I’ve brined hams for years without any problem. Just opened the fridge and found a little mold on top of the liquid in both buckets :-(. I’m going to pitch them, for sure, just trying to figure out what happened.
Should I have covered the buckets? Normally I leave the tops open, but perhaps “something” fell in the brine? Weird that both buckets would be impacted
I used the calculations found in Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages, which I’ve used many times
I cross checked my numbers with several other online calculators just to make sure I didn’t miss anything significant — always do that just to make sure I didn’t mess something up
All appeared well, I used two 5 gallon buckets (food grade). Sanitized them with a food grade iodine sanitizer used in brewing. Rinsed five times and then scalded the buckets.
I boiled the water for the brine and dissolved the sugar and salts in the brine. Waited until it cooled and then added the curing salt — same process I’ve always done. Placed the two buckets with the brine in the refrigerator. Once cold, I submerged the hams
They’ve been brining about 12 days with a scheduled 14 day brine time. (Again based time off of thickness of meat and formulas found in the book
They were fine day 11 (I check them daily) but this morning I noticed dots of white mold circles on top of the brine. Which to me means the brine is infected with the mold so time to toss
Any thoughts? Hate wasting that much meat but not for a second will I chance it. Just trying to learn so it doesn’t happen again

Hello, I'm a 20f who just got a septoplasty, bony spur removal, turbinate reduction, polyp/cyst removal, and then pretty much every reduction possible in all my sinuses, all the total -ectomys or however you spell it. Thought I'd make kind of a big surgery recovery post that I'd keep adding to as seeing some other similar posts set up like this have really helped me before and after the procedure! Also I kind of just want to complain to a space with people who fully understand my suffering / I also really need something to do lol.
Day 0 pre-surgery -
Blergh. It was daunting to say the least going in to the surgery clinic knowing the not-fun-at-all recovery process that laid ahead of me. Was so anxious I didn't sleep and then had a full mental breakdown by the time I was in all the full hospital gear laying down on that uncomfortable patient bed. If you suffer from health anxiety much like me I'd recommend asking for some anti-anxiety meds before going in because I was a nervous wreck. After the IV was in and I was calming down thanks to the cocktail of drugs they gave me, both the anesthesiologist and my ENT surgeon came in to do a final run through of everything. The anesthesia kicked in and I was soon knocked out.
Day 0 post-surgery -
Woke up what felt like a minute later with burning pain everywhere in my sinuses and throat. Not fun! Begged for pain meds and took my first oxy pill. I couldn't keep my eyes open because the bright light in the hospital room really hurt my head. Once I was at a more comfortable pain level, I was sent home. I kept my head back in that passenger seat with my eyes still slammed shut super sensitive to light. My family tried to show me some of those medical pictures the surgeon took of the nastiness he removed but my post-anesthesia nausea was NOT having it lol. I pretty much laid in my bed the rest of the day, towels over every single part of my bedroom windows where light was coming through. I just sat there, sleeping in 20-minute increments because I was sitting upright in the dark and waiting for my next dosage of painkillers. Nothing extremely painful by any means, just uncomfortable, boring, and fatiguing.
24 hours after, Day 1 -
Woke up (didn't sleep much.... by "woke up" I mean sat up in bed around 6 am) feeling not terrible. Much like yesterday, nothing really painful, just uncomfortable. Like many others have said, mouth breathing makes the throat hurt and my lips are so dry. It's hard to eat/drink because not only do I have a reduced appetite, sipping or chewing anything is kind of suffocating when you can't breathe through your nose at all. I've been able to smell and taste just fine though, so that's a win. This was also a slow, boring day. In the increments of time where I wasn't actively super sleepy on painkillers, I was just kind of laying around watching videos on my phone with low brightness thanks to my eyes still being kind of sensitive to light. My day slowly passed me by as I used all my antibiotic alarms as little checkpoints as well as changing the gauze under my nose every two hours or so. As I used to joke pre-op during my countless failed sinusitis antibiotic courses, life is just what happens in between amoxicillin doses.
Day 2 -
Didn't sleep at ALL during the night. Woke up feeling pressure in my nose because scabs/clots/something is starting to form in there. It's SO annoying I just want to blow it out, but per the doctor's instructions, I can't do anything about it. While the active bleeding out of my nose has stopped, today has just experiencing different unfortunate symptoms. I've been coughing up gross bloody mucus stuff. Every time I swallow my ears pop because of how clogged my nose is. Kind of gross, but my nose has been popping and making liquid-y bubbling noises all day... In terms of pain, I haven't felt any really *knock on wood*, just the obvious discomfort of nastiness backed all the way up in whatever they packed my nose with post-op. The only thing that can get me to sleep is honestly the painkillers just to get me to ignore the annoying sensation of what feels like water balloons up my nostrils, so I'm only going to take them at night if at all anymore. Kinda wishing there was a time travel option to skip past not only this boredom and discomfort, but the debridement post-op appointment which I hear can be painful😓. My sensitivity to light has pretty much gone away now, so I've been at least passing time quicker with movies and such. Man I wish I had an edible right now.
Day 3 -
Started off pretty promising. Woke up after considerably better sleep I've gotten the past few days. Drainage is still annoying, nastiness bubbling in my nose still, and there's still a feeling of gunk in the back of my throat, but overall painless. Towards the end of the day I got an AWFUL headache. Took some Tylenol and I'm currently hoping it goes away, if it continues getting any worse I will definitely be a little concerned as I believe my dr. told me to look out for horrible headaches. Other than that, I'm still just waiting around for the post op appointment. I suspect by the time Tuesday rolls around I'm gonna be so over the stuff in my nose that I won't even care about the pain of removing it anymore lol.
Day 4 -
Woke up with a little blood on my pillow. Gross. Apparently leaked through my gauze when I was sleeping because it fell off halfway through the night. In other news, I'm not bleeding as bad and I'm able to remove the bandage from under my nose for most of the day. I've noticed my cough is picking up too, half of the time it's normal congestion/phlegm, and then bloody variations. Feeling MUCH better compared to day one and two though, and again, eagerly awaiting stent/packing removal.
Day 5 -
Last full day with stents and packing (the source of pretty much most of my discomfort at this point)! Will update.

I was the one that found Jake dead, Tucked in the dark corner of the parking garage in his idling pest control truck that vibrated minutely.
The parking garage always had a humming from stainless metal fans to circulate the humid and hot Virgina air. Walking closer to the truck I saw his chemical box in the bed of the truck was open with the top flap sticking straight up.I thought nothing weird about the open box because it's not just us in the pest control company that live there and from time to time we steal from other trucks. For the summer the company buys out dozens of rooms for the employees to stay. Most employees are door to door salesmen who make a living selling pest control as a same day service. Where Jake and I, with a few others, come into play is after the sale. The ones who actually spray your house, the ones who interact with the customers and bring them down to reality after the salesmen fluff our feathers, or are they fluffing their own? We are the ones who click the rap trap mouths in place, with black jagged teeth…waiting, with the delicious neon blue food for the rats to nibble on and share with their newborns. We had 7 other trucks in the parking garage and from time to time chem went missing. Sometimes us technicians didn't want to wake up early and drive 30 minutes to the office to pick up materials, truckers were closer, much closer. I'd be lying to you if I didn't steal a de-weber every now and then off a truck, but I always made no trace of the thievery. I can't speak for everyone though. So when that lid was pointing up to the rusty pipes and concrete ceiling above, I wasn't surprised, hell I might have had a smirk on my face.
With the swing of my arm I slapped the box closed, a whiff of chemicals spewed out and hit my nose which gave me a feeling of a stinging sneeze that never comes. I gave the window a knock to see if he would turn around.. Silence. I got closer to see if he was glued to his phone and didn't hear me or didn’t bother looking. I put my hands up on the window and smushed my eyebrows against my index fingers to get a better look. I saw the seat was fully reclined back, him laying there…still as a morning lake. I knocked on the smaller back half door. Tap tap TAP. No movement. It was too dark to see so I dug my hand in my pocket to get my phone light out and put it flush to the back oval airplane shaped window. That's when I saw this face—— god his face—— skin a purplish hue and pulled taught by swelling, eyes adrift and red which were bulging out like they wanted to leave, jaw open with dark fluid sitting in his mouth, escaping on the sides. The streaks of dark liquid rolled down his purple face, curving down the back of his neck, and dribbling down the strands of hair meeting the head rest. My eyelids opened so wide they touched my eyebrows. His fingers curled limply around a chemical bottle, cap off and the liquid color matching that of the pool in his mouth…
“Jake” I whispered, my voice feels like it was stolen from me, my skin is tingling like an unknown channel on tv as heat takes over… I begin to fall, the last thing I notice are my fingers streaking down the window. I passed out.
4 months pass
I'm moving out of the building where it happened. I’ve wanted to get out of this building since it happened, but didn’t have the financial backing. Now I plan to stay in Virginia for the winter and move in with roommates from the pest control company. The salesmen call this time their “off season” due to them all leaving and going back home, most to Vegas. My other two roommates run the regular technician routes which consist of stopping at 14-15 designated houses a day, spraying chemicals and setting traps to take care of the contracts those grimey salesmen sell.
I used to share a room with jake. All of his things were taken out either by investigators or the maid service. The other roommates in the building told me to combine the abandoned twin bed with mine but I never touched it, I couldn't.
I’m making this entry due to finding something. Something I believe was very close to Jake.The last day of moving I had everything packed but my mattress and box spring. While moving my mattress lazily with the sheet still on I lost grip and it hit his mattress sliding it off the box spring and hitting the wall. I let go of my mattress automatically and wanted to fix his bed…. Preserve it. I wrapped my hands around his mattress when a wave of dizziness veiled over me. My hands became clammy and I didn't want to touch his mattress anymore, like a kid that doesn't want to touch an old person. I had to put it back! If I didn't it would haunt me forever my mind yelled at me. Just as I forced myself to slide the mattress back, my middle knuckle dropped into a slight groove, and I stopped in place. I pushed the mattress to the right and traced where my knuckle had been and found a slit in the box spring.I hesitated, staring at the unnatural slash in the cloth, Thinking about when Jake and I would make fun of our manager who always had a bone to pick with jake ever since the first day they met, the new manager 2 years younger than us yelling at jake to tuck his shirt in while his own untucked, covered his belt and belly. A smile slowly disappeared from my face as I was brought back with my whole forearm now in the slit of the box spring. My fingers clutched an object that had to be a book. I pulled My arm out of the box spring like pulling a calf out of its mother, now half expecting to see red viscous liquid and tiny wet legs, my eyes shut slowly like elevator doors closing.
But My hand appeared dry and my fingers clenched around a book of sorts. The outside of the book was void of color, almost like it absorbed it instead. I sat down on my thrown mattress and the empty apartment surrounded me. I flipped to the first page as the spine creaked at me, I saw Jake's name and it clicked in me that this wasn't a book. It was Jake's notebook! I flipped page after page reading Jacob’s writings about days of killing bugs and missing home till I got to the page. Sometimes I wish I wasn't lazy, I could have taken the sheet off the bed, this would have never happened, I would have never found the notebook. The apartment seemed to be silently closing in on me now like I was in the digestive tract of some huge monster. God the page—— in big dark letters he had written “THE LADY IN THE BASEMENT IS THE REASON WHY I AM GONE.” I was stuck reading the words again and again thinking I was seeing things. My heart was pumping so vigorously I could hear it agitate the fabric of my shirt little by little each beat. There was a dark arrow so dark that seemed to suck in light and pointed toward the right of the page wanting someone to flip it or something to flip it, so I did. For the next pages he wrote why…. And I clinging to every word …began to read.
2 months pass
The warm thick air has passed now, leaving a cold grey in the air. Virginia feels less claustrophobic with the heat gone. Winter is stinging its way into the picture more and more, breath starting to become visible almost every day.
My new apartment looks over the town of Arlington which is a nice view from the 13th floor. Whenever people ask where I live I tell them, “it’s 5 minutes from the pentagon,” I’ve said it so much it numbs me.
There are 3 guys in total that live in this apartment so the decor is minimal at best. Our tv stand is an upside down plastic bin, with our coffee table another bin, at least its a set. The floor is thick and worn carpet, light tan in color. The walls have the same yellowish void look. My favorite part of the apartment is the balcony that spans the whole side of the living room to which I can see a sliver of the Potomac river, an icy cold thing this time of year.
I've marinated in Jake's notebook for a while, I think I’m ready to share some of what is inside. Jake goes into extreme detail about these situations so I’ll just copy them down for you all to read, I think that is what’s best. After reading this I wasn’t the same, you are warned.
Thursday July 18th 2020 (7 months ago)

