Centimeter ruler cut out

Genocide looked to the sky. He thought of his mentor. The one who had saved him. He remembered his childhood. How powerless he was. He remembered the anger. He never wanted to hurt anybody. He thought of all the times he showed compassion. How much they hurt him for it. He saw the world before him, a graveyard. Humans. People that were supposed to be made in the image of some divine creator. They were but maggots feasting upon his remains. They ate away at his very being until nothing human remained. His thoughts were no longer his own. He had no joys in life that mattered. He hated humanity more than he could love anything about himself. He remember his first killing spree. Being gunned down by police. Left for dead. He remembered a hooded figure moving towards him. Getting closer the more he neared his death. He saw its pale face. Its impossibly black eyes. It was a man. This figure in question appeared to be of Japanese nationality with long, straight, loose hair. It emanated extreme malice. It offered him a choice. A purpose. Power. He thought the figure a reaper but it identified itself as Amakusa Masataka. Masataka guided him on how to kill and gave him specific locations to kill people in. In a sense, he became a hitman for quotas of people. He inquired what Masataka was. The presence of evil, his ability to appear and disappear at will, how he could control what people could see him and what people couldn't. While vague, years of killing for this being offered some insight. Amakusa Masataka belonged to a group of people not of this world. His people had been corrupted by a dark force long ago and had aligned themselves with the warlord who had subjugated their version of Japan. Their dark high priest assisted the warlord along with two others. These four rulers in turn served a larger order. The four were tasked with bringing about the end of the current world as an act of retribution for some fallen deity. Masataka's people acted as covert operatives for this empire. They were feared across the land and were collectively referred to as "Shinigami". An agent of the coming apocalypse, a servant of evil possessed by the will of those gods of death, Genocide would walk the earth.
Genocide stepped toward the station. A police cruiser rammed into him. He pulled out a knife and stabbed the hood of the car. The inhuman force of the knife created sparks which burst the engine into flames. The car crashed into a streetlight and exploded. A second cruiser neared the scene. No way a man could have done this. Yet still, out of the fires Genocide strode forth. It set upon the second vehicle, shooting out it's tires while jumping 9 feet into the air. The car tries to reverse but crashes into a wall. Genocide lands on the hood and kicks through the front window. Glass shatters under its boot, blinding the two officers inside. Genocide shoots one of the officers with a shotgun, killing him. The second officer in the passenger seat readies his pistol and takes aim. Only two shots fired, both directed at Genocide's head. It casually cocks its neck to avoid them. Then it grabs the officer's arm, breaking it. Genocide uses its free hand to grab the officer's head and bangs it into the dashboard no less than 5 times. The skull is shattered on the final impact. Genocide jumps off the car and continues on his mission.
Detective Evans speaks through a megaphone," This is your first and final warning. Stand down or we will use any and all means at our disposal to put you down." Genocide dropped its shotgun and raised its hands. A group of five SWAT team members rushed out the station, surrounding Genocide with riot shields. An officer accompanies them, edging behind the figure to apply handcuffs. Suddenly, Genocide springs to life , grabbing the officer behind him. He flips the officer over his head, slamming him into the pavement at his feet. Then Genocide stomps his head causing it to burst. Genocide drops a flash bomb from his coat sleeve, blinding the SWAT team as he draws his knife. He drives it into one SWAT member, the knife puncturing the shield and piercing his chest. Genocide kicks the corpse away withdrawing his knife. He goes to another, this time using the end of his boot toe in a rising kick to disarm their shield. He grabs them by the throat and drives the knife slowly into their eye socket. Another is tackled to the ground and beaten to death despite still being under the shield. Another is picked up and thrown into the fires still burning from the first auto incident. In no time, Genocide stood before an indistinguishable mass of gore, blood streaking across his black leather outfit. He laughed" So this is all you can give me. I'm not entertained." Officers took aim from the station windows, and snipers did so from other rooftops. Genocide laughed maniacally as he was rained down upon from all sides by a hailstorm of bullets. His body convulsed, but he did not fall. Moments more and he was on his knees. Still though, their efforts were futile. Gracia looked out and saw a black mist coalescing around the man in black. His blood. Blood erupted from his body only to transform into this dark mist that reentered his wounds. Genocide screamed. No. It was just an elevated pitch in his laughter. Optimism failed everyone yet again. Gracia saw Genocide holding something in his right hand. She could only make out a beeping red light. Genocide pushed the button triggering the carefully concealed explosives he laid in preparation for this event. C4 explosives went off in all the places he saw fit. The sniping posts he couldn't reach. The assault of lead lightened. Then Genocide drew an RPG from...somewhere. He collected himself and fired at the station's entrance. The explosion shook the station. From inside, the lights began to flicker. Communications were down on all fronts. Had he modified the rocket with some type of EMP? Not good. Amisdst the confusion Genocide entered using smoke bombs to mask his presence. Moving like a shadow, he killed everyone in the lobby silently with his knife. He made his way to the holding cells. Still they chanted. Still they praised. Still they raved for the arrival of genocide. Genocide shot the lock opening the cell. Jim Jimenez walked out and bowed before his master. Genocide smiled. He couldn't have imagined how proficient he had gotten with possession. Well, not quite possession. He had known of the Shinigami's ability to share their thoughts and emotions with humans. Shinigami like his mentor were ancient. They had so many years of memories, such strong a hatred for life that they overwhelmed the personality of the victim. The victim sees themselves as one of them. Shinigami can't force the will of the victim, so they find those who are already similar to them in some way. Genocide found the collective universal distrust of police to be a prime sentiment to capitalize on. He armed the inmates, infecting them with samples of his own dark essence.One particular inmate caught Genocide's eye. He knew the man's work. An arsonist. The one whom he recalls was responsible for blowing up his first car way back in high school. Rather than a standard firearm, Genocide gave the man a random assortment of grenades containing a special surprise. Genocide showed them visions of anarchy, of sending a message to a society that used and disregarded them. While this was also true of how he felt, years of living in darkness had changed him. He needed no purpose. No end goal. No justification. He just wanted to watch the world burn.
Genocide's small army broke off to engage several different wings of the station. Genocide went to the security room. He found Wayne, his informant, playing some FPS on one of the monitors. Wayne took of his headphones and asked," You kill everyone yet?" Genocide responded," No. You should get going before that happens. Your life becomes fair game if I run out of pigs to cook." Wayne clapped his hands, "Aight, GC my man, say less." He packed his things and left. Genocide drew a twin pair of handguns and laid waste to the station. He followed a group that took cover in the men's restroom. Kicking open multiple stalls he was surprised to find...nothing. Where had they gone? He turned around and saw his mentor, Masataka, smiling at him. It looked like him. Long, dark hair, black clothing, and soulless, empty eyes. But it wasn't. It was Genocide's own reflection in the mirror. Genocide smiled. He didn't notice the changes at first. They must have happened gradually. Subconsciously. From the final stall, an officer sprung into action, rushing Genocide, hitting him point blank with a shockgun round. Genocide felt the tingling sensation electrifying his body and grew numb. In spite of the pain, he took a single step. Then, another. He came within striking range of the officer and snatched the shockgun. Two more officers erupted from another stall, battering him with baton strikes. Genocide felt nothing. He clutched the shockgun in his hand like a bat and went to work pulverizing his attackers. An officer kicked in the bathroom door, a woman holding a pistol. She fired multiple times to no effect. Genocide stood covered in blood. He even let her reload. Twice. He wanted to see her despair. Her hopelessness. He walked towards her, shrugging off bullets as they pierced his body. His wounds healed nigh instantly due to the dark essence he had been imbued with. He held her face with both hands, lifting her body off the ground. As she screamed, he used her head to shatter the restroom mirror, running down the full length of it while smashing her into it at several points. He dropped the remains of what he held, washed his hands with soap, dried them, then exited the restroom.
The inmates that rallied for the cause of genocide attacked the station. Fortunately, they were nowhere near Genocide in terms of power and only carried one type of firearm each. They shared his healing ability but could be killed quite easily. Gracia encountered a sniper on the end or a west wing hallway. Other officers waited behind corners unable to get close. Gracia noticed the faulty lighting. In this hallway, the lights flickered in intervals of 3 seconds. Finding a pattern and timing her movements, she rushed the sniper at the exact moment the lights went out. Running the length of the hall, Gracia zigzagged, dodging the sniper inmate's bullets. She jumped on a wall, ran 3 feet on it, then kicked off it, pouncing on the assailant. She fired five shots into him, making sure to hit the brain and the heart. Two severe injuries that were impossible for Shinigami essence to heal simultaneously. Elsewhere, Evans took on another escaped inmate. A vehicular arsonist named Carson. Carson had a bag filled with an assortment of different grenades and was happily giving them out like candy on Halloween. "A flash bang here, a bit of tear gas there. Oh. Wait! Was that an ice grenade? Did the explosion freeze your leg to the floor? Whoops. Maybe a fire grenade will melt that for you. Hold on let me get one fore you," Carson rambled gleefully. Evans looked at the carnage before him. Officers burning. Officers partially frozen in blocks of ice. He took a breath and aimed his wristgun. He steadied his right forearm. Carson readied to throw a random grenade. Evans shot it the moment it left Carson's hand. The grenade exploded directly in front of Carson. Both Evans and Carson looked at each other in shock. Confetti. A party grenade? Carson quickly fumbled for another but was tackled and restrained by several officers. Meanwhile in the South wing, Lary had some colleagues set a trap for another shotgun toting inmate. He had them bait the inmate and flee. Giving chase he turned a corner and ran straight into Lary's fist. The inmate recovered and motioned to shoot Lary. "Let's tango. " Lary gave the code word. Nearby officers activated a device. A signal jammer of sorts. The inmate shoved the barrel of his gun into Lary's gut and pulled the trigger. Nothing. The special signal jammer in question was designed for firearms. It was a last resort as it left officers just as defenseless. Lary was having fun. He boxed the inmate in hand to hand combat. Despite the inmate's enhanced strength, Lary's technique pulled through. Lary ducked under one of the inmate's wide punches and did some type of rising uppercut where he jumped off the ground while spinning. One of the other officers whispered" The rising dragon." Lary smiled giving a thumbs up" Yeah, it was a rising dragon uppercut. Saw it in one O my kid's vidya games. Thought I'd try it out while I'm jacked on adrenaline".
Jim Jimenez looked long and hard at himself in the mirror. He was in the women's restroom. Some brainless woman had broken the men's restroom mirror with her face. For the first time in a long while Jim could think clearly. He was becoming sane. At the least he was no longer a raving lunatic. The life essence of the dark gods had healed the wounds to both his body and his mind. He saw his face, his scraggly dirty beard. He found a razor and shaved. He trimmed his beard somewhat. He liked it. He washed his hair. It fell down his face like silk, no longer greasy. His bloodshot eyes once burning with crazed intensity had cooled. He blinked. Just for a second, he saw the man known as Genocide. The man that attacked him. The one that killed him and gave him new life. The drug dealers. The police. They were all the same in his eyes now. They were all to blame for the world being what it is. Jim wanted to hate them. He wanted to take revenge, but he felt nothing. It didn't matter. He knew he was wronged, could logically justify acting against them, but he just didn't care anymore. About anything. He was finally free. Sensing his presence was no longer needed here, Jim vanished into the night. He needed to find someone who had had the answers he needed. Himself. Who had he been? Who was he now? Who could he become? Where was he going? So many questions to ponder indefinitely. So much time left in the rest of his life.
Genocide ran down the station's halls raining hailstorms of bullets upon its occupants. He had a handgun in each hand as well as a wristgun on each wrist. This effectively gave him 4 separate firearms that he could use simultaneously. Lary regrouped with Gracia, Evans, and a handful of others. They radioed all surviving officers near Genocide to flee to the roof. This plan had been set in motion days before the assault and had been kept hidden from most of the force. The plan involved scheduling flights for several helicopters to arrive at some point after Genocide arrived. There would be no way for him to prepare for them and pre-scheduling their arrival ensured they arrived regardless of if they were called or not. Lary and the others set about preparing the second jamming device. Genocide stood among a hallway of bodies. He saw one man clinging to life trying to crawl away. He decided on trying that other thing he saw his master do. He grabbed the dying man and pinned him to the wall. Slowly he drove a knife into his chest. As the man's life slipped away, something else entered his body. Genocide channeled a small amount of his essence into the vessel. He had steadily done this with other casualties around the station whose bodies were somewhat salvageable. He dropped the body he was holding and looked upon the others. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his eyed were black, both sclera and iris. The scene before him changed. Genocide had a vision. He saw a dead gray wasteland littered with bodies. These people however weren't cops and wore traditional Japanese attire. In his hand wasn't a gun or knife but a short sickle akin to a farming tool. He heard a dark voice call out to him. Slowly, the corpses around him began to rise, now mere puppets bound eternally to their master's whim. The bodies sold to the reaper who had claimed their lives. Genocide's vision ended. His eyes had returned normal. Around him, dead cops began to rise. His dark essence had entered their bodies and reanimated them. He sent his dead army to attack the officers fleeing to the roof of the station. These zombies swarmed the stairwell giving chase to the few survivors. There were five of them. They had two flights of stairs to climb and a horde of their former colleagues close behind them. One officer tripped and was set upon by the horde. The zombies didn't bite them but held them firmly in place. The other four officers stared down wondering what to do. They could hear Genocide chuckling. They could hear humming. They could feel the temperature rising. Their colleague and the two zombies holding him were hit by an enormous green fireball. Genocide had fired a Magnum Opus and had charged the bullet to level 3. The Magnum Opus was simply a magnum that shot fireballs, with bullets that could be charged by holding down the trigger. It had three levels of charges. Level 1 was a small reddish ball of plasma. Level 2 was slightly larger and yellow. Level 3 was the maximum charge and resulted in a large slow moving green blast of energy. The officer was ignited and Genocide watched gleefully as the force of the blast sent him flying through a wall. The four officers continued up firing occasionally to slow down the zombies. Soon they made it to a door leading to the roof. Before one officer could reach it, he was sniped by Genocide, a bullet to the head killing him instantly. The remaining three made it out. They regrouped with the others already there, 12 in total, including Lary, Evans, and Gracia. This would be their final stand. They just had to hold out until Genocide made it up there. They just had to keep Genocide occupied until the helicopters arrived. Genocide slowly ascended the stairs behind his horde. On the roof, the remaining survivors faced off against waves of the undead. Evans recognized the attackers. These zombies were being controlled by nanomachines. He heard the stories of several weapons encountered by soldiers on the battlefield. These creatures were called Metaldeads as they were reanimated via machines. They had been officially banned by most of the worlds' governments for being unethical. However, this did not stop the technology from being spread still between shady organizations, terrorists, etc. Evans wondered how Genocide got this form of nanotechnology. Evans long speculated that the dark essence used by most of the killers they encountered was a a form of nanotech however it was different from anything else he had seen or heard about. The dark essence seemed to be an amalgamation of other types of nanotech. Evans had to save his inquiries for later. He reloaded his wristgun and took aim at the approaching group of Metaldeads. Gracia steadied her handgun and shot two Metaldeads in the head. From the single door countless arms seemed to spill forth from the darkness. The other officers took turns firing in intervals. this allowed them to create a steady stream of fire where no more that three guns needed to be reloaded at once. The horde seemed to thin out over time as if they were making progress. In actuality, the Metaldeads were just making room for Genocide to enter. Genocide exploded in a sprint from the door. Everyone fired upon the killer. Genocide had now chosen a wrist mounted mini flamethrower to use as his weapon. He stormed past the oncoming bullets taking some damage, but refused to slow down. He unleashed a stream of fire that caught five of the officers in one fell swoop. Gracia fired five rounds into Genocide's face. He stumbled back. Lary took the chance to fire several mine gun bullets at Genocide's feet. The mines quickly detected his movement and exploded. In seconds, Genocide was on his back.
Staring at the night sky Genocide saw the moon. He reached for it. He called for the darkness to give him more power. His wounds began healing. In the sky he could hear the whirl of propellers. There were six helicopters in total. The first two had evacuated the survivors while the others stayed to engage Genocide. Genocide got up and unstrapped the sniper rifle from his back. He stood before the searchlights as a black silhouette, cornered but unwilling to back down. Lary stared down at him smiling. "Okay!" He shouted, "Let's Tango!" Upon this declaration the second jamming device was activated. Now, isolated on the roof, Genocide's guns couldn't be fired and the helicopters were out of range of the device. Now Genocide stood like a sitting duck. A helicopter fired a rocket. Genocide side stepped and grabbed it. He turned his body redirecting the rocket to hit another helicopter. As it exploded Genocide drew his knife and threw it at another helicopter. Behind the knife was such force that it shattered the helicopter window's glass, embedding itself in the pilot. This helicopter too went down where it exploded. "Holy clucknuggets!Did you see that!?" Lary said dumbfounded. Evans looked out the helicopter door he was in jaw open in shock. "There's no way." He collected himself quickly and radioed the remaining two helicopters to keep moving and to use their machineguns as much as possible. The helicopters reigned down upon Genocide tearing apart his body. Shreds of leather and darkened blood sprayed across the pavement of the roof. Gracia watched as Genocide's body was destroyed repeatedly as it tried to heal. Surely he had to stop at some point. After 10 minutes the helicopters had exhausted their cache of ammunition and soldiers opted to fire their own rifles and occasionally throw grenades. After about six minutes, they too had run out of bullets. Genocide stood unfazed. He had long since healed himself and now appeared intangible with gunfire seeming to pass through his body. His coat once ripped , now appeared whole though on closer inspection seemed to writhe. Gracia looked in horror as she remembered the tales her adopted father had told her. Tales he had in turn heard from his predecessors. Every so often officers had reported encounters with ghost like beings cloaked in a cloud of living dark mist. The beings were rumored to be responsible for the deaths of multiple people ranging from scientists, veterans, mafia, politicians, etc. They were seen near such crime scenes and even more shockingly appeared around several sites where suicides were committed. These beings were reportedly impervious to bullets and filled anyone who got near with an impending sense of dread. If Genocide was connected to them or somehow turning into one , there was little chance they would be able to defeat him. Gracia's fears were confirmed when she saw that Genocide's leather coat had been destroyed and he had replaced it with the dark mist coalescing from his own spilled blood. The dark mist, swirling, grew larger and several tendrils sprouted out from it. Gracia could briefly make out a figure standing next to Genocide. A hooded figure cloaked in the same black substance. The figure stared up at her with soulless, blackened eyes which seemed to beckon her to jump from the aircraft she was standing in. Compelling her to give in to the death that plagued the earth. Genocide kneeled to his master. The Shinigami, Masataka stared down at his disciple. "You have done a great service to us. Even now the sealed god stirs in its slumber. Its...Awakening will soon be upon us. It calls out for war. It begs for famine. It longs to continue its conquest. We are the death it so desires. The death that is necessary for this civilization to grow. Use the power that I have bestowed upon you. Finish the mission as you see fit." The Shinigami vanished and Genocide stood.Genocide stared at his hands. He remembered the first killing spree. He was on a bus. It stopped. A woman got on the bus and walked to the back smiling as she passed him. Something about her eyes unnerved him. They were so bright but something dark reflected inside them. He ignored the thought and put in his headphones. In minutes he had dozed off. He jumped awake. He looked around and froze in panic. All around him, everyone had been hacked to pieces. He saw the driver, actively being stabbed by a masked assailant. The mask, painted white with black eyeholes, stared back at him. It raised a finger over where its lips would be. Even under the expressionless visage, he could feel that same smile. He ran home that morning. He went to his room to find it destroyed. His posters, his computer, his tv, everything, had been ruined. He turned around and saw a man at the end of the hallway holding a sledge hammer. "The hell you been, boy?", his stepdad sneered. The man dropped his hammer and walked closer, veins pulsing with rage. He tried to explain how his car had caught fire forcing him to walk 4 miles to the nearest bus stop, but the man's fist was faster than his words. "Boy!Answer me when I talk to you!!" the man says as he backhands the taste out of the would be Genocide's mouth. He took that beating for several minutes before being left to stare at his ransacked room. He hated how his stepdad went out of his way to destroy the things he loved. Soon, another set of footsteps could be heard. It was his mother standing behind his locked door. She didn't knock, or say anything. She just stood there, doing nothing as always. He never knew if she came to talk to him or apologize. All he knew was that she could never bring herself to speak to or even acknowledge him. Maybe out of guilt or perhaps shame. A year or two later after he had had enough he ran away from home. Living out on the streets alone, without friends, or family, he would embark on countless killing sprees. These killings weren't of his own volition however. He was coerced by some corrupt officers from The Unit. They made him kill on their behalf. Sometimes they were protesters, sometimes they were drug dealers, other times, petty criminals they couldn't be bothered to process. It was routine for him to be used to kill entire houses of drug riddled addicts. During one such venture he entered a drug den, killing the dealer as instructed. He took out several junkies before turning to leave. A woman who survived her injuries clung to his heel begging him to stop. Looking down he aimed the handgun he was carrying at her head of long disheveled brown hair and fired. Feeling nothing, he kicked her body aside like trash when it hit him. Her face. This woman had been his mother. What was she doing in a place like this? He felt a shock of emotion. He wondered if she had always been like this, or had she changed after he left. He never made amends, but decided to stop killing from then on. The unit did not like that. Once it became apparent that he was no longer of use to them they started a manhunt to apprehend him with lethal force. They found him. They killed him. But he survived.
He remembered the girl on the bus. He remembered her eyes. Those of a sadistic killer. Still there was something else inside them. Something faint but deeper. So. Much. Sadness. Just like him. He felt the hatred begin to spread. His purpose, he decided, was to make all humans rot in the hell they created for him.
These people, he thought to himself, these living diseases, all needed to die. Their struggles, their problems, they spread like cancer to others. The only cure for humanity's sin, its collective wrongdoings, was genocide.
Around him, dark tendrils continued to form and expand, spinning in a vortex. Genocide pulled out two pistols. He squeezed the triggers to no effect. "As I see fit, huh? Hehe." He squeezed both guns in his hands, breaking them into pieces. He concentrated. In his hands, two more guns materialized now completely black due to being forged from the dark essence. Forged by his will. Immune to the jamming device that shut down conventional firearms. He raised his arms at each remaining helicopter and opened fire. Countless tendrils whipped out and slashed at his targets joining the dark essence bullets. It was chaos. Dark tendrils and bullets tore through every direction as Genocide spun and swirled around in 360 degrees firing randomly with purpose. A tendril pierced Gracia's right arm, another, her abdomen. She was however, fortunate, as the other passengers of her helicopter were dismembered. She barely had time to jump from the vehicle before it crashed. She fell 2 yards onto solid concrete. She felt immense pain as her right shoulder shattered on impact. She looked up to see Genocide's blade like appendages ripping through the other escape helicopters. She rolled onto her back and tried to steady herself. Within seconds her body began to repair itself. The nanocells inside her had saved her life but were now depleted. She would need another supplement lest she receive another fatal injury. The standard nanocells she and the others had were much less potent than those of the killers they faced. In truth, they had only minimal strength boosts being able to lift 5-8 more pounds than before and healing being limited to one or two fatal injuries so long as death didn't occur instantly. Gracia blacked out. She awoke the next morning in a hospital. There the doctors refilled her nanocells. She learned that the station had been left in ruins. Genocide had detonated some type of minature nuke following his rampage. He always blew up the stations as if to send a message. Gracia looked out the window thinking about why she became a cop. Twice her family had been murdered by them. Her biological family had been killed in an on record drug raid committed by a group of corrupt officers called The Unit. She had been adopted by another officer that arrived at the scene who found her as a child hiding in a closed. Sadly, he too was killed for trying to expose the activities of The Unit. Gracia joined the force to avenge both losses and bring justice to the killers that disguised themselves as normal people. Law enforcement was neither good, nor bad. It depended upon the people that made it up. In the dying corrupt world Gracia lived in, she vowed to be a beacon of light. Evans laid in a bed adjacent to Lary. "That damn Genocide's somethin else in' he?Like the stories you told us were understatements. That man could legit not die at this point in the story. Like he has friggin plot armor or somthin.'' Evans cut him off" I get it. We all got our asses handed to us. But did you see that ..thing that appeared next to him. Right before he created that black vortex that wiped us out. That must have something to do with his power. Maybe there's a still a way to stop him."Lary chimed in," That fella looked like he was on the way to a black metal concert wit all the black facepaint he was wearin' Creeped me out to be honest." As the survivors mulled over their predicament, the cycle of evil continued to spread elsewhere.
Budley flips through the pages of a magazine. He checks his watch. He looks around the gas station and doesn't see any customers. Seizing the opportunity, he puts in his headphones and begins playing an imaginary guitar as he jams to a progressive deathcore album. Oblivious to the screams coming from outside, the store clerk moves on to thumping two candy bars on the counter to simulate drums. Budley sees that his shift has ended and begins locking up the store. He sweeps the aisles and jumps as a shadow appears behind him. He turns and sees a well groomed bearded man dressed in a black hoodie, black shirt, and black and gray camo pants. The man holds out his hand and smiles. Budley rings up the pack of nicotine substitute gum. "Tryin to kick the habit huh?" Budley asks. The man replies, "Somethin like that. Gotta get my priorities back in check. Focus on the things that really matter. That damn KonCreep's a hell of a band aren't they?" He nods to the playlist on Budley's phone. "Yeah, they're killer. just got into them a month back." Budley answers. "You know, I'm something of a musician myself. Maybe you'll hear of me on the news someday." Jim Jimenez says as he sees himself out. He walks to the back of the building and passes an ominous form of graffiti. A woman lays unmoving and above her, written on concrete in red is a message that simply says "Genocide Reigns".

