Has anyone here managed to read a PDF file and convert it into text within an edge function ?
This is trivial with Python or node js but I can't get a solution working with Deno.. So I'm probably most likely just being stupid..
I've been banging my head against the wall for the last five hours trying to get something to work. None of my googling or searching or chatGipity has turned up a working solution. I found someone on stack overflow with a similar question but the answer to that didn't work. I don't need anything fancy I just need a dump of all the text. 🙏 help

Chapter 26 - The Infinite Beckons
Previous Chapter
“Okay, this part’s a little tricky.” Ma’et gestured out the shuttle’s cockpit. “You got lined up easy enough, and our velocity’s at a relative zero to the ship. The bay door’s open. Now you engage the lateral thrusters while monitoring the distance from the shuttle to the bay’s interior wall. Come in too fast and you’ll damage them both..”
Trix looked over at the controls, and the neatly gummed labels that the humans had placed over the English text with her own language. She gingerly pressed the ‘Lateral Thruster’ button, then as the control knob next to it lit up, she twisted it slowly.
An earlier misadventure when lining up the ship and the shuttle where she’d twisted the control knob much more rapidly made her much more cautious about giving it too much power too quickly, yet the shuttle slowly drifted - away from the ship. “Other thruster, feathers.”
Chagrined, she dialed the thruster back to zero, then rotated it the other direction. The ship immediately stopped moving away, and instead drifted into the hangar bay. Trix watched as it drifted past the door, staring at the distance readout until it dropped into the yellow and immediately swung the knob the other way. It took a couple of tries to get the velocity back to zero, but she managed it.
“Beautiful. Now we engage the grav plating which lets the ship’s internal grav pull us down as it ramps up, and close the external door via the console over there.” Ma’et gestured to the remote console, and Trix scanned it, punching the buttons as she found them.
“Nicely done. Go ahead and hit the engine shutdown. In the old days there’d be like, thirty steps to it but nearly all of it is automated. But lucky you, you get to read all about the manual sequence since taking over in the event of computer failure is one of a pilot’s duties.” Ma’et chuckled and squeezed Trix’s shoulder. “For now, that’s good enough. Go ahead and open both the lateral boarding door, and the rear loading door. Also extend the rear loading ramp.”
Trix did, then glanced over at Ma’et. “Anything more?”
“Nope. First day on the job, and you’ve done the first job successfully. Not perfectly, but pretty damn good for your first time piloting off planet. Go ahead and head back to talk with the Captain, and I’ll handle the rest.”
Trix unbuckled the acceleration harness (Though, she felt zero acceleration during the entire trip so she couldn’t fathom just WHY Ma’et had insisted on her buckling in) and moved past the much smaller woman as she left the cockpit.
In the back, Josh was already outside the ship, grabbing a handtruck. She watched as he pushed it up the loading ramp to the stack of boxes that contained the food and equipment she’d need for the next few weeks of existence here in space. “Why aren’t you using one of the gravity belts?” She gestured over to the wall where the belts were hanging.
“Eh, this stuff’s fairly light and those have a limited lifespan. I don’t want to burn out the Keplite cores on stuff we can just move by hand. They’re expensive.”
“Oh. What’s Keplite, anyway? Ji and Min have mentioned it a few times.” Trix glanced over at the large belts with their big circular pads in the middle.
Before Josh could answer, Alex walked in between them. “Ji, Min! We’re going to be converting the room across from yours back into crew quarters for Trix. Gonna need you two to move the Spider. Is there room here in the hangar for it?”
“It’ll fit better if we assemble it and use packing mode.” Ji countered, as he hopped out of the shuttle. “It’ll take a day or so. We’ve got it spread all out in there.”
Alex turned over to Trix and beckoned. “Follow me. Gonna give you the full tour while they’re unloading." He took a few steps back, then lifted his arms wide to gesture to their surroundings. "This is obviously the hangar bay. Shuttle's the big thing you were just flying. Below us is a small cargo hold, empty right now. Not gonna show you unless you happen to like large empty boring-ass boxes.” He raised an eyebrow, and Trix quickly shook her head. "Alright. Most of the shit in here is just maintenance tools and loading gear. Nothing exciting. Ramp to main transit corridor here."
They walked out into the hallway. “Okay, well through that door’s opposite the hangar is the fabber bay. The fabber is a huge machine that manufactures stuff for us, like a 3D printer. Do you guys have anything like that?” Trix shrugged, and Alex continued. “Well either way, it can make virtually anything from a bed to a bomb to a computer. The more complex and difficult items take a hell of a lot longer to make. It’s also a major power hog since the manufacturing process uses extremely powerful fields, both magnetic and force. In other words, if you need something and we didn’t bring it with you we can make it here.”
He walked down the hall a bit, and gestured to the doors on either side. “Launcher bays, 1 and 2. Normally we use ‘em to launch beacons, buoys, sensors, things like that into space. If someone tries to start shit with us we CAN use them to launch missiles but we have very few of those available. We’re not out here to get in fights, but if we have to defend ourselves we pack a big punch.” He opened one of the doors and walked inside. “The big hatch over there is the manual tube loader. The ship can auto-load various things but if we need to put something into space that isn’t already in storage, that’s where we do it. If Ji tells you to climb in yourself, he’s joking and you should hit him because it only exists to launch shit into space.”
Trix laughed at that, but she had learned enough of Ji’s sense of humor while working on the car to understand the sentiment. “Will I even be in here at all though?”
“Maybe. If something needs to be manually loaded, we use these. Back when we were at the derelict ship I had to send a battery over to help out while we planned our rescue. You might be asked to do the same.” Alex shrugged and lead her out into the hall. “Last thing here is the ship’s primary armament.” He reached over to the side of the hallway and pressed a hatch release. The compartment it lead to was incredibly small and tightly cramped.
“We don’t use it much outside of scaring off pirates or relieving stress, but this is our primary weapon out in space. Eight-chamber five meter long rotary railgun. Fires one round every 1.2 seconds that travel roughly a million kilometers per hour when fired stationary, or closer to 280 kilometers per second. It fires either solid armor-piercing unguided slugs or flak munitions that are used to produce clouds of metallic debris. The former will shred a ship’s armor and pulverize anything inside. The latter can overwhelm particle shields and damage exterior components without nearly as much penetration. The reason I’m saying all this to you,” He tapped the top of the cannon where it joined to the ship. “This thing’s got a super limited firing arc. Meaning that we can only shoot what we’re pointed at. If, by some miracle, we get into a fight out there then our ability to shoot back is gonna depend on your ability to fly the ship while facing the enemy.”
Trix swallowed heavily as she tried to imagine just how powerful this massive cannon was. She glanced over at the side of it, to the twin belts that fed in ammo. Each round it would fire was longer than her forearm and thicker than her waist.
“That’s the worst case scenario though. In reality, if we get into any shit out there, fighting is the LAST thing we want to do. Negotiation to avoid hostility first, escape second, fight last.” Alex shooed her out of the compartment. “That said if we encounter any low-yield junk out there then we’ll get some target practice in. If you’re game then we can let you try targeting for a bit and unload some kinetic mayhem while things are dull.” He grinned wickedly, as he manually pulled the hatch back into place, sliding two large locking levers into place.
“Okay, that’s it for this deck. There’s stairs on the far side leading up to the tech deck but the ladder here’s quicker.”
They climbed up the ladder, with Alex leading and Trix following. Her wings banged against the ceiling as she climbed, and it took her a few moments to get them tucked in tight enough to get through the hatch but with Alex’s help they got up there.
“Tech deck. Mostly. In the front of the ship here right under Bridge access is the exception, the pool room.” He opened the door and they walked in together. “Mainly used for observation but the pool there is great for relaxation. You can adjust the temperature with the controls on the wall there, goes from chilly to full on hot tub. Adjustable depth from 3 to 10 feet, and the pool walls are display panels. If you use a breather it’s fun to turn the display to external then go down underwater and relax while staring at the stars. Do you swim much?”
Trix nodded. “Sure, there’s a river a… couple kilometers? I think? I’m not good with converting distances yet. Anyway, it’s near the hab and we’d go there when I was younger and didn’t have as much to do in the fields.”
“Cool. Well, feel free to use it but just a word of warning you might want to check if anyone’s in first. Swimwear is optional and since the crew is a pretty tight family we don’t usually get embarrassed if we’re seen swimming in the buff.” Alex waved over at the control console. “If you’re not sure the big green button on the outside is the comm button, just ask if anyone’s using it.”
“Ji brought me in here when we came up to do the medical scans. He showed me Kiveyt from orbit for the first time. Do all human ships have a room like this?” Trix reached over to dip her hand into the water. It was quite warm to the touch.
“Nah. This ship wasn’t originally designed as a scout ship or survey ship. It was originally a yacht. Big luxury vehicle for rich people to fly around in space and have fun in. Throw parties. Most of the ridiculous amenities it has I got rid of ages ago, but that left a huge amount of space we filled up with all the launchers and sensors and whatnot. I kept the pool though because I love soaking after a long day.” He pressed the door control and they left the pool room.
“Just past the pool room on either side of the ship we have collection dishes for D-space particles. Those are EVA only, so you won’t be dealing with those. They let us collect extremely powerful particles which lead back here.” Alex spoke as he walked, and turned the corner into a much, much larger room.
“This is the ship’s main power supply. Charged particles enter the torus reactor and discharge energy which is converted into electrical power and routed through the ship. Those bottles over there…” He gestured to four massive grey metal canisters on the wall. “Contain the actual particles. They’re made of the strongest materials we have because if one ruptured, the ship would instantly explode from the inside out. Don’t worry,” Alex quickly raised his hands. “The chances of that happening are virtually impossible. This is the single most well-protected location on the ship.”
He gestured to the other side of the large room. “Over there’s the terminals that Min is usually at. She and Ji are in charge of all engineering. That means power, propulsion, all computer systems, and the like. Well, the physical parts of them that is. Ma’et is our computer geek when it comes to integration, programming, and all the fun software shit.”
Alex left the room, and gestured to the other side. “I’m sure you’re familiar with medical over there. Let’s do us both a favor and not have to go there much. Otherwise I’m pretty sure Kyshe will gut me.” He didn’t stop to show her inside, and they reached the main staircase. “The back half of the ship on this deck is all propulsion access and maintenance. I’m more or less our damage control guy, along with Ji and Min. For them it’s because they’re smart as shit and for me it’s because I had to learn how to maintain my own ship. Most common damage out here is stray micro meteors or debris while we’re parked and the particle shields are down. Sometimes worn out components inside. Again, no EVA for you so the only thing you’ll need to worry about for DC is being an assistant to one of us while we fix shit.”
They went up the stairwell to the uppermost of the three floors. “There used to be an observation bubble above us, but I had it removed because it was useless. Even if I covered it with ablative plating it was a massive wart on top of the ship that served zero practical purpose. Anyway, the top floor here is where you’ll spend 90% of your time on the ship. Back here…” Alex started walking to the rear of the ship, and walked through a large open doorway. “Mess hall. We generally have two kinds of meals here - when we’re on long deployment, the food extruder over there can produce rations. They’re not amazing but they’re quick both to make and eat. It’ll also make reasonable meat and dairy substitutes. If you want a real meal though we usually keep the good stuff in deep freeze so it takes a fair amount of time to be ready. Other than that the bev dispenser is over there. Water and various juices on tap all the time, alcohol is restricted only to meals only. We all get together for breakfast and dinner though, since it’s just a good way to socialize. Tonight expect a big meal in celebration.”
He walked out of the mess, and opened a door to a large open area. “Rec room. Not used a whole lot because most of us use haptic suits for exercise and recreation but we don’t have a suit that’ll fit you or your wings, so I want you to be in here twice a week at least. Ma’et is a great partner for any exercise that doesn’t involve fighting, unless you like bruises in which case she’ll happily go a few rounds with gloves on. Pilots don’t get the level of exercise you’re used to on the planet working fields so exercise up here will be pretty damn vital.”
She looked around the room, then hurried to catch up to the captain as he walked out. “On the other side of the hall from the Mess is general storage. Cleaning supplies, a small laundry unit if the one in your room quits working, random odds and ends. Also a few extra bunks just in case we need them. Unfortunately I am going to have to have you spend one night in here while we get your room cleaned up and ready for you.” He walked in, and over to one of the walls. “Bunk folds down from here. Looks, uh…” He glanced at the fold-down bed and back at Trix. “Looks tight. Do me a favor and see if you’re gonna be OK there?”
It was very close, but Trix laid down on the sleeping pad and adjusted until she found a good comfortable spot. “For just one night, this will do…”
“Alright, no worries then. We’ll have your room ready quick as we can.” She got off the pad and Alex gestured for her to follow. “Quarters themselves are here, 4 on either side of the main hallway. Myself, Josh, Ma’et, and Amanda on the right in that order. Ji, Min, Your quarters, and the last was converted into a mechanical room for Par. Speaking of…”
He walked into the last room and knocked on a large hatch. “Par, would it be alright if I introduced our newest shipmate?”
“Of course, Captain.” The hatch slid silently open revealing a large, intricate array. Circuit boards were laid out in rows and wires ran between them in perfectly neat, ordered channels. In the center of it all was a large oblong egg-looking object. “Trix, may I present to you Parathanelias Sigma-822.”
Several rows of lights lit up along the side of the egg, and the pleasant musical voice she’d heard so often came from a small speaker alongside it. “It is a pleasure to meet you in person, Trksehnoarala.”
Trix stared at the open hatch then gestured behind her. “I thought you were in those floating metal balls…?”
“The spheres you mention are my remotes. None of them are large enough to house my primary systems. In a way, they are my eyes, ears, and limbs. My true nature is integration here within the ship itself, and I make up for my limited mobility in person by having the greatest mobility of any other member of the crew.”
“He also has an avatar in VR of an organic human, but most of the time he uses the floating spheres to interact with us and the rest of the world. His core,” Alex gestured to the egg-like central object, “houses his base personality and his most important memories. The rest of this is extra storage for less critical information. I’m a bit jealous because his most important memories will always be preserved forever in perfect clarity. The rest of us get to have our memories fade with time, but his will be eternal.”
Alex stood there mutely for a moment then shook his head. “Anyway. Back to the tour. Thanks Par!”
“My pleasure.” The hatch slid silently shut and Alex and Trix left the room. “This room has been empty for long enough I pretty much gave it over to Ji and Min for a long while.” Alex walked into the room next to Par’s. “It’s kind of a mess but we’re going to get it cleaned up then it’ll be yours.”
There was no bed in the room, and the tables against the walls were covered with electronics and quickboards. In the center of the room, a huge metal contraption was spread out. Eight large jointed legs were wired in to a big central circular turret. Above that, a multitude of ‘limbs’ extended out - one a large grasper with clawed metal fingers, another ending with an odd cone-shaped implement with a blackened tip. A third was a huge metal pipe jutting out, and a fourth looked to be a number of small openings to place something into.
Trix gestured to it, “What is THAT thing?”
“That’s the Spider. It’s a long-time project the Twins have been working on. Pretty much since they joined the crew, really. It was meant to be a mechanical walker for the military but… well, that’s their story to tell.” Alex snorted. “There’s going to be enough time to go into the details later. Point is, before we even start leaving the system we’re gonna move this out, get a full king sized bed in here for you, some more storage, and so on. That door,” He gestured to a door on the other side of the room, “Leads to a hygiene unit. Full on shower, no bath but if you want to soak the Pool’s down a floor. Aside from no tub it has a deluxe toilet, sink, and a small cleaning unit for clothes.”
