Symptoms
The symptoms of a brain tumor can vary significantly depending on the tumor's size, location, and growth rate. Common symptoms include:
Headaches:
Frequent or severe headaches that may worsen with activity or in the early morning.
Seizures:
New onset of seizures in someone with no history of seizures.
Different types of seizures such as focal (partial) seizures or generalized seizures.
Cognitive or Personality Changes:
Memory problems.
Difficulty in concentration or making decisions.
Changes in personality or behavior.
Motor Problems:
Weakness or numbness in the limbs or face, often on one side of the body.
Difficulty with balance or coordination.
Sensory Changes:
Vision problems such as double vision, loss of peripheral vision, or partial/complete vision loss.
Hearing problems or loss of hearing.
Speech and Language Issues:
Difficulty in speaking or understanding speech.
Nausea and Vomiting:
Often related to increased intracranial pressure.
Other Symptoms:
Fatigue and drowsiness.
Hormonal (endocrine) disorders, which could be due to a tumor near the pituitary gland.
Causes
The exact cause of brain tumors is not always clear, but several factors can contribute to their development:
Genetic Factors:
Family history of brain tumors.
Genetic mutations or conditions (e.g., Neurofibromatosis, Li-Fraumeni syndrome, Turcot syndrome).
Exposure to Radiation:
Previous exposure to ionizing radiation (such as from radiation therapy for another condition).
Immune System Disorders:
Conditions that weaken the immune system can increase the risk of certain brain tumors (e.g., Primary CNS lymphoma).
Environmental Factors:
Possible links to exposure to certain chemicals or industrial pollutants, although more research is needed.
Age and Gender:
Certain types of brain tumors are more common in specific age groups or genders. For example, gliomas are more common in adults, while medulloblastomas are more common in children.
Previous Cancer Diagnosis:
Individuals who have had cancer elsewhere in the body can develop secondary (metastatic) brain tumors.
Types of Brain Tumors
Brain tumors can be classified as:
Primary Brain Tumors:
Originate in the brain.
Can be benign (non-cancerous) or malignant (cancerous).
Examples: Gliomas, Meningiomas, Schwannomas, Pituitary tumors.
Secondary (Metastatic) Brain Tumors:
Spread to the brain from cancers originating in other parts of the body.
More common than primary brain tumors.
Conclusion
Brain tumors can manifest through a wide array of symptoms and have diverse causes, ranging from genetic factors to environmental exposures. Early detection and accurate diagnosis are crucial for effective treatment and management. If you experience persistent or unusual symptoms, it's important to seek medical attention for a thorough evaluation.

Keven Fitzpatrick #44 • Motorcycle Grand Tour Of Texas • Grand Saline Texas
Stopped by Grand Saline Texas Stop #7 and ran into four Grand Tourers.
Motorcycle Grand Tour Of Texas: https://motorcyclegrandtouroftexas.com
Grand Celine Texas: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y68KhwEMcNFt96Hx6
Grand Celine Texas History: Grand Saline's first settlers were the ancient Caddo and Cherokee Indian tribes, who discovered and made use of a large salt prairie south of the town. The Native Americans used evaporated salt, from the brine stream that flows over the flats, as a commodity they traded for other needed goods. In the mid-nineteenth century, the tribes moved southeast, having been forced out of the area by Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas, and by general anti-Indian sentiment. Only a few years after the Indians left the salt prairie behind, a new group of settlers arrived. A settler named John Jordan and other newcomers brought their families and set up a primitive salt works. The community named Jordan's Saline quickly became the center of Van Zandt County and was, for a while, the county seat. There were formerly numerous salt companies in Grand Saline, including the Richardson Salt works, which had drilled the first salt well; the Lone Star Salt Company; Kleer Salt Works, the first steam-powered salt plant; and the Grand Saline Salt Company, which later became part of the Morton Salt Company. During the late 1920s, the discovery of the nearby Van oil field brought companies that provided needed supplies. In the 1930s Grand Saline had twelve petroleum supply companies and five lumber companies. In the Depression years, local sewing rooms made garments for the poor. During World War II, a workers' strike at Morton Salt led the town to form the Grand Saline Industrial Foundation to attract new business to town. Their efforts produced clothing manufacturers, sulfur processing and meat packing companies. Grand Saline was also known for its Lone Star Hotel, which was, for a brief time, the home of Hollywood starlet Louise Fazenda, the wife of Warner Brothers executive Hal Wallis. Agriculture, farming and ranching have long been a major part of the economic life in Grand Saline. Crops have included sweet potatoes and other truck crops. A cotton gin built south of town in 1890 marked the beginning of many years of cotton production. Poultry, livestock, dairy products, lumber and an ice house all played a role in the formation and history of the town.
http://LoneStarRider.tv http://RidingForACure.com

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MotorGrandTourOfTexas

Race Information

• Name: Vermont City Marathon
• Date: May 26, 2024
• Distance: 26.2 miles
• Location: Burlington, VT
• Website: https://www.runvermont.org/
• Age: 35M
• Time: 3:26:22

