Recently upgraded to a 13" Pro so my trusty M1 has to go:
M1 iPad Pro 512GB Space Grey

• Originally purchased in Sept 2023, has normal AppleCare until Sept 2024 w/ AppleCare+ Expiring 6/15/24.
• No signs of wear, has tempered glass screen protector applied since day one, and used with cases.
• Will come with the following accessories (all like new condition):
  • Apple Pencil 2
  • Apple Magic Keyboard - Black
  • Apple Smart Folio - Black
  • Elago Folio - this case has a removable front cover, but otherwise super useful since you can use the iPad with just the back cover.
  • Extra tempered glass protector
• Original boxes included for everything.
• The entire bundle saw very little use, and mostly sat on the LAB22 stand the past few months.
• Looking for $800 Shipped

LAB22 Infiinty Stand (Black) for 11" iPad Pro/Air:

• Fantastic stand, super heavy duty and offers almost limitless orientations for the iPad.
• Looking for $85 Shipped, or bundle with the iPad for $65.

Timestamps + Photos/Videos: https://imgur.com/a/9LNLPpu
Prices above are OBO within reason. Please leave a comment before sending PM. I can offer discounts for local sales in Flushing, NY.

Recently upgraded to a 13" Pro so my trusty M1 has to go:
M1 iPad Pro 512GB Space Grey

• Originally purchased in Sept 2023, has normal AppleCare until Sept 2024 w/ AppleCare+ Expiring 6/15/24.
• No signs of wear, has tempered glass screen protector applied since day one, and used with cases.
• Repairs: None
• Will come with the following accessories (all like new condition):
  • Apple Pencil 2
  • Apple Magic Keyboard - Black
  • Apple Smart Folio - Black
  • Elago Folio - this case has a removable front cover, but otherwise super useful since you can use the iPad with just the back cover.
  • Extra tempered glass protector
• Original boxes included for everything.
• The entire bundle saw very little use, and mostly sat on the LAB22 stand the past few months.
• Looking for $800 Shipped

LAB22 Infiinty Stand (Black) for 11" iPad Pro/Air:

• Fantastic stand, super heavy duty and offers almost limitless orientations for the iPad.
• Looking for $85 Shipped, or bundle with the iPad for $65.

Timestamps + Photos/Videos: https://imgur.com/a/9LNLPpu
Prices above are OBO within reason. Please leave a comment before sending PM. I can offer discounts for local sales in Flushing, NY.

Watching a rerun episode of the new $100000 pyramid (season 7 episode 2, originally aired 10/4/23). I swear that the show accidentally accepted an incorrect answer. HERES WHAT HAPPENED: - The contestant is paired with celebrity Lauren Ash and it’s the last question for the contestant to win $50k (and maybe qualify for the winners circle or something?). - The category for the top of the pyramid is “things on your neck”; - the celebrity gives the clue “your choker” or “a choker” (forget specifically which); - the contestant guesses “types of necklaces”; - and then suddenly the congrats bell or whatever goes off to celebrate that they got every question and the contestant has won the $50k. Don’t get me wrong, I want the contestants to win as much money as they can… but the inaccuracy is driving me insane. “Things on your neck“ is not an equivalent category to “types of necklaces” ..?? Examples: scarf, tie, a freckle, a scar. AM I MISSING SOMETHING? I googled it immediately and have no clarity. I don’t regularly watch this show so maybe I am not grasping the rules correctly or am not aware or something? Feels unlikely that you can guess a similar category and get credit but that’s just my opinion. Did someone fuck up in editing and the viewers saw the wrong category on our screens? I NEED ANSWERS PLZ HELP Disclaimer: including the specific ep so someone else can watch and tell me if I hallucinated this or not. Plz don’t somehow go ringing alarm bells so that this contestant ends up getting their victory money revoked if that’s even possible

Ok so a giant air conditioner venting heat into space will not work because moving heat requires moving matter, so it would be net negative. In theory, could we build a giant conductor (metal or some other material) with one end in space and one on earth, with some device at the top which could radiate the energy into space? The heat from earth would be naturally inclined to travel from hot to cold...

I believe my AC capacitor has gone out. I'm looking to purchase and replace one tomorrow, have you all bought one from Lowe's/Home Depot, or have recommendations on somewhere else to purchase one locally? I'd buy online but I prefer to try and finish the job tomorrow.

Got a 14,000 btu standing air conditioner from a friend who was moving. I plugged it in and nothing but a E1 code on the screen. Nothing is mentioned in the manual and nothing could I find online. There are no service centers that repair this device near. Any suggestions ?

