Cheesy tortilla infection

Hey all, I'm brand new to modding. I'm working on making a shirt, but I have no idea what I'm doing. I've spent a few hours trying to troubleshoot, follow videos, etc. and it looks like there's a few different ways to write the clothing config file. I at least made a .PAA file.
I have two versions here that I've been working on. Any advice is appreciated or if you can recommend any guides. Thanks!

// #include "BIS_AddonInfo.hpp" class CfgPatches { class Testmod { units[]={}; weapons[]={}; requiredVersion=0.1; requiredAddons[]= { "DZ_Characters", "DZ_Characters_Backpacks", "DZ_Characters_Pants", "DZ_Characters_Vests", "DZ_Characters_Tops", "DZ_Characters_Masks", "DZ_Characters_Headgear", "DZ_Gear_Camping", "DZ_Gear_Crafting", "DZ_Gear_Tools", "DZ_Gear_Containers", "DZ_Weapons_Melee", "DZ_Weapons_Firearms", "DZ_Pistols", "DZ_Data" }; }; }; class CfgVehicles { class Clothing; //Headgear class Ushanka_ColorBase; class TankerHelmet; class BallisticHelmet_ColorBase; class BeanieHat_ColorBase; class BoonieHat_ColorBase; class MilitaryBeret_ColorBase; class RadarCap_ColorBase; class Mich2001Helmet; class DirtBikeHelmet_ColorBase; //Masks class BalaclavaMask_ColorBase; //Ghillie class GhillieTop_ColorBase; class GhillieSuit_ColorBase; class GhillieBushrag_ColorBase; class GhillieAtt_ColorBase; class GhillieHood_ColorBase; //Backpacks class HuntingBag; class MountainBag_ColorBase; class TaloonBag_ColorBase; class DryBag_ColorBase; class AliceBag_ColorBase; class AssaultBag_ColorBase; class CoyoteBag_ColorBase; class TortillaBag; //Tops class ParamedicJacket_ColorBase; class QuiltedJacket_ColorBase; class M65Jacket_ColorBase; class TrackSuitJacket_ColorBase; class HuntingJacket_ColorBase; class TacticalShirt_ColorBase; class Raincoat_ColorBase; class Sweater_ColorBase; class Tshirt_ColorBase; class Jacket_ColorBase; //Pants class CargoPants_ColorBase; class TrackSuitPants_ColorBase; class ParamedicPants_ColorBase; //Vests class HighCapacityVest_ColorBase; class UKAssVest_ColorBase; //class SmershVest; class PlateCarrierVest; class PlateCarrierHolster; class PlateCarrierPouches; //Gloves class TacticalGloves_ColorBase; //Shoes class MilitaryBoots_ColorBase; //Items class CamoNet; class Spraycan_ColorBase; class Barrel_ColorBase; class Static; class Container_Base; class FirefighterAxe; class SantasHat; }; class Tshirt_dye: Tshirt_ColorBase { displayName="Colorful Shirt"; descriptionShort="Yay! Ive made my first Mod!"; itemsCargoSize[] = {6,5}; heatIsolation = 0.7; scope=2; hiddenSelectionsTextures[]= { "Testmod\tshirt_dye.paa", "Testmod\tshirt_dye.paa", "Testmod\tshirt_dye.paa" }; }; class Rainbow_hexagon: Jacket_ColorBase; { displayName="Rainbow Hexagon Jacket"; descriptionShort="Pain's first mod"; itemsCargoSize[] = {10,10}; heatIsolation = 0.7; scope=2; hiddenSelectionsTextures[]= { "Testmod\rainbow_hexagon1.paa", "Testmod\rainbow_hexagon1.paa", "Testmod\rainbow_hexagon1.paa" }; }; }; 

OR , second file I've been working on.
class CfgPatches { class Addon_name { units[]={}; weapons[]={}; requiredVersion=0.1; requiredAddons[]= { "" }; }; }; class CfgMods { class Addon_name { dir="Addon_name"; picture=""; action=""; hideName=1; hidePicture=1; name="Addon_name"; credits=""; author=""; authorID="0"; version="1.0"; extra=0; type="mod"; dependencies[]= { "Game", "World", "Mission" }; /*class defs { class gameScriptModule { value=""; files[]= { "Addon_name/scripts/3_game" }; }; class worldScriptModule { value=""; files[]= { "Addon_name/scripts/4_world" }; }; class missionScriptModule { value=""; files[]= { "Addon_name/scripts/5_mission" }; }; };*/ }; }; class CfgVehicles
{ class Clothing;
//Headgear class Ushanka_ColorBase; class TankerHelmet; class BallisticHelmet_ColorBase; class BeanieHat_ColorBase; class BoonieHat_ColorBase; class MilitaryBeret_ColorBase; class RadarCap_ColorBase; class Mich2001Helmet; class DirtBikeHelmet_ColorBase;
//Masks class BalaclavaMask_ColorBase;
//Ghillie class GhillieTop_ColorBase; class GhillieSuit_ColorBase; class GhillieBushrag_ColorBase; class GhillieAtt_ColorBase; class GhillieHood_ColorBase;
//Backpacks class HuntingBag; class MountainBag_ColorBase; class TaloonBag_ColorBase; class DryBag_ColorBase; class AliceBag_ColorBase; class AssaultBag_ColorBase; class CoyoteBag_ColorBase; class TortillaBag;
//Tops class ParamedicJacket_ColorBase; class QuiltedJacket_ColorBase; class M65Jacket_ColorBase; class TrackSuitJacket_ColorBase; class HuntingJacket_ColorBase; class TacticalShirt_ColorBase; class Raincoat_ColorBase; class Sweater_ColorBase; class RainbowShirt_ColorBase;
//Pants class CargoPants_ColorBase; class TrackSuitPants_ColorBase; class ParamedicPants_ColorBase;
//Vests class HighCapacityVest_ColorBase; class UKAssVest_ColorBase; //class SmershVest; class PlateCarrierVest; class PlateCarrierHolster; class PlateCarrierPouches;
//Gloves class TacticalGloves_ColorBase;
//Shoes class MilitaryBoots_ColorBase;
//Items class CamoNet; class Spraycan_ColorBase; class Barrel_ColorBase; class Static; class Container_Base; class FirefighterAxe; class SantasHat;
class RainbowShirt_ColorBase: Clothing { displayName="$STR_CfgVehicles_M65Jacket_ColorBase0"; descriptionShort="$STR_CfgVehicles_M65Jacket_ColorBase1"; model="\DZ\characters\tops\M65_Jacket_g.p3d"; inventorySlot[]= { "Body" }; itemInfo[]= { "Clothing", "Body" }; weight=1630; itemSize[]={4,3}; itemsCargoSize[]={7,6}; quickBarBonus=2; varWetMax=0.49000001; heatIsolation=0.89999998; soundAttType="HeavyJacket"; repairableWithKits[]={5,2}; repairCosts[]={30,25}; visibilityModifier=0.89999998; hiddenSelections[]= { "camoGround", "camoMale", "camoFemale" }; class DamageSystem { class GlobalHealth { class Health { hitpoints=180; healthLevels[]= {
{ 1,
{ "DZ\characters\tops\Data\M65_Jacket.rvmat" } },
{ 0.69999999,
{ "DZ\characters\tops\Data\M65_Jacket.rvmat" } },
{ 0.5,
{ "DZ\characters\tops\Data\M65_Jacket_damage.rvmat" } },
{ 0.30000001,
{ "DZ\characters\tops\Data\M65_Jacket_damage.rvmat" } },
{ 0,
{ "DZ\characters\tops\Data\M65_Jacket_destruct.rvmat" } } }; }; }; class GlobalArmor { class Melee { class Health { damage=0.85000002; }; class Blood { damage=0.80000001; }; class Shock { damage=0.80000001; }; }; class Infected { class Health { damage=0.85000002; }; class Blood { damage=0.80000001; }; class Shock { damage=0.80000001; }; }; }; }; class ClothingTypes { male="\DZ\characters\tops\M65_Jacket_m.p3d"; female="\DZ\characters\tops\M65_Jacket_f.p3d"; }; class AnimEvents { class SoundWeapon { class pickUpItem { soundSet="Shirt_pickup_SoundSet"; id=797; }; class drop { soundset="Shirt_drop_SoundSet"; id=898; }; }; }; }; class Rainbow_Shirt: RainbowShirt_ColorBase { scope=2; visibilityModifier=0.69999999; hiddenSelectionsTextures[]= { "\dz\characters\tops\data\M65_Jacket_black_co.paa", "\dz\characters\tops\data\M65_Jacket_black_co.paa", "\dz\characters\tops\data\M65_Jacket_black_co.paa" }; }; };// #include "BIS_AddonInfo.hpp" class CfgPatches { class Testmod { units[]={}; weapons[]={}; requiredVersion=0.1; requiredAddons[]= { "DZ_Characters", "DZ_Characters_Backpacks", "DZ_Characters_Pants", "DZ_Characters_Vests", "DZ_Characters_Tops", "DZ_Characters_Masks", "DZ_Characters_Headgear", "DZ_Gear_Camping", "DZ_Gear_Crafting", "DZ_Gear_Tools", "DZ_Gear_Containers", "DZ_Weapons_Melee", "DZ_Weapons_Firearms", "DZ_Pistols", "DZ_Data" }; }; }; class CfgVehicles { class Clothing;
//Headgear class Ushanka_ColorBase; class TankerHelmet; class BallisticHelmet_ColorBase; class BeanieHat_ColorBase; class BoonieHat_ColorBase; class MilitaryBeret_ColorBase; class RadarCap_ColorBase; class Mich2001Helmet; class DirtBikeHelmet_ColorBase;
//Masks class BalaclavaMask_ColorBase;
//Ghillie class GhillieTop_ColorBase; class GhillieSuit_ColorBase; class GhillieBushrag_ColorBase; class GhillieAtt_ColorBase; class GhillieHood_ColorBase;
//Backpacks class HuntingBag; class MountainBag_ColorBase; class TaloonBag_ColorBase; class DryBag_ColorBase; class AliceBag_ColorBase; class AssaultBag_ColorBase; class CoyoteBag_ColorBase; class TortillaBag;
//Tops class ParamedicJacket_ColorBase; class QuiltedJacket_ColorBase; class M65Jacket_ColorBase; class TrackSuitJacket_ColorBase; class HuntingJacket_ColorBase; class TacticalShirt_ColorBase; class Raincoat_ColorBase; class Sweater_ColorBase; class Tshirt_ColorBase; class Jacket_ColorBase;
//Pants class CargoPants_ColorBase; class TrackSuitPants_ColorBase; class ParamedicPants_ColorBase;
//Vests class HighCapacityVest_ColorBase; class UKAssVest_ColorBase; //class SmershVest; class PlateCarrierVest; class PlateCarrierHolster; class PlateCarrierPouches;
//Gloves class TacticalGloves_ColorBase;
//Shoes class MilitaryBoots_ColorBase;
//Items class CamoNet; class Spraycan_ColorBase; class Barrel_ColorBase; class Static; class Container_Base; class FirefighterAxe; class SantasHat; }; class Tshirt_dye: Tshirt_ColorBase { displayName="Colorful Shirt"; descriptionShort="Yay! Ive made my first Mod!"; itemsCargoSize[] = {6,5}; heatIsolation = 0.7; scope=2; hiddenSelectionsTextures[]= { "Testmod\tshirt_dye.paa", "Testmod\tshirt_dye.paa", "Testmod\tshirt_dye.paa" }; };
class Rainbow_hexagon: Jacket_ColorBase; { displayName="Rainbow Hexagon Jacket"; descriptionShort="Pain's first mod"; itemsCargoSize[] = {10,10}; heatIsolation = 0.7; scope=2; hiddenSelectionsTextures[]= { "Testmod\rainbow_hexagon1.paa", "Testmod\rainbow_hexagon1.paa", "Testmod\rainbow_hexagon1.paa" }; };
};OR class CfgPatches { class Addon_name { units[]={}; weapons[]={}; requiredVersion=0.1; requiredAddons[]= { "" }; }; }; class CfgMods { class Addon_name { dir="Addon_name"; picture=""; action=""; hideName=1; hidePicture=1; name="Addon_name"; credits=""; author=""; authorID="0"; version="1.0"; extra=0; type="mod"; dependencies[]= { "Game", "World", "Mission" }; /*class defs { class gameScriptModule { value=""; files[]= { "Addon_name/scripts/3_game" }; }; class worldScriptModule { value=""; files[]= { "Addon_name/scripts/4_world" }; }; class missionScriptModule { value=""; files[]= { "Addon_name/scripts/5_mission" }; }; };*/ }; }; class CfgVehicles
{ class Clothing;
//Headgear class Ushanka_ColorBase; class TankerHelmet; class BallisticHelmet_ColorBase; class BeanieHat_ColorBase; class BoonieHat_ColorBase; class MilitaryBeret_ColorBase; class RadarCap_ColorBase; class Mich2001Helmet; class DirtBikeHelmet_ColorBase;
//Masks class BalaclavaMask_ColorBase;
//Ghillie class GhillieTop_ColorBase; class GhillieSuit_ColorBase; class GhillieBushrag_ColorBase; class GhillieAtt_ColorBase; class GhillieHood_ColorBase;
//Backpacks class HuntingBag; class MountainBag_ColorBase; class TaloonBag_ColorBase; class DryBag_ColorBase; class AliceBag_ColorBase; class AssaultBag_ColorBase; class CoyoteBag_ColorBase; class TortillaBag;
//Tops class ParamedicJacket_ColorBase; class QuiltedJacket_ColorBase; class M65Jacket_ColorBase; class TrackSuitJacket_ColorBase; class HuntingJacket_ColorBase; class TacticalShirt_ColorBase; class Raincoat_ColorBase; class Sweater_ColorBase; class RainbowShirt_ColorBase;
//Pants class CargoPants_ColorBase; class TrackSuitPants_ColorBase; class ParamedicPants_ColorBase;
//Vests class HighCapacityVest_ColorBase; class UKAssVest_ColorBase; //class SmershVest; class PlateCarrierVest; class PlateCarrierHolster; class PlateCarrierPouches;
//Gloves class TacticalGloves_ColorBase;
//Shoes class MilitaryBoots_ColorBase;
//Items class CamoNet; class Spraycan_ColorBase; class Barrel_ColorBase; class Static; class Container_Base; class FirefighterAxe; class SantasHat;
class RainbowShirt_ColorBase: Clothing { displayName="$STR_CfgVehicles_M65Jacket_ColorBase0"; descriptionShort="$STR_CfgVehicles_M65Jacket_ColorBase1"; model="\DZ\characters\tops\M65_Jacket_g.p3d"; inventorySlot[]= { "Body" }; itemInfo[]= { "Clothing", "Body" }; weight=1630; itemSize[]={4,3}; itemsCargoSize[]={7,6}; quickBarBonus=2; varWetMax=0.49000001; heatIsolation=0.89999998; soundAttType="HeavyJacket"; repairableWithKits[]={5,2}; repairCosts[]={30,25}; visibilityModifier=0.89999998; hiddenSelections[]= { "camoGround", "camoMale", "camoFemale" }; class DamageSystem { class GlobalHealth { class Health { hitpoints=180; healthLevels[]= {
{ 1,
{ "DZ\characters\tops\Data\M65_Jacket.rvmat" } },
{ 0.69999999,
{ "DZ\characters\tops\Data\M65_Jacket.rvmat" } },
{ 0.5,
{ "DZ\characters\tops\Data\M65_Jacket_damage.rvmat" } },
{ 0.30000001,
{ "DZ\characters\tops\Data\M65_Jacket_damage.rvmat" } },
{ 0,
{ "DZ\characters\tops\Data\M65_Jacket_destruct.rvmat" } } }; }; }; class GlobalArmor { class Melee { class Health { damage=0.85000002; }; class Blood { damage=0.80000001; }; class Shock { damage=0.80000001; }; }; class Infected { class Health { damage=0.85000002; }; class Blood { damage=0.80000001; }; class Shock { damage=0.80000001; }; }; }; }; class ClothingTypes { male="\DZ\characters\tops\M65_Jacket_m.p3d"; female="\DZ\characters\tops\M65_Jacket_f.p3d"; }; class AnimEvents { class SoundWeapon { class pickUpItem { soundSet="Shirt_pickup_SoundSet"; id=797; }; class drop { soundset="Shirt_drop_SoundSet"; id=898; }; }; }; }; class Rainbow_Shirt: RainbowShirt_ColorBase { scope=2; visibilityModifier=0.69999999; hiddenSelectionsTextures[]= { "\dz\characters\tops\data\M65_Jacket_black_co.paa", "\dz\characters\tops\data\M65_Jacket_black_co.paa", "\dz\characters\tops\data\M65_Jacket_black_co.paa" }; }; };

