#storage of ordinary data

[simp-ly-writes]

The Master

─────── · ·  For All Time: The Series (pt.2)

─ · · PAIRING: 10th Doctor x F!Time Lord!Reader, 10th Doctor x Rose Tyler

─ · · SUMMARY: You are experiencing Heartbreak, a medical term for Time Lords and other long-living beings after a Soul Bond has been broken. So lost in your wallowing and left stranded in a sea of memories you become startled when a face from your past comes to the present.

─ · · TAGS: female pronouns used, second person perspective, canon divergence, soulmate au, emotional angst, depictions of anxiety attacks, coarse language, eventual happy ending (but not yet), not beta read.

─ · · MASTERLIST | TAGLIST REQUEST | WORDCOUNT: 3,004 | PART ONE | PART THREE | PART FOUR

─ · · A/N: 🗣️ LORE!- in today's chapter

─────── · · 

You sat in your TARDIS somewhere on the edge of the universe, where you observed a supernova spreading its way across the abyss of space. A thousand coloured gases blurred and blended into a forbidden palette in which you feasted your eyes upon, temporarily distracting you from the dull ache still rumbling in your chest. 

The TARDIS hummed a sad, soft tune, rumbling gently at your feet as you paced up and down the halls, kicking at invisible stones before glaring at a speck on the wall. You were upset that you waited this long for him only to be paid back with what could be considered a slap to the face in the form of Rose Tyler. Younger, prettier, more charming… Sure, you considered her a lovely girl and it was silly of you to wait centuries for a man but the Doctor was no ordinary person, no, he was something extraordinary that made you feel more alive… and yet you felt dead as ever when a mere moments ago you could’ve seen him. 

A part of you wondered what would have happened if you stayed… if he would greet you friend or foe, with a hug or a kiss to the temple like he used to, but that was something you’d never know for the rest of your long existence. If he’s happy with her then I won’t come in between the two of them, you remind yourself with a heavy sigh, If he’s happier with her… 

You shouldn’t feel so bitter but how could you not? How could I not… you shake your head of these thoughts, trying to find your inner resolve once again as you make your way to the console room and check your flight data before tinkering and performing some general maintenance that soon turns into deep cleaning as you tunnel vision on the task, removing anything and everything that reminded you of the Doctor and placing the boxes into deep storage. 

You don’t know if it had been hours, days, or years once you stopped, hair pointing in all directions atop your head, brow covered in a line of sweat that you try to wipe off while catching your breath. You think back to the Doctor whilst leaning against a railing, how good he would look maintaining his TARDIS, smirking up at you with every tool you passed him, a single strand of hair dipping across his forehead that your fingers ached to brush away- stop it! You commanded your brain, hitting your palm against your forehead repeatedly. 

You cannot be some desperate ex, (name), you are not some desperate ex, you tell yourself like a mantra before heading to the showers and allowing the warm water to cover your skin as you hold yourself underneath the showerhead. Just because you bonded your souls together does not mean what you had was forever.

Lathering yourself in your favourite soap and moisturizing afterwards you take off to the library in a simple bathrobe and slippers in search of a story to distance yourself with but before you can even make it halfway, the Tardis suddenly rumbled before you heard a loud BANG! And you were falling against a wall clenching on a door frame to keep yourself somewhat upright. I just can’t catch a break now, can I? You thought to yourself, waiting an additional moment after the TARDIS stills again before standing straight and heading back towards the console room. 

THE DOOR, THE DOOR! The TARDIS screams in your head as you quicken your pace, turning another corner to find the door wide open, space and stars clearly in view before becoming overshadowed by a TARDIS and a… dress shoe? What? You blink and rub your eyes, thinking yourself to either be going mad or tired in your current state. A voice calls down from the stairs that you can’t recognize but it must have been serious to find and catch me way out here. 

“Is there a little lady in there?” you freeze, and they know my name atop of all that. You slowly peer up the steps, eyes trailing from a black leather shoe up to a matching black suit, white shirt and the smiling face of a man that you don’t recognize. 

“Don’t tell me you don’t remember who I am. You mustn’t insult me that much when welcoming me into your home,” their smile does not falter, only growing as you grow more concerned by their forwardness and by how they tower over you once descending the stairs, standing above you on the last step. 

You flinch at their sudden touch, their hand grips your jaw, caressing your cheek as you shiver and groan in pain, the aftermath of your soul-bond heartbreak still lingering in your system. You blink up at them, not wanting to seemingly offend the intruder anymore but silently demand for their name. 

“It's me, the Master,” they deadpan, dropping your face and shoving you aside, the contrast of emotions has your head spinning as you race to close the door before carrying on after them. 

“It cannot be… how’re you alive?” you gasp trying to solve the riddle in your head before suddenly remembering all those times you fell asleep on this very man’s shoulder while back at the Time Lord Academy or how he would always sweep you away to distant planets when you were in a mood. You remember how he sat at the front of your and the Doctors wedding, felt his stare throughout the entire night, and then… nothing well, nothing until now. 

You stare at him more closely, walking up with caution as you raise your hand, tracing over his shoulder before gesturing to him to lean down further, you bite your lip to hide the bittersweet remembrance of the mischief that never seemed to leave his eyes since you were both young. 

“I have my ways,” the Master laughs, nose scrunched at you in a teasing motion as you roll your eyes in reply, “of course, I should have known better than to ask.” 

“That you should, know better,” he replies, you sense that even in the humor-cladded tone there is a degree of underlying seriousness to his words that have you looking down at your feet, wincing slightly at your appearance once seeing you only had one slipper on and were in fact, still in just your bathrobe. 

“I heard you and the Doctor had a run-in, so-to-speak,” the Master continues talking as he taps his shoe near your feet, “don’t be embarrassed by your appearance, you still look as beautiful as the last time I saw you.”

You take a step back, once again confused by the duality of the Time Lord before you seemingly having two different conversations at once. “I don’t think I’m following… and how did you know about that?”

“What do you think my answers going to be?” the Master tuts, “we did just go over that material and I’ve seen you covered in mud during the ancient olympic games back in our 100s, or did you forget that too?” 

“You have your ways?” you scoff, trying to use attitude to cover your blush of the memory of your more… wild days, “and to think I missed you and this ego and attitude of yours.”

“You missed me?” the Master coos, “I missed you too oddly enough. You should be honoured I temporarily stopped all my scheming at the mention of your name.” 

“Consider me flattered then,” your tone flat yet eyes sparkling with humour that the Master does not miss instead lacing his arm around your own and leading you towards the library where you take seats across from one another. 

“Now you didn’t answer my earlier question, how did your meeting with the Doctor go?” the Master asks again, taking a long drink of the tea you prepared for yourself earlier. You watch as he downs the cup fully before pouring himself another, casting you a wink partway and humming at the taste, awaiting your answer while leaning back. 

“I ran away before I could meet him, I…” you pause, looking down at your hands, “...I thought I was the only one, that I was losing my mind still feeling him after all these regenerations since the Time Wars and yet,” you grit your teeth, “I- nevermind.” You reach across the table to fill your cup, grabbing a digestive along the way to dip in your tea. 

“And yet he moved on, right? Got with that Rose girl, killed a few thousand species in order to ‘save others’ and forgot all about you… know that I never did, not for a moment. Trust me, I looked everywhere for you for at least a century,” the Master stares at you, every word spoken earnestly, not a spec of mischief to be seen within his irises. 

