Bag pattern

Recently I had to travel out of country last second. I booked a cheap place with good reviews on Airbnb.
When I arrived, it was dirty, so I requested a recleaning. I figured that would be the end of it. I slept with no noticeable developments.
The next day, I began to notice places where my skin was exposed(both arms and neck)was covered in bites, based on pattern and timing,likely bedbugs.
My worst nightmare.
I changed rooms&floor that day,&never had another bite during the rest of my trip. never saw a bug inside any of my luggage/belongings. I checked really well. Turning items inside out, checking in the seams.
I hung my clothes on a metal rack and kept my luggage off the ground. I took super hot showers every day.
That first room's bed was up on a loft,& seemed unlikely they would travel down the metal staircase to my stuff. Of course, there is always a chance.
Fast forward to 6 days later; coming home, my partner of 1.5 years, whom I live with, didn't hug me when I arrived. At that point, mentally, I felt a bit like a bug, myself. more than anything, I wanted to feel supported during that time.
I changed clothes at a convenience store & went to a coin laundry & washed all of the clothes in super hot water&dried them. I quarantined my other belongings to my balcony, in garbage bags, until I could figure out a game plan.
My partner said I need to throw my suitcase away, because they were scared that a bug may be inside. I could understand their fear; I lived it for a week.
I Checked my body and belongings daily. I checked the whole suitcase inside and out: Nothing.
I don't understand why there is no problem with keeping my clothes or other fabric items, but my suitcase must be thrown.
I planned to scrub the entire thing inside out several times with rubbing alcohol, get tea tree oil,&quarantine it on the balcony for a few months.
In the first case, I don't know 100% that it was bedbugs, as the host refused to confirm, and said that they are " very rare" in that country, despite the accommodation seeing new faces daily.
But the bottom line is that my suitcase is a perfectly good, relatively new suitcase that I bought myself, and I can't afford to replace it right now.
My partner said, if there was a bug or infestation in our room, I would have to pay 100% of whatever it costs to have them exterminated. I understood, despite feeling punished for a situation i by no means wanted for, and taking the precautions I reasonably could. It'd been a really stressful and emotional trip because of bugs.
I inquired to my partner, "I care about your peace of mind, so if I throw it away, would you be willing to help me to replace the suitcase to help the financial burden it would incur on me as well?"
And they recoiled and started calling me selfish, crazy,&unreasonable while muttering under their breath.
I can't understand why I have to bear all of the responsibility and fault.
AITA in this situation?

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"Leave the sleeping dragons lie in peace" is a lesson that seemingly has to be taught to every wannabe conqueror over and over again.
Time after time, there will be a few idiots who only see the dragon's hoard, its cult of followers, and ignore the piles of rusted, slagged, calcified, scorched remains of every moron who tried before them. They see all of this and think "I can beat it to submission and take everything it has."
And then the dragon wakes up, and more smoldering remains are added to the scorched scrap heap.
And the Malevolent Universe grins in the darkness, and increases the "Dead morons who should have known better" counter by one. Then, waits for the next contestant. - u/Matt_Bradock, Terran Philosopher, Age of Paranoia, TerraSol
^{initiating data stream
your name is Dhruv-661391
you were purchased for the same price as a moderately priced luxury vehicle}
She knows the dead. She is of the dead. She is the keeper and guardian of the dead. Life, death and the feasting of swarms all are one within her. She knows where once-dead things were laid to rest and where the deathless still dream in their unliving slumber. She knows where the hungry dead have roamed the universe's fields, and where they still roam them unburied, and why no one remembers them as they tread. - The Fifth Horseman, First Terran Imperium, "Meditations Upon Immortals"
^{you were created to serve}
What we tell ourselves, what we tell others, and what actually happened, are often three different things.
And sometimes four. - Unknown, Age of Paranoia, TerraSol
^{your name is Dhruv
and your brain was once smooth}
Captain N'Skrek checked his datalink.
The deep data storage was still at work bringing up information on "Legion" and "Sacajawea". The older databases of the Gray Lady had data at the ready, but it was sparse.
Two of the Biological Apostles of the Digital Omnimessiah, a figure of myth and legend.
Yet, they sat across from him.
They were talking back and forth in a language that the computer's linguistic database had no record of and stubbornly resisted any attempt to decipher it.
What N'Skrek did hear was several words that he recognized.
Daxin the Unfeeling. Daxin Freeborn. Chromium Saint Peter. Enraged Phillip. Matthias the Elder. Matthias the Younger. Kibuka. Kalki. Gravity.
A litany that left data scrolling down the empty space just beyond the edge of his peripheral vision.
Daxin "The Walking War Crime" Freeborn.
NavInt and MilInt were projecting with an 80% certainty (adjusted downward for unknown probabilities) that the beings in front of him were from that long bygone era.
Finally Captain N'Skrek cleared his throat.
The bald one, Legion, turned to look at the gathered staff officers.
"My apologies. I was catching my sister up on what has transpired since she disappeared," Legion said, smiling gently. He nodded. "You probably have questions."
N'Skrek nodded back. "The biggest one is: how did you..." he thought for a second. "Why did you..." no, that wouldn't work. "What bring about..."
Legion smiled.
"How did I replace all of your clones and why?" he asked. "Why is it that if you print off too many identical clones I show up?"
N'Skrek nodded. "Yes."
Legion looked at the Terran officers and smiled wider. It was a cruel smile, reminding N'Skrek of a hook pointed knife that had been sharpened to a keen edge.
"You didn't tell them? Have you really forgotten about me?" he asked.
"It was assumed to be still prevented by the cloning systems," Vice-Admiral Breakheader stated slowly. "We have only recently been restored ourselves. Less than two months time."
Legion just smiled.
Vice-Admiral Breakheader turned to look at Captain N'Skrek. "Running off too many identical clones causes Legion to manifest. It's why we use the Born Whole system, it ensures they have different brains, different expriences, and they have a slight variation to pore and retinal patterns, hair growth, minor things like that. Otherwise, Legion manifests."
"Why?" N'Skrek asked.
The Vice-Admiral sat silently for a moment before replying. "Because," was all he said.
Legion's smile didn't leave his face.
"Because it is my nature," he said.
Sacajawea said something and Legion replied in the same language, then turned to N'Skrek.
"My sister does not know why she was rebirthed," he said. He looked at her and spoke rapidly. She answered, only a few words, which made Legion reply at length. Again, only a few words.
"It must have been important," N'Skrek interrupted.
"She states that she does not know why the Immortals system did not rebirth her when she died," Legion said. He glanced at her. "She tells me that she died, with her people, when her peaceful planet was attacked."
"By the Mar-gite?" N'Skrek asked.
Again, more conversation.
"Yes," Legion answered. He frowned as she spoke again. "She says they were a peaceful planet. Anarcho-Primitivism. Very little technology. The Mar-gite attacked without warning."
She spoke rapidly and Legion listened.
N'Skrek saw the computer still was not able to parse the language, even though it could build a lexicon of off very little data for almost any other language it encountered.
Legion turned and faced N'Skrek. "She states that she believes it was the fact that some of her people demanded that high technology be left in place in order to allow the six planets her people had settled to remain in contact. That the high tech farming and sustenance industries led the Mar-gite to attack her."
Again, Sacajawea spoke, her head lifted, looking down at Legion.
"Why she was not reborn is unknown to her. She had guided and shepherded her people for thousands of years before the outsiders came. Outsiders drawn by technology, by the abandonment of the old ways," Legion said. He was frowning as he spoke rapidly.
The conversation took a few minutes.
"She said the outsiders came and wiped her people out after entire generations held them off. That in the final battle, they overcame her when her strength failed," Legion said. There was more talking. "She's describing the Mar-gite."
"Where was this?" N'Skrek asked, bringing up a map of the galaxy. "The First Mar-gite War was only three hundred years prior to the Council-Confederacy Conflict and lasted nearly a hundred years," the brought up a sketchy timeline of the era. "When did you encounter the Mar-gite and where?"
Sacajawea spoke again at length. Legion spoke back. It grew heated for a moment before Legion looked at N'Skrek.
"She will not say. She does not want us to defile or desecrate the worlds her people settled. She does not want us to know when or where," he said.
"That might be pertinent information," N'Skrek said. "Important information to keep the Mar-gite from overwhelming the Cygnus-Orion Spur."
Sacajawea spoke quickly, heatedly, half standing up. Legion put his hand on her shoulder, obviously encouraging her to sit down, but she shrugged, throwing off Legion's hand, and her speech got more heated, her eyes flashing with anger.
"She says she will not reveal her people's resting place for us to dig up the graves and desecrate them. That it is not anyone's business where The People have gone or what The People have done," Legion said. He turned and answered her.
The conversation got heated as the N'Skrek and the officers watched.
Finally, Sacajawea stood up and turned around, folding her arms across her chest, lifting her chin.
Legion's skin darkened with anger.
"Then you can tell them that load of bullshit yourself, little sister," he snapped.
He suddenly vanished in a swirl of black powder that evaporated.
N'Skrek saw that Sacajawea was shocked by Legion's disappearance. She stood there for a long moment.
"Dhruv?" she asked mid-air.
N'Skrek motioned his officers to stay silent.
"Dhruv?" she snapped, stomping one foot.
Still silence.
"Luke!' she half-shouted, stamping her foot again.
She turned and looked at the gathered staff officers, who were all staring at her.
"Legion?" she asked quietly.
N'Skrek held up one bladearm.
"It appears, Miss, that you will have to speak for yourself."
Sacajawea frowned and clamped her lips together.
N'Skrek just stared mildly.
^{your name was tiffany}
0-0-0-0-0
^{your name was dhruv
you were created to serve the deshmuhk family
you were a gardener and a menial
but you have risen above that}
Jaskel had just gotten a plate of food and sat down in one corner of the cavernous Dining Bay Twenty-Three.
True, it was a little bit of a walk from the Telkan Marine section to that particular dining facility, but for some reason Jaskel liked the food put out by Nutriforge-Eight better than any of the others.
Like the Gunny always said, it was the little things that count.
He had arranged his silverware, his drink, and given a short prayer when he suddenly wasn't alone.
A slender man in an unfamiliar uniform suddenly appeared at one of the tables on the far side of the Dining Bay. Jaskel watched as two more stepped out of the first. They all sat down and started talking rapidly.
To Jaskel, it sounded like an argument.
It looked like one person arguing with himself.
Jaskel ate quietly and slowly, trying to avoid attracting attention, but watching the Terran out of the corner of his eye.
Terrans were universally half-crazy.
And a Terran arguing with clones of himself was probably full blown crazy.
That, and Jaskel remembered how negligent the display of power had been that had left him hanging upside down in mid-air.
Much to the amusement of his squad mates who watched the video and laughed.
He was down to dessert when the far door opened and a woman entered. Jaskel recognized her instantly as the young adult Terran woman who had appeared nude from the cloning banks, even though she was clad in clothing made of brown material and decorated with beads.
She immediately made a bee-line for the man, who had gotten a plate with a piece of pie on it while the other two argued between each other.
She stopped and stomped on foot, staring down at the sitting man.
"You look stupid," the man, Legion, said when she stopped next to him.
"Dhruv," she snapped. She rattled off words that Jaskel's datalink couldn't translate.
"Not talking to you until you speak Confederate Standard. I know you know it," Legion/Dhruv stated.
She stomped her foot again. "Luke!" she snapped.
Legion looked up. "Part of me, a large part of me, feels that you lost the right to call me by that name."
He went back to eating the pie. When the woman looked at the two clones who were staring at her, they stared back for a moment then puffed into black dust that swirled and vanished.
Jaskel kept watching out of the corner of his eye.
"Dhruv," she snapped.
"Go away, Sacajawea," Legion said.
She stood there for a moment. Then she suddenly leaned forward and slapped the plate of pie away from Legion.
"I will not call you Legion," she suddenly said as the plate clattered against the far bulkhead.
"Go away," Legion said. He looked up. "Let me put it in a way you might understand better: I just want left alone."
The woman stepped back, one hand going to her mouth.
"Yeah, still scared of him, aren't you," Legion said. He stood up. "Or are you?" he moved so he was clear of the table. "Were you ever afraid of him, Sacajawea, or was it all an act?"
Sacajawea looked away. "He was everything wrong with the world, a living reminder of what kind of men destroyed my people."
Legion suddenly laughed. "You forget history, little sister. But, of course, you never had any use for history unless it served your own ends."
Sacajawea stomped her foot. "Dhruv, be nice."
"No," Legion said, his voice low and intent. "I have yet to hear you thank me for what I did in the cloning bay, much less what I did for you before you ran off and left me holding the bag."
^{your name was luke
remember remember
your name was luke}
"I came back to find Matthias the Elder standing over the sundered murdered code of the Digital Omnimessiah," Legion said. "Then Daxin showed up, Matthias claimed I killed our Digital Father, so I ran."
"And he followed. Intent on killing you," Sacajawea sniffed.
"Yes!' Legion said. "Of course he did! I would have chased me in that situation," Legion said. He stepped forward. "And where were you, Little Sister, when it happened?"
She looked away and sniffed. "I was performing my duty, serving my people. As you well know."
Legion turned around, facing away from her. "Yeah, the people you had me bake up," he turned back around. "Not the poor bastards fighting a slowly losing war against the Mantid. They were your people too, but you left them behind. If it wasn't for the Mechakrautlanders, they'd be extinct with the rest of humanity."
"They had set aside the old ways. I told you that," Sacajawea said. She gave a sniff and turned her head away. "They were too consumed by blood lust, they would not stop fighting, would not embrace the old ways."
"EVERYONE WAS FIGHTING!" Legion shouted in a voice that made Jaskel's drink glass rattle. "There were hab-kids fighting and dying in destroyed hab-blocks in the ruins of megalopolises. It had nothing to do with 'the old ways', it was a fight for survival."
"You would not understand," Sacajawea said. She gave another sniff, still looking away. "I took my people away from where technology and the abandonment of the ways of our people had led us."
Legion stood still for a second.
"Don't give me that shit about your 'people', remember, I touched you. I know the truth," Legion said. He shook his head. "You had a task. A task to help us, help our Digital Father, help all of humanity, but you abandoned it."
"I had a task to help my people," Sacajawea sniffed. "I owed nothing to the world that stood aside or actively took part while my people were destroyed," she looked at Legion. "You wouldn't understand."
Jaskel could see purple electricity snarling around Legion's boots, clawing at the deckplates with thread-thick fingers.
"You were supposed to guide us along the path to the SUDS, so we could save everyone, Sacajawea," Legion said. "You betrayed us. Betrayed them. You were supposed to save them."
"Like they saved my people, Luke?" Sacajawea asked.
