Finding the missing angle in a triangle worksheets

I've been laying in bed majority of the day recently and rarely step out of my house because I have been very sad and depressed about the fact I wasted my youth. For reference I'm in my 20s and just recently finished College, but I failed to make a single friend. Same story goes in High School. Now the rest of my life is dedicated towards work and moving and the likelihood of me ever finding a consistent stable friend group decreases. Even if I do find a friend group though, there is nothing I can do to get back the memories that I missed out on. The college experience, doing fun things with friends on campus, partying, etc is something I never got to experience and its literally been soul crushing for me. I don't know how to move forward and considering I've lacked the social experiences and connections in the last decade it will be even harder for me to connect to others and make friendships. And what makes things even worse is knowing 99% of college students had fun but I didn't, and the family friends I had when I was younger but moved away all made friends and had a good social life (Saw through instagram). So what would be the reason not to just end it all??
It's good to know there's a reddit like this so I'm trying to know how like minded people cope with this situation/life

I’m in a bit of a confusing situation and could use some advice.
I’m religious. It’s against my religion and modest personality to confess my feelings to a man as I fear god and I fear sining. Please don’t judge that.
But I feel something for someone I work with.
Every time I see him, my heart skips a beat, I miss him on our week offs, I think about him a lot, I do admit that I cried once out of frustration as I’ve been living with my feelings for so long now, so long that he is almost becoming a part of my daily prayers now…
I was planing to take this secret to the grave with me. But the way he is treating me now is giving me hope. Maybe he can voice out what I don’t have the voice for.
He is very religious, more than me. You would never see him having a conversation with a woman, unless it’s a coworker and it’s always short and professional. Up until a few weeks ago, he used to take many steps away whenever I would come his way to check something in the screen at work. Whenever he wants to use something, he would politely ask me to move first. Basically, he used to follow the rules that we have in our religion when it comes to environments that have both genders working together.
But suddenly, I’ve noticed him changing.
A week ago,He started having deep conversations with me, we even found out that we both share interests in few things and we enjoy talking about them. This isn’t normal for me or him. While I do enjoy learning from him, learning about him, and finding out that we are on the same page with MANY things, I’m afraid of making a mistake.
He started reaching out with his arm whenever he wanted something without asking, brushing his hand on mine, not even trying to make it look like an accident, he stands so close to me, so close that my heart just wants to explode in my chest.. as you see, it’s so hard and confusing to me…
A few days ago, he, the man who would never text me before, not even about work, called twice on two different days, speaking about work for just the first 5 minutes before switching to joking and then speaking about deep stuff eg. his childhood, how he doesn’t mind marrying a woman who was married before (I was)… and the last call was for around 50 minutes.. he told me SO many times, over and over, that he cares about me.. no explanation, just dropping it like this… all I could say is that I do too, very much.
am I going crazy? Does this change mean he feels something? Or am I just blind to the fact that he didn’t even see me as a woman so he’s just comfortable with me??
Please tell me I’m not delusional/over thinking..
I’m confused .. I don’t know what to do.. I want to speak about it and understand it.. help me please…
TLDR: secretly having feelings for my colleague who recently started getting closer to me in ways I haven’t seen him before with other female colleagues leading to a huge confusion.

I'm not sure where to begin. I'm 35. Female. All my life I felt abnormal and was labeled weird. At 25 (after graduating college, go figure) I was finally diagnosed with ADHD and screened for autism. Never got a complete test for that but the doc said she was 90-something percent sure I had it, but was worried if getting the information on my records was worth it at this point. Might do more harm than good.
I should also state that when I was born I had a subarachnoid hemorrhage. A bad one that required me to be in the hospital for a few weeks. Even then the doctor was worried it would effect me later. But it seems that slipped through the cracks? When I was younger (somewhere between 3-5 grade) a teacher noticed my oddities and suggested I get tested. Apparently I had been. But my mother refused to believe the results. Loathed the very idea of putting me on something like Adderall and such meds and buried it.
There's also a bunch of trauma from when my dad had a head injury and completely changed.
So long story short, I've always been weird, felt out of place, and very insecure eitha lot of trauma dumped on top of that. But I was still able to function somewhat. But after having my second child.... even almost 5 years after, I feel like I can't function at all. Taking care of my self is a struggle. Thankfully I'm able to somehow manage taking care of my children, but I also recognize it's not at the level I wish it were.
It's better at the moment, but for almost 2 years there I hardly moved from the couch. Only to help the kids with something did I move. I was always tired, no matter how much or how little I slept. I felt worthless. And honestly, if not for my children I might have killed myself. I'm not like that now. It's a bit better. But I know for a fact that stuff I used to be able to do without much thought, I simply can't do now or it frustrates me so much I snap. A few times I got super stressed/triggered by them and snapped horrible. So now whenever something upsets me I try and push it down and detach. Breathing exercises in the moment don't work because I simply can't remember them when I'm in the throws of fight/flight.
Worse in all of this is that I'm very self aware of all of this. I know the problem. I see them. I breakdown exactly how I got there and through research know the psychological factors. But then that triggers the imposter syndrome. Is it all just some lame justification for being difficult and lazy?
But this too I recognize as not truth. Who the hell would willingly put themselves in this position? I'm not happy. I'm not comfortable. My life isn't easier if I was an imposter pretending to have all this. Is that not the point of pretending?
So I'm aware of all of this... and yet nothing ever changes. I'm still stuck here.
And getting help? If you know anything at all then you should know the task of finding someone is daunting alone without the issue of insurance (i'm talking about adhd issues here). I loath meeting people. Zooms not better because then I can't read the person's body language, and i'm still overwhelmed with sensory overload issues.
Texting is a little better since I can stop amd think what I want to say... but are there even doctors that work like that? Not to mention so much information then gets lost...
I dont know. And now, after all this I'm second guessing whether I should even do this. What's the point? I know from dealing with my dad's issues that there isn't a cure or any real solution. Most times the go to answer is medication. And while I have that and it sometimes helps, it's hit or miss. And usually I'm suffering from insomnia so I can't even take it.
I'm either ranting or making excuses now. I can't tell...

I am over 30 already and haven’t really achieved anything of substance in life. The future really scares me.
For some reasons - bad luck and maybe added lack of my own motivation… I had to switch careers couple times and even now am mediocre at what I am doing.
Couple failed relationships. No wife, no children, am loosing most of my friends because of my depression and lack of desire to go out and have fun. It seems like my life is slowly sipping into a hell of no return. I am losing all of my hope slowly but surely as well. I cannot even force myself to find a new girlfriend or fall in love cuz I am that much depressed and lonely…
I tried many times to get on my feet and pushing life from different angles but it seems like I just have some kind of bad omen. I fail miserably in most areas of life. No matter how hard I start pushing most things just don’t work out for me. It hurts when I see people around me who have it come to them with way less effort.
I am really scared of future. Stuck with video games cuz that’s the only thing I left that I enjoy tiny bit…