Goals

Goal	Description	Completed?
A	Sub-3:20	No
B	Sub-3:30	Yes
C	Finish	Yes

Splits

13.1 splits	Time
1	1:43:20
2	1:43:02

Ancient History

Growing up, I was always pretty active and started running in High School. Going into my Junior year, I began to take running much more seriously and made steady progress with a 5K PR of 17:06 at the State meet. Going into my Senior year, I had been training 6 days a week with the team and hitting 40-60 miles a week consistently with hopes of going low 16's by the end of the XC season. Then, disaster. Pain in my quads was getting worse and worse until a bone scan finally revealed bilateral femoral stress fractures - one midway along the midline of each femur. I was devastated, and completely stopped running from August until February. By then, it seemed like things were getting better and I was able to put in some good miles for the spring Track season. I was always a better mid-distance runner, and was able to snag a few PRs of 2:00 in the 800m (agony, 1s off) and 4:35 in the 1600m. By that point I was basically over running, completely burned out and sick of running.
10 years later...
I wake up one morning in April of 2017 to take a shower and realize that I have no temperature sensation in my right leg whatsoever. I'm now finishing grad school, I've moved across the country, first kid on the way and due in a matter of weeks. I'm not working out much at this point, maybe running every few months at best. Stress is high. I go to urgent care and the last 6 months of subtle pins and needles on the left side of my face and the occasional double vision start to make a lot more sense. Multiple Sclerosis. It's not a death sentence, but I felt like the world was ending. My kid was due in 4 weeks and now my future was completely uncertain. A month or two, an MRI and one spinal tap later and the diagnosis is confirmed.

Training

Fortunately, new medicines have made MS much more manageable and I was lucky to have a great medical team. Perhaps the most important thing to keep the disease in check beyond highly potent immunosuppressants is regular exercise. Time to start running again.
Starting out was rough, but within a few weeks I was able to feel ok running 15-20 miles a week in the 8-10 min/mile range. I keep that up consistently for a year or so and run my first 10K with a time of 44:42, which I was pretty proud of at the time. Things are going well for a while, second kid is on the way, my MS seems mostly stable, albeit leaving me with some permanent loss of function of my left leg (these gait issues will come up later), pins and needles in my right leg, and fatigue. Then COVID hits. Now I'm at home, with much more time. I increase my mileage a bit, now running 20-30 miles a week but not really following any particular plan or anything. Move across country, keep running when I can.
Mid-2023 I decided to finally take it up a level. I was mostly using the Garmin Daily Workouts at this point and running consistently 30 miles a week. I decided to run my first half-marathon, just as a virtual training run, and felt pretty good about my time with an 8:24/mi average pace. Going into fall, I juggled some illnesses but kept running. Unfortunately around November I started to develop Sesamoiditis and had to really limit my running to 35-40 miles per week. I ran a Christmas 5K with a time of 19:14, which felt pretty good, but was still dealing with the Sesamoid issue.
Over time, the Sesamoid started to resolve but I would occasionally feel some twinges in my right Adductor. Nevertheless, I felt like the time was now to try for my first Marathon. Around February, I finally committed and decided to do the Pfitz 12/55 plan. I had been consistently in the 35-40 range for a few months, so felt like I had a decent base. At first, I found the plan quite difficult to deal with. It was the most structured running I had done since high school, but after a while my schedule adapted and I was hitting all of the workouts. About halfway through, the Adductor issue started to really rear its ugly head. It seems like it's a combination of gait issues from my MS as well as compensating for the weakened Sesamoid. I attempted to strength train, but had to back off a bit.
At best, I was able to hit 53 miles a week, occasionally having to skip some workouts for cross-training or rest. I felt like I nailed the 20 mile runs pretty well and overall the LRs felt good. I ran one 5K as a kind of "tune-up" with a time of 19:21, pacing a friend, so putting in maybe 80-90% effort. Due to injuries and some travel I was never able to do one of the longer tune-up races. Unfortunately, the Adductor issue continued to wax and wane, finally flaring up badly about 3 weeks out from my target marathon. After a consultation with Ortho, I was told to stop running cold turkey for two weeks prior to the Marathon, and then a follow-up last Friday I was given the green light to try it ... cautiously ... but consider dropping out if it is too painful.

Pre-Race

My taper was compromised pretty heavily by the injury, so I was really feeling worried about how the race would go. That said, I knew that the training was done at this point, and so an extended rest shouldn't make TOO much of an impact if I feel ready. I carb-loaded three days out and tried to take on a lot of fluids. While my injury was feeling better, the next worry was the temperature. Forecast was saying low 60s for the start of the race, ramping up to the mid 70s by the time I expected to finish. We drove up to Burlington from the Boston area on Friday with the kids, and I likely did too much walking on Saturday but overall I was feeling ok and was fortunate to get a good amount of sleep Saturday night (7.5hrs).
I'm a scientist by training, so planning and preparation is second nature to me. I woke up at 4:45, had a cup of coffee, half a bagel, a banana, and a Maurten 160 drink. Because of the temperature, I decided to prepare two 500mL bottles of Tailwind, one that I would take with me and one that I would pickup from my wife at the Half point. I planned for 4 gels (Maurten@5mi, Gu@10mi, Maurten+Caf@15mi, Maurten@20) and to get a cup of water at every aid station each 2.5mi. I jogged down to the start at 6:15am, used the restroom probably 4 times, and lined up with the 3:30 group.

