How to pass predicting performance job test

I'm on mobile, writing this brought back a lot of emotions. So if it's sloppy,I apologize.....
I've debated about posting this, but it's been a year now. So I should be ok. I've posted on Reddit before, asking about situations at the company but changed some things. So here we are, and here's a full run down of my time there
I started in May, 2019. Part time and straight out of highschool. By November, I was full time and had store keys, training to be a closing manager (RSS)
In 2020, we had a coworker stalk a new hire, as he really wanted to date her, she felt uncomfortable but since he was a manager, she felt inclined to do as he wanted. She came to me as we were close in age. I helped her talk with our boss. He was soon let go.
Then we hired another girl, and she was.... Something.
She decided that she was going to get the boss to fall for her, and be the favorite. Boss was annoyed by her, and she found it funny to walk up behind me when I was on a phone call, reach around and grab my chest. She did this in front of customers as well. Our store had no cameras.
Even after I told her to knock it off, she kept on. Soon the customers were trying to treat me the same. Trying to touch me, asking if they can "Rent me" and other gross things.
I'd told my boss, SM. But at the time, we had a very.... Slow to act DM. So nothing was done.
One day, I was training a new hire. I was on the phone with a customer, and he was beside me at the counter with a customer. She walked up behind me, reached around, but this time, one hand went up, one went down and she was telling our new hire "it's ok to do this cause there's no cameras" and slowly started undoing the buttons on my shirt.
I'd gotten permission from my boss at the time to react in anyway I had to to get her off me, as our DM didn't want to get involved but wouldn't allow him to fire her.
so I kicked her as hard as I could. She fell, and started laughing. After she left, I explained to him what's been going on. He understood but was upset and uncomfortable, not that I blame him. She'd been written up for this before.
The next day, DM was there. New hire had called tips, and told them if they didn't do anything about this he would go public, forcing the DM to do something. Well, we found out this day, that we had a new DM. As the company "had decided due to so many complaints under this DM, that they needed to take him from DM, and make him a SM again for awhile"
This one took swift action. She was canned. After this, the new hires we got were so much better. But unfortunately, the system we used, showed our phone numbers and addresses. So this, now ex coworker, started stalking me. Sending me threatening messages and following me home, company said just block and ignore. Police wouldn't help til she did something threatening my life. I'd come outside to my tires all flat, my car scratched, I'd be followed home, it was a mess. A few times I'd be followed, run off the road, one morning on the way to work, I called the store and told them I was being followed. Everyone knew by now what was happening, and they watched as I pulled in, my SM went outside to tell the girl to leave, as she tried to slam her car into mine. I'd Changed everything by then, moved, new number, new route to abd from work. Hadn't seen her in awhile.
I left that store in Feb of 2021, and went to a bigger store to be trained as a ASM and as a safety precaution, to create more space in case the chic came back. (As she still circled the store time to time) Once there, I helped run the store. I was there til August of that same year, I was "loaned" out to help a different store, but still was expected to run my second store. As the SM was out due to family issues.
So now I'm running two stores, one store where no one respects the store manager, and one store where there is no store manager. So I'm training people at one location while running this other store as the store manager is sleeping off a hangover In the office.
During this, I was training some guys from the second store, and on October 19th, 2021. I had been at store #3 getting stuff ready for the upcoming inventory, so I got home around 12AM. My phone was dead, I was tired and I had a husky needing to go outside. When two of the guys I was training pull up. They had gotten my address off of the computer and were here because "they were sick of the management and needed me back there" they knew what apartment number I was so they ran up the stairs and beat me to the door. I was tired and not in the mood to get into it that night, so they passed out on the couch and next morning, I'm being called due to them not coming in. So I answer and told them that they are currently passed out on my couch, I got in trouble for them not coming into work.
It went smoothly for awhile, then December 13th, 2021 comes along. At this time, my relationship with my mother was rocky. I had gone low contact with her. I also never told anyone my business, as I figured it wasn't anyones need to know. My personal life stays personal. Well, two store managers take it upon themselves to integrate me. It's their day off, so I'm running the store, only have one delivery driver that day, short staffed, they pull up and have me go into the back of the store, which has no walls. So everyone can hear what's being said.
And they lay into me. For 3hrs til I'm in tears and have told them everything that went on with my mother and why we're low contact. The store manager decides she's going to be my hero and go confront my mother, have her husband beat my mother up and have this show down. They told me to not worry, return to work and they'll handle it. And left. Leaving me crying, shaking and still trying to run a store, get people to lunch and my teams now more focused on me, what they heard in the conversation and some are calling the DM to report what just happened. This made a very awkward month, as now DM is involved, the SM's got a talking to and I had to relive this twice more. Once with the DM, then HR. Tho HR labeled this a "in house issue" and weren't willing to help.
After this, it calmed down. The SM's were now out to get me for "getting them in trouble" but otherwise, it seemed fine. Tho I was working with the store managers daughter, so she kept her mom updated, and made sure to mention my mothers abuse towards me and tell others about it as well. She liked the gossip of it.
Then on March 5th, 2022. The store managers daughter had been slacking. Big time. On her phone in the office, taking "favors" for reduced product, or just ignoring her job and making others pick up the slack. I was spread thin, mentally and physically. Trying to help with training a new store manager, training staff at my second store, and keeping this third one up. So when I was catching up on freight, and found she was off in the back on her phone watching TikTok, I got on her about it. She got upset, and said "you've been really moody lately. I think you're pregnant" to which I told her I'm stressed trying to get stuff going, I haven't had a break in awhile, and you aren't helping at all.( She also has this mindset that I slept with my first store manager. And that I was still with him and pregnant by him. )
She rolled her eyes, and on her break, she went out and bought a pregnancy test. When she returns, she hides my clipboard and paperwork, and had blocked my car in. Then, in front of the few staff I had that day, announces that I'm to take this pregnancy test, or she'll destroy the paperwork, and tell the SM that I wasn't actually in store, didn't do my paperwork and have been flaky. She had the DM and SM's wrapped around her finger. So I told her this isn't appropriate and that I'd rather not. This went back and forth, to the point of her getting in the way of me answering phones and helping customers, she'd physically take the phone from my hand and hang up, or tell the customer that I couldn't help them at this time.
So I told her, if I do, I'm going home for the rest of the day. I had 2 hours left of my shift. She said fine. But she needed to be in the bathroom as I took it, so I don't "cheat".
After that, she moved her car and I left. For the day. Went home, called HR. They told me it's an in store issue, and unfortunately they rather not get involved with it. So I told the DM. He had already received reports from the other staff, telling him what happened. She was talked to, but that's it. For the rest of the week, she talked about how cute it would be if I had a baby with my first SM, asked about what he was like in bed and if we did it in the store - this SM and I were close, he was a father figure/role model to me. If I couldn't figure something out, he was my first call. She ruined the friendship I had with him, as we both felt awkward when we worked together due to her. As she told her mom and the gossip spread like wildfire.
March 15th, 2022. I requested a week off. I needed a break, my car needed maintenance and I figured I would head to the ocean with my husky for a couple days. So the first day off, the 12th, I drop my car off at the dealership so they can replace a recall. They say it'll be 5 hours so I walk around town, just relaxing. Then they tell me that unfortunately, they found a new issue and are going to keep my car for a month, and have no way of giving me a loaner. I try to figure out why and it's the runaround, my buddy comes to my aid and helps me get my stuff from my car as they wouldn't let me back there to get my stuff. Then we go to my mother's house to try and get the spare car I have. But the rack and pinion blew on it the same day. So next day I spend trying to tear it apart. I get halfway through when work calls, and let's me know my vacation request ends early as the SM's daughter had an emergency and I need to cover for her. I tell them I'm without a car, in a city an hour away, and the SM says "not my problem. Figure it out. I need you in. If you aren't in, I'm writing you up and firing you"
So I rush to get the car going, and on the 14th, Im stressed, tired, sore and anxious. I push a tool a bit to hard and it slips on grease, comes flying out of the wheel well and hits me in the head, hard. My mother comes back an hour later to find me knocked out. My first concussion. (By this time, we'd had a better relationship/understanding and were working towards building it)
So that night, she drops me off at my apartment. No rental places had any cars, so that morning, I grab my scooter, my husky, and walk the 4hrs to the store. Two hours in, I start to have an asthma attack. My body's shaking, my heads killing me, but we get there. Almost falling in the parking lot. We get in, I sit by the door catching my breath. A driver who used to volunteer at the fire station, comes over and checks my pulse, gets worried and recommends I go to the ER. I tell him I'm okay, the SM has already left for the day. So I need to be here to close. I get cleaned up, and the DM calls. Saying the SM called to tell him I hadn't shown up, and to ask where I was. I told him I just walked there, im wheezing and he's concerned too. I tell him she threatened to fire me if I didn't get here. He said he'd talk to her. Nothing ever came of it.
July 6th, 2022. The DM decided to move me permanently back to my 2nd store, as the store manager was going through personal stuff and I was needed there. So I went. It had been a couple weeks before this, but on the 6th, my shifts were 7am to 7pm. Or til 9:30 if the closer didn't come in. So I come in on time, start working, and go into the back of the store to get hose for a customer. I'm still feeling the symptoms of the concussion from March, but power through. I'm not sure how, but I managed to slip on a piece of paper, fall back and hit the base of my skull on the shelf, then when I was getting up, hit my forehead on it too. A coworker came looking for me. And found me, in his words "in a puddle of blood". He gets me up and takes care of the customer, and gets me to the bathroom and cleaned up. Then we go to the SM and let her know.
She says "You're standing up. You can work. Clean yourself up and get on the counter" I had a two week vacation scheduled, starting the next day. So she thought I was trying to get off work early. Something I had never done. So I go the front after cleaning myself up, the nasty gash on my head swelling up and getting attention. The store is hot, it's 90 outside, and I'm in my jacket shivering cause I'm cold. This happened at about 9AM. I went to her at 12PM and requested a break so I could go out to my car, grab some pain pills and come back. She said no, as I might not return. So I worked through it. I tried calling a couple people to see if they could cover me, as I was feeling worse and worse. But nothing. By 3, a coworker comes in and sees me. His shift didn't start for another two hours, but he immediately told me to go home.
By how, the SM has sent two others home early as we were " slow" and didn't need them. She also wanted to leave, which would mean I'd be the only manager there. He was a manager in training. But he counted my til down and the SM said as I left "since you don't feel good, maybe you shouldn't go to your sister's and just relax. But if I see any pictures of you on vacation after this, I'll know you lied to get out of it."
I went out to my car, which was a 2019 base model Sentra, I left at 4pm. I didn't get home til 8:30/9pm. A drive, with traffic takes an hour. My car had no lane deparcher or blindspot monitoring. When I pulled into my spot at my boyfriend's apartment, as I had moved in with him after coworkers kept finding out where I lived, or gave my address out to random people. My car was scratched up, the rims had curb rash, the passenger side had scratches. I don't know where I went or why it took so long to get home. I remember getting into my car, turning it on, turning on the A/C and that's it.
I went inside and passed out on the bed, my boyfriend couldn't wake me up for dinner, next morning my mother came and got me, taking me to the ER. I had yet another concussion. The doctor told me to stay away from screens, loud noises, drink water and just relax. Refrain from hitting my head again.
After my vacation, I returned with a letter of resignation. As I did some thinking. I couldn't stand the job anymore, the gossip, the crap... The random guys who would get my number and say "someone gave me your number at the store." And I'd have to change my number again. I have a folder of some of the weirdest ones.
I gave my resignation to the SM I currently was under. She denied it. Said no, she needed me to run her store while she took care of stuff, but this was the same SM who believed that I slept with my first SM, denied my raise and SM training as "according to the 3rd store I was sent to. I didn't do anything of what I was supposed to do, got the SM and her friend and the daughter in trouble, I took my vacations without thinking of anyone else"
I went to my first SM, he faxed the paperwork in. My last day was scheduled for August 18th, 2022. Clearly stated on my resignation letter. I gave my two weeks notice on Aug. 4th. 2022.
Everyone started freaking out in management. My DM tried getting me to stay, as it was a shock to him. But I couldn't. On my last day, she scheduled me for a closing shift. With nothing on the following days. She put me on for that Saturday. She calls me, asking where I am. I tell her my last day was Thursday. She tells me no. That she decides when my last day is, and I'm needed there right now. She thought we had talked it out, and that I would "come to my senses" and see reasoning. I told her I was firm on no longer working there, and I had already turned in all my keys. She blew up. Calling me every name in the book, degrading me, she called other stores and a lot of my friends there, turned on me. As she told them straight lies.
I blocked everyone as I started getting hate messages, people commenting on my social media, saying awful stuff. It was hell. I blocked everyone, and for awhile. I had to block accounts or deactivate my stuff. Finally, it all stopped.
I thought I was going to be with that company forever. I missed friends events for it. Family stuff, and events I wanted to go to, cuz of the job..,.. but in the end, those who were assholes to me, got placed in higher positions. Praised for "dealing with everything" and took credit for everything I did. I still get messages asking how to do something, but those go unanswered.
I miss the challenges, the interactions with customers and cars. But I don't miss how HR worked. How tight some are, that they can easily sway things to benefit them just cuz they know each other outside of the company.
It was fun. But I'm glad I got out, and it's burned me... I miss certain people there. But I can't ever be positive about that company again