 -Jake’s notebook- 

Today I am changed. It was right after lunch when my work phone notified me a house was booked. Usually I disliked the salesmen but the one that booked me was just alright, tolerable. I pulled into the neighborhood as the sun dimmed from clouds rolling in, storm maybe. Multiple groups of six townhomes were placed throughout the neighborhood with tall trees and bush linking them. The small homes shared walls only separated by a slight offset in depth, looking like crooked teeth. Porches stuck out a measly foot from the homes which were more for decoration than enjoyment. The porches all had different faded color variations that staggered from each house, blue, red, orange, green, and back to blue. The peeling wood porches had the style of a western movie set which I thought interesting, but I knew the webs were going to be a bitch to get out. I rolled up to the address the app told me as the salesmen popped out of some trees to greet me, probably pissing. Wind whipped his hair, yes a storm. I rolled down the window and stopped the truck, wheels stopping the popping of gravel underneath. He gave me the rundown of the house while leaning on the windowsill of my truck, where the smell of sweat leaked in from him. He mentioned the old woman that lived in the townhome and said she was an oddball but kind. I thought nothing of it, just another job before getting off. As I parked the car, I asked the salesmen, “interior?” He replied, “yes.”
My shoe covers zipped on the asphalt as I walked toward the door, pump tank in my hand. KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. The old woman opened the splintered door as I introduced myself and got all the signatures I needed to apply the pesticides, legal reasons. The first thing I noticed about the woman was her eyes, they looked worn, tired as if she stayed up all night… or something was keeping her up. I smiled as I slipped the signed papers in the back pocket of my jeans, she reciprocated the smile and pushed the door open wide as creaks escaped the henges. Right before I stepped in I saw the salesmen grab a deweber from my truck, he is an alright one this salesmen. I looked back and the old woman kept her eyes on my face, I smiled again to break the slight awkwardness. The smell of wet concrete hit my nose when I stepped in the home, it started to sprinkle behind me, it cut off as she closed the door behind me.
The old woman’s home was tight like lungs that never sucked air back in. The layout was like a strip of gum, the start was the door I walked through and The end was the living room which had a step down. She offered me water which I politely declined, I could see the kindness the salesmen were talking about. The home was filled with random knick knacks but not messy, organized chaos. I asked her the routine questions about bugs like where she was seeing them to which she replied almost everywhere, thank god this was a small home. I started to spray in the kitchen which was directly left of the door I walked through. Spray shot Around the sides of the refrigerator and the baseboards and the woman followed me almost attached to the hip or like an obedient dog. I didn't think it weird, she kept conversation and genuinely looked fascinated about where I sprayed while listening to my little tips I replayed from the back of my mind on how to keep bugs away. We rounded the kitchen and stepped down into the living room where carpet met my boot covers with peppered static zaps. I sprayed the sliding back door focusing on the bottom track where bug highways usually gravitated. Then I traced the baseboards around the living room, avoiding wires powering lamps and televisions.
I heard quick stomps coming down the stairs to which I gave a glance of curiosity toward the bottom of the staircase and temporarily lifted my hand off the spray trigger. A child rounded the corner and ran to the old woman yelling, “grandma!” Must have woken up from a nap or something. The child then looked up at me and asked who I was and she explained in young terms, “he is here to make the bugs go away.” I smiled at that to reaffirm the old woman's version of me she gave, I was a version who told the bugs to go away, not kill them by the thousands. I liked that version of myself.
I had finished treating the main floor and now followed the old woman and child up the stairs, her veiny hands scratching her grandson's head. I went through every room, closet, bathroom, and windowsill spraying with the old woman still following me everywhere I went, pointing out the hotspots, her close presence becoming normal, almost warming as she reminded me of my grandmother. The child seemed just as interested as his grandmother about how I spray and I thought it wholesome.
After this point things took a dark sinister turn.
My job was now finished I thought. We were all on the main floor now and I began to reach for the front door and tell her we would finish the outside service now when she for the first time broke her distance from me. This made me feel, for lack of better words, alone. She steadily glided toward the living room not looking back and she stepped down the dip heading for the couch. Did she forget I was still in the house? Did she imagine opening the door and letting me out? The kid then followed her and jumped off the small dip in childlike fashion into the living room and landed on the carpet, gracing his tumble. The old woman never sat down, and her back was facing me as she stood there…. Her Body was still. Why didn't she sit down? She broke the silence right as my fingers touched the front door knob, her voice was colder now, “won't you come here for a second?” The knob rang numbly for a split second as my hands slid off. I then took a step toward the living room patiently, waiting for.. what? The rain now beat on the old woman's back windowed door, with the flash of illumination, lightning struck close, then thought of the salesmen with the metal deweber pole, that combination like brushing teeth and orange juice. The thought was erased as the tip of my boots hung off the step to the living room. I looked at the woman's face and dropped down in the living room, her wiry hair now covering some of her face with a blank stare. The kid now hugging her legs hiding his whole body except the right side of his face, the eyeball piercing me. Her hair was delayed as she snapped her head at me, then the hair caught up and fell. Her face then shook like when a student tries to stay awake in class, she then looked around, lost and took a deep breath. She said, “sorry sometimes I get these headaches, they just take over me,” as she laughed it off dryly. I told her “it's fine, I get them too,” I get them too? Are you stupid jake? She then raised her old saggy arm pointing to a door. I knew what this door led to. Being in hundreds of townhomes with the same layout, they led to the basement. Pairing with my thought she forced out, “Dear please spray the basement too, will you?
Before I could answer the kid somewhat loudly asked, “wait grandma… he is going into the basement? Grandma! Why the basement?” My neck chilled to goosebumps. I stepped back up onto the wood and stopped at the tooth white door expecting the old lady to open it for me, she had done this the whole way through the house, opening cabinets, windows, doors, flipping on light switches for me but here I am with the old woman standing firm in the same spot and the kid saying the same question, starting to cry. I looked back at the door as she said, “yes that door, the light switch is on the left, close the door when going down… we don't go down in the basement.” My heart started to pump faster and my fingers and forearm twisted the knob, opening the door, my mind replaying, “we don't go down in the basement, we dont go down in the basement,” What the fuck does that mean! I took one last look at her and saw only a part of the woman, due to the kitchen wall, she sat down now and grabbed something off her neck and started sifting it through her hands. She then did something my ears will never forget, she started to pray in spanish… and I took my first step down.
I shut the door behind me as then I switched the light on. It was very dim, only giving me the bare minimum brightness to reach the bottom. The walls were different as I descended, the light didn't bounce off them, instead the walls seem to let the light in. The old woman's prayers and childs crying muffled the creaks the wooden staircase gave off. The prayers were getting louder. I dreadfully got on the floor of the basement now. To the left, a wall, to the right, a long hallway leading to complete and utter darkness. My body felt a shiver like flying to a cold part of the world and the airport doors exposing you to the weather for the first time. My head naturally looked down at my feet for some reason. There was a door to the right of me now which I saw coming down the stairs. I shifted toward it with my boot covers scraping the carpet tips, uneasily, I opened it. The boiler room was dark as the swing of the door brought a string to my vision. The light for this room of course is a fucking string light. I pulled on it hard and light struggled to do its job. The light reminded me of when my 7th grade science teacher, mr. Crutcher, told us what would happen if a light bulb traveled the speed of light in space, “you will see the light, yes! But it will reflect no light! Precisely! what is a light but more than a mere tool that reflects light off of other things!” The memory should have put a smile on my face. I then sprayed around the water heater and cotton candy pink insulation sticking out from the room’s walls. My heart pounding and a veil of sickness came over me. The cold got stronger. This place… was pure sickness itself. Holding my hand up I wrapped around the string but paused, something deep inside of me telling me not to shut the light off, I almost felt as if someone with a remote was controlling my movements, I was separated from myself. I let the string slither out of my hand as I walked out of the room. My head fell back down at my boots, as if something didn't want me to look up. What would I see if I looked up? The exposed insulation made the old woman's prayers fuzzed, but now I was back in the hallway and I could hear the extent of it. She was screaming now. I imagined her old neck veins popping like blue miniature rivers flowing up to her wrinkly face.
I faced the hallway now, the walls darkening the further they got from the top stairway light. My brain was yelling at me to hurry and go as fast as I could but my body did not listen, we were disconnected. I took my first step still looking at my feet seeing the dark entrance from the hallway get closer, another step I go, I get closer, step, closer, step. I now know the sick thing in this home is in the dark void I approach with every step… waiting. I finally reach the end of the hallway and my body stops. The old woman's screams reach a pinnacle. The kid crying and yelling accompanies it. I am all alone. Even my brain is alone. I can do nothing. The darkness is all around me. I twitch my head to the right, it reminds me of the old womans movements, and reach my hand out to feel for a light switch, nothing. When I do this I can see in the dark room slightly with my hat hiding me from most, not all. My head comes back down to the center. I feel like throwing up now, my sickness is terrible. My head is spinning and so is my stomach. All of my extremities are ice now. I twitch my head to the left, my hand grazing the sandpaper wall and I feel A switch! My heart relaxes from the touch. Finally I'm not alone! the light switch accompanies me! Click…my finger flips the switch. My stomach drops. Click.CLICK.CLICK. NOTHING. My breathing is like a car engine that just turned over. The only thing that was with me for even a second is gone. No light. I won't move. I can't move. My hat doesn't cover it all. The ceiling now shakes from the old woman screaming as my eyes… my god damn EYES…. glance into the darkness and see the lady in the basement…. everything goes black.

Just an update on this thread that I hope can help some people not get taken advantage of. If you don't have time to read through this, the main point is — DO NOT BUY THIS MACHINE...
EDIT: ....IF YOUR GO TO DRINK IS MILK BASED because TerraKaffe says that 90 degrees is an ok temperature for a latte or cappuccino - and it's not (for clarity, I bolded the edited portion of my post).
We bought two, and they are both experiencing different issues brand new out of the box. It took me more than 30 days to gather and document so many issues. So when I contacted support, we had been using the machines for just over two months.
Some issues overlap, and some are different - again, on TWO BRAND NEW MACHINES. More issues have developed since this email thread, specifically in regard to one machine's ability to produce any consistent texture of milk at all as opposed to spitting milk out every which way. One machine only brews drip coffee out of one side and is very inconsistent in the flow - the other is fine on that issue. Neither can produce a hot drink. Terra Kaffe does not care, and as you will read, has no plans to address the issues in any way - it doesn't matter if your machine isn't functioning properly at 2 months old - too bad. The milk feature being a fail is what really gets me because they hyped it SOOOOO much as an improvement from the TK-01. Their marketing is great - I will give them that.
EMAIL #1 TO TK-02 SUPPORT: (because they don't have a phone number - so that's kind of frustrating right away).

Subject: Issues with Milk, Drip Coffee, and Random Spitting Out Hot Water Message: Hello, we have two TK-02 machines, and both have been a challenge to work with. 1) Our machines are two of the many that experience "ghost brewing" which is dangerous and annoying, but we have found ways to deal with that (always leave a cup under the brewer, and kiddos not EVER allowed anywhere close to it). 2) Our drip coffee function does not work as demonstrated in videos - the coffee mainly comes out of only 1 side, not both. Although I don't know that this is causing any issue now, it is unsettling that ours does not work the way that others are demonstrated online - but ok, we'll deal with that anxiety. 3) The thing that really has us stumped is the milk. The steamed milk function of the machine does not work properly on two levels. First, the setting that controls the aeration of the milk does not make a demonstrable change in the outcome of the milk when rotated from the 12 o'clock position to the 6 o'clock position and in between. Second, the machine does not properly heat the milk when steaming it, so the only way to get a drink at the proper temperature is to make it and then microwave it. This is very disappointing to say the least. I have looked for any instructions on how to change the internal temperature settings for milk, but I cannot see a way to do that and have not come across a solution when researching this issue online; I did find, however, that we are not alone, and others are experiencing this same issue. There was a lot of hype about the milk system on this machine, and we were very excited - obviously- we pre-ordered 2 - one for home and one for my husband's dental practice. I don't know where to go from here. I have 13 super disappointed ladies, and my husband and I are also quite deflated. Are there any solutions on the horizon to make the milk function properly?

EMAIL #1 REPLY:

Hi Emily, Thank you so much for reaching out - I'd love to chat through these concerns and offer clarity where possible. 1. This sounds like it may be the automatic cleaning process that takes place when your machine is going into Sleep mode. For safety and maintenance, after 30 minutes of non-use, the machine will enter screensaver mode. After 5 hours in screensaver mode, the machine will enter sleep mode. Before going to sleep, the machine will complete a cleaning cycle. If you feel like this isn't the case or would like a second opinion, I'd love to see a video of what's happening. If there's a concern (or even dislike!) over this feature, especially when kiddos are involved, I'd recommend manually putting the machine to sleep once you're done brewing for the day. I'd be happy to provide additional context on why this is the process, too, just let me know! 2. The drip coffee coming out of one spout is really unusual! I'd love to see a video of what's happening when you brew drip. 3. Unfortunately we can't directly set the milk temperature in the TK-02. As for the aeration, kindly note that this indeed an ON or OFF switch for frothing. Froth may be impacted by the type of milk used, however, the ON position does not have variable control and is designed to prevent splashing. This was actually designed this way based on customer feedback from the TK-01! We definitely appreciate your feedback and will take it into consideration for any future designs and/or future improvements to the TK-02 milk knob functionality. ​ Let me know if I missed anything or if you'd like to chat anything else through - I want to make sure you have all the information you need! Cheers, Lou My favorite TK-02 ​brew is a dirty chai latte with Necessary Coffee Dark Roast​ beans!

EMAIL #2 TO TK-02 SUPPORT:

RE: Issue 2. I will attempt to video the coffee brewing and send it to you. RE: Issue 3. Regarding a “milk temperature,” if it is set to a single temperature, what should this temperature be?

EMAIL #2 REPLY:

Sounds great, Emiliy! Unfortunately we don't have a single temperature for any drink, especially milk-based ones, as temperature is incredibly variable dependent on environment, glassware, and milk! Your machine will brew all drinks to the set temperature ceiling, which is set to 205 degrees Fahrenheit in the default profiles. Kindly note that this is the brewing temperature, not what the final drink temperature will be. It's expected that there will be a significant difference between brewing temperature and final temperature in your cup.

EMAIL #3 to TK-02 SUPPORT

Hello again, to clarify, my milk temperature question was regarding the steamed milk selection, without any coffee/espresso. What is an expected temperature range (let’s say a range of 10 degrees F) for the milk when it hits a pre-warmed cup (assuming the milk being used is a normal refrigerated milk temperature of between 35 and 38 degrees F )?

EMAIL #3 REPLY:

Thank you for clarifying, Emiliy! It will still depend on many of these factors, but, for example, the general range for steamed milk with 100mL volume would be about 40-60 degrees celsius. A few degrees on either side would still be considered acceptable. I hope this helps!

EMAIL #4 TO TK-02 SUPPORT:

Ours can only heat cold milk to somewhere in the 90 degrees fahrenheit. Can you please send me information on returning?

EMAIL #4 REPLY

Hi Emiliy, We're unable to accept returns outside of the 30 day/150 brew trial period, but we'd be more than happy to help troubleshoot. Even though we can't directly set the milk temperature in the TK-02, I've got a few tips to help you keep your coffee hot: 1. Steam Dial Setting: To start, turn the milk frothing dial to the left for steamed milk with no foam and use the Steamed Milk button to heat it. Afterward, turn the dial to the right and use this pre-steamed milk to brew your latte or cappuccino. 2. Drink Volume: Keep in mind the volume of your drink. Very small brews will rapidly cool in glassware and the ambient temperature of a room. Increasing the volume of small drinks will increase the temperature performance. Also, you can try preheating cups/mugs or using insulated glassware if you prefer smaller-volume drinks. Remember that it's normal for drinks to lose a bit of heat when using cold milk. Let's start with these steps and see how it goes - please let us know how they work for you!

EMAIL #5 TO TK-02 SUPPORT:

Hi Lou, I'm not suggesting a return because I tried it and ended up not liking it. The machine does not heat the milk properly, which is clearly a warranty issue.

EMAIL #5 REPLY:

Hi Emiliy, Unfortunately, this would not be considered a malfunction or outside of the acceptable range of the machine. As noted, the final temperature of the steamed milk will depend on a variety of factors. As this machine was delivered on Jan 6 and we're over a month outside of the return window, and I can see that it has made over 589 drinks, we're unable to accommodate a return here. We provide a 30 day/150 brew trial as this is an ample amount of time to see if it's a good fit for your home and lifestyle. We're happy to continue to help troubleshoot!

**NOTE: Interestingly he references the brews on the machine that gets used the most, the other had less than 75 brews.
EMAIL #6 to TK-02 SUPPORT:

We’ve discussed the factors - I’m putting a thermometer in the liquid as it comes out of the machine into a pre-warmed cup and it’s not even meeting your standard of 40 degrees celsius (which, I should add is ridiculous.) No one who knows anything about making specialty coffee drinks would heat/steam milk to 40 degrees Celsius for a latte. At a minimum it would be heated to 57.5 - I know, because I worked at a coffee shop in college. What other factors are there to troubleshoot or discuss?

EMAIL #6 REPLY:

I completely understand the frustration, Emiliy. Kindly note that a steam wand that coffee shops use will indeed froth milk at a far higher temperature than a frothing system on a superauto, so that's to be expected. When I want a super hot milk-based drink, I usually microwave my milk for fifteen seconds first, especially if it's coming out the fridge cold. Appreciate you checking!

"Appreciate me checking?" Wow. Just wow. I hope this will help someone else not get taken advantage of with this machine. It's all marketing.

