be made.

It was unfortunate because Milek just observed another one of the Human’s strange behaviors, something she knew Fessin would have loved to witness. Arthur began to approach the egerus slowly, bent over with the back of his hand presented.

Fear rose up in Milek as she watched the Human creeping toward the predators. She wanted to collect her offsprings’ cocoons and retreat back to their vehicle for safety. Yet Emily, their two children and the two other dogs showed no signs of distress or concern. Because of this, she decided that Arthur must not be in any real danger. Not that it would quiet down Milek’s own instincts.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Milek asked Emily.

Emily shrugged. “As safe as anything else. Have to take chances to get a reward. Arthur has a way with animals, especially dogs that show aggression.”

If the creeping man in the outfit his Human compatriots consider “dorky” is able to face down an aggressive dog, then the egerus shouldn’t pose much of a risk at all.

The egerus huddled closer when Arthur approached. The largest, the family matriarch, let out a low growl to warn the Human away. He cooed at the sound and commented how cute it sounded.

The matriarch then suddenly lunged at Arthur. Milek froze in terror, thinking she had just witnessed the end of her friend.

Instead, Arthur responded with reflexes that made the egeru look like thick adhesive dripping down a wall. His powerful hands, surprisingly gentle, readjusted the lunge off to the side. The Human then pinned the egeru down and, to Milek’s shock, flipped it over on its back.

The egeru tried to thrash and escape Arthur’s grasp. The Human had pinned the animal to the ground in a firm yet surprisingly gentle grip. The predator struggled to throw off the man’s fleshy shackles. All the while, Arthur was using his other hand and gently stroking the egeru’s underside.

After a few minutes, under the terrified gaze of its mate and offspring, the egeru began to calm. Arthur was making a gentle hissing noise with his mouth, which Milek found oddly soothing. Soon, the predator animal ceased thrashing and went still, its breathing beginning to calm.

After the animal ceased fighting, Arthur released it and backed away. The egeru matriarch calmly flipped over to its legs and then backed away from Arthur, keeping an eye on him. While it still didn’t look friendly, the animal didn’t show aggression. It had enough faculties to recognize the Human wasn’t something to trifle with.

Emily smiled at the interaction. “Ah! That’s promising!”

“That? The egerus look terrified,” Milek said as she watched the shaking animals stare at Arthur, no longer showing any behavior she was used to seeing in the predatory animals.

“Of course. We can, at the very least, ensure a proper breeding program with that behavior,” Emily replied. “Had they immediately fled or attacked after Arthur’s show of dominance, we would have had to come up with a different plan.”

Milek processed the words as she watched the dogs, upon invitation from Arthur, approach the egerus. The dogs were smelling the huddled animals, something she had recognized as a sign of friendly curiosity. With the dogs no longer showing their herding behavior, the egerus, to Milek’s shock, started to calm.

“Does this mean they’re tamed?” Milek asked as she watched Arthur again close in and carefully inspect the egerus, running his hand over parts of their body.

Emily laughed musically. “Oh, no. Not in the slightest. I wouldn’t suggest you go over there. At this stage, they show all the signs of recognizing Arthur and the dogs as something they can’t fight. Taming is harder and, even then, we still wouldn’t want Zilians anywhere near one. That would be after we domesticate them, which is a rather lengthy process.”

“So, what now?” Milek asked, starting up the rocking of her cocoons that she realized had stopped during the fascination with Arthur’s actions.

“We are going to request some land and set up a breeding facility. Then we’ll go out and find more egerus with similar temperament. We need to isolate and amplify the temperament genes needed for domestication without causing significant inbreeding. We lost a few breeds, like the German Shepherd and the French Bulldog, to poor genetic management,” Emily explained, a slight sadness in her voice when mentioning the last two dog breeds.

“Do you know how long it will take?” Milek asked as she observed Arthur applying a local anesthetic to the egerus’ ears before clipping a tracking device to it. They had the system set up to track candidate animals should they be located for capture after the facility was completed.

Emily crossed her arms and looked to the sky. “Oh, hard to tell really. It depends on how fast we can isolate the gene. There’s no guarantee domestication will even work. Still, the upside is we can at least produce a healthy population of egerus that will pose lower risk to the Zilians when we’re finished.”

Arthur, finished with tagging the egerus, let out a shrill whistle. The five Sheepdogs obediently converged on him as he walked away from the egeru family. After a distance, the egerus realized they were freed from their ordeal and slinked away in silence.

“We had a few victories today. We have a beginning of a good candidate for egeru breeding and, even better, these five are coming along nicely. I’ll get them trained up on some sheep and our client will have some excellent working dogs,” Arthur said with a clap of his hands, the sharp sound dissipating in the grassland.

Emily stood and stretched her back. “Unless you have any objections, Milek, I think we’ll call it a day.”

“None at all,” Milek replied as she pressed a few buttons on her cocoons’ basket. When the anti-gravity unit was activated, she prepared to move her offspring back to the vehicle to bring home. “It was an interesting day.”

“Quite,” Arthur replied. “It’s a shame Fessin wasn’t able to come. He would have loved to see this.”

Milek was sure he would have. He would have also requested Arthur to visit his planet to see if there were any predators that he could test as well.

As the Human children and the other two dogs made their way to the vehicle, Milek took one last turn and looked over the grassland at the forms of the retreating egerus. It was hard to believe that there was a chance that, some day in the future, those animals could be domesticated. That her children or grandchildren could lounge against a tamed egeru, safe in the knowledge their pet would keep them safe.

Milek also imagined the Humans going around the galaxy taming and domesticating even more of these animals. Interest in the IPGS may be waning now, yet Milek suspected there would be a new resurgence of attendees when the other species began showing off their newly domesticated home world predators.

The Human impact on her favorite pass-time was not yet over.
Author's Note: Thanks everyone for reading. When I initially came up with this silly short story exercise, I wasn't sure it was worth posting for the world to see, let alone getting the reaction it received, especially from an unknown writer. I honestly wasn't even thinking of writing more than the first one. I appreciate the time everyone has taken to read the story and the comments made. It really helped with my confidence to see people enjoy what I've written. It also is what sparked me to write up Part 2 and the Finale.
After finishing up the final part of my other little story experiment, I'll need to get back to finishing up a full-length novel I had started for publication. After that? I have another, full book length idea that I think will resonate well here. I'll probably start that later in the year.
See you all soon. I hope I bring you smiles in equal measure as you have brought me.