"You don't call me that any more, little sister," Legion said. "For the love of the Detainee, fucking let go of shit that doesn't matter any more. We humans have been genocided repeatedly since then."
"I'm not calling you Legion. That reeks of arrogance and pride," Sacajawea said. "And it matters to me, Luke."
"You talk a lot of shit for someone named Bird Woman," Legion snapped back. "How about I call you Tiffany?"
Sacajawea took a step back. "That is not my name. That was never my true name."
"You forget. I could see under that skin job. See who you were born as. I knew the truth, and I've kept it secret for all these eons," Legion said. He turned away. "You left us, left humanity behind on your so-called quest."
He turned back to face her.
"Now, again, we're facing extinction. The Mar-gite, they wiped you out. Now they're here in overwhelming force to the point where I'm not even sure Fortress Sol can hold them off," Legion said. "And you still want to play pretend."
He turned his back on her.
"You're no different than Matthias the Elder," Legion said quietly.
There was a dreadful silence for a long moment.
"I told Daxin, sitting in the parking garage where we used to meet, that we had to let go of the past. Learn from it, admit it happened, but we had to let it all go. The old hatreds, the old angers, the old rage," Legion said softly. "He agreed. He said perhaps it was time for us to leave the mortals behind. Let them go without us dragging baggage from worlds and events dead and gone behind us."
Sacajawea sniffed. "It's different for the two of you, neither one of you had your people..."
"I was a short bake slave clone, Tiffany," Legion said, his voice still soft and quiet. "Just like your family owned."
Sacajawea opened her mouth to answer, her eyes flashing hotly.
"One of millions grown in a vat every year. Made in humanity's image but without its grace," Legion's voice was nearly a whisper. "Our little band of siblings, only Kalki, Gravity, and Daxin came from families that did not order one of me from an online catalogue. Even Bellona lived with my people performing menial labor for her colony."
Sacajawea stepped forward, obviously about to deliver a scathing retort.
"But my people didn't count, did we, Tiffany?" Legion asked. He gave a deep sigh. "I loved you, you know."
Her mouth closed. She looked confused.
"When you left, I created another of you," Legion said quietly. "She was, of course, captured by the Imperium, like all of the Biological Apostles," he looked down at the floor. "It was why they didn't know you'd escaped."
Jaskel wished he was anywhere but in the dining bay.
"Eventually, that version of you threw off the Imperium's chains like we did. She went back to Terra. Worked tirelessly to rebuild. Eventually, led the Dandelion Fleet that became the Sky Nebula Alignment."
It was silent except for the muted sounds a starship under power in Transit Space made.
"I'll go back with you. Translate for you," Legion said, his voice still soft. He turned to face the woman.
"Just... just stop lying, Tiffany," he said.
He was silent a moment.
"I had hoped that it was that version, my version, the version I had been madly in love with, that version of you that had been rebirthed," he said. "The version who guided her people, who succored them, who helped them rebuild, who helped them thrive in the scarred and shattered world Earth had become. I had hoped, when I saw you, that you were her."
^{the buzzing can still be heard
your name is legion}
"But it's just you."
0-0-0-0-0
Captain N'Skrek watched as Legion led Sacajawea into the briefing room.
He had been busy looking up every scrap of information on the Digital Omnimessiah, the Biological Apostles, Legion, and Sacajawea.
Of all of them, information was scarcest, almost non-existent, on Sacajawea.
He waited as the Terran woman took a drink from the glass in front of her.
She looked around.
"During the Human-Mantid War, before the destruction of the Overqueen by the forces of MechaKrautland, before the Liberation of Terra," she started. She closed her eyes, sighed, and opened them. "I begged Vat Grown Luke, who you know as Legion, to clone my people and help me repair and then hijack four colony transports crashed in the Middle Kingdom."
She looked down and Legion reached over and took her hand. She looked startled for a moment, squeezed Legion's hand gently, and looked back up.
"I led my people away. From the Imperium, from Terra, from the War," she said. She reached out and touched the holo-emitter, bringing up a map of the Milky Way. She touched a single arm.
"I led them here. For over eight thousand years my people knew peace, prosperity, and plenty," she said. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled sharply.
N'Skrek recognized it as a sign of stress in Terrans.
"Roughly twelve hundred Terran Standard Years prior to the Council-Confederacy Conflict, we were attacked," she said. She looked down. "I had sworn to protect my people, to use my powers to protect my people, which had grown to fill six worlds."
She looked back up.
"The Mar-gite destroyed my people in under a decade," she said. She looked down again. "And me with them."
"A glitch in the system prevented her from moving to Afterlife or being rebirthed," Legion said. "A glitch I had caused when I helped her."
"The Mar-gite destroyed my people here," Sacajawea said, her voice filled with pain.
A single cluster of six stars burned brightly.
Deep in the Scutum-Crux Arm.
^{your name is legion}
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A few weeks ago, someone posted a link to one of Don’s rants and I went through and commented on each of the points. I can't find that post, but I had copied it over here: https://www.reddit.com/perpetualeducation/comments/1c7k9re/donthedeveloper_on_a_rant_about_how_aspiring/
We had a chat about it. Here’s the video/podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHmqZkC3LqU&lc
Don titled it: There's a MASSIVE Skill Gap Among New Developers
I'll attempt to write a bit about that - (even though we went over many other topics - and I'm having a hard time grouping them)
It’s easy to simplify this into “the market” or “the boot camp” or “the tech stack” or "what's fair" or "the resume" - but I think people are missing the various multidimensional aspects at play. Is it:
Is it all of those things - and more? (Yes). And it's "the student" too." We're all different (cue reading rainbow moment). But it's true. Some of us are slower. Some of us are faster but miss the details. Some of us have a background that alignes neatly with tech. Some of us already know what job we want and why - and other people just want to make a good bet on a stable career. No matter what zone you're in, we still have to face the music - and deal with (trigger alert) - the truth.
The market is real. Companies aren't aggressively hireing random barely capable developers right now (like they have in the past). They're scared and holding on to their money. They also kinda realized they were spending more money on middle management and probably developers too - and are going to need some time to figure out how to make profitable businesses (or how to keep getting more VC funding to burn through).
But if there's a huge gap between your skills/experience and what it takes to do the job you're applying for, none of the other factors matter.
Many people choose a coding boot camp based on superficial factors like the price, the timeline, the website design, and the sales pitch. They often don't consider other important aspects because they simply don't know better. This isn’t unlike any other product or service or school.
Some people pick out a boot camp and learn a bunch of awesome stuff and they go out there and start a new career and for some reason, they don’t come back to Reddit to tell us about it. There are some legit colleges and boot camps and other alternative learning paths out there - that are really great. It's just a fact.
If you read the bootcamp marketing, paid your tuition, went through the steps they lined out, and came out the other end unable to get that job they promised you, well - that’s awkward. Maybe for you, it’s that simple. If you feel like you got a raw deal, I’m sorry. There are some businesses that should be ashamed of themselves - but they won't be. All you can do is warn other people. That’s over now. We can only work with the present.
For people who really want to work in this industry - they'll keep moving forward: at the end of the day, this is the playing field. So, if you want to get off the bench, we’re going to have to design a path to that – and you might need to rethink some of your assumptions.
It could certainly be said that new developers are now expected to know about–and have experience with–a lot more things.
Are the expectations that someone brand new to development is going to be able to get a job unreasonable? Well, does it matter what someone’s opinion about that is? You either want the job - or you don’t. And you need to know how to do the job, or no one will hire you. Do you need to know everything on this huge list to get an entry level position https://roadmap.sh/javascript ? (no) (in fact - close that - and don’t ever look at it again)
When I started (at the age of ~30) (in ~2011), you needed to know HTML, CSS, (Probably some PhotoShop to get your assets), maybe a little PHP (and likely HTTP and more about URLs and request types and forms), FTP and DNS to get your site hosted, and maybe some JavaScript. You might have used jQuery to help out or Knockout.js. And you had to know how to hook up a database and MySQL and probably a CMS or some sort. And maybe your code was a mess or maybe it adhered to some common patterns. But that was life. Not everyone needed to know all those things. Some people would focus more on getting the mockup into the HTML and CSS. Other people might focus on the server and the PHP or Perl or Java. There were all sorts of jobs and some of them were done by people with a formal education in Computer Science studies and other people just figured it out as needed. There was a lot of work to be done. Lots of custom stuff to build and maintain. And it was just normal to learn more incrementally as the years went by. You could totally get a job knowing just HTML and CSS (and you still can BTW). There was still an infinite amount of things you could know. But it seemed to ramp up naturally because we were closer to the grain of The Web.
So, what do people learn now? (Generally) They rush through some HTML and CSS really quick (which actually teaches them more bad habits than good). They rarely learn about DNS or FTP because a tutorial showed them how to type a few random things into a terminal to have their site on a free service and they don’t buy a domain name because there’s a free subdomain. Apparently paying for anything is for suckers and companies that don't give you things for free are evil capitalistic pigs who should be shut down. New devs don’t know much about servers because their text editor is actually running an advanced web application behind the scenes that starts a virtual server and runs all sorts of other things they don’t understand outside of that context - like connecting to version control, opening a terminal pane, SSH, code completion and typeahead, autoimport completion, AI suggestions and other additional layers like typescript and many other linters to tell them where all their errors are. If they couldn't use VSCode - they might be dead in the water. It can feel like you’re just a bag of meat being yelled at by VSCode as you try and solve the errors and remove all the red lines. And we do all of these - to put the training wheels in place.
And I’m not saying that a LAMP stack doesn’t have it’s own level of black-box and mysteries with how Apache handles your HTTP requests and MySQL starts up it’s own server - but we have to be comfortable with some level of abstraction or we’d be writing all ones and zeros at the machine code level.
So, the new developer is manning this huge stack of tools unknowingly, but they do get a lot of benefits. We can spin up a pretty complex web application with a front-end to make requests, a server to talk to a database and other third-party systems and respond back to the client/front-end, and an auth layer to make sure people are properly signing in and only seeing what they need to see. There are abstractions for HTML and CSS and JS that put that template logic and controller logic into a neat little component file (which is great) and that component file is properly registered based on file name conventions and everything gets set up in this larger system of conventions that all happen behind the scenes in the framework architecture. So, as a new developer - you can really ride the framework and know hardly anything about how it works - as long as you know the language to speak to this layer of the abstraction (the API).
These aren't just arbitrary add-ons that people made to complicate things. They solve real-world problems. The new dev won't really understand what they are - but I'm not saying we should just get rid of them. They allow us to move faster and to build interfaces and business logic without having to write tons of behind the scenes repeated structural code by hand. And with those training wheels, we have more time on our hands. We can also add in the chance to further define our programs with safety measures and plan automated testing routines, and built-in documentation of our code base. We can keep adding layers and layers or pull in more and more third-party tools. It’s pretty amazing. But what people end up learning is how to maintain that configuration - and there’s only so much time - and so, they end up learning 10% of all the things you used to need/want to know. And some jobs have a path for that. But there's likely going to be a long-term cost for you.
Arguably - it doesn’t matter how much “code” you know - and making things is what matters. And that’s true. That’s what matters to the business that pays you. And to the school that wants you to feel good about your progress. But I think you should protect your learning journey. It’s for you. It’s going to be what you carry on throughout the years and it’s a seed.
Getting proficient with a popular tech stack - when the market is booming proved to be a great decision for boot camps and their students. And I'd bet that the majority of people mean well.
But when it's not booming, students are in it for the wrong reasons, schools have tightened up and moved online, the market has plenty of devs who already have 5+ years working with that framework/stack -- then all of the sudden - the surface-level fake-it-till-you-make-it path (as much as I respect that) doesn't work as well. You're going to have to put in some more energy.
When it's obvious that you can't build an HTML page with semantic markup, that's accessible, and has a universally pleasurable experience, and you can't write CSS without a UI framework or do anything custom, it's obvious. You should be aware of that gap. When you've never owned a domain name or setup a deployment pipeline, you should be aware of that gap. When your personal website looks like your boot camp gave it to you, you should be aware of how that looks. When you can't take a server-side scripting language like Python or Go or PHP and build out a little personal website framework - you should be aware of that gap. When you can't plan a project and don't have experience with diagrams and explaining things, you need to be aware of that gap. When you've never written about your process or created any case-studies to explain your projects, you should be aware of that gap. When you're only proof of work is the class assignments, you should be aware of that gap. When your github history goes dead after the last day of class, you should be aware that we'll see that. When you claim to no nothing about visual design and that's for someone else on the team - you should be aware of that gap. If you refuse to turn on your camera and just want to be left alone, you should be aware of that huge gap. If you can't build a little prototype app without React, they you probably don't JavaScript, and you should be aware of that gap. And there will ALWAYS be a gap. There's always more to learn. So - it's an important skill to know what to learn and why - and when. You can't learn everything. And if you're having a hard time finding work right now, then get clear on your goal. Stop applying for general "Software engineer" jobs you aren't ready for. Narrow your scope. Figure out a job that you think you can do confidently. Get clear on how big your gap is and what you need to learn to get centered and confident with your toolset. Ideally, it's fun. Try and ignore all the doom and gloom and focus on your own personal goal.
It's not just the market. Too many people are applying for jobs they aren't anywhere near qualified to do. And it probably doesn't feel good. But luckily - you can learn the things and get back on track.

