I (19F) grew up in a strict scripturally-focused non-denominational church that focused more on intelligence than emotion and spirituality. While in many ways I'm thankful for the experience, it also misled me on many things and has left me spiritually unfulfilled. My family is Christian, but my parents aren't that devout and their faith has never been their own, it's all my controlling religion-obsessed grandmother's.
Her devotion kept her children with a horribly abusive father for over 20 years since she was waiting on a biblical reason to divorce. It's hard for me to live with that fact and be okay with the existence of God and His restrictions on divorce, as the situation permanently ruined my family in ways that can never be repaired and still affect us.
My church also never had an active youth ministry because since I was in the nursery class, it was always just me and one other boy. He sadly took his own life as we entered the teen class, so I was left alone and because of what happened, no one wanted to touch that class. Then COVID hit and once again, I was left on my own. Our church was mostly old people, so online services were barely audible and other churches we tried seemed to put too much emphasis on presentation and less on meaningful content.
My family left this church because of the lack of youth and for a lot of other reasons, as well as my mom breaking away from her own mother's control. We've tried other churches, but nothing has been a good fit.
I've broken away from the faith. I don't have any. Because I grew up in Christianity, becoming a Christian was an obligation and as I branch out into other churches...I don't even know how to do that anymore. I'm not baptized (my church believed you're not a Christian until baptism) because I honestly have never believed. I may understand the Bible, but it doesn't mean anything to me. It's never helped me, prayer has never done anything for me. I don't find the Bible empowering or comforting because it's so distant from today and I'm on the autism spectrum and have a strong dislike of envisioning human faces. I would rather the Bible be about blobs of energy or animals rather than people because having to imagine people gives me deep discomfort and triggers my sensory issues. Also, since I am a woman, it really angers me to read about the so-called limitations placed on what my gender can and can't do. I grew up watching men always leading as women actually do everything for them but don't even get to speak for themselves. It's bothered me since I was a little girl and even if it is unbiblical, I can't see myself endorsing or supporting a place where women can't teach, pray, or even speak, like the church I grew up in.
I don't get the basics anymore. Why being a sinner is a bad thing, the point of prayer, salvation, why would I even want to be a Christian, etc. Nothing in Christianity entices me or makes me want to conform to it. It won't cure my disabilities, give me wealth, or fix a toxic family history. I can't be forgiven by the actual people I seek forgiveness from, who may still hold grudges against me...I don't see the point of it. I haven't since I was a child.
I really don't have an open mind anymore. I don't trust Christian research or science, it has such a history of false claims. I don't trust Christian content creators and there's so many that give me a good reason not to. Trust issues also run in the family, I was raised by two victims of severe child abuse who continue to be paranoid and distrustful well into adulthood.
Talking to people quickly turns to arguments, as I present question after question, counter after counter, and it feels like I just get vague reasoning in return. I relate to people who've left Christianity more than those in it. I want to be a Christian, solely to tick off the checkmark that's been instilled in me. Being a Christian is like graduating and getting a job, it's an obligation to fulfill for me.
Christianity bears no benefit, no meaning, and no point as far as I can see.
It's never been pleasant for me. Reading the Bible is confusing, going to or watching churches is the most grating experience on earth, and surrounding myself with other Christians is only an invitation to fake smiles, fake friendships, drama, and gossip. I grew up long enough in the community to know this.
I have a lot of alone time this summer and I wanted to use it to really work on my spiritual health. I just don't know how to start since I've completely turned away from it all.
Any advice would be welcome, but unfortunately, that does not mean it will be taken.

Hey so I’m an incoming freshmen so if my question is dumb let me know. I’m looking at the gen ed requirements while filling out my pre advisory worksheet. For a lot of the categories they are broken up into sub categories. For like the cultural studies it specifically says you must do one of each sub category. However for Natural science and tech, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Humanities and Arts if doesn’t specifically say the sub categories are required. So could I get away with say two natural science classes in the same category? I ask cuz I have a bunch of AP credits I’d like to use if possible

Disclaimer: This post is merely to provide knowledge, and not to instruct you to do anything. Your choice whether to choose the Science One program at UBC or not is completely up to you. I hope this helps in making an informed decision.
I just thought I would contribute to the existing public knowledge of the Science One program already on Reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/UBC/comments/ec95t4/for_anyone_interested_in_science_one/ My post assumes you already did basic research on the program and aims to contribute more knowledge that isn’t publicly available yet (here is the Science One website: https://scienceone.ubc.ca)
I am an alumni in the 2023-2024 cohort, but just a disclaimer that a few things will change in the program in the years to come (see below):
Just a few small updates to the previous Reddit post:

• BIOL 140 is no longer a mandatory component of Science One so there will be no associated biology labs.
• There are three STT’s, where you can find here for the updated schedules for your year: https://scienceone.ubc.ca/resources

Note about grades: While Science One is promoted as a program where the students care more about knowledge than grades, while this is very true in my personal experience, I still think that grades played a large impact on our mental health, confidence, and our overall enjoyability of the first year experience. The reason I am including grades here is to allow you to have reasonable expectations about your grades and know that if you want to go into a very competitive specialization in second year, Science One may not be the right program for you. Note that the grades published on UBC grades (https://ubcgrades.com) is not representative of the actual class average. There is a policy where if a student failed two or more subjects in Science One, the credit for Science One will be broken down into its individual course components and the student will not appear to have been in Science One (it doesn’t show Science One on their transcript, rather the rough course equivalents). This raises the apparent class average reported. In my year, 3 people were removed, which changed the class average from 75% to 77%.
Alright, with that out of the way, I will be filling in the gaps of public knowledge specifically with the workload of Science One. Below is a (hopefully) unbiased perspective on Science One. My personal opinion will be stated later in this post.
Biology
Note: both of our biology professors (Pam Kalas and George Haughn) are no longer teaching in the program, so this subject may look very different

• Weekly 10 minute quizzes (quiz average 15% of biology grade), consisting normally of two to three written questions (be sure to learn to type very fast and think fast, especially since these quizzes are normally at 8:30am in the morning)
  • However, we get one quiz drop per term where our lowest quiz mark is discarded
  • Generally the quiz average is around 74%
• Biology Midterm “superquiz” once a term (20% of biology grade, can replace quiz average if the mark is higher so can be worth up to 35%) which is around 55 minutes and consists of around 10 long written questions (however, this is very little time for the amount of thinking and typing necessary to succeed so learn to type fast!)
  • Average was around 74% and 60% respectively for terms 1 and 2
• Biology assignments for completion/participation (10%) around once every 1-2 weeks ~ somewhat simple compared to the complexity of the quizzes and midterm, takes around 15-20 minutes per assignment
• Pre-readings per week around 2 hours, critical to understanding the class material
  • Pre-readings are found in study guides provided to us or on public webpages, there is no textbook for biology
• One tree project in term 1 where you are tasked with finding and identifying five different tree species around campus
• 2.5 hour final exam (50%), however, if you do better on your final exam than midterm average, it can replace the midterm average (so can be worth up to 85% of your grade)
  • Consists of written answers with explanations (I found this final to always be very rushed, finishing writing my answers with around 1 minute to spare)
  • Typically, since the final exams are so difficult, very few people will be able to get a higher mark on the final exam than the midterm
  • Average was 65% in term 1, term 2 grades not available

Overall: 3-10 hours of work per week depending on your thinking speed and how busy that week’s schedule is
Class average over the year: 71%
Term 1 Units: Great Bear Rainforest, Metabolism, DNA, Gene Expression, Genetics
Term 2 Units: Genetics (Continued); Phylogenies, Speciation, Population and Community Dynamics; Macromolecular Self Assembly; Regulation of Gene Expression; Biological Energy Transformation
Biology Tutorials

• Salmon project ~ year long project where we test the DNA of salmon through learning gel electrophoresis strategies
  • Very minimal prep work, maximum 30 min per tutorial

Chemistry
Note: One professor is no longer teaching in Science One (John Sherman), but the other is staying (Guillaume Bussiere), so this may be different in your year

• Around biweekly unit quizzes (40%), five per term, each quiz around 30 minutes, double sided with around 15-25 questions, with both multiple choice and written answer questions
  • Around 74% averages
  • One quiz drop per term
• Assignments (10%) consisting of worksheets provided in class (takes around 30 minutes-1 hour per assignment) and questions submitted on a paid ($70 if I remember correctly) homework submission website called Achieve
• 2.5 hour final exam (50%) consisting of theory based questions, organic chemistry, multiple choice, and calculation
  • 69% average in term 1, term 2 grades not available

Overall: 2-5 hours of work per week depending if there’s quizzes or assignments that week
Class average over the year: 75%
Term 1 Units: Chemical Bonding and Basics, Conformations, Stereochemistry, Thermodynamics, Electrochemistry
Term 2 Units: Kinetics, Quantum Chemistry, Intermolecular Forces (not really a whole unit, more like a supplementary lecture), Valence Bond Theory and Molecular Orbital Theory, Acid Base Chemistry, SN1 and SN2 Reactions
Chemistry Tutorials

• some coding based tutorials for quantum chemistry, little to no prep work, but knowledge of python coding is needed (but you will learn in Science One), submission of a worksheet for marks
• Organic chemistry worksheets, guided by the professors, but no submission necessary

Chemistry Labs (Chem 121, Chem 123 equivalents for term 1 and 2 respectively)

• Biweekly 3 hour lab sessions, where we are performing experiments and recording notes in our EDF
• Prep work: normally on our “off weeks”, we need to fill in our EDF and do the prep work (around 3-5 hours)
• In term 2, we also need to submit lab reports for each lab session (takes around 1-2 hours to write)

Overall class average (I forgot): around 85%
Physics

• Two long form assignments per term (20%, so 10% each assignment), each assignment generally consists of collecting data related to something learned in class, and analyzing it
  • Data collecting and analysis can take around 2-6 hours spread over the week (generally how long it takes to complete the assignment)
  • Around 80% averages
• Biweekly quizzes (30%), total 5 per term, one hour long open book online quizzes, consisting of 12 multiple choice or calculation questions
  • Around 75% averages
  • one quiz drop per term
• Prereadings assignments (4%) on WebWork (around once every two weeks, but very inconsistent schedule), consisting around 3-4 multiple choice/calculation based questions
  • Most often, there is no prereading assignment, but there are around 6-7 sections of prereading assigned per week of lecture of online OpenStax textbooks
    • Personally, I did not do them, but still survived, as the prereadings can take up to 3 hours depending on your reading speed and intended depth of read
• Homework assignments (6%) around once every two weeks consisting of 8-11 multiple choice and calculation based questions, requires a lot of knowledge of theory rather than plugging in numbers into equations
• 2.5 hour open book final (40%) consisting of both multiple choice (submitted on Canvas) and long written answer questions (paper copy, but submitted on Canvas)
  • 60% average in term 1, term 2 grades not available

Overall: around 2-5 hours of work per week depending on if there’s quizzes, long assignments, or assignments
Class average over the year: 76%
Term 1 Units: Measuring and Modelling Motion, Motion and Conservation Laws, Thermodynamics, Rotational Motion, Special Relativity
Term 2 Units: Waves, Quantum Mechanics, Electrostatics, Circuits, Magnetism and Magnetic Fields, Stellar Nucleosynthesis
Physics Tutorials

