Pain movies
Watch People Die Inside
2016.10.21 15:38 relayrider Watch People Die Inside
2013.01.05 09:20 tara1 Everything that goes boom...
blowing your mind literally... As a statement on the treatment of moderators by Reddit administrators, as well as a lack of communication and proper moderation tools, /ThingsThatBlowUp has decided to go private for the time being. See https://www.reddit.com/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bxduw/why_was_riama_along_with_a_number_of_other_large/ for more info.
2011.08.14 05:50 osamabinnavi Movie Suggestions
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2024.05.16 23:11 Weathers_Writing They call Silicon Valley the tech capitol of the world. They're wrong
I won't disclose its actual location, so if that's why you're here, sorry to disappoint. It's not time for that yet. However, I do think it's time to start getting the word out. I've noticed an increase in what I'll call "Antennas" lately, or people who can detect cross-planar phase shifts. Without getting into all the math (some of which I don't even know), this is basically a phenomenon which refers to entropy seeping into our universe from other realms or universes or whatever you want to call it. Simply put, people think our universe is a closed system to entropy, meaning that the disorder of any variable in our universe can only increase or decrease in direct proportion to other variables in that same system (the universe). Under this precept, we can establish rules like the Laws of Thermodynamics, and for most people, they're effective. But not for Antennas.
Put another way, if you throw a bunch of bouncy balls into a box, there are a number of different configurations that the balls could take on, with different speeds and magnitudes. You can calculate all of those if you have the right numbers. Now let's say you throw in another set of balls that you don't consider in your calculations of the initial set. Well, then you're not going to get an accurate picture of what's happening. Most people only see the first set and calculate based on that, but some people can see two, three, four or more sets.
You'll understand the concept better when I tell you the story, but I wanted to give you a primer on an important concept that will help you understand why this place, which I'll call "Area X", exists, and what the goals of the people who work there are.
Also note that I'm going to be using the alias "Trent" moving forward. Please refer to me as such in any direct messages.
***
Eighteen years ago I started working as an independent Home Inspector. I dropped out of community college after my first semester (not because I didn't find some of the subjects interesting, but because deference to a man or woman has never been my style) and started working some odd jobs. I did construction work for a couple years, then plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for six months. I've always found pleasure in using my hands, and getting dirty was never a problem for me. Still, having a boss really dragged ass, so I spent my free time working on creating my own business. It took a few years and lots of savings, but I finally managed to get basic set of Home Inspection equipment: Tyvek coveralls, a cheap half-face respirator, voltage & AFCI/GFCI testers, CO2 and radon monitors, an IR camera, and telescoping mirrors in addition to the boots, safety glasses, electric gloves, ladder, and toolkits I already had on hand.
My buddy at the time was in the business, but he was moving off to the coast, so he helped me get set up and even introduced me to some of his clients. Of course, by that time I had already gotten my State license, but I still was a bit apprehensive to work with insurance agencies. I thought I could make a living working independently, inspecting for mold or sizing up a house for a prospective buyer. Eventually, though, I realized I should probably take every job available to me.
Easing into the business went about as well as it could have. The clients my friend referred to me were very satisfied with my work, and I was able to retain them. Then, in order to increase my reach, I hired someone on Fiverr to build a website for my company which led to a marked increase in traffic and conversions. About six months through, I began to get on a first-name basis with the boys and girls down down at Allstate and Progressive, and they fed me some of the bigger cases. In fact, I got so booked by year's end that I had to hire someone to help manage my schedule and the Excel spreadsheet with all my finances. I capped off a successful year with a 5-star Google rating and a trip to Ireland to visit some family and friends and get piss drunk. When I got back, it was the grindstone all over again, until the summer when I discovered… well, you'll see.
First off, I want to say that I was never one to believe in the paranormal. I grew up watching the movies and hearing the ghost stories round the campfire like every other kid, but it never struck a chord with me. If I can't touch it or see it or hear it, does it really exist? Probably not. So don't go thinking this was a scared man seeing his own shadow. That being said, I had this sense that something was off about this house when I parked along the curb and looked through a large window, perhaps two times the size of my van, to a dingy, dark foyer.
The entire neighborhood was stacked with upper-middle class domiciles, though it seemed like only two thirds of them were occupied, mostly by professionals who commuted to the City every weekday, and the rest were empty. As a man who understands real estate, to say this was strange would be an understatement. Still, I had no problem appraising the mini-mansion for a couple of newlyweds looking to enter the community. I did some research on the property ahead of time, and it seems that it was owned by a couple of old timers who had gone off the grid some time ago. The water and electric bill were both unpaid dating back to 2004 (it was June of '06 now). The bank had repo'd the house (which only had about 100k left on it) and held it for a year and a half before putting it back on the market. I tried to find out more about the old couple who vanished, but there was nothing in the news.
I stepped out of the van in my coveralls and grabbed my suitcase which had my mask, gloves, and eye protection in it. I liked to do a preliminary survey first, running an eye test on the exterior then interior before bringing out the big guns (that way I could identify the areas where I think there could be problems instead of running a metal detector over the whole damn ocean seaboard). I was about to do just that when the window caught my eye again. It felt uncharacteristic of me to be so occupied with this window, but I detoured to the front porch and peeked inside anyway.
Most of the furniture had already been moved out, meaning all that was left was a single three-seater couch, a couple candlesticks on the fireplace mantle, a pristine chandelier overtop a dining room table, and the kitchenware: an oven, gas stovetop, marble countertops, and an island. I could see into the living room very clearly with the afternoon light, but the dining room was dim enough that there were a few structures I couldn't quite make out in the distance. One of them appeared to be some kind of china cabinet or bookshelf—I figured it was the former considering where it was located. The other shadow looked kind of like a grandfather clock. Or at least that's what I thought until it moved.
When I say it "moved", I don't mean to say that it picked up and walked away. If you're not familiar with the Necker Cube, I suggest you search it up, because that kind of illusion is the best way to describe what I saw. At first I was seeing the grandfather clock in a certain way—pushed into the corner of the room—and the next second my vision "corrected" and it was maybe five feet to the left of its former position. I shook my head and looked again and saw the grandfather clock in its second orientation, standing in the center of the room against the wall. I figured I was just seeing things, but even so I spent a little extra time dawdling around the Egress window, taking notes, and delaying the interior inspection.
When I finally grew a pair and went inside, I walked straight to the dining room. Sure enough, the grandfather clock was stowed away in the corner of the room. I spent a couple minutes watching it with my pencil and travel notebook out. I'm the kind of guy that likes to collect hard data when the chips are down. Unfortunately, the clock apparently already had enough fun and was content with sweating me. Oh, well.
I fitted my pencil behind my ear and pocketed my travel notebook, then flipped the rest of the first floor lights on and completed my prelim. I concluded that everything was pretty standard. If anything, the house was in better shape than I'd expect considering it presumably hasn't been lived in for a couple years. I say "presumably" because one can never count out squatters, even during those times. Mainly I was expecting more dust build up and cobwebs than there were. Perhaps someone from the department had come by recently. It's unlikely, but possible.
I did the same check upstairs and it came back mostly clean. There was a bit of staining near the attic I wanted to check for mold. Based on its color, it was probably just a minor case of Aspergillus, but better safe than sorry. Then I got to the basement, and, well, let's just count out the idea of anyone dropping by. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I found.
The first thing that caught my eye was the long, slender body of a birch tree lying pale and dead across a large portion of the even larger unfinished basement's cement flooring. I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but, yep, there it was. Its crown was sealed up in the wall with only its trunk hanging out, which made me think of those medieval pillory devices which locked up people's heads and arms. Then confetti-scattered around the tree and all over the basement floor was a minefield of broken glass and ceramic tangled up with a set of random objects. And when I say random, I mean random. There was an unfurled Somali flag (the blue one with a single star in the center), some packaged drinks and condiments branded with all sorts of different languages (I could only make out Gaelic and Chinese or Japanese, I couldn't quite tell), a broken dome-shaped security camera, an otoscope (the thing the doc uses to check your ears), Hot Wheels cars (okay that one isn't so strange), and the list goes on.
At that moment, I wasn't freaked out or disgusted. I was more or less just confused. I started walking through the rubble, trying to avoid the sharp fragments but pretty confident that my steel toed boots would crush most the pieces anyway, when I heard a clink just up ahead. I was able to spot the coin in time, just before it jingled to a halt atop an old Life magazine. I picked it up and noted right away its oval shape and bronze color—clearly not American made. I tried reading it, but not only was the language not English, it appeared to be so old that most of the lettering had been filed down. I looked up at the ceiling to see if it dropped from a shelf, but there was nothing that could have been holding the coin. I considered for a moment, looking around at the other junk, and had the crazy idea that maybe all this stuff just appeared here. I popped the coin in my pocket and headed back to the van when I stopped by the tree and realized something. It wasn't a birch tree—it was a palm tree. I just didn't realize because of how ashy and decayed the bark was.
Now at this point you might think I've been acting a little nonchalant for such a strange occurrence, and I don't blame you, but if you're gonna stick around with me that's just something you're gonna have to get used to. I guess I was just born with a screw loose, but I really don't scare easily, and I tend to look at everything pragmatically. If you dig deep enough, you'll always find another plausible explanation. That being said, I do want to get to the part about Area X, so let me give you the rundown on what I learned about this basement.
I ended up trekking back to the van and picking up my gear. I was no longer running the routine inspection, obviously, but I figured I might as well throw 30 thousand dollars of scanning equipment at whatever the fuck anamoly existed in that basement. Most of it came back negative. There was a bit higher-than-usual EM interference as picked up on the voltmeters, but nothing that screamed danger close. Still, it was enough for me to set up my volt testers and IR camera while muddling through the rest of the junk. I won't bore you with another list of items, but I did find one thing of value: a diamond necklace. And not just any diamond necklace, it was one of those Queen-wearing, multi-row, big-jeweled necklaces like out of some Historical Fiction movie from the thirties. I almost didn't pocket it because I'm used to expensive items being owned by someone… someone who might want it back. But I figured if there was ever a place the finder's keeper's rule applied, it was probably in this Quantum graveyard.
7 O'clock rolled around and I hadn't eaten. I'm a pretty bulky guy, carrying my share of both muscle and fat, and most people think that means I need to eat a ton but that's really not the case. Mostly I just get dehydrated easily, especially in the summer. That said, I was bordering on famished territory and considered heading out for a bite when I heard another sound. The first thing I did was check my scanners, and sure enough the voltage needle was fully spun to the right side of the dial. EM interference. Then I went to see what had dropped. I was able to pick the object out pretty quickly since I had spent the last 6 hours staring at the mosaic of a basement floor. It was a silver briefcase, like one of those out of a crime novel, and it was cracked open.
I had this sense then that I was standing at a precipice, and if I opened the briefcase and looked inside, I wouldn't be able to stop whatever would come afterwards. Part of me deep down knew that I was just that type of guy that had to know, and maybe this was my Hamlet moment where it would be a trait gone a step too far. But then again I didn't really believe in any of that sentimental bullshit, so I opened the briefcase.
The gun surprised me a little, but not as much as the piece of paper laid atop a case file reading in large black font, "FIND ME". I expected the envelope to have some missing person file in it, but instead there were all these schematics and blueprints for some kind of device. Whatever it was, it was pretty massive. Some of the lengths were hundreds of meters long. And what's more strange is based on the blueprint's locale, it appeared to be underground. I looked back through the pages a couple times, then checked the note—nothing strange there. The gun appeared to be a simple glock. I was no gun expert, but I had been to the range pretty regularly with my construction buddies, so I got used to the feel of a pistol and rifle and some of the different names; however, I realized pretty quickly it wasn't your standard glock when I couldn't find mag-release. That's when I noticed how light the gun felt. I tried to chamber a round, but again, there was no hammer. What the hell kind of gun was this?
I ended up throwing everything back in the briefcase, including the necklace, coin, and a few Koozies I found that were branded with one of my favorite sports teams (never let an opportunity go to waste). I put up all my shit back in the van and spun over to a local burger joint, got my fill, and went home. I made sure to draft an email to the prospective buyers, telling them the house had several patches of black mold and a bit of a rat problem before drifting off to sleep. Although I really didn't do much of that.
When I woke up, I took a cold shower and downed a can of Reign, then commuted to my gym and got a lift and some sauna time in before making the trip back to the house. I brought some extra supplies with me for some experiments I cooked up while not sleeping the previous night.
First, I had two camcorders set up on a couple tripods in either corner of the basement. I wanted clear footage of these mystery objects spawning in. Then I set up a voltmeter in a similar fashion, but I had a wire extending out of it on a circuit which fed to an alarm that would blare when the reading was over 250 volts. Upstairs, I rearranged some of the furniture so that the small number of tables, chairs, clock, cabinets, and other little pillows or vases I could find were scattered across the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Then I pulled up a lawn chair to the front porch window and waited.
I didn't have to wait long though. In about a minute, I started to notice some of the objects moving. It was strange. When a few of them would shift simultaneously, it was like looking at a holographic card that would change shape depending on where your eyes were in relation to the image. Every time I saw a shift, I felt an awkward feeling in my eyes. They went blurry for a fraction of a second, then there was a twinge of pain, as if my brain couldn't handle the contradictory stimulus. It didn't get more crazy than that though—until the alarm went off.
I had cracked open the small rectangular window in the basement to the side of the house so I would hear it. It took four hours and several strange stares from passersby walking their dogs before it rang, so I was a bit lost in my thoughts, but when I heard the beep I perked up fast. It lasted for maybe 5 seconds total, but what I saw was truly miraculous. The best way I can describe it is a pool of silver or gray or translucent light emerging in the foreground between me and the objects in the different rooms. A series of twisting tentacles sprouted from the gray octopus-like head and spun in a way that reminded me of that little kids ride at the amusement parks. Then the objects started to "heat up" is the way I describe it. Their position became relative, meaning they were here one second, there another, then they popped out of existence entirely. Suddenly the rooms were all empty, then they were full of things I had never seen before. Then five seconds passed and the octopus vanished and it was back to the same old objects in their usual places.
It took a few minutes to process what I saw, and even then I wasn't sure I really saw it. I went inside and looked around at my distribution of the house's furnishings. They were all there, intact. Then I went downstairs to check the cams. I rewinded a couple minutes and played it back, but there was no flying object to be found. Instead, there was some gray static that lasted half a second and then the object, a kid's treasure chest toy, was there on the ground. But you want to know the really strange part? I rewinded the tape again, and when I watched the footage back, the treasure chest was always there.
I later came to understand that these poppings in-and-out of our reality are only conceivable to a conscious mind that can track the interference patterns—not rote computational instruments. In fact, even most people can't do it (although everyone has at least a slight awareness of it, even if only subconsciously). Plus, locations like the basement of this house are very rare and kept under tight lock. That became obvious to me two days later when, after my normal morning routine, I pulled up to a driveway and curbside filled with unmarked government vehicles. Either bravely or stupidly, I pulled up to a few officers (they were wearing suits in 85 degree weather, so I assumed…) who were idling by the large fence of crime scene tape and asked them what the score was.
"There was a crime," said the short man with a unibrow.
"Oh, is that right? Damn shame. Someone break in? I have a niece who lives nearby, so…"
The man looked at his two compatriots, both of whom were wearing sunglasses and a "get this civilian fuck out of here" expressions. "Oh, yeah," he started in a reassuring tone that was so condescending it would have annoyed anyone except me, "we found a body. We think it was a homicide. Best to keep your kids away from here for a while."
I thumbed the stubble on my chin, my other hand outstretched on the wheel, and considered moving on, but my mouth had other ideas. "That right? But uh, isn't this house vacant? I mean, I don't remember no one living in it."
The short man, now tall with temper, said, "Yeah, some squatters. We think there was a dispute over some drug money. Nothing for you to worry about though, we got it under control. Now if you wouldn't mind moving along, we have a lot of work to do."
Oh, I'm sure you do, I thought, but only said, "Of course, sir, sorry for keeping you from your job." Then I rolled up the window and cruised on, keeping my eyes on the house which slowly diminished in the side-view mirror.
Luckily I had been smart enough to break down my camp and lug home all my equipment each night, so I didn't leave anything incriminating. I didn't move the furniture back, so maybe that would come back to haunt me, but considering the kind of shit going down in that house, I didn't think they would notice.
For any of you wondering about the conclusion of the house story, I went back a couple weeks later after the suits had left and the tape was taken down and confirmed that not only was the basement entirely cleaned out, but it was no longer exhibiting any strange properties. I looked for a story related to the house, maybe a made up murder of some kind, but there was nothing. That bastard lied to me and didn't even bother to cover his story up.
Now, in the aftermath of an event such as this, I really only had one of two options. I could forget it, move on, continue living life. The necklace was surely worth a fortune. I could sell it and have enough to retire, or at least hire enough people and expand my business large enough to retire within ten or so years. Or I could take all that money and invest it in my own PI business with only a single objective: finding out what those people knew, and why they were hiding it.
I think you know me well enough by now to guess which line of reasoning appealed more to me.
***
For the sake of brevity, I'm going to omit most of my encounters along the journey to discovering Area X. There's a lot to tell, and if it appeals to you perhaps I'd be willing to share at a later date, but for now I want to get this part of the story, the more proximal part, out in the open.
Three years ago, I discovered the source of what I'll call "The Receiver". This is the device that was schematized in the documents that I found in the briefcase. What it does is a complex answer, and how it does it is pretty much all speculation, but here's what I've been able to find out: this universe we live in is a node in a network of many other spaces. These spaces exist in higher dimensions that we cannot directly perceive, but using a conceivable analogy, just think about a flower with petals. The petals are these other dimensions which bleed into our world, which is at the center. However, it's not that pretty. We see the physical world through the lens of spacetime: sizes, speeds, etc. These other dimensions don't necessarily have space or time. In fact, what actually exists there, I couldn't say. The only data I have on them is from two sources: correspondence information and server data from the secret agency (which I'll call "the Organization") that keeps this under wraps, and first-hand experience with realms from these other entities, either directly (I experience it) or through the eyes of someone else with the same or greater abilities than I possess.
I referred to these people with abilities earlier as "Antennas", and I will continue to use the term. Antennas really come in three flavors, marked by the strength of their ability: weak Antennas, like me, are able to observe spontaneous interactions between our universe and other dimensions (phase shifts) when there is a strong force of collision like existed in the basement; moderate Antennas may see phase shifts occur at any point, and they usually are able to retain memories from across the different transformations; strong Antennas, and I don't know if they exist yet, but they are able to consciously interact with these other realms and cause phase shifts to occur.
I mentioned that moderate Antennas are able to retain memories from before and after a phase shift. Technically, all Antennas have this ability, but it's about degree. I can recall only very specific instances and without much detail. Moderates are usually able to pick out much more nuanced minutiae. At the lower end of moderate scale, most of those details fade or get fuzzy over time, but for the very strong Antennas, they hold onto almost everything. One other property that scales with strength is interaction with other conscious entities. Only a small percentage of moderates are able to do this. What's interesting is that these entities can possess (yes, like ghosts) people who aren't even antennas, but no one is aware of such possession at this deep of a level. I have several companions now, and only two have had interactions with these otherworldly beings. Not all of them are malevolent, some of them are whimsical or kind, but there are a fair share of demons out there.
Getting back to the point, Area X started as a government funded project in the 70's. At that time, they were focused on a few subjects: Artificial Intelligence, DNA sequencing, and psychedelics. Yes, they were part of the infamous LSD experiments. But they looked at these subjects through a common lens—there was something that the burgeoning tech industry, fueled by the advent of a commercial computer market, was missing. As the tech giants rose in the early 2000's and began to collect mass amounts of data, this other agency was decades ahead in a different metric, although it was completely (and still is) hidden from the public. Their efforts to understand psychedelic experiences led to a formalized method of understanding interactions between multiple realities. They built certain scanning equipment to detect anomalies like the one I found in the basement; although their tools were much more sophisticated and didn't utilize voltage readings. Then they ran tests in these areas. One area in particular is a hot-bed of phase shift interactions. That's where Area X is located (and the Receiver).
The Receiver is a giant electromagnetic orb that has trapped the kind of multi-dimensional energy that causes the phase shifts; since the Organization seized control of the lab, it's effectively become a map of the Earth in relation to these other worlds. For the past twenty or so years, the Organization has been studying this map, using the data big Tech companies have collected to essentially develop a Rosetta Stone for interpreting the meaning of the fluctuations in their scanning equipment. Recently, the public, though going the long way round, was actually pretty close to a breakthrough in this same department until recently when ultra-powerful LLMs surfaced, and the whole world began going down what I'd argue is the wrong rabbit hole of language processing. But I digress.
Area X is essentially a private military base built for defending the most impactful piece of technology ever invented. With the Receiver, the Organization now has the power to essentially predict any and all future outcomes, the only thing holding them back is the limitations of their own scanning equipment which will get better with time. To put it into perspective, the Organization has access to a kind of data allocation tool which in one day can produce over ten thousand times that the Big Data companies combined would be able to filter through in the next decade. You might think, then, that the problem is merely asymmetric power, and that is certainly a concern, but it isn't the main concern. The main issue is that this organization is actively recruiting (and kidnapping) Antennas from around the world in an effort to find or make one of them into a strong Antenna. In other words, they want a subject who is able not only to see the future, but to manipulate it at will.
balance to the world. I've been working on amassing resources, capital, and building my own team, and now I'm ready. You might ask why I'm posting this here. Wouldn't it be better to keep all this secret? Well, yes, it would be. But that's the problem. Nothing is secret anymore. They know about me and the others, and if I don't make a move, they will. In a way, this is a letter directly to the organization that I know, and I'm coming.
In a different way, I wanted to release this information to the public. There are lots of people out there waking up and realizing that the world they experience is not the one others experience. If you think you might be an Antenna, don't be afraid—you have a special gift that can be controlled. If you want more details on how to control it, or if you're interested in my mission, don't be afraid to reach out. This hasn't always been my life's work, but it is now.
At least until I die.
submitted by Weathers_Writing to weatherswriting [link] [comments]
Put another way, if you throw a bunch of bouncy balls into a box, there are a number of different configurations that the balls could take on, with different speeds and magnitudes. You can calculate all of those if you have the right numbers. Now let's say you throw in another set of balls that you don't consider in your calculations of the initial set. Well, then you're not going to get an accurate picture of what's happening. Most people only see the first set and calculate based on that, but some people can see two, three, four or more sets.
You'll understand the concept better when I tell you the story, but I wanted to give you a primer on an important concept that will help you understand why this place, which I'll call "Area X", exists, and what the goals of the people who work there are.
Also note that I'm going to be using the alias "Trent" moving forward. Please refer to me as such in any direct messages.
***
Eighteen years ago I started working as an independent Home Inspector. I dropped out of community college after my first semester (not because I didn't find some of the subjects interesting, but because deference to a man or woman has never been my style) and started working some odd jobs. I did construction work for a couple years, then plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for six months. I've always found pleasure in using my hands, and getting dirty was never a problem for me. Still, having a boss really dragged ass, so I spent my free time working on creating my own business. It took a few years and lots of savings, but I finally managed to get basic set of Home Inspection equipment: Tyvek coveralls, a cheap half-face respirator, voltage & AFCI/GFCI testers, CO2 and radon monitors, an IR camera, and telescoping mirrors in addition to the boots, safety glasses, electric gloves, ladder, and toolkits I already had on hand.
My buddy at the time was in the business, but he was moving off to the coast, so he helped me get set up and even introduced me to some of his clients. Of course, by that time I had already gotten my State license, but I still was a bit apprehensive to work with insurance agencies. I thought I could make a living working independently, inspecting for mold or sizing up a house for a prospective buyer. Eventually, though, I realized I should probably take every job available to me.
Easing into the business went about as well as it could have. The clients my friend referred to me were very satisfied with my work, and I was able to retain them. Then, in order to increase my reach, I hired someone on Fiverr to build a website for my company which led to a marked increase in traffic and conversions. About six months through, I began to get on a first-name basis with the boys and girls down down at Allstate and Progressive, and they fed me some of the bigger cases. In fact, I got so booked by year's end that I had to hire someone to help manage my schedule and the Excel spreadsheet with all my finances. I capped off a successful year with a 5-star Google rating and a trip to Ireland to visit some family and friends and get piss drunk. When I got back, it was the grindstone all over again, until the summer when I discovered… well, you'll see.
First off, I want to say that I was never one to believe in the paranormal. I grew up watching the movies and hearing the ghost stories round the campfire like every other kid, but it never struck a chord with me. If I can't touch it or see it or hear it, does it really exist? Probably not. So don't go thinking this was a scared man seeing his own shadow. That being said, I had this sense that something was off about this house when I parked along the curb and looked through a large window, perhaps two times the size of my van, to a dingy, dark foyer.
The entire neighborhood was stacked with upper-middle class domiciles, though it seemed like only two thirds of them were occupied, mostly by professionals who commuted to the City every weekday, and the rest were empty. As a man who understands real estate, to say this was strange would be an understatement. Still, I had no problem appraising the mini-mansion for a couple of newlyweds looking to enter the community. I did some research on the property ahead of time, and it seems that it was owned by a couple of old timers who had gone off the grid some time ago. The water and electric bill were both unpaid dating back to 2004 (it was June of '06 now). The bank had repo'd the house (which only had about 100k left on it) and held it for a year and a half before putting it back on the market. I tried to find out more about the old couple who vanished, but there was nothing in the news.
I stepped out of the van in my coveralls and grabbed my suitcase which had my mask, gloves, and eye protection in it. I liked to do a preliminary survey first, running an eye test on the exterior then interior before bringing out the big guns (that way I could identify the areas where I think there could be problems instead of running a metal detector over the whole damn ocean seaboard). I was about to do just that when the window caught my eye again. It felt uncharacteristic of me to be so occupied with this window, but I detoured to the front porch and peeked inside anyway.
Most of the furniture had already been moved out, meaning all that was left was a single three-seater couch, a couple candlesticks on the fireplace mantle, a pristine chandelier overtop a dining room table, and the kitchenware: an oven, gas stovetop, marble countertops, and an island. I could see into the living room very clearly with the afternoon light, but the dining room was dim enough that there were a few structures I couldn't quite make out in the distance. One of them appeared to be some kind of china cabinet or bookshelf—I figured it was the former considering where it was located. The other shadow looked kind of like a grandfather clock. Or at least that's what I thought until it moved.
When I say it "moved", I don't mean to say that it picked up and walked away. If you're not familiar with the Necker Cube, I suggest you search it up, because that kind of illusion is the best way to describe what I saw. At first I was seeing the grandfather clock in a certain way—pushed into the corner of the room—and the next second my vision "corrected" and it was maybe five feet to the left of its former position. I shook my head and looked again and saw the grandfather clock in its second orientation, standing in the center of the room against the wall. I figured I was just seeing things, but even so I spent a little extra time dawdling around the Egress window, taking notes, and delaying the interior inspection.
When I finally grew a pair and went inside, I walked straight to the dining room. Sure enough, the grandfather clock was stowed away in the corner of the room. I spent a couple minutes watching it with my pencil and travel notebook out. I'm the kind of guy that likes to collect hard data when the chips are down. Unfortunately, the clock apparently already had enough fun and was content with sweating me. Oh, well.