Chapter 1 People are so…. Social. I grew up in a small town in Arizona and I’ve always loved the peace and quiet. But as I aged, graduating high school and spending a restless summer trying to divine what a broke carpenters son could do with his life (and probably drinking and smoking too much.) the small town gossip really started to wear on me. I’ve never been a social butterfly, preferring to mind my own business and let others mind theirs. But in a small town that’s a luxury you can’t afford. Everyone there has watched you mature from a scrawny kid with a stutter to a quiet but confident young man and, as such, feel that they have some obligation to be sure that your life is going to go in the right direction. There’s only so many questions a 19 year old can take about a lack of college and girlfriends. Only so many conversations following the familiar lines of “well you know, college is there to prove to employers you can show up at the same time and place for 4 years.” Or “don’t rush it, I found my wife when I finally gave up on looking!” Or, most aggravating “God works in mysterious ways!” (No shit Barbara, he’s an unknowable, omnipotent entity and you sell Sephora.(Don’t you have a bland youth group sermon to give?) I guess this is my way of explaining why I left my hometown so hastily the beautiful autumn after graduation. My folks were pleased to see I was going to “find myself.” As my mother so romantically put it. They hoped I’d find some kind of inspiration out on life’s grand highway. My dad chuckled, his eyes full of memories from the days he was young and free, a youthful joy that even 25 years in construction couldn’t dampen. “Go sow your wild oats son! Just remember you’ll reap them in the end.” He said, a mischievousness that was rare for him lightening the words. That is how I came to be here, in Golden Meadow, Louisiana. “Arizona plates? Well ain’t you a long way from home?” The deep southern drawl, by now familiar to me after a week of driving through Louisiana, cut through a perfectly quiet morning. Great. A socialite. Why did I have to choose the south for this roadtrip? I forced a polite smile and turned to face dreaded small talk as I began pumping my gas. “That’s right!” As I spoke I sized up my new best friend. A short, profusely sweating man stood before me. He must have been about 5’ 5”, well below my respectable height of 6’. His hair, greasy but trimmed nicely, his sheriffs hat…. Fuck. This is a cop. “Sheriff E. Gore, pleased to meet you!” He drawled again, his accent, I noted, more Texas than Cajun. He extended a sweaty hand, which I took as a good sign. (The law usually isn’t so friendly to suspicious people.) I shook his hand, surprised by the strength that this somewhat rotund sheriff had, his grip strong but measured. I returned his introduction. “David Lawrence.” “What brings you down to our little town son?” I took a deliberate look around before I answered, my gaze sweeping over the small gas station, the almost empty street, the abandoned buildings, a liquor store and a dilapidated dollar general. “Just passing through.” It probably wouldn’t take long, I thought to myself. I could see most of town from where I was. My gaze returned to Sheriff Gore, and I realized he was staring at me hard, gauging me for something. “I’m on a bit of a roadtrip.” I added, trying to remove his focus from my arms. “Well built aren’t ya?” The Sheriff said. Jesus, what a way to start a conversation with a stranger. I forced through the awkwardness. “Yessir.” Forced grin, wishing my gas would pump faster. “I try to stay active.” The Sheriff’s attentive gaze and fixed smile never strayed from me. “How nice! You know, you should stick around town awhile, we’ve got lots to offer!” I decided to myself that I didn’t like the Sheriff, my earlier thought that he likely wasn’t suspicious since he was so friendly now giving way to the feeling that he was too friendly. I gritted my teeth. “I really would, but I’m trying to make it to New Orleans.” I said, maintaining my politely measured tone. I had no interest in staying in this town. “That’s such a shame.” The Sheriff said, his voice betraying disappointment. “It’s a lovely town, it really is.” I was saved from my own awkward response to his too-friendly, begging statement by his radio crackling loudly from his cruiser, parked outside the gas station convenience store. The words, unintelligible to me, evidently made sense to Gore, as he swung around and strolled back to his cruiser. He was oddly quick for a guy of his stature. “Well, good luck on the road Lawrence.” He shouted over his shoulder as he left. “Be careful on the roads and come visit us again real soon!” I shook off the bile-like aftertaste of Gore’s stare and went back to doing what I do best. Minding my own damn business. I wouldn’t be in town long. What I’d told the Sheriff was true. I was headed to New Orleans. My red ‘69 mustang and I were scheduled to enjoy a beautiful city, far from the normal tourist season, here in early October. The food, the music, the bars, all promised to be excellent and uncrowded, allowing a drifting 19 year old a place to breathe and make decisions. Maybe I’d find some work and stay awhile. Or I’d stay a week and then continue “Dave’s Grand Tour” as I’d taken to calling my trip. The idea of Dave’s Grand Tour was simple; find a place that speaks to me. I had no interest in college, as I’d found during high school that an enterprising young man could make a good bit of money just by taking opportunities when they come. I’d worked at a county fair, for the railroad and for local farmers and ranchers and I had found that there were lots of ways to make money. And I didn’t want to tie myself to a career. After all, my dad had built a pretty great life doing carpentry, something that didn’t take much time to learn. (Of course I’d already learned, from helping him.) I contemplated these things as I pulled out of the filling station and back onto the road. Not much farther to New Orleans. As I drove through town, past a small town mechanic, a diner and a tidy row of houses, I almost felt bad for leaving. This town was clearly dying. Empty buildings, boarded windows and beat up cars told the story of a town in decline. The coastal fishing village was picturesque though, and its people were friendly and polite. With the exception of Sheriff E. Gore. What the hell was that guys prob.. I was tore from my thoughts as the unmistakable sound of a popped tire hissed above the growl of my car. “Shit.” I muttered, pulling over to assess the damage. The damage, as it turned out, was extensive and likely expensive. The ‘stang was equipped with beautiful whitewall tires, painstakingly sourced by my grandfather during the restoration I had helped him with during his final years. Cancer is a bitch, especially when you’re 72. He had handled it well though, and had the car (as well as some of his savings) to me when he passed. Grandma had gone ahead of him some years before. I reiterate, cancer is a bitch. And now my beautiful car was down two tires, both passenger side whitewalls punctured by a myriad of screws and nails. I stared in disbelief. Wandering back down the road I found their source, an overturned coffee tin which was clearly some tradesman’s “spare shit” bin. Shaking my head and muttering expletives I strolled back to my car. Of course I had a spare in the trunk, and all the tools to change a tire, but who carts a second spare tire around? Still muttering words I could never let my mother hear, I searched on my phone for the number to the mechanic I had passed, finding an oddly polished website. JP’s machine and tire shop had someone tech savvy on the payroll. And they were punctual. Less than 15 minutes later I was standing on the concrete shop floor, watching JP himself remove my tires. “Lord, you’ve had some bad luck!” He boomed. I’d decided I liked JP. He was a big man, with a tanned face and forearms, betraying many days spent on the sun-soaked waters of the bay. “How in gods name did you manage to get this many holes in such nice tires?” I laughed. “I’m Gods strongest soldier I guess.” JP roared out a laugh. Laughter came easy to him it seemed. “There’s good news and bad news.” He said, awhile later. I’d quietly sat in a comfy chair in the shops waiting area, reading, while he focused on his work. “What’s the bad news?” I asked. “You’ve got to wait two days for new tires.” JP replied. I’d figured as much. What kind of small town auto shop would have whitewalls for a 1969 mustang just lying around. “Good news is, I got you a helluva deal on them. Buddy of mine runs a classics restoration shop in Orleans. He’ll send a truck to deliver your tires, but he’s short handed, thus the wait.” This was excellent (and intriguing) news. I’d expected the wait to be much longer, and the cost to be higher. As JP broke down my bill, explaining the pricing, I couldn’t help but feel pretty lucky, all things considered. I paid JP (thank you Grandpa) and wandered out into the Golden Meadow sunshine, my backpack slung over my shoulder.
Chapter 2 It was a damn fine evening on the bayou. I was paddling along between small islands overgrown with thick river reeds, in a kayak I’d rented from a local fishing guide named Sam. I’d spent the afternoon fishing from the kayak, with a breakdown rod I kept in my backpack. Now, as the sun was sinking low, turning the water orange and pink in the dying light, I paddled gently back to town. As I made it to the dock where Sam had told me to leave the kayak (very trusting fellow, Sam was) I heard faint music. It grew louder as I came closer to the dock. A myriad of fishing vessels, speedboats and jet skis obscured it as I drew close. But as I tied the kayak in place at Sam’s dock, I made out the lyrics. I recognized the song. Brown Haired Blue Eyed Baby, by JD Clayton. Excellent song. That was when I saw her. Standing on a tall fishing boat at the next dock over. She. Was. Breathtaking. With dark brown hair and a deep tan, she looked to be about my age. She was coiling a rope, faced away from me, singing along to the music. I suddenly realized I was staring, not saying anything, and she had no idea I was there. Realizing that this could be a bad look for me, I cast my eyes downward and dropped my backpack onto the dock, letting it fall heavily. I glanced up as she swung around, pretending I hadn’t seen her until now. “Oh, hey!” I said, a bit too loudly. After a pause she returned the greeting somewhat cautiously. “Hey.” Words failed me. She had turned to face me now and I saw her eyes for the first time. They were a vivid blue, that reflected the light from the water, even as the sun sank. I had a sudden burst of confidence, thinking to myself that worst case scenario, e.g. rejection, I could always just leave in two days and never see her again. “Hey, listen, this might be a little too bold, but you are incredibly pretty.” I said, the words rushing from my mouth. She seemed shocked, and for a second I thought she was disgusted. Then her cheeks flushed and I realized she was blushing. I pushed on. “Sorry, sorry, that was probably a little too much, I’m so..” she cut me off with a laugh. Damn, even her laugh was cute. “It’s okay!” She exclaimed, breathlessly. “you just surprised me, that’s all.” I smiled broadly. She returned the smile. “I’m Dave.” I said, somewhat sheepishly. Extending a hand upwards to her perch on the boat. Still smiling she took it and said “I’m Emmy Lou.” Emmy Lou and I ended up talking for almost an hour as the sun disappeared and the moon shone brightly upon us. She told me about her life, growing up a local in this small town, working on one of Sam’s guide boats. I told her about Arizona, the summer I spent restoring my mustang (I mostly just wanted her to know I had a cool car), and all about Dave’s Grand Tour. She was sweet, a good listener, but she seemed tough, a girl who knew how to handle herself, even at 18. She was still living with her parents, saving up to move out. “Where will you go?” I asked her. “When you move out I mean.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Haven’t really thought that far ahead. Maybe to Texas? I’ve always wanted to be a cowgirl.” I grinned. “You’d certainly make a good one.” I replied. “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” She exclaimed in a joking manner. Her and I had fallen into a rhythm of teasing and joking very easily. I laughed as I replied in protest, “No, no, I didn’t mean it like that! You just seem to be naturally good at most things you try.” She blushed again. It was almost a familiar sight to me now. She broke eye contact. She generally had to be the first one to do so, since I seemed to be frozen every time I looked in her eyes. “Listen.” She said, standing up. “This has been a lot of fun, but I’ve gotta get home. My folks will be worried.” I stood as well. “Oh, alright.” I couldn’t hide my disappointment. “Hey, I’ll be around town tomorrow, since my tires won’t be in. Maybe I could see you around?” She looked down at her toes and said quietly “I’d like that.” We wished each other good night and went our separate ways, her to her parents place and me to a quiet motel room near the mechanic, a 20 minute walk away. I was almost to the motel when the light flashed across me. It was a flashlight beam, coming from the sidewalk in front of me. I froze. “Well hey there son!” Came a long southern drawl. “Decided to stay in town after all?” For some reason, the Sheriffs voice made my skin crawl. What made it worse was him shining the light in my face. It made it impossible to see him. I squinted hard. “Hey Sheriff. Yeah I’m in town for a couple days more.” Before I could continue (ask him to stop blinding me) he jumped in. “Now what’s held you up young fella. Car trouble?” He said. I paused. There was something about the way he asked the question that I didn’t like. Like he already knew the answer. “Yeah, how did you..” “Oh damn me!” He interrupted, not acknowledging my question at all. “I forgot!” He finally stopped shining the light in my eyes. (Hallelujah.) As my eyes readjusted to the dimly lit sidewalk, the flashlight now pointing down, the sheriff said “This here’s Mr. Wellers.” A deep new voice, clearly articulated “Hello Mr. Lawrence, the Sheriffs told me a lot about you.” I raised my eyes to meet this newcomers and was startled. In stark contrast to the Sheriff, Mr. Wellers was tall, well built and spoke with no accent. He had brown eyes, perfectly trimmed and combed blonde hair and was wearing… a lab coat? I blinked, my brain trying to process. All I could think to say was “Mister? Not….. doctor?” I thought it might be an offensive question at first, as the Sheriff looked at me reproachably and Mr. Wellers cast his eyes downward as if embarrassed. “I uhhhhh… used to be. My license was revoked.” Wow. There’s a rabbit hole I don’t need to go down within seconds of meeting this man. “Oh I’m so sorry” I said lamely. “That sucks.” “You’re damn right it does.” Growled out Gore. He seemed more offended over my apparent faux pa than his friend. “He was my personal doctor for many years. He’s a damned fine doctor too!” “E.” Mr. Wellers said quietly. “It’s alright.” This interaction had passed into the realm of the surreal. I had no idea why these two were out alone together after dark, and frankly I didn’t want to know. (Once again, minding my own business.) “Right… well it was good to see you, and nice meet you Dr. I mean… Mr. Wellers.” I cringed at my own words. God, just let me out of this conversation. “And a pleasure meeting you as well young man!” Said Mr. Wellers. I felt bad. He seemed like such a normal, reasonable guy when compared to Gore. “By the way.” His deep voice rang out again as I moved down the street. “What’s your blood type?” My brain malfunctioned. “My… uhm… what?” I struggled for words. “Blood type!” He exclaimed. Seeing the confusion in my eyes he elaborated. “We’re having a blood drive tomorrow.” (Oh hallelujah lord, thank god this guy doesn’t want to steal my blood.) “we could really use all we can get, you know. Being in a remote place like Golden Meadows it’s important we have a little extra on hand.” His tone put me at rest once more. “I’m O negative.” I said. “Universal donor. If I’ve got time tomorrow I’ll stop by.” I said it mostly to placate him and get out of the conversation faster. But his tone as he thanked me profusely, as well as the obvious gratitude in his doe brown eyes made me actually want to go help. I resolved myself to actually stop by and donate tomorrow. Might as well right? Not like I’ve got anything else to do. I finally made it to my hotel room and by the time I was cleaned up and in bed I had almost forgotten about the awkward demeanor of the pair. Although the Sheriff still made me hellishly uncomfortable. He had a way of staring at you like you were a snack he was about to eat. I shuddered, decided not to think about that anymore and rolled over, thinking of Emmy Lou and the possibilities of tomorrow.
Chapter 3 I was having some difficulty finding Emmy. I’d been down to the dock, had breakfast at the cafe, wandered the town and even hung out in the bait and tackle shop Sam run in conjunction with his guide business. No sign of her. I was checking out an enormous tarpon mounted above some fly rods when Sam’s voice floated over to me. “She’s out on the boat.” I heard the mirth in his voice and turned to face him. He was behind the counter, tying a huge streamer, round glasses perched precariously on the end of his long nose. He was an older man, maybe 50, with a bald head, strong hands and several old school tattoos, harkening back to his days in the navy. He looked over his glasses at me, his heavy eyebrows raised and a cheeky smile on his face. “She didn’t stop talking about you until they left.” He said. “Oh.” I blushed heavily. Looking back it must have been pretty obvious that I wasn’t there for hooks or spinning lures. “When will she be back?” I said, deciding not to hide my true motives. “Sunset.” He said. “Maybe sooner if they catch a big bait of red drum.” I nodded. “Thank you.” I said, and I meant it. I had been going crazy, cursing myself for not getting her number at least. But now my hope was restored. She’d be back. And then I could see her again. I headed towards the door. “Hey kid.” Sam called. I turned back to him. He had his glasses in his hand now, and he was looking at me with his full attention. “Yes sir?” “Don’t hurt her. She’s an angel and we’re all pretty protective of her.” I nodded. Sam was surely referring to his crew of fishermen and guides, a tough group of seamen, some of whom I’d met yesterday while they were gearing up for the afternoon. I definitely didn’t want to get on their bad side. Now it was Sam’s turn to nod. “Good.” Was all he said as he turned back to his work. I wandered back down the boardwalk into town, wondering how I would kill the long hours until sunset, when I saw the Sheriffs squad car. It was parked outside the small town hospital, and suddenly I remembered our awkward conversation last night. The blood drive! There’s a good way to kill an afternoon in the quietest town on the planet. I strolled across to the hospital, and walked through the sliding doors (the only set in town.) “Mr. Lawrence!” Mr. Wellers greeted me enthusiastically. “Glad to see you my boy!” People in this town sure get familiar fast. “Hey Mr. Wellers, where do I go for the blood drive?” The once-doctor directed me to his exam room. “I’ll just need to give you a checkup, make sure you’re in good shape to donate.” It seemed odd that he had an exam room, since he had no medical license. Come to think of it, I’ve never heard of getting a checkup before blood donation, but I shrugged it off as another oddity of Golden Meadows. Weird Sheriff, too-friendly strangers and the most beautiful girl (I believed.) in the south. This town was a trip. Mr. Wellers was talkative as he took my blood pressure, temperature, stared down my throat and peered into my eyes and ears, writing notes on his clipboard as he spoke. “You’re in damn fine health young man.” I knew I was. Years of physical activity and decent genetics (thanks dad.) kept me strong and healthy. I rarely got sick, played football through high school and never seemed bothered by sweltering Arizona heat, something that had benefited me greatly in the humid southern states. Mr. Wellers asked questions about all of these things. He seemed genuinely interested and I got the feeling he was asking more for his own curiosity than any official reason. “Well son,” he was saying now. “You’re the picture of health.” “Thanks.” I replied. “So where do I go to donate.” “Actually,” he said, a bit too quickly. “We’ve had a lot of donations today, far more than expected.” “Oh, so you don’t want me to donate?” I was confused. He’d made it seem like they seriously needed more donations. I brushed it off. Over-selling a problem did make sense. Sometimes it was the only way to get things done in a small town. “No no, we’d still love for you to donate!” He said, once again speaking quickly. “Just give me some time to make my preparations! He smiled, kindly. “Alright… “ I said, at a loss. This seemed so weird, I was beginning to get a bad feeling. Were Mr. Wellers motivations entirely… pure? He seemed to be trying to achieve something with his interactions with me, although I wasn’t sure what. “Well, I guess I’ll stop by later then.” I said, my voice laden with confusion. Mr. Wellers pretended not to notice, uttering vague complacencies as he sent me on my way. I stepped back out of the hospital, vaguely wondering why I hadn’t seen a single living soul inside besides Mr. Wellers. The reception desk had been empty since I came in, the intercom was quiet and I saw no nurses, doctors or patients. I’m starting to really hate the emptiness of this town. I wonder if my tires had come in…
Chapter 4 After a snack from the convenience store and a stop by JP’s to see my car I was wandering town again, aimlessly. The sheriff had driven past twice, smiling at me through his squad car window unblinkingly. I wondered what had happened to him in his life for his social behavior to be so odd. Maybe he had a bad childhood or was raised by an alligator or something. That would explain the toothy smiles and the never-blinking at least. It was about 2 o’clock. JP had assured me my tires would be in tomorrow, which suited me okay. I was almost hesitant to leave, since Emmy Lou was still in town and good lord knows I had an interest in her. Goodness she was fine. I was walking down the street, not really paying attention to anything going on, listening to in thoughts of Emmy. Her hair, her eyes, her walk, she walked… right behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey Dave!” I spun around, my mind returning guiltily from the gutter. “Emmy! Sam said you wouldn’t be off the boat until sundown!” “We limited out. What can I say, I’m just that good.” she spread her arms in a kind of proud shrug, a sarcastic-cocky smile on her face. I smiled too. She had that effect on me. “Hey, I realized I never got your number!” She looked surprised. “You want it?” Now I was surprised. “I… yeah, I really do. I mean, I think you’re great and I don’t want to lose contact when I…” the air around us suddenly felt heavier. I was suddenly nervous. Had I misjudged her interest? Did she see me as some passerby, a very temporary friend? A smile cautiously returned to her face. “You can have my number.” She said. “But if you move back to Arizona forever I’m not going to text you back.” Thank god. I thought I’d totally dropped the bag. “Deal.” I said, smiling once more. Emmy and I spent the afternoon talking as we saw the meager sights in town. We had an ice cream at the cafe, (rocky road for me, strawberry for her.) stopped by the mechanic (I really wanted to show off the car.) and then wandered out to the towns hiking path. Half a mile down the coast, down a dirt road, it was a great spot to be alone. I was promising Emmy a proper date once my car was running and she was laughing at me. “Sonic is not a real date.” She said through giggles. “Sonic is the perfect date. It’s like going to a restaurant but you don’t have to see any people.” I replied, playing up my anti-socialism to seem quirky, and praying it was working. As we reached the trailhead I heard the now familiar sound of the Sheriffs car on the road behind us. He wasn’t smiling this time. He watched us as we silently walked onto the trail. “Jesus, this dude is everywhere.” I muttered, as the trees began to obscure him from view. Emmys brow furrowed. (God she looked cute when she did that.) “What do you mean? He just sits at the cafe usually.” She said. “Wait, what?” Now my brow furrowed. “I’ve seen him all over town today. It’s like he’s following me.” “Maybe he thinks you’re trouble.” She teased. I shook my head. “Maybe. He’s been weirdly polite to me ever since we met.” Emmy shrugged. “Southern charm I guess. He’s a weird guy.” “Yeah he is. It feels like he’s” I made my voice as provocative as I could. “Checking me out.” I mocked a sexy stance. Emmy thought I was hilarious. She laughed and slapped my chest gently, her hand resting against me. Suddenly the air was heavy again. Her cheeks turned red but her hand stayed on my chest. My hands rested comfortably on her hips. This is as close as we’d been. Our eyes locked, her bright blue meeting my gentle brown. We stood there for a long time.
Chapter 5 The best part of road-tripping? Besides actually tripping, as I’d done in White Sands, New Mexico and a secluded beach in Texas. Sleeping in. My hotel room was perfect. I’d spent a lot of nights on Dave’s Grand Tour camping under the stars and it was amazing. But it wasn’t better than sleeping until noon on a thick mattress with the A/C blasting. I couldn’t have asked for a better night’s rest to end my trip in Golden Meadows. As I walked down to JP’s shop I reflected on the small towns impact on me. I was happy. JP was sitting in a rocking chair with his shop doors wide open. My car was next to him, four whitewall tires underneath. “Wondered when you’d be by.” Boomed JP. “Truck came this morning, she’s all ready for you.” His broad grin rippled across his face as he watched me inspect his work approvingly. “Thanks JP, this is amazing.” He nodded graciously as I tossed my backpack in the trunk. “Hey JP?” He noted my tone become more business-like and focused his eyes on me seriously. “Yessir?” He asked, his curiosity apparent. “That friend, the one with the restoration shop. Is he hiring?” JP’s eyebrows shot skyward. “Well son, I believe he is. You looking for work?” I nodded. “I’m thinking about settling down somewhere in the area, staying for a while.” JP grinned broadly again, his eyes betraying a secret. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with little miss Emmy Lou would it?” I blushed heavily. JP had watched Emmy and I as I showed her my car, explaining all the places I’d repaired and restored. He’d been grinning then too. “Well” JP’s voice returned to business and his eyebrows returned to their resting place. “Based on what I’ve seen of your work.” He gestured to the mustang. “I’d be willing to put in a good word with him.” “Thanks JP. I really do appreciate it.” And I did. The point of Dave’s Grand Tour was to find a place I could call home. And it was beginning to seem that I’d found it. I was on the road now, headed to New Orleans. JP had set up an interview for me with his friend and I was hopeful that it would work out. I’d been on the road about an hour, listening to music and texting Emmy, (don’t text and drive kids.) when I got the call. A blocked number. I didn’t answer the first three. But I finally decided it wasn’t scammers or something when the fourth call came, seconds after I’d sent the third to voicemail. “Hello?” I said. “Hello there Lawrence.” Came the Sheriffs voice, low and dripping with anger. “I have someone here who wants to talk to you.” “What the… what’s this all” I was cut off by Emmy’s voice. “Dave? Dave?!” There was panic in her tone and she sounded like she’d been crying. The brakes on the mustang squealed as my muscles responded on their own. I had turned around and was flying back to Golden Meadows as fast as the thought crossed my mind. “What is this?” I yelled. “Emmy what’s happening?!” Gores voice came crackling through the phone. “Meet me at Mr. Wellers office. Sundown.” And the line clicked off before I could answer. What was happening? “Oh god, oh god.” I said shakily as I pushed the mustang to new speeds. What was happening? What did the Sheriff want? Why did he have Emmy Lou?!
Chapter 6 GRAPHIC CONTENT. GRAPHIC CONTENT. DO NOT READ IF SQUEAMISH. I WARNED YOU. That was the longest drive of my life. I’d driven from Arizona to Louisiana, crossed Texas end to end in that car, but this drive was the worst. I was panicking. My tires slid easily as I gunned the engine, turning into the hospital parking lot. I stopped right in front of the doors and left the engine running as I sprinted headlong through them, barely giving them time to open. “GORE!” I yelled as I stepped into the lobby. “GORE WHAT DO YOU WANT?!” The lights were off, the air desperately still as I spun, looking every direction. Gore showed himself. He looked smug, his service pistol pressed against Emmys temple, her arm locked in his vice-like left hand. “There you are boy.” His thick accent dripped venom. “I didn’t find the perfect specimen just to let it slip away.” My mind reeled. Specimen? What was happening? And why did he have Emmy? What WAS this? Before I could collect my thoughts he spoke again, Emmy shaking in his grip, wordless, staring at me helplessly. “There’s a rag on the counter. Put it over your mouth and breathe in.” “What?” Why are you doing this?!” I said, the air in my lungs seemingly not enough to yell. “DO IT.” The Sheriff screamed, his face turning red. “DO IT OR I WILL SHOOT HER, SHOOT YOU AND HAUL YOUR LIFELESS BODY TO THE O.R.” His voice shook with rage, every syllable seeming to enrage him further. “Okay! Okay, I’ll do it.” I walked to the counter, my hands up, palms forward. I took the rag, placed it over my mouth and nose and breathed deeply. “Wake up Lawrence!” Came a singsong voice, breaking through my sleeping mind. “Waaaake upppp.” My eyelids were heavy. So heavy. I forced them up. Blue eyes stared down at me. Was that… Mr. Wellers? I tried to sit up, tried to speak, tried to move. I couldn’t. Mr. Wellers looked overjoyed. “Ahh the serum worked! Total paralysis, with a fully functioning mind!” His eyes. What was wrong with his eyes? Were they always… “I bet you’re wondering what’s happening to you.” Mr. Wellers said, his tone jovial. “You see Dave, I didn’t lie, we do desperately need donations. Just not blood.” He was holding… my eyes struggled to focus on the shining silver tool. A scalpel? “No no, we need far more precious donations.” A searing pain shot across my chest. Was he cutting into me?! He was staring at my chest as his hands worked, out of my view. The pain was unbearable. I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t even tense my body against the pain. Instead, my mind screamed, the searing feeling of a cold blade tracing below my ribs blocking all thought. “You know, I started the practice of organ transplants.” I heard Wellers speak as if underwater. “That was long before even your parents were born.” The cutting subsided, leaving a sharp ache that made me pray I’d black out. “I’ve been replacing parts as they get wore out ever since. A kidney here, a hand there. Much like you do with that car of yours.” His eyes met mine. Why were they… “of course, I need constant donations for this lifestyle.” He was speaking so calmly. “And you’ve got some shiny parts in here.” My stomach. What was he doing? “Like this lovely one here!” I felt a tugging sensation in my gut and Wellers voice faded away. Those eyes. My last thought made me wish I was dead. Those eyes. They weren’t his. They were Emmy’s. I don’t know how long it was before I awoke. But when I did I could move. I was in a stupor. All I saw were blurs. My body seemed to move on its own accord. I heard crying. I smelt something. Sweat. My mind was not working, but on some deep level my consciousness took hold. Sweaty pig. The thought slid across my delirious mind as my arms made contact with something solid but pliable. My lower consciousness took hold and I felt it give way beneath my strength. My hands felt wet. How odd. A voice. What a calming voice that is. Too bad. Such a shame. The thoughts slid across my mind, meaning nothing as my arms went about their task, levering some thing against something else. There was quite a bit of resistance. I felt it give way and a scream rippled across my absent mind. Hope I’m not breaking anything important. Another strange thought. Not mine. Whose? Why were my hands so wet? My chest too. What’s going…. I woke up for the second time. This time I could move and think both. Emmy Lou was beside my bed. I was in a hospital room. She was sleeping, a mask covering her eyes from the midday sun streaming through a window. I… remembered. “Emmy!” I yelled, tears coming to my eyes. I tried to stand but was held down by searing pain. Emmy rushed to my side, the mask still on her face. Wait. Not a mask. A bandage. “What happened?” I said, tears rolling down my face as I remembered everything that had happened. “Emmy? What happened?” She didn’t say anything. She was crying too, but no tears would come.
Epilogue That’s the story. What I can remember of it anyways. The cops told me the rest later. Mr. Wellers and Sheriff Gore had kidnapped Emmy and I. We were held in the hospital for days as everyone in town searched the river for our bodies. My mustang had been found submerged off the dock, and everyone thought Emmy and I were together in it. Her parents had cursed my name to a wordless ocean, screaming at the man who took their daughter, all while going to church with the Sheriff there to console them. The cops found us when Emmy Lou stumbled out into the street, screaming and blind. It had taken her hours to find her way out of the hospital. It’s hard to navigate when you can’t see. I had to hear the rest of the story from her. After our kidnapping they had operated on her. Removing her eyes, a third of her blood and one of her kidneys. Then they went to work on me. I’m still not entirely sure what they took from me. Everything seems to still be intact, my body healing from the meaningless surgeries well. Emmy says she pretended to pass out after hearing my screaming stop. The sheriff, receiving instructions from Wellers had then tried to move her to a different room. She managed to slip away from him, while blind and run to where she’d heard my screams. She found me, and a syringe. In a moment of madness she stabbed the syringe into my shoulder and empty its contents into me, hoping to kill me and end my suffering. Turns out the syringe had a potent mix of drugs, including pure adrenaline. The restraints that held me tore like paper. According to Emmy, all she heard from then on was me humming a tuneless song and Wellers and E. Gore screaming. She made her way out of the room and started trying to find the exit to the hospital. When she finally made it out and Sam called the state police they found me in the operating room, standing above the broken bodies of the malicious pair, humming and swaying back and forth. Yep, they tazed the shit out of me. When they noticed my injuries they rushed me to an actual hospital where I was remained for a week as my body worked through the drugs, the surgery recovery and the concussion I got after the cops tazed me and I fell into a medicine cabinet. Didn’t feel a thing. (Thank you drugs.) All of this happened five years ago. I wrote this story under the direction of my therapist. She thinks I need to let go. But I can’t. I found a record of Dr. Wellers license revocation. Only problem, it’s from the 1850s. I tried to learn anything I could about either Dr. Wellers or Sheriff E. Gore, but they were ghostlike. I can’t get over the questions I have. Questions like, why? And how? The police think they were selling organs on the black market, but I know what I saw. Wellers was wearing Emmy’s eyes. That’s why she’s blind. The cops don’t believe me, and in my drug stupor I destroyed any evidence there might have been. There wasn’t much left of either of my tormentors. I’m gonna stop writing now. These memories are painful. They are the reason I have a blind wife, a guilty conscience and a deeply scarred chest that’s painful to see in the mirror. They are the reason my hand bones are crooked, broken against a thick skull. I have many unanswered questions, and now I’m building a life on unsteady ground. But that’s enough now. I’m late for my meeting. I’ve got a client who wants me to restore a 78’ impala and then I have to pick Emmy up from her art studio. I hope my story helps someone out there. But for me, it just hurts.
Credits: The idea for the monster that is Wellers came from an episode of supernatural where they fight an organ stealing ancient doctor. This is also kind of an adaptation of the story of Frankensteins monster, with Dave playing the part of the monster at the end. I also leaned heavily on other creepy storys told on creepcast and I hope I didn’t step on any toes doing so. This is my first time writing something like this and I enjoyed it a lot, even if you guys don’t. Thank you for reading!