• Generally working on worksheets with the guidance of professors, very helpful for understanding the content better, but worksheets are not submitted

Physics Labs (Phys 119, Phys 129)

• 3 hour sessions per week, consisting of data collection and data analysis, learn plenty of Python and basic statistical tests (however, most labs in term 1 are very rushed, but in term 2 there is much more spare time)
• Prep work in term 1 takes around 1-2 hours per lab, consisting of submitting a Jupyter notebook with code so we understand the code we need to use in the lab
• Prep work in term 2 takes around 15 minutes - 2 hours, mostly doesn’t have as much prep work as term 1
  • Rarely Jupyter lab notebooks for submission, most weeks we just preread what we are doing in the lab and that is sufficient

Class average (I forgot): around 85%
Mathematics

• Midterms “tests” (25%) three per term, around 50 minutes, and consisting of 3-4 written questions (average is usually around 60%, but we have had two instances of failed average midterms resulting in scale [but don’t rely on a scale, it is very rare!]), however, we get one midterm drop per term, where it is not counted in our average
• Assignments (16%) consisting of three long assignments with written answers that take around 2-4 hours to complete, and weekly two WebWork assignments that are around 6-12 questions, calculation and theory based
• Weekly quizzes (9%), with one quiz drop per term
  • 15 minute quizzes with 3 questions, generally a little rushed but doable
• 2.5 hour final (50%)
  • Average 67% in term 1, term 2 grades not available
• Pre-reading assignments not for marks, takes around 2 hours per week (personally I didn’t do any and I was ok)

Overall workload: around 3-6 hours per week depending if there’s assignments, and midterms that week
Class average over the year: 72%
Term 1 Focus: Derivatives and ODE’s
Term 2 Focus: Integration
Term 1 Project (partnered)

• consists of a presentation and mind map of a topic that we research in depth using primary literature
• Around biweekly meetings with our mentor, and mini check in assignments

Overall workload: around 1 hour per week, but can be up to 4 hours when preparing for the presentation
Class average: around 85%
Term 2 Project (partnered)

• consists of a project designed personally by you and a partner to measure something and report on it in a 3000 word paper (90%) and a presentation to our peers (10%)
• Weekly check ins with mentor, or round table discussion with updates

Overall workload: anywhere from 0-8 hours a week depending on the complexity of the project
Class average: 75%
Summary
With that in mind, I want to provide some pros and cons of Science One:
Pros

• Unique connections to professors
• Community with fellow students, and can form a very close knit group of people who are like-minded
• Blended grade at the end of the school year, so if you do bad in one subject but good at the rest, you can “hide” the bad mark
• Networking with professionals at guest speakers
• Having all your classes in one classroom, to avoid rushing across campus between classes
• Allows you to see how all science subjects interconnect
• Provides a deeper knowledge of all topics, basically an honours version of first year Science
• No stress about designing your own timetable
• Research experience in term 2 project can help with research applications in the future
• Study spaces for only Science One students, very helpful especially during finals season

Cons

• grading is a little harsh (very harsh in biology in my opinion) and there is no scaling at the end of the school year, so you may not get into your desired major if it is very competitive to get into
• You also are not prioritized for major selection compared to mainstream (ie if you get a 70% and a mainstream student gets a 71%, they will be prioritized)
• Workload is very intense, sometimes it felt like there was no break for ourselves
• Mental health and stress levels
• Blended grade at the end of the school year, so if you do really good in one subject it may be hidden
• Busy workload means less free time, so some relationships outside of Science One may dwindle
• Very hard to take elective courses on top of Science One, because of the busy schedule and demanding workload (might make it harder to get into Computer Science because of its prerequisites)
• Science One only offers 28 credits (6 for two terms of, biology, physics, math, and chem each, with 2 for two terms of chemistry labs and physics labs each), meaning that our term 1 and term 2 work do not provide us any credit
  • Science One disqualifies students from taking SCIE 113 (a communication requirement), but does not give any credits for it

Personal Opinion
While I did enjoy Science One at the start of the school year because of the pros mentioned above, over the school year, I started taking an interest in a competitive major, which put a lot of stress on myself to achieve high marks. It almost felt like no matter how hard I tried and how well I thought I knew the topic, my mark was going to be low anyways because the way the content is tested. I feel like I shot myself in the foot when it comes to getting into my major as the application process is completely based on grades.
While I don’t know if I would have done better in mainstream (I probably wouldn’t have had as many friends, and therefore my mental health would be worse, and possibly it means that I don’t have as much motivation), I definitely think that I could have done better in mainstream if I had the same motivation I do now as their way of testing and marking may be a lot more lenient. However, I am almost certainly sure that if my cohort were placed into mainstream classes in first year, we would have achieved much higher grades than we did in Science One. However, I don’t know if being in Science One could have an effect on my performance in the years to come. I do acknowledge that over the year, I was able to develop really good study habits to manage the workload and also learned to prioritize my health, which will be beneficial in the future.
However, I have also noticed that there are some “hell weeks”, where we absolutely feel like dropping out. In both terms, after term 1 and 2 conferences, where we were away at camp for the weekend (we didn’t have the weekend to do schoolwork), there was a week where there were many overlapping assessments, such as math midterms, chemistry quizzes, math assignments, and chemistry assignments, etc. These are the assessments that ended up having class averages which were below expectations, which I feel wasn’t our fault at all.
In fact, we were burnt out, but because of our wonderful Student Council, we were able to have some assignments pushed back to alleviate some of our workload and reduce burnout. Special thanks to our chemistry professors, as they were always open to planning the chemistry quizzes on days that weren’t as bad for us, and even asked us which day we wanted the quizzes. I can tell they really care about our wellbeing and our performance.
In addition, even though Science One is marketed as being prestigious, most of the people I talk to don’t even know what Science One is, and the few who do know it, know it for its intensive nature and harsh marking scheme. There is no special treatment for Science One graduates that I know of except for the occasional “wow how did you survive?”.
Generally, I don’t regret doing Science One, but if I had the chance to restart first year, I would have chosen to go the mainstream route. I feel I would have been a lot less stressed and have gotten much better grades. However, I did meet so many motivated and amazing people this year, and have generally enjoyed some aspects such as camp. Unfortunately, because of my desired major, I have seen Science One as something that may have limited my options in the future.
Do I think Science One is for you?
These are my personal opinions and please don’t take this section as the final decider for you. Be sure to do more research!
To succeed in Science One, talent can only go so far. At some point you will be challenged academically, and you will doubt yourself. But what follow is what really determines if you are a good fit for Science One. If you want to give up and do something easier, go to mainstream. If you want to persevere and to learn more, Science One may be the right choice for you. If just you want the prestige of Science One, don’t do Science One, it is not as well known as their website may make it seem. If you want to go into Computer Science, Science One may not be for you since it has little connection to Computer Science and really lowers your mark.
If you really are hard set on a competitive major which requires high marks, consider mainstream, since it is very rare and very very difficult to do well in Science One. If you really love to learn more difficult concepts, have a tight community to be by your side, to have good connections to your professors, to get some research experience, AND grades aren’t a huge concern for you, Science One is for you.
Again, take my opinion with a grain of salt. You are ultimately the right person who can make the right choice for yourself. You know yourself the best. I hope this helped and I wish you all the very best in your studies, whether you decide to go Science One or not. Feel free to DM me or reply below if you have any further questions :)

Hi, I've been thinking about this question and would like some outside opinions because I feel like I have to be missing something. I also don't want to ask a bunch of coworkers and come off as dissing the teacher.
I'm a teacher aide in two second grade classrooms in a Choice private school. I did go to school to be a teacher. I completed everything except one 10 week student teaching (but I made up the credits and graduated). I've worked at those school for about 3.5 years. 1.5 were spent with K4. This is my second year in 2nd grade.
Backstory: My one teacher is chronically absent. She is being forced to retire after this school year. Her back and legs are causing hee so much pain she can't come to school and work. I've been the only constant presence for these kids these last 6 months. My teacher has only been a full time teacher her for about 7 years. She subbed for a lot of her life. I end up teaching a lot, although it's been awesome having subs on most days as of late. I take care of most of the stuff in the classroom and come in early and stay late to try to make sure everything is as it should be.
She basically doesn't use the school's science or English curriculum. We have a new math curriculum (we used to use Saxon until we couldn't get any more physical books. Now we have Math Expressions), but she doesn't teach it as intended. She doesn't use a lot of the materials that came with it.
For English, our school uses Shirely which is what I grew up with. The student books are still in storage. The student workbook are in their desks, unused. They have only used the sentence books, but she doesn't teach it the Shirely way. These kids will go on to 3rd grade... behind. She thinks they have to master each part of speech before doing sentences. It never occurred to her that we could go through them... as a class. I never even knew where the TE book was until like a week ago. I'm not even convinced she knows how to do it. She uses tons of superteacher worksheets and random ones she finds online. Sometimes the answer key isn't right. Some of the stuff is confusing. Instead of using the Shirely songs and videos, she picks random stuff from on YouTube.
For science, she doesn't use the book. She prints off all these black and white packets that the kids frequently lose. Lots of repetitive questions. Everything is writing stuff out that frankly feels like wastes of time sometimes because by the time everyone has the answers down, a chunk of the kids are now talking, making noises, and distracting each other. Sometimes I don't even know what the question is asking either. Sometimes the answer isn't actually in the text (and it's not an opinion or inference question).
I've talked a little with one of subs (who taught in the upper grades for many years at the school), and she clearly thinks that not using the English curriculm is wrong. On the days she's there, it's like she makes it her mission to teach how they should be taught.
Math is now being taught by the other 2nd grade teacher. We are units behind with only a couple weeks left and won't be able to finish the book. There were too many days spent not doing lessons or using materials not from the curriculum (which they didn't master. They are still very much struggling).
I just don't understand. How do you not know where you NEED to be if at all possible? If you are picking random topics for science, how do you know you are meeting standards? All of this goes against everything I was taught in college. If the kids were thriving, I wouldn't be worried. They aren't though.
And FWIW, the other teacher doesn't use the curriculum for social studies either, and I can't say I understand. That retired teacher sub doesn't even agree with some of the stuff in these worksheets (like money being an example of scarcity).
I very much try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I naturally believe they know better than me, so I hate saying anything. Am I missing something or is/was my teacher just not great at teaching? She feels like the kind of teachers I grew up with in the 90s and early 00s, although my teachers were better I think. I understand supplementing with materials every once in a while... or if the book is missing a lot of stuff. But never using the curriculum and it's worksheets? Or using it only a quarter of the way so that it appears to confuse the kids so it must not work? To be clear, I've never heard them talk about the curriculum being awful or old or anything.
I'll say this because I feel like someone may ask, we don't have anyone in charge of curriculum or looking over lesson plans. They submit their block plans to the drive I think, but I'm pretty sure they aren't looked at.