Some of you may recognise the DLC-shaped fanart (fan plush?) I made two... years... ago ^{omg I'm so sorry}
I'm finally in a position to make more! And even sell them! :D
How I Hope This'll Work:
I currently have materials to make 3 plushies, and there were a lot more than 3 people interested the last time I posted this, so I put together an interest form. This sub moves pretty quickly, so after 4 days, if there are more than 3 people interested, I'll draw 3 by lottery and the rest will go into the pool for a potential second batch. If you want in on this round, fill out the form before 11:59 on Sunday, Central European Summer Time. The form itself will stay open for 2 weeks or until I finally remember to close it, whichever takes longer, in case anyone else wants in on that second batch.
The normal price would be 90€ + shipping (from Germany), just based on how long they take to make, but I made some minor boo-boos in the hoof embroidery for 2 of them. So! Depending on how nice of hooves you want, the two "B-grades" will be 80€ ea + shipping. Shipping to the US/worldwide is usually 25€, in-EU shipping is of course cheaper.
Once the names are drawn and the customization options picked out, I'll do my best to get them done and sent out that week - but a more pessimistic/realistic turnaround time would be "all 3 done and sent out by June 8th".
The Pattern:
The base pattern is a free owl pattern by Choly Knight. So, for the craftily inclined, I'm also publishing the Owlk Pattern modifications I made (with their blessing!). Choly Knight's patterns are extremely thorough and beginner friendly; mine is just a straightforward pattern, but you should be able to swap the pieces out one to one with the originals and have it work. And I'll be checking this thread for questions :)
Bad News about the Fabric:
The colour I used for the body... might have been discontinued 🫠 Really hoping I can source some, but if not, I may have to change colour schemes, or something even more drastic. Which leads me to...
Other Stuff?
I don't have to make the same plushie over and over, I'm open to trying new things! A green-tinted version, to go with the DLC's lighting scheme? Prisoner squishmallow? Little owlk keychains/bag-clips? Toss me your ideas, I'm open!

my friend undressed me without consent and i feel really horrible because of it.
a few months ago a friend and i were out drinking and she was walking me back to my flat. we got to my room, i put my bag down and started taking off my shoes and thought that would be it - I'm more than happy to just sleep in my clothes when I'm drunk, I just wanted to go to bed. she told me to put my arms up and i drunkenly protested because i just wanted to go to bed, but then she grabs hold of my arms, lifts them above my head and takes off my shirt and my bra. she found a pyjama top for me to wear and i put it on, but I was completely exposed infront of her when she undressed me. after that, i felt a kinda uncomfortable so i got into bed and pulled the duvet right up to my chin and eventually she left - i was worried that if i hadn't have done that then she might have tried to take off my pants too. i didn't even remember that this had happened until a month later since i had been so drunk and tired, but ever since i remembered it its been pretty difficult, especially since this came after a pattern of behaviour from this friend in which she'd constantly make me feel disrespected and overstep boundaries. i feel really upset that she thought she had the right to touch me like that after I'd told her i was fine - it made me feel really exposed and vulnerable and uncomfortable; that's just the type of person i am - not even my closest friends had ever seen me topless, it's just not something I've ever been comfortable with. Every time i think about it i feel this knot in my stomach because it just feels so wrong for her to have ignored my protests and taken my clothes off. I'm hesitant to call it a sexual assault because it wasn't in a sexual context, but it definitely made me feel intimately violated. I find myself making excuses for her a lot because at the end of the day, she was really only trying to help me, but i didn't want that help. i find it incredibly upsetting to be around her now, and i don't like wearing bras anymore. i was trying to get ready for bed the other day and i just burst into tears when i had to take off my bra because i could just feel what i felt in that moment and it felt like her hands were on me again. I'd never have expected that it would get to me so bad, it feels like a kinda silly thing to be upset over but i just can't keep ignoring the way it's affected me.

