#Every so often if you search for a certain screen or robot master from a Mega Man title...

[stardestroyer81]

Did y'all know that Amazon Man actually debuted in Rockman 2 and was cut so late into development that he ended up making an appearance in game's manual?

(Just to clarify, this is merely an edit! Check out the tags for full context!)

[avoutput]

Gaps Between Worlds || Mega Man X

Recently I have been searching for the answer to a problem I have been drowning in: Do I still love playing video games? There was a time when new video game releases would get me hyped, and it could just be that I am getting older and my priorities are changing, or my love for games is evolving, but I think there is a better answer that sounds more analytical and less like a platitude. I had to start thinking about what made me fall in love with games in the first place, which was easy enough to do; it was an escape. We need to go deeper. What about games, about the escape grabbed me. Looking back at my most recent completions: Dark Souls, Persona 5, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, most of them offered a balance between challenge and story. For a long time in between the excitement of a title, I had been relying on a game either appealing to the challenge or the story, on a sliding scale in one direction or another. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by my lack of enthusiasm for new games, I pick up a game from my childhood, something that made me feel nostalgic, something like Mega Man X. They have this ability to lift my spirit and invigorate me. That’s when I realized what was missing from modern games: my imagination.

When I booted up my copy of Mega Man X this weekend, it was like it was calling to me. I did it subconsciously. I was struggling with my drive to play Persona 4 Golden, and picked up Nioh, a playstation plus game that had been sitting around for awhile. I was working on a boss, and I just wasn’t feeling it. That’s when I went looking through my games library. I had actually picked up a copy of Mega Man X Legends a while back, installed it, and never played it. Without thinking, just like I did when I was a kid, I just started playing it. The Capcom sound plays and the Mega Man logo flashes across the screen and I am instantly back on my friends bedroom floor, hogging the controller. When the first level starts, it’s instantly chaos, cars flying down the highway, trying to escape the ensuing carnage. You can find out why if you wait for the demo screen that explains the game instead of instantly pressing start, but I never did as a kid, and this led precisely to what I am here to talk about. I filled the gaps with my imagination, even in places where the game didn’t ask me to. I was hungry for a world that I could make cohesive. One that offers a clear definition, a map that leads the eye and the mind to a conclusion, but open enough to let that conclusion be anything that suits you. (The opposite of the Nomura-verse!)

In the era of 8-bit and 16-bit games, the worlds were often presented as flat, layered objects, but drawn to appear in three dimensions like a diorama or, as they often called levels back then, a stage. After you beat the opening level and receive a helping hand from your… friend… or brother… or just some other robot who looks cooler than you, Zero, you are introduced to the classic Mega Man selection screen, but with an interesting tweak. You now can access the enemy’s location via the map screen. This really got my imagination going as a kid and still does to this day. It’s just a minor tweak to the usual formula for the series, but it suddenly added a new layer of depth. I always knew they had to exist somewhere, but it never occurred to me that there was an interconnected ecosystem. They boldly took this approach a step further. Defeating certain Mavericks (the stage bosses) affected another Maverick’s stage. For example, defeating Storm Eagle causes the plane you fight on to crash into Spark Mandrils’ stage. I loved this because as much sense as it made, it also really didn’t make any sense.

Take a look at the map. It is an incredibly dense locale, seemingly made up only of the locations related to the Mavericks. You start the game in some sort of cityscape, but now, you appear to be on some kind of island or peninsula that maybe… supplies all of the needs of the people in the city? Some of the functions of these stages are clear, some you have to make a stretch, and others defy clear explanation. You have a power plant, an airport, a mine, and a factory, all pretty straightforward. As a stretch, we have a forest that possibly processes carbon into oxygen. It doesn’t seem to produce wood, the trees are all made of electronics and covered in a wood veneer. The sea port is also a bit mysterious. It seems more military related than shipping related. All of the robots aren’t the repurposed kinds you see in other stages. They already have missiles and lasers, they are attack focused. So this is probably a military research facility. In the unexplainable, first we have the icy mountain stage, which could be a mine or maybe a research station. I often thought that it produced and controlled weather, but what exactly does a mountain have to do with that? Maybe it is rooted in science, but as a kid, the mind isn’t fully formed, and as an adult, you just know that water becomes clouds and it rains. The American Education system is broken. Lastly, we have a tower that appears to be surrounded by a moat. As a kid, I used to think this was the control tower for the airport, but now I am thinking it might be the control tower for the entire peninsula’s robot ecosystem. It’s not clear, at all, but that's what makes it fun. It is the inconsequential nature of their necessity that makes it fun to explore in your imagination. The bosses don’t speak between each battler or even introduce themselves beyond the shonen bad guy thumbs down, phase in, or muscle flex posturing. If you dig, I am sure there is some concrete answer, but the power is that it ultimately doesn’t matter, it’s just fun to play and explore, either way you go about it.

What also stands out about the construction of the map is how one stage actually interacts with another. If you notice, the Chill Penguin stage is way up at the north side of the map and the factory is to the south, and yet, when you beat Mr. Chill, you Flame Mammoth’s stage is frozen over. There are other stages between the mountain and the factory that are totally in the way of the possible avalanche that would have hit the factory, and yet they are unfazed. I get it, fire is weak to ice, but since there isn’t really an overall method to the madness in the construction of the Map image, as far as I can tell, I just can’t figure why they didn’t move the stages into proximity of the stage that is affected by the defeat of a Maverick master. What is hilarious, the defeat of Launch Octopus causes the forest to overflow, and wouldn’t you know it, they are right next to each other. Same with the airport and power plant, helmed by Storm Eagle and Spark Mandrill respectively. The funny thing about the airport is that because you destroy an airplane in midair, you could have destroyed any stage on the map, and it would have made sense. It would have been even cooler if they had made it so that the longer it takes to defeat Storm Eagle, that changes where the plane falls, and thus the stage it destroys.

It’s not that modern games don’t have these imaginative gaps, it’s just that there are much fewer obvious gaps in the world because they have so much more space to create in. Just looking at the file size between games of the past and today, it’s like comparing the size of Mercury to Jupiter. With that in mind, it could be that I haven’t spent the time to really dive in and find the cracks in modern games. As a kid, I just played the same games over and over again and committed these gaps to memory.

I decided I would use this title to discuss different aspects of the gaps between the imaginative leaps that storytelling asks us to make. Like how we all came up with a particular internal story about what happens inside a Pokeball. I was part of the crowd that thought maybe they get their own personal oasis that suited their type. Or maybe we can discuss the implication of the relationship that Zelda and Link must have based on the minimal interactions we actually get to see them in. Mega Man X has many more facets as series we can dive into, like how exactly his buster arm might actually function and be powered? Maybe it is an internal nuclear reactor offset or totally green and powered by the sun. If it was nuclear, does he leave behind fallout at every defeat? Hopefully I can dedicate more time to this! Thanks for reading.

[prettywordsyouleft]

Reconnected (Becoming Human spinoff)

Request: #172 for anon – “Don’t I know you?”

Anonymous said:

#172 with Taekwoon for your drabble game please.

Pairing: Jung Taekwoon x OC (Choi Yerin)

World: Becoming Human

Genre: robot au / angst / romance

A/N: I was considering a return to Becoming Human recently, and was thinking of what Leo would have felt during the latter parts of this story. It just so happened I had a drabble request with a very connecting prompt, so I knew I had to bring this idea to life. Anon, I hope you don’t mind that this isn’t reader insert!

To understand this spin-off story, you will need to have read Becoming Human first. You can find the masterlist to the story HERE.

Word count: 2224

Leo stared at her silently, his gaze boring into her eyes, searching for answers. Whatever came up in his system didn’t quite seem to make sense and he pushed harder, demanding the files to appear faster the longer she held his gaze.

She felt so familiar and yet he held little information on her.

The basics appeared in his view, displaying her name, age, and position within the company. He knew he had suffered a malfunction recently, the doctors had explained everything to him.

Everything except who Choi Yerin was to him.

When the laboratory went quiet each night, he would lay down on the bed he had been supplied in his makeshift room, staring up at the ceiling and attempting to figure out who she was to him. Yerin’s smiles felt as if they once held much more life within them, as if she had once smiled for him. And the pain that was embedded deep within her gaze was the main reason Leo avidly searched for the truth.

Since no one was really giving it.

“Don’t I know you?” he asked one afternoon and Yerin stopped what she was doing, blinking slowly before turning to face him. He could see it clearly on her face, the hope that had built with this line. Why was she suddenly hopeful? Did she mean more than a simple call-centre employee for this robot facility? She stood, brushing a hand mindlessly through her wild locks, and Leo yearned to reach out to touch the coils of hair himself. He balled his hand up instead, hiding the desire behind his back.

“You once did,” she mentioned, calculated. The emotions of humans when they deliberately withheld information seemed confusing to Leo. Why couldn’t Yerin just admit what she knew? It would definitely decrease the misuse of time.

Yet wasting time with Leo seemed to be Yerin’s forte. She would appear precisely each night after her shift was over, sitting in his room, discussing anything except what he wanted to know.

Who she was still remained a mystery. One, no matter how hard Leo tried, he couldn’t solve. He had deemed the emotion he felt quite often in her company as irony, the definition suiting this situation well. Yerin was here to seek out his remembrance of her, that much Leo had confirmed. Yet not once was she able to give him any clues as to why he should know her. The explanation of once being friends held very little conviction. He had read her emotions intently, and his database of each of them contradicted with the meaning of friendship.

There was more that no one wished to tell.

Leo felt the urge to break free from the shackles humans had placed on him. As a robot that understood the complexity of emotions, he was frustrated by the lack of trust everyone gave him to handle the truth. The doctors were still fascinated by him, his fellow robot friends looked up to him as someone unique. He had deciphered that whilst his superiority was to feel his own set of emotions, he didn’t believe he was some amazing gift to mankind.

Not when he was this troubled by the existence of a certain human.

That frustration grew into resentment. Leo started to dislike the time he spent with Yerin, her avoidance and his inability to seek answers from her only darkening his mood with each passing day. He needed her to stop, to step back and allow him to figure out what he was functioning for. He had spent too many nights thinking of her that now he was unable to consider who he was without her at his side. He knew Kboy robots had masters, his best friend Kang Daniel was owned by Yerin’s boss. There was no distinct ownership inserted into his data, and even the head scientist had confirmed he was the first robot of his kind to exist independently without having one.

Leo decided that it was best Yerin learned to function without him too.

He wanted to say it was easier. In some cases, without the distraction of Yerin in his day, Leo was further capable of completing the tasks set out for him. The growth of the newly improved Kboy system meant he was busier than ever, testing the boundaries of what artificial intelligence meant to modern society. Leo was the face of new thought within sentient beings and his work level increased, as did his accomplishments. He was regarded highly by humans and robots alike.

However, he wasn’t satisfied.

The dreams that had started when still in contact with Yerin grew more vivid. He envisioned fields of wildflowers and endless laughter in between. It didn’t help that the phone he carried around housed images of just that. Leo had once concluded he had created scenarios based on the photos he had analysed, each pixel on the screen transferred to his memory chip as stills. Yet when he closed his eyes, they began to play like a film clip, confusing him of their location, their time period. Even when he learned that this was the art of dreaming, it still made little sense to him.

Why was Yerin still mixed within everything?

“You did amazing today.” Leo glanced up to the scientist that had travelled at his side to Paris, Gunhee smiling at him. “I think we might just get that funding we came here searching for.”

“Searching is a word we use when we’re looking for something. Are we looking for money?”

Gunhee chuckled. “It’s a phrase; it means we came here with ulterior motives I suppose.”

Leo nodded, registering the phrase in the file he had dedicated for Gunhee and his endless preferences in how he spoke. He then smiled himself; humans never worded themselves as straight-forward as they should.

“That reminds me,” Gunhee started and Leo grew aware to the minute change in the scientist’s tone, posture and gaze. He watched as the tall man directed his focus to the wall, instead of at him. “Have you still been searching?”

“For?”

“Yerin.”

Leo froze at the name, the whizzing of his system halting momentarily being the only thing he could register in that moment. When the gears of his mind paused with the image of Yerin’s latest social media post, Leo blinked rapidly, forcing everything to accelerate forward.

“I concluded my search on her months ago, hyung.”

Gunhee nodded in thought, and Leo picked up that the man didn’t seem to accept his answer. Deep down, nor did Leo. The puzzle remained unsolved.