High above the spreading ruin, Zildiz watched as a world died. For that was what a biome represented to her; a complete ensemble of living organisms bound together by a beautiful tapestry of interdependence, a balance composed of and sustained by the unconscious actions of innumerable individuals.
One could displace that balance at one end by changing any one of the variables in the system. Temperature, terrain, population size, climate—anything could upset the delicate equations. But in time Vitalus would always right itself and reach a new equilibrium.
Not so here. Here, there was only death.
She watched as the glaring ruby eye of the monster reached the brilliance of a sun, slowly building in intensity before finally unleashing a line of pure destruction that set the very air ablaze, a gout of flames reaching in and gutting the Amit mound.
Tiny figures tumbled out of the conflagration, flailing their limbs and sprinting in every direction in a hopeless attempt to escape. There was nowhere to run—the vegetation had also turned into a sea of flame. Even from her high vantage point she could smell the burning green wood and the rich scent of melting fat. Her mouth watered uncontrollably even though Zildiz felt sick to her stomach at the sight she was witnessing.
Other Gallivants quickly arrived at the scene, their minds tugging at hers, the magnetotactic symbiotic bacteria in her brain responding to the fluctuations in the surrounding EM fields.
“Zildiz,” one of the arriving males greeted, hovering closer while carefully maintaining a respectful distance. It was not yet mating season, and though the males outweighed her significantly, they knew better than to startle a female just back from the hunt.
“Menash,” she nodded, politely returning the greeting. Menash’s exomorph had bluish green armor plates and was equipped with heftier musculature than hers. He’d replaced one of his arms with a pincer since the last time she’d met him, and looked every inch the perfect predator. But even he was frightened by the level of destruction down below.
“What on earth is that thing down there?” he asked in open wonder.
“You know as much as I do,” she told him, “It almost looks like a Gallivant, don’t you think? Or at least one of the terrestrial castes, anyway.”
“Maybe it’s one of the Vitalus’ new creations?” suggested a smaller brown male named Racek, nervously fluttering from side to side in his lightweight exomorph.
“What possible function could that monster serve within the All-In-One?” Zildiz scoffed.
“Well, for one thing, it’s cracked open that mound quite nicely,” said a red-and-white female, licking her lips eagerly, “I haven’t had an Amit in months.”
“You can’t be serious, Vezda,” Zildiz said, “We shouldn’t take advantage of this situation. It’s against the rules. Look at them, the entire colony is getting wiped out even as we speak!”
This was not quite true. A handful of albino figures were limping through the canyons, having miraculously escaped the destruction.
“He that dares, claims the spoils,” Menash said, “This looks like an act of Nature to me. It’s certainly destructive enough to be one. We’re well within our rights to adapt to changing conditions within the system.”
“Then why didn’t Vitalus tell us about this…creature?” Zildiz asked, “There’s not supposed to be a seismic event for this cycle, remember?”
“Enough of this alpha-female posturing!” Vezda snapped, “Just because you’re a mother of three doesn’t mean you decide what’s best for the rest of us.”
Flexing her scorpion’s tail, the fiery female swooped in for the hunt. Other Gallivants followed after her, eager to score some free calories from the dying Amit colony.
“Madness,” Zildiz whispered, watching them go.
“The game has changed,” Menash shrugged, “This is hardly the first time that the Vitalus has introduced a new species to the equation. It’s all part of directed evolution.”
“That isn’t evolution,” Zildiz said fiercely, pointing at the grey giant, “That's wholesale extinction!”
Rene reached into the dying embers for the second time and dug around with the drill hand. The arms of the Engine were moving sluggishly now and a warning message kept flashing across his retinas:
“Danger! System overheating—possible malfunction in coolant circulation. Recommend immediate evacuation.”
“Over my dead body,” Rene gasped. His mind was overwhelmed, senses deafened and blinded by the bewildering new stimuli. In addition, his body was beginning to feel the hard edge of fatigue. Though he’d sustained only modest injuries in the siege of Mound Euler, all the little scrapes and bruises were adding up—the detonation of the blasting charges earlier had definitely ruptured one of his eardrums.
“Fuel rods at 98% depletion,” the spirit of the Engine told him.
“Piss off,” he grumbled. The claw hand finally closed around something solid and he pulled out a fistful of solid rock the size of a cathedral. Examining the object and seeing the hexagonal chambers studding its interior, Rene deduced that he was holding the Amit hatching nursery in his hand. Amazingly, some of the Amits still clung stubbornly to life within it, nymphs clutched the grub-like infants to their chests as if shielding them from his fury.
Even now after all the carnage the sight of them gave Rene pause. Memories flooded through him, sounds and smells he thought long forgotten. He was a young boy again in Mound Ulysses running up and down the spiral staircase of the school, eating candied grubs on a stick and building clay castles with his bosom friends.
He’d had a talent for working with clay back then, fashioning ballrooms and topiaries and drawbridges for his tiny king and queen. While other boys played at making sieges and fashioned cannonballs by rolling the clay into balls, Rene had imagined the most impossible things of all: a kingdom at peace with itself, under no threat from monsters or men, ruled by the just and free of the wicked, where everyone had enough grubs and mushrooms to eat. A kingdom where men could walk in the sun and breath without masks, and a boy of thirteen didn’t have to trade in his box of crayons for a tin of cartridges at the enlistment center.
But now the castle was real. So were the tiny lives he held in the palm of his hand, and instead of building things he was smashing them all apart.
“It has to be done. For the good of the Fleet,” he heard Deschane say.
Rene curled his hand into a fist, saw bodies mashed to pulp between his fingers. Something inside him died in that instant. Drawing back his arm, he hurled the broken mess across the mountain range, watching it disintegrate through the air in countless pieces.
“Fuel rods at 99% depletion,” said the voice in a drunken slur, “Initiating shutdown procedure in T minus 10 seconds. 10. 9…”
“I’m not done,” he pleaded, “Not yet.”
But really, what was there left to do? There was nothing left to destroy. There was nothing left in him, too.
Then he cast a weary eye over the land and saw strange birds alighting across the tortured landscape. He squinted at them, the glass dome responding to the movement of his facial muscles by magnifying the image.
What were these flocks of creatures? Hideous, all of them, even uglier than the Amits. They each had two pairs of wings and their faces were wholly made up of shiny, bulbous eyes. He saw them swoop into the smoldering vegetation below and begin feeding on the stricken Amits, devouring them on the spot.
Sickened by the grisly spectacle, Rene made up his mind in an instant.
“Open fire,” he told the Engine.
“8…Systems overheating. 7… Recommend full diagnostic of onboard laser platform. 6…”
“Belay that order!” he said, using one of Deschane’s favorite catchphrases, “I am assistant navigator Rene Louverture, and I am ordering you to fire.”
There was a brief pause, then:
“Acknowledged. Commencing atmospheric ignition.”
“Everybody back!” Zildiz cried, both verbally and via magnetosynapse, “That thing is sentient, and it means to kill everything!”
She’d seen what it had done to the nursery. There could be only one thing that was driving its actions. Hatred, pure and simple.
Some of her kin heard the warning and veered upwards, abandoning the feast as the red eye gathered its energies.
“No,” she told them, her bowels loosening in terror, “It sets the air on fire! Water, it’s our only chance!”
Racek heeded her and followed as she plummeted towards a narrow mountain stream winding through the canyon. The follicles on her neck stood on end as the humidity of the air dried up in an instant, water vapor evaporating on contact with her exomorph.
A red star was born, a terrible brilliance that threatened to engulf them all. The stream below was bubbling like a pot of stew even as she broke the surface at terminal velocity. Her last thought as her head cracked into the stony stream bed was how irritating it would be to dry her wings again. And then the foam closed over her, and she knew no more.
Link to 1st chapter here: 1st chapter on
Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road

My dream job is to become a diplomat with the US State Department. For a long time, ever since I was a kid, I've cultivated a love for history, geography, and other cultures, and as I matured and grew older this love grew to encompass foreign policy, political science, economics, psychology, business, and finance.
I recently read the book The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace by Aaron David Miller, who served as a US diplomat to the Middle East for over 20 years and who was deeply involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, such as the 2000 Camp David Summit. In the book, he talks about how he'd spend a long time, sometimes a year, of working long hours and late nights to craft a peace deal between the Israelis and an Arab nation like Syria, only for one of the parties to walk away at the last minute. He took a lot of heat from US lobbyist organizations, other people at the State Department, and interlocutors from the Israeli or Arab delegations, only to walk away empty handed in such scenarios.
When I did the worksheet for the Dharma module in Dr. K's guide, my duty to the world I identified was to share my knowledge, talents, and skills to make the world a better place and to use my perceptiveness of and empathy for other people to bring different sides together.
But when I read the memoir, it made me think about how I could surmount the possibility of feeling defeated from not seeing the fruits of my labor. I was also having a fight with my parents at the time about my career and my dad said to me: "The Israelis and the Palestinians have been fighting for 75 years. What makes you think you can make a difference?" I told my dad that I still wanted to play a role in something greater, even if it was a small role that didn't have much impact, but I have trouble believing in those words that I replied with.
Not being able to immediately see the purpose or result of the work I do causes me to procrastinate and give up. If I can't identify with why something is important, I stop caring and stop putting in hard work. This was why I struggled as a student and why I struggle in my current job, because my indifference causes me to not ask questions, not think about the work I do, and not ask for help when I need it. How do I overcome this mental obstacle, especially when this futility is what inherently comes with my dream career?

