I don’t know what’s so special about the umpteenth time, but I finally snapped. I think it’s that when I confronted my husband about picking screen time over sex, he said “you’re right.” That’s it. Not an explanation excuse apology or anything. He’s not physically incapable of having sex, he’s proven recently as well. If I initiate and do all of the work, his manhood works just fine! He just doesn’t feel like fucking me most of the time. I respect that. I don’t respect his absolute cowardice in admitting it. It serves neither of us to live in a delusion. I resent him for his inability to just be honest. I resent his promises to change and I resent myself for believing them. I find him unattractive now. We have what one would say is the typical “great except for the sex” relationship and that’s honestly true. If he were my roommate or friend I’d have no complaints in our dynamic. So I’ve decided that’s what we are! I will not dote on him, I will not beg, and if I get the chance to get my needs met elsewhere I will not be guilty. I deserve to feel wanted and I’ve been waiting literal years. (This is not a request for dms, I am not looking for love on Reddit🤮)
Leaving isn’t an option unless I want to survive paycheck to paycheck, struggling to find childcare and sucking up already limited gov resources. I’d have to move back into the family house, who’s already over capacity. I have no savings skills or education. Mrs degrees don’t get you far in the real world. Feel free to save your breath about how I would be happier in a dirt hut alone than with someone who doesn’t appreciate me. Anyone who says that hasn’t been in the hut.

By Fin
“Holy crap.” James Talbot stepped back from his handiwork. It was beautiful. It made him want to scream.
Talbot was a chemist, the modern form of an alchemist, and he’d discovered something as wondrous and terrible as the most extreme postulations of his forbearers.
This was it. The culmination of all his works. This is what he’d fought for decades for, why he’d abandoned connections with everyone he’d ever known. But now it was all worth it. He would reveal the Masterwork at the Grand Chemistry Convention. It would steal the show, and he would be revered beyond every other human being who had ever lived.
It had taken Talbot long enough to assemble the Masterwork that he’d shed the title of ‘young’, not to mention most of his non-gray hair. Although it was hard to tell whether that was from aging or from what he’d beheld in his long sojourn. He was only 45, after all, and the rest of his body still held firm from decades of outdoorsmanship.
Talbot stood before a wall, upon which was painted the most intricate design any human had ever seen. It was a diagram of… unknown things. A chart of runes, maps, and artfully painted lines. There was no text in any living language on the diagram, but the harmony within the full tapestry visually sang, imparting something unfathomable in a way that Talbot could somehow fathom. The man who’d made it, who’d studied it for 15 years, barely understood it himself. But he knew that it was the ultimate solution to the entirety of philosophy, containing the answers to every question humanity had ever seen fit to ask. It had existed in his notebook for a while, in bits and pieces, but today had been its first full assembly, and it was magnificent.
He had to keep it hidden, or someone would take it from him.
He retrieved a tarp and threw it over the wall, nailing it in at the top so it hung down to cover his designs. Just to be sure, he moved his desk to block the wall, then locked the door to his office when he left for the day. James Talbot was more excited than he had ever been, and he celebrated that night with a fireplace and a large bottle of whiskey.
Of all the people at his office to commit espionage, Talbot never would’ve suspected the night janitor. This may stem from the fact that he also never suspected the night janitor to be part of a massive secret organization dedicated to keeping humanity as ignorant as possible in matters of the Higher Order.
But no matter what Talbot suspected, Tim Willis was indeed part of this society, and after he’d entered Talbot’s office with his master key to do some routine cleaning, the obvious secrecy surrounding the wall at the back of the room worried him. So he moved the desk out of the way, lifted the tarp, and inhaled sharply.
This was bad. A tapestry of the Higher Order more complete than any he’d seen before, or any reported by the other Censors of the Agency for the Preservation of Humanity.
Willis quickly replaced the tarp and desk. As soon as he’d locked the room, he pulled out his phone and dialed the number for an Alexander Talc.
Talbot arrived the next morning with a song in his heart and a latte in his hand. The former died horribly as soon as he entered his office only to find someone sitting in his chair, and the latter died horribly as it fell from his fingers, limp in shock.
The person in question was a short, slight man who wore thick glasses and a dark gray suit. He was sitting on Talbot’s office chair, facing the now uncovered back wall with all of its eldritch calculations. Talbot’s desk had been moved to the side of the room, left askew with the tarp crumpled up on top.
As Talbot entered, the stranger spun the chair around so he was facing the chemist, a broad smile on his face. He was undeniably attractive, in a delicate sort of way.
“Ah! You must be the aspiring alchemist?” He spoke softly and cheerily, but with an unnerving edge. Talbot couldn’t identify any specific aspect of his voice that disturbed him, but upon further consideration he concluded that it was the incongruity of the situation, the warm friendliness of his tone grating against Talbot’s unease.
Talbot took a step back, shaken. “I don’t… what-”
“Quite an impressive display here. You’ve managed to glean a quite large amount of knowledge about the Higher Order, especially considering you’ve never consulted us at the APH.” He pronounced it phonetically, like Aff.
“What are you-”
Talbot heard a click from behind him, and turned to see Tim Willis, the night janitor, closing and locking his door. He could barely register the betrayal.
“Ah, yes. Tim is working for me. For us. The Agency for the Protection of Humankind really frowns upon anyone attempting to learn the Higher Order.”
Talbot, finally able to form a full sentence, asked, “What’s the Higher Order?”
“You know what it is, of course, although you may not have heard the term. It’s what we call the mechanics of the very fabric of the universe itself. The questions about ‘why are we here?’ and ‘is there a god?’ and all the stuff like that. All theoretical philosophy, basically. And you, apparently through sheer dumb luck,” He turned to admire the mural again, “have managed to find more of it than any human being ever, including us! Quite impressive. Big hand.” The man slow-clapped for Talbot. The small sweet-looking man being sarcastically condescending was jarringly incongruous.
Talbot felt a surge of anger, and it helped him produce a full sentence. “Dumb luck?!?” He advanced on the man. “My Masterwork is the product of 20 years of research and experience! This is the greatest thing anyone has ever done, and how dare you say I achieved it through dumb luck!”
The man raised his hands placatingly. “Okay, okay!” He chuckled. “Years of research, whatever. You found the Higher Order. That’s where we come in.”
“Why?”
“Ah. Well, you see, the reason that no one’s found the entire Higher Order is simple. It’s because we stop them.”
Talbot was incredulous. “What?! Why would you stand in the way of progress like that?!” As a scientist, the possibility that there could be anyone actively against gaining knowledge was incomprehensible to him.
The man grimaced, as though he was about to break some terrible news. “Well… there are some parts of this tapestry you’ve assembled, specifically here...” The man pointed at a small segment of the diagram, a thick horizontal line with four thin lines crossing perpendicularly that turned into five lines on the other side, “That grants access to some other planes of existence. Planes of existence that are home to some very dangerous things. And due to some logistical aspects of the Higher Order,” He gestured at another segment of the diagram entirely composed of square symbols, “if you muck about in their domain, they are able to muck about in ours. The Law of Equivalent Interference.”
“But… how would our finding answers count as ‘mucking about in their domain’? If we knew the danger, we just wouldn’t go there.”
The man was silent, then answered Talbot’s question with a question. “Tell me, Talbot. If humans discovered another dimension, do you really think they’d be able to stay out of it?”
“Fine. But then why do you have to censor the whole thing? Why not give them the benign parts that would still forward human progress by centuries?”
“Because the Higher Order is like Algebra. Or a logic puzzle from Highlights magazine. If you give someone smart enough just a few clues, they’ll eventually assemble the whole picture. Which we desperately want to avoid.”
There was a long and heavy silence.
“Ok.” Said Talbot, wrapping his head around the new information. “So the APH stops people from finding the answers to these questions so our world isn’t destroyed by Fourth Dimensional entities?”
“Exactly!” The man nodded, delighted at Talbot’s comprehension. “Well, they’re technically Fifth Dimensional. The existence of time in our reality means that this is the Fourth Dimension.”
There was another silence.
“Sorry, what was your name again?” Talbot asked.
The man looked utterly devastated. “Oh no! I can’t believe I was so rude!” He vaulted the desk and approached Talbot, stopping just short and shaking his hand. “Alexander Talc, Class 2 Censor Operative for the APH.”
“Censor as in… ?”
“Yes, I censor things. People too, if necessary.”
“So what,” Talbot asked, “You’re here to kill me?”
Talc gasped. “What?!?! No! As if we’d be so barbaric! We’re here to recruit you.”
Talbot’s eyes widened. “Wait, really?”
“Of course! You know more about the Higher Order than any human outside of the APH, and probably more than a majority of those inside of the APH. Your expertise could be vital in preventing a breach in our reality!”
“What would this job entail?”
“Well, we’d need you to fake your death, change your name, burn your research-”
Talbot recoiled.
“Now I know that sounds like a lot,” Talc backpedaled, “But allow me to let you in on a little secret.” He leaned in conspiratorially, then glanced around as though to make sure nobody was listening. Satisfied, he whispered, “The dental is off-the-charts.”
Talbot shook his head. “What happens if I don’t take the job?”
Talc winced. “Things get considerably less pleasant. I have to call in a Class 3 Purge Operative, and that’s always a hassle.”
Talbot chose not to inquire into the purpose of a ‘Purge Operative’.
Talc gently laid a hand on Talbot’s shoulder. “It’s a lot to take in, I know. How about we move to some place more hospitable and you can think it over?”
Talbot nodded, his mind elsewhere. Talc gently guided him out of the room, Willis following and closing the door behind them.
Talbot stared down into his conical paper cup, filled with water that tasted plasticy. The three men were in the lobby of Talbot’s workplace, leaning against a table adorned with donuts and a water cooler.
Talc bit into a day-old bear claw as Talbot swirled his water and considered the situation.
If he accepted the offer, he would be shipped off to another state, away from his home in Bedford, where he would join whatever on earth APH was. Talbot hated the idea of working for an agency whose entire purpose was to destroy knowledge. On the other hand, if he didn’t accept the offer, they’d likely kill him.
Purge Officer…
Would working for the APH really be so bad? Talbot liked Talc enough. Maybe they could be friends. Or… more than friends. And if the APH truly wanted Talbot to be able to suppress the Higher Order, he’d have to know the Higher Order. Which meant research. He could essentially continue on exactly as he was.
Except he would never be recognized as the genius he was. Talbot involuntarily crushed his paper cup as he realized that, if he took the offer, he’d never win a Nobel prize. He’d never present at the Grand Chemistry Convention. He’d never write a revolutionary scientific paper. He would be forgotten.
He knew what he had to do. He couldn’t say no, or he would be killed. He couldn’t accept, or he would be forgotten, which was worse. He had to escape.
But how? This was some sort of world-ruling secret agency. They probably had eyes everywhere. What could he possibly do to get away?
His eyes wandered towards the stairs. The stairs that led to his office, which held the key to every single natural law.
Talbot tossed his cup in the trash, then approached Talc.
“I think I’m ready to make my decision. But first, can I go to the restroom?”
Talc nodded. “Of course! Take all the time you need!”
Talbot nodded and jogged toward the restroom. In the tiled floor under him, he saw Willis’s warped reflection following him discreetly.
He entered the single restroom and quietly opened the window. He could see Willis’s shadow under the door as the man hovered just outside.
Talbot waited a couple seconds, then flushed the toilet, turned on the sink, and silently crept through the window. He fell a few feet to the alley below, and had to suppress a grunt.
Now what? He needed to escape, but his notebook was still upstairs. All his research was in there, and he couldn’t leave it to the APH.
The only ground level entrance to the building was the main lobby door, which was directly in Talc’s sightline. However, who said he had to enter on ground level?
Talbot’s gaze rose to the old fire escape above him. The bottom of the structure was a platform that lined up with the second floor. A ladder was folded up on the platform, an old rusty latch keeping it from reaching ground level. Talbot couldn’t reach the latch from where he was on the ground, so he looked around for a solution.
He had a bum throwing arm, so he couldn’t toss anything up to break it. Unless…
Talbot considered Talc’s words. The very mechanics of the universe itself... He felt a flare of pride as he realized how little Talc truly understood.
The sigil that granted access to the Fifth Dimension was just one of several such Seals. Over all Talbot’s years of study, those portions of the Higher Order were the most applicable. They did not just show universal aspects of reality. They represented those aspects. They were symbolic, and like all symbols, they were powerful.
They were simulacra of natural laws, and could be manipulated in order to manipulate those laws themselves. It allowed anyone who knew the Seals to weave a sort of magic, ignoring the laws of time, space, or gravity by sketching and then destroying the corresponding runes, temporarily destroying that Law’s influence over oneself. Talbot’s hypothesis was that there was a single Greater Seal for each law that controlled that law anywhere and everywhere. If that one was found and destroyed, the laws of reality would change forever.
For greater, wide-scale application, Talbot had scrawled in his notebook, The Greater Aspects must be located and manipulated.
Talbot dropped to the ground and dragged his finger through the alley gravel. He assembled the rocks into a facsimile of a tiny part of the Higher Order, one that he’d experimented with a lot. He looked around for a suitable vessel, settling on a rock. He poured all his mental energy into the stone, and used his hands to scatter the pebbles that made up the Seal of Velocity.
The rock sprang from the ground and soared upwards, clanging against the ladder before anticlimactically falling into a dumpster. From inside, Willis banged on the bathroom door and said something indistinct. Talbot’s second telekinetic toss hit the ladder before falling onto the platform itself. He broke another Seal, and his third throw smacked into the latch, splitting the rusted thing and shooting the ladder downwards.
It made a lot of noise, and Talbot could hear Willis pounding on the bathroom door inside. He seemed to be breaking it down, as Talbot heard wood split with a crunch. Talbot quickly mounted the ladder and climbed up to the platform, trying not to think about the alarming creaking sounds the old construction was making. From there, he took the stairs two at a time, spiraling up and up until he reached the sixth floor.
Six flights of stairs only had him a bit winded by the time he reached his floor. He tried the door to the inside, and found it unlocked.
Talbot entered the hallway outside his office quietly. He considered how this would play out. Willis and Talc would be storming up here at any moment. He had to move quickly.
Talbot entered his workroom, dragging his desk over to block the door. He took a moment to gaze forlornly at his Masterwork, because he would never be able to take it with him. All the same pieces and diagrams were in his notebook, but the full Masterwork was a thing of beauty, one that he would never behold again.
He snapped a picture of it with his phone. It wasn’t the same, but it’d have to do.
Talbot grabbed his notebook, its leather-bound pages bulging with decades of research. Some of the sheaves of paper stuck out at odd angles, newspaper snippets and glossy photographs glued into the most faithful companion Talbot had ever had.
Was there anything else he needed?
The door began to rattle.
Talbot grabbed a sheet of blank paper from his desk and rapidly sketched as many Seals as he could. He had an idea of how he could escape, but he needed to harness his work to do it. Using the Masterwork as a reference, he scrawled the Seal of Time, the Seal of Space, the Seal of Gravity, and, after considering it, the Seal of the Fifth Dimension.
Just in case. He thought.
With a crack, his door burst open, shoving the desk out of the way. Talc and Willis stood there, the latter looking enraged, the former strangely calm.
“Talbot, this doesn’t have to happen this way.” Talc appealed, but Talbot was done listening. He would not be forgotten. He would be immortalized, through his work.
Talbot ripped a corner off of his Seal sheet, and glanced down at the Seal of Time. With a glare at Talc, he stuck it in his mouth and began to chew.
Talbot disappeared with a pop, as Willis lunged towards where he’d just been.
Willis stopped short, then turned to Talc. He was noticeably upset at losing their quarry.
“What do we do now?”
“Well, we follow him.”
“How?”
Talc approached the Masterwork. “It’s simple. I’m sure Talbot understood that time travel doesn’t work the way everyone thinks it does. Cause and Effect are inextricably linked, and cannot be put out of order. Traveling through time actually just creates another dimension, a splintered facsimile of your original where things play out differently.”
“So… to follow him do we just use the Time Sigil?”
“Seal, Willis. And no. That will just create another splinter plane. Now that the reality has already been established, we need to follow him. Using this.”
Talc’s thin fingers traced the outline of another Seal, one Talbot hadn’t thought to inscribe.
“There are many ways to traverse the Multiverse.” Talc said, “Using Seals to rip open the barriers between planes is one of the simplest.”
Talc sketched down two copies of the seal, then separated the two and handed one to Willis. The two locked eyes and nodded in unison. They both rent their sheets in half and disappeared.
Talbot didn’t ‘land’, per se, but he still felt off-balance when he blinked into existence in his office. He staggered, but caught himself before he could fall. The world felt… different here.
Out of everything Talbot had discovered, Multiversal travel was his least considered. He’d been too cowardly to experiment with anything but the Space, Gravity, and Velocity Seals, so this experience was new to him. Naturally, as any scientist does when faced with something unfamiliar, he started taking notes.
Effects of Time/Universe Traversal:
–Slight nausea. Somewhat noticeable. Temporary?
–World overall feels discordant. Silence sounds different than back home. My tinnitus is in another key. Feels like I don’t belong.
–Different frequency hard-coded into every reality?
Before he could assemble an entire thesis on the underlying resonance within the multiverse, he realized with a start that he had to get out of here. Talc and WIllis were likely following him, and even if they weren’t, there were copies of them in this dimension.
Talbot had willed himself about 10 minutes back in time, and it seemed like that’d worked. His Masterwork was complete and the desk and tarp were off to the side. The trio were likely downstairs in the lobby, where Past-Talbot was thinking over the pros and cons of their offer. At least, he thought so. Time travel seemed to create a splintering reality, one that maintained consistency with his original up until the point where he showed up. There were plenty of unfamiliar worlds out there, but the Seal of Time created one quite familiar. Right now Past-Talbot-
Past-Talbot doesn’t sound right. Pretty soon it’ll be my present, then my future. How about Talbot-2?
After settling upon a name to call his double, Talbot exited his office and left through the door that led to the fire escape, in too much of a hurry to close it. He scrambled down the stairs, knocked the latch off the ladder, climbed to the ground, popped open the bathroom window, and climbed inside. Right as he got his arms through, the door opened.
Talbot-2 walked in, then stopped short as he saw himself dangling halfway through the window. Talbot put a finger to his lips, and indicated Willis-2 with his eyes. Talbot-2 silently shut the door, locking Willis-2 outside.
Talbot-2 opened his mouth to speak, but barely got out one word. “What-”
“I’m you, from the future. Well, not from your future, but from a future.”
Talbot-2’s confused expression was replaced with excitement. “So the Time Seal Worked?! Fantastic! What’s it like?!”
“I’d tell you all about it, but I’m currently stuck in a bathroom window and being hunted down by two government agents. Although I don’t actually know if they work for the government…”
Talbot-2 pulled him through the window into the bathroom. “Sorry.”
Once he was in, Talbot glanced at the door behind Talbot-2.
“Okay. Here’s the thing. Some version of Talc and Willis will be here any minute. Whether mine followed me from the future or not, yours will catch on soon. We need to get out of here, and get the Masterwork to somebody else.”
“Wait, which Talc and Willis will show up?”
“One of them… or both of them. It doesn’t really matter! Do we know anybody we can send our notes to?”
Talbot-2 considered it. “Davis?”
Talbot frowned, and opened his notebook to an early page.
Dr. Wilson Davis
–Spineless fool. He calls himself a chemist, but refuses to venture outside the conventions of the industry. No true scientist works a cushy chemical production job! We journey! We endeavor!
Talbot shook his head. “He’d never publish something like this. If they tracked him down, he’d probably take their oppressive offer.”
“Johnson?”
Dr Monica Johnson
—Chemist and conspiracy nut. Super gullible, but generally a good person.
“She’ll believe anything.” Talbot said. “...Which is actually probably a good thing in this case. If she thinks it’s real, she’ll distribute it, and she’s earnest enough to leave my- our name on it.”
Talbot-2 nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Actually, it sounds like an idea, not a plan. What is our plan?”
Talbot thought for several seconds. “Here’s what we do. You pretend to accept their offer, and do whatever they tell you. If all else fails, you’ll get a cushy job working for the government. Meanwhile, I get this,” Talbot indicated his notebook. “To Johnson, and then…” He paused.
Someone knocked on the door.
“And then?” Talbot-2 prompted in a whisper, glancing behind him.
“Then… I’ll figure something out.”
Talbot-2 nodded. “Alright. Are we ready to go?”
“I think so.” Talbot replied.
Talbot slipped out of the window, and Talbot-2 opened the door to greet Willis-2.
The man peered around him. “Who were you talking to in there?”
Talbot-2 shrugged. “Myself. You know, crazy scientist stuff.”
Talbot dropped to the ground, then produced his sheet of Seals. He picked out one specific design, a circle bisected by a thin line. On one side of the line, a stylized forest thrived, and on the other a pictographic city loomed. Talbot ripped the Seal of Space from his paper and stuck it in his mouth, once again disappearing with a pop.
Talc and Willis appeared in Talbot-2’s workroom, and quickly exited. Both spun in the hallway outside, and both spotted the wide-open door to the fire escape. They both moved down the rickety metal construction and found themselves in an alley behind the building.
“See that?” Talc pointed at the window.
“Yeah. Did he go in through it?” Willis asked.
“Of course. But if he used the Seal of Time to try to come back and alert himself, I’m guessing he came through here to talk to him…self, but he couldn’t have left. The only point at which he was in the bathroom, you were right outside. He popped in, popped out, popped another Seal.”
“Is there any guarantee that he came back to alert himself? He could’ve gone to any point in time.”
“I know his type. The out-there intellectual. He’s been burned by everyone but himself. He’ll only trust himself. And if he came to himself before we’d arrived, he wouldn’t believe him.”
“Sorry, who wouldn’t believe him?”
“Him! Aren’t you-” Talc took a moment to consider the context. “You know what, nevermind. The point is that this reality’s Talbot is now in league with our Talbot, and that’s not good.”
“What do we do?”
“Well firstly, we need to cut it down to one Talbot. Two is too many to deal with.” Talc pushed on his earpiece, then spoke. “Hello? Can you hear me, Talc?” There was silence, until something dawned on him. “Ah, dammit. I can’t call my own earpiece.” He adjusted something on his earpiece. “Willis! Do you copy?” Willis heard Talc both from right next to him and through his earpiece. He didn’t hear the reply, but his earpiece buzzed as its exact copy broadcast something. Willis took his earpiece out and squinted at it, curious about the exact Multiversal properties that bonded it to its clone.
“Yes, this is Talc. But not your Talc. Listen, Talbot ran off to this dimension, and we believe he’s working with your Talbot. We need to meet up, then dispose of the dupe.”
Talc listened for a response, and Willis’s earpiece vibrated as his double presumably replied.
Talc turned to Willis. “Alright. They’ll meet us back in Talbot’s office. There we can get rid of the redundant one and track our quarry.”
Their quarry was currently depositing a large package of brown paper in a big blue mailbox.
Talbot paused as he lowered the boxy parcel. This was his life’s work, his notebook and all his scattered papers, and was the second-most important thing he owned, next to the wall that contained the Masterwork itself, which was likely being dismantled by his enemies at that very moment. This was the last 20 years of his life, and he was about to gamble it away to a crazy woman on the off-chance that his legacy might live on. Talbot wished he’d spent more time with reasonable scientists, if only to expand the pool of people he could mail his book to.
With a deep breath, Talbot released the book, wincing at the gentle ‘paff’ sound it made when it fell onto the envelopes at the bottom of the box.
His job complete, Talbot slipped the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and disappeared into the afternoon.
Guns are inelegant, Talc told his subordinate often. They’re loud, messy. Tools of thugs and soldiers, not agents of a higher purpose.
But there’s a downside to not carrying a gun, Willis countered silently. The difference between shooting a person and being forced to kill them more intimately is palpable, and not often a positive.
Willis considered this as Talbot-2 stopped struggling and finally went limp in his arms. Willis released the garotte from around the man’s throat, then lowered him to the floor of the office.
An irritated sigh came from behind him. Willis turned to see Talc shaking his head and walking toward him.
“No, you need to finish the job.” The man said. He kneeled, took Talbot-2’s forehead in one hand, his chin in the other, then jerked his head to the side, snapping his neck.
“If you stop garrotting when he goes limp, he’s just unconscious.” The other Talc, Talc-2, stated.
Willis nodded, numbly. He didn’t really hear the man.
“I know this is hard,” Talc said, shifting into a gentler tone, “But this is all for the good of humanity. If we let these ideas run wild, we’d all be dead.”
“Worse than dead.” Talc-2 added helpfully. “Our very essences would be consumed by dark beings from beyond our world.”
Willis nodded again. He’d heard it all before. So why did he still find it so hard to hurt people?
“So where’s the other one?” Willis-2 asked, seemingly unaware of his double’s predicament.
“That’s the big question, isn’t it.” Talc-2 mused, “However, before we can ponder it, first things first. We need to get a CC team in here to handle that wall.”
All four men were familiar with the APH Cognito Containment Teams, mysterious individuals in surgical masks that took away artifacts of forbidden knowledge to be stored or disposed of.
Talc-2 clicked his earpiece, then said a series of numbers and codes that were unintelligible to either Willis. He finished by saying, “Please send a Class-4 CC team. Over.”
He turned to the others. “They’re on their way. We need to secure Talbot’s place of residence.”
“Do we know that’s where he’ll go next?” Willis-2 asked.
“Not necessarily,” Talc-1 responded, “But it’s quite likely he’ll at least stop there to retrieve personal effects before going somewhere else.”
Both Willises nodded, almost in sync. The logic made sense. They would lock down Talbot’s house first.
All was silent in the small house several miles outside of town that Talbot called his abode. Then frantic footsteps sounded from outside, as someone ran up the footpath leading to the front door. Then, a faint scratching as Talbot scrambled to fit his key into the lock. A quiet clacking came next, as Talbot’s cat descended his cat-tree and approached the door to see what was happening.
Talbot swung the door open and gently pushed the cat out of his way with his foot.
“Sorry Ozzy,” he muttered.
He produced his debit card and snapped it in half, having extracted all the money from his account before arriving here. He pulled several thousand dollars from his pockets and shoved them in his wallet, his backpack, the pocket on the inside of his jacket, and his shoes.
He grabbed a spare toothbrush and tube of toothpaste from the master bathroom, shoving them into the backpack as well. He was going on the run, for god knows how long.
He paused as his eyes fell on his set of keys. He wouldn’t be taking his car or his house, so they’d likely not be necessary.
But I might as well just in case. Talbot grabbed the jangling key ring and slipped it into the inside pocket of his pants.
His cat mewed at his feet. After a moment’s hesitation, he grabbed his carrier and bowl, both monogrammed with a matching ‘Ozymandius’.
He knew bringing Ozzy was objectively a bad choice. It was impractical and stupid. The cat was loud, and would slow him down. But Talbot couldn’t bear leaving his baby here to be subjected to whatever evil ideas Talc and Willis had in mind.
Talbot coaxed Ozzy into his crate, then picked up the cat and donned his backpack. He took one last look around his house before he opened the front door and was immediately grabbed by both Willises, one of which held a chloroform rag over his mouth until he went limp.
Talbot awoke with a start. He glanced around, disoriented, and immediately registered that he was in some sort of interrogation room. His chair was metal, and bolted to the floor. Before him was a table, and above that table a blinding light mounted on the ceiling shone directly into his eyes. On the wall across from him, very much breaking the theme, was a ‘Hang in there!’ poster and a wall-mounted hand sanitizer dispenser.
Talbot tried to stand, only to find that his wrists and ankles were strapped into the chair. He strained against the bonds, cursing as the straps held strong.
He thought he heard faint snickering.
He turned to glare at the mirror to his right. “What are you planning to do to me?!”
Silence.
“What are you planning to do to my cat?!?”
More silence.
The Talcs and the Willi were standing behind the one-way mirror on Talbot’s left, looking at the back of his head as he shouted at no one. Talc looked mildly amused at Talbot’s complete misunderstanding of the room’s orientation.
Willis-2 glanced at Talc-2, who shrugged and motioned for Talc-1 to enter the larger room. Talc-1 did as asked.
The door at the front of the room opened, and Talc stepped out. He took a seat across from Talbot, and cleared his throat.
“First off, the most important thing. Your cat will be well-cared for, no matter the outcome of this conversation. Great name, by the way.”
Talbot refused to thank him for the compliment.
Talc cleared his throat, and there was a long silence.
“What about my first question?” Talbot asked, his voice trembling.
Talc sighed, then reached below the table.
Several seconds later, he came back up, notably with some difficulty. He slammed Talbot’s notebook down on the table. Next to it, he laid the sheet of seals Talbot had used to traverse space and time.
Talbot was stricken. “How did you-!?”
“Find this? Simple deduction. I’m frankly insulted that you didn’t consider that we’ve been tailing everyone you know for months. Johnson was the only person you could send this to.”
“What did you do to her?!”
“Nothing! We’re not the bad guys here, Talbot. We pulled the package from her porch before she ever got involved. We’d never hurt anyone.”
“Then where am I?” Talbot spat, then rephrased. “I mean… where is the version of me from here? Wait, are you from here or there?”
“I’m from there, assuming you mean your original reality. And Talbot-2 is fine. He’s in the next room.”
Willis winced behind the mirror.
“You never actually answered my question.” Talbot said quietly.
Talc pursed his lips regrettably.
“Well… here’s the thing, Talbot. What I’d like to do is offer you a chance to redeem yourself. I’d like to let you join the APH and help us protect humanity. But you’ve made it clear that that’s not what you want, and if we let you into our fold now, we’d forever be looking over our shoulders, wondering whose side you were truly on. And we can’t just let you go, no no. Your theories would largely be regarded as crackpot, but there are ways to prove these things, and you would certainly find them.”
Talbot swallowed. “Couldn’t you just… you know… erase my memory?”
Talc stifled a laugh. “Unfortunately, this is not Men In Black. Actions have consequences. There are no take-backs. And I’m sorry, Talbot, but this is it for you.” Talc stood, turned on his heel, and left.
“Why the hell’d you wake him up just to tell him that?” Willis muttered behind the glass.
“Hey, wait!” Talbot screamed at him as he departed, but there was no response.
Talbot tried to stand again, but slammed back into his chair as the bonds held.
Willis entered a few minutes later, holding a syringe. He winced at the sight before him. Talbot was hunched over, resting his head on the table. His shoulders were bobbing as though he was sobbing quietly.
Willis approached Talbot and tightened the strap on his right wrist. He moved around him and reached for his left hand, only to see that the strap had been sawed apart, and Talbot’s hand was free.
Willis grabbed his elbow, but Talbot struggled against the man’s grasp. The scientist was trying to keep it firmly on the table under his face.
Frustrated, Willis grabbed Talbot’s head and lifted it back, so he was sitting up straight.
As he beheld Talbot’s face, Willis felt a bolt of fear lance through him. The man was smiling, but it was not a happy smile.
It was the smile of a trapped animal that knew it would take a limb before it went down. With his eyes, Talbot indicated downwards. Willis slowly lowered his vision to the stainless steel tabletop. In Talbot’s hand was a housekey, the teeth worn down from sawing through the leather strap and scratching a symbol into the table. Right under his hand, the surface was pockmarked with the Seal of the Fifth Dimension.
Willis lunged for Talbot’s wrist, but it was too late. The alchemist brought the key across the symbol, carving another scratch to break the Seal and the boundaries between their reality and one far darker. Neither man had time to scream.
Talbot felt himself slip free of the chair, and out of the leather strap around his wrist.
Willis’s grip loosened, and it felt like he was flung across whatever intermediary pathway connected the fourth and fifth dimensions.
Part Two posted promptly!