Your lip quivers as you wrap your arms around yourself, nodding slowly. You both sit there for a moment and you are thankful that the Master is giving you time to process his words before you whisper, “Thank you for missing me… I’ve missed you too, old friend. It’s nice knowing someone else is out there in the abyss.” Your cold skin warms slightly upon seeing the first truthful smile from him of the night, it’s small and toothless, eyes squinted gently as he breathes softly through his nose. 

“Space has been boring without you somewhere in it,” he murmurs, reaching over to refill your cup with what was left of the kettle. He sits forward, elbows resting on knees, head in hands as he simply observes you. “What?” you move your head from side to side watching as his gaze follows. 

He shrugs, keeping his position and lingering stare, “just reminiscing.”

“About what?” you press, taking a sip from your cup. 

“About all that was, about what could have been and what’s happened,” he lets out a long sigh, eyes cast aside and over your shoulder before continuing, “do you plan on ever talking to the Doctor?” 

You pause mid-sip, slowly setting your cup down in your lap, “not for awhile at least. I think I need to do some work on myself before I try to speak with him.” 

The Master nods, that small smile spreading yet eyes remaining distant, a cold draft suddenly surrounds the space making you shiver in your seat. “Good, you were always the wise one.”

You both sit in silence after his comment as you start picking at the fluffs on your bathrobe and counting the books across the shelves before the Master speaks up once more, “may I offer some parting words” You raise a brow, staying silent allowing him to continue, watching as he stands, stretching before adjusting his coat and tie- walking towards the door. 

“I’m not a good man, I never plan on being one, but I am an honest one in admitting this to you, that is what makes the Doctor and I different from one another. He will always promise to do better, he’ll fix one thing and ruin ten others…he will ruin others while claiming good intentions. But you already know that… don’t you?” 

The Master does not wait for your response as you hear the door closing behind himself, his footsteps trailing away and down before silence greets you like another old friend, sitting with you, sipping tea until it goes cold with time. 

You wanted nothing more than to stand, run after and defend the Doctor, the man that you knew to be outspoken in the face of injustice and serve kindness, but this was the same man that broke your heart- almost killing you in the process. You did not know who the Doctor was anymore, you shouldn’t claim to know after centuries of separation. For the person you knew yourself to be then, happiest in the presence of the Doctor, was long gone and it only took until now to realize that you had to be a new Lady without their Doctor. 

─────── · ·  

“But you failed to listen here, didn’t you?” Rose stated, poking at the Doctor's chest. In her own pain she was feeling she failed to realize just how deeply the Doctor was hurting as he shoved her away, clutching at his shirt while heaving, coughing and choking on air. 

Rose started back and into the console, he’s having the same reaction as her… why… how? Rose thought to herself. “Don’t touch me, please, it-” a sharp intake of air, his knuckles white as he grips a rail, “-it hurts. Feels like an ice-cold burn,” the Doctor explains his actions while hunched over himself. 

Rose can hear the unshed tears in his vocals, he appears raw- feral even in pain, twitching at the lightest brush of air. Rose opens and closes her mouth, at a loss for words in having never seen her Doctor this way. “Is there anything I can do to help? What’s going on Doctor, I’m scared for you,” Rose whispers, taking a half-step forwards. 

The Doctor does not respond. “I could get you some water? How about a snack? Blanket?” Rose rattles off a list of answers for him to nod to yet receives no answer again. She sees how tightly his jaw is clenched and swears to hear a tooth crack at the force. “Doctor?” she calls out again, taking another half-step forward before the Doctor quickly extends his arms forwards, keeping her at a distance. “Don’t. I’m fine. Just need a moment-”

“You said that ten minutes ago and you’re still like this! Just tell me what's wrong, let me help you, please!” Rose begs, her own eyes starting to burn. 

“I’m going through a heartbreak,” the Doctor whispers before choking back a sob that lets way to the floodgates from speaking the words into a reality he thought he’d never have to face. 

“I’ve gone through many of those, I know they hurt but pain is only temporary, I’m sure that-” Rose starts trying to console the Time Lord, crouching down further to make herself appear even smaller and sitting on the floor, back against a panel of the console before getting cut off, “no, this is not what you humans have, it's a medical condition, a state for us when we,” the Doctor hesitates to continue, he does not want to admit the truth, “...when we break a Soul Bond. Potentially deadly but mine was already weak- hurts like hell nevertheless.” 

“A Soul Bond?” Rose tests the term on her tongue, “what's that?” 

The Doctor manages to chuckle at her genuine curiosity breaking through the tension of this moment. He opens his eyes, blinking quickly to readjust to the lighting as the wave of pain has lessened. “For us Time Lords and other long-living beings it's like a more official marriage.” 

“Oh, so… is there like some spell you recite or…?” Rose presses, catching the Doctor's eye as a weak smile spreads across his face. “Not entirely but you can say vows during it… It's a rather…” Rose blinks, eyes in disbelief at the fiery blush that starts appearing on the Doctor's ears before trailing down his neck, “...intimate ceremony where you bond your essences together.” The Doctor coughs before loosening his tie. 

“Oh…” Rose starts to blush as well, lips pushed inwards and eyebrows raised. “Yeah,” the Doctor murmurs before sniffling. “So you and Lady…” Rose trails off hoping that the Doctor would pick up and clarify her words. 

The Doctor stares at Rose, holding her stare for a moment, “yes, she was my partner for over 50 years before we committed to the bond. Before that we grew up together and attended the same Time Lord Academy. She focused her studies on other-planetary relations and texts throughout time while I studied stellar engineering and general history.”

Rose laughs, “general history? For an alien I thought your subjects would be more, well, alien, you know?” The Doctor joins her laughter while also taking a seat on the TARDIS’s metal floors within the console room. 

“I’ll have you know that history is something all should learn no matter species or age, it's valuable to any and all,” The Doctor explains while pointing a finger forwards, wiggling it around in Rose’s face. Rose smiles widely while shaking her head at his actions, “but 50 years… wow.”

“That was just before we completed our bond, before the Time Wars sparked again we were together for almost one hundred years,” The Doctor's smile slowly slides off his face again, fingers tapping against the metal plates of the floor. 

Rose takes a large gulp, she would never live long enough to ever experience something like that and in some way, it made her feel inferior to you even when she was the one currently sitting in front of the Doctor just within reach.

“Soul Bonds are meant to be a for-life thing, it's a reason why not many in my kind completed theirs. You give something a piece of your soul, never to return but trust in the other to keep it safe.”

“So you’re now missing a part of your existence… forever?” Rose asks. 

The Doctor nods, head hung low, “forever and then some if we don’t reform the bond.” 

“So if your bond was still fresh or strong, what would happen then?” Rose bites her lip, knowing that she shouldn’t have asked such a question but her interest in the subject matter grows with each silver of information the Doctor feeds her. 

“I’d be dead,” the Doctor’s tone cold, “it’d be like I never existed in the first place.” He suddenly stands before flicking a switch and inputting a time and place, “How about a visit to your mum? I’m sure she’s missing you.” Rose looks up at the Doctor, watching as he focuses on his calculations, hands working subconsciously and at a rapid pace across the work surface. 

─────── · · 

PART T ONE | PART THREE | PART FOUR

─ · · A/N: apologies for the lore dump but its what had to be done!