Hello everyone! We are just over a month from being reunited on the Farm together, and so I emerge from my Reddit slumber to bring you some words of wisdom in preparing to make the pilgrimage to Manchester, TN.
For those who don't recognize my username, I'm a Roo Medic and have been here for about 6 years (not including the cancelled years of 2020 and 2021). I've worked load-in, load-out, and every spot during the festival including the pods, the tents, the carts, roaming on foot, and more. In my day job, I'm a 911 paramedic who also does ICU level transports and special events in my spare time. All of that is to say, I've been around the block a time or two. I'm also a native of Tennessee, so I'm fairly acquainted with the temperamental nature of our state.
Whether you're a Rookie here with us for the first time or a veteran who's been around since the days of yore, I'd like to offer my completely unsolicited but necessary advice on ways to make your time the best and safest it can be.

Dealing with Emergencies 101

While a majority of Roovians won't experience a medical emergency during the course of Roo, the chance of seeing or being near one is relatively high. Between the heat, the "sand", and the stimuli present at Roo, something is bound to happen. In the event of any kind of emergency, but especially a medical one, here's a few steps you can take in order to maximize the chance's of us finding you and getting much needed help as soon as possible.

1. When you realize an emergency is occurring, the first thing to do is immediately send someone to find the nearest staff member. Whether this is a vendor, a light/sound crew member, a safety staff, or whoever, find someone, preferably with a radio. Once you find them, tell them you need medical staff and a BRIEF description of what is going on. Often, "my friend collapsed" is sufficient. After that, STAY WITH THE STAFF MEMBER UNLESS DIRECTED OTHERWISE. Unless you can provide VERY specific directions, you are much better off meeting us in a common spot (near a bar or major landmark) and guiding us to the patient, rather than us have to navigate an extremely large crowd of chaos without an idea of where we need to go. If you leave the area and no one knows how to get to the sick person, it wastes precious time. STAY PUT.
2. Once medical staff arrive, follow our instructions and answer every question you can, but only what we ask. Often, we will ask about fluid/food/drug intake. We are not here to judge, nor are we here to narc. We need to know EXACTLY what the sick person may have taken, as different combinations have different effects. Everything you tell us is protected by HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). This FEDERAL law provides that any information you tell us is privileged information and will only be released to those who need it for healthcare purposes. This only includes law enforcement if they have a warrant or are investigating a crime, and can not be asked for to ascertain probable cause. TL;DR? What you say to us is safe with us.
3. STAY CALM. If you are not the one who is sick or injured, this is not your emergency. I understand how callous of a statement this may seem. However, when we need your help, a calm and collected bystander is leagues more useful than one who is screaming incoherently. Try to take a deep breath, and realize that we may ask you to take a step back or walk away if your actions are contributing to a worsening or unsafe scene. As I mentioned earlier, we don't narc on drug use. However, we will narc on those that assault or harm us. Don't waste your ticket, and just stay calm.

When to seek help

If you or someone with you experiences any of the following, follow my steps above and seek immediate help.
(Note, this is note an exhaustive nor all-inclusive list. If you think you need us, come find us. There is nothing too big or too small for us)

• Disorientation
• Agitation/aggression inconsistent with past experience
• Sudden changes in behavior
• Unresponsiveness
• Shallow/significant difficulty breathing
• Injuries (even minor ones can get much worse without proper care)
• Lack of sweating after prolonged sweating (this is sign of impending heat stroke)
• Assault (of any nature)

As mentioned earlier, everything you say to us stays with us. We are here to help.

What to pack

If you're inexperienced with camping or outdoor festivals in general, there are a few things I'd recommend bringing with in order to maximize your comfort and minimize your risk.

1. Durable, BROKEN IN, and comfortable shoes. Your shoe choice is probably the most integral part of anything you wear at Roo. Your feet will bear the weight of everything you carry, including yourself. The farm is over 700 acres, and after day 1, it shows. While things like the JamTrak and peddle carts decrease some of it, there is a LOT of walking. Getting a blister on day 1 will make the rest of your week into hell. A good pair of BROKEN IN hiking shoes/boots will be your best friend. While they may clash with your outfit, blisters match nothing. If you haven't already bought your shoes, do so now and start breaking them in. Walk around your yard or neighborhood as much as you can. You do not want to be wearing new and stiff shoes around the farm, trust me.
2. Sunscreen/thin outer clothing/something to protect you from the sun. The Tennessee sun is no joke. Our climate is a sub-tropical one, and it shows. There is very little shade outside of your tent or inside a vendor tent and there isn't always enough to go around for everyone. Even if your tan would make the cover of Sports Illustrated, please wear sunscreen or something to protect you from the harsh UV rays. In addition to the risk of sun poisoning or burns, direct sun exposure will rapidly deplete your fluid volumes and will dehydrate you extremely fast. Find sweat-resistant/sport sunscreen and apply frequently. Follow the manufacturer's instructions.
3. A hydration source. Whether this is a hydration pack like a Camelbak or a water bottle, you need to drink water. Again, the brutal Tennessee heat has made many a fool of those either naive or foolish enough to think they can go off of one bottle of water in the morning with a glance at a bottle later. You will sweat a lot, and if you don't, then see a doctor because sweat is natural. There are hydration stations all over Centeroo and at all of the showebathroom locations. While it may or may not be cold, it is VERY necessary. I personally carry a 100 mL Camelback that I refill about 3-4 times a day. Also, if you can't find/lose your hydration source, here's a tip. Go near the rails of any stage. There should be safety staff who have bottles/cans of water and they may be able to get you so much needed hydration. Another aspect of this is electrolytes. Additives like Liquid IV, Gatorade powder packs, and more, are incredibly useful in replenishing the electrolytes you sweat and pee out.
4. A list of your medications, medical history, and allergies. This can be crucial if you experience a medical emergency and aren't able to coherently communicate with us. We need to know what you take daily and if you have certain conditions (epilepsy, diabetes, POTS, etc), as this will guide how we treat you. If you don't want to write a physical list, both Android and IPhone have apps that allow us to access your medical info in an emergency without unlocking your phone. Additionally, have the number for someone who knows you that can communicate with us in the event you need to go to the hospital. Android IPhone Samsung
5. If you take specialized medications (insulin, Ozempic, etc) that require refrigeration, figure out how you're going to cool it now. A good cooler can be bought from any outdoor store, but do so now. The mark-ups at the local Walmart during the week of Roo is INSANE. In the event you can't reliably find a way to keep your meds cool, come find us at a medical tent, and we'll work something out. Additionally, if you take any meds daily, such as blood pressure meds, see if your provider can write you an extra prescription in order to have a surplus. You do not want to lose your only supply of meds for home at Roo, especially if you're travelling from abroad.

Ok, now with all of my preaching out of the way, I hope everyone is as excited for Roo as I am! If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments, and I'll do my best to answer.
P.S., Around when Roo starts, I'll post a picture from somewhere in the Farm. If you can find me, I'll provide the first person to meet me with a prize!

What would your life be like without beef, chicken, pork, or fish? Without these key ingredients in many of your favorite dishes, you'd be unenviable.
Thankfully, there are plenty of good meat substitutes to choose from that can bring these tasty recipes back into your diet.
Whether it’s because you don’t eat meat or simply looking to incorporate some new plant-based proteins into your diet.
Let’s look at the top best substitutes for meat on the market right now and see which ones will satisfy your cravings the most!
No one wants to eat meat daily, let alone more than once or twice a week.
Fortunately, plenty of great substitutes for meat taste good and are affordable and healthy.
It can be used in countless recipes to make vegetarian meals as filling and satisfying as their meat-based counterparts.
Check out these top best substitutes for meat that will make your mouth water!

1. Eggplant

Eggplant is the first on the list of best meat substitutes. This versatile vegetable can be fried, baked, grilled, or roasted, making it a perfect substitute for chicken.
It will also take on the flavors of any spices you use when cooking.
Plus, eggplant is packed with vitamins and minerals that benefit your health.
One of the best ways to cook eggplant is by slicing it and frying it in olive oil with salt and pepper.
Once it's browned on both sides, add onions and garlic for flavor before topping the dish with tomato sauce.
The pan should be covered so the steam can't escape, and the eggplant will become moist as it cooks.

2. Coconut Burger

Coconut is a great meat substitute and is best made into burgers.
The coconut meat is ground in the food processor and then seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic, onion powder, and cumin.
The mixture is then formed into patties and placed on a greased pan. The burger buns are spread with mayonnaise, and the burger is topped with cheese.
It's baked for about 25 minutes or until the cheese has melted. Serve them hot on a bun with all your favorite toppings!

3. Mycoprotein

The next on the list of best substitutes for meat is Mycoprotein. Ingredients;
​

• Olive oil
• Onion chopped
• Garlic minced
• Carrots peeled and sliced thin
• Vegetable broth (or chicken)
• Fresh mushrooms halved or quartered if large
• Dried thyme or fresh thyme leaves are removed from the stem to measure the same amount.

4. Edible Mushrooms

Mushrooms are excellent substitutes for meat because they're firm and packed with flavor, so they absorb the flavors of sauces or marinades beautifully.
Plus, since mushrooms come in various textures and flavors, there's something for everyone.

5. Glamorgan Sausage

If you're a vegan and craving sausage, there are plenty of options.
Glamorgan sausages are made from rice and lentils, but they're just as flavorful as meat-based.
They're also lower in fat, calories, and cholesterol than their pork counterparts.
Plus, they can be cooked in the same way: fried, pan-fried, boiled, or baked.

6. Paneer

Paneer is a great substitute for meat if you're tired of meat and want to try something new. This is a fresh cheese that is usually made with whole milk.
It can be eaten in curries, fried, or even sliced and put on salads for a delicious vegetarian dish. It can also be substituted for ricotta or mozzarella cheese in some dishes.
A popular Indian dish called palak paneer consists of spinach and paneer cooked with spices such as ginger, garlic, and garam masala.
The dish is often served with rice or naan bread to soak up the sauce. This can also be used in stir-fries!

7. Pea Protein

Pea protein is one of the best substitutes for meat because it's a complete protein and contains all essential amino acids.
Its protein is also low in fat, has no cholesterol, and doesn't contain animal products.
It does have fewer calories per serving than beef but still has a decent amount of protein in each serving.
Pea protein can be bought as pea flour, which needs to be mixed with water or other liquid ingredients like almond or plant-based milk.

8. Tempeh

Tempeh is a fermented soy product that can be found in the refrigerated section of most grocery stores.
It's made by soaking soybeans, grinding them into a pulp, and inoculating the mixture with an active culture.
The resultant mixture is then packed into blocks or cakes. Tempeh absorbs flavors well, like tofu, and can make anything from fajitas to burgers.

9. Seitan

Seitan is next on the list of best meat substitutes. You can find it in most grocery stores' refrigerated or frozen sections.
One of the best things about seitan is that it's so versatile. You can make a meatless dish with it, have it as a sandwich filling, or slice and bake it for a nice change from your usual chicken.
It is made from vital wheat gluten, which gives it its chewy texture and hearty flavor.
Seitan is high in protein and low in carbs and fats, perfect for people looking to avoid animal products for health reasons.
Slice the seitan thinly and cook it on medium-high heat with soy sauce, scallions, garlic, ginger, brown sugar, rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil until browned on both sides.

10. Tofu

Tofu is a great meat substitute, especially if you're vegan or vegetarian.
It's packed with protein, gluten-free, and has a neutral flavor that can be flavored any way you like.
Tofu is made from soybeans and pressed into blocks. Tofu is a good substitute for meat because it's high in protein and can be flavored any way you want to make it taste more like meat
Plus, it's inexpensive! To get you started in the right direction, I've compiled a list of my favorite tofu recipes:

11. Spicy Orange Tofu Tacos

This recipe is full of flavor and perfect for taco night!

12. Vegan Red Curry

This curry is so flavorful and delicious!

13. Sweet Potato Black Bean Tostadas

These tostadas are easy to make, and they taste amazing!

14. Lentils

Lentils are one of the best substitutes for meat because they're hearty and filling.
Lentils are a great fiber source and have an earthy flavor that most people enjoy. They can be used in curries, tacos, salads, soups, and more!
There are many varieties, so it's easy to find a lentil recipe that suits your tastes. If you're looking for the perfect meat substitute, look no further than lentils!

15. Black Beans

There are so many different substitutes for meat that you can use in your diet, but black beans are the best. They're inexpensive, easy to make, and delicious.
Black beans also contain a lot of protein and fiber, which keeps you feeling full longer than other foods.
If you don't like black beans, or if they're out of season where you live, this is a list of other great substitutes.

16. Chickpeas

Chickpeas are the next best substitute for meat. Many people think you have to be vegetarian or vegan to get enough protein.
The truth is that many plant-based foods contain abundant protein, like chickpeas.
Chickpeas are a great substitute for meat because they are high in protein, low in fat, and rich in fiber.
They can be cooked as a vegetable dish with spices or ground up and used as a burger patty. Either way, they make for a healthy and satisfying meal.

17. Plant-Based Sausages

Try a plant-based sausage if you're looking for a meat substitute that will make your mouth water.
There are plenty of varieties in the market to try, and they're all delicious. Here are five different types of plant-based sausages you can buy at the store today:

18. Field Roast Frankfurters

These sausages have a classic bratwurst flavor but are made from wheat gluten instead of animal protein.
They're also high in protein and low in fat, so they make a great weekday meal or weekend breakfast alternative.

19. Tofurky Beer Brats

If you love traditional brats but want to avoid red meat, these beer-flavored sausages are perfect for you!

20. Plant-Based Chicken

If you're a vegan or just looking to cut back on meat intake, the best way to do so is to explore some of the awesome plant-based meats that are out there. Example of one of the Plant-based chicken best substitutes for meat;

21. Field Roast Vegan Sausages

Field Roast makes an assortment of fantastic vegan sausages and other products, including their popular Apple Sage Breakfast Sausage and Celebration Roast.
All of their products contain no cholesterol and tons of protein.

22. Soyrizo

I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, but I love food and cooking. I love experimenting with different spices and seasonings to create delicious dishes.
One thing that I've found that tastes great is Soyrizo. Soyrizo is a plant-based protein with the consistency of ground beef, and it can be used for tacos, burritos, chili, burgers, meatballs, you name it!
Conclusion
This list of the best substitutes for meat can make you drool. Finding a good substitute for a classic dish is hard, but these are pretty close.
I will continue to update this list with more great ideas as I find them. In the meantime, enjoy cooking and eating some of these dishes!
I couldn't resist adding in one last favorite substitute; Cauliflower crusted pizza; It's not 100% vegan or vegetarian.
But it is still really delicious and worth including in this list because it sounds so yummy.
And if you're someone who eats eggs, then a frittata would be perfect for breakfast, lunch, or dinner (it's made from eggs).
The only thing about that recipe, though, is the use of milk, so if you don't like milk, then there are plenty of other things to choose from in this blog post.