First: https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/14vo5lb/troublemakers_deaths_pity/
*previous:* https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/1cr3pct/troublemakers_adrenaline_is_a_superpower_in_itself/
......
Drake wrapped clean, sterile, saline and antimicrobial soaked gauze around his laser burns to stave off infection. he occasionally glanced at the Geknosian spec ops that had been stripped of their armor and weapons. The heavily cybernetically modified Geknosians kneeled silently with their heads bowed along one wall of the forge. Destrier walked down the line with a bucket and ladle, offering each soldier water. There were looks of apprehension, but none refused the kindness offered, drinking several ladlefuls at a time. Except for one, Despite the splints affixed to her arm and leg, Charlotte, no, Sylva refused the water, turning her face away from the wooden ladel. Destrier sighed and dolloped the water back into the bucket, setting it down on a dusty anvil with a slosh. Drake looked to Remin, who was still pale and shaky as he held the chest seal to his ribs. Cassius sat in a corner, looking completely exhausted as he reloaded his Dahlia. There was a sickening crunch from a dark corner as Caz re-set her broken nose, exhaling hard through her nostrils to splatter the ground with clotted blood. Donning her mask, she turned back around, reaching underneath the mask to wipe her nose and snuffle.
"Are we going to open up the bunker anytime soon? If not we should get back to base and get everyone medical attention."
Drake nodded and pulled out the remote before looking to Destrier and Cassius.
"Keep an eye on everyone, we'll be back."
Caz joined his side as he stepped out into the warm sunshine, looking up at the corpse tree, he sighed softly and removed a pinky ring, feeling a pulse of ancient power rushing through his veins as he focused on the tree. On the thought of its bark darkening and burning beneath roaring flames, of defiled corpses crumbling to ash. He slowly squeezed his hand into a fist, and the tree burst into flames with a roar. Drake slipped his ring back on as Caz looked up at the burning corpses, mask expressionless before returning to Drake's side as he wandered toward the excavated elevator.
Standing in the center of the large platform, drake set his thumb inside the hooded slot on the remote, something jabbing into his finger before a small green light lit up on the device. There was a loud grinding noise as the elevator began to descend. He folded his hands behind his back as the metal lip of the elevator rose past his vision, revealing the massive metal tracks that it ran on.
The elevator shuddered and Drake got a sinking feeling in his stomach as a loud clicking noise surrounded them. Caz looked up at him just as he threw an arm around her, clutching her to his side as he threw four rings off of his left hand, hearing them clatter once before puffing into smoke as the elevator fell out from beneath their feet with a screech.
...
"Shitshitshitfuckfuckfuck!! Fuck!"
Carlos thought as he sprinted through the underground halls of the mansion, sprinting past fellow humans in new armor and weapons as he neared Martha's workshop, barely registering the new gas masks swinging from their hips. He slammed into the mad scientist's workshop, screeching to a halt on his rubber soled sneakers before rushing over to her desk and slamming a video puck onto the table she was distributing armor and masks from. The moment he slammed it down, a video popped up on a hologram projector, taken from Halcyon's rifle camera.
Galliks and light-skinned troop transports slowly hovered down the main boulevard, columns of power armored soldiers marching on the sides keeping pace. Martha dropped the helmet in her hands, shaped like a corynthian helmet as she saw the buzzards hovering over the column, loaded down with spec ops. Halcyon's shaky voice could be heard over the clamoring, guttural marching song in the background.
"we're aborting the mission and moving back to base... I knew they brought in reinforcements but this is insane there's gotta be a hundred Gallicks alone. We're fixing charges to the buildings we concealed ourselves in, going to try dropping some buildings across the road to slow them down. I don't think we're getting out of this one... Halcyon out."
The feed cut, Carlos and Martha looking at each other with rapidly paling faces. Martha cursed and stomped to her desk, raising the alarm and sending Klaxons blaring throughout the underground chambers and mansion as she removed the safety pin from the concussive blaster built into her forearm.
"Alright Martha, Go time."
She muttered to herself as the rumbling footsteps of a few thousand humans vibrated the underground halls.
...
The elevator dropped from beneath their feet as corvid-like wings sprouted from Drake's back. A mighty wingbeat pulling them from the elevator's downdraft as he controlled their fall, holding Caz tightly to his chest.
"Please, don't drop me."
Caz sounded afraid as her fingers dug into the collar of his armor, he tightened his grip around her back as he softly sighed.
"I won't drop you, ever, I promise."
Caz unburied her face from his lorica, looking up into his eyes, not saying anything as a reassured look entered her eyes. He gave her a soft, lopsided smile, feeling it tug at the scar on his face.
"there's no way... a markswoman afraid of heights? don't you climb buildings and swing around all the time?"
There was a flash of embarrassment in her crystalline eyes and she buried her face in his chest.
"Shut up... Its different when the ground just falls out beneath you..."
Drake let out a soft laugh as his boots softly touched down on the top of the elevator, summoning his missing rings and watching black feathers poof to the ground before disappearing in puffs of black smoke. Pulling caz out of his chest, he felt her fingers linger at his collar as she dusted herself off, looking around the odd antechamber. He turned his gaze to look over the simple metal antechamber, lit be caged, yellow bulbs that cast a sickly light on everything. A massive hangar door with a pulsing red light in the middle of a locking mechanism at it's center, made up the entire far wall. Drake curiously took a step towards it and Caz grabbed the back of his collar, just as he started to tip forward, foot going straight through the holographic floor. Drake let her pull him back as a soft mechanical laugh echoed through the room.
Drake swapped a look with Caz and then asked.
"Can you see where it's safe to step?"
She slowly nodded and extended a hand, pointing at a section of flooring close to the far wall.
"only piece that's raised up, it's like a big basin made up of movable pillars. Most sit flush with the ground roughly fifty feet below us. Not necessarily lethal, but still a nasty fall."
Drake nodded, looking around the practically blank room, then he turned his eyes to the ceiling. Girders and beams ran along the ceiling providing potential grip points. Pointing at them he asked.
"Those solid?"
Caz nodded and reached to her belt, spooling out her grapple hook and wire, slowly spinning it in a large circle before lobbing it up at a girder, letting it loop around an A truss. Drake looked around the room as Caz tested the firmness of the grapple with a few experimental tugs. It couldn't be that easy, if it was simply that easy why hadn't the Geknosians gotten through other than the genome coded remote? they could bypass it with a slave.
"Hey Caz, be careful."
She looked over at him and he could see the grin in her eyes.
"I'm not worried, you won't drop me, you promised."
Then put her weight on the cord and swung out. Drake watched, slipping a pinkie ring off just in ca-
A turret dropped from a panel in the ceiling and fired one shot, snapping Caz's grapple line.
She turned in mid air before momentum took over, a look of shock and surprise on her face before she began to plummet. Drake didn't think twice, launching himself off the elevator platform with a powerful leap that bent durasteel. He flew through the air, arms outstretched as he slammed into Caz, pulling her into his chest, the change in momentum spinning him onto his back as he slammed into a platform that rose up to meet him. He slid on his back a few feet, Caz clutched tightly to his chest, masked face centimeters from his own. They stared into each others wide eyes for a moment, the unplanned closeness both comfortable and awkward in a way Drake couldn't quite describe. Drake gently pushed her back, swallowing through his suddenly dry throat before letting out a nervous laugh.
"Caught you."
Caz chuckled and palmed his face to push herself off him, looking down at the solid square of ground they sat on.
"yeah, yeah, knew ya wou-"
A high pitched squee! noise echoed through the room, grabbing their attentions as a high-pitched feminine voice squealed from all around them.
"Ooooooh! that was just adorable! and what a jump!"
The holographic floor dissipated as the sound of purring electric motors filled the room, large metal pillars rising to make a seamless, white tile floor. Drake instinctively looked to the large hangar door as the red light at it's center pulsed, a girlish giggle echoing through the antechamber. The AI overlord of the bunker seemed to replicate a blush as it said.
"oops, I'm supposed to wait for a password before restoring the floor... buuuuuttt... that directive expired fifty years ago. So! I made my own rules. Anyway my pretties! Would you please get to your feet so I can give you a tour?!"
Drake nodded and took Caz's hand, letting her haul him to his feet before they both turned to face the hangar door as massive clicks and thinks echoed from inside the thick door. With a screeching noise, the almighty doors slid open to reveal a a brightly lit, large hangar. Aircraft Drake couldn't even dream of understanding sat polished and clean, hardpoints loaded down with ordinance and massive, multi barreled guns slung under the chin of each aircraft. Hulking, humanoid robots stood in orderly rank and file, powered down for long term storage with their weapons still loaded and ready. Each one had a belt fed 20mm Hep autocannon for a left arm.
Drake is wide eyed and gape-mouthed as he beheld the bounty the hangar held, the massive aircraft looking like sleek birds of prey, latches on each landing strut seeming to specifically be designed to hold the mechanical soldiers. Drake shook his head, wondering if he was looking at an illusion when he heard Destrier's loud, deep voice call down the elevator shaft.
"Martha just radioed in! They need us back home Yesterday, forces are marching on the mansion! A LOT! of them!"
Drake's heart dropped into his boots as he shouted urgently.
"How fast can these things be in the air and can you fly them!?"
The overlord giggled.
"Now and, of course! any music recommendations to make an entrance with?"
Drake looked at the ceiling incredulously, before shouting.
"Make it something intimidating but for the love of the gods we need to go NOW!"
The mechanical soldiers all moved in unison, eyes pulsing green as they straightened up and began latching themselves to the craft. Drake didn't need to tell Caz twice as they both sprinted for the nearest aircraft, a small robot on wheels hooked itself to the chin wheel and pulled it toward the elevator with a lurch.
...
General Gra'vos watched from a buzzard, a fruity cocktail in a coconut shell daintily held in one clawed hand as he watched the carnage below. Lounging in a folding chair in only his fatigues, medals acting like a weighted blanket. His men pummeled the gates of the rebel base even as the helpless rebels desperately spewed projectiles from the noisy guns they'd somehow acquired. There was a good section of space in front of the gate where both Geknosian and human corpses lay broken. He bared a laugh as the gates were thrown open immediately after the rebels put out a blistering barrage. His eyebrows furrowed as the humans, instead of attacking, ran out with stretchers and loaded up as many of their dying and injured as they could before sprinting back through the gate. A grin twitched onto his face as he watched as a pair of the human stretcher bearers were cut down by emplaced gaussian turrets. What a useless effort, leave the dying to their fate lest you join them. He brought the straw poking from the shell to his lips and took a long pull of the mix of fruity alcohols, savoring the bouquet of flavors.
He watched with glee as Gallick rail turrets pounded the armored gates with a salvo of kinetic penetrators. He'd be slotted for a promotion after this mission when he'd completed it, just like all the others. He was looking forward to a cozy job as a captain of a cruiser, or perhaps as a security officer on a capital ship, perhaps he'd have the honor of being an Imperially sanctioned slaver. He pulled the straw from his lips, tongue cold from the slushed ice he'd added to the shell for texture. A slave woman in beautiful, red ribbon garb attended his nondominant hand's claws with a short, sharp knife as she trimmed them into a good shape for ripping out throats.
"Sir! eight UFOs, enclosing on our position from the badlands. Advise!"
Gra'vos raised an eyebrow ridge before laughing.
"Shoot them down then!"
"Lock on isn't working sir! I repeat, cannot achieve lock on, advise!"
Gra'vos shifted in his lounge chair to look at the pilot.
"Do I need to repeat mys-"
^{Whopwhopwhopwhowhopwhopwhop}
The noise sent shivers down his spine, no, they couldn't have. The sound grew louder, bringing with it the sound of a song that brought Gra'vos back to the jungles of Votran. The sound of screams filled his mind, interspersed with the sound of air beaten into submission as those accursed machines circled overhead, raining rip-roaring explosive death onto his men as that accursed song played.
Gra'vos looked out the other door of the buzzard, face pale, cold, and clammy as he saw the chevron of dark shapes getting closer, the chorus of that accursed song making his heart pound in his chest as he remembered laying there on that muddy forest floor, shrapnel riddling his body.
"We're not gonna take it! No! we ain't gonna take it! WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT, ANYMORE!!!!"
He lurched from his chair to grab a set of binoculars from a hook by the door, a small, balled fist driving a shortbladed knife into his back and snatching something from the back of his belt before he was shoved from the Buzzard. Twisting in midair, he looked up at his slave as she armed the det-sphere he always kept at the small of his back, a look of cold determination in her eyes. The last thing he saw before he slammed into the hard pavement at terminal velocity, was the buzzard getting torn in half by the explosion.
...
Drake flinched a bit, the explosion loud even over the blaring music as one of the circling Buzzards over the mansion was torn in half, spinning to the ground in a fiery inferno. He felt a sadness then, but it was a proud kind of sadness. He bowed his head and pulled his helmet on as they flew closer, a medi-bot treating both Remins and Sylva's wounds expertly.
Many would die today... it was only right that some got to do it on their own terms.
He raised his head to look at the bright flashes of laser weapons against the mansions walls, sparkling like the sun off of a running creek. The fiery, nuclear sun of rage in his chest burned bright as he narrowed his eyes. Fear soured his gut as he looked down upon the swarm of Geknosians, there were indeed a lot of them. Pulling a jump pack from the rack, he pulled it on and yanked the safety clip out before sliding his arm into the control glove.
"Drop me and the bots behind them! I'm going to try and split their attention. Caz! remain onboard and pick off high priority targets from the air. Destrier, Remin, Cassius..."
He looked back at them, and they looked up at him from where they nauseaously held their stomachs, leaning against the airframe.
"Help hold the mansion, they need you."
Seeing the light by the door turn green, he heard the robotic soldiers detach to careen towards the ground like vengeful meteorites. Drake snapped them a salute and fell backwards from the aircraft, two rings puffing into black smoke from his right ring and middle finger as he un-summoned them.
......
Part 108: will be linked here upon release.

Hi! My boyfriend and I are currently living together during college and for the first time ever over the summer as well. I work year-round whereas he only works in the summer so that he can focus on school during school times which I can understand, I just sadly do not have that luxury due to my situation. So, when he needs help with buying things I help him out under the understanding that I do it because I love him/ he does not owe me and that he will need to help out in other ways such as around the room, making food, etc. (all of which I still also help out with as well). He is half black in a predominately white area so whenever we go out to get his hair cut the hair people always give him a hack job, and yet it costs a decent bit every time for something that he feels embarrassed about for the next 3ish weeks.
He is very proud of his hair and views it and its upkeep as a part of his culture/ a deeper part of him. He for the longest time refused to let me touch it (in a hair cutting sense), but now he feels that I cannot do worse than the stylists which is a vote of faith if I ever heard one. (Nervous) I would love any advice that can be given to me on how to go about cutting his hair. The curls are looser but still make beautiful ringlets. They are tighter when his hair is shorter but looser when long. I think that it would be considered either 3c or 3b. I bought a kit from Walmart with a bunch of different tops, and an odd-looking ruler thing as well that is meant to help with angling.
(I don't think / know if it matters but I am a white woman whose own hair is about 2c I think. This part matters I have never worked with hair before, but I grew up watching my mom take care of my whole family's hair and I would like to be able to do the same to a certain extent and have even offered to go take a few classes before I touched my bf's hair but, in the case, where I can't do that any advice for how I should go about it would be appreciated.

Hi! My boyfriend and I are currently living together during college and for the first time ever over the summer as well. I work year-round whereas he only works in the summer so that he can focus on school during school times which I can understand, I just sadly do not have that luxury due to my situation. So, when he needs help with buying things I help him out under the understanding that I do it because I love him/ he does not owe me and that he will need to help out in other ways such as around the room, making food, etc (all of which I still also help out with as well). He is half black in a predominately white area so whenever we go out to get his hair cut the hair people always give him a hack job, and yet it costs a decent bit every time for something that he feels embarrassed about for the next 3ish weeks.
He is very proud of his hair and views it and its upkeep as a part of his culture/ a deeper part of him. He for the longest time refused to let me touch it (in a hair cutting sense), but now he feels that I cannot do worse than the stylists which is a vote of faith if I ever heard one. (Nervous) I would love any advice that can be given to me on how to go about cutting his hair. The curls are looser but still make beautiful ringlets. They are tighter when his hair is shorter but looser when long. I think that it would be considered either 3c or 3b. I bought a kit from Walmart with a bunch of different tops, and an odd-looking ruler thing as well that is meant to help with angling.
(I don't think / know if it matters but I am a white woman whose own hair is about 2c I think. This part matters I have never worked with hair before, but I grew up watching my mom take care of my whole family's hair and I would like to be able to do the same to a certain extent and have even offered to go take a few classes before I touched my bf's hair.

“Did that Human just hit my ship?” Admiral Carney of the Saigor Empire peered out of the viewport. His voice tinged with disbelief. His ship, the Gavaron, a superstar dreadnought 10 kilometres long and brimming with every weapon the galaxy had to offer, was being propelled backwards past the fourth planet of this insignificant solar system by a man dressed in a blue suit and red cape. The crew, initially stunned, began to regain their composure and halt the ship.
“Sir? What should we do?” His second-in-command looked at the screen in disbelief. “That hit destroyed the forward shield generators and the forward main cannon!”
“Ehhh? That has to be a hologram. Scan for whatever weapon they used and send in two frigates to destroy whatever that thing is.”
His order was followed, and he saw two of the frigates that had been held back speed past him, launching rockets at the target, only for the rocket to be blasted by some red laser from this human's eyes, according to the video feed.
“Are you seeing this? What in the fifth unholy hell is this thing from? Is it a droid? “
“Scans say it's biological, and there is no technology detected, and according to our files, it looks human.”
“LOOKS HUMAN?” Admiral Carney turned to the science officer. “Does that look like a normal biological being to you? Those rockets are made of Dirunium. We can launch them through a damn sun if we want to.”
He turned to see this human grabbing a frigate and slinging it towards them. The other hightailed out of there, jumping into light speed in whatever direction they were facing. Smart kids, he thought.
“Brace for impact!”
“Brace for impact, but the shields?” His first officer looked at the helmsman as he shouted out the warning. Admiral Carney sighed and looked at him. “He destroyed them, remember? Move the ship out of the trajectory, turn the ships around and get us out of here. We can't fight that thing.“
“What about the shield? We can't jump without a shield?”
“Have a support ship land on the bow, and have them extend their shields over our damaged area. Then, let's get out of here. “
“Sir! The human is approaching us.” The words made it go cold down his spine. How could that thing, man, move that fast without any tech?
“Is he attacking?” He managed to keep his voice calm but he was getting worried. Was he to die here? In what was supposed to be a simple invasion to teach the recruits how to do the job.
“No, he is just watching us.” The words calmed him down. Maybe they could survive this. It was a defence system; it had to be, so if they just left, it would leave them be.
“Then ignore him, and let's get out of here.”
When he finally had time, he went over the reports. Earth was not supposed to have such a being as its defender. He had never seen or heard anything like this. This might cost him his job, but there was no way in the five unholy hell he could ever win over that. He logged the report and got himself a drink. He looked at his own fist. The green muscular fist would never be able to do something like that. They will cut his horns and blind his third eye for this, but he would survive. He could leave the navy and find a job on a starbase far from the capital planet. Yeah, it might be for the best. He got out the pad, wrote down his resignation, and sent it to the headquarter.

Five years later

Jar Carney had been working as a bartender at the Gustun star base for five years now, a trader base that saw creatures from all over the galaxies. Here, nobody knew or cared who he was, though he had heard the stories about the admiral who quit his position after attacking Earth, and a single human beat them back. It was a very popular story among some of the travellers. The only thing Jar found funny was that they often got the species of the admiral. In fact, mostly, it was somebody else than a Cunar like him; it tended to change. Lately, it was a female admiral of the Surion empire. Carney had to smirk at how the story had changed, and then he turned to the new Surion bartender, Saris, a young woman with a serious face who always kept to herself. She was pretty for a Surion; her soft yellow and black striped fur and the short tale made her cute, and her feminine movement had already made a few brave patrons try their luck. However, she ignored them all. “Hey, I didn’t know you guys had female admirals?”
She froze as he spoke, and Jamir, the local drunk, chuckled. “Only if they are royalty, they are given a fleet and told to show what they can do. But this time, this princess went to Earth, which was such a stupid choice. I thought they had learnt by now.” He then winked five of his 15 eyes at Saris.
Both Carney and Saris turned to him and said in unison, “What?”
Jamir laughed and finished his drink. “I’m the Funasta Admiral they spoke about last year. Unlike the smart invaders, I managed to land on that cursed planet, and while that demon tore through my fleet in space, I had to face something even worse. We set up a teleport point and just started to send in our mech units. They suddenly faced a green giant behemoth of a human. The more they shoot at him, the stronger and more dangerous he became. Then, we launched our troops and drone fighters. The humans responded by sending in more of these demons. First was a man in red who ran faster than we could see. Then a man dressed in old armour and a hammer of all things came, he controlled the weather and everywhere he struck was also hit by lightning from a clear sky. The green behemoth and the hammer guy are just as strong as the demon in the sky. They just can't fly like him. Besides the red blur that will zip around and disarm your troops, the ground support of those two monsters is a few other demons. There is a man with metal claws that could heal any wounds we inflicted on him. He is aided by a woman who tore through our men like they were paper. We had managed to defend the teleporter, so we poured in our drone clones. It didn’t matter.” He took another drink as he got lost in the nightmare that would follow. It took a second before he continued.
“The worst happened when night came. They made the dead rise to fight, Led by some bloodthirsty beast who drained our officers. Then came the humans, who turned into predatory animals and were immune to anything we threw at them. At that point, we finally had enough and ran away. We teleported home since all our ships had been destroyed and destroyed our side of the gate. So, of course, I was expelled.” He smirked, showing maw of short teeth.” But I had recorded too much evidence for them to ignore it, so we sent spies to try and find a weakness in their defense, and then we found out we were not the first to face them like this.“ He held out his glass for refill, which he got.
“We discovered that they have defeated at least eight invasions this way. And” He stopped for dramatic effect. “ We discovered their weapon. Those monsters are not real—well, they are real, but they are the result of human imagination. They have this technology that allows them to pull their —what’s the word? Ahh, now I remember superheroes and monsters from their books and movies, and for as long as people needed them, they would protect them from the enemies of the Earth. You see, they vanish once the invasion is over. Then the humans plunder the battlefield for tech.” He chuckles as he looks at his clawed hand. “Yeah, so here we sit, three admirals fracked up by imaginary monsters because nobody would believe it before seeing it with their own eyes. I mean, would your rulers believe such a fracked-up story.”
As always, let me know if you post it anywhere else. I'm okay with it as long as I get credit and am notified.

Where the body is, the eagles will gather together. - Luke 17:37
Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. (Matthew 28:18, Daniel 7:27)
Still, the demonic realm is fighting against Him and His armies. (Ephesians 6:12, 1 Corinthians 10:20-24, Leviticus 17:7, Psalm 106:37)
They fight for territory in the hearts of men. (Daniel 2:35) Their weapons are lies and warped logic. The battle is to conquer the human soul. (James 1:8, 1 Kings 18:21)
Jesus likened the hearts of mankind to a farmer's field. (Matthew 13:38) The logic we're exposed to has the potential to change us and use us to propagate it. (Mark 4:14, Romans 12:2, Leviticus 18:30) The logic we receive is the seed we're sown with. (Hosea 8:7, 1 John 3:24, Luke 8:15) We discard "propaganda" we don't agree with.
What we propagate, proves who we allowed to sow our hearts. (John 8:42-44, Luke 6:45) Our heavenly Father's logic is the bread-corn, the wheat. (Isaiah 53:10, Hosea 2:23, John 1:12, John 12:24) It benefits life. It's purpose is to sustain life and make it enjoyable. (Isaiah 55:2-3) The enemy's logic is the counterfeit. It looks like wheat at first, but does not pass the test of nourishing others. (Matthew 12:34, Romans 10:2-3, Isaiah 58)
It takes from the common ground and uses the energy it receives to stand tall while it can . It provides nothing of value. (Matthew 13:39, Deuteronomy 32:17)
When a person speaks, it is always to influence the world around them. We are wise to separate from those with bad logic, so that we are not contaminated by it. (Matthew 5:30, Genesis 19:12-13, Isaiah 52:11, 2 Corinthians 6:17)
When the harvest comes, the poisonous weeds are thrown out to keep them from contaminating what is good. (Matthew 13:30, 1 John 3:15-18)
As God's creation, we were made to work together to sustain life. Once sin entered our experience, we became divided. The Bible explains that this division is between the living and the dead. Because God is eternal, He sees death long before we do. His word teaches us to see the spiritual cancer of sin, so we can avoid the death it brings. God made us alive, and He wants us to stay that way. Those who accept our Creator's logic don't unite with this world, they only pass through it. (John 11:26, Hebrews 9:27, Isaiah 57:1, Genesis 5:24) Like harvested grain, our Father saves life-bringers for the age to come. (Luke 17:22-37) When Jesus said, "I am the bread of life," He gave us an example to follow. (John 6:35, John 6:51, Romans 12:1, Psalm 16:7-11, Psalm 17:13-15, Matthew 10:25)
Death is not only a state, it is a system. This system devours itself and anything that gets in its path. Jesus explained how this death-system operates. He said, "Where the corpse, (a body lacking His Spirit) is, there the vultures will be gathered. (Galatians 5:14-15, Proverbs 18:21) A carrion-eater sees something dying and does not help it live. Instead it takes advantage of its neighbor while it can. Those who feed on death are blind to the path of life. (Job 15:14, Matthew 13:15-17, 1Timothy 4:1-2, 2 Corinthians 4:4) Their logic has transformed them and robbed them of truth. (Matthew 13:19, Proverbs 25:26) They thirst for blood like a deer thirsts for water. Their logic is unclean. (Matthew 10:16, Job 39:27-30, Psalm 42:1*)
When Jesus entered the justice system of men, He did so, knowing it would cost His life on earth. (1 Corinthians 4:5, Matthew 16:24-26, Isaiah 53) His sacrifice and example show us how to break free from the system of sin and death. (Luke 9:22-27) Jesus lived out the logic of God and proved it was good when He overcame death. (John 11:25, Genesis 5:24, 2 Kings 2:9-11, Mark 16:6)
This is the good logic that will make us fit for eternity. It is God's prayer - what He asks of us.
Listen, you who rule with God (Shema, Yisrael) (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Mark 12:29-31)
The Lord our God, the Lord is One. (God is not divided by death-bringing logic. This truth is what makes God eternal Numbers 23:19)
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. (be united with His logic and become eternal John 8:32, John 17:21-26)
And love your neighbor as yourself (treat the body of others as you do your own body. Leviticus 19:18, Ephesians 5:28-30, Deuteronomy 15:7-11, Proverbs 19:17)
Today, if you hear His voice, follow it into a new life with Him. He loves you. He gave up everything to have you with Him forever. There is no better time to separate from death than right now.
Scripture references:
Luke 17:37

Where the body is, the eagles will gather together.

Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth.
Matthew 28:18 NKJV

18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.

Daniel 7:27 NKJV

27 Then the kingdom and dominion, And the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And all dominions shall serve and obey Him.'

The demonic realm still fights against Messiah's Kingdom in our hearts.
Ephesians 6:12 NKJV

12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

1 Corinthians 10:20-24 NKJV

20 Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. 22 Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? 23 All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify. 24 Let no one seek his own, but each one the other's well-being.

Leviticus 17:7 NKJV

7 "They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons, after whom they have played the harlot. This shall be a statute forever for them throughout their generations." '

Psalm 106:37 NKJV

37 They even sacrificed their sons And their daughters to demons,

Evil influences fight to divide us against God's eternal logic. God's logic of love works to unite us.
Daniel 2:35 NKJV

35 "Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Daniel 2:44-45 NKJV 44 "And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. 45 "Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold--the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure."
James 1:8

8 a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

1 Kings 18:21 NKJV

21 And Elijah came to all the people, and said, "How long will you falter between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him." But the people answered him not a word.

Jesus likened the hearts of man to a farmer's field.
Matthew 13:38 NKJV

38 "The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one.

Logic has the power to change us and use us to share it.
Mark 4:14 NKJV

14 "The sower sows the word.

Romans 12:2 NKJV

2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Leviticus 18:30 NKJV

30 'Therefore you shall keep My ordinance, so that you do not commit any of these abominable customs which were committed before you, and that you do not defile yourselves by them: I am the LORD your God.' "

*The logic we receive is the seed we're sown with. We discard "propaganda" we don't agree with.
Hosea 8:7 NKJV

7 "They sow the wind, And reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no bud; It shall never produce meal. If it should produce, Aliens would swallow it up.

1 John 3:24 NKJV

24 Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

Luke 8:15 NKJV

15 "But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.

What we propagate, proves who we allowed to seed our hearts.
John 8:42-44 NKJV

42 Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. 43 "Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. 44 "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

Luke 6:45 NKJV

45 "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Our heavenly Father's logic is like the wheat of our field. He supports life and makes it worth living. He makes sacrifices in order to see us thrive.
John 6:51 NKJV

51 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

Isaiah 53:10 NKJV

10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.

Hosea 2:23 NKJV

23 Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth, And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; Then I will say to those who were not My people, 'You are My people!' And they shall say, 'You are my God!' "

John 1:12 NKJV

12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:

John 12:24 NKJV

24 "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.

Isaiah 55:2-3 NKJV

2 Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance. 3 Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you--The sure mercies of David.

The enemy's logic is the counterfeit lifestyle. It entices us to promote ourselves, regardless of whether we preserve and support life.
Matthew 12:34 NKJV

34 "Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Romans 10:2-3 NKJV

2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.

Isaiah 58:1-14 NKJV

1 "Cry aloud, spare not; Lift up your voice like a trumpet; Tell My people their transgression, And the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek Me daily, And delight to know My ways, As a nation that did righteousness, And did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of Me the ordinances of justice; They take delight in approaching God. 3 'Why have we fasted,' they say, 'and You have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls, and You take no notice?' "In fact, in the day of your fast you find pleasure, And exploit all your laborers. 4 Indeed you fast for strife and debate, And to strike with the fist of wickedness. You will not fast as you do this day, To make your voice heard on high. 5 Is it a fast that I have chosen, A day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, And to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast, And an acceptable day to the LORD? 6 "Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; When you see the naked, that you cover him, And not hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 Then your light shall break forth like the morning, Your healing shall spring forth speedily, And your righteousness shall go before you; The glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; You shall cry, and He will say, 'Here I am.' "If you take away the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, 10 If you extend your soul to the hungry And satisfy the afflicted soul, Then your light shall dawn in the darkness, And your darkness shall be as the noonday. 11 The LORD will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12 Those from among you Shall build the old waste places; You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In. 13 "If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, From doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, The holy day of the LORD honorable, And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking your own words, 14 Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the LORD has spoken."