I fitted my pencil behind my ear and pocketed my travel notebook, then flipped the rest of the first floor lights on and completed my prelim. I concluded that everything was pretty standard. If anything, the house was in better shape than I'd expect considering it presumably hasn't been lived in for a couple years. I say "presumably" because one can never count out squatters, even during those times. Mainly I was expecting more dust build up and cobwebs than there were. Perhaps someone from the department had come by recently. It's unlikely, but possible.
I did the same check upstairs and it came back mostly clean. There was a bit of staining near the attic I wanted to check for mold. Based on its color, it was probably just a minor case of Aspergillus, but better safe than sorry. Then I got to the basement, and, well, let's just count out the idea of anyone dropping by. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I found.
The first thing that caught my eye was the long, slender body of a birch tree lying pale and dead across a large portion of the even larger unfinished basement's cement flooring. I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but, yep, there it was. Its crown was sealed up in the wall with only its trunk hanging out, which made me think of those medieval pillory devices which locked up people's heads and arms. Then confetti-scattered around the tree and all over the basement floor was a minefield of broken glass and ceramic tangled up with a set of random objects. And when I say random, I mean random. There was an unfurled Somali flag (the blue one with a single star in the center), some packaged drinks and condiments branded with all sorts of different languages (I could only make out Gaelic and Chinese or Japanese, I couldn't quite tell), a broken dome-shaped security camera, an otoscope (the thing the doc uses to check your ears), Hot Wheels cars (okay that one isn't so strange), and the list goes on.
At that moment, I wasn't freaked out or disgusted. I was more or less just confused. I started walking through the rubble, trying to avoid the sharp fragments but pretty confident that my steel toed boots would crush most the pieces anyway, when I heard a clink just up ahead. I was able to spot the coin in time, just before it jingled to a halt atop an old Life magazine. I picked it up and noted right away its oval shape and bronze color—clearly not American made. I tried reading it, but not only was the language not English, it appeared to be so old that most of the lettering had been filed down. I looked up at the ceiling to see if it dropped from a shelf, but there was nothing that could have been holding the coin. I considered for a moment, looking around at the other junk, and had the crazy idea that maybe all this stuff just appeared here. I popped the coin in my pocket and headed back to the van when I stopped by the tree and realized something. It wasn't a birch tree—it was a palm tree. I just didn't realize because of how ashy and decayed the bark was.
Now at this point you might think I've been acting a little nonchalant for such a strange occurrence, and I don't blame you, but if you're gonna stick around with me that's just something you're gonna have to get used to. I guess I was just born with a screw loose, but I really don't scare easily, and I tend to look at everything pragmatically. If you dig deep enough, you'll always find another plausible explanation. That being said, I do want to get to the part about Area X, so let me give you the rundown on what I learned about this basement.
I ended up trekking back to the van and picking up my gear. I was no longer running the routine inspection, obviously, but I figured I might as well throw 30 thousand dollars of scanning equipment at whatever the fuck anamoly existed in that basement. Most of it came back negative. There was a bit higher-than-usual EM interference as picked up on the voltmeters, but nothing that screamed danger close. Still, it was enough for me to set up my volt testers and IR camera while muddling through the rest of the junk. I won't bore you with another list of items, but I did find one thing of value: a diamond necklace. And not just any diamond necklace, it was one of those Queen-wearing, multi-row, big-jeweled necklaces like out of some Historical Fiction movie from the thirties. I almost didn't pocket it because I'm used to expensive items being owned by someone… someone who might want it back. But I figured if there was ever a place the finder's keeper's rule applied, it was probably in this Quantum graveyard.
7 O'clock rolled around and I hadn't eaten. I'm a pretty bulky guy, carrying my share of both muscle and fat, and most people think that means I need to eat a ton but that's really not the case. Mostly I just get dehydrated easily, especially in the summer. That said, I was bordering on famished territory and considered heading out for a bite when I heard another sound. The first thing I did was check my scanners, and sure enough the voltage needle was fully spun to the right side of the dial. EM interference. Then I went to see what had dropped. I was able to pick the object out pretty quickly since I had spent the last 6 hours staring at the mosaic of a basement floor. It was a silver briefcase, like one of those out of a crime novel, and it was cracked open.
I had this sense then that I was standing at a precipice, and if I opened the briefcase and looked inside, I wouldn't be able to stop whatever would come afterwards. Part of me deep down knew that I was just that type of guy that had to know, and maybe this was my Hamlet moment where it would be a trait gone a step too far. But then again I didn't really believe in any of that sentimental bullshit, so I opened the briefcase.
The gun surprised me a little, but not as much as the piece of paper laid atop a case file reading in large black font, "FIND ME". I expected the envelope to have some missing person file in it, but instead there were all these schematics and blueprints for some kind of device. Whatever it was, it was pretty massive. Some of the lengths were hundreds of meters long. And what's more strange is based on the blueprint's locale, it appeared to be underground. I looked back through the pages a couple times, then checked the note—nothing strange there. The gun appeared to be a simple glock. I was no gun expert, but I had been to the range pretty regularly with my construction buddies, so I got used to the feel of a pistol and rifle and some of the different names; however, I realized pretty quickly it wasn't your standard glock when I couldn't find mag-release. That's when I noticed how light the gun felt. I tried to chamber a round, but again, there was no hammer. What the hell kind of gun was this?
I ended up throwing everything back in the briefcase, including the necklace, coin, and a few Koozies I found that were branded with one of my favorite sports teams (never let an opportunity go to waste). I put up all my shit back in the van and spun over to a local burger joint, got my fill, and went home. I made sure to draft an email to the prospective buyers, telling them the house had several patches of black mold and a bit of a rat problem before drifting off to sleep. Although I really didn't do much of that.
When I woke up, I took a cold shower and downed a can of Reign, then commuted to my gym and got a lift and some sauna time in before making the trip back to the house. I brought some extra supplies with me for some experiments I cooked up while not sleeping the previous night.
First, I had two camcorders set up on a couple tripods in either corner of the basement. I wanted clear footage of these mystery objects spawning in. Then I set up a voltmeter in a similar fashion, but I had a wire extending out of it on a circuit which fed to an alarm that would blare when the reading was over 250 volts. Upstairs, I rearranged some of the furniture so that the small number of tables, chairs, clock, cabinets, and other little pillows or vases I could find were scattered across the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Then I pulled up a lawn chair to the front porch window and waited.
I didn't have to wait long though. In about a minute, I started to notice some of the objects moving. It was strange. When a few of them would shift simultaneously, it was like looking at a holographic card that would change shape depending on where your eyes were in relation to the image. Every time I saw a shift, I felt an awkward feeling in my eyes. They went blurry for a fraction of a second, then there was a twinge of pain, as if my brain couldn't handle the contradictory stimulus. It didn't get more crazy than that though—until the alarm went off.
I had cracked open the small rectangular window in the basement to the side of the house so I would hear it. It took four hours and several strange stares from passersby walking their dogs before it rang, so I was a bit lost in my thoughts, but when I heard the beep I perked up fast. It lasted for maybe 5 seconds total, but what I saw was truly miraculous. The best way I can describe it is a pool of silver or gray or translucent light emerging in the foreground between me and the objects in the different rooms. A series of twisting tentacles sprouted from the gray octopus-like head and spun in a way that reminded me of that little kids ride at the amusement parks. Then the objects started to "heat up" is the way I describe it. Their position became relative, meaning they were here one second, there another, then they popped out of existence entirely. Suddenly the rooms were all empty, then they were full of things I had never seen before. Then five seconds passed and the octopus vanished and it was back to the same old objects in their usual places.
It took a few minutes to process what I saw, and even then I wasn't sure I really saw it. I went inside and looked around at my distribution of the house's furnishings. They were all there, intact. Then I went downstairs to check the cams. I rewinded a couple minutes and played it back, but there was no flying object to be found. Instead, there was some gray static that lasted half a second and then the object, a kid's treasure chest toy, was there on the ground. But you want to know the really strange part? I rewinded the tape again, and when I watched the footage back, the treasure chest was always there.
I later came to understand that these poppings in-and-out of our reality are only conceivable to a conscious mind that can track the interference patterns—not rote computational instruments. In fact, even most people can't do it (although everyone has at least a slight awareness of it, even if only subconsciously). Plus, locations like the basement of this house are very rare and kept under tight lock. That became obvious to me two days later when, after my normal morning routine, I pulled up to a driveway and curbside filled with unmarked government vehicles. Either bravely or stupidly, I pulled up to a few officers (they were wearing suits in 85 degree weather, so I assumed…) who were idling by the large fence of crime scene tape and asked them what the score was.
"There was a crime," said the short man with a unibrow.
"Oh, is that right? Damn shame. Someone break in? I have a niece who lives nearby, so…"
The man looked at his two compatriots, both of whom were wearing sunglasses and a "get this civilian fuck out of here" expressions. "Oh, yeah," he started in a reassuring tone that was so condescending it would have annoyed anyone except me, "we found a body. We think it was a homicide. Best to keep your kids away from here for a while."
I thumbed the stubble on my chin, my other hand outstretched on the wheel, and considered moving on, but my mouth had other ideas. "That right? But uh, isn't this house vacant? I mean, I don't remember no one living in it."
The short man, now tall with temper, said, "Yeah, some squatters. We think there was a dispute over some drug money. Nothing for you to worry about though, we got it under control. Now if you wouldn't mind moving along, we have a lot of work to do."
Oh, I'm sure you do, I thought, but only said, "Of course, sir, sorry for keeping you from your job." Then I rolled up the window and cruised on, keeping my eyes on the house which slowly diminished in the side-view mirror.
Luckily I had been smart enough to break down my camp and lug home all my equipment each night, so I didn't leave anything incriminating. I didn't move the furniture back, so maybe that would come back to haunt me, but considering the kind of shit going down in that house, I didn't think they would notice.
For any of you wondering about the conclusion of the house story, I went back a couple weeks later after the suits had left and the tape was taken down and confirmed that not only was the basement entirely cleaned out, but it was no longer exhibiting any strange properties. I looked for a story related to the house, maybe a made up murder of some kind, but there was nothing. That bastard lied to me and didn't even bother to cover his story up.
Now, in the aftermath of an event such as this, I really only had one of two options. I could forget it, move on, continue living life. The necklace was surely worth a fortune. I could sell it and have enough to retire, or at least hire enough people and expand my business large enough to retire within ten or so years. Or I could take all that money and invest it in my own PI business with only a single objective: finding out what those people knew, and why they were hiding it.
I think you know me well enough by now to guess which line of reasoning appealed more to me.
***
For the sake of brevity, I'm going to omit most of my encounters along the journey to discovering Area X. There's a lot to tell, and if it appeals to you perhaps I'd be willing to share at a later date, but for now I want to get this part of the story, the more proximal part, out in the open.
Three years ago, I discovered the source of what I'll call "The Receiver". This is the device that was schematized in the documents that I found in the briefcase. What it does is a complex answer, and how it does it is pretty much all speculation, but here's what I've been able to find out: this universe we live in is a node in a network of many other spaces. These spaces exist in higher dimensions that we cannot directly perceive, but using a conceivable analogy, just think about a flower with petals. The petals are these other dimensions which bleed into our world, which is at the center. However, it's not that pretty. We see the physical world through the lens of spacetime: sizes, speeds, etc. These other dimensions don't necessarily have space or time. In fact, what actually exists there, I couldn't say. The only data I have on them is from two sources: correspondence information and server data from the secret agency (which I'll call "the Organization") that keeps this under wraps, and first-hand experience with realms from these other entities, either directly (I experience it) or through the eyes of someone else with the same or greater abilities than I possess.
I referred to these people with abilities earlier as "Antennas", and I will continue to use the term. Antennas really come in three flavors, marked by the strength of their ability: weak Antennas, like me, are able to observe spontaneous interactions between our universe and other dimensions (phase shifts) when there is a strong force of collision like existed in the basement; moderate Antennas may see phase shifts occur at any point, and they usually are able to retain memories from across the different transformations; strong Antennas, and I don't know if they exist yet, but they are able to consciously interact with these other realms and cause phase shifts to occur.
I mentioned that moderate Antennas are able to retain memories from before and after a phase shift. Technically, all Antennas have this ability, but it's about degree. I can recall only very specific instances and without much detail. Moderates are usually able to pick out much more nuanced minutiae. At the lower end of moderate scale, most of those details fade or get fuzzy over time, but for the very strong Antennas, they hold onto almost everything. One other property that scales with strength is interaction with other conscious entities. Only a small percentage of moderates are able to do this. What's interesting is that these entities can possess (yes, like ghosts) people who aren't even antennas, but no one is aware of such possession at this deep of a level. I have several companions now, and only two have had interactions with these otherworldly beings. Not all of them are malevolent, some of them are whimsical or kind, but there are a fair share of demons out there.
Getting back to the point, Area X started as a government funded project in the 70's. At that time, they were focused on a few subjects: Artificial Intelligence, DNA sequencing, and psychedelics. Yes, they were part of the infamous LSD experiments. But they looked at these subjects through a common lens—there was something that the burgeoning tech industry, fueled by the advent of a commercial computer market, was missing. As the tech giants rose in the early 2000's and began to collect mass amounts of data, this other agency was decades ahead in a different metric, although it was completely (and still is) hidden from the public. Their efforts to understand psychedelic experiences led to a formalized method of understanding interactions between multiple realities. They built certain scanning equipment to detect anomalies like the one I found in the basement; although their tools were much more sophisticated and didn't utilize voltage readings. Then they ran tests in these areas. One area in particular is a hot-bed of phase shift interactions. That's where Area X is located (and the Receiver).
The Receiver is a giant electromagnetic orb that has trapped the kind of multi-dimensional energy that causes the phase shifts; since the Organization seized control of the lab, it's effectively become a map of the Earth in relation to these other worlds. For the past twenty or so years, the Organization has been studying this map, using the data big Tech companies have collected to essentially develop a Rosetta Stone for interpreting the meaning of the fluctuations in their scanning equipment. Recently, the public, though going the long way round, was actually pretty close to a breakthrough in this same department until recently when ultra-powerful LLMs surfaced, and the whole world began going down what I'd argue is the wrong rabbit hole of language processing. But I digress.
Area X is essentially a private military base built for defending the most impactful piece of technology ever invented. With the Receiver, the Organization now has the power to essentially predict any and all future outcomes, the only thing holding them back is the limitations of their own scanning equipment which will get better with time. To put it into perspective, the Organization has access to a kind of data allocation tool which in one day can produce over ten thousand times that the Big Data companies combined would be able to filter through in the next decade. You might think, then, that the problem is merely asymmetric power, and that is certainly a concern, but it isn't the main concern. The main issue is that this organization is actively recruiting (and kidnapping) Antennas from around the world in an effort to find or make one of them into a strong Antenna. In other words, they want a subject who is able not only to see the future, but to manipulate it at will.
balance to the world. I've been working on amassing resources, capital, and building my own team, and now I'm ready. You might ask why I'm posting this here. Wouldn't it be better to keep all this secret? Well, yes, it would be. But that's the problem. Nothing is secret anymore. They know about me and the others, and if I don't make a move, they will. In a way, this is a letter directly to the organization that I know, and I'm coming.
In a different way, I wanted to release this information to the public. There are lots of people out there waking up and realizing that the world they experience is not the one others experience. If you think you might be an Antenna, don't be afraid—you have a special gift that can be controlled. If you want more details on how to control it, or if you're interested in my mission, don't be afraid to reach out. This hasn't always been my life's work, but it is now.
At least until I die.
2024.05.16 23:10 Weathers_Writing They call Silicon Valley the tech capitol of the world. They're wrong
I won't disclose its actual location, so if that's why you're here, sorry to disappoint. It's not time for that yet. However, I do think it's time to start getting the word out. I've noticed an increase in what I'll call "Antennas" lately, or people who can detect cross-planar phase shifts. Without getting into all the math (some of which I don't even know), this is basically a phenomenon which refers to entropy seeping into our universe from other realms or universes or whatever you want to call it. Simply put, people think our universe is a closed system to entropy, meaning that the disorder of any variable in our universe can only increase or decrease in direct proportion to other variables in that same system (the universe). Under this precept, we can establish rules like the Laws of Thermodynamics, and for most people, they're effective. But not for Antennas.
Put another way, if you throw a bunch of bouncy balls into a box, there are a number of different configurations that the balls could take on, with different speeds and magnitudes. You can calculate all of those if you have the right numbers. Now let's say you throw in another set of balls that you don't consider in your calculations of the initial set. Well, then you're not going to get an accurate picture of what's happening. Most people only see the first set and calculate based on that, but some people can see two, three, four or more sets.
You'll understand the concept better when I tell you the story, but I wanted to give you a primer on an important concept that will help you understand why this place, which I'll call "Area X", exists, and what the goals of the people who work there are.
Also note that I'm going to be using the alias "Trent" moving forward. Please refer to me as such in any direct messages.
***
Eighteen years ago I started working as an independent Home Inspector. I dropped out of community college after my first semester (not because I didn't find some of the subjects interesting, but because deference to a man or woman has never been my style) and started working some odd jobs. I did construction work for a couple years, then plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for six months. I've always found pleasure in using my hands, and getting dirty was never a problem for me. Still, having a boss really dragged ass, so I spent my free time working on creating my own business. It took a few years and lots of savings, but I finally managed to get basic set of Home Inspection equipment: Tyvek coveralls, a cheap half-face respirator, voltage & AFCI/GFCI testers, CO2 and radon monitors, an IR camera, and telescoping mirrors in addition to the boots, safety glasses, electric gloves, ladder, and toolkits I already had on hand.
My buddy at the time was in the business, but he was moving off to the coast, so he helped me get set up and even introduced me to some of his clients. Of course, by that time I had already gotten my State license, but I still was a bit apprehensive to work with insurance agencies. I thought I could make a living working independently, inspecting for mold or sizing up a house for a prospective buyer. Eventually, though, I realized I should probably take every job available to me.
Easing into the business went about as well as it could have. The clients my friend referred to me were very satisfied with my work, and I was able to retain them. Then, in order to increase my reach, I hired someone on Fiverr to build a website for my company which led to a marked increase in traffic and conversions. About six months through, I began to get on a first-name basis with the boys and girls down down at Allstate and Progressive, and they fed me some of the bigger cases. In fact, I got so booked by year's end that I had to hire someone to help manage my schedule and the Excel spreadsheet with all my finances. I capped off a successful year with a 5-star Google rating and a trip to Ireland to visit some family and friends and get piss drunk. When I got back, it was the grindstone all over again, until the summer when I discovered… well, you'll see.
First off, I want to say that I was never one to believe in the paranormal. I grew up watching the movies and hearing the ghost stories round the campfire like every other kid, but it never struck a chord with me. If I can't touch it or see it or hear it, does it really exist? Probably not. So don't go thinking this was a scared man seeing his own shadow. That being said, I had this sense that something was off about this house when I parked along the curb and looked through a large window, perhaps two times the size of my van, to a dingy, dark foyer.
The entire neighborhood was stacked with upper-middle class domiciles, though it seemed like only two thirds of them were occupied, mostly by professionals who commuted to the City every weekday, and the rest were empty. As a man who understands real estate, to say this was strange would be an understatement. Still, I had no problem appraising the mini-mansion for a couple of newlyweds looking to enter the community. I did some research on the property ahead of time, and it seems that it was owned by a couple of old timers who had gone off the grid some time ago. The water and electric bill were both unpaid dating back to 2004 (it was June of '06 now). The bank had repo'd the house (which only had about 100k left on it) and held it for a year and a half before putting it back on the market. I tried to find out more about the old couple who vanished, but there was nothing in the news.
I stepped out of the van in my coveralls and grabbed my suitcase which had my mask, gloves, and eye protection in it. I liked to do a preliminary survey first, running an eye test on the exterior then interior before bringing out the big guns (that way I could identify the areas where I think there could be problems instead of running a metal detector over the whole damn ocean seaboard). I was about to do just that when the window caught my eye again. It felt uncharacteristic of me to be so occupied with this window, but I detoured to the front porch and peeked inside anyway.
Most of the furniture had already been moved out, meaning all that was left was a single three-seater couch, a couple candlesticks on the fireplace mantle, a pristine chandelier overtop a dining room table, and the kitchenware: an oven, gas stovetop, marble countertops, and an island. I could see into the living room very clearly with the afternoon light, but the dining room was dim enough that there were a few structures I couldn't quite make out in the distance. One of them appeared to be some kind of china cabinet or bookshelf—I figured it was the former considering where it was located. The other shadow looked kind of like a grandfather clock. Or at least that's what I thought until it moved.
When I say it "moved", I don't mean to say that it picked up and walked away. If you're not familiar with the Necker Cube, I suggest you search it up, because that kind of illusion is the best way to describe what I saw. At first I was seeing the grandfather clock in a certain way—pushed into the corner of the room—and the next second my vision "corrected" and it was maybe five feet to the left of its former position. I shook my head and looked again and saw the grandfather clock in its second orientation, standing in the center of the room against the wall. I figured I was just seeing things, but even so I spent a little extra time dawdling around the Egress window, taking notes, and delaying the interior inspection.
When I finally grew a pair and went inside, I walked straight to the dining room. Sure enough, the grandfather clock was stowed away in the corner of the room. I spent a couple minutes watching it with my pencil and travel notebook out. I'm the kind of guy that likes to collect hard data when the chips are down. Unfortunately, the clock apparently already had enough fun and was content with sweating me. Oh, well.
I fitted my pencil behind my ear and pocketed my travel notebook, then flipped the rest of the first floor lights on and completed my prelim. I concluded that everything was pretty standard. If anything, the house was in better shape than I'd expect considering it presumably hasn't been lived in for a couple years. I say "presumably" because one can never count out squatters, even during those times. Mainly I was expecting more dust build up and cobwebs than there were. Perhaps someone from the department had come by recently. It's unlikely, but possible.
I did the same check upstairs and it came back mostly clean. There was a bit of staining near the attic I wanted to check for mold. Based on its color, it was probably just a minor case of Aspergillus, but better safe than sorry. Then I got to the basement, and, well, let's just count out the idea of anyone dropping by. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I found.
The first thing that caught my eye was the long, slender body of a birch tree lying pale and dead across a large portion of the even larger unfinished basement's cement flooring. I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but, yep, there it was. Its crown was sealed up in the wall with only its trunk hanging out, which made me think of those medieval pillory devices which locked up people's heads and arms. Then confetti-scattered around the tree and all over the basement floor was a minefield of broken glass and ceramic tangled up with a set of random objects. And when I say random, I mean random. There was an unfurled Somali flag (the blue one with a single star in the center), some packaged drinks and condiments branded with all sorts of different languages (I could only make out Gaelic and Chinese or Japanese, I couldn't quite tell), a broken dome-shaped security camera, an otoscope (the thing the doc uses to check your ears), Hot Wheels cars (okay that one isn't so strange), and the list goes on.
At that moment, I wasn't freaked out or disgusted. I was more or less just confused. I started walking through the rubble, trying to avoid the sharp fragments but pretty confident that my steel toed boots would crush most the pieces anyway, when I heard a clink just up ahead. I was able to spot the coin in time, just before it jingled to a halt atop an old Life magazine. I picked it up and noted right away its oval shape and bronze color—clearly not American made. I tried reading it, but not only was the language not English, it appeared to be so old that most of the lettering had been filed down. I looked up at the ceiling to see if it dropped from a shelf, but there was nothing that could have been holding the coin. I considered for a moment, looking around at the other junk, and had the crazy idea that maybe all this stuff just appeared here. I popped the coin in my pocket and headed back to the van when I stopped by the tree and realized something. It wasn't a birch tree—it was a palm tree. I just didn't realize because of how ashy and decayed the bark was.
Now at this point you might think I've been acting a little nonchalant for such a strange occurrence, and I don't blame you, but if you're gonna stick around with me that's just something you're gonna have to get used to. I guess I was just born with a screw loose, but I really don't scare easily, and I tend to look at everything pragmatically. If you dig deep enough, you'll always find another plausible explanation. That being said, I do want to get to the part about Area X, so let me give you the rundown on what I learned about this basement.
I ended up trekking back to the van and picking up my gear. I was no longer running the routine inspection, obviously, but I figured I might as well throw 30 thousand dollars of scanning equipment at whatever the fuck anamoly existed in that basement. Most of it came back negative. There was a bit higher-than-usual EM interference as picked up on the voltmeters, but nothing that screamed danger close. Still, it was enough for me to set up my volt testers and IR camera while muddling through the rest of the junk. I won't bore you with another list of items, but I did find one thing of value: a diamond necklace. And not just any diamond necklace, it was one of those Queen-wearing, multi-row, big-jeweled necklaces like out of some Historical Fiction movie from the thirties. I almost didn't pocket it because I'm used to expensive items being owned by someone… someone who might want it back. But I figured if there was ever a place the finder's keeper's rule applied, it was probably in this Quantum graveyard.
7 O'clock rolled around and I hadn't eaten. I'm a pretty bulky guy, carrying my share of both muscle and fat, and most people think that means I need to eat a ton but that's really not the case. Mostly I just get dehydrated easily, especially in the summer. That said, I was bordering on famished territory and considered heading out for a bite when I heard another sound. The first thing I did was check my scanners, and sure enough the voltage needle was fully spun to the right side of the dial. EM interference. Then I went to see what had dropped. I was able to pick the object out pretty quickly since I had spent the last 6 hours staring at the mosaic of a basement floor. It was a silver briefcase, like one of those out of a crime novel, and it was cracked open.
I had this sense then that I was standing at a precipice, and if I opened the briefcase and looked inside, I wouldn't be able to stop whatever would come afterwards. Part of me deep down knew that I was just that type of guy that had to know, and maybe this was my Hamlet moment where it would be a trait gone a step too far. But then again I didn't really believe in any of that sentimental bullshit, so I opened the briefcase.
The gun surprised me a little, but not as much as the piece of paper laid atop a case file reading in large black font, "FIND ME". I expected the envelope to have some missing person file in it, but instead there were all these schematics and blueprints for some kind of device. Whatever it was, it was pretty massive. Some of the lengths were hundreds of meters long. And what's more strange is based on the blueprint's locale, it appeared to be underground. I looked back through the pages a couple times, then checked the note—nothing strange there. The gun appeared to be a simple glock. I was no gun expert, but I had been to the range pretty regularly with my construction buddies, so I got used to the feel of a pistol and rifle and some of the different names; however, I realized pretty quickly it wasn't your standard glock when I couldn't find mag-release. That's when I noticed how light the gun felt. I tried to chamber a round, but again, there was no hammer. What the hell kind of gun was this?
I ended up throwing everything back in the briefcase, including the necklace, coin, and a few Koozies I found that were branded with one of my favorite sports teams (never let an opportunity go to waste). I put up all my shit back in the van and spun over to a local burger joint, got my fill, and went home. I made sure to draft an email to the prospective buyers, telling them the house had several patches of black mold and a bit of a rat problem before drifting off to sleep. Although I really didn't do much of that.
