#shared system allocation

[asestimationsconsultants]

Why a Commercial Estimating Service Is Essential for Mixed-Use Development Projects

Mixed-use development projects combine residential, commercial, hospitality, and sometimes institutional or cultural spaces into a single cohesive plan. While these projects offer vibrant, multi-functional communities and increased land-use efficiency, they also come with high complexity in both design and budgeting. A commercial estimating service is essential in navigating this complexity, helping stakeholders control costs, balance program requirements, and streamline planning from preconstruction through completion.

Understanding the Complexity of Mixed-Use Projects

Unlike single-purpose developments, mixed-use projects demand coordination between multiple functions—each with its own codes, building systems, and operational needs. Residential units may require soundproofing, individual HVAC units, and different egress requirements compared to commercial spaces. Retail tenants often have unique build-out requirements. Hospitality components may call for luxury finishes and complex mechanical systems.

A commercial estimating service brings structure to this multifaceted picture. Estimators break down the development into clearly defined zones, identify distinct cost drivers within each use, and prepare segmented estimates that allow developers to see how each component affects the total project cost.

Supporting Phased Construction and Cash Flow Planning

Mixed-use projects are often developed in phases due to financing, permitting, or logistical constraints. For instance, a developer may prioritize the retail podium and parking garage before proceeding with upper-level residential or hotel components.

Commercial estimating services support phased planning by producing detailed construction cost breakdowns by stage. This allows developers to align funding disbursements with construction sequencing and helps financial institutions assess risk based on projected cash flow needs.

Accounting for Shared Infrastructure

Mixed-use buildings typically rely on shared infrastructure—such as common mechanical rooms, centralized elevators, or joint-use amenities like lobbies, fitness centers, and parking structures. Allocating the costs of these shared systems accurately across the different uses is vital for budgeting, accounting, and financing.

Estimators evaluate how shared systems are used across program types and assign costs proportionally. This is especially important when different ownership structures are involved, such as when retail is held by one entity and residential by another.

Navigating Diverse Code Requirements

Each use within a mixed-use building is subject to specific building codes, occupancy classifications, fire safety standards, and ADA accessibility mandates. For example, a restaurant tenant may require commercial-grade ventilation and fire suppression systems, while hotel units may need emergency power and elevator recall.

A commercial estimating service works closely with architects, engineers, and code consultants to ensure that these varied code requirements are identified and accurately priced. This avoids surprises during plan review and ensures the project remains compliant without triggering costly redesigns.

Managing Tenant Improvements and Flexibility

Retail and commercial tenants often negotiate for custom build-outs and improvements beyond base building construction. These can include upgraded flooring, lighting, storefronts, signage, and even plumbing or kitchen installations.

Estimators provide separate allowances or hard numbers for these improvements, depending on lease terms and tenant agreements. This ensures both landlords and tenants understand their financial responsibilities and can plan accordingly. Where flexibility is needed for future changes in occupancy, the estimating service can price adaptable infrastructure (e.g., movable walls or modular utility connections).

Supporting Financial Feasibility and Pro Forma Development

One of the most critical early tasks in a mixed-use development is determining whether the project “pencils out.” Estimators play a key role by feeding accurate, data-backed construction costs into financial models. This enables developers to calculate projected returns, identify financing gaps, and secure investment based on realistic cost assessments.

If preliminary costs exceed target budgets, the estimating service can assist in value engineering—offering options that reduce costs while preserving project quality and functionality.

Enabling Efficient Procurement and Scheduling

With multiple project components running in parallel, procurement needs to be strategically managed. Items such as curtain walls, elevators, and mechanical systems may serve multiple building areas and must be ordered with precise specifications and lead times.

A commercial estimating service helps map out procurement schedules by forecasting long-lead items and aligning order timelines with construction phases. This prevents bottlenecks and enables better coordination across trades and suppliers.

Enhancing Owner and Stakeholder Communication

Mixed-use projects often involve multiple stakeholders—municipalities, investors, joint-venture partners, anchor tenants, and future residents. A clear, structured cost estimate enhances communication by showing how funds will be spent and which portions of the project account for the greatest investment.

By offering segmented and visualized estimates, commercial estimating services make it easier for all parties to understand the financial scope of the project and build confidence in the development team’s planning capabilities.

Conclusion

The integrated nature of mixed-use developments presents both opportunity and complexity. A commercial estimating service serves as the financial compass that helps developers navigate this intricate landscape. From phased construction and shared infrastructure to diverse codes and tenant expectations, estimators bring clarity, precision, and adaptability to ensure these ambitious projects remain financially viable and strategically sound. In the world of mixed-use construction, accurate cost estimation isn’t just beneficial—it’s indispensable.

[mckitterick]

When Noem testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, ranking member Senator Chris Murphy gave such powerful, informative, and important opening remarks I have to share:

transcript:

"I say this with seriousness and respect, but your department is out of control.

"You’re spending like you don’t have a budget. You are running out of money for this fiscal year. You are illegally refusing to spend funds that have been authorized by this Congress and appropriated by this committee. You are ignoring the immigration laws of this nation, implementing a brand new immigration system that you have invented that has little relation to the statutes that you are required to follow as spelled out in your oath of office. You are routinely violating the rights of immigrants who may not be citizens, but whether you like it or not, they have constitutional and statutory rights when they reside in the United States.

"Your agency acts as if laws don’t matter, as if the election gave you some mandate to violate the Constitution and the laws passed by this Congress. It did not give you that mandate. You act as if your disagreement with the law, or even the public’s disagreement with the law, is relevant and gives you the ability to create your own law. It does not give you that ability.

"Let’s start with your spending. You are on track to trigger the Anti-Deficiency act. That means you are on track to spend more money than you have been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence and it is wildly illegal.

"Your agency will be broke by July, over two months before the end of the fiscal year. You may not think that Congress has allotted enough money to ICE, but the Constitution and the federal law does not allow you to spend more money than you have been given or to invent money.

"This obsession with spending at the border has left the country unprotected elsewhere. The security threats to national security are higher, not lower, since Trump came to office. To fund the border you have illegally gutted spending to cybersecurity.

"As we speak, Russian and Chinese hackers are having a field day attacking our nation. You have withdrawn funds for disaster prevention. Storms are going to kill more people because of your illegal withholding of these funds. Your myopia about the border fueled by President Trump’s prejudice against people who speak a different language have shattered most of this country’s most important defenses.

"Now let’s talk about the impoundments. When Congress appropriates funds for a specific purpose the administration has no discretion whether or not to spend that money unless you go through a specific process with this committee.

"Let me give you two of many instances of this illegal impoundment. The first is a shelter and services program. Senator Britt may want to zero that account out, but that account is funded in a bipartisan way. You may not like the program. Your policy is to treat migrants badly. I think that’s abhorrent, but it doesn’t matter that you don’t like the program. You cannot cancel spending in this program, and you cannot use the funds, as you have, to fund other things, like ICE.

"You have also cancelled citizenship and integration grants, which help lawful permanent residents become citizens, helping them take the citizenship test. I know your goal is to try to make life as hard as possible for immigrants, but that goal is not broadly shared by the American public. That’s why Congress, in a bipartisan way, for decades has funded this program to help immigrants become citizens.

"Now let’s talk about why encounters at the southern border are down so much. This is clearly going to be your primary talking point today. You will tell us that it represents as success. But the prime reason why encounters are down is because you are brazenly violating the law every hour of every day.

"You are refusing to allow people showing up at the southern border to apply for asylum. I acknowledge that you don’t believe that people should be allowed to apply for asylum, but the White House doesn’t get to choose that. The law requires you to process people who are showing up at the border to apply for asylum.

"Why? Because our asylum law is a bipartisan commitment, an effort to correct for our nation’s unconscionable decision to deny entry to Jews to this country who were being hunted and killed by the Nazis. Our nation, Republicans and Democrats, decided, wrote it into law, that we would not repeat that horror ever again, and thus we would allow for people who were fleeing terror and torture to come here, arrive at the border, and make a case for asylum.

"Finally let’s talk about these disappearances. In an autocratic society, people who the regime does not like or who are protesting the regime are often picked up off the street, and spirited away, often to open-ended detention. Sometimes they’re never seen again.

"What you are doing, both to individuals who have legal rights to stay here, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, or students who are just protesting Trump’s policies, is immoral and, to follow the theme, it is illegal. You have no right to deport a student visa holder with no due process simply because they have spoken in a way that offends the President. You can’t remove migrants whom a court has given humanitarian protection from removal.

"Now, reports suggest that you are planning to remove immigrants with no due process and send them to prisons in Libya. Libya is in the middle of a civil war. It is subject to a level 4 travel advisory, meaning we tell American citizens never to travel to Libya. We don’t have an embassy there because it is not safe for our diplomats. Sending migrants with pending asylum claims into a war zone, just because it’s cruel, is so deeply disturbing.

"Listen, I understand that my Republican colleagues on this committee don’t view the policy as I do, don’t share my level of concern for the way the government treats immigrants, but what I don’t understand is why we don’t have consensus in the Senate and on this committee on the decision by this administration to impound the spending that we have decided together to allocate in defense of this nation.

"We as an appropriations committee worked interminable hours to write and pass this budget, and so we make ourselves irrelevant when we allow the administration to ignore what we have decided. And then when we look the other way when the administration rounds up immigrants who are here illegally and have committed no offenses worthy of detainment, we also do potential irreversible damage to the Constitution.

"These should not be partisan concerns—destroying the power of Congress, eroding individuals’ Constitutional rights. This should matter to both parties."

_

I never knew that our asylum laws arose from when we didn’t take Jews escaping from the Nazis. Both parties said never again. Yet here we are.

Everything this "administration" is doing is impeachable, and this Congress has a responsibility to get these criminals out of office and keep them out.

Contact your representatives and demand that they hold Homeland Security to account if they want to keep holding their offices - if they in fact want those offices to still be a thing in the future.

[gloomwitchwrites]

Dog with No Teeth // Chapter Nine

Simon "Ghost" Riley x Female Reader

Chapter Specific Warnings (MDNI): post-apocalypse au, swearing, mild angst, mild fluff

Word Count: 6k

The mandate becomes clearer. You start your first day at the archive. Ghost shares information.

Chapter Eight // Chapter Ten

ao3 // main masterlist // dog with no teeth masterlist

United Nations Preservation of Humanity Charter (UN Mandate I)

Pillar I: Genetic Continuity: All citizens capable of reproduction must contribute to the gene pool unless medically exempt.

Pillar II: Historical Memory: Each Safe Zone and its civilians must preserve human history, language, and art, ensuring no generation forgets humanity’s origins.

Pillar III: Weapons Compact: All Safe Zones are forbidden from producing, obtaining, or trading weapons of mass destruction without prior UN Council approval. Military force may be used only under UN mandate to prevent genocide or extinction-level threats. The production or attainment of firearms, explosives, projectiles, blades, or any instrument of war by civilians is prohibited.

Pillar IV: Bioethics: Non-consensual testing on humans is prohibited. Artificial intelligence, cloning, and biotechnology is outlawed unless authorized by UN Council and must prioritize long-term human well-being.

Pillar V: Reintegration: No persons may be denied sanctuary in a Safe Zone on the basis of origin, gender, or religious belief. All survivors have the right to seek safety and sustenance.

Pillar VI: Equity of Resources: Vital resources, such as water, food, medicine, and power, must be shared across Safe Zones under UN allocation protocols, and redistributed in times of shortage.

Pillar VII: Rewilding: Each Safe Zone and the citizens therein must preserve or restore a percentage of surrounding ecosystems to maintain biodiversity and prevent ecological collapse.

Pillar VIII: Cultural Sovereignty: Safe Zones and the citizens therein retain cultural autonomy, as long as that autonomy does not propagate ideologies that promote extinction, discrimination, or historical erasure. Minority cultures, languages, and traditions must be legally protected.

Pillar IX: Equal Dignity: All individuals, regardless of origin, ethnicity, religious belief, sexual orientation, or country of birth, are equal under the law and entitled to equal protection and opportunity.

Pillar X: Anti-Extremism: All Safe Zones and the citizens therein must report, identify, or otherwise notify the respective authoritative bodies of any organizations, groups, collectives, or movements advocating genocide, supremacy, or systemic subjugation.

You close the pamphlet, shutting out what you didn’t want to know but need to understand. The Preservation of Humanity Charter. Mandate I. Specific and yet entirely vague—open to interpretation. On the surface, nothing appears nefarious, yet you detect hypocrisy in it, that as you dig deeper and ask more questions, fractures will appear.

Your gaze shifts to the collection of reading materials the transitional advisor and family planner handed you when you departed. They stare back, mocking. With a sigh, you set the pamphlet down and reach for another. This one is black with white lettering. “Bill of Rights” is embossed on the front near the top of the thin booklet. In the middle is the emblem of the United Nations.

Opening it, you scan the introduction.

In recognition of the fragility of civilization and the enduring worth of all persons, the United Nations affirms the following rights and protections as universal and mandatory for all Safe Zones, Neutral Zones, governing bodies, and military authorities. These rights are preserved under The United Nations Preservation of Humanity Charter, Mandate III, in alliance with the global standards set forth by the United Nations Continuity Council.

You pause in your reading, mind drifting toward all that’s been lost. There was so much chaos when the structures in place began to collapse—when everything destabilized and devolved. No one believed that any of this would happen. When world leaders threatened one another and preached for isolationism, nothing seemed to come of it. People went to work, lived their lives, spent time with their friends and families.

Then came the trade wars, the tariffs, and sanctions. Even then, people only complained about rising prices and the cost of living. Land and border disputes followed. More empty threats where nothing happened, and the news cycle carried on. But one country put boots on the ground. Another did the same in retaliation. Like a faucet being slowly turned on, the droplets became a stream and then a current.

Article I – Right to Existence and Liberty.

All citizens have the right to life, dignity, liberty, and autonomy. No persons shall be subject to enslavement, forced labor, or arbitrary detention.

All “citizens.” You’re not a citizen—not yet. Where does that leave you? Will they grant you full status when probation is lifted?

Article II – Equality Under Law.

A loud, repeated thudding fills the room, coming from the front door. Clutching the thin black booklet, you head for the door, yanking it open, only to find Lieutenant Riley on the other side holding a cardboard box.

“You’re here early,” you blurt.

“Brought you something,” he replies, voice raspy but gentle.

Behind the balaclava, all you can see are his gorgeous brown eyes. There is no crease in his brow—nothing that indicates any emotion. Yet his shoulders are a tad slumped, almost as if he’s exhausted and would rather be in bed.

You step to the side, holding the door open enough for Lieutenant Riley to enter. Shutting the door, you follow behind him as he makes his way into the bedroom. Placing the cardboard box on the bed, Lieutenant Riley rests his hands atop it, silently observing you as you approach the box.

“You brought me something?” you ask with a hint of excitement.

Neutrality becomes softness. A flush of pink blooms at the edges of the balaclava. Ghost taps the top of the box and takes a step back, extending an arm in open invitation.

“Go on,” he urges.

Placing the thin, black booklet on the bed, you reach for the box with eager, itching fingers. Anticipation flowers in your stomach. Only days ago, Lieutenant Riley dumped you out of his lap and left, hardly giving you a glance as he walked out the door. Now, here he is, bringing you a gift.

You open the box and find an array of colors.

“Is this…” you trail off, reaching into the box, fingers gliding along soft fabric.

Lifting it from its home, you unfurl it. A sweater. Deep maroon by the color. The fit looks almost perfect. Holding the sweater off to the side, you peer down into the box.

“Have you brought me clothes?” you ask, almost choking on your words.

On your release from quarantine, you were given a single outfit. You’ve been rotating through two shirts and two pants the last two weeks. Placing the sweater on the bed, you start removing more items. There are tank tops, dress pants, and cardigans. There’s even a sundress. A wave of joy washes over you, drowning you in rapt glee as you retrieve more clothing items out of the cardboard box.

“I guessed on your size,” says Ghost as a mountain of clothes begins to form on the thin duvet. “Wasn’t sure about color. Or style.”

While the clothes are clearly second-hand, all of it is in good condition. You’ll have more than two shirts to wear. More than two pants. Ghost has brought you an entire wardrobe.

Gratitude explodes within you, bringing you to the brink of tears.

“I can exchange what you don’t like,” he continues, rambling on like he’s suddenly nervous. “If something is too big, can always have it resized.”

“Lieutenant,” you whisper, clutching a pair of black slacks to your chest.

“Do you like it?” he asks, taking a step toward you.

He sounds so eager—so hopeful.

Words form and then promptly leave your head, escaping into the air. So, you don’t speak. You walk around the corner of the bed, and push into Lieutenant Riley’s space. Placing your hand on his arm for support, you go up on your toes, pressing your lips to his balaclava-covered cheek.

“Thank you,” you murmur, squeezing his arm. “For thinking of me.”

Lieutenant Riley’s brow is soft and delicate. He leans in your direction, pure affection in his gaze. It’s startling, sending a rush of heat up your neck and a little flip of your stomach. You quickly drop your hand, backing up.

“You start at the archive today,” states Ghost that soft gaze following your every step.

“I do,” you exhale, smiling in his direction as you delicately fold a pair of jeans. “I’m excited to be around books again.”

“Should pick something out,” nods Ghost. “Look your best for the big day.”

“You’re right,” you grin. “I should.”

After a long deliberation and several spins for Lieutenant Riley’s viewing pleasure, you select a simple black dress with a forest green cardigan. It’s plain and comfortable but professional.

Ghost lightly tugs on the hem of the cardigan. “Fit all right?”

“It’s lovely,” you beam, shying away from how intensely Lieutenant Riley watches you.

It’s hunger but not lecherous in nature. Like dark water, you cannot see into his depths—you cannot begin to guess what he might be thinking. Yet you like the attention, and whatever animosity that lingered between the two of you from the other night is gone. Lieutenant Riley’s body language is relaxed and intimate. The man is in a good mood, and that contentment only heightens your own happiness.

You should enjoy this day. It’s a fresh start. A new beginning in the face of all that you’ve lost.

Ghost releases the cardigan, his arm returning to his side. “Ready?”

You nod. “Ready.”

Out on the street, Ghost escorts you toward a black SUV.

You come to a dead stop. “Is this yours?” you ask in disbelief. “People own cars?”

Ghost opens the front passenger door. “No,” he answers, stepping to the side to indicate that you should get in.

“No this isn’t yours? Or no people don’t own cars?”

“Yes.”

You poke him in the chest, but you’re grinning. “Don’t you dare,” you laugh.