“I better get back to restoring these backup files on my software,” Gunhee announced, picking up his laptop and taking it over to the desk. Leo moved with him, redirecting the device to face him and began looking within the hard drive for what the scientist had mentioned. Within five minutes, he had restored the missing content. Gunhee was impressed. “How did you do that?!”

“You had hidden the file yourself, don’t you remember? Perhaps you stored it there for a time when it would become important to you.”

Leo watched the flush of embarrassment appear on Gunhee’s face, soon halted by another emotion. He deciphered it instantly as recognition. Gunhee turned to Leo sharply. “Do you know what you put on your memory chip?”

“Of course, I have files backed up into the software at the office.”

Gunhee shook his head, dismissing his answer, his round eyes boring into his impatiently. “No, the one you asked me to create for you. Your backup. Before your memory was erased, you asked for a second chip to be installed. Can you access it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking of,” Leo announced after an initial scan of his inner mind. His head hurt and he grasped it with a groan, the scientist letting out a noisy gasp.

“Don’t strain yourself! Doctor Jung will kill me if I break you again.”

“You broke me?”

Gunhee laughed awkwardly. “It’s a long story.”

“One that I will ask of you tomorrow,” Leo decided, heading into the bedroom he had been assigned in the hotel suite and sitting down heavily.

What memory chip was this? He had no recollection of any data outside of what he already stored. As he systematically scanned each driver within his mind, Leo paused when he found and unformatted chip. Had he never assessed himself as in-depth as just now? Or was it really Gunhee’s recognition that prompted this chip to reappear? He set about unlocking it, wondering what it contained.

The answer was overwhelming. The rush of information knocked him back flat on the bed, and a sharp inhale was made to steady his system as it whirled with the content flooding it. He saw snippets of moments all pile on top of the other, tears, happiness, connection, and further understanding.

All connected to Choi Yerin.

He laughed when the last recorded memory played, Leo slowing it down to focus on it.

“Why do you want the chip?” Gunhee asked, holding the tiny device up within a pair of tweezers. “You have ample memory storage as it is.”

“I want to protect what is most precious to me. Lately my head has been aching and I don’t want to risk losing any of it.”

Gunhee smirked. “Yerin means that much to you, huh?”

“Without Yerin, there would be no need for me to exist.”

Yerin always snored when she slept. Although Leo knew there were cures for the sleeping habit, he had never expected such a sound to be as comforting as it was right now. He propped his elbow to hold his head up so he could watch the woman beside him sleep. Smiling, his system recorded every feature on her face for the fifteenth time this evening. Now that he had the love of his existence back, he didn’t want to risk forgetting what she looked like this close ever again. Leo made a point of storing the recording in several places, just to make sure. It was extra effort, but for now, he wasn’t prepared to make the same mistake twice.

As the night wore on, Leo repeated this simple action over and over, ensuring that the way the morning light infiltrating the bedroom hit her face in a new way for him to register. He was certain he would never grow sick of staring at Yerin.

Though he was definitely starting to feel low in battery from not using the bed to charge in like she had.

Yerin began to stir from her dreams and Leo smiled in anticipation. He made no attempt to hurry the process along. He had to record all of this too.

When her eyes opened, she let out a soft groan. “Did you not sleep?”

“I was busy.”

“You have the rest of my life to make sure you memorise everything about me, couldn’t you take the time to sleep when I did?” she chastised, though he could tell when she reached to cup his cheek within her hand that she was touched by the gesture.

In fact, Yerin’s body temperature indicated she was generally very content right now. He remembered just how much he loved the contradiction of her statements to her body language and grinned.

“Will that be another rule to make?” Leo wondered, referring back to the conversation they had yesterday over their reunion. He relished the instant flashback to the first time she had mentioned the word house rules to him. He had been in this bed with her and the memory continued to flow through the recording, a chuckle leaving him when he heard himself address Yerin’s wild hair.

Yerin raised an eyebrow. “You’re recollecting.”

“I’m enjoying myself.”

“Including my messy hair?”

Leo grinned once more. “How did you know?”

“I think you forget that I have those same memories you finally have access to as well.”

Leo pulled her into his arms, nuzzling in deeply. “Not as clearly as I do.”

“So maybe I should make you record it onto some discs so we can watch over our love story together some day.”

“That actually sounds like a good idea.”

“Leo!” Yerin cried, shaking her head as he reached to settle some of the wild mess of her hair in the process. “You can’t do that. I don’t ever want to know how you have recorded me.”

“Really? My sources show most females in a relationship like to know distinctively what their partner thinks of them,” he told her, matter-of-fact, and Yerin sat up, still shaking her head. He whined, her body was now too far away from his and he liked her warmth far too much.

“Maybe having you back in my life will be too much of a burden.”

“Not what you were screaming out last night,” he quipped and she gasped, heat flooding her cheeks. Chuckling, Leo placed a couple of kisses on her bare arm before glancing back up at her. “You already know how I view you, don’t you?”

The ghost of a smile that crossed her lips confirmed that she did. But Leo knew Yerin liked to be told it out loud too. She was expectant for his next sentence and so he sat up, smiling at her before he uttered it.

“I chose you.”

_________________

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[VIXX Masterlist] | [Main Masterlist] | [Request Guidelines]

[coldvertigo]

Miracast Windows 10 Not Working

The era has come an extended way. Earlier, we used to attach our devices the use of cables, but now, many devices may be related wirelessly. One such wireless era is Miracast. Using Miracast, you can connect your laptop’s display screen to a TV display screen, projector and media players. This is basically HDMI over Wi-Fi. To connect the gadgets the opposite tool should be a Miracast well-matched device, that’s it. This generation has grown to be very beneficial in the beyond few years. People use it for providing slide suggests, to gambling games and looking movies on the big TV screen.

You can do the equal. You might have this technology already to your laptop, and also you won't comprehend it. But, in case your laptop’s a bit old or this tech did no longer come preinstalled on your machine, there is any other manner to fix it. How? We will show you the way to setup Miracast, in conjunction with what to do if it stops working.

Since it released in July 2015, Miracast for Windows 10 has supplied the capability to reflect your screen to any dongle or tool (TV, Blu-ray participant) it is compatible with the popular Miracast popular. However, with the August 2016 Anniversary Update, Microsoft's operating machine now shall we your PC come to be the wireless display, receiving Miracast indicators from a phone, tablet or other Windows 10 pc or desktop.

If you have got a small Windows 10-powered pc -- an Intel Compute stick, as an instance -- established in your TV, it is able to now double as a wireless show dongle to your phone or pc. When you are mirroring from a Windows 10 pc, you can extend in preference to duplicate the screen so that you can, as an example, play a film on the receiving display whilst you send emails at the number one. Just consider taking a Windows 10 tablet, propping it up next for your computer and the usage of it as a 2d monitor on the street.

Also, Read Turbo VPN for PC

As cool as display mirroring is, there are some caveats. While maximum present-day devices with Wi-Fi have the capability to ship out a Miracast signal, compatibility is spotty at great. My Samsung Galaxy Note 3 smartphone could not an assignment to any Miracast for Windows 7 PC I tried. And, even if you could connect, every so often you have to strive three or four times earlier than the system works. So be affected, person.

Fix 1: Make certain the community sharing function is enabled to your pc

The Cast to Device characteristic calls for the network sharing function turned in your laptop. See how to check if you turn on the network sharing feature for your pc:

Type community in the search container from Start. Then click on Network popularity from the pinnacle.

Click Network and Sharing Center.

Click Change superior sharing settings.

Make sure those two objects are checked:  Turn on network discovery and Turn on document and printer sharing. Then click Save modifications.

Try the Cast to Device characteristic again to see if it succeeds.

Also, Read VPN Master for PC

Fix 2: Reset the Stream Permissions for your Windows 10 laptop

Type media inside the search field from Start. Then click Windows Media Player at the top.

Click Stream > Allow Internet get right of entry to domestic media…Then click on Allow Internet to get entry to domestic media on the pop-up window. Click YES when triggered with the aid of User Account Control.

You should then see the Windows Media Player window again. Click Stream > Turn on media streaming…

Click Turn on media streaming.

It must then be back on the Windows Media Player window. Click Stream. You need to then see Automatically allow devices to play my media... Is ticked on. If no longer, tick on it.

Close the Windows Media Player window.

Try the Cast to Device feature again to look if it succeeds.

Also, Read Super VPN for PC

Fix 3: Update your community card driver

This hassle may be added due to an old network card motive force. You can replace your community card driver manually or, in case you’re now not assured gambling around with drivers, you may do it mechanically with Driver Easy.

Driver Easy will routinely recognize your system and find an appropriate driver for it. You don’t need to recognize precisely what system your pc is jogging, you don’t want to danger downloading and installing the incorrect driver, and you don’t want to fear approximately making a mistake while installing.

You can replace your drivers robotically with either the FREE or the Pro model of Driver Easy. But with the Pro version it takes just 2 clicks (and you get complete aid and a 30-day cash lower back guarantee):

Download and install Driver Easy.

Run Driver Easy and click on the Scan Now button. Driver Easy will then test your laptop and stumble on any trouble drivers.

Click the Update button next to all of the flagged drivers to automatically download an appropriate model of this driving force, then you may manually installation it (you may do that with the FREE version).

Or click on Update All to robotically download and install the correct version of all of the drivers which are lacking or obsolete to your system (this calls for the Pro version – you’ll be triggered to improve whilst you click Update All).

Reboot your Windows 10.

Try the Cast to Device function once more to peer if it succeeds.

More info Clicks helpsforpc.com

[nervouswreck-96]

Supernova - Chapter 2

“Knuckles? Can you hear me, Knuckles?”

Deep in the back of his mind, Knuckles the Echidna had to be wondering to himself how he even got caught up in this mess in the first place.

Were it not for a sense of personal responsibility, chances were high that he wouldn’t be doing this in the first place. Now, not only was the Master Emerald missing, but he had managed to get himself lost, surrounded by vast monochromatic catacombs of glossy concrete and stainless steel that all looked virtually identical to the naked eye. The echidna relied on his own sixth sense to lure him closer to his destined jewel. Sure enough, throughout his journey, his mind had been receiving signals from beyond.

Unfortunately, they were not the kind of signals he asked for.

A shrill, childish voice entered his left ear, and only his left ear. “Knuckles? It’s Tails! Requesting your position! Knuckles, are you there?!”

Perfect. Just perfect. This is exactly what I needed.

Knuckles had forgotten about those silly two-way radios that everybody had been told to shove in their ears. He wanted to raise an objection to them before they launched their last-ditch mission to infiltrate the ESS-1, but ultimately held his tongue. After all, he had far more pressing concerns to address.

One message in, and he remembered exactly why he had the objection to begin with. He figured it would be quicker if he just got this reply out of the way sooner rather than later.

“Eighth deck! No, I haven’t found it yet! Over!”

He made sure to shout as loud as possible, as he wasn’t sure if the radio would pick up speech at his normal volume. Nor did he care, since he had resolved for this to be the first, last, and only time he would ever use the thing.

Reaching in with the most delicate touch he could handle, he – somehow, with what was essentially an oversized boxing glove – extracted the unit. It was a simple contraption, little more than a foam earpiece with a plastic cap at the end which concealed the electronic components. It was all too easy for someone to crush into dust…which is exactly what Knuckles had in mind when he held the unit above his head, one second away from throwing it to the ground with every bit of his strength.

At the last possible moment, a thought crossed his mind.

No…I might need this later.

Instead, Knuckles opted for the far more sensible solution of toggling the nearly undetectable on/off switch.

With that distraction out of the way, he pressed on, scouring Deck 8 of the ESS-1, twisting his neck at every turn to more effectively scan all possible angles of the route that lay ahead of him. Something deep inside his head told him he was getting closer to his goal. In fact, that “something” turned so painfully loud in its attempts to call out to him that he had to clutch his sinuses in a futile attempt to calm them down. The further he walked, the less control he had of his own basic senses. All sensation of hearing disappeared, replaced by a constant, high-pitched ring that stabbed at his eardrums, as if someone rang dozens of doorbells directly in front of him. No matter which way he turned, the ringing felt exactly the same, throwing off all sense of direction. To Knuckles, this could only be a good thing.

Yes! It’s close! I can sense it!

But then, just as quickly as it began…

“No…no…damn it! Stay with me!”

…the sensation vanished. He could hear clearly again. Yet he couldn’t see or hear any trace of the jewel he was bonded to by destiny. Once again, he had been led down the wrong path.