Like all haunted house stories, this took place right after I moved in. Cliché, right? My wife and I saved up enough money from our rental to finally put down on a house of our own. So we moved in and everything seemed right...at first.
It wasn’t until later that I realized there were warning signs. The seller seemed really anxious to close, and we were offered a much cheaper price than we expected for the space we got. While there was a moment of doubt, we brushed it off as some weird circumstance that ended in a great deal for us.
How could we possibly pass that up?
The strange occurrences were small at first. I would be up late watching TV and swore I heard something. I’d pause the show and make out what sounded like dragging noises. After investigating, I wouldn’t find anything. Even stranger was that no matter where I walked in the house, the noise always sounded the same distance away. When I focused on it, I noticed the particular noise was rhythmic.
Tap, tap...sliiiiiiide.
It was like that every single time. My wife never heard it, it was only me. None of us believe in ghosts, mind you. But as I said before it was a small thing, so I brushed it off.
One night, I woke up in a startle. I listened intently but could hear nothing. I decided to grab a late night snack from the kitchen since I was awake anyway.
Halfway down the hall, I heard something. This time, it sounded like dirt being sifted und. I knelt down and swore that the sound was louder. Before I knew it, I had my ear pressed to the hardwood floor, listening intently.
Schht, schht.....sccchhhhhhh...
I jumped up from the floor. It was that same pattern of noises, but this time it sounded like someone in the dirt. Trying to ignore the chills washing over me, I took a step towards the kitchen when…
…something grabbed my ankle.
I fell forward, almost busting my chin on the floor.
“What the...”
Flipping over, I turned to face my assailant, but there was no one behind me. I brushed it off and chalked it up to poor balance from a sleep-hangover. My wife got a good chuckle out of that one.
After that, the house began to feel.....heavier. It was this weight over me that would come and go. This was accompanied by feeling cold no matter how much we turned up the heat, and this was the middle of the summer. Even stranger, the cold seemed to only be in certain spots, particularly on the floor itself. I liked to walk around barefoot no matter what time of year it was, but it was even too cold for me.
Another night, I woke up again. My ears stood at attention, but couldn’t hear any evidence of what woke me up. I got up just like before, except I never made it to the kitchen.
I only made if halfway down our hall before I suddenly felt a horrible pain in my right leg. I had to limp to keep moving, then my other leg was wracked with a wave of pain. It was so bad I found myself face down on the ground, writhing in agony.
Then I heard it again…that awful succession of noises.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
The sliding sound was coming from the hardwood floor this time, not from underneath. And the sound was getting closer and closer until...
I watched in horror as a hand came around the corner in front of me. It was soon joined by another, and they tugged at the floor. My heart hammered in my chest as a person slowly came into view.
It was a woman with long black hair, her disheveled clothing smeared with dirt and hanging off in shreds. Her mouth was crudely stitched shut. She looked up at me with empty, lost eyes and I instantly felt a lifetime of pain and misery. It took my breath away, and I had to focus on my breathing to keep myself from fainting.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
That awful sound repeated as she grabbed the floor and pulled herself towards me. I was in a terrified trance, eyes locked with her as she slowly closed the distance. I could now see that she dragged herself because her legs were horribly mangled. A low moan emanated from her throat, sending ice through my veins.
Her very presence seemed to drain me, and I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. She made this awful gurgling sound as she got within arm’s reach. In seconds, her face was right up to mine. I tried to scream, but couldn’t make any sound.
Then...I woke up.
“AAAAHHhhh!” I shouted as I sprang up in bed.
My wife tried to console me, but it did very little. I’d never had a dream that felt so real before. Shaking, I walked out into the hallway where I had collapsed in my dream. I put a hand on the floor, expecting it to be freezing cold as usual.
But it was warm...
“Honey?” I felt the soft hand of my wife touch my shoulder.
“What’s going on? You look white as a sheet.”
“I’m okay...I just...”
On the floor in front me, I noticed the faint trace of fingernail marks.
“Was that there before?” My wife inquired.
“I’m...I’m not sure.”
“Let’s go back to bed. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”
I tried to hold back my stubborn expression, but she still saw it.
“C’mon, you need to rest.”
With an exasperated exhale, I went back to bed with the strange occurrence replaying incessantly in my brain.
In the morning, I told my wife about all the strange experiences. To my shock she actually believed me.
“What do you want to do, then?” She asked.
“Well...I have a theory I want to check out.”
“Theory of what?”
“Well, let’s just say that ghosts exist, and there are certain reasons why they haunt certain places. If that is true then...I think there could be a body in our crawlspace.”
“What, are you crazy?”
“I know how it sounds, but what would it hurt to look?”
“You really think there’s something down there?”
“More someone, but I’m not sure to be honest. Hopefully I can get a confirmation either way it goes.”
That afternoon, I found myself standing at the door to our crawlspace. It felt ridiculous, but so many details pointed to it. The sounds and cold spots were all related to the floor. The ghastly woman’s clothes were smeared with dirt. It was obscure, but it was all I had to go on.
I had to pry the door open with a crowbar, but I managed after a minute or two. A wave of unnatural cold air blasted me, so strong that I had to throw on a coat just to stop from shivering so badly.
I clicked on my flashlight, illuminating the eerie underbelly of our home. The dirt sifted under my feet as I crouch-walked around. After hearing it, it only confirmed what I thought I heard from under the floor.
Expecting to see more, I was almost disappointed that the crawlspace was completely bare. Not believing it entirely, I shined my light around more. The back part of the crawlspace led to concrete and it was there that I noticed one section of the wall looked different than the rest.
Hands quivering, I pushed against the section of concrete and felt it shift under the pressure. It continued to wobble around in place the more I pushed. Holding my flashlight between my teeth, I had to use both hands to pry the piece away from the wall. To my astonishment, it pulled away very easily. It was no coincidence that the section of wall fit the hole exactly, like a puzzle piece.
After leaning the piece of concrete against the wall, I found that the concrete was covering a door with a padlock.
There’s no way anything good is behind this...
Minutes later, I returned to the mysterious door with a pair of bolt cutters. I debated whether or not I’d go in. There was no reason I shouldn’t satisfy my curiosity, because if there wasn’t anything then great, but if there was something terrible, I’d simply have to deal with it. Either way, I had to know.
I clipped the metal bar off the lock and it thudded softly to the dirt floor. Taking in a deep breath, I dared to aim my beam down the opening. The crawlspace extended much further into the house, and I had a good guess where it led. I now had to crawl on my hands and knees as a knot of dread formed in my stomach.
“You always tell people not to do this in movies, why are you doing this now??!” I chastised myself.
I knew all too well how stupid this was but the part of my brain that can’t look away from a car wreck pushed me to carry along regardless.
It was difficult to navigate with the flashlight and crawl. A mild claustrophobia settled in that pushed me along with a sense of urgency. The temperature couldn’t have been any more than a meatlocker. My hands shook despite my thick jacket. Eventually, I came to a dead end.
Is this all?
I stopped for a moment and checked around with my light some more, hoping a more thorough search would bear some fruit. Yet, there was nothing.
Sighing in frustration, I decided that perhaps I was losing my mind and was just having really vivid dreams after all. How could I have been so stupid?
I made it halfway across the hidden area when I felt my legs suddenly give out. They weren’t tired or sore before this. It was as if they stopped working of their own volition. I attempted to cry out, but my mouth felt as if some force held it closed.
Just like a stitched mouth...
One of the few things I could move was my neck and I turned to the side to see...
…a tuft of a blanket?
Due to the narrow space, I must have missed it. I slowly reached for it with all the internal alarms in my body going off at once. Ignoring the warning, I pulled the cloth back to reveal a skeletal hand.
In this moment of revulsion, something turned on my motor skills again as I regained control of my legs, crawling out of there as quickly as I could muster. Heaving, I stumbled out of the crawlspace and instantly felt the rise in temperature. I sat on the porch and stayed there as I called the police and explained the situation.
It turns out that one of the previous owners of the home was a major suspect in the disappearance of a young lady fifteen years ago. There wasn’t enough evidence to conduct a home search so they were never able to find the body. And what they found was something I wish I had never known.
From examining the body, they found that her captor had broken both of her legs so she couldn’t escape and sewn her mouth shut to keep her from screaming. It was hard to tell how long she’d been locked down there before she died, but they hypothesized it was a month or two. The cause of death was unclear. This was clearly enough to pursue the former owner.
When they picked him up, the guy tried to play the ignorance card, pretending as if he didn’t know what house they were referring to. This of course made it even more suspicious.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything concrete enough to tie him to her death...until they searched his current home. Blueprints of the home showed that the crawlspace was supposed to end ten feet where the concrete wall was. No contractors were hired to do any work on the home, so someone had personally busted it up and created the door going further in. The last part of it was the padlock on the door.
When the police searched the man’s home, they found a shoebox full of seemingly innocent keepsakes. Among the keepsakes were some heirlooms, pictures of close family members, and a key. As suspected, the key matched the padlock to the crawlspace door. It was apparently enough to make him crack. It wasn’t long before he confessed to the kidnapping and murder, albeit without a hint of remorse. Turns out the bastard kept the key as a sick trophy.
They even questioned him about other possible victims since this was a trait commonly shared by serial killers. He denied it, but the police couldn’t feel any truth from it. If anything they knew that they solved one case, put a guilty man behind bars, and put a family at peace. Justice was served and he was locked away for the rest of his miserable life. Poetic justice, if you ask me. The poor girl’s parents buried her remains on a family plot.
After all this, we had serious doubts about staying in the home. Knowing something this egregious happened in our home was almost unbearable. I can’t tell you how much we cried when we heard the story of what happened to that poor girl. We were on the brink of selling the house for about a week, but one night changed all that.
I woke up from a dream, one so vivid yet it somehow escaped my thoughts like a fistful of sand. There was a strange feeling in my gut as if something was going to happen.
It was neither good nor bad, just....strange.
After drinking a small glass of milk, I meandered down the hall and stopped in my tracks. A woman stood in front of me, half-transparent with a bluish luminescence. I felt as if I knew her, although I didn’t recognize her appearance at all. She smiled, and I instantly knew who she was. Compared to her previous horrific manifestation, the woman was almost unrecognizable.
Never speaking, she motioned to her legs and I saw that they were in perfect condition. In a mild state of shock, I managed to form a smile. She beamed even wider and ran her fingers across her lips, pointing out her lack of stitches. A blanket of warmth wrapped around me, and I couldn’t resist the salty tears that streamed down my face.
Right before she waved goodbye, a voice spoke within my mind.
"It’s over now. Thank you..."
She faded away, and for the first time since we moved into that house, all hints of the oppressive energy dissipated. That was the last time I ever saw her.
It’s been 30 years now, and we’re still in that house to this day...
May she continue to rest in peace...