This story was originally written July 2023.
You might have heard of me. I was a social media influencer for two years.
I know kids have “influencer” as one of their top professions these days, but for me it was all an accident, really. I uploaded a few YouTube videos back in 2019, in the summer I finished school. All I did was rant about movies. I had a few notes, not a full script, and just spouted off to my laptop camera about inaccurate science, bad casting choices, real nitpicky stuff. In about six months I’d got 200 subscribers.
I was at university then, and I mentioned my videos to some of my uni friends. They subbed and told their friends, and I got up to 1,000 sub by January 2020. My videos were only about ten minutes long, and I had nowhere near the views to monetise. I was making one a week, but not on any sort of schedule. It was just something I did when I was bored.
Then the pandemic hit. A lot of students here in England basically got locked into their halls of residence (that’s dorms for any Americans reading), but I was lucky enough to get back to my parents’ before then. So I was doing what my uni laughably called “remote learning”, which basically meant a couple of video lectures a week, some worksheets, and lots and lots of my own research. I won’t bore you with the topic of my course; it’s not relevant.
I’m not exactly stereotypically pretty. I’ve come to accept that. My hair is stringy, my nose is too big, my face is profoundly asymmetrical, my complexion is strange and acned, my teeth are crooked … You get the idea. You can only do so much with makeup and hair that covers your face. I probably have fewer friends than I would if I looked like other people, and it actually took a lot of courage to make that first video - and even more courage to upload it.
I can only assume that’s the reason I went viral. It certainly wasn’t the high production values, or the tightly-written scripts, or the quality of my research. On the 9th of April I had 1,322 subscribers. On the 10th it was over 8,000. By the end of April it was up to 300,000, and I had actually monetised my channel.
The comments were … well, they were varied. Lots of hate because of my looks, but lots of love from people who just appreciated what I put out there, calling out others for their negative comments. I know many social media stars struggle with unkind comments, but I’d got used to it. Let’s be honest, they weren’t nice, but neither were they untrue. And comments under your video are easier to ignore than comments in the street. I was making decent money after all. If you were one of those commenters, you know which side you were on, and I love you either way. Thanks for the engagement - it’s not easy to gain financially from your unusual appearance!
The trouble with going viral is that it doesn’t last. Competing in the fast-paced world of internet stardom takes a lot of effort. I started experimenting with other things - YouTube shorts, TikTok, Instagram, pretty much anything going. The format that turned out to work best was actually TikTok. I’d bought some skimpy outfits and did ridiculous little dances. I quickly reached over a thousand views per video, and while I wasn’t up to their creator tier, it still worked. A well-known cosmetics company asked to sponsor my videos.
Cosmetics! Me! I guess they were going for woke points or something. I didn’t care, they offered me more money than I knew what to do with, as long as my views stayed high. So I started making 2-minute videos. A dance without make-up, then I applied the make-up - being sure to show the brand name clear and up-close - and then the same dance with make-up. If this is ringing any bells with you, then yes - that was me. And no, stupid - that’s not my real name.
I’d got used to undesired attention of course. Along with the unpleasant comments, I got my fair share of unwelcome male approaches. For a few hours after any upload, about half of my DMs were from men, and some women (or men with female account names), asking to see more of me. I wasn’t a camgirl, though I suppose I wasn’t a million miles away from one; but I could have been. I did seriously consider it a few times, but never actually followed through.
And half of the rest of my DMs, and a good portion of the public comments, were from angry women. What made me think I had the right to show off like that? How could I bring their favourite cosmetics brand into disrepute? But I’ve got pretty thick skin (hey, I can make that joke, you can’t), and mostly laughed the comments off and ignored them.
That was, in hindsight, a mistake.
By September my uni was reopening for in-person teaching. I was working six or seven hours a day just to keep up with everything, and had a couple more brands sponsoring me. Being an influencer isn’t just about filming for ten minutes a day and watching the money come in!
So I was going to tutorials an hour a day, watching video lectures at 2x speed, and ignoring my assignments in favour of making videos and replying to messages. It’s not like my pointless degree was helping with my real job.
Okay fine. It was geology. Rocks and stuff. You happy now? I bet you can’t tell the difference between sylvite and carnallite just by licking it, can you?
Anyway, the point is I came close to being chucked out. Actually I had to repeat the second year. At least I could afford it.
So anyway, I somehow got through to the end of my second year, the end of my second year again, and part way through my third year. I was passing my exams - just - and through several reinventions I had managed to maintain my social influencer role. Last Autumn I was getting some good views, and cash, back on YouTube. I was getting pretty good at make-up (I had an exclusive deal with one company on TikTok, and another deal with a different cosmetics company on YouTube). The videos that did well then were me with experimental hairstyles and not much in the way of clothes, putting on makeup for a few minutes, then reading out-of-copyright fiction in my patented “YouTube voice”. If you can imagine a cross between Shania Twain and Marge Simpson then… well, then you’re weird, but you’ve pretty much got it.
Then, last December, a week or so before the Christmas holidays, I went out with my friends. I had made a decent number, both girls and guys, by then. I could never quite tell whether it was my personality (which I assure you is fantastic), my influencer status, or the cash I was liberal with (it always seemed to be my round, and I didn’t mind). There were even a couple of boys who were keen on me, though I hadn’t done anything about it yet. Eight of us went out together to celebrate a birthday. It wasn’t actually anybody’s birthday that day, but Shireen had a Christmas Day birthday, and she wanted a proper party.
Now I look quite different in real life than I do online. I think the technical term is “frumpy” - jeans, trainers, fluffy jumper and a hat, or maybe a hoodie. The birthday girl had somehow convinced me to put a bit more effort in, and had helped me pick out some heels and a knee-length silver dress. Make-up was easy for me of course, and so I got dressed up and off we went to the Black Swan.
The Black Swan has several great qualities about it. One: it’s cheap. Two: it does good food. Three: it’s a couple of hundred metres from The Bar. We had a decent meal, a few drinks, and around 9 we walked to The Bar.
To be more precise, they walked. I wobbled. If you’ve watched my videos you might have seen me in heels, but did you ever see me walk in them? Didn’t think so.
The Bar is open til 3 in the morning. It looks respectable enough from the outside, especially in the afternoon; but after about 11, when most pubs close, it fills up with students drinking expensive-looking drinks. And almost every night, somebody jumps up onto a table, and then everybody’s up there dancing. In The Bar, either you hold your drink tightly, or you lose it.
I’d done this before, and I can handle my alcohol. I’ve stayed at The Bar till chuckout more than a few times, and I’ve been wobbly on the way home, but I’ve never thrown up or passed out. And so I was surprised when I woke up. The last thing I remembered was Stu saying he was tired, and Shireen replying that it wasn’t even midnight yet. Now I was lying on the hard wooden floor of my living room.
My head pounded. Daylight streamed through the window, and I blinked a few times and rubbed my eyes. My hands were wet and sticky.
I looked at them. They were covered in blood.
I looked down. My heels were across the room, but I was still wearing my dress. It, also, was covered in blood, a huge stain across the chest.
Panic set in. What happened to me last night? I checked myself out and could find no injuries. Where did the blood come from?
Standing up, I realised it was worse than that. Red pools stained the wooden floor. I don’t know much medicine, but if somebody had lost this much blood, I couldn’t see how they could have survived.
I stood up, unsure whether my shaking was from the shock or the alcohol. This was when I saw a shirt on the floor behind me. White, with a subtle pattern. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that it wasn’t my shirt. I lived alone, and rarely invited people back to my flat. I looked around some more. A pair of men’s black leather shoes by the door. And then I saw it.
I suppose, rather, I should say him. He was naked except for a pair of dark blue jeans, slumped in the open doorway to the kitchen, covered in blood, and very, very, dead.
I panicked then. I’m calmer now, so let’s take a moment to describe my conclusions that morning. I had got very drunk. I had met a guy. We’d come back to my flat. We’d been getting naked (the shoes and shirt weren’t bloodied). Then, for some reason, we’d had an argument or a fight. The body had stab wounds in the chest, and a pool of blood had congealed onto the wooden floor of the living room and the linoleum of the kitchen where the man collapsed. How did those stab wounds get there? I didn’t know for sure, but a quick glance at my kitchen counter showed that my sharp carving knife was missing. It was all coming together. I didn’t know if he had picked up the knife, or if I had; I didn’t know why either of us would do that. I didn’t even know his name, and later when I checked his pockets, I couldn’t find any ID.
There was a lot I didn’t know. But I’m smart. So once I was done crying on the floor (I think it was about two hours), I came up with a plan. This man was dead, and I couldn’t do anything about that. But what would the consequences be? There’s no need for my life to be ruined as well. I decided not to call the police. People go missing mysteriously all the time, he can just be another statistic and I’ll get on with my life.
The blood on Dave was mostly dry by now. (Sure, I didn’t know his name, but every bloke’s called Dave, right?) So I put a badly-fitting vest on him to soak up the remaining blood, and his shirt over the top, along with his shoes. His jeans were bloody, but they were dark, so hopefully it wouldn’t show up in low light. I couldn’t find his coat, which was odd given how cold it was, but this would have to do. I put my dress and heels in a plastic bag, and grabbed a spade that I never used. Had I missed anything?
The knife. The fucking knife. I searched all over for it, but by the time it got dark I still hadn’t found it. I knew I couldn’t delay for long, so I figured it was best to deal with Dave now, and find the knife later.
Eight o’clock in the evening came. I’m lucky I have parking right outside my house, no street cameras, and a ground-floor flat. I put the bag in the boot of my car and came back for the body.
Have you ever tried to move a dead person? It’s not easy, and I’m not exactly strong. I put my arm around his waist and eventually managed to heave him almost upright. “Come on Dave, that’s it. We’re gonna get you home. Maybe calm down on the tequila next time right? Try to keep it in, and don’t you dare vomit in my car, you sexy bastard.”
Oh come on, what do you want from me? I’m an influencer, not a stand-up comedian. And anyway, I don’t think anybody saw me during the several minutes it took to drag Dave to the passenger seat. I really wish I’d got round to buying a bigger car than the Fiat Punto I’d had since I was 18, but it was too late for that now.
There’s a place about an hour’s drive from me called Epping Forest. The Heritage Trust reckon it’s most famous for its huge tracts of unspoiled wildlife, thousands of trees, and Iron Age settlements. But around here it’s best known as the place where murderers and gang members bury bodies. So off I trundled in my 1.2 litre pensioner-mobile. I arrived around 9:30, checked Google Maps, and drove offroad into the woods.
Do you know how long it takes to dig a grave? The answer is: a long time! By dawn I’d only managed a hole about two feet. Oh, and it was my third try, because the first two times I found too much rock. Well, it would have to do. In went Dave, and I shovelled the ground back over him. I thought I could put my clothes in with him, but it was a shallow grave, and when the inevitable dog-walker finds it I didn’t want them linked back to me. I mean, there’s my DNA in there for sure, but let’s not make it too easy for them, right? So I chucked the spade in a river, and the clothes went back home with me, including the vest I’d lent him.
Now in England we have a thing called ANPR everywhere. The police can just type in a car registration and see exactly where it’s been from traffic cameras. I needed an alibi. Why had I gone to Epping Forest? For a hike of course! So I walked around for a few hours, got breakfast at a pub, and told the staff about all the wacky adventures I’d had that night. And while I was there, for the first time in a good long time, I checked my phone.
Hundreds of messages, of course. But only one sent a shiver down my spine.
Jolly_Gal_56234
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID
My heart thumped. My ears started ringing. I felt dizzy, nearly passed out. How could anybody know?
Of course nobody knew. I actually got messages like this fairly often. Just some idiot trying to wind people up. They’d probably sent a dozen messages just like it, to random people, and I just blocked her. Still it rattled me. I finished my breakfast, paid up, walked back to my car, and drove home.
My flat was just as I left it. Dave was gone, but his blood was still there. I scrubbed the floor for hours, and it helped a bit, but you could still see the stains. Exhausted, I showered and went to bed.
The next morning I woke up. I hadn’t posted anything for a day and a half, so I needed to do something about that. Scrolling through my messages, one stood out like a police light.
Jolly_Gal_28473
YOU’VE BEEN A BAD GIRL 🔪
Shit. SHIT! What the fuck is going on? I stared at my phone, paralysed with indecision. When I finally snapped out of it I made sure the door was locked, and tried to come up with a plan.
I had no idea who was sending these. Maybe they didn’t really know anything. You send stupid messages like that to hundreds of people, you’re gonna come across one who’s actually done something bad, right? I poured myself a big glass of gin, decided that nobody could know anything, and made a video.
Remember that one where I didn’t speak at all, just danced for three minutes dressed like 90s Britney to 70s disco music, titled “HANGOVER DANCE”? Yeah, that’s the one. I didn’t trust myself to speak without breaking, but I could dance about as well as I ever could.
The rest of the day I answered messages, emailed my sponsors, and considered getting an agent. It’s still just me doing everything, and that Sunday afternoon, I really didn’t want to. I also spent a few hours scrubbing the wooden floor with baking soda and vinegar, and looking for the knife.
I kept getting messages from Jolly_Gal. It didn’t matter how much I blocked her, she just popped up again the next day with different numbers at the end of her username. Always all-caps, just a single sentence.
YOU DON’T DESERVE IT
YOU’LL GET WHAT’S COMING TO YOU
OWN UP
DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT
Exactly one message a day, but always at different times. I decided it was a bot, and it was just coincidence that it started when it did. Until Christmas Day.
I’d been back at my parents’ for a few days, and endured the usual conversations about what I was going to do for a “proper job” after uni. They’re great, and really supportive. They’ve just never understood what an “influencer” really is, and that “playing on my phone” for six hours a day counts as work. My brother Rich gets it, but the rest of my family is honestly baffled.