When we fail to recognize community above self-promotion, we drain life of what makes it valuable, without a way to recharge that energy. Selfishness is how we unite with the father of lies and death.
Matthew 13:39 NKJV

39 "The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.

Deuteronomy 32:17 NKJV

17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God, To gods they did not know, To new gods, new arrivals That your fathers did not fear.

When a person speaks, it is always to influence the world around them. We are wise to separate from those with bad logic, so that we are not contaminated by it.
Matthew 5:30 NKJV

30 "And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Genesis 19:12-13 NKJV

12 Then the men said to Lot, "Have you anyone else here? Son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city--take them out of this place! 13 "For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it."

Isaiah 52:11 NKJV

11 Depart! Depart! Go out from there, Touch no unclean thing; Go out from the midst of her, Be clean, You who bear the vessels of the LORD.

2 Corinthians 6:17 NKJV

17 Therefore "Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you."

When the harvest of our souls comes upon us, those with toxic logic are excluded from the age to come. This is to keep them from bringing death into heaven the way they brought death into the earth.
Matthew 13:30 NKJV

30 'Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn." ' "

1 John 3:15-18 NKJV

15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. 16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? 18 My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

Those who accept our Creator's logic don't unite with death, they only pass through it. Some avoid it altogether.
John 11:26 NKJV

26 "And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?"

Hebrews 9:27 NKJV

27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,

Isaiah 57:1 NKJV

1 The righteous perishes, And no man takes it to heart; Merciful men are taken away, While no one considers That the righteous is taken away from evil.

Genesis 5:24 NKJV

24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

1 Thessalonians 4:17 NKJV

17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Like a farmer harvests grain, our Father saves life-bringers for the age to come.
Luke 17:22-37 NKJV

22 Then He said to the disciples, "The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. 23 "And they will say to you, 'Look here!' or 'Look there!' Do not go after them or follow them. 24 "For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines to the other part under heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in His day. 25 "But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. 26 "And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: 27 "They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28 "Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; 29 "but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. 30 "Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. 31 "In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. 32 "Remember Lot's wife. 33 "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. 34 "I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed: the one will be taken and the other will be left. 35 "Two women will be grinding together: the one will be taken and the other left. 36 "Two men will be in the field: the one will be taken and the other left." 37 And they answered and said to Him, "Where, Lord?" So He said to them, "Wherever the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together."

Genesis 25:8 NKJV

8 Then Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.

Matthew 13:47-52 NKJV

47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, 48 "which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. 49 "So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, 50 "and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth." 51 Jesus said to them, "Have you understood all these things?" They said to Him, "Yes, Lord." 52 Then He said to them, "Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old."

When Jesus said, "I am the bread of life," He gave us an example to follow.
John 6:35 NKJV

35 And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.

John 6:51 NKJV

51 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

Romans 12:1 NKJV

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

Psalm 16:7-11 NKJV

7 I will bless the LORD who has given me counsel; My heart also instructs me in the night seasons. 8 I have set the LORD always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will rest in hope. 10 For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. 11 You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 17:13-15 NKJV

13 Arise, O LORD, Confront him, cast him down; Deliver my life from the wicked with Your sword, 14 With Your hand from men, O LORD, From men of the world who have their portion in this life, And whose belly You fill with Your hidden treasure. They are satisfied with children, And leave the rest of their possession for their babes. 15 As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.

Matthew 10:25 NKJV

25 "It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher, and a servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of his household!

Death is a system which devours itself. Jesus explained how this death-system operates. He said, "Where the corpse (a body lacking His Spirit of life) is, there the vultures will be gathered.
Galatians 5:14-15 NKJV

14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 15 But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!

Proverbs 18:21 NKJV

21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.

A carrion-eater sees something dying and does not help it live. Instead it takes advantage of its neighbor while it can. Those who feed on death are blind to the path of life. Job's "friends" didn't acknowledge God's power to make people holy.
Job 15:14 NKJV

14 "What is man, that he could be pure? And he who is born of a woman, that he could be righteous?

Matthew 13:15-17 NKJV

15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.' 16 "But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; 17 "for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

1 Timothy 4:1-2 NKJV

1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron,

2 Corinthians 4:4 NKJV

4 whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

Those who accept death as "part of life" cannot break free from sin because of their polluted logic. Garbage in, garbage out. We thirst for what we love.
**Matthew 13:19 NKJV

19 "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside.

Proverbs 25:26 NKJV

26 A righteous man who falters before the wicked Is like a murky spring and a polluted well.

Matthew 10:16 NKJV

16 "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

Job 39:27-30 NKJV

27 Does the eagle mount up at your command, And make its nest on high? 28 On the rock it dwells and resides, On the crag of the rock and the stronghold. 29 From there it spies out the prey; Its eyes observe from afar. 30 Its young ones suck up blood; And where the slain are, there it is."

Psalm 42:1 NKJV

1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God.

When Jesus entered the justice system of men, He did so, knowing it would cost His life on earth. His sacrifice and example show us how to break free from the system of sin and death.
1 Corinthians 4:5 NKJV

5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God.

Matthew 16:24-26 NKJV

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Isaiah 53:1-12 NKJV

1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked--But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. 10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.

Luke 9:22-27 NKJV

22 saying, "The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day." 23 Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. 24 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. 25 "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? 26 "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father's, and of the holy angels. 27 "But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God."

Jesus lived out the logic of God and proved it was good when He overcame death.
John 11:25 NKJV

25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.

Genesis 5:24 NKJV

24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

2 Kings 2:9-11 NKJV

9 And so it was, when they had crossed over, that Elijah said to Elisha, "Ask! What may I do for you, before I am taken away from you?" Elisha said, "Please let a double portion of your spirit be upon me." 10 So he said, "You have asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if you see me when I am taken from you, it shall be so for you; but if not, it shall not be so." 11 Then it happened, as they continued on and talked, that suddenly a chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire, and separated the two of them; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

Mark 16:6 NKJV

And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.

Jesus' logic makes us fit for eternity. He shows us that love is the only way to live and thrive forever. Jesus is the Word of God. He is the same yesterday, today and forever
Listen, you who rule with God (Shema, Yisrael)
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NKJV

4 "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! 5 "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. 6 "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. 7 "You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8 "You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 "You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Mark 12:29-31 NKJV

29 Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. 30 'And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. 31 "And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

The Lord our God, the Lord is One. (God is not divided by death-bringing logic, this truth is what makes God eternal.
Numbers 23:19 NKJV

19 "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. (be united with His logic and become eternal.)
John 8:32 NKJV

32 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

John 17:21-26 NKJV

21 "that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 "And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 "I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. 24 "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. 25 "O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 "And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

Love your neighbor as yourself (treat the body of others as you do your own body.)
Leviticus 19:18 NKJV

18 'You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Ephesians 5:28-30 NKJV

28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. 30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.

Deuteronomy 15:7-11 NKJV

7 "If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, within any of the gates in your land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother, 8 "but you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need, whatever he needs. 9 "Beware lest there be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, 'The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand,' and your eye be evil against your poor brother and you give him nothing, and he cry out to the LORD against you, and it become sin among you. 10 "You shall surely give to him, and your heart should not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the LORD your God will bless you in all your works and in all to which you put your hand. 11 "For the poor will never cease from the land; therefore I command you, saying, 'You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor and your needy, in your land.'

Proverbs 19:17 NKJV

17 He who has pity on the poor lends to the LORD, And He will pay back what he has given.

Where the body is, the eagles will gather together. - Luke 17:37
Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. (Matthew 28:18, Daniel 7:27)
Still, the demonic realm is fighting against Him and His armies. (Ephesians 6:12, 1 Corinthians 10:20-24, Leviticus 17:7, Psalm 106:37)
They fight for territory in the hearts of men. (Daniel 2:35) Their weapons are lies and warped logic. The battle is to conquer the human soul. (James 1:8, 1 Kings 18:21)
Jesus likened the hearts of mankind to a farmer's field. (Matthew 13:38) The logic we're exposed to has the potential to change us and use us to propagate it. (Mark 4:14, Romans 12:2, Leviticus 18:30) The logic we receive is the seed we're sown with. (Hosea 8:7, 1 John 3:24, Luke 8:15) We discard "propaganda" we don't agree with.
What we propagate, proves who we allowed to sow our hearts. (John 8:42-44, Luke 6:45) Our heavenly Father's logic is the bread-corn, the wheat. (Isaiah 53:10, Hosea 2:23, John 1:12, John 12:24) It benefits life. It's purpose is to sustain life and make it enjoyable. (Isaiah 55:2-3) The enemy's logic is the counterfeit. It looks like wheat at first, but does not pass the test of nourishing others. (Matthew 12:34, Romans 10:2-3, Isaiah 58)
It takes from the common ground and uses the energy it receives to stand tall while it can . It provides nothing of value. (Matthew 13:39, Deuteronomy 32:17)
When a person speaks, it is always to influence the world around them. We are wise to separate from those with bad logic, so that we are not contaminated by it. (Matthew 5:30, Genesis 19:12-13, Isaiah 52:11, 2 Corinthians 6:17)
When the harvest comes, the poisonous weeds are thrown out to keep them from contaminating what is good. (Matthew 13:30, 1 John 3:15-18)
As God's creation, we were made to work together to sustain life. Once sin entered our experience, we became divided. The Bible explains that this division is between the living and the dead. Because God is eternal, He sees death long before we do. His word teaches us to see the spiritual cancer of sin, so we can avoid the death it brings. God made us alive, and He wants us to stay that way. Those who accept our Creator's logic don't unite with this world, they only pass through it. (John 11:26, Hebrews 9:27, Isaiah 57:1, Genesis 5:24) Like harvested grain, our Father saves life-bringers for the age to come. (Luke 17:22-37) When Jesus said, "I am the bread of life," He gave us an example to follow. (John 6:35, John 6:51, Romans 12:1, Psalm 16:7-11, Psalm 17:13-15, Matthew 10:25)
Death is not only a state, it is a system. This system devours itself and anything that gets in its path. Jesus explained how this death-system operates. He said, "Where the corpse, (a body lacking His Spirit) is, there the vultures will be gathered. (Galatians 5:14-15, Proverbs 18:21) A carrion-eater sees something dying and does not help it live. Instead it takes advantage of its neighbor while it can. Those who feed on death are blind to the path of life. (Job 15:14, Matthew 13:15-17, 1Timothy 4:1-2, 2 Corinthians 4:4) Their logic has transformed them and robbed them of truth. (Matthew 13:19, Proverbs 25:26*) They thirst for blood like a deer thirsts for water. Their logic is unclean. (Matthew 10:16, Job 39:27-30, Psalm 42:1)
When Jesus entered the justice system of men, He did so, knowing it would cost His life on earth. (1 Corinthians 4:5, Matthew 16:24-26, Isaiah 53) His sacrifice and example show us how to break free from the system of sin and death. (Luke 9:22-27) Jesus lived out the logic of God and proved it was good when He overcame death. (John 11:25, Genesis 5:24, 2 Kings 2:9-11, Mark 16:6)
This is the good logic that will make us fit for eternity. It is God's prayer - what He asks of us.
Listen, you who rule with God (Shema, Yisrael) (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Mark 12:29-31)
The Lord our God, the Lord is One. (God is not divided by death-bringing logic. This truth is what makes God eternal Numbers 23:19)
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. (be united with His logic and become eternal John 8:32, John 17:21-26)
And love your neighbor as yourself (treat the body of others as you do your own body. Leviticus 19:18, Ephesians 5:28-30, Deuteronomy 15:7-11, Proverbs 19:17)
Today, if you hear His voice, follow it into a new life with Him. He loves you. He gave up everything to have you with Him forever. There is no better time to separate from death than right now.
Scripture references:
Luke 17:37

Where the body is, the eagles will gather together.

Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth.
Matthew 28:18 NKJV

18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.

Daniel 7:27 NKJV

27 Then the kingdom and dominion, And the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And all dominions shall serve and obey Him.'

The demonic realm still fights against Messiah's Kingdom in our hearts.
Ephesians 6:12 NKJV

12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

1 Corinthians 10:20-24 NKJV

20 Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. 22 Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? 23 All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify. 24 Let no one seek his own, but each one the other's well-being.

Leviticus 17:7 NKJV

7 "They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons, after whom they have played the harlot. This shall be a statute forever for them throughout their generations." '

Psalm 106:37 NKJV

37 They even sacrificed their sons And their daughters to demons,

Evil influences fight to divide us against God's eternal logic. God's logic of love works to unite us.
Daniel 2:35 NKJV

35 "Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Daniel 2:44-45 NKJV 44 "And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. 45 "Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold--the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure."
James 1:8

8 a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

1 Kings 18:21 NKJV

21 And Elijah came to all the people, and said, "How long will you falter between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him." But the people answered him not a word.

Jesus likened the hearts of man to a farmer's field.
Matthew 13:38 NKJV

38 "The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one.

Logic has the power to change us and use us to share it.
Mark 4:14 NKJV

14 "The sower sows the word.

Romans 12:2 NKJV

2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Leviticus 18:30 NKJV

30 'Therefore you shall keep My ordinance, so that you do not commit any of these abominable customs which were committed before you, and that you do not defile yourselves by them: I am the LORD your God.' "

*The logic we receive is the seed we're sown with. We discard "propaganda" we don't agree with.
Hosea 8:7 NKJV

7 "They sow the wind, And reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no bud; It shall never produce meal. If it should produce, Aliens would swallow it up.

1 John 3:24 NKJV

24 Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

Luke 8:15 NKJV

15 "But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.

What we propagate, proves who we allowed to seed our hearts.
John 8:42-44 NKJV

42 Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. 43 "Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. 44 "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

Luke 6:45 NKJV

45 "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Our heavenly Father's logic is like the wheat of our field. He supports life and makes it worth living. He makes sacrifices in order to see us thrive.
John 6:51 NKJV

51 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

Isaiah 53:10 NKJV

10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.

Hosea 2:23 NKJV

23 Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth, And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; Then I will say to those who were not My people, 'You are My people!' And they shall say, 'You are my God!' "

John 1:12 NKJV

12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:

John 12:24 NKJV

24 "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.

Isaiah 55:2-3 NKJV

2 Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance. 3 Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you--The sure mercies of David.

The enemy's logic is the counterfeit lifestyle. It entices us to promote ourselves, regardless of whether we preserve and support life.
Matthew 12:34 NKJV

34 "Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Romans 10:2-3 NKJV

2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.

Isaiah 58:1-14 NKJV

1 "Cry aloud, spare not; Lift up your voice like a trumpet; Tell My people their transgression, And the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek Me daily, And delight to know My ways, As a nation that did righteousness, And did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of Me the ordinances of justice; They take delight in approaching God. 3 'Why have we fasted,' they say, 'and You have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls, and You take no notice?' "In fact, in the day of your fast you find pleasure, And exploit all your laborers. 4 Indeed you fast for strife and debate, And to strike with the fist of wickedness. You will not fast as you do this day, To make your voice heard on high. 5 Is it a fast that I have chosen, A day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, And to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast, And an acceptable day to the LORD? 6 "Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; When you see the naked, that you cover him, And not hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 Then your light shall break forth like the morning, Your healing shall spring forth speedily, And your righteousness shall go before you; The glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; You shall cry, and He will say, 'Here I am.' "If you take away the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, 10 If you extend your soul to the hungry And satisfy the afflicted soul, Then your light shall dawn in the darkness, And your darkness shall be as the noonday. 11 The LORD will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12 Those from among you Shall build the old waste places; You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In. 13 "If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, From doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, The holy day of the LORD honorable, And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking your own words, 14 Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the LORD has spoken."

When we fail to recognize community above self-promotion, we drain life of what makes it valuable, without a way to recharge that energy. Selfishness is how we unite with the father of lies and death.
Matthew 13:39 NKJV

39 "The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.

Deuteronomy 32:17 NKJV

17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God, To gods they did not know, To new gods, new arrivals That your fathers did not fear.

When a person speaks, it is always to influence the world around them. We are wise to separate from those with bad logic, so that we are not contaminated by it.
Matthew 5:30 NKJV

30 "And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Genesis 19:12-13 NKJV

12 Then the men said to Lot, "Have you anyone else here? Son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city--take them out of this place! 13 "For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it."

Isaiah 52:11 NKJV

11 Depart! Depart! Go out from there, Touch no unclean thing; Go out from the midst of her, Be clean, You who bear the vessels of the LORD.

2 Corinthians 6:17 NKJV

17 Therefore "Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you."

When the harvest of our souls comes upon us, those with toxic logic are excluded from the age to come. This is to keep them from bringing death into heaven the way they brought death into the earth.
Matthew 13:30 NKJV

30 'Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn." ' "

1 John 3:15-18 NKJV

15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. 16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? 18 My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

Those who accept our Creator's logic don't unite with death, they only pass through it. Some avoid it altogether.
John 11:26 NKJV

26 "And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?"

Hebrews 9:27 NKJV

27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,

Isaiah 57:1 NKJV

1 The righteous perishes, And no man takes it to heart; Merciful men are taken away, While no one considers That the righteous is taken away from evil.

Genesis 5:24 NKJV

24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

1 Thessalonians 4:17 NKJV

17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Like a farmer harvests grain, our Father saves life-bringers for the age to come.
Luke 17:22-37 NKJV

22 Then He said to the disciples, "The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. 23 "And they will say to you, 'Look here!' or 'Look there!' Do not go after them or follow them. 24 "For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines to the other part under heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in His day. 25 "But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. 26 "And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: 27 "They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28 "Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; 29 "but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. 30 "Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. 31 "In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. 32 "Remember Lot's wife. 33 "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. 34 "I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed: the one will be taken and the other will be left. 35 "Two women will be grinding together: the one will be taken and the other left. 36 "Two men will be in the field: the one will be taken and the other left." 37 And they answered and said to Him, "Where, Lord?" So He said to them, "Wherever the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together."

Genesis 25:8 NKJV

8 Then Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.

Matthew 13:47-52 NKJV

47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, 48 "which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. 49 "So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, 50 "and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth." 51 Jesus said to them, "Have you understood all these things?" They said to Him, "Yes, Lord." 52 Then He said to them, "Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old."

When Jesus said, "I am the bread of life," He gave us an example to follow.
John 6:35 NKJV

35 And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.

John 6:51 NKJV

51 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

Romans 12:1 NKJV

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

Psalm 16:7-11 NKJV

7 I will bless the LORD who has given me counsel; My heart also instructs me in the night seasons. 8 I have set the LORD always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will rest in hope. 10 For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. 11 You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 17:13-15 NKJV

13 Arise, O LORD, Confront him, cast him down; Deliver my life from the wicked with Your sword, 14 With Your hand from men, O LORD, From men of the world who have their portion in this life, And whose belly You fill with Your hidden treasure. They are satisfied with children, And leave the rest of their possession for their babes. 15 As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.

Matthew 10:25 NKJV

25 "It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher, and a servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of his household!

Death is a system which devours itself. Jesus explained how this death-system operates. He said, "Where the corpse (a body lacking His Spirit of life) is, there the vultures will be gathered.
Galatians 5:14-15 NKJV

14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 15 But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!

Proverbs 18:21 NKJV

21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.

A carrion-eater sees something dying and does not help it live. Instead it takes advantage of its neighbor while it can. Those who feed on death are blind to the path of life. Job's "friends" didn't acknowledge God's power to make people holy.
Job 15:14 NKJV

14 "What is man, that he could be pure? And he who is born of a woman, that he could be righteous?

Matthew 13:15-17 NKJV

15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.' 16 "But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; 17 "for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

1 Timothy 4:1-2 NKJV

1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron,

2 Corinthians 4:4 NKJV

4 whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

Those who accept death as "part of life" cannot break free from sin because of their polluted logic. Garbage in, garbage out. We thirst for what we love.
**Matthew 13:19 NKJV

19 "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside.

Proverbs 25:26 NKJV

26 A righteous man who falters before the wicked Is like a murky spring and a polluted well.

Matthew 10:16 NKJV

16 "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

Job 39:27-30 NKJV

27 Does the eagle mount up at your command, And make its nest on high? 28 On the rock it dwells and resides, On the crag of the rock and the stronghold. 29 From there it spies out the prey; Its eyes observe from afar. 30 Its young ones suck up blood; And where the slain are, there it is."

Psalm 42:1 NKJV

1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God.

When Jesus entered the justice system of men, He did so, knowing it would cost His life on earth. His sacrifice and example show us how to break free from the system of sin and death.
1 Corinthians 4:5 NKJV

5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God.

Matthew 16:24-26 NKJV

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Isaiah 53:1-12 NKJV

1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked--But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. 10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.

Luke 9:22-27 NKJV

22 saying, "The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day." 23 Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. 24 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. 25 "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? 26 "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father's, and of the holy angels. 27 "But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God."

Jesus lived out the logic of God and proved it was good when He overcame death.
John 11:25 NKJV

25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.

Genesis 5:24 NKJV

24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

2 Kings 2:9-11 NKJV

9 And so it was, when they had crossed over, that Elijah said to Elisha, "Ask! What may I do for you, before I am taken away from you?" Elisha said, "Please let a double portion of your spirit be upon me." 10 So he said, "You have asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if you see me when I am taken from you, it shall be so for you; but if not, it shall not be so." 11 Then it happened, as they continued on and talked, that suddenly a chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire, and separated the two of them; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

Mark 16:6 NKJV

And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.

Jesus' logic makes us fit for eternity. He shows us that love is the only way to live and thrive forever. Jesus is the Word of God. He is the same yesterday, today and forever
Listen, you who rule with God (Shema, Yisrael)
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NKJV

4 "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! 5 "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. 6 "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. 7 "You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8 "You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 "You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Mark 12:29-31 NKJV

29 Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. 30 'And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. 31 "And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

The Lord our God, the Lord is One. (God is not divided by death-bringing logic, this truth is what makes God eternal.
Numbers 23:19 NKJV

19 "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. (be united with His logic and become eternal.)
John 8:32 NKJV

32 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

John 17:21-26 NKJV

21 "that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 "And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 "I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. 24 "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. 25 "O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 "And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

Love your neighbor as yourself (treat the body of others as you do your own body.)
Leviticus 19:18 NKJV

18 'You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Ephesians 5:28-30 NKJV

28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. 30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.

Deuteronomy 15:7-11 NKJV

7 "If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, within any of the gates in your land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother, 8 "but you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need, whatever he needs. 9 "Beware lest there be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, 'The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand,' and your eye be evil against your poor brother and you give him nothing, and he cry out to the LORD against you, and it become sin among you. 10 "You shall surely give to him, and your heart should not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the LORD your God will bless you in all your works and in all to which you put your hand. 11 "For the poor will never cease from the land; therefore I command you, saying, 'You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor and your needy, in your land.'

Proverbs 19:17 NKJV

17 He who has pity on the poor lends to the LORD, And He will pay back what he has given.

Where the body is, the eagles will gather together. - Luke 17:37
Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. (Matthew 28:18, Daniel 7:27)
Still, the demonic realm is fighting against Him and His armies. (Ephesians 6:12, 1 Corinthians 10:20-24, Leviticus 17:7, Psalm 106:37)
They fight for territory in the hearts of men. (Daniel 2:35) Their weapons are lies and warped logic. The battle is to conquer the human soul. (James 1:8, 1 Kings 18:21)
Jesus likened the hearts of mankind to a farmer's field. (Matthew 13:38) The logic we're exposed to has the potential to change us and use us to propagate it. (Mark 4:14, Romans 12:2, Leviticus 18:30) The logic we receive is the seed we're sown with. (Hosea 8:7, 1 John 3:24, Luke 8:15) We discard "propaganda" we don't agree with.
What we propagate, proves who we allowed to sow our hearts. (John 8:42-44, Luke 6:45) Our heavenly Father's logic is the bread-corn, the wheat. (Isaiah 53:10, Hosea 2:23, John 1:12, John 12:24) It benefits life. It's purpose is to sustain life and make it enjoyable. (Isaiah 55:2-3) The enemy's logic is the counterfeit. It looks like wheat at first, but does not pass the test of nourishing others. (Matthew 12:34, Romans 10:2-3, Isaiah 58)
It takes from the common ground and uses the energy it receives to stand tall while it can . It provides nothing of value. (Matthew 13:39, Deuteronomy 32:17)
When a person speaks, it is always to influence the world around them. We are wise to separate from those with bad logic, so that we are not contaminated by it. (Matthew 5:30, Genesis 19:12-13, Isaiah 52:11, 2 Corinthians 6:17)
When the harvest comes, the poisonous weeds are thrown out to keep them from contaminating what is good. (Matthew 13:30, 1 John 3:15-18)
As God's creation, we were made to work together to sustain life. Once sin entered our experience, we became divided. The Bible explains that this division is between the living and the dead. Because God is eternal, He sees death long before we do. His word teaches us to see the spiritual cancer of sin, so we can avoid the death it brings. God made us alive, and He wants us to stay that way. Those who accept our Creator's logic don't unite with this world, they only pass through it. (John 11:26, Hebrews 9:27, Isaiah 57:1, Genesis 5:24) Like harvested grain, our Father saves life-bringers for the age to come. (Luke 17:22-37) When Jesus said, "I am the bread of life," He gave us an example to follow. (John 6:35, John 6:51, Romans 12:1, Psalm 16:7-11, Psalm 17:13-15, Matthew 10:25)
Death is not only a state, it is a system. This system devours itself and anything that gets in its path. Jesus explained how this death-system operates. He said, "Where the corpse, (a body lacking His Spirit) is, there the vultures will be gathered. (Galatians 5:14-15, Proverbs 18:21) A carrion-eater sees something dying and does not help it live. Instead it takes advantage of its neighbor while it can. Those who feed on death are blind to the path of life. (Job 15:14, Matthew 13:15-17, 1Timothy 4:1-2, 2 Corinthians 4:4) Their logic has transformed them and robbed them of truth. (Matthew 13:19, Proverbs 25:26) They thirst for blood like a deer thirsts for water. Their logic is unclean. (Matthew 10:16, Job 39:27-30, Psalm 42:1*)
When Jesus entered the justice system of men, He did so, knowing it would cost His life on earth. (1 Corinthians 4:5, Matthew 16:24-26, Isaiah 53) His sacrifice and example show us how to break free from the system of sin and death. (Luke 9:22-27) Jesus lived out the logic of God and proved it was good when He overcame death. (John 11:25, Genesis 5:24, 2 Kings 2:9-11, Mark 16:6)
This is the good logic that will make us fit for eternity. It is God's prayer - what He asks of us.
Listen, you who rule with God (Shema, Yisrael) (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Mark 12:29-31)
The Lord our God, the Lord is One. (God is not divided by death-bringing logic, this truth is what makes God eternal Numbers 23:19)
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. (be united with His logic and become eternal John 8:32, John 17:21-26)
And love your neighbor as yourself (treat the body of others as you do your own body. Leviticus 19:18, Ephesians 5:28-30, Deuteronomy 15:7-11, Proverbs 19:17)
Today, if you hear His voice, follow it into a new life with Him. He loves you. He gave up everything to have you with Him forever. There is no better time to separate from death than right now.
Scripture references:
Luke 17:37

Where the body is, the eagles will gather together.

Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth.
Matthew 28:18 NKJV

18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.

Daniel 7:27 NKJV

27 Then the kingdom and dominion, And the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And all dominions shall serve and obey Him.'

The demonic realm still fights against Messiah's Kingdom in our hearts.
Ephesians 6:12 NKJV

12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

1 Corinthians 10:20-24 NKJV

20 Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. 22 Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? 23 All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify. 24 Let no one seek his own, but each one the other's well-being.

Leviticus 17:7 NKJV

7 "They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons, after whom they have played the harlot. This shall be a statute forever for them throughout their generations." '

Psalm 106:37 NKJV

37 They even sacrificed their sons And their daughters to demons,

Evil influences fight to divide us against God's eternal logic. God's logic of love works to unite us.
Daniel 2:35 NKJV

35 "Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Daniel 2:44-45 NKJV 44 "And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. 45 "Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold--the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure."
James 1:8

8 a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

1 Kings 18:21 NKJV

21 And Elijah came to all the people, and said, "How long will you falter between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him." But the people answered him not a word.