i'm working on a novel and would like to know if anyone could tell me any improvements i could make to the first chapter and prologue
Prologue
The day had started the same way it had for the past two years. The only difference was that I was going home. The hallway was crowded with people walking to and from their classes. Everyone was crowded next to each other so the halls were making the area feel claustrophobic. All the people talking mixed with the summer heat made me feel like I was locked in a sauna. I walked with Preston to the last class we would ever have together and as usual he was smiling. I never got why he always smiled even in situations where people should be sad he still smiled. He knew what today meant for me and he tried to keep light of the situation. I kept my head down away from what was ahead of me. My mind was too clouded about returning to see my family to notice anything in front of me. I walked into another student. It felt like I had walked into a wall. I knew immediately I had walked into tree. I stumble onto the ground and the commotion around me slows down to make room for us. He turned his bulky body around and apologized profusely without saying a word even though I had walked into him. He helped me off of the ground before hurrying down the hall.
“Alexandria, are you doing okay?” Preston said he had tilted his body downward so I had to look down to look him in his eyes. The way he was standing made him look like an idiot but he didn't seem to care. The way he acted made me laugh, which caused his smile to widen.
“I'm doing fine, just got lost in my head.”
“Thinking about how you’ll leave soon,” he said
“Was it that obvious?” He was the only person I told about me being an exchange student. I came to spend high school in Newkinawa and he was the only person I ever hung out with.
“I see what you mean,” he said “Newkinawa is a beautiful place with beautiful people to live in it…myself included”
“You wish,” I say with a smile we continue walking through the hallway “I'm just not excited to go back yet”
After I say that his smile grows wider “So you will miss me after all”
“I wouldn't say that much” I responded whilst smiling.
We had made it to our last class only to see it closed with a sign labeled “Uma incident” Uma was a student known for messing with the chemistry lab and destroying school property in the process. I've never actually met her but Preston says “She's a little weird but still nice”
“Guess class is canceled for today,” Preston remarked with a smile “Wanna go out to the court till the bell rings.”
“Sure let's go” I respond
The place we ate every day was outside. It used to be a tennis court before I moved in. Now they put trees and flowers all over the place. Preston really liked the blue color of the flowers but it just never clicked for me. I look over at Preston and he's staring up at the sky. There are a number of clouds in almost enough to block the sun but it still pokes its rays through and lands on Preston's face. The clouds swim in front of the sun till they block out the sun's light. Preston faces towards me.
“I'm gonna miss you Alexandria” he says
“You know you can just call me Alex,” I replied. I start to smile again. “I'll miss you too!" He smiles toward me again as we get up to leave as the clouds start to clump together and rain slowly falls. As we're walking back to the school there's a loud tearing sound followed by screams as the ground shakes.
The ground tears itself apart as the dirt and stone erupt from the ground. The sky blackens and a pale blue light escapes the earth. Then creatures erupt from the ground in a violent ejection from the earth creating a white pillar diffusing as they reach higher in the air. Some are clawing their way out of the cracks like maggots out of a corpse. People are swept into the updraft screaming for their lives.
The creatures descend like a tidal wave and tear apart any people caught in their path. They storm out of the crack in hundreds as more cracks in the earth form. Me and Preston started running away as people were screaming behind us. A girl running next to us has her legs slashed by a creature. The monster begins to tear open her chest as she chokes on her own blood. The monster shovels her lungs and innards into its decrepit mouth. Me and Preston keep running until we're met at the entrance of the school and we catch the attention of a monster as it begins to savagely rush toward us. The monster resembles ghosts my father told me about. But this one looks monstrously horrific. It floats in the air and opens its mouth so wide it nearly replaces its entire torso; its jaws hold savage teeth each the same old gray color of its body. Its eyes glow a rotten yellow color through the dark. It stretches out its arms showing its giant hands and claws like fingers. It swipes at us leaving a giant claw mark on the door behind us but Preston ducks my body down to avoid the attack. We run around it as the monster swaps its focus to another bystander. Screaming past us. Me and Preston run into the parking lot as people scream around us. We hide next to a car.
“What the hell is happening!?” I yell to Preston. More of the creatures fly over us and swoop down to people like vultures on roadkill devouring the fleeing people.
Preston starts to breathe heavily ”we need to get out of here and someplace safer”. As we were talking one of the monster phases through the car we were hiding next to forcing us to run into the street.
“Lets go to your house till things cool down” i say to Preston through panted breaths
“Wait couldn't we head to your house instead” Preston says.
“Why would that matter your house is closer anyways” i respond
“But-” Preston is interrupted by two creatures swooping above us to grab another person. The two monsters begin to pull the person apart while he writhes in pain before having his flesh be torn in half and having his organs be devoured.
“Come on lets go!!” I say as I grab his hand and run even faster.
By the time we reach Preston's house any living person is gone. On the street are just corpses laying torn and mutilated on the roads and sidewalk. The air in the neighborhood feels cold despite the season being summer. When I walk down the street I can still hear the occasional horrific wail the monsters give off. We move closer to Preston's house and I can see him sweating. He looked more worried than before when the creatures were chasing us and he kept darting his eyes away from his home.
“Preston, are you feeling okay?” he doesn't respond to my question and keeps darting his eyes. He walks slowly behind me and as I reach for the door handle and when I touch it it feels nearly freezing. I wrap my hoodie around my hand and slowly open the door. The house is quiet so me and Preston creep further into his house. The inside is cold and damp as if we were locked in a freezer. The further we move into the house the louder a subtle chewing sound is heard.
“It sounds like rats are eating a dead cow over there” I whisper. Preston continues to stay silent behind me. We slowly walk closer towards the kitchen and the sound gets louder and louder and louder until we reach the room.
We're met with a rancid smell of vomit and blood. My blood starts to run cold and every instinct in my body is telling me to run. I can feel Preston breathing get heavier as we get closer. We turn the corner and see Preston's mom lying on the ground dead with one of the creatures hunched over slurping her intestines. The sight causes me to vomit alerting the monster to our presence. The creature turns around and its mouth turns into a mortifying grin as it flies into Preston's moms body. The corpse begins to rise and spur splashing blood over the kitchen. When the corpse stops spasming it picks itself up from the ground and with glazed over eyes it holds its intestines in its hand and gives us the same grin it did when it was outside her body. The possessed corpse lunges at me and starts to chase me around the kitchen. The body is running into the walls and cabinets spraying its blood and other loose organs around the area as I'm avoiding its assault. The corpse leans over and ejects one of its loose intestines towards me, wrapping me in it. It pulls me towards it so fast I'm flung towards the ground. The corpse limbers over to me and raises its free hand aiming for my head. The creature's deranged smile causes the corpse’s cheeks to tear apart. It places both of its bloodied and demented hands on my face and starts to press my skull into the ground. I struggle to breathe. The room starts to get dark and blood escapes my head.
Until Preston jumps on top of his mothers corpse with a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabs it in the head. The possessed body tries to shake him off but he keeps stabbing, blood gets in on his face and tears start to escape his eyes. The creature violently ejects from the corpse's mouth causing her head to nearly explode and Preston stops stabbing the body. The body falls over in a splash of blood and organs. The monster leaves phasing through the roof leaving Preston crying over his mother's body. As the blood mixes with the tears he collapses to his knees crying. I walk over and hug him as the air around us turns bitter and the chill of death leaves the room and us with it.
Chapter 1 Eclipse
It's been 2 months since the apocalypse started. We've kept ourselves alive by looting grocery stores and houses, we hide from the creatures as we have no way to fight back against them. Preston came up with the idea to call them glanter’s. He’s looking better since we left his family home but I can tell something is wrong with him that he's not telling me. Everytime I ask him about it he tells me it's no big deal. I asked him earlier today and he just told me
“don't worry about it, I'm over it” without even looking at me. Now we're walking through the street and I'm walking behind Preston, I can barely see his head past the giant bag we're both carrying on our backs we use to carry supplies. I look up at the sky and it's still pitch black except for the moon giving us any amount of light. Preston turns around to face me.
“Let's check out that house, it might have some cool stuff in it” he points to a white house to our right. The house is a two story building with steps leading to the front door. There's a generator poking out from the backyard. The driveway is empty save for a couple of dried blood stains and tire marks. It's similar to the other houses in the neighborhood except for a couple broken windows.
“Sure why not” We head over to the house and I see something shining on the side of the house in the corner of my eye. I turn my head to look at it closer but it quickly disappears before I can see it clearly.
“Probably squirrel or something” I mumble to myself. Preston walks up the stairs to the house and I walk up the steps behind him as a breeze blows past my face. Preston tries to turn the door knob but the door is locked. I start to pull out a lockpick I grabbed at the store earlier. I motion towards Preston to move out of the way as I kneel down to pick the lock. It takes me a couple of minutes to unlock the door so I walk inside the house and Preston follows behind me while closing and locking the door. The doorway of the house leads to a dark room so I take a flashlight out of my bag to illuminate the area. Were put into the living room and bookshelves are on the walls and a large TV sat in front of a large black couch with smaller chairs surrounding it. Dust is covering every surface of the room and spiderwebs litter the corners of the walls. The area smells like moth balls and there's a lack of blood anywhere nearby.
“Guess the owners got out before the Glanter’s got in, '' I say to Preston. When he doesn't respond I turn around and he's already looking further into the house. When I find him he's managed to find a flight of stairs that lead to a lower portion of the house.
“I'll check on him later,” I think to myself as I headed towards the kitchen to see if we could restock on food. I walk past a bedroom and remark on how childish it looked. The walls were painted with blue and green stripes and a bunk bed sat on the right wall. There's a chest at the foot of the bed so I walk over and lift the top off of it. The box is layered with children's toys, a multitude of dolls, bears, and figures all jut out of the box. I notice a small robot toy and inspect it in my hands.
The cold metal makes my hand shiver and the sharp body shape makes the robot bigger than my hand. There's red lining around the robot's buttons surrounded by the cold gray of the robot's “skin”. It reminds me of a toy my little brother had. My heart feels heavy as I worry about what happened to my family. If they're alive, dead, or worse…possessed. The thoughts send a chill down my spine but I push them aside for now. I put the toy in my bag and exit the bedroom.
I can see the kitchen is down the hallway so I walk down the hall and enter. The kitchen is pretty clean except for a couple of dishes in the sink and the dust. There's a table seated for 3 people in the center of the room. I start opening the cabinets in search for any food or water. There's boxes of cereal leftover on top of shelves and a mix of chip bags and cookies in neat boxes stationed in the cabinets.
“Score,” I say to myself as I begin to put the snacks into my bag. When the cabinets are empty I look inside the fridge. The inside of the fridge ran out of power so most of the food inside is rotted. There are a couple of bottles of water in the front so I shove those in my bag. There's also a bag of oranges that still seem to be healthy in the back. I grab them and toss them on the table. There's rotten sandwich meat hidden in the drawer of the fridge.it smells like a dumpster outside of a butcher shop. I wrinkle my nose at the smell. I look around the kitchen for any bread with no luck.
I continue to look through the fridge until I hear Preston scream from another room. Immediately I bolt out of the kitchen leaving my bag behind and run towards the lower part of the house. I run down the stairs and nearly trip on the steps. The stairs lead to a big room. There are posters to tv shows and movies I don't recognize. The walls are painted black and there's a bear skin rug on the floor. I notice Preston standing next to a really big TV hyperventilating. I walk over to him and ask him.
“Are you ok? What happened?”
He talks through deep breaths “I… saw a… spider.”
“What?!” I respond in confusion.
“It was really big and I had jumped at my face”
“Sure it was.” I say while laughing “Let's go upstairs there's some food in the fridge we can eat”
“Wait, I think you should check this out.” He says while pointing towards one of the walls. I grab Preston's flashlight off the floor and face it towards the wall. Hanging halfway off the wall is a large map labeled Newkiwana scavenger hunt of 76.
“I think we should take it,” Preston says “You can read a map right?”
“A little but I'm not the best at it,” I say to him “can you read a map?”
“it shouldn’t be too hard it’s mainly pictures any way I'm sure I can figure it out”
I walk over to the wall where the map is hung there are trophies covering tables and shelved in their own personal cases one of them reads “1st place 100-meter swimming competition for 1986 Zack Hemmingway” and another one reads “2nd place 100-meter swimming competition for 1989 Zack Hemmingway”
“Guess this guy really liked swimming,” Preston remarks while staring at a wall of newspaper clippings. All of them are about the same person in swimming competitions. All labeled different things like “a new record for Zack “the dolphin” Hemmingway”,
‘Zach Hemmingway our star plans for the future” all the newspapers are about this kind he has paler skin and a bulky enough build to swim pretty well. Most of the pictures have him coming out of the water in a pool, his long black hair soaked and sitting at his shoulders. Another one has him sitting at a desk over a pile of books and his hair in a knot , “vicious wipeout ends the Dolphins career”, and “ex-swim champ Zack Hemmingway found in a drunken stupor outside strip club.
“Everyone has their own hobbies I guess,” I say as I take the map off of the wall and fold it up. “Sucks what happened to Zack though” I walked over to Preston’s bag and put the rolled map in one of the pockets. I walk back up the stairs and Preston grabs his bag and follows behind me.
We make our way towards the kitchen and Preston starts looking through the fridge for anything to eat. I grab an orange from the table and throw it at his head. The fruit bounces off his head and rolls on the floor. He turns around and grabs the fruit from the floor
“Why did you throw an orange at me?”
“It's the only food we have unless you plan on eating spoiled a sandwich“ He starts to peel it while walking towards the table. We both take a seat and start to eat the oranges from the bag. He plants his feet on top of the table and bites into the fully peeled orange. I grab a water bottle from a bag and start to drink from it as Preston says.
“I saw a dvd player in that man cave downstairs we could watch a movie if it still has power”
“Sure it could be fun.” Me and Preston spend the rest of our time eating until the bag of oranges is emptied and we head back downstairs. Preston grabs the DVD player from under the table and blows the dust off the top of it; he plugs it into the wall as I plop myself onto the couch. He plugs the DVD player into the TV and sits on the recliner next to me. He presses a few buttons on the remote and the TV lights up. I squint my eyes at how bright it is. It's the most amount of light I've seen that didn't come from a flashlight. I notice there's a box filled with DVDs. I pull the box over towards me. I ruffle through the box and see movies like Silence of the Lambs, Terminator 2, and Home alone.