When I woke up, I took a cold shower and downed a can of Reign, then commuted to my gym and got a lift and some sauna time in before making the trip back to the house. I brought some extra supplies with me for some experiments I cooked up while not sleeping the previous night.
First, I had two camcorders set up on a couple tripods in either corner of the basement. I wanted clear footage of these mystery objects spawning in. Then I set up a voltmeter in a similar fashion, but I had a wire extending out of it on a circuit which fed to an alarm that would blare when the reading was over 250 volts. Upstairs, I rearranged some of the furniture so that the small number of tables, chairs, clock, cabinets, and other little pillows or vases I could find were scattered across the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Then I pulled up a lawn chair to the front porch window and waited.
I didn't have to wait long though. In about a minute, I started to notice some of the objects moving. It was strange. When a few of them would shift simultaneously, it was like looking at a holographic card that would change shape depending on where your eyes were in relation to the image. Every time I saw a shift, I felt an awkward feeling in my eyes. They went blurry for a fraction of a second, then there was a twinge of pain, as if my brain couldn't handle the contradictory stimulus. It didn't get more crazy than that though—until the alarm went off.
I had cracked open the small rectangular window in the basement to the side of the house so I would hear it. It took four hours and several strange stares from passersby walking their dogs before it rang, so I was a bit lost in my thoughts, but when I heard the beep I perked up fast. It lasted for maybe 5 seconds total, but what I saw was truly miraculous. The best way I can describe it is a pool of silver or gray or translucent light emerging in the foreground between me and the objects in the different rooms. A series of twisting tentacles sprouted from the gray octopus-like head and spun in a way that reminded me of that little kids ride at the amusement parks. Then the objects started to "heat up" is the way I describe it. Their position became relative, meaning they were here one second, there another, then they popped out of existence entirely. Suddenly the rooms were all empty, then they were full of things I had never seen before. Then five seconds passed and the octopus vanished and it was back to the same old objects in their usual places.
It took a few minutes to process what I saw, and even then I wasn't sure I really saw it. I went inside and looked around at my distribution of the house's furnishings. They were all there, intact. Then I went downstairs to check the cams. I rewinded a couple minutes and played it back, but there was no flying object to be found. Instead, there was some gray static that lasted half a second and then the object, a kid's treasure chest toy, was there on the ground. But you want to know the really strange part? I rewinded the tape again, and when I watched the footage back, the treasure chest was always there.
I later came to understand that these poppings in-and-out of our reality are only conceivable to a conscious mind that can track the interference patterns—not rote computational instruments. In fact, even most people can't do it (although everyone has at least a slight awareness of it, even if only subconsciously). Plus, locations like the basement of this house are very rare and kept under tight lock. That became obvious to me two days later when, after my normal morning routine, I pulled up to a driveway and curbside filled with unmarked government vehicles. Either bravely or stupidly, I pulled up to a few officers (they were wearing suits in 85 degree weather, so I assumed…) who were idling by the large fence of crime scene tape and asked them what the score was.
"There was a crime," said the short man with a unibrow.
"Oh, is that right? Damn shame. Someone break in? I have a niece who lives nearby, so…"
The man looked at his two compatriots, both of whom were wearing sunglasses and a "get this civilian fuck out of here" expressions. "Oh, yeah," he started in a reassuring tone that was so condescending it would have annoyed anyone except me, "we found a body. We think it was a homicide. Best to keep your kids away from here for a while."
I thumbed the stubble on my chin, my other hand outstretched on the wheel, and considered moving on, but my mouth had other ideas. "That right? But uh, isn't this house vacant? I mean, I don't remember no one living in it."
The short man, now tall with temper, said, "Yeah, some squatters. We think there was a dispute over some drug money. Nothing for you to worry about though, we got it under control. Now if you wouldn't mind moving along, we have a lot of work to do."
Oh, I'm sure you do, I thought, but only said, "Of course, sir, sorry for keeping you from your job." Then I rolled up the window and cruised on, keeping my eyes on the house which slowly diminished in the side-view mirror.
Luckily I had been smart enough to break down my camp and lug home all my equipment each night, so I didn't leave anything incriminating. I didn't move the furniture back, so maybe that would come back to haunt me, but considering the kind of shit going down in that house, I didn't think they would notice.
For any of you wondering about the conclusion of the house story, I went back a couple weeks later after the suits had left and the tape was taken down and confirmed that not only was the basement entirely cleaned out, but it was no longer exhibiting any strange properties. I looked for a story related to the house, maybe a made up murder of some kind, but there was nothing. That bastard lied to me and didn't even bother to cover his story up.
Now, in the aftermath of an event such as this, I really only had one of two options. I could forget it, move on, continue living life. The necklace was surely worth a fortune. I could sell it and have enough to retire, or at least hire enough people and expand my business large enough to retire within ten or so years. Or I could take all that money and invest it in my own PI business with only a single objective: finding out what those people knew, and why they were hiding it.
I think you know me well enough by now to guess which line of reasoning appealed more to me.
***
For the sake of brevity, I'm going to omit most of my encounters along the journey to discovering Area X. There's a lot to tell, and if it appeals to you perhaps I'd be willing to share at a later date, but for now I want to get this part of the story, the more proximal part, out in the open.
Three years ago, I discovered the source of what I'll call "The Receiver". This is the device that was schematized in the documents that I found in the briefcase. What it does is a complex answer, and how it does it is pretty much all speculation, but here's what I've been able to find out: this universe we live in is a node in a network of many other spaces. These spaces exist in higher dimensions that we cannot directly perceive, but using a conceivable analogy, just think about a flower with petals. The petals are these other dimensions which bleed into our world, which is at the center. However, it's not that pretty. We see the physical world through the lens of spacetime: sizes, speeds, etc. These other dimensions don't necessarily have space or time. In fact, what actually exists there, I couldn't say. The only data I have on them is from two sources: correspondence information and server data from the secret agency (which I'll call "the Organization") that keeps this under wraps, and first-hand experience with realms from these other entities, either directly (I experience it) or through the eyes of someone else with the same or greater abilities than I possess.
I referred to these people with abilities earlier as "Antennas", and I will continue to use the term. Antennas really come in three flavors, marked by the strength of their ability: weak Antennas, like me, are able to observe spontaneous interactions between our universe and other dimensions (phase shifts) when there is a strong force of collision like existed in the basement; moderate Antennas may see phase shifts occur at any point, and they usually are able to retain memories from across the different transformations; strong Antennas, and I don't know if they exist yet, but they are able to consciously interact with these other realms and cause phase shifts to occur.
I mentioned that moderate Antennas are able to retain memories from before and after a phase shift. Technically, all Antennas have this ability, but it's about degree. I can recall only very specific instances and without much detail. Moderates are usually able to pick out much more nuanced minutiae. At the lower end of moderate scale, most of those details fade or get fuzzy over time, but for the very strong Antennas, they hold onto almost everything. One other property that scales with strength is interaction with other conscious entities. Only a small percentage of moderates are able to do this. What's interesting is that these entities can possess (yes, like ghosts) people who aren't even antennas, but no one is aware of such possession at this deep of a level. I have several companions now, and only two have had interactions with these otherworldly beings. Not all of them are malevolent, some of them are whimsical or kind, but there are a fair share of demons out there.
Getting back to the point, Area X started as a government funded project in the 70's. At that time, they were focused on a few subjects: Artificial Intelligence, DNA sequencing, and psychedelics. Yes, they were part of the infamous LSD experiments. But they looked at these subjects through a common lens—there was something that the burgeoning tech industry, fueled by the advent of a commercial computer market, was missing. As the tech giants rose in the early 2000's and began to collect mass amounts of data, this other agency was decades ahead in a different metric, although it was completely (and still is) hidden from the public. Their efforts to understand psychedelic experiences led to a formalized method of understanding interactions between multiple realities. They built certain scanning equipment to detect anomalies like the one I found in the basement; although their tools were much more sophisticated and didn't utilize voltage readings. Then they ran tests in these areas. One area in particular is a hot-bed of phase shift interactions. That's where Area X is located (and the Receiver).
The Receiver is a giant electromagnetic orb that has trapped the kind of multi-dimensional energy that causes the phase shifts; since the Organization seized control of the lab, it's effectively become a map of the Earth in relation to these other worlds. For the past twenty or so years, the Organization has been studying this map, using the data big Tech companies have collected to essentially develop a Rosetta Stone for interpreting the meaning of the fluctuations in their scanning equipment. Recently, the public, though going the long way round, was actually pretty close to a breakthrough in this same department until recently when ultra-powerful LLMs surfaced, and the whole world began going down what I'd argue is the wrong rabbit hole of language processing. But I digress.
Area X is essentially a private military base built for defending the most impactful piece of technology ever invented. With the Receiver, the Organization now has the power to essentially predict any and all future outcomes, the only thing holding them back is the limitations of their own scanning equipment which will get better with time. To put it into perspective, the Organization has access to a kind of data allocation tool which in one day can produce over ten thousand times that the Big Data companies combined would be able to filter through in the next decade. You might think, then, that the problem is merely asymmetric power, and that is certainly a concern, but it isn't the main concern. The main issue is that this organization is actively recruiting (and kidnapping) Antennas from around the world in an effort to find or make one of them into a strong Antenna. In other words, they want a subject who is able not only to see the future, but to manipulate it at will.
balance to the world. I've been working on amassing resources, capital, and building my own team, and now I'm ready. You might ask why I'm posting this here. Wouldn't it be better to keep all this secret? Well, yes, it would be. But that's the problem. Nothing is secret anymore. They know about me and the others, and if I don't make a move, they will. In a way, this is a letter directly to the organization that I know, and I'm coming.
In a different way, I wanted to release this information to the public. There are lots of people out there waking up and realizing that the world they experience is not the one others experience. If you think you might be an Antenna, don't be afraid—you have a special gift that can be controlled. If you want more details on how to control it, or if you're interested in my mission, don't be afraid to reach out. This hasn't always been my life's work, but it is now.
At least until I die.
submitted by Weathers_Writing to nosleep [link] [comments]
Put another way, if you throw a bunch of bouncy balls into a box, there are a number of different configurations that the balls could take on, with different speeds and magnitudes. You can calculate all of those if you have the right numbers. Now let's say you throw in another set of balls that you don't consider in your calculations of the initial set. Well, then you're not going to get an accurate picture of what's happening. Most people only see the first set and calculate based on that, but some people can see two, three, four or more sets.
You'll understand the concept better when I tell you the story, but I wanted to give you a primer on an important concept that will help you understand why this place, which I'll call "Area X", exists, and what the goals of the people who work there are.
Also note that I'm going to be using the alias "Trent" moving forward. Please refer to me as such in any direct messages.
***
Eighteen years ago I started working as an independent Home Inspector. I dropped out of community college after my first semester (not because I didn't find some of the subjects interesting, but because deference to a man or woman has never been my style) and started working some odd jobs. I did construction work for a couple years, then plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for six months. I've always found pleasure in using my hands, and getting dirty was never a problem for me. Still, having a boss really dragged ass, so I spent my free time working on creating my own business. It took a few years and lots of savings, but I finally managed to get basic set of Home Inspection equipment: Tyvek coveralls, a cheap half-face respirator, voltage & AFCI/GFCI testers, CO2 and radon monitors, an IR camera, and telescoping mirrors in addition to the boots, safety glasses, electric gloves, ladder, and toolkits I already had on hand.
My buddy at the time was in the business, but he was moving off to the coast, so he helped me get set up and even introduced me to some of his clients. Of course, by that time I had already gotten my State license, but I still was a bit apprehensive to work with insurance agencies. I thought I could make a living working independently, inspecting for mold or sizing up a house for a prospective buyer. Eventually, though, I realized I should probably take every job available to me.
Easing into the business went about as well as it could have. The clients my friend referred to me were very satisfied with my work, and I was able to retain them. Then, in order to increase my reach, I hired someone on Fiverr to build a website for my company which led to a marked increase in traffic and conversions. About six months through, I began to get on a first-name basis with the boys and girls down down at Allstate and Progressive, and they fed me some of the bigger cases. In fact, I got so booked by year's end that I had to hire someone to help manage my schedule and the Excel spreadsheet with all my finances. I capped off a successful year with a 5-star Google rating and a trip to Ireland to visit some family and friends and get piss drunk. When I got back, it was the grindstone all over again, until the summer when I discovered… well, you'll see.
First off, I want to say that I was never one to believe in the paranormal. I grew up watching the movies and hearing the ghost stories round the campfire like every other kid, but it never struck a chord with me. If I can't touch it or see it or hear it, does it really exist? Probably not. So don't go thinking this was a scared man seeing his own shadow. That being said, I had this sense that something was off about this house when I parked along the curb and looked through a large window, perhaps two times the size of my van, to a dingy, dark foyer.
The entire neighborhood was stacked with upper-middle class domiciles, though it seemed like only two thirds of them were occupied, mostly by professionals who commuted to the City every weekday, and the rest were empty. As a man who understands real estate, to say this was strange would be an understatement. Still, I had no problem appraising the mini-mansion for a couple of newlyweds looking to enter the community. I did some research on the property ahead of time, and it seems that it was owned by a couple of old timers who had gone off the grid some time ago. The water and electric bill were both unpaid dating back to 2004 (it was June of '06 now). The bank had repo'd the house (which only had about 100k left on it) and held it for a year and a half before putting it back on the market. I tried to find out more about the old couple who vanished, but there was nothing in the news.
I stepped out of the van in my coveralls and grabbed my suitcase which had my mask, gloves, and eye protection in it. I liked to do a preliminary survey first, running an eye test on the exterior then interior before bringing out the big guns (that way I could identify the areas where I think there could be problems instead of running a metal detector over the whole damn ocean seaboard). I was about to do just that when the window caught my eye again. It felt uncharacteristic of me to be so occupied with this window, but I detoured to the front porch and peeked inside anyway.
Most of the furniture had already been moved out, meaning all that was left was a single three-seater couch, a couple candlesticks on the fireplace mantle, a pristine chandelier overtop a dining room table, and the kitchenware: an oven, gas stovetop, marble countertops, and an island. I could see into the living room very clearly with the afternoon light, but the dining room was dim enough that there were a few structures I couldn't quite make out in the distance. One of them appeared to be some kind of china cabinet or bookshelf—I figured it was the former considering where it was located. The other shadow looked kind of like a grandfather clock. Or at least that's what I thought until it moved.
When I say it "moved", I don't mean to say that it picked up and walked away. If you're not familiar with the Necker Cube, I suggest you search it up, because that kind of illusion is the best way to describe what I saw. At first I was seeing the grandfather clock in a certain way—pushed into the corner of the room—and the next second my vision "corrected" and it was maybe five feet to the left of its former position. I shook my head and looked again and saw the grandfather clock in its second orientation, standing in the center of the room against the wall. I figured I was just seeing things, but even so I spent a little extra time dawdling around the Egress window, taking notes, and delaying the interior inspection.
When I finally grew a pair and went inside, I walked straight to the dining room. Sure enough, the grandfather clock was stowed away in the corner of the room. I spent a couple minutes watching it with my pencil and travel notebook out. I'm the kind of guy that likes to collect hard data when the chips are down. Unfortunately, the clock apparently already had enough fun and was content with sweating me. Oh, well.
I fitted my pencil behind my ear and pocketed my travel notebook, then flipped the rest of the first floor lights on and completed my prelim. I concluded that everything was pretty standard. If anything, the house was in better shape than I'd expect considering it presumably hasn't been lived in for a couple years. I say "presumably" because one can never count out squatters, even during those times. Mainly I was expecting more dust build up and cobwebs than there were. Perhaps someone from the department had come by recently. It's unlikely, but possible.
I did the same check upstairs and it came back mostly clean. There was a bit of staining near the attic I wanted to check for mold. Based on its color, it was probably just a minor case of Aspergillus, but better safe than sorry. Then I got to the basement, and, well, let's just count out the idea of anyone dropping by. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I found.
The first thing that caught my eye was the long, slender body of a birch tree lying pale and dead across a large portion of the even larger unfinished basement's cement flooring. I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but, yep, there it was. Its crown was sealed up in the wall with only its trunk hanging out, which made me think of those medieval pillory devices which locked up people's heads and arms. Then confetti-scattered around the tree and all over the basement floor was a minefield of broken glass and ceramic tangled up with a set of random objects. And when I say random, I mean random. There was an unfurled Somali flag (the blue one with a single star in the center), some packaged drinks and condiments branded with all sorts of different languages (I could only make out Gaelic and Chinese or Japanese, I couldn't quite tell), a broken dome-shaped security camera, an otoscope (the thing the doc uses to check your ears), Hot Wheels cars (okay that one isn't so strange), and the list goes on.
At that moment, I wasn't freaked out or disgusted. I was more or less just confused. I started walking through the rubble, trying to avoid the sharp fragments but pretty confident that my steel toed boots would crush most the pieces anyway, when I heard a clink just up ahead. I was able to spot the coin in time, just before it jingled to a halt atop an old Life magazine. I picked it up and noted right away its oval shape and bronze color—clearly not American made. I tried reading it, but not only was the language not English, it appeared to be so old that most of the lettering had been filed down. I looked up at the ceiling to see if it dropped from a shelf, but there was nothing that could have been holding the coin. I considered for a moment, looking around at the other junk, and had the crazy idea that maybe all this stuff just appeared here. I popped the coin in my pocket and headed back to the van when I stopped by the tree and realized something. It wasn't a birch tree—it was a palm tree. I just didn't realize because of how ashy and decayed the bark was.
Now at this point you might think I've been acting a little nonchalant for such a strange occurrence, and I don't blame you, but if you're gonna stick around with me that's just something you're gonna have to get used to. I guess I was just born with a screw loose, but I really don't scare easily, and I tend to look at everything pragmatically. If you dig deep enough, you'll always find another plausible explanation. That being said, I do want to get to the part about Area X, so let me give you the rundown on what I learned about this basement.
I ended up trekking back to the van and picking up my gear. I was no longer running the routine inspection, obviously, but I figured I might as well throw 30 thousand dollars of scanning equipment at whatever the fuck anamoly existed in that basement. Most of it came back negative. There was a bit higher-than-usual EM interference as picked up on the voltmeters, but nothing that screamed danger close. Still, it was enough for me to set up my volt testers and IR camera while muddling through the rest of the junk. I won't bore you with another list of items, but I did find one thing of value: a diamond necklace. And not just any diamond necklace, it was one of those Queen-wearing, multi-row, big-jeweled necklaces like out of some Historical Fiction movie from the thirties. I almost didn't pocket it because I'm used to expensive items being owned by someone… someone who might want it back. But I figured if there was ever a place the finder's keeper's rule applied, it was probably in this Quantum graveyard.
7 O'clock rolled around and I hadn't eaten. I'm a pretty bulky guy, carrying my share of both muscle and fat, and most people think that means I need to eat a ton but that's really not the case. Mostly I just get dehydrated easily, especially in the summer. That said, I was bordering on famished territory and considered heading out for a bite when I heard another sound. The first thing I did was check my scanners, and sure enough the voltage needle was fully spun to the right side of the dial. EM interference. Then I went to see what had dropped. I was able to pick the object out pretty quickly since I had spent the last 6 hours staring at the mosaic of a basement floor. It was a silver briefcase, like one of those out of a crime novel, and it was cracked open.
I had this sense then that I was standing at a precipice, and if I opened the briefcase and looked inside, I wouldn't be able to stop whatever would come afterwards. Part of me deep down knew that I was just that type of guy that had to know, and maybe this was my Hamlet moment where it would be a trait gone a step too far. But then again I didn't really believe in any of that sentimental bullshit, so I opened the briefcase.
The gun surprised me a little, but not as much as the piece of paper laid atop a case file reading in large black font, "FIND ME". I expected the envelope to have some missing person file in it, but instead there were all these schematics and blueprints for some kind of device. Whatever it was, it was pretty massive. Some of the lengths were hundreds of meters long. And what's more strange is based on the blueprint's locale, it appeared to be underground. I looked back through the pages a couple times, then checked the note—nothing strange there. The gun appeared to be a simple glock. I was no gun expert, but I had been to the range pretty regularly with my construction buddies, so I got used to the feel of a pistol and rifle and some of the different names; however, I realized pretty quickly it wasn't your standard glock when I couldn't find mag-release. That's when I noticed how light the gun felt. I tried to chamber a round, but again, there was no hammer. What the hell kind of gun was this?
I ended up throwing everything back in the briefcase, including the necklace, coin, and a few Koozies I found that were branded with one of my favorite sports teams (never let an opportunity go to waste). I put up all my shit back in the van and spun over to a local burger joint, got my fill, and went home. I made sure to draft an email to the prospective buyers, telling them the house had several patches of black mold and a bit of a rat problem before drifting off to sleep. Although I really didn't do much of that.
When I woke up, I took a cold shower and downed a can of Reign, then commuted to my gym and got a lift and some sauna time in before making the trip back to the house. I brought some extra supplies with me for some experiments I cooked up while not sleeping the previous night.
First, I had two camcorders set up on a couple tripods in either corner of the basement. I wanted clear footage of these mystery objects spawning in. Then I set up a voltmeter in a similar fashion, but I had a wire extending out of it on a circuit which fed to an alarm that would blare when the reading was over 250 volts. Upstairs, I rearranged some of the furniture so that the small number of tables, chairs, clock, cabinets, and other little pillows or vases I could find were scattered across the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Then I pulled up a lawn chair to the front porch window and waited.
I didn't have to wait long though. In about a minute, I started to notice some of the objects moving. It was strange. When a few of them would shift simultaneously, it was like looking at a holographic card that would change shape depending on where your eyes were in relation to the image. Every time I saw a shift, I felt an awkward feeling in my eyes. They went blurry for a fraction of a second, then there was a twinge of pain, as if my brain couldn't handle the contradictory stimulus. It didn't get more crazy than that though—until the alarm went off.
I had cracked open the small rectangular window in the basement to the side of the house so I would hear it. It took four hours and several strange stares from passersby walking their dogs before it rang, so I was a bit lost in my thoughts, but when I heard the beep I perked up fast. It lasted for maybe 5 seconds total, but what I saw was truly miraculous. The best way I can describe it is a pool of silver or gray or translucent light emerging in the foreground between me and the objects in the different rooms. A series of twisting tentacles sprouted from the gray octopus-like head and spun in a way that reminded me of that little kids ride at the amusement parks. Then the objects started to "heat up" is the way I describe it. Their position became relative, meaning they were here one second, there another, then they popped out of existence entirely. Suddenly the rooms were all empty, then they were full of things I had never seen before. Then five seconds passed and the octopus vanished and it was back to the same old objects in their usual places.
It took a few minutes to process what I saw, and even then I wasn't sure I really saw it. I went inside and looked around at my distribution of the house's furnishings. They were all there, intact. Then I went downstairs to check the cams. I rewinded a couple minutes and played it back, but there was no flying object to be found. Instead, there was some gray static that lasted half a second and then the object, a kid's treasure chest toy, was there on the ground. But you want to know the really strange part? I rewinded the tape again, and when I watched the footage back, the treasure chest was always there.
I later came to understand that these poppings in-and-out of our reality are only conceivable to a conscious mind that can track the interference patterns—not rote computational instruments. In fact, even most people can't do it (although everyone has at least a slight awareness of it, even if only subconsciously). Plus, locations like the basement of this house are very rare and kept under tight lock. That became obvious to me two days later when, after my normal morning routine, I pulled up to a driveway and curbside filled with unmarked government vehicles. Either bravely or stupidly, I pulled up to a few officers (they were wearing suits in 85 degree weather, so I assumed…) who were idling by the large fence of crime scene tape and asked them what the score was.
"There was a crime," said the short man with a unibrow.
"Oh, is that right? Damn shame. Someone break in? I have a niece who lives nearby, so…"
The man looked at his two compatriots, both of whom were wearing sunglasses and a "get this civilian fuck out of here" expressions. "Oh, yeah," he started in a reassuring tone that was so condescending it would have annoyed anyone except me, "we found a body. We think it was a homicide. Best to keep your kids away from here for a while."
I thumbed the stubble on my chin, my other hand outstretched on the wheel, and considered moving on, but my mouth had other ideas. "That right? But uh, isn't this house vacant? I mean, I don't remember no one living in it."
The short man, now tall with temper, said, "Yeah, some squatters. We think there was a dispute over some drug money. Nothing for you to worry about though, we got it under control. Now if you wouldn't mind moving along, we have a lot of work to do."
Oh, I'm sure you do, I thought, but only said, "Of course, sir, sorry for keeping you from your job." Then I rolled up the window and cruised on, keeping my eyes on the house which slowly diminished in the side-view mirror.
Luckily I had been smart enough to break down my camp and lug home all my equipment each night, so I didn't leave anything incriminating. I didn't move the furniture back, so maybe that would come back to haunt me, but considering the kind of shit going down in that house, I didn't think they would notice.
For any of you wondering about the conclusion of the house story, I went back a couple weeks later after the suits had left and the tape was taken down and confirmed that not only was the basement entirely cleaned out, but it was no longer exhibiting any strange properties. I looked for a story related to the house, maybe a made up murder of some kind, but there was nothing. That bastard lied to me and didn't even bother to cover his story up.
Now, in the aftermath of an event such as this, I really only had one of two options. I could forget it, move on, continue living life. The necklace was surely worth a fortune. I could sell it and have enough to retire, or at least hire enough people and expand my business large enough to retire within ten or so years. Or I could take all that money and invest it in my own PI business with only a single objective: finding out what those people knew, and why they were hiding it.
I think you know me well enough by now to guess which line of reasoning appealed more to me.
***
For the sake of brevity, I'm going to omit most of my encounters along the journey to discovering Area X. There's a lot to tell, and if it appeals to you perhaps I'd be willing to share at a later date, but for now I want to get this part of the story, the more proximal part, out in the open.
Three years ago, I discovered the source of what I'll call "The Receiver". This is the device that was schematized in the documents that I found in the briefcase. What it does is a complex answer, and how it does it is pretty much all speculation, but here's what I've been able to find out: this universe we live in is a node in a network of many other spaces. These spaces exist in higher dimensions that we cannot directly perceive, but using a conceivable analogy, just think about a flower with petals. The petals are these other dimensions which bleed into our world, which is at the center. However, it's not that pretty. We see the physical world through the lens of spacetime: sizes, speeds, etc. These other dimensions don't necessarily have space or time. In fact, what actually exists there, I couldn't say. The only data I have on them is from two sources: correspondence information and server data from the secret agency (which I'll call "the Organization") that keeps this under wraps, and first-hand experience with realms from these other entities, either directly (I experience it) or through the eyes of someone else with the same or greater abilities than I possess.
I referred to these people with abilities earlier as "Antennas", and I will continue to use the term. Antennas really come in three flavors, marked by the strength of their ability: weak Antennas, like me, are able to observe spontaneous interactions between our universe and other dimensions (phase shifts) when there is a strong force of collision like existed in the basement; moderate Antennas may see phase shifts occur at any point, and they usually are able to retain memories from across the different transformations; strong Antennas, and I don't know if they exist yet, but they are able to consciously interact with these other realms and cause phase shifts to occur.