Part 71 Climate collapse (Part 1) (Part 70)
[Support me on Ko-fi]
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Growing up in a relatively posh suburb on the outskirts of Glasgow with parents who, by the standards of a corporate controlled world, were fairly well off had granted Sarah McAfree a rather unique view of the state of humanity. From her perspective informed by her family's yearly vacations that resulted in her seeing all six inhabited continents and dozens of countries, life for most people was pretty decent. The collection of mega-corps whose influence stretched across the globe had all learned long ago that the average person needed to have a real and meaningful ability to participate in the market system in order to keep the masses complacent and the money flowing. Similarly, despite the repercussions of the climate collapse in the 2060s still being felt everywhere on Earth, even the most greedy and dastardly corporate executives would always ensure their business operations always took into account the environmental impact. All in all, it wasn't until Sarah had become an adult and got to experience the dark realm of corporate espionage and sabotage for herself that she understood why things functioned the way they did.
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While most of the working class could easily afford housing, food, childcare, and all of the other essential aspects of life that granted them the feeling of prosperity, the gap between rich and poor on Earth was just as pronounced as it had ever been. Even if the truly destitute still existed, homelessness still blighting the few open spaces in many major metropolitan areas, and an exceptionally poor class still persisted, there were supposedly systems in place to get people back on their feet and into the rat race. All a person would have to do is take the job offered to them and subject themselves to the whims and control of those who owned the business. So long as relatively cheap resources continued to flow in from space to fuel the economic growth necessary for the rich to get richer, everyone else could live happily if they passively played along with the system.
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When Sarah had been offered the opportunity to attend university at the Aram Chaos Colony of Mars with all of her expenses paid for, she didn't even care who she signed a contract with. She simply believed her hard work in school had paid off and her parents’ dedication to United Heavy Industries had paid off. The required reports she had to write and occasional jobs from her benefactors had seemed benevolent enough at first such she hadn't even realized she had become a spy until it was already too late for her to escape the golden shackles that bound her. During the first couple years at ChaosU, she had found love, was inching closer to obtaining a highly in-demand degree from the most prestigious university in the Sol System, and her dreams of becoming an operations manager of a space station appeared as if they may come true. It wasn't until that final fateful year, one that ended not with her graduation but with a commission in the Central Intelligence Division of UN-E, that Sarah finally understood how the world of corporate control really worked.
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“You really think these corporations would use people's families as a means of coercion just for a chance to get access to galactic standard technologies first?” There was a split second of silence after the golden-eyed Nishnabe Intelligence Officer, Chief-Brave Nestetwakwe, asked the question.
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“Yes!” Though the answer came from several directions at once, the few Martians and Earthians in the room spoke with nearly exactly the same tone.
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“Even with the threat of immediate and violent retaliation?” Nest seemed almost taken aback by the way her new colleagues from Sol reacted. “And knowing they'll all be given equal access soon?”
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“Oi, not only did the fucks go after me mah and bruh, they were gonna attack yahr people for helpin’ strikin’ workers!” Sarah's voice contained a fair amount of vitriolic anger as her response came with a noticeable twitch of her eye. “The bloody bastards killed me dah and crippled me mah jus’ to get me to steal tech from ChaosU! If they think they can get away with it, they'll do it, no doubt.”
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“I suspect the only reason we haven’t seen any major activity is the fact that every national government has indicated that they will not protect the corporations who do not follow the Gentleman's Agreement.” General Renee Descartes added in a way that implied the only thing keeping her awake was the steaming cup of strong coffee sitting in front of her as she lazily swiped on her tablet to send the Nishnabe Intelligence Officer a report. “During our background checks and ongoing security screening for the people being called up to serve in our Defense Fleet, we have already discovered a few attempts by corporations to gain influence over them.”
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“This is some Vartooshi bullshit.” Nest only needed a brief few seconds, just enough time to see dozens of names listed in the packet she had just received, for her to become livid at the situation. “Do we have security on these people yet?”
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“That is what I spent all night arranging.” Descartes paused to take a sleepy sip of her highly caffeinated drink. “Luckily, UN-E Security Council and all member states have agreed to allow members of the Nishnabe Militia to be stationed wherever they are needed.”
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“Them corpos even tried to pull some o’ their shit on Mars.” Comandante Admiral Carol Nez chimed in while flicking over a file to Nest. Where the French General looked as if she needed to take a nap, the gruff and vaguely tomboyish Martian Comandante looked quite well rested and relaxed. “But… Well… We don't tolerate that corpo shit in MarsGov. Our counter-intel already got ‘em damn agents clocked an’ contained. An’ I tell yah what, I betcha if we had some Nishnabe warriors decloak in the middle of a few corporate boardrooms, that'd scare ‘em straight!”
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“Can we please not start a war unintentionally, Carol?” Renee didn't even bother to look up from the coffee she was sipping while her voice held a subtle but noticeable amount of annoyance. “You may be right, but that does not mean we should open ourselves up to a potential public relations nightmare. We have won quite a bit of good will and it would be a shame to lose it all with one action.”
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“I was jokin’! But in all seriousness, why ain't we offerin’ to relocate people to Shkegpewen if we’re concerned ‘bout their safety?”
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“Well… Uh…” There was a very particular form of hesitation in Nest's tone that caused the other three women at the table to look at her with confusion in their eyes. “They may not be wanted on Shkegpewen.”
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“What?!?”
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Once again the women from Sol spoke at the same time and with the same tone. However, this time, instead of nearly sounding dismissive about something they considered to be self-evident, the women were clearly taken aback by Nestetwakwe's suggestion that the Nishnabe as a whole would be anything other than excited about living alongside the people of Sol. Where Carol, a proud member of the Navajo Nation on Mars, was confused and saddened by the assertion that a people from what she considered to be another Native American Nation would not want her in their home, and Renee simply didn't understand why, Sarah had a brief moment of panic.
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“Oi, wha’ abou’ my family an’ me? I was told we’re already granted Nishnabe citizenship.”
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“Oh, yes, your family has been granted citizenship, Sarah.” Nest tried to sound positive but it was obvious by her tone that things were more complicated than they seemed. “But… Well… The idea of a sudden influx of people from Sol trying to live on Shkegpewen has… Let’s just say Earth isn't the only one of our planets with protests going on.”
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A somewhat small room aboard DS-1 was filled to the brim with slamming polyrhythmic beats, distorted yet surprisingly clean chords, and wildly varying vocals that sounded akin to a demon being conjured forth from the darkest pits of hell. An unnerving combination of violence and serenity in musical form pulsed through the hearts and minds of the small group of people seated in the rather comfortable and sound-proof space. Where the guitar and bass simultaneously clashed and complemented each other through a series of mind bending notes that somehow sounded both evil and angelic, the drums and vocals held an almost unnatural synchronization in their blistering tempo that pushed this noise far closer to fiendishness than divinity. It was as if the four players were all being possessed by the same entity which exuded nothing but contempt for the universe around it. And while the listeners had been fully warned about what they would experience, none were really fully prepared for the musical monstrosity that was being unleashed upon them.
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For the first time in quite some time the Rotting Colonizers, a somewhat obscure extreme metal band from Mars whose members were now on their way to a planet thousands of lightyears from Mars, were playing music in front of a live audience. Even if the group of listeners consisted of just a handful people, most of whom had never even heard this genre of music before, and this was really just a practice and jam session for the musicians, a few people listening seemed to enjoy what they were hearing. Or, at the very least, there were more people who seemed to appreciate the music than those who didn’t. Though Atxika, Hompta, and Binko had nearly horrified expressions on their faces, Tensebwse, Menashka-Ngwagen, Banitek, and NAN looked like they were either deeply impressed or genuinely enjoying the auditory assault. However, to those playing this rather intense music, it wouldn’t have mattered if they were the only people who were enjoying themselves. They were just happy to finally get a chance to play.
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“By the Creator, nikanek, y’all got some serious talent to play that fast!” Tens announced as Mik and his band came to a rest after a solid ten minutes of non-stop musical mayhem. “It’s almost like the Nukatov warchants I used to listen to to psych myself up for an orbital drop!”
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“Yeah, this would definitely get a person in the mood for some excessive violence!” Nashka quickly added while looking between the two unfamiliar instruments which both featured eight strings before gaze to rest on the one Kiera was holding. “I don’t know how you got that thing to sound the way it did, Kiera, but it reminds me of something that my Hi-koth friend Sargvinch plays. His just has half the strings and is shaped differently.”
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“Their called gryiers and all of the strings are usually the same size.” Having already recognized the familiarity between his people’s lyre-like instruments to the guitars being shown off, Banitek had found himself much more enthralled by the other, far more complex musical contraption on display. “Those drums, however, are extremely unique. I've never seen one person be able to strike so many different surfaces in so many different ways that quickly or precisely. It was almost like you were playing three different rhythms at once, but that may have just been a trick caused by the harmony.”
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“There were harmonies?!?” It had taken this long for Hompta’s brain to catch up to the present after the cacophony his furry little ears had just been subjected to. “I could barely hear notes, let alone anything else. It was all just angry, aggressive noises!”
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“We take that as a compliment!” TJ announced with a deep chuckle before picking his drumsticks back up. “And yes, Bani. That was two rhythms that create a third through harmony. But I actually can play four at once. Check this out.”
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Without skipping a beat or displaying the slightest bit of hesitation, Tyrese Jerome O'Neal began swinging all four of his limbs with so much control that it made the mostly metal man sound as if he were a machine built for the express purpose of exceeding the mental and physical capacities of a purely biological being. Though he had been able to play in this manner long before he had been forced to undergo the massive amount of cybernetic augmentation necessary to comfortably sustain his life, it would have been easy to believe he had gotten all those mods simply to improve his skills far beyond what many would assume to be their natural limits.
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“Ok, ok, we get it!” Binko interjected to try to interrupt the sound assaulting his rather sensitive ears. “That's just too much for me, niji. Trying to track that many sounds at once reminds me of combat and I'm trying to relax!”
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“That wasn't even our fastest ’r most complex song!” Mik had begun cackling at the all too familiar reaction from the feathered alien. “An’ it’s lookin’ like yah didn't like it either, Atxika.”
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“Well… I wasn’t overwhelmed and can certainly respect the talent required to play this genre of music. But…” The large, muscular, blue woman seemed hesitant in her response. “It's more that the lyrics were… Disturbing.”
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“You could understand my vocals?!?” Despite the look on Atxika’s face, Skol had a pleasantly surprised twinkle in his bright blue eyes. Though he never really intended for his guttural growls and demonic screeches to be incomprehensible, even he had to look up the words to songs in this genre to be sure he knew what was actually being said.
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“The translators contextualized everything the best they can and… Well…” Atxika paused for a moment to consider the best way to express what was on her mind after listening to a song titled Ecocide. “If I didn't know better I would have assumed you hated your own species. ‘We should have killed ourselves before we let it get this bad’ is a truly jarring line. But I have to assume that is more an expression of frustration as opposed to an earnest proposition.”
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“I mean… It is a cover of a song from over two-hundred years ago. Forty years before the climate on Earth collapsed in 2060. The people who wrote the song likely meant what they were saying. And, in a way, they may have been right.” Skol's attempt at clarification caused everyone not from Sol to stare at him with truly horrified looks in their eyes. “What? Shit got really bad. Over a billion people either died or were displaced because their homes essentially became uninhabitable for parts of the year. And that isn't even taking into consideration the mass extinction.”
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“Oh fuck…” It was rare that Tens would curse but the nearly despondent look on his face implied that Skol’s further explanation had connected quite a few dots in the Nishnabe warrior's mind. “I guess that explains why so many people on Shkegpewen are pissed off and don't want anyone from Sol going there. If y'all caused our homeworld's climate to collapse and a mass extinction, those protests are starting to make sense.”
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“Hold on! What the hell!” Kiera half-shouted her reply. “This is the first I'm hearin’ about protests. Are your people really protesting to keep us from going to y'all's planet?!? Why?!?”
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“Yeah! You haven't heard about that yet?” Nashka's almost dismissive reply elicited harsh stares from the four Martians and caused her to put her hands up while looking towards NAN for help. “Hey, I'm out of the loop besides the random Web-posts I see.”
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“Things are fairly complicated at the moment.” The Singularity Entity representing their self as a liquid metal human chimed in with a tone that implied they weren't all too worried about the situation. “I don't suspect any of you will be personally targeted. If anything, the protesters may have some sympathy for your plight. However, there are different groups expressing a wide range of grievances. Some want tight restrictions on who is allowed to come to Shkegpewen, some are demanding that people from Earth are entirely banned with only limited exceptions, and a few are even calling for a quarantine of the entire Sol System.”
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“Why?!?” Mik blurted out the question as soon as NAN left the smallest opening in their explanation of the events unfolding just a few days’ journey away. “What in the goddamn hell did us Martians do?!?”
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“Just like how the people of Sol have received full and unfettered access to the Nishnabe web, the people of Shkegpewen have similar access to your internet.”