─ · · FOR ALL TIME TAGLIST: @posionapple24 @azriel64290 @smallerontheoutside @soniiyi @spirit-of-the-hollow @f0x33

[mice-and-moonbeams]

Hi yes I would like to start down this rabbit hole please because I'm totally normal about this ... I am convinced Jon and Martin are part of a tape drive. It links with the tapes from TMA and the trailer for TMP especially with the opening computer screen (I already posted about my thoughts on that).

What is a tape drive?

A tape drive is a device that stores computer data on magnetic tape, especially for backup and archiving purposes. Like an ordinary tape recorder, a tape drive records data on a loop of flexible celluloidlike material that can be read and also erased.

Tape drives differ from hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs) in the way data is read and written to the storage media. Tapes store data sequentially, whereas HDDs and SSDs use rotating disks with rapidly moving seek heads, nonmoving flash memory or similar technology to transfer data.

Drives come in many sizes and capabilities. They are sold as standalone units or stacked in data center racks, creating tape libraries. The tapes themselves are often housed in sealed cassettes that can be inserted into the drive and activated.

There are several benefits to using tape drives, particularly for backup and archival uses. They include the following:

Capacity. Tapes have a large capacity for storing data when compared to HDDs.

Low cost. They are economical when compared to other storage media.

Life span. Tapes stored in a suitable environment can last for decades, an important factor for archival storage.

Transportable. Tapes can be easily moved from one location to another and are considered off-line storage.

Disaster recovery. Tape is often the storage medium of choice for data backup and DR. Storing critical systems and data on tape creates an air gap between systems that are at risk from cyber attacks simply by removing the tape cassette from the drive.

Security. Today, tapes support encryption such as Advanced Encryption Standard-256 and provide varying levels of data protection.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Researchers Ibuki Taniuchi, Ryota Akiyama, Rei Hobara, and Shuji Hasegawa of the University of Tokyo have demonstrated that the direction of the spin-polarized current can be restricted to only one direction in a single-atom layer of a thallium-lead alloys when irradiated at room temperature. The discovery defies conventions: single-atom layers have been thought to be almost completely transparent, in other words, negligibly absorbing or interacting with light. The one-directional flow of the current observed in this study makes possible functionality beyond ordinary diodes, paving the way for more environmentally friendly data storage, ultra-fine two-dimensional spintronic devices, in the future. The findings were published in the journal ACS Nano. Diodes are fundamental building blocks of modern electronics by restricting the flow of currents to only one direction. However, the thinner the device the more complicated it becomes to design and manufacture these functional components. Thus, demonstrating phenomena that might make such developmental feats possible is critical. Spintronics is an area of study in which researchers manipulate the intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of electrons, for example, by applying light.

Read more.

[swifty-fox]

Sci-Fi Horror AU

idk kinda word vomited this tonight after trying a new strain. I will be continuing it into a full story but not sure when

Entry Log 2043

-DateStamp: 14th July 5399

-Location: DeepSpace Sector G8677-65HG-76789_I

-Personnel File: Maj. J.C. Egan (Zoot Suit) 

Recording_

“This is Major John Egan, callsign ZootSuit, aboard the vessel M’lle ZigZag. Today is the dawn of my final day of exploration, putting an end to a sixteen-month foray into DeepSpace. Initial findings reveal little of note. A few developing stars and planets; an asteroid belt; and a total of six planets, two of which I will be recommending for a second more thorough exploration of due to planets possibly location being within the ‘Goldilocks Zone.’ I look forward to whiskey, solid food and to breathe air that isn’t recycled from a fucking can. I can’t wait to fuck my husband-”

John pauses.

“Ah, computer erase the last seven words. Reasoning: Irrelevant to mission. I will be entering Hyperspace within the hour, once I hit proper trajectory to slingshot around the primary sun.”

He taps the record button to end the log, carefully labeling the file and placing it in a folder with the few thousand other logs he’d recorded over the last year and a half. A verified library of data, observations and the occasional love-letter. A year and a half of research; one of the longest expeditions ever undertaken by any pilot. Considered bold by some and risky by far more. Deep space played with people's minds, the long stretches of isolation broken up only by Hypersleep creating the perfect recipe for a light case of mental instability.John had trained for this, ran through thousands of psychological tests and millions of scenarios. There was not a person in the universe more capable of this task. 

John rubs his jaw, feeling the scratchy beard and spins out of his pilot's chair, leaving the computer to guide the craft. 

Moving about the cramped space of the craft, built to maximize storage space; and to minimize comfort in his opinion, he begins securing anything not already safely battened down. He shaves in the cubicle sized bathroom, splashes water across his face and ignores the swirling flickers of color and light around the edges of his sight. Jaw smooth save for the now carefully trimmed mustache - just how Gale liked- he makes his way to the tail of the spacecraft to run an inventory check on his samples. Moon rocks and space dust and asteroid dirt. Anything the computer pinged or John spotted in his long hours gazing out into the empty void of space. 

He checks a few straps, making sure they’re tension tight before hitting the override on the artificial gravity. He holds the intentionally placed handle as he slowly lifts from the metal walkway. Giving himself several seconds to adjust he uses the similarly placed handles along the wall to pull himself back over to the pilot's chair. A second check on the navigation systems; the mathematical calculations for his trip around the sun and through hyperspace. Much of the process was left up to the computer these days, but John hadn’t survived twenty one missions - one of the highest in the force save for a handful - by not being thorough. 

Finding nothing out of the ordinary he switches all the lights off until his world is lit only by the approaching Red Giant, bathing everything a warm red. System lights blink soothingly as he takes a moment to take in the vast wonder in front of him. Years now it had been, and it still never failed to leave him breathless.

“Computer, begin countdown to Hyperspace entry, one minute. Beginning LCHS procedure, eta one minute.”

John pulls himself to the economically sized bunk, slotting into the space that barely left room for him to stretch and roll over, strapping himself down. 

“32…31…Thirty Second To HyperJump’’  the computer announces.

Bucky presses two fingers to his lips and then to the photograph taped above his bed. Folded so many times the crease lines were white and soft to the touch, Gale’s face gazed back at him. Caught unawares he was smiling soft and curving, glancing somewhere behind the camera. Laughing at something John had said, trying to pretend that he wasn’t. His cheek was rested in one elegant hand, gold ring glinting in the sunlight; a carbon match to the one on John’s own finger. 

“Be seeing you soon Buck.” John adjusts himself against the organic synthetic fibers of the mattress below him.

Fifteen seconds the computer chirps warningly. John always thought she got a little testy in those last few moments, as if scolding an unruly child. 

John reaches for the pouch beside his temple, withdrawing the last pill from the sheathe. Soft baby blue and the size of a quarter, he’d been issued exactly sixty-five of them upon the start of his expedition. Enough to get him all the way to the furthest reaches of the known galaxy in the shortest amount of time. Seven more consecutive jumps than had been previously attempted. Anything more than thirty and Federal Law was a minimum six months rest and recuperation before attempting further jumps. Risks for brain bleeds, heart attacks and Z-Sum sleep went up with every extra jump. John had stopped only once, stretching to forty five jumps before stopping at the nearest C-Class Planet Simulator outpost to rest. It had been his last chance to speak to Gale before he exited the reach of all communications. Eight months since he had seen that smile in any medium other than this photo. 

A quiet, tense conversation. Buck hadn’t wanted him to go; knew better than to stop him. 

“You’ll be careful out there John?” Buck was the only one to never call him Bucky. To the public he was Egan, Major if they were being formal. In private it was John, always John. His husband was strange like that. 