“Dude some of these came out just before the world turned inside out” I say to him.
“Really? Let's play one.” He responds. I toss him Terminator 2 and he puts it into the DVD player.
We spend the next couple hours watching movies and laughing together. It's some of our only moments of peace we’ve had since the end of the world and to me it's the most fun I've had yet. We're putting in the next DVD when there's a loud crash outside and the TV shuts off. Preston goes behind it to see if it's still plugged in.
“I think the generator outside is busted” i say
“It seems that way” Preston replies while backing away from the tv” i'm gonna go check it out”
“Don't worry I got it” I say as I hop out of my chair. Preston waves goodbye as I head up the stairs. I make my way back through the hallway leading to the living room and front door. I reach the door and start to turn the knob. I open the door wide as a car speeds down the street. I step out of the door to see what had happened when I hear the screech of a glanter. It cuts through the sky like an unholy opera singer. A group of them fly by and chase the car as I rush back inside the house. I slam the door shut and look through the window as I see a couple of smaller glanters grab and shake the car violently looking for the driver. They tear at it, ripping off doors and breaking the windows. The driver screams as the seats cover with blood and he's ripped out of the car as multiple smaller glanters tear and bite off parts of his body like piranha's until his body is completely devoured. I run back to the man cave to warn Preston about what had happened. I spot him laying in his chair spinning a DVD disc on his finger.
“It's not safe outside right now”
“Why not?
“There's glanter's outside, they just ate a dude in his car”
“Did they see you come inside?”
“I don't think so , they flew off before I went inside.”
“well we're not dead so I'm gonna say they didn't see you. But let's stay here for a couple more hours just to be safe”
“Sounds good i'm gonna go find the master bedroom.” I start to walk back up the stairs to the house
“ Hold on why do you get the master bedroom” Preston says while walking after me.
“Because I'm gonna find it first” I say as I start to run to find the bedroom. He chases after me in pursuit of the bedroom. Me and Preston run around the house looking for the master bedroom. We look through room after room finding closets, the garage, a bathroom and a door leading to a balcony in the back of the house. I manage to run into the bedroom and yell out to Preston.``Found it!!”
He comes walking into the room breathing heavily from the running. We both check out the room. The walls are painted a cream yellow and the bed takes up most of the room's center. The bed has burgundy sheets poking out from its bottom and a quilt with multi-colored floral designs lay sprawled out on top of it. There's a wardrobe built into the wall and a black leather couch sits comfortably on the left wall.
“Dibs on the bed” I say as I jump on top of it. I stretch out on top of the quilt and search for a comfortable part to sleep in.
“Where am I supposed to sleep then?” Preston complains
“You can sleep on the couch it looks soft enough” I respond while pointing towards the couch “I saw some spare blankets in one of the closets”
“Alright i’ll be right back” he mumbles to himself “why do i always get the couch”
“ I'll be right here if you need me,” i call after him. I sit up on the bed and start to look around the room more. I notice the entrance to the wardrobe is cracked open slightly. I hop out of the bed and grab a flashlight from my bag as I walk into the wardrobe. I turn on my flashlight and stare in awe at how many clothes are in there. The room is only half as big as the bedroom but it's still bigger than any closet I've ever had. The wardrobe is full of shirts, dresses, pants, and shoes for men and women. I immediately start to look through the shoes to see if any fit my size. I throw a pair of black high heels behind me as Preston finds me in the wardrobe. He looks around before asking me.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding a new pair of clothes to wear cause I've been wearing the same pair of jeans for waaaaay too long”
“Fair enough. Is there any guy stuff in there?”
“Yeah right there” I hook my thumb behind me to point to the other end of the closet.
“I'm sure they won't mind if we take a couple of things…they're probably dead by now anyways,” Preston says with a slight grin on his face. The way he said made me spin my head to look at him but he was already on the opposite end of the wardrobe looking at suits.
I shake away the thought and continue looking for any pair of sneakers in my size. 40 minutes pass before I walk out of the wardrobe holding a new pair of jeans and a black guns-N-roses t-shirt. I toss the clothes on top of the bed and check to see if the shower in the bathroom still works. I turn the dial and wait for a moment. The shower head chokes a little before water comes pouring out. I reach my hand under the showerhead to feel the water. The water is cold, it causes my hand to shiver when I take it out. I shake the water off and say to myself.
“Good enough” as I start to take off my old clothes and get in the shower. The cold water bounces off my skin, it sends shivers down my spine but I still get the old dirt from the last few months off of me. I step out and see a couple of dry towels hanging off of the door. I grab one and dry my body off and grab another to wrap around my head and dry my hair. I step out of the bathroom and Preston is still inside the wardrobe. I put on my new clothes while his back is turned and walk over towards him when I'm finished.
“Still haven't found anything,” I ask him
He turns around “Nothing yet, the only thing interesting was this coat.” He holds a leather coat up to me. The coat is made of black leather and has a skull covered with blue flames on the back. There's a black shirt inside the coat with a skeleton hand making a thumbs-up embroidered on the front.
“ That's pretty cool, it's better than what you're wearing right now at least” he's outfitted in a blue hoodie with holes on the chest and tears at the sleeves. He also has a shirt with a faded picture of a blue flower printed on it.
“I guess you're right” he gets up from the floor and exits the wardrobe. He lays the clothes on the couch along next to the blanket and pillow he brought into the room.
“The shower works so you can get yourself clean In there,” I say to him
“You know, a shower sounds really good right now.” He gets up from the floor and grabs a pair of pajama pants that were laying next to him. He leaves the wardrobe and enters the bathroom, closing the door behind him. After a moment the water turns on and I hop on the bed to get ready to sleep. I squirm myself into the quilt and rest my head against one of the pillows. I shut my eyes and fall asleep listening to the passive sound of the shower like rain on a car.
I'm in a void. It feels like I'm standing in a puddle of water that reaches to my knees. I wade my way forward looking around for anything in the darkness. In the distance I can see 3 figures l. I moved closer to them and their silhouettes get clearer. I realize they are my dad and brothers. I start to run towards them kicking up water behind me until something grabs my leg. It pulls down violently forcing me under the water without a breath of air. I kick at the thing grabbing me until something grabs my other leg. I look down and see two glanter's each with a monstrous smile on their faces. They stare back at me and one of them tugs my leg harder than before and tears it off of my body. The water around me turns red as the glanter laugh's. The other smiles wider as it starts to fling me around the water forcing any air left in my lungs to be forced out as I scream in pain. The glanter throws me away and I can see my family slowly fade into the distance as I'm flown away.
I struggle to swim back to where I was, one of my legs is missing and the other is broken. The glanter's find me again and I try to get to the surface to escape them. I'm flapping my arms in any attempt to escape as one of the glanter's flies in front of me and grabs my arm. I look at the monster with tears in my eyes as it bites my arm and tears my body away from it. It flings my body away and with my remaining arm I clutch the wound as the water floods into my body leaving me in the void I started in. I look around and the glanter's seem to have left. I turn behind me and see my family again, this time I'm closer than before.
I grit my teeth and drag my body towards them slowly as I leave a trail of blood and tears behind me. I finally reach my family and grab one of my father's shoes. I stare up and he looks at me. His stare causes me to feel cold as a grotesque smile grows on his face. I stare in shock as my brothers each have the same look as my father.
I shoot up from my sleep panting heavily in a cold sweat.
“It was just a dream..just a dream…just a dream” I look at my hands as tears fall into them. I look around the room and see Preston sleeping peacefully on the couch. The room feels frozen in place as a chill runs down my spine. I get out of the bed and walk out of the bedroom. I make my way through the dark hallway and find the entrance to the balcony I saw earlier. I creak open the screen door and head outside. The Balcony is pretty large, about the size of the kitchen in the house. There are some chairs knocked over next to a table and I pick one up to sit on it. I look out into the expanse of the neighborhood, houses lined up next to each other, dozens broken apart by roads, and dead bodies scattered across the roads.
I look up in the sky and sit back in the chair. The sky looks empty except for the moon giving this world its only source of light. Without the moon, we’d be left in darkness. It hangs in the sky alone, no stars, no clouds, nothing but itself, and the void of the sky. I think back about the dream I had. My dad and my brother's all dead and possessed and then they kill me. I start to tear up thinking about it. I try to wipe away the tears but it’s no use. I'm too scared for my family. I don't know where they are if they're alive if they're worried about me I don't know anything! I start to quietly cry into my hands. I don't know how long I'm sitting there until I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn my head to face it and I see Preston. He was smiling and looking at me. I turn away to wipe my tears and he walks next to me.
“I heard you sneaking out of the bedroom so I followed you to see where you were going.” he says “but that's not my question.” he pauses and looks at me “my question is what’s got you feeling so down?” he leans over the railing of the balcony
“It's nothing, I just came out here to clear my head.” I say as more tears escape from my eyes in big slow drops that ride down the sides of my face.
“if you don't feel like telling me you don't have to but i'll be here if you ever change your mind”. He looks up at the moon before turning to face me and his smile widens “I'll always be here with you…trust me I'm not going anywhere”
I stare up at him and wipe away my tears as a smile grows on my face to match his. I get up and stare over the balcony with him. “So where are we heading next?” I say to him, Preston pulls the map we got from the man cave downstairs out from his pocket.
“After I got out of the shower I decided to take a look at the map for anything interesting we could see.”
“Ok did you find anything?” i ask
“I did,” he points at a spot on the right of the map. “We should head to the museum”
“I didn't want to go to a museum before the apocalypse why would i want to go now?'' I ask him.
“Well the best part of museums is the cool stuff right”
“Yeah what about it”
“The only problem is that you could only look at the fossils and armor but you could never take them.”
“So you want to rob a museum?” Prestons eyes light up at the question
“Exactly they might have a really cool sword I could use, or I could sharpen a dinosaur tooth and use that as a weapon, there might be a cursed shield that can summon the dead to fight for you. This opportunity is too good to pass up. We need to go!”
“That does seem pretty cool but wouldn't carrying that stuff weigh us down. What if a glanter is chasing us and we can't run fast enough because of the stuff we took from the museum.”
“We’ll only take things that are light. Even then I could just block the glanter with my newly acquired 2000 year old shield.”
“Fair enough we can go in a couple hours” I yawn and stretch out my arms. “Cause I'm feeling way too tired to walk all the way over there right now.”
“Alright i'm heading back to my couch and THEN we’ll head out to the museum” he leaves the balcony and heads back to the master bedroom leaving me alone on the balcony.
“Thanks Preston I'm not leaving either” I say into the sky. I turn around and walk back inside the house, closing the balcony door behind me. I walk back into the bedroom and Preston is hunched over and holding a flashlight looking at the map. He’s drawing lines through roads and marking X’s in different areas.
“What are the X’s for?” i ask him
“They’re places that glanter’s usually stay around. I'm marking them off so we remember not to go through them, or at least be more cautious.”
“Cool. Did you find where we are right now?” He points to an area where the lines all converge out of.
“Right around here is where the neighborhood ends. So if we follow this path we can make it to the museum in one piece” I pat him on the back and take the map from his hands.
“Get some sleep Preston, we have a full day tomorrow” he grins to himself before laying down on the couch. I put the map back into my bag and hop on the bed to get to sleep. I cover my body in the quilt and roll over facing away from Preston as he falls asleep. I nestle myself into the bed and slowly fall asleep to get ready for the next day.
I'm awoken by Preston shaking the bed I'm sleeping on. My eyes open and the room is foggy, I wipe away the sleep from my eyes and focus my attention towards Preston. He's practically jumping out of his skin with excitement, he's already fully dressed for the trip and shaking the bed with a wide smile on his face.
“Ok ok i'm up the air feels heavy as a groggy feeling fills my body. I wipe my eyes and the room starts to clear up. I turn to face Preston. He's still shaking my bed to wake me up, he’s already fully dressed and nearly jumping out of his skin in excitement.
“Ok ok, i'm up you can stop shaking the bed” i say
“Then get up we’ve got a long walk ahead of us” he says as he stops shaking the mattress. He grabs the map from my bag and points to one of the red lines.
“We're gonna follow this way to the museum. We’ll move past the hotel around the ice skating rink and around the park. We’ll mainly stick to walking through the streets, we might have to go rooftop hopping to avoid any glanter’s if we see them but i'm sure we won’t reach that point.” he explains
“Wait, wait, wait, why are avoiding the skating rink and the park” i ask
“ everytime we go near the park there's weird noises and light coming out of it”
“And why can't we go to the ice skating rink?”
“I didn't think it would be important”
“It couldn't hurt to check it out at least”
“Fine we could make a detour”
“Ok and how do you plan on getting on top of roofs?”
“I'm sure we'll figure it out when we get to it”
“Ok man as long as you’re sure '' I yawn and step out of the bed. Preston starts to put the map in his bag. I walk into the bathroom with my clothes and change out of my pajamas. Minutes later I walk out and see Preston sitting on the couch twiddling his thumbs.
“Finally you're out” he smiles at me before handing me my bag and slinging it over his shoulder. We took a last look inside the kitchen to see if we missed anything. Afterwards we leave for the outside. The cold air bites at my face but Preston walks down the stairs, his face buried in the map. I jog to catch up to him as we both head into the street.
“Hey Preston, could I see the map?”
“Sure” he hands over the map and continues walking. I look at the map and the numerous lines drawn on roads. I look at the corner of the map and notice a small map key with numerous symbols for different areas like a library, school, hospital, and more. There's even a way to tell how far away each location is. The text reads “1 inch=5 miles” I quickly count how far we are from the museum.
“Dude this museum is like 100 miles away.”
“Yep it'll be a long walk, it'll take us a while to get there”
“Did you plan on us walking there the whole time?”
“We might find bikes or something.” he pauses “well i did think we would walk the whole way”
“This is gonna take us weeks to get there!”
“Did you have anything else planned?”
“Well…i guess not but we should still try to find some bikes or something”
“Ok if we see any way to travel faster we’ll take it”
“Alright cool” I hand him the map back and he folds it back up and puts it in his bag. We walk further until we leave the gated neighborhood we started in. Preston takes the map back out and looks at it before he turns right and continues walking. I follow him staring forward at the expanse of the road. The outside of the neighborhood is surrounded by roads all leading to different parts of Newkinawa. We walk past a sign that reads “Coretown 20 miles ahead” I nudge Preston towards the sign and he checks the map again.
“Yep, the museum’s in Coretown. Would you believe the residents were pretty proud of it. Should be a fun place to explore” he says
“Yeah but it’ll take us a million years to get there.” i complain
“Lighten up, I'm sure it will be worth it”. We continue walking down the road slowly making our way to Coretown.