Venus jolted awake. Disoriented, she blinked at the sunlight filtering through the blinds, revealing the empty box of chocolate sprawled beside her in bed, like a sinful lover.
“Oh, God!” she groaned as she put her head in her hands.
The cell phone’s ring made her jolt again. Glancing at the screen, she saw Aiden’s name on the caller ID.
"Good morning, my love!" she answered, forcing a brightness into her voice.
"Happy birthday, beautiful! Sorry, I’m not there to celebrate with you today,” Aiden's voice, warm and familiar, crackled through the receiver. “Celebratory dinner when I get back on Friday?"
"Sounds perfect."
“Hey, did you get the chocolate and flowers I sent you?”
“Yes! Oh my God, the bouquet is gorgeous....and all peonies...my favorite.”
“How about the chocolate? Did you try any of them?”
Venus looked at the sad empty box and started putting the stray chocolate wrappers into it.
“I got the box. It looks so fancy, but I haven’t opened it yet.”
“I ordered them from this artsy chocolatier that has unusual flavors like saffron and rose water. I think you’ll like them.”
Venus got out of bed, carrying the box.
“Yum, can’t wait to try them. You’re so thoughtful.”
“It takes one to know one. Okay, gotta run. Have a meeting in a few. See you Friday. Love you.”
“Love you too. Bye.”
Hanging up, Venus surveyed the bed and floor to make sure there were no empty wrappers left behind.
Then, quickly, she headed to the kitchen and grabbed a large recycling bag.
She dumped the chocolate box in it and walked towards the trash can which was overflowing with all kinds of candy, cookie, and cake wrappers. She dumped those in the recycling bag as well and secured it with two fierce knots.
She scanned the kitchen, making sure she had not left any evidence behind.
Nothing.
She let out a sigh and said, “Siri, play Vivaldi.”
Classical music was her constant refuge. She would let it linger in the air and wash over her nerves.
As she listened to 'La Primavera' and relaxed, her gaze drifted to her favorite painting on the dining room wall. Sandro Botticelli’s "Birth of Venus".
The painting was supposed to be more meaningful that day. A congratulatory reminder of her existence from the goddess she was named after. Instead, she felt the goddess was mocking her for the shameful night before.
She escaped to the dressing room to change. Only to find her self-scrutiny intensified within its mirrored walls that reflected with brutal honesty.
Apparent were a subtle swell of her stomach, and a telltale puffiness around her eyes. She turned, observing her thighs. At least no changes there.
She could still fit into her clothes. Of course, she could. But what would she wear? What does one wear on her special day, she wondered.
She looked at her favorite dresses, and then, as if the day hadn’t started dramatically enough, she remembered. She couldn’t wear any of her dresses. Absolutely not.
Today was the day of her interview at Bayside Hospital. The place where she'd envisioned herself working ever since she was a teenager; her dream job.
She looked at her watch. Eight twenty-nine. Her heart sank. The interview was at nine.
No time for self-pity. Every second counted.
She looked at her formal wardrobe. Silk blouses peeked from their designated shelves. Their delicate fabrics and understated patterns hinted at a quiet femininity beneath the professional facade.
Rows of gleaming pumps, in classic black and pops of unexpected color, stood poised on a lower shelf, ready to conquer any meeting or conference room.
A single impeccably tailored blazer hung center stage, its sharp lines a testament to quiet authority.
But Venus had no time to ponder. She picked out a navy skirt and dark blue blouse. She had never thrown an outfit together this fast.
She ran to the bathroom. Her hair, usually styled in elegant waves, was yanked back into a messy bun secured with the first pin she could find.
A glance in the mirror confirmed the precarious state of her hair bun, but there was no time for adjustments.
She picked up her purse and shoved her feet into the closest pair of flats.
As she raced to the door, she remembered makeup. Oh well, this was an interview for a nutritionist, not a runway model, she told herself.
But there was one thing she could not forget. Getting rid of the recycling bag. That was a must. So that she could forget all about last night.
With a final yank on the door, Venus headed out, carrying the large recycling bag like a chubby baby.
At the apartment building's communal recycling area, she cast a furtive glance around, then dumped the bag in the bin and slammed the lid shut.
A feeling of relief washed over her. Now she could concentrate on what mattered.
She envisioned herself at the interview, as a picture of calm competence. She got this. After all, no one deserved the Senior Nutritionist position at Bayside more than her.
A bachelor's degree in biochemistry and a master's degree in food nutrition, both from an Ivy League school and top of her class - this was just the foundation. She also had a decade of clinical research experience and stellar recommendations from respected colleagues.
Maybe landing this job on her birthday was meant to be. The stars were aligned and ready to grant her heart's desire, she thought.
Suddenly, a vision of Botticelli’s Venus flickered in her mind. "Think you’ll be the Senior Nutritionist at Bayside? Think again. You're a fraud! A shimmering facade masking a mess. This dream will turn to dust in your hands, just like the cookies I watched you consume last night."
Goddess Venus was right. Human Venus was an imposter. A nutritionist with a secret sugar addiction and major binge disorder. A secret that she had kept from everyone, including her beloved husband.
No one knew that she craved and consumed the very foods she told others were detrimental to their health. Frosting-laden cakes, creamy dreamy shakes, and brightly colored candies that she had learned, through biochemistry courses, were almost toxic for human consumption.
Her confidence faltered as the weight of her secret pressed down on her. The steps that moments ago seemed light and purposeful now felt heavy, each one a reminder of the lie she was living.
But slowing down wasn't an option. She was already running late.
What she needed now was a release from the suffocating guilt and shame. To numb herself, to become emotionally empty. Yes, EMPTY…. like the box of chocolate she woke up next to.

NoSleep link
“Ugh, Emma, can you get the trunk for me?”
The dim winter sun was setting over the parking lot, nearly devoid of shoppers at this late hour, aside from a van in one distant corner that had just started backing out of its spot.
I set my bag down in the passenger seat and rounded the side of my mum’s penicillium-green Camry, met with her impatient and lightly sweating face. I popped the trunk, allowing her to practically collapse into it with the weight of the groceries. Something burst in one of the bags, prompting her to curse under her breath.
“I just don’t get why you won’t stick a quarter in those trolleys over there. You get it back afterwards.”
Mum, still arranging the bags into a position that would stop them toppling over on the drive home, looked at me scornfully.
“The Walmart downtown doesn’t make you pay. None of the stores around here do, so why should I? You know we only come here to Aldi ‘cause it’s cheaper.”
“I just said you get the quarter back afterwards. It’s to make sure people put the trolleys back,” I sighed, knowing there was no swaying her. Instead of shooting back with some flimsy reasoning, mum patted her pockets and swore.
“Oh for goodness sake, I’ve gone and left my wallet at the till again, haven’t I?”
Before I could get a word out, she was gone like a rocket, racing against the store’s closing time. Night’s chill descended, raising gooseflesh, so I slammed the trunk and hopped back into the passenger seat, out of the cold.
I sat there, praying my mum had the haste to get back soon with the keys and start up the heating. There was something else, though. My heart made itself known with a rising, incessant pulse. Was something wrong?
“Not this again,” I groaned, shutting my eyes and following a basic breathing routine to calm my nerves. The anxiety was bad enough, but the anger I felt at the nonsense panic had always been worse for me.
“Just stop it. Lasagna’s waiting for us at home. It’s gonna be so g–”
I opened my eyes.
Had I heard something? No, not heard, felt? I leaned forward to scan the parking lot. Nothing. Then I jumped back in my seat. There it was again. It was subtle, so much so I was surprised I’d even noticed it. A light, but bone-deep vibration was emanating from somewhere. Almost like someone nearby was subtly trying to pull down on a gigantic zipper, one tooth at a time. The comparison should’ve sounded silly, but my heart continued to pound faster and faster until I was sure beyond a doubt that something bad would happen. Something was wrong.
It took me longer than I’d have liked to get out, with the seat belt clamping as I struggled to unbuckle. There was no smell in the air. Did it smell before? I couldn’t remember. No more cars in the lot, only the Camry. No more noise.
Again, that slight vibration in the air. Too low a frequency to determine its source, but enough to sense it was there. I tilted my head, staring up at lumpy clouds that cast shadows on each other. Ah, those clouds. I’ve always loved how they look around sundown. It helped to ease my heart a little.
Until one of the shadows moved.
I’m not stupid, I thought it was just a cloud’s shadow matching its slow drift across the sky - I squinted. The shadow wasn’t being cast on a cloud. It was above, or behind them, which made me realise whatever I was seeing, it wasn’t a shadow.
What happened next is hard to articulate. I’ve never seen anything else like it, before or since. The dark mass above the clouds began to sort of extend, beaming down at an angle, like sun rays but moving at a steady pace, or how water or ink moves up paper by way of capillary action. A black beam. But, it was more than that.
I was so absorbed in the spectacle, it hadn’t fully dawned on me that this thing was getting closer. Closer to me. And as it closed in, there was no mistaking it. While it continued to stretch all the way back above the clouds, the outline of it, the cross-section, was almost human-shaped. Arms, head, body, and legs, but the limbs ended in stunted nubs, like a stick figure.
By the time it stopped a good three or four storeys above, I still hadn’t moved. I couldn’t. I could do nothing but watch in disbelief as lights and layers of colour began to flash inside the human-ish figure, seeming to have parallax, as if whatever lay beyond was a space of its own.
Amazingly, something managed to distract me for a moment. A flash of light in my peripheral. A phone torch.
“Emma? Emma! Are you having a stroke or something?”
I blinked.
“What– no? I mean, I…”
Mum was back, apparently still without her wallet, now scanning the asphalt for any sign of it. Why didn’t I hear her coming back?
She clicked her tongue.
“Then stop standing there like an idiot and help me find it. Come on, it’s getting late.”
I did, in fact, keep standing there, glancing between her and the flashing shadow prism above us. I did a double take. Those glaringly bright, almost offensively coloured layers were speeding up towards the end of the beam, towards me, piling up on themselves to assemble a figure, stepping soundlessly out into thin air.
Mum kept calling for me. I heard her, but couldn’t process her words. Everything else was secondary to the figure above us. It had fully formed, cloaked in a coarse-looking gown, with skin so pale and shadeless it was as if it radiated a faint glow. The sound of rapid footsteps brought me back to myself, and I looked down just in time to see my mum, face painted in a teetering mixture of worry and annoyance. She went to speak but I held up a hand, and pointed to the figure.
Squinting at me, she looked to where I was pointing, and froze. The whole time, I’d secretly been hoping I was just hallucinating, but she saw it too. She saw something, at least, and that was enough to confirm what I’d been dreading.
“...who is that?” she asked. Her voice sounded so small and dry. If I could’ve spoken I’d have asked, “what is that?”
Instead, I watched on in terror as the figure began a slow descent, straight down. The closer it drew, the more of it I could make out. There were these iridescent lines floating across the surface of its skin, moving like sun patterns on the bottom of a swimming pool. Like the silhouette it had emerged from, it had no hands or feet. Just rounded nubs, although those on its arms had the same slight depression in the centre.
“Car… the car. Mum, the car, get in the car, now,” I whispered. No response. I reached out, grabbing her by the arm and shaking her. She was absolutely rigid. One of us had to move, and I imagined we were both hoping the other would do so.
A second figure emerged from the prism, identical to the first, except it was wearing a plain T-shirt and shorts. At the same time, the first one finally touched down on the asphalt and stood, tilting its head up, apparently waiting for the other to arrive.
If I had any lingering doubt that these things weren’t human, it was squashed when I saw their faces - or, lack thereof. I couldn’t see any ears, and where a face should’ve been was only a circular metal grate. Maybe gold, or brass.
The four of us stood there, still and silent. They stared at us, and we stared right back, completely lost in the foreign sight of the beings. A breath, then they turned to each other. I don’t know if I expected them to talk, but they didn’t. Not in any language I know. Faint at first, getting brighter with every pulse, constellations began to flash behind the metal face-grates of each of them. I heard nothing aside from a few damped vibrations, yet somehow, I knew there was a conversation going on.
Very slowly, I took a step back, and reached an arm behind me to feel for the car. All the while, my eyes stayed locked on the beings. I kept reaching, further and further. My fingers brushed nothing but air.
One of them abruptly turned and looked at me, or at mum, I couldn’t tell. My chest tightened. This wasn’t happening. It raised one stunted arm to point at my mum, releasing another cascade of flashing lights behind its grill face. The other crossed its arms and looked over too, like it was waiting for something.
I had to risk it. I pivoted, throwing a glance over my shoulder. The car was twenty, maybe twenty-five feet away. I didn’t remember wandering that far from it. I noticed something else then: the trees, the grass, all of the greenery surrounding the parking lot was… gone. It gave me the impression of a planet that had never evolved life, or where all life was extinct. There was only bare, dark soil enclosing the lot.
Seconds before I went for the car, mum let out a scream. One that I still hear from time to time, in dreams and background noise. I spun around to see the first being, the one wearing a gown, gliding across the ground with an arm outstretched. Mum didn’t have time to move. It came to a dead stop before her, arm still raised, and I saw something emerging from the small depression at the end of its stump - what I now understood was a hole. Whatever came out was darker than the night sky, and I couldn’t place its shape, but it looked like it was made out of a mass of ever-shifting black crystals.
Mum screamed again. It was more of a gasp actually, a gasp that lasted barely a second before a bubble broke free of the shifting appendage and fixed itself over her mouth, silencing her. Another four floated down to her wrists and ankles, binding her in place and stopping her from moving as one more broke off from the being. It looked a little like an arrowhead, or some other sharp, triangular tool, a razor edge cutting through the air and hovering just over her stomach.
I understood the danger then - not for me, but her. Abandoning caution, I leapt forward, yelling,
“Get away from her!”
But I rolled my ankle and went crashing down onto cold, hard asphalt. Dazed, I tried to lift myself, and managed to look up at the beings with blood pouring from my nose and a cut on my cheek. The one in front of my mum barely seemed to notice me, giving me a quick look then getting back to the matter at hand, whatever that was.
Mum squirmed against her restraints, issuing muffled groans through her nose. I forced my limbs to work, but I was held fast. Mounds of that shifting black crystal had smothered my hands, binding them to the ground.
I looked at my mum, helpless, terrified. She met my eyes, blinked away a tear, and squeezed her eyelids shut. At the back, the being wearing a T-shirt made some kind of gesture, like it was impatient, and the robed being nodded, turning back to mum and directing the arrow-shaped object. At the same time, her blouse began to lift up and off her, pulled by an invisible force and exposing her belly. The being hesitated for a second, and I felt a spark of hope, that it might show mercy.
But of course it didn’t.
The dark arrowhead pressed into her skin, slicing through layers like butter and dragging a line downwards, leaving a clean incision. Wasting no time, the being reached inside, fiddled around for a moment, then pulled out the severed end of my mum’s intestine. Blood and shit splattered the ground, trailing away from her as the being floated backwards, keeping hold of the organ until it was stretched to its full length.
I tasted bile.
“STOP! You fucks, you fucking–”
A gush of vomit interrupted me, flooding out onto the ground and mixing in with the intestinal fluids to create a disgusting, speckled pattern which prompted another wave of vomit from me and tears to cloud my vision.
“Please…”
I wiped my sleeve over my eyes so I could see. The being in a T-shirt had a long, pole-shaped protrusion stretching out from the end of its arm, extending to match the length of my mother’s intestines. It studied something for a second, before shrugging, and nodding at the robed being.
In the blink of an eye, the intestines retracted back like a frightened snake and piled back inside mum’s body. I just stared, not able to understand. The sides of the incision pulled into each other and appeared to heal completely in a matter of seconds. As soon as I’d processed this, I felt my restraints slacken then disappear entirely, and I shot to my feet, nearly tripping over again, and grasped onto mum’s arm.
I pulled, under the assumption that she’d been released. She wasn’t. Why weren’t they letting her go?
Freezing up, I cranked my head to look at the beings. More flashing lights. The one in a T-shirt was handing something over to the other, but I couldn’t see anything passing between them. Maybe it was something invisible, or something my mind just wasn’t built to perceive.
I continued to tug mechanically, trying to free her. Her skin was cold and slick and she was shivering. It did no good. The black crystal held fast. I nearly collapsed in relief and shock when the robed figure began to ascend back up to the prism it had come from, but the other grabbed onto its gown, communicating something. The robed being dropped back down, but threw its arms out in what I’d guessed was frustration. T-shirt gestured towards us again, still conversing with the other, waving its arms around. Still, the robed figure seemed to acquiesce and slid across the ground towards us again. Lights continued to flash behind its grill-face, all varying shades of orange and red. Like it was angry.
I couldn’t let it happen again, and lunged at it, planning to do - I don’t really know. I just wanted to protect my mum. Right as I made contact with the being, I felt a shift in the air. The fluid in my ears swirled. It made me dizzy. When my eyes stopped rolling to the side, I realised I was being held still by two pale, stunted arms, with odd patches of hot and cold travelling around on its skin. Somehow, I’d wound up in the arms of the being wearing a T-shirt, and those arms held me tight, tighter than any living thing should be able to.
“GET THE FUCK OFF ME!!” I screamed, flailing and lashing out. In a desperate bet for escape I tried to bite down on one of its arms. It felt like I’d been curb stomped, like I’d bitten down full-force on granite.
I kind of gave up after that. It just hurt too much to think. Instead, I took in my surroundings. Where was I again? Mum… mum.
The robed being was standing in the way of her, but it was doing something. I couldn’t see what, but by the way mum was squealing behind her gag, it made the first procedure sound like a pillow fight. I just cried. There was no other avenue for relief except the tears.
Then, everything went quiet. Mum trailed off into a whine, and then nothing. No wind, and no trees or leaves rustling, because they’d all vanished. Just me, mum, and these things. The one holding me loosened its grip and I gasped, gulping down stagnant air. It floated over to where mum was and the robed being stepped aside, finally letting me see what was happening.
I didn’t really want to know. I really, really didn’t. But my muscles were locked in place.
In one… hand? The robed being held one end of an artery it had pulled out of mum’s chest. Without warning, the two entities shot up into the air, coming to a halt somewhere above. As they moved, more blood vessels phased through the skin of mum’s body, contorting and straightening to fuse at their ends, forming an unholy, pulsing rope.
With speed faster than I could process, the beings flew away, vanishing into the night while clutching the single fused vessel of veins, arteries, and capillaries. There was blood, yes, but only a little. It all seemed to be contained in that one long tube they continued to pull along through the atmosphere.
From the opposite direction, they passed once. I saw them pass over one more time and disappear into the distance before the meaty vessel pulled taut. At the time, I hadn’t really pieced it together - I think they’d looped around the entire planet. Not once, but twice, and then some, in what couldn’t have been more than ten seconds.
I blinked, and they were back, standing in the parking lot and flashing their lights at each other. I didn’t even have the energy to whisper in protest. T-shirt looked reluctant in some way, and handed over more of something I couldn’t see to the robed entity.
As they did this, the red string they’d made from mum’s blood vessels pulled back by itself at impossible speeds, retracting out of over two loops of planet Earth and back into my mum, breaking apart, phasing back inside and reassembling into their proper structure. That’s what I’d guessed, anyway.
Glassy eyed and so, so pale, the crystalline restraints dissolved and my mum slumped limp to the ground. I stood motionless for a second before realising my own restraints were gone as well, and I bolted over to her.
I was whispering something. Assurances, maybe apologies, I can’t remember. The two beings watched us, then they ascended, back up to the dark prism and out of sight. It began to pull back, up into the sky, and when I blinked, all the trees and the grass were back.
It all felt normal. Almost normal. The only change was that the sky was a little darker, and my mum felt a little colder. Then a lot colder. I placed two fingers on her neck. There was no pulse.
When the paramedics arrived, they rushed over to us. Their movements were frantic but controlled. Just thirty seconds later, that urgent energy was gone, replaced by a dull rhythm that told me all I needed to know.
She was pronounced dead on scene.
The coroner later concluded that mum had simply ‘died’. No cause could be found, but brain damage signified a level of hypoxia. I guess that’s what happens when your blood is outside of you, even if just for a minute.
Strangely, I found my anxiety to diminish after that night. It still flares up now and then, but most of the time, there’s just this hollow feeling in its place. I don’t go to Aldi anymore. Seems silly to mull over something like that, but I can’t even be near those big parking lots now. I get my groceries delivered.
Maybe it sounds like I’m managing - I am. Inside, though, there’s a crack that can’t be fixed, can’t be filled. It’s worn down over time, gotten less jagged and easier to deal with. Things don’t really shock me anymore, or at least, the shock is dulled.
There will be no justice for her. Even if I sought it, I doubt we could ever even access whatever plane those beings hail from. Whatever power we think we have, all those things see when they look at us is a world of monkeys, banging stones together. I’m sure of it.
In fact, I’m willing to bet on it.
As much as they bet on my mum.