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

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

I think this is a bug, but I cannot find anyone else talking about this through Google searches or on WOTC bug report forums so maybe I am doing something incorrect here?
The rare wildcard counter says you receive a new token after every 6 packs opened. So, when you purchase a box set of 90 packs you should get 15 rare wildcard tokens (90/6,) plus any extra tokens you find in your packs. However, that does not appear to be the case, you only get 12 rare tokens plus any extra tokens collected within the packs.
Are we getting scammed, or am I missing something?

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

l’ve reached a point, where l feeI the loneIiest, I have ever been
Being 21 years old, my social life is practically nonexistent, and everyday existence feels extremeIy tough and incredibly loneIy. I find it hard to bear looking at myself and struggle with feelings of worthIessness and failure. Friendships, romantic relationships, and a family support system are all missing in my life. The profound loneIiness I experience, coupled with social anxiety and autism, creates a sense of detachment as if I'm simply going through Iife watching others live and while I don’t, this feeling like an outsider or alien in my own skin..
The endless feeIing of loneIiness has engulfed me entirely. Throughout the past year, I made countless attempts to break free from it, venturing out to public places like groups and bars, only to end up stuck in a repetitive cycIe of going to college and then back home. Turning to online dating was another effort, but it proved futile as I received no matches. It's awful to realize that even the online world poses challenges. This situation is further compounded by the fact that Iack a close-knit family to turn to, the absence of family only adds to my sense of isolation…

This is all work travel related.
Context: I had a nonstop flight from Denver to Boston at 9:30 MST that was supposed to get back at 3:30 EST.
Story: We get on the aircraft and it immediately delays. We sit on the plane and they say they have to get a mechanic and shut down and restart the plane due to some technical issue. The process takes almost 45 minutes where they shut everything down, the plane gets uncomfortably hot and then it slowly restarts. Once this is complete, they tell us we have to get off the plane because they need to take the current plane out of service. We are informed we should wait at the gate to get updates.
At the gate the attendants inform us that they are looking for a rescue flight to assist but can’t guarantee it will happen. They also say there is the possibility to rebook to one of the existing flights Jetblue has at the airport that day. They also inform us that if they got a new plane, it would still need to fly in from Boston or LA, and take about 3 to 4 hours to arrive in Denver. As a result, I rebook.
The flight I rebook on is scheduled to depart at 1:30PM EST and arrive at JFK at 7PM EST for a 9PM connection to Boston that gets in at 10PM. While I am waiting, I speak with the attendant at the gate multiple times to make sure that my checked bag will be moved to the new flight. I am assured more than once that this is the case. This will become relevant later.
After waiting a few more hours we board the new plane. We spend over an hour taxiing on the tarmac because they shut down a runway. To give you an idea, I watched almost all of Hunger Games before we even took off. Finally, we take off for a 4-hour flight, there’s tons of turbulence and plane drops very abruptly at one point which startles every passenger on the plane and is shakey coming in. I’ve flown over a hundred times; this was the worst I experienced. Obviously, the conditions and the turbulence are not the fault of the airline, it was just another part of the story.
When I get phone service at JFK, I see that my connecting flight got pushed back to 11PM. I later find out that because we were delayed so long, we missed the connection as it left while we were getting to the gate (because apparently, they couldn’t wait 15 minutes for us to get off). Which was also likely because some inconsiderate clown started walking around and made the plane stop on the ground when they told everyone to wait in their seats. They made an announcement telling the passenger to get back in his seat and he still proceeded to ignore it and go to the bathroom or whatever he was doing and had us stopped another 5 mins.
Anyways, once we are at JFK, we were told to go to the gate to get our connecting ticket because the Denver airport could not process the connecting ticket. After waiting in a decently long line at the gate they tell us that we actually need to go to the JetBlue help desk which is on the other side of the terminal from the gate. We go down there and after waiting in line the agent is has my ID and is processing my ticket. Then her extremely rude boss/manager comes over and says she needs to stop what she is doing because she needs her to do go something else. The person assisting me tells her that she is already in the middle of processing my ticket and asks to just finish it because it will only take two more minutes. The boss says no and tells me to stand back at the front of the line and wait for someone else to become available. I can’t stress this enough; I was in the middle of being helped and had to start all over when it would have taken at most a two minutes MAX to finish the matter and process my ticket.
At this point I call customer service to explain the situation, after 15 mins get disconnected from the first agent which is just beyond frustrating and I never get a callback and have to go through all of this again. I get a $150 voucher. Everything next is after dealing with customer service and incorrectly assuming I was compensated adequately and I had one short flight and my troubles were over….
After finally getting through some of the worst service I’ve experienced at an airline, we finally get on the plane at 11…. Then we are waiting for another 45 minutes. The plane is unbearably hot. everyone is sweating and uncomfortable. Straight up torture. The staff makes an announcement telling us all to turn the AC at our seats on so the plane can cool down and then they start passing out water bottles. We find out the delay was because the pilot wasn’t there yet and they couldn’t fully turn the plane on all the way to cool it down. When the pilot finally gets there, he tells us that he was delayed on the tarmac on another flight and doesn’t understand why we were boarded in these conditions without him. He recommends we should call Jetblue to be compensated for this experience (spoiler, it didn’t matter)
Totally unrelated to airline mishaps again, to add some fun flavor to the story, while we were taxing, the gentlemen in the seat in front of me got demanded the passenger in front of him use his headphones while he was using his phone. Not unreasonable, until the second man told him to fuck off. I thought they were joking and having a friendly back and forth and thought they new each other. That was until the second guy started saying “I don’t know why you are laughing; you don’t want to start with me”. The first guy asked “was that a threat”, we then got the “I don’t make threats routine” and then as the second passenger finally got pissed enough to start putting all his stuff down as I was terrified, they were going to delay the flight again, the flight attendant rushed over and asked what was going on. Like two kids on the playground, they played dumb and were told to cool down.
Meanwhile, in the row directly behind me, I spent the whole flight listening to husband asking his wife why she ditched him for 10 hours while they were on a vacation. I can’t stress this enough, this bickering went on the rest of the flight until the husband finally asked “do you have a boyfriend, is that what is going on”.
I was sandwiched between the Jerry Springer show…
After that tremendous experience, I land in Boston, go to baggage carousel, my bags never come out. I pretty much expected that at this point. I know I made a point to go up the gate agent in Denver no less than three times to make sure my bags were being moved to the right flight. But by this point I lost all faith in anything going right for this trip. Myself and another passenger who dealt with the same wonderful day since our Denver flight got messed up, went to the Jetblue baggage service office at Logan. I found out my bag never did in fact leave Denver (shocker)! I now have to waste more of my time filing a report in the airport before I can leave. I will give kudos to the person running that though. She was the only person who was clear, concise and effectively got me through this process.
I finally get home at 2:30AM (I should have arrived home by 4PM).
The next day (around 8PM) I think things are finally going my way when I get a call saying my bag was at Logan and would be shipped Then I get the bag. Parts of the insulating rubber are ripped and scratched up which really could only happen if you were dragging it on pavement and didn’t give a shit at all. This was a year old decently expensive TUMI bag. So that’s just great Also because they probably left it out on the tarmac for hours on end in 90-degree weather, a few gifts I got melted.
I did make a point to call customer service again and explain my wonderful adventure, they decided to just hide behind their “Customer Bill of Rights” and say that there was nothing more they could do.