Let me preface this post by saying this; we’re all spending time reading a subreddit about a show that’s two most reoccurring topics are farts and boobs. We take it far more seriously than we should. I am now going to proceed to continue doing just that, but at least we acknowledged it. My goal of this is to compartmentalize any common ongoing concerns with The Yak, and bring forth any helpful analysis or suggestions. It will become immediately clear that I have perhaps watched far too much of this show, for far too long now. It’s not an obsession, it just takes up a very large portion of my brain. So, let me dust off my keyboard, in order to psychoanalyze and deeply critique the people on this show, who consistently bring me great joy completely free of charge.
Mook
We might as well get the most frequently posted about subject out of the way first. In order to be an everyday personality on a successful daily talk show, you ordinarily are required to possess at least three of the following six qualities.
Confident
Charismatic
Creative
Funny
Intelligent
Interesting
Alternatively, you can also just be physically attractive.
Mook is none of these things. Zero. This is the simple and true reason why he is receiving flack for being on the show every day. Every other member that sits in The Yak studio checks off their respective boxes.
If you go back and watch some of the earliest shows that took place in the old Chicago office, Mook was an integral part of them. The crew was still figuring things out, and with a smaller cast for various reasons, he sort of naturally filled in. The thing is, he wasn’t a bad fit at all. In fact he was a good one, but unfortunately this didn’t last long. He went from a quality NBA sixth man, to benchwarmer, to over the past few weeks, if not months, playing like he belongs in the Baloncesto Superior Nacional (Puerto Rican basketball league). People have said he has become a scapegoat, just as Owen and a young Sas were as well. In reality, none of them have been scapegoats, they all at one point or another have just been the weakest link on the show, and received hate for it, that’s as complicated as it is. Owen was nothing more than overwhelmingly negative most of the time, providing good one liners in between vape hits. In the end, he left of his own volition, and the show improved. Sas was almost a decade younger than Mook is now, and had a lot of room to grow. With time, he did. Retrospectively, Sas also always had the talent, he just needed to get his shit kicked in a bit by the world to harness it. Mook isn’t negative, he’s in fact quite a positive guy, and has already gotten his shit kicked in plenty. What I’m saying is his problems are not the same problems as anyone else previously on the show, he is in a boat of his own.
These are not just the thoughts of the obviously autistic and schizophrenic man typing this though, but of the general Yak fanbase. The comment sections of those aforementioned early shows loved Mook, almost unanimously; they were overwhelmingly positive. Going back and reading them is quite a shock, only having read the comment sections of late. Commenters back then were calling for him to be a regular in droves, and so he became one; now these same people are calling for his head. I am somewhat guilty of never giving Mook his flowers so to speak back then, so I will do so now for anyone who might not remember his best moments: Rap video cameo, Perth trip, gay hands, Mintzy prank calls, the Fella Friday debacle, and he had more as well in just a short time. It has just dawned on me that it is 3AM, and I am writing a manifesto in which gay hands is a point of emphasis. Anyways, Mook by all accounts had a good run, albeit a bit brief. So, what changed?
Allow me to fully don my parasocial glasses, and introduce the primary theory I have. Two things: he’s always been an avid comment reader, in addition to nothing more than him simply running out of shit to talk about. Mook has brought up the comment section himself on a number of occasions, and he’s probably always read them since he’s been on the show. They built him up, and then tore him back down. Any confidence the comments gave him, has been torn to shreds by the same device. The other reason he probably felt comfortable early on is because he had these key moments on the show that were genuinely funny, the only problem is that they were entirely built around stories about himself. He really struggles to make jokes about others, which is a massive portion of what makes The Yak great; everyone can rag on everyone. And when it comes to self-deprecation, the concept is a fine line between recalling embarrassing or out of place situations, and refraining from saying shit that should only rattle around inside one’s brain. He’s resorted to the latter as of late now that he’s run out of the former material, and with him not being a particularly good conversationalist, there’s really nothing he can fall back on. I can’t speak on his stand-up comedy as I have not seen it, but if it’s any good it just hasn’t been translated to The Yak. While he’s not immune to having funny comments, his success rate with jokes is incredibly low.
This is absolutely no slight on him though, as almost all of us would be in the same position, given we are also not qualified to be on the show. We’d run out of shit to talk about in a week, if we had anything original or interesting to say at all. In a way this makes a lot of sense; Mook is not all that different from most of us, about a year ago he was a full time accountant. I don’t know how many accountants out there could successfully fill a spot on this show, but there can’t be many of them. We’ve devolved to his only highlights in the past few months being him essentially bullied about his relationship with a woman, and him injuring himself on a bicycle.
There is one final test I can offer up as a means of understanding this predicament if you don’t already. Truly imagine each member of the show performing in an improv comedy group; if you’ve done this, they should’ve, all in their own unique ways, provided for a good laugh, except one of them. Mook would plainly, be downright painful to watch. More than likely he'd freeze up, and if he delivered anything that wasn’t a bit about cum, it’d be an anomaly. That’s not good.
This is all to say, I think Mook has a place on The Yak. As does Danny Conrad, White Sox Dave, Max, or whomever the flavor of the month is that fans are heaping praise on. These guys are all great in doses, when they have something to talk about, and can also adequately fill in, when necessary, but when it comes to hosting a daily show, you have to be a special sort of talent to make that work. The only reoccurring guests on the show who come close to being on this level, are Feits, Guilio, and Bader. I’m not even going to get into the weeds regarding Mintzy, only time will tell how that develops, or doesn’t. I trust the crew to decide who belongs in a permanent fashion, but I just hope they really evaluate Mook’s role and give him the break that it frankly seems he needs, even if it’s a tough decision. Whatever they decide to do, I’m sure it will work out in the long run as it always does; have some faith folks. For the record, as an avid listener of ANUS as well, I think he fits his role as a producer just fine on there (he’d be a horrendous producer on any respectable podcast).
Kate
People have been coming at Kate’s neck for a while, so I’d like to address that. That is, right after I talk about the kind of person she is, being sure to mention the fact that she has a broken back, just went through a miserable pregnancy, and still showed up for more workdays in the last year than plenty of her co-workers. Never mind the fact that she’s an absolute badass and true patriot, but nobody tell her that. If you don’t find Kate funny, you’re an idiot, but that’s fine, humor is subjective. And yes, she needs to spend at least half as much time on TikTok as she does, but if you’ve read to this point, you need to at least double the amount of time you spend outside. She’s clearly beloved by everyone on the show, as she should be. Kyle would take a bullet for her; Nick wouldn’t, but that’s only because the gunman wouldn’t be able to hit his rickets riddled legs. It should be entirely obvious to any regular viewer of the show at this point, that Kate doesn’t help just host the show, but she also doubles as a producer. Not in the typical podcast producer sense, but more in the spirit of a TV producer. A lot of the great premeditated ideas and bits on the show are of her creation, and even those that aren’t, she leads the coordination behind the scenes. Nobody puts more effort and love into the show than her, except for the first 120 seconds of it, given her forgetfulness to be there for those. She would be sorely missed if she wasn’t a member of the show, and I just hope people who don’t already think this can learn to appreciate her, despite her quest to have a seemingly never-ending list of flaws; that’s a hobby if you ask me, Cate. In all seriousness, she had a bit of a funk throughout the past three seasons of the show we’re calling one season, for as many reasons as one could have, but she’s fully back in her groove now.
T.J.
People have also been whining about T.J. for one reason or another. If you don’t realize how important he is to the show, you have not been watching long enough. The Yak was not nearly the same prior to his arrival, despite the cast not changing in any significant way. He’s got the fastest sticks in the (Mid)west, and while we might not all appreciate his humor, he absolutely knows how to get the most out of the show. He’s the perfect cameraman and real-time editor for the job, and he’s proven this many times over. E.g. Francis big head, Rone green face, any patented Brandon mid-bite zoom in. Given the complete technological ineptitude of most Barstool producers, it’s frankly a minor miracle we have been stuck with him. Ultimately, he knows what the guys find funny, and what the audience does as well. Has his ego inflated since dropping more than a hundred pounds in weight? No shit it has, that’s how that works, good for him. And yes, he is chronically online. He averages three sentences per stream, I can take him saying something mildly annoying every now and then; any other expectation would be absurd for a behind the camera personality, or anyone for that matter.
Big Cat
Get off your damn phone. Him constantly being on his phone and ruining the flow of conversation was long a pet peeve of mine before he brought it up himself a couple of weeks ago. His solution of giving his phone to Cheah (which worked, by the way) lasting all of one show, is hilarious. It only rubs salt in the wound when he pretends to not just be scrolling Twitter and reading the YouTube chat, saying he’s promoting the show instead. Even if that is the reason a small percentage of the time, I could not think of a less trivial task for him to do whilst on air; truly, any of the many, many employees working under him, who are otherwise not doing anything, could do it for him. Nevertheless, him constantly being on it does indeed derail discussions when he tunes back in, and they have to be rehashed because he wasn’t listening. It’s overall just rude behavior, and inconsiderate to his actual friends sitting right beside him, as well as the audience. I’m sure this in particular irks me more than most, but it really is just such an easy thing to get better at that would improve the show.
Nick, Kyle, Brandon, and Titus are all our perfect little angels and will certainly steer clear of any criticism or malice brought forth by anyone, for any reason whatsoever, for the foreseeable future.
Additionally, I petition for The Yak to host a weekly Ronesh Hashana and Sash Wednesday session, naturally observed every Wednesday. Again, there is a reason why you and I could not be on the show, what the fuck was that. Just have them Zoom in for the second half of a show once a week, it would be great to have those boys on and just yakking it up far more often. I would even be willing to compromise, by tapping into Sas’s Xbox Live party while he’s in a COD lobby, if that is what we must do to accommodate his busy work schedule. And I’m sure Brandon would be relieved to move down to at least second in RSMPE (Racial Slurs Muttered Per Episode). The King of New York simply can’t grace the Chicago plebeians with his presence and just go up and leave; we must have our fix. Of course, we must also have Rone involved to stir the pot, or as the Yiddish say, טאָפּ.
Though it may not seem it, I am truly not here to judge the character of anyone on The Yak. It is just an internet show after all, and I don’t dislike any of them, far from it. In all my years of watching, I have never posted on here before, nor commented on a Yak video, nor in the chat. I’m only writing this now because I am overly passionate about the show, and the people on it. The show seems to be going through a period of growth right now, or at least it is reaching a new audience, and during this time I want to see it at its best. Does anything about the show truly need to change? No, it doesn’t. We watch it every day for good reasons. Though it is inevitable that we will always find something to whine about; there are too many moving parts and people involved with it on a daily basis for us not to. And in fairness, it does have its issues like anything else, so if some minor ones could be addressed, everyone might be a little happier. And yet, if it remains exactly the same, that's actually a pretty desirable outcome; I already fucking love this show.
If they want to keep Mook on, then fine, let it be. At the very least, we can try and not drown the dude in hate, maybe he’ll somehow get his mojo back. Hell, while we’re at it, let Kate start her stories about something that nobody saw, that turned out to be about something that wasn’t true, that somehow ends with her being made fun of for having sexual relations with a high school mascot. Let them continue to rib T.J. and diabetic Brandon for their massive collective weight loss of going from two diabetic Brandon’s to two diabetic Brandon’s. Let Big Cat continue to cosplay as a hometown Chicagoan from Massachusetts who went to school in Wisconsin. Let Cheah continue to grill Sas on hypotheticals about his mother’s brassiere. Let Nick speak only about the opening paragraphs of Wikipedia pages. Let Rone manspread the width of four Zah’s. Let Kyle harp on Ecuadorian thickies. Let them continue to bring up Titus’s massive monster of a cock; we’re not happy about it, but we’ll allow it. Let’s just enjoy The Yak.

Hiya, I've booked my to visit family for July 28th. My FLR Runs out July 12th. I have my life in the uk test booked for Sunday June 16th.
Just say I'm to pass Sunday. How long roughly is the wait for biometrics taken, then decision made. Am I going to get the visa on time?
Am I allowed to go abroad (back late September) as I assume the decision will be made before I return.
So they take my passport during biometrics and am I allowed out the country whole waiting in a decision?

How I passed the NCLEX in 85 without buying resources (eg. Uworld), cause some of us are broke! This is a long post but I wanted to be detailed for those who are super worried and want specifics!
1 Mark K: keep in mind that they are a bit old, the principles are generally the same though and was a helpful refresher. Lectures can be found online along with his lecture notes (search "Mark K free online").

• Create your own notes: I followed his notes but also made my own on a separate doc, it made it easier for me to navigate and allowed me to add in extra info from other resources (add info learned from practice questions!). I listened to the lectures once. Then I went over my notes a couple days before my exam, highlighting the key info I kept forgetting. The day before my exam I only reviewed the info I highlighted.
• Main topics from him that came up on my exam included adrenal/thyroid issues (eg. Cushing's), peds development + teaching (Piaget), and maternity.
• Warning: you will still need to supplement your studies. He only goes over a handful of conditions. Go through every body system after starting practice questions and write down pertinent conditions, just know what each are in general.
• Note: Mark K uses brand names. NCLEX only uses generic. You also do not need to remember lab values for next-gen!

2 Practice questions

• I searched up/downloaded a bunch of old Uworld. Also try extra searches online such as "free Uworld practice questions online". I downloaded the 2015 PDF doc from "PDFCOFFEE.com", and got to about page 1500 before my exam + did some other PDFs. Warning: some online links are finicky and you have to play around with them/delete many popup tabs.
• When self-scoring, remember SATA questions now give partial points (search up scoring rules).
• Nurselabs: I ran out of time to use this, but used it a bit during school. Tons of free questions + rationales.

3 Free trials

• After you have done a ton of PDF questions, do free trials. You want to do these near the end when you have a decent understanding of question format. Trials will give you exposure to the NCLEX testing format.
• Archer: has a great "24 hr" free trial. You can use it for longer than 24hrs but the question bank will reset meaning it may give you previously tested questions.
• NCLEX BootCamp: also a good free trial. I really liked that many questions have videos of people actually doing the questions/explaining them. It also has a readiness exam.
• Uworld: this trial is not as good but, free is free. It had 50 questions, many of them testing the same topics.
• FYI: if you end up wanting to buy them, there are many discount codes floating around Reddit.

4 Extra resources/tips/info

• Videos: obviously search up videos for topics you need clarification (eg. simple nursing, level-up RN)
• Saunder's textbook (bad idea, big waste of time imo): after Mark K I thought having a good baseline of the material would be best before doing practice questions so I started studying the textbook. It has waaaay too much info that's too specific, you'd never remember all of it. Went through half and it didn't help me answer a single question. It could be helpful for topic clarification but I thought videos on x2 speed were better. If you do want it, it's free on LibGen.
• NCLEX Crusade 7 day training YouTube: when I started questions I was miserable! I was getting everything wrong at first :(. That's why it's best to jump right into questions after Mark K cause they test on the most RANDOM shit that you cannot possibly create a baseline for it all. Learn how to answer questions based on type/format. I watched Crusade x2 speed which gave some helpful tips on how to prioritize. They are long, he stops a lot so you have to skip a lot, only watch if you have time.
  • Important tip: use M-ABC's and Maslow's hierarchy (pain is considered psychological not physical), for prioritization ask "is this a normal finding for this condition?", NCLEX is a "perfect" world.
• Vocab list: make a list of common term you keep forgetting. Questions are hard to answer if you don't know what the symptom means. Go over them a few days before your exam.
• Suffixes: very important to know! It's the best way to get through pharm. NCLEX also tests a lot on procedures. Learn ending such as "itis", "ectomy", "scopy", "otomy".
• Note conditions you see over and over in practice questions. For me i noticed: myasthenia gravis, guillian barre, diverticulosis/itis, pancreatitis, appendicitis, sickle cell. For Canadians, note scope differences between UNAs (HCA), LPNs, RNs.
• NCLEX sample: while they don't have answer keys, the NCLEX website has samples of the exams. Read through a couple just to get a sense of differences between the official thing and practice questions (don't read them all cause the no answers will just freak you out).
• Ask a friend!: there is no shame in asking friends who have written the exam already if you can use the remainder of their test bank subscriptions. I ended up doing one readiness exam thanks to a friend.

5 Overall

• I was answering average 40-50% questions correctly for about 2 weeks at the very beginning and averaged 70-80% correctly near the end. I studied 1 month and 2 weeks while working full-time.
• You will feel like you still know nothing and that you are guessing everything because the questions are so random, that's normal. Honestly, I almost feel like the NCLEX was just made to force us to study instead of testing our nursing knowledge.
• Lastly, believe in yourselves! Hope this was helpful! Good luck!

I've posted the same story in offmychest. I'm new to reddit and this might be not the way of handdeling things. But I'm desperate for input as I feel I'm going crazy. English is not my first not my second language so please excuse me if i make mistakes.
I've enjoyed listenning to reddit stories on those YouTube video's for a while now and was always amazed by the amount of input the community always gives. Now with my situation and not really knowing what else to do to cope I thought I'll give it a try.
So here is my story. I 30F met my girlfriend 27F in augustus of last year on a dating app. I remember finding her absolutly beautiful. We started taking and very soon we were calling each other everyday for hours . I communicated that I wasn't looking for a relationship as i was starting a bachelor degree combined with full time work. I was happy just being friends as I enjoyed her vibe. We were both talking to other people and she would confide in me how the others people were. We met up at my place the first time as I felt like I already knew her from so much talking. She got drunk. Looking back she definetly tried to initiate something but I was carefull and she was minutes later throwing up in my toilet so i put her to sleep.
The following days she opened up about her past trauma's. She was adopted in a white family, she was born in Asia, as a baby. But she never really gotten the proper guidance to deal with it. Besides her brothers were way older so she didn't have a real connection with them. She was also SA'd by one of the brothers and the family wasn't dealing with it. Like not adressing it, giving her proper therapy and so on. Beside that there were some other problems in the familly that eventually when we got together and she introduced me to the familly, one of the brothers asked me what i was studying. I study something that translates like familly sciences. When i told that brother he joked that his familly would be a good case for my studies.
Basically to state that she has a difficult past and she was upfront with it. I have also my trauma's like SA from family members, not feeling connected to the country we live in or my birth country. I wasn't adopted but I immigrated to here when I was 10. I've been abused in every way by my family. That plus the distance makes that I'm astranged from them. In the courant country where I also experienced a lot of harsh rasism, always the outsider. So basically when i heard all that I felt like we could relate on that and was hoping we could be there for each other. Either way I never hinted towards a relationship. I just wanted to be there for her. I have had been in therapy since i was 21 years and was finishing it. I was finally in a good place.
We met up a few more times. One of the times was to help her clean her appartement. She was moving back to her father as she had had a deppressive episode and neglected the place and payments and was in debt. She didn't know who to ask from her friends. I offered. I came took over, cleaned the place. In the evening she even left me alone to finish up as she had a family date she couldn't miss. I honestly didn't mind i finished up. she went to her familly and later she came back. We went out and when we came back in the early morning I just fell a sleep. Later once we were together she told me she wanted to thank me with sex. She did introduce me to a friend that did tell me that everyone dumps her in every relationship. He thought that i was her date and i didn't want to emberass her so I didn't ask much more questions and decided to ask her instead at an other time. But this is one of the redflags i missed looking back.
After that we met up one more time to go out. She knew that in the morning I would go see that other girl i was talking to. I hadn't met that one in real life but had also a good connection with her. But that evening she confessed having feelings for me. I couldn't denie that i was attracted by her and wanted to give her all the love we both never experienced. We kissed and ended up at my place in the morning. I just cancelled on the other girl.
The first months were good. I noticed that she was imature on some levels but could explain it due to her past, the lack of therapy, and her overbearing father that doesn't let her grow up.
She introduced me to all her friends and they all liked me. They explain that she has a past of dating people who aren't good for her. They all approved of me and I liked them too. I didn't have a lot of friends. I had learned to prefer my own company over friends after being burned a few times and deciding not to befriend just anyone for my own mental health. I was rather be alone after all the betrayal i've been throught. People are just unpredictable and when i care I go fully. So to protect myself and because all the friendships before therapy were somewhat toxic I just prefered to stay alone. I did miss belonging to a group tho so I was extatic to gain a girlfriend I felt could understand me to a deeper level and a friendgroup welcoming me and simular to me. She seemed to intagrate me in the group well and they were really nice. I felt i was finally having that chosen familly a lot of people who go no contact with their familly talk about. I was taking drugs so i can study, work and manage this new relationship and friendship circle. I was determinated to make it work.
The first issue i noticed was that we would be videocalling and she wouldn't pay attention. She would be texting her friends and checking Insta or Facebook while she expected me to stay connected till she fell a sleep. She would even call me when she would wake up in the middle of the night. I did night shifts so i didn't mind about her wanting me around to sleep. I did complain about the lack of attention when she was still awake. She didn't adjust her behaviour just yet. I had to complain and make a big deal out of it before she did some efforts. Just the bare minimum.
But i knew she needed therapy and thought to understand where this behaviour was coming from. I just encouraged her that she can talk to me to about eveyrthing. But mostly I stayed patient, thinking she hadn't been in a healthy relationship. I believed with time, working on communication and showing her she could trust me, that all would be fine
There were some other issues i ignored as redflags about this relationship and still wanted to live together with her. I first proposed in moving in my appartement with no strings attached. If it didn't work out she just could go back to her dad and I am okay too. None of us looses anything. But she was not sure how her father who hadn't met me yet would react. He is a more sober person and has disapproved all her partners before.
So eventually she found the balls to tell me that she wasn't in that idea. She wanted her father to approve and so on. She had lived before with a partner her father didn't approve of cuz they both felt she was taking advantage of my girlfriend to get her papers. By the way they are still friends and i like the ex too. She doesn't seem capable of manipulate someone to get get papers. But that is an other story.
After I met her father she was okay moving in together in the Capital, a fresh start for me and her too. I was excited to start forever happly after. I had never loved someone like I've loved her. She was so vulnerable from the start that i just wanted to care for her. Like stated before i wanted to give her the love we both missed.
We moved end mai in our appartemment. I was stressing as i had to find something on time so that i don't end up homeless. I needed to find a new job and so on. I was also the one who made all the appointments and took on the stress to find us something. All she had to do is like the place. I did everthing
We moved in in the last weekend of april. On the 18th of mai was pride in our city. I had to work even tho i wanted to go. She was stating to stay home as we had spend a lot of money to move. We were almost broke both of us. i could see she wanted to go as all her friends were going and texting her. She does have been irresponsible when going out, too much drinking, losing her stuff and over spending. So i proposed guidelines to follow so she could go have a good time and not stay alone at home and still not regret the day after. We agreed that she would take her old phone just in case, eat enough as she would be drinking and retrieve the money she was going to spend so she doesn't go over her budget. That way she can't spend more than her budget.
She who is always texting me didn't say a word alle night. When i did call to check up on her she just passed me a friend to talk to them. I was pissed but happy she was unharmed in our appartement. In the morning i came home. Most of the people were still sleeping and she was acting annoyingly wierd. I couldn't make a scene as her friends were there. I just entertained them and went to sleep. I was mad. Next day she tried to make up and after some talk Mostly explaining why I was mad. She had done nothing of the steps we had taken for her to go out safly. But when i calmed down anyway she dropped the bom that she also kissed someone there. One of the people she was talking to around the time we met. Someone she eventually deemed not a match.
I was broken by that. I just couldn't believe it. Okay our sex and love life had been less since the stress of the move, finding a new job in a new city, exams and a tighy wallet. but i thought she understood as i voiced my stress.
I was miserabel when she told me, just broken, not eating physically ill and all my issues re-triggered. I felt so stupid and trapped as we had just signed for 3 years in a 1 bed appartement. I just slipped back in depression while she seemed remorsefull as if she made a mistake. She was trying to care for me and fix things. One week later i was still not okay completely broken by the betrayal still and the huge mistake i made to cosign for 3 years with no other options to move out or kick her out. She touched me at some point and I felt better with her in my arms. I decided to give her an other chance. It was discussed that cheating the only non negotiable cause for a break up was for me and that everything else is can be talked over. i should have respected my own rule...
Well same week, few days later she told me a friend of her, beacause she is friends with a lot of people she flirted or hooked up with, well that they confessed their feelings towards her. I had met this person and she had explained to me not wanting to persu my girlfriend in the past. Now they were just friends. I was okay with that. I was glad she told me and we composed a message together for that girl stating that she had told me, that I' not mad but she will stay true to me.
Now thursday she kept talking about said friend and the things my girlfriend was saying weren't adding up. It didn't seem like something said friend would say or do without context so when she got home I asked her to read the messages with said friend to try to understand. When j read the messages i was floored. Most of them were deleted and it was my girlfriend always asking about the feelings that friend would have for my girlfriend. The reason said friend was freaking out is that my girlfriend told her I took her phone and texted the girl. She was shocked understandbly. My gf was creating drama and i still haven't understood why. Like if she wanted to actually cheat why make me aware?
Its been 4 dats now and I just don't know how to advance from this. I'm still very aware of her past and the lack of therapy. I still care for her in a sence but I also hurt and I feel so stupid. She now is again remorsefull and relize now I'm the first one to show her true love. I've broken up with her as I just need to respect myself but i still have a soft spot for her besides everything. She now wants to fix everything, she'll go in therapy and so on. I sometimes find myself being the one to comfort her even after it all. I'm so lost and don't know what to do. I want to keep it a healing exprericence for her, but want to protect myself and love her again at the same time.
This is just a little of the quesionable behaviour she had done, basically the most recent one. I'm just too hurt and blindsided to deal this on my own but i finished therapy like 6 months ago. I can't go back to my therapist. I plan on looking for a new one in the new city but i need advice and guidance since we live together in this 1 bed appartment. She is not really giving me space to think this trough. How should i handle this?