“More careful than a cat in a rainstorm.” 

Buck hums and squints his eyes at him. Stress sat in heavy lines at the corners of his lips, between his brows and around his temples. It had been eight months since John had kissed that mouth, tasted Gale’s sweet noises on his tongue. 

“You have enough LCHS’s to get through? None of them are compromised?” 

“Buck.” John sighs, “Come on.” 

Gale runs a hand through his hair, sucks his bottom lip between his teeth “I know you know what you’re doing...” His deep voice rumbled through the comms, staticky and pale in comparison to the in person thing.

“It’s just your job.” John finishes, grinning at Bucks self-amused shrug. “I checked them all twice. No leakage, no discoloration.” 

“I love you.” 

It never failed to make John’s spine tingle, hearing those words spoken so easily and effortlessly. The Gale he had gone to flight school with was a reserved quiet thing; John was better off trying to space-walk without a suit than pull an ounce of vulnerability from the other man. The years had softened him - John had softened him. 

“I love you too sweetheart. I’ll see you in eight months.”

Ten seconds. 

John startles, the pill slipping from his fingers and drifting in the gloom. He curses and reaches for it, straining against the straps holding him down. His steady beating heart kicks into panic mode. 

For centuries mankind had struggled to break out of the tiny confines of their miniscule corner of the universe. Confined by things like time-space and the limits of the human life span versus the distance needed to travel to discover anything new. They’d languished away certain of it was their destiny to never walk amongst the stars. Until HyperSpace had been discovered. The miniscule pocket between the folded pages of space-time. A way to jump through matter from one corner of the galaxy to another - and further. It blew the doors wide open on space exploration. They could go anywhere, journey past the point of creation they could find it. 

The only thing holding them back was the side effects of HyperSpace. It didn’t seem to pair so well with the cranial contents of human beings. The tendency to turn ones brain to pure soup was a drawback that left researchers, scientists and theorists all stumped. SMall jumps were manageable, with migraines and dizziness a much more risk-acceptable outcome. But in order for them to make any real progress they would need to find a solution,

LCHS. Lysergic Cerebral Hibernation Synthesizer.

The miracle drug and the solution to their dilemma. Developed initially from LSD the drug soothed the more vulnerable edges of one's brain and put the subject in such a deep sleep it took a reversal injection to bring one back to the waking world. It was used recreationally now as well; a way of opening one's mind to the world beyond the physical dimensions. Where light and color and feeling weren’t senses but physical states of being. It kept their pilots down for the jump; kept them asleep to the journey home. 

Without it. Well. Nobody had made a waking Hyperjump in as long as John could remember, at least had done it and lived. 

Five seconds.

John hisses through clenched teeth, straining for that little blue pill, technology his husband had dedicated his life to. Logically they both knew it was unlikely Gale had made the exact LCHS’s that sustained John, but he knew the other man pretended he did either way. The level of care put into each new batch as if it was made for his beloved specially. 

Three seconds.

John risks freeing one of his shoulders from the straps so he can get better reach. “Come on” he hisses. Closes his fingers around the dosage.

Two seconds.

John lays back, shoves his shoulder back into the strap so quickly the velcro scrapes his skin raw. He lifts the pill to his mouth, pressing past his lips.

One second.

_

_

_

Entering Hyperspace. 

Gale. John thinks.

His brain turns to mush.

[crypticemerald]

I've got nothing to post right now so have my oc, hes part of a subdivision of smaller iterators (in the sense of robot-like creatures) able to think of themselves (but are mobile) aka Operators :D

more rambling about Operators below :)

Operators serve as a way to persue small tasks between closeby groups, created during gen 2 of Iterators they serve as a ''fix it all'' having a set manual encoded in them which provides them with the necessary tools to fend for themselves and geolocate closeby structures which provide energy.

Being off the strings for them it means that they function off few neurons which they carry inside their body (which keeps them alive and stores some necessary stuff + recently given commands + records important events during their travels from one facility to the other). They recharge via a chargeble battery installed in their system by connecting it to anything remotely mechanical, such as shelters, karma gates (which they are able to access unless theyre karmically imbalanced or arent given permission to), communication stations/arrays and so on.

They do not have a great memory, they work on a limited one when off-field and when they reach the closest iterator they will connect to their structure, offering a scan of their can and offering to solve any issues they are able to fix within it, but most important they will empty their memory (think of outside storage) in order to recieve a new command/order/task. Their main purpose is to serve under the rules of the ancients and help with upkeeping iterator groups local to them or following their orders which may change from anything such as pearl collection, transferring data, rearranging faulty memory conflux structures, eliminate any threatening bodies to their host iterator can and so on!

[cough, if they find mobile rot even if their host iterator tells them not to kill it they will go on the violent route to eliminate the rot or mold]

Greatly respectful of ancients and senior iterators they will greatly follow orders given by seniors and other iterators, doing small tasks for them and serving low range messenger/support friend if you will. They are shorter than most iterators (with my guy being shorter than five pebbles) but more resistant and resilient than the mid iterator puppet plus a lot stronger!

Usually theres anywhere between none to five in groups, depending on their size and how old they are.

IDK they have some sort of weapon which they probably either carry around or its part of their design, mine has claws.

Their main rules are:

-follow iterator wishes

-ensue their safety

-dont mess with the enviroment (less prone to violence towards organic creatures)

ABOUT MY OC TE HEE

Ordinary Maintenances is under Chronicler of Methologies (an archivist iterator which belongs to @nemofil and they work under pearl collection duty most of the time, why most of the time?

Scavengers think of Ordinary Maintenance as a very very shiny object, so they trade him around until he menages to actually get up and leave their premises which is sadly not that successful. Seeing as Chronicler is quite a pacifist and feel bad about Scavenger he will often do nothing (not as he can do it) about it, leaving often time OM being traded around for shiny stuff.

Im not sure how i wanna kill them off but oh well, hes quite the resistant one, surviving through an iterator attacking them, being a chewtoy sometimes on sundays, and witnessing some pretty violent scav conflicts hes quite the silliest :)

stay in pieces chronicler, may you be loved by him as yk bros do (/j)

[lizardsfromspace]

Though Section 31 is the most well-known secret organization within the Federation, there is another, with its roots in ancient Earth...

Item #: SCP-54973

Object Class: Euclid Keter

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-54973 is currently contained within a museum ship at the Fleet Museum at █████ █████. The sensor and security logs of the Fleet Museum are scanned for signs of SCP-54973-1 every two nanoseconds by a discreet Foundation algorithm. Upon detection of a SCP-54973-1 instance, Foundation fightercraft are to be dispatched and intercept the object before it can advance to warp. Intercepted instances are to be destroyed or tractored to Foundation storage facility at the discretion of the administrator of Deep Space Site-15.

Visitors to the museum should be forbidden access to the ship's ninth deck, under a cover story of performing required renovations. Should anyone but approved researchers, ESCPH units, and D-series synths enter deck 9, they are to be detained and evaluated for memetic contamination before release. The starship's renown with the general public prevents fuller containment at this time.

Description: SCP-54973 is the primary shuttlebay of the decommissioned ████████-class starship USS ███████, NCC-█████. Anomalous properties were discovered upon the ship's return from a seven year journey in the [redacted], and the current procedures implemented.