Part 1
Part 2
Content Warning: Child Abuse
***
Darkness gave way to dimness as I opened my eyes and saw slivers of gray light printed on the ceiling like lines on the page of a ruled notebook. In the distance, I heard the sound of pans clanking against the kitchen stove, and I became ever-aware of the scent of cinnamon and bacon sneaking in from under my closed bedroom door. For a moment, I was back in sixth grade. My dad was downstairs cooking up his famous from-scratch buttermilk pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs. It was probably 7:00, maybe 7:05, and I had fifteen minutes to get up, shower, dress, eat, then it was off to Middle School with dad: for me to learn, him to work.
It was the day we were set to be assigned our Ancient Civilizations project. Unless something went terribly wrong, I would be choosing Ancient Rome. I didn't know much about it, other than it was some great empire, but even then I didn't really understand what an empire was. I was just happy that I would get to build something with my dad. I turned on my side and looked at the closed blinds, the source of the gray lines, then the cabinet with all my trophies, and finally the wobbly, firetruck-red chair pushed under my desk. I was home at last. The past fifteen years were nothing but a dream. There was no blinking. No malevolent demon chasing me. No inexplicable chaos…
It was a sweet fantasy. But one that became bitter the longer I tried to chew on it.
I swept my legs out from under the covers and sat, face-down, on the corner of my twin mattress. My feet were adult's feet. My room was my former room. And that was Trent downstairs cooking breakfast. Unless, of course, it was my dad, in which case I'd have bigger problems than merely waking up from a good dream.
After changing into a fresh shirt and pants, I went downstairs and saw that it was, in fact, Trent cooking breakfast. He was wearing a plain t-shirt through which I could see the ripples of his large back muscles as he whisked what I presumed was pancake batter. He must not have heard me, because he didn't turn around when I made it to the end of the hall. I leaned against the wall, arms folded, and watched him for a minute as he finished whisking the batter, then poured it onto a hot griddle (spilling a few dribbles on the counter in the process), watched it bubble, flipped it, then transferred the golden medallion onto a plate stacked five high. Next to the pancakes was a plate filled with bacon, and a small aluminum pan of scrambled eggs.
"Smells good," I said at last. "Find everything okay?"
I thought I might startle him with my abrupt appearance; instead, Trent looked over his shoulder, chewing on a piece of bacon. He swallowed and said, "Oh, it's you. Yeah, I hope you don't mind me using your kitchen. I thought I'd make us some breakfast."
It occurred to me then that Trent likely wasn't a guest in other people's homes very often. Lucky for him, I didn't mind him using a kitchen that hadn't been mine in many years. I was going to tell him as much when I saw an opened box of Bisquick sitting on the counter. I pointed to it and asked, "you found that in the pantry? My dad usually makes his pancakes from scratch."
He turned to look at the box, then back at me. "No, I went out and got that. And the bacon and eggs. I didn't want to dig into your supply without asking, and you were asleep, so..."
I felt my eyebrows furrow as I checked the time on the stove-clock. "It's 8:17 in the morning. Are you telling me you went out to the store, bought all these ingredients, then came back and cooked them? Just how early did you get up?"
"Around five," he answered as casually as if I had asked his dog's name. "I don't usually get much sleep. Around four, five hours is all I need. It's actually unusual for Antennas to need more than that amount. But I suppose you are unusual."
I opened my mouth in disbelief. Not only had he commandeered my kitchen, he was calling me unusual? At 8-fricken-17 in the morning?
"Sorry," Trent said, reading my expression, "I'm… well, let's just say I've not had many personal relationships. I'm used to being blunt. It's just easier that way." He took out a plate and transferred two pancakes, some eggs, and a few slices of bacon onto it. Then he held it up to me as a peace offering.
I sighed. "This better be good," I said with a wry smile and took the plate.
"Trent-certified, but no guarantees. Refunds not allowed." He replied, which made me giggle.
We sat across from one another at the dining room table. The meal was pretty good, but it was no dad's special: the pancakes were clearly box pancakes, the scrambled eggs lacked cheese and had a little too much pepper, and the bacon was… well it was bacon, no complaints there. Still, it was nice to settle down and have a somewhat normal morning.
After we ate, Trent unfurled the long arc of his life, which began as the second youngest brother of eight siblings in rural Oklahoma. Trent's 'pops' was in the logging business, first as a lumberjack, then as an owner of his own logging company. His dad acquired the business while Trent was still young, so school was never a high priority for him—at least not the way contributing to the household was. The rest of his childhood he summed up in two lessons: "Being 'close' has nothing to do with distance," and "don't touch strange plants in the woods."
I asked him if he kept in touch with any of his siblings, to which he responded, saying, "The only reason they haven't had a funeral for me is because it would be too much work." When I asked him to elaborate, he said he'd not had contact with anyone in his immediate family for over a decade. He kept tabs on them. For example, he knew his mother had dementia, and his dad was forced into retirement by his oldest brother (who had gone on to take over the logging company). His sisters were all married and moved to other parts of the country. He considered reaching out several times, but his situation required a degree of security that wasn't conducive of close family ties, not that there were particularly strong ties even before he broke contact. Trent admitted to being a bit of a black sheep.
"It all circles back to one of my jobs as a Home Inspector," he explained. "After I moved out, I tried college and quickly realized it wasn't for me. So I entered the workforce and did a bunch of odd jobs. Construction, carpentry, plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for a while. But I ended up in Home Inspection. There was one job in particular which made me aware of…" Trent paused and gestured toward the space between us, "our situation. The blinks. You remember what I told you about origin points being like a station where other realms intersect with our world? Well, this house was like Union Station or JFK airport if you prefer a plane analogy. There was a pile of junk up to my knees in the basement of that house; all of it had been blinked in. I spent a couple days on the property, running tests, trying to identify the strange phenomenon, but on day three I rolled up to an army of what I thought at the time were Feds, parading around the property like ants on an anthill and sectioning it off with crime-scene tape." I saw disgust funnel into Trent's expression. "They're not Feds at all though. At least not anymore. I call them "the Organization," a group of people who lead in the formalized understanding of what you know as 'blinking'. And they're the reason I have to take precautions."
I considered this for a moment. Trent's story was certainly plausible, but I was missing a key piece of the puzzle. "Okay, so, what does this 'Organization' want? You make it seem like they're not good people. Have they tried attacking you?"
This caused Trent to laugh for a solid ten seconds. "Sorry, it's just… I mean if you knew what I knew, you might think it's funny, too."
"Then tell me"
Trent took a deep breath, then released. "It's a long story. The gist of it is this. The Organization has a certain device which I call 'the Receiver'. Think of it like a giant antenna—no, not us kind of Antennas, an actual antenna. It's like the machine equivalent of us, but with a billion times the bandwidth. Their goal is to use the Receiver to map our world in relation to other dimensions, then use that map to establish dominion over everyone and everything. In order to do this, they need muscle: both human muscle, and Antenna muscle. They're in the process of harvesting as many of us they can find. They're like a giant diamond company who is taking to the mines. When they find a stone, they take it back to their factory for cutting and refinement. In real terms, they run tests on us and attempt to augment our powers. The ultimate goal is to create a 'Strong Antenna', or an Antenna capable of causing phase shifts—blinks." Trent saw from my expression that he was starting to lose me, so he stood up and began rolling up his shirt.
"What are you doing?" I asked, turning away. Then I saw what he wanted to show me. There was a long scar beginning high up on his ribs and slashing all the way down to his left hip. There was also what appeared to be a patch of burn marks on his stomach.
"It was early on when I got these." Trent explained. "I was naive. I actually thought I'd be able to reason with these people. The only reason I escaped was because of dumb luck and a box of hand grenades. But that's a tale for another time. I learned two important lessons that day. First, the Organization isn't fucking around. And two, they aren't immortal. Most of them are regular, every-day humans, except for their obsession with power." Trent let his shirt fall, covering up the marks. "I ran into them again recently at their Headquarters. My team and I are working on a plan to…" he paused, seemingly weighing his words, then changed gears. "Well, I guess we can go over that another time."
I couldn't help but feel that Trent was holding something back. As much as I tried to resist thinking about yesterday, the old demon-man's words kept ringing in my head. You think he can help you? He's only here to help himself. Then I thought about what Trent said at the deli: "that's the thing that got me really interested in you. Somehow you seem to be able to control it without gear, just by praying." Did Trent think I was a Strong Antenna? Is that the only reason he's helping me? Because he wants to recruit me? And if that is the case, what if I said 'no'?
"Listen, Trent," I started, but I saw Trent was already nodding. Still, I pressed on. "I need you to tell me what I'm actually doing here. Why did you agree to help me? And what does helping me really mean? I want to know the truth."
"The truth is…" Trent started, then stopped and looked out the glass door that led onto the deck. I looked too and saw a sparrow had alighted on our old bird feeder. It tried pecking at some of its non-existent grains, then sang what I assumed was a song of displeasure before taking back off to the skies.
"The truth is: I do want to recruit you. I think you have the potential to be the strongest tool in my arsenal, but I won't require it. To date, I've helped 53 of our kind, but only seven have stayed on. Most decide to go on and live normal lives." Trent scooted his plate to the side. "In our case, this can essentially go one of two ways. In either instance, we pass through Chicago for two stops. First, I need to meet up with an associate who has something to drop off to me. Then I need to stop at a storage locker and trade out some gear that will allow me to open a phase portal. When we arrive at your origin point, I'll open the portal and you'll look inside. Based on everything you've told me, I'm guessing that childhood accident was when the demon appended itself to your life. By seeing how it entered your life, you should be able to figure out how to dispel it. At least that's the working theory. Returning to the origin point has always worked for the other Antennas, although I must admit your situation is different, but I can't imagine it's so different that this method won't work at all. After you return demon-free, you're free. You can walk out and never see me again and hopefully you'll live a happy and peaceful life. Or you can decide to throw your lot in with mine, and I can show you how deep the rabbit hole goes, so to speak." Trent looked into my eyes, and when I didn't respond for a few seconds, he said, "that's it. That's all I got."
I smiled and responded with one sentence.
"When do we leave?"
***
Memories have a strange architecture. In some ways, they are the great safety net of our experiences: collecting them like a bucket under a leaky roof. In other ways, they are an eternal reminder that nothing ever truly lasts. Perhaps a better way of thinking about memories is as the ghosts of our past lingering in the present. As I took one last stroll through my childhood house, feeling that it might be my last time for a long while, I felt the imprints of childhood memories press into my awareness: I could hear my father's voice reading to me at my bedside; I could see him holding one of my stuffed animals above my head as I wrestled him for it; I could recall the times when I'd sneak down the stairs late at night and quietly open the freezer, grab the ice cream carton, then head back upstairs to eat it.
I felt a yearning to return to those memories: to walk into the fictitious pictures my mind was painting on the canvas of my present. I knew I couldn't return, but I still wanted something to hold onto. I went back to my room and grabbed the cotton-stuffed tomato from off my closet cabinet. Then I walked through my dad's study and removed a volume I recalled him frequently reading, a hard-cover book with a green binding called, "A Collection of Great Works". I placed these items by my feet in the passenger seat of Trent's van, and just as we were about to leave, I remembered something else.
"My plant!" I blurted.
"Your what?"
"My plant—and my car. I left them it the deli. Do you think we could swing by and get it?"
Trent checked the time, then said, "Yeah, I guess we can. I just hope it isn't towed."
Luckily, it wasn't. I half-expected to find a ticket on the windshield, but there wasn't one of those, either. I unlocked the door to my Jetta and got into what felt like an active oven. "Hot!" I said and rolled down all the windows, then cranked up the AC. I saw my plant resting in the cupholder that I'd left it in the previous day. I picked it up and touched its soil. It was dry and beginning to crack. Hang on little guy, I thought. Then I led the way back to my house.
When I arrived, I parked at the head of the driveway. I turned off the car, then ran inside with the young tomato plant, bringing it to the upstairs bathrooms sink and dousing it in water. I wasn't sure how much I was supposed to add, but I figured after the sauna experience it had yesterday, I could afford to go a little overboard. Once it was fed, I opened the small purple drapes and placed it on the windowsill which faced East, meaning it would hopefully get plenty of morning sunlight.
"Good, now?" Trent asked after I hopped back in the passenger seat of the van.
"Yeah," I said. "Good now."
"Then lets get a move on."
***
Road tripping with Trent was a much different experience than when we were driving for our lives. For one, Trent wasn't nearly as tense. He drove with the windows down and one hand on the steering wheel like out of a Mustang commercial, talking intermittently about his adventures: people he'd met, jobs he'd done, close calls. He was like a living radio. And when his personal station wasn't on, he was playing one of his CD's—classic rock, mainly. When he was in an 'off' period, I found myself looking out the window at the rolling wheat fields and cloudy blue sky. Journey was playing, and the lyrics to one of the songs crept into my head and reverberated there:
The wheel in the sky keeps on turning.
I don't know where I'll be tomorrow…
I've been trying to make it home,
Got to make it before too long…
Ooh I can't take it, very much longer…
In a strange way, I felt like I was leaving home. But in another way, I was going back. And then it occurred to me that perhaps I didn't have a home at all. Did I ever have one? These past couple days had called everything about my life into question, to the point where the past seemed as mysterious as the future, and both intersected at that one place in the woods. The place where it all began. The place we were headed.
We only stopped once at a gas station to refuel, get snacks, and use the bathroom. Otherwise it was smooth sailing, other than one heated discussion with Trent that began when he addressed his vehicle as "Car" for the fifth time.
"Okay, you need to come up with a better name than that."
"What do you mean?" Trent asked, seeming genuinely confused.
"You have a super-car and you named it 'Car'. That's actually embarrassing."
"But, it is a car."
I facepalmed. "First of all, it's a van."
"A van is a type of car."
"Second of all, would you name your kid, 'kid'?"
Trent thought it over for what I thought was much too long. At last he concluded, "No, I'd probably name him 'boy', or if it's a girl, 'girl'."
After five more minutes of his childish banter, we settled on the name "Ava"—my choice, after rejecting his runner-up name "Scar".
At around the seven hour mark, I dozed off, then woke up a couple hours later to the sensation of the van dipping, then bumping up into an elevated climb. The evening sunlight that was pressuring my eyelids to open, dissipated, and everything was suddenly dark. I opened my eyes and saw we had entered a parking garage. Trent pulled into an open spot on the second level.
"We're here," he said and gathered up his gun which he stashed in a driver's side underboard compartment that I'm guessing he had installed himself.
"I see that"
"You want to wait here, or—"
I opened the car door, which was answer enough for Trent. We both got out and started down Maple Avenue. I had been to several cities before, Chicago among them, but the size of the buildings always struck me with awe. As we walked alongside dozens of other pedestrians, I looked up and traced the closest tower to its peak, guessing how many stories it was in my head. Then I'd be pulled out of my game by the honking of some nearby vehicle.
We continued for two blocks until Trent made a path directly toward the nearest Starbucks. I didn't know what I was picturing for a meeting with his associate, but it definitely wasn't a meetup at a coffee shop. Still, I followed him in. Then when I saw that Trent was leading me to a corner table where a casually dressed Chinese girl who appeared even younger than me was sitting, I blurted in a hushed tone, "her? She's your associate?"
"Took you long enough," said the Chinese girl, looking up from what appeared to be some kind of homework assignment.
"And she's in school?" I asked, incredulous.