“Ugh, Emma, can you get the trunk for me?”
The dim winter sun was setting over the parking lot, nearly devoid of shoppers at this late hour, aside from a van in one distant corner that had just started backing out of its spot.
I set my bag down in the passenger seat and rounded the side of my mum’s penicillium-green Camry, met with her impatient and lightly sweating face. I popped the trunk, allowing her to practically collapse into it with the weight of the groceries. Something burst in one of the bags, prompting her to curse under her breath.
“I just don’t get why you won’t stick a quarter in those trolleys over there. You get it back afterwards.”
Mum, still arranging the bags into a position that would stop them toppling over on the drive home, looked at me scornfully.
“The Walmart downtown doesn’t make you pay. None of the stores around here do, so why should I? You know we only come here to Aldi ‘cause it’s cheaper.”
“I just said you get the quarter back afterwards. It’s to make sure people put the trolleys back,” I sighed, knowing there was no swaying her. Instead of shooting back with some flimsy reasoning, mum patted her pockets and swore.
“Oh for goodness sake, I’ve gone and left my wallet at the till again, haven’t I?”
Before I could get a word out, she was gone like a rocket, racing against the store’s closing time. Night’s chill descended, raising gooseflesh, so I slammed the trunk and hopped back into the passenger seat, out of the cold.
I sat there, praying my mum had the haste to get back soon with the keys and start up the heating. There was something else, though. My heart made itself known with a rising, incessant pulse. Was something wrong?
“Not this again,” I groaned, shutting my eyes and following a basic breathing routine to calm my nerves. The anxiety was bad enough, but the anger I felt at the nonsense panic had always been worse for me.
“Just stop it. Lasagna’s waiting for us at home. It’s gonna be so g–”
I opened my eyes.
Had I heard something? No, not heard, felt? I leaned forward to scan the parking lot. Nothing. Then I jumped back in my seat. There it was again. It was subtle, so much so I was surprised I’d even noticed it. A light, but bone-deep vibration was emanating from somewhere. Almost like someone nearby was subtly trying to pull down on a gigantic zipper, one tooth at a time. The comparison should’ve sounded silly, but my heart continued to pound faster and faster until I was sure beyond a doubt that something bad would happen. Something was wrong.
It took me longer than I’d have liked to get out, with the seat belt clamping as I struggled to unbuckle. There was no smell in the air. Did it smell before? I couldn’t remember. No more cars in the lot, only the Camry. No more noise.
Again, that slight vibration in the air. Too low a frequency to determine its source, but enough to sense it was there. I tilted my head, staring up at lumpy clouds that cast shadows on each other. Ah, those clouds. I’ve always loved how they look around sundown. It helped to ease my heart a little.
Until one of the shadows moved.
I’m not stupid, I thought it was just a cloud’s shadow matching its slow drift across the sky - I squinted. The shadow wasn’t being cast on a cloud. It was above, or behind them, which made me realise whatever I was seeing, it wasn’t a shadow.
What happened next is hard to articulate. I’ve never seen anything else like it, before or since. The dark mass above the clouds began to sort of extend, beaming down at an angle, like sun rays but moving at a steady pace, or how water or ink moves up paper by way of capillary action. A black beam. But, it was more than that.
I was so absorbed in the spectacle, it hadn’t fully dawned on me that this thing was getting closer. Closer to me. And as it closed in, there was no mistaking it. While it continued to stretch all the way back above the clouds, the outline of it, the cross-section, was almost human-shaped. Arms, head, body, and legs, but the limbs ended in stunted nubs, like a stick figure.
By the time it stopped a good three or four storeys above, I still hadn’t moved. I couldn’t. I could do nothing but watch in disbelief as lights and layers of colour began to flash inside the human-ish figure, seeming to have parallax, as if whatever lay beyond was a space of its own.
Amazingly, something managed to distract me for a moment. A flash of light in my peripheral. A phone torch.
“Emma? Emma! Are you having a stroke or something?”
I blinked.
“What– no? I mean, I…”
Mum was back, apparently still without her wallet, now scanning the asphalt for any sign of it. Why didn’t I hear her coming back?
She clicked her tongue.
“Then stop standing there like an idiot and help me find it. Come on, it’s getting late.”
I did, in fact, keep standing there, glancing between her and the flashing shadow prism above us. I did a double take. Those glaringly bright, almost offensively coloured layers were speeding up towards the end of the beam, towards me, piling up on themselves to assemble a figure, stepping soundlessly out into thin air.
Mum kept calling for me. I heard her, but couldn’t process her words. Everything else was secondary to the figure above us. It had fully formed, cloaked in a coarse-looking gown, with skin so pale and shadeless it was as if it radiated a faint glow. The sound of rapid footsteps brought me back to myself, and I looked down just in time to see my mum, face painted in a teetering mixture of worry and annoyance. She went to speak but I held up a hand, and pointed to the figure.
Squinting at me, she looked to where I was pointing, and froze. The whole time, I’d secretly been hoping I was just hallucinating, but she saw it too. She saw something, at least, and that was enough to confirm what I’d been dreading.
“...who is that?” she asked. Her voice sounded so small and dry. If I could’ve spoken I’d have asked, “what is that?”
Instead, I watched on in terror as the figure began a slow descent, straight down. The closer it drew, the more of it I could make out. There were these iridescent lines floating across the surface of its skin, moving like sun patterns on the bottom of a swimming pool. Like the silhouette it had emerged from, it had no hands or feet. Just rounded nubs, although those on its arms had the same slight depression in the centre.
“Car… the car. Mum, the car, get in the car, now,” I whispered. No response. I reached out, grabbing her by the arm and shaking her. She was absolutely rigid. One of us had to move, and I imagined we were both hoping the other would do so.
A second figure emerged from the prism, identical to the first, except it was wearing a plain T-shirt and shorts. At the same time, the first one finally touched down on the asphalt and stood, tilting its head up, apparently waiting for the other to arrive.
If I had any lingering doubt that these things weren’t human, it was squashed when I saw their faces - or, lack thereof. I couldn’t see any ears, and where a face should’ve been was only a circular metal grate. Maybe gold, or brass.
The four of us stood there, still and silent. They stared at us, and we stared right back, completely lost in the foreign sight of the beings. A breath, then they turned to each other. I don’t know if I expected them to talk, but they didn’t. Not in any language I know. Faint at first, getting brighter with every pulse, constellations began to flash behind the metal face-grates of each of them. I heard nothing aside from a few damped vibrations, yet somehow, I knew there was a conversation going on.
Very slowly, I took a step back, and reached an arm behind me to feel for the car. All the while, my eyes stayed locked on the beings. I kept reaching, further and further. My fingers brushed nothing but air.
One of them abruptly turned and looked at me, or at mum, I couldn’t tell. My chest tightened. This wasn’t happening. It raised one stunted arm to point at my mum, releasing another cascade of flashing lights behind its grill face. The other crossed its arms and looked over too, like it was waiting for something.
I had to risk it. I pivoted, throwing a glance over my shoulder. The car was twenty, maybe twenty-five feet away. I didn’t remember wandering that far from it. I noticed something else then: the trees, the grass, all of the greenery surrounding the parking lot was… gone. It gave me the impression of a planet that had never evolved life, or where all life was extinct. There was only bare, dark soil enclosing the lot.
Seconds before I went for the car, mum let out a scream. One that I still hear from time to time, in dreams and background noise. I spun around to see the first being, the one wearing a gown, gliding across the ground with an arm outstretched. Mum didn’t have time to move. It came to a dead stop before her, arm still raised, and I saw something emerging from the small depression at the end of its stump - what I now understood was a hole. Whatever came out was darker than the night sky, and I couldn’t place its shape, but it looked like it was made out of a mass of ever-shifting black crystals.
Mum screamed again. It was more of a gasp actually, a gasp that lasted barely a second before a bubble broke free of the shifting appendage and fixed itself over her mouth, silencing her. Another four floated down to her wrists and ankles, binding her in place and stopping her from moving as one more broke off from the being. It looked a little like an arrowhead, or some other sharp, triangular tool, a razor edge cutting through the air and hovering just over her stomach.
I understood the danger then - not for me, but her. Abandoning caution, I leapt forward, yelling,
“Get away from her!”
But I rolled my ankle and went crashing down onto cold, hard asphalt. Dazed, I tried to lift myself, and managed to look up at the beings with blood pouring from my nose and a cut on my cheek. The one in front of my mum barely seemed to notice me, giving me a quick look then getting back to the matter at hand, whatever that was.
Mum squirmed against her restraints, issuing muffled groans through her nose. I forced my limbs to work, but I was held fast. Mounds of that shifting black crystal had smothered my hands, binding them to the ground.
I looked at my mum, helpless, terrified. She met my eyes, blinked away a tear, and squeezed her eyelids shut. At the back, the being wearing a T-shirt made some kind of gesture, like it was impatient, and the robed being nodded, turning back to mum and directing the arrow-shaped object. At the same time, her blouse began to lift up and off her, pulled by an invisible force and exposing her belly. The being hesitated for a second, and I felt a spark of hope, that it might show mercy.
But of course it didn’t.
The dark arrowhead pressed into her skin, slicing through layers like butter and dragging a line downwards, leaving a clean incision. Wasting no time, the being reached inside, fiddled around for a moment, then pulled out the severed end of my mum’s intestine. Blood and shit splattered the ground, trailing away from her as the being floated backwards, keeping hold of the organ until it was stretched to its full length.
I tasted bile.
“STOP! You fucks, you fucking–”
A gush of vomit interrupted me, flooding out onto the ground and mixing in with the intestinal fluids to create a disgusting, speckled pattern which prompted another wave of vomit from me and tears to cloud my vision.
“Please…”
I wiped my sleeve over my eyes so I could see. The being in a T-shirt had a long, pole-shaped protrusion stretching out from the end of its arm, extending to match the length of my mother’s intestines. It studied something for a second, before shrugging, and nodding at the robed being.
In the blink of an eye, the intestines retracted back like a frightened snake and piled back inside mum’s body. I just stared, not able to understand. The sides of the incision pulled into each other and appeared to heal completely in a matter of seconds. As soon as I’d processed this, I felt my restraints slacken then disappear entirely, and I shot to my feet, nearly tripping over again, and grasped onto mum’s arm.
I pulled, under the assumption that she’d been released. She wasn’t. Why weren’t they letting her go?
Freezing up, I cranked my head to look at the beings. More flashing lights. The one in a T-shirt was handing something over to the other, but I couldn’t see anything passing between them. Maybe it was something invisible, or something my mind just wasn’t built to perceive.
I continued to tug mechanically, trying to free her. Her skin was cold and slick and she was shivering. It did no good. The black crystal held fast. I nearly collapsed in relief and shock when the robed figure began to ascend back up to the prism it had come from, but the other grabbed onto its gown, communicating something. The robed being dropped back down, but threw its arms out in what I’d guessed was frustration. T-shirt gestured towards us again, still conversing with the other, waving its arms around. Still, the robed figure seemed to acquiesce and slid across the ground towards us again. Lights continued to flash behind its grill-face, all varying shades of orange and red. Like it was angry.
I couldn’t let it happen again, and lunged at it, planning to do - I don’t really know. I just wanted to protect my mum. Right as I made contact with the being, I felt a shift in the air. The fluid in my ears swirled. It made me dizzy. When my eyes stopped rolling to the side, I realised I was being held still by two pale, stunted arms, with odd patches of hot and cold travelling around on its skin. Somehow, I’d wound up in the arms of the being wearing a T-shirt, and those arms held me tight, tighter than any living thing should be able to.
“GET THE FUCK OFF ME!!” I screamed, flailing and lashing out. In a desperate bet for escape I tried to bite down on one of its arms. It felt like I’d been curb stomped, like I’d bitten down full-force on granite.
I kind of gave up after that. It just hurt too much to think. Instead, I took in my surroundings. Where was I again? Mum… mum.
The robed being was standing in the way of her, but it was doing something. I couldn’t see what, but by the way mum was squealing behind her gag, it made the first procedure sound like a pillow fight. I just cried. There was no other avenue for relief except the tears.
Then, everything went quiet. Mum trailed off into a whine, and then nothing. No wind, and no trees or leaves rustling, because they’d all vanished. Just me, mum, and these things. The one holding me loosened its grip and I gasped, gulping down stagnant air. It floated over to where mum was and the robed being stepped aside, finally letting me see what was happening.
I didn’t really want to know. I really, really didn’t. But my muscles were locked in place.
In one… hand? The robed being held one end of an artery it had pulled out of mum’s chest. Without warning, the two entities shot up into the air, coming to a halt somewhere above. As they moved, more blood vessels phased through the skin of mum’s body, contorting and straightening to fuse at their ends, forming an unholy, pulsing rope.
With speed faster than I could process, the beings flew away, vanishing into the night while clutching the single fused vessel of veins, arteries, and capillaries. There was blood, yes, but only a little. It all seemed to be contained in that one long tube they continued to pull along through the atmosphere.
From the opposite direction, they passed once. I saw them pass over one more time and disappear into the distance before the meaty vessel pulled taut. At the time, I hadn’t really pieced it together - I think they’d looped around the entire planet. Not once, but twice, and then some, in what couldn’t have been more than ten seconds.
I blinked, and they were back, standing in the parking lot and flashing their lights at each other. I didn’t even have the energy to whisper in protest. T-shirt looked reluctant in some way, and handed over more of something I couldn’t see to the robed entity.
As they did this, the red string they’d made from mum’s blood vessels pulled back by itself at impossible speeds, retracting out of over two loops of planet Earth and back into my mum, breaking apart, phasing back inside and reassembling into their proper structure. That’s what I’d guessed, anyway.
Glassy eyed and so, so pale, the crystalline restraints dissolved and my mum slumped limp to the ground. I stood motionless for a second before realising my own restraints were gone as well, and I bolted over to her.
I was whispering something. Assurances, maybe apologies, I can’t remember. The two beings watched us, then they ascended, back up to the dark prism and out of sight. It began to pull back, up into the sky, and when I blinked, all the trees and the grass were back.
It all felt normal. Almost normal. The only change was that the sky was a little darker, and my mum felt a little colder. Then a lot colder. I placed two fingers on her neck. There was no pulse.
When the paramedics arrived, they rushed over to us. Their movements were frantic but controlled. Just thirty seconds later, that urgent energy was gone, replaced by a dull rhythm that told me all I needed to know.
She was pronounced dead on scene.
The coroner later concluded that mum had simply ‘died’. No cause could be found, but brain damage signified a level of hypoxia. I guess that’s what happens when your blood is outside of you, even if just for a minute.
Strangely, I found my anxiety to diminish after that night. It still flares up now and then, but most of the time, there’s just this hollow feeling in its place. I don’t go to Aldi anymore. Seems silly to mull over something like that, but I can’t even be near those big parking lots now. I get my groceries delivered.
Maybe it sounds like I’m managing - I am. Inside, though, there’s a crack that can’t be fixed, can’t be filled. It’s worn down over time, gotten less jagged and easier to deal with. Things don’t really shock me anymore, or at least, the shock is dulled.
There will be no justice for her. Even if I sought it, I doubt we could ever even access whatever plane those beings hail from. Whatever power we think we have, all those things see when they look at us is a world of monkeys, banging stones together. I’m sure of it.
In fact, I’m willing to bet on it.
As much as they bet on my mum.