“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.

Apologies, this one is kinda long. First and foremost, let me say that I am well aware of Reddit's opinions on poly relationships and I'm aware that this one ultimately did not prove to be healthy, but please don't let that be an admonishment to poly relationships. Just like any other relationship, it requires work, and this one actually has opened my eyes to the importance of clearly discussing boundaries in any relationship and validating one another's emotions in a healthy and loving manner.
Essentially, I (37M) started dating this woman (32f) when I wasn't exactly in the healthiest place. I was drinking a fair bit and I was cool with the poly dynamic (she had been with her partner for 13 years, only recently went poly) because I was just looking for a fun thing without having to put too much commitment into it. I'm going to take full blame on this one and say that I realized pretty early on into dating that this woman clearly had substance abuse issues, and I decided to jump on board and have some fun rather than acknowledge and address my own shortcomings with substance abuse. It became a regular occurrence that we would drink too heavily and end up having to score a bag of blow, and then spend the next day sleeping it off. Up until I had met this woman, I had all but cut blow out of my life for many a year, with only the occasional slip-up (maybe five times in the last 7 years of my life).
I had met her partner, he was a rad dude and was totally open to all of this, and the only boundary he had in place was practice safe sex and keep him abreast of any sexually-related health issues, which we did. Eventually, they ended up splitting up and he moved out of the house because they realized they wanted different paths in life (he wants a family, she does not want kids). In this time I was a big source of comfort for her and before we knew it we tumbled headlong into an even unhealthier, co-dependent dynamic where we unwittingly found ourselves as primary partners and there were very strong feelings.
One night we were out with friends and ended up back at a mutual friends house. I had been talking with a friend for awhile and noticed I hadn't seen my partner in awhile, so I went to find her. When I opened the bathroom she was in there with a couple (who were her friends and also poly) and they went scurrying off, so I knew something was up. My partner immediately admitted that they had been making out, and I was pretty upset. I felt like I had been betrayed and she admitted she let herself get carried away in the heat of the moment, but they had no intention of making out initially, and when it did start to happen she realized this probably wasn't right and needed to have a discussion with me first. Eventually we ended up realizing that we needed to discuss boundaries because of the new dynamic we found ourselves in, and we agreed on the boundary that "if we go out together, then we're out together".
Fast forward a couple days and the man from that relationship reaches out to my partner and asks her on a date, and she relays this to me. She wants to go but is asking about my comfort levels given the situation. I will willingly admit at this point I have issues with invalidating my own emotions in order to keep the peace (part of a complex web of PTSD from childhood abuse), so I expressed that I was uncomfortable with the whole situation, but I wanted to afford her the freedom to explore. Well, she ended up going on the date, and I found myself slipping into a CPTSD episode. I was trying to pull myself together, I went for a run to clear my head, tried meditation, but I just couldn't pull myself together. I took an ativan, but it didn't help, then ended up driving to the bar and just throwing back beers. The entire time I felt like I was outside of my body watching myself make the worst decisions while every logical part of my brain screamed "STOP!", but I just couldn't get back to reality. In my drunken, out-of-body state, I ended up leaving the bar, getting in my car, and attempting to drive off a cliff and into the ocean to kill myself. I ended up smashing into some trees instead, but still came perilously close to succeeding, and ended up with a fractured sternum and a week long stay in the psychiatric ward.
Now, I'll admit a large part of this had to do with insecurity and jealousy, but I also really didn't like the way the whole situation with the new partners was handled. When I had returned to the party after finding them in the bathroom, the man didn't apologize but instead kept saying "don't be mad" like some goddamn toddler, and only stopped when I said "no, dude, I have every right to be mad right now". My suspicion that he didn't really care about other people's feelings and he was really just a self-centred hedonist masquerading as an enlightened spiritual being was confirmed when he messaged me the day after my suicide attempt saying that I needed to get my act together and stop dragging my partner through this because she's going through a hard time right now.
When I got out of the ward, I went immediately to my partner and we went out for drinks, which was obviously the dumbest decision ever, but actually it ended up being the catalyst for some serious change (as if the suicide attempt wasn't enough). When we were wrapping up and paying the bill, I noticed my partner was very drunk at this point, and was acting furtive with her phone. This rattled me a bit, because we're usually incredibly open with one another, so I pressed. After a bit of pressure, she admitted she had just ordered a bag of coke, and ended up having a bit of a breakdown. I convinced her to cancel the order, and we found a bench to sit on, where she just completely broke down and opened up to how bad it has really been.
She had been using hard drugs daily for the past month (at least) to keep herself going. Between her breakup with her partner of 13 years, a stressful job that she hated, and the pressure she put on herself to socialize, she just couldn't cope. She let me know she has a history of relying on drugs to get her through the tough times. Her circle of friends is very into the festival and party culture and so she was ashamed she couldn't handle her drugs like they could, she was ashamed of anyone finding out she was struggling, she didn't want to turn to her family because she thought they wouldn't understand and would shun her instead of helping her, despite her father having gone through his own struggles with addiction. I did my best to assure her that nobody who is regularly using drugs has it together, that everyone who abuses substances is struggling, and if she reached out she would find that people are more open to discussing it and supporting her than she'd ever imagine (I've been through this process in my life before, I was no stranger to having to reach out for help), and that the only people she'd lose in the process are ones who aren't worth keeping around. She swore up and down she needed to make life changes and wanted a future of fun, sober adventures together, where we'd go camping and hiking together. I told her I'd be by her side to help her navigate, with the caveat that if she did keep struggling, that I'd have no choice but to have to distance myself from our relationship and get her friends and family involved. I was cautiously optimistic about the whole situation. I've been through the process of getting sober before, and know you can end up in some really dark places before you finally have to make a change. Since that night I've been off booze and drugs (almost two months now). I grew up with an alcoholic father and have gone through the process of recovery myself (did 3 years sober in my early 30s) and have tried to help many friends navigate through addiction, and I've seen an acquaintance succumb to his struggles. So I'm quite seasoned in the hell that is addiction and recovery and self-improvement.
Well, to nobody's surprise at all, she struggled. She ensured me she was on a better path, but then would party one night, but it was okay because she was with safe people and only did a bit of coke etc etc. Ultimately, yes, she was not relying on substances as much, but she was still casually using them and insisting she was under control, until she'd have a bad night, then it was just a "lesson learned" kinda thing. Well, one night in particular really got under my skin. We went out for an evening with friends, which included the other aforementioned couple (for her sake I was trying really hard to be cool about the whole situation and wanted to give it a chance), and I noticed her quickly getting to the stage of obliterated. She ignored my polite suggestion to at least try having a water between beers, and when I tried to talk to her about the way the evening was going she pushed back about how she doesn't need to be mothered and needs the freedom to be able to change her plans on the whim. Well, it turns out what that really meant was that she wanted to be able to disregard the boundary about going out together and staying together, because I caught her telling the couple that she ordered a bag of coke and they were invited back to her house, and all of a sudden she wasn't sure if she wanted me to come over that night anymore (it was a weeknight, by the way. She had work in the morning).
Eventually we biked home together and I dropped her off at her place. She said she just went to bed and didn't end up having any coke or the friends over, but I obviously had some trust issues at that point. She ended up admitting that was a bad slip-up, and like an idiot I forgave her trampling of my boundaries for a time, until not long after when she had another episode of severe upset. She had seen her ex at a mutual friends house while she was drinking and it triggered her because she had realized he was never going to be in her life again etc etc and eventually one of her sober friends pulled her aside and sent her home and told her to drink some tea and have a bath and get a good night's sleep, but the next day she was still distraught, so I went and comforted her and she once again assured me she wasn't in a place where she could handle drinking.
That is of course, until a few days later when she met up with her ex and she realized they actually had space for one another in their lives and were still going to casually date while he looked for a life partner to raise a family with. So they had a night of casual beers together.
This time I just pushed. I said I can't do this anymore, you need to figure your shit out, this is driving me mad, are you drinking or not? Well, she started pushing back, claiming she never said she needed to go sober the same way I did, that she was "experimenting" with sobriety, that she had it under control, and all the other lies addicts tell themselves, and I just got too frustrated and was not sparing her feelings (I didn't insult her or call her names, but I did call her out quite abruptly on her bullshit). She didn't even acknowledge that she was lying to me about the severity of her breakdowns until texted her a screenshot of our last conversation when she said "yeah, I still feel like I have to lay off the booze, definitely not in a space where I can have that in my life", and even then, she tried to downplay her struggles.
She said she needed to process things and I gave her the week to do a therapy session and figure it all out. During that time I reached out to the dude in the other relationship and asked if they had actually gone over to her house after I dropped her off that night, and he said he and his partner just went back to theirs and went to bed. Okay, so at least she wasn't lying about that.
Later in the week she had been to therapy and we had a chance to sit down and talk about boundaries and all that, and she said she knew I had reached out to the dude and asked if I was struggling with jealousy, and that I was not to reach out to either of them anymore because they didn't consent to have me as part of their relationship (hey, too frigging bad, we're partners, and part of being ethical is acknowledging my feelings, too). We seemed to come to a place of understanding, where I would play a smaller role in her life and we would date casually but I wouldn't be around her if she was partying. Cut to: the next night she comes over to hang out but there's a party down the street she might attend later. As soon as she gets to mine she whips out a bottle and takes a few microdoses of LSD, then before leaving for the party does MDMA. Turns out, it was just a little get together, she just assumed it was going to be a party, so she was just rolling at a casual function full of fairly straight-laced adults.
The other day it was her birthday and she was having friends over, and expressed it might be awkward for me to be there because she had vented to them about our issues and had managed to turn it in a way that made me out to be controlling and jealous. That was it. I was sick of this. Now she had no problem throwing me under the bus in order to save face because she was too ashamed to admit she had been struggling severely.
This is where I finally grew a backbone. I had an emergency therapy session, and after having the therapist validate my experience and my emotions (something I have always struggled with), I reached out to the other couple. I sent them a long wall of text explaining that she had been struggling hard with substance abuse, and that she had been lying to save face, and that I don't know what she's been telling them, but she has repeatedly violated my boundaries regarding their relationship and so that technically their relationship was within the realm of ethical non-monogamy and was built on a lie and unaddressed substance abuse issues.
The dude's response solidified my view of him as a real piece of shit. Basically he said "this is super unacceptable, I only read a bit of that but calling out someone who's struggling with substance abuse isn't cool. I struggle with substance abuse, and since you're going sober, I thought you'd have more sympathy." I called him out on making an issue about boundaries all about himself, and said "if her partner had reached out and let me know she was violating his boundaries and that she was struggling with addiction, I wouldn't dismiss the guy. Real class act
".
She has yet to respond to all of this, but I let her know I reached out to them and that I no longer have any space for her in my life. That she has been wildly inconsistent and erratic and is unable to exercise basic levels of respect in a relationship and that polyamory doesn't just mean a hedonistic free-for-all with a bunch of sociopathic enablers. Frankly, I'm thinking of just blocking her number because I don't feel like I owe her the respect of listening to what she has to say anymore, and I'm also thinking of reaching out to her sister, as her sister is someone who has been in the loop previously about her struggles with substance abuse and I feel like she desperately needs someone who isn't a fuckhead enabler to help her come to terms with her lack of control.
So, AITAH for the way I handled things? I know for my own sake I should've walked away ages ago, but this woman is legitimately a wonderful human, just one that is struggling very hard and isn't in a space where she is ready to take accountability for her behaviour while she's been abusing substances. I'm also well aware I was an enabler for most of the relationship, and that's why I feel some kind of obligation to help.