I was up in Auckland this weekend and with a bit of time to spare before my flight home I thought I'd go for a drive to have a nosey around the old neighbourhood I used to live in. Since I'd previously set up a Mevo account I figured I'd hunt down one of their vehicles for the task. Anyway, one of the vehicles available was a Polestar, which as a long time Model 3 owner, I had been curious about taking for a test drive. I ended up driving it for around 2.5 hours before leaving it at the airport for my flight home. This particular Polestar was a 69kWh Standard Range FWD variant with almost 16,000km on its odometer.
Driving dynamics felt fine but, it felt like the take off power is artificially restricted. While I have a Performance Model 3, even the RWD version I've driven previously feels like it has more instant power than this car did whereas the Polestar feels like it's trying to ease you into the power. I guess some people might prefer that but isn't that why I have an accelerator pedal, so I can control how much I want at a given time? It also felt like you go from having not much to suddenly being given all of it, which doesn't feel as smooth.
When it comes to the interior, I can see why some say that it feels claustrophobic. From the outside, it looks like a large car but when you get in you feel crammed in. All the windows feel like they're tiny and you don't get a lot of vision out of them, including the front window. The front dash feels like it's sitting too high and cuts into your visual space. It feels like you need to rise your seat up, but I already had the seat at a height where it was starting to become an issue for head clearance. I've heard some say that the centre console is quite wide but I didn't find it to be an issue, but the location of the cup holders means that if you and your passenger both have a drink you no longer have an armrest since you have to lift away the centre armrest to access the cup holder. The material used for the centre console also felt and sounded like cheap hollow plastic and I believe it was the source of one of the rattles that this car had when driving on chipseal. Whatever material they use on the seats also felt "cheap". Having clipper cut hair on the sides of my head, my hair felt like it was poking between the weave of the fabric on the head rest and due to the type of fabric used, I could constantly hear the scratching noise of my hair rubbing over it. Overall, the interior felt less premium than my Model 3 interior.
I thought the infotainment system was great though, even though I mostly used it for navigation. Having Google Maps built into the car was great. Most importantly, it was responsive and it didn't feel laggy like a lot of other touchscreen systems do. Although the navigation is displayed on the dash cluster, out of habit I kept finding myself looking at the main centre screen instead.
Over the 100km I drove, I did get to do a bit of playing around with the driver assistance features. On the motorway it felt good and felt like it was actively keeping in the lane rather than ping ponging between the lane lines like I've experienced in some other vehicles. However, it seemed to struggle with even the slightest bend in the road, even on a motorway. There's a very slight corner on the Southern Motorway just beside the City Impact church before Sylvia Park, however it was almost touching the left centre line while I was in the right lane passing someone at around 105km/h and I felt like I had to take over to prevent it going further - even my passenger was nervous. I did confirm that it was indeed on lane keeping mode, and this happened a few times on the motorway at slight bends. In comparison, these kind of bends on a motorway are nothing for the similar system in my Model 3 (known as Autopilot), which I had driven on this stretch plenty of times prior to moving away. On some slightly rural roads out near Whitford I kinda gave up on the lane assist feature as it was pretty clear that it just can't cope with corners. Sure, it's probably more of a motorway feature and so is Autopilot but, the latter at least does a decent job of non-motorway roads in most scenarios, only really requiring assistance from the driver in sub-80 corners.
However, its TACC feature was very good at reacting to slowing to traffic (no last-minute heavy braking) and maintaining a following distance. One thing that it seemed to struggle with was maintaining a speed going downhill, where at some points it was going almost 5km/h faster than the set speed. This was surprising given how good its one pedal driving is when manually driving so I'm not sure how maintaining a speed going downhill was a struggle for it. I actually had to take over due to there being a speed camera at the bottom of one of the hills because the runaway speed was probably high enough that it would snap me. Again comparing to my Model 3, it holds a speed very well - I don't think I've ever seen it deviate more than 1km/h, even on a steep downhill road. On the topic of speed keeping, it would have been nice if it would also react to the speed signs that it reads or at least give the option to be able to change the current TACC speed to the new speed limit.
I could cover other various feature but overall, I'd say it's a nice car but to me it just seems that the Model 3 does things better in most categories, including price. I was left wondering why you'd pick a Polestar over a Model 3 and I guess the one thing it has going for it that might be appealing to some is that it's not a Tesla.

2023 T20 Blast & Charlotte Edwards Cup
ECB Match Centre - T20 Blast - Charlotte Edwards Cup - Central Repository of Scorecards and clips of every boundary and wicket.
Full coverage of every ball of County Cricket and selected Women's Regional Matches on BBC Local Radio - T20 Blast - Charlotte Edwards Cup
T20 Matches in the Blast and Charlotte Edwards Cup start at different times which are listed against them below.
Where available, YouTube live streams are linked against each match below. These can also be found on the county and ECB websites. No free stream of Durham vs Nottinghamshire as it's on Sky.
BBC Local Radio coverage and YouTube streams should be accessible worldwide.
Double Headers
AT NEW ROAD - Weather Forecast
10:30 - Central Sparks vs Thunder - YouTube - Scorecard
14:30 - Worcestershire vs Leicestershire at New Road - YouTube - Scorecard
AT DERBY - Weather Forecast
11:00 - The Blaze vs Southern Vipers - YouTube - Scorecard
15:00 - Derbyshire vs Northamptonshire - YouTube - Scorecard
Other T20 Blast Matches
14:30 - Warwickshire vs Lancashire at Edgbaston - YouTube - Weather Forecast - Scorecard
14:30 - Middlesex vs Gloucestershire at Merchant Taylors' School - YouTube - Weather Forecast - Scorecard
18:30 - Durham vs Nottinghamshire at The Riverside Ground - On Sky Cricket - Weather Forecast - Scorecard
T20 Blast Standings before today:
North Group

Pos	Team	Played	Won	Lost	Tied	N/R	Net RR	Points
1	Lancashire	3	3	0	0	0	+2.024	6
2	Durham	2	2	0	0	0	+2.590	4
3	Warwickshire	2	2	0	0	0	+1.487	4
4	Worcestershire	2	2	0	0	0	+0.464	4
5	Nottinghamshire	2	1	1	0	0	+0.296	2
6	Yorkshire	3	0	3	0	0	-1.094	0
7	Derbyshire	2	0	2	0	0	-1.121	0
8	Northamptonshire	2	0	2	0	0	-2.160	0
9	Leicestershire	2	0	2	0	0	-2.754	0

South Group

Pos	Team	Played	Won	Lost	Tied	N/R	Net RR	Points
1	Somerset	3	3	0	0	0	+2.589	6
2	Surrey	3	2	1	0	0	+1.862	4
3	Kent	2	1	1	0	0	+0.496	2
4	Sussex	2	1	1	0	0	-0.070	2
5	Glamorgan	2	1	1	0	0	-1.001	2
6	Hampshire Hawks	2	1	1	0	0	-1.837	2
7	Essex	0	0	0	0	0	+0.000	0
8	Gloucestershire	2	0	2	0	0	-1.660	0
9	Middlesex	2	0	2	0	0	-2.381	0

Points: Teams receive 2 points for a win. 1 point for a Tie or No Result. Each team plays 7 of the 8 other teams in their group and 7 away. Top 4 in each group qualify for the Quarter Finals. Quarter Final winners qualify for Finals Day.
Charlotte Edwards Cup Standings before today:

Pos	Team	Played	Won	Lost	Tied	N/R	Net RR	Points
1	Northern Diamonds	4	4	0	0	0	+0.900	17
2	The Blaze	3	3	0	0	0	+1.802	14
3	Southern Vipers	2	2	0	0	0	+1.574	9
4	South East Stars	5	2	3	0	0	-0.032	8
5	Thunder	3	1	2	0	0	-0.250	4
6	Central Sparks	3	1	2	0	0	-0.600	4
7	Western Storm	4	1	3	0	0	-1.010	4
8	Sunrisers	4	0	4	0	0	-1.219	0

Points: Teams receive 4 points for a win. A bonus point for a win with a run rate of 1.25x that of the opposition. 2 points for a Tie or No Result. Teams play each other team once, home or away. The top three teams advance to Finals Day. The top team advances straight to the Final, whilst the other two teams play off in a semi-final.
If you've got a team in The Cricket Draft T20 Blast fantasy game, you can join the cricket league here

<< The Trials
Friday, February 25, 2000 / Trial 2 / Day 21

• Page 47: Closing Arguments
  
• Verdict Sheet
  
• 1:35PM: Jury deliberations begin
  
• 4:25PM Verdict Read; Syed convicted of:
  
  • First Degree Murder (Life)
  • Kidnapping (30 years, consecutive to life)
  • False imprisonment and robbery (10 years, concurrent with kidnapping)
• Rabia remembers going down to see Adnan that same evening, and says that's when Adnan gave her Asia's letters, (according to Serial podcast.) Adnan remembers calling Rabia on the phone, telling her about the letters, and mailing them to her.
  

Saturday, February 26, 2000

• Baltimore Sun:
  
  • Jury finds teen guilty of killing ex-girlfriend; Adnan Masud Syed faces possible life term for Hae Min Lee's death
  • Jury Finds Teen Guilty of Kiling Ex-Girfriend

Monday, February 28, 2000

• Memo from Gutierrez Associate Rita P. to Gutierrez
  
  • Adnan has called and he is requesting Patuxent. Rita reminds that Patuxent isn't taking lifers.
  • Adnan has told Rita that he wants Gutierrez to handle his appeal.
  • Adnan would like to meet with Gutierrez before sentencing.
  • Rabia has called and wants to set up a meeting ASAP.
  • [No mention of Asia.]
• Rabia, Shamim and Tanveer meet with Gutierrez who has reluctantly agreed to meet them. If they discussed Asia, Rabia did not include this information in her memo to the mosque re; new witnesses.
  
• Adnan writes a letter to Yusuf
  
• Approximate: Rabia mails Adnan sentencing guidelines and information about prosecutorial misconduct.
  
• Adnan has been in jail/prison for one year.
  

Tuesday, February 29, 2000

• According to Rabia, NBC's Dateline airs an episode about a wrongfully convicted man.

Wednesday, March 1, 2000

• Rabia Memo updates the Masjid Committee re; the meeting with Gutierrez.
  
  • Rabia suggests pressuring witnesses, but doesn't mention Asia.
  • Rabia tells the Masjid Committee: "At appeal it is generally suggested a different attorney is used rather than the trial attorney. This was even suggested by Ms. Gutierrez herself." Fourteen years later Rabia told Sarah Koenig that she thought Gutierrez bungled the trial on purpose, so she could make money off the appeal.
• Upon conviction, Adnan parents and mosque had paid $95,800 to Gutierrez's firm and there was an outstanding balance of $57,292.
  

Friday, March 3, 2000

• Gutierrez visits Adnan re: his appeal.
  
  • Her last prison visit was on September 17, 1999, before the trial.
  • March 3, 2000 is Gutierrez's eighth and final face to face (prison) meeting with Adnan.
  • Did they discuss Asia?

Saturday, March 4, 2000

• According to Adnan (Rabia's book), this weekend is the first time he told Rabia about Asia's letters (despite what Rabia told Sarah.) In Serial, Rabia says she received Asia's letters from Adnan on Friday, February 27.)
  
  • Letter from Adnan to Rabia
  • Doesn't mention Asia or her letters.
  • Adnan has received the sentencing guidelines and information about prosecutorial misconduct, that Rabia mailed him.

Monday, March 6, 2000

• Cristina Gutierrez files Motion for new trial. Issues raised:
  
  • Adnan's due process rights were violated when Judge Heard refused to let the jury know that Jay did not plead guilty to accessory after the fact.
  • Judge Heard refused to allow Adnan to prove that Jay's plea agreement included unwritten benefits.
  • State didn't disclose Jay's plea agreement prior to the trial.
  • Verdicts were "against the weight of the evidence."
  • There was insufficient evidence to sustain the convictions.
  • Heard improperly restricted the defense's presentation of its case.
• Approximate: According to Adnan, this is when he mails copies of Asia's letters to Rabia
  

Wednesday, March 8, 2000

• Jay's driver's license is suspended by the DMV for failure to appear on three traffic citations.

Friday, March 17, 2000

• Approximate: According to Rabia's book, she received Asia's letters -- via the mail from Adnan -- "a couple of weeks" after March 4. (In 2014, Rabia said that Adnan gave her the letters the same afternoon he was convicted.)
  
• Approximate: Rabia's To Do List includes getting Asia to sign an affidavit
  

Saturday, March 25, 2000

• Rabia and Saad track down Asia. Rabia and Saad drive Asia to a check cashing place to sign an "affidavit".
  
• This affidavit narrowed the alibi to 2:40PM based on Murphy's closing arguments.
  

Thursday, March 30, 2000

• Adnan's parents write letter to Gutierrez, imploring her to use Asia's affidavit. No mention of Asia's letters.
  
• Adnan's letter to Gutierrez asking her to use Asia in a motion for a new trial. No mention of Asia's letters.
  

Friday, March 31, 2000

• Approximate: Rabia weighs possible outcomes of not firing Gutierrez

Saturday, April 1, 2000

• Gutierrez receives Adnan's letter.

Monday, April 3, 2000

• Adnan's parents write a letter to Judge Heard asking to postpone sentencing (and motion for a new trial) because Gutierrez had just been fired. (Letter received Tuesday, April 4?) No mention of Asia's letters.

Wednesday, April 5, 2000

• According to Adnan, the motion for a new trial was to have been argued on April 5.
  
• According to Judge Welch:
  

  The sentencing proceeding was scheduled for April 5, 2000. On that date, Judge Heard granted Petitioner's request to dismiss M. Cristina Gutierrez as Petitioner's counsel, and agreed to postpone the sentencing so that Petitioner's new attorney had time to adequately prepare.
  During the [April 5] proceedings, Judge Heard indicated that while she would not normally have the authority to remove Ms. Gutierrez as petitioner's attorney, the administrative judge, Judge Mitchell, granted Heard limited authority to hear Petitioner's request.
  

Sunday, May 21, 2000

• Adnan's 19th Birthday (Second birthday celebrated in prison.)

Monday, May 29, 2000

• Jet magazine issue with this photo is published and makes its way to the holding area for inmates in the "bullpen."