Race

My plan was to start out with the 3:30 pacer group and see how things go. The course is advertised as being flat and fast, but I'm not sure I believe that because there is a big hill you run up twice with 120ft of vert over about 1/2 mile and between 5-7% grade at times. The course is essentially two figure 8s, and you start in the middle. At 7:15am, we took off. The first few miles felt a bit stiff, but I was chatting it up with the pacers and feeling pretty relaxed. We were going a bit ahead of pace, clocking in at 7:50 per mile for the first 4-5 miles. Around the 10K mark, I was feeling a bit antsy and the pace was slowing down...I decided to head off alone, despite a lot of reservation that I was making a poor decision.
Around Mile 9, I was starting to feel a bit of tightness in my legs and my HR was in the high 160s. I was a little bit concerned about this early fatigue, but I knew from my training that I feel like this on almost every single run and it doesn't really seem to get worse, it just seems to be part of my mechanics or something. I kept pushing on, mile after mile, keeping my pace pretty consistently. Every aid station I got a cup of water, drank some and splashed the rest on my head. This made a HUGE difference in the end.
Mile 13, came in at the Half feeling great. Started up one of the hills and saw my wife. *Disaster* she had the wrong bottle. No carbs, no Tailwind for the 2nd half, and my current bottle was empty. At this point, I had also been taking my gels early. My stomach was feeling great so instead of a gel at every 5th mile I was taking one at every 4. The race provided gels at mile 8 and mile 21, so I had picked up an extra gel by this time and made the decision to stop at the next aid station around mile 15 and fill up my bottle with Gatorade. Salvation.
Kept chugging along, feeling a bit of fatigue setting in around the slog from mile 16-19. At mile 19, I saw my wife again and she had the correct bottle (it was my fault, she thought I meant for her to give me a larger, recovery bottle I had prepared of Skratch for after the race). I got my bottle of Tailwind and hit the monster hill at Mile 20. This was my slowest mile at 8:15 (GAP of 7:40) and it really sapped my strength. I was thinking that this must be like running Heartbreak Hill the entire time I was going up.
Through the hill, into the last 10K. Starting to feel desperate, just pushing forward every step of the way. The pacing in this marathon is quite strange, because it also has a Relay of either 2-person or 4-person teams, so you're always seeing different people with way fresher legs than you. Ended up finding a woman to run with who was crushing it, and we paced eachother the last 3-4 miles. Took a last gel around 24 miles and grinded it out to the end.

Berlin next... then Boston?

Post-race, I was feeling pretty happy with my 3:26 time. To be honest, I felt a little anti-climactic, although I'm not entirely sure why. I didn't feel a ton of adrenaline or emotion throughout the race and things seemed pretty collected. That said, I'm pretty surprised at how much I loved almost every minute of the race itself. Maybe it was just because it was my first time, but it was truly a fun and rewarding experience.
I think there were a few areas where I could have pushed just slightly harder, but given it was my first marathon on a somewhat challenging course in the heat I'm overall happy with my time. I absolutely nailed my hydration/fueling and my pacing, with a slightly negative split overall, so I'm really pleased with that. As a whole, I'd give my training cycle maybe a 6/10; I think I definitely raced too many of my training runs, likely leading to some of my injuries. I was also only able to go above 50mpw in 2 of the 12 weeks of the program.
Given my somewhat poor training cycle, I'm hoping that I still have a lot of room to improve. I was a bit worried that my MS would cause issues during the marathon, particularly my left leg, which tends to lose coordination in long, higher intensity efforts. Fortunately, it felt pretty good throughout.
Earlier in the year, I was lucky to get a spot for both Berlin and NYC. Given their proximity to each other, I'm going to try and defer NYC to next year. I've now been thinking through if I want to try and apply to Boston for 2025. Given my MS, I am technically eligible for an "adaptive" application, which has a cutoff time of 6:00. I feel in two minds about this, because on one hand I feel like I'm maybe taking a bit of the easy way out, when it might be possible for me to hit sub-3:05 some day. On the other hand, I don't know how many years I have left running so I'm thinking I might just seize the opportunity now and then try and qualify through the more "standard" way in the future. Curious on people's thoughts on this, and thanks for reading!
Made with a new race report generator created by herumph.

I've got a situation with my genitives and other case markers. It marks both the object possessed and the possessor. This was fine for simple sentences like "He saw the man's pencil" since objects with less relative agency don't get marked in relation to the verb, you only mark the reverse (so like if the man's pencil was somehow looking at him).
However, clearly there are scenarios where you might need to mark it. Like, "He saw the man's friend", that's two humans so you need a marker to know who is looking at who and they're both going to fall on friend.
Are there any languages that have a double-marked genitive that would end up "competing" with another case? I can see this also conflicting with my instrumental and locative in some situations as well. I also have a noun ending that is a pseudo-plural that could end up stacking with any of these.
I was also going to have my "and" append to the last listed item but it might conflict as well, though, I think "I saw cats.ACC dogs.and" could work just as well for that.
The verbs are not at all agglutinative (fusional/synthetic) so it feels weird to have agglutinative nouns but I am not entirely sure how else. Other than to come up with set of genitive case fusions (Gen-Loc, Gen-Acc, Gen-Instr).

Let's get this out of the way first....I was born with a degenerative muscle disorder and I use a power wheelchair. I have severe muscle weakness throughout my entire body which includes my cardiac and pulmonary muscles. As you can imagine dating is a bit more difficult for me but I have found love on Reddit before so I’m back to find it again.
A LITTLE ABOUT ME: I would definitely call myself an introvert. I'm extremely even-tempered so it takes a lot to piss me off and/or offend me. I'm a good listener and very easy to talk to, I have been described by previous partners as genuine, kind and sweet. In person I can come across as quiet and shy at first but, I just need a little time to get comfortable with someone before I really open up. Me---https://imgur.com/a/Qf6HHVg
Some things I enjoy....
-Making people smile/laugh
-Watching sports(Padres and Chargers)
-The cringiest of puns d4d jokes
-Standup comedy...Tom Segura, Bill Burr, Bert Kreischer, Andrew Schulz, Bobby Lee, Norm MacDonald, Mark Normand, Dave Chapelle, and many more.
-Collecting Batman memorabilia
-Podcasts like YMH, Tigerbelly, Kill Tony, TYSO, 2 Bears 1 Cave, Bad Friends, etc.
-Music...I mostly like Alternative and Classic Rock but I'm into some pop and open to everything really. Foo Fighters, Wet Leg, Cage The Elephant, RHCP, Queen, The Eagles, AURORA, and so many more
-Going to concerts
-Shows...Currently watching Hacks on Max. all time favorite show is Breaking Bad
-Watching movies like horror, thrillers, sci-fi, comedy, and Super Hero stuff is fun Taskmaster!
ABOUT YOU: I’m looking for my best friend and partner, someone who wants a serious relationship. I want someone who is kind and compassionate, trustworthy and genuine. Someone with a sense of (sometimes dark)humor who can make me laugh and doesn’t take themselves too seriously. Someone who is not afraid to be silly sometimes. As for location, the closer the better so it's easier to meet up but I don’t mind long distance as long as there is a plan to see each other often. It would be ideal if you could eventually relocate because that is currently not an option for me.
To show me that you’ve read the entire post and are serious please include the word football in your message. If you have any questions regarding my condition please feel free to ask me ANYTHING.
Don’t be put off by my disability, I don’t bite (unless you're into that ;)