Anyway, Christmas morning comes. All four of us were in the house together (my brother’s 17 so he still lives there), and we gathered together in the living room opening presents. It was a couple of weeks since the incident, and I still had nightmares every night, and those sudden panic attacks - you know, when you’re sure you’re going to be found out - but I was getting used to it. It had happened, I couldn’t change it, and I’d have to keep it secret for the rest of my life; but it was becoming a sort of background hum. I don’t know if that’s too quick, but I suppose I’ve learned to handle difficulty in my life.
Until we finished opening presents and I checked my phone.
Jolly_Gal_814385
HAPPY CHRISTMAS
And underneath, a photo of my kitchen knife, stained with blood.
I ran out of the house in tears.
Rich found me, sitting on the wooden bridge down the road from the house, my legs dangling over the river. I came here a lot when I was a teenager, so it was the first place he looked. I’d left my phone on the living room floor, and the three of them had seen the message, so he knew what triggered me. He just didn’t know the full story.
Well, I told him. I mean, not everything, obviously. But I told him how this person had been harassing me for weeks. He listened sympathetically, like he’s always done, and asked if there was anything he could do to help. I didn’t say anything; I just turned around, hugged him, and cried into his Christmas sweater.
After about half an hour we went back to the house. Rich explained things to my parents, thank goodness. I don’t think I could have handled it.
The rest of the holiday was … okay, I guess. More messages from Jolly_Gal, but only text. I made videos most days, and met all two of my old schoolfriends for drinks, movies and shopping. They’re big fans of my channels. I even took Rich out for drinks one evening, though it took us four pubs to find somewhere that wouldn’t ID him. He’s a bit of a babyface.
I did all I could not to think about Dave. I put him to the back of my mind, letting him live in the shed at the bottom of the garden of my psyche where he couldn’t disturb me. I guess that’s why it came as a shock to me, when I packed my stuff into the boot of my car to head back to uni.
There was one suitcase I’d packed but hadn’t got round to taking into the house. And peeking around the edge was that plastic bag. I’d forgotten to get rid of it!
Dad was helping me load the car, so I couldn’t do anything about it. I tucked it out of sight, finished loading up, said goodbye, and drove back to uni. It was dark when I got back, so I unpacked everything else, triple-bagged my bloody clothes, left my phone at home (no tracking me!), and walked two miles to drop them into somebody else’s wheelie bin.
The next morning I checked my messages.
Jolly_Gal_12592
WELCOME HOME
And a photo of me dumping the bag the night before.
You know what? This didn’t bother me. I mean, it did bother me, but not as much as I guess Jolly_Gal hoped. I’ve been bullied and harassed most of my life, and I’ve got pretty good at ignoring it. Sure, it was an escalation - she was actually following me - but it was just one of almost thirty messages. Jolly_Gal was hoping to destroy me. Instead, she hardened my resolve.
Clearly she had enough evidence to go to the police, but she hadn’t. And obviously she lived nearby. Now I’m no hacker, but you don’t do a job like mine without learning your way around technology. So I started sleuthing. I hadn’t bothered blocking her after the third or fourth message, so I made a list of all the messages, including timecodes. I’ve got a geology degree (almost), and we have techniques to analyse rock strata. Finally I had a genuine use for all that studying I sort of did!
Jolly_Gal was not as clever as she thought. She’d got sloppy. About half of her messages were sent at strange hours, on the hour. These were presumably posted by her bot. But the other messages were all sent between 7 and 8 am, or between 6 and 10 pm. So I guessed that she has a normal 9-5 day job, or maybe she’s a student.
Next I searched all the social media sites I could think of for Jolly_Gal or JollyGal usernames. There are a few, so please don’t go harassing people with that username! I don’t want innocent people to get hurt. After a few hours I had profiles of all Jolly_Gals. Pictures, locations, partial travel history, even birthdays for some of them. I discounted those who clearly weren’t in England, but I still had too many to narrow it down. The photos had no EXIF data so I couldn’t tell the type of phone or camera they used.
So my days became something like this: Five hours doing uni stuff, five hours working on my socials, and an hour or two learning digital sleuthing. I still went out with my friends sometimes, but made sure not to drink too much. I know how to have a good time without being drunk!
The breakthrough came by total chance. I rarely read the local papers, and just got lucky one afternoon in March. I was waiting for a friend in the pub after lectures, and there was a copy of the Post somebody had left on a table. So I flicked through it. The local council was rubbish at doing traffic. Some group of OAPS was organising a May Day celebration. And a woman had been convicted of body-snatching.
I recognised her! There was a photo of a woman in her early twenties. She’d been arrested when a corpse went missing back in December, and they’d seen her take it on the morgue’s CCTV. She’d been released on bail. “Prevention of the lawful and decent burial of a dead body” is a rare crime these days, so she hadn’t been sentenced yet; instead she was released until her sentencing, expected to be in August. Her name was Jenny Smith, which is so common as to be almost useless - that is, if you don’t have a profile of her on your laptop at home!
The report also gave her address. So I started hatching a plan. I texted my friend that I wouldn’t make it, and went home.
Jolly_Gal, or rather, Jenny, lived near me, and actually went to the same university. She had accounts on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and a few others. Of course you can’t get Jolly_Gal by itself these days, but my profile gave all her precise usernames. I spent my evening watching her videos and reading her tweets. And then I found the smoking gun.
Jenny had posted a video on TikTok last June bitching about me. She’s way prettier than me, and yet I’d got all the subs and follows. She deserved all those sponsorship deals. It wasn’t fair that I had hundreds of thousands of subs and she only had a few thousand. She even said I was ugly and deserved to die.
Well, she got one out of two right, I guess. You can decide which one.
It all started to slot into place. Jenny was absurdly jealous of me, so she’d hatched a plan to destroy me. She must have roofied me in The Bar, got me and Dave back to my place, stabbed him, poured blood everywhere, and taken the knife home. I mean, I don’t know anything about forensic science, and I was drugged and panicked when I woke up that morning. I’d have no way of knowing that Dave had died days before he ended up in my flat!
I’d never managed to get all the blood out of the wooden flooring, and ended up putting a really misplaced rug over it. I chiselled off a sample and gave it to one of my friends who was doing a PhD in biology. It took a bit of persuading, but he ran an analysis on it.
It was pig’s blood.
Fuck Jenny. She’s not Jenny, or Jolly_Gal, she’s fucking Carrie!
She planned to destroy me. She ruined my mental health, she framed me for murder. All because I was more popular on TikTok than she was. Well, two can play at that game. I didn’t deserve what Jenny did to me. She did.
I thought about this all night, coming up with plan after plan, weighing them in my head. I wanted two things: to destroy Jenny, and to feel good about it for myself. Finally I had a course of action I’m actually rather proud of.
I decided to start slow. I did something anybody could have done - I mocked up a poster. At the top was “Jenny Smith - body snatcher!”. Underneath were two pictures, her Insta profile pic and the courthouse photo from the paper, and between them: “From This … To This!” And all her various social media handles to top it off. I printed hundreds of these, and pinned them all around the university and her street.
I’ve never thought of myself as an unkind person - God knows I’ve suffered enough myself to be sympathetic to others. But I’m willing to admit I felt a lot of satisfaction seeing her comments fill up with accusations and links to the online article. Jenny carried on making videos, but I could tell she was suffering. Good!
That was stage one. I had to up the ante for stage two. Jenny had covered me and my flat with pig’s blood, so I think we all know what’s coming next.
I pondered for a long time whether I should do it in the day or the night. But you know what they say - go big or go home. I scoped out her house for a while, and found out that she leaves her kitchen window, at the back of the house, open. Now I’m not the most athletic girl in the world, but I can be pretty determined when I want to be. So one night around 2 am I walked to her house - it’s only about half a mile - and climbed through the window.
I almost gave myself a heart attack when I knocked a glass over on the kitchen sink! Luckily it didn’t smash. I hid in a corner and waited for a full half hour before I decided Jenny hadn’t heard me. Then I snuck upstairs, slow as anything, and crept into her room.
Actually, the first room wasn’t hers. She shared with a couple of other students. Thank fuck I checked first! The second room was the right one. She was asleep, alone, in a double bed. I was so quiet that the only thing I could hear was my heart pounding in my chest as I opened my canvas bag, gently deposited its contents onto the pillow next to her, and took a photo. It didn’t come out that well - I couldn’t use the flash - but hey, I have a souvenir!
I really wish I’d seen her face when she woke up the next morning, staring at a pig’s head. She didn’t post on her socials for a week after that, and for two days she even forgot to send me a threatening message.
I’m sorry? You think I’m done? Oh, my sweet summer child. I’ve barely begun.
Jenny had a boyfriend, Abdul. I made sure he wasn’t around when I broke in, but stage three involved him in a big way.
Abdul was also at our university, a year younger than me, a year older than Jenny. He wasn’t very active on social media, but he did tend to broadcast his activity on Twitter. And what do you know? He’s also a fan of The Bar. So I spent the next month planning my move. I bought a new clubbing dress and heels - hey, I kinda missed that outfit! - and asked around for the other thing I needed. Some things you can’t just buy in Next, or a local butcher’s, but eventually I managed it.
I got my chance one Friday in May. Abdul had loudly announced on Twitter that he was excited for his boys’ night out in The Bar, and Jenny had been gushing about a girls’ night on the whole other side of town. Perfect. I spent hours on my makeup, and got to The Bar around ten. Abdul and his mates were having a drinking contest, and leching up at the girls dancing on the tables.
I figured I had a good long while before he would be ready, so I had a couple of drinks - not too much, but like I said I can handle myself, and I knew Jenny wasn’t around - and got up on the tables myself for a bit. Then about midnight Abdul’s friend got another round in, while Abdul was in the loo. This was my chance. I walked up to their table - which had no dancing feet on it, but a heck of a lot of spilled beer - and started talking to them, saying I thought their friend was hot.
“Uh, what the fuck?” “Not a chance in hell.” “Get lost, freak!”
Lovely chaps. But they were too far gone to notice me dropping something into Abdul’s double-whiskey-and-coke. For all I know, it’s the exact same thing Jenny used on me all those months ago.
Abdul came back and downed his whiskey in one gulp. I was worried he was going to vomit it up, but he held it in and blamed his difficulty on the coke fizz. Yeah mate, sure, sure.
Not too long after, he started to fade. His friends were really taking the piss out of him for being such a lightweight. Well, when I came over, the pisstaking just got worse. I introduced myself (with a fake name, duh) and told him he was hot. Believe it or not, it was only about twenty seconds before he put his tongue down my throat. Wow, I’m not sure I even needed to bother with the roofie!
His friends, who had been so intent on being mean to me, now turned their attention to him. I suggested we ditch them and go back to his place (I’d checked, it was only five minutes’ walk sober) - and off we went.
That was the first time I had sex. I’m sure I don’t need to go into details, but we did a lot of stuff, and I enjoyed it. I’m not sure if that’s because it was good, or because he was good, or because I knew what it was all for. I was impressed that he managed to keep going as long as he did in his state, but I do feel a bit sorry for him; from his Twitter he seems like a decent guy.
When he finally fell asleep I left. I’d got what I came for - pictures. And the next day I made a new account and sent a DM to Jenny.
At first I blurred my face, or chose shots that didn’t include it. A bit of editing and I could have been anybody. I watched their messy breakup on Twitter, Jenny hurling accusations, Abdul protesting his innocence. I know this is the age of social media, but I never understood why people play these things out in public.
And then, after posting a picture a day for a few weeks (I’d taken a lot of pictures), I sent one that showed my face clearly.
Jenny had managed to restrain herself from replying before, but now she knew who I was. She was furious! The very idea that her boyfriend had cheated on her with ME, of all people, was unbelievable. And this was exactly the outcome I’d been going for.
Jolly_Gal was broken. She’d ruined her reputation. She’d lost her boyfriend. She had nightmares about pigs (okay, so I don’t know that for certain, but in my imagination she woke up screaming every night). She was possibly going to prison. And now she knew that not only was I more successful than her as an influencer, but I was the one to steal her lover. She still sent messages, at first angry, but they soon degenerated into pleading. “Please stop.” “I’m sorry.” “We can work this out.” Jolly_Gal without CAPS LOCK, it was glorious to see.
In fact it was almost perfect. Three stages of my plan were complete, and only one remained. Jenny’s sentencing was in three weeks, so I had to move quickly.
She had two flatmates, so I needed to work around them. They weren’t particularly active on Twitter, but Jenny was. I knew from her tweets that while her flatmates had gone home, she was staying on a couple of weeks after the end of term. She didn’t say why publicly, but it was for her trial. No flatmates, no boyfriend. Now was the time.
And that brings us up to date. I’ve typed this up over the last few days, and saved as a draft. The final chapter, hopefully, comes tonight.
*******
I’m at Jenny’s house, and I’ve just called the police.
I turned up at Jenny’s door just after seven. Luck was with me - she’d tweeted that she was expecting a Deliveroo takeout. And I got there first.
The idiot actually kept the knife. I’d seen it when I was in her room. When she answered the doorbell, expecting food, and saw me - ah, the look on her face was priceless.
“I’m so sorry! Please, let’s just talk. I didn’t mean it to get this -”
I stalked towards her, anger in my face. Jenny fled upstairs. Perfect! She went into her room and shut the door, but I was like the furies of Greek legend. I smashed the door in, and looked on as Jenny cowered on her bed.
In full daylight, I saw the knife took pride of place in what looked like a shrine. She had photos of me printed out, and she’d written on them “BITCH”, “WHORE”, “FREAK” and all sorts of other hateful words.
Jenny had tried to make me into a murderer, so I gave her what she wanted. I grabbed the knife and stood over her. The coward shrank into the bed, begging for forgiveness, pleading for her life. Unfortunately for her I was not inclined to oblige. I plunged the knife into her chest, just as she had done to Dave all those many months ago. Jenny whimpered like a whipped dog, and after the ninth stab (yes, I counted), she stopped.
The police are on their way. I’m definitely going to jail after this. But Jenny got what was coming to her. We could both have lived happily, but Jenny chose otherwise.
And me? I passed my degree. I have friends. And jail or not, I have a life.
Burn in hell, Jolly_Gal.