I'm designing a study where I have two different groups of people before and after taking a drug. These people go on to do 2 separate, unrelated tests and I measure how well they perform on them, is it a 2x2 Anova done twice, or is it a 2x2x2? I'm a little confused. Thank you in advance.

I'm a 5'6 minority guy who grew up in the early 90's and early 2000's who was born with several health issues, in poverty, abusive parents, and was bullied for most of my young adult life.
Entering my 20's i had no friends, no gf, no money, no parents who would support me. The entirety of my college life was working 2 part time jobs to support myself while still being unable to afford most of my own text books nor clothes nor food and my dad telling me "go figure it out urself" when i asked them for help on financial aid forms.
My first job during the 08 recession, literally every 2 days it was the same thing: "do you eat dogs", "shut up jackie chan", "dont yall have tiny dicks", etc and when i told my dad about this he told me, "just ignore them and keep ur head down and keep working". This didn't relieve the bullying.
So i opted to get bigger so i wouldnt be a push over so i spent 2 years at the gym in the evenings so i could bulk up.
Over 600 days consecutively I went to the gym with minimal results and i found out from a doctor i had hormonal issues that was keeping my test levels comparable to those of a 70 year old man
No friends, no love life, living paycheck to paycheck during a recession in a toxic workplace, no support from parents, and a useless body i wanted to chuck into a river.
So i decided to move out of my current state. I looked for jobs elsewhere and landed something outside the east coast. Not great pay but it was an out at least.
I opted to go out more with watever little change i could scrounge up. Usually that meant carrying a pregame bottle with me and taking the subway to nearby bars. Where i was needy and annoying previously, i opted to just be chill and nice to everyone with no expectations. If they disliked me, cool. If they thought i was too weird or awkward, fine. My philosophy was that as long as i knew i was being a chill decent person then i couldnt' care less what others would think of me cause at the very least i did my part.
that year i made more friends i had in my entire life. It was the first time people texted ME to go out and asked ME if i was gonna go to x or y party.
i never had that happen to me before and it felt really nice.
as for the gym, i got injections and my test levels to only even average and got more gains within 6 months that i ever did in 2 years. Compared to the struggle i was going through before, it felt like easy mode now
and the combination of the previous 2 helped me to get with girls that someone like me on paper had no business getting the interest of.
as for my career, that took a little longer. I eventually got diagnosed with sleep apnea and adhd and once i got those two managed, within a year i ended up with my first 6 figure job. I didnt even think that was possible since the majority of my life was spent earning $30-38k a year.
i know this is already a long post already but it really leaves out all the nights spent angry at myself and spent breaking down at how much of a loser i felt like. Most people who knew me when I was younger have no idea what i went through or how i change things around, but i'm proud of myself and i wanted to share this.

Me M19, had a breakup in March and I've been dealing with anxiety, taking meds, and I'm feeling more desperate than ever. Studying to pass college is really burning me out and my family is a another factor that doesn't help. I have a terrible relationship with my brother and dad is very abusive not only towards me but my mother too. I don't feel comfortable staying home, not even in my room and not having privacy is really pissing me off.
I remember being really depressed last Christmas since my parents were arguing all the time and I felt powerless, because I'm not able to make any change since my mother doesn't want to divorce, even though I tried opening her eyes countless times.
Then, meeting my ex brought hope to me and sometimes I would end up crying of happiness just for being around him. I felt like life could be fullfilling again, but we soon realized it was not the time for us to be together since I'm still in college and our busy schedules would make communication really hard (he's significantly older than me). After breaking up I became completely disfuncional for almost a month, not being able to even get out of bed sometimes. It doesn't feel as bad as it was but it still gets into me.
Now, I'm trying to find a way to finish studies, get a job, live by myself and finally break out of the hell that my house is. My family is really toxic and there are things that I won't be metioning here since it's pretty messed up.
I'd love to know on how to hold on because I don't feel any pleasure doing the hobbies I once loved and therapy is feeling useless.

I (21F) am a college student and about to start working at an ice cream shop. I had a trial day today and my manager who is a woman would touch my butt every time she showed me where to go and every time she told me to step aside cause other people were passing by. She wasn't full on grabbing my butt, just touching it. This happened like 7 times. It seemed weird so I just kept my distance and then she did it one more time. She also touched the sides of my waist with both of her hands one or two times. How should I handle this? If this was a man I would have lost my shit and probably find another job, but since she is a woman, I don't know if this is considered harassment. The place was crowded so she might have been mindlessly trying to guide me through people with this gesture, but I mean... this happened repeatedly and didn't seem like an accident.

That's the mantra that repeats in my head over and over when I'm reaching a breaking point. I find myself repeating, "it's just tough and I'm having a hard time". While it's nice to be able to identify that mantra as a red flag before I breakdown, I don't know what to do with it or how to stop it. Typically, it's followed by very intrusive thoughts for things I haven't struggled with in years. I am proud of myself that I can tell what's just an intrusive thought vs what's really me but I feel like I'm just going downhill and have no way to stop.
I love my job but I don't know how to accomplish what is being asked of me. I am an Internet investigator and have 4 hours to research, capture information, and then write a report. I'm really good at my job and tend to find a lot more than most other investigators. My reports are at least twice the length of theirs, but I have to spend hours putting it all together (and don't get overtime). I always receive good feedback but am told I need to work on my time. I'm overwhelmed and need help but I don't know how to ask for it. They've given me tips on how to manage the time better but it hasn't helped. I feel like admitting I need more help is going to make me look incompetent and incapable of performing what they need me to do.
I'm also going to school and taking summer classes (while raising 3 kids, being a caretaker for my injured husband, and working 60+ hours). I'm falling behind in my courses and have worked really hard to keep a 4.0 GPA. I don't think I'm going to pull it off this semester. I think I've set myself up for failure.
I have no friends (literally only talk to my husband and kids) and I'm distant from my own family, but I'm supposed to be figuring out how to get my narcissistic abusive ex to agree to let my daughter go to my sister's wedding because my family expects my children there. I haven't asked him yet because I'm too scared of stirring the pot and creating issues. I just keep freezing up and putting it off, so now I'm running out of time and disappointing my family (who barely even talks to me).
I'm sorry this is so long and rambly. I didn't expect to include so much. I could just really use some support and help. I feel like I'm supposed to be able to pull it all off. Other people do. There has to be a way... but I don't know if I can. I feel like a failure in every way, right now.
If you read this whole thing, I'd really appreciate any advice. If you got bored, I completely understand.

England!
Hey all, this is on behalf of a family member who doesn’t have Reddit. Apologies that it’s lengthy, I want to give as much context as possible.
She has been working at her job for the same company for 18 years and is in a director level role (this is also in the job title). She was pulled into the office on Friday and told they are eliminating her role but have created a “Manager” level role, which has all the same job responsibilities but half the pay. So think instead of “marketing director” it’s now a new role of “marketing manager”.
They told her if she’d like this job she can apply for it, but they have also passed it out to agencies so they will be interviewing other people as it’s possible there is a better fit for the role out there.
She said that, since she is nearing retirement age anyway, she would rather take the redundancy. She was then told they weren’t offering redundancy, she wasn’t redundant as they were offering her the “opportunity” to interview for this new role.
However, she pointed out if her old role is eliminated because it’s not needed then that is redundancy. They maintain it isn’t because of the offer to interview for the “new” role (which, again, is her exact role but with a different title and half the pay). They have said it will be a “fair” interview process and they will choose the best person for the job, and if it’s not her there is nothing they can do about that. She feels she won’t get the role based on how they’re acting.
They have told her she needs to decide this week if she will be leaving the company (with no redundancy pay, severance etc) or will be applying for the new job.
So, with this in mind, is what they are doing legal? Would this actually fall under redundancy? And what can she do here if they keep refusing its redundancy?

Counting scales are specialized weighing instruments widely used across industries to streamline inventory counts, enhance efficiency, and ensure accuracy, particularly during stocktake periods. These digital scales have become indispensable tools for businesses aiming to optimize productivity and inventory management.
How Do Counting Scales Work?
Counting scales operate similarly to standard weighing scales but are equipped with additional functions for division and multiplication operations, making them ideal for verifying large volumes of identical parts. Calibration is crucial before use, either through calibration weights or predefined procedures.
After calibration, a sample unit is measured to calculate its weight, which serves as the average weight for individual items. Using this average weight, the scale accurately determines the quantity of pieces based on the total weight placed on it. Features like tare functionality ensure consistent accuracy by subtracting the weight of containers or packaging materials.
Who Uses Counting Scales?
Counting scales are prevalent across various industries in North America, including:

• Production: Tracking components, parts, or materials in manufacturing processes to maintain accurate inventory levels and streamline workflow management.
• Receiving and Shipping: Verifying the quantity of incoming and outgoing items during shipping and receiving processes to ensure inventory accuracy and prevent order fulfillment errors.
• Warehouse Management: Conducting inventory counts, especially for smaller items that are challenging to count manually, to facilitate efficient stocktaking and inventory management.
• Quality Control: Ensuring accurate counting of components or products during inspection and testing processes to maintain product quality standards and identify production discrepancies.

How to Correctly Use a Counting Scale?
While specific instructions may vary based on the scale's model and manufacturer, the following general steps can maximize the effectiveness of counting scales:

1. Set the Scale to Zero: Ensure proper calibration and zeroing of the scale to guarantee accurate measurements.
2. Place Container and Set Tare: Use tare functionality to subtract the weight of containers or packaging materials, focusing solely on the items being counted.
3. Weigh a Sample Size: Measure a sample of items to establish the average weight for individual pieces.
4. Place Total Items & Calculate: Weigh the full batch of items to be counted, allowing the scale to calculate the quantity based on the total weight and average weight of a single item.

Choosing the Right Counting Scale
Consider the following factors when selecting counting scales:

• Scale Capacity: Choose a scale with a capacity suitable for your weighing needs without excessive capacity.
• Readability: Opt for scales with high readability to ensure accurate and precise measurements.
• User-Friendly Interface: Look for scales with intuitive controls and easy-to-navigate menus for simplified operation.
• Readable Display: Select scales with clear and easy-to-read digital displays for accurate information visibility.
• Remote Scale Option: Consider scales offering remote display options for added flexibility and convenience.

A&D’s Counting Scales for North American Businesses
Explore A&D’s range of counting scales tailored to meet the diverse needs of North American businesses:

• FC-i/FC-Si Series Time Saving Counting Scales with High Resolution: Featuring premium performance, these counting scales offer high resolution and advanced functions for efficient counting operations.
• HC-i Series Counting Scale: Versatile and durable, these counting scales enhance counting efficiency with a wide range of functions and connectivity options.