So I’m in this dinosaur arena and got Rivajov to 4% health. I still see his health bar on the screen but he seemingly just vanished into thin air. I’m literally walking around the arena trying to to draw him out but he’s nowhere to be found. Has anyone ran into this bug? I’d prefer to not fight this bastard again.

Edgiscript: Kimchi's a little under the weather, so I'll tell you that this is where you can find info on monetization An Introdu ction To The Book That Is Me : ASMRScriptHaven (reddit.com) and here's my library Masterlist for edgiscript : ASMRScriptHaven (reddit.com) . That's all.
Kimchi: HAAAAAAAA!!!!
Edgiscript: EEEAAAAAAGGGHHHHH!!!! Kimchi? What the hell?
Kimchi: It's not that easy to make that interesting and fun, is it?
Edgiscript: I... was... so concerned about your health, that I... couldn't... spend any time to... make this fun.
Kimchi: Awwwwww. That's so sweet. Utter BS, but still sweet.
------------------------------------------------
Part 6: [F4M] Play Time - 6 out of Checkmate [Kimchi Cat-Girl Speaker] [Hubby Human Listener] [Playing Board/Bored Games] [Rickety-Ass Stairs] [Colonel/Kernel] [You Sank My Battleship] [Give Me Back My Piece] : ASMRScriptHaven (reddit.com)
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Part 7

Kimchi: (Singsong voice.) Hubbyyyyyyyy? Huuuuuubbyyyyyyyy? I’m coming to geeeeet youuuuuuuu.
(Snickers and giggles.) Ooh, you are so good at this. I love playing hide and seek with you so much. The park has so many good hiding spots, but out here, you don’t have the advantage of having everything smell like you. So… I can follow… your scent… to… HERE!
Hah, haaaaaah. I see you. You can run, and you can laugh, I love your laugh, but you can’t hide anymore. I’m almost on you. I’m going to POUNCE…
(Kimchi crashes in some leaves.)
Hubby, what are you doing? You came back to get me. You should have used that opportunity to get away. Now the hunt is over. That’s no fun.
(Pause.)
Well, yeah, I missed. That’s what I meant. I missed, so why didn’t you keep running?
(Pause.)
Yeah, I suppose I’ve never missed before, but, you know, it happens. Why didn’t you run?
(Pause.)
Awwww, you were worried about me. Did you think I’d hurt myself? Well, thanks, hubby, but you don’t have to worry. Cats are invulnerable. I’ve got nine lives, remember? That means I can’t get hurt.
(Pause.)
Does too mean that.
(Pause.)
That’s right, there’s no point arguing with me. Why would you try to correct me when I’m right?
(Pause.)
What d’ya mean, I don’t look so good?
(Sounding hurt.) I thought you thought I was pretty.
(Pause.)
(Brightening up.) Oh, you do think I’m beautiful. You meant I look a little off.
In what way?
(Pause.)
Why would you think that, silly? And why are there two of you all of a suddenly? All of a suggen. Sudden. Whatever.
(Pause.)
No, I didn’t hit my head when I landed. What would I have hit my head on. There’s nothing but leaves here. I just… (Sneezes.)
Sorry, hubby. That came out of nowhere. I just… (Sneezes.)
No, I don’t know. Maybe allergies.
(Pause.)
Nope, never had allergies before, but I can’t think of another reason why I might… (A few coughs.)
(Pause.)
Whaaaaaaat? Sick? No way. Cats don’t get sick. That’s a silly human thing.
(Pause.)
Cats do not get sick. I told you, cats are invulnertable.
(Pause.)
Right, that’s what I said. Invulnerable. Geez, hubby. You’re thinking I’m sick, but you’re the one not hearing things properly.
Now, if you’ll stop being so silly and doing things like spinning in circles, we could get back to our game.
(Pause.)
Don’t tell me you’re not spinning. You and the whole forest is doing it. I’m actually impressed. How did you manage to get the whole park to… ohhhhhh.
(Kimchi faints. When she wakes up, she’s in bed. She sounds a little groggy.)
Hubby? What happened? Why am I in bed? Where did the forest go?
(Pause.)
Yes, the park. The grass, the trees, the leaves. Where did it go?
(Pause.)
I did not pass out. I can fall asleep very quickly, but only when I’m trying. And I wasn’t trying.
I wanted to catch you. That’s our Saturday game. I get to hunt you in the morning and then I have the rest of the day to make you happy after I catch you.
I love being the hunter and you love being the prey. I love our Saturdays. You don’t have to go to work. I get to play with you all day. Now what happened?
(Pause.)
No, no, hubby. I think you’re confused. I carry you when I catch you. You don’t carry me. You couldn’t have carried me all the way home.
(Pause.)
No, hubby, it’s not that I think you’re not strong enough, it’s just that it doesn’t happen that way. I catch you. I carry you. I make you happy. Do you see the relationship here? Me to you. You’re getting it backwards. Now let me get up and…
(Kimchi tries to get up but stops right away. Sore, painful moans. Kimchi starts to sound a little groggier and now sounds a little stuffed up as well. If you want to cough at times, go ahead when you think it works.)
Ohhhh. Ohhh, OOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHH. My body hurts. Why does my body hurt?
What did you do to me? What did I do to me? Wait, did the forest do this to me? I didn’t know it could do that. I thought it liked me. What’s going on?
(Pause.)
A fever? Pfft. Cats don’t get fevers.
(Pause.)
No, I’m not dizzy, and I don’t have body aches. I’m a cat. We’re invulnershuble. Invernatable. Invlurt… We can’t get sick.
(Pause.)
Of course I can say the word. I’ve said it before, many times. You’ve heard me say it.
(Pause.)
I… just… don’t want to say it right now. That’s all. It has nothing to do with the fact that I’m dizzy and achy all over.
(Pause.)
Oh, drat. You tricked me. Ok, fine, I’m a little dizzy, but that’s probably just because I crashed into those leaves.
(Pause.)
Yes, those leaves. There were a lot of them. And they were really big. They ganged up on me. Why does the park not like me all of a sudden?
(Pause.)
(Kimchi sounds even more stuffed up now.) No, my nose isn’t starting to run. Legs run. Noses sniff. Hubby, I think you’re the one who’s sick if you forgot that.
(Pause.)
Oh, you mean I’m leaking. Yeah, you’re right. What’s this coming out of my nose?
(Pause.)
Ewwww, that’s disgusting. How could that be?
(Pause.)
What’s that? A Kleenex? What do I do with it?
(Pause.)
Ok. (Blows nose.) WOW! Hubby, look at this. That came out of me. What’s going on?
And why am I naked with the air conditioner on? It’s freezing in here.
(Pause.)
What? I can’t be in my pajamas and under the covers. It’s so cold, I…
Huh. I guess you’re right. Wow. How did I not know that? And why am I so cold?
Wait. What’s that? (Distrustful.) Hubbyyyyy, what is that?
(Pause.)
Yes, that filthy, disgusting, vomit inducing, nasty goop that smells like you pulled it out of the garbage disposal. And why are you pouring some of it into a spoon?
(Pause.)
You can’t be serious. There is no way I’m swallowing that.
(Pause.)
You humans do it all the time? What, in the literal hell, is wrong with you? No wonder cats are superior in every way when you’re sabotaging yourself as a species by eating that filth.
(Pause.)
You can call it medicine and good for me if you want, but I know better. And it doesn’t matter. I’m not sick.
(Kimchi gets a little panicky.)
Hubby? Where are you going?
(Pause.)
(Quietly, afraid to admit the truth.) Well… yeah… I guess some chicken soup does sound kinda good right now. I suppose I’d like some. But only because I always like your chicken soup. It’s nummy.
If… if you wanted to make me some, I guess I’d eat it.
(Pause)
(Panicky.) Hubby? Wait. Don’t… don’t go.
(Pause.)
Yes, I know the ingredients and the stove aren’t in here, but… I don’t want you to go.
(Pause.)
I know you’re not leaving the apartment, but I don’t want you to go… anywhere. I… don’t want you to leave me.
(Pause.)
No, please. I’m…
(Sweetly, tenderly, frightened.) I’m scared. Hubby… I’m scared. I’ve never felt like this before. I’m… sick. That means I could… I could die, right? What if you left, even for a minute, and I needed you. I think that… if you go… even for a little bit… I might…
(Long pause. Hubby walks to the dresser and opens a drawer to get something.)
Hubby, what is that? Why are you counting to ten?
(Pause.)
You’re tying a bow on my wrist.
(Pause.)
Yes, it is pretty. I like the color very much. You make a nice bow. I like it.
(Pause.)
What? There was no hunt.
(Pause.)
Oh, so that’s what the counting meant. You started a game, didn’t you? You caught me. You tied me… with this bow. And now you have to make me happy.
(Pause.)
That’s right. Those are the rules.
(Pause. From now on, Kimchi sounds more and more tired, and gets quieter and quieter until she falls asleep.)
Yes, please. Climb into bed with me and hold me.
(Pause.)
Thank you, hubby. You feel so warm. And your arms around me makes me feel safe.
I don’t like being sick. It makes me scared. I don’t want to die, hubby. I don’t want you to go away.
(Pause.)
Ok. I guess you’re right. I can’t die with you here now because you have to make me happy, and being apart from you would make me sad.
(Pause.)
Yes, that’s right. You have to make me happy. Those are the rules. And you are, hubby. You are making me very happy right now.
(Pause.)
Oh, yes, hubby. Stroking my hair feels so good. I always like it when you pet me.
(Pause.)
And scritch my ears. Just like that.
(Pause.)
Yes, I like laying on your chest. Is it ok if I squeeze you?
(Pause.)
Yes, that would make me happy.
(Pause.)
That’s good. If I hold on tighter, you’re even warmer. How is that possible? Am I squeezing warmth out of you?
(Pause.)
Hubby, thank you. You make me not scared. I love you, hubby. I love you. I’m so glad you’re mine.
(Pause.)
No, I’m not yours. You’re mine.
(Pause.)
Ok. I’m yours too.
(Pause.)
Yes, that makes me happy.
(Pause.)
No, I’m not going to fall asleep. I just like laying here with you.
(Pause.)
So what if my eyes are closed. That means I’m comfortable.
(Pause.)
Yes, I am a good hunter. I love to catch you and make you happy, because I love you.
But… I always wondered why you liked being the prey so much. Now I know. This is nice. You’re nice.
I like you taking care of me. I love you, hubby. I… love…
(Kimchi falls asleep.)
Part 8 next.

