(A) "Methane is worse. Why even worry about CO₂?"

Because it's both, there's much more CO₂ in the atmosphere and CO₂ lingers far longer than methane.

While methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO₂, there is over 220 times more CO₂ than methane in the atmosphere - as of 2022, 417 ppm as opposed to 1.894 ppm. The amount of warming attributed to methane is calculated to be around 30% of the warming CO₂ contributes. And the atmospheric concentration of both continues to rise (fig. 1).

(...)

Methane should not be underestimated. Once in the atmosphere it has various effects and associated feedbacks that contribute indirectly to warming. Realclimate has an authoritative post detailing some of those, here.
In AR6, the changes in radiative forcing due to methane and other greenhouse gases are presented (fig. 3). The figure shows that while CO₂ is the biggest of our problems, methane is still significant and efforts to reduce its emissions should nevertheless continue to be implemented. But never at the same time let it distract from CO₂. It's not a case of one or the other. They are both big problems requiring different solutions.

https://skepticalscience.com/methane-and-global-warming.htm
Both are a significant problem, but CO₂ is still quantitatively more important. Both need to be addressed, and not one or the other. CH₄ has a far shorter atmospheric lifetime than CO₂ - decades versus hundreds of years.
See also this diagram in the IPCC report.

(B) "CO₂ is plant food"

1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-does-rising-co2-benefit-plants1/
2. https://skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food-advanced.htm
3. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/12/more-co2-in-the-atmosphere-hurts-key-plants-and-crops-more-than-it-helps/
4. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2022/01/27/how-climate-change-will-affect-plants/
5. https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chaptechapter-3/

(C) "It's a fantastic loop the earth has: we produce CO2, plants need it and produce O2 that we need"

Atmospheric CO₂ is increasing because the natural carbon cycle cannot absorb all of the CO₂ we emit and we emit 37 Gt every year.

(D) "It's odd for us to even try to reduce our CO2, especially when China is burning endless fossil fuels"

1. Does it matter how much the United States reduces its carbon dioxide emissions if China doesn’t do the same?
2. Analysis: Which countries are historically responsible for climate change?

(E) "It's hard to take climate scientists seriously when they don't recommend nuclear power"

False.

When it comes to nuclear power, there is a 20-point gap between AAAS members’ and the general public’s views, with the AAAS community more inclined than the general public to build more nuclear power plants. Fully 65% of AAAS members favor building more nuclear power plants, while 33% are opposed. Those figures are similar to the subsets of AAAS members who are Working Ph.D. Scientists and Active Research Scientists. By contrast, about half of Americans (51%) oppose building more nuclear power plants, while 45% are in favor.
A majority of AAAS members support more nuclear power plants, regardless of disciplinary specialty. Physicists and engineers are more strongly in favor of building more nuclear power plants than are those in other specialties. For example, 79% of all physicists surveyed and 75% of engineers connected with AAAS favor building more nuclear power plants. The views of Earth scientists are similar to those of all members; 66% among this group favor more nuclear power plants and 32% are opposed.

Pew Research Center - Elaborating on the Views of AAAS Scientists, Issue by Issue
James Hansen is a very prominent climate scientist promoting nuclear power, to name an example.

(F) "It used to be much warmer"

Crocodiles once swam around at the poles. Just because this was once the case though, that doesn't mean we can afford to all go live there now, just so we don't all die from heat stress. Global warming does have the potential to make certain areas of the planet virtually uninhabitable for human beings which were otherwise habitable before.
Introducing: the wet bulb temperature.

Talking point not listed?

Try: https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php
There are 219 debunks there for your reading pleasure, sorted by popularity, descending.
Still not listed? Use my irrefutable climate denial debunking essay. That's what it's for. Want a nice short video instead? Here you go.
Finally, read about the consequences of global warming.
Now get out there and fight back.

I've posted this a day later than I wanted to (really want to stick to weekly on Tuesday), but now that my wife and I are on the mend, I can dedicate a little more time to writing/editing and art again.
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We had been clearing rooms in Engineering for two hours, and my body felt like seven shades of hell. I leaned against Taga’s back, enjoying the warmth of his scales, while he sat on the ground, forge-welding bulkhead panels together with his bare hands. A few hours ago, I would have been fascinated with how he did it; now, I just closed my eyes and enjoyed the ambient warmth as it did wonderful things to my muscles.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s take it back to the beginning.
Heshae and I arrived in the middle of a firefight: Ulketh and his guards were on one side, and the same squad I saw in the hold was on the other. It was a large, diamond-shaped room split into an upper and lower level—a grated observation deck up top for the overseers and a mess of pipes that descended from the ceiling into a labyrinth of machines on the lower level.
A set of stairs that split the diamond in half connected the lower and upper floors; Heshae and I were closer to them, but the attacking group had the straighter route.
Ulketh’s guards were firing kinetic weapons from the balcony on the upper level with practiced ease, using their constructed defenses to their advantage. Behind the safety of his guards was Ulketh, firing off wild, frantic shots of crystal shards with a strange crescent-shaped weapon wherever he found an opening.
Taga was pushing a crate the size of a small car down the main corridor on the lower level, which kept Ulketh and his guards from getting a good angle on him. Whenever the guards’ fire died, his companions would pop out from cover and answer back with cobbled-together crossbows and captured small arms while Taga continued to push toward the stairs.
I winced as their shots bounced harmlessly around the defenders’ barricades. Our side was making a good show of it, but they weren’t taking the time to be precise with their shots. The defenders on the upper level reloaded calmly, almost unconcerned by their advance. A lack of space or ammo would stop them at some point. Even if it didn’t, I didn’t think Taga could carry the crate up the stairs.
I turned back to Heshae and whispered, “I don’t know how they’re going to make that last charge up to the balcony once they’re forced to abandon cover.”
She peeked over my head as I continued to watch things unfold. Something about the defenders’ tactics was…odd. They had an elevated position and superior firepower; it didn’t make sense to try and pick them off. Why not just flank them and take them out? I couldn’t put my finger on it, though.
Heshae’s quarterstaff tapped the ground. She took a deep breath and replied, “Neither do I. Taga is strong, but he’s not made of [warrior-elite-magic-living-metal]. Perhaps we could distract the overseers and give them enough time to advance.”
“Move further down, you morons!” Ulketh shouted, his gun arm gesturing wildly in the air. As soon as he popped his head out to berate his guards, a firebomb arced over Taga’s crate and shattered against the ceiling, raining fire down on the balcony. Liquid flame dripped through the balcony grating, bathing the entire room in an orange-yellow glow, and a scream of frustration burst from the upper level.
Ulketh slid further in our direction with his guards in tow, speaking in a low voice at his guards before he moved to the back of the room and out of my line of sight. I heard something heavy being moved upstairs, but I couldn’t tell what it was from my vantage point.
“Why don’t you go fuck a [ravenous-slaughter-predator-terror-stalker], you [voidborn-refuse-eater]!” A smaller, modulated version of my voice yelled out from behind the barricade. Even without a complete understanding of what was said, I chuckled a bit and nodded to myself.
I started to sneak out from the doorway in a crouch until a thin fragment of purple crystal whizzed past my face and struck the wall. My head whipped upward, and I saw Ulketh looking right at me, his eyebrows raised. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
A second shot struck an inch from the first. I spun back into the doorway beside Heshae, wiping sweat from my forehead.
That guy may act like he’s out of control, but he doesn’t shoot like it. Screw it, let’s get mean.
I blew a lock of hair away from my face and looked at Heshae. “Once I make it to the stairs, have the others follow me up. Push them towards the fire.”
I didn't give her time to agree and dashed from my cover in the doorway, making a beeline for the stairs. The shh-kee shh-kee sound of two more shots peppered my previous position as Ulketh continued to draw a bead on me. I ignored the shards that shattered against the machine behind me as my hands danced in the air.
Excess anima created a white-gray cat’s cradle from my fingertips, which burst into silver ribbons as my casting completed. I didn’t have the time to ensure my casting was efficient, but I got the result I wanted: part of the bulkhead beside me groaned and sagged as I pushed forward.
“Vass, we have a problem,” he said, one hand pressed to the base of his neck, the other firing his weapon repeatedly. One shard pierced my robes before shattering against my skin, another hit my neck and deflected into the wall, and a third caught in my hair and shook out onto the ground a few seconds later.
His rounds shattered when they hit the bulkhead; now, they did the same with me. I couldn’t catch what he said as he turned around, but I saw him motion to the other guards and jog casually for the door at the other end of the balcony.
“You’re fuckin’ right you have a problem!” I yelled back as I slid to the bottom of the stairs. A guard posted at the top of the stairs whipped his rifle over their barricade and trained it on me; I roared at him in response. My blood was pumping in my ears as my hands yanked at the handrail, propelling me up the stairs three at a time.
The eyes of the Gaal guard widened in shock as I rushed him, and he sprayed a hail of fire down at me. Two shots smacked into me that felt like someone driving their fist into my chest, and I tried to ignore it. Another shot hit me in the stomach and knocked the wind out of me, driving me to one knee. The next shot felt like someone jamming their boot into my right shoulder, and the pain drove me to the ground.
I was now officially pissed off.
My left hand reached through the railing to my left toward the droplets of flame and tensed into a claw, then raked across my body like I was tossing something. I dredged up a recollection of a flamethrower and merged it with the memory of a snowstorm that blew so hard the snow seemed to come from the side instead of above me. Anima trailed from my hands like silver-white claw slashes, and the puddles of flame on the ground raked up at an angle, spraying the guard with gouts of flame.
Before the screaming started I was already up on my feet and scrambling up the stairs. My hand gripped around the barrel of his weapon and tore the weapon from his hands. I must have broken a finger or two because his screaming got louder and he clutched at his hand, still smoking from the temporary blast of flame.
The screaming abruptly stopped once I choked up on the rifle with both hands and smacked it against his shoulder, sending him tumbling against the nearby wall. He struck with a dull whump, but I didn’t have time to inspect my handiwork; I was already shoving his cover into a position I could use to continue my assault.
“…Understood. We’re moving,” Ulketh said with a cold calm, his burning white eyes sizing me up with ruthless curiosity. “Fall back and burn the door shut.”
He bowed to me—actually bowed to me, the bastard—and fired another trio of shots against my cover, then dipped through the doorway on the other side of the upper level. His guards continued to fire their shots in rotating bursts as they followed him.
Three of the people on our side made it up the stairs moments later and dashed for the door, followed by Taga and Heshae. Their pounding on the door was ceaseless, but through it all, I heard Heshae say, “…Very headstrong.”
I smirked and sat down against the barricade as Taga stood over us, watching the door. I wasn’t going to lie to myself, those shots had hurt. I’d probably be sporting bruises tomorrow. Taga’s massive pangolin-crocodile head swung from smiling at me (at least, I hoped it was smiling) to the three at the door.
“WON’T OPEN. WELDED SHUT. WAIT FOR OTHERS.”
Holy shit, his voice was loud. Well, my voice in his mouth was loud. After the initial confusion, Heshae explained how I was able to talk to them, which saved me the trouble. I checked myself for any lasting damage, Taga helped me to my feet, and we retreated a few rooms away while the engineers worked on the door. I looked at the two new holes in my robes with no small amount of regret; it felt like I was whittling on a memory of home.
Overall, it was one hell of an introduction.
The next two hours were a crash course in species and personalities. While I was already well acquainted with the various personalities and vagaries of different species that lived in close proximity to my own, those groups banded together out of necessity and tradition. We stopped thinking of ourselves as a series of different species and just felt like we were the “survivors.”
These people had a common language and a common goal, but that was where the camaraderie stopped.
Rexiel was the fox-lizard with four arms from the cargo hold. He was from a species called the Udari, part of the Corath caste. Over the last two hours, I heard him say a total of six words; he tended to use sign language to converse with the others. That is, when he wasn’t sharpening his shortsword, slinking through the shadows to try and dispatch someone, or brooding like broody people do when they’re psyching themselves up for something self-destructive.
I got the feeling Rexiel was completely comfortable ending people on a regular basis. Either that, or he was a damn fine actor.
The smaller creature from earlier in the hold was another Onalir named Messec. He sported an environmental suit with the same coloring as Duguf and used a weapon that looked like a crossbow mixed with a combustion engine that shot quills dipped in neurotoxin. His neurotoxin. He explained that Onalir stay inside their suits when they’re not in an enclave because of it; if you brush up against them, you’ll find it pretty hard to breathe in the next minute or so.
He disabled the engines during the initial uprising but got separated from his group during his escape from primary propulsion. The mad little guy traversed the access tunnels from one end of the ship to the other just to join back up and continue the fight.
He was the one who chucked the firebomb earlier. I liked him.
The Firoma’s name was Ereia, and she was absolutely stunning. When I was growing up, I found several Pact species and genders attractive, but she put them all to shame. Her dark skin had a scattering of dusky lavender freckles, and her long, straight sunset-colored hair framed her face like a splash of twilight. She wore her hair tied into a long braid that she wrapped around her neck and pinned to the collar of her short cloak.
After the third or fourth skirmish, we found ourselves sitting next to one another passing a waterskin back and forth, and she complimented my hair. I replied, “Yeah, uh… you too… yeah.”
Hooray for eloquence; Gods preserve us.
We actually had a decent conversation once I found my voice again. I learned that her beauty was the reason her parents sold her into slavery. She was trained and eventually auctioned, and I was surprised and disheartened that she didn’t seem bitter about it. I gave her some insight into human anatomy, and she revealed that she had seduced Ulketh and destroyed his “Circlet of Authority,” which was the catalyst for the entire uprising.
I didn’t need much explanation to figure out what the Circlet was for, and her description of the pain it inflicted was so matter-of-fact that I got queasy. My skin crawled when I thought of my attraction to her, especially after knowing her story. It took a little time for me to circle around to apologize for it, but she responded with a nonchalant shrug and said, “You can’t help what you like.”
I still felt like crap about it.
Last but certainly not least, Taga Night-Breaking-Clear, the Embrial the size of a freight train. Of all of the creatures that composed this assault group, he was the most open. My stunt in the cargo hold that nearly got me killed made me somewhat of a good luck charm in his eyes, and he was going to make sure that I and everyone else knew it, too.
His unshakable faith in me was because of his unshakable faith in Lasaret, a two-faced God who practiced honesty and deceit in equal measure.
Here’s how he explained it: acting without warning my enemy was deceitful. But, I also worked out of a need to free an innocent (myself), and there was no guile in that action. So, it was an honest action done deceitfully—the ultimate expression of Lasaret’s will on the universe. Seeing as it was my first action after being released from my chrysalis, Taga took it as a sign that he was acting within Lasaret’s auspices.
I mentioned that almost every action could have ulterior motives but ultimately benefit someone. Taga brightened—and by that, I mean the light under his scales increased in brightness—and he said that was part of the point. I still didn’t get it. I replied that I’d have to read the pamphlet later, but I don’t think he got the joke.
Life settled into a strange rhythm. We’d clear a room of personnel and traps, mark it off our map, breach whatever barricades the defenders had made, reset the doors' codes, and do it all over again. It was grating work. The fighting part of the process lost its luster after the fourth or fifth skirmish when Ulketh and his various Rent-a-Bastards managed to slip away.
Mercifully, we were making progress, and people started talking about the Lifeweaver Nexus in more urgent tones. After listening for a bit, I spoke up, “So the Lifeweaver Nexus controls air, heat, and water. Why haven’t they turned those off, just asphyxiate us or make us freeze to death?”
Messec said, “Safeguards won’t let them. Those systems are ‘always on,’ which keeps owners and captains from threatening their vassals or crew with it. Morality safeguards, the Confederacy calls them.”
“And there’s no way to turn them off,” I said, “No override; they can’t grab something and pry out those safeguards?”
“It’d be like committing suicide, if it even worked in the first place. No, they’re holed up in there because it’s the location most hardened against attack,” Messec said.
“RUSH THEM. FINISH THIS, THEN WE LEAVE,” Taga said, bumping his knuckles against the ground with a whump.
“If we move hastily, we’re likely to have more casualties,” Heshae responded.
Rexiel clapped his hands and pointed to his eyes, then gestured in the direction of the Nexus. We all watched him make an intricate series of signs before he said, “Spy.”
Ereia nodded and shouldered her rifle, “Rex is right: he can get in and see what’s happening, then report back. Until then, we wait.”
I slumped down against the wall and rubbed my stomach, which growled about ten minutes ago. I hated waiting.
Messec drew Rexiel aside, hastily sketched a series of diagrams on a piece of paper, and passed it to Rexiel. He spun slowly as he oriented himself to the map, and then stalked into the gloom of the portside door. The others broke out and passed around wafers that smelled vaguely of soap while I continued to get grumpier over not being able to eat anything. I chugged some more water and pitied the next unfriendly person who crossed my path.
Like clockwork, I closed my eyes and checked my Tether: about a third left in the tank.
I was afraid of that. Since I came to consciousness, most of my time had been spent repeatedly casting translation spells. The spells I cast didn’t have a chance to settle into a rhythm where they’d sip at my anima. Instead, I was casting them, dispelling them, then casting them again. I was causing my anima to surge every time I’d cast, like flipping the switch on a cold light bulb. Repeated casting had chipped away at my reserves.
It didn’t help that I was also being slapdash with my casting; when a Human’s casting is “complete,” it doesn’t emit excess Anima. It just happens. I was sacrificing efficiency for speed. Well, if it worked, I wasn’t going to complain. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can find out where I need to go, and the sooner we can get there.
This brought up another important point: I hadn’t actually set the price for my aid. I had just done it without negotiating. Was that okay? Was that how things worked around here? I was used to just doing things when I was asked or if I saw they needed to be done. So naturally, I just did the same thing here.
Oh well. They might not like it, but I’ll get them to help. Maybe I could just get Taga to bully them into doing it.
That made me snicker, which in turn made Heshae look at me and raise an eyebrow. I shook my head and mentally grabbed at the other tangled web in proximity: what in the hell were the overseers up to? There had to be a reason for the delaying tactics.
Heshae had been worried that they were trying to find a way to cut off life support, but Messec said it was nearly impossible for them to break the safeguards. So if it wasn’t to buy more time to cut off this Lifeweaver Nexus thing, then it had to be—
It made more sense the more I thought about it.
Our side is worried about being recaptured, and they need to control engineering to get away. They’re not the only ones who can prioritize their needs. Someone on the other side must have thought the same, or they had planned for this eventuality. They’re waiting us out until someone shows up to reclaim their property.
I snapped back to the active conversation; I had to know if they were thinking the same thing I was. “…knew what had been said in the Gathering Hall, even though she was unconscious at the time,” I heard Heshae say before she turned toward me and asked, “Amelin? Are you able to explain how you knew what happened during your transport to the infirmary?”
I stopped trying to interrupt and thought, It's not a bad idea, but—
“When I’m sleeping, I’m not here," I said, “I’m somewhere else, in a place where my magic comes from. That’s where all of our surface thoughts, our emotions, our [dreams] go. But more importantly—”
“DREEM? WHAT IS DREEM?” Taga said, inching closer to me.
Godsdamnit, I thought to myself, Let's get this over with.
Many things separated Humans from other species, but the difference that stood out above all the others was the ability to recall our dreams. A tek might growl or bark in their sleep. An Orval, Tevelish, or Alvi might wake up with a start. Ask any of them to recall their dreams, and you’d end up with confused stares.
Hell, most Humans forgot what happened in their dreams by the time they had breakfast. But the ones that remember, that can truly recall what happened? Those are the ones that can become Conduits.
“They’re… thoughts and images,” I said, “that your brain processes when you’re asleep; like a memory, but different. Most of the time they just happen to you, but some of my people learned how to change them. Then, they learned how to store them. Eventually, they figured out how to connect them to reality. It’s how our magic works.”
Blank stares all around. Ereia blinked once and said, “Can we use these dreams to see into the Nexus?”
I was dubious about that idea. I had never attempted a dive into the Gossamer outside of natural sleep before. I had seen it done with narcotics—it was standard practice to do recon before a foray into the wastes—but it was a skill that was restricted to more experienced Conduits.
“Maybe, but I’ve never tried it before. And I wouldn’t try it with the anima I have left. But—”
Heshae’s shoulders drooped slightly, but the others’ expressions didn’t change much. Rexiel was still out there, so I figured they were just asking to see what other tricks I had.
Taga huffed and said, “YOU HAVE DONE MUCH TODAY. TRY THIS LATER.”
Finally, I could get a word in edgewise and blurted out, “Have any of you thought that the reason we’re being hindered is because they’re stalling for reinforcements?”
Understanding blossomed on their faces, and the silence that followed devoured any talk of dreams. A new conversation took its place; one where even Heshae recommended haste. We needed to get to the Nexus and deal with the stragglers, now.

LEGACY OF DESTRUCTION

Etymology/Translation Corner
Tagline: "The long silence is now broken. This battle between souls will carve open a way to the future and turn into light!!"
CM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxnOMm7miEY
Yugi: "My other self... I promise to beat you in this fight!"
Dark Yugi: "Partner... I'll take you on!"
Yugi: "Here I go! I'm betting it all on this card! Appear! The vicious dragon clad in black and gold who will unleash a shimmer of glorious devastation! Gandora Geas, the Dragon of Destruction!"
...
Yugi and Dark Yugi: "DUEL!!"
This is a list of translated Japanese names for all of the cards in Legacy of Destruction. See below for further notes.
Each card name is linked to an image!! (Use an image-zooming extension like Imagus to view them instantly.)
Any questions or issues you may have about the translations are welcome.

• Magicians of Bonds and Unity

1. Gandora Geas, the Dragon of Destruction
2. Silent Swordman Zero
3. Silent Magician Zero
4. Tricolore Gadget
5. Mashimarshmallon
6. Antique Gear Dark Golem / Mechanical Dark Giant of Antiquity
7. Antique Gear Tanker / Mechanical Tank Soldier of Antiquity
8. Antique Gear Commander / Mechanical Commander of Antiquity
9. Refrain, Melodious Songstress of the Phantasmic Performance
10. Couplet, Melodious Songstress of the Phantasmic Performance
11. Snake-Eyes Diabellstar / Great Flame Demon with Serpentine Eyes
12. Diabellze the Original Sin
13. Raika-no-Marikobe / Scourgebud Skullcone
14. Raika-no-Yahazukamikiri / Scourgebud Arrowhorn Beetle
15. Raika-no-Yoroitokage / Scourgebud Armor Lizard
16. Tenpai Dragon Paidora / Heavenly Cup Dragon - Paidora
17. Tenpai Dragon Fadora / Heavenly Cup Dragon - Fadora
18. Tenpai Dragon Chundora / Heavenly Cup Dragon - Chundora
19. Hellgrave Squirmer
20. Gold Pride - Assassinator
21. Centurion Gargoyle II / Dragoon Cavalry - Gargoyle II
22. Selettrice Varmonica / Voice-Picking Princess of Angels and Demons
23. Dragoon of Light-Road / Dragon of the Way of Light
24. Light-Road Demon Veiss
25. Wight Lord
26. Golgoil, the Great Demon of Steel
27. Moonfang Dragon - Crescent Dragon
28. Talons of Schlieren
29. Nightmare Apprentice / Apprentice Magician of Entrancement
30. Dinovader Docus
31. Cyclus the Summon Ring Fairy
32. Fishborg - Harpooner
33. Chilling Fire
34. Saffira, the Dragon Deity of Silent Voices
35. Spectacular Bach, Melodious Princess of the Phantasmic Performance
36. Flowering Étoile, Musical Flower Goddess of the Phantasmic Performance
37. Memento Twin Dragon
38. Enlightenment Dragoon / Dragon of Divine Light
39. Burgeoning Dragon of Lustrous Phantoms - Bident Dragion
40. Supreme Dragon of Lustrous Phantoms - Transcend Dragion
41. Gold Pride - Annihilator
42. Centurion Arxila / Empress of Knights - Arxila
43. Light-Road Athena Minerva
44. Goblin Rider - The Griare Trio / The Flesh-Eater Pandemonic Parade - The Griare Trio
45. Decanelogue - Varudras / Supreme Beast of the Endtime Commandments - Varudras
46. Okosama / Mister Angry Pants
47. Raika-no-Mushadokuro / Scourgebud Warrior Skull
48. Raika-no-Ogaminushi / Scourgebud Mantis Priest
49. Raika-no-Kusarigami / Scourgebud Chain Serpent
50. Raika-no-Daiohga / Scourgebud Great King Ogrefang
51. Gold Coffer of Light
52. The Silence of Time - Turn Silence
53. Ties of Friendship
54. Silence Towards the Future
55. Antique Gear Advance / March of Antiquity
56. Phantasmic Performance Concerto
57. The Battle of Tainted Treasures
58. Raika Off-Season Profusion / Off-Season Profusion of Scourgebuds
59. The Lustrous Phantom Parlor of Brimming Cups
60. Lustrous Phantoms: Opening the Gate
61. Nightmare Throne
62. A Blessing for the Silent Voices
63. Nether-Skeleton Fusion - Memento Fusion
64. Wake Up, Centurion!
65. Varmonica Invitare
66. Varmonica Disarmonia
67. Map Your Way Out
68. Blinkout
69. Metatronius / The Embodiment of God's Abyss in the Coexistent Worlds
70. Boot Tracks in the Snow, We Follow Them with Our Steps, One by One They Go
71. Strong-Hold the Hidden Fortress
72. Antique Gear Duel / Mechanical Competitive Bout of Antiquity
73. The Goblin Rider Grand Pile-Up / Grand Pile-Up of the Flesh-Eater Pandemonic Parade
74. Tainted Treasure Turnaround
75. Tainted Treasure of Slumbering - Morrigan
76. Raika Large-Flowered Headhunting Dance / Large-Flowered Headhunting Dance of the Scourgebuds
77. Light-Road Aegis
78. Barrier of Entrancement -Mirage Force-
79. Zoma the Earthbound Ghost
80. Terrifying Simultaneous Fixed-Point Cannon Equations

+1 Bonus Pack

• Gandora, the Dragon of Destruction

Etymology and other trivia:

Yugi's Deck

• Gandora Geas is a reference to Final Geas, a Trap Card used by Yugi Muto in THE DARK SIDE OF DIMENSIONS that was used to summon Gandora Cross, the Dragon of Annihilation, another counterpart to Yugi's original Gandora, the Dragon of Destruction. (A geas is an Irish-folklore term for an obligation or prohibition magically imposed on a person.) Its effect of Special Summoning a monster after using its effect is a reference to how Silent Swordman LV7 was brought back after Gandora used its effect in Yugi's Duel against Dark Bakura.
• Silent Swordman Zero and Silent Magician Zero are references to Yugi's Silent Swordman LV0 and Silent Magician LV0, respectively. Silent Magician Zero's Level-increasing effect is also a more faithful recreation of how the original one's worked.
• Tricolore is French for tricolor.
• Mashimarshmallon is a portmanteau of mashimashi (Japanese for "to increase" or "to enlarge") and Marshmallon, another of Yugi's monsters. It has the effect of Marshmallon Glasses built into it as well.
• Gold Coffer of Light is based on Yugi's Gold Coffer of Sealing (Gold Sarcophagus in the TCG), whicn in its original iteration was able to prevent the usage of any card sealed away inside it. This card's effect of being able to send back to the Graveyard a monster Special Summoned from there by a Magic Card effect is a reference to when Yugi sealed away his own Resurrection of the Dead to prevent Dark Yugi from using it in their final Duel against each other. Its effect of being unable to be destroyed by monster effects is a reference to how the card sealed inside the original Gold Coffer was unaffected by any magical effect, including Gandora's ability in the manga.
• Turn Silence is a reference to Yugi's A Leap in Time -Turn Jump-, which was used in his Duel against Dark Bakura to skip time ahead to three of his turns into the future (thus this card's effect being able to raise a monster's Level by 3, similar to how Yugi's Silent monsters gained LVs with each passing turn). Its artwork is a reference to a scene from that Duel in which Yugi's Silent Swordman destroys Bakura's Zoma the Ghost. This card being able to negate a monster effect if activated in response to one is a reference to how the time skipped by Turn Jump effectively prevented Bakura's Zoma from applying its damage-inflicting effect at the end of that Battle Phase.
• Ties of Friendship is a reference to Yugi's Ties of the Brethren, and has a similar effect to it. This card's artwork mimics an illustration drawn by Kazuki Takahashi and published on the STUDIO DICE official website with a message of support for the areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. The illustration depicted Yugi Muto with the original versions of the monsters in this card's artwork, and was later printed in DUEL ART—a collection containing some of Takahashi's illustrations.
• Silence Towards the Future's artwork and effect are a reference to a scene from Yugi Muto's Duel against his other self in which he uses Treasured Cards from the Heavens (Card of Sanctity in the TCG) to draw multiple cards and power up his Silent Magician.
• Strong-Hold the Hidden Fortress's title is a reference to when Dark Yugi referred to Yugi's Strong-Hold the Moving Fortress as "the trap of the hidden fortress."

Antique Gear

• Antique Gear Dark Golem is a reference to the fact Chronos de Medici's Deck was called a Dark Medieval Deck in the GX anime.
• Antique Gear Tanker's artwork and ATK-increasing effect are a reference to when Chronos equipped his Antique Gear Soldier with Antique Gear Tank in his Duel against Napoleon in the anime.
• Antique Gear Commander's pose mimics one Chronos himself struck often during Duels, while his bladed weapon is a visual reference to Chronos's Duel Disk, which was built into the Duel Coat he wore.
• Antique Gear Duel depicts a scene from Chronos's second Duel against Judai Yuki, in which Antique Gear Ultimate Golem attacks Judai's Flare Neos. The phrase Competitive Bout (Kyōtō) is a pun on the Japanese word for "vice-headmaster" (also pronounced kyōtō), referring to the title Chronos held at Duel Academia at the time of that Duel. This same pun is used for the card Competitive Bout - Cross-Dimension (Cross-Dimensional Duel in the TCG).

Phantasmic Performance

• Refrain (pronounced "REH-FRAWN") is the French word for the English refrain or chorus—the line or lines that are repeated in music or in poetry.
• Couplet (pronounced "COO-PLAY") is the French word for the English couplet—a pair of successive lines of verse, typically rhyming and of the same length.
• Both Refrain and Couplet are reference to a rondo—a musical form that contains a principal theme (sometimes called the "refrain") which alternates with one or more contrasting themes, generally called "episodes", but also occasionally referred to as "digressions" or "couplets". This alternation can also be seen in their effects that return them to the Pendulum Zones after a Fusion Monster is Special Summoned.
• Spectacular Bach is based on Johann Sebastian Bach—a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period, generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.
• Flowering Étoile is named after Danseuse étoile (French for "star dancer")—the highest rank a dancer can reach at the Paris Opera Ballet. The star-shaped flowers on her dress are the flowers of the yuzu plant, referencing Yuzu Hiiragi, who played a Phantasmic Performance Deck in the ARC-V anime.
• A concerto is a musical composition for a solo instrument or instruments accompanied by an orchestra, especially one conceived on a relatively large scale.

Diabellstar storyline

• Snake-Eyes Diabellstar's stat line could mean it's a reference to Magician of Black Chaos, seeing as how the original Diabellstar is to Black Magician.
• Diabellze is a portmanteau of Diabell- and Beelzebub.
• Griare is pronounced "GREE-AW-RAY." The word Trio (Sanketsu) here is a Japanese phrase used to refer to "three great people" of a certain historic era, but sanketsu is also a pun on the phrase niketsu ("riding double on a motorcycle").
• Grand Pile-Up refers to piling up Xyz Materials under a single monster with its effect.
• Morrigan is named after the Morrígan—a figure from Irish mythology associated with war and fate, especially with foretelling doom, death, or victory in battle, and is often depicted as a crow.

Raika

• Raika is written with the kanji for bud and calamity, roughly translated as Scourgebud for the alternate translations above.
• Marikobe is a pun on the Japanese words igakusa (written with similar kanji as Marikobe)—the Japanese name for the Rhynchospora rubra, a member of the sedge family that features a distinctive spherical spikelet at the end of its stem—and sharikōbe (an alternate reading of dokuro—the Japanese word for "skull").
• Yahazukamikiri is the Japanese name for Uraecha bimaculata, a species of beetle. It is a slender longhorn beetle with a reddish-brown body and a pair of diagonal dark spots on its forewings that resemble arrow notches (with yahazu being the Japanese term for the nock of an arrow). Its name could also be a reference to yahazu-midare—a type of hamon that resembles of sequence of nocks. Since the Raika theme has a yōkai motif, it is also possibly a reference to the Kamikiri (lit. "hair-cutter")—a Japanese yōkai said to secretly cut people's hair on the head.
• Yoroitokage literally means armored lizard, referring to the armadillo girdled lizard—a diurnal animal with rows of tough spiny scales all over its body.
• Mushadokuro is a portmanteau of musha (a Japanese word meaning "warrior") and Gashadokuro (lit. "rattling skull")—a yōkai spirit that takes the form of a giant skeleton made of the skulls of people who died in the battlefield.
• Ogaminushi is a portmanteau of ogamimushi (a dialectal Japanese term for the praying mantis) and ōkannushi (the chief Shinto priest serving the Grand Shrine).
• Kusarigami is a portmanteau of kusarigama (lit. "chain-sickle")—a traditional Japanese weapon consisting of a sickle attached to a metal chain with a heavy iron weight at the end—and kusarihebi (lit. "chain snake")—the Japanese name for the viper.
• Daiohga is based on Dorcus bucephalus, a type of stag beetle also known as the great king (daiou) stag beetle in Japanese. Its name also sounds like a portmanteau of daiou and ogre.
• Raika Off-Season Profusion (Raikaryouran Kuruizaki) is a play on the Japanese idiom hyakkaryōran ("many flowers blooming in profusion").

Tenpai Dragon/Lustrous Phantom

• This theme is based heavily on Japanese mahjong, also known as riichi mahjong.
• Tenpai (lit. "heavenly cup" or "sky cup") is a pun on the Japanese-mahjong term tenpai (lit. "listening tile")—meaning to be one tile short of a winning hand (sometimes called "fishing" in English).
• The Main Deck monsters are based on the dragon tiles (sangenpai, lit. "three fundamental tiles") in mahjong. Their names ending in dora (from doragon or "dragon") is additionaly a pun on mahjong's dora tiles—bonus tiles that add han value to a winning hand.
• Paidora comes from paipan—the white dragon tile without any markings (also known as haku).
• Fadora comes from ryuufa (roughly meaning "green wealth")—the official name for the green dragon tile hatsu, which has the Chinese character for "wealth" written on it.
• Chundora comes from honchun or hóngzhōng (lit. "red center")—the official name for the red dragon tile chun (lit. "medium" or "center"), which has the same character written on it.
• Bident Dragion is a reference to the card Trident Dragion, with a bident being a two-pronged spear as opposed to the three-pronged trident. Burgeoning Dragon of Lustrous Phantoms (Sangenshōryū) is a pun on the Japanese mahjong term shōsangen (lit. "little three fundamentals")—a yaku (a certain pattern in a mahjong hand) reliant on all three sangenpai (dragon tiles). The hand consists of triplets of two dragons and a pair of the third.
• Transcend Dragion's title (Sangenchōryū) is in turn based on a chōsangen (lit. "superior three fundamentals")—a non-standard yaku containing all three quads of sangenpai.
• The Lustrous Phantom Parlor of Brimming Cups (Sakazuki Michiru Sangensō) is a pun on the Japanese term jansō ("mahjong parlor")—a Japanese venue which offers tables for playing mahjong. The two kanji for Brimming Cups (Sakazuki Michiru) can also be read haiman, similar to the Japanese-mahjong term baiman (lit. "double-full")—a win worth 16,000 points (or 24,000 if the dealer wins). This likely refers to this theme's ability to field massive amounts of battle damage in a single Battle Phase.
• Opening the gate (Kaimen) is a Japanese-mahjong term for determining which tile the dealing of hands starts at the start of the game.