Jesus likened the hearts of man to a farmer's field.
Matthew 13:38 NKJV

38 "The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one.

Logic has the power to change us and use us to share it.
Mark 4:14 NKJV

14 "The sower sows the word.

Romans 12:2 NKJV

2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Leviticus 18:30 NKJV

30 'Therefore you shall keep My ordinance, so that you do not commit any of these abominable customs which were committed before you, and that you do not defile yourselves by them: I am the LORD your God.' "

*The logic we receive is the seed we're sown with. We discard "propaganda" we don't agree with.
Hosea 8:7 NKJV

7 "They sow the wind, And reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no bud; It shall never produce meal. If it should produce, Aliens would swallow it up.

1 John 3:24 NKJV

24 Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

Luke 8:15 NKJV

15 "But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.

What we propagate, proves who we allowed to seed our hearts.
John 8:42-44 NKJV

42 Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. 43 "Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. 44 "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

Luke 6:45 NKJV

45 "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Our heavenly Father's logic is like the wheat of our field. He supports life and makes it worth living. He makes sacrifices in order to see us thrive.
John 6:51 NKJV

51 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

Isaiah 53:10 NKJV

10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.

Hosea 2:23 NKJV

23 Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth, And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; Then I will say to those who were not My people, 'You are My people!' And they shall say, 'You are my God!' "

John 1:12 NKJV

12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:

John 12:24 NKJV

24 "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.

Isaiah 55:2-3 NKJV

2 Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance. 3 Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you--The sure mercies of David.

The enemy's logic is the counterfeit lifestyle. It entices us to promote ourselves, regardless of whether we preserve and support life.
Matthew 12:34 NKJV

34 "Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Romans 10:2-3 NKJV

2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.

Isaiah 58:1-14 NKJV

1 "Cry aloud, spare not; Lift up your voice like a trumpet; Tell My people their transgression, And the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek Me daily, And delight to know My ways, As a nation that did righteousness, And did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of Me the ordinances of justice; They take delight in approaching God. 3 'Why have we fasted,' they say, 'and You have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls, and You take no notice?' "In fact, in the day of your fast you find pleasure, And exploit all your laborers. 4 Indeed you fast for strife and debate, And to strike with the fist of wickedness. You will not fast as you do this day, To make your voice heard on high. 5 Is it a fast that I have chosen, A day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, And to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast, And an acceptable day to the LORD? 6 "Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; When you see the naked, that you cover him, And not hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 Then your light shall break forth like the morning, Your healing shall spring forth speedily, And your righteousness shall go before you; The glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; You shall cry, and He will say, 'Here I am.' "If you take away the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, 10 If you extend your soul to the hungry And satisfy the afflicted soul, Then your light shall dawn in the darkness, And your darkness shall be as the noonday. 11 The LORD will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12 Those from among you Shall build the old waste places; You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In. 13 "If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, From doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, The holy day of the LORD honorable, And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking your own words, 14 Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the LORD has spoken."

When we fail to recognize community above self-promotion, we drain life of what makes it valuable, without a way to recharge that energy. Selfishness is how we unite with the father of lies and death.
Matthew 13:39 NKJV

39 "The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.

Deuteronomy 32:17 NKJV

17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God, To gods they did not know, To new gods, new arrivals That your fathers did not fear.

When a person speaks, it is always to influence the world around them. We are wise to separate from those with bad logic, so that we are not contaminated by it.
Matthew 5:30 NKJV

30 "And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Genesis 19:12-13 NKJV

12 Then the men said to Lot, "Have you anyone else here? Son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city--take them out of this place! 13 "For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it."

Isaiah 52:11 NKJV

11 Depart! Depart! Go out from there, Touch no unclean thing; Go out from the midst of her, Be clean, You who bear the vessels of the LORD.

2 Corinthians 6:17 NKJV

17 Therefore "Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you."

When the harvest of our souls comes upon us, those with toxic logic are excluded from the age to come. This is to keep them from bringing death into heaven the way they brought death into the earth.
Matthew 13:30 NKJV

30 'Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn." ' "

1 John 3:15-18 NKJV

15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. 16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? 18 My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

Those who accept our Creator's logic don't unite with death, they only pass through it. Some avoid it altogether.
John 11:26 NKJV

26 "And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?"

Hebrews 9:27 NKJV

27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,

Isaiah 57:1 NKJV

1 The righteous perishes, And no man takes it to heart; Merciful men are taken away, While no one considers That the righteous is taken away from evil.

Genesis 5:24 NKJV

24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

1 Thessalonians 4:17 NKJV

17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Like a farmer harvests grain, our Father saves life-bringers for the age to come.
Luke 17:22-37 NKJV

22 Then He said to the disciples, "The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. 23 "And they will say to you, 'Look here!' or 'Look there!' Do not go after them or follow them. 24 "For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines to the other part under heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in His day. 25 "But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. 26 "And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: 27 "They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28 "Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; 29 "but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. 30 "Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. 31 "In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. 32 "Remember Lot's wife. 33 "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. 34 "I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed: the one will be taken and the other will be left. 35 "Two women will be grinding together: the one will be taken and the other left. 36 "Two men will be in the field: the one will be taken and the other left." 37 And they answered and said to Him, "Where, Lord?" So He said to them, "Wherever the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together."

Genesis 25:8 NKJV

8 Then Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.

Matthew 13:47-52 NKJV

47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, 48 "which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. 49 "So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, 50 "and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth." 51 Jesus said to them, "Have you understood all these things?" They said to Him, "Yes, Lord." 52 Then He said to them, "Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old."

When Jesus said, "I am the bread of life," He gave us an example to follow.
John 6:35 NKJV

35 And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.

John 6:51 NKJV

51 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

Romans 12:1 NKJV

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

Psalm 16:7-11 NKJV

7 I will bless the LORD who has given me counsel; My heart also instructs me in the night seasons. 8 I have set the LORD always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will rest in hope. 10 For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. 11 You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 17:13-15 NKJV

13 Arise, O LORD, Confront him, cast him down; Deliver my life from the wicked with Your sword, 14 With Your hand from men, O LORD, From men of the world who have their portion in this life, And whose belly You fill with Your hidden treasure. They are satisfied with children, And leave the rest of their possession for their babes. 15 As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.

Matthew 10:25 NKJV

25 "It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher, and a servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of his household!

Death is a system which devours itself. Jesus explained how this death-system operates. He said, "Where the corpse (a body lacking His Spirit of life) is, there the vultures will be gathered.
Galatians 5:14-15 NKJV

14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 15 But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!

Proverbs 18:21 NKJV

21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.

A carrion-eater sees something dying and does not help it live. Instead it takes advantage of its neighbor while it can. Those who feed on death are blind to the path of life. Job's "friends" didn't acknowledge God's power to make people holy.
Job 15:14 NKJV

14 "What is man, that he could be pure? And he who is born of a woman, that he could be righteous?

Matthew 13:15-17 NKJV

15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.' 16 "But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; 17 "for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

1 Timothy 4:1-2 NKJV

1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron,

2 Corinthians 4:4 NKJV

4 whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

Those who accept death as "part of life" cannot break free from sin because of their polluted logic. Garbage in, garbage out. We thirst for what we love.
**Matthew 13:19 NKJV

19 "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside.

Proverbs 25:26 NKJV

26 A righteous man who falters before the wicked Is like a murky spring and a polluted well.

Matthew 10:16 NKJV

16 "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

Job 39:27-30 NKJV

27 Does the eagle mount up at your command, And make its nest on high? 28 On the rock it dwells and resides, On the crag of the rock and the stronghold. 29 From there it spies out the prey; Its eyes observe from afar. 30 Its young ones suck up blood; And where the slain are, there it is."

Psalm 42:1 NKJV

1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God.

When Jesus entered the justice system of men, He did so, knowing it would cost His life on earth. His sacrifice and example show us how to break free from the system of sin and death.
1 Corinthians 4:5 NKJV

5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God.

Matthew 16:24-26 NKJV

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Isaiah 53:1-12 NKJV

1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked--But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. 10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.

Luke 9:22-27 NKJV

22 saying, "The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day." 23 Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. 24 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. 25 "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? 26 "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father's, and of the holy angels. 27 "But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God."

Jesus lived out the logic of God and proved it was good when He overcame death.
John 11:25 NKJV

25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.

Genesis 5:24 NKJV

24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

2 Kings 2:9-11 NKJV

9 And so it was, when they had crossed over, that Elijah said to Elisha, "Ask! What may I do for you, before I am taken away from you?" Elisha said, "Please let a double portion of your spirit be upon me." 10 So he said, "You have asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if you see me when I am taken from you, it shall be so for you; but if not, it shall not be so." 11 Then it happened, as they continued on and talked, that suddenly a chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire, and separated the two of them; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

Mark 16:6 NKJV

And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.

Jesus' logic makes us fit for eternity. He shows us that love is the only way to live and thrive forever. Jesus is the Word of God. He is the same yesterday, today and forever
Listen, you who rule with God (Shema, Yisrael)
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NKJV

4 "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! 5 "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. 6 "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. 7 "You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8 "You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 "You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Mark 12:29-31 NKJV

29 Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. 30 'And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. 31 "And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

The Lord our God, the Lord is One. (God is not divided by death-bringing logic, this truth is what makes God eternal.
Numbers 23:19 NKJV

19 "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. (be united with His logic and become eternal.)
John 8:32 NKJV

32 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

John 17:21-26 NKJV

21 "that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 "And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 "I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. 24 "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. 25 "O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 "And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

Love your neighbor as yourself (treat the body of others as you do your own body.)
Leviticus 19:18 NKJV

18 'You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Ephesians 5:28-30 NKJV

28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. 30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.

Deuteronomy 15:7-11 NKJV

7 "If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, within any of the gates in your land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother, 8 "but you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need, whatever he needs. 9 "Beware lest there be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, 'The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand,' and your eye be evil against your poor brother and you give him nothing, and he cry out to the LORD against you, and it become sin among you. 10 "You shall surely give to him, and your heart should not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the LORD your God will bless you in all your works and in all to which you put your hand. 11 "For the poor will never cease from the land; therefore I command you, saying, 'You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor and your needy, in your land.'

Proverbs 19:17 NKJV

17 He who has pity on the poor lends to the LORD, And He will pay back what he has given.

Where the body is, the eagles will gather together. - Luke 17:37
Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. (Matthew 28:18, Daniel 7:27)
Still, the demonic realm is fighting against Him and His armies. (Ephesians 6:12, 1 Corinthians 10:20-24, Leviticus 17:7, Psalm 106:37)
They fight for territory in the hearts of men. (Daniel 2:35) Their weapons are lies and warped logic. The battle is to conquer the human soul. (James 1:8, 1 Kings 18:21)
Jesus likened the hearts of mankind to a farmer's field. (Matthew 13:38) The logic we're exposed to has the potential to change us and use us to propagate it. (Mark 4:14, Romans 12:2, Leviticus 18:30) The logic we receive is the seed we're sown with. (Hosea 8:7, 1 John 3:24, Luke 8:15) We discard "propaganda" we don't agree with.
What we propagate, proves who we allowed to sow our hearts. (John 8:42-44, Luke 6:45) Our heavenly Father's logic is the bread-corn, the wheat. (Isaiah 53:10, Hosea 2:23, John 1:12, John 12:24) It benefits life. It's purpose is to sustain life and make it enjoyable. (Isaiah 55:2-3) The enemy's logic is the counterfeit. It looks like wheat at first, but does not pass the test of nourishing others. (Matthew 12:34, Romans 10:2-3, Isaiah 58)
It takes from the common ground and uses the energy it receives to stand tall while it can . It provides nothing of value. (Matthew 13:39, Deuteronomy 32:17)
When a person speaks, it is always to influence the world around them. We are wise to separate from those with bad logic, so that we are not contaminated by it. (Matthew 5:30, Genesis 19:12-13, Isaiah 52:11, 2 Corinthians 6:17)
When the harvest comes, the poisonous weeds are thrown out to keep them from contaminating what is good. (Matthew 13:30, 1 John 3:15-18)
As God's creation, we were made to work together to sustain life. Once sin entered our experience, we became divided. The Bible explains that this division is between the living and the dead. Because God is eternal, He sees death long before we do. His word teaches us to see the spiritual cancer of sin, so we can avoid the death it brings. God made us alive, and He wants us to stay that way. Those who accept our Creator's logic don't unite with this world, they only pass through it. (John 11:26, Hebrews 9:27, Isaiah 57:1, Genesis 5:24) Like harvested grain, our Father saves life-bringers for the age to come. (Luke 17:22-37) When Jesus said, "I am the bread of life," He gave us an example to follow. (John 6:35, John 6:51, Romans 12:1, Psalm 16:7-11, Psalm 17:13-15, Matthew 10:25)
Death is not only a state, it is a system. This system devours itself and anything that gets in its path. Jesus explained how this death-system operates. He said, "Where the corpse, (a body lacking His Spirit) is, there the vultures will be gathered. (Galatians 5:14-15, Proverbs 18:21) A carrion-eater sees something dying and does not help it live. Instead it takes advantage of its neighbor while it can. Those who feed on death are blind to the path of life. (Job 15:14, Matthew 13:15-17, 1Timothy 4:1-2, 2 Corinthians 4:4) Their logic has transformed them and robbed them of truth. (Matthew 13:19, Proverbs 25:26) They thirst for blood like a deer thirsts for water. Their logic is unclean. (Matthew 10:16, Job 39:27-30, Psalm 42:1*)
When Jesus entered the justice system of men, He did so, knowing it would cost His life on earth. (1 Corinthians 4:5, Matthew 16:24-26, Isaiah 53) His sacrifice and example show us how to break free from the system of sin and death. (Luke 9:22-27) Jesus lived out the logic of God and proved it was good when He overcame death. (John 11:25, Genesis 5:24, 2 Kings 2:9-11, Mark 16:6)
This is the good logic that will make us fit for eternity. It is God's prayer - what He asks of us.
Listen, you who rule with God (Shema, Yisrael) (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Mark 12:29-31)
The Lord our God, the Lord is One. (God is not divided by death-bringing logic, this truth is what makes God eternal Numbers 23:19)
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. (be united with His logic and become eternal John 8:32, John 17:21-26)
And love your neighbor as yourself (treat the body of others as you do your own body. Leviticus 19:18, Ephesians 5:28-30, Deuteronomy 15:7-11, Proverbs 19:17)
Today, if you hear His voice, follow it into a new life with Him. He loves you. He gave up everything to have you with Him forever. There is no better time to separate from death than right now.
Scripture references:
Luke 17:37

Where the body is, the eagles will gather together.

Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth.
Matthew 28:18 NKJV

18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.

Daniel 7:27 NKJV

27 Then the kingdom and dominion, And the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And all dominions shall serve and obey Him.'

The demonic realm still fights against Messiah's Kingdom in our hearts.
Ephesians 6:12 NKJV

12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

1 Corinthians 10:20-24 NKJV

20 Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. 22 Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? 23 All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify. 24 Let no one seek his own, but each one the other's well-being.

Leviticus 17:7 NKJV

7 "They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons, after whom they have played the harlot. This shall be a statute forever for them throughout their generations." '

Psalm 106:37 NKJV

37 They even sacrificed their sons And their daughters to demons,

Evil influences fight to divide us against God's eternal logic. God's logic of love works to unite us.
Daniel 2:35 NKJV

35 "Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Daniel 2:44-45 NKJV 44 "And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. 45 "Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold--the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure."
James 1:8

8 a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

1 Kings 18:21 NKJV

21 And Elijah came to all the people, and said, "How long will you falter between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him." But the people answered him not a word.

Jesus likened the hearts of man to a farmer's field.
Matthew 13:38 NKJV

38 "The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one.

Logic has the power to change us and use us to share it.
Mark 4:14 NKJV

14 "The sower sows the word.

Romans 12:2 NKJV

2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Leviticus 18:30 NKJV

30 'Therefore you shall keep My ordinance, so that you do not commit any of these abominable customs which were committed before you, and that you do not defile yourselves by them: I am the LORD your God.' "

*The logic we receive is the seed we're sown with. We discard "propaganda" we don't agree with.
Hosea 8:7 NKJV

7 "They sow the wind, And reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no bud; It shall never produce meal. If it should produce, Aliens would swallow it up.

1 John 3:24 NKJV

24 Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

Luke 8:15 NKJV

15 "But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.

What we propagate, proves who we allowed to seed our hearts.
John 8:42-44 NKJV

42 Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. 43 "Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. 44 "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

Luke 6:45 NKJV

45 "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Our heavenly Father's logic is like the wheat of our field. He supports life and makes it worth living. He makes sacrifices in order to see us thrive.
John 6:51 NKJV

51 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

Isaiah 53:10 NKJV

10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.

Hosea 2:23 NKJV

23 Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth, And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; Then I will say to those who were not My people, 'You are My people!' And they shall say, 'You are my God!' "

John 1:12 NKJV

12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:

John 12:24 NKJV

24 "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.

Isaiah 55:2-3 NKJV

2 Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance. 3 Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you--The sure mercies of David.

The enemy's logic is the counterfeit lifestyle. It entices us to promote ourselves, regardless of whether we preserve and support life.
Matthew 12:34 NKJV

34 "Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Romans 10:2-3 NKJV

2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.

Isaiah 58:1-14 NKJV

1 "Cry aloud, spare not; Lift up your voice like a trumpet; Tell My people their transgression, And the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek Me daily, And delight to know My ways, As a nation that did righteousness, And did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of Me the ordinances of justice; They take delight in approaching God. 3 'Why have we fasted,' they say, 'and You have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls, and You take no notice?' "In fact, in the day of your fast you find pleasure, And exploit all your laborers. 4 Indeed you fast for strife and debate, And to strike with the fist of wickedness. You will not fast as you do this day, To make your voice heard on high. 5 Is it a fast that I have chosen, A day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, And to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast, And an acceptable day to the LORD? 6 "Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; When you see the naked, that you cover him, And not hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 Then your light shall break forth like the morning, Your healing shall spring forth speedily, And your righteousness shall go before you; The glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; You shall cry, and He will say, 'Here I am.' "If you take away the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, 10 If you extend your soul to the hungry And satisfy the afflicted soul, Then your light shall dawn in the darkness, And your darkness shall be as the noonday. 11 The LORD will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12 Those from among you Shall build the old waste places; You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In. 13 "If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, From doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, The holy day of the LORD honorable, And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking your own words, 14 Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the LORD has spoken."

When we fail to recognize community above self-promotion, we drain life of what makes it valuable, without a way to recharge that energy. Selfishness is how we unite with the father of lies and death.
Matthew 13:39 NKJV

39 "The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.

Deuteronomy 32:17 NKJV

17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God, To gods they did not know, To new gods, new arrivals That your fathers did not fear.

When a person speaks, it is always to influence the world around them. We are wise to separate from those with bad logic, so that we are not contaminated by it.
Matthew 5:30 NKJV

30 "And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Genesis 19:12-13 NKJV

12 Then the men said to Lot, "Have you anyone else here? Son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city--take them out of this place! 13 "For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it."

Isaiah 52:11 NKJV

11 Depart! Depart! Go out from there, Touch no unclean thing; Go out from the midst of her, Be clean, You who bear the vessels of the LORD.

2 Corinthians 6:17 NKJV

17 Therefore "Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you."

When the harvest of our souls comes upon us, those with toxic logic are excluded from the age to come. This is to keep them from bringing death into heaven the way they brought death into the earth.
Matthew 13:30 NKJV

30 'Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn." ' "

1 John 3:15-18 NKJV

15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. 16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? 18 My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

Those who accept our Creator's logic don't unite with death, they only pass through it. Some avoid it altogether.
John 11:26 NKJV

26 "And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?"

Hebrews 9:27 NKJV

27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,

Isaiah 57:1 NKJV

1 The righteous perishes, And no man takes it to heart; Merciful men are taken away, While no one considers That the righteous is taken away from evil.

Genesis 5:24 NKJV

24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

1 Thessalonians 4:17 NKJV

17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Like a farmer harvests grain, our Father saves life-bringers for the age to come.
Luke 17:22-37 NKJV

22 Then He said to the disciples, "The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. 23 "And they will say to you, 'Look here!' or 'Look there!' Do not go after them or follow them. 24 "For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines to the other part under heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in His day. 25 "But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. 26 "And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: 27 "They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28 "Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; 29 "but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. 30 "Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. 31 "In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. 32 "Remember Lot's wife. 33 "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. 34 "I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed: the one will be taken and the other will be left. 35 "Two women will be grinding together: the one will be taken and the other left. 36 "Two men will be in the field: the one will be taken and the other left." 37 And they answered and said to Him, "Where, Lord?" So He said to them, "Wherever the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together."

Genesis 25:8 NKJV

8 Then Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.

Matthew 13:47-52 NKJV

47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, 48 "which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. 49 "So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, 50 "and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth." 51 Jesus said to them, "Have you understood all these things?" They said to Him, "Yes, Lord." 52 Then He said to them, "Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old."

When Jesus said, "I am the bread of life," He gave us an example to follow.
John 6:35 NKJV

35 And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.

John 6:51 NKJV

51 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."

Romans 12:1 NKJV

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

Psalm 16:7-11 NKJV

7 I will bless the LORD who has given me counsel; My heart also instructs me in the night seasons. 8 I have set the LORD always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will rest in hope. 10 For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. 11 You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 17:13-15 NKJV

13 Arise, O LORD, Confront him, cast him down; Deliver my life from the wicked with Your sword, 14 With Your hand from men, O LORD, From men of the world who have their portion in this life, And whose belly You fill with Your hidden treasure. They are satisfied with children, And leave the rest of their possession for their babes. 15 As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.

Matthew 10:25 NKJV

25 "It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher, and a servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of his household!

Death is a system which devours itself. Jesus explained how this death-system operates. He said, "Where the corpse (a body lacking His Spirit of life) is, there the vultures will be gathered.
Galatians 5:14-15 NKJV

14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 15 But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!

Proverbs 18:21 NKJV

21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.

A carrion-eater sees something dying and does not help it live. Instead it takes advantage of its neighbor while it can. Those who feed on death are blind to the path of life. Job's "friends" didn't acknowledge God's power to make people holy.
Job 15:14 NKJV

14 "What is man, that he could be pure? And he who is born of a woman, that he could be righteous?

Matthew 13:15-17 NKJV

15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.' 16 "But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; 17 "for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

1 Timothy 4:1-2 NKJV

1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron,

2 Corinthians 4:4 NKJV

4 whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

Those who accept death as "part of life" cannot break free from sin because of their polluted logic. Garbage in, garbage out. We thirst for what we love.
**Matthew 13:19 NKJV

19 "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside.

Proverbs 25:26 NKJV

26 A righteous man who falters before the wicked Is like a murky spring and a polluted well.

Matthew 10:16 NKJV

16 "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

Job 39:27-30 NKJV

27 Does the eagle mount up at your command, And make its nest on high? 28 On the rock it dwells and resides, On the crag of the rock and the stronghold. 29 From there it spies out the prey; Its eyes observe from afar. 30 Its young ones suck up blood; And where the slain are, there it is."

Psalm 42:1 NKJV

1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God.

When Jesus entered the justice system of men, He did so, knowing it would cost His life on earth. His sacrifice and example show us how to break free from the system of sin and death.
1 Corinthians 4:5 NKJV

5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God.

Matthew 16:24-26 NKJV

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Isaiah 53:1-12 NKJV

1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked--But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. 10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.

Luke 9:22-27 NKJV

22 saying, "The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day." 23 Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. 24 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. 25 "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? 26 "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father's, and of the holy angels. 27 "But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God."

Jesus lived out the logic of God and proved it was good when He overcame death.
John 11:25 NKJV

25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.

Genesis 5:24 NKJV

24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

2 Kings 2:9-11 NKJV

9 And so it was, when they had crossed over, that Elijah said to Elisha, "Ask! What may I do for you, before I am taken away from you?" Elisha said, "Please let a double portion of your spirit be upon me." 10 So he said, "You have asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if you see me when I am taken from you, it shall be so for you; but if not, it shall not be so." 11 Then it happened, as they continued on and talked, that suddenly a chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire, and separated the two of them; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

Mark 16:6 NKJV

And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.

Jesus' logic makes us fit for eternity. He shows us that love is the only way to live and thrive forever. Jesus is the Word of God. He is the same yesterday, today and forever
Listen, you who rule with God (Shema, Yisrael)
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NKJV

4 "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! 5 "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. 6 "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. 7 "You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8 "You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 "You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Mark 12:29-31 NKJV

29 Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. 30 'And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. 31 "And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

The Lord our God, the Lord is One. (God is not divided by death-bringing logic, this truth is what makes God eternal.
Numbers 23:19 NKJV

19 "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. (be united with His logic and become eternal.)
John 8:32 NKJV

32 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

John 17:21-26 NKJV

21 "that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 "And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 "I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. 24 "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. 25 "O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 "And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

Love your neighbor as yourself (treat the body of others as you do your own body.)
Leviticus 19:18 NKJV

18 'You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Ephesians 5:28-30 NKJV

28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. 30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.

Deuteronomy 15:7-11 NKJV

7 "If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, within any of the gates in your land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother, 8 "but you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need, whatever he needs. 9 "Beware lest there be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, 'The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand,' and your eye be evil against your poor brother and you give him nothing, and he cry out to the LORD against you, and it become sin among you. 10 "You shall surely give to him, and your heart should not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the LORD your God will bless you in all your works and in all to which you put your hand. 11 "For the poor will never cease from the land; therefore I command you, saying, 'You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor and your needy, in your land.'