So I have had the mini 2 pro since about 6 months after it was released and the regular cell phone screen type controller. I recently bought the Air 3 with the RC controllefly more combo and I am just blown away by how much of an upgrade this was as a whole. The thing I kept hearing from friends and colleagues was "just get the mini 4 pro." Although the m4p is a great drone in its own right and I loved the few times I used it, I cannot stress enough how worth the money the Air 3 upgrade was.
THINGS I LIKE:

1. Lenses/sensors - The star of the show IMO is 100% the 70mm focal length. People kept saying "you'll never use it" to me and that couldn't be further from the truth. It adds so many possibilities and perspectives that I'm going to have a hard time ever going back to a single lens. The background compression and parallax effect is just a game changer in terms of creativity and movements. I don't like that it was advertised as 48 mp when that very clearly isn't the case but quad-bayer has changed marketing of camera sensors for everyone. I knew what the image quality was going to be going in so I can't really complain about it too much.
   
2. Controller - The next best part has been the RC controller. It was definitely tempting to just grab the regular controller and save some $$$ and I'm so so glad that I didn't do that. The RC makes me actually want to go out and fly. It brings the entire ritual of going out and flying much more tempting and easy. Basically just a huge ease of use/quality of life bump. If there was anything I could complain about here it would just be I would love a built in stylus so the screen doesn't get smudged up and non removable sticks that hide away inside the controller when not in use. Also more custom buttons would be nice.
   
3. Powerful motors - Next on the list in my opinion is how much more powerful this drone is as a whole. My mini 2 always felt like I was taking a risk unless there was very low wind and good visibility. I cannot stress how much that isn't the case with the Air 3. I flew throughout golden/blue hour today in 20 mph winds and didn't even think about it. I'm also on an island so a lot of that was over water and I have not felt concerned even once. I've also gotten very few "high wind" pop ups even in very gusty weather. It's just so much more "powerful" and feels like I can climb to much greater heights and further from home more comfortably and easily. This feels more like a "tool" and less like a squirrelly little toy that I'm afraid is going to blow away.
   
4. Image quality/D-log M: it speaks for itself if you've watched the reviews. The image quality when paired with the Freewell ND/PL filters is just unbelievable for how small those sensors actually are. DJI must have their R&D department working overtime. Everyone was worried about the smaller sensors and this thing has proven everyone wrong in the best way. Even at night it's been a treat. I do think for the price it should have access to full D log but it's a small gripe. Also D-log M is way easier to color grade and mess with if you enjoy actually coloring and not just small adjustments. I love the dynamic range and the color depth/flexibility. I do wish there were more codecs and more information on screen when choosing like bitrate and so on, but again DJI is only going to give you so much for the price.
   

THINGS I DISLIKE:

1. I hate the bag it comes with. There's barely any room for any aftermarket accessories and although I will give DJI credit for making the bag of a high quality it's just simply too small in my opinion for a drone like this. Everything just barely fits in it and I simply don't like it.
   
2. NO CHARGER. What in the flying fuck kind of a world are we living in where you spend damn near 2 grand on something after insurance and all that and they can't even throw in a bare minimum 65w brick/wire without it costing $100 extra? An Anker 100w brick/wire is $35 on Amazon 🤦 God damn if that isn't a stingy move on DJIs part. Gone are the days when you spent extra money on shit and got treated accordingly I suppose. What a shame.
   
3. The missing prop holder strap that I now have to buy aftermarket. I hate the props flopping around when I'm holding the drone and it should have come with something to stop that IMO.
   

In closing if you're torn between the Air 3 and pretty much anything else around this price point just get the Air 3. You'll be happy you did.

[prev] [next]
Memory Transcript: Kinet, Venlil Surveyor Captain [Standardized Human Time July 5th, 2114]:
We had arrived in-system [four days] ago, and while I was expecting to see a world ravaged by nuclear exchange, the damage to the planet was beyond what I could have ever imagined. The surface was scorched, and the air filled with ash and soot from massive continent spanning fires that must have been burning for cycles. Despite all the destruction, our scans showed some signs of life trying to take hold on the surface, but not nearly as much as there should have been.
The humans had wiped themselves out over [150 years ] in the past; it shouldn’t look like it only happened only a herd of claws ago.
Fiir was of no use. When the first glimpses of the planet came in on the viewscreen, the scruffy researcher just stared with his jaw hanging loose before stammering about something being wrong. He stormed off to his quarters, and I haven’t seen him since then.
I sighed and walked onto the bridge with my waking claw cup of tea but was immediately assaulted by the chittering of an excited sivkit, our primary communications officer.
“Captain, captain, captain!”
“Hephy, yes, I’m right here. What is it?” I looked down towards her. She barely came up to my waist in her typical quadrupedal stance, and even doing her best to stand up, she wouldn’t be able to look me in the eye. Despite her stature, her excitement demanded attention as her eyes flicked between myself and whatever data she had scrolling across her display visor.
“Right Right. Anyway, Captain, I have to show you something, it’s big.” Most people don’t pay sivkits much mind, but Hephy was a prodigy. The excitable woman could look at a waterfall plot and pick out every signal present, and even read some of them without any computer assistance. I motioned for her to follow me to the ready room and started off toward it while sipping my tea. She trotted behind me on all fours, as sivkits are wont to do, and when I sat in my chair, she hopped side to side in excitement. “The signals, when we arrived from the jump, I saw something fascinating!” “Hephy, stop bouncing and sit.” I gestured to the chair in front of my desk. She looked at me for a moment as if I had grown a set of ears at the end of my snout. After a moment, her trance broke, and she hopped into the chair. She sat on her haunches and pulled out her tablet.
“Ok so, when we jumped in, we got a ping of the area, right? Send a signal out, listen for the reply, and we see what’s out there that our eyes can’t. Standard stuff, sure, but look.” She tapped at her tablet and expanded a multidimensional spectrum plot. “The bright spots are reports, and it’s all around. Debris right? That’s what I thought but look closer!” I leaned in and looked at the impressionistic splotches of color shown on the holographic display. The blues, yellows, and oranges spattered amongst the dark gray and black of night and other known objects was appealing to the eye, but ultimately gave me little idea what Hephy was trying to communicate with me. She must have picked up on my lack of insight, because she sighed and tapped the display again. “Normally, you see the pulse pattern return and that’s pretty distinct, but this is different. Odd. I thought it was just micro-debris but if you spread it out over time there’s a pattern to it, a structure in the phase relationships that doesn’t match reflections or our interrogation pulses.” “Hephy, you know I rarely ever understand you at this level.” “Right sorry right. Captain, this isn’t the return pulse, they’re data transmissions. Multiple data transmissions all at once.”
My ears perked up, and I tilted my head to the side a bit. “How can you be sure? What would even be out there to send them?”
“I wasn’t sure myself until I looked later on in the data buffers. Almost a claw later there was another longer burst. The automated systems ignored it due to interpreting it as just more micro-debris, but it had that structure-but-not-structure, perfectly shaped noise. I also had nav and sensors run another few active pings at different frequencies, trying to rule out silly patterns seeking brain nonsense. Nothing returned. The debris cloud doesn’t exist!”
“So what does this mean for us?”
“I don’t know, but it's fascinating! They must be satellites of some kind, either too small to reflect much or made to absorb radio waves.”
“That’s worrisome. There’s only one reason you’d build something like that.”
“Weaponry?” She chirped with surprising insight I had not expected to come from her. She had never been in the space force like I, and many others, had.
“Defense platforms, yes.” I took a sip of my rapidly cooling tea to try and soothe the anxious pit growing in my stomach.
“That’s…concerning.” Her excitement waned for a moment but quickly slipped back.
“Very, thank you for bringing this to my attention, Hephy.”
“As if I could keep quiet about something like this!” She snorted with a chittering laugh. “Oh! Wait there’s one more thing. There was another signal in a higher band that sounded off around the same time as the other burst, this time from a different orbit, way further out. I traced it to an artificial satellite.”
Suddenly, a thought hit me. These things were actively communicating with something. Was there something still left on the surface?
“Hephy, do you know where those signals were going?”
“Normally the antenna is too directional for anyone but the recipient to see it or it’s hard to get a read on directionality, but I know where everything is communicating to. The middle of the smaller main ocean.”
“Hephy, that’s an incredibly important bit of information!”
“It is? Oh yeah right, that makes sense!” She wiggles her tail in an amused flicking motion.
I stood up and patted her on the shoulder. “Get us close to that artificial satellite and see what it is. I’d like to get a better idea of what we’ve just stumbled into. Report back when you have some answers and we will go from there.”
Hephy bobbed her ears and hopped off the seat. “On it, sir. Where are you going?” “I’m going to talk to Fiir. This is beyond the original mission, and he needs to know.” “Ay captain. Good luck. Guy’s a weirdo.” I simply grunted and strolled down to the auxiliary quarters where I knew the researcher to be.
>Advance record: [10 Minutes]:
Fiir had brought an entire team of researchers with him. I was told they’re all colleagues of his from the research academy that are interested in this personal project of his. This many people on board with his project did explain how he was able to offer the exorbitant sum of credits to hire me and my crew. They had been allocated a section of the ship near the front, just past the shuttle bay and under the bridge area. This let them have their privacy and set up whatever gear they brought with them.
It also meant that there was a door between them and the rest of the ship. A door that they did not hesitate to keep closed after pre-launch inspections had concluded. The researchers didn’t have anything I didn’t expect from the manifest, but I still found it rather suspicious. Were they hiding something? Perhaps it had to do with that odd power hungry computer they insisted upon. Mara had her ears tied in a knot trying to accommodate it, and still they were coy about why exactly they needed it. It didn’t do me any good to speculate, though. What mattered most was the problem of the satellites.
I finally reached the door and, being the polite man I am, I scratched at the sounding plate before grabbing the handle and trying to open it. To my surprise, it didn’t budge. I could understand locking doors to the personal quarters, but this was a main corridor in my own ship! Just as I reached over to key in the unlock code, the door made a thunk as the latch disengaged and slid open part of the way. A familiar gray fringed brown muzzle stuck out from the gap. “This is a restrict- Oh. Captain.” Fiir opened the door a little more and stood up facing me. “What is it?”
I blinked at his rather blunt question. “I just came to inform you that we’ve discovered some worrying details about the nature of the-” “The artificial satellites are not of any concern to us.” He cut me off before I could finish.
“We think they might be-”
He glanced back behind the door for a moment, his tail thrashed in agitation. “It doesn’t matter. Have you prepared the landing party yet?” My jaw tightened as my frustration with his rudeness grew. I couldn’t get much of a word in, but I needed any answers. “They’re set to depart in two claws, but with those unknown satellites, I can’t be sure of their safety! I saw you on the bridge when we arrived, you were expecting something different. As the captain of this ship, I need to know if there’s a threat to-”
“Captain.” Fiir’s gaze grew intense as he leaned in. I may have had almost a head of height on the wizened farsul, but in that moment, he felt as if he was towering over me. “I suggest you stick to the responsibilities I hired you for, Captain Kinet. There are things that you are not privy to, nor will you be made privy to in the foreseeable future. Continue with the survey as per our agreement, and you’ll get your credits. Do not bother me until the away team is en route. Good paw, Captain.” He closed and locked the door without even waiting for my response.
I just stood at the door for a long while, a feeling of anger and indignation boiling in my chest. I had only ever had cordial contact with the researcher up until now; this abrupt shift in his demeanor was unsettling, to say the least. How dare he talk down to me like that on my own ship! I sighed and took a deep breath, holding it for a moment before letting it out. Slow and controlled. Letting the tension and anger flow out with my breath.
Inhale. Hold. Release.
Inhale. Hold. Release.
After a few cycles, the burning anger was reduced to a smoldering cinder. As much as I had wanted to headbutt Fiir, it wasn’t worth risking the contract for. I turned and walked back to the bridge to prepare for the away mission. Without Fiir’s info, I needed to make sure contingencies were in place for any possible threat to the away team. The lives of my crew are paramount, even if the contract was very, very lucrative. All that aside, the planning would keep my mind away from thoughts of my rude client.
>Advance record: [Standardized Human Time July 6th, 2114]:
I woke up after my rest paw feeling groggy and unrested. The confrontation with Fiir kept playing in my mind all night, despite the claws of planning for the away mission. To say his standoffish behavior left knots in my wool would be an understatement. I wiped my snout with my paws, flicking the crust from my eyes before getting up out of bed.
I grabbed my favorite mug and fixed myself my morning cup of tea. Pulling the dried leaves and stems from the canister, I could feel my mouth water in anticipation. I had been told by many who possessed the strange appendage called a nose that the tea leaves had a strong earthy and floral scent. I often wondered what that meant. Venlil didn’t have noses, but we did have a sense of taste, which is apparently quite similar. I often wondered what it might be like to smell. Do we really miss out on so much without being able to smell?
We had to soak our foods and tea in water before we could taste it with our tongues, and even then, it’s not nearly as sensitive, which is probably why other species consider venlil cuisine to be overseasoned and overpowering.
Another reason why the stereotype of venlil being weak is nonsense, in my opinion. How strong can you be if you can’t handle a little spice?
The timer went off, chirping to tell me my tea was ready. I sifted out the leaves and brought the invigorating elixir to my lips. The hot fluid warmed me to my core and burned away the waking lyasi silk from my groggy mind.
I needed to catch up with Hephy and Mara; they should have brought in that satellite-
My thoughts were interrupted by the chiming of my pad. I picked it up and answered the call to see Hephy’s face almost filling the screen, with Mara looking over her shoulder.
“Oh good you’re awake! Captain, you must see this! It’s amazing! The satellite, it’s full of brains!”
END TRANSCRIPTION
Been a hot minute, I hadn't forgotten about this. As always, comments are coveted and appreciated. What do you all think about Fiir's behavior? What do y'all think of Hephy?
Thanks to for creating this setting and fostering such a delightfully passionate community! Thanks again to , Novalux, and the Foxmates for editing and helping me get this done!
Soma belongs to Frictional Games.