I mentioned that moderate Antennas are able to retain memories from before and after a phase shift. Technically, all Antennas have this ability, but it's about degree. I can recall only very specific instances and without much detail. Moderates are usually able to pick out much more nuanced minutiae. At the lower end of moderate scale, most of those details fade or get fuzzy over time, but for the very strong Antennas, they hold onto almost everything. One other property that scales with strength is interaction with other conscious entities. Only a small percentage of moderates are able to do this. What's interesting is that these entities can possess (yes, like ghosts) people who aren't even antennas, but no one is aware of such possession at this deep of a level. I have several companions now, and only two have had interactions with these otherworldly beings. Not all of them are malevolent, some of them are whimsical or kind, but there are a fair share of demons out there.
Getting back to the point, Area X started as a government funded project in the 70's. At that time, they were focused on a few subjects: Artificial Intelligence, DNA sequencing, and psychedelics. Yes, they were part of the infamous LSD experiments. But they looked at these subjects through a common lens—there was something that the burgeoning tech industry, fueled by the advent of a commercial computer market, was missing. As the tech giants rose in the early 2000's and began to collect mass amounts of data, this other agency was decades ahead in a different metric, although it was completely (and still is) hidden from the public. Their efforts to understand psychedelic experiences led to a formalized method of understanding interactions between multiple realities. They built certain scanning equipment to detect anomalies like the one I found in the basement; although their tools were much more sophisticated and didn't utilize voltage readings. Then they ran tests in these areas. One area in particular is a hot-bed of phase shift interactions. That's where Area X is located (and the Receiver).
The Receiver is a giant electromagnetic orb that has trapped the kind of multi-dimensional energy that causes the phase shifts; since the Organization seized control of the lab, it's effectively become a map of the Earth in relation to these other worlds. For the past twenty or so years, the Organization has been studying this map, using the data big Tech companies have collected to essentially develop a Rosetta Stone for interpreting the meaning of the fluctuations in their scanning equipment. Recently, the public, though going the long way round, was actually pretty close to a breakthrough in this same department until recently when ultra-powerful LLMs surfaced, and the whole world began going down what I'd argue is the wrong rabbit hole of language processing. But I digress.
Area X is essentially a private military base built for defending the most impactful piece of technology ever invented. With the Receiver, the Organization now has the power to essentially predict any and all future outcomes, the only thing holding them back is the limitations of their own scanning equipment which will get better with time. To put it into perspective, the Organization has access to a kind of data allocation tool which in one day can produce over ten thousand times that the Big Data companies combined would be able to filter through in the next decade. You might think, then, that the problem is merely asymmetric power, and that is certainly a concern, but it isn't the main concern. The main issue is that this organization is actively recruiting (and kidnapping) Antennas from around the world in an effort to find or make one of them into a strong Antenna. In other words, they want a subject who is able not only to see the future, but to manipulate it at will.
balance to the world. I've been working on amassing resources, capital, and building my own team, and now I'm ready. You might ask why I'm posting this here. Wouldn't it be better to keep all this secret? Well, yes, it would be. But that's the problem. Nothing is secret anymore. They know about me and the others, and if I don't make a move, they will. In a way, this is a letter directly to the organization that I know, and I'm coming.
In a different way, I wanted to release this information to the public. There are lots of people out there waking up and realizing that the world they experience is not the one others experience. If you think you might be an Antenna, don't be afraid—you have a special gift that can be controlled. If you want more details on how to control it, or if you're interested in my mission, don't be afraid to reach out. This hasn't always been my life's work, but it is now.
At least until I die.
2024.05.16 22:21 jakefromstatefarm176 The time I overdosed on Fentanyl due to medical negligence
So this was in November 2023 and due to my wack ass immune system, I (15M) had gotten myself extremely sick to the point where I was vomiting almost every time I'd eat. And my body has a way of cascading things like this, so I it was no surprise when I started sickling.
I'm laying in bed, nauseous and in pain, just praying for the oxy to kick in so I can fall asleep and not deal with this hell anymore when this sharp pain starts stabbing me in my chest and I feel like I'm literally DYING. This pain I was feeling in that moment was worse than any sickle cell crisis I've ever had and I just assumed the jig was up and organ failure was imminent.
I couldn't get up from where I was laying (my mom's bed) because of the severe pain so I'm just crying so loudly and my mom wakes up annoyed and tells me to lay on my back and go back to bed but as i shift over a wave of nausea crashes over me and i begin vomiting all over my mom and her bed (woops).
Fully awake and freaking out by this point my mom picks up her phone and dials 911 for an ambulance to get me and I'm just crying like a little baby now in a pile of my own bile (too scared to eat anything because I didn't wanna barf) praying for the ambulance to get here. And after what only felt like 5 minutes, my mom runs to the front door to open it for the paramedics who lay me onto the stretcher and give me this drug I'm in too much pain to notice.
And then it calms me down. A lot. So much so that it feels like whenever I breathe, I'm breathing out all the air in my lungs and taking my first breath again like I've just been born. I vaguely feel the pain in my chest but my mind is so empty I cant even bother to think about it. I take a few deep blinks and then wake up in the ER with my mom sleeping in the chair beside my bed.
After this, it becomes a cycle of them giving me medicine, the pain subsides somewhat, and then the medicine wears off and my chest feels like it's getting knifed by a million UK roadmen. They start me off with morphine, and that doesn't do the job like it usually does, so then they give me Dilaudid AND morphine, and still yet I feel like the end is near. So they decide to pull out the big guns that worked on me when I was in the ambulance. Fentanyl.
Initially I was very skeptic and lowkey refusing treatment because of the stigma around it and the doctors reassured me over and over that it was safe and I had been given it before and blah blah blah even though these were the same doctors that would ask me how long I've had sickle cell for. But I was in so much pain that I just gave up and gave in and gave them the a-ok because their nagging was just too much.
They set me up with this little green button thing attached to my IV, that would allow me to press it whenever I felt severe and constant pain but would not allow me to exceed the "maximum dosage" they had put in place for my body. And to be completely honest this little button scared me at first. The entirety of my night nurses shift I didn't press the button once and just writhed there in the cold hospital bed because I'd rather die than willingly administer my own fentanyl.
But I wouldn't even be typing this story if I simply just hadn't pressed the button for the entire duration of my stay. It was now day 3 in the hospital and I hadn't got a single wink of sleep in the past 32 hours so I decided to press the button. It didn't hit me like it had in the ambulance, but when i tell you i relaxed, i RELAXED. I was finally able to shut my eyes and go to bed and stop myself from shaking my leg (self soothing thing I do when in pain). I woke back up to my nurse doing my 8 hour check up and for some reason, she was still bringing me morphine and Dilaudid despite me having the fentanyl push button thingy, but I was so out of it I just took the medicine so I could go back to sleep. It became I cycle of me pushing the button, falling asleep, being woken up to take additional opiates i did NOT need, then going back to bed, until early on day 5 in the hospital, my friends from school came to visit me. So obviously I try to be a good host and not to fall asleep despite me having pushed my button already for more fent (clearly addicted but oblivious because of this phantom pain my body is forcing me to experience) and coincidentally as my friends are still here, my nurse comes in for the 8 hour check up and gives me the Dilaudid and morphine again. I take the medicine and I look down at my green button because I'm not sure i've been awake this long in days and I see its glowing again so I press it.
bad idea.
I'm talking to my friends but something seems off, their voices seem so far away and there is black dots clouding my vision, I of course am so out of it that I somehow don't see any issue with these two things until I realized I hadn't said a word in like 2 minutes. Matter of fact, I hadn't even spoken for 2 minutes. My eyes go wide because I can feel my vision fading, but for some odd reason it was all black except a tiny pinhole in the center of my vision. I hear this faraway annoying beeping that I realize is the pulse-ox thing going kookoo bananas because I haven't breathed in so long and I see shapes moving around and my friends running to the hallway to get me help and all I can focus on is "If I'm not breathing, why doesn't it hurt?"
The nurses rush in and can clearly tell I'm overdosing so they put an oxygen mask over my head and say "Can somebody give him some Narcan?" and I'm laying here spectating what's going on to my own body from inside of my head wondering "I wonder what narcan is"
WELL I SURE KNOW NOW
The nurses push the Narcan in through my oxygen mask and I can suddenly hear everything perfectly. I say "woah" and then my entire body gets a flash of heat all over so I jolt up and say "WOAH" again and I look to the left to see like 6 nurses with 3 of them doing something with my arm that I obviously just messed up. But then the heat is gone, replaced by this freezing cold feeling all over and INSIDE my body. I can feel every one of my organs touching each other and they all feel cold and I just feel nauseous. By this point i was just in agony. It wasn't like any pain I've ever felt before I felt like not only was I gonna die, but it was gonna be painful and I'd feel each individual organ dying from inside my body because of how hypersensitive I was to everything around me. I could feel the scratchy hospital blanket and the way the grip of the hospital sock felt against the bed and it was all just too much for me and my head cocked straight up and i began vomiting so much liquid it was scary to watch. Feeling each chunk of food run down my throat was a sensory nightmare and it caused me to KEEP VOMITING and every time I'd move one of my limbs, it would completely jerk itself all the way to a full extended position which would shake my body and all my senses would be on fire and I'd cock my head back and continue vomiting. This was a pediatric hospital so the nurses had never dealt with anything this severe before so they were all just freaking out because I was actually tweaking so hard and I had knocked over everything they had put on my bed to help me. In addition to all this mess, I'd torn out my IV and started bleeding all over the sheets and the smell of barf mixed with blood was just such a strong smell I had continued barfing onto myself. My entire being felt cold inside and out so I was trying profusely to wrap myself in a cocoon but the nurses were so fixated on my blanket being covered in vomit and me like "contaminating myself" but I did not give a single fuck bro I was in so much pain and was so cold the only thought on my mind was the fetal position, and a cocoon. two nurses jammed those tubes that they have at the dentists office to suck your saliva down my throat so I didn't continue choking on my vomit, while the other 4 removed the fitted sheet from the bed trying their best not to interfere with my tweakage.
After they removed the sheet I had laid down and then I felt my organs shift in my body so I began vomiting again because anytime I sensed a new sensation, the big kahuna of nausea would hit me. I threw up onto the plasticky cover that goes over the mattress of the hospital bed but at this point there was only like so much left to throw up so a nurse wiped it away with an alcohol wipe. And the SMELL of that wipe gave me such sensory overload that I began crying to the point of basically screaming. As I shut my eyes really hard praying I'd fall asleep and escape the pain and coldness of my insides.
And the weird thing about all this is, I was there the whole time, y'know? Like I felt perfectly conscious throughout the entire process of being Narc'ed. I had no control over my body and anything I did, it just felt instinctual and had no thought behind it, but I was still actively thinking throughout all of it. I felt shame, embarresement, surprise, all like I was watching a movie. Except it was one of those 4D movie theaters where you can feel whatever is happening on screen, but not control it.
Eventually sleep overcame me and I woke up in the ICU with like 40 million wires attached to me a heating pack over my belly, and these bags around my legs that would inflate and deflate over and over. And all I could think in my head, was thank GOD it was over.
I had ended up getting myself a bone eating staph infection because some of my vomit got into the IV hole I'd torn out (I see why there were trying to take the blanket off) and ended up having to stay in the hospital for 10 more days so they could give me heavy antibiotics,, and had to do an additional 5 days at home self administering the medicine through a PIC line that went all the way from my wrist into my heart (it was so gross because they kept me awake while they removed it and it felt so weird).
A few weeks later the hospital called us back and apologized but they were using so much avoidant language and deflecting blame off of themselves so hard that it was pathetic to watch. Like you gave a 15 year old kid fentanyl through a SELF REGULATED SYSTEM and didn't expect the worst? Especially since I was being given Dilaudid and morphine on top of the fent? Get out my face with that smh.
submitted by jakefromstatefarm176 to Sicklecell [link] [comments]
I'm laying in bed, nauseous and in pain, just praying for the oxy to kick in so I can fall asleep and not deal with this hell anymore when this sharp pain starts stabbing me in my chest and I feel like I'm literally DYING. This pain I was feeling in that moment was worse than any sickle cell crisis I've ever had and I just assumed the jig was up and organ failure was imminent.
I couldn't get up from where I was laying (my mom's bed) because of the severe pain so I'm just crying so loudly and my mom wakes up annoyed and tells me to lay on my back and go back to bed but as i shift over a wave of nausea crashes over me and i begin vomiting all over my mom and her bed (woops).
Fully awake and freaking out by this point my mom picks up her phone and dials 911 for an ambulance to get me and I'm just crying like a little baby now in a pile of my own bile (too scared to eat anything because I didn't wanna barf) praying for the ambulance to get here. And after what only felt like 5 minutes, my mom runs to the front door to open it for the paramedics who lay me onto the stretcher and give me this drug I'm in too much pain to notice.
And then it calms me down. A lot. So much so that it feels like whenever I breathe, I'm breathing out all the air in my lungs and taking my first breath again like I've just been born. I vaguely feel the pain in my chest but my mind is so empty I cant even bother to think about it. I take a few deep blinks and then wake up in the ER with my mom sleeping in the chair beside my bed.
After this, it becomes a cycle of them giving me medicine, the pain subsides somewhat, and then the medicine wears off and my chest feels like it's getting knifed by a million UK roadmen. They start me off with morphine, and that doesn't do the job like it usually does, so then they give me Dilaudid AND morphine, and still yet I feel like the end is near. So they decide to pull out the big guns that worked on me when I was in the ambulance. Fentanyl.
Initially I was very skeptic and lowkey refusing treatment because of the stigma around it and the doctors reassured me over and over that it was safe and I had been given it before and blah blah blah even though these were the same doctors that would ask me how long I've had sickle cell for. But I was in so much pain that I just gave up and gave in and gave them the a-ok because their nagging was just too much.
They set me up with this little green button thing attached to my IV, that would allow me to press it whenever I felt severe and constant pain but would not allow me to exceed the "maximum dosage" they had put in place for my body. And to be completely honest this little button scared me at first. The entirety of my night nurses shift I didn't press the button once and just writhed there in the cold hospital bed because I'd rather die than willingly administer my own fentanyl.
But I wouldn't even be typing this story if I simply just hadn't pressed the button for the entire duration of my stay. It was now day 3 in the hospital and I hadn't got a single wink of sleep in the past 32 hours so I decided to press the button. It didn't hit me like it had in the ambulance, but when i tell you i relaxed, i RELAXED. I was finally able to shut my eyes and go to bed and stop myself from shaking my leg (self soothing thing I do when in pain). I woke back up to my nurse doing my 8 hour check up and for some reason, she was still bringing me morphine and Dilaudid despite me having the fentanyl push button thingy, but I was so out of it I just took the medicine so I could go back to sleep. It became I cycle of me pushing the button, falling asleep, being woken up to take additional opiates i did NOT need, then going back to bed, until early on day 5 in the hospital, my friends from school came to visit me. So obviously I try to be a good host and not to fall asleep despite me having pushed my button already for more fent (clearly addicted but oblivious because of this phantom pain my body is forcing me to experience) and coincidentally as my friends are still here, my nurse comes in for the 8 hour check up and gives me the Dilaudid and morphine again. I take the medicine and I look down at my green button because I'm not sure i've been awake this long in days and I see its glowing again so I press it.
bad idea.
I'm talking to my friends but something seems off, their voices seem so far away and there is black dots clouding my vision, I of course am so out of it that I somehow don't see any issue with these two things until I realized I hadn't said a word in like 2 minutes. Matter of fact, I hadn't even spoken for 2 minutes. My eyes go wide because I can feel my vision fading, but for some odd reason it was all black except a tiny pinhole in the center of my vision. I hear this faraway annoying beeping that I realize is the pulse-ox thing going kookoo bananas because I haven't breathed in so long and I see shapes moving around and my friends running to the hallway to get me help and all I can focus on is "If I'm not breathing, why doesn't it hurt?"
The nurses rush in and can clearly tell I'm overdosing so they put an oxygen mask over my head and say "Can somebody give him some Narcan?" and I'm laying here spectating what's going on to my own body from inside of my head wondering "I wonder what narcan is"
WELL I SURE KNOW NOW
The nurses push the Narcan in through my oxygen mask and I can suddenly hear everything perfectly. I say "woah" and then my entire body gets a flash of heat all over so I jolt up and say "WOAH" again and I look to the left to see like 6 nurses with 3 of them doing something with my arm that I obviously just messed up. But then the heat is gone, replaced by this freezing cold feeling all over and INSIDE my body. I can feel every one of my organs touching each other and they all feel cold and I just feel nauseous. By this point i was just in agony. It wasn't like any pain I've ever felt before I felt like not only was I gonna die, but it was gonna be painful and I'd feel each individual organ dying from inside my body because of how hypersensitive I was to everything around me. I could feel the scratchy hospital blanket and the way the grip of the hospital sock felt against the bed and it was all just too much for me and my head cocked straight up and i began vomiting so much liquid it was scary to watch. Feeling each chunk of food run down my throat was a sensory nightmare and it caused me to KEEP VOMITING and every time I'd move one of my limbs, it would completely jerk itself all the way to a full extended position which would shake my body and all my senses would be on fire and I'd cock my head back and continue vomiting. This was a pediatric hospital so the nurses had never dealt with anything this severe before so they were all just freaking out because I was actually tweaking so hard and I had knocked over everything they had put on my bed to help me. In addition to all this mess, I'd torn out my IV and started bleeding all over the sheets and the smell of barf mixed with blood was just such a strong smell I had continued barfing onto myself. My entire being felt cold inside and out so I was trying profusely to wrap myself in a cocoon but the nurses were so fixated on my blanket being covered in vomit and me like "contaminating myself" but I did not give a single fuck bro I was in so much pain and was so cold the only thought on my mind was the fetal position, and a cocoon. two nurses jammed those tubes that they have at the dentists office to suck your saliva down my throat so I didn't continue choking on my vomit, while the other 4 removed the fitted sheet from the bed trying their best not to interfere with my tweakage.
After they removed the sheet I had laid down and then I felt my organs shift in my body so I began vomiting again because anytime I sensed a new sensation, the big kahuna of nausea would hit me. I threw up onto the plasticky cover that goes over the mattress of the hospital bed but at this point there was only like so much left to throw up so a nurse wiped it away with an alcohol wipe. And the SMELL of that wipe gave me such sensory overload that I began crying to the point of basically screaming. As I shut my eyes really hard praying I'd fall asleep and escape the pain and coldness of my insides.
And the weird thing about all this is, I was there the whole time, y'know? Like I felt perfectly conscious throughout the entire process of being Narc'ed. I had no control over my body and anything I did, it just felt instinctual and had no thought behind it, but I was still actively thinking throughout all of it. I felt shame, embarresement, surprise, all like I was watching a movie. Except it was one of those 4D movie theaters where you can feel whatever is happening on screen, but not control it.
Eventually sleep overcame me and I woke up in the ICU with like 40 million wires attached to me a heating pack over my belly, and these bags around my legs that would inflate and deflate over and over. And all I could think in my head, was thank GOD it was over.
I had ended up getting myself a bone eating staph infection because some of my vomit got into the IV hole I'd torn out (I see why there were trying to take the blanket off) and ended up having to stay in the hospital for 10 more days so they could give me heavy antibiotics,, and had to do an additional 5 days at home self administering the medicine through a PIC line that went all the way from my wrist into my heart (it was so gross because they kept me awake while they removed it and it felt so weird).
A few weeks later the hospital called us back and apologized but they were using so much avoidant language and deflecting blame off of themselves so hard that it was pathetic to watch. Like you gave a 15 year old kid fentanyl through a SELF REGULATED SYSTEM and didn't expect the worst? Especially since I was being given Dilaudid and morphine on top of the fent? Get out my face with that smh.
2024.05.16 22:03 KelDurant Debating Christians on Psychedelics
So, I'm a Christian. I was raised Christian, left, and through psychedelics came back to faith. First, I want to say I am not encouraging anyone to take them, but this is just my argument.
I feel Christians' perspective on psychedelics is more impacted by what the government tells us is good and bad, and not by what is actually good and bad. If nicotine and antidepressants were banned by the government and given bad press purposely, Christians all around would be saying, "God hates nicotine and antidepressants."
I understand the "be of sober mind" verse and agree with it. But what is considered sober? Is it anything above base level? Some people's sober is other people's drunkenness. Are you sober when taking antidepressants? Or Adderall? Or pain meds? Allergy medication can put you to sleep, even while driving—are you now not sober minded?
I still take mushrooms today, in small doses in the morning or sometimes before I go to the movies. Mainly, they just enhance my senses and make me happier and more creative. I work a creative job. I am completely sober doing so, to a degree that feels more sober than base level.
The arguments I hear Christians make against psychedelics seem weak and can be applied to so many other substances that they consider ok. I'm sure a lot of you got your wisdom teeth removed. Halcion and Valium can be very psychoactive—I know they were for me. But no, God is okay with those, just not the ones that grow out of the ground. They have to be made in a lab... I just don't get it.
To summarize my point: I'm only going to argue for mushrooms because that's all I've taken, but this could extend to others. It's only a matter of time until psychedelics are decriminalized. After that, it's only a matter of time before they are used medically and become FDA approved. Mushrooms have recorded many possible benefits to mental health, depression, addiction, trauma, etc. The methods we have today have very low success rates and are produced using many different lab-made chemicals. I'm not making an argument against medicine, just saying. The only argument I can see is abuse of these substances, but you can die from too many bananas and cherries. That argument can be used for everything.
The argument "they put you in the spirit realm" is not a factual statement, just an assumption. I don't know if I would disgree with that claim though. But same thing could be said for breath work, are you now not sober because you meditated?
What is a good argument against the use of these substances? Am I missing something?
submitted by KelDurant to Christianity [link] [comments]
I feel Christians' perspective on psychedelics is more impacted by what the government tells us is good and bad, and not by what is actually good and bad. If nicotine and antidepressants were banned by the government and given bad press purposely, Christians all around would be saying, "God hates nicotine and antidepressants."
I understand the "be of sober mind" verse and agree with it. But what is considered sober? Is it anything above base level? Some people's sober is other people's drunkenness. Are you sober when taking antidepressants? Or Adderall? Or pain meds? Allergy medication can put you to sleep, even while driving—are you now not sober minded?
I still take mushrooms today, in small doses in the morning or sometimes before I go to the movies. Mainly, they just enhance my senses and make me happier and more creative. I work a creative job. I am completely sober doing so, to a degree that feels more sober than base level.
The arguments I hear Christians make against psychedelics seem weak and can be applied to so many other substances that they consider ok. I'm sure a lot of you got your wisdom teeth removed. Halcion and Valium can be very psychoactive—I know they were for me. But no, God is okay with those, just not the ones that grow out of the ground. They have to be made in a lab... I just don't get it.
To summarize my point: I'm only going to argue for mushrooms because that's all I've taken, but this could extend to others. It's only a matter of time until psychedelics are decriminalized. After that, it's only a matter of time before they are used medically and become FDA approved. Mushrooms have recorded many possible benefits to mental health, depression, addiction, trauma, etc. The methods we have today have very low success rates and are produced using many different lab-made chemicals. I'm not making an argument against medicine, just saying. The only argument I can see is abuse of these substances, but you can die from too many bananas and cherries. That argument can be used for everything.
The argument "they put you in the spirit realm" is not a factual statement, just an assumption. I don't know if I would disgree with that claim though. But same thing could be said for breath work, are you now not sober because you meditated?
What is a good argument against the use of these substances? Am I missing something?
2024.05.16 21:38 swamplavender got ghosted after 2 dates and am embarrassingly distraught :/
Just a little vent post I suppose since I'm sure my friends are sick of hearing about this lol. But I (24F) met someone (27M) on Hinge. We texted for a couple days then he asked me on a picnic. It went super well, and I immediately was really into him and I knew he liked me too. I felt so drawn to him, he's very interesting and unlike anyone I've ever met.
Two days later he asked if I wanted to go up to the mountains where his friends have a house, I went and it was mostly really nice. I was so happy going to the grocery store with him to get snacks. We were watching Jurassic Park and apparently I commented something endearing because he laughed and said that made him want to kiss me. We kissed a bit then cuddled very nicely the rest of the movie. Then after we started having sex and it was slightly awkward. His...dick... was really big lol and it kind of hurt and I cried a little bit. Because idk sex already puts me in an emotionally fragile state, and then the added pain just made me need to lay there for a minute and cry. He immediately stopped and we ended up just cuddling til we fell asleep but he seemed uncomfortable which is understandable. Then the next morning we had slightly better sex, it felt good for both of us and emotionally it was good, but neither of us came.
Anyways the rest of the morning he seemed more distant, and he didn't sit close to me or kiss me goodbye or anything. As we parted ways he asked if I wanted to go to the river in the next few days though and I (maybe too eagerly ugh) said yes. Over the next few days he stopped initiating texts and kept leaving me on delivered. I did text him say sorry for crying during sex, and that I have been feeling stressed from exams lately. He said "You scared me so bad" lolll... After that I wasn't texting him much because I knew something was off, but I did ask if he still wanted to go to the river soon and he said he was busy but he would keep me posted. Finally after a few days of him not saying anything I sent him a message. I basically just told him that maybe he's busy or needs space, but it seemed like he didn't want to go to the river anymore and that it was fine if he didn't feel a connection. I said I liked being around him a lot but that I would get over my feelings of course and that I hoped he would have a good summer... And he read it but didn't respond which I expected.
So I guess it's pretty clear that things are over between us, probably due to the awkward sex. I know that with the right person it wouldn't matter but my heart is crying a little because I just was so interested in him... When we hung out I would just find myself watching him do mundane things like make coffee or cut bread and I felt enraptured. I am tearing up as I type this :( I think there were some incompatibilities between us anyway. I was always asking him about himself and to be honest he didn't seem very interested in me, and also he didn't really try to make me feel good during sex. He doesn't seem very good with emotions and I am kind of an emotional person. But I just wish we could have gotten to know each other a little better. He's autistic and there's a high chance I am too. Personally I need a bit of time around a new person to figure out how to act around them and to feel comfortable. I wish we would have had a more casual second date without sex.
I just feel so sad which is funny because a year ago I had just been cheated on by my boyfriend of 5.5 years. I seriously never thought I could be hurt again romantically or even really be this interested in someone. I guess a positive aspect to this experience is that I feel way more over my ex than before. I was getting really excited about this new guy that I stopped caring if I would ever see my ex again. And I know theoretically that I don't want to be with someone who doesn't want me, and that what's meant for me will not miss me or whatever... but I feel sad. I am prone to limerence so it makes sense. I know this is probably too intense of feelings for two dates. It's only been like 2 weeks and I know I will feel better in a couple weeks but also part of me feels like I will always have a crush on this guy. Ah oh well! Sorry this is a crazy long post but it did help to write it all out. :)
submitted by swamplavender to ghosting [link] [comments]
Two days later he asked if I wanted to go up to the mountains where his friends have a house, I went and it was mostly really nice. I was so happy going to the grocery store with him to get snacks. We were watching Jurassic Park and apparently I commented something endearing because he laughed and said that made him want to kiss me. We kissed a bit then cuddled very nicely the rest of the movie. Then after we started having sex and it was slightly awkward. His...dick... was really big lol and it kind of hurt and I cried a little bit. Because idk sex already puts me in an emotionally fragile state, and then the added pain just made me need to lay there for a minute and cry. He immediately stopped and we ended up just cuddling til we fell asleep but he seemed uncomfortable which is understandable. Then the next morning we had slightly better sex, it felt good for both of us and emotionally it was good, but neither of us came.