Yubel

• Hellgrave Squirmer is based on Grave Squirmer, a monster used by Yubel in the GX anime. Its wings and left arm now resemble those of Yubel.
• Nightmare Throne is based on the throne on the top floor of Yubel's tower in the Spirit World. The artwork is a reference to a scene in which Johann Andersen (possessed by Yubel) leans on the left side of the throne after his Duel against Amon Garam.

Centurion

• The II in Gargoyle II is read as zwei (the German word for the number two).
• Arxila (pronounced "ARK-SEE-LAH") is a twist on auxilia (lit. "auxiliaries")–auxiliary troops in the Roman army.

Varmonica

• Selettrice (pronounced "SELETREE-CHE") is an Italian feminine noun meaning "selector." The title Voice-Picking Princess (Seisenki) is a reference to the card Voice Picker of Angels and Demons - "Varmonica", whose Voice Picker is also pronounced the same (Seisenki), but is written with a different ki kanji meaning "device."
• Invitare is Italian for "to invite."
• Disarmonia is Italian for "dissonance."

Light-Road

• This theme's inclusion in this set could possibly be a reference to its similar name to LIGHT OF DESTRUCTION, the core booster set in which the Light-Road theme first appeared. LIGHT OF DESTRUCTION was also released next after the core booster set PHANTOM DARKNESS, which was the basis for the previous set PHANTOM NIGHTMARE.
• Veiss is a pun on vice (as in "immoral or wicked behavior") and Weiß (German for "white"). This monster seems to be a Light-Road version of Snoww, Sorceress of the Dark World, who is also connected to the color white and is present in several card artworks together with Light-Road Hunter Ryko.
• Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, especially strategic warfare, the arts, and especially crafts. Her Roman counterpart is Minerva.
• Aegis is named after an attribute of Zeus and Athena (or their Roman counterparts Jupiter and Minerva) usually represented as a goatskin shield.

Memento

• Memento Twin Dragon is based on the early-era OCG Fusion Monster Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon.

Miscellaneous

• Wight Lord (Waitorōdo) is a pun on the Light-Road (Raitorōdo) theme's name, and even has a similar Deck-milling effect. In its artwork, Wight Lord and Skull Dog Marron appear to be wearing armors similar to those of Light-Road Paladin Jain and Light-Road Hunter Ryko, respectively.
• Golgoil, the Great Demon of Steel is an Illusion Magic remake of the early-era OCG monster Golgoil. Its title comes from the fact the original Golgoil has the words MAJIN OF KOTETSU (roughly meaning "demon of steel" in mixed Japanese and English) engraved on its upper armor. Great Demon of Steel (Kōtetsu no Daimajin) is also a reference to both Great Mazinger (Gurēto Majingā) and Steel Jeeg (Kōtetsu Jīgu), which are two Japanese mecha anime series created by Go Nagai.
• Moonfang Dragon - Crescent Dragon is a remake of the early-era OCG monster Crescent Dragon (known as Mikazukinoyaiba in the TCG). This monster is meant to symbolize 2024 being a Year of the Dragon.
• Schlieren (pronounced "SHLEER-EN" and meaning "streaks" in German) are discernible layers in a transparent material that differ from the surrounding material in density or composition. An example of this phenomenon would be the shimerring sunlight on a hot summer day. Its effect is a reference to its flavor text in some of the Game Boy Yu-Gi-Oh! games, where this monster originates from.
• Nightmare Apprentice has a similar name, stats, and effect as Apprentice Mage of Illusions (known as Apprentice Illusion Magician in the TCG).
• Dinovader Docus is a pun on dinosaur, invader, and Diplodocus—a huge herbivorous dinosaur of the late Jurassic period, with a long slender neck and tail.
• Cyclus (Kikurosu) is the Latin form of the Ancient Greek kyklos ("circle" or "ring"). Its title is a play on a fairy ring or fairy circle—a circular area of grass that is darker in color than the surrounding grass due to the growth of certain fungi. They were popularly believed to have been caused by fairies dancing.
• Chilling Fire (Hieru Hi) is a counterpart to and has a similarly alliterative name (in Japanese) as the card Burning Algae (Moeru Mo).
• Decanelogue is a twist on Decalogue, another name for the Ten Commandments—a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship that play a fundamental role in Judaism and Christianity.
• Okosama is a pun on okosama (a Japanese polite expression used to refer to children, albeit written in different kanji than this card's name) and oko (Japanese internet slang for being angry). The kanji used in its card name are those for "angry," "young child," and the polite honorific sama.
• Map Your Way Out (Kyūsureba Tsūzu) is a pun on the Japanese proverb also pronounced the same way, which is basically the equivalent of the English idiom, "Necessity is the mother of invention," meaning that when the need for something becomes essential, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it. The last kanji in the card name is the kanji for "map" or "diagram"—this and its artwork are a reference to the anime/manga series Eyeshield 21, where the protagonist would sometimes imagine a mapped-out route through the opposing players that would lead him to a touchdown. Kyū is also the Japanese pronunication for the number nine, referring to its effect of wiping out the opponent's field and Graveyard if a player uses its effect while their opponent controls 9 or more monsters.
• Blinkout is a pun on "to blink out of existence," link (referring to Link Monsters), and possibly blackout.
• Metatronius is based on the Ancient Greek metathronios, which can be translated as "one who sits behind the throne." It has been suggested this phrase is the origin of the name Metatron—an archangel in Christian and Jewish folklore.
• Boot Tracks in the Snow, We Follow Them with Our Steps, One by One They Go (Yukigutsu no / Ato Ou Hitotsu / Mata Hitotsu) is written as a haiku—a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world. Its effect also mentions the numbers five, seven, and five in that order.
• Zoma the Earthbound Ghost is a combination of Dark Bakura's Zoma the Ghost and Call of the Earthbound Spirits. Its effect to inflict damage equal to double the ATK of the attacking monster is a reference to the original depiction of Zoma the Ghost in the anime and manga, which had a similar effect to inflict damage equal to double the ATK of the monster that destroyed it at the end of the Battle Phase.
• Terrifying Simultaneous Fixed-Point Cannon Equations (Renritsu Hōkoteishiki) is a pun on the Japanese term for simultaneous equations or equation system (renritsu hōteishiki)—in its simplest form, a set of two equations with two variables. The ritsu in renritsu has been replaced with the second kanji from senritsu ("terrifying"), and the hōteishiki meaning "equation" has had the kanji ko ("cannon") spliced in-between, and the teishi part has been replaced for the teishi meaning "fixed-point." Its effect can be expressed as the equation system {2x + y = a; x + y = b}, where 'x' and 'y' stand for the number of Xyz Monsters and Fusion (Yūgō in Japanese) Monsters, respectively.

Tournament Pack 2024 Vol.1

1. Archethys, the Ravenous Crocodile Dragon
2. Wight King
3. Wight Prince
4. Decoy Dragon
5. Light-Road Maiden Minerva
6. Soprano, Melodious Songstress of the Phantasmic Performance
7. Naga
8. Antique Gear Golem - Ultimate Pound / Mechanical Giant of Antiquity - Ultimate Pound
9. Exodius, the Ultimate Sealed God
10. Trident Dragion
11. Hagakuremino the Insect Chunin
12. Piri Reis Map
13. Sword of Silence
14. Silent Burning
15. Spirit Conversion Device
16. Grave of the Super-Ancient Organisms
17. Horror of the Lifeless Dragon - Destrudo

V Jump March 2024 Edition bonus card

• Magic Card: "Resurrection of the Dead"

Etymology:

• This card's name is taken from a line usually said when Resurrection of the Dead was activated in the Duel Monsters anime and manga: "I activate the Magic Card Resurrection of the Dead!" Its artwork is taken from a scene during Yugi's Duel against Pandora in Battle City, in which both he and Pandora use their own Resurrection of the Dead at the same time to revive their Black Magicians from the Graveyard. It being a Quick-Play Magic Card is a reference to the fact all Magic Cards functioned like Quick-Play ones in the manga (and sometimes in the anime).

At the world’s top college of magic and technology, every day brings a new discovery -and a new disaster. The advanced experiments of the college students tend to be both ambitious and apocalyptic, with the end of the world only prevented by a mysterious time loop, and a small handful of students who retain their memories.
For the past two years, Vell Harlan has been caught in the loop alongside his best friends, Lee and Harley, and with their help he’s been able to survive every disaster the universe has thrown at him. But as Vell enters his third year, Lee and Harley are entering their fourth (and final) year at the Einstein-Odinson College. With a ticking clock counting down, the trio must cut through the chaos of killer crickets, haunted phones, and naked sorcerers to try and solve some of the mysteries plaguing their lives -including why all these butterflies keep following Vell around...
[Chapter 1 (Book Three)][Previous Chapter][Patreon][Cover Art][Next Chapter]
The campus is about to get haunted by digital ghosts, and their only solution comes from an unexpected source: Samson's rarely helpful twin brother, Ibrahim.
“And I don’t know what happened after that, because, you know, I was dead,” Samson said. Lee sighed and rubbed her temples.
“You don’t remember anything about the ritual?”
“Nothing useful.”
“Nothing at all?”
“It was definitely a circle,” Samson said. “I think the symbols on top had a lot of lines.”
Lee sighed again. That really wasn’t useful.
“Well I learned jack shit,” Harley said. “Hawke?”
“Nothing on my end either,” Hawke said.
“My attempts at conventional rituals also failed,” Lee said. “It would seem Ibrahim stumbled across a piece of the puzzle we all missed.”
“God knows how,” Samson grumbled. Lee ignored the passive aggressive remark and kept them on track.
“Anything that can be discovered can be rediscovered,” Lee said. “Samson, if you can get the right textbooks, I’ll prepare the rituals, and we should have this knocked out by lunch.”
***
Samson picked at a french fry from his lunch. It had gotten cold and soggy.
“Okay, try this one.”
Lee put down an energy drink and sluggishly grabbed the document. Hours of failed experimentation had left her drained of magical and physical energy. She still had the mental acuity to scan the document for errors, at least.
“Samson, this is barely a change.”
“Minor differences can have big effects.”
“In hardware and software, maybe,” Lee said. “Magic is bigger, and quite frankly, needlessly dramatic sometimes. You need to make more drastic changes.”
Samson tore up the drawing and threw the scraps on the floor before starting over. Harley watched the drift into the reject pile along with the dozens of other failed documents.
“Feel like maybe we should start working on plan B here, guys,” Harley said. Hawke and Kim had already gone to lock up Kim’s spare body parts, as a precaution, and Harley had made sure her friends in the robotics department were disassembling any potentially dangerous drones. Even with the most dangerous potential machines disarmed, a horde of phone ghosts was less than ideal, and their current plan wasn’t exactly working out.
“I can do this,” Samson insisted. Anything Ibrahim could do, he could easily do better. He was the smarter twin, after all.
“It might be wise to have a second plan,” Lee said. Their initial idea, to have the ritual ready and simply exorcise the entire island as soon as the hauntings began, was looking less and less likely by the second. “Harley, work on tracking down the source and taking some preventative measures. Vell, help me recharge for a moment and I’ll try to come up with something for you.”
Samson took a break while Harley took action, and Vell took Lee to go get some sunlight and fresh air -and, most importantly, privacy.
“Alright, so what do you want to tell me now that Samson’s not around?”
“I had an idea, and it’s an odd one,” Lee said. “I just wanted the perspective of a longtime looper...and also yes, to not have Samson around.”
Vell nodded, and Lee elaborated.
“You’re familiar with the second rule of looping, yes?”
“Without us changing events, everything will happen exactly the same as before,” Vell said. That was why they had to rely on convoluted schemes instead of making simple disruptions and letting the butterfly effect take over. “What are you thinking?’
“I’m thinking, what if we tried to force that effect? Put Ibrahim in similar circumstances as the first loop and see if he comes to the same result?”
“That’d be...interesting,” Vell said. He had to take a moment to think about it. They’d never tried to exploit the time loop in that way. Usually they were looking to do the exact opposite. “I guess it could work, but, uh, one thing.”
“Yes?”
“Ibrahim hates me,” Vell said.
“Not anymore than he hates the rest of us.”
“Right. Guess I’ll give it a shot, then. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“I’m sure you’ll do great. Just remember, you need Goldie, a lot of textbooks, a reason to investigate cyber exorcisms, and Ibrahim.”
***
The first step on Vell’s mission was to get Goldie’s help. She was easily bribed with a large order of potato-based food, so Vell checked that off his list real fast. Next were the textbooks, which were slightly less easy, as the librarian could not be bribed with potatoes, but still fairly easy. A good reason to be studying cyber exorcisms was the first major hurdle, and it reared its head as soon as Goldie was done eating.
“Why exactly are we researching ways to get data ghosts out of computers?”
Vell wracked his brain for about ten solid seconds.
“I’m...going to play a prank on Harley.”
“By getting a ghost out of her phone?”
Vell wracked his brain for another ten seconds.
“No. I want to put a ghost in her phone, but I want to be sure I can get it out later.”
“Alright, sure,” Goldie said. Vell gave himself a mental pat on the back. That was surprisingly good improv, by his standards. “We getting Samson to handle the computer stuff?”
“Nope, Samson is too intimidated and/or attracted to Harley to defy her,” Vell said. “We have to go for the other twin.”
“The other twin,” Goldie said. She’d never actually met Ibrahim, but she’d heard the stories. “The one that hates you guys?”
“I figure he might be on board for a prank, you know,” Vell said. “Help one guy he hates to hurt another.”
“That feels like a stretch.”
“Don’t try to look for outs now,” Vell said. “You already ate the french fries, you’re in as deep as I am.”
“Damn those spuds,” Goldie said. “Fine. Let me talk to Ibrahim, though. Maybe he’ll be nicer since he doesn’t know me.”
“Sounds good. Take the lead.”
Thanks to Samson’s recap of the first loop, Vell knew Ibrahim would be crossing the quad around this time. He found an excuse to wait in place and camped out until he saw Ibrahim start to come his way. Predictably, Ibrahim tried to veer away from Vell, but Goldie chased him down. The sight of an attractive woman reverted Ibrahim’s priorities, and he immediately leaned on a wall and tried to look cool.
“Hey. What can I do for you?”
Goldie raised an eyebrow.
“I’m a lesbian.”
“Oh, okay,” Ibrahim said. He stood up straight and deactivated flirting mode. “So, you need something?”
“Yeah, you want to play a prank on Harley or what?”
Vell was keeping his distance for the sake of negotiations, but even he could tell things did not go well at first. Ibrahim seemed offended by the very idea, but he started to come around the more Goldie talked. Vell wondered if she was naturally persuasive, or if this was also part of the universe trying to reassert its prior course. Whichever of the two was happening, it led to Ibrahim agreeing to help. He reluctantly approached Vell and examined him as if meeting him for the first time.
“Anyone ever tell you you know a weirdly high number of lesbians?”
“They tend to congregate,” Vell said.
“Still. How many straight chicks do you know?”
“Well, there’s-” Vell stopped himself right away. He’d been about to say Skye, but Ibrahim would probably not take kindly to a reminder that Vell was dating one of his exes. “Leanne. You never met her, but she’s straight. I’m pretty sure Sarah’s straight too, though obviously I’ve never actually been able to ask. That’s like, one and a half.”
“Not counting my ex,” Ibrahim grunted.
“Not counting your ex,” Vell mumbled. Ibrahim had gone and brought it up himself.
“Oh, don’t get all quiet, man, I’m messing with you,” Ibrahim said. “It’s been months.”
“Uh. You sure?”
“Yeah,” Ibrahim said. “Seriously, it was like two dates. Why would I not be over it?”
“You’d be surprised how people can hold grudges around here,” Vell said. “I bought the last Dr. Pepper out of a vending machine back in first year and some guy is still mad at me about it.”
“You’re joking.”
“No I’m not, he’s right over there,” Vell said, as he pointed across the quad. “Hey Lae!”
“Fuck you, Harlan!”
“See what I mean?”
Ibrahim stared at the offended student for a few seconds. He was no stranger to holding a grudge, but that was just excessive, even by his standards.
“I’m hoping he’ll get over it before we graduate,” Vell said. “But I’m not counting on it.”
Vell led Ibrahim and Goldie to a small laboratory stacked high with textbooks and reference materials on digital ghosts. He gestured to the experimental materials and then shrugged, as he had no idea what the next step was.
“So, uh, you guys just do your thing with the digital ghosts, I guess,” Vell said. “Do you want some food or something, Ibrahim? I already got Goldie some french fries, it’s only fair.”
“Tell him to get me more french fries,” Goldie said.
“You’ve already had like a pound, woman, control yourself,” Vell said. Ibrahim was actually starting to crave french fries now.
“Important question,” Ibrahim said. “Curly or straight cut?”
“Curly, obviously,” Goldie said.
“Right answer. I’ll split some with you.”
“Jesus christ,” Vell said. “Fine, more potatoes it is.”
***
“This is your last serving for the day,” the server at the counter told Vell. “I’m not enabling an addiction.”
“It’s for a friend,” Vell insisted.
“That’s what they all say,” the server sighed.
“I’m not- nevermind,” Vell sighed. Some conversations were lost before they even began. He cut his losses and took the french fries back to the lab. He found Ibrahim right where he’d left him, but Goldie was nowhere to be seen. The question of where she was got answered when Vell heard a closet door open and felt something metallic press against his throat. Having had a knife to (and through) his throat more than once, Vell could easily tell it was just a pen pressing in to his neck.
“Hey Goldie,” Vell said. “What’re you doing?”
“Winning a bet,” Goldie said. She retracted her pen, clicked it, and turned to Ibrahim. “Told you he wouldn’t blink.”
“Man, I figured just as like, a reflex,” Ibrahim said. He withdrew a few dollar bills from his wallet and passed them off to Goldie, who immediately handed half to Vell. He took that as acceptable payment for Goldie’s pretend ambush.
“So you were just hiding in the closet, then?”
“Yeah. Don’t make any jokes about being in the closet,” said known lesbian Goldie.
“I wasn’t going to,” Vell said. He took her hiding in the closet as a good sign. It showed that time really was trying to repeat itself, even if in a convoluted way. He handed over the french fries and appraised the progress the two had made in his brief absence.
“We’re just getting started, but I think it’s doable,” Ibrahim said, as he watched Vell scan the many documents they had assembled. “We’ll see, though.”
“I believe in you,” Vell said. Confidence was made much easier by the fact that Ibrahim had technically done it once already. “You going to be able to get this wrapped up without an actual haunted phone to practice on?”
“Hard to do things like this just in theory,” Ibrahim said. “I can get you something ninety percent certain, but that other ten percent might be killer.”
He had no idea how right he was.
“I’ll see about getting you a burner phone,” Vell said. “And a burner phone ghost. You two keep up the good work. And please don’t ambush me the next time I come back.”
“I already proved my point,” Goldie said. “But you can bring someone else around and we’ll see.”
“Try Hawke, he seems flinchy.”
“I think I’m going to refrain from jumpscaring my friends, thanks,” Vell said. “I’ll be back later. Goldie has my number if you need anything.”
Vell stepped away, and left the two to their own devices, just as they had been on the first loop. Hopefully it’d be enough to recreate their discovery in time for all hell to break loose.
***
“Alright, try this one,” Samson said. While Harley and Vell pursued alternatives, he and Lee continued to try and brute-force their own solution. So far, their trial-and-error approach had been more error than trial.
“Not going to work,” Lee said. “You haven’t properly encircled the Atusian Sigils.”
“What the fuck are you even talking about? I’ve never had to encircle anything before.”
“You didn’t have a Vyasa tri-sigil before,” Lee said. “You’d completely overwhelm the sigil network.”
Samson scanned his textbooks again, and dug through footnotes and annotations for any notes on the subject. He had to actually jump into a different textbook to see what Lee was talking about.
“Christ, really?” Samson sighed. “Do you have to do this every time you cast a spell?”
“Eh, not entirely,” Lee said. Magic was a complex art, but not usually quite this complex. “It’s the introduction of technology that really messes with things. Computers work on logic, magic works on intention. The overlap gets convoluted.”
The overlap of technology and magic was usually made easier by runes, which could be made to work on similar computer-like logic, but such a system was useless for a large scale exorcism. Vell was still running through various potential ideas in his head as a thought experiment, but nothing ever connected. He was still formulating such a failed idea when he returned to Harley and Lee’s shared dorm.
“Alright, plan C might be working,” Vell said. “Which is good, because Harley just checked in and Plan B is going nowhere. How’s Plan A going?”
“Poorly,” Samson said. “I can’t make heads or tails of this magic shit.”
“And I am hopelessly inept when it comes to computers,” Lee said.
“Well, I kind of work between those lines, sometimes,” Vell said. He had a little time to kill before he had to get back to hunting phone ghosts, so he took a seat. “Maybe I can help.”
“Perhaps. Do you have any idea how to make Gyges Sealing Ritual and a Jabirian Fluctuation apply to internal PCB’s without an overload?”
“I cannot help.”
Vell stood up and left the room without another word. Lee shook her head and got back to work.
***
“Alright, I looked around and could not find a phone ghost,” Vell said, as he got back to Ibrahim’s lab. “Which is probably a good thing, but not for your experiment.”
They were only about two hours away from having more phone ghosts than they knew what to do with, so Vell didn’t stress too much about finding one. He just hoped they’d have something prepared for when the sudden surplus arrived.
“Well that’s rough,” Ibrahim said. The lab had become slightly more organized in Vell’s absence, as Ibrahim and Goldie cleaned up their act. “There’s no real way to know if this is going to work without a test run.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Goldie said. “We’ve done the math like three times. This’ll work.”
“It works in theory,” Ibrahim said. “Lots of stuff works in theory. Like bacon wrapped asparagus.”
“Does that not work?”
“I mean, it tastes good, but the bacon usually just slides right off, and then you’ve just got greasy asparagus,” Ibrahim said. “Just make the bacon and then make the asparagus in the same pan, same end result, way less hassle wrapping the bacon around the stalks.”
“Huh. Maybe I’ll try that next time I get some turkey bacon,” Goldie said.
“Not that I don’t appreciate a good cooking lesson, but can I see what you made?”
Ibrahim handed it over, and Vell promptly realized he had no idea how to make heads or tails of anything he was seeing. He tucked the schematic in his bookbag anyway.
“I have no idea why I asked,” Vell sighed. “Guess I’ll just have to trust you guys got it right.”
“Or you could just not put a ghost in Harley’s phone,” Ibrahim said.
“I could but, uh...that wouldn’t be as funny,” Vell said.
“You people sure are st- persistent,” Ibrahim said.
“Thank you for that, but stubborn also applies,” Vell said. “Anyway, if you’re sure this’ll work, I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Hey, uh, before you go.”
“Yeah?”
“Is Samson doing alright?”
The two twins had barely interacted for the past few weeks, and on the rare occasions they did, it usually involved Samson doing a lot of swearing. Vell, on the other hand, could interact with Samson with slightly less swearing involved. He could still tell Samson was in a generally bad mood, though, and contemplated how best to communicate that with Ibrahim.
“He’s okay,” Vell said. “Still kind of in a bad mood, but not like, cripplingly. Do you want me to say something, like, tell him-”
“It’s probably better if you don’t,” Ibrahim said. “He can be a little slow to come around on this kind of thing.”
Over the past couple of years, Vell had learned that it was often better to be proactive about these sorts of things, but it was Ibrahim’s brother and his call to make. He decided to mind his own business and took his leave, noting, as he left, that Ibrahim and Goldie continued to sit and chat despite their mission being complete. Apparently they’d established a rapport. He made note of the pleasant development before heading back to the lair. They didn’t have long before the phone ghosts struck, and by the time he made it back to the lair, they were just minutes away.
“Any luck, Vell?’
“Yeah, I think we might be good to go,” Vell said. Lee nodded approvingly. Kim, Hawke, and Harley had locked down most of the campus’s dangerous machines, so they were already in a good position.
“We’ve got it taken care of,” Samson said. He slapped a scroll lying on the table triumphantly. “Took a while, but we finally got this thing figured out.”
The arcane sigil Samson was so proud of looked very similar to the one Ibrahim and Goldie had created. From what Vell knew of magic, and of computers, those alterations could drastically affect the way the spell worked.
“Uh, okay, guess we can try that,” Vell said.
“Unless of course you have something better, Vell,” Lee said. She subtly stressed her words in a way that made it very clear she had her own doubts about the ritual she and Samson had put together.
“Well, I did ask around,” Vell said. He took the folded ritual paper out of his pocket and laid it down next to the other one. “This might-”
“You went to Ibrahim?”
“Shit.”
Samson had recognized his brother’s sloppy handwriting in an instant. Goldie had handled most of the arcane transcription, but Ibrahim still did the note-taking.
“You went to fucking Ibrahim?” Samson repeated, more forcefully this time. “Behind my back?”
“He got it the first time,” Lee said sheepishly.
“It was a fluke,” Samson said. “He’s sure as shit not going to get it right twice. Without life or death pressure on him, he’d never actually do real work.”
“He seemed pretty confident,” Vell said. “And, I mean, you’re the one who said the circle worked the first time around. Did he do the same thing or not?”
Samson looked more closely at the sheet of paper. His memory wasn’t perfect, but it looked exactly the same to him.
“Goldie probably did most of the work anyway,” Samson mumbled.
“Samson, is it going to work or not?” Lee said. “We have maybe a minute-”
“Twenty six seconds, actually,” Kim corrected.
“Samson!”
“Just use mine, it’ll work better than his anyway!”
“Samson, no one is doubting your skills, but when preventing the literal apocalypse, it might be better to use proven methods,” Lee said.
“Just do it,” Samson said, handing over his own ritual to Lee.
“Do fucking something, people, my phone’s starting to jump,” Harley said. She nabbed her cellphone out of her pocket and held firmly to it as it began to thrash. Hawke’s phone followed shortly after, and soon every phone in the room was violently possessed. Kim took everyone’s phones and held them firmly in place to avoid any minor injuries, and to make sure nothing went wrong while Lee cast the spell. If she ever got to.
“Here you go,” Samson said, handing over his own magical drawing. “Cast it.”
“Samson, I don’t enjoy pulling rank,” Lee said.
“So don’t,” Samson insisted. “Cast the spell.”
“Samson.”
Vell took Ibrahim’s version of the spell off the table and held it out to Lee. Samson snatched it first.
“Really?”
“Really,” Samson said. He held out his own work towards Lee. “Use the spell that wasn’t made by an idiot.”
“Samson, give me your brother’s spell,” Lee said. “I’m only going to ask once.”
“Then I’ll only tell you no once.”
“Guys?”
“You have something to say, Kim?”
“Well yes,” Kim said. “Firstly, Samson, you’re being a jackass. Second: Look.”
Kim lifted her hands. The phones she had been holding firmly against a table stayed in place, entirely motionless. After a second of curious observation, Harley grabbed her own phone and unlocked it.
“I’m no expert, but this does not seem haunted to me,” Harley said. Everything about her phone was working perfectly, and it wasn’t trying to harm her in any way, which she considered normal. Everyone else grabbed their phones and did a quick check, finding everything to be normal. After scanning through all her most-used apps, Lee weaved through the motions of a quick spell.
“There’s a surplus of magical energy,” Lee said. “Someone else just cast a powerful spell.”
“Who?”
Vell snatched a sheet of paper out of an unsuspecting Samson’s hands, and held up the magical diagram Ibrahim had made.
“Who do you think?”
***
“Vell, how badly did you fuck up?”
The loopers had headed right back to Ibrahim’s lab to see what had happened. As they crossed the campus, they had seen dozens of students curiously examining their phones, but absolutely no one in any danger. Vell found Ibrahim and Goldie right where he’d left them, though the room had been rearranged to accommodate some spellcasting.
“Uh, pretty badly, yeah,” Vell said, unconvincingly. “Thanks for stopping my fuckup.”
Goldie and Ibrahim exchanged a quick look. Vell’s acting skills failed him yet again.
“You knew this was going to happen, huh?”
“No, it was definitely- okay, yeah, sort of,” Vell said. He could see himself digging a deeper hole and decided to quit while he was ahead. “Somebody smarter than me take over.”
Lee, being smarter than most of them, stepped forward.
“It’s a long story,” Lee began, mostly to buy herself more time to think of that long story. Thankfully, Goldie held up a hand to stop her.
“Let me stop you right there,” Goldie said. “Love you guys, big fan of all the stuff you do, not entirely sure I want to be any more involved in it than I already am.”
Goldie was a relative newbie to the loopers circle of allies, but she’d spent enough time with them to know that sometimes she was better off not asking questions. She politely excused herself and left the room, though Ibrahim showed no signs of following her. He scanned the loopers curiously and narrowed his eyes.
“Is this what you’ve been doing the whole time? You know when bad shit’s going to happen and you have to stop it?”
“It’s been pretty obvious the whole time that we’re just trying to help,” Samson said.
“Yeah, but I thought you were just fucking around and doing it like idiots,” Ibrahim protested. “You do shit like haul radioactive isotopes and fight crocodile men, I thought you were insane! You’ve actually known what you’re doing this whole time?”
“That may be a generous assessment,” Harley said. Lee elbowed her in the shoulder.
“We don’t exactly have specific, moment to moment knowledge,” Lee said. “But we have enough information to make somewhat coherent plans.”
“Well...shit. Sorry.”
“Cool, about time,” Samson said. He brushed past his twin brother and left in a huff.
“Sorry about him,” Vell said. It was an odd reversal of circumstances that Samson was now consistently being the jackass of the two.
“Can’t say I don’t deserve it,” Ibrahim shrugged.
“I can, actually,” Lee said.
The leader of the loopers set off after Samson with a determined stride. It wasn’t hard to find him, or catch up with him, as Samson sulked his way across campus.
“Samson!”
Even from behind, Lee could tell Samson was rolling his eyes as he ignored her and continued walking. That little touch of disrespect officially set Lee over the edge. She clenched her fist, and a vicelike grip of magic snatched Samson where he stood, and held him in place until Lee caught up to him. She spun him around to face her direction and poked Samson in the forehead.
“I have had enough of your attitude lately, Samson,” Lee said. “You’ve been acting like a child for weeks. Did you break your brain when you broke your nose?”
Lee stopped for a second.
“Wait, actually, did we get you checked for a concussion?” she wondered. “Sometimes I forget that injuries can have long-term consequences.”
“I’m fine, Lee, the doctors checked me out,” Samson said. “And why the hell are you the one on my case about this? You of all people should know how shit family can be.”
“I do know. And that’s...ugh. Come with me.”
She phrased it as a request, but Samson did not have much of a choice. Lee magically moved him through the air and then plopped him down on a bench before taking a seat right next to him.
“Did you know my family had a dog when I was a child?”
Samson turned and stared at her for a moment.
“Are you sure you aren’t the one with a concussion? How is that relevant?”
“It’s an anecdote that relates to a point I’m trying to make,” Lee said. “Just sit and listen for a while. My parents had an annoying, aggressive little beagle, and in spite of everything, in spite of who they were, I think that beagle was the only thing either of them ever genuinely loved.”
Including their own daughter, Lee thought to herself for a single bitter moment. But that was all in the past.
“His name was Chippy, and both my parents took excellent care of him. Never needed anyone to remind them to feed him, clip his nails, take him to the vet, anything. Even when they weren’t available to do it themselves, they made sure to have one of their employees do it for them. No matter how many times Chippy bit or barked or chewed on expensive furniture, they never lost their patience or mistreated him in any way, and when he died they both cried as hard as they could and built him a little monument in the backyard of their mansion.”
Samson was really starting to wonder where Lee was going with this “anecdote”.
“I’m not saying this to imply they were good people, on any level,” Lee said. “Only to say that there was some goodness in them, however dwarfed it was by the rest of their evil. They were capable of love, and kindness, and compassion. And I was well aware of that when I made the decision to cut them out of my life.”
The period of somber reflection ended, and Lee crossed her arms angrily and faced Samson.
“You, on the other hand, seem content to treat this matter with your brother as a simple matter of black and white, good twin and bad twin, smart one and stupid one,” Lee said. “Which is a profoundly childish mindset for someone of your age to have.”
Lee stood, adjusted her skirt, and turned on her heel to stare down at Samson.
“Human beings are complicated,” Lee said. “Your brother has bad qualities and good ones, as do you. As does everyone. Perhaps you spent too long refusing to see the bad in your brother, but now you refuse to see the good. And that’s just as foolish.”
With a final huff of disapproval, Lee stood up and walked off, leaving Samson to contemplate his own path forward. While she wanted to push him into having more patience with his brother, she knew that such a push could have the exact opposite effect. Sometimes people had to reach the right conclusions on their own. She had faith Samson would come up with the answer he needed. He wasn’t all bad.
***
In retrospect, Ibrahim wondered if Goldie’s early exit hadn’t been as much about avoiding the cleanup as anything else. He shuffled through the paperwork lying around the room, gathering what was useful and throwing away everything that wasn’t. Even he was shocked at how much junk paper there was. Getting that ritual right had required a lot of trial and error.
In spite of the overwhelming paperwork, he was still a little offended when someone walked up and snatched a sheet of paper right out of his hands. He looked up, ready with a snippy comment, and found Samson staring at the diagram. A few thoughts on what to say raced through Ibrahim’s head, but he realized they were all bad and said none of them. Samson spoke first.
“So I see you got caught up on that Jabririan-whatever thingy too,” Samson said.
“I did like eight versions of the thing and I still don’t get it,” Ibrahim said. “Do you think magic actually has all those rules, or are all those wizards just fucking with us?”
“I think they’re serious,” Samson said. “About most things, at least. I’m still not sure about the Annus Clause.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely made up.”
Supposedly there was a yearly limit on mages being able to perform a certain kind of magical ritual, but the twins shared a suspicion that it was some kind of joke about the word “Annus”. The two exchanged quick conspiratorial nods about their shared suspicions, and then fell silent.
“So. You want to compare notes?”
“Sure.”
“Cool.”