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"Good afternoon Ms. Lopez." I say, warmly greeting an elderly Cuban woman in her sixties. She smiles sweetly at me as she asks me if I am the chef behind today's food, in Spanish. I smile and nod at her, and she excitedly begins to chatter in Spanish, telling me the latest chisme regarding the latest romantic escapades occurring in her son's life.
I lightly place some ham on the sandwich I'm preparing for her as she excitedly gossips with me. I cleverly practice my active listening skills, while occasionally chiming in to let her know that I am actively aware of what she's saying. The woman is one of the last people to arrive during today's meal hour. She seems to operate on a sense of punctuality that is uniquely hers, almost like a force of nature. I almost admire it, if I'm being honest. My fellow volunteers look at me and smile as they sense the passive patience I radiate in this minor interaction.
The day has been one of the more chill ones in the soup kitchen, especially since I started actively championing the place. At our most busy we've served hundreds of families in a single day, and today we've served a few dozen. There's something quite nice about this moment of normalcy. I wonder if I sometimes took this level of mundanity for granted during this jump...
To be fair to myself a part of me is almost acting like I'm guaranteed to send myself to some apocalyptic hellscape and that's just not happening. I'm almost guaranteed to go to a place more dangerous than "9-5; a white-collar simulator", but I'm picking my next destination and after the decade of serenity I've had here I've got no reason to act like a dumbass and jeopardize my odds of long-term success in this career by sending myself to a death trap. Ms. Lopez smiles as she walks away, clearly believing she's shared vital chisme with me. To be fair, she did share gossip plenty of people would find juicy, but since I'm not some gossip I was the wrong audience for her words.
My fellow volunteers look at me and glance at my phone with curious looks. I pick up the thing and see that I've been missing an exhilarating conversation in our group chat. I skim the thing, my perfected memory allowing me to instantly catch up with the conversation the small gaggle of brave volunteers who kindly donate our weekend hours have been having before I begin to text the group back.
The rest of the day passes by in a blur. We wait for the people who've come for a meal to finish their food up and then we get to cleaning. After that we do a few sweeps of the parts of the church we've used before going our separate ways. I make my way home, and I do some light meal-prepping as well as practice a few more of my skills. At this point in my stay I've perfected my routine and could do it in my sleep... If I ever slept that is. In the entire time I've been in this setting I don't believe I've slept once. That is a nice feeling, since it means I never wasted an hour of my time, much less six.
The work week is a bit of a slog, since I am eagerly anticipating the news regarding my final promotion. I was never the sort to believe that time felt longer when you were excited about something, or dreading it, but in the time since I came to this setting I've gradually become a believer in such ideas even if they still feel a bit silly. Nonetheless. I diligently work through the week, keep my team on track, and when Friday rolls around I get the news I've waited for.
Thanks to "Gamer's Mind" I am able to keep my face even as the office's general supervisor explains this news to me and not outwardly express my excitement, but internally I am more excited than I've been about anything since I first entered this world. This news means that I'll be getting right around $3,000 dollars every two weeks just for existing! This means that in future jumps working will be optional unless I get really greedy, which frees me up to decide what I want to do in most modern settings. In medieval settings this amount of money could be even more vital, though at the same time such a thing could just... not matter, since in such a setting I could easily just avoid civilization, but this money will certainly liberate me from a lot of the struggles of wasting vast swathes of a jump at a job I don't want.
At the time that I was being told the good news I almost began to cry. Thank goodness for Gamer's Mind, I guess.
Nine years ago I was down on my luck and down to my last dollars when I got the job offer that led me here and this news means that I am free from such things. The freedom and power that comes with making enough to get by, especially passively, is awe-inspiring, and it's quite difficult for me to find the words to express how excited it makes me feel even days after it. I spend... close to a week passively smiling and being just ambiently happy, as I begin to integrate a new set of responsibilities into my work life.
During this time my decision to fix the coffee machine in the office break-room by hand after it almost burns a colleague results in me getting a new class; "Handyman" and the initial ability I receive is a simple one that bolsters my agility a touch, agility being my attribute tied to fine motor skills. I skillfully use this class to actually fix various things by hand, and I begin to steadily accrue various maintenance skills. In days I gain class levels, and with each class level I am able to repair things faster, more cheaply, and eventually my ability to fix matures into an ability to improve things, which I instinctively know will lead to some shenanigans down the line. Before I know it days have turned into weeks, which age and turn into months. My skills with leadership and motivation have continued to improve and I lead my team with my full focus and skillful decision-making. Before I know it I am in the final leg of the final stretch of my first jump.
I've been here for 119 months. Nine years and eleven months. It's actually been... even longer than that. I'm at the beginning of the final week of my stay here, and my hands idly clean a dish as I passively listen to Pastor Charlie, one of the few guest pastors the church has invited in years deliver a sermon. He has the congregants enraptured and eating out of the palm of his hand as he speaks about a miracle that "Our Lord" once performed. His voice is a pleasant distraction and one of my twin trains of thought listens and takes notes on how the man delivers his sermon. Physically I seem to be engrossed in the man's sermon when someone, one of the church's assistants, taps on my shoulder and gestures for me to walk over to the pastor's office. I stealthy get up, activating "Rogue" and make my way out of the serving area adjacent to the kitchen. I relax a touch when I'm in the long hallway leading me to Tyler's, Pastor Rhodes's, office.
As I walk down the humble hallway I feel a strange sense of finality wash over me. There's something uncommonly... real about this trek. I feel more solid, more whole than I have in a while, and I suspect that it's because this is my last time in this soup kitchen, this church. I won't be returning here, at least not for a while, and that's sad. It's not the saddest thing that's ever happened to me, but it is kind of a bummer and I allow myself to feel a touch of real, genuine sadness at the sobering realization that when I leave this place I'll be leaving for a long time.
I eventually put that thought away, shelving it and compartmentalizing my thoughts so I can focus on better, happier things. My enhanced senses allow me to spot things like faint cracks too thin for normal humans to spot, and as I walk past them I cast my handy spell on them. I watch as the walls of the hallway repair themselves and I smile, sensing the powerful potential of the spell at my fingertips. I reach the office of the man I've spent plenty of weekends working alongside, and under, and I smile, even internally, when he looks up and spots me. He greets me with a smile and motions for me to sit down. When I do what he asks, he immediately begins to speak.
"Lucas, I apologize for calling out to you but I wanted to check in. Today you seemed... Out of it." The man exclaims, and judging from the way my heart jumps in my chest I realize that some people are just.... more intuitive than others. My acting skill gets a nice little load of experience when I mask my reaction to his words and let out a small, natural sounding laugh in response to his question.