Join our community to discover more about counting scales, engage with fellow North American professionals, and stay updated on the latest innovations and best practices in weighing technology!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
We pulled off I-51 a little after midnight, stopping at a truck stop which was couched between the highway and a large forest.
We waited in the van for ten minutes or so. Trent had increased the sonar radius to its maximum of 30 miles a little over an hour ago. Somehow the red pings had kept up with us, holding a steady distance of around 20 miles. Considering we were averaging around 80 mph, and a coyote's top speed is only around 40 mph, we figured they had been enhanced in some way. Either that, or they shape-shifted into something faster. Regardless, now that we had stopped, we waited to see if the demon spawn would try and close the distance. Luckily, or unluckily, they didn't. They kept their 20 mile buffer, but we noticed they were beginning to spread out along the circumference of that boundary.
"We're close. They know that, so they're trying to trap us in." Trent said.
"Trying to?—more like they have."
We considered whether we should stay in the van and keep watch, but we figured that would do us little good. At their speed, they could be on us in ten minutes, which means we would need to stay up all night and keep tabs on their positions. Trent offered to stay up, of course, but I shut him down.
"The demon doesn't want to kill us now. You said it yourself. Plus, we need our rest. If they come, they come."
Trent didn't like it, but he acquiesced.
The truck stop had all the essentials: a gas station and mini mart with showers and an attached McDonald's, a large parking lot for truckers to idle and sleep, and even a section with lodging for those who wanted a more comfortable night's rest. I told Trent that he should take advantage of the showers, and after a little convincing, he agreed. While he was cleaning himself up, I patrolled the dingy, half-stocked aisles of "Daisy's Quick Mart". I probably would have been appalled at the quality of the store had I actually been paying any attention to it whatsoever. But I wasn't. I was thinking hard about what awaited me tomorrow.
During the drive, I had asked Trent why the demon would want us to return to the crash site. What did he mean that I would be 'confronting a dark entity in a place he couldn't help me'? He seemed hesitant to answer, but my little stunt outside the storage facility seemed to have sufficiently motivated him.
"When I said I've never done this before, I meant it." Trent started. "I've never done this exact thing before—meaning I've never projected someone into the past."
"So, I'm time traveling?" I asked.
"No—don't think of it like that." Trent paused, trying to come up with a good explanation. "It's more like I'm opening a window for you to look through: not a door. You're going to see the past, but you can't interact with the physicalities there. But that doesn't mean you can't interact with anything."
There was a space of silence as Trent tried to let me work out his meaning for myself. "I don't get it. Are you saying there's something I can interact with? Like what?" And then it hit me. "The demon. The demon can interact with me? Meaning what? It can kill me?"
"Meaning… I'm not exactly sure. You're going to be in a kind of psychic space. If it does damage, it won't be to your body. It'll be to your mind—or spirit. But I don't know what the limits of that damage could be. I just don't have those answers."
"If you've never done this, how do you know any of it will work?"
"That's an easy one." Trent answered. "Because it's been done to me."
There was silence.
"Look, if I know anything, I know my tech. Don't doubt that this will work. It's my job to make sure it does. I just need you to be in the right mental for this. Just because it knows your coming doesn't mean it automatically has the upper hand. It won't be able to see you unless you make contact with it first. In other words, you have to initiate contact. As long as you remain a spectator, you should be okay. Trust me. Just don't make contact."
I started pacing faster—fast enough to catch the attention of the overnight shift worker, a young man whose name I can't quite remember. I know it started with a "J". Jake, maybe? Anyway, he asked if I was alright, to which I responded in the affirmative. He left me alone for another couple passes, but when I almost ran into one of the shelves, he stood up and said, "Uh—I'm going to have to ask you to stop running around. I don't want you to hurt yourself."
I must have stared daggers at him, because he recoiled from my gaze. What's gotten into me? I thought. Then, steadying myself, I apologized. I looked around and grabbed the nearest edible looking piece of merchandise: a bag of Swedish Fish, and placed it down on the counter. "Just this, please."
The cashier rang me up. It was surprisingly cheap.
"Are you sure you're alright?" the young man asked. He was tall with brown hair. He seemed tired—maybe even more tired than me. But he also seemed kind.
I smiled as best I could and said, "No, I'm not. But there's not really anything you can do. Hell, there might not be anything I can do." I furrowed my eyebrows at my own response, realizing that imminent death may have broken my verbal filter.
On the other hand, the cashier did not seem surprised at all. "Ah, I see. It's one of those problems." He responded. "Well, hey, for what it's worth, you seem like one of the resilient ones. I think you'll be alright."
I only smiled and nodded at his mildly cryptic comment. Looking back, the whole interaction was a bit strange, but I had way too much mental clutter to recognize that in the moment. I took my Swedish Fish and walked through the anteroom which led to McDonald's. I found an open yellow booth that wasn't littered with crumpled straw sleeves and sat down, chomping mindlessly on my little red fish until Trent returned. When he arrived, he took my place, and I went to shower. After we were both clean and fed, we returned to the van. The pings were still pushed safely out of harm's way. But that didn't mean we were out of harm's way. Trent asked me if I wanted to sleep in the van, saying that "it'd be the safest place."
I thought it over. He was right, obviously. The van was not only outfitted with weapons I couldn't even begin to understand, but it was also our escape, and it would be just as difficult, if not more difficult to break into than the studio-style motel rooms with their wood doors and big windows. Still, if this was going to be my last night on earth, I wanted to sleep in a bed. A real bed. Trent understood and said he'd stay parked right outside my room for the night.
After purchasing a key from the night attendant, I moseyed over to the cement walkways which connected the twenty or so rooms. Mine was room #56, which I thought was odd since, like I said, there were only 20 rooms. I lugged in my tomato plushie and dad's old book and placed them on the queen mattress.
"I'll be right outside." Trent said after I collapsed onto the bed.
"Trent," I called out, stopping him half-way through the door.
"Yeah?"
All the blood in my body rushed up to my face as I realized my unfiltered mouth almost reflexively said the word "stay". I stared at Trent, my heart beating, my face hot. I considered asking him to sleep on the floor like my dad, but that would be childish and impolite. The alternative was to share my bed… Or I could take the floor.
"I'll just be right outside." Trent said before my mind processed a solution. "Come by if you need anything. I'll be up most of the night anyway."
"Okay," I replied in a faint voice.
Trent shut the door.
I sat atop the bedsheets and acquainted myself with my new living space. A feeling of regret closed over me as I considered that even sleeping on a carseat would have been better if it meant I didn't have to be alone. With a sigh, I turned on the bedside lamp and grabbed the book and stuffed tomato, using the tomato as a backrest as I slipped my legs under the covers and situated the book upright on my thighs. I cracked it open and was immediately blasted with a puff of dusty, old book scent. It was ripe at first, and I turned my head away to sneeze, but as I perused through the pages, the scent grew on me. It reminded me of the days growing up when I'd step into dad's study and read through one of the many volumes on cryptic topics which were at least two college degrees above my Lexile range.
I was only a couple minutes into browsing the collection of different scientific and philosophical works when I came across a page which contained highlighted text. This was unusual, as my dad would never mark up his books. He was a purist on that point. I rubbed my thumb over the yellow lines, and sure enough, it was highlighter.
The highlighted text was part of a small book by Carl Jung called "Synchronicity". There were a total of three pages that were marked, and they advanced like this:
Page 5:
The philosophical principle that underlies our conception of natural law is causality*. But if the connection between cause and effect turns out to be only statistically valid and relatively true, then the causal principle is only of relative use for explaining natural processes… That is as much to say that the connection of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and require another principle of explanation.*
Page 19:
…there are events which are related to one another experimentally, and in this case meaningfully*, without there being any possibility of proving that this relation is a causal one, since the "transmission" exhibits none of the known properties of energy…a situation which does not yet exist and will only occur in the future could transmit itself as a phenomenon of energy to a receiver in the present…Therefore, it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity... "synchronicity"*
Page 22:
A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer… which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.
I flipped through the rest of the pages of the book. There was no more highlighted text, but there was a message on the last page which read:
Matthew 7:7-8
I'll meet you in the darkest place.
He also included his typical smiley face which had an ovular shape and three sprouts of hair which I now realized kind of resembled my tomato plushie. It was my dad's writing, of course. But why? And how? What did this mean?
The motel had a Bible stashed away in the nighstand drawer. I got it out and looked up the verses which read the following:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
I spent maybe an hour ruminating on all of this. The whole discourse on energy and causality and a "falling together in time" just seemed so right. It was clear that my dad definitely did know what I was going through, but for whatever reason, he made it seem like he was oblivious. Why had he hidden that from me? I felt like I was being pulled in two directions. On the one hand, my dad loved me enough to leave this note, maybe even knowing the exact moment I'd need it. But on the other hand, he had neglected my struggles throughout my entire childhood. He even lied at times. Was this really enough to make up for all of that?
And then there was the section about the future transmitting energy to the past. I read back through the whole paragraph and the original writer had meant it to say this as something that wasn't possible, but my dad's highlighting made it seem like he wanted to flip the meaning. The future does affect the past. I thought about where I was headed and wondered if I would soon discover that for myself.
Lastly, dad's message. The Bible verse reminded me of the first time I prayed; how I reached out to God and received peace as an answer to my prayer. Now I feel like I'm actively seeking… something, but I don't know yet what I'll find. And then there's knocking. At first that reminded me of the story with the beetle tapping on the window, but then I went back even deeper in my memory and dug out the monster tapping at my window, and the words my dad spoke to me in order to set my mind at ease: "you're a superhero. And you know what your greatest superpower is? Your greatest power is you get to tell the monsters what to do. Because the monsters are only as strong as the stories you tell about them…so if you're ever scared, honey, just dream up a better story."
I was crying into my stuffed tomato now. I felt like all the blinking pieces of my life had finally been pulled together into a completed puzzle. This was all by design. My entire life, filled with so much chaos and confusion, was actually preparing me for this moment. And my dad thought I had the tools and strength enough to get through it. I flipped through the book one more time, thinking maybe he had left some other hidden comment—some formula to defeat this demon and return home. But there was nothing. Only that one comment: "I'll meet you in the darkest place."
What's the darkest place, dad? Is that where I'm going? Are you saying you'll be there, too?
With those thoughts in mind, my eyes became heavy shutters which, with a slight pressure on the pulley, winded shut. My swimming thoughts and firework-like fears dissipated, and I returned to a precious childhood memory. It was after an evening soccer practice. Summer. Dad was driving me to Dairy Queen. I got a cherry-dipped twist cone. I was happy.
So, so happy.
***
I woke up to sunlight blaring through my windows. Shit, I overslept, was my immediate thought. I threw off my covers and opened the front door. A glance at the clock showed 1:13 PM. I shouldn't have even been allowed to stay checked in this long. Damn, am I gonna get double-billed for this?
I heard a rummaging sound around the corner of my motel room. It sounded like a squirrel was trying to find an afternoon snack in one of the garbage bins. I stepped outside. The sun was extremely bright, to the point where I had to squint and put my hand over my eyes to even see the ground in front of me. I was trying to walk toward the van, but somehow I ended up in front of the trash bins where the animal's tail was sticking out from a turned-over, silver garbage can. Its tail was wagging excitedly, and I remember thinking that it was much too large to be a squirrel.
The animal bent down as if biting onto something, and I heard the sound of its growl as it struggled to tug whatever it was free from the barrel. Inch by inch, the creature backed out of the canister, and more of its sharp, sticky hair was revealed. I heard something snap, then the creature leapt back and I saw what it was chomping on. My eyes widened in horror as the pink tube of a human intestine was pulled taut like the end of a tangled hose. Blood and entrails were spilling out of the human's opened gut. And then, behind the canine, I saw the person's face. His face was pale white, his eyes closed, and his hair was slicked back… It was Trent.
Before I could react, I heard footsteps approaching from behind. I whirled around and saw my dad. But—no, it wasn't him. It was someone wearing a paper-mache face mask that was painted to look like my dad. The forehead of the mask was already beginning to crack, white specks breaking off like sawdust. Through the cracks, I could see the figure's true form. I didn't know darkness had its own type of light, but that's the only way to describe it. It was as if malevolence itself was reified into a skin which was actually an amalgamation of millions of little, oozing parasites that leached into the nearby light. When it finally spoke, the demon's voice was a full octave lower than the old man's at the deli. And it had an earth-stilling gravitas.
"Today's the day!" He sang and reached into his pocket. His lips curled upward into a foxy smirk. "You have no idea how long I've waited for this day." He said and held up a razor blade. Half his facade had already fallen apart, and now I could see the bugs up close, writhing in what was either horror or ecstasy. And his scent… it was somehow more rank than the rabid coyote rummaging through the trash can with Trent's cut open body inside. The demon closed in on my position, and in one, decisive motion, he brought the blade close to his chin, then sliced it across my throat. "Wake up!" He screamed.
I jumped out of my bed and grabbed my throat, feeling the cold sting of its quick slice. Hyperventilating, I patted the area down, trying to hold the blood in, but when I removed my hands, I saw they were dry. It was only a dream, I thought. Gray light was only beginning to filter in through the drapes. I'm in my hotel room. I'm safe. I tried consoling, but the pragmatic mental massages weren't enough to hold the force of my knees buckling. I dropped onto the carpet and cried for a long while.
Outside, rain was beginning to fall.
***
By the time I met up with Trent, I had already composed myself and decided to keep my dad's message and the nightmare to myself. None of it seemed particularly productive from a logistical standpoint, anyway. And I wanted to focus on the mission.
We stopped by McDonald's and bought a couple cups of coffee. Trent asked if I wanted any food, and I declined. Black coffee seemed like the only thing my stomach could take at the present moment. I could tell Trent was hungry, but he tried playing it off (I guess to be respectful of me?) I told him to knock it off and get something to eat. I didn't need my Charon getting lightheaded and dropping the paddle before he finished rowing me to Hell. He didn't care much for my joke, but he ordered a couple Chicken McGriddles at the kiosk anyway.
There were maybe ten patrons spread throughout the restaurant. We sat down at the same booth from the prior night, this time across from one another. Trent spent the first ten minutes or so babbling about our fuel supply and the logistics of the trip from here on in. Practical stuff. I've come to realize that's how he deals with his stress. He talks it out in short, durable sentences. I mostly nodded and watched as what looked like a storm front closed in on the truck stop. The sky was overcast, and there were darker clouds in the distance. The rain was still only a patter, but a middle-aged man wearing a yellow bow tie on the wall-mounted TV confirmed that there would be heavier rain and thunderstorms very soon.
After the worker delivered Trent's food and he ate it in record time, I posed the one question that was still on my mind.
"How do I fight him?" I asked.
Trent finished a large gulp of his coffee, then looked at me. It was the first substantial thing I'd said all morning; Trent could tell something was off with me, but he figured there was no point in asking what it was. "By 'him', I assume you mean the demon?"
I nodded.
Trent licked his teeth clean. "You could try praying again."
"I'm serious," I responded.
"I'm serious, too. It worked before, didn't it?"
"You mean at my house?"
Trent nodded.
"I thought you weren't a religious man?"
"I'm not. Just a practical one. If praying worked before, maybe it'll work again."
"That's the best you've got? A maybe?"
"No, I've got a lot of shit better than a maybe." He answered. "It's just not accessible where you're going. Which is why I recommend not making contact on the first run."
"First run? So we're going to do this more than once?"
"At least," Trent answered. Then, seeing my expression, he continued. "What? You thought this was going to be a one-and-done? We have to conduct some research first. I did tell you this was new for me, right?"
Somehow Trent's response had set my mind at ease a little. I was going to have more than one chance. Of course, why wouldn't I be able to go back more than once?
"Why didn't you tell me this earlier? It would have gone a long way in easing my mind."
Trent lifted his hands in defense. "Sorry, I just thought that was a given. I mean, what we're doing is dangerous, just like I said, but it doesn't mean we aren't going to approach this as safely and scientifically as possible. However, there is a different problem with running multiple trials."
"The Organization?"
"That's right," Trent said like a proud parent. "Our little experiment will be like a giant spotlight, and the longer we wait around after it's on us, the greater the chance we'll have unwelcome company."
"So, safe but speedy."
"Safe but speedy. Exactly."
***
We fueled up and were back on the road a little after 8:00. From that point on, Trent and I were absolutely silent. I had the distinct feeling of being in the eye of a storm. The pings moved closer commensurate with our progress toward the crash site. The cloudfront continued its advance. And I noticed a haze beginning to descend onto the road ahead of us. It was fog.
We meandered further inland, the forest thickening around us until the rain almost stopped entirely—the leaves drinking it up before it fell onto our windshield. I kept my eyes on the radar. We were approaching the large yellow circle which indicated we had arrived. As we pulled closer, I began to feel things. Fear. Eeriness. Doubt. Then happiness. Hope. Love. Normally feelings like these had a clear source to picture, but these sensations came on in waves without any discernible reason. It was almost as if they were blinking into existence inside me.
"Here we go," Trent said like an airline pilot readying his crew for turbulence.
I still recall the exact moment we crossed the boundary into the area of higher energy. It was like something just "clicked" in my brain, and all of a sudden everything felt so much closer. The sound of the rain against the trees was almost right next to my ear. The trees in the distance would oscillate between their position a half-mile out, then suddenly seem five meters away. If I focused on something long enough, it began to radiate those same ethereal particles as when Trent released Ava's "phase lock". I checked to make sure the shifter wasn't set to "TD". Sure enough, it was still in drive.
"Can you see them?" Trent asked. "The shifts?"
"Yeah," I said in a dreamy voice. I felt like I was driving through a wonderland.
"It's the energy. I barely notice a difference. A bit of movement in the trees, but not much else. But I'm sure for you, it's a whole experience."
"What is this?" I raised my hand and caught some of the pixel dust dripping off the sun visor. It disappeared when it made contact with my hand.
"It's a kind of radiation. Everything emits it, just in different quantities. I'm still not exactly sure how it relates to the other realms, but I'm guessing it's a kind of primordial matter that helps connect our worlds."
"It's beautiful," I exclaimed. "I wish I could see the world like this all the time."
"Maybe you will," Trent whispered.
As we arrived at the crash site, I began to get glimpses of the past. My childhood dreams and memories were pushing their way out from my subconscious. I noticed an increased number of blinks, which were validated by Ava who reported the following: "Currently detecting 14,350 novel emergences and 2,777 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 2,777."
"That's a lot of blinks." I remarked. "Why doesn't Ava include them in the net anomalies?"
Trent turned his head so I could see his smirk. "Because blinks aren't anomalies."
I thought about it for a second. Blinks aren't anomalies. "I never thought about it that way."
"It's hard to think about it that way when 'normal' for most people means not picking up on a fundamental aspect of reality. But that doesn't make it any less real."
We continued past the epicenter of the yellow circle. "Are we not stopping?" I asked. "I think we already passed the crash site."
"It doesn't have to be exactly at the site," Trent said. "Plus, we don't want to stop on the side of the road and risk getting some civilian involved. There's a field about half a mile up ahead. I'm going to pull off the road and set up camp there.
The "field" that Trent was referring to was actually a large clearing that dipped down into several trench-like troughs which were filled to the brim with fog like witches cauldrons. Further on in the distance, I saw open fields, probably used for farming, and then a large hill where the trees once again reasserted themselves. We had pulled off the road and up a small incline where the trees had already been broken down, leaving a trail for us to drive through. When we surfaced at the edge of the clearing, Trent pulled us onto a flat bed of dried mud which was maybe thirty yards long.
"Here," he said with a sigh.
We both sat for a minute, looking around at the field. We had finally arrived. The rain was beginning to pick up, and the dark sky made it almost impossible to discern the time of day.
"You ready?" Trent asked.
I looked at him. Really looked at him. In his blue eyes. Was I ready? Did it even matter?
"Let's do this," I said.
***
This was the first time I was really able to inspect the back of Trent's van. He had talked up his gear a lot, and honestly, I was impressed. Not in the way that a scientist is impressed by another scientist's lab—I wasn't any kind of expert—but it still seemed remarkably well managed. Now that I was in a state where my vision had been enhanced, I could actually see the enigmatic particles circulating through the pneumatic tubes which were coiled like the pipes and valves of an elaborate wind instrument. The walls of the van, itself, were glistening white, making it easier to make out everything else inside. Along the floor were five overturned columns. Each column was dark and had a vibrating quality, as if they were charged with energy. Then atop the center three columns was a small altar which supported an apparatus with two skinny, metal arms holding a silver halo. At present, the arms were folded and the halo was suspended a few inches above the altar, faced-down. I thought maybe I'd see particles exuding from it, but instead it was emitting visible waves which bent and warped everything they touched.
"That thing is emitting a lot of energy." I remarked, gesturing toward the halo.
Trent stepped in between the columns and started pulling out the packages he had stuffed in there yesterday. "Just wait till' it's on."
Most of the packages contained only a single piece of equipment, and were otherwise packed with foam peanuts. We carefully removed each box and set them on the ground outside. I asked if the rain would damage any of the stuff inside, to which Trent only laughed and continued lugging out the boxes. When they were all out, Trent removed a box cutter from his pocket and went one-by-one opening them. There were eight pieces in total.
"What is it?" I asked as we fished the first item out.
"It's another apparatus, like the one inside. Except it'll mount on the ground out here."
I pulled out what looked like a metal tripod.
"Good, that'll go on the bottom."
"Where are we setting it up?"
"Over here," Trent said and stepped five paces away from the van. He coordinated himself up so he was centrally aligned with the inner ring, then stomped a few times. "This is the spot."
As we continued to work, I asked Trent about how the whole contraption works.
"Do you remember the first time we were in the van? When we had to escape from the semi-truck?" Trent asked and connected a secondary mounting apparatus on top of the tripod. It had four spider-like legs that made right angles and stuck into the ground.
"Of course," I said. "The 'phase lock'."
"Yeah," Trent said and gestured toward the metal stick that was in my hand. I handed it to him. "The phase lock is a seal on the level of energy that the van is allowed to release. It also controls its dispersion pattern so that it releases its energy in a steady wave. This allows Ava to scan for anomalies without causing us to become an anomaly." Trent stuck the plank into the neck of the tripod.
"So when you released the phase lock, we started emitting more energy."
"That's right." Trent confirmed. "Enough to create an alternate route through a different realm."
"So we blinked into a different realm, then back, just to avoid that truck?"
"That's right."
"But why couldn't we just move out of the way?"
"Because it had locked onto us. It was tracking our motion and adjusting its course based on the amount of energy we were emitting. So in order to escape, we had to radically skew our potential energy and then use it to shift."
"Couldn't he have just followed us?"
Trent connected four more pieces to the device which now looked like an elaborate teepee. He was fishing in the last box when he spoke again. "Yeah, he could have. But it was highly improbable that he would have found us." Trent returned from the bottom of the box with another silver ring in hand. "Think of it like this. Let's say you're trying to escape from some bad guy who's coming after you, and you enter a new room you've never seen before. Would you prefer this room to have three doors to go through, or ten?"
I thought about his riddle for a second, then responded, "It depends where they go."
Trent fastened the ring atop the teepee. "Let's say they all lead to random places, or let's say they're all closets that lead nowhere. The key is that more is better, because the more doors he has to check, the less likely he is to pick the correct one. Make sense?"
"So we opened up a bunch of doors and escaped through one at random?"
"Hence the gear 'TD', for 'Trap Door'."
I marveled at the insights, but not for long. Trent hopped back in the van and pulled a lever that I hadn't seen until now. The two metal arms raised the inner ring until it was perpendicular with the altar. Then Trent clicked one of three red buttons along the back wall, and I saw what looked like a large, glass eye suspended in a magnifying glass protruding from the wall, aligned with the center of both rings. A couple seconds later, the glass eye began to focus the energy which was being fed to it from the pneumatic tubes, and a blue pyramid of light projected from it into the first ring, then from the first ring into the second ring. All three pieces were aligned at slightly diminishing heights, so the cylinder of light beamed through the second ring, into the ground.
"Alright, time for the first trial."
I felt the nerves starting up in my stomach. Trent sensed this and hopped out of the truck. It was raining quite hard now, though it was still warm. Both Trent and I were soaked, but that hardly concerned us. He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. "I know you're feeling scared." He said. "But trust me on this. You're going to do fine. Just keep in mind what we talked about. Stay a spectator. Okay?"
I looked into his blue eyes, which seemed especially gray in the dark. Still, Trent's voice was reassuring. All I had to do was trust him. Trust myself. Trust my dad. And it was all going to turn out right.
"I'm ready," I said.
Trent was still for a second, holding my eyes in his. Then he guided me behind the outer ring and into the cylinder of light.
"I should step into it now?" I asked, afraid I'd be called away immediately.
"It's not on yet, so don't worry. I still have to press another button."
I followed Trent's instructions and stood in the blue light which was centered on my chest. Then I watched as Trent ran into the back of the van and posted up next to the glass eye. "Ready?" He yelled out. It was hard to hear him over the rain, but I yelled back. "Ready!"
The next thing I saw was a blinding blue light beam from the van. I heard what sounded like a laser, then saw the cylinder oscillate, expanding and compressing. When the energy reached the second ring, I saw everything around me light up—it looked brighter than noon on a cloudless day. Then the oscillations made their way to me, and I was swallowed up whole.
***
When I came to, I was in the backseat of a car. I felt my butt rumbling. Everything was dim and quiet. And then I heard a woman's voice from in front of me.
"Mark, please, not with Lauren in the back."
The man, who I now identified as my father, pulled the cigarette away from his lips and blew the smoke at my mom. He eyed the back seat where I was sitting, using one of five markers that hadn't rolled off my lap to color a rabbit in my animal color book.
"The kid's fine." he said and took another drag.
"Mark," my mom repeated.
I saw my dad raise his hand in a rapid motion. "I said she's fine, Cheryl. Now check the map and make sure we're going the right away. I can't see shit with all this fog."
I took a moment to make sure I was really in the back seat. I patted myself. I clearly had weight. Then I tried touching the car. At first, my fingertips met a solid surface, but when I tried to press through, my hand slipped into the car. I quickly pulled my hand away as if I had reached into a fire.
That's when I heard the little three year old next to me start crying. I turned and saw that little-me had dropped another couple markers onto the ground and was struggling to reach them.
"Hey!" my dad shouted. "What did I say about crying?"
"Quit it, Mark. She just dropped her markers." said my mom; she turned to help me pick them up.
"What did you say to me?" Mark spat with a voice full of guile. He reached out and pushed her back into her seat. "Don't," he commanded. "She has to learn how to deal with life."
"Deal…" My mom started in disbelief. "Deal with life? Do you hear yourself? What's gotten into you?"
"Sometimes shit happens. It doesn't give her the right to cry. You helping her is just going to reinforce her behavior."
"Her behavior? What about your behavior? You're acting like a total dick."
I didn't even have a moment to react before my dad's hand was across my mom's face. I felt the slap more than I heard it, my own face seeming to swell with the force of the blow. I saw my mom cover her mouth and lean away. Then little-me began to cry even louder, which only challenged my dad to step up his own volume.
"Everyone needs to get a fucking grip before I crash this car." My dad shouted and took another drag. The scariest part was I couldn't tell if he was warning us or threatening us. I felt the sudden urge to do something. There was no way this was real. I was definitely in some fantasy concocted by the demon. He wanted to turn me against my dad. That was the only explanation for something like this. My dad was a good man, not… this.
As I contemplated what to do, I saw a small, golden light appear behind little-me's window. Apparently she saw it, too, because her cries hushed as she traced the wisp with her eyes. After a second, the wisp transformed into a bunny rabbit, reminiscent of the one she was coloring. The rabbit hopped alongside the window, then did a couple circles in place. I watched little me let out a playful laugh and reach toward the window.
"What's going on back there?" my dad asked with a scowl. Apparently the only sound more disturbing than cries were laughs.
I looked back to the front and saw my mom wiping blood from her lip. Her expression was miserable. "Leave her alone, Mark."
"I'll do whatever I damn well want to do, Cheryl. It's my kid back there."
My mom was quiet.
When I looked back toward the rabbit, it was no longer a rabbit but a person. Or at least it looked like a person. The figure radiated pure gold, and atop his head was what appeared to be a King's crown. I recalled Allison's experience of seeing the sun-like figure in her moment of distress. Was that what was happening here? Was this really all true?
"Hey!" My dad shouted, eyeing little-me from the rear-view mirror. "What are you reaching at?"
I looked and saw the golden figure extending his hand toward the window, and little me's hand was reaching back. "Mom, dad, it bright." little-me said.
"What's bright, honey?" my mom asked.
"Don't encourage her, Cheryl."
"Someone there!" little me shouted happily and dropped the rest of the markers and the coloring book onto the ground.
"Who's there?" asked my mom.
"Cheryl, I swear to God. Sit the fuck down."
Everything from that moment on happened so quickly I barely had any time to process it. My mom lifted out of her seat to either get little me's attention or help me pick up my coloring book. My dad responded by grabbing onto her throat, letting go of the steering wheel entirely. He threw her back against the car door, and her head hit the window so hard, the glass cracked. My dad had dropped his cigarette, and I could smell smoke coming from under his seat, but that didn't seem to bother him at all. He turned toward little-me at the same moment my three-year-old hand reached out and grabbed onto the golden figure, whose hand diffused through the window. When my dad turned, I got a whiff of the most awful smell that I wouldn't have been able to place had I not had that nightmare last night. He grabbed onto little-me's shoulder and tugged her away from the golden figure that was trying to pull her the other way. My dad's facade began to crack, and I could see those dark bugs crawling out from the pores in his arms, marching down toward little-me.
I reacted.
I grabbed onto my dad's arm and pulled him off little-me. I heard the sound of my shirt ripping as she was torn from his grip and pulled out of the car, diffusing through it like a ghost. My brief victory was immediately overturned as I saw what was now clearly the demon smiling at me, his wretched fingers curled around my forearm.
"Caught you," He sneered.
Then the whole world once again diffused into countless numbers of particles, only this time, instead of riding through it, I felt like I was falling through an elevator shaft with each floor darker than the last. The further I fell, the less I became aware of my surroundings, and the more I felt a deep sense of loneliness. It was as if I was the only person in the whole world: and the whole world was a prison designed entirely for me. This went on for so long, I began to forget who I was. Where I was. What was.
And then I landed.
***
Source Used:
Jung, Carl. Synchronicity. Translated by Sonu Shamdasani, Princeton University Press, 2010.