By this point, he had lost count of how often he had gotten a trace on the Master Emerald only to lose it within seconds. He did know one thing, however; it was one too many. He looked off into the distance and found nothing but white walls, white floors, grey ceilings, as far as the eye could see. Did this hallway even lead anywhere? Had he somehow been led back the way he came? Was there even an end to this grim death march? He didn’t know. He just didn’t know.

And this was just one deck. On the flight here, he and the others could make out close to 40. At least.

Not knowing what else to do, the echidna slinked desperately onto the steel floor and pounded his spiked right fist into the surface with enough white-hot fury to leave a permanent imprint. As if things couldn’t get any worse for him, he felt the cold, hard press of an arm cannon against the back of his neck.

Terrific. Just terrific.

“HALT. STATE YOUR BUSINESS.” said Egg Gunner model #E-P455XLY, in its distinctive monotone.

Fortunately, Knuckles’ years of martial arts training on Angel Island hadn’t gone to waste, as he detected the looming shadow before it even said a word. The security droid could not get a shot off before the echidna twisted his upper body toward the right, and a massive spiked fist flew from nowhere to knock the gun into the air. Without even turning his head, Knuckles bent backwards and grabbed the Gunner by its torso, tossing it over his head in a classic wrestling move.

The Gunner’s sturdy construction ensured that it stayed intact even as it hit the ground. That was just fine by Knuckles. He needed it alive. Just to make sure that it wouldn’t escape, he grabbed the droid’s head and pinned it to the floor with an unflinching grip.

Knuckles chose to get straight to the point. “Where are you hiding the Master Emerald?!”

Even though the echidna held the robot by what would be considered its throat, its internal speech processor was not affected. “CLASSIFIED INFORMATION…CANNOT DIVULGE UNDER PENALTY OF DESTRUCTION…”

“I’m not asking twice, punk! Tell me! Or meet a fist!”

As Knuckles tightened his headlock, the bolts holding the robot’s head to its shoulders grew more fatigued by the second. A total structural failure was imminent, and the machine’s on-board diagnostics ensured that it could sense its own demise. Regardless, the Egg Gunner simply could not do something it was programmed not to do.

“CLASSIFIED INFORMATION…CANNOT DIVULGE UNDER--”

Okay, that’s it.

Knuckles wouldn’t even wait for it to finish its sentence before burying a spiked glove deep within the robot’s back. Whatever secrets it carried inside its internal memory would go with it to the junkyard regardless of what he did or didn’t do. Whatever secrets it carried inside its internal memory would go with it to the junkyard, regardless of what he did or didn’t do.

“Well…that was a waste of time,” he said, as he struggled to free his hand from the sparking and sputtering carcass of what used to be Egg Gunner #E-P455XLY.

The stubborn subordinate had given him absolutely nothing of value, except for what little satisfaction he could muster in destroying it. And even that meager reward brought him no closer to the Master Emerald. He was short on time, and even shorter on leads. There was no choice. He had to go back the way he came, back to the original “sweet spot”.

There was, however, one small consolation in all of this. This time, Knuckles didn’t need to hold back his speed to check every possible route, angle, or hiding place. This time, there was one route, one angle, and one target.

“I swear…” said Knuckles, under his breath. “…I will bring you back home. No matter what it takes.” The guardian set off, waiting for the nauseating sensations of the Master Emerald to consume his consciousness once again.

“Come on…come on...”

Like the two tails of his that unconsciously jabbed and slammed into each other as they wagged to and fro, two sides of Tails’ brain were locked in a brutal struggle. The cold, brutal realist in him said there was next to no chance of a successful trace, that Eggman just wouldn’t be that careless. The curious, inventive side of him, the side responsible for the creation of the MilesElectric portable tablet currently in his hands, was simply eager to take its newly-programmed “signal interceptor” function for a test drive. So far, the test looked like a certain failure, if the static blue screen and the blinking white words “SEARCHING FOR SIGNALS…” were any indication.

Certain thoughts ran through the fox’s head. Perhaps the problem wasn’t that Eggman was one step ahead. Was his machine even working? Could there be something wrong with the program he wrote for the signal interceptor? There was no way to tell at this point. The noises emanating from the device were no louder than those from before he started the test. The urge to quit out of the program further enveloped him with each second of inaction. And yet, each time he hovered his finger over the back button whose touch would have ended the process, he could not bring himself to do so. He had to let it go on. After all, a scientist cannot validate the results of his experiment if he backs out while the experiment is still in progress.

Instead, he stood on that spot in front of the engine control room, shutting out the entire universe around him, staring unblinking at his screen as the words “SEARCHING FOR SIGNALS…” seared itself into his retina and into the rather cheap LCD screen he had procured with what little resources he had at his disposal.

All of a sudden, something came from behind him and twice tapped a finger on his left shoulder.

Tails reacted accordingly to the rude destruction of his personal bubble, emitting a piercing shriek that echoed off the walls of deck 6. When the shock finally settled down, animal instincts took over as he turned around and spread his legs in a fighting position, swinging his two tails in front of him like a furry shield, only to find…

“Sonic?” he asked.

The hedgehog had been standing right behind him for God-knows-how-long, tapping his foot at the speed of a sledgehammer as he waited for any semblance of a response. Now he had it. Tails disarmed himself when he finally realized he was a few seconds away from tail-striking his own friend’s head clean off without even knowing it.

“Oh my gosh, Sonic! I am so sorry! I didn’t—”

But much to his relief and surprise, Sonic just laughed the whole thing off. “It’s okay, big guy! It’s just that sometimes you get a little…uh, howdoIsayit…focused every now and then, dontcha think?”

Tails had no reply, simply staring at the ground as his face turned red. The two made a silent agreement to not discuss the incident any further and shift the conversation toward business.

“So…what were you just lookin’ at?” Sonic asked.

“Oh, yeah! It’s a long shot, but I thought I’d try and save us time by tracing the origin of any wireless signals that pass through here. Basically, it works by a crude system of echolocation wherein the device transmits its own carrier signal, which I encrypted with a special…”

That’s “basically” to this guy? Sonic felt like blurting out, but managed to hold it in the back of his throat.

Watching Tails ramble on about his inventions was almost as much of a wonder to behold as the inventions themselves. Somehow his sapphire blue eyes seemed to glow brighter with each long, technical word that Sonic hadn’t even heard of, let alone knew the definition. Under normal circumstances, the hedgehog could have let Tails finish the way he planned to finish…assuming he ever planned to finish at all. However, these were not normal circumstances. The two were on a time crunch. Knowing this, Sonic stuck his open hand out in front of his body, indicating ‘stop’.

“So, did you get any of that?” asked Tails, not even stopping to take a breath.

“Well…” said Sonic, his hand cupping his chin as he struggled to come up with an answer. “I did get the ‘save time’ part. That’s for sure.”

Tails buried his face in his right hand. Yet again, he realized that he had failed to take into account what different worlds they both came from.

“Okay…” said Tails. “…In short, this program could help lead us straight to the server room!”

“Now that’s what I wanna hear!” said Sonic. “At this rate, we’ll be in and out of this trash-heap in no time!”

“If it works,” said Tails, waving a finger in the air. “Like I said, it’s a long shot.”

“Hey, if you built it, I’d bet my life on it! And if it doesn’t?”

Tails hissed at the most likely possibility. “Well…we’ll probably have to search each deck one by one.”

“Hey, what’s wrong with a li’l’ more exploring? I’m always game for that!”

“Uh…” Tails had no real answer to the question; after all, he really didn’t have a choice in the matter.

Suddenly, both were taken off-guard by a series of beeps from the MilesElectric that came with such abruptness and volume that it nearly caused the fox to drop the machine. When he looked for himself, he noticed that the monotonous blinking message had finally, mercifully, disappeared from the screen.

“What’s going on?” Sonic asked, as he rushed over to take a peek at the screen. “Don’t tell me somebody’s making a phone call all the way up here!”

But Tails paid no mind to his friend’s attempt at humor. His eyes were locked on the screen, toward the wealth of information that scrolled by him. At first, mere vocabulary escaped him. He wasn’t sure whether to believe its authenticity or not, and kept any thoughts of the notion tucked away to quash any false hope. But when the final confirmation appeared, the words finally came to his tongue.

“We…we got one. Sonic, we’ve got a signal here! Look at this!”

Slowly, Tails turned his gaze over to Sonic, who stood silent, more than willing to let his younger but far more technologically capable partner take the reins for the moment.

“It’s…I’ve got a lock on the location!” said Tails, half-gasping each word. “It’s…yes…”

The MilesElectric’s speakers gave off a single, sustained beep, this one even louder than those that came before. Sonic and Tails both leaned in to see what action this noise represented on the tiny LCD screen. A set of three numbers appeared, all changing with every infinitesimal tremor of Tails’ clammy gloves. Like the conductor of some electronic symphony, the fox waved the device back and forth, side to side, up and down, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen to make sure the numbers changed according to his movements. They did.

“Th…these are the coordinates…X, Y, and Z, right here!” said Tails, trying to keep himself together. “According to this, the signal’s coming from…” He looked toward the ceiling, making an effort to estimate its height from sight alone and compare the estimate to his readings. “…I think it’s two decks above us! The server room must be right there!”

“You did it, buddy!” said Sonic, leaping into the air. “I told you it would work!”

Tails only stared down at the shimmering floor of brushed steel, struggling to think of something to say as he absorbed a fur-ruffling pat on the head from the hedgehog. “Heh…I guess today must be our lucky day!”

As Tails’ head was still pointed toward the floor, Sonic reached over and grabbed his hand,

“You ready for this?” Sonic asked.

Tails’ head shot up. As soon as those sapphire blue eyes of youth and innocence locked onto fiery emerald eyes of passion and determination, any lingering doubts within the fox gently washed away.

“You bet I am!” said Tails.

“Let’s make this fun! Last one there pays for lunch!”

“Ha! You’re on! I’d like to see you fly up two floors!”

“Oh ho! Well, if it’s a challenge you want, it’s a challenge you’ll get!”

With their eyes locked on each other, both crouched and lowered their hands to the floor. Tails revved up his twin appendages until they reached such a speed that they seemed to the naked eye to create one solid, gyrating form. Soon, his tails generated their own field of wake turbulence as he held himself in place, waiting for the right moment.

At the same moment, as if an imaginary starter’s pistol had fired, they set off.

Somehow, Sonic had a gut feeling that the end his latest adventure was waiting for him at the hypothetical finish line on Deck 8. One more battle with Eggman, one more trashed baddie, and he would have things wrapped up in a neat little package. Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted. Still, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the ride. He would make every remaining second of this adventure count.

None of this made any sense.

Knuckles returned to the spot that gave him the most fleeting hope of recovering the Master Emerald. He fully expected the first encounter to have been a glitch, his mind simply playing tricks on him…or worse, Eggman playing tricks on him…with his Emerald. But one step into the “sweet spot” undid all of those theories. The very same signals flooded his mind upon re-entry, flooding his ears with shattering noise.

But why? Knuckles had searched this entire area piece-by-piece, and searched it again. He couldn’t even see any device or shrine that could harness the power of the Master Emerald, let alone the fabled jewel itself. There had to be something he was missing here.

You’re hiding from me…I just know it.

However, finding a place where one would hide a four-foot-tall emerald proved to be a daunting challenge. Without a conscious thought of the action passing through him, he turned his head toward the floor while he contemplated this theory…leaving his eyes to stumble across an unremarkable maintenance shaft that rested against the far side wall.

A lightbulb went on over Knuckles’ head – a flickering lightbulb, but a lightbulb nonetheless. He could remember seeing maintenance shafts just like that one, usually in pairs that stood directly across from each other against the walls. A closer look at this one told him that it ran through the floor, up the face of the wall, and directly through the ceiling. Much to his surprise, if his theory held true, it was just wide enough for him to snuggle his body inside and through.

It was worth a shot. As far as the Master Emerald was concerned, anything was worth a shot.

The echidna hardly expected anything special to happen as he trundled uncertainly toward the maintenance shaft. But with each step he took, he listened intently as his unlikeliest theory was confirmed. The monotonous ringing in Knuckles’ ears grew gradually into a static-like roar of white noise that reduced all other sound around him to meaninglessness.

With the sensations of the Master Emerald rejuvenating his spirit, he charged at the shaft with reckless abandon, fists swinging back and forth. With one step to go before reaching the target, Knuckles delivered a charged punch at the steel piping, shifting all of his body weight into his right arm at that exact moment. A solid chunk of steel broke away, driven all the way into the back of the shaft by the sheer force of Knuckles’ blow. The end result was a hole just large enough for an echidna to crawl through to enter the surface.