The associate looked to me, then to Trent (who nodded), then back to me. "It's just a cover. I'm glad to see it still works, though." She reached out to shake my hand. "I'm Allison. It's nice to meet you."
Trent gave me a smirk, then said, "looks can be deceiving."
I grunted an affirmation and shook Allison's hand. "I'm Lauren. It's nice to meet you, too."
"You have it?" Trent asked, skipping right to business.
"Of course," Allison replied and removed a mailing package from her backpack, setting it on the table. "You want to go make sure it works?" She asked, gesturing up at the ceiling with her eyes.
Trent seemed to think it over for a second, then looked at me. But before he could say anything, Allison cut back in—
"—I'll stay with her. It's been a while since I've had any female company. Why don't you let us girls talk while you take care of that?" She said in a seductive yet authoritative tone which garnered her years that her appearance did not reflect.
Trent hesitated, but only for a moment. "Okay, I'll be right back," he said. Then he hurried out the door in the direction we had come from.
"Come, sit with me." Allison invited. "Tell me about yourself."
I took a seat on the small wooden seat opposite Allison, then crossed my legs. "What do you want to know?" I asked, feeling discomfort rise in my stomach. Nothing about this situation, from the mysterious package, to Trent leaving me alone with this girl, to the girl herself, whose voice was as velvety smooth as the latte she was stirring with a black coffee straw, sat right with me.
"I'm curious about what you think of Trent."
"Trent?" I repeated. I realized this was the first time I was putting any of my thoughts about Trent or our relationship into words. "I guess... he's a pretty straightforward guy. He seems to know what he's doing."
Allison flashed me a small smile, then took a sip of her latte. I saw the sticker on her drink read "Chai". Then she set the cup down and sighed. "Yes, he's very straightforward. Definitely doesn't mince words." She looked up into my eyes. Hers were a rich black, like onyx pebbles, but there was something about the way the light refracted off them which simulated a kind of inward motion, as if they were tiny whirlpools. Her smile spread across her lips. "I'm curious. What did he tell you?"
"Tell me about what?"
"About what you're doing. About where you're off to. What's the plan?"
"Don't you know?" I asked, but it immediately occurred to me that maybe she didn't know. I never saw Trent with a cellphone. Just how did he communicate with his 'associates'? And what if he didn't want her to know what we were doing for a good reason? Should I tell her?
"No, Trent keeps his cards close to his chest. He always has."
"Don't you work together, though?"
Allison waved her left hand in the air. "Of course, but it's because of the nature of our work that most of our communication is done in person, so Trent doesn't tell me much outside of the current job. I was just curious, is all."
"That makes sense. I mean, I'm actually pretty curious about what you do, too."
"Oh?" Allison's voice went high, as if she suddenly sensed an opening. "Then, why don't we trade stories. You tell about your trip, and I'll tell you about mine."
I thought it over for a second. I really did want to hear what Allison had to say, and she was Trent's co-worker, it's not like I was spilling crucial secrets to an enemy. "We're currently on our way to Southern Illinois. Specifically, we're going back to my origin point so I can confront a demon that Trent thinks blinked into my life there."
Allison stopped stirring, but her eyes didn't break from mine. "A demon, huh?" She raised the cup and took a long sip, then placed it back on the table and continued stirring. "I met a demon once," she started, looking up at the walls as if her life was playing on a screen there. "It was back in China, where I was born." She dropped her attention back to me. "Do you mind if I reminisce a little? Maybe you can get something out of it."
I shook my head, but something in my gut started to stir again. Allison continued.
"I was born during the Era of the Once Child Policy. As a result, my mother decided to leave me in a shoebox on the side of the road. I was a girl, so that's just how it was... Like many other babies in my... 'condition', I ended up in foster care. However, for whatever reason, I wasn't adopted. Years passed, and when I turned six, the government decided I'd be of better use building our impoverished town's GDP in a factory that assembled electronic devices for Western countries. Mostly they had me cleaning, but when I turned eight, one of the employees asked for my help with one of the soldering machines. That turned out to be the beginning of the end for me. I sliced open the ring finger of my right hand. I remember specifically seeing the bone underneath the split flesh and thinking it looked so small and white. The employee claimed to have nothing to do with my accident, and the management declared my injury "minimally invasive" and bandaged it up. Two weeks later and who would have guessed that the wound would become infected, and, well..."
Allison dropped the straw into her cup and raised her right hand, spreading the fingers out for me to see. There were only four. Her ring finger was missing, and a small v-shaped scar had taken its place.
"I'm lucky that the surgeon was experienced enough to take out the whole digit, that way it healed in a way which makes it somewhat difficult to notice. You didn't notice, after all. But, then again, is that really luck?" She made a fist and brought it to her lips, stifling a laugh. "No... Now I remember. My luck was still yet to come." She continued stirring. "Because, you see, after that incident, they moved me to a clothing factory with a boss who had a penchant for getting drunk and roughing up his workers, and, well, one night I was walking back to foster care when I heard the outside door to the manager's office slam shut, and there he went, stumbling, slurring insults, curses, and here I was, perfectly in his path. We met eyes, and in them I saw absolutely nothing. A hollow shell of a man, and I can still remember what it looked like to see that shell fill with a demon."
Allison's eyes went wide with some strong emotion that I couldn't place. "He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me out into the field, far away from civilization. I tried to fight at first, but every time I tried to lunge away, I was only ripping a hole in my own scalp. It felt like flames were spewing from my head, and my only respite was when the blood eventually cooled over the wound. By the time he had thrown me against the rock, I'd already all but given up. Then, when my head met the stone, I heard a pop and my grip on the world loosened. The man continued touching me, but it was as if I was disconnected now, floating somewhere above my own head, and gravity was beginning to reverse, causing me to float higher and higher, away from the horrible nightmare below."
Allison paused for a moment, and I suddenly realized I was holding my breath.
"Then I saw the most bright light I'd ever seen. At the time I thought it was either the Sun or Heaven or something like that. It was just too bright for this world. But then after looking for a little longer, I noticed it was in the shape of a person. It reached out toward me, and I had never been so quick to respond. When I touched it, I felt all my pain immediately dissipate. And I felt warm and... peaceful. And I was no longer in the sky. I was back in the field. But when I looked around, the man was gone. Vanished, right out of existence. I didn't understand it at the time, but that was my first experience with the Shifts. All I knew then was that I was free, and I damn well wasn't going to waste that. I ran as far as I could, away from the factories, the foster home, the corrupt governments and corporations. I kept running until I arrived at a City that didn't know me. That didn't want to know me. And I liked it that way, because it's easier to live as a ghost than as a victim."
Allison perked up, and when I turned around to see what for, I saw Trent entering back through the door.
"But you know what's interesting?" Allison blurted out, her voice becoming quieter. "Trent never took me back to confront my demon." Her voice became a whisper. "In fact, I can't recall him ever taking any of us back."
For a moment the whole world became a still frame. Allison's clear, olive skin, and dark eyes, made darker with eyeliner; her narrow nose; her small lips now coiling into a smile. My entire body was a hair trigger hat only needed the slightest force to set it off. And when Trent placed his hand on my shoulder, I whirled around and narrowly missed a haymaker that swept just shy of Trent's face.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa" he said and stepped back with his palms up. "It's just me. Is everything okay?"
I turned back to Allison, but she seemed different now. Her expression was benign; confused, even. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"I—you"
"We were just talking about where you were off to next." Allison said without a hint of pretense.
"Okay, well, chat time is over. It's time to go." Trent said and started guiding me toward the door. I turned back and saw Allison mouth some words which I swear I heard, as if they had been directly transmitted into my brain.
"See you soon" she purred.
She was smiling.
***
The next leg of the trip passed mostly in silence. It was a little over an hour to the storage facility which was located just South of Chicago. My heart was beating wildly in my chest as I pictured Allison's smile. I wanted to ask Trent if demons could possess Antennas, if somehow one of us could become compromised, but then I remembered Allison's words and stopped myself. Because I didn't know if I could really trust Trent. I tried to tell myself I could trust him—that it was Allison who was the liar. Her whole persona seemed fake at best, and possessed at worst. But, then... what if she was telling the truth? What if Trent was the enemy?
He sensed my quietness and tried striking up a couple conversations, but I only gave one-word answers. Somehow, our trust was so brittle that a single, well-placed sentence was enough to snap it. When he asked if everything was okay, I lied and said that I just had a headache and needed more rest. So I leaned my head against the stuffed tomato and tried to sleep, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to.
We arrived at the facility just as the sun was setting for the night. Trent pulled up to the self-service gate and scanned a card which caused the automatic doors to swing open. We looped down a couple rows of the outdoor units until we came to #48.
"We're here," Trent prompted, but this time I didn't budge. I felt his eyes on me after he turned off the ignition. "Hey," he called. "Are you awake?"
I was silent.
I heard Trent quietly click open his door, then close it the same way. I waited a few seconds then turned my head and watched him from the driver's side mirror. He opened the storage locker, then walked inside and turned on a light. It occurred to me then how dimly lit this outdoor storage facility was. There was a weak overhead lantern peeking over every fourth garage like an anglerfish's lure, leaving a large portion of the road not hit by the light bubbles completely dark.
I tried to plan my next move. I could leave Trent and run. But where would I go? Or I could stay and see Trent's plan through. There was a chance this was all an elaborate trap. Maybe Trent was working with the demon, or maybe he was the demon. But then why did he save me? Twice. Maybe he was actually a double agent for the Organization. But he could easily have captured me by now. Unless he needs me to go back to the origin point for a different reason... I considered everything I had learned up until this point: we live at the cross-section of different realms; these other realms interact with our world; Antennas, who are a very small minority of people, can see these interactions; the Organization wants to harness our power and create a 'Strong Antenna' to achieve some kind of universal hegemony; I'm the closest thing to a Strong Antenna to date; Trent knows this; He's taking me back to my origin point, despite not taking the others back to theirs; Trent claims to want to fight the Organization; the best way to fight the Organization would be with a Strong Antenna. What if Trent was trying to make me into a Strong Antenna?
I considered this chain of reasoning. It seemed very plausible, especially after Allison's cryptic messages. Was she trying to warn me of this? But that smile, and the "see you soon"... If she wasn't being possessed, why would she be seeing me soon?
Suddenly my thoughts gave way like a broken dam as I heard a ping come from Ava's radar. I jumped, thinking that all of the electronics turned off with the ignition, but when I looked at the circular sonar map, I saw a red dot had just emerged in the top-right corner. I looked out the window in the direction of the ping, but I couldn't see anything heading down the road.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.
Four more dots appeared behind the first, and they were approaching.
I jumped out the van and ran over to where Trent was hauling in a large cardboard crate into the back of the van. "Trent, there's pings on the radar. A bunch of them."
He dropped the box next to three others, and I realized I had never seen inside the back of the van. It was filled with what looked like pneumatic tubes wired into circuits, and in the center was a tri-pod which was holding a large halo-shaped ring.
"Pings?" Trent said, then his face widened with shock as he realized what I meant. "Shit, how many?"
"Five, maybe more now. And they're getting closer."
"Five?" He jumped out the back and ran into the storage locker. I thought he was going to close the door, but when I saw him hauling boxes back toward the van, I yelled at him. "What are you doing!?"
"I need to load this up for tomorrow. Here," He tossed me his keys. "Get it started."
"Fuck, seriously?"
Trent didn't respond, only kept shuffling boxes into the van.
I turned and ran to the door and hopped in the driver's seat. As I was turning on the ignition, I saw the row of bushes that was just outside of the facility begin to rattle. The next sweep revealed a whole sea of pings. I rolled down the window and shouted Trent's name.
"One more, that's all. Get in the passenger seat, I'll be there in a sec."
I scooted over the center console and waited, clutching at the bottom of my pants legs. Just as Trent slammed the rear door of the van shut, I saw the first figure emerge onto the road ahead of us. It looked like some kind of large coyote, though it was hard to tell because it was still fifty meters out.
"Now detecting 53 controlled agents." Ava said right as Trent jumped in and shut the driver's side door. "Net anomalies: 53."
"Ava, increase radius to five miles." Trent instructed as he backed up all the way to the end of the lane and spun us around toward the gate. Just as we left, I saw the pack of coyotes stalking toward us, slow at first, then in a dead sprint.
"Increasing radius." Ava responded. "Increased. Recalculating… Recalculating… Re—complete. Now detecting 451 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 451."
"What does 'controlled agent' mean?" I asked.
"Hold on," Trent said and accelerated into the gate, bursting through it. The whole van shook, and I heard my phone fall in the crack between the seat and door. Trent steadied the van, then said, "It means the things chasing us are being controlled by something that isn't detectable."
"The demon?"
"That'd be my guess."
"But why can't Ava detect it?"
Trent switched to the right lane, then merged onto the Interstate-South ramp. "Probably because it isn't trying to kill us."
"Then, what—" I looked back at the map and basically had my question answered. All 451 pings were coalesced in a semicircle on one side of the map. The side of the map that we had just come from. "Is it trying to force us toward the crash site?"
"It seems that way." Trent answered.
"Trent, pull over."
"Huh?"
"Pull over!" I yelled.
He looked at me, eyes wide. Then he did as I had instructed and pulled off in the middle of the ramp. The red dots slowly closed in on our position.
"Now detecting—"
"Shut up, Ava." I said. I could feel my blood boiling. "I'm not going one step further until you tell me the truth. Why are we going to my origin point? What is your real motive?"
"What do you mean? I already told you."
I unlocked the passenger side door.
"Wait," Trent said and reached out toward me. "Just, wait."
There was silence, except for the pings indicating that the beasts behind us had re-encroached on our position to about fifty meters.
"Okay, I didn't tell you everything. But we don't have time now—"
I opened the door.
"Okay, okay. I didn't tell you everything, it's true. I've never done this with anyone else, but the reason is because I never needed to. And if I told you what might happen, you would have refused it."
"Refused what?"
"This—me, my help. Lauren, I am trying to help you. But you have to understand—it's likely that neither of us are going to live past tomorrow. You're basically confronting a dark entity in a place where I can't protect you, and if you somehow do manage to kill it, you'll be coming back to the fight of your life. Because I don't have the power to hide you from the Organization. They're going to show up and try to take you. I really don't know how you've lasted as long as you have. Whatever protection you had growing up, it's gone now. And now I'm all you have. And in some twist of fate, you're all I have."
Ava reactivated. "Now detecting 1,117 controlled agents. Proximity till contact: 20 meters. Net anomalies: 1,117."
I closed my door. "But what if I still don't want to go through with it?"
Trent pointed at the screen. "Then we die right here, right now, together. Because I am one-hundred percent certain that if we don't go to that crash site, we're dead anyway. All of us."
Another ping rolled through. I checked the side-view mirror and saw the swarming pack of dogs reach the van and bound around the rear wheels. I suddenly recalled the conversation I had with Father Martin and the conclusions I had drawn. Father, I've been… wrestling with something, and I think God wants me to confront it. I think I've been running away and hiding from it for so long that I'd convinced myself it disappeared...
"Go," I said just as I felt the collision of the coyotes slamming their bodies against the side doors.
Trent didn't waste any time stepping on the gas. I watched as the coyotes diminished in the distance and the pings receded into the back of the map, never disappearing fully, but covering the flank of our retreat—a reminder lingering on the edge of our awareness that there was no turning back now. That, one way or another, this was ending tomorrow.
And I'd either be dead, or something else entirely.