TLDR: I was on 3 flights that all got messed up between a technical issue that put a plane out of, a bunch of runway closures and nonstop taxiing in Denver, boarding a furnace without a pilot, dealt with terrible turbulence, some of the worst customer service I ever experienced at any airline, crazy passengers, and a lost and damaged bag and what should have been a quick 4 hour at most flight turned into a day of pure travel hell. But at least I can now entertain you with my dread.

Extra TLDR: WTF

This week’s vintage batch features European FPs from the 1930s-50s, most of which are piston fillers. Nibs range from a springy to Wet Noodle, including one dip-pen nib retrofit. As always, all are fully restored and ready to write.
 
ALBUM & TIMESTAMP
 
Pastable link: https://imgur.com/a/QtB5ctS
 
Condition (n.b.): All pens listed below have been disassembled, cleaned and restored with new sacs installed in the last couple weeks and seals installed in the last couple years. Each of these pens is guaranteed to fill and write as designed without leaks or other problems. Nibs have been adjusted when necessary to ensure that all lay down a smooth and consistent line.
THESE PENS HAVE NO CRACKS (except #3), CHIPS, PERSONALIZATIONS, LOOSE OR MISSING PARTS, BENT NIBS, MISALIGNED TINES, BROKEN/WORN OFF TIPPING, OR THREADING ISSUES.
 
Line Widths and Writing Samples: To provide buyers with as much information as possible, I have adopted the following line width standards: XXF (.1-.2mm); XF (approx .3mm); F (approx .4mm); M (approx .6mm); B (approx .8mm). Nib flexibility is determined by variation (max line width under pressure) and softness (amount of pressure). Flexibility designations based on variation generally run as follows for an XF/F nib: Semi-Flex (approx. 1mm); Flex (1.2-1.9mm); Superflex (2mm+). All line width measurements are taken with a digital caliper but should be considered approximations providing a general guide. Width may vary slightly depending on type of ink and paper used as well as amount of pressure applied. All writing samples are on Rhodia dot paper using Waterman Serenity Blue.
 
 
1. 1950s Pelikan 400 (Tortoise, celluloid, GPT, piston filler, 14k KM [F/M Ball] nib). This standard-sized model measures 4 15/16” capped. I assume that the Pelikan pen company requires no introduction here :) This is an example of one of Pelikan’s most celebrated vintage pens in tortoiseshell celluloid with transparent striations for viewing the ink level. Classic gold-plated cap band and Pelikan-beak clip. Two-chick Pelikan logo stamped in captop (see DETAIL PHOTO). This pen is a piston filler: to fill simply rotate the blind cap counter-clockwise until the piston is fully extended, submerse the nib, and rotate the piston clockwise until it comes to a stop. Blind cap is stamped KM, corresponding to the ‘M’ marking on the 14k Pelikan nib. The ‘’K’ is for ‘Kugel’ (‘ball), designating this nib as a ball nib, the tipping finished to give it a wider sweet spot for smooth writing at a wide range of angles. Though I wouldn’t call it a flex nib, it does have a springiness and buttery smoothness that’s quite nice. It lays down a smooth and consistent F/M line by the standards above (see WRITING SAMPLE). Condition: fine [C]. I’d describe this pen as more of a user. It’s been fully restored with a new seal and is guaranteed to fill smoothly to factory capacity without leaks. However, there’s an issue with the piston while unscrewing the blind cap all the way that makes the blind cap want to lift up and disengage when the piston is close to fully extended. The solution to this is simple enough: apply a little downward pressure to the piston when unscrewing the blind cap to extend the piston and it works just as it should every time (100% reliable). This has been factored into the price all the same. Barrel transparency is near mint with light yellow coloration and no staining (see DETAIL PHOTO). Gold-plated trim shows brassing to the bottom of the clip and a sliver around the bottom edge of the cap band as well as some nicks to the top edge of the clip tassie. Celluloid surface is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes – scarcely even any microscratches. Manufacturer imprints are deep and fully legible. A chance to own one of these with superb clarity at less than half the price they fetch on merchant websites. Price: $190
 
2. 1939-44 Pelikan 100 Wartime (green Binde, celluloid, NPT, piston filler, chromium nickel [CN] steel Oblique F/M-XF Flex nib). This standard-sized model measures 4 5/8” capped. During the material restrictions of WWII, Pelikan made several, short-lived changes to the 100. In place of 14k nibs they implemented Chromium-Nickel steel nibs marked CN. The gold-plated clip was supplanted by nickel-plated (so-called "reverse trim"). And the gold-plated cap bands gave way to no cap bands at all, the cap being either smooth or milled with decorative bands like this example. This wartime model is 100% original and correct, having all these features, including the original nib. It is made of celluloid with a vibrant green marble Binde. Pelikan two-chick logo stamped on the cap top (see DETAIL PHOTO). Barrel underneath is a transparent green for viewing the ink level. This pen is a piston filler: to fill simply rotate the blind cap counter-clockwise until the piston is fully extended, submerse the nib, and rotate the piston clockwise until it comes to a stop. The Pelikan CN nib is a Left-Foot Oblique (iridium is ground in a shape like your left foot viewed from above). Under normal pressure it lays down a smooth and consistent F/M on the cross-strokes and XF line on the down-strokes. And the line widens to a 3B+ (approx 1.9mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Versatile variation and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it a great choice for shaded writing and expressive styles. And the tipping was smoothed by Rick Propas when this pen was restored, making it just as buttery smooth as a Pelikan 14k nib. Condition: near mint [B+]. This pen comes from my personal collection and is the result of hunting the best example I could find. Wartime 100s are rare and this one, which resembles an artifact from a time-capsule, took me decades to track down. Nickel-plated trim is pristine with no brassing or other notable wear. Celluloid surface is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes. Barrel clarity is superb with no discernible darkening or staining (see DETAIL PHOTO). Manufacturer imprints on the captop are factory deep and even contain most of their original green fill. The only hiccup is that despite being restored 2 years ago by Rick Propas and only being filled 1-2 times since, this pen only fills to half capacity. And this despite the piston operating as smooth as they come. I’ve regreased the pen, but it hasn’t seemed to make a difference. Because this pen is more off a collector-oriented find, I’ve decided to list it anyway. You’d be hard pressed to find another example of this rare piece of Pelikan history in better cosmetic condition. Price: $450
 