I realise a lot of people on here don’t know about The Village. Well… imagine Prison, Disneyland and a University party thrown into a blender with a little pinch of desperation thrown in for taste. That is The Village.
And my guide to this magical pimple of a place introduced himself by driving his motorbike through my front window.
I’m not sure what woke me up first – the roar of the engine, the gentle tinkling of glass as it smashed into my new refrigerator, or the nasal Australian ‘G’day’ that was called out to me.
I sat up in bed, heart thumping, and grabbed the closest thing to a weapon I could find – a shitty plastic bedside lamp. I walked out there holding the lamp in front of me like a mace.
‘Hello?’ I called out.
The light switched on, blinding me and I heard a distinctively Australian scream.
‘God mate, put some clothes on. You got ya willy hanging out and everything.’
I blinked in the light, in front of me stood a leather-clad, very stylish dude about my age who was trying very hard to keep his eyes on my face.
‘Who are you?’ I mumbled, the air had a chill to it, and when I looked around I saw bits of my window embedded in one wall, ‘You drove through my window!?!’
‘Yeah mate,’ the guy winked, ‘First rule I’m gonna teach you is that if you’re not a good writer you have to do some pretty crazy shit here to stand out and attract attention from the good writers so they’ll help fund your lifestyle,’ Manuel held up his hands, they didn’t have the computer-key-callouses that mine did, ‘I am not a good writer,’ he said.
‘The window…’
He brushed a piece of glass off his leather jacket, ‘Don’t worry - Al-Dog showed me how many views your stories have. You can afford it.’
I groaned, ‘Man I’m trying to get out of this hellhole. The more money I spend on fixing windows the less I have to... hey, what are you doing?’
Manuel was getting back on his motorbike, he pointed to my room, ‘You go back in there, you get some party clothes, and you come with me, we’ve got a long night ahead of us.’
I went to open my mouth but nothing came out. I guess the shock of having a biker drive through my front window in the middle of the night and the fact I was only half awake had dulled my mind.
‘I don’t have party clothes,’ I said eventually, ‘I’m just gonna...’
‘...you’re just gonna go back in there and look in your wardrobe. Al-Dog gave me money for important stuff. And believe me, you wouldn’t have made a good first impression showing up to the party naked.’
I stumbled back into the room and found a closet filled with dress-shirts, chinos, and high-end coats. I swallowed when I saw them, just imagining the damage they would’ve made to my bank account.
But they fitted well... so well that I decided someone at Crusher Media must’ve written down my shirt sizes when I’d arrived.
I threw on a patterned shirt, black pants and shoes – which took a lot longer than usual as I hadn’t worn anything on my feet since I entered Crusher Prison.
We rode Manuel’s motorbike back through the window and roared along the streets of The Village. The houses blurred by like I was on a ghost train.
We pulled up outside a mansion in a screech of rubber. Manuel parked the bike between two marble Greek statues.
‘What? Not gonna ride through this guy’s window as well?’
Manuel just shook his head, ‘These guys would kill me.’
‘Hmm... so that’s where I went wrong.’
Music was pumping from inside and a bunch of people in their early 20s were drinking wine on the marble steps. Manuel turned to me.
‘Before we go in I need you to know something.’
I stared at him so he continued, ‘Say it after me... I am a nobody.’
‘Manuel, you are a nobody.’
‘Are you stupid?’
‘No. I’m just messing with ya.’ I pulled a packet of chips from my shirt and popped it open.
‘Eli. You are a no-’
Crunch
His sentence broke in half, ‘Mate. Did you just eat a chip? While I was talking to you?’
I nodded, ‘You were saying I’m a nobody.’
‘Exactly,’ he was getting annoyed, ‘Dude. I’m your guide to this place. Why are you acting up?’
I crunched on another chip, ‘Look Manuel, maybe you’re a good guy. Maybe you genuinely believed driving a motorbike through the front window of my house was a good idea. Maybe you’re going to show me a secret tunnel you’ve dug in the basement of this mansion that we can crawl through to a waiting aeroplane that’s ready to take us to the Australian Outback where we can go hug some koalas and forget about all the messed up shit that goes on in this place.’ I put a hand on his shoulder, ‘Maybe you’re a good guy Manuel – but up till this point everyone in this prison who isn’t a writer has shat on me.’
Manuel stared at me, his voice softened, ‘Wow. Sound like you’ve been through some trauma mate.’
‘You wouldn’t believe half of it.’
One of his arms wrapped around me, ‘Eli. Buddy. I need you to forget all that stuff. This place...’ he spread his hand out over The Village, ‘This place is heaven on earth my man. No, wait, it’s better than heaven because it’s got alcohol, it’s got drugs, and there’s no one telling you what to do.’
‘Except you.’
‘Ahh... but I’m a guide. And Eli. It’s time for the best night of your life.’
****
Bach, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Billie Eilish and Bob Marley alternated on the speakers that thumped around the house.
By the front door, a circle of romance writers wearing knitwear and white tees with quotes on them sat discussing the best dates they’d been on.
Clustered around a couch playing Mario Cart, Minecraft, and talking about the best paths to level up a character were the LitRPG writers. We climbed the stairs where a group of crime fiction writers dressed in large trenchcoats and black scarves were arguing over the best way to get away with homicide. At the top of the stairs, Manuel put a hand to my chest and stopped me. He pointed to a guy wearing japanese-style clothing who was standing on the edge of the balcony.
‘Watch this.’ Manuel said.
The guy took a few steps backwards, then sprinted towards the balcony rail, leapt off it, did a double backflip – then landed in the indoor pool – almost smashing his head open on the side of it.
‘What does he write?’ I asked.
Manuel stared at the guy as he swam a victory lap.
‘Isekai.’
We moved along the balcony to a couch near the drinks table with a great window view of a group of wuxia and anime-style writers who were Nauruto-running their way across the lawn.
‘Huh.’ I said, ‘This party has someone for everyone.’
Manuel looked away from the group of chicks he’d been checking out, ‘Yeah buddy. This is a writer’s paradise.’
‘Cool. Now, where do I find angry, disillusioned, Crusher Media hating writers?’
Manuel just smiled, ‘Nowhere Eli. They don’t exist.’ He put a beer in my hand, ‘Get out there. Meet some people. I’m done babysitting.’
My guide stood, straightened his collar, and headed for the drinks table.
I sat there for a while, just people watching, drinking beer and munching on my chips. I had to shake my head. These are the people. These are the people that created the worlds I’d lived in all those years I’d been a reader.
A woman in a red dress placed a tray of sushi in front of me.
‘Hey.’ She lifted her eyes to meet mine, ‘You must be new.’
‘Hey.’ I said, ‘How’d you know?’
She tilted her head towards Manuel, ‘You’ve had the leecher hanging off you like a bad smell.’
That made me laugh.
‘You want some sushi?’ she said, moving a ball of rice into her mouth with chopsticks so elegantly I knew I had no hope of ever replicating the manoeuvrer.
I smiled, ‘I’ve... well...’ I lifted the second packet of chicken chips I’d brought, ‘I’ve got all the food I need right here.’
She frowned at the bag, picked a chip out with her chopsticks and crunched down on it, ‘Mmmh. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good chip. But why the hell you only eating them for? Is this some weird new diet?’
I shook my head and she let out a sigh.
‘Good, because heaps of authors get into these weird trendy diet things – they think eating fish and beans will help them write for longer. They think if you mix kale and spinach into a smoothie it’ll make you a writing god.’
I shook my head, ‘Believe me – the only thing that kale and spinach change are your taste buds and the smell of your shit.’
The woman in red laughed loudly and patted me on the back, ‘You’re a funny guy.’
Then the romance writers made the LitRPG writers move their couch and TV, the Wuxia writers shifted chairs and tables away from the entrance to create a large open space in front of the door. A couple of fantasy writers shifted the speakers so they were facing the open space, while the crime writers smoked cigarettes and did their best to look shady. The Isekai writer climbed along the ceiling with a disco ball slung over his back. He attached the disco ball then dropped to the floor and rolled. Everyone clapped.
‘Oh my god,’ I turned to the woman in red, the music was loud so I had to shout, ‘Now... I’ve got a confession to make. I hate this place and I hate Crusher Media with every fibre of my being, but...’ I shook my head and took a swig of beer, then placed it down in the pile of empty bottles by my feet, ‘...I have a weakness for dancing.’
‘Huh?’ she said, ‘You like dancing?’
‘I love dancing. It’s like my second favourite thing after pissing people who work for Crusher Media off and reading.’
‘That’s two things, Eli.’
‘Huh?’
‘You said second... oh never mind. Go. Dance. Unleash yourself. You’ve been through some shit man.’
‘You gonna come?’
She winked, ‘I’ll see you down there.’
So I left her there with my packet of chicken chips and descended the stairs to the dance floor.
Now I’m not a good dancer, so I’m not going to embarrass myself with descriptions of my awkward spinning and leaping and shaking of limbs. But no one seemed to care. Everyone was drunk enough and happy enough that enthusiasm was all you needed.
The Isekai guy was back on the ceiling again, hanging off a wooden beam with one hand. He raised his other hand to his mouth and shouted above the music, ‘This world is shit!’
Everyone on the dance floor raised their hands to their mouth, ‘This world is shit!’
The Isekai guy grinned, ‘But this party is lit!’
I raised my hands to my mouth and screamed at the top of my lungs, ‘BUT THIS PARTY IS LIT!’ And a guy in a trenchcoat and a girl in a tee with quotes on it wrapped their arms around my shoulders and it felt so good. Someone poured champagne straight into my mouth, then I walked wobbly-legged up the stairs to see if I could find the woman in red. A song by Avicii was banging on the speakers.
There were a few couples making out on the balcony, but I couldn’t see the woman in red. I tripped over a beer bottle and then laughed at how nothing hurt and my stomach was full and I was so happy.
I crawled over to the window and pushed it open. The cold night air felt nice on my face and I decided I wanted more.
Clumsily, I climbed through the window and rolled down the roofing tiles. I came to a stop at the gutter – just before the edge. That made me giggle – ‘Woah, you almost Isekaied yourself just then.’
I climbed on my hands and knees along the roof until I could sit comfortably. There were stars in the sky – real stars – and they reminded me of everything I’d left behind underground. I thought about Astra. How much she’d love to see them and I thought about her face when I’d first seen it, and the pull-top earrings and smashing my shitty tablet to get glow in the dark liquid. Then I pulled my knees to my chest and I started to cry.
NEXT: https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/1cokkq1/a_victim_of_online_fiction_ch14_the_pill/

Hello! Unsure if this belongs here but there's a restaurant in Atlanta that has incredible smoked salmon. It does it with a cold curing process using a dry rub and then a bit of cold smoke to add some extra flavor.
I'll also be including the trout recipe. I used to just use the info from the AJC article on this but it looks like they're starting to paywall a lot of their content. I dont want this recipe lost when that fully happens so I'm info dumping the spice Mixture, the 2 trout recipes and the salmon and then salmon with latkas recipe.
Canoe Seven-Spice Cure Mixture
scant 1/4 cup cracked black peppercorns
scant 1/4 cup crushed fennel seed
scant 1/4 cup crushed coriander seed
1 star anise
4 whole cloves
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 (3/4 ounce) packages thyme sprigs, stems removed
1 bay leaf
1/2 pound kosher salt, divided
1/4 pound light brown sugar
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine peppercorns, fennel, coriander, star anise and cloves on a rimmed baking sheet and bake until fragrant. Remove from oven and allow to cool. In the jar of a blender, combine toasted spices with garlic, thyme leaves and bay leaf. Process until blended. Add half the salt and blend until fairly finely ground. In a medium bowl, combine remaining salt and sugar. Add salt/spice/herb mixture from blender and stir together thoroughly. May be made ahead and stored in an airtight container. Makes: 3 cups
Canoe House Hot Smoked Trout Fillets
Whatever trout you don’t eat straight off the grill, or in the Trout and Apple salad recipe we’ve provided, would be delicious added at the last minute to a seafood chowder or used to make a smoked trout dip.
A 1 1/4-pound trout will yield two 6- to 7-ounce fillets.
8 (6- to 7-ounce) rainbow trout fillets
1/2 cup Seven-Spice Cure Mixture (see recipe)
Hickory wood chips
Carefully check fillets for pin bones and remove. Arrange trout, skin side down, on a wire rack set in a rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle lightly with cure mix, about 1 tablespoon per fillet. You should be able to see the flesh through the cure. Refrigerate trout 2 hours uncovered.
Rinse trout until gently flowing cold water and put back on wire rack. Refrigerate uncovered overnight.
Preheat the smoker to 170 degrees.
Move trout to smoker racks and add wood chips on the fire. Be sure to maintain the smoker at 170 degrees. Smoke trout for 1 hour or until fillets are flaky. Do not overcook. Makes: 8 fillets
Per fillet: 217 calories (percent of calories from fat, 26), 35 grams protein, 4 grams carbohydrates, 1 gram fiber, 6 grams fat (1 gram saturated), 100 milligrams cholesterol, 1,114 milligrams sodium.
Hot Smoked Trout and Apple Salad
Basford created this recipe as a play on a Waldorf salad. At Canoe, it’s served with pickled muscadines. You could add grapes to your version at home. You can use romaine lettuce or the suggested arugula for a more peppery bite. The cooked trout skin provide a smoky, crisp counterpoint to the salad. Basford says they provide the same textural contrast as a crisp piece of bacon.
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup sour cream
Juice of 2 lemons
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley
2 Granny Smith apples, cored and sliced 1/8-inch thick
1 bulb fennel, cut into matchstick pieces
4 Canoe House Hot Smoked Trout fillets (see recipe)
8 ounces arugula
Vegetable oil
1/4 pound toasted walnut halves, optional for garnish
Make dressing: in a medium size bowl, whisk together buttermilk, sour cream, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, whole grain mustard, onion powder, garlic powder and parsley. Set aside.
In a large bowl, combine apple slices and fennel and add dressing to coat. Remove skin from fillets and break flesh into large chunks. Set skin aside. Add to apple mixture along with arugula pieces. Gently toss together, making sure to keep trout pieces intact. Add more dressing if needed. Divide salad between serving plates.
In a small skillet, film the bottom with oil and heat over medium-high heat. Add reserved trout skins and cook until crisp. Top each salad with a piece of trout skin and garnish with walnuts if desired. Serve immediately. Serves: 8
Per serving: 276 calories (percent of calories from fat, 52), 23 grams protein, 11 grams carbohydrates, 3 grams fiber, 16 grams fat (3 grams saturated), 52 milligrams cholesterol, 646 milligrams sodium.
Canoe House Cold Smoked Salmon
A 4 1/2-pound salmon will yield 3 3/4 pounds of fillets.
1 4 1/2-pound Atlantic salmon, filleted
1 1/2 cups Seven-Spice Cure Mixture (see recipe)
Hickory wood chips
Carefully check salmon fillets and remove any bones. Arrange salmon, skin side down, on a wire rack set in a rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with cure mix. Cure mix should be about 1/4-inch thick. Gently pat it into place. Do not press it into the flesh. Wrap salmon in plastic wrap and refrigerate 2 days. Keep the salmon on a sheet pan or something else that can catch any liquid that may drip from the salmon.
Rinse salmon until gently flowing cold water and put back on wire rack. The salmon is fully “cooked” at this point and could be eaten in this state although you’ll find it a little salty. Refrigerate uncovered overnight.
Prepare smoker: Create coals in a separate area from where you are going to smoke. Once you have some coals, if you have a multi-level smoker, place a baking dish full of ice between the coals and the salmon itself. Heat smoker to no more than 90 degrees.
Place the cured salmon high in the smoker. Be sure to have dampers in the flue open to allow the hot air to escape. Add hickory wood chips to coals. Smoke salmon for one hour. Be sure to check the ice level throughout the process. The ice will keep the smoker cool as well as cooling the air as it rises past the salmon. After one hour, check the salmon by taking the fillet out of the smoker and smelling to see if it has a subtle smoked smell. If not, return it to the smoker for 30 more minutes. If it seems right to you, then remove salmon from smoker and refrigerate, covered, overnight. The salmon is then ready to slice. Be sure to check again for any bones. Be sure to use a knife with a very thin blade and slice the salmon at a 35- to 40-degree angle and against the grain of the fillet. You want to get a little of the top of the salmon with each slice Makes: 3 pounds smoked salmon
Canoe’s House Smoked Salmon, Crispy Potato Cake, Vermont Goat’s Cheese
1/2 cup Caper Dill Cream (see recipe)
4 Potato Pancakes (see recipe)
6 tablespoons Goat Cheese Cream (see recipe)
8 1/8-inch thick slices Cold Smoked Salmon (about 1/2 pound)
1 shallot, finely diced, optional
4 chives, finely sliced, optional
On each serving plate, spread 2 tablespoons Caper Dill Cream. On work surface, spread each Potato Pancake with 1 1/2 tablespoons Goat Cream Cheese. Lay salmon on pancake and cut pancake into quarters. Arrange quarters on serving plates and garnish with shallot and chives if desired. Serves: 4
Per serving, entire recipe: 516 calories (percent of calories from fat, 53), 29 grams protein, 31 grams carbohydrates, 2 grams fiber, 30 grams fat (13 grams saturated), 96 milligrams cholesterol, 1,252 milligrams sodium.
Caper Dill Cream
8 ounces creme fraiche
1/4 bunch dill, finely chopped (about 1/4 cup)
2 tablespoons nonpareil capers, roughly chopped
1 shallot, finely minced
Salt and pepper
In a medium bowl, combine creme fraiche, dill, capers and shallot. Season to taste. Refrigerate until needed. Makes: 1 1/4 cups
Per 1-tablespoon serving: 30 calories (percent of calories from fat, 90), trace protein, trace carbohydrates, trace fiber, 3 grams fat (2 grams saturated), 10 milligrams cholesterol, 13 milligrams sodium.
Potato Pancake
Basford emphasizes that you need “aged” Yukon gold potatoes for this recipe. Newer potatoes won’t make for a nice, crisp cake so don’t try this with freshly harvested Yukon Golds from your local farmers market. His two-step method of cooking the pancakes makes for a pancake that is crisp all the way through. In the Canoe kitchen, the pancakes are first skillet fried and then cooked in a deep fryer. We’ve adapted the recipe for the home cook without a deep fryer by baking the browned pancakes in a moderately hot oven.
6 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled (about 2 1/2 pounds)
Salt and pepper
Vegetable oil, for frying
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Cut potatoes into matchstick pieces and season with salt and pepper.
In a 6-inch skillet over medium heat, add enough oil to cover bottom. Arrange 1 heaping cup of potatoes in skillet and use a spatula to press into a small, flat pancake. Fry until browned on one side, about 4 minutes, and then gently turn and cook 4 minutes on second side. Move pancake onto a rimmed baking sheet. Continue with the remaining potatoes. When the four pancakes are fried, put the baking sheet into the oven and cook pancakes until crisp and browned all the way through. Drain on paper towels and allow to cool slightly before using in salmon recipe. If made ahead of time, put in a 250 degree oven to crisp and warm before using. Makes: 8
Per pancake: 177 calories (percent of calories from fat, 35), 3 grams protein, 25 grams carbohydrates, 2 grams fiber, 7 grams fat (1 gram saturated), no cholesterol, 19 milligrams sodium.
Goat Cheese Cream
You could just use goat cheese for this recipe, but Basford likes to combine goat cheese with a bit of cream cheese for the luscious quality the cream cheese brings to the mixture. At Canoe they use Vermont Butter and Creamery Goat cheese.
4 ounces fresh goat cheese
1 ounce cream cheese
In the bowl of a food processor, cream goat cheese until soft, then add cream cheese and mix on high until fluffy. Remove from food processor and refrigerate until needed. Makes: 1/2 cup
Per 1-tablespoon serving: 76 calories (percent of calories from fat, 74), 5 grams protein, trace carbohydrates, no fiber, 6 grams fat (4 grams saturated), 19 milligrams cholesterol, 60 milligrams sodium.
For source and because it's incredibly good food Here's the Restaurant page