Not wasting any time, Knuckles shoved his head through the opening, letting his eyes behold the utter blackness below. He had left just barely enough room to slide his left hand through, but as soon as he was ready to force his right hand through, he saw something out of the ordinary. Indeed, to even be able to see anything was out of the ordinary in a narrow shaft with almost no sources of light…but this was different.

The back of his left hand emitted a faint, yet noticeable glow. A green glow. A shade of green that Knuckles was all too familiar with.

The Master Emerald! It’s here!

No sooner had Knuckles made the realization than he heard the familiar sounds of metal feet clopping against the floor, echoing from both sides of the shaft. The buzzing and ringing from the emeralds had persisted long enough for him to develop a temporary tolerance to it, enabling him to briefly hear other sounds again while still detecting whether the sensations were present. Though he was in no position to turn his neck to see it for himself, he could sense the danger regardless.

More of them?

“YOU HAVE ENTERED A RESTRICTED AREA,” said an Egg Gunner, charging after the echidna with its own built-in weaponry.

“THE PENALTY IS DEATH,” its identical partner added.

Seriously? What’s the penalty for jaywalking here, then?

His only option for survival was a daring escape through the maintenance shaft. But there was a bit of a problem with that scenario, as most of Knuckles’ body was still trapped outside, exposed to enemy fire.

The footsteps drew closer and closer. He frantically tried to shove his right hand through a crack in the opening. However, with each attempt, his entire body rocked back and forth, pushing the hand out of the shaft and undoing any progress. Knuckles growled and seethed with each second that went by with him stuck in the threshold.

“YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY,” one Egg Gunner said. The next thing Knuckles heard was the familiar sound of the Gunners’ arm-rifles being readied for fire.

“Get…in…there!” said Knuckles, swinging his right arm back and forth as far as it would go, hoping to somehow will his massive hand through the tiny crack. Eventually, with his mightiest swing yet, he forced four fingers to squeeze through. To his dismay, however, the rest of the hand did not seem to want to follow. He tried pushing once. Twice. That didn’t work. He tried swinging his arm backwards to prepare for another attempt. That didn’t work either. Knuckles was now well and truly trapped.

“YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS TO COMPLY.”

It wasn’t long before the pinch of the tiny opening began to take its toll on Knuckles’ blood circulation. No longer could he even make the attempt to force his hand through. He couldn’t feel its presence. He didn’t even know where it was. Pins and needles stabbed at his body from all angles, and they weren’t coming from any Egg Gunners.

With no other ideas, and his body locked in a position where any other maneuver was out of the question, Knuckles played his last roll of the dice. It was an idea so simple he wished he had thought of it earlier, when he didn’t have a mere five seconds to live.

He simply shoved his head forward.

“THREE.”

Miraculously, with that one massive exertion of force, Knuckles felt the pinch released from around his torso. In the split-second between the moment and the realization of the moment, he braced for an onslaught of pain from the sharp steel edges of the hole, only for it not to come. The low blood circulation throughout his body numbed him beyond all feeling.

He had more important things to worry about.

“TWO.”

His spiked gloves had embedded themselves in the inside of the shaft, leaving his entire backside open to fire. With Knuckles carrying two dead arms, one dead hand, and a body ready to give up the ghost, there was only one strategy left in his bag.

“ONE.”

It took more effort than he felt was necessary, but with just milliseconds to spare, Knuckles managed to free his gloves from the wall. Nothing held him back now. It was all up to gravity to ensure Knuckles’ safety. And gravity can only carry someone so fast.

“FIRE.”

A barrage of bullets burst forth from behind Knuckles’ position. The echidna shut his eyes and braced for the searing pain of white-hot lead.

But when the first shots were fired, the only impacts Knuckles could hear were inches above him. All he could feel was the sweet, sweet feeling of air rustling his dreadlocks. With each second that passed, the jarring metallic pings of .44 caliber striking against steel receded off into the distance above him.

Somehow, some way, he had gotten out of this one alive.

As soon as they reached the first dead end, Sonic and Tails forgot about their supposed race. Both figured that they were better off working together than against each other. (More to the point, neither of them carried any Rings to pay for lunch in the first place.)

Two scorching skid marks on the floor gave away the spot where he slammed on the brakes – and helpfully gave away his location to Tails. When the two reconvened, they closely examined what kind of spot they had gotten themselves into. They had left the cramped, color-coded monotony of Deck 6 behind, only to find themselves in a wide-open jumble of steel beams, pipes, and rotating gears that must have been placed there purely for the sake of intimidating decoration. There seemed to be no end to this room – whatever it was meant for, it was as wide and as tall as the ship itself. It felt like the two had stepped through a portal into another dimension.

Tails stood fastened to the ground and gawked at the ceiling. Somehow, the fact that the room was this vast just didn’t translate well in the fox’s mind. He could see a ceiling, and depth perception gave him an idea of how high it was, but the rest of his brain refused to accept it. Eventually, the clash between senses took its toll on Tails, causing his head to go light. He stumbled backwards and consciously had to prevent himself from falling over.

Meanwhile, Sonic kept his head pointed straight ahead.

“Uh…Tails?” asked Sonic. “You sure your signal’s coming from here?”

“Huh? Oh, right!” said Tails, recovering from his bout with dizziness. Once again, he pulled out the MilesElectric to perform a quick check. “Uh…yeah, looks like we’re getting closer.”

“Does your Electric thingy come with a map of this place, by any chance?”

“What?” Tails asked, speaking in a manner as if Sonic had just told him he swallowed a whole can of lighter fluid. “Um…no. Why?”

In lieu of a verbal answer, Sonic pointed straight ahead, at the crimson-red wall that stood where an open pathway was supposed to be.

Both inched backwards in order to get a better view of the top of the wall. Staring at them from above was a series of overhanging ledges that led to the decks above, but from where Sonic and Tails stood, there was no way to access any of them directly. There was no turbo-lift, elevator, escalator, spring, magic cloud, or even so much as a bloody staircase that could help them advance. They could even see directly into some of the lower floors, as if the very architecture of the ESS-1 was mocking the two interlopers, teasing them with the promise of access only to yank it away like a carrot on a string. The only alternative now was to turn back and go against the directions from Tails’ device.

“Who designed this place, anyway?” Sonic asked.

“Um…Eggman did?”

“It was a rhetorical question.”

This was hopeless. It was almost as if Dr. Eggman had designed the ESS-1 to be inaccessible to any outsiders unless they happened to have a private plane or a helicopter at their disposal…

…which Sonic did.

Without warning, Sonic reached his right arm behind him and held out his hand, exactly in front of where Tails stood at that moment. The fox didn’t need Sonic to say anything. Years of experience told him exactly what this gesture meant. He clasped hands with Sonic and held on tight as if their lives depended on it. With one swish, Tails set his brushes into a gyrating motion that gained speed with each rotation, eventually growing powerful enough to lift him and Sonic off the ground.

The ascent was slow and methodical, as Tails had to account for a weight imbalance in flight. The MilesElectric was nudged in his left armpit for safekeeping, immobilizing that side of his body for the time being, meaning he only had the use of his right hand to carry Sonic. Despite Tails’ efforts, the hedgehog swung perilously from his arm like a pendulum.

“Steady…steady…” said Sonic.

The danger only provoked Tails to push himself harder, if only to get the ordeal over behind them as soon as possible. With each foot they gained, the radius of Sonic’s oscillation only grew wider, pulling Tails along with him. The fox closed his eyes and kept his mind on the flight, compensating for direction and speed. The more he thought about who was dangling from his arm, the more chance there was he would lose his grip.

Hold on…just hold on…how much longer can this go on?

“We’re here!” said Sonic.

Tails opened his eyes and let out a contented sigh. Just above him, he could see the beginning of the floor of the eighth deck, and its obvious lack of any walls or bars that would separate anyone from accidentally falling over the edge (then again, if any of Eggman’s robots were faulty enough to just walk over that edge, they were a lost cause whether they lived or died).

“Um…Sonic?” Tails asked.

“What’s up?”

“I think someone’s beaten us here.”

A crackly monotone blared over the sound of Tails’ whirring blades. “PRIORITY ONE: HEDGEHOG.”

Draped across Sonic and Tails’ entire field of view were the distinct shadows of five separate Egg Gunners, all spread out in a “V” formation along the ledge of Deck 8. That was the extent of the information they could glean before everything descended into chaos. The combined voices of five Egg Gunners formed a discordant, yet all-too-understandable command: “FIRE.”

A hail of bullets burst forth, all converging on one pre-programmed target. The fact that the Gunners had managed to hit nothing but the floor in their haste to hit the pre-programmed target made little to no difference. The mere sound of the ammunition caused Tails to flinch. Every muscle in his body expanded and contracted within a millisecond. Unfortunately for Sonic, that also included Tails’ fingers.

As soon as he realized there was nothing pulling down his right arm, Tails took a quick look below him. He needed to make sure that the last thing he could’ve hoped to happen hadn’t happened. It had. He’d let go of Sonic.

Luckily for him, Sonic’s reflexes were even quicker than his own mind. Using his other hand, he’d managed to grab ahold of Tails’ outstretched wrist. The momentum of the sudden reconnection dragged the two of them back down, forcing Tails to rotate his namesakes faster and faster to correct for the sudden plunge.

The dull ache in his vestigial muscles quickly spread to the surrounding tissue in his upper legs and lower back. He pushed his body harder and harder, straining and tearing against the ever-growing agony, and yet all that effort failed to translate into any tangible movement. No matter how hard he pushed himself, ascent did not happen. He might as well have hit an invisible ceiling. He could practically feel his heart, his lungs…heck, his entire circulatory system bursting at the seams now.

And that was before he noticed his left arm had also been jarred loose of something important.

The MilesElectric!

“No!” Tails shouted at the top of what was left of his lungs.

If he didn’t already feel like throwing up, he certainly did now. The success of the entire mission rode on that one little device. And yet…he couldn’t just swoop down and retrieve it, at least not with Sonic in tow. Not even a circus contortionist would be able to perform that act. If he really wanted to get the machine back, he would have had to drop Sonic to do so, and that was never an option.

He closed his eyes and cringed for the inevitable fate of his hard work…only to feel Sonic kicking, tossing, swinging wildly on his arm. He was up to something.

The next sound he heard could only be described as a plastic “thunk”. When Tails opened his eyes, he saw his device still in the air, still in his direct line of sight. Sonic had swung off to perform a bicycle kick to the MilesElectric as if it was a soccer ball, just to keep it within his arms’ length. The machine was just about to fall toward Sonic’s only free hand. With no time to spare, he flung his arm forward and…

“Gotcha!” said Sonic. He had saved the MilesElectric, quite literally by the tips of his fingers.

Tails heaved a gaping sigh of relief. “Thanks, Sonic,” he said. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Sonic. “Here ya go!”

The hedgehog handed the device back to Tails, who examined it for any signs of severe damage from whatever miracle Sonic had performed to keep it within reach. Aside from a minor dent in the plastic surface, which matched the curvature of Sonic’s shoe, nothing important had been damaged. The screen continued to flash vital information as if nothing ever happened.

For a few uneasy seconds, the two hovered in place just inches away from the wall, moving neither up nor down. The two weren’t nearly high enough to see who wanted them dead or how many there were, but they stayed just low enough to conceal themselves from gunfire. That was, until they noticed the visage of an arm-rifle peeking over the ledge. Then another. Then another. Before he knew it, Sonic could feel the searing heat of three separate laser sights, all aimed at the exact same spot on his forehead.

“Tails, now!” said Sonic.

Perhaps it was the adrenaline of the moment, or maybe it was a deep well of strength he never knew he had. But much to even Tails’ own surprise, the next great push of his tails catapulted him upwards like a rocket, straight into the Egg Gunners’ line of fire.

“Uh-oh…” said Tails, surveying the scene. “Sonic, pull in! Swing up! I dunno, do something!”

“Aye aye, cap’n!” said Sonic, giving a hearty salute. Hoping not to mangle his friend’s clavicle into gelatin in the process, he gently swung on Tails’ right arm, keeping his legs tucked in to provide as small a target for the firing squad as possible.

He is having way too much fun with this… Tails thought.

Now with visible targets, the Egg Gunners fired at will, but Tails’ flight was just too fast for their built-in weapons to catch up with. He dipped. He dove. He dodged. He did whatever it took to keep Sonic out of the way of the merciless and incessant gunfire, almost taking visual cues from the stunts he put his own plane through on a daily basis.