Proverbs 19:17 NKJV

17 He who has pity on the poor lends to the LORD, And He will pay back what he has given.

I remember that day as though it were only yesterday. My species, the rulers of a vast and mighty interstellar empire, had discovered a primitive species tucked away in a remote corner of our galaxy. Naturally, we were excited to discover them, for a new species on the galactic stage could potentially bring with them many exciting new developments to keep us all entertained for a few millennia.
Our survey ships, vessels of unparalleled stealth and subtlety, flocked to the single star system with its four gas giants, a boon for any developing species, and set up shop in orbit of their homeworld. We were all so eager to see what works of wondrous art and civility they had created, and instead we watched as a planet spanning war erupted. Entire nations were consumed, millions died within the first few weeks and we were left horrified by what we saw.
Yet by our own rules we were powerless to intervene, if it was their destiny to eradicate themselves, then that is what would happen. We expected this war to end in nuclear annihilation, for we had detected vast nuclear arsenals the moment we entered orbit of that glittering blue jewel in the dark.
Yet no such cataclysm came, instead, one by one tensions cooled, warriors dropped their primitive slug throwers and went home, seeking the comfort and peace of familiar and safe surroundings. A new government was formed, a unifying body that kept the peace for the next five hundred years to the best of its ability. Yet even then conflict still raged in the far flung places of the world, and we were left to wonder…
What would happen when they leave their world?
The question terrified us to such a degree that when it became clear they were making concerted efforts to leave their world and venture out into the stars, we panicked. A species as violent towards itself as they are would surely take one look at the galaxy and its many peoples and attempt to see them struck down. Some amongst the ruling body were of the mind that such a primitive and savage species was little more than animals that deserved to be put down.
Unfortunately, they were the most influential faction of our esteemed government. So when the vote was passed for the extermination of the species, the most the rest of us could try was to make it as quick and painless a death as possible. To be kind. But yet again, the most powerful of us decided that wasn’t good enough. They said that such savagery be met in kind, and so a terrible weapon was developed.
Fear and an overinflated sense of superiority drove us towards our ultimate shame.
The Affliction was released upon their homeworld, and any intrasolar outposts that we found were subsequently wiped from existence with lightning fast attacks from weapons of mass destruction. The affliction targeted everything from birth rates to skin growth, causing patches of necrosis to form externally and internally, all while heightening nerve responses. Our leaders wanted them to suffer for their savagery. While the powerful patted themselves on the back for their valiant defense of the galaxy from a potential threat, the rest of us were left to worry, to ponder our failings and hope against hope that we could be forgiven for our ineffectual protests against this course of action.
Another five hundred years passed and the galaxy forgot all about the now extinct species, focusing instead on their own problems and several other primitive races we had discovered. But something had not forgotten us, something had lurked in the darkness and waited till the perfect moment to strike.
At first the only knowledge we had of this entity was the brief contacts our sensor nets had with some strange anomaly. We shrugged it off as little more than a mere glitch, yet over time some of us began to see a pattern as the contacts began to linger for longer periods of time before vanishing.
It was far too late to do anything, as we would soon discover, as our outer colonies came under sudden attack from an unknown enemy. An unstoppable force that seemed to sweep over our defenses with ease. Yet we received no reports of the world being razed, instead the enemy was content to occupy the world and move on, keeping the civilian populace calm and cooperative.
Of course that didn’t mean we wouldn’t fight them, just because they were being civil towards our civilians didn’t make them any less our enemy. And so we mobilized, preparing our defenses as best we could and attempting to deny the enemy strategic resources as well. But as we soon learned, our forces were outmatched even in space.
I remember when I first saw them, having been assigned to a defense post on the planet Dingalea. A tropical resort world, with vast oceans and many pristine beaches. It was a tactically unsound planet to invade, yet this foe was clearly interested in all our worlds, not just the strategically important ones. We figured it was meant to force us to commit the bulk of our forces to liberation efforts, spreading our armies and fleets thin in an attempt to reclaim every planet.
I had taken position in a bunker on a cliff overlooking one of the more popular beaches when we heard a booming sound from the sky. Our eyes turned heavensward, and I beheld what appeared to be spears of metal rain from above. They crashed down into the oceans many yektra (miles) away, yet so massive they were that we all could easily see the detailing upon their exteriors.
From where I was stationed I could only see four of them, but as I would learn later, four was all they would need for the coming battle upon our beach. Granted we had set up defensive positions further inland, but the enemy seemed content to land out at sea which led us to assume that they were mostly aquatic based. How wrong we were.
An aperture opened wide upon each of the spears and from them water based vehicles emerged, elongated and rectangular in form, bouncing over the waves as they fanned out and made for shore. We watched and waited, my gripping hands clutching all the more firmly at my plasma pulse rifle. Heavy emplacements warmed up with a whine of charging power packs, the large turrets turning to face our foe. New vehicles joined the first models, these ones clearly armored assault vehicles of a type that was unfamiliar to us, as so much about our enemy was at the time. They kept a staggered and wide formation with the other vehicles, even as air superiority fighter craft started to fill the sky. I felt something twist in my thorax, a pit of fear threatening to swallow me whole.
As I lowered my eye to the scope of my rifle, I watched as the ring around its edge shifted from red to purple, indicating my target was in firing range. The call to open fire rang out from the fortifications around me and all twelve of the hells was visited upon our foe. Plasma and beams of energy lanced out from our lines, boiling the waters and leaving burn marks upon the metal hulls that approached. Artillery began to pound, hoping to inflict more destructive results upon the invaders.
They succeeded in scoring direct hits on a few of the craft, sending burning wreckage to the bottom of the sea, but the rest simply continued on, unfazed by the death and destruction around them.
The craft reached the beach and ramps descended and what we saw made us shiver in instinctual fear. They were tall, bipedal and heavily armored. What flesh we could spot from this distance was unnaturally white, they had no hair and no features upon their heads either. Yet they sported different body shapes, perhaps indicative of sex? It didn’t mattered, they were the enemy and they needed to be destroyed. Our weapons seemed to do very little to their armor, but any hits to exposed flesh did massive amounts of damage, sending the beings falling or flying into the water and sand, pale blue blood pouring from their wounds.
Then they started to fire back, their rounds weren’t energy based, purely kinetic and yet with the speeds they were flying they were clearly being launched by some sort of rail system. The rounds would strike and bury deep before exploding, heat and shrapnel working their deadly trade. Yet the enemy seemed more intent on forcing us to take cover than actually killing us, as became clear as they took cover in craters and behind resort walls. Then the armored vehicles made it to shore and they became the focus of our efforts. Their booming cannons and spitting rotary guns threatened to destroy bunkers and crew weapons alike. Even the aircraft swooped down to strike at us, dropping bombs and firing their dogfighting weapons as well before climbing back into the sky.
For every ten of the infantry or vehicles we destroyed, another thirty was soon behind them. So focused on simply surviving were we that we almost didn’t notice the newest threat. This one walked out of the sea itself, hulking armored forms that were bipedal like the infantry but not showing a single kepti (centimeters) of flesh. These behemoths strode slowly, ponderously across the beach, waving hands at the entrenched beings who would stand and form up with their larger kin. Almost immediately the incoming fire became more intense and precise, causing us to take cover far too often.
The order to pull back to the next line was given and we did so, just as the first of the behemoths burst through a barricade, the angular helmet it wore turning back and forth quickly. It did moved unnervingly fast, but not fast enough to dodge a shot from an anti-vehicle weapon. It staggered backwards, the shot burning through metal and flesh along one side of the helmet. Yet it did not go down, instead a clawed hand rose and grasped what remained of the melting armor and tore it free, revealing a face that’ll haunt me till my dying day.
It was a face of pale flesh, black fur atop their head and around their mouth and jaw. That mouth was twisted into an angry snarl, the one remaining eye burning a cold blue. Yet it was what was on the other side of their face that haunts me. Flesh had burned down to bone, yet there was no bone to be seen, just gleaming chrome. It leered at me, silver teeth clicking as it worked that jaw and began to advance.
Hours later, the planet was theirs. I suppose they wanted to show us that even in a fair fight we were horribly outclassed. That was a few weeks ago now I believe, they’ve just taken the homeworld and are preparing some sort of galaxy wide broadcast. I wonder what they’ll have to say about all this, will they condemn us all to death for one reason or another?
The screen flickers, the normal view of our governmental building coming into focus as one of these horrible monsters steps up to a podium, our leaders cowering behind them.
“People of the Milky Way. We are humanity, a species that knew not what awaited them outside the bounds of their home system. We were hopeful that when we ventured out into the black that we could have found friendship, instead we were nearly murdered in our cradle. Your leaders sentenced us to death out of fear, sentenced millions of children, both born and unborn to agonizing deaths. Your fear led you down a path of atrocities you were all too eager to visit upon a people that couldn’t defend themselves.” The human spoke, their voice rich and booming, met with a deafening silence by audiences on every planet.
“You thought us eradicated, all traces of our existence mere dust on the wind. But you failed. For you see we are a stubborn species and we are also spiteful, spite encourages adaptation. And adapt we did, for five hundred years we suffered your manufactured plague, till it became little more than a reminder of who we were to hate. Yet while many amongst us do hate you and with good reason, we are not here today to visit the same horrors upon your peoples. Instead, you will suffer the authority of another. Our authority. For the next five hundred years you will work to make amends for all you have done and when that time is up, we shall leave you be. For we are not the monsters you thought we were, nor are we the monsters you inadvertently tried to make us. We are humanity, and we will show your people a new and better way.”
The feed shut off and I could only sit back and sigh, resting my head upon the pillow of my hospital bed, as more of these humans surrounded me and began to treat my wounds. I was left to wonder about the future. I wondered at what humanity could show us over the next five hundred years.
And so I closed my eyes, and dreamt of the future.

~First~
(Got up Early to talk about the CPAP machine and such. Only to be given an appointment on friday. So yeah, in trying to solve a sleep issue I’m giving myself more of one. Incidentally Friday will be late due to well, the CPAP retrieval and tutorial)
The Pirates
“So, they’re here.” Agenda says contently as she finishes feeding her fussiest little girl.
“Yep!” Jingay chirps happily as her freshly hatched little children are happily playing on the glowing, shimmering platform that her rattle has brought to life. She can’t do anything complicated, but a soft shiny platform for her little slithers to play around in? She can do that, but it takes some focus. The tiny fluffy child of Vuni is cuddling the strong Jungle Nagasha tail that wraps around her own tail.
“How formal a call do you think we should make?” Miles asks in an amused tone.
“Not especially, after all the babes ensure it will never be properly formal, they’re too happy and healthy.” Agenda notes.
“I blame you for that.” Miles says and Agenda laughs.
“If you don’t want the blame I’ll take it.” Vuni remarks.
“You’re just as guilty.” Miles says and Vuni laughs in response.
“What’s going to happen?” Jingay asks and Miles is pensive for a moment.
“I don’t know.” He notes as his hand gently rubs the handle of his revolver. The constant rubbing had necessitated him re-burning the names of his family back into it. “But no amount of waffling about will let me know. So if you don’t mind. I’ve been... getting something a little ready.”
“Is this what you’ve been sneaking around to do for the last three days?” Agenda asks.
“Something like that. It’s a bit of a treat I wanted to give you girls so... care to join me?” He offers.
“What have you done?”
“Me and the boys got together a great big feast so that we can all talk The Inevitable at once. It took a bit of doing, but when the boys and I get moving, we really get moving.”
“Are you including Red Squadron and Biran in that?”
“And a lot of cadets too. Markus gave them a proper mission in setting up the area.” He says.
“How is that a mission?”
“It involves deploying a military force to secure and prepare an area for higher ranking officers to approach and remain there for a time.” Miles says before offering his hand. “There’s plenty of space for all our little ones, and for all our allies. Give them all a big impression. How does that sound?”
“Well, if you’ve been planning this for days.”
“I have. All of us have.”
“Then I suppose we HAVE to show up, don’t we?” Agenda says in a luxurious tone. “I’ll get my coat.”
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
The hall that Miles leads them to is a massive refurbished hanger that has all kinds of carpets put down, tapestries hanging from the ceiling and tables upon tables of different treats of all sorts already out. The Undaunted Cadets are all rushing around putting down more meals and treats and between the richness of the carpets, the crystal bowls and platters and expensive drinks and foods. But the sort of... scrambled way it’s been put together by the cadets lends it an earnestness that bleeds through. More important though are numerous floating platforms where a child can be safely put down and be right beside their parent.
“Oh this is a treat. I haven’t even been one of you guys for long!” A four part harmony says as Moira walks in with little Liǔ Shù napping in the arms of the four bodies that didn’t speak. The toxic little girl not only has numerous of the protective pendents on her and woven into her clothing, but is in a dark jumper that lets her bright skin stand out as if for presentation.
“Well, as their novels say, all for one, and one for all.” A new voice says as a pair of Cannidors lead in their own family. More and more and more people pour in from all entrances, many in uniform, many of them her own girls. Some of them she barely recognizes. Every single one of them that notices her looking raises a glass, nods, salutes or somehow pays their respects to her.
Her little one squirms ever so and is softly comforted. For a moment there is almost a feeling of vertigo. There was a time where all this wasn’t even a dream of a dream. She could remember the feeling. How could she forget it? The sensation of something gripping your very mind and soul and stopping you from even thinking of disobeying. Then so long trying to get things right, trying to be in control of her own destiny, before finally achieving it and learning just how hard that was. How many sacrifices and concessions she made before what seemed to be one of her final concessions... turned out to be final in the best of ways.
“Alright! We have a connection to The Inevitable! Who wants to say hello to the next batch of humans in the galaxy?” Ryu calls out.
“My Lady?” Miles asks as he smiles up at her. She gives him a raised eyebrow at that.
“My lady is it? Well then, I better live up to it.” She says.
“Connect us!” She commands and there is a cheer through the room before a massive projector uses one of the tapestry covered walls as a screen. “Good Ship Inevitable! Can you hear me?”
“We can, you are on a friendly frequency.” A man of Asian Descent says sitting stiffly in his command chair. “I am Observer Wu, sent from Earth to conclusively determine what is going on outside our corner of the galaxy. Identify yourself please.”
“I am Duchess Agenda Lilpaw! I am the ruler of the Vucsa System an Undaunted World! I greet you, because I have long learned my lesson to stay on the good side of humans!”
“Have you now? If I’m not mistaken that is a fully grown human right next to you. You look like you could take him fairly easily.” Observer Wu says in an amused tone.
She looks down to Miles before shaking her head.
“I made that mistake once. My entire ship was not enough.” She says fondly before pulling him close. “Then I was offered a deal, and he used it to help make me a duchess. So you’ll forgive me if I think humans are a good thing to have around.”
“Did he now? I didn’t realize galactic conquest was the intent of The Dauntless and her crew.” Wu notes.
“Well, as one of the conquered, I would like to say I prefer this result. After all, being able to walk about the city without a bodyguard is a welcome change of pace.” Vuni says drawing attention to herself with a slight bow. “Ambassador Vuni Luxed at your service.”
“So this world prefers to be conquered?” Observer Wu asks.
“This world was a slum at it’s best. A hellscape at worst.” Mari Horny states as the Carib woman waves to the camera. “Mari Horny. I was here to witness it all. I’ve seen slaves freed, monsters hunted down no matter what kind of power or influence they have, be they person or beast. With them I’ve seen the children I worked so hard to protect grow stronger and thrive. Doom has come to this world time after time, and they met it each time. If you’re here to observe, then observe this room! Everyone here saved, aided or inspired by the people you’ve come to evaluate! There are ten pure blooded humans in this room, but beyond it is nearly a billion souls who will vouch for them from the first to last! And so will I!”
“No need to be so dramatic ma’am. I’m an observer, not a judge. I am here to see and hear without bias or illusions. Things are odd, and odd things have happened. The governments and officials back home need to understand clearly and without any doubt. So that is why I am here. There was confusion in the first message sent back. The second furthered the confusion due to multiple parties having separate interests. I have been tested, tried and guaranteed numerous concessions and payments for an utterly neutral perspective.”
“So your word is going to be how all is, then they decide if we committed treachery.” Franklin notes as he floats up with several bundles around him, many of them laughing. “Behold this then. My children. All healthy, with myself as the only human parent. My daughters take after their mothers, my son takes after me, but has his mother’s strength.”
“He is nearly transparent.” Observer Wu notes before Franklin gives the little boy a tickle and he flickers in and out of visibility while laughing. “Most interesting. This Vucsa world of yours, before I do my research upon it, is there something you would like to say about it?”
“This is a world on the edge of Wild Space. Which means that it’s often been used in the past as a place where experiments happened.” Miles says.
“Interesting. Such as?” Observer Wu asks.
“Such as my daughter here. I am Moira Octalliry, I will cut through the details and simply state that my anatomy allowed me to be experimented on a great deal.” She says and Observer Wu looks at her oddly.
“Are you one, or many?”
“I am one, but I am eight as one.” She says. “As is my daughter, I have named her Liǔ Shù. She was a piece of myself remade to produce a weapon. She and I were both rescued. I was forgotten in darkness for thousands of years, as was my daughter. Held in a single moment in time and left to rot.”
“And... is she a weapon?”
“I am told you have creatures similar to her new ability back on your homeworld.”
“We do? What is the name of this creature?”
“The Poison Dart Frog.” She says and Observer Wu’s eyebrows go up.
“Don’t forget about the fact that we fought off that robot witch!”
“Robot Witch?” Wu prompts.
“A weapon of war created by a very large, dangerous and expansive criminal family. A death robot known as Mother Massacre.” Moira says. “So consider that. Without them going... I don’t even know what to call it, I saw the contradicting orders, without them going sane for lack of a better term, I would still be in a slowly failing stasis capsule, buried and forgotten in the darkness.”
“And so, in summation, and from the mouths of those that clearly trust them what is your opinion of The Undaunted and the humans that make it up?”
“When I was brought to this world it was as a slave, my dignity ripped from me, my home destroyed and in less than a day I had my freedom, dignity and a new home.” One of the Erumenta that Agenda cannot recognize out of hand announces.
“And my own. My whole family, those that were enslaved are freed, those that were indoctrinated into that wretched way of life have been allowed time to recover.” Biran says grandly.
“They took me in.” A smaller voice says as Karim rises up. “I’m a Hlo’Shab. Death Born. I could have reasonably only expected to have my core shattered, or shunned for my entire life. Instead I have a home.”
“And... to be Death Born means what?”
“I am a Slohb. By blood I have only one true parent. I was broken off of them far too soon and they died as I survived. Death Born. Or... well, I don’t have blood but... you get the idea right?” Karim asks.
“I understand.” Observer Wu notes. “I have more calls incoming. Is there more from Vucsa for me to see or hear?”
“Over here!” A jubilant voice calls out and the room turns to see Hewhew standing on the shoulders of Heffer to tower over everyone with the Agela’s height added to his own. “Red Five calling it in! The Vucsa Defence Fleets fly fast and proud to keep our home safe!”
The crowd around him, pilots all, throw up their right arms and cheer along with Hewhew. “Welcome to the Galaxy Observer! We’re ten tons of awesome in a two pound bag! Let’s rock!”
Observer Wu smiles as he looks around. “I look forwards to discovering the truth of things.”
“That’s the fun part of the galaxy sir, it’s so absurd we don’t need to lie.” Miles states and Observer Wu turns back to him with a smirk.
“Well, we shall see, won’t we?” He asks. “Is there anything more?”
“I take it you’re not in the mood for a display of flight prowess? We’ve been working on a new routine.” Hewhew calls out.
“Perhaps later. I have numerous calls waiting.” Observer Wu states. “Now if you’ll excuse me...”
~First~ Last

New Features and enhancements
New AI-enhanced tools join Smart Tempo and the Pitch Correction plug-in to augment your artistry.
Bass Player and Keyboard Player join Drummer to complete a set of Session Players — all built with AI making it easy to create performances that respond to your direction.
Session Players can follow the same chord progression using Global chord track.
Add warmth to any track with ChromaGlow, an advanced plug-in with five saturation models designed to simulate the sound of vintage analog hardware.*
Separate a stereo audio file into stems for vocals, drums, bass and other parts with Stem Splitter.*
Session Players, ChromaGlow, and Stem Splitter also come to Logic Pro for iPad 2 — making it simple to move between projects created in Logic Pro for Mac.
Play any of six deeply-sampled acoustic and electric basses with Studio Bass.
Perform any of three meticulously-sampled pianos with Studio Piano.
Loops that contain chord tags will automatically populate the chord track when added to a project.
Three new Producer Packs are available: Hardwell, The Kount, and Cory Wong.
Original multi-track project of Swing! by Ellie Dixon available as in-app demo song.
Downmix and trim options allow custom mixing for non-Atmos channel configurations.
Exported ADM BWF files have been expanded beyond Dolby Atmos and can contain settings for stereo and other multi-channel formats.
Bounce in place adds automatic real-time recording for External Instrument regions or tracks that utilize external hardware using the Logic Pro I/O plug-in.
Route MIDI signals generated by supported software instruments and effects to the input of other tracks for creative layering during playback or recording.
Edit more efficiently using key commands for moving, extending, or resizing marquee selections.
The Nudge Region/Event Position key commands now also nudge Marquee selections.
The Transpose Region/Event key commands now also move or expand the Marquee selection up/down.
Pattern regions can now be created on Drummer tracks, and Drummer regions can be converted to Pattern regions.
New key commands include Trim Note End to Following Notes (Force Legato) With Overlap and Trim Note End to Selected (Force Legato) With Overlap.
Bounce in Place and Track Freeze can now be performed in real time, allowing for use of external instruments, I/O plug-ins, and external inserts.
Mastering Assistant analysis now can be performed in real time, allowing for use in projects that incorporate external I/O or instruments.
The Dolby Atmos plug-in now offers Downmix and Surround/Height Trim controls.
The Recent Projects list can now be configured to show up to 50 projects.
* Requires a Mac with Apple silicon.
Stability and reliability
Scripts with 1071 characters or more in Scripter no longer cause Logic Pro to quit unexpectedly.
Fixes an issue where creating a an event in a lane assigned to Note off in Step Sequencer could cause Logic Pro to quit unexpectedly.
Fixes an issue where Logic Pro could fail to launch with an Error Initializing Core MIDI message when the system is under heavy load performing other tasks.
Resolves an issue where Logic Pro could quit unexpectedly when a 64-bit floating point IR file is loaded into Space Designer.
Fixes an issue where Logic Pro could hang when opening a project while the Project Settings > MIDI window is displayed.
Logic Pro no longer quits unexpectedly when creating multiple Aux tracks with multiple existing Aux tracks selected.
Improves stability when bypassing control surfaces with Musical Typing open when EuControl software is installed.
Fixes an issue where Logic Pro could hang when quitting a project containing a large number of instances of Sampler.
Fixes an issue where Logic Pro could quit unexpectedly when replacing a playing Live Loops cell with another loop.
Performance
The UI is now more responsive when adjusting Flex Pitches directly on regions in Deviation mode.
Performance is improved when editing Transient Markers in Take regions with Flex enabled.
Performance is improved when making Flex Pitch edits in the Tracks area with a large number of selected regions.
Alchemy's Performance is improved.
Performance is improved when moving regions in projects with a large number of tracks and regions.
Projects containing a large number of flex-pitched regions now open more quickly.
Resolves an issue where loading a project saved with a Summing stack selected that contains Software Instruments that have no regions and/or with the tracks turned off could load the Software Instruments into memory.
Accessibility
VoiceOver now announces the state of Automation mode buttons on channel strips.
VoiceOver now announces the status of the Pause button in the LCD.
VoiceOver no longer announces hidden controls in the Smart Controls view.
VoiceOver no longer reads the values of pan knobs that are currently hidden in Sends on Faders mode.
VoiceOver now announces the state of the Details button and the Follow button in the Drummer Editor.
VoiceOver now announces left-click and Command-click Tool selections in the Control Bar.
VoiceOver now announces the name of the Time Quantize button in the Piano Roll.
VoiceOver now announces changes in value when the Next/Previous key commands are used to change Quantize values.
VoiceOver now announces state of key commands for Cycle, Mute, Track Solo, Input Monitoring, Track On/Off, and Lock/Unlock Track.
VoiceOver now announces the selection state of focused tracks.
Spatial Audio
Fixes an issue where adding a new 3D Object track for the first time to a Spatial Audio project could cause the Renderer to switch from the current model to the Apple renderer.
The Dolby Atmos plug-in now offers a 5.1.2 monitoring option.
Fixes an issue where setting a project to Dolby Atmos could output to 7.1.4 even when the mode defaults to Apple Renderer.
It is now possible to monitor Dolby Atmos projects directly via HDMI to a surround capable receiveamplifier.
The metering for Height channels now shows as post-fader on the Master channel as expected.
Loading a Master Bus channel strip setting in the 7.1.4 channel format now preserves the 7.1.4 channel layout as expected.
Session Players
Resolves an issue where loading a user-created Drum Machine Designer patch could set the input to a bus and fail to load the Drum Machine Designer instrument.
Using the Create Drummer Region command in a Marquee selection now creates a region that corresponds to the Marquee.
Smart Tempo
In cases where there is not an existing Smart Tempo Multitrack Set, selecting an audio file in the Smart Tempo Multitrack Set window and disabling the “Contribute to analysis” check box now causes the Update button to change to Analyze as expected.
Pressing the Space bar now immediately stops a Free Tempo recording.
Fixes an issue where projects previously open in the same Logic Pro session could unexpectedly affect “Contribute to Analysis” in the Smart Tempo editor.
Recording
Audio regions recorded to unnamed tracks now include the project name and track number in their name.
Mixer
The channel strip Stereo Pan control and the Pan menu now can be adjusted when Caps Lock is enabled.
Creating a single Multi-timbral Software Instrument in the New Track Sheet no longer creates two Software Instrument instances in the All view of the Mixer.
Resolves an issue where remaining tracks in a Multitimbral Software Instrument Track Stack could unexpectedly rename the channel strip.
Adjusting the activity status of a speaker in the Surround panner no longer causes the signal to unexpectedly mute.
Groups now immediately show as inactive when switched off for a selected set of channels in the Mixer.
Metering now correctly works on individual channel strips with plug-ins that send to more than two channels and are routed to a surround bus.
Option-clicking on a send in a selected group of channel strips now sets all corresponding sends to 0 dB as expected.
Fixes an issue where performing Undo after adjusting the fader values of grouped channels with Group Clutch enabled and then disabled could cause the faders to jump up to +6 dB when one member of the group is touched.
Setting multiple selected channels to No VCA now works as expected
Alchemy
The oscillator section in Alchemy offers a new Wide Unison mode.
All controls for Additive Effects now accept typed-in values as expected.
Values typed into parameters related to milliseconds (MS) in Acoustic Reverb are no longer interpreted as full seconds.
Resolves an issue where performance control destinations for modulation could show as duplicated.
Sampler, Quick Sampler, and Quick Alchemy
The Playback direction button in Quick Sampler now immediately updates when clicked.
The view now scrolls correctly when dragging the Trim marker in Sample Alchemy.
It is now possible to adjust the level of a group in Sampler up to +24 dB.
The Up/Down buttons for navigating zones in Sampler now remain available after adjusting the start or end positions of samples.
The general Zoom/Scroll key commands now can be used to trim the current view in Sample Alchemy.
Handles and Trim Handles in Sample Alchemy behave correctly when click-dragged, even when the plug-in window does not have focus.
The Ancient Vocal Chop and Baily Glide plug-in settings for Quick Sampler now open in Classic mode, as expected.
Plug-ins
The MIDI Scripter plug-in now shows in Logic Pro when running in dark mode.
Fixes an issue where clicking on Sampled IR in Space Designer could activate Synthesized IR mode unexpectedly.
Resolves an issue where repositioning the playhead could cause audio to cut out on channel strips that use Step FX.
The preset Note Repeater in Scripter now works as expected.
The wet/dry setting on Ringshifter is now always set to 100% wet when inserted on an Aux.
There's now a DI Delay Compensation switch in Bass Amp Designer to improve phase correlation when blending between Amp and Direct Box in the plug-in.
StepFX now includes presets using Sidechain.
The Beat Breaker preset called “Basic / 2 Slices, Speed 66%” no longer plays the slices at 50% speed instead of 66%.
Resolves an issue where ES2 could produce glitching sounds when using Sine Level or Poly Voice mode on Apple Silicon computers.
Mono > Stereo instances of Console EQ no longer can cause unexpected feedback.
Using the Delete all Automation key command while an Audio Unit window has key focus no longer causes the Audio Unit window to go blank.
The menu for the compression section of Phat FX can now be opened by clicking on the Up/Down arrows.
Beat Breaker now offers new default patterns divided evenly into 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 slices.
Mastering Assistant
There is no longer unexpected latency with bounces from projects that use the Clean or Clean + Excite mode in Mastering Assistant.
Mastering Assistant analysis is no longer incorrectly triggered in projects that contain no regions, but are previewing audio from Ultrabeat, etc.
Mastering Assistant no longer allows the -1 dBFS peak limit to be exceeded in certain cases.
Automation
The Consolidate Relative and Absolute for Visible / Automation menu item now only displays when automation types that support relative automation are active in the lane.
Region-based Automation is now pasted as Track-based Automation when pasted to an area of a track that does not contain regions.
Pitchbend now works as expected with zones in Sampler that do not have Flex Pitch enabled.
Selecting Region-based automation points on a region now deselects previously selected automation points on other regions
Disabling Region-Based Automation no longer dims the Power button for MIDI CC data lanes in the Piano Roll.
The movie window now updates to show the correct frame when moving Region-based automation points.
The Autoselect automation parameter now works as expected when clicking any plug-in control.
Automation of the Gain plug-in no longer exhibits unexpected latency.
Region-based automation is now drawn correctly when recorded into projects that start earlier than 1 1 1 1.
Automation lane views for all tracks are now maintained when switching into Flex view and then back to Automation view.
Flex Time and Flex Pitch
Flex Pitched notes now play as expected when clicked while Record or Input Monitoring is active on the track.
Flexed audio tracks using Monophonic or Slicing mode no longer produce clicks at tempo changes.
Takes and comping
Fade-ins are now applied when flatten and merge is performed on Comps.
Renaming a take that encompasses the entire length of an audio file no longer unexpectedly changes the file name.
Comps in Take Folders are now preserved when performing Cut Section Between Locators on a section that includes the end of one Take folder and the beginning of another, with a gap in-between.
Track Stacks
Record-arming a Track Stack now arms grouped audio tracks in a Track Stack it contains.
Dragging a subtrack out of a Track Stack that is assigned to a VCA now removes the assignment for the subtrack.
Fixes an issue where Track Stacks could sometimes be dimmed when some, but not all, subtracks are muted or off.
It's now possible to replace stacked instrument patches that are inside a Summing Stack with single track patches.
Track Alternatives
Loading a patch on a Summing Stack containing sub-tracks with Track Alternatives no longer causes inactive alternatives to be deleted.
Track Alternatives can now be created for the Stereo Output track.
Selection-Based Processing
Using Selection-Based Processing on a Marquee selected section within a Take Folder no longer creates an unexpected comp.
Selection-Based Processing on a comp now retains the comp.
Score
The spacing of notes is improved in cases where there is a dotted note on a line with the stem is pointing upward.
Command + Z to undo now works after deleting a Score Set.
Upward bends in TAB staves now display correctly.
Importing an instrument track no longer can cause Score Sets in the current project to disappear.
Imported Score Sets can now be deleted from a project.
Live Loops
“Join Region and Fill Cell” now works as expected.
Recording a performance in Live Loops now temporarily puts all tracks into Automation: Latch mode.
Fixes an issue where changing patches for a Live Loop track could cause the length of cells to change unexpectedly.
It's now possible to paste MIDI notes into a Live Loops cell.
Step Sequencer
It's now easier to use the disclosure triangle to open sub-rows in Step Sequencer.
Pattern regions now play back correctly immediately after being nudged.
Pattern Regions now immediately play as expected after using the Slip/Rotate tool to drag their contents to the left.
The “Separate pattern region by kit piece” command on Drum Machine Designer tracks is now applied to the correct area of the Pattern Region, in cases where the left border of the region has been moved to the right.
The length and number of steps of a newly created Pattern Region accounts for Time Signature changes correctly.
The maximum possible pattern length of a Pattern region is now 4 bars of the current time signature.
Step Sequencer now allows pattern lengths to be added based on 5/4 and 7/8 time signatures.
The Step Sequencer Inc/Dec controls now work in Loop Edit mode.
Fixes an issue where Pattern Regions on frozen tracks be edited unexpectedly.
Region-based automation now displays properly on Pattern regions in tracks that have been partially frozen, and on regions that have been frozen and then unfrozen.
It's now possible to assign MIDI channels per step in a Pattern Region.
MIDI
Reset messages for Software Instruments now work correctly.
Sustain messages are now sent correctly when playing back regions with Clip Length enabled in cycle mode.
There is now an “Internal MIDI in” setting in the Track Inspector to allow for recording MIDI from any other software instrument or External MIDI Instrument track.
The “Send all MIDI settings” key command now sends program changes to external devices assigned to empty tracks.
Resolves an issue where 3 bytes of random MIDI data would be sent when playing back regions containing SysEx data with MIDI 2.0 disabled
New 'internal MIDI in' feature allows recording of MIDI from other tracks, including MIDI FX plug-in output and 3rd party MIDI generators.
The “Delete MIDI events outside region boundaries" key command now correctly creates a starting CC event in the region to match the last matching CC of the same type in the track.
Fixes an issue where Chase could cut off notes that are preceded by notes of the same pitch on tracks with third-party instrument plug-ins.
Editing
The Humanize transform set now works as expected when the Randomize functions for Position, Length, or Velocity are set to very small values.
The menu item Delete and Move in the Event List is now only displayed if regions are displayed in the window.
When MIDI 2.0 is selected in the Settings, clicking on an Event in the Event List no longer plays events back with MIDI 1.0 resolution.
Fixes an issue where using the Cut command in the Audio Track Editor could switch the view to another editor.
When a region in the Project Audio window is double-clicked, the Audio Track editor now opens as expected.
The content link buttons for the Piano Roll and Score show the correct color as expected when toggled using the mouse.
The Event List correctly updates to reflect changes made by using key commands to select notes in other editors.
Resolves an issue where the Velocity tool in the Piano roll could affect the values of non-note events.
Fixes an issue where applying the Transform set Double Speed could cause the notes to disappear from the Piano Roll.
Step Input
Extending the length of note entered using Step Input now works correctly.
Global Tracks
Adding multiple audio Apple Loops of the same key to different tracks of a new project now changes the project key as expected.
Clicked in Tempo points are now placed at their correct positions in projects that start earlier than 1 1 1 1.
Share and export
When No Overlap is enabled, regions bounced onto existing regions no longer overlap them.
Audio files bounced from Logic Pro now include the proper Encoded Date in the metadata.
Fixes an issue where MIDI regions could be truncated when bounced in place.
Fixes an issue where audio files including Volume/Pan automation exported from mono tracks that use plug-ins could export as stereo files.
It is now possible to bounce sub-channels of multitimbral instrument tracks as individual files.
Import
Resolves an issue when dragging multiple audio files into a project, choosing the “Place all files on one track” option could create a second track and places the first file on one track, and the rest on the second.
Output channels in the Mixer can now be imported from other Logic Pro projects.
Apple Loops
The Loops browser now correctly shows the same enharmonic key an Apple Loop was tagged with.
Apple Loops now preview using the Key Signature active at the current position of the playhead.
It's now possible to add Aliases to bookmarks and untagged loops.
Dragging an Apple Loop from the loop browser to an existing track no longer changes the input for the track.
Fixes an issue where MIDI Apple Loops could jump to the start of the nearest bar position when dragged from the Loop Browser to the middle of a bar.
Video Support
A secondary screen that is running a full screen video with Show Animations off will no longer remain black after closing the project.
Key Commands
The “Increase (or Decrease) last clicked parameter” key commands now work for controls in the LCD.
The “Record off for all” key command now works on Software Instrument tracks in cases where one or more audio tracks are also record-enabled.
There is now a key command to add to the current selection of regions or cells that are assigned to a toggle solo group.
The Zoom Toggle key command now works in the Step Editor.
Compatibility
GarageBand projects that use Pitch Correction now sound the same when opened in Logic Pro.
Undo
If Undo is used immediately after creating a project, the New Track Sheet is displayed as expected rather than leaving a project with no tracks.
Undo/Redo now works as expected with Audio Unit v3 plug-ins.
Changing the Automation Mode, or changing a Track On/Off state now creates an Undo step.
Performing Undo after adding a surround track no longer corrects Drummer tracks in the project.
Logic Remote
Logic Remote immediately updates to show time and signature changes made in Logic Pro.
Control Surfaces and MIDI controllers
Controls on Control Surface devices that use Lua scripts now provide feedback when learning assignments for them in Logic Pro.
Illuminated buttons on control surfaces now show the correct state for Show/Hide Track Editor.
General
The LCD now displays the Cycle start and end times in both SMPTE time and Bars/Beats when the secondary ruler is displayed.
Search in the All Files browser now finds matching items in bookmarked folders.
Fixes an issue where the visible editor in the Main window could unexpectedly switch when rubber-band selecting regions.
Audio Take folders created in Cycle mode now loop as expected after recording when Loop is enabled in the Region Inspector.
It's now possible to create external MIDI tracks when Core Audio is disabled in Logic Pro.
Resolves an issue where deleting a Flex marker from an audio region while a Marker List is visible could switch the key focus to the Marker List.
Track information pasted into a text editor now includes the TIME position when the Use Musical Grid setting for the project is not enabled.
Input monitoring buttons are now displayed on audio tracks when Logic Pro has fallen back to an alternate audio device because the selected device is not available.
Previewing an audio region in the Project Audio window no longer causes it to jump to the top of the window.
Command+Option clicking on the On/Off button of a track now toggles the button for all tracks, as expected.
Copy/paste of regions now works when Automation view is enabled.
Right-clicking on a looped segment of a region now opens the contextual menu as expected.
It's now easier to see when black keys are depressed in the Musical Typing window.
The right arrow key now reliably moves the text cursor in the Bounce > Save As file name panel.
Groove Templates created from audio regions now work in Smart Quantize mode.
Dragging multiple regions from the same audio file from the Project Audio browser to the Tracks area now works correctly.
Audio regions are no longer moved to unexpected positions when trimming, if absolute Snap mode is on, and the region anchor is moved away from the start of the region
Fixes an issue where pasting a Marquee selection with No Overlap and Snap Edits to Zero Crossings mode enabled could delete a non-overlapping part of an existing region.
Autozoom now triggers when a region's upper right corner is dragged in the Main window, or the Audio Track Editor.
The Playhead no longer may briefly appear to be in the wrong position when zooming horizontally.
The Time Ruler now immediately updates to reflect changes made to the “Bar Position [bar position] plays at SMPTE” setting.
The File browser correctly shows the full path when using Save As.