I want to add some stuff to my Ryzen 5700G because it is 95°C integrated graphic and cpu with just 10% in use and i want the pc for gaming with integrated graphics i only want to play league and minecraft i dont think i need a graphic card i could be wrong but idk so to control the refrigeration i already have a H100x Elite Corsair Liquid refrigeration but i think i messed up with the thermal paste and it was pre applied so i am going to get some of the special alcohol and change the paste i want to add fans for a better airflow but i need a controller i dlnt have more space for fans on my MSI B550M Pro here all the stuff i am going to buy please help me to know if is enough Corsair TM30 Thermal Paste, SilverStone Technology Silverstone CPF04, Cooler Master SickleFlow 120 V2 RGB, Vorago CLN-108 Isopropyl Alcohol Is that enough for gaming with the Ryzen 5700G? oh and if you could add some stuff i could do in bios like some config more vram i have 32GB ram and what i can do would be great i havent configured anything at all. thanks for reading 🙂

A week ago on April 23rd my ear started pulsating like I could hear liquid going with my heartbeat. Me panicking trying to get it to stop, I shoved my finger in there resulting in me pulling a huge thing of hard, dark earwax ball out. That didn’t stop the pulsing sound and sensation and with it being midnight I just laid that ear on a pillow turned my tv up and went to sleep.
Went to my primary doctor that morning and was told one eardrum had some minor bleeding and the one that was pulsating was inflamed. Was prescribed amoxicillin and been a week and still no help. But now that pulsating sensation comes and goes.
I don’t believe it has anything to do with blood vessels due to me having a brain mri the week before this feeling due to me having constant headaches and the only thing they found was minor sinus inflammation… I even had my jugular veins ultrasound that same month again due to everyday migraines and headaches.
What should I do someone help soothe the anxiety and tell me it gets better :( my next appointment is on the 7th aka next Thursday. I’m sure if it doesn’t look better I will be referred to an ent but until then this sucks :((
Side note. I was driving through mountains two weeks prior to this incident

Let's say we have some sort of a liquid and we put it in the refrigerator. It is most common that the refrigerators have temperature between 3-4°C. It is mentioned that after putting the liquid in the fridge, after 7 minutes the temperature of the liquid drops from 16°C to 12°C. And, after 2 hours and 41 minutes(not from the start but from the point where 7 minutes have passed), our unknown liquid becomes solid. I need to find liquids specific heat of solidification and find out what liquid was frozen.
My guess would be that the liquid is water mixed with salt. I don't have proof for my hypothesis, but I need to somehow find the specific heat of solidification and I guess, when I find it, I will be able to say what liquid was frozen?
1) Calculated the sensible heat removed(cooling from 16°C to 12°C)
I assumed that the m = 1000g as it was not given, c = 4.18 J/g°C (water-like) substance
Q_1 = m * c * Δt = 1000 * 4.18 * (16 - 12) = 16720J
2) Calculated heat transfer rate during initial cooling
`Q = Q_1 / 7min = 16720J / 420seconds = 39.81 J/second
3) Calculated the additional sensible heat assuming it's just below 5°C
Q_as = m * c * Δt = 1000 * 4.18 * (12 - 5) = 29260J
4) Latent head(assuming the entire mass freezes)
Since we stated that it is a water-like substance, we say that the latent heat of fusion L_f = 334 J/g
Q_2 = m * L_f = 1000 * 334 = 334000 J
5) Total heat removal for freezing
Q_total = Q_as + Q_2 = 29260 + 334000 = 363260 J.
Where do I go from here?
​

I - II - III - IV
The fleshy centers in both of Teresa’s palms were starting to bruise.
Diggs’ spiel had somehow transported them outside the Entodome, out to an open field not far from the facility parking lot. He was now directing her attention to the mobile “Dragondrone hangar” (which still looked more like a barbecue than anything else), where Cesar held his hands above the latch.
“Now this. This is one of my favorite parts.” Diggs smirked, his arms held behind his lab coat. “It’s what fills seats at every expo.”
Teresa fought the urge to groan. Oh, just get on with it. She watched as Cesar opened their little “hangar” and unleashed a cloud of bewildered dragonflies into the air. It was a mass of confused movement.
Well, here goes. This is where they all fly off. Bye Bye.
But to Teresa’s surprise, The dragonfly horde swirled into one precise shape, unifying and shooting forward like a directed puff of smoke.
Diggs stepped in front of the now-empty barbecue. “You see that pole they’re aiming for?” He pointed at a metallic pylon in the distance. “They’ll be upon it shortly. We program their transceivers to fly back and forth between these two points.” He motioned again to the barbecue. “It allows us to perform some baseline inspection. Quality control.”
Teresa nodded slowly, not really in awe, but in a bemused sort of devastation. How on earth could this be sustainable? The enemy might as well release children with fly swatters. Or frogs. She tried to think of something to ask, to convince herself this afternoon hadn’t been a huge waste of her time. She turned to Cesar with an open palm. “So … how long do they live for?”
The assistant clearly hadn’t been expecting to talk. “Um. Well it depends,” he said. “Most of them? Twelve months.”
Only a year? Teresa bit her tongue. “Can they handle extreme climates?”
“Well, it depends.” His eyes stared at the ground. “What kind?”
She fought the urge to face-palm. We’re fighting in the arctic, what kind do you think?
Devlin quickly intervened. “We can breed them to survive near anything. And the beauty is, they’ll always feed themselves! Infinite battery power.”
Teresa’s mind kept finding more holes to poke. “And if there isn’t any food? What then?”
“Oh they’ll hunt anywhere,” Diggs said with a certainty. “Flies and mosquitoes exist on every continent, which makes our Dragondrones extremely versatile. All terrain.”
Is he trying to sell me a car? She turned before her annoyance could show and pretended to watch the line of insects returning from the shiny pylon.
On second thought, a car wouldn’t be so bad. I could drive it straight to the airport, instead of waiting for the courtesy vehicle after this flea circus.
***
“Use your wings!” Flax yelled, swaying the tail that Ollo gripped. “It only works if you flap in tandem with me!”
Ollo tried, but he was having trouble synchronizing his muscles. He panicked as they sputtered awkwardly, beginning to plunge. The shadows of the three Envoys stood tall and still in the distance: judging on behalf of The Ancestor.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, no, no.
Ollo focused and very quickly discovered his panic doubled as an effective metronome.
Oh - no. Up - down. Oh - no. Up - down.
“Keh! That’s more like it!” Flax yanked them toward the tail-end of the racers. They lined up behind a pair of large duskhawkers, whose freckled wings cut through the air. Suddenly, the endeavor became much easier.
“Oh wow,” Ollo said, “have I gotten better?”
“No, we're in their slipstream, dullard. They’re breaking the air for us.”
Ollo raised his feeler and could indeed feel a displaced draft.
“Just don’t tail them too closely,” Flax said, “or they’ll switch and slipstream us.”
They kept at a following distance, and Ollo used the moment to catch his breath and admire this new universe. He couldn’t believe it. He was here. The Outside.
There were rocky immensities in the distance and vast fields of green. The atmosphere contained a breeze that contoured all flight, and an open humidity that filtered freshness into his being. Ollo took a deep inhalation. This is what adulthood is supposed to be.
“It tastes good, right?” Flax said, mostly gliding now.
“It does,” Ollo admitted. “It’s incredible.”
“For me, the racing doesn’t matter half as much as just being out here,” Flax said. “That’s all the reward I need.”
“You’ve never ranked well?”
“How can I? See these hairs on my thorax?”
Ollo looked beyond the tail he gripped. There flailed hundreds of tiny black fibers.
“Too much drag. Not to mention an entire body frame that’s off-balance.” Flax flexed his front two nubs. “No, I’ve accepted that I’ll be bringing up the rear for the rest of my life. But there are advantages to last place; you’ll see. Plus, it’s better than being stuck in that pond, am I right?”
Ollo nodded, though he was unsure if he agreed. Suddenly, the two duskhawkers ahead of them shifted.
“You want to stay away from where their wings shed air,” Flax said. “Especially during this turn. It’s easy to get caught up in vortices.”
Ollo watched the duskhawkers pull a U-turn around the shiny pole ahead of them.
“Steady,” Flax said. “Steady …”
The lights in Ollo’s vision swam, beckoning him to turn. The lights gently abated as he rounded the beacon carefully.
Dozens of small air cyclones dithered around Ollo. The shed vortices felt weak where they were in last place, but Ollo saw one of the duskhawkers spin out of control.
The poor duskhawker’s wings had twisted the wrong way, and he spiraled down to the earth. Ollo wasn’t sure what had happened, but he could swear, in the periphery of his vision, that something exploded.
***
“What was that?” Teresa asked. Blue sparks popped among the line of dragonflies like a firecracker.
“Oh yes: if they swerve too far from alignment, we can self-destruct their transceivers.” Diggs whirled his hand around a touch-device. “It’s a quick way to weed out any mistakes before the mission starts. It’s also how we prevent valuable flyers from getting into the wrong hands.” He shot Teresa a look that said: bet you didn’t think of that!
She didn’t like his bizarrely jovial attitude, especially considering these bugs were meant to be used for conflict areas. His whole sales approach seemed to forget that she was with the Air Force, not Amazon.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking.” Diggs walked backwards, pocketing his device. “These flyers are all very well and efficient, but how can I see them in action? True recon missions travel great distances over several days, do they not?”
Teresa didn’t say anything, She followed at half speed towards the parking lot, where Cesar now sat inside a golf cart.
“Well in honor of your visit, Sarge, we’ve prepared a little surprise.” Diggs gave a thumbs-up and Cesar bumbled the vehicle over the curb, pulling it onto the grass.
“Hop in.”
Good lord. What more is there to see? Theresa tried to think of something to end this joke. This carnival ride. But her mind was too encumbered by annoyance. A military rep could not be seen as weak.
She sat in the rear two seats, wondering if Diggs could read her resentment. The director leaned in from the front. “We’ll be going uphill, so buckle up!”
She grabbed a ceiling handle. He can’t read me at all. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.
The car throttled up a knoll, and the lack of shocks became evident as the wheels bounced over every pebble and crack.
Christ, what was the Major thinking when he sent me here?
She could hear his old, French cadence jabbering in her head. “It’s a showcase of living drones, Zhao! Made a huge splash at the expo. One of us should be there—and I think it should be you. It’s the forefront of its industry, and it needs someone of your expertise.” But all Teresa could see at this ‘forefront’ was glorified gnats: bird food. How could he have taken this all so seriously?
Then it occurred to her. Maybe he hadn’t.
Maybe she had been sent here as a farce. The more she thought about it, the more the whole visit began to reek of the same passive-aggression that had lingered since her days as a drone pilot: where lieutenants would assign her the latest night shift, or somehow leave her with the rattiest equipment or chair.
Could they be pranking her now? Some petty jab for becoming sergeant in place of someone else? Christ almighty. Even now, at the turn of the 22nd century, the military is a petulant boys’ club.
She watched the two scientists navigate their golf cart, its two-wheel-drive struggling. How much longer am I expected to sit through this? All afternoon? All night?
Being senior air force, Teresa did have access to an evac order. It was something she could theoretically request. But calling it here would be absurd. Wouldn’t it?
No more absurd than being sent to watch bug theatre.
She considered the idea. Wouldn’t it be funny? If they were going to waste her time, she could waste theirs. With her cellphone’s GPS, dispatch could locate her without a hitch. The request would only be a text away. A twenty-year official should be treated with respect.
The golf cart wheezed to the top of the neighboring hill to reveal a large, stylish-looking gazebo. Cesar pulled the E-brake and stopped in front of its glass entrance.
“What’s this?” Teresa stared.
“Oh, you’ll see.” Diggs stepped off the cart and lit a long, thin cigarette. “We’re just getting started.”
Upon approach, the doors slid open, revealing blue-glowing screens. A padded interior ushered comfort, and Teresa could soon hear the familiar hum of something refrigerating. The room contained several monitors that hung below a beautiful, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the valley. It felt newly renovated, but old enough to have a few mugs lying around.
Diggs smoked outside as Cesar rapidly began tapping on the screens, activating icons and plotting lines across some kind of map. The map kept resizing across the monitors, and as Teresa glanced back and forth, she could faintly see the shine of other metal pylons across the valley. Their placement corresponded to the markers on-screen.
“What is this? Some kind of watchtower?”
Diggs faced away, taking a drag with one arm on the door to prevent it from closing. “Well, you saw our little NASCAR warm-up where we started, right?”
Teresa looked at the field they had left, where a thin oval of dragonflies still circled.
Diggs exhaled. “Well, let’s just say from now on, we’ll be watching Formula One.”
His ember pointed at the cushy seats in the center. Teresa gawked at the chairs, but couldn’t bring herself to sit. Just when the bar on absurdity has been set—it somehow manages to skyrocket further.
***
On their fourth lap, the lights in Ollo’s head began to shimmer, beckoning a new trajectory. Before the colors turned piercingly bright, Flax broke from their path, pulling Ollo to the right.
“Finally,” the damselfly said, “prelim’s over.” In front of them, the linear plume of racers all travelled north, away from the established circuit.
“Wait … what’s going on?” “Can’t you sense her lights? The race has officially started, Ollie. And it looks like a new course.”
“It’s only started now?”
“That’s right. We’ve never flown north before. Lady Meganeura has carved us something special.”
Ollo gripped Flax’s tail and focused on his tandem wing-work. They had entered a steady rate of acceleration, with their wings fluttering in near-perfect opposites.
“Keh. Keep this up and we won’t need to rely on slipstreams.”
Ollo’s mandibles flashed a smile. He enjoyed seeing the grass blur quicker than before. Perhaps this racing does hold some purpose...
The lights guided them far away, towards a strange dirt field. It was strange because it was home to dozens of evenly-dispersed pillars, all about the height and size of an Envoy. They were white, square-shaped, and as Ollo passed the first row, he noticed a beaten, wood-like texture to them. They were full of dents and scratches, as if the pillars somehow rose and bumped each other from time to time.
“What are those things?” Ollo asked.
“Like I said, new course. No idea what Mega’s thinking.”
They flew straight and trailed behind the plume of racers, watching their shimmering wings toss blades of light. As they flew in deeper amongst the white pillars, a muffled buzzing grew louder from all directions. Ollo noticed the hairs on Flax’s thorax grow stiff.
The shimmers up front stopped progressing, and instead oscillated in circles. The distant racers then dispersed around the monoliths.
“Slow down,” Flax said.
“What’s going on?”
“Something’s not right.”
Out from the pillars came flying blue shapes, all buzzing loud and fierce. Thick streams of them gave chase to the racers ahead.
“We need to disengage,” Flax said.
As Ollo let go, they both witnessed one of the racers return their way: it was grey flatwing. The poor dragon was screaming, chased by two blue insects who dove in and out, taking bites of his tail.
“Get offa me! Get off!” The flatwing rapidly turned, tossing vortices at his assailants. The spinning air was powerful enough to sway Ollo and twist the blue bugs’ wings.
“Scramble!” Flax revved his thorax and dived into the cover of the weeds below.
Ollo watched the blue flyers steady their flight, lifting their black-and-blue striped bodies. Each of their abdomens ended in a long, black barb. Ollo had seen a few of these above the pond: bees.
***
“You’re making them fly through your bee farm?” From the window Teresa could no longer make out the drones, but she saw the little hives in the distance. Like tiny white bricks.
“Yes, well, earlier you were asking how they might feed.” Diggs rose from his seat and opened a mini-fridge. “I thought I’d let the drones snack on some of our other products. Like our signature blue bees.”
He grabbed some glass bottles that contained a gold-ish liquid and placed them on the side. “This makes for a nice segue actually—I’d like to introduce some of our artisanal mead, derived from those very bees. It’s smooth, not-too-sweet, with a unique, tangy aftertaste.”
The sergeant glanced from the off-topic drink to the screen Cesar was manipulating. This hive complex was labeled Marker Two on the very large map.
Marker two out of thirty. Good lord.
“The bees are one of the main branches of our company.” Devlin raised his glass and offered the others to Teresa and Cesar. “We are a self-sustaining business, after all, and invested in pollination, which, as you may know, is an extremely profitable endeavor. Our bees are among the few that can still do it.”
So he’s pitching his bees now? It seemed like this Diggs truly lived in his own reality.
“I know you probably assume some grants might’ve paid for our facility”—Diggs giggled—“but grants wouldn’t allow for such extravagance.” His fingers drummed along the gazebo walls, the tops of two monitors, and then the on-screen hive icons.
“It is our bees—which we’ve bred to be a bit more aggressive than others—that ensure we stay on top of the market. It’s what funds our dragonflies, our silkworms, our termites...”
Teresa could not handle whatever this was turning into. There was no way she could stomach hours of this derailed demo and keep a straight face.
Damn you, Major. Never again.
With her hand in her pocket, Teresa sent the text she had prepared. Screw it.
Emergency evac requested. If she was going to have her leg pulled all day, she might as well pull back.
Diggs continued to sip and gasconade, mead swirling in his hand. Teresa nodded along, grabbed her own glass and allowed herself to drink.

