howdoyouspell.cool

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“It takes an idiot to do cool things. That's why it's cool.” —Haruko. FLCL.

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from DigiVoyager

In the ramshackle city of Quetta, once a prosperous hub of economic activity, now more akin to a dilapidated frontier town because of the devastating earthquake of 1935, life is viewed through a very narrow schism. The good old days, before 1935, before the earthquake that ruined almost all of its infrastructure, killing over 30,000 to boot, and the bad days since. Add a heaping dose of doom and gloom for every year post founding of the once Dominion, now Islamic Republic, of Pakistan in 1947. In this corner of the world, people tend to believe hope was locked inside Pandora's Box for a different reason entirely. For hope is an evil thing, just as rotten as the rest of the inhabitants of that contraption.

We now move forward in time, from the once hopeful times of Independence Day circa 1947, the hope of a new nation and better days to come, until we hit the 2010s – but we do not see any development. The economy has stagnated, and the people are worse off than they were before. There is only disillusionment and deprivation. Added to the box of despair and misery is the missing person phenomenon, state sanctioned abductions are now the norm.

We now present for your consideration, the tale of a journalist, seeking gainful employment. One Bilal Mehngal, who works as an honorary journalist in Noshki, a correspondent for a newspaper called the Independent, the kind that you won't find at a news stand, or even with a seller that carries most newspapers. The Independent did not pay him a salary, and eking out an existence per story covered was miserable.

Picture a journalist, in need of money, and picture the Pakistan army, the country's most successful business enterprise. Picture, if you can, that journalist trying to make his way out of the quagmire of poverty and squalor.....but the people of Quetta are people of few means, and life treats them just as apathetically as it does Bilal.

Picture then, his euphoria, when the army itself wanted to hire a tailor on a long term basis, the most gainful employment of all and Bilal just happened to have a background in tailoring, due to having worked with his older brother, who was a tailor. Lucky break, you would say, and you would be wrong if you were at all familiar with what happened in Balochistan.

In order to stitch for the army, our friend the tailor had to work within the garrison, an extremely secure, highly regulated environment. He and his son were the only civilians there, everyone else was from the army.

Now picture if you will, the chain of command, and the army's officer cadre. Picture if you will, a baboon smoking a cigar, and drinking whisky, picturing himself as the very height of culture. His qualifications? A useless Bachelor's, and a schooling just as pathetic. His patience? None. These people only care about results. And when something bad happens, they want a name. Failure to supply one means an end to your career. In Pakistan, everyone is a wolf, but also a sheep that hopes to survive by throwing you to the wolves instead.

Now picture, if you will, the tension in Quetta. A city where the number of abductions and missing people continues to spiral. The abductors? The ones within those garrisoned walls.

Picture our tailor, and his son, happily working at their station, when a soldier is shot at. The time? 6:30 PM.

The soldiers of the army are just as savage as their masters, only they put on no airs. A name is needed. A name is given, the name of one of the only two civilians in the garrison at the time.

The civilian was the tailor's son.

It did not matter that he was with his father in the shop, or that they had proof of his presence there, or even a register logging him as leaving the shop at 7:15 PM, and not a minute before.

What matters is what was said by one uniform to another.

And so, our tailor, once seeking gainful employment, now stands outside the Quetta press club, lost in the sea of fellow Baloch faces seeking something even more elusive than hope, justice.

45 disappeared, 48 killed. A headline for the ages in any other nation. But for the Baloch people? Just another month. August, 2022, in fact, and almost every other month is just the same.

The citizenry of Pakistan, however, may as well have prosopagnosia, for they see no difference between him, and countless others. There is a reason the Baloch lock hope away.

 
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from Sodium Reactor

Written as a commission for a client who wanted fanfiction of 3 of his favorite characters

Cosmo Imai looked around his gym and sighed. It was true that their humble gym attracted a murderer's row of fighters and martial artists looking to improve themselves. But they'd spent so much time fighting, sweating, learning together that Cosmo knew their habits and styles nearly as well as his own.

He could scarcely imagine a situation where training and fighting weren't his favorite pastimes, but he could no longer deny to himself that he'd grown bored and this had grown stale.

He sipped from his water bottle and scanned the gym again, forcing a smile and a generic compliment to his latest training partner to hide his growing discontent. He made a note to reach out to some of the more eclectic fighter' s he'd met through his travels and see if any of them were still local.

The athletic 20 year old yearned for the sense of danger and uncertainty that had endeared him to fighting in the first place. His blonde ponytail bounced as he shook his head and subsumed the feeling beneath the simple joy of grappling. The dissatisfaction endured, but he couldn't defeat it by pouting and wishing anymore than he could become the world's best martial artist overnight. Results required effort.

An hour later, the gym's advanced class had yet to conclude but Cosmo had nearly found the flow again. He lay on his back, hips up and legs churning as he fended off an overzealous attempt to pass his guard. His sparring partner shifted this way and that, pausing only to toss wayward strikes in a vain attempt to open Cosmo's guard and knock the grin off his face.

Instead the lithe blonde counted the strikes in his head, waiting for the fourth and the guard stack attempt to his left that would follow. Cosmo swept the man onto his back instead and sat in full mount, frankly disappointed that he'd been this many steps ahead of his sparring partner.

He mimed a few elbows of his own before feinting a different submission en route to the head and arm triangle choke he'd wanted all along.

The thrill of success quickly withered into the same discontent that'd chilled him minutes earlier: he didn't want a win. He wanted danger, and his gym had little to offer him

As class ended, the 20 year old sulked by his gym bag near the edge of the room. What was the point of a gym that didn't scare him? What could he gain from partners that-

“Hey shorty! You want to chat, or am I interrupting your brooding time?”

Cosmo recognized the interloper and her distinctive Brazilian accent. He couldn't help the wild grin that bloomed across his face.

Finally!

Results required effort but recognizing chances and taking advantage of them were hallmarks of a good fighter.

“Laura Matsuda, what did I tell you about coming here and trying to steal students?” Cosmos' smile was as aggressive as it was friendly.

“I don't steal. I attract. Cause I'm attractive.” the curvy Brazilian street fighter objected. “And once they see what Matsuda style Jiu Jitsu is capable of, recruiting is the easy part.”

Cosmo cut his eyes at the intruder and lifted his water bottle to his lips. He'd rolled with Laura in strange places and situations that made training together in an actual gym felt tame and quaint. The self-styled King of Strangles found in her a grappling partner and a rival. Her presence promised the exact kind of excitement and danger that he'd longed for.

But standing behind the cocky South America was a woman that Cosmo didn't fully recognize. Her short, sharp black hair had been partially dyed bright red, while her matching black and red gear contrasted against her pale, muscled frame. He recognized her immediately as a fighter and began trying to discern her style and ability.

He stared past his occasional grappling buddy at the new woman who matched his gaze and smiled with all the ferocity of a burnt marshmallow. Her sports bra and shorts revealed a figure at least as tempting as Laura Matsuda's. Cosmo liked these two, and he liked the prospect of training with them even more.

Laura caught on a moment later and made the formal introduction. “Imai, this is my friend Mila. She's”–”

“I'm a fighter.” The woman explained, punctuating her declaration with a wink.

“I hope so, for your sake.” He shot back. “Class just finished. Can I assume you're here to try and even the score, Laura?”

“The score's already even.” the Brazilian bombshell countered. “But Mila's visiting the city and I've been introducing her to some of my favorite grappling dummies.”

“Then you'd better go find them.” Cosmo pretended to look far and wide. “All you'll find here is the boy who keeps tying you into knots and putting you to sleep. I could probably take you both on at once”

Laura's eyes widened at this latest boast. “Oh? You promise?” She shot her friend a knowing look and Mila returned her enthusiasm.

“Sounds like a challenge to me, Laura. Think he'll back out?”

But the blonde young man had already moved past them to the now deserted grappling mats. “When you two get over yourselves, you can let me know who wants to get snuggled to sleep first.” He flipped the long blonde bangs that framed his face.

His devious grin was all the invitation his two new playmates needed. Mila took a step toward him before her friend stopped her. “Ditch the MMA gloves. Just grappling today.”

The redhead nodded her agreement and discarded her gloves, grinning with giddy joy. “Don't blame us if you see stars, Cosmo!”

—————————————————— “If I didn't know any better I'd think you had something else on your mind than fighting, Laura. If you need me to take it easy on you you'll have to ask nicely.” The blonde teased, pressed against the squirming Jiu Jitsu player beneath him.

Cosmos' toned chest pressed firmly against the contours of her back as he worked to press her flat and face down against the grappling mats. He'd fended off her initial takedown and gradually worked his way through her defenses until she'd offered up her back during an ill advised sweep attempt.

His firm hands danced along her hips, her sides, prodding and testing for some gap in her defense that he could use to submit her.

“Don't get cocky, we're just getting started” She grunted, pulling her knees underneath her and lifting her hips into the air. Cosmo hung on her like a weighted blanket, one arm wrapped around her neck and his legs spread wide as he fought to keep her from rolling over.

The action slowed for a moment as the two competitors considered their next moves as carefully as chess grandmasters. Each motion was a gamble, a risk of action and reaction, play and counterplay. Cosmo wagered his superior position against Laura's submission.

And just when it seemed that both competitors had lost their nerve, they sprang into action like coiled springs. The tawny submission grappler all but flipped forward in an attempt to dislodge the mouthy blonde, who instead spun around on top of her, facing her curvy ass as he pressed her head into the mat with his chest and slid an arm under neck.

Laura tapped her submission a moment after Cosmo's arms constricted around her head and neck, not even waiting for him to crank the hold. She wasn't here to contest hopeless positions; instead she'd concede and reset the position entirely. She had plenty of time to return the favor after all.

Cosmo slid off of her and knelt beside her, smiling broadly as he caught his breath. “That was fun!” He patted her on the back and stood with her, content to gloat for a minute longer.

“Less cheesing, more wheezing.” Mila shouted, immediately cringing at her own joke. Her two matric mates both shot her confused, weary looks and tea redheaded Spaniards offered only a shrug in return. “What it rhymed right?”

“Alright blonde, my turn!” Mila strode toward him as Laura took her turn to watch.

“If you're in that much of a hurry to get strangled, your prince is happy to oblige” Cosmo offered a short bow before offering his hand for the stubby hand on hand slap that grapplers offered each other as a sign of good sportsmanship. Strikers touched gloves, but grapplers refused to ever make a fist.

The two combatants circled for a few seconds, hands by their waist and fingers extended as they reached and feinted and pulled.

Cosmo saw something he liked in her stance, a moment of lack or a foot out of position and shot for her front leg, ducking low into the single leg takedown that'd slung thousands of opponents onto their back. His fingers found no purchase as her pale thigh slid away from him and her body pressed down on him.

Mila defended his takedown with a vicious sprawl that nearly slammed his face into the mat before she pulled up and away.

“You might be ‘king of strangles’ but you're definitely not the prince of takedowns.” She grinned, circling again. Cosmo picked himself up and tucked the thwarted attack into his memory, already recalibrating for his next attack.

This time Mila led their dance, shooting for Cosmos' ankle to twist him to the ground. He turned with her attempted ankle pick and slid an arm under hers, pulling her up with him.

This signaled the beginning of their scramble, and the two dove and rolled and pulled and leaned at each other, neither able to control the other for more than a moment until Cosmo disengaged and found Milla lunging toward him with a speed he didn't think a woman was capable of.

But Mila's speed was nothing compared to the strength of her grip as she wrapped her arms around his thighs and drove him to the ground with a double leg takedown clean enough for an instructional video.

They hit the mat in a heap and she pushed forward, sitting on his leg as Cosmo fought to keep the situation from worsening. “Still having fun right?” Mila asked, and Cosmo returned her wide eyed smile with one of his own.

The path forward was clear. Win half guard, return to full guard, and then sweep her. He surmised that her background in MMA meant she'd be much more comfortable defending submissions from inside his guard, but he wondered how her defenses would hold up once she found herself beneath him. They returned to an uneasy ceasefire, shifting and grasping, both full of wide eyed enthusiasm. All Cosmo saw were possibilities and probabilities like the moves on a chessboard. Would she shoot for full mount? Or side control? Or retreat entirely and try again with a new exchange? He slid his calf on top of hers as a safeguard to keep her from escaping. Not while he still harbored visions of returning to his guard and forcing her to endure him.

What he couldn't account for however, were her simplest attributes. Mila felt more compact, more dense than any woman he'd rolled with. Rolling with her felt more akin to corralling a brick or throwing a kettlebell. In any event she was just as curvy as one. He didn't expect her to wrestle like one, however, and the way she barreled into him—pushing her shoulder into his chest until his back met the mat—caught him off guard long enough for her to free her leg and sit on his waist in full mount. All Cosmo saw were choices, and he prepared to defend all of them.

They’d agreed to pure grappling so he wouldn’t have to defend any strikes, but what submission would she attempt? An Ezekiel choke? A guillotine? Perhaps she’d switch position to something else entirely? He prepared to counter whatever plans she laid.

But her goals were simpler than that. Mila looped her leg over his shoulder, folding her calf across the back of his neck even as she rolled over onto her back. He’d guessed she’d go for something flashy, and she’d instead picked the head and arm triangle that white belts learned in their second week of class.

She constricted her powerful thighs around his neck and arm until vision blurred and he tapped his submission. “Of all the submissions in the world... a triangle? From mount? Where's the flair? The style?”

“There's no style points in MMA. Either you get the sub or you don't. Either you earn a win bonus or you don't.” She shrugged. “Simple is better. Besides, so much for taking us both on at once. You couldn't even beat both of us separately.” The MMA fighter laughed, tousling her short red and black hair.

Cosmo felt his face redden, but the hand that draped over his shoulder and slid across his chest made his shorts tighten.

“Let's go again then. Tapping me once doesn't mean anything.” He challenged his new sparring partner even as he turned to face Laura before her hands on him made him think of anything else but grappling. Her touch felt electric but his pulse raced too fast to fully consider his feelings.

“Now you're talking. But if we're talking run backs I want mine first, Cosmo.” Her other hand wrapped around his waist before she pulled away, twirling before facing him with a look that suggested she wanted to touch him, dominate him, and that grappling was just a means to that end.

“Lucky for you, I never get tired of winning.” Cosmo cheesed, once again assuming his grappling stance.

Another thirty minutes passed as the trio traded rounds on the mat, each looking to outdo the others. Laura brought peerless fluidity and creativity, chaining bold attacks and defenses that no one else would even try. Cosmo thought her friend's approach couldn't be more different: Mila approached each round with the singular goal of working, grinding, subduing.

Aside from a few flourishes that looked like they'd been plucked out of a pro wrestling ring the redheaded Spaniard seemed content to do the simple, correct thing with perfect execution and force her opponent to take risks in order to stop her.

Cosmo considered that her grappling style would have been utterly boring had she not been so good at it, so technically sound; instead the prospect of outsmarting her—embarrassing her— intrigued Cosmo more than a million rounds with the rote automatons who populated his gym.

And so he turned his entire being towards the goal of outsmarting these valkyries, noticing each pattern and habit and preference and ingesting it, analyzing it. It cost him, and he dropped several submissions in a row simply by making incorrect guesses that left him in poor positions that his curvaceous partners were only too happy to abuse.

But the two friends had rolled with each other as well, after the simple joy of completion overcame Laura's protests that she and Mila had come to visit him precisely because they were tired of sparring with each other. And the eager young blonde had made sure to note each trick and tactic in either woman's repertoire.

And by the time they all sat on the mats, panting and tired, Cosmo Imai was certain that he was winning. All he needed to do now was prove it.

“I tapped you both, twice. In a row. Still don't believe that I can take you both at once? You're gonna both lose at once. It'll be a little embarrassing, but I promise it'll be a lot of fun.”

Mila and Laura sat up to find their host sitting with his knees near his chest, waving them both toward him. They couldn't say he wasn't asking for it.


“I gotta say you were totally right, Cosmo.” Laura Matsuda sneered, pulling Cosmos sweaty, flushed face deeper into the cleavage of her shirt. “You promised this would be a little embarrassing and a lot of fun and you were totally fucking right.” The young man struggled and pitched forward, trapped by the muscular leg clamped across his back and choked by the other shin pressed firmly against his neck.

Cosmo fought and gasped, unable to spare a thought for the humor of Laura submitting him with an effective, if unorthodox choke with a Brazilian name. Cosmo, Mila, and Laura all recognized it as a gogoplata, one of the more exotic Brazilian Jiu Jitsu chokes that still saw common use.It was too fitting, like the way her shin fit across his throat. Laura tousled his hair in a final act of humiliation, encouraging the trapped young man to escape and confident that he would not.

“You're cute when you struggle, you know that?”

Cosmo gargled an unintelligible retort and made a final failed effort before falling unconscious on top of her.

Laura released the choke as soon as she felt him go limp and let the downed young man rest on her. She'd expected him to tap, to submit once the choke was locked in, but she knew better than to interrogate a fighter's pride. Perhaps the King of Strangles was sensitive about being strangled himself?

In any event, she was glad that Cosmo was cute even while unconscious and drooling on her tits, and that was all she could ask for in a partner. The headstrong Brazilian dumped their host onto his side like a sandbag.

“I swear you pull that gogoplata out of fucking nowhere.” Mila admitted with audible admiration. “I feel stupid every time I get caught by it.”

“Don't worry,” Laura stood up and cast a glance at Cosmo as he stirred back to life. “However bad you feel, I'm pretty sure he feels even stupider.”

“I don't understand how he's that smart and that stupid all at once. I mean, I'm not complaining, but” Mila purred.

“At least he's cute right? I say we milk it for all he's worth.”

Cosmo Imai shuddered back to life with a shake and a start while his assailants looked on. The self assured blonde wiped his mouth and recognized what'd happened even before he rolled onto his butt and saw the smiling vixens giggling to each other. He blinked away the last vestiges of grody asphyxiation induced sleep, and forced himself to stand.

“Al-alright I think I'm getting the hang of this. Let's try that again.

” Maybe I choked you harder than I thought.” An incredulous Laura asked.

Cosmo stared at them with clear eyes and clearer intentions. He intended to fight them, beat them, at once. He just needed to pick his spots and find his opportunity and he’d have these two curvy brawlers drooling in his lap or asleep in his arms.


4 minutes later Cosmo muttered a swear as he lay flat on the mats. Laura’s friend was a crude approximation of a woman: a bull with a red and black pixie cut, a steamroller in a sports bra. He’d defended Laura’s takedowns one after another like parrying a sword in a duel, but Mila struck like a warhammer. She’d taken him off his feet before she landed on top of him, and 90 seconds of scrambling had done little to free him from her vice-like grip. He’d recovered, rolled, and threatened with a head and arm triangle of his own until Laura interrupted with a headlock and a kiss. Why did flirting come so easily to this woman?

He had scant time to consider any of these questions before Mila, seated firmly on his sternum, leaned forward, almost past him and slid her forearm underneath his neck. Cosmo recognized the danger from the first and fought the guillotine attempt, but fighting off one woman would have been difficult enough, let alone two.

“That’s a good look for you. Cosmo” Laura cackled, pulling away as Mila tightened her submission hold. The brawny Spaniard’s hips snuggled close to his body and her knees dug into him as she tried her best to catch his chin on her forearm and yank his skull off his neck, or at least choke him unconscious. He rolled over in vain, only giving her a guillotine from guard instead of one from mount. He was stuck, utterly and totally.

“Ge-get off me!” He gagged, still refusing to tap. He might surrender before a joint lock caused real damage, but he’d fight a choke until the end.

Mila released him 15 seconds later, just after he’d gone limp. Cosmo floated on the edge of consciousness, silent and dazed. His eyes fluttered, and he realized as the light returned that Laura had blocked his vision while she’d kissed him.

“God, did I ever tell you I love the taste of ‘stupid loser?’” She cackled. “It’s my favorite flavor”

“Nghh, let’s go again.” Cosmo demanded, shaking off his confusion and standing again. “I almost had you that time.” Sweat dripped down his face, staining his rashguard. His breaths came slow and short and it was clear that the King of Strangles was finally beginning to tire.

Retreat was as unthinkable as admitting that he couldn’t subdue two world class grapplers at once. Nothing was impossible for Cosmo Imai if he understood the challenge and how to complete it. But keeping them both from overwhelming him proved simply impossible. Each time he mounted an offense: a trip, a takedown, a half formed standing submission, there was another woman intervening, interrupting with her own opportunistic offense. He dragged Mila to the mat only for Laura to leap on his back and threaten a choke.

The 20 year old grappling phenom felt Laura’s hands through his hair, threatening to undo the hairband securing his blond hair into a low ponytail. He tucked his chin to his chest as a matter of instinct, bringing his hands up to defend whatever Laura tried. They rolled together, first onto their sides and then onto Laura’s back as she sat between her thighs, groaning with the effort. Her legs snaked around his own and he recognized that he’d never escape, not fully, until he unwound her body hooks and freed his thighs from her calves. This would have been difficult enough, but Mila demanded his attention elsewhere.

“Laura said no strikes, but this is normally where I’d ground and pound.” She explained to the struggling blonde man. “But since she’s got you all tied up, why don’t I try something else?”

She didn’t expound and instead tugged on his skintight rashguard. She pulled it up to expose his untanned skin and began nibbling on his stomach.

He gasped as her hot wet tongue drew a meandering line down his abs, and the newcomer made sure to suck and nibble on his skin as she went. He hadn’t taken her for that kind of woman, but he was in no position to fend off her advances. His dick throbbed, and he thought he heard Mila make a bawdy joke about his hardening shaft before Laura slid her arm underneath his chin, cinched in the choke, and sent him to dreamland again.

They’d now settled into a miserable routine: They grappled, the two of them collaborated to trap him in the worst position possible despite his impressive efforts, and then one of them distracted him from fully defending whatever submission came next. He tapped to joint locks but fought the chokes until he woke up on the mat, mouth dry and eyes watery.

By now he’d acquired a new collection of bruises and hickeys between his waistband and his neck and could no longer tell which were from overaggressive kissing and which were from some vixen digging her knee or elbow or shoulder into his body. Too frustrated to quit, not talented enough to succeed, Cosmo Imai instead stood up and persevered.

“Let’s go again.”

Four and a half minutes later Cosmo Imai knelt on the mats, wearing Mila like a malevolent backpack. She’d leapt on his back while he’d been busy trying to grab Laura by her wrist or leg, hand fighting as the various grappling martial arts called it. He’d never had someone nibble his ear while choking him, but he’d also never had a woman try to grope him while she choked him either.

Was this what it felt like to discover a new kink? His body reacted in its own way, heedless of his mind’s protests. Mila’s heavy bosom pressed flat against his back as she whispered all the things she wanted to try with him. Most of them weren't legal in any organized competition. The tent in his shorts stood firm regardless of how much he tried to reassert control of his body and mind. Why was this damned woman so alluring? And why was she so damn heavy? He considered if her ideas were all anatomically possible, especially with one of her legs clamped around the front of his waist, secured by her knee folded over her other ankle in a body triangle.

And then Cosmo woke up on the mat again. Gasping. Drooling. Trapped in some hellacious groundhog day. Reliving the same scenario over and over in various permutations.

He slapped the mat and swore again. He'd gotten closer but not far enough to claim any more than a moral victory.

Again! “Let's go again. I'm not satisfied yet.” He rose like a man possessed, rubbed his bruised neck, and found some humor in the situation. “So I actually can't remember the last time I got tapped twice in a row by an RNC. It's been, what... years? And it only took two world class grapplers working in perfect tandem.” He gasped. “I'm glad we know where we stand.”

“You haven't done much standing at all tonight.” Mila sniped.

“But you have done a lot of laying face down and napping.” Laura added, rubbing her friend's waist.

“Well yeah. You two had to catch up. I almost got bored beating you two so easily.” He lied, standing up as straight as he could given the ache in his legs and his ailing ribs.

“Well if the score is tied by now, why don't we do something about that.” The black haired Brazilian taunted, lunging for Cosmo's arm without waiting for him to take up his stance. He defended the attack and the trip that followed when she sat down and tried to tangle his legs with hers. He enjoyed her wide eyed look of surprise when he dove onto her, sitting on her thigh and establishing his own half guard. This would have been fortuitous on its own but another vixen circled, waiting for her chance to strike. He expected her arms around his neck and her awkward back take, feeling her chest press against him again. The pressure wasn't unwelcome even as it distracted him from his attempts to pass Laura's guard. Now he fought against Mila's arms, rolling backwards with her before escaping back to his feet.

“Not fast enough ladies.” Cosmo laughed, freeing himself for a moment. The women climbed back to their feet and their play resumed. This time Cosmo took initiative, tripping Mila to buy himself a moment alone with the Brazilian temptress. He and Laura jockeyed for position before he shot out for her leg. But exertion and exhaustion, from a full day of training and the combined efforts of his newest training partners robbed him of his speed. Instead of snatching her leg and dumping her to the ground, he found himself face down with Laura looming over him, pressing against his back. He didn't even have time to voice his regret before she slipped an arm over and back underneath his arm, grabbing her wrist with her other hand. Cosmo recognized the danger even before she pinned her leg against his head and sat down.

They rolled together until Cosmo nearly flipped forward, stopped only by Laura's torso pushing and pulling on him with opposite limbs, gradually and assuredly choking him. He pushed with his legs but couldn't fully pull them under him and instead rocked to a stop. He tried it again, now gagging from her arms clamped around his back, his neck, choking. Mila's face appeared, her expression difficult to read while he was upside down and staring out at the lights of the gym. She said something but he struggled to make it out before he blacked out.

Cosmo awoke on his back with his arms on his chest, as if arranged for a funeral. His gasp became a yawn as he stretched out, sat up, and rolled over and onto his feet. “Aha, very funny.” He spat, shaking his head. “Was that... a Peruvian Necktie though? I thought you were Brazilian, not Peruvian.”

“That was an awful joke.” She answered. “Maybe you need a little more sleep? I can help you take a nice long nap.”

“Thanks but I'm feeling nice and refreshed. But you both look a little sleep deprived. And you'd both look great napping in my lap. Open offer ladies.” They might be able to submit him but they couldn't rob him of his cheerful demeanor and enthusiasm. The last roll had taken a lot out of the 20 year phenom, but his sparring partners both looked like they had a lot left to offer. Mila sauntered up to him, all smiles and giggles, and laced her hands together behind his head. He recognized the snapdown before she yanked him forward and onto his hands and knees. He knew. He knew the escape, the response, the counter. But his body simply would not respond like he wanted to, like he'd trained. Instead everything came seconds too slow to be of any use. He was a passenger along for the ride while she used him however she wanted.

Her pale, toned arm snaked under his, clasping onto her other bicep. She pressed her thigh underneath him, buoying him for a moment before violently rolling onto her back and dragging him with her. His brain registered the Anaconda Choke but he recognized how seldom he'd been on this end of it. He was the one distributing naps, but getting caught in increasingly complicated chokes made him feel like a young student in Jiu Jitsu class again. When he flopped on his back and her leg cranked around his he knew the end was imminent. He'd discovered that Mila did the little things well for all her techniques, even if she evidently didn't have an array as large as Laura or he did.

“Don't put him out yet.” Laura called, and her friend acquiesced. Cosmo struggled, groaned, and flailed to no avail, but Mila refused to finish the submission, instead holding him trapped before Laura loomed over him again, biting her lip with lust and ill intent. The eager Matsuda Jiu Jitsu scion quickly showed Cosmo why she wanted him awake. “You can struggle and moan all you want.” She explained as she sat on Cosmo's grounded leg and pulled his rashguard up to his neck and exposed his stomach. His only free limb, his left leg, kicked and thrashed aimlessly while Mila tangled his arms and leg. With their quarry captured, Laura Matsuda took every opportunity to nibble and kiss and grind on her prey. She explored the crevices of his toned chest and abs, sucking hard until bruises bloomed on his pale skin. Cosmo whimpered and gasped, unwilling to trust his own voice to produce anything more than desperate, immodest squeaks.

“Please?” Was all he could think to offer.

“That's a start. Keep going Laura!” Mila cheered. “He's cute when he blushes. Make him turn red.”

Laura pressed onward with her teasing and tormenting, doing everything short of stroking his now throbbing erection. Teasing him seemed to be her only goal. Cosmo looked up at her with a mixture of thirst and desperation, and his Brazilian conqueror finally gave her flirty steamroller of a friend the signal to put the young blonde to sleep.

Cosmo awoke and didn't bother standing up. There was no purpose, and specifically no strength left in his legs. Instead he rolled over onto his knees and looked up at his two tormentors. He should give up. He'd spent the last of himself on that final failed attempt. He was a ragdoll, a sitting duck, a grappling dummy. And yet... he wasn't quite ready to stop, to be free of them, to see them leave.

So he waved them in. “One more.” He offered. And they obliged, walking on their knees to accommodate their headstrong host. This time there was no struggle, just two women taking everything they wanted from him, leaving him to struggle and push and groan without the possibility of victory or escape. Thankfully, neither Laura nor Mila wanted to hurt him. Instead they seemed to have found their bliss and squeezing, teasing, kissing him. Bullying him on the mats, moving him as they wanted and completing 80% of a dozen different submissions. By now they were alone in the gym, no one would care what they did here. He wondered, hoped that their wrestling might turn into something more intimate, but he didn't dare ask. Instead he felt Laura high on his back and reacted, pulling a way a second too slow to keep her from snaring his arm with hers and his neck with her legs.

He recognized the hold for what it was. An arm and a neck captured together made a triangle, and her legs, one folded around the other to keep him stuck, confirmed it. He could tap. Should tap. He certainly wasn't going to fight his way out of this after exhausting himself. And yet part of him wanted to see how this ended, what they had in mind. And so he hesitated. This time Mila took her turn teasing him, dragging her tongue across his exposed chest, exploring his body with her capable hands. He groaned and was immediately embarrassed by whatever sound his body had decided to produce instead.

“Don't...” Cosmo gasped

“Don't what?” Mila and Laura asked almost in tandem, eyes full of lewd excitement.

“Don't... stop.”

For once that night, Mila and Laura were happy to follow his order, and Cosmo Imai stopped thinking long before Laura squeezed her legs tight and finally put him to sleep.

“That was great!” Mila laughed.

“Just great?” Her friend challenged in between kisses.

“Alright, alright, that was fucking amazing.” Mila admitted. “You weren't kidding when you said you knew the best training spots around here. I'll definitely come again.”