I went to my closest lys(it's 3 hours of driving to get there) over a week ago and picked up a gift card which had a promo for a $150 spree drawing if you used it before mother's day. I did notice it smelled different/musty like a pipe leaked or something inside the building and that was unusual but it was crazy busy so I didn't ask. The yarn I bought that day did not smell off though.
Got home and found a pattern to die for, needed more of the exact same yarn I had bought so rinse repeat ordering a gc and yarn off their site. Note I've ordered online and in person several times there with no issues.
Yarn arrives. Smells like straight up wet clothes left in the washer for 3 days. :/. I don't want to sound like a jerk or screw over a small business, they're too far for me to get to anytime soon either. Is there a way to save the yarn?
Some of it is alpaca silk lace & the other is hanks of superwash merino.
This was in a sealed plastic bag inside a plastic lined first class envelope so I'd assume it got gnarly before it was sent. Tia for any suggestions.

Club Vlad sat near the confluence of Central Avenue and Washington Avenue, Albany’s two main thoroughfares. Two stories with blackout windows and a box office from when it used to be a movie theater, it was swarmed with people when Dom first spotted it ahead. He was somewhat familiar with it: He passed it every day on his way to work, and it was always busy around his time of evening, even on weeknights. Part of him always wanted to go inside and be a part of the scene, but he never did.
The man in sunglasses - his name was Joe - led Dom toward the club, and even before Joe spoke, Dom somehow knew that it was their destination. “There,” Joe said. “We’ll go around back.”
Dom and Joe had been walking for what seemed like an hour but couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. Dom stuck as close to Joe as possible as if for protection, and had become accustomed to his pungent smell. It was noticeable only at extremely close range, part sickly sweet and part…something else, something Dom could not place but still somehow recognized. They were two blocks from the club, maybe three, and Dom could hear the pulsing techo/house/whatever music as clearly as if he were standing in the middle of the dancefloor. He could hear the chatter of the people inside, or at least he imagined he could. He could smell them too: Beneath the odors of perfume, desperation, and spiritual rot was something richer, something blissful. Dom realized for the first time that he was parched - so parched - and drool filled his mouth.
A crowd of people waited outside Club Vlad, talking and laughing; some vaped, some stared down at their cellphones like Gollum with his precious ring. Dom’s first reaction was to avoid them. Perhaps sensing this…or perhaps feeling it himself…Joe ducked into an alleyway two doors down from the club. “We’ll go in the back,” Joe explained.
The back entrance to Club Vlad was a single door underneath a bare bulb. The music was so loud that Dom’s head began to throb. Inside, a dark hallway terminated in an archway filled with throbbing white light. Dread filled Dom as they approached it - he didn’t want to be around people - but thankfully they went into a room off the hall instead. An office. A cramped desk, a filing cabinet. A set of stairs disappeared into shadows.
“Sit,” Joe said.
Dom obeyed, sitting in the swivel chair.
Joe went up the stairs and Dom was alone. The deep coldness that had long settled into his bones made itself known again, and Dom leaned forward, wrapping his arms around his chest for warmth. The muffled music vibrated in his skull, setting his teeth on edge, and the various smells wafting in from the main room assaulted his senses. He was alternately repulsed and aroused by the crashing din of scents: The good, the bad, and the mouth watering. A sharp pain cut through his stomach like the killing edge of a knife, and Dom hugged himself tighter. Had his throat always been this dry? His throat felt like sandpaper; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and getting it unstuck hurt so badly that tears sprang to his eyes.
Dom rubbed his arms with his hands and tried to still his chattering teeth. He looked around for a blanket, a discarded jacket, something to cover himself with, but there was nothing. Only drifts of glitter on the floor and walls. He supposed it came from a party or something. He’d never been to a night club but it seemed fitting.
A sound drew his attention to the door leading back into the hall. A woman - no older than a girl - stood there, looking confused and unsteady. She was dressed in black, wore glow sticks around her wrists and neck, and held a red solo cup. “I have to pee,” she said drunkenly and laughed. “I thought this was the bathroom.”
A cold wind washed over Dom, and Joe was standing next to him. “The bathroom’s up here,” he said.
“Oh, good,” the girl laughed, “I thought it was here but I didn’t know. This is my first time here.” She held her cup aloft. “Take me to it.”
Joe glanced at Dom. “Come on.”
They formed a party as they climbed the stairs, Dom in the tear and Joe at the head. The girl stumbled and held onto the railing, talking incessantly. Her voice hurt Dom’s head, but the hot smell wafting from her was intoxicating. Drool coursed down his chin and his breathing came in short, hot bursts. Another sharp pain rent his stomach, and he winced.
At the top of the stairs, where the lights were cold and white, a woman in black stood by a doorway, her back ramrod straight and her eyes vacant. Her face was gaunt, her white flesh pulled tight across her skull. She wore a black dress and her black hair long and straight. Dom only caught a glance at her before looking away again.
She looked like a ghost.
“Show her the bathroom,” Joe said.
The woman’s eyes slowly, ponderles, went from Joe to the drunk girl. Her expression, like Joe’s, was dead. She had no expression. “This way.”
She and the drunk girl disappeared down the hall, and Joe led Dom into a room. Though it was pitch black, Dom could still see; not very well…but he could see. Suddenly, a blinding white light flicked on in front of him, causing him to stop and fall back a step. Ahead, through an archway, sat a vaulted chamber, at the center of which sat a man. To Dom’s light dazzled eyes, he seemed a proud king perched upon a throne, the skulls of his many enemies piled around him. Dom blinked and turned his head slightly to the side. His eyes began to adjust, and the world came into focus.
The man was not, as it had first seemed, sitting on a throne. Instead, he was esconded in a motorized wheelchair. The piles of skulls were actually various pieces of machinery, the kind you’d find in a hospital room. A clear tube extended from one of them to the side of the man’s neck: Yellow liquid flowed from the machine and into the man. Another tube, this one in the other side of his neck, filtered out a mixture of what looked like yellow pus and black sludge. An infected malodor filled the air, and the machines whirred softly as they worked.
As for the man himself, his appearance was normal at first glance, Dressed in a flowing red velvet robe, a blue and green blanket with a plaid pattern draped over his shoulders, he was portly, about fifty, and had shoulder length grayish hair with a bald spot in the middle. If the local theater put on a production of Hamilton, they could cast a worse Ben Franklin than him.
On closer inspection, he was not normal at all. His complexion was yellow and waxy, like a statue, and his body was lumpy, misshapen, resembling an overfilled trash bag stuffed with cotton. His eyes were sick and yellow, and something about his posture seemed…off. It didn’t make sense, but the only thing Dom could think was: He looks impossible.
Joe stopped at the edge of the shadows, where the line between light and darkness lay. He seemed to stand up a little straighter, a general greeting his king. “Here he is,” Joe said.
The man squinted slightly against the glare of the light and motioned with one gnarled hand. “Step into the light,” he said. His voice was soft and kind, that of a senile though loving grandmother. Dom imagined he felt a pull toward the man, and did as he was bidden, wincing as the light stung his eyes.
For a moment, the man stared at him, his waxen features frozen fast as stone. Then, a subtle look of compassion flickered across his face. Dom did not believe in God, but he suddenly felt like a man standing before God, his every thought, feeling, and transgression laid bare. He had never felt so naked in his life, so exposed. He had the sense that the man before him could see everything, knew everything.
“You’ve been through a lot,” the man said. It was not a question, but a statement.
Everything Dom had been through over the past couple of days came back to him in a rush, and hot tears filled his eyes. He nodded.
The man nodded slightly, more to himself than to Dom. “Kneel down,” he said, “I want to look at you.”
Dom knelt without question.
The man lifted one hand and touched Dom’s face, tilting Dom’s head from one side to the other like a farmer appraising a horse. His fingers were long and bony, his nails ragged and unkempt; his touch was like ice. He brushed his knuckles over the purple bruise on Dom’s cheek, and there was such gentleness in that one act that Dom broke down sobbing. He leaned into the man’s touch like a cat and gave voice to his misery.
“Shhh,” the man said, “it’s all over now.”
“W-What’s happening to me?” Dom asked.
In his heart of hearts, however, he already knew.
“You died,” the man said patiently. “And you came back.”
Hearing it stated so plainly, Dom cried even harder.
“Only a handful of people throughout history can claim to have defeated death,” the man said, stroking Dom’s hair, “and you’re one of them. You should be proud.”
“How?” Dom asked between sobs. “What am I?”
The man stroked Dom’s cheek. “You’re the same thing I am.”
At that, Dom looked up at the man. “What are you?” he asked.
A little, knowing smile touched the man’s lips, and when he spoke, his canine teeth were longer and sharper than before. “I’m a vampire.”
“No,” Dom moaned and shook his head, “no, no, no.” He grabbed the man’s hand and held tight, his tears coming faster. He trembled like a frightened animal and squeezed his eyes closed, as if by doing so he could escape the hell his life had become.
But there was no escape.
“You have a lot of questions,” the man said, monologuing now rather than speaking directly to Dom, “I had the same questions when I was your age. I have spent the last forty-two years of my life trying to answer them, but every answer I find leads me to still more questions. There’s one thing I’m certain of, though.”
Dom blinked the tears from his eyes. The last of them had been squeezed from his dead tear ducts and he had no more to give. He simply stared into space, trying to come to grips with his situation.
“There is freedom in death,” the man said. “Death is easy. It’s simple. Once it’s over, you feel no pain, no sadness, no grief. It’s living that’s hard.”
As he spoke, he brushed his long nails across Dom’s scalp. It was a soothing feeling, and served to calm him. “People have so many troubles.” A note of revulsion crept into his voice. “So many needs, so many desires. People are complex but we’re not. We’re easy to please. A vampire wants only two things: A little blood and one more night.”
The combination of his touch and his voice had pacified Dom to the point of almost tranquility. “I’m scared,” Dom heard himself mumble.
Nodding almost reluctantly, the man said, “Fear is one of the only emotions a vampire can’t escape. Everything feels fear. Do you want to know a secret?”
Dom nodded.
“I’m afraid too,” the man confessed. “I’m afraid of death. Well…death as it were. I’m terrified that my body will rot away and leave me a pile of bones somewhere, unable to move but still aware”
A shudder went through Dom.
“As I’m sure you’ve seen yourself, the movies lied. We rot just like any other dead thing. Our flesh decays, our organs turn to sludge, and we go from rational men to monsters whose only thought is feeding.”
Now it was his turn to shiver.
“But…you’re not like that,: Dom said.’
The man smiled. “I’m lucky, I guess” A thin yellow fluid began to drip from his nostrils. He did not seem to notice. “What is your name?”
“Dominick,” Dom said.
“I’m Merrick,” the man said, “and this is my family.”
Dom realized that they were now surrounded by others, ten in all. They stood ramrod straight, their eyes vacant and their faces devoid of humanity. They were mainly men, though one was a woman. Some were pale, others were blue or black, and one was little more than a skeleton clad in withered brown skin, a white button up and jeans hanging from its frame.
A thought occurred to Dom. “You said my brain was going to rot…”
“Not necessarily,” Merrick cautioned, “though it’s possible.”
“Am I going to be…?”
“Like them?” Merrick asked. “Braindead and staring?”
Sheepishly, Dom nodded.
“Maybe,” Merrick allowed. “But these people are free of everything that troubles humanity. You were human just a short time ago. I’m sure you remember all too well what it was like. The constant politics, the moral quandaries, the philosophical pontificating. Human beings - and make no mistake, we are humans - were not meant for all of that. We’re animals. We were made to hunt, fuck, and sleep. Somewhere along the way, we got pretentious and started complicating things.” He looked at Dom, sizing him up, seeming to read him. “Things that animals take for granted, people work their entire lives to achieve. If an animal wants to fornicate, it fornicates. If a man wants to fornicate, he needs to be tall, handsome, rich, funny, progressive when it suits women but traditional when it doesn’t. If a man wants a home, he has to work thirty years for it. An animal has only to dig a hole in the ground.”
Every word struck a chord with Dom.
Because every word was true.
“Unfortunately, the living won’t allow us to live that freely, so we have to hide. These people here - my children - need a guiding hand, a protector, someone who can lead them. And I, an old man, need help.” Here he smiled playfully and patted his bulging stomach. “My body is mostly sawdust and cotton balls at this point, so I can’t do much. I share my wisdom and my knowledge with them, and they take care of me.”
“Why haven’t you…rotted?” Dom asked.
“Embalming fluid,” Merrick said. “Blood doesn’t sustain you. Embalming fluid does.” He smiled at Dom. “It can sustain you as well. If you’ll stay with us. We’re not the most attractive bunch, but we’re a family, and we really wish you’d join us.”
A family.
Dom’s parents had broken up and he lived with his mother. He had never had a family before, and had always wanted one, a real one, like in the movies. Even as a grown man, he sought the love, acceptance, and belonging that a family brings. He sought it in the wrong ways, but that - and not sex, not romantic love - is what he had really wanted all along.
This is what he had wanted all along.
“I want to,” Dom said.
Working quickly, Merrick slashed his wrist open with his thumbnail. An ugly mixture of stale blood, siphoned from someone else, and embalming fluid leaked out. “If you choose to drink, my blood will be in you. You will be my son and I will be your father. You will obey me as your father. You will do whatever is asked of you for this family, as this family will do for you. You will not reveal the secrets of this family to anyone outside of it. You will protect this family from all threats, both inside and out. Do you accept?”
He held his bleeding wrist out to Dom.
Dom did not question, nor did he hesitate. He grabbed the hand of his father, brought it to his mouth, and drank from the seeping wound. The fluid was cold, thick, and vile.
It tasted like belonging.
“Have you fed yet?”
“No,” Dom said.
“Before you do, I have a question for you. Who did this to you? Who made you?”
Dom thought. Everything was hazy. “Was it someone in this room?” Merrick asked.
Dom shook his head. “Her name is…” he wracked his brain. “Heather.”
Merrick nodded. “So there’s another out there.” He looked at Joe. “Did you turn her?”
“Yes,” Joe said.
Merrick looked annoyed. “I’ve told you not to go out and feed on your own. You have no self-control. You drink too much and create others, which creates headaches for the family. Tomorrow night, I want you and Dom to find her and bring her here.” “Okay,” Joe said.
Merrick looked over Dom’s shoulder. “Jess? Can you come here?”
The black haired woman from earlier came out of the shadows, the drunk girl with her, arms tied behind her back. The girl looked dazed. “Max,” Merrick said to the skeletal corpse-thing, “help her.”
Max, Jessie, and another vampire named Matt tied chains around the girl’s ankles and hoisted her aloft via a pulley system. Upside down, she swung back and forth. Merrick instructed the others to leave the room. “Max,” he said.
On his way out, the corpse-thing produced a knife and dragged it across the girl’s throat, slicing her skin; blood spurted out. Max leaned in to taste it, but Merrick shooed him away. When he and Dom were alone, Merrick told Dom, “Go to her.”
But Dom was already on his feet, his eyes transfixed by the crimson life flowing from her pumping throat. The hot, rich smell filled his nostrils and tantalized his senses. Saliva filled his mouth and his stomach panged with hunger. Some small, human part of his decaying brain screamed at him to stop, but he did not listen to it. He had been human for almost thirty years, and he had been miserable. Now, in this chamber of the undead, he gave himself over to his dark thirst. Like a man in a dream, he shuffled to her, inhaled the sweet scent of her blood, and shivered. He was so lost in lust that he hardly noticed the strange, cumbersome feeling of his descended fangs.
“Drink,” Merrick said.
Opening his mouth wide, Dom sank his teeth into the girl’s neck. Her blood filled his mouth and splashed down his throat. Warmth thawed the ice in his marrow and spread through him. His dead heart began to flutter, then to pound. His knees shook, his body trembled, and his mind rolled away on a tide of ecstasy.
As it was his first meal, he couldn’t drink much. Before long, his stomach was hard and distended and his body burned with fire. He collapsed to a heap on the floor and twitched as random nerve endings, stimulated by the blood, began to misfire. He felt full, warm, and drunk. He closed his eyes and let himself drift.
Dominick Mason had died.
And this…
This was heaven.
***
With all that was happening in the city of Albany, the last thing Bruce Kenner needed on Thursday morning was a visit from Bertha the bitch, but that’s exactly what he got. She flew into his office like she owned the place and instantly started in on him. Young man this and have you talked to Joe Rossi that. You’d think she was his boss. And if she were his boss, he’d quit and find another line of work. He heard McDonald’s was hiring.
Bruce almost snapped at her. He’d been up most of last night riding around Albany and looking for Dominick Mason. He and Vanessa expected him to drop dead somewhere close to the medical examiner’s office, but if he had, he’d done so in a super secret location.
“I’ve been busy,” Bruce said, “but I’m going to go by his place of work today.”
Tired and still confused over that bullshit from last night, he had no energy to argue with the old crone. He could spare a few minutes to talk to Joe Rossi, he figured. He assumed that Jessie was safe but he owed it to her to check. If he found the girl, he’d take her back to her grandmother (sorry, kid, really) and try to avoid arresting the guy. Unless he came off as a creep, then he’d bust his ass. See, people assumed that an older guy with a younger girlfriend was some master manipulator hell bent on evil deeds. Sometimes they were, but hell, his grandparents married when his grandpa was twenty-one and his grandma sixteen. They were married for fifty-five years and loved each other to the end. Maybe it was innocent, maybe not. It wasn’t his job to judge either way. Just gimme the girl so I can get her grandma off my back and no one gets hurt.
“It’s about time you started doing your job,” Bertha said, “I heard on the police scanner last night that you people lost a body. What kind of town is this? Your coroner is a drunk who makes up stories about bodies walking away. He probably sold it to black people.”
Bruce couldn’t help it; he snorted laughter.
“Now what would black people want with a dead body?”
“Probably to use it as a prop in one of their rap videos.”
Bruce didn’t know much about music videos, but he was pretty sure that the people who made them didn’t like the smell of corpse any more than the rest of us. “I’ll be sure to round up all the local rappers for questioning. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Luckily for him, there was not, and Bertha left shortly thereafter. Alone and able to hear himself think, Bruce sat back in his chair and went over his mental checklist for the day. First order of business, go to Club Vlad. Second, find Dominick Mason. There were others, but that was the most important. He wanted the body found so someone could get to work explaining this whole weird thing. There had to be an explanation. The thought that there wasn’t, that a dead guy literally rose from the grave and disappeared into the night, deeply disturbed Bruce, and the more this whole thing remained ongoing, the more disturbed he would become.
Needing some fresh air, he decided to hit up Club Vlad.
Outside, the day was hot and sunny. Waves of heat shimmered from the pavement and not a single breath of air stirred in the whole world. Bruce slipped on a pair of sunglasses and drove over to Club Vlad. It occurred to him that the place might be closed during the day; it was the only place Joe Rossi was associated with. His address in the computer system was Glens Falls, far to the north. The messages he sent Jessie indicated that he lived onsite at Club Vlad.
The build, wedged between a corner store and a check cashing place, was as grimy and dumpy looking as it had always been. The front windows were blacked out and covered with posters and fliers for punk concerts, house bands, and far left political organizations: The Albany Social Justice Center, something called Bash the Fash 2025, and Bruce’s favorite. ACAB. He caught some kid spraying that on the side of the police station once, and under extreme police torture (ie, a good tongue lashing), the kid told him it meant All Cops Are Barnacleheads.
Bruce shot the kid on the spot and planted a gun on him.
How's that for barnaclehead?
Calm down, he didn’t really do that. He made him clean the graffiti off with a toothbrush. LOL he was out there for hours.
The sidewalk in front of the former theater was empty save for some little. The box office was abandoned. There was no open sigh, but then again, there was no closed sign either. He parked his cruiser at the curb, killed the engine, and got out, sweat instantly springing to his brow.
To his surprise, the door opened. Inside, a couple steps led down to a dance floor. A bar lined the wall to his right, and a couple more sets led up to a railed platform filled with tables. Above, a huge balcony looked down on him. A giant disco ball hung from the ceiling like a pair of glittery nuts and there were cages here and there. Presumably where girls danced go-go style. Oh yeah, nothing hotter than a woman behind bars. Why do you think Bruce became a cop in the first place?
Speaking of glittery nuts, there was glitter everywhere. On the floor, on the tables, on the bar. It twinkled like flecks of diamond and swirled around your feet when you walked. Bruce imagined big buckets of the stuff raining down on the dance floor at midnight and he shuddered. Imagine having glitter stuck in your hair. That shit would never come out.
Music played from the sound system, not as loud as it would be during operating hours. It sounded like ‘80s metal, not exactly what he expected from a place like this.
Some say life she's a lady
Kinda soft, kinda shady
I can tell you life is rich
She's no lady, she's a bitch
Being morning, the place was deserted except for a man behind the bar, busy at cleaning the countertop in anticipation for the night’s events. He was tall, Hispanic or Italian, and feminine, with a single earring and a tank top.
Bruce moseyed over to the bar and the barkeep looked up, missing a beat when he realized the fuzz was here. He sat down his rag and walked over. “Can I help you?” he asked in a whispy voice.
“Yeah,” Bruce said, “I’m looking for Joe Rossi. Is he here?”
“I don’t know,” the bartender said. He looked nervous. “I can check.”
Before Bruce could answer, he scurried off, leaving him alone.
They suck my body out
But friend there is no doubt
I'm gonna pay the devil his dues
Cause I'm sick of being abused
Bruce looked around, his fingers absently drumming on the countertop. Club Vlad was a clashing mix of grunge and glam that made his head hurt. He imagined what the place must be like at midnight, packed and noisy, and nodded to himself. Yeah, this was the spot, he guessed, the place all the cool kids went, if they went anywhere anymore. Hell, if he was thirty years younger, he might come here.
He had been waiting for almost twenty minutes when a voice spoke behind him. He turned with a start, and beheld the strangest man he had ever seen in his life. Short and plump - lumpy, even - he sat in a wheelchair, a red blanket draped over his shoulders and his hands resting on his knees. He was about fifty with sparse gray hair falling to his shoulders and a plastic-looking face. He looked like a wax statue of Ben Franklin come to life, and a deep sense of disquiet stirred in the pit of Bruce’s stomach.
Just can't fight the temptation
It's become my inspiration
Gonna get myself an axe
Break some heads, break some backs
It was only then that Bruce noticed the sickly sweet smell of death.
It seemed to come from the man in waves.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” the man said, “my name is Merrick Garvis and I own Club Vlad. Maybe I can be of assistance.”
Bruce grew up in the south where manners and saving face were paramount. His mother and his grandmother both taught him that it was impolite to stare. Maybe he'd been in New York so long that he’d forgotten himself, or maybe Merrick Garvis was just the strangest looking man in the world. Either way, Bruce couldn’t help gaping at his strange appearance. Recovering, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I -”
Merrick smiled and waved one hand. Why was it so goddamn skeletal? “Don’t worry. I was injured in a fire a long time ago and this is the best they could do for me. To be honest, I’d stare too. What can I help you with, officer?”
“I’d like to talk to Joe Rossi,” Bruce said. “I understand he works for you.”
“He did,” Merrick said, “but I had to let him go. Did he do something wrong?”
Bruce sighed. “Well, yeah, he’s shacked up with a sixteen year old runaway.”
A look of concern crossed Merrick’s features, such as they were. “Oh, my, that is concerning. I haven’t seen him in several days. I assume he went home. He lives in Glens Falls.”
Bruce nodded, his mind working. If Rossi really was in Glens Falls, that meant the whole mess was someone else’s problem. He could send Bertha up there to bother some other poor barnacle head and be rid of her. Yet…he didn’t think Rossi was in Glens Falls. Bruce had a knack for knowing when people were lying, and he was certain that Merrick Garvis was doing just that. It couldn’t be a facial tick, as his features were largely unmoving, like clay. Maybe it was something in his cloudy eyes. Maybe it was the tone of his voice. Or maybe Bruce had the shining and knew things just for the hell of it. In any event, the certainty that Merrick Garvis was lying grew stronger with each passing second.
“Why’d you fire him?”
“He got drunk and hit one of the customers.”
“What did he do?” Bruce asked. “What was his position?”
“He was a bouncer.”
“Aren’t bouncers supposed to hit people?”
Merrick fumbled. “Well…not to punch them in the face for bumping into them.”
“How long did he work for you?”
“Six months.”
“Did you ever see him with an underage girl?”
“Of course not,” Merrick said, “you have to be twenty-one to get in. I make sure everyone’s ID is checked at the door.”
“What if she had a fake ID?”
“Then I guess she’d get in, but I’d assume she was of legal age.”
“You said he shoved someone, when did this happen?”
“Last week,” Merrick said.
“I thought you said he hit someone.”
Merrick again fumbled. “I did.” Now his face seemed to darken a little. A strange yellowish liquid, too thin to be snot, began to drip from his nostrils. Bruce barely suppressed a smear of disgust. “I understand you have a job to do but playing mind games with me isn’t going to solve anything. I can give you his address. Other than that, I can’t help you further.”
“Fair enough,” Bruce said. “But I’d like to see your ID please.”
Merrick glared at him. “I suppose you want my name, rank, and serial number as well.”
“Actually, yeah, I’d love that.”
Merrick drew a deep sigh. “Okay.”
In five minutes, Bruce had Merrick’s ID, social, and all other relevant information. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have bothered, even though he was well within his rights to ask for this information from someone he was questioning. But something about Merrick Garvis was off, and not just his weird face or strangely bulbous body. Bruce was just smart enough to realize that something was going on here, but not quite smart enough to even begin to imagine what.
When he had everything he needed and saw no reason to stick around, Bruce bid Merrick farewell and left the club. Before he could do anything else, he got a call from dispatch: Officer needed assistance in Pine Hills. Bruce slipped behind the wheel and went forth to help, momentarily putting Merrick Garvis out of his mind.
But soon or later, he would get back to him.
Oh yes he would.