If you bought the gun range for your bunker, you know that there are 18 challenges-- 6 weapons in 3 difficulty tiers. Completing all of these is part of your career achievement (only for next gen consoles maybe? +/- PC?).
When I was looking for information on completing it, I repeatedly saw comments that it was impossible or nearly impossible, and many suggestions for a commonly known exploit. The other main advice is to get good.
I'm here to tell you that even for someone with average to below average aim, you can get it done (without exploits). I did pick up a few bits of helpful information along the way, but I am by no means an expert, so I'm hoping others can either offer additional feedback, or even criticize the advice I give if it doesn't work for you.
ALL WEAPONS
Take note of what weapon you're using. If you have a custom loadout enabled, say to hide your pistol MK2, you won't be able to use hidden weapons for the challenge, so be sure to unhide the ones you want to use. Alternately, if you want to use a different weapon, hide the one it selects... but I don't think you ever want to use a weapon other than the best one, which is what will be selected if all weapons are unhidden.
Remember that if you have an MOC with a Mk 2 workshop inside, it's only a short jog to make changes to your weapon and try different things.
HEAVY SNIPER RIFLE
This one is the most straightforward. Hit all headshots, make sure you have the extended magazine. Don't zoom in too much or it will slow down your aim.
PISTOL
Use the MkII with extended clip. I actually did it with the suppressor but I suspect it would be easier with the compensator.
If you start out aiming for low body shots on the low targets and headshots on the high targets, you can hit the targets twice each before they go away-- but only if you squeeze the trigger twice. If you hold it down, it won't shoot fast enough. I shot each target twice until I got the 3x bonus then swapped to single headshots. (Don't look at the bonus, you'll slow your aim, just note the point values of your shots or count.)
AUTOMATIC WEAPONS
The rest are automatic weapons. Personally I found the SMG, Assault Rifle, and Combat MG to be the easiest challenges (including pistol/sniper), and the Carbine rifle to be the hardest of all.
Be sure you have a muzzle brake for greater stability, an extended clip, and of course all the other things you probably already have on your Mk 2 weapons- grip, barrel, etc.
Don't try to "time" it. Use your ears instead. You'll get into a rhythm based on the sound-- PApaPApaPApaPA(1-2-3-4-5-6-7) instead of "shoot for 1/2 of a second" or "shoot until you see the target move."
You can get in at least 2 more headshots on the upper targets before they go away than you can on the lower targets, depending on which class in this category you're talking about. For example, with the carbine rifle, you can get 5 headshots on the bottom targets, but 7 on the upper targets, before they go away (because of the angle of the target as it moves away from you; if you were going for body shots, you could get an extra couple in on the bottom, but you shouldn't be going for body shots.)
Play with your scope, distance in 3rd person, and zoom (don't forget you can tap the R stick to scope in). You may find your optimal combination is different from mine. I did not think any of these were easier in first person scoped in-- too far zoomed, the flicks are too long. However, on some weapons I opted for a higher zoom level, while in others I put on a lower zoom scope but changed my 3rd person view to be closer to the character model.
For the carbine rifle, I completed the challenge while not scoped in. However, I got multiple 2975 and 2950 scores (out of 3000) while scoped, so you can do it either way, I'm sure.
Prioritize 100% headshots over speed once you have the maximum bonus! The thing that takes away most of your time is switching between targets and reloading, and the targets go away after X number of shots, so there's no reason to be an extra fraction of a second quicker shooting your target in the black. If you're not seeing a string of 45s, you're not going to complete the challenge.
Don't stop shooting because you missed a shot. I would suggest not getting in the habit of backint out and restarting just because of some early misses. Remember, not every miss resets your bonus-- you get a "grace" shot on some of the faster shooting weapons, so just keep aiming for the head.
MATH FOR AUTOMATIC WEAPONS
This is for the Carbine; I can do them for others if it would be helpful, but I figure one example gives you a pretty good idea of your goals.
-If you hit 72 headshots in a row without missing, you'll end up with 3015 points, enough to clear the mission.
-Suppose you lose your multiplier after your 30th shot after getting all headshots until then: You will then need to hit a total of 77 headshots (plus the two missed shots for 79 total) to clear 3000 points.
-If you miss after your 30th and 60th shot, you'll need 82 headshots (plus 4 missed shots for a total of 86)
-Suppose you never reset your multiplier, but 10 of your shots hit the outermost rim of the target (for 3 points instead of 15): now you'll need 75 total shots instead of 72 to clear the level.
You can use this to get an idea of how close you are to being on track, but I think it also drives home the point: accuracy is more important than speed. I can easily get 91-95 shots off with the carbine at 80% accuracy, but I might not even break 1200 points doing that. Most of my attempts fell around 79-82 shots and 95-97% accuracy when I was doing well and closing in on 3000.
TARGET SELECTION AND ACQUISITION
When you get to tier 3, targets will come and go fairly quickly. It's important that once you lock onto your current target, begin deciding on your next target and move your eyes there before you're done shooting your last target. It's also important to track the order of targets that popped up, at least in a general sense. If you're shooting at top targets and bottom targets start popping up, for example, it's essential to know which bottom target popped up first, and will therefore be the first to go away.
You don't have to shoot every target! And you don't have to unload the full amount of shots into every target! To be clear, you normally should be trying to unload a full clip into each target, but let's say you just finished shooting a bottom target, a top one popped up, and by the time you finished shooting the top one, you have 3 more bottom targets. By the time you acquire a bottom target again, there's a good chance you won't have much time to shoot whichever one came up first. It's okay to just ignore that one, and shoot the other two. By then, another target will probably be up anyway.
Any time you're reloading, be sure your crosshair is on the target you want to shoot next before the reload is finished. If you have plenty of targets to shoot at when you reload, you may want to move on to the next target in line if you can. If you take time to reload, then shoot your prior target for the last one or two shots, then immediately have to acquire a new target, that's a lot of wasted time for those one or two shots. And that wasted time can result in a juicy target going away before you can get to it. This is a judgement call of course-- if the next target is crappy anyway (eg front bottom to back top) or there are only one or two targets up, and/or you only shot the target once or twice before reloading, it might be better to finish the one you're on and hope a new, better target pops up by the time you're done.
THE MENTAL ASPECT
One thing to be aware of: RNG is going to come into play here. If you're an aim god, you don't need this guide anyway. If you're like me, even your best won't be good enough unless you get the perfect set of targets.
For example, given that you can hit 7 headshots with the carbine rifle on the upper targets, it's nice to get a lot of uppers in a row... except unlike the bottoms, the front upper targets block headshots to the back upper targets, requiring you to either fire a string of body shots to get the closer target out of the way, or re-aquire a headshot (sometimes only to be blocked once again by a 3rd target.) So getting a front-to-back line of upper targets is a huge boost. Getting two blocked headshots in a row by closer upper targets just means "gg go next." Likewise, the lower targets are closer together and faster to acquire, so getting a bunch of lower targets in a row is also great. Upper and lower alternating? You're kinda screwed.
Even with no change in your accuracy or target acquisition, the random aspects can make an easy 500 point difference and probably more, eg if a target gets blocked, then blocked again, then you finally go to shoot at your first target and it goes away so you shoot the wall instead.
When chasing the 3000 on carbine, I would guesstimate that I scored <1000 points on about 10% of my attempts, <2000 points on about 30-50%, and between 2000-2500 on like 30-40% (at least towards the end when I was really locked in). Getting between 2500 and 3000 was uncommon for me, probably <10% of the time; I did hit some 2975 and 2950s, and a handful of 26xxs, but most were lower.
Or to put it another way: if you're not an aim god, your results are going to fall on a bell curve, and the peak is going to be way below 3000. Don't look at it like "I have to keep closing in on 3000, and if most of my results are 2200-2400 and I'm not consistently climbing, I'll never win." Look at it this way: most of your results won't be good enough to win, and by the nature of reality, you won't be getting your top 5% results every time. What you're looking for is for your best performance (rare) to overlap with the best target RNG (rare). Keep at it, and one of those times, which will probably feel no different than any other time, you'll look at your score and gasp, and see that it hits the goal. I kept trying the carbine tier 3 challenge repeatedly from 11:30pm to 3am before I got it, with small breaks for otter pops and buying more supplies for my bunker.
PROBABLY BULLSHIT ADVICE BUT I'D LOVE FEEDBACK
I felt like the visibility of certain targets was different from different spots on the range. Sometimes the light casts a hard shadow on some targets in some areas but not others, making it harder to see the headshot. I didn't objectively test this, going back and forth and noting specific targets, so it may be in my head.
I played around with night vision (do NOT use thermal lol) and was undecided on whether it helped. It makes the circles no longer red, and they're a little subtleharder to see on the targets that are clear anyway, but it also makes it easier to see the targets in the back. The main reason I went with no vision aids is because the goggles kept glitching out anyway, where they'd suddenly deactivate, and I got tired of resetting them. The specific advantage of NVG was when I was on a certain position on the range, the metal apparatus and the head of the target itself kind of blended together in shadow, and the NVG made that difference crystal clear-- but again, at the cost of making it harder to see the specific red zones. On the other hand, the head is a cricle, and you're shooting the middle of the circle, so how important is the red color really? This is probably down to preference, but this is also where I thought moving to the far left position eliminated the problem of the shadows (if I'm not just accidentally full of shit.)
STUFF I NEED MORE INFO ON
Here are some things I'd love to know if anyone has the info or wants to figure it out:
-What are the rules on when missing shots resets your bonus? You can miss one for example with the carbine rifle... and if you miss the second, it resets. What if you miss one, and hit 3 shots, then miss another? 1/5?
-Why does the multiplier counter keep ticking up even after you hit 3x? Is this related to the missed shots? Once you hit 3x you're maxed out, but the next 4 shots still fill up bits of your multiplier bar. Don't know if this is just a graphic design decision or if it's functional in some way.
-Are the targets that flash truly random? Or are there a few set patterns? Even if no one is going to memorize the pattern, just knowing eg that there's going to be a string of low targets towards the end is helpful, or being able to say "THIS IS THE GOOD ONE!"
-I saw some advice on altering your field of view and your dead zone. I didn't play with this, but it does seem useful. Normally I like to see as much as possible so I can view threats, but for this specific challenge, it's unnecessary, so maybe tweaking it gives an advantage.
CONCLUSION
Thanks for helping! Feel free to also send your favorite links. I didn't watch a lot of video guides (maybe 4 or 5) because I prefer text guides, but it's possible I missed out on some good info as a result.
Good luck out there!