Part 1
Part 2
***
Darkness gave way to dimness as I opened my eyes and saw slivers of gray light printed on the ceiling like lines on the page of a ruled notebook. In the distance, I heard the sound of pans clanking against the kitchen stove, and I became ever-aware of the scent of cinnamon and bacon sneaking in from under my closed bedroom door. For a moment, I was back in sixth grade. My dad was downstairs cooking up his famous from-scratch buttermilk pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs. It was probably 7:00, maybe 7:05, and I had fifteen minutes to get up, shower, dress, eat, then it was off to Middle School with dad: for me to learn, him to work.
It was the day we were set to be assigned our Ancient Civilizations project. Unless something went terribly wrong, I would be choosing Ancient Rome. I didn't know much about it, other than it was some great empire, but even then I didn't really understand what an empire was. I was just happy that I would get to build something with my dad. I turned on my side and looked at the closed blinds, the source of the gray lines, then the cabinet with all my trophies, and finally the wobbly, firetruck-red chair pushed under my desk. I was home at last. The past fifteen years were nothing but a dream. There was no blinking. No malevolent demon chasing me. No inexplicable chaos…
It was a sweet fantasy. But one that became bitter the longer I tried to chew on it.
I swept my legs out from under the covers and sat, face-down, on the corner of my twin mattress. My feet were adult's feet. My room was my former room. And that was Trent downstairs cooking breakfast. Unless, of course, it was my dad, in which case I'd have bigger problems than merely waking up from a good dream.
After changing into a fresh shirt and pants, I went downstairs and saw that it was, in fact, Trent cooking breakfast. He was wearing a plain t-shirt through which I could see the ripples of his large back muscles as he whisked what I presumed was pancake batter. He must not have heard me, because he didn't turn around when I made it to the end of the hall. I leaned against the wall, arms folded, and watched him for a minute as he finished whisking the batter, then poured it onto a hot griddle (spilling a few dribbles on the counter in the process), watched it bubble, flipped it, then transferred the golden medallion onto a plate stacked five high. Next to the pancakes was a plate filled with bacon, and a small aluminum pan of scrambled eggs.
"Smells good," I said at last. "Find everything okay?"
I thought I might startle him with my abrupt appearance; instead, Trent looked over his shoulder, chewing on a piece of bacon. He swallowed and said, "Oh, it's you. Yeah, I hope you don't mind me using your kitchen. I thought I'd make us some breakfast."
It occurred to me then that Trent likely wasn't a guest in other people's homes very often. Lucky for him, I didn't mind him using a kitchen that hadn't been mine in many years. I was going to tell him as much when I saw an opened box of Bisquick sitting on the counter. I pointed to it and asked, "you found that in the pantry? My dad usually makes his pancakes from scratch."
He turned to look at the box, then back at me. "No, I went out and got that. And the bacon and eggs. I didn't want to dig into your supply without asking, and you were asleep, so..."
I felt my eyebrows furrow as I checked the time on the stove-clock. "It's 8:17 in the morning. Are you telling me you went out to the store, bought all these ingredients, then came back and cooked them? Just how early did you get up?"
"Around five," he answered as casually as if I had asked his dog's name. "I don't usually get much sleep. Around four, five hours is all I need. It's actually unusual for Antennas to need more than that amount. But I suppose you are unusual."
I opened my mouth in disbelief. Not only had he commandeered my kitchen, he was calling me unusual? At 8-fricken-17 in the morning?
"Sorry," Trent said, reading my expression, "I'm… well, let's just say I've not had many personal relationships. I'm used to being blunt. It's just easier that way." He took out a plate and transferred two pancakes, some eggs, and a few slices of bacon onto it. Then he held it up to me as a peace offering.
I sighed. "This better be good," I said with a wry smile and took the plate.
"Trent-certified, but no guarantees. Refunds not allowed." He replied, which made me giggle.
We sat across from one another at the dining room table. The meal was pretty good, but it was no dad's special: the pancakes were clearly box pancakes, the scrambled eggs lacked cheese and had a little too much pepper, and the bacon was… well it was bacon, no complaints there. Still, it was nice to settle down and have a somewhat normal morning.
After we ate, Trent unfurled the long arc of his life, which began as the second youngest brother of eight siblings in rural Oklahoma. Trent's 'pops' was in the logging business, first as a lumberjack, then as an owner of his own logging company. His dad acquired the business while Trent was still young, so school was never a high priority for him—at least not the way contributing to the household was. The rest of his childhood he summed up in two lessons: "Being 'close' has nothing to do with distance," and "don't touch strange plants in the woods."
I asked him if he kept in touch with any of his siblings, to which he responded, saying, "The only reason they haven't had a funeral for me is because it would be too much work." When I asked him to elaborate, he said he'd not had contact with anyone in his immediate family for over a decade. He kept tabs on them. For example, he knew his mother had dementia, and his dad was forced into retirement by his oldest brother (who had gone on to take over the logging company). His sisters were all married and moved to other parts of the country. He considered reaching out several times, but his situation required a degree of security that wasn't conducive of close family ties, not that there were particularly strong ties even before he broke contact. Trent admitted to being a bit of a black sheep.
"It all circles back to one of my jobs as a Home Inspector," he explained. "After I moved out, I tried college and quickly realized it wasn't for me. So I entered the workforce and did a bunch of odd jobs. Construction, carpentry, plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for a while. But I ended up in Home Inspection. There was one job in particular which made me aware of…" Trent paused and gestured toward the space between us, "our situation. The blinks. You remember what I told you about origin points being like a station where other realms intersect with our world? Well, this house was like Union Station or JFK airport if you prefer a plane analogy. There was a pile of junk up to my knees in the basement of that house; all of it had been blinked in. I spent a couple days on the property, running tests, trying to identify the strange phenomenon, but on day three I rolled up to an army of what I thought at the time were Feds, parading around the property like ants on an anthill and sectioning it off with crime-scene tape." I saw disgust funnel into Trent's expression. "They're not Feds at all though. At least not anymore. I call them "the Organization," a group of people who lead in the formalized understanding of what you know as 'blinking'. And they're the reason I have to take precautions."
I considered this for a moment. Trent's story was certainly plausible, but I was missing a key piece of the puzzle. "Okay, so, what does this 'Organization' want? You make it seem like they're not good people. Have they tried attacking you?"
This caused Trent to laugh for a solid ten seconds. "Sorry, it's just… I mean if you knew what I knew, you might think it's funny, too."
"Then tell me"
Trent took a deep breath, then released. "It's a long story. The gist of it is this. The Organization has a certain device which I call 'the Receiver'. Think of it like a giant antenna—no, not us kind of Antennas, an actual antenna. It's like the machine equivalent of us, but with a billion times the bandwidth. Their goal is to use the Receiver to map our world in relation to other dimensions, then use that map to establish dominion over everyone and everything. In order to do this, they need muscle: both human muscle, and Antenna muscle. They're in the process of harvesting as many of us they can find. They're like a giant diamond company who is taking to the mines. When they find a stone, they take it back to their factory for cutting and refinement. In real terms, they run tests on us and attempt to augment our powers. The ultimate goal is to create a 'Strong Antenna', or an Antenna capable of causing phase shifts—blinks." Trent saw from my expression that he was starting to lose me, so he stood up and began rolling up his shirt.
"What are you doing?" I asked, turning away. Then I saw what he wanted to show me. There was a long scar beginning high up on his ribs and slashing all the way down to his left hip. There was also what appeared to be a patch of burn marks on his stomach.
"It was early on when I got these." Trent explained. "I was naive. I actually thought I'd be able to reason with these people. The only reason I escaped was because of dumb luck and a box of hand grenades. But that's a tale for another time. I learned two important lessons that day. First, the Organization isn't fucking around. And two, they aren't immortal. Most of them are regular, every-day humans, except for their obsession with power." Trent let his shirt fall, covering up the marks. "I ran into them again recently at their Headquarters. My team and I are working on a plan to…" he paused, seemingly weighing his words, then changed gears. "Well, I guess we can go over that another time."
I couldn't help but feel that Trent was holding something back. As much as I tried to resist thinking about yesterday, the old demon-man's words kept ringing in my head. You think he can help you? He's only here to help himself. Then I thought about what Trent said at the deli: "that's the thing that got me really interested in you. Somehow you seem to be able to control it without gear, just by praying." Did Trent think I was a Strong Antenna? Is that the only reason he's helping me? Because he wants to recruit me? And if that is the case, what if I said 'no'?
"Listen, Trent," I started, but I saw Trent was already nodding. Still, I pressed on. "I need you to tell me what I'm actually doing here. Why did you agree to help me? And what does helping me really mean? I want to know the truth."
"The truth is…" Trent started, then stopped and looked out the glass door that led onto the deck. I looked too and saw a sparrow had alighted on our old bird feeder. It tried pecking at some of its non-existent grains, then sang what I assumed was a song of displeasure before taking back off to the skies.
"The truth is: I do want to recruit you. I think you have the potential to be the strongest tool in my arsenal, but I won't require it. To date, I've helped 53 of our kind, but only seven have stayed on. Most decide to go on and live normal lives." Trent scooted his plate to the side. "In our case, this can essentially go one of two ways. In either instance, we pass through Chicago for two stops. First, I need to meet up with an associate who has something to drop off to me. Then I need to stop at a storage locker and trade out some gear that will allow me to open a phase portal. When we arrive at your origin point, I'll open the portal and you'll look inside. Based on everything you've told me, I'm guessing that childhood accident was when the demon appended itself to your life. By seeing how it entered your life, you should be able to figure out how to dispel it. At least that's the working theory. Returning to the origin point has always worked for the other Antennas, although I must admit your situation is different, but I can't imagine it's so different that this method won't work at all. After you return demon-free, you're free. You can walk out and never see me again and hopefully you'll live a happy and peaceful life. Or you can decide to throw your lot in with mine, and I can show you how deep the rabbit hole goes, so to speak." Trent looked into my eyes, and when I didn't respond for a few seconds, he said, "that's it. That's all I got."
I smiled and responded with one sentence.
"When do we leave?"
***
Memories have a strange architecture. In some ways, they are the great safety net of our experiences: collecting them like a bucket under a leaky roof. In other ways, they are an eternal reminder that nothing ever truly lasts. Perhaps a better way of thinking about memories is as the ghosts of our past lingering in the present. As I took one last stroll through my childhood house, feeling that it might be my last time for a long while, I felt the imprints of childhood memories press into my awareness: I could hear my father's voice reading to me at my bedside; I could see him holding one of my stuffed animals above my head as I wrestled him for it; I could recall the times when I'd sneak down the stairs late at night and quietly open the freezer, grab the ice cream carton, then head back upstairs to eat it.
I felt a yearning to return to those memories: to walk into the fictitious pictures my mind was painting on the canvas of my present. I knew I couldn't return, but I still wanted something to hold onto. I went back to my room and grabbed the cotton-stuffed tomato from off my closet cabinet. Then I walked through my dad's study and removed a volume I recalled him frequently reading, a hard-cover book with a green binding called, "A Collection of Great Works". I placed these items by my feet in the passenger seat of Trent's van, and just as we were about to leave, I remembered something else.
"My plant!" I blurted.
"Your what?"
"My plant—and my car. I left them it the deli. Do you think we could swing by and get it?"
Trent checked the time, then said, "Yeah, I guess we can. I just hope it isn't towed."
Luckily, it wasn't. I half-expected to find a ticket on the windshield, but there wasn't one of those, either. I unlocked the door to my Jetta and got into what felt like an active oven. "Hot!" I said and rolled down all the windows, then cranked up the AC. I saw my plant resting in the cupholder that I'd left it in the previous day. I picked it up and touched its soil. It was dry and beginning to crack. Hang on little guy, I thought. Then I led the way back to my house.
When I arrived, I parked at the head of the driveway. I turned off the car, then ran inside with the young tomato plant, bringing it to the upstairs bathrooms sink and dousing it in water. I wasn't sure how much I was supposed to add, but I figured after the sauna experience it had yesterday, I could afford to go a little overboard. Once it was fed, I opened the small purple drapes and placed it on the windowsill which faced East, meaning it would hopefully get plenty of morning sunlight.
"Good, now?" Trent asked after I hopped back in the passenger seat of the van.
"Yeah," I said. "Good now."
"Then lets get a move on."
***
Road tripping with Trent was a much different experience than when we were driving for our lives. For one, Trent wasn't nearly as tense. He drove with the windows down and one hand on the steering wheel like out of a Mustang commercial, talking intermittently about his adventures: people he'd met, jobs he'd done, close calls. He was like a living radio. And when his personal station wasn't on, he was playing one of his CD's—classic rock, mainly. When he was in an 'off' period, I found myself looking out the window at the rolling wheat fields and cloudy blue sky. Journey was playing, and the lyrics to one of the songs crept into my head and reverberated there:
The wheel in the sky keeps on turning.
I don't know where I'll be tomorrow…
I've been trying to make it home,
Got to make it before too long…
Ooh I can't take it, very much longer…
In a strange way, I felt like I was leaving home. But in another way, I was going back. And then it occurred to me that perhaps I didn't have a home at all. Did I ever have one? These past couple days had called everything about my life into question, to the point where the past seemed as mysterious as the future, and both intersected at that one place in the woods. The place where it all began. The place we were headed.
We only stopped once at a gas station to refuel, get snacks, and use the bathroom. Otherwise it was smooth sailing, other than one heated discussion with Trent that began when he addressed his vehicle as "Car" for the fifth time.
"Okay, you need to come up with a better name than that."
"What do you mean?" Trent asked, seeming genuinely confused.
"You have a super-car and you named it 'Car'. That's actually embarrassing."
"But, it is a car."
I facepalmed. "First of all, it's a van."
"A van is a type of car."
"Second of all, would you name your kid, 'kid'?"
Trent thought it over for what I thought was much too long. At last he concluded, "No, I'd probably name him 'boy', or if it's a girl, 'girl'."
After five more minutes of his childish banter, we settled on the name "Ava"—my choice, after rejecting his runner-up name "Scar".
At around the seven hour mark, I dozed off, then woke up a couple hours later to the sensation of the van dipping, then bumping up into an elevated climb. The evening sunlight that was pressuring my eyelids to open, dissipated, and everything was suddenly dark. I opened my eyes and saw we had entered a parking garage. Trent pulled into an open spot on the second level.
"We're here," he said and gathered up his gun which he stashed in a driver's side underboard compartment that I'm guessing he had installed himself.
"I see that"
"You want to wait here, or—"
I opened the car door, which was answer enough for Trent. We both got out and started down Maple Avenue. I had been to several cities before, Chicago among them, but the size of the buildings always struck me with awe. As we walked alongside dozens of other pedestrians, I looked up and traced the closest tower to its peak, guessing how many stories it was in my head. Then I'd be pulled out of my game by the honking of some nearby vehicle.
We continued for two blocks until Trent made a path directly toward the nearest Starbucks. I didn't know what I was picturing for a meeting with his associate, but it definitely wasn't a meetup at a coffee shop. Still, I followed him in. Then when I saw that Trent was leading me to a corner table where a casually dressed Chinese girl who appeared even younger than me was sitting, I blurted in a hushed tone, "her? She's your associate?"
"Took you long enough," said the Chinese girl, looking up from what appeared to be some kind of homework assignment.
"And she's in school?" I asked, incredulous.
The associate looked to me, then to Trent (who nodded), then back to me. "It's just a cover. I'm glad to see it still works, though." She reached out to shake my hand. "I'm Allison. It's nice to meet you."
Trent gave me a smirk, then said, "looks can be deceiving."
I grunted an affirmation and shook Allison's hand. "I'm Lauren. It's nice to meet you, too."
"You have it?" Trent asked, skipping right to business.
"Of course," Allison replied and removed a mailing package from her backpack, setting it on the table. "You want to go make sure it works?" She asked, gesturing up at the ceiling with her eyes.
Trent seemed to think it over for a second, then looked at me. But before he could say anything, Allison cut back in—
"—I'll stay with her. It's been a while since I've had any female company. Why don't you let us girls talk while you take care of that?" She said in a seductive yet authoritative tone which garnered her years that her appearance did not reflect.
Trent hesitated, but only for a moment. "Okay, I'll be right back," he said. Then he hurried out the door in the direction we had come from.
"Come, sit with me." Allison invited. "Tell me about yourself."
I took a seat on the small wooden seat opposite Allison, then crossed my legs. "What do you want to know?" I asked, feeling discomfort rise in my stomach. Nothing about this situation, from the mysterious package, to Trent leaving me alone with this girl, to the girl herself, whose voice was as velvety smooth as the latte she was stirring with a black coffee straw, sat right with me.
"I'm curious about what you think of Trent."
"Trent?" I repeated. I realized this was the first time I was putting any of my thoughts about Trent or our relationship into words. "I guess... he's a pretty straightforward guy. He seems to know what he's doing."
Allison flashed me a small smile, then took a sip of her latte. I saw the sticker on her drink read "Chai". Then she set the cup down and sighed. "Yes, he's very straightforward. Definitely doesn't mince words." She looked up into my eyes. Hers were a rich black, like onyx pebbles, but there was something about the way the light refracted off them which simulated a kind of inward motion, as if they were tiny whirlpools. Her smile spread across her lips. "I'm curious. What did he tell you?"
"Tell me about what?"
"About what you're doing. About where you're off to. What's the plan?"
"Don't you know?" I asked, but it immediately occurred to me that maybe she didn't know. I never saw Trent with a cellphone. Just how did he communicate with his 'associates'? And what if he didn't want her to know what we were doing for a good reason? Should I tell her?
"No, Trent keeps his cards close to his chest. He always has."
"Don't you work together, though?"
Allison waved her left hand in the air. "Of course, but it's because of the nature of our work that most of our communication is done in person, so Trent doesn't tell me much outside of the current job. I was just curious, is all."
"That makes sense. I mean, I'm actually pretty curious about what you do, too."
"Oh?" Allison's voice went high, as if she suddenly sensed an opening. "Then, why don't we trade stories. You tell about your trip, and I'll tell you about mine."
I thought it over for a second. I really did want to hear what Allison had to say, and she was Trent's co-worker, it's not like I was spilling crucial secrets to an enemy. "We're currently on our way to Southern Illinois. Specifically, we're going back to my origin point so I can confront a demon that Trent thinks blinked into my life there."
Allison stopped stirring, but her eyes didn't break from mine. "A demon, huh?" She raised the cup and took a long sip, then placed it back on the table and continued stirring. "I met a demon once," she started, looking up at the walls as if her life was playing on a screen there. "It was back in China, where I was born." She dropped her attention back to me. "Do you mind if I reminisce a little? Maybe you can get something out of it."
I shook my head, but something in my gut started to stir again. Allison continued.
"I was born during the Era of the Once Child Policy. As a result, my mother decided to leave me in a shoebox on the side of the road. I was a girl, so that's just how it was... Like many other babies in my... 'condition', I ended up in foster care. However, for whatever reason, I wasn't adopted. Years passed, and when I turned six, the government decided I'd be of better use building our impoverished town's GDP in a factory that assembled electronic devices for Western countries. Mostly they had me cleaning, but when I turned eight, one of the employees asked for my help with one of the soldering machines. That turned out to be the beginning of the end for me. I sliced open the ring finger of my right hand. I remember specifically seeing the bone underneath the split flesh and thinking it looked so small and white. The employee claimed to have nothing to do with my accident, and the management declared my injury "minimally invasive" and bandaged it up. Two weeks later and who would have guessed that the wound would become infected, and, well..."
Allison dropped the straw into her cup and raised her right hand, spreading the fingers out for me to see. There were only four. Her ring finger was missing, and a small v-shaped scar had taken its place.
"I'm lucky that the surgeon was experienced enough to take out the whole digit, that way it healed in a way which makes it somewhat difficult to notice. You didn't notice, after all. But, then again, is that really luck?" She made a fist and brought it to her lips, stifling a laugh. "No... Now I remember. My luck was still yet to come." She continued stirring. "Because, you see, after that incident, they moved me to a clothing factory with a boss who had a penchant for getting drunk and roughing up his workers, and, well, one night I was walking back to foster care when I heard the outside door to the manager's office slam shut, and there he went, stumbling, slurring insults, curses, and here I was, perfectly in his path. We met eyes, and in them I saw absolutely nothing. A hollow shell of a man, and I can still remember what it looked like to see that shell fill with a demon."
Allison's eyes went wide with some strong emotion that I couldn't place. "He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me out into the field, far away from civilization. I tried to fight at first, but every time I tried to lunge away, I was only ripping a hole in my own scalp. It felt like flames were spewing from my head, and my only respite was when the blood eventually cooled over the wound. By the time he had thrown me against the rock, I'd already all but given up. Then, when my head met the stone, I heard a pop and my grip on the world loosened. The man continued touching me, but it was as if I was disconnected now, floating somewhere above my own head, and gravity was beginning to reverse, causing me to float higher and higher, away from the horrible nightmare below."
Allison paused for a moment, and I suddenly realized I was holding my breath.
"Then I saw the most bright light I'd ever seen. At the time I thought it was either the Sun or Heaven or something like that. It was just too bright for this world. But then after looking for a little longer, I noticed it was in the shape of a person. It reached out toward me, and I had never been so quick to respond. When I touched it, I felt all my pain immediately dissipate. And I felt warm and... peaceful. And I was no longer in the sky. I was back in the field. But when I looked around, the man was gone. Vanished, right out of existence. I didn't understand it at the time, but that was my first experience with the Shifts. All I knew then was that I was free, and I damn well wasn't going to waste that. I ran as far as I could, away from the factories, the foster home, the corrupt governments and corporations. I kept running until I arrived at a City that didn't know me. That didn't want to know me. And I liked it that way, because it's easier to live as a ghost than as a victim."
Allison perked up, and when I turned around to see what for, I saw Trent entering back through the door.
"But you know what's interesting?" Allison blurted out, her voice becoming quieter. "Trent never took me back to confront my demon." Her voice became a whisper. "In fact, I can't recall him ever taking any of us back."
For a moment the whole world became a still frame. Allison's clear, olive skin, and dark eyes, made darker with eyeliner; her narrow nose; her small lips now coiling into a smile. My entire body was a hair trigger hat only needed the slightest force to set it off. And when Trent placed his hand on my shoulder, I whirled around and narrowly missed a haymaker that swept just shy of Trent's face.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa" he said and stepped back with his palms up. "It's just me. Is everything okay?"
I turned back to Allison, but she seemed different now. Her expression was benign; confused, even. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"I—you"
"We were just talking about where you were off to next." Allison said without a hint of pretense.
"Okay, well, chat time is over. It's time to go." Trent said and started guiding me toward the door. I turned back and saw Allison mouth some words which I swear I heard, as if they had been directly transmitted into my brain.
"See you soon" she purred.
She was smiling.
***
The next leg of the trip passed mostly in silence. It was a little over an hour to the storage facility which was located just South of Chicago. My heart was beating wildly in my chest as I pictured Allison's smile. I wanted to ask Trent if demons could possess Antennas, if somehow one of us could become compromised, but then I remembered Allison's words and stopped myself. Because I didn't know if I could really trust Trent. I tried to tell myself I could trust him—that it was Allison who was the liar. Her whole persona seemed fake at best, and possessed at worst. But, then... what if she was telling the truth? What if Trent was the enemy?
He sensed my quietness and tried striking up a couple conversations, but I only gave one-word answers. Somehow, our trust was so brittle that a single, well-placed sentence was enough to snap it. When he asked if everything was okay, I lied and said that I just had a headache and needed more rest. So I leaned my head against the stuffed tomato and tried to sleep, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to.
We arrived at the facility just as the sun was setting for the night. Trent pulled up to the self-service gate and scanned a card which caused the automatic doors to swing open. We looped down a couple rows of the outdoor units until we came to #48.
"We're here," Trent prompted, but this time I didn't budge. I felt his eyes on me after he turned off the ignition. "Hey," he called. "Are you awake?"
I was silent.
I heard Trent quietly click open his door, then close it the same way. I waited a few seconds then turned my head and watched him from the driver's side mirror. He opened the storage locker, then walked inside and turned on a light. It occurred to me then how dimly lit this outdoor storage facility was. There was a weak overhead lantern peeking over every fourth garage like an anglerfish's lure, leaving a large portion of the road not hit by the light bubbles completely dark.
I tried to plan my next move. I could leave Trent and run. But where would I go? Or I could stay and see Trent's plan through. There was a chance this was all an elaborate trap. Maybe Trent was working with the demon, or maybe he was the demon. But then why did he save me? Twice. Maybe he was actually a double agent for the Organization. But he could easily have captured me by now. Unless he needs me to go back to the origin point for a different reason... I considered everything I had learned up until this point: we live at the cross-section of different realms; these other realms interact with our world; Antennas, who are a very small minority of people, can see these interactions; the Organization wants to harness our power and create a 'Strong Antenna' to achieve some kind of universal hegemony; I'm the closest thing to a Strong Antenna to date; Trent knows this; He's taking me back to my origin point, despite not taking the others back to theirs; Trent claims to want to fight the Organization; the best way to fight the Organization would be with a Strong Antenna. What if Trent was trying to make me into a Strong Antenna?
I considered this chain of reasoning. It seemed very plausible, especially after Allison's cryptic messages. Was she trying to warn me of this? But that smile, and the "see you soon"... If she wasn't being possessed, why would she be seeing me soon?
Suddenly my thoughts gave way like a broken dam as I heard a ping come from Ava's radar. I jumped, thinking that all of the electronics turned off with the ignition, but when I looked at the circular sonar map, I saw a red dot had just emerged in the top-right corner. I looked out the window in the direction of the ping, but I couldn't see anything heading down the road.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.
Four more dots appeared behind the first, and they were approaching.
I jumped out the van and ran over to where Trent was hauling in a large cardboard crate into the back of the van. "Trent, there's pings on the radar. A bunch of them."
He dropped the box next to three others, and I realized I had never seen inside the back of the van. It was filled with what looked like pneumatic tubes wired into circuits, and in the center was a tri-pod which was holding a large halo-shaped ring.
"Pings?" Trent said, then his face widened with shock as he realized what I meant. "Shit, how many?"
"Five, maybe more now. And they're getting closer."
"Five?" He jumped out the back and ran into the storage locker. I thought he was going to close the door, but when I saw him hauling boxes back toward the van, I yelled at him. "What are you doing!?"
"I need to load this up for tomorrow. Here," He tossed me his keys. "Get it started."
"Fuck, seriously?"
Trent didn't respond, only kept shuffling boxes into the van.
I turned and ran to the door and hopped in the driver's seat. As I was turning on the ignition, I saw the row of bushes that was just outside of the facility begin to rattle. The next sweep revealed a whole sea of pings. I rolled down the window and shouted Trent's name.
"One more, that's all. Get in the passenger seat, I'll be there in a sec."
I scooted over the center console and waited, clutching at the bottom of my pants legs. Just as Trent slammed the rear door of the van shut, I saw the first figure emerge onto the road ahead of us. It looked like some kind of large coyote, though it was hard to tell because it was still fifty meters out.
"Now detecting 53 controlled agents." Ava said right as Trent jumped in and shut the driver's side door. "Net anomalies: 53."
"Ava, increase radius to five miles." Trent instructed as he backed up all the way to the end of the lane and spun us around toward the gate. Just as we left, I saw the pack of coyotes stalking toward us, slow at first, then in a dead sprint.
"Increasing radius." Ava responded. "Increased. Recalculating… Recalculating… Re—complete. Now detecting 451 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 451."
"What does 'controlled agent' mean?" I asked.
"Hold on," Trent said and accelerated into the gate, bursting through it. The whole van shook, and I heard my phone fall in the crack between the seat and door. Trent steadied the van, then said, "It means the things chasing us are being controlled by something that isn't detectable."
"The demon?"
"That'd be my guess."
"But why can't Ava detect it?"
Trent switched to the right lane, then merged onto the Interstate-South ramp. "Probably because it isn't trying to kill us."
"Then, what—" I looked back at the map and basically had my question answered. All 451 pings were coalesced in a semicircle on one side of the map. The side of the map that we had just come from. "Is it trying to force us toward the crash site?"
"It seems that way." Trent answered.
"Trent, pull over."
"Huh?"
"Pull over!" I yelled.
He looked at me, eyes wide. Then he did as I had instructed and pulled off in the middle of the ramp. The red dots slowly closed in on our position.
"Now detecting—"
"Shut up, Ava." I said. I could feel my blood boiling. "I'm not going one step further until you tell me the truth. Why are we going to my origin point? What is your real motive?"
"What do you mean? I already told you."
I unlocked the passenger side door.
"Wait," Trent said and reached out toward me. "Just, wait."
There was silence, except for the pings indicating that the beasts behind us had re-encroached on our position to about fifty meters.
"Okay, I didn't tell you everything. But we don't have time now—"
I opened the door.
"Okay, okay. I didn't tell you everything, it's true. I've never done this with anyone else, but the reason is because I never needed to. And if I told you what might happen, you would have refused it."
"Refused what?"
"This—me, my help. Lauren, I am trying to help you. But you have to understand—it's likely that neither of us are going to live past tomorrow. You're basically confronting a dark entity in a place where I can't protect you, and if you somehow do manage to kill it, you'll be coming back to the fight of your life. Because I don't have the power to hide you from the Organization. They're going to show up and try to take you. I really don't know how you've lasted as long as you have. Whatever protection you had growing up, it's gone now. And now I'm all you have. And in some twist of fate, you're all I have."
Ava reactivated. "Now detecting 1,117 controlled agents. Proximity till contact: 20 meters. Net anomalies: 1,117."
I closed my door. "But what if I still don't want to go through with it?"
Trent pointed at the screen. "Then we die right here, right now, together. Because I am one-hundred percent certain that if we don't go to that crash site, we're dead anyway. All of us."
Another ping rolled through. I checked the side-view mirror and saw the swarming pack of dogs reach the van and bound around the rear wheels. I suddenly recalled the conversation I had with Father Martin and the conclusions I had drawn. Father, I've been… wrestling with something, and I think God wants me to confront it. I think I've been running away and hiding from it for so long that I'd convinced myself it disappeared...
"Go," I said just as I felt the collision of the coyotes slamming their bodies against the side doors.
Trent didn't waste any time stepping on the gas. I watched as the coyotes diminished in the distance and the pings receded into the back of the map, never disappearing fully, but covering the flank of our retreat—a reminder lingering on the edge of our awareness that there was no turning back now. That, one way or another, this was ending tomorrow.
And I'd either be dead, or something else entirely.