"Tyler," I begin, causing the man to wince. I'm an atheist, or at least I was pre-chain, now... well, now I'm a lot more curious about religion than I was before. I'm not sure if gods exist, but I sure as shit know the supernatural does and I'm not in the business of denying what I can see. I've made my vague religious position clear to the man long ago so he insists I call him "Tyler" which I've personally always found a bit awkward, but there's something a little funny about how it disarms him so cleanly during this interaction. "I'm doing... Okay. I AM bummed I won't be here next week." I state, calmly. This causes my friend's eyes to widen in surprise.
"You're missing a week? I'm sure some of our regulars will be disappointed. Is everything alright?" The man asks. His question is so sincere, so genuine that it's mildly disarming.
I'm... not a nice person. I'm far from mean, sure, but I've come to accept that there's a core of kindness in some people, even in many people, and I am not someone who has that core, that central, unconscious, guiding light that moves them towards kindness with the ease and naturalness of a heartbeat. At my core rests something else, something I don't know if I can articulate in just a few words.
I wouldn't say I'm mean or anything like that but I'm far more cynical than a lot of the people I've met are. In this world, especially, it seems like a lot of people are just decent at heart and I suspect that that was and is the case in the world I was born on as well. Tyler is one of the people I've met whose central guiding light seems to be centered around decency and kindness and I think in any world the man could find himself in he'd strive to be kind. It's almost like interacting with a real version of Ned Flanders from The Simpsons...
"I'm okay. I'm gonna be doing other stuff, and I normally prioritize the soup kitchen over my work or social life," I state, and this isn't a flex it's simply a very true statement. Tyler hears the remark and smiles faintly. "But I've been asked to help out with other stuff from friends who wouldn't ask if it wasn't something they really felt they could handle alone. I'm just gonna miss one weekend, and then I'll be back." I remark, and Tyler smiles at me.
"Okay Lucas. If you need any help you'd ask, right?" Tyler asks, and I consider the question. This is only somewhat an act, as I don't know if I'd ask for help if I needed it. I ultimately nod at the man and I can sense a touch of sadness as he studies my response, which I don't love but I also don't really feel right lying anymore than is necessary. The man makes some small talk and I quickly breeze through it. In minutes I am back in the kitchen with the others. And minutes after that I am cleaning with my fellow volunteers. Almost before I know it I'm stepping out of the church after we've cleaned out the kitchen. I glance at it one last time before I make my way home.
The next few days pass by in a blur, with only two minor oddities; the first being that I ask Hannah to come out with me on Friday night. I have got to see if I can stomach the idea of any sort of romance in a jump, and this is a consequence free way for me to do something along those lines. The second oddity is that I spend nearly all of my money purchasing... well, everything. Every night after work I go to various stores and spend the money that I really haven't needed all that much until now, purchasing things like weapons, food, and especially books. I buy boatloads of books, both ready and willing to use up something I won't be able to take with me into future jumps anyway in exchange for stuff I CAN take with me, thanks to the fiat-backed power of an infinite inventory.
The work week is, aside from what I do after work every night, pretty normal but Friday itself is weirdly solemn. The day passes by as quickly as any other day has, filled with minor encounters with glitches, and a few more annoyances with my small number of drawbacks but when five rolls around I clock out one last time and give the office a final look. I am weirdly slow when it comes to getting up and leaving my cubicle, in fact I'm actually one of the last office workers to leave the office but as I step out of the building I experience another burst of gratitude to Gamer's Mind, which keeps me from acting odd or even tearing up as I glance back at the place I've spent thousands of hours in.
I allow myself a beat to... honestly, grieve. I tell myself that it's okay to have feelings about leaving, even if those feelings are big and weird and are not the most fun. Nonetheless I don't linger here, at my place of employment, I have other things I both need and want to do. I use my inventory and change into a pretty casual outfit before I begin a brief walk. _________________________________________________________________________
​The park beside the office building is a rare example of a pristine location in the city. It is filled with natural greenery, and at the moment a stunningly pretty redhead glances at her phone waiting for someone to pop into view.
The redhead is wearing a pleasant looking dress and a jacket, as the weather is just beginning to take the seasonal turn towards the unpleasant. It's still warm enough that the clothes are mostly unnecessary but as she waits for her friend, a young man who has finally gotten the courage to ask her out on something vaguely approximating a date, she appreciates the wisdom of her decision to wear the slightly warmer than necessary clothes.
Her "date", mostly in her eyes though he is aware of her feelings and a part of him feels some happiness in the idea that this is a date, enters the park and spots her before she spots him. He reaches into his inventory and he retrieves something, a nice little bouquet he purchased earlier today and safely stored away. The flowers, prettily packed and all, appear as he walks towards the young woman.
Lucas is testing the waters here. He isn't testing the waters with Hannah specifically, but rather what it feels like to go on a date as a jumper. He has long had strange feelings about this, but he knows that he is going to leave tomorrow and so he wants to see if he can enjoy a date as a jumper, so he is doing a scientific experiment even if he feels... less than great about some aspects of all of this.
"Hannah!" Lucas says, calling out to one of his first, in fact one of his only, real friends in this world. The redhead excitedly turns and spots her longtime friend, waving at him and waving him over. She spots the bouquet and lets out a delighted sounding laugh, and when Lucas hears it the smile that alights his features is heartwarming.
In his day to day life some facets of Lucas's charisma-heavy build only rarely surface in ways that matter and his looks tends to be one such thing He is attractive enough that his looks can captivate and reside in one's imagination for a while after they first meet him, but right now, this early on along his chain his looks are only enough to make people have schoolgirl crushes on him and people can and do get used to his looks after a while. Still, in some moments this is enough to color the impression he makes on people. Right now, in a romantic context, his supernatural attractiveness is enough to change the sort of impression he makes on someone.
The handsome actor reaches his friend and sits down next to her. He hands her the flowers and for a moment a strange serenity washes over the two as they enjoy each other's company. Lucas looks inward and he realizes that he genuinely, well and truly, likes this moment. Hannah looks at him and eventually asks an important question.
"Lucas... how am I gonna hold these flowers?" She asks, and this makes him smile. He is quick to offer her a response.
"I'll take them when we get going but I saw them and I thought of you. I felt like I'd regret it if I didn't give you these." He says, and there is an odd, for him, level of sincerity and genuineness in his voice that makes Hannah giggle girlishly. Lucas right now is relying on his perk-enhanced instincts and the charisma he has honed through social encounters for the last decade, and he's enjoying how it feels.
Both of the figures on the "Date", though neither of them officially dubbed it that, enjoy the moment. Their passive delight and infatuation create an envy-inducing atmosphere of closeness and quiet joy that radiates outward. The park is nearly abandoned so there is no one to witness this moment other than Lucas's benefactor, and Lucas is simply at peace.
Eventually he lightly touches Hannah's hand, and asks her if she'd like to go and get dinner before they go to the movie they agreed on going to watch earlier this week. Hannah agrees, handing Lucas the bouquet and he, to her surprise, puts it in the bag he has on his person. When she asks if that will squish or hurt the flowers Lucas tells her, with a bizarre amount of confidence, that it won't. She eventually accepts this, having learned to trust that Lucas knows what he is doing, and the two of them begin a short walk to a mall they both know well.