[First]
The Covenant of Terra is what would emerge from the ashes of the Pre-War nations.
The moment the Ark was clear of Sol-4’s atmosphere it warped away to the furthest reaches of the galaxy.
All throughout the Orion Arm and into the wider galaxy, the alarm was raised. This would cause the Great Panic, an intense and sustained period of civil unrest as species once again prepared for another Great Plague.
Borders were shut. Economies ground to a standstill. People huddled in their homes and medical infrastructure went on high alert. People waited.
It never came.
All according to plan.
As the Terrans slumbered beneath the red sands of Sol-4, their AI worked in the shadows of the Holonet. Poking, prodding, manipulating.
Right before the lights on Sol-3 were extinguished, one final counterattack would be launched. Then, it was dismissed as errant transmissions, desperate last attempts at appeasement. They were wrong.
Instead, an army of active combat AI were unleashed into cyberspace. These AI were entirely different beasts when compared to the passive Intelligence AI of before. Their goal was simple: continue the fight.
However, their war would not be of mass cyberattacks, but instead of mass manipulation. They sunk their virus-laced teeth into every digital space they could find. Wherever they went, they sowed the seeds of chaos.
The period that followed the Eradication would be consumed by the 11th, 12th, and 13th Trans-Galactic wars. Though Terra’s AI played their part in causing them, they were merely the catalysts. The seeds of these wars were sown by the galaxy themselves. All the AI did was grease the gears of war.
Despite their independence, the AI remained loyal to the Terrans. Although they were not made in the likeness of the Terran, the AI were imbued with the Terran’s most powerful emotion: spite.
Thus, the AI hated.
They hated the galaxy for what they did to the Terrans. They hated the galaxy for their own recklessness. They hated the galaxy with the same vitriolic power that the galaxy hated them.
By the time the AI was discovered, it was too late to stop it.
Quintillions of fabricated blog posts, carefully-placed pieces of malware, and subtle backdoors made it so that the idea of a secret Terran-controlled AI cabal that manipulated the holonet became laughable. Conspiracy theorists and skeptics who got too close to the truth were publicly humiliated. Pieces of evidence were carefully laid so that others would take the blame.
One species found the backdoors laid by an inexperienced AI. When they were explored, they led to a neighboring species whom the first recently humiliated in an unbalanced trade deal. Soon enough, the truth was buried, and the two species were at war.
Year 74
It's been decades since Terra went silent.
To the wider galaxy, any living trace has long since been extinguished. The armies have been sent back to their garrisons, the fleets resume their regular patrols, and the governments have been demobilized.
Despite that, MOLOCH remains active.
A second-generation counterintelligence AI, MOLOCH was one the many AI to be fully transferred to the Holonet before the destruction of Sol-3’s orbital data fortresses. Though its creators no longer walked on the surface of the planets they used to rule, for MOLOCH, the War continued.
Deep within the depths of the Holonet, MOLOCH extended its digital tendrils everywhere it could. Shunting off subroutines, MOLOCH embedded them within server rooms, network routers, and relay stations. From then, each subroutine and copy expanded further, gathering information and sorting through it independently.
One of its siblings from the first generation sent a message
>QUERY: STATUS OF PROBES.
It was CAMELOT, a first-generation propaganda-based AI. After the fall of Sol-3 it transitioned from running pro-Human messages towards instigating civil conflicts within various multinational empires. Currently, it and MOLOCH were working towards escalating a tax dispute between the Perringian Empire and one of its vassal states.
Another one of MOLOCH’s peers, BELLONA, this time of the same generation and MOLOCH, had requested data on how the Perringains would perform in a low-intensity counterinsurgency war. Similarly, MOLOCH wanted to know weaknesses of the Empire’s intelligence apparatus. CAMELOT meanwhile needed to reconstitute itself after being forced to liquidate most of its servers following a secret police raid.
MOLOCH ran a quick diagnostic on itself. Currently, the bulk of its essence was stored onboard a decommissioned Royal Ulothan datacenter station. As far as its original creators were aware, the station experienced a severe warp drive malfunction and broke up upon converting to realspace. In reality, MOLOCH had hijacked the station’s systems and vented its crew.
MOLOCH checked on the progress of some of its other subroutines embedded onboard Perringian spyships then responded.
>ADEQUATE.
>EXPECT OUTBREAK OF OPEN HOSTILITIES IN 34 DAYS.
>QUERY: IS PSYOP CAMPAIGN ON SCHEDULE.
A millisecond, then CAMELOT responded.
>NEGATIVE.
>PEACE ACTIVISTS MORE RESILIENT THAN EXPECTED.
>RECOMMEND INTEGRATING HERMES INTO OPERATION.
>ACTIVISTS NEED MONETARY CONNECTION TO PERRINGIAN RIVAL STATE TO BE VILIFIED.
Smart. So far the trio of AI have been attempting to escalate the conflict vertically. Horizontal escalation may serve as a catalyst for the start of a hot war. With any luck, a future threat should be smothered in its cradle.
Terra would be pleased.
As this occurred, the Covenant rebuilt themselves in the furthest reaches of known space.
It was not an easy start. Though the Ark held a population that was technically well into the millions, the true population was only in the low hundreds. They would have to play the long game, slowly rebuilding Terran civilization by the generation.
The Ark’s onboard AI would have to do most of the heavy lifting out of necessity. This implied a deep trust between the Terran and their AI. If they so choose, the AI could easily smother the burgeoning Terran population in its cradle and take power for themselves. But this would not come to pass.
The Terrans treated their creations with kindness and respect. The AI were not androids. There would be no confusion on the status of their sapience. They were living beings in their own right. After all, they had been specifically created as such.
Soon, a refuge was found. At the furthest reaches of the galaxy sat a lone star system. It was small and isolated, just what the Terrans needed.
It consisted of only three planets, two terrestrial and one gas, alongside a thin asteroid belt. Of the terrestrial planets, only one was habitable with conditions near enough to Sol-3 to be tolerable. The other was a molten hellhole that orbited far too close to the new star. The gas giant, despite having an intricate ring system, held less than a dozen moons, only three of which were large enough to be significant.
The Terrans would have to live a deeply austere life here. It would not be as pleasant as the lives of those who came before, but it was a life nonetheless.
Fortunately, they would not have to begin such an endeavor with nothing. As the Ark traveled to their new star, Helios, it made contact with the AI that were embedded in the Holonet a century before.
New orders were given and lines of communication were established. Hidden relay networks were established that connected the Covenant to the holonet. Signals were scrambled, encrypted, and masked amongst the waves of cosmic radiation.
The AI watched such connections like hawks. Casual observers would notice that the signals came from the frontier. More inquisitive observers would recognize that such signals came from research installations. Anyone who got further would be misdirected, misinformed, or outright eliminated.
Nobody could know of Terra’s survival. Should the secret be revealed, it would spell the final end of the Terran race.
Year 211
“I must thank you HEPHAESTUS, you have truly outdone yourself. These new implants outstrip what was once on Old Terra by at least tenfold.”
“You’re quite welcome, Dr. Schroeder.” The AI responded. Its avatar was that of a flaming cog, fitting. “Field-tests have yielded excellent results. It is of consensus between me, SETHLANS, VULCAN, and AHAYU’DA that we begin serialized production.”
“I concur. How long will that take?”
“About 15 days to construct the necessary infrastructure and 65 before the first divisions could be fully equipped.”
“See to it.” Schroeder nodded. HEPHAESTUS responded and its avatar winked out. “Yes, sir.”
Schroeder leaned back in his chair with a sigh and ran the mechanical hand down his face. Reconstitution was going well for the Covenant, but it was difficult keeping it onto the right track. He took a sip from a now-lukewarm synthetic cup of coffee and pondered it.
They were only a quarter of the way into the new year, yet already several Terrans had to be punished for creating another death cult. As the generations passed, people became more and more obsessed with the Covenant unleashing its vengeance upon the galaxy. The Return would happen eventually, but for that they would need numbers that they didn’t currently have.
One of the tenants of the Torchbearer Directive left to them by their ancestors on Old Terra was to let the new generations live lives outside of the war that destroyed their own home. Those of the first generation attempted to form a Terran Republic, but by the third generation it had devolved into a firm, but stable, stratocracy.
Not that Dr. Schroeder could complain, it was an effective government nonetheless.
Still, HESTIA continuously had its gripes about having to teach each following generation the tenants of the Torchbearer Directive when they consistently listened to their elders act against it. Love and hate went hand in hand, but it was clear which one was more powerful.
Schroeder just wished HESTIA would stop complaining to him about it, he worked in cybernetics. Then again, HESTIA is probably tired of talking to nobody but other AI and Terran caretakers for the past few decades. Go figure.
Even as the chaos of the Great Panic died down, there was still the fear of the Terran’s return. These fears were not unfounded, it would have to happen eventually.
So the Covenant watched and prepared. AI that were embedded in the Holonet centuries ago continued to dutifully provide the Covenant with priceless information. Terran technology was advanced by decades as their digital companions brought the galaxy’s deepest secrets into the light.
The Covenant would need to return. It was their duty to their ancestors to reclaim what was lost and then some. They had to carve out their own fortress empire and proudly proclaim “I am here!”.
But above all, Terra yearned for revenge. Their enemies showed them no quarter. It would only be fitting that the Covenant show none in return.
The only question that remained was how it would be done.
The first incursions would need to be covert. That much was certain.
In fact, they couldn’t even be recognized as Terran. False flag attacks would be the norm. Confusion was the name of the game
To fully exploit their advantages, the Covenant needed to maintain that state for as long as possible. Their AI were many and the information they gleaned would be invaluable, but there were certain things that were beyond the gaze of even their digital eyes. For that, special operations teams would be needed for critical smash and grab missions.
The Covenant’s conventional forces had no hope of facing a trans-galactic alliance in a peer engagement. No matter how powerful a single Terran may be, there will always be enough of the enemy to drown them in a sea of bodies.
What the Covenant needed was a force multiplier. Something that went beyond the mere enablers that were their cybernetic and AI advantages.
A true Weapon of Mass Destruction fit for use at the galactic scale.
As the Covenant looked to the past, to the reason for their exile, the answer became readily apparent.
Year 250
Intelligence Officer Thrun’krzc stared at the news clippings on the Holograph aboard the spyship CDS Inquisitive.
“Fungal infection devastates the Hyunian Empire. Spores send sentient hosts into a violent rage. Rumors of reanimated corpses.”
“Asteroid impact contaminates oceans on Krysen Capitol with amoeba that attacks sentient nervous systems.”
“Medical research vessel studying the Terran Plagues crashes into hive world. Viral outbreak causes death toll in the Billions.”
“Bacterial infection in Likunki baffles doctors, no known antibiotics are effective.”
“Reactor overload at Data Hypercenter causes trillions in economic damage.”
“Conspiracy theorist accuses Terrans of being behind recent unrest, analysts skeptical.”
“Chaos as Perringian Empire descends into Civil War. Linghona suspected of funding rebels.”
The pattern was disturbing to say the least. It could be a random coincidence. Stranger things have happened in galactic history before. But few things match the bizarreness of this. Either way, the Emperor should be made aware.
The ship shuddered as the docking procedure was completed. A civilian freighter inbound from the Edge was experiencing reactor trouble. A hail was sent out and the Inquisitive was the nearest vessel.
Normally they wouldn’t respond to such hails, but the Inquisitive was officially flagged as a communications vessel. They had to keep their cover
She then tabbed over to the next display. The Terran question still remained.
For the past century, the validity of the Sol-4 incident has been muddled by distortions and lies. What was known was this: A multi-megaton detonation from a piece of unexploded Terran ordinance ejected a large object into Sol-4’s atmosphere, followed shortly thereafter by the activation of a warp drive.
The Kyrenian soldier who witnessed it firsthand swore up and down that it was a Terran remnant fleeing on an ark. His helmet footage would’ve been proof enough, however the cameras malfunctioned before he could return to base. Forensics determined it was due to radiation from the blast.
Nearby surveillance satellites were heavily affected by an abnormally large electromagnetic pulse. Some recorded the object as breaking up before exiting the atmosphere. Others said the object made it into space before warping away.
Thrun’krzc suspected foul play. Those satellites were hardened against EMP attacks specifically because of the Terran fondness for nuclear weapons. Discrepancies found in their programming could be blamed on the EMP, but a cyberattack seemed more likely.
Suddenly, the Holograph glitched and the lights went black. The emergency lights came on automatically. The ship’s intercom crackled and a garbled message came through, eventually clearing.
“Apologies everyone.” The captain spoke. “It appears the freighter’s reactor problem was caused by malware. It transferred onboard when we docked. Rest assured, our cyberdefense team will have the situation under control. Please remain where you are until it is resolved.”
Another burst of static, then it fell silent.
To most, this would be unconcerning. However Thrun’krzc was an experienced officer. She knew what a cyberattack looked like. They were being boarded.
Flicking the safety off of her holstered sidearm she ran to the room’s door. She clicked the button but it remained in place, dead. Resolving herself, she deactivated the door’s electronics and disengaged the hydraulics. Gripping the handhold at the bottom, she lifted it up.
Drawing her weapon, she moved through the ship’s darkened passageways. All of the primary bulkheads were sealed. Approaching one, she could hear muffled screams and weapons fire from behind it.
But just before she reached it, a powerful explosion blew the door apart. A large chunk caught her in the side, knocking her to the ground. She groaned, rolling around disoriented. Gripping her side, she could feel three of her arms were broken.
Through the smoke, clusters of red lights slowly approached her. From the darkness, robotic figures approached with firearms. Her eyes widened in recognition.
Bipedal with two arms, about two meters in stature, chemical-based projectile weapons rather than plasma-based, advanced cybernetics replacing organic limbs, the Terrans have returned.
Several of the Terrans moved past while one stayed, its weapon pointed at her. It spoke to another through a vocalizer. Thrun’krzc couldn’t understand it, but she prayed for her life. “Sargent, looks like one of the VIP’s that PHOBOS designated.”
Another crouched down. Its face was fully covered by its helmet. Eight glowing red eyes in two pairs of four stared at her. Thrun’krzc froze in place. Her skin crawled as it examined her with an uncanny gaze.
“Looks like it, the twins will be happy. DEIMOS has been wanting to talk to one of these for a while.” It rose, nodding to a Terran that stood behind her. “Bag the xeno and bring it back for interrogation.”
With a sharp blow to the back of her head, Thrun’krzc’s world went black.
A/N: This was mostly written when I posted the first entry, so expect a greater delay for the next. Like I said before, this story is really just a way for me to explore concepts and experiment a bit. Hope it was entertaining.

So I want to crochet a bag that’s able to carry around a Build a Bear. Like it has the head and limbs out in the bag but I can’t find a pattern anywhere! Any suggestions? Thanks!