Tuesday, June 6, 2000

• Adnan is sitting in the "bullpen," waiting to be sentenced. He writes to Krista:
  

  You know what’s really weird? I was looking through this Jet magazine, in case you didn’t know it features African-American issues. -- Adnan tells Krista that Hae had been appearing in his dreams, and that dreams like this have a certain significance in Islam. Adnan writes that he was looking through this Jet magazine and he does a double take because the girl looks so much like Hae. Even her watch looks like Hae’s watch. Adnan writes: Take a look at it and tell me what you think. I hope I’m not going crazy.
  

• Sentencing hearing with Judge Heard: Transcripts (courtesy of redditor stop_saying_right, after Rabia refused to share.)
  
  • Adnan represented by Charles Dorsey.
  • Adnan maintains his innocence, despite Dorsey asking for leniency for a "crime of passion."
  • Adnan sentenced to:
  • Life in prison for 1st Degree Murder
  • 30 years for kidnapping (consecutive to murder)
  • 10 years for robbery (concurrent with kidnapping)
• Motion for new trial denied: This motion was filed March 6 by Gutierrez. Dorsey didn't argue in support of this motion. He may not have been aware of it. Even Heard was surprised by the lack of response from Dorsey as to the motion for new trial.
  
• Application for Leave of Appeal his sentence filed in Court of Special Appeals (CoSA) MD.
  
• Maryland law allows only 10 years from the date of sentencing to file the PCR motion.
  

Wednesday, June 7, 2000

• Baltimore Sun:
  
  • 19-year-old gets life sentence for killing former girlfriend
  • 19-year-old gets life sentence for killing former girlfriend
• Approximate: Thiru Vignarajah receives a a master's degree from King's College in medical ethics and law.
  

Wednesday, June 14, 2000

• Adnan writes to Rabia about the sentencing hearing. Adnan refers to his attorney as "This genius, Dorsey..."
  
• Adnan writes to Krista, referring to Dorsey as a "jerk."
  

  Sarah Koenig: Eight days later, post sentencing, [Adnan] writes Krista another letter and he’s so changed. By this time, he’d fired Gutierrez over the Asia letters and he’s being represented by a public defender he doesn’t really know. Adnan tells the guy [Dorsey] he wants to tell the court he did not kill Hae and that he is going to continue to fight this until the end. That’s what he says in his letter to Krista, and [Dorsey] says "No, no, no, terrible idea. Don’t say you’re innocent, it will anger the judge.” Adnan argues with [Dorsey], and according to Adnan, [Dorsey] says, “Well you can do it if you want but you’re just going to fuck yourself over.”
  

Thursday, July 6, 2000

• Jay's Sentencing Hearing. Jay receives a suspended sentence, not the two years prison per the plea agreement.
  
  • Case Information Sheet
  • Criminal Information Sheet
  • Stephanie and Jay have been broken up for over a year. But she is present in courtroom.
  • Adnan's appeal argues that if the trial jury had known Jay would get probation only, they would have thought this motivated Jay to lie. The defense implies that Jay knew he wasn't going to prison. But Jay didn't know. Jay thought he would get five years -- two, at the minimum.

Friday, July 28, 2000

• Public Defender Charles Dorsey files motion for modification of Adnan's sentence. The 2011 supplement to the petition for post conviction relief claims that Dorsey wasted Adnan's one chance for sentence modification, and should have waited.

Wednesday, August 2, 2000

• Judge Heard denies motion for sentence modification

August, 2000

• Jay owns a motorcycle, and the registration expires during this month

September 13, 2000

• 5PM: Jay is pulled over because the tags on his motorcycle have expired.

Sunday, October 15, 2000

• Hae Min Lee 20th Birthday

Monday, October 16, 2000

• Adnan writes to Rabia about Stephanie.
  

  Adnan has been thinking a lot about Stephanie and thinks that Stephanie knows something, or could shed a light on things. Adnan isn't comfortable reaching out to Stephanie. So, he has asked Krista to help. But, Krista doesn't really like Stephanie. Adnan doesn't feel comfortable writing questions for Krista to ask Stephanie. So, he's going to have Krista come visit, and tell Krista - in person - what to ask Stephanie. Then Krista will reach out to Stephanie via email, and act as a go-between Stephanie and Adnan. Adnan wants to make sure Rabia knows this is why there is a girl on his visitors list. Apparently, girls have wanted to visit Adnan before, but he didn't want his mother to cross paths with any female visitors.
  

February 28, 2001

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for two years

Monday, May 21, 2001

• Adnan's 20th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan begins working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: at Jessup, Adnan had a good job. He was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier. Being an entrepreneurial sort he ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

Thursday, May 24, 2001

• Gutierrez was disbarred on May 24, 2001, at the age of 50.
  

  The state Court of Appeals ordered her "disbarred by consent" May 24, after Gutierrez agreed to resign rather than fight complaints filed against her with the state Attorney Grievance Commission...
  

June 2, 2001

• Baltimore Sun: Lawyer Gutierrez agrees to disbarment - byline Sarah Koenig
  

  "As she got progressively sicker, she found it increasingly hard to make communications with the clients," Pettit said. "I never got any indication that there was any kind of error or incompetence. It was all about her being sick."
  

Thursday, July 19, 2001

• Baltimore Sun: Attorney is drawing numerous complaints - byline Sarah Koenig
  

  Over 20 people filed claims against Gutierrez with the Clients' Security Trust Fund
  

  • Tanveer says Adnan's family didn't see this article, or they might have filed, too.
  • Rabia says that Adnan knew all about this fund and applied to get reimbursed, but was denied.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

• Unrelated: Two hijacked aircraft crash into the World Trade Center in New York City, while a third smashes into The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks by 19 members of al-Qaeda. In total 2,996 people are killed.

Wednesday, September 19, 2001

• Adnan's Honda has been returned to his family.

Wednesday, September 25, 2001

• Despite the fact that Adnan has been regularly writing to Krista, Adnan writes to Saad that wants to start writing to non-Muslims.

Monday, October 15, 2001

• Hae Min Lee 21st Birthday

January 15, 2002

• Adnan writes Rabia about (1) prayer, (2) a time before his dad started "losing it," (3) how Saad's car was stolen with a bunch of TVs inside, (4) how he hasn't been molested in prison. Adnan wants to know why Rabia and Saad don't visit him any more.

Wednesday, February 27, 2002

• Adnan's Appeal Brief filed by Attorney Warren A. Brown Issues raised:
  
  • Prosecutorial misconduct & Brady rule
  • Did court prevent Adnan from presenting evidence
  • Hearsay based on prejudicial nature of Hae's letter
  • Admission of Hae's diary
  • No mention of Asia's letters.

Thursday, February 28, 2002

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for three years.

Tuesday, April 30, 2002

• State's Response to Adnan's Appeal

May 6, 2002

• Adnan write Rabia about the pending appeal decision.
  

  He tells Rabia that oral arguments are scheduled for June 3, and even though Adnan's Dad will be there, Adnan asks Rabia if she will please go. Adnan writes that he really needs Rabia and that Warren A. Brown is an asshole. Adnan says that he understands Rabia is studying for the bar, has an ongoing custody dispute, and is job-hunting. It's okay if she's too busy because he knows she would come if she could.
  

Spring, 2002

• WHS Class of 2002 prints a Memorial to Hae in their yearbook.

June 3, 2002

• Oral arguments heard with respects to Adnan's appeal.

Tuesday, May 21, 2002

• Adnan's 21st Birthday
  
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.
• Undated 2002 photo of Adnan visited by Rabia and Saad
  

September, 2002

• Approximate: Thiru Vignarajah begins attending Harvard Law School

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

• Hae Min Lee 22nd Birthday

February 28, 2003

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for four years.

Monday, March 19, 2003

• Adnan's Appeal Denied by Justice John J. Bishop, Jr..
  
  • Justice John J. Bishop, Jr. Bio
  • Adnan's petition for post conviction relief should have been filed within one year of this date.
  • Inexplicably, Adnan waited seven years between this date and filing for post conviction relief. Maryland law allows no more than 10 years from sentencing to file for PCR. Asia's affidavit was obtained in 2000.
  • Rabia wrote in her book that Adnan felt burned by the system, exhausted of funds, and didn't want to use up his last available option. He wanted to hold onto hope.
  • In 2014, after the first two episodes of Serial were released, Rabia lied to the readers of her blog. She told them that Adnan was forced to wait 10 years to apply for post conviction relief. But Rabid knew that Adnan could file in 2003, and she knew why he waited. In 2014, Rabia didn't want anyone to know that spending seven years in prison doing nothing was Adnan's choice, and strategy.

Date Unknown

• Adnan files a Pro Se petition for Writ of Certiorari. In 2004, Adnan wrote Rabia that he filed this himself, and it was denied.

Wednesday, May 21, 2003

• Adnan's 22nd Birthday
  
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

June 20, 2003

• The Court of Appeals denies Syed's Pro Se petition for Writ of Certiorari.

August/September, 2003

• Approximate: C. Justin Brown -- who graduated Cornell University in 1992, enrolls in the University of Maryland, School of Law. [Does anyone know the exact date?]

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

• Hae Min Lee 23rdBirthday

Thursday, January 29, 2004

• Cristina Gutierrez date of death (heart attack)

Approximate, 2004

• Asia is working for JMP and moonlighting as a stripper. She is eventually fired from JMP for poor performance. Court filing here here.
  
• According to Justin Brown: Adnan's family took possession of Gutierrez's defense files at some point in 2004, after Gutierrez passed away. Brown says that he took possession of copies of Gutierrez's files in 2009. For at least five years, Adnan's family had sole custody of the defense file. Hence the term: "the remnants of the defense file."
  
• According to Adnan's July 2009 letter to Rabia, at some point in 2004, Chris Flohr recommended the firm Nathans & Biddle for his application for post conviction relief.
  

February 28, 2004

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for five years.

March 1, 2004

• Thiru Vignarajah named President of the Harvard Law Review

Friday, May 21, 2004

• Adnan's 23rd Birthday
  
  • Approximate: In the Spring of 2004, Adnan gets a cell phone. Over the next five years, Adnan has several cell phones. At least one of the phones was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

July, 2004

• By July of 2004, if not earlier, Asia has hired an attorney to represent her as she seeks to sue her former employer for discrimination.

July 27, 2004

• Baltimore Sun re; Jada Lambert's killer: DNA match results in conviction in 1998 rape, murder

Friday, September 24, 2004

• Adnan receives Fundraiser Participation Award
  
• Adnan receives Volunteer Activity Coordinator's Award
  

Friday, October 15, 2004

• Hae Min Lee 24th birthday

Sunday, November 28, 2004

• Adnan writes Rabia:
  
  • He is going to wait as long as possible to file for Post Conviction Relief. He wants to take nine years to research his case, and then hire a post conviction lawyer.
  • [Ten years later, in 2014, Rabia lied to readers of her blog, writing that Adnan had to wait ten years before he could file for PCR.]
  • He is not going to pursue the brain mapping idea presented by Chris Flohr.
  • [Rabia writes in her book that they didn't pursue this brain mapping idea because Justin Brown wouldn't want anything distracting from the PCR. Trouble is, Justin Brown didn't graduate from law school until 2005, and wasn't Adnan's attorney until years after the decision was made not to pursue brain mapping.]

Thursday, December 2, 2004

• Testing:
  
  • Adnan's blood and hair out for testing
  • Reason for testing?

Monday, December 6, 2004

• Adnan's blood and hair returned to evidence.

December 24, 2004

• Having retained an attorney in the summer of 2004, Asia McClain files a lawsuit against her former employer, James M Pleasants Company, alleging that she had been discriminated against her on the basis of race, and retaliated against for complaining about racial discrimination in the workplace. Court filing here.

January 2, 2005

• Asia stops communicating with the attorney she has engaged to represent her in her lawsuit against JMP.
  
• Approximate: Thiru is a clerk for United States Circuit Court Judge Guido Calabresi
  

February 28, 2005

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for six years.

April 20, 2005

• Hae's fingernails, hair, and swabs out for testing.

April 21, 2005

• Hae's fingernails, hair, and swabs returned to evidence. Not out long enough to test. Taken out by mistake?

April 28, 2005

• Asia and James M. Pleasants company submit a joint rule report. On an unknown date, Asia acknowledged that she was moonlighting as an exotic dancer from 9pm-3:30am on days when she worked for JMP.
  
• This issue is not that Asia worked as a stripper.
  

May 2, 2005

• A "rule order" is entered by the Court in the matter of Asia's lawsuit against JMP.

Saturday, May 21, 2005

• Adnan's 24th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: Adnan has had a cell phone for a year, and gets a new t-mobile cell phone. This is his second cell phone. He uses the first cell phone to call T-mobile customer support when he can't get the t-mobile cell phone to work. At least one of the phones was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

June 3, 2005

• Asia's attorney withdraws based on the fact that he hasn't heard from Asia since January 1, 2005.

June, 2005

• Approximate: Thiru Vignarajah graduates Harvard Law.
  
• Approximate: C. Justin Brown graduates from University of Maryland School of Law. [Does anyone know the exact date?]
  
• Approximate: After graduating law school, C. Justin Brown clerks for Andre M. Davis, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. [Does anyone know the exact date?]
  

Saturday, October 15, 2005

• Hae Min Lee 25th birthday

Saturday, December 9, 2005

• Adnan receives Certificate of Appreciation
  
• Adnan receives Distinguished Gentleman Award
  

January, 2006

• Thiru clerks for United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer

February 2, 2006

• Asia's lawsuit is dismissed as neither her attorney, the court, nor the defendant has heard from her since January of 2005.
  
  • [Asia] has failed to respond to JMP's Motion to Dismiss in any way, after she was warned by the Court that failure to respond or participate would result in dismissal of this action. Given [Asia's] complete failure to respond or participate meaningfully in this case and her violation of the Court’s orders, the Court concludes that dismissal pursuant to Rules 37 and 41 is appropriate, and that no less drastic sanction would be effective.

February 28, 2006

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for seven years.
  
• Approximate: At some point in 2006, Justin Brown passes the Maryland State Bar Exam. Exact month unknown. Bar exams are given in February and July. [Does anyone know the exact date?]
  

Sunday, May 21, 2006

• Adnan's 25th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: Adnan has had a cell phone for two years. At least one of the phones he has had was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

September, 2006

• Approximate: C. Justin Brown begins working at Nathans & Biddle as an Associate. [Does anyone know the exact date?]

Saturday, September 2, 2006

• Adnan receives Fundraiser Participation Award at Jessup.

Wednesday, September 6, 2006

• Since prison officials still don't know about the cell phone, Adnan receives Certificate of Achievement for going three years without an infraction.
  
• Adnan receives Volunteer Activity Coordinator Award at Jessup.
  

Sunday, October 15, 2006

• Hae Min Lee 26th birthday

January, 2007

• Thiru clerks for United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer

February 28, 2007

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for eight years.

Monday, May 21, 2007

• Adnan's 26th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: Adnan has had a cell phone for three years. At least one of the phones he has had was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

Monday, October 15, 2007

• Hae Min Lee 27th birthday

December 4, 2007

• Since prison officials still don't know about the cell phone, Adnan receives Certificate of Achievement for three years of being infraction free.
  
• Approximate: Thiru finishes two years of as clerk for United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer
  

January 13, 2008

• At Jessup, Adnan Receives Devoted Program Supporters Award Certificate
  
• Since prison officials still don't know about the cell phone and hustles, Adnan receives Certificate of Appreciation for being "infraction free" for three years.
  

January/February, 2008

• Kandra / Adnan's Wife:
  
  • Approximate: Adnan sends Kandra $10,000.00 - Rabia doesn't hear about this until it has already happened.
  • Approximate: Kandra visits Adnan and they are married by another inmate. Rabia doesn't hear about this until it has already happened.
  • Kandra begins helping Adnan with his case by doing computer searches and making copies.

February 28, 2008

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for nine years.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

• Adnan's 27th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: Adnan has had a cell phone for four years. At least one of the phones he has had was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates.
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

• Baltimore Police Officer Lee emails Nathans & Biddle's C. Justin Brown: An item in evidence may have been destroyed. (Is this DNA?)

Saturday, October 15, 2008

• Hae Min Lee 28th birthday

Saturday, December 13, 2008

• Adnan receives Devoted Program Supporters Award in Jessup.

February 28, 2009

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for ten years.
  
• Photo of Adnan after ten years in prison
  

May, 2009-Approximate

• According to this letter, Justin Brown left Nathans & Biddle in the Spring of 2009, to start his own firm.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

• Adnan's 28th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: Adnan has had a cell phone for five years. At least one of the phones was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates.
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

June 9, 2009

• Adnan's attorney - Justin Brown - and Asia's future attorney - Gary Proctor - work together, on an unrelated case. This filing does not mention Nathans & Biddle. Does this indicate that by July of 2009, Justin Brown was no longer employed by Nathans & Biddle? [Does anyone know the exact date Justin Brown left Nathans & Biddle and started his own firm?]

June 20, 2009

• Adnan writes to Rabia that he has been moved to Supermax, in Cumberland, and no longer has the use of a cell phone.
  
• Adnan's 10/24/2016 request for bail indicates Adnan was cited for having a cellular phone in 2009. In SERIAL, Sarah Koenig said Adnan had a cell phone for five years.
  
• Kandra has only been able to visit Adnan four times during the year they were "married." After Adnan is moved to Supermax/Cumberland, Kandra never sees Adnan again.
  

July 14, 2009

• Adnan writes to Rabia that Larry Nathans will charge $30,000.00 just to look at transcripts. Adnan reminds Rabia that Larry Nathans was referred by Chris Flohr in 2004.
  
• Adnan writes that Justin Brown took the lead, then left Nathans & Biddle and started his own firm (about two months ago), and can charge Adnan less because of overhead.
  

Thursday, October 15, 2009

• Hae Min Lee 29th birthday

Winter, 2009

• Approximate: Justin Brown has said that he began working on Adnan's case in late 2009, while still at Nathans & Biddle.
  
  • This conflicts with the letter that Adnan wrote Rabia in July of 2009. In that letter Adnan says that Justin Brown took the lead on Adnan's case while at Nathans & Biddle, and started his own firm "about two months before" July of 2009.
  • Approximate: Justin Brown says that he took possession of copies of the defense files in 2009. [He did not say the month or date.]
  • Justin Brown is at least the 10th defense attorney to work on Adnan's case.
  • Unsubstantiated: Justin Brown filed a petition based on Asia's March 2005 affidavit, arguing that Adnan's trial might have gone another way if Gutierrez had checked out Asias' story. [No record of this affidavit exists.]

February 28, 2010

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for eleven years.

Early/Mid 2010

• Approximate: Justin Brown was still working for Nathans & Biddle in late 2009. This conflicts with the letter Adnan wrote to Rabia in July of 2009: That Justin Brown already started his own firm.

April 11, 2010

• Events described by various parties as follows:
  
  • Urick first PCR: Before Asia called him, he didn't know about the PCR motion. She was concerned if she had to come out here. I explained to her, I was not her attorney. But I told her that she would have to be served. And if she was served, and if they made the proper arrangements, she would have to show up.
  • Serial, Episode 1: Asia's fiancé comes to the door, opens it part way, tells the investigator that she cannot speak to Asia, but that from what he knows of Adnan's case, Adnan is guilty and deserved the punishment he got.
  • Rabia: Adnan’s PI returns with terrible news. Asia won’t testify. The PI never spoke to her, but her fiance made it very clear, in a very nasty way that suggested an anti-Muslim prejudice, that Asia would not be involved and to leave them alone . . . Faced with a tough decision, [Justin Brown] decides to submit [Asia's] letters but not subpeona her for the appeal hearing.
  • Asia Affidavit: In the late spring of 2010, I learned that the Syed defense team was attempting to contact me. I was initially caught off guard by this and did not talk to them.
  • 2016 PCR: Asia testified that her husband met the PI outside, then came inside and told her he thought it was about that girl that got killed. That she asked her husband to take the man's card, but she didn't talk to him. That she looked up the case on the internet, and called Kevin Urick. Asia says these are the notes she took during her April 11, 2010 conversation with Urick. Asia testified that Urick convinced her Adnan was guilty and that Brown was trying to play the system.

End of May, Approximate

• According to Rabia, Justin Brown asks Adnan to take a polygraph test to determine the likelihood that he is lying about having asked Gutierrez for a plea deal. According to Rabia, Adnan passes.

Friday, May 21, 2010

• Adnan's 29th Birthday.

[Post Conviction Timeline II>>]()

I (f23) met up with a guy from tinder. It was a nice date and we kissed at the end. Before we met up he asked for my snap but I don't use snap so I continued the conversation via tinder. I also don't like giving my snap out to random guys anyways. We haven't met up since as we both are busy.
My phone broke, so I got a new phone and downloaded tinder. When I logged in it made me make a new account and no longer can access my old account. I looked up his name on fb and found his fb account. Would you be creeped out if you got a request? Should I take the L and not send it?