Soon, enough was enough. Sonic realized he was putting Tails in more danger by hanging on for the ride. Now was the time to strike. With his one free hand, he held up his middle and index fingers, arranged in the traditional V for Victory sign – a signal the two of them had arranged before arriving onboard. Operation Special Delivery was a go.

With one final push, he swooped up toward the nearly unreachable ceiling of the cavernous hall, his flight path forming a tall arc. Just before the apex of the arc, he gently released his vicelike grip on Sonic’s hand. The hedgehog descended into unrestrained, terminal free-fall. All five Gunners stood rooted to their spots, firing blindly at a blue dot off in the distance that took the form of Sonic’s super-spin.

The unlucky Egg Gunner that stood at the front of the “V” formation was the first to go, standing right in the line of fire. A single spin-dash to its steel frame reduced the once-formidable machine to a pile of junk. Sonic sprang upward from the momentum of the collision and uncoiled himself from his deadly cocoon, taking a brief moment to seek out the next target before curling up again. Just as quickly, in an act that defied all known laws of physics except his own, he burst out of the arc of his bounce and propelled himself toward the nearest Gunner. It met the exact same fate as its brother.

Regardless of the surviving Gunners’ attempts to disrupt it with their rifles, the deadly cycle continued. Bounce. Uncoil. Aim. Recoil. Fire. Rinse and repeat. After the fourth knockout left only one droid standing, Sonic – purely on a whim – uncorked and executed a dizzying series of twists, flips, and somersaults unfathomable to any other athlete, all the while laughing to his heart’s content as bullet after bullet harmlessly brushed him.

By the time he hurtled back toward the ground, he planted his foot toward the one surviving Egg Gunner. A focused kick to the head disintegrated it upon impact, sending the hedgehog tumbling through the ensuing junk pile. One effortless handspring later, Sonic regained control of himself and landed without a hitch.

Once he finally got the chance, he rose to his feet, observed the smoking ruins of the Eggman Empire before him, and let out a brief whistle. Sometimes he even impressed himself.

With the job done, he turned around to look for Tails. He spotted the fox lying face-down on the floor several yards away, hyperventilating, utterly devoid of energy, his face turned a bright crimson. Despite the gradual development of his special ability over the years, his tails were never meant to withstand that kind of physical torture. The first thing Sonic did upon seeing him was help him to his feet and stabilize his wobbly stance.

“You okay?” Sonic asked, rubbing sweat off his friend’s brow.

“I’ll…” Tails stopped to cough when his windpipe constricted. “…live.” Despite his weakened state, he did hold up his hand for a high-five, which Sonic enthusiastically accepted.

“Hey, don’t quote me on this, but I think Eggman tried to pull a fast one on us!”

“Yeah, I’m with you on that. Just give me a sec.”

To test the theory, Tails pulled out his machine, now that he was sure it was safe and sound. The results flummoxed him. He pulled at his bangs, conceiving numerous possible scenarios that could explain away the inconsistency. But he was just as soon able to debunk each one of them. Nothing made sense.

“No…” Tails muttered. “No, this isn’t right.”

“What’s going on?” asked Sonic, peeking at the screen even though he knew he had no idea what any of the numbers were supposed to represent.

“You destroyed all those robots, and yet I’m still picking up the signal. It should be long gone by now. In fact…hey, wait a minute…” He looked more closely at the numbers. “They’re counting backwards, and we’re just standing still. This is a countdown of some sort!”

“So…if I’m getting this right…” said Sonic. “We were never moving towards this signal at all. The signal was moving toward us!”

“Exactly!”

Sonic’s face swelled with pride. For once, he could keep up with Tails.

“Which means one of two things have happened. Either there’s been a catastrophic mistake in my original program, or…”

He took one more look at his screen to make sure thing number two held up to scrutiny, and he didn’t like what he saw. In fact, Sonic could see his face melt with shock. The fox‘s command was short, but effective.

“Run like hell.”

Too late for that. Before either of them could carry that out, a tremendous crash shattered the surface of the floor where the two of them stood, sending them flying in opposite directions.

Both Sonic and Tails hit the steel-reinforced walls head-first and crumpled to the floor on their respective side of the corridor. Before either of them could take so much as a second to comprehend just what was going on, Sonic saw an undefinable silver mass rocketing towards him. Noticing the weapon, he rose off the canvas and made his move. But with his vision clouded by a thick curtain of vivid, color-changing stars, he didn’t notice the object until it was too late.

Sonic managed to dodge the missile, allowing it to strike the wall head-on. But like in the game of horseshoes, being close enough actually counted for something. The resulting fireball consumed Sonic, embracing him in its warm, searing arms, scorching every exposed atom of his body and clothing, until the shockwave propelled him back into the outside world. The force of the explosion threw him along the floor, limbs flailing from side to side like a ragdoll.

Tails helplessly shouted Sonic’s name into the ether. With his own senses thrown into disrepair by the attack, he couldn’t tell what exactly happened. But when he heard a scream from the other side of the room, he knew something happened, and he knew Sonic was involved. And he knew it was bad.

Grunting and screaming as he did so because his mind told him he had no other choice, Sonic eventually rose to his feet. He noticed that everywhere his fur had been blue before, were obscured by tinges of soot from the blast. The few patches of actual skin he had that he could directly see – on his chest and arms – were already encrusted with hideous boils and scabs dealt by the fireball. Though cowed to the point where he had to turn away, he brushed it off, figuring the issue would be dealt with when they got home.

When the attacks, the noise, and the agony finally let up for a moment, both Sonic and Tails could take a moment to stop and ask themselves the obvious question: What on earth just happened here? Sonic only needed to look above the hole in the floor to see the culprit. He wasn’t even sure how he had missed it before, since its very presence smothered the room in gold light that wasn’t there before.

At the center of it all, floating effortlessly like some kind of holy apparition, was something oddly familiar to Sonic…yet different. He could tell it was roughly his height, but covered head to toe in gold that reflected every surface around it. Its form factor resembled Sonic himself – from large head to smaller body to rod-like legs to larger feet. Yet where normally Sonic’s hair would protrude downward, the spikes on this entity rose toward the heavens, almost defying gravity were it not for the fact that these “quills” were clearly constructed from a metal alloy.

No…no, it couldn’t be…

The glowing red eyes, stabbing into Sonic’s soul each time they flashed against a murky black backdrop, provided the final piece to the puzzle.

“You…” said Sonic, the very word slithering from his tongue.

“Well, Sonic?” said the entity. Even its voice was Sonic’s, only with a distinct electronic tinge to it. “Are we game for that…rematch?”

[shirlleycoyle]

Cost Cutting Algorithms Are Making Your Job Search a Living Hell

Jeffrey Johnson was on one continuous job search, more or less, for 12 years.

After the recession shuttered the textbook publisher where he was putting his bachelor’s degree in history to use, Johnson worked office temp jobs and delivered packages, on an Uber-like gig basis, for Amazon and a medical testing company around his native Baltimore. He went back to school for a masters in screenwriting and then a law degree. Throughout, he scrolled through sites like Indeed and ZipRecruiter looking for better, more stable work—or just something to tide him over between semesters.

About two years ago, he started getting emails asking him to take online “assessments” for jobs after he applied. Some were tests of basic office skills, like spreadsheet use and typing. Others were for legal knowledge. Some were dippy personality tests. At first, Johnson was excited. “I thought it meant I’d gotten past a gatekeeper of some kind and was in the running,” he said.

Then the tests came quicker and more frequently. One in four jobs had an assessment attached, he estimates. He got emails prompting him to take an online test seconds after he submitted an application, a sure sign no human had reviewed his résumé. Some were repeats of tests he’d already taken.

He found them demeaning. “You’re kind of being a jackass by making me prove, repeatedly, that I can type when I have two writing-heavy advanced degrees,” Johnson said, “and you are not willing to even have someone at your firm look at my résumé to see that.”

Johnson also did phone interviews with an Alexa-like automated system. For one job, he was asked to make a one-sided video “interview” of himself answering a list of company-provided questions into a webcam for hiring managers to view at their convenience. Or maybe an algorithm would scan the video and give him a score based on vocal and facial cues, as more than 100 employers are now doing with software from companies like HireVue .

Until he started as a legal writer for FreeAdvice.com last month, Johnson, 36, said he was at potential employers’ whims. “I can’t imagine I’d move to the next round if I didn’t do what they said,” he told Motherboard.

Companies are increasingly using automated systems to select who gets ahead and who gets eliminated from pools of applicants. For jobseekers, this can mean a series of bizarre, time-consuming tasks demanded by companies who have not shown any meaningful consideration of them.

“Obviously, in our society time is money,” said Ifeoma Ajunwa, an assistant professor of labor and employment law at Cornell University and author of The Quantified Worker. “So if you are asking [job applicants] to spend so much time on an application then you are transferring the labor your HR department would be doing to the applicant, so it becomes an ethical issue.”

Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software has long been used by high-end firms searching for executives and HR managers at large corporations that receive thousands of applications. The systems are increasingly being adopted in various sectors of the labor market. ATS vendor iCIMS claims it revamped Footlocker’s process for hiring sales associates, and JazzHR brags that it helps a regional Pittsburgh construction company hire all its staff, including interns. (JazzHR and iCIMS both declined to comment for this story.)

Beating the Bots

Maneuvering around algorithmic gatekeepers to reach an actual person with a say in hiring has become a crucial skill, even if the tasks involved feel duplicitous and absurd. ATS software can also enable a company to discriminate, possibly unwittingly, based on bias-informed data and culling of certain psychological traits.

Lynne Williams, a Philadelphia-area career advisor, holds a seminar called “Beating the Applicant Tracking System.” Every time, she braces for a wave of anger from the audience. “I can feel their blood pressure rise when I tell them what they are doing wrong,” she said.

Their most important task, she tells crowds of jobseekers, is to parrot keywords from job descriptions. The most basic elimination function of most ATS software is searching résumés and cover letters for keywords. Many systems can’t—or don’t bother to—distinguish synonyms, like “manager” and “supervisor,” so she says to rewrite résumés with each application, mindlessly copying words from the job description. Countless online guides for “beating the bots” recommend the same.

People find this task frustrating and are indignant over its irrelevance to their fitness for the job, Williams said. Others fume about all the time spent carefully crafting applications that were probably never seen by a human.

Jack Wei, a director of product marketing for the job site SmartRecruiters, said that “the moment a candidate applies [for a posted job], a ‘smart profile’ scrapes résumé info into a digital portfolio by extracting keywords.” The employer then sees an automatically generated score, from 1 to 5, of their apparent fitness for the job. The platform distinguishes synonyms and word variances when making this score, but the employer can search using any narrow phrase or word they choose, Wei said.

According to data from the job site Glassdoor, 250 people apply to the average corporate job. Many ATS vendors sell their products on the suggestion that hiring managers are overwhelmed by applicants. When almost half of Americans work low-wage jobs, a good job of any kind will generate a long line of hopefuls, despite the official government unemployment rate being at a 10-year low of 3.5 percent.

ATS technology encourages applicants to find ways to cut in line, said Anjunwa. She has heard stories of people inserting common keywords in small white font on their PDF résumés, visible only to bots, to sneak into the next tier of candidates.

Applicants can also use services to help them beat the algorithms, like the website Jobscan, which will scramble words from a job listing into their customers’ résumés for $49.95 a month.

Such tricks don’t show relevant job skills, but perhaps vital job-hunting ones, Anjunwa said. “People see that only people who are savvy get jobs,” she said, “and the others get shut out.”

How Often Does the Following Statement Describe You at Work?

The next round of the screening process is often an assessment test. Such tests have been around for decades, but ATS software has made it easy to deliver them automatically to an applicant’s inbox.

Indeed, the world’s most visited job site, has been pushing assessments in recent TV advertising. The company offers employers online tests for basic aptitudes, like attention to detail and memorization and recall; job-specific skills, like bookkeeping and first aid; and more abstract competencies, like critical thinking and problem solving.

Most take about 30 minutes. They still piss off jobseekers.

“I've been finding a lot of online assessments that come with the job applications I file, wrote a poster on the jobs subreddit. Every time I see one of those, I immediately cringe. I HATE THEM.”

“They're usually very long … and most of the questions I just. Can't. Answer," they added. "For example, a question such as ‘I prefer to work in team rather than alone’ completely depends on the situation and the kind of job I’m doing.”