PLAYBOY Interview With Conan O'Brien Interview by Kevin Cook For Playboy Magazine February 1998
A candid conversation with the preppie prince of "Late Night" about his rocky start, his show's secret one-day cancellation and how David Letterman saved the day.
He was polite. He was funny. He gave us a communicable disease.
At 34 Conan O'Brien is hotter than the fever he was running when we met in his private domain above the "Late Night" sound stage. A gangly freckle-faced ex-high school geek he is "one of TV's hottest properties" according to "People" magazine. The host of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" has become his generation's king of comedy.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Congested too, but O'Brien has far more to worry about than his head cold. A perfectionist who broods over one bad minute in an otherwise perfect hour of TV, he worries he might be anhedonic, "I have trouble with success," he says, "I was raised to believe that if something good happens something bad is coming." Sure things look good now "Rolling Stone" calls "Late Night" "the hottest comedy show on TV." Ratings are better than ever, particularly among 18- to 34-year-olds, the viewers advertisers crave.
But O'Brien only works harder. Despite his illness he taped two shows in 26 hours on three hours' sleep. He smoothly interviewed Elton John then burst into coughing fits during commercials. Later in his crammed corner office overlooking Manhattan traffic Conan the Cool gulped Dayquil gel caps. He coughed spewing microbes.
"Sorry, sorry," he said. Of course O'Brien can't complain. He came seriously close to falling to being banished behind the scenes as just another failed talk show host.
At his first "Late Night" press conference he corrected a reporter who called him a relative unknown, "Sir I am a complete unknown," he said. That line got a laugh, but soon O'Brien looked doomed. His September 13, 1993 debut began with O'Brien in his dressing room preparing to hang himself only to be interrupted by the start of his show. Before long his career was hanging by a thread. Ratings were terrible. Critics hated the show. Tom Shales of "The Washington Post" called it as "lifeless and messy as roadkill." Shales said O'Brien should quit.
Network officials held urgent meetings discussing the Conan O'Brien debacle. Should they fire him? How should they explain their mistake?
In the end of course he turned it around. The network hung with him long enough for the ratings to improve and the host of the cooler-than-ever "Late Night" now defines comedy's cutting edge just as Letterman did ten years ago.
Even Shales loves "Late Night" these days. He calls O'Brien's turnaround "one of the most amazing transformations in television history."
O'Brien was born on April 18, 1963 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, a doctor, is a professor at Harvard Medical School. His mother, a lawyer, is a partner at an elite Boston Law firm. Conan, the third of six children became a lector at church and a misfit at school. Tall and goofy, bedeviled with acne, he tried to impress girls with jokes. That plan usually bombed, but O'Brien eventually found his niche at Harvard where he won the presidency of the "Harvard Lampoon" in 1983 and again in 1984 - the first two-time "Lampoon" president since humorist Robert Benchley held the honor 85 years ago.
After graduating magna cum laude with a double major in literature and American history he turned pro. Writing for HBO's "Not Necessarily The News." O'Brien was earning $100,000 a year before his 24th birthday. But writing was never enough.
He honed his performance skills with the Groundlings, a Los Angeles improv group. There he worked with his onetime girlfriend Lisa Kudrow, now starring on "Friends." But Conan was not such a standout. In 1988 he landed a job at "Saturday Night Live" - but as a writer, not as on-air talent. In almost four years on the show O'Brien made only fleeting appearances, usually as a crowd member or security guard. His writing was more memorable. He wrote (or co-wrote) Tom hanks' "Mr Short-Term Memory" skits as well as the "pump you up" infosatire of Hanz and Franz and the nude beach sketch in which Matthew Broderick and "SNL" members played nudists admiring one another's penises. With dozens of mentions of the word that hit was the most penis-heavy moment in TV history. It helped O'Brien win an Emmy for comedy writing.
In 1991 he quit "SNL" and moved on to "The Simpsons" where he worked for two years. His urge to perform came out in wall-bouncing antics in writers' meetings. "Conan makes you fall out of your chair" said "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening. O'Brien's yen to act out was so strong that he spurned Fox's reported seven-figure offer to continue as a writer. He was driving for the spotlight.
By then David Letterman had announced he was turning shin - leaving NBC taking his ton-rated act to CBS. Suddenly NBC was up a creek without a host. The network turned to Lorne Michaels, O'Brien's "Saturday Night Live" boss. Michaels enlisted Conan's help in the host search planning to use him in a behind-the-scenes job. But when Garry Shandling, Dana Carvey and almost every other star turned down the chore of following Letterman, Michaels finally listened to Conan's crazy suggestion, "Let me do it!" Michaels persuaded the network to entrust it's 12:30 slot which Letterman had turned into a gold mine to an untested wiseass from Harvard.
O'Brien was working on one of his last "Simpsons" episodes when he got the news. He turned "paler than usual," Groening recalled. The Conan moseyed back to where the other writers were working, "I'll come back with the Homer Simspon joke later. I have to go replace Letterman," he said.
NBC executives now get credit for their foresight during those dark days of 1993 and 1994. They snared the axe and now reap the multimillion-dollar spoils of that decision. In fact, the story is not so simple. We sent Contributing Editor Kevin Cook to unravel the tale of O'Brien's survival, which he tells here for the first time. Cook reports:
"His office is chock-full of significa. There's a three-foot plastic pickle the Letterman staff left behind in 1993 - perhaps to suggest what a predicament he was in. There's a copy of Jack Paar's 'I Kid You Not' and a coffee-table book called 'Saturday Night Live: The First 20 Years.' His bulletin board features letters from fans such as John Watters and Bob Dole and an 8" x 10" glossy of Andy Richter with the inscription: "To Conan - Your bitter jealousy warms my black heart. Love and Kisses Andy."
"Of course it's all for show. From the photos of kitch icons Adam West and Robert Stack to the framed Stan Laurel autograph, from the deathbed painting of Abraham Lincoln, to the ironic star taped to Conan's door - they're all clever signals that tell a visitor how to view the star. Lincoln was his collegiate preoccupation: stardom is his occupation. Somewhere between the two I hoped to find the real O'Brien.
"As a Playboy reader he wanted to give me a better-than-average interview. I wanted something more - a definitive look at the guy who may end up being the Johnny Carson of his generation."
"Here's hoping we succeeded. If not I carried his germs 3000 miles and infected dozens of Californians for no good reason.
O'Brien: Yes, this is how to do a Playboy Interview -- completely tanked on cold medicine. I'll pick it up and read, "Yes, I'm gay."
Playboy: We could talk another time. O'Brien: (coughing) No, it's OK. I memorized Dennis Rodman's answers. Can I use them?
Playboy: You sound really sick. Do you ever take a day off? O'Brien: No. The age of talk show hosts taking days off is over. Johnny Carson could go to Africa when he was the only game in town -- "See you in two weeks!" But nobody does that now. I will give you a million dollars on the first day Jay takes off for illness.
Playboy: Do you ever slow down and enjoy your success? O'Brien: If anything, the pace is picking up. Restaurateurs insist on giving me a table even if I'm only passing by, so I'm eating nine meals a night. Women stop me on the street and hand me their phone numbers.
Playboy: So you have groupies? O'Brien: Oh yes. And other fans. Drifters. Prisoners. Insomniacs. Cab Drivers, who must watch a lot of late night TV, seem to love me lately. They keep saying, "You will not pay, you will not pay, you make me happy!"
Playboy: How happy did your new contract make you? O'Brien: Terrified. The network said, "We're all set for five years." I said, "Shut up, shut up! I can't think that far ahead." Tonight, for instance, I do my jokes, then interview Elton John and Tim Meadows. We finished taping about 6:30. By 6:45 my memory was erased and my only thought was, Tomorrow: John Tesh. And I started to obsess about John Tesh. Sad, don't you think?
Playboy: Not too sad. You got off to a rocky start but now you're so hot that People magazine recently said, "that was then, this is wow." O'Brien: I try not to pay much attention. Since I ignored the critics who said I should shoot myself in the head with a German Luger, it would be cheating to tear out nice reviews now and rub them all over my body, giggling. Though I have thought about it.
Playboy: Tell us about your trademark gag. You interview a photo of Bill Clinton or some other celeb, and a pair of superimposed lips provide outrageous answers. O'Brien: We call it the Clutch Cargo bit, after that terrible old cartoon series. They saved money on animation by superimposing real lips on the cartoons. I wanted to do topical jokes in a cartoony way -- not just Conan doing quips at a desk. TV is visual; I want things to look funny. But we're not Saturday Night Live; we couldn't spend $100,000 on it. Hence, the cheap, cheesy lips, You'd be surprised how many people we fool.
Playboy: Viewers believe that's really the president yelling, "Yee-haw! Who's got a joint?" O'Brien: It's strange. You may know intellectually that Clinton doesn't talk like Foghorn Leghorn. Ninety-eight percent of your brain knows the president wouldn't say, "Whoa Conan get a load of that girl!" But there are a few brain cells that aren't sure. When Bob Dole was running for president we had him doing a past-life regression: "My cave, get away." And then back further, "Must form flippers to crawl on to rocky soil," he says. There may be people out there who believe that Bob Dole was the first amphibian.
Playboy: Do you ever go too far? O'Brien: The fun is in going too far. It's a nice device because you get Bill Clinton to do the nastiest Bill Clinton jokes. We'll have Clinton making fart noises while I say "Sir! Please!"
Playboy: Are you enjoying your job now, with your new success? O'Brien: Well, there are surprises. I hate surprises. Like most comics, I'm a control freak. But I am learning that the show works best when things are out of control. Tonight I ask Elton John if he likes being neighbors with Joan Collins. He says he isn't neighbors with Joan Collins. He lives next door to Tina Turner. So I panic -- huge mistake! But Elton saves the day. "Joan Collins, Tina Turner, it doesn't matter. Either way I could borrow a wig," he says. Huge laugh, all because I fucked up. Later he surprised me by blurting out that he's hung like a horse. The camera cuts to me shaking my head: That crazy Elton. What can I do? Of course, I'm delighted that he went too far.
Playboy: That "What can I do?" look resembles a classic take of Jack Benny's. O'Brien: There's an old saying in literature: "Good poets borrow; great poets steal." I think T.S. Eliot stole it from Ezra Pound. Comics steal, too. Constantly. When I watched Johnny Carson, I noticed that he got a few takes from Benny and Bob Hope. When a comedy writer told me how much Woody Allen had borrowed from Hope, I thought, What? They're nothing alike. Then I went back and watched Son of Paleface, and there's Hope, the nervous city guy backing up on his heels, wringing his hands and saying, "Sorry, I'll just be moving along." Now look at early Woody Allen. You see big authority figures and Woody nervously saying, "Look, I'll just be on my way." Of course Woody made it his own, but he must have watched and loved Bob Hope.
Playboy: Who are your role models? O'Brien: Carson. Woody Allen. SCTV. Peter Sellers. When Peter Sellers died I felt such a loss, thinking, There won't be anymore of that. There's some Steve Martin in my false bravado with female guests: "Why, hel-lo there!" And I won't deny having some Letterman in my bones.
Playboy: You were surprise as Letterman's successor. At first you seemed like the wrong choice. O'Brien: I didn't get ratings. That doesn't mean I didn't get laughs. Yes, I had a giant pompadour and I looked like a rockabilly freak. I was too excited, pushed too hard, and people said, "That guy isn't a polished performer." Fine! But it isn't my goal to be Joe Handsomehead cool, smooth talk show host. Late Night with Conan O'Brien is supposed to be a work in progress, and now that we've had some success there's a danger of our getting too polished and morphing into something smoothly professional. Which would suck.
Do you know why I wanted this show? Because Late Night with David Letterman played with the rules and it looked like fun. Here was a place where people did risky comedy every night for millions of people. We had to keep this thing alive. There should be a place on a big network where people are still messing around.
Playboy: How bad were your early days on the show? O'Brien: Bad. Dave left here under a cloud: his fans and the media were angry with NBC. Then NBC picks a guy with crazy hair and a weird name. And the world says, "Harvard? Those guys are assholes." I sincerely hope that the winter of December 1993, our first winter, was the worst time I will ever have. I'd go out to do the warm up and the back two rows of seats would be empty. That's hard to look at. I would tell a joke and then hear someone whisper, "Who's he? Where's Dave?"
Playboy: You had trouble getting guests. O'Brien: Bob Denver canceled on us. We shot a test show with Al Lewis of The Munsters. We did the clutch cargo thing with a photo of Herman Munster. Unfortunately, Fred Gwynne, who played Herman, had recently died, and Al Lewis kept pointing at the screen, saying, "You're dead! I was at your funeral!"
Playboy: For months you got worried notes from network executives. What did they say? O'Brien: They were worried. The fact that Lorne Michaels was involved bought me some time. But Lorne had turned to me at the start and said, "OK, Conan. What do you want to do?" Now television critics were after me and the network was starting to realize what a risk I was. Suggestions came fast and furious. I kept the note that said, "Why don't you just die?"
Playboy: Did they suggest ways to be funnier? O'Brien: They were more specific and tactical. The network gets very specific data. Say there was a drop in ratings between 12:44 and 12:48 when I was talking to Jon Bon Jovi. I'll be told, "Don't ever talk to him again" Or they'll want me to tease viewers into staying with us: "You should tease that -- say, 'We'll have nudity coming up next!'"