Have been through many appointments and probably have many more to come. Have one set for GI next month but I don’t feel like I can make it that long.
Currently trying low FODMAP diet as recommended by my PCP, but even that gives me issues. Cramping like crazy on my mid left side of my abdomen after steak tacos with corn tortillas and cilantro. Started in my stomach and is traveling.
Started with a trip to Cancun, month later increased bathroom trips and feeling like crap. PCP thought bacterial infection and prescribed antibiotics, said no dairy. I finished that no problem but never was really able to introduce dairy back into my diet. Butter and cheese seemed ok at the time. Have been on probiotics since this point.
Really tried to slowly put dairy back in, started with some lactose free. Had a few good weeks and then would go back to cramps and frequent BMs. I never have diarrhea really, I just go a lot. Always happens in the morning and by the afternoon I’m wrecked.
Went back to PCP, then got diagnosed with a fibroid that is too small to remove. Waiting on that appointment too but on meds to balance out in the meantime. My cycles been intense for a while, makes sense. Looking into an ablation, just want that done too.
No improvement on the stomach side, dairy free on docs orders. Ran stool sample and blood panel. Everything came back great, no inflammation, my cholesterol was on the higher side and is now perfect. No parasites, no clue.
Here I sit, having gone gluten free, dairy free, wheat free, and am following low FODMAP and I’m miserable.
Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