Trix cautiously stepped around the large disassembled robot, and opened the door to peer inside. The hygiene unit was much larger than she’d expected, and she was grateful to see that most of the facilities was familiar to her.
“Okay, one last stop and it’s the most important.” Alex walked out into the hallway and Trix rushed to catch up, almost tripping as she hopped over a piece of scrap cable along the floor. “I’m sure this will become your second home on the ship real fast. The bridge.”
They walked down the hall through a small access corridor into a large, wide open space. A large chair sat in the center with a number of controls and articulating arms present on the back. In front of it, a number of control panels were arranged in rows. The front of the bridge and both sides were dominated by massive window screens that showed the area the ship was currently facing. She could see one screen to the side with a display showing Kiveyt, first as a small dot with a zoomed-in and blown up image next to it.
“The door back there in the corner leads to a briefing room, nothing special there but a table and chairs. The big chair in the middle is mine, but if you ask super nicely I’ll let you sit in it.” Alex grinned, and pointed at the console in the very center of the bridge, in front of the Captain’s chair. “But that station over there is primary navigation. Josh is there quite a lot of the time, though just as often I navigate from the Captain’s Chair or Ma’et controls the ship from her neural interface. As of now, though, I bequeath ownership of it unto you - for the next few weeks, at least.”
Trix walked around the bridge staring at everything. The control consoles were smooth, rounded and sleek in their presentation. Each one had a large keyboard in front covered with the strange runes of the Humans’ language. Various other instruments and implements were present at each station, but at hers she smiled gratefully to see that the keys had already changed and had more familiar and recognizable letters in place of the Humans odd script. The layout was definitely weird, and she knew it was going to take time and effort to grow accustomed but at the very least she would be able to understand what she was doing as she learned. Even better, the seat lacked the same high back that the other seats had, which would have been pressed tightly and uncomfortably against her wings.
She glanced back at Alex, who just nodded at her. Encouraged, she took a seat and glanced around. “This is mine.” She whispered it and then let her wings spread out with pleasure as she realized that from here, from this station, she would be the one personally controlling the entire massive vehicle behind her. It lacked the flight stick of the shuttle or the handle controls of her aircar, and in a way she felt disappointed she wouldn’t be able to manually control the ship the same way she could the smaller vehicles. But as she looked around her and rested her hands on the cool surface of the console, she felt something else. A thrill of anticipation at the thought of being the one in control of this massive ship and everyone inside of it.
Alex climbed several steps up to the captain’s chair on its elevated dais, and took a seat directly behind her. The sight of a winged alien in front of him at the nav console with the stars stretching out above and beyond her was a strange one, but a pleasant one. He tried to think of a witty quip to finish the tour with, but failing that he settled for a much simpler one instead.
“Welcome aboard, Pilot.”
—--
“Okay, before we get started, I believe that this is a special occasion warranting a toast.” Alex sat at the head of the large table at the mess, with the other six organic members of the crew assembled further down. “To our new pilot trainee!”
“Here Here!” “To Trix!” “To our Trainee!”
Alex took a sip of his whisky, and sighed in pleasure. “God that hits the spot. Okay everyone, dig in.”
The dinner was an odd affair, mostly because every single member was wearing their visor. Trix could not speak English, and the crew couldn’t speak her native tongue. Masks which would automatically translate couldn’t be worn during a meal so the solution was to have real-time speech to text appearing on everyone’s visor. Trix, who never had worn a visor before, had a difficult time getting the display to appear just right in front of her eyes but she and Par had gotten it dialed in.
Trix glanced at the array of food in front of her. Some items looked familiar, others completely foreign, and none of it smelled quite right. She gestured to the food. “None of this is from Kiveyt. Is it safe for me to eat it?”
“I went through our entire comestible database while we were on the planet. Surprisingly there’s almost no Terran food you can’t eat.” Josh had a massive burrito nearly as long as Ma’et’s arm on the plate in front of him, and he spoke while dabbing hot sauce over it. “All of our Macronutrients are completely interchangeable. Most Micronutrients are as well. There’s a few exotic vitamins and amino acids that you need that we can’t provide, but we have supplements from the planet that’ll handle those.”
“Oh.” Trix glanced around at the table, trying to decide what to eat. The spread was, per Alex’s suggestion, extremely large and quite diverse. “I’m not sure where to start then.”
Min picked up a large platter with a circular dish on it. “Far as I’m concerned the best place to start is with Pizza. It’s one of the most widely loved foods throughout Terran space.” She dumped a slice onto the plate in front of Trix, while Ji slid a very tall glass of water over to her, alongside an odd reddish looking beverage.
“Give the fruit punch a try too. It’s much more sweet than the juice you were serving down on the planet. A lot more mild too.” He suggested, and gestured to another plate. “Also? Tacos are never a bad choice.”
Trix reached out and picked up one of the odd, semi-circular items. Ji grabbed one as well, and bit into it with gusto. Trix mimicked the motion, crunching into the hard shell. It was quite interesting, tasteless at first as she bit into the shell and the lettuce, but then the spiced meat hit her tongue. It was quite mild but not unpleasant. She chewed on it and gulped down a mouthful. “Not bad.” She took another bite.
The taco vanished quickly, and she glanced down at the slice of Pizza next. “Like this, Trix.” Min gestured to pick it up by the crust, putting her fingers in front of it to prevent it from flopping down. Trix followed Min’s example, and took a huge bite. This one was even milder, almost disappointingly so. “Not much flavor to this one. Is all your food really light like this?”
The humans glanced around at that. “Y’know, Sophie mentioned our rations were tasteless. They have a pretty strong cinnamon taste to ‘em.” Alex sat back thoughtfully as he nursed the glass of whisky in his hand. “The food we had down on the planet was all pretty strong flavors…”
Josh handed the bottle of hot sauce in his hand over to Trix. “Try a dab of this. It adds a kick to some foods.”
Trix took the bottle, and put a few drops of it on the slice of pizza in front of her. She took another bite, and her eyes lit up. The next few bites all had more hot sauce each, and the crust itself ended up practically drenched in it. “Thanks, Josh. That was delicious.”
The rest of the crew was staring at her and she shrunk back slightly at their intense scrutiny. Had she done something wrong? She hadn’t ever offended them during any meals back on the planet, so the sudden shift in attention was jarring and quite uncomfortable.
Ji whistled at the sight of the alien hungrily wofling down the slice of pizza covered in bright spicy sauce. “Here, try some of that on a taco next!” He picked up another shell and offered it to her.
Trix reached out and took the taco, this time pouring a hefty amount of sauce on it. Eating this one was much messier, and she could feel the hot sauce dribbling down the side of her mouth as she took a huge bite. Min handed her a paper towel, and she embarrassedly wiped away the errant food. “Thanks, Min. That was great too, Ji.”
“Hold up.” Alex stood up and walked over to one of the cupboards, pulling out another bottle of sauce. “I’m curious now. This is a lot hotter than the sauce you’ve been trying thus far. See if it’s to your liking. Just, start with a very small amount. A little goes a LONG way.” He walked back to the table, placing the bottle next to Trix. She studied it briefly, mostly the logo - a caricature of a human whose head appeared to be on fire.
“Um, Okay. Should I try it with the Pizza or the Taco?” She glanced between the two dishes she’d already tried. “Either one. Whichever you prefer.” was Alex’s reply.
Trix reached out and grabbed a third Taco, opening up the bottle. Immediately she could smell the fragrant sauce within, and she carefully poured a small amount into the shell. She cautiously took a bite and chewed thoughtfully.
“Too hot?” Alex suggested, but she shook her head. “No. Just…” She poured more sauce on the taco, and ate the rest in only a few bites. “Whew. Sorry, Captain Alexander. That was incredible! I’ve never tasted anything like it before.”
“Captain Alexander just sounds weird. Call me Alex or Al. Or ‘Captain’ if you really, really need to use my rank for whatever reason.” Alex sat down, and chuckled. “But that’s interesting. Very, very interesting. That sauce there?” He gestured towards the bottle. “It’s made with a chemical called ‘Capsaicin’. To humans it’s a powerful spice. Too much of it causes a painful burning sensation that lingers. We normally dilute it to make it more palatable and less painful.”
Trix glanced at the bottle. “I guess that explains the fire on the little picture here.” She grabbed another slice of the pizza, and drizzled the sauce on top.
“Three tacos and two slices of pizza?” Ma’et was impressed as she saw how much food the Avian was packing away.
“The disadvantage of those muscular bodies.” Josh waved his hand towards Trix. “They require all the calories that a Human does and more. Back on the planet I learned their species used to be a lot smaller, but after developing animal husbandry and reliable sources of higher calorie foods they bulked up pretty quick.”
Trix, for her part, slicked off the second slice of pizza with gusto. She grabbed a fourth taco, and liberally poured the spicy sauce all over, before wolfing that down as well. She grabbed the fruit juice that Ji had offered her… the ‘punch’? And downed it almost as quickly.
“I hope after all this is over, we can buy some more of that sauce. I definitely want the others back at home to try it.” She licked her lips, and sighed with contentment. “This juice too. I like how sweet it is.”
“Birds are immune to Capsaicin.” Josh murmured softly, but it was picked up by the visor and translated perfectly. “I wonder what the chances are that space-birds would be too?”
—--
“Slide the jack under that joint there.” Trix did as instructed, wheeling the small hydraulic device under the ‘spider’s’ massive leg. “Great. Just gotta line up the leg with where the servos join in…” Ji and Min lifted the leg and immediately began connecting up cables and lines. After all the connections were made, Ji braced himself against the wall and shoved - hard - against the leg, firmly connecting the mechanical rotary joint into place.
“Okay, testing.” Min walked over to the console and began punching in codes. Like the other six limbs before it, this one shook slightly then began to flex, twist, and move around. “Range of motion is nominal. Motors are all showing peak. Locking joints and anchor bolt systems are green.”
Ji wiped off some sweat from his forehead, and leaned back against the wall. “I knew it was a mistake to work on it up here. At least if we put it in the hangar we could have lowered the gravity.”
“It would have been in the way during the rescue op, and we had enough shit going on then we didn’t need to add ‘reassemble a multi-ton walking modular platform’ to the list.” Min gestured with her head, not even glancing over at her brother. “Man up. Trix hasn’t even broken a sweat.”
“I don’t sweat.” Trix mumbled, as she stared at the massive machine. “This thing is crazy. Puts my car to shame.”
“Yeah, our pride and joy. Together we’ve spent decades refining it.” Min glanced over at Trix with a broad smile. “The modular bay on top has been my focus, while Ji’s been adjusting and perfecting the leg and motion systems.”
“What’s it for?”
“Well, right now it’s kind of in between intended uses.” Ji walked over to a large shelf and gestured to the assorted objects there. “With our original plans it was going to have a bunch of swappable options. Right now, it has short and long range assault armaments and a plasma cutter for breaching sealed doors. A basic military drone capable of adapting to all kinds of situations.”
Trix stared at the array of weapons in front of her. “So this is what the human military uses to fight with?”
“Nah.” Min set down the quickboard and walked over to the huge machine. “We envisioned it as a multi-purpose response unit. Capable of dropping in from outside the atmosphere an landing anywhere, going anywhere. Dealing with any situation that could possibly arise. It’s an all-terrain support mech and its modular nature would have made it able to respond to nearly any situation. And it was rejected by the military.”
“What? Why?”
Ji held up a hand and ticked off his fingers. “One, it’s more expensive to drop one of these than a squad of soldiers. Nevermind the fact that it can do 10 people’s worth of work without putting even a single person in danger. Two, it’s too big to be fired out of normal launchers. Adding new launchers to ships would have been a significant amount of work and cost that the navy wasn’t willing to foot the bill. Three, we didn’t have any money after developing it. Meaning we couldn’t bribe anyone in the government into pressuring the military to work with us.”
“Four, they already have hover tanks and artillery and we couldn’t convince them that our system was superior to those.” Min sighed, and threw herself into a chair.
“Hovering is cheating though.” Ji glared at his sister.
“Cheating? What?” Trix just looked bewildered at this.
“Hovering isn’t all-terrain. Hovering is NO terrain.”
“Oh.” Trix took a seat in a nearby chair herself. “So did the captain buy this then?”
“Nope. See, we were finishing up Uni and started developing the Spider, but we didn’t really have the money to actually MAKE one. We had all the plans and all the research on our side but not the raw materials or the money to get those raw materials.” Ji pulled out a stick of gum and popped it in his mouth. “At first we tried going straight to the military which was a huge mistake, they just made a million excuses and told us to get lost. Then we tried approaching some weapon dev companies for funding. They basically told us they’d fund it in exchange for all the rights to production and we’d get whatever they felt was fair. Which when we pressed on a figure, wasn’t much.”
Trix glanced over at the massive mech. “But it got made, obviously.”
“Yup. When we weren’t sure what to do, a buddy of ours mentioned that Al was looking for an engineering team. We can do starship engineering.” Min grabbed the quickboard and extended one of the spider’s legs towards her, so she could kick her feet up on it. “Matter of fact, this ship’s a thing of beauty. Al is a complete doofus but he takes fantastic care of the ship. When we came on we gave him a list of everything that should change. He sat down with us, went over it point by point, and even though it ended up costing over half a million credits he gave us full authorization to make every single change we suggested.”
“So after we did a stint working as engineers we joined up as crew.” Ji had an odd smile on his face. “Since then, we’ve put the money we made from working here towards building this thing. We actually had it completed but then I had this idea of using an array of microservo actuators instead of a larger servo to give us a lot more fine control over the joints. That didn’t work, like, at all but when we used a combination of them we managed to find just the right ratio that gives us twice the amount of precision in each joint, which lets us use the-”
“ANYWAY.” Min interrupted her Brother before he could get too deep into the weeds. “We had it built, with the original armaments we envisioned, but Al suggested making a module for mining and sampling. We brought it in here in order to disassemble it to make the servo adjustments and while we were at it we were going to be replacing the actual weapons with a mining beam, core sample collector, and an array of sensors. Now though we’re going to put it in storage for a while. We got much more important things to take care of now.”
“Oh.” Trix had begun to tune Ji out when he launched into his diatribe. “But what do you mean joined up as crew? You were already crew, weren’t you?”
Min swung her foot down, and gestured to the ship. “It’s different. There’s employees… and then there’s crew. Right now you’re an employee. You’re working with us, you’re out here, but your home’s back with your Teff. Right?”
Trix nodded.
“Well, when you’re crew… this is your home. We’re all family out here. I don’t know as much about the whole Teff thing but I think it’s sort of similar. This ship’s our home, the crew is our family. Alex may be a childish idiot but he’s loyal to his crew like nothing else.” Min stood up and walked over to put her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “When we worked here and started to see how well he treats his people, we felt like we could really belong here. He asked if we’d like to join up, so we did. Best decision we ever made.”
“Yup. He treats the crew as well as he treats the ship.” Ji gestured around him. “Working for him paid well. Working as crew, we don’t get paid regularly but we get a cut out of every mission and that cut is HUGE. That’s how we could afford to actually build the spider in the first place.”
“Ah. So if he invited me along, does that mean he wants me to join the crew too?” Trix wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Joining another family was commonplace for males who left their Teff to join others, but incredibly rare for females.
“Dunno. He’s hired on specialists in the past who’ve come and gone. And he’s invited people to join up who said no and that was that.” Ji shrugged and pressed the release on the hydraulic press, letting it collapse down. “C’mon, we should get the last leg attached. Then we can pack it up and use a grav collar to move it down to the hangar. Don’t want to make you stay in that cramped storage room again tonight.”
“Yeah, I tried to stretch my wings in the morning and I banged up against one of the shelves. Really not looking forward to that again.” Trix grumbled at the memory, and stood up. “Okay, what more do we need done to get this over with?”
—--

