The rise of connected medical devices has revolutionized patient care. These devices, from pacemakers to insulin pumps, offer continuous monitoring, remote intervention, and improved data-driven treatment plans. However, this connectivity also introduces new security vulnerabilities. Malicious actors targeting these devices can compromise patient safety and privacy.
Here’s where red teaming comes in. Red teaming is a simulated cyberattack exercise designed to expose weaknesses in an organization’s security posture. In the context of medical devices, a red team acts like a malicious hacker, attempting to exploit vulnerabilities in devices, networks, and systems to achieve a specific goal, such as stealing patient data, disrupting device functionality, or causing physical harm.
This blog post will delve into the importance of red teaming for medical device manufacturers and healthcare organizations. We’ll explore how red teaming services can identify and address security gaps in connected healthcare systems, ultimately safeguarding patient data and ensuring device integrity.

Why is Red Teaming Critical for Medical Devices?

Traditional security testing methods often focus on known vulnerabilities. Red teaming, however, takes a more proactive approach. By simulating real-world attacks, it uncovers previously unknown weaknesses that attackers might exploit. Here’s why red teaming is crucial for medical devices:

• Identifying Unforeseen Threats: Red teams think like attackers, employing a variety of techniques, including social engineering, network vulnerabilities, and physical security breaches. This helps uncover unexpected attack vectors that traditional testing might miss.
• Testing Security Controls: Red teaming exercises assess the effectiveness of existing security controls like firewalls, access controls, and intrusion detection systems. It exposes weaknesses in these controls, allowing organizations to strengthen their defenses before a real attack occurs.
• Improving Incident Response: Red teaming helps organizations test their incident response plans and procedures. By experiencing a simulated attack, healthcare providers and manufacturers can identify gaps in their communication, response protocols, and crisis management strategies.
• Building Security Culture: Red teaming fosters a culture of security awareness within an organization. By experiencing the consequences of a successful attack, stakeholders become more invested in cybersecurity best practices.

Benefits of Utilizing Red Teaming Services

Red teaming requires specialized skills and knowledge. Partnering with a reputable red teaming service provider offers several advantages:

• Expertise: Red teaming service providers have a deep understanding of medical device security and the latest cyber threats. They can tailor their exercises to address specific device vulnerabilities and healthcare infrastructure weaknesses.
• Experience: Experienced red teaming teams have a proven track record of successfully identifying and exploiting security vulnerabilities. They can bring a fresh perspective to your organization’s security posture.
• Objectivity: An external red team maintains objectivity and avoids blind spots inherent in internal assessments. They can identify issues that internal teams might overlook.
• Efficiency: Red teaming services are often more efficient than building and training an internal red team.

Red Teaming for Medical Devices: A Simulated Attack Scenario

Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario:
A medical device manufacturer develops a new insulin pump with remote monitoring capabilities. To ensure its security, the company engages a red teaming service provider.
The red team starts by studying the device’s architecture, communication protocols, and software. They then identify potential attack vectors, such as vulnerabilities in the wireless communication between the pump and the monitoring system.
The red team attempts to compromise the device using various techniques, including:

• Social engineering: Phishing emails are sent to employees with access to the device’s control systems, tricking them into revealing sensitive information or clicking on malicious links.
• Network vulnerabilities: The red team scans the manufacturer’s network for security gaps that could be exploited to gain access to patient data stored on the cloud.
• Physical security: The red team assesses the physical security of the production facility where the insulin pump is manufactured. They attempt to gain unauthorized access to the facility and tamper with the devices.

The Outcome:
The red team’s simulated attack might be successful in uncovering vulnerabilities in the device’s communication protocol, weak access controls on the manufacturer’s network, or lax physical security measures at the production facility.
By identifying these vulnerabilities, the manufacturer can take corrective measures, such as:

• Patching software vulnerabilities in the device.
• Implementing multi-factor authentication for accessing device control systems.
• Enhancing physical security at the manufacturing facility.

Through this red teaming exercise, the manufacturer proactively addresses security weaknesses, safeguarding patient data and ensuring the integrity of their device.

Conclusion

Red teaming is not a one-time event. It should be integrated into a comprehensive security strategy for medical devices. Regular red teaming exercises, combined with ongoing vulnerability management and security awareness training, create a proactive and layered defense against cyber threats.
By embracing red teaming, medical device manufacturers and healthcare providers can demonstrate their commitment to patient safety and data privacy. This not only builds trust with patients but also enhances brand reputation and fosters a culture of security within the organization. In today’s evolving threat landscape, red teaming serves as a critical tool for securing connected healthcare systems and ensuring the future of safe and reliable medical technology.
Taking the Next Step
If you’re a medical device manufacturer or healthcare provider interested in exploring red teaming services, consider researching reputable red teaming service providers with experience in the healthcare sector. These providers can help you design and execute a red teaming exercise tailored to your specific needs and vulnerabilities.
By investing in red teaming, you’re investing in the safety and security of your patients and the integrity of your connected medical devices.

Is anyone worried about MHS Genesis integration?
So, this system rolled out a year ago at meps and has the ability to pull records from your birth to present day from the majority of the HIE’s in the USA. I know plenty of people who withheld information to enlist, ADHD, broken bones etc etc when the system becomes implemented what’s to stop the VA from reopening past claims if they find out you had ADHD as a child per medical records? Is MHS genesis gonna overturn rating decisions?

Who even bought this supplement and actually got results on this? Now I know this is snake oil and most of the reviews on YouTube and the ad are AI-generated, it does appeal to me personally cuz I do struggle with myopia. I’m not usually stupid enough to fall for these but I’m kinda getting desperate and I’m sick of myopia. But I’m wondering who actually bought this and got results too. If you’re gonna prove to me this is actually the real deal, you’re gonna have to send your medical record, prescription history, and so on personally in the DM to me. If not, then you’re gonna have to tell me that imma just have to stick to optometrists and glasses and how I’d have to rely on surgery if I want good vision without glasses again.

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AFAB, 42, type II diabetes, chronic migraines, hypertension, polycystic ovarian syndrome, hyperthyroidism, obese, ADHD, anxiety, depression, PTSD, agoraphobia.
Propranolol, metformin, levothyroxine, methylphenidate, methylphenidate extended release, desvenlafaxine, zomitriptan. No vitamins or supplements.
One pet cat, no lifestyle changes such as a new pet, partner, diet, or move.
I've had huge, red, raised, intensely itchy hives over 90% of my body for weeks, scalp, ears, chin, neck, shoulders, both arms, chest, back , stomach, butt, legs, feet, even the soles of my feet and palms of my hands. It started suddenly, with no history of hives. I've also had my eye randomly swell shut and my lip swell up a couple times.
I've been taking famotidine twice daily and diphenhydramine throughout the day. It mostly controls or at least lessens it but there's no sign of actual improvement. The moment it wears off, the hives come roaring back.
I saw the doctor, who was concerned it could be an autoimmune condition, and had blood work done. They did a bunch of tests because they did my usual thyroid and a1c in there too. I think the relevant ones for the hives were C-reactive protein and anti-nuclear antibody screen.
The C-reactive protein came back as 1.6mg/dL. The antibody screen came back negative.
From what I read, 1.6mg/dL (I think that's 16mg/L?) is associated with autoimmune conditions, and is considered kinda high?
My doctor called it mildly elevated, though, and I guess paired with a negative anti-nuclear antibody test, my doctor says it's not an autoimmune disease.
I'm just a little confused about why it's elevated and why what I read makes it seem more concerning than my doctor's interpretation seemed. Lupus would have kinda made sense, tbh. But I guess I'm in the clear for autoimmune stuff? So what does it mean that it's that high? Or is it really not that high and I read things that weren't accurate?
The only other test that was abnormal was that my thyroid medication does was a little high. My thyroid is never stable, though. It is always too low or too high and my dose always changes.
So my doctor wants me to try a combination of Zyrtec, Allegra, famotidine, and prescription Singulair for a month and see how it goes.
I could include pictures of the hives/swelling, but they look exactly like hives/swelling.

Been living in this spot for 10 years. Some family medical issues hit and there was a delay in my LOA pay so i ended up late on my rent. Got hit w the 3 day notice on the 6th. I called the leasing office on the 10th and they said I would be ok if I turned in a certified check that day. Bank closed so I end up turning it in on the 11th with an extra $50 to cover the late payment. They ended up refusing the check and telling me they can't accept it bc the eviction is already in motion. I really really dont want to move or have eviction on my record. What can i do? Am i fuckd? I have enough money to pay everything owed and and then some.

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Here is the link: E800 1.49inch AMOLED Smart Watch
Best price with coupon code (apply in the cart!): BGE800PL1
Current price is 42.99 USD. The lowest price in my database is 42.99 USD. There're already 1 records in DB. Price monitoring since 15.5.2024!
Notes (coupon may work only in selected countries): Poland
If you're too late or you want e-mail PRICE ALERTS, then you can check current coupons for E800 1.49inch AMOLED Smart Watch here: https://couponsfromchina.com/e800-1-49inch-amoled-smart-watch-coupon-price/
Best regards.
I guess it's a good price
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FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/CouponsFromChinaCom
FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/couponsfromchinacom/
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Feel free to snoop on my past posts because it explains what I’ve been dealing with, but to sum it up I have autism, a lot of past trauma, and recent symptoms of PTSD from being sexually assaulted.
I was query diagnosed with “histrionic pd” (no assessment whatsoever) by a man I never even met after 5 mins in the emergency department (I feel suicidal because I’ve had no support whatsoever since I was raped), and despite a second psychiatrist later on (I had a formal appointment with her, she actually sat down and listened to me rather than labelling me with outdated, misogynistic shit) saying that I don’t meet criteria for any cluster b PDs, I’ve been treated like some lying, attention seeking freak.
Now I also feel traumatised from these horrible experiences with professionals, to add to it I faced gaslighting and verbal abuse from a mental health nurse. Thank god I have recordings of these meetings otherwise they’d just use this against me to further “prove” I’ve got a pd.
I’ve been taking propranolol for my physical anxiety for several years now, it’s in the NICE guidelines for it but I realise it’s not licensed for anxiety specifically. My GP is now denying me a helpful amount of it, she keeps saying it’s “not in the guidelines” and is pushing me to take Quetiapine … except I don’t have schizophrenia or bipolar. Antipsychotics are not licensed for PTSD.
Antidepressants haven’t worked for me in the past, (they just made me fat and zombie like), which is supposedly why they want to push me on antipsychotics but I’m struggling to understand how they’re going to help me.
I struggle with extreme physical anxiety, I don’t get mental anxiety, I just have a lot of moments of going into fight or flight mode, this isn’t the kind of thing I can “logic” my way out of using shit like DBT skills because my nervous system is fundamentally fucked up. My physical anxiety is also related to my autism and I’m aware it’s also in the NICE guidelines that you shouldn’t medicate people for their autistic traits. I get such a high heart rate, a rush of adrenaline, all sweaty and shaky, and propranolol is what works for me but now I can’t get a proper amount of it.
Does anyone have any advice, I am going to see a different GP but I’m wary they’ll all say the same shit.