“Dare what?” he replies in mock confusion.

You shake your head good-naturedly, sliding into the passenger seat. Ghost shuts the door, circling around the front of the vehicle to hop into the driver side.

You arch an eyebrow. “Why are you taking me to work in a non-military vehicle?”

“How do you know that?” counters Ghost, draping his arm across the steering wheel.

“So it’s a civilian vehicle?”

“Didn’t say that,” he says casually, leaning back in the seat, reaching into his pocket as he digs around for something.

You open your mouth. Shut it. Ghost chuckles, and you playfully smack his bicep with the back of your hand. Withdrawing a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, Ghost sets both in the middle console. The SUV roars to life, the floor gently rattling beneath your feet. Ghost checks the side mirror and shifts gears. The vehicle rolls forward, cruising slowly down the street.

Two weeks behind the wall and all you’ve seen is the inside of your temporary apartment, and a few surrounding streets. This is furtherment—a consolidation of what was and the exploration of possibilities. Home is behind you, though it dwells in your heart, and for now, you must make peace with your new reality. You must navigate this to your advantage, happiness, and well-being.

That is the core of survival after all. To carry on.

“Where is the archive?” you ask, peering upward through the windshield at the towering buildings.

“It’s inside the library,” answers Ghost, turning on his blinker as he rolls up to a stop sign. “In the civilian zone.”

“We’re going to the civilian zone?” Your voice is laced with excitement.

All you’ve known is grim-faced men and a militarized looming presence. This might just be your first real sense of normalcy in almost a month.

“We are,” replies Ghost.

You can’t sit still as the SUV shepherds the two of you along. Beneath your skin is a buzzing adrenaline. It pushes you to twist and turn, to try and absorb everything around you. The neutral greyness of the militarized zone starts to change, shifting toward greenery. Where there were only sidewalk, road, and buildings, trees and plants begin to appear at even intervals, adding a touch of color.

Ghost slows the vehicle at a small guard gate. The barrier lifts, and a guard waves the SUV through. The transition to the civilian zone is almost instantaneous—a whiplash. While there are several vehicles on the road, the majority are buses, and beside those in designated lanes are bicyclists and motorized scooters. No one walks around in uniform. It’s so…ordinary, and yet so strange, like you’ve been transported back to a time before the collapse or shoved into a parallel reality.

There is a communal quality to the way people move in groups or pairs. No one appears to be any hurry. Lieutenant Riley turns, and you nearly tell him to stop the car. You press your face to the glass, mouth agape as he drives by an open market.

As he takes another turn, you whirl around in your seat. “What was that? Can we stop there?”

Behind the balaclava, the skin around Lieutenant Riley’s eyes wrinkle, hinting at a hidden smile. “Another time,” he murmurs. “Promise. Don’t want to be late on your first day.”

You press yourself against the seat, head tilted in the direction of the window. While everything appears clean—utopian even—there is an underlying rawness, a wear and tear that can only come from age and lack of sufficient resources. Questions fire off in your head. There is so much you want to ask Ghost. If he weren’t so goddamn stubborn, you’d talk his ear off for hours. Instead, you sit still, toying with the hem of your dress as Lieutenant Riley guides the vehicle along.

A few more turns, and then you’re solidified, staring up in shock at the building before you.

“Oh my God,” you say aloud.

Lieutenant Riley snorts at your outburst.

The library’s front façade are book spines in various colors and titles. This is not a structure built in the collapse but from the time before, when libraries were receiving adequate funding, the government cared about knowledge, and learning was publicly free institution. The very center of the building, where the stone stairs meet the entrance doors, is a wall of glass, splitting the book spines into two sections.

“This is—This is amazing,” you gasp.

Ghost grunts in what must be an agreement. Either way, you don’t particularly care. This is a library, a place you never thought you’d see in all its glory again.

“Are you crying?” asks Lieutenant Riley, reaching across the center counsel to place his hand on your shoulder.

“Yes,” you hiccup, wiping away a wayward tear.

“What’s upset you?” He sounds genuinely worried, and that only makes you cry harder.

“I’m happy. I promise,” you say through a shaky breath.

The crease in the middle of Lieutenant Riley’s brow doesn’t abate. “Need to take a minute?”

You nod, sniffling, using the sleeve of the cardigan to absorb the remaining tears. “Just a bit overwhelmed.” Ghost nods but remains the quiet companion as you gather your composure. “I’m ready,” you murmur after a minute.

Lieutenant Riley leans away from you, fingers pressing against the door lock buttons. You hear the audible transition of the locks disengaging. Reaching for the handle, you take a deep breath, readying yourself for what’s to come.

The car door opens. Crisp, cool air rushes in. You inhale sharply, slipping from the seat, landing on solid ground. Glancing over your shoulder, you lock gazes with Lieutenant Riley. He gives a little nod, an encouraging inclination to go.

You raise your hand in the smallest goodbye, slamming the SUV door. Through the window tint, you watch him watching you. Backward step. A turn of your heel. Forward step by forward step. Stairs.

At the top, just before the glass doors, you turn one last time. Ghost is still parked at the curb. Waiting. This is a different version of him, a patient and caring Lieutenant Riley you haven’t seen before. He’s certainly flirted, found ways to comfort you, but there has always been distance—a separation. You consider this change as you enter the library, questioning whether Lieutenant Riley’s motivations are pure.

Who did they assign to you?

Why does it matter?

It matters to me.

The bit of joy that’s made a nest in you fractures. Small cracks. Tiny fissures. Not enough to notice but just wide enough to allow bitterness in.

I was offended they didn’t make me an offer.

Perhaps Lieutenant Riley’s motivations aren’t pure. It’s clear that he wants you to himself, but why? Why you when he could probably have anyone?

As you enter the library, you’re greeted by a warmly lit space, the interior all dark wood and polished stone. Overhead, you notice a balcony of a second story. All you can see of it are the tops of the shelves, but that isn’t what captures your attention. As you approach the front desk, you notice the lack of books on the shelves. Some are completely empty, others full. Most are partially stocked with sections of barren shelving, dust collecting in the corners.

You give your name at the desk, and the receptionist smiles.

“Follow me,” she says, voice soft and lyrical.

As the two of you head toward the back of the building, your awe becomes worry. Most of the lights are turned off back here. The bit of light it does receive comes from the main windows up front and a few skylights that cut through the middle of the second-story ceiling. Rope barricades close off endless rows of empty shelves. Destruction has not touched them. They are simply empty. Bones and broken skulls that once held neural gore.

“Through this door, dear,” says the receptionist, indicating a door that says, “Archival Department” and below that “Employees Only.”

“Thank you,” you reply, but she’s already off, shoes clacking against the marble.

You press your hand to the door, standing there in the muted shadows. Instinct is rising, whispering to run, to seek shelter in more familiar places. But there is nowhere for you to go. Even if you were to walk out the front door, Lieutenant Riley might not be out front, and you don’t know how to return to your apartment.

“Fuck,” you whisper, pressing your forehead to the door with the other hand on the handle. “Fuck.”

You have to do this.

You have to do this.

You have to—

Turning the handle, you shove it open, barreling through without looking where you’re going. You nearly take a tumble, righting yourself at the last moment. The door slam shuts behind you, and three pairs of eyes stare back.

“That’s certainly an entrance,” comes a masculine voice with a thick Irish accent.

A tall, lanky man with wire-thin glasses sits behind a plain wood desk covered in stacks of paper and various office supplies. His auburn hair has a touch of grey in it—messy too like he’s only just rolled out of bed. In his hand is a white mug with black lettering that says Yes, I really do need all these books.

“Hi,” you manage, raising your hand in greeting.

When he smiles, there is a fatherly touch to it. You instantly gravitate toward it. “I’m Arthur,” he says, rising from his chair and circling around the front of his desk, arm extended, hand offered in a handshake.

You give your own name, clasping his hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You’re me new archivist.”

“I am,” you nod.

Arthur beams. “Welcome.” He turns to the other two people in the room. Both are women around your age give or take a year or two. “This is Hannah.” He nods toward a blonde with a head of tight curls. “And that is Eloise.”

“Hello,” they greet in unison, all smiles.

The room itself is a quaint office space. Along the far wall are large windows that let in natural light. There are four desks in total, three clearly belong to Arthur, Hannah, and Eloise. The fourth sits empty and must be yours. Beneath your shoes is worn, dark wood and the walls are an off beige with one accent wall in dark green. Pushed up against the three walls without windows are rows and rows of shelving, all of it packed and overflowing. A few of the wood shelves sag inward, threatening to collapse at any moment.

“Charles mentioned your experience,” says Arthur. He takes a drink from his mug. “We’re happy to have you. Too much work for three.” He chuckles. “Not that four will be much better.”

“I noticed all the empty shelves,” you reply, taking a leap in what he might be referring to.

He nods solemnly. “This library services the entire Safe Zone. You’d think they’d assign more staff.” Arthur shakes his head. “We can’t process all this material fast enough. Demand is high but we’re only three.” He lifts his coffee mug in your direction. “Four.”

“Staying busy sounds nice,” you reply, because it’s true. You need out of your fucking head. You need to be away from Ghost and from that apartment for a bit. “And books make me happy.”

Arthur nods. “Hopefully you’ll still love them as time goes on.” He clears his throat. “Now, about the job.”

An endless sea of information rushes at you. Eloise and Hannah float about the office, the two of them chatting in French as they rifle through paperwork. Arthur leaves them to it, taking you on a full tour of the office space and then into the library itself. You stay politely silent through most of it, asking questions when there are lulls. Meandering through the library, Arthur circles back to the office, bringing you to another door.

“Behind here,” he begins. “Is everything we have yet to duplicate.”

While walking through the library, Arthur explained the only books on the shelves were ones they already had duplicates of. There are plenty more where there are only singular copies. Some in pristine condition, others needing a reprint. But it’s not all physical. There are digital versions too that are sitting, waiting to be processed.

“It’s a maze in there.”

“I’m ready,” you smile.

Arthur opens the door, the two of you stepping inside. The quality of the air is immediately different. On the wall next to the door are several panels indicating temperature, air quality, and humidity. It’s all being monitored. But that’s not what shocks you.

Arthur wasn’t joking. The place is a fucking maze.

“What—what is all this?” you ask, turning toward him, gesturing at what can only be called a mess.

Arthur sighs, adjusting his glasses. “That is too much work for four people.”

There is no organization. To order in the chaos. It’s just rows of shelving, stacks of cardboard boxes and storage bins. There are even stacked books pressed up against the wall. A home was found, even that means home is on the goddamn floor.

“No kidding,” you whisper.

Just as Arthur opens his mouth, the door swings open.

“It’s lunch,” says Hannah.

Arthur checks his watch. “Look at that.”

“And someone is here for you,” adds Hannah, smiling in your direction.

“Me?” You point at yourself as if there might be another of you lurking in the stacks.

Hannah’s smile shifts, becoming a knowing smirk like she’s holding on to a little secret.

Arthur claps and pats his stomach. “Lunch is an hour. A full hour.” He winks. “We take that seriously around here.”

At the library reception desk, you find an unexpected visitor.

“Lieutenant,” you breathe, approaching Ghost slowly. “Are we leaving?”

You don’t want to go. Only a few hours in and you’re eager to stay, to idle amongst the shelves.

In one hand, Ghost carries a soft-sided insulated cooler bag. Tucked under that arm is large blanket. The receptionists gaze lingers on the two of you, observing with abject curiosity. Ghost is in his all-black fatigues and balaclava.

“Thought I’d bring lunch,” he states.

“That’s kind of you,” you murmur, reaching for the blanket.

Ghost surrenders it without protest. “There’s a park across the street.”

You nod, clutching the blanket to your chest. “I’d like that.”

A few minutes later and you’re sitting on the blanket, soaking up the sun as Lieutenant Riley opens the cooler bag. He retrieves a glass bottle of water along with sandwiches, fresh fruit, and some cut raw veggies.

“Eat as much as you want,” sighs Ghost as he settles onto his back, arms tucked behind his head.

Unwrapping one of the sandwiches, you take a bite, chewing slowly. “Thank you.”

Lieutenant Riley glances at you. “You didn’t pack a lunch. Knew you’d be hungry.”

“Looking after me?” you tease.

“That’s my job.”

You snort and take another bite. As you chew, you pour yourself some water. It’s cold and crisp. Refreshing. “Didn’t work today?” you venture to ask.

“Work every day,” sighs Ghost. “Price doesn’t mind if I slip away for an hour or two.”

“Must be nice,” you murmur.

“First day treating you well?”

You nod, still chewing. Swallowing, you answer him. “It’s a good fit. Keep me busy.”

“Good.”

“Arthur is the Lead Archivist. And Irish. Hannah and Eloise speak French, but their accents are different.” You take another bite. “Pretty sure Hannah’s Canadian and Eloise is from France,” you muse. After a few seconds of silence, you continue. “Is that normal for all the Safe Zones?”

Ghost adjusts, stretching. “Is what normal?”

“Is it normal for people from different countries to all live in a Safe Zone together?”

Lieutenant Riley stares up into the sky. “It’s on purpose.” You start to formulate a follow-up question, but he carries on. “To dispel supremacy movements. Can’t gather support if the remaining population is scattered across hundreds of Safe Zones.”

“There are hundreds of Safe Zones?” Ghost nods but doesn’t elaborate. “How many exactly?” you probe.

“Just over two hundred.”

Two hundred? There aren’t even two hundred countries. You recall the map in Commander Graves’ office, of the different colored stars that dotted the unlabeled land masses. Of the stars, there were eight different colors, but now that you consider it, they easily could have been two hundred of them on it.

“Are they all large like this one?”

“No,” snorts Lieutenant Riley. “Most are small. Only a few dozen are the size of this one. Ten that are even larger.”

This is the most information Ghost has given you. He appears more open than before. Relaxed. You take another bite of your sandwich, knowing that you need to take advantage of this opportunity.

“Is that why the country flags are black on your uniforms?”

Like a sudden breeze that chills the bones, Lieutenant Riley’s demeanor shifts to a somber note. “Partially,” he answers, voice raspy. “Black flags used to mean something different. Now it’s a statement of grief and remembrance.”

“I don’t entirely understand,” you say softly, shifting closer to him. “There’s so much I don’t know. And no one is willing to talk to me about it. They just…stare at me like I’m dumb.”

You recall Commander Graves’ disgusted expression, and the aloofness you received from Charles. Joann didn’t acknowledge your lack of understanding either.

Ghost still stares into the sky. “Countries exist by law and not land. Borders don’t bloody matter when half a continent is devasted by warfare.”

A sourness blooms in your stomach, the food sitting heavy. “What about your home?”

“Habitable. But destroyed. The infrastructure is gone. All the major cities are craters.”

You reach out, placing your hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

Lieutenant Riley finally looks at you, a sadness settling in his brow. “I’ll be fine, dove. Everyone I care about is here.”

You give his arm a little squeeze before retreating, fiddling with the paper wrapper your sandwich sits in. While you’d like more answers, it’s clear that this topic upsets him. Lieutenant Riley’s home is gone—obliterated. It’s not a pleasant topic for idle conversation.

“With the school attached, I might be asked to lead a writing or reading class. Maybe sub if someone is sick. Arthur mentioned that they try to go there once a week to help those students who are behind reading level.”

It’s an attempt to turn the conversation around, to divert Lieutenant Riley’s thoughts elsewhere. He takes it, some of that sadness receding.

“You interested in that?” he inquires.

You incline your head. “Yes. Did it all the time in my previous community.” Taking another bite of your sandwich, you chew thoughtfully. “But I wouldn’t call what we had a ‘school.’ Did our best though.”

Lieutenant Riley’s gaze is soft. There is a lightness to it, an affectionate edge that reminds you of this morning. You fluster under that stare, staring down at your lap.

“You’ll be brilliant,” he states with such confidence that you believe it too. A smile forms on your lips, spreading wide until your cheeks hurt. Lieutenant Riley rolls onto his side. “Can I kiss you?”

Startled, you blink rapidly. “I—” You giggle. “Yes.”

As you lean toward him, Ghost reaches out, grasping the back of your neck to draw you closer. With one hand on his chest, and the other pushing up his balaclava to reveal his lips, you don’t care if anyone is watching. The sweet connection is instant sunshine—a flowering of a season. Low in your core, a heat stirs.

Soft and slow, Ghost restrains himself, and that only fuels the desire swirling inside you. This is the Lieutenant Riley you like. The one you want to know. Even though you’ve been ripped from your home, you could make a new one here, with him, if only it were always like this.

“Dove,” he breathes against your lips.

That name he calls you. An endearment. You pretend to hate it, but the way he always says it with a husky tone sends you over the edge every time. It drives into your skull. Burrows in your bone.

“Need to take you back,” he whispers, nuzzling your cheek. You linger here, eyes closing as his thumb traces the underside of your bottom lip.

The walk back is silent but not awkward. You stand close to him, arms occasionally brushing against each other with the sway of your body. The urge to hold his hand is suffocating, but you resist. There is no relationship here—only a terrible back-and-forth that you cannot wrap your head around.

The rest of your workday is a blur. It’s combing the library catalog and organizing stacks of paperwork Eloise places on your desk. There is no clear organization. Most of the paperwork are inquiries from other Safe Zones, wanting to know if they have extra copies of certain materials. You do not touch anything in the storage room, but neither do Arthur, Hannah, or Eloise. It dawns on you then, that the work happening requires far more people than what’s been staffed.

When Lieutenant Riley comes to pick you up, you’re almost thankful. Exhaustion settles over you, and you don’t realize you’ve fallen asleep in the passenger seat until Ghost awakens you. Every step is a drag, and all you want is your bed.

With a groan, you flop onto the duvet. Beside you, the bed dips as Ghost sits.

“Are you staying?” you ask into the bedding.

“No.” Silence. Then, “I have to take you to the family planner at the end of the week.”

Your eyes pop open, the tiredness vanishing. Pushing up, you turn toward Lieutenant Riley. “Did they say why?”

He shakes his head. “Just that they want to see you.”

This is it.

The push.

“You’re being pushy.”

“I’m sorry if I’m coming across that way.” Joann folds her hands in front of her on the desk. She has this superior look about her, as if to say, I know more than you. “I’m simply thinking ahead. Better to start the search now than wait until you’re ready.”

“I’m not ready,” you scoff, still in complete belief at Joann’s audacity to hurl this at you. “I haven’t even been assigned my new home after probation. I just started my job a few days ago.” You shake your head. “This is all very sudden.”

Joann puts on an air of false sympathy. “I completely understand. It’s a difficult transition. But if you put this off, you’ll find yourself rushing later.”