in science i sit with four people, assigned seats. none of them do their work and they ALWAYS ask to copy off me. like, always without fail. and yk it’s fine asking every once in a while for pics of the work, but every single time we have a worksheet they all at the table ask me to take a pic of my work. and it’s irritating because they’re loud as hell, they’re always jumping on the tables and shit so it’s hard as hell to focus and then ask to copy my work like bruhh 😭😭stop being stupid and just do it yourselves. idk sometimes i wanna tell my teacher but then they’ll know it was me and it would be awkward as hell at the table

in science i sit with four people, assigned seats. none of them do their work and they ALWAYS ask to copy off me. like, always without fail. and yk it’s fine asking every once in a while for pics of the work, but every single time we have a worksheet they all at the table ask me to take a pic of my work. and it’s irritating because they’re loud as hell, they’re always jumping on the tables and shit so it’s hard as hell to focus and then ask to copy my work like bruhh 😭😭stop being stupid and just do it yourselves. idk sometimes i wanna tell my teacher but then they’ll know it was me and it would be awkward as hell at the table

Hi all!
So everyones been asking for help for CS,, like topicals, worksheets, etc, since the syllabus has been changed and theres barely any material
Im not giving CS this year ,, but as someone who got A* in my midterms at school, I can say that the Cambridge IGCSE and O Level Computer Science Second Edition workbook and answers helped ALOT...
attaching the links to the pdfs here:
Workbooks
Answers
hope it helps<3 best of luck everyone!

So this is what godhead feels like, Rene thought dimly. What a bloody headache!
Through the whirl of images and flashing lights he could discern that he was standing in the center of a vast dome whose walls were completely transparent. Blocks of figures, fluctuating graphs and meaningless symbols trawled across the crystal surface, overwhelming his senses with information he simply could not understand. Whistles and alarms blared from every direction while in the background the monotonous female voice repeated itself over and over again:
“Warning. Fuel rods at 95% depletion. Power saving mode is advised.”
Rene flinched at a sudden migraine, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the dazzling display. But in response to this gesture, the Divine Engine responded by summoning forth ghostly hallucinations, impressions of solid shapes rendered in spectral green light. Rene reeled from them, tripping over his own feet and nearly faceplanting onto the metal floor. Likewise, the Engine tilted over and smashed headfirst into the bulk of Mound Euler. Rene threw up his arms, fully expecting the glass dome to smash apart upon impact with the cyclopean mass of rock. But instead, the mound itself caved in, plunging Rene’s world into darkness.
“Optic feed lost,” the spirit informed Rene as he picked himself back up again, “Activate ventral searchlights?”
Two words winked into existence before him: YES on the left, and NO on the right. Rene reached out with a trembling finger, and feeling rather like a child attempting to mash the square peg into the round hole, pointed at Yes.
Instantly he was bathed in illumination, brilliant beams of light chasing away the pitch blackness and replacing it with the stuff of nightmares. Thousands upon thousands of tiny Amits stared back at him, crowded beneath the honeycombed interior of their subterranean dwellings. Rene had always known them to be prodigious architects, but the extent and complexity of Mound Euler took his breath away. By accidentally headbutting his way inside, he’d created a perfect cross-section of the mound’s interior, laying bare everything from the nurseries and royal chambers at the base, to the cavernous main hive and the ancillary galleries at the core, to the conical ventilation shafts. Below each graceful archway and chamber the Amits cringed, frozen by the sudden apparition that had burst into their lives.
Seeing them now at their most vulnerable, Rene’s lips unconsciously drew back in a snarl, his fright replaced by cold certainty.
I might not know how to operate this heap, Rene told himself, but I will find a way to make them pay.
“Make. Them. Pay!” he muttered aloud. In his mind’s eye he saw Lethway’s face framed between the musket’s sights once again, could make out the expression on Lethway’s face as he had recognized Rene. Once again Rene felt the kick of the musket butt against his shoulder as he’d squeezed the trigger, saw Lethway clutch at his heart and fall over through a shroud of gun smoke.
He had killed his friend for nothing! Mound 13, Deschane, Lethway and all his comrades-in-arms of the 3rd Pathfinder Regiment. All of them, dead! For nothing! Tears burned his eyes and ran down his cheeks, lubricating the strange metal filaments that had bored under his lids and taken root in his brain. Rene struck out blindly, punching and shoving at the air. The Engine followed suit, righting itself and pushing clear of the debris. As it moved the green phantasms shifted and Rene finally understood what they were: a miniaturized map of the surrounding topography, giving the operator of the Engine a bird’s eye perspective of the outside world. Standing in the center of it was a little figurine of the Engine itself. As expected, it had a domelike head which unlike the transparent-seeming interior was fashioned from a completely solid and completely sealed-off helm. A single menacing red eye sat blinking at the center of the dome where a face would have been.
The head was fused directly to the bulky torso, the latter of which was flanked by buttress-like shoulders which sported enormous curved pauldrons. They reminded Rene of the ancients sets of iron armor in the museum back home which primitive warriors had worn in early days of the Amit War. But rather than lance and shield, the Engine was equipped with an arsenal of strange tools. One vaguely resembled a saw, except that each ‘sawtooth’ was a shovel-like blade that was clearly meant for excavation. The other was a claw with a mammoth drill head protruding from the palm and enclosed by the four grasping digits.
Rene flexed his right hand and the earthsaw began to spin, the excavator blades rotating up and down the length of the arm with the harsh shriek of rusted metal in motion.
“Right,” Rene whispered hoarsely, “Let’s see what this old wreck can do.”
He rammed the earthsaw into the heart of the Mound and saw the countless chambers gnawed into dust upon impact, glimpsed Amits buried screaming in the showers of rubble. Rene swung the earthsaw up and across, toppling the spires above and sending them hurtling down the chutes, effectively smothering the lungs of the mound. One after another, like the layers of a chandelier sent crashing to the ground, each level of the mound buckled beneath the weight of the collapsing mountain. Thousands were buried in an instant, the crags echoing with the sound of their demise. Across the topographic map the aftershock rippled out into the canyons in the form of dozens of avalanches, choking the valleys with boulders and uprooting entire forests.
Rene raised his left hand and the drill spun in ponderous revolutions, the fingers of the hand folding back to give it free reign. He punched the drill into the rubble heap and bored a hole through the mountainside. Withdrawing the drill arm, he uncovered whole nests to shell-shocked survivors, covered in dust and too stunned to moved. All the Amits could do was cringe and cower as he loomed above them, the avatar of their annihilation.
“Did you think you could escape?” he seethed, “There is no sanctuary here. You’ll burn! All of you! BURN!”
“Do you wish to initiate atmospheric ignition?” queried the sterile voice of the Engine. Once more came the two choices: Yes or No.
“Oh, you know I do,” Rene laughed, liking the sound of those words. He stabbed a finger at the affirmative option and the red eye in the center of the Engine’s forehead flashed, warning klaxons going off as it gathered its mysterious energies.
“Laser platform online. Awaiting your command," the Engine said politely. Rene stared coldly down at the shell-shocked masses of Amits and consigned them to death with a single word:
“Fire.”
Link to 1st chapter here: 1st chapter on HFY
Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road

UPDATE: A few things to note.