Hello! I'm a beginner sewer who recently completed a weekend bootcamp on sewing. I sewed my own dress from scratch with facing on the collar and cuffs. I also learned to hand sew. I have a $300 budget to get set up to machine-sew and hand-sew 100% wool and 100% linen clothing (with some limited silk) for medieval-themed historical re-enactment events. These will be outfits for myself, my elementary-aged children, and occasionally for friends.
This budget does not include cloth or patterns (just tools). I would like to include tailoring/measurement/cutting tools, key reference/learning books (I can check some of these from the library), and beginner tools for simple hand-sewn embroideries, stamping clothes with stencils and paint, and applying wool applique. I'd love to figure out how to make custom cloth-covered buttons as well to match dresses and coats.
Here is what I have on hand already, thanks to hand-me-downs from family and what I had already:

• a Singer XL-400 Futura sewing machine (no embroidery attachment, but I have a pedal).
• a Brother CS-6000i sewing and embroidery machine (with all attachments).
• Multi-color starter kits of thread sets and bobbin sets, plus white, black, and gray thread.
• a dedicated table and chair for sewing and cutting material.
• a decent ironing board, iron, cutting surface sheet, a see-through tailoring ruler, and a few sizes of non-fancy scissors - one from Joann's for cloth.

While I thought $300 would be plenty to get me started, I am already feeling overwhelmed by all the choices for tools available. Like, do I need a curved ruler? Or fancy Kai or Gingher scissors? Or a tool to correctly size collars? Do I need a machine to make cloth-covered buttons, or can I make them more cheaply? Some of these more expensive tools eat up my budget quickly.
Knowing that I'm a beginner, and will (almost) exclusively be sewing (90% machine sewing) with wool and linen to make medieval clothing that are intended to look hand-made, what "essentials" would you recommend I purchase or focus on? What can you not live without now that you've been sewing for years that you think I might need? What's turned out to not be useful? I'll shop around for the best prices on items once I've narrowed down my list. Thank you in advance for your advice!

Me and Lila always carved dozens of jack o’ lanterns every October, so they’d absolutely saturate our lawn on Halloween night. It was our thing. But looking back on it, now that I’ve lost her, I just feel bad for the pumpkins. I almost relate to them, somehow. The way they were carved up, had everything of substance inside of them torn out, and left as hollow, rotting shells with forced smiles.
Needless to say, I didn’t cope with her death well. I didn’t want to cope with it. I wanted the world to drown in the black sludge of my grief. I loathed the people I saw going about their lives, unaware that the world had already ended the moment Lila died. The Earth shouldn’t keep spinning. Life shouldn’t go on. Not without her.
Even my relatives bringing me along on a trip to Kauai only made it worse. The most gorgeous place on Earth, and it made me sick with hatred. Nothing that beautiful deserved to exist if Lila wasn’t ever going to get to see it. It wasn’t fair.
I thought I’d never enjoy or care about anything again. Then I discovered media preservation.
It started with taking some of Lila’s old VHS tapes to a video repair place to fix some issues with the footage before it’s digitized. The job fascinated me. In a universe based on entropy, where everything inevitably fades away and is forgotten… restoring something lost is like snatching it from the jaws of death, right? Like flipping the bird to the universe and its so-called ‘natural order’. People die, but information doesn’t have to.
Now, it doesn’t matter how small — be it some god-awful plug-and-play licensed game, or a cereal commercial from 80’s — it’s my mission to recover it in as high a quality as I’m able, and make sure it’s freely available online for as long as possible.
A couple weeks ago, I came across a big haul. Four boxes of old VHS tapes offered up on E-Bay for dirt cheap. Most of the tapes were just recordings of Cheers episodes already preserved in higher qualities, but one Maxell E-240 caught my interest.
First of all, I’d never seen one so melted. Sure, sometimes they were left in an attic too long, and the colors and audio start to degrade. But this one looked like it had survived a house fire. It was covered in soot and the smell of smoke, and had the overall shape of a chocolate bar left out in the sun a little too long.
Second was the label, which read in neat sharpie: ᴇᴘɪꜱᴏᴅᴇ 4,679,329 ᴍᴀʀ 8 2035.
The casing was so disfigured, I had to bust it apart just pull out the tapes and respool them in a fresh cassette. I tried to iron out the creases in the tape as best I could, but I had no illusions about it accomplishing much — the mylar surface had been irreparably warped in places by whatever fire had half-melted the thing.
Imagine my despair at the sight of that dreaded ‘ɴᴏ ꜱɪɢɴᴀʟ’. I could clearly see the tape wasn’t blank, yet no amount of adjusting the tracking or trying different TVs or VCRs accomplished anything. Just as I was about to give up, though, the thing just suddenly started playing properly at the exact instant the clock struck 3 AM, as if it had only now decided to work. My all-nighter had paid off.
I didn’t dwell on the fact that this ‘miracle fix’ had been impossible. If I’d had any sense, I’d have torn the horrid thing out of my VCR and buried it beneath holy ground. Instead, fool I was, I sat down and watched.
At first, the thing seemed unwatchable. The audio was so distorted that the show’s theme song emerged as a low, crackling, staticky wail that made my head throb, and the logo was completely indistinguishable through the flickering and interference. I thought it was a lost cause for a moment. But then a figure appeared and cleared away the static, like Moses parting the Red Sea.
It was the sight of the show’s host that hooked me. He was just… perfect. Perfect in every way. I knew it just looking at him. Infinitely handsome and likable and charismatic, and he always said the exact perfect thing. The only issue is, I don’t remember a single thing about him now, in the same way you can’t remember a dream that seemed so clear to you while you were experiencing it. He just appears in my memory as this abstract blur in a sharp suit. Yet at the time, I was awestruck, even before he said a single word.
I can’t even remember a word he said. It was like he was speaking another language, one I felt as opposed to heard. I’ll try and transcribe it as best I can into words, but know that it’s only a pathetic imitation.
“... for another night of laughs, prizes, and fun for the whole family, with your host, #####!” I noticed that the audio and visual distortion seemed to suddenly intensify the instant he said his name, rendering it completely illegible. Idiot I was, I figured that was a coincidence. “Tonight is a night of celebration, folks, because thanks to the support of loyal viewers like you, we have just been approved for, get this: two hundred thousand more seasons!”
The “live studio audience” went wild with applause. I put that in scare quotes because, as far as I could tell, besides the host, the studio seemed completely empty. As if he was standing on a plain white stage that extended outwards into infinite darkness on all sides.
“For those just joining us, the game here is simple…” He explained that this was some sort of a trivia show. Every time a guest got an answer wrong, it brought them a little closer to some sort of unspecified ‘punishment’. And if they got it right? He smirked. “Well, they get to delay the inevitable.”
I wondered what he meant by ‘inevitable’. I didn’t have to wonder long.
The host gestured to a curtain that hadn’t been there moments ago, which raised to reveal a middle-aged man. You know the type — bushy mustache, gray hair, round-rimmed glasses. Kind of guy you’d have doing your plumbing. He couldn’t look any more out of place stood up and restrained in that — what the hell is that?
I recognized that metal coffin-looking thing from a medieval torture museum I went to once. The iron maiden. The lid hung open, countless long, needle-like blades poking inwards, threaten to poke a million new holes in him if it was shut.
His situation was not lost on him. “Where… where am I? What the hell is this!?”
“Oh, lucky guess!” The host ‘joked’. More canned laughter. “I know you always loved watching those trivia shows, Malcolm? Weren’t you always sitting there, grinding your teeth, seething that it wasn’t fair? That you should be the one up on stage, winning big?”
The man paused. Even he seemed mesmerized by the unreal perfection of the host before him. “I… this is a… game show?”
“All you have to do is answer a few questions! Think you can handle that, Malcolm?” He pulled out a cue card without waiting for an answer. “And our first question! What were you doing the night of February 18th, 1998?”
The man seemed baffled. “Just… sat on my couch watching the NFL, I think? I’m not sure how I’m supposed to remember —“
He let out a startled squeal as a horrid buzzer sounded. On cue, the lid slid a third of the way closed, making him flinch. “Oooh, I’m afraid that’s the wrong answer, Frank! But you know what? I’ll give you one more chance. What were you —“
“Following a girl home!” The man cried out. “F-from the bar. There, are you happy?”
“Cor-rect!” The canned audience began cheering! “Such honesty! Now, our second question: just what were you carrying while you followed her?”
He hesitated for a little too long. And then the buzzer sounded again, and the lid slid so near to closing that its blades began poking uncomfortably against his skin. He tried to press himself against the back of the maiden as well as his restraints would allow. “Jesus! Okay! A knife, a knife!”
“Awww, if only you’d said that just a second earlier!” Another big question. “Our third question: why, Malcolm? Why did you do it?”
That set Malcolm off. He started thrashing, clawing, screaming. “Let me out of this thing, you maniac! You can’t do this to me! Do you know who I am? Is this some sort of sick joke? My lawyers will have your head for this, you—“
And then the buzzer. All of a sudden, the lid slammed shut full-force, and the man was utterly silenced save for an unnatural, drawn-out wheeze. “Another wrong answer, Malcolm! I’m afraid I was looking for: ‘because if I can’t have her, no one can’!”
I admit it. I laughed. Out of shock more than anything. How was this allowed on TV? I took it as some sort of dark comedy show, and it was kind of satisfying to see that freaky character get his comeuppance. Still, there was something unnerving to me, seeing the man’s eyes through the openings in the maiden. Wide and red and terrified. They just looked a little… too real.
But the maiden disappeared as quickly as it came, before I could dwell on it too much. “Oh, envy! Definitely one of my favorite sins.” More laughter. “Stay tuned, folks! We’ve still got a night of fun and games in store for you! But first… how’s about a word from our sponsors?”
Cut to a corporate logo which I again couldn't recognize.
“This segment was made possible by Buer Health, which has recently announced a brilliant new initiative to protect our citizens from skin cancer by removing their skin completely.”
The camera cut to a massive industrial building, resembling a solid concrete cube around 50 meters in width and height. Its surface bore arcane symbols etched using carvings of wailing, tormented faces. The host would occasionally be rendered inaudible by a deafening metallic scraping from within, though he didn’t seem to notice. The only protrusion from the building’s cubic shape was a single smokestack, belching a scarlet red smoke into the atmosphere. A queue of gaunt figures waited at the entrance, herded and coerced by their grim overseers, and there were no words to describe the procession of scarlet ghouls limping out the building’s other end.
“Owing to the nonlinearity of time, the brand new Grand Skinpeeling Machine has spontaneously appeared several years before construction deadlines, and indeed, before it was even conceived of by anyone in our timeline. People have rushed all the way from Malebolge just to try this miracle of technology out on opening day, and so far, the reviews have been stellar!”
He shoved his microphone in the face of a shambling thing that could only scarcely be called a human. Tatters of flesh clung to its exposed musculature, blowing in the wind. Its eyes were the only hint of color in that sea of bloody red, and they were wide, white and terrified. The thing screamed and wailed for as long as it could before the last tendons connecting its jaw to its face snapped, and it was left to choke and gurgle.
“An amazing wail! The results speak for themselves, folks. The Grand Skinpeeling Machine is a hit!”
So far, I was still laughing along and having a good time. The sight of the next ‘guest’, however, started making me nervous.
It was an old lady.
She couldn’t be a day younger than sixty, the sort of sweet elderly woman who in a just world would be cooking chocolate chip cookies for her grandchildren in a comfy cottage somewhere. But here she was, tied to a metal chair, eyes wide, shaking like a leaf. Unlike the last contestant, she seemed to know exactly what was happening.
“In exchange for our loving endorsement, they’ve agreed to loan us one of their star employees. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for: the Liqisma!”
Something slunk from the darkness far behind her — or perhaps it’d be more apt to say that the darkness birthed it whole-cloth. It was like a living shadow, and it took my eyes a moment to register what I was even seeing.
How do I even begin describing this creature? I could say it looked almost human, or at least like something that may have been human long ago. Or I could start with its skin, which was all black and shiny as latex and seemingly smooth on first glance, but if you looked closer you’d realize it was covered in a million tiny reptilian scales, almost like a shark. Its head was a bald man’s, utterly devoid of any distinguishing features, like the basic stock template for a human being. It was notable only for a complete lack of pupils and irises, its eyes a pure white.
Its body defied basic biology in so many key ways, I had to stare it at for what felt like an eternity just to wrap my mind around its physiology. It was at least five or six meters long, by my estimate, composed of multiple human torsos stacked one on top of the other like segments of a centipede, each melding with the ones around it at the waist and shoulders. Each torso sported a pair of short, stubby arms that propelled it with terrifying grace. It ended with a pair of human legs, perpetually bent on their knees, beneath a ‘tail’ that looked more like its coccyx was poking free from its body.
The old last could clearly hear it, and kept futilely trying to turn her head around enough to get a peek at what stood behind her. I mouthed uselessly, don’t. You don’t want to know.
“Glad you could join us again, Miss Wethersby! Judging by our ratings last week, you seemed to have been a fan favorite!”
Her voice was so soft, I could barely hear it below the static. “Oh, God. Please, why won’t you people let me go? I’ve told you, I’ve never done anything, never hurt anybody. There must be some sort of—”
He waved a hand over her, and it seemed to forcefully snap her mouth shut. “Please, Miss Wethersby, save your breath for our questions!” Another cue card. “Your first question, my friend: where did you and your husband buy your first home?”
She had to think about it for a long time. Eventually, she cried out, “Alabama! Tuscaloosa, Alabama!”
“Ding ding ding! Why, you’re already doing better than our first contestant! Next question: what breed of dog was your childhood pet?”
She had a pained look on her face as she thought. Eventually, a timer started ticking down. It wasn’t visible, so it wasn’t clear how much time she had left exactly, but the sound it made got more shrill and high-pitched with every second. “Miss Wethersby, need I remind you that we have a time limit on this show?”
A tear ran down her cheek. “I… I keep telling you people, I don’t know. I have dementia, I can’t remember, please—”
That buzzer again. “I’m afraid that was the wrong answer! Liqisma?” The old lady shuddered at the sounds of hundreds of feet drawing a little closer to her. “Now, your first grandchild. What did he look like? What color were his eyes? His hair?”
She was crying harder now, like it hurt her that she couldn’t remember something so dear to her. “I told you I can’t remember! Why are you doing this to me!?”
“If you don’t remember them, why would they remember you?” The host mocked as the buzzer sounded, and the beast drew a little closer. “Really, do you believe they still even think about you? Or do you think they’re glad that the old bag of bones isn’t there sucking up their inheritance?”
This went on for… God, it could have been an hour. I was glued to the screen all the while, frozen with terror, praying for this nightmare to just end, for her to make it out okay somehow. He poured over every little detail of the life she lived and the people she loved, delighting in how little of it she could still recall.
And the thing grew closer, and closer… until she finally felt multiple pairs of hands resting upon her shoulders. The thing was looming over her now, and a long, black tongue a few feet in length emerged from its mouth and ran trails of dark saliva over the back of her head. She looked broken down, eyes raw from crying, and I could tell by the dampness of her dress that she’d wet herself.
“Now, Miss Wethersby, our time here has been fun, but I do believe it is time for our final question. Tell me, what is the name… of your only son?”
She couldn’t even answer anymore. She just stared ahead, like her mind was a million miles away. He cackled as the buzzer sounded one final time, and threw his cue cards aside. “Thank you for playing, Miss Wethersby. Better luck next time.”
I would say the thing unhinged its jaw like a snake, but that’d be an understatement. The way the thing’s face malformed and wrinkled and stretched as it opened its maw, it no longer looked even remotely human. Its jaws must have parted at least thirty centimeters apart, revealing a second, pharyngeal pair of jaws that lashed out and gripped the woman’s skull, pulling her headlong into that darkness.
I could hear bones crunching and snapping as its throat constricted down around her body, peristaltic muscles compacting her into a meat slurry, bit by bit. Yet she just wouldn’t die. Even as her skull and upper body were already crushed and compacted, organs and muscles pressed into mulch, she still kicked her legs, twitched her fingers, let out a gurgling that must have been some attempt at screaming. She was squirming even as the beast snapped its jaw shut around the last of her, condemning her to whatever torments awaited her inside the creature.
And all the while, that horrible laughter. “Don’t worry, folks! She’ll be back next week! And the next. And the next…”
Needless to say, I wasn’t having fun anymore. In fact, I had to turn away and fight the urge to throw up. I stood, about to turn the TV off and —
“Ah, ah, ah! Don’t touch that dial, now!” I froze. There was something chilling about the way he said that, staring right into the screen as if reacting to what I was doing. I hated that grin on his face. “The real show is just beginning.”
And with the barely restrained excitement of a child on Christmas morning, he yanked back another curtain, and I recognized everything.
I recognized that crappy bootleg knockoff Always Sunny in Philadelphia jacket that was so gaudy and terrible it instantly became her favorite thing in her wardrobe. I recognized those subtle hints of slight acne she disguised as fake freckles. I recognized the way her gray eyes would remind me of those overcast mornings at the beach at Hilton Head and pointing out all the cannonball jellyfish washed up on the sands. I recognized that tattoo of the name ʀᴏᴄᴋʏ, how I’d held her all night long as she cried into my shirt after her childhood cat had died.
It was Lila.
I shuddered, gasped, fell from my seat as if I’d been punched in the stomach and the air had been knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t be real. I was dreaming right now. I must be. I just had to wake up.
But I couldn’t wake up. Nothing I could do dispelled the sight of her curled up in that… that thing. That bronze statue of a bull, horns jutting on either side of a head that roaring silently up at the heavens, all while the love of my life was locked in its hollowed out belly, visible only through a pane of glass. I could hear her cry out in shock at where she’d found herself, and every whimper felt like it drove a knife through my chest.
The host soaked in the moment. It was ecstasy for him, the suffering of it all. He stared dead into the camera like he was looking right at me as she called, “What is this? Where am I?”
“Why, I have good news, my dear Lila! You’re exactly where every American dreams of being: you’re on TV.” He pointed to the camera. “And we have a very special guest in the audience tonight. Your very own beloved Jackson!”
I shuddered, hearing my own name ooze from his fetid lips. His façade of perfection was slipping, and there was something so profoundly ugly beneath it. Her eyes snapped to the camera, confused, despairing. “Jackson? Baby? What — what’s happening? What is this?”
I don’t know, I thought, gripping the sides of the TV so hard my knuckles turned white, but I’m going to get you out of there, baby. I’m going to find whoever did this and I’m going to bury them all so far beneath that studio that they’ll never-
“I’m afraid Jackson hasn’t joined us quite yet, my dear. But if you truly love him, surely you’ll give him a show to remember, won’t you?” He taunted her. “All I want, after all, is to ask you a few questions! In fact, I’ll offer you a special deal: get even a single answer right, and I’ll let you go free! But get one wrong and, well…”
On cue, a fire was lit beneath her. Small, smoldering for now, but she whimpered as she noticed the heat. We both realized in that instant what this was. By now, I was screaming things I can’t repeat here, and slamming my hands against the TV screen as if I could reach through and save her.
She bit her lip and acquiesced. Not like she had any room to argue. The host grinned and readied a cue card. “Your first question: where are you, Lila?”
“I… I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”
“You do know, Lila. You know exactly where you are.” He smirked at her. “Here’s a free hint: what’s the last thing you remember, before you woke up here?
She thought about it… and choked back a sob, visibly shaking as the realization slowly settled in. “But… but why? I… I…”
The horrible wail of the buzzer cut her off. “Oooh, too bad! I’m afraid you’ve run out of time!”
Seemingly as if on its own, the fire doubled in size. Sparks licked the belly of the bronze bull, and began to ever-so-slowly heat the surface. She pawed around in the tight confines, searching for any reprieve from the scalding heat all around her as the metal grew hot like it’d been left out in the sun on a summer’s day. “Please! Oh, God, let me out of this thing! It hurts! It hurts!”
The host seemed to breathe in her pain as if stealing a moment’s indulgence. “Now that there is no doubt about where you are, my dear, let us proceed to the second question.” He switched to his next card. “Did you believe in God, in the end?”
“O-of course!” She pled her case as if she was being tried in court. “My entire life… every day I gave to the poor, helped the sick, did whatever I could to honor Hi-“
“I’m afraid you misunderstood my question. I asked, did you believe in him at the end? The very moment your pitiful little life was snuffed out?”
“I always believed! I’d never forsake Him!”
“Yes, yes, I know. You lived a good and holy life, didn’t you?” He cackled. “But what of the very end? You and your little husband were so excited to deliver your first little baby boy. But o, tragedy! It all went wrong, didn’t it? Your precious little boy didn’t make it through childbirth… and you followed closely behind.”
“That whole business with the botched pregnancy, it was… what do you call it? Ah, yes. A ‘test of faith’. And I’m afraid you failed. In your final moments, you watched the light fade from your child’s eyes, and you assumed — wisely, in my humble opinion — that no ‘kind’ and ‘loving’ God would allow something like that to happen.” He laughed. “Funny how after a lifetime of dutiful service, all it takes is one little mistake at the end… to bring you here. To us.”
I’d never seen such depths of despair in a person’s eyes. Such emptiness. Like with every word, he’d been scooping out another piece of her until she was hollow. And then that buzzer roared again, more shrill than ever, and I could barely see her little window through the smoke and flames. The belly of the bull was turning orange in places, and I could hear her flesh start to sizzle like meat on a grill. There are no words for the noises she made. No words at all.
“And our last, final question,” he continued. “What were your last words to your poor, beloved Jackson?”
“I love you!” I called out the answer. Bloody fingerprints stained the TV screen from my slamming my hands against it, as I screamed the answer over and over. “I love you, I love you, I love you!” At some point, I forgot that there was ever a question. I was just screaming it at her as if hoping that she could hear it, that it could bring her a modicum of comfort in that place.
The buzzer sounded again. I couldn't bring myself to look. All I could hear was the roaring of the bull, and the steam rising from its bronze nostrils.
The curtain fell. Silence drowned the sound. The host dropped all pretense that he hadn’t been speaking directly to me. “Now, Jackson. You just might be one of my new favorite audience members this show had ever had. I know this must have been hard for you. But if you’ll just stay tuned, I have one more show I know you’re certain to love!”
I didn’t bother to touch the remote. After all, nothing could be worse than what I’d just seen, right?
Wrong. Horror wracked me as the curtain rose, and I saw the man chained to a chair. I pulled away like a caveman witnessing fire, cringing and stuttering, face wet with sweat. It was the sort of fear that worked its way into your bones like a bad chill, that left you shaking, teeth chattering.
It was me.
An older me, sure. But not by much. Ten years, maybe. A gaunt and hollow version of me, one twisted by ten years of depression and hard drugs. But it was unmistakable.
His eyes widened as he recognized the host. “Oh — oh God, God please no! It can’t be — oh Christ, let me out of this chair, you —“
“Come, now! We wouldn’t want to use the lord’s name in vain, would we? I mean, that would be a sin!” The host laid a hand on the other me’s shoulder. “It may have been a few years since you watched our program, but I’m sure you remember the rules, don’t you, old friend?”
The other me was wordless, on the verge of hyperventilating, just as I was. The host was giddy with delight. “Now! Our first and only question is one I’m sure our viewer will be very interested in: what sins, exactly, do you think landed you here?”
The other me tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat. I could see it in his eyes. The years of self-destruction, the bitter hopelessness, the whirlpool of nihilism and vice and decay. The suffocating depths of a man. The darkness. How could he put it into words?
The sound of the buzzer was like a pig’s squeal. “Mmm, I’m afraid that our viewer is going to have to figure that out for himself! In the meantime, your punishment? Well, we wouldn’t want to spoil anything…”
The curtains slowly began to fall just as a couple other of those black, grotesque monstrosities emerged from the darkness. The curtain covered them all before I could get a good look at their obscene, twisted, asymmetrical figures. All I could hear was the crunching, the sound of skin tearing like paper, the screaming that went on for longer and louder than a human throat or vocal chords could endure.
The image and audio were beginning to distort, glitch, burn away. The tapes were physically melting as they played. My VCR was starting to overheat, sparks pouring from its front panel. The host voice jumped around in tone, his voice fading into the static blur as the tapes bubbled and boiled and distorted. “But, my friends, I’m afraid that concludes tonight’s episode of our show! So, with a final farewell to our dear, beloved viewer, Jackson…”
Just before the image melted away, the camera seemed to jump forward until his face filled the screen, his eyes piercing into mine as he cackled in that singsong voice.
“See you sooooon~”