3. 1930s Luxor Visible 5907 (red and translucent web celluloid, NPT, piston filler, 14k Two-Tone XF Super-Flex nib). At 4 7/8" capped, this pen roughly the same length as a Pelikan. Luxor was a German brand of the Hebborn pen company, founded in 1925 by former Kaweco employee Heinrich Hebborn and located in Heidelberg until relocating to Cologne sometime before 1937. In Richard Binder's words: "The company produced pens of high quality, and it was known universally by the name of its signature brand, Luxor, with designs inspired by the aesthetic of ancient Egypt. Sub-brands included Sphinx, Visible, and Grandvisible" (source). The company is credited with having designed the first telescopic piston mechanism, which Montblanc would famously incorporate into its own designs. Despite their high quality, there weren't very many of these pens made and Luxors are especially scarce finds in the US today. This Visible model is made of a stunning red and translucent web celluloid similar to that which Wahl-Eversharp used for the Doric. Unlike the Doric, however, the entire barrel is translucent to show the ink level and piston operation. The cap is also translucent! The celluloid pattern is complemented by nickel-plated clip in an elegant Egyptian motif and triple cap bands with one wider, knurled band. This piston filler holds far more ink than cartridges, converters, and lever fillers of the same size. It is filled by removing the blind cap to reveal the turning knob (see fillers photo), rotating the knob counter-clockwise until the piston is fully extended, submersing the nib, then rotating the knob clockwise until the piston is fully retracted. The pen is equipped with a beautiful 14k two-tone Luxor nib stamped with the pyramidal Luxor trademark. The nib is a Super-Flexible writer, laying down a smooth and consistent XF line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.3mm capped) under light pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Thin hairlines, strong snap-back and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it a great choice for calligraphic writing styles such as Copperplate and Spencerian. Condition: excellent+ [B+] aside from a hairline crack in the shank of the nib. The crack can be seen in the photos. It has no effect on the nibs performance or how it writes. And there’s no reason to think it’ll worsen unless the nib and feed are removed and re-installed (something that is only done on vintage pens for repair, not flushing). I’m happy to offer a one-year guarantee (no-questions return for refund) that this crack won’t get any longer. Nickel-plated furniture is remarkably clean, showing no brassing or other notable wear aside from a small spot of brassing on the bottom terminus of the clip. Red color is of an even shade across the cap and barrel. Celluloid surface is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes – scarcely even any miscroscratches. Barrel clarity is excellent but slightly ambered in comparison to the cap's (see DETAIL PHOTO). Manufacturer imprint on the cap is deep and fully legible. An uncommon and uncommonly eye-catching pen that also happens to be a lovely writer. *Price: $290
 
4. 1940s-50s Oversized Stylomine 303 Retrofit (black, celluloid, NPT, accordion filler converted to twist filler, 14k XXF Needlepoint Wet Noodle nib). This oversized pen is massive, having a thick girth that doesn’t fit all the way into the slots of the slotter box and a capped length of 5 3/8.” Stylomine was a Parisian pen company founded shortly after World War I. Streamlined profile, clip, and font of the imprint exude the aesthetics of midcentury design. This pen is made of black celluloid with tapered ends. Nickel-plated trim in a deluxe configuration includes cool spring-loaded clip with a hallmark ‘Y Z’ on the right side. I wasn’t able to track this down, but it’s possible the clip is either sterling silver or silver-plated. In 1940 the company patented an innovative FP filling system comprised of a rubber sac shaped into a bellows and attached to a glass ink cartridge at the end of the barrel (see fillers photo). Referred to as an accordion filler today, the pen was designed to be filled by removing the blindcap and depressing the glass ink cartridge several times until the cartridge fills with ink. Since accordion sacs are no longer being made, I followed David Nishimura’s advice and restored this pen using a standard tubular sac trimmed at both ends. This essentially converted it into a twist filler so that instead of depressing the glass cartridge one twists it a little over 1 full turn to fill the sac as well as 1/3 to 1/2 of the glass cartridge. Thanks to the size of the pen, this retrofitted solution still allows it to hold about as much ink as a typical lever filler (e.g. Waterman 52). This pen came to me nibless. But I was able to find a serendipitous match in a massive 14k, iridium tipped E.S. Johnson #4 nib stamped ‘303’. This number matches the Stylomine model number on the barrel! Like all my dip pen nib retrofits, the nib and feed were modified to guarantee factory fit, flow, and performance, delivering the best of both centuries. That nib yields Flexible variation with Wet Noodle softness, laying down a smooth and consistent XXF line that widens to a 3B+ (approx 1.8mm) under minimal pressure – i.e. anything more than grazing the page (see WRITING SAMPLE). Don’t be fooled by the max line width. Needlepoint hairlines, effortless variation, surgically responsive snap-back, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it an ideal choice for calligraphic writing styles such as Copperplate and Spencerian. Condition: excellent+ [B+]. Nickel-plated trim shows no brassing or other notable flaws. Celluloid surface is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes – scarcely even any microscratches. Manufacturer imprint on barrel is deep and fully legible with ‘Made in France’ slightly weakened. Price: $340
 
5. 1930s Big Ben (grey shell, celluloid, NPT, piston filler, 14k XF Flex nib). This standard-sized model measures 5 1/16” capped. Big Ben was a trademark of the Benzion Trading Company of Copenhagen, Denmark. The company was founded in 1933 by Niels Benzion, who had worked for the Wahl-Eversharp. A pen of cosmopolitan origins, the Big Ben has a piston-filler patented in England (hence the cap imprint) while the pen was made in collaboration with H. Hebborn & of Heidelberg, Germany. That is why this pen so closely resembles the Luxor above. This particular example is made of celluloid in a grey shell pattern resembling that of a 2nd-gen Eversharp Doric complemented by nickel-plated clip in an elegant Egyptian motif and triple cap bands with one wider, knurled band, and decorative bands at the ends of the cap and barrel. This piston filler holds far more ink than cartridges, converters, and lever fillers of the same size. It is filled by removing the blind cap to reveal the turning knob (see fillers photo), rotating the knob counter-clockwise until the piston is fully extended, submersing the nib, then rotating the knob clockwise until the piston is fully retracted. Big Bens came with two different 14k nibs depending on when they were made and for what market: a nib stamped ‘Big Ben’ in cursive font; and a nib stamped ‘1st Quality’ in the same distinctive font. This pen is equipped with the latter. That nib is a Flexible writer, laying down a smooth and consistent XF line that widens to a 3B+ (approx 1.9mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Thin hairlines, strong, snap-back, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it an excellent choice for expressive and shaded writing. Condition: excellent [B]. Barrel transparency is superb with no staining and a yellow coloration (see DETAIL PHOTO). Nickel-plated trim is clean with no brassing or other notable wear aside from a tiny spot at the bottom terminus of the clip visible under a loupe, a couple spots on the lower cap band that have lost some of their original luster, and thinning of the plating on the blind cap’s thin decorative band. Celluloid surface is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes - scarcely even any microscratches. Manufacturer imprint on cap is deep and fully legible. Price: $330
 
6. 1930s Orion Everlasting 552 in Box with Papers (Black and Bronze, celluloid, GPT, lever filler, 14k XXF/XF Flex nib). This standard-sized model measures 5 1/4” capped. Orion was Danish company (located in Copenhagen) that imported quality pen parts from Germany and England and assemble the pens in Denmark. In 1933 they changed their name to Miller Pen Co., a writing instrument importer that exists to this day. This pen comes in its original factory box with exquisite paperwork (see DETAIL PHOTO). It’s made of the same black and Bronze celluloid Conklin used for the Endura, complemented by gold-plated trim with elegant, Art Deco clip stamped ‘Orion’. Flexible 14k Orion #2 nib lays down a smooth and consistent XXF/XF line that widens to a 3B+ (approx 1.8mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE. )). Thin hairlines, strong, snap-back, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it another excellent choice for expressive and shaded writing. Condition: excellent [B]. The only noteworthy flaw on this pen is brassing to the center of the clip over the Orion trademark. Trim is otherwise pristine with no noteworthy flaws. Celluloid surface is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes - scarcely even any microscratches. Manufacturer imprint on barrel is deep and fully legible. Price: $240
 
 
 
Shipping: Pens purchased on the weekend are mailed on Tuesday. Otherwise they are mailed within 2 business days of payment. All pens that do not come with their original boxes are packaged in PVC or thick plastic tubes to protect them in transit. To CONUS locations the following shipping options are available:

• USPS First-Class with tracking for $5 Due to the delivery delays that continue under postmaster general DeJoy, I strongly recommend that the Priority shipping option be chosen. All packages will include full insurance (covered by me). Rest assured that a full refund is guaranteed (issued through Paypal) in the event of a lost parcel and you will not have to wait until I receive a reimbursement from the USPS.
  