Pardon the length, but I'd like to give as much detail as possible.
My wife and I have a 2.5 year old indoor female cat who had suddenly displayed signs of Estrus back in the beginning of February - meowing, purring, writhing, super affectionate (very odd, since she's usually shy and reclusive), presenting herself, and spraying anything/ anybody. The problem is, she was spayed two years ago. Called the vet, and had to schedule an appointment almost a week later (unfortunately, my cat's amorous behavior had dissipated by this time). I nearly got my arm clawed to pieces by her trying to take her, because unlike my other cat, she hates being held, hates the sight of her carrier, and I unfortunately had to resort to grabbing her to stop her from running and risking missing the appointment time (I have since researched better ways to get her from tough to reach places to avoid another slashing fest and getting another set of scars).
After helping me clean my arm, the vet listened to my explanation of my cat's sudden heat-like symptoms. Sadly, all he seemed to hear me say was that she was peeing (I said spraying) everywhere, and deduced it to being a UTI - most likely caused by stress. While knocking her out to extract urine from her bladder (he remembered her as being a feisty cat the last time I had brought her in), he asked me if anything in the household had changed, be it a new plant, new food for the cats, new litter box, redecorating, etc. as the smallest things can stress out a cat. After informing him that nothing had changed, he dismissed my claim, saying that I probably don't realize what I'm doing to stress her out, to which he showcased a variety of products on Amazon to help reduce her stress, including new cat food, a water fountain, scented plugins, etc.
With that, he had extracted enough urine, and performed a test to examine it. Minutes later, he called me over, pointing out she couldn't be in heat due to her spaying, and lack of blood in her urine. He then had me look in the microscope and pointed out that her levels showcased her being under a lot of stress. I asked if my dragging her to the vet so violently could be the cause of such stress, and he dismissed it, saying her meowing and peeing on everything was her trying to tell me that she was suffering from a UTI.
Okay. $300. That's fine, I love this cat. As for treatment, he sold me a bag of Dasuquin chewables, and requested I bring her back twice a week for two weeks for an Adequan injection. Done and done. Like I said, I researched better ways to get her into her carrier, so the following trips went rather smoothly. Cut to the beginning of March, and she starts her Estrus behavior all over again. Instead of rushing to the vet, however, my wife and I decided to see if she would stop on her own; without the chewables and injections. She did, and went back to her normal, reclusive, "get your damn hands off of me" attitude.
April swings by, and wouldn't you know it, she's making herself known, presenting herself, wanting all the love, and spraying whatever she damn well pleases. I call the vet, and they tell me that I can't schedule an appointment for another week. Fearing that she won't show her symptoms, I record her writhing, purring, being affectionate, etc, and notify the vet's nurses that I have proof of her heat-like behavior. But they dismiss it, saying that she's already spayed, and that the videos only show that she wants attention. Doubtful the vet made a mistake, they tell me if I truly think it's heat, they'd have to run an $800 blood test, but, again, there's no way the vet would've made such a "rookie mistake" (her words).
Not appreciating the nurse's attitude, I think to myself why wasn't this test an option before, paying instead for a test and treatment that didn't work. Irritated with the vet's clinic, I decided to just live with my cat's monthly heat sessions, doing anything I can to ease her "pain". But with her starting her heat in May, my wife and I just got news of a baby on the way, and I realize that our heated cat may prove very unsanitary for the new member of the family.
I now desperately seek advice, as I don't want to get rid of my youngest cat because of her underlying condition, but I don't want her spraying my house where my child will soon venture.
Tl:Dr
-2.5 yo indoor cat is showcasing signs of heat after being sprayed 2 years ago.
-These Estrus-like periods last 4 to 8 days (we've been recording), and they usually begin between the 1st and the 10th of the month. After that, she's back to normal.
-During this time, she meows for attention, presents herself, reacts strongly to being pet, purrs & writhes on ground, sprays windows/ doors/ people's legs after rubbing on them.
-She is normally (and for the past two years) a very reserved cat, won't let you pick her up, plays/ torments my 6 yo female cat even when she hisses at her to stop, and most notably, she hides when the front door opens/ a stranger visits.
-In her "heat" state, she'll come to you, let you pick her up, and approach the front door when it opens.
-After $300, Vet says it's a UTI caused by stress, and now wants to charge me $800 for a blood test to see if there's truly any ovarian tissue.
How rare is it for a cat to suddenly experience periods of Estrus after being spayed for two years? Is there any other way I can get this damn vet to "entertain" the possibility that he made a mistake? Or could it truly be something else? Should I let her outside to "mate" to see if it gets out of her system?
I've had only the two cats, but I grew up in a family that had many, and I've never experienced something like this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as I'm mostly seeking Peace of Mind before returning to the vet responsible for her spaying, or quite possibly, another vet for a second opinion.

This is bad for anybody who needs to do any insurance claims.
It would be a shame if anybody took advantage of this to dispute a bill.