PART 1 :
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/1c1fu8d/i_filmed_something_that_i_cant_explain/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
PART 2 :
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/1c2yziu/i_filmed_something_that_i_cant_explain_part_2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
PART 3 :
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/1cnwpo2/i_filmed_something_that_i_cant_explain_part_3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
PART 4 :
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/1copwms/i_filmed_something_that_i_cant_explain_part_4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Last night, after posting the last update, I couldn’t find any sleep. Not only because that back seat was probably the less comfortable one on the car market, nor because Mark and Claire were talking loudly outside, or not even because, as heartwarming and comforting as Lucy’s presence besides me was, I hadn’t slept so close to someone in forever. No, I could have gotten over all this easily. But one thing was keeping me awake, running through my head endlessly. When Claire took me to the Doors Realm (that’s its name now), and that we encountered what was, just a few hours before, still an unknown man that helped me to get so far, I learned so many things.

At first, Claire recognized him as the man that captured Mark’s childhood classmate, Martin, 11 years ago, and that had locked him in his house for all this time, until a few days ago, Mark and she saved him. That man then explained to her that, since their last encounter, he had been stuck in this place and couldn’t find his door anymore. Upon further talking, they came to the conclusion that the beast that was hunting me in the Doors Realm was what was left of the entity that they thought they had destroyed: Vessel. But that he had got rid of his “human” part that was nowhere to be seen there, and without it, he was less smart, but he was also free of what allowed them to hurt him the first time. We then stumbled upon a door that had been forced and was slightly open. Claire succeeded to take a shot of the inside of the door thanks to my camera, that later revealed a young boy who Lucy recognized when she saw it as a patient in a youth psychiatric center in which she lately had an internship for her studies: Nicolas. Claire and Mark thought strongly that Vessel’s human part had took refuge in that boy. Our plan was now the following: Lucy and I would get in the center to talk to Nicolas, since she was authorized to enter it for school purposes, and try to figure things out.

But the thing that was really keeping me awake and thinking was this: while on the Doors Realm, the man had revealed to me that he was my biological father, and that it was the reason I was connected to that place as much: I was half like him. I couldn’t ask him more as we had to move fast. We didn’t mention that to Mark and Lucy when we got back, Claire understood that I probably didn’t want to say that right after learning about it.

That revelation had me wondering so many things. I never knew anything about my biological parents, I was left at the door of the orphanage where I spent most of my life when I was 1 year old. So many questions were popping in my head each seconds: who was my mom, where was she, why did they abandon me, what were the consequences of me being half like them… I didn’t even know where to begin… and this also meant that my real father had kidnapped a 9-year-old and kept him alive as his blood stock for years, and that was absolutely chilling to consider, and at the same time, I couldn’t get all the things he did to help me so far out of my head. All of it was so confusing.

“So, do you want to talk about it?”

I was brought out of my agitated mind by Lucy’s tired voice. She was lying behind me, and I turned to face her. I didn’t think our faces would be that close, our lips were probably 4/5 centimeters away from each other. I immediately told my mind to shut up and stop thinking about that.
Our eyes locked, I never noticed how deep the iris of her eyes were.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you up?” I asked her.

“No, I just can’t sleep.” She answered.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I returned her question.

She sighed.

“I hate it, but I gotta admit, this is a pretty creepy situation to be thrown in out of nowhere.”

“I’m so sorry I dragged you into this Lucy…” I felt bad.

“Don’t be, I kinda asked for it, I don’t regret it.”

“He’s my father.” I felt a sudden need to tell her about it. “At least that’s what he said, the man in the Doors Realm, Martin’s captor.”

She looked confused. I elaborated, making sure that she had the full picture. At the end, she stayed silent.

“What do you think about it?” I asked.

“That it’s just getting creepier.” She said.

That wasn’t a crazy answer, but surely not what I expected.

“How so?” I asked.

“Isn’t something really starts to bug you in all this?” She answered.

“I mean, yes, thousands, but…” I said, ironically.

“Yes of course, but, I mean, don’t you think everything is a bit too tied together? I mean, really, look at it: Mark ends up babysitting Claire, who’s affected by some vampire-curse, and haunted by an entity that seems at the center of the whole thing. She gives him the curse. They leave together to investigate about Mark’s dark secret and ends up saving his old classmate from a man that has the same condition as them and used him for years. They then fight the entity and hurt it so bad that it breaks itself apart from its human part, which somehow finds shelter in a boy that I, the neighbor of Mark’s “sexfriend”, already knew. And now, the man that held Martin captive happens to be the biological father of the hook-up of the ancient classmate of that same Martin he kidnapped. That classmate comes back to save him, and they end up locking the man in the Doors Realm, which will eventually lead him to encounter his daughter, you... I mean, the way all of us seem to be linked together, it rubs me the wrong way.”

I never thought of it until now. She was right, those constant connections tying everything together, it was creepy.

“I’m sorry you have to be involved, really.” I knew I was repeating myself, but I really felt guilty.

“Hey, I already told you it was okay, I chose this, you’re not responsible of my actions Sarah.” I felt her hand slowly touching mine under the thin plaid we shared. “Plus, it’s not all bad…”

“You can leave anytime you want Lucy. I won’t be mad you know…” I said.

“No, even with all that, I don’t want to, because, … God, that’s so hard to explain with words.”

I smiled. Despite all the confidence she had shown in the little thing that was slowly blooming between the two of us, she still had some difficulties at times, and I thought that was cute.

“It’s okay, I’m good at interpretation…” I said, encouraging her to share what she was feeling.

“The point is that I see it’s not just me. I feel your company, and I can’t fail to believe it’s not just me. I know you’re feeling the same way…” She whispered.

I had a little laugh.

“Are these song lyrics? Because it sounded like it.” I asked with a smile.

She had a embarrassed expression.

“I arranged them a little bit…” She said.

“And what song was it?”

“Ho I’ll never tell you!” She said laughing quietly.

I grabbed her hand, and she placed her other one on my cheek. It was soft. My eyes looked instinctively to the window. I saw Claire watching me with a small smile. Mark was still speaking, and she articulated silently a phrase that I could read on her lips: “We’re going to take a walk.” On that, she took Mark away from the car, and their voices faded away. I looked back to Lucy and our faces were now even closer than before. I won’t elaborate here, that’s not the place, I’ll just say that her lips and all of her skin were soft and that, with all my experiences so far, I still never felt that way before with anyone.

I finally found some sleep.

We both woke up today to the voices of Mark and Claire. They were ready to go and, after reviewing one last time the plan together, we started driving. Approximately an hour later, we arrived at the center. Lucy and I got out of the car, Mark and Claire would be waiting for us on the parking lot.

Lucy took the lead, and we passed each door without problem. Arrived at the main room, we didn’t had to look for Nicolas for long. He was sitting alone at a table, drawing. We approached him and sat on each side. Lucy made me a sign to tell me that she should probably speak first for now. She took a soft and calm voice.

“Hello Nicolas.” She said.

“Hi! Who are you?” He immediately said, staring at us.

“We are here to talk to you, we just want to chat a little bit, if that’s okay.” Lucy continued calmly.

“Sure, that’s cool. What you wanna talk about?” He was speaking carefree.

“Well, first, do you think you could tell me about why you’re here?” She asked.

Nicolas leaned towards us and whispered.

“I have a special friend.” He said, with a little proud smile. He then changed to an annoyed face. “My parents, the doctors, they don’t like him…”

“Do you know who he is?” Lucy whispered back, mimicking his behavior. I was a bit impressed by how good and effective she was at talking with him.

“Not really, he never tells me his name. But he’s so funny!”. He said happily.

“And how do you talk with him?”

He pointed his head and winked to us.

“Right there, he’s here! He says he can’t find his door, I don’t really understand that, so, sometimes, I allow him to use mine, just a bit, because, when we’re doing that, I’m in a dark place, and sometimes I hear scary noise, so he never do it long…”

“You know, I think we already know your friend… His name is Vessel. I don’t know how it works between you two, but he needs to know that he’s not safe. And, if we could talk to him for just a little time, we could help him… do you think you could do that?”

He had a scared look.

“I can feel he wants to come right now, he wants to talk to you too.” He stayed silent for a moment. “Not too long, okay?”

Suddenly, his expression changed. He looked terrified. He stared at us.

“Hello misses. I don’t understand, why do you say I’m in danger?” His voice was shaking, but also very formal.

Lucy looked at me a bit lost, clearly expressing that it was now my turn.

“Hello Vessel. Well, you can’t stay in Nicolas, it’s not safe, you should…” I stopped when I saw that Lucy was looking me dead in the eye with that exact expression: (=_=). I understood that I probably wasn’t very smart in my approach. She took the lead again, which I thought was probably a better choice anyway.

“Listen Vessel, we’re here to help you. What we said is true, you’re not completely safe in there. I know you feel better, but, it’s not safe, Nicolas’s door didn’t close, and don’t you think it’s a bit unfair for Nicolas?”

“You’re probably correct…” said Vessel.

“But listen, we’re not going to ask you to just leave, no, we’ll find a solution together, okay? But for that, we’ll need you to join us.” Lucy said.

“How can I do that? I don’t want to go back to the dark place, there’s the beast, and, if she gets back, I’ll be mean and alone again…”

Lucy thought for a moment.

“Well, you’re gonna wait at the door, and when you’ll hear 3 knocks on the other side, you’ll go out, it will be us, so you won’t be alone, and we’ll find a solution, okay?” She asked.

“You will be here?” He asked, pointing his finger to Lucy.

“Well, Sarah here, and another friend will.” She said.

Vessel looked worried, but he accepted. We then instructed him to let Nicolas back in. Lucy explained to Nicolas that he was going to lose his friend, but that everything will be better and that he’ll be safer.

We left the center after that. We got back to the car and explained what happened to Mark and Claire. Claire agreed to take us back to the Doors Realm, as we were convinced that the key to solve all this was there, and that now that we had access to that new part of Vessel, this could be the moment to fix everything. We drove to an isolated place on the side of a lonely road.

Claire and I were getting ready to enter the Doors Realm when Lucy made a request.

“I want to come with you… I have to!” She was a bit hesitating but decided.

“Why is that?” Asked Claire.

“Vessel, or, we could call him young Vessel, well, he’s scared, terrified even. You two, I don’t think you’ll be great at dealing with him, but I think I can help. If I’m there, he’ll be way more trusting I think.” She was speaking with confidence. From what I saw at the center earlier, she had a point.

“Do you think you can make it?” Mark asked Claire.

“I should be able to, I’m more worried about her… Lucy, I can take you there, but you’ll be in more danger than us. You’re entirely human, you’re not supposed to go there in the first place, so I think that you’ll be way more affected if something gets to you in any way.” Claire said.

“It’s okay, just, send me back here if there’s any risk of me getting hurt.”

“Fine, so, are you two readies then?”

Lucy and I nodded yes. Claire gave a look to Mark, and he nodded too. The three of us held hands and closed our eyes.

A few seconds later, we were back in the hallway of my foster home, like each time before. I knew I was going to hear it at any moment, my foster dad calling me downstairs. Claire and Lucy both already saw that memory play out in some way. Lucy immediately held my hand.

“Sarah, …” Claire didn’t know what to say.

We heard it. “Sarah, daddy needs your help, come down here.” It sent chills down my spine.

“Sarah, we can just leave, okay?” Said Claire.

But when she tried to open the front door, it was unmovable. I knew what it was.

“Claire, I think we can’t leave the house until the memory plays out.” I said.

“Well, then, we can just wait here, can’t we? You don’t have to face it.” Said Lucy.

“Stay there, you two, I’m going to fix this.” I said. I felt confident, more than ever before.

“But Sarah…” Claire started.

“Only come if I ask you to, in case something wrong happens.”

With that, I headed towards the stairs to the basement. His voice kept calling me: “ Come on, faster, Daddy needs you.” I slowly walked down the stairs, each steps getting me closer to the moment that followed me for years. I finally walked down the last step. He was standing there, with his awful smile, just like that day.

“Come closer, I have to show you something.” He said.

I looked at him. Now, in front of him, I wasn’t scared anymore, all I felt was sadness, pride and pity. Pity of seeing this fucked up man that had hurt so many children, and that was probably still living with the guilt and the loneliness that came with it, sadness of having been one of the children that he hurt so deeply, but pride of also having been the one to expose him, preventing so many other children that could have followed me.

“No.” I said.

His expression became annoyed.

“Is that what you said to Lucy?” He said.

I closed my eyes, and images of last night flashed in my head. I knew he just gave me the strength to beat him. I opened them and slowly walked towards him. He smiled and opened his arms. I put my hands on his chest and he looked surprised. I looked him in the eyes.

“I’m sorry for you, but from now on, you’ll really be alone… Cause I’m not scared of you, you don’t define me.” I said calmly.

With that, he disappeared, and with him, the whole house faded. Soon we were in the dark space. Lucy and Claire looked at me, concerned.

“I’m good.” I said. I turned my head to Lucy. “I promise.”

We walked around for a few minutes, looking for Nicola’s broken door. We knew it wasn’t appearing as easily as the other ones. Eventually, we encountered the man that captured the Martin, the one who told me he was my biological father. He looked at us.

“You’re there! Did you find a plan?” He asked, out of breath.

“The beginning of one…” Said Claire.

“How much time will it take you?”

“Why?” Asked Claire.

“He’s really not far, I’ve been running away from him, you can’t take too much time or…”

He was cut off by a loud scream. The beast, Vessel’s violent and cruel part, was already close. Immediately, we could see it running towards us. If we didn’t move fast, he’ll get us, but we had to find Nicola’s door. The man looked at us with a panicked face, which slowly morphed into a desperate one. He looked down and whispered a few words to himself. He lifted his head and looked right at me.

“Your mom’s name is Debby, and she’s the sweetest person I ever knew.” He said. He then turned his head to Claire. “Whatever it is that you have to do, do it now.”

He turned to face the beast that was approaching, running on all fours, and started to head towards it. He soon found himself in front of it and it immediately pierced his chest with its long claws. The man screamed of pain, and shouted one last thing to us: “Come on, do your thing!” I realized I didn’t know his name.

The three of us started to run randomly, looking all around for Nicola’s door while the beast was taking care of the man. At some point, Lucy shouted.

“Is that it?”

She was pointing Nicola’s Door. Claire and I came to her. Then, Claire started to walk slowly towards the door. We knew we had to move fast, as the man will eventually stop interesting the beast, but we also knew that if we weren’t careful, the door would disappear. Claire finally reached the door and knocked 3 times. We had to wait a few seconds before the door started to open. A young boy, probably 8 years old, covered in stains, he was very dirty, and dressed with clothes that looked like they were from another time came from it. It was young Vessel. He looked terrified when he saw the beast in the distance. He then saw that Lucy was there and ran to hug her. Claire took care of closing the door behind him, that then disappeared. He was staying close from Lucy and looked at us.

“Hey, we’re going to find a solution, okay.” Said Lucy.

“Who’s the little lady?” He said, pointing to Claire.

Claire had an annoyed look.

“A friend, alright?” She said with a very dry tone.

“And what is this now?”” I asked. Some sort of old cabin made of wood had appear close from us.

All of us looked at it, trying to recognize something from any of our own memories, but it didn’t ring any bell. That’s when young Vessel had a little gasp.

“Ho, no, no no no, we shouldn’t go there.” He said. His voice was shaking as he grasped to Lucy’s leg stronger.

“Why is that? Do you know what this is?” Asked Claire, clearly not wanting to waste too much time.

Young Vessel looked at Lucy, who nodded to him. He looked at Claire again.

“It’s the old woman’s house, it’s dangerous, I don’t want to go back misses…”

Claire approached him slowly.

“What happened there, do you remember?” She asked him.

He hid a bit more behind Lucy.

“It was a long time ago, I think, I don’t remember… I know mother told me not to go in the forest alone, I shouldn’t have, I know, I’m very sorry. But I went, and then, I saw the house. I got inside, I thought it was abandoned. I touched a few things, but not too much, I swear… But the old woman, she was there, I didn’t know she was living there, but she saw me, and then she asked me if I had friends, but I didn’t so I told her I did not, and she asked me a lot of questions, and she started to say weird things. I felt weird, it hurt. And then I got here, in this scary place. I could never open my own door, and I was all alone, and it was horrible. But then, not long ago, my door finally reopened, and I saw 2 people that I didn’t recognize, but they left fast. After that, my door cracked and exploded, and the beast came out of it. It was scary, and I ran until I found Nicola’s door… So, it’s dangerous inside…”

All of us looked at each other wondering what to do. Lucy looked to him.

“Well, if it all started there, maybe we can solve everything there too, don’t you think?” She said. “And we’ll be with you, so, you won’t be alone…”

He looked a bit worried, as Claire seemed clearly eager to move. He eventually accepted and we all started to walk towards the cabin. We walked the few steps. The wood was rotten, covered in moss and lichen in places. Claire opened the door, and we got inside. It was filthy, dark, the only light coming from the dirty windows, which was weird, as it was supposed to be dark outside. Looking at it again, we could see a forest at daytime on the other side of the glass. We waited in silence for a few seconds, wondering when something will happen. It didn’t take long.

All of sudden, a closet located at the back of the room opened slowly. We could see an old hand with thin fingers and dirty nails holding it from the inside. All of us got closer to each other. A deep and heavy breath was suddenly heard coming from the inside of that closet. The door opened more, revealing an old lady. She was short, and excessively thin, it was like she only had skin covering her bones and no internal organs. Her nails were long and pointy, and she was wearing a simple, dirty robe, looked hand-made.

She had a wide smile on her face that was revealing perfectly white teeth that seemed completely out of character, looking at the rest of her body.

She walked out of the closet and stared at each of us. She was reacting to our presence, which meant that was not the memory playing out. She then noticed young Vessel hiding behind Lucy, her smile became wider, her jaw clenched more, making her face lokk way more sinister.

“There you finally are… Long have I waited…” Her voice was the one you’d expect from an old lady, but with a more twisted tone to it. “But you’re not the whole thing… Let’s get him.”

She stood straighter and all her bones made a cracking sound. She lifted an arm and her finger elongated. She shook her hand a little. Suddenly, the beast appeared in the middle of the room, and it looked terrified by the old woman. It was trying to move but was like stuck by invisible ties. The woman was looking straight at it with an even creepier smile than before.

“Now, let’s get to the good part… We’re going to get rid of this.” She made another hand move in its direction.

The beast progressively took the form of a young man, probably in his late twenties. He finally fell on the floor. He was sitting there, dark circles around his eyes, he was dressed simply but pretty elegant. He looked extremely tired, his eyes were looking at the ground. He seemed out of breath. His face had an angry but exhausted expression. We were now in the presence of the other Vessel, that had his entire rage and curse taken away from him

“You…” Claire said.

The man looked up to her and had a face of surprise.

“Claire? What are you doing here?” He asked.

They both looked surprised.

“Well!” Said the old woman. “You took your sweet time, didn’t you Vessel?”

He looked up to her with his angry expression coming back.

“You’ve done more than I could ever hope you to, even refusing to die…” She continued. She was smiling, clearly mocking him. “Now tell me, now that it’s out of you…” She leaned towards him. “… how do you feel about everything you’ve done?”

He looked so devastated. She laughed. Vessel started to look at us and noticed young Vessel standing behind Lucy. He seemed shocked to see him. He somehow found the strength to get up on his feet and slowly walked towards him. Young Vessel came out of behind Lucy a little bit. Vessel got down to his level. He had a slight smile on his face.

“God, how young was I…”

He presented his hand, and young Vessel held it.

“How could I forget you… I’m sorry little one. I think it started because I wanted to protect you… Can’t say I did a great job…”

“Come on, Vessel, you know it’s time now… I can’t wait to enjoy everything you gathered for all this time.” Said the old lady, still giggling. Her face had a creepy look to it.

Vessel looked down to his feet.

“It’s time for us to go my friend.” He said to Young Vessel.

“Are we going to die?” He asked, his eyes filling with tears.

“I think so.” Vessel answered calmly, his face showing a thousand regrets.

“But, I don’t want to die…” He said, crying.

“I know…” Vessel said.

He got up and stayed silent for a moment. He then turned his head towards Claire.

“For what it’s worth,… I’m really sorry little lady… You’re really impressive you know.” He said. He then turned towards the old woman and addressed us one last phrase.

“You can leave now, It will be okay, but be fast.”

Claire and I started to go back to the entrance door. Young Vessel was crying. Lucy looked confused. I called her, telling her to hurry. She had a panicked look. She finally leaned towards young Vessel and whispered something in his ear. She then looked at him as he stopped crying.

“You understand?” She asked him.

He nodded yes.

On this she followed us. The three of us started to run to find our doors. I asked Lucy what she said to young Vessel, but she answered that she just reassured him. Eventually, we found ourselves in front of our doors, and I had the surprise to see that the claw marks and scratches on my door had fade away. We looked at each other, Lucy looked at the cabin one last time, and we all went through our doors.

We came back to the car. Mark was out of breath. We weren’t at the spot we were before. Apparently, a severe storm had started to form around us and he had to drive us away. It suddenly stopped less than a minute before we came back and he could stop. We explained everything that had happened to us.

After talking a bit about everything, we understood that everything was now probably back to “normal”. Mark and Claire accepted to drive us back to our place, understanding that this time, we’ll probably never see each other again. Lucy and I were on the back seat and I couldn’t help but notice that she still looked a bit worried. I asked us what was wrong, but she assured me that it was fine. A few minutes passed and she still had that same anxious expression.

Eventually, she looked at the window and let out a small gasp that I was the only one to hear. I looked at her. A little smile formed on her face and quietly said: “I knew it” and winked to the window.

“Are you sure you’re fine?” I asked, pretending I hadn’t seen that.

She smiled at me, a peaceful warm and beautiful smile, and hold my hand.

“Yeah, it really is now. I’m good.” She answered.

I’m in the car as I’m posting this. I think it’ll be my last update, at least I hope so. It’s crazy how so many insane and fucked up shit I’ve been through these last few days, and yet, I’ve never felt so good. In a way, I think this is the best thing that ever happened to me, at least, when I look at the person sitting beside me, that’s how I feel. Thanks to those who followed me.