This is a fanfic that I made that takes place after the Joy and it's about a team of survivors consisting of Larry, Mr Corneille, Larry's fiancée Karen and The hexagon lady trying to save Elmore from the Joy virus before it infects the entire world.
Needlemeyer Residence 7:00 AM
Larry wakes up in bed, He turns off his alarm clock and goes to eat breakfast. He then takes a shower and Goes to the living room to watch the TV.
He turns on the TV to see the news channel.
Kip Schlezinger: Hello everyone, and welcome back to elmore news, on today's top story, a mysterious virus is spreading in Elmore. The virus turns the people who are infected with it. Into deadly "Huggers" who spread the virus by hugging people who aren't infected.
Kip:It is advised that you lock all doors and windows to protect yourself from the Huggers. And make sure you have a weapon to defend yourself-
Kip then notices his cameraman Ken laughing hysterically.
Kip:Uh Ken? Why are you laughing at me? What's wrong?
Ken then runs to Kip to Hug him spreading the joy virus to him.
Kip:Looks like I've been Infected.... If anyone hears this.. Please tell my wife I-hahahha. HAHAHAHAHAH!
Larry then turns off the TV And prepares to go to work. He then goes outside of the house and walks outside to his car
Larry then gets inside and drives to The food n Stuff convenience store which is one of the many jobs he works at.
Larry attemps to go to the Counter where he usually works at, But a group of huggers block his way He then trys to run away from them but the moment Larry goes outside food n stuff He is saved by a food truck that suddenly drives in front of him.
"Get In!" Said Mr Corneille, the geography teacher of Elmore junior high, Who was driving the food truck
Larry got inside as fast as he could and inside the truck with him was his fiancée Karen and The hexagon lady who was rescued by Mr Corneille from the huggers.
"Thanks for rescuing me. What's your name?" Larry said.
"Moonchild Corneille. But many people just call me Mr Corneille. Listen now, I got a plan To save Elmore from this virus. I'll discuss it with you later when we arrive at the headquarters""
"You guys have a headquarters!?" Larry said
"Well it's not an actual headquarters it's actually my house, but i boarded it up so that I would be safe from the Huggers."
The food truck then stopped at Mr Corneille's house and everyone got out to go inside.
"Ok, so here's the plan" Mr Corneille said while laying out a map of Elmore. Mr Corneille then got 4 toy soilders and he put them on the Elmore map. "Ok so this is us, we need to Go to Elmore junior high"
"Why?" Larry asked
"Because there we'll find a tape that plays a song so sad that it can counterattack the effects of the Joy virus."
"But how can we defend ourselves from the huggers?" Karen asked.
"It turns out Water can easily knock them down and i have a bunch of rapid-fire super soakers in the truck". Mr Corneille said
"After getting the tape, we'll need to go to the music store of the Elmore mall, steal the boombox of the music store and insert the tape that we've got from the school and then play it loud enough to turn everyone back to normal."
"Sounds like a great plan. Let's do this!" Larry said excitedly.
A montage then plays of the group arming themselves with super soakers and paintball pistols as sidearms.
The group then got inside the food truck and began driving to Elmore junior high
"How did this joy virus start anyway?" The hexagon lady asked Mr Corneille
"Well, it all started when a father named Richard noticed that both of his sons, gumball and darwin were very grumpy. Because of this, He gave them a Wonder hug, a hug that contains all the happiness in the world, the hug was so powerful that it gave them the Joy virus. Soon, after gumball and darwin transformed into Huggers, they infected the entire school and after that day, the virus spread to Elmore."
"But how did you survive?" Larry asked.
Mr Corneille replied to him by saying "When I noticed the joy virus spreading throughout the school, I managed to lock myself in the Teacher's lounge, I waited there until a few hours later, i saw that there were no huggers outside, i then opened the door and went outside the teachers lounge where I managed to make it outside the school where i found an abandoned food truck just parked nearby. I then went inside and began to drive it, looking for any other survivors, and then while driving, i saw Karen and the hexagon lady just outside of Karen's house, after that I parked my truck and i rescued them both."
After that, the truck parked near the Elmore junior high building, The group then began to equip their weapons as Mr Corneille yelled: "Ok guys, let's go!"
The group then went inside the school, it was empty and some of the walls had rainbow colored liquid on them,
"Should we go by group or should we split up-" Larry asked but he was interrupted by Mr Corneille.
"Shhh.. keep your voices down, we don't want any huggers hearing us." Mr Corneille said.
"And we should go by group, it's better that way." Mr Corneille added.
Walking through the halls of the abandoned school, the group began to search for the tape. It was then they heard a choir of hysterical laughter
After that a horde of huggers then approached them
"Alright this is our first horde, prepare your water guns!"
Larry then aimed at the first hugger he was about to shoot, It was Harold, Tobia's dad
He then shot harold in the head with his water gun, causing Harold to fall and be knocked down.
The group then began to shoot the other huggers with their water guns until most of them were knocked down.
After that the group began to search the classroom for the tape, but the tape wasn't there
They then searched the science lab for the tape but the tape wasn't there either,
Mr Corneille then suddenly remembers something, He remembers seeing Miss simian running into her office the day that the joy virus spreaded to the school.
"Guys, I think i know where the tape is." Mr Corneille said
"Where?" Larry, Karen and hexagon lady asked.
"It's in Miss Simian's office."
The group then ran to miss Simian's office, but they saw a big horde of huggers blocking the door of the office
"Oh no, how can we go to miss Simian's office if there's a whole horde of them blocking the entrance?" Karen said
"Wait, I have an idea." Larry said
"Give me your phone Mr Corneille."
"Why?" Mr Corneille said
"I have a plan, just give me your phone."
Mr Corneille then gave his phone to Larry and Larry then played a cheesy 80's song that Mr Corneille downloaded on his phone.
Larry then threw Mr Corneille's phone as far as he could into the floor and all the huggers began to walk into the area where Larry threw the phone, thinking that they heard something.
"Phew, good thing they are not that intelligent." Larry said
"But my phone!" Mr Corneille exclaimed
"Don't worry, you can buy a new one, now let's go get that tape." Larry said.
The group then went inside miss Simian's office where they found the cassette tape lying in miss Simian's desk.
Larry then grabbed the tape and put it in the bag that he was carrying.
The group then left miss Simian's office to find out the same horde of huggers that Larry distracted earlier.
"I guess the song did stop huh." Larry said nervously "RUN!" Mr Corneille said loudly as the group then ran outside of elmore junior high, while being chased by the horde of huggers.
they then got inside of the truck and began to drive away from Elmore junior high as fast as they could
"That was close," Larry said.
"Now that we have the cassette tape, we'll need to find a boombox from the music store from the Elmore mall so that the sad music could be heard by everyone."
They then drove to the Elmore mall to find out a huge mob of huggers had surrounded the mall.
"Great, now our quest got even worse." Larry sarcastically said
"I have an idea!" Karen said
"What?" Mr Corneille, Larry, and hexagon lady asked.
"Maybe we can distract them by... Pretending to be them!" Karen said.
Everyone discussed Karen's plan until they all agreed with it.
"Alright. 1, 2, 3!" Karen said
The group then did their hugger impressions with their jaws opened and their eyes widened as they awkwardly proceeded to the mall without being detected by the huggers,
They then opened the door of the mall as they quietly proceeded inside,
The group began to search for the music store until they found it on the 1st floor.
The group then went upstairs to go to the music store, but unfortunately saw a big group of huggers blocking their way.
The group then aimed their water guns at them and began shooting at the huggers.
Unfortunately, Mr Corneille and the others got outnumbered by the huggers and got infected
"Larry, find a boombox... And insert the cassette tape in it.. make sure to set it to the max volume so everyone could hear-HAHAHHAHA, HAHAH!" Mr Corneille said before getting turned into a hugger.
Larry, who was the only member of his group that didn't get infected with the joy virus went inside the music store, he then searched for the boombox until he found a big boombox.
Larry then carried the boombox outside of the elmore mall. Unfortunately he was surrounded by an army of joy infected huggers,
"If you happy Psychos want a piece of me, then come get some!"
Larry yelled at the huggers Who then approached him As larry then shot at them with his water gun, suddenly, after he shot Principal brown, who was infected with the joy virus, he ran out of water.
Larry then inserted the tape but as he did, he was surrounded by huggers who then hugged him.
Larry then reached for the play button on the boombox while being surrounded by huggers.
Fortunately for him he managed to press the play button on the boombox just in time before he turned into a hugger.
As he was getting hugged by the huggers, Larry then began laughing as the sad song then played on the boombox.
The sad song then uninfected everyone who was infected with the Joy virus and turned then back to normal.
The next day: Larry woke up as he saw a group of police officers in front of him.
"What happened to you?" The donut Sheriff said to larry.
"Wait why am I not laughing anymore?" Larry said
"Well it looks like that sad song someone played over the boombox was heard by everyone, and that song was so sad that it uninfected all the people who were infected with the joy virus."
Larry then stood up and looked all around him, he then saw a bunch of people who were also uninfected.
"What the what? Why am I here? mom and dad didn't even told me to go to the mall!" Gumball said.
"Oh my head, what happened? And why am i in the mall?" Principal brown said as he tried to look for miss simian.
After that, principal brown saw miss Simian and began to hug her.
Larry then looked behind him and saw Mr Corneille, Karen and hexagon lady going outside of the Elmore mall.
"Guys!" Larry excitedly said as he hugged th members of his group.
Suddenly, Karen kissed Larry in his right cheek. "Thanks for saving the entire world from the joy virus fiancée."
Larry then blushed a bit before saying. "You're welcome, you can count on me anytime."
Larry then went inside his car and drove home, but before he did, he waved goodbye to his group members.
After arriving home, Larry turned on the TV to watch the news.
"Welcome to Elmore news I'm your news reporter Kip Schlezinger, On today's story, I am happy to announce that the joy virus has been now cured and everyone who was infected by it turned back to normal!" Kip said.
"It is unknown how this virus was cured, But police at the elmore mall saw a boombox that was laying on the ground outside of the mall, The police theorized that someone played an extremely sad song on the boombox that counterattacked the effects of the joy virus. The police are still searching for the person who played the sad song on the boombox. That's all for today, I'm Kip Schlezinger, and this has been Elmore news."
Larry then turned off the TV And began to smile as he said:
"I think this is the first time I've ever felt like a hero."
The end.