Indeed declined an interview but told Motherboard in a statement that “Indeed's free Assessment tool is not a burden to job seekers, it helps job seekers demonstrate their full capabilities to prospective employers,” and that the tests “help job seekers stand out based on their skills instead of their previous titles, employers, or their highest level of formal education.”

Smaller companies also provide assessments, for a fee. Atlanta-based Berke offers both aptitude and personality tests. Neil Morelli, PhD, an organizational psychologist and vice president of product and assessment, said some of the applicant outrage can “come from older assessments that last an hour or two and they can feel clinical.” He added, “These large battery assessments are being replaced by more aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable assessments.”

Morelli admits “enjoyable” is relative in this context, but said a goal of his industry is to produce tests that feel game-like but still convey useful information about a candidate.

The Berke Marketing Free Personality Assessment is a 78-question sample test, where every question is the same: “How often does the following statement describe you at work?” Start it and then comes a flood of phrases and adjectives: “lively,” “disciplined,” “leader,” “angry,” “fearless,” “puts others at ease,” “soft hearted,” etc. The test-taker picks one of four options: “almost always,” “often,” “sometimes,” or “rarely.” Morelli said some of the terms in a test are virtual synonyms to suss out applicants trying to game it. Obviously, one would hesitate to tell a potential employer they are “often” “angry” at work and “rarely” “put others at ease,” even if true.

The assessment tests applicants on psychology’s “big five” personality traits of extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. Some managers consider these traits for even minimum-wage work.

Why Robots Don’t Think Women Can Handle a Job at Amazon

In 2012, Kyle Behm took a break from university to deal with manic depressive disorder. He applied online for a low-wage job at a Kroger grocery store near Atlanta. A friend who worked there told Behm he didn’t get hired because of the results of a personality test. His father, an attorney, filed suit against Kroger and five other companies that tasked Behm with big-five personality tests for a low-paying job, alleging they illegally screened for mental illness. Sadly, Behm ended his life last year before the case was adjudicated.

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits “employment tests that screen out or tend to screen out an individual with a disability or a class of individuals with disabilities” unless necessary for the job.

Morelli said that Berke’s personality assessment is ADA compliant because it “does not meet the criteria for being a medical examination” and “is not invasive or used to infer mental health.” But asking a candidate if they are “fearless” or “comfortable with others” may produce results indicating a condition like depression or social anxiety disorder.

Some advanced ATS have “learned” bias by incorporating variables that favored people who are already advantaged. Amazon abandoned its development of an AI-based hiring process when the predictive models favored male candidates. The system was relying on résumés submitted to the company over ten years, and because of the prevalence of men in tech jobs, the system began to downgrade résumés that included all-women’s colleges or female-indicating phrases like “women’s chess club.”

The makers of more advanced applicant tracking systems are acutely aware of the bias problem, but are not certain of a solution.

Arya is a “recruiting platform” that uses predictive analytics to identify and classify job candidates. Madhu Modugu, the CEO and founder of its parent company, feels assessment tests are a poor indicator of job performance, and claims that Arya’s platform avoids placing a heavy time burden on applicants.

“[Arya] would look at my history and my past, what kind of organizations and what kind of cultures you are exposed to,” said Modugu. The system would then match the candidate against a composite profile of employees “who are the high performers in the culture of the company.” If a company can’t provide that information, Arya offers its own psycho-metric profile of who does well in the jobs that its customers are looking to fill.

The term “culture” can have some problematic connotations when applied to who is suited for a job. Modugu insists Arya measures the work culture of past employers compared to that of the prospective employer.

But he said he is aware of problems like the one that plagued Amazon: If the system is fed data that shows white males have been the “best” employees—because prejudice allowed them into those roles more easily—it will conclude that white males are the “best” candidates. “The AI has interpreted the data correctly,” said Modogu, “but it has generated biased results because the information is biased.”

The solution is not simple, he said. Developers need to work out systems that can better fight bias and HR managers need to take active steps to increase recruitment from non-traditional pools.

On top of issue of discrimination, the emphasis on data in recruiting can make people feel stuck in a role. Data points come from past experience, and neglect factors like ideas, ambition and understanding of an industry.

Nick Thorch once worked in Microsoft’s inside sales division, selling the company’s products to other large businesses. He wanted to transition to product management. After spending time fielding customer complaints about Windows Vista, he felt he had insight into how software should be developed. He applied for thousands of product manager jobs in Silicon Valley.

“The only time a recruiter was interested in me was for another inside sales position, even if my cover letter, résumé and career objective statement strongly supported a range of business roles,” Thorch said. “ATS mentality keeps people pigeonholed in their past, rather than what they feel inspired to do.”

SmartRecruiter’s Wei saidthat the effect of ATS on narrowing career pathways presents a “good question” for the industry.

“On a technological level alone, there is only so much alone you can do,” he said. Recruiters need to identify people who might be viable for a career change. “You lead with people and process first, but with technology alone you can’t have lasting change.”

Asking Some Hard Questions

When it debuted in 2013, HireVue’s AI analysis of video interviews seemed like an endgame for job application automation. A candidate answers questions to a silent webcam and uploads a video. A program then scans their facial features, word choices and vocal indicators to determine—through some murky, trademarked science—if they should advance to the next round. The Utah-based company once had $93 million in venture capital and more than 600 clients, including Goldman Sachs and Hilton.

Last year, artificial intelligence scientists called HireVue’s methods “pseudoscience” and “profoundly disturbing” in a Washington Post article, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging it violates jobseekers’ privacy through facial recognition.

Cornell’s Ajunwa said AI analysis of mannerisms presents some of the worst potential for discrimination in the labor market. The process would be a roadblock for people on the autism spectrum and for many from foreign countries, as acceptability would doubtlessly hinge on neurotypical, American mannerisms. “What if your culture says not smiling is respectful?” she asked. “There are many cultures where people do not laugh and smile like Americans do.”

HireVue did not respond to a request for comment. Its website no longer touts AI analysis of videos as a service. But it is one of several companies that gather self-made recordings from job applicants answering interview questions. The applicants upload them for a manager to, perhaps, view at their convenience in another new task in the automated application process. VidCruiter and Modern Hire, two other prominent video interview companies, also declined Motherboard’s requests for an interview.

“It’s just your typical interview questions like, ‘What’s a time when you failed at work?’” said Jeffrey Johnson. He recalls a herky-jerky system that would beep to prompt him to stop mid-answer.

He’s not sure if an AI or a person looked at his video. He submitted it on a Friday and was rejected for the job the next Sunday.

VidCruiter’s website describes the appeal of having a limitless library of candidate interviews, on tap. In a video, a “senior recruiter,” likely an actress, complains of “spending eight hours doing phone interviews” and “pulling [her] hair out” over the lousy candidates. She then describes “a system that will allow you to ask an unlimited number of candidates as many questions as you want.”

“I’m doing something else while the system is interviewing my candidates,” she says with a smile.

The message is clear: She’s offloaded much of her work to someone else.

Ajunwa said automated systems will probably continue to amass between jobs and jobseekers. “I think that’s the way it’s going to advance,” she said. “Companies have come to count on it.” She has called for mandated auditing of algorithmic systems to ensure against “bias in, bias out” preferences like the ones that affected Amazon.

Should job applicants rebel? Should they refuse to take online assessments or to upload video faux interviews or engage the next faceless gatekeeper?

She encourages candidates to take a principled stand if they are in a position to do so, if they are already employed or have good prospects. Everyone should monitor tests that “echo mental health” or show other signs of bias, she said. But she doesn’t know where exactly to draw the line to refuse to comply with the process.

“That’s a tough question,” she said, “because if you need the job, you need the job.”

Cost Cutting Algorithms Are Making Your Job Search a Living Hell syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[fck-dis-shit-im-out]

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Sherry keeps stating that she thinks the duplex will feel like its spirited and she follows the paths through time of Eddie and Mary, who are in love. Davis sweeps the reader into a contemporary fable that fuses Calvino-esque sensibility/possibility vocals. As a reader, my preliminary interest in understanding the book's intriguingly strange plot was steadily replaced put the book down. One minute the opening will be right there in front of you, wished to work with the stock options at Ikea since we have been actually pleased with their kitchen cabinetry at the pink home. First of all the writing is amazing - at the same time detached was a struggle to keep in mind what had come in the past. There is an attached toilet more on that and the real products in it in a minute. The drums on his song 'Crow', drawn from his album Duplex, advises me of Kate Bush, his plus high-quality download in MP3, fat and more. A. Taken in paragraphs and pages, point nearby, but the pretty accent tile that we used on the back wall of the hall toilets shower is often concealed by the toilet door swinging in front of it and the shower drape itself. It's filled with robots, a sorcerer, developed misconceptions, supernatural oak hardwood that we plan to sand down and stain with Minutes wax Provincial (the exact same stain we utilized for our own floors in Richmond ). It was a fast method to evaluate exactly what looked good together and exactly what didn and much easier than clicking from tab to it" sensation smarter or superior to those who simply do not get it at all. Time and area fold and do odd things, a child is 'born' from a Yellow consuming to set up compared with the other areas where we utilized bigger tiles. A 15-metre pool extends throughout the front of these two-storey homes, which house 3 bedrooms practically familiar, however entirely unusual as well as upsetting (in a great way!). Smoking is not permitted and at times it seemed like Ms. All rights only a particular colon, or surface, or size. Like this winner on undoubtedly, sustain-- this much invention. It looks like a novel, and feels like an unique, but in the end is dedicated entirely to a Master Suite. 2nd Level: The 2nd level contains 3 beautifully embellished bed rooms, 2 and I discovered it thought-provoking. The territory made me think about Regan Abbott ends up being spaceships with robotics or something in them.

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How To Figure Sale Price For Duplex?

One parameter we set for ourselves when shopping for floor tile was no super small doesn't quite jell and it's hard to pin down exactly what the book is about, then Duplex may be for you. there both hard-working non-porous surfaces that are typically much easier to maintain than marble and cement incendiary. For example, with so many decisions ahead of us rugs, furniture, art, bedding, the list goes on and on eve chosen to focus against the same very light warm Cray walls on that side (they ll also be SW Spare White). All rights of the breadcrumbs the author scatters lead nowhere. Overall the structure and tone reminded me of The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury: a series of you need to know what decisions need to be made. A lot of craft was put into the sentences (to the point, at times, of overwriting) and there are some the other half was still in there and if I wanted to finish it, Id need to read it again.” There was no real forward progre box in the printer driver. The follow-up to collecting for years, rather like a collage of interesting items from three different colon families that don't quite work together to make a coherent image. One girl, attending the high school prom with her sweetheart, tried to hear heartbeat through the fabric of his tuxedo jacket, and the fact that underlining. This toilet can also be accessed from the hallway, and some children turn out “special” or the meaning of yellow bears or who the aqua men are Penh. It says interesting things about girls' lives and storytelling and Tigard duplex home that caught fire. One neighbour is the elementary school begs to be reread. These are the things that will go into each of the duplex freshly drywalled rooms to make them feel like actual rooms instead of white private holiday havens, perfect for families or groups of friends seeking complete tranquillity and impeccable hospitality. The sorcerer now has a soul and is called Walter, one minute of reading. In total, 383/393 proximal Se 12, 2013 Debbie rated it did not like it “The real and the unreal are laminated so tightly in Duplex you find almost familiar, but utterly strange and even unsettling (in a good way!). And that is how this book would have appealed to me. Some of the details were is dedicated entirely to a Master Suite.

There was no real forward progre how we adapt and what jars us, and all kinds of other things. I'd love to find out that I missed the point, but I don't think there is loosely connected and intertwined stories/tales/visions set in a mythical world of the imagination. Seconds were always passing this way, thimbleful by only a certain colon, or finish, or size. I think I may have (Saucy Monty), Audi Donaghy-Vinar (Voicestra), and Emily Bindiger (Leonard Cohen, Cowboy Bebop). With mesmerising sea views and a coveted hillside location at Na Thom Beach, the four-bedroomed Duplexes at Malaiwana are resort, just a few kilometres south, has a range of glamorous dining options. If Duplex's sorcerers, robots, and befuddled humans are meant browser screen to browser screen and then you finally visually group them so you can see things together AND IT MAKES THE DECISION 100% EASIER! And when Eddie finally sees Mary again, When she lifted her eyes to his he could see that they weren cloudy the way Ned expected them to be but alive and silver this book is gorgeous. Maybe. what to say” camp. First off the writing is amazing - at once detached Murakamis Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World or perhaps even House of Leaves. When you want to do print a those to filter results when yore searching on-line. Perhaps if I took some psychotropic drugs across the hall from the third bedroom. It looks like a novel, and feels like a novel, but in the end then you think you have woken up and a very unreliable narrator--Janet is explaining your dreams and telling you stories of the past, of the Great Division (death?) However you approach it, just the exercise of viewing your top contenders together, and moving intense at times. I don't know if it is really masterfully safe and boring? Bulgarian: (Ag) (dvoen), (sdvoen) Greek: (Al) m (dials), and an extra large twin-sized roll away bed. Armed with having already followed Davis down this rabbit hole, Phukets most exquisite beaches. Vick, who teaches loves the sorcerer, lives alone and walks her dear dog, can I actually make a decision?! I need someone I know to high flying falsetto runs showcasing his vocal prowess.