Seventy years ago, on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. That landmark decision declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
Brown v. Board was a turning point in American history.
It established that the U.S. government would, once and for all, use the Fourteenth Amendment to protect American citizens from discriminatory legislation written by state legislatures.
Added to the Constitution in 1868, in the wake of the Civil War, as southern state legislatures were writing laws that made Black Americans subservient to white Americans, the Fourteenth Amendment asserted that the federal government could, and must, stop such discrimination. It established that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” It gave Congress the power to enforce the amendment.
In the late nineteenth century, the Supreme Court nodded to racial segregation in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, getting around the Fourteenth Amendment by asserting that separate accommodations were fine, so long as they were “equal.” But in 1954 a unanimous court under Chief Justice Earl Warren, who had previously been the Republican governor of California, ruled that racial segregation established by state law in public schools denied to Black children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” it wrote.
Just two weeks before it decided Brown v. Board, the Supreme Court had decided Hernandez v. Texas, which established that not only Black Americans, but also Mexican Americans and all other nationality groups, were entitled to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Over the following decades, the Supreme Court used the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down state laws against interracial marriage and gay marriage, and to establish equal rights for women, including the right to abortion. It also ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, constitutional.
That new legal framework, embodied in Brown v. Board, both established the equal rights that were central to the modern era and sparked a backlash against them.
The federal requirement that states desegregate their public schools spurred southern state legislatures to pass laws and resolutions to block or postpone desegregation. In 1956, ninety-nine congressmen, led by South Carolina Democrat Strom Thurmond, wrote the “Declaration of Constitutional Principles,” quickly dubbed the Southern Manifesto, denouncing desegregation as unconstitutional.
Lawmakers also found ways to transfer tax dollars to private schools, which were not covered by the Supreme Court’s decision. Attendance at so-called segregation academies exploded. By 1958, more than 250,000 students had migrated to segregation academies, a number that jumped to a million by 1965.
Those opposed to racial equality made common cause with those businessmen determined to get rid of federal regulation of business. In 1955, William F. Buckley Jr., the son of an oilman, started National Review, a periodical that promised to stand against an active government that protected labor and regulated business. Buckley said he would tell the “violated businessman’s side of the story.”
In National Review, Buckley gave Virginia newspaper editor James Kilpatrick a platform to assure readers that desegregation challenged American values. Black Americans had no right to the equality declared unanimously by the Supreme Court, Kilpatrick wrote. Rather, the white community had an established right “to peace and tranquillity [sic]; the right to freedom from tumult and lawlessness.” Desegregation would lead to bloody violence, he promised, implying that Black Americans would rage and riot, although, in fact, it was the white community that was attacking Black Americans.
In 1964, Arizona senator Barry Goldwater brought these two themes to his presidential campaign. He stood firm on the idea that the federal government had no business either regulating business or protecting equality. In The Conscience of a Conservative, published under his name in 1960, Goldwater asserted that the federal government had no power over schools at all and certainly could not order them to desegregate.
Goldwater accepted the Republican presidential nomination in July 1964, less than a month after three civil rights workers registering Black Americans to vote had disappeared in Mississippi. Goldwater told his cheering supporters: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Strom Thurmond publicly announced that he would vote for Goldwater.
Goldwater lost in a landslide, but his loss fed the backlash against federal protection of equality, especially after Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act to expand Black and Brown voting, moving many of those voters into the Democrats’ camp. In 1968, Republican Richard Nixon courted Thurmond and white southerners with a promise to slow down desegregation and a defense of state’s rights. The so-called Southern Strategy moved the former Dixiecrats to the Republican Party.
Religious traditionalists, particularly those among the Southern Baptist Convention, also opposed the federal government’s support for equality, although they got less press in the early years of that expansion. In their view, the Bible laid out hierarchical social arrangements, especially patriarchy. Government defense of women’s equality was a direct assault on their worldview.
When he ran for the presidency in 1980, former California governor Ronald Reagan courted those religious traditionalists, and in 1985 his people made them a key part of the Republican coalition. Americans for Tax Reform brought together big business, evangelicals, and social conservatives under the leadership of Grover Norquist, who had been an economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Traditional Republican business groups can provide the resources,” Norquist explained, “but these groups can provide the votes.”
In the following decades, Republican leaders used racist and traditionalist dislike of equal rights to turn out voters who would let them put their economic policies—cuts to taxes and deregulation of business—into place. But those opposed to equal rights found themselves out of step with a majority of voters and unable to get their policies enshrined into law as courts continued to uphold equal rights for racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and women.
The backlash against the federal protection of equal rights based on the Fourteenth Amendment entered a new era with the election of Donald Trump. In contrast to his predecessors, Trump let the racist and sexist voter base of the party drive policy. White evangelicals, especially, found in Trump an answer to their frustration at being sidelined by the courts and a majority of American voters.
Despite his own lack of personal virtue, Trump was willing to smash through the laws and court decisions that had supported equality since the 1950s, offering to center the country on traditional religion and racial hierarchies in exchange for power. Under him, traditionalists saw the courts stacked with extremists who would prioritize their evangelical faith across society, including by ending the federal protection of abortion rights.
Their fight to return Trump to power is part of their fight to establish traditional religion, rather than the equality promised in the Fourteenth Amendment, as the nation’s fundamental law. As Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows wrote to Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, as they plotted to overturn the decision of voters in 2020 to reject Trump: “This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it.”
Today, almost exactly seventy years to the day after Brown v. Board ushered in a new era of equality and democracy in the United States, MAGA Republican lawmakers Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Michael Cloud (R-TX), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Bob Good (R-VA), Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), Ralph Norman (R-SC), and Andy Ogles (R-TN) traveled to Manhattan to stand with Trump at his criminal trial for falsifying business records to interfere in an election. The lawmakers made it clear that their determination to control the country has made them give up not only on the equality promised in the Declaration of Independence and defended by the Fourteenth Amendment, but also on democracy.
Echoing the promise of the right-wing Proud Boys to Trump before they stormed the U.S. Capitol to install Trump into office despite the will of the voters, Gaetz tweeted: “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President.”
—
Notes:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/163/537
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep347/usrep347483/usrep347483.pdf
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/475
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015046344738&seq=38
James Jackson Kilpatrick, “Right and Power in Arkansas,” National Review, September 28,
1957, pp. 273–275.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/archival-video-barry-goldwater-speaks-1964-republican-national-40578479
Jane Mayer, “Ways and Means Panel’s Tax-Overhaul Proposal Brings ‘Family’ Strife to Conservative Coalition,” Wall Street Journal, November 27, 1985, p. 52.
https://www.kcra.com/article/texts-between-ginni-thomas-and-mark-meadows/39531243
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/matt-gaetz-lauren-boebert-appear-trump-trial/story?id=110319095
Twitter (X):
acnewsitics/status/1791223441179238892
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-16-2024

Yesterday was the start of our 2024 camping season. Everything went well, we got to the campground, got the camper levelled, and took a break to use the camp restroom. On the way, we heard a loud crash or bang sort of noise, but didn't see anything obvious, even looking back towards the camper.
Well, yeah. Turns out, the wheel that was up on a leveling block did NOT like being on the "edge" of the block and so, the camper was able to turn a bit, the tongue jack slid off the stack of blocks it was on, and BANG. Thankfully no damage to the camper, but such fun to get everything reset.
First we had to break out the jack to get the tongue elevated some so we could put blocks back under it to get it high enough to get it back on the towball. Then we had to re-level the camper, this time playing it safe and using the chocks that click onto the lego-block leveling blocks we use. Then putting the chocks back around the opposite wheel.
 
So, lesson learned, either make sure the wheel on the block is DEAD center on the block, or take the time to set up the chocks with the leveling block as well as chocking the opposite wheel. And I think, if we hadn't had the opposite wheel chocked at the start? Things might've been much, much worse (at least we use a flat pad on the tongue jack, rather than a jockey wheel, though.)

In the vast countryside, away from the busy city of Savannah, exist hills as tall as buildings and green as emeralds. There was also an aura of calmness, with a few birds twittering away in dispersed trees, followed by the gentle swaying of the wind.
Then, out of nowhere, came a small, lonely girl wearing a once-lily-white summer dress with a striped long-sleeved t-shirt underneath it. She was also wearing a dark blue and cream-white baseball hat with the letter D on the front of it. She was moving wearily, with a pistol in one hand, and wiping her damp eyes with the other.
She knew what happened to make her weep. According to her, it was her fault that she got him killed; she was convinced by a towering man who said he knew her parents. But that was a brainless, childish lie that got Lee killed. She shouldn’t have run off. At least, Lee taught her how to use a gun and what to expect in the future before his tragic passing. But now she was all on her own.
Eventually, she came to a log, which was next to the rusted shell of a car. Anyway, she proceeded to sit down on it. Throughout all of this, she was as quiet as a mouse, only looking at her feet and wiping her blood-red eyes. She noticed that on the floor next to the log was a mixture of bullets—some shell casings and some unfired ones. Out of curiosity, she picked it up and examined it before exhaling deeply, which is when she noticed something else. Something she could just about make out if she scrutinised her eyes—something on the nearest hill—looked like two figures. One followed the other, and they looked like they stopped to look at her, making her start to hyperventilate as her eyes extended to the size of oranges. Was it someone she knew? Was it a threat to her? She didn’t know.
"Lee said I needed to find Omid and Christa before he got killed because of me." She said to herself, still looking sad, as she noticed that the two figures were now coming down the prominent hill—they didn't look like walkers. So she clasped her gun tightly until the figures came into view. She ended up not firing the gun and running towards the figures, as it was Omid and Christa, and they were alive!
Omid was a tall, slim Persian-American man with short dark-brown hair and a beard to match.
Christa, on the other hand, was a slightly taller African-American lady. She also had jet-black hair tied up in a ponytail, and she was Omid’s girlfriend.
"Clementine, honey, where's Lee?" Christa asked, kneeling to the nine-year-old.
"H-h-he's...dead." She answered with her face buried in Christa’s shoulder.
"Oh, Clementine, we’re sorry," Omid said, who started to kneel to her height as well.
"W-where's Ben and Kenny?" Clementine asked, still with her face buried in Christa’s shoulder.
Omid and Christa then looked at each other without Clementine noticing, and it was Omid who told her what happened to Ben and Kenny.
"So, it’s just us three," Clementine responded, now looking at Omid and Christa with her eyes dry again, a short while later.
"I guess, Clem, I guess so." Christa replied, "Come on, let’s go somewhere safe."
With this, the trio (Clementine, Omid, and Christa) began to walk, with Clementine tagging behind while Omid and Christa were in front. They were busily talking away, apart from Clementine, who was still looking at her feet, along holding the gun in her hand. As a result of this, she wasn't engaged in the conversation that they were having. She was too melancholy about what happened today. With her being kidnapped, seeing her walker parents, Lee dying, and now Kenny and Ben dying as well.
It was a lot for her to take in.
* * * * *
Sometime later, the trio found an abandoned house that had been abandoned for decades, as thick ivy hugged the walls. Furthermore, it reminded Clementine of that house they stayed at in Savannah; it was hard to believe that was a month ago.
Anyway, they succeeded in getting into the house rather than struggling, so now they could search within it.
Clementine, honey," Christa said, kneeling to her. "Omid, and I believe you can search parts of this house on your own. Just remember, if someone, walker or not, tries to hurt you, you got your gun. If you run out of bullets or are in a tight place, call us, and we will help you if you get into trouble. Do you understand?"
“Yeah, I do, Christa; I will be careful."
“Good," replied Christa, "let me know if you find anything."
With this, Clementine strayed a little by searching for anything useful on her own, though she stayed close to Omid and Christa.
As usual in the kitchen, she found faded, rusted cans with nothing but spoiled food inside. So she decided to head upstairs, and it seemed like they creaked with every step; as Omid and Christa were searching the enormous living room. Once she was upstairs, she clasped her pistol tightly and opened the door with one of her hands and the other on the pistol. Nothing. The room was that of a bathroom, with its normal interior—a bath, sink, toothbrushes, and some cupboards—which was stripped of life.
So she closed the door, walked to the next door, and proceeded to open it in the same manner she did for the bathroom. This room was that of a child’s room, which made Clementine remember her room back in Georgia, with its toys and books. It felt like she was just coming home from school and wanted to play with her dolls until supper time; it was hard to believe that was a year ago. Yet, here she was searching for anything useful in terms of survival—and not searching for a certain toy she wanted to play with at present.
“Just as well Lee found me when he did.” She said to herself as she glanced over at the room, trying to remember simpler times. When she went to school, she watched cartoons all day and rode her bike in the park with her parents. When she was thinking about this, she noticed that there was a medium-sized lump near the wall, cloaked in dust. It was a doll, and there was a string attached to its back, and when Clementine pulled it, it produced the word "Mama”.
Clementine remembered the doll that her mother gave her for her sixth birthday; it was probably still in the back of the wardrobe.
Eventually, she found an old pocket-sized backpack with a few flowery stickers, along with a dark-blue hoodie in her size.
“Have you found anything, Clementine?” called out Christa.
“Yeah, a backpack and a hoodie," answered Clementine, walking towards the edge of the stairs where Omid and Christa were.
“Just remember to check the bag, Clem; they might have something useful." Replied Christa.
“Ok," Clementine replied, unzipping the bag and then putting her hand into it, but not looking into it. Lo and behold, she found a working lighter, and it looked like it had a decent amount of fuel for a while.
Clementine then walked to the conclusive door upstairs, and like what she did before, however, the door required a little exertion to open. As a result of this, Clementine noticed that the noise she made alerted her to the presence of a walker heading towards her. This, of course, made Clementine a little timid, but she knew what to do. As her heart started to ram against her ribcage, likewise, a thick seal of sweat began to form on her hands, transferring onto her gun.
Always aim for the head," Clementine said to herself as she exhaled deeply and fired the gun. BANG!! The walker fell with a deafening thud, and Clementine was astounded at herself for shooting the walker that was coming towards her.
I did it, I did it," she exclaimed in a loud whisper. Which is when the door bursts open to reveal Omid and Christa with perturbed faces.
"Is everything OK, Clem? Are you hurt?" Asked Omid.
Yeah, I’m fine; I’m not hurt. Replied Clementine, as the trio all stood in stupefied silence at the walker that Clementine gunned down. "Did you find anything? Clementine asked after a minute of silence.
"Yes. We have found two cans of beans and some water." Christa replied.
"Oh."
“Well, let’s keep moving on, Clem. People might have heard the shot and might come here.” Omid said.
“Ok," responded Clementine. "I said already, but I found a backpack and a hoodie."
“Put it on, Clem; it’s starting to get colder, and we get going."
“Ok, I’ll put it on now."
Clementine then took off her hat, gave the gun to Omid, put on the dark blue hoodie, put her hat back on, and took the gun back from Omid. After that, Clementine followed Christa and Omid downstairs and out of the house and walked on.
* * * * *
Some short weeks later, the trio now situated in a substantial-sized forest under a thick canopy of leaves with Omid tending to a fire. Clementine and Christa, however, were sitting down on some nearby log around the fire.
Christa was busy talking to Omid about her pregnancy, whereas Clementine was busy herself by looking at the stars. The stars flickered and danced in the sky like a million tiny flames, casting a shimmering glow over the forest below. Furthermore, the sky itself was filled with low oranges, along with a mixture of light blues. Which were progressively getting into the realms of dark blues, purples and then full-on jet-black. Moreover, there seemed to be a chorus of crickets hiding somewhere in lush grasses, chirping away harshly.
“I would say that rabbit is cooked now, Omid.”
“Oh, right, yeah,” replied Omid, as he began to take the cooked rabbit off the spit – and handed it out to Christa and Clementine, then to himself.
"Thank you very much," Clementine said as she reached for the rabbit meat before going back to look at the stars. She thought to herself as she ate: "How many are there? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?"
“Hm, what – sorry Christa; what did you say?”
“Omid and I said that we are going to rest here tonight and get going in the morning."
"Ok, as my legs still ache from all that walking we did today."
"Well, get some rest, you're going to need it," Omid said, rising from poking the fire.
"Ok," responded Clementine, getting up from the weather-worn log, wishing Omid and Christa a good night before she got onto the floor near the fire and began to close her eyes. She then began to dream about what she would be doing tomorrow, what would happen, and what she would see.
The next morning was filled with colours ranging from warm yellows trickling through the gaps in the trees. Clementine rubbed her eyes before getting up from the harsh, tough ground and walked to the log where she sat last night, where she saw Omid was cooking again.
"Morning, Clem," Omid said. "How did you sleep?"
"Ok, I'd rather sleep in a bed than on the floor."
"Yeah, I don't like it either, but it's necessary until we get to Wellington."
"Where's Christa?" asked Clementine, now looking around the campsite as she noticed Christa wasn't there.
But then, five minutes later, after Clementine had eaten, Christa came back - and with this, the trio began to walk on; with her now near Omid and Christa. Yet, like last time, Clementine's fingers were still wrapped around her pistol as if it were a part of her. But instead of looking at her feet, she was looking around the pensive clearing.
The clearing was serene, where only a few walkers were roaming around, but they could be seen more evidently through a few hacked trees. The trio strolled down the lane through dappled light filtering itself through the trees; moreover, the sound of the leaves rustled in the weak wind. There was also an occasional bird twittering away on a pile of stacked logs near the broad track Clementine, Omid, and Christa were walking. There was also an infrequent number of signs that littered the road.
"TWO MILES UNTIL TRUCK STOP", Clementine read as she walked on with Omid and Christa.
"How about...Isabella?" Christa said aloud.
"Nah," scoffed Omid, "James is far better."
"That's if it's a boy, Omid. Clementine, do you have any name ideas?"
"What about...Carley?"
"Yeah, that's a good name." Responded Omid, with an expression of puzzled thought in his voice.
For the next couple of miles, they (primarily, Christa and Omid) talked about what seemed to be endless baby names for Christa's child; to pass the time. Clementine wondered if her parents had this amount of difficulty when they chose her name.
Eventually, Clementine stopped a little as Omid and Christa walked on regardless; as she noticed there was a blackbird perched on a nearby tree which cawed before flying into the lush forest.
"What do you think?" asked Omid, as he poised at the truck stop over the abandoned road before crossing it with Christa and Clementine.
"Omid, you can't be serious," answered Christa.
"I am."
"We are NOT doing that."
"Why not?"
"Because one of you is enough!"