“I think he might too.” Laura laughed, now seated on her unconscious host's face. It'd been Mila's idea to kiss right then and there, both women seated on top of their overconfident host. They hadn't stopped rubbing and grinding against him, thankful for the easy friction provided by his muscular, lithe frame. The two friends lost themselves in another kiss, touching and teasing each other as easily as they had Cosmo.

Finally satisfied, Mila gave the cute, blonde, 20-year old another glance and asked her friend what came next.

“Do we need to wake him up? Or like... call somebody?”

“Nah, Cosmo will be fine. He's a big boy. Besides, I think he'll need some alone time after everything he's been through....”

Mila couldn't argue that and the two friends laughed on their way out of the gym and into the crisp night air, leaving Cosmo Imai to dream of lust and revenge.


#Writing #FirstDraft #NSFW #Series #Fiction #Commission #Action #Sex #Fight #Kink #BDSM #MartialArts

 
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from forrest

*note: these notes are presented without proofreading or editing of any kind, and many of these notes were taken with speech-to-text.

  • since moving to email-only communication, many have reached out to me, and the overall tone of these people has been very different from the general tone you get from people on social media (note that some of these people are indeed the same people from social media, but I’m not going to name names); they’re way more personal, understanding, and empathetic; as if, since they are no longer potentially being seen by others, they have shed some upper-crust layer of their persona thus revealing more of their true selves; they’re “more comfortable,” is the main takeaway (i guess).
  • why does an RSS reader need “enhanced AI features???”
  • Syd Barrett The Madcap Laughs; One of those albums that I pretended to like in high school but ended up really liking a whole lot in adulthood and now I can't tell if I just pretended so hard that I ended up liking it, like pretending myself into enjoyment? Dark Globe has to be incredible, though, I think.
  • There's a certain sadness to children. being a parent, you can punish your child for whatever and they'll start crying and then if you start feeling bad and show them some sympathy right afterwards, the child then comes back to you and gives you a big hug and is just overflowing with this “please hold me daddy” thing, despite the fact that you just did something kinda awful to them. i.e., they are both afraid and extremely reliant on the parent for their well-being and they kinda instinctively know this and it puts them in this very weird kind of limbo in which they are totally at the mercy of some random adult they didn’t choose as a parent, (and we all know that every adult is just a bundle of awful baggage, so it’s really quite the crazy lottery: this making-babies thing).
  • when I was a kid I had a lot of pimples, and I also had (and still have) a nervous compulsion to incessantly pick scabs or bumps or any redness on my body whatsoever; this mixed with the fact that, In the case of pimples, when they're popped, the grease itself can clog up the pores which just cause more pimples which leads to more picking of said pimples which leads to more grease clogging more pores which leads to—you guessed it—more pimples which leads to me picking and popping those pimples which leads to my getting more pimples which leads to me popping more pimples which leads to me getting more pimples &c. &c.
  • The way spider webs disperse light into rainbows in the corner of your eye.
  • “when that happens, you go to a different channel and if you don't like that channel, you go to a different channel. And one of the reasons I can't own a TV is I've started having this thing where I become convinced there's something really good on another channel and that I'm missing it.” – DFW
  • watching a small child just hit you in the face real hard then blankly stare is an interesting thing: the whole “children are psychopaths” thing distilled into a small action here.
  • has anyone really thought about the Comedy Central logo? what is it? why? it's earth with 3 huge skyscrapers piercing through the ozone into space. what do the skyscrapers have to do with comedy? what does it mean? the only thing comedy related is the word “COMEDY” in the logo text “COMEDY CENTRAL”; a promise of comedy, more than anything else, really.
  • upon my approach, the front tire of my bike parts the sea of geese
  • “blowout barrier” (diapers)
  • couples that end up looking like each other—what’s up with that???
  • no one feels primitive in the moment
  • The first few bars of “Let My Love Open the Door” by Pete Townsend sounds nearly identical to the classic Final Fantasy prelude theme because they're both pretty basic arpeggio scales (note that the Final Fantasy Prelude was a quick arpeggio that Nobou Uematsu wrote in about 5 minutes. It's not particularly original in any way. Neither Uematsu or Townshend are the originators of the arpeggio, idk who is.)
  • once you start to focus on things, like, once you start putting your phone down, you start to realize how much everyone around you can't put the phone down.
  • the common misuse of the word “believe”; such as “I believe in strong institutions” instead of “I support strong institutions.” &c. at least this seems like misuse because, obviously, strong insitutes either exist or they can exist; it’s not a matter of belief.
  • Exclamation Cleaners like “Shout” and “Pledge” where this come from???
  • Chapter 4 of The Egg just kinda came together, the destruction/rebirth thing kinda just happened; was cool, interesting. wish i could harness this power.
  • in this IRC chat room, people “talk” but they “talk” past each other; for example, we were “talking” about anime, and I was saying how I like pre-2005 animes like CBBB, Boogiepop Phantom, etc. and this guy responds talking about this anime “no one knows about” called “Noir” and how it’s “really good and no one knows about it”, etc.; this irked me a bit because he’s not really responding to me, instead, he co-opted the topic that I brought up to talk about himself and his obscure anime knowledge, never addressing me directly; this would have been acceptable if he acknowledged me, like “i like Cowboy Bebop too! have you heard of Noir? you might like that too”—as, in this example, he’s responding directly to something I said (i.e., “i like Cowboy bebop too!”) while, at the same time, introducing his own recommendation.
  • “Dark Cloud 2 was trying too hard to be like Kingdom Hearts”; OK? this isn't the criticism that you think it is; in fact, it’s not a criticism at all, more just a statement.
  • took the lock off my phone because who the fuck wants to get into my shit? imagine the inflated self-worth you must have to assume that someone wants to get into your dumb phone.
  • you never realize you're primitive at the time…..
  • Ed Sheeran never looks like he wants to be wherever he's at. looks like he murdered someone, maybe. always a little nervous about someone finding the skeletons.
  • continued increases in accessibility of television entertainment must be one of the driving factors for decreased attention span and focus; twenty years ago, if you wanted TV in your bedroom, you needed to get a second cable box installed, which cost extra through the cable provider, so you were less likely to do it, which meant that your bedroom was a place of rest and relaxation, not just yet another place to veg out watching The Office. while in 2024, everywhere is another place to veg out watching The Office (see: phones, streaming sticks in every cheap TV), and this is NOT A GOOD THING.
  • i swear, i feel like AI journal articles are being generated based on my search history or Spotify listening habits, then being suggested to me on the regular by Google. there was article on The Smiths song “Back to the Old House” that, upon reading the first two sentences, I knew that it had to be AI-generated—and just to be sure i put the text in one of those genAI checkers, which came back as 100% AI-generated. The article was something like, “The Historical Significance of The Smiths song Back to the Old House,” which itself is an incredibly weird and niche article topic, which was the first thing that clued me.
  • one day soon i will look back upon this moment, in which I wrote this very thing, and think “how naive, how ignorant, how unaware.” maybe i didn’t even exist five minutes ago, for what is the past, REALLY?
  • Before computers and typewriters, if one wanted to write something in all capital letters, it required significantly more effort than lowercase or cursive because the capitalized letters are bigger bolder and have more lines and generally take longer to write out by hand; as such, keyboards and typewriters, with their ability to just hold shift or whatever to instantly make whatever you're typing capitalized, have thus trivialized typing stuff in all caps; what I'm trying to say is, before the typewriter and the computer, if a letter was written to you in all capital letters, you knew that that person was fucking serious because of the effort involved in writing out all of those capital letters, but nowadays somebody just held down the shift key or tapped the caps lock and typed like normal, it means nothing, maybe the person was entirely calm when typing the all caps email to you, you will never truly know—i guess you wouldn’t have known before, but before at least the effort gave you an idea.
  • every company has “points” now, like, “Bed Bath and Beyond points” or whatever. these points are just a weird ersatz money, i.e., roundabout money that’s not really money, has far less actual value, and has a conversion rate of abysmal for the amount of effort put in to collect these ridiculous “points.”
  • I saved a moth from a spider's web and now i fear that I may have fucked up the balance of nature. maybe got too “involved,” like those documentarians observing wildlife or whatever. maybe i fucked up. hmm
  • Battlestar Galactica (2004) is the show most susceptible to spoilers. you can ruin someone’s watching experience (if they care about spoilers) with, like, four words: “BLANK is a Cylon.”
  • In electronic gambling of any kind, the problem is the house knows your bet, there is immediately not only an advantage for them, but one side has way more information and control than the other or something. in electronic gambling, the house literally controls the code. why would anyone then participate in electronic gambling? for example, an electronic gambling machine would know that you picked a certain number and then some code in the back end of the machine could (potentially) de-prioritize that number from winning and you would never know, yet we just place our faith in the backend systems when we gamble in this way, much like placing our faith in the backend systems of pretty much anything else, but kinda more stupid because you don’t actually need to place your faith in electronic slot machines lol
  • floating head movie and television show covers or promotional images, like all those Marvel movie covers with all the floating heads on the promo artwork. just like five floating heads. this is all over the place now, actually.
  • The human face has all of these pores and all of these pores get clogged and there's some sort of a white stuff that comes out if you squeeze literally any part of it. it's very fucking weird.
  • Mark E. Smith of The Fall or: the Napoleon of post-punk.
  • Walmart is a formative nostalgic force for most Americans; a cultural staple of American society, which every US citizen has deep experience/memories of.
  • The plethora of learning disabilities like ADHD dyslexia dyscalculia are starting to just feel like different layers of stupid that we’re now deciding to label with special words and/or phrases, “you’re not an idiot, forrest, you just have dyscalculia” or “you’re not an idiot, grugg, you just have Bang-Head-on-the-Wall-over-and-overlia.”
  • might have figured out why my writing has thus far been shooting itself in the foot (and will continue to shoot itself in the foot [and that’s fine because i like doing what i do and writing what i write because i am who i am and if i want to write an essay about Romancing SaGa 2 that is actually about anti-natalism then i will], but this here is just the facts i think): i am writing vaguely about games while using the games’ names / characters as centerpieces; however, my writing is actually more appealing to people who deeply care about reading/writing/thinking-stuff (writers, especially, considering the email feedback i have received from writers [both good and bad]), and i am finding out that the video game community and the likes-to-read-and-write community don’t actually have that much overlap—which is unfortunate, as it’s almost as if the stereotype that “gamers” are kinda lobotomized vegetables drooling over television sets is a little bit true (and, in hindsight, I certainly was like this [lobotmized vegetable] before i started seriously reading and writing); so, basically, these two communities don’t overlap much; and that’s a shame, because—while there is some mindlessness to gaming (i say “SOME” but c’mon there’s LOTS, actually)—there are a lot of video games (story driven games, mostly) that cover intellectual themes that could potentially fit perfectly with the literary crowd, and do, just less so. but, in conclusion, maybe the reason my writing isn't widely read is because “gamers” go into my essays thinking they’re going to read a lot of words about the game they love but quickly find out that I am using the game to, instead, write about animal rights or escapism or why having kids is immoral or whatever, thus i can imagine my essays/stories feel a bit like a bait-and-switch to these people—which is understandable. or, it could be that my writing just isn’t very good (you’d figure a so-called great writer’s opening sentence would hook even non-readers into reading their stuff, but who knows).
  • “why is it that when things go wrong, they go wrong so well?” –Gaius Baltar, BSG (2004)
  • tying a fish to a helium balloon is tantamount to tying a ball & chain to a human and then be pushing them into the ocean
  • whiteheads pushed out of the face look like little maggots
  • bath toys for children that get rusty? who is designing/approving this stuff
  • In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. Reality television is a perfect example of this; put a camera on people and watch how they change; the mere possibility of being on camera changes people, thus reality television is never an accurate representation of reality, thus “reality television” is a misnomer.
  • Nostalgia Spangled Banner
  • white dude who goes to the HomeGoods store just to buy all the black Santa stuff so as to eradicate the very idea of black Santa because he’s a racist prick but in doing so kinda montarily supports the whole black-santa enterprise but is too racist and stupid to make this connection
  • novel subplot idea: HomeGoods display-couch girls; like three girls who divvy out little bits of preppy girl wisdom to high school girls who come in to seek their council, and they always seem to be there sitting on this specific display-couch all mysterious like; hinted as being supernatural. (HomeGoods is the home of all things Taylor Swift, after all).
  • kid on swing set swung so hard that he wrapped around the suspension pole and the chain asphyxiated him (i have a false memory of something like this happening but i looked up on Google if this was possible and, apparently, the chain would go limp before it would allow itself to swing around the top bar).
  • still trying to figure out what nostalgia actually feels like. language, sometimes, cannot describe things accurately (actually more than sometimes, this is a whole thing, actually).
  • “corporate bureaucracy always mirrors human hierarchies”
  • corporate bureaucracy is always about pressure: middle managers pressure those below them; directors pressure middle managers; c-suite pressure directors; board of directors pressures C. suite; shareholders pressure board of directors; and (maybe) consumers pressure shareholders. however, it seems nowadays, consumers have less power over shareholders.
  • “Saturnine”
  • response to my leaving social media has been met with overwhelmingly negative feedback from people who used to follow me on social media and this is probably because they see my reasonings for leaving social media as an attack on their own behavior which it sort of is indirectly (but not really intentionally), and then they get defensive because they know they're doing the bullshit that I was doing yet they're not willing to admit it yet or are just making excuses for it. for example, if i say, “social media made me stupid” and someone replies with, “are you saiyng that I’m stupid?” then that is far more telling of that specific person’s mental state than any statement I making.
  • someone in a YouTube comment said you should never trust someone who doesn't like Deftones so I guess you just shouldn't trust me, and that's probably accurate. i cannot stand Deftones; it’s something about the vocals, too ruff, edgy, and KORNESQUE. actually there’s, like, one Deftones song I think is OK.
  • The absolute hubris of these tech companies coming up with all these complicated screen lock techniques for smartphones as if there's anything worth looking at on someone else's smartphone to begin with (or any smartphone, for that matter).
  • I give absolutely zero fucks about the opinion of any quote-unquote YouTuber.
  • when you're walking down the street and somebody has their window open you can see them just sitting on the couch watching television and it reminds you of seeing some sort of NPC in a video game, just all mindless no soul. it's very weird watching people when they think they're alone and they're doing nothing.
  • It's funny how being a partisan hack can also look the same as being illiterate, for example, RFK recently did an interview where he said he was going to create wellness farms, and people then said that he was going to send people against their will to those farms, which is just a partisan spin on the article cuz they don't like RFK. but ultimately what it looks like is that they're just incompetent or unable to read or unable to comprehend things. so in a way partisan hackery kinda mimics stupidity.
  • eat something long enough it starts to taste bad.
  • the whole system of art critiquing, like reviews, and competitions etc., undermines the spirit of artistic creation; article title “is Sally Rooney a literary phenomenon or a bluff?” who actually cares? writers write because they love to write, it's an art; no one who hates writing writes a novel, unless they’re a masochist; it a huge time investment. looking at art from this “is this good or bad” dichotomy is moronic, go become a sports announcer or something. fuck off.
  • the ridiculousness of the the fox football robot.
  • the dichotomies are killing you.
  • I've never gotten along with a person wearing a cowboy hat.
  • remnants of anorexia from youth.
  • In regard to Thurston Moore's first solo album “psychic hearts” last FM user X writes “every fucker had this in 95. I still have it on my iPhone and I don't even pretend to listen to it. it's kind of a necessary weight.”
  • It seems to me that writers often write about subjects or topics or goals that they aspire to themselves, for example, David Foster Wallace wrote about how evil TV was or whatever, but was addicted to TV himself; what this tells us is that David Foster Wallace was kind of writing to himself when he wrote about the societal rot that TV could eventually cause—even though he probably was addressing other people with you pronouns, he was really talking to himself. he was saying to himself “you are addicted to TV, and these are the reasons being addicted to TV is bad, and you need to stop.” similar to my essay titled “Become Immersive.”
  • Experian: I do not care about my fico score. fuck off.
  • bottom of a chocolate bar like the sole of a shoe.
  • in America everyone is in debt to someone. if you have a car, you're in debt. we are a debt society. maybe this is the case in all societies with money, who knows.
  • note that guy on Bluesky is the perfect example of a mindless consumer who has been programmed to be resistant to any criticism to his brainrot consumerist lifestyle, offended at even the slightest hint of criticism, even when the criticism is not directed at them directly, “i read this and couldn’t help feeling targeted,” ok maybe that’s because you think that you yourself are guilty of all the shit that was called out in the thing you just read? jesus. the lack of awareness. entire personality just video games and movies. could go to their profile right now and it would be full of pictures of video game cases and movie shit. no depth beyond the latest release in their favorite commercial video game series.
  • as a writer, publishing your writing for a large audience, especially essay or opinion pieces, implies a massive ego; and that’s OK, if the writer admits to it and tempers it, but that is usually not the case.
  • The founder of Braintree is trying to reverse age himself, yet he looks like a pale ghost with skin that has been stretched on over a frail skeleton.
  • I learned the opposite lesson from the story of The Grinch.
  • Gaius Baltar is the main character of BSG.
  • headline “ChatGPT prompts to cut your workload by 50%” or How to Fast Track Your Way to Unemployment.
  • “poorly cut jacket; sleeves too short…” do people really notice this stupid shit?
  • the sorrow that comes with losing a loved one, and then the prolonged kinda forced sadness that comes from the realization that you are starting to care less and less about said loved one’s death, as if you are beating yourself up because you are no longer as sorrowful as you once were, as if you should continue to feel a deep sorrow for the deceased forever to honor their memory or something, even though said loved one is thoroughly dead and does not—cannot—care. this is a guilt loop.
  • neighbor was burning leafs, which blanketed my backyard in smoke, which made the sunlight come down in pillars like the rays of heaven (or something).
  • article title: “Brandon Sanderson knows he's risking everything with Wind and Truth.” What? what is “everything?” he's certainly not risking his millions of dollars, or actually anything at all. stupid headline.
  • cheap tacky T-shirts that relish in mediocrity and bad behavior, stuff like “I've quit more things than you've started” or “fresh sarcasm served daily” or “if you find me offensive then i suggest you quit finding me” &c. &c. and the people who wear them.
  • people who smell like the backside of a McDonald’s.
  • seems to me that the more praise for an author on the book jacket, the worse the author is. this is usually a reliable metric.

#notes #fragments

 
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from DigiVoyager

Somewhere in Peshawar, in a lesser known Government Hospital

Dr. Fawltea entered his domain, the forgotten Medical E ward, like a king finally bestowing his magnanimous grace upon one of those lesser-visited and more neglected hamlets. Or, to give it a more local flavor, a police officer visiting one of those streets he knew was frequented by smugglers, drug dealers, and those he hated the most: fruit vendors; but those vendors would not sour his mood on that particular day because he had gotten a brand-new motorcycle as a gift from the state. A gift, in this context, being a bike he'd taken a fancy to at the impound, removed the plates off of, and claimed as his own. Similarly, nothing would sour Fawltea's mood today; not the faulty oxygen lines, the lack of essential drugs, the misplaced crash carts or even the outdated monitors that were well past it, their green phosphorescent glow drowning out any information a doctor might glean from them.

Not even Gul Abad, the technician who liked to pretend he was a trainee from some other specialty, could ruin his day. He had been a Cardiologist, Pulmonologist, and even an Emergency Medicine specialist (a specialty that wasn't even recognized in Peshawar, such was his dedication to the role). He'd argued many a time with Gul Abad in the past, but, like others before him, Dr. Fawltea too had given up, realizing he was just one of many; there were similar characters in Surgery, Radiology, Pathology, and even the blood bank, for some reason.

“Gul Abad is not just a person, he is an idea, and these ideas often have their own clinics on the outskirts of town” had become his new go-to line whenever any new doctors asked what his deal was.

Why anyone would want to be a blood bank officer, Dr. Fawltea could not fathom, but then, dear reader, he was not aware of Gul Abad's favorite maxim: “There is always money in the blood bank.” Gul Abad's role model, a notoriously corrupt doctor who had dodged jail more times than Pakistan had had IMF bailout programs (25 at the time of writing) had bestowed this wisdom unto him. In Gul Abad's view, this saint among men would've probably cheated the IMF and led Pakistan to heights hitherto unseen. In the views of more pragmatic people, such as his family, friends, etc. he would've taken a few bad loans and absconded with the money.

While Gul Abad had been named after his father's favorite place, Dr. Fawltea was sadly not named by his father after that esteemed personage, Basil Fawlty, who managed Fawlty Towers. But he told people that anyway, making sure to look at them with a derisive eye so that they would not ask questions about why the timeline didn't match up, him being older than Fawlty Towers and all. This benevolent shepherd (or so he fancied himself—but then he also fancied himself a cardiologist, even though he had specialized in internal medicine) of that godforsaken flock, which constituted today's trainees (they did not even know how to read ECGs, the only one that had shown any interest was that annoying Gul Abad), annoyed him to no end. But nothing could ruin his mood today; he had finally managed to get his hands on the holy grail of holy grails: a VIP. VIP in this here context does not mean Very Important Person; it means Very Important Patient.

Patients, you see, had varying levels of importance for Dr. Fawltea (and many other Pakistani doctors) depending on what they had to offer. A poor patient? Pointless. The milk of human kindness, however much remained in Dr. Fawltea, compelled him to take a cursory look at those poor downtrodden and help them, but that is all. Those middle-class, annoying patients who only asked questions, on the other hand – ingrates, the lot of them – were of no use to him. He disliked them the most. VIPs, on the other hand, were patients that were connected to the halls of power; they could be businessmen, criminals (in Pakistan, the Venn Diagram of such an association would be extremely overlapping; some have tried to find that rare creature, a businessman that is not a criminal, and have turned every rock up and down for said cause, but to no avail), politicians (much like businessmen, they also overlap with criminals, and like our criminals, they overlap with businessmen too), and of course, the unicorn: a high-ranking army officer. Dr. Fawltea was dreaming of luxurious luncheons at golf courses, days whiled away driving those cute little golf carts all over the course. Perhaps he would even throw down a fishing rod or two in the water – he didn't care that there were no fish. He was due some much needed introspection.

He entered the break room, not at all surprised to find only two of his sheep there. He did not know how many there were in total; only God knew that because the system was a mess, and over half of them were ghost employees who never showed up, except when they needed to change their attendance records – a little bribery went a long way. Within the lounge, there was that new fellow who looked like he was dressed as a seller for a book fair at some old bookshop that had long since run out of funds and was hoping to glean some extra sympathy from buyers; he was talking about how computers were unfairly priced for the umpteenth time. He was perpetually on the night shift, and judging by his pallor Fawltea was beginning to suspect the fellow was some sort of lesser vampire.

Sitting on that twin green sofa across the table was that famous professor's daughter. Her father had a master's in several domains, and she too claimed expertise in said matters. Why she had decided to go into medicine also baffled Dr. Fawltea, he had seen her discuss everything but. She was, as ever, reading her book out loud, perhaps lost in the delusions of being a person of lordly caliber, much as Fawltea himself was. Dr. Fawltea wondered if she too viewed the other doctors as her flock; it certainly seemed like it. He did not like the idea of competition from a junior doctor, but, being related to not one but two brigadiers on her mother's side, Dr. Fawltea knew better than to say anything to her. A harsh word from him would lead to many harsh beatdowns in a cell. 'Sticks and stones will break my bones, and words will never save me,' he reminded himself. Feigning polite interest, for one can always do with being on good terms with someone related to the army, he smiled and asked, 'And what are we reading today?'”

The Professor, as she was affectionately nicknamed (not that she was aware they called her that), smiled back and pointed to the cover of the book dismissively, as if Dr. Fawltea was not worthy of her time. It was another one of Adam Smith's works; of course it was. Moral Sentiments or something. And all he could do, in lieu of her powerful family, was to nod and smile as she continued to read it out loud, as if this were a Class 3 (for my American audience, think third grade; for my British audience, I am not familiar with your form system rannygazoo) English lesson.

She spoke stentoriously: “It is to be observed accordingly, that we are still more anxious to communicate to our friends our disagreeable than our agreeable passions, that we derive still more satisfaction from their sympathy with the former than from that with the latter, and that we are still more shocked by the want of it.” The fellow who looked like a down-on-his-luck bookseller nodded and obliged, Fawltea was not sure if it was due to genuine interest or simply what her status commanded. Fawltea felt bad for the poor sod, it was clear he'd not slept all night, and now this. It was all Fawltea could do to keep himself from yelling something akin to “Go on, you vampire, go into the sunlight and end your torment.”

All this scene really needed – Fawltea thought in disdain – was a harsh, dissonant violin to make it more annoying, or perhaps a sad piano piece to drive home the lesser vampire's agony. “Shall we start the round then?” Dr. Fawltea asked, though it was more of a command than anything.

“After this chapter,” replied the Professor, as if she were the head consultant and Fawltea the trainee medical officer.

Fawltea sat down to drink some tea, wondering if any of the other rascals he supervised would bother showing up to today's round, when the Hardy Boyses entered the lounge as if it were their own backyard, bringing a smile to his face. He called them that because they reminded him of Frank and Joe, two characters from his favorite book series. Always together, practically like brothers, always off having an adventure. Normally, this sounded great, but when their adventures (the Hardy Boyses in a brawl with the local Snooker Club toughs was a particular favorite of Fawltea's) happened on the hospital's time and dime – that is to say, they were being paid to treat patients and not beat up hoodlums that darkened the doors of the local Snooker club, or go hunting or fishing or whatever else they found to occupy their already paid-for time – it made quite a lot of administrative trouble. But Fawltea had always idolized such adventurous lads, having been denied that feeling in his own school years. He was now living vicariously through them, much like the books had allowed him to live vicariously through Frank and Joe. If that stupid deputy sub-inspector police were going to make sure his nephew Gul Abad stayed, then he, Fawltea, would also fight to the death for his Hardy Boyses, who had taken him fishing, hunting, and even horse riding, besides the usual spot of cricket. Sadly, they did not have access to that hanging garden of Babylon, the local golf course. He could simply go and pay a rather exorbitant sum, but Fawltea had always found it hard to part with his money.

“Allo allo bruva,” said Frank, whose hair was in more disarray than the traffic in Peshawar, but not so bad as to be likened to the traffic in Karachi or Lahore. “Hey, bro,” said Joe, who had used more hair gel than a baboon would on a particularly bad hair day. Both of them fist-bumped Fawltea. This, right here, was the dream. For a moment, he too had forgotten he was their boss, and he was just one of the lads. There was a triumphant smirk on his face, and in his own mind, he was bathed in radiance, others watching on, jealous that he was a member of this exclusive boys' club. How Fawltea wished they were off in some long lost Amazonian jungle, finding lost treasures and thwarting devious pit vipers as they made their way to the top of a sacrificial altar just in time to save the world from a permanent eclipse. But before he knew it, they were gone again. Dammit, he had not gotten a chance to get any new stories from them, his daydreams were too vivid sometimes.

The Professor's sermon on Adam Smith's treatise regarding moral sentiments continued for a good while, during which Fawltea pondered many things. He wondered when exactly the heat death of the universe would occur, if today’s youth were interested in those old Doctor Who radio dramas, and why his car had such particularly bad mileage. As a matter of fact, it was because his driver used it as a taxi during the time Fawltea was busy working.

As he continued to ponder, another trainee he was afraid of entered. The first words she uttered were: “Hi Benazir, hi Hamlet. I'm well past 3000 now!” and then she made a peace sign. The fellow who looked like the world's most forlorn bookseller (Fawltea could see why he had the Hamlet moniker, it was easy to visualize the boy being plagued by several ghosts, though he would've gone with some lesser known vampire himself) mumbled congratulations. The Professor (aptly nicknamed Benazir, after the former Prime Minister who was the first woman to lead a Muslim majority government) also nodded her acknowledgment. Unfortunately for Dr. Fawltea, this trainee was not related to any army officers by any degrees of separation; she was as close to the establishment as one could possibly be – both of her parents were high-ranking officers. Why she was in a government hospital like this and not a military hospital, he couldn't fathom, but it possibly had something to do with the higher salary and the lack of consequences. All one had to do was be in the right place at the right time, and they could perform operations well outside their own domain. Fawltea himself had done a few appendectomies and exploratory laparotomies out of sheer curiosity, and had even botched a few cardiac surgeries.

While looking at her, most would see a normal girl. Not Fawltea, though. He always saw her flanked by two phantasms, both famous generals of the past, who looked at him threateningly, daring him to say anything so they could toss him into a jail cell for good, their mustaches brimming with the arrogance of a thousand suns. At least she wouldn't oppress him like The Professor, Fawltea consoled himself as he watched the girl sit down, bring out a MacBook (which, by the way, is asking for trouble in a government hospital, dear reader, as someone will invariably want to snatch it) and start watching a movie with her fancy Bluetooth thingamajigs that fit in the ear, they were called earpods or something of the sort. Fawltea did not like how they made him feel; he was an old-fashioned sort and preferred old-school headphones. He noticed she watched at least two, sometimes three or four movies at work, and he wondered just how many films she must have seen. The number must be in the thousands. One day, perhaps, he'd talk cinema with her – always useful to have contacts in the army, after all.

A cursory look told him she was watching The Breakfast Club, the irony of which was not lost on Fawltea. His own ward, once a well disciplined unit that ran with the cold, calculated efficiency of a machine when he was a trainee here, had turned into a recreational club of sorts under his own command. It seemed as if she were mocking his very being, by watching that movie.

Having given up on conducting a morning round, some but not all of his good mood soured like your typical fruit vendor's stock in the suburbs of Hayatabad, Peshawar. Fawltea had decided the hangdog bookseller would be carrying out today’s orders. He did not like to call Frank and Joe and ask them to cover their allotted beds, for he did not want to seem uncool. They would say something like, “Never figured you for a stooge,” and he would no longer be one of the boys, merely a toad, or whatever slang was hip these days.

As much as he hated that bloke who kept gabbing on about how Pakistan would have its first guillotine soon, the revolution being nigh, the bourgeoisie finally coming out and making the nation their own, Fawltea realized he was missing him today. His arguments with The Professor about Communism, Socialism, Economics, Philosophy, and the like usually ended up with the cozy, almost café-esque atmosphere so prevalent here right now going up in flames, and everyone marching out to start the round without Fawltea having to say anything. Come to think of it, this was the first day he’d been absent. Communist or no, Fawltea had suddenly become an admirer of the man, and after a few phone calls that went unanswered, Fawltea had realized that this Tartan Check sweater wearing patriot had probably been picked up for good. Others had warned the fellow not to go on posting exposés about the army’s various businesses, but he had not taken those warnings to heed. Fawltea wondered if he should perhaps ask the girl whose parents were high-ranking officers to have a word with them about Mr. Tartan Check, but then he remembered what had happened to all those people who had become missing persons simply because they were searching for another, and decided against it. He poured himself a cup of tea and drank it in remembrance, hoping Mr. Check would return alive someday.