Xuefeng
First of all, we have to admit that the Bible is the accomplishment of the Ephraim which loyally records the Jewish history, explains the relationship between the God, Devil and human beings to the furthest degree, and gives the direction the human beings should take.
The Bible, the Koran, the Buddhist Scripture and the Tao Te Ching are the eternal and effective treasures and collections of human wisdom, teaching us how to behave and develop into the higher level of life space.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. The first sentence in the Bible did tell the truth. But the things covered by the cossack may not be the holly things. And the people wearing the sacred cassock may not be the abbot.
The problem with the Bible is that the God it introduces is not the genuine Greatest Creator.
We have known that the Greatest Creator has the 8 features. The Greatest Creator is unique and exclusive, amorphous, neutral, mysterious, impartial, merciful, supremely powerful and intelligent. The wisdom of the Greatest Creator is revealed through its creation of universe order, designing of LIFE program and knowing of the past and the future.
Then, does the God in the Bible have the above-mentioned 8 features?
Let’s explain this with examples.
The Betrayal of Adam and Eve
According to the Genesis, Adam and Eve were instigated to eat the fruit on the Wisdom Tree forbidden by the God in the Bible. Because they have violated the order of the God (in the Bible), they were repelled out of the Eden.
It indicates that the God in the Bible is a. incompetent; b. improvident; and c. unjust.
He is incompetent because he was a loser at the beginning. The first couple of human he created betrayed him. So can we still say it is supremely powerful?
Can we still believe in a “person” who often loses? The Great Flood had killed most of the human beings. What happened to them afterwards? They still wouldn’t listen to his words. The Moses Ten Commandments are actually the directives of the God in the Bible. Can you tell me how many of them are obeyed by the human being? Actually not even one. The God in the Bible seemed to know nothing about how to control the human beings. The only measure it takes is to voice warnings and threats against the human beings. Thousands of years has passed, the human beings remain the same. Is there no means to control the human beings? Or is there some other force constraining this Almighty God? If this is the case, is this God not sole or exclusive? For thousands of years, the human beings have been violating hisorder. What is he waiting for?
The God in the Bible is improvident because he didn’t know that Adam and Eve were going to betray him or the development trend of what he had created. Is this God, who is not able to predict the future or the past, still reliable? If the Earth is going to get out of the Solar System and this God knows nothing about it, how can he save the human beings? How can this GOD administer the deities, Buddha, celestial beings and Devils when he found it difficult to control the human beings? How can he manage the spacious Universe?
The God in the Bible is unjust because it cannot tell wrong from the right and because it is unreasonable.
Why would Adam and Eve betray the God in the Bible? There are three major reasons. First, the genetic structure of Adam and Eve had faults, or was imperfect. The life created by this God was now its own constraint. This angered the God very much. It is just like the house built by an architect who put every efforts was fallen and hit his own feet. Is the house or the architect that should be blamed?
The second reason they betrayed is that they were instigated and seduced by the snake. Adam and Eve are humans while behind the snake was the Devil Satan. The energy and wisdom of human beings can’t match those of the Devil. This God didn’t punish the Devil Satan. Instead, it imposed inflictions on Adam and Eve and drove them out of Eden. Is it fair? If a rapist raped an 8-year-old girl, would it be fair to blame the girl for her sexual organ and weakness instead of bringing justice to the rapist?
The third reason of betrayal, which is also the most important one, is the damned Wisdom Tree that can tell the good and evil. Who has planted it in the Eden and why? It’s just like putting a poisonous sweet on the dinner table for the kids. Or it’s like playing the porn video for the young girls while teaching them to retain their innocence. Would a moral person do such a thing? Isn’t this “person” who planted the Wisdom Tree in the Eden has caused the betrayal of Adam and Eve?
Besides, does this God, who had created Adam and Eve, has other measures to take rather than driving Adam and Eve out of the Eden? Is it fair not to give them a second chance simply because they have made only one mistake? Does one mistake justify their life-long sins?
Jesus came to the Mortal World to atone for the human beings’ sins. According to the Bible, all the people have their “original sin”. Where does the “original sin” come from? Actually, they are inherited from Adam and Eve, the ancestors of human beings, whose sins were formed because they had eaten the fruit on the damned Wisdom Tree.
When we are born, we have the “original sin” inherited from Adam and Eve. The “cross” on our back was much too heavy. According to this logic, “the son of a thief is always a thief”, “the son of a criminal is always a criminal”, and “the son of an emperor is always an emperor”. That’s why in ancient China, in the feudal period in particular, “If a man committed crime, all his family members would be sentenced to death”, or “If a man attained the Tao, even his pets ascended to Heaven”. This also explains why the thrones can only be passed on to the next generations of royal families. This is because it complies with the logic in the Bible.
If somebody has sins, the God in the Bible and the Satan sined first. Is it humanitarian to inflict on billions of humans throughout the history simply because of the wrongdoings of Adam and Eve? Why not executing Adam and Eve and creating a new pair of humans at the time? Is creating a new couple so difficult for the God in the Bible?
All the people are born with sins. This is why each of us comes to the Mortal World to endure the sufferings. But the sins are not inherited from our ancestors. They are made by oursleves in the previous cycle of life. If we don’t have sins, we would all have become Buddha or celestial beings.
Ten Plagues of Egypt
According to the Exodus, when Moses and Aaron, in the capacity of the GOD in the Bible, asked the Egyptian Pharaoh to let the Israelis leave Egypt, they were refused. Consequently, the GOD in the Bible imposed 10 plagues on Egypt. 1. Plague of Blood The water of the Nile will be changed into blood. The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink; the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water. 2. Plague of Frogs. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. The frogs will go up on you and your people and all your officials. 3. Plague of Lice.The dust of the ground became lice, lice came upon men and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became lice. 4. Plague of Flies The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies, and even the ground where they are. 5. Plague of Livestock Death The fifth plague of Egypt was an epidemic disease which exterminated the Egyptian livestock; that is, horses, donkeys, camels, cattle, sheep and goats; 6. Plague of Boils The sixth plague of Egypt was Shkhin. The Shkhin was a kind of skin disease, usually translated as "boils".; 7. Plague of Hail The seventh plague of Egypt was a destructive storm; 8. Plague of Locusts Locusts will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields.; 9. Plague of Darkness Total darkness covered all Egypt for three days 10. Death of the Firstborn The tenth and final plague of Egypt was the death of all first born in Egypt — no one escaped, from the lowest servant to Pharaoh's own first-born son, including first-born of livestock.
It is understandable that the God punished Egypt because Egyptian Pharaoh wouldn’t obey his order. However, it was unreasonable and went too far to kill the first-born of all humans and animals in Egypt. You can punish the Egyptian Pharaoh for his disobedience. Why inflicting on the common people? Even worse, the God would kill the kids of the girl slaves working as donkeys in the lowest rank. Can we still say the God behaving like this merciful? It was behaving without humanitarianism just like a Devil.
Even more abominable, the Pharaoh of Egypt wouldn’t let the Israelis leave mainly because the God had hardened the Pharaoh’s heart. Before the Ten Plagues came, the God in the Bible had done something. According to 7:3 in the Exodus, Jehovah told Moses, “And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.”
It means the God in the Bible had prepared a trap for the Egyptians, trying to find an excuse for the following plagues. In Exodus 8:19, “Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God." But Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had said.”. In Exodus 9:35, “And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, neither would he let the children of Israel go; as the LORD had spoken by Moses.” In Exodus 10:20, “But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go.” In Exodus 10:27, “But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go.” In Exodus 11:10, “And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh: and the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go out of his land.”
It was the God in the Bible who let the Israelis leave Egypt. But it was the same God who had hardened the Pharaoh’s heart and sparked the conflicts so that the Israelis couldn’t leave Egypt easily. So what the God in the Bible was doing? It was encouraging the people to revolt while telling the authorities about the revolt and encouraging the government to oppress them mercilessly. Isn’t such a person a schemer and two-faced?
So is this the image of the Greatest Creator?
The Israelis Are the People of the Covenant
The Bible has the Old Testament and the New Testament. The part telling what happened before Jesus was born was called the Old Testament and the part telling things after Jesus was born was the New Testament. The Testament actually means agreement, covenant, and contract. The whole Bible is the agreement, covenant and contract between the Israelis and the Greatest Creator.
So here is a paradox. There are over 3,000 nations in the world and why the God has established the Testament with the Israelis? Does this mean the other nations are not the subjects of the God? If they are, why has the God only established the Testament with the Israelis while neglecting all the other nations? If they are not, what’s the origin of all the other nations? Are Adam and Eve only the ancestors of Israelis and not the other nations? The Israelis are created by the God. Does it mean the other nations are created by the Devil?
There are 1,656 years between the Genesis and the Great Flood. There are 857 years between the Great Flood and the Exodus. There are 396 years between the Exodus and the founding of the Israeli State. There are 510 years between the founding of the Israeli State and their captive to Babylon. There are 152 years between their imprisonment in Babylon and the reestablishment of Jerusalem. There are 450 years between the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the birth of Jesus. There are 2003 years between the birth of Jesus and today. So according to the Bible, the history of human beings is about 6,376 years.
According to the Bible, there were only 8 people survived the Great Flood on the Earth. They were the couple of Noah, their three sons and their wives. It means that 4,700 years ago, there was no one else living on the Earth except for the Noah family.
But this has brought some other questions. First, where do the American Indians come from? According to the theory of Continental Drift, America drifted away from the other continents. But it couldn’t happen within 4,700 years of time. Then how the Noah family reached America from the Middle East? After the Great Flood, there were only 8 members in Noah family. It was impossible for them to get dispersed. Noah couldn’t let one of his sons and his wife to cross the freezing Siberia and the Bering Strait to get to America.
Second, where did the African blacks come from? From the perspective of genetics, the blacks, yellows and whites have their separate ancestors. A couple of pure whites couldn’t generate the blacks and yellows. Even the evolvement couldn’t produce the blacks and yellows in 3,700 years of time. Besides, according to Darwin’s evolutionary theory, the survival of the fittest, could the Israelis able to write the Bible evolve into the African blacks? The blacks are not the matches of Israelis in the intelligence no matter how we exaggerate their abilities.
Now let’s come to the Chinese nation. The first Chinese King was born about 4,600 years ago. The story of Dayu‘s Flood Control happened about 4,200 years ago. It was impossible for the future generations of Noah to come to mainland China 100 years after the Great Flood. Even if they did it, how could they produce so many people who followed Dayu to control the flood?
Where does the Chinese nation come from? Are the Flood Control by Dayu were just the Great Flood?
From the perspective of the Bible, the biological evolutionary theory could never be accepted. But once we accepted the theory, it would deny the theory that the God created the human beings. But if we denied the evolutionary theory, there was no way to explain the origin of the blacks and yellows and we can’t say Adam and Eve are the common ancestors of all human beings.
The Story of Cain
The first child of Adam and Eve, after they were driven out of the Eden, was Cain, followed by Abel. “And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.” Out of jealousy, Cain killed his brother Abel.
We want to ask the God in the Bible some questions, “Why do you favor the offerings of Abel instead of those of Cain? Is Cain killing his brother Abel not your fault? If you had never favored one of them, how could it arouse the jealousy of Cain? Why the people created by you had so many troubles? Adam and Eve wouldn’t follow your orders and their kids killed each other. As the God, you don’t have the ability to solve these problems? Or is it what you have designed?
Cain was a murderer and deserved the punishment. But you told Cain, “Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.”
So what kind of the justice standard is it? It is hardly understandable not to levy the punishment on the criminal. But it is even more understandable to have revenge of sevenfold on those who would punish the criminal. Is it protecting the criminal?
That’s why the few thousand years of human history were full of blood, violence and crime. The God in the Bible has been protecting the criminals.
“Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” Because Cain is a criminal, we can fully understand it as ““Therefore whosoever slayeth the criminal, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.””
We can conclude we had better become criminals because the criminals are protected and the good men are not. The good men have the risk of being revenged sevenfold.
The Prophet and the Dream
In the Bible, there are a large number of prophets and dreams. The prophets are the representatives of the God in the Mortal World. They have unimaginable wisdom and power, which sink the average people with average wisdom into the mist. If someone says, “I am a prophet”, should we believe him or not. If we don’t, we are standing against the God. If we do, how can we know the prophet is a fake or not?
Now let’s talk about the dreams. There are many dreams and dream analysis in the Bible, in particular in the Revelation. Of course, those who can analyze the dreams are all prophets. But they have also brought a lot of puzzles.
First, has the prophet had the dream at all? No one could see his dream and he could well compose some dreams and cheat us. If he really had the dream, was his analysis correct, or was he analyzing the dream on the reverse aspect?
I want to ask the God in the Bible, in the Old Testament, you used to talk directly with the human beings. Then why you stopped doing so later? Are the Adam and Eve on other planets also disobeying your orders? Why would you warn the human beings in the form of dreams? Why not tell us the truth directly? Don’t you have the ability to do so? Don’t you have time? Don you have some secret sorrow?
I can give many other examples to state that the God in the Bible does not have the features of being unique and exclusive, amorphous, neutral, mysterious, impartial, supremely powerful, merciful and wise as genuine Greatest Creator has.
So we can affirm that “the God in the Bible is not the genuine Greatest Creator”.