Let's say my dataset contains columns that are categorical. In this case, for the two columns income and height. The values in the column are like ranges. income - 0-10k, 10k-15k, 15k-20k Height - 165-170, 170-175, 175-180
My other columns excluding my target variable are all characters spanning -2, -1, 0, 1, 2.
My aim is to make a model to predict another column in this dataset that's numeric/integer. For that I will have to first convert my categorical columns.
After this when I used model.matrix, the categorical columns automatically got converted to numbers and the various ranges became column headers with their own 0 and 1 values.
When I ran my regression tests(those that use model.matrix) and obtained my rmse on the test data, it was quite accurate.
Is this correct? Can I continue using this matrix? If so, how do I tune this further?

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Content Warning: Domestic Abuse
***
We pulled off I-51 a little after midnight, stopping at a truck stop which was couched between the highway and a large forest.
We waited in the van for ten minutes or so. Trent had increased the sonar radius to its maximum of 30 miles a little over an hour ago. Somehow the red pings had kept up with us, holding a steady distance of around 20 miles. Considering we were averaging around 80 mph, and a coyote's top speed is only around 40 mph, we figured they had been enhanced in some way. Either that, or they shape-shifted into something faster. Regardless, now that we had stopped, we waited to see if the demon spawn would try and close the distance. Luckily, or unluckily, they didn't. They kept their 20 mile buffer, but we noticed they were beginning to spread out along the circumference of that boundary.
"We're close. They know that, so they're trying to trap us in." Trent said.
"Trying to?—more like they have."
We considered whether we should stay in the van and keep watch, but we figured that would do us little good. At their speed, they could be on us in ten minutes, which means we would need to stay up all night and keep tabs on their positions. Trent offered to stay up, of course, but I shut him down.
"The demon doesn't want to kill us now. You said it yourself. Plus, we need our rest. If they come, they come."
Trent didn't like it, but he acquiesced.
The truck stop had all the essentials: a gas station and mini mart with showers and an attached McDonald's, a large parking lot for truckers to idle and sleep, and even a section with lodging for those who wanted a more comfortable night's rest. I told Trent that he should take advantage of the showers, and after a little convincing, he agreed. While he was cleaning himself up, I patrolled the dingy, half-stocked aisles of "Daisy's Quick Mart". I probably would have been appalled at the quality of the store had I actually been paying any attention to it whatsoever. But I wasn't. I was thinking hard about what awaited me tomorrow.
During the drive, I had asked Trent why the demon would want us to return to the crash site. What did he mean that I would be 'confronting a dark entity in a place he couldn't help me'? He seemed hesitant to answer, but my little stunt outside the storage facility seemed to have sufficiently motivated him.
"When I said I've never done this before, I meant it." Trent started. "I've never done this exact thing before—meaning I've never projected someone into the past."
"So, I'm time traveling?" I asked.
"No—don't think of it like that." Trent paused, trying to come up with a good explanation. "It's more like I'm opening a window for you to look through: not a door. You're going to see the past, but you can't interact with the physicalities there. But that doesn't mean you can't interact with anything."
There was a space of silence as Trent tried to let me work out his meaning for myself. "I don't get it. Are you saying there's something I can interact with? Like what?" And then it hit me. "The demon. The demon can interact with me? Meaning what? It can kill me?"
"Meaning… I'm not exactly sure. You're going to be in a kind of psychic space. If it does damage, it won't be to your body. It'll be to your mind—or spirit. But I don't know what the limits of that damage could be. I just don't have those answers."
"If you've never done this, how do you know any of it will work?"
"That's an easy one." Trent answered. "Because it's been done to me."
There was silence.
"Look, if I know anything, I know my tech. Don't doubt that this will work. It's my job to make sure it does. I just need you to be in the right mental for this. Just because it knows your coming doesn't mean it automatically has the upper hand. It won't be able to see you unless you make contact with it first. In other words, you have to initiate contact. As long as you remain a spectator, you should be okay. Trust me. Just don't make contact."
I started pacing faster—fast enough to catch the attention of the overnight shift worker, a young man whose name I can't quite remember. I know it started with a "J". Jake, maybe? Anyway, he asked if I was alright, to which I responded in the affirmative. He left me alone for another couple passes, but when I almost ran into one of the shelves, he stood up and said, "Uh—I'm going to have to ask you to stop running around. I don't want you to hurt yourself."
I must have stared daggers at him, because he recoiled from my gaze. What's gotten into me? I thought. Then, steadying myself, I apologized. I looked around and grabbed the nearest edible looking piece of merchandise: a bag of Swedish Fish, and placed it down on the counter. "Just this, please."
The cashier rang me up. It was surprisingly cheap.
"Are you sure you're alright?" the young man asked. He was tall with brown hair. He seemed tired—maybe even more tired than me. But he also seemed kind.
I smiled as best I could and said, "No, I'm not. But there's not really anything you can do. Hell, there might not be anything I can do." I furrowed my eyebrows at my own response, realizing that imminent death may have broken my verbal filter.
On the other hand, the cashier did not seem surprised at all. "Ah, I see. It's one of those problems." He responded. "Well, hey, for what it's worth, you seem like one of the resilient ones. I think you'll be alright."
I only smiled and nodded at his mildly cryptic comment. Looking back, the whole interaction was a bit strange, but I had way too much mental clutter to recognize that in the moment. I took my Swedish Fish and walked through the anteroom which led to McDonald's. I found an open yellow booth that wasn't littered with crumpled straw sleeves and sat down, chomping mindlessly on my little red fish until Trent returned. When he arrived, he took my place, and I went to shower. After we were both clean and fed, we returned to the van. The pings were still pushed safely out of harm's way. But that didn't mean we were out of harm's way. Trent asked me if I wanted to sleep in the van, saying that "it'd be the safest place."
I thought it over. He was right, obviously. The van was not only outfitted with weapons I couldn't even begin to understand, but it was also our escape, and it would be just as difficult, if not more difficult to break into than the studio-style motel rooms with their wood doors and big windows. Still, if this was going to be my last night on earth, I wanted to sleep in a bed. A real bed. Trent understood and said he'd stay parked right outside my room for the night.
After purchasing a key from the night attendant, I moseyed over to the cement walkways which connected the twenty or so rooms. Mine was room #56, which I thought was odd since, like I said, there were only 20 rooms. I lugged in my tomato plushie and dad's old book and placed them on the queen mattress.
"I'll be right outside." Trent said after I collapsed onto the bed.
"Trent," I called out, stopping him half-way through the door.
"Yeah?"
All the blood in my body rushed up to my face as I realized my unfiltered mouth almost reflexively said the word "stay". I stared at Trent, my heart beating, my face hot. I considered asking him to sleep on the floor like my dad, but that would be childish and impolite. The alternative was to share my bed… Or I could take the floor.
"I'll just be right outside." Trent said before my mind processed a solution. "Come by if you need anything. I'll be up most of the night anyway."
"Okay," I replied in a faint voice.
Trent shut the door.
I sat atop the bedsheets and acquainted myself with my new living space. A feeling of regret closed over me as I considered that even sleeping on a carseat would have been better if it meant I didn't have to be alone. With a sigh, I turned on the bedside lamp and grabbed the book and stuffed tomato, using the tomato as a backrest as I slipped my legs under the covers and situated the book upright on my thighs. I cracked it open and was immediately blasted with a puff of dusty, old book scent. It was ripe at first, and I turned my head away to sneeze, but as I perused through the pages, the scent grew on me. It reminded me of the days growing up when I'd step into dad's study and read through one of the many volumes on cryptic topics which were at least two college degrees above my Lexile range.
I was only a couple minutes into browsing the collection of different scientific and philosophical works when I came across a page which contained highlighted text. This was unusual, as my dad would never mark up his books. He was a purist on that point. I rubbed my thumb over the yellow lines, and sure enough, it was highlighter.
The highlighted text was part of a small book by Carl Jung called "Synchronicity". There were a total of three pages that were marked, and they advanced like this:
Page 5:
The philosophical principle that underlies our conception of natural law is causality*. But if the connection between cause and effect turns out to be only statistically valid and relatively true, then the causal principle is only of relative use for explaining natural processes… That is as much to say that the connection of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and require another principle of explanation.*
Page 19:
…there are events which are related to one another experimentally, and in this case meaningfully*, without there being any possibility of proving that this relation is a causal one, since the "transmission" exhibits none of the known properties of energy…a situation which does not yet exist and will only occur in the future could transmit itself as a phenomenon of energy to a receiver in the present…Therefore, it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity... "synchronicity"*
Page 22:
A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer… which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.
I flipped through the rest of the pages of the book. There was no more highlighted text, but there was a message on the last page which read:
Matthew 7:7-8
I'll meet you in the darkest place.
He also included his typical smiley face which had an ovular shape and three sprouts of hair which I now realized kind of resembled my tomato plushie. It was my dad's writing, of course. But why? And how? What did this mean?
The motel had a Bible stashed away in the nighstand drawer. I got it out and looked up the verses which read the following:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
I spent maybe an hour ruminating on all of this. The whole discourse on energy and causality and a "falling together in time" just seemed so right. It was clear that my dad definitely did know what I was going through, but for whatever reason, he made it seem like he was oblivious. Why had he hidden that from me? I felt like I was being pulled in two directions. On the one hand, my dad loved me enough to leave this note, maybe even knowing the exact moment I'd need it. But on the other hand, he had neglected my struggles throughout my entire childhood. He even lied at times. Was this really enough to make up for all of that?
And then there was the section about the future transmitting energy to the past. I read back through the whole paragraph and the original writer had meant it to say this as something that wasn't possible, but my dad's highlighting made it seem like he wanted to flip the meaning. The future does affect the past. I thought about where I was headed and wondered if I would soon discover that for myself.
Lastly, dad's message. The Bible verse reminded me of the first time I prayed; how I reached out to God and received peace as an answer to my prayer. Now I feel like I'm actively seeking… something, but I don't know yet what I'll find. And then there's knocking. At first that reminded me of the story with the beetle tapping on the window, but then I went back even deeper in my memory and dug out the monster tapping at my window, and the words my dad spoke to me in order to set my mind at ease: "you're a superhero. And you know what your greatest superpower is? Your greatest power is you get to tell the monsters what to do. Because the monsters are only as strong as the stories you tell about them…so if you're ever scared, honey, just dream up a better story."
I was crying into my stuffed tomato now. I felt like all the blinking pieces of my life had finally been pulled together into a completed puzzle. This was all by design. My entire life, filled with so much chaos and confusion, was actually preparing me for this moment. And my dad thought I had the tools and strength enough to get through it. I flipped through the book one more time, thinking maybe he had left some other hidden comment—some formula to defeat this demon and return home. But there was nothing. Only that one comment: "I'll meet you in the darkest place."
What's the darkest place, dad? Is that where I'm going? Are you saying you'll be there, too?
With those thoughts in mind, my eyes became heavy shutters which, with a slight pressure on the pulley, winded shut. My swimming thoughts and firework-like fears dissipated, and I returned to a precious childhood memory. It was after an evening soccer practice. Summer. Dad was driving me to Dairy Queen. I got a cherry-dipped twist cone. I was happy.
So, so happy.
***
I woke up to sunlight blaring through my windows. Shit, I overslept, was my immediate thought. I threw off my covers and opened the front door. A glance at the clock showed 1:13 PM. I shouldn't have even been allowed to stay checked in this long. Damn, am I gonna get double-billed for this?
I heard a rummaging sound around the corner of my motel room. It sounded like a squirrel was trying to find an afternoon snack in one of the garbage bins. I stepped outside. The sun was extremely bright, to the point where I had to squint and put my hand over my eyes to even see the ground in front of me. I was trying to walk toward the van, but somehow I ended up in front of the trash bins where the animal's tail was sticking out from a turned-over, silver garbage can. Its tail was wagging excitedly, and I remember thinking that it was much too large to be a squirrel.
The animal bent down as if biting onto something, and I heard the sound of its growl as it struggled to tug whatever it was free from the barrel. Inch by inch, the creature backed out of the canister, and more of its sharp, sticky hair was revealed. I heard something snap, then the creature leapt back and I saw what it was chomping on. My eyes widened in horror as the pink tube of a human intestine was pulled taut like the end of a tangled hose. Blood and entrails were spilling out of the human's opened gut. And then, behind the canine, I saw the person's face. His face was pale white, his eyes closed, and his hair was slicked back… It was Trent.
Before I could react, I heard footsteps approaching from behind. I whirled around and saw my dad. But—no, it wasn't him. It was someone wearing a paper-mache face mask that was painted to look like my dad. The forehead of the mask was already beginning to crack, white specks breaking off like sawdust. Through the cracks, I could see the figure's true form. I didn't know darkness had its own type of light, but that's the only way to describe it. It was as if malevolence itself was reified into a skin which was actually an amalgamation of millions of little, oozing parasites that leached into the nearby light. When it finally spoke, the demon's voice was a full octave lower than the old man's at the deli. And it had an earth-stilling gravitas.
"Today's the day!" He sang and reached into his pocket. His lips curled upward into a foxy smirk. "You have no idea how long I've waited for this day." He said and held up a razor blade. Half his facade had already fallen apart, and now I could see the bugs up close, writhing in what was either horror or ecstasy. And his scent… it was somehow more rank than the rabid coyote rummaging through the trash can with Trent's cut open body inside. The demon closed in on my position, and in one, decisive motion, he brought the blade close to his chin, then sliced it across my throat. "Wake up!" He screamed.
I jumped out of my bed and grabbed my throat, feeling the cold sting of its quick slice. Hyperventilating, I patted the area down, trying to hold the blood in, but when I removed my hands, I saw they were dry. It was only a dream, I thought. Gray light was only beginning to filter in through the drapes. I'm in my hotel room. I'm safe. I tried consoling, but the pragmatic mental massages weren't enough to hold the force of my knees buckling. I dropped onto the carpet and cried for a long while.
Outside, rain was beginning to fall.
***
By the time I met up with Trent, I had already composed myself and decided to keep my dad's message and the nightmare to myself. None of it seemed particularly productive from a logistical standpoint, anyway. And I wanted to focus on the mission.
We stopped by McDonald's and bought a couple cups of coffee. Trent asked if I wanted any food, and I declined. Black coffee seemed like the only thing my stomach could take at the present moment. I could tell Trent was hungry, but he tried playing it off (I guess to be respectful of me?) I told him to knock it off and get something to eat. I didn't need my Charon getting lightheaded and dropping the paddle before he finished rowing me to Hell. He didn't care much for my joke, but he ordered a couple Chicken McGriddles at the kiosk anyway.
There were maybe ten patrons spread throughout the restaurant. We sat down at the same booth from the prior night, this time across from one another. Trent spent the first ten minutes or so babbling about our fuel supply and the logistics of the trip from here on in. Practical stuff. I've come to realize that's how he deals with his stress. He talks it out in short, durable sentences. I mostly nodded and watched as what looked like a storm front closed in on the truck stop. The sky was overcast, and there were darker clouds in the distance. The rain was still only a patter, but a middle-aged man wearing a yellow bow tie on the wall-mounted TV confirmed that there would be heavier rain and thunderstorms very soon.
After the worker delivered Trent's food and he ate it in record time, I posed the one question that was still on my mind.
"How do I fight him?" I asked.
Trent finished a large gulp of his coffee, then looked at me. It was the first substantial thing I'd said all morning; Trent could tell something was off with me, but he figured there was no point in asking what it was. "By 'him', I assume you mean the demon?"
I nodded.
Trent licked his teeth clean. "You could try praying again."
"I'm serious," I responded.
"I'm serious, too. It worked before, didn't it?"
"You mean at my house?"
Trent nodded.
"I thought you weren't a religious man?"
"I'm not. Just a practical one. If praying worked before, maybe it'll work again."
"That's the best you've got? A maybe?"
"No, I've got a lot of shit better than a maybe." He answered. "It's just not accessible where you're going. Which is why I recommend not making contact on the first run."
"First run? So we're going to do this more than once?"
"At least," Trent answered. Then, seeing my expression, he continued. "What? You thought this was going to be a one-and-done? We have to conduct some research first. I did tell you this was new for me, right?"
Somehow Trent's response had set my mind at ease a little. I was going to have more than one chance. Of course, why wouldn't I be able to go back more than once?
"Why didn't you tell me this earlier? It would have gone a long way in easing my mind."
Trent lifted his hands in defense. "Sorry, I just thought that was a given. I mean, what we're doing is dangerous, just like I said, but it doesn't mean we aren't going to approach this as safely and scientifically as possible. However, there is a different problem with running multiple trials."