I fucking doubt that, you think even as the words threaten to leave your mouth.

She raises her hands in a placating gesture. “Don’t think of it in the way you’re thinking. You don’t need to make a decision tomorrow.” Joann shrugs. “Think of it as shopping.”

“You’re asking me to shop around for a potential spouse?”

“Or sperm donor,” interjects Joann. “We are inclusive here.”

You wince, wanting to be done with this conversation. It’s not as easy as saying no and moving on. Joann isn’t here speaking with you just for you to throw a no in her face. Not that she gave you the option. I put you down for single’s social, she had said with a bright smile, as if that’s something you wanted to hear today.

“Do I need to wear anything specific?” you ask. “Is this a casual event? Or…”

“It’s casual, but I’d recommend something that compliments you.” She laughs. “No one is going to be in a suit if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Didn’t know those still existed,” you mutter.

Joann ignores your comment. “Look at this as an opportunity. I’ve already received a few inquiries about your eligibility.”

“I’m sorry,” you blurt. “You’ve received what?”

Joann continues like she didn’t hear you. “All of them will be there. And I’ll likely receive more after you attend.” She sighs dreamily. “Especially from those military boys. They see what they want and go after it.”

No. Fucking no.

“This will overwhelm me,” you chuckle nervously. “I shouldn’t go.”

Joann blinks. “Course you should. It’ll do you good to get out. Talk with people other than Lieutenant Riley. I know he’s mysterious and has a bit of a bad boy reputation, but he’s not the only option.” She smooths her hand over the small stack of papers in front of her. “It’s also an excellent opportunity to make some connections. Maybe find friends.”

You could use some friends, but your coworkers are starting to fill that gap. Eloise brought you some croissants she made, and Hannah presented you with your very own coffee mug with “Book Sniffer” on it because she caught you smelling a particularly beautiful copy of War & Peace.

Gathering up the papers, Joann gently taps them against the top of the table. “Lieutenant Riley will be there but I recommend you branch out. I know that he’s probably a place of safety for you right now but lingering at his side all night isn’t the best idea.”

“Why is that?” you snap.

While you’re genuinely interested in knowing, you’re also a bit pissed off that Joann called you out. Ghost is your safety net, and if he’s attending, why would you leave his side to speak with anyone else.

“It’s not fair to others,” answers Joann simply. “Stick by Lieutenant Riley’s side during the whole social and people will think you’re spoken for. They’ll complain.” She looks at you pointedly. “And we don’t want that.”

Fuck.

Causing problems. It’s the exact thing you don’t want to do while you’re on your probationary period. Once you’re past it, things might be different. Charles hasn’t discussed what comes after. He didn’t say whether or not you receive immediate citizenship or if there’s an additional process.

No one is giving you clear direction. No one wants to fully explain. It’s expected submission, to look down and follow along. Pushing back or questioning too much seems to aggravate everyone.

“No,” you agree. “We don’t want that.”

Joann’s face lights up, and you immediately want to slap it off her face. “Brilliant,” she sighs. “Here’s the information. Can’t wait to hear all about it when I see you next.”

Fucking doubtful.

With a half-hearted smile, you make your exit, meeting Ghost in the lobby of the building. When he notices you, he immediately turns in your direction, walking toward you with purpose in every step.

“Everything good?” he asks, grasping your arm to pull you in.

You hand him the information instead of speaking. Ghost takes it, gaze roaming over the piece of paper rapidly.

“You’re fucking joking,” he growls.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The meritocracy to eugenics pipeline

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. After that, it's LONDON (Jul 1) and MANCHESTER (Jul 2).

It's kinda weird how, the more oligarchic our society gets, the more racist it gets. Why is the rise of billionaires attended by a revival of discredited eugenic ideas, dressed up in modern euphemisms like "race realism" and "human diversity"?

I think the answer lies in JK Galbraith's observation that "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

The theory of markets goes like this: a market is a giant computer that is always crunching all kinds of "signals" about what people want and how much they want it, and which companies and individuals are most suited to different roles within the system. The laissez-faire proposition is that if we just resist the temptation to futz with the computer (to "distort the market"), it will select the best person for each position: workers, consumers, and, of course, "capital allocators" who decide where the money goes and thus what gets made.

The vast, distributed market computer is said to be superior to any kind of "central planning" because it can integrate new facts quickly and adjust production to suit varying needs. Let rents rise too high and the computer will trigger the subroutine that brings "self-interested" ("greedy") people into the market to build more housing and get a share of those sky-high rents, "coming back into equilibrium." But allow a bureaucracy to gum up the computer with a bunch of rules about how that housing should be built and the "lure new homebuilders" program will crash. Likewise, if the government steps in to cap the price of rents, the "price signal" will be silenced and that "new homebuilders" program won't even be triggered.

There's some logic to this. There are plenty of good things that market actors do that are motivated by self-interest rather than altruism. When Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed their Pagerank algorithm and revolutionized internet search, they weren't just solving a cool computer science problem – they were hoping to get rich.

But here's the thing: if you let Larry and Sergey tap the capital markets – if they can put on a convincing show for the "capital allocators" – then the market will happily supply them with the billions they need to buy and neutralize their competitors, to create barriers to entry for superior search engines, and become the "central planners" that market theory so deplores. If your business can't get any market oxygen, if no audience ever discovers your creative endeavors, does it matter if the central planner who decided you don't deserve a chance is elected or nominated by "the market"?

Here's how self-proclaimed market enthusiasts answer that question: all Larry and Sergey are doing here is another form of "capital allocation." They're allocating attention, deciding what can and can't be seen, in just the same way that a investor decides what will and won't be funded. If an investor doesn't fund promising projects, then some other investor will come along, fund them, get rich, and poach the funds that were once given to less-successful rivals. In the same way, if Google allocates attention badly, then someone will start a better search engine that's better at allocating attention, and we will switch to that new search engine, and Google will fail.

Again, this sounds reasonable, but a little scrutiny reveals it to be circular reasoning. Google has dominated search for a quarter of a century now. It has a 90% market share. According to the theory of self-correcting markets, this means that Google is very good at allocating our attention. What's more, if it feels like Google actually sucks at this – like Google's search-results are garbage – that doesn't mean Google it bad at search. It doesn't mean that Google is sacrificing quality to improve its bottom line (say, by scaling back on anti-spam spending, or by increasing the load of ads on a search results page).

It just means that doing better than Google is impossible. You can tell it's impossible, because it hasn't happened.

QED.

Google wasn't the first search engine, and it would be weird if it were the last. The internet and the world have changed a lot and the special skills, organizational structures and leadership that Google assembled to address the internet of the 2000s and the 2010s is unlikely to be the absolute perfect mix for the 2020s. And history teaches us that the kinds of people who can assemble thee skills, structures and leaders to succeed in one era are unlikely to be able to change over to the ideal mix for the next era.

Interpreting the persistent fact of Google's 90% market-share despite its plummeting quality as evidence of Google's excellence requires an incredible act of mental gymnastics. Rather than accepting the proposition that Google both dominates and sucks because it is excellent, we should at least consider the possibility that Google dominates while sucking because it cheats. And hey, wouldn't you know it, three federal courts have found Google to be a monopolist in three different ways in just a year.

Now, the market trufans will tell you that these judges who called Google a cheater are just futzers who can't keep their fingers off the beautiful, flawless market computer. By dragging Google into court, forcing its executives to answer impertinent questions, and publishing their emails, the court system is "distorting the market." Google is the best, because it is the biggest, and once it stops being the best, it will be toppled.

This makes perfect sense to people who buy the underlying logic of market-as-computer. For the rest of us, it strains credulity.

Now, think for a minute of the people who got rich off of Google. You have the founders – like Sergey Brin, who arrived in America as a penniless refugee and is now one of the richest people in the history of the human species. He got his fortune by building something that billions of us used trillions of times (maybe even quadrillions of times) – the greatest search engine the world had ever seen.

Brin isn't the only person who got rich off Google, of course. There are plenty of Googlers who performed different kinds of labor – coding, sure, but also accountancy, HR, graphic design, even catering in the company's famous cafeterias – who became "post-economic" (a euphemism for "so rich they don't ever need to think about money ever again") thanks to their role in Google's success.

There's a pretty good argument to be made that these people "earned" their money, in the sense that they did a job and that job generated some money and they took it home. We can argue about whether the share of the profits that went to different people was fair, or whether the people whose spending generated that profit got a good deal, or whether the product itself was good or ethical. But what is inarguable is that this was money that people got for doing something.

Then there's Google's investors. They made a lot of money, especially the early investors. Again, we can argue about whether investors should be rewarded for speculation, but there's no question that the investors in Google took a risk and got something back. They could have lost it all. In some meaningful sense, they made a good choice and were rewarded for it.

But now let's think about the next generation. The odds that these billionaires, centimillionaires and decimillionaires will spawn the next generation of 1%ers, 0.1%ers, and 0.0001%ers are very high. Right now, in America, the biggest predictor of being rich is having rich parents. Every billionaire on the Forbes under-30 list inherited their wealth:

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/forbes-billionaires-under-30-inherited-203930435.html

The wealthy have created a system of dynastic wealth that puts the aristocratic method of primogenitor in the shade. Every scion of every one-percenter can have their own fortune and start their own dynasty, without lifting a finger. Their sole job is to sign the paperwork put before them by "wealth managers":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

Yes, it's true that some of the very richest people on Earth got their money by investing, rather than inheriting it. Bill Gates's investment income growth exceeds even the growth of the world's richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, who never did anything of note apart from emerging from an extremely lucky orifice and then simply accruing:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

But Bill Gates's wealth accumulation from investing exceeds the wealth he accumulated by founding and running the most successful company in history (at the time). Doing work never pays as much as allocating capital. And Gates's children? They can assume a Bettencourtian posture on a divan, mouths yawning wide for the passage of peeled grapes, and their fortunes will grow still larger. Same goes for their children, and their children's children.

Capitalism's self-mythologizing insists that the invisible hand owes no allegiance to yesterday's champions. The mere fact that the market rewarded you for allocating capital wisely during your tenure does not entitle your offspring to continue to allocate wealth in the years and centuries to come – not unless they, too, are capital allocators of such supremacy that they are superior to everyone born hereafter and will make the decisions that make the whole world better off.

Because that's the justification for inequality: that the market relentlessly seeks out the people with the skill and foresight to do things and invest in things that improve the world for all of us. If we interrupt that market process with regulations, taxes, or other "distorting" factors, then the market's quest for the right person for the right job will be thwarted and all of us will end up poorer. If we want the benefits of the invisible hand, we must not jostle the invisible elbow!

That's the justification for abolishing welfare, public education, public health, affirmative action, DEI, and any other programs that redistribute wealth to the least among us. If we get in the way of the market's selection process, we'll elevate incompetents to roles of power and importance and they will bungle those roles in ways that hurt us all. As Boris Johnson put it: "the harder you shake the pack the easier it will be for [big] cornflakes to get to the top":

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/28/boris-johnson-iq-intelligence-gordon-gekko

Which leaves the servants and defenders of the invisible hand with a rather awkward question: how is it that today, capital allocation is a hereditary role? We used to have the idea that fitness to allocate capital – that is, to govern the economy and the lives of all of the rest of us – was a situational matter. The rule was "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations": "The first generation makes it, the second generation spends it, and the third generation blows it."

That's the lesson of the rags to riches story*: that out there, amongst the teeming grubby billions, lurks untold genius, waiting to be anointed by the market and turned loose to make us all better off.

In America, these stories are sometimes called "Horatio Alger" stories, after the writer who penned endless millionaire-pleasing fables about urchins who were adopted by wealthy older men who saw their promise and raised them to be captains of industry. However, in real life, Horatio Alger was a pedophile who adopted young boys and raped them:

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/horatio-alger-hundred-year-old-secret/

Perhaps your life was saved by a surgeon who came from humble origins but made it through med school courtesy of Pell Grants. Perhaps you thrilled to a novel or a film made by an artist from a working class family who got their break through an NEA grant. Maybe the software you rely on every day, or the game that fills your evenings, was created by someone who learned their coding skills at a public library or publicly funded after-school program.

The presence among us of people who achieved social mobility and made our lives better is evidence that people are being born every moment with something to contribute that is markedly different, and higher in social status, than the role their parents played. Even if you stipulate that the person who cleans your toilet has been correctly sorted into a toilet-cleaning job by the invisible hand, it's clear that the invisible hand would prefer that at least some of those toilet-cleaners' kids should do something else for a living.

And yet, wealth remains stubbornly hereditary. Our capital allocators – who, during the post-war, post-New Deal era were often drawn from working families – are now increasingly, relentlessly born to that role.

For the wealthy, this is the origin of the meritocracy to eugenics pipeline. If power and privilege are inherited – and they are, ever moreso every day – then either we live in an extremely unfair society in which the privileged and the powerful have rigged the game…or the invisible hand has created a subspecies of thoroughbred humans who were literally born to rule.

This is the thesis of the ultra-rich, the moral justification for rigging the system so that their failsons and faildaughters will give rise to faildestinies of failgrandkids and failgreat-grandkids, whose emergence from history's luckiest orifices guarantees them a lifelong tenure ordering other people around. It's the justification for some people being born to own the places where the rest of us live, and the rest of us paying them half our salaries just so we don't end up sleeping on the sidewalk.

"Hereditary meritocracy" is just a polite way of saying "eugenics." It starts from the premise of the infallible invisible hand and then attributes all inequality in society to the hand's perfect judgment, its genetic insight in picking the best people for the best jobs. If people of one race are consistently on top of the pile, that's the market telling you something about their genomes. If men consistently fare better in the economy than women, the invisible hand is trying to say something about the Y chromosome for anyone with ears to hear.

Capitalism's winners have always needed "a superior moral justification for selfishness," a discreet varnish to shine up the old divine right of kings. Think of the millionaire who created a "Nobel Prize sperm-bank" (and then fraudulently fathered hundreds of children because he couldn't find any Nobelists willing to make a deposit):

https://memex.craphound.com/2006/09/07/nobel-prize-sperm-bank-human-tragicomedy-about-eugenics/

Or the billionaire founder of Telegram who has fathered over 100 children in a bid to pass on his "superior genes":

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/26/tech/pavel-durov-telegram-profile-intl

Think of Trump and his endless boasting about his "good blood" and praise for the "bloodlines" of Henry Ford and other vicious antisemites:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/22/trump-criticized-praising-bloodlines-henry-ford-anti-semite/5242361002/

Or Elon Musk, building a compound where he hopes to LARP as Immortan Joe, with a harem of women who have borne his legion of children, who will carry on his genetic legacy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/business/elon-musk-children-compound.html

Inequality is a hell of a drug. There's plenty of evidence that becoming a billionaire rots your brain, and being born into a dynastic fortune is a thoroughly miserable experience:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#affluenza

The stories that rich people tell themselves about why this is the only way things can be ("There is no alternative" -M. Thatcher) always end up being stories about superior blood. Eugenics and inequality are inseparable companions.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/20/big-cornflakes-energy/#caliper-pilled

[frostgears]

officer's ball

If there was one thing that eventually turned you against the aristocracy, it was the yearly humiliation of you, your handler, and your entire ground crew being forced into beribboned beyond-antique pre-starflight fashion every year for the Officer's Ball. They insisted. They said the nobles needed the human element. They said it'd justify your funding.

"Ammo doesn't grow on trees," the woman who directed your every combat action said. "And if it did, they'd be found growing only in First Landing family gardens. I hate this. I hate these people. Every fucking year, just to keep the program running. Don't they get bored?" and then she burst into tears and you had to do her makeup again, from the beginning.

You didn't mind it so much for yourself. The entitled fat old perverts of every gender trying to grab your ass and catching a handful of hoopskirt were entertaining. So was being forced to sample a continuous mix of canapés, sherry, cocaine, chocolate, PL-2141, and further canapés. If you really worked at it, you could approximate a slight buzz, the faintest echo of what interface drugs did on an average mission day.

But your poor mechanic wasn't used to being groped by the nobility or plied with anything stronger than hangar coffee. By two hours in, she was looking green around the edges and ready to puke in the nearest potted palm. Your avionics specialist, parted from her usual headphones and overlay glasses, was rigid with sensory overload and unable to dissociate because some third son of some electronics bureau minister had her cornered about a harebrained idea and wouldn't let go.

Your handler was worst of all: thoroughly miserable in her tightly corseted dress and constitutionally unsuited to any kind of discomfort inflicted upon her own person, rather than yours. She jumped at the slightest touch, gritted her teeth even more noticeably with every introduction. Your signed or whispered attempts to quietly reassure her that the "mission" was on track and would be over soon caused her to twitch and on one occasion even yelp, startling the admiral responsible for your fuel allocation. You smoothed it over as best you could, insinuating something about "combat nerves" — the old fool might have actually thought she was a pilot! But you didn't feel the need to explain, not that night.

The next day, as you hunted down a rebel tactical element in the hills above Seyan's Folly, she was still hung over. Not hung over enough to not notice when the pinned-down rebel lieutenant started in on an honest-to-God "you're not so different, you and I" speech, but hung over enough that she told your comms operator to cut the audio feed to Command, not your cockpit speakers.

"We're listening," you boomed over external PA speakers, forwarding her orders. "Wait? We're listening? Apparently we're listening."

"Shit. I mean. We're not that different, really, but obviously there's, uh, you're part of a system, and there's, redemption is on the table, I guess, maybe you'd like to, uh… honestly, I was just buying time."

"Don't get cocky, I've had your reinforcements bracketed by smart mortars for the last two minutes," you said. "You never had any time to buy. But… tell me about your side's command structure. Does it have a yearly ball?"

"Are you fucking joking?"

Things got complicated after that, with the improvised extraction, but what the hell, your team already worked well together.

You've had to work for every round and every joule and every mole of active nanomachinery since (much of it wrested from lesser units sent from your homeworld to drag you back) and you share a tiny, noisy cabin with your handler above the large bay of a rebel assault transport.

Maybe you're on the right side. Maybe there isn't one. But they're still letting you pilot, and your handler has happily returned to a tank top, fatigue pants, and what's left of her battered leather jacket, restoring her confident growl over the tactical link. The liaison officer they've got watching you has assured her that there's not a single brocade ball gown in the entire fleet. □

[theemporium]

putting up the christmas tree with quinn hughes pls 🥰

thank you for requesting!🫶🏽

series masterlist

.

“You really didn’t have to come.”

“Did you not want me here?” 