“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.

Out there - Patreon (for all those curious or wanting to support :))
At the Beginning
Adventure Arc - Arc 2
Wilderness Arc - Arc 3
Academy Arc - Arc 4
Nobility Arc - Arc 5
Previously on Leveling up the World...
Whole regions of the world were turned to glass or slapped by devastating waves. All three pretenders immediately responded to Dallion’s territorial push. The suspicions of his war council had proven absolutely correct. Once the war started, it was exceedingly difficult to keep on growing. The territory Dallion had obtained had been substantial, yet he had lost almost as much in the following actions. While he had retained all of his settlements, glass craters had emerged in several areas, mostly points that bordered the Tamin empire.
Massive areas of coastline were also devastated by waves as the ocean pushed to expand. Although he didn’t see the full picture, Dallion was left with the impression that, other than him, Tiallia had gained the most. The Order had quickly retreated, severing the links between its domains. That was the problem of a vast observation network: they were capable of dealing with any single threat, but not all threats at once.
In response, the archbishop wasted no time targeting a large number of easy targets. Dallion’s capital had also suffered a near miss. It was only thanks to his rocket crossbows that he had managed to evade a repetition of Jio Province.
​
DOMAIN INVASION
​
A red rectangle flashed in front of him.
“The emperor’s pushing east,” he said in his war room.
“How?” Hannah asked. “There were a dozen patrols in that area.”
“No idea. I didn’t sense a thing. It might have been from the air.”
“I’ll check it out,” Diroh suggested eagerly.
No sooner had she done so than Adzorg floated to the fury and placed both of his hands on her shoulders.
“Let’s not get carried away. For all we know, the emperor might be leading the charge.”
The explanation was plausible enough to have the fury reluctantly reconsider. Dallion felt the disappointment and determination stream from her. She had improved a lot since Dallion had brought her from Halburn, making the jump from non-awakened to a level sixty far faster than him. Sadly, that was where her limit had kicked in. Even with Skye’s help and all the artifacts in Dallion’s possession, she’d be unable to become a domain ruler.
“I don’t think it’s the emperor,” Dallion said. “It might be his dragon.”
“The Great Dragon Aurun,” Hannah said in reverence.
“Looks like I’m not the only one with a dragon,” Euryale said, more in reaction to the former innkeeper.
“It'll be a Moonless day when you can compare yourself to the emperor and his legendary dragon, girl,” Hannah snapped. “The historical records said that he achieved victories in half the continent. If he’s gone back to that, not sure even you can step up to him.” She glanced at Dallion. “You’ll have to start a game of cat and mouse. Since you can’t win against his dragon, you have to capture everywhere he isn’t.”
“Theory’s always good,” Pan intervened. “But I doubt he remained on the throne for so long by leaving things to chance. Despite the losses on the ground, Tamin still controls the skies. Not to mention that he still has a few capable archdukes. You’ll have to deal with them before making any gains. And remember, you also can only be at a single place at once.”
“What if his echoes level up?” Diroh asked, full of eagerness once more.
“They aren’t my echoes anymore.”
The tone was soft but clearly conveyed Dallion’s disapproval of using the term. Gen, July, and Ariel were their own entities now and while they gladly agreed to help out however they could, they weren’t to be used as Dallion’s stand-ins.
“They’re human now,” Adzorg explained to his fury pupil. “And, like you, not otherworlders. Although easier, leveling up still comes with its challenges. There’s a reason that we must only level up once per day.”
The fury said nothing.
The phase of mass destruction continued for days. Other than the devastating waves and rockets, little else took place. Even reconnaissance was limited to specific key spots throughout the continent. By this time, everyone had picked up the habit of keeping their settlements in constant motion. People were indeed the key resource in a painfully pragmatic way. And while Dallion was pleased a lot of them were kept safe, the mere thought that they were viewed as numbers in an experience bar gnawed at him more and more, appearing in his nightmares.
Often, he would catch himself hoping that the Moons would step in and stop all this, but they never did, remaining in the sky day and night, watching the destruction beneath. Deep inside, he knew that it was a barrier he had to push through, but with each day his heart tightened more and more.
Only Euryale knew his burden, and just like him, she couldn’t share it with anyone else. Even the appearance of uncertainty in either of the ruling pair would only bring more harm. As a means of countering it, they would spend a moment every day within a realm, away from the chaos that surrounded them.
“You can’t stop thinking about it, can you?” Pan managed to catch one of the few instances in which Dallion was alone. “You know it’s better than any alternative, and still part of you isn’t certain it was all worth it.”
“I get the feeling you’ve been through this before.”
“Oh, yes.” The copyette made its way next to Dallion.
The bubble surrounding the city was crisscrossing his wider domain faster than a flying arrow, and yet no matter how far one looked, all they could see was a perfectly static background which had always been there. Even that was an illusion.
“Chainlings have been flowing into the wilderness again,” Pan continued. “Only in the destruction zones for now, but they’ll start spreading.”
“That will make claiming land more difficult,” Dallion said as an afterthought.
“Not for the moment. Even voidlings fear power. Eventually, there will be enough of them to merge together and go on a rampage. Then someone will have to step in.”
Usually, it was the Order of the Seven Moons that would do so. Unfortunately, the Order had suffered the greatest number of losses. Jeremy, Dallion, and Tiallia knew enough about the archbishop to be afraid, so they took every chance they had to diminish his power as much as possible. Dallion had taken the east forest, the emperor had razed any shrine and monastery that remained within his territory, as for the nymph empress—she was continuously transforming the west coast of the continent into an archipelago, systematically destroying every army of war priests she came upon. Whatever alliance had been between her and the Order was long forgotten.
“The south and the north remain unoccupied,” Pan said. “No one sees them as viable. That only leaves the ocean.”
“I can’t fight her on her territory. You saw what happened last time I tried.”
“Your level was a lot lower then. Besides, you’re still the underdog. The Order was the main threat, so all of you combined your efforts to cripple it. Now that it’s done, the empire and the nymphs are the front runners. You don’t need to defeat the empress, just engage enough of her forces. The emperor would do the rest.”
“What makes you think he won’t go after me?”
“If he thought you were a greater danger, he would have done so. All attacks so far have had a double function. The Order’s rockets strike areas between you and the empire, the emperor targets coastal areas, and the nymphs for the most part are focused on areas that are contested between you and the Order.”
Dallion let out a deep sigh. It was a strange blessing being the weakest.
“The ever-shrinking prize,” Pan said all of a sudden.
“What?” Dallion turned towards the copyette.
“That’s what I used to call it. The more you fight for the world, the less of it is there. The only thing that keeps you going is the hope that once you’ve won, you’ll get to become a Moon and fix it all.”
That was very much what Dallion was hoping. If he turned out to be wrong, even the winner wouldn’t amount to much.
“You’ve seen a lot more than you’re sharing, haven’t you?” Dallion asked.
“Yes, but I can’t tell you any of it. Not yet.”
“I can only learn what I already know. I never liked that rule.”
“It has its downsides, but in the long run it’s a good rule. If I’d really known what it was to be a domain ruler when I awakened, I’d have created a lot more chaos on my way to the top. As would anyone else.”
“Yeah. Probably…” Dallion looked at the horizon. A chain of mountains was visible in the distance—the same that had been there for thousands of years. In a blink of the eye they were gone, replaced by a view of the ocean. “You’re wrong about one thing,” he added.
“What exactly?” Pan laughed.
“Attacking the ocean isn’t my best bet. I can still claim the south. Maybe even the north.”
“How? That won’t bring you more people. And even if you claim a bit more territory, you’ll need to take the forces from somewhere, which will invite everyone to fill the void.”
“Why are you convinced I can’t find more inhabitants?”
“Please tell me you’re not thinking of speed breeding.”
“Huh?” Dallion trembled. There was something in that combination of words that made the phrase repulsive.
“Move people back into the swords, leave them for a day to breed, then return a few new generations into the real world. For one thing, it won’t work, for another, that would definitely be breaking a Moon law.”
“That’s not what I had in mind.”
“What then?”
“Shardflies,” Dallion whispered. “I’m following the path of empathy. Who’s to say that only people can be my subjects?”
For the first time in a very long while, Pan was at a loss for words. Technically, there was no rule against it, but it still felt unrealistic.
“If it were possible, the dryads would have done it.”
“Dryads didn’t have to resort to that. Besides, I’m not talking about using them as weapons, but having them join me.”
“You’ve done some crazy things, but this… shardflies?”
“They are destructive. Besides, they were brought into this world, same as us. And…” Dallion opened the palm of his hand. Gleam and Ruby emerged. Both were in largely diminished sizes, remaining there like delicate butterflies. “I have the perfect means to convince them.”
It took less than a moment for Dallion to emerge in the southmost part of his domain. After the fight for the Learning Hall, this was where he had agreed to send the creatures. It remained uncertain how willing they would be to have anything to do with humans, but as things stood, they were Dallion’s best bet.
The standard pair of shardflies were capable of laying close to a thousand eggs once per year. In normal circumstances, about a tenth of those would survive to adulthood, after which they’d fly out on their own, becoming the territorial monsters they were later known to be. Yet, the colony Dallion had sent here was anything but standard. Brought to this world by magic, they had become used to sticking together and—when needed—fighting together. There was a good chance they had increased their original number tenfold, provided the other monsters of the fallen south hadn’t done anything about it.
Please tell me you’re not thinking of making me royalty. Gleam fluttered in front of Dallion’s face.
“I thought you enjoyed having power.”
I enjoy having power and freedom.
Fluttering beside her, Ruby didn’t say a thing.
I’ll help you find them and help convince them to listen to you. What you do after that is none of my business.
“Still itching to fight a dragon?”
Wouldn’t anyone? You’re not the only one who’s grown. It’s time I showed the world what I’m capable of.
Ruby extended his wings, giving them a razor-sharp edge.
Yes, you too, Ruby, Gleam said. While undistinguishable to most, the ruby shardfly had managed to mellow her out a bit. It helped considerably that he himself had gotten stronger.
Taking a step forward, Dallion cast a spell that lifted him into the air. The rest of the search he’d have to do flying and hope that no one decided to send a rocket his way.

Hi all, so this dicussion has been held multiple times but I have a few different needs and therefore figured I'll ask you for a recommendation.
The situation: I'm moving and all of a sudden tracks like Misano aren't far away anymore, I always wanted to get into trackdays but didn't because of a lack of good tracks around me.
About my skills and experience: I'm 19, nearly 6'1" and have around 170lbs. I've owned and/or ridden tons of different bikes, street, dual sport, enduro and mx. I actively ride motocross, tried myself on enduro and had fun on the street too. I'm on the bike since about 8 (on and off though). I'm confident in the dirt and on the street although I can't say much about pavement skills because I'm rather careful there because of traffic. I don't own a real dedicated streetbike right now, but whenever I got the chance to ride something "sportier" it felt good and I wished I could use the bike more to it's limit.
I'm aware of the financial aspects of track riding, etc.
Now I'm left with choosing the right track bike. I'm definitely not getting a 600cc i4 because I highly doubt that I could even use a fraction of the power of a 600cc. I'm rather using all of the power of a smaller bike than to struggle with a bigger one. I'm ok with keeping the bike long, so I want something capable in terms of suspension and rider position I don't care about wrenching, I repair all my bikes myself.
So something like a RC390 or a Ninja 400 seems to be the go to choice, but what keeps me from geting such a bike is both the high prices people want for used bike here and that they aren't "real" track bikes. I'm sure they are more than enough for my skills now but how about in a few years? I don't want to upgrade to a 600cc soon, I want to have a small bore bike that I can keep for years. Maybe I'm overthinking all this, but is a Ninja 400 really still funny if you are more experienced or does it feel restrictive? I can only compare this to dirtbikes where a small trails bike was great for learning but I outgrew it fast and felt restricted by the suspension and ergnomics. On the other hand I'll probably never give up my YZ125 because it feels capable in every way. I'm not talking about power at all. I'm aware that you can't compare a trails bike with a full fledged MX bike, just as a small analogy.
So what I would like (or think would be best) is a very capable, but small displacement bike. I'm thinking of something like a KTM RC4R which has the 250 crosser engine or the Honda NSF250R which is basically a lower power moto3 bike. Parts availability is not bad too. The Honda engine is a bit obscure but I bet a fun project would be engine swapping a 250 or 450 Yamaha cross engine if you happen to get one with a blown engine. This shouldn't be too much of an task since both the original Honda engine and the Yamaha engine use a reversed cylinder head, therefore the airbox should fit with some modifications too. I'm unsure if the gearbox ratios fit pavement use though. But that's offtopic, parts for the original Honda engine are surprisingly affordable for such a bike.
However, I'm not sure about my size on these small bikes. I'm ok with a aggressive position, but I don't want to be restricted because of the size of the bike. On the other hand, even larger guys ride moto3, so is it really an issue? Suspension options seem to be there so my weight shouldn't be a problem I think.
Another (physcially larger) option would be an older Aprilia RS125, but I'm not sure if I'd be just in way of everybody else because of the limited power...
I'm aware that this might be a weird post but I'd really like to hear your opinions on the topic.
Thanks for reading all that!