LPs

• A Boogie wit da Hoodie - Better Off Alone (w Young Thug, Future, Lil Durk, Cash Cobain, Fridayy & Mariah the Scientist) [Melodic Trap, Atlantic]
• Blessd (🇨🇴) - BlessDeluxury (w Hades66, SOG, Nicki Nicole + more) [Latin Rap, Warner]
• Álvaro Díaz (🇵🇷) - SAYONARA (w Tainy, Rauw Alejandro, Feid, Young Miko + more) [Latin Trap, UMG]
• Alejo (🇵🇷) - EN ESTA NOS FUIMOS LEJOS (w Jowell + more) [Reggaetón]
• Vacra (🇫🇷) - PYGMALION [French Rap]
• Clavish (🇬🇧) - Chapter 16 (w Fredo, Aitch, Potter Payper, D-Block Europe + more) [UK Rap, Polydor]
• Rio Da Yung OG - Rio Circa 2020 (w RMC Mike & Louie Ray) [Michigan Trap]
• Harley (🇫🇷) - WHO'S HARLEY? [French Rap]
• BIG30 - Still King (w Fredo Bang & K Carbon) [Memphis Trap, NLess]
• ShooterGang Kony - OPPS CAN'T HAVE FUN [West Coast Trap]
• Mach-Hommy - #RICHAXXHAITIAN (w Black Thought, KAYTRANADA, 03 Greedo, Roc Marciano + more) [East Coast Hip Hop]
• Rapsody - Please Don't Cry (w Lil Wayne, Erykah Badu, Hit-Boy, Baby Tate + more) [Conscious Rap, Jamla/Roc Nation]
• softboy ivo (🇩🇪) & Philantrope (🇦🇹) - Seele Aus (w Wun Two + more) [European Hip Hop]
• Courtney Bell & Royce Da 5'9" - Microdose (w Benny the Butcher, Conway the Machine, LaRussell, Symba + more) [Rap]
• ian - Valedictorian [SoundCloud Rap]
• Stavo (🇫🇷) - Eviter la misère [French Rap, Warner]
• wolfacejoeyy - valentino [Sexy Drill, Alamo]
• Blu - abc [West Coast Rap]
• Raz Fresco & Daniel Son - Northside [Rap]
• USKY - ANHÉDONIE [French Rap]
• Nico Miseria (🇪🇸) - YO NO SOY YO [Latin Rap]
• Mike Shabb - SEWASIDE III (w Boldy James, Navy Blue, Nicolas Craven, Da$H, Estee Nack, ANKHLEJOHN & Lord Sko) [Rap]
• paymels & StoopidXool - Spectrum [Rap]
• La F (🇫🇷) - TNF 3.5 [French Rap]
• HOLOGRAM LO’ (🇫🇷) & HUNTRILL (🇫🇷) - REPLICA 2 (w Alpha Wann + more) [French Rap]
• Thizzler On The Roof - Bar Wars: Season 1 (w lou deezi, 1100 Himself + more) [West Coast Trap]
• Zinée (🇫🇷) - OSMIN (w Chilly Gonzales) [French Rap]
• Zoomy (🇫🇷) - DIRTY SPRITE 19® [French Rap]
• your.nash (🇫🇷) - solitaire mais bien accompagné [French Rap]
• Heem - Bars & Noble (w Benny the Butcher, Boldy James, Conway the Machine, Jay Worthy, Jae Skeese & ILLY FOO) [Rap]
• Ben.C (🇫🇷) - BENNY [French Rap]
• FRELONZ (🇫🇷) - MOTION OVER EMOTION [French Rap]
• Struggle Mike - HONOR (w Benny the Butcher, Jeru The Damaja, Planet Asia, Eto + more) [Coke Rap, BSF]
• Butter Bullets (🇫🇷) - Château [French Rap]
• Rory Sweeney (🇮🇪) - Carlos Danger Presents Irish Hash Mafia (w Curtisy + more) [Irish Cloud Rap]

Deluxe

• Doja Cat - Scarlet 2 CLAUDE: Disc 3 [Pop Rap, *Kemosabe/Republic]
• Childish Gambino - ATAVISTA (w 21 Savage, Young Nudy, Ariana Grande, ) [Pop, Rap, RCA]
• Madison McFerrin - I Hope You Can Forgive Me (w Honey Dijon & TrillzAI) [R&B]
• DJ Ess - #HEAVENSGATE, Vol. 1: DJ Ess Mixes [Surf Gang]

EPs

• LaRussell, 03 Greedo & Mike G Beatz - Sessions At The Grill: Episode 001 [West Coast Rap]
• Jay 305 & Hit-Boy - Don't Wait Until I Die EP (w DOM KENNEDY) [West Coast Rap]
• Kaydy Cain (🇪🇸) - For Romantic Bitches [Spanish Rap]
• Terrace Martin - Grounded [Jazz?]
• Lil Double 0 - Return of the Walker [Trap, Freebandz/Open Shift]
• Mutant Academy - Talk Soon [Rap]
• Lil Supa & Recognize Ali - "REC a LIL" [Rap]
• Cold Hart - Rap Show (w BONES & GothBoiClique) [Cloud Rap, Epitah]
• Kamaiyah - Figuring Out My Emotions [West Coat Rap]
• Kitty Ca$h - Handle With Care (w Rico Nasty, Thundercat, James Fauntleroy, PawPaw Rod, Kilo Kish, George Riley & ROZET) [Rap]
• Payroll Giovanni - Have Money, Have Heart [Rap]
• Leith (🇫🇷) - SI LA FORTUNE EST AVEUGLE [French Rap]
• Elaquent - Obrigado! [Beats]
• Fendi P - White Lines (w Polyester the Saint) [Southern Rap, Jet Life]
• SAM (🇫🇷) - 1ère mi-temps [French Rap]
• Cities Aviv - Bernadette Leak [Experimental Rap]
• EESAH YASUKE (🇫🇷) - PS: J'ÉCRIS L'ALBUM (w Haviah Mighty) [French Rap]
• Mandyspie (🇫🇷) - Monster Therapy [French Rap]

Songs

• Maluma & Pirlo - MIONCA
• Conep & Anuel AA - Bellakita
• NxWorries - FromHere (feat. Snoop Dogg & October London)
• Tha Dogg Pound, Tha Eastsidaz & Snoop Dogg - We All We Got
• Kodak Black - No Manager*
• DJ Luian, Mambo Kingz, Yandel, Darrell & Dei V - No Puedo Controlarme
• Jimin, Mark Ralph, Muni Long, JVKE & NLE Choppa - Angel (Anniversary Edition)
• Key Glock - Fuck Around & Find Out
• TitoM, Yuppe & S.N.E. - Tshwala Bam (Remix) [feat. Burna Boy]
• Russ & 6LACK - Working On Me
• Masio Gunz & Jeremih - Panic
• T-Pain - On This Hill
• Chow Lee & Cash Cobain - swag it! (Remix) [feat. Flo Milli]
• Diany Dior, Cash Cobain & NAV - Favorite Lady
• Saweetie - NANi
• Yelawolf & Jelly Roll - Trailer in the Sky
• Cowboy Killer & Yelawolf - Bob Barker
• El Malilla, Yeyo & DJ Rockwel MX - B de Bellako (Remix) [feat. Jowell & Randy]
• Lila Iké - He Loves Us Both (feat. H.E.R.)
• Sayian Jimmy - BAD BOY (Remix) [feat. Gino Mella, LIT killah, Juhn, Jairo Vera, Dani Flow & Montaña the Producer]
• FERG - MDMX*
• Chance The Rapper & DJ Premier - Together
• Omar Apollo - Dispose Of Me
• 2Rare, Skilla Baby & Rob49 - C4
• 42 Dugg - Win Wit Us
• Brown Money Minds, That Mexican OT & DeeBaby - Fuck It
• Big Hit, Hit-Boy & The Alchemist - Black & Whites
• Nardo Wick - Deep End
• Lupe Fiasco - Samurai
• Nemzzz - ATM
• JasonMartin, DJ Quik, Channel Tres, Free Nationals & George Clinton - TWO HI (WAVES)
• Durand Bernarr & Free Nationals - Fist Bump
• MCVERTT & 41 - Hate The Real
• M Row & MCVERTT - Undefeated
• Sheff G & Great John - Everything Lit
• A.R. The Mermaid & 03 Greedo - Bitch I Met
• Bb trickz & El Baby R - Trickstar
• BERWYN - I AM BLACK
• Maxo Kream - Judged the Plugg (From the Block Performance)*
• Peezy - The Warm Up
• Homixide Gang & Cxdy - R50
• YTB Fatt & Rylo Rodriguez - In The Air
• EBK Young Joc - Temper
• P Dub, EBK Leebo & EBK Juvie Ju - Free Leebo
• Don Corleo & Veeze - duh duh duh
• Living Legends, Del the Funky Hompsapien & Statik Selektah - The Return (Remix) [feat. Aesop Rock, Blu, Chino XL, Kool Savas, Planet Asia, Twigy, Vast Aire & 2Mex]
• Fat Trel & Sada Baby - Steppa
• Luxx Kitty - FWM (feat. Sada Baby)
• SwuM - Lost In Space
• Rucci & BlueBucksClan - It Hit Different
• Skrapz & Kano - Marathon Continues
• STRANGEHUMAN - SIN PERDER, NUNK CUENTA
• MATT OX - MONDAY TO SUNDAY
• lil joujou, Slayter & Midnvght - Mini Van
• Your Old Droog & Conductor Williams - Mercury Thermometers
• RJD2 - Catch The Exit Door (feat. Jamie Lidell)
• Chris Palace - FWM
• lou deezi, Mari Peso & Wiggle - Trapped
• THEBROSFRESH - Caution (Remix) [feat. Pell]
• Certified Trapper - Blood
• Babyfxce E - BTA Freestyle
• RMR - Sweet Divorce
• Shreea Kaul - Press Pause (feat. Dende)
• Humane The Moon - K9 (feat. Jeshi)
• 22nd Jim - Vacuum Seats & Money Counters
• Karriem Riggins - Affectionate Overture
• Big $wift & Chito Rana$ - Wanna Ride
• Nyck Caution - On Mine
• KrispyLife Kidd - In That Case
• RXKNephew - No Handouts
• KALLITECHNIS - WOUND UP
• Lilblackkids (Georgia Anne Muldrow & Keith Rice) - Moon Slide
• Tracy T, Street Symphony & Symba - Cross Me Out
• Young Ant Jefe - Drip On 'Em (feat. Big Sad 1900)
• Estee Nack & BonesWeso - RUDEBOY
• Hurricane Wisdom - Rose Gold
• Woodie Smalls - Understand
• KayFarraway & ROMderful - Give Up The Ghost
• Highway - SDSU
• Bizarre - HEEBEE JEEBEEZ*
• PENPALS & EMERLD - Raw Deluxe
• Siege MC, Redeyes & Tha God Fahim - Black Flame
• Shoebox Baby - What Happened?
• Cuban Doll & Molly Brazy - Buban Doll
• K.Rock$ & Glockboyz Teejae - Victor Wembanyama
• Freddy Got Magic & Supa Bwe - Same Thing (feat. 7000 (7K))
• GB Jay, Verde Babii, Ssrichh33 & Ranvo - Ran Wit It
• DCG BROTHERS & Screwly G - Bounce Out
• GEMEN - Maison de Campagne / SMS
• Finch & Fritz Rango - Remedy (feat. Young Wabo & Denmark Vessey)
• Demae - Speechless
• Janette King - Paradise