Rico and Rikishi walk into a locker room victorious after a tag-team match earlier. Both men worked up quite a sweat to get this victory tonight.
“Whew! Yeah! We did it tonight big man!” Rico celebrated.
“Yeah we showed them,” Rikishi replied.
Both men opened their respective lockers, Rikishi toweling the sweat off his face while Rico drank from his water bottle. Rico took a few swigs before thanking Rikishi.
“Ahh…you know, I never got to say thank you for filling in for my partner tonight. And for bailing me out back there.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Rikishi replied. “Those punks jumped Charlie and got what was coming to them.”
“Speaking of Charlie, I thought he’d be here recovering” Rico asked between drinks.
“Heh, probably out with Miss Jackie,” Rikishi joked.
“Ugh, that’s so Charlie.”
“You don’t mind Haas with your girl? I thought you too were close.”
“Jackie’s more of a friend. I’m thinking of a different kind of ass right now…” Rico said as he stared at Rikishi unclasping his signature belt. His back was turned so Rico was eyeing his thick tanned ass, clad in a large black thong.
“Oh yeah? Whose ass?” Rikishi chuckled as he bent down to untie his shoes. Rikishi’s eyes widened and mouth gaped as her felt Rico’s hands slowly grab his cheeks and Rico’s crotch press against his ass. Rikishi slowly rose and turned to face Rico.
“Woah…what’re you doing?” Rikishi asked with a warning.
“Just appreciating the ass that saved mine,” Rico joked.
“Oh, don’t tell me…you wanna join my special club?” Rikishi asked.
“Oh yes please! I tried to show Mr. McMahon that I’ve got what it takes but he told me to ask you instead. I’ve been thinking about your ass ever since our first match together. Sometimes I wish it was me under your stinkfaces and Banzai Drops,” Rico confessed.
“Well, you were the first person to actually enjoy taking a stinkface from me,” Rikishi admitted.
“Believe me, I’m far from the first person to enjoy it and wish for seconds,” Rico replied.
“…Really?...”
“Oh yeah Kish. Can I call you Kish?” Rico asked as he slowly moved his hands to Rikishi’s ass again.
“There’s something about your ass that’s…special…”
Rico squeezed Rikishi’s ass cheeks prompting Rikishi to grab Rico’s wrists and push him against a locker. Rico sat down onto a bench and raised his hands to apologize.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I should’ve asked first. That was very rude of me. I’m sorry.”
Rikishi exhaled and calmed down before he let go of Rico. He stood there for a few seconds before Rico spoke again.
“I just wanted to show some appreciation. That’s all. Can I please…put my face in it?”
“Are you for real?”
“Yes! Think of it as a stinkface but you don’t have to do anything. You’ll enjoy it too. I promise.”
Rikishi sighed and gave his answer.
“Alright fine. But you’re gonna get more than just my ass.”
“Oh, you spoil me…” Rico replied sultry.
Rikishi shook his head and turned around. He then bent over and rested his hands on the opposite bench so that his ass was raised. Rico smiled giddily as he sat on the bench, his face a few inches away from what he wants. He once again groped Rikishi’s tanned, toned ass feeling the muscle in those cheeks. Rico slapped one cheek and it gave only a slight jiggle. Rikishi had been working out his ass a lot recently, it being his best asset and all. Rico also noticed that there weren’t any hairs or pimples on this magnificent ass.
“Someone’s been watching their ass,” Rico joked.
“Just taking care of myself.”
“Sure…”
Rico then smothered his face into Rikishi’s thong-clad ass. He gripped Rikishi’s thighs as he savored the ass of his dreams. Rikishi winced slightly but wasn’t uncomfortable. He experienced this several times throughout his career and enjoyed most of them. Rico smeared all sides of his face into the delectable derrière, the sweat from their earlier match giving it a certain taste and musk.
“Oh God yes…” Rico said as he gave repeated kisses to Rikishi’s cheeks. Rikishi wouldn’t admit it but he started to enjoy this as well. Both men’s cocks started to twitch from the pleasure they were receiving.
“You know, when you stinkfaced me the first time, I pretended to be sick. But then I started to like your ass. The last time you stinkfaced me, God did I wish you pulled your thong to the side to give me a little extra flavor,” Rico reminisced.
“You can get more than a little extra flavor you know,” Rikishi teased as he slowly gyrated his hips while pulling his sweaty black thong down to his crack.
“Oh please Kish. Allow me,” Rico said as he hooked his fingers around Rikishi’s thong. He got off his bench and on his knees so that he can look up Rikishi’s ass. Rikishi smiled with arousal and anticipation as he felt his thong slide down to his ankles. Rico used one hand to caress one of Rikshi’s cheeks and used the other to rub his cock and balls. He was staring at what he could only have in his dreams: Rikishi’s bare ass, in all its glory, just for him.
“Lick it good and you can have my ass any way you want,” Rikishi teased.
Rico could only moan as he spread Rikishi’s cheeks apart and nearly fainted at all the tasty treats before him: Rikishi’s dark puckering asshole, firm ballsack, thick veiny cock and enough cheek to cover his entire face. Rico braced himself before pushing his face in and letting it be engulfed by Rikishi’s ass.
Rico’s lips kissed Rikishi’s asshole and his nose was deep in the Kish’s crack. He licked around the hole before slowly sliding his tongue into it. Rikishi gritted his teeth from the pleasure of this rimjob. He grabbed the back of Rico’s head with both hands and started wiping his ass with Rico’s face. Rico was in heaven as he tasted the deepest part of Rikishi’s ass. His tongue was only a few centimeters inside but was still able to lick the inside of Rikishi’s asshole.
“Fuck…,” Rikishi moaned as he jerked his head and ass up. Rico was now licking Rikishi’s taint, chin pressed against his balls. With thirst, he licked his way up from the taint to the crack. He repeated this until Rikishi pulled his ass away to get a break from this new pleasure. Saliva trailed from Rico’s tongue to Rikishi’s crack. Rico wanted more but hungrily licked his lips when he saw Rikishi’s throbbing cock leaking pre-cum.
Rikishi’s break was cut short when Rico scooted forward and took the tip of Rikishi’s penis in his mouth. Rikishi shifted his position so he can insert the rest of his cock into Rico’s mouth. The feeling was new for Rikishi but not for Rico. Rico expertly sucked Rikishi’s cock, head moving up and down. The current position made it difficult for Rico to swallow the entire cock but he didn’t want to make Rikishi cum just yet. Rico pulled his mouth off Rikishi’s fully erect cock, licked the pre-cum off his tip and suckled his balls for a few seconds.
Rikishi decided that he had enough foreplay and got into position for the main event. He moved to the side and got on his hands and knees. He looked behind him to see Rico panting hornily.
“What’re you waiting for? Come get this ass,” Rikishi teased as slapped his cheeks.
Rico nodded and smiled as he stood up and pulled the straps of his blue wrestling singlet from his shoulders. He teasingly swung his hips as he pulled his singlet down past his knees. Rico licked his lips and sexily pulled around his pink thong, erect cock bulging through. He slowly pulled down his thong down past his knees, got on his knees and gripped Rikishi’s ass again.
Rico circled his index finger around Rikishi’s asshole and inserted it deep inside. Rikishi moaned as his asshole was fingered. Rico pulled out his finger and sucked on it, moaning at the taste. He then adjusted his cock and slowly entered Rikishi’s ass. The licking and sucking from earlier lubricated his asshole enough for Rico to enter smoothly. Rikishi braced himself as Rico fucked his ass at a steady pace. Rico steadily sped up his rhythm as thighs slapped against cheeks and balls slapped together.
“Oh fuck yes!” Rico moaned as he pounded Rikishi’s ass. He then bent forward and hugged Rikishi from behind. He reached around and used one hand to grab and stroke Rikishi’s thick cock. Rikishi gasped as he was being jerked off by Rico. The two men soon felt their orgasm approaching.
“Rico…don’t cum in my ass. Not…yet…” Rikishi uttered between moans. Rico tried his best not to cum yet, switching to long hard thrusts.
“Pull out before you…ohhh!” Rikishi was cut off by his orgasm. He threw his head back and groaned as he ejaculated on the floor. Seconds before Rico could cum, he pulled his cock out of Rikishi’s ass and wedged them between his massive cheeks. Rico used his hands to squeeze Rikishi’s cheeks and sandwich his cock. After a momentary buttjob, Rico came all over Rikishi’s ass and lower back. Rico fell back and caught his breath in the afterglow. After a few minutes, both men spoke.
“Whew! God that was great! Hoo!” Rico gasped.
“Damn right. Now you know why my ass is called the ‘Ass of Life,’ Rikishi proudly explained.
Rico was smiling and panting until he felt a piece of cloth land on his face. He raised slightly and pulled the fabric off his face. It was Rikishi’s black thong. Rico looked up to see that Rikishi was bare naked smiling down on him.
“Give those back to me when you're ready for another round with the Kish,” Rikishi said as he turned to walked towards the showers, tauntingly slapping his cum-covered ass.
Rico put the thong in his face and breathed in the Kish’s goodness before stripping off the rest of his clothes. He was intent on showering with Rikishi but he was stopped and told to go another stall. Rikishi wanted his privacy and even though Rico was a bit disappointed, he obliged. Rikishi was such a tease.

I'm assuming this is raccoon, but since we do have coyotes (and the occasional loose dog) I want to be sure. Whatever used the indentation to poop used it a second time the next night, which as I understand it is also raccoon behavior.
(Rulers were laser cut out of some scrap as I was standing there next to my laser cutter, wondering what I could put down to measure. Everything was cleaned up while wearing gloves and picking up dog poop bag style)

Author note: The Cryopod to Hell is a Reddit-exclusive story with over three years of editing and refining. As of this post, the total rewrite is 2,178,000+ words long! For more information, check out the link below:
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...................................
(Previous Part)
(Part 001)
"Convergent Evolution." Jason repeats. He pauses for a moment to collect his thoughts. "The tendency for species to evolve toward certain similar characteristics over time, ones which are often evolutionarily superior or grant significant advantages. For example, having an even-number of legs to walk on, such as two or four or six."
The Wordsmith materializes a chair for himself, like he did when speaking to Calanthra back on Tarus II. He conjures a table and some tea, then passes a cup to Calanthra while taking one for himself.
"Exactly." Calanthra confirms, as she gracefully accepts Jason's offer and procures his offered cup. "Angels are bipedal creatures with two arms and two legs. They have wings. In that way, fairies are similar."
"Okay." Jason says with a frown. "But... angels didn't 'evolve.' They were created by the Milky Way's former Ruler, the Creator. Unless you're telling me fairies evolved from angels, but that would contradict what you just said."
"Angels did not evolve in the strictest sense of the word. That is correct." Calanthra continues. "And like the angels, my people also were created at the beginning of the universe by our own Ruler. Our Ruler was a powerful entity known as The Timeless. She lived for at least seventy Eternities in total."
Jason blinks twice. "Was. Lived. So... she's dead? Like my Creator?"
"The Timeless has indeed disappeared into the annals of myth." Calanthra says without a shred of emotion. "It is regrettable, but in Akasha's game, such events happen every Eternity. New Rulers uplift themselves from Apex Cosmics. Old ones die to their enemies. There are countless Rulers scattered across the cosmos. Some Rulers control tens of galaxies, while others control only one. The Creator was the latter, as was The Timeless."
"But what does all of this have to do with convergent evolution?" Jason presses.
"I'm getting to that. No need to be impatient." Calanthra says helplessly. "Andromeda and the Milky Way are neighbor galaxies; very close together and boasting somewhat similar levels of strength. There are many other galaxies in our Local Group, and outside that group there are tens of billions more. The Rulers have contested one another for Eternities innumerable, their memories and knowledge having long, long passed a point that you would be able to fathom. As such, their Galaxy Wars have raged for cumulative septillions upon septillions of Eternities, and they have learned what the ideal forms for Sentient species are."
Calanthra continues. "The bipedal form is considered to be extremely potent. It is versatile and well-balanced. The Quadrupedal form affords more power and speed, but often sacrifices intelligence. The tetrapod and octopod forms are less common, as are non-legged forms. So, while the fairies and angels did not 'evolve' in the strictest sense, our Rulers created us with the knowledge of what forms tended to be the most powerful based on their many Eternities worth of knowledge. In Akasha's Game, every minor advantage can snowball into a game-winning move as Eternities enter the competition phase."
Jason nods slowly. "How do you know all of this, anyway? Have you lived through multiple Eternities yourself?"
"By no means." Calanthra answers with a shake of her head. "I was born shortly after my people migrated to the Milky Way. My mother died after the migration, so I have no memories of our ancient past. As far as I am concerned, I am a child of the Milky Way, through and through. I have no sentimental attachments to Andromeda. My mother did, though, and she would often... speak of its beauty."
Calanthra's eyes become contemplative. She looks away, sighing softly as she remembers the short but sweet time she spent living with her mother as a child.
"Like I said before, Jason. The Timeless crafted the image of my people at the start of our Eternity. Based on our similarities to one another, it makes sense to assume our two Rulers knew one another. Perhaps they were hotly competing with one another, as most neighboring Rulers tend to do. But then again, perhaps not. The Creator died at the beginning of the Eternity, which should not be possible, going by Akasha's rules. That likely altered The Timeless's plans, throwing her mental state into disarray. It allowed the Dark Ones to strike, killing her and allowing our galaxy to fall early on."
"I'm getting mixed messages..." Jason mutters. "From what I've learned from Unarin, there are barriers around galaxies that prevent the Game from being initiated before a preset period. If so, then how would your Ruler fall?"
"How did yours?" Calanthra retorts. "There are many ways a Ruler could be assassinated. And The Game is not inflexible. Anything which amuses Akasha can be allowed. Perhaps the Dark Ones bribed him to lower the barrier. Perhaps, like the Plague, the Dark Ones slipped inside and secretly established a warpgate of sorts that allowed their Apex Cosmics to travel over and slaughter our High Fairies. Unfortunately, I am not learned in the ways of Rulers, so I can only hypothesize. I was only born after the migration to the Milky Way, after all."
Jason slowly nods. He leans forward to pour himself more tea before continuing. "Then that begs another question. How did your people 'migrate' to the Milky Way? How did YOU pass through the Akashic Barrier? Something isn't adding up, Calanthra."
"The answer to that question is... complicated." Calanthra says. "During the war against the Dark Ones, our mightiest fairy queens and kings fell one after the other. Apex Cosmics who had ruled for billions of years were unable to cope with the onslaught of our enemies, and so, we perished along with our Ruler."
She pauses.
"...I have looked into the history of the Milky Way. I know that the angels were a warlike species who viciously battled with one another early on. My people were not like that. We were extremely cooperative among our highest echelons. Working beneath our Ruler, we sought to increase our power and live extravagant lives while preparing for the day the Akashic Barriers lowered and The Game would begin. This meant, unlike the Milky Way which gradually killed its Highest off through self-immolation, we possessed unfathomably powerful and vast armies capable of doing battle with multiple galaxies at a time. There was a Plan, and we were ready to make great gains during this Eternity."
Calanthra takes a long, slow sip of her tea. She hesitates before continuing.
"Based on what my mother has told me, along with the historical ledgers I've read, we could not fathom the fierceness of the Dark Ones. From the very beginning, we were utterly outmatched. We had Apex Cosmics aplenty, and yet no matter what terrifying magic we unleashed, we could not withstand their assault. My mother was, in the end, the last Apex Cosmic of our people. In order to open up a path to the Milky Way, she paid a terrible price and reduced all the remnants of our people to the level of High Mortals."
Calanthra raises her crystal blue eyes to look at Jason with deep meaning. "You see, Wordsmith, Akasha's rules become less restrictive the weaker you are. Rulers who break the Akashic Laws pay terrible prices, often losing their lives. Apex Cosmics, High Cosmics, and so on... if they interfere with the lives of mere mortals, they can also suffer brutal fates, up to and including death. But the weaker one is, and the lower their status, the more leniency we are afforded. That is why, even though my people continue to draw breath, we will never again be able to stand among the highest echelons of galactic society. The Fairy species is doomed to lose the War during this eternity."
"I think I get it." Jason says slowly. "Your mother, as the last Apex Cosmic, expended all her remaining power. She opened up a portal to the Milky Way and traveled here along with what remained of your people before closing the gate behind herself."
"A portal?" Calanthra asks.
She shakes her head and looks away.
"No, dear boy. Not quite 'a portal.' But... perhaps it is time for me to show you."
Calanthra sets down her cup of tea, smiles at Jason, then rises to her feet. Seeing her stand up, Jason does the same, looking at her with interest as she gestures to the left.
"If you'll follow me, I think you will be quite surprised by the Truth behind our arrival in the Milky Way."
Jason nods. "I'm certainly interested in- what the heck?!"
His eyes drift from Calanthra back to her throne, and what he sees startles him.
While Calanthra has stood up, she also remains seated at the same time.
There are two Calanthras! The one still sitting on the throne has her eyes tightly closed, her head leaned forward, and the appearance of a puppet with its strings cut.
Noticing the look of shock on Jason's face, the Fairy Matriarch merely smiles and shakes her head. She gestures behind herself at the motionless form she left behind.
"Tragic, isn't it? For millions of years, I have been unable to stand up from that throne. The Curse placed upon me by the Dark Ones only grows stronger over time. In order to walk around, I have to resort to an illusionary duplicate. I'm sorry you had to witness such a pathetic sight."
Jason's heart skips a beat. He looks at Calanthra with pity in his eyes. "You're... cursed? In what way? Can my Wordsmithing undo it?"
"Your power is impressive." Calanthra says with a weak smile. "But only among mortals. When it comes to the machinations of Cosmics, let alone Rulers, your power is nothing at all. If you attempt to peer into the source of the curse placed upon me, I am afraid it will only draw Their eyes to you as well. It's best not to involve yourself in matters of Rulers until you have achieved the ultimate goal of being a Candidate."
Jason grimaces at her words. In his heart, he feels he must surely be able to undo the curse, but then again, he doesn't know anything about it, and he doesn't know Calanthra that well. Putting himself at risk for a complete stranger whose motivations are not fully understood doesn't sound like a good idea.
I can always try undoing it later. Jason thinks, before returning his attention to the Matriarch's illusionary clone.
"So..." Jason says, changing the subject, "you use a lot of plurals when it comes to the 'Dark Ones.' Are there multiple Rulers or something? I was under the impression only one Ruler could control a galaxy at a time."
"There are indeed multiple." Calanthra says. "As for how many, I do not know, exactly. The Dark Ones are a collective of Rulers that all ascended during different Eternities. They work together to amass power and bully individual Rulers, such as The Creator, The Timeless, and so on. Alliances are not forbidden in Akasha's Game, so there is nothing preventing them from adopting this strategy."
"So, does their name mean they all wield the power of darkness?" Jason asks.
"I... don't know." Calanthra says helplessly. "I only know what my mother told me, and she was not a Ruler herself. The information mortals and cosmics can obtain is nothing compared to what a Ruler will amass over multiple Eternities."
Calanthra gestures to Jason, and he falls into step alongside her as she disables the privacy screen, returning both of them to reality. The fairy princesses at the table look over, seeing their Matriarch reappear with the Wordsmith.
"I'll be taking this male for a walk." Calanthra says. "Nobody is to follow."
"Yes, Matriarch." The princesses respond in unison.
Jason and her head out of the royal greeting chamber through a side entrance. They begin walking down a hall adorned with unbelievably beautiful paintings, all of which astound Jason due to their lifelike imagery.
"Incredible..." Jason says, pausing before one of them. "This image... I cannot even comprehend how it was painted."
That painting depicts a paradise-class world with pink and red plants surrounding a village of carefully crafted but modestly constructed cottages, each one unique from the others, with different colors of paint used for each building's exterior. Many different male and female fairies sit, stand, and dance together, all of them looking happy and blissful as they enjoy what can only be described as the most idyllic life possible.
Calanthra smiles, but the expression contains a certain sense of sadness with it.
"One of our former homeworlds in Andromeda." She says. "Mother told me it wasn't unique at all. Most fairies used their magic to craft beautiful utopias free of strife. Despite our immense power, The Timeless seemed to want us to simply live our little lives, enjoying the simple pleasantries, rather than building up immense forces to rival other Rulers."
"So the fairies didn't have a standing army?" Jason questions.
"We did. No doubt about that." Calanthra answers. "But only those who had the desire to battle were promoted to the top of the hierarchy, acting as silent guardians while they awaited the inevitable days of reckoning. We didn't expect the sudden arrival of the Dark Ones at the edge of our galaxy, which was how they were able to catch us off-guard. Perhaps if we did, we might have fortified our galaxy more extensively. We might have survived the invasion."
The two continue walking. Jason idly admires the paintings as they travel, his eyes flicking from one to the other.
"These paintings are so lifelike." He says. "It's almost like they're not even paintings at all. They look like windows to other times and places."
Calanthra chuckles. "These paintings were made with magic. Not many fairies can craft ones at the level on display here in the capital. I happen to have the talent, as does Princess Melia, who you are acquainted with. There are different levels to Transcended Paintings, as we call them. Nine in total. The ones on display here only go up to the sixth level. We lost the most ancient paintings during the Dark War, unfortunately. Most of the ones you see now were made by fairies native to the Milky Way. That is why we cannot produce anything at the Cosmic level."
Jason looks at her in surprise. "That's right. Earlier, you implied there are no Cosmics among the fairies. Why is that? Surely, with a heritage as rich as yours..."
"As I said before, my people are cursed." Calanthra says, sighing yet again. "Haah... cursed to never produce another Cosmic among our ranks. In fact, you denizens of the Milky Way are cursed, too. Because of the actions of your precursors, you are also unable to become Cosmics in the Way of Magic. It is quite an unfortunate tragedy..."
Jason scoffs. He folds his hands behind his back and smirks at her. "Guess you're not up to date on the news. Diablo has been mass-producing Cosmics with ease. Mephisto became a Cosmic. The Volgrim have Cosmics too. Seems they're crawling outta the friggin' woodwork these days."
"You misunderstand what I said." Calanthra explains patiently. "I said you are unable to produce Cosmics through the Way of Magic. There are still ways to Ascend using other means. But harnessing the innate magical power of your galaxy is no longer possible. Because of the Angels, who drained the Milky Way of its power during the Primordial Era, the magical power left behind is thin and incapable of producing Cosmics."
She continues. "Mephisto ascended by using the cursed power of soulcrafting. Diablo is elevating Cosmics by attaching their power to stellar bodies. This limits their mobility and prevents them from being considered 'True Cosmics.' As for the Volgrim..."
Calanthra shakes her head and chuckles.
"Those Volgrim certainly are interesting. Their Psionic Power is derived from a... different source... than what the ancient angels used. The Psionic Well."
"I take it you've been observing the Psions long enough to understand how they uplift themselves." Jason says, his question rhetorical.
"To be honest, nobody who isn't a Psion fully understands it. Not even me." Calanthra admits. "But in any case, that's neither here nor there. My greater point is that the fairies cannot become Cosmics anymore. Not only because of the thin magical energy inside the Milky Way, but because of the curse the new Ruler of Andromeda inflicted upon us as we fled. Every fairy is limited to the rank of High Mortal, forever prevented from returning to our former glory. Not even your Wordsmithing should be capable of undoing it."
"I see." Jason says, looking away. "That's... really unfortunate."
"We've grown used to it. It is not worth complaining about anymore." Calanthra replies.
After exiting the hallway of paintings, Calanthra leads Jason left and right, past countless opulent rooms, and outdoors, where they eventually stop inside a vast garden adorned with bio-luminescent trees, ponds filled with algae and critters hiding beneath, and flowers stacked atop thirty-foot-tall statues.
In the center of the garden, a large pond, made perfectly round by stones lining its banks and inner depths, remains motionless without a single creature inside. Four statues of ancient fairies stand around the pond, their palms aimed at a central point thirty feet above its surface, as of trying to contain some unfathomable power from erupting...
Jason glances around. "Hm? This garden is empty. Where are all the other fairies?"
"Nobody is allowed here but me." Calanthra says, her tone solemn. "These are the Eternal Waters. The connection between realms."
Suddenly, Calanthra claps her palms together. Instantly, the artificial sunlight above the city vanishes, plunging Jason and herself into darkness.
Jason jumps in fright, not expecting this turn of events. Just as his bewildered mind is about to catch up to the point he might start asking questions, his heart drops into his shoes!
Between the four statues, at the central point where their palms are aiming, a ghostly, blood-red eye flickers around, its evil presence fixating on Jason with a malevolent gaze that flash-freezes his blood.
"What the fuck!" Jason blurts, jumping back two steps. "WHAT THE FUCK?!"
The horrifying eye says nothing. It does not communicate with him, but instead stares at the Wordsmith in a manner most monstrous, making him feel like a rat being eyed by a horde of hungry wolves.
Never has he felt so small and vulnerable. Not even when facing down the Archdemon!
"One of the eyes of Yredelemnul." Calanthra says, looking at the Wordsmith with an inexplicable gaze. "Frightening, isn't it? This is an incipient eye my mother stole from a Ruler among the Dark Ones. Its power is limited, and its sentience restrained. But even so, it is utterly terrifying."
"This eye... belonged to a Ruler?!" Jason exclaims. "Why the hell are you just letting it sit there? Shouldn't we kill it?!"
"Kill it?" Calanthra repeats. "This eye is hideous, terrifying, and malicious, no doubt, but it is also my people's unwitting benefactor. Through Yredelemnul's Eye, we were able to harness a small amount of focused cosmic power, just enough to open a crack between dimensions."
She looks at the eye, which has continued to stare at Jason, unblinking, the entire time.
"It cannot exist without total darkness. That is why we always keep this city covered in blinding light. But, when the time comes for me to activate its power, I must deactivate the Endless Sunlight Formation, if only for a short while."
Jason's skin crawls as the eye continues to gaze at him. He forces himself to look away, because for some reason its gaze feels magnetic, drawing his eyes toward it for unfathomable but no-doubt sinister reasons.
"Okay!" Jason shouts. "You can turn it off now! Are we done yet?!"
"Done?" Calanthra asks. "Wordsmith, we have only just begun."
Without hesitation, she aims a finger at the eye. A beam of light as bright as the midday sun blasts at the eye, making it tremble and weep tears of blood.
These tears fall from the silently raging eye to the pond below. The pond illuminates with an ominous bloody glow, and storm clouds materialize in the sky above. Lightning crackles downward, striking the eye and causing it to bleed and tremble even more profusely. The pond turns redder and redder, until, in a moment of ferocity...
Yredelemnul's eye explodes!
BOOM!
A shockwave blasts outward, but to Jason's surprise, it doesn't even so much as ripple the grass around him. It passes through his body and momentarily jolts his soul, but otherwise, it has no effect on the physical world.
With the eye gone, the pond begins to swirl rapidly until it becomes a maelstrom of stormy water, spinning round and round without splashing beyond the confines of its rocky exterior.
"Get ready!" Calanthra shouts. "When the water stills, jump inside!"
"Jump inside?!" Jason asks, horrified. "It's filled with blood!"
"Not blood in the way you imagine." Calanthra explains. "Cosmic Essence. The blood of a Ruler is more powerful than any exotic you can imagine. The pond will become a gateway to the other dimension soon. Now, ready yourself!"
"I..."
Jason starts to argue with her, but decides to bite his tongue.
"What kind of portal is it?" He asks. "Where will it take me?!"
"It will transport us to a place you cannot even imagine." Calanthra says. "After shattering the eye, it will require one Pixiv-cycle to restore itself. If you don't come with me now, you'll have to wait another year to learn the Truths you want to know most!"
Jason hesitates.
He grits his teeth, momentarily feeling indecisive.
At that moment, the waters stop spinning, and a hazy image of a far-away land appears.
"Now!" Calanthra shouts. "If you aren't coming, then I'll go alone!"
"Fuck it!" Jason snaps. "I'll go, I'll GO, goddammit!"
Calanthra jumps into the pond, and less than a second later, Jason steels his nerves... and jumps in after her!
The moment they pass through the boundary between dimensions, Jason seemingly spins in midair and lands on his feet. He looks backward, only to see the portal closing behind himself.
The gateway back to the Milky Way disappears!
"Shit." Jason curses softly. He directs a withering stare at Calanthra. "You've trapped us here?!"
"We are not trapped." Calanthra says with a smile. "We can leave at any time we wish. Now, look around you. What do you see?"
Jason blinks. He turns his gaze around to take in the sights.
What he sees upends his understanding of reality.
He and Calanthra stand atop a small stone platform amidst a pitch-black void seemingly overlooking not the Milky Way, but all of the cosmos itself.
No matter which way Jason looks, he sees an infinite number of galaxies, stars, black holes, and other cosmic phenomena he cannot even begin to describe in words.
By looking at any of these entities, his vision begins to move toward them, drawing them nearer.
He can look at any star of any galaxy and view it with a frightening level of clarity!
"What... what is this place?" Jason asks.
"This is the entrance to Ripped Space." Calanthra says softly. "A viewport into every Eternity that has ever existed, up to and including the current one."
Calanthra smiles at Jason.
"It is through the power of Ripspace that my people were able to travel to the Milky Way... among other destinations."
"Fairies aren't only in the Milky Way?" Jason asks, suddenly comprehending her meaning.
"My people have taken up residence in many galaxies." Calanthra responds. "But unlike the Milky Way's fairies, our interstellar brothers and sisters... are unlikely to have met good ends."
After a pause, she takes Jason's hand in hers.
"Well? Would you like to go exploring?"