I - II - III - IV
The fleshy centers in both of Teresa’s palms were starting to bruise.
Diggs’ spiel had somehow transported them outside the Entodome, out to an open field not far from the facility parking lot. He was now directing her attention to the mobile “Dragondrone hangar” (which still looked more like a barbecue than anything else), where Cesar held his hands above the latch.
“Now this. This is one of my favorite parts.” Diggs smirked, his arms held behind his lab coat. “It’s what fills seats at every expo.”
Teresa fought the urge to groan. Oh, just get on with it. She watched as Cesar opened their little “hangar” and unleashed a cloud of bewildered dragonflies into the air. It was a mass of confused movement.
Well, here goes. This is where they all fly off. Bye Bye.
But to Teresa’s surprise, The dragonfly horde swirled into one precise shape, unifying and shooting forward like a directed puff of smoke.
Diggs stepped in front of the now-empty barbecue. “You see that pole they’re aiming for?” He pointed at a metallic pylon in the distance. “They’ll be upon it shortly. We program their transceivers to fly back and forth between these two points.” He motioned again to the barbecue. “It allows us to perform some baseline inspection. Quality control.”
Teresa nodded slowly, not really in awe, but in a bemused sort of devastation. How on earth could this be sustainable? The enemy might as well release children with fly swatters. Or frogs. She tried to think of something to ask, to convince herself this afternoon hadn’t been a huge waste of her time. She turned to Cesar with an open palm. “So … how long do they live for?”
The assistant clearly hadn’t been expecting to talk. “Um. Well it depends,” he said. “Most of them? Twelve months.”
Only a year? Teresa bit her tongue. “Can they handle extreme climates?”
“Well, it depends.” His eyes stared at the ground. “What kind?”
She fought the urge to face-palm. We’re fighting in the arctic, what kind do you think?
Devlin quickly intervened. “We can breed them to survive near anything. And the beauty is, they’ll always feed themselves! Infinite battery power.”
Teresa’s mind kept finding more holes to poke. “And if there isn’t any food? What then?”
“Oh they’ll hunt anywhere,” Diggs said with a certainty. “Flies and mosquitoes exist on every continent, which makes our Dragondrones extremely versatile. All terrain.”
Is he trying to sell me a car? She turned before her annoyance could show and pretended to watch the line of insects returning from the shiny pylon.
On second thought, a car wouldn’t be so bad. I could drive it straight to the airport, instead of waiting for the courtesy vehicle after this flea circus.
***
“Use your wings!” Flax yelled, swaying the tail that Ollo gripped. “It only works if you flap in tandem with me!”
Ollo tried, but he was having trouble synchronizing his muscles. He panicked as they sputtered awkwardly, beginning to plunge. The shadows of the three Envoys stood tall and still in the distance: judging on behalf of The Ancestor.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, no, no.
Ollo focused and very quickly discovered his panic doubled as an effective metronome.
Oh - no. Up - down. Oh - no. Up - down.
“Keh! That’s more like it!” Flax yanked them toward the tail-end of the racers. They lined up behind a pair of large duskhawkers, whose freckled wings cut through the air. Suddenly, the endeavor became much easier.
“Oh wow,” Ollo said, “have I gotten better?”
“No, we're in their slipstream, dullard. They’re breaking the air for us.”
Ollo raised his feeler and could indeed feel a displaced draft.
“Just don’t tail them too closely,” Flax said, “or they’ll switch and slipstream us.”
They kept at a following distance, and Ollo used the moment to catch his breath and admire this new universe. He couldn’t believe it. He was here. The Outside.
There were rocky immensities in the distance and vast fields of green. The atmosphere contained a breeze that contoured all flight, and an open humidity that filtered freshness into his being. Ollo took a deep inhalation. This is what adulthood is supposed to be.
“It tastes good, right?” Flax said, mostly gliding now.
“It does,” Ollo admitted. “It’s incredible.”
“For me, the racing doesn’t matter half as much as just being out here,” Flax said. “That’s all the reward I need.”
“You’ve never ranked well?”
“How can I? See these hairs on my thorax?”
Ollo looked beyond the tail he gripped. There flailed hundreds of tiny black fibers.
“Too much drag. Not to mention an entire body frame that’s off-balance.” Flax flexed his front two nubs. “No, I’ve accepted that I’ll be bringing up the rear for the rest of my life. But there are advantages to last place; you’ll see. Plus, it’s better than being stuck in that pond, am I right?”
Ollo nodded, though he was unsure if he agreed. Suddenly, the two duskhawkers ahead of them shifted.
“You want to stay away from where their wings shed air,” Flax said. “Especially during this turn. It’s easy to get caught up in vortices.”
Ollo watched the duskhawkers pull a U-turn around the shiny pole ahead of them.
“Steady,” Flax said. “Steady …”
The lights in Ollo’s vision swam, beckoning him to turn. The lights gently abated as he rounded the beacon carefully.
Dozens of small air cyclones dithered around Ollo. The shed vortices felt weak where they were in last place, but Ollo saw one of the duskhawkers spin out of control.
The poor duskhawker’s wings had twisted the wrong way, and he spiraled down to the earth. Ollo wasn’t sure what had happened, but he could swear, in the periphery of his vision, that something exploded.
***
“What was that?” Teresa asked. Blue sparks popped among the line of dragonflies like a firecracker.
“Oh yes: if they swerve too far from alignment, we can self-destruct their transceivers.” Diggs whirled his hand around a touch-device. “It’s a quick way to weed out any mistakes before the mission starts. It’s also how we prevent valuable flyers from getting into the wrong hands.” He shot Teresa a look that said: bet you didn’t think of that!
She didn’t like his bizarrely jovial attitude, especially considering these bugs were meant to be used for conflict areas. His whole sales approach seemed to forget that she was with the Air Force, not Amazon.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking.” Diggs walked backwards, pocketing his device. “These flyers are all very well and efficient, but how can I see them in action? True recon missions travel great distances over several days, do they not?”
Teresa didn’t say anything, She followed at half speed towards the parking lot, where Cesar now sat inside a golf cart.
“Well in honor of your visit, Sarge, we’ve prepared a little surprise.” Diggs gave a thumbs-up and Cesar bumbled the vehicle over the curb, pulling it onto the grass.
“Hop in.”
Good lord. What more is there to see? Theresa tried to think of something to end this joke. This carnival ride. But her mind was too encumbered by annoyance. A military rep could not be seen as weak.
She sat in the rear two seats, wondering if Diggs could read her resentment. The director leaned in from the front. “We’ll be going uphill, so buckle up!”
She grabbed a ceiling handle. He can’t read me at all. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.
The car throttled up a knoll, and the lack of shocks became evident as the wheels bounced over every pebble and crack.
Christ, what was the Major thinking when he sent me here?
She could hear his old, French cadence jabbering in her head. “It’s a showcase of living drones, Zhao! Made a huge splash at the expo. One of us should be there—and I think it should be you. It’s the forefront of its industry, and it needs someone of your expertise.” But all Teresa could see at this ‘forefront’ was glorified gnats: bird food. How could he have taken this all so seriously?
Then it occurred to her. Maybe he hadn’t.
Maybe she had been sent here as a farce. The more she thought about it, the more the whole visit began to reek of the same passive-aggression that had lingered since her days as a drone pilot: where lieutenants would assign her the latest night shift, or somehow leave her with the rattiest equipment or chair.
Could they be pranking her now? Some petty jab for becoming sergeant in place of someone else? Christ almighty. Even now, at the turn of the 22nd century, the military is a petulant boys’ club.
She watched the two scientists navigate their golf cart, its two-wheel-drive struggling. How much longer am I expected to sit through this? All afternoon? All night?
Being senior air force, Teresa did have access to an evac order. It was something she could theoretically request. But calling it here would be absurd. Wouldn’t it?
No more absurd than being sent to watch bug theatre.
She considered the idea. Wouldn’t it be funny? If they were going to waste her time, she could waste theirs. With her cellphone’s GPS, dispatch could locate her without a hitch. The request would only be a text away. A twenty-year official should be treated with respect.
The golf cart wheezed to the top of the neighboring hill to reveal a large, stylish-looking gazebo. Cesar pulled the E-brake and stopped in front of its glass entrance.
“What’s this?” Teresa stared.
“Oh, you’ll see.” Diggs stepped off the cart and lit a long, thin cigarette. “We’re just getting started.”
Upon approach, the doors slid open, revealing blue-glowing screens. A padded interior ushered comfort, and Teresa could soon hear the familiar hum of something refrigerating. The room contained several monitors that hung below a beautiful, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the valley. It felt newly renovated, but old enough to have a few mugs lying around.
Diggs smoked outside as Cesar rapidly began tapping on the screens, activating icons and plotting lines across some kind of map. The map kept resizing across the monitors, and as Teresa glanced back and forth, she could faintly see the shine of other metal pylons across the valley. Their placement corresponded to the markers on-screen.
“What is this? Some kind of watchtower?”
Diggs faced away, taking a drag with one arm on the door to prevent it from closing. “Well, you saw our little NASCAR warm-up where we started, right?”
Teresa looked at the field they had left, where a thin oval of dragonflies still circled.
Diggs exhaled. “Well, let’s just say from now on, we’ll be watching Formula One.”
His ember pointed at the cushy seats in the center. Teresa gawked at the chairs, but couldn’t bring herself to sit. Just when the bar on absurdity has been set—it somehow manages to skyrocket further.
***
On their fourth lap, the lights in Ollo’s head began to shimmer, beckoning a new trajectory. Before the colors turned piercingly bright, Flax broke from their path, pulling Ollo to the right.
“Finally,” the damselfly said, “prelim’s over.” In front of them, the linear plume of racers all travelled north, away from the established circuit.
“Wait … what’s going on?” “Can’t you sense her lights? The race has officially started, Ollie. And it looks like a new course.”
“It’s only started now?”
“That’s right. We’ve never flown north before. Lady Meganeura has carved us something special.”
Ollo gripped Flax’s tail and focused on his tandem wing-work. They had entered a steady rate of acceleration, with their wings fluttering in near-perfect opposites.
“Keh. Keep this up and we won’t need to rely on slipstreams.”
Ollo’s mandibles flashed a smile. He enjoyed seeing the grass blur quicker than before. Perhaps this racing does hold some purpose...
The lights guided them far away, towards a strange dirt field. It was strange because it was home to dozens of evenly-dispersed pillars, all about the height and size of an Envoy. They were white, square-shaped, and as Ollo passed the first row, he noticed a beaten, wood-like texture to them. They were full of dents and scratches, as if the pillars somehow rose and bumped each other from time to time.
“What are those things?” Ollo asked.
“Like I said, new course. No idea what Mega’s thinking.”
They flew straight and trailed behind the plume of racers, watching their shimmering wings toss blades of light. As they flew in deeper amongst the white pillars, a muffled buzzing grew louder from all directions. Ollo noticed the hairs on Flax’s thorax grow stiff.
The shimmers up front stopped progressing, and instead oscillated in circles. The distant racers then dispersed around the monoliths.
“Slow down,” Flax said.
“What’s going on?”
“Something’s not right.”
Out from the pillars came flying blue shapes, all buzzing loud and fierce. Thick streams of them gave chase to the racers ahead.
“We need to disengage,” Flax said.
As Ollo let go, they both witnessed one of the racers return their way: it was grey flatwing. The poor dragon was screaming, chased by two blue insects who dove in and out, taking bites of his tail.
“Get offa me! Get off!” The flatwing rapidly turned, tossing vortices at his assailants. The spinning air was powerful enough to sway Ollo and twist the blue bugs’ wings.
“Scramble!” Flax revved his thorax and dived into the cover of the weeds below.
Ollo watched the blue flyers steady their flight, lifting their black-and-blue striped bodies. Each of their abdomens ended in a long, black barb. Ollo had seen a few of these above the pond: bees.
***
“You’re making them fly through your bee farm?” From the window Teresa could no longer make out the drones, but she saw the little hives in the distance. Like tiny white bricks.
“Yes, well, earlier you were asking how they might feed.” Diggs rose from his seat and opened a mini-fridge. “I thought I’d let the drones snack on some of our other products. Like our signature blue bees.”
He grabbed some glass bottles that contained a gold-ish liquid and placed them on the side. “This makes for a nice segue actually—I’d like to introduce some of our artisanal mead, derived from those very bees. It’s smooth, not-too-sweet, with a unique, tangy aftertaste.”
The sergeant glanced from the off-topic drink to the screen Cesar was manipulating. This hive complex was labeled Marker Two on the very large map.
Marker two out of thirty. Good lord.
“The bees are one of the main branches of our company.” Devlin raised his glass and offered the others to Teresa and Cesar. “We are a self-sustaining business, after all, and invested in pollination, which, as you may know, is an extremely profitable endeavor. Our bees are among the few that can still do it.”
So he’s pitching his bees now? It seemed like this Diggs truly lived in his own reality.
“I know you probably assume some grants might’ve paid for our facility”—Diggs giggled—“but grants wouldn’t allow for such extravagance.” His fingers drummed along the gazebo walls, the tops of two monitors, and then the on-screen hive icons.
“It is our bees—which we’ve bred to be a bit more aggressive than others—that ensure we stay on top of the market. It’s what funds our dragonflies, our silkworms, our termites...”
Teresa could not handle whatever this was turning into. There was no way she could stomach hours of this derailed demo and keep a straight face.
Damn you, Major. Never again.
With her hand in her pocket, Teresa sent the text she had prepared. Screw it.
Emergency evac requested. If she was going to have her leg pulled all day, she might as well pull back.
Diggs continued to sip and gasconade, mead swirling in his hand. Teresa nodded along, grabbed her own glass and allowed herself to drink.