At regular intervals, SCP-54973 produces shuttlecraft. The process by which new shuttlecraft are created is as of yet unknown, as SCP-54973 produces false records in all sensor and recording equipment placed within itself during a production event. Shuttlecraft are designated SCP-54973-1. Since the starship ███████'s return from the [redacted] and the departure of its crew, SCP-54973-1 instances have begun autonomously launching themselves into space by a unknown process and attempting a rapid acceleration to warp.

SCP-54973-1 instances resemble baseline Starfleet shuttlecraft externally, but their interiors have been made from a variety of non-standard substances, including wood, bio-neural gel, humanoid biological components, and [DATA EXPUNGED].

While in service in the [redacted], SCP-54973 exerted a strong memetic effect on its crew. Logs indicate frequent statements that ███████ had "a full complement of shuttles" no matter their losses (in reality, the starship's ordinary complement of shuttles was exhausted a little over a year into their mission). Crew additionally expressed no alarm at the anomalous nature of the shuttlecraft, or at the appearance of non-standard designs such as the "█████ █████", believing they had been constructed by the crew, despite the implausibility of constructing experimental shuttle designs with a paucity of resources.

Addendum 54973-A: On Stardate █████.█, a SCP-54973-1 instance was not intercepted in time and accelerated to Warp ██. Its current whereabouts are unknown. All ships and starbases within the territory of the Federation, Klingon Empire, Romulan Free State and other post-nova remnant governments, Nyberrite Alliance, Dominion, and I██████ Empire received a transmission in an artificial voice resembling that of ███████'s former Captain, ███████ ███████:

"I'm coming, babies. I'm coming, I'm almost back babies, I'm -"

Transmission intercepted by Foundation assets in each government before wider exposure. Meaning of transmission remains unknown.

In light of SCP-54973-1's warp ██ capabilities, upgrade to Keter suggested and approved.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Power struggle: will Brazil’s booming datacentre industry leave ordinary people in the dark?

While millions live with regular blackouts and limited energy, plants are being built to satisfy the global demand for digital storage and processing – piling pressure on an already fragile system

Thirty-six hours by boat from Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, Deodato Alves da Silva longs for enough electricity to keep his tucumã and cupuaçu fruits fresh. These highly nutritious Amazonian superfoods are rich in antioxidants and vitamins, and serve as a main source of income for farmers in Silva’s area. However, the lack of electricity to refrigerate the fruit makes it hard to sell their produce.

Silva’s fruit-growing operation is located in the village of Boa Frente, in Novo Aripuanã municipality, one of Brazil’s most energy-poor regions, where there is only one diesel-powered electricity generator working for a few hours a day.

The 17 families in the community pay for the diesel, but because of the high price, everyone agrees to use the generator only between 6pm and 10pm. This is also the only time they can communicate with the outside world – the region has no mobile phone connection, only satellite internet.

“Power is supplied for just four hours a night. The motor is switched off and only switched back on the following night,” says Silva, 72, a rural health worker and fruit-grower who has lived in the area since he was born.

“I would have a much higher income if we had power to preserve the cupuaçu pulp. Our community is a big producer of tucumã, but the lack of power prevents conservation.”

More than 1.3 million Brazilians still live, like Silva, with little or no electricity. Even though it has one of the world’s cleanest power grids, the country has a vulnerability: its reliance on hydroelectric power, which causes fluctuations in power generation and blackouts in times of severe drought.

Yet Brazil is attracting the attention of big datacentre companies, which consume huge amounts of energy. According to the Brazilian Data Centre Association (ABDC), 46 new datacentres are either under construction or being planned across the country. There are already 60 centres in operation.

Continue reading.

[kentuckycaverats]

NOLA by Night

Session 2: AMAB (All Mages Are Bastards)

Session 1

The coterie takes an unofficial, self-guided tour of Biograde Technologies in search of Maxence.

It's 2am. 4 hours to sunrise.

Ira is adamant that Max is wherever Silas came from, and therefore connected to the Masquerade breach at the radio station. Silas said that he'd been in some kind of lab; Klay wonders if it might have been hunters who had him, messed with him, turned him loose, and hijacked the station to draw attention to it.

Klay spends a point of Resources for a contact at a medical supply warehouse and asks if there have been any unusual requests lately. Nothing out of the ordinary, but the contact reads off some of the item descriptions and a shipment of microchips catches Klay's interest. He asks for the address for that delivery: it belongs to one Biograde Technologies, located in the biomedical district. Klay knows that name--the Hecata primogen, Sergio Giovanni, works for Biograde.

Klay explains microchips to Ira, who realizes Silas may very well be chipped. Florian is sent to rendezvous with Silas and Cameron to warn them while the coterie pays Biograde a visit.

Klay asks wraith Charles to knock out the external cameras that Ira and Walter identify. Ira notices several more inside. The office is closed but the lobby lights are still on, populated by 1 receptionist and 2 security guards--all mortal. Jules and Klay easily disarm them with an Awe + Cloud Memory combo and the coterie is in.

Jules finds a building map on the wall:

5: Employee Lounge

4: Data Lab

3: HR, Marketing, Legal

2: (You Are Here) Storage, Supplies, Labs

1: [unlabeled]

Unlabeled basement is weird. The water table in NOLA doesn't really allow for building underground. The coterie pokes around on Floor 2 (sure enough, mostly medical supplies and empty labs) and Klay liberates some bleach, some sedatives, and 3 syringes. Just in case. Then they head into the basement.

It's a large concrete room and it's completely empty. No furniture, no decor, no equipment, nothing. Klay detects no wraiths in the vicinity. Jules sings to test the acoustics of the room but detects no abnormalities. Even with Heightened Senses, Ira can't hear anyone else in the building; nor can he hear the vibrations or beeping of any fancy machines. There's nothing here. Just a big, empty slab of cement.

Walter can tell by scent that there was something here recently, though. A number of mammals, and they were here no more than 48 hours ago. He and Klay also notice something sticking out a bit from the floor--what seems to be a pressure plate.

Ira intentionally triggers Premonition and notices a faint swirling residue, almost like an afterimage, of some sort of magical...energy? signature?

Walter steps on the pressure plate. The basement door autolocks behind the coterie and the room starts to fill with water. Sewage water, by the smell of it. Coterie isn't too bothered on account of not breathing air and Klay sends Charles to open the door from the outside. Charles warns them to watch their step on the way out; as they come through the doorway the coterie sees a long cable suspended from the ceiling and snaking under the doorway. The end is frayed and sparking.

Ira sees that same afterimage on the wall; fresher and more distinct here. He commits it to memory so he can paint it later.

Ira and Walter each know a bit about mages; enough to know that mages tend to specialize in certain fields, and that Space is one such specialization. Maybe that's how they're moving their test subjects undetected...

Ira is starting to unravel. He's convinced that Max was here, and that whoever has him moved him tonight, maybe mere hours before the coterie arrived. He tells the coterie he met some mages at Cafe du Monde shortly after waking from torpor; an older woman who called herself Nana and a young redheaded girl called Lily. They'd said they had a message from Ira's sire, Mary, but that in order to hear it Ira would have to allow them to temporarily sever his connection to the Cobweb. He refused, suspicious of both the mages' intentions and Mary's. Mary notoriously loathes mages, a bias she instilled in Ira as well; the idea of her cooperating with mages is unheard of. And on the off chance that it really is her, well, maybe she shouldn't have stuck Ira in torpor for 80 years if she wanted him to return her calls.