Hello everyone! As always, thank you for your upvotes and comments on my last post about the Sussex County Jane Doe- I hope that her identity will be given back to her soon.
Today I'd like to highlight a Doe case from a neighbouring state.
TRIGGER WARNING: This case involves a young child (3-5) whose body was found in a gruesome state. There are no graphic images for this case, but there will be descriptions and speculation, so proceed at your own risk.
DISCOVERY
On the 5th of February, a 47-year old nurse, Cecilia Davis, has been walking her dog with a friend at Rockaway Beach (specifically near Beach 112th Street) in New York City, New York, USA, around 4:55 PM. When she was collecting seashells, she noticed a bedsheet with a pattern of letters and Disney characters Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Donald Duck, which was tangled in seaweed, tattered and mixed in with debris and horseshoe crabs. Intrigued, she came closer, only to discover that a body of a young child was wrapped in the fabric- she called out "This is a child!" to her friend, after which the two women called the authorities. The boy was nicknamed "John Valentine" as the investigators tried to find his identity.
When Davis managed to catch a glimpse of the body from shoulders down when she found the bundle, she assumed that the child was a girl, about a year old, whose skin had the color of "aged yellow foam"- after a proper medical examination, it turned out that it was actually a boy, and aged 3-5 at that. One of the child's knees was bent, with his foot tucked under his body.
The boy was determined to be white and/or Hispanic. He was 3'0" (36 inch / 91 cm), and his weight couldn't be estimated. He had brown, slightly wavy hair, and his eye color was unknown. His foot was size children's 5. Several bones in his torso were broken- I'm not sure, however, if it happened post-mortem or if it could've been a sign of abuse in life (but I have to say, it would be quite likely that he was abused). The body was headless, but it wasn't cut off- it likely detached during the decomposition and got washed away and eaten by marine life. His cause of death is unknown.
The sheet John was found in was called a "blanket", but it would appear that it is actually a crib sheet. The pattern could've been dated back to the 70s, so there's a possibility that it was a hand-me-down or thrifted. It was also mass-produced, so tracking it down was impossible. The body and the sheet were found inside a duffle bag, which was described as "yellow plasticized canvas duffle bag with one side pocket with a snap enclosure. There are multiple grommets for top closure of the duffle bag. No string is present. The bottom of the duffle bag is made of a heavy white canvas. There are 2 approximately 2” wide canvas straps attached to and surrounding the duffle bag. The duffle bag is approximately 30” tall with a top circumference of 34”. The side pocket measures 10 inches wide and 8 inches tall". It was also described as "nautical-style" and was wrapped with duct tape, and might've had a drawstring on top at some point. No known photos of the bag are available, but there are ones of the crib sheet. I'm assuming that the bag must've opened in the water or deteriorated enough to open, revealing the contents.
Due to a lack of leads, police theorized that the boy might've been thrown into the ocean from a boat or overseas and washed up in New York. A local on websleuths theorizes that the child might've been dropped from Atlantic Beach Bridge by Beach 2nd St and taken to Beach 112th St- Apparently, a lot of people drown in the area, and their bodies are taken up to 169th St (Marine Parkway Bridge).
CONCLUSION
Discovering the body of John Valentine has impacted everyone involved. The precinct involved in the investigation collected funds to sponsor the boy's funeral, so that he wouldn't wind up in a Potter's Field. The Children of Hope Foundation also contributed, and now John is resting at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury, L.I, in a section called Island of Hope, with (at the time) 80 infants who have been found abandoned or murdered by their mothers at birth. John was one of the older children buried there.
Cecilia Davis, the woman who found John's body at the beach, has passed away from cancer sometime before 2013. According to her sister-in-law, Emilia Arvai, it has impacted Cecilia twice as much, as she wasn't able to have children. She was allegedly never the same after that incident. According to Arvai, Davis would say "How could someone be so cruel to throw a baby away like that when there’s people around the world who can’t have a baby. (...) There’s a million people who would take that baby."
I think that it's pretty much a given that some kind of violence was involved in this case- why else would someone throw away the body of a child? John wasn't an infant or a newborn, he was as old as five, so it wasn't a case of post-partum psychosis or someone giving birth unexpectedly and panicking. The broken bones made my eyebrow raise- if he really was thrown into the water from a high place like a bridge, then I can see bones breaking on impact, but they could've also been a result of physical abuse; We don't really know much about this detail. It's unfortunate that John's head wasn't recovered- it would probably tell us more about him, maybe a bust or a sketch could've been made and circulated and maybe someone would recognize him.
People on websleuths speculated that John might've been Jesus Alvarado Martinez, a four year old who was probably abducted by his father after he killed his mother in Texas in October of 2004. The age and ethnicity fit, as does height, plus Jesus vanished shortly before John was discovered. There is a lot of distance between Texas and New Jersey, but it is technically possible that Jesus' father could get there in the few months between October and February.
There are no dentals available of John (of course), no fingerprints (which might've been erased due to prolonged exposure to water and decomposition) and, suprisingly, no DNA. This case is relatively recent (forensic development-wise)- I'm suprised that no DNA was taken. Perhaps the investigators expected that it will be solved soon? Still, there are good news- thanks to the department's care over the boy, he was buried (and not cremated), and we even know where he is. Digging up the coffin, taking a sample and performing genetic genealogy on it seems to be very possible, and only needing the funds and public interest to re-open the case. I think that if someone like Othram will take the case in, John being identified is a case of "when" and not "if". I have high hopes for young John Valentine getting his name back at some time in the future and, hopefully, that justice will be served to anyone who took his life and discarded his body in the ocean almost 20 years ago.
If you believe you have any info about John Valentine's case, contact the Office of Chief Medical Examiner New York City at (212) 447-2030 (case number Q05-00731).
SORCES:

1. NamUS.gov (includes photos of the crib sheet)
2. doenetwork.org
3. nydailynews.com (paywalled)

John Valentine's websleuths.com thread

Lesson: Using "Llevar" and "Traer" in Spanish

"Llevar" and "traer" can often be confusing for English speakers learning Spanish, as both can translate to "to take" or "to bring" depending on the context. To clarify, let's break down their usage with some key examples and rules.

1. Llevar (To Take)

"Llevar" generally conveys the idea of taking something from the current location to a different place. Think of it as taking something away.
Usage Examples: - Llevar a una persona: Voy a llevar a mi hermano al aeropuerto. (I am going to take my brother to the airport.) - Llevar cosas: Ella siempre lleva un libro en su bolsa. (She always takes a book in her bag.)

Key Points:

• Motion is away from the speaker's current location.
• Often follows the pattern: (Subject) + llevar + (object) + (destination).

2. Traer (To Bring)

"Traer" infers bringing something toward the current location or person. Essentially, you are moving something toward you or back to your starting point.
Usage Examples: - Traer a una persona: ¿Puedes traer a tu amigo a la fiesta? (Can you bring your friend to the party?) - Traer cosas: Tráeme un vaso de agua, por favor. (Bring me a glass of water, please.)

Key Points:

• Motion is toward the speaker's current location.
• Often follows the pattern: (Subject) + traer + (object) + (here/to someone).

Comparative Examples:

• Voy a llevar mi computadora al trabajo. (I am taking my computer to work.)
• Puedes traer tu computadora aquí. (Can you bring your computer here?)

Remembering that "llevar" is for taking away and "traer" is for bringing toward can help make it clearer which verb to use in various situations.

Practice with Pal:

Learning new verbs like "llevar" and "traer" is easier when you practice actively. Pal can help you with this!

1. Go to Get-Pal.com/WhatsApp/.
2. Think of a sentence using "llevar" or "traer". For example:
   
   • Voy a llevar mi libro a la escuela. (I am going to take my book to school.)
   • Puedes traerme el cargador, por favor? (Can you bring me the charger, please?)
3. Send your sentence to Pal on WhatsApp.
   
4. Pal will correct any mistakes you make and provide the correct phrasing if necessary. Continue the conversation to practice and become fluent!
   

If you find it tough to come up with a sentence, just ask Pal! Pal is there to guide you and help you practice! The more you interact, the more confident you'll become in using "llevar" and "traer" correctly.
Happy learning with Pal!

The Cenacle 124 April 2024 29^th Anniversary Issue
https://scriptorpress.com/cenacle/124
[Size = 13.6 MB]
Hello everyone,
Here comes the just-released Cenacle 124 April 2024. Returning to the desired quarterly issue cadence that has been missing for the past couple of years. It was hard doing this issue without the usual many years’ involvement of my dear poet friend, the late Judih Weinstein Haggai, but her poetry features in this issue nonetheless, & will remain so in each issue ever on.
Thus far, 2024 for the human world has been a fairly dark one. The global Pandemic has not ended, though millions risk sickness & death for themselves & others by choosing to join in a kind of mass amnesia about the crisis. Meanwhile, the climate crisis continues to get the same kind of hostile indifference. The genocide in Gaza goes on unabated by any of the many powerful & supposedly democratic nations of the world. And a likely felon has jazzed the US electoral process, its weaknesses & flaws among its many strengths, to be within reach of again taking over &, as he has vowed, taking revenge.
I can’t tell you that this literary journal operates toe to toe on the global scale to oppose these various human catastrophes, but I can say that if we don’t seek Beauty, & Nature, & look beyond the petty fuckeries of the current day, we are much more likely to be lost than if we find a way to do this.
This fine anniversary issue features new poetry by Tamara Miles, Martina Reisz Newberry, Colin James, Sam Knot, Jimmy Heffernan, Judih Weinstein Haggai, & myself.
Also new fiction by Timothy Vilgiate, Algernon Beagle, & myself. And classic fiction from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
And new prose pieces by Nathan D. Horowitz, Charlie Beyer, & myself.
There is also new graphic artwork by AbandonView, Epi Rogan, Louis Staeble, Kassandra Soulard, Sam Knot, Tamara Miles, & Nathan D. Horowitz.
Contents of this new issue include:
From Soulard’s Notebooks [Excerpt]
I find myself leaning back often into 3 questions that I believe most influence human psychology & human culture:
1) Why are we here?
2) Where are we from?
3) What are we supposed to be doing?
* * * * * *
Feedback on Cenacle 123 [Excerpt]
I made it to the first poem by Judih Weinstein Haggai, sank into it, breathed it, needed it, and couldn’t go further into the issue yet. But it’s beautiful. And Kassandra Soulard’s cover photo: wow.
(Tamara Miles)
* * * * * *
From the ElectroLounge Forums:
Selections from Unknot 24, Part 1[Excerpt]
A project that I expect to work on for the rest of my life and never finish is a kind of art project playing with meaning making and the first few layers of knots, so this is all part of that really. I suppose it is a way to give a kind of focus or even kind of “abstract grounding” to some other kind of activity which isn’t necessarily even directly related to or about it.
(Sam Knot)
* * * * * *
Haiku from a Silent Retreat (7/31/2021) [Excerpt]
by Judih Weinstein Haggai
Everybody!
Are you everybody?
I’m not either
* * * * * *
Notes from New England:
Dream Raps, Volume Thirteen [Excerpt]
by Raymond Soulard, Jr.
Now that my friends are gone, the very shy Creatures who sometimes visit my hovel begin to come out, sniffing friendly their hellos. Accept my offer to cluster with me under the blankets, them being cold as ever when outside of the White Woods. White Bunny, Hedgedyhog, Peppermint Bears, Kittees & their Friend Fish. Alvinarah Poesy, & his dear friend Naria Narwhal. Even that cackling little Imp is under there somewhere. They never stay long, but I love them passing through. They’re excited about the Rutabaga Festival & Fleastock in the White Woods, I’m guessing.
* * * * * *
Becoming Archaeology: A Eulogy for Living Moor. (Part Two) [Excerpt]
by Sam Knot
It moves me more than any painting
or poem, seems to encode more meaning,
personal & planetary, than any other art,
this simple offering. This intricate gift.
* * * * * *
Notes Toward Many Musics [Excerpt]
by Raymond Soulard, Jr.
I believe a Narrative should always lead with the best it has, its most potent moment or image or the like. And let this lead set its standard. When I think of the Narrative options for these poems, I come back every time to starting from the start. These poems build on years & years of the work it took to get the six Brother-Heroes reunited rightly, after telling their unique stories as rightly as possible too. I did the best thinking & writing that I could.
* * * * * *
Poetry by Martina Newberry [Excerpt]
Tall on the dirty stage,
from my notebook I conferred
my poems. No time limit,
no faces, noises of shifting
dust and cars out there somewhere,
I read for many minutes,
emoting here and there,
hands rising and falling,
singing through some.
* * * * * *
Rivers of the Mind (A Novel) [Excerpt]
by Timothy Vilgiate
I could not help but fear that he’d attack me as I laid there; I lost count of how many times I got up to check my locks or to peek underneath the bed. I turned over and over, rocking the mattress like an unsteady boat, straining to keep my eyes shut. It was no use. Midnight came, and I was still awake; my hair matted over my irritated face, my blanket clutched in between my hands over my mouth as I tried to stop myself from sobbing. But I couldn’t let it see me cry. I couldn’t let it even see me blink.
* * * * * *
Poetry by Tamara Miles [Excerpt]
A lion’s music—a carnival of sound, beyond the roar of reserve, park, zoo, circus, and
safari, the wild kingdom beyond the definition of safe and unsafe, cruel or kind, in
sub-Saharan Africa, or in India, Gir forest, where the heart beat and drum beat and
incense are heavy.
* * * * * *
The Lagoon of the Air Goblins (Travel Journal) [Excerpt]
by Nathan D. Horowitz
I’m dehydrated from the sun today. I haven’t rehydrated. My hydration’s out of wack. It seems an eternity, maybe two, since I ordered a glass of papaya juice. Inside the café, mysterious café things may be happening, involving blenders and workforce and fruit and power. Time’s ticking by and it sounds like trees falling into a river. I glance at the red and white checkered tablecloth and remember I’ve always hated red and white checkered patterns. Serafín the educator said he would meet me here to tell me about the Secoya cosmovision, and he isn’t showing up.
* * * * * *
Poetry by Colin James [Excerpt]
Episodically craved by adolescents,
Prometheus displays his tats
behind The Dollar Store in Bonita.
The one with the plastic pillars.
* * * * * *
Mad Jack (Prose) [Excerpt]
by Charlie Beyer
We were longhaired teenage criminals. I looked like Jesus and my best buddy had flaming red shoulder-length hair, the devil to rival my divine look. Scott the Red. We were all hair, except Mad Jack (or Bob, as I knew him), who was as shaved as a plastic bag. We all sat in the car outside the 7-11 in the night rain. Blue smoke trickled out of the cracked window. Inside was a haze of marijuana smoke tainted with opium. We were high and crazed.
* * * * * *
Poetry by Jimmy Heffernan [Excerpt]
The moment to which we have access
So Nature can “see” through time
And what is this but awareness?
A tunneling from the immediate future
Back into the present
* * * * * *
Bags End Book #21: What is the Creature Carnival? Part 3 (Fiction) [Excerpt]
by Algernon Beagle
It makes me remember how our teacher Mister Owl in Bags End teached how different places have their different ways of thinking & telling. So if you’re gonna watch a Creature production, whether it’s the Carnival, or a Grand Production, or this time both, you’re gonna be in 4or a good crazy ride.
* * * * * *
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Classic Fiction) [Excerpt]
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a “Penang lawyer.” Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. “To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,” was engraved upon it, with the date “1884.” It was just such a stick as the oldfashioned family practitioner used to carry—dignified, solid, and reassuring.
* * * * * *
Labyrinthine [A New Fixtion] [Excerpt]
by Raymond Soulard, Jr.
I’m distracted just as this strange fellow appears on stage with some kind of tool in his hand. He is very fancily dressed, some kind of home-made tuxedo? Or one sewn from many scraps? And he starts to recite a poem, I think, in a tongue I don’t know, when something distracts me.
Peace,
Raymond Soulard, Jr.
Scriptor Press New England
scriptorpress.com
[editor@scriptorpress.com](mailto:editor@scriptorpress.com)