Thank you u/SpacePaladin15 for the amazing universe!
l Prologue l Previous l Next l
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memory transcription subject: Jones, Four Star General, United States Army
Date [standardized human time]: July 16th, 2136
“Given the situation on the border, I expect Russia to deploy BTGs along…”
The voice of General Baker faded out as I considered the ridiculousness of the entire situation. Russia and China were once again having a slap fight on their border, a tradition spanning back at least a century. There was no doubt the UN would intervene before it became anything of note, but the fact that these petty disputes happened at all was a disgrace on humanity.
Did World War Three not teach us anything? We thought we could get a leg up one another by knocking out satellites out of the sky. Low risk, high reward, no chance of any casualties. Next thing we knew, we had our nukes pointed at each other, fingers on the trigger. It took a literal divine intervention to prevent us from blowing ourselves up. You think that would humble us.
Instead, we still had to deal with this, the petty bickering of nation states over issues that didn’t even matter in the first place. China and Russia fighting over their border, what was this, 1968? Not to mention the Levant, or Brazil, or-
“Jones?”
The abrupt voice of Baker interrupted my ruminations. All eyes in the conference room had turned to face me.
“Pardon, could you repeat that?” I feigned as if I misheard.
“I asked, what is your opinion on the current situation on the Russo-Sino border?” Baker repeated flatly.
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “To be quite frank, I don’t even know why we're discussing this in the first place. We all know this will amount to nothing.”
The room gave me a stern look. “We can’t know that for sure, this is still an ongoing crisis.” Another general, Christen, remarked.
I almost wanted to scoff. “A ‘crisis’ that has been repeating for the last century now, one that always goes the exact same way.”
I stood up from my seat, and began circling the room. “Some Russians lose a bet, or get drunk, or god knows whatever reason, and decides to lob some shots over the border. The Chinese shoot back, everyone gets nervous for a couple of days, the UN comes in and shuts the party down, Zhao and Petrov go on TV repeating the same line about how we need to find ‘peaceful solutions’, and then the cycle repeats itself. Over, and over, and over. And every time, we drag ourselves here, and act like World War Four is about to kick off, when it's the same thing every time: Petty bullshit that won’t matter before the end of the week.”
The entire room stared at me as if I just declared undying allegiance to Chinese Communist Party.
“Are you finished, General?” Baker asked, with no small amount of ice in his voice.
I straightened out my suit, and took my seat again. “Yes, I am.”
They would never see my point of view, of course. These people, Baker, Christian, the politicians, the institutions, all of them benefited from this empty trade of words and lives. It was a sick, disgusting rot that lay at the heart of every palace and parliament we have built. And so many times, it felt as if I was one of the only few who could see it.
The meeting continued on like this, regarding the situation before us as if it wasn’t going to be overshadowed by celebrity trivia by the end of the week.
My thoughts were only interrupted when a knock came at the door. “General Jones?”
I turned to see the wide eyes of an aid stare directly at me through the doorway.
“You're interrupting an important meeting.” Baker lied through his teeth. As if this farce held any importance at all.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but Meier has requested Jones' presence in New York, immediately.”
Baker looked as if to object, before realizing he would be objecting to the demands of the General Secretary himself. He waved for me to leave, an opportunity I was more than willing to take.
“You're dismissed, Jones, better not leave the General Secretary waiting.” Baker sounded almost happy to be gone, after my little speech. To be fair, I was happy as well.
I didn’t bother leaving them with parting words, For I would have to respect those clowns in the first place. I hurried down the hallways of the Pentagon, anxious to see why Meier had requested my presence.
—--
The thrum of rotor blades carried through me as I watched ferries and cargo ships navigating the choppy waters below. Looking out to my left, the ever familiar skyline of Manhattan glittered in the evening light, One World still standing above it all. The streets below were filled with traffic, people moving about like ants among the grass. As we made a low pass over the Brooklyn Bridge, my destination came into view, standing as it always had for nearly two centuries.
As the pilot brought us gently down on the UN headquarter pad, I still wondered as to why Meier called me out here. No matter, I was to learn soon enough. More than anything, I was just grateful to be out of the dreadful meeting.
“Jones, glad to see you.” Meier smiled in a warm greeting as I opened the door. My old friend raised his hand, which I quickly moved to meet with a firm shake. Up close now, I could tell the secretary hadn’t properly slept in days.
“Good to see you too, Meier. What brings me out to New York today?”
The old man frowned. “Serious business unfortunately, but I rather wait until…” A gust picked up at his graying hair…”until we can get inside to discuss.”
“Understood.” As we walked towards the access stairwell, Meier carried himself with an uncharacteristic speed. Whatever was on his mind, it was clear he wanted it off as quickly as possible.
We descend the dimly lit stairwell briefly, footsteps echoing up and down the shaft, before we opened a door to a hallway. Fluorescent lights shone upon yellowed walls, on which hung centuries old paintings. The smell of musty carpet rose to greet my nostrils. No matter what, the UN headquarters was always happy to remind us of its age.
A minute of walking brought us to the Secretaries office at the end of the hall. With some effort, Meier pushed open the carved double doors, revealing the familiar looking office. Three floor to ceiling windows let light in from everywhere but the north, giving us great vantage over Brooklyn. Plush green carpet lay on the floor, complemented by the rather plain walls, upon which hung paintings of world landmarks. In the corner, the flag of the UN, along with that of the United States, hung from their poles in silence. And standing in the center, speak of the devil…
“Ah, General Jones, good to see you again.”
The smartly dressed People's Liberation Army General extended his hand in greeting, a gesture which I met. One of politeness and respect, but not of friendship. His face carried a visage of confidence, but I could tell he wondered why he was here as well. One of the few things that we shared in common.
“Zhao, I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.” Discussions on the re-ratification of the Treaty of Shanghai were to begin in October, bringing together most of the world's top leaders. It was one of the few times where I met my Chinese counterpart in person, unless a situation that required international cooperation arose. Looking at Zhao, it seemed we found ourselves in such a situation.
“Neither did I, but I feel we're about to learn why.” He shot a glance over to the now seated secretary.
“Yes,” Meier leaned forward in his chair, his face half shadowed in the dying light of the day, “I rather wish this was a friendly table-side chat, but these types of meetings never are, are they?”
The last time Meier brought us in like this was when tensions flared in the Levant back in 32. The United States and China scrambled forces to stabilize the situation, with me and Zhao at the lead. A moment of genuine international cooperation, moments that me and Meier had to relish.
Meier pulled a large bottle of whiskey from one of the desk drawers, along with three glasses. “Please, take a seat, and have a drink. You may need it.”
Zhao and I took our places. I wasn't in the mood, but Zhao took the secretary up on his offer. Meier seemed to take a moment to collect himself, letting the whiskey swirl in his glass. His eyes scanned over us, as if silently asking if we were prepared for what was to come. He seemed to come to an answer.
“Four days ago, we received word back from Odyssey One, from their expedition of the Gliese 832 system. Upon observation of 832c, they discovered that the planet harbored life. Not just life, but sapient life. Jones, Zhao, we are not alone in this universe.”
Everything suddenly appeared so much smaller. A great silent constriction, as the entire world seemed to rush in around me. And then suddenly, clarity.
I stood up, and walked silently to the window. Outside, rush hour traffic had reached its peaks, seas of white and red moving like molasses along the roadways. Ferries and barges meandered their way up and down the east river, while flocks of bird weaved in between. Over the blazing lights of Brooklyn, among the clouds painted red by the dying sunlight, a spaceplane could been seen making its final approach to JFK.
This entire city, 10 million people, the center of the great American empire, was now just another speck upon the mote of dust we called Earth.
It seemed the great mystery that was marked by Signal Day had finally been solved. But what did that mean?
Did humanity matter?
“How many people know?” Zhao’s voice cut in, calm and collected as usual.
“Besides us, just President Dannister, General Secretary Liang, and a select few in Houston.”
I turned to face Meier directly. “And you said you knew four days ago. Why wasn’t there an immediate announcement?” The program sparked by that signal so long ago, a signal we built an entire holiday around, had finally completed its mission. I expected ticker tape parades, fireworks across the globe, not this. There had to be a good reason for the secrecy.
Meier sighed, as he took a draw of his glass. “We wanted to wait for a few days, let Odyssey send back more information. And it turned out, that was the right move.”
Meier produced from his desk two binders, about as thick as my forearm and nearly as wide as my chest. From the security clearances pasted on the front, anybody under our rank would be liable to get shot if they even laid a single eye upon the contents inside.
“In here, you will find everything you will need to know about our new alien friends. This is highly confidential information, so ensure that it remains in your hands, and your hands only."
I looked at the stack of what must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of pages. I wasn't reading it in an hour, that was for sure.
"Can you give us a brief rundown of what we're stepping into here?"
Meier leaned forward slightly. "Long story short, most of it isn’t good.”
That didn't inspire confidence.
I hefted the binder into my hands, as did Zhao, and I seated myself once again. Flipping through the first couple pages, I was met with anatomical diagrams of an alien species that apparently called themselves the ‘Venlil’. They almost looked like sheep, if not for the fact that they stood on two stocky legs, and had a tail that stretched out for a foot at least.
Flipping forward again, I was met with what looked like a gray crocodile, an eighth foot tall crocodile with crimson eyes and six claws adorning each limb. They were apparently called the ‘Arxur’, and they looked like they could snap me in half like dry pasta.
Aliens upon aliens upon aliens. Some looked strikingly similar to animals found on earth, as if god got lazy and used the copy paste function. Others looked much more, well, alien.
Most of it isn't good? What was that supposed to mean?
“Is that why you had us come, Meier? Are we expecting an alien invasion within the next week?”
Meier didn’t laugh. In fact, his face was like a stone mountain, completely immovable. “That might very well be the case, if we don’t handle this right.”
I felt a slight pit open in my stomach.
“What do you mean?” Zhao inquired, his tone as smooth as ever.
Meier took another sip, setting his glass down loudly on the lacquer. “What I mean to say is that were walking into a minefield, one that could blow our legs off if we don’t tread carefully.”
“From the information sent by the Odyssey crew, the galaxy is being fought over by two warring factions, the Galactic Federation and the Dominion. The Federation adheres to a particular ideology, one that divides sapient species between 'predator' and 'prey'. And the Federation considers us 'predators'."
It wasn't difficult to determine which one of the two was supposed to be the bad one.
“So this 'Federation' considers dangerous then. The question is, how dangerous?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer. An entire galactic Federation, no doubt centuries ahead of the technological curve. If they wanted, they could probably curb-stomp us within the afternoon.
“Dangerous enough to have voted successfully to exterminate us 150 years ago.”
Scratch that, they did want to curb-stomp us.
I would have felt more shocked, if not for the obvious question that immediately came to mind. “Why didn’t they, then?”
Unless reality around us was a mirage, or this 'Federation' was really bad at its job, we shouldn't even be here to discuss the possibility.
“Luck, basically. They thought we killed ourselves off in a nuclear war back in the 1990s, so they thought we did their job for them.”
Luck, the only reason we were here right now. A luck not marked by Signal Day.
But then that left another obvious question, one that Zhao managed to ask first.
“If this Federation wanted to kill us, and they now know that we survived, why haven’t they come to finish the job?”
Meier finished off his first glass, and poured himself a second. “Because I was being hyperbolic. It only seems like a small portion of the Federation wants us dead. From what they Odyssey sent over, most of galaxy seems indifferent to us, and a small number of species even seem friendly.”
Somehow, knowing only a small portion of an entire intergalactic government was actively genocidal towards our existence did little to settle my concerns. Which begged the question:
“How do we know that these so-called ‘friendly’ aliens are actually friendly?”
Meier already seemed primed to answer that one. “The ones the expedition have talked to say they are opposed to the crazy ones, but that remains to be seen. In other words, we don’t know, but it's not like we have much of a choice but to trust them.”
Again, that did little to settle my nerves. Seemed like we had a lot of unknowns running here.
“And what about this ‘Dominion’,” Zhao inquired, as he stared down at his binder with concern, “what I am reading here about them is rather, distressing.”
Meier actually laughed. “Distressing is definitely one way to put it…” He downed nearly half of his second glass in one gulp.
Zhao had not made a peep when Meier mentioned a good portion of the galaxy would have us dead. The fact that he spoke up now did not bode well for the character of this 'Dominion'.
I flipped through the binder until I came upon the section I was looking for. I was again greeted with the image of a so-called Arxur, this time dressed in what appeared to be a set of robes overlain with ceremonial armor. In its claws it wielded what must have been a massive rifle, of anti material caliber no doubt.
I began skimming the paragraphs of text. Some words immediately began to spring out. Honor based culture, okay, obsessed with a form of race science known as Betterment, that raised plenty of red flags, keeps sapients as slaves and cattle, thats-
WAIT.
I re-read those last words over and over, making sure I didn’t just suffer a stroke. Keep sapients as slaves and…cattle…did that mean…?
“Do these fuckers eat people?” I somehow managed to whisper quietly.
I slowly raised my gaze until it was level with that of Meier's. The look he gave me told me all I needed to know.
I slowly turned my head to the right. Me and Zhao, in a moment that transcended animosity and ideology, shared a look of absolute bewilderment.
Race science obsessed space crocodiles, who ate people. Space Nazis. Who. Ate. People.
I soon found myself pacing the room as I ran those words in my head over and over again. It was almost too ridiculous to believe that an institution so comically evil could actually exist in this plane of reality. I almost wanted to believe that Meier was joking, that this was all some sort of sick prank. But the dead look he gave told me that this was the truth, a truth we now had to deal with.
What in gods name were we getting ourselves into?
Christ, maybe I do need a drink.
—--
After recovering from the psychic shock of that revelation*,* we spent the rest of the meeting discussing some of the preliminary negotiations the expedition crew made with the ‘friendly’ aliens. I still wasn’t convinced of these aliens' honesty, given the organization they were a part of voted to have us reduced to ash. But Meier was right, we didn’t have a choice but to trust them.
Which was why we were organizing an in person meeting, with actual diplomats rather than scientists. No better way to determine these aliens' good faith than by talking to them in person. Or that was the hope, at least. And for the first time since I left West Point, I had homework to do. This galaxy had three hundred sapient species, and by the time we shot off to Gliese (or Skalga, as the locals apparently called it), I had to know them all. A daunting task, to say the least. At least learning about other species would distract me from them.
The less I thought about their existence, the better.
I should have only come away thinking we had stumbled into a nightmare. And we had, no doubt. But as I thought about our position more, I began to see a glint of an opportunity. I needed to discuss it with him.
Meier leaned over the railing overlooking the East river. A security detail stood off to the side, hawkish eyes seeming to scan everything. Ignoring their piercing stares, I walked up beside Meier, and stared out with him.
Boats and ferries intermingled in the water, off on journeys unknown. Their lights, along with those of the nighttime Brooklyn skyline, caused the river to reflect a burning orange. The sounds of lapping water and distance traffic met our ears, the sound of New York.
For a moment, we absorbed it all.
Just a day ago, this all seemed so big. The center of the world, New York City, the Big Apple. And now, it seemed like just another place.
And I found myself returning to that question.
“Does this matter, Meier? Do we matter?”
“Of course we do, Jones.” His answer was quick. Good.
“It was rhetorical.”
“Why did you want to meet?” He sounded tired. I didn't blame him.
“I thought it was obvious. We need to figure out what to do.”
“I already told you, we’re in talks with-”
My hand on his shoulder cut him off. I turned to face him directly. The night rendered half his face in shadow, the other half sodium orange. It was in that light that I stared at him.
“What was it you promised when you became General Secretary, Meier?”
The question was unexpected, but Meier was quick on the draw.
“I promised to put humanity first, of course.”
Exactly.
“A shared dream, one that we still fight for.” I turned back towards the river.
“You are among the few who recognized the rot, the factionalism, the pettiness, that lies at the heart of this world. It was why I supported you, Meier. We see what others cannot, or others refuse.”
Meier remained silent. A slight breeze began to stir.
“Humanity first, a humanity united under a single flag. It's what we fought for our entire lives. But despite how hard we fought, how hard we fight, the dream always seems out of reach."
Again, silence.
“But that's all changed now, hasn't it? What do nations matter, what do borders matter? All the arbitrary ways we have used to divide ourselves, they all fall away in the face of this new reality.”
A reality of a hostile galaxy. One divided among those who sought our death, and those whose very existence seemed to be pure evil manifest.
“We are stepping in a maelstrom, one that will sweep us away if we do not link arms and stand together as one. The galaxy has dealt us a terrible hand. But if we play our cards right, and if luck is on our side, then-”
“We can finally achieve that dream.” He finished for me.
It was ironic, how many times these aliens had saved us. Their mistake, that prevented our extermination. Their signal, that prevented our annihilation. And now their hatred, which had given us an opportunity.
An opportunity to finally excise the rot, the weakness, that festered in the heart of humanity. A chanced for renewed purpose, unity, and above all, strength. And there would be no sacrifice too great.
“Meier, whatever happens in the coming weeks and months, we need to remember one thing.”
He didn’t say anything. He already knew the answer. But it was an answer worth repeating.
As the city blazed brightly around us, I felt I stood taller than even the highest skyscrapers. It was a feeling of renewed purpose, a drive that was now more alive than ever before.
“No matter what, always put humanity first.”
l Prologue l Previous l Next l

So, I've been picking away at potential mechanics to use for gaming in the sort of worlds that interest me: Bronze Age technology, sword-and-sorcery flavor, near eastern mythology as a rough influence (Judaic, Canaanite, Babylonian, Assyrian, Ancient Egyptian, etc.)
One of the things that has always intrigued me was how to make magic fit the world in the way I like, here's what I came up with. If you have any advice on how to improve it, I'm happy to hear (and obviously feel free to take and hack). I'm writing this under the assumption that I'll use Black Hack as the basis but that's subject to change.
The major actual mechanic is the "Cost" - so feel free to scroll down there if that's what interests you most. The rest is (mostly) flavor.
There are two major forms of magic available to PCs: Spells and miracles.

• Miracles are performed by clerics: warrior priests chosen by the gods. Some were gifted their powers after asking for it - others were chosen without consent.
• Spells are performed by those who aren't given the gift of magic, but rather take it by force: by communing with chaotic forces and stealing power from the gods.

​
Spell preparation
Magic-Users and Clerics both need to prepare their spells and miracles. They can prepare a number of spells/miracles equal to their level, and can spend one hour to prepare all their spells/miracles for that day. They can only prepare an individual spell once per day.

• Clerics must pray and perform the appropriate ceremonies of their religion or god (bathing, burning incense, meditating, etc.) at the time of day prescribed by their religion or god, and donate coins to the temple or bury them for their gods (1d6 coins per highest level miracle prepared).
• Magic-Users must prepare their spells at night (when the gods are asleep). They must draw the appropriate diagrams (in the sand, in ink on a scroll engraved on a clay tablet, in chalk on the wall, in chicken blood on the ground, etc.), and allot the appropriate material components (1d6 coins per highest level spell prepared)

​
Spell-casting

• Once a spell or miracle is cast, it cannot be used again until it's prepared once more. Unless the caster pays a cost.
• A PC may empower a spell or miracle through Ritual Casting (think 13th Age or D&D 4E) to use the spell for things outside the scope of what is described in the spell description, but it takes longer (turns, hours, or days equal to the spell level - GM chooses based on power of ritual), may require the PC do so in a place of magical power (a temple or shrine for a cleric, a magical stone circle for a magic-user), and the caster must pay a cost.

Costs

• The cost of a spell or miracle should be either randomly rolled or determined by the GM and PC.
• The cost should reflect the spell's power (higher level spells require a higher cost)
• The cost may be paid before, during, or after the spell, depending on the nature of the cost
• The player should know the cost before deciding to cast the spell or miracle
• The cost can (and should) change each time
• There is no hard limit to how much a player can recast one spell a day, but the cost should probably rise each time. A PC who pays a cost to cast a spell more than once or twice a day is taking a risk, and likely won't last very long.
• Any PC may opt to pay the ULTIMATE COST - self-sacrifice - to recast (or ritual cast) virtually any spell or miracle.

​
Table of Costs:
Roll 1d10, and add the spell level
​
Miracles Costs:
2. Sacrifice the flesh small animal (rabbit, rat, dove, hedgehog) on a make-shift altar

1. Compose a new prayer in the name of the god granting you this power
   
2. Sacrifice the entrails of a large animal (gazelle, ibex, goat, wolf, crocodile, bear, lion, leopard), on a makeshift altar
   
3. Burn branches of the Marwan tree, which only grows in the subterranean realms, and wave them to fill the air with incense smoke as you cast your miracle
   
4. Swear an oath not to spill any blood on this sacred day
   
5. Fast for the rest of the day. Every time the party must stop to eat and drink, test your CON (or roll an appropriate save) - take 1d6 damage on failure.
   
6. Open your senses to an awesome vision of your god. Take Disadvantage on any rolls involving Wisdom for the rest of the day.
   
7. Go naked for the rest of the day to cleanse your body of sin.
   
8. Build a permanent altar on the top of the nearest hill
   
9. Whip your back 30 times for each level of the miracle you're casting. Take d4 damage for each miracle level.
   
10. Swear an oath to cleanse this most unholy place of chaos
    
11. Put the mark of your God upon your heart (brand, scar, or tattoo a symbol onto your chest)
    
12. Open your eyes to a vision from the abode of the gods (blind for the rest of the session)
    
13. Open your ears to hear the very voice of your god (deaf for the rest of the session, disadvantage on any checks to be silent)
    
14. Swear an oath to banish the great demon Kharkum-Nuk within 90 days from today.
    
15. Rise and go unto the city of Rafshan-Tzur, city of sin, and speak the words of your god unto them. Convert them and save their souls.
    
16. Mark the symbol of your god upon your face, permanently.
    
17. Go to the desert and isolate yourself there for 1d20 days
    
18. Sacrifice a fellow human being (The nature of the person may matter - depending ont he will of the god. A just and merciful god would not want innocents slain - sacrifice a murderer, a rapist, a heretic or a magic user)
    

​
Spell Costs
2. Shatter a sacred object over your head

1. Commune with your ancestors in the underworld - and curse them
   
2. Spill your own blood onto an open fire (1d4 damage per spell level)
   
3. Make a pact not to light a flame for the rest of the session
   
4. Swallow poison
   
5. Read the forbidden tablet of Asmardan - Disadvantage on all rolls involving INT for the rest of the session
   
6. Collect 101 dung beetles, and engrave the necessary occult diagrams on the carapace of each before letting them go when casting your spell.
   
7. Paint the unholy symbols of the fiend Izmashu using the blood of a monster slaughtered today - allowing the fiend into this world
   
8. Reveal your true name to a demon
   
9. Lend your voice to chaos (Speak in tongues never heard by any living person for the rest of the session. No way to communicated in-character with the world)
   
10. Rub a powdered sphinx tooth over your face
    
11. Drink from the waters of one of the rivers of the underworld - and lose your past (You may not use your background for the rest of the session. Next session - come up with a brand new background, of a lost soul you have drunk).
    
12. Swallow a phoenix egg whole (shell included) before casting your spell
    
13. Melt a magical blade that has spilled blood today - and pour it over your body (2d6 damage)
    
14. Enter the void to cast your spell. Upon returning to the material realm, test WIS. Failure means the experience has weakened your psyche. Take 1d3 permanent WIS damage.
    
15. Vow to rescue the great demon Kharkum-Nukh from his prison within 90 days from today
    
16. Spill the blood, tears, urine or seed of a god on the soil while casting this spell
    
17. Exchange bodies with another person for the rest of the session (either a hireling, OR another PC, if the player agrees. If one of the bodies dies, thew new soul inhabiting it dies with them, and the old soul is trapped in its new body forever more. A PC stuck in a new body has both his old and new backgrounds)
    
18. Gouge out your eye and burn it in sorcerous flames. No magic may ever grow it back (usable up to three times in a campaign)
    