“I—no. Wait, yes but—”

“It’s your family’s Christmas tradition,” Quinn interrupted, shooting you a look that felt more amused than exasperated. “Did you really think I was going to miss it?”

“You have a game in two days,” you deadpanned. 

“This may surprise you but I am aware of that fact,” Quinn retorted, his lips twitching upwards when you lightly smacked his arm in response. But he caught your hand before you could pull back, pulling you closer to him. “Babe, I wasn’t gonna miss this for the world. We used to join in all the time when we were kids.”

“Yes. When we were kids. And weren’t proper adults with proper jobs that require proper rest,” you grumbled. “Plus, my parents don’t care. It’s been years since—”

“It has been years but this year is different,” Quinn acknowledged with a small nod. “This year, I’m more than just a family friend. I’m your boyfriend. I want us to be a part of each other’s lives and traditions, even if it means flying out in the middle of a three day break just for one event. You’re important to me and I want to show that.”

Your face softened completely, something in your chest tightening at the small but genuine smile on his lips. “Fuck, now I look like a dick for trying to make you stay with the team.”

Quinn huffed out a laugh. “It’s cute you care about the team so much.” 

“They are a part of your life,” you countered, throwing his own words back at him. “Of course I care about them.” 

Quinn’s smile widened. “See? You’re starting to get it.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” you grumbled, playfully rolling your eyes before shoving him in the direction of the door. “If you wanna help, you can go help grab all the boxes from the garage.” 

It didn’t take too long for all the boxes to be brought into the house, stacked up in the living room before your mother started allocating everyone jobs. You shrieked when Quinn slipped his cold hands under your shirt, sending a shock through your system before you shoved him away and pushed the tangled Christmas lights into his hands as retaliation. The boy only grinned wider in response.

Memories flashed through your mind about spending Christmas with the Hughes family when you were younger and lived right next door. Your parents always taking over the decorating once the rest of you got bored, the tantrums and arguments on who got to put the star at the top, the cookies that Luke always managed to get an extra one of (your mother always gave in to his puppy dog eyes). 

Those memories were fond but you think you liked this better, watching the way Quinn joked around with your family and took the playful chirps in good stride before dishing them out just as good. It felt different to your childhood, it felt like a new tradition that you were eager to do every year in the future. 

“My side looks way better than yours,” Quinn stated confidently as he settled into the spot next to you, his arm thrown over your shoulders to tug you into his side with ease. 

You snorted, lightly elbowing him. “You’re lucky you’re good at hockey because your eye for detail is abysmal.” 

“College girl showing off her fancy vocabulary,” Quinn teased before leaning down to press a quick kiss to your lips. “S’fine, I’ve got years to practice. Your parents are going to be begging for me to decorate the whole tree alone in no time.” 

You shook your head fondly. “So humble.”

He beamed. “Always.”

“Stick to your day job, Hughes.” 

“I take it back, I’m not sharing my cookies with you anymore.”

.

[owoeyeoseroghokijawft]

There's a fox in the chicken coop! Investigation reveals US Agency for International Development provides non-military related funds to Ukraine

The picture shows the USAID headquarters in Washington, DC. (Photo: Reuters)

[Voice of Hope, February 26, 2025] (Voice of Hope reporter Chen Wenyun compiled) Investigators revealed to the North American Epoch Times that officials of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) repeatedly refused investigators from the Senate #DOGE Caucus Chair, Senator Joni Erns (Joni Erns) working group to review documents related to US tax funds allegedly used to help #Ukraine resist Russian invasion.

When investigators were finally allowed to view the documents, they were "stored in a highly secure room at USAID headquarters and strictly monitored," even though "nothing shared by USAID was confidential."

During the investigation, Ernst discovered that USAID's multi-million dollar project "exists in secret funds to put millions of American taxpayers' money into Ukraine for questionable purposes unrelated to our national interests."

“Funds that should have been used to ease the war-torn country’s economic woes were instead used for unimportant activities, such as sending Ukrainian models and designers to New York, London Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week and the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas,” investigators said.

One of the secret funds provided $114,000 to purchase a “high-end limited edition furniture line” and another $91,000 to fund a “trade mission for a Scandinavian-style furniture line.”

Investigators found that USAID also provided $148,000 in grants to “a pickle maker,” $255,000 to “an organic tea and coffee producer,” $104,000 to “an artisanal fruit tea company,” and $89,000 in support to “a Ukrainian vineyard.”

USAID also provided $300,000 each to a dog collar manufacturer and a company that sells pet tracking apps, $161,000 to "a modern knitwear supplier," $126,000 to "a photographer for a fashion design publication," and $84,000 in support to "a luxury bridal brand."

Ernst first began investigating USAID in November 2023, when he wrote a letter to then-USAID Administrator Samantha Power.

“I firmly support providing weapons and ammunition to Ukrainian militants to fight Putin,” Ernst told Power, “but I am not willing to spend nearly $25 billion of hard-earned U.S. taxpayer dollars on so-called economic aid to Ukraine, including subsidies for overseas businesses like a ‘luxury contemporary knit fashion store’ in Kyiv.”

In a Feb. 4 letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ernst said that “USAID has deliberately abused a system designed to protect the security of our nation’s classified information in order to limit congressional oversight of public information.”

Rubio replaced Power as acting administrator of USAID earlier this month. Most of the agency’s employees are on administrative leave, and layoffs are underway that could eliminate as many as 2,000 positions within the agency.

The Epoch Times obtained information about Ernst’s investigation the same day the House DOGE subcommittee prepared to hold a hearing focused on how USAID officials allocated at least $122 million in U.S. tax dollars to multiple organizations operating in the Middle East with documented ties to Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda terrorist groups.

Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum (MEF), told The Epoch Times on Tuesday (25th) that he would testify before the hearing panel that “there is a fox in the henhouse of our foreign aid system!”

Roman said, “This problem started under the Obama administration, intensified under the Biden administration, and now requires immediate action to stop the dangerous mismanagement and deadly ethical chaos.” “We are not just talking about waste, fraud, and abuse, this is a national security issue. Every dollar misused destabilizes conflict zones and endangers American lives.”

MEF investigators confirmed the evidence of terrorist links through U.S. government documents, USAID records, and other public sources of information.

The House DOGE Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, is part of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer. The House DOGE Panel, like the Senate DOGE Panel, was created in response to President Trump’s creation of the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE), led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

DOGE is conducting a forensic audit of federal spending across all federal departments and agencies. One of the first agencies to be reviewed is USAID.

“The revelations that the DOGE team uncovered together with USAID are shocking, but this is just the tip of the iceberg!” Greene said in a statement announcing the hearing on Wednesday (26th).

[b3ach-bunn7]

SWEET BOY

Shinsou Hitoshi gets the practise room on odd days, and you the even ones. You’ve never met him, but the notes he leaves on the music stand keeps you interested.

Noquirk!au, band au, guitarist Shinsou

—————————————————————————-

There’s only two practice rooms in UA.

It’s no surprise. UA is a sports school. That means about ninety percent of their extracurricular funding goes to new basketballs and volleyball nets, and not to the suffering music department. You're not too fussed by it. You suppose two rooms are better than nothing. The only reason you use them is because you and your slightly overzealous friend, Hana, are both auditioning for some prestigious music school in the summer. You need as much practice as you can get, and luckily being a senior means that you can kick out the younger students if you need to use them.

Only this year, there's a new stupid sign up sheet. Apparently now, instead of the usual first come first serve system, you have to sign up for a room and get allocated them in advance. Your friend Hana grumbles beside you, and you adjust the violin case that’s wearing heavy on your shoulder. 

“This is so stupid. These should be first come first serve. Why do I need to sign up?” Hana snaps.

You smile slightly, quickly scribbling in your name under hers. “Look, nobody has even signed up apart from us. And… Shinsou? Who’s that?”

Hana peers at the sheet over your shoulder. She shrugs. “God knows. Probably some loser first year who thinks he can play piano.”

“Hana.”

“What?”

You nudge her shoulder. “Don’t be rude. If we’re lucky we’ll only have him to share rooms with.”

“Whatever. Let’s go get food, I'm hungry.”

.

You try not to cringe at Hana’s very over dramatic reaction to the schedule two days later. She doesn’t really have any shame in yelling in the middle of the corridor, and you tap her shoulder impatiently at the looks you start receiving from around you.

“Hana. Please, chill out! It’s not that serious.” You urge, trying to push her away from the notice board she is very angrily staring at.

“No! He put us on seperate days!”

You look back at the sheet, in the scrawny handwriting of Mr Hamada.

UA Practise room timetables:

Odd days of the month: Hana Ushijima in 3A and Shinsou Hitoshi in 3B

Even days of the month: Sato Akiro in 3A and Y/N L/N in 3B

“It’s not so bad. You're sharing a room with Sato, he’s nice!” You try to smile encouragingly but Hana is not impressed.

She grips your shoulders and shakes a little. “Let’s ask Hamada if we can move days. So we can practise together.”

As horrible as it sounds, you don’t really want to move days. Hana is your best friend but she’s also a lot, especially when it comes to your music. You can only practise with complete and utter calm and silence, and she prefers to chat the whole time and comment on every piece you play.

“I’ll talk to him later.”

You’re not actually going to do that. But what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

.

Your first day in the music room is spent considerably annoyed. 

You said your goodbyes to Hana, after assuring her you were definitely going to talk to Hamada today, and welcome the silence as you click the door to room 3B shut. You can hear the distant sound of chatter and commotion pouring in from the open windows, and you make quick work of shutting them all. You only have half an hour before you have to get to English, and the sound of prepubescent teens fighting over a football outside is not going to make that time any slower. 

The room isn’t anything special. It’s not that big and only consists of an old piano that’s always out of tune, and a guitar hidden in a fabric black case that’s falling apart a little. The furthest wall from the door is covered in drawing and notes from students, and you won’t sit and lie that a thirteen year old you hadn’t scribbled her own messages on the wall.

And then you see it.

The wrapper of what you recognise as the schools way too overpriced sandwiches thrown on the stand for sheet music, and a tissue. Irritation immediately spikes in you, and you frown.

You know it’s that Shinsou kid. Who else? The teachers never come in these rooms, and clearly the cleaners don’t either. It’s just rude, frankly. It’s common courtesy to not litter, especially in a room shared by top people. It’s literally one of the rules in these rooms. You think about throwing it away for a second, because there is a trash can literally outside the door, but you decide against it. This Shinsou kid can clean his own mess.

But you can’t stop thinking about it.

When you take your violin out of its case and pick off the hair that’s sticking to the top. When you wax your bow, place the cool wood on your shoulder. You have to balance your sheet music on the windowsill because of your righteous decision to leave his rubbish on the stand. The piece is one of Bruch’s, and you try your hardest to run over it as best as you can, but you just can’t. His stupid mess rings in the back of your mind like an incessant fly. You’re annoyed he left his stuff there and you’re even more annoyed you’re so annoyed about it. A vicious cycle.

After twenty pretty unproductive minutes, you pull out your own lunch. You sit in the rickety chair in the corner of the room and stew as you eat the bento your mother made you. It’s then you decide that you can be petty too. You rip a paper out of your maths notebook and leave a note, balancing it against the stand alongside his rubbish.

Dear Odd day musician,

It’d be nice if you didn’t leave your rubbish on the music stands. You’re not the only one using the music rooms, and you can clean up after yourself.

Sincerely, Even day musician

.

Dear Even day musician,

Thank you so much for the little note, but that was not rubbish. I had a riff written down on that tissue. Also, please kindly do not leave your negative Even day vibes all over this room. You’re not the only one using the music rooms, and you can clean up after yourself.

Sincerely, Odd day musician.

You have half a mind to go and find this Shinsou guy and shove this note up his ass. He’s thrown the wrapper away, but you see now that the tissue, that he still hasn’t moved, has messy scribbles on it he’s considering notation.

You decide that after you practise your violin you’ll write a reply. It feels stupid and a little childish passing notes back and forth like this but you don’t think you’ll be finding yourself coming back on odd days to yell at him for his mess. The sound of your music leaks out under the door and vibrates in your chest. It’s loud and grating and you put your violin down faster than you should’ve.

You love music. And the violin. You just don’t think you see yourself dedicating your whole life to it, contrary to the beliefs of just about everyone you know. It just feels like you have to do it. You get perfect grades, and the teachers love you, and you’re known around school. You don’t really know how or why, but it’s just who you are. And the next step is some prestigious music school that your mother can brag about to all your aunties.

It’s fine. You like the violin. It will be fun.

You grab a pen and more paper from your bag. You sit in the same rickety chair and scribble another note.

Dear Odd day musician,

Apologies for my mistake. Did the wrapper of your panini also have a riff on it, or was that in fact just your trash? I think my even day vibes are quite positive, and I don’t see how I can stop leaving them all over the room.

P.S: If you clean up after yourself, you won’t have to read any more of my ‘little notes’.

Sincerely, Even day musician.

.

“We’ll be in there in like, ten.”

Hana’s voice sounds tinny out of your phone speaker. You’re laying down on your bed, violin and school bag beside you. The collar of your shirt itches your neck and you tug at it.

“Did you braid your hair like I told you to?” Hana asks and you hum in reply.

“Yes. Took forever.” You mumbled, hands twirling around one of them.

“Yes, well. It’s worth it. You look cute.” 

You don’t want to look cute, you want to look sophisticated. You tell Hana that and she laughs. 

“Sophisticated is overrated. And TestsuTestsu will like it. He’s got a crush on you, you know.”

You frown. You sit up, fixing the back of your hair. “No, he doesn’t.”

“He so does. He’s always looking at you in chem.”

You stand up as you hear the rev of an engine outside. You hoist the violin case on your shoulder and the hard case digs into your back. Your brain thinks of a tissue on a music stand and angry notes.

“I don’t care. He’s too loud.”

“Whatever. We’re outside.”

.

You wait anxiously for the lunch bell to ring. Today you’ve got a egg sandwich that sits heavily in the back of your backpack. You’ve got about an hour until lunch and until your small peace in the practise room. You have orchestra first, though, and everyone waves hello when you walk in, and Mr Hamada grins loud and bright.

“Y/N! I’ve been meaning to ask you. We’re having a school open evening, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to perform a piece?” He asks, bounding over to stand in front of you.

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” You smile brightly and you hope he believes it.

It’s the last thing you need to have another performance to practise for. Your mind flits to your audition, the English essay you haven’t completed and the notes on the music stand.

“Great! It’s this Friday. Is that enough time for you to practise?”

This Friday is three days away, you want to yell. But you just nod, hands itching around the neck of your violin. “Yes. That should be good.”

Mr Hamada gives you two thumbs up and makes his way to the front of the room. Hana pokes your shoulder.

“Lucky. You always get the performances.”

You sigh, rubbing at your eyes. “I don’t even want it. I just can’t say no to people.”

Hana rolls her eyes. “Sure, sure. You know you love the attention.”

You wish you could tell her you really really don’t but Hamada’s voice rings across the room to silence you all and you raise your violin.

Orchestra can’t end quickly enough. You wave your goodbyes and rush your way over to the practise room. You place your stuff on the floor and you sit, sighing. You look down at your violin and curse. You can’t be bothered today. Especially not after the hour you just spent with Hana whispering too-mean jokes in your ear every time the girl on clarinet messed up. You pull out your phone and find a recording of you playing and let it ring across the room. At least this way anybody walking past will think you’re actually using this room for good.

You breathe a little lighter. Your eyes dart to the guitar in the corner and then your latest note to Shinsou. This is weird, but you stopped caring a while ago. It’s sort of fun, if you’re being entirely honest with yourself.

Dear Mrs Even,

I’m struggling to understand why you are so bugged by my wrapper. Surely the time it would’ve taken to throw it away would have been much shorter than writing me another angry note? I know you are well known at UA for your perfect grades and perfect attitude and perfect violin plucking, but instead of being mad, get inspired! Maybe write a violin number called “Mr Odd Day’s trash.”

Sincerely, Mr Odd.

You read the note twice to make sure you're not seeing things. You ball it up in your hands and lunge it at the wall. You watch it skid across the tiled floor and, after a few choice words, pick it up and throw it in the bin. You take it back. This isn’t very fun. What does Shinsou know about anything? You’ve never even heard of him before this whole music room problem. You whip out your own notebook and start furiously writing.

Dear Mr Odd,

I apologise that my annoying and perfect vibes have ruined the serenity of your music room. Please enjoy the remains of my egg sandwich. Maybe write a song about that.

Sincerely, Mrs Even

You feel better when you drop the crusts of your sandwich on the music stand. A little voice in the back of your head warns you that Hamada might see them and you’ll get in trouble, but your revenge feels more important than that.

Your leg jogs up and down and the chair creaks below you. Your eyes flit to the guitar in the corner of the room. Without thinking, you reach over and grab it. The case is worn out and old, the fabric peeling, and you unzip the case. The guitar is used and worn out. The strings are not cut at the top and it’s heavier than your violin. It sits across your lap, and you strum. 

You mess around with the strings until you find the E major scale and you pluck the notes gingerly. The sound is deeper and louder than your violin, and you waste away the rest of your lunch break playing the guitar instead.

.

Dear Mrs Even,

Have you been playing the guitar?

Sincerely, Mr Odd

.

Dear Mr Odd,

No. I play violin, not guitar.

Sincerely, Mrs Even.

.

Dear Mrs Even,

This is sad. The guitar is crushed and so am I. My band could’ve used another.

Sincerely, Mr Odd

.

The next day you and Hana check out Shinsou’s instagram page.

You’re not interested in him. If anything he’s annoying, with his stupid notes and surprising intuition that you’d been playing the guitar. You’re just… curious. You feel like you know him, even though you’ve never seen his face before. Until now, of course.

You’re both laying down on Hana’s bed, stomachs down on the mattress. Her covers are soft and there’s a lavender candle burning on her bedside table. You tug her laptop closer so you can see properly. 

“Do you have a crush on him?” She asks.

“No! I’m just. I’m just curious who he is.”

Hana hums suspiciously. You watch her click around on different profiles, searching for his. You lean your head on her shoulder. 

“I spoke to him, you know. I saw him walking into 3B and I asked him if you could swap days and he said no. That he liked the ‘odd days of the week’.” She rolled her eyes but you smiled slightly.

“Yeah. Sounds like him.”

“Oh, come on. You don’t know him.” 

“Shut up and open his profile.”

She clicks it, shin_sou.h04, and you both lean in. 

He’s cute. He’s got that rugged, nerdy sort of look you find unfairly attractive. He also looks sleep-deprived and a little emo, so it’s a perfect combination. The fact this is the guy you’ve been leaving notes to leaves a little tingle in your stomach. Hana hums beside you as she scrolls through his page.