1. Fallout is based on a 1950's style American society that never ended in an alternate universe. So therefore, feminism never took off, or the breakup of the nuclear family and gender roles never changed in this alternate reality.
2. The vaults were sold to unsuspecting dwellers as luxurious underground hotels that only well-off Americans could afford to live in. This is directly stated by the Vault-Tec salesman at the beginning of Fallout 4. The women entering vault 69 were likely under the belief it's a vault for singles only where they'd meet single men and relax and be pampered while waiting for the surface world to be safe.
3. Vault-Tec is in the business of creating misery. The women are the test subjects. Vault-Tec wants to know the behavioral changes of the subjects when exposed to a misery factor. They didn't spend millions building the vaults for people to enjoy themselves. There has to be some social data that is gained from the vault. The women discover there's no men except 1. The women eventually realize they won't be getting with the man, and the alpha females will control the man. But then when automated systems fail to add stress to the vault population, it becomes a war.

Original post:
Anyone think about Vault 69 in more depth other than a man getting to sleep with lots of women? Vault 68 will have a horror story which I have carefully thought out based on my theory. The surface reason for that vault's longer success being that the remaining men (after fighting and war in the vault) eventually accept their situation, go monk-mode, and cope by being reflective and productive. Life can be stable as long as you're not competing for the sole woman. Vault 68 would not succeed in reaching reclamation day, but neither would Vault 69. But Vault 69 would be issued a G.E.C.K.
Vault 69 design (1 man, 999 women)
The admitted women all have to be young and in the same age range. They all have to be prime fertile (obviously) They have to be women who never worked a day in their lives and had a lifestyle where their needs were always satisfied. They are not aware of the social experiment of Vault 69.
The one man is young and virile. He is also skilled in productive things and has technical knowledge. He is not aware of the experiment upon entering Vault 69.
The sole man is not the Overseer. It's a female doctor specializing in fertility, and who would literally control the entire vault. The Overseer is also not aware of the social experiment. She knows the purpose of the vault is for breeding, but under the impression the gender balance.
The idea is for the 1 man to never have privacy in this vault, and always be accessible to the women. There's only 1 male quarters, shower, lockeroom, etc. There would be no doors on these rooms and located centrally in the vault in the core foot traffic and social areas. There would be cameras and windows for the women to always know what this man is doing and which women are interacting with him. The man can never be by himself. There are no dedicated male spaces. He would probably have a tracking device placed on him too.
There wouldn't be anything productive for the man to do to keep his mind in tact. Only sex, which would become unfulfilling after time passes. Any entertainment provided is female focused.
There are no maintenance staff or engineers for the generators or life support systems. It's all handled by automation, but it will intentionally fail after a year or two. Thus disrupting the man's life of endless sex, and really placing him into a worker role to maintain the survival of the entire vault.
The vault would obviously have a lot nursery facilities for all the babies that would be conceived. On top of that an advanced medical wing with classrooms for educating the kids.
The first year of the vault would be non-stop breeding. The man having the best fantasy any man would dream of. The second year however, the life support systems begin to malfunction by design. Just like other vaults, there is intentional design flaws to add stress to the population. The man is the only person who can keep it operational. And this would instill panic with the women population as now food, water, and air insecurities are introduced. The man cannot possibly be the only workforce in the vault.
This means a workforce of women would need to be conscripted. The man would have to teach them how to do all these repair functions. Most of the women would opt to get pregnant to get out of doing the work as it becomes apparent the birthing women get preferential status. Additionally, Vault-Tec would supply the women tons of Buff-Out, liquor, and other strength enhancing drugs to overpower the man so they can get pregnant, and he has no doors to keep them out. The Overseer would step in and immediately subject women to involuntary medical procedure to render women infertile thus forcing them into the worker class. Any women who give birth to only girls would also be cut off from breeding and subjected into the worker class. Only few women will be allowed to give birth, and only the female doctor Overseer gets to decide this as everyone would depend on her.
Only sons are the key goal. The Overseer and ruling women only need the 1 man until more males are born, and then the man is relegated to being a work slave to the dominant women to keeping the life support systems functioning. Only females that can birth sons get to be free of doing labor. The Overseer would immediately control the male offspring. However, any baby girls born in this vault would likely be rendered infertile and made into the worker class to serve the alpha females. Lots of lesbians. Lots of women fighting other women. Security would have to barricade off the nursery areas and protect the superior birthing women.
The one man will get weaker and weaker and disassociated from his male identity. The Overseer would likely not permit him to see his sons.
This so far, is my view.
Notable vault 69 loot:
Naughty nightwear x 999
Laundered dresses x 999 (the females wouldn't have vault jumpsuits, except the male)
Vault 69 jumpsuit x 1 (the man)
Vault-tech science uniform (The Overseer)
'Tattoo Taboo' magazine
'Live and Love' skill magazines.
Massachussetts Surgical Journal
'La Coiffe' perk magazines.
Donuts and sweetrolls.
Lots of buff-outs
Lots of liquor.
Radiation suit x 6

I'm 14 and supposed to be in 8th grade. I think my parents lost custody of me to DCF a few weeks ago at this point? I'm currently living with my grandma, but for the first two weeks of not living with my parents I lived with my grandpa. My parents lost custody of me for obvious reasons. They failed to update my homeschool progress (because they hardly homeschooled me in the first place), they have been VERY non compliant and combative with authorities, and there have been obvious signs of domestic violence and animal neglect going on in their house due to multiple police calls reguarding loud yelling, and escaped farm animals sometimes even directly from one of my siblings. In my current situation, I'll be returning to public school for the remainder of the school year starting tomorrow, but the thing is I haven't actually been to school since second grade. My parents pulled me out at that time because I started complaining about school being too hard and I knew my mom was teacher.
I had significant trouble focusing on anything and had an attention span of literally five seconds before getting lost in my own thoughts. I would miss out on entire classes because of this too, even though it was such an early grade. The past few years I realized this was the cause of me not wanting to go to school, and tried my absolute best to pay attention to everything people were telling me and I tried my best to be more responsible to appease my parents and have a healthier life. It worked, I have few issues paying attention anymore, but everything else was just too hard... After I was pulled from school my parents never got to work on educating me or my brother (My younger brother is in a similar situation, except the difference is he's never recieved any formal education at all. At all.), and I don't even know why they didn't. My life until now largely consisted of me being left alone to the internet and playing video games, but as I've gotten older I've tried everything I can to at least learn some forms of general knowledge on the internet because it was really all I knew to do. My parents were stressed and overworked as I grew up, and our house was in a terrible condition. They would constantly yell at me to stop using screens and help them but I just couldn't. A bit unrelated but if you're wondering, yes me and my brother almost never left the house at all. As I've been growing up my mom has been repeatedly abused by her partner, which has probably caused a handful of traumatic experiences to me and my siblings and effected our mental health(in case your wondering, I have 3 siblings, one of which no longer lives with us and two of which have already finished school.).
Earlier today I went inside of a public school for the first time in years, albeit anxious. Me and my younger brother were given a tour of the building and introduced to some of our teachers and thats all that happened. We expected a test that would determine our grade level or something or if we could go to school there but nope. BUT. My main worry is that I'm 100% not smart enough and I'll have to hand in loads of empty papers which will be embaressing. The only skill I'm confident in is social studies which I practiced extensively on a website called IXL.com. (I should have just practiced math :( I should have just practiced math.) I only know some math like what letters mean what most symbols mean (except parenthesis ironic LOL) but that doesn't mean I'm any good at it. I won't be able to follow any instructions on worksheets because I won't know what the instructions mean. I was a little less stressed about it at my grandpa's because my grandpa has a son 1 year younger than me who didn't do too well at school, and he needed my help for his science homework and I basically did most of it for him and corrected almost every question he got wrong.
My younger brother has to do the same with very little schoolwork done in his life to go off of. DCF believes that my younger brother has mental illnesses/disabilities that were not being met by my parents(Gee, I wonder why I had so much trouble in school and my parents didn't even try to find out why I was struggling). So my brother has it 100x worse than me but I'm too stressed to pay attention to him too much (sorry...).
I know someone will ask why my worksheets are empty and I won't know what to say which will suck... Ive left a lot of things out as well because I'm mostly going off of what I'm feeling right now and this isn't easy... ill answer any questions, though.
Edit because this is important: I'm also trying to act as if I want to go back to my parents' house to the people investigating my case, and my parents are working hard to try to get me back. I do want to go home. Although I think my parents are not entirely innocent because no one that acts the way they do (neglecting our mental health, being non compliant with the law) are innocent. I'm NOT saying its their fault. They're likely struggling as well. I want to go home because I feel like they're the only chance I have at catching up in schooling, and I miss some of my hobbies that my grandparents won't help me to continue doing, and I love my family.