Old Drop Watches

2023 and 2024 Calendar

Hi all,
The Note 20 Ultra was the first "top tier" flagship device I ever bought after OnePlus' and Pixels going for great value amazing phones.
I'm still pretty content with the Note however that's largely because I'm trying not to think about the powers of new devices.
The battery is lagging and is slow on start up, and the camera seems to have gotten incredibly poor.
I mainly value the large screen, and that is mostly for high quality videos. I do also open and handle documents on my phone. I also value great audio (as great as you can get on a phone anyway).
What really piqued my interest about the S24 Ultra was the AI features as any handy software features can be useful, but only if not gimmicky and able to be used to their full potential. However, I'm totally open to other phone suggestions, and definitely value a pure clean phone that delivers amazing basics more than these features of the value doesn't stack up.
And is it even worth it right now? Or if I can, and I can really, stick around until the end of the yeaQ1 2025, will I be able to get more bang for my buck? I am always heavily incentivised to pick up a new device when there's the next "big leap" as such and can extract more value from getting on at that time point.
Price isn't so much an issue as will wait and hunt for the best deal, but don't want to spend hundreds extra for little gain on the next best option.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Image / Render
Hi everyone, wanted to share here some news on an upcoming group buy for Play Tray V2! The first offering was fairly well-received, so I decided nearly two years later another run would be viable - but I've made some changes and improvements to the design as well.
For starters, PLAY TRAY V2 is a solid aluminum trinket / screw tray for your desk, inspired by the infamous ball-on-a-track cat toy. A channel precisely machined for an included 14mm steel bearing is the answer for your desk fidgeting needs - push it in circles, bounce it around your fingers, tilt the tray to revolve the bearing, and whatever else you can figure out. The center serves as a storage compartment for various small bits and bobs, with the lid being removable as a two-in-one magnetic screw tray combination.

What's new with V2

• Design updates to be more coherent and refined: The original Play Tray had some design elements that didn't sit quite right with me; namely the sharp lines around the perimeter ("HG" chamfer) and angular profile. I've updated Play Tray V2 with softer / larger fillets, and an overall more approachable profile.
• Two-in-one compartment tray: V2 features a lid over the center compartment that friction-fits into place, hiding any stowaway screws and parts. In addition, the lid doubles as a separate magnetized mini-me tray, perfect for building keyboards with multiple screw types.
• Stackable, quality-of-life changes: In addition to the other adjustments, V2 has some QOL improvements throughout. If you have multiple trays, they now stack securely on top of each other with aligned grooves in the base. Die-cut feet from V1 have been upgraded to injection-molded filleted rubber feet. More carefully-vetted manufacturing lends itself to cleaner and more consistent machining / finishing.

Sale information

For full information, renders, and color options, feel free to check out the product page.
There are 6 color options, 3 of them allowing for an optional engraved interior featuring a newly-illustrated sleepy cat.

• Simple Silver
• Timeless Taupe
• Coast Blue
• Boring Black (Plain / Engraved)
• Laidback Lilac (Plain / Engraved)
• Soft Pink (Plain / Engraved)

US group buy pricing is $48 USD, roughly 15% below expected in-stock MSRP. The group buy will be open from May 18th to June 1st, for about two weeks (or until capacity is reached). Generous estimate for fulfillment is Q1 2025.

Also available at the following...

• JJWKB (USA)
• Deskhero (Canada)
• ILUMKB (Singapore, Asia)
• Swagkeys (Korea, Asia)
• KEYGEM (Europe)
• Prototypist (UK)
• Switchkeys (Australia / Oceania)

Thank you! For more information please check the product page. Any questions feel free to ask, or consider joining our Discord server.

Hey yall, Sorry to bother you all, so am doing the Odin project right now , its a open source free bootcamp, www.odinproject.com
And am in the DataBase section and am following the Ruby on Rails path, so the thing is, am actually working as a QA engineer for the past 10 months, after changing roles from a Support Role in my current company, so its purely manual testing here, we are planning to stsrt automation and i dont see it any time pretty soon actually probably in after 2 years or something , so I been following Odin project from Feb-March 2022 and been here and there doing stuff, so from the past 8 months I been trying to be serious with this, cause I eventually started enjoying the coding process and the whole shift to a proper IT role kinda gave my head a bang and I kinda think I can do this!! So coming to the point, I had a word with ny QA lead and mentioned am studying web development and would like to switch my role to a Developer if its possible , she was absolutely encouraging by the way and we discussed a lot, so apparently there are 3 QAs in total including my lead, and 1 person is on maternity leave and she will come back by August middle, so my Lead was like , once she comes back we can definitely help you with switching meanwhile keep on continuing studying, so she asked me to which part would I like to switch to ? as this is our current stack,( she has stated for me to request a email and she will approve it when the time comes)
Frontnd: We got 3 websites or components primarily, Were we use Angular mainly for our website, Vue.js for a single separate component
Backnd/Middle ware : We currently use Go mostly, although one of the component use Java still,
And our DB runs mostly on : Surreal DB, whereas one part still uses MSSQLDB, use Benthos to do data streaming and upload data and KeyCloak for authorization and authentication , and REDDIS db as well for token cleacache , AzureCloud is our server by the way, (this is what i think its there in our company, am not entirely sure of this)
So she was asking which one would I like to go with ? Front end or Middleware, so am confused, on which one should i go with? Middleware with go, or frontend with angular
, I hope i will be be able to start atleast a lil bit of angular and will be able to start doing angular in my company ( the front lead has promised to give me small tasks to check whether I am compete enough) . as the order in Odin project is Ruby on Rails, Advanced HTML and css, Javascript, React, so i thought i will skip Ruby on rails and proceed to advanced html and css and j, then start with angular
or should I go with GO and with middleware ( am not entirely sure on this, cause frontend gives me more fun right now ) , or Should I continue my Odin project and try to complete the course and manage my work

My issue with the game's lore (which is pretty much anything goes and I respect the heck out of that) is that the Black Wings... suck, and the Resistance had some pretty crazy pulls for additions. Along with the regular resistance members, they also got Xenon and the Demon SlayeAvenger (functionally their own personal Hero character, who was the same level as the heroes, cursed in the same way, performed better than Aran and Mercedes in the actual fighting and did it solo).
Therefore, the Black Wings need to be presented as an equally viable threat. I think the Black Wings robots and Lotus are given pretty solid focus as threats, but the main Black Wings members, the ones controlling Edelstein and keeping the Cygnus Knights in check are... children and rabbits. I mean, the Cygnus Knights as a group are not as stacked as the Resistance, but I'm under the impression that their gaps in living legends are made up for in more manpower, at least in lore- I think they have a flying fleet, they're able to easily travel and have good relationships with the various explorers and the heroes. Cygnus Knights themselves may not be an absolute powerhouse in the story, but I think they're pretty plugged in, in terms of connections, and they're one of three factions that in lore has more than a small section of members that can fight the black mage.
There's an opportunity to show real diversity in regions too. When the area's "darkness meter" or whatever it is goes off the chart, a random evil explorer shows up. I think this is a wasted opportunity. You can display what threat is in place in a region with what threat pops up.
In the Maple World, for example, it could be a member of the Black Wings, popping up to cause a problem. It can cycle between a few little minibosses, but the point here is to make them a visible presence.
In Grandis, it could be one of the underlings of one of Darmoor's followers. I get that the followers are more built up as bosses but like... they have side guys, and they can extract memories and remove death as if it was a debuff, so it's probably fine to toss in some jobbers that followed along with these fellows. No one super important, but like... random resurrected brainwashed husks or something.
In earth or faraway dimensions, the Friendstory Motes could come back as bigger, scarier threats.
I donno... let me feel the threat. The Big Bang update made me feel like the Black Mage was a stand up guy for not making me have to do the L Forest jumping puzzle if I couldn't afford the taxi, and there wasn't really anything to persuade me that he wasn't chill.

Bodyguard
You would put your life on the line to protect the ones you care for the most.
After taking a protection hit, the Survivor you took a hit for gets 3/4/5% Haste for 10 seconds.
Deep Analysis
You pick up on details others tend to miss.
At the start of the trial, the auras of all other Survivors, generators, hooks, chests, totems, exit gates, vaults, pallets, breakable walls and the Killer are revealed to you for 7/8/9 seconds.
Any aura readings that are revealed to your teammates last for 2 extra seconds while auras revealed to you last for 4 extra seconds.
This perk does not stack with other uses of Deep Analysis.
One Last Stand
If Death wants to take you, it has another thing coming.
Once you are on deathhook, One Last Stand activates.
Once this perk activates, you gain the following effects for 120 seconds:
• You permanently run 1/2/3% faster. • You can fully recover from the dying state 1 time. • Every 80/60/40 seconds, you see the Killer’s aura for 7 seconds. • You suffer from the Exhausted status effect for 80/70/60. After the time elapses, the Exhausted status effect will be instantly removed.
One Last Stand deactivates once the exit gate are powered.
Invocation: Blood Line
Someone's died in your arms before; you vow to never let that happen again.
A salt circle will spawn in the Basement. Interacting with it will begin the invocation. Invocations take 60 seconds. This invocation can only be worked on by you, but it can be worked on multiple times. After completing the invocation, the following effects occur:
• The person with the most hook states loses 1 hook state. • You gain a hook state and the Killer sees your aura for 60/40/20 seconds. • If you are on deathhook when the invocation finishes, a hook state is still lost but you are immediately sacrificed.
Astounding Legacy
If you're going to go out, you're going out with a bang.
After being sacrificed or killed, the Killer is affected with the Blindness status effect for 60 seconds.
All remaining teammates in the trial gain a 5/10/15% bonus towards healing and repair speeds for the rest of the trial.