I - II - III - IV
The fleshy centers in both of Teresa’s palms were starting to bruise.
Diggs’ spiel had somehow transported them outside the Entodome, out to an open field not far from the facility parking lot. He was now directing her attention to the mobile “Dragondrone hangar” (which still looked more like a barbecue than anything else), where Cesar held his hands above the latch.
“Now this. This is one of my favorite parts.” Diggs smirked, his arms held behind his lab coat. “It’s what fills seats at every expo.”
Teresa fought the urge to groan. Oh, just get on with it. She watched as Cesar opened their little “hangar” and unleashed a cloud of bewildered dragonflies into the air. It was a mass of confused movement.
Well, here goes. This is where they all fly off. Bye Bye.
But to Teresa’s surprise, The dragonfly horde swirled into one precise shape, unifying and shooting forward like a directed puff of smoke.
Diggs stepped in front of the now-empty barbecue. “You see that pole they’re aiming for?” He pointed at a metallic pylon in the distance. “They’ll be upon it shortly. We program their transceivers to fly back and forth between these two points.” He motioned again to the barbecue. “It allows us to perform some baseline inspection. Quality control.”
Teresa nodded slowly, not really in awe, but in a bemused sort of devastation. How on earth could this be sustainable? The enemy might as well release children with fly swatters. Or frogs. She tried to think of something to ask, to convince herself this afternoon hadn’t been a huge waste of her time. She turned to Cesar with an open palm. “So … how long do they live for?”
The assistant clearly hadn’t been expecting to talk. “Um. Well it depends,” he said. “Most of them? Twelve months.”
Only a year? Teresa bit her tongue. “Can they handle extreme climates?”
“Well, it depends.” His eyes stared at the ground. “What kind?”
She fought the urge to face-palm. We’re fighting in the arctic, what kind do you think?
Devlin quickly intervened. “We can breed them to survive near anything. And the beauty is, they’ll always feed themselves! Infinite battery power.”
Teresa’s mind kept finding more holes to poke. “And if there isn’t any food? What then?”
“Oh they’ll hunt anywhere,” Diggs said with a certainty. “Flies and mosquitoes exist on every continent, which makes our Dragondrones extremely versatile. All terrain.”
Is he trying to sell me a car? She turned before her annoyance could show and pretended to watch the line of insects returning from the shiny pylon.
On second thought, a car wouldn’t be so bad. I could drive it straight to the airport, instead of waiting for the courtesy vehicle after this flea circus.
***
“Use your wings!” Flax yelled, swaying the tail that Ollo gripped. “It only works if you flap in tandem with me!”
Ollo tried, but he was having trouble synchronizing his muscles. He panicked as they sputtered awkwardly, beginning to plunge. The shadows of the three Envoys stood tall and still in the distance: judging on behalf of The Ancestor.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, no, no.
Ollo focused and very quickly discovered his panic doubled as an effective metronome.
Oh - no. Up - down. Oh - no. Up - down.
“Keh! That’s more like it!” Flax yanked them toward the tail-end of the racers. They lined up behind a pair of large duskhawkers, whose freckled wings cut through the air. Suddenly, the endeavor became much easier.
“Oh wow,” Ollo said, “have I gotten better?”
“No, we're in their slipstream, dullard. They’re breaking the air for us.”
Ollo raised his feeler and could indeed feel a displaced draft.
“Just don’t tail them too closely,” Flax said, “or they’ll switch and slipstream us.”
They kept at a following distance, and Ollo used the moment to catch his breath and admire this new universe. He couldn’t believe it. He was here. The Outside.
There were rocky immensities in the distance and vast fields of green. The atmosphere contained a breeze that contoured all flight, and an open humidity that filtered freshness into his being. Ollo took a deep inhalation. This is what adulthood is supposed to be.
“It tastes good, right?” Flax said, mostly gliding now.
“It does,” Ollo admitted. “It’s incredible.”
“For me, the racing doesn’t matter half as much as just being out here,” Flax said. “That’s all the reward I need.”
“You’ve never ranked well?”
“How can I? See these hairs on my thorax?”
Ollo looked beyond the tail he gripped. There flailed hundreds of tiny black fibers.
“Too much drag. Not to mention an entire body frame that’s off-balance.” Flax flexed his front two nubs. “No, I’ve accepted that I’ll be bringing up the rear for the rest of my life. But there are advantages to last place; you’ll see. Plus, it’s better than being stuck in that pond, am I right?”
Ollo nodded, though he was unsure if he agreed. Suddenly, the two duskhawkers ahead of them shifted.
“You want to stay away from where their wings shed air,” Flax said. “Especially during this turn. It’s easy to get caught up in vortices.”
Ollo watched the duskhawkers pull a U-turn around the shiny pole ahead of them.
“Steady,” Flax said. “Steady …”
The lights in Ollo’s vision swam, beckoning him to turn. The lights gently abated as he rounded the beacon carefully.
Dozens of small air cyclones dithered around Ollo. The shed vortices felt weak where they were in last place, but Ollo saw one of the duskhawkers spin out of control.
The poor duskhawker’s wings had twisted the wrong way, and he spiraled down to the earth. Ollo wasn’t sure what had happened, but he could swear, in the periphery of his vision, that something exploded.
***
“What was that?” Teresa asked. Blue sparks popped among the line of dragonflies like a firecracker.
“Oh yes: if they swerve too far from alignment, we can self-destruct their transceivers.” Diggs whirled his hand around a touch-device. “It’s a quick way to weed out any mistakes before the mission starts. It’s also how we prevent valuable flyers from getting into the wrong hands.” He shot Teresa a look that said: bet you didn’t think of that!
She didn’t like his bizarrely jovial attitude, especially considering these bugs were meant to be used for conflict areas. His whole sales approach seemed to forget that she was with the Air Force, not Amazon.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking.” Diggs walked backwards, pocketing his device. “These flyers are all very well and efficient, but how can I see them in action? True recon missions travel great distances over several days, do they not?”
Teresa didn’t say anything, She followed at half speed towards the parking lot, where Cesar now sat inside a golf cart.
“Well in honor of your visit, Sarge, we’ve prepared a little surprise.” Diggs gave a thumbs-up and Cesar bumbled the vehicle over the curb, pulling it onto the grass.
“Hop in.”
Good lord. What more is there to see? Theresa tried to think of something to end this joke. This carnival ride. But her mind was too encumbered by annoyance. A military rep could not be seen as weak.
She sat in the rear two seats, wondering if Diggs could read her resentment. The director leaned in from the front. “We’ll be going uphill, so buckle up!”
She grabbed a ceiling handle. He can’t read me at all. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.
The car throttled up a knoll, and the lack of shocks became evident as the wheels bounced over every pebble and crack.
Christ, what was the Major thinking when he sent me here?
She could hear his old, French cadence jabbering in her head. “It’s a showcase of living drones, Zhao! Made a huge splash at the expo. One of us should be there—and I think it should be you. It’s the forefront of its industry, and it needs someone of your expertise.” But all Teresa could see at this ‘forefront’ was glorified gnats: bird food. How could he have taken this all so seriously?
Then it occurred to her. Maybe he hadn’t.
Maybe she had been sent here as a farce. The more she thought about it, the more the whole visit began to reek of the same passive-aggression that had lingered since her days as a drone pilot: where lieutenants would assign her the latest night shift, or somehow leave her with the rattiest equipment or chair.
Could they be pranking her now? Some petty jab for becoming sergeant in place of someone else? Christ almighty. Even now, at the turn of the 22nd century, the military is a petulant boys’ club.
She watched the two scientists navigate their golf cart, its two-wheel-drive struggling. How much longer am I expected to sit through this? All afternoon? All night?
Being senior air force, Teresa did have access to an evac order. It was something she could theoretically request. But calling it here would be absurd. Wouldn’t it?
No more absurd than being sent to watch bug theatre.
She considered the idea. Wouldn’t it be funny? If they were going to waste her time, she could waste theirs. With her cellphone’s GPS, dispatch could locate her without a hitch. The request would only be a text away. A twenty-year official should be treated with respect.
The golf cart wheezed to the top of the neighboring hill to reveal a large, stylish-looking gazebo. Cesar pulled the E-brake and stopped in front of its glass entrance.
“What’s this?” Teresa stared.
“Oh, you’ll see.” Diggs stepped off the cart and lit a long, thin cigarette. “We’re just getting started.”
Upon approach, the doors slid open, revealing blue-glowing screens. A padded interior ushered comfort, and Teresa could soon hear the familiar hum of something refrigerating. The room contained several monitors that hung below a beautiful, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the valley. It felt newly renovated, but old enough to have a few mugs lying around.
Diggs smoked outside as Cesar rapidly began tapping on the screens, activating icons and plotting lines across some kind of map. The map kept resizing across the monitors, and as Teresa glanced back and forth, she could faintly see the shine of other metal pylons across the valley. Their placement corresponded to the markers on-screen.
“What is this? Some kind of watchtower?”
Diggs faced away, taking a drag with one arm on the door to prevent it from closing. “Well, you saw our little NASCAR warm-up where we started, right?”
Teresa looked at the field they had left, where a thin oval of dragonflies still circled.
Diggs exhaled. “Well, let’s just say from now on, we’ll be watching Formula One.”
His ember pointed at the cushy seats in the center. Teresa gawked at the chairs, but couldn’t bring herself to sit. Just when the bar on absurdity has been set—it somehow manages to skyrocket further.
***
On their fourth lap, the lights in Ollo’s head began to shimmer, beckoning a new trajectory. Before the colors turned piercingly bright, Flax broke from their path, pulling Ollo to the right.
“Finally,” the damselfly said, “prelim’s over.” In front of them, the linear plume of racers all travelled north, away from the established circuit.
“Wait … what’s going on?” “Can’t you sense her lights? The race has officially started, Ollie. And it looks like a new course.”
“It’s only started now?”
“That’s right. We’ve never flown north before. Lady Meganeura has carved us something special.”
Ollo gripped Flax’s tail and focused on his tandem wing-work. They had entered a steady rate of acceleration, with their wings fluttering in near-perfect opposites.
“Keh. Keep this up and we won’t need to rely on slipstreams.”
Ollo’s mandibles flashed a smile. He enjoyed seeing the grass blur quicker than before. Perhaps this racing does hold some purpose...
The lights guided them far away, towards a strange dirt field. It was strange because it was home to dozens of evenly-dispersed pillars, all about the height and size of an Envoy. They were white, square-shaped, and as Ollo passed the first row, he noticed a beaten, wood-like texture to them. They were full of dents and scratches, as if the pillars somehow rose and bumped each other from time to time.
“What are those things?” Ollo asked.
“Like I said, new course. No idea what Mega’s thinking.”
They flew straight and trailed behind the plume of racers, watching their shimmering wings toss blades of light. As they flew in deeper amongst the white pillars, a muffled buzzing grew louder from all directions. Ollo noticed the hairs on Flax’s thorax grow stiff.
The shimmers up front stopped progressing, and instead oscillated in circles. The distant racers then dispersed around the monoliths.
“Slow down,” Flax said.
“What’s going on?”
“Something’s not right.”
Out from the pillars came flying blue shapes, all buzzing loud and fierce. Thick streams of them gave chase to the racers ahead.
“We need to disengage,” Flax said.
As Ollo let go, they both witnessed one of the racers return their way: it was grey flatwing. The poor dragon was screaming, chased by two blue insects who dove in and out, taking bites of his tail.
“Get offa me! Get off!” The flatwing rapidly turned, tossing vortices at his assailants. The spinning air was powerful enough to sway Ollo and twist the blue bugs’ wings.
“Scramble!” Flax revved his thorax and dived into the cover of the weeds below.
Ollo watched the blue flyers steady their flight, lifting their black-and-blue striped bodies. Each of their abdomens ended in a long, black barb. Ollo had seen a few of these above the pond: bees.
***
“You’re making them fly through your bee farm?” From the window Teresa could no longer make out the drones, but she saw the little hives in the distance. Like tiny white bricks.
“Yes, well, earlier you were asking how they might feed.” Diggs rose from his seat and opened a mini-fridge. “I thought I’d let the drones snack on some of our other products. Like our signature blue bees.”
He grabbed some glass bottles that contained a gold-ish liquid and placed them on the side. “This makes for a nice segue actually—I’d like to introduce some of our artisanal mead, derived from those very bees. It’s smooth, not-too-sweet, with a unique, tangy aftertaste.”
The sergeant glanced from the off-topic drink to the screen Cesar was manipulating. This hive complex was labeled Marker Two on the very large map.
Marker two out of thirty. Good lord.
“The bees are one of the main branches of our company.” Devlin raised his glass and offered the others to Teresa and Cesar. “We are a self-sustaining business, after all, and invested in pollination, which, as you may know, is an extremely profitable endeavor. Our bees are among the few that can still do it.”
So he’s pitching his bees now? It seemed like this Diggs truly lived in his own reality.
“I know you probably assume some grants might’ve paid for our facility”—Diggs giggled—“but grants wouldn’t allow for such extravagance.” His fingers drummed along the gazebo walls, the tops of two monitors, and then the on-screen hive icons.
“It is our bees—which we’ve bred to be a bit more aggressive than others—that ensure we stay on top of the market. It’s what funds our dragonflies, our silkworms, our termites...”
Teresa could not handle whatever this was turning into. There was no way she could stomach hours of this derailed demo and keep a straight face.
Damn you, Major. Never again.
With her hand in her pocket, Teresa sent the text she had prepared. Screw it.
Emergency evac requested. If she was going to have her leg pulled all day, she might as well pull back.
Diggs continued to sip and gasconade, mead swirling in his hand. Teresa nodded along, grabbed her own glass and allowed herself to drink.