Playboy: You did come close to being cancelled. O'Brien: We were cancelled.
Playboy: Really? You have never admitted that. O'Brien: This is the first time I've talked about it. When I had been on for about a year, there was a meeting at the network. They decided to cancel my show. They said, "It's cancelled." Next day they realized they had nothing to put in the 12:30 slot, so we got a reprieve.
Playboy: Were you worried sick? O'Brien: I went into denial. I tried hard not to think, Yes, I'm bad on the air and my show has none of the things a TV show needs to survive. We had no ratings. No critics in our corner. Advertisers didn't like us. Affiliates wanted to drop us. Sometimes I'd meet a programming director from a local station where we had no rating at all. The guy would show me a printout with no number for Late Night's rating, just a hash mark or pound sign. I didn't dare think about that when I went out to do the show.
Playboy: Are you defending denial? O'Brien: How else does anyone get through a terrible experience? The odds were against me. Rationally, I didn't have much chance. Denial was my only friend. When I look back on the first year, it's like a scene from an old war movie: Ordinary guy gets thrown into combat, somehow beats impossible odds, staggers to safety. His buddy say, "You could have been killed!" The guy stops and thinks. "Could have been killed?" he says. His eyes cross and he faints.
Playboy: How did you dodge the bullet? O'Brien: There were people at NBC who stood up for me. I will always be indebted to Don Ohlmeyer, who stuck to his guns. Don said, "We chose this guy. We should stick with him unless we get a better plan." He was brutally honest. He came to me and said, "Give me about a 15 percent bump in the ratings and you'll stay on the air. If not, we're going to move on."
Playboy: Ohlmeyer started his career in the sports division. O'Brien: Exactly, his take was, "You're on our team." Of course, it wasn't exactly rational of Don to hope I'd be 15 percent funnier. It was like telling a farmer, "It better rain this week or we'll take your farm away."
Playboy: What did you say to Ohlmeyer? O'Brien: There wasn't time. I had to go out and do a monologue. But I will always be indebted to Don because he told me the truth. Wait a minute -- you have tricked me into talking lovingly about an NBC executive. Let me say that there were others who were beneath contempt -- executives who wouldn't know a good show if it swam up their asses and lit a campfire.
Playboy: Finally the ratings went your way. Hard work rewarded? O'Brien: Well, I also paid off the Nielsen people. That was $140,000 well spent.
Playboy: Ohlmeyer plus bribery saved you? O'Brien: There was something else. Just when everyone was kicking the crap out of the show, Letterman defended me.
Playboy: Letterman had signed off on NBC saying, "I don't really know Conan O'Brien, but I heard he killed someone." O'Brien: Then I pick up the paper and he's saying he thinks I am going to make it. "They do some interesting, innovative stuff over there," he says. "I think Conan will prevail." And then he came on as a guest. Remember, this was when we were at our nadir. There was no Machiavellian reason for David Letterman, who at the time was the biggest thing in show business, to be on my show.
Playboy: Why did he do it? O'Brien: I'm still not sure. Maybe out of a sense of honor. Fair play. And it woke me up. It made me think. Hey, we have a real fucking television show here.
Of six or seven pivotal points in my short history here, that was the first and maybe the biggest. I wouldn't be sitting here -- I probably wouldn't even exist today -- if he hadn't done our show.
Playboy: The Late Night wars were hardly noted for friendly gestures. O'Brien: How little you understand. Jay, Dave and I pal around all the time. We often ride a bicycle built for three up to the country. "Nice job with Fran Drescher!" "Thanks, pal. You weren't so bad with John Tesh." We sleep in triple-decker bunk beds and snore in unison like the Three Stooges.
Playboy: You talk more about Letterman than your NBC teammate Leno. O'Brien: I hate the "Leno or Letterman, who's better?" question. I can tell you that Jay has been great to me. He calls me occasionally.
Playboy: To say what? O'Brien: (Doing Leno's voice) "Hey, liked that bit you did last night." Or he'll say he saw we got a good rating. I call him at work, too. It can be a strange conversation because we're so different. Jay, for instance, really loves cars. He's got antique cars with kerosene lanterns, cars that run on peat moss. He'll be telling me about some classic car he has, made entirely of brass and leather, and I'll say, "Yeah, man, I got the Taurus with the vinyl." One thing we have in common is bad guests. There are certain actors, celebrities with nothing to say, who move through the talk show world wreaking havoc. They lay waste to Dave's town and Jay's town, then head my way.
Playboy: You must be getting some good guests. Your ratings have shown a marked improvement. O'Brien: Remember, when you're on at 12:30 the Nielsens are based on 80 people. My ratings drop if one person has a head cold and goes to bed early.
Playboy: Actually, you're seen by about 3 million people a night. Your ratings would be even higher if college dorms weren't excluded from the Nielsens. How many points does that cost you? O'Brien: I told you I'm an idiot. Now I have to do math too?
Playboy: Do you still get suggestions from NBC executives? O'Brien: Not as many. The number of notes you get is inversely proportional to your ratings.
Playboy: What keeps you motivated? O'Brien: Superstition. We have a stagehand, Bobby Bowman, who holds up the curtain when I run out for the monologue. He is the last person I see before the show starts, and I have to make him laugh before I go out. It started with mild jabs: "Bobby, you're drunk again." Bobby laughs, "Heehee."" Then it was, "Still having trouble with the wife, Bobby?" But after hundreds of shows, you find yourself running out of lines. It's gotten to where I do crass things at the last second. I'll put his hand on my ass and yell, "You fucking pervert!" Or drop to my knees and say, "Come on, Bobby, I'll give you a blow job!"
"Ha-ha. Conan, you're crazy," he says. But even that stuff wears off. Soon, I'll be making the writers work late to give me new jokes for Bobby.
Playboy: Did you plan to be a talk show host or did you fall into the job? O'Brien: I was an Irish Catholic kid from St. Ignatius parish in Brookline, outside of Boston. And that meant: Don't call attention to yourself. Don't ask for too much when the pie comes around. Don't get a girl pregnant and fuck up your life.
Playboy: Were you an alter boy? O'Brien: I wanted to be an alter boy, but the priest at St. Ignatius said, "No, no. You're good on your feet, kid," and made me a lector. A scripture reader at Mass. He was the one who spotted my talent.
Playboy: What did you think of sex in those days? O'Brien: I was sexually repressed. At 16 I still thought human reproduction was by mitosis.
Playboy: How did you get over your sexual repression? O'Brien: Who says I got over it? My leg has been jiggling this whole time.
Playboy: What were you like in high school? O'Brien: Like a crane galumphing down the hall. A crane with weird hair, bad skin and Clearasil. Big enough for basketball but lousy at it. My older brothers were better. I would compensate by running around the court doing comedy, saying, "Look out, this player has a drug addiction. He's incredibly egotistical."
I was an asshole at home, too. My little brother Justin loved playing cops and robbers, but I kept tying him up with bureaucratic bullshit. When he'd catch me, I'd say, "I get to call my lawyer." Then it was, "OK, Justin, we're at trial and you've been charged with illegal arrest. Fill out these forms in triplicate." Justin was eight; he hated all the lawsuits and countersuits. He just cried.
Playboy: Were you a class clown? O'Brien: Never. I was never someone who walked into a room full of strangers and started telling jokes. You had to get to know me before I could make you laugh. The same thing happened with Late Night. I needed to get the right rhythm with Andy and Max and the audience.
Playboy: So how did you finally learn about sex? O'Brien: My parents gave me a book, but it was useless. At the crucial moment, all it showed was a man and a woman with the bed covers pulled up to their chins. I tried to find out more from friends, but it didn't help. One childhood friend told me it was like parking a car in a garage. I kept worrying about poisonous fumes. What if the fumes build up? Should you shut off the engine?
Playboy: For all your talk about being repressed, you can be rowdy on the air. O'Brien: The show is my escape valve. When I tear off my shirt and gyrate my pelvis like Robert Plant, feigning orgasm into the microphone, that shows how repressed I am -- a guy who wants to push his sex at the lens but can only do it as a joke.
Playboy: Aren't you tempted to live it up? O'Brien: I always imagined that if I were a TV star I would live the way I pictured Johnny Carson living. Carousing, stepping out of a limo wearing a velvet ascot with a model on my arm. Now that I have the TV show, I drive up to Connecticut on the weekends and tool around in my car. I could probably join a free-sex cult, smoke crack between orgies and drive sports cars into swimming pools, and my Catholic guilt would still be there, throbbing like a toothache. Be careful. If something good happens, something bad is on the way.
Playboy: Yet you don't mind licking the supermodels. O'Brien: At one point a few of them lived in my building, women who are so beautiful they almost look weird, like aliens. To me, a woman who has a certain approachable amount of beauty becomes almost funny. It's the same with male supermodels. They look like big puppets. So while I admire their beauty I probably won't be "romantically linked" with a model. I'd catch my reflection in a ballroom mirror and break up laughing.
Playboy: The horny Roy Orbison growl you use on gorgeous guests sounds real enough -- O'Brien: Oh, I've been doing that shit since high school. It just never worked before.
Playboy: Your father is a doctor, your mother an attorney. What do they think of their son the comedian? O'Brien: My dad was the one who told me denial was a virtue. "Denial is how people get through horrible things," he said. He also cut out a newspaper article in which I said I was making money off something for which I should probably be treated. So true, he thought. But when I got an Emmy for helping write Saturday Night Live, my parents put it on the mantel next to the crucifix. Here's Jesus looking over, saying, "Wow, I saved mankind from sin, but I wish I had an Emmy."
Playboy: Ever been in therapy? O'Brien: Yes. I don't trust it. I have told therapists that I don't particularly want to feel good. "Repression and fear, that's my fuel." But the therapists said that I had nothing to worry about. "Don't worry Conan you will always be plenty fucked up."
Playboy: When a female guest comes out, how do you know whether to shake her hand or kiss her? Is that rehearsed O'Brien: No, and it's awkward. If you go to shake her hand and her head starts coming right at you, you have to change strategy fast. I have thought about using the show to make women kiss me, but that would probably creep out the people at home. I decided not to kiss Elton John.
Playboy: Do you get all fired up if Cindy Crawford or Rebecca Romijn does the show? O'Brien: I like making women laugh. Always have, ever since I discovered you can get girls' attention by acting like an ass. That's one of the joys of the show -- I'm working my eyebrows and going grrr and she's laughing, the audience is laughing. It's all a big put-on and I'm thinking. This is great. Here is a beautiful woman who has no choice but to put up with this shit.
But it's not always put on. Sometimes they flirt back. Sometimes there's a bit of chemistry. That happened with Jennifer Connelly of The Rocketeer.
Playboy: One guest, Jill Hennessy, took off her pants for you. Then you removed yours. Even Penn and Teller took off their pants. O'Brien: Something comes over me. It happened with Rebecca Romijn -- I was practically climbing her. Those are the times when Andy and the audience seem to disappear and it's just me and this lovely woman sitting there flirting. I keep expecting a waiter to say, "More wine, Monsieur?"
Playboy: Would you lick the wine bottle? O'Brien: It's true, there's a lot of licking on the show. I have licked guests. I have licked Andy. Comedy professionals will read this and say, "Great work, Conan. Impressive." But I have learned that if you lick a guest, people laugh. If I pick this shoe off the floor, examine it, Hmmm, and then lick it, people laugh. I learned this lesson on The Simpsons, where I was the writer who was forever trying to entertain the other writers. I still try desperately to make our writers laugh, which is probably a sign of sickness since they work for me now. Licking is one of those things that look funny.
Playboy: Johnny Carson never licked Ed McMahon. O'Brien: We are much more physical and more stupid than the old Tonight Show. Even in our offices before the show there's always some writer acting out a scene crashing his head through my door. A behind-the-scenes look at our show might frighten people.
Playboy: One night you showed a doctored photo of Craig T. Nelson having sex with Jerry Van Dyke. Did they complain about it? O'Brien: I haven't heard from them. Of course I'm blessed not to be a part of the celebrity pond. I have a television show in New York, an NBC outpost. I don't run with or even run into many Hollywood people.
Playboy: You also announced that Tori Spelling has a penis. O'Brien: I did not. Polly the Peacock said that.
Playboy: Another character you use to say the outrageous stuff. O'Brien: Polly is not popular with the network.
Playboy: You mock Fabio, too. O'Brien: If he sues me, it'll be the best thing that ever happened. A publicity bonanza: Courtroom sketches of Fabio with his man-boobs quivering, shaking his fist, and me shouting at him across the courtroom. I'm not afraid of Fabio. He knows where to find me. I'm saying it right here for the record: Fabio, let's get it on.
Playboy: Ever have a run-in with an angry celeb? O'Brien: I did a Kelsey Grammar joke a few years ago, something about his interesting lifestyle, then heard through the network that he was upset. He had appeared on my show and expected some support. At this point my intellect says, "Kelsey Grammar is a public figure. I was in the right." Then I saw him in an airport. Kelsey didn't see me at first: I could have kept walking. But there he was, eating a cruller in the airport lounge. I thought I should go over. I said hello and then said, "Kelsey, I'm sorry if I upset you." And he was glad. He looked relieved. He said, "Oh, that's OK." We both felt better.
....See my other post with the last third of the interview