​
​

Five years ago, I met a boy in my dad's basement.
He was called Pain.
I couldn't remember the feeling of pain.
Was it a physical and real sensation that clenched in your chest, or was it a numbness that slowly took over, plunging you into unbridled despair?
I didn't know what despair felt like or on the opposite scale, I had never felt joy or hope. I was told that I smiled with a cardboard look in my eyes, and I cried when I knew I was being watched.
I didn't cry even when my Mom died.
What was the difference between pain and agony? Was despair something that you could overcome, and how much pain would you have to be in—whether mental or physical, for it to take hold?
I knew pain existed in other people.
In me, however, it was null.
I had vague memories of feeling it as a kid. I remembered stubbing my toe and falling off my bike, skinning my knees. But I didn’t remember the pain throbbing in my large toe or the stinging in the graze in my cut knees. I lost my pain first, closely followed by my happiness—and then my ability to feel sad. It felt like drowning, in a way.
Like, one day, I stopped feeling all together.
And one by one, my emotions became null.
I was told by friends at school that I had a cardboard face. I smiled when I had to smile, easily mimicking others around me. But it wasn’t real. The world became black and white, a greyish nothing swirling around me where everything just… happened with cause and effect.
I laughed at jokes that I was supposed to laugh at and cried at movies that were supposed to make me sad. I was a good actress. I can’t pinpoint a specific time or date when I lost all of my emotions, but I never really thought about it until I looked around at my mother’s funeral and found myself surrounded by emotion.
Happiness was something I could live without, I guess. Life was boring anyway.
Sadness and pain, however, were emotions my body needed to feel human; to feel real, like I was alive and breathing and not a build-up of atoms made up into flesh and organs. Pain was part of my soul, and without pain, I didn’t feel real. My mother’s funeral was suffocated in it, the thing I craved.
Everyone was crying, pulling faces and sobbing into their hands; raw eyes and twisted lips that didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t feel sad. I stood next to my aunt with my head bowed patiently waiting for it to be over.
When I discovered my mother was reduced to nothing on the sidewalk, a tangled mess of limbs and bisected torso, I did what I always did.
I waited for a wave of ice to slam into me, a heaviness in my heart and a suffocating feeling choking the air in my lungs.
I waited to be breathless.
That was what everyone else felt like, right? That was the feeling of agony. It was supposed to feel like a blunt knife, like the world was crumbling around you.
I didn’t feel anything except mild annoyance that the cop detailing my mother’s death was spilling his drink all over the table. “Are you okay, Mori?” He kept asking me the same question with wide eyes while I sipped my own mocha. The man had sympathy eyes, sympathy lips— sympathy everything.
Mom was well known in town, so of course his hands wrapped around his tea were shaking.
“Because if you’re not, you can tell us… Here for you. The school offers… This is a difficult situation and when you’re ready… we’ll need to contact your…where did you say… lived again?” The cop’s sympathy speech started to fade in and out like crashing waves.
He kept shooting his colleague worried glances as if to say, “I think she’s in shock.” But I wasn’t in shock. I didn’t feel numb or confused or even angry. I think they were waiting for another answer which wasn’t, “Yes.” Which I kept repeating to them with my cardboard smile. They heard it a lot from grieving family members. “Yes, I’m okay.” When really they were breaking apart inside.
But in my case, I really was okay. Pain came with shock, confusion, and anger. I didn’t feel either of them.
In fact, my mother’s death was more of an inconvenience if anything.
I was still in my junior year and legally a child, so that meant going to live with my estranged father.
I studied emotions a lot—whether it was the people around me or characters on TV. I had mastered the ability to contort my expression into manufactured sadness and curl my lip like I was crying.
I could even squeeze tears out if I was desperate. With the cops, I figured that was the best thing to do to make them leave and break the awkward silence suffocating the room.
So, I scrunched up my face and forced myself to really cry, timing each tear so it was perfect. It was harder when I was really trying to get rid of someone.
Still, though, it worked. They left after giving me numbers for therapists and offering their grievances. I fake sobbed my way to the door, waited until their fancy car was gone, and then went upstairs to finish my math homework.
I did my best to appear sad at Mom’s funeral, but the more I contorted and scrunched up my own face in the mirror and timed myself when to start crying, I started to wonder if I was a sociopath.
When I googled the inability to express emotion, the word “sociopath” came up a lot—and with it, came mimicking and copying emotions to suit them. That's what I did. When my aunt came to comfort me after the funeral, I burst into uncontrollable sobs and allowed her to wrap her arms around me and tell me everything was going to be okay.
Half an hour later, I was downing strawberry daiquiri's.
I caught my cousin side-eyeing me taking advantage of the open bar.
Apparently, seventeen-year-olds who had just lost their mother were allowed sympathy drinks.
It’s not like I felt anything, anyway.
I just got super talkative with grandpappy about the state my mother was found in. When his expression started to harden and he became less polite, my younger cousin dragged me outside. I don’t think he appreciated the amount of detail I was going into about how my Mom was found, though I couldn’t help it.
I didn’t have my own pain, so thinking, fantasizing, about how my mother had felt before she died, actually feeling it, drowning in what I had lost, was a kind of comfort.
It wasn’t until my cousin was grabbing my arm and hissing, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” did reality hit me.
I blinked, noticing the ambience of the crowd was gone.
I was outside standing ankle-deep in snow. It was mid December. Christmas time, and we were dressed in black.
My aunts summer house was lit up. I thought it was beautiful, though I wasn’t sure what beauty really was. The lights were in memory of my mother, a golden blur illuminating the dark.
Everyone else thought it was beautiful, so, naturally, I did too. I was partially aware of grandpappy in the bathroom throwing up, and my aunt was crying. I didn’t remember moving from A to B, inside to outside. Having no emotion fucks with your sense of perception.
I didn’t realize it was snowing, or even that the season had changed. Mom died when the leaves in the yard were still brown.
I didn’t even feel the graze of cold air on my cheeks.
My cousin was shivering. I wasn’t cold. I was never cold, or warm, or anything. I was always the exact same temperature which was neither.
Sometimes, it felt like living in a suit of metal. He was yelling at me, though I was in a fugue state, barely aware of my surroundings. His words sounded like blahblahblahblahablah in my skull.
If I could describe it, I would say it sounded like he was talking like a sim.
Like, “Blardong! Bleh! Bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh?” Sometimes, I blocked people out.
Which was easy to do when I didn’t feel anything. I just turned the world into my own personal cartoon. I watched the boy's breath dance in the air until his voice burst into clarity and reality drifted back into focus. The sounds of grandpa's vomiting inside prickled the back of my mind.
“You have crocodile tears," my cousin's tone bled back into my ears. “Stop with the fake crying, you’re embarrassing yourself. You’re not even sad.” He stepped in front of me, his eyes hard.
Jasper had always jokingly called me a robot at family gatherings, but this time he wasn’t teasing. “I knew you were a freak, Mori, but this is messed up. Not caring about her death is one thing, but talking about her fucking corpse with grandpa?" I presumed he was talking about grandpa throwing his guts up in the bathroom. I didn't mean to talk about the state my Mom was found in.
My cousin's words scrambled back into sim speak once again.
Blahblahblablahablah
Like going under a tunnel and losing signal, before hitting me in a wave.
"--Anyway, my parents think you've lost it. Like, gone completely nuts. Mom wants to take you to a psych ward."
I shrugged. "So."
Jasper's eyes darkened. "So? You'll be labelled a total psycho!" He stuck two fingers in his temple, miming me having a screw loose. "I don't want to be associated with my crazy cousin! The kids at school already hate me."
"Okay."
His lip curled. "Okay? Mom wants to throw you in a white room, and you don't care?" Jasper pulled a face. "You don't care about anything, do you? Your Mom is six feet under, and I haven't seen you cry once. Just crocodile tears."
“I don’t care,” I told him, crossing my legs uncomfortably. His words should have twisted my gut. I read that nausea came with pain and anger. Apparently, it was supposed to make you feel like you were going to barf. I felt the same as always.
Bored.
“I’m not sad.”
He narrowed his eyes, jumping up and down on his heels to stay warm. “Do you mean like… you’re still in shock?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sad.”
A group of mourners shoved past us, and for a moment, my cousin looked baffled before he grabbed me by my dress collar and pulled me inside the downstairs bathroom. “What are you talking about?”
I should have taken notice that my cousin did not look pissed or disgusted. He looked curious, like I was this cool new specimen he wanted to put in a jar. Jasper was my least favorite cousin. With him being the youngest, just a freshman in high school, and the most immature, his teasing was more akin to bullying.
“You don’t feel anythiiiing?”
He did that a lot, drawing out his words like a toddler.
“Nope.”
Jasper stepped closer and prodded me hesitantly. I was aware he was practically backing me into the bathroom wall, an animal cornering its prey. He cocked his head. “You never smile, so what, do you not feel happy?”
My cousin’s eyes widened before I could speak. He stepped back like I was the animal.
“You’re a psychopath, aren’t you?"
He could talk.
When we were little kids, Jasper tore the heads off of worms and stamped on already-dead roadkill, skewering ladybugs for fun.
Maybe this thing ran in the family.
But that didn't make me any better.
Being seventeen meant I was still technically a child, so that meant packing up my things and moving across the country. I did question why Mom's death did not affect me, though that made me want to mimic others' emotions even more. I studied other people around me, though they did not make sense. A girl in my class sliced her finger open during home economics, screaming, sobbing, her face tomato red. When the class was over, I stood in front of her desk and picked up the knife she had been using.
There was no teacher, so I slid the teeth of the blade across my own thumb.
I could remember her exact reaction so well, I could copy it myself. The girl squeaked, wafting her finger, "Oh god, I'm bleeding! Mr Carlisle, I'm bleeding bad! When the knife cut into me, I waited for my own body to react, an animalistic shriek clawing from my lips just like the girl. But nothing happened.
I just had a bleeding finger, dazedly watching pooling red run down my palm and wrist. I didn't feel annoyance or anger. There was nothing. I couldn't cause my own pain, which made me deliriously obsessed with my Mom's death. I knew every detail, every word coming from the detective's mouths.
She was found at 8:37pm… I wrote it out, drawing it, even replicating it in my head to get a front row seat. She wasn't breathing, Mori. And… there was a significant amount of blood, due to her head severing…
I wondered if Mom felt anything before darkness consumed her. Was it quick, or did she feel it during her last moments?
Pain.
Stinging, slicing, throbbing pain that made you want to scream and cry.
That got your synapses tingling.
The most powerful sensation that drove the human body.
Did my mother feel the agony of thousands of tonnes of metal slamming into her? Did she feel her skull cracking apart on the sidewalk, her brain leaking out of her ears? I found myself craving it like a drug, trying to hurt myself every day. It started slow. I pricked myself with a sewing needle. Nothing. Then I got brave, using a kitchen knife. All I could feel though, was wet warmth sliding down my arm.
I was sick of seeing my own blood without pain. I rode my bike to and from school, intentionally throwing myself over the handlebars. All I got were grazed knees, and a worried looking woman who definitely saw me lunge off of my seat, purposely crashing my bike. How do I explain this without sounding crazy?
Pain was none existent to me.
It didn't exist inside of me, and I needed it to feel human. Without it, I was a robot who talked and breathed, but was I really alive? Don't we have to feel and endure certain emotions and sensations to feel like we were alive?
Pain fascinated me. I made sure to physically try and hurt myself every day, because in my mind, my emotions were like puberty. Maybe I was a late bloomer. I wanted to feel in my mother's last moments. To revel in it.
Maybe my cousin was right and I was a sociopath.
After moving in with dad, I did my own research. Google listed several symptoms that had sociopathic tendencies. The key symptom I noticed a lot was copying and mimicking others, which was called wearing a so-called mask. I had been doing that since I was a kid. Without my own emotions, I studied others and acted them out in front of a mirror. Sadness.
I drooped my face, lowering my eyelids and blinking several times to incite tears. Happiness. I widened my eyes and grinned at my reflection, slightly tilting my head to mimic the kids in my class.
I never understood why they were happy over things like toys and books and computer screens. I was just bored.
Boredom. I drooped my face and put weight on my eyelids, like sadness, but this time deepening my frown.
Jealousy. That was a hard one. I saw it a lot as a kid, though it was hard to copy.
Envy. I had to really think about it. Narrowed eyes and twisted lips. I imagined it felt like swallowing knives.
Pain was the only one I struggled with.
I couldn't understand how to twist and contort my face to really show it, shaping it on my expression. There was something wrong with me, so surely my father had some kind of record from when I was a kid. If I could find doctor's notes or some kind of diagnosis, I would know why I was like this. Dad was at work and I had the house to myself.
There were explicit rules not to explore the floors beyond the first and second floor, but I needed to find something on paper that told me I didn't have the ability to feel pain.
If I didn't, I would continue looking for it.
Pain. Which was lost, violently torn from me.
I tried dad's office first. Third floor. It was on the long list of rooms that were out of bounds, but weirdly, the office wasn't locked. I opened it up, sliding through the door. Homely. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through pretty yellow curtains.
Dad's office was minimalistic, just like his house. It was rustic themed, littered with boxes and papers neatly piled on his desk, an expensive looking laptop, and the coffee mug I got him for his birthday.
I picked it up gingerly. "BEST DAD" was printed on the side. The coffee had gone cold.
There was a photo of me and Mom.
I was seven years old, smiling wildly at the camera, while Mom stuffed ice cream in my mouth, her smile laughing.
I could tell my grin was fake.
There was another photo of an older version of me, maybe ten or twelve, and surprisingly, my younger cousin. He looked even more evil as a little kid, eyes narrowed like he was planning to lazer future me right through the photo.
The two of us were standing together, him with his arms folded, pointedly glaring at the camera, and me with a small smile that I was mimicking.
We were standing exactly where I was, right in front of dad's desk. My cousin had his hands wrapped around the neck of a ceramic pig. I could see the contortions in his hands, and the slightest prick of a smile. He was definitely pretending to strangle it.
My cousin and me standing in my dad's office as kids was so out of place. Which was funny, because I didn't remember ever visiting this house or office when I was a kid. Placing the photo frame back down, my attention flickered to the idle screen of dad's MacBook. When I tapped the keyboard, a password screen illuminated the dim.
I had a feeling whatever record dad had of my medical notes, they were probably in paper form. I tried his drawers. Locked. Of course. No sign of a key when I picked around his desk.
I did find a rubber band ball, a memory drive, and interestingly, an iPhone 6 gathering dust. It was the same brand as mine, minus my splintered screen.
Mom promised to get me an updated one.
I wouldn't have paid attention to this phone if it wasn't for the Adventure Time phone cover, pale blue, with the characters printed on the back. I turned the phone around in my palm. Dad didn't strike me as an Adventure Time fan.
My first thought was my younger cousin, though he was more The Walking Dead than colourful cartoons.
The phone was out of battery, so I plugged it into a charging outlet.
Pressing the power button, I found myself staring at a lockscreen of a young kid, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, with his arms wrapped around an older looking woman. The kid was lanky, dark brown curls and freckles. There was no signal or sim card, 300 missed calls from "Teddy B."
I squinted at the screen.
300 missed calls from 2920 days ago.
8 years.
The phone was password protected, though from a scroll through the notifications, I could tell this was a kid. There were Minecraft messages telling him he had something to build, YouTube informing him Pewdiepie and Markiplier had uploaded. Each notification built an identity. Texts from friends reminding him about homework, and Snapchat messages from group chats demanding his reply.
There was an email sent 2910 days ago. I could only see the start of it.
"Hi, we're unable to contact you at your current address. You can't keep playing these games. Your social worker will be there to collect you tomorrow, honey. I know the last thing you want to do is come live here with us, but there are great children here. You will be welcomed, and it's–
The email cut off, and I found myself tapping the screen to try and get through the password. This was the first time I felt desperate. It felt good, like my numb shell of a body was slowly coming back to life. I was reading and re-reading the email, when my own phone vibrated in my jacket. Dad had texted me. "Hey, do you want Chinese food tonight? There's a great place where I work. I can get your favorite!"
"Sounds good" I texted back, before switching my phone off. I rolled the kid's phone in my hand, restless. This twelve year old boy's entire life was in my hands, and for some reason, his life had come to a halt in my father's house.
8 years ago.
I stood up, taking a different angle in searching my dad's office. If he was hiding something, then it would be in his office. I started with the bookshelf, my mind whirring with questions. There was no logical answer why he had a kid's phone– a kid from eight years ago.
The phone was a time capsule, and holding onto it gave me a semblance of feeling. I couldn't feel sad or angry or frustrated, but I did feel irritated.
Dad was a college professor, why did he have an eight-year-old phone?
Anger had always confused me. I didn't understand it. But with that phone feeling like it was burning through my pocket, I felt close to it.
Anger. It was in reach. I could sense my blood was boiling, except there was no urge to scream and cry, no suffocation in my lungs. Pulling out books from the shelf, there were no signs of magical contraptions or sliding glass doors in the walls. However, when my hand lightly grazed the same ceramic pig from the photoframe, something shifted behind me. I saw it in the corner of my eye, movement in the floorboards.
Dropping onto my knees, I shoved aside the sheepskin rug, revealing what appeared to be a trap door. No way, I thought, tracing four singular gaps in the floor. My boring college professor father had a trap door in his office.
Very Scooby Doo.
The door opened outwards, and I peered down stone steps leading into darkness. I should have been able to feel the chill, my breaths stuck in my throat. But there was nothing. I didn't feel panic or exhilaration. Kneeling on the floor, I took a moment to think about my actions.
Dad had a kid's phone, and a secret trapdoor in his office. There was no way he wasn't hiding something.
Before I could stop myself, I was already lowering myself into the hole, my feet grazing stone cold steps.
Closing the door behind me, I slowly started to descend.
The place was what I guessed was a basement. The hand railing was freezing cold. Why my dad was hiding this place though, I had no idea. There was no light, so I used the walls to help me blindly find the bottom. Every step was harder to see.
A smell hit me halfway down. Chlorine.
It reminded me of the hospital when I broke my leg at six years old after climbing a tree. I didn't feel anything, though the doctors were insistent on me staying the night. That's what the smell was. The hospital, mixed with chlorine and bleach. When my feet landed on cold marble, darkness morphed into bright light.
I shaded my eyes, blinking through fraying vision. Too bright. I could barely see in front of me. When I moved my hand, I was aware I was standing on a plush white hallway, the smell of antiseptic tingling in my nose and throat.
Starting forwards, at first hesitantly, and then I quickened my steps.
This was high tech, even for my father who had bought a million dollar condo on top of a mountain with a built in swimming pool. Still though, this was far from a basement. He had an entire facility hidden under his house.
Reaching the end of the hallway, there were three doors, all of them locked. When I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my face into the glass, I could just make out a bed.
A single bed with no pillow or blanket.
A peek into the other rooms gave me the same picture.
Huh. So, dad had his own private emergency room. If he was doing medical research it made sense, but I was still grasping the kid's phone in my pocket.
I don't know what led me toward another set of stone steps. This time the light fixture above was flickering, and the sweet, tangy stink of antiseptic was replaced by the unmistakable stink of rot and mould. The further I got down the stairs, marble became stone, crumbling brick and mortar. The light dimmed, steps making way for uneven rocky ground.
Now, this was a basement.
Not exactly how I had pictured. I envisioned a wine cellar filled with vintage alcohol and ancient family relics. What I got, however, was a buzzing light above me barely illuminating the room, and a lot of steel.
Taking slow strides, I marvelled the room, a rocky basement transformed into what appeared to be a laboratory. Above me, the ceiling was crumbling and the floor was falling apart under my feet, though the work built around it mesmerised me.
Machines I had never seen before beeping odd noises, desks filled with paper and computers, and whiteboards covered in notes, clumsily drawn diagrams and crossed out deadlines.
I wish I had the ability to feel fear, because my brain wasn't registering everything around me. Like a moth to a flame, it was only seeing things that were shiny. I didn't notice the body-size lump covered in a white sheet until I was running my hands over it, thinking it was a mannequin. Then I was lifting the sheet, and my fingers were grazing ice cold skin that was almost slimy.
I glimpsed a limp arm still strapped down, and then the explosion of scarlet where her stomach was supposed to be. I didn't feel sick when my fingers slid across what was left of the girl's torso. I half wondered if she felt pain in that moment before…
Before my father cut her open.
I dropped the sheet before I could pull it further up, revealing a face. The girl was dead. She wasn't the only one. Beyond the shiny things, my mind was attaching itself to smears of blood decorating stainless steel, and at the very corner of the room, several bodies hanging from meat hooks. I looked closer, glimpsing a toe curling, an arm shift. They were still breathing. Not dead. But part of me wished they were.
To my father, these people weren't human, tubes and wires stuck into them, crowns of metal glued to shaved heads.
I stumbled back, losing my footing for the first time since I was a little kid.
Fear didn't exist inside me, but it did somewhere else.
So if it was real, where was it?
And how could I feel echoes?
At that moment it was so powerful, so overwhelming, like a tidal wave coming over me, that I actually felt prickles of it. I was suddenly boiling hot, my hands clammy, my lungs filled with poison. I staggered back, slamming into the corner of a desk. I wasn't used to the type of fear I had read about. Unbridled fear that crept up on you, slithering up and down your spine. It was bugs skittering across your skin and filling your mouth, stealing away your breath.
Never stopping or faltering until you were screaming, submitting to the inevitably of the darkness closing in. I felt my skin prickle, paralysis seeping into my blood.
I couldn't move when a light tap sounded, cutting through my thoughts.
Immediately, I twisted to the hanging bodies, the spindly legs of a spider entangling themselves around my spine.
My gut lurched, mouth watering.
Was this what it was like to throw up?
I forced myself to look closer, waiting for movement.
They hadn't shifted. The body at the end was still trembling, swaying back and forth. The needle protruding into the back of his neck elicited more feeling, this time so close, so reachable.
I had never felt so human, and so disgusted.
Swallowing slimy tasting bile, I heaved in a breath.
"Hellloooooo! Over here!"
Following the voice, my eyes found exactly what my brain had blocked out.
I saw it the second I stepped over the threshold, and then when I uncovered the girl's body. Except my brain didn't want to see it. It wanted to see shiny steel and spiky needles. The large panel of see through glass was hard to miss, and yet I wanted to ignore it, to pretend it didn't exist. Because then I could prove my own theory wrong. It wasn't fear that tightened its phantom hold of me when I situated myself in front of the glass screen. No, it was something else.
The closer I got, the feeling enveloped me, dragging me into bottomless depths. What was it? Happiness? No, I wasn't smiling. Sadness? I gingerly swiped my eyes. I wasn't crying either. Closer. Those bugs crawling across my skin started to dig their tiny wriggling feet into my flesh, burrowing into my bones. There were three shadows behind the glass screen.
The one with her face pressed against the other side was a pretty blonde girl, her hair pulled into childish pigtails, red ribbons trailing in golden locks.
She reminded me of a zombie cheerleader, sharp red smearing her cheeks and neck, ugly stitches patching pieces of her face together. But the blood wasn't fake. Her matted hair was not a wig. She was too thin, malnourished in her cheeks, a flimsy blue gown hanging off of skeletal hips. It was her smile that was causing that sensation inside me.
Panic.
The sudden feeling of being unable to breathe.
Trapped.
My body wanted me to run, turn around and pretend I didn't see anything.
Except this girl's smile was too wide, unnaturally splitting her lips in half. I could see blood pooling at the corners of her mouth from the excessive stretching. When I looked closer, a lifetime of screams were curled on those lips stretched and contorted in agony.
This girl's entire life had been pain. It never stopped or gave mercy, twisting her into… this. The grinning shell who was wearing a human face.
"Hi!" The girl was practically vibrating with excitement. She pressed a bloody kiss to the glass, red rimmed eyes almost cartoon wide. I could see through whatever front this was. Her eyes were deep, cavernous, nothing, empty sockets hollow of life. I saw no personality past that horrific grin and maniacal gleam.
She reminded me of a soulless animatronic programmed to smile and make kids laugh.
The girl slammed her hands into the glass impatiently when my gaze wandered, finding the other two shadows.
"Hey!" She surprised me with a laugh, and I jumped, my gaze flicking back to her.
The blonde's smile took over half of her face. "Aww, why don't you turn that frown upside down, hmm?" her fingers played an imaginary piano across the glass.
I stepped back, swallowing hard.
"Mori," the girl giggled, tantalising scarlet dripping from her mouth and sliding down her chin. I caught slight twitches in her face, screams that failed to claw from her mouth, cries that muffled on her tongue. She was in agony. Her whole body trembled with electroshocks, her head jolting. Pain.
The type that I had been looking for in myself.
Before I could hesitate, I was following her hypnotising voice, pressing my face against the glass.
"Come on, I know you can smile!"
The blonde didn't make sense as a human being, but as something else, she did.
"There! I knew you could do it!"
I didn't even realize I was copying her out of habit.
Her grin was so bright, and I felt my own lips prickling into the smallest of smiles like she was pulling at the corners of my mouth. I pressed my fingers, and then the palm of my hand against the glass. The sunshine girl pulling faces on the other side– she was my happiness. The girl was everything I had lost, years of being unable to laugh or smile, or feel warmth in my chest.
She was my lost exhilaration.
My euphoria.
Satisfaction.
Bliss.
Joy.
Love.
She was all of them stuffed into one singular body.
Which was slowly failing, old and new red seeping from every orifice.
Everything I had stolen was bursting inside of her.
"Hey."
That numbness that had wound its way around me for years slowly started to bleed away.
My eyes stung.
Just once. But I definitely felt it.
The lump in my throat, my cheeks prickling with heat, and the heavy weight in my chest.
The choked cry came from the floor, the overgrown brown curls buried in pristine white. The boy's voice was strained, already on the brink of sobs. When he lifted his head, he was already crying, eyes raw, lips curved into a scowl. The boy was older than me. 20, maybe. His face though, was still one of a child, wide eyes and a wobbling lip.
He too was sickly pale, almost skeletal, his collar bone jutting out, that same blue gown pooling around him. "Are you going to cry?" He inclined his head, tears slipping down his cheeks. His face was permanently stained with a mixture of tears and snot tinged red.
This time, I did barf. All over myself, making the blonde girl squeak. It was an odd sensation, especially when I could actually feel it. The string of barf clinging onto my chin was at the back of my mind, however. Instead, all I could see was this man. Everything about him, the curl in his lip and the crease in his eyes.
He had taken in everything the detectives told me. He knew the details of what happened to Mom, and had silently stood with me at her funeral, bearing the brunt of the loss that was supposed to rip me apart.
He had felt that agonising, slicing pain ripping through me, loneliness collapsing into numbness, every twist of nausea in my gut and the suffocating weight crushing my chest when I was told my mother wouldn't be coming home.
Every time I had been dry eyed with no feeling, no emotion, this man had sobbed for me. Something sickly twisted in my gut, and from the crinkle in his expression, the scrunch of his nose, he was already being hit with it.
His whole body was shaking, filled to the brim, bursting with what was mine.
He was still bearing that loss, every loss, struggling to stand and leaning onto one side, teary eyes begging me to keep my turbulent emotions in check.
The reason why I didn't cry at Mom's funeral.
Why I couldn't feel sad, no matter how hard I tried.
This man, somehow, was my sadness.
"Please don't cry," he whispered, curling into himself. "Please…" he sniffled, struggling through sobs. "Don't c–cry. Oh god, please don't fucking cry."
"Language!" The blonde laughed, nudging him with her foot. Her smile was almost delirious, drugged up, or maybe not. Maybe she was just high on happiness, the happiness stolen from me.
"I'll get you out of here," was the first thing that came out of my mouth.
The girl laughed, and the man snorted into the floor.
My tone was flat, like I didn't care.
But I did care. The reason why I didn't care was standing right in front of me.
The blonde beamed. Her eyes, however, told a different story. Kill me. The cry was alive in her lips, ignited in her eyes.
"Don't be sad, Mori!" she stepped back, almost tripping over herself. "Why don't we play a fun game to cheer you up?"
"Fun game?" I whispered.
My reaction delighted her. "Yes! Let's play hide and go seek!" she closed her eyes. "You're it! Hide, and we'll find you!"
I nodded slowly. "Okay. First I'm going to get you out of here." The girl was passed saving. Both of them were. The more I looked at her, I was finding mismatched skin, like she had been stitched together.
There were needles stuck into the veins of her neck, scraps of bloody band-aid's ingrained into bruised flesh. She was more of a puppet, a plaything stuffed with my happiness, no traces of who she was remaining. Just a pretty smiling face.
Is this what my dad thought my happiness was?
Already, I was searching for a lock mechanism. I needed to get them out.
Stepping back, the heel of my foot went straight through a rusty nail sticking through a plank of wood. I didn't even notice until a sharp hiss of breath caught me off guard. The blonde's loud and bubbly personality had completely blocked him from sight. A third shadow sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees, primed toes rocking him backwards and forward. His identity stood out to me. I knew it. At least, I knew the twelve year old boy with freckles. This man didn't even have the shadow of the kid on his lock screen.
His head was half shaved, reddish curls on one side, rugged stitched skin on the other. He tried to hide it, shielding his face when my heel went through the nail.
I didn't feel anything, while his knees jerked against his chin, expression crumpling. He tried to bury in his head in knees, but what was supposed to be running through me, was striking him.
Every time his body shook, fingers curling.
Stepping closer to the screen like I was observing animals in a zoo, I could see every contortion of agony in his eyes, my mom's death ripping him apart from the inside. His lips twisting into a yell had my anger and my frustration, my white hot pain. What I had been craving for so long. Pain. He was the one harbouring it all, stealing away my humanity. For a moment, I couldn't see the sharp edges sticking into his wrist and the dark circles under his eyes, the sickening lack of flesh on his bones.
I could just see my pain.
I fell into a trance, completely aware of myself and unable to stop my body. I picked up the plank, pulled out the screw, and stuck it straight through my palm.
He tried to stop it, tried to hold himself, but his body was jerking along with the useless sack of flesh I called my own.
A body that refused to give into it. I could almost feel it if I took in every crease in his eyes, every curve in his mouth. No longer in control of myself, I broke my finger with a sickening snap, and this time, he cried out like an animal, teeth gritted, head tipped back.
This was what I had been missing.
"Please." Pain's eyes found mine.
"Don't!"
I couldn't.
"Stop!" His scream rattled through me, tears glistening in his eyes. "Fucking stop!"
This time he was standing up, slamming his hands into the glass, his face full of emotion, full of fear and anger and fucking pain. While I was numb. While I watched him revel in it.
I snapped my index, and then my pinkie, my cousin's words coming back to the forefront of my mind. Maybe I was a sociopath. Maybe I didn't just want to revel in my own pain. I snapped my thumb, which was harder. I had to bend it back, snapping the tendons.
I wanted others in pain too.
What had my father done to me?
Whatever he had done, Pain was stealing a part of me. All of my agony.
This man was taking it, soaking it up like a sponge. "Let us out," His voice lilted into a whine when he threw himself into the glass. "You psycho bitch!" he shoved the others away when they tried to console him, hysterical. I had no idea what hysteria felt like. Watching it made me feel almost alive.
"No, get off of me!" he battered the glass. "She needs to let us out NOW."
But, still trapped in my own mind, I was curious. I didn't see a human man. I just saw what had been taken from me.
So, I took a scalpel from the cabinet, and started to carve into myself slowly, watching him drop to his knees, my stolen agony turning to twisted madness in his eyes. Pain. I wanted to see if I could cut all of it out of him. I stabbed the blade in, and his head dropped into his knees, shoulders shuddering with sobs.
Still nothing.
Harder.
I dragged the blade, willing it deeper and deeper, slicing through my flesh, layer into layer.
I don't remember the blade slipping through my fingers. I do remember coming back to fruition, wrapped in my father's arms.
I didn't feel horrified at what my father had made me do.
I couldn't feel any of them.
Guilt.
Disgust.
Anger.
They were all in this room, whether they were behind the screen of glass, shadows I hadn't met yet, or trapped inside the bodies hanging from hooks.
There was a new body on the ground in front of me, a man in his early 20's.
"Memory," my father whispered into my ear. "The other Memory had a malfunction," he jerked his head towards the back of the room where the dead hung. "So, I got you another one."
I hummed in response, my father's puppet.
His warm hands were grasping hold of my blood slicked arms. "Don't worry, honey," His voice was like a lullaby, and I was well aware that I was deeply under my dad's control. "I got rid of sensation, Mori. I'm getting close to physical."
He hugged me to his chest, and my head lolled onto my shoulder. Pain was on his knees, lips curled into a snarl. "You're not going to hurt again."
The new Memory, however, failed to work.
His body became another failure, unbeknown to my father.
Which meant I awoke the next morning curled up on our family couch to the smell of eggs, my dad's filthy secret still lingering in the back of my mind.
There's more to it, but word counts exist.
Therapy, too.
Thank god.

First Previous
Memory Transcription Subject: Taksak, throwback arxur
Date [Standard Human Reckoning]: 2136-12-09
Upon waking up, I stood in my room and peered through the window. The amber hues of the setting sun painted the landscape outside. The earth's main star itself had hidden behind the thick canopy of trees. I watched Ivan, on the other bed in this room, lay unmoving in a deep slumber. I turned off the alarm, to not wake up the young arxur. On the farm and here in this village, he had become like a nephew to me.
A quick scan of the room revealed the absence of our third roommate, Sosis the biawak. We have fitted it with a tracker to prevent it from wandering out of the village. I could query its location right now, but I decided to use this opportunity to hone my senses. I went out of my hut, tracking it using the distinct scent it left behind. As the few Earth creatures in a village of arxur, Sosis' smell set it apart from the familiar scent of my people.
Guided by my nose, I soon found myself at the entrance of the village crèche. Inside, Tresn, along with his human mate, Jago, sat on the wooden floor. There I found Sosis lounged in Tresn's lap
As I entered, Jago sensed my presence. Turning around with a warm smile, the human greeted, "Oh hi there Taksak! Looking to see the hatchlings too?"
Indeed, the hatchlings, Fnaf and Gizhahun, had woken up. They played under the attentive supervision of their aunt, Zoghen. A peculiar ball took their attention right now. The toy seemed to have a mind of its own, darting away each time they tried to grab it.
"Yeah..." With a leading question like that, I couldn't help but lie.
I settled down next to Tresn and Jago, my eyes taking in the splendor of the crèche around us.
We built this place as a haven for our new hatchlings. Compared to the sterile facilities of our homeworld, this place radiated warmth and comfort. The atmosphere in the crèche evoked emotions I hadn't felt in a while, one of nostalgia. As colonists, my parents saved me from that bleak childhood. Back on our farm, I remembered open spaces, farms, and forests where I had free reign to roam once I could walk and run.
Our knowledge of how our ancestors raised their young has been lost to time. But, with the help of the humans, we fashioned this crèche. We hoped to replicate what we imagined our forebears might have considered a nurturing environment. All sorts of soft lights were embedded into the room. On one wall, climbing structures made of vines and sturdy branches stood tall. We arxurs don't do as much climbing as humans do, but I could see the potential benefits of hunting. The idea of ambushing prey from the treetops seemed alluring. Next to this lay a shallow pool, lined with smooth pebbles. The humans also came up with this feature, reflecting their love for water.
Intricate calligraphy adorned the walls of the room. They wove tales of old and new. Among these symbols, I identified the familiar angular strokes of Salekh. But, many others looked as foreign to me as the various human writing systems. Some of these scripts conveyed prayers, invoking blessings and protection. Another section even contained a heartfelt poem. Its author reminisced about the golden era before our society fell into moral decline. Interspersed among these writings we have placed plush nests. Crafted from leaves and soft moss, these places provide the hatchlings with cozy places to rest on.
In this secluded corner of Earth, we made an effort to rekindle ties with the past we had strayed so far from. I hoped that we were treading the right path.
"Hey... Jago." Tresn started.
"Yeah?"
Tresn, with a hint of anxiety in his eyes, remarked. "Would you find me weird if I say that I want to play with that prey-mimicking gadget?"
"Well... no..." Jago answered. "What did you use to play in your childhood anyway?"
Tresn looked distant, as though he observed a prey beyond the wall. "They taught me that 'toys and plays' are things that preys do. The closest thing we had to play was behavior enforcement. Once we learned to speak, we had structured learning."
"Oh, man." Jago sidled closer and wrapped one of his arms against the arxur.
The squabbles of the two hatchlings shattered the room's ambiance. They abandoned their previous toy. Now we found them embroiled in a spirited tug-of-war over a new plaything. Their sharp maws held onto the object, each determined to triumph over the other. In a swift, calculated move, Fnaf exerted a powerful pull snatching the toy. This caused Gizhahun to stumble forward. Gizhahun recovered in no time. She launched herself at Fnaf in a whirlwind of nips, tumbles, and rolls.
Jago, observing the interaction, furrowed his brow. "Is this a normal behavior among your young ones?"
"In the more populated crèches." Tresn said, "They discouraged confrontations using shock collars."
Jago's eyes widened and pulled Tresn closer to him. "They used... what!?"
Zoghen, catching the rising tension in Jago's voice, nodded. "When cruelty defined your people, you didn't see the abnormality in such practices. "
I felt compelled to add, "Our society veered off the path of compassion. Crèches, once places of nurture, became production lines. The irony has been lost on most of my people. We considered the sapient prey species as a bunch of 'animals' but we treated our own offspring no better."
"The Dominion's must be destroyed," the human spat.
Zoghen responded, "I trust that your people are planning towards that end right now."
Amid our conversation, the spirited Fnaf saw an opening and darted away from the relentless pursuit of his cousin. The hatchling made his way to a secluded nook of the crèche. Gizhahun, her eyes locked on the toy, readied herself for another chase. However, before she could launch herself, Zoghen stepped in, lifting her into his arms. The young hatchling writhed, attempting to free herself from Zoghen's grasp.
"Enough, Gizh," Zoghen chided. "Fnaf has bested you twice now."
Jago, still observing the hatchlings, asked. "Can she comprehend language at this age?"
Zoghen sneered as she struggled with the spirited hatchling in her arms. "Of course not. They're driven more by instinct at this stage. When do human babies start to speak anyway?"
"A year at least." Said the human. "Your hatchlings grow so fast. They were just... less than a month old and they can crawl already."
"I sometimes wonder if our accelerated development is a side effect of betterment." As I spoke, Zoghen managed to distract Gizhahun with a series of chew toys. One, resembling a chicken, seemed to catch the hatchling's fancy, and she began gnawing on it.
"You humans have a weird growth rate. Among the sapient mammals, I know." Said Zoghen "Most of them take just half a year before they can walk on two legs."
Before we could delve further into the topic, a recognizable voice echoed through the crèche. "Ah, there you are! Are we ready to break our fast?"
Zoghen huffed at Ivan. "You go on ahead. I'm waiting for my mate to join me."
When we arrived at the dining area, I marveled at the spread laid out before us. Armed with their diverse culinary traditions, the humans introduced us to the concept of incorporating plant matter into our dishes. We discovered that our digestive system can handle plant-based ingredients in small amounts when cooked well. This revelation enriched the flavors of our traditional dishes in ways we had never imagined.
An array of dishes adorned the table, each prepared with a blend of herbs. One dish that caught my attention was a rich stew, where succulent chunks of meat mingled with hearty root vegetables and fragrant herbs. The steam wafting from it carried an enticing aroma and I could already imagine their taste from their smell alone.. Next to the stew, we have a plate showcasing skewers of marinated meat, punctuated with slices of yellow fruit. Jago said that the acidity of the fruit not only added a zesty punch but also rendered the meat even more tender and juicy.
After we took our portions and settled around the table, Ivan murmured a prayer before we began partaking in the feast. I couldn't help but notice a certain pensiveness clouding Ivan's demeanor.
Clearing his throat, Ivan broke the silence. "According to the Southern Rites' calendar," he began, a touch of pride evident in his voice. "I've now reached the age of seventeen."
Jago, a tad confused, remarked, "My subtitle mentioned that it's equivalent to fifteen in Earth years..."
Sensing the building tension, Tresn chimed in, "Jago, is there something wrong?"
Jago's expression grew more anxious, and he turned towards Tresn, His gaze showed concern. "Tresn... I... I never asked how old you are."
Surprised by the sudden query, Tresn hesitated before answering, "I'm twenty-three. Why do you ask?"
That made the human relaxed, though a hint of worry still lingered. "That's a bit twenty Earth years."
I interjected, "Let's get back to Ivan's shall we? Alright, so you have reached seventeen years of age now. What next?"
Ivan, his face betrayed impatience continued. "In most of our ancient traditions, turning seventeen signifies our coming-of-age. It's a milestone that mandates us to embark on a rite of passage. Something that had been erased by the current regime."
Curious, Jago inquired, "What do arxurs in the dominion do upon reaching fifteen?"
"They stopped receiving rations from their caretakers and had to turn to the fleet for sustenance." Said Ivan.
"Oh...I see..." Jago said. "So, what does this rite passage entail?"
Leaning in with rapt attention, Tresn said, "Oh I know about this, Ivan would need to go on a solo hunting expedition to test his skills and maturity." Tresn turned to his mate. "Do you think the humans might grant Ivan this opportunity?"
Jago shifted, processing this new information. "Well, we did ecological restoration initiatives decades ago. So we have introduced a lot of fauna back to this region. I suppose you can hunt one or two every once in a while? You should consult Elangkasa for help and guidance."
Twilight draped the surroundings in shades after we finished our breaking of the fast. Splitting apart from Tresn and Jago, Ivan and I set out towards Elangkasa's office.
"Oh! hi there." They greeted us. "How can I assist you tonight?"
"I have... some request." Said Ivan.
"Sure, please sit first."
After sitting, Ivan took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts before presenting his case. I stood behind him, trying to offer silent support, but the looming possibility of refusal kept me on edge. After Ivan finished A hush settled over the room. Outside, the nocturnal symphony of soft chirps and distant animal calls provided a soothing ambiance.
After what seemed like an eternity, Elangkasa broke the silence. "We have protocols in place for activities that might pose risks to individuals and the broader community. Do you really need to do this... hunting?"
Feeling a surge of frustration at their comment, I answered. "This isn't about courting danger or thrill-seeking. We want to revive a sacred tradition."
Elangkasa reclined in their chair, rubbing their temples. "I see..." they responded, "I'll bring this up with my superiors. But, as I've mentioned, any excursion outside the designated areas requires formal authorization. I'll do my best to advocate for you. But I doubt they will let you venture into the wilderness unaccompanied. They'll assign an expert to assist you."
"I'm supposed to do it alone," Ivan began, but I cut in.
"This is their planet, Ivan. They understand its intricacies better than we do." I reasoned. "We don't want a repeat of the snake incident."
Ivan grumbled but held his words.
I turned to the liaison officer. "Can the expert let Ivan do his hunt alone?"
"I suppose they can watch from afar." Elangkasa allowed. "But they would step in if Ivan is in real danger."
"Well... alright. But I shouldn't be in real danger." Ivan said. "I did make my own preparation.
"Hmm..." Elangkasa's observed the young boy. "Preparation huh? Can you specify the regions you have considered for this hunt?"
Pulling out his pad, Ivan displayed a detailed map of the surrounding area. "I've pinpointed a few locations around the village."
He zoomed in on a dense green patch near a river. "Based on the sensors we've placed, these areas appear to be frequented by the species we're after."
Elangkasa, impressed, remarked, "I see that you've done some research. Those areas indeed teem with diverse wildlife. There are several things you need to mind. Our rewilding efforts in Java have reintroduced not just prey, but predators like crocodiles as well."
"I remember Raja's lecture. I have read on how to avoid crocodiles and snakes too."
Elangkasa then asked further, "Do you have specific prey in mind?"
Without hesitation, Ivan answered, "Boars and deer. I've been monitoring their patterns using the trail cameras that came with the sensors."
These boars are the wild counterparts of the pigs that the humans had introduced to us for our budding farming initiative. While bioreactors supplied the bulk of our needs we decided to keep the practice of raising non-sapient animals. We hope to foster a deeper connection to our ancestral customs by doing this.
Elangkasa, now engaged, leaned forward. "How do you plan to track them?"
Ivan paused before answering, "We use our sense of smell. They should smell like... pigs... should they?"
"I have only hunted deer before." Said Elangkasa. "See... this is why you need an expert to discuss with. I have no idea what boars smell like."
"How do humans hunt anyway?" Ivan asked back. "You can't detect their scent, can you?"
The intricacies of human hunting methods intrigued me. How could a species with such a terrible nose trace their prey?
Elangkasa chuckled, "We can... to a limited extent," they began. "But, we've adapted our hunting methods to our strengths. Unlike your kind that hunts at night, we rely on our daylight vision. This allows us to detect minute changes in our environment. It could be a slight rustle, an anomaly in the surroundings, or even the shimmer from an animal's eyes."
With an illustrative gesture, they continued. "Nature provides hints everywhere if you know how to interpret them. Footprints can tell us about the creature, its size, the direction it's headed, and at times even its age. Droppings can offer clues about their diet and health. Other subtle signs like broken twigs, marks on tree bark, or the gentle sounds of disturbances in the environment can lead us to our target."
Ivan looked intrigued, "So, humans piece together these tiny details to see the bigger picture?"
Elangkasa nodded, "Correct. While we don't have the acute nose of the arxur, humans have sharpened their other senses."
"But hunting during the day means the prey can see you as well, right?"
"They can," Elangkasa agreed, a hint of mischief twinkling in their eyes. "Which is why we use camouflage suits. We also have a method of hunting where we do allow our prey to see us."
That raised a question in my head. I waited for the human to continue.
"In our history, some humans also practiced something that we call persistence hunting. Our forebears would track their prey, not with sheer speed, but with relentless endurance. They kept following their prey until the animal became too fatigued to continue."
That revelation made me pause. As ambush predators we have always relied on the element of surprise, waiting in stealth to strike. The idea of pursuing prey over extended distances, until they just... fall, sounded so alien. I tried to envision humans trailing behind their quarry, never letting up, always keeping pace. My legs felt tired already just imagining it.
I often considered them weaklings but... I suppose humans do have different kinds of strength.
"Are you folks alright?" Elangkasa inquired, noting our contemplative expressions.
"Yeah, it's just that... wow... you chased them until they died from exhaustion?" Ivan remarked, a touch of awe in his voice.
"Well, we have weapons now like arrows and spears. That made things more convenient now."
"But, let's get back to your target..." Elangkasa continued. "The crepuscular deers are active during twilight and boars are nocturnal animals. So you could start before sunset. And to clarify, you won't use firearms, correct? I can lend you an air rifle, but I don't think my bosses would let you use something like a coilgun."
Ivan replied with a hint of indignation, "I don't need firearms. Our ancestors relied on their natural talents and instincts. Here, I aim to honor that tradition."
Wanting to ensure safety, I interjected. "Perhaps... carrying a dagger might be a wise precaution?"
After a moment's thought, Ivan agreed, "That... seems reasonable."
Elangkasa's expression grew serious. They leaned closer, their gaze penetrating as they said, "This wilderness existed before we came to this island. I don't know how religious you are, or if you believe in spirits. But... the wilderness demands respect."
Ivan nodded in understanding, "I'll keep this in mind. Thank you for your consideration."
Elangkasa typed on their table. "Well then! I've recorded our conversation. I'll present this to my superiors and I should get back to you within a few hours."
With gratitude and a bit of hope, we left Elangkasa's office.
Memory Transcription Subject: Bolad, gojid doctor
Date [Standard Human Reckoning]: 2136-12-09
In a classroom within the School of Life Sciences, we convened for a discussion. One of the walls had turned into a giant screen displaying a detailed image of the gojid genome. It glowed with an array of vivid hues. Each color represented different gene clusters and markers. Once an enigma to us all a month ago, the blueprint for my people lay open for everyone to see.
Surveying the room, I noticed the AR form of Christiane occupying the other side of the screen. Her simulated gaze landed on the genome display. Rehab, Harad, and a handful of other Gojids sat facing the screens. Pertiwi, a human expert in bioreactor technology, also joined us, typing down notes on her pad. Busem, our Zurulian project overseer, was absent. From what I can gather, he attended some undisclosed matters at a zoological garden.
"Let us dive into the matter at hand," I initiated. "Today we will focus on the post-transplant data we gathered from Harad."
I recapped the journey so far. Harad, who underwent a spleen transplant over a week ago, had shown encouraging results. His flesh allergy had not reared its head post-operation. But, we learned that Harad had been an outlier. He has milder allergic symptoms. Our excitement waned when other spleens started to falter under increasing allergen concentrations.
After telling Harad's story. I brought up another window on the interactive wall. "So we decided to probe Harad's genotype. We wanted to identify any unique elements that could explain his better resistance to allergens."
A split-screen appeared. Harad's genetic sequence appeared alongside a 'typical' gojid genome. A rainbow of colored nucleotide strings helped differentiate between the two. Pulsating neon highlights marked the points of divergence. Annotated pop-ups offered insights into these genetic disparities. Each description tied them back to known biological functions.
"With this comparative analysis," I declared, "we have identified several salient mutations."
Animated graphics circled certain segments of Harad's genome. "For instance, consider this region. The coding for allergen receptors shows a minor yet significant alteration in Harad. Could this hold the secret to his lesser sensitivity to meat?"
"Harad also possesses a unique single nucleotide polymorphism in a gene linked to inflammation," Christiane added. "It’s possible this variant plays a role in dampening his allergic responses."
A puzzled voice sliced through the dialogue enveloping the room. It was Bangnu, a fellow believer of the Mother Protector. "Hold on a minute. Can you put this into words so the rest of us can understand?"
Before I could distill the information, Harad interjected. "Okay... so I've got these peculiar quirks in my genetic code that might explain why I don't end up choking to death every time I eat flesh."
"You eat what?" Said Bangnu.
I looked at Harad, whose quills bristled in panic. "I mean-" he started.
"He was talking in hypotheticals." I cut him. "We tested him by giving the specific protein diluted in water." I gave her the half-truth. "I assure you that there was no flesh-eating involved."
Bangnu did not need to know how Harad had licked clean the plate we used to serve him cubes of flesh.
"Yeah, what the doc said." The gojid farmer added. "Anyway! They're probing these quirks to help us figure out which parts of our genotype need a little touch-up."
Christiane nodded, her eyes meeting Harad's. "An accurate summation."
Harad's eyes took on a wistful glint as he continued, "My parents always said I was special, a real unique specimen." His voice carried a caustic undertone, and his half-smile seemed to mask something deeper. "Or as they put it more precisely, a 'special case.'" The tone of his voice now tinged with resentment
For a moment, I remembered a past conversation where Harad had mentioned how he had escaped from his parents, as they planned to send him to a Correctional Facility for Predator Disease.
Snapping back to the subject at hand, Harad looked around the room. "So, where do we go from here? Are we going to use my genetic quirk to engineer cloned spleens that might make other gojids all more tolerant of these pesky allergens?"
"We are a bit ahead of that," I revealed, my words hanging in the air. "In fact, we have already cloned a new batch of spleens, and the preliminary trials should start soon."
The collective atmosphere shifted as we moved from the conference room into the corridors that led to the bioreactor lab. The gojids who had come with us, including Bangnu, seemed both eager and apprehensive about what lay ahead.
Upon entering the lab, Bangnu was the first to break the silence. "Wow, this place didn't look as nightmarish as I thought. I can't even see the organs you're growing."
Pertiwi chuckled before she asked. "You expected organs suspended in transparent containers?"
"Uh... yeah," Bangnu admitted.
Pertiwi leaned against one of the bioreactor tanks, her palm touching the surface of the metallic tank. "See, glass containers might make for cool visuals." She started with the very human concept of being excited to see organs in a glass container.
"But they're suboptimal for actual tissue growth." The human continued. "Inside these bioreactors, delicate biochemical reactions are occurring. Factors like light and even minor temperature changes can throw off the balanced processes here."
With a flick of a finger, Pertiwi conjured a series of diagrams in augmented reality. "Anyway... as Bolad had explained, We're performing targeted genetic editing. First, we tagged specific areas suspected to be Farsul-induced alterations responsible for meat allergies. Our discoveries from Harad's genetic makeup helped us determine key places from these tagged areas. We then uploaded a modified genotype of the spleen into the bioreactor's control system."
She moved her finger across the interface of a nearby tank. The metallic containers revealed their contents through the screen. "Several days ago, this machine initiated the process. The bioreactor first laid down a cellular scaffold in sequential layers. Then, we let the tissue grow following the blueprint we provided."
The screen showed an array of spleens at various stages of development. "Each of these spleens represents a different experiment in genetic engineering. Some have minor tweaks aimed at reducing allergic reactions. Others have larger, more complex alterations. In them, we have deleted or edited significant sections of the genotype."
After Pwertiwi finished her lecture I took the moment to further elaborate. "Before these spleens find their way into any gojid, we will put them through a couple of tests. First, we shall perform allergen tests. We introduce the specific proteins found in the flesh to the cultured spleens. This test lets us check if our genomic edits have neutralized the allergic response."
"Following that, we will proceed into immunological compatibility tests." I continued. "We shall expose the cloned spleens to a serum containing antibodies from potential gojid recipients. If we find no signs of distress it signifies that the spleen is ready for transplant."
Bangnu nodded, "Hmm... I see." The gojid woman looked at the rotating spleens on the screen. "Whose spleens are these? You cloned them from someone... right?"
"We have four volunteers right now, Including me. In the spirit of scientific exploration and personal investment, I propose myself to be the first recipient. " I declared, looking at everyone for their reaction. "After we had conducted all necessary tests, Rehab would put the one cloned from me into my body." .
Rehab, her quills flattened, spoke up. "Even the most well-tested spleen isn't risk-free. Something could still go wrong."
"We will put in place real-time monitoring trackers for the reinsertion procedure. We also will develop an emergency backup plan. Such as enzyme inhibitors."
Rehab looked at me, her eyes filled with a mixture of doubt and trust. "Still... the possibility of failure exists."
"Failure is a data point. Remember, we are in one of the best institutes Earth has to offer. If something were to go wrong, there is no better place and time to manage it. Have faith, Rehab."
Rehab's eyes met mine. "I may not share your faith in the Mother Protector, but I do have faith in you."
Next