Ira doesn't know how to get back in touch with Nana and Lily, though, only that they play chess together every Sunday at the cafe. That's still two nights away. He isn't sure they're even related to Max's plight, but they're the only true mages he knows.

Jules, Klay, and Walter convince Ira to let them poke around upstairs to see if they can find some more tangible leads. Florian calls Walter and tells him they did find a microchip in Silas, and that the coterie should probably come meet them on Basin Street as soon as they can. That's where everyone's gone missing.

The coterie raids the employee lounge (Klay steals some top shelf tequila for his ghoul Missy and Jules loads up on Biscoff cookies for her touchstone Eden) but no one is good enough with computers to hack the desktops there. Walter steals hard drives from 2 of them instead, and a couple from the data lab desktops for good measure. Some of his clanmates will be able to sort through those.

Jules and Klay hit another Awe + Cloud Memory combo on the receptionist and security guards, and the coterie leaves Biograde without issue to go meet up with Florian and the lupines.

Silas is more lucid now that he's had a few hours for the sedatives to wear off. There are still gaps in his memory, but he remembers being out here near Basin St, smelling blood, talking to a sad brunette girl with a long braid down her back, feeling a weird tingling in his feet, and suddenly being in a big cage. After that he was out for awhile--he doesn't know how long--and when he came to a dashing French dude with a magnificent beard was cutting him loose and demanding that Silas go find a rabbit monster. He bit Silas, who frenzied, and next thing Silas knew his paws were tingling and he was outside again.

Only an hour till sunrise. There's nothing more that can be done tonight. Klay offers for Ira to stay at the shop with him so he isn't alone overnight, but Ira declines. He needs to go home and paint. He needs to. Florian will go with him for emotional support.

The coterie plans to meet up the following night to strategize and debrief. Walter will have some intel on the hard drives by then, Florian on the sedative and microchip, and the lupines will try to wrangle up some muscle.

And hey, Klay suggests...maybe the coterie ought to start thinking about securing a shared haven.

[weirdmageddon]

got these tags on my last post and wanted to discuss them @tealfruit

i disagree with some of this. in breath of the wild, the dragons despawned through a vortex to the sky. the sky islands aren’t visible. if this vortex is the same barrier that keeps the sky islands hidden from below, the light dragon was above this the entire time.

what caused the upheaval—the sky islands to break and fall and the cloud barrier to dissapate—was present-day dehydrated ganondorf raising the castle, which further weakens his seal. the events of botw’s gameplay was not yet at that point since totk takes place a few years after it.

i don’t like the disappearance of the sheikah tech, but that wouldn’t logically follow that it just disappeared with time travel, since that would put the events in the time between zelda going under the castle and arriving in the past in jeopardy, and there’s a lot that happened. there’s very solid evidence the sheikah tech wasn’t erased from history. link is still alive in the present (or future, from zelda’s position). if she changed the past so where there was no sheikah tech, link wouldn’t be alive (or if he would be he’d be old as fuck, like 120+ years old biologically). because he was born along with zelda over 100 years before the present-day totk gameplay. (i guess zelda had her own sort of stasis holding calamity ganon for 100 years). if there was no sheikah tech, the calamity would have gone differently. link wouldn’t have been near-killed by guardians and put into the shrine of ressurection. that’s why he’s still youthful since it sort of put him into a stasis. but the calamity had to have happened and sheikah tech not been changed by zelda’s time travel since the story of the calamity 100 years ago are still in the game, taught by symin, and link is still a young man. the loop is fine.

it’s just that we dont know exactly where the sheikah tech went in those 5 or so years between botw and totk, but it was always there earlier on the timeline. there’s an easier explanation and it’s that it was just cleaned up and repurposed after learning from mistakes with the calamity. sheikah technology has a storage function so i think it’s possible the shrines and divine beasts were stored in data or parts physically deconstructed. they served their purpose for training the hero with trials and destroying calamity ganon in the end. zelda says at the end of botw that vah ruta stopped functioning and you can see vah medoh in the distance shut down with no lights as well. link was really the only sheikah slate user, so it’s not like ordinary citizens were using fast travel.

we know that guardian parts were repurposed for attaching the wire to a person to scan the area’s topography, and link’s shocked reaction when seeing them for the first time implies he definitely has some guardian trauma, meaning zelda’s time shenanigans didn’t change the course the sheikah technology aside from possibly inspiring the sheikah slate in the first place. the purah pad is obviously based off the sheikah slate, but zelda was sent back in time with the purah pad. that’s why zonai locations have sheikah travel gates when activated, since mineru worked them in when she studied the purah pad in the past

purah and robbie designed, and hudson construction built, the sheikah skyview towers that we see in totk. it’s likely that they were remodeled to be more resilient to ganon’s dark magic. the people of hyrule clearly wouldve learned from their mistakes and probably didn’t want to risk having outdated tech lying around that ganon easily corrupted. but at the same time they wanted to build on them and keep their conveniences, in fact i remember reading in purah’s diary that it’s on the table for the purah pad to be a product for ordinary citizens in the future

[l3webhostings]

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[crazy-pages]

I read your commentary about Ozempic and (once I got past the “…oh” moment) it got me thinking. Are there any lay-person friendly analyses of the benefits of Ozempic for people with diabetes compared to the risks associated weight loss and starvation in general? How would I find these, or identify if they’re reputable information or not?

So for a layperson accessible scientific analysis of Ozempic, meet the podcast Maintenance Phase, with a specific episode about Ozempic!

I can't say there are layperson friendly analyses of your question in particular, that's kind of a research nitty-gritty question by definition, unfortunately. Also I don't think that data exists for Ozempic at all, it's too new of a drug. It's literally not possible for anyone to have information on its long term health effects. Though the researchers are pretty sure that the long term effects can't be worse than treatment resistant diabetes, which is why it got approved for diabetes treatment.

However the weight loss described in this study on the effects of dosages intended to treat diabetes is relatively moderate.

At week 104 ... the mean body weight in the semaglutide group, as compared with the placebo group, was 2.9 kg lower in the group receiving 0.5 mg and 4.3 kg lower in the group receiving 1.0 mg (P<0.001 for both comparisons)

That's 3%~4.5% of people's body weight. That's not terribly much weight loss. That's very much in the realm of ordinary weight fluctuations and sustainable permanent weight loss by normal means.

We see larger weight fluctuations all the time (albeit much more unpredictable and inconsistent ones) from other drugs, like anti-depressants and birth control. From my very-much-not-a-doctor perspective, this doesn't send up any screaming red flags for me. This is just using small doses of the long-lasting satiety hormone analogue for its effect on insulin, not because it's sending anyone's body into a mode of perpetual silent starvation.

For its use as a weight loss drug though ... I mean the mechanism isn't alteration of fat storage, or increased metabolism, or anything like that. It's literally just that you feel hunger less. And it creates degrees of weight loss which (while not nearly as world-shaking as often reported) create amounts of persistent weight loss (while on the drug) which are sometimes above any previous drug, diet, or exercise regimen tested scientifically. That is a screaming red flag for me. That just sounds like smothering your brain with a pillow while it begs you to not starve.

[whitherwordswither]

Dead Ringing, Pt. 5

Outside the facility I dialed the bureau, reaching out to Akeno. Reception transferred and he picked up halfway through the first ring. "Warrick. Any leads?" Straight to the point as usual.