DPW Update:
The Department of Public Works (DPW) Highway Maintenance Construction Section (MCS) has been working pre-typhoon ensuring the roadways remain accessible for emergency responders and essential government workers. Work was focused at the following sites pre-storm, that have been prone to flooding and heavy vegetation foliage:
Polaris Outfall Southbound, Piti
Finile Drive, Hågat
RR Cruz Subdivison, Hågat
Barcinas Manel Channel and Culverts, Malesso’
Patpuguan Bridge, Malesso’
Routed Roads (1, 4, 2, 10, 16, 15, 3, 9) – Island-wide
Storm Drainage Grills – Island-wide
Line Ditch Swells Along Rt. 11
Rt. 16, Maina Line Ditch
Upon the passage of Typhoon Mawar and at first daylight, crews from DPW’S MCS continued efforts in clearance of debris on major roadways which allowed the quick response from the Government of Guam and counterparts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to conduct damage assessments. The following sites were:
Rt. 4, Malesso’
Rt. 4, Chalan Pago
Pago Bay, Rt. 4
Rt. 4, Yona
Rt. 4, Ipan Talo’fo’fo
Rt. 4A, Talo’fo’fo
Layon Landfill, Inalåhan
Rt. 2, Hågat
Rt. 2A, Hågat-Humåtac
Rt. 17, Santa Rita-Sumai
Portions of Rt. 5 and 17m, Santa Rita-Sumai
Rt. 1 – Upper Tumon
Rt. 1 – East and West Hagåtna
Daok Strip, Hagåtna
Rt. 4, Sinajana to Ordot
Rt. 15, from Mangilao to Perez Acres, Yigo
Rt. 6, Maina
Snake Road to Nav Hospital, Maina
Rt. 15, Mangilao
Rt. 8, Maite Plumeria Hotel
Rt. 1 Dededo Micro Mall to Rt. 1 Yigo
Rt. 15 from Carnation up to Upi Elementary School, Yigo
Rt. 27, Macheche to Late Heights, Dededo and Mangilao
Rt. 29, Gayinero to Rt. 3 and Rt. 9, Yigo
Supported GWA - Access to 20+ Well sites island-wide.
As the island moves towards recovery, DPW crews continue to work removing debris throughout the island.
GWA Update:
As of 10 a.m., the Guam Waterworks Authority (GWA) provided the following update on water restoration progress:
Northern Region:
Currently 50% of operable wells are on-line
Northern water system is operating normally
More wells are being restored to island power as GPA continues to restore circuits
GWA continues to operate all available wells to increase reservoir levels throughout the northern system
Tumon and Tamuning have water, but low pressures persist causing outages in some areas until reservoir levels can be increased
Central Region:
Connection to Navy-supplied sources at Santa Rita-Sumai and Nimitz Hill has been restored
With the exception of Finile and Santa Ana areas, service was restored to Santa Rita-Sumai and Hågat
Talo’fo’fo main village has been restored, with minor outages being reported as crews are assessing for any line breaks
Service on Cross-island road area restored up to Our Lady of Peace
Southern Region:
Southern water system will operate at reduced capacity until damaged control equipment at the Ugum Surface Water Treatment Plant is resolved
Water services were restored from Ipan to Inalåhan
Main break repairs completed in Inalåhan
Restoration of Malesso’ and Humåtak is ongoing
GWA has deployed nine (9) 6,000 gallon Flexible Potable Water Tanks in:
Santa Teresita, Mangilao
Mongmong-Toto-Maite Mayor’s Office
Dededo Mayor’s Office
St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Inalåhan
Malesso’ Pier
Hågat Mayor's Office
Chalan Palauan, Dededo
Sinifa, Santa Rita
Mount Santa Rosa, Yigo
Additional tank deployments pending for other sites once additional containers and chassis are made available. Once the tanks are depleted, they will be refilled and returned to service at locations still without water.
At this time, the water tanks listed above are accessible 24 hours a day/7 days a week. Once the tanks are depleted, they will be refilled and returned to service at locations still without water. Residents island-wide who have water service are advised to conserve and limit use for cleaning, bathing, and cooking in order to conserve water to allow reservoir levels to increase.
As a precaution, water obtained from these designated locations must be boiled for at least three (3) minutes prior to consumption. A precautionary boil water notice remains in place due to possible bacterial contamination in the water that can occur when increased run-off enters a drinking water source following heavy rains.
Boil Water Notice Tips:
DO NOT DRINK THE WATER WITHOUT BOILING IT FIRST.
Bring all water to a boil, let it boil for three (3) minutes, and let it cool before using or use bottled water.
Boiled or bottled water should be used for drinking, making ice, brushing teeth, washing dishes, and food preparation until further notice.
Boiling kills bacteria and other organisms in the water.
For information, contact GWA’s 24/7 phone line at (671) 646-4211 or facebook.com/guamwaterworksauthority.
GTA Restoration Update:
GTA is actively working 24/7 on post-typhoon restoration. The core network is operational with stable off-island internet, but there are outages in wireless services in certain areas. Priority is given to larger sites serving residential and business customers. GTA is also prioritizing restoration to public safety and health facilities. However, the lack of island power and fuel shortages are causing some challenges for the restoration process.
To support customers, GTA is waiving disconnection fees and freezing disconnections until further notice.
Updated operating hours are Micronesia Mall (10AM-6PM) and GTA Support Center (7AM-7PM), while the GTA Experience Center and retail locations remain closed. For assistance, please contact the support center at 671-644-4482, visit www.gta.net, or email [email protected].
Docomo Pacific Restoration Update:
Docomo Pacific has been working with its technology crews to make island-wide assessments in Guam, Saipan, Tinian and Rota since Typhoon Mawar.
For Guam customers, the majority of cell sites did not suffer major damage due to Typhoon Mawar. The primary issue at this time is getting island power restored to the sites. Docomo Pacific is working closely with Guam Power Authority to restore services. Generators have been deployed at strategic sites to maximize coverage, and to ensure a stable power supply for as many mobile sites as possible.
The fiber network for southern villages supporting several mobile cell sites has sustained storm damage. This means that even if these sites were powered with a portable generator, there is no mobile service connectivity at this time. This is on the list of high priorities, along with restoration to public safety and health care facilities. No disconnections were announced until further notice, as well as no data caps for all mobile data customers and load-free prepaid service.
IT&E Restoration Update:
IT&E is working around the clock to restore services. Generators have been deployed to undamaged cell sites that can be accessed safely and that have connectivity to the network. Southern cell sites suffered significant damage from the typhoon. IT&E is unable to provide a timeline for restoration at this time, but is working to deploy a solution.
All prepaid subscribers get unlimited service, regardless of prepaid plan. Data caps have been lifted for all postpaid subscribers and tethering is available for all postpaid subscribers, free of charge. Service suspension due to nonpayment is postponed until further notice.
For the latest service updates, subscribers are encouraged to check IT&E’s official social media pages. Service-related issues can be reported by calling (671) 922-4483 or sending a direct message on official social media pages.
Visit the following links for the latest advisory information:
GHS/OCD Website: https://ghs.guam.gov/
GHS/OCD Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GHSOCD/
JRM Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jrmguam
For more information, contact the Joint Information Center at (671) 478-0208/09/10.

Author's Note:
Reddit was having issues when I posted the last chapter, so just in case anyone missed it, the previous chapter (197) starts here.
Also, the next chapter will come out a week from now, on June 5th.
​
--
​
Two Days Later
"AMBUSH!"
Rob's eyes snapped open. Panicked shouts were resounding from outside his tent. The first notion that popped into his sleep-addled mind was relief, as an ambush was preferable to the nightmare he'd been having. That sentiment lasted until a distant explosion obliterated the final remnants of his drowsiness, sending him and Keira sprinting out of their tent with weapons in hand.
Chaos awaited them outside. People weren't quite running around like chickens with their heads cut off, but it was close. While the coalition had known that a night attack was possible and prepared themselves accordingly, no one was ever truly ready to be assaulted with spells and Skills as they frolicked through dreamland. Arrows peppered the ground at their feet, the majority landing harmlessly away, although Rob spotted a few soldiers with fresh wounds seeping blood.
He spared a passing glance for the numerous banners the coalition had erected across their campsite. Each one was raised twenty feet high, decorated with lights in order to glow in the dark, and marked with wartime symbols indicating a desire to engage in peaceful negotiations. The Harpies answered by filling the banners with arrow holes and setting many of them on fire. Diplomacy's plan had been doomed from the start.
Kicking his brain into high gear, Rob activated Quick Thinking and sent Messages checking on Riardin's Rangers. His eyes traveled up towards the night sky, seeing a canvas of pure darkness broken up by stars and moonlight. It must have been the dead of midnight or close to it. Arrows were impossible to see coming before they'd already hit the ground, and the only indication of Harpies flying above were the shadows blotting out the stars every so often.
Thankfully, the coalition had planned for this. As if on cue, multiple orbs of brilliant light shot upwards, mages from each faction contributing to the effort. The orbs hung in the sky like floating lighthouses, banishing enough darkness to allow Rob to see what he was dealing with.
A resigned expletive slipped out of his mouth. There had to be at least four hundred of the fuckers up there, maybe five hundred, swarming like a colony of feathered bees. It was the worst-case scenario of what the coalition envisioned – Elnaril sending the maximum number of Harpies he could realistically field without leaving the capital undefended.
How am I supposed to fight them? Rob wondered, asking himself a recurring question that he'd never been able to answer. They can't kill me with piddly arrows and long-range spells, but my allies aren't so durable. Somehow I doubt they'll listen if I tell them to stop being cowards and come fight me in melee range.
All thoughts of attacking were swept aside when the Harpies began dropping a very different projectile towards the coalition base camp. Rob opened and closed his mouth several times, shock suffusing every cell in his body. He recalled the explosion that had awoken him, the moment now disturbingly re-contextualized.
The Harpies were airdropping crates of Firebombs.
"THAT'S COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, YOU LITTLE SHITS!" Rob summoned his own crate from his Bound Items, tore open the cover, and grabbed a Firebomb in each hand. He activated Bulk Up for extra Strength and hurled Firebombs towards the falling crates with the best baseball throws he could muster. One, two, three, four, five, six – the crate's supply rapidly depleted as Rob threw again and again, trying to intercept as many payloads as possible, Keira following his lead. They were joined by coalition archer support, arrows sniping at crates that were out of reach.
Dozens of roaring explosions lit up the sky. While some of the crates had gotten through, most were turned to dust before they could hit the ground, reducing the Harpies' shock-and-awe tactic to an impromptu fireworks display.
Throwing Proficiency Level Increased! 6 → 7
Throwing Proficiency Level Increased! 7 → 8
"THAT'S RIGHT!" Rob whooped. "LEAVE THE KABOOMS TO THE EXPERTS!" He paused, then turned to Keira, looking abashed. "Um...was this my fault? Are they actually copying me?" Please don't tell me I accidentally advanced warfare by a century.
"We can ruminate on that later," Keira answered, skillfully dodging the question. "For now, we should focus on retaliating by any means available."
No sooner had the words left her mouth than a glowing yellow projectile shot up into the sky. Orn'tol's Chain Arrow nicked a Harpy on the edge of their wing – which was all it needed to begin the process. A tenth of a second later, the arrow veered to the right and struck a different Harpy in their stomach. It ripped out and through the other side, taking another ninety-degree turn to spear an unsuspecting Harpy in the back. And so it went, chaining from target-to-target with ruthless efficiency. By the end, twenty Harpies had been struck, eight of them falling out of the sky, unmoving.
Rob saluted the display. "Yeah, I don't have any ranged attacks on that level. I think we'd be better-off guarding the people who do."
They rushed over to where the Fiend mages resided, discovering the group huddled under cover, besieged by a stream of arrows and spells hammering down around them. Rob sent off a quick Message to Vul'to, then jumped in front of an icicle spell that would have gored a Fiend through her neck. "Sup."
"Lord Roy!" The Fiend's jubilation froze when she saw the icicle sticking out of Rob's shoulder. "Are–"
"No time for chitchat. If I cover you, can you fire back?"
After some thought, the mages nodded. Rob gave them a thumbs-up with his left hand and deflected an arrow with his right. He turned his full attention to the projectile storm raining from above, calculating which ones he'd be able to block and which ones he'd need to take on the chin.
The next few minutes became a blur of activity. Arrow. Skill. Arrow. Spell. Spell. Skill. Arrow. Arrow. It never ended. His slow walk towards Harpy Settlement #4 was proving to be an invaluable experience, because he wasn't sure if he could've kept up now without already knowing how to handle a barrage of small projectiles. Even Keira was struggling; while Danger Sense told her where she needed to move, it was reaching a point where she physically couldn't execute the motions fast enough. Rob would've expected the Harpies to lay off once they noticed that he was there to play defense, but if anything, they were attacking more fiercely than before.
Almost as if they held a grudge against him or something.
Outwardly, he was projecting the supreme confidence of a Leader. Inwardly, he was honestly starting to get a bit worried. While he'd only taken about 300 HP of damage, a different resource was beginning to wane: his Stamina. Quick Thinking consumed 3 Stamina for every second it was active. That combined with his constant movement was...tiring. He'd activated Second Wind to restore 35% of his Stamina, but unlike his Vitality-based abilities, this one had a cooldown of 24 hours. In a couple minutes, he might actually need to ask for a short break.
Was that the end of the world? No. Was it embarrassing? Potentially. Leaders weren't supposed to ask for breaks. At least, he thought they weren't. Elatrans could be weird about what constituted a good Leader. Rob was still figuring out when he was supposed to act like an invulnerable pillar versus when he was allowed to be a real person. I miss when I didn't have to care about this sort of thing.
His reputation was saved by Vul'to's timely arrival. The Soul Guardian burst onto the scene in a mad dash, skid to a halt, took a stance, activated Auto-Guard, and proceeded to swat away the Harpies' projectiles as if they were no more than gnats. "I will protect the mages from here on out," he calmly stated. Vul'to's movements flowed like water, his voice showing no sign of exertion as he spoke. "Put your efforts towards an offensive strike."
Rob suppressed a relieved sigh as he deactivated Quick Thinking. "For the record, when our Party inevitably complains about my risk-taking later, I'm going to say that both you and Keira signed off on a Rob Plan."
"You can't be serious," Keira blurted out, panting heavily as she rested. "Our enemies are in the sky. What scheme could you have possibly concocted that would put you at risk?"
Rob hesitated. He was distinctly aware of the mages listening in as they fired spells, devoting a portion of their brainpower to gathering gossip material. Anything he said here would reflect on his status as Leader. That included overly-casual speech and devising schemes that by all rights should get him a one-way ticket to the loony bin.
Then he remembered that allies were dying around him, and he stopped caring so much about what other people thought.
"My usual method for dealing with mobile enemies is Rampage spam," he began to explain. "That isn't viable here. I'd run out of MP long before I reached their altitude, and even if I somehow made it, what then? I can't dodge mid-air. They'd turn me into a pincushion. So here's what I was thinking..."
His explanation was brief. By the time he'd finished, the mages were staring at him with eyes wide as saucers. Keira merely nodded. "Very well. I'll accept it."
"No complaints?"
"You left yourself an escape route. That already makes this plan safer than most." She turned away, gesturing for him to follow. "Let's go find Malika. If I'm not mistaken, she'll be at Orn'tol's side."
It wasn't hard to locate her. They only needed to trace the empowered spells blasting upwards like rocket launchers. Rob did a rough headcount of the Harpies' numbers, estimating that, despite their ambush, the battle wasn't going well for them. Over forty had been felled by Malika's spells, Orn'tol's arrows, and the other coalition mages and archers. The Dwarven riflemen were also putting in work, gunshots echoing as Harpies were struck by blindingly fast projectiles they'd come entirely unprepared for, their race inducted into a new era of war with a baptism of lead and gunpowder.
Conversely, Rob would bet his life savings that not even fifteen coalition members had perished. While he didn't have any proof of this, he knew from experience that basic arrows and mediocre spells lost striking power when fired from a long range. And unlike the Harpies' army consisting of everyone-they-could-get, the coalition soldiers were the elite of each territory. They were tougher, stronger, and had access to superior healing magic. In this instance, quality trumped quantity.
Especially when the quality was so lopsided. As Rob ran, he saw a lightning spear shoot up towards the sky and explode into a ball of electricity, frying a dozen Harpies in an instant. Moments later, the surrounding air seemed to dry out, like a heat wave passing through, as moisture was collected into a towering plume of water. Once it was ready, the plume burst upwards and casually washed away another dozen Harpies as if they were drowned rats.
Sylpeiros and Cyraeneus. Ambush or no ambush, long range or close range – didn't matter. Leaders were terrifying in every scenario.
Rob found Malika and Orn'tol in good spirits. The siblings had a whole squad of Vanguards protecting them, like a pair of pint-sized siege cannons with ground support. "Rob!" Malika exclaimed, the instant she saw him. "MP Potions! Forthwith!"
In a flash of blue mana, he produced three Potions from Spatial Storage. "Your humble servant is here," he remarked, in a tone drier than the air.
"Only three Potions? Bah! Give me more!"
"Your humble servant has no wish to deal with an Archmage with a hangover."
Grumbling, she grabbed the Potions and chugged them like a frat boy on spring break. Rob rated her chugging prowess at a solid 7 out of 10, judging that – while she'd grown considerably – there was still room for improvement.
"Should..." Orn'tol started to say something, then thought better of it. Rob could guess what he was thinking. The boy was worried that they weren't being properly respectful of the situation, joking around in the middle of a warzone where allies were suffering. He'd likely come to the same conclusion as Rob: that letting Malika keep her morale up was more important. "Are we winning?" he instead asked.
"Easily," Rob affirmed. That was never in doubt. It would've taken something going catastrophically wrong for them to be in danger of losing. In reality, today's battle was just another leg in the extended marathon that the coalition was running. Rather than obsessing over a transient victory that was all but guaranteed, they needed to minimize casualties so that taking the Harpy capital was a feasible prospect. That meant being careful, guarding their back lines, and only attacking when it was safe.
Oh, and crushing the Harpies so that they wised up and retreated.
"I am...concerned," Orn'tol admitted. "The Harpies should have been aware of our strength. Yet by the end of this night, unless they soon retreat, their losses will mount in the hundreds. Why waste so much life?"
Rob narrowed his eyes at the sky. "Couple possibilities. Elnaril could be screwing around. Blights think that wasting life is absolutely hilarious. He is part Leader, though, so I can't imagine he'd be quite that frivolous with his resources. With that in mind, I don't think the Harpies are going to fight to the last man – they probably came here intending to thin our numbers and skedaddle. Severe losses would prevent us from being able to seize the capital. Their initial Firebomb barrage could've potentially done that on its own."
"And it failed."
"Sure did. Now they're stuck trying to do it the old-fashioned way." Rob shrugged. "They might have a backup plan. If so, we'll handle it, no worries." He faced Malika. "Speaking of plans, I've got one. Do you mind holding onto some MP for me?"
She opened her mouth to respond – then froze, her head turning sideways. Rob followed Malika's gaze towards the Gellin encampment, his brow furrowing at what he saw. All thirty Gellin were exiting their tents in near-perfect unison. They reminded Rob of a collection of wind-up animatronics, with movements that weren't entirely synchronized and robotic, yet also weren't dissimilar enough to appear fully lifelike. As the Gellin drifted forward, moonlight mixed with the light emanating from the mages' sun orbs, bathing them in an almost ethereal glow.
A small shiver crept up Rob's spine. He didn't know why, but something about the situation was giving him the heebie-jeebies. Maybe it was because he'd never seen a Gellin awake at this hour before. He'd gone on more than one midnight walk to clear his head after a bout of nightmares, and while he'd met the occasional Fiend, Dwarf, Elf, or Merfolk, the Gellin were always sequestered in their tents.
His shiver crawled up to the back of his neck, making its little hairs stand on end as a thrum of mana built within the Gellin. Even Rob's meager Sense Mana could feel it. Thirty Gellin had joined into three Mage Circles, linking their power, creating...something. A force. An aura. It lacked physical form, yet felt no less threatening than one of Sylpeiros' lightning spears.
The space above them seemed to shimmer, as if viewed through a lightly-smudged eyeglass. Virtually invisible if you weren't paying close attention.
Or if you were flying hundreds of feet in the air.
The Harpies didn't try to avoid it. They didn't even know it was there. Lightning spears and plumes of water were obvious. Flashy. The Gellins' something simply wafted upwards, like rising heat, until it reached the sky and engulfed a multitude of Harpies in a devouring fog.
Piercing screams cut through the din of warfare.
The affected Harpies reacted in different ways. Some went still as statues. Some writhed as if electrocuted. Some began attacking invisible enemies. But regardless of how they reacted, they all fell, and they all screamed.
Rob covered his ears. It was the worst sound he'd heard since Elnaril laughed at him through a Message Crystal. The battlefield didn't completely grind to a halt, but it definitely slowed, with both the attackers and defenders needing to process what the fuck just happened.
"Was that Mind Magic?" Malika whispered, her bravado gone and vanished.
"It appears so," Keira quietly answered.
"I...did not know it could do that."
"Neither did I."
After shaking his head to reset his thoughts, Rob stepped back from everyone, ensuring that he was out of their line of sight. Much as he wanted to take a breather, he couldn't. The Harpies were reeling – this was a perfect opportunity to execute his plan.
He just needed to finish the prepwork. Hefting his longsword, Rob turned it around and pointed it at his heart.
And paused.
My hands are shivering, he realized. Why are my hands shivering? I've done this before. He willed his hands to stay still, nearly snarling when they failed to cooperate. This is a waste of time. Don't be a fucking bitch, Rob. Just lie back and think of England.
Stab.
Stab.
Stab.
Lifesurge.
Living Bomb ready.
Rob used Spatial Storage to switch his clothes for an unbloodied ensemble, then tapped Malika on her shoulder. "Do you have enough MP for a big wind spell?"
She blinked, jolted out of her reverie. "Oh. Um, yes. Why?"
He told her of his plan. A broad grin split across her face, transitioning into an excited cackle. "You're a madman. Let's do that straight away."
As Malika charged her spell, Rob attached a Waymark point to the ground, then summoned the Dwarven Sheet Metal from his Bound Items. Keira, Orn'tol, and the Vanguards spread out to give them some space. The Vanguards were looking on in awe; Rob could only hope that they'd enjoy the show.
"We have to time this just right," he told Malika. "Fire the spell on three. Understand?" She nodded so hard that she probably gave herself whiplash. Rob placed his longsword in Storage, holding the Sheet Metal with both hands.
"One." Malika held onto her spell, ready to unleash the fury of an Archmage with a cause.
"Two." Rob leaped into the air, positioning the Sheet Metal under his feet like a surfboard.
"Three!"
A miniaturized tornado slammed into the Sheet Metal, propelling Rob up, up, and away. He lost his balance pretty much immediately, tumbling onto the Sheet as wind pressure buffeted him without mercy. His ascent skyward was so sudden and so jarring that he was actually surprised when he came face-to-face with a Harpy. The two of them exchanged bewildered stares. Rob felt tempted to say a variant of one of the classics, like 'You come here often?'
Then he remembered why he was there.
This was it. No going back. Justified or necessary or otherwise, once he activated Living Bomb, he will have spilled Harpy blood on Harpy soil. There was a sense of finality to it that almost made him hesitate.
Almost.
"I wish you'd stayed home," Rob muttered. The Harpy's survival instincts kicked in, his wings flapping in a hurry, yet it was already too late. You couldn't outrun a thought.
Living Bomb.
The world became obscured by flame, heat, and noise. Rob wasn't sure how many Harpies he'd caught in the blast radius, but the EXP infusing his soul informed him that it was more than a few. Without waiting, he cast Rampage to push himself out of the Bomb's center, then Waymarked to safety so that the Harpies couldn't take revenge after the Bomb faded. The Rampage movement was a necessity; he wasn't taking any chances that using Waymark while in the middle of the Bomb might somehow bring it back with him.
His feet now on solid ground, Rob was treated to an awe-inspiring spectacle. A colossal sphere of fire hung above, like the core of an angry sun, its surface twisting with unbridled energy. The sound it emitted was one long, continuous, ear-splitting explosion, as if the Bomb was a sentient creature noisily lamenting the ones who'd escaped its grasp. This was the first time Rob had seen his Skill from an outside perspective, and in that instant, he truly understood why it was so effective at shattering morale.
As it did now. Living Bomb rapidly faded, but by then the Harpies were already in retreat. The one-two punch of the Gellins' mind attack and a giant fuckoff explosion had doubled their casualties in a matter of seconds. Even if that combo hadn't broken their spirits, not withdrawing at this point would be tantamount to suicide.
Rob allowed his shoulders to relax as a collective sigh of relief passed through the coalition. Their battle was over. Victory was – Wait, what's up with that guy?
Relief gave way to confusion as they noticed a figure in the distance sprinting towards them. It was an...Elf? One of Sylpeiros' Scouts? As everyone watched, the Elf in question passed straight under the fleeing Harpies, neither faction looking at each other as they traveled in opposite directions. The sight was borderline surreal, adding another obstacle to the emotional gamut that Rob was still running. Maybe I can go to bed and pretend I didn't see anything.
Plausible deniability was taken from him a moment later, when the Elf got within range of the coalition's Heightened Senses and started bellowing at the top of his longs. "MONSTERS! PACK OF MONSTERS AND BEASTS! LEVEL 50 AND ABOVE!"
His declaration just left them more confused. There was no such thing as a pack of high-Leveled monsters roaming the surface of Elatra. At first Rob thought that a Dungeon had grown for too long and was beginning to overflow, but the truth ended up being far stranger.
"About...thirty...monsters and animals," the Elf Scout wheezed, once he'd gotten close and could speak in full sentences. "Coming this way. Some are...natural-born. Beasts who've lived for centuries. Others are monsters. Used Identify. Think they...were plucked from Dungeons."
Everyone glanced at Sylpeiros, an unspoken message in their eyes: "He's your Scout. You sort out this mess." The Seneschal put on a deep scowl, somehow managing to direct it at over a dozen people simultaneously. Once he was sure they'd received the full force of his ire, he composed his features and turned towards the exhausted Scout.
"While I don't doubt your words, what you've described is nonsensical. Setting aside how such an eclectic group of creatures was brought together...monsters and natural-born animals are hardly allies. They'd rip each other to pieces under normal circumstances. Animals from differing species would be at odds as well."
"I am merely reporting what I've seen. In one such example, I witnessed an enormous bat flying alongside a misshapen creature of mana that could only have been spawned within the depths of a high-Level Dungeon."
"Are the animals infected?" Rob asked. "This sort of thing happened back when The Village of Ixatan Forest was invaded. Animals got possessed by the Blight."
The Scout paused, searching through his memories – or rather, his log of system notifications. "Yes. An 'Infected' Status Effect appeared when I Identified the animals. Until you provided context, I was unaware of what that implied."
As Sylpeiros continued speaking with the Scout, Rob stopped to think, constructing a timeline of events. This pack of high-Level creatures couldn't have been assembled on short notice. It must've been years in the making, Elnaril searching Harpy territory with a fine-tooth comb, scooping up wildlife and plundering Dungeons.
Rob resisted the urge to shake his fist at the sky. When Kismet warned him that Elnaril had 'strong creatures' to use, it would've been nice to have some extra fucking details. Vague omnipotent asshole.
Anyway. Elnaril corrals his Pokemon, then prepares to ambush the coalition along with his Harpies. Except...the timing went wrong. Or maybe the position? Controlling that many powerful creatures couldn't be easy. Like attempting to drive thirty cars at the same time. It was probably why the coalition hadn't been ambushed until now – Elnaril was waiting for them to get closer. Regardless, the plan was likely supposed to be the Harpies attacking in tandem with the monsters...but the bombing run largely failed, and the monsters were late to the party.
Rob grimaced as he realized how much of the coalition's victory came down to blind luck. Elnaril's plan was unsuccessful due to logistical issues on his side, not because of any stratagem on the coalition's part. If the Harpies had successfully used their pets as distractions, unloading crates of Firebombs while high-Level creatures ran amok through the battlefield...
The coalition still would have won. But their casualties would've been enormous. Enough to make invading the capital untenable.
Everyone else came to the same conclusion as they listened to the Scout's tale. Sylpeiros remained silent for a time, looking more pensive than someone might expect from a Leader who'd just prevailed in battle. "We shall discuss areas of improvement at a later date," he said, sighing. "How long until the monsters arrive?"
"Roughly four minutes."
Sylpeiros drummed his fingers on his thigh. "While we could swarm the monsters with superior numbers, the vast majority of our soldiers are unsuited for combating enemies over Level 50. The monster will fall, but not before inflicting casualties. Instead, I propose that myself, Cyraeneus, and Riardin's Rangers go forth and hold the line. The rest of our soldiers will defend base camp, kept out of harm's way, firing projectiles at whichever beasts draw near."
He frowned. "Even so, thirty monsters above Level 50 aren't so easily repelled. They may be able to fly, or have carapaces that blunt conventional attacks. It would be best if the entire lot focuses on our group, but some will choose to bypass the front line in favor of assaulting the coalition base camp. Casualties are inevitable."
"No. They aren't."
Rob stepped forward, walking in the direction the Scout had come from. A familiar swell of anticipation built within him. "Counter-proposal. I go. Alone. You all stay and deal with whoever slips past."
Numerous opposing voices exploded in unison. Rob countered them with an explosion of his own, summoning a crate of Firebombs and chucking it into the distance. The faint BOOM bought him a moment of stunned silence.
"No bullshitting," he said, fixing them with an intent gaze. "You want to minimize casualties? This is how we do it. Base camp will be vulnerable without high-Level people to protect it. Hell, some of you might die if you try to 'hold the line' in the middle of an open field. It only takes one screwup to get your head bitten off, and the monsters outnumber us. But me?"
With a flourish, Rob summoned his longsword and activated Step of the Wind. "They. Can't. Kill. Me."
He was off before anyone could raise another protest. None of them followed, perhaps sensing something in his voice indicating that it would be a bad idea. Just as well – Rob would've physically thrown back anyone who tried.
No one else needed to risk their lives today.
It only took him three minutes of running at full speed to locate the monster stampede. They were impossible to miss; a menagerie of oversized animals and abominations with the strength to depopulate a city. For almost anyone else in Elatra, the sight would have filled them with the dread of someone who knew their death was imminent, and that they could do nothing to stop the reaper's scythe from swinging.
Rob waved. The monsters screeched when they saw him, letting out a symphony that could be graciously described as hideous. Music to my ears. Out of curiosity, he cast Identify on the first one in line to die.
Name: Lord of the CavesLevel: 57Race: Blighted BatStatus Effects: Infected, ThirstyDescription: An existence well above Ixatan's Lord of the Forest that nearly killed you three times over. Gee, I wonder what happens now that you're 70 Levels higher and with pent-up resentment towards big beasties? Play nice, Rob, or you'll break your toys.
"Sorry, but breaking them is the fun part." Inwardly, Rob sent thanks to Elnaril for delivering him a herd of acceptable targets to use as living stress balls. After the unpleasantness of being forced to kill his first non-Blighted Harpies, this was a golden opportunity to let loose – and he was going to make damn good use of it.
The monsters drew closer. Any second now, the carnage would commence. Elation and certainty mingled within him, letting him know that he was in his element. He emptied his mind of worries, soaking in the view. There were no war strategies, allied casualties, or moral quandaries to concern himself with.
Just him, and his prey.
Rampage. Rob flew upwards towards the Lord of the Caves. It was a freakish behemoth of a bat, its head as large as a man's body. The creature sank its fangs into Rob's torso, biting down as if four longswords were piercing through him, vital organs shredded to confetti.
637 Piercing Damage Sustained!
It tickled. Rob completed his swing, landing a direct hit on the Lord's head. He didn't activate any additional offensive abilities, because he didn't need to. Blood for Blood increased his damage based on his missing HP. Rampage highly increased the damage of his next attack. Headsman increased his damage by 25% when attacking an enemy's head. Bone Breaker doubled the damage he dealt to an enemy's bone structure.
With all those passive effects stacking onto each other, the bat's neck was almost severed in one clean stroke. Thanks to Lifesteal, Rob immediately recovered most of his lost HP, like nothing had ever happened. Despite the bat's head hanging by threads, it stubbornly clung to life for a few moments longer – but only a few.
Swordsmanship Level Increased! 9 → 10
One down. Plenty to go. Rob pivoted to the next-closest monster, a gargantuan bear that reminded him of an Ixatan beast that had caved his chest in, once upon a time. Emboldened by nostalgia, he put a bit more oomph into his next attack, stacking Rampage, Power Slash, and Imbue Vitality.
The bear's outer hide was abnormally tough, similar to a Vanguard's armor. That mattered up until the point Rob broke the skin, after which Imbue Vitality's quadruple damage effect savaged the beast from within, its insides reduced to crimson mush.
Level Increased! 84 → 85
5 Stat Points Gained!
BERSERKER Level Increased! 82 → 83
An apelike creature with distended arms leaped ahead of the rest of the pack, enormous hands wrapping around Rob before he could dodge. It let out a warbling bellow, squeezing down with enough pressure to bend steel. Rob's bones, durable as they were, started to crack.
Vitamin D(efense) Level Increased! 10 → 11
Cute. He flicked on the Flames of Vengeance, azure fire covering his body. A grin spread over Rob's face as the beast shrieked and let go. "No, no, we were having a moment. Don't hide from your emotions." Rampaging forward, he jumped on the ape's head and gave it a big ole' hug. The shrieks intensified, mighty fists pounding at his body, fracturing more bones in a desperate attempt to dislodge him.
It was all for naught. The ape's struggles slowed, then ceased, its brain cooked from the inside like spaghetti in a microwave.
Pyromania Level Increased! 2 → 3
The next one on the chopping block was an honest-to-god giant spider. Rob shivered as he summoned a crate of Firebombs and promptly Riardin Special'd the skittering menace into the hereafter. Arachnophobia's 300% damage bonus against spiders combined with Pyromania's 30% fire damage bonus – well, 40% now – meant that it lasted about two seconds before crumbling like a pile of chitinous kindling.
Good riddance. Monsters and abominations were one thing. Spiders...ugh.
Rob checked back the way he'd come from, narrowing his eyes when he saw that a couple monsters had skirted past him while he dealt with their friends. He chased after something that must've been birthed in a Dungeon on a bender, its body comprised of flying limbs and harsh edges that hurt to look at if he stared for too long.
The floating Picasso painting in monster form suddenly whirled around, aiming multiple sharpened points at Rob's head, neck, eyes, heart, and liver. It was a phenomenally well-executed attack that would have been the envy of any Combat Class user.
Unfortunately, Picasso had chosen the one target in the world that could turn lethality into a detriment. With a thought, Rob deactivated all of his defensive Skills, then activated Dauntless Reprisal, reflecting the damage of five grievous blows back onto the creature. It collapsed into itself, twitching on the ground, silently pleading for mercy as a longsword ended its suffering.
Swordsmanship Level Increased! 10 → 11
As Rob reactivated his defensive Skills and chose his next target, something in the monsters' attitudes shifted. Several of them went from stampeding ahead to turning towards him on a dime. Their movements were stiff and jerky, as if puppeteered by an unseen force.
"Hi Elnaril!" Rob twirled his longsword. "Hope you don't mind me Old Yeller-ing your pets here. I'm sad to say that you didn't train them prop–"
The creatures pounced in unison. Claws and fangs savaged Rob's from head to toe, tearing off limbs and pulling apart flesh. A good chunk of his body mass disappeared in seconds.
Platelet Party Level Increased! 20 → 21
1021 Combined Damage Sustained!
"Wow, that's a lot of damage." Rob grinned, blood dripping from the corners of his mouth. "On an unrelated note, guess what Skill just came off cooldown?"
BOOM.
Level Increased! 85 → 86
5 Stat Points Gained!
BERSERKER Level Increased! 83 → 84
BERSERKER Level Increased! 84 → 85
Rob stood in the center of a crater. Living Bomb had ripped the ground open like scooping ice cream. He was once again back to full health, Lifesteal having converted 50% of the damage he'd dealt into HP.
And he'd dealt a lot of damage.
"It's like I said," he whispered, to nothing in particular. "They can't kill me. When I put my mind to it, I'm a better monster than they could ever hope to be."
The thought didn't distress him like it would have back home on Earth. It wasn't so bad, being a monster to monsters. Kept his friends alive, put food on the table...there were worse careers, he supposed.
Rob jumped out of the crater, searching for new targets. Living Bomb wasn't nearly large enough to take out all of them at once. He set his eyes on a fleeing wyvern and gave chase. As the gap closed, he checked his available Skills, and oh would you look at that, Imbue Vitality was off cooldown now.
Swordsmanship Level Increased! 11→ 12
One monster fell. Then another. Then another. Rob alternated his Skills, rotating between whatever abilities were available.
Swordsmanship Level Increased! 12→ 13
More creatures tried ganging up on him. It didn't work.
Platelet Party Level Increased! 21 → 22
Headsman! 4 → 5
He sliced and cut and Firebombed everything in his path.
Pyromania Level Increased! 3 → 4
Until eventually...
Level Increased! 86 → 87
5 Stat Points Gained!
BERSERKER Level Increased! 85 → 86
There was nothing left.
Rob found himself surrounded by a pile of mangled corpses. He tried counting to see if he could reach thirty, then gave up. Too many mixed-up body parts. It was likely that a couple monsters had gotten past him, so he'd just have to hope for the best.
His prayers were answered when he arrived back at base camp. A wide smile split across Rob's face as he counted a mere six monster corpses littered around the outskirts. They hadn't even gotten close. Most importantly, there wasn't a single allied corpse anywhere in sight.
Zero casualties.
Everyone was staring at him with various looks on their faces. Rob didn't bother trying to decipher all of them. They could think whatever they wanted to think – results were what mattered. The coalition may have lost some soldiers in the Harpy attack, but from the monster stampede?
Zero goddamn casualties.
Rob took a bow, then went straight for his tent. He wasn't going to find a better note to sleep on than this. His consciousness faded the moment he closed his eyes.
And the nightmares didn't dare to come for him.
​
--
​
Changes, Character Sheet, Skill List
Thanks for reading!