"The Organization?"
"That's right," Trent said like a proud parent. "Our little experiment will be like a giant spotlight, and the longer we wait around after it's on us, the greater the chance we'll have unwelcome company."
"So, safe but speedy."
"Safe but speedy. Exactly."
***
We fueled up and were back on the road a little after 8:00. From that point on, Trent and I were absolutely silent. I had the distinct feeling of being in the eye of a storm. The pings moved closer commensurate with our progress toward the crash site. The cloudfront continued its advance. And I noticed a haze beginning to descend onto the road ahead of us. It was fog.
We meandered further inland, the forest thickening around us until the rain almost stopped entirely—the leaves drinking it up before it fell onto our windshield. I kept my eyes on the radar. We were approaching the large yellow circle which indicated we had arrived. As we pulled closer, I began to feel things. Fear. Eeriness. Doubt. Then happiness. Hope. Love. Normally feelings like these had a clear source to picture, but these sensations came on in waves without any discernible reason. It was almost as if they were blinking into existence inside me.
"Here we go," Trent said like an airline pilot readying his crew for turbulence.
I still recall the exact moment we crossed the boundary into the area of higher energy. It was like something just "clicked" in my brain, and all of a sudden everything felt so much closer. The sound of the rain against the trees was almost right next to my ear. The trees in the distance would oscillate between their position a half-mile out, then suddenly seem five meters away. If I focused on something long enough, it began to radiate those same ethereal particles as when Trent released Ava's "phase lock". I checked to make sure the shifter wasn't set to "TD". Sure enough, it was still in drive.
"Can you see them?" Trent asked. "The shifts?"
"Yeah," I said in a dreamy voice. I felt like I was driving through a wonderland.
"It's the energy. I barely notice a difference. A bit of movement in the trees, but not much else. But I'm sure for you, it's a whole experience."
"What is this?" I raised my hand and caught some of the pixel dust dripping off the sun visor. It disappeared when it made contact with my hand.
"It's a kind of radiation. Everything emits it, just in different quantities. I'm still not exactly sure how it relates to the other realms, but I'm guessing it's a kind of primordial matter that helps connect our worlds."
"It's beautiful," I exclaimed. "I wish I could see the world like this all the time."
"Maybe you will," Trent whispered.
As we arrived at the crash site, I began to get glimpses of the past. My childhood dreams and memories were pushing their way out from my subconscious. I noticed an increased number of blinks, which were validated by Ava who reported the following: "Currently detecting 14,350 novel emergences and 2,777 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 2,777."
"That's a lot of blinks." I remarked. "Why doesn't Ava include them in the net anomalies?"
Trent turned his head so I could see his smirk. "Because blinks aren't anomalies."
I thought about it for a second. Blinks aren't anomalies. "I never thought about it that way."
"It's hard to think about it that way when 'normal' for most people means not picking up on a fundamental aspect of reality. But that doesn't make it any less real."
We continued past the epicenter of the yellow circle. "Are we not stopping?" I asked. "I think we already passed the crash site."
"It doesn't have to be exactly at the site," Trent said. "Plus, we don't want to stop on the side of the road and risk getting some civilian involved. There's a field about half a mile up ahead. I'm going to pull off the road and set up camp there.
The "field" that Trent was referring to was actually a large clearing that dipped down into several trench-like troughs which were filled to the brim with fog like witches cauldrons. Further on in the distance, I saw open fields, probably used for farming, and then a large hill where the trees once again reasserted themselves. We had pulled off the road and up a small incline where the trees had already been broken down, leaving a trail for us to drive through. When we surfaced at the edge of the clearing, Trent pulled us onto a flat bed of dried mud which was maybe thirty yards long.
"Here," he said with a sigh.
We both sat for a minute, looking around at the field. We had finally arrived. The rain was beginning to pick up, and the dark sky made it almost impossible to discern the time of day.
"You ready?" Trent asked.
I looked at him. Really looked at him. In his blue eyes. Was I ready? Did it even matter?
"Let's do this," I said.
***
This was the first time I was really able to inspect the back of Trent's van. He had talked up his gear a lot, and honestly, I was impressed. Not in the way that a scientist is impressed by another scientist's lab—I wasn't any kind of expert—but it still seemed remarkably well managed. Now that I was in a state where my vision had been enhanced, I could actually see the enigmatic particles circulating through the pneumatic tubes which were coiled like the pipes and valves of an elaborate wind instrument. The walls of the van, itself, were glistening white, making it easier to make out everything else inside. Along the floor were five overturned columns. Each column was dark and had a vibrating quality, as if they were charged with energy. Then atop the center three columns was a small altar which supported an apparatus with two skinny, metal arms holding a silver halo. At present, the arms were folded and the halo was suspended a few inches above the altar, faced-down. I thought maybe I'd see particles exuding from it, but instead it was emitting visible waves which bent and warped everything they touched.
"That thing is emitting a lot of energy." I remarked, gesturing toward the halo.
Trent stepped in between the columns and started pulling out the packages he had stuffed in there yesterday. "Just wait till' it's on."
Most of the packages contained only a single piece of equipment, and were otherwise packed with foam peanuts. We carefully removed each box and set them on the ground outside. I asked if the rain would damage any of the stuff inside, to which Trent only laughed and continued lugging out the boxes. When they were all out, Trent removed a box cutter from his pocket and went one-by-one opening them. There were eight pieces in total.
"What is it?" I asked as we fished the first item out.
"It's another apparatus, like the one inside. Except it'll mount on the ground out here."
I pulled out what looked like a metal tripod.
"Good, that'll go on the bottom."
"Where are we setting it up?"
"Over here," Trent said and stepped five paces away from the van. He coordinated himself up so he was centrally aligned with the inner ring, then stomped a few times. "This is the spot."
As we continued to work, I asked Trent about how the whole contraption works.
"Do you remember the first time we were in the van? When we had to escape from the semi-truck?" Trent asked and connected a secondary mounting apparatus on top of the tripod. It had four spider-like legs that made right angles and stuck into the ground.
"Of course," I said. "The 'phase lock'."
"Yeah," Trent said and gestured toward the metal stick that was in my hand. I handed it to him. "The phase lock is a seal on the level of energy that the van is allowed to release. It also controls its dispersion pattern so that it releases its energy in a steady wave. This allows Ava to scan for anomalies without causing us to become an anomaly." Trent stuck the plank into the neck of the tripod.
"So when you released the phase lock, we started emitting more energy."
"That's right." Trent confirmed. "Enough to create an alternate route through a different realm."
"So we blinked into a different realm, then back, just to avoid that truck?"
"That's right."
"But why couldn't we just move out of the way?"
"Because it had locked onto us. It was tracking our motion and adjusting its course based on the amount of energy we were emitting. So in order to escape, we had to radically skew our potential energy and then use it to shift."
"Couldn't he have just followed us?"
Trent connected four more pieces to the device which now looked like an elaborate teepee. He was fishing in the last box when he spoke again. "Yeah, he could have. But it was highly improbable that he would have found us." Trent returned from the bottom of the box with another silver ring in hand. "Think of it like this. Let's say you're trying to escape from some bad guy who's coming after you, and you enter a new room you've never seen before. Would you prefer this room to have three doors to go through, or ten?"
I thought about his riddle for a second, then responded, "It depends where they go."
Trent fastened the ring atop the teepee. "Let's say they all lead to random places, or let's say they're all closets that lead nowhere. The key is that more is better, because the more doors he has to check, the less likely he is to pick the correct one. Make sense?"
"So we opened up a bunch of doors and escaped through one at random?"
"Hence the gear 'TD', for 'Trap Door'."
I marveled at the insights, but not for long. Trent hopped back in the van and pulled a lever that I hadn't seen until now. The two metal arms raised the inner ring until it was perpendicular with the altar. Then Trent clicked one of three red buttons along the back wall, and I saw what looked like a large, glass eye suspended in a magnifying glass protruding from the wall, aligned with the center of both rings. A couple seconds later, the glass eye began to focus the energy which was being fed to it from the pneumatic tubes, and a blue pyramid of light projected from it into the first ring, then from the first ring into the second ring. All three pieces were aligned at slightly diminishing heights, so the cylinder of light beamed through the second ring, into the ground.
"Alright, time for the first trial."
I felt the nerves starting up in my stomach. Trent sensed this and hopped out of the truck. It was raining quite hard now, though it was still warm. Both Trent and I were soaked, but that hardly concerned us. He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. "I know you're feeling scared." He said. "But trust me on this. You're going to do fine. Just keep in mind what we talked about. Stay a spectator. Okay?"
I looked into his blue eyes, which seemed especially gray in the dark. Still, Trent's voice was reassuring. All I had to do was trust him. Trust myself. Trust my dad. And it was all going to turn out right.
"I'm ready," I said.
Trent was still for a second, holding my eyes in his. Then he guided me behind the outer ring and into the cylinder of light.
"I should step into it now?" I asked, afraid I'd be called away immediately.
"It's not on yet, so don't worry. I still have to press another button."
I followed Trent's instructions and stood in the blue light which was centered on my chest. Then I watched as Trent ran into the back of the van and posted up next to the glass eye. "Ready?" He yelled out. It was hard to hear him over the rain, but I yelled back. "Ready!"
The next thing I saw was a blinding blue light beam from the van. I heard what sounded like a laser, then saw the cylinder oscillate, expanding and compressing. When the energy reached the second ring, I saw everything around me light up—it looked brighter than noon on a cloudless day. Then the oscillations made their way to me, and I was swallowed up whole.
***
When I came to, I was in the backseat of a car. I felt my butt rumbling. Everything was dim and quiet. And then I heard a woman's voice from in front of me.
"Mark, please, not with Lauren in the back."
The man, who I now identified as my father, pulled the cigarette away from his lips and blew the smoke at my mom. He eyed the back seat where I was sitting, using one of five markers that hadn't rolled off my lap to color a rabbit in my animal color book.
"The kid's fine." he said and took another drag.
"Mark," my mom repeated.
I saw my dad raise his hand in a rapid motion. "I said she's fine, Cheryl. Now check the map and make sure we're going the right away. I can't see shit with all this fog."
I took a moment to make sure I was really in the back seat. I patted myself. I clearly had weight. Then I tried touching the car. At first, my fingertips met a solid surface, but when I tried to press through, my hand slipped into the car. I quickly pulled my hand away as if I had reached into a fire.
That's when I heard the little three year old next to me start crying. I turned and saw that little-me had dropped another couple markers onto the ground and was struggling to reach them.
"Hey!" my dad shouted. "What did I say about crying?"
"Quit it, Mark. She just dropped her markers." said my mom; she turned to help me pick them up.
"What did you say to me?" Mark spat with a voice full of guile. He reached out and pushed her back into her seat. "Don't," he commanded. "She has to learn how to deal with life."
"Deal…" My mom started in disbelief. "Deal with life? Do you hear yourself? What's gotten into you?"
"Sometimes shit happens. It doesn't give her the right to cry. You helping her is just going to reinforce her behavior."
"Her behavior? What about your behavior? You're acting like a total dick."
I didn't even have a moment to react before my dad's hand was across my mom's face. I felt the slap more than I heard it, my own face seeming to swell with the force of the blow. I saw my mom cover her mouth and lean away. Then little-me began to cry even louder, which only challenged my dad to step up his own volume.
"Everyone needs to get a fucking grip before I crash this car." My dad shouted and took another drag. The scariest part was I couldn't tell if he was warning us or threatening us. I felt the sudden urge to do something. There was no way this was real. I was definitely in some fantasy concocted by the demon. He wanted to turn me against my dad. That was the only explanation for something like this. My dad was a good man, not… this.
As I contemplated what to do, I saw a small, golden light appear behind little-me's window. Apparently she saw it, too, because her cries hushed as she traced the wisp with her eyes. After a second, the wisp transformed into a bunny rabbit, reminiscent of the one she was coloring. The rabbit hopped alongside the window, then did a couple circles in place. I watched little me let out a playful laugh and reach toward the window.
"What's going on back there?" my dad asked with a scowl. Apparently the only sound more disturbing than cries were laughs.
I looked back to the front and saw my mom wiping blood from her lip. Her expression was miserable. "Leave her alone, Mark."
"I'll do whatever I damn well want to do, Cheryl. It's my kid back there."
My mom was quiet.
When I looked back toward the rabbit, it was no longer a rabbit but a person. Or at least it looked like a person. The figure radiated pure gold, and atop his head was what appeared to be a King's crown. I recalled Allison's experience of seeing the sun-like figure in her moment of distress. Was that what was happening here? Was this really all true?
"Hey!" My dad shouted, eyeing little-me from the rear-view mirror. "What are you reaching at?"
I looked and saw the golden figure extending his hand toward the window, and little me's hand was reaching back. "Mom, dad, it bright." little-me said.
"What's bright, honey?" my mom asked.
"Don't encourage her, Cheryl."
"Someone there!" little me shouted happily and dropped the rest of the markers and the coloring book onto the ground.
"Who's there?" asked my mom.
"Cheryl, I swear to God. Sit the fuck down."
Everything from that moment on happened so quickly I barely had any time to process it. My mom lifted out of her seat to either get little me's attention or help me pick up my coloring book. My dad responded by grabbing onto her throat, letting go of the steering wheel entirely. He threw her back against the car door, and her head hit the window so hard, the glass cracked. My dad had dropped his cigarette, and I could smell smoke coming from under his seat, but that didn't seem to bother him at all. He turned toward little-me at the same moment my three-year-old hand reached out and grabbed onto the golden figure, whose hand diffused through the window. When my dad turned, I got a whiff of the most awful smell that I wouldn't have been able to place had I not had that nightmare last night. He grabbed onto little-me's shoulder and tugged her away from the golden figure that was trying to pull her the other way. My dad's facade began to crack, and I could see those dark bugs crawling out from the pores in his arms, marching down toward little-me.
I reacted.
I grabbed onto my dad's arm and pulled him off little-me. I heard the sound of my shirt ripping as she was torn from his grip and pulled out of the car, diffusing through it like a ghost. My brief victory was immediately overturned as I saw what was now clearly the demon smiling at me, his wretched fingers curled around my forearm.
"Caught you," He sneered.
Then the whole world once again diffused into countless numbers of particles, only this time, instead of riding through it, I felt like I was falling through an elevator shaft with each floor darker than the last. The further I fell, the less I became aware of my surroundings, and the more I felt a deep sense of loneliness. It was as if I was the only person in the whole world: and the whole world was a prison designed entirely for me. This went on for so long, I began to forget who I was. Where I was. What was.
And then I landed.
***
Source Used:
Jung, Carl. Synchronicity. Translated by Sonu Shamdasani, Princeton University Press, 2010.

my boyfriend is great in a lot of aspects but i feel like our relationship orbits around his mood swings and depressive episodes. we never go on any dates because he gets irritated at the world (driving, location, anything can tick him off) every time we go out, and i orient most of my time waiting for him to be ready to spend time with me.
i just always have to be the one accommodating and i’ve gotten used to it but i feel lonely having to keep track of his mood and his classes to sustain our quality time.
i’ve settled with just being around him when he’s working and performing tasks, and i have fun but most of the time he just sets a timer in the background, we both work, and during an occasional 5 minute break we get to cuddle and talk.
i wish he would pay more attention to me than that.
i don’t care that much about surprises, expensive gifts, dates, etc., all i really want is to hang out and do things together. we are both artists so i want to make things together but he’s always too busy catching up on homework and pursuing his own interests for any action to take place.
he constantly wants to be moving around pursuing his own interests. he makes a lot of plans with me in air but they always fall through and i lost a lot of trust in him to be reliable. we are both in our early 20s so i don’t expect him to be perfect and i encourage him to do what he loves. i never want to inhibit him and hold him back from joy, because i feel like he experiences so little of it.
i am sad when he chooses not to be with me though. i don’t want to force him either because then what’s the point?
depression isn’t foreign to me—but i experienced it during adolescence, not early adulthood, where responsibilities pile up much more. i try my best to be understanding and communicate when his depression swallows me.
he’s snapped at me a couple of times but he’s never been violent with me. whenever he’s going through something he holes up and stops communicating with me for days.
i wonder sometimes what it would be like if he didn’t ignore me so much, or if i actually want to spend the rest of my life with someone so avoidant. i hope his depression doesn’t spiral like it has before.
i’m not planning on breaking up with him, not anytime soon at least unless it gets much worse, but sigh…i don’t know how to cope. i love him, i want a future with him, and we’ve overcome a lot together.
right now it’s summer break for both of us—i’m studying abroad and he’s job hunting. most of our communication is me sending pictures and telling him about my day and him responding with a few words and being quiet on facetime because he’s in a bad mood. i am sad when this happens because i am feeling good until he is hit with a wave of depression and stops showing care for me.
i know he can be affectionate and loving because we’ve had many great moments together where i do feel seen and cared for.
anyone relate?