The “café” that the doctor's lounge had become now had two happy faces on the green sofa towards the left – one reading her book out loud, the other watching a movie on her Mac with her Bluetooth thingamajigs – and two downcast faces on the right: the fellow who looked like a woebegone bookseller, and Fawltea, who was sure the former was going to print out a few posters of Adam Smith (on the hospital's dime, of course) and throw a few darts at them. As things stood currently, Fawltea wanted to do so himself; perhaps this could be a bonding moment. It would be far better than brooding at graveyards, or whatever it was this gloomy vampire undertaker did in his free time.

As for Frank and Joe, Fawltea speculated they had probably embarked on their next adventure, and had just been stopped by the police for carrying all that vodka near GT Road. Alcohol was illegal in Pakistan and usually carried the threat of jail, but even the police officer had fallen for their charisma, wanting so badly to be one of the lads that he ended up escorting them in his own car so that no one would stop them. They seemed like rich, well-off boys, so the officer knew no good would come of arresting them. He had a penchant for good vodka anyway; might as well make friends with people who could source the damn thing. They probably sang Pashto songs as they traveled to the River View hotel, where the plan was to drive the police car into the sea or some such. Yes, it seemed like the sort of thing they would do on any given day; at least, in Fawltea's opinion. Outside that world of dreams, however, Frank and Joe were just playing snooker at a newer, lesser-known club, as was their custom, so that they would not become too well known as hustlers.

God, Fawltea missed Nancy Drew, as addicted as she was to reading true crime books, she could be trusted to check up on the patients and make sure they were all getting the right medication. But she had since made her way to far off shores, and Fawltea had not been able to find anyone else with that sense of responsibility. Now she had been replaced by a Veronica Mars, who only cared about what Olivia Rodrigo was up to and the like. “They're all doomed anyway, they're living in Pakistan.” Veronica would say nonchalantly, before going back to her phone, refusing to check up on any of the patients. Were she not some higher up bureaucrat's daughter, she too would be walking the plank on his ship, but instead she was busy making all kinds of playlists for her musically uncultured colleagues.

As Fawltea continued to wallow in despair, the clock, which had struck 9 (and 8 before, and 7 before that, and so on), struck 10, and he realized he had waited over 90 minutes for Adam Smith’s sermon to end. Just then, Gul Abad entered, and the first thing he did was ask when the round was going to start. As much as Fawltea despised the fellow, he wanted to sing his praises for the interruption. But sadly for Fawltea, no one else heard Gul Abad. Before Fawltea could say anything, Gul Abad seized the opportunity and declared, “Don't worry, I'll conduct the round myself.” Did he just conjure a lab coat out of thin air? Fawltea was flabbergasted, but before he could say anything, Gul Abad had bolted faster than The Flash when he needed to mess with the fabric of time itself.

Fawltea called his Assistant Professor, wondering why the AP had not arrived. “Pakistan vs Netherlands hockey match today, mate, can't be bothered.” was all he got. Fawltea muttered more curses under his breath, wishing he were part of some military outfit — then he’d like to see how anyone would dare disobey or misbehave as they were now. Still, he had to begrudgingly give the man some credit, here he was supporting the flickering flame of a once glorious hockey empire. The jokers that sat before Fawltea had no idea how glorious Pakistan's hockey team had once been in the 70s and the 80s, winning four world cups.

“You, come with me. Don't just sit around. It's time for the round,” Fawltea motioned to the boy, who looked like a heartbroken bookseller whose wares had drowned due to a leak while he had already been weighed down by a suffocating debt. Or a vampire that had just arrived at a blood bank for a feast, only to be hit with a flood of sunlight. Afraid of getting in trouble with his supervisor, the depressed vampire started to get up, only to be chided for it.

“Sit down, you idiot, don't get up.” The Professor glared angrily at him; he was now exuding the vibe of a practically hopeless bookseller whose store had burned down, and it was beginning to look like he would cry.

Then, she shot an angry look at Fawltea, dropping her Adam Smith for the moment. This did not bode well.

“And just why does he have to obey you? We don't have to do anything you say. We're doctors, we're supposed to be independent. We'll examine patients on our own time. Why don't you stick to your job, and let us do ours? It's not like this is an office, and you're our boss.” She huffed with the kind of rage usually seen in a tiger disturbed from enjoying its usual meal of daily villager, with a side of rabbit.

As a matter of fact, he was precisely that. They were trainees, and the whole point of training was to do as you were told by your supervisor. But these new trainees weren’t even interested in following basic protocols. Suddenly, Fawltea realized just how brave the Tartan Check doctor was for taking on these establishment prats, for he could not bring himself to do the same and risk the army's wrath. Even a lowly captain could make you disappear forever, never mind someone related to brigadiers. It was all he could do to stop his hands from shaking.

Nodding and saying, “Sorry, ma'am,” because he was reminded of his particularly harsh History teacher, and because his paranoia insisted on it, he left the doctor's lounge. He was consoled by the fact that, for the gloomy insomniac, listening to more Adam Smith was a fate far worse than any that could befall him during a morning round.

Fawltea started to make his way to the private room where his VIP patient was. Always best to butter these fellows up and what not. He made his way past the main counter where over 20 people were queued up. The two doctors on duty there were playing Tekken Tag on the PC used to register and discharge patients, and the crowd of attendants in the queue seemed more interested in the match than in their own patients. Various amounts of money were exchanged, and the fellow playing Heihachi and Kuma against Eddy and Hwoarang had 12-1 odds or something of the sort. Fawltea liked Heihachi, he was a no-nonsense man, the kind that threw his own son off a cliff if need be. If only I were like him, he thought pensively.

The IT Administrator seemed to be handling the financial side of things as far as the betting went. Fawltea remembered those days when these two buffoons could be found playing Tekken 3. The queues seemed far shorter back then, interest in Tekken 3 had waned after 15 odd years of it being the mainstay government hospital videogame in Peshawar, (and all the other cities too) but now the queues were longer than ever – signing off on those new PCs had been Fawltea's undoing. The IT Administrator had tricked him into thinking it would make the administrative side of things faster, yet all it had done was gum up the works significantly while lining his own pockets. These PCs were also capable of playing Tekken 4, 5, and 6 for when interest in Tag waned. The future of the administrative side of the process looked bleak.

When he finally arrived, still a bit shaken by his brief encounter with what he swore was the Grim Reaper playing Ludo with the custodial staff, he found a nurse putting the death shroud on his patient’s face, eyes closed. “W-what happened?” he asked, his voice cracking as if his very soul – and more importantly, his hopes and dreams of free adventures on the golf course – were being cleaved out. There went his only chance of impressing Frank and Joe.”

“Dr. Gul Abad tried his best; he threw everything at uncle – adrenaline, morphine, ketamine, you name it,” said the patient's only attendant. All Fawltea could do was glare at Gul Abad, who was doing his best to look solemn while the attendant thanked him for trying so hard to save his uncle, who had been admitted for a simple case of mild pneumonia, which Fawltea had managed quite well.

They went outside the room, Fawltea fuming like a police officer who discovered the bike he had stolen from another had been stolen from him. “You did it again; you rat bastard. You killed a perfectly stable patient.” His eyebrows nearly jumped off his face, as if he were some sort of angered cartoon.

“I saw signs that led me to predict a shortness of breath, sir, and concluded adrenaline might be needed, so I acted in advance, before the bacteria could surprise us. I am still learning about why they use morphine and ketamine,” Gul Abad spoke nonchalantly, as if he were a trainee.

“Goddamn it, YOU ARE NOT A DOCTOR!” Fawltea wanted to choke him right then and there, yet Gul Abad was smiling as if they were the best of friends, like petrol smugglers in Balochistan and the soldiers that patrolled the border on petrol smuggling day.

“I got his golf club pass for you, sir; the nephew agreed to put it in your name, the paperwork is underway.” Gul Abad smiled wryly, holding out the card.

“Oh, you did...? Well, that does change things. Well done, Gul Abad; perhaps I shall teach you a few things from now on.” He smiled, all that malice evaporating faster than Pakistan's GDP crashing after the typical bust caused by bad loans stimulating useless consumption. A patient was a patient after all; you lose one, you move on to the next. Such was the spirit the country that had defaulted 3 times had inculcated in its citizens. Frank and Joe were more important, as were his dreams of golf.

“Shall we drink some tea, sir, while you teach me how to read ECGs?” said Gul Abad, as one of the poor patients in the corner rooms passed away silently, forgotten by all. In his death summary, Veronica Mars merely wrote: “Saved him from a bleak, hopeless future that would probably end in suicide anyway. kthxbai”

“Of course, of course,” nodded Fawltea happily, and they went back to that pleasant café, what was once known as the doctor's lounge. Without the argumentative revolutionary, it was certainly far more pleasant. Fawltea made a mental note to be sure to denounce him beforehand on his social media accounts, just to make sure the authorities didn't assume they were pals or anything. There was no arguing with them, one only ended up in an infinite combo of pain.

The Professor was still reading, still the most imperious of orators. Fawltea wondered if she somehow wasn't related to Mark Antony. “The first are those whining and melancholy moralists, who are perpetually reproaching us with our happiness, while so many of our brethren are in misery, who regard as impious the natural joy of prosperity, which does not think of the many wretches that are at every instant labouring under all sorts of calamities, in the languor of poverty, in the agony of disease, in the horrors of death, under the insults and oppressions of their enemies.”

Adam Smith was going to haunt this lounge for a good while longer, it seemed. The Breakfast Club was no longer playing on the Macbook; it was now Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Fawltea liked this Ferris fellow, he reminded him of his buddies Frank and Joe. Maybe it was time he took a day off, too, and went on a wild adventure. He made his way towards his classic 96 Corolla, and drove off, it did not matter where he went.

Back at the hospital, Gul Abad had noticed the Defibrillator for the very first time, and was wondering just how it worked. Now that he had surface level knowledge of electrocardiograms, it was time to put his knowledge to the test.

 
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from Sodium Reactor

January, the Year Everything Happened

“Hey Simone, are you here to talk shit or are you here to spar?” Natalie Turner asked, standing in what had formerly been a very focused fighting stance. Her blue mouthguard, still shiny with spittle, now clutched in the palm of her hand as she narrowed her brown eyes at her partner.

“Both, ideally.” Simone Williams grinned. There was no tension in her 5'10 frame, just brown eyes full of mischief and laughter creasing her face. She shrugged, baggy tee obscuring the athletic body beneath, palms of her red MMA gloves up towards the ceiling of the gym.

“Come on. I've got class in an hour and we still gotta catch the bus back to campus.” Natalie complained. “Waste your own time; some of us are trying to go pro.” She slid her mouthguard back in and waved on the other college freshman: Nat was done talking even if her friend wasn't.

“Actually... fuck.” The dark complexioned Black woman glanced past Nat and at the digital clock on the wall of the gym. “Lowkey, I think I'm missing Chem lecture right now.” Simone laughed. “But like I-” Her words caught in her throat as she ducked away from Natalie’s unannounced high kick. The shock of the missed attack stirred her back into action and she slid her mouthguard in as well. “Gahdamn, Nat.” She finally assented, sliding into her own stance.

Nat nodded at her childhood friend. Now it was her turn to smile. Simone played too much, but once she focused on fighting she could more than keep up with her. Natalie led their dance, the 19-year old college student keeping her shorter friend at bay with long, straight punches and harassing her with kicks to her legs thrown from too far away for Simone to retaliate.

Each time the shorter, stockier Simone pressed the issue and tried to close the gap between them, her friend had a blue glove or instep guard ready for her, a chiding reminder to keep her distance. Friendly admonishment. Natalie observed the frustration curdling Simone's bouncy, lackadaisical demeanor. Her footwork, accuracy, and reach presented a persistent obstacle to the back and forth firefight Simone wanted. The Biochem major's stance tightened and her black and red braids stopped bouncing as she hunkered down and approached. Their traffic was two way, but it was clear who was enjoying this more.

“Maybe you should have gone to Chem class.” Natalie allowed herself a joke as she connected with a tight combo and earned a brief wince from her friend. None of their strikes were thrown at full strength; their goal to challenge and sharpen rather than maim each other. But the 6’0” college freshman couldn't deny a sense of satisfaction at getting one up on her longtime friend.

She threw again, but the punch felt wrong immediately. She recognized the parry a moment before Simone's bright red glove collided with her face. At that range, and coming forward into it, even a pulled punch stung. Her overenthusiastic partner pulled her into a clinch before she could recover and Nat tugged against the hands clasped behind her head. Natalie cursed to herself; given enough time, Simone read everyone's patterns. Her bawdy friend was intuitive if nothing else. Natalie steadied her breath and her thoughts and prepared to solve this problem.

“Come to mama!” Simone managed despite her mouthguard. She threw soft knees, content to tap her partner while taking advantage of the situation. Natalie appreciated her restraint, especially since the position mushed her face-first against Simone's soft, sweaty bust.

“Don't be shy, get in there. Spend some time with the girls.” Simone crowed, dispelling any idea that the position was as awkward for her as it was for Natalie. Her partner was rowdy, playful, and lewd in equal measures.

Natalie had trained with this firestarter long enough to expect—and defend—Simone trying to sweep her off her feet and deposit her onto her ass there on the mats. Natalie slipped away but ate a check hook on her way out of the entanglement. Nat backed away into her stance and felt her athletic, brawny partner tap her shin on Natalie’s jaw with a high kick. Half strength, but thrown with the playful ease of someone confident they could do it again when it mattered. Natalie circled away with an expression that said “you play too much.”

They tapped gloves again, Nat’s blue gloves meeting Simone’s red in a recommitment to keeping things friendly between them. Nat prepared to keep her hard charging—and newly emboldened— sparring partner at bay. Simone's bright eyes and mischievous smile promised more chaos.


The bus ride back to campus was quiet until a tap on her shoulder roused Natalie from the R&B flowing in her earbuds. She caught Simone smiling at her again, this time behind glasses and newly red irises.

“Ok, no, wait.” Natalie interrupted, pointing at her own eyes while staring at her friend. “Are the color contacts cosmetic? Are the glasses real? What's going on, Simone?”

Simone's bulky varsity jacket rustled as she pulled a few braids behind her ear. Natalie noticed that everything about her friend was brightly colored: her hair, her eyes, and the low cut crop top under her jacket. No mater the setting, Simone wanted attention. That suit Natalie fine, who'd never wanted the spotlight she sometimes found herself thrust into.

Simone blinked, hard, and then stared at her with a gaze that emphasized those same eyes. “That's the fun part. Who knows? The glasses make me look smart, and the red contacts are cool and edgy and they make me feel like an anime protagonist. I'm a mahou shoujo, Nat.”

“A what?” She blinked.

“Like... a magical girl.” Simone said, slightly deflated by Natalie's uncomprehending. “It’s an anime thing.”

“Anime? Girl, you're a whole ass weeb. You need to let that cartoon shit go and get a real hobby.”

“Listen here 'Love and Basketball.' I know all you watch is sitcoms and rom-coms and reality TV, but I'm trying to watch some shit I can't actually do in real life. If I wanna get my heart broken by a fuck nigga there are thousands on campus I can choose from.”

“You can't tell me you don't like Insecure and Abbott Elementary.” Natalie protested, eyes wide.

“Listen, I agree with Isa Rae: 'I'm rooting for everybody Black,' but c'mon Nat: I need some excitement.”

“Simone the last thing you need is more excitement. I saw you at Anthony's lil kickback kissing on that dude and his girlfriend.”

Now it was Simone's turn to gaze ahead in self conscious shock. Nat watched the gears turn in her friend's head, curious what story or justification her rowdy friend would roll out this time.

“Hey, if they're willing to share, I'm willing to be a team player.” Simone cackled. She playfully patted her own chest, as if Natalie needed a reminder of Simone's lewd intent or very generous curves. “I'm fine being someone's hot 'unicorn.' Teamwork makes the dream work, Nat.”

Natalie shook her head. Simone's appetite for love and sex had long since stopped being surprising. “If you say so. I'm cool on the 'one night stand' vibe. Miss me with that shit. I'm more of a 'one love' kinda girl.” Natalie said, adjusting her baggy T-shirt. Her clothing didn't quite obscure her muscles or her curves but didn't put them on full display either.

“You're more of a no love, slow love kinda girl. That courtship shit is played out.” Simone explained between bites of something she'd pulled out of her bag. “We'll never be 19 again. Have fun, make mistakes, nahmean?”

The pair of Black freshmen traded barbs and jokes until they both dissolved into laughter and friendly shoves there on the city bus. Natalie laughed hard enough to forget what she had meant to say in the first place: something about Mixed Martial Arts and her retired professional fighter of a mother. In any event, this was her stop, on the liberal arts side of the California University at Los Angeles campus. Nat shouldered her backpack, adjusted her T-shirt and jeans, and prepared to sit through a CU@LA freshman English class.

From kickboxing class to freshman requisites with no break in between. Natalie wondered if this was just what being a student athlete meant.

#Writing #FirstDraft #Series #SFW #BeatPreyLove #BPL #Fiction #Action #Fight #MartialArts

 
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from forrest

title card for "Become Immersive" showing the cover of the novel plus the words "Become Immersive" typed diagonally over the cover in inky typewriter font

... rather listen to this essay? Click here.


§1

“To breath, so to speak, without air … To be, in a word, unborable.” —The Pale King, David Foster Wallace, 2011, p. 440.

Question for you: What do the following three people have in common? 1) a young boy who spends hours a day contorting himself in very painful ways so that he can eventually lick every part of his own body, including “the papery skin around his anus” and the back of his own neck; 2) a GS-13 Revenue Agent at the Peoria, Illinois IRS Technical Auditing Branch who can complete over 100 tax audits per day and levitates a little bit while doing so; and 3) a verbose college kid addicted to Adderall who is able to tap into such heightened states of awareness that he is even aware that he is aware of being aware and can describe everything around him with near-perfect clarity.

Keep that question in mind—we’re going to come back to that later.

§2

“Routine, repetition, tedium, monotony, ephemeracy, inconsequence, abstraction, disorder, boredom, angst, ennui—these are the true hero's enemies, and make no mistake, they are fearsome indeed. For they are real.” —The Pale King, Wallace, 2011, p. 233.

The Pale King is a 550-or-so-page unfinished novel written by David Foster Wallace, published posthumously in 2011. The novel follows the lives of several peculiar people living in or around Peoria, Illinois, during the 1980s. Each of these characters has been called to account and now works for the Internal Revenue Service—yes, the IRS, the same government organization that we U.S. citizens curse out loud by name during the yearly American pastime of stepping into that figurative Iron Maiden, wherein a single wrong move can land us in federal prison, also known as filing our taxes. For context, if you—reader—are not from America, filing U.S. taxes is complicated and can take hours for the average citizen. And it only gets more complicated as one gets older due to the natural buildup of assets, dependents, and income over time. Basically, filing taxes is a tedious, boring task, but it’s something we all must do whether we like it or not—and if it seems like I’m going off on a tangent, well, maybe, but that last part about the tedious boredom will become very relevant very soon.

The Pale King is a work of fiction; and when I say “fiction,” I mean that in the loosest way possible. The novel—much like Wallace’s earlier work of encyclopedic fiction, Infinite Jest—sort of defies categorization in that it has no narrative starting point or cohesive structure or conclusion, all while claiming that it is a work of autobiographical nonfiction written by none other than David Foster Wallace himself, who is a character in the novel; and this simulacrum of David Foster Wallace strongly insists that he wrote the novel as a “vocational memoir” and that the only fictional thing in the book is the disclaimer on the copyright page, which states, “The characters and events in this book are fictitious.” And this sets up quite a clever metafictional titty-pinching paradox, all while Wallace himself insists that he hates clever metafictional titty-pinching paradoxes—and, if you're confused, I’m referring to the character in the novel having said this, not the author, or maybe they’re the same? I’m still not sure. In fact, there are actually two characters named David Wallace in the novel, both of whom work for the IRS—totaling three Wallaces if we include the real-life author of the book—so, as you can imagine, it gets even more confusing; and it becomes even more confusing still when an error in the IRS computer system mixes up the two David Wallaces, causing a number of highly confusing yet very humorous downstream consequences for Mr. Wallace, which kinda ends up mirroring how the reader might feel about the whole thing—that being: incredibly confused. And, of course, this clerical IRS fuck-up introduces yet another clever metafictional paradox that David Wallace supposedly does not like at all, per his own words in the novel that he supposedly wrote about himself that is totally a nonfictional vocational memoir, or something. And, sadly, due to the incompleteness of the novel, we never get to find out what happens to any of the two (three?) David Wallaces.

The incompleteness of the novel’s narrative is partially due to the fact that it is indeed an unfinished novel, but even regardless of that, one gets the impression that, if the novel had been completed, the story still wouldn’t have resolved itself in any traditional manner—if it can even be called a “story” to begin with; as it’s more like a loose collection of anecdotes, diatribes, long-winded tax law explanations, tangents, poignant character pieces, and quirky encounters all tied together by the common themes of cosmic boredom, people vs. automation, devils actually being angels, identity, systems vs. individuals, what is nonconformity really?, mindless repetitive busy work, awareness of self and others and surroundings, realism vs. anti-realism, every love story being a ghost story, the impacts of solipsistic navel-gazing, and overcoming that aforementioned cosmic boredom through the power of transcendental focus; and that last theme is what really stuck with me during the two months it took me to finish this novel: the power to look past the boredom and see the beauty beyond, the power to become immersed.

And, if you can harness this power of immersion, you yourself become immersive.

Reading The Pale King is a lot like just being an average working adult in the first-world 21st century: that whole existential dread of “Am I just going to be fiddling with papers and spreadsheets and emails for the rest of my life?”; the whole, “I used to be a young rebel who fancied myself different from the rest of those pathetic sheeple but now here I am just sitting at a desk five days a week part of the very same system that I once claimed so vehemently to hate” type of thing; and all the different ways that people cope with these crushing realizations—if they’re even “crushing” at all. Perhaps, instead, these realizations are just narcissistic navel-gazing, a faux-sophisticated lamenting-of-self that only serves to paralyze the mind and prevent self-improvement? And in this way, The Pale King is almost like a coming-to-grips-with-reality type thing: a learning-to-deal-with-it type thing; a figuring-out-how-to-see-past-the-boredom-to-the-beauty-beyond type thing. The Pale King makes you think about this kinda stuff. And, much like life itself, The Pale King seems gravely serious at times, but, five pages later, those same gravely serious things seem pointless and boring. Throughout the novel, stuff builds up but ultimately never resolves, instead just kinda fizzling out with a whimper, becoming just another “whatever happened with that?” type of thing; and the fact that The Pale King itself is incomplete only strengthens this fizzling-out feeling, which mirrors the modern-life-is-a-never-ending-trial-of-boredom type feeling that the novel’s characters (and you: the reader) are coming to grips with; in fact, per the author’s notes on page 548 of the “Now With Four Previously Unpublished Scenes!” paperback edition of the novel, David Foster Wallace (the real one, not the simulacrum—I think?) writes: “Plot a series of set-ups for stuff happening, but nothing actually happens.” And that is precisely what The Pale King is: boring.

But if we look past the boredom we find the beauty beyond—which is that The Pale King is consistently brilliant and beautifully poignant and stylistically innovative and deeply existential and laugh-out-loud funny while also being deadly serious and just one hell of a life-changing read.

And, if you’ll hear (read?) me out, I want to take the rest of this essay to explain why The Pale King is indeed life-changing.

§3

“To put it another way, the pie has been made—the contest is now in the slicing. Gentlemen, you aspire to hold the knife. Wield it.” —The Pale King, Wallace, 2011, p. 234.

I write most of my stuff on a computer that’s hooked up to multiple monitors, and while typing up those first couple sections up there, I found myself clicking various bookmarks in my browser’s bookmarks bar, checking all my favorite sites to see if they had updated since the last time I had checked them only minutes earlier. (And if this seems non-sequiturous in comparison to the previous sections, please just bear with me.) First, I checked my own website (howdoyouspell.cool, the same site you’re likely reading this on right now) to see if the view count went up on my recent article (it didn’t and hasn’t for a few days, and I know that, yet I continue to check); then I typed a few sentences; then I checked my email (note that I have email notifications on my mobile phone set to play the classic AOL “You’ve got mail” soundbite, and those notifications are quite loud indeed, meaning that when I get an email, I am made aware of it almost immediately regardless of where I’m at or what I’m doing; yet, even knowing this, I still check my email every few minutes regardless of notificaiton alerts [post hoc I tell myself that I do this because my phone misses notifications sometimes due to low signal strength or whatever, but somewhere deep down I surely know this justification to be bullshit, as evidenced by my typing up this lengthy parenthetical aside that probably could have been cut from the essay]); then I wrote a few more sentences; then I checked my RSS reader to see if there were any new articles published (there were no new articles, as was the case when I had last checked only a few minutes prior); then I wrote a few more sentences; then I checked my Last.fm account (a service that tracks music I listen to) to see if anyone messaged me there (no one ever messages me there); then I typed up a few more sentences; then I checked a fourm to see if anyone had replied to one of my posts (note that these replies are also forwarded to my email, and we’ve already covered the whole mobile-email-notification thing); then I swapped the order of the phrases “papery skin around his anus” and “the back of his own neck,” as I figured that putting the shocking anus quote first was more attention-grabbing than the neck thing (note that licking the back of your own neck is impossible to do, by the way [but surely you already knew that, I would hope]); then I finished typing up both sections up there; then I checked my Libre.fm account (which is the non-corporate federated version of Last.fm that also tracks the music I listen to and consequently mirrors my Last.fm account one-to-one so it’s basically just looking at Last.fm in a different format; yet even knowing this, I still check it anyway, despite the service having no message or follow features to speak of, meaning there’s really no reason to check this one at all [i.e., literally a mindless click and nothing more]); then I spot-checked the grammar and spelling of the aforementioned sections up there; then I checked Lemmy (which is a federated link aggregator, basically non-corporate Reddit [and I really don’t care for either of these services but still use them for reasons I won’t analyze here in this essay, for the sake of time]); and then, finally, I moved on to writing this long-winded paragraph you’re about to finish reading right now, wherein the attention-deficit writing process outlined herein repeated itself once more.

And this distraction nexus isn’t something I get sucked into only when I sit down to write; it happens with everything that I do. It’s as if I’m a celestial body being pulled into a supermassive black hole, and that supermassive black hole is a smartphone or a computer screen or whatever. The worst part is that I’m supposedly aware of this happening, yet I continue to allow myself to be sucked in, as if my so-called free will is being subverted in such a way that I still feel like I have a choice in the matter or something. It’s all very confusing and distressing when I think about it.

So, the question I always end up at is: How do I turn my true passions into the supermassive black hole at the center of my galaxy? Which means that the real question behind the question is: How do I excise all the bullshit?

Now, regarding my lack of focus, you may be thinking something like, “That sounds like a you problem,” and you may be right about that to some extent: I do have some attention-deficit, hyperactive tendencies. But if I were a gambling person, I would bet that you—yes, you, the reader—can relate to the cycle of distraction that I outlined in the previous paragraph; in fact, I would bet big big money that you can relate to it on a deeply personal level. And I would make that bet confidently because we both live in the same oversaturated media environment wherein literally thousands of services—both commercial and noncommercial—are competing for our attention on the hourly. There is just so much stuff to do: so many sites to check and so many social media posts to read and so many headlines to ingest and so many video games to play and so many television shows to watch and so many celebrities to keep track of and so many books to read and so many movies to stream and so many songs to listen to and so on and so forth. And it’s all right there—yes, right there, on whatever device you’re reading this on—just a single click or swipe or button-press away.

All of this stuff has been made so on-demand that we have been conditioned to think that we should be finding cool new things literally all the time, and thus are endlessly searching for this new cool stuff, so much so that when we are listening to the same songs or watching the same television shows or reading the same books or playing the same video games or checking the same sites or doing literally anything at all, we subconsciously believe that something super incredible must have slipped our attention, and that, surely, if we just reload the page or change the channel or scroll the list just a few more times, we will find that incredible something that we had missed. We have been conditioned via an endless stream of information to feel as if we are missing out on quote-unquote incredible things that may or may not even exist. And this fear of missing out is being exploited on a cosmic scale by faceless entities all to make a quick buck. It’s some sort of cosmic FOMO that’s being tapped into here. And this cosmic FOMO is destroying our ability to concentrate on any one thing for longer than the time it takes for your Twitter feed to load.

One of the central themes of The Pale King is the idea that being able to superfocus on a task—the ability to see past the boredom to the beauty beyond—can lead to some sort of transcendental awakening. In fact, in the novel, the IRS is searching for people who can tap into this state of superfocus, as those who can do this would obviously make for the best tax auditors.

Remember back in §1: that GS-13 Revenue Agent at the Peoria, Illinois, IRS Technical Auditing Branch who can complete over 100 tax audits per day? Well, that's Shane Drinion, and he’s one of those people who can superfocus to such an extent that he slightly levitates off the floor while doing so; someone even caught him levitating upside down in his office while auditing tax returns one time. And, when Shane is in conversation, he can superfocus on whatever his interlocutor is saying to such an extent that he fully comprehends everything being said and can draw some profound connections that would be missed otherwise, and he slightly levitates then too. Shane never became bored or frustrated or anxious or procrastinatory or evasive during any situation he found himself in—regardless of how tedious or loquacious—because he was instead superfocused, seeing past the boredom to the beauty beyond. And, while reading through the sections of The Pale King featuring Shane Drinion, I kept thinking to myself—why can’t I superfocus? Why can’t I see beyond the boredom? Is it a me problem? Or is it because we now live in a society wherein it’s harder than ever to focus due to the overabundance of easily accessible distractions? Or is it both?