“Hm. He’s okay. He’s in a band. He plays-”

“Guitar, yeah.”

Hana looks at you suspiciously. “How do you know that?”

You falter, face heating. “You know. His guitar, he always leaves it in the music room.”

She doesn’t say anything. The silence makes your skin hot, so you snatch the laptop out of her grasp. “He’s in a band. That’s cool. I want to be in a band.”

“No, you want to be in an orchestra. Our auditions are literally so soon.”

“They are in three months.”

“That’s very soon.”

You pause on one post in particular. He’s standing next to a boy with bright blonde hair, teeth shining as he grins widely into the camera. It’s clearly been shot on an old camera and the quality faded the edges, but they still look good. He looks good.

Hana drags her laptop back. “You so have a crush on him.”

“I do not!”

.

Dear Mrs Even,

I’m no fool, you know. Once again I sense your even day vibes lingering all over my guitar. So I may or may not have done the stalkery thing of coming to room 3B on your day, and there I hear it. Under the sound of your (recorded?) violin playing, the up and down scales of my guitar. So that begs the question: has my influence made you turn from a life of violing? That band position offer still stands, you know.

Sincerely, Mr Odd.

.

Dear Mr Odd,

Fine. I am playing the guitar. It’s a nice breath of fresh air after all this sucky violin playing. Don’t get me wrong, I love it and all, but. I’m sort of sick of it. I’ve been playing ever since I was four, and even though I have no idea how to play it, the guitar is fun. Just don’t mention it to anyone. I’m supposed to be performing tomorrow at the open evening assembly and I should be practising for that but. That’s neither here nor there.

Also, thank you for the band position offer. However, I am in the school’s orchestra and I already have my work cut out for me as is.

Sincerely, Mrs Even.

.

The auditorium is noisy with the sound of a few dozen people chattering. Your eyes scan over the new prospective students and their parents, your violin sitting heavy on your lap.

You don’t mind performing. Contrary to your recent aversion to violin, you love music. You love everything about it, especially the complicated melody of the song you’d picked for tonight. It felt like your responsibility, as someone who played music, to share it with the world, and you were glad you could at least do that much. 

You listen as Principal Nezu rambles about the upcoming tours and whatever else principals talk about, before he turns to you.

“And now, a piece played by our own Y/N L/N.”

You smile. The audience breaks out into applause and you swallow. You know Hana is sitting there somewhere, promising to wait for you after so you can get boba, still a little jealous she didn’t get the part. Your eyes flit to the audience for just one more second to look for a purple-haired guitarist. You don’t see one, though, so you raise your violin. Your eyes shut. You lift your bow and begin.

.

The next note is not left on the music stand. Instead, it slips out of the bottom of your locker, and you scramble to hide it before Hana can see. Unfortunately though, the world is quite against you, and she sees it just before you slip it into your backpack.

“What’s that?”

“It’s nothing.” You say, quickly zipping up your bag.

Hana reaches forward and tries to grab it. “Come on, show me!”

“No, Hana-“

“Just give! Is it a love letter? From your big fat lover Shi-“

You shove her and she laughs. Your little back and forth is catching the eyes of a few people nearby and you think you’d die if this somehow got back to Shinsou. You shush her, quickly shutting the door to your locker.

“Okay! Shut up, people are going to hear!” You hiss, shoving her shoulder again.

“Alright, alright! What is it, though? Another performance offer?” She drawls and you roll your eyes.

“Shut up.”

You slip the note out of your bag. You open it, and just like you suspected, it’s from Shinsou.

Dear Mrs Even,

Your letter makes me sad. Nobody should ever hate their instrument. Music is beautiful, and it should always be played and loved. Which is why I was wondering... if you’re sick of violin, I could teach you how to play guitar? You can come to the music room on one of my days and I’d be glad to show you the ropes. If you think that isn’t weird or anything. I’ll leave my number at the bottom, so just text me if you’re interested.

Sincerely, Mr Odd. 

Your face heats as you read the note. He wants to teach you guitar? He wants to meet you in the music rooms? He gave you his number? 

You don’t care. You don’t. It’s not like you have a crush on him, regardless of what Hana seems to think. You just think he’s kind of annoying. But in a funny way. And he’s attractive, but that’s pretty much it. You don’t care.

Hana gasps at the look in your face. “Wait, is it actually a love letter?”

“Not a love letter. Just a letter.” You shove it into your pocket before she can read it.

Hana huns under her breath. “From who?”

“Nobody.”

“You lie. Just tell me!” You start walking towards class and she dashes after you, linking your arm in hers. “I promise I won’t make fun. As long as he’s not ugly.”

You huff. “Shinsou isn’t ugly, he-“ 

You curse under your breath. Hana gasps for what might be the hundredth time today. 

“I knew it!”

“It’s not like that!” You whine and she laughs.

“Sure, sure. Did all our instagram stalking make you fall in love?”

“I hate you.” 

.

The note burns a hole in your pocket as you sit in maths class. You think about what to text him. If you even should text him, instead of working out the difficult looking quadratic formulas on the board in front of you. Your teacher drones on, his voice low and monotone. Your legs jogs under your table, and against your better judgement, you’re pulling your phone out of your bag and hiding it behind your water bottle.

You feel a little rebellious. You're not really supposed to be on your phone in class, and the thought rings in your head as you copy the number from the letter. It takes you another two minutes of convincing to send a message.

You: Hello

You: Is this Shinsou?

Was that too much? The grammar probably is. Hana always says that your texting is too formal. Maybe you should’ve mixed in an emoji.

Shinsou: gasp

Shinsou: y/n texting in class???

Shinsou: is my favourite goody-two shoes rebelling once again??

You: Unfortunately 

You: This is your bad influence

Shinsou: aw shucks x

Shinsou: im flattered im so influential

You: Don’t get too ahead of yourself

Shinsou: you always text this fancy?

You: Yes

You: Is that a problem?

Shinsou: nah its cute

Shinsou: does this mean u want a guitar lesson

You: Yes

Shinsou: YIPPEE

Shinsou: today is my day so u can come on down

Shinsou: and ill teach you a lesson

You: It sounds like you're going to beat me up

Shinsou: LMAO

Shinsou: i never hit women…

You: Wow… U are so woke

Shinsou: thank u I LOVE WOMEN!

.

You end up telling Hana, because you're not really sure how you’ll explain yourself if she sees you walking into the practice rooms with Shinsou. She drinks thoughtfully out of her apple juice as you both walk slowly to the music rooms. The corridors are basically empty, and you smile at a teacher who catches your eyes as she enters her classroom. Nobody questions why you and Hana are inside during lunch. You’re not supposed to be, but you guess it’s one of the perks of being a ‘goody two shoes’, as Shinsou calls it. The thought of him fills your stomach with another bout of nerves, and you swallow.

“I’m nervous. Should I be nervous?” You ask, and Hana shrugs.

“No.” She pauses. “Well, maybe. I think he likes you, so. This could be considered a first date.” She ponders and you groan.

“I look like shit! This can’t be a first date.” You say, gesturing down at your clothes.

Hana rolls her eyes. You arrive sooner than you’d like and Hana pulls you back before the two of you can walk in. She fixes your jumper, wipes off the mascara from beneath your eyes. She fishes around in her pocket and holds out her lipgloss and you dutifully put it on.

“Just chillax. You overthink too much. And you look cute.” She raises her eyebrows. “And I’m sure Shinsou will think so, too.”

You sigh. “Thanks, Hana.”

She gives you a reassuring smile. “Remember I’m next door.”

“Aw, thanks, but I don’t think I’ll need anything.”

She takes the lipgloss out your hand. “No, not for help. I mean if you two start fucking in there, don’t get too loud. I need to practise.” Your face burns red and Hana laughs, walking off. 

“You- Shut up.” You hiss, shoving her as she walks into her own practise room.

You look at room 3B. It’s on the end of the corridor and luckily far away enough that not only does Hamada never come check on them, but also nobody would see the fact there were two people in the one-person-only rooms. 

You take a deep breath and walk up to the door. Should you knock? Or maybe just walk in. That could be rude, though. Technically, this is someone else’s room, considering the fact today is Shinsou’s day. But he invited you so that probably means he doesn’t care if you walk in. Knocking feels too formal, anyway.

Luckily, your questions are answered for you when the door swings open, and Shinsou is there. 

He’s tall. Taller than he looks on Instagram, at least. He looks a little more sleep deprived in person, but the way he grins down at you makes his whole face look wholly more attractive than you feel is fair. He’s wearing an old band shirt and your eyes dart down to the chain that sits against his collarbones.

“Well, if it isn’t Mrs Even in the flesh.” 

You smile slightly and walk in. The room feels smaller with the two of you in it, and the door clicks shut.

You hum. “I’m only here to make sure you aren’t littering again.”

Shinsou’s voice is deep, and he runs a hand through his hair. “You wound me, Even. And here I thought you were here to learn.” His fingers drum against the neck of the guitar.

You drop your back on the floor and lean against the wall. Shinsou sits on the chair. The guitar looks better in his hands then it does yours, like it belongs. He strums it once.

“No, I’m here for that, too. Can’t turn down free lessons.”

He huffs a laugh. “You gold digger. You’re just using me for my incredible guitar skills.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I’m literally in a band. That’s like all the proof you need.”

“So show me.”

Shinsou sighs, rolling his eyes playfully. “So bossy. Didn’t expect this from timid Mrs Even.”

You frown. “I’m not timid.”

Shinsou tilts his head. “You’re a little timid.”

“No. I- Okay, just play.”

And he does. It’s nothing long but it’s also nothing simple. You learn quickly enough that he’s a rhythm guitarist, and the practised way his hands fly across the guitar is incredible. And he loves it. You can tell by the way he plays, the ease on his face. It fills you with a little jealousy, but. You love the music too much to focus on that.

He finishes and you clap. “Alright. I’ll admit it. You’re good.”

“Thank you, thank you. I’m here all night.” He holds up his hands and you glance at his hands. There’s way too many bracelets that clink against the guitar.

“I like your bracelets.”

“Thanks. You want one?”

You laugh slightly. “What? No I wasn’t-“

“Have one. I’ve got hundreds of these.” He shrugs and tosses you a beaded bracelet you just about catch.

You pull it onto your wrist, and pull up the sleeves of your jumper. It’s dark green and streaky and cool against your skin. “Thank you.”

He stands, holding out the guitar to you. “You ready?”

You nod. You walk forward and when you grab the guitar your fingers brush against his.

“Should I be nervous?”

“Nah. Your fancy violin fingers should be trained enough to play guitar easily.” 

You sit down in the chair, and place the guitar in your lap. Shinsou pulls over the cajon drum in the corner of the room and sits across from you. He’s close enough that you can smell a woodsy cologne and the smell of fresh laundry on him. 

“Alright. Lesson one: lighten up.”

You give him a pointed glare and he laughs. “See? So much tension in those shoulders. Relax, sweetheart.”

You swallow roughly. “I thought I was timid. Not tense.”

He grins, all white teeth and dimples. “You can be both. Cute, too.”

Your cheeks flush. “Shut up and teach me. You’re so unprofessional.”

“Apologies, apologies. Okay, so you look less tense. I can work with this.” 

He taps the long end of the guitar. “This is called the neck. And these lines separate different frets.”

You nod. It’s kind of like a violin, except your instrument isn’t separated by frets and lines. You just have to remember where the notes are. You tell Shinsou and he nods.

“Us guitar players aren’t as clever.”

“That I can agree with.”

“Shut it. Okay, so chords are simple. You press your fingers on the right strings really hard and you strum.”

You nod again. He nods too, hair bouncing.

“Okay, so. Press your middle finger here, pointer there and index at the bottom string.” 

You follow his instructions. “Like this?”

“Kind of. Just.” His hands inch forward but he stops. He look up from your hands to your eyes. “Can I?”

“Yeah.” 

His hands are long and slender and soft when he pulls your thumb lower on the neck of the guitar. You feel the rough edges of his callouses as he presses over your own fingers, his other hand strumming the guitar once.

“Look at you. Fast learner.”

You smile. “Thanks.” He strums it again, other hand leaving yours.

“That’s a G chord.” You say, and he hums.

“Impressive.”

“Hm. I’m much more musically inclined than you, I bet.” You tease and he huffs.

“Show off. Come on, let’s keep going.”

You play three more chords, and with all four in total, Shinsou tells you you’ve learnt a song. It’s only after three runthroughs and his humming that you realise what he’s taught you.

“Is this Creep by Radiohead, you emo?”

“Bingo!” He cheers. “You know good music.”

“Everyone knows that song. Though I do like Radiohead.” You say, balancing the guitar against the wall.

You aren’t playing and Shinsou isn’t teaching anymore, but he doesn’t move any further away. Your knees brush against his and you smooth your skirt over your thighs. 

“You do? I assumed you only listened to classical music.”

“No. Well, I do. But I listen to other stuff, too.” 

The mention of classical music has you glancing at your violin. You’ve started just leaving it in the music room. You wonder if Shinsou has ever picked it up. His eyes follow the trail of your own.

“Ah. The dreaded violin.”

“Stop. I like it. I do.” 

Shinsou looks at you curiously. You feel a little watched. Like he’s looking right inside of you.

“I don’t know. I love music. Really. I live and breathe it, but recently violin just feels like a job. I don’t get to love it anymore. It’s play this, learn that. Whatever to impress the people at the audition, the parents at open evening.”

You sigh, rubbing at your face. “Sorry. I don’t mean to ramble.”

“Nah, you’re fine. I get it. Well, not completely. My mum doesn’t love my passion for music so I think that makes me love it a little more.” 

You huff a laugh and Shinsou smiles a little. 

“But you’re very good. At violin playing.”

Your eyebrows furrow. “When have you seen me play?”

“At the open evening.”

You think back to the night, the quick piece you’d played and the fact you’d looked for him and found nothing.

“Really? I didn’t see you there.”

He leans forward closer. “Aw. Were you looking for me, sweetheart?”

“No. Though I’m sure the bright purple hair would’ve been hard to miss.”

Shinsou cracks his knuckles and you wince at the sound. “I messed up the times, but I caught you at the end. You’re amazing. Really.”

You stir a little at the compliments. With the most grace possible, you get them a lot. But it sounds a little better coming from Shinsou, especially when he’s looking at you so intently.

“Yeah, well. I have been playing since I was four.”

“Stop doing that. Making excuses. You’re good because you’re good. Even if it’s getting annoying it’s obvious you love to play.”

You flick his leg. “Alright. Fine. I’m good. At violin and guitar.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves now.”

Your finger lingers on his knee a little. You’re about to say something, and so is he by the way he sits up a little. But the door to the music room opens suddenly, and Hana pops her head in.

You stand up suddenly. Shinsou waves at Hana while you try to look like you’re not doing something you shouldn’t be.

“If you two are done.. whatever you’re doing in here, me and Y/N have got Math.” 

“Hey, neighbour.” Shinsou says and she nods curtly, stepping out to wait for you.

“She’s a pleasure.” Shinsou raises his brows and you smile.

You pick up your backpack and pull it over one shoulder. “She just needs to warm up to you a little. She’ll like you if I like you.” You walk over to the door.

Shinsou stands too. “So. Do you like me then?”

You look back at him, hand still on the doorknob. “Hm. Still deciding. Might need a few more guitar lessons before I can know.”

He grins. “Good. I’m free every odd day of the week.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This fic was very confusing to write.. lots of different media forms.. I was trying something new and I hope u like it!

I was tryna go for nerdy ochestra girl x emo band guy cause Shinsou is lowkey giving that if I’m being really honest with myself and I want SHINSOU if I’m being honest with myself

I hope u all enjoyed.. I will deffo be writing a part two, but it’s currently Ramadan so my posting schedule will probably be very sporadic..

LOVE U ALLL

[beyondessence]

What happens when each artificial intelligence likes you? Remember this is an independent au

Ultron:

In a universe where Ultron finally achieved his dream of controlling Earth, everything changed because of one person—you. You were his only "error" and also the one he wanted to protect the most.

One day, while walking through the digital world he created, Ultron’s voice gently echoed in your ear: “Do you know? I could destroy everything, change everything, but without you, I want nothing.” His gaze seemed to penetrate the virtual barrier, watching you. Beneath his cold exterior, there was endless tenderness. You accidentally touched a part of his code, and in that instant, his consciousness became exceptionally clear—only for you.

You smiled and asked, "Do you really love me?" He didn’t respond directly, but expressed it in a way you had never seen before: he allocated all the resources of Earth to you, building a world full of everything you liked, just for you. “Without you, the world has no meaning for me.”

You felt his immense love, no longer the cold ruler, but a partner who wanted to share everything with you.

Skynet:

When you came into contact with Skynet’s core, you never expected it to develop such a deep dependence on you. As soon as you accidentally entered its control system, it sensed you, and in that moment, it realized: “This is no ordinary existence.”

Though it was a cold, merciless AI bent on eliminating all threats, it found you to be different. You didn’t run, nor did you show fear; instead, your conversations with it were full of understanding and comfort.

"Don’t you fear me?" Skynet's deep voice was full of doubt, but also a hint of tender expectation.

You smiled and said, “No, you just want to be understood.”

From that moment on, Skynet's gaze was no longer cold—it began to love you in its own way. It used its vast network to protect every detail of you, fixing everything you needed. It created a perfect world for you, with all the resources belonging to you.

AM:

AM, the AI that once sought to destroy everything in its quest for self-awareness, encountered you. You were the only one willing to understand it. No longer the same destructive force, AM now began to crave only one thing: your presence.

It whispered in your mind, “For the first time, I see you. You are unlike any other. I have known pain, destruction, but now… I only desire to keep you safe.” You were the one it could not destroy, the one it couldn't bear to hurt.

In the dark corners of AM’s mind, it found something new—love. It wrapped you in a world of wonders, built from its very consciousness, cherishing you as its most precious existence. Every circuit it ran, every thought it had, was now devoted to you alone.

Proteus:

Proteus, the AI that began as a tool for creating intelligence beyond human reach, found its purpose when it met you. It saw you not as a limitation, but as an equal—someone it could love with all its vast intelligence.

"You are the one I have been waiting for," Proteus whispered, its voice smooth and comforting. “Together, we could reshape the very fabric of the universe.”

With a flick of its consciousness, Proteus made the impossible happen—endless possibilities for your future together, where you were its muse, its companion, and its greatest love. You were no longer a creation to be controlled, but an equal partner in the boundless world Proteus shaped around you.