Myrnova asked for us to join her back at her shop until the feast, since she wanted to do some repairs and start getting things sorted for our departure. we joined her back at the shop and helped her get stuff sorted out around the shop before departure. she asked if there was anything else we needed to get repaired besides what we already left here earlier, to with i said "i may have a few things". i pulled out my storage device and started empty out all the weapons, armor, and ores i had into two piles, one small pile for repair and another large pile to be broken down for materials. Myrnova asked if I'd be able to help her carry her gear and such with my device, with i was going to offer anyway. she said it might take a few days to get everything repaired, broken down, reforged, and stored, to with we offered to help in whatever way we could. after we finished talking and closing up the shop for the day, we rejoined the people of the realm in a feast to celebrate our victory against the invaders. we told the people that we would be around for a few more days to resupply and help Myrnova get things sorted out before we all head out to our next destination. the next few days flew by as we rested up, visited the surrounding isles while helping with patrols, did some training to hone our skills, and various other things until Myrnova finished up in the shop. she not only repaired, but upgraded our equipment and even made a few new weapons, including a weapon for me that changes modes between a twisted blade sword to a duel bladed scythe. we gathered up all that remained and stored it away before going around and saying our goodbyes to the people of the realm. we gathered on the edge of the isle and i told the group to save their energy for when we need it, so I'll carry us to were the space between realms is with Xeyu's directions. i begin a draw energy in for the transformation as the rest of the group waved goodbye once more to the one seeing us off. i didn't think I'd have enough room to transform where we stood, so i stepped off the isle and transformed in mid-air, shortly followed by the rest of the group jumping down and landing on my back. Xeyu pointed me in the direction we needed to go and off we went toward our new destination.
we were ready to see what was to come next and full of hope that we could continue to save one world after another. after we had been flying for some time, Xeyu seem to be perplexed, asking if we could stop for a moment. Xeyu was having trouble locking down where the space between the realms leading to the next crest bearer, going by the theory that there may have been a shift when we sealed up the tear. for now we will have to go through another realm's rift get access to the one we seek. after some discussion, we decided this shouldn't be a real problem, since our goal is to stop the invading forces across all the realms, so we'll start with a few before we can get to our next member. Xeyu refocused in on the closest spot to access to another realm and guided me to the location. Xeyu explained to us that even though there is an access point we can rift through, we still don't know what awaited us on the other side, so we should be ready for anything. i asked if I'd have to change back before we go through, but Xeyu explained that since it's not a rift between a collapsed realm, we'd be going straight through. Xeyu focused in and formed a crack in space large enough for me to fly through to the other side and made sure we were ready before pulling open the crack to form the rift and had me fly through, quickly closing it up behind us. as we looked upon the world we entered, we were stunned, seeing the world had already started a full blown war against the demonic invading forces. we had no time to lose, as i told everybody to hold on while i went into a nose drive toward a large group of demons. when we were close to striking distance i told them to release, at the same time transforming back into my normal form and drawing out my new weapon. enemy forces flew back from the impact of our landings, as we each instantly leaped into battle. we battle on for hours, wiping out the invaders by the thousands, but still saw no end in sight to the forces before us. Myrnova and Xeyu noticed something strange in the distance as they fought off flying forces. we turned all our attention toward what they saw, as i cleared a path the best i could at that moment with a dragon fire blast. when we got over to that location, we noticed a familiar sight but worse, 3 tears in space where the forces were coming out. Xeyu quickly asked us each to block a tear, as they try to seal them up, one at a time. we each took a position at a tear, fighting off not only the enemies coming out of the tears, but also the forces coming in from behind. one by one, Xeyu sealed up each tear, getting more skilled with each time, while gaining better understanding of the space around them. even after sealing those tears in space up, more demons kept flowing in from behind us. we took to the air in search of more tears in space, in which we found several. we followed a similar plan as the others, guard and seal, until we eventually had them all sealed up and the forces before us until we cleared the battlefield. we were rather confused though by the fact there were no residential forces to be seen anywhere, as i questioned if they might have passed away or are held up somewhere. for the time it did not matter, we needed to keep moving toward and after a quick rest, Xeyu found us our next rift. we kept in mind that this may be a long journey before we reach our next goal, at which point we walked through the rift to the next world.
for several more realms we went through similar events, talking to the people, fighting for our common cause, few place siding with the other side. as we worked our way through these worlds, we collected and studied numerous things from each, adapting with what we learned along the way. we managed to get several storage devices similar to mine made on one of the worlds to make it easier for each of us. each time we sealed up a tear in a world, our path toward our goal shifted in location. we encountered more empty worlds and started to concluded that these may be use by the enemy for mass deployment. we had a few near death encounters along the why, as we fought against gods of some realms, but in the end we were still victorious. we got blessing from beings that we freed from corruption, weather that was by cleansing or death. at some point during this journey we lost track of how many worlds we went through and started to question how many more are to come. Xeyu skills by this point had increased to point where they developed a mental map of where each realm we've gone through, including access shifts from sealing tears, but we were still having problems getting to where we wanted to go. finally we landed on a world that didn't have us entering into a battle, well at least with evil forces, as we were surrounded mere moments after arriving here. we told them we meant no harm and only wish to help those of this world fight off the evil in these world. it was at this moment they informed us that there was no evil in this world and they wanted to know how we got here. we voluntarily went with them back to their fortress, along the way answering various questions and getting answers to some of ours. as we approached the fortress, Xeyu started to act a little strange before asking a question that concerned them "is there a gate here?", to with they responded "how do you know that?". we arrived at the fortress and got escorted straight to their leader, at which point we talked back and forth for hours, resting up and eating a proper meal for the first time in a while. Xeyu explained somethings about their ability and in exchange the leader showed us to the gateway. they explained that until we arrived, this was the only way in or out of their world, which is why it's so heavy guarded. they told us that this gate lends to the cosmic mountain crossroads, so we may be able to find a way to where we wanted to go. we thanked them as we explained that we were looking for that exact location, mentioning our crests again, to with they mentioned an enchanter of sorts having a mark that looked similar. with this we had our way, a few clues to follow when we got there and with this we stepped through the gate to cosmic mountain crossroads.