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Memory Transcription Subject: Taksak, throwback arxur
Date [Standard Human Reckoning]: 2136-11-14
Once we established the perimeter around our village, we had to clear several meters of land beyond it. The dense underbrush and thick vegetation needed to go away. Besides delineating our territory, we need to ensure the sensors we put on top of the stakes work at their most optimal performance. Left unchecked, these shrubs would interfere with the sensors' ability to detect intruders.
Tonight, the clearing task fell to Zoghen and me. Armed with head-mounted lights and machetes, we cut through the darkness like blazing. Sometimes we even need to take out our axes to slash woody trees or stubborn roots.
We had leveled the ground in silence for a while before Zoghen spoke up.
"Uh, Sir, check this out," Zoghen called, her voice carrying a tone of curiosity.
Turning my attention to where Zoghen pointed her claws, I found a peculiar creature. It resembled a plump hose with a head on its end. Its limbless body gave it an absurd appearance. The bands of dark and light patterns on its scales made it hard to miss.
"Zoghen, leave that animal alone," I warned her. "We have no time for a hunt right now."
"I'm not hunting it," she moved closer to the animal then she squatted down to observe it closer.
The creature hissed, its forked tongue flickering in and out.
"We don't even know if that thing is dangerous or not," I cautioned, though the creature appeared more frightened than threatening.
"How can it harm me?" she scoffed. "Look at it! It has side-facing eyes and not a single leg. How could such a creature defend itself, let alone hunt?"
Undeterred, she extended her paw towards it. "Weird how it didn't run away though," she mused.
In that instant, the creature sprang into action. With astonishing speed, it struck, sinking its fangs deep into Zoghen's forearm. She let out a surprised grunt. The young woman stood and lifted her arm to show me the creature, now dangling from her. It trashed as it maintained its fierce bite. Without a moment's hesitation, she used her other paw to pinch the animal's head and pry it from her.
"I have a feeling that these hose-like things are far from a prey." I came closer to check her arm and found two distinct and deep puncture wounds left by the animal.
"We should get back to the village, right now," I urged. Something about this incident didn't feel right.
"Why? I just got two small wounds, it should close in no time" Zoghen protested, her words tinged with an edge of defiance, but her body language implied a nagging worry. In her paw, the creature continued to wriggle and hiss, revealing two long needle-like teeth that glinted in the dim light.
"Think, Zoghen, about why it has such long teeth," I cautioned. "I don't know what, but evolution must have come out with such deep penetrating fangs for a reason."
I rummaged through my satchel and pulled out a woven sack. "Drop it in here," I instructed, unfolding the sack and holding it open wide. "We'll need to show the humans what bit you."
Zoghen cast a wary glance from the cable-like creature to the sack.
When we entered the clinic, it felt as though we had stepped into another world altogether. All the smell in the world became muted here, as its air conditioning system worked hard to filter out any contaminant. The clinic featured smooth, polished, and rounded surfaces. The sterile environment stood in contrast with the surrounding wilderness.
"Greetings, Rahil," I announced our presence. I looked around. The clinic has two adjustable recliners that can turn into a bed when needed. The shelves held medical equipment that the doctor on duty could bring out for fieldwork.
"Oh, hi Taksak... Zoghen," the doctor acknowledged, looking up from her desk. The human woman stood up. Her eyes darted between us. "How may I help you?"
"This thing bit her," I upended the sack, allowing its contents to tumble onto the pristine clinic floor. Rahil's eyes widened in horror as she let out a sharp gasp. She scrambled backward at the sight of the creature before climbing onto her chair for safety.
"Why does this creature scare you so much?" Zoghen reached out to reclaim the cable-like creature
"Stop! Don't touch it!" Rahil's voice pierced the room, sharp and clear. "Get back."
"Do as she said, Rahil. They know better about their animals than us."
The doctor tapped the side of her glasses. Her fingers danced in the air as she dialed a particular number on her augmented reality display.
"Jago? You need to come to the clinic. Right now." she demanded with a steady voice colored with a hint of urgency.
A palpable pause ensued, filled by the subtle hiss of the creature on the floor.
"They brought a snake inside!" Rahil emphasized. The human's gaze remained fixed on the curling animal. "Small, black and white." she continued.
Within mere minutes, the clinic's door slid open to reveal Jago clutching a specialized tool in his hand. It had a curved, gentle hook at its end and a long, sturdy shaft. Jago approached the creature with practiced confidence, using the pole to loop it around the snake's midsection. Once he secured a firm grasp, he lifted it, allowing the snake to drape around the pole, its head and tail dangling without touching the ground.
"By the way, is that a weling or welang?" she asked. Her attention never strayed from the snake animal.
Jago examined the snake, his eyes narrowing as he traced the creature's markings. "It has a white underbelly. This is a weling," he confirmed. "We have the anti-venom available, right?" he asked.
"We have several polyvalent antivenoms." Rahil affirmed. Her eyes saccaded left and right, as she reads something that only she can see. "It covers weling too, yes."
"Okay, good. Because if not, we might have to do something extreme." Said Jago, looking at his artificial arm.
With the animal handled, Rahil climbed down from her chair. "Thanks for taking care of the snake."
"Okay, let me move this little baby outside," Jago said, his voice sounding affectionate.
"Have a good evening everyone," he said to me and Zoghen with a nod.
The door of the clinic slid shut behind him as he went to deal with the creature.
"Little baby? Is that a juvenile snake?" I inquired.
"That's an adult," Rahil clarified with a small smile. "Some people tend to call the animals they like as 'little babies,' regardless of their age."
Turning her attention back to Zoghen, Rahil’s professional demeanor reasserted itself.
"How long since it bit you?" she asked.
"Minutes, I suppose," She responded.
Without wasting another moment, Rahil guided Zoghen to one of the reclining chairs. The human doctor then opened one of the medical cabinets, revealing an organized array of vials and ampoules. After selecting one with precise movements, she took an injector from her desk drawer.
She loaded the ampoule into the injector and with a click of a button, the device hummed to life. Rahil then scanned Zoghen's arm for the precise location of the bite marks. The human then administered the antidote to a place closer to her body.
"You did the right thing coming here right away," Rahil said. "We have no idea if snake bite has a less or more severe effect on arxur. Let's hope it's the former."
Zoghen, puzzled by all the intense reaction by the humans so far, still seemed nonchalant despite the situation. "Why the panic over that creature?" she asked.
Rahil paused for a moment, I presume trying to figure out how to start explaining the animal to us. "Does the term 'venom' translate in your language?" she asked, her eyes meeting Zoghen's.
Zoghen nodded, "It means toxin, right? Yeah, we all heard your discussion with Jago. But that doesn't make sense."
"Wait..." I interjected. "No, that makes sense now. That long fang is a toxin injector! This animal hunts by poisoning... their prey?"
"Correct," Rahil confirmed. "Venom is a specific type of toxin that some animals use, either for defense or to hunt."
A deep frown crossed Zoghen's face. "Creatures using toxins in hunting? How do they not poison themselves in the process?"
"That is an interesting question." I agreed. "Toxins would fill the blood of their prey, right?"
The doctor looked taken aback by my question, her eyes widening. "Wait... you... haven't encountered anything venomous like snakes before?"
"No," Zoghen admitted. "Why do you need to deliver an antidote? What would happen if you didn't inject me anyway?"
At this, Rahil's face turned a shade graver, her eyes narrowing. "Gather everyone outside the village. Now," she instructed. "This is critical."
She then tapped the of her glasses again.
"Hello... Elangkasa?"
For the rest of the night, the liaison officer, Elangkasa, instructed us to confine our activities within the perimeter. In the meantime, the humans busied themselves crafting something important for us. When dawn broke, we received a clear and direct notice to assemble in the community hall in our field of vision. In case some people ignored the notification, the village's public announcement system informed everyone with the same command.
Along with Ivan, Tresn, and Jago, we came first into the hall. The air inside smelled crisp.
Banners hung from the wooden truss of the community hall ceiling. Someone had written something in a complex character on them. Ivan told me that the writing system used to find widespread use in the western hemisphere of Wriss. It had thousands of non-phonemic characters, and the ones written on the banner meant something important to the writer.
Perseverance, Courage, Honor, Discipline.
One by one, arxurs filled the meeting hall. The murmurs of puzzlement began filling the silence. It created a soft undercurrent of voices that echoed throughout the chamber. People fidgeted in their seats, leaning forward or whispering to neighbors in curious, hushed tones as our eyes fixed on the wall screen. Right now it shows the emblem of UNSC, the planet Earth surrounded by some sort of leaves and a shield in the middle.
After everyone filled the hall, Elangkasa walked to the front of the hall.
"It came to our attention," they began. "That you haven't received any instruction on Earth's wildlife. We decided to assemble this presentation on short notice to educate and prepare you."
"Is this about the snake?" one of the arxurs inquired.
"Yeah," Elangkasa nodded, their faces looking earnest. "But we have other important things you should keep in mind too. Let's get this started."
After a graceful bow, Elangkasa exited the stage, leaving the room’s focus on the screen.
The title "The Wildlife of Earth" illuminated the screen in bold, stark letters, demanding the attention of everyone in the room. An inset popped up on the bottom right of the screen, showing a creature that resembled a venlil. It had marked differences, however, such as a pair of pronounced curled horns and eyes that faced forward.
"Hi all, I'm Raja," the venlil-like creature began.
"What in the stars is that thing?" Zoghen remarked, perhaps a bit too loud.
The video paused, and Elangkasa's calm, clear voice filled the room.
"That's Raja's avatar, his virtual representation" they explained. "He asked if he had to show himself as a human, and we told him he could appear as anything non-offensive. Please refrain from commenting before the end of the recording."
The video resumed continuing as though nothing had interrupted it.
"My friend asked me to make a short video about the wildlife on Java and what to do when encountering them," Raja explained, his avatar gesturing as he spoke. "He said to imagine my audience as a group of xenos with stronger physiques than humans in general. Also, he said that you tend to underestimate our wildlife."
He paused, the digital eyes of his avatar scanning the virtual room. "You folks are arxurs, right? I'm making this video for arxurs, aren't I?"
Raja paused again, he looked around as he waited for an answer that didn't come
"Anyway, I heard one of you got bitten by a snake. So we should start with reptiles."
Earth reptiles filled the next screen, their vibrant colors and diverse shapes rendered in vivid detail. They appeared to scale, and I saw several towering giants in the background, looming like legendary beasts.
"These animals in the back are dinosaurs," Raja clarified with a smile in his voice. "They have been extinct, but I wanted to show them to you because they look cool."
I could hear murmurs of awe coming from the audience. Raja had placed a human figure for scale, and one of the dinosaurs, with a giant head, looked like it could swallow an adult human whole.
"How did you even survive with predators that large?" I asked Jago.
"Because they died millions of years before the first humans even climbed down the trees," Jago replied with a chuckle. "I don't know why Raja showed you dinos. I suppose they do look cool, I suppose."
"They're awesome," Tresn commented. "I would worship them."
"Even more awesome than dragons?" Jago asked, nudging his mate.
"Why would you dress up as an imaginary creature when something like this existed?" Tresn retorted.
That caused a whispered argument between the couple.
"Did you notice anything about the dino?" Raja’s voice took my attention again. "They have side-facing eyes."
A detailed model of the big-headed dinosaur rotated on the screen. The name identified it as "Tyrannosaurus". Its impressive claws and sharp, menacing teeth captivated me so much that they almost made me forget that particular detail.
"That's right." Raja continued, his avatar’s digital eyes looking more animated than ever. "All reptiles on Earth have side-facing eyes, even the carnivorous ones. This often gives them a wider field of vision but less binocular vision. Remembering this can help you recognize them and keep a safe distance when necessary."
"Well, let's fast forward to modern day then," Raja added as the visuals on the screen transitioned.
A single, vivid picture of a quadruped reptile popped up. "See this? This is a crocodile, a predator found in rivers and bodies of water," he explained.
The fact that they looked like arxurs with side-facing eyes made me feel ill at ease. Its pointy, dagger-like teeth served as a clear sign that this creature hunted. Evolution didn't come up with those teeth for eating plants.
As though he sensed my suspicion, Raja played footage of a crocodile hunting. Its ambush tactics looked like our own. But then it did what Raja referred to as a "death roll," a powerful and swift rotational movement designed to overpower and tear the prey.
"Some other predatory reptiles you might encounter on this island would be the biawak." The slide transitioned, showing two animals with smoother scales than the crocodile. On the screen, we saw them fighting for a piece of flesh, sending dust everywhere.
"Those are Komodo Dragons, the largest biawak," Raja clarified. "The ones you might find would be this size."
The next slide showed a human carrying a smaller biawak like they would their own child. From a glance, it looked like an arxur hatchling, but then I noticed how its limbs attached at an odd angle to its body.
"These little babies don't pose much of a danger to you," Raja said. "You can eat them... if you want." His voice sounded playful as if trying to gauge our reactions to such a suggestion.
"Do you eat them?" I asked Jago, my eyes still fixed on the images.
"I haven't eaten one, but other people have," he admitted, a slight shrug lifting his shoulders. "They say biawaks taste a bit like chicken."
"Next, we have the nope ropes," Raja announced with a chuckle.
Pictures of snakes filled the screen. They came in all sorts of colors and patterns. Some with scales that glinted like polished gemstones, others camouflaged with their surroundings. A particular one surprised me by how large it got. Several humans held the giant snake, which must have spanned several meters from tail to head.
"The smaller ones, like the one that bit one of you, tend to have venom," Raja began, addressing the captive audience, his tone taking a more serious note. The levity from his voice now had gone.
He then conjured an anatomical diagram on the screen, displaying a detailed view of a snake’s fangs and venom glands. He began explaining how venom injection works. "These fangs," he pointed, "act like hypodermic needles. They function to deliver venom deep into the prey’s tissues."
As Raja continued, a chill seemed to settle over the room. "The venom of many snakes came as a result of complex mixing of proteins and enzymes," he elaborated. "Some components break down cell membranes, causing tissues to die and leading to widespread internal bleeding. Others target the nervous system and can cause paralysis, including the muscles needed for breathing. Some venoms cause blood to clot, leading to blockages in the vessels, while others inhibit clotting, resulting in dangerous blood loss."
As I absorbed Raja’s explanation, I found myself imagining the unthinkable. What if I had ignored the bite on Zoghen? We had left our society to build a new life here. After all the effort we had made, it would have been a heart-wrenching loss to have it all end due to a bite. Glancing around, I could see I other arxurs in the room looked uneasy, shifting in their seats.
"We need further research to determine whether snake venom has milder or more severe effects on arxurs," Raja noted. "But we do know that it can kill non-humans as well. We have a record of a member of an invasion force who crash-landed in India and succumbed to a snake bite."
Raja paused for a moment to let the information sink in, his face reflecting the seriousness of the topic. "This is why it’s crucial," he emphasized, "that if any of you are bitten by a snake, you must seek medical attention right away."
As if anticipating the next question, Raja continued, "And before you wonder, snakes don't succumb to their own venom because their blood doesn't mix with it. The venom itself evolved from a specialized type of saliva. It travels down a separate duct and is injected through the fangs. The snake's body has evolved to produce proteins that neutralize the venom if it does happen to enter their bloodstream, although this only provides protection against a small amount of venom."
"Not all small snakes have venom," Raja's avatar gesturing for emphasis, hooves splayed for added drama. "Regardless, for your own safety, stay away from all snakes. Once again, if you’re bitten, seek medical help, and pray that we have the antivenoms for the species."
I wondered how the large one hunted without venom, and then came the slide showcasing the larger snake's unique hunting technique. I found it fascinating and a bit terrifying in equal measure. The images showed a sequence of the snake locating its prey, coiling around it, and tightening its coils in a calculated manner.
"The larger ones have a different strategy," Raja explained. "Their sheer size and strength can overpower you, throttling you within its coils. Arxurs like you could perhaps struggle free, but trust me that you don't want to find yourself under their coil."
"How strong could that thing be?" Ivan muttered, his voice carrying a tinge of disbelief. He crossed his arms, uncomfortable with the images displayed.
"It seems to know how to reach for the neck," I added, noting the snake’s strategy. It seemed to target the vital areas where it could most cut off its prey's air supply.
"If you find a river and cannot see the bottom of it, stay away," Raja advised, his tone firm and serious. "You might encounter a crocodile, in which case you might lose a limb. Or a giant snake, in which case you could end up drowning."
He took a moment to provide safety tips for any potential snake encounters, such as watching our step in tall grass, where snakes liked to hide. Sturdy boots or footwear would protect us from this, and I made a mental note to ask Elangkasa about the possibility of producing them. We also learned that many snakes came out at night, like us. In the end, Raja advised us to let humans handle the snakes.
Moving on, Raja delved into the diverse wildlife of Java. He introduced us to various creatures. They have formidable prey like the rhinoceros which the humans revived from extinction. The island also housed more common prey like deer and boars, which we were allowed to hunt. He told us not to pursue domesticated ones like cows and goats. Not because they could injure us, but because they probably belong to a human.
"Trust me, you don't want angry farmers running after you with crossbows."
As an ex-farmer, I understood that sentiment. I wouldn't want people killing my livestock either
Raja then transitioned to general predators on Earth. He captivated us with majestic creatures from other places like lions, tigers, wolves, and bears. The slide showing a pack of lions working together to bring down a larger prey fascinated me. I thought coordinated group efforts and hunting strategies belonged to the domain of the sapient.
"Well, that's all about Earth animals in general. I hope you find that informative."
The venlil-like creature bowed down before the inset featuring him disappeared from the screen.
Silence filled the village hall, a respectful pause as the weight of all the information we had received settled in. Elangkasa's voice came from the ceiling. "I hope you find this short lecture useful. For further questions, you can direct them to me, and I can relay them to Raja."
I have a lot of questions. Why don't they remove the native predators? These animals not only eat their livestock but have even attacked and consumed humans too.
I tried to broach the subject during breakfast.
"If you remove the predators, then you can end up with an abundance of their prey," Jago started, pausing to sip his coffee before continuing.
"Yes, and isn't that good?" I asked, trying to understand any downside from this.
Jago shook his head. "If you can replace their position... maybe," he replied. "Perhaps this can work in your homeworld. But we humans get most of our meat from farms. So with no one to hunt them, the explosion of herbivores could cause overconsumption of plants. They would then compete with us humans."
As he spoke, Jago assembled a bite from his breakfast bowl that had a combination of leaves and pieces of meat. "As much as I lean into my carnivore rhetoric, humans need plants too for a balanced diet. If the unchecked prey eats our crops, these herbivores would then become a pest for us." He plunged his eating utensil into the mix and stabbed a cube of chicken along with a bunch of leaves.
"Ah... I see it now," said Tresn, nodding. "This stems from your diet."
"Perhaps," Jago shrugged. "Our diet did shape a significant part of our relationship with the environment."
I watched as Jago took another bite, savoring the blend of flavors in his mouth before continuing.
"But it’s not just about food," he added after swallowing. "Uncontrolled populations of herbivores can lead to landscape degradation. They can strip lands bare, causing soil erosion, and altering water cycles. This would make it difficult for forests and other ecosystems to recover. That impacts everything from the air we breathe to the water we drink."
"How do you know this so well?" Tresn asked.
Jago chuckled, setting down his utensils and wiping his mouth with a napkin. "Well, I did talk about the topic with Beer… I mean Raja before. You weren't the first one to ask such a question," he said. "Raja had performed a similar talk to a bunch of gojid before."
"Oh..." Tresn said, his ears perking up in understanding. "They also asked the same question, didn't they?"
Jago nodded. "Yeah, but from the other side. While you think of the native predators as competition, they saw them as a threat. But in the end... it was the same question, coming from someone who tried to figure out the world they found themselves in."
"I see..." Tresn murmured, his gaze drifting beyond the window of the dining hall as if he were picturing the complex and intertwined world outside where every creature, great and small, played a role in the delicate balance of nature.
The talk that Jago mentioned happened in Chapter 41, and Raja also presented himself with his sheep avatar. Due to the need for secrecy, this time he was requested to record a lecture.
Next