In many ways, our society resembles the near-future dystopia of David Foster Wallace’s second novel, Infinite Jest, published in 1996—which is set in a world wherein entertainment and pleasure rule above all else (and, in the novel, there is even a movie that is just so compelling that anyone who watches it become totally obsessed and just withers away right there in front of the television set, which, when compared to smartphones or social media or MMORPGs, is just a little too allegorically accurate for comfort). Our modern society’s Infinite Jest-ness is so uncanny that it’s almost as if David Foster Wallace accurately predicted the future—was he a prophet, or was society’s trajectory into this oversaturated corporate self-gratification nexus so plainly obvious to anyone living in the ’90s, provided they possessed half a brain? Prophetic visions or nay, the fact of the matter is that this is where we’re at now; regardless of what our individual interests are—be it literature, reality television, movies, writing, erotic humiliation, video games, accounting, beetle fighting, painting, woodworking, contorting your body in weird ways so that you can lick your own butthole, sports, whatever—our modern media/information landscape now provides just so much of whatever we want whenever we want that everything starts to feel kinda cheap and expendable, so we are always trying to find the next best thing. We might find an incredible movie today, but there’s always another hypothetical incredible movie to watch, and another and another and another, and when we can’t find that next incredible movie to watch, we start to feel like we’re missing out on something; this missing-out feeling, in turn, makes us feel anxious, and this, in turn, makes us delve even deeper into all the digital menus trying to find all the incredible stuff that we might have missed out on; and when we do find that new incredible thing, it’s never good enough because there’s just so much other quote-unquote incredible stuff out there that we’re supposedly missing out on, so we start to feel anxious again, and this makes us delve even deeper still into all the menus trying to find all the incredible stuff we might have missed out on; and when we do find that stuff, it’s just not good enough because there’s just so much other quote-unquote incredible stuff out there that we might be missing out on as well, so we start to feel anxious again, and, yeah, I think you get the point.

“Think about it. You watch one thing, there’s eleven other things you can’t watch. You’re having to not-choose more and more just to be able to choose anything. It’s too much.” —The Pale King (Reading Group Guide), Wallace, 2011, p. 24.

Reach deep down inside and it becomes self-evident that this whole distraction ouroboros makes us feel like shit—so I end up right back where I started, asking the same question: How do I excise all the bullshit?

In other words, how do I wield the knife?

And, as I neared the end of The Pale King, I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe the solution to this cosmic FOMO nexus actually lay within the pages of the novel itself; in that one recurring theme that I just could not stop thinking about: the ability to see past the boredom to the beauty beyond, the ability to become immersed and thus become immersive.

And, with that in mind, I have another question for you:

When was the last time you felt immersed?

§4

I’m not talking like watching-a-movie-in-full immersed or reading-a-book-for-an-hour-straight immersed or beating-Ninja-Gaiden-in-one-sitting immersed or an-afternoon-playing-with-your-kids immersed or having-a-romantic-dinner-with-your-partner immersed all the while thinking about all sorts of other stuff. I’m talking about doing any of these things and, while doing said things, literally not thinking about anything else other than those things. I’m talking, like, fully immersed in the stuff that you are doing right now. I am talking, like, reading the words I am typing right here and fully absorbing them into your brain, thinking about nothing else other than these words right here and what they mean and how they might relate to you and your personal situation. I am talking about becoming so immersed that there is literally no room for ennui, loneliness, anger, or boredom of any kind. I am talking about becoming immersive; the ability to look past the boredom, not by letting your mind wander to another thing—like those various browser bookmarks or mobile apps in which you might find the next supposedly incredible thing—but by becoming fully immersed in the thing you are doing so much so that you see the beauty beyond the boredom of it and thus are totally engaged in the thing and thus become immersive and thus all of your so-called problems become irrelevant in that small pocket of spacetime.

Remember the verbose college kid addicted to Adderall that I mentioned in §1? That’s Chris Fogle. He would sit around his dorm doing nothing in particular, kinda drifting, not caring, just overcome with boredom, being a “wastoid” (as he called it). But sometimes, he would take Adderall and tap into these super-heightened states of awareness, which allowed him to see himself from an almost out-of-body perspective; he would become truly aware of what he was doing on a deep level, experiencing what he describes as “a sort of emergence, however briefly, from the fuzziness and drift of my life.” He would become fully immersed in the details:

“I am in this room right now. The shadow of the foot is rotating on the east wall. The shadow is not recognizable as a foot because of the deformation of the angle of the light of the sun’s position behind the sign. I am seated upright in a dark-green easy chair with a cigarette burn on the right armrest. The cigarette burn is black and imperfectly round. The track I am listening to is ‘The Big Ship’ off of Brian Eno’s Another Green World, whose cover has colorful cutout figures inside a white frame.” —The Pale King, Wallace, 2011, p. 184.

Chris Fogle’s observations are simple, but they are ones we often don’t register in the moment. During these episodes, Chris is fully aware; he’s immersed and, as such, notices all the little details. During these episodes, he sees past the boredom to the beauty beyond. And in those small pockets of spacetime, Chris Fogle is immersed, and thus immersive.

I have a lot of experience with Adderall—which is basically just legal speed (which is slang for various types of amphetamines)—as I was prescribed the drug from the ages of 10 to 20 by a legitimate medical professional for the treatment of ADHD (Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder), so I can relate on a deeply personal level to Chris Fogle’s experience, which he calls “doubling” for the odd aware-of-your-own-awareness effect that amphetamines can elicit from the user. Not only that, but when you take Adderall, you become fully immersed in whatever you’re doing. Little things that once seemed mundane now seem interesting. Things that were once tedious are now exciting. Stuff that was once frustrating is now manageable. Taking Adderall is like a little taste of becoming immersive. You are no longer just doing things, drifting, half-paying attention; instead, you are hyperfocused and totally engaged—boredom and tedium and ennui just cease to exist entirely. It’s almost zen.

As I was reading through Chris Fogle’s prolix coming-of-awareness monologue (which is literally 98 pages long, or 18% of this 550-page novel), I suddenly realized that I hadn’t felt truly immersed in anything since I was, like, nineteen years old, playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion whilst high on Adderall, which was about the last time I filled my Adderall prescription, having decided shortly afterward to quit because the comedown was becoming too much and it killed my sex drive, and I was very clearly dependent by that point. The point I’m trying to get to here is that, since then, everything I do has been (and continues to be) interrupted by the constant urge to click or flick a screen, or my mind just goes to a whole other place entirely and thus I am no longer fully focused on whatever it is I sat down to do. For example, just the other day, I was playing Final Fantasy VII but could not stop thinking about how I carelessly used the phrase “as stated in my previous email” in a work email and how that might have come off as rude to the recipient of said email and how that might have damaged my relationship with said recipient; then, as I was exploring some mako reactor or other, I kept lifting my phone to my face to check for new posts on Mastodon (a social media service), and then, as I was battling Jenova for the first time, I kept looking up information on the new Shinichirō Watanabe-directed anime titled Lazarus (marketed as a spiritual successor to Cowboy Bebop with jazz score and all) on Google—all the while, Jenova was beating my ass due to the ongoing ATB (Active Time Battle) system, which I was ignoring every few seconds in favor of all sorts of stupid shit that was invading my mindspace, so much so that I would forget to pause the game and thus game over.

In hindsight, during all those distracted instances, I would like to think that I was aware of what I was doing—that I really wanted to think about those work emails or that I really wanted to check my social media feeds, but did I really? No, I was just drifting; I was just doing things; I was not thinking at all; I was being—as Chris Fogle would put it—a wastoid. I was not aware of the beauty of whatever it was I was trying to do—which was, at the time, play Final Fantasy VII; instead, I was wasting my time and attention, and I wasn’t even aware of it. And you—as the reader—may be thinking something like, “Well, video games are a waste of time to begin with, wouldn’t you want to do something more productive?” But that’s not the point of this whole thing. That’s not the point at all. The point is that this power—this ability to see past the boredom into the beauty beyond—can be applied to literally anything in life, good or bad: video games, writing, romance, work, drawing, reading, family: anything.

And as I was reading Chris Fogle’s insanely long section, I started to think to myself: why can’t I tap into this power of immersion without the aid of drugs? How can I harness this state of hyperfocus without becoming addicted to speed again? Perhaps this insane level of focus is a fantasy—something inhuman, achievable only through drugs. But then, hope overtook me, and I thought: no, surely I can tap into this power of immersion without drugs; surely, I have some semblance of control over my own thoughts; surely, I can master myself; surely, I can become immersive; surely, I possess the awareness to achieve all of this.

So I went outside, sat down in front of my fence, and stared into the wood for ten minutes; I figured this was the most boring thing that I could do, and by doing this, I figured I could condition myself to see past the boredom into the beauty beyond—at least for a fleeting moment. I watched the wood intently, soon becoming aware of even my own blinking and then soon not, because I determined that that data point was irrelevant and that I would only focus on the wood going forward. Each plank of wood was about the width of my hand and a little taller than myself, standing at 6’1. The surface of the wood appeared aged, its original brown coloring now a faded gray tone; and, considering the home's 1990s construction, I estimated the fence must have been built about twenty years ago. Then I thought about all the hurricanes it must have weathered during that time (as I live[d] in Southeast Georgia right on the Atlantic coast, and we get hit by many hurricanes and/or tropical storms each year). I then noticed all the little lines in the wood, some going from top to bottom, others not; they shared no specific pattern but reminded me of little guided pathways that small insects might travel upon, some of these little pathways obstructed by huge knots, which appeared like the eye of the planet Jupiter, itself basically a massive hurricane; then I started to think about how many hurricanes I myself have weathered, and how during each of those storms I said that I would buy a generator yet still have not purchased one (they are very expensive); but then I realized that I had lost focus on the wood, so I shook my head and told myself, “No, that is irrelevant, a distraction, stay focused on the wood,” and blinked intentionally real hard and then saw the wood for what it was once more. I saw the little nails hammered into the wood every few inches apart; the nails themselves were all different shades of orangish-red, as if rust were the dried blood of metal. I reached out to touch the wood; it was coarse, splintery. Then I slid my index finger over one of the nails, and a fleck of rust attached itself to my finger before I rubbed it away with my thumb. The entire fence started to shake slightly as a squirrel darted across the top of it; this squirrel had a bushy gray tail and cheeks all puffed up. I shifted my focus back to the wood and observed the lines once more; some drooped in such a way that they looked like nicotine stains or paint dripping down the walls of an old room on a hot summer day. Minutes passed. Without even realizing it, I had become immersed in the wood. What I assumed to be another squirrel ran atop the fence, shaking the planks once more, but I did not even look up to get a glimpse of the creature, for I was fully immersed in the wood.

In that small pocket of spacetime, I became immersive.

Then I heard, “Dad, are you alright?” and this broke my immersion. My daughter was standing there, looking down on me with a single eyebrow raised and a slight droop to her lips. I said something like, “Shouldn’t you be doing your homework?” then stood up and wiped the back of my pants and then walked back to my office, all while my daughter stood there in place for a moment, running the is-my-dad-crazy calculus through her head, all wide-eyed and slack-jawed—or so I imagined, as this routine is something I’ve seen her do many times before in response to my behavior (and when she’s older, she’ll understand—is what I tell myself).

When I returned to my office desk, in front of that computer with all the monitors and all the bookmarks and all the tabs all over the place, I immediately broke the immersion spell by clicking into Mastodon to check my social media feed and post something like “I just stared at a plank of wood for ten minutes, lol.” But after a few seconds of doomscrolling, I stopped, stared at the screen with this heavy frown that I could feel very strongly on my face, and, as if the wood gods had cast a spell of epiphany on me, I clicked into profile settings and deleted my Mastodon account right then and there. Then I went to Bluesky (another distraction nexus) and deleted my account there as well. Then I went to Twitter and deleted my account there also (granted, I had stopped using Twitter long ago, but I still felt compelled to delete my old account there). Then I stared at the screen once more; the heaviness lifted; I felt as if I had just slain some sort of pantomime shadow version of myself that was hand-turning this waterwheel of distraction, but instead of being powered by water, it was powered by cheap dopamine released by this faux feeling of validation elicited from people that I didn’t even care about, only thinking I cared about them because they gave me likes and follows. I felt like I no longer needed to impress or appease anyone, and that made me feel really good. And now I feel like a fuller, more complete version of myself.

To be fair, the whole excising-distractions thing wasn’t really an epiphany moment for me, more of a slow build-up. I had been reading The Pale King for about two months by this point, and had been thinking about these distraction nexuses often during that whole reading period—even before that, this (deleting all social media) was something I had vehemently debated with the angels and demons in my head for years. But maybe staring into the wood was that extra push I needed. And, don’t get me wrong, I wasn't suddenly cured of distraction, as, obviously, when I went to write this essay, we all know what happened (refer back to §2). But I am one step closer to achieving true immersion. I excised some of the distraction nexus, and since then, I have been more productive and more immersive and just in a much better mood overall. And to achieve the first step of immersion, all it took was some basic awareness: awareness of myself wasting away; awareness of myself farming cheap validation yet still feeling invalidated; awareness of myself saying I was going to do something but then just clicking and swiping all over the place instead; and awareness of how embarrassing all this stuff actually is, and not embarrassing in an egocentric “what will people think of me?” type of way (because this distraction nexus is the standard human condition in 2024; i.e., I am not unique in this), but embarrassing in a deeply personal “the hyperaware Chris Fogle-doubling-on-Adderall-esque pure soul version of myself is floating invisible in the room watching me as I allow nefarious external forces to subvert my will whilst tricking me into believing that I am in total control, and they (the aforementioned pure soul version of myself) are crying real soul tears” type of thing—if that makes any sense whatsoever.

What I’m trying to say is, awareness is the first step to true immersion—and becoming immersive might just be the key to enlightenment.

§5

So, circling back to my previous series of questions in §3:

“Why can’t I see beyond the boredom? Is it a me problem? Or is it because we now live in a society wherein it’s harder than ever to focus due to the overabundance of easily accessible distractions? Or is it both?” —Become Immersive, Forrest, 2024, §3.

The answer is: It’s both.

To truly become immersive, you first need to develop the awareness to recognize the distractions in your life, and then you need to excise those distractions with extreme prejudice, and then you need to sit down, realize that you are in control of your own self, and just fucking focus.

And, don’t get me wrong, I’m not pretending that I have mastered this power or even tapped into one iota of its full strength—only that I am aware of it, that I am aware that true enlightenment can only be achieved once I have become immersive. And, even now, with this essay, I am working toward becoming immersive.

§6

“Wonderful, indeed, it is to subdue the mind, so difficult to subdue, ever swift, and seizing whatever it desires. A tamed mind brings happiness.” —The Dhammapada, the Buddha, Ch3. The Mind

Now you’re thinking that this all sounds like New Age nonsense: like, “true enlightenment? What the fuck is this person talking about?” But think about it for a moment, I mean really think about it; think back to a time when you felt truly immersed—what did that feel like?

Was it unpleasant?

Here’s the low-down, the situation that you and I find ourselves in: modern life can be incredibly boring. We are called to account, and accounting is very boring indeed. Whether by choice or by the causal quirks of the universe or by the massive snowball getting bigger and bigger as it rolls down the hill that is our collective decisions up until this very point, we are constantly tasked with assignments that are both tedious and sometimes entirely pointless in the grand scheme of things. Take raking the leafs in your backyard, for example: tedious, boring, could be doing anything else; but it must be done, for whatever reason (maybe you have an HOA [Homeowners Association] and they’re very serious about the yards, maybe you have bad snakes that like to hide in the leafs, maybe your kids keep tripping on the slippery leafs &c. &c.). Take your job, whatever it might be, the same job that you’ve grown so tired of and probably cut corners all over the place because no one seems to notice, the job in which you write code for some soulless corporate overlord or troubleshoot kitchen appliances over the phone or participate in video calls that could have simply been emails instead or drive a mail truck around delivering mail or give massages at the local mall wherein all the shops are closing down and you’re pretty sure black mold has crept into the highest corners of the ceiling or auditing tax returns or whatever. The point I’m trying to make here is that we are constantly tasked with things that we have to do simply to survive, much of it facilitated by the need for money (which is a whole other thing that I’m not getting into right now). And you might be reading this thinking something like, “Well, I didn’t choose to be part of this hellish capitalist system” and other pleas of victimhood, but, NEWS FLASH, you are part of the system, whether you like it or not. You are a cog. Go protest outside a government building or vote for change or whatever, but at the end of the day, you’re coming back home to a place in which rent is always due, you are forced to participate in this system, and if you don’t participate, you will perish (now, if you want to perish, that’s a whole separate thing that I’m not going to get into right now [for the sake of time]), and I’m not just talking about you (although I am using you-pronouns), I’m talking about everyone; and provided you (everyone) intend on existing in this world, you will have to deal with the unjust tedium and boredom that comes along with it. Hell, much like capitalism, we could bemoan our own biology as well; sometimes, even the mere fact that I have to interrupt what I’m doing to go get something to eat, because if not, I will get pissed off and eventually wither away, is unfair and unjust and tedious and boring to me. The whole system, from biology to bureaucracy, is riddled with tedium.

Many of us do these tedious things in a begrudgingly half-assed, bitter kind of way that slowly decomposes our soulstuff and makes us want to die. But, what if we could hyperfocus on demand? What if we could become immersed in this stuff, do it so quickly and efficiently that we don’t even realize that it’s tedious to begin with, then move on to become immersed in something else? Something of our choosing. What if we could become so immersed in whatever we were doing that, whilst doing said things, we didn’t even have the desire to do something else—instead, only being prompted to switch tasks when our current task was truly finished? What if we could become so immersed that we saw past the boredom to the beauty beyond? What if we could just flip this immersion switch on and off at will? What if we could tap into this power of immersion on demand for whatever we wanted?

Nothing would be able to stop us.

§7

This power of immersion need not only be used to endure the tedium of modern life—it can be used for literally anything you want. Want to play Final Fantasy VII? It can be used for that. Calculate Pi? Good for that. Play with your kids? Good for that too. Make your own video game? Very good for that. Clean your entire house? That, too. Read a book? Solve the Riemann Hypothesis? Write your own book. Learn how to fix that weird stutter your car keeps doing. Watch baseball on television without falling asleep. Discover dark matter, or prove it doesn’t exist. Set the world record for longest time spent chewing the same piece of gum. Roll thousands of coins for deposit? Check. Proofread an 8000-word document such as the one you’re reading right now? Can confirm, I did it myself. Stare at a wooden fence for hours? Also, yes, obviously. Teach your cat how to use the human toilet. Tighten literally every screw in your home. Meditate in silence. Listen to Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart without rolling your eyes even once.

I think you get the point.

But beware, for the power of immersion is a double-edged sword and must be wielded with great care.

“He struggled to breathe against the dextrorotated pressure of his ribs, stretching farther and farther to the side, very early one morning, until he felt a flat pop in the upper part of his back and then pain beyond naming somewhere between his shoulder blade and spine. The boy did not cry out or weep but merely sat silent in this tortured posture until his failure to appear for breakfast brought his father upstairs to the bedroom’s door.” —The Pale King, Wallace, 2011, p. 397.

Did you think that I was just going to forget about that kid from §1 who was obsessed with licking every inch of his own body? That boy who sat in silence for hours a day, contorting himself in weird painful ways. Bones creaking softly like slow pressure on wood. Head inches from ripping from the neck as he extends his tongue between his own buttocks. Were you hoping that I would forget because you yourself wanted so badly to forget? Well, if so, you were wrong, because there’s a very important lesson to be learned from the boy who licked his own butthole.

But before we get into that lesson, we first need to answer the question posed at the very beginning of this essay.

Q: What do Shane Drinion, Chris Fogle, and the butthole boy have in common? A: They are all immersive.

But while all three people are immersive, only one of them ends up in the hospital.

The butthole boy is a cautionary tale; while he was able to tap into the powers of immersion, what he chose to use that power on landed him right in the emergency care room. The butthole boy shows us that the power of immersion can be used for both yin and yang and that one needs the awareness to determine what the power of immersion should be used on and for how long it should be used. The butthole boy also shows us that the power of immersion by itself grants neither higher wisdom nor enlightenment; instead, it is one of many tools to be used in the pursuit of higher wisdom and enlightenment, and it should be used with great care.

Hypothetically, if I could flip the immersion switch on and off (which is what I am aspiring to learn how to do here), I could spend all day and night playing Final Fantasy VII, ignoring everything around me while doing so, and I would be happy via the power of true immersion. However, I would be wasting away; I would stop showing up for work, thus I would have no money to pay bills, thus my power would be shut off, thus I would have no Final Fantasy VII to play, and eventually my house would get foreclosed on, and my family would become destitute, and thus we would all starve to death. It’s simple stuff, really, but it needs to be said: immersion must be wielded responsibly.

Be careful not to paralyze yourself with the tremendous power of immersion. Do not forget about your worldly responsibilities; instead, become immersed in them when necessary, but do not forget who you are, and do not become so immersed in yourself that you lose sight of the big picture. There is a balance that must be reached between self and system. And know that immersion can be used on all things, but also know that if you are not able to wield immersion on the boring stuff, then you are not able to wield immersion at all.

Becoming immersive is not only about being able to hyperfocus on pleasurable things, it’s also about being able to hyperfocus on the things that you normally don’t want to focus on: the mundane, tedious, soul-sucking things that we are all pretty much required to do simply to exist in this modern world. The power of immersion makes the unbearable bearable, and thus, when we wield immersion, we are at peace with tedium because it is no longer tedium at all.

There will be times when you are called to account, and during these times, you will want to be able to wield the power of immersion—just make sure you wield it responsibly.

§8

Bad news—there’s no magic spell or secret words or series of numbers that, once recited, grants the power of immersion (but according to David Foster Wallace's notes included in the paperback edition of The Pale King, Chris Fogle was meant to know the series-of-numbers thing, though it never made it into the final manuscript).

The power of immersion cannot be taught; it can only be suggested, and from there, one must mine the power from the depths of the soul and hone the power over time. And, as such, the journey to becoming immersive is a personal one that will differ from person to person. However—and this is important—it is imperative that you start this journey immediately; we are living in an age where the self has been co-opted by soulless media corporations and social media influencers that do not care about you; they have stolen your attention and intend to keep it forever, but it is imperative that you reclaim it; you must reclaim yourself; and if you don’t start this journey soon, it may be too late to start the journey at all. And, again, I am not trying to say that I have become immersive myself—merely that I am aware of the power of immersion and that I aim to become immersive and that I am trying to become immersive even now as I write these words. Everything I do from here on out is in service to becoming immersive. (In fact, it's likely that I am only using you-pronouns because it's easier to get my point across stylistically, and that I am kinda indirectly giving myself a pep talk, because directly addressing myself with first-person singular pronouns all the time starts to feel a little awkward, prose-wise; that is certainly one valid interpretation of what I'm doing here.) And while I can’t give you the magic words or the secret numbers to become immersive, there are a few things I can suggest that might illuminate the path for you. The first step is awareness: awareness that your attention has been stolen from you, awareness that you are not in full control right now but that you can be (and, if you’re a determinist who does not believe in free will, consider your reading of this essay to be your antecedent cause to action). The second step is to read The Pale King in full (half-joking, but it helps in the same vein as the previous parenthetical aside). The third step is to excise the bullshit: foster environments wherein you minimize distractions; turn off your smartphone when you don’t need it because smartphones are a direct line to the corporate distraction nexus; distance yourself from social media or delete it outright, because everything on social media is pantomime (it should be called social mimesis), and it is the primary vector for the distraction mind virus; use only one computer monitor instead of three or four or ten thus making it harder to multitask yourself into distraction; log off the internet once in a while; take a day wherein you use absolutely no electronics but instead just think about stuff real hard; walk a nature trail in full and then do it again; immerse yourself in a daily exercise routine; stop using online services that use predictive algorithms of any kind; and, last but certainly not least, just sit down and focus on the stuff you want and/or need to do, because ultimately, this is all in your head; it’s all mental. All you have to do is WILL IT. Boredom is our enemy, and we wield the knife. The next time you’re sitting there doing something that you really want and/or need to do but find yourself starting to drift or become bored, just lift the knife and tell yourself, “I AM NOT DRIFTING. THIS IS NOT BORING,” and then cut right through the boredom to the beauty beyond. Once you know that you can do this—that it was even an option at all—you are on the path to becoming immersive.

“If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.” —The Pale King, Wallace, 2011, p. 440.

You can reclaim your attention. I know you can, and I know this because I know that I myself can; and if an ADHD-diagnosed high school dropout who still has to do the L-thing with his hand to figure out left from right whose uncle once said quote there is no career path for him other than hobo unquote can do it, then so can you.

I believe in you.

We can become immersive together.


If this essay made you feel something, please let me know via email at f0rrest@pm.me.


#essay #ThePaleKing #books #AudioEssay

 
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from Sodium Reactor

Late September, The Year After Everything Happened

Teresa Paraiso knew they had the address right. She'd checked it three times and driven past it the day before just to make sure. At this point they probably thought she was casing the joint rather than coming to fight for the first time. But no amount of mindfulness and deep breathing could abate the anxiety in her chest.

“You get quiet and sweaty when you're nervous. Just stop it.” Jennifer Schwiezer deadpanned, leaning forward from the backseat of Nisha' busted little sedan to and face Teresa. Teresa's longtime roommate and training partner had agreed to accompany her alongside Teresa's longtime friend, Nisha Patel, who'd agreed to drive only on the condition that someone else be the designated driver on the way back. Teresa's tall, pale roommate maintained a mild enmity with most of her friends, including Nisha. The feeling was largely mutual: she and Jennifer might be thick as thieves but neither one had ever gelled with her roommate's friends.

”'Lucky Shot' is such a shit name for a bar.” Jennifer grumbled.

“What? Nah it's hilarious. It's a pun. It's cute.” Nisha protested. “It's a bar, and they host fights. Lucky shot? Get it?”

“I get it. It's stupid. Someone was trying too hard.” Jennifer shot back, and Theresa welcomed her friends' arguments sas a quick reprieve from her thoughts of her own fight. This wasn't the first time she'd had an organized fight: she'd appeared on Kelsey Drama's Beat, Prey, Love series a dozen times over her college career so far.

Beyond that training with her professional fighter friends had provided crucial insight into what she did well and what she struggled with. Her stocky, light brown 5'3 frame was soft, and voluptuous, but far sturdier and stronger than it looked. Her plump thighs and squishy arms hid real, devastating power. She just had to believe in herself.

Nisha parked her cramped little sedan in the asphalt parking lot and stepped into the night air, running a hand through the short undercut she'd recently dyed silver again. “Less worrying, more fucking shit up, 'Pound Cake.'”

Hearing her ring name made this more real somehow. Teresa Paraiso was a college student. Pound Cake was an underground fighter.

The anxious 21 year old Filipina and her two friends flashed their IDs as they moved past the bouncer and into the bar. The Lucky Shot was bigger on the inside than it looked, and when Teresa turned around to ask the bouncer for direction, her voice failed her. Instead Jennifer pulled her hand so hard that Teresa clutched her glasses to keep them from falling off her round face.

“Hey, my friend signed up to fight tonight. Where do we go?” The tall Seattlite explained to the nearest server over the low din of the bar.

“Which one?” Asked the server, a reedy brown man with stubble and tired eyes. When Jennifer and Nisha pointed back towards their shorter friend, Teresa fought the urge to flee. “Here...” The server explained, wrapping a blue disposable bracelet around her wrist before pointing towards the far wall. “Head to the back. Ask for Acacia.”

Theresa nodded wordlessly, gripping her wrist as if she'd been marked for death.

They passed through the spacious bar, eyeing the boxing ring that dominated its center and the two women brawling inside it. Both were topless, and the bawdy crowd cheered each time one struck the other. It looked so barbaric from outside, but Teresa couldn't deny how much she enjoyed competing. She’d never even thrown a punch before college, but her life had changed dramatically since the last few weeks of her freshman year. The thought buoyed her a little.

The trio reached the far wall of the establishment where a tall woman blocked a door marked “Staff Only.” When Teresa flashed her new wristband and stammered the names of the two women who'd recommended this place to her, the muscled woman's countenance changed considerably. “Oh so you're here to fight fight. You shoulda said that from jump.” She nodded. “Locker room's two doors down on the right. Rock, go let Acacia know. ” She motioned for the buxom brawler to walk down the hall and then motioned for another man to head to a different door.

“We're her team.” Nisha explained, following closely behind their fighter.

“Mhm. I bet. Just don't do anything stupid and you'll be fine. Keep the fights in the ring ladies.”

Jennifer and Nisha both resented the implication that they might cause trouble, but neither could contest that they both attracted scuffles and brawls— often with each other's friends—like metal attracted magnets. Pound Cake might be the one fighting tonight but Meanstreak and Raya Riot wouldn’t let their friend have all the fun, not for long.

Inside the locker room, Jennifer and Nisha combined to do their best impression of a boxing coach, helping their chubby friend wrap her hands, get her boxing gloves on, and keep from melting down in the process. “Listen T, you've been topless on camera with both of us. Hell, you've beat both our asses at least once.” Nisha smiled. “Just keep your hands up, keep coming forward, use your angles, like Simone always says. Tag this bitch once, she'll start running and then you can trap her.”

“Wait, what if she's bigger than me?” Teresa countered, adjusting her glasses.

“Didn't they tell you who you were fighting?” Jennifer asked. Teresa shook her head and a new wave of dread fell over her: What if they paired her with someone far better, far more experienced? She suddenly felt small and inexperienced and like every other woman in the room was sizing her up like a hungry predator might. Simone had joked for years about her, Nisha, and Teresa being 'snacks' in the sexual sense, but right now Teresa felt like dessert for some veteran fighter. Her nerves frayed by the minute.


“Alright, which one of you is 'Pound Cake?' A feminine voice asked as if its owner expected a prompt answer.

“Th-th-that's me!” Teresa turned around so quickly she almost fell. The voice's owner was a fair complexioned woman with violet hair that transitioned to a bright pink at its tips and matched her hot pink blazer.

'Don't hurt yourself.” The woman laughed, folding her arms and looking down at her newest competitor. “That's what the other girls are for.” One of the woman's assistants laughed nervously until this pink haired woman put her hand up. “I'm Acacia. I'm in charge here. First timers get $500 and $500 to win.” Teresa balked at the pay. Beat Prey Love certainly paid better, but she hadn't come here strictly for the money. She wanted to know what it felt like, what her scary dangerous friends meant when they said they felt free inside a ring fighting for real. Beat Prey Love was run by an e-girl video game streamer and martial artist, and the online series stressed the performance rather than the result: Kathy Liu's audience didn't care much which girl won or lost so long as they fought hard and someone got finished in dramatic (sexual) fashion. But by all accounts Teresa wouldn't have to worry about some overly handsy coed trying to finger her on camera. Tonight she could just box.