Xuefeng First of all, we have to admit that the Bible is the accomplishment of the Ephraim which loyally records the Jewish history, explains the relationship between the God, Devil and human beings to the furthest degree, and gives the direction the human beings should take. The Bible, the Koran, the Buddhist Scripture and the Tao Te Ching are the eternal and effective treasures and collections of human wisdom, teaching us how to behave and develop into the higher level of life space. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. The first sentence in the Bible did tell the truth. But the things covered by the cossack may not be the holly things. And the people wearing the sacred cassock may not be the abbot. The problem with the Bible is that the God it introduces is not the genuine Greatest Creator. We have known that the Greatest Creator has the 8 features. The Greatest Creator is unique and exclusive, amorphous, neutral, mysterious, impartial, merciful, supremely powerful and intelligent. The wisdom of the Greatest Creator is revealed through its creation of universe order, designing of LIFE program and knowing of the past and the future. Then, does the God in the Bible have the above-mentioned 8 features? Let’s explain this with examples. The Betrayal of Adam and Eve According to the Genesis, Adam and Eve were instigated to eat the fruit on the Wisdom Tree forbidden by the God in the Bible. Because they have violated the order of the God (in the Bible), they were repelled out of the Eden. It indicates that the God in the Bible is a. incompetent; b. improvident; and c. unjust. He is incompetent because he was a loser at the beginning. The first couple of human he created betrayed him. So can we still say it is supremely powerful? Can we still believe in a “person” who often loses? The Great Flood had killed most of the human beings. What happened to them afterwards? They still wouldn’t listen to his words. The Moses Ten Commandments are actually the directives of the God in the Bible. Can you tell me how many of them are obeyed by the human being? Actually not even one. The God in the Bible seemed to know nothing about how to control the human beings. The only measure it takes is to voice warnings and threats against the human beings. Thousands of years has passed, the human beings remain the same. Is there no means to control the human beings? Or is there some other force constraining this Almighty God? If this is the case, is this God not sole or exclusive? For thousands of years, the human beings have been violating hisorder. What is he waiting for? The God in the Bible is improvident because he didn’t know that Adam and Eve were going to betray him or the development trend of what he had created. Is this God, who is not able to predict the future or the past, still reliable? If the Earth is going to get out of the Solar System and this God knows nothing about it, how can he save the human beings? How can this GOD administer the deities, Buddha, celestial beings and Devils when he found it difficult to control the human beings? How can he manage the spacious Universe? The God in the Bible is unjust because it cannot tell wrong from the right and because it is unreasonable. Why would Adam and Eve betray the God in the Bible? There are three major reasons. First, the genetic structure of Adam and Eve had faults, or was imperfect. The life created by this God was now its own constraint. This angered the God very much. It is just like the house built by an architect who put every efforts was fallen and hit his own feet. Is the house or the architect that should be blamed? The second reason they betrayed is that they were instigated and seduced by the snake. Adam and Eve are humans while behind the snake was the Devil Satan. The energy and wisdom of human beings can’t match those of the Devil. This God didn’t punish the Devil Satan. Instead, it imposed inflictions on Adam and Eve and drove them out of Eden. Is it fair? If a rapist raped an 8-year-old girl, would it be fair to blame the girl for her sexual organ and weakness instead of bringing justice to the rapist? The third reason of betrayal, which is also the most important one, is the damned Wisdom Tree that can tell the good and evil. Who has planted it in the Eden and why? It’s just like putting a poisonous sweet on the dinner table for the kids. Or it’s like playing the porn video for the young girls while teaching them to retain their innocence. Would a moral person do such a thing? Isn’t this “person” who planted the Wisdom Tree in the Eden has caused the betrayal of Adam and Eve? Besides, does this God, who had created Adam and Eve, has other measures to take rather than driving Adam and Eve out of the Eden? Is it fair not to give them a second chance simply because they have made only one mistake? Does one mistake justify their life-long sins? Jesus came to the Mortal World to atone for the human beings’ sins. According to the Bible, all the people have their “original sin”. Where does the “original sin” come from? Actually, they are inherited from Adam and Eve, the ancestors of human beings, whose sins were formed because they had eaten the fruit on the damned Wisdom Tree. When we are born, we have the “original sin” inherited from Adam and Eve. The “cross” on our back was much too heavy. According to this logic, “the son of a thief is always a thief”, “the son of a criminal is always a criminal”, and “the son of an emperor is always an emperor”. That’s why in ancient China, in the feudal period in particular, “If a man committed crime, all his family members would be sentenced to death”, or “If a man attained the Tao, even his pets ascended to Heaven”. This also explains why the thrones can only be passed on to the next generations of royal families. This is because it complies with the logic in the Bible. If somebody has sins, the God in the Bible and the Satan sined first. Is it humanitarian to inflict on billions of humans throughout the history simply because of the wrongdoings of Adam and Eve? Why not executing Adam and Eve and creating a new pair of humans at the time? Is creating a new couple so difficult for the God in the Bible? All the people are born with sins. This is why each of us comes to the Mortal World to endure the sufferings. But the sins are not inherited from our ancestors. They are made by oursleves in the previous cycle of life. If we don’t have sins, we would all have become Buddha or celestial beings. Ten Plagues of Egypt According to the Exodus, when Moses and Aaron, in the capacity of the GOD in the Bible, asked the Egyptian Pharaoh to let the Israelis leave Egypt, they were refused. Consequently, the GOD in the Bible imposed 10 plagues on Egypt. 1. Plague of Blood The water of the Nile will be changed into blood. The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink; the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water. 2. Plague of Frogs. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. The frogs will go up on you and your people and all your officials. 3. Plague of Lice.The dust of the ground became lice, lice came upon men and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became lice. 4. Plague of Flies The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies, and even the ground where they are. 5. Plague of Livestock Death The fifth plague of Egypt was an epidemic disease which exterminated the Egyptian livestock; that is, horses, donkeys, camels, cattle, sheep and goats; 6. Plague of Boils The sixth plague of Egypt was Shkhin. The Shkhin was a kind of skin disease, usually translated as "boils".; 7. Plague of Hail The seventh plague of Egypt was a destructive storm; 8. Plague of Locusts Locusts will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields.; 9. Plague of Darkness Total darkness covered all Egypt for three days 10. Death of the Firstborn The tenth and final plague of Egypt was the death of all first born in Egypt — no one escaped, from the lowest servant to Pharaoh's own first-born son, including first-born of livestock. It is understandable that the God punished Egypt because Egyptian Pharaoh wouldn’t obey his order. However, it was unreasonable and went too far to kill the first-born of all humans and animals in Egypt. You can punish the Egyptian Pharaoh for his disobedience. Why inflicting on the common people? Even worse, the God would kill the kids of the girl slaves working as donkeys in the lowest rank. Can we still say the God behaving like this merciful? It was behaving without humanitarianism just like a Devil. Even more abominable, the Pharaoh of Egypt wouldn’t let the Israelis leave mainly because the God had hardened the Pharaoh’s heart. Before the Ten Plagues came, the God in the Bible had done something. According to 7:3 in the Exodus, Jehovah told Moses, “And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.” It means the God in the Bible had prepared a trap for the Egyptians, trying to find an excuse for the following plagues. In Exodus 8:19, “Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God." But Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had said.”. In Exodus 9:35, “And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, neither would he let the children of Israel go; as the LORD had spoken by Moses.” In Exodus 10:20, “But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go.” In Exodus 10:27, “But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go.” In Exodus 11:10, “And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh: and the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go out of his land.” It was the God in the Bible who let the Israelis leave Egypt. But it was the same God who had hardened the Pharaoh’s heart and sparked the conflicts so that the Israelis couldn’t leave Egypt easily. So what the God in the Bible was doing? It was encouraging the people to revolt while telling the authorities about the revolt and encouraging the government to oppress them mercilessly. Isn’t such a person a schemer and two-faced? So is this the image of the Greatest Creator? The Israelis Are the People of the Covenant The Bible has the Old Testament and the New Testament. The part telling what happened before Jesus was born was called the Old Testament and the part telling things after Jesus was born was the New Testament. The Testament actually means agreement, covenant, and contract. The whole Bible is the agreement, covenant and contract between the Israelis and the Greatest Creator. So here is a paradox. There are over 3,000 nations in the world and why the God has established the Testament with the Israelis? Does this mean the other nations are not the subjects of the God? If they are, why has the God only established the Testament with the Israelis while neglecting all the other nations? If they are not, what’s the origin of all the other nations? Are Adam and Eve only the ancestors of Israelis and not the other nations? The Israelis are created by the God. Does it mean the other nations are created by the Devil? There are 1,656 years between the Genesis and the Great Flood. There are 857 years between the Great Flood and the Exodus. There are 396 years between the Exodus and the founding of the Israeli State. There are 510 years between the founding of the Israeli State and their captive to Babylon. There are 152 years between their imprisonment in Babylon and the reestablishment of Jerusalem. There are 450 years between the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the birth of Jesus. There are 2003 years between the birth of Jesus and today. So according to the Bible, the history of human beings is about 6,376 years. According to the Bible, there were only 8 people survived the Great Flood on the Earth. They were the couple of Noah, their three sons and their wives. It means that 4,700 years ago, there was no one else living on the Earth except for the Noah family. But this has brought some other questions. First, where do the American Indians come from? According to the theory of Continental Drift, America drifted away from the other continents. But it couldn’t happen within 4,700 years of time. Then how the Noah family reached America from the Middle East? After the Great Flood, there were only 8 members in Noah family. It was impossible for them to get dispersed. Noah couldn’t let one of his sons and his wife to cross the freezing Siberia and the Bering Strait to get to America. Second, where did the African blacks come from? From the perspective of genetics, the blacks, yellows and whites have their separate ancestors. A couple of pure whites couldn’t generate the blacks and yellows. Even the evolvement couldn’t produce the blacks and yellows in 3,700 years of time. Besides, according to Darwin’s evolutionary theory, the survival of the fittest, could the Israelis able to write the Bible evolve into the African blacks? The blacks are not the matches of Israelis in the intelligence no matter how we exaggerate their abilities. Now let’s come to the Chinese nation. The first Chinese King was born about 4,600 years ago. The story of Dayu‘s Flood Control happened about 4,200 years ago. It was impossible for the future generations of Noah to come to mainland China 100 years after the Great Flood. Even if they did it, how could they produce so many people who followed Dayu to control the flood? Where does the Chinese nation come from? Are the Flood Control by Dayu were just the Great Flood? From the perspective of the Bible, the biological evolutionary theory could never be accepted. But once we accepted the theory, it would deny the theory that the God created the human beings. But if we denied the evolutionary theory, there was no way to explain the origin of the blacks and yellows and we can’t say Adam and Eve are the common ancestors of all human beings. The Story of Cain The first child of Adam and Eve, after they were driven out of the Eden, was Cain, followed by Abel. “And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.” Out of jealousy, Cain killed his brother Abel. We want to ask the God in the Bible some questions, “Why do you favor the offerings of Abel instead of those of Cain? Is Cain killing his brother Abel not your fault? If you had never favored one of them, how could it arouse the jealousy of Cain? Why the people created by you had so many troubles? Adam and Eve wouldn’t follow your orders and their kids killed each other. As the God, you don’t have the ability to solve these problems? Or is it what you have designed? Cain was a murderer and deserved the punishment. But you told Cain, “Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” So what kind of the justice standard is it? It is hardly understandable not to levy the punishment on the criminal. But it is even more understandable to have revenge of sevenfold on those who would punish the criminal. Is it protecting the criminal? That’s why the few thousand years of human history were full of blood, violence and crime. The God in the Bible has been protecting the criminals. “Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” Because Cain is a criminal, we can fully understand it as ““Therefore whosoever slayeth the criminal, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.”” We can conclude we had better become criminals because the criminals are protected and the good men are not. The good men have the risk of being revenged sevenfold. The Prophet and the Dream In the Bible, there are a large number of prophets and dreams. The prophets are the representatives of the God in the Mortal World. They have unimaginable wisdom and power, which sink the average people with average wisdom into the mist. If someone says, “I am a prophet”, should we believe him or not. If we don’t, we are standing against the God. If we do, how can we know the prophet is a fake or not? Now let’s talk about the dreams. There are many dreams and dream analysis in the Bible, in particular in the Revelation. Of course, those who can analyze the dreams are all prophets. But they have also brought a lot of puzzles. First, has the prophet had the dream at all? No one could see his dream and he could well compose some dreams and cheat us. If he really had the dream, was his analysis correct, or was he analyzing the dream on the reverse aspect? I want to ask the God in the Bible, in the Old Testament, you used to talk directly with the human beings. Then why you stopped doing so later? Are the Adam and Eve on other planets also disobeying your orders? Why would you warn the human beings in the form of dreams? Why not tell us the truth directly? Don’t you have the ability to do so? Don’t you have time? Don you have some secret sorrow? I can give many other examples to state that the God in the Bible does not have the features of being unique and exclusive, amorphous, neutral, mysterious, impartial, supremely powerful, merciful and wise as genuine Greatest Creator has. So we can affirm that “the God in the Bible is not the genuine Greatest Creator”.