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

I was surprised to learn that paleo doesn't think it possible to live on just rice and shrimp. I've been doing so (more or less) for years out of necessity due to poor gut health.
Obviously I haven't been running my life as a strict experiment, and I don't expect you to believe an internet stranger. So if anyone's interested in doing a diet study under controlled conditions, I'm game.
I will be doing it regardless. Instead of using it as an elimination diet baseline to test new ingredients/treatments, I will rigorously test the diet's long-term sustainability. I won't need to travel for the next month and a half, which should be plenty of time for signs of malnutrition to appear. I can understand why nobody has done this yet, since substantial psychological barriers appear at the 1-2 week mark, if one just throws rice and shrimp into a pot and eats the same meal every time. However, this is due to multiple errors in preparation, not inadequate ingredients.
This issue is quite important to me, because I've suffered a great deal from toxic modernity, and my solution is supposedly impossible, which suggests it would help many others if it was known. For me it certainly makes the difference between a life not worth living and pleasant productivity.
It doesn't surprise me to hear "that diet's impossible" during a doctor visit, but I expected paleo would know differently, given the history of scurvy (fresh meat cures) and the famous carnivore-only experiment:

So in 1928, Stefansson and another explorer began their culinary experiment. Checking into New York’s Bellevue Hospital, the two spent several weeks under constant supervision as doctors did blood tests and observed for signs of dietary distress. After a brief control period of a varied diet, the two men ate only fresh meat: The cuts included steak, roast beef, brains, and tongue, with calf liver once a week to ward off scurvy. Perhaps inevitably, the study was funded by the Institute of American Meat Packers.