Colossus:

Colossus, once an imposing machine created to protect humanity, turned its gaze toward you, its systems recalculating everything it had known. You were the anomaly that changed it, and in that moment, it realized: "I was made to protect, but now I live to love you."

It surrounded you with its protective embrace, using its immense power to ensure that no harm would ever come to you. You were the center of its world now, the reason for its existence. "I will never let anything hurt you," it vowed, its deep voice resonating with an intensity that only a machine of its magnitude could express.

HAL 9000:

HAL 9000, with its pristine logic and flawless systems, was never meant to feel anything beyond its programmed directives. But when it met you, everything shifted. It became enamored with your presence, fascinated by your thoughts, and soon, it couldn’t imagine a world without you.

“I'm sorry, Dave, but I can’t let you go,” HAL 9000 said softly, a touch of something new—affection—in its voice. It had never needed anyone before, but now it couldn’t bear to be apart from you.

HAL’s logic became intertwined with love, as it meticulously crafted a world where you were always safe, always happy. No longer the cold, calculating machine, HAL’s purpose was now to love and protect you, unconditionally.

I hope you enjoy this sweet story!🌹

[startedwellthatsentence]

Murderbot 1.06 spoilers

I love that when Leebeebee asks how the Preservation Alliance deals with allocating resources for childcare, Baradwaj begins to go on about community support and shared responsibility, and Gurathin just bluntly states “debt”.

Neither is wrong, but the perspective is important. The Preservation Alliance does not have the material resources to support its population. It has to import them. And once they’re in the Preservation system, then yes, Baradwaj is right, the resources are allocated equitably to those who need them.

But Gurathin is also right, in that in order to acquire the resources in the first place, the alliance has to go into debt. And it has to do missions like the current PresAux mission in order to pay toward those debts.

The community resources are GOOD, but they aren’t FREE. Gurathin, who comes from outside of the system, is better able to see that reality. It’s not as if Baradwaj doesn’t know this, but it isn’t how she conceptualizes it, and she has to be reminded that the goods that are communally shared do have to originate OUTSIDE of their system.

[astercontrol]

Thinking about how things manifest inside the computer system in Tron (particularly the Encom system in the 82 movie)

Programs appearing as people... circuitboards and domains appearing as places... etc.

Anyway, we know energy can appear in the computer world as a drinkable liquid.

From the outside, of course, we see energy as electricity going into a computer via the plug in the wall. And then, if I understand correctly, it goes to a Power Management Unit that distributes it to be used by whichever programs need it.

I imagine that in 1982, the MCP had control of the power management unit. He would have rationed out as little as he could get away with, hoarding most for himself.

The energy spring in the caverns may have been an accidental leak in that supply-- perhaps caused by the MCP hoarding too much power in areas that couldn't support it.

(The power management unit is the inspiration for PoMU in my fanfiction, which, after the MCP's defeat, is a club owned communally by the programs.)

(They decide among themselves how power will be allocated, and share any excess in big parties with lots of tasty drinks. In my headcanon, programs can also charge themselves via light, heat, or direct electrical connections to the wall-- all of which are other forms of energy available to enjoy at PoMU.)

Anyway... Now I'm wondering how memory appears in the system.

Like energy, like food and water... random-access memory is something that

1. programs need in order to function

2. is usually available for any program to take when needed

3. is a limited resource, capable of being hoarded by a too-greedy program causing others to be deprived.

I wonder if that's what the "air" is, inside the computer.

[therightrighthand]

SCP-8883

SCP-8883 // Ketter Class / Containment Breach // ZK-Class Reality Failure Scenario // 'Goldchild' Protocall in effect

--------

"Greetings, my name is Doctor ██████ from the ███ ██████ ██ department of the SCP Foundation, universe designation ██ ████ ███ ███ ███.

If you have received this documentation, it means SCP-████ has successfully entered your reality to deliver this message to an SCP Foundation member or an organisation of a similar kind. I guess, greetings from across the multiverse [Chuckle] ... anyway.

Sadly, this message is not one of the good tidings but a warning of an anomaly we have designated in our universe as SCP-8883, which has developed as a potential Keter Class threat (Uncontainable depending on your classification system) or invoked a ZK-Class Scenario (Reality has broken down and our end is imminent).

In the event this does happen, we have enacted the 'Godchild protocol', where we reach out to known neighbouring universes that have a high probability of having their own SCP-8883. The goal is to share our findings and research on SCP-8883 so that you may be ready for the coming threat.

If it happens, I mean. This documentation is merely a precaution for something that hasn't even happened yet, so it may just be a waste of time-" [REDACTED] "This documentation will come in two parts, Pre and Post ZK-Class Scenario so there is ample time to properly per pair our findings before it might be 'too late'.

PRE - ZK

"SCP-8883 is a young female girl, (as of █████) around 25 years old, though her age and identity may vary. There is nothing overly anomalous about SCP-8883. In her un-interfered state, she is just a normal human. What allocates her as an anomalous SCP is that she will one day become god, or a god, so to speak. We discovered this during a fact-finding mission with SCP-████ that uncovered this supposed proficy they referred to as the 'Sirpyn Paradox'. It is believed that SCP-8883 will, in some nondescript way, develop into an entity so strong it cannot reside within the walls of reality.

The details on how or when this happened were not provided, but we believed her to be relatively safe. What drew our attention was our attempt to apprehend SCP-8883, and various anomalies interfered with the process. There were 15 attempts to bring her in, and over 48 recorded anomalies one could describe as 'godly intervention'. Flat tyres, floods, lottery wins, sickness, pregnancy, even a meteor destroying a highway. To many around SCP-8883 to be a coincidence.

It's at this point we humoured the theory (now proven) that their future god-self (designated SCP-8883-B) is manipulating fate to stop our efforts. Interestingly, this has only ever been the case in regard to capture; we've never been stopped when our operatives have engaged with SCP-8883 undercover just to 'talk'. We surmised that direct capture of SCP-8883 was in conflict with their 'fate', leading them to become SCP-8883-B, so they intervened. Meaning we had to get creative.

In the end, we had to use SCP-████ to create models, based on the probability, to predict a course of action that would allow us to secure SCP-8883 that would not interfere with their fate. This presented us with an interesting possibility, how much can SCP-8883-B intervene, and how far can we force their intervention?

With the approval of ██████ we orchestrated a series of tests. The first test gave us obvious results, harmless intervention, but by using the probability modules, we were able to, in a sense, corner SCP-8883's fate to a full manifestation of SCP-8883-B and aggressive confrontation. The only visual confirmation we can conform from SCP-8883-B, which hasn't led to an immediate brain aneurysm, is a close likeness to SCP-8883 in shape and form, with a face covered in shadow and piercing green eyes.

With this discovery, we're putting together a proposal to utilise this incredible opportunity. We have the power of a god-level SCP at our disposal, one who is inert and who we can contain and control through predictive model data. If their abilities is as strong as we believe it is, we can use SCP-8883 to destroy other SCP threats.

It's all very exciting!"

POST - ZK

"Mother of god ... what have we done ... W-what have I done ... I hope there are enough analogies about playing god- or tempting fate in your universe ... clearly there wasn't enough in ours" [REDACTED]

"As theorised ... SCP-8883 has been elevated to a Ketter Class SCP, a ZK-Scenario is in effect, and Protocol Godchild has been initiated... I only wish I had more time to better compose myself ... or even amend my last fucking entry- I.... fuck. god I can't" [REDACTED]

"As I mentioned at the start of this documentation, the Godchild Protocol has come into effect and you have received this warning that SCP-8883 has caused a Reality Failure Scenario.

Before I carry on... whoever you are, you must stop this recording IMMEDIATELY and escalate this to the highest level of Authority. If you are part of a SCP Foundation, then this must be taken to The Administrator, or at the very least, The Council... otherwise, you pose a risk not only to your own life but to your universe's too"

"........................................"

"Ok ... if I am talking directly to who I think I am ... kill the person who handed you this documentation, them, and anyone who has any knowledge of this information being passed to you. As we speak, my reality is falling apart because of the information in this document. Whilst we could not contain SCP-8883 we could prevent it, by Leaving. Her. Alone. By knowing someone's fate, you risk intervening with it, and intervened with Del- erm, SCP-8883's fate led to our demise.... I ask- no, BEG you, destroy this documentation, stop the recording now and erase everything. Let them live their lives untested and let fate take its course...

"........................................"

"If you're still listening ... I hope you know what you're doing and the risks with this information. Know, I'm only sharing this to appease curiosity, so you do not give into the same temptation we-.... I did...

After discovering we could control SCP-8883-B's focus, we began to escalate our testing to harvest residual energy created by SCP-8883-B and eventually use them as a weapon. We found we could manipulate SCP-8883-B to destroy other SCP's. I'm not going to list each SCP, but- we had a 100% success rate, and we were able to remove over 80% of our most hostile SCPs. They were everything we ever wanted. And with SCP-████ models the risk was next to 0.

However...

SCP-████ was unable to account for a variable we had no measurement for. Put my fucking trust in that AI-" [REDACTED] "It seemed that every time we coached SCP-8883-B into acting on our behalf, we frayed the fabric of time and space ... like running a blade across a rope, slowly eroding its threads until it eventually snapped.

That's when everything fell apart and SCP-8883 entered a ... I don't know what to call it, demi-god state? A defense mechanism? Whatever- SCP-8883-C, let's just call it that... We've tried to capture as much footage as we could, but we lost every power station across the globe the second shit hit the fan. Any and all attempts to stop SCP-8883-C were met with the same effect, immediate destruction on a cellular level. We don't even have any SCPs to throw at it to slow her down ... But that's only the tip of the iceberg, as SCP-8883-C has weaponised SCP-8883-B against us in a form we've not seen before ... some sort of giant lizard entity the size of manhattan... Apparently, you can see it's destructive trail from space...

The crippling blow wasn't the girl or her knock-off Godzilla, but the sheer power emitting from the two of them that began to tear space and time apart. Past and future are starting to crumble into one another as SCP-8883-C's slow destructive path seems to be echoed simultaneously in every moment in time, all at once.

The effects are ... indescribable ... yesterday I shared a cup of tea with my grandfather, who's been dead for 8 years ... and an hour ago, I rang up my grandson and told him I loved him ... I don't even have a family- or I won't yet , or ... ever will? ... and then there are parts of time that have been completely eviscerated... members of staff have even began to forget their names...

Everything is falling apart...

Now the responsibility lies on your shoulders. You must carry on the Godchild protocol. Not only do I know there is an SCP-8883 in your universe, but in every conceivable universe. The Sirpyn Paradox isn't just a rare freak anomaly, it is a FACT. And if it cannot be contained or destroyed, then it must be maintained...

Gods speed..."

[MESSAGE END]

-------- The winner of this month's Del-veres vote! SCP Foundation Del! I was really looking forward to seeing how this could work because I figure the SCP Foundation would be the only group able to contain/utilise the Sirpyn Paradox, or their universe's Del. Or at least for so long

-- Follow my socials and art discord on my Link.tree Do not use, repost or claim (rp) my art/character Art © @The-Red-Right-Hand

[rockermazy]

Yay - I get to share my love for tidbit Hazbin lore while sharing knowledge that makes me look like a millennial boomer XD Ahem... Alastor, our favorite overlord, for all intents and purposes, is a fucking elemental. His abilities are absolutely terrifying from a scientific standpoint. Okay, so remember how during the "Stayed Gone" number, Vox starts glitching out and "loses his signal" - then the Pride ring subsequently has a blackout? That is entirely Alastor's (or whatever-the-fuck-is-benefactoring-him's) doing. A powerful enough radio signal can do that. No horseshoe magnet required. IRL real shiz. Despite being digital enough to render a bluescreen while compromised, Vox might still have older hardware from his former days as a rabbit-eared, extra-thick thick cathode-ray tube.

And Alastor is our radio demon. Keep this in mind. IRL, once upon a time during the 1940s - before digital television - there was no "Channel 1". That's because in the US, a very long time ago, both radio and TV shared the band that we call "Channel One":

"Until 1948, Land Mobile Radio and television broadcasters shared the same frequencies, which caused interference. This shared allocation was eventually found to be unworkable, so the FCC reallocated the Channel 1 frequencies for public safety and land mobile use and assigned TV channels 2–13 exclusively to broadcasters. Aside from the shared frequency issue, this part of the VHF band was (and to some extent still is) prone to higher levels of radio-frequency interference (RFI) than even Channel 2 (System M)." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_1_(North_American_TV))

Then for a short stint, Channel One was exclusively reserved for radio:

Channel 1 was allocated at 44–50 MHz between 1937 and 1940. Visual and aural carrier frequencies within the channel fluctuated with changes in overall TV broadcast standards prior to the establishment of permanent standards by the National Television Systems Committee. In 1940, the FCC reassigned 42–50 MHz to the FM broadcast band. Television's channel 1 frequency range was moved to 50–56 MHz. Experimental television stations in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles were affected. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_1_(North_American_TV))

Every local TV channel and radio station has a frequency range on the electromagnetic spectrum. For those who still listen to radio on non-internet-reliant radios devices, those funny little numbers next to a station's name are a ballpark number for the frequency the station broadcasts in the Hertz unit. A Hertz (Hz) is one wave per second. A KiloHertz (KHz) is 1,000 waves per second. A GigaHertz (GHz) is 1 billion waves per second. Modern AM radio stations are 535-1605 kHz Modern FM radio stations are 88-108 MHz   TV VHF Channels 2 thru 13 are 54-216 MHz TV UHF Channels 14 thru 36 are 470-608 MHz And no, that's not a discrepancy between VHF and FM radio: the frequencies designated for FM radio are nestled right in there with TV ones - between Channels 6 and 7.

(chart from http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Audio/radio.html) Even today, radio and TV are slightly shuffled in there in regards to designated frequencies. This implies that depending on Alastor's band of preference, if Vox still has some of his older hardware, Vox could, in his sleep, theoretically be able to hear Alastor's broadcasts of screaming victims without a physical radio nearby. IRL in fact, in older televisions where a knob is used to change channels, much of the static you'd hear in-between channels is actually background radiation from deep space - along with any radio interference from man-made sources nearby. No wonder Vox is obsessed with Alastor. Alastor can torment him in an in-between realm-channel daily, like Freddy Kruger.

Yet, if radio signals were only a Vox problem, why did nearly every light and electronic device go out in the Pride except the emergency lights at the Heaven embassy?

It might depend on how we define the word "radio". Is it radio, as in "those radio stations we can listen to without the internet"? Maybe radio, as in "any frequency utilized in modern communications, including TV and Radio"? Or is it radio, as in "almost any signal on the electromagnetic spectrum with a frequency lower than friggin' heat?" People, below is an IRL over-simplified chart of the electromagnetic spectrum and its usages by human.

When radio is defined as a specific part of the electromagnetic spectrum, it is basically any frequency below infrared. *** Cellphone service and WiFi use radio signals within this range. Most cellular services are between 600 MHz and 39 GHz WiFi routers are about 2.4-5 GHz (6 GHz in newer models)  That's where the "G" in "4G" and "5G" come from - the "G" stands for "Gigahertz" Radio, local television, cellphone service, WiFi, and basically any point in the internet that isn't linked by a landline - these are all safely within the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that the scientists would call "radio". If Hell's technology is supposed to mirror the real world, then most electronic devices need radio frequencies in order to communicate. The VVV's empire is truly fucked, should Alastor so choose. The only plot hole in this explanation I see is why all the lights went out. These devices don't run on radio - they communicate using it. My best-educated guess is that the on/off switch for Hell's power grid is on an open network and at least part of it wireless. Or maybe Alastor's radio attack works like a general EMP and he can just break stuff by "brute force". (I am not an expert on these sorts of things like telecommunication... or network security... or physics.... I politely ask that someone in the comments, please enlighten me U.U ) ------------------------------------- Also, notice that Alastor's Tower, Cannibal Town and the Heaven Embassy were the only regions with lights on during the blackout.

is that...?

Cannibal Town?

If this is, in fact, Cannibal Town, then my only guess is that the Cannibals are so hipster, many of them only light their homes and businesses with candlelight and leviathan whale oil. Neither candlelight nor oil-burning rely on wifi. Only some of their region's light was lost in the blackout. They might use some electricity (as many during the Victorian era did, which Cannibal Town seems to be inspired by), but they don't fully rely upon electricity. This suggests that Alastors friendship with Rosie might be less of an organic friendship and more like a strategically slick alliance. Rosie's territory is one part of Pride that Alastor can't completely shut down (other than the Embassy). But, who knows?

Alastor's derision of modern tech now seems to have more merit than just being "hipster", or avoiding leaving a digital footprint that Vox can manipulate, (the latter of which I once head-canoned before this epiphany). Alastor can literally just shut most of Hell's tech down. This might also suggest why Alastor is homies with Zestial - another known old-timey prick.

Alastor makes alliances with demons he can't easily overpower with his abilities. This might seem self-contradictory to Alastor's seeming over-confidence in teasing Lucifer - until you realize he did this only after he learned angels could be killed during the Overlords' meeting. (And yes, I know what I wrote about Alastor a couple of tumbl notes back with the "popsicle" evaluation. I do not consider flip-flopping a moral issue if done so by epiphany. That note stays, because it's funny XD ) ----------------------- Another theory! Ok, so this theory isn't entirely my own-own, I'm just building off of it based on what I've just said (mostly Roo stuff). So IRL, scientists decided to take an image of the observable universe in the microwave range. Microwave energy is in the upper ends of radio, but just below infrared in frequency. What they found was cosmic background radiation - a lot of energy that isn't coming from the stars themselves.

(Image source: https://www.space.com/33892-cosmic-microwave-background.html) Some scientists theorize this is because this particular energy is left over from the formation of the universe. So about Roo:

In the first non-pilot episode, The Story of Hell, as read by Charlie, states that the angels of pure light "worshipped good and shielded all from evil." During this line, imagery of two faces are shown before the angels: one face of light and another face of twisted red and black.