Anyways the rest of the morning he seemed more distant, and he didn't sit close to me or kiss me goodbye or anything. As we parted ways he asked if I wanted to go to the river in the next few days though and I (maybe too eagerly ugh) said yes. Over the next few days he stopped initiating texts and kept leaving me on delivered. I did text him say sorry for crying during sex, and that I have been feeling stressed from exams lately. He said "You scared me so bad" lolll... After that I wasn't texting him much because I knew something was off, but I did ask if he still wanted to go to the river soon and he said he was busy but he would keep me posted. Finally after a few days of him not saying anything I sent him a message. I basically just told him that maybe he's busy or needs space, but it seemed like he didn't want to go to the river anymore and that it was fine if he didn't feel a connection. I said I liked being around him a lot but that I would get over my feelings of course and that I hoped he would have a good summer... And he read it but didn't respond which I expected.
So I guess it's pretty clear that things are over between us, probably due to the awkward sex. I know that with the right person it wouldn't matter but my heart is crying a little because I just was so interested in him... When we hung out I would just find myself watching him do mundane things like make coffee or cut bread and I felt enraptured. I am tearing up as I type this :( I think there were some incompatibilities between us anyway. I was always asking him about himself and to be honest he didn't seem very interested in me, and also he didn't really try to make me feel good during sex. He doesn't seem very good with emotions and I am kind of an emotional person. But I just wish we could have gotten to know each other a little better. He's autistic and there's a high chance I am too. Personally I need a bit of time around a new person to figure out how to act around them and to feel comfortable. I wish we would have had a more casual second date without sex.
I just feel so sad which is funny because a year ago I had just been cheated on by my boyfriend of 5.5 years. I seriously never thought I could be hurt again romantically or even really be this interested in someone. I guess a positive aspect to this experience is that I feel way more over my ex than before. I was getting really excited about this new guy that I stopped caring if I would ever see my ex again. And I know theoretically that I don't want to be with someone who doesn't want me, and that what's meant for me will not miss me or whatever... but I feel sad. I am prone to limerence so it makes sense. I know this is probably too intense of feelings for two dates. It's only been like 2 weeks and I know I will feel better in a couple weeks but also part of me feels like I will always have a crush on this guy. Ah oh well! Sorry this is a crazy long post but it did help to write it all out. :)
2024.05.16 21:37 obsessedobtuse 19M - introverted and dorky guy, looking to make long term friends!
Hello beautiful people of this sub! I don't think I'm particularly good at introductions and the like, so l' do us all a favour and get straight to the point.
I'm a 19 year old guy, from North America (Mexico, if it matters), somewhat chubby and very tall (according to all accounts), who has always struggled with sociability and everything requiring interaction with others, however, l've decided to start breaking out of this shell, and I decided to give posting in here a try! Who knows? I might just find exactly what I'm looking for.
About me, in case the flair wasn't clear enough, 1 am somewhat of a heavy gamer! My favourite types of games include open world exploration ones (think like Minecraft), and JRPG's (such as Persona and Shin Megami Tensei). I use all three main gaming platforms (PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch), so if we can arrange a session and play together that could be lovely!
I'm also a big fan of music, I spend most of my free time listening to it and I even own a vinyl collection, which I have posted on my instagram for a while now! We can talk about that for literal hours and I can't possibly get bored, recommend me your favourite songs or artists! I can even give you some recommendations myself.
Other smaller hobbies l've got also include movies (I've got a letterboxd), and reading, which in turn has made me somewhat of a writer, l've given writing a try a few times before and like to think I'm well spoken and educated, though that is something I can't award myself on purely ethical grounds. Seems a bit self-aggrandising in my opinion.
I've also got my fair share of baggage in the form of stories of various experiences and tragedies in my life (most revolving around men, funnily enough) so we can also wallow in each other's pain if that's something you're looking to do! I can talk about anything, anytime, just as long as we're both in the same wavelength, it'll be all smooth sailing.
If I sounded like something you'd like to bother with, don't hesitate to hit me up! And we don't even have to chat extensively through here, l've got Discord, Snapchat, Instagram, or of the enough trust is there, we can even text! I leave it up to you, one thing about me is that I am insanely adaptable, and will always try to make sure you are comfortable and feeling good when we talk.
Well, with this long ass post over, see ya soon! :)
submitted by obsessedobtuse to gayfriendfinder [link] [comments]
I'm a 19 year old guy, from North America (Mexico, if it matters), somewhat chubby and very tall (according to all accounts), who has always struggled with sociability and everything requiring interaction with others, however, l've decided to start breaking out of this shell, and I decided to give posting in here a try! Who knows? I might just find exactly what I'm looking for.
About me, in case the flair wasn't clear enough, 1 am somewhat of a heavy gamer! My favourite types of games include open world exploration ones (think like Minecraft), and JRPG's (such as Persona and Shin Megami Tensei). I use all three main gaming platforms (PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch), so if we can arrange a session and play together that could be lovely!
I'm also a big fan of music, I spend most of my free time listening to it and I even own a vinyl collection, which I have posted on my instagram for a while now! We can talk about that for literal hours and I can't possibly get bored, recommend me your favourite songs or artists! I can even give you some recommendations myself.
Other smaller hobbies l've got also include movies (I've got a letterboxd), and reading, which in turn has made me somewhat of a writer, l've given writing a try a few times before and like to think I'm well spoken and educated, though that is something I can't award myself on purely ethical grounds. Seems a bit self-aggrandising in my opinion.
I've also got my fair share of baggage in the form of stories of various experiences and tragedies in my life (most revolving around men, funnily enough) so we can also wallow in each other's pain if that's something you're looking to do! I can talk about anything, anytime, just as long as we're both in the same wavelength, it'll be all smooth sailing.
If I sounded like something you'd like to bother with, don't hesitate to hit me up! And we don't even have to chat extensively through here, l've got Discord, Snapchat, Instagram, or of the enough trust is there, we can even text! I leave it up to you, one thing about me is that I am insanely adaptable, and will always try to make sure you are comfortable and feeling good when we talk.
Well, with this long ass post over, see ya soon! :)
2024.05.16 21:24 Pokey-Porky Is the RGB2COMP the right choice for you?
 | TL;DR: I was trying to find if the difference between S-Video and RGB2COMP was great enough to make the financial decision to change all my cables and buy new/more equipment. I found that there is a noticeable difference in quality, and the decision if it’s worth it is up to you! submitted by Pokey-Porky to crtgaming [link] [comments] For more context on photos and videos please read the painfully long description LOL (sorry I just wanted to be thorough): Before I got my PVM, I was heavily considering the RGB2COMP as an option for my WEGA Tv. With the WEGA, I was limited to S-Video for most of the consoles that also supported RGB. When I tried to do research, I had a very hard time (and actually could not) find a video that directly compared the improvement that using an RGB2COMP makes as opposed to S-Video. All of the videos and posts I found really didn’t do direct comparisons, and only compared it to composite, in which case the RGB2COMP would obviously provide a huge improvement. What I was trying to find though was if the difference between S-Video and RGB2COMP was great enough to make the financial decision to change all my cables and buy new/more equipment. My personal need for the RGB2COMP went away when I got my PVM but I still was curious of the difference and now, using the Extron Crosspoint, I also had the ability to compare native RGB to RGB2COMP. So I decided to get everything I needed to do a comparison in-depth enough (given the equipment I have) to have some solid findings, and for others that may have the same question I did to see if RGB2COMP is the upgrade you are looking for. To get some thoughts and points I would like to state/make out of the way: I was really happy with the improvement S-Video makes over composite, and feel it’s an improvement enough to make the investment for the consoles that support it. I was/still am perfectly pleased with the way that S-Video looks, but given that I now have a PVM and an RGB capable setup I do prefer RGB (there is no denying the jump in quality). I am also aware that the HD Retrovision Component Cables exist, but for the purpose of this comparison, its strictly trying to answer the question “is the RGB2COMP the right choice for me, in comparison to S-Video and keeping native RGB in mind?” Equipment Used: For this comparison I am using the following displays: · PVM 1953MD · Sony KD-27FS120 For this Comparison I am using the following Consoles+ Video output · PS1- S-Video · PS1- RGB (Two separate consoles) For this comparison I am using the following Cables/equipment · Retro Access RGB SCART- CSYNC Cable · Wookieewin SCART to BNC Breakout Adapter · Extron Crosspoint 300 series 12:8 model · Wookieewin BNC to SCART Adapter with a 470 Ohm Resistor on the SYNC LINE- VERY IMPORTANT WHEN USING A CROSSPOINT AND RGB INPUTS/OUTPUTS!!!! · RetroTink RGB2COMP · Onn Brand (Walmart) RCA cables (for component) · OEM PS1 S-Video Cable Main Games used in the comparison: · Final Fantasy VII · Metal Gear Solid Final things to note in this comparison: · The way that this is hooked up is RGB PS1 input into the Crosspoint, output to the PVM (Native RGB signal) and output to the RGB2COMP (Converted RGB signal). The RGB2COMP then outputs component to the Sony Wega Tv. A separate PS1 is hooked up directly to the Sony Wega Tv with an OEM PS1 S-Video cable. · PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU ARE USING A CROSSPOINT AND AN RGB SIGNAL, IF YOU OUTPUT TO SCART OR CONSUMER SPEC EQUIPMENT YOU NEED A 470 Ohm RESISTOR ON THE SYNC LINE FOR IT TO BE SAFLEY USED. The crosspoint outputs TTL level sync and if it is unattenuated it can permanently damage your tv or equipment over time. You can solve this by messaging Wookieewin and asking them to include the 470 Ohm resistor onto your order. · I originally intended to directly compare the RGB2COMP converted component signal to the Native RGB, both on my PVM switching back and forth simultaneously. I quickly realized that this would not be as feasible as I hoped as the PVM processes component brightness differently. It would be very impractical to turn the brightness knob up and down each time I switched, so I ruled this comparison option out, and placed a greater focus on the RGB2COMP VS S-Video comparison. · I chose Metal Gear and Final Fantasy as they have multiple discs and focused my comparisons mainly on their intro screens to keep the photos as similar as possible. I decided not to compare gameplay too much because of its variability given that this is two different consoles running the same game at the same time. · The Native RGB and RGB2COMP comparisons are running at the same time (they are the same signal, one is just converted to component) on two different screens (the WEGA consumer TV and the PVM). · The S-Video and RGB2COMP comparisons are strictly on the consumer WEGA Tv. · The WEGA Tv is set to “MOVIE” Mode and the PVM is dialed to what I feel is the “appropriate brightness” for the PVM (note this is subjective). End Findings and Final thoughts: · Starting with the comparison of RGB2COMP on the consumer WEGA Tv and Native RGB on the PVM, it is very evident that there is what I would call a blue-ish/green-ish hue to the consumer WEGA TV. It is also interesting and important to note that the WEGA and PVM draw the images slightly differently. I don’t think (and cannot say for certain) that the RGB2COMP is what is causing this hue-change, and I strongly believe that it is the Wega Tv as I have found that it provides a very “Super Saturated” look as opposed to the more “Natural” Look of the PVM. This is very color pallet subjective and it’s very possible that someone else’s PVM will not have the same look and hue as my PVM, same with the WEGA Tv. Other than these differences the signal is very similar and picture quality is equally good on both. Chances are that you wouldn’t even notice the hue difference if you were only looking at one or the other. · For the S-Video comparison I started with the Final Fantasy intro screen comparison to mainly show the color difference, which is very slight but very noticeable. The biggest difference that I found overall is the difference in brightness. I would also like to point out that when looking at this comparison S-Video has what I can best describe as a “white dot effect” in some images, and this is most noticeable in the closeup of the Final Fantasy letters. Now as previously stated the biggest difference is the brightness, I chose and put a greater focus on the intro of Metal Gear to show off how significant it is, as Metal Gears intro is already dark in nature. I feel that the images speak for themselves in terms of brightness, and would like to say that to me brightness makes a huge difference in gameplay. I played Halo to completion on composite video, and I felt that some areas were unbearably dark! It felt like I could not see where I was going or looking at all! I later made the upgrade to original competent cables for the Xbox, and right away noticed the brightness difference. The areas that felt pitch black on composite, had a faint outline in component, allowing me to have an idea of where I was going while still keeping that dark atmosphere intact. All of this to say that brightness makes a big difference in how you experience the game (at least for me). To answer the main question, there is a noticeable difference and upgrade in using the RGB2COMP over S-Video, but if its worth the financial expense for the upgrade is for you to decide. I hope you enjoyed this in-depth analysis and Hope it helps someone out there trying to make the decision as I was faced with. (Sony KD-27FS120 RGB2COMP) (PVM 1953MD RGB) (Sony KD-27FS120 RGB2COMP) (PVM 1953MD RGB) (Sony KD-27FS120 RGB2COMP) (PVM 1953MD RGB) Sony KD-27FS120 Sony KD-27FS120 Sony KD-27FS120 Sony KD-27FS120 Sony KD-27FS120 Sony KD-27FS120 Zoomed in for a better look Sony KD-27FS120 Sony KD-27FS120 Zoomed in for a better look |
2024.05.16 21:08 whyB2 (Selling) movies
PayPal Friends and Family preferred; can also accept Venmo.
Vudu is now Fandango at Home
Split codes where possible - only redeem the portion listed.
Assume loyalty points have been used; unless noted. Refer to the 4Ksheet for 4K redemption.
----------Collections / TV / Bundles / Other----------
submitted by whyB2 to DigitalCodeSELL [link] [comments]
Vudu is now Fandango at Home
Split codes where possible - only redeem the portion listed.
Assume loyalty points have been used; unless noted. Refer to the 4Ksheet for 4K redemption.
----------Collections / TV / Bundles / Other----------
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (includes Director's Cut & Special Edition) 4K Movies Anywhere [3 films; 1 code] - $7.00
- Dirty Grandpa & Dirty Grandpa Unrated HD iTunes / Vudu [2 films; 1 code] - $4.00
- How to Train Your Dragon Trilogy HD Movies Anywhere [3 films; 1 code] - $9.00
- Outlander: Season 1: Volume 2 HD Vudu - $7.00
- 1917 4K Movies Anywhere - $4.75
- 21 Jump Street 4K Movies Anywhere - $4.50
- 50 Shades Darker (Unrated) 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $1.75
- Allied 4K iTunes - $3.00
- Baywatch 4K iTunes - $2.75
- Captain Marvel 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 200 DMI Points] - $4.00
- Cold Pursuit 4K iTunes - $3.50
- Death on the Nile 4K Movies Anywhere - $5.75
- Deepwater Horizon 4K iTunes / Vudu - $2.25
- Divergent 4K iTunes - $1.75
- Enders Game 4K iTunes / Vudu - $2.50
- Escape from L.A. (Kurt Russell) 4K iTunes / Vudu - $4.25
- Everything Everywhere All At Once (A24 Studios) 4K Vudu - $5.75
- Fast & Furious 8: The Fate of the Furious 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $1.50
- Finding Dory 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 200 DMI Points] - $4.00
- Fright Night (1985) 4K Movies Anywhere - $4.00
- Glory (1989) 4K Movies Anywhere - $6.00
- Gods of Egypt 4K iTunes - $2.75
- Hellboy (2019) 4K iTunes / Vudu - $2.75
- Independence Day: Resurgence 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K - $3.50
- Inside Out 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 200 DMI Points] - $4.00
- Jack Reacher: Never Go Back 4K iTunes - $3.25
- Jason Bourne (2016) 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $1.75
- John Wick 3: Parabellum 4K iTunes / Vudu - $1.25
- Jungle Cruise 4K Movies Anywhere - $5.50
- Jurassic World 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $1.50
- Kingsman: The Golden Circle 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K - $4.00
- Les Miserables 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $3.50
- Life of Pi 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K - $3.50
- Lone Survivor 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $1.75
- Lucy 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $2.75
- Maleficent 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 200 DMI Points] - $3.50
- Mechanic: Resurrection 4K iTunes - $3.00
- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K - $3.25
- Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol 4K iTunes - $2.50
- Mission Impossible 5: Rogue Nation 4K iTunes - $2.50
- Ninja Turtle (2014) 4K iTunes - $2.50
- Parasite 4K Movies Anywhere - $5.50
- Passengers 4K Movies Anywhere - $6.00
- Pitch Perfect 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $2.25
- Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino) 4K iTunes / Vudu - $5.75
- Sing 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $3.00
- Singin' in the Rain (1952) 4K Movies Anywhere - $4.50
- Snatch 4K Movies Anywhere - $5.50
- Snitch (The Rock) 4K iTunes - $2.50
- Spider-Man (2002) 4K Movies Anywhere - $4.25
- Spider-Man 2 (2004) 4K Movies Anywhere - $4.25
- Spider-Man 3 (2007) 4K Movies Anywhere - $4.25
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) 4K Movies Anywhere - $5.00
- Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) 4K Movies Anywhere - $5.00
- The Addams Family (with more Mamushka!) 4K iTunes / Vudu - $4.75
- The Cabin in the Woods 4K iTunes - $2.75
- The Dark Tower 4K Movies Anywhere - $5.00
- The Fault in Our Stars 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K - $1.75
- The Good Dinosaur 4K iTunes * will port to MA in 4K [should come with 200 DMI Points] - $3.75
- The Hunger Games 4K iTunes - $1.50
- The Hunger Games 4K Vudu - $4.00
- The Hunger Games: Catching Fire 4K iTunes - $2.25
- The Martian 4K Movies Anywhere or iTunes - $3.50
- The Secret Life of Pets 4K Movies Anywhere or iTunes - $3.75
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent 4K iTunes / Vudu - $5.75
- Transformers 4: Age of Extinction 4K iTunes - $2.25
- Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 4K iTunes - $0.75
- 007: Skyfall HD Vudu / Google Play - $1.75
- 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi HD Vudu - $1.25
- 22 Jump Street HD Movies Anywhere - $1.50
- 50 Shades Darker (Unrated) HD Movies Anywhere - $1.50
- 50 Shades Freed (2018) HD Movies Anywhere - $1.50
- A Good Day to Die Hard (Extended Edition) HD Movies Anywhere - $2.00
- A Monster Calls HD iTunes or Movies Anywhere - $3.00
- A Most Violent Year (A24 Studios) HD Vudu - $4.50
- A Most Wanted Man (Philip Seymour Hoffman) HD Vudu / Google Play - $2.50
- Aladdin (1992; NOT Signature Edition) HD Movies Anywhere - $3.00
- Alex Cross HD Vudu - $0.75
- Alice in Wonderland (1951) HD Movies Anywhere - $6.00
- Arrival HD Vudu - $1.75
- Bad Moms HD iTunes * will port to MA [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $2.25
- Battleship HD Movies Anywhere - $1.00
- Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas HD Movies Anywhere - $6.00
- Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) HD Movies Anywhere - $6.00
- Black Panther (2018) HD Movies Anywhere - $2.75
- Bohemian Rhapsody HD Movies Anywhere / Vudu / Google Play - $2.50
- Bridesmaids HD iTunes * will port to MA [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $2.50
- Buffy, The Vampire Slayer (1992) HD Movies Anywhere - $4.50
- Captain Marvel HD (4K) Movies Anywhere or iTunes (4K) / Vudu - $4.00
- Cheech & Chongs: Up in Smoke HD iTunes - $3.00
- Christine (1983) HD Movies Anywhere - $4.00
- Cold Pursuit (4K) HD iTunes (4K) or Vudu / Google Play - $3.50
- Daddy's Home HD Vudu - $1.75
- Dallas Buyers Club HD iTunes * will port to MA [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $3.50
- Despicable Me 2 HD Movies Anywhere - $1.50
- Divergent HD Vudu - $1.00
- Dying of the Light HD Vudu - $2.75
- Edward Scissorhands HD Movies Anywhere - $3.25
- Ex Machina (A24 Studios) HD Vudu - $3.75
- Fast & Furious 3: Tokyo Drift HD Movies Anywhere - $1.00
- Fast & Furious 5: Extended Edition HD Movies Anywhere or iTunes - $0.25
- Fast & Furious 8: The Fate of the Furious HD Movies Anywhere - $0.75
- Fast & Furious 8: The Fate of the Furious (Extended Director's Cut) HD Movies Anywhere - $1.00
- Finding Dory HD (4K) Movies Anywhere or iTunes (4K) / Vudu - $4.00
- Florence Foster Jenkins HD iTunes - $2.25
- Gangs of New York HD iTunes / Vudu - $4.50
- Gods of Egypt HD Vudu - $2.00
- Hercules (The Rock) HD Vudu - $2.00
- Home Again HD Movies Anywhere - $2.00
- How to Train Your Dragon 2 HD Movies Anywhere - $2.00
- I Am Wrath (John Travolta) HD Vudu - $4.75
- Identity Thief HD iTunes * will port to MA [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $2.00
- Independence Day: Resurgence HD (4K) Movies Anywhere or iTunes (4K) / Vudu - $3.50
- Inside Out HD (4K) Movies Anywhere or iTunes (4K) / Vudu - $4.00
- Into the Woods (2014) HD Movies Anywhere - $3.25
- Jack Reacher: Never Go Back HD Vudu - $2.00
- Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa HD iTunes / Vudu - $2.75
- Jason Bourne (2016) HD Movies Anywhere - $0.75
- John Wick 2: Chapter 2 HD Vudu - $0.75
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle HD Movies Anywhere - $1.75
- Jurassic World HD Movies Anywhere - $0.50
- Killer Elite HD iTunes * will port to MA [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $3.00
- Killing Them Softly (Brad Pitt) HD Vudu - $3.50
- Kingsman: The Golden Circle HD (4K) Movies Anywhere or iTunes (4K) / Vudu - $4.00
- Les Misérables (2012) HD Movies Anywhere - $2.00
- Life of Pi HD (4K) Movies Anywhere or iTunes (4K) / Vudu - $3.50
- Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch HD Movies Anywhere - $3.75
- London Has Fallen HD iTunes * will port to MA [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $3.00
- Lone Survivor HD Movies Anywhere - $0.50
- Lucy HD Movies Anywhere - $2.00
- Maleficent HD (4K) Movies Anywhere or iTunes (4K) / Vudu - $3.50
- Marauders (Bruce Willis) HD Vudu - $1.25
- Mechanic: Resurrection HD Vudu - $2.00
- Men in Black 3 HD Movies Anywhere - $1.00
- Mickey's Christmas Carol HD Movies Anywhere - $4.75
- Minions HD Movies Anywhere - $2.25
- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children HD (4K) Movies Anywhere or iTunes (4K) / Vudu - $3.25
- Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol HD Vudu - $1.00
- Mission Impossible 5: Rogue Nation HD Vudu - $1.25
- Moneyball (Brad Pitt) HD Movies Anywhere - $2.75
- Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson) HD Movies Anywhere - $3.50
- Ninja Turtles (2014) HD Vudu - $1.25
- Now You See Me HD Vudu - $1.75
- OZ: The Great and Powerful (2013) HD Movies Anywhere - $2.50
- Pain & Gain (Mark Wahlberg & The Rock) HD Vudu - $3.00
- Parental Guidance HD Movies Anywhere - $1.25
- Pet Sematary (2019) HD Vudu - $2.75
- Peter Pans: The Pirate Fairy (2014) HD Movies Anywhere - $3.00
- Pitch Perfect HD Movies Anywhere - $2.00
- Pitch Perfect 2 HD Movies Anywhere - $2.00
- Planes: Fire & Rescue HD Movies Anywhere - $3.00
- Precious Cargo (Bruce Willis) HD Vudu - $4.75
- Queen of Kahwe HD Movies Anywhere - $2.75
- Ralph Breaks the Internet HD Movies Anywhere - $3.25
- Red Sparrow HD Movies Anywhere - $4.00
- Redemption (Jason Statham) HD Vudu - $1.75
- Rise of the Guardians (Dreamworks) HD Movies Anywhere - $2.25
- Rock the Kasbah (Bill Murray) HD iTunes * will port to MA [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $3.00
- Savages HD iTunes * will port to MA [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $3.00
- Silver Linings Playbook HD Vudu / Google Play - $3.00
- Sisters (Unrated) HD Movies Anywhere - $2.25
- Skin Trade (2015) HD Vudu - $3.25
- Sleepless HD iTunes * will port to MA [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $2.75
- Snitch (The Rock) HD Vudu - $1.75
- Star Trek: Beyond HD Vudu - $1.75
- Star Trek: Into Darkness HD Vudu - $1.50
- Ted 2 (Unrated) HD Movies Anywhere - $2.75
- The Age of Adaline HD iTunes - $2.25
- The Boss (Unrated) HD iTunes * will port to MA [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $2.75
- The Bourne Legacy (2012) HD Movies Anywhere - $0.50
- The Boy Next Door (Jennifer Lopez) HD iTunes * will port to MA [should come with 500 Universal Rewards Points] - $2.50
- The Breakfast Club (1985) HD Movies Anywhere or iTunes - $3.50
- The Doors (1991) HD iTunes - $3.50
- The Expendables 3 (Unrated) HD Vudu - $0.25
- The Fault in Our Stars HD (4K) Movies Anywhere or iTunes (4K) / Vudu - $1.75
- The Good Dinosaur HD (4K) Movies Anywhere or iTunes (4K) / Vudu - $3.75
- The Grey (2012) HD iTunes or Movies Anywhere - $2.75
- The Hitman's Bodyguard HD iTunes / Vudu - $3.00
- The Hunger Games HD Vudu - $0.75
- The Hunger Games: Catching Fire HD Vudu - $1.25
- The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 HD Vudu - $1.25
- The Impossible HD iTunes or Vudu - $3.75
- The Jungle Book (1967) HD Movies Anywhere - $3.75
- The Jungle Book (2016) HD Movies Anywhere - $3.75
- The Legend of Hercules (Kellan Lutz) HD iTunes / Vudu - $3.25
- The Magnificent Seven (2016) HD Vudu - $2.25
- The Martian HD (4K) Movies Anywhere or iTunes (4K) / Vudu - $3.50
- The Mummy (Tom Cruise) HD Movies Anywhere - $1.75
- The Purge: Election Year (2016) HD Movies Anywhere - $2.25
- The Secret Life of Pets HD Movies Anywhere - $2.00
- The Shack HD iTunes - $2.50
- The Vow HD Movies Anywhere - $2.25
- The Wolf of Wall Street HD Vudu - $2.25
- Think Like a Man HD Movies Anywhere - $2.75
- Thor: Ragnarök HD Movies Anywhere - $3.25
- Transformers 4: Age of Extinction HD Vudu - $1.25
- Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 HD Vudu - $0.25
- Twist (2021) HD Vudu / Google Play - $5.00
- Tyler Perry's: A Madea Christmas HD Vudu / Google Play - $1.00
- Tyler Perry's: Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned HD Vudu - $1.75
- Tyler Perry's: Madea's Witness Protection HD iTunes / Vudu - $0.50
- Tyler Perry's: The Single Moms Club HD Vudu / Google Play - $2.00
- Tyler Perry's: Temptation HD Vudu - $1.75
- Walking with Dinosaurs (2013) HD Movies Anywhere - $3.25
- War Room HD Movies Anywhere - $3.00
- Wild Card (Jason Statham) HD Vudu / Google Play - $2.75
- World War Z HD Vudu - $2.25
- Avengers: Infinity War HD Google Play * will port to MA - $0.75
- Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) HD Google Play * will port to MA - $3.50
- Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) HD Google Play * will port to MA - $0.50
- The Good Dinosaur HD Google Play * will port to MA - $1.25
- Captain Phillips SD Movies Anywhere - $0.75
- Nerve SD Vudu - $0.75
- The Call (Halle Berry) SD Movies Anywhere - $0.75
2024.05.16 20:54 Crafter235 A Clockwork Orange Video Game Adaptation
Currently, I have watched the movie and completed the book. From seeing both source materials, I've thought about the idea of making a video game adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, instead of just another movie.