“You call yourself Pound Cake and... “The woman continued, looking Teresa's chubby, voluptuous frame up and down. “Your name fits at least. The crowd's gonna loooove you.” Acacia grinned, patting Teresa's massive bust and her thick ass and thighs. Teresa was glad she didn’t touch the chubby tummy she’d struggled to accept as part of her body.

Acacia turned to call for someone behind her and smiled. “Finesse, your girlfriend's here.” Teresa Paraiso watched a tall, fit, pale, blonde woman grimace and then approach, dripping disdain for everyone in the room.

“Yeah? What's this one call herself? Besides ‘overweight and out of shape.’”

“This is Pound Cake.” Acacia explained before pointing at the tall blonde. “She's Finesse. You two are dance partners.”

Unseen by the nerdy infighter, the friends who'd accompanied her shared excited glances. They’d both personally felt how dangerous Teresa could be once supplied with a little extra motivation. Their shortstack friend was much stronger than she looked and had put both of them down on the canvas multiple times. If this snotty blonde wanted Teresa angry instead of anxious, who were they to intervene?

“Wait... Finesse?” Nisha asked. “Oh! I remember you. You've been to Beat Prey Love a few times.”

“Get lost, twerp. You're not on the menu tonight and I don't talk to NPCs” the woman called 'Finesse,'” dismissed the Indian woman with a wave.

“So you two know each other? Even better.” The pink haired woman reasserted herself. “Rules are simple: Foxy Boxing, Strip Boxing, whatever you wanna call it: Lose your top if you get knocked down. Lose your shorts if you get knocked out. Winner gets her shit back and the loser's gear as a trophy. The crowd loves that shit.” She chuckled.

Teresa observed that Acacia didn't look much older than she was. There was a story here that she wanted to unravel, but the first chapter entailed leaving here with cash and clothing. “Speaking of, how many sets of green bras and black shorts have you had to buy, Finesse? I hope you're buying in bulk.” Acacia cackled.

“Very few. Fuck you very much. Those are collector's items.” The pale white woman retorted without missing a beat, though Teresa swore she saw the fair blonde's face redden.

“Yeah yeah. So matches go six 3-minute rounds, if you last that long. After six rounds it's sudden death. No bells, no timers, no judges. Just boxing. Either way the fight's over when one girl can't make a 10 count. No Standing 8 counts, no referee stoppages, no TKOs. But you can be saved by the bell. I should warn you though that if the crowd really enjoys watching the other girl smack the paint off you, you can expect a slow count. Lucky Shot patrons like KOs.” She explained, and the buxom Filipina brawler wondered if this woman owned the entire bar or merely coordinated the entertainment.

“Someone will let you know when the last fight has finished. Come on out to the ring and then come out swinging.” She looked from one woman to the other. “Oh, and the ref is just there for legal purposes. Don't make her get involved please. She’s a spaz and I don’t pay her enough.” The pink haired organizer muttered, halfway covering her mouth with her hand.

“Hope you like pain, fatass.” Finesse sneered. “I'm about to make you regret every slice of cake you've ever eaten.”

“Y-yeah? Well you're ugly, and you're stupid, and at least my boobs are real you fucking fake plastic Barbie bitch!” She'd started talking and ended yelling loud enough that a few heads turned towards her. Teresa's vitriol surprised even her, and she felt her blood pounding in her ears after she finished yelling. Her massive bust rose and fell slowly as she tried to regain her composure. She hadn't meant to yell that loudly, but this stupid blonde kept turning everything into the same corny fat joke she'd heard since high school and Teresa wanted only to shut her up.

Acacia's team separated the two fighters and now satisfied, the pink haired twenty-something left the competitors to their own devices. “Don’t kill each other before the bell rings. It’s bad for business!” She called out with a wave as she left.

The rest of the time spent waiting passed by without incident but Teresa felt as if time passed too slowly and too quickly at the same time. Her friends teased that for all the skill's she'd gained, trash talking still wasn't one of them. She felt that familiar relief and dread when a staff member came by and told her to get ready. Whatever else she'd done today, she'd be fighting tonight.

She caught sight of the last match's apparent loser: a thin, pale, teary eyed young redhead wearing nothing but a floral blue thong, boxing shoes, and a miserable frown. She carried her blue boxing gloves in front of her, shielding her breasts, but she couldn’t hide the ugly blue bruises marring her face and stomach. A broader woman walked behind her, trying to offer some solace that the poor girl clearly didn't want to hear.

Teresa decided that her only goal was to end the night with her clothes in her possession. And there was only one way to do that: a knockout victory.

The walk out to the ring was muted and underwhelming: the bar played generic club rap as she walked to the ring and the DJ called out her ring name with the same enthusiasm she imagined he'd introduce a 5pm stripper. The crowd was more appreciative, and she caught more than one person staring intently at her jiggling bust as it struggled against her purple, white, and black sports bra.

Her friends had helped her come up with the nickname “Poundcake” two years ago. She’d fought Jennifer, her roommate and best friend, topless on camera for Beat, Prey, Love, the video series started by Kelsey Drama to sell videos of hot coeds fight and fucking each other. It'd been a week none of them would ever forget. Since then she’d clashed with Jennifer and Nisha and a dozen other girls, some of whom didn’t even go to her college. Teresa couldn’t deny that ‘semi-pro fighter’ was as much a part of her personality as ‘gamer’ was.

Finesse, who Nisha had remembered answering to 'Britney' during her Beat, Prey, Love appearances, was already waiting for her in the blue corner, wearing a racy green sports bra and black boy shorts that barely reached past her hips.

“Ready to lose, nerd?” She called out from behind the ref.

“N-No! This gamer geek is about to put you to sleep!” Teresa menaced, already cringing about how lame she sounded. Everything sounded better, cooler, in her head before she said it.

The rest of the formalities passed quickly: the referee called them together, checked their gloves, and repeated most of the information they'd received backstage. The striped official sent them back to their separate corners and each woman waited for the bell to signal the start of their bout.

The bell came as a relief for Teresa; at least she could do something about all this pent up energy.

Unfortunately the first thing she did was walk face first into Finesse's green and black glove. The rangy blonde met her in the center of the boxing ring and rebuffed the shorter woman's attempts to draw within arm's reach. Finesse poked and prodded with her left hand, firing her jab at any perceived gap in Teresa's guard until the Filipina nerd backed away.

“You're too short, meatball!” Finesse jeered, circling away.

Chastened but not convinced, Teresa bit down on her mouth guard and advanced again, brown eyes firmly fixed on her target. She just needed to get a littl- psh psh ... psh

The athletic blonde's jab knifed through Teresa's guard again, stinging the shorter girl's cheek before she slammed a right straight into Teresa's nose. Finesse circled away to the center of the ring again, content to stick her glove in Teresa's face and then move away.

Pound Cake lunged at her and caught a looping left hook for her trouble that knocked her off balance and nearly onto the canvas before she righted herself. Finesse kept laughing, kept punching, kept moving, and Theresa couldn't get a bead on her. Nearly every punch she threw landed where the cackling white woman had been a moment ago, and she could pin Finesse down for more than a second, more than a single errant jab of her own.

The logic of the fight pounded in her brain so loud she could almost hear it: keep her guard up, minimize damage on the way in. Move, and retaliate as soon as she felt Finesse's jab on her glove. Approach slowly, save her energy for the dash from the outside of the other fighter's to the inside of hers.

Her brain knew. But her body refused to comply.

Instead Finesse taunted and smacked her, growing increasingly confident over the first two minutes of the first round that this buxom nerd didn't belong in the same ring as her. Finesse might not be a star on the Beat, Prey, Love shows, but here in a boxing ring with no fear of being wrestled to sleep she felt much better about her abilities. This dork had more breasts than brains and she relished the idea of sending this sloppy fatass home in just her underwear, sporting a few new bruises.

The first two minutes of the round ticked by in familiar, agonizing fashion. Finesse controlled the action, initiating each engagement with her rapier of a left jab. It was her radar antenna and her opening salvo, forcing the shorter woman to stop and contend with it while Finesse repositioned. She could circle to her left to line up her right straight down the middle of Pound Cake's guard or fire a left hook meant to sneak around her opponent's guard or smack her for an ill-timed approach.

Pound Cake walked into several of those punches, grunting with each impact. But getting smacked just made her push harder, certain she could get to Finesse this time if she just wanted it a little more. But that cycle screeched to a halt when Finesse faded to her left again and Pound Cake turned to find a rocket of a right hand waiting for her.

The overhand right walloped her, leaving Teresa blinking and dazed for the first time tonight. Instinct begged her to tighten her guard and back away, but her failing defenses couldn't keep Finesse at bay. Her own punches were answered with stinging retorts that buffeted her like winter winds. Finesse pursued her now, hitting her, landing that damn jab at will and any other punch she seemed to want. Finesse’s jab landed again and again on Teresa’s cheek, her eye, her jaw, stinging her before the inevitable right that left her seeing stars and wishing for an escape.

Teresa backed away from the torrent of green leather and felt the ropes dig into her back before Finesse sunk a right hand deep into her stomach, then scored with two more punches to her eye. The grinning blonde finished her with a screaming left hook that spun Pound Cake partially around before she staggreed like a baby gazelle and sat heavily on the canvas.

The referee shooed her blonde tormentor away, only turning back to Filipina slugger after Finesse backed into a corner and began preening for the rowdy crowd. “There's gonna be a lot more where that came from. I'm gonna turn Pound Cake here back into Cookie Dough!”

Teresa sighed. She was more angry than hurt, more frustrated than beaten. The ref counted slowly and the pudgy pugilist rose to her feet before the referee said “5.” The woman in stripes held her wrists, checking to see that Pound Cake still wanted to fight, before reaching for the chubby woman's purple sports bra.

“Top comes off after a knockdown.” She reminded the fighter.

“There's a zipper in the front.” Teresa pouted, looking away. “Don't rip it though. I'm gonna put it back on after I knock this chick out.”

The referee smiled and helped her out of her top. “Of course you are sweetie.” Teresa's heaving breasts flopped out of her unzipped bra and the announcer and audience both cheered the raunchy new development. Teresa wondered how often the ref had heard some variant of what she’d just said, and how often those girls made good on their promise of revenge.

“Now I know why you're so slow!” Finesse jeered from across the ring. “Those bowling balls have gotta be slowing you down!”

The referee backed away and commanded them to box, and Teresa came out hands up and newly angry. She couldn't wouldn't lose like this. Not to this blonde loudmouth fitspo reject.

Unfortunately her body had other ideas, and Teresa remained a step slow as Finesse resumed her assault. The tall athletic blonde tagged her again, splitting her attention between Teresa’s face and her bare breasts. A looping left

 
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from DigiVoyager

I have been meaning to make this entry for a while now. My first thought was to perhaps find a Fediverse instance with 1000 character limit, or something of the sort, perhaps even higher, haha.

But on reflection, I wanted to write just a tad more, making this a better fit.

Earlier, on Saturday, that is the 23rd of November, I went to my cousin's wedding. We're not that close, but generally attendance, and a small gift (money is usually the way, we do not have registries and the like) is considered mandatory at these things so I had to go. I, of course, did not take any gifts, since I assumed my parents would, being fond of my own money and all. I did not care to confirm that they did, for I wished to cover my bases, me asking may have lead to a no, why didn't you, and a negative outcome for self.

Anyways, back to the wedding itself, the old men mingled with other old men; sadly not wearing golf caps and plus sixes, no cool pipes either. They were, perhaps, talking of times long gone – times when the grass was more green than brown, the air not a near lethal dose of toxic smog equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes in a day, and crime was the exception, rather than the norm. The invention of mobile phones has something to do with this. that most attractive and lucrative profession, phone snatching, would not be so rampant if we were still stuck with telephones. Imagine someone sticking you up at gunpoint, asking you to take them home, so they make take your telephone set – no one is going to risk it all and go to such lengths for something far cheaper than any phone.

One may wonder if wallet snatchers exist or not, the answer to which is simple. They do, but make up far less of the robber %, being that most of us walking the streets are poor, our wallets are similarly deprived of any meaningful cash for them. Thus, they have that other most attractive profession, that of robber who hangs around outside the ATM. The glint in the eyes of said robbers when they see someone vulnerable is something to behold, not unlike that of the look in one's own eyes when the PS2 finally avoids the dreaded red screen that accompanies an unreadable disc.

There are sadly not any Beyblade snatchers, though perhaps in one of the zillions of other timelines, there is a lil' DigiVoyager who turned to a life of crime, and decided he might as well get a Beyblade collection out of it, circa 2009. He probably has an account named DigiSurfer, or something to that effect and enjoys playing Grand Theft Auto 2, and only 2, because he is a hipster or something of the sort.

But back to the wedding, on the other side, the women mingled with other women, for weddings among us Pashtuns are generally segregated. There was much gossip, and nothing but gossip as my mother tells me, and people speaking of making matches between so and so's son, and this and that's daughter, while both of the aforementioned parties are enjoying university life, oblivious to this sudden axe hanging over their heads. I imagine it must be like taking a nice leisurely stroll on a nearby road, only to run into a wild leopard -also a thing that has happened to a few unfortunate souls here in Pakistan. I am told my name comes up often, first with an array of optimism – oh, he's a doctor, but then someone invariably mentions my salary; who first sourced my income, and then told the rest, I do not know, but my mother denies it so it was probably one of my aunts or cousins – then the conversation quickly turns to other names or women who are 40 and over, yet very wealthy.

Dear my aunts and cousins, I am not a gold digger, I do not know what caused you to imagine me so.

Now, there's a lot of showing off, pomp and festive merrymaking at these things, provided the festivities have been thrown by a middle class (or better) family. As we go up the economic ladder, the festivities get more and more luxurious, and segregation too, tapers off.

However, this one was a distinctly lower class affair. I am not mocking my cousin's status by the way, in case the thing may seem mean spirited or such, he and I are about the same economically as Goblin A and Goblin B in one of your role playing games, the mooks you beat up around the start of your game without even letting them get a hit in.

We sat in the tent, cold, I taking in the usual chat: Uncle A talks about how he purchased a rare WW2 rifle from so and so, uncle C reveal the rifle is a fake as he knows the seller only provides fakes, uncle A insists it must be a different fellow with the same name, uncle C opens his Facebook profile, uncle A curses, uncle B tries to sneak an extra plate in the heat of the moment, uncle D talks of how he plans on finally purchasing that dream car but his own progress in that matter is about the same as mine in getting that coveted Panda Trueno, that is to say he and I are about as close to owning a car as this country is to fixing itself.

If any time travelers are reading, I wish to know: Does he ever get the car? I can make peace with me not getting one, but I am too invested in his tale.

Back to the class matter, our weddings during winter are not ones you want to attend. We are not the class of family that rents out wedding halls, these events take place in tents, and you can probably imagine how cold it gets. For warmth, there are a few fires lit here and there, you sit down by them if you are feeling cold. If there are ever any portable heaters or the like, all of them always go to the women's side.

This is never an issue in middle class or better weddings. For photography and recording, many families hire drone photographers and the like, but here we had just one photographer, a friend of my cousin's with a DSLR. This, by the way, is a rule of getting by in Pakistan. If you know anyone with a DSLR, befriend them instantly. I wonder if these DSLR fellows ever get burgeoning existential crises where they wonder if people care about them or their camera more.

When the thing is done, there are photos at the end. The bride and groom sit on a sofa, and families go in turn to take photos with them, pretending to have a nice conversation and such. I generally never take part in these things. Many feel it is shyness, or some other reason. In my own view, the crux of the matter seems to lie in me not really being close to my relatives, it feels rather like a case of impostor syndrome, I've never really had any bonding moments with them, nor they me, and to appear in these would feel not only wrong, but also so as to be cheapening their memories. This does seem like a rather odd tangent to go off on, but I do wonder what it feels like on the other side. I imagine people just keep photos of people they like, and get rid of the rest. But do they also feel that cheapening, or is it just me?

Perhaps they are too happy, too euphoric to care, like Uncle B, sneaking off to where the rice is being made, claiming he needs some more plates for misters X, Y and Z, who remain as unaware of his deeds as they were 20 years ago.

Still, I would love to photograph one of these events one day, the raw authenticity one sees is something else. I wish to take wedding photos, and someday soon I may, if I ever get my camera. For the moment, it is about as close as Uncle D's car.

 
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from forrest

mognet3 titlecard

Yo,

Just a heads up that, while typing this email, I was (am) listening to the track titled “Elwynn Forest (Ambient)” from the official World of Warcraft Soundtrack—which was ripped by some person named “Homer” (per the attached metadata)—which I had illegally pirated some time ago (along with nearly a terabyte of other video game music, all of which I had listened to while playing the actual games in question at some point in my life [meaning I did not just download this stuff to have it for no reason—each soundtrack holds some sort of special meaning for me]), all of which I have had stored on my second hard drive for many revolutions (the drive is named “X-Drive,” and yes, this predates Elon’s co-opting of the letter X, which is also a good reminder that I need to get a new drive for storage sometime soon). And I was (am) listening to this track on repeat, of course. And if for whatever reason you don’t believe me, and you think I’m just trying to be cute or clever or funny or whatever, I have attached a screenshot of my desktop with both X-Drive and the Rhythmbox media player pictured as proof of these claims (see attachment titled “proof.png”).

Anyway…

Before I get into writing about “Psycho Wand, My Beloved” (which I’m very happy that you actually read and provided feedback on!), I wanted to briefly cover my own experience with massively multiplayer online role-playing games (what a mouthful), as I think it colors what I’ll be getting into with the rest of this email.

My own experience with MMOs is vast, spanning my entire post-pre-teen life (starting 2003) until about two years ago (2022), when I swore off MMOs as if they were as harmful as smoking cigarettes (which, coincidentally, I also swore off that same year). As mentioned in a few of my other stories/essays, I was on Adderall from a young age, which I abused to facilitate this feeling of getting-totally-lost in a video game’s world. This getting-lost feeling was especially potent with MMOs, as the worlds of these games are huge and full of real people, and, therefore, there is near-endless possibility for unique experiences. I played my first MMO at 12 years old. It was Ragnarok Online (Korean MMO, released in 2003), a beautiful isometric sprite-based MMO all about building cool-looking anime characters with perfect stats and grinding for items with terrible drop rates (a time-sink measure commonly implemented in MMOs to artificially increase playtime and thus subscription revenue [as covered in the PWMB footnotes]). My second MMO was Final Fantasy XI (released by Square in 2002), which I started playing at the age of 13 (prime time for forming potent nostalgic connections that literally never fade), and this game pretty much consumed my life. The zones of Final Fantasy XI are as nostalgic for me as the old pond at my grandma’s house, where I stayed every summer—that’s how ingrained Final Fantasy XI is in my memory. I played Final Fantasy XI well into adulthood and ruined at least one relationship playing it—which inspired Blair and David’s relationship dynamic in PWMB. And, like you, I’ve also played World of Warcraft on and off; but when it first came out, I wasn’t immediately drawn to it because I didn’t care for the western cartoony art style and lack of pretty characters. I only tried it—at a school friend’s insistence—after Burning Crusade came out, because I liked Blood Elves aesthetically. And since then, I’ve put about a year’s worth of play total into WoW, much of that driven by my current partner’s love of the game, as I played along with her until the release of Battle for Azeroth in 2018, at which time I somehow got sucked back into Final Fantasy XI for several years. Eventually, I got into Final Fantasy XIV (the successor to Final Fantasy XI), which is an incredibly shallow action game that’s more of a fashion simulator than anything else; yet somehow, despite my dislike for that game, I ended up maxing out every class around the time of Endwalker’s release in 2021 (Final Fantasy XIV’s fourth expansion).

So, what I’m trying to say is, I have a lot of experience ignoring reality by playing MMOs.

Also, you might notice that, within that whole run-on paragraph about MMOs up there, I didn’t mention Phantasy Star Online, not even one time; that’s because I never truly got lost in that game world. So, the question you’re probably asking now is, “Why did you use that MMO as the backdrop for the story, then?” and that’s a fair question. Let’s delve into that. You see, at the time, I was publishing this faux-historical magazine titled On Computer Games Monthly, and the first issue of that magazine was faux-released in November 2000. And since I wanted this magazine to be a sort of faux-historical document, I wanted the next issue to cover December 2000, and, as such, I needed a keynote game for that issue that I was also interested in playing and writing about. It just so happens that Phantasy Star Online was released in December 2000, and, having played that game once or twice before (but never seriously engaging with it), I decided it would be the perfect candidate for my next writing project.

Thus, “Psycho Wand, My Beloved” was born. And, thus thus, On Computer Games Monthly #2: Delving Digital Voids.

When I sat down to write “Psycho Wand, My Beloved,” I wanted to do this whole dark-comedy David Foster Wallace-inspired kinda thing (even the main character of the story is named “David”), as I was reading The Pale King at the time but didn’t actually finish that novel until, well, just a few days before writing this email to you (as I picked the novel up and put it down many times—considering it’s a massive tome—and finally got through it after realizing that highlighting passages as I read is a brain hack that keeps me super engaged in the reading process, always on the lookout for new passages to gush over and absorb; so, as such, I have this copy of The Pale King which is just chock-full of highlighted stuff; and now that I’m finished with the novel, I plan on writing a small piece inspired by it and, thus, I highly recommend the novel for anyone into meticulous and/or humorous and/or existential fiction, even with the novel being incomplete due to its tragic interruption, that being David Foster Wallace’s suicide on September 12, 2008—truly, one of the greatest writers of our modern age was lost that day). There’s also a tinge of psychedelia and absurdism mixed into “Psycho Wand, My Beloved,” and the footnotes (also inspired by Wallace) are quite gratuitous indeed (and I also noticed that you didn’t comment on the footnotes in your email, probably because you read the piece on howdoyouspell.cool instead of its original place of publishing, which was oncomputer.games, where footnotes are much easier to navigate to and fro; meanwhile, howdoyouspell.cool [or, rather: the WriteFreely platform it’s built upon] has no official footnote support, and thus, I am made to do some gimmicky workaround with superscript and hashtags, which—as you might imagine—is actually very very very annoying to work with and—as I can imagine—just a complete nightmare for readers, so much so that most readers probably just don’t bother with the footnotes at all [but, for the record, I tried really hard on those damn footnotes, so if you didn’t read them, you should; and—post-hoc footnote justification incoming—I used the footnotes as a way to insert my own personal experiences/thoughts into the story and provide review-like commentary on the game without hindering the flow of the main story]).

But what I’m really trying to say is that I am constantly surprised that I—or my writing (which sometimes feels like it came out of another person entirely, especially when I revisit my work after a long period of time)—can compel anyone to sit down and focus on something for any length of time whatsoever; and even after having had it (people reading my stuff and providing feedback) happen a few times, it still surprises me, and I can barely even believe it; I assure you that my middle school and high school teachers would certainly not believe it, either: “I figured he’d be dead in an alley somewhere by now.”

So what I’m really trying to say is that I really really appreciate you reading the story and doubly appreciate you providing feedback.

It’s funny that you mention that some readers might interpret David as “too much like a strawman of a modern game addict,” because, when writing the character, I feared that he might come off that way—a caricature or a parody in the worst way possible—but David is actually some fictional exaggerated version of myself. I have been addicted to many things, including video games on and off. And, as you probably already surmised, I have an “addictive personality” (if we’re using psych terms, which I don’t prefer to use, but they serve the purpose of easily getting across my point here); that is, if I like something, I do that something at every possible chance until I wear it out and become bored, at which point I move on to something else that catches my interest and wear that thing out until I become bored, at which point I move on to something else, and so on and so forth. This whole addiction loop is like a compulsion and continues to happen even though I’m aware of it. Contrary to what some might think, this behavior is not always a detriment, as it helps with writing, personal projects (actually completing them), reading, and, in the case of single-player video games with clear endings, it facilitates my completion of those games and then my moving-on to something else once those games are completed; but, for stuff that is designed to be as addictive as possible and/or basically endless—such as all MMOs or hard drugs (which are basically the same things, as far as I’m concerned)—my addictive personality becomes my proverbial Achilles’ heel, and you can kiss any semblance of a quote-unquote life I had before starting said addictive, predatory things goodbye. For real for real.

Here are a few examples of how David is inspired by me: the whole sneaking-into-the-bedroom-early-in-the-morning-as-to-not-wake-his-partner thing, the whole ignoring-his-partner thing (this one is actually not exaggerated at all), the whole getting-jealous-over-William-spending-time-with-Mark thing, the whole copious drinking thing, the whole work thing (I wasn’t a debt collector, but I was a call center agent that made outbound calls for a time [also note that, somehow, Merenie—David’s manager in the story—ended up being my favorite character after the whole thing was written]), the whole Pavlov response thing (the lighting in David’s room and the urge to have a certain television show playing in the background while playing Phantasy Star Online; i.e., the whole associating-one-thing-with-another-thing-thus-both-things-reminding-you-of-the-other-thing thing), the whole hyper-obsessed-with-his-goals thing, the whole ignoring-his-family thing, &c. &c.

Of course, nearly all of David’s issues are exaggerated for both comedic effect and to kinda get a “point” across. The point being: if you give yourself up completely to these urges and/or bad habits without reflection, you will ruin your life completely—it’s that simple. The secondary “point” of the story is that David spent so much time in this MMO, ruined his life playing it, but, by the end of it all, he had nothing to show for it: his beloved Psycho Wand drops, and the next day or so the official servers are shut down; I wanted to use this as a way to show how ephemeral MMO achievements actually are; I wanted to get across that MMOs—and, by extension, even gaming as a whole—is not worth sacrificing other more tangible aspects of your life for (such as friends and family and general survival). In fact, this “secondary point” is actually the most important point I wanted to get across with the story, as I feel like it’s something we as a species—especially my generation—need to hear; we need it jammed into our heads every day all the time: VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR REAL LIFE. (Some people might have a problem with that last statement, considering it’s kind of broad and “real life” is a nebulous concept, but I would simply point those naysayers to my entire body of work as a counter, as I’ve written about this very sentiment in much greater detail elsewhere [most recently: “Destination Ivalice”].) I look around and see people vegged out in front of screens both large and small all the time everywhere: in the car, at the dinner table, when their kids are playing on the playground shouting “daddy, daddy, look at what I can do!” and they (the parents) are just sitting there on the bench looking at their weird glowy cube. And it’s not just video games, it’s entertainment as a whole—the instant accessibility of it, the faux self-gratifying nature of it, everything; it’s gone too far. And I wanted to use David to illustrate this.

I wanted David to be a cautionary tale.

Anyway. I probably need to calm down. Sometimes, I feel like I am developing harmful writing habits that actually make writing harder for me than it has to be. I could just do the whole everything-is-a-standard-sentence-with-no-weird-stuff-between-the-first-capital-letter-of-the-sentence-and-the-hard-period-at-the-end-of-the-sentence thing, but for some reason I am magnetically drawn to just doing the opposite of that with every fiber of my being. I have always been kind of a contrarian (I say “kind of”). The parenthetical stuff in my non-fiction writing kinda mirrors how my non-sequiturous brain works, I guess. Anyway, I know that if Cormac McCarthy were alive today and reading this, he would probably try to find me and then kill me Judge Holden-style for all the quote-unquote weird little marks (McCarthy’s words) that I use. With that in mind, I am consciously making an effort to use fewer commas in my writing, as they both look ugly and are just not necessary for understanding the text in many cases—ultimately disrupting pacing and readability, I think. I get separating independent clauses and dependent clauses and appositives and long lists with commas—that makes sense to me; that both looks and feels right to me—but using commas between certain adjectives and for weird pauses and for setting apart small lists can lend itself to overuse and start to make the text look pretty gross, but that’s just, like, my opinion (you see, in that last aside, the comma before and after the filler word “like” seems to suggest pauses, but is it really so different if I just used “but that’s just like my opinion” instead? Oh, the joys of being a wannabe writer).

I could probably go on and on about any of the subjects brought up in this email, so I’ll just cut it short here. Again, I appreciate you taking the time to read my stuff. If you want to read something similar to PWMB, I suggest both “My Time in Arcadia” and “Dionysus: Death,” as they’re both more story-like than essay-like and they’re both very personal.