Finished student teaching over a month ago and just remembered this ridiculous PD that happened a while back.
We had a pirate themed PD. The “centerpieces” on the tables were handfuls of random pirate themed toys and junk: gold coins, blow up plastic swords, bendy straws, and other items that adults don’t need. At least they had a pirates booty. Top tier snack. They made sure to include the cheesy pirate theme in the presentation. They also had a huge metaphor about building a bowl from Cafe Rio and how all the toppings are different objectives and data or something like that. The metaphor was confusing.
Then at 11 am, they announced the scavenger hunt for lunch. Cafe Rio of course. They handed us a map of the school with arrows pointing to which room to go to next. We started in the library with tortillas and then went to a different room for each topping. And to add to the ridiculousness, this was the day after daylight savings, so it felt like 10am.
When will admin learn that we just want to be treated like adults?

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

Hey there commanders,
I've been slowly but surely adding to my deck collection, with the ultimate goal of reaching a full Prismatic collection (one deck for each color identity). In hopes of optimizing my trading, I've started looking ahead to plan out future decks so I am not trading out and back for cards I will want later.
I have a fairly small regular EDH group, and I like having a big collection of decks I can loan out whenever someone is around and wanting to play, but I'm pretty casual about EDH in general (my ill-advised collection tendencies notwithstanding) so I generally like to netdeck to get to a starting place and populate my tradelist, and then tweak the decks to my liking as I play them.
To that end, it probably comes at no surprise that EDHrec is a big resource for me. My ultimate goal would be to represent as many of the popular archetypes as possible, and I generally look to the most popular decks as a guide. (I'm aware of the cheesy nature of this approach, but it works well for my needs)
I sat down this weekend to take a look at EDHRec's current top 200 commanders, and their most popular archetypes. Thought I would share this here in case it is helpful or interesting to anyone.
METHODOLOGY: I included only the top 200 popular commanders, as this seemed like a wide enough swath to include all the color identities, and covered the majority of popular Types & Themes. I color coded each type/theme as Gold/SilveBronze to indicate the 3 most popular commanders for each. Form is fully sortable by rank or color ID. Open to suggestions on this approach if anyone has ideas.
24/05/25 - EDHRec Top 200 (Google Sheet)
Now on to the part I am hoping folks will have some suggestions for me based on their experience. Below is my current & planned Prismatic list. My aim is to minimize overlapping cards between my decks, have as much variety as possible, and include as many commonly seen archetypes as I can within these constraints. If anyone has suggestions for changes to consider (Especially favoring my already built decks), I would be happy to hear them!
CURRENTLY BUILT DECKS

• UB: Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow (Ninjas, Ninjutsu)
• BR: Prosper, Tome-Bound (Treasure, Exile)
• BG: Lathril, Blade of the Elves (Elves)
• RW: Osgir, the Reconstructor (Artifacts) ***Considering dropping for Winota or Feather and going with a different Artifact deck
• WUB: Varina, Lich Queen (Zombies, Zombie Tokens)
• BRG: Lord Windgrace (Lands)
• RGW: Gishath, Sun's Avatar (Dinosaurs, Kaheera Companion)
• BGU: Zaxara, the Exemplary (Hydras, X Spells)
• RWB: Edgar Markov (Vampires, Lifegain)
• GUR: Kalamax, the Stormsire (Spellslinger, Spell Copy)
• WUBRG: The First Sliver (Slivers)