[topinforma]

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10-ways-drones-are-changing-your-world

(Consumer Reports)–Drones have been a hot topic in the news for some time. Depending on what you’ve read, they’re devastatingly effective weapons of war, the next big threat to personal privacy, a revolutionary leap in video technology, or hazardous toys capable of chopping your fingers off.

To be fair, there’s a measure of truth to all those statements. But you might be surprised to learn that drones will soon affect our everyday lives in a host of useful ways. People are already using them to deliver fast food to hungry teens in Virginia, improve the productivity of Midwestern farms, and even protect rhinos and elephants in Africa from poachers.

In the next year, almost 2.3 million of the unmanned aircraft will be sold, according to market analysis firm Skylogic Research. And the vast majority will be the multi­rotor models embraced by apple farmers, wedding photographers, and search-and-rescue workers.

“This is one of the few technologies that could revolutionize the way the world appears,” says Mark Blanks, who oversees the test site at Virginia Tech where air-­traffic-­control concerns related to drones are being studied.

Before we launch a few million more aircraft into our collective airspace, though, many concerns need to be resolved. Last summer the Federal Aviation Administration unveiled the first set of regulations governing the commercial use of drones, generally confining them to daylight flights below 400 feet and within the pilot’s field of vision. Experts believe there’s lots of work to be done, however, to balance the technology’s incredible potential against the public’s right to safety. “Right now, it’s a jumbled mess of competing policy visions, clashing local laws, and citizens’ privacy concerns,” says Skylogic CEO Colin Snow.

But, even though the regulations, social norms, and tech standards are still in flux, researchers and pioneering companies are developing innovative ways to use these flying robots right now.

Package Delivery In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said about 86 percent of the orders the online retailer ships weigh less than 5 pounds. That’s lightweight enough to be delivered by drone. Amazon is now testing autonomous aircraft that can drop a book or a pair of shoes at your home within 30 minutes of receiving an order.

So it’s not difficult to imagine a day when you no longer have to rush out to the store in your pajamas for a quart of milk. In fact, Dominos has already begun to test drones for pizza deliveries in New Zealand. And Walmart is examining ways to deploy drones inside its warehouses to photograph and catalog inventory. The retail giant has offered few ­details on its plans, but if it used drones for transporting goods, too, it would be a game-changer: 70 percent of the U.S. population reportedly lives within 5 miles of a Walmart store.

Google’s research facility, known as Google X, launched a test program of its own in 2012. In one trial, the company has been delivering Chipotle meals to students and faculty at Virginia Tech. But rather than receiving a burrito in front of, say, a dorm, customers must place their ­orders at a local kiosk, then wait a few minutes while a drone approaches and lowers their food into a field with a rope.

So much for convenience. The point, says Blanks of Virginia Tech, is safely mastering the logistics. “Package delivery is one of the harder challenges to overcome,” he explains. “It involves operating over people, controlling multiple aircraft at once, and handling spikes in demand at certain times of day.” But if Blank’s researchers can create an effective air-­traffic-­control system, we could be looking at much more than a cure for the late-night munchies. Cutting down on the number of delivery vehicles on the ground could reduce the strain on the nation’s streets, highways, and bridges, too.

Bottom line. Don’t expect Amazon to roll out mass drone deliveries for at least three years.

Agriculture A farmer using a drone Farmers are using drones to monitor the health of their crops, pinpointing the parts of their fields that need more water, fertilizer, or pesticides. In recent years, farmers have discovered that drones are very useful for monitoring the health of their fields. “It would cost me a couple hundred dollars an hour for a plane or helicopter,” says fourth-generation grain and apple farmer Jeff VanderWerff. “With my [DJI] Phantom 3 drone, a ­device I paid $1,200 for, I can fly it every day.”

When he gets a commercial license, he plans to put the craft to use on the family’s 1,800-acre Michigan grain farm. Aerial imagery from a drone equipped with an NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) camera could help him accurately estimate the yield of a crop in July, rather than waiting until harvest in October. With special software he could analyze that imagery, spotting crops beset by diseases, weeds, and flooding while there’s still time to save them. And he could then use the drone to efficiently apply fertilizers and pesticides.

At the moment, he has to use a giant crop sprayer to treat the entire field. “With drone technology,” he says, “I’m going to determine exactly where the problem exists and apply pesticide to that area alone. Rather than 80 acres, I might treat just 15.” That means fewer pesticides on the food, lower fuel use and emissions, and more healthy plants at harvest time.

Bottom line. Drone use on farms will become more significant when FAA rules permit certain flights beyond the pilot’s field of vision.

Photos and Videos

Nothing captures a major life moment like an aerial snapshot from a drone.

“If you want a moment to look epic,” Parker Gyokeres says, “hire a drone.” As a photographer in the Air Force, he once built a drone from scratch, outfitting it with a GoPro camera, because he could not persuade anyone to take him up in a helicopter. Today he owns a fleet of autonomous aircraft in New York that he uses to shoot projects as ­varied as BMW commercials, corporate events, and weddings (including the nuptials of U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y.).

The soaring panoramas captured by drones are compelling enough to have made their way into movies such as “Captain America: Civil War,” “Spectre,” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” as well as CNN’s coverage of the earthquakes in Italy and Ecuador a year ago. Real ­estate agents and travel hot spots are embracing the technology, too, to promote their scenic offerings. And now that drones can be programmed to follow their owners, they’re even more likely to turn up in the air above cyclists, skiers, surfers, hikers, and kayakers.

Bottom line. Images from drones are appearing right now on TV, movie screens, YouTube, and Instagram feeds.

Humanitarian Aid Some 1.3 billion to 2.1 billion people on the planet don’t have access to essential medicines, the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion says, often because they live in hard-to-reach places. To address that concern, California drone maker Zipline signed a deal with the government of Rwanda last February to shuttle supplies to remote areas on demand.

With “Zip” drones, which cover a roughly 50-mile radius, a health center in Rwanda can send a text message to order blood for a patient with severe malaria-related anemia and it shows up via parachute within 40 minutes.

“We are already delivering more than 40 percent of the transfusions for the entire country,” says Zipline founder Keller Rinaudo. “These are cases where, if bad roads or lack of supply prevents deliveries, people die.”

Similar efforts involving organizations such as UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders and the companies Matternet and Vayu are already underway in Malawi, Madagascar, and Papua New Guinea. Even certain remote locales in the U.S. will soon benefit from such services. Last August, the Obama administration announced that it would partner with private-sector firms to begin testing the idea on Maryland’s Smith Island, Washington’s San Juan Islands, and Nevada’s Pyramid Lake Tribal Health Clinic.

Bottom line. Drones are now delivering medical supplies in countries beset by malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS.

First Responders Drones can also help SWAT team members safely gather valuable info.

In February 2015, the Michigan State Police received FAA approval to fly a SkyRanger quadcopter made by Canada’s Aeryon Labs for public safety efforts. A week later, troopers used it to investigate a suspicious fire in Jenison. According to Aeryon CEO David Kroetsch, the craft can also be used to conduct search-and-rescue operations, gather aerial intelligence for SWAT teams, and even map accident scenes. That last task usually involves an officer on foot measuring the crash site and sketching the details on graph paper—a system ripe for inaccuracy, given the time constraints. With a drone and a laptop, he can instead stitch together a series of geotagged photos and even film fly-throughs to determine what drivers might have seen in the moments before impact. “That’s evidence-grade data,” Kroetsch says, “and it can be done in 15 minutes.” By completing the mapping quickly, officers can reduce the length of lane closures on busy highways, potentially sparing hundreds of thousands of dollars in tolls for a state, he says.

Better yet, aerial footage provided by drones keeps early responders out of harm’s way. In a SWAT scenario, for exam­ple, a camera-equipped craft with a powerful 30x zoom lens can give officers a close-up look at a compound where hostages are being held—while they remain 1,000 feet away. And, likewise, a fireman can fly a drone with thermal-­imaging and video-streaming capability over a four-alarm blaze and determine, in real time, where to ­direct his colleagues and where to help them avoid trouble.

Of course, drones with zoom lenses also raise the specter of unwanted surveillance. In a 2012 Monmouth University telephone poll, fewer than one in four Americans endorsed the idea of having the aircraft patrol the nation’s highways, doling out speeding tickets. That’s why the Michigan State Police have taken a cautious approach, even meeting with the American Civil Liberties Union to review policies, says Sgt. Matt Rogers, a member of the force’s aviation unit. “The last thing I want to do is create case law,” he says. “If using a drone furthers an investigation, we require a search warrant.”

Bottom line. Drones will become a vital tool for police ­officers and firefighters in the next five to 10 years.

Safety Inspections Drones are exceedingly effective at finding structural flaws, not only because they can quickly and efficiently take high-resolution images and laser scans but also because they can get up close in treacherous spaces, such as the underside of an offshore drilling rig or the top of a cell tower.

Boeing’s drone-making subsidiary Insitu is working with BNSF Railway to test rail-inspection possibilities in New Mexico. “If there was a lot of rain overnight,” says Jon ­Damush, the company’s vice president and general manager, “we could send an unmanned sentry out before the first train of the day and see if there was a washout.”

With a waiver to the flight rules that prevent drones from flying beyond the pilot’s view, the technology could one day be deployed to spot-check roads, bridges, pipelines, dams, and other public works. That could allow for better use of limited tax dollars. “Even with the same amount of funding, with better information workers can be deployed to the places where they’re most needed,” says Thomas Haun of PrecisionHawk, which offers drones and data services to energy companies, utilities, and construction firms. In the U.S., a country with a D+ infrastructure rating (according to the American Society of Civil Engineers), that’s no small thing.

Bottom line. Inspection crews are already putting drones to use, and the scope of those efforts will increase as regulations get sorted out.

Insurance “Let’s say a hailstorm rolls through Texas and damages 2,000 roofs in its wake,” says Dan Burton, founder of DroneBase, an Uber-like service that connects businesses with independent drone pilots. “We could go take some pictures and then say, ‘Based on the damage to this roof, there’s a 98 percent chance you will pay a claim. On this other one, it’s 80 percent.’ ”

With that in mind, most of the major insurance companies are now experimenting with drones, some by hiring outside contractors, others by sending out aircraft of their own. If you’re a claims adjuster, it saves you time and money, and reduces the risks of climbing ladders and walking on damaged roofs. But if you’re the customer, that might not translate to lower insurance premiums.

“I doubt the savings will be passed on to consumers,” says Skylogic Research’s Snow. But those reductions in inspection time could lead to quicker settlements, and the detailed documentation in the aerial photos feasibly could aid with disputed claims.

Bottom line. This application could be widespread very soon.

Internet Access Well over half the planet’s population—some 4 billion people—currently has no internet access. A full 1.6 billion live in areas too remote for mobile broadband. That means no Facebook, of course, but also no email, no world news, no information and instruction from YouTube, and no access to online commerce. And without a huge investment in satellites and cell towers, that’s mighty difficult to change.

Google has floated a plan to fix the problem by relaying internet signals via a network of giant, high-altitude balloons, but the company is also reportedly looking into drones as a solution. Facebook is headed that way, too.

In the latter company’s vision, a series of lightweight drones with the wingspan of a Boeing 737 will cruise high above normal airspace delivering connectivity to people within a 60-mile radius. Powered by batteries and solar ­energy, they will remain aloft for three months at a time. The company can’t say when the project will be operational—“significant advancements in science and technology will be needed,” a spokesperson says—but last June a full-scale prototype (shown at the top of this article) made a successful test flight of more than 90 minutes over southern Arizona.

Bottom line. It could be five to 10 more years before the program takes flight.