And, yes, I am posting this as a Mognet,

Forrest

(oh yeah, here's the screenshot:)

screenshot of desktop


#mognet #autobiographical

 
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from forrest

4-something-lost

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4


  “It’s so nice, Ellie bringing friends over. She never brings anyone over, always in her room tinkering with something, head wrapped in a headset, sometimes on the holotable or clacking away on one of those old letter boards—the key thingies, whatever you call them—old stuff. Dunno why she needs them when we’ve got the headsets. She’s got some old screens in there too; dunno what she needs those for either, but she’s got them, sure does. You know, she left only an hour or so ago, said she was going to fix the net, and by the Gods, just like that, all the things start beeping and we’ve got net again. My brilliant little girl. Does spend too much time in front of the screens, though. Sometimes I worry that I’m not enough, that she needs someone else. Maybe I’m a little jealous of the screens. It’s just been her and me for as long as she can remember, hell, nearly as long as I can remember, you know. And those screens were always her closest friends. I was starting to think she didn’t have any real friends. She’s always been real stubborn too, gets worked up easy, thinks she knows best—maybe she does. I was kinda like that too when I was her age; her mom too, I think—well, I figure. Her mom, I can’t remember her face. It feels sad, but I’ve forgotten why it’s sad, so maybe it’s not so sad; I don’t know; who knows. There’s just a fog there. Echos Myron says the data’s corrupted, unrecoverable, even cut me a deal on future memory refreshes. Young guy at the counter said all nervous, ‘We’re so sorry about this, Miss Gigi, but the information tagged daughter has been fragmented beyond repair.’ I can remember his words word-for-word but can’t remember my own damn daughter, can you believe that? Maybe I never even had a daughter. I don’t know. I don’t even have any holos of her, which is kinda strange. You’d figure that, if I can’t remember my daughter, I wouldn’t even remember that I had one to begin with. And sometimes I do forget, until I look at Ellie, and then it all comes flooding back. Ellie is the only reminder I have left, like a solitary flower in a field of corpses; a reminder that there’s something more out there; something beautiful; something easy to forget. I don’t know. Some people say they’re putting stuff in the water, makes us forget things. Sounds crazy to me, but sometimes you gotta wonder. It’s probably just age, though. You can’t remember everything, right? But even nutters gotta be right sometimes, you figure. The Complex Authority is definitely putting contraceptives in the water, though, right? Gotta be. No newborns for a while, I heard—seven, eight, nine years or something. Anyway, glad she brought you two young men over. Only other person that ever came over here before was little Timony. Sweet girl, kinda wild, though. But Timony’s real young—gotta be eight or nine or something. Born during the fertile period. Always playing that holotable game all the time: People of Power or Power to the People or Pantheon People or, yeah, Pantheon of the Power People, I think it was called—actually, I don’t remember too well. Power. People. Power. Pantheon. Too many P’s. Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, right, Timony. The poor thing lives with her mama, and that old girl’s got old problems. All crashed out. Lives a few blocks down. Old, old problems; and I’m not just talking looks or ankles—I’m talking years of snowcrash. You know, snow sickness. I don’t know the technical term for it, something complicated, but she has that glaze to her eyes where there’s like this sick gray mucousy stuff all over, kinda like the ash storms out there always hiding those starships that you only see on the holo news sometimes, you know. Those thick pillowy clouds of gray ash—or red, if it’s real bad. Maybe our eyes are, like, the starships of the soul. Ignore me. Sometimes I say crazy things. I’d love to see one of those things at least once, though—the starships, I mean. You ever see them? Some people say it’s all a hoax. They’ve never been outside; when people can’t see something for themselves, they come up with all sorts of wild stories: the flat Thessaly people, the rat warriors of the Great Latrine, those mutated dogs with the poison fangs—as if there’s any animals—people saying the Pantheon isn’t real, or memory banks putting your memories in the moral agents for who knows what; that last one’s the craziest one out of all of them, I think; like, why would they do that? But you know how they go on and on, especially Lenny. Oh boy, Lenny. Anywho, you boys from Floor 3 too? Elpis and I, we used to live up on Floor 7, had this nice recreational facility for kids. I don’t remember why we moved down here. But I used to take her there when she was real young—the rec, I mean. She’d jump all around the platforms, doing cartwheels and spins off the bars. I would say, ‘My little Elpis, recklessly confident as always!’ and she would grin that big toothy grin of hers and just keep doing the stuff even harder, like she was showing off for a crowd that wasn’t there. But when an actual crowd did show up, she would act so shy, like she couldn’t do the damn things I had just seen her doing. In fact, I got a video of it right here in the drawer, just gotta…”

  Gigi—an elderly woman with hair like white rust pulled into a wiry ponytail and skin like that of an old, cherished blanket with many wrinkles and small eyes like clouded emeralds and those once-freckles long since turned into brown splotches with little micro hairs poking out—trailed off, mumbling between small coughs as she dug through a metal drawer full of thick cards and other knick-knacks.

  Gray was leaning back, arms crossed, against a black metal cold box that nearly touched the low ceiling, which resembled an eldritch maze of dark chrome pipes and tubes and air vents and small inset fans. He wore an expression like that of an atheist being forced to attend a sermon.

  Jules, blonde locks brushed behind one ear, was bent over a glossy countertop that reflected a dim orange glow from a bulb inset into the ceiling itself in what appeared to be a kitchen crammed into the corner of a cramped living area. The room contained a sofa with a small side table nearby and four doors, one for each wall—portcullis, bathroom, Gigi’s room, Ellie’s room—and, of course, not a window in sight. The ambiguous artist was propping their head up on the countertop with their bare right hand while lightly chewing their long index finger. The glove they had been wearing during their earlier encounter with Zale was missing. They watched the wrinkled woman intently, blinking with wonder as a child might while listening to a bedtime story.

  Ellie was nowhere to be found, although her presence was felt, as the cramped room was littered with items that gave the impression they were not Gigi’s: small DIY electronic devices, some wrapped in black electrical tape, and little plastic model robots of all colors and sizes dotted the back of the kitchen counter. Some of the robots were holding small utensils and devices in their little robot hands; mixed in there were little plastic cats, one of which was orange and pudgy, swinging a single paw back and forth as if motorized. Lots of magnets were stuck all over the walls, one of which held a holo-paper calendar turned to the month of Gamelion, displaying a moving image of a big-eyed cartoon woman wearing a floppy hat who struck different poses as she leaned against a massive metal wand topped with a heart-shaped stone while little hearts bubbled up and popped all around her; the words “month of love” faded in and out near the top of the image. The black cold box was adorned with holo pictures of both Ellie and Gigi, one of which showed a very young, bare-bottomed Ellie standing in a sonic shower with her head vis-à-vis the camera as her hair was being blasted all over the place; her expression a mixture of fear and excitement. Dotting the room were potted plants with plastic stems, featuring both synthetic and holographic petals of oranges and blues and greens.

  “Ah, here we go,” Gigi said as she pulled out a dark metal card about the size of her palm. On it was the letter-number combo “E9,” what looked to be a camera lens, and three touch-sensitive glyphs for PLAY and PAUSE and BACK. Before continuing, she glared sharply at Gray, who was still leaning against the cold box; “Didn’t your mama teach you any manners? This isn’t some nightclub. Stop leaning on the box!” Then she slid a slightly trembling finger over PLAY, causing a blue three-dimensional image to flicker out from the small lens. The holo was volumetric, occupying real space above the card, and wobbled wildly three times before the blue light solidified into a full-color image of a small girl with bright orange hair in baggy clothes on what looked to be a gray metal jungle gym. The girl leapt from a ledge, grabbed a metal bar mid-air, spun elegantly, and then twirled down to a pad below, landing entirely upright like some anti-gravity feline. She turned to the camera and smiled wide—single big front tooth noticeably missing—then bolted off toward a ladder to start the whole thing all over again before the hologram flickered out.

  When the image disappeared, Jules’ face was very close to the card as if they had been analyzing every little detail. “She’s wonderful, isn’t she?” they said without thinking, blinking their big alien blues and chewing on their thin index finger.

  “She really is—what’s your name again, young man?” Gigi asked with a warm smile.

  “Jules. And…” They pursed their lips for a moment, as if debating something internally, then just returned the smile. “Thanks for showing me that.”

  Gray lifted his arm up and around in an exaggerated motion then peered down at the black square on his wrist. “It’s been nearly fifteen minutes. I’m going to check on her.”

  “Would you, dear? She’s normally not this quiet when guests are over.” Gigi leaned her body ever so slightly to the right to look beyond Jules’ tall frame, but as she lifted one foot off the ground, she toppled right over, nearly hitting the floor if not for Gray, who—as he was walking past her to the door across the room—caught her in what seemed like a flash, leaving Gigi staring up into his dark eyes. The young man peered down at her with something like a faux coldness that one got the impression was once a conscious affectation but was now involuntary, and this cold glare spooked Gigi, who hadn’t gasped when she first fell but certainly gasped now when she looked deep into those dark orbs. This prompted Gray to set her upright and look away as if he hadn’t just caused some old woman to shudder with dread. Gigi, who was already very pale, turned paler still, and she spoke with a tremble, “T-thank you, young man.”

  Jules felt the vibe and felt it weird, so they leaned in toward Gigi and spoke with a soft slyness that was something close to a whisper, “It’s like, one day, long ago, Gray was staring in a mirror, practicing those cool stoic expressions, and a devious genie came along and granted his wish, permanently altering the landscape of his handsome face into that of Epictetus, for better or worse—wouldn’t you say?” And this returned the color to Gigi’s face; she looked back and forth from Gray to Jules before she said, “And you say his name is Gray?” To which Jules nodded cartoonishly and responded, “It’s almost as if the name chose him!” And this elicited a jubilant laugh from Gigi that must have been contagious because Jules started laughing too and the only one who wasn’t laughing was Gray whose Epictetus was slowly turning Hades in real time so he sharply turned and started toward the door on the other side of the small room, crossing the entrance portcullis, which, as he did so, started going off like a claxon with high-pitched boops. The portcullis was ringing, and this caught Gray’s attention, so he shifted his entire demeanor from stoically casual to stoically alert and—hand in coat pocket—stoically ready to hurt someone if necessary, then turned toward the door, which was when he saw a small monitor about the size of a hand near the portcullis keyhole that displayed a grainy live feed of the area just outside the portal.

  Standing in front of the portal was a young girl holding a thin box, the details of which were hard to make out. The girl herself barely stood eye-to-eye with the camera. Her hair was twisted into dreads that spilled like thick muddy water over an ovoid stone. She was wearing a nervously indignant expression on her face, made complete by a deep pout on her full lips, as if she knew she was not supposed to be doing exactly what she was doing but was clearly doing it anyway; yet, underneath this rebellious demeanor, she looked as any child does: powerless and lost and full of hope.

  “Oh, that must be Timony.” Gigi didn’t need to shout because the room was so small. “Please, let her in.”

  Gray hesitated for a moment before lifting his hand to the keyhole, in which the square plastic key was still inserted; he twisted it, and the heavy portal let out a pneumatic poot as it lifted to slowly reveal the dark-skinned young girl just standing there all surrounded by gunmetal walls lined with cardboard boxes and graffiti and a few lost souls all drooped over. The little girl tilted her chin up to stare at the young man now standing before her; her brown eyes wide and trembly and ever so cloudy. “What do you want?” she said in this sort of forced rude way, and just as the words escaped her lips, she lifted the metal box to her chest and wrapped both arms around it as if protecting the thing or, perhaps, drawing comfort from it. Then, somewhat shyly, she stood tiptoe to get a look over Gray’s shoulder; the sight of Gigi brought an immediate smile to the girl’s pouty face. Gray only managed to get one syllable out before the girl pushed past him. The portal closed behind her. She immediately made her way to the middle of the cramped room and plopped herself down on the chrome-framed sofa, wiggling herself into the dark blue cushions, sinking somewhat into the plush.

  Gray took his hand off the portal key and turned to the metal door that was the entrance to Ellie’s room; as he took the first of the five steps required to get there, he stopped at the sofa and introduced himself to the girl, who was holding what he now recognized to be a HypnoSims V15 HoloTable, which he knew was a very old model indeed. “My name’s Gray, by the way. What’s yours?”

  But Gray’s introduction prompted only a sideways glance from the girl before she lowered her head close to the holotable and pressed a glowing glyph on the device, which elicited a low-pitched jingle before humming with whirr. A circular lens in the middle of the box opened as if it were some sort of reptile’s eye, and from this eye, a blue light burst forth, illuminating both the girl’s creamy face and the maze-like ceiling above her. The blue light weaved and warbled before coalescing into a nondescript man in heavy armor, holding a shield in one hand and a spear in the other, its tip pointed at the chest of a mighty dragon towering above him. The entire hologram played out over the little girl’s lap, which happened to be about the size of it. At first, the image was only blue, but it soon flickered into full color, highlighting the man’s red-and-gold armor and the dragon’s scaly brown-and-green hide. The man and the dragon started trading blows: jab, fire, guard, jab, fire, guard, jab, fire, guard. The girl reared back, a huge grin on her face.

  The holotable started to speak, its voice clear and charged with valor: WELCOME TO THE PANTHEON OF POWER! A logo with very powerful P’s faded in as a shimmering gold treasure box spiraled into view, obstructing both the man and the dragon, who continued to battle in the background. CLAIM YOUR DAILY TREASURE BOX! The girl lifted her thin wrist and tapped the holographic box; the box opened, revealing an artistic animation of a nude man with flowing electrical wires instead of hair soaring through a red ash sky atop a mechanical horse with clockwork wings; the man was holding skyward a thick triangular blade, and the tip of this blade shone bright. BELLEROPHON PEGASUS FORM B! A heavy sigh escaped the girl’s lips, but before she had a chance to dwell, a heart-shaped box with a rose-tipped lever burst into view. FIND TRUE LOVE DURING THIS MONTH OF ROMANCE! The girl tapped the rose-tipped lever, and it cranked with a glittery tune before opening to reveal a gorgeous fair-skinned woman with hair of golden weave wearing a sleeveless robe that alternated epileptic between blue and purple; the woman’s arms were chromatic and iridescent as she softly strummed a lyre, the frame of which resembled animatronic snakes with the heads of men attempting to lick each other’s forked tongues; her music wafted momentary bliss throughout the entire room. HARMONIA LYRIST FORM C! Timony stared into the hologram as if dumfounded for a moment before shaking her head. “C-tier? Really? I can never pull a good healer class Goddess.” She started grumbling to herself as she tapped the image away, which caused a holo starship to zoom into view; it was highly curved and black with golden accents, three burst engines like massive buttocks on the back of it spitting blue and white flame; there were golden particles raining down from the belly of the starship, and these particles shimmered into obscurity as they reached the holotable itself. STARSHIP OLYMPUS RAINS FORTUNE UPON YOU! TAP! TAP! TAP! BONUS PULL! Timony’s eyes lit up—”oh oh oh!”—and she tapped the starship aggressively; each tap increased the particles before the starship abruptly zoomed out of view, leaving only a single glistening chest behind, which opened to the image of a man sitting on a throne, the cushions of which were a dark yellow; there was a spotlight on the man; he was dressed in black slacks and an Old Earth sports jacket over a white dress shirt topped with a dark bowtie; he sat confidently with one hand resting upon his chin, a pensive frown painted across his pale, clean-shaven face, which was framed by a jawline that was sculpture-esque yet just pudgy enough to appear youthful; his parted hair was as dark as the jacket he wore and fell in waves right below his brow, and the loose strands of hair, which would normally fall over his pointed ears, were tucked behind those ears; by all metrics, the man was incredibly handsome as he sat there on his dark throne, puffing pensively on a thin black tube, which lit yellow at the tip with every drag before the man released clouds of smoke from his mouth as a lazy dragon would, and some of these clouds were shaped like lightning bolts and rings and stars; and although the man was wrapped in smoke, his deep blue eyes pierced right through the fog with paralytic gaze. ZEUS PALE KING FORM S. Timony’s eyes went wide, “My first Zeus! And S-tier, too! I can’t believe it! Serge’s going to be so jealous. This is going to be my new party lead, for sure for sure for sure!” She bounced in place on the sofa before tapping Zeus away, which caused yet another holo to abruptly flash into view: a calendar bordered by spiral columns and flowers, all of which looked completely flat when viewed from certain angles. CONSECUTIVE LOGIN ROLL; ONLY 5C TO BOOST YOUR ODDS. Timony tapped 5C, which jingled, and then the calendar spun wildly as it was overtaken by artwork of a feminine figure wearing a full suit of close-fitting purple armor accented with scales and webbing, complete with a long black cape that whipped about behind her; she wore a dark purple helmet shaped in the likeness of a dragon’s head, which covered only the top half of her face, thus revealing her fair skin and full pink lips below the draconic visor which itself was inset with two orbs of white; her hair, which was the color of fresh rust, flowed from the back of the helmet like a river of blood, stopping just short of her curved posterior; her right arm was down by her side, and in her hand, she held the shaft of a massive black lance that extended far behind her; the blade of the lance was no blade at all, but instead, a pyramid of blue light. ATHENA PARTISAN FORM F. Timony’s jaw dropped in horror. “F-tier? That’s what my 5C gets me? F-tier?” she mumbled as she tapped at the dragon dame, which prompted yet another box to appear, followed by yet another heroic proclamation, followed by yet more tapping, followed by more heroic proclamations, and so on and so forth.

  Gray could hear the heroic proclamations booming from behind him as he knocked on the sleek metal of Ellie’s bedroom door. PAN FLUTIST FORM F. There was no answer. Gray knocked again. SACRIFICE OF TROY B. There was still no answer. “Hey, it’s Gray. Just c—” TYCHE BLESSED: ROLL AGAIN! Gray’s ear twitched as Timony blurted out some sort of nonsense word. “I was just checking on you,” Gray repeated, raising his voice as he pushed his face closer to the metal. About thirty seconds passed before he turned his back to the door and saw both Gigi and Jules staring at him, looking concerned in tandem, while Timony was still just tapping away.

  FINAL ROLL. Angels on high. “C’mon.” Shimmering fountains. “C’mon.” A casket creaking. “C’mon, C’mon.” An explosion of glitter. A fanfare. JASON UNDEAD FORM D. Timony fell silent, and then, as if in the blink of an eye, she bounced herself to a standing position atop the sofa, flailing the holotable in her hand, which flickered holograms wildly about the room as if there were a psychedelic light show going on. “GACKING GAME GACKING SUCKS I CAN’T EVEN DRAW A GACKING A-TIER HEALER FOR GACK’S SAKE. ORPHIC GARBAGE.” Then the holotable was flung across the room, narrowly missing Jules’ head, before crashing into a wall with a loud clang, bouncing once on the hard floor, and landing upright, projecting the man and the dragon once more as if nothing at all had happened.

  “Timony! Language! Your mama may let you act like that, but not around here!” Gigi rasped forward with a surprising amount of spunk for someone her age, then snatched the holotable off the floor and placed it back on the sofa next to Timony, who had done just as Gigi said, for she was now sitting as rigid as a plank of synthetic wood.

  “Do you have any idea how much those things cost? No respect for your mama or anything!” Gigi gesticulated between light coughing.

  Timony hung her head low before meekly trying to get a word in. “It’s black vanadiu—”

  “Black vanawhatnow? That’s not the point! The point is personal responsibility. Respect for your stuff and your things and all that. Think about all the hard work your mama put in just to buy you that; you should think of that thing as if it’s your mama; instead of that holotable sitting right there on that sofa right there—it’s your mama. You just threw your mama. The whole idea of your mama: thrown. Right against the wall.” Gigi shook her head. “Not a care in the world.”

  “Mama didn’t buy this for me, she ain’t got any credits. I stol—”

  But Gigi wasn’t listening. “And those crystals cost a small fortune, you know. If you damaged that crystal, oh girl, you know you’d be in a world of hurt trying to get another one. Say bye-bye to your Power People Pantheon or your Pantheon Peoples or your—well, you know what I mean.”

  Gray had forgotten about Ellie, all pent up in her room, silent; he was caught up in Gigi’s lecture, and he found it hard to remain stoic in the face of the whole thing; an odd expression—something like empathy, if raw empathy could be an expression—formed on his face as images of his own mother flashed through his mind; the memories kept pouring in, to the point that it became just too much, and he had to close his eyes as if to tune it out.

  “Alright, alright. I’m done. Here.” Gigi removed a palm-sized bar wrapped in crunchy foil laminate from her pants pocket and held it out to Timony. “Have yourself a biobar. You look famished.”

  Timony lifted her head, a weak smile forming on her lips. “You just having these in your pocket?” She grabbed the bar from Gigi and, as she did so, noticed Gray, just standing there with his eyes closed. “Hey, Messy Head, what’s the sad face?”

  Gray looked to his left and then to his right. “Messy Head?”

  Jules stepped from the kitchen corner, placing a gloveless hand on Gray’s head, ruffling that wild bush of hair. “Gray’s hair, slayer of combs. I quite like it.”

  Gray jerked his head away. “Whatever.” He toughly rubbed his nose. “Just reminded me of someone, is all.”

  Jules nodded but said nothing. Gigi moved to the kitchen, opened and closed the cold box, and then returned with a clear bottle of water, which she placed on the small triangular end table near the sofa. Gray was looking away from the whole scene, hiding what he felt was something like embarrassment all over his face. There was an odd quiet before the sound of Timony gulping water interrupted the silence.

  “Anyway.” Gray cleared his throat.

  Jules stood there all alien in the quiet, twirling strands of blonde hair around their finger before letting them go, watching them twist like brief tornadoes before settling into slightly wavier strands.

  “Yeah, anyway.” Timony shot a glance at Jules. “Who’s the pretty girl?”

  “My name is Jules.” They blinked. “Do you like music, Timo—”

  “Girl? You’re a woman?” Gigi’s shock overtook her manners.

  Gray’s mental embarrassment evaporated as he cast a dubious look at everyone around the room.

  Jules thought about Gigi’s question for a moment, then responded in a tone bordering on melody. “All things are interdependent—you and I and everything,” their last syllable trailing off like the final note of a song.

  There was a another brief silence.

  “What the gack does that mean?!” Timony blurted before being slapped on the back of the head by Gigi as she was returning to the kitchen. The young girl grumbled as she rubbed the back of her head before grabbing the holotable and burying her face deep in the glow of the holo menu.

  Jules stood there with an ambiguous wave on their lips before running a hand through their blonde hair, which fell very messy down the middle. Then they turned to Gray, who was digging one hand through a coat pocket in an unassuming manner. Jules looked back at Ellie’s bedroom door before turning back to Gray. “Let me try,” they said as they turned to approach the door.

  Gray took two steps toward the sofa, hovering over Timony like a storm cloud. “Hey—mind if I borrow your holotable?” He said as faint knocking could be heard behind the digital horns and strings and clashing steel and explosions all booming from the holotable speakers.

  “Hades no,” Timony said without looking up. “I’m in the middle of a Tier 8 raid. I can’t just quit.” She lurched forward, her young face glowing as she peered into a war-torn woodland with flaming trees and craters and a lake with some sort of tentacle monster coming out of it and all the rest, all isometric on a grid. Four units outlined in blue sat on the right side of the map, six in red on the left, all idling in different cool poses. “And I’m outnumbered. So no. Go away, Messy Head.”

  Gray remained unassuming and poised all cool. “Well, what if—” he trailed off as he saw Gigi—who was just fidgeting with a synthetic flower pot dangling from a pipe on the kitchen ceiling—turn toward them in an annoyed motherly kind of way, as if she was about to go off on Timony once more, but Gray subtly gestured to her with two fingers, causing Gigi to nod and turn her attention back to her flower pot.

  Gray continued. “What if I could get you a free pull?”

  Timony was quiet for a moment, then twirled her wrist above the holotable, which stopped all animation and caused a bright white “PAUSE” with a powerful P to appear over her lap. She then looked up at the one she called Messy Head, a single thick eyebrow raised. “How?”

  Gray stretched a single hand up to Timony’s right ear, and she responded by incredulously pulling her head back into the sofa cushion, which momentarily caused her chin to blob into her neck. “Hey, man! What you doing? Back o—”

  Gray flashed his wrist back from behind Timony’s ear, and wedged there between his index and middle was a thin plastic card. He then twisted his wrist to reveal the image on the front of the card; a young woman surrounded by treasure caskets of various colors, a ring of gold framed the woman’s head, and she held a sceptre which was flowing with rainbow electricity and adorned at the head with a massive letter C. The words Pantheon of Power were above the woman while little flashing C’s danced all around her.

  “Oh oh oh!” Timony might as well have been drooling.

  “It’s yours—just let me borrow your table for about ten minutes.” Gray’s stoicism was replaced by a childlike grin as he deftly moved his arm around, dodging Timony’s clumsy attempts at snatching the card out of his hand. “You’re not going to get it any other wa—”

  Timony suddenly launched off the sofa at Gray, who smoothly stepped to the side, causing Timony to land face down into the gunmetal floor. The clank of her hard skull banging the metal rang for a moment before being drown out by soft groans.

  Gray’s grin was now a rare smile. “I told you, you’re not going to get it any oth—”

  Gigi burst onto the scene. “Timony! Just what do you think you’re doing acting like that? Wild child! Now, if your mama would ever let me talk to her—or see her, for that matter—I would make sure to tell her to give you a proper—”

  Gray laughed true for the first time in a long time, three deep ha’s. “Gigi, it’s fine. Let her be.” The old woman gave Gray the side eye then coughed then waddled off to the kitchen, mumbling something.

  Meanwhile, Timony had managed to lift herself to her knees, picking up the holotable that had fallen during her desperate lunge. She was growling softly, which was like a low rumble in the room’s ambiance, as if an aggravated Old Earth cat had somehow gotten loose. Then, she plopped herself down on the sofa. The growl turned into a sigh of defeat.

  “Well?” Gray said, now tauntingly waving the card back and forth.

  Timony snapped back. “Fine, but only for ten minutes, and only after I finish my match.” She paused, looked down at the paused holotable, then back up. “Messy Head.”

  Gray said nothing as he looked at the girl, who looked back with those big dark eyes that were ever so cloudy and very slanted, the bitterness of defeat still lingering. But when Gray’s expression softened into something like a brotherly gaze, Timony’s expression softened in kind. Gray then took one step, placed the card face down on the end table, and then took two steps back to the kitchen. Timony, meanwhile, unpaused her game, which started with the horns and strings and clashing of metal and explosions once more.

  Gigi turned to the young man. “That was well played. Surprised me. Thought for a second you were some kinda devil or something. But somehow I knew Ellie wouldn’t bring any devils home. That look in your eye when you caught me earlier, you know. Real strange. I don’t know what it was. But no devil could pull that off with little Timony. Never seen her looking like that or acting like that with someone before. You got kids or something? You look too young. But you seem to have the knack.”

  Gray blinked. He then gestured at the cold box, which Gigi gestured back to, so he opened it and removed a plastic bottle of water and a biobar. “Don’t be so sure about devils,” he paused to twist the cap off the water and take a sip, “they come in all shapes and sizes, you know.” He shifted his dark eyes at Gigi with an exaggerated slant, as if trying to scare her in some cartoonish way, but this only prompted a laugh from the old woman.

  “I know you now. You’re no devil,” Gigi said, serious like cardiac arrest. This seriousness caught Gray off-guard, and in an attempt to seem unaffected, he leaned back against the counter and focused on the back of Timony’s head, which was shifting back and forth as she tapped and waved at the holotable while sounds were going off.

  There was a quiet between them for a moment before Gray spoke. “My mom was like that.”

  Gigi was the one blinking now, clearly confused.

  “I could see it, in Timony’s eyes.”

  Gigi tilted her head slightly.

  “My mom. Crashed. Hard.”

  “But your eyes are as clear as mud, not a cloud in sight.”

  “She started using just after I was born.”

  Gigi watched the dark youth intently.

  “How you talked to Timony, she would talk to me like that too,” Gray said, “on her good days.”

  The messy-haired young man fiddled with the crinkly wrapper of the biobar, then, after much crunching, managed to pull it halfway down to reveal the gray block of bio-matter underneath. He took a small bite, winced, swallowed, then took a big gulp of water to wash it down. “Always hated the taste of these things. Especially these blank label ones. What flavor is this supposed to be anyway?”

  Gigi—taken aback by the non sequitur—did a double-take between Gray and the biobar and back again. “Oh, the bar?”

  Gray took another bite, didn’t even chew this time, just swallowed it whole. “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. I think the flavorless ones. But even flavorless has a flavor, I suppose. It’s all we can afford with the hecatinium mining job I got, borrow Ellie’s headset to control the below-ground bots. Ellie does it part-time, too, you know. Between school. Mostly do maintenance on the machinery down there, sometimes help with the water pumps too. Doesn’t pay too well. Anyway. They say those biobars have all the nutrients we need to survive, but you always still feel kinda empty after eating them, don’t you? Lenny one time joked that they were made of these things called cockroaches, or something, but actually, I don’t think he was joking. Always sounds like he’s joking, though. He says they’re Old Earth bugs that can survive anything, which makes no sense, no bugs on Thessaly, makes you wonder why they’re even taught in elementary. What’s the point of learning about some old dead planet? Anyway, Lenny keeps going on and on and on with the conspiracies, says people have seen bugs outside the complex, even in the bubble, but that’s just crazy talk. Hades, I don’t know anyone who’s been outside of the bubble, much less outside of the complex, but Lenny, you know Lenny, he’s always going on—”

  “Stop,” Gray said abruptly, glaring. “And no, I don’t know Lenny. Why would I kno—”

  Timony suddenly WOO HOO’D, which was followed by a fanfare of horns and sparkle sound effects from the holotable, flashing a rainbow of colors across the pipes on the ceiling above her. “This Zeus is way overpowered,” the young girl blurted out to no one in particular.

  Gray and Gigi turned vis-à-vis wearing an identical smile.

  They laughed.


  Ellie sat there upon the lip of a verdant coastal shelf, surrounded by a rainbow of flowers, her arms wrapped around her knees, her head slightly down in the gap between. An occasional breeze tossed her rusty hair to and fro as she gazed out at an endless blue, watching white V’s circle above crystal-clear waves cresting into the foggy distance. A solitary seagull perched merely a few feet away from her, both of them right there on the edge of the fall.

  “I just don’t know why he did it.”

  An ambiguous voice drifted in upon the wind: “I’m having trouble manifesting.”

  “I can take care of myself, you know…” Ellie’s last word trailed off as she shifted her gaze to a honeysuckle blooming in real time by her feet.

  “I know you can.” The voice seemed to be coming from nowhere in particular; it was just floating there, part of the ambiance. “I still can’t manifest.”

  “It’s a single-user instance,” Ellie said with detached matter-of-factness.

  “There’s this Old Earth nursery rhyme—seems appropriate—goes something like,” the voice spoke in tune, “yipee, you can’t see me, b—”

  “—ut I can you.” Ellie mumbled the end of the lyric.

  “Did you program this place?” The voice seemed to come from every direction.

  Ellie idly tapped her bare feet together. “Yeah. I come here sometimes.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s whatever.”

  “What isn’t whatever?”

  “The man.”

  “Gray?”

  “No.”

  “Who, then?”

  “The mouse.”

  Silence.

  “I killed him.”

  Silence.

  “He’s dead.”

  Silence.

  “And I just left his body there.”

  “He was…”

  “He was a person.”

  “Of course, but…”

  “And he had a mom and a dad and maybe even kids.”

  Silence.

  “Don’t you feel anything?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you seem so fine with everything? So playfully oblivious.”

  “I have to be.”

  “You have to?”

  “I thought it was love, but it’s far beyond that.”

  Silence.

  “I’ve known him for as long as I can remember.”

  “How long is that?”

  “Maybe thirteen years or so.”

  “You’ve known him that long?”

  “He… he saved me.”

  “From the Consortium?”

  “From everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “From myself.”

  Silence.

  “A few minutes before you and I met… he saved me then, too.”

  “Seems like he saves anyone prettier than himself.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  Silence.

  “It was his idea… he couldn’t let you go alone.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t say it, but I could tell he felt responsible.”

  There was a long silence before Ellie responded: “And now I feel responsible—can’t you see that?”

  “Yipee, you can’t see me…”

  “And now I’m in his debt.”

  “No, he doesn’t see it that way—you’re free.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I, Julian?”

  “Is there anyone else?”

  “That’s a good question.”

  “Stop it.”

  Silence.

  “What I meant was—are you free?”

  “I don’t…”

  “Free from him, I mean.”

  There was a long pause before the voice continued. “I…”

  “You…?”

  “This dictionary never has a word for the way I’m feeling.”

  “But there’s no dictionary coded into this simulation.”