(Part 1)
(Part 2)
(Part 3)
(Part 4)
(Part 5)
As far as I knew, I had gone deeper into the bizarre other word that existed inside of Pop’s Grocery than anyone had before. I had discovered an end to the supposedly endless aisles: a wall of freezer-burned refrigerators with two rusted double-doors in the middle: doors which, in my reality, led to the cold storage area. As I stepped through them, some instinct screamed that I was making a mistake, that this was my last chance to turn back: I ignored it. I had come this far, and who could say if I would ever be back here again?
When I didn’t hear any doors close behind me, I knew something was wrong. The employees at Pop’s were constantly complaining about how the doors swung shut with a vengeance, always smashing the foot or shoulder of whoever was pushing a palette through to the other side, but the moment I stepped through, it was like the whole place I had left behind had ceased to exist. The doors, the refrigerators, the endless aisles–they were all gone. The fishing wire went limp in my hands.
A bare concrete floor stretched on as far as the light of my headlamp could reach. The space was dark…and freezing. My employees and I usually put on an extra layer when we worked in cold storage, but the temperatures here were so low that my teeth were chattering. I put on the heavier clothes I’d brought in my backpack. My grandfather had been right: expedition-quality gear was needed while exploring…wherever this was.
I started walking forward–or at least in the direction I thought was forward. The emptiness of the space was starting to get to me; the cold was too. I just needed to see some kind of landmark, some sign that the darkness I was trapped in didn't just go on forever...
I almost fell down the stairs. They were the same ugly gray color as the concrete floor–almost like they’d been made to blend in on purpose. By who or what, I couldn’t imagine, but this was a first: there were no stairs in the cold storage area of Pop’s, and none had been mentioned in my grandfather’s journal, either. Was this where it all ended? Had Frank Kelch, Sheriff Paulson, and my grandfather all reached this point, too–and never come back from what lay beyond it?
There was only one way to find out. I pulled my knit cap a little tighter over my ears and started down the stairs. The air got colder and hazier the further I went, filled with tiny floating particles, like dust. I was just beginning to wonder what they were and whether breathing them in might be dangerous when a white-hot burst of pain exploded in my shin. I tumbled forward, crashing into a wall that signaled the end of the stairs. My blood turned to ice when I realized what I had tripped over: it was another fishing wire. Someone had been here before!
I got to my feet, brushing clouds of blackish-gray dust from my clothes. To the right was an eerily-ordinary door that read “MANAGER:” it probably led back to the maze of offices I knew so well. Wary of awakening whatever was on the other side, I looked left, where the fishing wire led down a tangled corridor of cords, tubes, and rusted pipes.
Each time the corridor branched in a new direction, I followed the fishing wire. I knew it was foolish to believe that whoever had placed the wire knew the way out of here, but it was the only hope I had. Frayed electrical wires hung down like cobwebs from the low ceiling; pipes jutted out into the narrow passage like vines in some bizarre industrial jungle. Just as I was stepping over one, I heard an uncannily familiar sound up ahead: a roll of fishing wire unraveling. I rushed around the corner up ahead, eager to meet whoever was exploring this place with me. I should have known.
I got lucky. The shotgun blast deafened me, but missed taking off my face by just a few inches. Shrapnel from the wall sliced into my cheeks as I instinctively hit the floor, hands over my head.
“Don’t shoot!” I screamed at the short, stocky figure standing at the far end of the hallway. He had a yellowed miner’s flashlight taped to his shotgun and wore gear that looked like Korean War kit from some army surplus store. I rolled backwards as he fired a second time.
“LIAR!” A hoarse voice roared. “You won’t fool me, you beast, you hellspawn! DIE!”
More deafening shots blasted the wall; a few of the pipes began leaking a murky reddish liquid that steamed as it oozed out of them, but I had bigger problems: the crazed explorer was charging me. All I could do was run, following the most convoluted path in the hopes that my pursuer wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot. As I sprinted away from the deranged, howling voice behind me, the corridors became…stranger. The walls and floor were no longer entirely concrete and wire; parts of them were uncomfortably spongy and warm to the touch. The branching pipes took on organic shapes that reminded me uncomfortably of human veins.
“Liar! Face-stealer! What did you do with Eddie?!!”
Eddie…Edgar Lee…my grandfather!
Another shot hit the wall in front of me. This time, an awful moan reverberated through the corridor. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this part of Pop’s was alive somehow–and that we were making it angry. The ragged wires hanging from the ceiling now seemed more like hair; the floor became uneven and…bone-like. I had to act. Crouching behind a sharp corner, I took off my backpack. When my pursuer came charging past, I swung it into his face as hard as I could. The big man went down…but kept his grip on the shotgun. I coiled myself around it, fighting to pry it from his grasp as he fired twice more into the ceiling of the corridor. By the time I wrangled it away from him, it was out of ammunition…and more of that murky red goo was dripping from the ceiling above him.
I looked down at the now-empty shotgun. “Paulson” read the name engraved into the stock.
“I’m not a monster!” I shouted. “I’m Edgar Lee’s grandson!”
“That’s impossible…that’s…that’s…” It seemed to take Sheriff Paulson a moment to realize how absurd it was to think that anything was ‘impossible’ in a place like this. “It got to Eddie. He’s a part of it now. My God…how…how long have I been here?”
Sheriff Paulson looked to be in his early sixties–probably the age he was when he, Frank Kelch, and my grandfather began exploring the place–but I wasn’t concerned about that then. I was more worried about the ragged mass of black tendrils hanging down from the ceiling above Paulson, from the hole that he’d created by firing so wildly with the shotgun. I had thought it was my imagination at first, but those wires–or hairs, or whatever they were–had begun to stretch downward toward the heavyset old man on the floor. Before I could shout a warning, they had coiled around him, lifting him toward the black fissure in the ceiling.
“You won’t take me–no, you won’t take me–NO!” He flailed his arms wildly, but it was too late. The ragged reddish stuff that the ceiling was made of chomped down on Paulson again and again until nothing was left of him apart from a single gore-splattered boot, which tumbled to the ground at my feet. The tendrils were inching toward me now, and I had no intention of being consumed as Paulson had. I sprinted forward, fleeing even deeper into the maze of tunnels.
I came here looking for answers about what had happened to my grandfather, but now that I had begun to find them, was I really sure that I WANTED to know?

Cross post from elsewhere, forgive me :) I don't smoke since 2013, but had a 20 year habit of 0.5 to 0.75 ppd. I know, it was the worst idea. I drink only on special occasions like holidays, and never to excess. Average less than a drink per month. I do use edible THC very occasionally as well, history of cancer and iatrogenic nerve pain with which that helps. Medical conditions as below, am very sorry but unable to include pictures or imaging.
This is more of a triage and process question in any event, cross post below the break
Hi folks, I'm kind of at the end of my wits and could use some advice.
Quick rundown: I developed metastatic melanoma in 2020, just after the coronavirus pandemic began. I discovered the resulting tumor in my neck, after a CT scan I was taken near immediately to surgery so it could be removed (secondary site, they took the tumor, most of my right parotid gland, and 23 lymph nodes, fortunately only one of those was malignant).
This was followed by excision of primary site on my scalp 2 months later, I had 30 fractions of IMRT, total 60 cGy to head and neck to clean up what might remain. This was followed by a year of monthly nivolumab infusions. Since 2021, everything treatment wise has been over, labs excellent, CT clear as anything, declared remitted in 2022. I am still doing well and will be considered cured in 2026.
I had mild periodontal disease also. A combination of things both pandemic and financially related (I had a lot to pay for) kept me away from dental care until 2023, when my teeth began crumbling. I went immediately to an emergency dentist, who shrugged at me and sent me to an OMS. OMS said, you will probably need 13 teeth extracted, and sent me to a prosthodontist with great bedside manner that I could not remotely afford. I didn't return, although I was confident in both fellows.
I kept up with hygiene the best I was able and for a while, things were okay.
Two weeks ago, my left upper lateral incisor broke in half. it surprised me, but there was no pain or bleeding so I think it has probably been dead a while.
I called another emergency dentist, and developed an abscess in the right mandibular canine prior to seeing them. This dentist said, you are beyond my capabilities, please go see OMS #2. Meanwhile, here is a week of amoxicillin 500 tid, let's see how that does so we don't get invasive before we have to. we do not want you to develop necrosis.
OMS #2 said, the dentist did not tell us what we needed to look at, we'll get records from them and radiation oncology regarding your pathing and total dose and then we will have a treatment plan for you.
That's where I am now, the amoxicillin has been making some progress because I'm expressing pus from the gum boil beneath the canine, but I still have some pretty distracting pain, I'm not able to eat or open my jaw well, and I don't need to tell any of you that the whole pus business is unpleasant.
I want to address the whole situation but dentistry is beyond my knowledge (I am a surgical and recovery nurse, but almost ignorant of how oral health works other than brush, floss, get cleanings). Accordingly it's hard to triage but, my gut tells me first, treat the infected tooth, then get plane and scale for the rest so there's no gum infection when they go, then complex extraction because there's little left of the mandibular arch, and after that some form of prosthodontia.
I know it's a long process, I'm willing to go through it, but I'm in a lot of pain, totally grossed out at what my own body is doing, and just damn tired of liquid or near liquid food. I feel like time is important because I don't want to lose bone or go septic.
Please help me sort out where to begin? I certainly appreciate any wisdom you've got to offer because navigating this has been a total maze.
Thank you all.

Hi folks, I'm kind of at the end of my wits and could use some advice.
Quick rundown: I developed metastatic melanoma in 2020, just after the coronavirus pandemic began. I discovered the resulting tumor in my neck, after a CT scan I was taken near immediately to surgery so it could be removed (secondary site, they took the tumor, most of my right parotid gland, and 23 lymph nodes, fortunately only one of those was malignant).
This was followed by excision of primary site on my scalp 2 months later, I had 30 fractions of IMRT, total 60 cGy to head and neck to clean up what might remain. This was followed by a year of monthly nivolumab infusions. Since 2021, everything treatment wise has been over, labs excellent, CT clear as anything, declared remitted in 2022. I am still doing well and will be considered cured in 2026.
I had mild periodontal disease also. A combination of things both pandemic and financially related (I had a lot to pay for) kept me away from dental care until 2023, when my teeth began crumbling. I went immediately to an emergency dentist, who shrugged at me and sent me to an OMS. OMS said, you will probably need 13 teeth extracted, and sent me to a prosthodontist with great bedside manner that I could not remotely afford. I didn't return, although I was confident in both fellows.
I kept up with hygiene the best I was able and for a while, things were okay.
Two weeks ago, my left upper lateral incisor broke in half. it surprised me, but there was no pain or bleeding so I think it has probably been dead a while.
I called another emergency dentist, and developed an abscess in the right mandibular canine prior to seeing them. This dentist said, you are beyond my capabilities, please go see OMS #2. Meanwhile, here is a week of amoxicillin 500 tid, let's see how that does so we don't get invasive before we have to. we do not want you to develop necrosis.
OMS #2 said, the dentist did not tell us what we needed to look at, we'll get records from them and radiation oncology regarding your pathing and total dose and then we will have a treatment plan for you.
That's where I am now, the amoxicillin has been making some progress because I'm expressing pus from the gum boil beneath the canine, but I still have some pretty distracting pain, I'm not able to eat or open my jaw well, and I don't need to tell any of you that the whole pus business is unpleasant.
I want to address the whole situation but dentistry is beyond my knowledge (I am a surgical and recovery nurse, but almost ignorant of how oral health works other than brush, floss, get cleanings). Accordingly it's hard to triage but, my gut tells me first, treat the infected tooth, then get plane and scale for the rest so there's no gum infection when they go, then complex extraction because there's little left of the mandibular arch, and after that some form of prosthodontia.
I know it's a long process, I'm willing to go through it, but I'm in a lot of pain, totally grossed out at what my own body is doing, and just damn tired of liquid or near liquid food. I feel like time is important because I don't want to lose bone or go septic.
Please help me sort out where to begin? I certainly appreciate any wisdom you've got to offer because navigating this has been a total maze.
Thank you all.

So I have been purchasing the "Just Egg" liquid product for several years, now, and have never had any issues with them. Just recently, however, the last 4 cartons I've purchased have been really bad. They are pretty much inedible. They stick to the pan (well oiled), to my spatula, and they appear to not cook thoroughly. They break up into very small, wet pieces that do not hold any shape or texture. They look absolutely awful. Over my years of cooking Just Egg, I've NEVER had any issues like this. I've had to throw all 4 cartons away... and they are not cheap.
Does anyone know if they have they changed the recipe? The ingredients? Is there a reasonable explanation or theory anyone could provide that could explain the reason why the cartons I've purchased are doing this?
I'm storing them in my refrigerator, just the same as I've always done. They are not expired. I shake them very well before using. I've done nothing different on my part to yield different results.
Has anyone else experienced any changes like this recently? Maybe my grocery store is storing them improperly? 🤔