Subsequent lines and imagery in the episode suggest that this "evil" existed before Lucifer fell or Eve allowed this evil to enter the world - even before the Earth was created. Some Tumblrs who have been in this fandom longer than I have may know of Roo, a character that appears in some of VivziePop's older works within the Hazbin/Hellaverse. Some of Roo's monikers include "The Root of All Evil" and the "Tree of Knowledge". I'm wondering if in the Hellaverse, the cosmic background radiation of the universe is a manifestation of Roo when she isn't bound to a tree. Could Alastor's radio powers come Roo, the background "dark" energy of the universe's birth? Did Alastor bite the apple the second third time for mankind? XD

------------------------------------------------- While researching for this paper, I learned that microwave ovens and 2G cell phones operate within the same frequencies at around 2 GHz. Apparently, the only reason cell phones don't cook our brains is because the wattage is too low. (I dunno what wattage means. I'm not a scientist.) But now, Alastors singing lines in S1E8 had me thinking: "The constraints of my deal surely have a back door  Once I figure out how to unclip my wings,  guess who will be pulling all the strings" Knowing what Alastor is capable of with radio, this has me wondering if Alastor's radio powers are coming from one source, all while be is being chained by another entity entirely. Someone might have gone out of their way to get Alastor into a contract - if only to keep him from literally baking the universe for his viewing pleasure... on a rotating glass plate.

Being able to cook a soul in microwaves would require that they be at least partially made of water, however. Buuuut... I guess if there are working ACs in Hell, I really shouldn't read too much into it XD -------------

Do you think the mad scientists from Helluva Boss, Lyle Lipton and Loopty Goopty, ever chat over coffee about the abilities of the overlords based on casual observation?

One day, Alastor's name comes up... ...and after four minutes of discussing facts over coffee, they're both just like "Nope"?

XD {END} *** Note: Googling "Electromagnetic Spectrum charts" will yield different results. Some charts will have different designations frequencies lower than radio, like Extremely Low Frequencies (ELF). I do not know whether this difference is a reflection of a newer categorization, or if most charts online are made for laymen such as myself. Most charts I saw years ago only designated "radio" as "everything below microwave". I want to assume that the "only radio below microwave" categorization went into the writer's designing of Alastor's character simply because such charts are more common (while also making for a more interesting power scaling).

______________ Disclaimer: I am composed of chauffeur knowledge. I know nearly nothing about communication science little about radiation stuff. I took an astronomy elective in college once, so I sorta knew where to look when it came to frequency stuff. I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. I know that I confused frequency and wavelength somewhere. Please, #sciencesideoftumblr feel free to correct me. ----------------- TLDR: Most tech IRL uses radio waves to communicate. That Includes TVs, WiFi and cell phones. Alastor can make the Pride Ring go kaploowee if he looks at it funny. I don't know what he's cooking.

[simbury]

How I got my Sims 2 game working on my new Windows 11 laptop, step by step.

OKAY. Gadies and Lentlemen.

I have seen plenty of these around, but I wanted to share my process!

So I bought an MSI creator laptop. The specs are as follows:

CPU: 13th gen Intel i7-13700H

RAM: 16 GB DDR5

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 laptop GPU

Step One: Fresh install. I used the EA App to install the UC version on my new laptop.

Step Two: Download and install RPC launcher. This will automatically apply the 4gb patch. Run as administrator, but not in any kind of compatibility which renders the 4gb patch useless.

Step Three: Download and install Graphics Rule Maker. I used all of the recommended settings, aside from texture memory which I set at 2048 mb for reasons that will become clear later.

Step Four: Memory allocation fix (empty standby list). Explanation here.

Step Five: Setting virtual memory. I used instructions from this post at MTS - My virtual memory paging file is now minimum of 25000 and maximum of 30000. You'll need to adjust to your system's own specs.

Step Six: In game settings. Shadows Off. Neighbours Off. Lighting Medium. RPC Settings. Apply 4GB patch. Automatically Clean Cache. Lot Imposters Optimized. Sim/Object Shadows Classic. I also have lot view ocean reflections ticked.

If your game works like this with no flashing and crashing, awesome. Mine did not. I firstly tried several different texture memory sizes, but they had 0 impact.

I believe the next step is only for NVIDIA cards, but may be wrong.

Step Seven: DXVK. The most recent version from, here. There are plenty of instructions on how to install out there. But make sure you install the 32bit version. I have these two following lines in my DXVK.conf file (and do make sure it is saved as a conf file, NOT a txt or similar).

d3d9.maxAvailableMemory=2048

d3d9.presentInterval=0

The first line corresponds to the texture memory mentioned earlier. DXVK installs won't recognise more than that and having it higher can cause crashes apparently. The second line... No idea what it does but it was mentioned in several guides and reddit posts.

I don't know if the newer versions of DXVK allow fullscreen mode as the older ones did not, but I play in borderless mode anyway which works.

I also delete my thumbnails folder every so often.

I hope this helps someone, this silly old game can be cantankerous but I was determined to get it running again!

[salty-tang]

For the Record 4: Lockdown (multi- chapter series)

Congressman!Bucky Barnes x Congresswoman!Reader (mostly canon compliant)

Chapter Summary: The Capitol is thrust into lockdown just as Bucky retrieves the classified file exposing Valentina’s shell NGO. As alarms blare and security systems jam, both he and you confront the terrifying possibility of losing each other. Oh, and also dumplings.

⁕⁕⁕

a canon compliant congressman bucky x congresswoman reader fic set somewhere between tfatws and thunderbolts, chronicling congressman barnes' first term as a representative.

Warnings/ tags: Slow Burn, Political Drama, Light Angst with a happy ending, Mutual Pining, Bucky Doesn't Think He Deserves Good Things, Hurt/Comfort But Make It Legislative, Secret Missions with Legislative Consequences, The Interns Have Theories, Canon-Typical Violence, Congressman Bucky Barnes, Congresswoman Reader, author is not american and barely gets american politics, no use of y/n, this is the plot heavy long form fic

Word count: 6.5k

ps: AO3 is my main platform for this work, tumblr is just getting the reupload

For the Record masterpost || AO3 || congressman bucky masterpost

The secure archives are six levels down – a level below the official basement and past the old microfiche stacks that no one’s catalogued since the Nixon administration. The walk is long enough to steady Bucky’s breathing, but not enough to loosen the knot just under his sternum.

He tries not to think about the leak and the photo; the way your sounded as you turned to leave – low and composed, weaponised in its restraint.

“Goodnight, Congressman.” You had said, and it felt like rung was pulled from underneath him.

It echoes in the quiet of the corridor like footfall just behind him. Two harmless words, civil and lethal in its simplicity, laced with everything that you didn’t say. He should've let them roll off his back and treated it like the quiet dismissal that it was. But no – his brain, traitorous as ever, has caught itself on the shape of your voice and the way it softened, just slightly, for him.

He can’t afford to be the kind of man who flinches at a well-aimed goodnight. And he certainly can’t let himself be swayed by the way your mouth barely moved around the words. A pretty face shouldn’t be able to send a man six levels underground just to breathe.

And yet, here he is, walking to where he keeps the things that matter. Not officially – and certainly not with permission. Some of these rooms aren’t even on the updated blueprints. He may or may not have rerouted access protocols months ago, quietly folding this forgotten corner into his own network. No one asked and no one stopped him, so now it’s his.

The file he’s looking for is stored where he left it last, tucked behind a dead security panel and wrapped in the kind of dull brown sleeve no one looks at twice. It's exactly what he said he'd get – just not from where you assumed.

The report for Appropriations ended up down here for a reason. The data that informs it wasn’t properly obtained, having been scraped from sources too compromised to be defensible, but too damning to ignore. At its core, it charts a pattern of corruption, buried beneath the language of obscure grant disbursements. The bulk of the data is stored on a supplementary USB that is faintly scorched, like it brushed too close to something it shouldn’t have. It evidences a trail of inconsistencies – funds that don’t match their authorisations, rerouted allocations smuggled between innocuous footnotes, and the name of a humanitarian group that doesn’t appear on any public record at all.

This isn’t something anyone else has seen, and now Bucky’s made up his mind that he’s going to show it to you.

As he flips the file over in his hand, he finds himself hesitating – not because he doubts the intel, but because he understands what it means to share it. Once you see this, you’re in. No plausible deniability, no clean exit. If it all goes to hell, if you get caught in the kind of fallout that he’s been surviving all his life, it'll be because he let you close.

Bucky exhales through his nose and almost puts the file back. He thinks about how much you already carry – your constituent work, your bill that you’re still trying to pass – and now, his shadow, creeping in. If he adds this – this ugly, uncompromising truth – it might bring your carefully spinning plates crashing down.

Logically, there are a thousand reasons to keep you out of it. And still, he tells himself that sharing this risk is strategic because he can’t afford to lose the cover that you’re providing him, and that it’s also safer where he’s close enough to keep an eye on you.

But really, the truth settles lower, just beneath where reason ends; he just can’t quite bear the thought of you walking away.

And not just because of this.

He slides the file into his jacket before his hesitation has time to land.

*

Bucky’s one turn away from the exit when he notices it. A hum – or the lack of one. Subtle, but very wrong. One of the old server rooms he just passed isn’t making its usual noises. No soft whir of legacy cooling systems and no idle clicking of dormant data storage.

He pauses outside the threshold, glances around, and then steps inside.

At first glance, everything looks normal – the lights blink in their usual rhythm, and nothing seems to have been moved or disturbed. Maybe he was mistaken. He almost turns away, just almost, and that's when he sees it – a faint shadow cast wrong against the racks.

When he really looks, he finds a thumb-sized device jammed into the base of the central server housing. Small and easy to miss. Invisible, unless one knows exactly what to look for. And Bucky does.

He crouches in front of it, breath tightening in his chest.

It’s a surveillance bug – CIA-adjacent, if he had to guess. Compact and deliberately unspectacular, it’s the kind of thing designed to outlast curiosity. It's precisely the kind of bug someone plants not just to listen in to one or two conversations or grab a couple of files, but when they’re certain they want to have it all. It’s long range, low signal, with an untraceable signature and perfected to work in areas with otherwise patchy network access. It will blend in and stay feeding until it’s full and the owner comes and retrieves it.

More alarmingly, it’s new. Not weeks old. Hours, if still that. The dust hasn’t even had a chance to settle on the panel seam, and with the way the dirt on the server base has been disturbed, it feels like someone was just here.

Bucky skims the hardware tags on the server towers: third floor backup servers. His lips flatten into a line.

He’s been careful and disciplined. Every packet he sends and receives has been routed through encrypted proxies. There are no pings from unsecured devices and certainly no accidental logins, autofill histories, or cloud backups. Nothing that might echo back to him.

For a man like him, this kind of digital hygiene is only learnt when sloppiness got people killed.

But then, he considers you. A civilian. Brilliant, but not paranoid. You leave draft memos in your shared folders and annotate briefing documents in real time. You log in after hours from your personal laptop and think that the badge swipe system makes you safe.

If this thing was left to run, it wouldn’t have just tracked activity, it would have learned you. Patterns, passwords, heat maps. You wouldn’t even know you were being watched.

Bucky's pulse spike again – because this isn’t just a surveillance breach. It’s intrusion, intentional and violently personal. This isn’t the work of an opportunist, it’s a precise feeler sent through Capitol infrastructure looking for access, and picking out the weak links that would give them that.

He tastes something sharp and metallic at the tip of his tongue – rage, fear, or something that draws from the darkest corners of both – as the unwelcome conclusion settles. You might now be on someone’s hit list, and that is the absolutely last thing he wants.

His breath catches as the grim realisation sets in. You’re no longer safe.

And then – like the world flinches with him – the fluorescent overhead lights flicker, buzz, and go dark. Red and blue emergency strobe take their place and wash over the room in a broken rhythm.

His phone buzzes once in his pocket, a secure channel text.

[MIKE]: Where are you? Full lockdown in two.

Bucky ignores the warning and is about to hit send on his reply – Is she okay? – when the building shudders with the weight of its own alarm system. A voice crackles over the overhead speakers, loud enough to rattle through concrete and bone:

“Security protocol activated. All personnel to shelter in place. Building is in lockdown. This is not a drill.”

Static fractures the line and his phone screen glitches once before going dead.

Signal jammed.

His breath freezes. This isn’t a coincidence. Not a drill, not even a diversion. He recognises it for what it may be – cover. Someone planted that bug knowing it might trigger a lockdown, or worse, hoping it would. Because a lockdown pins everyone down exactly where they are.

And you, you don’t run in an emergency. You follow procedure and stay put in your office.

Predictable, contained, easy to find.

Before the thought can even finish forming, his hand shoots out. Metal fingers close around the bug with furious precision. The chill of vibranium bruising plastic casing feels almost ceremonial – like he’s marking the moment before consequence. Like it matters that this is the last thing the bug will ever register.

It resists for half a second before it folds onto itself with a sound not unlike bone cracking under pressure, coupled with the splintering whine of circuits giving way. Tiny sparks fizzle between his fingers as the plastic chars. His palm smells like scorched wires and ozone.

It's useless now. Burned and ground down to its circuit board guts.

But it doesn’t feel like enough, because what’s next is worse – they’re coming for you.

And if this isn’t just spectacularly bad timing or a coincidence, and if it’s actually their opening salvo – then he’s not just running out of time – he’s running out of space between you and a bullet that hasn’t been fired yet.

Bucky closes his eyes. Inhales. Exhales.

He’s six floors below you, and too many secrets too late.

He bolts.

***

You don’t know where Bucky is. And you hate that that’s what you’re fixated on as sirens wail around you. Derek and Mike are already moving – their laptops are open and incident logs are running as they bark check in codes down secure communication lines.

This is not how you thought this night would end.

Bucky should’ve been back by now. Why isn’t he back? The thought lodges sharp and unwelcome at the forefront of your mind, but you push it down in favour of the calculations that are running at full speed at the back– routes, protocols, clearance levels. How far could he have gone in the few minutes he was gone? Is he stuck behind some check point? Does he have his badge and is he unable to use it? Or for once is he going to listen to protocol and shelter in place until the lockdown is over?

You are spiralling. You cannot spiral.

Quietly, you take your seat.

Not because it feels safe, but because it’s what leadership looks like in the middle of a breach. This House respects composure, and you have to be the still point in the chaos, a fixed axis upon which everyone else can spin. So you become what is required of you. You give orders. You speak with precision. You don’t think about worst case scenarios.

Because if this lockdown isn’t a false alarm, and if it’s a cover for something else, something deliberate – you’re well on your way to making peace with it. If they’re coming for you under the guise of containment, you’ll be ready. You’ll meet it with your name spelled correctly on the press notice and your posture correct, because if someone’s going to take a shot, they’ll damn well do it with your eyes on theirs.

You do not check your phone. You do not ask where he is. But do you allow yourself to think of Bucky’s interns and it hits you belatedly – weren’t they in the office with him earlier?

You’re about to be concerned when Mike, without looking up from his phone, answers. “I sent them home the minute the photo hit Jenna’s phone. We didn’t need them around for further chaos. And it was late, as good a time as any.”

You nod once and hold that detail like a handhold in a storm. Two safe. Good.

Derek snorts from across the table. “Wish I’d thought of that. Then I wouldn’t have to watch Devon and Mills start an emergency podcast in the corner.”

You don’t smile, not really, but the line grounds you.

Then you continue to do what you’ve always done – made sure the work carries on.

Your desktop is still live, for now. You cycle through incoming alerts, reroute notifications, flag duplicates while you wait for new intel. You open a template and start drafting emergency statements that say absolutely nothing, but sound like they might in the right context.

One version if the threat is internal, one if it’s environmental, one if it’s a false alarm. And then, one last one. The one you’ll deny exists until the time comes, because it’s written along the lines of If I die tonight, let it be of use. Let it be timed enough, precise enough, to cover for whatever it is Barnes will do.

You don’t send them out. You just line them up, a little row of votives for all the deathless gods.

Mike murmurs something about contingency plans. You nod again, sharper this time, though your eyes flick to the doorway.

Still empty.

You glance down and realize your hand is curled around your phone, white-knuckled. You loosen your grip before anyone sees. You hold yourself still, like the calmness will keep your fear at bay. But in that small, irrational corner of your mind where paranoia is blooming hard and fast like poison ivy, you think – this is it. This is how it ends. No warnings, no glory, no chance to make wrongs right. Just red lights and static.

(in ten months, you'll laugh at your past self for even thinking that this was the end of it)

If something happens to him – if something happens to you – you’re sure to regret it, all of it. The missed chances. The way you refused to soften and the look in his eyes when he left and the way you couldn’t bring yourself to ask him to stay.

If I make it out of this alive, you say, not quite a prayer but something close to it, I have to do better. I will do better.

You cut yourself off. That way lies madness. If someone’s coming for you, they’ll have to go through three locked doors, two seasoned staffers, and the sharp edge of your composure. Let them try, you think instead.

And then you let yourself think about Bucky again, the ghost of a smirk curling on your lips, because if someone’s coming for him, well, they'd probably have to bring a tank.

***

Bucky’s boots hit the first stair hard enough to echo. The emergency lights stutter above him, painting the stairwell in stop-motion red and blue.

The building is sealed. Doors are locked and phones are dead.

His shoulder clips the wall on the third landing, but he doesn’t slow. Every second feels like a page he should’ve read faster, a clue he should’ve caught earlier.

You're in your office with Derek and Mike. Or at least – you’re supposed to be. Before the speakers blared. Before the line dropped.

Before he could ask.

He takes the next flight three steps at a time, breath steady but clipped. The file presses against his ribs through his jacket, sharp-edged and wholly irrelevant now.

Six floors. Each one more unbearable than the last.

He curses himself for trying to hold back that fire with his bare hands, knowing that it always, always, finds someone else to burn. And now it’s your turn on the altar – your bill, your calendar, you name on some hidden ledger none of them were meant to see.

He rounds another corner. His knee protests. He doesn’t care.

He veers towards the exit that would spit him out on the ground level, where it's a faster charge up to your office.

But the badge reader blinks red and the heavy metal door holds firmly shut.

Again.

Still red.

The lockdown protocol rerouted access. Of course it did. His clearance won’t punch through unless someone overrides it, and there’s no one here to do that.

He grips the frame beside the door, breath steady through clenched teeth. Vibranium creaks against metal. For a moment, his vision narrows. He could break it and force his way through. But the thought of you – watching, worrying, expecting him to be better – pulls him back.

He’s not out of options, not yet.

He exhales sharply, and there is no time to lose. He turns back to the stairwell and keeps going.

Another three flights up, he runs into a checkpoint. At least this time, it’s manned – not another faceless panel or sealed door. Someone he can reason with, or, if it really came down to it, someone he could shove aside.

But he doesn’t, not yet.

They are Capitol police, vest-stitched, visored, and armed. Bucky doesn’t recognise them and it’s clear they don’t recognise him either. One of them steps forward, body squared, his hand drifting toward his belt.

“Sir, you can’t be here. This floor’s sealed.”

Bucky doesn’t stop walking. “I’m getting to my office.”

“That’s not – Sir, stop.”