  The disembodied voice responded with a whistle that wisped into a soft hum, followed by the gentle plucking of guitar strings—three or four notes alternated somewhere between melancholic and euphoric; and, in short time, the low hum harmonized with the guitar melody. The ringing of each note reminded Ellie of what the muted booms of stars going nova in galaxies far far away might sound like, each star leaving behind a black hole, sucking in all the nearby planets. But then, the chorus of the song sped up, as if in fast rewind, like each of those dead stars were reverting back into protostars, only to nova once more in the verse. And all these mental images brought Ellie’s emerald eyes to a close. The language of her mind became lost, a gravitational whirlpool of emotion that could no longer be translated into words, and these feelings swirled like those same planets swirling into black holes for several minutes before the melody drifted off on the synthetic wind.

  “That was beautiful,” Ellie mumbled before opening her eyes to the sight of a dozen seagulls all perched at the fall. “What’s it called?”

  The voice returned. “I don’t know—the title has been lost to time, but I call it ‘Something Lost, Something Returned.’”

  “Well, then, it’s not lost—is it?”

  There was brief silence before the voice returned. “Thank you for fixing my Tone Gauntlet.”

  “Of course—that’s why you’re both here, isn’t it?”

  “You offered.”

  Ellie’s lips curled into a weak smile, but she remained silent.

  “What will you do now?”

  Silence.

  “Whatever you do, I’m glad that I got to meet you, Ellie.”

  Ellie was quiet a moment before shifting her gaze to the electric blue. “I’m glad…” but before she could finish her sentence, she felt a small pit in her stomach, like the absence of something; somehow she knew the voice was gone. And she was left sitting there, alone, staring out into the endless blue. The seagulls that once perched there along the fall had all taken flight, become little V’s out there in the foggy distance.

  Ellie took a moment to soak it all in, releasing her knees as she rested her palms on the damp grass behind her. She repeated the words the voice had spoken to her: “What will you do now?” and then took a deep breath before exhaling that same breath, and then, like a whim on the wind, hopped to her feet and took off in a sprint toward the ledge. As she approached the fall, she closed her eyes and leapt with all her might. She felt the air against her face, her hair dancing wildly upon the wind before it was pushed upward by the fall. The primal part of her brain kicked in, flooding her body with adrenaline as her heart rate sped up and her breathing quickened, but as the logical part of her brain took over, she soon relaxed and splayed her limbs out like a starfish, twirling herself slowly like a dying leaf falling from an Old Earth oak. When she finally opened her eyes, she realized she was much closer to the water than she had expected, which spurred some light panic before she crossed her left hand over to her right, tapped her palm in a rhythmic pattern, and mumbled something inaudible against the wind. With the final tap, glowing rings of yellow materialized, forming a pipe around her, and then the rings collapsed in on themselves, and, just like that, Ellie was gone.

  The seagulls and the waves were gone too.

  When Ellie opened her eyes, she was standing inside The Polytechnic of Chrysame, in the back of a lecture hall; the spiraled white columns and open-air clerestories letting in pillars of light and students donned in white-and-gold robes were a dead giveaway. The students were motionless as she lightly stepped down tiers of steps toward the main lecture stage, where a professor—a middle-aged woman in black robes with dark hair accented with wisps of gray—stood frozen, pointing up at a massive board displaying an image of space dotted with little stars. There was one massive white star in the middle, which Ellie figured to be a white dwarf star, but, despite her assurance, she looked puzzled. “Is this the wrong recording?” Then she looked far above the board at a frozen marquee—LATTICE 6–BLOCK 11—and sighed. “Maybe a bug in the telepipe protocol,” she muttered as she reached for her palm. But before tapping her palm, she paused, looked up at the white dwarf star again, and then lowered her hand; curiosity had gotten the better of her.

  “Play.”

  The professor lowered her arm, then addressed the class, looking right past Ellie, who was standing right there, staring up at the white star on the board. “Consider the black hole, spacetime’s most powerful celestial object—not even an object, really, more a rip in the fabric of the known universe, perhaps even beyond the known universe, into places completely unknown to mortals, places that maybe could not even be called places at all; places only true gods know, if any such beings exist. The black hole, something that, even now, we are still unable to fully explain without branching off into multiple theories of physics and metaphysics and sometimes—like in the case of the Scions of Singularity—even religious cults, just to explain these anomalous holes in space. This is what makes the fact that we have created one—a black hole—so strange. As you all know from our course last semester on the early scientific experiments conducted by The Great Witch Queen, Maeve Hecate—may she bless us all—even a black hole the size of a grain of sand can destroy an entire continent. And we also know that each of Hecate’s—may she bless us all—attempts to contain even the smallest of black holes were met with failure; even hecatinium, the most powerful of the known elements, could not contain a black hole, as every hecatinium barrier erected around a black hole was itself drawn into the hole, thus making the black hole stronger, and every barrier around those barriers was sucked in as well, and every barrier around even those barriers was sucked in also, and so on and so forth. Thus, the very act of trying to contain a black hole only makes it stronger. And, as you all know—because, if you didn’t, you would have failed last semester’s final exam and thus would not be here to hear this lecture—the only way that The Great Witch Queen, may she bless us all, was able to stop the black hole she had created was by creating another black hole of equal magnitude, thus each black hole canceling the other out; they effectively sucked each other into oblivion.” (Laughter erupted from the class at this last statement.) “The point I am trying to get across is that these black holes are more powerful than anything we currently utilize today on Thessaly; and the point of that point is to illustrate the sheer destructive force of these magnificent spacetime anomalies. And, as a follow-up, I want you all to consider for a moment: what if a black hole could be reversed? What would that look like?”

  There was a break in the lecture as the professor flicked her wrist at the board behind her. The white dwarf star started to warble and flicker, then it solidified, and, as if in the blink of an eye, the entire board flashed white and stayed that way for some time before, slowly, the whiteness started to fade into blackness. Little specks of color—stars—started to dot the inky void. Ellie, standing there transfixed by the whole thing, slowly realized that she was watching the creation of an entire cosmos on fast-forward. The video zoomed through various planets and moons before magnifying in on a lush blue-green planet. But before the animation could finish, the professor flicked her wrist, and the video paused.

  The professor turned back to the class. “Who can tell me what that was?”

  Students started raising their hands, spotlights shining down as the professor pointed at them, one by one.

  “Looked like a star going nova.”

  “The theorized Hecatinium Wave?”

  “May I be excused? I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Old cosmology, looked like the Big Bang, I think?”

  “Definitely a singularity event of some kind.”

  “I really need to go to the bathroom.”

  “A black hole in reverse, like you said?”

  The professor nodded at that last one. “Yes, yes, but what’s the name for it? Anyone know?”

  A small boy with shaggy silver hair that framed his pudgy, rosy face raised his hand; his head barely poked up above his arm desk. The boy—whom Ellie had never seen before—looked far too young to be enrolled at The Polytechnic of Chrysame. The professor pointed at the boy without even a subtle change in expression. The spotlight reflected off the boy’s odd gray eyes as he spoke, “That was a visualization of a white hole—highly theoretical, of course.”

  The professor nodded. “That’s corr–”

  “Really more of a legend or a myth than a scientific theory, however, as a white hole has neither been observed nor mathematically computed. Even Maeve Hecate—” The boy was interrupted by the professor, who muttered, “May she bless us all,” before pausing to allow the boy to continue, which he did with nasally, mid-pitched clarity: “As I was saying, she was unable to produce even a single white hole, even with gravity engines powered by high concentrations of hecatinium. The idea, however, is that a white hole acts in the opposite manner of a black hole; to put it in layman’s terms—which this class desperately needs—a black hole consumes, whereas a white hole creates. It’s theorized that the existence of black holes necessitates the existence of white holes, for where else would all the black-hole-consumed matter go? But, alas, not a single white hole has been observed, so—again—this is all more of a legend or a myth, really, a fantasy, and I don’t know why we’re even learn—”

  “Very good, Ptolemy,” the professor said abruptly, cutting the boy off. She then turned to the board, waving her wrist, which caused all the events played out earlier to rewind at high speed back into the white mass that earlier Ellie had mistakenly believed to be a white dwarf star. “The video is meant to illustrate not only the obvious—that being, the white hole ejecting energy and matter into the cosmos—but also that, when played in reverse, the white hole effectively becomes a black hole, sucking everything back into itself; the flow of time altering its very nature; and, in this way, one could think of a white hole as a black hole backwards. One can then extrapolate that a white hole is something like a seed, or a womb, or, figuratively, like an idea waiting to be acted upon. But perhaps the best analogy would be that a white hole is like an egg, like a cosmic eg—”

01010100 01001000 01000101 00100000 01000101 01000111 01000111 00100000 01010111 01000001 01001001 01010100 01010011 00100000 00110010 00110001 11000010 10110000 00110010 00110100 11100010 10000000 10110010 00110000 11100010 10000000 10110011 01001110 00100000 00111000 00111001 11000010 10110000 00110011 00110001 11100010 10000000 10110010 00110000 11100010 10000000 10110011 01010111

  The environment around Ellie started to rip and tear; the color of the surrounding walls melted like paint into a black void beneath her, and the space around her danced with purple ones and zeroes that didn’t feel random at all. Then a harsh noise rang out, causing Ellie to cover her ears, but somehow this only made the noise worse. Before she could react further, the space around her flickered and shifted into another lecture hall, where Socrates stood frozen before a massive whiteboard.

  Ellie lowered her hands, her face a picture of perplexity as she scanned the new room. A shiver ran down her spine when she saw herself sitting among the rows of seats in the middle of the lecture hall, a bird perched on the back of her seat. She saw Arc, too, looking as full of scorn as ever, his eyes trained on her own simulacrum. She had never quite gotten used to seeing herself in the third person.

  “Play.”

  Socrates animated; the old man flicked his wrist, and the board was suddenly consumed by black lettering outlining a lengthy assignment. “This week, I would like you to complete two essays: the first on which utilitarian system of ethics you think leads to the most positive outcomes, and the second on a time in your life when you had to use that same utilitarian system, outlining the reason and outcome. If you can't think of a time, consider an event in the past when you could have used your chosen utilitarian system, and then extrapolate on that.”

  When the old professor finished outlining the assignment, Arc noticed Ellie’s avatar had lost its features and was now just a blue-light outline. He blurted out, “Ellie’s glitching out again,” accentuated afterward with a single mocking “ha!” before continuing, “Complexer HyperNet, poor girl.” Arc’s toxic tone was met with silence from his peers, so he again started with the forced laughs as he nervously looked to the students around him, who, out of loyalty (or fear), started laughing along with him. Ellie—the real Ellie—never noticed all of Arc’s subtle pleas for attention until just now from the outside looking in.

  “Idiot,” Ellie mumbled, then tapped her palm six times in an odd rhythmic pattern, which caused the scene to slowly start fading.

  As the scene faded, the students’ forced laughter continued. “Quiet!” Socrates shouted before aggressively flicking the contents of the board away, leaving nothing but a massive blankness floating behind him. Then, taking a deep breath, he addressed the class once more, his volume fading in time with the image: “The recording is available for any student who attended the class, as always.” And, with the scene nearly black, the old professor looked up from his desk, realizing that the students were still sitting there, awkwardly staring at him. “Right, right—you’re all dismissed.”

You can now safely eject.


  Gray sat upon the sofa with the holotable in his lap just as Jules—looking more ambiguous than ever—closed the thick metal door behind them, their right hand now fitted with a thick fingerless glove, the palm of which pulsed with a faint blue ring of light. Gray looked up from the holotable, which was not projecting anything at this moment. “Well, what did she say?”

  Gigi turned to look at Jules from her spot in the kitchen. “Is she OK?”

  “She’s OK, she’s just—”

  Just then, a loud whirring like a sonic flush could be heard throughout the small room, and, as the noise trailed off, Timony burst through a metal door in the corner and blurted out, “You done yet?!” as she pranced up behind the sofa, leaning her head over the back of it, real close to Gray’s, and stared down at the holotable.

  “Patience,” Gray muttered as he placed his hand into his coat and pulled out a small rectangular stick enclosed in a dark blue casing with a single connector poking out from the bottom. He felt around the side of the holotable, feeling for a port, and, when he found one, slotted the stick into it, which was followed by a soft chime.

  “Patience? I’ve been in the sonic for, like, five minutes! What have you been doing out here? C’mon, Messy Head!” She reared her head back as if she were pulling away but then suddenly launched over the back of the couch in a desperate attempt to grab the holotable; but Gray bounced to his feet just as suddenly, his long coat swirling as if Gray himself were the eye of a typhoon, causing Timony to fall flat on her face yet again. And when Timony looked up, Gray was holding the holotable under one arm while tauntingly holding the thin plastic card from before with his free hand.

  “Hey! You gave that to me!” Timony shouted.

  “Should have used it while you had the chance.” Gray spun the card in his finger, slid it into the depths of his coat.

  “Not fair!”

  “What the Gods giveth, they also taketh away.”

  Timony rolled over on the hard metal floor then let out an exaggerated sigh.

  Gray gave one of his dark smiles then spoke, “You can have it when I’m done.”

  Jules watched the scene with a soft smile, as they had not seen Gray this playful in a long time.

  Gray took one wide step right over Timony to the sofa and sat down, placing the holotable back on his lap before waving his hand over it. A three-dimensional woman with bobbed blonde hair wearing a suit and tie flickered into view right above Gray’s lap; to her left was a waterfall of green text, and to her right was a zoomed-out image of a sandy landscape scarred by a large smoldering crater that was emitting thick plumes of smoke. The woman lifted her arm to point at the image of the crater, which was like a window into another world right by her head. And then she spoke in a tone that was intonated and calm:

And in latest news from the surface, complexes across the entire northern hemisphere are experiencing outages due to a meteorite impact that occurred at approximately 8:30 PM TST. The meteorite’s impact zone was calculated as being located between Spire64 and a derelict AA Facility just outside Complex 42’s bubble, which has since been reported from sources inside the complex as being, quote-unquote, barely holding. The Star Touched Sentinels’ sources aboard the scientific research vessel, Starship Scylla, have reported that the meteorite is emitting abnormally high levels of H-radiation despite its small size and is of special interest to the Thessalonian Triumvirate, who have ordered its immediate retrieval, citing matters of planetary security. And, according to our sources, within the coming hours, a small force—overseen by the Mistress of War, Athena—will be dispatched to the surface to retrieve the meteorite. When asked why a military force is needed, the Thessalonian Council refused to give specifics but did state that dispatches to the surface are typically handled by the military branch, insisting that this was routine procedure. In the meantime, Aides autonomous droids have been mobilized to repair the damage to Spire64, and the surface outages are expected to end at approximately 12:30 AM TST. And in other news, the Pale King himself will be making a visit to the garden district of the Starship Athens to deliver—

  “Boring!”

  Timony leapt at Gray, who was forced to perform a complicated backward flip over the back of the sofa just to avoid her, sending Timony face-first into the sofa with a mouthful of cushion. The holotable fell to the floor, and Timony hurriedly picked it up and plopped herself down on the sofa; she then placed her hand on the side table to grab the card, only to be reminded that Gray had taken it moments earlier.

  Jules, who had been in the perfect position to prevent all this, chose to do nothing except cover their mouth in a poor attempt to hide silent laughter.

  Gray rose from behind the sofa with a cross look on his face. He patted his coat before looking down at Timony. “Why did you think that was a good idea?”

  “Who cares about some stupid meteor? I’ve got daily missions to complete,” Timony snapped back. She had already booted up Pantheon of Power and was tapping her way through the menus. There was a brief pause before she turned her upper half to look at Gray. “Can I have the card now?”

  Gray just stood there. “That meteorite could buy you a place on a starship, young lady.” He then flicked the card back between his fingers. “Why shouldn’t I just destroy it?” He flicked again, and the card was gone.

  “If you do that, I’m telling Ellie that you were mean to me, and she’ll never ever let you come over again,” the young girl said with an exaggerated pout on her face.

  “We can’t have that, I guess,” Gray responded as he flicked his wrist, seemingly materializing the card once more.

  Timony stared in wonder, “How do you keep doing that?”

  Gigi, coughing as she walked slowly to the door of her room, looked back at Gray and shook her head. “After how she’s been acting, you better not give her that card!”

  Timony bounced in place on the sofa, nearly shouting. “C’mon! He knows I’m just playing!”

  Jules stepped over to Gigi—who was doing these wobbly coughs—and placed a hand on her shoulder, offering help without saying a word.

  “I just need to lie down for a moment, in my room,” Gigi said quite frailly. “It was lovely meeting you both. I’m so glad that”—she coughed—“Ellie has some friends now.” A smile shone between wheezes. “Look out for her, Jules.” She started inching closer to her bedroom door, Jules helping her along. “That Messy Head,” Gigi said, laughing and coughing at the same time, “make sure”—another cough—“he doesn’t get her into any trouble.” She placed a hand on Jules’ hand and looked straight up at them. “He’s got that look in his eyes, you know.”

  Jules looked back at Gray—who was now playfully holding the card out to Timony only to pull it away when she reached for it—then back at Gigi. “I know.”

  Then Gigi opened her bedroom door and passed into the darkness of her room, leaving the door slightly cracked, only to poke her head out a moment later. “And Timony”—she coughed—“you stay here tonight! I don’t want you wandering around out there during an outage!”

  And just as Gigi’s door closed, Gray swiped the card away from Timony’s leaping grasp, landing the young girl flat on her face, a third time. “You’re going to need to do better than that if you want the card,” he grinned.

  “Not fair! You said I could have it!” Timony said as she crawled back onto the sofa.

  “That was before you attacked me.”

  “I was just playing,” she said meekly as she pulled the holotable back onto her lap.

  “Look, tell you what,” Gray dangled the card close to Timony’s face, “Jules and I have to get going,” he twirled the card, “but if you stay here and promise to keep an eye out on Gigi and Ellie for me,” he flicked the card into the air above him; it spun, “I’ll let you have the card.” Seconds later, the card fell perfectly between his fingers, then he twirled it once more. “Sound good?”

  Timony fiercely nodded. “Yes yes yes yes, I promise.”

  Gray nodded, then extended his hand to the young girl, who snatched the card and pulled it close to her chest. Gray blinked for a moment, and when his eyes opened, Timony was slicing the plastic card through the mouth of a dragon whose volumetric head was melon-sized in the young girl’s lap.

  The sound of angels on high.

  Gray started toward the portal; Jules took a few steps to catch up with him.

  Shimmering fountains.

  Gray turned to Jules. “What did she say?”

  A casket creaking.

  Jules: “She said you seem to have this habit of saving people prettier than you.”

  A glittery explosion.

  Gray's smiled wryly. “She’s not wrong.”

  Timony’s raised voice could be heard behind a static crackle: “Thing’s glitching out!”

  Gray, turning the portal key, glanced over at Jules. “If we can get our hands on that fallen star, kiss goodbye to that blood debt and literally everything else. This is our chance.”

  Jules heard Gigi’s voice in their mind as they recognized that look in Gray’s dark eyes. “Our chance...” they repeated before following Gray out of the raised portal and into the Terminal-B hallway.

  Perhaps it was for the best that Ellie wasn’t coming along with them, Jules thought.

  A fanfare went off—ATHENA PARTISAN FORM S—followed by a loud “WOO HOO!” Timony flailed her arms while bouncing up and down on the sofa, holographic artwork of Athena bobbing up and down along with her. She let out something that sounded like a SQUEE before spinning around on the sofa.

  “Hey, Messy Head! Guess what—”

  But Messy Head was gone.


Chapter 5 (Coming soon)

Artwork by ComicFarm.


#TheEgg #Fiction

 
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from Lucifer Orbis

I've spent the last two hours caring about the wonders of bank accounts, outstanding payments, various updates, invoice control, etc. I would love to have someone who could take care of this mess for me, but part of being an adult – so people say – is being able to control our own finances and everything else in our life. I am on the good path! Also, I'm happy living in a country where if I fail to remember some payment, I will get spammed with notifications. In my home country I'd get one notification and then, shortly after, a fine. Maybe things have changed now and I'm too absorbed in my life to notice it. I mean, I see things changing for the worse. No, this is not an introduction to some profound message. I'm too tired even for that.

When I was a child, my grandfather used to say that I was already born tired. He did it with a chuckle and tenderness that still fills my memories every time I think about him. My grandmother was the boss. There wasn't time for exhaustion and tiredness. We should go to school or work, be active, and don't think too much about our problems – we should solve them instead. I miss her resolve. I can imagine her in Heaven, with everyone lying on the clouds in peaceful meditation, and complaining that she has to do all the tasks and paperwork by herself. “You, get up and help me.” If you think Heaven is easy – not with my grandmother there. What could be written in those papers? Words no one cares about here below.

My divinely sweet cat has been very sick. We took him to the vet, they didn't find anything, but he has a chronic illness that, little by little, will take away years of his life. He lost a lot of weight, at least for a cat. I have much to learn with him. How to feel weakened, living with an incurable disease, and still being simultaneously happy and cranky. Our relationship has evolved greatly after I took care of him during one of his episodes. If he wants something, he will make himself understood, and when he doesn't, there's claws and teeth waiting for me. I'll gladly take everything if it means taking a glimpse at the enormous spirit inhabiting his eyes. When I arrive home, he's the first to run towards the door to congratulate me for having survived another day in the adult world. Then he jumps into the kitchen area and says “Human, I need food. Go to work.” But I know it isn't food that he wants; it's just his convoluted way of asking for cuddles, because he's as good at communicating feelings as I am. Then, cuddles it is, but not without some protest in between. Then comes the food, and of course he doesn't eat it because he had done it five minutes earlier.

In the end, I give him a big hug. “No-no, go away, you witch.” I put him on the floor, and he comes back straight after, asking for more pats. And then there's lap time, but carefully, because Your Highness doesn't like to be petted just like that. Things should be done with grace. One takes ten minutes to find the right position and then God help me if I need to get up because my feet got numb. There's a bit of protest and then, finally, relaxation. At this point, a book or a handheld console can rest on his back. As a proud owner/owned I was well trained in the art of staying still. Some movement is allowed, but what he really enjoys is conversation around him. The sound of our voices and the company (without touching!) is the best a King can have. The sound of talking about life, politics, culture, religion, everything is music, even if it's about the US. He's very attentive to everything I do. If it's bathroom time, “Better go and keep watch lest she gets swallowed by the toilet and I lose my source of food!”

I have another cat. A cat-cat. When I arrive home, he keeps napping, and doesn't even notice me. I fill him with kisses and he doesn't bite or scratch. He chirps a little, still half asleep, starts purring and falls asleep again. When it's time for cuddles, he doesn't understand the word “no.” How could I dare having any will of my own? The difference is that I can do whatever I want with him. I can go full Elmyra Duff on him and he loves it. His favourite place is the crook of my arm (before, it was my head, but even I have limits) and I use my other arm to pet him. All arms on deck and no books. But if the King dares to set paw on the bed at that precise moment, the Dragon is unleashed, and a fight ensues. Being able to defend the territory is of paramount importance to ensure the source of cuddles is well protected against intruders. Sometimes, even a simple eye contact for a short moment is enough to expel the intruder from the battleground. This little Dragon Snake has been with me for many years and now he's taking advantage of his brother's illness to steal his special food. He also stole his bed.

When there's fireworks outside or any other suspicious sound that could indicate a catastrophic hazard, the King rings the alarm, “Alarm! Alarm!!! Move, you fools!” running around plants, over the furniture, on window sills, to the front door and back; while the other one just sits and stares in pure ataraxia, watching the world burn around him, watching his brother panicking over nothing. Purr, purr, purr.

Reality is always More or less Than what we want Only we are always Equal to ourselves.

Ricardo Reis (excerpt) 1-07-1916

 
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from DigiVoyager

Blade

I will preface this article by saying that Blade is not the sort of game you should play if you loathe jank and that specific brand of friction found in many PS1 games that weren't always fair. Now if you are in search of that techno/drum'n'bass/jungle in a club feeling that seems to be synonymous with many of the titles found on the original PlayStation while you hunt vampires, this is the game for you. It is its own vibe, and that is one of the best compliments I can pay. This is coming from the sort of person who always contextualizes a title in the period it was made, and always gives them the benefit of the doubt. Did I enjoy playing this on my laptop (which must surely be a vampire laptop at this point, having refused to buckle to time) at midnight, whiling away the night shift? Yes. Would I recommend anyone else to play it? Maybe if you don't mind sloppily made PS1 games, and seek the aforementioned mood, play it at midnight, it's got a very different vibe. Rain helps, too.

There are some videos on YouTube about how it is an underrated game with some interesting mechanics at play, and was approached wrongly by reviewers. Personally, I feel its reception is appropriate, it is the very essence of a flawed game (it also runs quite terribly, play it in an emulator with the CPU% set higher for your own sake) – but it must be remembered flawed doesn't imply it's terrible, or worthless, merely that it has a few issues. Indeed, Blade is one of those games where if you just run around, particularly in the first two levels, you will probably get to the Game Over screen faster than the lizard oil dealers near our government hospitals dive into some unknown alley when they see the police. They are, of course, surprised to see that some policeman as a customer, merely a day later but in plainclothes.

Lizards Yes, this is a thing, Cannabis addicts found aplenty in our government hospitals and rehabilitation centers, have started to prefer these. The poor fellows having only just left Cannabis, get hooked on these instead. The economics of this business are quite sound, Lizards being easy and free to source in numerous quantities, but I digress.

The issue with Blade is a simple one, it is of balance. Some of the enemies you come across, like the Zombies, are tuned such that they do next to no damage. Others (ones armed with Machine Pistols, particularly) tend to melt through your health bar. And often, it's at just the right distance that they're out of camera. As such, the designers have applied duct tape to the cracks in the game, much like the Pakistani government has duct taped our economy by killing all imports, and causing massive inflation. Inflation in Blade's case would be the excessive amounts of health boosters and first aid kits found throughout the game. An easy solution to this issue, I suppose. And while normally, such a game would ramp up the combat intensity, that doesn't happen except for two levels, which, roughness aside do remain my favorite levels.

Blade, you see, must be played with a very “I am now travelling the streets that phone grabbing gangs also love to patrol, and they are not shy about firing the gun” attitude. Indeed, it is a vibe that can only be likened to having low HP as you traverse the dungeon, hoping the game doesn't throw a random encounter your way. And the ensuing depression that comes with a party wipe, and having a save game only at the very start.

In essence, one must move slowly, become the R1 (control type B – lock on) button's best friend, so that you're alert to any enemies hidden in the distance. One must also love the strafe button, and be ready to just peek out of a corner in this particularly unwieldy manner so as to get the drop on enemies. Move slowly, and survey repeatedly, and the game is more manageable; besides the occasional ambush that costs you 30 minutes of hard earned progress. At its core, it is an endurance game, as getting from one save point to another will require you to learn well the enemy placements, and plan accordingly. There is one issue however, the stamina meter. Blade is very slow to strafe, and back up, especially when the stamina bar (vertical bar on left) is yellow. That is why you pop Serums, to make Blade strafe and back up faster, my advice is to use them liberally as there are plenty of them throughout the game, any time it feels like a crowded fight or you need that edge, pop a Serum.

Chinatown Chinatown2 Chinatown. One of the more eye-pleasing locations in the game, there is a decent number. There are also some fun drum'n'bass, techno and such tracks in the game, but also some very odd choices.

See that gauge in the top corner? It fills when you hold the lock-on/target button, and when it reaches full capacity, it flashes for a very brief interval. Shooting as it flashes will get you a headshot, this is pretty much the key (and only) mechanic of the game. Land headshots, and you will save ammo and be rid of enemies far quicker than otherwise, making the game far harder. This mechanic doesn't matter as much for when you need to empty a clip or two of the Machine Pistol into the enemy, but it is still critical in the long run. It is a consistent mechanic in that once you have a feel for the timing, you won't mess up. The Shotgun fills the fastest, the Machine Pistol the slowest, the Handgun being somewhere in the middle. As for the money, you get it by killing enemies, and throughout the game you will find Resupply points (rarer than save points) that let you spend around $200-250 to get an assortment of random ammo and items.

View View2 Not bad visuals for a PS1 game, Blade has some nice looking environments, sadly the models are not as flattering.

Now, the strategic part of the game besides moving slowly and carefully and being ready to rain a Machine Pistol clip full of death on any enemies just in case, comes from the resource management.

You have a Katana, a Handgun (weapon of choice of our local phone bandits), a Machine Pistol, a Shotgun, and a Multi-launcher that fires Blades (think throwing stars, not the character), Bolts as well as Grenades.

The resource management comes in like so:

Handgun: Standard and Carbon bullets Machine Pistol, Standard, Carbon and Silver Shotgun: Standard, Silver + Explosive Shells Multi-launcher: Standard and Silver blades, Standard and Explosive bolts.

Now, the strategy comes from the fact that the enemies in this game are basically divided into 4 types:

Humans: Weak to Standard Monsters: Weak to Carbon Vampires: Weak to Silver Nitrate All: Weak to Explosive

So you will have to ration your ammo properly, as they are all separate pickups. Or just get a ton of headshots. That is a general rule of sorts. You will also run into enemies wearing bullet proof armor and carrying shotguns, they're best dealt with using shotguns. Similarly, there are ninja vampires who will deflect your bullets by spinning their swords, making them invulnerable. Zombies are big on the ammo drain, but instantly taken care of with a headshot. Overall, the enemy designs in this game have a few cool ideas, despite how messy the title is. Explosive shells are a boon but they damage you too, so only use them at a good distance. The Katana is a great choice for various early game grunts and Svamps, as well as a few of the brute type enemies.

It may sound like a recipe for disaster, a slow paced tactical game that needs fast decisive action at times having so many ammo types for each weapon when the character himself controls so clunkily, but here is where the Weapon Select button (L1 – Type B) comes in. Holding L1 will freeze the game, letting you take all the time you need. You scroll through your weapons with Up and Down, while you change the type of ammo with Left and Right on the D-Pad.

Meme I found a new version of the clown and circus meme. Perhaps it is a meta commentary, on me, the player. I hope not.

Atmos2 Atmos When the game nails atmosphere, it absolutely nails it. Especially in the Pallatine Building, and particularly in the ritual area. This Faustina Priestess is the real secret behind Pakistan's undead economy, though buried long ago, it continues to stick around somehow.