Throwaway because my partner follows my other account. tLDR at the bottom of the post. I do not give permission or consent for this post to be read, processed, or disseminated through any programs for the purpose of reproduction or content production.
Let it live and die here, please.
TWs: Suicidal Ideation and Active Planning
Easy Background Information I am a 24 y/o guy who has struggled with mental health my entire life. I've experienced passive suicidal ideation (SI) since I was 8 years old. My fiancée is a 25 year old woman who has also struggled with mental health most of her life due to an early trauma at the age of 3. She manages her schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with medication, but she is not currently in therapy.
The two of us are on waiting lists for sliding scale options in our area (US) and I am currently unemployed. I'll call my fiancée Eleanor (fake name) for the purposes of this post and will not be sharing detailed information about our history of trauma aside from giving the basic idea around those traumas when relevant to ensure anonymity.
The Complex Stuff - I edited this down... Four years ago I was kicked out of my mother's house during a depressive episode because I was not looking for work. During this time, I couch surfed between friends who had the space to house me for a few days at a time. One of those people was my boyfriend (Zack, 24) at the time, he had a girlfriend he wanted to introduce me to and I was interested in meeting Eleanor at the time, so I agreed. He set up the meeting and made sure that the two of us had one anothers Snapchats.
We began messaging every day and quickly became emotionally involved. As Zack, Eleanor, and myself are all polyamorous, we spoke about boundaries that everyone wanted to set and we were off to the races. Out first meeting was life changing for me. I had just been informed that my mother had let my 3 pets starve (they had all the supplies they needed for multiple months) and she had sent me a text on the day of our meeting to tell me they had died.
Needless to say that I was not doing well that day, but the meeting went fantastic. Our conversations flowed as well in person as they had over Snapchat and I know that I have a tendency to fall fast, so I tend to wait to reveal the intensity of my feelings of at all. After just a few weeks, it was early 2020 and lockdown began.
Eleanor was living in a college dorm at the time and offered her extra space to me. This extra space was a place in her bed and permission to share her private one bedroom dorm. I was adamant that it was a bad idea but the alternative was that I sleep in my car and not see her because she is immunocompromised and she said would have had to distance herself from me for safety. This decision was complicated by the fact that we were already in love with one another by this point, but we hadn't said it.
She insisted that it was the best option because she is considered a ward of the state and they couldn't kick her out of her dorm the way they were doing to everyone else. Her trauma at age 3 resulted in some odd privileges while in college and that was one of them. So, while many people were scrambling to find a place to go when the school told everyone they had to leave, Eleanor was cool, calm, and collected.
I moved in and she and I have been together since. I've even proposed. Now, here's the rub.
During this early stage in our relationship, I was homeless, severely mentally ill (unmedicated without therapy), and I was grieving both my pets and my relationship with my parents. I was experiencing SI every day without fail and I was confiding in Eleanor at her request. Our conversations got heavy and I expressed thoughts and feelings I hadn't shared with anyone else and she did the same. It was the start of a trauma bond.
The conversation that this whole situation pivots on is that Eleanor was asking about what it would take for us to become official. I told her that I didn't think it'd be a good idea since I would have to find somewhere to go once the school year ended and she would go to her dad's house in a different state. She said that she'd ask her dad if I could come with her and if he said no, she'd stay with me.
At 20, I thought this was insane (I still do.) but incredibly romantic and when her dad said no, she stayed with me. She was then (rightfully) devastated when I said that we couldn't officially date and asked me why. This conversation happened in the early morning and I should have slept instead of running my stupid fucking mouth.
I told her that I have desired to take my own life since I was 12, that I believe that that is how my life will end and I don't want to add another person that will be affected when it happens. I told her that my best friend took his own life when I was 16 and while I experienced the devastation first hand and watched our shared friends and his family grieve, I don't want to live until I naturally pass.
I told her that I think she's fantastic and she had lost her sister to a heroine overdose less than 8 months before this conversation, so I didn't want what I know I'm going to do, to be a part of her future history of trauma. She listened intently, leaning forward the whole time, I remember the image because it felt like she should've run away and her closeness was so comforting.
I didn't say it to simply hurt her, we had just told each other so many harsh truths that we hadn't shared with others that I trusted her with this deeply fucked up truth of mine. She said that was okay and that she understood while crying and kissed me. I knew the whole thing was bad when it happened, but with 4 years under our belt and a ring on her finger, I'm seeing the effects.
I'm currently suicidal and have been actively planning for nearly a year, I hid it for 9 months and finally told her about 3 months ago. She was devastated, but not for the reasons I thought. Today we had a longer conversation and she said that she wanted to fix it (which I expected) and then she said that she wished I hadn't hid it for so long. She said that she knows that I'll take my life at some point but she doesn't want to be surprised by it.
She revealed to me that she doesn't regret my telling her that I will take my own life someday, because it let her know that she needs to cherish every moment with me because she may not have a long time with me. I asked if she thought 4 years was a long time. She said yes, but that it also "feels like I met you yesterday." She broke down crying and said that thinking about losing me breaks her heart.
She said she doesn't think about that conversation every day or even very often, but she expressed feeling that when I take my life that no one will love her. That she'll never move on or "get over me". That she didn't feel cared for before me. That she feels like I'm the only person who knows her.
I realize now that she was already in love with me during that fateful conversation 4 years ago, we were both 20 and mentally ill. I feel I have inflicted a deep trauma on her and will in the future as well. I feel that becoming her first real love (her words) has forever tainted how she will experience and see love. I feel that I've ruined her ability to be happy when I'm gone.
She disabled and I'm her caregiver and medical advocate during appointments. I realize now that I took on all of these roles and she didn't learn how to fill them herself and while she says that her "life was going nowhere fast" and she "didn't know how to be happy, I think those are the thoughts of someone experiencing cognitive dissonance and my role in her life likely has done more damage than I ever realized before today.
Is there any way to undo the damage I've done and keep our future marriage intact? I'm currently seeking help for my SI and mental health issues to properly heal and hopefully manage the SI and mood swings I've been experiencing that have made things harder recently.
We plan to go to marriage counseling, focusing on the Gottman method and do not have a date set for our wedding because of my admission of suicidal ideation. I don't feel at all comfortable vowing to love them forever, feeling so confident in this belief that I will take my own life someday.
TLDR; I told my partner 4 years ago that I plan to take my own life someday and that I would not date her unless she understood and accepted that. I think it was traumatic, deeply messed up, and unintentionally coercive since she already had feelings for me during the conversation.
I want to undo the damage to their possible image of relationships, trust in themselves, and have active steps to move forward and support them as a healthy partner instead of perpetuating any of the beliefs that they have about themselves or their possible future aftewithout me. Whether that future is triggered by my death or the natural end of our relationship.

Despite AI’s impressive track record, its computational power pales in comparison with that of the human brain. Scientists today unveil a revolutionary path to drive computing forward: organoid intelligence (OI), where lab-grown brain organoids serve as biological hardware. “This new field of biocomputing promises unprecedented advances in computing speed, processing power, data efficiency, and storage capabilities — all with lower energy needs,” say the authors in an article published in Frontiers in Science.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been inspired by the human brain. This approach proved highly successful: AI boasts impressive achievements – from diagnosing medical conditions to composing poetry. Still, the original model continues to outperform machines in many ways. This is why, for example, we can ‘prove our humanity’ with trivial image tests online. What if instead of trying to make AI more brain-like, we went straight to the source?
Read more here: https://magazine.mindplex.ai/mp_news/scientists-unveil-plan-to-create-biocomputers-powered-by-human-brain-cells/

*** Comments mentioning anything related to treatment, trying to conceive, or family building measures in this thread will be removed via our OFF TOPIC rule. Consider if you were taking a break from treatment because you were exhausted and sad - treatment (yes anything related to it) goes in treatment **\*
Coping with infertility is complex, and it is our imperative to create places where we can honor the distinctly unique needs created by infertility. Sit beside us and share what’s on your mind and going on in your life. This is a great place to get to know your fellow members outside the gravity of treatment. Discussion here includes, but is not limited to:

• Venting about the impact of infertility on our lives/relationships/careers
• Non-IF Rants of all kind – marriage, career, societal, social media, friendships, mental health, and yes… politics too. It doesn’t need to be infertility related!
• Discussions around dealing with the influence of infertility – therapy, coping methods, finding supportive friends, getting lapped by a friend, dealing with pregnancy announcements, pushy parents, people that don’t understand, etc. The big picture stuff.
• Sharing stories and parts of your life (pictures of pets always welcome!) outside of infertility

​
Example of the difference between the Treatment and Chat Thread:
Comments for the Treatment Thread

• Literally anything that involves or mentions treatment, trying to conceive, or any family building measures: paying for it, being exhausted by it, fighting about it, telling other people about it. If anything about your comment has anything to do with treatment or TTC, it belongs in the treatment thread. Also including diagnostic tests, medication, lab results, or lifestyle measures taking in the hopes of improving treatment outcome.
  • I'm in the TWW, and I'm glad I scheduled a vacation as a distraction!
  • I'm trying to decide if I should delay my egg retrieval cycle because this is a big work month for me.
  • I told my parents about IVF, and they were incredibly supportive. I feel really grateful.

Comments for the Chat Thread

• You can of course still discuss infertility in the chat thread:
  • I am super bummed about being lapped by a friend.
  • I have two currently pregnant coworkers, and I am losing my mind with all the pregnancy discussion.
  • Today is the anniversary of my loss, and I'm really struggling.
• Or you can discuss things unrelated to infertility:
  • Whoa, my dogwalker taught my dog to roll over.
  • There's this donut place next to my work that sells donuts for $5 each, but the WILD thing is that they're worth it!
  • My spouse and I are planning a trip to Europe. Opinions on Italy vs Greece?

A few notes:

• Positive HPT or Beta Results (including Beta Hell) should only be posted in the Results thread as per the rules (except for confirmed loss): https://www.reddit.com/infertility/search?q=flair_name%3A%22Results%22
• We recognize that the AM/PM distinction doesn’t match up with every time zone in our global community, we ask that you pick the most recently posted thread wherever you are.
• Standalone culture here is saved for complex topics, usually including detailed conversations around scientific studies, or asking multi-part complex questions around treatment plans. We strongly recommend posting in the community threads first. If you aren’t sure, ask in the daily threads first!

Above all - Science minded perspective and respect for others is important here. Please treat your fellow peers with compassion.
Last reminder - this is the CHAT thread. Not the place to discuss anything focused on treatment, TTC, or family building measures.