For an idea: instead of the typical GTA concept, I would have it be more like a beat-em-up game like Scott Pilgrim or the Hobo flash games. With the synthesized music, I would also make it pixelized 16-bit to fit the theme. With the arcadey feel to it and the retro style, it helps narratively to show us the depravity in Alex's mind. To him, it's all some funny game, no big deal. However, with cartoony sound effects and acradey music, victims will scream and moan in actual pain, begging for mercy, showing that they're truly suffering, and how disassociated with reality Alex is, with upbeat feelings but horrifying sound effects. Milk-Plus would serve as power-ups, which each type having their own specialty for each night. From combat, once you defeat an opponent, you have two options: You can just kill them, or give them the "ol in-out". The second option more brutal (if you know what it is), but you gain more experience points.
When not fighting, there are other minigames, such as:
The gameplay will follow like the book; traditional beat-em-up in the first act, other minigames in prison with some combat in the 2nd act, and hiding and stealth in the 3rd act. While there can be some influence from the movie, it will be much more closer to the book. With being more with the book, there will be things like selling stuff to Will the English (a dealer mentioned only in the book), the option to bribe alilibis in case the droogs are arrested, or we would see Alex and Co. wearing outfits described from the book (though the Kubrick film outfits could be like a dlc).
Of course, being a separate adaptation in the video game medium, there would be some changes and differences. For example:
Aside from the obvious controversy of such a game (whether it be the violence and/or politics), what are your thoughts? What would you also include?
submitted by Crafter235 to StanleyKubrick [link] [comments]
For an idea: instead of the typical GTA concept, I would have it be more like a beat-em-up game like Scott Pilgrim or the Hobo flash games. With the synthesized music, I would also make it pixelized 16-bit to fit the theme. With the arcadey feel to it and the retro style, it helps narratively to show us the depravity in Alex's mind. To him, it's all some funny game, no big deal. However, with cartoony sound effects and acradey music, victims will scream and moan in actual pain, begging for mercy, showing that they're truly suffering, and how disassociated with reality Alex is, with upbeat feelings but horrifying sound effects. Milk-Plus would serve as power-ups, which each type having their own specialty for each night. From combat, once you defeat an opponent, you have two options: You can just kill them, or give them the "ol in-out". The second option more brutal (if you know what it is), but you gain more experience points.
When not fighting, there are other minigames, such as:
- Mini levels when Alex has weird dreams
- When stealing a car, there's a driving minigame where Alex can run over people and cause cars to crash.
- When Alex is listening to classical music, there is a minigame clicking to the beat like in Friday Night Funkin'
- Clicking to the beat when being under the Ludvico Technique.
- Roasting and trash-talking in Nadsat to lower the stats of opponents. In addition, charisma skill checks when bribing adults.
- Button-smashing for...rape. It would have a funny censor over it, further showing us the depravity of Alex and his gang. On the other hand though, button-smashing for consensual sex.
The gameplay will follow like the book; traditional beat-em-up in the first act, other minigames in prison with some combat in the 2nd act, and hiding and stealth in the 3rd act. While there can be some influence from the movie, it will be much more closer to the book. With being more with the book, there will be things like selling stuff to Will the English (a dealer mentioned only in the book), the option to bribe alilibis in case the droogs are arrested, or we would see Alex and Co. wearing outfits described from the book (though the Kubrick film outfits could be like a dlc).
Of course, being a separate adaptation in the video game medium, there would be some changes and differences. For example:
- For the violence in the first act, perhaps try to split it up in the span of 2-3 days, so the player could have a little more ultraviolence and combat.
- Have more choices and dialogue options in the beginning, to show the themes of free will.
- For the girls Alex meets in the music store, make them the same age as him like in the movie. Because of movie influence, and themes of choice and free will, there can be different options on what to do, whether to drug them and give "in-out", have consensual sex, or just hang out for the day. There's more xp if you choose the "in-out" option, but if you befriend them with the other options, you unlock them as alibis for the night.
- Aside from Billyboy and his droogs, add maybe 2-3 other gangs you can come across in the city, based on groups mentioned in the book.
- Update elements of the story for more modern audiences. Don't worry, the core themes of free will and choice will stay, but some things were just different in the 60s and 70s (when the book and movie came out).
Aside from the obvious controversy of such a game (whether it be the violence and/or politics), what are your thoughts? What would you also include?
2024.05.16 20:48 th7777ow7777aw7777ay Did anyone else think labor and post partum were easier than expected?
First off, I am so sorry to all the mamas that had a rough time but just curious if anyone else has had a similar easier than expected experience.
I was really nervous about childbirth because everything you see in media and posts and movies is about how horrible the pain is with childbirth and postpartum. I opted for an epidural and had such an easy go, I mean pretty much zero pain during delivery. I chalked this up to the epidural but perhaps more surprisingly have had zero pain the past three weeks postpartum despite having a second degree tear.
I’ve been able to resume my normal home activities and started walking on a treadmill/do a post partum exercise class on iFit that has some core work but I’m nervous to push it farther just because of what I’m reading about ruining my pelvic floor.
So anyone else have no pain with childbirth or postpartum? Is there something wrong with me? Do I have no nerves down there or something?
Otherwise I hope some of you take solace that it’s not always a horrible experience and might be better than expected!
submitted by th7777ow7777aw7777ay to fitpregnancy [link] [comments]
I was really nervous about childbirth because everything you see in media and posts and movies is about how horrible the pain is with childbirth and postpartum. I opted for an epidural and had such an easy go, I mean pretty much zero pain during delivery. I chalked this up to the epidural but perhaps more surprisingly have had zero pain the past three weeks postpartum despite having a second degree tear.
I’ve been able to resume my normal home activities and started walking on a treadmill/do a post partum exercise class on iFit that has some core work but I’m nervous to push it farther just because of what I’m reading about ruining my pelvic floor.
So anyone else have no pain with childbirth or postpartum? Is there something wrong with me? Do I have no nerves down there or something?
Otherwise I hope some of you take solace that it’s not always a horrible experience and might be better than expected!
2024.05.16 20:37 shoefitsit It was a remarkable performance.
 | Louise Fletcher, on why she can no longer bear to watch "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975): "I find it too painful. It comes with age. I can't watch movies that are inhumane. I was really shocked in those scenes where I was actually so cruel." submitted by shoefitsit to moviecritic [link] [comments] In later interviews, Fletcher said that she found ways to make her character human, yet remain unsympathetic, ultimately deciding that Nurse Ratched actually did care about the patients, and felt she was doing what was best for them, but was ultimately misguided and drunk on her own power. Fletcher was so upset with the fact that the other cast members could laugh and be happy, while she had to be so cold and heartless, that near the end of production, she removed her dress, and stood in only her panties, to prove to the cast members she was not "a cold-hearted monster." Fletcher said that Nurse Ratched's old-fashioned hair style shows how uptight she is. It's also no coincidence that it resembles the horns of the devil. Director Milos Forman relied heavily on reaction shots to pull more characters into scenes. In some group therapy scenes, there were ten minutes of Jack Nicholson's reactions filmed, even if he had very little dialogue. The shot of Fletcher looking icily at Nicholson after he returns from shock therapy, was actually her irritated reaction to a piece of direction from Forman. Fletcher learned sign language at a very young age, as both of her parents were deaf. When Fletcher neared the end of her (spoken) Best Actress Oscar acceptance speech for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," she finished with a unique (unspoken) touch in American Sign Language: "For my mother and my father, I want to say thank you for teaching me to have a dream. You are seeing my dream come true. Thank you." |
2024.05.16 20:20 twylysnow I (21F) am conflicted about my feelings for my guy best friend (21M) who confessed he's still in love with me and is willing to wait as long as he still loves me, But I am in a 3 year fully committed relationship with my boyfriend (21M)
This is going to be a long one so I suggest sitting down and eating a snack lol. This honestly starts back from kindergarten when I first met my boy best friend (21M) who I'll call Joey to keep things private. Joey and I grew up together, we've lived across the street from each other for the past 15 years. I would say our friendship didn't start to pick up till the 4th grade. It was me, Joey, My brother (18M), Tom ( 21M), Diana (21F), and Joey's little brother (18M). Diana was my best friend the girl I hung out with everyday and spent all my time with, shared secrets with. Tom was that type of person to joey. Joey and I have always had some form of mutual crush towards each other and I honestly I believe it started in the 4th grade. Growing up our parents were best friends and to this day still are. So Joey and I spent a lot of time together, we would watch movies, go to the park, go on trips together, go to the the local community street and just hang out we spent all of our time together. The first time I told Joey I liked him was in 5th grade, I've always known I loved him, He was my first love, my first kiss, the first boy I cried about, the first boy who made me jealous although we never dated, there was a lot of first between us. Joey use to be really mean to me, would always make fun of me, constantly chase me, and just in general say mean things and always shut me down whenever I confessed my love to him. Everyone knew I liked him, I would never stop talking about it. Our friends would have us kiss during truth or dare or have us confess our love for each other. Thats just how it was growing up. In middle school is when things started to change and I started to get involved with other guys. It was nothing more than the middle school relationship, just people I liked. I can't remember exactly what summer it was but I believe it was 8th grade summer going into 9th grade when things between really started to pick up. During that summer our family went on 2 week long camping trip and joey and I got really close and he confessed his love for me, but nothing came from it and when we got back from that trip we shared our first kiss together during a scary movie we were watching at my house. After that there was nothing. I started high school and we really drifted apart. I remained with Diana and some other close friend while Joey made new friends and kept his distance. It was like that all of high school. But a lot happened during that time. I dated my first boyfriend who i broke up with within a year and I dated my second boyfriend who I broke up with 3 years ago. My second boyfriend is honestly the root cause to things getting messy. I started dating my second boyfriend at the end of 10th grade, and that summer I went on a trip and Joey and his family and some of my cousins. That trip joey and I flirted a lot, spent all our time together and just got really close. But when it was over it was if nothing had ever happened and I went on to continue dating my boyfriend. Without getting into too much details about my ex lets just say he was a horrible person who physically and mentally abused and manipulated me and basically turned me into the person I am today. He ruined a lot for me and he tore apart my friend group. Joey, Diana, and Tom all saw how much my ex was hurting me and they tried multiple times to get me out of the relationship but It just never really happened and things got messy. Joey continued to distance himself from me and Tom started to fill joey's mind with horrible thoughts about me which honestly really turned joey against me. The summer of 2021 is when I was finally able to escape my ex but the way it panned out wasn't good. My friends first tried to force me and joey to date even if It was as rebound, they used our history as an excuse to get me out of the relationship and well that didn't work. And a month later I tried to kill myself, I ended up in the hospital with 11 stitches in my wrist and lots of therapy. I ended up going back to my ex a few days later. Thats when I saw joey and tom distancing themselves and honestly they said some hurtful things to me. My now boyfriend is the reason I was able to leave the relationship. 3 days after I broke up with my ex, my best friend Diana got with him and yeah thats another story for another time. But basically to keep it simple after that happened they all left me and I was just left alone in pain with my now boyfriend picking up the pieces. Everything went well since then. I grew up and I really matured and got my life in order. But last week something unexpected happened. Joey entered my life again. I was at the bar with my parents when he arrived with his parents, I would be lying if I said I wasn't already drunk, But I was way drunk. And I got wasted even more after joey arrived. But we talked for hours that night and I found myself confessing my love for him all over again. And he started confessing his love and basically he had to carry me home cause I was wasted. I waited 10 years for this boy to tell me he loved me and now I don't know what to do. He went on to apologize for all the things that happened and how he was never there for me and he basically was just sorry. I kept asking him why he never dated me or why he never took the chance when I gave him chance after chance. And he told me he was jealous and mad at me for all the times I went out with other guys and he thought that I didn't genuinely care for him. I basically told him I felt like you constantly played with my feelings. Now I am in a relationship. A very loving relationship fully committed one too. We live together already. But after hearing joey's words and the things I said when I was drunk I feel so conflicted and have no idea where to go from there. Joey told me he would wait for me as long as he is still in love with me. He told me he's been in love with me for that past 14 years and that there's never been anyone else for him. He's never dated anyone the closest he's ever came to was me. My boyfriend knows some of the story he knows basically all the childhood drama and everything that happened, and he knows Joey is back in my life as a friend. I don't know if the love I had always had for joey is the same or if i'm acting based off old emotions. I don't want to hurt anyone but I know someone is gonna get hurt. And for more reference tom joined the marines and isn't really in anyones life atm and diana is getting her veterinarian license. Joey just graduated from college and is joining the army in 3 months. I am just focused on my career and planning out my future with my boyfriend. What should I do. Joey and I have talked a lot about just rebuilding our friendship and getting to know each other again because the last we talked like this was 6 years ago so we definitely have grown and matured since. I love my boyfriend but I worry I still love joey.
TL;DR! - To sum everything up my first love confessed he's still in love with my and is willing to wait for me as long as he loves me. I confessed I still loved him when I was drunk. But I am planning out my future with my boyfriend.
submitted by twylysnow to relationships [link] [comments]
TL;DR! - To sum everything up my first love confessed he's still in love with my and is willing to wait for me as long as he loves me. I confessed I still loved him when I was drunk. But I am planning out my future with my boyfriend.
2024.05.16 19:27 maqisha My thoughts/review as a windows user
I was really excited to finally try Arc when it comes to windows as people seemed to love it and it always looked interesting and clean to me. Here I will write a short review of what i've noticed with using it a few days.
I won't touch so much on the subject on side tabs, Spaces, "bookmarks", these are not really issues and are definitely subjective and different, some people might like the new approach, some dont.
Here's a quick summary of my thoughts on the most notable "features" (Sidenav, Spaces, Different Logic for Bookmarks)
I also don't want to talk about any early Windows bugs, I'm sure those will be sorted out soon.
What I primarily wanted to talk about is some missing features. Sadly, at this point in time, Arc feels like a downgrade. Many features are missing or abstracted in a very weird way, and its not clear why, most of the things I'm about to talk about would not impact the "nature" of Arc, so I'm not sure why they were left out or not implemented.
The way favourites behave is just dumb, i have no other way of putting it. Its horrible and mostly unusable.
Example: Let's say I favorite Netflix. I click on it to open it, it's not gonna create a new tab, its just gonna open it in favorites. I play a movie and navigate off. There is NO WAY for me to tell that Netflix was ever even opened, that I have an entire movie playing in the background, i would have no idea where its coming from, what is playing, or anything about it, until i finally click on it to see whats going on. It's a horrible experience.
This somewhat intertwines with the way current "bookmarks" behave, except that this type of behavior is never expected from a quick-access menu. Atm these are just glorified tabs, but worse since they have no title, no indicators for being opened or playing audio, nothing.
To fix this simply make clicking on this open a new tab, I don't see how the current approach is better.
In other browsers the title bar would show something like: Inbox(5) - [myemail@gmail.com](mailto:myemail@gmail.com)
In Arc it shows: Gmail
Just why? A very useful piece of information coming from the third party website itself is overridden for a worse user experience.
Now that Arc is on Windows the "Mac way of doing things" seems to remain, and everything feels slightly off.
(I'm not talking about chromium settings, these need to exist. But even these are impossible to find for an average user)
Here are all the available options
Let me know what you guys think and if you found a workaround for some of my issues. Or have any other benefits to Arc that i filed to notice.
Thanks for reading
submitted by maqisha to ArcBrowser [link] [comments]
I won't touch so much on the subject on side tabs, Spaces, "bookmarks", these are not really issues and are definitely subjective and different, some people might like the new approach, some dont.
Here's a quick summary of my thoughts on the most notable "features" (Sidenav, Spaces, Different Logic for Bookmarks)
- I personally like the side nav, i like how easy it is to see everything and is forcing me to use my keaboard more for navigation (Ctrl+S, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W), which i enjoy. It also looks great
- Spaces, and similar features like it in other browsers, is something that's not a part of my workflow typically. I like everything in one place and don't like unnecessary overhead. However, i see great potential in this for people who want to separate personal life and work, or multiple different works in an organized way.
- I don't use bookmarks as heavily as some people either, but it definitely feels weird having them act as tabs, maybe I could get used to it.
I also don't want to talk about any early Windows bugs, I'm sure those will be sorted out soon.
1. Favourites (Quick access, or h/e you wanna call it)
When I started using Arc, considering that there is no way to customize the default home page, I was disappointed to see that theres no way for me to quickly open up some my most visited places. Then i found the Favourites, and i was pleasantly surprised, they looked clean, were accessible at all times, didn't take up too much space, perfect. That's what i thought until i was disappointed again.The way favourites behave is just dumb, i have no other way of putting it. Its horrible and mostly unusable.
Example: Let's say I favorite Netflix. I click on it to open it, it's not gonna create a new tab, its just gonna open it in favorites. I play a movie and navigate off. There is NO WAY for me to tell that Netflix was ever even opened, that I have an entire movie playing in the background, i would have no idea where its coming from, what is playing, or anything about it, until i finally click on it to see whats going on. It's a horrible experience.
This somewhat intertwines with the way current "bookmarks" behave, except that this type of behavior is never expected from a quick-access menu. Atm these are just glorified tabs, but worse since they have no title, no indicators for being opened or playing audio, nothing.
To fix this simply make clicking on this open a new tab, I don't see how the current approach is better.
2. Titles
I can't for the life of me figure out why this is the case, but some webpage titles are overridden. Most notably I noticed Gmail, but I think i saw other cases as well.In other browsers the title bar would show something like: Inbox(5) - [myemail@gmail.com](mailto:myemail@gmail.com)
In Arc it shows: Gmail
Just why? A very useful piece of information coming from the third party website itself is overridden for a worse user experience.
3. Multi-monitomulti-window support
For this part it might be important to notice the difference between Windows and Mac users. Correct me if I'm wrong but Mac seems typically focused on one monitor (considering the product), and the workflows for MacOS apps are built with that in mind. I'm not saying that all windows users use multiple monitors, in fact most don't, but it seems more common to have those types of customizability.Now that Arc is on Windows the "Mac way of doing things" seems to remain, and everything feels slightly off.
- Technically you can have multiple arc windows, but the only way to make them is to drag and drop tabs. However, this creates an entirely new unnamed new space, and I'm not sure if that is what i would want.
- Creating new windows lacks the UX compared to Chrome, where you can just drag it out anywhere and it works natively the way a windows app is expected to.
- Middle-clicking the Arc icon in the taskbar doesn't do anything (should open a new window). And Right Click->New window opens the original Space with the same tabs,it feels very off and buggy, I don't see the benefit.
- Splitting is probably the closest I found to match the way I typically use a browser. However these are also not very intuitive, its hard to navigate, replace/add/close tabs, theres a weird white border, you cant split vertically
4. Settings
I couldn't wait to dive into the settings and personalize my Arc experience to fix all of these "issues" I was having. Only to find that settings pretty much don't exist. There is nothing.(I'm not talking about chromium settings, these need to exist. But even these are impossible to find for an average user)
Here are all the available options
- Change the Theme between the two (they seem exactly the same)
- Change default search engine
- Setup when tabs are archived
- THATS IT, those 3 settings are the only ones that exist.
5. Why?
- Opening a URL/Search window always shows "The Browser Company" youtube channel as one of the option? At least disable it when opened once, or put more rows in this menu, you remove an entire space for most recently opened places for an ad.
Navigating off a page playing a puts a video in a small window over your other stuff. Maybe 1/20 times i watch a video I might want this to happen, the rest of the time, its a music video, podcast, something to listen to, you just navigated quickly off of it, etc. At least add an option to remove this.(As I was writing this i found a way to disable the "picture in picture", I will leave the section to show my initial thought, but im pleasantly surprised i was able to fix this and im willing to give other features a try the same way)
Conclusion
I will still be using Arc for a while to see if I can get used to some of my current pain-points and to give it a better shot, as well as wait for potential upgrades.Let me know what you guys think and if you found a workaround for some of my issues. Or have any other benefits to Arc that i filed to notice.
Thanks for reading
2024.05.16 19:01 Excellent_Rich4930 My wife and I have been married for 9 years and have been together for 13 years, she has recently re-connected with her first BF from high school and I can't stop letting it bother me.
Just a little backstory, this EX was her first everything but he was also supremely emotionally abusive. He would spread rumors about her, and essentially ruined her social life in high school. They only spent 8-10 months together total before he turned on her. It has always been a source of trauma for her.
Recently, he came messaging her on FB. He kept trying to apologize and kept messaging her every few months. Finally she answered back and they started talking. I told her I supported facing him to get any closure and help heal any wounds she's carrying. I never once had an issue with her talking to this Ex or any Ex. I've never been the jealous type, I trust her completely even though I don't trust this dude for one second with his strange intentions of reaching out to her 20 years later.
Anyway, fast forward 2 weeks, I notice her texting non-stop for hours one evening. I knew immediately is wasn't just a friend, I knew it was him. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to be "that guy". But my stomach was in a knot seeing her so engaged with her Ex.
A few days later she said she wanted to let me know that they spoke on the phone and are now texting, and that he's really changed. That she unpacked this all with her therapist and they both think it would be good to forgive and move on and have this connection. They are now meeting for dinner and a movie to meet in person for the first time in 20+ years to unpack everything. She subtlety mentioned he warned him she doesn't look the same as she did in high school, and that he re-assured her she will always be beautiful and that of all the people he dated she treated him the best. I asked if that was her goal, to get this male attention from someone else from her past. And she admitted that it felt good to hear it from someone else besides me. All things I understand. I totally do. Being together with the same person for that long I'm sure brings on its monotony. But I've always strived to make her feel wanted, desired, appreciated, loved, cared for. And now I question what I'm not providing her.
I asked her if I was lacking anything that she is seeking in someone else, and she said no that we are fine and that this is something different. And to her credit she has not acted different with me at all, we are still close, there's no awkwardness or distance other than me getting stress cramps and trying to hide how all this affects me. At the end of the day it still feels like it's an "emotional affair". But I'm scared of even bringing that up because I don't want to come across as some immature "jealous" husband. He is now on her FB, "hearting/loving" every post of hers, yes even the ones with me in them. She then asked me why I was checking who likes her posts. I told her I didnt, that when I go to like a post of hers I just see right there he's already there with a "heart" on it.
I know it sounds childlike and immature, and I've seen similar posts here with this same situation. But the fact that my wife is enjoying the attention but assures me that she has zero feelings for him and that they just talk about movies and music still doesn't make me feel any better. I can't sleep most nights now, this knot in my stomach won't go away. Last night I smoked 4 joints and downed 2 glasses of scotch to try and knock myself out but it was like my body was immune to the effects, I spent the whole night wondering why she's doing this even though she's explained it from her POV several times now. I trust her 100%, but my the stress and anxiety just won't go away and now I need to hide it because I fear of making her think I'm some controlling person that wants to dictate who she can or cannot speak to. I don't want that, that's not who I am. I honestly told her I'd be fine if this was some random guy friend, or even a stranger from Reddit or something. But the fact that this guy not only has been with her, but also treated her poorly, just makes it all weird to me.
I don't know what I can possibly do without making her resent me. I don't want a world where she cuts off this guy fully and then resents me for making her feel like she needs to do that. But from the very beginning this whole thing was supposed to be about getting closure, and the surprise of it turning into texting and now meeting up took me by surprise. She's been very open about it, she isn't hiding anything. But part of me feels like he's making moves on her, hitting on her, or just being flirty with her. I haven't seen any of the texts, and I would never look unless my wife willingly showed me (I havent asked to see them because I really do trust her, I dont want to go down that road).
Anyway, it's been throwing me for a loop, and I miss being able to sleep without a painful knot in my chest and stomach. As someone who's been passed over many times before meeting my wife, those experiences naturally pop up in my head. But I know she'd never do anything since this dude is a mess. He may have a GF but he's unemployed, went to jail and has a criminal record, and never got an education. I just don't know what to make of this, is this an emotional affair? Am I being a weak selfish person wanting this dude to just go back to living in the shadows? I just feel all out of sorts over it and don't know how I can even approach this without being the bad guy.
submitted by Excellent_Rich4930 to Marriage [link] [comments]
Recently, he came messaging her on FB. He kept trying to apologize and kept messaging her every few months. Finally she answered back and they started talking. I told her I supported facing him to get any closure and help heal any wounds she's carrying. I never once had an issue with her talking to this Ex or any Ex. I've never been the jealous type, I trust her completely even though I don't trust this dude for one second with his strange intentions of reaching out to her 20 years later.
Anyway, fast forward 2 weeks, I notice her texting non-stop for hours one evening. I knew immediately is wasn't just a friend, I knew it was him. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to be "that guy". But my stomach was in a knot seeing her so engaged with her Ex.
A few days later she said she wanted to let me know that they spoke on the phone and are now texting, and that he's really changed. That she unpacked this all with her therapist and they both think it would be good to forgive and move on and have this connection. They are now meeting for dinner and a movie to meet in person for the first time in 20+ years to unpack everything. She subtlety mentioned he warned him she doesn't look the same as she did in high school, and that he re-assured her she will always be beautiful and that of all the people he dated she treated him the best. I asked if that was her goal, to get this male attention from someone else from her past. And she admitted that it felt good to hear it from someone else besides me. All things I understand. I totally do. Being together with the same person for that long I'm sure brings on its monotony. But I've always strived to make her feel wanted, desired, appreciated, loved, cared for. And now I question what I'm not providing her.
I asked her if I was lacking anything that she is seeking in someone else, and she said no that we are fine and that this is something different. And to her credit she has not acted different with me at all, we are still close, there's no awkwardness or distance other than me getting stress cramps and trying to hide how all this affects me. At the end of the day it still feels like it's an "emotional affair". But I'm scared of even bringing that up because I don't want to come across as some immature "jealous" husband. He is now on her FB, "hearting/loving" every post of hers, yes even the ones with me in them. She then asked me why I was checking who likes her posts. I told her I didnt, that when I go to like a post of hers I just see right there he's already there with a "heart" on it.