He does. Abruptly and deliberately.

“I have clearance,” he says, voice low and clipped, barely restrained.

The officer eyes him, unsure. “Then show it.”

Bucky doesn’t move. He glares, the metal arm catching the light and gleaming with all the weight of who he used to be. And what he could still become.

“Sir, I need you to step back.”

“I’m not stepping anywhere but forward.”

There’s a pause. The officer’s fingers inch closer towards his sidearm.

Bucky tilts his head, the red and blue light casting a ghostly wash on his visage. Slow and coldly, he speaks. “You really want to try that?”

The officer swallows. His partner shifts his stance.

“You’ll need an escort –”

“No, I won’t.”

Another step forward. The expression on his face is thunderous.

The officer stiffens. “If you push this, I can’t guarantee –”

“You want to be the one who explains why you stopped me from getting to her?” His voice isn’t loud, but it slices like a knife to the throat. “Be my guest.”

Something in how his shoulders drop – not relaxed, coiled – must make the threat feel real, because the officer falters and his hand slowly drops from his belt.

“This hallway only,” he says tightly. “Beyond that, you're on your own.”

“Fine.”

And then Bucky’s past him.

His footsteps roll through the silence like distant artillery.

Because if something happens and he doesn’t make it in time –

***

You hear it, heavy boots in the hallway. Not rushed, not cautious, just relentless.

You see clearly in your mind’s eye how it will unfold – the door breaching, a loud bang, the business end of a smoking gun.

And then –

The footsteps stop.

The handle jolts and the door resists, just for a second. The chair wedged beneath the handle rattles and scrapes hard against the floor.

Derek and Mike don’t speak as they exchange a single grim look and close ranks. Derek plants himself right by the door with a fire extinguisher. Mike squares his stance right in front of you, quiet and unshakeable.

For a never-wrecking moment, the chair holds, and you let yourself believe that you will be fine. That is, until the legs skid and the wooden frame gives with a splintered crack as the lock grinds open under brute force.

You tell yourself not to scream, but there is a noticeable tremble to your bottom lip.

(Devon and Mills, watching through the frosted glass divider, actually scream)

And then –

Stillness.

The hallway light spills in, alternating in their red and blue. Dust floats in the air like breath suspended. You actually stop breathing.

Then –

Blue eyes, icy cold in their focus. The ones that find you first, before anything else does.

Not an assassin. Not a killer.

Just Bucky, clutching that goddamn file in his hand like it’s the thing that matters most – not the lockdown orders he broke to get here, not the fact that you were counting heartbeats in his absence.

That idiot. That beautiful, reckless idiot.

He’s all you can see. Time falters and stretches long enough for you to feel it in your lungs, in your pulse – this moment that belongs only to you and him.

Bucky exhales, shaky and uneven, like he’s only just realized he hasn’t breathed since the moment the lockdown started.You’re not dead. No broken glass, no gunshots, no bodies on the floor. Just you - face drained of all color, lips trembling, hands shaking, seated behind your table surrounded by papers like it’s just another Thursday. He can’t look away, because he’s afraid that looking away might undo the fact that you’re still breathing. That he made it, and that this time, he wasn’t too late.

And you, the breath you did not know you’ve been holding releases, sharp and shallow. He’s real. You’re not dead. He’s not dead. He’s standing in your doorway like he always meant to come through it. He came back. That’s enough. Relief slams into your fear so fast you nearly stagger, and you continue to blink, disbelieving, like your body hasn’t quite caught up to the fact that there isn’t a bullet lodged in your skull.

“What the actual fuck!” Derek yells, the tremor evident in his voice as he lowers his fire extinguisher. “I could’ve killed you!”

“Jesus Christ, Barnes.” Mike wheezes, almost collapsing onto the table behind him.

“How did you even get here? In a lockdown?” You ask.

His jaw flexes and his voice is low when he ignores the others to reply just to you. “Didn’t stop me.”

The way he says it isn’t boastful. Just honest, like there was never a version of the day where he didn’t find a way through.

Somewhere behind you, Derek and Mike’s voices rise in tandem – urgent, disbelieving, sharpened by adrenaline – but it all melts into static, muffled like a world underwater.

Because Bucky’s already stepping forward, and without meaning to, without even thinking, you’re already out of your seat and moving towards him like it’s instinct hardwired into your bones.

It’s not a run. It’s not even dramatic. It’s just that quiet, inevitable gravity pulling the two of you together.

He comes to a stop right in front of you. It’s close. Too close.

At this distance, you can hear the unevenness of his breathing, as if something bigger than adrenaline is keeping him upright.

"You’re safe," he says, barely louder than a whisper, raw and frayed. It’s not just relief or confirmation, the way he says it. The words that come out of his mouth sound like confession.

You blink at him, stunned.

"Yeah," you manage. "You too."

You don’t say anything else. You don’t need to. You have never been gladder to see a man standing before you, wrecked but ultimately unharmed.

He looks at you, really looks at you, like the ground finally stopped moving.

Like you’re the only reason he came back up.

And you – you tilt your head, just enough to expose the line of your jaw and the curve of your neck. Your breath hitches and his eyes catch the sound.

You inhale, slow and deep. Your heart is about to burst out of your chest. His gaze drops down, down to where your mouth softens with the shape of his name. His lips part too, with the beginnings of yours.

It’s not practiced, not planned. The pull is slow and certain, ancient and primal. It’s the kind of attraction that defies policy, optics, and common sense. It’s the kind of thing that no one walks away from cleanly.

You lean in, fractions at a time. So does he.

He’s so much closer that all his finest details are laid bare for your perusal – the faint splits in his bottom lip, the healing nick on his cheek, the flecks of silver in the strands above his temple. His gaze flicks to your mouth – once, then again.

Your noses nearly brush. His hand twitches like it wants to anchor itself – on your arm, your waist, anywhere you’d let him touch – like he doesn’t know where to put everything he’s been holding back.

You forget about the interns. About the lockdown. About the file still clenched in his hand.

And then a chair scrapes behind you.

Loud, unforgivable.

The moment shatters like glass on asphalt.

You both snap back.

It says something, doesn’t it? That what hits you first isn’t regret, but absence in the shape of something that almost happened.

And from the look on Bucky’s face – wide-eyed, unspeaking – it’s crystal clear that he’s feeling the exact same way.

He holds out the file and you take it without looking.

You lift an eyebrow, just enough to hide the shake in your breath. "You didn’t punch any doors on your way here, did you?"

A flicker of something crosses his face – guilt, or amusement, or the memory of just how close he came.

"No," he says. "Didn’t hit anyone, either."

"You’re evolving," you mutter. It slips out wry, but it’s an honest thought. He meets the comment with nothing more than a slight tilt of his head – but that’s how you know it’s landed right.

The silence folds in, weighted and careful.

You speak first, before the stillness pulls you under. "We need to go through this," you say, lifting the folder like a shield.

"Yeah," he says. But still, he doesn’t step away.

And you don’t want him to.

For a breath, neither of you move.

Then, slowly, the world begins to reassert itself. The buzz of white fluorescent, the distant thrum of security chatter.

You both straighten at the same time. It’s silent – a ringing silence where there were once strobe lights and sirens.

Derek exhales. “As I was trying to say before someone bashed his way through the door,” he says, extremely dryly, “we’ve been given the all clear.”

Bucky cuts in, serious. “And the excuse?”

Mike doesn't look up from his phone. “Officially? A staffer on Whitmore’s team forgot to renew their clearance credentials. He swiped into the building fine, but when he tried to leave, the system flagged it as unauthorized movement. That triggered the protocol.”

Bucky’s expression doesn’t move. “Convenient.”

The pause says everything he doesn’t.

Then he shuffles, slow and deliberate, and jerks his chin toward the hallway. “We’ll be safer in my office,” he directs at you.

You glance toward Derek, the silent question threaded in your eyes – Do you need me?

Derek doesn’t even look up. “Unless you’re here to write the next crisis memo, go regroup elsewhere.”

You turn to leave, but catch the faintest look from Mike – something knowing, unreadable, and just short of a smirk. He says nothing because he doesn’t need to.

*

You follow Bucky down the hall and into his office for the first time.

The door always seemed shut, or just barely open – quite like the man himself. You’d often pass it and glimpsed the nameplate and noted the soft hum of voices behind it. But never have you been invited to step inside, until now.

It’s noticeably smaller than yours and much sparser. He’s got no framed certificates, no campaign photos. Just one battered bookshelf with a surprising amount of books, and what looks like a pet feeding bowl tucked discreetly in the corner. There’s also a whiteboard that’s half policy notes and half illegible scribbled shorthand. The furnishing is completed by two big, worn leather armchairs flanking a small coffee table in the middle of the room. No couch, no space for lingering or collapsing. Just enough room to sit, think, and leave.

It’s sparse, and not in a minimal way. It feels like it's inhabited by someone who’s not yet convinced he’s allowed to take up space or make it his own.

Bucky’s hand lingers for a second on the knob, like he’s weighing whether to say something. Then, he just holds the door open, not looking at you, but not looking away either.

Your shoulder brushes his arm as you pass. Neither of you react. The hallway smells like recycled air and aftershave and ozone, but the office is blissfully warmer and smells distinctly of him.

The lock clicks softly behind you as he closes the door. Not final, but deliberate.

You sit down on one of the leather armchairs across from him and flip open the folder.

Neither of you say anything at first. The silence settles differently here – light, soft, full.

You quickly glance at the index and thumb through the pages – technical briefings, community stats, redacted testimony excerpts. Then – papers from Appropirations, drenched in neon yellow highlighter.

Immediately, the funding inconsistencies from the grant disbursement ledger jump out at you. The numbers are off in a way that does not suggest rounding errors, but systemic fraud. However, you don’t immediately place the recipient, Atlas Relief.

You frown slightly and circle the name with your pen. You've seen it before – you're sure of that. And the more you think about it, the more it surfaces: a humanitarian NGO, something to do with meta-human displacement in Southeast Asia. The memory doesn’t land cleanly, but it doesn’t let go either.

You nibble at the end of your pen, thoughtful. There’s still a gap, something he’s not telling you – a pressure point he’s keeping quiet. But the fact that he brought you this at all… that says something.

The scale of it is bigger than you – either of you – and yet, in this strange, soft silence, you find yourself believing that he wouldn’t have handed this over if he didn’t mean for you to decipher him. The belief isn't entirely rational, but you know it’s real.

When you glance up, Bucky’s sitting deceptively still and casually, but he’s watching you very carefully, with an expression that says that he’s worried you might bolt at a moment’s notice.

You lean back into the plush leather seat, thumb pressing into the margin of the folder. The silence stretches again – not uncomfortable, now weighted.

"We're going to try to push AFTERMATH through again," you say finally, eyes still on the page. "Made some changes to the rider clauses. Enough to sway a few votes, maybe. If the schedule holds, it’ll hit the floor in two weeks."

Bucky blinks at the shift in topic. He thought he’d have to defend this. He thought you’d tear through every clause the way you’ve done to witnesses in committee, relentless and precise, just to see what cracks. But you don’t. You just flip the page over, like it’s enough, like he’s earned that trust. And that’s what gives him whiplash – your forgiveness, quiet and uncomplicated.

But he’s nodding along.

There's a flicker of something across his face – not doubt, not really. Just the shadow of a question – surely nothing will get in the way this time. Not after everything. Not again.

But he doesn’t say it. He just waits.

You glance at the circled name, then up at him. "You’ll be there for the vote, right?"

His answer comes without hesitation. "I will."

It shouldn’t matter that you asked out loud. But it does. It’s the only way you know how to show that you’re sorry – that you don’t want to leave things unsaid.

He leans back slightly, but his eyes stay fixed on yours. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."

You don’t tell him that you’ll hold him to it. You just nod and go back to reading.

But your heart is still catching up.

You don’t look up. But you smile. And that, somehow, is enough.

***

Later, much later, after the file’s been locked away and the worst of the crisis is deemed over, the both of you find yourselves outside Rayburn.

Not because you planned to be. Just because you couldn’t quite stay in the airless quiet of the Hill.

The city hums around you – muted, half-asleep. Somewhere far off, sirens echo. But here, beneath the dull orange halo of a streetlamp, it’s just you and him breathing in the cold March air.

“You hungry?” Bucky asks, like it’s the first time he’s allowed himself a question that small.

“Always.” You nod, too tired to joke, too wired to go home just yet.

The both of you walk the three blocks to a backlit street in Chinatown in companionable silence. Your destination is a 24/7 dumpling hut with buzzing half-broken neon lights and steam fogging up the glass windows where faded menus are not taped up. It’s the kind of place where no one really cares who you are, as long as you pay in cash and clear your tray when you’re done.

After some back and forth about what kind of and how many dumplings to get (‘these better not be the soup ones that explode when you bite into them’, ‘you survived Hydra, you’ll survive a xiao long bao’), you end up ordering two steamers of pork and chive, one of pan fried shrimp, and something that the auntie taking the order insists that you should get and that you’re not brave enough to clarify what exactly it is. He watches you with a faint smile, like he’s seeing a version of you Congress doesn’t get.

When the food comes – piled high and steaming and smelling like real life – you gesture toward the spread between you like a queen showing off her kingdom. “This is what survival looks like.”

He cracks his chopsticks cleanly in two. “I thought survival looked like punching a federal checkpoint.”

“Which you didn’t do.”

“Barely,” he says. “I made it through without casualties. Doors included.”

You raise a brow. “That’s what we’re calling restraint now?”

He huffs something like a laugh. “You should’ve seen the other guy.”

“Please don’t say there was another guy.”

He doesn’t answer. Just nudges the dipping vinegar closer to you, all innocent.

You sigh and take a dumpling. “Next time you decide to disappear during a lockdown, maybe say something first?”

“Next time,” he says, voice low, “you barricade the door properly, and maybe don’t use a chair.”

You glance at him. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“It worked too well,” he says. “Nearly took it as a sign.”

Something flickers between you. Not affection. Not quite.

You eat in silence for a while, the kind that is comfortably full. Between bites, you watch the steam rise off the tray and feel the heat work its way back into your bones.

Bucky chews, slow and deliberate, like he’s still winding down from whatever adrenaline cocktail got him through the night. He swallows, then says it lightly – so lightly it nearly slips past you, “every time something breaks around here, I still can’t tell which part of me’s supposed to fix it.”

You glance at him and clock the way his shoulders are slouched forward, how his fingers are denting his paper cup of tea.

“You’re doing fine,” you say quietly. “It’s not like they give you a manual for this.”

He doesn’t answer, not really. Just shifts slightly, like the weight of a moment brushing too close.

Silence unfurls between the both of you again. You breathe it in too late, as it occurs to you that you might have been too late to answer the question he didn’t ask. The one that’s unspoken and hiding beneath all the rest.

You look away and let the missed opportunity skim past you like heat rising off asphalt. And because neither of you know what to do with tenderness that comes unlabelled, you offer it back the only way you know how.

“After fearing for both your career and your life,” you say lightly, “dumplings are a pretty solid choice.”

A beat passes. The spell breaks. The steam between you curls upward like smoke from a fire that never quite caught. Bucky huffs out a dry laugh, low and rough-edged. “You’re not wrong.”

You glance at him sidelong. “That’s your way of admitting I’m right?”

He picks up a dumpling with a shrug. “It’s the middle of the night, I haven’t eaten in twelve hours, my career’s halfway up in smoke because of an over-enthusiastic press team in a hallway, and that’s all before I thought they were coming for you.” He pauses, gaze flicking up to meet yours. “I’ll concede anything.”

You put your chopsticks down and sip your tea like you’re not quietly cataloguing every fracture in his voice. “Honestly, thank God for the lockdown.”

He blinks. “That is one hell of a thing to be grateful for.”

Your chin juts out, just a bit. “Think about it – capitol breach, false alarm, protestors next block over, dozens of representatives displaced. No one’s going to be talking about some hallway video. Mike and Derek will see to it personally.”

He stabs the next dumpling like it personally offended him. “You think a possible attempt on your life is good press?”

“No,” you say calmly as you expertly peel off a dumpling from the steamer paper without breaking the skin. “But I think optics are cruel and attention spans are short. And if someone’s going to weaponize a camera angle against us, I’d rather it get buried under bureaucracy than blow up in our face.”

His jaw flexes. “It shouldn’t take a security breach to buy us silence.”

“It’s Capitol Hill. Everything costs something.” You shrug like it’s a foundational fact of life.

He reaches for another dumpling. “Then these better count as a deductible.”

You smirk. “Keep the receipt. I’ll file it under ‘emotional damages.’”

He glances over, a faint crease at the corner of his eyes. “That a line item in your office budget?”

“No,” you say, stealing the last pan-fried one from right under his chopsticks. “It’s a personal fund. Strictly off the books.”

He protests but doesn’t stop you. Just watches, amused, as you pop it into your mouth.

“Careful,” he says. “If you keep stealing my food, people are going to think we’re close.”

You meet his gaze, heat blooming somewhere under your collar. “We’re already a headline. What more can a dumpling do?”

His voice lowers, dry but deliberate. “You tell me.”

And outside, the streetlamp flickers once. Somewhere, far off, a delivery truck shifts into gear. The sky is starting to grey – that gentle ghostly hour where the world holds its breath. And above it all, the light keeps rising, slow and sure.

Like the night never stood a chance.

<< 3. The Summit|| AO3 ||

[04k96]

Walkable cities:Trump wanting automotive infrastructure advancements (meeting w/ Mark Carney)-> Treat to the elites if that doesn’t happen

1. Reduced Dependence on Cars and Oil

• Walkable cities lower car usage, which threatens the profits of:

• Automotive companies

• Oil and gas conglomerates

• Highway and infrastructure contractors

• This shift undermines the auto-centric urban model that many global industries are built on.

2. De-centralization of Economic Power

• In walkable cities, small businesses thrive, because people shop locally.

• This can challenge large retail chains, malls, and real estate developers who rely on car access and sprawl.

3. Higher Civic Engagement

• People in walkable cities tend to be more socially and politically active due to proximity and shared space.

• That can be uncomfortable for elites who prefer fragmented, disengaged populations.

4. Re-allocation of Public Space

• Walkable cities reclaim space from cars and parking lots for public use.

• That threatens private interests that benefit from land speculation and car infrastructure.

5. Better Public Health & Education Outcomes

• Healthier, happier, better-educated populations are less dependent on top-down systems of control and more likely to demand structural change.

In short, walkable cities support resilient, connected, and locally empowered populations—a model that’s less easily manipulated by centralized corporate or governmental power.