• USPS Priority with tracking for $9
  

International Customers: Please contact me for shipping quote if located abroad (delivery confirmation required). (Note: due to the issues stated above, my international shipping options are currently limited. PM for more info). Please do not ask me to commit mail fraud by altering the declared value of a pen for customs. Not only am I registered as a business but shipping insurance is based on declared value.
New York Customers: For tax purposes, I am now required to add an 8% sales tax on any sale made in the state of NY. If your shipping address is in NY state, please let me know before payment to receive an adjusted total. Discounted shipping is included for NY State residents to help defray the extra cost.
Ordering: Pens are placed on hold for the first person to reply to the thread and PM me with firm request to purchase (no chat DMs please). A request with the words “I'd like to purchase [pen number]” would be best to avoid confusion), to which I’ll reply with payment details. Please note that a message inquiring into a price discount does not suffice to place a pen on hold. If I haven't received Paypal payment within 24 hrs after a hold is placed, then pen(s) may become available to the next person.
Payment, & Guarantee: Payment by Paypal only. All pens are guaranteed to be in the condition in which I've described them. If I've missed something objectionable or the filling mechanism is not fully functional, the buyer may contact me up to 7 days after receiving the pen for a full refund (issued once I receive the pen back in the same condition as sold). Buyer must ship the return no later than 2 weeks after it was delivered to receive a refund. I've sold pens online for over a decade. Please check my past listings here as well as on the classifieds and historical sales forums on FPN (username: Estragon) and FPGeeks (popcod) for some of my previous offerings.
 
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OTHER OPEN LISTINGS

• Superflex Pilot 53R Koi
  
• Vintage Montegrappa Extra Edacoto
  
• Waterman Nurse’s Sets
  
• Off-Catalogue Sheaffer Stubby Balance Lifetime
  
• Psychedelic Bayard Excselsior
  
• Waterman Taperite Citation
  
• Conklin Enduras, Nozac
  

My partner and I have been talking about getting engaged and having a small outdoor wedding with only close family and a few friends. We are very outdoorsy people, and much of our relationship is centred around exploring and adventuring. We do alot of off roading, sailing, rock climibing, hiking. Living in the PNW, we regularly see very beautiful places that are secluded. This is making picking an outdoor wedding space to be difficult, because it needs to feel special and a little elevated from our normal weekend adventures.
My first and favourite idea is a helicopter microwedding, but there's no way to do it without spending way more money than we want to. We could do a helicopter elopement with just the two of us, but then our family and friends couldn't come. My partner feels somewhat strongly about our kids and parents being there (though honestly, I could do it just the two of us). We considered doing a backroad wedding, where we all drive back in the woods to a sweet spot with a fleet our vehicles containing all of our people, but that seems like so much to organize, and there's so many variables that could get in the way of this succeeding (weather, gates locking, logging, other issues with road access, etc.). I've thought of just doing a quiet ceremony in a forest or on a secluded beach somewhere, but I'm not sure how to pick a location where we won't be disturbed (there are almost no secret spots here anymore, even when you travel a couple hours off the beaten path, and I don't want people and their dogs waltzing through our sacred ceremony). I've read of other people renting a cabin, and having a small ceremony and reception there, but I can't seem to find anything close enough to me that would be big enough with a beautiful outdoor space. (If we went the microwedding route, it would be probably 12-15 of us.)
What do I do? What am I missing?

DESIGNER DISCOVERY SETS for those interested in buying decants from specific lines. Current sizes I offer are 2ML 5ML 10ML and include everything listed under a brand. (I have many more brand lines to add soon) Any questions or mix matching feel free to reach out. ILL HELP YOU FIND WHAT YOU LIKE. (I may be missing some from each set but I am on the hunt. If you have one I am missing chat me I’m looking to buy or trade for it) $$$ SHIPPED CONUS
[COLOGNE PHOTOS PT.4]
[COLOGNE PHOTOS PT.1]
[COLOGNE PHOTOS PT.2]
[COLOGNE PHOTOS PT.3]
[COLOGNE PHOTOS PT.5]
Please check the list below as there are some colognes added that are not in photos. ⬇️
1 MILLION - OG, Parfum, Cologne, Intense, Elixir, Lucky, Prive, Royal
x8 -2ML $50
SPICEBOMB - OG, Extreme, Fraiche, Night Vision EDT, Night Vision EDP, Infrared, Infrared EDP
x7 -2ML $42
INVICTUS - OG, Intense, Aqua, Aqua 2016, Platinum, Victory, Legend
x7 -2ML $42
AZZARO WANTED - OG, Tonic, Night, Most Wanted, Most Wanted Parfum, EDP
x7 -2ML $42
PRADA LUNA ROSSA - OG, Eau sport, Carbon, Extreme, Ocean, Sport, Black
x7 -2ML $42
YSL Y - OG, Fraiche, EDP, Parfum, Live, Elixir
x6 -2ML $40
ACQUA DI GIO - OG, Profondo, EDP, Absolu, Profondo Lights, Profumo, Absolu Instinct, Parfum
x8 -2ML $50
DIOR HOMME - OG, Intense, Cologne, Parfum, Eau, Sport
x6 -2ML $40
MERCEDES-BENZ - OG, Silver, Intense, Cologne
x4 -2ML $20
MONT BLANC LEGEND - OG, Night, Spirit, Intense, EDP, Red
x6 -2ML $25
LE MALE - 2008 OG, Elixir, Le Beau, Navy, Stimulating Body Spray, Ultra, Fleur Du Male, Terrible, Fraicheur Intense, Parfum, Essence De Parfum, Fleur Du Male Cologne, Summer Spray, On Board, Aviator
x15 -2ML $102
PASHA DE CARTIER - OG, Parfum, Noire, Sport, Fraicheur Menthe
x5 -2ML $25
GIVENCHY PI - OG, Extreme, Neo, Air
x4 -2ML $24
VERSACE PH - OG, Dylan blue, Oud Noir
x3 -2ML $12
DIOR FAHRENHEIT - OG, Aqua, 32, Parfum, Absolute
x5 -2ML $40
BURBERRY - London, Brit, Rhythm, Rhythm Intense
x4 -2ML $16
MONT EXPLORER - OG, Platinum, Ultra Blue
x3 -2ML $12
BVLGARA AQVA - OG, Toniq, Marine, Amara, Atlantique, Marine Toniq
x6 -2ML $30
BOSS THE SCENT - OG, Intense, Absolute, Pure Accord, Parfum, Private Accord, Le parfum
x7 -2ML $36
COACH MEN - OG, Blue, Platinum, Green
x4 -2ML $18
A-MEN - OG, BMen, Malt, Havane, Shot, Urban, Tonka, Wood, Chili, Ultimate, IceMen, Kryptomint, Coffee, Leather, Zest
x15 - 2ML $105
PARFUMS DE MARLY - Herod, Sedley, Goldolphin, Percival, Darley, Kalan, Layton, Greenley, Pegasus, Layton Exclusif, Althair, Perseus, Haltane, Pegasus Exclusif, Oajan
x15 - 2ML $116
KILIAN - Angels Share, Apple Brandy, Roses On Ice, L’Heure Verte, Intoxicated, Bamboo Harmony, Vodka On The Rocks, Back To Black, Moonlight In Heaven, Black Phantom, Gold Knight, Sacred Wood, Dark Lord
++RARE ADD ONS++ Cruel Intentions , A Taste Of Heaven
x12 - 2ML $106
JOHN VARVATOS - OG, Artisan, Dark Rebel Rider, Artisan Blu, Oud, Dark Rebel, Artisan Pure
x7 - 2ML $35
DRAKKAR - Noir, Intense, Essence, Horizon
x4 - 2ML $14
DIESEL THE BRAVE - OG, Street, Spirit, Wild, Sound, Spirit Intense
x6 - 2ML $24
BAD BOY - OG, Parfum, Cobalt Parfum, Extreme
x4 - 2ML $20
GUCCI GUILTY - OG, EDP, Cologne, Absolute, Parfum, Elixir, Black
x7 - 2ML $42
MANCERA - Cedrat Boise, Tonka Cola, Red Tobacco, Lemon Line, Lemon Aoud Mint
x5 - 2ML $30
VALENTINO - Uomo, BIR, Coral Fantasy, Acqua, BIR Intense, Uomo Intense
x6 - 2ML $38
ARMANI CODE - OG, Absolu, A-List, EDP, Colonia, Profumo
x6 - 2ML $38
GUERLAIN IDEAL - OG, Cologne, Intense, EDP
x4 - 2ML $26
DIESEL - Green, Green Parfum, Fuel, Fuel L’Eau, Masculine, Plus Plus
x6 - 2ML $30
PRADA L’HOMME - OG, Intense, Water Splash
x3 - 2ML $20
CHANEL - Allure Homme, Allure Cologne, Allure Sport Extreme, Allure Sport, BDC EDT, BDC Parfum, BDC EDP
x7 - 2ML $48
CK ONE - OG, Platinum, Gold, Shock, All, Be, Summer Daze, Everyone
x8 - 2ML $32
YSL L’HOMME/ LA NUIT - OG, LNDL OG, Frozen Cologne, Libre, Cologne Gingembe, Jean Nouvel, Parfum intense, Le Parfum, Libre Cologne Tonic, Sport, Ultime, Cologne Bleue, LNDL Bleu Electrique, LNDL Le Parfum, LNDL Intense, LNDL Eau Electrique
x16 - 2ML $120
VERSACE MAN - OG, Eau Fraiche
x2 - 2ML $10
YSL KOUROS - Silver, Body
x2 - 2ML $12
D&G THE ONE - OG, Parfum, Sport, Grey, Gentleman, EDP
x6 - 2ML $32
TERRE D’HERMES - OG, Eau Givree, Parfum
x3 - 2ML $18
BENTLEY - Intense, Black, Silverlake, Absolute
x4 - 2ML $18
DIOR SAUVAGE - OG, Elixir
x2 - 2ML $14
CLONES - Khamrah, Asad, Ramz, Futura Parfum, CDN Intense, CDN Milestone, The Tux, Ameer Al Oud Intense, Fakhar, Badee Al Oud, Najdia, Ejazzi Silver, Tres Nuit Lyric, Hunter, L’aventure intense, Amber + Leather, Sharaf Blend
2ML $4 Each
MISCELLANEOUS - Boy Toy, Voyage, HIM, The Dreamer, Rogue Man, Star USA, Rochas Man, Deseo, Scandal, Light Blue, Light Blue Forever, Amber Intense, Phantom, Encre Noire, Gentleman Society
2ML $4-6 Each