I'm recently 40 and on a journey to figure myself out. Whether or not I am gifted in any sense is somewhat unclear to me. I recently took the Mensa Norway IQ test and scored 100, totally average (although if there was a time component to it, I did ignore that), but yet people always say I am smart. Putting my finger on what that means has been tricky though, I don't feel like I am 90+ percentile good at anything. There is only one constant that always stands out among the mixed signals of my cognitive ability: I figure out new things much faster than everyone else. I can build an an above average competency at anything very quickly. I have many examples of this:

• Signed up for a Groupon to learn rock climbing years ago. In a class of 30 first-timers, I got all the knots right on the first try, like literally in seconds, after being shown once while everyone else struggled for the next 15 minutes. Never had played with rope before in my life.
• Mathematics has always been very easy. See one example of how a problem is done and I could apply the concept to anything. Math only started to become something I had to put energy into to succeed at at the graduate level when working on proofs.
• I've been building a house as a hobby (ontop of my fulltime job, homesteading sorta situation) and I can usually nail down a skill in a day that tradesman take years to perfect, as in muscle motor type stuff. It's so noticeable that it's become a friction point with my wife. She has been working on a lifelong issue of self-confidence, but every time we go to do something neither of us have done before on the house, I pick it up no problem, then she feels bad because she will still be struggling weeks later while we are still working on it. It became such a knock to her efforts to build her self-confidence that we largely stopped working on projects together.
• I worked briefly for UPS loading the long inter-hub trucks in my early 20s. The job entailed memorizing a list of zipcodes, checking that each package was on the list, and if so, then building it into a wall in a Tetris-style way, manipulating the direction of the package so each row snugged in tightly to prevent damage during transportation. The average packages per hour loaded with no errors (loading a package that didn't belong) was around 300-400 for an experienced loader, with the better loaders doing around 500-600. I was loading 800+ packages per hour with no errors, ever, a couple weeks into the job. It never took me longer than a day or two to learn a new list of OK zipcodes when moved to a truck destination I had not worked before. My walls were also always perfect. If there was any money in being the best loader for a trucking company, this probably would have been my calling, but alas, there is not.
• I was at a startup that received a large funding round, which they used to rapidly expand their headcount. I was asked to be a product manager (was previously a data scientist) on a technical product team that would be all data scientists and engineers. I had never even thought about going into Product as a job before. Things went so well that in short time I was getting questions from similarly titled peers about how I learned to be a good product manager, what courses or programs I studied, literature I found helpful etc. I had nothing to say, I didn't research anything. I'm still regarded highly and was even promoted to be a director of product in less than a year. I'm still kind dumbfounded by it, I've done zero personal development on the topic of Product Management to this day. People look at me as a mentor and I don't even know what to make out of it.
• To add to the last one, I have been promoted quickly at every company I ever worked after college the past 10 years, always spending much less time at a particular level than my peers. I never cared about climbing the ladder, I never specifically tried to be promoted. It always just happened.

Is this a familiar story to anyone else here? Is there a type of intelligence this relates to? Am I perhaps just totally average, but my ADHD hyperfixation has given me a few bumps in life? (feel like that doesn't explain the math though). What do I even do with this?

It became apparent to me recently that my boss is a gossip, and that many of the weird cliques or "off weeks" we've had recently boil down to her mood, or who she is irritated with on a given week. Our team is small, and I can tell her attention is turning toward me based things that transpired in the last week. I know her behavior is inappropriate and hostile, and I know my work performance is more than adequate, but this is the job I have.
Growing up I was taught to be overly polite, and was constantly scolded for being inattentive or making small mistakes. I am so afraid of being scolded or mocked, that I sometimes say nothing. As an adult, these things just make me look timid. My boss and colleagues are all around my age, and when I sense rejection, I just want to shrink away and hide. There are times that I know sacrificing my comfort will make a big impression, or that socializing, taking the lead, going out on a limb will all help my situation, and i just cant bring myself to do it. I shut down. Honestly, I shut down this week and have been in a shame/fear spiral all weekend.
Without regard to the bigger problem, which is my boss, how do you help yourself when your rejection sensitivity is starting to isolate you. I love my job and I'm good at it, but one slap on the wrist and I start finding it hard to be motivated or emboldened by anything.

Greetings, YelanMains! I come to you today with a different type of Yelan build. Instead of a build for her in-game, I'm gonna be showcasing how to build and play Yelan in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. This is something I've been doing for Genshin characters recently, and I wanna share it with you all.
Let’s start off with our goals for this build. First, we need to be a master at manipulation, intel gathering, and espionage. Secondly, we need to wield a bow, as that’s your weapon of choice. Lastly, we need to utilize magical abilities to support your allies, as while we won’t be able to replicate her abilities exactly, we’ll still keep that support role for her.
(Please note that I stopped playing Genshin when Yelan came out, so I know next to nothing about her lore or character other than she's like a spy for Ningguang or something like that)
For stats, we’ll be using the Standard Point array from the Player’s Handbook. Roll for stats if you want, just keep your Dexterity and Charisma high for multiclassing.
15 Charisma, as you are a master of manipulation and deception.
14 Dexterity, as you are nimble, and it’s the stat for bows.
13 Intelligence, as being a secret agent requires a sharp mind.
12 Wisdom, as you are very insightful and good at reading people
10 Constitution, as while I hate to have it low, you are canonically frail
And lastly, 8 Strength, as again, you are frail.
For Race, Yelan is a human, and Variant Humans get a Feat. The Actor Feat is perfect for going undercover. You get +1 to Charisma, advantage on Deception and Performance checks to pass off as another person, and you can spend a minute listening in on someone to mimic their speech. Bump your Intelligence and Charisma with your 2 Free points, take Perception for your Skill of choice, and the Spy Background for Stealth and Deception as you are an Intelligence Agent.
We’ll kick things off as a Rogue. 1st Level Rogues can pick 4 Skills from the Rogue list. Insight, Persuasion, Sleight of Hand, and Investigation would be my picks. You also get Expertise in 2 of those Skills, doubling your proficiency bonus with them. Go for Persuasion and Deception to order your way around everyone. You also learn Thieves Cant, letting you speak in secret code words, and Sneak Attack, giving you an extra d6 to add to a weapon attack once per turn if you either have advantage on the attack roll or have an ally within 5 feet of you.
2nd Level Rogues get Cunning Action, letting you Dash, Disengage, or Hide as a Bonus Action.
3rd Level Rogues get to pick a Roguish Archetype, and Inquisitive is useful for uncovering information. You have an Eye for Detail, letting you use a bonus action to make a Perception or Investigation check to find a hidden creature or object or check for clues. You also have an Ear for Deceit, meaning you cannot roll lower than an 8 on any Insight check to tell if someone is lying. You also get Insightful Fighting, letting you use a bonus action to have a creature you can see make a Deception check contested by your Insight check. If you succeed, then you can use your Sneak Attack on that creature without needing advantage or another ally for up to a minute or until you use it on someone else. Lastly, 3rd Level Rogues get Steady Aim, letting you use a bonus action to gain advantage on your next ranged attack roll as long as you don’t move or haven’t moved that turn, and Your Sneak Attack increases to 2d6.
4th Level Rogues get an Ability Score Improvement or a Feat. We’ll take the Skill Expert Feat for +1 to Charisma, Proficiency in Intimidation, and Expertise in Insight.
Now that we have our sneaky Rogue stuff handled for now, let’s multiclass into Bard, as while Yelan isn’t a singer or performer, Bards, much like Rogues, are very good in social situations. Multiclassing into Bard gets you 1 free Skill. Acrobatics would be my pick. You get Bardic Inspiration, letting you use a bonus action to give an ally a d6 they can use to add to an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw within the next 10 minutes, an amount of times per long rest equal to your Charisma modifier, similar to an Exquisite Roll. You can also cast spells as your Vision does grant you magical abilities. For your Cantrips, take Vicious Mockery and Message. For your spells, take Silvery Barbs, Charm Person, Dissonant Whispers, and Command.
2nd Level Bards get Jack of All Trades, letting you add half your proficiency bonus to any ability check you aren’t proficient with, which include initiative rolls. You also get Song of Rest, letting your allies add an extra d6 whenever they spend hit dice to restore HP during a short rest to keep them up in the field. You also get the option of Magical Inspiration, letting an ally who has a Bardic Inspiration die use it to add to the damage or healing of a spell.
3rd Level Bards can pick a Bard College, and College of Whispers is another fine choice for a deceptive and manipulative agent. You get Psychic Blades, letting you spend a Bardic Inspiration to deal an extra 2d6 Psychic damage with a weapon attack once per turn. You also get Words of Terror, letting you spend a minute talking to someone alone and have them make a Wisdom saving throw or be frightened by you or another creature you choose for up to an hour or until the target is attacked. If they succeed, they have no indication you tried to frighten them. You can now also learn 2nd Level Spells. Take the spells Hold Person and Zone of Truth to catch them in the net.
Last, but not least, 3rd Level Bards get Expertise in 2 more Skills. Go for Perception and Investigation.
4th Level Bards get an Ability Score Improvement. Cap your Charisma for the most Bardic Inspiration and better spells and skills. Take the spell Invisibility.
5th Level Bards get Font of Inspiration, meaning your Bardic Inspiration now recharges on a short rest as well, and it also upgrades from a d6 to a d8. You can also learn 3rd Level Spells. Take the Spell Nondetection. Your damage from Psychic Blades also increases to 3d6.
6th Level Whispers Bards get Mantle of Whispers, letting you use your reaction to capture the shadow of a humanoid that dies within 30 feet of you. Until you finish a long rest, you can use your action to assume the form of the Shadow, taking on the humanoid’s appearance for 1 hour or until you end it as a bonus action. While you're disguised, you gain access to all information that the humanoid would freely share with a casual acquaintance, Such information as general details on its background and personal life, and you gain a +5 bonus to Deception checks when someone tries to see through your disguise. Once you capture a shadow, you cannot do so again until you finish a short or long rest. For your spell, take Hypnotic Pattern.
Lastly, 6th Level Bards get Countercharm, letting you use your action to give you and your allies advantage on saving throws against being charmed or frightened, but this feature is honestly pretty bad.
Back to Rogue for the rest of the build. 5th Level Rogues get Uncanny Dodge, letting you use your reaction to halve the damage you take from an attack against you. Your Sneak Attack also increases to 3d6.
6th Level Rogues get Expertise in 2 more skills. Go for Stealth and Intimidation.
7th Level Rogues get Evasion, meaning when you make a Dexterity saving throw to avoid damage, you take no damage on a success, and only half on a failure. Your Sneak Attack also increases to 4d6.
8th Level Rogues get another Ability Score Improvement. Bump your Dexterity for better AC, damage, and initiative.
9th Level Inquisitive Rogues get Steady Eye, giving you advantage on Perception and Investigation checks if you use no more than half your movement that turn. Your Sneak Attack also increases to 5d6.
10th Level Rogues get another Ability Score Improvement. Keep bumping your Dexterity.
11th Level Rogues get Reliable Talent, meaning you cannot roll lower than a 10 on any skill you have Proficiency or Expertise with. Your Sneak Attack also increases to 6d6.
12th Level Rogues get our last Ability Score Improvement. Cap your Dexterity for the best damage, AC and Initiative.
We’ll finish off the build with 2 Levels in Fighter. 1st Level Fighters can pick a Fighting Style, and Archery will add +2 to the attack rolls you make with Ranged weapons. You also get Second Wind, letting you heal 1d10+your Fighter level as a bonus action once per short or long rest to stay up in the fight.
Our Capstone is the 2nd Level of Fighter for Action Surge, letting you take an additional action once per rest.
Now that we’ve hit Level 20, let’s go over the strengths of this build. First, you are insanely good in social situations. You have Expertise in 6 Skills, and paired with Reliable Talent, your minimum for any Charisma check is a 28, along with Mantle of Whispers, making you a master at gathering intel and espionage. You also have solid damage thanks to Action Surge, Sneak Attack and Psychic Blades, letting you deal up to 11d6+10 damage in a single round, with Steady Aim to gain advantage. Lastly, you’re a really good support with Bardic Inspiration and useful crowd control spells.
For weaknesses, you are VERY squishy, sitting at 105 average HP. While you do have Evasion, Uncanny Dodge, range, and a decent 17 AC with Studded Leather, if you’re caught in the wrong situation, then you’re gonna go down easily. You’re also vulnerable to Strength saving throws, meaning you can easily be tossed around. Lastly, you have multiple features that require your bonus action, meaning you’ll have to pick and choose what to use each turn.

I am about to start 1st round of stims (yay) and have coverage through Cigna and FamilyPath - $30k excluding meds. I was very excited because we also have a large HRA balance that should cover our deductible and OOP max. I did find out our policy excludes PGT-A testing so I’m on the hook for $1700 + $300 per embryo. I read our policy and seems pretty clear it doesn’t allow for embryo banking. Once im on my way with stims this week I will confirm for sure. Given my age (40) and desire for 2 kids, I was really hoping to do back-to-back cycles which my doctor supported if insurance covers. My job was eliminated June 1 so I am currently unemployed but was able to keep my medical benefits through (discounted) COBRA. After some googling I did find out my husband has progyny that covers 2 smart cycles and my clinic is in network with their insurance provider Aetna. I believe we have up to 60 days for life status change (losing my job / benefits) to switch over. Actually may only have 30/31 days. I’ve heard/read progyny is the best but I know every policy is different and I’m not sure how much information I can get before enrolling. Assuming it financially makes sense to switch (Cigna won’t let me bank embryos and need at least another ER), how big of a pain is it going to be to switch insurance in the middle of everything? Is it possible I may end up paying more with progyny somehow? I still have a bit of research on my end to see if it is worth going down this path but wanted to see if anyone has been in a similar boat? I know I’m very lucky to have insurance coverage let alone 2 to chose from!

My partner and I are both in the medical field, but in different specialties. In the past, he’s put down other specialities by saying things like how he’s in one of the only fields where he won’t have to deal with dirty, difficult patients and how his field won’t have to worry about NPs and PAs taking over because they can’t do what he does. With that in mind, I do tend to be a little bit more defensive when I feel like he’s being too critical of other specialities or take it personally when he says stuff about what I’m doing, which is emergency medicine. He works at a place he doesn’t like and will share a lot of stories. I try to listen as best as I can, but at times when he says stuff I don’t agree with I’ll say so. He’ll then turn around and accuse me of not being supportive and empathetic.
A recent example would be when he was sharing a story about a patient transferred up from the emergency department who the urologist wouldn’t treat due to the patient not having insurance. In the story, he placed the blame on the EM doctor and said how lazy he was because he didn’t verify if the patient had insurance and how they missed one of the diagnosis of the patient. I pointed out how EM will treat patients regardless of whether or not they have insurance and how their job is to stabilize the patient. Also, the diagnosis that the patient was admitted for was urgent, so at the time checking if the patient had insurance probably wasn’t priority. If they find something that needs admission they will admit them based on that and then later other diagnosis might come up after they’ve been admitted.
After an argument of me not agreeing with how much he thought the EM doc messed up, he then got upset at me saying I wasn’t being supportive of him and not listening to him vent. He said I should’ve asked him how it made him feel and observing the interaction was traumatic for him, because he was there and felt bad for the patient. I can agree with feeling bad for the patient, but I feel he changed it to being something personal after I pointed out his extensive critique, because prior to that the story was told more so focused on how terrible the EM doctor was. At the same time, I do understand if the story was something personal to him or if he was affected, but still I feel like that doesn’t give a free pass to criticize the way he tends to.
Things like this come up from time to time and I’m conflicted with how to approach these situations. Is this something where I should just agree and not point out things I don’t agree with? I want to be supportive and empathetic, but I feel like it becomes difficult in situations like these.
TLDR: My bf will share stories from work being overly critical about other specialities and when I don’t agree with his criticism he’ll tell me I’m not being supportive enough. How can I be supportive when I don’t agree with what he’s saying?