Hey y'all!
So my dog (Pixel- 6F, 45lbs mixed breed) over the years has become increasingly anxious about a few things that (mostly) seem to be triggered by sounds, and I am looking for any ideas or solutions that people might have. I am thinking of maybe finding a way to block sounds when needed? We have tried the Happy Hoodie, and although it does seem to block sounds (she will stop trembling), it is clearly too tight and uncomfortable for her. So I'm thinking of trying the Rex Specs Ear Pro, but dunno if this will be any better? Additionally, we just started fluoxatine/prozac last week. Hopefully it helps, but for now it's TBD.
The 3 main sound-based culprits are:

• Thunderstorms- full body shaking, crying and whining, not being able to settle
  • Some solutions have included Tramedol (previously tried trazedone), Happy Hoodie (is uncomfortable for her- might be the wrong size but it's too tight), staying with her in the bathroom with the fan on and music playing loudly (the main issue here is that I cannot always just stay with her on the floor in the bathroom to wait out the storm, and she does not settle being there alone- she is almost always in the same room as me)
  • These are rare enough, though, that I can deal for the most part.
• Cats hissing/playing/fighting- causes her to cry/growl and bark, hackles all the way up, tail up, etc.
  • Solutions have included mostly management (separating the cats as much as possible) and trying to create positive associations with the cats being close to each other. This problem though has increased to Pixel reacting earlier and earlier to potential cat conflicts, and now misinterpreting the cats' behaviors where even if we are the ones playing with the cats, she will sometimes react to them playing (she is often reacting to them without seeing them, so it seems to be triggered by a sound they make that I cannot hear).
  • This happens almost every single day. Our most recent solution has been luring birds to our balcony to distract the cats, and that's actually helped decrease the instances from multiple times a day to maybe 0-2 times a day. Although it's clearly a high arousal and high stress situation for Pixel, it tends to be pretty short lived and it's relatively easy to distract her.
• Cross breezes in the apartment.... -_- again, full body shaking, crying and whining, not being able to settle, etc
  • Solutions have been similar to thunderstorms, though instead of the bathroom with the music and stuff, it's sufficient to put her in a room where there is no cross breeze. But again, she doesn't settle unless I'm with her, and that's really hard to do when I work during the day (the only rooms without the cross breeze would be the bathrooms and our bedroom). She is fine with just the front door and windows being open, but as soon as the back door is open to create a cooling cross-breeze, she will start trembling/shaking/crying/seeking help and comfort. For this one, I am not sure if the trigger is sound based or touch based (like maybe she can feel the air current changing). We believe the fear started from some of the doors slamming closed when there is a strong breeze though. The only real solution we found is just... not having a cross breeze, but that's not a real solution when it starts to get very hot.
  • This is absolutely the hardest one to live with and something I'm desperate to find a solution for. It gets very hot in the apartment in the summer if we cannot create a cross breeze. We had our doors open for the first time this year yesterday and it was just a whole day of managing my dog's fear until I finally convinced my wife we absolutely needed to close the back door. (At one point, my wife went out the back and forgot to close the door and immediately Pixel came to me crying and shaking.) I don't know if anyone has ideas for things I can try? Again, i'm looking at maybe finding a way to block sound, but I'm worried that it's her whiskers or something telling her that there is a cross breeze. Maybe if sound is dampened she won't worry about the door? idk... T_T halp

I'm hopeful that some of them have overlapping solutions.