I huffed, shaking my head as if he could see it. "Yeah, possibly. I ah… I think this one is going to get a bit… complex. Mars is on her way back with a couple of samples. Make sure those get to forensics a-sap. You're also going to want to send a clean up crew. One body to collect."

"A body?" Akeno shuffled at his desk. "Hopefully not a body that could have provided us some answers?" I chuckled. Dry. Humorless.

"No, luckily. I guess. Ehhh~ One of the samples Mars is bringing in… this… device, whatever it is. It was attached to a cadaver's neck. I'm not sure how the hell it did what it did, but… the fucking corpse was mobile. Some kind of reanimator… or something. The thing was mentally unstable, it tore the chip off itself. I don't think this is going to be cut and dry."

Akeno was silent for a few moments, then sighed. "Well, shit. Alright. I guess you're good to go then. Lock it up and I'll get a crew on the way." After a beat, he asked. "And Mars? How was she?"

"Good eyes. Pleasant to work with. Better sense of humor than you. She'll do just fine." I smirked at the scoff on the other end of the line.

"Alright. Thanks, Warrick. I'll keep in touch. Keno out." The line clicked off and I tapped a claw over my pad's screen, bringing back up the security terminal for the facility. I enabled a lockdown override, tucked the pad in to a pocket and headed back toward the transit station, my thoughts churning over what had happened.

I didn't have the entire picture yet. Someone needed a whole lot of bodies. But for what? How did the chip that reanimated the corpse actually work? We were surprisingly lucky to have encountered a seemingly forgotten straggler. More than likely they were on a time table and couldn't afford to calibrate that individual unit as they made off with the rest. The erratic behavior would have been awful to deal with. According to storage records, sixty pods were brought out of stasis. That meant there were fifty-nine unaccounted for. Were they aware? Could they recall anything of their prior lives? I stopped halfway to the transit platform, staring straight ahead. Wait. Was I forgetting something? I furrowed my brow, whiskers wiggling. Shit. Yes, yes I was. We had checked inside. But we hadn't checked outside. Preoccupied. Foolish.

I turned and headed back toward cold storage.

Fifty-nine bodies didn't just walk out. Security had been disabled. Above ground camera footage was nonexistent for the time period. I wandered the perimeter of the building, making my way around back. Who ever had removed the bodies had been utilizing the maintenance halls. They connected to all levels of the facility. The easiest way in and out with that route would be the loading bays. Docks. Equipment and supplies didn't just get shuffled on in through the front door.

There was nothing out of the ordinary along the first few bay doors. The final one at the opposite end from where I'd started, however, bore some interesting differences. The first and glaringly obvious were the fresh tracks in the dirt road between segments of cracked pavement. Heavy tread. Large truck. The door itself was as pristine as the others. The keypad at its right was what caught my attention. The plating was ever so slightly skewed. I hated it when things didn't line up just right. They stood out to me. This was no different. I poked my claws around the edge of the pad, applying just enough pressure on either side. It popped loose, exposing wires and circuitry. For such a pristine facility and relatively high tech structure, it shouldn't have given so easily. It had been tampered with.

After replacing the panel I pulled out my data pad and shot jotted down a few notes as I followed the road up from the bays, following the short run of tracks in the dirt before coming to a stop again, staring down the road. It ran the perimeter of the dome before curving back in to the city ruins. I sent the update to Akeno. It really didn't give us any extra super important information, but I could at least pat myself on the back and not feel like I half assed my assignment. With a sigh, I headed for the transit station. Again.

The cleanup crew was just arriving as I rounded the building. A sentient avalanche separated from the vehicle, a tree trunk section splitting from itself, waving like an appendage. "Eeey, lookit who is! They still throwing scraps your ways, eh, mutt?" It turned out not to be a physical manifestation of the Swiss Alps wearing dark navy coveralls, but a large white furred bear. Polar variety. My lips curve with a smile and I strode over to clasp his hefty, warm paw in my own.

"Mori, you behemoth! Still slinging mops?"

"Hah! Only when newbies losing their lunch. Get to play seer over the parade now. Is nice. Pays more better." He hadn't let go of my hand and pulled me close, muzzles almost touching as he leaned down. His body was big enough to block the exchange from view of the rest of the crew. "Missing your company, wolf. Free for drinking soon, yeah?"

His snout brushed against mine and I leaned in to it, giving a little laugh as he kissed my cheek. "Yeah, that might be nice Mori… things've been in a bit of a slump lately and…"

The bear cut me off. "All more reason to be joining! Old Mori will help the troubles with washing away." Mori squeezed my hand tighter, nuzzling against my ear a bit before pulling back, clapping me hard enough on the shoulder to almost knock me off balance. A call from the vehicle had him looking over and grunting a command. When he turned back to me, he was all smiles again. "Favor yourself. Call your friend Mori soon, yes? Or he may just have to bring the drinking to you, mutt." He pressed his paw to the side of my face, a soft warmth lighting up his stoic features, thumb tracing the contour of my cheek. His eyes lingered on mine for a few moments before his paw dropped to my shoulder, giving it another squeeze before he turned and lumbered off toward the vehicle, waving an arm as he looked back with a grin. "Catch you."

"Y-yeah, heh. Catch ya." I huffed, rubbing my cheek, feeling a little flushed. With a chuckle and a shake of my head I waved and continued on. I was suddenly feeling very tired and glad the night would soon be over.

The small knot in my gut told me this was going to be one of those nights…

[cyanocoraxx]

somnolence (thing about mecha and little metal)

Darkness was a pair of strong protective arms, holding it close until the promised morning. So, at two weeks old, Metal Sonic felt safest in shields of black duvet. It scaled the metal racking against the wall with ease, having learned the quickest route yesterday. Once it reached the top shelf, it sat hunched over much like a small cat, claws decidedly gripping the bars as it took rest.

Looking down in the low light, Metal took a proud mental note of how high up it was now. Any large Badnik or other machine incapable of flight would struggle to reach it here. Good. Some time away from the rabble might quell its frustrations.

There was one little detail it failed to seriously take into account - the approach of another hedgehog-series. Its signal appeared as a blip on the small robot's HUD. Metal looked up with a start. And as soon as the first crack of light invaded the small storage room, Metal let out a hiss and immediately bolted to the light on the ceiling, where it hung on for dear life, upside-down.

To an ordinary person, the sight of bright red eyes glaring right into your soul from the ceiling would be enough to make them think twice about coming any closer. However, Mecha Sonic was not conventionally ordinary, and her sibling's unusual behaviors did not deter her. Nothing really did.

So, Mecha Sonic gingerly stepped in and closed the door behind her. "Greetings, Metal Sonic."

Metal stared down at her with bright crimson optics, silently warning Mecha to stay away. Its claws gripped the light tighter, cracking the plastic casing under the force. And when Mecha failed to leave, Metal let out a low warning growl from its engine.

Mecha met its sibling's angry gaze with calm. "I mean you no harm. I detected a signal in this location and it is protocol to investigate. There is very little traffic through this room, so it flagged as abnormal."

The pair were silent for a short while, Metal keeping its optics trained squarely on Mecha, while Mecha stood quietly. The gentle hum of her older engine was a soft, familiar backdrop for the angry machine above her, and Mecha watched patiently as its optics slowly dimmed.

"You are at a substantial risk of scuffing your paint if you fall from that height. I recommend returning to ground level as soon as possible."

Metal shook its head, no. There was no logical reason to say no. It just felt right, considering that it was angry and frightened. Something about being high above ground, away from people. Something about having control over a situation. Something about, Metal was too young to understand why it was feeling this way.