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Blurb: Stranded on the hell-planet of Arachnea, the last remnants of the human Fleet fight to survive in a world overrun by insectoid monsters and a sentient ecosystem gone mad. It is a war they are destined to lose, as with every century that passes, more of the ancient science lies forgotten, replaced by myth and superstition. That is, until assistant navigator Rene stumbles the mightiest weapon of the ancestor-gods...
Link to 1st chapter here: 1st chapter on HFY
Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road
They were still walking as night fell. The Amit would not break off their chase for mere lack of light. They walked on, guided by the constellations which Rene had learned to read at the academy. They dared not give themselves to sleep for fear of being unable to wake the next day. They ate up ground at an unforgiving pace, setting one boot after another till the blisters on their toes rubbed bloody in their hole-ridden socks. It was times like these that they learned to hate their masks. It was hard enough going without having to gasp through the rank-smelling things. Occasionally they would loosen their straps and pull the rubber facepieces up past their noses, taking greedy gulps of oxygen-rich air. It was a dangerous tactic. Though the masks were only simple machines consisting of a series of intake valves, they served to limit the amount of oxygen they inhaled while simultaneously retaining more of their waste gases such that they could breathe just the right mixture of air. Each time they did it made them delirious, lungs filling with sweet life-giving sustenance, burning muscles renewed with fresh strength. But too much exposure to the poisonous atmosphere and they would die the next day of oxygen narcosis. They permitted themselves this deadly luxury for only a minute at a time before clasping their facepieces back on.
Once they stopped to treat Lethway’s clearly worsening wound which, as a result of the puncture in his sealant suit, was already was showing signs of rot. Pale, mold-like growths had begun to appear along with the scabs. They washed it with antiseptic solution and closed it over with wad of cotton. Upon Lethway’s return, if they returned at all, he would have to undergo a battery of treatments to rid his body of hosts of parasites which had found a home in him. For now they ignored it as best they could, though Lethway had begun to slow considerably, grunting with pain with every other step he took.
Some time after daybreak they climbed to the top of a small hill and there lay resting, listening for any sign of pursuit or for one of their number wandering close by. From their vantage point they saw the river again, a silvery white streak threading its way through a small gorge. They were close. Before they set out they tried establishing contact one final time. At regular intervals Rene inhaled deeply and blew the whistle hard. A few times he thought he heard a faint response. Each time they sat up, flushed with excitement, but eventually they worked out that they were merely hearing the echoing return. Lethway shook his head in despair: the surface had claimed their comrades, just as it had so many others.
They turned away and descended. Soon they heard the burbling of water as it swept past reed covered banks. Once they crossed it would only be a few hour’s march to the outpost. Their pulses quickened at the prospect of safety.
“As if things couldn’t get any worse,” Lethway said as they eyed the tree line on the other side, “Now I’ll have to march with wet socks.”
“Better wet socks than having those devils on our tail the rest of the way,” replied Rene. Somewhere amid the violet branches a flock of tiny meritsel birds played their monotone song, rubbing barbed legs across bladed feathers. A striped rat sunned itself on a flat river stone, blinking placidly in the heat. The place looked deserted enough. Still, they didn’t cross the soft brown loam of the bank, but kept in the shade beneath a tall frond.
“Pity. I’d just got the buggers to dry.” Lethway noticed his thoughtful look and unslung his musket “You smell something funny, or does your face always look that way?”
Rene motioned for quiet. The birds had fallen silent. The striped rat cocked its head, perturbed. Rene went prone, reached for his musket, and primed it. Lethway repositioned, steadying his barrel against a rotted trunk. A long moment passed, in which neither man moved a muscle.
Suddenly, one of the members of the avian orchestra squawked, a brutal, jarring chord that shattered the stillness. The song resumed. Rene bowed his head in relief.
“That had my heart going, and no mistake,” Lethway said with a grin. He made to straighten up when a pebble flung by some hand unseen skipped across his toes, and he all but jumped out of his skin. In one fluid motion Rene raised himself and turned to his left, cocking his weapon and bringing it to his shoulder as he did.
A red face had appeared amid the bushes to their left. Several dozen meters away the navigator lay in a dense thicket, bleeding heavily from his forehead, body rigid with pain.
“Stay down,” he mouthed, and pointed upriver. Both of them kissed dirt and tried not to breathe.
They watched as Deschane took another pebble. He tossed it over in a long arc across the river, where it splashed into the water next to the rat. It darted away, all six limbs scurrying across the bank towards the trees.
It crossed an invisible line and died quicker than a thought.
An Amit came wriggling out from under deep layers of earth, muddy water running off its glistening pale body. Hastily it snagged the rat with its claws and crammed it squeaking into its jaws whole. Then it returned to its hiding place, where it dug out a tiny Amit with a shrunken body and a monstrously large head engorged beyond the normal proportions, clammy skin stretched so tight it was almost translucent. Their chitinous lips met in a grotesque parody of a kiss, shreds of meat and bone passed from set of mouth parts to the other.
“A nursery. Just our luck,” said Lethway. He watched as the nursemaid with uncharacteristic gentleness cradled the infant Amit in its vestigial arms as the nymph devoured its predigested meal. There was something tender about the way it was rocking back and forth. Something almost…maternal. He frowned. He had not heard many accounts of how the Amit reared their young. All he knew was that at a certain point in the nymph’s adolescence it was taken out of the mound along with a dozen of its brood-mates, who would then be cared for by a sterile female who guarded her charges with suicidal devotion. The infant finished its meal and reached up with a clawed hand. It ran its digits gently down the face of its nurse, caressing its mouth like a babe suckling at the teat. Not for the first time, Rene wondered just how much of the enemy’s ways remained to be understood.
“Place is probably covered in spore lines,” Lethway was saying, “Ancestors only know how many of the little bastards are hiding in there.”
All Amits were host bodies to many symbiotic organisms, among them a certain fungus that inhabited their pheromone glands. These they would spray thick upon the hunting grounds of their choosing, usually at points where prey was most likely to approach. Upon contact with living organisms these would erupt in tiny spouts of pungent spores which adhered to fur and clothing and served as hunting markers. The unfortunate creature had undoubtedly crossed an unseen tripwire.
A worm of fear curled up in Rene’s belly. He doubted that this was coincidence. Somehow, the enemy had guessed that their prey would try and lose them at the water’s edge, where the humans could wash off the scent, and had covered the only possible exit with a deliberation that hinted at a more than bestial cunning. The navigator crawled over to them on his belly.
“Where’s the rest of you?”
They shook their heads.
“Ah,” he said simply, disappointed. He was silent for moment, then said:
“So then, what do you reckon?”
“Sir, you’re injured.” Lethway said with concern. That was putting it mildly. One of his earlobes was missing, along with a portion of his scalp.
“Yes. I’ve noticed,” absently he wiped a speck of blood from under his swollen right eye. “I came upon a nymph and its nursemaid a while ago,” he explained, “It was a close thing, but I finished it quietly enough.” He gestured behind him, where Rene saw a section of trampled bushes. The nursemaid lay amid the disheveled leaves, limbs contorted by its final death throes. The small, child-like hand of an infant Amit poked out from its stiff embrace. Rene looked away quickly.
“Anyway, we have two options, and neither of them too attractive. First, we can try and circumvent the area and find another way to cross. But that would take time, and frankly we don’t have much of it. The hunting parties are at our heels.”
Rene was shocked. He had known that they would catch up eventually, but never this quickly.
“The second option is we try and push through.”
“And die horribly for our efforts,” said Rene, surprising even himself.
“As is our duty to the Fleet, ensign,” said Deschane sternly, “Do not take that tone with me. I am still your commanding officer.”
“To the void with your hierarchies!” Rene hissed, all his resentment and hysteria boiling over. Deschane’s hand slid down to his holster. Rene saw this and stiffened.
“Sir, with respect, but what you’re suggesting is suicide.”
“Admittedly the likelihood of survival is low, but-"
“Yet you would throw our lives away, knowing the risk? We’re all that’s left!”
“We don’t know that for certain, and even if we were, it doesn’t matter. Our lives are nothing compared to the information we now possess. Information that if undelivered will spell death for every person in the settlement. The Amits leave no survivors.”
“I’ve got it,” Lethway suggested gently, “How about you stop being a pair of bloody knobheads?”
They both turned to stare at him.
“That is not how to address an officer of the fleet, ensign Lethway.” The lord navigator pursed his lips. “I may be forced to-”
“Ah, force it up yours, you miserable bag. Void take it, why is it that only us grunts can see the obvious?”
“What are you saying, ensign?”
“I’m saying that you both are in better shape than I am,” He pointed at the cotton wad at his side. It had begun to weep a bloody pus. Worse still, peering close Rene was startled to see the clutches of white fungus clinging once again to the edges of the wound. Lethway unclasped his sealant suit and showed them. The growth had spread all the way up the small of his back.
“Think about it. If I get back, claiming that there’s a monster of a mound out here populated by a million of the sodding buggers, they’ll put it down to shock or to a poor ensign not being able to count past the number of his fingers. But if a navigator and his aide give them the facts, well. There’s a chance they might see things your way, sir.”
Deschane nodded.
“Ensign, your sense of duty is to be commended.”
“I don’t understand,” Rene said.
“You’re a clever little sod,” Lethway said, “Work it out.”
Rene backed away.
“I can’t condone this. They’ll eat you alive.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing you’re not the navigator. This bugger is, ancestors save us,” he gestured at Deschane. Lethway snapped his heels together and saluted. “Permission to serve the Fleet, sir?”
Deschane allowed something like approval to grace his gaunt features.
“Permission granted. Light’s speed to you. We’ll be further south, past the bend. Let us know when you’ve crossed.”
“Oh, you’ll know alright,” he turned to other man, said “Rene. My regards to the missus. Try and take care of them, right?”
Rene tried to summon the right words for the moment, but his heart gave out and all he could manage was to lower his eyes in shame.
Lethway went into a crouch and crept into the brush. Rene watched him disappear with a sinking feeling. Then he and Deschane hunkered down and waited. The Amits across the river had finished their snack and were digging themselves back into the earth with powerful sweeps of their forelimbs. Rene’s heart hammered in his chest.
One of the beasts paused in its work and tasted the air with a darting proboscis. That was the cue. They took off southward, leaves crackling softly underfoot, going as fast as they dared. They went round the bend of the river, washed themselves thoroughly in the water, and crossed to the other side.
They were a few kilometers away when they heard the shot, and a cry of rage and pain that echoed into the hills. Rene stopped in his tracks and looked back. The river bank on the other side was swarming with them. They came bursting out of the ground like maggots from the belly of a bloated corpse, dozens of nurse maids clutching their young in their residual hands. They swung away towards the sound, claws clicking eagerly at their sides. “Ensign,” It was a strange thing to hear compassion in that steely voice. Nevertheless, Rene looked up and saw Deschane looking back at him with solemn eyes.
“The Fleet will remember his sacrifice. But only if we survive this day. Understood?”
Rene hung his head and followed after him.
Link for all chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road

TLDR; I have been a teacher for the past 2 years and realize I cannot stand teaching, what are some other options?
So I went to school to become a doctor and I was pre med until I was a junior and I realized I did not want to be a doctor (shadowing was miserable and I realized I only want to do it because I was kind of mesmerized by being a woman in stem and I knew doctors were paid well).
So I graduated with a BSc in microbiology and then I went on to get a MEd in general science education (a lot of help that does me now not wanting to be a teacher)
I kind of enjoy working mostly alone or on a really large team (so team of 1 or team of 10+ I like the feeling of anonymity). I really enjoy being creative and creating new products or programs - I enjoy being able to create custom worksheets for my students or designing lab activities (this has led me towards instructional design or educational outreach - but I have not found many good resources on how to get started in these areas).
I really enjoy have checklists and predictable work schedules (so not super spontaneous and unpredictable work flows) but I also like being able to do something different from time to time (meaning like I do not want to be an accountant that does the exact same thing day in and day out, I like some variety - maybe like a broad job scope)
In terms of things I’m good at vs bad at, I’m a bit of a perfectionist and extremely detail oriented, I love creativity or adding a little bit of a creative touch to the things I do and I love staying focused on a single task until I see it through to completion. I’m not great at working through conflict (I’m a pretty anxious person overall) and I am not the best at being micromanaged (like to the point where I have no autonomy - I don’t mind being told what to do but I like some autonomy).
I make about 60k as a teacher but I also do a lot of “extra work” like working sports games, working on a science team contract, co counsel a club, and work pretty closely with special Ed (I do get satisfaction from these things but they are big time commitments and I do them largely for the salary boost)
I have thought about being an event planner because I enjoy being in a role where I create the outcome, and I really like to make people happy/ have a good time. I have also thought about going into med device or pharma sales because I enjoy stem and the technical aspect of sharing things and teaching about medicine or devices.
I feel like I’m a bit of an ambivert (I enjoy being around others but I don’t like working on teams where others aren’t pulling their weight)
I originally became a teacher because I love science and I love sharing my love of science with other people who are also interested in science. I also really wanted a chance to make a positive impact on the youth and be somewhat of an inspiration for my female students who also wanted to be in stem. I really enjoy developing my own lessons and lesson plans and being able to deliver labs or assignments the best way I think will teach the lesson.
Since starting teaching I really do not like how disrespectful and unruly these kids are, I’m also in a school system where I find that there is a lot of pressure/ stress placed on us to be liked by parents and to present as a certain way in public (like I can’t just enjoy what I want to do because I may see someone from school or the community that may say something bad about me or the way I was dressed or what I was doing and call my tenure into question), and to a point I made earlier I really do not like working with other teachers who just do not care or will not put in effort to lessons or labs..
Any advice or guidance is highly appreciated!! I’m not really even sure where to start so even just an accurate career inventory or personality inventory rec would also be appreciated. I just feel a bit lost in where to even start..