Thank you u/SpacePaladin15 for the amazing universe!
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Memory transcription subject: Kalsim, Krakotl United Federation Fleet Captain
Date [standardized human time]: December 27th, 2136
I shouldn’t be doing this.
My talon flattened my feathers against my head, gel ensuring they wouldn’t stick out at any odd angles.
Why didn’t I refuse?
My uniform was in perfect condition, nary a wrinkle, scuff or scratch to be found. My medals, pinned to my breast, gleamed as if they were brand new.
Why didn’t I just say no?
Staring back from the mirror was me, prim and proper as always. Ready to help the Federation take its next step towards the future.
Fuck.
Jerulim had been right for once in his pathetic existence. I knew it from the moment she stepped up to the podium. The gleam in her eyes, scanning each and every one of us like an Arxur would his cattle. She was a predator, through and through.
I’d thought they would at least share some of my common sense. Unlike the rest of those bumbling primates, she was everything we told ourselves we fought against. Humanity by itself could be managed or otherwise ignored. She would make sure that wasn’t the case.
At least I made myself look presentable. More for the sake of consistency, rather than out of respect for the occasion.
I’m sure the shadow eye agent would agree, if he ever spoke or acknowledged his presence. Falling in behind as I stepped out of my quarters, the farsul maintained a good distance between us. Whether out of fear or malice, it didn’t matter. He took his notes.
Guess this is what it’s like to be Sovlin. As if the poor bastard didn’t have enough on his plate.
The station's krakotl personnel gave me high regards as I marched down the gently curving halls. Some salutes, falls to silence, gentle whispers of ‘that’s Kalsim’. Several even tried to get a word from me, advances which were quickly ignored. The kolshian Exterminators standing guard only stared on.
We quickly passed through the halls and passages of the station, winding our way down towards one of the many dozen landing bays. We found it already cleared out, spare for the several krakotl guards standing watching. Curt tail waves were their form of acknowledgement. They paid no mind to the farsul, who elected to watch from one of the upper balconies.
It wasn’t long before a standard model shuttle appeared in front of the vacuum shield. It slipped through and gently set itself down on the steel paneling. Guards shifted as the ramp hissed and lowered, and our visitors began to descend. I didn’t know whether they clued into our body language yet. I still forced myself into a welcoming demeanor.
The humans were a diverse bunch, all dressed roughly in the same outfit. Blue suits, white undergarments, ties around the neck, medals pinned to the breast, and a flag pin near the collar. All red, white and blue. Leading the pack was someone striding with confidence I’d become quite familiar with.
“Kalsim, it’s a pleasure to meet once again.” She extended her palm for one of those handshakes, which I met with my talon.
“It’s mine as well.” I was surprised how authentic I made my voice sound. Guess it comes with experience. “I’ve seen you’ve brought all your friends.”
“Gentlemen,” she turned to her compatriots, “you’ve probably heard much about Kalsim at this point, so his name bears no repeating. But rest assured you'll come to know him quite well over the next couple of months.”
Coming out last were several humans donned in extensive combat gear and rifles slinged to their chests. Their shoulders bore that same flag in black and white along with the motif of a finger held up to a pair of their lips. They seemed not in awe of their surroundings, instead meeting the gaze of the assembled guards with suspicion. Their security detail.
With the farusl boring into the back of my skull, I recalled the memorized talking points, and strutted up to the front of the group.
“Welcome to station one, or the ‘Anchor’ as we like to call it. Headquarters of the United Federation Fleet, and where we will coordinate our preparations over the next several months. Although this tour won’t give you a full survey of this station's capabilities, it will give you an idea of the assets we have at our disposal in the fight against the Dominion. I hope that this will one day be a place where we can celebrate our victory. Now, shall we begin?”
They all filed behind me as we began our journey through the station. The officer stayed near the back, scribbling something on his pad. Jones, leading the officials, smiled slightly. I bet she’s very smug about all this. Free insight into all our capabilities, and they didn’t even have to lift a finger.
We took a left at the first opportunity and came to a hallway length viewport. Just beyond the fist thick glass, several spacesuit-donned krakotl orbited the resting hulks of dozens of cruisers and destroyers. Sparks from arcwelders flared momentarily while shuttles darted to and fro. And watching from afar, the crescent shadow of Nishtal. Several of the humans murmured awe at the view. Jones seemed particularly enamored, sizing up each ship as an arxur would its cattle. I tried to hide my discomfort as my next part came up.
“The Anchor serves as the primary shipyard and basing point for much of the fleet. At any one time, hundreds of ships of all classes can be found berthed here, receiving maintenance, fitting upgrades, transferring crew. Hundreds of thousands live and work here every day.”
“Wow, and I thought the lunar station was big.” One of the human generals commented. “This makes that look like a lego playset.”
“As you like to say, Rome wasn’t built in a day.” That elicited a few chuckles. “The station has been expanded and iterated as the Federation has grown. Some sections here date back to our uplift.”
“Shit must be hell to maintain.” Another one of them commented.
A maintenance skiff floated past the window, scanning for any sign of needed repair. At any given moment hundreds were surveying the station, ensuring the Federations presence here was maintained in top shape.
We moved past the viewport towards one with a better view of one of the ships. My ship, in fact. “This is the Lyakuda, under my command. One of the many prides of the fleet. Nearly three hundred meters long, serving a crew of over five thousand, packed to the brim with the latest weapons and technology.”
“What kind of weapons and technology?” Jones asked.
I stuttered for a moment as the farsul settled his glare on me. “Several kinetic and missile batteries, along with dozens of point defense cannons, and a single plasma railcannon. For the sake of tradition.”
“Tradition?”
“Yes, advances in shield and missile tech leave rail cannons outranged and outmatched. With its shields and composite armor plating, a shot to Lyakuda wouldn’t even leave a scratch.”
“Interesting, so what’s that they're installing?”
Her gaze led to a large assembly being installed near the bow of the ship. Arc weld sparks danced among a series of concentric rings lined up one after another, while skiffs guided in exterior plating to be installed over completed sections. When finished, it would resemble a large silo with circular forward facing entry mounted to a turret assembly.
“That is a particle beam cannon, a weapon that promises to completely upend the way ship combat is fought. Tests have it cutting through shields and armor like talons through flesh. The grays won’t know what hit them once we start fielding it en masse.”
And we were just letting her know about it like it was no big deal. She’ll probably have her people cooking up countermeasures before the day is out.
The other generals seemed very impressed, while Jones simply nodded. “Certainly puts our torpedoes to shame. This is all quite impressive Kalsim. Although even without it, I bet you're still quite effective.”
“Well I…”, the officer scribbled away, “…thank you.”
We moved away from the docks and towards the inner side of the ring, where the general quarters were located. It wasn’t long before we came to a hallway that bent up and out of view in either direction.
“We call this Main Street. It spans the entire circumference of the station, and it’s where you can find access to amenities, quarters and training areas. Speaking of which…”
We came to another window, one which lent us a view of a large gymnasium. This one was modeled after the layout of an arxur settlement, based on liberated cattle words and satellite data. From overhead balconies, more kolshian exterminators stood watching, rifles pointed in no particular direction besides down.
Several squads were running the gauntlet, popping holograms of arxur soldiers with training rounds until they collapsed and disintegrated into digital dust. One squad was up against an emplaced machine gun nest inside of a house at the other end of the street. While his squad mates gave him suppressing fire, one Krakotl used his wings to bound quickly over to underneath the window where the nest was located.
Unclipping a grenade from his vest, he flapped one wing, using the rotation to give extra leverage to his throw. The grenade gently arced into the window, before a muffled explosion and a puff of dust signaled the end of the threat. His squadmates gave the krakotl their congratulations, before they moved on to the next objective.
“This is all quite impressive.” Jones noted, with several of her company agreeing. Even some of their security detail seemed to take a break from staring suspiciously to take note of the training.
“Yes, the program we’ve developed is based directly off of experiences from liberating cattle worlds. It’s been adopted by the large majority of the Federation.”
Another soldier, donned in the classic metallic exterminator suit, stuck his flamethrower nozzle through an open window and let it rip. Even from afar, the simulated screams of the arxur echoed sharply.
“Except the coalition, of course.” The officer gave me a side eye. “…But we’ll be more than willing to lend you the use of our training facilities, if you so desire.”
“You seem much better prepared for the war we’re going to fight. Granted you've been fighting it your entire life, but still.” Jones watched as the squad from before began clearing another house. “I’d wager a place like this would be perfect for our needs.”
The rest of the tour went by in a blur, locations melding into one another as a pattern emerged. I would rotely recite the purpose of each station section, the officer would shoot me a glance, and I would add an addendum that would feed into the human generals ego. The farsul would write down something on his pad, and he would move on.
It was a small relief when we reached the designated end point of the tour. A small bar near the edge of the ring, positioned to give a clear view of Nishtal floating below. Webs of light crisscrossed the surface, hugging coastlines, cutting swamps, checkering plains.
I collapsed into one of the chairs as my home slowly crossed the breadth of the window. The layout of the planet was intensely familiar to me from years of study and innumerable times spent staring down from orbit. I could see the boundaries of the ancient nation states, erased in moments by the Federations arrival. The name of each and every city, the university where I met my first love, the academy where I found my purpose, and my estate perched somewhere along the equatorial band.
It all looked so insignificant from up here. 10 billion people, my people, what I thought I spent my life fighting for, contained to a small rock orbiting around a yellow star, one among an innumerable count dotting just the arm alone. That in an instant it could be all wiped away without a thought to spare, just another casualty among countless in a war manufactured long before my time.
Fuck, and to think I once believed in it all. That there was a point to all this.
Well, that was a lie. There was a point. Just like there was a point to this station, the exterminators, predator and prey, everything the Federation stood for. A cynical power game played from the shadows. And I didn’t even know if the players still knew it was a game. But here I was, acting my part, being one of their little pawns. Knowing that at the end of the day it will be all for naught.
I wasn’t planning on drinking, but fuck it. Not like they’ll have much more use for me today.
“Kalsim, I would just like to congratulate you on a job well done.”
Fuck.
Jones sat down across from me, gaze setting upon my home below. “A fantastic view. Nishtal reminds me of Earth in a lot of ways. Only if the everglades took up twenty percent of our land mass, but that’s beside the point.”
I managed an appreciative gesture. “Glad it does. It’s been an honor to bring you into the fold.”
“As has been mine. I’ve been enjoying our time working together, Kalsim. Just like our homes, we have a lot in common.”
I could feel the officers eyes drill dual shafts through the back of my skull. “I was thinking the same thing. We share a common vision, not one held by many others in this galaxy.”
“Exactly.” She raised the glass she brought to the table, and took a short draw. The flag pin fastened to her collar gleamed momentarily. “It’s something I greatly appreciate about you. It’s endlessly frustrating knowing you work among the willfully blind.”
The kolshian exterminator standing guard shifted slightly, eliciting jostles from the various packs strapped to his uniform. “I know the feeling.”
Jones took note of the exterminator, along with the farsul staring me and Jones down like a predator. “It’s funny how they still don’t trust you.”
"Pardon?"
“A millennia of service, and they act like you're going to snap at any moment. Even after curing you, they still see you as predators. Doesn’t that make you angry?”
It did. And I hated that she was right. I hated that she would use that pain as just another way to move me across the board.
“It does.”
She smiled. “Then that puts you a cut above the rest. We share a vision, and a means to enact it. Unlike your so-called allies, I trust you. Do you trust me?”
The farsul was still staring. Could he even hear us? I wasn’t about to take that chance.
“Of course.”
She smiled again before taking another sip of her drink. “Good to hear that we can rely on each other. Especially since there are matters that I would like to discuss in a more…private setting.”
“Like…”
“I think a private tour of Nishtal would be just the perfect setting. I’m very interested in learning more about your home. And it would be good to get to know each well. After all, I imagine we’ll be working together quite a bit more in the coming months.” Her smile very nearly verged on predatory.
What could she possibly want to discuss further? She’s already made her plans quite clear, and she’s probably memorized my script by now. No, it's ‘get to know each other’ that’s important. She wants to get at my heart, kindle some sort of friendship, maybe something more. But it has to be some sort of act. At the end of the day I'm just a pawn to her, like I am to them.
And I'm sure they’ll love smashing me and Jones together.
“I’ll see if something can be arranged.”
On average, kolshians were just a tad bit shorter than kraktol. It varied from case to case, but that was the general rule. Maybe that’s why Nikonus never met me in person.
“So the general came to you with the offer of the tour.” The purple kolshain spouted, tentacles folded over another as he lounged at his desk. With the holo display on, the normally stout Chief absolutely dwarfed me. “It seems she wants an opportunity to further discuss her plans in private.”
“That appears to be the case.” Even sitting on my perch, surrounded by my more than luxurious quarters, light years away from his physical presence, anxiety still found room to creep up my throat. I had become well versed in hiding it thankfully. Either that, or the Chief was stunningly unaware. Probably a mix of both.
“She may want to divulge more information than she’s been willing to let on before. Either that…”
“Do you have another theory?”
“I’d call it more of a hunch, but it appears that Jones may be trying to foster more of an…intimate relationship with me. She’s become…quite friendly.”
“Ah, a classic case of predatory deceit.” Nikonus adopted a smug look. “Playing at our sympathy. That’s how they got to the Coalition. Seems they’re trying the same trick with you.”
“So what would you have me do then?” I dreaded the answer I already knew was coming. Of course,
“Maintain course. Continue to court her, do whatever it takes to make her believe she is in control. Then, once they’ve grown complacent, we strike.”
“And what if she doesn't play along? Even with the cyberattack, we still don't have a proper idea of what she’s planning. She might be using the Coalition to prepare a first strike as we speak.”
“And as we’ve already discussed, we have contingencies prepared. If Jones, humanity, or any member of the Coalition fall out of line, they will be dealt with appropriately.”
With a large dosage of antimatter no doubt. “I’m still concerned the neutrals won’t fall in line. Even if we present a solid case, who's to say the shield, or the-”
“Kalsim.” The chief's massive eyes narrowed into a piercing glare. “Are you doubting the plan?”
As if I even know what the ‘plan’ is. “No, I just have some concerns that I would-”
“Then I suggest that you keep those concerns to yourself. Despite your and your species prior affliction, you have proven yourself trustworthy. Don’t make me doubt that assessment.”
Or I’ll personally make sure a PD facility ensures you’ll never see the light of day again was the implication. They already did it with Solvin, and he was practically the fleet's mascot. They wouldn’t spare any expense for me.
“I…understand.”
Nikonus twisted his tentacles together in satisfaction. “Good. Make sure that Jones becomes well acquainted with Nishtal. And remember, do whatever is necessary. I trust that you will.”
“Yes, I-”
The display cut off, leaving the giant visage of Nikonus replaced with the back wall of my quarters. Not even going to leave me with the final word.
I don’t know how long I stared forward blankly. A minute, an hour? What did time matter to me? I didn’t dictate my own time. I hadn’t for a while.
That was the funny thing about being a captain. Command of an entire ship, entire fleets. Fame, prestige, wealth, all of that at my wingtips. But not over myself. How funny that is.
I turned to the viewport just as Nishtal crept back into view. It was followed by a massive cruiser passing in front of the planet, completely blocking view of my homeworld. Painted brightly on the side was the logo of the United Federation Fleet.
What am I doing this for anymore? Not for my people, not for their protection. They would just as easily sacrifice their oldest member as their youngest if they saw it fit. For myself? What do I gain from this besides empty platitudes, useless wealth, a voice that commands but does not control?
Nothing.
I’m just…nothing.
Almost like on autopilot, I strutted over to the bathroom and got the shower running. Not even because I needed it. Not even because I wanted it. It was just something that I could do myself.
I almost didn’t take off my uniform before I stepped under the waterfall. It didn’t matter. I had ten identical copies hanging in my wardrobe. Same medals, same name rendered in that common script they liked to push on everybody.
Maybe the shower was some vain attempt to forget the word existed. The steam clouded my vision, the water muffled all sound, and I could pretend for a moment that none of it existed. The Federation, the kolshians, everything we’ve lost, the pointlessness of it all.
We’re piloting ourselves into another endless war, and for what? Another two centuries of their ‘benevolent rule’?
I collapsed against the wall, not caring for the water getting into my eyes. I just sat there, trying not to think about anything. But even in the confines of my solitude, the outside world found a way in, in the form of a notification from my holopad.
Reaching out from the shower, I saw that it was an alert that someone was at my door. Sighing, I shut the water off, made the barest effort to dry myself, and threw a towel around my waist. The mirror told me that I looked like shit. Not that I cared much for its opinion at the moment.
Stepping over and unlocking the door met me with a teal kolshian, dressed in a delivery service uniform, with a hurried look in his eyes.
“Excuse me, what do you-”
The kolshian shoved a small package into my wings, before darting back down the hallway. Making sure no one else was coming, I closed my door, and set about examining the package.
It was an odd little thing. A small box, wrapped in paper with almost…festive patterns on it. Completed with a bow and tie. Removing the wrapping revealed a small cardboard box, entirely unassuming, with a lid that came off easily. Inside that was a small paper note, folded neatly.
There was a feeling of apprehension holding it in my talons. Who sent this, any why? And what was with the strange packaging? But curiosity overrode my lingering sense of doubt, and my talons gently unfolded the paper.
Kalsim, I must apologize for the strange manner this message has been delivered in, but consider it in the spirit of the holidays. Humans have the strangest traditions, don’t they?
Simply, I need your help. And you’re one of the few I can trust.
I know they’ve put you in a rather unenviable position. So consider this an out. Or as the humans would put it, a late ‘Christmas gift’.
And remember the phrase:
Clear Sky
It will help you.
At the bottom, a set of neatly written coordinates.
I stared at the note for what must have been minutes, trying to process what exactly I just read. Definitely not fanmail, that’s for sure. But crossing that explanation off didn’t leave me with many others. I sat down at my desk, flipped on the lamp, and began the process of deduction. There wasn't exactly much to go off. Definitely not enough to make a conclusive determination. But maybe just enough to get a good idea of who sent this note.
The delivery man seemed real anxious to get his job done. Almost like he knew what was inside the package. That he knew what was inside was important. So maybe it's safe to say that he wasn’t a delivery man at all, but a direct agent of the notes author.
A definite possibility. But for all I knew, the author in question could just be some wayward youth looking to pull a prank. So I next turned my attention to the writing itself. And that revealed a noteworthy detail.
Perfect Jelidese. Jelidese was one of the old krakotl dialects, back before the Federation came around and purged it from our records. Well, all except from the galactic archives. And being in my prestigious position, I was allowed limited access into what remained of my peoples history. I had taken to the ancient language, partly as a passion project, partly as a small act of preservation.
Nonetheless, the fact that the note was written in the script meant it had to be written by someone with knowledge of the language. Someone important enough to have access to those parts of the archives in the first place. And someone who knew I knew the language in the first place. It can’t be a coincidence. This has to be someone high up.
An idea began to form in my head, only further strengthened by an examination of the handwriting itself. I’d seen it from numerous handwritten letters and notes sent down straight from the top. The style was unmistakable. The loops, the swirls, the curls. This was written by a kolshian, and more importantly, one which attended the Flora Naval and Military academy, who had a reputation of enforcing upon its cadets this very exact style of handwriting.
And the fact that the author knew of my position, how I was being forced into it? Someone could deduce that, sure, but they would have a tough time. They made sure I made sure of that. No, they had direct knowledge of the dealings between me and the Chief.
I leaned back in my chair as the possibilities swirled. Someone in the Shadow Eye, a higher up in Aafa, or perhaps one of…them.
And now there was the possibility that one of them just gave me an out.
No, that’s too good to be true. A strange note, no author, a random set of coordinates? This has all the makings of a trap.
But then again, I’m already trapped. If they wanted to lock me up in a PD facility, they wouldn’t need to do much. Fabricate some documents, leak them to the internet, and I would be lobotomized by the end of the week.
And the fact that they didn’t seem to mind this human holiday ‘Christmas’. A predator's holiday. They even compared it to the grays worship of their prophet. Yet…no, this can’t be right.
My mind was caught in a civil war as I pondered the meaning of the note. It could very well be some sort of ruse conjured by Nikonus to catch me out on treasonous thoughts. Or it could be the way out that the author promised.
Either way I was screwed. Condemned to watch helplessly as the Federation collapsed into more endless war, or to watch helplessly strapped to a torture chair.
But, if there’s even the slightest possibility that the author is telling the truth…
An out. A promise of agency.
And that was a promise I couldn't help believe in.
I went to plug the coordinates into my holopad, before realizing it was probably being monitored. I’ll have to go in blind. But that’s a risk I’ll have to take. Instead of a map, I pulled up the private channels, and sent a message off to an aid.
Tell the human delegation that General Jones' tour of Nisthal will have to be postponed.
Personal matters have come up.
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Hi everybody
I've been lurking on this sub for a while, but now it's come to the point where I really need to ask for your advice.
I (36F) am looking for advice on how I can best support my partner (30M) who has grown up with a narcissistic mother.
When I first met his Nmom, I had alarm bells go off immediately.
1) She told me that I would have to defer to her in medical decisions for my partner who suffers from a chronic health condition (but is perfectly capable of making his own medical decisions and has done so since the age of 16 when he was first diagnosed).
2) She told me that just because I have money, that I'm not better than her (I had just bought my own flat before I met my partner, but it's not flashy and it's about a quarter of the size of her house).
3) She started looking inside my washing machine, found a tiny bit of fluff and started instructing me how I ought wash my clothes and take care of my appliances. Essentially, how I needed to improve my housekeeping skills to care for my partner (we both work full time and split chores evenly).
4) She asked several invasive questions about my fertility as well as when I last went to the gynecologist.
I am not a confrontational person and at the time I was too stunned to respond. Convinced that I wouldn't get a word in edgeways if I called her, I messaged her and politely set out the boundaries of mine that had been crossed, but said that I really cared for her son and hoped that our relationship could improve. After this she didn't talk to me for 5 months but yelled at my partner, who staunchly supported me on every occasion.
My partner was very anxious during this time and keen to smooth things over despite her lack of apology. I figured that the most important thing was that he had my back, and so I agreed to give her another chance. We carried on as though nothing had happened and to be fair, she has not crossed these boundaries with me again. Although I have always found her to be very overbearing and argumentative, I have tried my best to get to know her better, and I came to understand that a lot of her actions come from having suffered an abusive upbringing herself, and some extreme anxiety around losing control. I tried to show her that I wasn't here to take her son away, and to give her a long leash around some of her bad behaviour (one particularly bad incident involved her feeding my dog a load of small bones on Christmas day after I told her at least 10 times not to feed him bones - she 'forgot' about this and still blames it on me - luckily my poor dog was ok.) At every turn, I've tried my best to forgive her and move on for my partner's sake.
However recently, her behaviour has got worse and worse. She has called my partner up repeatedly to scream at him while he's been at work, cheated on her husband, went on holiday when her husband has been incredibly sick leaving us to care for him with no notice before he had to be admitted to hospital... and then did a complete 180 and started camping out at the hospital, refusing to respect visiting hours and screaming abuse to doctors and nurses trying to do their jobs to the point where security came and threw her out. Her emotions are everywhere and she expects my partner to be there or at least at the end of the phone day or night to regulate them.
Last week my partner cracked and told me what his childhood was really like. In the past she has hit and kicked my partner, and attacked her husband with a hoover pole. My partner's brothers endured similar abuse. She also psychologically abuses my partner, saying he's 'not a real man', calling his career choice 'pathetic' and weaponising guilt and tears when he shows too much independence. I feel heartbroken that he didn't tell me this sooner, and foolish that I suppressed my initial instincts about her and didn't see the signs. Often when we're all together my partner will go mute and just stare at his phone - I now see that he's probably dissociating when he does this. However, throughout the years we've been together he's covered for her - I don't know whether this is because of a misplaced loyalty, or a fear that she could gatekeep contact with his Dad if he pulled away from her (his Dad adores her and would believe anything she told him).
I know that it's not my call to go NC and I don't believe that he's ready for this step - he will likely lose touch with his sick dad and be villainised by the wider family. I just want to know how I can support him without buying into the family dysfunction - I cannot un-know what I know and I don't want to spend any more of my time pandering to somebody who I now know is an outright abuser. I have put some firm boundaries of my own down (i.e. I will never have her around my dog again), but if I put down a boundary of never spending time with her again myself, I wonder if I may open my partner up to psychological and perhaps physical abuse? Should I encourage him to lay down boundaries or am I just making life harder for him?
Sorry for the length of this - I'd really appreciate advice from this community. I know you've all walked the walk of dealing with narc families.

I'll keep it simple with breakdowns as able, and while you might disagree with some of the things I say, I feel you may not disagree with all of the things I say.
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Lets get the hot take out of the way really quickly - Music

• The music in this game is phenomenal, but heavily limited, much like the first game. While I love what is currently there, it tends to do two things that are becoming increasingly annoying.

1. The repetition of the same musical numbers in multiple sections of the game can make extended play sessions an exercise in patience, and while I know we can agree the launch music is a banger, you can only listen to the same song so many times before you start to become aggravated by the process.
2. The music is misleading. Now you might be saying "What do you mean misleading?", well rather simply, it's use and implementation is directly affecting how users play the game at a subconscious level, oftentimes to their detriment. There are no musical sets to imply an overwhelming numbers scenario, and there is no music for encouraging a player group to disengage the enemy, this oftentimes means that users will not notice another problem.....

Combat spawning mechanics.

• It's known as you progress that engagements that are allowed to run for even slightly too long will often cascade into outright mosh-pits of enemies. I believe this is intended to encourage groups to understand some basics of engagement, hit-and-run, and shock / awe engagements, as well as finally just not engaging every patrol that exists.
  • This cascade effect is amplified by the music design, that makes many players feel like this is a "Big stand", when in reality the game is asking you to kindly run because this is the ninth time you have decided to...
    • Throw your (now infuriated) teammates into the horde via a pokeball, praying they will land on something large before they are turned into a human cat-toy by the literal swarm they have been dumped into without equipment, or teammates, or heck, the time to even react.
    • While is it understandable that you have steering mechanics, and that you can control your fate somewhat, at the moment the radius of an un-upgraded pod is only large enough to choose where you die. The fact a ship upgrade is required for what should be a quality (and longevity) of life feature may fit the theme, but in my opinion it does not fit my blood pressure. This would be more survivable if it wasnt for the fact that....