I know it sounds childlike and immature, and I've seen similar posts here with this same situation. But the fact that my wife is enjoying the attention but assures me that she has zero feelings for him and that they just talk about movies and music still doesn't make me feel any better. I can't sleep most nights now, this knot in my stomach won't go away. Last night I smoked 4 joints and downed 2 glasses of scotch to try and knock myself out but it was like my body was immune to the effects, I spent the whole night wondering why she's doing this even though she's explained it from her POV several times now. I trust her 100%, but my the stress and anxiety just won't go away and now I need to hide it because I fear of making her think I'm some controlling person that wants to dictate who she can or cannot speak to. I don't want that, that's not who I am. I honestly told her I'd be fine if this was some random guy friend, or even a stranger from Reddit or something. But the fact that this guy not only has been with her, but also treated her poorly, just makes it all weird to me.
I don't know what I can possibly do without making her resent me. I don't want a world where she cuts off this guy fully and then resents me for making her feel like she needs to do that. But from the very beginning this whole thing was supposed to be about getting closure, and the surprise of it turning into texting and now meeting up took me by surprise. She's been very open about it, she isn't hiding anything. But part of me feels like he's making moves on her, hitting on her, or just being flirty with her. I haven't seen any of the texts, and I would never look unless my wife willingly showed me (I havent asked to see them because I really do trust her, I dont want to go down that road).
Anyway, it's been throwing me for a loop, and I miss being able to sleep without a painful knot in my chest and stomach. As someone who's been passed over many times before meeting my wife, those experiences naturally pop up in my head. But I know she'd never do anything since this dude is a mess. He may have a GF but he's unemployed, went to jail and has a criminal record, and never got an education. I just don't know what to make of this, is this an emotional affair? Am I being a weak selfish person wanting this dude to just go back to living in the shadows? I just feel all out of sorts over it and don't know how I can even approach this without being the bad guy.
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- Pixplode
- Pizza Connection 3
- Plague tale
- Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition
- Planet Alcatraz
- PLANET ZOO
- PlateUp!
- Pogostuck: Rage With Your Friends
- Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold'em
- Police Stories
- Poly Island
- Post Void
- Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
- Prank Call
- Prehistoric Kingdom
- Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire
- Pretty Girls Panic!
- Prey
- Primal Carnage: Extinction
- Princess Kaguya: Legend of the Moon Warrior
- Pro Cycling Manager 2020
- Prodeus
- Project CARS - GOTY Edition
- Project Warlock
- Project Wingman (EU)
- PROJECT WINTER
- Propnight
- PULSAR: The Lost Colony
- qomp
- Quadrilateral Cowboy
- Quake II
- Quantum Break
- Quern - Undying Thoughts
- Radio Commander
- RAGE
- Rage in Peace
- RAILROAD CORPORATION
- Railroad Tycoon 3
- Railroad Tycoon II Platinum
- Railway Empire
- Rain World
- Rayon Riddles - Rise of the Goblin King
- Re: Legend
- REBEL COPS
- Rebel Galaxy
- Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
- Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
- Red Riding Hood - Star Crossed Lovers
- Red Ronin
- RED SOLSTICE 2: SURVIVORS
- Redout Complete Bundle
- Redout: Enhanced Edition
- Redout: Enhanced Edition + DLC pack
- Regular Human Basketball
- REKT! High Octane Stunts
- Relicta
- REMNANT: FROM THE ASHES - COMPLETE EDITION
- Republique
- Rescue Party: Live!
- Resident Evil 0 HD REMASTER
- Resident Evil 4
- Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition
- Resident Evil 7 Biohazard
- Resident Evil Revelations
- Resort Boss: Golf
- RETROWAVE
- rFactor 2
- RiME
- Ring of Pain
- Rise of Industry + 2130 DLC
- Rise of the Slime
- Rising Storm 2: Vietnam + 2 DLCs
- Riven: The Sequel to MYST
- River City Girls
- River City Ransom: Underground
- Roarr! Jurassic Edition
- Roboquest
- Robot Squad Simulator 2017
- Rogue : Genesia
- ROGUE HEROES: RUINS OF TASOS
- ROGUE LORDS
- Rogue Stormers
- rollercoaster tycoon 2
- ROTASTIC
- Roundguard
- ROUNDS
- RUNNING WITH RIFLES
- Rustler
- Ryse: Son of Rome
- S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
- Sailing Era
- Saint Row
- Sam and Max Devil's Playhouse
- SAMUDRA
- Sands of Aura
- Sands of Salzaar
- Saturday Morning RPG
- Save Room - Organization Puzzle
- Scarlet Tower
- Scorn
- SCP: 5K
- SCUM
- SEARCH PARTY: Director's Cut
- Second Extinction
- Secret Government
- Serious Sam 3 Bonus Content DLC, Serious Sam 3: Jewel of the Nile, and Serious Sam 3: BFE
- SEUM speedrunners from hell
- SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell
- Severed Steel
- Shadow Tactics: Aiko's Choice
- Shadowgate
- SHADOWS: AWAKENING
- Shape of the World
- She Sees Red - Interactive Movie
- Shenmue I & II
- SHENZHEN I/O
- Shift Happens
- Shing!
- Shoppe Keep 2 - Business and Agriculture RPG Simulation
- Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate
- Sid Meier's Civilization VI
- Sid Meier's Railroads!
- Sifu Deluxe Edition Upgrade Bundle (EPIC)
- Silver Chains
- SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition
- Sinking Island
- SINNER: Sacrifice for Redemption
- Skautfold Chapters 1-4
- Skullgirls 2nd Encore
- Slain: Back from Hell
- Slap City
- Slash It
- Slash It 2
- Slash It Ultimate
- Slay the Spire
- Small World
- Smart Factory Tycoon
- Smile For Me
- Smoke and Sacrifice
- Smoke and Sacrifice
- Smushi Come Home
- Snail bob 2 tiny troubles
- Sniper Elite 3
- Sniper Elite 3 + Season Pass DLC
- Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe Edition
- Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 - Season Pass Edition
- Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts
- Snooker 19
- SONG OF HORROR COMPLETE EDITION
- Songs of Conquest
- Sonic Adventure 2
- Sonic Adventure DX
- Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing
- Sonic Generations Collection
- Soulblight
- Souldiers
- SOULSTICE
- Soundfall
- Source of Madness
- Spartan Fist
- Spec Ops
- Speed Limit
- Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo
- Spidersaurs
- Spin Rush
- Spirit Hunter: Death Mark
- Spirit of the Island
- Spirit of the North
- Spring Bonus
- Stairs
- STAR WARS - Knights of the Old Republic
- STAR WARS - The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition
- Star Wolves
- Starsand
- STASIS: Bone Totem
- State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition
- Steel Rats™
- Stick Fight: The Game
- Still Life
- Still Life 2
- Stirring Abyss
- STONE
- Strange Brigade
- Strange Brigade Deluxe Edition
- STRANGER
- Strategic Command: World War I
- Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg
- Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom
- Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism
- Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty
- Strategy & Tactics: Wargame Collection
- Streamer Life Simulator
- Street Fighter V
- Street of fury ex
- Strider
- Strikey Sisters
- Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
- Styx: Master of Shadows
- Styx: Shards of Darkness
- SuchArt
- Sudden Strike Gold
- Suite 776
- Sumoman
- Sunblaze
- SUNLESS BUNDLE
- Sunset Overdrive
- Super Buff HD
- Super Mag Bot
- Superbugs: Awaken
- Superhot
- Surgeon Simulator 2
- Survive the Nights
- Surviving Mars
- Surviving Mars
- Surviving The Aftermath
- Swag and Sorcery
- Sword Legacy Omen
- Sword of the Necromancer
- Swords and Soldiers 2 Shawarmageddon
- Syberia 3
- Symphonic Rain
- Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga
- Synthwave Dream '85
- Tacoma
- Take Off - The Flight Simulator
- Tales
- Tales from the Borderlands
- Tales of Vesperia™: Definitive Edition
- Talk to Strangers
- Tallowmere
- Tangledeep
- Tank Mechanic Simulator
- Tannenberg
- Team Sonic Racing
- TEKKEN 7
- TEMTEM
- Terminus: Zombie Survivors
- Terror of Hemasaurus
- Textorcist
- Tharsis
- The Adventure Pals
- The Amazing American Circus
- The Anacrusis
- The Ascent
- The Battle of Polytopia
- The Battle of Polytopia *DLC1. Cymanti Tribe *DLC2. ∑∫ỹriȱŋ Tribe *DLC3. Aquarion Tribe *DLC4. Polaris Tribe
- The Blackout Club
- The Callisto Protocol™
- The Chess Variants Club
- The Citadel
- The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes
- THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: LITTLE HOPE
- The Darkest Tales
- The Dungeon Beneath
- The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos
- The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® Game of the Year Edition
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition
- The Elder Scrolls Online
- The Escapists 2
- THE GAME OF LIFE 2
- The Golf Club™ 2019 featuring PGA TOUR
- The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game
- The Hong Kong Massacre
- The Horror Of Salazar House
- The Innsmouth Case
- The Invisible Hours
- The Jackbox Party Pack 9
- The Last Campfire
- The LEGO Movie 2 Videogame
- The Letter - Horror Visual Novel
- The Long Dark
- The Manhole: Masterpiece Edition
- The Mortuary Assistant
- The Mummy Demastered
- The Outer Worlds
- THE OUTER WORLDS: SPACER'S CHOICE EDITION
- THE PALE BEYOND
- The Quarry
- The Quarry deluxe
- The Ramp
- The Red Lantern
- The Rewinder
- The Sacred Tears TRUE
- The Sexy Brutale
- The Tarnishing of Juxtia
- The Tenants
- The Uncertain - The Last Quiet Day
- THE UNCERTAIN: LAST QUIET DAY
- The Uncertain: Light At The End
- The USB Stick Found in the Grass
- The Walking Dead
- The Walking Dead - 400 Days
- The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners
- The Walking Dead: A New Frontier
- The Walking Dead: Final Season
- The Walking Dead: Michonne - A Telltale Miniseries
- The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
- The Walking Dead: Season 1
- The Walking Dead: Season Two
- The Way
- The Wild At Heart
- The Wild Eight
- The Witness
- Them and Us
- They Bleed Pixels
- Thief of Thieves
- This War of Mine
- This Way Madness Lies
- Three Kingdom: The Journey
- Time on Frog Island
- Tinkertown
- Tiny Tina’s Wonderland(EU)
- TINY TINA'S WONDERLANDS CHAOTIC GREAT EDITION
- Tiny Troopers
- Tinykin
- Tinytopia
- TIS-100
- Titan Quest
- Tokyo Xanadu eX+
- Tools up
- Tooth and Tail
- Torchlight
- Total Tank Simulator
- Tour de France 2020
- Tower Unite
- Trailblazers
- Train Sim World 3: Standard Edition
- Train Simulator Classic
- Train Valley 1
- Transport INC
- Treasure Hunter Simulator
- TRIBES OF MIDGARD
- Trine 4
- Trinity Fusion
- Trombone Champ
- Tropico 5 - Complete Collection
- Trover Saves the Universe
- Tunche
- Turmoil
- Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
- Twin Mirror
- Two Point Campus
- Two Point Hospital
- TYPECAST
- Tyrant's Blessing
- Ultimate Chicken Horse
- Ultimate Zombie Defense
- Ultra Space Battle Brawl
- Unavowed
- Undead Horde
- Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy
- Unity of Command: Stalingrad Campaign
- Universim
- UNLOVED
- Unpacking
- Until I have you
- Unto The End
- Upside Down
- URU: Complete Chronicles
- Vagante
- Valfaris
- Valfaris: Mecha Therion
- Valkryia Chronicles 4 Complete Edition
- Valkyria Chronicles 4 Complete Edition
- Valkyria Chronicles 4: Complete Edition
- Vambrace: Cold Soul
- Vampire Survivors
- Vectronom
- Velocity Noodle
- Venba
- Verne: The Shape of Fantasy
- Victoria 3
- Victoria II
- Viking: Battle For Asgard
- Virgo Versus The Zodiac
- VirtuaVerse
- Visage
- Viscerafest
- Void Bastards
- VOIDIGO
- Volcanoids
- Voltage High Society
- V-Rally 4
- Wanderlust: Travel Stories (GOG)
- Wargroove
- Warhammer 40,000 Sanctus Reach - Complete Edition
- Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon - Imperium Complete
- Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector
- Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War
- Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf Special Edition
- WARHAMMER AGE OF SIGMAR: REALMS OF RUIN – ULTIMATE EDITION
- Warhammer vermintide collector's edition
- Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide
- Warhammer: Vermintide 2
- Warman
- Wasteland 3
- Wayward
- WE NEED TO GO DEEPER
- We should talk.
- We Were Here Together
- We Were Here Too
- Webbed
- What Lies in the Multiverse
- When Ski Lifts Go Wrong
- while True: learn()
- Whos Your daddy
- Wick
- Will You Snail?
- Windward
- Witch It
- Witchy Life Story
- wizard of legends
- Wolfenstein 3D
- Worms Rumble
- WRC 6 FIA World Rally Championship
- WRC 7 FIA World Rally Championship
- WWE 2K Battlegrounds
- WWE 2K23
- WWZ Aftermath
- Wytchwood
- X-COM: COMPLETE PACK
- XCOM: ULTIMATE COLLECTION
- XIII - Classic
- X-Morph: Defense + European Assault, Survival of the Fittest, and Last Bastion DLC
- X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
- Yakuza Kiwami
- Yakuza: Like A Dragon
- Yumeutsutsu Re:After
- Yumeutsutsu Re:Master
- Zen Chess: Mate in One, Mate in 2 , Mate in 3 , Mate in 4 , Champion's Moves (5 games)
- Ziggurat
- Zombie Army 4
- Zombie Army Trilogy
- Zool Redimensioned
- For The King: Lost Civilization Adventure Pack
- Train Simulator: Isle of Wight Route Add-On
- Train Simulator: Woodhead Electric Railway in Blue Route Add-On
- Train Simulator: North Somerset Railway Route Add-On
- Train Simulator: Union Pacific Heritage SD70ACes Loco Add-On
- Train Simulator: London to Brighton Route Add-On
- BR Class 170 'Turbostar' DMU Add-On
- DB BR 648 Loco Add-On
- Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations
- Expansion - Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise
- Expansion - Europa Universalis IV: Res Publica
- Grand Central Class 180 'Adelante' DMU Add-On
- Peninsula Corridor: San Francisco - Gilroy Route Add-On
- SONIC ADVENTURE 2: BATTLE
- Small World - A Spider's Web
- Small World - Cursed
- Small World - Royal Bonus
- The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos - Goodies Pack
- The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos - OST
- Thompson Class B1 Loco Add-On
- Total War: Shogun 2 - Rise of the Samurai
- Train Sim World® 3: Birmingham Cross-city line
- Train Sim World®: BR Class 20 'Chopper' Loco
- Train Sim World®: Brighton Main Line: London Victoria - Brighton
- Train Sim World®: Caltrain MP36PH-3C 'Baby Bullet'
- Train Sim World®: Cathcart Circle Line: Glasgow - Newton & Neilston
- Train Sim World®: Clinchfield Railroad: Elkhorn - Dante
- Train Sim World®: Great Western Express
- Train Sim World®: Hauptstrecke Hamburg - Lubeck
- Train Sim World®: LIRR M3 EMU
- Train Sim World®: Long Island Rail Road: New York - Hicksville
- Train Sim World®: Nahverkehr Dresden - Riesa
- Train Sim World®: Northern Trans-Pennine: Manchester - Leeds
- Train Sim World®: Peninsula Corridor: San Francisco - San Jose
- Train Sim World®: Rhein-Ruhr Osten: Wuppertal - Hagen
- Train Sim World®: Tees Valley Line: Darlington - Saltburn-by-the-sea
- Worms Rumble - Armageddon Weapon Skin Pack
- Worms Rumble - Captain & Shark Double Pack
- Worms Rumble - Legends Pack
- Worms Rumble - New Challengers Pack
- Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7
- Dagon: by H. P. Lovecraft - The Eldritch Box DLC
- Duke Nukem Forever Hail to the Icons
- Duke Nukem Forever The Doctor Who Cloned Me
- GRIP: Combat Racing - Cygon Garage Kit
- GRIP: Combat Racing - Nyvoss Garage Kit
- GRIP: Combat Racing - Terra Garage Kit
- GRIP: Combat Racing - Vintek Garage Kit
- GameGuru
- GameMaker Studio 2 Creator 12 Months
- Intro to Game Development with Unity
- Music Maker EDM Edition
- Neverwinter Nights: Darkness Over Daggerford
- Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Dark Dreams of Furiae
- Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Tyrants of the Moonsea
- Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition
- Neverwinter Nights: Infinite Dungeons
- Neverwinter Nights: Pirates of the Sword Coast
- Neverwinter Nights: Wyvern Crown of Cormyr
- PDF-Suite 1 Year License
- Pathfinder Second Edition Core Rulebook and Starfinder Core Rulebook
- RPG Maker VX
- WWE 2K BATTLEGROUNDS - Ultimate Brawlers Pass
- We Are Alright
- The Outer Worlds Expansion Pass
- A Hat in Time - Seal the Deal DLC
- City Skylines:mass transit
- A Game Of Thrones - A Dance With Dragons
- A Game Of Thrones - A Feast For Crows
- Blood Rage: Digital Edition - Gods of Asgard
- Blood Rage: Digital Edition - Mythical Monsters
- Blood Rage: Digital Edition - Mystics of Midgard
- Carcassonne - The Princess and The Dragon DLC
- Carcassonne - Traders & Builders DLC
- Carcassonne - Winter & Gingerbread Man DLC
- Carcassonne - Inns & Cathedrals
- Carcassonne - The River
- Splendor: The Trading Posts DLC
- Splendor: The Strongholds DLC
- Splendor: The Cities DLC
- Small World - Be Not Afraid... DLC
- Small World - Grand Dames DLC
- Small World - Cursed!
- Sands of Salzaar - The Ember Saga
- Sands of Salzaar - The Tournament
- Monster Train: The Last Divinity DLC
- WARSAW
2024.05.16 18:44 calvin324hk [H] 1000+ Games / DLCs / VR Games [W] Paypal / Wishlist / Offers
https://www.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/pikmri/calvin324hks_igs_rep_page/
https://www.reddit.com/sgsflaicomments/of2wzu/flair_profile_ucalvin324hk/
Wishlist
Region: NA (Canada)
Fees on buyer if any, currency is USD unless specified
CTRL + F to find your games in terms of name
DLCs and Softwares:
submitted by calvin324hk to SteamGameSwap [link] [comments]
https://www.reddit.com/sgsflaicomments/of2wzu/flair_profile_ucalvin324hk/
Wishlist
Region: NA (Canada)
Fees on buyer if any, currency is USD unless specified
CTRL + F to find your games in terms of name
- 10 Second Ninja X
- 11-11 Memories Retold
- 112 Operator
- 12 is Better Than 6
- 198X
- 1993 Space Machine
- 60 Parsecs
- 7 Billion Humans
- 8 DOORS
- 8-bit Adventure Anthology: Volume I
- 9 Years of Shadows
- 911 Operator
- A Game of Thrones: The Board Game
- A Hat in Time
- A Hole New World
- A JUGGLER'S TALE
- A Long Way Down
- A PLAGUE TALE: INNOCENCE
- A Robot Named Fight!
- A Tale for Anna
- A.I.M.2 Clan Wars
- Ace Combat Assault Horizon Enhanced Edition
- Adore
- Aeterna Noctis
- AETHERIS
- Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot The First Cases
- AIdol
- Airborne Kingdom
- Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
- Alder's Blood: Definitive Edition
- Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo
- Alien Breed Trilogy
- Aliens vs. Predator™ Collection
- All-Star Fruit Racing
- Almost There: The Platformer
- American Fugitive
- American Truck Simulator
- Amerzone: The Explorer’s Legacy
- AMID EVIL
- Amnesia rebirth
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent + Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
- Anomalous
- Another World – 20th Anniversary Edition
- Antigraviator
- Anuchard
- APICO
- APICO
- Aragami
- Aragami 2
- Arboria
- Arcade Paradise
- Arcade Paradise - Arcade Paradise EP
- Arcade Spirits
- Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace
- Armada 2526 Gold Edition
- Army Men RTS
- army of ruin
- Arto
- Ary and the Secret of Seasons
- As Far as the Eye
- Ascension to the Throne
- Assemble With Care
- Assetto Corsa Competizione
- Assetto Corsa Ultimate Edition
- Astebreed Definitive Edition
- Astronarch
- Attack of the Earthlings
- Automachef
- Automobilista
- Automobilista 2
- AUTONAUTS
- AUTONAUTS VS PIRATEBOTS
- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora™ - Ubisoft Connect
- AVICII Invector: Encore Edition
- Awesomenauts All Nauts pack
- Baba is you
- Back 4 Blood
- Back 4 blood (EU)
- Backbone
- Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
- Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
- Banners of Ruin
- Bartlow's Dread Machine
- BASEMENT
- Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials
- Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition
- Batman: Arkham Origins
- Battle Royale Tycoon
- Battlecruisers
- Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
- BATTLESTAR GALACTICA DEADLOCK SEASON ONE
- Battlestar Galactica Deadlock: Complete
- BATTLETECH MERCENARY COLLECTION
- BATTLETECH Shadow Hawk Pack
- BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION
- BEFORE WE LEAVE
- Beholder 2
- Ben 10
- Ben 10: Power Trip
- Bendy and the Ink Machine™
- Between the Stars
- Beyond a Steel Sky
- Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
- Beyond the Long Night
- BEYOND THE WIRE
- Beyond: Two Souls
- BIOMUTANT
- Bionic Commando
- Bionic Commando Rearmed
- BioShock: The Collection
- BLACK BOOK
- Black Moon Chronicles
- Black Paradox
- BLACK SKYLANDS
- BLACKHOLE: Complete Edition
- Blacksad: Under the Skin
- Blade of Darkness
- Blasphemous
- Blazing Chrome
- Blightbound
- Blood And Zombies
- Blood Rage: Digital Edition
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
- Bomber Crew
- Boneless Zombie
- Boomerang Fu
- Borderlands 3
- Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe
- Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition
- Borderlands: The Handsome Collection
- Bot Vice
- Bounty of One
- Brawlout
- Breakout: Recharged
- Breathedge
- bridge constructor
- Bridge constructor medieval
- bridge constructor stunts
- Broken Lines
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
- Brutal Legend
- Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling
- BUILDER SIMULATOR
- calico
- Call of Duty® Modern Warfare 3™ (2011)
- Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
- Car Mechanic 2018
- Car Mechanic Simulator 2015
- Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
- Castle Morihisa
- Castle on the Coast
- castle storm
- CastleStorm
- Cat Cafe Manager
- Caveblazers
- Celeste
- Centipede: Recharged
- CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience
- Charlie's Adventure
- Chenso Club
- Chernobylite: Enhanced Edition
- Chess Ultra
- Chicago 1930 : The Prohibition
- Chivalry 2
- Chop Goblins
- Chorus
- Cities Skylines + After Dark
- Cities: Skylines
- City of Beats
- CivCity: Rome
- Click and Slay
- Cloud Gardens
- Cloudpunk
- Code Vein
- Coffee Talk
- Comedy Night
- Command & Conquer Remastered (Origin)
- Complete Dread X Collection
- Conarium
- Construction Simulator (2015) Deluxe Edition
- Constructor Plus
- Control
- Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
- cornucopia
- Corridor Z
- Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel
- Cosmonautica
- Crash Drive 2
- Crash Drive 3
- Creaks
- Creepy Tale
- Crookz the big heist
- CROSSBOW: Bloodnight
- Crush Your Enemies
- Cube Runner
- Cultist Simulator: Anthology Edition
- Curse: The Eye of Isis
- Cyber Ops
- Cybercube
- Danger Scavenger
- Dark Deity
- DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: HOUSE OF ASHES
- Darksiders Warmastered
- Darkwood
- DARQ: Complete Edition
- Day of the Tentacle Remastered
- days of war definitive edition
- Dead by Daylight
- Dead Estate
- Dead Rising 2
- Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
- Death Stranding Directors Cut
- DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR'S CUT
- Deceased
- DECEIVE INC.
- Degrees of Separation
- Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire
- Deliver Us The Moon
- Demetrios - Deluxe Edition
- Depraved
- DESCENDERS
- DESOLATE
- Destiny 2: Beyond Light
- DESTROYER: THE U-BOAT HUNTER
- Detention
- Devil May Cry HD Collection
- Devilated
- Dicey Dungeons
- Dirt 5
- dirt rally
- Dirt Rally 2.0
- Disaster Band
- Disciples III: Reincarnation
- Discolored
- DISTRAINT 2
- Distrust
- DmC: Devil May Cry
- Do Not Feed the Monkeys
- Don't Be Afraid
- Doomed Lands
- Door Kickers: Action Squad
- Doorways: Prelude
- Downfall
- Dragons Dogma Dark Arisen
- Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
- Draugen
- Draw Slasher
- Drawful 2
- Dreams in the Witch House
- Dreamscaper
- DreamWorks Dragons: Dawn of New Riders
- DRIFT21
- Driftland: The Magic Revival
- drive!drive!drive!
- Drone Swarm
- Due Process
- Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project
- Duke of Alpha Centauri
- Dungeon Rushers
- Dungeons 2
- Dungeons 3
- DUSK
- Dusk Diver
- Dust to the End
- DV: Rings of Saturn
- Dynopunk
- Earth Defense Force 4.1 The Shadow of New Despair
- Eastern Exorcist
- Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
- El Matador
- Elderand
- ELDEST SOULS
- Electrician Simulator
- Elemental Survivors
- Elex
- Elex II
- Elite Dangerous
- Embr
- Empire: Total War - Definitive Edition
- Empyrion - Galactic Survival
- ENCASED: A SCI-FI POST-APOCALYPTIC RPG
- Endless Space 2
- Endless Space 2 - Digital Deluxe Edition
- Endless Space® 2 - Digital Deluxe Edition
- Endzone - A World Apart
- Epistory - Typing Chronicles
- Escape the backrooms
- Eternal Threads
- Europa Universalis IV
- European Ship Simulator
- Everdream Valley
- Evil Genius 2: World Domination
- Exorder
- EXPEDITIONS: ROME
- Expeditions: Viking
- Explosionade
- F1 2018
- F1 2019 Anniversary Edition
- F1 2020
- F1 RACE STARS Complete Edition Include DLC
- Fable Anniversary
- Factory Town
- Fallback uprising
- FALLOUT 1
- Family Mysteries 3: Criminal Mindset
- FANTASY BLACKSMITH
- FARMER'S DYNASTY
- Farming Simulator 17
- Farming Simulator 19
- Fictorum
- Field of Glory II
- Fights in Tight Spaces
- Filthy Animals Heist Simulator
- Firefighting Simulator - The Squad
- Fishing Adventure
- Flashback
- FLATLAND Vol.2
- FlatOut
- FLING TO THE FINISH
- Floppy Knights
- Fluffy Horde
- FOBIA - ST. DINFNA HOTEL
- For the King
- For The King: Lost Civilization Adventure Pack
- Forgive me Father
- Forts
- Fred3ric
- Fresh Start Cleaning Simulator
- Friends vs Friends
- Frogun
- From Space
- Frostpunk: Game of the Year Edition
- Frozenheim
- Fun with Ragdolls: The Game
- Funtasia
- Gamedec
- Gamedec - Definitive Edition
- Gang Beasts
- GARAGE bad trip
- Garden Story
- Garfield Kart
- GAS STATION SIMULATOR
- Gelly Break Deluxe
- Genesis Alpha One Deluxe Edition
- Gevaudan
- Ghostrunner
- Giana Sisters 2D
- GIGA WRECKER
- Gigantosaurus: Dino Kart
- Glitch Busters: Stuck On You
- Gloria Victis
- Go Home Dinosaurs
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2024.05.16 18:30 BigBoiforpresident [16M] [Ohio/US] I'm bored and want to meet some new people, I'm kind of a loner too, so it would help to chat
Idk really know what to put here, so I'll put some hobbies: I like music, watching movies, playing games with the only friend I really have, and complaining about my back pain.
submitted by BigBoiforpresident to MeetNewPeopleHere [link] [comments]
2024.05.16 18:25 Basket_475 I rewatched The Darjeeling Limited on mushrooms.