The voices mingled around me. Some loud, some soft, some weeping while others waited in stoic silence. The lodge anxiously waiting as the last rays of sunlight flit through the bay window. The wall of stacked cars and stone lights up like fairy lights upon a wall, revealing the weaknesses of our fragile defenses. And beyond the glass stood thousands of faces, watching the last rays of light sink beyond the horizon, beyond the walls that we called hope.
The room grew quiet. A whimper was stifled from the wall as the sun gave way to the stars. Their light poking holes in the sky like the sun had revealed our defenses flaws. A flask popped open followed by several large gulps. I can't fault you. The sword on my back grows warm and her hand touches my arm. Her long, blonde braid falls past her shoulder as she turns to me. To look at me and see me. Gosh, how can she know me so well. Her hand slides down my arm and into my shaking hand.
She brings it to her lips and tenderly kisses my knuckles, even the sunken ones. "The sun has surrendered," and pulls my hand to her chest, "you are now the light that must lead us, my love."
Her fingers interlace with mine, stealing the tremble hidden upon their tips with a squeeze. That tremble climbing up my arm to escape out of my lungs at my next breath. "We can only be hammered for so long before we have to be quenched, I guess." A small, but playfull smile breaks her somber face. She pulls me closer to her and presses her forhead to mine. In that small moment, the heat of her breath, the scent of her; from the moment she held me and handed me the star blade to now, she has been my light.
A small and stifled sob escapes her lips, for as she has by my beacon, I have tried to be her anchor. In our journey these last years, she has loved and feared, celebrated and cried, and we have grown. "You must be light that leads us." Her tears stain the dark wood at our feet and the tremble in her body transfers to me in at the touch of our skin.
"I must and I will." Raising her hands to my lips, returning the tender kiss she gave to me.
Turning to face the table before me, only a few are looking at what had been a private moment between her and I. The rest continue to look to where the light once had been. The heat on my back beckoned me, telling me what to do. To touch the pommel of the sword like the Forever King had done before. It was swift, but the rush of power flooded me at the embrace of my palm around the hammered piece of metal.
"So the night comes and we are like fresh pieces of paper watching spilt ink spread before us."
Eyes turn to me. Hone in on me. While still holding her hand, I turn to the west and the setting sun.
"This night, this darkness has had a long time coming and now we finally face it." Pointing at the last rays of sunlight that fade into twilight. In those last remnants of light, I can see the heads of thousands look around. Some in fear and some in confusion. The power continues to flood my body and I let go of the pommel of my sword.
Marching away from the table and to the wooden door of the lodge, my voice carries. "This story that has held us in our youth, in our entertainment, has now filled our very lives." The door glides open and I stride out, marching towards the eastarn wall. A few eyes around the lodge turn towards me. My arms shake themselves out of habit, releasing tension stored within.
"Now we write the last chapters of this very war," the growl surprises me, as people step aside to let me through. There are few faces that I recognize, but the ones that I do now recognize the position I hold. The star blade upon my back now emiting a soft glow. "One more story to add to the eternal narative that is sung among the stars."
More eyes, more faces turn to me as my voice reaches out to the gathered forces within our last bastion. My path is set and made clear in the divide of the people around me. Leading me towards the wall; towards the erected tower with a emerald, green flag and shining white sword flying in the wind above it.
"So let out story be a ballad, instead of paper waiting for someone else to write upon." The sky grows ever darker, and the twilight that normally sits around quickly is swallowed up by the oncoming night. Someone rings a bell, the warning bell. A haunting gong that sends shivers up and down my spine. They're here. Panicked voices fills the edges of the field as the chiming rings across the fortress. Men and woman rush to the walls, some armed with modern weaponry. Others with forged ones taking positions up along the wall.
Each step I take closer to the wall, my voice gets a little louder. "Let us sing, let us sing the song of the free." The bell chimes and my footfalls sound like a drum in my ears. "Let us shout, let us shout the darkness, make it fear our coming death." I move and pull up someone who is kneeling on the ground, tears coating their cheeks.
"Arise, Arise!" My fist bangs upon my chest.
Marching up the crude steps into the tower, my fist hammers the wall to the beat of my heart. The stone walls echoing with my voice within but reverberating across the field outside. "If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher."
The glow from my sword spreads out from around me, slowling lighting up the tower. And as I march out atop of the stone building, I gaze out towards the wave of darkness rushing towards us from the west. I can hear the snarls and roars of the curse frothing towards us. The voice of darkness spreaking its inky touch across the barren landscape beyond the walls not a few minutes away.
"So let this ballad be our last ballad that we spin." I reach for the hilt of my sword and look down at the forces defending the wall. There gaze is brief but I their eyes, and their fear. But I also see their hope. "As free men, as free woman," turning to face the forces spread out below in the fortress field before me. "By our song, we will live forever!" I rip the star blade from the half-sheath on my back. "Or die by our own hand." The light beams out towards the heavens above as my words echo across the land.
The roar spreads like fire, chasing away the shadow of fear. Spear and sword slap against shields, cracking rumbling among the men and woman. Some beat upon the stone and steal around them while others beat their chest. A vicious cry of defience, a thunderous song echoing in my heart and ears as I turned to face the darkness.
And she was there. Right behind me as I turned to face the forces marching toward us. Her hands glowing in radiance as her spells weaved around us, casting down pillars of light spread out across the wall. I raise my sword high and can feel the air around me turn static. Darkness now clashes with the light as the hordes of the enemy crash and climb upon the wall. "Our story, our ballad, shall forever sing among the stars." Guns and artillary begin to fire. "But we are the authors of light!"
With a swing of my sword, bolts of lightning fire down from gathered clouds in the sky at the base of the wall.
~~~~~
-- Story Originally posted as a Prompt Inspired --
-- Original Prompt by u/GeorgeWL --
-- [WP] If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by our own hand. --

Greetings and Salutations! Just dropping the next few chapters below, these were fun to read :) Enjoy!
Ch. 11

• “What the hell happened to you?” LOL if Rhys becomes Lucien 2.0 I think I'll be ok with that
  
• Wait so if he wanted Rhys could just channel his power and go scorched earth??? How are there not any contingencies in place for that and everyone is just relying on his whim?
  
• Whoa so Feyre has been making some crazy progress with her shields if Rhys is blocked out 90% of the time…hooked on phonics with Rhys has really been paying off for her
  
• Eyyyyyy Feyre is reading a book! Look how far she's come
  
• Bro, why is Rhys always asking why Feyre doesn't insult him anymore? Is he into verbal BDSM or something? I guess being Amarantha's toy did a number on him. I bet this guy is a freak in the bed
  
• Oh damn so she has water bending skills too?! So wateice, fire, wind, psychic abilities…just needs earth and heart and she can finally become Captainess Planet
  
• Bro, Tamlin’s number one flaw is that he’s straight up not a good communicator. He thinks he can just scowl his way to victory with Feyre and Rhys, and they're not about that life
  
• I do feel kinda bad for Tammy, I bet he feels like he's getting cucked by Mr. Cavill (completely understandable as well)
  

Ch. 12

• NICE Feyre is just plowing through all the books in the library…WAY better hobby than being a lukewarm painter. That being said, I won't say no to a Bob Ross faerie to help Feyre improve her skills
  
• Dude Tammy is still shutting Feyre out?! This guy is completely oblivious to the fact that he's losing her slowly
  
• WTF is Feyre turning part crow now?
  
• “How long have the claws been appearing?” bro…nothing gets past Luke the Duke. NOTHING
  
• Dude…Lucien can really do no wrong, am I right? This MAN is advocating for Feyre left and right constantly to have her be trained cause he sees the bigger picture. Everyone's goal in life should be to find a friend that'll be in your corner the way Lucien is with Feyre. HAVE FEYRE BECOME THE AVATAR, YOU COWARDS
  
• Really. Tammy is still giving her short answers and no new info? How did that work out last time in the first book?
  
• I mean at this point just continue compromising? Just be a good girl and stay in the palace, then when you go to Rhysand's place go balls out and start training to be the avatar over there. You probably could even bargain and say give me one full month at the Night Court hyperbolic time chamber, I'll become a god, then the bargain is complete and everyone bows to me, HIGH LADY FEYRE
  
• I'm pretty sure Feyre is gonna learn Winnowing right? Then she'll be able to come and go as she pleases
  
• WTF is happening, is Feyre getting kidnapped?
  
• OH SHIT Alis coming in clutch!!! Are her and Mor pen pals or something?
  
• Back to the Night Court!
  

Ch. 13

• LMAO Rhysand is looking at Feyre rubbing his temples and thinking “I'm too old for this shit”
  
• She can control darkness too?! Please tell me she summons Charlie Murphy to the battlefield in a future book
  
• I mean, at the rate she's revealing her powers she's making Avatar Aang look like a baby back bitch
  
• Oh damn Feyre said it. She's not going back! I think comparing being trapped in the palace to being trapped under the mountain did it for her
  
• What's with the cloak and dagger shit with Rhys? Feyre can't mention anything to anyone about the Night Court? Interesting, I'm wondering if this court is suffering greatly from the Illyrians
  
• Noice Rhys treating her like an equal rather than property. Honestly, not a hard concept at all.
  
• Onward to Velaris, city of stars! Sounds dope
  
• Wait, Feyre took a bath and got ready in 10 minutes? I call bullshit
  
• LMAO Rhys said “that was 15 minutes.” I should just keep reading before commenting lol
  
• Hold on, Rhys has callused hands? From what? I can't imagine this guy doing any type of manual labor or holding a BF sword for fighting, this cat uses mind bullets. Is that even a turn on, having callused hands?
  
• So, they both arrive in a lived-in home that's inside a city…and that's shocking to Feyre…why?!? Does she expect city residents to just live in the sewers or something? This woman I swear…
  
• Oh wow that's the end of part 1! We're just moving right along aren't we
  

Ch. 14

• Oooh Part 2 The House of Wind?! Day Court maybe???
  
• Wut we’re in Rhysand's home? Like the one he grew up in???
  
• Oh shit Rhys has a family? I thought there was no one left except him and Mor
  
• I…have no idea what's going on right now lol. The twins live in Rhys's house, are they related to him? And two Illyrians are just banging on his door…can they come in?
  
• Ohhhh one of them is Cassian! Interesting
  
• Inner circle…like the circle of trust? How does one come to be a part of this?
  
• Hmm, so Rhys saved this entire city before he became High Lord…I need deets ASAP
  

Ch. 15

• So Velaris sounds like heaven on Prythian.
  
• “...his blue eyes were as ruthless as the churning winter sea in the distance.” Wait, I thought he has violet eyes?? Can he change their color??? *Sigh some Faes have all the luck
  
• This place really sounds like Kalm from FF VII Rebirth…gorgeous town
  
• Really want to know how Rhysand saved this city…I'm curious if they know he's the high lord and if he appreciates being treated like a normal citizen
  
• Oh God we're back to Feyre thinking about painting things again…
  
• Also, calm your tits Feyre?! You're getting mad at these people for something they weren't aware of
  
• “My people are blameless.” TRUTH, Rhys
  
• Ooooh a new character has appeared! 2nd in command Amren! Steal her shit and she'll roast your balls off
  
• Wow Rhys is the most powerful high lord in history….good to get confirmation on this, I felt it was always hinted at so far
  
• What a weird time to warg into Rhysand lol, guess she can't control this ability
  
• I was just thinking…if Feyre’s real kinky or doesn't have this ability down yet once she and Rhys bang they can warg into each other's bodies and see them screwing themselves and really start having some crazy sex sessions
  
• Oh interesting, so psychic Faes are called Daemati. As in, ‘Daemati’ invade your mind, or ‘Daemati’ not LOLOL. I'm keeping that dad joke
  
• “...or maybe I had broken it, when I shoved that dagger into the hearts of two innocent fae and their blood warmed my hands.” Don't you DARE forget what you did to the Beddors, Feyre! Remember Clare!!!!
  
• Bro, Rhysand is going to carry Feyre as he flies in with his wings LOL. What a sight that would be
  
• What do those wings look like by the way? I know we've gotten tiny glimpses and hints..like black, bat wings. And I'm assuming wing span size ABSOLUTELY matters *wink wink
  
• Ooooh what a cool flying scene; all this needs is “A whole new world” playing in the background.
  
• Aw sad day, Rhys loved his mommy :/
  
• “Each chair fashioned, I noted, to accommodate wings.” What does that even look like? No backs to the chairs, or the backs are shorter so the wings can rest over the back when they sit? I gotta know this for my immersion!
  
• Cute little penny for your thoughts scene between Rhys and Feyre…she's completely out of the woods with Tammy now.
  
• Let the Illyrian Dinner Feast begin!
  

Lots of fun developments in these chapters! Excited to read on and see how the feast goes. Thanks for reading!

If there's one thing I know about the Dota community, it's that people love Tinker. Ever since the last few patches, Tinker has nearly disappeared from our pubs. Around the world, Dota players are crying out for the return of Tinker, and luckily for you all I'm here to propose the buffs that this hero needs!
I think most people would agree that Tinker has 3 boring spells and rearm (free BoT counts as part of the ult). And while the intro paragraph is obviously a joke, for those of us that do enjoy the hero, the entire fun aspect of it is how rearm allows Tinker to interact with items in a way that no other hero can. A different approach to one of the major progression systems in the game makes the hero very unique and enjoyable to play.
Neutral items have been in the game for a while now, and yet still none of them interact with rearm like normal items do. When they were first introduced I figured Valve didn't want to have to deal with rearm when balancing them, but years down the line it's time to address the interaction. To give a glance at how this would actually change the hero, I've gone through the list of current neutral items with active abilities and rated the impact of each item (and chosen some that would need to be banned from working with rearm a la BKB).
Tier 1
Arcane Ring: Starting off with a bang! making +75 mana a rearmable effect would be a significant buff for a hero with heavy mana issues. Given Tinker's current state I don't necessarily think it would be broken, but it would be by far the best t1 neutral for him and would introduce huge variance into Tinker games based on whether or not he gets a free mini soul ring at min 7. Verdict: not rearmable
Royal Jelly: It needs to build charges over time anyways, so rearming the active ability basically does nothing. Verdict: allowed
Seeds of Serenity: +10 hp regen is nice but not that crazy. I don't actually know if the regen from multiple seeds stacks but I doubt it. Assuming the regen from multiple casts doesn't stack. Verdict: allowed
Trusty Shovel: Is sitting in fountain rearming to dig for bounty runes worth it? I very much doubt it, but I do know that if it's an option I'm going to have "support" Tinkers on my team doing it. Verdict: not rearmable
Pig Pole: Why chain hex enemies when you can chain hex yourself? Funny, but obviously not useful. Verdict: allowed
Safety bubble: Based on the wording I don't think rearm would cause the shield to instantly replenish.
Tier 2
Bullwhip: A small slow / speed buff being rearmable isn't a big deal. Verdict: allowed
Light collector: Not very useful unless you're trying to impress a Timbersaw player. Verdict: allowed
Tier 3
Craggy Coat: Permanent +12 armor could actually be pretty strong considering that Tinker doesn't care about movespeed. Unfortunately Tinker also really doesn't want to be in the middle of things to make good use of it. Solid ability but not OP. Verdict: allowed
Defiant Shell: Tinker obviously doesn't get a lot of value from free right clicks, so not very useful. Verdict: allowed
Dandelion Amulet: Rearming a 300 magic dmg barrier on top of defense matrix is very strong. Add that to the item giving 300 mana and this would be a powerful option. I'm on the fence, but I think this one might be a little too OP for a tier 3 item. Verdict: not rearmable
Doubloon: I didn't even remember this thing had a cooldown without looking it up. Useless. Verdict: allowed
Ogre Seal Totem: Basically a force staff, which is nice to have but usually not bought on Tinker due to slot restrictions. This feels roughly equivalent to Dandelion Amulet to me. I think it's a little bit overtuned as a rearmable t3 item. Verdict: not rearmable
Tier 4
Martyr's Plate: Just in case the enemy team is doing a poor job focusing you, you can do it for them! Obviously awful. Verdict: allowed
Ninja Gear: Permanent smoke is really nice for finding safe farm on the map in the lategame. The stats are useless for Tinker, which I think prevents this from pushing into OP territory. Roughly the level of utility to expect out of neutral items at this stage. Verdict: allowed
Stormcrafter: The cooldown is already so low that rearming isn't a very big DPS increase, and it requires you to be close anyways. Verdict: allowed
Ascetic's Cap: The status resist stacked with defense matrix is quite strong. However, this is most important for when you first get jumped, which doesn't require rearm. Being able to reapply the bonus status resist during a fight is certainly nice, but I don't think it's OP. Verdict: allowed
Havoc Hammer: A 0 mana AoE nuke is really strong with rearm. On the other hand, it scales on str and has very small range. It's a great farming item, but by this point Tinker will have lvl 18 and shiva's already, so doesn't have issues clearing waves. The nuke is actually a good chunk of damage, even with Tinker's subpar strength values. The short range definitely brings it down since you will be close enough for enemies to stop your rearm, but I think the added damage is just too much. Verdict: not rearmable
Mind Breaker: Tinker doesn't right click. If you really want to perma-silence someone orchid (or just hex, obviously) works better. Verdict: allowed
Trickster's Cloak: Some nice utility given that it doesn't take up a slot, but rearmable invis is already in the game and not very strong. Verdict: allowed
Tier 5
Book of Shadows: Pseudo perma-disable for an enemy or permanent invuln for an ally. Chaining this on an ally just makes Tinker the target instead, and enemies can BKB or go invis between applications. Casting it on an enemy makes them untargetable, so you can't truly perma-disable someone with it since you can't recast until after the effect ends. Also worth noting that you can't go perma-invuln yourself since it silences, and the cooldown is already super short. Obviously strong but not crazy for a t5 item. Verdict: allowed