Armor stats mean essentially nothing.

• If an armor has 50 armor stat, and another has 60, then both armors are essentially identical in their armor strength. Not because they are close in the number but because there is a sort of "Fail-over point" where the number actually means it allows you to take another hit. Anything below this point makes it identical to all others in this sort of "deadzone" where the armors effects mean nothing.
  • (Please keep in mind I'm using these numbers as an example and I don't need the Excel warriors doing spreadsheet kung-fu on me to "um, akshually" me about 50/60...you get the drift of the message.)
• Armor passives are another discussion, suffice to say everyone has preached enough about needing more variance in passives, I'll say the same thing, but I can't make any real input on what needs to happen there.

The End-of-Round death by powerpoint.

• Lets be blunt, if it takes longer to end a match than it does to walk around, say "gg re?" pick a spot to drop, get into pods, select your stuff, and then drop? That is a problem.
• The business grade powerpoint presentation that takes places that could have been much more concise and streamlined is asinine, and what boggles my mind is that it used to be even slower than this!

Lets circle back to sound, specifically something known as Audio Cues.

• The music is hiding another issue, many of the mobs in the game are quite literally silent, and I'm not sure if it's been made known to you.
• Go turn off music in the menu settings of the game, grab some buddies you trust or go alone, and try to trigger some spawns or find enemies. Give them a nice poke.
  • You're going to find out that not only do they not make a lot of noise, but that many of the largest enemies in the game are effectively silent.
  • Imagine a hulk somehow scooby-dooing behind you like some kind of cartoon villian. This is directly in contradiction to their size and presence on the battlefield. You getting the picture?
• Because there is such a huge lack of sound cues you're missing a key aspect of gameplay mechanics within a grouping known as situational awareness.
  • Now the first and obvious answer people have is "LOL JUS LOOK AROUND DAWG" but you're not the people I want to talk to about this as I'm not in the right state of drunk to handle that conversation.
  • Sound design gives players situational awareness just as much as visual, and this can come from enemies who are occluded by cover, or who provide a cue they exist in the horde. Left 4 Dead had a system using music (specifically piano and sounds specific to an enemy), Darktide performs this with multiple enemy types, the same goes for Gears of War, Halo, etc..
  • With a few small exceptions, such as the bots marching song, most enemies are friggen quiet. This is weird, and after seeing this, you're going to notice it too.

I ain't here to complain about guns or stratagems, plenty of people do that just fine, and everyone thinks they have the next big "brilliant" fix (looking at you, melee mech crowd, this aint gundam). I have ideas too, problem is that I'm not a game designer, and I have no friggen clue how much work it'd take to implement them.
I am able to observe though, and talk about my experiences with the game. Dunno if it'll mean much, but maybe you folks agree on some of this.
​
--Out
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Synopsis:
"You are a monster, Adam, but you didn't choose to be. Make your first choice."\
Molded into a mindless killing machine from birth, psychic prodigy Augustus Adam makes his first real choice and frees himself from the shackles of his upbring. But it is too late.
After being tried for his crimes against humanity, he is sentenced to summary execution after a short trial. Unwilling to let his mind be studied to produce more psychics like himself, he does the only thing that ensures humanity's freedom from psychic tyranny: suicide.
Though death's embrace is sweet, it's surprisingly short as Adam awakes in an unknown forest, learning soon after that he is in a world of magic, of swords and sorcery. Accompanied by magical beasts that could flatten a mountain if they so wished, Adam sets forth into this new world, hoping to make a positive difference this time around. It was his choice, a real chance for freedom, and he wasn't about to let some demon lords, necromancers, or gods get in his way towards redemption.
***
Note:
A rewrite from a previous version, this story is a slice-of-life adventure of an young man blessed with powers but burdened by a heavy and troubled past, hoping to reconcile himself with his innate humanity. Though the premise is magic vs psychic power, I also want to explore the human heart. I believe that there is good in people, but they all need to make the choice. This story follows that line of thinking. Any and all constructive criticism is encouraged and appreciated.
First / Prev / Next / RoyalRoad
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This was not the first time I was surrounded and outnumbered, neither was this the first time I found myself standing alone against incredible odds. This was, however, the first time I've been surrounded by animals. Animals that could very well be tanks with four legs and mighty antlers that spewed bolts. I thought for a moment that maybe I was inside a simulation of some kind, or a testing ground for new and highly advanced combat drones. That said, the animals looked too natural, their movements fluid and Graceful. Their intent was to try and kill me.
And that's exactly what they did. As if on cue, bolts shot out from the space between their antlers, firing towards me like bullets of light. Now that I was alert and ready, I was able to redirect most of the bolts, bending their trajectories or tanking them outright with my psychic shield.
The bolts still came in a relentless assault, pounding against my psychic shield in the thousands. They were similar to tank shells in terms of kinetic and explosive yield, reminding me of the time I got surrounded by a tank battalion. This time, however, the tanks did not need to reload as long.
Speaking of my psychic shield, it was an invisible yet physical barrier that could be wrapped around my body or extended as a sphere around me. It did well to protect me from surprise attacks, environmental hazards, and incoming fire. However, despite the strength of my mind and the immense psychic power I wielded, I could not possibly hold out forever. Not against this power.
With a wave of my hand I swiped several of the deer off their feet. As I did, I began gathering forth a wall of air to slam into the rest. With the air within my grasp, I spun round, bringing to bear the wall of air against every animal surrounding me. Much of the deer lost their footing, finding themselves tumbling against the weight of this sudden wind. The elk, meanwhile, struck against it, causing my attempt to lose speed and fizzle out. They then continued to fire.
The flaming blue birds dove towards me, swiping at my shield with their fiery beaks and claws. Blue flames engulfed the ground beyond the protection of my psychic shield as the birds flapped their wings, summoning forth gusts of blazing fire. Their flames bounced off my shield, but the fires themselves placed a tremendous strain. These were not ordinary fires. They burned bright, stronger, and hotter. A lot hotter.
I had to move, and quickly. Ignoring the muted pain all over my body, I lifted myself up and flew through the wall of deer and elk as fast as I could, avoiding where the moose and wolves still stood. They didn't seem interested in acting just yet, and that worried me.
Bolts flew all around me as the animals gave chase. The birds continued to swing and dive, bearing their claws and fiery wings. The deer and elk ran through the forest with grace and speed, zipping between the trees with the elegance of a ballerina skating over ice. It was surreal, and terrifying. The animals left in their wake a trail of light as they ran, the only proof of their flight.
I, on the other hand, was frantically swinging wildly and abruptly as I sped through the forest, avoiding massive tree trunks and dangling vines as best as I could. Putting more of my power at the front of my psychic shield, I plowed through the air with increasing speed. The air howled in protest as the chase grew faster and even more desperate for me.
I did not want to harm the animals directly, no more than what was necessary. It didn't seem right, as if something was telling me that doing so would be a tremendous mistake. There was a subtle mental influence being projected against my mind. It was nigh imperceptible and hard to sense, but the influence was unmistakable. Something or someone was pushing me to be careful.
If killing the animals was going to be a mistake, then I could at least try and slow them down. I sent forth my power and wrapped a tree around my mental grasp a few thousand meters away. I felt the enormity of the tree as my power followed its length into the sky, still not reaching the top in spite of my effort. Still, I had within my mental hold several hundred meters of tree trunk. That would have to do.
Unsurprisingly, the tree was as hard as a solid concrete skyscraper and it took me some effort to pull it down, placing even more strain on my already bruised and battered body.
The mind was the springboard from which my psychic powers came from. My body, meanwhile, powered my brain and ensured it could call upon my psychic power. The many injuries I had thus far sustained was proving detrimental, hampering much of my mind from calling upon most of my power.
Once I finally overpowered the tree, an entire network of thick, deep roots sprang from the ground in a massive explosion of dust as the behemoth fell towards my direction. As it came crashing down, I realized that I had made a grave miscalculation. Though I had not reached its top, it instead fell towards me with the weight of a small hill.
There was a chorus of rustling leaves and snapping branches as a massive shadow appeared over my head. I came to a stop, unsure which direction to take. My pursuers immediately changed course, making a hasty retreat away from the shadow as it darkened and expanded around me. A few moments later, several of the tree trunks around me shook after a violent crash, mercifully catching the falling tree.
The mist cleared and I saw the canopy of the fallen tree looming over my head. Long, intertwining branches stretched for hundreds of meters, full of large leaves of many shapes and a few colors. The branches pulsed with veins throbbing with white and blue color.
Panting, my psychic revealed that I was again surrounded, this time by an even greater number of animals. They slowly made their way towards me, their pace slowed and careful.
From beyond the mist that still persisted in front of me came the moose and its pack of wolves. The moose looked at me with disdain in his eyes. Pure and utter contempt. A drastic change from the neutral gaze it held before.
The deer and elk did not fire their bolts, instead forming a perimeter around me while the moose and the wolves walked forward. I frowned and took a stance, readying myself for another bout. I had no idea how this was going to go down, it could either be a melee or a firefight. Either was not okay, I'd rather they left me alone or showed me the way out of here.
I did not want to fight them, yet I had no other choice. Still, a growing part within me was rebelling against the influence telling me to show mercy. My strange and unexpected second chance at life was on the line for goodness sake!
Pain flared all over my body as the adrenaline struggled to keep pace with the physical strain. I had broken many bones and lost a considerable amount of blood, not to mention the injuries most of my organs had sustained.
"I'm not here to fight you, nor do I want to harm any of you. Please, let me go. Help me get out of this place and I won't bother you or come back ever again." I said, almost pleading, hoping that the creatures understood.
Then a voice came, echoing from the moose, and yet the animal's mouth did not move. Still, it spoke.
"Not only have you trespassed into our home, you have desecrated our sacred grounds and killed one of our beloved Elders. You will pay with your life, Summoned One."
Summoned One?
Before I could process anything, the moose's antlers began to spark with electricity as they began glowing with light.
"As a Guardian of the Trees, I demand that you perish."
Lightning struck from above with a loud boom, crackling with fury as it smashed against the roof of my psychic shield. My psychic shield barely held on as it absorbed and redirected hundreds of millions of volts in the split second the lightning hit.
After the first strike, another soon thundered down, then another, until I was under constant assault. My ankles buckled and I fell on my knees, sinking into the ground as I found myself at the mercy of whatever this moose-like creature was.
But even as my legs waned and my arms tired, my mind remained defiant. In spite of the pain and agony, my body pushed back. I held out, and as another streak of lightning hammered down from the sky, I roared.
My power swelled from the depths of my mind, fueled by a desperate scream to survive and make something of myself. For myself. I felt my surroundings with unmatched clarity, capturing everything within the power of my psychic might.
Fight or flight. A natural human response against danger. At first, I chose to fly, literally and figuratively. Now? It was time to take a stand, and fight. To whomever wanted me to hold back, may they understand and forgive me.
Before the lightning could strike at my shield, I threw it off-course with an unseen nudge, making it deflect off my psychic shield before exploding into a million sparks elsewhere. It left a burning mark where it went, causing the grass there to become charred and smolder.
Using my power to enhance my movement, I flickered from my position, disappearing with a blink, and slammed my fist against the unsuspecting moose.
The majestic animal recoiled from the blow, staggering back. After realizing what just happened, the wolves immediately bore their fangs and pounced at me with their claws. Their speed surprised me, catching me off-guard as claws scratched at my skin and fangs barely missed my limbs.
Doing my best to dodge, I retaliated with punches and elbows, kicks and quick footwork. The wolves and I exchanged blows and blood was drawn from both sides. Their eyes, gleaming a fiery white blaze, left streaks in the air as their speed grew. Realizing that I would soon be overwhelmed, I decided to push my brain even further.
I opened my hands before clenching them shut, catching the wolves mid-air with a psychic hold. They floated in the air, unable to move, struggling and growling as their eyes stared at me with contempt. S
Panting, I went on my knees while I kept one hand raised and closed. I struggled to keep my concentration as exhaustion and pain combined assaulted my body.
I then felt a tingle in the air and saw the deer and elk readying their antlers to fire bolts. Thinking quickly, I decided to use the wolves as a shield and surrounded myself with their floating bodies. As expected, the other animals hesitated, refusing to fire with their allies on the line. The blue flaming birds circled above me, waiting for a chance to strike. These wholly different animals cared for each other in a way that was unnatural yet comforting. For them.
"Leave me, and I'll go." I said, begging. I was at my limit, and pushing myself even further would just mean certain death.
None of the animals looked to be tired at all. They barely had any injuries, aside from the wolves with their ruffled fur and bleeding bruises.
The moose, having recovered from my punch, walked up to me with regal disposition. He stared at me for a moment and our eyes locked. There was no silent conversation or unseen understanding.
"Unhand my brothers." It demanded.
"Let me go." I countered.
"That cannot be done. You have failed us, Summoned One. You will not leave this place with your life. Your soul will be returned to the great abyss where it belongs."
"How on earth could I have failed you? I don't even know what's going on!" I said, pulling the wolves closer around me.
"You failed the moment you arrived. You are a monster. A distasteful stain. You wreak death in ways unseen and in numbers unheard of. This world has seen enough monsters."
Silence prevailed as I took in the animal's words. It knew who I was, or what I was. It understood my existence, and was aware of my past. I couldn't help but feel utterly confused, and at the same crushed.
"Then face me alone." I said as I freed the wolves from my hold, setting them loose. The wolves immediately retreated behind the moose.
"Oh? Are you proposing a duel?" It asked.
Honestly, it was just a desperate attempt to give myself a chance. It sounded like the animal had a sense of responsibility and held itself to some sort of standards. It felt rigid, and it reminded me of Earth's ancient histories. Maybe it knew things similarly. And thus I decided to take my chances and asked.
"A duel. A fair fight. If I win, you let me go and I'll leave this forest and everyone in it alone. If you win, then make my death as swift as possible."
The moose frowned, considering my proposal.
"You are in no position to dictate an agreement." It said finally.
"But I do anyway."
The moose snorted. The animals then fell back, forming a wide and open ring around us. The mist likewise cleared within the ring, allowing for good visibility. The moose moved forward with its head held high and antlers to the sky.
"Then it is accepted." It sounded amused.
First / Prev / Next / RoyalRoad
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What it says on the box. I'm trying noom, and my ADHD (and autism) is near crippling.
So far, at a week it's kept me engaged enough to keep using it. And it's helping me keep track of my calories in/out and what a real portion size looks like.
Neurodivergence is a unique challenge with weight loss, because autism can cause an inability to feel hunger or fullness. And adhd can make it near impossible to create habits and stick to plans.
So, I'm trying it, and hopefully I'll be able to remember to write an update on whether it's a valid option for those that struggle forming habits and remembering to stick to a plan.

clown cars come up off the ground all miniature honking then full sized beings come out them
there's a baseball game with constant homeruns and a crowd cheering
i was so convinced this was really happening outside my condo and was confused why my cats weren't reacting to the parade going on outside or these sounds of like an airplane crashing and my cats do not react to it, if i didnt have my cats i dont know where these auditory hallucinations would take me.
the hallucinations are real as they are happening then since i record it with my phone and have the cats to inform me if the hallucinations are real................
im more confused than anyone able to read this as to what is happening to me