I want to have children, I want to buy a home, I want to work my job, I want to live healthy, I want to not step on others to make all that happen. It is impossible at this day and age to do all of them, maybe not even half at the same time.
The water we drink is poisoned. Whether it's waste legally dumped from factories making untested chemicals, or from the pipes it flows through or from the containers we drink from, it doesn't seem like you can drink untainted water.
Our food is poisoned. Whether it's the untested chemicals put into it to make it last longer, taste better, become more addictive and become cheaper, or from the chemicals known to cause health issues, sprayed on it to keep bugs off. If we are talking about meat, factory farmed livestock is given plastic to eat, pumped with hormones to grow bigger and faster, and all that's without getting into the torture of their short lives in the dark with no room to move, living in their own excrement.
Our shelter costs more than ever in American history, not just to own, but to borrow. Broken homes are being sold for what more than half the population could afford to "buy." Buy is a loose word because over 3/4ths of Americans live Paycheck to paycheck. We don't have money to "buy" anything. We have to borrow money from institutions that have crashed our economy, in order to hopefully, eventually own one of these broken homes. If you borrow shelter (rent), you are at the mercy of your landlord, almost guaranteed to have the rent go up every year and lose your down payments when you move out. If you refuse to buy or borrow, wherever you stay is likely illegal and the country is working on making it a crime to sleep outside. You will be productive, whether is by "choice" or in prision.
Our environment is poisoned. The air you breathe, the water you swim in, the ground you grow crops in, is it safe? Have you gotten it tested? Sure there are "acceptable" levels of everything, but who is it acceptable to? The people living in it or the people polluting it? Can you go for a swim at your nearest beach without getting tar balls stuck to your clothing or your dogs fur from the multiple offshore oil rigs crowding the sunset view? I can't. Can you swim in the lake or pond nearest to you? I can't. Its prohibited and I cannot find a specific reason, but I'm sure it has something to do with the water cooling the Power plant located there. Somehow the fish have been cleared as acceptable to eat though. If you can't find somewhere to swim, you better find a way to cool down because this summer will be the hottest on record until next summer and so on. You sure you want to live in the hottest parts of the country right now? Will they be habitable in a few years? Will even the poisoned water be available to drink?
Our medical care is so expensive we either don't have it or are so afraid to use it for fear of bankruptcy. Insurance companies are constantly denying payment for basic medical needs and death causing events. Cancer will kill you and if it doesn't, the bill at the end will make you wish you died instead. If you wanted to try and pay for it yourself, the insurance industry has caused even just basic services to sky rocket in price, it's impossible. A 15 minute checkup is $400 out of pocket at the medical office nearest me. That does not include the blood work they send you to a different facility for, or any other xrays, medicine or general care you may need otherwise.
Our jobs are so level locked that if you've got no education, you'll make enough that the government will assist you with some needs like food. Your community has been trained to judge you for it, thinking you're cheating the system because you don't want to work, when in reality it's whichever corporation your working for, actively gaming the system so they can keep their labor costs as cheap as possible. If you've got some education, you're probably living to work. Yeah you only make what minimum wage SHOULD be, but if you work 80 hours every week,, you might be able to pull off a lower middle class life style. With some education, you might even be able to sneak into a 9-5 where you don't have to work as many hours, but you're still not making enough to meet every basic need. If you have higher education, you might be doing alright, or you might be unable to find a job, while stuck in nonexpiring, crippling debt. Maybe you're somewhere in between. And even if you've got a great job... is it safe? Did the shareholders make enough so that there won't be a massive round of layoffs this quarter? Did the right political candidate get elected so the field you work in isn't shut down until the opposite party gets back into power?
Not every American is in this position, there are lucky ones who come from enough money that they'll never know struggle, never know food/wateshelteHealthcare insecurity. But the one thing that is STILL unavoidable, the one thing EVERYONE must participate in is stepping on others to live day to day. Everyday, we interact with, see, touch, feel or use a product that was made with questionable labor, if not outright slave labor and human suffering. From the people mining the basic materials to create products, to the people working the factories that products are produced in, to your neighbor that works at the shipping facilities to get it to you, the whole line is corrupted and meant to squeeze the absolute most out of the workers operating everything. The threat of losing even more of your basic needs keeps you in line, if not threat of physical and emotional torture.
I am only smart enough to see the things that are wrong in the world and recognize that it is unsustainable, but I'm too dumb to solve any of it and convince others to help.
So how do we give up without giving up? How do we get rid of our morals and act like everything is fine? How do we continue on feeling good about the systems we have in place, knowing there is so much suffering involved? How do I make a concious decision to bring another human life into this world, to experience what Im experiencing, but for it to be so much worse by the time they can recognize it? It seems that there is no way to change everything and we are headed towards inevitable collapse, so how the hell do we enjoy the ride that's left? I see people do it everyday. Not doing it is pure depression and I am so exhausted from being depressed.

Demographic info: 31M. 5' 7. 140 Pounds. Chronic Migraine. Regular Medication: Amitriptyline 30mg. No drinking, smoking or recreational drug use.
This is happening in NY, USA.
I went to a local ER (not my usual hospital) for potential stroke like symptoms. I gave them all the information they requested and they ran tests which were clear. Towards the end they administered medication for the mild pain I still had along with nausea. It was intravaneously administered, and I immediately started shivering and feeling cold. This persisted until they gave me benadryl.
In the moment I asked them what they gave me, but after waking up I didn't remember it at all. In the past, the discharge papers I got from ERs recorded information about medication administed - so I didn't think too much of it. I scheduled a follow up appointment with my regular care provider today, and they wanted to know more about the reaction I had to the medications they gave me. But there's no record of me getting any medication in the ER.
I called the hospital and they told me to make an online account and check there. The patient portal had been updated with the lab reports from the ER visit - but there wasn't anything about medication I was administed. When I called them back saying that information wasn't available on the portal, they put me on hold for 10 minutes before cutting the call.
I called back again, and they put me on hold. Again, the call timed out. Is there anyway of finding out what medication I was given? I assume most of it will be out of my system in another day or so, but is there anyway for me to figure out what medication I was administered?

Hello im new here, nag suggest lang mga friends ko i-try to kase ewan ko mga nag momove on pa mga tao sa bumble. So anyway sawa kanaba mag isa? Gusto mo ba ng tunay na pag ibig? Murang mura! Sa size na hindi mo kaya sa presyong abot kaya! Ilang beses ko na tinalo ung laro ng panahon. Kaya tulad nila im very strong in many ways pero sa pag-ibig ang aking kahinaan. Kelangan ko rin ng mwa mwa!
About me:

• 3 years na kong taga “ayie” sa lovelife ng iba. Lord anak mo rin ako baka nakalimot eh hello im still here po.
  
• We can play games! Pc or sa playstation.
  
• Pwede rin anime so sawadeeka.
  
• Kdrama rin sige.
  
• Taga good morning, night, afternoon etc mo. Kahit 3 am mag gogood night ako kase ka late night talks kita yieee! Eme
  
• Babatiin kita sa lahat ng occasion kahit hindi sia related. Kahit hindi mo birthday mag cocompose pa rin ako ng birthday greetings.
  
• Sobrang hilig ko sa documentaries. Tawagin mo akong kuya kim Kase may kaalaman akong pwedeng i-share pag mag ka date tayo. Back to you jugs and teddy!
  
• If we ever date, you tell no one that we met on the internet. Our story is, we met saving a catto from a burning building.
  
• Cat person. Shoutout sa asong humabol sakin habang nag babike ako nung bata, sana masaya ka ngayon.
  
• Pet peeve: yung mga tanong na “Kara David diba influencer yun?”
  
• Pinalo at kinaldag rin ako ng parents ko nung bata. Hanger, walis , sinturon choose your weapon nalang.
  
• Hindi Non-chalant
  
• Kung mahilig ka sa pogi. HAAHA! D ako yon! 3/10 generous na yan! Kung sapiosexual ka im the perfect dude for you dahil dun lang tayo may asset.
  
• Color blind. I cant see red flags.
  
• Takot sa multo kaya hindi nang-ghoghost
  
• Rebelde rin ako hindi ko binabasa ung T&C. “I agree” nalang agad.
  
• Mabilis ako mag reply. Pwede rin calls.
  
• Taga Quezon city ako dont worry hindi SM north half way natin xD
  
• May trabaho at registered rin ung diploma ko sa ched. Kung i-checheck mo wala akong record na nag cheat ako sa exams so hindi rin ako mag checheat sayo. Pero nag cutting ako nung college. HAHAHHAA
  
• Maliit lang ako 5’6 pero wait! Men under 6ft emit less co2 and dates with us are subsidized under the green new deal. !!!
  

About you:

• May cellphone

No flings please if youre ready sa seryosong relationship dun ako interesado.
So habang tinatype ko to hinihingal na ko. Kaya i chat mo na si tito! Kung nakarating ka man dito tayo rin magkakatuluyan sa dulo charot. I mean andito kana lang rin! Chat mo na ko may substance naman ako kausap.