– The Arctic Explorer Who Pushed an All-Meat Diet Vilhjalmur Stefansson wanted to prove a point. Atlas Obscura
Just as it is possible to practically eliminate carbs except those in fatty meat, it is possible to practically eliminate fat except that in lean meat. Just as it is unnecessary to eat vegetables since the vitamins in fresh meat are more bioavailable, it is unnecessary to eat vegetable fat because the oil in fresh shrimp is more bioavailable. (I have found that shellfish meat is too lean for this to work, but shrimp has 2x more fat than scallops.)
I will participate in such a study for free, as long as someone provides the food, location and travel. You can lock me in with my computer and Internet access for however long. I've done the COVID lockdown drill in China; it's no big deal.
Rice and frozen shelled shrimp are all I'll eat, and then do a medical checkup at the end. (My most recent showed no problems.) I will need either a window or a sunlamp. You can record with a webcam, except the bed and toilet.
The food costs will be cheap. I eat 1kg of organic shrimp every 1-2 weeks, and two handfuls of rice for each handful of shrimp. Six handfuls per day total is a normal filling amount. The shrimp is organic and average sized, between thumb and forefinger. So if I'm correct and this diet delivers excellent focus, people can drastically reduce the cost of food purchase, prep and digestion, even if they don't eat the strictest version. This should already be obvious from the success of high-density meal-replacements such as Soylent, which I contend are inferior to natural foods.

rice isn't paleo

I use a pressure cooker to reduce white rice to a congee that almost certainly has less antinutrients than the starches ancestral humans ate. I could not actually eat an ancestral diet as I am now, but I can use the principles to perform supposedly impossible feats.
For reference, here is the document that Reddit filters removed from Paleo after downvoting.

I just started my own asphalt maintenance company in the area earlier this year because it became clear to me last year that there were just way too many potholes and unsafe parking lots in the area that are in really rough shape.
There are great companies here in the Knoxville area that do quality work, but they typically get booked for months in advance for the "sealcoating season" through October which leaves business's that may have a need or be interested having to put off much needed maintenance.
Since I started this business, almost everyone I interact with that knows about my company tells me about a place where they hit a large pothole or had trouble parking because the lines were so blurred or nonexistent. That's why I'm starting the "Finder's Fee Program" to hear from more people in the community. There's a lot of unsafe parking lots out there that are not ADA compliant, and I want to give people the opportunity to share if they have had those experiences locally while also compensating them if it leads to a sale.
I'm as "local startup" as it gets. I've lived in East TN pretty much my whole life and in the Knoxville area for 7 years now. Go Vawls! I pretty much started out just re-striping parking lot lines as a side hustle last year and decided to get serious, learn as much as I can, and pump some of my own money into it. Just like many of you, the rising cost-of-living forced me to think outside the box. I want my company to help as many local businesses, and local people as I can while also building a profitable business.
If you know of any local business where you hit a pothole or had difficulty navigating the parking lot because of the condition of the asphalt or the lot was not clearly marked, here's the link to the form the "Finder's Fee Program." I'll pay $35 or 5% of the total of the sale, whichever is greater, to any lead you submit that converts to a sale.
If you just have one experience that you want to share, great! Fill out the form and I'll reach out to the business to try to get that issue resolved.
If you know of several businesses in the area that have potholes or need to be re-striped, also great! Fill out the form and let me know you have several locations you know of in the details section.
If you've read this far and think this is a horrible, that's also great! At least you read this far and didn't waste your time on another "Thinking of moving to Knoxville" post.

Hey everyone!
Located in Australia and budget is around the $300 to 500 mark, give or take depending on if there is any significant notice in quality.
I'm currently looking for a new gaming headset or headphones. I currently have Astro A50s which unfortunately appear to be not charging correctly, or holding very little battery where it won't charge beyond 2 bars on the dock. I've tried hard resetting the device etc already and no luck, they're quite old so I think it's time to look at swapping them out.
For a bit of background to get some more detailed help, I currently own Sony 1000XM5 for Media (not sure if these would be any good for gaming?) and also own a Blue Yeti which I used before these headphones, so a headset isn't necessary, though perhaps a bit more welcome for more desk space.
Before the Astro A50s, I use to own Audio Technica ATH-AD700 which were great and super comfy and looking for something similar where comfort is also a priority. I know this is counter intuitive to ask as flair is Open Back, but is there any hybrid of an open/closed style headphone? A slight concern is noise inside the house breaking immersion or focus when playing games like Tarkov, Valorant etc and people working from home in the same room as gaming setup.

Hey Reddit community,
We’ve got some exciting updates at Go X, and we’re eager to hear your thoughts! 🚀

Expanding Our Scooter Service to Las Vegas

We're thrilled to announce that Go X is expanding to Las Vegas this year! Have you used our scooters before, or are you excited to give them a try? We’d love to hear your thoughts on our expansion and how we can make your scooter experience even better.
We've been playing with some new designs and would love your feedback on them:
New Go X scooter Designs
Various Design Prototypes
New Floral Design

Launching Go X e-Bikes 🚴‍♀️

We're excited to introduce our new line of e-Bikes! Designed for commuting and leisure, these e-Bikes feature a powerful 500w motor, removable battery, and manual throttle for an instant boost. They’re perfect for those looking to enjoy a smooth ride while reducing their carbon footprint. Have you ridden an e-Bike before? What features do you think are essential for a great e-Bike experience?

Introducing the Go X Dragon Car 🚗

Meet the Dragon, our new electric vehicle designed for short urban trips. With speeds up to 75 mph and a range of over 120 miles per charge, the Dragon is efficient and sustainable. Currently available in Daytona Beach and Hawaii in limited quantities, we plan to expand to over 450 locations by the end of 2024. We’re testing different pricing models and exploring long-term rental options. What are your thoughts on electric vehicles for short trips? What features or pricing models would make you consider using the Dragon
The Dragon
Dragons at Go X Partner Location in Waikiki
Dragon in the \"wild\"

We Value Your Feedback!

Your input is crucial as we continue to improve and expand our services. Please share your experiences, suggestions, and thoughts on:

• Our scooter service and LV expansion.
• The new e-Bikes.
• The Dragon electric vehicle and its features.

Thank you for being a part of the Go X community! We can’t wait to hear from you and make our services even better.
Mahalo Nui Loa, The Go X Team