I'm beginning to develop a hatred for my parents. To reiterate, I am 19F, still living with my father.
I want to give a recent example so you understand my current emotional status. My birthday. I wake up at 6:15 AM. See a text from my father. (he wakes up around 5 to go to work 6:30. I am grateful for everything he does. He has long shifts. But this...) He sent me a picture of some roses and gave me a "happy birthday" text. First thought was "oh wow. he must have woke up even earlier to go to our local supermarket and get a bouquet for me!" (I recognized the aisle in the background.)
I got up to look around, no roses in sight. "Oh well," said my brain, "I don't really care, he still went extra early to take a photo. I mean, it does kind of hurt that he didn't even bother to buy a less than $10 bouquet when he makes $36/hour, an amount that would mean my birthday as a personal event is worth less than 20 minutes of his time, but it's still appreciated." I spent some time with him before he went to work, and he was telling me some relatives down south are also saying happy birthday. I replied with thanks.
I went on the daily walks I have with my sister, and she happens to work at this supermarket. I tell her about the text, and she drops a bombshell. That that supermarket opens at 7. The night before he came back home at 9:45 PM, completely exhausted and going straight to bed. This is understandable, a farmer during seeding. But there is no possible way that he would have the time or energy to go to a supermarket and take a photo of flowers. Not to mention that roses are a bit strangely romantic for a birthday. And then it became clear.
He took that picture before seeding and sent it sometime in the past for his current girlfriend. What's the alternative? Find a picture that somehow matches the aisle perfectly online? It's the only thing that makes sense. I've gone to this supermarket my entire life, I know the layout like the back of my hand.
It was the barest effort imaginable. Plus, kind of uncomfortable. I wanted to cry but I fought it as my sister and I chatted. Once my sister and I got back home, I went to class before we went back to the park with my mother to have a bit of a chill time. My mom bought me those boxed chocolates, and I hugged her for it. My sister went the extra mile. She bought me macarons and the jewelry and mascara I would use for high school graduation. I made sure to hug her too.
Anyway, all this to say my mother suddenly began to direct conversation, like she usually does. Jumping from topic to topic, not giving me any breathing room and talking over me and my sister. And then she suddenly asked for my plans for the future, (I have shared this exact plan with her many times before.) Finally get my drivers license, get a job and get some student loans to go to art school and keep it, hopefully paying it off as much as possible at once I graduate. Get an apartment, save up for a good 15 -20 years and get a pretty good house. And then live my life chill. Maybe get a cat or two. No kids, but maybe a partner if life is good to me.
And then she replied over me, "oh, finally, you're starting to think seriously. My daughter not having a job is kind of embarrassing." I felt stunned and blankly stared at her for a few seconds before shaking it off and literally gaslighting myself into thinking that was "constructive for my future." on the way back home, my sister told me "I'm so sorry you had such a horrible 19th birthday. I saw you get quiet for a long time after mom said that. Not to mention dad." I don't know where I would be without my sis. I actually cried a bit because of how well she knew me and felt for me.
This is just one example. Another one is that my sister has been suffering through a very painful disease for the past 6-7 months. Out of respect, I will not be specific. Shortly after the diagnosis, my mother made a post on Facebook, "I just heard that my daughter has (insert illness here), this will prove to be a very difficult time for me. Pray for me and my family."
ME... and my family. First. Not my sister. Herself. Not to mention without my sister's permission. Needless to say, I was infuriated, but kept my mouth shut.
Okay, speed round. My father makes so much money but somehow we're living paycheck to paycheck. Not to mention that his boss bought his house for him, and he only has to pay the interest rate every month until he can pay the boss back, which is less than a typical one bedroom apartment in our area. He's a very "buy and do nothing with it," man, we have 2 cars and 2 motorcycles that he swears he will fix and/or sell, to quote, "bring in the cash," but has had them for the past 5ish years and hasn't done anything. His girlfriend also lives down south, so after around six months of dating and sticking to that schedule, he's been flying back to this country.
He bought her a car and her son a laptop. I'm pretty sure don't need to explain how 3 separate trips in a year and a half, a whole ass vehicle, and a laptop is expensive. We don't even have the money now to get me new glasses, which I NEED to, you know, see.
Both of my parents are extremely narcissistic from my sisters unofficial diagnosis. She almost has a masters degree in psychology (only like 2 classes left). I literally trust her with my life, so you will hear many references to her while this post continues.
It feels good to finally say this somewhere.
My dad is cheating on his girlfriend with my mom, his ex wife. And for some reason, my mother let it continue for almost a year before she decided to stop and even recently sometimes she says that he'll be at her doorstep at random times of the day and ask for sexual favours.
I repressed one time my father was upset that I couldn't rake the leaves in the backyard when I was around 13, and he said "I'm going to punch your face until your teeth fall off. Do it faster." the only reason I knew was apparently my mother heard him.
When my father and I went grocery shopping, (dis was back when the pandemic was still going strong, 2021-ish) he was incredibly rude to a customer service lady who was directing us to an open cashier. Saying something like, "I am shocked that you are here, dictating where I should be going. I hope you get fired." I lagged behind him to discreetly apologize, just saying "sorry." I hope she caught what I said because she was extremely sweet and that comment came out of pocket to the poor lady who was just doing her job. We had a blow up fight once we got the car, and I was shocked he would treat her that way, especially since he knows his own daughter works in customer service.
My dad follows a certain news channel that I will not mention, but based on the fact that he has this half-baked notion that customer service peeps will do anything to scam you/masks were useless/freedom is being suppressed/communism is on the horizon, you can probably infer the kind of influence he has. I was conversing with a brick wall, basically.
When we came back to the house, we were unloading our groceries and I kept pushing it because I got emotional like a dumbass and he threatened me again and told me, in Spanish, that the neighbors can hear me and if I keep being this loud about it he'll slap me across the face. Keep in mind I was not crazy screaming, this was the same tone you have in a heated discussion. I called his bluff once we got inside and said if I really am the one in the wrong, slap me, because I will not admit defeat on this topic. Ultimately he didn't but that just solidified my disgust with him and told me that I finally got him.
My sister went to the country where my extended family was for college for a good 4 years, from when I was about 10-14, and then going to the US of A for another school year before deciding to just finish the degree at a nearby university. Now that the context that I was alone during that ~5 year time period is set, I want to write about my troubles with my sexuality and horniness in general. This is where my mother hurt me the most.
Starting with my first exposure. I was 6, to the confirmation of my sister. I thought I was 8 for the longest time, but she specified I was 6 when my mom basically handed me a book about genitalia and sexual reproduction. I remember some pages so vividly, they weren't pictures, it was more drawings.
As an example, there were two double spreads, I think the closest example I can give you is that monkey to human evolution picture. You know the one, showing that transition from a side angle. Well, this was like that, but they were naked, so you know. It would go from a tween to an adult and show body growth. It didn't have any diagrams, but gave me the first description of PIV sex and specified the aspect of reproduction at the end. I never had your run of the mill stork story, basically.
Time skip, my parents were still married, previous context is applied, I was alone with my mom- OH YEAH- I forgot to mention I've been homeschooled since grade 1, just so you understand how isolated I felt.
Basically, my mom would constantly tell me about her relationship with my dad. Getting incredibly detailed and commenting on their sex life on the regular, saying his mini me was a bit too mini, if you catch my drift, or tell me how she often couldn't... "finish" and she was left hanging, or told me about times where it wasn't consensual, including my birth story, which was basically that my mother lost my older brother and she was so depressed from it that my father... Did it to her in her sleep to "lift her spirits."
It made me incredibly uncomfortable but I didn't say anything because I knew she had no one to turn to and she was deeply depressed. I definitely think that messed me up. She drowns me in affection sometimes and tells me that I'm the light of her life and stuff and I just think she's deeply mentally ill because that's just not normal or expected for a child born from non-consensual sex. (Sorry if that comes across as rude, but it's generally a stereotype that's expected. If I'm overstepping in my assumption, please correct me.)
What crushes me is that my mom and I had a discussion about this and she says that she feels like I abandoned her as soon as my sister left, and I tried explaining that whenever I would try to talk about my interests, you know, tween stuff, she would tell me that it was dumb and that she didn't want to hear and go on to talk about their relationship. Sometimes even when I was having serious conversations.
I specifically remember one time where I was talking to her about some career options and she shut me down saying they were all stupid and proceed to talk about how lonely she felt with dad. After about 2 years of this I finally decided to try to stop interacting because I just couldn't talk with her. I know she's lying though, because she claims this was basically overnight and I distinctly remember the years it took for me to drift away from her.
This next things are going to be kind of graphic, okay?
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Basically I was a horny teenager. Nothing new.
I had no sex toys, no lube, nothing to assist my raging libido. I started self-pleasuring when I was pretty young, some nights I would do it multiple times. I was also kind of an insomniac. At one specific moment, my mom caught me watching gay porn. Quick point to make is that of I preferred gay or lesbian porn compared to straight stuff but it didn't come from a gross appropriation way; it was a horny unaware bisexual tween that was tired of straight people way XD.
She yelled at me in disgust, "[insert name here]! That's so disgusting! What is wrong with you?!" after that she would basically do a random search above and below my bed and shame me for anything deemed gross, like underwear or something. This breaching of privacy diminished over time, but the horniness followed. Eventually was desperate for anything lol so I had to default to anything I could get my hands on. It went from a sharpie, to a hairbrush, to a... Large, blue flashlight.
Going off of my memory and a nearby ruler, the diameter was around 2 and a half inches and the length was around 12. It was big, cylindrical, and metallic, however, like 8 inches of the length (the grip) was comparable to very course sandpaper. I wasn't that much of an idiot. I tried putting it in once, failed miserably, and it very much hurt, so I ditched the idea and used it another way.
Basically, she did another search and found the flashlight, confronting me and backing me into a corner, because how can you explain that? I was hoping I could trust my mom to keep that a secret when I told her, because, again, we were already talking about her sexual problems and I never approached dad about them.
I was expecting/hoping for the golden rule, but of course, as soon as he comes back from work, she tells on me. And my dad absolutely freaked out, basically yelling at me for 3 hours and calling me depraved among other words I will not repeat, and she did nothing. She just sat there in the background, interjecting with her own berating tone. She claims now that she thought that I was inserting it and could be causing damage, so she went to my dad in the hopes that he could "set me straight." which apparently meant that she turned off her brain when I said it wouldn't fit so I stopped.
In that same discussion we had, I specified that that event made me not trust her. I still stand by the fact that I took a chance in trusting her with that information and she knew how my father would react. It wasn't her place to tell and she seriously caused problems with my sexual exploration. I had a strong case of religious guilt and I developed sneaky kid syndrome because of the both of them. Not to mention how long it took me to unpack my sexuality.
Grew up in a religious family, and you can guess by the fact that I have accepted my sexual identity, bisexual, for about a year now, that I didn't have a good time growing up in the church I was in. I was consecrated within the first 6 months of my life, went to church every weekend, and went back home only to be met with my father's favourite Spanish pastor who had 3 hour sermons that we would listen to for the entire day. I am not exaggerating in any sense. We would listen to like 3 different sermons. Our dad would just sit there on the couch or a chair and tell us to shut our mouths whenever we began talking. That pastor had such a distinctive tone and it gives me a weird mental response if I listen to him now. Whenever I talk about this with my sister I just attribute it to the war flashback memes LOL.
I've heard this is actually a very common story, but I was spanked as a young child if I acted up in church. Even if I so much as needed to walk around a bit from sitting for 2 hours, or whined when I was hungry. Apparently my sister was a one time "offense" and she never did anything again from the first spanking, but I was much more "rebellious." I don't remember being spanked, but my sister and mother have told me about it and I can conclude that he would drag me downstairs to where the male bathroom was and spank me.
Imagine physically abusing your child in a "holy" place and leaving them mentally scarred for the rest of their lives.
Couldn't be me.
(By the way the most recent conversation with my mom brought up this topic and she had this demented look on her face. I don't believe in anything right now but if there was any proof of demonic possession it would be my mothers face in that moment. She straight up had this grin when she talked about me being spanked, and when I said it wasn't funny and described how traumatic spanking could have been for me (I'm not sure, again, I don't remember, but spanking and trauma basically go hand in hand) she began crying and told me not to tell her anymore because "it reminds me of the suffering I went through at the hands of your father."
It might have sound callous but I was stone cold when I told her that it's in the past and there's nothing that can be done now. I know that I might have stepped on a trigger but it seems quite insensitive to talk over someone like that right when they are opening up about their struggles. idk all I know is I would never do that to someone else no matter how much pain I was in. She straight up interrupted me (relayed that info to my sis and she just said "self-pity crocodile tears," which I very much agree on).
Anyway, I kept going to church until I was around 15. Nearing the end of my regular attendance, I would feel so hot and stuffy at the end of regular church service, almost crying and feeling like I was seconds from hyperventilating sometimes. Sorry, but that was not "God touching my soul," thank you very much, that was a visceral reaction from choosing to go into such a negative environment.
When I finally decided I wasn't going anymore, my parents didn't force me, but they did guilt trip me every two seconds. Especially my father, who would call me his church "compañera" which directly translates to female companion, because my mom and sister weren't going either (just saying again, my mom also guilt tripped me but it wasn't nearly as much). The people in that church were insufferable. He would consistently ask me for about a year if I was going to church with him once I dropped it.
Essentially church equalled hell to me and my sister. I can't think of a single time when I felt welcomed or comfortable in that space.
I also think I was a child of neglect when I was young. One, because my sister spent the most time with me when I was a baby, my mother only caring for the necessities because of postpartum depression, according to my sis, the caring witness.
I was quite a silent baby after around 6 months, and my sister took the brunt work of keeping me entertained and taking care of emotional needs. Needless to say, my dad was also absent from my life, always at work.
My sister told me a story, that when I was a toddler (before I was talking), I would stare at her for an abnormal amount of time. To the point where I would get fussy for how long I was turning my head to look at her. One day, she turned me so I could look at her without having my head in that awkward position. My mother came inside the room and looked at the both of us for a few seconds before saying, to my sister's face, "You're getting along so well with her. I'm glad I didn't abort you."
Needless to say, this was scarring for her. She told me it's okay to write this down, for reference. When she thought about it in retrospect, she realized that I stared at her like she was my mother. And my mom straight up says that my sister is making what she said up.
I was a wee lass, around 3.5 yrs old, and I woke up at like 4 am and managed to open the front door by myself, walking in -30C to my first daycare by myself in my very thin pajamas (for context the door of the old house had a lock that was only for someone outside coming in, so if you could turn the knob from the inside the door would open). My lips were blue by the time a worker saw me on the road, I was almost there. I am confident that if she hadn't seen me, I would have died. She drove me back, to the shock of my entire family. Just for reference the daycare was about a block away, so it wasn't that far, but think of my tiny footsteps and the temperature I was in. Yep.
A story told multiple times was that one time during the second daycare I went to, they didn't let me change my clothes when I was wet. They also didn't feed me whenever I misbehaved or talked out of line, you know, how children do. I hated going there, but I didn't really have a choice since my mom was still trying to get a nursing degree, my dad was at work, and my sister was in middle school. I grew accustomed to the abuse and I theorize that that caused my unhealthy relationship with food (I have a bad habit of trying to eat faster and more than other people depending on their speed because I feel like I won't get enough).
All this to say, with the amount of neglect stories that both of us have that have been completely repressed or forgotten, it's safe to say that we didn't have much parental support. Internet became my escapism in life after about 9 yrs old.
Forgot to mention that for a lot of my formative years, my sister would babysit me when both of my parents were at work, my mother and father having the nightshift and my father being gone the entire day, as well. I can confidently say that other than a roof over my head and food on my plate, my parents were never truly there for me. I would give credit to my sister for fulfilling that role. They always made it about themselves, or treated us like crap.
Something that still hurts to this day is that I have a lot of problems with my weight. I'm overweight. But something my father does is that he'll call us by one describing feature, calling me gorda, which literally just means fat female. In an English context, it would be like calling someone fatso or fatty.
My sister? Flaca, means skinny female. On the opposite end of the spectrum, my sister was always thinner than me, but the same sentiment applies. When she was younger and her freckles were still visible, he would call her escupido de mate, which is difficult to explain. If you know mate the drink, you understand that it's basically a loose-leaf tea through a straw with a filter. This basically means someone spit the contents of the mate on her face, hence, the freckles.
Whenever I confront him about this, he always tries to explain it away as "cultural," and now, I'm all about respecting that, but there is a difference between calling someone a playful, cultural nickname and actively insulting someone, and sometimes, it just hurts. Like you were stabbed with a tiny knife to the intestines. We've told him many times to stop, but it's just not getting through his head, or he just wants to hurt us.
And so.
I kind of forgotten about this draft LOL. I graduated 2 days ago as of writing this. It sounds harsh, but me and my sister decided to basically tell some white lies so that our parents were appeased on not being invited to the grad. My sister took a bunch of recordings and pictures so that they they at least had something, you know? Big moment of regret before was that there was going to be a school livestream and I sent my mother the link before I really thought about it.
They had a section where the students would give white flowers to the parents/guardians, and I emailed if I could give it to my sis. Principal said it was okay, but I realized that my mother might be triggered if she saw that or something. I really wanted to say thank you to any higher power that was supporting me because they were having technical issues with the livestream the day of and she basically saw only my moments from my sister's recordings.
My sister has once again come in with another post from mom, "Congratulations, my girl. Have a better life than mine," with some of the pictures my sister gave. Once again, about herself. It might sound small or nonexistent. But she always has to refer to herself. Why can't she end the post on, "congratulations, my girl?" Or, "Congratulations [insert my name here]!" It always has to be about her.
Two "new" events. for context, my father is currently in home country but went on a previous trip about ~6 months before then. He got COVID from his then girlfriend (they have recently broken up. woo!) and felt symptoms for about a week, meanwhile he got me sick and I had COVID for almost a month. We went to the doctor twice, and the second time, he said to the doctors face, and I quote, "I hope this medication helps because if my daughter doesn't wake up tomorrow I will buy a gun and come to kill you." Yeah. Needless to say this death threat landed him a court case and more security cameras installed out and inside the clinic.
I berated him in the car, like full-on chastising, and he was silent the entire time. But after he drove by a few days later and saw the security cameras I realized that my dad was actually insane because he actually bragged about it. It pissed me off that after a long and very complicated story he didn't even face ramifications for his actions, either. I know it sounds messed up, but I wanted him to land in prison for some time or even just get a spot on his criminal record, but alas, he walks off scot-free. I count this as a separate story, but it's connected to this one.
We brought our mom up to speed on the situation right before the whole court thing went down, talking about how his "work buddies" were giving him tips on how to handle this. My dad told me and my sister that one specific coworker told him that he didn't even need a lawyer. We just wanted our mom to know what was going on in our lives and voice on how we felt about our dad's stupid and downright deplorable behaviour, but she ended up sending our dad a massive text telling him to not believe this coworker with very hostile language, and of course, because we were the only people he told this to, he confronted me.
This is when I fucked up because my first instinct was to lie and said I didn't, but of course he didn't believe me. So I apologized and took the brunt of the blame by buffering it and saying only I told my mom sparing my sis because she is in much more danger than me for getting kicked out, (her and her husband are also staying at my dads house because the rent they had on their house was too much and they want to save for their wedding (they are common-law) and move to another place in the country).
Of course, when I confront my mom over text she deflects and pins the blame on me for telling her in the first place when it was her choice to tell that information to dad or not. See, she isn't as up-front as my dad, which is why we've compared her to a snake before XD. Always trying to find a way push blame onto anyone else.
So. I just scrolled up. And this is straight up the definition of trauma dumping XD.
Also recently, my mother began another phase of being an almond mom, (she's fluctuated periodically throughout our lives) and she messaged me and my sister about a supplement series that will somehow cure my epilepsy and my sister her disease. She doesn't seem to realize that both of these illnesses can't be cured or helped with the types we have.
Again, I cannot speak for my sister, but at least from my perspective, I have none of the traditional causes for a seizure, like flashing lights or loud sounds. Every single seizure I've had is on the weekend. Both of my doctors attributed it to an emotional overload once I begin to process the week that has just transpired, and I definitely feel more jittery and strange during the weekend when I have that downtime. As well as when I have a strong emotional reaction.
You can understand why no amount of supplements are going to stop me from my seizures. And just to clarify, my sister's illness cannot be helped by this either. Both of us found this deeply offensive and when my sister came back from work with some alcohol, I drank for the first time with my sister. (My countries legal drinking age is 19.)
It was ultimately a good time, my sister would constantly get house remixes on her fyp on TikTok for some strange reason, but we were still distraught by what she texted us. It was just a difficult moment for the both of us and we succumbed to alcohol to mitigate our feelings. We both agreed to never do it again.
Another time skip and I think I got a breakthrough with my mother. A few days ago my sister and I went to visit her and she began to tell us about how she was having doubts of the religion we had and we gave her a bunch of resources and an in-depth discussion on the topic, and she seemed receptive. We had a similar conversation today when I visited her alone.
I think she's beginning to see.
However, I still think she's a narcissist.
She basically called herself one. She texted me that I got a cheque from the government and that I should open a bank account to put it in. I told her about the bank I had in mind, and when I was leaving, she said "you're finally beginning to become a human being," and when I told her, naturally, that I was always human, she said, "no, you were an extension of me, but now you're becoming your own person." Of course, I just responded with "Oh yes, because the point of being a human being is opening a bank account," just to end the conversation. But then she said, "forgive your narcissistic mother," with a giggling tone while I was hugging her goodbye.
I definitely think she's becoming a bit more tolerable, but she'll have random bouts of disturbing language in a joking manner, such as homophobic, sexist, racist, etc. stereotypes that just make me so incredibly uncomfortable. It's like you don't know which mom you're going to talk with some days. But like I said, at least she is willing to talk, unlike my father, who wouldn't listen to another opinion for the life of him.
I'm not going to forget that my father is deeply homophobic, racist, and sexist as well.
Anyway, I think I'll leave the post here. I definitely have forgotten some things or left some stuff out, but I'm satisfied with what I've written. It's just a massive rant about my parents and history. Idk if anyone will read this, but thank you if you did. It's greatly appreciated.
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This is very, very long.

First- Previous - Next
Blinking rapidly, I looked around with groggy, gritty eyes. A short, blonde woman, and from her clothes I could tell she was either a nurse or doctor, bustled around my bed. That and the fact that I was hooked to beeping monitors told me I was in a hospital. Somehow, I rated a room of my own.
“Ah, Miss Xi, I see you are awake. Don’t talk just yet. Here, drink some water. It will help.”
She handed me a glass of ice water and I drank greedily through the straw. My mouth felt like old leather. I could feel the liquids hydrating the dried out skin. I swirled the cold water around my mouth, relishing the feel of it.
“How…” My voice croaked painfully.
“Shush now for a bit. I’ll answer your questions for you. My name is Lieutenant Jala Fitzgerald. I’m a nurse on the navy hospital ship Blanchfield. You’ve been unconscious for several days. Doctor Akhmetov will be by shortly, and your friend was asleep when you started to wake up. He’ll be along as fast as he can.”
“Friend?” It hurt to say just that one word.
“Yes, Mister Bennet. He’s such a nice young man. He came aboard with you and has been here every day to sit with you. You are quite lucky to be alive. When your shuttle crashed, he ran through that storm to rescue you. Without him finding you and starting first aid, you would not be with us.”
“The last thing I remember was boarding the shuttle with Frank to fly up the Star Wanderer.” My throat felt dry, and my voice sounded like a stranger’s.
The hatch opened and a tall, spare man joined us. He had short hair going grey with a fully gray beard and piercing blue eyes. “That is normal in traumatic brain injuries,” he said. “Good morning. I am Doctor Akhmetov. Where should I begin?”
I did not answer but waved for him to begin.
“We’ve had you in a medically induced coma for the past few days. Let’s start with your major injuries. The shockwave broke six of your ribs and damaged her lungs, liver, kidneys, and heart. We repaired your heart with some synthetic muscle fibers, and it will be good as new within a week. The quickheal will take care of the rest.
“We had to remove your spleen. We’ve already started to regenerate it, but that will take several weeks. A large shard of metal pierced your left calf. It damn near severed it. Now you’ve got metal bones, and the soft tissue damage is on its way back with the quickheal.
“Anyway, your recovery is progressing fantastically. You have responded to the quick heal better than most. The big side effect of quickheal is you will be tired and hungry for the next few weeks. You will eat about two to three times your normal caloric intake per day and sleep about twenty hours a day.
“You came damned close to dying. That young man’s effort and fast thinking is the only reason you are still with us,” he finished.
“I barely know him. I have no idea why he would have done it.”
“You will have to ask him. He will be by soon. We’ve also notified the Admiral that you are awake. He’ll probably come by to see you soon.”
“You said Frank was still aboard?”
“Yes.” She keyed in a series of commands to her data pad and said, “He’s on deck eight, heading to the lifts now. He should be here in a few minutes.”
“Well, I have other patients to see,” Akhmetov said abruptly. “Though none of them are human. If you need anything, the navy has decreed that we take good care of you.”
I didn’t know what to say. I am unsurprised that the navy would care for me. After all, I was onboard their shuttle that blew up. Not saying the navy was at fault. But they had the resources that I didn’t. I am happy to let them foot the bill.
I heard a chime and the nurse said, “Ah, there is your friend. He’s a polite one. He didn’t just barge in. I’ll let him in.”
“Um… Good morning,” Frank said as he walked in. “I’m glad to see you are finally awake.”
He looked a lot less like a kid. He didn’t look any older, not really. He’d been a bit nervous and trepidatious on the planet. But now there was something in his eyes and the way he carried himself.
“Good morning, kid.” I cleared my throat a few times to shake the cobwebs off my vocal cords. “I understand you saved my life. I don’t know how to thank you for that.”
He looked at the floor in discomfort before speaking. “You don’t have to. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“I heard you shot a large river predator, something like a crocodile, on the way,” Fitzgerald said. It sounded like the nurse had a crush on the kid. She could do worse, he was smart, cute, had a good future, and apparently brave.
“Um. Yeah. I never really saw what it was, but it thought I was on the menu.”
“Why did you do it? We barely know each other.”
“Honestly, I cannot tell you. I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve been stuck here with not much to do. I’ve never been one to help others and nobody’s ever raised a hand to help me, so I figured it as the way the universe works.
“I grew up on a frontier world, Ernte. Funny, ernte is German for harvest, but it was a poor planet. We had enough food for the population, but it was hard. My parents died when I was about ten, and I became a ward of the state. It was not a good life. I lived in a group home with twenty other kids.
“It was not a good life. I got the bare minimum I needed to survive. I got an education. I got fed and clothed, though I bought my first new clothes at twenty-two. I had no money, so I got a job at fifteen. I worked my ass off and saved every penny I earned. I excelled in school. I am good at math, mechanically inclined, and can work my way through plans and diagrams to troubleshoot issues. I got accepted to Alacalufe Polytechnic University on Kawéskar. I qualified for grants and scholarships. The school would be free, but I still had to get there and pay for my own room and board.
“When I turned eighteen, I was no longer a ward of the state, and I was kicked out of the group home. For two years, I was homeless. I lived where I could, went from shelter to shelter, sometimes on the streets. I worked as much as I could and fought those that tried to take what was mine. I killed a man. He kept stealing from me, taking what little I could get for myself. I confronted him and he came at me with a knife. I have a scar where he stabbed me. I…” he paused before continuing in a subdued voice, “I picked up a board with nails in it and hit him… I kept hitting him until I could not swing it anymore.
“The police determined it was self-defense, but I’d already been in jail for three months. I decided that I was going to get off than planet, no matter what it took. I signed on to work on a tramp freighter as a cook to pay my way. It was over three years since I’d graduated primary school, but I made it to the University. I had to work my way through, even with the grants and scholarships. It took me six years to graduate.
“This was my first job as an engineer after school. Out of all the people I’d met, you were the only one to take an interest in me. You taught me, not because you had to, but because you wanted to. I learned more in a few days about practical engineering than I’d learned in six years.
“I couldn’t let the only person in the universe who’d helped me because wanted die on me.”
Fitzgerald and I both had sat in silence. I’d learned more about him in the last five minutes that I had since I met him. He’d probably never shared that with anyone.
“After my mother finds out about this, my mother will adopt you into our family. Trust me, you will never be alone again,” I promised.
“That’s not necessary,” he objected.
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t argue with my mother for anything. If you are smart, you won’t either.”
“I’ll think on it.” He sounded less unsure about it. Boy, he had no idea how much his life would change. I have a huge family.
“How do I get ahold of Admiral Pierre? I need to tell him about that gravitational tic.”
“Um… I already did. He came here to visit you and met with me. I told him what you’d found. I’d had the opportunity to dig up more data. There is a seventeen point five second pause, then a half second gravitational surge. As you head further insystem, the surges gained power.
“Since you’ve been unconscious, we’ve had four Science and Survey vessels show up with over a thousand survey probes. Then the Connie battlegroup showed up telling us to leave. Then the Marine Expeditionary Force dropped out of hyper and ran the Connies off, then the Lopingu science ships showed up.”
“Wait, slow down. Connie battlegroup?”
“Um… From what I heard, they popped into hyper and ordered us to leave. The Admiral refused and the CO of the battlegroup threatened the fleet. Marine Expeditionary Force Twelve had been hiding out in hyper. They dropped in real close to Umsurrat and scrambled almost eight hundred fighters. Apparently the MEF’s commander, General Tokuda, expected the Connies to do something stupid and was prepared to stop them.”
“It’s a bad idea to argue with a Marine Expeditionary Force,” Fitzgerald said. “The Connie admiral realized that and hightailed it out of here.”
“That had to have blown their drives to hell and gone,” I observed.
“Oh, they did. I found out military ships have two hyper drives, just for this situation,” Frank replied. “Their engineers should have them repaired by now. Their designs are a bit more robust and have large blocks you can remove and replace with stocks and then fix the broken one at your leisure.”
“Don’t fall in love with the idea, kid. Civvy ships operate on a tighter budget. No tax dollars for us. We can’t have that much space and cash tied into something we probably won’t ever need. Plus the crew needed to run an operation like that? We had twenty-one people running the Wanderer, 24/7. I’ve seen smaller ships run even tighter.”
“I’ve been thinking on that.”
“Uh oh, you’ve been bitten by the bug, haven’t you?”
“What bug?”
“The Navy Bug… Capital N and B.”
“Yeah. Maybe. I guess. It just seems that I can get decent pay, learn a lot, and finally find a place where I fit. I looked into it. With my experience and licensing, all I do is go to OCS and come out an ensign, keep my nose clean, and make L-T-J-G after a year.” He used the slang term for Junior Grade Lieutenant.
“I think that’s a great idea,” Fitzgerald said. “I will be going back to school soon to get my doctorate at the Harrington Medical Center on Lothlorien, and the Navy is paying for it. They will pay for any schooling, licensing or whatever.”
She was giving it the hard sell. I was positive she had a crush on him now.
“Lothlorien… I always laugh at that. Who would name a system and planets after an old book?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I always loved Tolkien’s works,” I replied.
“I’ve never had the time to read for fun.” His voice held a note of… not quite anger or bitterness, but something near.
“You should take the time. Not everything in this universe requires such seriousness. You’ve made it off the streets. You’ve made your way on your own terms. Own it. Be proud of it, kid. Shit, there’s people out there twice your age that haven’t gotten to where you are.”
“I could share some books with you, if you want,” Fitzgerald offered. “Meet me in the mess at twelve hundred hours.”
She didn’t wait for him to say yes, she just bustled out of my little room. Frank looked at the hatch with a slightly lost, perplexed look on his face.
“She likes you. You could do a lot worse. You should meet her for lunch, kid. You’ve been handed a shit sandwich already. Eat some cake. Grab what happiness you can while you can.”

Acts I to III are available in my previous posts. This act is the longest of all and thus, I've been forced to divide it into two posts. Make sure you're comfortable. Enjoy your read!
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Act IV: The Clouds Burst (1/2)