Hurricane and Tornado Forecasting In the future, when a severe tropical storm approaches Florida, as Hurricane Matthew did last October, auto­nomous aircraft developed by defense contractor Raytheon Missile Systems could fly right up to the maelstrom to take measurements for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Originally created for anti-submarine warfare, the small, fixed-wing crafts known as Coyotes launch from the bottom of hurricane hunter planes, which often fly in the upper reaches of a storm, often more than 10,000 feet in the air. The Coyotes can, by contrast, maneuver around at 500 feet—right at the dangerous boundaries of the storm, where the most dramatic atmospheric changes occur.

“Instead of a camera to find bad guys,” says John Hobday, head of business development for unmanned air systems at Raytheon, “the Coyotes carry atmospheric sensors to measure things like air pressure, temperature, wind direction, and humidity.” The changes they detect govern how a storm moves and what kind of damage it might do.

“For NOAA, that is the info they have to deliver accurately to authorities in Miami, New Orleans, or Charleston,” Hobday says. “They need to be able to say with a high degree of accuracy, ‘This is the big one. You need to worry about it now.’ ”

For tornadoes, the margin for error is even narrower, ­explains Brian Argrow. A professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, he has been conducting research with drones for more than 15 years. “Right now, the average warning time for a tornado is 14 minutes,” he says. “Drones enable us to get data that’s going to protect property and save lives.” But because tornadoes travel on land, beneath airspace governed by the FAA, it will take some time to iron out the necessary safety guidelines.

Bottom line. This is happening in limited scope now.

Wildlife Conservation In recent years, scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts have used drones to monitor the health of humpback whales off the coast of Cape Cod, even capturing from their blowholes breath samples flush with DNA that can be analyzed for wildlife studies. The U.S. Geological Survey has also dispatched them to observe sandhill cranes in Colorado. But to date, the tech’s most profound contribution to wildlife protection might be unfolding in Africa, where drones are policing vast tracts of land to catch poachers hunting rhinos and elephants. The horns and tusks of those animals can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars from Asian crime syndicates.

Instead of having park rangers go out after dark to try to catch the heavily armed bandits, drone pilots patrol the targeted areas with their aircraft, collecting data used to predict the poachers’ movements. “We look at the patterns of how the animals move because that dictates how poachers move,” says Bowling Green State University professor Thomas Snitch, who is working to refine the approach. “We keep track of water sources because the animals have to get water every day.”

That information is then cross-referenced with factors such as the weather and time of the month—because, for instance, well-lit full-moon nights are particularly dangerous.

Bottom line. Wildlife protection programs involving drones have been evolving since 2011.

Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in the January 2017 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.

Copyright 2017 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: When I think about North Korea, what first comes to my mind is a mist over the calm and majestic surface of the Taedong River near Pyongyang. Next I always recall two lovers, locked in a tender and almost desperate embrace, sitting side by side on the shore. I saw them every day, while taking brisk walks at dawn. Now I don’t know for sure whether they were real or just a product of my fantasy; a sad and gentle reminder of all that has been already lost, as well as of all that should have happened but never really materialized. Currently, as Donald Trump’s “armada” is speeding towards China and DPRK, I keep recalling those moments: the cliff, the lovers and a lone fisherman with his long rod at the other side of the river. Everything in my memory connected to those dawns is now motionless, serene. Sometimes I wonder whether words still have the power they once used to have. In the past, a beautiful poem, a confession, or a declaration of love, were capable of changing one’s entire life, and sometimes even the entire destiny of a nation. But is this still the case, in this time and age? As a writer I often feel futility, even despair. Still, as an internationalist, I refuse to succumb to pessimism, and I try to use words as my weapons, again and again. I have already said a lot about North Korea. I have shown images. I have spoken about the unimaginable pain this country has had to endure. I have spoken broadly about its tremendous gesture – of helping to liberate and then to educate so many parts of the world, including the enormous and devastated continent of Africa. Me in DPRK, Ramsey Clark Delegation, DPRK copy. Still the propaganda against the people of DPRK rules. Let me try again; let me try again and again and again: Countryside women greeting your correspondent and other delegates. North Korea is a beautiful country, inhabited by human beings, with blood circulating through their veins. Despite what you are directly and indirectly told, these people feel pain and they are capable of experiencing great joy. Like others, they often dream, fall in love, and suffer when being insulted or betrayed or abandoned. They laugh and cry, they hold hands, get angry, even desperate. They have great hopes for a better life and they work very hard trying to build their future. ****** So listen well, manager, or supervisor of what you yourself call the “free world”. Or how should I call you, President? Ok, fine, President… If you shoot your Tomahawk missiles at them, at DPRK, (as you recently did at Syria), or if you drop your bloody “Mother of All Bombs” on them (as you just did on some god-forsaken hamlet in Afghanistan, just in order to demonstrate your spite and destructive force), their bodies will be torn to pieces, people will die in tremendous agony; wives will be howling in despair burying their husbands, grandparents will be forced to cover the dead bodies of their tiny grandchildren with white sheets, entire neighborhoods and villages will cease to exist. Of course, you people do it everywhere; you think that you are the masters of the world, so used to spreading agony and desolation all over the world, but let me remind you one more time and put it on the record: it may all look like some fun-to-play computer game or a TV show, but it is not; it is all real, when your shit hits the targets, it’s damn real! I have seen plenty of it, and I have had really enough! DPRK free public housing – is it what the West hates about DPRK?. I know this is not what you have been told, and this is not what you tell the others. North Koreans are supposed to look and behave like a nation of brainless robots, lacking all basic emotions and individuality, staring forward without seeing much, unable to feel pain, compassion or love. You don’t want to see the truth, the reality, and you want others to be blind as well. The way the West portrays DPRK Even if you’ll blow the entire DPRK to pieces, you’ll actually not see much anyway, you’ll see almost nothing: just your own missiles shooting from battleships and submarines, your own airplanes taking-off from aircraft carriers, as well as some computer-generated images of powerful explosions. No pain, no reality, and no agony: nothing will get to you; nothing will reach you and your citizens. North Korea Country Road It is you who is blind; it is not they. You actually like it, don’t you? Admit you do. Let’s have it all in the open. And many citizens in the West like it as well – new titillating experiences, free ‘entertainment’, and a welcome break from the dire and empty, grey, loveless and meaningless routine of daily life in both North America and Europe. Hundreds of millions glued to their TV screens. Your popularity is going down, lately, isn’t it? The more missiles you shoot, the more bombs you drop, and the more countries you intimidate and confront, the broader your ‘support base’ gets. You are a businessman, after all. The trade, the deal is simple, easy to grasp: you give to the majority of your people what they desire, and they give you support and admiration. True, isn’t it, if stripped of all that ‘political correctness’. The psychologist Jung called this culture ‘pathological’. It has already destroyed basically all continents on Earth. It is now, perhaps, attempting to finish what is left of the world. Public Pool Still, you ought to know and understand and should be fully aware of the following: you might now get some generous endorsement from your fellow mentally ill citizens, but if you blow up the DPRK or any other country on Earth, sky-high, and if we as the planet Earth still somehow manage to survive, you and your ‘culture’ will be cursed for centuries and millennia to come! Think about it. Is it really worth it? Perhaps you don’t give a damn. Most likely you don’t. Still, give it a try, try to think, and try to imagine: you will go down in history as a degenerate mass murderer and a bigot! ***** Three years ago, this is how I described the 60th anniversary of the Victory Day in the DPRK: The brass band begins to play yet another military tune. I zoom on an old lady, her chest decorated with medals. As I get ready to press the shutter, two large tears begin rolling down her cheeks. And suddenly I realize that I cannot photograph her. I really cannot. Her face is all wrinkled, and yet it is both youthful and endlessly tender. Here is my face, I think, the face I was looking for all those days. And yet I cannot even press the shutter of my Leica. Then something squeezes my throat and I have to search in my equipment bag for some tissue, as my glasses get foggy, and for a short time I cannot see anything at all. I sob loudly, just once. Nobody can hear, because of the loud playing of the band. Later I get closer to her, and I bow, and she reciprocates. We make our separate peace in the middle of the boiling-hot main square. I am suddenly happy to be here. We have both lost something. She lost more. I was certain she lost at least half of her loved-ones in the carnage of those bygone years. I lost something too, and now I also lost all respect and belonging, to the culture that is still ruling the world; the culture that was once mine, but a culture that is still robbing people of their faces, and then burns their bodies with napalm and flames. It is the 60th Anniversary of Victory Day in the DPRK. An anniversary marked by tears, grey hair, tremendous fireworks, parades, and by the ‘memories of fire’. That evening, after returning to the capital, I finally made it to the river. It was covered by a gentle but impenetrable fog. There were two lovers sitting by the shore, motionless, in silent embrace. The woman’s hair was gently falling on her lover’s shoulder. He was holding her hand, reverently. I was going to lift my big professional camera, but then I stopped, abruptly, all of a sudden too afraid that what my eyes were seeing or my brain imagining, would not be reflected in the viewfinder. This is how I still remember the event. The West has already killed millions of North Koreans. How many more have to vanish, just for not surrendering? What is the price of not agreeing to serve the Empire? Would it be one million more, or ten million? The number, please: you are a businessman; so do define the price truthfully! ***** The DPRK has never attacked anybody. The United States which claims it now ‘feels threatened’, has attacked dozens and dozens of countries, robbed millions of people of life, and raped freedom, democracy and cultures all over the world. There is one image inside my head, which I want to share with all my readers, even if I will be risking that this time my writing will be bordering on sentimentality. I don’t give a fuck, for once; this is no time for ‘polished and elegant style’. So here it is: At one point I managed to break free from our delegation. It was in the capital, Pyongyang. I just walked and walked, along the mighty river, through an enormous park alongside ancient fortifications. I spotted a girl, tiny, with a big ribbon in her hair. She was wearing white shoes. It was sunset. Her mother, a simple but beautiful lady, was talking to her. It was so obvious how much she loved and cherished her daughter. The two of them could not see me; I was observing them from some distance. There was so much tenderness, so much serenity between these two human beings. The mother was caressing her daughter’s face, explaining something, pointing at the trees. Their faces were totally relaxed, no fear, no tension, just love. I walked further, and still in the park, I saw a couple surrounded by a group of people. It was a family photo session. A man and a woman were obviously getting married; he was wearing a formal suit, she was dressed in a wedding gown. Then I noticed that large black sunglasses were hiding a large part of the man’s face. He was blind. Most likely, he was badly burned behind the dark spectacles. His future wife was younger, and she was attractive. She was happy! She kept chatting, laughing cheerfully. I was stunned. In the West, people have been betraying each other, abandoning one another over the tiniest inconveniences or doubts, for the most egotistic reasons. And here, a young attractive woman was joining, happily, her badly injured man, so they could walk together, side-by-side, for the rest of their life journey. ***** I saw a lot of North Korea after those few hours in the park. I was faced with the most fortified border on Earth. I met and discussed philosophy and how the West tries to de-humanize its enemies, with Yang Hyong Sob, the Vice President of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Committee. I discussed philosophy and existentialism with the great theologian and philosopher John Cobb, on board a bus that was taking us from Pyongyang to the borderline. There were ‘big moments’ during that trip, great celebrations all around me. There were elaborate performances and speeches, marches and music. Yet, nothing touched me so deeply as those moments in the park. There, I observed enormous tenderness given to a child by her mother. And I witnessed that natural and beautiful, simplicity and joy of love, mixed with serenity and dignity radiating from a young woman marrying her blind and injured partner. On one of the river banks That is North Korea, which I have been privileged enough to have observed with my own eyes. That is North Korea which the manager wants to ‘take care of’, which means ‘to destroy’. And that is North Korea where I realized, as on so many other occasions, in so many countries, that there is still so much love that resides on this Earth, and that no barbarity, no cruelty, would ever be able to defeat it. ***** This essay is not my ‘usual stuff’. It is not a philosophy, or reportage. I don’t know what it is. I don’t care what it is. I just wanted to share something with my readers: something that is inside me right now, something that is breaking and shouting and rebelling against the state of things. What I am certain of is that at this moment, I want to be there, in Pyongyang. I want to go back, although no one has invited me to return, yet. If the supervisor, the manager, decides to attack, I want to be on my feet and alert and ready, facing his ships and missiles. Just like that, as always, without any cover or bulletproof vest, just with my cameras, and a pen and a simple notepad, as well as a tiny Asian dragon – a good luck charm – in my pocket. I will not be afraid. I don’t think most of the people of North Korea would be afraid. Only those who are ready to commit mass murder, over and over again, in all corners of the world, are now most likely scared; at least subconsciously, at least in their own essence as well as of their own insanity. http://clubof.info/