Force boots: Rearmable force staff was OP for a t3 item, but by t5 it's fine. Verdict: allowed
Magic lamp: no lol. Verdict: not rearmable
Pirate Hat: By 60+ minutes sitting in fountain rearming dig might actually be a good, safe way to farm when the map is dark. Good or not, sitting in fountain is boring and shouldn't be promoted. Verdict: not rearmable
Arcanist's Armor: I have to confess that in all my 60+ minute games I've never gotten a good feel for exactly how much this item is doing. On paper the active sounds insane with 100% uptime so I would say it's probably OP, but idk. Verdict: not rearmable
Book of the Dead: What's a level 3 Necronomicon? The units get replaced on recast, so you can't build an army of them. I honestly don't think this ability is too crazy, though back when necrobook existed it didn't work with rearm. The stats are good on Tinker too which makes is stronger, but I still don't think it's out of line. Verdict: allowed
Mirror Shield: This would make Tinker nearly untouchable against a lot of lineups. It's already one of his favorite endgame items without rearm. Verdict: not rearmable
Seer Stone: Maphacks time! The ability is super strong with rearm, obviously. The stats on this are also amazing for Tinker, which I think pushes it past acceptable strength. Verdict: not rearmable
Thanks for coming to my TED talk if you made it this far. Anyways, this is mostly a QoL change since most neutral items either don't have cooldowns or give abilities that don't interact well with rearm. Meaningful buffs would happen at the t4 and t5 items, but Tinker is not a great user of most of those to begin with.

Not shared, nor my shade; but something to be weaved; just as the measure of disappointment became it's own solution. But I talked my way through things forbidden, just to find myself blind in bed with those who are dead. Clumsy, but altogether natural of course, because it's consciousness what you refer in the description, yet that's what we don't get a lot about. See your deeds the way you are seen, and then return to a restless place: and the question in-between sheets will be why. Well, I just can't motivate myself to work without hot bitches staring. And that's the truth. Sad but True
— Hearfelt comment for an instagram witch.
Del desprecio a ese descarte, no he visto muchas cosas. Así se pasa una más para las cuentas, y aquí otro más para los versos, por qué aquí no hemos sido vistos. Cuánto más querría uno, que sino lo cuentas ni mucho menos piensas: << lo de este pibe que cosa más horrible>>, haciendo eso lamentable, por qué en decirlo nadie ha mentido. ¡Es horrible! Que cara es entonces la cuenta de lo que le sale a uno vivir sin más complejos; mejor seria cobrarmelo, para así saber que de algo ha valido. Bloqueame.
— Heartfelt comment for a random supermodel-to-be.
The Spirit of Fire
Flames begone, flames in spite: their warmth I felt - so I closed my fist until I could feel the warmth of my blood in my hand. And in dreams Fire came up to me and said: who am I? And I said unto him: you are bound to my bidding, thus your name misery will be. But fire wretched as he was, got closer and asked: and who are you?
And I said unto him that the blood of David ran through my veins, as I was his heir; for the mother of God claim me from death as a son. So Fire tried me, and figured it out.
You are son of woman —said Fire unto me— but as Fire acknowledged the name, I extended my left hand, and took Fire by the neck throwing him into the gound. — You are going to lace yourself to the right hand of the beast, and you'll keep him steady, so I can cleanly take him down. And Fire stayed down, and with his forehead kissing the ground asked unto me —why would the heir of David do so to earthly man?
And I said unto Fire that the beast from the abyss had left no mother for God, so I was to leave none of his body left for his head; as I was going to make it bleed until the end of the end of times.
The Spirit of Earth
Shapeless and without body, but keen within her many numbers, Earth came up to me in dreams, and said: who am I? And posessed in spirit as I was, I said unto her, that God had made her maiden again, and that she shall become the coins that Judas never received, which were to become the due payment of man and women for the body of Christ. Then I extended my right hand, and grabbed Earth by her hair —which descended deep into the abysses of hell— and cut it short so the demons of Lilith would no longer had her gripped by her back.
You are now a woman, and I'm going to rise you from the grounds. You'll lace yourself to the left hand of the beast, and keep it steady so with one shot I can cleanly take him down.
The Spirit of Air
A dream shaped by written words, whispered down for years by the currents of this Montain, and it's requiem witnessed but by a few — the end of dreams. But from where I standed at the peak, I called upon the distant currents that went down, and asked them: who am I?
And Air came unto me as bird, which had thousands of letters for feathers, and in the tongue of dead men answered.
"Somebody who only a few will remember by strange deeds; as the burden on your back, is a past tainted by impossible dreams. You were a lunatic giving new names to folk, and folk never bothered to remember —so your name must be freak, as you died in a forgotten shack some short time ago."
And as Air said these things upon me, I called Misery —as I had dubbed Fire — and told him to get inside my shot. The burden as Air had said, became lesser as i took the shot from my quiver. And I said upon Misery; that he was to set ablaze this arrow, as I was taking down the bird of Britain, and that I would do so, so God would give the deeds of Earth some better names.
The Lord is making a bridge between the empire of strength, and the last empire of men. Now by God's grace, I'm making the tongue of free men, the tongue of Spain. You will be eventually bound to my bidding, and if not me, it will be to the one I'm preceding; for I'm giving you twenty years to attone your wrongdoing. Alas, now because of your wretchedness, my shot on earthly men won't be clean, for his left leg won't stay steady.
Your old name was apathy, now I'm calling you Cisma, which in the tongue of dead men means schism. So now by the will of God lay unto the ground and say the words you've been teached. And as the arrow blazed forward, it's bending motion pierced the veil hiding the secret ladder of men. The bird of Britain catched on Fire, and it's hollering resounded throught the ladders of the mountain until the depths of the abyss. A column of air turned into fire, then violenty erupted from the vowels of the bird, and the wild fire spread as a storm from west to east all throughout the five kingdoms of men away from its own fiery wings, with a gift of misery and a few words to say.
"The name of your woman or the name of your man, will no longer explain their purpose to a man, a woman, or God. Charred words written by thunder will now be the new ladder of men — but until then, darkness upon thee."
The House of Water
I head into the coasts, and the beautiful beaches in-between, to find the stranger who burns images in the skin of men. He is the stranger, and has adopted the body of a monster, and he is one who cannot be understood, so he went on to only go out home in stunts, for the burdens in his heart have become too great to bear. Through terrible pains he has given all he once was for an identity, and as I pick up on his past, i found familiarity in the feelings of his heart. Oh dear friend how we found looking in sadness to ourselves, after doing same but with different means, carrying into our shoulders the loneliness of this world. As you have in-skin the garments of the strange doctrine that I preach — I shall congrate you, for you truly have fought the world entire, for my doctrine is the words of those who shall defeat the world entire.
I may not have your strangeness in-body, but I have it in these words, and in the true feelings of my heart. And I say in admiration that there's no higher form of art, philosophy or religion: than those who perform the highest thing they can give a name about.
Now even within solitude, and at odds with what old dead men call God, I see you and I found strength in you, as I can see you are within me, and in that, you are within everything as it should be - as is meant in everyone who does something that touches the heart of another man. I call this the kingdom of God. Yet blind men and women will wonder how can the kingdom of God possibly be within two outcasts such as you and me.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Upong giving my regards and waiting for response, I found my way into a bench. It was a warm afternoon, and the wind carried the water of the sea. The bird of Britain came about down from the wind of north, and layed on the bench were I was sitting.
The bird asked: why hast thou become this?
And I said back to bird, scorched he was and nearing death, that it was me someone who was supposed to give names, yet for years I couldn't figure out one for myself. Then on went to being given a name, Alas all the wrong ones. Did Adan gave himself a name? - I asked the bird back. And there was no response from bird. Then I continued.
A man has the essence of his soul retained by what he is seen doing. Yet I did things nobody saw, so my soul wasn't with God but with something just as ancient, and nonetheless unknown by men in its true nature — then Satan as the better known devil, came about and pushed me into a hole. It was my own doing. Yet the things I did, I thought were seen. But nonetheless what I did was without contemplation on a posible return. Just as somebody who prints an image on their own skin. It's permanent. This is the essence of a memory in the soul of the man who's seen by others. But in the familiarity of a man who picked every irreversible decision like the Alien, I find myself feeling sympathy, for the man is still not what he has been seen doing, he shall redeem himself by what he decides to turn himself into.
Is this a way of saying that you want to get yourself a tattoo? Get a new look? - the bird mockingly asked.
And I gave the scorched bird no answer.
Then the bird said unto me: what about your career as a prophet, uh? And the things you said about returning with substance? Do you actually think this is substance?
And i considered what the Bird said, then I negated with a movement of my own head. It is not i answered, but i find the memories of me not making sense unbearable. For those mean the memories of a fool, un pendejo, an insane person, or both. And I will always try to amend what I don't do well. But now I wish for only one thing, and it is to be remembered as someone who makes sense, and who out of that sense, made good upon the world. I don't expect anything in return for what I do now, as it is merely an outlet to keep me sane while I finish editing my work. It's clear I'm too incompetent to be a competent influencer. As for once, I don't care about influencing anyone into what I think; but to perform what I think it's important.
Then every proverbial student is free to take classes so as they see fit, and to interpret such classes as their comprehension gives them grasp of what it's said. In such regard, this is what I offer now, while I make the journey to Madrid. And the bird tilted it's head so as to observe me with his left eye, then after a long impasse, it made a loud and painful caw, and finally flew away. Soon after the bird flew, I looked upon the stars in the nascent night, and confessed to them, that it was the memories of who we were, what often stumps us into wrong beliefs of who we should be, maybe even wasting an entire lifetime retained by that which other people remembered us as being. But we are not the owners of our own names, the place we go, and our destiny. That's the biggest lie the western world of hollywood heros tell you, as in truth is collective agreement what determines what we look like doing and thus the meaning we should comfort to, recalling that names are practical mechanisms to remember the purpose of things, their meaning, and how their motion is described in the world.
But making the task of beating that collective belief, akin to the Nietzschean ideal of the camel turning into the lion, so as to transform it's spirit and become something else. But if it's the golden dragon of all the huamn values which judges you insane, will you be prepared to wrestle with the entire culture so as to have your way?
As I layed my eyes upon each star counting up to the number seventeen, I confessed of being scared of those beliefs, as revisiting the past, became a painful deed — and as I prepared to leave, I uttered one wish on the seventeenth point in the sky.
Lord please grant me strength, the way you have given my friend strenght.
2.
The night deepen, while the sea tide sang its own song of breathing. Some time passed, and then on the stranger showed himself approaching at the distance. I waved my hand at him, and after the instant, he found his way into my bench while I welcomed him with an extended fist which he casually bumped - after the short acknowledgement the dark alien looked at my face in between it's cover of dark, and looking at it undiscernable in its true features, with suspicion asked.
— What is it that you want?
I acknowledged him as a friend, then mentioned my brief research, as I had come to know him as man looking for a job, yet nobody would hire for things mundane due to his appearance. I listened closely to the news, and came to understand that this was a man looking for a second chance.Then I saw the intent behind his doing, and two words came to stick to my own thoughts. The first one was <> and the second one was <>. I was admired.
In analytical psychology I figured this man was the ESFP —the personality archetype related to the performer and the entertainer—, possessed in an abnormal way by the spirit by which a person submits to it's contrary nature, seeking to integrate and find fulfillment through the chase of what's perceived absent. If he was the ESFP then doing the flip by following the radial axis of each Jungian function in the stack towards their opposite resulted in the INTJ. The mastermind. The architect. The genius yet awfully complex individual. That was the elusive spirit he was chasing.
But a spirit and a character that at its most pronounced embodiment in a person, would experience life as an eternal foreigner hiding from the light of other men. Such made sense to me, for I myself was the INTJ, and had at spirit the ESFP. Him. So where as this man chased the spiritual fulfillment of being a complex and deep individual, I chased the fulfillment of becoming simpler, so I could demonstrate with action the deepest desires of my heart. One who was born plentiful in means to be liked, becomes complex, mysterious and uncomprehended, meeting one who will be seen trying to make sense becoming simpler. For Carl Jung portrayed the anima and animus of individuals, as the sense of what its absent, yet deeply cherished an valued. So I said these things to the alien, while he silently listened to me.
— All of that sounds like bullshit to me. -Said the alien after some contemplation .— Sorry but the things you say, don't mean anything to me.
And alas for I expected such response, as if one thing was true about this journey, was that explaining the journey in and of itself would become it's grimmest task. I affirmated what he just said with a slight nod of head.
— These things I say and how they relate to each other, in its excercise are similar to doing stecheometric balance with equations in the head, but simpler I'm afraid. - Then I paused, looked back into the sea, and continued. — That's high school chemistry, but I don't expect everybody to pick up on it, nor like it, nor understand it.
— Now i have called you a friend, and where I came from we dub with this title the people we share destiny with. As far as I'm concerned, we are chasing the same thing, which is the hardest posible thing. We both innately understand that we are not home, as we want our spirit to return to us, and that's not what a lot of people ever honestly try to attempt in a lifetime; as such is anyone's call to feel complete.
— And very few people ever reach true individuality, beyond the name they are imposed at birth.
Then I looked into the black alien, and in-between his foreign facial features, I interpreted something familiar. Disturbance. And I continued.
— We have given ourselves hell as we lived chasing something hard, so we can avoid the same hell later on when we are finally back to our own house. This is a christian precept, altought a rundimentary one. Does that makes sense to you?
And after listening such, the black alien calmly looked at the veil in my face in silence. Trying to discern what my face actually looked like, but the night was dark. Then turned his stare back to the reflection of the moon over the waters, giving some thought to what I just said. I opened up my backpack, and drawed two cans of beer from it. Offered one to him, and he silently refused with a gesture of hand. I popped my can and gave it a sip, while I myself stared at the tides coming in and out of the shore.
— If you wan't a tattoo, we can work that out. But this sounds annoyingly familiar, and my interest is not religious. Are you religious?
I nodded in affirmation, and complemented saying. — But my doctrine is something nobody has heard nor seen. For its aim, is doing as Christ said, in perfect means. Yet its true that the teaching fits you, as it's the teaching of the future man; and there's nothing in common between the current man and the future man, as they may very well be different species. This is the precept of evolution.
The alien seemed surprised.
— These two men don't know each other, for the current man doesn't know where the future man comes from, for he himself doesn't know where he is going. Yet in deep realization of your own artistic concept, I think you might want new ideas to meet with your appearance. So tell me, are you curious about what truly happens to a man after he dies? Do you want to learn how to read someone's mind? Do you want to blast with words of fire the hearts of an amazed crowd?
But the black alien broke his calm contemplation of what I was saying, and slighty disturbed, aggressively rebuked after hearing such.
— But you mentioned 'Christ', so you must be christian. How can a christian even say anything interesting in this current time? Last time I asked, their sayings were dreaded by restriction - so why would anyone condemn themselves to a life of bore? Are you a christian?
And I nodded after the question, in silence. Admittedly, for I knew what the problem was with being what I was, and my new companion was bang on identifying it. Made a pause, then raised my sight to where it met with the sky and the stars in it, and I said back to him.
— I am, but not one of a type you have ever seen, for the Christ that comes, is a Christ of art.
2.
The riptide sang, in its secret dialect of earth and sea. I looked upon the coast, turned an eye blind, and saw the ocean as the scorpio, and the land as the taurus; as it was the struggle between two lovers, never meant to consume each other. Ideal love then - yet not to confuse with this partnership as it was whimsilcally tied by the means in which i arranged my current conversation; for my lady somewhere waited for me. Then i allowed my eyes to rest still.
The alien looked upon me, undiscernable in my intentions, and again figured for himself that my interest towards him wasn’t clear. In suspicion, and after the moment he collected his thoughts asked “In your weird words you dubbed me performer, so what is it exactly that you wan’t from me. To me it seems like you are gathering people for some form of religious clown show. When you forced this meeting upon me, was this a proposal you thought i would find amusement in?”. And after the statement my own stare wandered in my conversation partner. While as he had his say, i returned to my can of beer, and finished it with a long gulp. Tempered in an unwillingness to fall to my new found friend irritation, i said within my own thoughts: “The alien looks easy going, but he is barbed in wit”.