Wonder Women

Issue Fifty
Written by u/VoidKiller826
Edited by u/Predaplant
Arc: Revelations
*************************************************************
Greetings, people of Gateway City. This is your new peacekeeper speaking. You might know me as the White Magician, a rather crude name, but I will accept it considering Man’s World's lack of creativity. However, you may also call me Circe, and I am here with an important message that your news station will deliver for all to hear.
SCYTHE is no more: their HQ is under my and the Red Centipedes’ command. The Commander and his soldiers are dead and buried, as you all wished to happen. I was more than happy to oblige you if it meant depriving your stupid President of her next chance for reelection. Any survivors of the prison break are being hunted down by the people they locked in cages, who are more than happy to round them up as they once had been themselves.
But none of that’s important, for this recording is only to be heard by one person: Olympos, Wonder Girl, or whatever the fuck new title name you want to be called. This message is for you: You are to surrender yourself to me here in SCYTHE HQ in the next five hours, and in turn, I will not destroy this piss-end of a city. If you fail, I promise you, I will make Coast City look like a picnic by the time I finish with Gateway.
That cow you call Wonder Woman is dead, and I will make sure everyone else will follow her if you don’t comply with my request.
Your mentor learned a valuable lesson when she tested my patience.
*************************************************************
Spears Apartment - Gateway City:
[...President Cale has announced the complete closure of all access to Gateway City following the prison break that occurred in SCYTHE’s holding facility hours ago,] said Cassandra Arnold from GateNews, the city’s main news station. [We still have an unconfirmed number of escapees following the message sent by the White Magician, but the President has assured GateNews a solution will be found.]
Vanessa Kapatelis watched the TV in dismay. Pacing back and forth in the Spears duplex apartment, she had the TV on to pass the time while Ares worked on helping Helena and Cassandra upstairs.
“Here,” Vanessa turned away from the TV to see Tanya Spears handing her a bottle of water. “Something for you to drink.”
“Thank you,” Vanessa accepted the bottle. “I would prefer a beer, but this will make do.”
“My mom has her wine collection in a locked cabinet,” Tanya noted, pointing at the kitchen. “She doesn’t know that I know that, but I can get you a bottle?”
Vanessa chuckled. “Thanks, but I don’t want a girl your age to be walking around with alcohol or to get you in trouble with your mom.” She twisted the bottle cap and slowly drank. “I needed that… it feels like I’ve been dry for months.”
“It’s actually been 3 hours,” Tanya said, sitting on the sofa and opening her tablet to look over the internet. “I hope what she said wasn’t true… about Wonder Woman not being around…”
Taking a seat by her side, Vanessa saw that Tanya was reading through the report on what happened to SCYTHE. The escaped convicts had taken control of the SCYTHE headquarters and equipment after killing many of the agents that had stood in their way.
Seeing the photo of SCYTHE HQ burning angered her. That place should represent the absolute shield of Gateway. Now, it had come under the control of the convicts that they were supposed to stop because of Aeeta Branwen. A name that had made her happy now belonged to a stranger who had lied to her all this time.
Memories of their most intimate moments came flooding back: their first conversation, their first date, their kiss, and the morning after their date in her apartment. It was a moment when she thought she could finally stop grieving and move on from what happened to Coast City. And now, that had been disintegrated into oblivion.
In anger, she crushed the bottle with her hand, spraying water all over the table and the floor.
“Shit!” Vanessa stood up, finally realizing her mistake. “I am sorry!”
“Oh, it's fine!” Tanya ran to the kitchen to grab some paper towels. “It’s just water.”
“I know it’s just…” Taking the paper towel, the two began wiping the floor and the table. “I have a lot on my mind.”
“I’ll bet with everything that happened,” said Tanya, giving Vanessa a supportive smile. “Your friends are getting hurt, and you can’t do anything but watch. It would piss anyone off. I know it did with me when the RedCent guys invaded EE Tower.”
“Yeah…” Vanessa sat back on the sofa. “But this… I not only possibly lost many friends, but I was betrayed by someone I loved, someone who I thought was the one for me…” she said, distraught, as tears ran down her face.
Tanya, without saying anything more, hugged Vanessa closely. Despite them knowing each other for only a few hours, Tanya knew that Vanessa was in pain. Watching her loved ones being hurt by someone that she trusted must have been a hard truth to accept.
The doors upstairs opening and closing caught the two’s attention. Looking up, they saw Somya Spears descending, looking exhausted, like she had gone ten rounds in the ring. As she reached the ground floor, Tanya ran up to her mother, hugged her close, and guided her to the nearest chair to rest.
“Is everything alright, mom?” Tanya asked, worried.
“Yeah… just felt that I might take that long overdue vacation…” Somya answered, leaning against the soft chair with a tired sigh. “Maybe we’ll go to Paris like you wanted, Tanya…”
More steps followed, and Ares, or Mars as he insisted to be called, followed Somya, pulling his folded-up sleeves back. Unlike Somya, he didn’t seem any different from when he went upstairs to help the Sandsmarks, but the few strands of hair on his face told a different story.
“How are they?” Vanessa asked, walking up to the former God of War. “Are they ok?”
Ares turned to Vanessa. “The girl has a lot of heart, far too stubborn to let a beating keep her down.” He said with praise, impressed with the former Wonder Girl’s willpower. “Her Sumerian blood will help her heal in only a few days, but it won’t help her mental wounds after I told her the news about her mother.”
Vanessa had a lot of questions about what he had said, especially the word Sumerian; perhaps Cassie was not simply half-Olympian. However, she focused on the most important detail in his explanation. “What happened with Helena?” She asked in a worried tone. “Is she-”
“She is alive,” Ares said, but his expression shifted, frowning, making her nervous. “Physically, she will recover, she has only a few cuts and bruises. Even a human like her can heal those.”
“But?”
“But it's the spell Circe struck her with. It is unlike anything I’ve seen because it is of her creation,” Ares explained, and Vanessa ground her teeth together when she heard the name belonging to the stranger who hurt her and her loved ones. “Whatever she used, it is affecting her very soul, slowly killing her.”
“Like a virus?” Vanessa asked, and Ares nodded. “Magic can do that?”
“It does,” Ares answered. “Magic can create a nuclear bomb if the user has the patience for it. And Circe is a master at it, one of the very best and most gifted witches on the planet, so making something like this would be as easy as making a cake for her.”
Magic had never been SCYTHE’s priority, but the Commander still made them study anything related to the subject in case they had to face it. Vanessa had never expected to see it at this scale.
“Can you break it?” Vanessa asked. “Find a way to break the curse from Helena’s soul?”
Ares took a deep breath, pocketing his hands. “It’s too complex to break. I will admit Magic is not my strongest suit, but even if you bring in someone knowledgeable, it would be a while for them to break her creation,” he explained. “You need someone at her level of knowledge when it comes to magic, and I am not the best person to face her in that department.”
“Then we call for a specialist, anyone, really,” Vanessa said in desperation. “If this is like a virus, a curse, then we bring a surgeon to cut it out! Maybe Cassie can use her Justice Legion connection, or maybe you can call someone for a favor.”
Vanessa's desperation was clear. She was willing to call for the Justice Legion, the very people she swore to go against for their vigilantism, if it meant saving Helena Sandsmark, her promise be damned.
“The spell is growing far too rapidly. By the time you find someone, it will be far too late,” Ares said solemnly. “The only person in the world who can break the spell without any problem or fear of failsafe is Hecate, the Goddess of Magic. She was Circe’s mentor, and she taught her everything she could about magic. No matter how complex it is, Hecate would understand it.”
“She can help us?”
Ares shook his head. “No, she has no interest in helping the world unless it is connected to her directly, and even then, dealing with her is the worst-case scenario because there is a chance she’ll side with Circe before she even thinks of helping us.”
“So what now?” Vanessa asked, sounding defeated. “Just let Helena die? Let Cassie suffer? Let Circe win?!” she shouted angrily, finally addressing Circe by name. All of this explanation from Ares told her one thing: that the Witch had them beat, and they couldn’t do anything about it.
Ares didn’t react to her outburst, while the Spears looked worried. Tanya, for her part, tried to walk up to calm Vanessa, but the War God raised his hand to stop her, shaking his head and giving her the silent sign to let Vanessa be.
“There is one way: it will be quicker if we act fast enough, but it would take everything from all of us for it to happen,” Ares said, beginning his explanation. “There is a chain link connecting the spell, from the spell caster to Circe. This means it can be broken if we force Circe to release the chain connecting her to Helena…” he explained, letting his words be understood by the occupants in the room before finishing with one last note. “Killing Circe would also break the binding if she didn’t leave any contingencies.”
Vanessa gritted her teeth. “So we have to make her break the spell, and hopefully she doesn’t screw us over… or we kill her, and hopefully she still doesn’t screw us over even in death?” she asked, and Ares nodded. “What kind of person is willing to put in all that work? Just for revenge? On Diana, who is long gone?”
Ares shrugged and turned to the Spears, his gaze focused on Tanya, his daughter. Someone whom he never thought he would meet again was facing him, without knowledge of their blood relations.
“Possibly,” Ares answered, taking a step back. “But if there is one thing I know for sure, Circe does not put these kinds of bindings without any reason. Whatever that reason is involves Cassandra Sandsmark and whether she will choose to make Circe break the spell or kill her, tainting her forever.”
Silence came to the room, letting Ares’s words sink in for all occupants, which might have been the same words he said to the Sandsmarks.
*************************************************************
The room of Somya Spears was quiet, with the only sound being the breathing of Helena Sandsmark lying on the bed sleeping. The room was spacious, with an expensive queen-sized bed as expected from an interim CEO of one the largest companies in the world.
Seated a few feet away on a chair was Cassandra Sandsmark, dressed in fresh clothes given to her by Somya after throwing off the bloody tattered ones she had arrived in. Watching her mother closely, Cassandra’s mind was racing, especially after what Ares told her about the curse Circe placed on her mother, slowly destroying her soul bit by bit until she was nothing but a husk.
“Dammit!” In anger at their situation, she crushed the armchair, tearing its arm off like it was made of paper. If she was stronger, faster, and had the heart for it, she would have stopped the Witch, stopped her from hurting her city, the people of SCYTHE, and those caught in the crossfire, stopped her from hurting her mother…
She buried her face into her hands, tears running down her eyes as she despaired. Everything she worked on after Coast City evaporated was ground up under a very powerful enemy out for revenge.
Considering Circe’s ultimatum, her city could well be gone by the time this was over.
“Artemis… please be safe…” she whispered. She had nearly had a panic attack when she heard the news of the Amazon heading to SCYTHE HQ to stop the prison break, and then… nothing. No matter how many times she dialed her phone, there was no one answering, and she feared for the worst.
She heard her mother coughing, and Cassandra was quickly by her side. “Mom!” she called for her, holding her hand.
“Cassandra?...” Her mother said her name weakly. Her skin was becoming paler, a clear sign that the curse spell was working. “Are you… ok?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Cassandra answered, covering the bandages hidden inside her clothes. “We’re safe. You’re safe.” she said, tightening both her hands around her mothers.
“Did you… break something?” She asked, looking at the chair behind her. “You shouldn’t be… doing that… we are guests…”
Cassandra laughed, her tears falling away. “Sorry… it’s just… it’s been a hell of a week…”
Helena touched her daughter’s cheek, noticing the bandage on it. “You’re… hurt…”
“It’s alright, Mom. Just a few bruises,” Cassandra assured. “You shouldn’t worry, you know I can take it…”
“I am your… mother, Cassandra,” Helena said, facing her daughter. “Demi-God or not… I will always be worried… scared for my little girl.”
Cassandra’s tears came back. Seeing her mother remain strong despite everything made her happy, and she was terrified of losing her.
“So… my soul is cursed?” Helena asked.
“You heard all that?”
“Can’t not… with all the swearing…” Helena noted, giving her daughter a small smile. “You shouldn’t swear at people, Cassandra, especially those who are trying to help.”
“I know, I know,” Cassandra said. She had gone off on Ares after he explained what happened to her mother, and she might have overreacted when she put all her anger on the former War God. “It’s just… I don’t want to lose you… not while we can fix this.”
Helena sat up on her bed, fully facing her daughter. “Which is why… I don’t want you to make the wrong choice.”
“I won’t,” Cassandra said with a low tone. “I will make Circe free you from this curse-”
“No, Cassandra,” Helena grabbed both of Cassandra’s hands with hers. “That is not what I meant…”
Cassandra raised her brows, confused. “Mom?”
“I heard everything… from Circe’s spell… how it works… and how it can be broken…” Helena said, shocking Cassandra. “I know you already decided what you feel you have to do.”
Cassandra didn’t answer, avoiding her mother’s disapproving gaze accusing her. Ares said the quickest way to break the binding and the spell was either by forcing Circe to break it herself or by killing her, severing the connection.
But if what Circe said was true, that Diana decided to kill her instead of making her surrender like everyone else who faced her, that means there was no chance the Witch would submit willingly. She would rather die than give the satisfaction of admitting defeat.
Which left only one solution where she could save her mother.
Helena sighed, knowing what decision her daughter might have made. She held her hand tightly and changed the subject. “I have to tell you something…”