"You appear to be in a state of heightened emotion. I cannot understand which emotion is currently causing you distress. However, I would… like, to understand. Will you speak with me?"

Again, no.

"Would you prefer it if I left this space. I do not wish to cause any undue distress."

No. Please, no.

Mecha took pause. There had to be a solution, there always was, and she always found it. A creature of logic and order as she was, she methodically scanned over the various shelves and boxes until her sights came to rest on a specific item. She slowly moved, as she had learned was best in her sibling's company, towards a box containing something potentially useful.

"Organic hedgehogs are burrowing creatures. And, as you were created with the hedgehog's data in your root code, I may have formulated a temporary solution."

Mecha held up a large, thick blanket - most likely once belonging to the doctor - and tilted her head expectantly. What she did not expect was for the smaller robot above her to suddenly let go of the ceiling fixture and drop straight into the blanket. Mecha's reaction was quick, and she captured the little creature in both arms before wrapping it tightly in the material.

"That was most unwise of you…" Mecha told it quietly, almost scoldingly. "There was a significant possibility of sustaining damage to your frame." Even so, she sat down, and then set the smaller creature down beside her. To her surprise, Metal, hidden under the blanket, moved closer to rest against her side.

The warmth of Mecha's engine had become soothing to Metal, and Metal clung to that sometimes, as much as it would absolutely much rather deactivate than admit that to anybot. Its needs overruled its thoughts though, and it stayed close. And its needs grew more overpowering. And its frustration slipped away. And it felt safe.

And it wanted to tell its older sibling - I'm tired. I'm scared of the world. I don't understand. I hate and I don't know why. I want to sleep but my mind won't let me. Creator keeps me up for training. I feel safe with you. Stay with me.

"I cannot understand what is troubling you, which I apologize for. However, I do wish to see you operating in a better state. What do you need me to-"

A quick scan over the smaller robot by her side told her that it had put itself into sleep mode. Taken aback, Mecha carefully lifted the blanket to check.

"Metal Sonic?"

Mecha fell quiet, consulting with the data from her scan. She came to a sudden and sobering realization that Metal had not entered into a full sleep mode cycle in three days, instead utilizing all of its power on training programs. Mecha also noted that Metal had been responding to many, many commands from their creator. Its RAM hadn't been flushed for some time, handling several short-term tasks and program values all at once. In short, the young robot was exhausted. It had a lot to learn in such a short time.

So, Mecha relaxed into a more comfortable position. She was going to be there for a while. As carefully as she could manage with her tremors, scooped her little sibling into her arms and held them, allowing the warmth of her engine to transfer to its smaller frame. Mecha, too, recalled needing to learn the complexities of language, facial recognition, protocols, and hedgehog-murdering skills, and it had been difficult to comprehend it all with a backdrop of conflicting ideas, commands, and the stresses of being a target, let alone the uncertainty of being so new to the world.

"I understand."

The next night, Metal would return to the storage room to find a neatly set pile of blankets ready for them. It chose the purple one, the same colour as its sibling's armour. At two weeks and one day old, Metal Sonic felt safest in shields of purple.

[clearworld1]

Build Smart Cities with Retroflex Wrap For Existing Poles

Urban centers are expanding due to the demand for smarter and more connected infrastructure. A reputed manufacturer is always at the forefront of this transformation, which can deliver innovative solutions. It can help to turn ordinary lighting poles into multifunctional assets. It means there will be better communications, smart management, and more security with no technical flaws. Residents can communicate well during emergencies with pre-installed alarm buttons.  This can improve the overall public safety while having a journey towards a fully connected and data-driven community. Plug-and-play ports can avoid technical hassle while adapting to emerging technologies.

The Retroflex Wrap for Existing Poles can help redefine the modernization approach. It can be fitted into the present pillars with battery storage, surveillance systems, and communication technology. It can provide about 80 hours of backup, which means there will be no breakouts in outages or failure situations. This helps cities with a better flow of energy and expands their capabilities without extending their budget. Therefore, the path to a secure and eco-friendly structure becomes more affordable than ever.

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Safeguarding Information Through Trusted Digital Solutions

In today’s business environment, handling large volumes of paperwork efficiently is more than just a matter of convenience—it’s critical for productivity and compliance. Organizations of all sizes are increasingly turning to professional scanning services to digitize their documents and improve the accessibility, security, and longevity of vital information. Whether you're operating in healthcare, legal, finance, or education, having access to reliable and HIPAA compliant document scanning services is essential for maintaining the integrity of sensitive data while reducing reliance on physical storage.

The need for professional scanning services has grown significantly due to regulatory standards and the evolving expectations of modern recordkeeping. These services not only offer high-resolution imaging and optical character recognition (OCR) but also ensure accurate indexing and secure file delivery systems. By employing HIPAA compliant document scanning services, institutions can be confident that patient records, legal documents, and other confidential files are protected during the digitization process, fully adhering to federal privacy standards.

Digitization begins with the safe transportation and handling of paper records. From there, documents are carefully scanned using high-grade equipment to preserve quality. Every image is reviewed for clarity and completeness before being stored in a digital repository. This level of attention to detail separates ordinary scanning solutions from professional scanning services, which are tailored to meet the stringent demands of secure, large-scale projects. It’s not just about turning paper into pixels—it’s about creating an efficient, searchable, and safe digital archive.

HIPAA compliant document scanning services are particularly vital for organizations that deal with personal health information (PHI). Compliance involves more than encryption; it demands protocols that protect data before, during, and after scanning. This includes staff training, access controls, data retention policies, and secure destruction of physical copies once the digital transition is complete. Choosing a partner that specializes in this level of compliance is a step toward responsible data stewardship.

When working with a digital transformation provider, the onboarding process typically includes a needs assessment to identify the scope of the scanning project. From there, a plan is created that includes deadlines, document types, file formats, and delivery preferences. Throughout the project, transparency is maintained to ensure accuracy and satisfaction. This kind of seamless coordination is what defines true professional scanning services, especially in industries where timing and trust are everything.

The benefits of digitization go beyond storage and compliance. Digitized records are searchable, which reduces the time employees spend digging through file cabinets. They are also shareable across teams or departments, improving collaboration and decision-making. Additionally, electronic backups ensure continuity in the face of disasters, something paper-based systems cannot offer. That’s why forward-thinking organizations are prioritizing this shift—not as a luxury, but as a necessity.

Although many service providers offer scanning solutions, not all are equipped to handle regulated information. Businesses must take the time to evaluate potential vendors based on experience, security protocols, and client testimonials. In this regard, AccessScanning.com stands out by delivering scanning solutions that meet industry-specific requirements with consistency and care. With a focus on accuracy and privacy, the brand has become a trusted resource for institutions seeking HIPAA compliant document scanning services.

Equally, AccessScanning.com’s ability to scale its professional scanning services to projects of all sizes—from small offices to enterprise-level operations—makes it a versatile choice for digital transition. Their approach blends cutting-edge technology with personalized service, ensuring that clients not only meet compliance requirements but also streamline their document workflows for future growth.

As regulations tighten and data volumes rise, businesses must embrace digital strategies that protect and optimize information. Investing in HIPAA compliant document scanning services is not just a proactive move—it’s an essential step toward operational excellence. By aligning with experienced professionals who understand the value of confidentiality and accuracy, organizations position themselves for long-term success in a data-driven world.

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