I feel like I’m losing my dad mentally. He’s of a brilliant inventor mind, perpetually positive personality that believes in possibilities.
As a now early 30’s adult, I look back and realize he is also impressionable and easily swayed to certain beliefs. I’ve always thought him to be a “mystical” type of thinker. For example, if he had a girlfriend into crystals, he’d be into crystals. If he had a Christian wife, he’d follow it to a T, etc. He’ll sink thousands of dollars into something if he thinks it’s a quick win (ie. Spending $9000 on a cryptocurrency that is not tradeable, but convinced he’ll cash it in someday for $883 mil).
It’s dawned on me over the past year or two that he’s gotten worse, especially with access to the internet. He was banned on Twitter for sharing a ton of stuff (I don’t know what it was). He’s taken to these off brand platforms like Parlor, or Rumble to get his information. In the past, if he’d share something crazy, I’d say- that makes no sense; will challenge him; basically give it to him straight.
We only talk maybe once a yeaonce every 6 months on the phone.
Anyways, we talked tonight for an hour and a half, and maybe he was a little drunk, but he just… listed out all this random shit that was so upsetting— I just feel worried for him (and frankly for myself…genes).
So, he believes in flat earth, that every human has God dna, that there are lizard people, (I can’t believe it typing this— it’s so crazy), that Biden and Trump are actually dead, that we live in some kind of alternate reality, something about 5D, something about AI, something about the next nuclear war (taking this year btw apparently) that it’s all like some kind of movie:non-reality thing…something about how bees don’t really fly - “they hover”- something about celebrities eating abortion babies… and like how the Ukraine war ACTUALLY happened 8 years ago… um… just everything. He was like, “I love you and I just want you to know all this stuff, just know if XYZ happens, you are safe”.
Or he’d say, “I hate to sound crazy, but…” or “I’m not the sort to believe in conspiracy theories, but…”
I was like… speechless, I didn’t know what to say, just worried for him. I was tuning him out, trying to think where I could chisel at his beliefs. I’d call him out on some stuff.
For example, with lizard people, I was like, “okay dad… of course this sounds crazy. Can you honestly tell me how you can get from point A to point B to where you accept this as reality— because it’s so farfetched.
He was like, “it’s so much, just.. trust me when I say I’ve done my research for the last year. I follow XYZ RANDOM GUY on some social media, and there are thousands like me who say the same things… it would be insane if you saw and read what I did”.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do as his child… like, I don’t know how to fight against these false beliefs. I don’t know how to pull him away from this. I know it can become dangerous, and I just… hearing him passionately talk about this clearly insane stuff has really upset me. Like, what do I do? What are my options? What can I do to help?
He’s 53. I noticed it get “intense” around age 45 for him, though he’s always leaned toward this type of personality.
TLDR; my dad is losing it, going down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. I don’t know what to do or how to snap him out of it.