This is all work travel related.
Context: I had a nonstop flight from Denver to Boston at 9:30 MST that was supposed to get back at 3:30 EST.
Story: We get on the aircraft and it immediately delays. We sit on the plane and they say they have to get a mechanic and shut down and restart the plane due to some technical issue. The process takes almost 45 minutes where they shut everything down, the plane gets uncomfortably hot and then it slowly restarts. Once this is complete, they tell us we have to get off the plane because they need to take the current plane out of service. We are informed we should wait at the gate to get updates.
At the gate the attendants inform us that they are looking for a rescue flight to assist but can’t guarantee it will happen. They also say there is the possibility to rebook to one of the existing flights Jetblue has at the airport that day. They also inform us that if they got a new plane, it would still need to fly in from Boston or LA, and take about 3 to 4 hours to arrive in Denver. As a result, I rebook.
The flight I rebook on is scheduled to depart at 1:30PM EST and arrive at JFK at 7PM EST for a 9PM connection to Boston that gets in at 10PM. While I am waiting, I speak with the attendant at the gate multiple times to make sure that my checked bag will be moved to the new flight. I am assured more than once that this is the case. This will become relevant later.
After waiting a few more hours we board the new plane. We spend over an hour taxiing on the tarmac because they shut down a runway. To give you an idea, I watched almost all of Hunger Games before we even took off. Finally, we take off for a 4-hour flight, there’s tons of turbulence and plane drops very abruptly at one point which startles every passenger on the plane and is shakey coming in. I’ve flown over a hundred times; this was the worst I experienced. Obviously, the conditions and the turbulence are not the fault of the airline, it was just another part of the story.
When I get phone service at JFK, I see that my connecting flight got pushed back to 11PM. I later find out that because we were delayed so long, we missed the connection as it left while we were getting to the gate (because apparently, they couldn’t wait 15 minutes for us to get off). Which was also likely because some inconsiderate clown started walking around and made the plane stop on the ground when they told everyone to wait in their seats. They made an announcement telling the passenger to get back in his seat and he still proceeded to ignore it and go to the bathroom or whatever he was doing and had us stopped another 5 mins.
Anyways, once we are at JFK, we were told to go to the gate to get our connecting ticket because the Denver airport could not process the connecting ticket. After waiting in a decently long line at the gate they tell us that we actually need to go to the JetBlue help desk which is on the other side of the terminal from the gate. We go down there and after waiting in line the agent is has my ID and is processing my ticket. Then her extremely rude boss/manager comes over and says she needs to stop what she is doing because she needs her to do go something else. The person assisting me tells her that she is already in the middle of processing my ticket and asks to just finish it because it will only take two more minutes. The boss says no and tells me to stand back at the front of the line and wait for someone else to become available. I can’t stress this enough; I was in the middle of being helped and had to start all over when it would have taken at most a two minutes MAX to finish the matter and process my ticket.
At this point I call customer service to explain the situation, after 15 mins get disconnected from the first agent which is just beyond frustrating and I never get a callback and have to go through all of this again. I get a $150 voucher. Everything next is after dealing with customer service and incorrectly assuming I was compensated adequately and I had one short flight and my troubles were over….
After finally getting through some of the worst service I’ve experienced at an airline, we finally get on the plane at 11…. Then we are waiting for another 45 minutes. The plane is unbearably hot. everyone is sweating and uncomfortable. Straight up torture. The staff makes an announcement telling us all to turn the AC at our seats on so the plane can cool down and then they start passing out water bottles. We find out the delay was because the pilot wasn’t there yet and they couldn’t fully turn the plane on all the way to cool it down. When the pilot finally gets there, he tells us that he was delayed on the tarmac on another flight and doesn’t understand why we were boarded in these conditions without him. He recommends we should call Jetblue to be compensated for this experience (spoiler, it didn’t matter)
Totally unrelated to airline mishaps again, to add some fun flavor to the story, while we were taxing, the gentlemen in the seat in front of me got demanded the passenger in front of him use his headphones while he was using his phone. Not unreasonable, until the second man told him to fuck off. I thought they were joking and having a friendly back and forth and thought they new each other. That was until the second guy started saying “I don’t know why you are laughing; you don’t want to start with me”. The first guy asked “was that a threat”, we then got the “I don’t make threats routine” and then as the second passenger finally got pissed enough to start putting all his stuff down as I was terrified, they were going to delay the flight again, the flight attendant rushed over and asked what was going on. Like two kids on the playground, they played dumb and were told to cool down.
Meanwhile, in the row directly behind me, I spent the whole flight listening to husband asking his wife why she ditched him for 10 hours while they were on a vacation. I can’t stress this enough, this bickering went on the rest of the flight until the husband finally asked “do you have a boyfriend, is that what is going on”.
I was sandwiched between the Jerry Springer show…
After that tremendous experience, I land in Boston, go to baggage carousel, my bags never come out. I pretty much expected that at this point. I know I made a point to go up the gate agent in Denver no less than three times to make sure my bags were being moved to the right flight. But by this point I lost all faith in anything going right for this trip. Myself and another passenger who dealt with the same wonderful day since our Denver flight got messed up, went to the Jetblue baggage service office at Logan. I found out my bag never did in fact leave Denver (shocker)! I now have to waste more of my time filing a report in the airport before I can leave. I will give kudos to the person running that though. She was the only person who was clear, concise and effectively got me through this process.
I finally get home at 2:30AM (I should have arrived home by 4PM).
The next day (around 8PM) I think things are finally going my way when I get a call saying my bag was at Logan and would be shipped Then I get the bag. Parts of the insulating rubber are ripped and scratched up which really could only happen if you were dragging it on pavement and didn’t give a shit at all. This was a year old decently expensive TUMI bag. So that’s just great Also because they probably left it out on the tarmac for hours on end in 90-degree weather, a few gifts I got melted.
I did make a point to call customer service again and explain my wonderful adventure, they decided to just hide behind their “Customer Bill of Rights” and say that there was nothing more they could do.