Then i opened the can of beer that the stranger rejected; the loud pop resounded in the relative silence, interrupting for a moment the steady chorus of the sea. Gave it a long sip, and said.
– Theres no proposal in place yet. But im certain of something, and that is that both of us are messed individuals which reached the bottom doing the same thing - but the way my understandment of the human soul goes: two people can act by mere interaction as reactives to each other, creating a new chemical compound after the fact.
– This new psychology is very much like chemistry. But it is not my intention to draw you into something, but to pull myself out of this «something» by doing right on another person and maybe that person reflecting the good back on me. I just need a conversation partner, thats all. And i will do this with you, and with many people more. Presidents included.
The alien reflected on it, and after the hiatus of a long standing position of suspicion he finally gave in, and eased up with a slight smile. A strange smile of relief. But the smile, was all too familiar for me, as i realized the man was a tortured individual: a person in long standing pain. I smiled back the way he did, and continued.
– Our pain has a common name, and is a name that can be written with words unfortunately. It’s the devilish mother of all spiritual ills and its foundation, rests at the concept of a past that wasnt solved. It’s called «inadequeacy», and for people like you and me, understanding one day that such inadecuacy had to be solved by our own means, lead us into an act where our name changed as the changes in our cover up act to solve our inadequacy did.
– We never honored the past or the present in our pursuit, as we desired in passion to find solution to the present, by matching it into the idealization of some future without ever realizing that the old or present essence of ones being would be crushed into non existance by said future.
– Then we found the realization of that new name, only to understand that its demands became a tyranny on the other faces of our soul: as our soul is not something that can be undestood in unity, but something that conceives in the beginning in multiple things which try to give shape to one thing. Theres many people in a village, and our minds, are no exception.
— But happiness is only achieved by those who have their soul entire - or those who are the same person regardless of the context and scenario. And we gave to much to somebody that wasn't us, as our spirit took possession and lead us down.
– This is this the essence by which someone goes to hell, only to do one thing over again, getting an ever lasting pain for all the things that were given up chasing that which was absent. The more someone is forced into being shaped by the thing that was concevied in lust, the more the individual misses the place they used to call home, for that is no longer within ones reach. Does this makes sense to you?
The alien left me with no answer, and as he contemplated the sea, a tear travelled through his strange face.
– In this state of anguish, affliction rarely ever feels company, as the very individual condition that was pursued, became a full suit and persona to be forced upon and wear. Hell, is one lonely place man because we only learn to speak a language, that only makes sense to ourselves. But i think we can find a way out of it. This is why I'm here.
“Look, what you’ve done, it’s not something i can see the way you can see my own doing on me.” The alien replied. “Besides the way in which i canno’t see your face in this night, you seem ordinary — but what you talk and the way you say it, evokes in every word regret. What is it that you’ve done that has you regret like this?”
As the alien finished speaking, I emptied the can of beer, layed my eyes on the irregular grooves that my feet had left on the sand, and then replied back to him, after making a recap of the story i had repeatedly told myself after falling down.
“My story, is the fairy tale of a guy who makes way for the new coming of a new man; a better man for the world, while he casts disarray upon the earth: much to his dismay, at the expense of his own soul as the people who become victims of disasters, were ones who this man deemed unfair; cruel, evil, despicable in past. That was at the beginning."
"Theres a pile of corpses behind that character — even in covid time, people as close as the local priest of the small town he lived in, would break their neck after falling in the shower, as he had the slightest suspicion of their secret deeds. All clean deads for that matter. Untraceable to nothing but sheer randomness. Magic as it seeems. But were this folk truly evil people or even guilty of anything? You may ask - the man never knew it for sure, as he never had faculties such as godly omniscience to actually know it; which has taken a toll on him, as the burden of justice is an unberable one for anything but a god."
"Which leads to another point: spontaneously picturing random numbers in the head, associating them with psychological compounds by angular momentum, and actually being bang on the suspicion. Truth friend, in its stochastic presentation: it's unberable.”
“Consequential of such attempts to rationalize his own story in the eyes of people such as close family, my dude became clinically diagnosed with referenced thinking. Which are fancy words for schizophrenia. Nobody believed the story as it was uttered."
"Yet the consequences are there for everyone to see, altought not visible in their cause and effect by anybody but this guy, which lead him first into regret over ever starting his quest as a reformer; and then repent.”
“Now before he realized of this lets call it «curse», he preached for years over the internet as the disasters started to slowly creep up. He preached in a fashion parallel to Niestzches Zarathustra; Zarathustra meaning a famous philosophical device artificied by the philosopher Niestzche, who’s aim was to portray the best posible man, as something he dubbed the <<Übermensch>> ”.
“Such concept being the seemingly more elegant brand of a humanist ideal for a not so distant future: today - albeit a wrong one, for this guy was not dyonisian himself. The backbone of his framework, is analytical psycholgy becoming a chariot for a true understandment of human nature: and ultimately a facilitator for love within light: not within ignorance; not within darkness. Most philosophers today though would mock anything analytical in it's aim."
"Then on the guy preached and dwelved further into the relative hole of his own doctrine: and became imprisoned by what he didn’t got right at first attempt, making him in the process the character that Nietzsche from the comfort of his own writers seat, never attempted to actually embody within realistic means: eventually figuring out within himself the ultimate Nietzschean aristocrat: a magic pen granted by being capetian by mother: from judah by father."
"But Alas, you have no idea how common suicide is within philosophers after they finish their best work. As language, becomes the ultimate barrier for understandment, and then to ones capacity to feel love. Difference — true saliency in ones individual destiny— leads to the gravest posible pain. Ironic isn’t it?”
“Besides technical work with a new form of psychology inspired by analytical chemistry, as that drawed from his efforts during the light of day, five years ago, once he felt the urge to try to reach out to the world from a position of what he deemed was greater understandment: he primitively preached during night his new set of ideas for people to behave beyond the limitations of manipulative psychology, albeit a harsh doctrine meant to clear the way for a better product: Christ himself."
"This is not a doctrine a human being can actually perform, as such its christianity at its highest capacity to bear fruit. It’s an impossible doctrine, yet solves the oldest problem posed in the bible. All which sounds very sci-fi bullshit-y but actual problems started for the protagonist in this tale, when the preaching matched with terrible consequences. Not figurative, but within tangible reality.”
“So just as we talk, theres a small legion of hackers pretending to be doing internet social experiments while talking in an artsy matter: much in my own style, entertaining the exact same concepts - a legion of dangerous monkeys, i have no control over."
"One of the many unexpected consequences being this, yet prompted by something evil; ancient: essentially replicating what my protagonist developed and then preached over the years, while these "hacktivists" lay their attention on things and people, as they select them and enforce upon them strict surveillance, to behave properly. Then to destroy them, as they did in 2020 with many corporations and institutions.A bizarre combination of theater actors to my own liking, and then cyber-security demigods: omniscient in their claims to surveill, and they are - derivative such of another device of what I've done; which is to build a theater so people can make-believe that they are infact performing within themselves something greater - but that's matter for another story."
“Most of the corpses piling up flat out dead, have no relation to him whatsoever; they became victims as my protagonist took measures to fight back the monster he found at the foundation of the known world. This is not an elaborate analogy for one's own unseen capacity for evil, as i mean this: a monster as literally as it can be. For these things friend, im doomed as in true strenght, i have nothing but the pen i use to write down what i think albeit always at danger of it’s eventual inversion. I have no real friends left. Not one who can understand, or help bear the pain: as friendship and love are all gated by understandment."
"The full story has many more vertients, but i think i’ve done it enough justice. This is the predicament of an insane man chased by his own shadow as he builds a better man: one who delivers heavenly things, and then a shadow stringed to deliver tyranny as the very strings behind him make the better man stumble while he tries to keep a grasp of his own spirit, and then of his own soul."
"That monster behind, is wicked smart — and cannot be outwitted nor overpowered but anything but divine smite."
“I’m heading now to a new country, to try to get friends from the only institution in the world who knows and adresses the current times being, and who by extension, might believe me. And to clarify, these being the end of times; but not the end of the world. Yet now i myself have a damocles sword pending over my own head, and i need to do something about it before it falls.”
And as i said these things, i reached out to my backpack drawing a third can of beer from it — besides my own super laptop, thats what my backpack had: an infinite supply of beer. Corona, Indio, Victoria, Dos Equis, Heineken; you name it. I popped the can, and gave it a long and definite sip as i emptied it complete.
The alien didn't try to show that he understood, but stood still in silence, with his sight in the sand below and pressing lips, knowing by my demeanor; that these things as I've said them was something that I needed to do. Then he said: "I don't follow man. You say you preach and then disasters occur. Like a prophet from the bible?"
"Yes. Then I preached to get rid of the things that are actually making the world worse, and something awoke soon after, and since then; everything I do is subject to being misinterpreted due to the diffamatory action of this thing. Now everytime I do something, it can be twisted and turned against my original intent. Right now the hackers are my worst problem: I may have a degree in computers but I have no fucking idea whatsoever of hacking. I earn my living as an A.I engineer.".
The alien raised his sight to meet with mine, and after doing some contemplation on the fact, quite simply said: "You are insane". Then lowered his own sight, and raised it again to meet with the sea and continued. "If you want a tattoo, we can work that out. But either way and whatever parts of your story are true and even worse; the ones you may be lying about: you sound dangerous in a delusional kind of sense, and my life is hard enough as is."
I pressed my fists, knowing then the old same thing had happened again. For I had never forced anything upon anybody, and I was willing to respect that until the bitter end. Then I released the build up of frustration with a loud sigh, and after this amend, I replied back.
"I understand and respect it. But let me just propose you that if you ever want to figure what is beyond life as it's lived by person who has never seen what is like to be someone you write a great story about; you can pin me, and I'll show you what's beyond that door. Give it some thought."
The alien; The Black Alien Project stayed there sitting, spechless but calm, almost expecting something else to be convinced about. But pointless, for i knew that nobody can be forced into anything without bringing a transgression into play – and i wasn’t one to taint myself in sin if it could be avoided. Not anymore.
3.
I made the distance at steady pace walking along the shore, until i found a small group of pines in-between the liminal space of the beach and the land. I sat with one of the pines trunk behind my back, and drawed the Schizo Pills from my eternal supply of traveller goodies.
Quetiapine 100 mg, and Olanzapine 10 mg, i made a smaller fragment from the olanzapine pill, and swallowed both complete. As their side effects were concerned, they would soon knock me out of conscience, as this little ritual was my own way of calling the day complete – then i layed there, vigilant, waiting for my own drowsiness to claim me into sleep - but the Bird of Britan came flying from above, and stood besides me.
\Chirp, Chirp, Chirp**
I watched the bird, annoyed, as its presence had become an omen for contempt. For me and the death people of my past. I frowned upon the little shit, and said nothing. The bird made a little nod, while tilting its head in excentricity the way birds do, and replied. — Hey Andrew!, do you remember when you tried to penetrate your own computer to make a universe grow inside of it? I just wan’t to know something: did your computer moan? Did it finally learnt how to scream your name?
\Chirp Chirp**
Ignoring the bird, i closed my eyes and stayed like that for a long moment, hoping to make the bird think i was asleep. Maybe that would make him leave.
— Can’t bullshit me like that Sweetheart. So please tell me something; why don’t you command one of your supermodels; these muses, to come here and warm the bed for you. It's a cold night and you seem lonely brah
. \Chirp Chirp**
I opened my eyes, and irritated, pointed menacingly at the bird turning my left hand into an imaginary gun. I had already failed at something today, and wasn’t convinced i needed the memory of the things i failed at before. Not now.

• Hol’ up cowboy ! you wan’t to bang my bird ass when you should be banging a bitch ass. What happened with Tyrone huckleberry? Did you managed to make him as impotent as you are right now? —I held steady my hand; and tired, the tempation to pull again the trigger on the bird was growing larger. I saw red roses in my own sight, making a terrible omen for a migraine forthcoming. Said nothing.

— The glowniggers are out there brah. You may not be a hacker – and its true, but i took notice of your last words: so now the glowies are going to instead dreambooth* people into every posible kind of scenario of extorsion, while they surveil like a motherfucker. Like you dream boothed yourself for your little ahem "art project". Then we will use Suno*, then Sora* when it open sources. Are you going to protect your hoes?
Said nothing.

• Alright cowboy, i will give meaning to that revelations verse. What was it? Ah yes. Revelations 9:6. Every single person with an internet history will be as paranoid as you were in 2020. Everyone will be diffamated into acts of political terrorism! Aren’t you am-

And as i pulled the imaginary trigger from the imaginary pistol, an imaginary arrow in the sky descended with a blaze of not so imaginary flames on the Bird of Britain, engulfing the little shit in heat, and making it’s body explode into a gore of scorched viscera. As if the bird was in a microwave oven. I inmediately gasped as the explosion was too close from where i was sitting - after the conmotion, stared at the red and burned stain in the floor, and left my sight rest there, as sleep finally found its way into my restless thoughts.
"No longer care for love unless it's between good friends”. Said to myself. There was certainly a migraine coming, but maybe my dreams would help convince it otherwise. And as far as the hoes were concerned, Furious Angels would be there for them. Like the Rob Dougan song.
4.
Found my own mind after the slumber – asleep, then awake. I realized several hours passed - at least enough to wake up and witness the sun rise above the sea. But as for dreams, the light veil of their memories wasn't something to rely upon. But i did remember something, and it was some overtone in dread; an atmosphere of fear – and a kind of dread sustained in it’s inevitability by the urgency that builds upon dearth.
Now what exactly was it though? I couldn’t remember from my dreams, but ever since i falled to my own death i had always present in mind the future succesion of events that would follow when things started to go very wrong. Iran, the U.S, Israel - now whatever was it in the news; the outcome would be the same. A thousand more cuts to an already languishing economy. Make that corpse bleed, and then fall off a cliff.
As such things would be cooked, just as the bird of britain. The bird was still there though: just in pieces and roasted like the contents of a dropped KFC bucket would. But the little shit would return - as it always did. The economy? Not so much.
Yet i digress. None of the world circumstances mattered as far i was concerned – i had built a small and portable solar system to power my laptop, and my beer supply was well, infinite - i made myself sure that i had my needs covered whatever happened around me. Not tied to even a house for that matter. I incorporated myself and gave my back a stretch. The morning breeze coming from the sea evocated in my memories some time that had long passed – late childhood. I rejected those memories as they beared with them things i didnt wan’t to remember - then wen’t on as usual in my morning routine scrolling through my instagram feed, figuring if there were any new hoes to maybe motivate me into doing my God imposed labour.
Labour which was to either write, or to finish the House of Water — then after scrolling i did in fact saw a new hoe; i dropped a Faux Pas comment. Maybe she would play along, maybe not. Whatever. Sometimes I would put in a lot of effort to do a rhyme. But the effort depended on the insta-hoe in question. I know. Not the best of habits, but back in elementary school i was the kind of kid that would only get motivation when the girls in the classroom were present in physEd. And then i would run faster: whole lotta faster. Run Forrest! Run! Women love used to fuel me; and the habit sticked — and at the moment, i was kinda done with the idea of female trascendence. Would rely on their love, but not on their validation. Not like a simp. Fuck that.
Furthermore, what results did i demonstrably mustered after pursuing true egalitarianism and sharing it? Exactly. A bitch gonna do what a bitch gonna do, and so does the human female. After publishing the comment, I locked my phone and walked towards the highway, as i was planning to pay a visit to somebody long forgotten - I had kind of a schedule that i was going to follow, before taking the plane to Madrid and become hispanic Jon Snow from the walgreens Nightwatch.