UNDER CONSTRUCTION DECKS

• C: Kozilek, the Great Distortion (Eldrazi, Artifacts) ***Also considering Zhulodok, but perhaps too similar play to The First Sliver
• WU: Shorikai, Genesis Engine (Artifacts, Vehicles)
• GW: Sythis, Harvest's Hand (Auras, Enchantments) ***Converting from built Tuvasa, the Sunlit***
• GU: Hakbal of the Surging Soul (Merfolk)
• URW: Zedruu the Greathearted (Chaos)

DECKS UNDER CONSIDERATION

• W: Giada, Font of Hope (Angels, Lifegain)
• U: Urza, Lord High Artificer (Artifacts, Storm)
• B: Marrow-Gnawer (Rats, Rat Colony, Relentless Rats)
• B: K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth (Lifegain)
• R: Krenko, Mob Boss (Goblins, Goblin Tokens)
• G: Fynn, the Fangbearer (Deathtouch)
• RG: Tovolar, Dire Overlord (Werewolves)
• WB: Teysa Karlov (Aristocrats)
• UR: Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph (Burn, Pingers)
• UBR: Nekusar, the Mindrazer (Wheels) ***Tempted by Becket Brass because I'm a sucker for Tribal
• GWU: Arcades, the Strategist (Walls, Toughness)
• WBG: Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit // Sam, Loyal Attendant (Halflings, Lifegain)
• WUBR: Breya, Etherium Shaper (Artifacts)
• UBRG: Yidris, Maselstrom Wielder (Cascade)
• BRGW: Saskia the Unyielding (Humans, Legends)
• RGWU: Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis (Wheels, Group Hug)
• GWUB: Atraxa, Praetors' Voice (Phyrexians, 1/1 Counters, Infect, Planeswalkers)

(The four-color IDs are obviously the most limited currently, and my lowest priority)

At the beginning of elimination phase, I did one big shopping trip so you’ll notice a lot of the same ingredients appearing in different meals.
Breakfast : corn flakes with almond milk; lactose-free yogurt with 1tbsp ground flax; smoothie (unripe banana, peanut butter, almond milk, cocoa powder); overnight chia pudding with almond milk and maple; sourdough waffle with maple and peanut butter.
Lunch: sourdough toast with sliced tomato & mayo; chicken quesadilla (corn tortilla, lactose-free cheese, shredded chicken); shredded chicken wrapped in romaine lettuce; tuna mayo wrapped in romaine lettuce; tuna melt with lactose-free cheddar on sourdough bread; veggies (cucumbepeppers) on the side.
Dinner: chicken enchiladas (corn tortillas, lactose-free cheese, shredded chicken & homemade sauce); quinoa & egg enchilada skillet (quinoa, sweet potato, enchilada sauce, lactose-free cheese & egg); baked herb-crusted chicken thighs with salad (greens, tomato, cucumber, beet & homemade vinaigrette); sushi bowls (rice, tuna, 1/4 avocado, sweet potato, cucumber, sesame seeds, nori, soy sauce).
Snacks: 50g macadamia nuts (almost every day); comté cheese & sourdough; dark chocolate square
Drinks: tea, black coffee, beer, wine, almond milk latte
Notes… I was trying to keep things simple by using fewer ingredients but writing it down makes me realize I can probably add more fruits and veggies in coming weeks. The enchilada sauce (no garlic/onion) and sourdough were homemade to avoid any problematic ingredients. I also simmered 5 chicken breasts in the enchilada sauce to use as shredded chicken during the week. I ate a lot of leftovers… but while other people in my family had pizza, baked ziti, butter chicken etc I was enjoying enchiladas and I didn’t feel too deprived of something cheesy and spicy. I happen to have a huge package of lactose-free cheese on hand right now so that is what I'm using but many cheeses are in fact low-Fodmap.

There's a lot going on here so I'm going to try to be as comprehensive as possible and still be concise. Some exposition. I have had vestibular migraine since May of 2020 which makes me a little dizzy at almost all times but insanely dizzy sometimes (also affects vision, stability, etc). Before this incident I had also been on keto diet since November of 2023.
At the tail end of April I noticed that my dizziness was way worse. Over the next week I got a fever of almost 103 for 3 nights in a row, intense back pain, nausea, crazy anxiety, the feeling of vomiting (didn't a really vomit), and just general feeling like I was weak and unwell. I am always a person that shows up to work for everything but between my symptoms and my dizziness, it was impossible. Went to the ER twice and they had no answer (although my absolute neutrophils number from my blood test was very high). Went to urgent care and he noticed an infection on my chest so he prescribed me Bactrim. I had an adverse reaction to Bactrim and felt like I was going insane so I was prescribed clindamycin instead. During the course of the antibiotic I felt like I could eat almost nothing, stomach felt very small and if I ate too much I quickly regretted it. Possible relevant: I went off keto for a few days at the beginning of this and then back on because I felt terrible.
The first two weeks (week one was me realizing something was wrong, week 2 was Bactrim week) I could not go to work because my dizziness was insane. Week 3 (back on keto, on clindamycin) I was able to go to work for 4 days. On the last day (last Sunday) my legs fell out from underneath me several times and I kept almost passing out and my boss called an ambulance. When ambulance got there my blood sugar was 53 (I ate normally but had a tortilla that day which I don't normally have). Went to ER then my doc the next day and they did blood tests, everything looked fine and my A1C was within normal range.
After my blood sugar incident my family convinced me to switch to a normal diet (which includes bread). For the past few days I feel like I have been poisoned. Dizziness out of control, back pain, kidney pain, confusion, intense anxiety, afraid to leave my house. I feel like I'm losing it. I mentioned kidney pain to my doctor but I had a scan a few weeks ago that seemed to indicate no stones. I also forgot to mention that since 3 weeks ago I lost 7 pounds for seemingly no reason (yes people lose weight on keto but before I went off of it and back on, I hadn't lost weight in months).
My thoughts/questions: -There are so my factors going on here. What should I be focusing on? -Is it possible to develop gluten intolerance or celiacs from a bacterial infection? Or from keto even? -Could gluten intolerance or celiacs even present these symptoms? -Should I be worried about possible cdiff? (Had diarrhea yesterday but it hasn't been out of control) -Am I just experiencing guy problems stemming from antibiotics? I feel like it's more than that but that's my doctor's theory. -Why would these symptoms be making my preexisting dizziness so bad? Brain inflammation? -What else could it possibly be that I'm missing?
I know this is a lot but thank you so much.

There's a lot going on here so I'm going to try to be as comprehensive as possible and still be concise. Some exposition. I have had vestibular migraine since May of 2020 which makes me a little dizzy at almost all times but insanely dizzy sometimes (also affects vision, stability, etc). Before this incident I had also been on keto diet since November of 2023.
At the tail end of April I noticed that my dizziness was way worse. Over the next week I got a fever of almost 103 for 3 nights in a row, intense back pain, nausea, crazy anxiety, the feeling of vomiting (didn't a really vomit), and just general feeling like I was weak and unwell. I am always a person that shows up to work for everything but between my symptoms and my dizziness, it was impossible. Went to the ER twice and they had no answer (although my absolute neutrophils number from my blood test was very high). Went to urgent care and he noticed an infection on my chest so he prescribed me Bactrim. I had an adverse reaction to Bactrim and felt like I was going insane so I was prescribed clindamycin instead. During the course of the antibiotic I felt like I could eat almost nothing, stomach felt very small and if I ate too much I quickly regretted it. Possible relevant: I went off keto for a few days at the beginning of this and then back on because I felt terrible.
The first two weeks (week one was me realizing something was wrong, week 2 was Bactrim week) I could not go to work because my dizziness was insane. Week 3 (back on keto, on clindamycin) I was able to go to work for 4 days. On the last day (last Sunday) my legs fell out from underneath me several times and I kept almost passing out and my boss called an ambulance. When ambulance got there my blood sugar was 53 (I ate normally but had a tortilla that day which I don't normally have). Went to ER then my doc the next day and they did blood tests, everything looked fine and my A1C was within normal range.
After my blood sugar incident my family convinced me to switch to a normal diet (which includes bread). For the past few days I feel like I have been poisoned. Dizziness out of control, back pain, kidney pain, confusion, intense anxiety, afraid to leave my house. I feel like I'm losing it. I mentioned kidney pain to my doctor but I had a scan a few weeks ago that seemed to indicate no stones. I also forgot to mention that since 3 weeks ago I lost 7 pounds for seemingly no reason (yes people lose weight on keto but before I went off of it and back on, I hadn't lost weight in months).
My thoughts/questions:
-There are so my factors going on here. What should I be focusing on?
-Is it possible to develop gluten intolerance or celiacs from a bacterial infection? Or from keto even?
-Could gluten intolerance or celiacs even present these symptoms?
-Should I be worried about possible cdiff? (Had diarrhea yesterday but it hasn't been out of control)
-Am I just experiencing guy problems stemming from antibiotics? I feel like it's more than that but that's my doctor's theory.
-Why would these symptoms be making my preexisting dizziness so bad? Brain inflammation?
-What else could it possibly be that I'm missing?
I know this is a lot but thank you so much.

If you don't know a McGangBang is a kind of joke item people came up with that combines a double cheeseburger and a mcchicken with the chicken going between the burgers.
How would combine two Taco Bell items to make something similar, an El GangBang (or La GangBang, depending on how you want to gender it)? I imagine you could open up a big burrito and put a smaller one inside and re-wrap it, or take two small burritos and lay them side by side and wrap them in a large tortilla.
I'm thinking a Cheesy Toasted Sausage Breakfast Burrito and Cheesy Bean and Rice wrapped together in a 12" tortilla, or maybe a Cheesy Double Beef Burrito with a breakfast hashbrown inside.

35M - 220lbs - 5'11" Skip to the final paragraph if you're not interested in hearing my long gallbladder journey to NAFLD discovery.
In December 2023, I went to a PCP for hypertension. They incidentally discovered I had high ALT (79). I went back a month later and it was exactly the same. She didn't seem concerned as long as it wasn't getting worse.
Shortly after, I started having stomach nausea. It was like a dull ache in the center of my stomach. After 3 days, I message my PCP and she prescribes omeprazole. I take it for 4 weeks and my pain did seem to resolve and I tapered off the medication.
But the nausea comes back a few days later and I went to an urgent clinic who recommended resuming omeprazole. Again, it did seem to help because the pain went away again. But it comes back and my doctor adds on carafate and famotidine. This time, there was no improvement. I did have small windows of relief for like 2 or 3 days, but it always came back. One day I get really tired of feeling ill 24/7, and I go to the ER. They say my labs are perfect and also do a quick ultrasound of my gallbladder. No visible stones. They send me home with a zofram prescription (which also didn't work).
I switch to a new PCP (new insurance) and he prescribes pantoprazole. No improvement. He also ran a metabolic and my ALT did drop, down to 62 (I had lost about 10 lbs and attributed it to that). He suggests an ultrasound to check my stomach. The results come back that my gallbladder has sludge (no stones or inflammation) and that my liver has some signs of FLD. So no concrete explanation for the nausea.
He sends a referral to a GI (soonest appointment 8 weeks away) and suggests a low fat diet in case the sludge is the issue. I basically cut out all fat, eating probably less than 5g daily. Doesn't seem to improve. He adds on lipitor, and it was like magic.... I was better. At first I was skeptical it was just another temporary fix, but the pain stayed gone this time! I start thinking the medicine was the cure and introduced fat back into my diet.... boom, symptoms again. So clearly, the only answer was BOTH lipitor and low fat. Still not sure why this is working for me but I'm not trying to argue.
One night I was feeling a little too confident and ate some beans with sausage and a few hours later I had to go to the ER for severe pain. This pain was different, normally it was a dull ache in the center of my stomach but this was stabbing pain on my right side. I wasn't sure if it was just a gallbladder attack or appendix issues but I didn't want to chance it. They do a CT and see the gallbladder sludge but again, no stones or infection. Pancreas looks good too. They send me home. However, in the lab results I did notice that my ALT was at the highest it's ever been 92. A week later my PCP rechecks and it's back down to 55. Weird.
I have another attack a week later after eating a few tortillas... just plain tortillas nothing else. Same pain, same time frame. But this time I don't got to the ER, I just wait it out. Sure enough, it does go away.
Finally, I see the GI doctor. He says I may have fatty liver but wants to runs an LFT to exclude other things. He also wants to run a HIDA scan to check my gallbladder for the pain. The LFT did exclude HEP B/C and autoimmune stuff.
Well I'm glad he suggested the HIDA because it showed my gallbladder has zero function. Didn't take the tracer even after 4 hours. Somehow, I have a zero function gallbladder with no stones or infection. No idea why at this point, but I'm scheduled for a surgery consultation on Friday and maybe I'll find more answers then. My GI did suggest that the surgeon could do a liver biopsy while he's removing the gallbladder to help confirm NAFLD and severity.
But I've been reading that getting your gallbladder our can make fatty liver worse. I mean, I know I don't really have a choice but is that true? Is there anything else I can do?