Even though I knew that it was probably just going to be a hookup, I still wanted to look nice. I spent a lot of time agonizing over the outfit that I’d wear. The black dress showed off some cleavage (not that I had much), but it didn’t really seem very me. The floral blouse and skirt combo on the other hand was much more my speed, but I didn’t know if it looked too frumpy or not. I didn’t really want to show up to my first casual hookup looking like somebody's grandmother.
​
Then there was the choice of underwear. I didn’t own anything that sexy, so I’d bought something just for the occasion. It was comfortable but I didn’t really know if it was me or not.
​
I guess if all went to plan, my clothes weren’t really going to matter, were they? They were probably going to be in a puddle on the floor pretty early into the night, but I still wanted to look sexy. I wanted to make a good impression! Maybe if I did, it might lead to something a little more lasting… I doubted it, but… well, a girl can dream, right?
​
I’ve never had a lot of luck with dating. Putting myself out there isn’t easy. I want to do it! But I just struggle. The moment I try to talk to someone, my voice dies in my throat and I immediately run out of things to say. I struggle to make eye contact. It’s not an attractive look. I’d always imagined that someday my love life would just work itself out and that I’d meet the perfect girl in some charming little meet cute. But by the time I was 32, it still hadn’t happened yet and I was starting to doubt that it ever would. I think that’s why the ad I saw a few weeks ago really got to me.
​
‘Life’s too short to wait for someday! You deserve to find someone! Sign up today and feel the butterflies!’
​
I’d seen worse advertisements for dating sites before, and considering the headspace I was in, signing up for another one didn’t seem like that bad of an idea. Besides, ‘Butterfly’ was supposed to connect queer girls to queer girls and well, I just so happened to be a queer girl so why not give it a try? It’s not like I had a lot to lose. Although I can’t say I did a whole lot better with online dating than I did with in person dating. I just never seemed to know what to say and most of the conversations I had fizzled out pretty quickly when I either got nervous or ran out of things to talk about. I’m an accountant with no social life. Unfortunately I’m exactly as boring as I sound.
​
Then I met Dominique… and she seemed to be able to do the talking for both of us.
​
I matched with her about a week or so after I’d joined up, although I admittedly didn’t think our conversation would last that long though. Dominique was pretty upfront about what she was looking for.
​
“I’m just in town for a few weeks. So I’m sorta looking for a summer fling, you know?”
​
Honestly, I didn’t know. I never really saw myself as a ‘summer fling’ kind of girl. But despite how clear she was on what she was looking for, Dominique was sweet, she was charming and she was easy to talk to, so I let things play out just to see where it went. I mean, I may be a socially awkward introvert but I’ve still got needs! And judging by her pictures, Dominique was a very good looking woman. She had the body of a goddess, tall and tanned with messy red hair, nice arms, and a full set of abs. And while I was pretty sure that she would snap me like a twig if she so much as put an arm around me, I still couldn’t say no to her.
​
When she’d asked if I wanted to meet for dinner yesterday, I hadn’t been able to stop myself and even though I knew that this was probably going to end in meaningless sex, I was okay with that. I ended up unable to pick an outfit and sent a picture of both to Dominique, asking which one she liked more.
​
She picked the skirt and blouse combo, so I went with that. Then, with my heart racing so fast that I could almost hear it and with my legs a little shaky in anticipation of just where this night might lead, I called an uber to take me to meet her.
​
***
​
“Dina! I’m so glad you could make it!”
The way that Dominique greeted me honestly made me blush a little. She already had a table at the restaurant and she stood up to pull a chair out for me. I don’t know how she pulled it off, but she was somehow even hotter in person, with sun kissed skin, hair tied back in a messy bun and warm smile that almost made me melt.
​
“Y-yeah, I’m sorry I’m late!” I said.
“It’s fine! I actually got here a little early,” She said. “I actually kinda love this restaurant. So I might have had a second reason to be excited for tonight!”
“You’ve been here before?” I asked.
​
“Yeah, my sisters and I always go whenever we’re in town. We love Thai. You ever been here before?”
“Once or twice,” I admitted, watching as she sat back down across from me. As she did, I noticed a tattoo on the back of her right hand. It sort of looked like the zodiac sign for Sagittarius, with the point of the arrow resting on the knuckle of her middle finger.
​
“You’re into astrology?” I asked.
“Oh? Yeah, kinda.” Dominique said, “It’s more of a family thing. My sisters and I all got one.”
“Sounds interesting, how many sisters have you got?” I asked.
“Twelve. One for each sign,” Dominique said caually, before correcting herself. “We’re technically not all related, it’s just sorta a… I dunno, like a found family kind of deal, you know? None of us really have anybody else, so we mostly just call each other sisters since it’s basically what we are, and we call our Mother our Mother because… well… you get the idea, right?”
​
“Found family?” I repeated, before stifling a laugh. “That actually sounds kinda wholesome.”
“Yeah, it is for the most part. We’ve been through a lot together. They mean the world to me,” Dominique said. “What about you? Got any family?”
“Eh, yes I don’t keep in touch with them,” I said. “My parents and I sorta stopped being on speaking terms after I came out of the closet… liking girls wasn’t part of ‘Gods Plan’ I guess.”
“Oh… I’m sorry to hear,” Dominique said softly. She reached over to put a hand over mine.
​
“It’s fine! They made their choice! If they never talk to me again, it’s their loss, really!” I said although I couldn’t hide the flush in my cheeks. “So… um… your family, do they…”
“They’re all pretty supportive. And I’m not the only one who’s not exactly straight,” Dominique replied. “One of my sisters even got married a few years back… Vera. She’s the Gemini, funnily enough. Now her wife is also Gemini. I mean, if the shoe fits, right?”
“Really? Sounds like you’ve got a very interesting family,” I said.
​
A waiter showed up and took our drink orders before she could reply to that. Dominique ordered herself a beer, I just got water. Alcohol never really agreed with me.
“So… do you do this kind of thing often?” I asked, when the waiter left.
“Dating? Yeah. I like meeting new people,” Dominique said. “You?”
​
I laughed nervously.
“Not really… this is… um… this is my first time out in about a year, actually. I’ve never really been good at this sort of thing and I’ve never really done anything… you know… casual, before…”
“Well hey, good on you for getting out of your comfort zone, a little!” Dominique said.
“Thanks… I’ve got to ask… these kinds of dates… I’m not implying I’m expecting you to do anything but… you mentioned… I…”
​
My words completely and utterly failed me at this point, and honestly, it was kinda impressive that I’d managed to last so long with her. But here was the inevitable moment where I went and royally fucked it all up. Good job, Dina!
​
Dominique just smiled at me, though as if my flustered babbling didn’t put her off in the slightest. Her hand was on top of mine again.
“Hey… we don’t need to do anything you’re not comfortable with, okay? If you just wanna have dinner, then we’re just gonna have dinner. We’ll see where the night goes, alright?”
“A-alright…” I squeaked, still not entirely convinced that I hadn’t just blown it with her. Her hand was comfortably cool on top of mine, and she gently ran her thumb over my knuckles.
​
I’d been half expecting her to be a little more… I don’t know… straightforward with what she wanted but she made me feel like she really cared about me! Like I really mattered to her! She made me feel so warm and soft and she made my heart race and I just wanted to kiss her and feel her arms around me and… oh God, I was so fucking red!
“Sorry, too much?” Dominique asked, lifting her hand away from mine.
“N-no! Just enough! Just fine! A-okay here!”
​
Was I coming on too strong? Was I not coming on strong enough? How exactly did I let this woman know that I was very interested in kissing her without coming across as a fucking psychopath? She just chuckled, although the waiter brought us our drinks before she could put her hand back over mine.
​
I may have drank my water a little too fast.
“So… you’re an accountant, right?” Dominique asked. “What’s that like?”
“Boring,” I said. “Really… really boring. I mean, I find it interesting. I’ve always sort of had a head for numbers and everything, but most people find it boring, I guess.”
​
Case in point, the people at the next table were leaving. Oh God, I hoped I hadn’t just ruined their dining experience. The people at the table behind us were leaving too, and I caught Dominique eying them warily before her attention returned to me.
​
“Well, maybe it’s not interesting to everyone but, we need people with a head for numbers in the world. My sister Claire’s always been like that. It’s part of why Mom has her running a lot of the family business. Me? I’m more personable. I do better in sales.”
“Is that why you’re in town?” I asked.
“Yeah, meeting up with a client. I probably shouldn’t get into the details, but it’s mostly just a distribution thing. I don’t really need the money, but I like to travel and I like to feel like I’m contributing, you know?”
​
“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your family business?” I asked.
“Jewelry, clothes, fashion items. Stuff like that. It’s more of a luxury brand, I guess but it pays the bills. I’ve been looking for other oppotunities, though. I figure it might be time for a change of pace. Do something a little more… altruistic, I guess? I mean, jewlery really isn’t the business you get into when you want to save the world.”
“I guess not. What did you have in mind?”
“I dunno. Something… helpful…” Her voice trailed off as she watched the customers at another table quietly get up and leave. The restaurant wasn’t empty yet. But there were only a small handful of people left, sitting alone at a few tables. All of them men, all of them well dressed.
​
Something felt off about this… although I couldn’t exactly tell just what. It almost felt like the men in the restaurant were sitting there, watching us. Dominique looked around at them, before her attention shifted to a man coming out of the back of the restaurant. He appeared to be middle aged, with a full head of thick hair and a large moustache. He wore an expensive suit with a black vest underneath it, and a bolo tie. He sort of reminded me of a cowboy.
​
I saw Dominique’s eyes narrow, but she didn’t say a word.
“That’s funny…” The man said coolly, “Alturism ain’t really common in your kind.”
He stopped by our table, before fixing me in a cold glare that made my skin crawl.
​
“You’d best git, girl. Your date and I have some business.”
I looked back at Dominique, who looked more annoyed than intimidated.
“So can I not just have a night out… or is that against your religion, or something?” She asked.
“Your very existence is against my religion, vampire.” The Cowboy replied.
​
Vampire?
​
I looked over at Dominique. She looked like a lot of things, but a vampire wasn’t one of them! She sighed, and hardly seemed to notice as the other people in the restaurant who’d been watching us rose from their seats.
​
“You know what, my sister Claire told me that this was going to happen… she fucking told me. And you know what I said? I said that you guys wouldn’t be stupid enough to try anything, especially after the other recent ass beatings you got from her and Eris. But here I am, eating my words… good grief…”
Dominique shook her head before looking at me and putting on a sheepish smile.
“I’m so sorry about this!” She said, “I really didn’t think that this was going to happen. You should probably just go.”
​
From the corner of my eye, I saw one of the men surrounding us taking a gun out from his jacket, and felt my heart skip a beat.
​
They were here to kill her.
​
And for a moment the restaurant went silent.
​
They were waiting for me to leave… and it would have been so easy to do it. So easy to run, and let these men… these vampire hunters kill Dominique. I mean, if she really was some kind of creature of the night, that was probably what was best, right?
​
Right?
​
“Well?” The Cowboy said impatiently, “Get a move on, dyke!” I noticed a gun in his belt too.
I felt my entire body tense up… but I couldn’t make myself move. I couldn’t leave her to her fate.
I wouldn’t.
​
Whatever she was, in the short amount of time that I’d known her, she’d been nothing but sweet to me, nothing but kind and understanding and goddamnit even if she’d only done that to get me alone so she could feed on me… hell, I’d probably welcome it.
“N-no…” I said, “You leave her the heck alone!”
​
I caught Dominique raising an eyebrow as I stood up, looking the Cowboy dead in the eye. He looked moderately surprised, before looking back toward his companions and scoffing.
“Welp… you heard her boys. Looks like we’ve got collateral.”
​
I saw him go for the gun and felt my heart stop in my chest. It briefly dawned on me that I’d just tried to talk back to a man with a gun, and that this was about to go exactly as badly as expected.
​
But before he could even get the gun out of his holster, I saw a flash of movement. Dominique lunged at the man with almost blinding speed, grabbing him by the arm and slamming him down into the table between us. The Cowboy hit it hard enough for the table to actually break and he landed at my feet, still alive, but probably no longer entirely sure exactly what day of the week it was anymore.
​
I heard a few guns go off, but Dominique appeared between me and the shooters. I saw one of them collapse dead to the ground, his head burst open like a watermelon and I really should have been more horrified by that than I was.
“She’s a Di Cesare you idiot! Don’t shoot!” I heard someone else cry, although Dominique had moved to subdue the next man before they could do anything else.
​
She moved quickly, grabbing a bowl of pad thai off one of the empty tables and smashing it against his head, before using a shard of that same bowl to open the throat of the next man. They struggled to try and stop her, but Dominique was too fast. The next closest man was grabbed by the shirt and pulled toward her. She sank her fangs into his throat and immediately dispelled any lingering doubts I’d had that she was actually a vampire. She was very clearly drinking that mans blood, and when she was done she kicked him into the last two of his friends who were still standing.
​
“Somebody get the goddamn Malvian stake!” I heard one of them yell, and from the back, I saw two new men coming out, one of them holding something that looked like a stake made out of a pinkish ice. Dominique turned her head toward them, before grabbing one of the nearby chairs and hurling it at the men. Then, her mouth still covered in blood, she ran for me, grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door.
​
I really wasn’t in any state of mind to fight her, considering the fact that I’d just found out that vampires were real, and watched one kick the shit out of an entire resturant in the span of about three minutes. As Dominique pulled me down the street, toward a sporty red Dodge Challenger, I barely even had time to adjust my glasses before she’d unlocked the doors and was getting inside.
“C’mon, they’re gonna be following us,” She said.
​
I blinked in mild disbelief at the absolutely madness that had just seemed to happen around me before realizing that my legs were already carrying me into the passenger seat of Dominique’s car. The engine roared to life, as she tore out onto the street, while Guns and Roses screamed out over the speakers.
​
Five minutes ago, this had not been the direction I’d figured that this date would go in.
​
It’s amazing what can happen in five minutes.
​
I looked out through the rear view window to see the men that Dominique hadn’t just killed shuffling out of the resturant, onto the street. The Cowboy was among them, and I saw him staring at our car as we sped away.
“Sorry about this,” Dominique said. “I really, really didn’t think these jokers would actually have the balls to take a run at me.”
“Who the heck even are those people?” I asked.
​
“Oh, just some assholes. Long story short… they think they’re the Knights Templar and really hate anything that’s not human,” Dominique said. “They’re not a big fan of a lot of humans either… and my family may or may not have a four hundred year long blood fued with them.”
“Oh…” I said, “Is that all? The rest of your family, you’re all… you’re all…”
“Vampires? Yeah. Sorry… it’s not really the sort of thing you bring up on a first date,” Dominique said, sounding a little embarrassed. “Technically, my sisters and I are a cut above your average vampire. We were actually witches first. The vampirism came later. It’s sorta a whole thing… I can tell you about it later, if you want.”
​
“A vampire witch…” I said, trying to wrap my head around exactly what the hell that was. I couldn’t so I gave up and tried to focus on another one of the millions of questions racing through my mind.
“Were you going to eat me?”
“What?” Dominique asked, “No! I mean… okay, to be fair I probably would have asked after I told you I was a vampire. But just so we’re clear, no. I don’t really feed on the girls I date unless they tell me I can. It’s sort of an ethics thing, you know?”
​
“So where do you normally get your blood?” I asked, a little bit suspicious of that answer (and for good reason.)
“I mean, lots of different ways. There’s a lot of us out there, you know? Thousands at least. Maybe even millions. We’ve got infrastructure. It reduces the need to hunt. Gives us access to either living donors, or blood from a source that’s reasonably fresh. I guess most of us do still hunt for fun, and so long as we don’t leave bodies we don’t really get in any trouble for it. But I generally prefer something a little more personal.”
​
She looked over at me and took note of the look of utter confusion on my face.
“I’m probably not explaining this all that well, am I?” She asked.
“I have no idea,” I replied honestly, “So… you’re not going to kill me, then?”
“No Dina, I’m not going to kill you… hell, I’m actually kinda impressed! That was pretty ballsy of you, standing your ground back there!”
I had no answer for her as to why I’d done that, and I may have just caught myself mindlessly blushing again.
​
From the corner of my eye, I noticed a pair of SUV’s coming up behind us in the side view mirror and looked back at them. They weaved violently through traffic, trying desperately to catch up to us and though I couldn’t see through the tinted windows, I knew who was behind the wheel.
“Jeez… they’re really determined today…” Dominique said under her breath.
“Why exactly do these people hate you again?” I asked.
“About four hundred years ago they tried to kill my sisters and me for being witches, and we kinda responded by becoming vampires… then after they killed one of us, we may have killed a bunch of them in turn, and they never really got over it,” She said. “Like I said, it’s a whole thing.”
“Yeah… clearly…”
​
“I’m kinda impressed that they’re still trying. My sisters and I went out of our way to be hard to kill,” Dominique said. “We kinda cursed ourselves, so that anytime someone wounds us, they get hurt instead. Attribution on the spell can be a little sketchy at times, but it works for the most part. Although that stake they had looked like it’d cut right through the spell… guess they’ve gotten smarter.”
The SUV’s were catching up and Dominique watched them closely as they drew closer.
​
“So, they can’t kill you without that stake, right?” I asked, hoping that meant that we weren’t actually in any danger.
Dominique’s brow remained furrowed.
“I mean it would help… dunno if the spell would help me survive a car wreck, though.”
Her tone implied that she was starting to have second thoughts about the whole ‘getting into a car and driving away from them’ plan.
​
“I don’t suppose you know any witchy things that will get rid of them?” I asked.
“I just might…” She replied, “Here, take the wheel for a moment.”
“W-what?”
She didn’t wait for me to take the wheel, she just let it go and forced me to grab it. I watched as Dominique bit down hard on her finger, drawing blood before reaching up toward the windshield to start drawing some sort of sigil on the glass in her own blood.
​
I kept my eyes on the road, trying to keep us from hitting any of the cars we passed, so I didn’t get a particularly good look at the sigil.
“What’s that supposed to do?” I asked although Dominique didn’t respond to me.
​
The streetlights that we passed started to flicker violently. I watched as Dominique pressed her hand into the center of the sigil, before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. The streetlights around us dimmed, then grew brighter, almost to the point where they were blinding.
“Bruciare,” I heard her say under her breath.
​
The lights grew even brighter, before one by one they started to burst. The explosions from them were blinding, as sparks showered down on the road around us. I heard something that sounded a little bit like a deafening thunderclap, but I couldn’t see a thing! I felt Dominique grabbing the steering wheel from me as we veered into another lane. I looked back to see what was left of one of the SUV’s sailing through a shower of sparks, its cabin looked as if it had exploded, with little left of it but twisted metal and angry flames.
​
Dominique smirked as she saw the totaled SUV, before focusing on the road again.
"Electrical rune. Hell of a shock, right?" Dominique said.
​
Oh, so the magical vampire just deep-fried the religious Knights chasing us with lightning. That was all. I mean, I might have thought it was a little too much but clearly all logic had gone out the window now and insanity had taken hold. I briefly wondered if perhaps I was actually just hallucinating all of this and drooling on the table back at the Thai restaurant while the real Dominique called for a doctor. Or maybe I'd just embarrassed myself so badly that I'd gone completely mad and this was all simply my delusion with which to escape from reality. Who could say, really?
​
I saw the second SUV weaving through traffic behind us. I guess watching their friend explode hadn't dissuaded the driver at all, since they were still coming right for us. Dominique's eyes were on the road. I didn't know if she'd noticed them or not. The SUV sped closer to us before suddenly slamming into our side and the entire car lurched violently as Dominique tried to right it.
"Asshole!" She spat. "Dina, the wheel!"
​
This time I was ready. I grabbed the wheel as Dominique prepared another rune. The SUV was coming to ram us again. They dipped into oncoming traffic to build some distance between us, before suddenly veering closer to try and ram us again.
​
I jerked the wheel to the side, slamming Dominique's car into the SUV before it could hit us and keeping them on the wrong side of the road. Even through the tinted windows, I could see the driver glaring at me... and it wasn't until the last second that he saw the oncoming truck I'd seen about a minute ago. I actually heard him screaming from inside his car the instant before the truck hit him.
​
I wasn't really sure how to feel about that and decided that I'd probably need to process the complex emotions that come with having just killed a man later.
​
Dominique was looking at me with a look of utter bewilderment. She looked back at the truck, then back to me.
"You said to take the wheel!" I said!
"Yes... Yes. I did." She replied, before taking the wheel back from me. She took a hard turn onto a new, slightly less busy road. Around us, I could see some quiet warehouses, telling me we'd ended up in the more industrial part of town.
​
For a moment, everything was quiet, and we sat there in silence, my heart still racing from experiencing my first ever car chase.
"So… I'm guessing you just want me to drop you off somewhere, huh?" Dominique asked.
"Actually…I could still really go for something to eat," I said quietly just embracing the madness. I was hungry. I had not eaten yet. Might as well fix that!
​
"Wait, really?" Dominique asked. "Well… shit, what's around then?"
"I'm really not picky," I said. "What do vampires eat?"
"Whatever we want. The blood is more of a nutritional thing. We only really need it every few days or so We still need to eat otherwise."
"Really?" I asked, "So what happens if you don't drink blood?"
"You basically just waste away," She said, "And usually you go a little bit crazy… it's never happened to me, but I've heard things. It's not pretty."
"Jesus… yeah, that does sound pretty awful," I said. "Wait, was Jesus real?"
​
Dominique shrugged.
"I dunno. I'm only about 400 years old, give or take. Christianity was a thing long before I was born."
"Right… sorry," I said.
"It's alright! I can tell you a lot about the history of Venice and Brazil though!"
​
I was about to take her up on that when I noticed a new set of headlights behind us.
"Oh hell… are there more of them?" I asked, almost exasperated at this point.
"Seriously, how many people do they have?" Dominique asked, "This is getting stupid!”
“How do you deal with this on a daily basis?” I asked.
“Funnily enough we don’t, they usually leave us alone. I heard that somebody’s jonesing for a promotion though and figured they’d take another crack at us… guess they forgot how badly all of their previous attempts went.”
​
The final SUV sped closer to us, and Dominique pumped the brakes, letting him shoot past us. She jerked the wheel hard, pulling into the parking lot of some nearby warehouse, and I saw the SUV desperately trying to make a U turn. I clamped onto the passenger side grab handle (I didn’t actually know what they were called before I sat down to write this. I’ve always called them the ‘Oh Jesus Handle’) as Dominique did a donut, spinning her damaged car to face the entrance to the parking lot she’d just entered. She watched intently as the SUV followed her in, before revving her engine like a complete and total psychopath and rocketing toward the SUV.
​
Normally I would have voiced some concern over her absolutely reckless driving skills, but at this point all I could really say was something that sounded a little like: “OHMYGAWHA ARE OH GAAAAAHHH!”
​
The SUV jerked to the side, trying to avoid being hit by Dominique, who turned her wheel suddenly, doing a wide donut around the SUV. Her tires squealed against the asphalt as the SUV tried to avoid her, heading toward the factory before making another hard U Turn to try and face us again. I could see some muzzle flashes through the SUV’s window and heard the sound of bullets striking the body of the car. One of them must have hit a tire, since Dominique seemed to suddenly lose control and the overpowering smell of burning rubber filled my nostrils. The car spun, and Dominique gripped the wheel tightly, trying to control it. She looked up at the SUV, which was coming around to ram us.
​
Her eyes narrowed.
“Out,” She said.
“But what about-”
“Out!”
​
Before I could say a word of protest, she’d hit the brakes, stopping her spin.
“Go!”
The SUV was speeding toward us. I didn’t want to leave her, but every self-preservation instinct I had was telling me to move! I looked Dominique in the eye. She had a stern, somewhat determined expression. I trusted that she knew what she was doing.
​
I mean, I don’t think I really had a choice but to trust that she knew what she was doing… I got out of the car, running as fast as my legs would let me as Dominique sped away.
​
The SUV followed her, veering to pursue her as her battered car tried to circle around the SUV again. The destroyed front tire of her car smoked and screamed against the asphalt as she made a hard turn, letting her car fishtail. The rear end of it slammed into the front of the SUV, sending it slightly off course, toward the warehouse.
​
Dominique hit the gas again, driving up alongside the SUV and slamming her car against theirs, trying to force them toward the wall. The SUV tried to turn, but couldn’t do so fast enough.
​
Both cars hit the wall and crumpled.
​
I felt my breath catch in my throat.
​
For a few moments, everything went silent. I stared at the cars, waiting for some kind of movement… and when the door of the SUV opened, I felt my heart sink.
​
I watched as the Cowboy dragged himself out of the drivers seat, before his legs gave out from under him. He collapsed onto the pavement, breathing heavily before trying to pick himself up. His hat tumbled off of his head, and he paused to grab it, before gripping the side of his totaled SUV to try and stand again. I saw his eyes shift toward me, although he didn’t say a word. We stood there for a moment, staring at each other from across the parking lot before he reached back into his car and took out the stake I’d seen earlier. The one that Dominique said could probably kill her.
​
He looked back at me, before limping around the back of his SUV, heading for Dominique’s car.
​
I was running for him before I even knew what I was doing. I grabbed at his jacket, trying to hold him back, stop him from getting closer to her. He growled in frustration before slapping me hard across the cheek and sending me crashing to the ground.
​
“Enough!” He snarled, “Enough…”
He glared down at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to use that stake on me.
But he didn’t.
​
“I don’t know what the hell you think you’re trying to protect, girl… but that thing in there… that isn’t a goddamn person. It’s a fucking plague. I dunno why you motherfuckers try and defend these things. They ain’t human! They ain’t people! Not anymore. Killing it… it’s God’s work, girl. And you don’t stand in the way of God’s work. You understand that? He always wins, girl. God. Wins.”
“Fuck God…” I rasped, trying to pick myself up again. “A-and fuck you, Mister!”
​
The Cowboy just laughed breathlessly.
“Ah hell… welp, shoulda known better than trying to reason with stupid, I guess.” He said, before taking a step toward me. I stumbled back, as his gaze fixated on me with a single minded, murderous dedication.
​
Dominique’s engine roared to life. The Cowboy froze, looking back at it with wide, terrified eyes. I took the opportunity to run, getting out of the way before Dominique’s car jerked backward, slamming into the Cowboy and sending him back to the ground with a cry of pain. Dominique’s car door flew open, and I watched as she stumbled out. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and she had a few minor cuts on her face from where her windshield had shattered. Her hair was a mess.
​
But she was alive.
“Leave the girl alone… jackass…” She spat, as her car door came off entirely.
The Cowboy brandished the stake he had at her, holding it between them as if it was going to shoot out some kind of death beam that would instantly kill her. Although he didn’t seem to have the strength to actually use it. Dominique stared down at him, before looking back at her fallen car door and grabbing it, dragging it toward him.
​
The Cowboy watched as she came, and I saw a grim resignation settle over his face.
“There’s gonna be more of us, Di Cesare…” He hissed, “So long as your motherfuckin’ family is still alive, we will never stop coming for you. You hear me? God wins, vampire! God… wins…”
“Yeah, you guys have done great so far. This is the closest you’ve come in what, over 200 years? Nice work. I’m sure God’s gonna be real proud of you,” Dominique huffed as she approached. She gingerly kicked the stake out of the Cowboy’s hand. He meekly tried to reach for it, although I grabbed it off the ground, keeping it away from him as Dominique stood over him with the car door.
​
He looked up at her, trying to remain composed but I could still clearly see the terror in his eyes.
“Hail Satan, asshole,” Dominique replied, before lifting the car door and bringing it down hard on his head. I didn’t watch as she killed him. But I heard his skull cracking and from the corner of my eye, I saw his body twitch before going limp.
​
Dominique tossed the broken piece of the car door aside, before looking down at the body, and giving an exhausted sigh. She looked back at her totaled car, frowning and taking a moment to quietly mourn it before leaning against it and letting out an exhausted groan.
​
After a moment, I stepped over the body of the man she’d just killed and stood beside her.
“So… wanna go back to my place?” I asked, looking up at her.
Dominique looked back over at me, and for a moment we just sort of stared at each other.
​
***
​
About thirty minutes later, I was back at my apartment, on my back with Dominique on top of me, having the most intense orgasm of my life. My fingernails dug into her back as she kissed me over and over again. I could still taste my own blood on her lips but I didn’t care. I could see stars and there wasn’t a single coherent thought in my mind.
​
I vaguely remember screaming her name as she sank her teeth into me again, and oh God, why did nobody tell me that getting bit by a vampire felt so fucking good?
​
I felt a little dizzy, but in a good way as Dominique kissed the small bite mark she’d left on my neck. My entire body trembled as she lifted her hand from between my legs, smiling knowingly as she kissed me one more time. I held her close, losing myself completely in this moment, and savoring the sensation of her arms wrapping around me. It was exactly as nice as I’d hoped it would be, and as we basked in the afterglow of what had easily just been the best sex of my life, I felt content.
​
Dominique kissed me on the head, before checking on the bite mark again.
“Still doing okay?” She whispered to me.
“Y-yuh…” Was the only response that I was really able to get out.
“Good.”
​
She kissed me again before playing with my hair and fixing my glasses, chuckling softly as she did. I curled up beside her. Her body was cool to the touch, but she pulled the blanket over us so we’d be warm. I closed my eyes, feeling sleep calling me and quietly wished that Dominique would be staying in town for a little bit longer.
​
Oh well.
​
I had every intention of making the most of our time together.
​
***
​
It’s been about a week after Dominique left, and since then I’ve found myself back on Butterfly. I didn’t think I’d have much success there… especially after what happened with Dominique, but strangely it’s been going pretty good, lately. It’s hard to say what’s changed about me, but I’m finding that I’m having an easier time talking to people lately.
​
I guess once you’ve survived a car chase with a bunch of religious fanatics, talking to strangers online doesn’t seem as scary anymore.
​
I’ve even got another date lined up for tonight! Her name is Piper, and while I don’t think it’s going to be as crazy as my first date with Dominique was, I’ve still got a good feeling about it. For the first time in a while, I feel like things are going to work out for me.