Wow. I had seen the movie a few times, and I’m no stranger to mushrooms, but I was picking up on so many little things emotionally between the characters I never did before.
I can’t tell if it’s just the mushrooms but I have an even deeper appreciation for Wes as a story teller.
The scene when he took his bandages off I felt so much pain from his character and how it was a suicide attempt. From this suicide attempt is the impetus for the whole trip.
Also the scene with the mother and them holding hands while the music plays. I finally understand that was the only way the mother could communicate her own pain and suffering. She was trying to tell the boys that she too is hurt and confused.
I know this probably seems dumb but lots of stuff made more sense.
submitted by Basket_475 to wesanderson [link] [comments]
I can’t tell if it’s just the mushrooms but I have an even deeper appreciation for Wes as a story teller.
The scene when he took his bandages off I felt so much pain from his character and how it was a suicide attempt. From this suicide attempt is the impetus for the whole trip.
Also the scene with the mother and them holding hands while the music plays. I finally understand that was the only way the mother could communicate her own pain and suffering. She was trying to tell the boys that she too is hurt and confused.
I know this probably seems dumb but lots of stuff made more sense.
2024.05.16 18:13 lexxstrum Where is the "Good Future" for the X-men/mutants in general?
Was talking about the X-men with a friend. He only knows them from the movies, shows and games, but he realized that no matter the future or timeline, it usually sucks for mutants.
And with my knowledge spanning the comics from the 80's to the early 2000's, I'm pretty sure he's right. I can't think of a future where Xavier's dream comes to pass. It's all Sentinels, camps, dystopia all the way down. At best they're second class citizens, like in comic Bishop's time. Usually they're hunted, killed or enslaved, like Days of Future Past or Apocalypse's far future.
Alternate timelines aren't much better; AoA is mutants in charge, but it's a war torn hellscape. Even the old Guardians of the Galaxy book showed mutants living isolated on a desert world with one small oasis to house them.
Where is the good timeline? Where is the future of coexistence, of peace? I've been out of the game for a bit, so maybe they've seen it but I haven't, but it seems it's all just pain and suffering for Homo Superior.
submitted by lexxstrum to xmen [link] [comments]
And with my knowledge spanning the comics from the 80's to the early 2000's, I'm pretty sure he's right. I can't think of a future where Xavier's dream comes to pass. It's all Sentinels, camps, dystopia all the way down. At best they're second class citizens, like in comic Bishop's time. Usually they're hunted, killed or enslaved, like Days of Future Past or Apocalypse's far future.
Alternate timelines aren't much better; AoA is mutants in charge, but it's a war torn hellscape. Even the old Guardians of the Galaxy book showed mutants living isolated on a desert world with one small oasis to house them.
Where is the good timeline? Where is the future of coexistence, of peace? I've been out of the game for a bit, so maybe they've seen it but I haven't, but it seems it's all just pain and suffering for Homo Superior.
2024.05.16 17:35 Final-Refuse7545 Can somebody please help me understand my classmates?
Hi. So, for context, I'm a younger millenial who decided to go back to college at the age of 27. My very first university experience was horrible and it took years to gather the courage to try again. I applied to both a different school and a different degree than the previous time, and I love it. The environment at the other school, a large public one, was cold, competitive and isolating. I stayed there way longer then I ever should've, because of how ingrained in me it was that any college degree is important and once you start one, you should stick it out. Except I really did feel that degree in particular was useless, with not that many work oppurtunities and a toxic, soul-sucking environment.
Now, I've joined a smaller private university, which is well ranked internationally and to study a subject that I'm genuinely passionate about.
The one issue with private universities in my country is that their standards on admission are very low. The teachers are still amazing and very fair, and although they do go a little easier on us that at my former school, they still grade you according to the grade you deserve (basically just because its easy to get in, doesn't mean it's easy to get out). So yes, there is a bit of a stigma where I'm from that, in private universities, you pay to get in and aren't actually smart or deserving (yet another reason why it took me so long to gather up the courage to take the leap and apply). But once, you're in, everybody's paying the same, and everybody is treated the same.
I do think a lot of my classmates' behaviour can be attributed to this - they weren't good students before, they've never really built the work ethic my very strict and very honest mother raised me with (and which a lot of my own millenial classmates in ''high school'' - secondary school here - also didn't have). A lot of them genuinely do not want to be here, and have said so. Their parents are paying and they come because ''they're made to''. For even more context, this school's tuition is about 3, maybe even 4 times now with inflation, the amount you would pay for a public university education - it isn't like the United States, it doesn't cost so much that people go into debt for years, but it is still a lot of money to come up with.
Aside from a few older students, and one or two who are around my age, most of them will have been born at around 2003 and 2004, plus a couple people who were 20 when we started first year.
A significant amount of them are extremely poorly behaved and disrespectful to our teachers. They can get extremely loud to the point several teachers have lost their patience and told them off (kinda the way it used to happen when I was in 8th grade, about a million years ago). It got to the point where I genuinely considered bringing earplugs to wear in the classes that took place in the anfitheaters, where the echo makes it genuinely painful to have that must noise.
A few of them either have been caught cheating, or have openly admited that they cheat. It has been reinforced again and again since week one how important it is that everybody in this program knows english, because in our area, all cientific papers must always be published in english, regardless of what country the study originated from. To facilitate things, an english class was added to our first year...which people regularly didn't show up to, a few of them have failed several times and have not made even the slightest effort to learn, resorting instead to automated translation softwares, which are very unreliable and more often than not will not convey the information correctly. This part confuses me greatly, because so much of the media people consume in this country is not dubbed. Shows, movies, music and so much stuff available for free on youtube is in english. That's how I myself learned. Except they don't seem to even want to try.
I've had several nightmare group projects experiences, to the point where even my therapist has agreed with me that I'm better off doing my work alone whenever I have the chance, because this isn't benificial socialization and it's hindering me and stressing me out more than it is building any skills. I had one girl disappear from a large period of time and then text me one week before the due date asking what the project was about (we had talked about it in person and I had emailed her several articles I found and had even told her to pick one to highlight).
When it was time to do the presentation, I told her to read carefully the parts of the source material that explained in more depth the things she was supposed to cover in her turn to speak. Instead, she read directly from the slides, and even read it wrong (said ''resposability'' instead of ''responsivity''). When the teacher asked her questions, she straight up didn't know.
Recently, two people I was doing a group project with tried to hire me to plagirize a report for them and we got into a fight that basically led me to strom out of a group project for the first time in my life and ask the teacher to grade me individually (she's amazing and was very accomodating and understanding). Found out the only reason those two wanted to work with me in the first place was because they were using me for grades, because I usually do super well in research projects and end up having high grades, which in a group project will bump up their own grades and let them barely pass the class. One simple conversation with them made quite clear they didn't actually understand the article we were supposed to be analyzing at all and I simply got fed up.
Now, earlier today, I was in the library, revising for a test I had and someone had stuck chewing gum on the bottom of the chair I was sitting in and now I have a huge white stain on my leggings that I can't get off.
That was kinda the final straw for me, because, not even back when I was in school, in 1st to 12th grade did this ever happen to me...
I'm sorry, but I really needed to vent...I really want to believe that not everyone is like this, but they have really been testing my patience lately.
submitted by Final-Refuse7545 to GenZ [link] [comments]
Now, I've joined a smaller private university, which is well ranked internationally and to study a subject that I'm genuinely passionate about.
The one issue with private universities in my country is that their standards on admission are very low. The teachers are still amazing and very fair, and although they do go a little easier on us that at my former school, they still grade you according to the grade you deserve (basically just because its easy to get in, doesn't mean it's easy to get out). So yes, there is a bit of a stigma where I'm from that, in private universities, you pay to get in and aren't actually smart or deserving (yet another reason why it took me so long to gather up the courage to take the leap and apply). But once, you're in, everybody's paying the same, and everybody is treated the same.
I do think a lot of my classmates' behaviour can be attributed to this - they weren't good students before, they've never really built the work ethic my very strict and very honest mother raised me with (and which a lot of my own millenial classmates in ''high school'' - secondary school here - also didn't have). A lot of them genuinely do not want to be here, and have said so. Their parents are paying and they come because ''they're made to''. For even more context, this school's tuition is about 3, maybe even 4 times now with inflation, the amount you would pay for a public university education - it isn't like the United States, it doesn't cost so much that people go into debt for years, but it is still a lot of money to come up with.
Aside from a few older students, and one or two who are around my age, most of them will have been born at around 2003 and 2004, plus a couple people who were 20 when we started first year.
A significant amount of them are extremely poorly behaved and disrespectful to our teachers. They can get extremely loud to the point several teachers have lost their patience and told them off (kinda the way it used to happen when I was in 8th grade, about a million years ago). It got to the point where I genuinely considered bringing earplugs to wear in the classes that took place in the anfitheaters, where the echo makes it genuinely painful to have that must noise.
A few of them either have been caught cheating, or have openly admited that they cheat. It has been reinforced again and again since week one how important it is that everybody in this program knows english, because in our area, all cientific papers must always be published in english, regardless of what country the study originated from. To facilitate things, an english class was added to our first year...which people regularly didn't show up to, a few of them have failed several times and have not made even the slightest effort to learn, resorting instead to automated translation softwares, which are very unreliable and more often than not will not convey the information correctly. This part confuses me greatly, because so much of the media people consume in this country is not dubbed. Shows, movies, music and so much stuff available for free on youtube is in english. That's how I myself learned. Except they don't seem to even want to try.
I've had several nightmare group projects experiences, to the point where even my therapist has agreed with me that I'm better off doing my work alone whenever I have the chance, because this isn't benificial socialization and it's hindering me and stressing me out more than it is building any skills. I had one girl disappear from a large period of time and then text me one week before the due date asking what the project was about (we had talked about it in person and I had emailed her several articles I found and had even told her to pick one to highlight).
When it was time to do the presentation, I told her to read carefully the parts of the source material that explained in more depth the things she was supposed to cover in her turn to speak. Instead, she read directly from the slides, and even read it wrong (said ''resposability'' instead of ''responsivity''). When the teacher asked her questions, she straight up didn't know.
Recently, two people I was doing a group project with tried to hire me to plagirize a report for them and we got into a fight that basically led me to strom out of a group project for the first time in my life and ask the teacher to grade me individually (she's amazing and was very accomodating and understanding). Found out the only reason those two wanted to work with me in the first place was because they were using me for grades, because I usually do super well in research projects and end up having high grades, which in a group project will bump up their own grades and let them barely pass the class. One simple conversation with them made quite clear they didn't actually understand the article we were supposed to be analyzing at all and I simply got fed up.
Now, earlier today, I was in the library, revising for a test I had and someone had stuck chewing gum on the bottom of the chair I was sitting in and now I have a huge white stain on my leggings that I can't get off.
That was kinda the final straw for me, because, not even back when I was in school, in 1st to 12th grade did this ever happen to me...
I'm sorry, but I really needed to vent...I really want to believe that not everyone is like this, but they have really been testing my patience lately.
2024.05.16 16:28 P_0_VV Camping in Skeleton Park
Part 1
The official story is that I hit my head. According to the lawyer I wasn't lucid enough to be a reliable witness, and honestly, I'm starting to believe that might be the truth. It's certainly easier to accept that everything was all just some nightmare.But if my mind wasn't playing tricks on me, and those fuck-heads didn’t have anything to do with my friend’s disappearance, then there truly is no explanation for what happened.
My therapist and parents both agree. The best way to preserve my sanity is to chalk it all up to my imagination. But I see understanding in their eyes when I recount the events. They want to believe me, I know it. That alone is enough to fuel my doubt.
—
School had begun that September with mourning. I only knew the guy who passed away by face and name. It had happened a month after his graduation, and two months before his first year at Cornell.
During the intercom-ordered moment of silence, I looked out through the classroom. Some were bored, some cried. Many shifted in their seats and were glancing around, like myself, counting every second till the awkwardness would end.
It ended sooner than we thought when a kid with sports goggles a size too big bouncing on his face slammed the door open, obliviously clarifying his attendance.
I'm embarrassed to say that this kid, Aiden, was the only friend I had made in high school until this point. I have a hard time introducing myself to others, but being friends with a prepubescent outcast wasn't making that any easier.
After middle school, my family moved to the small village we live in now. It was a brainless choice because my Mom had found better work, my Dad wanted to be closer to his aging parents, and I desperately wanted out of my old school.
Aiden was the first kid to introduce himself when I transferred last year. I realized he was the token 'weird kid' way too late to make it into any social circles. I know it sounds like I'm a shit friend, but that's the way our relationship turned out. Sure, we told our parents and teachers we were friends, but in reality, it was more a tolerance than friendship.
After all, we didn't have anyone else.
For once, I was thankful for Aiden's lack of awareness. It gave me something to focus on instead of the depressing silence strangling the room.
After realizing his mistake, he whispered an apology, sat down, and pulled out an insect encyclopedia from his book bag. What a nerd.
I distracted myself by reading the book from over his shoulder, and before I knew it, lights were turned back on and class began in earnest.
—
I was able to learn what had happened by eavesdropping on hallway gossip between my classes.
Eight kids, six seniors and two juniors, had found a cave in a region of forest known as Skeleton Park. With that discovery, they decided to add spelunking to their pre-graduation bucket list.
Skeleton Park is the setting of countless local ghost stories, which made it a hot spot for rebellious teen antics. Kids would do everything there: party, drink, smoke, fuck, and everything in between. They even crawled around in caves apparently.
When I first moved, I was a skeptic with no intent of exploring the woods. But one creepy phenomenon always unnerved me. For some reason, animals completely avoided the area.
I initially dismissed this as fiction, like all the other folk tales, until I started walking my dog, Paddy, along the town's bike trail.
The trail runs parallel to the remains of a stone wall outlining Skeleton Park. The first couple of times I walked along it, I didn't notice anything peculiar. But after my Dad first told me about the rumors, I became aware that the area was unnaturally silent. No birds chirped in the trees, no flies buzzing, and no rustling from rodents or any other animals.
Even more surreal, on several occasions I saw deer stop at the wall and walk along it instead of passing through the area. It was like there was an invisible border they refused to cross.
With this context, I'm sure you can understand the reaction of the locals when eight kids entered, and only seven escaped two days later, traumatized and bruised.
Honestly, I was surprised to not have heard about the event over the summer, closer to when it happened. Even more strange though, was how unwilling Aiden was to talk about the incident.
He was the kind of kid who had a strong opinion about everything. On top of that, he was constantly bringing up horror movies, or Creepypastas he had found online. But when I asked his opinion on this summer's events during recess, he only shrugged. Despite the nonchalant response, the look on his face told me that it bothered him. So I didn’t press, and let the subject go.
At the time I'd guessed that he might've had some connection to the kid that went missing. In a way, he did.
—
After an exhausting day of attempts from teachers to console their students with speeches, candy, and exceptional lenience, I was ready to go home.
I expected to find Aidan at the usual spot by the bike racks, where we met each day to walk home. Instead, there was an audience next to the bikes, forming a ring around two disheveled figures.
The flying fists and shouting could only mean one thing, so I kept my distance. Then I heard Aidan yell center, “Fucker!’ and saw a glimpse of his face spitting from a bloody mouth onto the other fighter.
Even though his back was to me, I could tell Aidan’s opponent was easily 5 inches, and 60 pounds heavier than my friend.
Teachers didn’t arrive to break up the fight before the two were on the ground, Aidan mounted with arms up, desperately trying to block blows.
A whistle was blown, and people began running away as my math teacher desperately tried to pry the football player off of Aidan.
He fought back the grown man and was finally pulled away when two more adults rushed to help. The boy was screaming at Aiden with carnal rage.
"You're a fucking liar! How dare you, I'm going to fucking kill you if I ever see you again!"
Aidan was still screaming too, but backed away willingly.
"I'm telling the truth dumbass! You were trespassing! You should be lucky we didn't press charges!"
Aiden looked bad but waved the teachers off whenever they asked if he was OK. Blood poured from his forehead, mouth, and nose. He had at least one black eye.
The other guy, I learned from the crowd, was one of the two juniors who had gone to the cave. He didn't have as many cuts or bruises but was supporting his weight on one leg and his friend's shoulder. Multiple teachers forced him into a chair while they waited for a nurse to arrive.
While the crowd control was distracted, Aiden sneaked over to me and whispered that we needed to get out of there. A couple of minutes later, the two of us were walking home like nothing had ever happened.
It took me a while before I dared to ask Aiden for the full story. He didn't even let me finish my question, which let me know he was more or less his usual self.
"My family inherited the property everyone calls Skeleton Park. It's not haunted, it's not toxic, it's not the home of a satanic sex cult; it's just a piece of forest that's been in my family for a couple of generations."
He spat a dribble of red onto the sidewalk, and I realized I'd never seen Aiden get violent before. We had our share of bullying this past year, but he would always shrug it off and laugh. He wouldn't even try to fight back. We would just get pushed around a bit, and he'd make a quip afterward about the guys' weight or smell.
"Every summer, my dad and I drive around the perimeter putting up trespassing signs, and every year they get ripped down. We get police calls once a month during the summer that somebody came limping out of there with a broken arm or leg, and they have the balls to demand we do something about it. It's not our fault nobody follows the law around here. It's the fucking woods, and it's our private property. What the hell are we even supposed to do?"
To be honest, I hadn't even considered Skeleton Park could've been private property. Though I believed everything Aiden said, I had never seen any signs along the border wall. Embarrassed from being one of those trespassers, I looked away and stayed silent as Aiden continued.
"The area is just too big. There are too many places to enter, and there's no way to block it all off. Though it's not like that'll stop anybody. I feel bad that somebody died, but I'm also a little bit thankful. Maybe now, people will think twice before messing around out there."
We walked in silence until reaching the junction where we would have to part ways. I was tired and wanted to head home, but I also was worried that Aiden would be jumped by some of the seniors if he was alone. It had happened before, and his earlier brawl could've been seen as a declaration of war.
Instead of voicing these concerns, however, I asked if he wanted to play video games at his house. He was surprised by the request but agreed.
I was on edge with every passing car, and every blind turn, but thankfully we weren’t attacked. After a couple more minutes of walking, we made it to Aiden’s house. His Dad was outside watering the garden. He turned, noticing our approach in the corner of his eye, but his planned greeting died in his mouth when he saw the dried blood coating Aiden’s face.
"Holy Shit! what did you do this time?" he exclaimed, running over to inspect his son’s injuries. "Oh, hey Brian," he added, smiling briefly at me before returning to his analysis.
Mr. Eriks was cool for a dad. Aiden never had a bad thing to say about him, and the way he handled everything that happened in the following months would only increase my admiration for him. He'd raised Aiden by himself, and I would've considered him a second friend if he wasn't 40 years older than me.
After determining the damage wasn't all that bad: a cut on Aidan's forehead and lip producing most of the blood, the three of us went inside.
Aiden went upstairs to take a shower, and his dad privately thanked me for walking him home. It didn’t take long for me to cave, and ask Mr. Eriks about the park.
"Yeah, we do own it," he answered while preparing snacks for Aiden and me. " My wife, Aiden's mom, inherited it before she passed away, and then it was signed over to me. To be honest, I don't know too much about it, and she didn't either. We just used it to go camping there sometimes, back before Aiden was born. Now we go together because it reminds us of her."
"Did you ever run into people up there, when you're camping?"
"Yeah, though not in the fall and winter when we usually go. I have the police's local number on speed dial for when it happens. Usually, it's just teens though. Kids tend to run away as soon as they see an adult with a flashlight. Paranormal or not, they know they're not supposed to be there- You staying with us for dinner Brian?"
At this point, I was too curious about the truth of Skeleton Park to leave, so I nodded and said I just needed to check with my parents.
After a phone call with my mom, some pizza rolls, and a couple of rounds of Fortnite, the afternoon stress had mostly faded away.
Me and Aidan were sitting in his room, scrolling Netflix for a slasher film to watch, when I finally asked what I'd been dying to know the entire afternoon.
"So, why was that guy saying you're a liar?"
Aiden chuckled at the question.
"He refused to believe my family owned the property his friend died on."
"Why did you even say anything? You know that just makes them want to beat you up more, right?"
"I'm tired of everybody using our land like a public park, I'm tired of picking up condoms left by people I go to school with, and I'm tired of keeping quiet about it. I tried explaining it to people in middle school. Our first project in fifth grade was a presentation about something important to us, I did mine about the park. Nobody believed me, and it got me socially exiled for the next four years. "
I ignored the urge to explain that there was probably more to his social exile than a get-to-know-you presentation from four years ago.
"That's fair I guess," I said instead. "You're dad says you go camping there."
"Yeah, on three-day weekends, and sometimes longer on breaks. Mostly in the fall and winter when there are less trespassers."
"You don't find it creepy camping there? Even without the trespassers?"
"You mean because of the silence?" Aiden smiled and looked over at me. "Yeah, the rumor about the animals is true as far as I can tell. Sure. It's kind of weird, but in winter it's kind of beautiful too. After a blizzard, there's nothing to disturb the snow, and it's kinda like the whole forest has gone to sleep. With the snow and no animals, it can get so quiet that you hear your own heart beating."
He looked off past me with a feeling of nostalgia, but all I felt was chills.
"I can take you if you want," Aiden added. "I'll have to ask my dad, but I think it would be fun to have another person camp with us."
"I'll think about it," was my way of declining without saying no.
Aiden just shrugged. "Suit yourself. Offer still stands if you ever change your mind."
Much to my annoyance, we weren’t even able to finish the movie. My Mom called, saying she was outside to pick me up an hour into our viewing of The Blair Witch Project.
I went to bed wondering how anyone could feel safe camping in a place like that. After contemplating taking Aidan up on his offer, I concluded there could be nothing that would make me spend the night there. Ironically, it would be less than a week before I changed my mind.
—
Three days later, I was walking Paddy along our usual route when she stopped and looked up at something beyond the stone wall, into Skeleton Park. She stood like a statue, eyes wide and fixated on some invisible thing.
I tried tugging the leash, pulling out a treat, begging, and making all kinds of sounds, but she just stood there. Paddy was a six-year-old golden retriever who easily weighed as much as I did, so I couldn't do much more than wait for her to move.
Suddenly, she began barking wildly at the air.
I tried approaching, but she growled at me, a sound I had never heard from her before, and I was forced to back away.
Before I could even process what was happening. She leaped over the wall and ran at full speed into the woods. It all happened so quickly that I had no time to tighten my grip on the leash.
She sprinted straight into the woods, and I chased after her, but I didn't make it far without tripping on a root hidden among the leaves. My knee was split open by something as I fell, and it took all my strength, fighting past the shock, to get back up. After recovering, I looked in all directions, but couldn't see Paddy anymore. I could only hear the tossing of leaves and branches in the distance.
Then there was nothing. Not a single sound. I'm not sure why I didn't question the sudden silence back then. It wasn't the gradual fade into silence you would expect from something running away. It was as if somebody had just hit a mute button on everything but the wind through the trees.
I don't know, maybe I'm misremembering the details.
Patty's disappearance doesn't matter anyway. We never found her, and dogs don’t live for twenty years, so at this point, we never will.
After taking a moment to recover from the shock, I limped home crying and told my parents what had happened. My Dad called the police because it was the only thing we could think of, but all they did was apologize and recommend we put up posters.
They couldn't do anything even if they wanted to. After all, she ran onto private property.
After that, the last thing I could think to do was call Aiden. His dad promised they could search the park that night, and he also offered to take me for an extended search the following weekend in case they didn’t find anything.
Of course, they didn't find her, just half of a leash wrapped around a branch. At least, that's what my parents told me the Eriks had found, they never actually let me see it.
A day before the trip, the Forecast started predicting snow: Saturday night into Sunday, eight inches, wet.
I probably should've given up then. Instead, I told Aiden this would probably be my only chance to find Paddy, insisting she wouldn't survive in the snow. After making sure with his dad, we continued with the plan and headed out after school Friday night.
—
While it hurts keeping this story in, reliving the memories is almost as painful. So I'm going to take a break writing for now and continue in a day or two. If anyone has a scientific explanation for why animals were avoiding that area, or for my dog's behavior, please let me know.
Thanks for reading, B
Part 1
2024.05.16 16:12 CIAHerpes I remember the night I died and saw the Bardo.
There are some kinds of wisdom only great suffering can bring. I remember my time in the Bardo with this in mind, for otherwise, the memory might drive me insane.
The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality.
His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.
“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.
“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”
“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:
“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.
“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.
“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.
“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”
I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.
As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.
“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.
“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch.
“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.
“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting.
I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.
“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.
“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.
“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on.
I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.
I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.
“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars.
I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.
“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.
I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.
Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.
The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.
Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.
***
I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.
The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.
“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”
“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”
***
The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.
A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair.
He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?
“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”
“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”
“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals?
“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.
“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.
“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them.
“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”
Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.
“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”
“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.
***
The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.
The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.
Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate.
Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.
As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.
Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.
I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.
But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms.
I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong.
I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.
“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”
“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”
“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.
“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.
“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.”
***
Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.
I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.
Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.
Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.
But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.
Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.
The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger.
I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?
The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic.
“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!”
A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.
A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.
“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.
I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.
She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.
It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.
***
I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.
“Again!” another voice yelled.
“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.
The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.
“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.
At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.
“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.
I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.
I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.
And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.
submitted by CIAHerpes to nosleep [link] [comments]
The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality.
His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.
“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.
“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”
“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:
“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.
“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.
“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.
“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”
I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.
As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.
“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.
“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch.
“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.
“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting.
I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.
“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.
“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.
“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on.
I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.
I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.
“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars.
I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.
“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.
I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.
Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.
The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.
Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.
***
I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.
The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.
“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”
“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”
***
The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.
A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair.
He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?
“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”
“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”
“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals?
“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.
“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.
“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them.
“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”
Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.
“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”
“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.
***
The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.
The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.
Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate.
Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.
As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.
Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.
I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.
But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms.
I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong.
I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.
“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”
“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”
“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.
“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.
“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.”
***
Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.
I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.
Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.
Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.
But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.
Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.
The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger.
I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?
The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic.
“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!”
A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.
A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.
“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.
I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.
She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.
It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.
***
I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.
“Again!” another voice yelled.
“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.
The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.
“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.
At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.
“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.
I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.
I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.
And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.