The difficulty of Blade's very uneven, it starts out relatively calm, but there is always that odd enemy or two that will get you with the Machine Pistol, and you will often find a nasty surprise late into the game. Sometimes, an ambush of two mini-bosses will mean your ruin due to the clunky controls. The boss fights, much like the main game itself are sloppy, but they do have some ideas behind them. Sloppy, but with some ideas, just about sums up the game.

Atmos2 The Museum isn't bad either, there is something about baked lighting that feels really pleasing to the eye. Simple. Comfortable.

Now, in terms of secrets, one level has an alternative exit, not really a big deal. More importantly, there are hidden throughout the game various glyphs (most are easy to find) that let you read lore about various vampire clans and types. Some of the glyphs near the end of the game let you unlock cheat codes like infinite ammo.

What is interesting is the final level. Throughout the game you can pick up weapons parts, there are 4 in total, to make a UV cannon. Should you find them all, you will get a shorter version of the final level that takes place at nighttime. I much preferred the daytime version you get when you don't have all the parts, as it is a far harder and more trying endurance test. The longer stage shares the final portion of its route with the short one, but you still get two different versions of the final boss though there the day time version is lame, as you just have to run around pressing buttons, whereas the UV cannon fight is tense due to its overheating mechanic.

View Even at the zenith of the final level, Blade will take his time to enjoy a view, and so should you.

The End Watching Wesley Snipes in Deadpool and Wolverine brought back many nostalgic memories of better times for me (Blade 2 was quite popular in my school), I hope at least some part of this review was enjoyable.

 
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from rC:\ Writing Portfolio

I Believe In the Fediverse

In 2022, tech magnate and bombastic personality Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion, thumbing the scales of an already polarized social media website further toward censorship, misinformation and ideological warfare. Twitter once was—and arguably still is—the closest thing to an open forum on the internet with widespread participation among people of all social status, from A-list celebrities to run-of-the-mill crackpots. While this may be true, it hasn't stopped millions of people from completely abandoning the site as the quality of the user experience continues to degrade beyond our wildest imaginations.

The critical weakness of Twitter was exposed during the aftermath of this multi-billion dollar transaction: a forum cannot actually be open when it is owned and operated by a central authority with a transparent political agenda. Much digital ink has been spilled over when exactly Twitter was ruined, but it's hard to deny that it got there. People have begun to understand the need for an alternative, seeking it out in new and familiar destinations alike.

The new social web, in many ways, looks like the old social web. The kinds of people who were on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Vine in the early 2010s are likely spending more time on Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Bluesky in the mid-2020s. We're still tapping out ten-second, hundred-character ephemera into our pocket rectangles, the parameters have just shifted slightly. While I'm glad to see people recognize the need to cut ties with a burgeoning hotbed of reactionary ideology in the case of Twitter, I worry that many have not learned the correct lessons from this saga and are setting themselves up to repeat the same mistakes.

As we continue down a path toward tech oligopoly and unfettered transfer of wealth to the upper echelons of society, it should be clear that another centralized, corporate platform cannot be the key cornerstone of a free and open internet. An alternative will always be necessary when the entire infrastructure of a communication service can be acquired with a cash transfer. Enter Mastodon: an open-source, decentralized Twitter equivalent that could be a viable solution to this growing problem.

Mastodon is part of a vast social networking platform known as the fediverse. This platform makes use of the ActivityPub protocol, a framework for seamless communication between various interlinked, disparate services. In practice, a Mastodon user can see content and interact with profiles from all over the fediverse, well beyond anything that exists under the Mastodon umbrella. Fediverse servers (referred to as “instances”) are comparable to email servers, hosted by different kinds of people from around the globe and able to communicate with each other by design.

The fediverse is as much a part of the small web as your personal website or blog. Its utility in your life is as shallow or deep as you want; your experience will be the priority every step of the way. Fediverse services are never going to harvest your data, advertise to you or psychologically manipulate you into scrolling further—they only seek to connect you with other fediverse users. The fediverse is also literally a “small web” in the grand scheme of social media. Mastodon only has about 7,000,000 users, around half of the total Bluesky userbase and about thirty times smaller than the population on Meta's Threads app.

Threads is technically part of this federated network, though its users currently cannot follow or see replies from other fedizens, demonstrating Meta's lack of good faith commitment to the concept. Bluesky is another popular refuge for Twitter expats, developed on a similar protocol to ActivityPub. The Authenticated Transfer protocol is not linked to the fediverse or any other service outside of Bluesky, suggesting this for-profit service's touted openness could end up being more style than substance. It's possible to bridge profiles between Mastodon and Bluesky using hacky third-party methods, but this is not quite the same as the intercommunicability you'd find between fediverse instances.

Most people are not thinking too deeply about the technical minutiae, they simply go where other people are. Once you get used to a certain place, it's difficult to see the point of spending time anywhere else. Enmeshing yourself in any given service will eventually expose you to its limitations, there might be ways around them but you're going to be aware of them regardless. There's a certain Stockholm syndrome-like quality to social media partisanship; I can't confidently say I've been above it in all my years of using the internet.

I've always been fascinated with the abundance of social media apps that all end up doing the same thing. If social media is supposed to be a place on the web to share shortform text, pictures, video and audio clips, why do we need so many places to do it? At a certain point after uploading videos to Twitter, posting a Notes app essay on Instagram or publishing an animated photo album reel on YouTube, how have we not discovered that this is all the same?

The beauty of the fediverse is a distinct recognition of this fact; the entire utility of social media has been flattened into one logical, streamlined plane of deployment. The services that make up the fediverse aren't deadlocked in competition, instead collaborating with each other to popularize the ActivityPub standard. Rather than being driven by market forces that funnel development efforts toward unwanted features, fediverse apps endeavor to provide the best possible experience for their intended use cases and nothing more.

Mastodon is the premier service, it's practically synonymous with the fediverse among the uninitiated. There are also several other federated Mastodon-likes offering comparable features and exclusive benefits, such as Misskey, Sharkey, Friendica and Pleroma. Pixelfed is the designated Instagram replacement, about as straightforward as it gets. A TikTok competitor called Loops was also recently made available by the Pixelfed developers. Peertube remains criminally underutilized as people clamor for a viable YouTube alternative, though it can be challenging to find a suitable instance. Lemmy successfully gained a foothold among disillusioned Reddit users, but it's still too niche to be useful for certain interests due to lack of engagement. WriteFreely is a solid, if bare-bones choice for blogging in my experience, seemingly lacking functionality offered by other free services.

The fediverse as it exists today is clearly a mixed bag. It's nice that all of these services can talk to each other, but the practical application of this is questionable at best from my vantage point. Further buy-in is required from wealthy, technically-skilled people to keep the project sustainable. Prominent instances that serve a specific niche on the fediverse like botsin.space are forced to shut down due to lack of support, exposing a weakness of this concept and demonstrating why it might not actually be the one-size-fits-all solution needed to fix social media altogether.

It's been a great service for my specific interests as a tech blogger, but I worry the evangelists can't see past their nose when it comes to clarifying the benefits of joining for other kinds of people. The sign up process is notoriously confusing for those who are more familiar with conventional social media. The actual usability of fediverse apps is almost never a clear upgrade over their mainstream counterparts. We've reached a point with computing—and every experience downstream from it—where the focus has shifted away from providing a quality product and more toward extracting value out of those who are too dug in to learn a new way of doing things. The alternatives don't currently have the infrastructure or cultural cachet to compete, requiring more effort and compromise than the average person may be interested in.

All I can do is share bits of personal experience in hopes that it resonates with people. I've enjoyed my time on the fediverse, but I'm just not as deep into it as other folks. While I think it would be a fun project to start my own instance from home, I don't exactly have the time, money, housing continuity and technical competence to get it done right away. Still, the act of remaining on a large general-purpose instance like mastodon.social does not make me less of a fediverse user in the same way that relying on a desktop environment does not make me less of a Linux user—yes, it's true.

I decided to join Mastodon in the summer of 2023 when I became fed up with the direction of Twitter under its new leadership. By this point, Twitter had become more of a news tool than a social media site for my uses. I was drowning in a sea of voices; nothing I shared had any amount of penetration, and the mutual acquaintances I once kept up with grew distant or dropped off completely. I chose mastodon.social because it seemed like the most logical starting point for getting into an ecosystem I knew practically nothing about.

It took a period of months to start coalescing around like-minded individuals on Mastodon. Posting in several hashtags, monitoring the various timelines, filtering out obnoxious keywords and vigilantly muting obviously fake, spam-ridden and low quality accounts worked wonders for discovering people. I can proudly say I've made more genuine connections on Mastodon in under two years then I ever did on that Twitter account I made in 2009. Though I may not have the energy to post multiple times a day, every day, I'm likely to get something out of it when I do.

I believe in the fediverse as a Utopian concept for a social web unconstrained by corporate influence. I've been exposed to avant-garde ideas and artistic creations I wouldn't have encountered anywhere else. I've met some wonderful people who've encouraged me to be more creative, put myself out there, think in different ways and grow as an individual. There is a personal touch to the fediverse that can be difficult to describe. Fedizens appreciate your contributions in a way you won't find as easily in other communities focused on cultural narratives and clout chasing. It can be easy to forget how small Mastodon is when you're reaching an engaged audience without much barrier to entry.

That being said, it's important to recognize that the fediverse may never end up being a snug fit for everyone. It's not likely to win over anybody who is averse to using social media or those who struggle to find a healthy balance with online activities. While it's not as explicitly hierarchical and addicting-by-design as some of the other corporate services I briefly mentioned, the perverse incentive structures baked into the concept of social media are inextricably linked to fediverse apps as well. The ways that social apps shape our behavior are beyond the scope of this piece, but suffice to say, the fediverse won't likely be a panacea for anybody's social isolation or attention span issues. All the negative factors I've discussed add up to a potentially tough sell, hence why I don't normally extol the benefits of the fediverse to everyone I know.

The irony of this ambitious interlinked system of cooperative social media services ultimately having limited appeal beyond a thin slice of diehard enthusiasts is not lost on me, but at the same time, that lack of reach might actually be a good thing. The small web is experiencing a revival, in part because previous attempts to create a central location on the internet for every kind of person to mingle have mostly proven to be a failure, a net negative for society at large. The internet was always better when there were degrees of separation between demographics—the evolution of the new social web is bearing this out. It would be great if humans could get together, sing Kum Ba Yah and find ways to appreciate each others' differences, but that's simply not the world we live in. Until that day comes, I'll keep sharing periodical musings with the handful of people in my circle over here.

(Originally published in Ctrl-ZINE Issue #17: https://ctrl-c.club/~/loghead/zine/Ctrl-ZINE.issue.17.pdf)

 
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from Sodium Reactor

Alright, bear with me.

The yearslong assault on journalism and criticism, especially in gaming, makes sense to me when constellated among a few other trends. Others have likely tied these all together more completely or succinctly but you're reading me instead.

Media choice has increasingly become a stand-in for identity online (and only online). Rather than fandom being a facet of a fully fleshed out person, there's a growing temptation to define yourself by your media consumption. Late stage capitalism has reduced us to consumers.

Increasingly insular communities that get more and more tribal, more and more insular, and more and more hostile encourage simplistic us vs them conversations. Rather than introspection or analysis, forum level conversation often stop at “do you like this thing?” with little attempt to place a work or series in any larger context

What you consume and enjoy has increasingly become a stand-in for morality online (and only online). Once we define ourselves by our media consumption, it only makes sense to wanna overlay the same good/evil or moral/immoral axes onto media consumption the same way we would personal beliefs or actions.

Economic conditions and developments mean journalists have less money, time, support, and resources than ever. The push for metrics and traffic and engagement above all else also incentives outrage over nuanced critique.

Negative reviews of media you enjoy feel bad. Full stop. There is an easy (and historical) kneejerk reaction of “what does that stupid critic know anyways? They don't even like this thing/genre/property to begin with.” But if you have no distance between your identity, media choices, and morality, then a negative review becomes an attack on your entire being. An existential crisis.

Now you have an enemy to attack. This is exacerbated by the same easy flimsy logic perpetuated by right wing populism that has grown online. Conflating increasingly hostile capitalism with modest and often only topical social advancements. “You had more money at the same time you didn't see all this race and LGBT focus so if you surpress them you'll go back to having money.” It doesn't make sense, but it doesn't have to. It's easy and comfy.

Shit is fucked up all over. I don't have clear solutions. I'm just trying to put pieces together and connect dots and maybe trace out the larger contours of this nightmare we're all enduring.

But you are more than your hyperfixations. You are more than your MyAnimeList or your Steam library or your GoodReads. Media is not (necessarily) morality.

 
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from Lucifer Orbis

Updating on my previous post, I finally – finally – finished The Mirror of Simple Souls by Margaret Porette. I’m so happy because it wasn’t easy and I may or may not have something to say about it. Maybe in general terms, but even to me it was too much. And not even on purpose, another book came out: Dissident women, beguines, and the quest for spiritual authority by Catherine Lambert. I’m going to read it after taking 1000 naps. I mean, the book title says everything. What I enjoyed the most about Margaret was precisely the independence with which she lived her faith, especially at a time when independence and women were mutually exclusive. I wrote the following text a while ago, but didn’t publish it because I didn’t think it was that good but here goes.


I was listening to a song called Ballad of the Prodigal Son. It's terribly beautiful and collected. It's actually funny that the story, being a joyful one, and with a happy ending, at least for the father and the son – the brother being rightfully pissed at the special treatment and kinda missing the point – the angelic voice shifted tone just in the right measure to bring tears to my eyes. I still have no idea why I listen to these things, but I do. Oh, it's late at night. Silence! And a midlife crisis.

Circling back, this is a very well-known story but as my memory fails me consistently, I don't recall it from my childhood; or maybe it was in a book a nanny gave me. I must have heard it, but without much contextual memory from those early years, I can only trust that the story reached me one day somehow. It’s common knowledge that the communion of saints is one of the fundamental principles of the Catholic Church. But why exactly do people need saints? What's a saint supposed to do? After all, Christ is Lord. He is, but sometimes you just need a little nudge to get there. The saints can do precisely that. So, a normal Catholic will tell you “we don't worship saints!” even though they may be talking with their favourite saints the whole day, but this is the part that they don't tell you so it can't get confused with “worshipping”. However, if they tell you that they're talking with other Catholics the entire day, it's not worshipping, it's a conversation. This is exactly what the communion of saints is – relishing in the very connection between earthly and heavenly things, and everything in between – that of holy people united by the sacraments and communion with Christ our saviour. Think about it as a connection between the human and the divine; the human turned holy, touched by grace and by the Holy Spirit which is common to us all. In other words, it’s being in touch.

Of course I’m only mentioning this in very loose terms, not even explaining anything, but you get the idea. Where I want to get at is, as made abundantly clear in a previous post, I have a favourite saint. That person died 400 years ago. I could try to update myself a little bit and choose another saint as a guide but I can’t. My head is resting on the perfect lap, if I can be so candid. I can push it a bit further and say that my body is being held by the perfect pair of arms and my soul is being fed the most eloquent whispers. That my will is being guided by the wisest actions and my dreams are being set on fire by the most ferocious passion. Ok, I’ll stop here before this gets weird – and it does. Remember that angel? Where do you think that passion comes from? It came from God, it was infused into a human being who subsequently wrote a number of theological teatrises that pierced the soul of another human being 400 years later. Now think about this as a web of connections, of a pulsating heart from where all arteries and veins expand. This is just the power of one saint and her communion with Christ. Think how many individuals are connected to Christ through a web of connections with other people, and these, with others. It is, in other terms, a Church.

My head is resting on the perfect lap My body is held by the perfect pair of arms My soul is fed the most eloquent whispers My will is guided by the wisest actions My dreams are lit by the most ferocious passion

Hah, it almost looks like I’m in love! Teresa of Avila, in her younger years, got access to a number of books. One of them was Letters of St. Jerome. See, St. Jerome was an inspiration to her and a guide in her own faith. As such, I also started reading his letters, learning that he was the translator of the Bible to Latin and a few other facts about his life. I wanted to read his letters, because they lingered in the eyes of Teresa and his words flipped a switch some time later. One of his letters caught my eye – To Theodosius and the rest of the anchorites. It was there that I saw Luke 15:3-5 and ended up reading the whole passage. For context, St. Jerome wrote: “I am the prodigal son who although I have squandered all the portion entrusted to me by my father, have not yet bowed the knee in submission to him; not yet have I commenced to put away from me the allurement of my former excesses.” Oh Jerome, how much we have in common! And then, by some weird coincidence, the heavenly voice I mentioned in the first paragraph starts singing the ballad that gave melody to my ears, a ballad previously unknown to me, playing on shuffle on YouTube, echoing the Holy Spirit, echoing Luke’s gospel, echoing Jerome, echoing Teresa, and piercing me.

 
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from forrest

mognet2 title card

(context: this is an email response to a reader who provided feedback on my scathing critique of social media found in the first issue of Mognet; essentially, this is a follow-up clarifying some of the WHY of why I left social media.)


Hello Reader,

I really appreciate you reaching out. It kinda made my morning when I read your email. I didn’t know I had this type of influence on people—or even one person, for that matter. I was especially surprised that it was you who reached out, as I was under the impression that, for some reason, you didn’t like me or something, but that was probably just my mind playing tricks, as it often does.

I’ll preface this with the classic Spider-Man quote that we all know so well, but I won’t actually type it out here; instead, I’ll just say the following: influence is a tricky thing that comes with a lot of responsibility, and I don’t know if I’m truly worthy of influencing anyone. So please take everything that comes after this paragraph with massive piles of salt.

Anyway, as I said, I really appreciate you reaching out. And I understand that, because of my previous Mognet post (and my actually-leaving-Mastodon), you, too, are now considering leaving Mastodon. So, let’s talk about that.

And yes, I know who you are. I averaged about four hours a day on Mastodon (between mobile and desktop) while I was still a user there, so I can confidently say that—up until the point when I left—I’d read every single one of your posts and either A) liked it, B) commented on it, or C) didn’t interact with it at all because it would have felt inappropriate to do so. To elaborate on that last one: like you, I have pretty poor social skills (even online), especially when it comes to expressing empathy for someone’s personal misfortune; and a large part of the reason I don’t like to console people online in this way is because, well, I just don’t care that much—OK, let me rephrase that: I care intellectually, but I don’t care that much emotionally. I can recognize when something bad happens, understand its impact, and realize that it sucks, but I don't feel bad for the person specifically. (Note that I am referring to online people I have never met here, not family or friends or someone getting stabbed on the street in front of me or whatever.) So, as you can imagine, the idea of me providing emotional support to someone online that I barely know makes me feel a bit fraudulent. What am I supposed to say? “I'm sorry your relative died,” “praying for your quick cancer recovery,” or send little heart emoji and/or animated dancing heart gifs or something? If that’s expected, do we really want a community where we’re all doing all these little performative, feel-good platitudes that lack real emotional weight? At that point, I’d constantly worry about the sincerity of the person telling me they’re “so sorry” for my loss or whatever. This ties directly into social media, which, in my view, has become very performative in this exact way. But perhaps I'm just the odd one out here; maybe quote-unquote normal people do feel deep empathy for literally everyone else's misfortunes. Who knows. Somehow, however, I doubt it, because if so, we would be seeing a lot more people just hanging limp from rafters or crumpled fetal in the corner sobbing due to the sheer volume of psionic shit they would be experiencing on the day-to-day; it would all be too overwhelming. Not even the fictional character Jesus from the hit novel The Bible could maintain that level of empathetic care without at least breaking down into tears every few minutes. I just don't buy it. When we start throwing these platitudes around all the time for literally everything—especially when we don’t really know the people personally—we make sentiment cheap and, as a result, no one can tell what's truly heartfelt and what's not. Maybe you can relate to all this, maybe not. The important thing, though—(and I’m not just putting this in as a disclaimer, I actually believe this intellectually, emotionally, &c.)—is that, while this all sounds very cynical and mean, we have to remember that, even if we don't personally feel sorrow on behalf of someone's misfortune, that misfortuned someone is still a fleshy human person who deserves our respect; and, in my mind, refraining from empty platitudes is more respectful than flippantly telling everyone, “I’m sorry that happened to you” for every little thing; and in this way, when I do express empathy, the person receiving said empathy will absolutely know it’s genuine—because it will be.

That was a long-winded tangent. Sorry about that. You probably think I’m some sort of major asshole now. Like I said earlier: piles of salt, &c., &c.

Anyway, yes, I was (am) aware that you were diagnosed with autism. I have never been formally diagnosed with autism, but I was diagnosed with ADHD “pretty much five seconds after the pediatrician met you” (my mom’s words). What I think I’m trying to say is that, while I may not be diagnosed with autism, I feel it’s appropriate to respond to you here because I think I can relate to your situation personally. Outside of us playing very similar games at very similar points in our lives—(such as Half-Life 2, which you seem to really like [see—I have read your posts], and I also really like Half-Life 2; in fact, Half-Life 2 is probably one of my favorite games, if I had to pick; up there with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time [which I seem to recall you not liking very much—maybe I am misremembering?])—I, too, faced all forms of bullying in school; from wads of paper thrown at me in class to literal sitcom-like toilet swirlies (only happened once) to just being straight-up attacked while going to the bathroom (this happened, like, twice; both times I escaped unharmed). So, as you can imagine, I was “the weird kid” or “the future school shooter” or “the faggot” or, well, you get the point. After a while, I just exaggeratedly played into these roles to scare the other kids into leaving me alone, which started to work by the time high school rolled around, but by that point, kids kinda just stopped bullying me and retreated fully into their own little cliques. And all this was in the early 2000s, when social media was just starting out. It (social media) hadn’t caught on with adults yet, but it was mega popular with kids; everyone had a Myspace profile, and every Myspace profile had a wall of comments, and every wall of comments was located right under a “top friends” section displaying, at most, like six friends—which was a pre-programmed limitation for some reason or other. (And you can’t begin to imagine the amount of drama caused by that “top friends” thing; the number of friendships torn apart by the very act of changing the top slot on said “top friends” section was, quite frankly, unimaginable.) All that, plus the private message feature, plus the fact that parents didn’t have a clue about the internet back then, resulted in pretty much a wild west of teen and pre-teen weirdness that even I wish I could forget sometimes. And this was just the beginning of the weird shit kids got up to online back then.

Anyway, I think I’m getting off topic, again.

What I meant to say is that I originally started using online services (like Myspace) for the same reasons you did: to find a community of like-minded people, to connect with the youth of which I was also a part of. And I still think that social media is a good way to find like-minded people, but, unfortunately, it’s fraught with the perils you mentioned in your original email: cyberbullying (which is much easier to do—and fall victim to—online, as it’s easy to forget that people are indeed people when you’re communicating with them from behind a screen), the constant questioning of whether people are who they say they are, the emotional-sincerity problem that I mentioned in that long tangent earlier, this tit-for-tat you-share-my-post-I’ll-share-yours interaction system which leaves you wondering if people genuinely value you as a real human person or if they’re just using you to increase their own e-clout, and the ease with which every community turns into a tribal echo chamber in which anyone with even slightly differing opinions is ostracized right into another harmful echo chamber. All of this—and, I’m sure, much more than I am just unable to fully articulate at the moment—lends to online social media feeling very transactional and fake indeed.

But, again, I recognize the value of community, and I understand that some people do not have a real, in-the-flesh network of people that they can consider their own community, and that these people—for the sake of their own well-being—may need to find a community on social media instead. And that’s OK. In fact, it’s better than nothing. I would just caution those who pursue this avenue to be aware that these online communities can never replace the physical experience of being around other like-minded people in the flesh; and the more we retreat into these social media safe havens, the more we become sucked into them, the more we become reliant on them, and, thus, the more we disconnect ourselves from the people around us, thus thus driving everyone into these highly polarized online spaces from which it becomes nearly impossible to remove oneself due to the addictive nature of social media itself.

But, of course, there’s danger in everything we do. Perhaps I’m just being a doomsayer. Maybe I’m just trying to post-hoc justify my decision to remove myself from Mastodon. Which is a nice segue back into the reason why you emailed me to begin with: your implied question, “Should I, too, leave Mastodon?” And the answer is going to disappoint you, I guess. Because the answer is: I don’t know.

Here’s the lowdown on why I left Mastodon. Yes, I wrote that Mognet piece; yes, it was a real email to a real reader; and yes, I still believe everything I wrote in that email. (And yes, I’m posting this one here as a follow up because I feel what I’m about to get into here is very important.) But the twist here is that most of that first Mognet piece was projection. And when I posted the piece online (on Mastodon, lol), a lot of people got kinda defensive and upset about the whole thing, as if I was calling them out specifically. This backlash was mostly prompted by the following line (I think):

“. . . it doesn't remove the human need for self-validation that inspires all of the following: fake feel-good shit, posting pictures of video games and/or toys one bought hoping for someone to reply with “wow, that's really cool” . . .”

But I wasn’t calling anyone out except myself.

Due to an unwise decision on my part, I chose to use the collective “we” pronoun throughout the entire email/piece, which, perhaps, was my subconscious mind kinda deflecting the accusations that my conscious mind was making against itself. Those accusations were that I was using social media to farm validation through the constant posting of my own stuff, all hoping that people would like, share, and comment things like “wow, you’re amazing and smart and introspective,” and so on and so forth. And that, really, the whole thing is a cautionary tale on why you should be careful about which pronouns you use in an article or essay or whatever.

The fact of the matter—the bit that was left out of the original email/piece (and why I’m taking so much time to type this up to you and then post it as a follow up to the first Mognet piece)—is that I have always had an addictive personality. I have had problems with drugs, alcohol, gaming, and whatever else you can think of. Anything that makes me feel good, I can’t stop doing. So, when I wasn’t at my computer scrolling through Mastodon, I was on my phone scrolling through Mastodon. Even when I was writing my long essays and whatnot, I was compelled to check Mastodon after writing every sentence just to see if anyone had liked or commented on my stuff; in hindsight, it’s like some sort of techno-demon had invaded my mind and taken control of my right arm so that they could constantly click on the Mastodon bookmark every few minutes to power some dark hell battery. I had even turned my mobile notification volume to max to kinda be like, “I don’t need to check Mastodon all the time now because when someone interacts with me on Mastodon, I’ll now get a very loud beep from my phone.” But even then, I still manually checked Mastodon. I could not stop.

So, what changed? I’m not sure, but something clicked in my brain and, suddenly, the techno-demon was exorcized. I kept thinking of a time when I didn’t use social media, which was many times throughout my life, and most of those times I felt happy and validated without it (social media)—and I just kept thinking about that. I kept thinking that there was a time in my life in which I felt validated and happy without having to check social media every 5 minutes. I kept thinking that there was a time in my life when I could just sit there playing a video game like Final Fantasy VII and not feel compelled to take screenshots to then post on social media every 5 minutes. There was a time when I could enjoy doing things without having to tell everyone online that I was doing said things. I started thinking: “Why can’t I just enjoy stuff for stuff’s sake? Why do I have to keep telling everybody about the stuff that I am doing?” And this thought then made me think that, perhaps, I was cheapening the things I enjoyed by insisting that my enjoyment of those things be validated by people online—as if my enjoyment of those things were controlled in some way by the whims of people other than myself. I don’t know if I’m explaining this well, but the whole thing really made me feel kinda sick.

Social media is a lot like smoking cigarettes, actually. I used to smoke about a pack a day—Marlboro Lights were my brand—and every thirty minutes or so, I would interrupt what I was doing to go outside and smoke a cigarette. Say, for example, that I was playing a video game or something; every thirty minutes, on the dot, I would get up, go outside, light a cigarette, smoke it for about 7 minutes, then go back inside and start playing the game again. And when I was back inside playing the game, I would barely be enjoying the game itself because, while playing, I was thinking about smoking another cigarette in thirty minutes and counting down the minutes.

And just to hammer the point home: If I were playing a video game for 4 hours straight but took a 7-minute smoke break every 30 minutes, that’s about 56 minutes of smoking during that 4-hour period, which is really just 56 minutes I could have been playing the video game. My mind was cigarettes all the time. I stopped smoking back in 2022, so I’ve secured much of that future wasted time. But, up until just yesterday, I had spent who knows how long just doomsurfing Mastodon and/or telling people on Mastodon about what I was doing instead of actually doing the thing I was telling people I was doing—literally an unquantifiable amount of time wasted when I could have been enjoying the stuff I was actually interested in.

So, I kept asking myself—why couldn’t I just enjoy things? Why did I have to tell everyone that I was doing the things? Why couldn’t I just sit down and read a book, play a game, or watch a movie without telling everyone I was reading a book, playing a game, or watching a movie?

Is any of this making sense? I feel like I’m just typing a bunch of words, the meaning of which is being lost due to the inadequacies of the English language (or just my inability as a writer—maybe both?).

Basically, I left Mastodon for personal reasons. And my personal reasons shouldn’t be your reasons. You need your own reasons.

If any of this resonates with you—good, I’m glad we can relate to each other. But don’t feel like you have to delete Mastodon because someone was irresponsibly using “we” pronouns instead of “I” in a piece about the ills of social media.

But, for the record, I do believe that social media is a cheap way to feel validated, and I also believe that it’s a cheap way to find community, and I also believe that it’s a tar pit of sorts that enables both personal and political inaction by being a hugbox echo chamber full of people just telling each other the things they want to hear, and I also believe that its entire design is conducive to being highly addictive and thus harmful long-term, especially to “neurodivergent” people with addiction and/or hyperfocus tendencies and/or those who have trouble moderating themselves.

But these are just my beliefs (and I’m realizing now that “belief” is a weird way to frame all of this, but whatever). You do you. I’m not going to tell you that you should leave Mastodon or any other social media network. I’m not comfortable telling you that. I’m not comfortable telling you what to do at all. But, if I were—hypothetically—comfortable telling people what to do, I would probably tell them something like this:

If you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through social media or constantly posting pictures of your favorite things or obsessively updating everyone on every little thing about your life or replying to posts with little platitudes while not actually caring all that much about the actual people behind the posts or getting angry over other people’s posts for whatever reason or comparing yourself to your followers or trying to be like some online influencer—ask yourself, WHY?

And if you don’t like the answer, do something about it.

The most important question you can ask yourself is WHY?

WHY AM I DOING THIS STUFF?

And then, when you think you know the answer, ask WHY again, and again and again and again and again.

For me, deleting my social media presence was merely one of the many conclusions I came to after asking myself WHY over and over again. And I’m not done.

Even now, I’m still asking.

Thanks,

Forrest


*sent on 11/10/2024

#autobiographical #mognet

 
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