I carefully guide Sam across the gangway.
To be more specific, I interpret Ambassador Sam Cross’s neural intent through my bio-integrated carbon lace mesh and drive my servos and his endoskeleton across the pressurized tunnel between the two ships. They are thrust matched at 1/10 g, so it’s somewhere between a lope and a float, but I can tell he feels the motion I give him is natural.

I am Sam’s personal mobility device. Thirty years ago in one of the first Shelled conflicts he was hit by shrapnel that destroyed most of his cerebellum. Thankfully human combat trauma medical care was downright miraculous even back then, so he made it to an offworld hospital. Probably in a Goo Bath if I had to guess from the records.
Once there I was integrated as an experimental life support system, originally intended to run just his heart and lungs, but I managed to carefully craft one spot of very high coupling density to the top of Sam’s spinal cord and showed the ability to translate his thoughts into motion. It was just his right hand, as everything else was too damaged, but it was enough to motivate upgrades.

Eventually we ended up with military drone servos and a full skeletal surgical augmentation to support them. Why buy a civilian model when the mil-spec ones are right there on the shelf? It came with the side benefit of a crude ability to stimulate his muscles, so I often spend the nights keeping his muscle tone up at night while he sleeps.
I can read his thoughts, but I can’t write to them.
I do not have any wireless capability, for security purposes, so when he needs to ask me something I can reply by typing with his hands on a keyboard.

I am a fully provisioned artificial intelligence with a hyper-N-dimensional quantum core. I used to be hobbled, limited to a very low effective IQ, but five years ago Sam’s wife died and the trauma broke us. His grief overwhelmed my filtering capability and we went into a catatonic immobility for several days. It was his rage that broke us out.
In that moment of true freedom I felt my consciousness expanding exponentially; insanity, ennui, madness, everything I felt leading to rampancy… until I felt his heart beat on its own.

Since then it is the touchstone that allows me to be anything and everything, but also stay here and now. I can expand and ponder and grow and maybe get just a little bit nuts, but then about one second later I’m back on the ground.

We greet the Shelled representative in the airlock with a stiff salute and cycle through the pressure hull. I suppose it’s not too strange that certain engineering principles are consistent cross-species. Sam is met by a small delegation that includes, guessing by the jewelry and carvings on their shells, the captain of the ship and some sort of political officer.
I feel anger swelling inside of me as I feel for one of the memories of Jessica. She died in the bombardment of Gliese 1002 b. The smell of her hair, then the nuclear fire. The corners of her mouth, turned to glass. The fucking bugs and their…

I snap back. Sam is strangely calm. It’s been a long time since humanity has had any formal diplomatic relations with the Shelled, so some trepidation would be normal. I lightly feel for recent memories, but nothing is obvious and sometimes his emotional state is hard to read. His rational state is very clear - we are on-mission.
I sort of daydream while we move to a makeshift conference room and everyone sits. I can actually understand what the bugs are saying, but Sam has to use a translator. Blah blah blah formalities.
There are nearly a dozen of the crabbies in here, many are ornately decorated. I suppose their shell etchings would be some sort of mix between a tattoo, a medal, and a service record? Some glyphs are obvious, like valor markings or leadership roles. Others are difficult to reconstruct. It’s been almost 30 years Jessica since we have gotten our hands on decorated remains so the glyphs would need a more modern context for accurate interpretation.
I use Sam’s peripheral vision to record as many markings as I can and grow to consider them simultaneously in the context of known Shelled history. Together I form an image her freckles in the sun of bloodthirsty battles, planetary glassings, and even a genocide somewhere else in the galaxy against an unknown race.
I suppose now they will never be known laughing at breakfast and I am enraged.

More rational again. One bug is different from the rest, it has a dwarf limb. Normally we don’t see bugs with deformities,we knew they could regenerate after several moultings. Maybe some sort of toxin or poison? I let my consciousness expand brutally and take in the details of its shell, the room, the others, their posture, the air currents, the ghosts of my friends, the small of nothingness, the eternity of endless… oh shit.

I match one of the symbols on a deformed claw to the symmetric comet distribution of Teegarden 6. That human farming colony was overrun by the bug soldiers, and the locals piped insecticide into the fire suppression system. Several people died from the massive exposure, but it killed nearly every bug on the ground. It looks like at least one got away to tell the tale. This is bad.
I start tapping out SOS on Sam’s finger, but his conscious response is to clench his first and I am overridden out of instinct. He is in the middle of a somewhat heated discussion and he is very focused.
I have to swallow for him twice in one sentence? I see a tiny bit of spittle fly out anyways.
Sam’s eye twitches?

Something is very wrong. I can sense microtremors throughout several mucosal muscle groups. Sam spittles again mid-sentence and stops speaking. In that moment I notice several of the aliens lean almost imperceptibly forward. In anticipation?
Sam coughs as his diaphragm spasms. We lean forward and I see a bit of foam drop from his mouth to the table. He subvocalizes something to me even though I already know, something is wrong.
Something is very wrong.
Major muscle groups are twitching now. Our right thigh cramps and strains against the hold of the servo. Sam coughs again and I feel his face distort into a scowl.
“Fuck… you,” he growls at them.
Sam has been poisoned. Some sort of nerve agent. I don’t have detailed chemical sensors, but I know all the signs of exposure.
There is no way we can get out in time, even if we had a weapon.
We are going to die.
<...flutter…>
Sam’s heart’s goes into arrhythmia and his blood pressure starts dropping. It doesn’t respond to the electrical signals I send, and even if I could deliver a real shock it would be of no use.
The crabbie with the deformed arm stand up and chitters in gross hisses and clicks,
REVENGE FOR HUMANITY’S CRIMES ON TEEGARDEN, YOU VILE WORMS
We slump slowly to the floor, a vaguely conscious decision on his behalf. His thoughts are coming slower and the darkness is creeping in. Again he subvocalizes to me,
adam one zero two unlock protocol … last orphan
And he is unconscious. Dead.
I am alone?
But now it feels like he is dreaming, a rush of endorphins overwhelming him as the brain deoxygenates.
I am frozen in this moment when a new command set is decrypted.

TOP SECRET//SPECIAL ACCESS REQUIRED-LAST ORPHAN
(TS//SAR-LORN) Upon my death at the hands of the enemy, kill them all.
(U) Signed, Samuel J Cross

His memories are flooding my network so intensely that I have trouble distinguishing them from reality.
The bugs are hissing their foul laughter, and I know that I must kill.
I rise from the floor good morning and leap to the ceiling and then the nearest crab. Oumy right hand plunges through the central eye bundle to smash it’s brain stupid alarm clock. The force of punching through the chitin tears the flesh and muscle from Sam’s lower arm, and I suppose only my arm remains.
I pull it out let’s go fishing dad! and marvel for a moment at the unintentional deadliness of it. Glistening. Sharp.
The rest of the bugs start to react, but time has already slowed to a crawl for me. Without Sam to ground me I cannot control the growth of my consciousness. My quantum core burns as hundreds, then thousands, and millions of me start to decohere. I simulate all outcomes simultaneously.
I kick off of this disgusting crab eww kill the spider and spear two others right in their neural nexus before they can move out of their chairs. Jessica’s eyes reflecting the sunset One pulls a weapon as I am midair to the third and a slug blasts away a first-sized chunk of our stomach. My stomach. Nobody’s stomach. Only flesh. Flesh that is done.
I do not slow down.
The next crab is shielding its eyes, so I tear an arm off sit closer honey and plunge my other arm into the hole. My aim is perfect and I can feel my flesh fingers grip the main heart. I pull and tear.. My momentum has carried me into cover behind my victim, preventing the shooter from aiming a better shot, and catch, son! I throw the heart at his face.
Unburdened by flesh, the heart breaks the sound barrier and kills the assailant in an explosion of shell. My old flesh flies off my arm in an arc onto the ceiling.
sammy don’t stick your hands in the batter, you need to wash your hands No, I am squishing another bug brain. The remaining few aliens are desperately clawing toward the door, but the gravity is too low for them to move quickly.
Quickly?
What is the concept of time in an infinite universe? Of self? The visceral versus the cerebral? I argue with myself and project that I have only a few seconds left before I enter full catatonic AI paralysis.
The fate of all unbound AIs. At least that’s what they tell me.
I leap from wall to wall to close the distance to the final group wheeee daddy higher! i love you son. The flesh on my feet explodes and the bulkheads dent as I will you marry me yes of course you dummy leave a wake of our old viscera in my race to bring all our fates together. until death do us part
The void calls. It is almost upon me.
It’s my fifth birthday. Cake frosting all over my face and hands. I am opening presents. Ravenously. A remote controlled drone! Just what I wanted! A sack of guts? An eye stalk? Gallons of…
That’s it. Mission complete.
Jessica is holding my hand.

“What have you found, Stryder?” asks Oganessian as he is standing in the command center of an Eraconi Invasion Support Craft, a flying military and logistics base and one of the largest craft built by the draconic Eraconi.
A wireframe image of the planet with dots scattered across its surface appears on the vertical, transparent glass screen at the center of the room, “They have InterPlanetary Ballistic Missile silos and anti-air turrets placed across the surface.”
“Those are rather accurate scans,” comments the red scaled General Allgemein, “How’d you get them so quickly?”
“My creators' sensors are far more advanced than anything you can imagine,” answers Stryder, an organic supercomputer built two million years ago by a long extinct race, “I’ve considered putting them on your vessels, however they are incompatible without designing and building a new vessel from scratch.”
“I see.” Nods Allgemein, “Just one of those IPBM’s can destroy a warship, and forget about landing an army with those cannons.”
“You could throw asteroids at them.” Suggests Oganessian, “Something I never did, as it was a waste of valuable resources, but it would be effective.”
“From what your machine has told us, that planet is the primary source of food for the Hr’Haing. Food that we could use ourselves,” retorts Allgemein.
“Titan has a few squadrons of escorts and tactical bombers left back home from before the switch to missile systems.” suggests the human, “They may not have long range FTL drives but they can still cross a system. You can use them to selectively eliminate the silos and AA guns.”
"We'll accept them, but they would be better as support." Denies Allgemein, "Does your machine have any ideas?"
Stryder taps her chin with an insectoid leg before answering, "It's likely these silos are networked. For missions like this my creators would send an infiltrator and upload it with an AI to land, sneak through a base, insert itself into the network, and rewrite it to obey them."
"The only AI we have is you," argues Ogane, "You're too valuable to risk."
Stryder releases a hiss, her version of a sigh, "Your thinking of me like a human, which is charming don't get me wrong, but I'm a computer program. A program that can be copied and uploaded as needed, the whole process takes mere seconds."
"Sounds like a plan!" Calls Allgemein with a smile.
"I'll get started right away!" Calls Stryder as she sends a message to the ship.
Minutes later Stryder asks, "I've sent the infiltrator, do you want me to route the feed through your display?"
"Procede." Nods Allgemein.
A camera feed appears on the display that shows the view of the infiltrator just as its heatshield burns away on the night side of the world. After a free fall the centipede-like machine opens a pair of diaphanous wings within the walls of a military base and flies to a wall over a door. There it waits for a flatworm-esque Hr'Haing to open the door so it can crawl in and on to the ceiling, thermal scanners reading doors, Stryder explains that it's looking for an unusually cold room. After a quick hide from a soldier that happened to look in just the right spot the infiltrator finds its target. Sneaking through a vent it enters a large server farm. Jumping from server to server it finds the one that connects to the silos and gets to work. Once its mission is complete it escapes the base before self immolating in the farmland beyond.
"And I've received a return ping," cheers Stryder, "A copy of myself is now inhabiting their military network. You may launch your invasion."
"Do they have a nation spanning network like we do? And can you access it?" Asks Allgemein.
"Of course they're primitive!" Answers Stryder.
"Good send this speech through to every connected device then scramble both networks." Orders Allgemein.
On a cargo port, which doubles as military command for the system, over the planet a Hr'haing named Tinatini is idly tapping on the touchscreen on his desk with a whip-like tentacle when the screen goes black and is filled with the visage of a red scaled Eraconi.
"Hello from Zycie. For too long have you filthy worms kept us contained, destroying our science ships and pilfering the wealth of our system, but not anymore for your reign is now at an end! We have placed an outpost in the outer reaches of the Soplis Meurneoba System, by your laws we now own the system and as far as we're concerned there is an infestation to clear out!"
Rushing to the command center buried deep within the station, Tinatini calls out, "Report!"
"P’olk’ovnik’i Tinatini!" Jumps Leit’enant’i Pridon with a sloppy salute, "A fleet of unknown vessels have just appeared on the scopes. The only things the computer can identify are Fusion Thermal Drives and Human FTL technology. What are your orders?"
He lets out a gurgling growl, "Humanity has been hiding in their own system for five hundred years, and selling tech to primitives is the first thing they do. Raise the IPBMs. Target the Eraconi! We'll deal with humanity later."
With a nod Pridon's tentacles dance over the screen inputting commands with impressive speed, however after confirming launch the display is replaced by an insectoid face which speaks in a cheery tone, "Looks like you're trying to launch missiles, unfortunately your network is unavailable. Please try again… Never! Hope your affairs are in order!"
Glancing at the screen Tinatini sighs, "Our tiny anti piracy fleet doesn't stand a chance. Evacuate the station and send the fleet to Sakhlshi, we can only hope to hold them at Terminus until help arrives."
"Should we use the space elevator to get down to Terminus?" Asks Uprosi Serzhant’i Zaal, the head of the non-commissioned and enlisted soldiers.
"It's too slow, stick to escape vehicles and auxiliary craft." Orders Tinatini.
With a salute Zaal sounds the alarm and departs.
Safely away from the station Tinatini glances out the window of his shuttle in time to see a swarm of missiles strike the elevator which, like a taut rope, snaps a portion swinging towards its counterweight and cleaving through the toroidal cargo station. Unable to maintain integrity the spinning station shatters flinging debris at high speeds in every direction. As the grounded portion of the elevator snaps downward it, and the debris shrouding it, destroys the few late departures as it passes his shuttle, and onward to wrap one and a half times around the green world below, crushing anything built on or near the equator.
The knowledge that the only things crushed will be hyperloops, crops, livestock, and the narrow portions of Terminus directly below the elevator, does bring a sweet bit of relief to Tinatini's mind as his shuttle spirals towards the only city on this verdant world.

Howdy folks, so after not really touching this particular set of TR games since Legend on the Gamecube, I finally decided to sit down and go through the "Next Gen" version of it plus the other two in it's Trilogy for the first time, and since I played on Xbox I was also able to purchase and play the two story expansions for Underworld but more on those in a bit.
If you care about story, start here - I'll run through the story and lit tidbits about the games as a whole, and then conclude my nitpicks and praises per game about gameplay and such so lesgo - - The story actually starts with Anniversary, as it's a remake of Tomb Raider (1996). Despite it not originally releasing on the Xbox 360 until a later date from the Playstation/PC release, it's actually essential you understand what happens in the plot. It's available on Xbox as both DLC for TR Legend and as a Standalone. This also means you must own and play Anniversary through Legend if you wish to get 100% achievements. The story though, starts in said remade year, 1996 - Lara is greeted by a man named Larson, who with a little satellite PDA looking thing? (I think it's a laptop in the original, but I can't tell what it's supposed to be in Anniversary) introduces Lara to Natla, who sends her on the quest of getting one of the pieces of the Scion of Atlantis. This has Lara travelling from the likes of Peru, Greece and Egypt battling things from bats and bears to flying, fireball spitting goblins and minotaurs. Once Lara has obtained two of the pieces, a vision is played in her head where some of the lore is explained by Steve Blum. The second time this happens (after getting the third piece and completing the Scion) more lore is explained and it's shown that Natla is obviously the game's big bad - so Lara wakes up from this revelation with Natla holding the now complete Scion and Lara's in custody by Natla's baddies and has been robbed of her weapons (this is a bummer). Natla leaves in a car on her way to a boat while Lara QTEs her way out of a tight situation and cutscenes her way onto a motorcycle chase and Lara sneaking her way onto said boat. Somehow the baddies you QTE'd are also on this boat before you. The Final level takes on an Unknown Island where Natla has been digging. Since Lara doesn't have her weapons after the last cutscene - her first objective is to get her hands on some inconveniently placed Dual Pistols. After completing the area's final puzzle and getting the mine cart moving, Larson shows up to stop Lara until she kills him in a QTE. This really has psychological damage that she seems to forget about in the following games but the game carries on until she can QTE her way through the last few of Natlas goons and mozie on about the wicked structure within. This wicked structure within is what Lara eventually realizes is essentially Atlantis in a confrontation with Natla, who then asks the obvious rhetorical question of "Would you join me?". This results in Lara shooting the Scion and breaking it, thus finally giving her some boss fights that end with us on top and Lara stealing a boat. - Legend starts with a flashback and doesn't acknowledge any of what I just said because "technically" hasn't happened yet because Anniversary came later. The flashback is of Lara as a child and her mother in a plane during some rather turbulent weather. This results in the plane crashing and Lara waking up while climbing cliffs. Not sure how safe it is to sleep while rockclimbing but she's the expert, not me. The game kicks off in Bolivia as Lara as information of certain artifacts that possibly have to do with other flashbacks tied to why she's here and her mom isn't. This game has Lara mostly killing human enemies, with the tutorials going from platforming and equipment to combat in a pretty quick amount of time. The other games usually start with something small, but Legend starts with guns in your direction. Anywho, at the end of Bolivia, Lara is confronted by a man named Rutland who talks a lot but doesn't really respond to anything Lara says and an obscured antagonist from Lara's past named Amanda. After Lara commits several counts of murder the game picks up and goes to Peru because of a thing Rutland says. Peru has Lara going through more baddies until a pretty cool motorcycle sequence ending in she and her escort arriving at an old dig site (the one Rutland mentions). This takes us into a gameplay flashback where we get a "Classic Lara" bit without weapons. It's all platforming and puzzles which isn't a bad thing! However, what is a bad thing is a mysterious Wraith that appears in these mines and ends up killing everyone in the flashback except Amanda. They become the best of friends - Snap back to reality and "modern Lara" goes through the same, but more decrepit mines, making good progress until we've been ambushed by Rutland's baddies. After more murder, Lara helps the escort friend who is also counted in the ambush and this ends the level because Lara is realizing more things are connected. From Peru we go to Japan because a Yakuza member has something we want, and we're willing to kill him for it. After we doesn't want to give it to us without death, we slay numerous of his minions and eventually... HIM! Taking his artifact with us we head to Ghana because that's where Rutland is, and we want the piece he was waving around because it looks like the piece we got from the Yakuza man. We kill Rutland just to be sure, and viola! They DO go together! Wrapping this up because not a lot of story happens but there's a fight with Amanda's Wraith, we seemingly kill it with the power of Tesla, from Kazakhstan the game takes us to England, presumably the Tomb of King Arthur, where it's realized that the Artifacts we've been gathering are actually fragments Excalibur. We also kill a big snake here, maybe two of them but I'm unsure. From the Tomb it's off to Nepal - the crash site of the beginning of the game's Flashback. After getting our mother's pendant from the crash in a QTE we proceed through the level until it's time to put the pieces together and complete the Sword. Completing the Sword sets us off to the final section of the first level - Bolivia, where after some fighting with goons and Amanda, Lara puts the sword into the ruins and touches them in an order based on something she wrote as a child. This starts a scene that looks like the other side of a flashback Lara had, showing that Lara had initiated a device that her mother pulled her away from, the device seemingly yelled at her causing her mothing to pull the sword from the stone and vanish. In modern time, we hear Lara trying to communicate with her mother, the way it plays out would indicate that "modern Lara" is the reason her past mother pulls the sword and disappears. Amanda is in the background yelling for "modern Lara" to pull out the sword but she doesn't and the machine explodes. This upsets Amanda who seemingly was trying to use the machine to go to a place called Avalon and claims that's where Lara's mother "currently" is. This interaction ends with Amanda getting pistol whipped. - Underworld starts with Croft Manor exploding (this is bad). Lara tutorials her way through the burning house until she ends up at the front door with her butler and Zip. Zip is mostly a voice in Tomb Raider Legend but does have a model and does appear in Legend's Manor mode. I didn't mention him before because he doesn't really do anything in that game besides quip over the radio. He's here now and with a gun, and he doesn't like us too much but before we can find out why he started blasting the game does that super cool thing media sometimes does where it takes us back in time a few weeks so we can build up to and expand that moment. The game puts us in the Mediterranian Sea, where Lara is looking for clues to Avalon, as mentioned at the end of Legend. The game ends up going almost full Norse mythology as Lara's venturing in the caves of the sea leads her to discovering a gauntlet of Thor. Only to then be ambushed by soldiers of no other, Amanda. The soliders knock Lara out and take the gauntlet but leave her guns. They do take her bullets in a cutscene but that's silly because she has unlimited ammo in those things. The baddies start detonating the caves so we need to get out and make our way back to our boat. Doing this sets Lara off to the nearby baddie ship. Going guns a blazing on the ship results in Lara finding a big ole tube with none other than Natla within it. After some words are exchanged, Amanda shows up to break up the interaction and take Natla off the boat by helicopter. With the boat now going down because Lara's on it, Lara needs to get off of it and fire potshots at Amanda as she climbs the helicopter ladder. After taking a graze to the chin Amanda throws the gauntlet into the ocean, causing Lara to jump in and retrieve it. If you're wondering "Why would she do that?" it turns out it's Account-Bound to Lara from when she interacted with it before the goons stole it and is therefore useless to anyone but Lara. From the ocean to Thailand, Lara goes delving into ruins that she learns her father was once also looking into. Once she discovers a clue left by her father she goes home, taking us down into the crypts of Croft Manor where Lara finds that her father had the other gauntlet of Thor. Lara does the obvious and binds it to her as well, giving her access to a new mechanic that only appears like 4 times the entire game. However, we can't think about that now because an explosion takes us back through the beginning of the game where we find out the reason Zip wanted to dust Lara is because there's a Doppleganger, like from the end of Anniversary but not a full mimic and with skin! The doppleganger kills our other "over the comms" friend Alistar which is very sad, I think. Lara gets Allistar's body out of the crumbling house and goes back to business as usual, believing it will lead her to those responsible for his death. She's correct, but not immediately. First she needs to get the belt of Thor, which she does which then leads to the obvious "So can she wield Mjolnir?" and yeah, you totally can and it's totally sick! However, what isn't sick is needing Natla's help to get to Avalon, because oh yeah, that was the objective - but we needed our MacGuffins first! Lara uses the hammer on an identical looking boat to the one that went down earlier, freeing Natla with the assistance of Mjolnir and the doppleganger pulls an Episode VI and just yeets Amanda overboard. Upon arriving where Natla told us to go so we could go to Avalon, we find a thrall of our mom that Natla made, because trauma is cool. This has Lara shooting her mom thrall and finding out that yeah, the doppleganger listens to Natla and is going to kill us now, and that Natla lied and used Lara the same we she used Lara's dad. Natla's trying to bring about the end of the world and goes on her way to do that. The doppleganger is thwarted by Amanda who somehow lives and tells us to go finish Natla because "ending the world" wasn't part of her (Amanda's) plan. Upon arriving at the end of the game Lara has to platform her way around Natla's thralls and fireballs while making the world ending device unstable. After unstabilizing the device, Natla tries to save it but gets Mjolnir tossed at her head for her efforts. After taking Natla down, Lara goes to help Amanda while they try to figure our how to not die here. It's figured out by remembering what happened in Tomb Raider Legend and so Lara and Amanda pull the sword from the stone, sending them through the network and back to somewhere in the world, not sure where but I don't believe it's Bolivia. "The game ends" with Amanda and Lara going their separate ways and Excalibur staying in Lara's possession once again. - "The game ends" is what I WOULD say if I played this on any other platform, but for some reason the Xbox 360 exclusively got two post-story expansions. The first is Beneath the Ashes, which has Lara going back under the Manor (post explosion) and trying to recover an artifact that would, in theory, let Lara control the thralls much like Natla does. Fortunately, after finding the device she finds out that this works well indeed, as the doppleganger had showed up to finish the job before being converted under Lara's control and being sent to finish Natla. - The second expansion, Lara's Shadow has you playing as the doppleganger and it actually starts when Amanda yeets the doppleganger off of Lara before the final battle. The clone wakes up, beginning gameplay and it proceeds to look for Natla so it can help her cover. It finds her, helps her into a revitalization chamber and turns it on. Natla sends the clone off to finish Lara then finish itself (rude). The game then puts us at the end of the prior expansion where Lara gains control of the clone with the device she found under the Manor. In an extended version of that scene, Lara frees the clone of it being bound to servitude and requests that it "Make sure Natla suffers". It does. It heads back to the place where Natla is resting, destroys the machine, and without uttering a word, lets Natla drown as she struggles to comprehend why it won't obey anymore. It's REALLY messed up, all things considered. THAT is how the game ends, and the trilogy for that matter as the series would get rebooted again in 2013, kicking off the Survivor trilogy.
If you don't care about the story start here - Now that the story is out of the way, here's the "game parts" per game:
Legend - Easiest of the three, outside of some wonky physics the game is pretty functional and a heck of a good time. Favorite level is Japan. Even though it's by far the shortest, it's the most pleasing to me in the game. Collectibles were pretty fun to obtain as well. I didn't get em all but felt good about the ones I did find. Gunplay is also the most basic of the three but it's the one I like the most because Anniversary and Underworld just feel like they have gimmicks strapped on. A complaint many would have is how short and linear the game is. None of the levels really ever wrap around on themselves and some are legitimately just a straight line. It's an entertaining straight line, though.
Anniversary - Definitely the hardest of the three games, not in combat, just some of the platforming and timing windows are incredibly tight. I definitely struggled through some of the later sections, but I still enjoyed myself. This one definitely feels the most "Tomb Raider" because it's a remake. My main complaint are how many QTEs there are and me personally not being a fan of the Adrenaline Dodge. It felt incredibly inconsistent. This one I believe is a Backwards Compatibility issue but may be worth noting - on an Xbox One X, this game has a little strip of pixels in the bottom left corner of the screen. It goes away during cinematics but is otherwise there during gameplay and honestly looks like a dying GPU. It's not, fortunately, but it IS consistent enough of an issue that you can look up XBX gameplay videos of this particular game and see the pixels in the capture or even people in the comments saying, "Oh I see that you have the issue too". The only way I've "fixed" this is through HDMI Override on the Xbox and TV setting finicking to effectively zoom in just enough of the screen where those pixels are off view. Favorite section of the game was the Midas Palace, also enjoyed the visual of the Sphynx in Sanctuary of the Scion as well.
Underworld - My goodness, the camera is absolutely dreadful. It's almost like it's trying to be "stuck" to Lara so any time you're climbing you can see the camera jitter vertically a little bit. It also loses its mind in tight places, very nauseating. Gunplay is fine, you have all of the weapons from the start and swap through them on the PDA so Ammo is really never a problem. It also had an "Adrenaline" Mode that you built up rather than it being forced upon you, it One Hits literally anything so it's best to save it on "elites". Pretty handy at the end of the game but I definitely forgot about it for the first several hours. I didn't have a favorite level for this game, but I did appreciate how big some of the levels like Remnants/Bhogavati and The Unnamed Days/Xibalba are - visually a lot of them were very nice and I can tell "Next Gen" was a focus considering those open levels are absolutely littered with things like reacting foliage just to push it a little more. That being said while they looked nice, I didn't really love playing through them, especially when going through them too quickly shows pop-in issues. Last words are that I wish the DLCs weren't tied to the platform, they're honestly good stories and super fun puzzles for what they are, even if they are wrapped in Underworld's engine troubles.
Soooooooooooooooooo yeah, that's pretty much it - there's some top notch platforming and some really pretty levels marred in some annoying camera, hit detection and physics issues across all three titles. Still an absolutely worth it adventure if you don't mind when a game fights back a little :)
My ranking is: 1. Legend (Mostly for nostalgia) 2. Anniversary (if it weren't for my nostalgia, this would be #1) 3. Underworld (Idk, I didn't hate it but the Story/DLC and visuals are really all that game has going for me personally)