“No, mom. You’re not giving me the ‘Dying Speech’, not while there is a chance we can save you-”
“It’s about your father,” Helena cut her off, shutting Cassandra up. “Your real father…”
Cassandra remembered Circe calling her Daughter of Enlil, not Zeus. Ares said he was a friend of her father, which confused her because Ares hated Zeus, so it wouldn’t make sense that he would help out even if they were his siblings.
“Enlil…” Cassandra said the name aloud, and Helena’s eyes widened, her breath hitching when she heard the name. “Circe… she called me Daughter of Enlil… Child of the Sky...”
Helena took a deep breath, bringing her daughter closer. “Yes… that is true…” she began. “You are not Zeus’s daughter, Cassandra, nor you are an Olympian in any way… but you are in fact… Sumerian… Mesopotamian,” The elder Sandsmark brought her youngest closer and spoke carefully, as if worried that someone might hear them. “Your father is Enlil, the Sumerian God of Wind… and he was the kindest man I have ever known…”
From then on, Helena explained Cassandra’s origins as carefully as possible, pushing on even while the spell affected her. She explained how she met Enlil, a man with golden hair similar to Cassandra’s, who introduced himself as an expert in Mesopotamian history during an expedition in Iraq. They had become rivals at first due to their clashing personalities, but how that developed into respect, to eventually falling in love after a very lengthy adventure that sounded like the plot of The Mummy.
And that love resulted in Cassandra’s birth. He helped raise her with Helena for the first year and a half before he disappeared because he had Olympian enemies and had to leave them to keep them safe.
While she explained all this, Cassandra’s mind went to another piece of critical information. Her father’s true identity had never been the most important thing for her. But what made it important was what Circe told her about Diana’s true reason for coming to Gateway City. It wasn’t just settling in a ‘piss-end of a city’ the more she taught about it, the more she realized the terrifying truth behind her mentor’s reasoning for coming to the city.
Diana was sent to find Cassandra, a Sumerian Demi-God, the Olympians greatest enemy since the Titans, and eliminate her. The prophecy of the Godkiller that they had feared might have come from Cassandra, but all it did was start a long, personal, and bloody war between two women because of the gods' demands for blood.
And now, she, Artemis, and Gateway City suffered the consequences. Even after Diana’s death, Circe would not let her hatred for what had happened to her go, and if it meant destroying her mentor’s legacy, she would do it.
‘Diana…’ Cassandra thought in sadness.
*************************************************************
SCYTHE Sub Base - Industrial District:
“I am not sure how you were able to do it, but you somehow found an ever more depressing place than that HQ of yours. It makes the cell you put us in look like a five-star hotel room,” said one Pamela Isley, formerly Poison Ivy, seated in the middle of a large room behind a large table. Around her were what was left of the SCYTHE agents they had saved during the escape, all working to get the makeshift base they had hidden up and running.
Alexei Abramovici, the Bloodcrow of SCYTHE, glared at the former supervillain, not happy with her comment. He turned to one of his men and began barking orders, “You! Get the goddamn Black Room working! We are running blind here!”
‘Worker drones even without their Commander.’ Pamela looked on unimpressed at the agents. She had never been that sympathetic to the plight of cops getting killed, especially militarized ones. The once mighty and feared peacekeepers of Gateway, who went to war against all the crime syndicates and the Red Centipedes, were now a mere little squad that won’t be able to protect a mini-mart, let alone every escaped convict under the command of the White Magician.
“Man… the signal here sucks!” complained Miguel Barragan by her side, raising his phone and trying to catch any kind of signal. “Could barely talk to my boyfriend when I called him, and can’t connect to the internet,” he complained. He tried once again to call but he couldn’t find a signal. “Useless brick…”
“We are underground in a bunker previously owned by Neo-Nazis, Barragan,” Pamela noted. From what she had heard, this used to be an old RedCent hideout that SCYTHE took over after the war, using it as a smaller base in case of emergency. “Not receiving any signal is part of the appeal of the place.”
“Bunker, huh…” Miguel chuckled. The name Bunker reminded him of the super name that he picked out; the more time passed, the more convinced he was that it was the right one.
Pamela gave a confused look at his expression and shrugged it off. Turning to her right, she saw the silent Emily Sung staring off into the distance. Unlike Barragan, Emily had other matters on her mind. Whatever she sensed or saw back at SCYTHE HQ freaked her out, like seeing something she shouldn’t.
Just as Pamela was about to ask her how she was feeling, a knock on the large blast doors echoed around the base, loud enough for all to hear. Quickly, everyone felt tense, and the SCYTHE agents covered the door as Alexei signaled them to aim their weapons. After the news of the escaped convicts taking control of SCYTHE HQ and their equipment and weaponry, the agents knew that they were being haunted now by the convicts looking for revenge, so they were not taking any chances.
“Would you mind opening the door!” A familiar voice said behind the door, a voice Pamela recognized right away. “I have a bloody Amazon here, and I would like her off my fur!”
“Barbara?” Pamela realized.
“Minerva? As in the Cheetah?” Alexei asked, eyes narrowed with suspicion. “She could be working with them, with the White Magician.”
“She isn’t,” Pamela answered, glaring at the SCYTHE soldier for the accusation. “She would never ally with the psychos you had under lock and key.”
Alexei scoffed. “That woman got a cemetery filled with people who say otherwise, and she hurt the mother of someone I know.”
Before the two could argue, Miguel stood up and decided to take action. He extended his hand, forming a large arm construct from it, and grabbed the handle of the blast door. With one pull, he opened it wide. Barbara entered. Her feline form made some of the SCYTHE agents tense, and weapons were still trained on her.
“Quite the welcoming committee…” she noted in sarcasm. “Now, would you be dears and get this woman some help?” She adjusted the unconscious and bloody Artemis on her back. Her blood covered Barbara’s fur.
“Medic!” Alexei called for an agent nearby before turning to Miguel. “And you, don’t use your freaky powers until I order you to do so.”
“Sorry tin man, I don’t speak fascist,” Miguel responded with a smirk, and Alexei glared at him.
The medic quickly came to Barbara and guided her to a nearby makeshift hospital room, which had a bed and various equipment to help the SCYTHE wounded. Barbara went in haste, and gently, with the help of the medic, they placed the injured Amazon on the bed, her blood soaking the white sheets red.
“How the hell did you even find us?” Alexei asked as he and the others entered. “I made sure I covered all our steps.”
“You did,” Barbara noted, stepping back to let the medic check on Artemis. She turned to Alexei and pointed at her nose. “But one of you has a very special pheromone that I can smell for miles,” she said with a smile as she turned her gaze to Pamela. “Still with those rose scents around you.”
The redhead smiled. “Maybe it’s that mark you left on me.”
“More than you think, Pammy.”
“Christ…” the medic gasped, catching everyone’s attention. “How is she still alive? And how long has she been like this?” He asked, examining the injured Amazon.
Her armor was wholly wrecked, beyond repair. Her headpiece was half broken, and the gauntlets and braces on her arms and legs were dented and unusable. Her injuries were severe: open wounds, slash marks, and burn marks were all over her body, and judging from blows on her armor, she might have had a few broken bones as well.
“Didn’t bother to look at the time with some of the grunts that were sent after us,” Barbara answered, leaning on a nearby chair as fatigue finally set in for her. “But these Amazons are too stubborn to die, and I know that from experience…”
The number of times Barbara thought she had beaten Diana only for the Amazon to get back up and beat her back was many, and it frustrated the woman to no end, but now she couldn’t help but be in awe at the resilience of these warriors.
“Her Amazon gifts will heal her,” Barbara noted. “But I am not sure how long it will take…”
“I doubt it will take more than a few days at least…” the medic noted, bringing out some bandages and wrapping them around her arms. “She will need a miracle to even walk out of here on her own two feet.”
“Uhmm…” Everyone in the room turned to Emily Sung, who stood by the doorway. “I… I think I can help her heal faster.”
Barbara and the medic gave her an odd look. To better explain it, Emily brought her hands together, and a small flame began to form from her palm. However, they weren’t bright orange flames; they were blue flames, and they didn’t feel any heat from them.
“I developed this technique while training,” said Emily. “It's a fire spell that doesn’t burn, but it heals people. I first used it on Miguel when he hurt his hands, and it was instantaneous,” she explained, and Miguel showed his fully healed hand as if he was demonstrating it. “But this will be the first time I will heal someone with this severe of injuries…”
Pamela and Barbara looked at the blue flames with wide eyes. In Pamela’s case, she was told that Emily had powers, and from Miguel’s description, she had the power of all the elements. However, seeing it firsthand and feeling it from just that tiny flame made her sense there was power behind it, warmth, like the sun.
“Do it,” Barbara said, taking a step back. “At this point, if we need magic to get her back into the fight, we better get to it before we lose her for real.” She turned to the shocked medic. This was the first time he would ever see magic in play. “And you, guide her in whatever wounds need to be healed.”
The medic nodded. It was better than nothing. With his guidance and Miguel’s support by her side, Emily went to work to heal Wonder Woman, who was in a state of life and death if they didn’t work fast enough, all while Circe and her crew were out there terrorizing the city.
“What’s the news out there?” Alexei asked after the three left the infirmary room. “We are in the dark here, and I couldn’t radio in anyone with the pieces of junk we got. Not even my brother, who was trying to get as many agents as possible.”
“Brother?” Barbara asked before she realized who his brother was. Her expression became solemn. She remembered the Warhammer who stayed behind to slow Circe and her crew, giving Barbara a chance to escape with Artemis on her back. “The guy with the Hammer…”
Alexei furrowed his brows, noticing the change in her expression. “What happened to my brother?”
Barbara took a deep breath and began explaining everything that had happened: the White Magician’s true identity, her taking over SCYTHE HQ, her ultimatum to Wonder Girl, and finally, Anatoly Abromivici’s sacrifice to save them.
*************************************************************
Somewhere in Gateway…
With the loss of SCYTHE and their headquarters, the surviving agents didn’t have the necessary support from the intel agents in the Black Room to fight off against the newly revived Red Centipedes, now grown more powerful with the help of the escaped convicts, more than happy to exact revenge.
With the bridges closed off, SCYTHE’s weakened state, and Wonder Woman being presumed dead, the city had been thrown into chaos. Streets filled with criminals and looters taking full advantage of what had happened, stealing anything from everyone across the island.
Red Centipedes roamed the streets with military trucks, taken from SCYTHE after their HQ had fallen to the White Magician’s control, making full use of their hardware to hunt down any surviving agent, delivering the message that they were the new peacekeepers of Gateway.
“Let me go!”
A woman, a worker from Taco Whiz, was being dragged from the streets by a group of RedCent grunts. Taken into a nearby corner, the RedCent dropped the worker on the dirty ground. Their eyes had terrible intentions behind them.
“Come on, man,” one RedCent grunt said from behind to his buddy. “We are supposed to find those SCYTHE fuckers, not mess around.”
“You’re serious?” The buddy looked at his friend like he was crazy. “We’ve been locked for months in SCYTHE’s cells; we can have a few minutes of fun.”
“Please! Don’t do this!” The woman screamed, tears falling from her eyes, afraid of what they would do to her. She tried to stand up and run away but was quickly pushed back down on the pavement.
The RedCent approached the woman, who crawled away from them in fear. “Come on, girl, I just need to release all this stress after being locked up for so long!” He proclaimed, giving the woman a leery look before turning to his buddy. “Hey man, I can share! Maybe we can get someone else from the street-”
The RedCent stopped speaking, catching his breath for a moment after he saw his buddy lying on the ground face first, knocked out cold. Looking up, his eyes widened in shock when he saw the person standing before him. “You’re… you were supposed to be dead?!”
Covered in heavy bandages and wrecked NIGHT armor, and carrying a mace in his hand and a pissed-off look on his face, Commander Hector Hall stood before the RedCent grunt like a dark spectre coming back to life. Kicking the knocked-out buddy aside, the Commander looked between the grunt and the terrified woman before he hardened his glare at the RedCent.
“Stay back!” The RedCent grunt aimed his weapon, hands shaking in fear. “I said stay the fuck back-”
In a moment, Hall moved at such a speed he looked like a blur, cutting the distance between the two. With one swing of his mace, he smacked him squarely on the head, sending him to the ground.
Hall turned to the woman he saved, who looked at him in horror. “Go… get to safety…”
Without another word, the woman ran toward the exit and into the streets, away from the alley. Now alone with the two RedCents, Hall grabbed the knocked-out buddy and woke him up, making the man see the bandaged-up Hall looking down at him with hateful eyes.
“You… I want you to send your boss a message…” Hall began, making him face the Commander. “Tell the White Magician, Circe, that I am declaring war on her and on anyone who stands by her side.” He turned and walked up to the other grunt, who was crawling away from the Commander in fear, grabbing his bleeding head. He begged for his life, but Hall ignored his pleas. “And this, this is for my men that you Centipedes have killed…”
He lifted his bloody mace and brought it down like a hammer on the begging Red Centipede as his buddy looked on in horror. He lifted it up once more to reveal the man’s head was crushed like a watermelon.
Commander Hector Hall was still alive, and as long as he was still breathing, SCYTHE would remain standing to fight against all threats against Gateway City.
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Wonder Women Vol 3.

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