Maisie's evasion
While Ramsay is secretly covering them in the control room, Wu and Theo enters Katia Lesser's lab and with Rod Drummond's unexpected help (he's tired of working for Biosyn and intend to get out of the valley), they neutralize the scientist and frees Maisie from her cell. They then cross the other secret labs within Biosyn's Citadel and we several interesting elements:
- Dissected animals are seen in one of the labs while others are suffering medical experiments.
- In one of the sections, there are ten rooms. Nine of them are empty and in the tenth one, there are nothing but locusts, which surprise Theo. However, Drummond points out they don't exactly look like ordinary locusts (they're only slightly bigger than modern locusts. They could even be portrayed by real locusts (a bit enlarged by visual tricks) if this was a film) and noticing Wu's guilty look, the two men and Maisie realize he had a role in their creation). But he doesn't have the time to give explanations about those locusts.
- Another room has a window which overlooks a large dark bunker-like hall. In its darkness, they glimpse the shape of a large theropod with raised dorsal spines and crocodile-like scutes but when he sees the creature a bit more clearly, Drummond says something like "Those idiots made their cheap Godzilla knockoff!", recognizing the creature from the short film he mentioned to Wu in the Drinking Confession scene. He calls the mysterious theropod an "Ugly bastard" and a perversion of real dinosaurs.
After the labs, they head for the metro station just as planned but due to his lame leg (in TRQ, it was pierced by one of the Indoraptor's claws), Wu can't go with them and decides to stay in order to win some time for them. He and Maisie have a last look/exchange, with the teenager finally showing Wu some genuine respect and gratitude. Wu gives Theo a flash drive, urging him to send its content to Guillaume Vuillier of the WDMC as it contains the evidences of a scourge Biosyn intend to release soon. They separate, with Wu going in the opposite direction.
While the guards are chasing Wu, Maisie, Theo and Rod enter the metro and picks one of the stations on the eastern side of Auronzo (actually one of the observation towers). The metro leave the Citadel, following the valley loop. However, the metro system was badly designed and it can only follow the loop in a clockwise direction, forcing them to make a considerable detour and waste precious minutes.
Wu is soon caught and Dodgson's arrival in the control room prevents Ramsay from further helping the fugitives. Seeing one of the metro heading east, Dodgson has it stopped halfway of its journey and orders the guards to go inside the tunnels and bring back Maisie. Aware that Wu betrayed him, Dodgson takes a tablet and activates a certain Prometheus protocol.
Underground, Maisie, Theo and Drummond are forced to leave the metro and they try to find an exit before the guards can catch them. They find a door on the side and breaking it, they enter another smaller tunnel. However, the ground is slippery and they fall, descending further down into the darkness.
When the guards sent in the tunnels tell Dodgson that they lost Maisie, the CEO has a fit of anger.
The old amber mines
After their fall, Maisie, Theo and Drummond discover that they're in the old amber mines, which Biosyn exploited until their depletion, and search for an exit. Drummond also mentions that the valley's underground is like a cheese and that he wouldn't be surprised if some tunnels lead outside of the valley, which would explain all the incidents which occurred in the past year. During their crossing of the mines, they find several human skeletons or remains. It's implied that it's all the undesirable people who trespassed into the valley (governments' and rival companies' spies, anti-Biosyn activists...).
Should the giant temnospondyl be scrapped from the frozen lake sequence, it's probably going to be included here, as there are underground rivers and reservoirs by the mines.
Aviano Air Base
At Aviano Air Base, at the very gates of the Alps, Jessica Bigelow boards a US air force helicopter which takes her to Auronzo.
Prometheus Protocol
Wu is brought to Dodgson, which shows him a screen. Wu is aghast as it's a Twitter feed with the following hashtag #MadScientistWu, which is trending. Dodgson then explains that he had a file containing evidences of Wu's ethical misbehaviour (his work on the Indominus and Indoraptor, and especially the use of human DNA in their making ..) be made and ready to be sent to the media at once should he betray him. His reputation being destroyed for good, Wu breaks down and Dodgson orders the guards to bring him to Dr Lesser's lab and put him in Maisie's cell. Several characters (Ramsay, Pellegrino, Chapman, Everett...) watch Wu being led away by the guards.
With Mia Everett being nearby, Dodgson declares that Biosyn shouldn't have accepted a single InGen employees within its ranks has they have been nothing but traitors and burdens, before announcing to Mia he finally decided to pull the plug on her research program, as her rival and his team have much more promising results and shall be soon covered in glory.
Raiding and Betrayal
While the afternoon reaches its end, Owen, Dougal and Kayla end up near one of the Sanctuary's seven observation towers. There's no one inside and Kayla suggest entering it to raid some of the supplies it contains. She also tells her two companions that there is a metro station beneath each of the towers, stations connected to the Citadel by the tunnels. Thinking they could infiltrate the Citadel by those tunnels, Dougal agrees with her plan and the trio enters the tower and steal the needed supplies but a drone has spotted them. Just as they are about to follow the tunnels, they notice flashlights, those of incoming Biosyn guards. They climb back to the top of the tower but a security vehicle parks in front of the building and other guards step out of it. Surrounded, the trio prepare for a siege inside the tower but just as the guards are about to enter, Kayla points her weapon on Dougal's head and tells Owen to drop his or his colleague dies.
From the nearby forest, Claire witnesses the capture of her two colleagues and watches the Biosyn Security vehicle taking Kayla and the prisoners to the Citadel while the sound of helicopters approaching can be heard.
The board arrives
The helicopter(s) transporting Biosyn's board of directors lands on the Citadel's helipad and its passengers (which include Nathan Quinn and Zoe Murdoch) are welcomed by Dodgson and Ramsay.
Obstinacy
At the same time, Jessica Bigelow is brought to the Citadel and asks to see Dodgson but Murdoch stands in her way, claiming he's very busy. The CIA agent insists and Dodgson finally listens to what she has to say. But he wants to carry on with his event whatever happens, but reassure her as for Biosyn's most important research: They're already on a hard-drive in his office.
The cells
We cut to Owen and Dougal as they are locked up in a cell in the Security HQ. Kayla is standing outside, next to Pellegrino who's interrogating the two men about their mission and Claire's whereabouts. The smuggler reveals to the two WDMC agents that powerful friends suggested to her to let herself be arrested by the Italians as they expected they'll use her as a Trojan horse. She adds that there's nothing personal, she's just thinking about herself. While Pellegrino carries on with her questions, Kayla leaves the Security HQ and meets Bigelow by its exit (telling the audience that Kayla's powerful friends are the CIA). She asks her about their next moves and the CIA agent answers that the two of them will leave the valley with Dodgson and his escort. Back in the cell, Owen and Dougal hope Claire will succeed.
Unleashed dragon
As she's nearing the Citadel, Claire is spotted by a patrol of mercenaries or a drone. They chase after her and in her flight, she ends up in an enclosed part of the Sanctuary with several paddocks and cages. Several of them contain animals and it's implied that it's where Biosyn keeps those it just acquired or bred before releasing them in the valley. One of the cages contains a tyrannosaur and just as the mercenaries are about to catch her, Claire releases the predator and the mercenaries panic, triggering the rex's attack. It kills them before turning towards Claire, who's crouched and not making a single move. The rex sniffs her lengthily and Claire notices it's the animal she saw the day before, which left the droppings she used to mask her scent... The rex leaves Claire alone and disappears in the woods, heading north while Claire heads in the opposite direction. On the way, she sees a mysterious large theropod (she and the audience have visual obstacles which prevents them from clearly seeing it but we know it's the one from the bunker under the Citadel) being transported towards the western part of the valley.
In the besiegers' camp
While the sun is setting, a meeting is held in one of the besiegers camp's tents. Among the attendees are Vuillier, Nyamu, Viscontini, the leader of the Carabinieri Colonel Orlando Pasolini, and those of the Italian and Austrian Special Forces (and Pazzi through videoconference as he's still in Rome). They're talking about Biosyn's defenses and forces, the species which might be encountered in the Sanctuary, eventual negotiation strategies, the WDMC agents' mission, the grey guards who are in the valley and currently heading to the Citadel... Argument breaks out as some (like Pazzi) advocates for an immediate offensive, to surprise Dodgson and prevent him from fleeing or preparing some nasty surprise, while others want to wait until dawn, to let time for the grey guards and the eventual surviving WDMC agents to accomplish their mission in addition of avoiding sending men in a valley full of deadly animals in the dark of the night. Pazzi is for an immediate offensive and gives his blessing to colonel Pasolini.
Worried about the fate of his agents, Vuillier contacts the grey guards, which are already heading to the Citadel, following a path in the uplands.
The US spies
From a nearby wood, some people are seen spying the camp and northern entrance of Biosyn's lands. We cut to a meeting room inside the CIA's headquarters at Langley where Gibbon and his colleagues just received news that an offensive is about to start at Auronzo. Some ask the head of the DSD news about his agent inside Biosyn's Citadel.
Open the gates
Bigelow, with Ramsay's help, is trying to persuade Dodgson to cancel the event, take the hard-drive with the key research, and secretly evacuate Auronzo before ordering the control room to open the gates and let the Italian authorities in. While those would be searching through the Citadel, they would leave the area by the mountains before heading to a secret safehouse. Dodgson complains that the only help the US government sends is her but she mockingly retorts that the US won't risk a war with Italy and Austria just because of him and that had he been more careful, all that mess wouldn't have happened.
Watching footage of the besiegers' camp, Dodgson finally orders the opening of the northern gate. He and Ramsay then go to the auditorium, where Biosyn's board and other important figures are waiting for the CEO.
The convoy
Believing Dodgson finally surrendered, Colonel Pasolini and most of his Carabinieri enter Biosyn's lands while the Italian and Austrian Special Forces remain in the camp. After passing by the mercenaries (who were ordered by Dodgson to stand down) and the airstrip, the convoy enters a narrow pass through the mountains, the same one through which the hunters were brought to the Sanctuary.
Chips
In the Citadel's auditorium, Dodgson begins his presentation with a speech about how dinosaurs and other de-extinct animals were used since InGen first cloned them. At the same time, all the non-essential employees are gathered in the cafeteria and locked there by the mercenaries on his orders while others are deployed in some of the Citadel's most strategic locations (the control room, the labs' entrance...)
Meanwhile, the Carabinieri convoy has entered the Sanctuary and following the main road to the Citadel, they pass by the lake seen in A bed in the trees scene and several animals, including predators, which do nothing but watch the convoy. Drones are seen flying above the Italian vehicles. However, just as the Citadel is visible in the distance, the convoy stops when the first vehicle notices that a fallen tree is lying across the road. While it's quite large, said tree is still light enough to be moved by a group of people and with a lot of effort. Colonel Pasolini orders for a certain number of his men to get out and move the tree out of their way but while they start accomplishing their task, the Carabinieri feels the ground trembling beneath their feet and they and those still in the vehicles see ripples in the water puddles along the road. A racket starts to be heard in the woods on both sides of the road and in the distance, trees can be heard being jostled or even falling. Aware that large dinosaurs must be nearby, Pasolini orders his men to get back inside the vehicles and to the last in the convoy to return to the last crossroads and search another way to the Citadel. But just as said vehicle turns around, a tree falls across the road, larger than the one ahead of the convoy. The latter is now stuck between the two fallen trees and when they see human silhouettes running away from the one behind the convoy, the Carabinieri realize that they've fallen into an ambush (hearing the Carabinieri's communications on the radio, Vuillier and Viscontini wonder what treachery Dodgson has planned). Meanwhile, the drones have returned over the convoy and the racket in the woods gets closer and closer and the people in the convoy glimpse three large necks rising from the forest: argentinosaurs, charging argentinosaurs. Frightened at such a sight, the Carabineri are struck with fear and just as the sauropods are about to burst out of the forest at any second, a dreadful booming sound (similar to that of the orcs horns in Battle of the Five Armies; or the reapers' sound from the Mass Effect series) comes from speakers on some nearby elevation and in response, the sauropods let out a deafening bellow heard across much of the Sanctuary. Before they can take action, the Carabinieri are attacked by the argentinosaurs and their suite of small predators.
In the control room, Pellegrino witnesses the attack through some drone visuals and is wondering how it happened. She orders the technicians to send a signal in the sauropods' brain chips (during the Inspection scene at the beginning of the story, Pellegrino explain to the group that the Sanctuary animals are chipped) in order to make them stop but when they try to send the signal, the get an error notification, and one of the technicians say that either the chips fried and are driving the animals mad, or they were hacked. Pellegrino then asks to deactivate the aerial defense system to let the besiegers fly their helicopters into the valley but she's told that some program recently inserted prevent them from doing that for the entire duration of the prenstation. Powerless, the head of security watches the argentinosaurs crushing vehicles and men under their feet, and their suites of small predators harassing them. She's even more surprised when a few Ankylosaurus (first glimpsed in the news montage when the report talks about "tailored dinosaurs". Compared to those from the fossil record and those made by InGen, those Ankylosaurus are bigger and more high-legged, giving them enhanced mobility. Design-wise, it's basically the one from the actual JW films, albeit perhaps more intimidating) join the fray. Having suspicions, she head for the auditorium.
After learning that Pasolini and his Carabinieri fell into an ambush, an offensive is launched against the walls of Biosyn lands. Vuillier and Viscontini watch the Italian and Austrian Special Forces engaging the mercenaries defending the walls by the airstrip. They hope they'll soon make a breach so they can reach the convoy before it's too late (they know they can't send helicopters due the pterosaurs acting as the Citadel's aerial defense).
In the valley, one of the Carabinieri notice that the animal isn't acting on its own will (it's seen blocking its movements for a short moment, like someone resisting to a possession) and even seems in pain.
We cut to the auditorium and his observation is confirmed, with Dodgson explaining to the board of directors that thanks to chips (originally designed by Mantah Corp but Dodgson being Dodgson, he doesn't mention that and instead give the credit to the team rival of Mia's), they can control the animals like puppets. He precise that while the chips work well on some animals, trials have failed with others (like the raptors). On the auditorium's giant screen, various diagrams and footage of trials are seen.
We then follow another POV, that of technicians inside a command centre-like room. The technicians are sitting in front of monitors and each of them is seen typing on keyboards, giving instructions to the argentinosaurs' and ankylosaurs' chips (on the monitors, the audience can notice that they give names to each of the animals. For example, the three Argentinosaurus are named Brontes, Steropes, and Arges; after three of the cyclops from Greek Mythology). Through their drones or even micro cameras attached to the dinosaurs, they see the Carabinieri fleeing northwards while some of the Italians retaliate to the attack by shooting on the dinosaurs. But their weapons are ineffective against the argentinosaurs' hide and the ankylosaurs' armours. On the order of a mercenary officer, the technicians send a second wave of animals.
The speakers make once again their awful booming sound, exacerbating the animals' aggressiveness, and the second wave emerges from the forest. Before the scene cuts, we see it's made of, among other things, a Gigantoraptor (named Jabberwocky on its controlling technician's monitor), a couple of Quetzalcoatlus, probably some medium-large theropods like Allosaurus or Carnotaurus, a Biosyn Triceratops, and maybe even some Hyaenodon/sabre-toothed felid (depends on which will appear in the fighting pit in Malta) and Gigantopithecus recently imported to Auronzo. Many of those new attackers wear armor pieces comparable to those of police and military dogs or horses.
In the auditorium, the giant screen ends up showing the battle occurring in the valley. Dodgson's audience gasps when they see the drones' footage. One of the board members ask: "It's from a video game? Right?"
NOTE: I fear that there might be too many animals and different species involved in the battle. The mandatory ones are the following: Argentinosaurus (maybe have more than three individuals? The Brontes-Steropes-Arges trio could be seen charging abreast, evoking from afar a single three-headed gigantic beast) and their suite, Triceratops (which will illustrate itself soon and show how it's different from InGen's trikes), Gigantoraptor (in order to have a faster and more agile creature in the lot), and another player foreshadowed in earlier scenes (you'll know which when we'll return to the battle).
Sneaking into the Citadel
While battle just broke out further west, a Biosyn guard posted by a large gate carved at the base of the mountain near the Citadel spots a hooded silhouette under the trees: Claire. She retreats into the darkness and as a huge reward has been promised to anyone who would capture Vuillier's she-wolf, he runs after her. However, just like the colleagues she killed the day before, she lures him into an ambush and neutralizes him. She then steals his uniform and badge, and use the latter to open the gate, entering in an underground corridor, large enough to allow the transportation of large animals like the mysterious big theropod she glimpsed earlier. She follows it towards the Citadel.
Unbeknownst to her, the grey guards have also started their infiltration in the Citadel, by walking down the slopes behind the central tower. After neutralizing the few Biosyn guards positioned there, they enter the garden around the tower. In the latter's shadow, they split up in four groups, each heading into different parts of the Citadel:
- Cesare, Olivares and another are tasked with entering the labs.
- Perez, Al-Damiri and a third team member must take over the control room at the top of the tower.
- Chapuy and two others are tasked with searching the archives under the tower and preventing anyone from destroying the documents.
- Massoud, Kapakas and Papadopoulos must find the cells and free the WDMC agents if they're there.
The Battle of Auronzo
Following the road, the retreating Carabinieri reach the Valley's main river and the bridge the convoy crossed on the way just a few minutes ago. However, a controlled animal charging from the other side of the river prevents the first Carabinieri from taking it and they are forced to cross the cold waters of the river itself (it's thigh-deep at best) while the controlled animals are right on their heels. Several Carabinieri get killed during the crossing while some of their colleagues are cut off from them and must escape into the woods on the southern side of the river. Luckily, the controlling technicians didn't notice them. Once Pasolini and his remaining men are all on the other side of the river with the few vehicles they could have gotten out of the ambush site, the controlling technicians have their animals stopped just at the edge. A last animal codenamed Quasimodo arrive on the battlefield, a large Biosyn-made predator which visually, looks like a perversion of the real animal which makes up its base genome: It's the monstrous theropod from the bunker, an Acrocanthosaurus whose DNA was spliced with that of other animals, including crocodile (due to the croc fetish of some Biosyn executives) in order to be bigger and more "Monstrous and cooler-looking" than InGen's Acrocanthosaurus (yes, it's just JWD's Giganotosaurus with a different name). The apex predator makes his way through the other animals, which are seen looking at him with fright (in case of the smaller species) or irritation (in case of the Argentinosaurus and the other megaherbivores) but still controlled, they can't run away or fight it. As they're not controlled by the chips, the members of the Argentinosaurus' suite are showing aggression and one of them dares to attack him, but Quasimodo just grabs it in the air and eats it, discouraging the others from attacking as long as the sauropods won't. Quasimodo then stops in front of the bridge and looks at the Carabinieri on the other side. Confronted to this surreal sight, Pasolini don't know if they shall continue their retreat northwards or wait and hope for reinforcements' arrival.
While the animals are eerily standing still by the river, Dodgson exposes an idea to the board: They will bred new animals which aren't in their official catalogue, secretly release them in various parts of the globe, create "controlled" incidents and then get contracted by governments to capture the animals (capture which will be very easy with the chips, barely an inconvenience...) and send them to Auronzo. Biosyn will be both the disease and the cure, getting profits from this endless cycle of incidents and capture and obtaining absolute control on genetic power while their remaining competitors will die one by one. Basically, they'll soon become the equivalent in the Bio-engineering world of the British East India Company, something InGen aspired to be before crumbling. The CEO adds that his friends within the US government are already very interested by this technology.
Hidden in a technical room right behind the auditorium's stage, Pellegrino heard Dodgson bragging about controlling the animals. Realizing that he's so mad that he is slaughtering her fellow countrymen just to sell a technology, she takes a potentially fatal decision.
Back at the camp near the airstrip, Viscontini tells Vuillier that someone within the Italian government must have warned Dodgson, explaining how he got the time to do his nasty preparations. As the Special Forces just defeated the mercenaries guarding the northern entrance of Biosyn's lands and took the airstrip, Vuillier and Nyamu join them, asking for a weapon and climbing into one of their vehicles, refusing to stay safely in the camp while their friends and colleagues are in danger of death within the valley.
The speakers let out a third blast and hearing it, the few Carabinieri south of the river turn towards its origin. They see the speaker and an movable antenna on a nearby ridge and are aware that it must have something to do with the animals' unnatural behaviour. They rush towards it, hoping to save their comrades.
Irritated by the third blast, the controlled animals stamp and growl/bellow for a moment, before their controlling technicians orders them to move forward, as they were ordered to crush the Carabinieri before the arrival of their allies. While the other animals cross the river, Quasimodo the monstrous Acrocanthosaurus takes the bridge, accelerating his pace little by little before roaring and dashing on the Carabinieri. Aware that they'll be all slaughtered within a few minutes if they just stand there, Pasolini ordered to his men a few moments before to scatter in every direction and flee as long as possible in order to win time while the remaining vehicles will be either used to carry a maximum amount of men to the nearest shelter (could be the Hunting Lodge) before coming back and picking up those they can. Pasolini volunteers to stay on foot.
While flying between the speakers and the river, one of the drones spot the Carabinieri left south of the river. Noticing those troublemakers, the controlling technicians recall two of the animals from the battlefield (probably one of the Argentinosaurus and the Gigantoraptor).
On the other side of the river, the rest of the controlled animals have started attacking Pasolini and his men. The argentinosaurs charge through the forest and crush the Carabinieri like ants while their predatory auxiliaries harass them; the trike basically acts like a giant version of the boar from Australian horror film Razorback, charging, goring with its horns, and cutting off limbs with its sharp beak; Quasimodo devour several of the Italians... Colonel Pasolini ends up killed by one of the creatures and his death ruins the morale of his men who are about to rout.
Meanwhile, reactions among Dodgson's audience are varied:While some are captivated, others are not sure what to think about using the Carabinieri as guinea pigs, and one or two are disgusted. Nathan Quinn has a neutral attitude (he's interested by the technology but even if he strongly disapproves the actual demonstration and the bloodbath, he doesn't show it) while Ramsay avoid looking at the screen.
Hearing one of the Argentinosaurus bulldozing its way through the forest behind them just as they are about to reach the speakers and the antenna, the other Carabinieri start to run but during their race, they are surprised by the Gigantoraptor when it kills one of the Carabinieri, acting a bit like an oversized terror bird. They are forced to climb into a tree near a cliff's edge in order to escape it, with even another of the Carabinieri sacrificing himself to let the others climb high reach its targets, the Gigantoraptor tries to climb on the tree but to no avail, as it's too big. However, the tree bends and ends up uprooted under its assaults. Our characters are now hanging on an horizontal tree which will probably soon fall if the theropod keeps kicking it under its controller's command. They can't escape by one end as the Gigantoraptor is waiting for them and to make matters worse, the Argentinosaurus appears below the cliff and it can raise its head almost high enough to grab our characters. They can't escape.
Sneaky as a viper
After passing by the entrance of the large bunker where the monstrous Acrocanthosaurus was contained, Claire decides to pass by the vents after hearing some guards.
The Goblins of Nublar
During their journey through the amber mines, Maisie, Theo and Drummond stumble upon a lone Pectinodon. Remembering what he said earlier about the network of tunnels and its potential exits leading out of the valley, Drummond realize that the Pectinodons, and not the raptors, were involved in several of the external incidents (including the one from the Prologue). As he had to capture some of those creatures in a post-apocalyptic Nublar for Mills and Wu while he was part of Wheatley's mercenary company, Theo warns his companions about the danger of those animals. Maisie remembers having seen babies of those animals in the manor's basement along all the others Mills sold in his secret auction. The lone Pectinodon let out a series of calls and soon, an entire pack threatens our protagonists.
Ensue a scene where they have to repel them (Drummond tries to use the portable horn he has in his bag in order to scare the pectinodons but they're not impressed) and flee. However, Theo is bitten during that scene and his two companions notice this during a brief moment of respite. Maisie hopes they could perhaps find some cure but Theo answers that while one exists, they won't reach it in time. He adds that the venom will drive him mad (as seen in JPTG and mentioned in TRQ) and turn him into a danger for them. While his mind is still clear, he give Wu's flash drive to Maisie, has farewell words with her, asks Drummond to take care of her, and then runs back to where they came from, intending to win some time for them. While Maisie and Rod flee, Theo stands in the tunnel, preventing the pectinodons from going any further. He battles them to the death, taking several to the grave with him. An alternative could be him attracting a maximum of pectinodons in a room where he either provokes a crumbling, either a flooding, something that kills Theo and his attackers.
Finding a ladder, Maisie and Drummond follows it and climb out of the mines, narrowly escaping the pectinodons. They are back to the surface, somewhere in the northern part of the valley, not far from the dam. The palaeontologist then takes the traumatized teenager to the nearest tower, where they rest and resupply for a time.
Turning the Tide
Just as hope seems lost for the Carabinieri in the western part of the valley, a group of Shantungosaurus steps out from the forest and when the speakers on the trailer let out another blast to infuriate the controlled Gigantoraptor and Argentinosaurus nearby, the hadrosaurs, pissed by the sound made, attack the speakers and in the process, destroy also the antenna which sends the signals to the controlled animals' chips.
Freed of the mercenaries' control, the animals stop for a moment and most being scared by the gunshots or having no interest in killing the humans in front of them, just leave. However some like the Triceratops or Quasimodo carry on with their attacks due to their natural instincts but when the Special Forces finally arrive from the north, they hesitate and after being intimidated by the newcomers, they retreat and disappear in the forest' darkness. The surviving Carabinieri start to rally to their allies.
Witnessing the shift in the situation, Dodgson is frustrated and leaves the auditorium, tasking Ramsay with trying to reassure the board. He calls Bigelow, telling her to meet him at his office. On the way, the CEO is cornered by Pellegrino and some of her men, mostly Italians, who point their pistols on him. The head of security tells Dodgson he's under arrest and orders him to cease this madness and surrender to the authorities. However, the putschists are surrounded in their turn by Dodgson's bodyguards and some mercenaries, and all except Pellegrino are gunned down. While she is neutralized and taken to the cells, Dodgson hurries to the Citadel's central tower. By the entrance of his office, Bigelow and Kayla are waiting for him. They enter his office and Dodgson starts cleaning his computer and putting his most precious belongings in a bag, including the hard-drive with Biosyn's most important research. The CEO also orders some men to destroy the archives.
At the top of the tower, Isabella Perez, Sherif Al-Damiri and their companion reach the control room and while they're securing it, Vincent Chapuy and his two comrades have to fight the men sent by Dodgson to the archives. Perez orders the technicians to deactivate the aerial defense system and the pterosaurs are seen moving away, letting the Special Forces (accompanied by Viscontini) fly to the battlefield. A couple of their helicopters go directly to the Citadel, engaging the mercenaries defending it.
While the dead or wounded Carabinieri are taken off the valley before the scavengers show up, the others regroup and with the Special Forces' ground forces, march to the Citadel where they intend to soon end the battle. Vuillier contacts Cesare, asking him about his progress. Cesare and his two companions haven't yet entered the labs, as Dodgson deployed seasoned mercenaries and not simple guards at their entrance, offering a hard resistance.
While the Citadel's defenders are engaged with the Special Forces dropped by the helicopters, Armand Massoud, Angelos Papadopoulos and Lydia Kapakas enter the Security HQ and free Owen and Dougal after a small fight with the gaolers. Pellegrino is also freed. The Raptor Whisperer asks one of the gaolers where Victoria is. She's in the kennels, in the lower levels. While Owen rushes to the kennels, the three grey guards, Dougal and Pellegrino head for the atrium.
Running out of time (his computer is having some issues), Dodgson sends his last forces to the Citadel's atrium, where a shootout occurs. With the cafeteria no longer guarded, the non-essential employees try to break out. Meanwhile several Biosyn guards drop their weapons and surrender when they see Pellegrino collaborating with the besiegers.
Dodgson's joker card
The defenders lose ground and as they are about to be caught between the Carabinieri, the Italian and Austrian Special Forces, the Massoud-Kapakas-Papadopoulos trio and Pellegrino's followers, one of the Biosyn guard calls for a ceasefire. The fight stops and Dodgson appears on top of the stairs which lead to the main courtyard. Bigelow, Kayla and his bodyguards are with him (while Ramsay is seen arriving from the Auditorium) and Dodgson has his bag with him. Seeing the CIA agent, the trio of grey guards hurls threats and insults at her, declaring she'll pay for Digby who died in Malta because of her treachery.
Dodgson look at his enemies: Vuillier, Nyamu and Viscontini down in the atrium, standing in front of the Carabinieri; the grey guards, Dougal and Pellegrino on one of the floors. He talks to them, congratulating them for taking the valley from him, before adding that they won one battle but not the war. Just as he is about to get arrested, he unveils his joker card: Should he be imprisoned or killed, his agents abroad have the order of releasing the content of nine containers he sent across the globe: Swarms of genetically-modified locusts designed to eat every crop but Biosyn's (a montage show trucks carrying the same containers as those seen in the airstrip. They park in the countryside of the following regions: US Midwest, India, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Egypt, China, Argentina, Australia, and Germany). Should the locusts be freed, they would trigger a global famine, with people being forced to turn to Biosyn if they want to eat. Even if Dodgson doesn't leave Auronzo alive, Biosyn will have a future as it will be the only entity which could ensure mankind's survival in this apocalyptic scenario.
New attackers
Meanwhile, three helicopters arrive from the opposite side of the valley. At first, it's believed that they are others Special Forces helicopters but as no one on the besiegers' camp ordered them to head for the Citadel, some try to contact the oncoming aircrafts, to no avail. Fearing some ill shift in situation, Vuillier suggest his allies to take cover. One of the besiegers' helicopter tries to intercept the trio of helicopters but they shoot it down and it crashes in the eastern part of the valley, near one of the observation towers. Everyone in the atrium is surprised, including Dodgson, and rushes to shelter while two of the helicopters fire missiles in several of the Citadel's key locations, including the atrium, the helipad (destroying the board's helicopters) and the cafeteria, and spray the control room (Perez is hit while one of the technician accidently release the animals contained in the kennel when he falls dead head first on his console. The freed animals not only include Victoria but also dilophosaurs among other things). After that, they distract those of the besieging forces and attack the Citadel's defenders. Many casualties are inflicted among the besiegers and Biosyn employees.
Dodgson regains consciousness just after the attack, which killed his bodyguards and projected Bigelow and Kayla away. Next to him, Ramsay is still unconscious. He sees the third helicopter of the attackers landing in the courtyard and debarking a squad of armed men who directly rushes to the laboratories. As soon as they're gone, Dodgson grabs his bag, wakes Ramsay up, and takes advantage of the situation to escape, towards the nearest elevator. He chose one of the lower levels, that of the garages. The elevator blocks itself halfway and the two Biosyn executives must force their way out while chaos has taken over the rest of the building.

Today's games repulse me with their copycat, timid and shallow character. Though it seems like there is a variety of concepts flashing around, in practice games revolve around the same half-dozen tropes. Their hallmark sign is that it is nothing that is not seen on TV. If the game's idea is not a reflection of the modern world from someone who, by all appearances, has never read a real book or has experience to share, then it's Pirates in Some Carribean, or the Victorian Age When Jack the Ripper Roamed in a Black Cab, or the Middle Ages with Standard Treachery, or Abstract Space Exploration. I was sick and tired of this a few years ago, now I have all but given up on this art form. Even when the concept is interesting, it is rarely taken far or with force. Neutered developers are afraid to give offense and as a result make bland, short-breathing stuff, but I think the sharp edges are never there to begin with anymore. I don't know anybody who sets out to defy the world, stand apart from its simulations and blandishments and spit a good gob in its ugly square face.
I have never had an opportunity to make a game of my own (it takes a team besides everything else), but I have made mods for a very old RPG for years - new mechanics, plots, magic, quests, effects, scripts, writing and so on. I have more or less put that old engine on its head, though I know hardly anyone will ever find out about my efforts. This is to say that I am not a pure theorist. Some time in the winter, bored and exasperated, I decided to do a quick marathon of game ideas - for RPG, quests, simulations, something in-between - and see how many I can whip out on the run. I would like something from here picked up by a company, but I am not advertising. I realize that is probably not something that might happen. It was a good exercise for me, however. Here are the results for all to see. I did ten first, then three more occurred to me.
1 ) Circa Caotica
You play the role of Jabsh, a clown of a traveling circus, who suddenly discovers that he is no orphan but the son (Raka, daughter for female players) of the director, Maestro Leotardi. Minutes later after making the sobbing confession the boss is swallowed by the Crocodile Man in a suspicious accident. You have to own up to the unexpected legacy and step into the tight and tall boots of the director. Your responsibility is to keep the circus going by fine-tuning and inventing acts based on ideas solicited over regular all-troupe brainstorming sessions despite little starting respect from the others, who have decided to unionize as well (the mentalist takes notes). You must keep drawing in crowds to avert the bankruptcy, earn respect and manipulation points and find the truth behind Leotardi's death and the disappearance of the Big Green cashbox with everyone's last year salary and the medallion that supposedly bears the face of your mother the same evening. All the while you still have to perform in regular clown acts with your partner. You can play as a red clown or a white clown, and the other type will be your foil.
2) Nachtwaffe
"Ah, count. Decided to join me for a walk?" Vampires steal planes from the Nazi airforce to zoom through the dark skies over the Balkans and turn humans to make more of their own. You start out as a single nosferatu, converted from an arrogant German, and must find and raid small airports and landing strips across the forests and mountains of Roumania, impersonate a living officer to get supplies and fuel, avoid communist guerillas, find and build places to hide during the day and choose which humans to turn to expand your force. Naturally, it is all quite a dead end, as the war is bound to finish sooner or later, which radio broadcasts confirm, and what then will happen to the vampiric empire? But this is something that the gameplay begins to convey to the player gradually. Hopefully the fate of someone who has no future but still does his all will touch some dormant strings in players' hearts.
3) Yuck!
The sleepy Tibetan village of Dongtso is unaware of what lurks in the bushes and the mountains: you, the desperately lonely yak-man. Born with a big head and two horns, you have only one connection to civilization: the gold ring in your nose. Squinting cross-eyed, you can just make out some kind of symbols on it, and a banner over the village shrine features ones like them. This must be the key. You have to lurk about the supersititious hamlet, helping the folk at night and out of sight with small chores and evesdropping on their reactions and conversations until you can pick up a few words, including, at some point, "Hello." Since this is a game about Tibet and shaping up something rebellious, let the tongue be one of Tibet's many and accompanied by Tibetan script. You can train to pronounce the words when you dare show yourself to children, old people and widows, to improve from mooing to legible speech, but until then you have to dodge men's hunting parties and survive. With enough good deeds and a few friends, you might win the folk's confidence and stand before the village council so that someone might teach you to read. The quest becomes complicated, however, by the appearance of the army of People's Republic of China that establishes a base in the village in its push to subdue Tibet. The year is 1952. One of the newcomers is a local - a renegade llama who, the villagers say, has been on many supernatural journeys in the mountains, even to Shangri-La, but is now wearing the uniform of Tibet's conquerors. The writing on the ring, deciphered, identifies him as your father. What will happen next?
4) Footlocker
This is a soccer-themed RPG, but you view the sport from the point of view of a bookie besieged on all sides by mafia. To pay back his debt he resolves on a colossal set-up: first get control of an underdog team, then bring them at least to the regional semi-finals and, with the bets in their favor, make them lose in a big way. The thugs are ready to provide cash handouts, leg-breaking, knuckle sandwiches, addictive opioids and more to get the right people on the team and stubborn elements out, but at the cost of increased control and cut of the profits. You must balance their appetities with placating sports authorities, the press, sponsors and police. In the final match a dilemma presents itself: go through with the plan and ruin the team or defy the gangsters and take your chances on the right side of the tracks?
5) And See It Again For the First Time
Starting out from your homeland on three caravels, you unfurl the sails and set out to circumnavigate the world. The globe is randomly generated every time and rolls away at the horizon, with the map, continents and straits unknown beforehand, in the manner of River Raid. Your characters are the three ships and their crews, condition and supplies are their stats. Dropping anchor at strange shores and dealing with natives will be necessary but dangerous as they fight with each other, shuffle and migrate like microbes. Loss of crew can't be repaired. At least one of the ships must find the passages and make it to the fabulous Gate of Makhamedi, enter it from the far side and begin the journey home.
6) The Person and the Essence
In the beginning chapter you play Sauqin, second-in-command to general Varziranga, head of the army of the Arcolan Empire sent to quash the rebellion of Panlaa, who has tried to bring his province to secede. The imperial army has crushed Panlaa'a troops a fortnight ago and has got him shut in the Ravine of the Gold Specks. Complete victory is near, but the commander has been acting strangely since the battle. On this decisive night his behavior spins out of control just as Panlaa makes a sudden sally from his trap, causing great confusion. As his lieutenant, it falls to you to maintain order in dealing with the various officers as well as the clerics of the One, who insist that Panlaa, a lapsed pagan, be given to them for execution once he is captured. The ending of the chapter will determine whether Panlaa ends in the emperor's prison in the capital, Hotharsoom, alive or dead at the clerics' hands, whether Varziranga will be simply demoted or disgraced.
Chapter two will take place in the capital city. You will have been promoted to a top military command for your performance, only to become embroiled in an intrigue involving the emperor's controlling mother, a consequential schism in the church of the One over whether the head of state is eternally the same person reincarnated or a series of persons, demagogues in the public and lurking pagans with unclear motives. Other chapters will follow, and the endings will determine who sits on the throne and who stands behind it, whether state policy is in principle subject to revision and criticism or not and whether the pagan faiths are crushed without mercy or adopted into the church of the One. The material here is Byzantium, Egypt with the notion of the pharaoh as incarnate Horus and the empires of southeast Asia. Some early Christian heresies also deserve to be revivified.
7) Of Rats and Men
You are a rat trapped in the gears of the Trumpet of Doom, the hugest, heaviest and most advanced steam ship ever to paddle the Grumuous Sea. This basin is famously salty enough to let even an iron float for a time, which, the public money finally gathered, made it the perfect road to carry the 25-inch-gunned ("24 + 1 for Paterland!") Trumpet to the shores of Festaly and at last give those Festalians what for! The citizenry is cheering with patriotic joy, the brass bands are blowing. The ship rats are less happy, especially you, who were captain Reissenpouf's pet before you managed to scramble through a porthole and below the desk as he was buttering a toast. You are nearly panicky with fright. Unlike the locals there, you have spent time locked with the diagrams in the captain's safe and know that the battleship is very weakly armored below the waterline. Someone must have made a good bit of business during the construction selling the metal. When the Trumpet comes up against the Festalians with their triton suicides or their rumored counterpart ship, the Rough Musician, not even the Grumuous Sea will keep it from ending up as a gigantic, barnacled wreck on the ocean floor.
To avoid this fate you only have so much time to organize the other rats for systematic sabotage. The game's world is the enormous ship below and above the deck. The humans of the crew are, of course, adamant in their resolve to get themselves killed, so they will repair the servos, the cables turning the massive gears, the ball bearings, the hydraulics and the rest almost as quickly as those are destroyed. This effort will be headed by the near-transparent, monochrome spindle of a man, Admiral Hel, the leader of the expedition, always of his private high deck, sipping his black milk and staring through his spectacles ahead to where TOD's fate awaits it. If all of you ratfolk together gnaw through and spoil enough of the ship's devices, however, the captain might just have the authority to radio Kaiser Walzer of the decision to turn back... though you personally may also have to sneak back into his cabin to sit on his pillow and intone suggestions as he sleeps. The fact that you are an albino rat and at first come across as a crazy visionary doesn't help, and neither does being a female rat and having to give birth to a litter every so often. The current mate can be deputied on tasks while lactating. Other ships may sometimes be encountered in the sea, with different results, and you may improve your reputation in the murine community by predicting these encounters, if you check the looking glass often enough. The length of the game, and hence the difficulty, depends on the distance to Festalian waters - from two weeks' journey to three months.
8) Cosmic Choir
You play as one of the planets of the solar system. The other actors and your partners are the thieving and scurrilous Mercury, the lusty and sly Venus, the militant braggart Mars and so on. And you are the meh-in-the-middle Earth, and in this group of strong personalities stand out with your unique ability of Rational Decision (it would be nice to get Woody Allen for the voice acting, were he younger). Other planets have other powers, and all of them certain characteristics and appetites (for tasty meteorites, for more intimate or more standoffish orbits and so on). The plot revolves around the announcement of the Sun that it has had enough of burning hydrogen and wants to retire, going immediately into the red giant phase, which would, of course, burn up all of the inner planets and kick the outer planets way out. For this the star has recruited a planet-sized asteroid, large enough to pull most of the star fuel away so that the moribund transformation may be set in motion. The euthanatic dark planet is whirring ever closer. Before it gets on a near enough orbit to disrupt the Sun the other planets must find out what caused this sudden depression and persuade their ruler and source of life otherwise. (The answer is that the Sun has always dreamt of going nova but lacks substance.) Playing as the only inhabited planet, you must also keep the life forms on you alive through all of the maneuvering. If you can get Mars to cooperate, however, you may shorten the distance enough for humanity and some of the ecosystems to make the leap and found Musk City there, and then you won't have to care about your surface anymore.
9) Paris, 1245 A.D.
A meticulously researched simulation of the criminal underworld of medieval Paris and the worlds that abutted on it: those of the church, guilds, city watch, the university, lepers, the court and so on. No shortcuts and simplifications for babies who can't tell a Benedictine from a Cistercian. A dynamically filled encyclopedia may be included, though, and remain permanently unlocked for later replays. The main character is a vagrant and a thief. This may be a persistent sandbox, possibly a multiplayer RPG, or it may have a plot, but strictly within historical realities.
10) The Last Supper
You play the role of Jesus, son of God, in the company of the twelve disciples. The game should probably be in first person. (The Sermon of the Mount and such may be shown in cutscenes, or they may be challenges in quiz form.) The time period is your wanderings in Judea after the baptism and until the last night before the arrest. The background is the Judaic society at the time and its Roman controllers, somewhat historically accurate. This is a detective story, a wholldoit where you need to figure out who is best suited to betray you in due time so that you may prep him for the job and finally give him the impetus to "do it quicker" at the Last Supper. For Christ certainly needed someone to betray him. It's not always Judas: the identity of the potential traitor, along with his motives, will vary randomly between playthroughs. Incidents and encounters along the road, both recorded in the Bible and invented, will liven up the experience and better inform you about the personalities of the disciples, building on but going beyond what is known (Peter with his short temper, the lofty John an so on).
11) Cuadrophobia
Ships and the sea again. This time you are a typical sailor with an atypically strong survival instinct on one of the vessels in a colossal game of Battleship between Our Guy and the Other Player. Accordingly, there are two grids firing at each other: your side's and the enemy's, though you only get to travel across your own. The ship you begin on is chosen at random: it may be anything in size from a single-squarer to a five-squarer. Smaller ships are less likely to be hit, of course, but when a ship is finished, it sinks, and you with it. The purpose of the game is to survive until Our Guy's victory, which programmatically is likely but not guaranteed and happens about 70% of the time. To do this you must desert on a regular basis, setting out in a dinghy to a ship more favored in the current situation. However, the dinghy only travels three squares per turn, and you can only spend two turns in the open sea before dying. You also need time on board ships to access their radio broadcasts, which, besides playing some inspirational propaganda, update the picture of the grid as the battle rages. Without it you are limited to paddling to vessels that you can directly see. The role-playing element comes from dealing with ship commanders, who all take their duties and titles - captain of Cruiser! captain of Battleship! - very seriously, from picking up supplies in floating debris and from acquiring special abilities that let you, for example, paddle an extra square farther. Is war evil? Is it to be hated, or is our side to be cheered on? After all, if Our Guy loses, this will all have been in vain.
12) Standardom
In this game of life, dedicated to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), you must pass through all of the Gates of Conformity to win your ultimate prize - death from old age, as opposed to suicide. The option to kill yourself is always available in the menu. Being the hero and chickenshit that you are, though, you are determined to submit to every humiliation just so you can press forward. The world of the game is a vertical platform that moves with you along the Y axis, which represents time from some random year forwards: you may begin at 100 B.C., 1824 A.D., 12749 j-Spec and so on. It is really all the same where on the timeline you are dropped off. As with other platformers, once the screen has moved, there is no going back. You can walk freely to the left and right, however, pick up bonuses, disarm threats and converse with characters. Going up, every so often the screen is intersected by a wall with a gate in it. Your character's silhouette must either match the cut of the gate or be smaller to pass through. You start out small as a baby, a little circle, but very soon handicaps such as Discovery of Talent, Unusual Upbringing, Independent Spirit or Love of Sex will begin to rush at you to complicate your silhouette with Г, & and other such protrusions. You will also grow in size until your late 20s. Luckily, opportunities will also present themselves to prune some of this exotica: Family, Steady Job, Political Engagement, Puppy, Human Interest and other bonuses can be found or obtained from conversations to simplify your puzzle to a manageable cut until such time as the years pile on and the worst is behind you. You will become smaller and smaller and able to rush through the checkpoints one after the other to the finish line.
13) Six Handshakes to Liberty
The country is suffering under a cruel dictatorship. Ar-Parason, the president-for-life, has wrung the last of resources from the nation and has now thrown it into a disastrous war. In his palace he is surrounded by guards armed to the teeth and without a shred of conscience to shoot the bastard. What can you, a humble microbiologist living in the suburbs, do about this? Nothing, it seems, until you discover a strain of bacteria that is absolutely deadly within weeks and immune to all known antibiotics except one, still not fully developed. The microbe is passed along by touch. Alas, you discover it when you become infected with it. You still have the resources to finish the research on the antibiotic and save yourself, but now you realize that you possess the perfect secret weapon to rid the country of the tyrant. Although you can't get so close to Ar-Parason in person, someone must enjoy that intimacy...
Every day you do your research at the computer, look through the press, then put on gloves and go out in search of people in contact with other people who will, you hope, ultimately carry the strain to its target. You have to follow news to figure out whose hands to shake and who to sleep with - secretaries, daughters of generals, corrupt officials - and many times the scheme will fall short of success. The chain of handshakes will terminate early somewhere, and these intermediaries will just die. But all those sacrifices are worth it, aren't they? You keep several intrigues going at once, determined to see one of them to the end. Meanwhile an epidemic is beginning in the country, Ar-Parason is starting to take precautions, and your own remaining time that could be spent on finishing the antibiotic is also running short. What is more important: life, revenge, justice, survival, honor? Your actions will be your decisions.

This is post n°1 of a Bigger theory. here.

The Geocentric Pantheon of the True Gods of One Piece: a set of main characters orbiting around the Earth, using corroborative myths and legends from Aztec, Hindu, Greek Mythology, and Astrology:

Part I - Post/Subpart n° 1.1:

Content for this Post:
The connection between One Piece characters and the Classical planets of geocentrism, Astrology, or Mythology
The case of the Sun God explain
The case of the Moon God explain

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The connection between One Piece characters and the Classical planets of geocentrism, Astrology, or Mythology.

A. Linking Celestial Bodies with Zodiac Signs using the Geocentric model of One Piece and Astrology.

According to the chronology of the manga, we should be around the year 1524, and at that time the scientists inspired by the Greek theorists of antiquity thought that the universe was governed by the so-called geocentric model. That is to say that the Earth is at the center of the universe while the other stars are in orbit around it.
Indeed, the planet model of Ohara's archaeologists and Zou's seven pillars made me think that geocentrism could be at the heart of the mysteries of the manga. If we were to transpose the Ohara model into our world, the Ohara model would then correspond to the geocentric model :
Heliocentric view for comparison.
This concept is not new as beautifully shown by Boss_Aesop theory except that this theory will be more complete overall and backed up by explanations for each character.