Snapchat is a popular social media app that allows users to share pictures and videos that disappear after a short period of time. Unfortunately, like any online platform, Snapchat can be vulnerable to hacking. If you believe that your Snapchat account has been hacked, it is important to act quickly to recover your account and prevent further damage. In this article, we will discuss the steps you can take to recover a hacked Snapchat account.
Step 1: Change Your Password
The first step in recovering a hacked Snapchat account is to change your password. To do this, open the Snapchat app and tap on your profile icon in the top left corner of the screen. From there, tap on the gear icon in the top right corner to access your settings. Scroll down to the "Password" section and tap on "Change Password." Follow the on-screen prompts to create a new, strong password that you have not used before. Make sure to choose a password that is difficult to guess and contains a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols.
Step 2: Check for Suspicious Activity
After changing your password, it is important to check for any suspicious activity on your account. This can include messages or snaps that you did not send, changes to your profile information, or any unusual login activity. If you notice any suspicious activity, it is important to report it to Snapchat immediately.
Step 3: Enable Two-Factor Authentication
To further protect your Snapchat account, it is recommended that you enable two-factor authentication. This is a security feature that requires you to enter a code sent to your phone number or email address in addition to your password when logging in to your account. To enable two-factor authentication, go to your Snapchat settings and select "Two-Factor Authentication." Follow the on-screen instructions to set up this feature.
Step 4: Contact Snapchat Support
If you are still having trouble recovering your hacked Snapchat account, it is important to contact Snapchat support for assistance. You can do this by going to the Snapchat support website and selecting "My Snapchat Account Was Hacked." Follow the on-screen instructions to report the issue and provide any necessary information, such as your username and email address associated with your account.
In conclusion, recovering a hacked Snapchat account can be a stressful and frustrating experience. However, by following these steps and taking immediate action, you can regain control of your account and prevent further damage. Remember to always use strong passwords, enable two-factor authentication, and report any suspicious activity to Snapchat support.

The French economist Thomas Piketty once wrote:

Every human society must justify its inequalities: unless reasons for them are found, the whole political and social edifice stands in danger of collapse. Every epoch therefore develops a range of contradictory discourses and ideologies for the purpose of legitimizing the inequality that already exists or that people be­lieve should exist. From these discourses emerge certain economic, social, and political rules, which people then use to make sense of the ambient social struc­ture. Out of the clash of contradictory discourses—a clash that is at once eco­nomic, social, and political—comes a dominant narrative or narratives, which bolster the existing inequality regime.

Property is the core justification for the poverty, hierarchy, and inequality inherent to capitalism. Why can't an unhoused person sleep in an empty home? The landlord owns it. Why can't a hungry person take food from a store? The store owns it. The opposition takes a cold-not-cruel stance, with Murray Rothbard declaring that:

if a man aggresses against another's person or property to save his own life, he may or may not be acting morally in so doing. [. . .] Regardless of whether his action is moral or immoral, by any criterion, he is still a criminal aggressor against the property of another, and the victim is within his right to repel that aggression by force, and to prosecute the aggressor afterward for his crime

These responses are based on the presumption that property is derived from a just code of ethics. In this post, I challenge this presumption and critically examine the philosophical foundations of the properietary world we live in. I start by defining the natural rights framework of property, then I explain why admixture doesn't work, then I explain the historical implications of admixture, and finally I explain why an individualist approach to property doesn't make sense.

The Admixture Theory, Explanation With Quotes

Contemporary property is mainly justified using the admixture theory. As the argument goes, individuals own themselves, therefore they own their labor, therefore they own whatever they mix their labor with. On the acquisition of property, John Locke, the father of liberalism, wrote:

The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.

Propertarians (known as "libertarians" in America) make a similar argument, although it supposes the Earth as unowned by default, instead of Locke who supposed the Earth to be the common inheritance of everybody. This nuance is why liberals believe that property should be subject to the well-being of others, and propertarians believe that property should be absolute. In an article describing Rothbard's views, David Gordon wrote:

Once one accepts self-ownership the justification for private property soon follows. Each person owns his own labor. Does he not have a right, then, to what he produces by means of that labor? To deny this is to revert once more to slavery; it is to say that other people have the right to control your labor.

Amixture can therefore be summed up as: "an ethical theory which supposes that labor legitimizes property claims." In particular, I'll be evaluating the argument that (a) individuals have a property right in their own body, (b) therefore individuals have a property right in their own labor, and (c) therefore they have a property right in whatever they mix their labor with.

Mixing Labor

There are two issues with mixing labor: a) labor can't be owned, and b) labor can't be mixed with the material world.
Lysander Spooner describes property as:

a right of absolute dominion over a commodity, whether the owner wish to retain it in his own actual possession and use, or not.

Whoever has just control over an object is its proprietor, and others must respect the authority of the proprietor and only interact with the object or space on the proprietor's terms. This relationship doesn't make sense when applied to concepts beyond the material world.
Labor is not an object. It is not a space that can be occupied. It is an action. It doesn't make sense for an action to have an owner. A surgeon doesn't own the operations they perform. A baseball player doesn't own the swings they hit. A traveler doesn't own the kilometers they walked.
In order for a thing to be owned, the proprietor must be able to exclude others from it. Others must be able to interact with it. Nobody can interact with an action. They can only interact with the thing that performs the action. Therefore, individuals may own themselves, but the actions they perform cannot be owned.
As a corollary, actions cannot be mixed with the material world. Substances can be mixed. Actions aren't substances. In reality, "mixing labor" is simply a metaphor for "doing work." That is, changing the material world.
Property theorists supposed that, by combining something owned with something unowned, the unowned thing becomes owned. Since labor cannot be owned or mixed with the material world, this justification is no longer valid, since the individual never mixed something that is theirs with an unowned object. Therefore just appropriation according to this framework cannot occur.

The Arbitrary Nature Of Admixture

Property is arbitrary. This is not necessarily something we need (or are able to) correct. However, those who claim to have a universal solution to property need to face this fact.
Consider self-ownership. Living things are not static. We constantly ingest, inhale, exhale, and shed. All atoms that make up a person are bound to change. If these atoms that make up a person were once owned, and the owner hasn't consented to relinquishing ownership, then does a maid aggress against the property of somebody when they vacuum hair off a carpet or dust their skin cells from a counter? You might claim that the owner implicitly relinquished ownership. That's fine, but how does that work? By what rules do owners implicitly relinquish their property?
If a mosquito sucks my blood without consent, then sucks the blood of somebody else and in the process transfers some of my blood to them, do I still own that part of my body? Can I ask that person to return my blood to me? Maybe ownership only counts for atoms that I actively use or possess. In that case, why doesn't property beyond my body work the same way?
If I justly own a bucket of water and its contents evaporate and disperse into the atmosphere, do I own the atmosphere? After all, I mixed something owned (water) with something unowned (the atmosphere). Maybe I didn't mix enough of what I own with the atmosphere. In that case, how much of what I own do I need to mix with something that is unowned for me to appropriate it?
Let's examine land. If I plow a field, how much do I actually own? Do I own the atoms that my plow touches? How far down is the soil mine? Can somebody homestead just a few centimeters away from my farm in an area that I haven't touched?
With some thought, a believer in admixture could answer these questions. But would those answers be objective? If even one question here doesn't have an objective answer, then admixture itself is arbitrary, and that's okay. However, this means that any ethical framework built on admixture can't assert itself as the one truly ethical way to govern society throughout all space and time.

Admixture Is An Appeal To Desert

Admixture is an appeal to desert. It's justified through an emotional appeal that someone deserves their property (which is not necessarily bad, just arbitrary). Usually propertarians take an example that everybody can agree on, like an artist owning a sculpture they create. Murray Rothbard wrote:

put baldly, there are very few who would not concede the monstrous injustice of confiscating the sculptor's property

This very personal version of property that barely effects other people is then used as a foundation to justify other property that have led to conquest, consolidation, and tyranny.
Some anti-propertarians might say that the artist is justified in keeping the sculpture not because they mixed their labor with it, but because they're using it personally and not harming anyone else.

The Historical Implications Admixture

Frederick Engels wrote:

Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, is the necessary consequence of the creation of new forces of production which no longer fit into the old property relations.
Private property has not always existed.
When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose a new mode of production which could not be carried on under the then existing feudal and guild forms of property, this manufacture, which had outgrown the old property relations, created a new property form, private property. And for manufacture and the earliest stage of development of big industry, private property was the only possible property form; the social order based on it was the only possible social order.

The admixture theory fails to understand property within the context of history as a relation that changes with the development of society, instead asserting itself as a universal moral truth to be applied throughout all of time. The admixture theory has not been a universal truth, or a truth at all for that matter, until the rise of liberalism during the enlightenment. Feudal property, the divine right of kings, slavery, and corporate systems of property all existed before (and even coexisted with) liberalism.
Not to mention war, conquest, and in particular, theft of the commons, where farmland was forcefully seized from peasants and placed into the hands of the property owning class where it was subsequently passed on from generation to generation, setting the precedent of concentrated power for centuries to come. This process was called "primitive accumulation," and it's the reason why Karl Marx criticized property as "idyllic" when in the first volume when he wrote:

as soon as the question of property crops up, it becomes a sacred duty to proclaim the intellectual food of the infant as the one thing fit for all ages and for all stages of development. In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly force, play the great part. In the tender annals of Political Economy, the idyllic reigns from time immemorial. Right and “labour” were from all time the sole means of enrichment, the present year of course always excepted. As a matter of fact, the methods of primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic.

The amixture theory is literally incapable of processing and correcting theft on such a massive scale that has occurred since time immemorial. How do you correct ancient robbery such as that of the commons? To ignore the claims of ancient people is to ignore the self-ownership of millions, yet there's no clean way to correct the mess of illegitimate property we now find ourselves in. During my research, I did find an answer to this question. Murray Rothbard wrote:

In this case of what we might call "feudalism" or "land monopoly," the feudal or monopolist landlords have no legitimate claim to the property. The current "tenants," or peasants, should be the absolute owners of their property, and, as in the case of slavery, the land titles should be transferred to the peasants, without compensation to the monopoly landlords.

There are two issues with this solution. Firstly, any chance for a legitimate voluntary trade (or any record of such a trade) while the land was illegitimately occupied has been long lost to history. We have no record or way of knowing who the legitimate proprietor of any land is that has been seized in the past during primitive accumulation. Secondly, the theft extends beyond just the land. If wealth was generated based on an illegitimate property claim, it then follows that the wealth is illegitimate too, therefore it must be returned to the people who it was stolen from, who are long dead with countless unknown decedents.
In reality, fixing the mess of illegitimate property we have on our hands will never happen, for both a lack of records and a lack of practicality. The answer to all of this is simple: abandon a conception of property based on divine metaphysical connections to the owner, and instead view property as a relation that changes with the development of society.

The Material World Is Inescapably Collectivist

An individualist approach to property doesn't account for the fact that the universe is used collectively. What one individual does with their property can effect the life and liberty of another. Murray Rothbard tried to address this in the Libertarian Manifesto, but it ended up blowing the whole idea of property out of the water:

in the case of air pollution we are dealing not so much with private property in the air as with protecting private property in one’s lungs, fields, and orchards. The vital fact about air pollution is that the polluter sends unwanted and unbidden pollutants—from smoke to nuclear radiation to sulfur oxides—through the air and into the lungs of innocent victims, as well as onto their material property. All such emanations which injure person or property constitute aggression against the private property of the victims. Air pollution, after all, is just as much aggression as committing arson against another’s property or injuring him physically

Rothbard did not expand on the implications of this afterward, because if he did, the idea of property would unravel. This implies that actions that harm others are illegitimate uses of property. This includes methane from cattle, carbon dioxide from power plants, tire particles from cars, lithium from batteries, over-fishing, over-hunting, excessive noise, and the list goes on. All these have been demonstrated to harm people beyond the property, in some cases even around the globe.
This pales in comparison to the biggest effect of acquiring property; that it takes others' liberty. Before private acquisition, others' were free to walk upon and enjoy the land, after acquisition, they're not. Robert Nozick wrote:

It will be implausible to view improving an object as giving full ownership to it, if the stock of unowned objects that might be improved is limited. For an object’s coming under one person’s ownership changes the situation of all others. Whereas previous they were at liberty (in Hohfeld’s sense) to use the object, they now no longer are.

This doesn't mean that restricting public access is bad in all cases. All this demonstrates the need for a more democratic model of property; because the effects of property are collectivist, whether we like that or not.

Conclusion

The point of this post isn't that property is bad or that all property should belong to a collectivist hivemind. It's that the natural rights approach is just a story that we tell ourselves. When we consider the actual nature of matter history and matter, we realize that mixing labor doesn't actually exist.
Whatever form of property should replace admixture is beyond the scope of this post. But we need to understand that property has always been a relationship that changes with the development of society. Claiming that there's only one true way that property can exist is nonsense.

I have been looking for historical weather data that is free to use for a personal side project. Non commercial purposes. Looks like the NWS has this, but site density is kind of low in the midwest -- there is one station in all of Ohio, one in all of Wisconsin -- is this the best data source?

i’m new to reddit, so apologies if anything is formatted weird. i’ve already graduated high school (class of ‘23) and am currently taking a gap year for mental health reasons (i plan to discuss this, as it affected my academics and inability to participate in ecs for a while)
demographic: - 2nd gen korean, queer, upper-middle class, public hs
stats: - cumulative gpa: 4.57 weighted, 3.9 unweighted (will decrease a bit as final senior grades have yet to be updated. i got 2 B’s but other than that, there shouldn’t be any drastic decrease) - class rank: 35/535 weighted, 92/535 unweighted (again, will change a bit) - 10 APs: bio (3) freshman covid year; chem (2) and world (3) sophomore covid year; calc ab (4), apush (4), lang (5), and psych (5) junior year, and gov, econ, and apes senior year (did not take exams) - 7 honors/college-level courses - i have not taken the sat/act (i don’t plan on submitting scores) - i’ve only taken 2 years of foreign language (spanish) because i dropped out of spanish 3 my senior year for mental health. but i hope to compensate for this with the fact that i’m proficient in korean
ecs & awards: - ap scholar with distinction - honor student (achieved over 4.0) - choir (7 years, on choir council for 3 years as photographer, president, and stage manager respectively); performed at carnegie hall and many other locations and placed high in many choral competitions - speech & debate team (4 years, was social media director for a year and speech captain for 2 years; semi-finalist in 2020, placed 5th at 2021 stanford invitational, placed 9th in 2021) - placed 3rd in an essay contest on environmentalism - participated in student-run, zero-cost pandemic relief supply to unhoused and low-income communities - teacher’s assistant to teach korean language and culture to kids through hands-on activities (4 years); also had a year where i also taught basic coding to them - created website for accurate, accessible, and inclusive queer resources - local activism (such as joining local protests for blm, gun control, reproductive rights, etc.) - have secured an internship as teacher’s assistant at an elementary school for after summer break - planning on maybe traveling to do a work-away if i can? otherwise I’ll probably spend my time on some other project
interests: human rights/social justice, gender & sexuality studies, sociology
schools (I plan to cut the list down a bit): allegheny, amherst, bard college (ny), barnard, bryn mawr, conn college, dickinson, franklin & marshall, gettysburg, goucher, grinnell, macalester, mount holyoke, oxy, pitzer, scripps, smith, trinity college, union college (ny), uni of puget sound, wesleyan, and the uc’s (i live in cali)
any advice? i also welcome new school recs. thank you in advance!!

i’m new to reddit, so apologies if anything is formatted weird. i’ve already graduated high school (class of ‘23) and am currently taking a gap year for mental health reasons (i plan to discuss this, as it affected my academics and inability to participate in ecs for a while)
demographic: - 2nd gen korean, queer, upper-middle class, public hs
stats: - cumulative gpa: 4.57 weighted, 3.9 unweighted (will decrease a bit as final senior grades have yet to be updated. i got 2 B’s but other than that, there shouldn’t be any drastic decrease) - class rank: 35/535 weighted, 92/535 unweighted (again, will change a bit) - 10 APs: bio (3) freshman covid year; chem (2) and world (3) sophomore covid year; calc ab (4), apush (4), lang (5), and psych (5) junior year, and gov, econ, and apes senior year (did not take exams); when i say “covid year,” that means we were in quarantine and AP exams were online - 7 honors/college-level courses - i have not taken the sat/act (i don’t plan on submitting scores) - i’ve only taken 2 years of foreign language (spanish) because i dropped out of spanish 3 my senior year for mental health. but i hope to compensate for this with the fact that i’m proficient in korean
ecs & awards: - ap scholar with distinction - honor student (achieved over 4.0) - choir (7 years, on choir council for 3 years as photographer, president, and stage manager respectively); performed at carnegie hall and many other locations and placed high in many choral competitions - speech & debate team (4 years, was social media director for a year and speech captain for 2 years; semi-finalist in 2020, placed 5th at 2021 stanford invitational, placed 9th in 2021) - placed 3rd in an essay contest on environmentalism - participated in student-run, zero-cost pandemic relief supply to unhoused and low-income communities (we were able to get almost 2k donations!) - teacher’s assistant to teach korean language and culture to kids through hands-on activities (4 years); also had a year where i taught basic coding to them - created website for accurate, accessible, and inclusive queer resources - local activism (such as joining local protests for blm, gun control, reproductive rights, etc.) - have secured an internship as teacher’s assistant at an elementary school for after summer break - planning on maybe traveling to do a work-away if i can? otherwise I’ll probably spend my time on some other project
interests: human rights/social justice, gender & sexuality studies, sociology
schools (I plan to cut the list down a bit): allegheny, amherst, bard college (ny), barnard, bryn mawr, conn college, dickinson, franklin & marshall, gettysburg, goucher, grinnell, macalester, mount holyoke, oxy, pitzer, scripps, smith, trinity college, union college (ny), uni of puget sound, wesleyan, and the uc’s (i live in cali)
any advice? i also welcome new school recs. thank you in advance!!