TLDR: I was on 3 flights that all got messed up between a technical issue that put a plane out of, a bunch of runway closures and nonstop taxiing in Denver, boarding a furnace without a pilot, dealt with terrible turbulence, some of the worst customer service I ever experienced at any airline, crazy passengers, and a lost and damaged bag and what should have been a quick 4 hour at most flight turned into a day of pure travel hell. But at least I can now entertain you with my dread.

Extra TLDR: WTF

Recently my orders for the pilgrim and dusk came in and I’d thought I’d give me thoughts. Fair warning I really only came into hobby a year and a half or so ago so I’m not the best with specific terminology but I’m going to do my best.
The Pilgrim
The pilgrim came first so it only felt right to start there. My main driver up to that point was the truth ear zero red. I was pretty happy with it but I thought I’d try the upper tier items to see how they compare. I was hesitant cause of the price point but I’d figured if the jump to to 300$+ IEM’s is anything like the jump from shitty earbuds to 20$ IEM’s it’d blow my mind and be worth it. And my first impression with the pilgrim was…I wouldn’t say disappointment but it wasn’t the leap I expected. It definitely sounded better especially with the details but it wasnt a giant leap. I can also say I felt the bass was somewhat lacking (more in quantity than quality) though I just used the impedance adapter that came with the zero red and that made it much better (for the purpose of this comparison though I’m using the pilgrim without this adapter as it doesn’t come with the IEM and didn’t use it for direct testing between them). Even without it though I would say the pilgrims are a good set, they’re just a tad too bright even if those upper notes sound good.
Unfortunately, while I do think the pilgrim is largely a good set, I somewhat mainly have negatives to say. My primary complaint is I really find them uncomfortable. I know the zero reds are a set that sorta infamously have the asterisk of not being for everyone due to comfort reasons but I could wear the reds all day without problems but the pilgrims got to be almost a pain pretty quickly. It’s less about the in ear and more the combination of the hard metal casing, the cables being more at an awakened angle rather than a curve at the front of the ear, and the weight of the IEM’s + cable pulling at the ear causing the front of the ear especially to not feel comfortable. At one point when listening to Sometimes I Moght be Introvert by Little Simz I was considering switching back to the reds because while not as good I felt they could be more relaxing.
Dusk
While I wasn’t super impressed with the pilgrim, I have to say I’m loving the dusk. The cable (at least the analog one) isn’t exactly the most premium but it’s comfortable and doesn’t get tangled easily which is really all I need, they go into the ear easily without the casing or nossle causing any difficulty, etc. I noticed the pins are a really tight fit which at first kinda felt like a hassle but considering how many times I’ve had the experience of an IEM coming loose after taking it on and off the cable I’d take a more secure fit over the extra few seconds of having to securely life it on and off, though considering one of the selling points for this IEM is the multiple cables it comes with it only felt right to mention that the process of switching isn’t exactly smooth.
On that note to talk about the dsp I think both sound good but yeah i preferred the dsp, one of the tracks when comparing dsp with analog was gone angels by mili where both were pleasant but for the dsp it just felt so smooth and like i could get lost in it. One of my concerns with dsp was i remember hearing Timmy from gizaudio say female vocals were a little recessed but after comparing with a few tracks by mili, beach house, Flo mili, and laufey, I can say while I do notice a difference I wouldn’t say they’re too recessed or even necessarily worse than analog. Unfortunately i do have an iPhone and in the words of Crin “If you’re on iOS, go fuck yourself” so yeah I’ve mostly been using the analog because of that and all direct comparisons between the pilgrim and dusk were done with analog because I didn’t feel like switching to the dsp cable and using my laptop. Kind of a bummer but I did find myself satisfied enough with the analog
As for the general sound everything just feels like it has volume to it but in a way which isn’t overwhelming or fatiguing. The sound stage is the thing I really noticed first, it feels a lot wider which combined with it not being as bright as the pilgrim helps it to feel less fatiguing and more ‘immersive’ in a sense. It’s strange because there are things that in a technical sense sense I think the pilgrim does “better” but even in songs which would benefit from those things I’d say dusk is better for me because it feels like more of a full package where no element is lacking. Like I’d say the pilgrim can be better for strings but to use the example of two of the songs I’d tested with, The Hustle by kiltro and Turkish Rondo by the Boccherini Guitar Quintet which have great strings to them, I’d say the dusk is better cause with the pilgrim I’d had the volume lower then I would’ve liked because the high sections felt a bit too much whereas with the dusk it felt like everything was balanced well and gave a full band like experience.
I think “experience” is the right word for how I would describe the difference. Both have their unique sounds but at the end of the day I’d say the pilgrim sounds good but the dusk sounds and feels good (both in a sense of the feeling of them physical IEM itself and the sound). The pilgrim is a set I could be happy with and get used to but whereas it was one I almost didn’t want to sit down for a full album with, with the dusk I just want to listen to as much as possible. It’s not outright better in every way but to me is a much better all rounder and conducive to what I want in my music listening experience. I’d even say aside from music its sound is something I find myself more comfortable with doing something like watching YouTube for an extended period of time.
In short, pilgrim is good but especially considering the price point if it was between this and the reds I already had, they’re better but I would return them as I don’t necessarily find them to be worth it. The dusk though, as much as I’m somewhat trying to talk myself out of spending $400 on iems when I already have a good pair, I’m likely going to keep them (and maybe look into a good lightning to usb-c adapter to use the dsp on my phone, if anyone knows of a good one especially one which also has a port for charging let me know)
Hopefully that made sense and could be helpful for anyone looking for comparisons between the two, I do have the super mix 4 coming next week and am planning to give my comparison/thoughts on those when they arrive. I’m honestly hoping I like them more than the dusk as I’ve heard some say they do because I’d be a lot more comfortable spending $150 then $400 for an upgrade.

Hi, I want to edit hum_head_babe4.mmb, I assume it is model of a woman's head, that's what my friend said, but I don't know how to open it. I tried in blender and gmax but it doesn't work, I also installed kerrax. I couldn't find anything about that on the internet nor on gothic's discord so I'm asking here. Maybe I missed something idk

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

Apologies for the silly question. I am registering my daughter British citizenship and during the process I found this statement:

If Miss <...> told us that their parent is settled in the UK then you must provide us evidence of their settled status. This could include a BRP, a letter from the Home Office, an endorsement in their passport or another document certifying permanent residence.

I have searched online and I can't find a way to order a BRP, neither a letter from HO nor any endorsement (???). I always used a shared code to prove my status and I guess in this case it would not be accepted. I am probably missing something important. What does it mean "document certifying permanent residence"? It seems a bit vague. Would the bills from my energy provider be accepted?

Not Dr. Bronner’s, but the feel is the same.
They made very generic items that you could find in Walmart or in a dollar store, and the things you used to be able to see on google were like, paper plates, plastic utensils, birthday candles, napkins, pencils; stuff like that.
The quotes were usually inspirational and I think religiously based, but I don’t exactly remember.
the part that made it weird is that every product had a different quote, and the quote was very inconspicuously placed on the packaging to where you would almost miss it if you weren’t looking for it.
The brand name is coming to me like “___- brite” or something.