To the smart guys who would invalidate this theory on the spot because they do not recognize the rings of Saturn in the model of Ohara or the other missing planets of the solar system, I will answer them that the observation of Saturn's rings was made with Galileo in 1610, that is 106 years later compared to the current chronology of one piece (1526 years - 22 years (Ohara's incident) = year 1504). In addition, as they should know, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune also have rings just much less visible and discovered much later. While all the planets up to Saturn are known since antiquity because visible to the naked eye, the last 3 planets of the solar system designated as the ancient weapons in the manga as Uranus, Neptune and Pluto will be respectively discovered in 1781, 1846 and 1930 and are therefore absent from the model of the sages of Ohara theoretically... Patience is the mother of all virtues.

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Thus the model of the archaeologists of Ohara could be a direct reference to the Thema Mundi, the mythical Horoscope of the Greeks that shows the supposed positions of the seven visible planets (including the Sun and Moon) at the beginning of the universe.
The Thema Mundi works by associating a zodiac sign with its traditional ruling planet (Given the path (call the ecliptic) of the planets among the stars and constellations of the sky).
Example of Traditional Zodiac of Greek astrology.
Obviously, Oda could not solely rely on the 7 Planets / Zodiac sign to build the numerous main characters of his manga and so extended it with other celestial bodies or new astrological points to extend his own One Piece Zodiac/Geocentric model by: * including Influential dwarf Planets & main Asteroids & hypothetical planets: Eris = Mihawk, Vesta/Hestia = Jaguar D. Saul, Pallas/Athena = Kuma, Chiron/Asclepius = Trafalgar D. law, Ceres/Demeter = Unknown yet, Hebe = Ivankov, Bellona = Crocodile, Diana/Artemis = Boa Hancock... * including Hypothetical Planet (Read more here), Like Vulcan/Hephaestus = Vegapunk, Proserpina/Persephone/Lilith = Nefertari D. Lili... * including Other astrological points: New Moon/Hecate = Gecko Moria, Lunar nodes (Ketu & Rahu) = Teach's twins... * splitting the inferior Planets (Venus & Mercury below the Earth) into Morning and Evening Version (read more here): Apollo (Garp) = Mercury as The Morning Star, Hermes (Buggy) = Mercury as The Evening Star, Eosphorus (Shanks) = Venus as the Morning Star = , Hesperus (Teach) = Venus as the Evening Star. * or including Alternative constellation or Zodiac signs.jpg) like Ophiuchus, Cetus, Orion, Serpens caput, Serpens Cauda...
This could fit for the creation of an enlarged Geocentric system with more than 7 main celestial bodies (set of main characters) but extended with other secondary bodies (secondary set of characters, and ancient weapons characters).
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B. The One Piece world is the allegory of the Solar system: Linking One Piece key characters to their respective Celestial bodies using Mythology.

Secondly, many religious personifications are used by Oda to create his characters. We can then assume the use of certain concepts from different mythologies (Aztec, Indian, Greek) that resonate perfectly with the geocentric theory of the manga by associating a star and a deity with certain key characters. It is the picture of the Zou 7/8 pillars that made me think that the 7 planets of astrology and of the Ohara model could be paired with concepts like the Guardians of the directions of Hinduism. Hence, allows us to discern a pantheon of several heroes/key characters in the manga who are inspired by these concepts and operating as in the geocentric model around the Earth or more precisely around a Mother Earth charactecreature. In the geocentric model, the Sun like the other Celestial Bodies orbits around this Earth, like the characters of One Piece travel on the Grandline (the ecliptic path) that encircle the Earth and which force these characters to move around a giant Mother Earth creature personifying the Earth. This makes the Grandline allegorically the orbital plane where you can possibly encounter Stars (Lodestar, Supernovae, Planets (other Main Gods characters) and their natural moons (crewmate, world noble), dwarf planets (Eris, Ceres, Charon, Chiron), Big asteroids (Pallas, Juno, Hestia).

Update after 1086: The Warrior God status of the Gorosei is a decoy to obfuscate the real Gods Characters of One Piece
This idea and the explanations for each character will demonstrate that Oda is trying to fool us by presenting the Gorosei members as the Real Planet God of the world of One Piece, when they are in fact fake luminaries/Planets for the world not orbiting around the earth. In other words not traveling around the world on their ecliptic path, the Grandline. Instead, they are in a stationary orbit inside Mary Geoise orbiting around a Single Celestial Body (Imu) like Natural satellites/Moons of a Planet usually do. So if Imu is a malevolent character personifying the Planet Saturn or Pluton (often depicted as evil planets in astrology), then the Gorosei members could be demons/fallen angels that support their true mastefounder Imu (see parts 2.2 & 2.3 for details) representing the 5 moons of Pluto or 5 of the 20 main Moons of the Planet Saturn with the Other foundling World Nobles families.

For the inspiration behind each character Oda may have relied on different mythologies:

1. Navagraha: the planets and astronomical phenomena in the Indian cosmological system that are supposed to influence human destiny as well as the course of nature (vegetation, tides...).
2. Vasu: In Hinduism, the Vasus (Sanskrit: वसु) are auxiliary deities of Indra, and later of Vishnu. They are eight elemental gods (called "Aṣṭa-vasu", "Eight Vasus") representing aspects of nature (the five elements and cosmic natural phenomena (the sun, moon and stars)).
3. The Dikpala: The Guardians of the Directions are the deities who govern the cardinal points of space according to Hinduism. As a group of 8/9 deities, they are called Nava or Ashta-Dikpāla literally meaning guardians of the eight directions often augmented by one central deity symbolizing the "Zenith".
4. The Greek Astra Planeta: Five Greek divinities personifying the Classical planets, minus the Sun and the Moon (Eos' siblings), the Earth (Gaia)), or Uranus, Neptune and Pluto as they are invisible to the naked eye and were thus unknown to the ancient Hellenic peoples.
5. Roman Olympians Gods/Goddesses: the twelve major deities of the Roman/Greek pantheon.
6. Aztec Gods & Goddesses: organized around Thirteen Heaven's cosmogony and a given star or planet.

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On the whole, I constructed and obtained this table which linked the main characters of the manga to their respective inspired myths or legends from Aztec, Hindu, or Greek mythology.
The following details split into three posts, explain the associations for the 10 main Gods of One Piece:

• The Sun God,
• The Moon God,
• The Earth Goddess,
• The Venus as Morning Star God,
• The Venus as Evening Star God & his twins the Lunar nodes Gods,
• The Mercury as Morning Star God,
• the Mercury as Evening Star God,
• The Mars God,
• The Jupiter God.
• The Saturn God.

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The case of the Sun God Luffy:

Character:	Monkey D. Luffy + Gol D. Roger's inherited will
Associated Real or Hypothetic Celestial Body :	Sun
Associated Greek divinity:	Helios
Associated Aztec divinity:	+ Tonatiuh (Fifth & last Sun: Luffy) + Nanahuatzin (The first Sun: Roger)
Associated Hindu divinity (Navagrahas, Vasus, Dikpâlas, Devas):	Surya / Nataraja (Avatar of Shiva)
Associated animal (Manga + Mythology):	Monkey [1] [2] / Lion [1] [2] / Beetle [1] [2]
Associated mythological animal (Potential Zoan shape / ancient weapon partner):	Hanuman / Narasimha
Associated Semi-divine Buddhist race & Manga equivalent:	Vanara (Monkey D. character + Revolutionary army)
Associated Constellation/Zodiac sign:	Leo
Birth Place:	Goa (Luffy) + Roguetown (Roger)
Birth Date:	05/05

Since, it has been revealed in the manga that Luffy is Nikka the "god of the sun" I will not try to explain the numerous foreshadows but rather demonstrate why these associations fit the character.

• Tōnatiuh literally "Movement of the Sun" was an Aztec sun deity of the daytime sky and ruled the cardinal direction of the east (like Luffy who comes from east blue) and was known as "The Fifth Sun". He is represented as a fierce and warlike god painted in red (like Luffy) and is seen wearing an eagle feather headdress and holding a shield that could be a solar disc.
• Helios is the son of the Titans Hyperion (Roger connection) and Theia and brother of the goddesses Selene (the Moon) (Enel connection) and Eos (the Dawn) (Shanks connection). Due to his position as the sun, he was believed to be an all-seeing witness and thus was often invoked in oaths (Luffy and the Voice of all things).
• Luffy cognates to many aspects of the Hindu god Nataraja:
  • Nataraja (king of the dance) is an epithet of Shiva who performs a cosmic dance called nadānta, the "dance of bliss.". A fighting dance from Joyboy will make Zunesha happy while Luffy's celebration dance announces the collective farewell festivities.
  • He holds in his upper right hand a drum (damaru) symbolizing the primordial sound of the creation of the universe and in his left hand a flame symbolizing the destruction of the world. His second right hand is in Abhaya-mudrā, a gesture of protection. His lower left-hand shows his raised leg symbolizing the hope of liberation (moksha). He crushes with his second leg the dwarf Apasmārapuruṣa, also called Muyalaka, who represents ignorance. He is a God "intensely compassionate to all creatures, and holding the All-Burning Fire" as the destroyer (Hara) of demons (ignorance, egoism, greed, violence) and of the cycle of reincarnations (samsara) in which unawakened beings are caught.
  • Equivalently, Luffy as Joyboy/Nikka the sun god is the embodiment of liberation and fire. he is a compassionate being that acts as the protector of the oppressed and of the young, he is the slayer of evil ending the doomed reign of Kaidou,, or Enel, and so on (Wapol, Crocodile). Luffy under his awakened Gear 5 form makes his heartbeat sounds like drums, the drums of liberation. I also speculate that like Nataraja, Luffy will put an end to the life-death-rebirth cycle and grants everyone some form of immortality (see Part 3.5).
  • Nataraja is surrounded by flames that symbolize the succession of cosmic cycles. With the help of his bun adorned with a diadem (jaṭā-mukuṭa), he channels the descent of the celestial waters (of the Ganges in Hinduism) (mandākinī) to Earth. Similarly, when Luffy is in his Gear 5 form, he is surrounded by a halo of flames (like saints) and sports a crown of flames.
• Luffy is strongly related to the monkey his totem animal either when displayed during his gear form or displayed in his psychological traits (playful or candid like a monkey who likes to jump from one place to another with his long-ass arms) which could link Luffy to the mythical god Hanuman: a monkey God who repeatedly delivered people from oppression but also a God of Wisdom, Strength, Courage, Devotion and Self-Discipline, and martial art and son of the wind-god Vayu (Monkey D. Dragon).
• Luffy could also be linked to the lion: Luffy playing with a giant lion in a color spread, The figurehead of the boat "Sunny" is a lion head which could be a reference to his associated Zodiac sign Leo or the mythical Narasimha, an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu that incarnates in the form of a part-lion, part-man being who is known primarily as the 'Great Protector' who specifically defends and protects his devotees from evil and who is an iconic symbol of resistance, hope against odds, victory over persecution, and destruction of evil (which all fit with Luffy traits).

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The case of the Moon God Enel:

The Moon, unlike the Sun, may have several characters linked to it depending on its shape or Phases. But for simplicity, I will focus on Enel only, the Character that personifies the Physical Moon itself, and not just a Phase.

Character:	Enel
Associated Real or Hypothetic Celestial Body :	Moon
Associated Greek divinity:	Selene
Associated Aztec divinity:	Tecciztecatl
Associated Hindu divinity (Navagrahas, Vasus, Dikpâlas):	Kubera
Associated animal (Manga + Mythology):	Lobster [1] / Crab
Associated mythological animal (Potential Zoan shape / ancient weapon partner):	Karkinos%20was%20a%20giant,stars%20as%20the%20constellation%20Cancer) [1] (Sky Lobster) / Raijū [1] (Minks)
Associated Creature in the Manga:	Special Express Lobster
Associated Territory in the Manga:	Skypiea + Moon / Orbital space
Associated Semi-divine Buddhist race & Manga equivalent:	Yakshas (Minks)
Associated Constellation/Zodiac sign:	Cancer (kind of Lobster or Crab)
Birth Place:	Sky (Birka Island)
Birth Date:	05/06

Several similarities with Luffy could show that Enel's fruit is not just a Logia but a Zoan Moon God in disguise:

• Rubber and Lighting are natural enemies and so are the Sun and Moon. A bit like nikka who is considered the sun god but has a body with rubber properties, Enel could be a moon god with a lightning-like body, similar to the minks' natural electro ability to conjure electricity from their bodies using the power of the moon (Sulong form).
• Maybe Enel's god complex and his desire to return to the Moon are not just for show but are things related to his devil fruit's own will if the Goro Goro no Mi happened to be a mythical Zoan instead of a pure logia like it is only presumed by Robin or mistakenly believed by Enel himself (probably both unaware of mythical Zoan existence and abilities at the time) who can, like any Logia type user, physically morph into pure lightning and remains unfathered by physical attacks non-coated with haki.
• Indeed, despite having this look-alike Logia abilities, Enel can transform his body (Amaru form), a trait that is normally only seen with Zoan users according to Kaidou, and a type of transformation that has not been seen with any other logia users so far who usually become intangible beings fully made of their own element that they can morph into any shapes. Like Monet when she turns into a full snow demon or Aramaki who simply, turns into a golem of nature by letting its power spread over his body without ever altering parts of their Bodies non coated with there element. Unlike Enel's transformation which let Enel display non-electric physical attributes (Clothes/Jewels) during this bigger electric Amaru form instead of becoming a morph of pure electricity like a typical Logia user.
• What's more is that like Luffy in his Gear 4 & 5 awakened form, Enel, in his Amaru form (probably an awakened form too) is also surrounded by a floating halo/ribbon (Hagoromo) of his intrinsic element, a halo of flame/white gas for Luffy and a halo of electricity for Enel. Yet, this halo is usually the trait of awakened Zoan users like Rob Luci or Yamato compared to true Logia fruit User like Aramaki who does not seem to have this halo around him.
• Luffy's and Enel's defensive Buddha poses are even identical to Sengoku's pose when he takes his mythical Zoan Golden Buddha form as a potential foreshadowing of the mythical Zoan nature of the Goro & Gomu no Mi fruits representing Buddhist Guardian deity (Nio or Dharmapāla) for the world.
• Unlike a typical or non-awakened Logia user, Enel's abilities seem to extend beyond simple elemental control of electricity as he is able to interact with ambient electromagnetism to hear any long-distance conversations, to remold Gold, or to use the conductive elements (clouds/gold) in his environment to convey his electricity and strike from anywhere. As if Enel had awakened powers that could interact with his environment combined with a permanent electric body and the body transformation of a Zoan similar to the "Mythical Zoan Sun God" fruit which combined awakened paramecia powers with a permanent rubber body and a Zoan form.
• A possible stretchy coincidence since Enel's drum connection could simply be the attribute of his Raijin Thunder God inspiration who uses drums as a medium for thunder creation but both Enel and Luffy seem connected to drums and seemingly channel their powers from the sounds of their drums. When Luffy channels his rubber shapeshifting ability from the drum sounds of his heartbeat, Enel seems to channel his electrokinesis from the sound made by the drums on his back.
• A Final resemblance between the two is that both are capable of overcoming death itself, Enel can magically restart his heart with his electric powers during his cardiac arrest/coma (a sign of clinical death), while Luffy with his cartoonish rubber powers can cheat his own death and magically heal his wounds as if they were 2 immortal Gods.

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Moon technology is heavily reliant on electricity, the same power source as the Goro Goro no Mi:

• Firstly, In Enel's great space operation, Enel ends up on the moon looking for answers. When he attacked a spacey, the robot seems revigorated by the electric attack rather than hurt or fried. Or alternatively, his electric power perfectly fits with the architecture of the spacey lab and quite naturally awakens the spacey army with one strike which means that the whole factory is oddly made of electrically conductive materials and seems to run on electricity.
• Secondly, Birka people originally came from the moon, and Enel originates from the Birka tribe /island.
  • Then, maybe the moon god was always linked to electricity and a past reincarnation of the god lived there on the moon in charge of supplying the city with his electricity making the Goro Goro no Mi a secret Hito Hito no Mi mythical Zoan model: Bilka the Moon God as the polar opposite to Nika the Sun God
  • Since moon people could have been thriving on electricity and their technology could have been based on it, this could explain the exodus of the Birka people to the Earth to look for gold and other conductive precious metals. In fact, Enel's maxim is similarly based on gold recovered from the city of Shandora and Enel feels particularly attracted to this metal.

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Enel's association with Sky Lobsters is a foreshadowing of his Moon God status:

• Firstly, in the sea of clouds exist giant sky lobsters (Super Express Lobster) called God. This lobster can be summoned by Skypiea natives like Conis through unknown means. But according to Pagaya, these Super Express Lobsters are God's (a.k.a Enel's) servant which means they are somehow controlled by him or beaten into submission to some extent.
• Secondly, a red lobstecrayfish is drawn in Enel's lunar fresco during his space exploration. So Why does a fresco display in an ancient city on the moon have those animals depicted unless they have some links with their civilization or with the Moon? as if sky lobsters were Moon-specific animals that used to live on the moon before they moved in a similar environment in the sky of the Earth after the Exodus of the Moon people. In fact, lobsters/crabs are the representation of the Cancer zodiac sign, a sign ruled by the moon according to astrology much like how the Leo sign is ruled by the sun and why the lion (Leo) is closely linked with Luffy, his ship figurehead or his Leo Bazooka. So Enel's association with sky lobsters could indirectly depict him as a moon God like the lion foreshadowed Luffy's role as the Sun God of One Piece.

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Enel character is inspired by Moon deities:

• Tecciztecatl was an Aztec deity, the personification of pride and also the god of the moon. He is often depicted as the "man-in-the-moon" carrying a large, white seashell on his back, representing the Moon itself and his name literally means "person from Tēcciztlān," meaning "Place of the Conch".
  • Similarly, the presence of the Spacey City directly on the moon and the ability of Enel with his maxim to travel directly on the moon makes him the perfect representation of the "man-in-the-moon" aka in many cultures, the pareidolic images (false perception) of a human face recognized in the disc of the full moon due to the appearance of dark areas on the lunar surface.
  • Secondly, Enel lives in Skypiea, a place that relies on the use of Dials, shells, or Conch-like objects that inhabitants often attach to their backs to propel themself. Hence, the "Place of the Conch" and the Seashell inspiration on its back. Indeed, looking at Enel's appearance the four attached wooden shime-daiko drums could represent a set of moons attached to his back.
  • Perhaps the most obvious, but with his god complex and his immorality, Enel is a clear personification of sinful pride like Tecciztecatl his Aztec myth inspiration. Since Enel holds no regard for any life except his own and has no moral qualms about killing thousands. Instead, he sees it as his godly duty, to punish any trust passing in the Shandora's forest by a death sentence called its divine punishment.

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• Kubera is the Hindu god of wealth, and the god-king of the semi-divine yakshas demons (Minks) and ruled in the golden city of Lanka.
  • Similarly, Enel feels particularly attracted to the gold and used it intensively to create its maxim, and rules over the Golden city of Shandora in the Sky.
  • Vimānas are mythological flying palaces or chariots described in Hindu texts. The "Pushpaka Vimana" of Ravana (who took it from Kubera who build it but Rama returned it to Kubera) is the most quoted example of a vimana. This flying chariot made by Kubera is the inspiration behind the Maxim of Enel.
  • Yakshas are celestial beings of nature, usually benevolent, who are the guardians of the natural treasures hidden under the earth and the roots of the trees. But the yakṣha has a dual personality. On the one hand, it can be of harmless nature, associated with forests and mountains; but there is a much darker version of the yakṣa, which is a kind of ogre, ghost, or anthropophagous demon that haunts the wilderness, and attacks or devours travelers, such as the rakṣasas. Mink and their electro ability are clearly connected to Enel. In addition, Enel's design is inspired by the Shinto god of Thunder Raijin and in Japanese folklore, this deity is often accompanied by Raijūs, the Beast of Thunder the inspiration behind the minks.

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For the next set of characters (Earth, Saturn, Venus) continue here, to navigate to another part of this theory, please refer to the hyperlinked table of contents here.

First Previous
Memory Transcription Subject: Vani, venlil exchange program participant
Date [Standardized Human Reckoning]: 2136-08-31
Today we started our journey toward Bandung. Since today is Friday, Johan was free to engage fully in whatever activity we do on our way there. Now that my venlil-made pad can open an Earth map, I looked at our route highlighted on it, and from the name of the places there I realized that we would be retracing the same highway that took us to the Cibodas Gardens on our last trip.
"So, any detour you have in mind?" Johan had finished his meal blocks while I was in the process of finishing my second one. I wondered if these things will have long-term effects on me.
"I have seen a collection of your marine wildlife in the aquarium. Is there such a place for land-based animals?"
"Funny you mentioned that." Johan smiled. "The route we're taking does pass such a place."
I have a human instant messenger already installed on my pad and Johan sent me a link through it. When I opened it, it showed me an updated map of our route with the detour marked. The place was located toward the summit of one of the many mountains on the island.
"Originally I wanted to bring you to see one of the craters in Gede Mountain. But I realized that It would take hours of trekking. A detour to [Safari] Park sounded more relaxing."
"Can you define what the 'Safari' part of Safari Park means?"
"Hmm..." Johan looked through the windshield, no doubt thinking of the best way to explain it. "If I understand correctly… your homeworld doesn't have what we call… wilderness. Right?"
"We transformed all available land for cultivation, energy generation, or living spaces among other uses." Johan didn't say anything about it, but there was a hint of concern in his expression when I told him that.
"To be honest, this island has been... transformed by humans too." Johan looked embarrassed when he said that, just like Fikri the aquarium tour guide yesterday.
"A lot of animals, like the Javanese [tigers], have been extinct since the 20th century." He continued "Then the Sumatran [tigers] went extinct in the 21st century."
"What are tigers"
"Big cats, the size of humans, or maybe two humans?"
I have seen these "cats" and I could not imagine the mayhem a giant version of them would cause. I kept my opinion on the extinction of tigers to myself and waited for Johan to continue.
"Anyway... safari means an excursion into the wilderness to observe wild animals. I think… it specifically used to mean the wilderness of southern Africa, but nowadays wilderness in general?"
"You just look at them? Not hunt them?"
"Well… back then, hunting was also on the agenda, yeah. But we don't do that anymore. During a safari, you would go inside an armored vehicle into the wilderness and see wild animals in their native habitat."
That kind of absurdity is just the thing I expected from humans.
"This Safari Park, I presume, is a simulation of the actual Safari?" Johan said that the Island of Java had lost a lot of animals. Maybe they're using animatronics? By now I have opened pictures of tigers in my pad and I remained convinced of my opinion about their disappearance from this island.
"Yeah, we imported the animals from Africa and around the world into this Safari Park. I recall we brought tigers from North America after they banned private ownership of tigers."
There are just so many questions from that short description alone. Importing predators? Private ownership? I know humans keep emotional support animals, but... tigers?
"So we are going to bring your vehicle into this predator-filled park?
"Don't worry though! It's been decades since the Safari Park allows ground vehicles. Nowadays we watch them from a safe distance through a cable car. No predator can reach us."
"What kind of car is that?"
After Johan explained the concept of the cable car, a park full of predators is the least of my concern now.
"What if it falls?" I looked at a photo of a cable car on my pad. The vehicle hung precariously from a length of steel cable that looked just too thin to support it.
"It won't… I thought you were okay with height. The Ferris Wheel we rode in the Amusement Park is even higher!"
"The Ferris Wheel cabins are mounted firmly on the main structure. This…" I looked at the photo again.
"If you're not comfortable riding on a cable car, we can pick another destination."
"There has never been any incident, has there not?"
"I don't think so." Johan's tone and expression did not sound very convincing.
Fighting over my sense of preservation, I said. "I do not mind riding on the cable car."
I liked the atmosphere of the higher altitude here. It was not as cold as some places on Earth but it was not sweltering hot either. Located in a sparse region like this, Safari Park has a parking garage situated near their entrance, so we also did not need to walk a long distance.
Since today is one of the human break days, the park was quite crowded. After getting through the main gate, we found ourselves in a shaded plaza. From there we followed the sign toward the cable car station. A human shouted at us when we were about to enter the queue line.
"Hey, you over there!" My translator assigned them a voice of indistinct gender. Hearing that, Johan pointed his forefinger to himself.
"Yeah, you." The human answered. They wore fabrics that were all sand colored with a lot of pockets on their upper part. A headgear with a round brim perched on their head and it didn't look functional.
"Come here!" The human shouted again.
"Heh, about time," Johan muttered. We got out of the queue and approached them.
"Hi there. My name is Happy." The human offered their hand, which Johan grabbed and shook up and down several times before releasing it. I looked at the text overlayed above their head and they were speaking in English.
"Are you a furry?" I asked.
"Uh…no?" they said. The human looked at Johan with a confused expression.
"Their name is an English noun phrase, Just like Snow Paws," I explained.
"That's… uh…" Johan looked at the badge on one of the human's pockets and I noticed that my visual overlay translated that too.
"Happy is their actual legal name," Johan said.
"Yep, my full name is Happy Go Lucky Wijaya, and you must be Johan and Vani right?"
"It's hard to mistake him for someone else." Johan gestured all over me.
"Alright then... are you ready to see animals? Follow me!" I realized that Happy didn't even introduce themself as a tour guide, nor did they ask whether or not we needed or wanted one.
"Uh, so… we're not going to ride the cable car?" Johan asked while following them,
Happy stopped and looked back at us. "VIP tours are on the ground, but… some people prefer the cable car. It has a glass bottom so you can look do-"
"We will take the ground tour," I interjected.
"I promise you'll like it." They walked away again and led us toward the direction of the main entrance. Partway, we went through a gate that said "Staff Only" on it and continued on a secluded trail with tall vegetation on our side. Finally, we came into a large blocky building where a pawful of black windowless armored vehicles was parked.
Happy must have done something because one of the vehicles changed its surface color into something that looked like a twisted mishmash of its surroundings.
"Whoa, a camouflaged car!" Johan exclaimed.
"It's not military grade though. It's only meant to fool non-sapient animals." Happy explained.
"Why are you describing them as non-sapient animals? Is there such a thing as sapient animals?" I asked.
"Well, you're talking to one. Unless there's something about venlil biology I'm not aware of. So are you."
I looked at Johan who gave a panicked gesture to the tour guide. He wiggled his palm toward the other human.
"Look, Vani had a bad experience where he overheard some humans calling him an animal."
"But it's a biological truth! Putting ourselves above the rest of the animals is why we're still in the process of healing our planet now! That's why we no longer have native tigers!" Happy looked like they were ready to pounce on both of us.
Neither my human nor I did not have an answer to that. We stood in silence, watching the tour guide close their eyes and took a deep breath.
"I'm sorry. We got on the wrong foot. Yeah... in some context I can see how it would be upsetting."
"There is no need for an apology," I answered. "I can see that you did not mean to use the word animal as an insult."
The tour guide opened one of the doors. "Well anyway! Let's go in. Mr. Venlil can go in the middle."
Unlike Johan's van, the vehicle has a front door that leads into a long seat, completely separate from the compartment in the back. I climbed inside and Johan followed, while Happy entered from the other side, sandwiching me in the middle. When I was making myself comfortably seated, I realized that the car did have windows that let us see outside. A material with fine holes was suspended inside the vehicle's glasses.
Happy grabbed the steering wheel and I realized that... of course, the park is not an automaton-grade place and there are a lot of unpredictable obstacles in the form of animals. I was reminded of the time Johan went feral on the bumper car and I hoped a car crash is more survivable than falling from a cable car above.
One of the garage doors slid up and we came out to an outdoor area, the pavement blocks gave way to a dirt road with green branchless trees to our left and right. We encountered a gate that opened slowly when it detected our vehicle. When the vehicle moved in, another gate hindered us from moving forward. It was not until the gate behind us closed before the one in front of us began to slide open. The second gate brought us into wild greenery, with just enough space between the giant trees to allow our vehicle to pass.
An animal with long ridged horns appeared from behind one of the trees.
"Oh look, there's a Gazelle. One of the fastest herbivores." The gazelle ignored us as it moved cautiously across the ground.
"Being fast is its evolutionary defense then?"
"Yeah, and their predators, the cheetah, are among the fastest carnivores. That's the evolution for you."
As they drove us deeper into the park, Happy explained that before the park put the visitor on the cable cars above, they used to admit vehicles. We were following the same roads, though they had been de-paved.
"I think we should give you a bird's eye view of the wildlife here. Car, show the cladogram of tetrapods." A circular tree diagram appeared on the dashboard in front of me.
"There you can see the tetrapods clade," Happy explained while still looking forward. "The highlighted branches are the ones that we keep in the park."
The section we were in right now was dedicated to a specific clade of earth animals called Bovidae. They are characterized by horns in their males (and some species have horns on their females too). The horns themselves are also an evolutionary advantage not only to defend themselves against predators but surprisingly also to fight among themselves.
We passed a group of bighorn sheep. Unlike the picture of sheep I have on my apron, they didn't have fluffy fleece as we do. As their name suggests, their helical horns were massive.
"See those horns. They'll sometimes butt heads against each other in an act of domination. But it rarely happens here."
After passing groups of white-horned blocky animals (which I learned were mountain goats), we saw a group of large muscular animals, with dark fur and pointy side-sweeping horns. Several small birds stood on its back, pecking what I presume were surface parasites.
"Here you can see buffaloes. That horn is meant to gore a predator. Animals like buffalos are the reason we have pack predators. In a one-on-one fight with a lion, the buffalos win."
"Are all prey on Earth this vicious?"
"Well... not all, but there's a reason we use the term herbivore. Some of them don't have predators."
We went through another double gate and to the right of us lay a large pond with several bulbous animals floating in it. One of them stayed on dry land. It yawned and showed its giant maw with teeth the size of my arm.
"Those over there are the hippopotamuses." The cladogram in the dashboard zoomed toward the position of the animal in the Earth's tree of life. "They're the deadliest animal in Africa and they're vegetarian."
"And no animal hunts them?"
"The babies are easier to kill and preyed upon, but the adults? It's rare for non-humans to take them down."
As we continued on our journey, we encountered yet another large and menacing herbivore called the "Rhinoceros" with a formidable horn on the end of its snout. It did not take a lot of imagination to guess how the Rhinoceros use their horn. We then passed an even larger group of herbivores, the elephants. These giants stood tall with two long pointy tusks (probably to injure predators too) on each side of their proboscis.
"I see why you don't call them preys.."
The dichotomy between prey and predators broke down on this strange planet. When I asked them about it, Happy told me about Coyotes in the Americas. These animals sometimes prey upon cats, who are themselves, predators.
After we saw the extremely tall animal known as the "giraffe" we entered the beginning of the predator section. Unlike the image of a wild predator, I have in mind. Most of them were lazily sleeping when we passed them by. We finally found the striped predator called "tiger" that Happy was so fond of. The giant cat was playing on what looked like a playground, batting a hanging ball with its forepaws.
"We don't feed them live animals here, so they need some enrichment." Happy explained even before I got the chance to ask.
"Is there a reason other than moral standards for you to keep predators alive?"
The tour guide stopped driving to collect their thoughts and I wished I did not ask that question. I looked at the tiger "playground" and the predator had gone missing.
"Let me tell you about the trophic cascade." Happy started.
The tour guide explained that less predator means more prey and more prey, in turn, means fewer plants. Exterminating predators has even resulted in a lot of death before. In 20th-century China, humans once tried to exterminate birds known as sparrows. It turned out that the sparrows were important in keeping a kind of insectoid pest. With the sparrow missing, they grew unchecked and ate all the humans' staple food.
Armed with the knowledge of the ecological balance, humans even resorted to importing predators into their natural preserve (another uniquely human practice of keeping a large swath of wilderness) to "restore" the balance
"Is there any place on the earth where predators are not part of the balance," I asked.
"Actually, yes. In some places like New Zealand, the balance precluded predators and the predators that humans introduced have been eliminated. You're not allowed to keep cats and dogs as pets there."
I heard a soft thud from the left and saw a tiger sniffing the window of the car door on Johan's side. Its giant paw was pressed against the glass.
"Awww, he's giving us a hello." Johan placed his palm against the tiger's paw and that made me realize just how large the predator was.
"I presume you do have the means to drive this predator away?" I asked the tour guide.
"Don't worry about that." Happy faced the dashboard and spoke. "Car, deploy the distraction drone."
A drone whirred out from the roof of the van. Seeing the flying device triggered the tiger's predatory instinct and it left us alone to chase after it.
"See? It's as simple as that."
In the next section, I finally saw the gazelles' natural predators. The cheetah looked like it was built to run fast. But right now... they were also sleeping under a tree. Two of them looked oddly peaceful cuddling against each other.
Cats like tigers and lions are carnivorous. But that was not the only kind of predator on Earth. In the next section, we visited omnivorous predators known as "bears". They look like giant Zurulian with forward-facing eyes, and I plunged into the metaphoric uncanny valley again when I saw them. One of the bears was sitting against a rotting trunk of a tree. It looked so pensive, staring past us. The bear raised its hands and made a gesture that looked like a human greeting.
"Aww, it's waving its hand. It's not fair that they look so adorable," Johan said. He is, after all, a human, and sometimes he says obscene human things like that.
Before we finished our tour on the ground, we went through the big birds and reptile section. Here, I saw the crocodile when we crossed a bridge. The reptile looked like they could be the arxurs' ancestors except for the fact that they have side-facing eyes.
"How… do they hunt?" The jagged teeth of the animal were an unmistakable feature of the predator but the side-facing eyes did not look right perching on that head.
"They usually wait for their prey to approach, then they snap their mouth. Their bodies are often mistaken for tree logs."
One of the crocodiles opened its mouth and stayed agape. "Oh yeah..." Happy continued. "Hippos often harass and even kill them."
After we exited the Safari Park, Happy continued the tour by bringing us around the walkable part of the park, pointing out various animals and their habitats along the way. It was in this place that I saw the pandas. Their features are that of a predator but these rotund bears were munching on unmistakable plant material when we observed them.
"Is that really what they eat?" I asked. The Panda's black and white coats contrasted against the green foliage surrounding them.
"There are incidences of them eating meat in the wild. But they can thrive on bamboo alone."
If my encounter with the carnivorous plant is any indication, the Panda is probably not the only one of its kind. True enough, Happy then took us to see the Red Panda. With the usual human habits of reusing names, the Red Panda is only distantly related to Panda, they're not at all members of the bear family.
The red, black, and white animal was sitting on a tree branch, calmly munching on a piece of fruit. Its fluffy tail was curled around its body, and its big eyes seemed to sparkle in the sunlight. It seemed to notice us, and let out its tongue before picking another fruit and at it.
"Awww, how cute," Johan said.
Strangely, I found myself agreeing with him. Just as higher brain function was not a prerequisite for predation, these two ex-carnivores proved that the reverse can also be true. You do not have to be a sapient with a complex moral framework to switch to herbivorous behavior. The Earth kept refusing to follow our standards and perhaps… that was for the better. Perhaps we do need something to show us that the universe has more diversity than we can suppose.
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