I’m going to bleach and dye my black, low porosity, curly hair for the first time! I’m doing like a brown balayage and the salon uses goldwell as their bond builder which is unfortunate as I heard olaplex and k18 are the way to go, but it’s my best option.
My current routine is just shampoo & deep conditioner & few drops of argan oil as a leave-in (all protein free), then air dry.
So I’m wondering how should I change my routine / what to introduce to care for it? I’m planning on switching to a protein-containing conditioner and using olaplex n3 weekly. Any better suggestions? Should I still go for an in-salon k18 treatment afterwards?

To start things off, I have dry eye disease and regular screens hurt my eyes at times, especially during flare-ups or if I use them for too long, so I've been looking for an e-reader for these past few days and as with most purchases, I can't decide which one to get. Most of my use cases would be reading books, manga and some web browsing. At first I thought about the Page, but 7" seemed a bit too small, so I went looking for an 8" reader and Boox only has one device at that size that's currently in stock which is the Tab Mini C. I then started looking into color e-ink devices and became even more unsure on what to choose, so I have a couple of questions, mostly regarding the colored devices:

• Does the frontlight cause any additional eye strain?

I know some people prefer not using the frontlight, but from my understand you kind of need to use it if you have a color e-ink device unless you're in a well lit environment.

• Can you watch anime on a color e-ink device?

I know it's not the intended purpose of these devices, but I'm still curious, especially if it's kind of feasible then I could have an additional thing to do on the device without straining my eyes watching it on a regular screen, if I wanted to. I tried looking for more info about this, but only found a couple of people that took some short videos, but they haven't really elaborated much on the experience.
Anyway my choices are:

• Boox Page - 260€
• Note Air 3 - 410€
• Tab Mini C - 450€
• Note Air 3C - 510€
• Or to just wait until they release new devices, I guess, but from my understanding it won't happen until later in the year since that's when they usually do it